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came to another towne called Tatalicoya, hee carried with him the
Cacique thereof, which guided him to Cayas. From Tatalicoya are foure
daies iournie to Cayas. When hee came to Cayas, and saw the towne
scattered; hee thought they had told him a lie, and that it was not the
Prouince of Cayas, because they had informed him that it was well
inhabited: He threatned the Cacique, charging him to tell him where hee
was: and he and other Indians which were taken neere about that place,
affirmed that this was the towne of Cayas, and the best that was in that
Countrie, and that though the houses were distant the one from the
other, yet the ground that was inhabited was great, and that there was
great store of people, and many fields of Maiz. The towne was called
Tanico: he pitched his Campe in the best part of it neere vnto a Riuer.
The same day that the Gouernour came thither, he went a league farther
with certaine horsemen, and without finding any people, hee found many
skinnes in a pathway, which the Cacique had left there, that they might
bee found, in token of peace. For so is the custome in that Countrie.
Chap. XXVI.
How the Gouernour discouered the Prouince of Tulla, and what
happened vnto him.
The Gouernour rested a moneth in the Prouince of Cayas. In which time
the horses fattened and thriued more, then in other places in a longer
time, with the great plentie of Maiz and the leaues thereof, which I
thinke was the best that hath been seene, and they dranke of a lake of
very hot water, and somewhat brackish, and they dranke so much, that it
swelled in their bellies when they brought them from the watering.
Vntill that time the Christians wanted salt, and there they made good
store, which they carried along with them. The Indians doe carrie it to
other places to exchange it for skinnes and mantles. They make it along
the Riuer, which when it ebbeth, leaueth it vpon the vpper part of the
sand. And because they cannot make it, without much sand mingled with
it, they throw it into certaine baskets which they haue for that
purpose, broad at the mouth, and narrow at the bottom, and set it in the
aire vpon a barre, and throw water into it, and set a small vessell
vnder it, wherein it falleth: "Being strained and set to boile vpon the
fire, when the water is sodden away, the salt remaineth in the bottome
of the pan." On both sides of the Riuer the Countrie was full of sowne
fields, and there was store of Maiz. The Indians durst not come ouer
where wee were: and when some of them shewed themselues, the souldiers
that saw them called vnto them; then the Indians passed the Riuer, and
came with them where the Gouernor was. He asked them for the Cacique.
They said, that he remained quiet, but that he durst not shew himselfe.
The Gouernour presently sent him word, that he should come vnto him, and
bring him a guide and an interpretour for his iournie, if he made
account of his friendship: and if he did not so, he would come himselfe
to seeke him, and that it would be the worse for him. Hee waited three
daies, and seeing he came not, he went to seeke him, and brought him
prisoner with 150. of his men. He asked him whether hee had notice of
any great Cacique, and which way the Countrie was best inhabited. Hee
answered, that the best Countrie thereabout was a Prouince toward the
South, a day and an halfes iournie, which was called Tulla; and that he
could giue him a guide, but no interpretour, because the speech of that
Countrie was different from his, and because he and his ancestors had
alwaies warres with the Lords of that Prouince: therefore they had no
commerce, nor vnderstood one anothers language. Immediatly the Gouernour
with certaine horsemen, and 50. footemen, departed toward Tulla, to see
if the Countrie were such, as hee might passe through it with all his
companie: and assoone as hee arriued there, and was espied of the
Indians, the Countrie gathered together, and assoone as 15. or 20.
Indians could assemble themselues, they set vpon the Christians: and
seeing that they did handle them shrewdly, and that the horsemen
ouertooke them when they fled, they gat vp into the tops of their
houses, and sought to defend themselues with their arrowes: and being
beaten downe from one, they gat vp vpon another. And while our men
pursued some, others set vpon them another way. Thus the skirmish lasted
so long, that the horses were tired, and they could not make them runne.
The Indians killed there one horse, and some were hurt. There were 15.
Indians slaine there, and 40. women and boies were taken prisoners. For
whatsoeuer Indian did shoot at them, if they could come by him, they put
him to the sword. The Gouernour determined to returne toward Cayas,
before the Indians had time to gather a head; and presently that
euening, going part of the night to leaue Tulla, he lodged by the way,
and the next day came to Cayas: and within three daies after he departed
thence toward Tulla with all his companie: He carried the Cacique along
with him, and among all his men, there was not one found that could
vnderstand the speech of Tulla. He staied three daies by the way, and
the day that he came thither, he found the towne abandoned: for the
Indians durst not tarrie his comming. But assoone as they knew that the
Gouernour was in Tulla, the first night about the morning watch, they
came in two squadrons two seuerall waies, with their bowes and arrowes,
and long staues like pikes. Assoone as they were descried, both horse
and foot sallied out vpon them, where many of the Indians were slaine:
And some Christians and horses were hurt: Some of the Indians were taken
prisoners, whereof the Gouernour sent sixe to the Cacique, with their
right hands and noses cut off: and sent him word, that if he came not
to him to excuse and submit himselfe, that hee would come to seeke him,
and that hee would doe the like to him, and as many of his as hee could
find, as hee had done to those which hee had sent him: and gaue him
three daies respit for to come. And this he gaue them to vnderstand by
signes, as well as hee could, for there was no interpretour. At the
three daies end, there came an Indian laden with Oxe hides. He came
weeping with great sobs, and comming to the Gouernour cast himselfe
downe at his feet: He tooke him vp, and he made a speech, but there was
none that vnderstood him. The Gouernour by signes commanded him, to
returne to the Cacique, and to will him, to send him an interpretor,
which could vnderstand the men of Cayas. The next day came three Indians
laden with oxe hides; and within three daies after came 20. Indians, and
among them one that vnderstood them of Cayas: Who, after a long oration
of excuses of the Cacique, and praises of the Gouernour, concluded with
this, that he and the other were come thither on the Caciques behalfe,
to see what his Lordship would command him to doe, for he was readie at
his commandement. The Gouernour and all his companie were verie glad.
For in no wise could they trauell without an interpretour. The Gouernour
commanded him to be kept safe, and bad him tell the men that came with
him, that they should returne to the Cacique, and signifie vnto him,
that he pardoned him for that which was past, and thanked him much for
his presents and interpretour, which he had sent him, and that he would
bee glad to see him, and that he should come the next day to talke with
him. [Sidenote: The Cacique of Tulla.] After three daies, the Cacique
came, and 80. Indians with him: and himselfe and his men came weeping
into the Camp, in token of obedience and repentance for the errour
passed, after the manner of that Countrie: He brought a present of many
oxe hides: which, because the Countrie was cold, were verie profitable,
and serued for couerlets, because they were very soft, and wolled like
sheepe. Not farre from thence toward the North were many oxen.
[Sidenote: Gomara Histor. Gener. cap. 215.] The Christians saw them not,
nor came into the Countrie where they were, because those parts were
euil inhabited, and had small store of Maiz where they were bred. The
Cacique of Tulla made an oration to the Gouernour, wherein he excused
himselfe, and offered him his Countrie, subiects, and person. Aswell
this Cacique as the others, and all those which came to the Gouernour
on their behalfe, deliuered their message or speech in so good order,
that no oratour could vtter the same more eloquentlie.
Chap. XXVII.
How the Gouernour went from Tulla to Autiamque, where he passed the
winter.
The Gouernour enformed himselfe of all the Countrie round about: and
vnderstood, that toward the West was a scattered dwelling, and that
toward the Southeast were great townes, especially in a Prouince called
Autiamque, tenne daies iournie from Tulla; which might be about 80.
leagues; and that it was a plentifull Countrie of Maiz. And because
winter came on, and they could not trauell two or three moneths in the
yeere for cold, waters, and snow: and fearing, that if they should stay
so long in the scattered dwelling, they could not be susteined; and also
because the Indians said, that neere to Autiamque was a great water, and
according to their relation, the Gouernour thought it was some arme of
the Sea: And because he now desired to send newes of himselfe to Cuba,
that some supplie of men and horses might be sent vnto him: (for it was
aboue three yeeres, since Donna Isabella, which was in Hauana, or any
other person in Christendome had heard of him, and by this time he had
lost 250. men, and 150. horses) he determined to winter in Autiamque,
and the next spring, to goe to the sea coast, and make two brigantines,
and send one of them to Cuba, and the other to Nueua Espanna, and that
which went in safetie, might giue newes of him: Hoping with the goods
which he had in Cuba, to furnish himselfe againe, and to attempt the
discouery and conquest toward the West: for he had not yet come where
Cabeça de Vaca had been. [Sidenote: Quipana, fiue daies iournie from
Tulla.] Thus hauing sent away the two Caciques of Cayas and Tulla, he
tooke his iournie toward Autiamque: Hee trauelled fiue daies ouer very
rough mountaines, and came to a towne called Quipana, where no Indians
could be taken for the toughnesse of the Countrie: and the towne being
betweene hilles, there was an ambush laid, wherewith they tooke two
Indians; which told them, that Autiamque was sixe daies iournie from
thence, and that their was another Prouince toward the South, eight
daies iournie off, plentiful of Maiz, and very well peopled, which was
called Guahate. But because Autiamque was neerer, and the most of the
Indians agreed of it, the Gouernour made his iournie that way. In three
daies he came to a towne called Anoixi. He sent a Captaine before with
30. horsemen, and 50. footemen, and tooke the Indians carelesse, hee
tooke many men and women prisoners. Within two daies after the Gouernour
came to another towne called Catamaya, and lodged in the fields of the
towne. Two Indians came with a false message from the Cacique to know
his determination. Hee bad them tell their Lord, that hee should come
and speake with him. The Indians returned and came no more, nor any
other message from the Cacique. The next day the Christians went to the
towne, which was without people: they tooke as much Maiz as they needed.
That day they lodged in a wood, and the next day they came to Autiamque.
[Sidenote: Autiamque sixe daies iournie from Quipana.] They found much
Maiz laid vp in store, and French beanes, and walnuts, and prunes, great
store of all sorts. They tooke some Indians which were gathering
together the stuffe which their wiues had hidden. This was a champion
Countrie, and well inhabited. The Gouernour lodged in the best part of
the towne, and commanded presently to make a fense of timber round about
the Campe distant from the houses, that the Indians might not hurt them
without by fire. And measuring the ground by pases, hee appointed euery
one his part to doe according to the number of Indians which he had:
presently the timber was brought by them: and in three daies there was
an inclosure made of very hie and thicke posts thrust into the ground,
and many railes laid acrosse. Hard by this towne passed a Riuer, that
came out of the Prouince of Cayas: and aboue and beneath it was very
well peopled. Thither came Indians on the Caciques behalfe with a
present of mantles and skinnes; and an halting Cacique, subiect to the
Lord of Autiamque, Lord of a towne called Tietiquaquo, came many times
to visit the Gouernour, and to bring him presents of such as hee had.
The Cacique of Autiamque sent to know of the Gouernour, how long time
hee meant to stay in this Countrie? And vnderstanding that he meant to
stay aboue three daies, he neuer sent any more Indians, nor any other
message, but conspired with the lame Cacique to rebell. Diuers inrodes
were made, wherein there were many men and women taken, and the lame
Cacique among the rest. The Gouernour respecting the seruices which he
had receiued of him, reprehended and admonished him, and set him at
libertie, and gaue him two Indians to carrie him in a chaire vpon their
shoulders. The Cacique of Autiamque desiring to thrust the Gouernour out
of his Countrie, set spies ouer him. And an Indian comming one night to
the gate of the inclosure, a soldier that watched espied him, and
stepping behind the gate, as he came in, he gaue him such a thrust, that
he fell downe; and so he carried him to the Gouernour: and as he asked
him wherefore he came, not being able to speake, hee fell downe dead.
[Sidenote: Great prouidence.] The night following the Gouernour
commanded a souldiour to giue the alarme, and to say that he had seene
Indians, to see how ready they would be to answere the alarme. And hee
did so sometimes as well there, as in other places, when he thought that
his men were carelesse, and reprehended such as were slacke. And as well
for this cause, as in regard of doing their dutie, when the alarme was
giuen, euery one sought to be the first that should answere. They staied
in Autiamque three moneths with great plentie of Maiz, French beanes,
Walnuts, Prunes, and Conies: which vntill that time they knew not how to
catch. And in Autiamque the Indians taught them how to take them: which
was, with great springes, which lifted vp their feete from the ground:
And the snare was made with a strong string, whereunto was fastened a
knot of a cane, which ran close about the neck of the conie, because
they should not gnaw the string. They tooke many in the fields of Maiz,
especiallie when it freesed or snowed. The Christians staied there one
whole moneth so inclosed with snow, that they went not out of the towne:
and when they wanted firewood, the Gouernour with his horsemen going and
coming many times to the wood, which was two crossebow shot from the
towne, made a pathway, whereby the footemen went for wood. In this meane
space, some Indians which went loose, killed many conies with their
giues, and with arrowes. These conies were of two sorts, some were like
those of Spaine, and the other of the same colour and fashion, and as
big as great Hares, longer, and hauing greater loines.
Chap. XXVIII.
How the Gouernour went from Autiamque to Nilco, and from thence to
Guacoya.
Vpon Monday the sixt of March 1542, the Gouernour departed from
Autiamque to seeke Nilco, which the Indians said was neere the Great
riuer, with determination to come to the Sea, and procure some succour
of men and horses: for hee had now but three hundred men of warre, and
fortie horses, and some of them lame, which did nothing but helpe to
make vp the number: and for want of iron they had gone aboue a yeere
vnshod: and because they were vsed to it in the plaine countrie, it did
them no great harme. [Sidenote: The death of Iohn Ortiz, and the great
misse of him being their interpretour.] Iohn Ortiz died in Autiamque;
which grieued the Gouernour very much: because that without an
Interpretour hee feared to enter farre into the land, where he might be
lost. From thence forward a youth that was taken in Cutifachiqui did
serue for Interpretour, which had by that time learned somewhat of the
Christians language. The death of Iohn Ortiz was so great a mischiefe
for the discouering inward, or going out of the land, that to learne of
the Indians, that which in foure words hee declared, they needed a whole
day with the youth: and most commonly hee vnderstood quite contrarie
that which was asked him: whereby it often happened that the way that
they went one day, and sometimes two or three daies, they turned backe,
and went astray through the wood here and there. The Gouernour spent ten
daies in trauelling from Autiamque to a prouince called Ayays; and came
to a towne that stood neere the Riuer that passeth by Cayas and
Autiamque. There hee commanded a barge to be made, wherewith he passed
the Riuer. [Sidenote: Great snow about the twentieth of March.] When he
had passed the Riuer there fell out such weather, that foure daies he
could not trauell for snow. Assoone as it gaue ouer snowing, hee went
three daies iourney through a Wildernesse, and a countrie so low, and so
full of lakes and euill waies, that hee trauelled one time a whole day
in water, sometimes knee deepe, sometimes to the stirrup, and sometimes
they swamme. He came to a towne called Tutelpinco, abandoned, and
without Maiz: there passed by it a lake, that entered into the riuer,
which carried a great streame and force of water. Fiue Christians
passing ouer it in a periagua, which the Gouernour had sent with a
Captaine, the periagua ouerset: some tooke hold on it, some on the trees
that were in the lake. One Francis Sebastian, an honest man of Villa
noua de Barca Rota, was drowned there. The Gouernour went a whole day
along the lake seeking passage, and could finde none, nor any way that
did passe to the other side. Comming againe at night to the towne hee
found two peaceable Indians, which shewed him the passage, and which way
hee was to goe. There they made of canes and of the timber of houses
thatched with canes, rafts wherewith they passed the lake. They
trauelled three daies, and came to a towne of the territorie of Nilco,
called Tianto. There they tooke thirtie Indians, and among them two
principall men of this towne. The Gouernour sent a Captaine with
horsemen and footmen before to Nilco, because the Indians might haue no
time to carrie away the provision. They passed through three or foure
great townes; and in the towne where the Cacique was resident, which was
two leagues from the place where the Gouernour remained, they found many
Indians with their bowes and arrowes, in manner as though they would
haue staied to fight, which did compasse the towne; and assoone as they
saw the Christians come neere them without misdoubting them, they set
the Caciques house on fire, and fled ouer a lake that passed neere the
towne, through which the horses could not passe. The next day being
Wednesday the 29. of March the Gouernour came to Nilco: he lodged with
all his men in the Caciques towne, which stood in a plaine field, which
was inhabited for the space of a quarter of a league: and within a
league and halfe a league were other very great townes, wherein was
great store of Maiz, of French beanes, of Walnuts, and Prunes.
[Sidenote: The best Countrie of Florida.] This was the best inhabited
countrie, that was seene in Florida, and had most store of Maiz, except
Coca, and Apalache. There came to the campe an Indian, accompanied with
others, and in the Caciques name gaue the Gouernour a mantle of Marterns
skinnes, and a cordon of perles. The Gouernour gaue him a few small
Margarites, which are certaine beades much esteemed in Peru, and other
things, wherewith he was very well contented. He promised to returne
within two daies, but neuer came againe: but on the contrarie the
Indians came by night in canoes, and carried away all the Maiz they
could, and made them cabins on the other side of the Riuer in the
thickest of the wood, because they might flee if wee should goe to seeke
them. The Gouernour seeing hee came not at the time appointed, commanded
an ambush to be laid about certaine store-houses neere the lake, whither
the Indians came for Maiz: where they tooke two Indians, who told the
Gouernour, that hee which came to visit him, was not the Cacique, but
was sent by him vnder pretence to spie whether the Christians were
carelesse, and whether they determined to settle in that country or to
goe forward. Presently the Gouernour sent a Captaine with footmen and
horsemen ouer the riuer; and in their passage they were descried of the
Indians, and therefore he could take but tenne or twelue men and women,
with whom hee returned to the campe. This Riuer which passed by Nilco,
was that which passed by Cayas and Autiamque, and fell into Rio grande,
or the Great Riuer, which passed by Pachaha and Aquixo neere vnto the
prouince of Guachoya: and the Lord thereof came vp the Riuer in canoes
to make warre with him of Nilco. On his behalf there came an Indian to
the Gouernour and said vnto him, That he was his seruant, and prayed him
so to hold him, and that within two daies hee would come to kisse his
Lordships hands: and at the time appointed he came with some of his
principal Indians, which accompanied him, and with words of great offers
and courtesie hee gaue the Gouernour a present of many mantles and
Deeres skinnes. The Gouernour gaue him some other things in recompense,
and honoured him much. Hee asked him what townes there were downe the
Riuer? He answered that he knew none other but his owne: and on the
other side of the Riuer a prouince of a Cacique called Quigalta. So hee
tooke his leaue of the Gouernour and went to his owne towne. Within few
daies the Gouernour determined to goe to Guachoya, to learne there
whether the Sea were neere, or whether there were any habitation neere,
where hee might relieue his companie, while the brigantines were making,
which he meant to send to the land of the Christians. As he passed the
Riuer of Nilco, there came in canoes Indians of Guachoya vp the streame,
and when they saw him, supposing that he came to seeke them to doe them
some hurt, they returned downe the Riuer, and informed the Cacique
thereof: who with all his people, spoiling the towne of all that they
could carrie away, passed that night ouer to the other side of Rio grande,
or the Great Riuer. The [Sidenote: Foure names of Rio grande.] Gouernour
sent a Captaine with fiftie men in sixe canoes downe the Riuer, and went
himselfe by land with the rest: hee came to Guachoya vpon Sunday the 17.
of April: he lodged in the towne of the Cacique, which was inclosed about,
and seated a crossebow shot distant from the Riuer. Here the Riuer is
called Tamaliseu, and in Nilco Tapatu, and in Coça Mico, and in the port
or mouth Ri.
Chap. XXIX.
Of the message which the Gouernour sent to Quigalta, and of the
answere which he returned; and of the things which happened in
this time.
As soone as the Gouernour come to Guachoya, hee sent Iohn Danusco with
as many men as could goe in the canoes vp the Riuer. For when they came
downe from Nilco, they saw on the other side the Riuer new cabins made.
Iohn Danusco went and brought the canoes loden with Maiz, French beanes,
Prunes, and many loaues made of the substance of prunes. That day came
an Indian to the Gouernour from the Cacique of Guachoya, and said, that
his Lord would come the next day. The next day they saw many canoes come
vp the Riuer, and on the other side of the great Riuer, they assembled
together in the space of an houre: they consulted whether they should
come or not; and at length concluded to come, and crossed the Riuer. In
them came the Cacique of Guachoya, and brought with him manie Indians
with great store of Fish, Dogges, Deeres skinnes, and Mantles: And
assoone as they landed, they went to the lodging of the Gouernour, and
presented him their gifts, and the Cacique vttered these words:
Mightie and excellent Lord, I beseech your Lordship to pardon mee the
errour which I committed in absenting my selfe, and not tarrying in this
towne to haue receiued and serued your Lordship; since, to obtaine this
opportunitie of time, was, and is as much as a great victorie to me. But
I feared that, which I needed not to haue feared, and so did that which
was not reason to do; But as haste maketh waste, and I remoued without
deliberation; so, as soone as I thought on it, I determined not to
follow the opinion of the foolish, which is, to continue in their
errour; but to imitate the wise and discreet, in changing my counsell,
and so I came to see what your Lordship will command me to doe, that I
may serue you in all things that are in my power.
The Gouernour receiued him with much ioy, and gaue him thankes for his
present and offer. He asked him, whether hee had any notice of the Sea.
Hee answered, no, nor of any townes downe the Riuer on that side; saue
that two leagues from thence was one towne of a principall Indian a
subiect of his; and on the other side of the Riuer, three daies iourney
from thence downe the Riuer, was the Prouince of Quigalta, which was the
greatest Lord that was in that Countrie. The Gouernour thought that the
Cacique lied vnto him, to rid him out of his owne townes, and sent Iohn
Danusco with eight horsemen downe the Riuer, to see what habitation
there was, and to informe himselfe, if there were any notice of the Sea.
Hee trauelled eight daies, and at his returne hee said, that in all that
time he was not able to go aboue 14. or 15. leagues, because of the
great creekes that came out of the Riuer, and groues of canes, and
thicke woods that were along the banks of the Riuer, and that hee had
found no habitation. [Sidenote: The Gouernor falleth sick of thought.]
The Gouernour fell into great dumps to see how hard it was to get to the
Sea: and worse, because his men and horses euery day diminished, being
without succour to sustaine themselues in the country: and with that
thought he fell sick. But before he tooke his bed hee sent an Indian to
the Cacique at Quigalta to tell him, that hee was the Childe of the
Sunne, and that all the way that hee came all men obeyed and serued him,
that he requested him to accept of his friendship, and come vnto him;
for he would be very glad to see him; and in signe of loue and obedience
to bring something with him of that which in his countrie was most
esteemed. The Cacique answered by the same Indian:
[Sidenote: A most wittie and stout answere of the Cacique of Quigalta.]
That whereas he said he was the Child of the Sunne, if he would drie vp
the Riuer he would beleeue him: and touching the rest, that he was wont
to visit none; but rather that all those of whom he had notice did visit
him, serued, obeyed and paid him tributes willingly or perforce:
therefore if hee desired to see him, it were best he should come
thither: that if hee came in peace, he would receiue him with speciall
good will; and if in warre, in like manner hee would attend him in the
towne where he was, and that for him or any other hee would not shrinke
one foote backe.
By that time the Indian returned with this answere, the Gouernour had
betaken himselfe to bed, being euill handled with feuers, and was much
agrieued, that he was not in case to passe presently the Riuer and to
seeke him, to see if he could abate that pride of his, considering the
Riuer went now very strongly in those parts; for it was neere halfe a
league broad, and 16. fathomes deep, and very furious, and ranne with a
great current; and on both sides there were many Indians, and his power
was not now so great, but that hee had need to helpe himselfe rather by
slights then by force. The Indians of Guachoya came euery day with fish
in such numbers, that the towne was full of them. The Cacique said, that
on a certaine night hee of Quigalta would come to giue battell to the
Gouernour. Which the Gouernour imagined that he had deuised, to driue
him out of his countrey, and commanded him to bee put in hold: and that
night and all the rest, there was good watch kept. Hee asked him
wherefore Quigalta came not? He said that hee came, but that he saw him
prepared, and therefore durst not giue the attempt: and hee was earnest
with him to send his Captaines ouer the Riuer, and that he would aide
him with many men to set vpon Quigalta. The Gouernour told him that
assoone as he was recouered, himselfe would seeke him out. And seeing
how many Indians came daily to the towne, and what store of people was
in that countrie, fearing they should al conspire together and plot some
treason against him; and because the towne had some open gaps which were
not made an end of inclosing, besides the gates which they went in and
out by: because the Indians should not thinke he feared them, he let
them all alone vnrepaired; and commanded the horsemen to be appointed to
them, and to the gates: and all night the horsemen went the round; and
two and two of euery squadron rode about, and visited the skouts that
were without the towne in their standings by the passages, and the
crossebowmen that kept the canoes in the Riuer. And because the Indians
should stand in feare of him, hee determined to send a Captaine to
Nilco, for those of Guachoya had told him that it was inhabited; that by
vsing them cruelly, neither the one nor the other should presume to
assaile him; and hee sent Nunnez de Touar with fifteene horsemen, and
Iohn de Guzman Captaine of the footmen with his companie, in canoes vp
the Riuer. The Cacique of Guachoya sent for many canoes and many warlike
Indians to goe with the Christians: and the Captaine of the Christians,
|
will see, little devil! He
will--what you call it? Make ze punching bag of you! Who will be
happy zen? I will laugh at you, so, ha-ha!”
“Go ahead, laugh, old boy, it will ease your mind!” said the boy,
whom the cook had so aptly described. “It may save you from having
apoplexy and croaking. Fat old guys like you often go off just like
that!” and he grinned and snapped his fingers.
The outraged cook could think of nothing to say to this crowning
insult, and retired into his shack, muttering a string of variegated
profanity. After a short interval the boy returned to his
dish-washing, but kept a wary eye on the door, prepared to cut and
run at the first sign of danger.
The Boy Scouts had been interested spectators of this scene, and now
Mr. Durland stepped up to the boy who had been the cause of all the
trouble, and said, “Can you tell me, my lad, where I can find the
foreman, if he is in camp?”
“The boss is away just now,” replied the boy, civilly enough. “Wot’s
yer business with him? Shall I tell him you were here?”
“That depends on when he will be back,” replied Mr. Durland. “Do you
think he will be here soon? If so, we will wait for him.”
“I guess he will, if you want to see him bad enough to wait,”
answered the boy. He seemed willing enough to oblige, and Mr. Durland
felt sure that he was not a really bad boy, although it is safe to
say that the cook would not have agreed with him.
“Who’s them guys with you?” asked the boy, but with a note of respect
in his voice that was seldom heard there.
“That is a Troop of three Patrols of Boy Scouts,” explained Mr.
Durland.
“Boy Scouts?” echoed the boy. “I knew a feller once who was a Boy
Scout, and he said it was nifty to be one. He said I could be one,
too, if I wanted to, and I did, but I thought he was just kidding me.
How is a guy like me, what can’t even talk straight, goin’ to be a
Boy Scout?”
“There’s no reason on earth why you shouldn’t be one, if you really
desire it,” said Mr. Durland, kindly. “You can soon learn to ‘talk
straight,’ as you call it, and once you have taken the Scout oath,
everything else will come of itself.”
The Scout-Master then went on to explain just what being a Boy Scout
meant, and the boy listened attentively. When he spoke about the
Scout oath, the boy inquired:
“Just what is the oath, mister?”
“It is the oath that every boy desiring to become a Scout must take,
and once having done so, he must stick to it through thick and thin,”
explained Mr. Durland.
“Well, I know now that I will want to join, but could I have a little
time to think it over?” inquired Harry, for so his name proved to be.
“Why, surely!” replied Mr. Durland, cordially. “We wouldn’t hurry
you in your decision for a moment. We will be in the camp off and on
quite a while, and you can let me know of your decision at any time
that suits you best. Just take your time, my boy, and think it over.”
“I will, sir,” replied Harry, gratefully, and turned again to his
seemingly endless task.
The Scout-Master rejoined the boys, and they all started on an
inspection of the camp. As they walked, Mr. Durland told Jack and
Dick Crawford about what the red-haired boy had said, and they were
as pleased as he over the prospect of gaining a new Scout, when
in this part of the country nothing had been further from their
thoughts.
The clearing in which the logging camp was situated covered several
acres, and was hemmed in closely by giant trees. Some of these had
already been nicked by the woodcutter’s axe, which marked them as the
next victims to the demands of advancing civilization.
Not far from the camp ran a river, or at least what was a river at
certain seasons of the year, though now it was little more than a
large brook. The boys could hear it murmuring through the trees, and
suddenly Tom Binns said:
“Say, fellows, I wonder if there’s any place around here that we
could take a swim? It’s getting pretty hot, and I for one feel as if
a good swim would do me all sorts of good.”
There was a general shout of approval, and the Scout-Master said,
“Why don’t you see if you can discover a pool of some kind?”
This was no sooner said than done, and the boys, accompanied by Don,
were plunging pell-mell through the underbrush in the direction of
the river. Soon they emerged on the bank of the stream, and after
their hot run the thought of a plunge in the cool, shady river was
pleasant indeed.
Running along the bank, they discovered a place where a fallen forest
giant had formed a natural dam, and the water was several feet deep.
It was not two minutes before every Scout was in the pool, and oh,
how grateful the cool, clear water felt! They splashed around, and
in one place the better swimmers found it deep enough for diving.
“Say, isn’t this a bully place?” shouted Jack.
“Bet your sweet life it is!” shouted one.
“I just guess yes!” agreed another.
Mr. Durland remained on the bank with Don beside him. He could see
that the dog wanted to jump in with the boys, but felt that he ought
not to leave the Scout-Master alone. So Mr. Durland picked up a dry
stick and, showing it to Don, said, “Here, boy, fetch it back!” and
threw it into the stream.
In three bounds Don had reached the brink of the pool and dashed in,
covering the boys with spray. In less time than it takes to tell, he
had grasped the stick in his strong, white teeth, and clambered up
the bank.
Pausing only long enough to give himself a shake, which sent a
miniature shower into the air, he ran proudly up to the Scout-Master
and dropped the stick at his feet. Mr. Durland patted his wet head
approvingly, and this performance was repeated several times, much
to the delight of both boys and dog. When it came to swimming, Don
could beat any of them, and the water seemed almost to be his natural
element.
But time was passing, and at last the boys had to climb out
reluctantly and dress.
“Gee,” said Bob Hart, “we’ll have to try to get down here as often as
we can,” and this sentiment was heartily echoed by the others.
They now proceeded to the camp, and when they reached there found
that the foreman, Mr. Flannigan, had arrived a few minutes before.
Mr. Durland introduced himself, and handed the foreman a letter from
Mr. Scott. With many grimaces and mutterings Mr. Flannigan finally
deciphered the letter and, looking up, remarked:
“Shure, an’ Mr. Scott says as how yer all right, an’ by the same
token, whativer Mr. Scott says goes around here, him bein’ the boss.
What kin I be doin’ fur ye, sir?”
“Why, nothing very much,” answered Mr. Durland with a smile. “We are
commissioned by Mr. Scott, as he no doubt tells you in his letter, to
get the lay of the land around here and make a report to him. While
we were about it, I thought it would be a good chance to give my
Troop some idea of what a logging camp is like.”
“Shure, an’ it’s glad I’ll be to do what I kin fur yez,” said
Flannigan, scratching his head. “But, bedad, it’s a poor time o’ the
year to see a loggin’ camp. Most of the brave b’ys is in town or
scattered around further north. At this time o’ the year ’tis little
we do besides nickin’ the trees for the fall cut. Howiver, if I’m not
mistaken, here come the b’ys now fur supper, an’ if ye don’t mind
rough table manners, we’ll soon have a bite to eat. Here, cook!” as
that individual bustled past, “set up an extra table in the bunk
house for the b’ys here. More’s the pity, it’s not much we’ve got to
offer ye, but such as it is, there’s never any lack, and I guess ye
kin make out.”
By this time the lumbermen had arrived at the house, and the boys
thought they had never seen a stronger or more healthy set of men.
The sun had tanned their bearded faces to a deep brown hue, and as
they dropped their heavy axes into a corner, it was easy to see that
each one was as strong as two ordinary men.
They all muttered a “How d’ye do” to Mr. Durland, and took their
seats around the rough table in silence.
Obedient to instructions, the cook had stretched a wide plank between
two barrels, and this served Mr. Durland and his Troop as a table.
The boys were not in a mood to be critical, and so long as they got
something to eat, did not care much what kind of a table it was
served on.
Harry, the red-headed cookee, now entered, bearing a huge platter
of steaming beans. This was followed by other dishes of biscuits,
doughnuts and great cups of black coffee.
The lumbermen fell to with a rush, and it was wonderful to see the
way in which the eatables vanished. They ate like famished wolves,
and the Scouts, hungry as they were, almost forgot to eat, and could
only stare at the spectacle and wonder how the men ever did it.
However, you may be sure that their own hunger soon asserted itself,
and, as Ben Hoover expressed it, they began to “feed their faces.”
The food was very good in its way, and the boys made a hearty meal.
The lumberjacks, however, were through almost before the Scouts had
begun, and had gone outside, there to smoke their pipes and swap
yarns of perils by wood and water.
Soon the boys followed them, and ranged themselves on the grass,
listening to the whoppers that the inventive men told. It must be
admitted that most of the yarns had some foundation of truth, but
on this had been reared an elaborate structure of events that had
happened only in the imagination of the man telling the story.
After a while they started singing a rough lumberman’s song, and some
of the boys joined in the chorus. Tom’s clear, piercing voice rang
out above the thunderous bass of the men like foam on the crest of
the wave, and when they had finished, the men gazed at him admiringly.
“That there kid,” said one great, bearded fellow, who at one time had
been a cowboy on the western plains, “is sure goin’ to be some shakes
as a singer when he grows up. I bet he’ll be in opry some o’ these
days. I knew a feller on the Panhandle as could sing like that oncet,
but he _would_ borrow hosses as didn’t belong to him, and so we all
strung him up one fine mornin’. It sure seemed a shame to strangle
that voice of his’n, but it had to be did.”
He gazed meditatively out over the tops of the trees, and a big
fellow called Pete said:
“Say, boy, why don’t you bane give us a song?”
Tom was about to refuse, when Mr. Durland said, “Go ahead, Tom. Sing
_My Old Kentucky Home_, won’t you?”
Thus encouraged, Tom drew a deep breath and started the Southern song.
In the hush of the great north woods, his wonderful voice floated out
in liquid melody, and the men sat entranced. Visions of childhood
days, when they had sat at some distant fireside, came up before
them, and more than one hardened “scrapper” felt a lump rise in his
throat and his eyes grow moist.
As the song was finished there was a short silence, and then someone
said in a husky voice: “Say, kid, that was great! I’ll bet your
father is proud of you. I would be, if I was your dad! Sing some
more, will yuh?”
Tom sang song after song, until it was almost dark, and the Scouts
were forced to leave.
All the men followed the boys to the edge of the clearing, and here
they parted.
“Youse b’ys has given us an iligant evenin’, bedad, and it’s us that
thanks ye, although we can’t do it in none of them flowin’ speeches
like the poetry fellers does. All we kin say is as how we hope ye’ll
come early and often, and stay late.”
There was a hearty chorus of, “We sure will!” and “Much obliged, Mr.
Flannigan!” from the boys, and as Mr. Durland shook hands with the
boss of the camp, he said:
“We certainly have been royally entertained, Mr. Flannigan, and want
to thank you for it.”
“Shure, an’ it’s yourselves that has done the entertainin’,”
responded the foreman, with a comical grin.
“Well, good-night, everybody!” shouted the Scouts in chorus, and were
answered by a good-natured mumble from the deep-chested woodmen.
“Forward, march!” called Scout-Master Durland, and the Boy Scouts
started on their return journey.
CHAPTER III
THE OLD SNAKE HUNTER
The boys--Jack, Tom and Bob--set off one morning at the
Scout-Master’s direction for the bluestone quarries situated about a
mile from the lodge. Don rushed joyfully ahead, barking at squirrels,
who looked at him tantalizingly from safe retreats in the trees,
chasing rabbits into their burrows, and making himself altogether
disagreeable to the astonished inhabitants of the forest.
The way to the quarries was not an easy one. The boys had to climb
over great rocks, descend the steep sides of mountains, slipping and
sliding most of the way; they had to make a path through stout vines
that reached from tree to tree and seemed determined not to let them
pass. Still they went steadily forward, for what Scout would ever
think of complaining or, worse yet, of turning back with a task half
done?
Finally they saw before them through the trees a small hut before
which an old man of strange appearance was standing. He wore an old
brown hunting suit, so old and threadbare, in fact, that the boys
wondered how it ever managed to hold together; his leather leggings
were strapped securely just below the knee. In his hand he held
an implement that looked like a pitchfork, but which had only two
prongs, and in his mouth was a huge pipe that sent up a cloud of
smoke at every puff. And although his face was all criss-crossed with
wrinkles, the few people who knew him forgot all about that when they
caught the kindly gleam of his dark eyes, which were just as keen and
bright at sixty as they had been at twenty.
Don trotted up and down and regarded the old man, with one paw raised
and his head cocked inquiringly on one side, confident of welcome.
“Waal, I’ll be durned!” said the old fellow scratching his head in
perplexity. “If that dog ain’t the image of my Rover what got drowned
down in the river yonder a year ago come Monday! Seems like he might
almost be Rover’s sperret; that is, ef I was to believe in sech
things. Come here, doggie, an’ ’splain yerself! One minnit ye ain’t
there an’ next minnit ye air! Whar be ye from?” and he laid his hand
gently on the big dog’s head.
Just then the boys came into the cleared space in front of the cabin
and saluted the old man courteously.
“Waal, you be pow’ful fine youngsters,” he said, fairly beaming with
delight at the unexpected visit. “Be this your doggie?”
“You bet your life he is!” Bob asserted, proudly. “Jack here is his
real owner, but we all have a part interest in him. We come from the
Boy Scouts’ camp about a mile back,” he went on to explain, “and
we’re bound for the bluestone quarries.”
“Waal, I’ll be durned!” again said the old man, knocking the ashes
out of his pipe. “Seems to me I heerd somethin’ ’bout a boys’ camp
t’other day when I was down in town. Layin’ out that new ’state or
whatever you call it, beant you?”
“Yes, we’re locating lakes and brooks and different kinds of trees,
and we’re getting great fun out of it, too,” Jack replied; then
added, “I’m afraid we’ll have to get along, fellows. We’ve got quite
a way to go yet.”
“What’s your hurry, boys? ’Tain’t so often Old Sam has company drop
in to see him that he’s glad to see ’em go. Why can’t ye stay and
hev a bite o’ somethin’ to eat with me? I am bound for the quarries
myself to get the ile from any o’ them pesky snakes what are fools
enough to let me ketch ’em. I kin show you a durn sight better road
there than any you know of.”
The boys, who had brought some lunch with them, were only too glad to
accept Old Sam’s kind invitation. Don, who had felt a lively regard
for the old man from the first minute he looked at him, trotted
contentedly into the cabin with the rest.
The old man was so happy to have someone to talk to that he kept up
a continual chatter as he put the frying-pan on the stove and sliced
some bacon.
“You see,” he was saying, “it was like this, boys. We had had a
turrible late spring same’s we’ve had this year an’ the river was
pow’ful swollen an’ angry like, along o’ the snow meltin’ an’ comin’
down from the mountains. Waal, my Rover an’ me, we wuz walkin’ along
when all o’ a sudden we heerd a child screamin’. Sez I to Rover, sez
I, ‘It’s ’bout time, my boy, that we wuz findin’ out the meanin’ o’
that there scream.’
“Rover seemed like he wuz o’ the same opinion, cuz before I had time
to git the words out o’ my mouth, away he went like a streak. When I
got to the river, I see my Rover gather hisself together and spring
into the river, makin’ straight fer a little patch o’ white that I
took fer a child’s dress. It didn’t take long fer me to git my coat
off and foller him, let me tell ye!”
The boys, deeply interested, waited impatiently while Old Sam turned
a slice of bacon, and then continued, reminiscently:
“Waal, by the time I had fit my way as fur as from this stove to the
door, I see Rover comin’ back with a little piece o’ white in his
mouth. He swum much slower and feebler than he done at fust, and I
could see that the strain was tellin’ on him turr’ble. I swum as fast
as I could to meet him. Purty soon up he come, stickin’ on to that
piece o’ white like he would sooner give up his own life than let go,
but when he looked up at me so pitiful like I--I----” Here the old
man choked and drew his hand hastily over his eyes, stealing a glance
at the boys to see if they had noticed his weakness, but finding them
all looking in the other direction, then, putting the bacon on the
table, he went on:
“Waal, I put out my hand to take hold o’ the little child, an’ Rover,
he let go jest too soon and the little one went under. I dove down,
and soon felt the dress in my hand. When I got to the top, I jest
nat’ally looked to see whar my Rover wuz, but I couldn’t see him
nowhere. It hurt me turr’ble to go in without findin’ him, but I
knowed my strength wouldn’t hold out much longer, so I had to use it
while there wuz any left. Waal, I never could remember how I swum
the rest o’ the way to shore, but I got thar some way, an’ found a
crowd o’ people thar, glad enough to take the child after I had saved
it. They told me how brave I wuz, too, but I turned on ’em, kind of
fierce like, an’ said:
“‘It wuzn’t me as done it! It was my Rover, and he’s dead now. Dead,
d’ye hear that?’ an’ then I jest walked away with my heart gone clean
out o’ me. Ye see, my Rover wasn’t a water dog. He jest nat’ally
hated the water, but the big, brave heart o’ him----” Here the old
man’s voice grew husky, while Don, wistfully watchful, nestled close
to him, looking up into his face with a great longing to comfort
expressed in his beautiful eyes.
“Aye, lad,” and the voice was still unsteady, “aye, lad, ye have the
look o’ my Rover!”
More than one of the boys dashed his hand across his eyes as he
looked at the lonely old man with his arms around their Don’s neck.
In a moment Old Sam had pulled himself together, and called to the
boys to “fall to,” upon which the boys brought forth their baskets
and promptly carried out Old Sam’s suggestion. They avoided further
mention of Rover, but their thoughts were often drawn back to the
tragedy and in their hearts was a very tender spot for Rover’s master.
After dinner they all set out for the quarries. Sam, as he insisted
upon the boys calling him, was as good as his word, showing them a
much shorter road than the one they had intended to follow. In a
short time they reached the quarry, and found they were in time to
see some of the blasting done.
“Ye see,” Old Sam said, “owin’ to the late spring, all the snakes
hasn’t left their snug bedding places in the rocks, but when the men
comes around with their blastin’ the durned reptiles thinks it’s
’bout time fer them to be movin’. Ye wouldn’t believe it,” he went
on, “but some o’ them critters curls up in a great big bunch durin’
the winter so’s they kin keep warm, and when they gits their walkin’
papers, it’s as easy as rollin’ off a log to ketch ’em, they take so
long to get untangled.”
“But how do you catch them?” Jack had asked eagerly. “Isn’t there
great danger of your being bitten?”
“Not much; ye have to be pow’ful keerful, that’s all. Ye see, I gets
behind one o’ them snakes and sticks the two ends o’ this here pole
in the ground, one on one side o’ his neck jest below the head, an’
the other on t’other side. Then I stoops over and picks him up by the
neck, and drops him head first into this here leather bag. Then when
I gets him home, I kills him and gets the ile.”
This interested the boys intensely, and they could not wait to see it
done. They stood awhile watching the blasting when they had reached
the quarry, and then Old Sam suddenly cried out: “See that? Look over
there by them rocks! No, this way! That’s right! Now d’ye see that
reptile? Come along, and I’ll show you how I kin ketch ’em.”
Excitedly the boys followed Sam across the rocks until he said, “Stay
there! Don’t come a step further. Now jest watch yer Uncle Sam!”
So saying, Old Sam was off down the rocks, climbing as nimbly as a
boy. With breathless interest the boys watched as he drew near a
snake that lay basking in the sun. Without an instant’s hesitation,
he slipped up behind it, plunged his pronged stick hard on the ground
on either side of its neck and, stooping over, picked it up quickly
just behind the head and threw it bodily into his bag. Then, closing
the bag tight, he clambered up once more beside the admiring group of
Scouts.
“You sure are a wonder!” said Tom, and the praise came from the
bottom of his heart.
“I don’t think I’d have the nerve to try that,” said Tom Binns, who
always had had a fear of snakes.
“Waal, ’twan’t much to do,” Old Sam protested, pleased beyond
measure, nevertheless, by the boys’ hearty and open admiration.
After they had examined the quarries thoroughly, the party started
out once more. When they reached Sam’s cabin, he urged them to come
and see him often, to which the boys agreed eagerly, and exacted a
promise from him in return that he would come and spend a day with
them in camp soon.
So, with a last gentle pat on Don’s head, Old Sam watched the boys
out of sight among the trees, and then turned with a happy sigh to
enter his cabin.
“Them boys sure are fine lads, an’ the dog--waal, he did have the
looks o’ my Rover!”
The boys went happily along, talking about the interesting events of
the day, full of wonder at Old Sam’s courage and skill.
That evening around the camp-fire, they told an interested group of
boys about the old snake hunter. Tom Binns, who had been especially
interested in the story of Rover’s death, turned to Don where he lay
in his usual place beside Jack, and whispered softly: “Don’t you go
and get drowned like poor old Rover, boy, ’cause if you do, we sure
would have to break camp! We can’t get along without our mascot, old
fellow!”
CHAPTER IV
THE FIGHT
As is usually the case with men who live close to nature, the
lumberjacks in Mr. Scott’s logging camp possessed many rough virtues,
and, it must be confessed, some equally strong vices.
Among these might be numbered an inordinate love of fighting.
And fighting among these elemental natures was not the honorable
stand-up-and-fight-and-don’t-hit-a-man-when-he’s-down style of combat
that our Scouts were used to considering it.
On the contrary, the one thing that the lumberman desired was to
put his opponent out of the running, either by fair means or foul.
And, indeed, the tactics employed were considered all right by their
comrades, so in a way it could not be said that they fought by
underhand methods. They knew what they had to expect, and so it was
“up to them” not to be taken unawares.
“Everything went,” no matter what it was. A man might kick, bite, or
gouge his adversary, and if he tripped, might even jump on the fallen
man, without being criticized by his companions. Just to win, in any
way, was their one great aim and object.
But if they had been allowed to follow their tendencies unchecked
there would have been little work done around the camp, as a large
part of the working force would have been disabled a good part of the
time.
To prevent this, the foreman, Flannigan, had issued strict orders
against fighting of any kind.
“The first one of yez that Oi catch at it, Oi’ll lick meself,
begorra, and fire him afterward,” had been his ultimatum and the men,
knowing him for a famous “scrapper” and a man of his word, had kept
the peace up to today.
But there had always been a smouldering animosity between two of
the men and this morning it threatened to burst forth into a “real
knock-down rumpus,” as the lumbermen described it.
The two lumberjacks in question were named respectively Larry O’Brien
and Jacques Lavine. As may be inferred from the names, the former
was a strapping red-headed Irishman, with a big bull neck and small,
twinkling, blue eyes.
The Canadian, on the other hand, at first glance seemed to be much
the physical inferior of the two. He was a lighter man and more
slenderly built, but from constant outdoor work his muscles had
become like steel wires. So that if the men should at any time come
to blows, as now seemed very probable, they would be a pretty evenly
matched pair.
It was unusually hot weather, and that may have had something to do
with the ill-temper in which the men found themselves. For another
thing, work had been slack recently, and that is always bad for men
who are not used to it. Indeed, the same thing may be said in regard
to all of us. The man who does not have to work reasonably hard is to
be pitied.
To cap the climax, the foreman was away on a trip to the distant town
for supplies, and this fact further relaxed the reins of discipline.
If either of the two men had been called on to give a reason for
their hatred toward each other, the chances are that they would have
been hard put to it to give an adequate reply.
Their feud had started in some little slighting allusion to the
other’s nationality, and small things had led to larger, until now
they both felt that they must settle the question of supremacy once
for all.
As is commonly the case with those who are of such an irritable and
trouble-seeking nature, they were really the two most worthless men
in the camp. They both drank heavily whenever they got the chance,
and were continually shirking their work and picking quarrels.
It is safe to say that if they had put half as much energy and time
into their work as they did into grumbling and quarreling, they would
have been valuable men.
Both were strong and skillful in the handling of axes, and could
bring a forest giant to the ground as soon or sooner than anyone else
in the camp. It is too bad that in this world of ours there is so
much misdirected energy, which if deflected into the proper channels
would do so much valuable work.
As has been said, on this particular morning the men all felt out of
sorts, and, to make things worse, the cook had burned the biscuits.
“It’s always the way,” grumbled O’Brien, who was usually called
“Red,” both because of the color of his hair, and also on account of
his red-hot temper, “them French cooks never is no good, nohow! I for
one never heard of a---- frog-eater who ever was any good, anyhow,”
he continued, casting a meaning glance in Lavine’s direction.
Lavine rose slowly from his seat, an ominous scowl on his dark face.
“You mean to say, den, Irishman, zat you tink no Frenchman be any
good? Is zat what you say?”
“Ye guessed right foist time, Frenchy,” replied O’Brien, recklessly.
“Now, what ye gonna do about it, hey?”
“Dog!” hissed the Frenchman, his eyes flashing and his dark face
livid with rage. “I will show you who ees your master!” and he leaped
across the rough table and struck O’Brien a tremendous blow on the
jaw.
Any ordinary man would have dropped like a log, but the hardy
Irishman only reeled a little from the terrific buffet.
“So that’s how ye feel, is ut?” he grunted, and they fell to
belaboring each other in good earnest.
The rest of the men were delighted at this turn of affairs and
quickly formed a ring around the combatants.
Neither man was very popular in the camp, so the men could enjoy the
fight without having to worry about which one conquered. All they
cared for was to see a rousing fight, and their desires seemed in a
fair way to be gratified.
Both men were in the pink of condition, and for a long time neither
seemed to gain any advantage over the other.
They swayed backward and forward, exchanging terrific blows that
echoed on their chests like the beating of a drum. No sound was heard
save their labored breathing and an occasional encouraging cry from
one of the men. It seemed as though no man could live through such
punishment, and finally both were forced to rest through sheer lack
of wind.
Then they fell to again, and this time employed all the rough-house
tactics that they knew. Lavine suddenly brought his spiked shoe down
on the Irishman’s foot with all the force at his command, and the
latter gave a bellow of pain and rage. He retaliated by lowering his
head and butting it into the pit of Lavine’s stomach. The Frenchman
gave a gasp and reeled for a moment, but quickly recovered and
returned to the attack with tiger-like ferocity.
There is no telling how the fight would have ended, for here there
was a diversion. Flannigan, the foreman, had returned to the camp
after his trip to town, and with one quick glance realized what was
going on.
With a yell he charged the group of men, who made a path for him with
rather sheepish looks on their faces. He grabbed one by each shoulder
and threw them apart.
“Pfwat the Dickens do ye mean by this, ye shpalpeens?” he shouted,
angrily. “Didn’t Oi say that Oi’d have no fighting in my camp? If yez
want to scrap, go and do it in some other camp. Yez can’t do it here!
Ye’re fired, both of yez! Pick up yer duds and vamoose! Beat it now,
before Oi lick the two of yez! Get!”
The two men were entirely taken back by this, for, as is usual
with men of their type, they had an exaggerated idea of their own
importance and had not believed that Flannigan would really discharge
them. When they realized that such was actually the case, however,
their first astonishment changed to rage and resentment. Their common
plight caused them to forget their recent quarrel and they were drawn
together by their natural grudge against Flannigan. They regarded
him with black scowls and then entered the bunk house to get their
things.
“Who’d have thought the old cuss would take it that way?” growled
O’Brien.
“He’ll live long enough to regret it, by gar,” snapped Lavine,
grinding his teeth, “but not much longer. No man can fire me, Jacques
Lavine, in dat way and live to boast about it. No, sar!”
“We’ll get hunk on him, all right,” muttered “Red.” “We’ll show him
that he can’t get away with anythin’ like that! Yes, by thunder, we
will!”
“Sure ting!” assented the Frenchman, and the look in his eyes was not
good to see. He was the kind of man that would not stop at anything,
and it is safe to say that O’Brien would not be far behind him in
anything he might undertake.
The two worthies packed their blankets and, after drawing the money
due them, set out from the camp. As they reached the edge of the
clearing they both looked back, and Lavine shook his fist at the
rough log houses.
“We’ll get square wiz ze whole bunch,” he said, with a furious oath,
“old Scott and all of zem! Wait, dat’s all!”
“Right you are, Frenchy,” growled O’Brien. “Shake on that,” and with
black thoughts in their hearts they entered the forest.
What plots they laid and how they failed to take Jack Danby into the
reckoning will be seen a little later on.
CHAPTER V
THE BEAR’S SURPRISE PARTY
“And bang! bing! bang! went Billy’s gun, and that was the end of
_that_ bear.”
The words came clearly, distinctly to Dick Crawford swinging
along through the cool, green, glorious forest; but as he looked
wonderingly around, not a trace of the speaker could he see.
The words had been uttered in a clear, boyish voice, but if a boy had
been there, he must have vanished
|
he consented--'
She broke off, struck by a sudden thought. 'Consented to tell a lie' she
had meant to say, but the unspoken words diverted her mind from the
conversation. It came upon her in a flash that she had found the key to
David’s mystery. His note was in her pocketbook, but she knew every word
of it, and now everything was plain to her. The lie was this lie about
his age, and the person he wanted to shield was his father. And for that
he was suffering so!
She began to ask questions eagerly.
'Has David said anything about--about a little trouble he had in school
the day he became ill?'
Both parents showed concern.
'Trouble? what trouble?'
'Oh, it was hardly trouble--at least, I couldn’t tell myself.'
'David is so hard to understand sometimes,' his father said.
'Oh, I don’t think so!' the teacher cried. 'Not when you make friends
with him. He doesn’t say much, it’s true, but his heart is like a
crystal.'
'He’s too still,' the mother insisted, shaking her head. 'All the time
he’s sick, he don’t say anything, only when we ask him something. The
doctor thinks he’s worrying about something, but he don’t tell.'
The mother sighed, but Miss Ralston cut short her reflections.
'Mrs. Rudinsky--Mr. Rudinsky,' she began eagerly, '_I_ can tell you what
David’s troubled about.'
And she told them the story of her last talk with David, and finally
read them his note.
'And this lie,' she ended, 'you know what it is, don’t you? You’ve just
told me yourself, Mr. Rudinsky.'
She looked pleadingly at him, longing to have him understand David’s
mind as she understood it. But Mr. Rudinsky was very slow to grasp the
point.
'You mean--about the certificate? Because I made out that he was
younger?'
Miss Ralston nodded.
'You know David has such a sense of honor,' she explained, speaking
slowly, embarrassed by the effort of following Mr. Rudinsky’s train of
thought and her own at the same time. 'You know how he questions
everything--sooner or later he makes everything clear to himself--and
something must have started him thinking of this old matter lately--Why,
of course! I remember I asked him his age that day, when he tried on the
costume, and he answered as usual, and then, I suppose, he suddenly
_realized_ what he was saying. I don’t believe he ever _thought_ about
it since--since you arranged it so, and now, all of a sudden--'
She did not finish, because she saw that her listeners did not follow
her. Both their faces expressed pain and perplexity. After a long
silence, David’s father spoke.
'And what do _you_ think, ma’am?'
Miss Ralston was touched by the undertone of submission in his voice.
Her swift sympathy had taken her far into his thoughts. She recognized
in his story one of those ethical paradoxes which the helpless Jews of
the Pale, in their search for a weapon that their oppressors could not
confiscate, have evolved for their self-defence. She knew that to many
honest Jewish minds a lie was not a lie when told to an official; and
she divined that no ghost of a scruple had disturbed Mr. Rudinsky in his
sense of triumph over circumstances, when he invented the lie that was
to insure the education of his gifted child. With David, of course, the
same philosophy had been valid. His father’s plan for the protection of
his future, hingeing on a too familiar sophistry, had dropped innocuous
into his consciousness, until, in a moment of spiritual sensitiveness,
it took on the visage of sin.
'And what do _you_ think, ma’am?'
David’s father did not have to wait a moment for her answer, so readily
did her insight come to his defense. In a few eager sentences she made
him feel that she understood perfectly, and understood David perfectly.
'I respect you the more for that lie, Mr. Rudinsky. It was--a _noble_
lie!' There was the least tremor in her voice. 'And I love David for the
way _he_ sees it.'
Mr. Rudinsky got up and paced slowly across the room. Then he stopped
before Miss Ralston.
'You are very kind to talk like that, Miss Ralston,' he said, with
peculiar dignity. 'You see the whole thing. In the old country we had to
do such things so many times that we--got used to them. Here--here we
don’t have to.' His voice took on a musing quality. 'But we don’t see it
right away when we get here. I meant nothing, only just to keep my boy
in school. It was not to cheat anybody. The state is willing to educate
the children. I said to myself I will tie my own hands, so that I can’t
pull my child after me if I drown. I did want my David should have the
best chance in America.'
Miss Ralston was thrilled by the suppressed passion in his voice. She
held out her hand to him, saying again, in the low tones that come from
the heart, 'I am glad I know you, Mr. Rudinsky.'
There was unconscious chivalry in Mr. Rudinsky’s next words. Stepping to
his wife’s side, he laid a gentle hand on her shoulder, and said
quietly, 'My wife has been my helper in everything.'
Miss Ralston, as we know, was given to seeing things. She saw now, not a
poor immigrant couple in the first stage of American respectability,
which was all there was in the room to see, but a phantom procession of
men with the faces of prophets, muffled in striped praying-shawls, and
women radiant in the light of many candles, and youths and maidens with
smouldering depths in their eyes, and silent children who pushed away
joyous things for--for--
Dreams don’t use up much time. Mr. Rudinsky was not aware that there had
been a pause before he spoke again.
'You understand so well, Miss Ralston. But David'--he hesitated a
moment, then finished quickly. 'How can he respect me if he feels like
that?'
His wife spoke tremulously from her corner.
'That’s what I think.'
'Oh, don’t think that!' Miss Ralston cried. 'He does respect you--he
understands. Don’t you see what he says: _I can’t tell you--because you
would blame somebody who didn’t do wrong._ He doesn’t blame you. He only
blames himself. He’s afraid to tell me because he thinks _I_ can’t
understand.'
The teacher laughed a happy little laugh. In her eagerness to comfort
David’s parents, she said just the right things, and every word summed
up an instantaneous discovery. One of her useful gifts was the ability
to find out truths just when she desperately needed them. There are
people like that, and some of them are school-teachers hired by the
year. When David’s father cried, 'How can he respect me?' Miss Ralston’s
heart was frightened while it beat one beat. Only one. Then she knew all
David’s thoughts between the terrible, 'I have lied,' and the generous,
'But my father did no wrong.' She guessed what the struggle had cost to
reconcile the contradictions; she imagined his bewilderment as he tried
to rule himself by his new-found standards, while seeking excuses for
his father in the one he cast away from him as unworthy of an American.
Problems like David’s are not very common, but then Miss Ralston was
good at guessing.
'Don’t worry, Mr. Rudinsky,' she said, looking out of her glad eyes.
'And you, Mrs. Rudinsky, don’t think for a moment that David doesn’t
understand. He’s had a bad time, the poor boy, but I know--Oh, I must
speak to him! Will he wake soon, do you think?'
Mr. Rudinsky left the room without a word.
'It’s all right,' said David’s mother, in reply to an anxious look from
Miss Ralston. 'He sleeps already the whole afternoon.'
It had grown almost dark while they talked. Mrs. Rudinsky now lighted
the lamps, apologizing to her guest for not having done so sooner, and
then she released Bennie from his prolonged attendance in the store.
Bennie came into the kitchen chewing his reward, some very gummy
confection. He was obliged to look the pent-up things he wanted to say,
until such time as he could clear his clogged talking-gear.
'Teacher,' he began, before he had finished swallowing, 'What for did
you say--'
'Bennie!' his mother reproved him, 'You must shame yourself to listen by
the door.'
'Well, there wasn’t any trade, ma,' he defended himself, 'only Bessie
Katz, and she brought back the peppermints she bought this morning, to
change them for taffy, but I didn’t because they were all dirty, and one
was broken--'
Bennie never had a chance to bring his speeches to a voluntary stop:
somebody always interrupted. This time it was his father, who came down
the stairs, looking so grave that even Bennie was impressed.
'He’s awake,' said Mr. Rudinsky. 'I lighted the lamp. Will you please
come up, ma’am?'
He showed her to the room where David lay, and closed the door on them
both. It was not he, but Miss Ralston, the American teacher, that his
boy needed. He went softly down to the kitchen, where his wife smiled at
him through unnecessary tears.
Miss Ralston never forgot the next hour, and David never forgot. The
woman always remembered how the boy’s eyes burned through the dusk of
the shadowed corner where he lay. The boy remembered how his teacher’s
voice palpitated in his heart, how her cool hands rested on his, how the
lamplight made a halo out of her hair. To each of them the dim room with
its scant furnishings became a spiritual rendezvous.
What did the woman say, that drew the sting of remorse from the child’s
heart, without robbing him of the bloom of his idealism? What did she
tell him that transmuted the offense of ages into the marrow and blood
of persecuted virtue? How did she weld in the boy’s consciousness the
scraps of his mixed inheritance, so that he saw his whole experience as
an unbroken thing at last? There was nobody to report how it was done.
The woman did not know nor the child. It was a secret born of the boy’s
need and the woman’s longing to serve him; just as in nature every want
creates its satisfaction.
When she was ready to leave him, Miss Ralston knelt for a moment at
David’s bedside, and once more took his small hot hands in hers.
'And I have made a discovery, David,' she said, smiling in a way of her
own. 'Talking with your parents downstairs I saw why it was that the
Russian Jews are so soon at home here in our dear country. In the hearts
of men like your father, dear, is the true America.'
BLUE REEFERS
BY ELIZABETH ASHE
'THE child will have to have a new dress if she’s to take part in the
Christmas entertainment.'
My mother spoke very low, so as not to wake me, but I heard her. I had
been too excited to fall asleep.
'Of course,' said my father in his big voice that never could get down
to a whisper.
'S-sh,' warned my mother; and then added, 'But we shouldn’t get it,
George. You know what the last doctor’s bill amounted to.'
'Oh, let the little thing have it. It’s her first chance to show off.'
'S-sh,' my mother warned again. After a moment I heard her say, 'Well,
perhaps it won’t cost so very much, and as you say it’s the first time.'
I turned over in bed and prayed, 'Dear Lord, please help my mother to
get me a new dress.' For a new dress was one of the chief joys of taking
part, and I had longed so to take part.
Although I had been a member of our Sunday school in good and regular
standing ever since I was three weeks old, and had been put on the
Cradle Roll, that being in the eyes of my parents the nearest approach
to dedication allowable to Baptists, I was taking part for the first
time, and I was seven. There had been numerous occasions in these seven
years for taking part: our Sunday school celebrated Easter, Children’s
Day, Anniversary Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, with quite
appropriate exercises. But it was a large school, and I had freckles and
what Aunt Emma, my cousin Luella’s mother, called 'that child’s jaw.'
Aunt Emma meant my front teeth, which were really most dreadfully
prominent: in fact they stuck out to such an extent that Aunt Emma
seldom failed to see them when she saw me.
Aunt Emma wasn’t used to children with jaws. Her little Luella had the
prettiest teeth imaginable: she was pretty all over, pretty golden hair,
pretty blue eyes, pretty pink cheeks,--not a freckle,--and pretty arms
very plump and white. She was just my age, and she was invariably asked
to take part. It seemed reasonable that she should, and yet I felt that
if they only knew that I had a mind,--a mind was what an uncle once said
I had, after hearing me recite the one hundred and third Psalm, the
fifty-second chapter of Isaiah, and the thirteenth chapter of First
Corinthians, with only one mistake,--they would ask me too. A mind
should count for something, I thought, but it didn’t seem to with Miss
Miriam.
Miss Miriam was the assistant superintendent. She was a tall, thin,
youngish-looking woman, with fair hair and a sweet, rather white face.
She always wore very black dresses and a little gold cross, which one of
the Big Girls told us was left to her by her mother, who was an
Episcopalian. Miss Miriam got up all the entertainments, and it was she
who made out the list of the people who were to take part in them. Three
or four Sundays before an entertainment was to be given, Miss Miriam
would come from the Big Room to our Primary Department with a lot of
little white slips in her hand and a pad and pencil. While we were
having the closing exercises, she would walk very quietly from class to
class distributing the little white slips. The slips said, 'Please meet
me after Sunday school in the Ladies' Parlor.' If you were given a slip,
it meant you were chosen to take part.
Once I confided my longing to my mother.
'What makes you want to so much, Martha? You’re not a forward little
girl, I hope.'
Forwardness in my elders' opinion was the Eighth Deadly Sin, to be
abhorred by all little girls, especially those who had heard it said
that they had a mind. Little girls who had heard that might so easily,
from sheer pride of intellect, become 'forward.'
'I’m not forward,' I assured her. 'I--I, oh, mother, it’s so nice to be
in things.'
And now at last I was in things. I could still feel the touch of the
white slip which had been put into my hand only that afternoon; and I
turned over in my bed on my other side and prayed with even more fervor.
'O Lord, please help my mother to get me a new dress.'
He did. A week later my mother went to town. She brought back white
Persian lawn, the softest, sheerest stuff I had ever felt. I could see
the pink of my skin through it when I laid it over my hand.
'I’m going to have a new dress for the entertainment,' I told Luella on
my way to rehearsal. 'Are you?'
'Why, of course. I always do. Mine’s going to have five rows of lace
insertion in the skirt and tiny tucks too.'
'Mine’s to have tucks, but it won’t have but one row of lace in the
skirt. Mother says little girls' dresses don’t need much lace.'
'I like lots of lace,' said Luella; but her tone of finality did not
disturb my happiness. I was disturbed only when, at another rehearsal,
Luella told me that her mother was making a blue-silk slip to wear under
her white dress. Almost everyone wore slips when they spoke pieces.
I gave my mother this information.
'Isn’t the white dress pretty enough, Martha?'
I fingered the soft material she was sewing. 'It’s beautiful,' I said,
hiding my face in her neck. Then I whispered, 'I don’t mind if Luella
has a slip, mother.'
I did mind, but I knew I oughtn’t.
My mother raised my head and adjusted the bow on one of my skimpy little
pigtails. She looked as she did sometimes after my Aunt Emma had just
gone.
'We’ll see if you can have a slip. What color would you like--supposing
you can?'
'Pink,' I answered promptly, 'like my best hair-ribbons.'
Pink china silk was bought. When I tried it under the Persian lawn it
matched the ribbons exactly. I jiggled up and down on my toes--my only
way of expressing great joy.
The dress, when my mother was not working on it, lay in the spare room
on the bed. I made countless pilgrimages to the spare room. Once I
slipped the dress on by myself. I wanted to see how I looked. But the
mirror of the spare-room bureau was very small; so I inserted a
hair-brush. With the mirror tipped I could see quite all of me--only I
didn’t see quite all. I didn’t see my freckles, or my jaw, or my very
thin legs. I saw a glory of pink and white, and I grinned from sheer
rapture.
The spare room had no heat: there was a register, but unless we had
company the register was closed. My mother found me one day kneeling by
the bed, shivering, but in ecstatic contemplation of my dress, which I
had not dared to try on a second time. She gave me ginger tea. I gulped
it down meekly. I felt even then that as a punishment ginger tea is
exquisitely relevant. It chastens the soul but at the same time it warms
the stomach you’ve allowed to get cold.
I had been very much afraid that before the night of the
entertainment,--it was to be given the twenty-third of December,--something
would surely happen to my dress or to me; but the night arrived and
both were in a perfect state of preservation. To expedite matters, as
the Sunday school was to assemble at a quarter past seven, my mother
dressed me before supper. Just as the last button was fastened, we heard
footsteps on the front porch.
'There, Martha! Go show your father.'
I ran down into the hall and took up my position in the centre of it;
but when I heard the key turn in the latch of the inside door I wanted
to run away and hide. I had never felt so beautiful.
My father stopped short when he saw me. 'By the Lord!' he ejaculated.
'Why, George!'
My mother was on the stairs.
'Well, by the Great Guns then--you’re a--a vision, Marty.' I could only
grin.
'Here’s some more pinkness for you to wear,' he said, producing a long
tissue-paper package that he had been holding behind his back. He
chuckled as he unwrapped it. 'Twelve, Marty; twelve solid pink
carnations. What do you say to 'em? Show your mother.'
I said nothing. I only jiggled on my toes.
'George, dear, what made you? A little child like that can’t wear
flowers--and they’re seventy-five cents a dozen!'
All the chuckle went out of my father’s eyes: he looked at me, then at
the carnations, then at my mother, just like a little boy who finds that
after all he’s done the wrong thing. I wanted to run and take his hand;
but while I stood, wanting and not daring, my mother had crossed the
hall and was putting her arms around his neck.
'They’re beautiful, George dear. She can wear three or four of them,
anyway. They will make her so happy, and the rest we’ll put in her room.
Her room is pink too.'
'So it is.' He kissed my mother and then me. 'Say your piece,
Marty--quick! Before we have supper.'
I had learned my piece so thoroughly that the order was like turning on
a spigot. Four verses, four lines in each, gushed forth.
My father clapped. 'Now for something to eat,' he said.
Immediately after supper my mother and I set out, leaving my father to
shave and come later. It was a cold night with a great many bright
stars. At the corner we met Luella and her mother. Luella’s mother was
carrying over her arm Luella’s spring coat, her everyday one, a dark
blue reefer.
'Martha ought to have hers along, too,' said my Aunt Emma. 'If the
church should be chilly they’ll catch their death sitting in thin
dresses.'
My mother thought it was probable we would. So I was sent back to hunt
for my little reefer. It was like Luella’s, dark blue with tarnished
gilt anchors on the corners of the sailor collar, and like hers it was
second-best and outgrown.
Luella and I parted with our mothers at the door of the Sunday school
room.
'Don’t forget to take your reefers when you march in,' admonished my
Aunt Emma.
'Must we carry them while we march?' I almost wailed.
My mother came to the rescue. 'Hold them down between you and the little
girl you march with. Then no one will see.'
'Yes’m.' I was much relieved.
The Sunday school was a hubbub of noise and pink and blue hair-ribbons.
In among the ribbons, and responsible for some of the noise, were
close-cropped heads and white collars and very new ties, but you didn’t
notice them much. There were so many pink and blue ribbons. After a
while the room quieted down and we formed in line. Miss Miriam, who even
that night wore a black dress and her little gold cross, distributed
among us the eight silk banners which, when we weren’t marching, always
hung on the walls of the Sunday school rooms. There were subdued
whispers and last prinkings. Then the piano, which had been moved into
the church, gave the signal and we marched in.
We marched with our banners and our pink and blue hair-ribbons up and
down the aisles so that all the
Mothers-and-Fathers-and-Friends-of-the-School could see us. Whenever we
recognized our own special mother or father, we beamed. The marching
finally brought us to the pews assigned to our respective classes.
Luella’s class and mine were to sit together that night. I turned
round--almost every little girl, after she was seated and had
sufficiently smoothed out skirts and sash, turned round--and saw that my
mother and aunt were only two pews behind us. I grinned delightedly at
them, and they both nodded back. Then I told Luella. After that I
settled down.
The church was decorated with ropes of green and with holly wreaths. At
either side of the platform was a Christmas tree with bits of
cotton-batting scattered over it to represent snow. I had heard that
there were to be two Christmas trees, and I had looked forward to a
dazzling glitter of colored balls and tinsel and candles, maybe. The
cotton-batting was a little disappointing. It made you feel that it was
not a real Christmas tree, but just a church Christmas tree. Church
things were seldom real. The Boys Brigade of our church carried
interesting-looking cartridge-boxes, that made them look like real
soldiers; but when they drilled you found out that the cartridge-boxes
were only make-believe. They held Bibles. Still, the cotton-batting did
make you think of snow.
After what seemed like a very long wait the entertainment began. The
minister, of course, opened it with prayer. Then we all sang a carol. As
we were sitting down I felt some one poke my shoulder.
'Your mother says you must put on your jacket. She says you’ll take
cold,' whispered the little girl behind me.
I had not felt cold, but the command passed along over two church pews
had the force of a Thus-saith-the-Lord. While I was slipping the jacket
carefully over my ruffles, some one poked Luella and whispered to her.
Luella looked at me, then put on her jacket.
The superintendent was making a speech to the
Fathers-and-Mothers-and-Friends-of-the-School. When he finished, we rose
to sing another carol, and as we rose, quite automatically Luella and I
slipped off our jackets. I was very excited. After the carol there would
be a piece by one of the Big Girls; then the Infant Class would do
something; then I was to speak. I wondered if people would see the pink
of my slip showing through my dress as I spoke my piece. I bent my head
to get a whiff of carnation.
We were just seated when there came another poke and another whisper.
'Your mother says to keep on your jacket.
I looked back at my mother. She smiled and nodded, and Aunt Emma pointed
to Luella. We put on our jackets again. This time I buttoned it tight;
so did Luella. I felt the carnations remonstrate, but when one is very
excited one is very obedient: one obeys more than the letter of the law.
The Big Girl was speaking her piece. I didn’t hear the words; the words
of my own piece were saying themselves through my head; but I was aware
that she stopped suddenly, that she looked as though she were trying to
remember, that someone prompted her, that she went on. Suppose I should
forget that way, before my father and mother and the friends of the
school and Miss Miriam! It was a dreadful thought. I commenced
again,--with my eyes shut,--
'Some children think that Christmas day
Should come two times a year.'
I went through my verses five times, while the Infant Class individually
and collectively were holding up gilt cardboard bells and singing about
them. I was beginning the sixth time,--
'Some children think,--'
when the superintendent read out,--
'The next number on the programme will be a recitation by Martha Smith.'
I had been expecting this announcement for four weeks, but now that it
came, it gave me a queer feeling in my heart and stomach, half-fear,
half-joy. Conscious only that I was actually taking part, I rose from my
seat and made my way over the little girls in the pew, who scrunched up
themselves and their dresses into a small space so that I might pass.
As I started down the aisle I thought I heard my name frantically called
behind me; but not dreaming that any one would wish to have speech with
a person about to speak a piece, I kept on down, way, way down to the
platform, walking in a dim hot maze which smelled insistently of
carnations.
But the poor carnations warned in vain. I ascended the platform steps
with my reefer still buttoned tightly over my chest.
The reefer, as I have said, was dark blue, adorned with tarnished
anchors, and outgrown. Being outgrown, it showed several inches of my
thin little wrists, and being a reefer and tightly buttoned, it showed
of my pink and white glory a little more than the hem.
Still in that dim hot maze, I made my bow and gave the title of my
piece, 'Christmas Twice a Year,' and recited it from beginning to end,
and heard them clap, all the teachers and scholars and
Fathers-and-Mothers-and-Friends-of-the-School. Then, quite dizzied with
happiness, I hurried down off the platform and up the aisle. People
smiled as I passed them and I smiled back, for once quite unconscious of
my jaw. As I neared my seat I prepared to smile upon my mother, but for
a moment she didn’t see me. Aunt Emma was saying something to her,
something that I didn’t hear, something that made two red spots flame in
my mother’s face.
'Isn’t it just like Martha to be a little fool! She’s always doing
things like that.'
Aunt Emma was one of those people who assume that you always do the
particular foolish thing you have just finished doing.
The red spots died out when my mother saw me. She smiled as though she
were very proud--and I was proud too. But before I could settle down to
enjoy my satisfaction, Luella’s name had been called and Luella was
starting down the aisle. Luella’s golden curls bobbed as she walked:
they bobbed over her blue reefer jacket which was buttoned snugly over
her plump body.
There was a suppressed exclamation from some one behind me, but Luella
kept on. Luella’s jacket was not short in the sleeves, but it was very
very tight. Only the hem of her blue and white glory peeped from beneath
it, and a little piece of ruffle she had not quite tucked in peeped out
from above it.
Luella bowed and spoke her piece. All the teachers and scholars, all the
Fathers-and-Mothers-and-Friends-of-the-School applauded.
A queer sound made me look round at my mother and aunt. Their heads were
bowed upon the pew in front. Their shoulders were shaking. When I turned
around again they were sitting up, wiping their eyes as if they had been
crying.
I could not understand then, nor did I understand late that night when
my father’s laugh woke me up.
'Poor Emma!' he chuckled. 'What did she say?'
And my mother answered, her voice curiously smothered, 'Why, you see,
she couldn’t very well say anything after what she had just said
before.'
'I suppose not. Poor Emma, I suppose not.'
My father’s laugh broke out again.
'S-sh, George--you’ll wake Martha.'
THE DEBT
BY KATHLEEN CARMAN
THE convent was a large square building of red brick, harsh of outline,
unlovely in its proportions. It stood on the rise of a barren hill,
unfriended by the trees of the little valley below, unsoftened by the
pleasant landscape above which its ugly bulk arose, stern and
domineering. To the south and west lay fertile fields and huddling
farm-buildings; to the east, beyond the little valley, rose many closely
wooded hills; while to the north,--ah, the north!--one of the greatest
wonders of all this wonderful world lay there; for if one climbed to the
highest story of the convent and looked out of any window to the north,
one beheld that never-ceasing miracle--the sea!
Sister Anne had known no other home but the convent for nearly half a
century, but the sight of those unresting waves never failed to set her
spirit free: free of unknown and enchanted worlds, worlds of wonder, of
mystery, and of heart-stirring beauty. She was merely a plain, silent,
hard-working, rather stupid old woman, who had never been in all her
life admired or considered, or even loved, unless one counts the tepid
affection of those with whom she lived. She had been brought here as a
young girl from the orphanage where she had passed her childhood; and
since she had been one of those who are always willing to do what is
asked of them, no matter how unpleasant or hard it may be, there had
fallen to her share all the humblest and meanest of the household tasks,
all the petty drudgeries which must be done and which no one wishes to
do. Her place was always in the kitchen or the laundry. She would have
liked to cook, but that had never been suggested. She had always been
put to washing dishes. Here again she had a preference: she would have
liked to wash the glassware, which came out of the hot suds like bubbles
and must be polished on the softest and cleanest of towels; or even the
clumsy plated forks and spoons, which to her were very beautiful. There
was nothing delicate or lovely about the great iron soup-kettles which
her patient hands must cleanse, or about the greasy roasting pans. And
it was the same way in the laundry. Only the coarsest, heaviest of the
washing was given to her: the rag mats that lay beside the beds in the
dormitories, the big aprons that the working sisters wore, the cloths
that were used in cleaning the lamps. Not for her the intricacies of
starching and skillful ironing and fluting.
Yet all the years of toil had not saddened Sister Anne. If any one had
questioned her and she had been able to express herself, she might have
said that the forces which had formed her sturdy body had given her also
a spirit capable of sustaining itself on the most meagre happiness. But
no one questioned her, and she was at all times slow and scant of
speech.
The sources of her contentment lay all without the convent walls; and
being there, it was strange that she should have discovered them. As a
matter of fact she had not discovered them. They had come, through a
slow and unconscious process, to be a part of her life. It had begun,
humbly enough, in the kitchen garden. When first she came to the convent
she had not been very well, and they had set her to weeding the
vegetables in order that she might be out of doors as much as possible.
Her simple, kindly nature had turned in solicitude and affection to this
springing life that responded to her tendance. No great and lovely lady
in her garden ever looked with more pride and admiration on her roses
and lilies than did Sister Anne on her beans and cabbages and early
peas. Through them she had come to watch with interest every change in
the weather, anxious for the needed rain, fearful of the early frost,
rejoicing when sun and air and moisture did their kindly best.
And thus it was, through a process simple, gradual, inevitable, that her
heart had wakened to the wonder and the beauty of the world about her.
At first she saw no farther than the garden, finding joy in the clear
green of the new shoots, pleasure in the sturdy growth of some robust
plant, or a still ecstasy in the dew-crowned freshness of the bean
flowers in the early morning. But soon that morning magic lay before her
marveling eyes upon the near-by fields and the distant hills, and in
time she beheld the wonderful pageant from mystic dawn to dawn, and that
still more wonderful pageant of the changing months.
No one knew or guessed the joy that filled her life from this dumb
intercourse with flying cloud or snow-hung cherry tree, or from the deep
stillness of a green-clad hill in a summer noon. When she was younger,
she used sometimes to speak of these things to her companions; but she
had early learned that they neither understood nor cared to understand
the feelings which she would have shared with them. But this did not
disturb her. She felt for those with whom she lived good-will and a mild
affection, but hers was not a nature to expect or need sympathy. She had
a profound and sincere humility which rendered her incapable of envy.
She felt herself, without bitterness, to be the inferior of all with
whom she came in contact. The fact that they were indifferent to what
were to her the purest sources of happiness never seemed to her a lack
in them, but only an accentuation of the fact that she was less clever
than they. To read, to embroider, to converse, to make long devotions,
were all beyond her powers. She was not'spiritual-minded.' Prayers were
to her a tedious and difficult task, to be fulfilled conscientiously but
always finished with relief. This indeed came by slow degrees to be a
source of pain and anxiety to her. She felt herself a sinner. In the
laborious and inarticulate processes of her mind there gradually took
form the knowledge that she would rather do any kind of work than pray;
that she would rather, far rather, sit in idleness, looking out upon the
familiar, beloved landscape, than pray. This seemed to her inexplicably
wicked, but it never occurred to her to change, although she sometimes
felt that
|
sages, that thou wouldst
saddle the responsibility for the ripening of the fruit of works, on
me? As my people's works have been, so is their condition: they are
but gathering the fruit of the tree of their own wrong-doing in a
previous existence. And the crimes of a former birth dog them like
death, and lie on them like a shadow: they only have themselves to
blame, and now there is no help for it, but in themselves. And they
must work out their own emancipation, not by petulance and violence,
but by penance and austerity.
And I listened in silence to the deity, and when he finished, I looked
up. And after a while, I said to myself: Now, surely, that crystal
moon is the diadem of deity; and the voice of God is the murmur of the
sea.
_Christmas, 1910._
[1] The old argument: there is immorality in the stones of the gods;
_ergo_, the men must be the same, is a monotheist calumny. Books like
Kingsley's _Roman and Teuton_, where all the vice is imputed to the
Roman, and all the virtue to the Teuton, are merely an inversion of the
fact. "The truth is," says Professor Lewis Campbell on Æschylus, "that
while religious custom lay upon the Greeks with a weight almost as deep
as life, the changing clouds of mythology rested lightly on their
minds, and were in their very nature, to some extent, the sport of
fancy and imagination." This is equally true of the Hindoos.
[2] The _dictum_ of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, whose India is merely a
misrepresented Anglo-India, that _there ain't no Ten Commandments_
there, is superficially a truism, and essentially a foolish libel. No
man has done more to caricature and misinterpret India, in the
interests of military vulgarity, than this popular writer, to whom
Hindoo India is a book with seven seals.
[3] The observations of Mr. Theophilus G. Pinches, on the means by
which, in ancient Babylon, "an enlightened monotheism and the grossest
polytheism could, and did, exist side by side," apply accurately to
India. (_The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records of
Assyria and Babylonia_, p. 10.)
[4] Olymp. vii.
[5] _Apud Bocharti Phaleg_. p. 184.
[6] James Mill's criticism of the Indian ethic is a criminal offence, a
sin against literature. The coryphæus of the Inductive Philosophy,
dogmatising on a language of which he could not even read a single word!
CONTENTS
A Mountain of Merit
A Fetter of the Soul
The Waves of Time
A MOUNTAIN OF MERIT
_Where the Snows that fall on the Icy Wall
Leave all the tall peaks bare,
I heard the Mountain Spirits call
That travel upon the air._
CHAITYA
A MOUNTAIN OF MERIT
INVOCATION
_Sinking in the waves of time, O skull-adorned demolisher of Daksha,[1]
we cling to the worship of the beauty of thy moony tire, whose silver
lustre steals like a woman of good family fearfully through the shadows
of the forest of thy hair, to fall at last like a blue and ashy
benediction upon the mountain-backs of the three great worlds, lying
prostrate in a sáshtánga[2] devotion at thy feet._
I
Far away in the northern quarter, half-hidden in Himálaya's shaggy
sides, there lies a holy bathing-place and favoured haunt of Hara,
where Gangá leaps down through a rocky chasm in the Lord of Hills, and
rushes out into the plain, white as it were with foamy laughter at the
thought of her coming union with Yamuná and the sea. And there one
evening long ago it happened, that two Brahmans were engaged in a
dispute upon the bank of that very sacred stream, having quarrelled on
a question of precedence. And long they wrangled idly, each claiming a
superiority in status which neither would allow. And finally one said:
Enough of this absurdity! Who but a blind man argues as to the shining
of the sun at noon? Or how can thy family contend in excellence with
mine, which is in the _gotra_ of Agastya? Then said the other
scornfully: Thou art the proof of thy own asseveration, and as I think,
the very Balákhilyas[3] must have been the original progenitors of such
a pigmy as thyself. And the other answered angrily: Better the pigmy
body of Agastya than a pigmy soul enclosed in the worthless bulk of
such a _pashu_[4] as thyself. And immediately his opponent ran upon
him, and gave him a kick. And he exclaimed: Ha! dost thou call me
_pashu_? then taste my hoof. But as to thy Agastya, a fig for him!
What is he to me, who am just about to earn emancipation by a series of
extraordinary penances, worthy to extort the admiration of Pashupati[5]
himself?
So as those boobies wrangled, it happened, by the decree of destiny,
that that very Lord of Creatures animate and inanimate was passing in
the air, only just above them, as he roamed towards Kailàs with Gauri
in his arms, on his way back from a visit to Ujjayini, one of his
earthly homes, whose palaces seem to laugh at their rivals in the sky.
And as he listened to the squabble, all at once he uttered a solitary
shout of laughter. And instantly, those two very foolish disputants
took to their heels, and fled away at full speed in opposite
directions, taking his laughter for a thunderbolt. And seeing them go,
the Daughter of the Mountain said to her lord: Well might thy laughter
be aroused by the exceedingly contemptible behaviour of that pair of
silly Brahmans. Then said Maheshwara: Nay, it was not that which
caused my laughter. For these ridiculous mortals commonly dispute in
precisely this manner, making use of abuse, and even blows, instead of
reasoning, blinded by vanity and arrogance and passion. And if I were
to laugh at every instance of the kind, I should never stop laughing,
night or day. For there is no end to just such arguments as these.
Then said Párwati: At what then didst thou laugh? And the
moony-crested god said slowly: I laughed, to think of the amazing
self-ignorance of that big boasting Brahman. For he is the very man,
who in one of his former incarnations so egregiously failed, in exactly
such an effort of asceticism as that which he described himself now
just about to undergo, though he has utterly forgotten all about it,
and never even dreams that he is travelling fast, not towards
emancipation, but away from it: since all his acts in recent births are
nothing but so many steps downward into the abyss of reincarnation, out
of which he will not find it so easy, again to reascend. For when a
soul is on the downward path, nothing in the world is so difficult as
to alter its direction into that of the ascent, or even to stop at all;
seeing that every fresh error adds weight to its burden, and impetus to
its speed. And if he only knew it, this down-goer would be utterly
appalled at the prospect of the innumerable myriads of years that lie
before him, stretching away like a never-ending desert of waterless
sand, through which he must absolutely pass, in birth after birth, each
terminated by a death, before he will succeed in changing his tendency
to darkness. For the waves of the sea of works are over his head, and
he resembles a stone, sinking continuously down, down, in a bottomless
and clammy slough of evil, created by himself.
Then said Párwati: And what then was this old endeavour, the very
recollection of whose contrast with his brag so moved thy laughter?
And the god said: It is a long story, and travelling at this pace, if I
begin it, we shall arrive at Kailàs long before it ends. But if, as it
seems, I must absolutely tell thee all about it, I will regulate the
speed of our advance, so as to keep pace with the movement of the tale,
ordering matters so, as to arrive at Kailàs and the conclusion of the
tale exactly at the same moment. Moreover, it would be a shame to
hurry. For I love to watch the lustre of my moon, noiselessly stealing
like a thief into the shadowy gorges of thy father's huge valleys, and
stripping from his sides that carpet of rich colour which the setting
sun bestows upon them, to spread over them instead that cold and
melancholy pallor of her own, which resembles an atmosphere of the
camphor of death.
II
Know then, O thou Snowy One, that long ago, in a former birth, this
boaster was a Brahman, and his name was Trishodadhi,[6] and he was, by
hereditary descent, the minister of a king, named Ruru. And as it
happened, King Ruru was a spoiled child. And then, being betrayed by
his queen in his youth, he fell into a violent hatred of all women,
that, strange to say! exhibited itself in the form of love. For
wishing as it were to wreak his vengeance on the whole sex for the
crime of one, he began like a mad bee to rove furiously from flower to
flower, making love to every woman in the world that took his fancy,
and then throwing her away as soon as won--taking all possible pains to
obtain the love of each, only to flout her, the moment it was his. And
like a deadly plague, he gradually corrupted the women of his kingdom,
who nearly all found him irresistible, not merely because he was a
king, but still more because of his extraordinary beauty, being as he
was a good thing changed and converted into evil by the misconduct of
his wife. And he was dreaded by the husbands and fathers of his
kingdom, and above all by his minister, Trishodadhi. For Trishodadhi
possessed a wife much younger than himself, and recently married, named
Watsatarí.[7] And she was well named, resembling, in youth and beauty,
the horns of the new moon; and she hovered between the charm of the
woman and the child, as the moon does between the two incomparable
moments of delicate epiphany and round perfection. And yet, unlike the
moon, she was always invisible to everybody, save only himself. For
his natural jealousy, which was extreme, was accentuated by her
extraordinary beauty, and his own age. And fearing all the men in the
world, above all he feared the king, and passed his life perpetually
trembling lest Ruru should set eyes on her; and he kept her very
scrupulously hidden, like a priceless pearl, from all eyes but his own.
And though he doted on her, yet against his will he was obliged to
leave her much alone, for all the burden of the state was thrown upon
his shoulders by the king, who utterly neglected all affairs, intent on
nothing but pursuing his amours. And being thus preoccupied,
Trishodadhi had only his intervals of leisure for his wife. And yet,
all the while he was not near her, he was everlastingly tormented by
his jealousy and fear, which like busy painters drew him endless rows
of pictures of his wife, surrounded in his absence by innumerable
lovers, created out of nothing by his own imagination, and all, as it
were, but so many copies of the king; as if, like the slayer of
Kamsa,[8] King Ruru possessed the power of self-multiplication,
appearing in just as many bodies as he pleased. And though Watsatarí
was in reality purer than a tear, he was haunted by a swarm of
suspicions, which like bees buzzed for ever in the ear of his uneasy
soul, and drove him almost into madness, while like a gardener he
strove to preserve his blue honey-laden lotus from the onslaughts of
their importunate and greedy troops. And in order to place her as far
as possible beyond the reach of any danger, he kept her in a residence
that resembled a fortress, and shut her in a garden, surrounded by a
lofty wall. And he never went to see her without quivering with
anxiety, lest he should discover, on arriving, that what he was always
fearing had actually come to pass. And so in fact it did. For one
day, returning from his duties long before he was accustomed, as if
destiny had determined to gratify his apprehensions, when he entered
the garden, where his wife was in the habit of wandering for her
diversion, he looked, and saw her, in the very arms of the king.
So when he saw it, Trishodadhi stood for a single instant, silent,
gazing at that pair with eyes that were suddenly filled to the very
brim, first with amazement, and then with anguish, and next with anger,
and finally with ice. And then he turned away, saying slowly to
himself: Miserable wretches, what after all is the use of astonishment,
or pity for myself, or even wrath with you? It is not you that are to
blame, obeying as ye do the incorrigible instincts of your sex and your
depravity, and rewarding one who has loaded both of you with benefits
with the blackness of ingratitude. But it is rather I myself who am to
blame, for putting any faith whatever, were it fleeting as a jot of
time, in this treacherous and unsubstantial world, filled full to the
very brim with lovers and women, snakes and tigers, and betrayers and
betrayed; on which I will this very instant turn my back for ever, as
indeed, had I not been utterly blinded by passion and delusion, I
should have done already, long ago. And even as he said, so he did.
And he went straight away, there and then, never to return. And
abandoning his wife and his office and his home, counting them all as
grass, he threw away his skin, like a snake, and becoming a pilgrim,
turned his steps, without losing a single instant, to the wilderness of
the Windhya hills.
And as he went along, that very miserable Brahman said angrily to
himself, with tears in his eyes: Ha! what was the Creator about, in
creating such a world as this, where evil-doers prosper, and virtue
comes to ruin, and fidelity and service and devotion gain nothing in
reward, but villainous ingratitude, and bitter disappointment? Surely
it was a blunder; and why, then, do the rulers of the world allow it to
continue? And all at once, rage rushed into his soul against the very
constitution of the world,[9] as if that, rather than himself, were the
author of his misery. And he exclaimed, in an ecstasy of grief: Ha!
Did not Wishwamitra, when he found this world not according to his
taste, create another of his own? And by what means did he acquire the
power that enabled him to perform his extraordinary feats of
world-creating and other such miracles, but by penance and asceticism?
Did he not prove, by his own example, that nothing is impossible to
perfect asceticism? And cannot others do what he did, by the very
selfsame means, provided only that their resolution is thorough and
complete? So then, now, I also will rival and surpass him, and by
means of the intensity of my extraordinary penance bend the very gods
to my will, and compel them to obey me, and change the established
constitution of the world, whether they will or no. Aye, my resolution
is fixed, and adamantine, and inalterable. I will begin this very
moment, and heap up for myself a very mountain of merit, till its
towering mass shall overbalance and obliterate the united forces of the
inhabitants of heaven.
So then he resolved, in the bitter agony of disappointment. And like
one looking down into a forest pool created by a shower of rain, and
mistaking its shallowness for an infinity of depth, deceived by the
imitation of the illimitable abyss of heaven in the mirror of its
glass, so he mistook his own pique at the world arising from the wound
inflicted by the conduct of his wife, and proving, by its very
violence, the strength of his attachment to the objects of sense that
he pretended to despise, for real renunciation based on perfect
knowledge, and undertook rashly, in imitation of that bull among
ascetics, Wishwamitra, a task beyond the limits of his strength; not
having understood, that those only are equal to the terrible strain of
true renunciation whose soul is pure, unstained by any tincture of
egoism, and resembling a well of the crystal liquor of perfect mastery
of self. And yet even so, he commenced his undertaking confidently,
and counting beforehand on success, and burning with the fire of
preliminary zeal, ignorant of the presence of that element in his soul,
which was destined in the future to upset his calculations, and bring
about his utter destruction, on the very brink of ultimate success.
And going to the farthest recesses of the forest, he discovered in its
heart a remote and lonely cemetery,[10] on the outskirts of a long
deserted and forgotten town. And he entered it, and having discovered
a suitable spot, he remained and dwelt there, as motionless as a tree.
And collecting from the relics of burning funeral pyres a quantity of
bare and empty skulls, divested of their flesh by fire, and time, and
the troops of night-walking, flesh-devouring wild beasts and Rákshasas
and Wetálas,[11] by which that gloomy cemetery was infested, he made of
them a rosary for himself, like mine,[12] and began to mutter spells.
And so he continued, night and day, year after year, muttering
incessantly, living all the while like a serpent on nothing but air and
his own undaunted resolution, till at last he had completed a century
of years.
And then at last, being pleased with his perseverance, such as it was,
I appeared to him one day in the guise of a _digambara_,[13] and
granted him a boon. Thereupon that indomitable Trishodadhi replied: O
Shankara, I ask for absolutely nothing, but permission to continue my
devotions. If therefore I must perforce select a boon, grant me as
much time as I require, so as to continue, muttering on, till I abandon
my assiduity of my own accord. So I left him, muttering diligently
away, just as before, though I foresaw the end, and knew that he
carried within him, unsuspected by himself, the seed of the fruit of
his own undoing, which time would ripen, dooming him to undergo the
punishment that lies in wait for all, who plunge, without due
consideration, into enterprises above their strength.[14] And so the
boon I offered him was wasted, and the chance was thrown away. For had
he only had knowledge of himself, it might have saved him after all, by
ensuring him oblivion of the past. For his memory was his ruin, as the
story will show thee, O Daughter of the Snow.
And he in the meantime muttered on unflaggingly, wholly intent on
nothing else, till at length the mound of his accumulated merit began
to rival in dimension yonder hill, whose top the evening sun is now
touching with the colour of affection, as if loth to leave it to be
swallowed by the dark.
III
And then at last one day it happened, that Mátali arrived in Indra's
palace, having returned to heaven from a visit to the earth. And as
soon as he entered, he exclaimed: O punisher of Páka,[15] and the rest,
what are you all about? Are you asleep, or have you actually abandoned
all care whether of your own pre-eminence or the established order of
the world? For away below on earth, there is an old Brahman, in a
deserted cemetery in the forest of the Windhya hills, who by his
interminable muttering continued through the centuries has accumulated
so gigantic a heap of merit,[16] that it threatens destruction to the
three worlds. And now, unless something is done very speedily to stop
him, and reduce it, this merit of his, beyond a doubt, will disturb the
equilibrium of the universe, and wreck the established order of the
worlds, and hurl you from your thrones.
And hearing him, Indra said: There is no difficulty in this. I will go
myself, and bribe him to discontinue his proceedings. And he went down
himself accordingly to earth, to examine and investigate that Brahman,
and see what could be done. And after considering him awhile, and
admiring his extraordinary obstinacy, he set to work to tempt him, and
induce him, by offering bribes of various descriptions, to desist. And
he offered him accordingly mountains of gold, and oceans of jewels, and
everlasting youth, and many kinds of magic power, and finally he racked
his brains, to find something or other that would move that obdurate
Trishodadhi, and draw him from his vow. But in vain. For Trishodadhi
paid no more attention to his offers and himself, than the moon does to
the barking of a dog; continuing to mutter, all the time he spoke, just
as if he was not there.
So finding all his efforts vain, after a while, that baffled lover of
Ahalyá[17] returned to heaven. And summoning the gods, he laid the
case before them, and requested their advice. And after deliberation,
they determined to seduce him by sending down a heavenly nymph, saying
to themselves: Did not Menaká, and Tilottamá, and others of their kind,
prove too strong for the asceticism of even mighty sages, so that their
merit melted, like a lump of snow, in the flame of their desire, and
their self-control vanished like stubble in a forest conflagration?
Nay, did not even Brahma assume his name,[18] becoming four-faced, in
order to gratify his intolerable thirst to behold the beauty of
Tilottamá performing a pradakshina around him, though he would not turn
his head? Therefore it is not to be doubted that in this case also,
the irresistible amber of feminine attraction will prove its power, and
draw this grass in the form of a Brahman any way it will, snapping like
thread the resolution which would chain him to his muttering, as soon
as it is seen.
And accordingly they drew up before them in a row the chorus of Indra's
heavenly dancers. And they chose out of them all that Apsaras who
seemed to them the least easily to be resisted, by reason of her
rounded arms and dainty ankles, and sent her down to earth with
suitable instructions, to seduce that Brahman from his muttering as
quickly as she could. But she, to her amazement, found on her arrival,
that, do what she might, she could not even so much as succeed in
inducing him to look at her sideways even for a moment. So, after a
while, she left him, and flew back to heaven in a pet. And they sent
instead of her another, who presently returned, having found herself as
ineffectual as the first. And they tried again, and sent, one after
another, the whole of Indra's chorus, pelting as it were that
stony-hearted old ascetic with a very shower of celestial flowers, and
gaining the very opposite of the end at which they aimed. For inasmuch
as he never ceased muttering even for a moment, all their efforts to
corrupt him and reduce his stock of merit only added to its heap,
making its mountainous proportions more formidable than before.
And finally Indra exclaimed in despair: We are conquered by this
_awatár_ of obstinacy in the form of an ascetic, on whose rock the
waves of this very sea of beauty beat in vain. And now there is no
refuge for us but in the sole of the foot of the Burner[19] of the
Bodiless God. For he alone is stronger than Love, whose power seems to
fail us in this pinch, rendered nugatory by the intractable composition
of this exasperating mutterer. And if even he can devise no remedy for
this disease, it is incurable; and then will this incorruptible old
devotee have us all at his mercy,[20] and bring heaven to its knees,
and turn, if he pleases, the three worlds upside down.
And then, led by Indra, they came altogether in a body to me; and
placing the difficulty before me, they waited with anxiety to hear what
I should say. And I looked there and then into the future, and saw in
its dark mirror, like a picture, the ruin of that old ambitious
Brahman, and the means by which it was destined to be accomplished.
And after a while, I said slowly: All diseases are not able to be
remedied by the same medicine, and notwithstanding the omnipotence of
feminine attraction, this is a case wherein heavenly nymphs are
impotent, and utterly without avail. For all these heavenly nymphs do
nothing but dance and sing and attitudinise and ogle, imagining that as
in the case of Menaká Tilottamá, Rambhá, and the rest, they have only
to show themselves to gain at once their end, trusting only to the body
and its beauty, and very shallow coquetry and artifices to sharpen the
edge of its effect, such as wind that stirs their clothing, or water
that causes it to cling to the outline of their limbs and reveal, as if
by accident, the thing that it pretends and is intended to conceal, and
other such devices. But this Trishodadhi is a fish that, as I
perceive, will not easily be caught by the bait of mere meretricious
beauty, and in his case, the hook must be hidden in a lure of quite
another kind. But there is a Daitya, named Aparapaksha,[21] living at
the very bottom of the sea, who has a hundred daughters. And were
beauty the necessary weapon in this instance, any one of them would
serve the turn, since all of them have bodies formed as it were of
ocean-foam, with lips of coral, and eyes like pools, and hair longer
than themselves, and voices like the echo of the waves; and only lately
I heard them singing all together as I passed, on an island shore, and
was myself all but bewitched, so that unawares I paused, hanging in the
air to listen, waylaid as it were by the magic and the spell of that
melancholy sound, forgetting my journey for the sake of their refrain.
But now, since something more is necessary, you must abandon all the
others, and betake you to the youngest of them all, who is rightly
named Kalánidhi, though she is the ugliest and cleverest woman in the
three worlds, for she is a very ocean of craft and trickery and
guile,[22] and very knavish in disposition, as full of deception and
caprice as the element in which she lives. And if you can get her to
assist you, I do not doubt you will succeed. And perhaps, if you tell
her that this is a matter in which all the heavenly nymphs have failed,
she will help you out of spite; for she is very jealous of them all,
and this is a glorious opportunity for her to show herself able to
accomplish a thing which has baffled the ingenuity and beauty of
everybody else. But certainly, if she either cannot or will not
overcome this obstacle, I think that even the elephant-headed Lord of
Obstacles himself would fail. For though beauty is a power stronger
than any other, it may nevertheless sometimes be successfully resisted.
But feminine ingenuity is a far more formidable antagonist, which no
man has ever yet successfully encountered since the beginning of the
world, since it is half protected by his own innumerable scruples in
its favour, being utterly destitute of any sort of scruple of its own.
And so, should Kalánidhi assist you, and fail after all, there is
nothing to be done: and under the weight of this Brahman's mountain of
accumulated merit, you must sink to the very bottom of the ocean of
defeat, like an earth bereft of the tortoise to save it on its back.
IV
So then, led by the lover of Ahalyá, the gods went off in a body to the
bottom of the sea, to look for Kalánidhi, in such a hurry that they
even forgot to worship me. And they found her father's residence, but
not himself, for he happened to be away from home. And roaming here
and there among his hundred daughters, all at once they came upon
Kalánidhi, lying dreaming, curled in a bed formed by her own hair, in a
giant oyster shell. And very suitable indeed seemed that shell to be
her cradle, for her bosom resembled an enormous double pearl, not dead
but living, keeping time slowly to the echo of the sea. And her body,
that resembled a foaming wave, was hung all over with gems, picked up
at random from the ocean floor, and her lips resembled sprigs that had
fallen from the coral tree whose branches spread above her head in and
out of the green water that moved her weedy tresses quietly to and fro.
And as she opened her eyes and looked towards them, Indra said within
himself: Maheshwara was right, and she is hideous, for all her beauty;
for her eyes are like sea caves, out of which other eyes like those of
an _ajagara_ seem to freeze you with their chill, and the smile on her
thin lips resembles the sinister and silent laughter of a skull.
So as they came towards her, Kalánidhi gazed at them sleepily in
wonder, and murmured softly to herself: What in the world can the gods
want, so badly, as to bring them here, all together in a lump? For
these must be the gods, since their eyelids do not wink. Something
must surely have gone amiss in heaven, and beyond a doubt, sore indeed
must be the need that drives them, for instead of sending Mátali, they
have actually come themselves. And now it is very fortunate that my
father is away. For he is far too simple[23] to drive a bargain with
the gods, or anybody else, and would make no use of his opportunity.
And then she arose politely, and listened in silence, while Indra told
her the whole story. And when he ended, she looked at him for a while
ironically, and then she said: For centuries have we lived here, my
father and my sisters and myself, and yet not even one of the gods ever
visited us before. What honour, for a daughter of the Daityas! But
what could be the services of such a thing as me, where even heavenly
maidens fail? Moreover, I do not like cemeteries, seeing that every
cemetery is the home of mouldering and evil-smelling bones and skulls,
and flesh-eating Rákshasas and Wetálas and ghosts. But inasmuch as you
have come here, not as friends or guests, but as merchants seeking to
engage me in an enterprise for your own advantage, this is after all a
matter on a mere commercial footing. And what then is to be the price
of my assistance, and if I am successful, what is to be my appropriate
reward?
Then said Maghawan:[24] I will give thee a crore of elephants, black as
ink, with golden tusks; or if thou wilt, raiment woven out of the beams
of the rising or the setting sun, or crystal vats of camphor strained
from the midnight moon, or endless strings of jewels, or anything thou
wilt. Then said Kalánidhi: What is the use of elephants, even black as
ink with golden tusks, at the very bottom of the sea? And as for
jewels, the sea floor is their very home, and I find them strewn at my
very feet. And as for clothing, what do I want but my own hair? Then
said Indra: Choose, then, for thyself, what I shall give thee. And
Kalánidhi smiled. And she said: What if I were to require of thee a
cushion, stuffed with the down that grows on the breast of Brahma's
swan, or a fan, to cool me, made of the feathers of Saraswati's
peacock's tail? And Indra said: Both shall be thine, and the bargain
is complete. Then said Kalánidhi: Nay, there is no hurry. For what if
I asked for a crore of crystal jars, filled to the very brim with
_amrita_, which, never having tasted, I am curious to taste? And Indra
said: That also shall be thine, and so the bargain is complete. Then
said Kalánidhi: Nay, for there might still be something lacking. What
if I should say, that I long for a single blossom of Wishnu's
_párijáta_ tree? For when I am in the cemetery, how should I endure to
stay, even for a single moment, without its odour as an antidote to the
reek of burning bodies and the stench of dying pyres? And Indra said:
For that also I will answer, and now the bargain is complete. Then
said Kalánidhi: Nay, be not hasty, in a matter of such importance. And
now that I come to think of it, this Brahman must be very old and ugly,
and exceedingly repulsive by reason of his long austerity. And what if
I should ask thee for a lamp, that I might examine him from a distance,
made of a single splinter chipped from Wishnu's _kaustubha_, and filled
not with oil, but the ooze of Shiwa's moon, squeezed from the
moonstones hanging on the trellises in Alaká, so that setting it in
imitation of Maheshwara, like a diadem in my hair, I might be suitably
equipped for reconnoitring your Brahman, in that gloomy home of ghosts?
And Indra said: I will guarantee it thine, and the bargain is complete.
And then, Kalánidhi looked craftily at the eager god, out of the very
corner of her eye. And all at once she began to laugh, and she
exclaimed: Ha! lover of Ahalyá, thy need must surely be extreme, seeing
that thou art as it seems ready to strip the very deities of their
necessary attributes, to lure me to thy task. But now, learn that I
did but play with thee and thy anxiety, to measure the degree of thy
extremity; nor do I stand in need of any of those things that I have
mentioned, nor of anything at all. For my assistance will be
determined, not by bribes, but my own good pleasure and caprice. And
it may be I will go and try my skill against this old malignant
mutterer, merely because I choose, and for no reward at all, and to
show that I can be of use,
|
it afforded them, for exchanging the
reciprocities of their mutual affection. He was lost not far from the
iron-bound coast of Carnarvonshire, but nearer towards Anglesea. I saw
her frequently, and her demeanour was most peaceable, except towards the
evening, when her benighted fancy would conjure up a variety of pleasing
expressions, which were uttered in the Welsh language; and were
invariably directed towards her lover, whom she often fancied was
present with her. I was happy to hear, that through the kind
superintendence of the late Dr. Jones, of Denbigh, she in a great
measure recovered her faculties, but died two or three years after at
Liverpool.
* * * * *
SHAKSPERIANA.
(_For the Mirror._)
"Each scene of many-colour'd life he drew
Exhausted worlds,--and then imagin'd knew."
JOHNSON.
So much has been said, and said so well, respecting the writings of
Shakspeare and the peculiar character of his genius, that it would be a
hopeless as well as a presumptuous task to attempt adding anything to
public information on that head. But I know not that any one has
ventured to point out a few of those instances in which our great
dramatist has stooped to plagiarize. That he must have done so, at least
occasionally, is a matter of course, as no voluminous writings were ever
given to the world that were not the result of study as well as original
thought, for genius must ever be corrected by judgment, and what is
judgment but the child of experience and study? Observation alone can
tell us, that man is an imitative animal, and philosophy teaches us that
his ideas are not innate; he must borrow them at first in a simple form
from those around him, and though by the association of these ideas, and
the gradual extension and improvement of them, he may eventually
generate new ones, yet some traces cannot but remain of what was
originally lodged in the mind, and will come into play as occasion may
call them forth. Shakspeare was a perfect master of human nature, but he
was a master of our language as well; he was indeed one of those who
have improved it, but he could never have himself arrived at the degree
of perfection in which he found it, had he not derived assistance from
others, and made himself intimately acquainted with our purest national
works of talent. Thus, he could never have been so ignorant as he is
said to have been of English literature.
Little is known of Shakspeare's earlier years, except that he was sent
to the free school at Stratford, where he acquired the rudiments of the
learned languages; that he was never a distinguished classic is certain,
but it is equally certain that he must have been acquainted with the
Greek dramatists by the use of translations, though he may not have had
scholarship enough to study them in the original. So many parallel
passages might be drawn from this source, that the task would be an
endless one; besides the fact is so well known and admitted, that it
would be unnecessary. "We find him," says Mr. Pope, "very knowing in all
the customs of antiquity." In _Julius Caesar, Coriolanus_, and other
plays where the scene is laid at Rome, not only the spirit but the
manners of the ancient Romans is exactly shown, and his reading in the
ancient historians is no less conspicuous. It is well known at the
universities of this country, that on any public examination, be the
play either tragic or comic, the students are frequently required to
produce parallel passages from the writings of Shakspeare: now it might
indeed with some reason be supposed that occasionally the same ideas
would present themselves to different minds, and where two writers are
equally well acquainted with the nature of man, and equally skilled in
analyzing his passions, it might well, I say, be supposed, that such
true and acute observation would suggest similar ideas, and perhaps even
the same method of defining them. Yet when this similarity is frequent
instead of occasional, when the unusual peculiarity of the sentiment
renders it startling and suspicious, then the above supposition becomes
too extensive even for prejudice to admit. Such however is the case
here, and so the matter stands between Shakspeare and the ancient
dramatists. Even some of the machinery he has made use of is not his
own. Thus, the seemingly ingenious introduction of "The Play" into
_Hamlet_, is borrowed from an old Greek drama, where Alexander, the
tyrant of Pharos, is struck with remorse for his crimes upon viewing
similar cruelties to his own, practised upon the stage.
At that earlier period of literature when Shakspeare flourished, books
were few in number, and consequently scarce; yet there can be no doubt
that our author seized every opportunity of improving and strengthening
his mind: whether he had any acquaintance with the modern languages is
unknown, but he has certainly introduced many French scenes in his
works, and he has taken several of his plots, such as that of _Romeo and
Juliet_, from the Italians. As to his own language, he is said to have
made the poems of Chaucer principally his study, so that it would not be
quite fair to produce any plagiarisms from that writer; but I give the
reader a few specimens of English literature taken from other quarters,
which seem to have afforded Shakspeare ideas, or else matter, to work
upon. The following passage is from one of our oldest dramas, and it
will readily call to the recollection of the reader, the celebrated
speech of Claudio in _Measure for Measure_:
"To die is sure to go we know not whither,
We lie in silent darkness, and we rot.
Perhaps the spirit, which is future life,
Dwells, salamander-like, unharm'd in fire,
Or else with wand'ring winds is blown about
The world; but if condemned like those
Whom our uncertain thought imagines howling,
Then the most loath'd and the most weary life,
Which age, ache, penury or imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a Paradise.
To what we fear of death."
The sentences that follow are from a small historical work I have fallen
in with, written in old English, but without its date; about a fourth
part of the matter contained in this little book is to be found woven
into the different historical plays of Shakspeare, but the underwritten
extracts are very nearly in his own words, allowing, of course, for the
more poetical expression.
(_Fall of Wolsey._) "Being near his end, he called Sir William Kingston
to him, and said, 'Pray, present my duty to his majesty, who is a noble
and gallant prince, and of a resolved mind, for he will venture the loss
of his kingdom, rather than be contradicted in his desires. And now, Mr.
Kingston, had I but served my God as diligently as I have served the
king, he never would have forsaken me in my grey hairs!'" (Compare this
with Cardinal Wolsey's speech to Cromwell, _Henry VIII._, Act iii.)
Amongst other particulars in this book, concerning _Richard III._ we
have the following: "The Protector coming in council, seemed more than
ordinarily merry, and after some other discourses, 'My lord (says he to
the Bishop of Ely) you have very good strawberries in your garden in
Holborn, pray let us have a dish of them.' 'With all my heart,' replied
the bishop, and sent for some. Afterwards, the Protector knit his brows
and his lips, and rising up in great wrath, he exclaimed, 'My lords, I
have to tell you, that that old sorceress, my brother Edward's widow,
and her partner, that common prostitute, Jane Shore, have by witchcraft
and enchantment been contriving to take away my life, and though by
God's mercy they have not been able to finish this villany, yet see the
mischief they have done me; (and then he showed his left arm,) how they
have caused this dear limb of mine to wither and grow useless.'" (Vide
_Richard III._ Act iii. Scene 2.)
Shakspeare was contemporary with Bacon, and he no doubt valued and
studied with attention, the writings of that great man. The working up
of the splendid dialogue between Iago and Othello, may not impossibly
have been suggested by this sentence of Lord Bacon: "Breaking off in the
midst of what one was about to say, (as if he took himself up) breeds a
greater appetite in him with whom you confer, to know more." (Vide
_Essays_.)
But let us drop the tone of attempted criticism, which ill becomes an
embryo writer at any time, and still less so when Shakspeare is the
theme. Having mentioned Bacon, perhaps the following authenticated
dialogue may not be uninteresting to the reader, especially as it is
only to be met with in one or two scarce books:
(_Shakspeare._) "I have heard, my lord, that a certain arch in Trinity
College, Cambridge, would stand until a greater man than your lordship
should pass through it."
(_Bacon._) "Did you ever pass through it, Mr. Shakspeare?"
(_Shakspeare._) "No, my lord, I never was at Cambridge."
(_Bacon._) "Then we cannot decide which of us two is the greater man. I
am told that most of the professors there pass under the arch without
tear; which indeed shows a wise contempt of the superstition."
(_Shakspeare._) "I rejoice to think that the world is yet to have a
greater man than your lordship, since the arch must fall at last."
Several of Shakspeare's least amusing plays are supposed to be not of
his composition, such as _Henry VI._, and _Troilus and Cressida_, with
the exception of the master-touches and some of the finer speeches,
which probably were introduced by him. This, however, is a trick of
trade in every department of science; and when we see, for instance, the
collected works of some great artist, it would be ridiculous to suppose
that his whole lifetime could have sufficed for so much handicraft, and
perhaps in reality, only the faces and more delicate parts were the work
of his pencil.
To return to Shakspeare. The objections to his style, which are many,
especially to a more modern reader, are excusable from several causes.
The writers of the Elizabethan age and previously, were all of them very
coarse in their mode of expression, and the dramatists not very delicate
in their plots, though in doing so they did but obey the dictates of
fashion and the bad taste of the times. Even prolixity and
circumlocution were countenanced, and the insufferable conceits we meet
with in the poems of Donne, Cowley, and others, were highly relished in
those days. Euphaeism (mentioned so often by Sir W. Scott in _The
Abbot_,) was also then in vogue, and all these various peculiarities of
style, language, &c. were indispensable in all that was offered to the
public. Shakspeare's fondness and propensity for punning may claim the
same excuse, viz. "the hoary head and furrowed face of custom;" yet
there are some of these puns interspersed through his works, which are
sad blots indeed to our modern fastidious eyes, and that we could well
wish to see expunged; such a one now is this:
"Say, '_pardon_,' king, let pity teach thee now."
"Speak it in French, king, say, '_pardonnez moi_.'"
"A quibble (says Dr. Johnson,) gave him such delight that he was content
to purchase it by the sacrifice of reason, of propriety, and even of
truth; a quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the
world, and was content to lose it!"
Schiller, who is styled "the Shakspeare of Germany," and who is so
ardently admired at the present day, has indeed taken our author for his
model; he has in many respects been too servile a student, for his
plagiarisms are both close and numerous. Thus, any one acquainted with
his celebrated play of _The Robbers_, will readily recollect that the
whole story is built upon the secondary plot in _King Lear_, between the
Duke of Gloucester and his two sons; one of these who is a natural
child, and a villain withal, contrives to poison the mind of the father,
and to eject the legitimate son from his favour; it will be found
exactly thus in Schiller's famous story of "The Robbers." It must be
acknowledged, however, that foreigners in general have never idolized
Shakspeare, or paid him that devoted adoration, which his countrymen
both pay and think him entitled to. Hear Voltaire's overdrawn and even
paltry criticism of _Hamlet_. "The tragedy of _Hamlet_ is a gross and
barbarous composition, which would not be supported by the lowest
populace in France and Italy. Hamlet goes mad in the second act, Ophelia
in the third; he takes the father of his mistress for a rat, and runs
him through the body. In despair, the heroine drowns herself. Her grave
is dug on the stage, while the grave-diggers enter into a conversation
_suitable_ (!) to such low wretches, and play, as it were, with dead
men's bones! Hamlet answers their abominable stuff, with follies equally
disgusting. Hamlet, with his father and mother-in-law, drink together
upon the stage; they sing at table, afterwards they quarrel, and battle
and death ensue. In short, one might take this performance for the
fruits of the imagination of _a drunken savage_." (_Letters on the
English Nation._)
In another place, this writer says, "Shakspeare had not a single spark
of good taste, or knew one rule of the drama. In one of his _monstrous
farces_, to which he has given the name of Tragedies, we find the jokes
of the Roman shoemakers and cobblers introduced in the same scene with
the orations of Brutus and Antony." (See Voltaire's _Essays on Tragedy
and Comedy_.) Here this rival dramatist again objects to any
introduction of the lower orders on the stage, and seems averse to
whatever is natural, and to depicting life as it is; but if any excuse
is necessary for Shakspeare on this head, we must remember that the
stage was in his time, and indeed is now perhaps, more particularly
levelled to please the populace, and its success more immediately
depends on the common suffrage; accordingly the scenes of our English
drama, and Shakspeare's scenes particularly, are very often laid among
tradesmen and mechanics, and though it may be contrary to all good
taste, the author is compelled to indulge in bombast expressions,
pompous and thundering rhymes, and sometimes even ribaldry and mean,
unmannerly buffoonery.
During his lifetime, Shakspeare acquired reputation principally through
his poems, which from some unaccountable cause, are now comparatively
neglected, and we may add unfortunately so for the enjoyment of the
public. These poems were more admired than his plays, and what speaks
higher in their favour, they are more expressively alluded to by
contemporary writers. The "Venus and Adonis" is a splendid piece of
composition, and very touching in its sentiment; even its illustrious
author was proud to call it "the first heir of his invention." We have
from it one of our most popular songs, which constitutes one of its
stanzas:
"Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear,
Or like a fairy, trip upon the green,
Or like a nymph with long dishevell'd hair
Dance on the sands, and yet no footing seen."
His ready talent for composition was singular, and perhaps unparalleled;
his mind and hand ever went together, and it is reported he was never
known to blot a line. He was an actor occasionally in his own plays, but
it does not indeed appear that he excelled in this art.
Shakspeare never considered his works worthy of posterity, and was
little careful of popularity while he lived; having acquired a
competency by his labours, he retired to Stratford, and spent the
remainder of his life in ease and retirement, like a private gentleman.
His income was estimated at £200. The epitaph--not that on his monument,
but on the rude stone actually covering his remains is to the following
effect, and thus curiously written:
"Good friend, for Jesus SAKE forbeare
To digg T--E dust EncloAsed HERE
T
Blese be T--E man spares TEs stones
T y
And curst be hey moves my bones."
I conclude this rather desultory article with Lord Lyttleton's splendid
eulogy on him, which in a few words expresses more than the finest
Philippic to his memory--"If all human things were to perish except the
works of Shakspeare, it might still be known from them what sort of a
creature Man was!"
F.
* * * * *
SIR THOMAS FOWLER'S LODGE, ISLINGTON.
[Illustration: SIR THOMAS FOWLER'S LODGE, ISLINGTON.]
Few parishes in the environs of London are so rich in architectural
antiquities as the "considerable village" of Islington. Canonbury-house,
of which a solitary tower remains, is said to have been the
country-residence of the Priors of St. Bartholomew, and to have been
_re_built early in the 16th century. Highbury belonged also to the
Priory. The existing relics are chiefly of the Elizabethan age. The
lodge, represented in the cut, belonged to an old mansion; the property
of the Fowler family, built in 1595, which appears on a ceiling. The
house fronts Cross-street, and the lodge is at the extremity of the
garden, and adjoins Canonbury Fields. It is most probable that this was
built as a summer-house by Sir Thomas Fowler, the younger, whose arms
are placed in the wall, with the date 1655. It has been absurdly called
Queen Elizabeth's Lodge, but with no other foundation than her majesty
having passed through it when on a visit to Sir Thomas Fowler.
The Fowlers appear to have been of some note. Sir Thomas Fowler, the
elder, who died in 1624, was one of the jury on Sir Walter Raleigh's
trial: his son, Sir Thomas, was created a baronet in 1628; the title
became extinct at his death. Some coats of arms were taken out of the
windows of the old mansion. Among these were the arms of Fowler and
Heron. Thomas Fowler, the first of the family who settled at Islington
married the daughter of Herne, or Heron, of that place.[5]
[5] See Harl. MSS., No. 1551.
The Pied Bull, near Islington Church, is stated to have been the
residence of Sir Walter Raleigh; though Oldys, in his _Life of Raleigh_,
says there is no proof of it; and John Shirley, of Islington, another of
Raleigh's biographers, records nothing of his living there. The
statement is, however, renewed in a Life of Sir Walter, published in
1740.
* * * * *
FINE ARTS.
* * * * *
THE PANORAMA OF MILAN.
By the aid of Mr. Burford's panoramic pencil, the sight-hunter of our
times may enjoy a kind of imaginary tour through the world. At one
season he wafts us to the balmy climes of India--next he astounds us
with the icy sublimities of the Pole (a fine summer panorama, by the
way)--then to the glittering spires, minarets, and mosques of
Constantinople--then to the infant world of New Holland--and back to the
Old World, to enjoy scenes and sites which are hallowed in memory's fond
shrine, by their association with the most glorious names and events in
our history. We remember the philosophical amusement of the great Lord
Shaftesbury, in contriving _all the world in an acre_ in his retreat at
Reigate: what his Lordship laboured to represent in his garden, Mr.
Burford essays in his panoramas--in short, he gives us all the world on
an acre--of canvass.
Reader, we do not hold the grand secret of life to be the art of
hoaxing, when we tell you that for a Greenwich fare you may be
transported to the classic regions of Italy--that a walk to Leicester
Square will probably delight you more than a ride to Greenwich, little
as we are inclined to underrate the last of the pleasures of the people.
The contrast is forcible, and the intellectual advantage to be enjoyed
in the metropolis too evident to be overlooked.
At the Panorama, _Florence_ is in the upper circle, and _Milan_ in the
lower one. The main attraction of the latter is the celebrated
cathedral, which forms, as it were, the nucleus of the scene. The point
of view has been objected to, as the spectator is placed about mid-way
up the cathedral, and thus looks down into the streets and squares of
the city; but, it should be remembered, that he also enjoys the distant
country, which he could not have done had the view been from the area of
the city; and, as we have before said, the beauty of the _paysage_ is
one of the perfections of Mr. Burford's paintings. Its present success
may be told from the _Description:_
"Beyond, the eye ranges to an immense distance over the rich and fertile
plains of Lombardy, Piedmont, and the Venetian States, luxuriant with
every description of rural beauty, intersected by rivers and lakes, and
thickly studded with towns and villages, with their attendant gardens,
groves, and vineyards. The Northern horizon, from East to West, is
bounded by the vast chain of the Alps, which form a magnificent
semicircle at from eighty to one hundred and twenty miles distant, Monte
Rosa, Monte Cenis, Monte St. Gothard, the Simplon, &c. covered with
eternal snow, being conspicuous from their towering height; towards the
South the view is bounded by the Apennines, extending across the
peninsula from the Mediterranean to the Adriatic; and on the South-west,
the Piedmontese hills, in the neighbourhood of Turin, appear a faint
purple line on the horizon, so small as to be scarcely visible; the
purity of the atmosphere enables the eye to discern the most distant
objects with accuracy, and the brilliant sunshine gives inconceivable
splendour to every part of the scene; each antique spire and
curiously-wrought tower sparkles brightly in its beams, whilst the dark
foliage of fine trees, even in the heart of the city, relieves the eye,
and produces a beautiful and pleasing effect."
The cathedral will be recollected as the finest specimen extant of
pointed Gothic architecture, and termed by the Milanese, the eighth
wonder of the world. It is entirely of white marble, and its highest
point four hundred feet from the base. A better idea of its minute as
well as vast beauty will be afforded by the reader turning to our
engraving of the exterior in vol. xiv. of _The Mirror_. It is
successfully painted in the Panorama, although it has not the dazzling
whiteness that a stranger might expect; and, on it are those beautiful
tinges which are thought to be shed by the atmosphere upon buildings of
any considerable age. This effect is visible ever in the fine climate of
Italy: it is ingeniously referred to by Sir Humphry Davy in his last
work[6] to the chemical agency of water. He speaks, however, rather of
the _decay_ produced by water, of which _tinge_ is but the first stage.
The latter is very pleasing, and, about two years since, the fine
portico of the Colosseum, in the Regent's Park, was artificially
coloured to produce this effect of _time_, as it has been poetically
considered.
[6] "Consolations in Travel, or the Last Days of a Philosopher."
1830.
The City of Milan is not particularly interesting, though to an
untravelled beholder, it has points of attraction. He may probably be
struck with the vast extent of some of the structures when compared with
the puny buildings of our own country and times; and the space occupied
by the palaces will but remind him of the mistaken magnificence of
Buckingham, or the gloomy grandeur of St. James's. Again, the plastered
and fancifully coloured fronts of the dwelling-houses, their gay
draperies, &c. but ill-assort with the heavy red-brick exteriors of our
metropolis; although this contrast is to be sought elsewhere than in
externals. Mr. Burford's summary, or characteristics of the city may be
quoted:
"The form of the city is nearly circular, about ten miles in
circumference, although perhaps the thickly built and more densely
populated part may be confined to an area of half that size. There are
several large and handsome squares, but the streets, with very few
exceptions, are neither wide nor regular; the pavement is formed like
that of Paris, of small, sharp pebbles, with occasionally a narrow
footway on each side, and the addition of two (or in the wider streets
four) strips of flat stones in the centre, forming a sort of railway, on
which the carriage wheels run with great smoothness and very little
noise. The churches, hospitals, establishments for the poor, and other
public institutions, are numerous, and display all the richness and
magnificence of Italian architecture, and are at the same time endowed
on a most liberal scale; the ancient palaces of the nobles, vast and
rude, bear stamp of the importance of the city in the middle ages, when
they served as domestic fortresses and lodged well-appointed and
numerous retinues; and although they cannot at present vie with those of
Rome or Genoa, yet they display considerable architectural luxury, and
contain fine collections of works of art; attached to many are large and
well-stocked gardens, which add much to the beauty of the city. Very
little regard is paid to regularity of appearance in the general
buildings; they vary in height from two to five stories, and are built
of brick, or granite from the Lago Maggiori, plastered, coloured, or
ornamented, according to the taste of the owner; many are still without
the luxury of glass in the windows; the shops are numerous and well
furnished; their entrances, as well as those of the coffee-houses, are
frequently defended only by a coloured drapery, which, with the silk
tapestry hung at the church doors, and occasionally from the balconies,
&c., has a gay and pleasing effect; indeed the whole appearance of the
city is cheerful and flourishing."
The groupes and incidents in the streets will amuse the spectator. There
is _Policinel_--the eternal Punch--with his audience, a short distance
from the Cathedral. All over Europe, the most enlightened portion of the
world, is this little _Motley_ to be seen frolicking with flashes of
satire; the motto for his proscenium should be _hic et ubique_.
One of the beauties of this Panorama is the masterly effect of _the
Italian_ sky. There are fewer cloudless days in Italy than the stranger
may imagine, but Mr. Burford was fortunate in his season.
* * * * *
SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.
* * * * *
CHIT CHAT OF THE DAY.
There is a good share of pleasant patter in the following abridged from
the _Metropolitan_.
"Every one says that I am an odd person; I presume I am, and so is every
one else taken singly. I can prove that by Cocker. One and one make
two--two is even, one is odd, I am but one. There's logic for you. I am
also a rambler by temperament. I ramble my person at my own free will,
and my mind rambles quite indifferent as to its intimate connexion with
the former. I look at the stars, and my thoughts are of women--I look at
the earth, and my thoughts run upon heaven--I frequent the opera, and
moralize upon the world and its vanities--I sit in my pew at church, and
my thoughts ramble every where in spite of my endeavours and those of
the parson to boot--I live in town all the year, because it's the
fashion to be here in the season, and because I prefer London most when
I can walk about where there is nobody to interrupt me. In the season, I
am allowed to walk into every body's house, very often get an invite to
fill up an odd corner, and as there generally is an odd corner at every
party, and I do not stand at a short notice, I eat more good dinners
than most people. I am not a fool, and yet not too clever, so that
poised in that happy medium, I hear all, see all, know a great deal of
what is going on, and hold my tongue. When people inhabit their town
houses, I spend the whole day going from one to the other. I consider a
house the only safe part of the metropolis. Were I to frequent the
street during the season, I am so apt to fall into a brown study, that
I'm certain to be jostled until I am black and blue--I have found myself
calculating an arithmetical problem at a crossing, and have not been
aware of my danger until a pair of greys sixteen hands high in full trot
have snorted in my face--I am an idler by profession, live at a club,
sleep at chambers, and have just sufficient means to pay my way and
indulge my disposition. But I've not stated why I particularly like town
when it is empty. It is because I feel relieved of all the fashionable
et ceteras. By the time the season is over I am tired of dinners, of
wine, of the opera, the eternal announcement of visiters at parties and
balls, the music, the exotics, the suppers, the rattling of carriages,
and the rattling of tongues. I rejoice at last to find London _en
deshabille_--I can then do as I please without any fear of losing my
character as a fashionable man. I consider that I can in London extract
more amusement in a given quantity of ground than at any other place. A
street will occupy me for a whole day: with an indifferent coat, and
nothing but silver in my waistcoat pocket, I stop at every shop-window
and examine every thing. Should it so happen that the prices are affixed
to every article displayed, I make it a rule to read every one of them.
I know therefore when Urling's lace is remarkably cheap, the value of
most articles of millinery, the relative demands for boots, shoes, and
hats, and prices of'reach-me-downs' at a ready-made warehouse. At a
pawn-broker's shop-window I have passed two or three hours very
agreeably in ascertaining the sums at which every variety of second-hand
goods are'remarkably cheap,' from a large folio Bible as divinity,
flutes and flageolets as music, pictures and china as taste, gold and
silver articles as luxury, wedding rings as happiness, and duelling
pistols as death. I could not of course indulge in these peripatetic
fancies during the season without losing caste, but there is a season
for all things."
* * * * *
"Talking of pictures, by the way, what a marvellous falling off is there
in Wilkie!--a misfortune arising, as I take it, from a struggle after
novelty of style. There is a portrait of the King by him in Somerset
House Exhibition, like nothing on earth but a White Lion on its hinder
legs, and there was one a year or two since of George the Fourth in a
Highland dress--a powerful representation of Lady Charlotte Bury,
dressed for Norval. Look at that gem of art, his Blind Fiddler, now in
the National Gallery, or at his Waterloo Gazette, or at the Rent Day,
and compare any one of them with the senseless stuff he now produces,
and grieve. His John Knox--ill placed for effect, as relates to its
height from the ground, I admit; but look at that--flat as a
teaboard--neither depth nor brilliancy. Knox himself strongly resembling
in attitude the dragon weathercock on Bow steeple painted black. Has
Wilkie become thus demented in compliment to Turner, the Prince of
Orange (colour) of artists? Never did man suffer so severely under a
yellow fever, and yet live so long. I dare say it is extremely bad taste
to object to his efforts; but I am foolish enough to think that one of
the chief ends of art is to imitate nature as closely as possible. Look,
for instance, at Copley Fielding's splendid drawing in the Water Colour
Exhibition, of vessels in a gale off Calshot; and certainly I have never
yet seen any thing either animal or vegetable at all like the men,
women, trees, grass, mountains, which appear in Mr. Turner's works.
"This is of course an individual opinion, but I think it may be
expressed without any fear of incurring a charge of ill-nature, when one
thing is recollected. Copley Fielding cannot be a bad artist; Prout
cannot be a bad artist; Nash cannot be a bad artist; De Vint, Stanfield,
Reinagle, Calcott, none of these can be called bad artists; yet not one
of these gentlemen, eminent as they are, produce any thing like Turner's
drawings. Now if they are all wrong, Mr. Turner is quite right; but it
is utterly impossible _he_ should be so, if they are.
"Everybody knows the story of the sign-painter in the country, who could
paint nothing but a red lion; and accordingly he advised every
inn-keeper and alehouse-keeper in the neighbouring village, who applied
to him, to have the sign of the Red Lion. This did very well for a
considerable time, and the painter practised so successfully that not a
hamlet or town, for ten miles round, that had not its red lion; until at
length a new-comer, who, like Daniel of old, thought there were quite as
many lions round him as were wanted, suggested to the artist that he
should like to have a swan for the sign of his small concern. In vain
the painter protested, Boniface was resolute. 'Well,' said the rural
Apelles, 'if you will have a swan you must, but you may rely upon it
when it is finished, it will be so like a red lion, you would not know
the difference.' So Turner, if he were to paint a blackbird, it would be
so like a canary when it was finished, you would not know one from the
other.
"Among other sights, I was induced to go and visit the 'Fleas,' last
Saturday. Never was there such an imposition; instead of being
harnessed, they were tied by the hind legs, and the combatants, poor
wretches! were pinched by the tails in tweezers, and of course moved
their legs in their agony. Well, thought I, as I went out, I have been
in Spain, and Portugal, and Italy, and have passed many a restless
night, but hang me if ever I was so flea bitten in my life as I have
been to day; and I thought of my shilling and the old proverb.
"There is a picture of Lord Mulgrave in the Somerset House exhibition,
very like, painted by Briggs. The best portrait there, is Pickersgill's
Lord Hill; as a likeness, it is identity; and I admire it the more, from
the total absence of what the painters call accessories
|
strength doing things
the wrong way,--often, too, annoying or endangering the others.
Finding a way to get climbers to go slowly was a problem that took me
time to solve. Early in the guiding game the solution was made
impossible by trying to guide large parties and by not knowing human
nature. Once accomplished, slow going on the trail noticeably
decreased the cases of mountain-sickness, greatly reduced the number
of quarrels, and enabled almost all starters to gain the height
desired. Slow climbing added pleasure to the trip and enabled every
one to return in good form and with splendid pictures in his mind.
To keep the party together,--for the tendency of climbers is to
scatter, some traveling rapidly and others slowly,--it became my
practice to stop occasionally and tell a story, comment on a bit of
scenery, or relate an incident that had occurred near by. As I spoke
in a low tone, the climbers ahead shouting "Hurry up!" and the ones
behind calling "Wait!" could not hear me. This method kept down
friction and usually held the party together. With a large party,
however, confusion sometimes arose despite my efforts to anticipate
it.
Hoping to get valuable climbing suggestions, I told my experiences one
day to a gentleman who I thought might help me; but he simply repeated
the remark of Trampas that in every party of six there is a fool! It
is almost impossible for a numerous party, even though every one of
them may be well-meaning, to travel along a steep trail without
friction.
My most unpleasant climb was with a fateful six,--three loving young
couples. Two college professors about to be married formed one of the
couples. He, the son of wealthy parents, had been sent West to mend
his health and manners; he met a young school-ma'am who reformed him.
They attended the same college and became professors in a State
school. They were to be married at the end of this outing; but on this
climb they quarreled. Each married another! Sweethearts for years was
the story of the second couple. They, too, quarreled on the trail, but
made up again. The story of the third couple is interestingly
complicated. He was rich, young, and impetuous; she, handsome and
musical. For years she had received his ardent attentions
indifferently. As we approached the top of the peak, he became
extremely impatient with her. As though to make confusion worse
confounded, after years of indifference the young lady became
infatuated with her escort. He tried to avoid her, but she feigned a
sprained ankle to insure his comforting closeness. They are both
single to this day. Meantime the six had a general row among
themselves, and at the close of it united to "roast" me! Whether imp
or altitude was to blame for this deviltry matters not; the guide had
to suffer for it.
Early in guiding I conceived it to be my duty to start for the top
with any one who cared to try it, and I felt bound also to get the
climber to the top if possible. This was poor theory and bad practice.
After a few exasperating and exhausting experiences I learned the
folly of dragging people to the top who were likely to be too weak to
come back. One day a party of four went up. Not one of them was
accustomed to walking, and all had apparently lived to eat. After
eight hard hours we reached the summit, where all four collapsed. A
storm came on, and we were just leaving the top when daylight faded.
It rained at intervals all night long, with the temperature a trifle
below freezing. We would climb down a short distance, then huddle
shivering together for a while. At times every one was suffering from
nausea. We got down to timber-line at one o'clock in the morning. Here
a rest by a rousing camp-fire enabled all to go on down. We arrived at
the starting-place just twenty-four hours after we had left it!
Mountain-climbing is not a good line of activity for an invalid or for
one who shies at the edge of a precipice, or for any one, either, who
worries over the possible fate of his family while he is on a narrow
ledge. Altitude, the great bugbear to many, is the scapegoat for a
multitude of sins. "Feeling the altitude" would often be more
correctly expressed as feeling the effects of high living! The ill
effects of altitude are mostly imaginary. True, climbing high into a
brighter, finer atmosphere diminishes the elastic clasp--the pressure
of the air--and causes physiological changes. These usually are
beneficial. Climbers who become ill through mountain-climbing would
also become ill in hill-climbing. In the overwhelming number of cases
the lowland visitor is permanently benefited by a visit to the
mountains and especially by a climb in the heights.
Mountain-sickness, with its nausea, first comes to those who are
bilious, or to those who are hurrying or exerting themselves more than
usual. A slight stomach disorder invites this nausea, and on the
heights those who have not been careful of diet, or those who
celebrated the climb the evening before it was made, are pretty
certain to find out just how mountain-sickness afflicts. Altitude
has, I think, but little to do with bringing on so-called
mountain-sickness. It is almost identical with sea-sickness, and just
as quickly forces the conclusion that life is not worth living!
Usually a hot drink, rest, and warmth will cure it in a short time.
Clarence King in his "Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada" says
concerning the effects of altitude, "All the while I made my
instrumental observations the fascination of the view so held me that
I felt no surprise at seeing water boiling over our little faggot
blaze at a temperature of one hundred and ninety-two degrees F., nor
in observing the barometrical column stand at 17.99 inches; and it was
not till a week or so after that I realized we had felt none of the
conventional sensations of nausea, headache, and I don't know what
all, that people are supposed to suffer at extreme altitudes; but
these things go with guides and porters, I believe."
Altitude commonly stimulates the slow tongue, and in the heights many
reserved people become talkative and even confiding. This, along with
the natural sociability of such a trip, the scenery, and the many
excitements, usually ripens acquaintances with amazing rapidity.
Lifelong friendships have commenced on the trail, and many a lovely
romance, too. One day two young people met for the first time in one
of my climbing parties. Thirty days afterward they were married, and
they have lived happily to date.
In one climb a chaperon gave out and promptly demanded that two young
sweethearts turn back. As we moved on without the chaperon, she called
down upon my head the curses of all the gods at once! In order to save
the day it is sometimes necessary for the guide to become an autocrat.
Occasionally a climber is not susceptible to suggestion and will obey
only the imperative mood. A guide is sometimes compelled to stop
rock-rolling, or to say "No!" to a plucky but sick climber who is
eager to go on. A terrible tongue-lashing came to me one day from a
young lady because of my refusal to go farther after she had fainted.
She went forward alone for half an hour while I sat watching from a
commanding crag. Presently she came to a narrow unbanistered ledge
that overhung eternity. She at once retreated and came back with a
smile, saying that the spot where she had turned back would enable any
one to comprehend the laws of falling bodies.
Occasionally a climber became hysterical and I had my hands full
keeping the afflicted within bounds. Mountain ledges are not good
places for hysterical performances. One day, when a reverend gentleman
and his two daughters were nearing the top, the young ladies and
myself came out upon the Narrows a few lengths ahead of their father.
The ladies were almost exhausted and were climbing on sheer nerve. The
stupendous view revealed from the Narrows overwhelmed them, and both
became hysterical at once. It was no place for ceremony; and as it was
rather cramped for two performances at once, I pushed the feet from
beneath one young lady, tripped the other on top of her,--and sat down
on both! They struggled, laughed, and cried, and had just calmed down
when the father came round the rocks upon us. His face vividly and
swiftly expressed three or four kinds of anger before he grasped the
situation. Fearing that he might jump on me in turn, or that he might
"get them" too, I watched him without a word. Finally he took in the
entire situation, and said with a smile, "Well, I don't know whether
it's my move or not!"
Twice, while guiding, I broke my lifelong rule never to take a tip.
One tip had with it a surprise to redeem the taking. It came from the
gentleman who had organized the party. On the way up he begged leave
to set the pace and to lead the party to the top. He appeared
sensible, but I made a blunder by consenting to the arrangement, for
his pace was too rapid, and at Keyhole he was attacked by nausea. He
pluckily insisted that we go on to the summit and leave him behind. It
was five hours before we returned to him. For two hours he had lain
helpless in a cold rain and was badly chilled. He was so limp and
loose-jointed that it was difficult to carry him across the moraine
called Boulderfield. At the Inn the following morning he was
completely restored. I was still so exhausted from getting him down
that when he insisted that he be allowed to give me a tip in addition
to the guiding fee I agreed to accept it. The instant I had consented
it occurred to me that a tip from a millionaire for the saving of his
life would be worth while. I was startled when, with a satisfied
expression, he handed me twenty-five cents!
[Illustration: THE NARROWS, LONG'S PEAK TRAIL
(Figures of climbers can be made out on the trail)]
Early one season, before the ice had melted, one of my five climbers
met with an accident in one of the most dangerous places along the
way. We were descending, and I was in front, watching each one closely
as he crossed a narrow and extremely steep tongue of ice. The
gentleman who brought up the rear was a good climber when not talking;
but this time he was chattering away and failed to notice me when I
signaled him for silence while each climber, in turn, carefully
crossed the steep ice in the footholds chopped for that purpose. Still
talking, he stepped out on the ice without looking and missed the
foothold! Both feet shot from beneath him, and down the smooth,
deadly steep he plunged.
Early in guiding I had considered the dangerous places and planned
just where to stand while the climbers passed them and just what to do
in case of accident. When an accident actually occurred, it was a
simple matter to go through a ticklish grand-stand performance that
had been practiced dozens of times, and which for years I had been
ready to put into effect. The instant he slipped, I made a quick leap
for a point of rock that barely pierced the steep ice-tongue. This ice
was steeper than half pitch. He shot down, clawing desperately and
helplessly, with momentum sufficient to knock over half a dozen men.
There was just time to grab him by the coat as he shot by the rock.
Bracing with all my might to hold him for a fraction of a second so as
to divert him and point him at an angle off the ice, I jumped upward
as the violent jerk came. We went off as it were on a tangent, and
landed in a heap upon the stones, several yards below the spot from
which I had leaped to the rescue. His life was saved.
The last season of my guiding career was a full one. Thirty-two
ascents were made during the thirty-one days of August. Half a dozen
of these were by moonlight. In addition to these climbs a daily round
trip was made to Estes Park, eight miles distant and fifteen hundred
feet down the mountain. These Estes Park trips commonly were made on
horseback, though a few were by wagon. My busiest day was crowded with
two wagon trips and one horseback trip to Estes Park, then a moonlight
climb to the summit. In a sixty-hour stretch I did not have any sleep
or take any food. Being in condition for the work and doing it easily,
I was in excellent shape when the guiding ended.
The happiest one of my two hundred and fifty-seven guiding experiences
on the rugged granite trail of this peak was with Harriet Peters, a
little eight-year-old girl, the youngest child who has made the climb.
She was alert and obedient, enjoyed the experience, and reached the
top without a slip or a stumble, and with but little assistance from
me. It was pleasant to be with her on the summit, listening to her
comments and hearing her childlike questions. I have told the whole
story of this climb in "Wild Life on the Rockies."
Thoughtfulness and deliberation are essentials of mountain-climbing.
Climb slowly. Look before stepping. Ease down off boulders; a jump may
jar or sprain. Enjoy the scenery and do most of your talking while at
rest. Think of the fellow lower down. A careful diet and training
beforehand will make the climb easier and far more enjoyable.
Tyndall has said that a few days of mountain-climbing will burn all
the effete matter out of the system. In climbing, the stagnant blood
is circulated and refined, the lungs are exercised, every cell is
cleansed, and all parts are disinfected by the pure air. Climbing a
high peak occasionally will not only postpone death but will give
continuous intensity to the joy of living. Every one might well climb
at least one high peak, and for those leaving high school or college,
the post-graduate work of climbing a rugged peak might be a more
informative experience or a more helpful test for living than any
examination or the writing of a thesis.
Scenery, like music, is thought-compelling and gives one a rare
combination of practical and poetical inspiration. Along with
mountain-climbing, scenery shakes us free from ourselves and the
world. From new grand heights one often has the strange feeling that
he has looked upon these wondrous scenes before; and on the crest one
realizes the full meaning of John Muir's exhortation to "climb the
mountains and get their good tidings!"
Wild Mountain Sheep
Wild Mountain Sheep
One day in Glacier Gorge, Colorado, I was astonished to see a number
of sheep start to descend the precipitous eastern face of Thatch-Top
Mountain. This glaciated wall, only a few degrees off the
perpendicular, rises comparatively smooth for several hundred feet.
Down they came, slowly, with absolute composure, over places I dared
not even try to descend. The nearness of the sheep and the use of
field-glasses gave me excellent views of the many ways in which they
actually seemed to court danger.
It is intensely thrilling to watch a leaping exhibition of one of
these heavy, agile, alert, and athletic animals. Down precipitous
places he plunges head foremost, turning and checking himself as he
descends by striking his feet against walls and projections--perhaps a
dozen times--before alighting on a ledge for a full stop. From this
he walks overboard and repeats the wild performance!
Wild mountain sheep are perhaps the most accomplished and dare-devil
acrobats in the animal world. They are indifferent to the depths
beneath as they go merrily along cañon-walls. The chamois and the wild
mountain goat may equal them in climbing among the crags and peaks,
but in descending dizzy precipices and sheer walls the bighorn sheep
are unrivaled. When sheep hurriedly descend a precipice, the laws of
falling bodies are given a most spectacular display, and the
possibilities of friction and adhesion are tested to the utmost.
A heavily horned ram led the way down Thatch-Top. He was followed by
two young rams and a number of ewes, with two small lambs in the rear.
They were in single file, each well separated from the others. Down
this frightful wall the lambs appeared to be going to certain death.
At times they all followed the contour round small spurs or in niches.
In places, from my point of view they appeared to be flattened against
the wall and descending head foremost.
There was one long pitch that offered nothing on which to stand and no
place on which to stop. Down this the old ram plunged with a series of
bouncing drops and jumps,--falling under control, with his fall
broken, checked, and directed, without stopping, by striking with the
feet as frequently as was necessary. First came three or four
straightforward bouncing dives, followed by a number of swift zigzag
jumps, striking alternately right and left, then three or four darts
to the right before again flying off to the left. At last he struck on
a wide ledge, where he pulled up and stopped with masterly resistance
and stiff-legged jumps! Mind controlled matter! This specialty of the
sheep requires keen eyesight, instant decision, excellent judgment, a
marvelous nicety in measuring distances, and a complete forgetfulness
of peril. Each ewe in turn gave a similar and equally striking
exhibition; while the lambs, instead of breaking their necks in the
play of drop and bounce, did not appear to be even cautious. They
showed off by dropping farther and going faster than the old ones!
This was sheer frolic for these children of the crags.
Down a vertical gulley--a giant chimney with one side out--they went
hippety-hop from side to side, and at the bottom, without a stop,
dropped fifteen feet to a wide bench below. The ram simply dived off,
with front feet thrust forward and with hind feet drawn up and
forward, and apparently struck with all four feet at once. A number of
others followed in such rapid succession that they appeared to be
falling out of the air. Each, however, made it a point to land
to the right or the left of the one it was following. Two ewes
turned broadside to the wall as they went over and dropped
vertically,--stiff-legged, back horizontal, and with head held well
up. The lambs leaped overboard simultaneously only a second behind the
rear ewe, each lamb coming to a stop with the elastic bounce of youth.
Beneath this bench where all had paused, the wall was perilously steep
for perhaps one hundred feet. A moment after the lambs landed, the ram
followed the bench round the wall for several yards, then began to
descend the steep wall by tacking back and forth on broken and
extremely narrow ledges, with many footholds barely two inches wide.
He was well down, when he missed his footing and fell. He tumbled
outward, turned completely over, and, after a fall of about twenty
feet, struck the wall glancingly, at the same time thrusting his feet
against it as though trying to right himself. A patch of hair--and
perhaps skin--was left clinging to the wall. A few yards below this,
while falling almost head first, he struck a slope with all four feet
and bounded wildly outward, but with checked speed. He dropped on a
ledge, where with the utmost effort he regained control of himself and
stopped, with three or four stiff plunges and a slide. From there he
trotted over easy ways and moderate slopes to the bottom, where he
stood a while trembling, then lay down.
One by one his flock came down in good order. The leaps of flying
squirrels and the clever gymnastic pranks of monkeys are tame shows
compared with the wild feats of these masters of the crags.
The flock, after playing and feeding about for an hour or more,
started to return. The injured leader lay quietly on the grass, but
with head held bravely erect. The two lambs raced ahead and started to
climb the precipice over the route they had come down. One ewe went to
the bottom of the wall, then turned to look at the big-horned leader
who lay still upon the grass. She waited. The lambs, plainly eager to
go on up, also waited. Presently the ram rose with an effort and
limped heavily away. There was blood on his side. He turned aside from
the precipice and led the way back toward the top by long easy slopes.
The flock slowly followed. The lambs looked at each other and
hesitated for some time. Finally they leaped down and raced rompingly
after the others.
The massive horns of the rams, along with the audacious dives that
sheep sometimes make on precipices, probably suggested the story that
sheep jump off a cliff and effectively break the shock of the fall by
landing on their horns at the bottom! John Charles Frémont appears to
have started this story in print. Though sheep do not alight on their
horns, this story is still in circulation and is too widely believed.
Every one with whom I have talked who has seen sheep land after a leap
says that the sheep land upon their feet. I have seen this performance
a number of times, and on a few occasions there were several sheep;
and each and all came down feet first. Incidentally I have seen two
rams come down a precipice and strike on their horns; but they did not
rise again! The small horns of the ewes would offer no shock-breaking
resistance if alighted upon; yet the ewes rival the rams in making
precipitous plunges.
The sheep is the only animal that has circling horns. In rams these
rise from the top of the head and grow upward, outward, and backward,
then curve downward and forward. Commonly the circle is complete in
four or five years. This circular tendency varies with locality. In
mature rams the horns are from twenty to forty inches long, measured
round the curve, and have a basic circumference of twelve to eighteen
inches. The largest horn I ever measured was at the base nineteen and
a half inches in circumference. This was of the Colorado bighorn
species, and at the time of measurement the owner had been dead about
two months. The horns of the ewes are small, and extend upward,
pointing slightly outward and backward.
The wildest leap I ever saw a sheep take was made in the Rocky
Mountains a few miles northwest of Long's Peak. In climbing down a
precipice I rounded a point near the bottom and came upon a ram at the
end of the ledge I was following. Evidently he had been lying down,
looking upon the scenes below. The ledge was narrow and it ended just
behind the ram, who faced me only five or six feet away. He stamped
angrily, struck an attitude of fight, and shook his head as if to say,
"I've half a mind to butt you overboard!" He could have butted an ox
overboard. My plan was to fling myself beneath a slight overhang of
wall on the narrow ledge between us if he made a move.
While retreating backward along almost nothing of a ledge and
considering the wisdom of keeping my eyes on the ram, he moved, and I
flung myself beneath the few inches of projecting wall. The ram simply
made a wild leap off the ledge.
This looked like a leap to death. He plunged down at an angle to the
wall, head forward and a trifle lower than the rump, with feet drawn
upward and thrust forward. I looked over the edge, hoping he was
making a record jump. The first place he struck was more than twenty
feet below me. When the fore feet struck, his shoulder blades jammed
upward as though they would burst through the skin. A fraction of a
second later his hind feet also struck and his back sagged violently;
his belly must have scraped the slope. He bounded upward and outward
like a heavy chunk of rubber. This contact had checked his deadly drop
and his second striking-place was on a steeply inclined buttress;
apparently in his momentary contact with this he altered his course
with a kicking action of the feet.
There was lightning-like foot action, and from this striking-place he
veered off and came down violently, feet first, upon a shelf of
granite. With a splendid show of physical power, and with desperate
effort, he got himself to a stand with stiff-legged, sliding bounds
along the shelf. Here he paused for a second, then stepped out of
sight behind a rock point. Feeling that he must be crippled, I
hurriedly scrambled up and out on a promontory from which to look down
upon him. He was trotting down a slope without even the sign of a
limp!
Sheep do sometimes slip, misjudge a distance, and fall. Usually a bad
bruise, a wrenched joint, or a split hoof is the worst injury, though
now and then one receives broken legs or ribs, or even a broken neck.
Most accidents appear to befall them while they are fleeing through
territory with which they are unacquainted. In strange places they are
likely to have trouble with loose stones, or they may be compelled to
leap without knowing the nature of the landing-place.
A sheep, like a rabbit or a fox, does his greatest work in evading
pursuers in territory with which he is intimately acquainted. If
closely pursued in his own territory, he will flee at high speed up
or down a precipice, perform seemingly impossible feats, and
triumphantly escape. But no matter how skillful, if he goes his utmost
in a new territory, he is as likely to come to grief as an orator who
attempts to talk on a subject with which he is not well acquainted. It
is probable that most of the accidents to these masters of the crags
occur when they are making a desperate retreat through strange
precipitous territory.
In the Elk Mountains a flock of sheep were driven far from their
stamping-ground and while in a strange country were fired upon and
pursued by hunters. They fled up a peak they had not before climbed.
The leader leaped upon a rock that gave way. He tumbled off with the
rock on top. He fell upon his back--to rise no more. A ewe missed her
footing and in her fall knocked two others over to their death, though
she regained her footing and escaped.
One day a ram appeared on a near-by sky-line and crossed along the top
of a shattered knife-edge of granite. The gale had driven me to
shelter, but along he went, unmindful of the gale that was ripping
along the crags and knocking things right and left. Occasionally he
made a long leap from point to point. Now and then he paused to look
into the cañon far below. On the top of the highest pinnacle he
stopped and became a splendid statue. Presently he rounded a spur
within fifty feet of me and commenced climbing diagonally up a wall
that appeared almost vertical and smooth. My glass showed that he was
walking along a mere crack in the rock, where footholds existed mostly
in imagination. On this place he would stop and scratch with one hind
foot and then rub the end of a horn against the wall!
As he went on up, the appearance was like a stage effect, as though he
were sustained by wires. At the end of the crack he reared, hooked his
fore feet over a rough point, and drew himself up like an athlete,
with utter indifference to the two hundred feet of drop beneath him.
From this point he tacked back and forth until he had ascended to the
bottom of a vertical gully, which he easily mastered with a series of
zigzag jumps. In some of these he leaped several feet almost
horizontally to gain a few inches vertically. Occasionally he leaped
up and struck with his feet in a place where he could not stand, but
from which he leaped to a place more roomy. His feet slipped as he
landed from one high jump; instantly he pushed himself off backward
and came down feet foremost on the narrow place from which he had just
leaped. He tried again and succeeded.
The edges of sheep's hoofs are hard, while the back part of the bottom
is a rubbery, gristly pad, which holds well on smooth, steep surfaces.
Coöperating with these excellent feet are strong muscles, good eyes,
and keen wits.
Wild sheep are much larger than tame ones. They are alert,
resourceful, and full of energy. Among the Colorado bighorns the rams
are from thirty-eight to forty-two inches high, and weigh from two
hundred to three hundred and fifty pounds. The ewes are a third
smaller. The common color is grayish brown, with under parts and
inside of the legs white. In the north there is one pure-white
species, while on neighboring ranges there is a black species. Though
wild sheep usually fallow a leader, each one is capable of independent
action. Tame sheep are stupid and silly; wild sheep are wide-awake and
courageous. Tame sheep are dirty and smelly, while wild sheep are as
well-groomed and clean as the cliffs among which they live.
In discussing wild life many people fail to discriminate between the
wild sheep and the wild goats. The goat has back-curving spike horns
and a beard that makes the face every inch a goat's. Though of
unshapely body and awkward gait, his ungainliness intensified by his
long hair, the goat is a most skillful climber. The sheep excel him
for speed, grace, and, perhaps, alertness.
It is believed that the three or four species of sheep found in the
wilds of America had their origin in Asia. In appearance and habits
they bear a striking resemblance to the sheep which now inhabit the
Asiatic mountains.
Wild sheep are found in Alaska, western Canada, and the United States
west of the Plains, and extend a short distance down into Mexico.
Most flocks in the Sierra and the Rocky Mountains live above the
timber-line and at an altitude of twelve thousand feet. Winter
quarters in these high stamping-grounds appear to be chosen in
localities where the high winds prevent a deep accumulation of snow.
This snow-removal decreases the danger of becoming snowbound and
usually enables the sheep to obtain food.
Their warm, thick under covering of fine wool protects them from the
coldest blasts. During storms the sheep commonly huddle together to
the leeward of a cliff. Sometimes they stand thus for days and are
completely drifted over. At the close of the storm the stronger ones
lead and buck their way out through the snow. Occasionally a few weak
ones perish, and occasionally, too, a mountain lion appears while the
flock is almost helpless in the snow.
Excursions from their mountain-top homes are occasionally made into
the lowlands. In the spring they go down early for green stuff, which
comes first to the lowlands. They go to salt licks, for a ramble, for
a change of food, and for the fun of it. The duration of these
excursions may be a few hours or several days.
Most of the time the full-grown rams form one flock; the ewes and
youngsters flock by themselves. Severe storms or harassing enemies may
briefly unite these flocks. One hundred and forty is the largest flock
I ever counted. This was in June, on Specimen Mountain, Colorado; and
the sheep had apparently assembled for the purpose of licking salty,
alkaline earth near the top of this mountain. Wild sheep appear to
have an insatiable craving for salt and will travel a day's journey to
obtain it. Occasionally they will cross a high, broken mountain-range
and repeatedly expose themselves to danger, in order to visit a salt
lick.
The young lambs, one or two at a birth, are usually born about the
first of May in the alpine heights above timber-line. What a wildly
royal and romantic birthplace! The strange world spreading far below
and far away; crags, snowdrifts, brilliant flowers,--a hanging wild
garden, with the ptarmigan and the rosy finches for companions! The
mother has sole care of the young; for several weeks she must guard
them from hungry foxes, eagles, and lions. Once I saw an eagle swoop
and strike a lamb. Though the lamb was knocked heels over head, the
blow was not fatal. The eagle wheeled to strike again, but the mother
leaped up and shielded the wounded lamb. Eaglets are occasionally fed
on young lambs, as skulls near eagle's nests in the cliffs bear
evidence.
A number of ewes and lambs one day came close to my hiding-place. One
mother had two children; four others had one each. An active lamb had
a merry time with his mother, butting her from every angle, rearing up
on his hind legs and striking with his head, and occasionally leaping
entirely over her. While she lay in dreamy indifference, he practiced
long jumps over her, occasionally stopping to have a fierce fight with
an imaginary rival. Later he was joined by another lamb, and they
proceeded to race and romp all over a cliff, while the mothers looked
on with satisfaction. Presently they all lay down, and a number of
magpies, apparently hunting insects, walked over them.
In one of the side cañons on the Colorado in Arizona, I was for a
number of days close to a flock of wild sheep which evidently had
never before seen man. On their first view of me they showed marked
curiosity, which they satisfied by approaching closely, two or three
touching me with their noses. Several times I walked among the flock
with no excitement on their part. I was without either camera or gun.
The day I broke camp and moved on, one of the ewes followed me for
more than an hour.
They become intensely alert and wild when hunted; but in localities
where they are not shot at they quickly become semi-domestic, often
feeding near homes of friendly people. During the winter sheep
frequently come from the heights to feed near my cabin. One day, after
a number had licked salt with my pony, a ram which appeared as old as
the hills walked boldly by my cabin within a few feet of it, head
proudly up. After long acquaintance and many attempts I took his
photograph at five feet and finally was allowed to feel of his great
horns!
[Illustration: A WILD MOUNTAIN SHEEP
_Copyright, 1913, by Enos A. Mills_]
A few years ago near my cabin a ram lost his life in a barbed-wire
fence. He and a number of other rams had fed, then climbed to the top
of a small crag by the roadside. While they were there, a man on
horseback came along. Indifferently they watched him approach; but
when he stopped to take a picture all but one fled in alarm, easily
leaping a shoulder-high fence. After a minute the remaining ram became
excited, dashed off to follow the others, and ran into the fence. He
was hurled backward and one of his curved horns hooked over a wire.
Finding himself caught, he surged desperately to tear himself free. In
doing this a barb severed the jugular vein. He fell and freed his horn
from the wire in falling. Rising, he ran for the crag from which he
had just fled, with his blood escaping in great gushes. As he was
gaining the top of the crag he rolled over dead.
A flock which is often divided into two, one of ewes and one of rams,
lives on the summit of Battle Mountain, at an altitude of twelve
thousand feet, about four miles from my cabin. I have sometimes
followed them when they were rambling. About the middle of one
September this flock united and moved off to the south. I made haste
to climb to the top of Mt. Meeker so as to command most of their
movements. I had been watching for several hours without even a
glimpse of them. Rising to move away, I surprised them as they lay at
rest near-by, a little below the summit; and I also surprised a lion
that evidently was sneaking up on them. This was close to the altitude
of fourteen thousand feet. The mountain lion is the game-hog of the
heights and is a persistent and insidious foe of sheep. He kills both
old and young, and usually makes a capture by sneaking up on his
victim. Sometimes for hours he lies in wait by a sheep trail.
The day following the surprise on Mt. Meeker, this flock appeared at
tim
|
. It must be right if that
is the effect. I have felt so happy and light-hearted ever since you
said it. It is rather absurd to think that _I_ should improve you, but
if you in your sweet frankness say that it is so, why, I can only marvel
and rejoice.
But you must not study and work too hard. You say that you do it to
please me, but that would not please me. I’ll tell you an anecdote as a
dreadful example. I had a friend who was a great lover of Eastern
literature, Sanskrit, and so on. He loved a lady. The lady to please
him worked hard at these subjects also. In a month she had shattered her
nervous system, and will perhaps never be the same again. It was
impossible. She was not meant for it, and yet she made herself a martyr
over it. I don’t mean by this parable that it will be a strain upon your
intellect to keep up with mine. But I do mean that a woman’s mind is
_different_ from a man’s. A dainty rapier is a finer thing than a
hatchet, but it is not adapted for cutting down trees all the same.
Rupton Hale, the architect, one of the few friends I have down here, has
some most deplorable views about women. I played a round of the Byfleet
Golf Links with him upon Wednesday afternoon, and we discussed the
question of women’s intellects. He would have it that they have never a
light of their own, but are always the reflectors of some other light
which you cannot see. He would allow that they were extraordinarily
quick in assimilating another person’s views, but that was all. I quoted
some very shrewd remarks which a lady had made to me at dinner. ‘Those
are the traces of the last man,’ said he. According to his preposterous
theory, you could in conversation with a woman reconstruct the last man
who had made an impression to her. ‘She will reflect you upon the next
person she talks to,’ said he. It was ungallant, but it was ingenious.
Dearest sweetheart, before I stop, let me tell you that if I have brought
any happiness into your life, you have brought far, far more into mine.
My soul seemed to come into full being upon the day when I loved you. It
was so small, and cramped, and selfish, before—and life was so hard, and
stupid, and purposeless. To live, to sleep, to eat, for some years, and
then to die—it was so trivial and so material. But now the narrow walls
seem in an instant to have fallen, and a boundless horizon stretches
around me. And everything appears beautiful. London Bridge, King
William Street, Abchurch Lane, the narrow stair, the office with the
almanacs and the shining desks, it has all become glorified, tinged with
a golden haze. I am stronger: I step out briskly and breathe more
deeply. And I am a better man too. God knows there was room for it.
But I do try to make an ideal, and to live up to it. I feel such a fraud
when I think of being put upon a pedestal by you, when some little hole
where I am out of sight is my true place. I am like the man in Browning
who mourned over the spots upon his ‘speckled hide,’ but rejoiced in the
swansdown of his lady. And so, my own dear sweet little swansdown lady,
good-night to you, with my heart’s love now and for ever from your true
lover,
FRANK.
Saturday! Saturday! Saturday! oh, how I am longing for Saturday, when I
shall see you again! We will go on Sunday and hear the banns together.
THE OVERTURE CONCLUDED
_St. Albans_, _June_ 14_th_.
MY DEAREST FRANK,—What a dreadful thing it is to have your name shouted
out in public! And what a voice the man had! He simply bellowed ‘Maude
Selby of this parish’ as if he meant all this parish to know about it.
And then he let you off so easily. I suppose he thought that there was
no local interest in Frank Crosse of Woking. But when he looked round
expectantly, after asking whether there was any known cause or just
impediment why we should not be joined together, it gave me quite a
thrill. I felt as if some one would jump up like a Jack-in-the-box and
make a scene in the church. How relieved I was when he changed the
subject! I sank my face in my hands, but I know that I was blushing all
down my neck. Then I looked at you between my fingers, and there you
were sitting quite cool and cheerful, as if you rather liked it. I think
that we shall go to evening-service next week. Papa has given up going
altogether since the new organist came. He says he cannot face the
music.
What a sweet time we had together. I shall never, never forget it! O
Frank, how good you are to me! And how I hope you won’t regret what you
are doing. It is all very well just now, when I am young and you think
that I am pretty. I love that you should think so, but I am compelled to
tell you that it is not really so. I can’t imagine how you came to think
it! I suppose it was from seeing me so often beside papa. If you saw me
near Nelly Sheridan, or any other _really_ pretty girl, you would at once
see the difference. It just happens that you like grey eyes and brown
hair, and the other things, but that does not mean that I am really
pretty. I should be so sorry if there were any misunderstanding about
this, and you only found out when too late. You ought to keep this
letter for reference, as papa always says, and then it will be
interesting to you afterwards.
I should like you to see me now—or rather I wouldn’t have you see me for
the world. I am so flushed and untidy, for I have been cooking. Is it
not absurd, if you come to think of it, that we girls should be taught
the irregular French verbs, and the geography of China, and never to cook
the simplest thing? It really does seem ridiculous.
But it is never too late to mend, so I went into the kitchen this morning
and made a tart. You can’t imagine what a lot of things one needs even
for such a simple thing as that. I thought cook was joking when she put
them all down in front of me. It was like a conjurer giving his
performance. There was an empty bowl, and a bowl full of sliced apples,
and a big board, and a rolling-pin, and eggs, and butter, and sugar, and
cloves, and of course flour. We broke eggs and put them into a bowl—you
can’t think what a mess an egg makes when it misses the bowl. Then we
stirred them up with flour and butter and things. I stirred until I was
perfectly exhausted. No wonder a cook has usually a great thick arm.
Then when it had formed a paste, we rolled it out, and put the apples in
the dish, and roofed it in, and trimmed the edges, and stuck flat leaves
made of paste all over it, and the dearest little crown in the middle.
Then we put it into the oven until it was brown. It looked a very nice
tart, and mamma said that I had made it very solidly. It certainly did
feel very heavy for its size. Mamma would not taste it, because she said
that she thought Dr. Tristram would not approve of her doing so, but I
had a piece, and really it was not so bad. Mamma said the servants might
have it at dinner, but the servants said that the poor window-cleaner had
a large family, and so we gave it to him. It is so sweet to feel that
one is of any use to any one.
What do you think happened this morning? Two wedding-presents arrived.
The first was a very nice fish slice and fork in a case. It was from
dear old Mrs. Jones Beyrick, on whom we really had no claim whatever. We
all think it so kind of her, and such a nice fish-slice. The other was a
beautiful travelling-bag from Uncle Arthur. Stamped in gold upon it were
the letters M.C., I said, ‘Oh, what a pity! They have put the wrong
initials.’ That made mamma laugh. I suppose one soon gets used to it.
Fancy how you would feel if it were the other way about, and you changed
your name to mine. They might call you Selby, but you would continue to
feel Crosse. I didn’t mean that for a joke, but women make jokes without
intending it. The other day the curate drove up in his donkey-cart, and
mother said, ‘Oh, what a nice tandem!’ I think that she meant to say
‘turn-out’; but papa said it was the neatest thing he had heard for a
long time, so mamma is very pleased, but I am sure that she does not know
even now why it should be so funny.
What stupid letters I write! Doesn’t it frighten you when you read them
and think that is the person with whom I have to spend my life. Yet you
never seem alarmed about it. I think it is so _brave_ of you. That
reminds me that I never finished what I wanted to say at the beginning of
this letter. Even supposing that I am pretty (and my complexion
sometimes is simply awful), you must bear in mind how quickly the years
slip by, and how soon a woman alters. Why, we shall hardly be married
before you will find me full of wrinkles, and without a tooth in my head.
Poor boy, how dreadful for you! Men seem to change so little and so
slowly. Besides, it does not matter for them, for nobody marries a man
because he is pretty. But you must marry me, Frank, not for what I look
but for what I am—for my inmost, inmost self, so that if I had no body at
all, you would love me just the same. That is how I love you, but I do
prefer you with your body on all the same. I don’t know how I love you,
dear. I only know that I am in a dream when you are near me—just a
beautiful dream. I live for those moments.—Ever your own little
MAUDE.
_P.S._—Papa gave us such a fright, for he came in just now and said that
the window-cleaner and all his family were very ill. This was a joke,
because the coachman had told him about my tart. Wasn’t it horrid of
him?
_Woking_, _June_ 17_th_.
MY OWN SWEETEST MAUDE,—I do want you to come up to town on Saturday
morning. Then I will see you home to St. Albans in the evening, and we
shall have another dear delightful week end. I think of nothing else,
and I count the hours. Now please to manage it, and don’t let anything
stop you. You know that you can always get your way. Oh yes, you can,
miss! _I_ know.
We shall meet at the bookstall at Charing Cross railway station at one
o’clock, but if anything should go wrong, send me a wire to the Club.
Then we can do some shopping together, and have some fun also. Tell your
mother that we shall be back in plenty of time for dinner. Make another
tart, and I shall eat it. Things are slack at the office just now, and I
could be spared for a few days.
So you have had a fish-slice. It is so strange, because on that very day
I had my first present, and it was a fish-slice also. We shall have fish
at each end when we give a dinner. If we get another fish-slice, then we
shall give a fish-dinner—or keep one of the slices to give to your friend
Nelly Sheridan when _she_ gets married. They will always come in useful.
And I have had two more presents. One is a Tantalus spirit-stand from my
friends in the office. The other is a pair of bronzes from the cricket
club. They got it up without my knowing anything about it, and I was
amazed when a deputation came up to my rooms with them last night. ‘May
your innings be long and your partnership unbroken until you each make a
hundred not out.’ That was the inscription upon a card.
I have something very grave to tell you. I’ve been going over my bills
and things, and I owe ever so much more than I thought. I have always
been so careless, and never known exactly how I stood. It did not matter
when one was a bachelor, for one always felt that one could live quite
simply for a few months, and so set matters straight. But now it is more
serious. The bills come to more than a hundred pounds; the biggest one
is forty-two pounds to Snell and Walker, the Conduit Street tailors.
However, I am ordering my marriage-suit from them, and that will keep
them quiet. I have enough on hand to pay most of the others. But we
must not run short upon our honeymoon—what an awful idea! Perhaps there
may be some cheques among our presents. We will hope for the best.
But there is a more serious thing upon which I want to consult you. You
asked me never to have any secrets from you, or else I should not bother
you about such things. I should have kept it for Saturday when we meet,
but I want you to have time to think about it, so that we may come to
some decision then.
I am surety to a man for an indefinite sum of money. It sounds rather
dreadful, does it not? But it is not so bad as it sounds, for there is
no harm done yet. But the question is what we should do in the future
about it, and the answer is not a very easy one. He is a very pleasant
fellow, an insurance agent, and he got into some trouble about his
accounts last year. The office would have dismissed him, but as I knew
his wife and his family, I became surety that he should not go wrong
again, and so I saved him from losing his situation. His name is
Farintosh. He is one of those amiable, weak, good fellows whom you
cannot help loving, although you never can trust them. Of course we
could give notice that we should not be responsible any longer, but it
would be a thunderbolt to this poor family, and the man would certainly
be ruined. We don’t want to begin our own happiness by making any one
else unhappy, do we? But we shall talk it over, and I shall do what you
advise. You understand that we are only liable in case he defaults, and
surely it is very unlikely that he will do so after the lesson that he
has already had.
I think the house will do splendidly. The Lindens is the name, and it is
on the Maybury Road, not more than a quarter of a mile from the station.
If your mother and you could come down on Tuesday or Wednesday, I should
get a half-day off, and you would be able to inspect it. Such a nice
little lawn in front, and garden behind. A conservatory, if you please,
dining-room and drawing-room. You can never assemble more than four or
five guests. On your at-home days, we shall put up little placards as
they do outside the theatres, ‘Drawing-room full,’ ‘Dining-room full,’
‘Room in the Conservatory.’ There are two good bedrooms, one large
maid’s room, and a lumber-room. One cook and one housemaid could run it
beautifully. Rent £50 on a three years’ lease—with taxes, about £62. I
think it was just built for us. Rupton Hale says that we must be careful
not to brush against the walls, and that it would be safer to go outside
to sneeze—but that is only his fun.
What a dull, stupid letter! I do hope that I shall be in good form on
Saturday. I am a man of moods—worse luck! and they come quite regardless
of how I wish to be, or even of how I have cause to be. I do hope that I
shall make your day bright for you—the last day that we shall have
together before _the_ day. There have been times when I have been such
bad company to you, just when I wished to be at my best. But you are
always so sweet and patient and soothing. Until Saturday, then, my own
darling.—Ever your lover,
FRANK.
_P.S._—I open this to tell you that such a gorgeous fish-knife, with our
monograms upon it, has just arrived from Mrs. Preston, my father’s old
friend. I went to the Goldsmith’s Company in Regent Street yesterday
afternoon, and I bought—what do you think? It looks so beautiful upon
its snow-white cotton wadding. I like them very broad and rather flat.
I do hope you will think it all right. It fills me with the strangest
feelings when I look at it. Come what may, foul weather or fair, sorrow
or joy, that little strip of gold will still be with us—we shall see it
until we can see no more.
_P.P.S._—Saturday! Saturday!! Saturday!!!
THE TWO SOLOS
THEIR tryst was at the Charing Cross bookstall at one o’clock, and so Mr.
Frank Crosse was there at quarter-past twelve, striding impatiently up
and down, and stopping dead whenever a woman emerged from the entrance,
like a pointer dog before a partridge. Before he came he had been
haunted by the idea that possibly Maude might have an impulse to come
early—and what if she were to arrive and not find him there! Every
second of her company was so dear to him, that when driving to meet her
he had sometimes changed from one cab to another upon the way, because
the second seemed to have the faster horse. But now that he was on the
ground he realised that she was very exact to her word, and that she
would neither be early nor late. And yet, in the illogical fashion of a
lover, he soon forgot that it was he who was too soon, and he chafed and
chafed as the minutes passed, until at about quarter to one he was
striding gloomily about with despondent features and melancholy
forebodings, imagining a thousand miserable reasons for her inexplicable
delay. A good many people stared at him as they passed, and we may do so
among the number.
In person Frank Crosse was neither tall nor short, five feet eight and a
half to be exact, with the well-knit frame and springy step of a young
man who had been an athlete from his boyhood. He was slim, but wiry, and
carried his head with a half-defiant backward slant which told of pluck
and breed. His face was tanned brown, in spite of his City hours, but
his hair and slight moustache were flaxen, and his eyes, which were his
best features, were of a delicate blue, and could vary in expression from
something very tender to something particularly hard. He was an orphan,
and had inherited nothing from his parents save a dash of the artist from
his mother. It was not enough to help him to earn a living, but it
transformed itself into a keen appreciation and some ambitions in
literature, and it gave a light and shade to his character which made him
rather complex, and therefore interesting. His best friends could not
deny the shade, and yet it was but the shadow thrown by the light.
Strength, virility, emotional force, power of deep feeling—these are
traits which have to be paid for. There was sometimes just a touch of
the savage, or at least there were indications of the possibility of a
touch of the savage, in Frank Crosse. His intense love of the open air
and of physical exercise was a sign of it. He left upon women the
impression, not altogether unwelcome, that there were unexplored recesses
of his nature to which the most intimate of them had never penetrated.
In those dark corners of the spirit either a saint or a sinner might be
lurking, and there was a pleasurable excitement in peering into them, and
wondering which it was. No woman ever found him dull. Perhaps it would
have been better for him if they had, for his impulsive nature had never
been long content with a chilly friendship. He was, as we may see, a man
with a past, but it _was_ a past, now that Maude Selby had come like an
angel of light across the shadowed path of his life. In age he was
nearly twenty-seven.
There are one or two things which might be said for him which he would
not have said for himself. He was an only child and an orphan, but he
had adopted his grandparents, who had been left penniless through his
father’s death, and through all his struggles he had managed to keep them
happy and comfortable in a little cottage in Worcestershire. Nor did he
ever tell them that he had a struggle—fearing lest it should make their
position painful; and so when their quarterly cheque arrived, they took
it as a kindly but not remarkable act of duty upon the part of their
wealthy grandson in the City, with no suspicion as to the difference
which their allowance was making to him. Nor did he himself look upon
his action as a virtuous one, but simply as a thing which must obviously
be done. In the meantime, he had stuck closely to his work, had won
rapid promotion in the Insurance Office in which he had started as junior
clerk, had gained the goodwill of his superiors through his frank,
unaffected ways, and had been asked to play for the second Surrey eleven
at cricket. So without going the length of saying that he was worthy of
Maude Selby, one might perhaps claim—if it could be done without
endangering that natural modesty which was one of his charms—that he was
as worthy as any other young man who was available.
That unfortunate artistic soul of his, which had been in the tropics of
expectation, and was now in the arctic of reaction, had just finally
settled down to black despair, with a grim recognition of the fact that
Maude had certainly and absolutely given him up, when one boomed from the
station clock, and on the very stroke she hurried on to the platform.
How could he have strained his eyes after other women, as if a second
glance were ever needed when it was really she! The perfectly graceful
figure, the trimness and neatness of it, the beautiful womanly poise of
the head, the quick elastic step, he could have sworn to her among ten
thousand. His heart gave a bound at the sight of her, but he had the
English aversion to giving himself away, and so he walked quickly forward
to meet her with an impassive face, but with a look in his eyes which was
all that she wanted.
‘How are you?’
‘How do you do?’
He stood for a few moments looking at her in silence. She had on the
dress which he loved so much, a silver-grey merino skirt and jacket, with
a blouse of white pongee silk showing in front. Some lighter coloured
trimming fringed the cloth. She wore a grey toque, with a dash of white
at the side, and a white veil which softened without concealing the dark
brown curls and fresh girlish face beneath it. Her gloves were of grey
suède, and the two little pointed tan shoes peeping from the edge of her
skirt were the only touches of a darker tint in her attire. Crosse had
the hereditary artist’s eye, and he could only stand and stare and enjoy
it. He was filled with admiration, with reverence, and with wonder that
this perfect thing should really proclaim itself to be all his own.
Whatever had he done, or could he do, to deserve it?
She looked up at him in a roguish sidelong way, with the bright
mischievous smile which was one of her charms.
‘Well, sir, do you approve?’
‘By Jove, it is splendid—beautiful!’
‘So glad! I hoped you would, since you are so fond of greys. Besides,
it is cooler in this weather. I hope you have not been waiting.’
‘Oh no, that’s all right.’
‘You looked so solemn when first I saw you.’
‘Did I?’
‘And then you just jumped.’
‘Did I? I’m sorry.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. I like our feelings to be our very very own, and never to
show them to any one else at all. I dare say it is absurd, but that is
my instinct.’
‘Never mind, dear, it wasn’t such a big jump as all that. Where are we
going?’
‘Come here, Maude, into the waiting-room.’
She followed him into the gloomy, smoky, dingy room. Bare yellow benches
framed an empty square of brown linoleum. A labouring man with his wife
and a child sat waiting with the stolid patience of the poor in one
corner. They were starting on some Saturday afternoon excursion, and had
mistimed their train. Maude Selby and Frank Crosse took the other
corner. He drew a jeweller’s box from his pocket and removed the lid.
Something sparkled among the wadding.
‘O Frank! Is that really it?’
‘Do you like it?’
‘What a broad one it is! Mother’s is quite thin.’
‘They wear thin in time.’
‘It is beautiful. Shall I try it on?’
‘No, don’t. There is some superstition about it.’
‘But suppose it won’t fit?’
‘That is quite safe. I measured it with your sapphire ring.’
‘I haven’t half scolded you enough about that sapphire ring. How could
you go and give twenty-two guineas for a ring?—oh yes, sir, that was the
price, for I saw a duplicate yesterday in the Goldsmith’s Company. You
dear extravagant old boy!’
‘I had saved the money.’
‘But not for that!’
‘For nothing half or quarter as important. But I had the other to the
same size, so it is sure to fit.’
Maude had pushed up her veil, and sat with the little golden circlet in
her hand, looking down at it, while the dim watery London sunlight poured
through the window, and tagged all her wandering curls with a coppery
gleam. It was a face beautiful in itself, but more beautiful for its
expression—sensitive, refined, womanly, full of innocent archness and
girlish mischief, but with a depth of expression in the eyes, and a
tender delicacy about the mouth, which spoke of a great spirit with all
its capacities for suffering and devotion within. The gross admirer of
merely physical charms might have passed her over unnoticed. So might
the man who is attracted only by outward and obvious signs of character.
But to the man who could see, to the man whose own soul had enough of
spirituality to respond to hers, and whose eye could appreciate the
subtlety of a beauty which is of the mind as well as of the body, there
was not in all wide London upon that midsummer day a sweeter girl than
Maude Selby, as she sat in her grey merino dress with the London sun
tagging her brown curls with that coppery glimmer.
She handed back the ring, and a graver expression passed over her mobile
face.
‘I feel as you said in your letter, Frank. There _is_ something tragic
in it. It will be with me for ever. All the future will arrange itself
round that little ring.’
‘Are you afraid of it?’
‘Afraid!’ her grey glove rested for an instant upon the back of his hand.
‘I _couldn’t_ be afraid of anything if you were with me. It is really
extraordinary, for by nature I am so easily frightened. But if I were
with you in a railway accident or anywhere, it would be just the same.
You see I become for the time part of you, as it were, and you are brave
enough for two.’
‘I don’t profess to be so brave as all that,’ said Frank. ‘I expect I
have as many nerves as my neighbours.’
Maude’s grey toque nodded up and down. ‘I know all about that,’ said
she.
‘You have such a false idea of me. It makes me happy at the time and
miserable afterwards, for I feel such a rank impostor. You imagine me to
be a hero, and a genius, and all sorts of things, while I _know_ that I
am about as ordinary a young fellow as walks the streets of London, and
no more worthy of you than—well, than any one else is.’
She laughed with shining eyes.
‘I like to hear you talk like that,’ said she. ‘That is just what is so
beautiful about you.’
It is hopeless to prove that you are not a hero when your disclaimers are
themselves taken as a proof of heroism. Frank shrugged his shoulders.
‘I only hope you’ll find me out gradually and not suddenly,’ said he.
‘Now, Maude, we have all day and all London before us. What shall we do?
I want you to choose.’
‘I am quite happy whatever we do. I am content to sit here with you
until evening.’
Her idea of a happy holiday set them both laughing.
‘Come along,’ said he, ‘we shall discuss it as we go.’
The workman’s family was still waiting, and Maude handed the child a
shilling as she went out. She was so happy herself that she wanted every
one else to be happy also. The people turned to look at her as she
passed. With the slight flush upon her cheeks and the light in her eyes,
she seemed the personification of youth, and life, and love. One tall
old gentleman started as he looked, and watched her with a rapt face
until she disappeared. Some cheek had flushed and some eye had
brightened at his words once, and sweet old days had for an instant lived
again.
‘Shall we have a cab?’
‘O Frank, we must learn to be economical. Let us walk.’
‘I can’t and won’t be economical to-day.’
‘There now! See what a bad influence I have upon you.’
‘Most demoralising! But we have not settled yet where we are to go to.’
‘What _does_ it matter, if we are together?’
‘There is a good match at the Oval, the Australians against Surrey.
Would you care to see that?’
‘Yes, dear, if you would.’
‘And there are matinées at all the theatres.’
‘You would rather be in the open air.’
‘All I want is that you should enjoy yourself.’
‘Never fear. I shall do that.’
‘Well, then, first of all I vote that we go and have some lunch.’
They started across the station yard, and passed the beautiful old stone
cross. Among the hansoms and the four-wheelers, the hurrying travellers,
and the lounging cabmen, there rose that lovely reconstruction of
mediævalism, the pious memorial of a great Plantagenet king to his
beloved wife.
‘Six hundred years ago,’ said Frank, as they paused and looked up, ‘that
old stone cross was completed, with heralds and armoured knights around
it to honour her whose memory was honoured by the king. Now the
corduroyed porters stand where the knights stood, and the engines whistle
where the heralds trumpeted, but the old cross is the same as ever in the
same old place. It is a little thing of that sort which makes one
realise the unbroken history of our country.’
Maude insisted upon hearing about Queen Eleanor, and Frank imparted the
little that he knew as they walked out into the crowded Strand.
‘She was Edward the First’s wife, and a splendid woman. It was she, you
remember, who sucked the wound when he was stabbed with a poisoned
dagger. She died somewhere in the north, and he had the body carried
south to bury it in Westminster Abbey. Wherever it rested for a night he
built a cross, and so you have a line of crosses all down England to show
where that sad journey was broken.’
They had turned down Whitehall, and passed the big cuirassiers upon their
black chargers at the gate of the Horse Guards. Frank pointed to one of
the windows of the old banqueting-hall.
‘You’ve seen a memorial of a queen of England,’ said he. ‘That window is
the memorial of a king.’
‘Why so, Frank?’
‘I believe that it was through that window that Charles the First passed
out to the scaffold when his head was cut off. It was the first time
that the people had ever shown that they claimed authority over their
king.’
‘Poor fellow!’ said Maude. ‘He was so handsome, and such a good husband
and father.’
‘It is the good kings who may be the dangerous ones.’
‘O Frank!’
‘If a king thinks only of pleasure, then he does not interfere with
matters of state. But if he is conscientious, he tries to do what he
imagines to be his duty, and so he causes trouble. Look at Charles, for
example. He was a very good man, and yet he caused a civil war. George
the Third was a most exemplary character, but his stupidity lost us
America, and nearly lost us Ireland. They were each succeeded by
thoroughly bad men, who did far less harm.’
They had reached the end of Whitehall, and the splendid panorama of
Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament lay before them. The most
stately of ancient English buildings was contrasted with the most
beautiful of modern ones. How anything so graceful came to be built by
this tasteless and utilitarian nation must remain a marvel to the
traveller. The sun was shining upon the gold-work of the roof, and the
grand towers sprang up amid the light London haze, like some gorgeous
palace in a dream. It was a fit centre for the rule to whose mild sway
one-fifth of the human race acquiesces—a rule upheld by so small a force
that only the consent of the governed can sustain it.
Frank and Maude stood together looking up at it.
‘How beautiful it is!’ she cried. ‘How the gilding lights up the whole
building!’
‘And how absurd it is not to employ it more in our gloomy London
architecture!’ said Frank. ‘Imagine how grand a gilded dome of St.
Paul’s would look, hanging like a rising sun over the City. But here is
our restaurant, Maude, and Big Ben says that it is a quarter to two.
IN BRITAIN’S VALHALLA
THEY had discussed the rooms in their new house, and the bridesmaids’
dresses, and Maude’s cooking, and marriage-presents, and the merits of
Brighton, and the nature of love, and volleying at tennis (Maude was the
lady-champion of a tennis club), and season tickets, and the destiny of
the universe—to say nothing of a small bottle of Perrier Jouet. It was
reprehensibly extravagant, but this would be their last unmarried
excursion, and so they drank to the dear days of the past, and the dearer
ones of the future. Good comrades as well as lovers, they talked freely,
and with pleasure. Frank never made the common mistake of
|
way.
"He makes me sick!" blurted out the motor boat man.
The young lady who was supporting Mrs. Carrington leaned toward Frank.
Her face expressed the respect and admiration she felt for their
rescuer.
"We can never thank you enough for your prompt service," she said, in a
voice that trembled a trifle from excitement.
"I am glad I was within call," replied Frank, modestly.
"Won't you kindly give me your name?" inquired the young lady. "I am
Miss Porter, and I am companion to Mrs. Carrington. I know her ways so
well, that I am sure the first thing she will want to know when she
becomes herself again is the name of her brave rescuer."
"My name is Frank Durham," replied our hero. "My chums in the little
boat are Randolph Powell and Pepperill Smith."
"So you live here at Seaside Park? Where can Mrs. Carrington send you
word, for I am positive she will wish to see you?"
"We may stay here until to-morrow--I cannot tell," explained Frank. "If
we do, I think we will be at the Beach Hotel."
The young lady had a small writing tablet with a tiny pencil attached,
secured by a ribbon at her waist. She made some notations. Then she
extended her hand and grasped Frank's with the fervency of a grateful
and appreciative person. Then an auto cab drew up at the end of the
pier, the officer summoned help, and Mrs. Carrington was lifted from the
launch. Frank assisted Miss Porter, and Peter, apparently fancying
himself an object of admiration to all the focussed eyes of the crowd,
disappeared into the automobile.
"Hey!" yelled Pep after him, doubling his fists. "Thank you!"
The motor boat man grasped Frank's hand with honest thankfulness in his
eyes.
"I shan't forget you very soon," he said with genuine feeling.
"Did the boat belong to you?" asked Frank.
"Yes, I own two motor boats here," explained the man, "and run them for
just such parties as you see."
"The explosion will cause you some money loss."
"I hardly think so," answered the man. "Mrs. Carrington is a rich woman,
they say, and she is quite liberal, too. I think she will do the right
thing and not leave all the loss on a poor man like myself."
"Get the skiff back where you found it, Randy," directed Frank. "I will
be with you soon," and he started the launch back for the spot where he
had been allowed to use it by its owner.
A chorus of cheers followed him. Glancing across the pier, Frank noted
the owner of the motor boat surrounded by a crowd and being interviewed
by two young fellows who looked like newspaper reporters. One of them
parted the throng suddenly and ran along the pier, focussing a camera
upon the launch. He took a snap shot and waved his hand with an admiring
gesture at its operator.
"Young man, I don't know when I have been so pleased and proud,"
observed the owner of the launch as Frank drove up to the pier where he
stood. "I'm glad I had my boat at hand and as bright and smart a fellow
as you to run it just in the nick of time."
Frank felt pleased over his efforts to be helpful to others. He was too
boyish and ingenuous not to suffer some embarrassment as he passed
little groups staring after him. Such remarks as "That's him!" "There he
goes!" "Plucky fellow!" and the like greeted his hearing and made him
blush consciously.
He found his friends down the beach, Randy laughing at Pep and joking
with him, the latter seated on the edge of the boardwalk emptying the
water out of his shoes and grumbling at a great rate.
"What's the trouble, Pep?" hailed Frank.
"Trouble! Say, whenever I think of my chance to duck that cheap cad we
took aboard the skiff I want to lam myself. 'Jumped overboard to hurry
for help,' he claimed. Then found 'that he had forgotten he couldn't
swim.' Bah!" and the irate Pep slammed his shoe down on a board as if it
was the head of the offensive and offending Peter Carrington.
"We'll go up town and get you dried out, Pep," remarked Frank. "I say,
fellows, I'm inclined to believe that we're going to find an opportunity
of some kind here at Seaside Park. The little hotel we inquired at seems
to be the cheapest in the place, and we had better make arrangements
there for a sort of headquarters, even if we don't stay here more than a
day or two."
"That suits," nodded Randy. "The man offered a double room on the top
floor for a dollar, and we can pick up our meals outside."
The three chums concluded the arrangement at the Beach Hotel.
Fortunately each had brought an extra suit of clothes on his journey,
and Pep was placed in comfortable trim once more. Then they sallied
forth again to make a tour of the parts of the little town they had not
previously visited.
"Just look at the crowds right within a stone's throw of the place we
are thinking of renting," said Pep, as quite naturally they wandered
back to the empty store so suited to their purposes and so desired by
each.
"Yes, and it keeps up from almost daybreak clear up to midnight,"
declared Randy. "Why, Frank, we could run three shifts four hours each.
Just think of it--twelve shows a day. Say, it would be a gold mine!"
"I agree with you that it looks very promising," decided Frank. "We must
do some close figuring, fellows."
"Let's go inside and look the building over again," suggested Pep, and
this they did.
"Why, hello!" instantly exclaimed the owner. "Back again?"
"Yes, Mr. Morton," replied Frank, pleasantly.
"Shake!" cried the old fellow, dropping a hammer he held and in turn
grasping a hand of each of his juvenile visitors. "You're some pluck,
the three of you. That was the neatest round-up I ever saw. What you
been before? Life saving service?"
"Why, hardly----" began Frank.
"Well, you got those people off that burning motor boat slicker than I
ever saw it done before. Look here, lads, business is business, and I
have to hustle too hard for the dollars to take any risks, but I like
the way you do things, and if I can help you figure out how you may take
a lease on the premises here and make something out of the old barracks,
I'm going to favor you."
"We shall decide this evening, Mr. Morton," said Frank.
"Well, you've got an option on the place till you are ready to report,
no matter who comes along."
"Thank you," bowed Frank.
"Oh, I do so hope we can make it!" exclaimed the impetuous Pep.
They were hungry enough to enjoy a hearty meal at a restaurant. Then
they found themselves tired enough for a resting spell. Their room at
the hotel was a lofty one, but it commanded the whole beach and afforded
an unobstructed view of the sea for miles. The chums arranged their
chairs so as to catch the cool breeze coming off the water, forming a
half-circle about an open window.
Frank had been pretty quiet since they had last seen the vacant store,
leaving Randy and Pep to do the chattering. They knew their business
chum had been doing some close calculating and they eagerly awaited his
first word.
"Tell you, fellows," finally spoke their leader in an offhand but
serious way, "I've turned and twisted about all the many corners to this
big proposition before us, and it's no trivial responsibility for
amateurs like us."
"We made good at Fairlands; didn't we?" challenged Pep.
"That is true," admitted Frank, "but remember our investment there
wasn't heavy; we didn't have to go into debt, expenses were light, we
were right among friends who wanted to encourage us, and we had free
board at home."
"That's so," murmured Randy, with a long-drawn sigh.
"If we start in here at Seaside Park," went on Frank, "we have got to
fix up right up to date or we'll find ourselves nowhere in a very little
while. There's electric fans, expensive advertising, a big license fee,
more help and the films--that's the feature that worries me. As we
learned this morning, we have got to have the latest and best in that
direction."
"But twelve shows a day, Frank," urged Pep. "Think of it--twelve!"
"Yes, I know," responded Frank. "It looks very easy until some break
comes along. I wouldn't like to pile up a lot of expenses, and then have
to flunk and lose not only the little capital we have but the outfit
we've worked so hard to get. Truth is, fellows, any way I figure it out,
we're short of the ready funds to carry this thing through."
Randy and Pep looked pretty blank at this. It was a decidedly wet
blanket on all their high hopes.
"Couldn't we get a partner who would finance us?" finally suggested
Randy.
"Why, say, give me that chance!" spoke an eager voice that brought the
three chums to their feet.
CHAPTER IV--AN OLD FRIEND
It had grown nearly dusk while the three chums sat at the window of
their room animatedly discussing their prospects. None of them had
thought of lighting the gas and the night shadows that had crept into
the room prevented them from recognizing the intruder whom they now
faced.
They had left the door of the room leading into the corridor wide open
to allow a free current of air. The doorway framed a dim figure who now
advanced into the room as Frank challenged sharply:
"Who's that?"
"Why, it's me--Peter," came the cool reply. "Don't you remember?"
Peter--Peter Carrington--stalked closer to the window with the superb
effrontery that was a natural part of his make-up. He ducked his head
and grinned at the chums in the most familiar manner in the world. There
was a spare chair near by. Peter moved it near to the others and sat
down as if he owned it.
"Feels good to rest," he enlightened his grim and astonished hosts. "Had
a message for you, and the hotel clerk directed me to your room. Say,
you must fancy climbing four flights of stairs!"
"You seem to have made it," observed Randy, in a rather hostile tone,
while Pep seemed bristling all over.
"Glad I did," piped Peter, cheerfully. "Wouldn't have missed it for
worlds. Just in time to hear you fellows going over your dandy scheme,
and say--it's a winner! Photo playhouse on the beach! Why, it'll coin
money!"
Nobody said anything. Frank was minded to treat the intruder civilly and
resumed his chair. Suddenly Pep flared out:
"Have you been waiting out in the hall there, listening to our private
conversation?"
"Guess I have; glad I did," chuckled the thick-skinned Peter. "I heard
you say you were short of funds and something about a partner. What's
the matter with me? I suppose you know my aunt is rich and we're some
folks here. We live up on the Terrace--most fashionable part of the town.
Why, if I had an interest in your show I could fill your place with
complimentaries to the real people of Seaside Park. They'd advertise
you, my friends would, till there'd be nothing but standing room left."
"Think so?" observed Randy, drily.
"Know it. I'm my aunt's heir, you know, and she's got scads of money.
She's been drawing the tight rein on me lately. I smashed an automobile
last week and it cost her over four hundred dollars, and she's holding
me pretty close on the money question. But in business, she'd stake me
for anything I wanted. Says she wants to see me get into something."
"You got into the water when the motor boat blew up, all right,"
remarked Pep.
"Hey?" spoke Peter, struggling over the suggestion presented. "Oh, you
mean a joke? Ha! ha! yes, indeed. Business, though, now," and Peter
tried to look shrewd and important.
"We have not yet decided what we are going to do," said Frank. "As you
have overheard, we need a little more capital than what we actually
have. I will remember your kind offer, and if we cannot figure it out as
we hope I may speak to you on the subject later."
"I wish you would come right up to the house now and tell my Aunt Susie
all about it," pressed Peter, urgently.
"I couldn't think of it," answered Frank. "No, you leave matters just as
I suggest and we will see what may come of it."
"Say, Frank," whispered Pep, on fire with excitement, "you don't mean to
think of encouraging this noodle; do you?"
"I want to get rid of him," answered Frank, and all hands were relieved
to see the persistent Peter rise from his seat.
"Oh, say," he suddenly exclaimed--"I came for something, that's so. My
aunt wants to see you, all three of you. Miss Porter gave her your names
and addresses and she wouldn't rest until I had come down here. She
wants you all to come to dinner to-morrow evening and she won't take no
for an answer."
"Why, we may not be here then," said Frank.
"Oh, you must come," declared Peter, "now I have a chance to go in with
you. I couldn't think of your not seeing her. Look here," and Peter
winked and tried to look sly--"Aunt Susie is no tightwad. She is the most
generous woman in the world. She's minded to give you fellows a fine
meal and treat you like princes. She considers that you saved her life
and she can't do too much for you. Say, on the quiet, I'll bet she makes
you a present of fifty dollars apiece."
"What for?" demanded Frank.
"For getting to that burning boat and saving all hands, of course. Why,
I wouldn't take the risk you did of being blown up for a thousand
dollars."
"No, I don't think you would," announced Pep, bluntly.
"I'll tell you," went on their guest--"if you'll give me a tip on the
side I'll work up Aunt Susie to a hundred dollars apiece. There, I know
I can do it."
Frank bit his lip and tried to keep from losing his temper with this
mean-spirited cad. Then he said with quiet dignity:
"I think you had better go, Mr. Carrington, and I shall expect you to
tell your aunt that we were only too glad to do a trifling service for
her. Please inform her, also, that I am quite certain we shall be too
busy to accept her kind invitation for to-morrow evening; in fact, we
may leave Seaside Park for our home at Fairlands early in the morning."
Dauntless Peter! you could not squelch that shallow nerve of his. In a
trice he shouted out:
"Why! do you live at Fairlands?"
"Yes," nodded Frank, wondering what was coming next from this
extraordinary youth.
"Then you know Greg Grayson?"
"Oh, yes," admitted Randy.
"I should think we did!" observed Pep, with a wry grimace.
"Why, then, we're regular friends," insisted Peter, acting as if he was
about to embrace all hands. "He was my roommate at school. We were like
twin brothers."
"Maybe that's the reason!" muttered Pep.
"His folks are big guns in Fairlands, just as we are here. Say, if you
know Greg Grayson, that settles it. You just ask him if I ain't all
right--up to snuff and all that--and if I wouldn't make a fine partner."
Frank managed to usher their persistent visitor from the room, all the
way down the corridor the latter insisting that he was going to "put the
proposition up to Aunt Susie" forthwith, and that they would hear from
him on the morrow.
"Frank," exclaimed Pep, "it seems good to get rid of that fellow."
"A fine partner he'd make," observed Randy, with a snort.
"I am dreadfully sorry he overheard our plans," spoke Frank. "Of course
it will soon be generally known if we decide to locate here; but this
Peter may talk a lot of rubbish that might hurt us or start somebody
else on our idea."
"And to think of his knowing Greg Grayson, and playing him off on us as
a recommendation!" cried Pep.
"They make a good pair," added Randy. "Why, I'd give up the whole
business before I would have either of them connected with our plans in
any way."
"I wouldn't wonder if Mr. Jolly might happen along if we stay here a day
or two longer," remarked Frank. "You know he was the first to suggest a
look at Seaside Park with a view to business."
"That's so," said Randy. "Did you write to him, Frank?"
"Yes. You know when we closed up at Fairlands he said he would take a
day or two visiting some relatives and looking over the movies business
in the city."
"Ben Jolly told me he wasn't going to stay idle all summer. Nor let us
do it, either," observed Pep. "He'll have something fresh to tell us
when we see him."
"Well, when we left Fairlands I sent him a few lines telling him that we
were going to look over the field here," said Frank. "That is why I
think he may drop in on us."
"I wish he would," declared Randy. "Mr. Jolly knows so much about the
business. What's the programme for to-morrow, Frank?"
"Why, I thought we would find out what it will cost us to move our traps
here from Fairlands, the amount of the license fee for the show, the
cost of a lot of electric wiring and current we will need if we locate
at Seaside Park, how much it will cost us to live, and a lot of such
details."
The boys had a wonderfully refreshing sleep in that high room pervaded
with cool ocean breezes, and got up fully an hour later than they had
planned. After Peter Carrington had left them the evening before they
had strolled down the beach about nine o'clock to get an idea of the
evening crowds. This filled them more than ever with ardor as to their
prospective business undertaking.
"I say," Randy had observed, "don't you see, Frank, there aren't enough
amusements to go around?"
"Yes," Frank had assented, "the crowds seem just in trim for some lively
entertainment."
The chums dispatched a substantial breakfast at the restaurant. Then
they started out on their second day's investigation of conditions and
prospects at Seaside Park.
Frank made it a point to interview several owners of concessions along
the beach. Those with whom he talked had attractions vastly inferior to
the one the chums designed to operate, but the boys picked up many a
suggestion and useful hint. It was shortly before noon when they sat
down to rest under a tree in that part of the town given over to
permanent residences and summer cottages. They began talking over the
ever-present theme of their photo playhouse when there was an
interruption.
Down the street there strolled leisurely a young man who made it a point
to halt whenever he got in front of a house. There he would linger and
begin a series of whistling exploits that made the air vibrate with the
most ravishing melody.
"Say, just listen to that!" exclaimed Pep, in a pleased tone.
"It's one of those trick whistles," declared Randy.
"Then it's an extra fine one," said Pep.
"I think you are mistaken, boys," suggested Frank. "Those are real human
notes--at least almost exact human imitations of bird tones."
"Well, then, the fellow must have a throat like a nightingale," asserted
the enthusiastic Pep.
The active whistler deserved all the chums said about him. His
repertoire seemed exhaustless. He confined himself to imitations of
birds exclusively--and of only such birds as were native to the
surrounding country.
He fairly filled the air with melody, and real birds in the trees and
shrubbery about the handsome residences of the locality twittered,
hopped about and responded in an echoing chorus to his expert call.
Little children came running out of yards to gaze in wonder and
admiration at this unusual warbler. Even older folks watched and
listened to him. The man turned a corner out of view of the motion
picture chums, followed by quite a procession.
He had scarcely vanished before a high wagon such as is used to carry
cooper's barrels turned slowly into the street. A slow old horse pulled
it along. Its driver nimbly leaped from his seat. The moment he called
out "Whoa!" to the horse and turned his face toward the chums, Pep Smith
uttered a great shout.
"Why, fellows, see," he cried, in mingled glee and surprise--"it's Ben
Jolly!"
CHAPTER V--THE BIRD HOUSE
Ben Jolly it was, more sprightly, more jolly-looking than ever, for he
waved his hand with a genial smile to the children staring down the side
street after the whistler. The other reached into the wagon. Instantly
upon recognizing their old-time friend and helper the three chums
started in his direction.
"Hi, there!" hailed Pep, while Randy waved his hand gaily and all
hurried their gait.
"Well! well!" exclaimed Jolly, his face an expanding smile of welcome,
extending both hands and greeting his friends in turn. "I expected to
find you here and headed for here, but I did not expect to run across
you so oddly."
"For mercy's sake, Mr. Jolly," burst forth Randy, staring in amazement
at the wagon, "what in the world have you got there?"
"Why bird houses," replied Jolly.
"Bird houses?" repeated Pep, equally bewildered. "What are you doing
with such a lot of bird houses?"
"Selling them, of course."
Frank himself was surprised and puzzled. The wagon contained half a
dozen tiers of little box-like structures packed close. At one side was
a heap of poles the size of display flag staffs. These poles were stout
and heavy, painted white, and about twelve feet in length. The houses
were about two feet high and as wide. They were painted white, like the
poles, and were exact models of a broad, low colonial house, even to the
veranda. The roof was painted red, there was an imitation chimney and a
double open doorway in front trimmed with green. All around this
miniature house were little apertures representing windows.
A neater, more inviting little bird house for a garden could not well be
imagined. As Jolly took a sample from the wagon the little children
flocked about him on tiptoe of curiosity. There were admiring "Oh's!"
and "Ah's!" "Ain't they cute!" "What cunning little houses!" and "Oh,
mister! are they for sale?" "What do they cost?"
"If you will excuse me while I make a demonstration," observed Jolly,
"I'll explain what it's all about."
"What a rare fellow he is!" remarked Randy to his companions, as they
stepped aside.
"The same busy, happy, good-natured friend of everybody," returned
Frank, with genuine feeling.
If there was a being in the world the motion picture chums had reason to
feel kindly toward it was this same Ben Jolly. A free wanderer, taking
things easy, tramping flower-fringed country roads, making his way,
willing to meet any task that came along, Ben Jolly had dropped into
their life at the critical moment when they were discussing the
prospects of their first motion picture show at Fairlands.
Ben had been a Jack-of-all-trades and knew a little something about
pretty nearly everything. Particularly he knew a good deal about the
movies. He gave the boys advice and suggestions that enabled them to buy
their first outfit at a bargain and the day the show opened appeared
with an old piano which he had induced a rich relative to buy. From that
time on Ben Jolly furnished the music for the Wonderland photo playhouse
and, as told in our first volume, was the means of unearthing a plot
against the father of Frank Durham, whereby he had been swindled out of
a small estate.
Jolly took a sample bird house under each arm and entered the first yard
he came to, the interested children keeping him close company. He came
out of the first house with only one bird house, he came out of the
second with none. Along the block he visited on both sides of the street
Jolly disposed of just eleven of the attractive little miniature
domiciles, distributed poles later to each purchaser and rejoined the
boys.
"Now, then," he said, briskly, placing a little roll of banknotes in a
well-filled wallet, "how are you and what are the prospects?"
"Excellent," declared Randy. "See here, though, Mr. Jolly, will you
kindly explain this new business of yours?"
"Simply a side line," replied Jolly, in a gay, offhand manner.
"But where did you ever pick up that rig and that lot of odd truck?"
challenged Pep.
"I picked up better than that," retorted Jolly, cheerily. "I ran across
the finest advance agent in the business--and here he comes. You knew him
once, but under his stage name of Hal Pope. He's Mr. Hal Vincent now."
At that moment the whistler came into view, having circled the block. As
he approached, Frank's face expressed pleased surprise.
"Why," exclaimed Pep, "it's our friend the ventriloquist."
"So it is," echoed Randy.
"Glad to meet you again," said Hal Vincent, and there was an all-around
handshaking. "You're all looking fine and I hear you're prosperous."
"Not so much so that we could afford to hire you for our programme at
Fairlands, as we would like to do, Mr. Vincent," replied Frank, with a
smile.
Pep began to grin as he looked at Vincent, and the memory of their first
meeting was reviewed. Then he chuckled and finally he broke out into a
ringing guffaw.
"Thinking of my first and only appearance at that auction where you
bought your movies outfit?" inquired Vincent, with a smile.
"Will we ever forget it?" cried Randy. "I tell you, Mr. Vincent, if you
hadn't made the auctioneer believe that two innocent bystanders were
bidding against each other with your ventriloquism, and gained time
until Frank arrived, we would never have gotten into the motion picture
business."
"It worked finely; didn't it?" answered Vincent.
"I ran across Hal at Tresco, about thirty miles from here," narrated Ben
Jolly. "He was counting the ties in the direction of New York, having
left the dummies he uses in his stunts on the stage for meals and
lodging."
"Yes, I was about all that was left of the Consolidated Popular
Amusement Corporation," put in Vincent. "I was glad to meet an old
friend like Ben. He told me there was the shadow of a chance that you
might start in at Seaside Park and wanted me to come along with him.
Then we ran across the outfit here," and the speaker nodded toward the
wagon and its contents.
"That was my brilliant idea," added Jolly. "I call it a rare stroke of
luck, the way we ran across the outfit."
"How?" projected Pep, vastly curious.
"Well, a carpenter in a little town we came through had got crippled.
The doctor told him he wouldn't get around without crutches for six
months. He was a lively, industrious old fellow and couldn't bear to be
idle. Had a lot of waste lumber and worked it up into dog houses. There
weren't many dogs in the town, so his sale was limited. Then the bird
house idea came along. The carpenter got the local paper to print a lot
about the birds, the merry birds, that sing about our door----"
"That--sing--about--our--door!" echoed a slow, deep bass, apparently away up
in a high tree near by, and the boys knew that their gifted
ventriloquist friend was exercising his talents.
"The carpenter," proceeded Jolly, "hired a lot of boys to go forth on
his mission of kindness to our feathery songsters. The campaign went
ahead until nearly everybody wanting a bird house got one. Our friend
found himself with some two hundred of the little structures left on his
hands. He had overstocked the market, with a big surplus left on his
hands. When we came along it was a sign in front of his place that
attracted our attention. It read: 'These fine bird houses and a capable
horse, wagon, and harness for sale for a mere song.'
"Anything odd always catches me, so I interviewed the old man. It seemed
that he had received word only that day that a relative in another part
of the country had left him a farm. He wanted to realize quick and he
offered me the bird house outfit and the rig all for fifty dollars. I
had only thirty-eight dollars, and he took that and gave me his new
address. The arrangement was that if I was lucky in getting rid of the
bird houses I was to send him the balance. If I didn't he was willing to
charge it up to profit and loss. He'll get that balance," announced
Jolly, with a satisfied smile.
"It looks so, judging from your sales of the last half-hour," remarked
Frank.
"What do you get for the little houses, Mr. Jolly?" inquired Randy.
"A dollar apiece. I don't sell them, though--not a bit of it," exclaimed
Ben Jolly, modestly. "It's Hal. You ought to hear his whole
repertoire--orioles, thrushes, mourning doves, nightingales, mocking
birds. He infuses the neighborhood with the melody and I slide in with
the practical goods. And that rig--remember the noise wagon at Fairlands,
Pep Smith?"
"Do I?" cried Pep, in a gloating way--"I should say I did!"
The "noise wagon" had been introduced in connection with the photo
playhouse at Fairlands and had become a novel institution with the
inhabitants. A wagon enclosed with canvas, bearing announcements of
existing and coming film features, was provided with a big bass drum,
bells, huge board clappers and some horns--all operated by pedals under
the driver's feet.
"You see this new rig of mine would work in on the same basis here,"
proceeded Jolly. "If not, I can get more for the outfit than I paid for
it, anyway. Now then, Durham, where can we find you this evening?"
"Why not sooner?" suggested the impetuous Pep. "We've a great lot to
tell you, Mr. Jolly."
"And I'm anxious to hear it all," declared Jolly, "but we've got our
stock to get rid of. Nothing like keeping at it when you've made a good
beginning; and this town starts out promising-like."
Frank now decided that he would remain over at Seaside Park for another
day at least. The appearance of Ben Jolly somehow infused all hands with
renewed vim and cheerfulness. The chums were glad also to meet Hal
Vincent. He had done them a big favor in the past and they realized that
he could be of considerable advantage to them in the future in case they
located at Seaside Park.
Vincent had the reputation of being an accomplished all-around
entertainer. He was an expert ventriloquist and parlor magician, liked
the boys and had told Frank on the occasion of their first meeting that
he would be glad to go on their programme at any time for a very
moderate compensation.
Ben Jolly burst in upon his young friends with his usual bustle and
buoyancy about six o'clock that evening. He merrily chinked a pocket
full of silver and was all ready for what might next come along, and
eager to tackle it.
"Left Hal finishing one of the few full meals he has had since his show
broke up," reported Jolly. "Got rid of the last one of the bird
houses--and, see here, Frank," and the volatile speaker exhibited a
comfortable-looking roll of bank notes. "That was a fine speculation,
the way it turned out, and leaves me quite in funds. Now then, what's
the programme?"
Frank became serious at once and all the others as well. He told his
loyal friend all about their plans and hopes. Jolly shook his head
soberly when Frank produced some figures showing that the amount
necessary to operate a new photo playhouse was beyond their ready means.
"I've got nearly one hundred dollars you are welcome to," reported Jolly
promptly, "but that's about my limit. You see, when I got the money to
buy that piano and the 'noise wagon' I practically sold my prospects for
a last mess of pottage. I'm willing to pitch in and live'most any way
to give the new show a start, but when it comes to raising the extra
five hundred dollars needed, I'm afraid I can't help you much."
Randy looked glum at this, and Pep was almost crying. Ben Jolly sat
chewing a toothpick vigorously, his thinking cap on.
"Perhaps we had better give up the idea of coming to Seaside Park until
we are a little stronger in a money way----" Frank had begun, when there
was an interruption.
"Someone to see Mr. Frank Durham," announced a bellboy, appearing in the
open doorway.
Frank arose from his chair promptly and went out into the corridor.
"In the ladies' parlor, sir," added the bellboy, and Frank went down the
stairs, wondering who this unexpected visitor could be.
CHAPTER VI--A FRIEND IN NEED
Frank Durham entered the ladies' parlor of the hotel to see a stout,
dressy woman arise, joined by a girlish companion. He recognized both at
once. They were the persons he had taken aboard the launch from the
burning motor boat the afternoon before.
"This is Mr. Durham," spoke Miss Porter, and she smiled in a friendly
way at our hero, while her companion extended her bejeweled hand with a
decided show of welcome.
"I was so overcome by that explosion," said Mrs. Carrington, "that I
just got a glimpse of you. Then that ridiculous fainting away! I have
thanked Miss Porter a dozen times for having had the foresight to obtain
your name and that of your brave young comrades. Now then, Mr. Durham,
if you please, sit down and give an account of yourself."
"In what way, madam?" asked Frank, with an embarrassed smile, and
flushing at the compliment conveyed.
"Why have you not accepted our invitation to come up to the house, as I
requested?" demanded Mrs. Carrington, pretending to be very severe.
"I certainly appreciated your kindness in thinking of me," replied
Frank; "but I have been very much occupied with business and did not
know yesterday how long I would remain at Seaside Park. Then, too, some
friends arrived this afternoon."
"I am used to being obeyed, young man," Mrs. Carrington, with a playful
frown. "I have no doubt, though, that I sent a blundering messenger. Oh,
that Peter of mine! I never know how to place him. He came back
perfectly wild over going into the motion picture business with you. He
has been tormenting me all day long about it. I have told him decidedly
that I should not encourage him in any way.
"To tell you the truth, Mr. Durham, Peter is a sad failure at anything
that requires application and work. I would not do you the injustice of
having you hampered by a person who has no business training and does
not know the value of money. The fact is, Peter has been a great cross
to me of late, and I am now in correspondence with a military school,
with the idea of getting him where a year's discipline may do him some
good."
Frank had not for a moment seriously entertained the thought of taking
Peter Carrington into partnership. He felt immensely relieved, however,
to find that his visitor did not press that phase of the subject.
"I have come, first and foremost," went on the fussy but good-natured
lady, "to thank you for what you did for us. When I think of how near we
were to drowning or burning up it makes me shudder! My friends, who
happened to see your picture in this morning's paper----"
"My picture?" exclaimed Frank, in bewilderment. "What picture, Mrs.
Carrington?"
"Why," cried Mrs. Carrington, "he actually is so modest he hasn't
realized what a hero he has been! I refer to the splendid account of
your bravery in the _Brenton Daily News_."
Brenton was the nearest city, about twenty miles from Seaside Park.
Frank began
|
he has played me many a damned trick to spoil my fortune;
and, egad, I am almost afraid he’s at work about it again now; but if I
should tell thee how, thou’dst wonder at me.
LORY.
Indeed, sir, I should not.
TOM FASHION.
How dost know?
LORY.
Because, sir, I have wondered at you so often, I can wonder at you no
more.
TOM FASHION.
No! what wouldst thou say, if a qualm of conscience should spoil my
design?
LORY.
I would eat my words, and wonder more than ever.
TOM FASHION.
Why faith, Lory, though I have played many a roguish trick, this is so
full-grown a cheat, I find I must take pains to come up to’t—I have
scruples.
LORY.
They are strong symptoms of death. If you find they increase, sir, pray
make your will.
TOM FASHION.
No, my conscience shan’t starve me neither: but thus far I’ll listen to
it. Before I execute this project, I’ll try my brother to the bottom.
If he has yet so much humanity about him as to assist me—though with a
moderate aid—I’ll drop my project at his feet, and show him how I can
do for him much more than what I’d ask he’d do for me. This one
conclusive trial of him I resolve to make.
Succeed or fail, still victory is my lot;
If I subdue his heart, ’tis well—if not,
I will subdue my conscience to my plot.
[_Exeunt_.]
ACT II.
SCENE I.—LOVELESS’S _Lodgings_.
_Enter_ LOVELESS _and_ AMANDA.
LOVELESS.
How do you like these lodgings, my dear? For my part, I am so pleased
with them, I shall hardly remove whilst we stay here, if you are
satisfied.
AMANDA.
I am satisfied with everything that pleases you, else I had not come to
Scarborough at all.
LOVELESS.
Oh, a little of the noise and folly of this place will sweeten the
pleasures of our retreat; we shall find the charms of our retirement
doubled when we return to it.
AMANDA.
That pleasing prospect will be my chiefest entertainment, whilst, much
against my will, I engage in those empty pleasures which ’tis so much
the fashion to be fond of.
LOVELESS.
I own most of them are, indeed, but empty; yet there are delights of
which a private life is destitute, which may divert an honest man, and
be a harmless entertainment to a virtuous woman: good music is one; and
truly (with some small allowance) the plays, I think, may be esteemed
another.
AMANDA.
Plays, I must confess, have some small charms. What do you think of
that you saw last night?
LOVELESS.
To say truth, I did not mind it much—my attention was for some time
taken off to admire the workmanship of Nature in the face of a young
lady who sat at some distance from me, she was so exquisitely handsome.
AMANDA.
So exquisitely handsome!
LOVELESS.
Why do you repeat my words, my dear?
AMANDA.
Because you seemed to speak them with such pleasure, I thought I might
oblige you with their echo.
LOVELESS.
Then you are alarmed, Amanda?
AMANDA.
It is my duty to be so when you are in danger.
LOVELESS.
You are too quick in apprehending for me. I viewed her with a world of
admiration, but not one glance of love.
AMANDA.
Take heed of trusting to such nice distinctions. But were your eyes the
only things that were inquisitive? Had I been in your place, my tongue,
I fancy, had been curious too. I should have asked her where she
lived—yet still without design—who was she, pray?
LOVELESS.
Indeed I cannot tell.
AMANDA.
You will not tell.
LOVELESS.
Upon my honour, then, I did not ask.
AMANDA.
Nor do you know what company was with her?
LOVELESS.
I do not. But why are you so earnest?
AMANDA.
I thought I had cause.
LOVELESS.
But you thought wrong, Amanda; for turn the case, and let it be your
story: should you come home and tell me you had seen a handsome man,
should I grow jealous because you had eyes?
AMANDA.
But should I tell you he was exquisitely so, and that I had gazed on
him with admiration, should you not think ’twere possible I might go
one step further, and inquire his name?
LOVELESS.
[_Aside_.] She has reason on her side; I have talked too much; but I
must turn off another way.—[_Aloud_.] Will you then make no difference,
Amanda, between the language of our sex and yours? There is a modesty
restrains your tongues, which makes you speak by halves when you
commend; but roving flattery gives a loose to ours, which makes us
still speak double what we think.
_Enter_ SERVANT.
SERVANT.
Madam, there is a lady at the door in a chair desires to know whether
your ladyship sees company; her name is Berinthia.
AMANDA.
Oh dear! ’tis a relation I have not seen these five years; pray her to
walk in.—[_Exit_ SERVANT.] Here’s another beauty for you; she was, when
I saw her last, reckoned extremely handsome.
LOVELESS.
Don’t be jealous now; for I shall gaze upon her too.
_Enter_ BERINTHIA. Ha! by heavens, the very woman! [_Aside_.]
BERINTHIA.
[_Salutes_ AMANDA.] Dear Amanda, I did not expect to meet you in
Scarborough.
AMANDA.
Sweet cousin, I’m overjoyed to see you.—Mr. Loveless, here’s a relation
and a friend of mine, I desire you’ll be better acquainted with.
LOVELESS.
[_Salutes_ BERINTHIA.] If my wife never desires a harder thing, madam,
her request will be easily granted.
_Re-enter_ SERVANT.
SERVANT.
Sir, my Lord Foppington presents his humble service to you, and desires
to know how you do. He’s at the next door; and, if it be not
inconvenient to you, he’ll come and wait upon you.
LOVELESS.
Give my compliments to his lordship, and I shall be glad to see
him.—[_Exit_ SERVANT.] If you are not acquainted with his lordship,
madam, you will be entertained with his character.
AMANDA.
Now it moves my pity more than my mirth to see a man whom nature has
made no fool be so very industrious to pass for an ass.
LOVELESS.
No, there you are wrong, Amanda; you should never bestow your pity upon
those who take pains for your contempt: pity those whom nature abuses,
never those who abuse nature.
_Enter_ LORD FOPPINGTON.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Dear Loveless, I am your most humble servant.
LOVELESS.
My lord, I’m yours.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Madam, your ladyship’s very obedient slave.
LOVELESS.
My lord, this lady is a relation of my wife’s.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
[_Salutes_ BERINTHIA.] The beautifullest race of people upon earth, rat
me! Dear Loveless, I am overjoyed that you think of continuing here: I
am, stap my vitals!—[_To_ AMANDA.] For Gad’s sake, madam, how has your
ladyship been able to subsist thus long, under the fatigue of a country
life?
AMANDA.
My life has been very far from that, my lord; it has been a very quiet
one.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Why, that’s the fatigue I speak of, madam; for ’tis impossible to be
quiet without thinking: now thinking is to me the greatest fatigue in
the world.
AMANDA.
Does not your lordship love reading, then?
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Oh, passionately, madam; but I never think of what I read. For example,
madam, my life is a perpetual stream of pleasure, that glides through
with such a variety of entertainments, I believe the wisest of our
ancestors never had the least conception of any of ’em. I rise, madam,
when in town, about twelve o’clock. I don’t rise sooner, because it is
the worst thing in the world for the complexion: not that I pretend to
be a beau; but a man must endeavour to look decent, lest he makes so
odious a figure in the side-bax, the ladies should be compelled to turn
their eyes upon the play. So at twelve o’clock, I say, I rise. Naw, if
I find it is a good day, I resalve to take the exercise of riding; so
drink my chocolate, and draw on my boots by two. On my return, I dress;
and, after dinner, lounge perhaps to the opera.
BERINTHIA.
Your lordship, I suppose, is fond of music?
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Oh, passionately, on Tuesdays and Saturdays; for then there is always
the best company, and one is not expected to undergo the fatigue of
listening.
AMANDA.
Does your lordship think that the case at the opera?
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Most certainly, madam. There is my Lady Tattle, my Lady Prate, my Lady
Titter, my Lady Sneer, my Lady Giggle, and my Lady Grin—these have
boxes in the front, and while any favourite air is singing, are the
prettiest company in the waurld, stap my vitals!—Mayn’t we hope for the
honour to see you added to our society, madam?
AMANDA.
Alas! my lord, I am the worst company in the world at a concert, I’m so
apt to attend to the music.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Why, madam, that is very pardonable in the country or at church, but a
monstrous inattention in a polite assembly. But I am afraid I tire the
company?
LOVELESS.
Not at all. Pray go on.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Why then, ladies, there only remains to add, that I generally conclude
the evening at one or other of the clubs; nat that I ever play deep;
indeed I have been for some time tied up from losing above five
thousand paunds at a sitting.
LOVELESS.
But isn’t your lordship sometimes obliged to attend the weighty affairs
of the nation?
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Sir, as to weighty affairs, I leave them to weighty heads; I never
intend mine shall be a burden to my body.
BERINTHIA.
Nay, my lord, but you are a pillar of the state.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
An ornamental pillar, madam; for sooner than undergo any part of the
fatigue, rat me, but the whole building should fall plump to the
ground!
AMANDA.
But, my lord, a fine gentleman spends a great deal of his time in his
intrigues; you have given us no account of them yet.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
[_Aside_.] So! she would inquire into my amours—that’s jealousy, poor
soul!—I see she’s in love with me.—[_Aloud_.] O Lord, madam, I had
like to have forgot a secret I must need tell your ladyship.—Ned, you
must not be so jealous now as to listen.
LOVELESS.
[_Leading_ BERINTHIA _up the stage_.] Not I, my lord; I am too
fashionable a husband to pry into the secrets of my wife.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
[_Aside to_ AMANDA _squeezing her hand_.] I am in love with you to
desperation, strike me speechless!
AMANDA.
[_Strikes him on the ear_.] Then thus I return your passion.—An
impudent fool!
LORD FOPPINGTON.
God’s curse, madam, I am a peer of the realm!
LOVELESS.
[_Hastily returning_.] Hey! what the devil, do you affront my wife,
sir? Nay, then—[_Draws. They fight._]
AMANDA.
What has my folly done?—Help! murder! help! Part them for Heaven’s
sake.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
[_Falls back and leans on his sword._] Ah! quite through the body, stap
my vitals!
_Enter_ SERVANTS.
LOVELESS.
[_Runs to_ LORD FOPPINGTON.] I hope I ha’nt killed the fool, however.
Bear him up.—Call a surgeon there.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Ay, pray make haste. [_Exit_ SERVANT.
LOVELESS.
This mischief you may thank yourself for.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
I may say so; love’s the devil indeed, Ned.
_Re-enter_ SERVANT, _with_ PROBE.
SERVANT.
Here’s Mr. Probe, sir, was just going by the door.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
He’s the welcomest man alive.
PROBE.
Stand by, stand by, stand by; pray, gentlemen, stand by. Lord have
mercy upon us, did you never see a man run through the body
before?—Pray stand by.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Ah, Mr. Probe, I’m a dead man.
PROBE.
A dead man, and I by! I should laugh to see that, egad.
LOVELESS.
Pr’ythee don’t stand prating, but look upon his wound.
PROBE.
Why, what if I don’t look upon his wound this hour, sir?
LOVELESS.
Why, then he’ll bleed to death, sir.
PROBE.
Why, then I’ll fetch him to life again, sir.
LOVELESS.
’Slife! he’s run through the body, I tell thee.
PROBE.
I wish he was run through the heart, and I should get the more credit
by his cure. Now I hope you are satisfied? Come, now let me come at
him—now let me come at him.—[_Viewing his wound._] Oops, what a gash is
here! why, sir, a man may drive a coach and six horses into your body.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Oh!
PROBE.
Why, what the devil have you run the gentleman through with—a
scythe?—[_Aside_.] A little scratch between the skin and the ribs,
that’s all.
LOVELESS.
Let me see his wound.
PROBE.
Then you shall dress it, sir; for if anybody looks upon it I won’t.
LOVELESS.
Why, thou art the veriest coxcomb I ever saw!
PROBE.
Sir, I am not master of my trade for nothing.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Surgeon!
PROBE.
Sir.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Are there any hopes?
PROBE.
Hopes! I can’t tell. What are you willing to give for a cure?
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Five hundred paunds with pleasure.
PROBE.
Why then perhaps there may be hopes; but we must avoid further
delay.—Here, help the gentleman into a chair, and carry him to my house
presently—that’s the properest place—[_Aside_.] to bubble him out of
his money.—[_Aloud_.] Come, a chair—a chair quickly—there, in with him.
[SERVANTS _put_ LORD FOPPINGTON _into a chair_.]
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Dear Loveless, adieu; if I die, I forgive thee; and if I live, I hope
thou wilt do as much by me. I am sorry you and I should quarrel, but I
hope here’s an end on’t; for if you are satisfied, I am.
LOVELESS.
I shall hardly think it worth my prosecuting any further, so you may be
at rest, sir.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Thou art a generous fellow, strike me dumb!—[_Aside_.] But thou hast an
impertinent wife, stap my vitals!
PROBE.
So—carry him off!—carry him off!—We shall have him into a fever
by-and-by.—Carry him off! [_Exit with_ LORD FOPPINGTON.] Enter COLONEL
TOWNLY.
COLONEL TOWNLY.
So, so, I am glad to find you all alive.—I met a wounded peer carrying
off. For heaven’s sake what was the matter?
LOVELESS.
Oh, a trifle! he would have made love to my wife before my face, so she
obliged him with a box o’ the ear, and I ran him through the body, that
was all.
COLONEL TOWNLY.
Bagatelle on all sides. But pray, madam, how long has this noble lord
been an humble servant of yours?
AMANDA.
This is the first I have heard on’t—so I suppose, ’tis his quality more
than his love has brought him into this adventure. He thinks his title
an authentic passport to every woman’s heart below the degree of a
peeress.
COLONEL TOWNLY.
He’s coxcomb enough to think anything: but I would not have you brought
into trouble for him. I hope there’s no danger of his life?
LOVELESS.
None at all. He’s fallen into the hands of a roguish surgeon, who, I
perceive, designs to frighten a little money out of him: but I saw his
wound—’tis nothing: he may go to the ball tonight if he pleases.
COLONEL TOWNLY.
I am glad you have corrected him without further mischief, or you might
have deprived me of the pleasure of executing a plot against his
lordship, which I have been contriving with an old acquaintance of
yours.
LOVELESS.
Explain.
COLONEL TOWNLY.
His brother, Tom Fashion, is come down here, and we have it in
contemplation to save him the trouble of his intended wedding: but we
want your assistance. Tom would have called but he is preparing for his
enterprise, so I promised to bring you to him—so, sir, if these ladies
can spare you—
LOVELESS.
I’ll go with you with all my heart.—[_Aside_.] Though I could wish,
methinks, to stay and gaze a little longer on that creature. Good gods!
how engaging she is!—but what have I to do with beauty? I have already
had my portion, and must not covet more.
AMANDA.
Mr. Loveless, pray one word with you before you go. [_Exit_ COLONEL
TOWNLY.
LOVELESS.
What would my dear?
AMANDA.
Only a woman’s foolish question: how do you like my cousin here?
LOVELESS.
Jealous already, Amanda?
AMANDA.
Not at all: I ask you for another reason.
LOVELESS.
[_Aside_.] Whate’er her reason be, I must not tell her true.—[_Aloud_.]
Why, I confess, she’s handsome: but you must not think I slight your
kinswoman, if I own to you, of all the women who may claim that
character, she is the last that would triumph in my heart.
AMANDA.
I’m satisfied.
LOVELESS.
Now tell me why you asked?
AMANDA.
At night I will—adieu!
LOVELESS.
I’m yours. [_Kisses her and exit_.]
AMANDA.
I’m glad to find he does not like her, for I have a great mind to
persuade her to come and live with me. [_Aside_.]
BERINTHIA.
So! I find my colonel continues in his airs; there must be something
more at the bottom of this than the provocation he pretends from me.
[_Aside_.]
AMANDA.
For Heaven’s sake, Berinthia, tell me what way I shall take to persuade
you to come and live with me.
BERINTHIA.
Why, one way in the world there is, and but one.
AMANDA.
And pray what is that?
BERINTHIA.
It is to assure me—I shall be very welcome.
AMANDA.
If that be all, you shall e’en sleep here tonight.
BERINTHIA.
Tonight.
AMANDA.
Yes, tonight.
BERINTHIA.
Why, the people where I lodge will think me mad.
AMANDA.
Let ’em think what they please.
BERINTHIA.
Say you so, Amanda? Why, then, they shall think what they please: for
I’m a young widow, and I care not what anybody thinks.—Ah, Amanda, it’s
a delicious thing to be a young widow!
AMANDA.
You’ll hardly make me think so.
BERINTHIA.
Poh! because you are in love with your husband.
AMANDA.
Pray, ’tis with a world of innocence I would inquire whether you think
those we call women of reputation do really escape all other men as
they do those shadows of beaux.
BERINTHIA.
Oh no, Amanda; there are a sort of men make dreadful work amongst ’em,
men that may be called the beau’s antipathy, for they agree in nothing
but walking upon two legs. These have brains, the beau has none. These
are in love with their mistress, the beau with himself. They take care
of their reputation, the beau is industrious to destroy it. They are
decent, he’s a fop; in short, they are men, he’s an ass.
AMANDA.
If this be their character, I fancy we had here, e’en now, a pattern of
’em both.
BERINTHIA.
His lordship and Colonel Townly?
AMANDA.
The same.
BERINTHIA.
As for the lord, he is eminently so; and for the other, I can assure
you there’s not a man in town who has a better interest with the women
that are worth having an interest with.
AMANDA.
He answers the opinion I had ever of him. [_Takes her hand_.] I must
acquaint you with a secret—’tis not that fool alone has talked to me of
love; Townly has been tampering too.
BERINTHIA.
[_Aside_.] So, so! here the mystery comes out!—[_Aloud_.] Colonel
Townly! impossible, my dear!
AMANDA.
’Tis true indeed; though he has done it in vain; nor do I think that
all the merit of mankind combined could shake the tender love I bear my
husband; yet I will own to you, Berinthia, I did not start at his
addresses, as when they came from one whom I contemned.
BERINTHIA.
[_Aside_.] Oh, this is better and better!—[_Aloud_.] Well said,
innocence! and you really think, my dear, that nothing could abate your
constancy and attachment to your husband?
AMANDA.
Nothing, I am convinced.
BERINTHIA.
What, if you found he loved another woman better?
AMANDA.
Well!
BERINTHIA.
Well!—why, were I that thing they call a slighted wife, somebody should
run the risk of being that thing they call—a husband. Don’t I talk
madly?
AMANDA.
Madly indeed!
BERINTHIA.
Yet I’m very innocent.
AMANDA.
That I dare swear you are. I know how to make allowances for your
humour: but you resolve then never to marry again?
BERINTHIA.
Oh no! I resolve I will.
AMANDA.
How so?
BERINTHIA.
That I never may.
AMANDA.
You banter me.
BERINTHIA.
Indeed I don’t: but I consider I’m a woman, and form my resolutions
accordingly.
AMANDA.
Well, my opinion is, form what resolutions you will, matrimony will be
the end on’t.
BERINTHIA.
I doubt it. But ah, Heavens! I have business at home, and am half an
hour too late.
AMANDA.
As you are to return with me, I’ll just give some orders, and walk with
you.
BERINTHIA.
Well, make haste, and we’ll finish this subject as we go—[_Exit_
AMANDA.]. Ah, poor Amanda! you have led a country life. Well, this
discovery is lucky! Base Townly! at once false to me and treacherous to
his friend!—And my innocent and demure cousin too! I have it in my
power to be revenged on her, however. Her husband, if I have any skill
in countenance, would be as happy in my smiles as Townly can hope to be
in hers. I’ll make the experiment, come what will on’t. The woman who
can forgive the being robbed of a favoured lover, must be either an
idiot or a wanton. [_Exit_.]
ACT III.
SCENE I.—LORD FOPPINGTON’s _Lodgings. Enter_ LORD FOPPINGTON, _and_ LA
VAROLE.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Hey, fellow, let thy _vis-à-vis_ come to the door.
LA VAROLE.
Will your lordship venture so soon to expose yourself to the weather?
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Sir, I will venture as soon as I can expose myself to the ladies.
LA VAROLE.
I wish your lordship would please to keep house a little longer; I’m
afraid your honour does not well consider your wound.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
My wound!—I would not be in eclipse another day, though I had as many
wounds in my body as I have had in my heart. So mind, Varole, let these
cards be left as directed; for this evening I shall wait on my future
father-in-law, Sir Tunbelly, and I mean to commence my devoirs to the
lady, by giving an entertainment at her father’s expense; and hark
thee, tell Mr. Loveless I request he and his company will honour me
with their presence, or I shall think we are not friends.
LA VAROLE.
I will be sure, milor. [_Exit_.]
_Enter_ TOM FASHION.
TOM FASHION.
Brother, your servant; how do you find yourself today?
LORD FOPPINGTON.
So well that I have ardered my coach to the door—so there’s no danger
of death this baut, Tam.
TOM FASHION.
I’m very glad of it.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
[_Aside_.] That I believe a lie.—[_Aloud_.] Pr’ythee, Tam, tell me one
thing—did not your heart cut a caper up to your mauth, when you heard I
was run through the bady?
TOM FASHION.
Why do you think it should?
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Because I remember mine did so when I heard my uncle was shot through
the head.
TOM FASHION.
It, then, did very ill.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Pr’ythee, why so?
TOM FASHION.
Because he used you very well.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Well!—Naw, strike me dumb! he starved me; he has let me want a thausand
women for want of a thausand paund.
TOM FASHION.
Then he hindered you from making a great many ill bargains; for I think
no woman worth money that will take money.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
If I was a younger brother I should think so too.
TOM FASHION.
Then you are seldom much in love?
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Never, stap my vitals!
TOM FASHION.
Why, then, did you make all this bustle about Amanda?
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Because she’s a woman of insolent virtue, and I thought myself piqued
in honour to debauch her.
TOM FASHION.
Very well.—[_Aside_.] Here’s a rare fellow for you, to have the
spending of ten thousand pounds a year! But now for my business with
him.—[_Aloud_.] Brother, though I know to talk of any business
(especially of money) is a theme not quite so entertaining to you as
that of the ladies, my necessities are such, I hope you’ll have
patience to hear me.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
The greatness of your necessities, Tam, is the worst argument in the
waurld for your being patiently heard. I do believe you are going to
make a very good speech, but, strike me dumb! it has the worst
beginning of any speech I have heard this twelvemonth.
TOM FASHION.
I’m sorry you think so.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
I do believe thou art: but, come, let’s know the affair quickly.
TOM FASHION.
Why, then, my case, in a word, is this: the necessary expenses of my
travels have so much exceeded the wretched income of my annuity, that I
have been forced to mortgage it for five hundred pounds, which is
spent. So unless you are so kind as to assist me in redeeming it, I
know no remedy but to take a purse.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Why, faith, Tam, to give you my sense of the thing, I do think taking a
purse the best remedy in the waurld; for if you succeed, you are
relieved that way, if you are taken [_Drawing his hand round his
neck_], you are relieved t’other.
TOM FASHION.
I’m glad to see you are in so pleasant a humour; I hope I shall find
the effects on’t.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Why, do you then really think it a reasonable thing, that I should give
you five hundred paunds?
TOM FASHION.
I do not ask it as a due, brother; I am willing to receive it as a
favour.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Then thou art willing to receive it anyhow, strike me speechless! But
these are damned times to give money in; taxes are so great, repairs so
exorbitant, tenants such rogues, and bouquets so dear, that the devil
take me I’m reduced to that extremity in my cash, I have been forced to
retrench in that one article of sweet pawder, till I have brought it
down to five guineas a maunth—now judge, Tam, whether I can spare you
five paunds.
TOM FASHION.
If you can’t I must starve, that’s all.—[_Aside_.] Damn him!
LORD FOPPINGTON.
All I can say is, you should have been a better husband.
TOM FASHION.
Ouns! if you can’t live upon ten thousand a year, how do you think I
should do’t upon two hundred?
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Don’t be in a passion, Tam, for passion is the most unbecoming thing in
the waurld—to the face. Look you, I don’t love to say anything to you
to make you melancholy, but upon this occasion I must take leave to put
you in mind that a running horse does require more attendance than a
coach-horse. Nature has made some difference twixt you and me.
TOM FASHION.
Yes—she has made you older.—[_Aside_.] Plague take her.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
That is not all, Tam.
TOM FASHION.
Why, what is there else?
LORD FOPPINGTON.
[_Looks first on himself and then on his brother_.] Ask the ladies.
TOM FASHION.
Why, thou essence-bottle, thou musk-cat! dost thou then think thou hast
any advantage over me but what Fortune has given thee?
LORD FOPPINGTON.
I do, stap my vitals!
TOM FASHION.
Now, by all that’s great and powerful, thou art the prince of coxcombs!
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Sir, I am proud at being at the head of so prevailing a party.
TOM FASHION.
Will nothing provoke thee?—Draw, coward!
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Look you, Tam, you know I have always taken you for a mighty dull
fellow, and here is one of the foolishest plats broke out that I have
seen a lang time. Your poverty makes life so burdensome to you, you
would provoke me to a quarrel, in hopes either to slip through my lungs
into my estate, or to get yourself run through the guts, to put an end
to your pain. But I will disappoint you in both your designs; far, with
the temper of a philasapher, and the discretion of a statesman—I shall
leave the room with my sword in the scabbard. [_Exit_.]
TOM FASHION.
So! farewell, brother; and now, conscience, I defy thee. Lory!
_Enter_ LORY.
LORY.
Sir!
TOM FASHION.
Here’s rare news, Lory; his lordship has given me a pill has purged off
all my scruples.
LORY.
Then my heart’s at ease again: for I have been in a lamentable fright,
sir, ever since your conscience had the impudence to intrude into your
company.
TOM FASHION.
Be at peace; it will come there no more: my brother has given it a
wring by the nose, and I have kicked it downstairs. So run away to the
inn, get the chaise ready quickly, and bring it to Dame Coupler’s
without a moment’s delay.
LORY.
Then, sir, you are going straight about the fortune?
TOM FASHION.
I am.—Away—fly, Lory!
LORY.
The happiest day I ever saw. I’m upon the wing already. Now then I
shall get my wages. [_Exeunt_.]
SCENE II.—_A Garden behind_ LOVELESS’S _Lodgings. Enter_ LOVELESS _and_
SERVANT.
LOVELESS.
Is my wife within?
SERVANT.
No, sir, she has gone out this half-hour.
LOVELESS.
Well, leave me.—[_Exit_ SERVANT.] How strangely does my mind run on
this widow!—Never was my heart so suddenly seized on before. That my
wife should pick out her, of all womankind, to be her playfellow! But
what fate does, let fate answer for: I sought it not. So! by Heavens!
here she comes.
_Enter_ BERINTHIA.
BERINTHIA.
What makes you look so thoughtful, sir? I hope you are not ill.
LOVELESS.
I was debating, madam, whether I was so or not, and that was it which
made me look so thoughtful.
BERINTHIA.
Is it then so hard a matter to decide? I thought all people were
acquainted with their own bodies, though few people know their own
minds.
LOVELESS.
What if the distemper I suspect be in the mind?
BERINTHIA.
Why then I’ll undertake to prescribe you a cure.
LOVELESS.
Alas! you undertake you know not what.
BERINTHIA.
So far at least, then, you allow me to be a physician.
LOVELESS.
Nay, I’ll allow you to be so yet further: for I have reason to believe,
should I put myself into your hands, you would increase my distemper.
BERINTHIA.
How?
LOVELESS.
Oh, you might betray me to my wife.
BERINTHIA.
And so lose all my practice.
LOVELESS.
Will you then keep my secret?
BERINTHIA.
I will.
LOVELESS.
Well—but swear it.
BERINTHIA.
I swear by woman.
LOVELESS.
Nay, that’s swearing by my deity; swear by your own, and I shall
believe you.
BERINTHIA.
Well then, I swear by man!
LOVELESS.
I’m satisfied. Now hear my symptoms, and give me your advice. The first
were these; when I saw you at the play, a random glance you threw at
first alarmed me. I could not turn my eyes from whence the danger
came—I gazed upon you till my heart began to pant—nay, even now, on
your approaching me, my illness is so increased that if you do not help
me I shall, whilst you look on, consume to ashes. [_Takes her hand._]
BERINTHIA.
O Lord, let me go! ’tis the plague, and we shall be infected.
[_Breaking from him._]
LO
|
-at-arms. But I must
stand gossiping no longer; the rumours that we are likely ere long to
have war with France, have rarely bettered my trade. Since the wars in
Scotland men's arms have rusted somewhat, and my two men are hard at
work mending armour and fitting swords to hilts, and forging pike-heads.
You see I am a citizen though I dwell outside the bounds, because house
rent is cheaper and I get my charcoal without paying the city dues. So I
can work somewhat lower than those in the walls, and I have good custom
from many in Kent, who know that my arms are of as good temper as those
turned out by any craftsman in the city.”
Giles Fletcher's anticipations as to the result of his guest's illness
turned out to be well founded. The fever abated, but left her prostrate
in strength. For a few weeks she lingered; but she seemed to have little
hold of life, and to care not whether she lived or died. So, gradually
she faded away.
“I know you will take care of my boy as if he were your own, Bertha,”
she said one day; “and you and your husband will be far better
protectors for him than I should have been had I lived. Teach him to be
honest and true. It were better, methinks, that he grew up thinking you
his father and mother, for otherwise he may grow discontented with
his lot; but this I leave with you, and you must speak or keep silent
according as you see his disposition and mind. If he is content to
settle down to a peaceful life here, say nought to him which would
unsettle his mind; but if Walter turn out to have an adventurous
disposition, then tell him as much as you think fit of his history, not
encouraging him to hope to recover his father's lands and mine, for that
can never be, seeing that before that time can come they would have been
enjoyed for many years by others; but that he may learn to bear himself
bravely and gently as becomes one of good blood.”
A few days later Lady Alice breathed her last, and at her own request
was buried quietly and without pomp, as if she had been a child of the
bowman, a plain stone, with the name “Dame Alice Somers”, marking the
grave.
The boy grew and throve until at fourteen years old there was no
stronger or sturdier lad of his age within the city bounds. Giles had
caused him to be taught to read and write, accomplishments which were
common among the citizens, although they were until long afterwards rare
among the warlike barons. The greater part of his time, however, was
spent in sports with lads of his own age in Moorfields beyond the walls.
The war with France was now raging, and, as was natural, the boys in
their games imitated the doings of their elders, and mimic battles,
ofttimes growing into earnest, were fought between the lads of
the different wards. Walter Fletcher, as he was known among his
play-fellows, had by his strength and courage won for himself the proud
position of captain of the boys of the ward of Aldgate.
Geoffrey Ward had kept his word, and had already begun to give the lad
lessons in the use of arms. When not engaged otherwise Walter would,
almost every afternoon, cross London Bridge and would spend hours in the
armourer's forge. Geoffrey's business had grown, for the war had caused
a great demand for arms, and he had now six men working in the forge. As
soon as the boy could handle a light tool Geoffrey allowed him to work,
and although not able to wield the heavy sledge Walter was able to do
much of the finer work. Geoffrey encouraged him in this, as, in the
first place, the use of the tools greatly strengthened the boy's
muscles, and gave him an acquaintance with arms. Moreover, Geoffrey was
still a bachelor, and he thought that the boy, whom he as well as Giles
had come to love as a son, might, should he not take up the trade of
war, prefer the occupation of an armourer to that of a bowmaker, in
which case he would take him some day as his partner in the forge. After
work was over and the men had gone away, Geoffrey would give the lad
instructions in the use of the arms at which he had been at work, and so
quick and strong was he that he rapidly acquired their use, and Geoffrey
foresaw that he would one day, should his thoughts turn that way, prove
a mighty man-at-arms.
It was the knowledge which he acquired from Geoffrey which had much to
do with Walter's position among his comrades. The skill and strength
which he had acquired in wielding the hammer, and by practice with the
sword rendered him a formidable opponent with the sticks, which
formed the weapons in the mimic battles, and indeed not a few were the
complaints which were brought before Giles Fletcher of bruises and hurts
caused by him.
“You are too turbulent, Walter,” the bowyer said one day when a
haberdasher from the ward of Aldersgate came to complain that his son's
head had been badly cut by a blow with a club from Walter Fletcher. “You
are always getting into trouble, and are becoming the terror of other
boys. Why do you not play more quietly? The feuds between the boys of
different wards are becoming a serious nuisance, and many injuries have
been inflicted. I hear that the matter has been mentioned in the Common
Council, and that there is a talk of issuing an order that no boy not
yet apprenticed to a trade shall be allowed to carry a club, and that
any found doing so shall be publicly whipped.”
“I don't want to be turbulent,” Walter said; “but if the Aldersgate boys
will defy us, what are we to do? I don't hit harder than I can help, and
if Jonah Harris would leave his head unguarded I could not help hitting
it.”
“I tell you it won't do, Walter,” Giles said. “You will be getting
yourself into sore trouble. You are growing too masterful altogether,
and have none of the quiet demeanour and peaceful air which becomes an
honest citizen. In another six months you will be apprenticed, and then
I hope we shall hear no more of these doings.”
“My father is talking of apprenticing me, Master Geoffrey,” Walter said
that evening. “I hope that you will, as you were good enough to promise,
talk with him about apprenticing me to your craft rather than to his. I
should never take to the making of bows, though, indeed, I like well
to use them; and Will Parker, who is teaching me says that I show rare
promise; but it would never be to my taste to stand all day sawing, and
smoothing, and polishing. One bow is to me much like another, though my
father holds that there are rare differences between them; but it is a
nobler craft to work on iron, and next to using arms the most pleasant
thing surely is to make them. One can fancy what good blows the sword
will give and what hard knocks the armour will turn aside; but some day,
Master Geoffrey, when I have served my time, I mean to follow the army.
There is always work there for armourers to do, and sometimes at a pinch
they may even get their share of fighting.”
Walter did not venture to say that he would prefer to be a man-at-arms,
for such a sentiment would be deemed as outrageous in the ears of a
quiet city craftsman as would the proposal of the son of such a man
nowadays to enlist as a soldier. The armourer smiled; he knew well
enough what was in Walter's mind. It had cost Geoffrey himself a hard
struggle to settle down to a craft, and deemed it but natural that
with the knightly blood flowing in Walter's veins he should long to
distinguish himself in the field. He said nothing of this, however, but
renewed his promise to speak to Giles Fletcher, deeming that a few years
passed in his forge would be the best preparation which Walter could
have for a career as a soldier.
CHAPTER II: THE HUT IN THE MARSHES
A week later a party of knights and court gallants, riding across the
fields without the walls, checked their horses to look at a struggle
which was going on between two parties of boys. One, which was
apparently the most powerful, had driven the other off from a heap of
rubbish which had been carried without the walls. Each party had a flag
attached to a stick, and the boys were armed with clubs such as those
carried by the apprentice boys. Many of them carried mimic shields made
of wood, and had stuffed their flat caps with wool or shavings, the
better to protect their heads from blows. The smaller party had just
been driven from the heap, and their leader was urging them to make
another effort to regain it.
“That is a gallant-looking lad, and a sturdy, my Lord de Vaux,” a boy of
about ten years of age said. “He bears himself like a young knight, and
he has had some hard knocks, for, see, the blood is streaming down his
face. One would scarcely expect to see these varlets of the city playing
so roughly.”
“The citizens have proved themselves sturdy fighters before now, my
prince,” the other said; “they are ever independent, and hold to their
rights even against the king. The contingent which the city sends to the
wars bears itself as well as those of any of the barons.”
“See!” the boy interrupted, “they are going to charge again. Their
leader has himself seized the flag and has swung his shield behind him,
just as a knight might do if leading the stormers against a place of
strength. Let us stop till we see the end of it.”
With a shout of “Aldgate! Aldgate!” the leader of the assailants dashed
forward, followed by his comrades, and with a rush reached the top of
the heap.
“Well done!” the young prince exclaimed, clapping his hands. “See how
he lays about him with that club of his. There, he has knocked down the
leader of the defenders as if his club had been a battle-axe. Well done,
young sir, well done! But his followers waver. The others are too strong
for them. Stand, you cowards, rally round your leader!” and in his
enthusiasm the young prince urged his horse forward to the scene of
conflict.
But the assailants were mastered; few of them could gain the top of the
heap, and those who did so were beaten back from it by the defenders.
Heavy blows were exchanged, and blood flowed freely from many of their
heads and faces, for in those days boys thought less than they do now
of hard knocks, and manliness and courage were considered the first of
virtues. Their leader, however, still stood his ground on the crest,
though hardly pressed on all sides, and used his club both to strike and
parry with a skill which aroused the warmest admiration on the part of
the prince. In vain his followers attempted to come to his rescue; each
time they struggled up the heap they were beaten back again by those on
the crest.
“Yield thee prisoner,” the assailants of their leader shouted, and the
prince in his excitement echoed the cry. The lad, however, heard or
heeded them not. He still kept his flag aloft in his left hand. With a
sudden spring he struck down one of his opponents, plucked up their flag
from the ground, and then fought his way back through his foes to the
edge of the battleground; then a heavy blow struck him on the temple,
and, still holding the flags, he rolled senseless to the foot of the
heap. The defenders with shouts of triumph were rushing down when the
prince urged his horse forward.
“Cease!” he said authoritatively. “Enough has been done, my young
masters, and the sport is becoming a broil.”
Hitherto the lads, absorbed in their strife, had paid but little heed
to the party of onlookers; but at the word they at once arrested their
arms, and, baring their heads, stood still in confusion.
“No harm is done,” the prince said, “though your sport is of the
roughest; but I fear that your leader is hurt, he moves not; lift his
head from the ground.” The boy was indeed still insensible. “My lords,”
the prince said to the knights who had now ridden up, “I fear that this
boy is badly hurt; he is a gallant lad, and has the spirit of a true
knight in him, citizen's son though he be. My Lord de Vaux, will you bid
your squire ride at full speed to the Tower and tell Master Roger, the
leech, to come here with all haste, and to bring such nostrums as may be
needful for restoring the boy to life.”
The Tower was but half a mile distant, but before Master Roger arrived
Walter had already recovered consciousness, and was just sitting up when
the leech hurried up to the spot.
“You have arrived too late, Master Roger,” the prince said; “but I doubt
not that a dose of cordials may yet be of use, for he is still dazed,
and the blow he got would have cracked his skull had it been a thin
one.”
The leech poured some cordial from a vial into a small silver cup and
held it to the boy's lips. It was potent and nigh took his breath away;
but when he had drunk it he struggled to his feet, looking ashamed and
confused when he saw himself the centre of attention of so many knights
of the court.
“What is thy name, good lad?” the prince asked.
“I am known as Walter Fletcher.”
“You are a brave lad,” the prince said, “and if you bear you as well as
a man as you did but now, I would wish no better to ride beside me
in the day of battle. Should the time ever come when you tire of the
peaceable life of a citizen and wish to take service in the wars, go to
the Tower and ask boldly for the Prince of Wales, and I will enroll you
among my own men-at-arms, and I promise you that you shall have your
share of fighting as stark as that of the assault of yon heap. Now, my
lords, let us ride on; I crave your pardon for having so long detained
you.”
Walter was some days before he could again cross London Bridge to
inform his friend Geoffrey of the honour which had befallen him of being
addressed by the Prince of Wales. During the interval he was forced to
lie abed, and he was soundly rated by Master Giles for again getting
into mischief. Geoffrey was far more sympathetic, and said “Well,
Walter, although I would not that Gaffer Giles heard me say so, I think
you have had a piece of rare good fortune. It may be that you may never
have cause to recall the young prince's promise to him; but should
you some day decide to embrace the calling of arms, you could wish for
nothing better than to ride behind the Prince of Wales. He is, by all
accounts, of a most noble and generous disposition, and is said, young
as he is, to be already highly skilled in arms. Men say that he will be
a wise king and a gallant captain, such a one as a brave soldier might
be proud to follow; and as the king will be sure to give him plenty of
opportunities of distinguishing himself, those who ride with him may be
certain of a chance of doing valorous deeds. I will go across the bridge
tomorrow, and will have a talk with Master Fletcher. The sooner you are
apprenticed, the sooner you will be out of your time; and since Madge
married eight years since I have been lonely in the house and shall be
glad to have you with me.”
Geoffrey Ward found his friend more ready to accede to his request, that
Walter should be apprenticed to him, than he had expected. The bowyer,
indeed, was a quiet man, and the high spirits and somewhat turbulent
disposition of his young charge gave him so much uneasiness, that he
was not sorry the responsibility of keeping him in order should be
undertaken by Geoffrey. Moreover, he could not but agree with the
argument, that the promise of the Prince of Wales offered a more
favourable opportunity for Walter to enter upon the career of arms and
so, perhaps, someday to win his way back to rank and honours than
could have been looked for. Therefore, on the following week Walter
was indentured to the armourer, and, as was usual at the time, left his
abode in Aldgate and took up his residence with his master. He threw
himself with his whole heart into the work, and by the time he was
fifteen was on the way to become a skilful craftsman. His frame and
muscles developed with labour, and he was now able to swing all save the
very heaviest hammers in the shop. He had never abated in his practice
at arms, and every day when work was over, he and his master had a
long bout together with cudgel or quarterstaff, sword or axe; Walter of
course used light weapons, but so quick was he with them that Geoffrey
Ward acknowledged that he needed to put out all his skill to hold his
own with his pupil. But it was not alone with Geoffrey that Walter had
an opportunity of learning the use of arms. Whenever a soldier, returned
from the wars, came to have a weapon repaired by the armourer, he would
be sure of an invitation to come in in the evening and take a stoup of
ale, and tell of the battles and sieges he had gone through, and in the
course of the evening would be asked to have a bout of arms with the
young apprentice, whom Geoffrey represented as being eager to learn how
to use the sword as well as how to make it.
Thus Walter became accustomed to different styles of fighting, but found
that very few, indeed, of their visitors were nearly so well skilled
with their arms as his master. Some of the soldiers were mortified at
finding themselves unable to hold their own with a boy; others would
take their reverses in good part and would come again, bringing with
them some comrade known to be particularly skilled with his weapons,
to try the temper of the armourer's apprentice. At the age of fifteen
Walter had won the prize at the sports, both for the best cudgel play
and the best sword-and-buckler play among the apprentices, to the great
disgust of many who had almost reached the age of manhood and were just
out of their time.
On Sundays Walter always spent the day with Giles Fletcher and his wife,
going to mass with them and walking in the fields, where, after service,
the citizens much congregated. Since Walter had gone to work he had
taken no part in the fights and frolics of his former comrades; he was
in fact, far too tired at the end of his day's work to have any desire
to do aught but to sit and listen to the tales of the wars, of the many
old soldiers who pervaded the country. Some of these men were disabled
by wounds or long service, but the greater portion were idle scamps, who
cared not for the hard blows and sufferings of a campaign, liking better
to hang about taverns drinking, at the expense of those to whom they
related fabulous tales of the gallant actions they had performed. Many,
too, wandered over the country, sometimes in twos or threes, sometimes
in large bands, robbing and often murdering travelers or attacking
lonely houses. When in one part or another their ill deeds became too
notorious, the sheriffs would call out a posse of men and they would be
hunted down like wild beasts. It was not, however, easy to catch them,
for great tracts of forests still covered a large portion of the country
and afforded them shelter.
In the country round London these pests were very numerous, for here,
more than anywhere else, was there a chance of plunder. The swamps on
the south side of the river had an especially evil reputation. From
Southwark to Putney stretches a marshy country over which, at high
tides, the river frequently flowed. Here and there were wretched huts,
difficult of access and affording good hiding-places for those pursued
by justice, since searchers could be seen approaching a long way off,
and escape could be made by paths across the swamp known only to the
dwellers there, and where heavily-armed men dared not follow. Further
south, in the wild country round Westerham, where miles of heath and
forest stretched away in all directions, was another noted place where
the robber vagrants mustered thickly, and the Sheriff of Kent had much
trouble with them.
The laws in those days were extremely severe, and death was the penalty
of those caught plundering. The extreme severity of the laws, however,
operated in favour of its breakers, since the sympathy of the people who
had little to lose was with them, and unless caught red-handed in
the act they could generally escape, since none save those who had
themselves been robbed would say aught that would place the pursuers
on their traces, or give testimony which would cost the life of a
fellow-creature. The citizens of London were loud in their complaints
against the discharged soldiers, for it was upon them that the loss
mainly fell, and it was on their petitions to the king that the sheriffs
of Middlesex and Hertford, Essex, Surrey, and Kent, were generally
stirred up to put down the ill-doers.
Sometimes these hunts were conducted in a wholesale way, and the whole
posse of a county would be called out. Then all found within its limits
who had not land or visible occupation were collected. Any against whom
charges could be brought home were hung without more ado, and the rest
were put on board ship and sent across the sea to the army. Sometimes,
when they found the country becoming too hot for them, these men would
take service with some knight or noble going to the war, anxious to take
with him as strong a following as might be, and not too particular as to
the character of his soldiers.
Walter, being of an adventurous spirit, was sometimes wont of a summer
evening, when his work was done, to wander across the marshes, taking
with him his bow and arrows, and often bringing home a wild duck or two
which he shot in the pools. More than once surly men had accosted him,
and had threatened to knock him on the head if they again found him
wandering that way; but Walter laughed at their threats, and seeing,
that though but an apprentice lad, he might be able to send an arrow as
straight to the mark as another, they were content to leave him alone.
One day when he was well-nigh in the heart of the swamp of Lambeth he
saw a figure making his way across. The hour was already late and the
night was falling, and the appearance of the man was so different
from that of the usual denizens of the swamp that Walter wondered what
business there might be. Scarcely knowing why he did so, Walter threw
himself down among some low brushwood and watched the approaching
figure. When he came near he recognized the face, and saw, to his
surprise, that it was a knight who had but the day before stopped at
the armourer's shop to have two rivets put in his hauberk. He had
particularly noticed him because of the arrogant manner in which he
spoke. Walter had himself put in the rivets, and had thought, as he
buckled on the armour again, how unpleasant a countenance was that of
its wearer. He was a tall and powerful man, and would have been handsome
had not his eyes been too closely set together; his nose was narrow, and
the expression of his face reminded Walter of a hawk. He had now laid
aside his helmet, and his figure was covered with a long cloak.
“He is up to no good,” Walter said to himself, “for what dealings could
a knight honestly have with the ruffians who haunt these swamps. It is
assuredly no business of mine, but it may lead to an adventure, and I
have had no real fun since I left Aldgate. I will follow and see if I
can get to the bottom of the mystery.”
When he came close to the spot where Walter was lying the knight paused
and looked round as if uncertain of his way. For four or five minutes
he stood still, and then gave a shout of “Humphrey” at the top of
his voice. It was answered by a distant “Hallo!” and looking in the
direction from which the answer had come, Walter saw a figure appear
above some bushes some four hundred yards distant. The knight at once
directed his steps in that direction, and Walter crept cautiously after
him.
“A pest upon these swamps and quagmires,” the knight said angrily as he
neared the other. “Why didst not meet me and show me the way through, as
before?”
“I thought that as you had come once you would be able to find your way
hither again,” the man said. “Had I thought that you would have missed
it I would have come ten times as far, rather than have had my name
shouted all over the country. However, there is no one to hear, did you
shout thrice as loud, so no harm is done.”
“I thought I saw a figure a short time since,” the knight said.
The man looked round in all directions.
“I see none,” he said, “and you may have been mistaken, for the light is
waning fast. It were ill for anyone I caught prying about here. But come
in, sir knight; my hovel is not what your lordship is accustomed to, but
we may as well talk there as here beneath the sky.”
The two men disappeared from Walter's sight. The latter in much surprise
crept forward, but until he reached the spot where he had last seen the
speakers he was unable to account for their disappearance. Then he saw
that the spot, although apparently a mere clump of bushes no higher
than the surrounding country, was really an elevated hummock of ground.
Anyone might have passed close to the bushes without suspecting that
aught lay among them. In the centre, however, the ground had been cut
away, and a low doorway, almost hidden by the bushes, gave access into a
half subterranean hut; the roof was formed of an old boat turned bottom
upwards, and this had been covered with brown turf. It was an excellent
place of concealment, as searchers might have passed within a foot of
the bushes without suspecting that aught lay concealed within them.
“A clever hiding place,” Walter thought to himself. “No wonder the posse
search these swamps in vain. This is the lowest and wettest part of the
swamp, and would be but lightly searched, for none would suspect that
there was a human habitation among these brown ditches and stagnant
pools.”
To his disappointment the lad could hear nothing of the conversation
which was going on within the hut. The murmur of voices came to his ear,
but no words were audible; however, he remained patiently, thinking that
perhaps as they came out a word might be said which would give him a
clue to the object of the mysterious interview between a knight and one
who was evidently a fugitive from justice.
His patience was rewarded. In the half hour which he waited the night
had fallen, and a thick fog which was rising over the swamps rendered it
difficult to discern anything at the distance of a few paces.
“You are quite sure that you can manage it?” a voice said as the two men
issued from the hut.
“There is no difficulty in managing it,” the other replied, “if the boat
is punctual to the hour named. It will be getting dusk then, and if one
boat runs into another no one need be surprised. Such accidents will
happen.”
“They will be here just before nightfall,” the other said, “and you will
know the boat by the white mantle the lady will wear. The reward will be
fifty pieces of gold, of which you have received ten as earnest. You
can trust me, and if the job be well done I shall take no count of the
earnest money.
“You may consider it as good as done,” the other replied. “If the boat
is there the matter is settled. Now I will lead you back across the
swamps. I would not give much for your life if you tried to find the way
alone. Who would have thought when you got me off from being hung,
after that little affair at Bruges, that I should be able to make myself
useful to your worship?”
“You may be sure,” the knight replied, “that it was just because I
foresaw that you might be useful that I opened the doors of your cell
that night. It is always handy in times like these to be able to lay
one's hand on a man whom you can hang if you choose to open your mouth.”
“Did it not strike you, sir knight, that it might enter my mind that
it would be very advisable for me to free myself from one who stands
towards me in that relation?”
“Certainly it did,” the knight replied; “but as I happen to be able to
make it for your interest to serve me, that matter did not trouble me.
I knew better than to bring money into this swamp of yours, when I
might be attacked by half a dozen ruffians like yourself; and I took
the precaution of informing Peter, the captain of my men-at-arms, of the
spot to which I was going, bidding him, in case I came not back, to set
a hue and cry on foot and hunt down all who might be found here, with
the especial description of your worthy self.”
Walter could hear no more; he had taken off his shoes and followed them
at a distance, and their voices still acted as a guide to him through
the swamp. But he feared to keep too close, as, although the darkness
would conceal his figure, he might at any moment tread in a pool or
ditch, and so betray his presence. Putting his foot each time to the
ground with the greatest caution, he moved quietly after them. They
spoke little more, but their heavy footsteps on the swampy ground were a
sufficient guidance for him. At last these ceased suddenly. A few words
were spoken, and then he heard returning steps. He drew aside a few
feet and crouched down, saw a dim figure pass through the mist, and then
resumed his way. The ground was firmer now, and, replacing his shoes, he
walked briskly on. As he neared the higher ground along which the road
ran he heard two horsemen galloping away in the distance. He now turned
his face east, and after an hour's walking he reached the armourer's.
“Why, Walter, you are late,” the smith said. “The men are in bed this
hour or more, and I myself can scarce keep awake. Where hast thou been,
my boy?”
“I have been in the swamps and lost my way,” Walter replied.
“It is a bad neighbourhood, lad, and worse are the people who live
there. If I had my way the whole posse should be called out, and the
marshes searched from end to end, and all found there should be knocked
on head and thrown into their own ditches. There would be no fear of any
honest man coming to his end thereby; but now to bed, lad. You can tell
me all about it tomorrow; but we have a rare day's work before us, and
the fire must be alight at daybreak.”
On his way back Walter had debated with himself whether to inform
his master of what had happened. He was, however, bent upon having an
adventure on his own account, and it was a serious thing in those days
for an apprentice lad to bring an accusation against a noble. The city
would not indeed allow even an apprentice to be overridden, and although
Geoffrey Ward's forge stood beyond the city walls it was yet within the
liberties, the city allowing its craftsmen to open shops just outside
the gates, and to enjoy the same privileges as if dwelling actually
within the walls.
On the following afternoon Walter asked leave to cease work an hour
earlier than usual, as he wished to go across into the city. The
armourer was surprised, since this was the first time that such a thing
had happened since the lad had worked for him.
“What are you up to, Walter?--some mischief, I will be bound. Go, lad;
you have worked so steadily that you have well earned more than an
hour's holiday should you want it.”
Walter crossed the bridge, and seeking out four or five of his old
companions, begged them to bring their bows and clubs and rejoin him
at the stairs by London Bridge. To their laughing inquiries whether he
meant to go a-shooting of fish, he told them to ask no questions until
they joined him. As soon as work was over the boys gathered at the
steps, where Walter had already engaged a boat. There were some mocking
inquiries from the watermen standing about as to where they were going
shooting. Walter answered with some light chaff, and, two of the party
taking oars, they started up the river.
“Now I will tell you what we are bent on,” Walter said. “From some words
I overheard I believe that some of the ruffians over in the marshes
are this evening going to make an attack upon a boat with a lady in
it coming down the river. We will be on the spot, and can give them a
reception such as they do not expect.”
“Do you know who the lady is, Walter?”
“I have not the least idea. I only caught a few words, and may be wrong;
still, it will do no harm should I be mistaken.”
The tide was running down strongly, for there had been a good deal of
rain during the preceding week, and all night it had poured heavily. It
was fine now, but the stream was running down thick and turbid, and it
needed all the boys' efforts to force the wherry against it. They rowed
by turns; all were fairly expert at the exercise, for in those days the
Thames was at once the great highway and playground of London. To the
wharves below the bridge ships brought the rich merchandise of Italy and
the Low Countries; while from above, the grain, needed for the wants of
the great city was floated down in barges from the west.
Passing the Temple, the boys rowed along by the green banks and fields
as far as Westminster, which at that time was almost a rival of the
city, for here were the abbey and great monastery; here were the king's
palace and court, and the houses of many of his nobles. Then they went
along by the low shores of Millbank, keeping a sharp lookout for boats
going down with the stream. It was already getting dark, for Walter had
not allowed for the strength of the stream, and he was full of anxiety
lest he should arrive too late.
CHAPTER III: A THWARTED PLOT
A boat was rowing rapidly down the stream. It had passed the village of
Chelsea, and the men were doing their best to reach their destination
at Westminster before nightfall. Two men were rowing; in the stern sat
a lady with a girl about eleven years old. A woman, evidently a servant,
sat beside the lady, while behind, steering the boat, was an elderly
retainer.
“It is getting dark,” the lady said; “I would that my cousin James had
not detained us so long at Richmond, and then after all he was unable to
accompany us. I like not being out on the river so late.”
“No, indeed, my lady,” the woman replied; “I have heard tell lately much
of the doings of the river pirates. They say that boats are often picked
up stove in and broken, and that none know what had become of their
occupants, and that bodies, gashed and hewn, are often found floating in
the river.
“How horrible,” the girl said; “your tale makes me shiver, Martha; I
would you had said nothing about it till we were on land again.
“Do not be afraid, Edith,” the lady said cheerfully; “we shall soon be
safe at Westminster.”
There were now only two or three boats to be seen on the river. They
were nearing the end of their journey now, and the great pile of the
Abbey could be seen through the darkness. A boat with several men in
it was seen rowing across the river towards the Lambeth side. It was
awkwardly managed.
“Look out!” the steersman of the boat coming down stream shouted; “you
will run into us if you don't mind.”
An order was given in the other boat, the men strained to their oars,
and in an instant the boat ran with a crash into the side of the other,
cutting it down to the water's edge. For
|
’cause ‘there’s never a law
of God or man runs north of Fifty-three,’ as the poetry man remarked,
an’ he couldn’t have spoke truer if he’d knowed what he was sayin’.
Everybody is privileged to ‘look out’ his own game up here. A square
deal an’ no questions asked.”
She looked somewhat doubtful at this till she caught the heat of
Glenister’s gaze. Some boldness of his look brought home to her the
actual situation, and a stain rose in her cheek. She noted him more
carefully; noted his heavy shoulders and ease of bearing, an ease and
looseness begotten of perfect muscular control. Strength was equally
suggested in his face, she thought, for he carried a marked young
countenance, with thrusting chin, aggressive thatching brows, and mobile
mouth that whispered all the changes from strength to abandon. Prominent
was a look of reckless energy. She considered him handsome in a heavy,
virile, perhaps too purely physical fashion.
“You want to stowaway?” he asked.
“I’ve had a right smart experience in that line,” said Dextry, “but I
never done it by proxy. What’s your plan?”
“She will stay here to-night,” said Glenister quickly. “You and I will
go below. Nobody will see her.”
“I can’t let you do that,” she objected. “Isn’t there some place where I
can hide?” But they reassured her and left.
When they had gone, she crouched trembling upon her seat for a long
time, gazing fixedly before her. “I’m afraid!” she whispered; “I’m
afraid. What am I getting into? Why do men look so at me? I’m
frightened. Oh, I’m sorry I undertook it.” At last she rose wearily. The
close cabin oppressed her; she felt the need of fresh air. So, turning
out the lights, she stepped forth into the night. Figures loomed near
the rail and she slipped astern, screening herself behind a life-boat,
where the cool breeze fanned her face.
The forms she had seen approached, speaking earnestly. Instead of
passing, they stopped abreast of her hiding-place; then, as they began
to talk, she saw that her retreat was cut off and that she must not
stir.
“What brings her here?” Glenister was echoing a question of Dextry’s.
“Bah! What brings them all? What brought ‘the Duchess,’ and Cherry
Malotte, and all the rest?”
“No, no,” said the old man. “She ain’t that kind--she’s too fine, too
delicate--too pretty.”
“That’s just it--too pretty! Too pretty to be alone--or anything except
what she is.”
Dextry growled sourly. “This country has plumb ruined you, boy. You
think they’re all alike--an’ I don’t know but they are--all but this
girl. Seems like she’s different, somehow--but I can’t tell.”
Glenister spoke musingly:
“I had an ancestor who buccaneered among the Indies, a long time
ago--so I’m told. Sometimes I think I have his disposition. He comes and
whispers things to me in the night. Oh, he was a devil, and I’ve got his
blood in me--untamed and hot--I can hear him saying something
now--something about the spoils of war. Ha, ha! Maybe he’s right. I
fought for her to-night--Dex--the way he used to fight for his
sweethearts along the Mexicos. She’s too beautiful to be good--and
‘there’s never a law of God or man runs north of Fifty-three.’”
They moved on, his vibrant, cynical laughter stabbing the girl till she
leaned against the yawl for support.
She held herself together while the blood beat thickly in her ears, then
fled to the cabin, hurling herself into her berth, where she writhed
silently, beating the pillow with hands into which her nails had bitten,
staring the while into the darkness with dry and aching eyes.
CHAPTER II
THE STOWAWAY
She awoke to the throb of the engines, and, gazing cautiously through
her stateroom window, saw a glassy, level sea, with the sun brightly
agleam on it.
So this was Bering? She had clothed it always with the mystery of her
school-days, thinking of it as a weeping, fog-bound stretch of gray
waters. Instead, she saw a flat, sunlit main, with occasional
sea-parrots flapping their fat bodies out of the ship’s course. A
glistening head popped up from the waters abreast, and she heard the cry
of “seal!”
Dressing, the girl noted minutely the personal articles scattered about
the cabin, striving to derive therefrom some fresh hint of the
characteristics of the owners. First, there was an elaborate,
copper-backed toilet-set, all richly ornamented and leather-bound. The
metal was magnificently hand-worked and bore Glenister’s initial. It
spoke of elegant extravagance, and seemed oddly out of place in an
Arctic miner’s equipment, as did also a small set of De Maupassant.
Next, she picked up Kipling’s _Seven Seas_, marked liberally, and felt
that she had struck a scent. The roughness and brutality of the poems
had always chilled her, though she had felt vaguely their splendid pulse
and swing. This was the girl’s first venture from a sheltered life. She
had not rubbed elbows with the world enough to find that Truth may be
rough, unshaven, and garbed in homespun. The book confirmed her analysis
of the junior partner.
Pendent from a hook was a worn and blackened holster from which peeped
the butt of a large Colt’s revolver, showing evidence of many years’
service. It spoke mutely of the white-haired Dextry, who, before her
inspection was over, knocked at the door, and, when she admitted him,
addressed her cautiously:
“The boy’s down forrad, teasin’ grub out of a flunky. He’ll be up in a
minute. How’d ye sleep?”
“Very well, thank you,” she lied, “but I’ve been thinking that I ought
to explain myself to you.”
“Now, see here,” the old man interjected, “there ain’t no explanations
needed till you feel like givin’ them up. You was in trouble--that’s
unfortunate; we help you--that’s natural; no questions asked--that’s
Alaska.”
“Yes--but I know you must think--”
“What bothers me,” the other continued irrelevantly, “is how in blazes
we’re goin’ to keep you hid. The steward’s got to make up this room, and
somebody’s bound to see us packin’ grub in.”
“I don’t care who knows if they won’t send me back. They wouldn’t do
that, would they?” She hung anxiously on his words.
“Send you back? Why, don’t you savvy that this boat is bound for Nome?
There ain’t no turnin’ back on gold stampedes, and this is the wildest
rush the world ever saw. The captain wouldn’t turn back--he
couldn’t--his cargo’s too precious and the company pays five thousand a
day for this ship. No, we ain’t puttin’ back to unload no stowaways at
five thousand per. Besides, we passengers wouldn’t let him--time’s too
precious.” They were interrupted by the rattle of dishes outside, and
Dextry was about to open the door when his hand wavered uncertainly
above the knob, for he heard the hearty greeting of the ship’s captain.
“Well, well, Glenister, where’s all the breakfast going?”
“Oo!” whispered the old man--“that’s Cap’ Stephens.”
“Dextry isn’t feeling quite up to form this morning,” replied Glenister
easily.
“Don’t wonder! Why weren’t you aboard sooner last night? I saw
you--‘most got left, eh? Served you right if you had.” Then his voice
dropped to the confidential: “I’d advise you to cut out those women.
Don’t misunderstand me, boy, but they’re a bad lot on this boat. I saw
you come aboard. Take my word for it--they’re a bad lot. Cut ’em out.
Guess I’ll step inside and see what’s up with Dextry.”
The girl shrank into her corner, gazing apprehensively at the other
listener.
“Well--er--he isn’t up yet,” they heard Glenister stammer; “better come
around later.”
“Nonsense; it’s time he was dressed.” The master’s voice was gruffly
good-natured. “Hello, Dextry! Hey! Open up for inspection.” He rattled
the door.
There was nothing to be done. The old miner darted an inquiring glance
at his companion, then, at her nod, slipped the bolt, and the captain’s
blue bulk filled the room.
His grizzled, close-bearded face was genially wrinkled till he spied the
erect, gray figure in the corner, when his cap came off involuntarily.
There his courtesy ended, however, and the smile died coldly from his
face. His eyes narrowed, and the good-fellowship fell away, leaving him
the stiff and formal officer.
“Ah,” he said, “not feeling well, eh? I thought I had met all of our
lady passengers. Introduce me, Dextry.”
Dextry squirmed under his cynicism.
“Well--I--ah--didn’t catch the name myself.”
“What?”
“Oh, there ain’t much to say. This is the lady we brought aboard last
night--that’s all.”
“Who gave you permission?”
“Nobody. There wasn’t time.”
“There wasn’t _time_, eh? Which one of you conceived the novel scheme of
stowing away ladies in your cabin? Whose is she? Quick! Answer me.”
Indignation was vibrant in his voice.
“Oh!” the girl cried--her eyes widening darkly. She stood slim and pale
and slightly trembling.
His words had cut her bitterly, though through it all he had
scrupulously avoided addressing her.
The captain turned to Glenister, who had entered and closed the door.
“Is this your work? Is she yours?”
“No,” he answered quietly, while Dextry chimed in:
“Better hear details, captain, before you make breaks like that. We
helped the lady side-step some sailors last night and we most got left
doing it. It was up to her to make a quick get-away, so we helped her
aboard.”
“A poor story! What was she running away from?” He still addressed the
men, ignoring her completely, till, with hoarse voice, she broke in:
“You mustn’t talk about me that way--I can answer your questions. It’s
true--I ran away. I had to. The sailors came after me and fought with
these men. I had to get away quickly, and your friends helped me on here
from gentlemanly kindness, because they saw me unprotected. They are
still protecting me. I can’t explain how important it is for me to reach
Nome on the first boat, because it isn’t my secret. It was important
enough to make me leave my uncle at Seattle at an hour’s notice when we
found there was no one else who could go. That’s all I can say. I took
my maid with me, but the sailors caught her just as she was following me
down the ship’s ladder. She had my bag of clothes when they seized her.
I cast off the rope and rowed ashore as fast as I could, but they
lowered another boat and followed me.”
The captain eyed her sharply, and his grim lines softened a bit, for she
was clean-cut and womanly, and utterly out of place. He took her in,
shrewdly, detail by detail, then spoke directly to her:
“My dear young lady--the other ships will get there just as quickly as
ours, maybe more quickly. To-morrow we strike the ice-pack and then it
is all a matter of luck.”
“Yes, but the ship I left won’t get there.”
At this the commander started, and, darting a great, thick-fingered hand
at her, spoke savagely:
“What’s that? What ship? Which one did you come from? Answer me.”
“The _Ohio_,” she replied, with the effect of a hand-grenade. The master
glared at her.
“The _Ohio_! Good God! You _dare_ to stand there and tell me that?” He
turned and poured his rage upon the others.
“She says the _Ohio_, d’ye hear? You’ve ruined me! I’ll put you in
irons--all of you. The _Ohio_!”
“What d’ye mean? What’s up?”
“What’s up? There’s small-pox aboard the _Ohio_! This girl has broken
quarantine. The health inspectors bottled up the boat at six o’clock
last night! That’s why I pulled out of Unalaska ahead of time, to avoid
any possible delay. Now we’ll all be held up when we get to Nome. Great
Heavens! do you realize what this means--bringing this hussy aboard?”
His eyes burned and his voice shook, while the two partners stared at
each other in dismay. Too well they knew the result of a small-pox panic
aboard this crowded troop-ship. Not only was every available cabin
bulging with passengers, but the lower decks were jammed with both
humanity and live stock all in the most unsanitary conditions. The
craft, built for three hundred passengers, was carrying triple her
capacity; men and women were stowed away like cattle. Order and a
half-tolerable condition were maintained only by the efforts of the
passengers themselves, who held to the thought that imprisonment and
inconvenience would last but a few days longer. They had been aboard
three weeks and every heart was aflame with the desire to reach Nome--to
reach it ahead of the pressing horde behind.
What would be the temper of this gold-frenzied army if thrown into
quarantine within sight of their goal? The impatient hundreds would have
to lie packed in their floating prison, submitting to the foul disease.
Long they must lie thus, till a month should
[Illustration: “SHE STEPPED BACK AGAINST THE WALL, HER WONDROUS, DEEP,
GRAY EYES WIDE AND TROUBLED”]
have passed after the disappearance of the last symptom. If the disease
recurred sporadically, that might mean endless weeks of maddening
idleness. It might even be impossible to impose the necessary restraint;
there would be violence, perhaps mutiny.
The fear of the sickness was nothing to Dextry and Glenister, but of
their mine they thought with terror. What would happen in their absence,
where conditions were as unsettled as in this new land; where titles
were held only by physical possession of the premises? During the long
winter of their absence, ice had held their treasure inviolate, but with
the warming summer the jewel they had fought for so wearily would lie
naked and exposed to the first comer. The Midas lay in the valley of the
richest creek, where men had schemed and fought and slain for the right
to inches. It was the fruit of cheerless, barren years of toil, and if
they could not guard it--they knew the result.
The girl interrupted their distressing reflections.
“Don’t blame these men, sir,” she begged the captain. “I am the only one
at fault. Oh! I _had_ to get away. I have papers here that must be
delivered quickly.” She laid a hand upon her bosom. “They couldn’t be
trusted to the unsettled mail service. It’s almost life and death. And I
assure you there is no need of putting me in quarantine. I haven’t the
small-pox. I wasn’t even exposed to it.”
“There’s nothing else to do,” said Stephens. “I’ll isolate you in the
deck smoking-cabin. God knows what these madmen on board will do when
they hear about it, though. They’re apt to tear you to shreds. They’re
crazy!”
Glenister had been thinking rapidly.
“If you do that, you’ll have mutiny in an hour. This isn’t the crowd to
stand that sort of thing.”
“Bah! Let ’em try it. I’ll put ’em down.” The officer’s square jaws
clicked.
“Maybe so; but what then? We reach Nome and the Health Inspector hears
of small-pox suspects, then we’re all quarantined for thirty days; eight
hundred of us. We’ll lie at Egg Island all summer while your company
pays five thousand a day for this ship. That’s not all. The firm is
liable in damages for your carelessness in letting disease aboard.”
“_My carelessness!_” The old man ground his teeth.
“Yes; that’s what it amounts to. You’ll ruin your owners, all right.
You’ll tie up your ship and lose your job, that’s a cinch!”
Captain Stephens wiped the moisture from his brow angrily.
“My carelessness! Curse you--you say it well. Don’t you realize that I
am criminally liable if I don’t take every precaution?” He paused for a
moment, considering. “I’ll hand her over to the ship’s doctor.”
“See here, now,” Glenister urged. “We’ll be in Nome in a week--before
the young lady would have time to show symptoms of the disease, even if
she were going to have it--and a thousand to one she hasn’t been
exposed, and will never show a trace of it. Nobody knows she’s aboard
but we three. Nobody will see her get off. She’ll stay in this cabin,
which will be just as effectual as though you isolated her in any other
part of the boat. It will avoid a panic--you’ll save your ship and your
company--no one will be the wiser--then if the girl comes down with
small-pox after she gets ashore, she can go to the pest-house and not
jeopardize the health of all the people aboard this ship. You go up
forrad to your bridge, sir, and forget that you stepped in to see old
Bill Dextry this morning. We’ll take care of this matter all right. It
means as much to us as it does to you. We’ve _got_ to be on Anvil Creek
before the ground thaws or we’ll lose the Midas. If you make a fuss,
you’ll ruin us all.”
For some moments they watched him breathlessly as he frowned in
indecision, then--
“You’ll have to look out for the steward,” he said, and the girl sank to
a stool while two great tears rolled down her cheeks. The captain’s eyes
softened and his voice was gentle as he laid his hand on her head.
“Don’t feel hurt over what I said, miss. You see, appearances don’t tell
much, hereabouts--most of the pretty ones are no good. They’ve fooled me
many a time, and I made a mistake. These men will help you through; I
can’t. Then when you get to Nome, make your sweetheart marry you the day
you land. You are too far north to be alone.”
He stepped out into the passage and closed the door carefully.
CHAPTER III
IN WHICH GLENISTER ERRS
“Well, bein’ as me an’ Glenister is gougin’ into the bowels of Anvil
Creek all last summer, we don’t really get the fresh-grub habit fastened
on us none. You see, the gamblers down-town cop out the few aigs an’
green vegetables that stray off the ships, so they never get out as far
as the Creek none; except, maybe, in the shape of anecdotes.
“We don’t get intimate with no nutriments except hog-boosum an’ brown
beans, of which luxuries we have unstinted measure, an’ bein’ as this is
our third year in the country we hanker for bony fido grub, somethin’
scan’lous. Yes, ma’am--three years without a taste of fresh fruit nor
meat nor nuthin’--except pork an’ beans. Why, I’ve et bacon till my
immortal soul has growed a rind.
“When it comes time to close down the claim, the boy is sick with the
fever an’ the only ship in port is a Point Barrow whaler, bound for
Seattle. After I book our passage, I find they have nothin’ aboard to
eat except canned salmon, it bein’ the end of a two years’ cruise, so
when I land in the States after seventeen days of a fish diet, I am what
you might call sated with canned grub, and have added salmon to the list
of things concernin’ which I am goin’ to economize.
“Soon’s ever I get the boy into a hospital, I gallop up to the best
restarawnt in town an’ prepare for the huge pot-latch. This here, I
determine, is to be a gormandizin’ jag which shall live in hist’ry, an’
wharof in later years the natives of Puget Sound shall speak with bated
breath.
“First, I call for five dollars’ worth of pork an’ beans an’ then a
full-grown platter of canned salmon. When the waiter lays ’em out in
front of me, I look them vittles coldly in their disgustin’ visages, an’
say in sarcastic accents:
“‘Set there, damn you! an’ watch me eat _real_ grub,’ which I proceed to
do, cleanin’ the menu from soda to hock. When I have done my worst, I
pile bones an’ olive seeds an’ peelin’s all over them articles of
nourishment, stick toothpicks into ’em, an’ havin’ offered ’em what
other indignities occur to me, I leave the place.”
Dextry and the girl were leaning over the stern-rail, chatting idly in
the darkness. It was the second night out and the ship lay dead in the
ice-pack. All about them was a flat, floe-clogged sea, leprous and
mottled in the deep twilight that midnight brought in this latitude.
They had threaded into the ice-field as long as the light lasted,
following the lanes of blue water till they closed, then drifting idly
till others appeared; worming out into leagues of open sea, again
creeping into the shifting labyrinth till darkness rendered progress
perilous.
Occasionally they had passed herds of walrus huddled sociably upon
ice-pans, their wet hides glistening in the sunlight. The air had been
clear and pleasant, while away on all quarters they had seen the smoke
of other ships toiling through the barrier. The spring fleet was
knocking at the door of the Golden North.
Chafing at her imprisonment, the girl had asked the old man to take her
out on deck under the shelter of darkness; then she had led him to speak
of his own past experiences, and of Glenister’s; which he had done
freely. She was frankly curious about them, and she wondered at their
apparent lack of interest in her own identity and her secret mission.
She even construed their silence as indifference, not realizing that
these Northmen were offering her the truest evidence of _camaraderie_.
The frontier is capable of no finer compliment than this utter disregard
of one’s folded pages. It betokens that highest faith in one’s
fellow-man, the belief that he should be measured by his present deeds,
not by his past. It says, translated: “This is God’s free country where
a man is a man, nothing more. Our land is new and pure, our faces are to
the front. If you have been square, so much the better; if not, leave
behind the taints of artificial things and start again on the
level--that’s all.”
It had happened, therefore, that since the men had asked her no
questions, she had allowed the hours to pass and still hesitated to
explain further than she had explained to Captain Stephens. It was much
easier to let things continue as they were; and there was, after all, so
little that she was at liberty to tell them.
In the short time since meeting them, the girl had grown to like Dextry,
with his blunt chivalry and boyish, whimsical philosophy, but she
avoided Glenister, feeling a shrinking, hidden terror of him, ever since
her eavesdropping of the previous night. At the memory of that scene
she grew hot, then cold--hot with anger, icy at the sinister power and
sureness which had vibrated in his voice. What kind of life was she
entering where men spoke of strange women with this assurance and hinted
thus of ownership? That he was handsome and unconscious of it, she
acknowledged, and had she met him in her accustomed circle of friends,
garbed in the conventionalities, she would perhaps have thought of him
as a striking man, vigorous and intelligent; but here he seemed
naturally to take on the attributes of his surroundings, acquiring a
picturesque negligée of dress and morals, and suggesting rugged,
elemental, chilling potentialities. While with him--and he had sought
her repeatedly that day--she was uneasily aware of his strong
personality tugging at her; aware of the unbridled passionate flood of a
nature unbrooking of delay and heedless of denial. This it was that
antagonized her and set her every mental sinew in rigid resistance.
During Dextry’s garrulous ramblings, Glenister emerged from the darkness
and silently took his place beside her, against the rail.
“What portent do you see that makes you stare into the night so
anxiously?” he inquired.
“I am wishing for a sight of the midnight sun or the aurora borealis,”
she replied.
“Too late for one an’ too fur south for the other,” Dextry interposed.
“We’ll see the sun further north, though.”
“Have you ever heard the real origin of the Northern Lights?” the young
man inquired.
“Naturally, I never have,” she answered.
“Well, here it is. I have it from the lips of a great hunter of the
Tananas. He told it to me when I was sick, once, in his cabin, and
inasmuch as he is a wise Indian and has a reputation for truth, I have
no doubt that it is scrupulously correct.
“In the very old days, before the white man or corned beef had invaded
this land, the greatest tribe in all the North was the Tananas. The
bravest hunter of these was Itika, the second chief. He could follow a
moose till it fell exhausted in the snow and he had many belts made from
the claws of the brown bear which is deadly wicked and, as every one
knows, inhabited by the spirits of ‘Yabla-men,’ or devils.
“One winter a terrible famine settled over the Tanana Valley. The moose
departed from the gulches and the caribou melted from the hills like
mist. The dogs grew gaunt and howled all night, the babies cried, the
women became hollow-eyed and peevish.
“Then it was that Itika decided to go hunting over the saw-tooth range
which formed the edge of the world. They tried to dissuade him, saying
it was certain death because a pack of monstrous white wolves, taller
than the moose and swifter than the eagle, was known to range these
mountains, running madly in chase. Always, on clear, cold nights, could
be seen the flashing of the moonbeams from their gleaming hungry sides,
and although many hunters had crossed the passes in other years, they
never returned, for the pack slew them.
“Nothing could deter Itika, however, so he threaded his way up through
the range and, night coming, burrowed into a drift to sleep in his
caribou-skin. Peering out into the darkness, he saw the flashing lights
a thousand times brighter than ever before. The whole heavens were
ablaze with shifting streamers that raced and writhed back and forth in
wild revel. Listening, he heard the hiss and whine of dry snow under the
feet of the pack, and a distant noise as of rushing winds, although the
air was deathly still.
“With daylight, he proceeded through the range, till he came out above a
magnificent valley. Descending the slope, he entered a forest of
towering spruce, while on all sides the snow was trampled with tracks as
wide as a snow-shoe. There came to him a noise which, as he proceeded,
increased till it filled the woods. It was a frightful din, as though a
thousand wolves were howling with the madness of the kill. Cautiously
creeping nearer, he found a monstrous white animal struggling beneath a
spruce which had fallen upon it in such fashion as to pinion it
securely.
“All brave men are tender-hearted, so Itika set to work with his axe and
cleared away the burden, regardless of the peril to himself. When he had
released it, the beast arose and instead of running away addressed him
in the most polite and polished Indian, without a trace of accent.
“‘You have saved my life. Now, what can I do for you?’
“‘I want to hunt in this valley. My people are starving,’ said Itika, at
which the wolf was greatly pleased and rounded up the rest of the pack
to help in the kill.
“Always thereafter when Itika came to the valley of the Yukon the giant
drove hunted with him. To this day they run through the mountains on
cold, clear nights, in a multitude, while the light of the moon flickers
from their white sides, flashing up into the sky in weird, fantastic
figures. Some people call it Northern Lights, but old Isaac assured me
earnestly, toothlessly, and with the light of ancient truth, as I lay
snow-blind in his lodge, that it is nothing more remarkable than the
spirit of Itika and the great white wolves.”
“What a queer legend!” she said. “There must be many of them in this
country. I feel that I am going to like the North.”
“Perhaps you will,” Glenister replied, “although it is not a woman’s
land.”
“Tell me what led you out here in the first place. You are an Eastern
man. You have had advantages, education--and yet you choose this. You
must love the North.”
“Indeed I do! It calls to a fellow in some strange way that a gentler
country never could. When once you’ve lived the long, lazy June days
that never end, and heard geese honking under a warm, sunlit midnight;
or when once you’ve hit the trail on a winter morning so sharp and clear
that the air stings your lungs, and the whole white, silent world
glistens like a jewel; yes--and when you’ve seen the dogs romping in
harness till the sled runners ring; and the distant mountain-ranges come
out like beautiful carvings, so close you can reach them--well, there’s
something in it that brings you back--that’s all, no matter where you’ve
lost yourself. It means health and equality and unrestraint. That’s what
I like best, I dare say--the utter unrestraint.
“When I was a school-boy, I used to gaze at the map of Alaska for hours.
I’d lose myself in it. It wasn’t anything but a big, blank corner in the
North then, with a name, and mountains, and mystery. The word ‘Yukon’
suggested to me everything unknown and weird--hairy mastodons, golden
river bars, savage Indians with bone arrow-heads and seal-skin trousers.
When I left college I came as fast as ever I could--the adventure, I
suppose....
“The law was considered my destiny. How the shades of old Choate and
Webster and Patrick Henry must have wailed when I forswore it. I’ll bet
Blackstone tore his whiskers.”
“I think you would have made a success,” said the girl, but he laughed.
“Well, anyhow, I stepped out, leaving the way to the United States
Supreme bench unobstructed, and came North. I found it was where I
belonged. I fitted in. I’m not contented--don’t think that. I’m
ambitious, but I prefer these surroundings to the others--that’s all.
I’m realizing my desires. I’ve made a fortune--now I’ll see what else
the world has.”
He suddenly turned to her. “See here,” he abruptly questioned, “what’s
your name?”
She started, and glanced towards where Dextry had stood, only to find
that the old frontiersman had slipped away during the tale.
“Helen Chester,” she replied.
“Helen Chester,” he repeated, musingly. “What a pretty name! It seems
almost a pity to change it--to marry, as you will.”
“I am not going to Nome to get married.”
He glanced at her quickly.
“Then you won’t like this country. You are two years too early; you
ought to wait till there are railroads and telephones, and _tables
d’hôte_, and chaperons. It’s a man’s country yet.”
“I don’t see why it isn’t a woman’s country, too. Surely we can take a
part in taming it. Yonder on the Oregon is a complete railroad, which
will be running from the coast to the mines in a few weeks. Another ship
back there has the wire and poles and fixings for a telephone system,
which will go up in a night. As to _tables d’hôte_, I saw a real French
count in Seattle with a monocle. He’s bringing in a restaurant outfit,
imported snails, and _pâté de foies gras_. All that’s wanting is the
chaperon. In my flight from the _Ohio_ I left mine. The sailors caught
her. You see I am not far ahead of schedule.”
“What part are you going to take in this taming process?” he asked.
She paused long before replying, and when she did her answer sounded
like a jest.
“I herald the coming of the law,” she said.
“The law! Bah! Red tape, a dead language, and a horde of shysters! I’m
afraid of law in this land; we’re too new and too far away from things.
It puts too much power in too few hands. Heretofore we men up here have
had recourse to our courage and our Colt’s, but we’ll have to unbuckle
them both when the law comes. I like the court that hasn’t any appeal.”
He laid hand upon his hip.
“The Colt’s may go, but the courage never will,” she broke in.
“Perhaps. But I’ve heard rumors already of a plot to prostitute the law.
In Unalaska a man warned Dextry, with terror in his eye, to beware of
it; that beneath the cloak of Justice was a drawn dagger whetted for us
fellows who own the rich diggings. I don’t think there’s any truth in
it, but you can’t tell.”
“The law is the foundation--there can’t be any progress without it.
There is nothing here now but disorder.”
“There isn’t half the disorder you think there is. There weren’t any
crimes in this country till the tender-feet arrived. We didn’t know what
a thief was. If you came to a cabin you walked in without knocking. The
owner filled up the coffee-pot and sliced into the bacon; then when he’d
started your meal, he shook hands and asked your name. It was just the
same whether his cache was full or whether he’d packed his few pounds of
food two hundred miles on his back. That was hospitality to make your
Southern article look pretty small. If there was no one at home, you ate
what you needed. There was but one unpardonable breach of etiquette--to
fail to leave dry kindlings. I’m afraid of the transitory stage we’re
coming to--that epoch of chaos between the death of the old and the
birth of the new. Frankly, I like the old way best. I love the license
of it. I love to wrestle with nature; to snatch, and guard, and fight
for what I have. I’ve been beyond the law for years and I want to stay
there, where life is just what it was intended to be--a survival of the
fittest.”
His large hands, as he gripped the bulwark, were tense and corded, while
his rich voice issued softly from his chest with the hint of power
unlimited behind it. He stood over her, tall, virile, and magnetic. She
saw now why he had so joyously hailed the fight of the previous night;
to one of his kind it was as salt air to the nostrils. Unconsciously she
approached him, drawn by the spell of his strength.
“My pleasures are violent and my hate is mighty bitter in my mouth.
What I want, I take. That’s
|
the dog scarcely reach to twenty years, and multitudes of insects are
born and die within a few weeks, so one species may have assigned to
its life, for aught I know, a hundred thousand years as its normal
period, and another not more than a thousand. If creation was, with
respect to the species, what I have elsewhere proved it was with respect
to the individual,[1]--a violent irruption into the cycle of life--then
we may well conceive this to have taken place at very varying relative
periods in the life-history of the different species;--that is to say,
that at a given date, (viz., that of creation) one species might be just
completing, _ideally_, its allotted course, another just commencing, and
a third attaining its meridian.
Certain it is, that not a few species of animals have died during the
present constitution of things. Races, which we know on indubitable
evidence to have existed during the dominion of man, have died out, have
become extinct, so that not a single individual survives. The entire
totality of individuals which constituted the species, have, in these
cases, ceased to be. Some of these seem to have died at a very early era
of human history; but others at a comparatively recent period, and some
even within our own times. Even within the last twenty years several
animals have been taken, of which it is highly probable that not a
single representative remains on the earth; while there are others yet
again, which we know to be reduced to a paucity so extreme, that their
extinction can scarcely be delayed more than a few years at most. Thus
we may consider ourselves as standing by the dying-beds of these
creatures, with the consciousness that we shall soon see them no more;
that the sentence is gone forth against them; that their sands are
running to the last grains, and that no effort of ours can materially
prolong their existence. The facts from which these conclusions are
drawn are highly curious, and I shall endeavour to lay them, with as
much brevity as they will allow, before my readers.
On that prochronic hypothesis, by which alone, as I conceive, the facts
revealed by geological investigation can be reconciled with the unerring
statements of Scripture,--every word of which is truth, the truth of a
"God that cannot lie,"--we may assume the actual creation of this earth
to have taken place at that period which is geologically known as the
later Tertiary Era, or thereabout. When, on the third day, "the waters
under the heaven were gathered together into one place, and the dry land
appeared," it is not necessary to suppose that the form assumed by the
emerging land was immediately that which it now has; we may, on the
other hand, I think, assume as likely, that successive or continuous
changes of elevation followed, which have been protracted, perhaps
constantly decreasing in extent and force, to the present hour.[2]
Perhaps between the six days' work of Creation and the Noachic Flood,
Europe became much altered in outline, and in elevation. It may have
been, at first, a great archipelago, agreeing with the epithet by which
it is designated in early Scripture, "the Isles,"[3] and by which it
was subsequently known for ages. The Pyrenees, the Alps, and the
Apennines, already emerged, were slowly uniting, and the Carpathians,
the Balkan, the Taurus, and the Caucasus, were uprearing, while the vast
regions to the north were still an expanse of open sea. England was
probably united with the newly-formed European continent, and embraced
Ireland in one great mass of unbroken land, which stretched far away
into the Atlantic. Volcanoes were active in the north of Ireland, and in
the west of Scotland, pouring forth those floods of fiery lava which
have cooled into the columnar forms seen at the Giant's Causeway and the
Cave of Fingal. Slowly the north of Europe emerged, and the great
south-west expanse of Britain sank beneath the sea, leaving, it may be,
the large island of Atlantis in mid-ocean, to be submerged by a later
catastrophe.
Probably changes very similar were coevally taking place in Asia and
North America, while the vast flat alluvial regions of South America
were, perhaps, even still more recently formed, and a great Pacific
continent was in course of subsidence, of which Australasia and
Polynesia are the existing remains.
Such changes of elevation, and of the continuity of land, must effect
considerable alterations of climate; and, therefore, it is not
surprising to know that, in earliest ages, animals and plants flourished
in regions to which they would now be altogether unfitted, and that
many races existed then which have since died out; for geological and
climatal modifications are among the most easily conceivable causes of
the decease of species.
In the great swamps of emerging Germany, and in the, as yet, only
half-drained valleys of Switzerland, lurked then the heavy Dinothere.
Huger than the hugest elephant, he carried an enormous body of twenty
feet in length, vast and barrel-like, which even his columnar limbs of
ten feet long scarcely sufficed to raise from the ground. His uncouth
head, elephantine in shape, was furnished with a short proboscis; and
two tusks, short and strong, projected from the lower jaw, not curving
upward, as in the elephant, but downward, as in the walrus. In the
teeming marshes lurked this ungainly beast, half immersed, digging out
with his mighty pickaxe-tusks the succulent roots that permeated the
soft soil, which his sensitive trunk picked up, and conveyed to his
mouth.
On the southern slopes of the slowly-rising Himalayas, already clothed
with forests of teak, and palm, and bamboo, revelled the Sivathere,
another heavy creature, of the bulk of a rhinoceros, and therefore not
more than half equalling the German colossus. He too was a strange
subject. With a proportionally enormous head, in form somewhat between
that of the elephant and of the rhinoceros, minute sunken piggish eyes,
and a short proboscis like that of the tapir, he carried two pairs of
dissimilar horns. On the forehead were placed one pair, seated upon bony
cores, not unlike those of our short-horn oxen. Behind these there rose
another pair, large and massive, which were palmated and branching,
like those of the fallow-deer, but on a gigantic scale. What sort of a
body, and what kind of limbs, furnished the complement of this
curiously-compound head, we do not exactly know; but surely it must have
been a very remarkable form, as it browsed quietly and blamelessly,
among the luxuriant shrubs of those sun-facing slopes.
In the same regions a land Tortoise of enormous bulk, far vaster than
the vastest of now existing species, to which that ponderous one which
will march merrily away with a ton weight on its back, is a mere pigmy,
shook the earth with its waddle, and the forests with its hoarse
bellowing. Broad roads, like our highways, were beaten by it through the
jungle, along which it periodically travelled to the cool springs,
leisurely sauntering, and tarrying to munch the fleshy gourds and
cactuses that bordered its self-made track.
The plains of Siberia, stretching away towards the Arctic Ocean,
sheltered countless hosts of huge pachydermatous quadrupeds. A species
of Rhinoceros, not less bulky than those of the present age, roamed to
the very verge of the Icy Sea; its hide, tough and leathery, was
destitute of folds, but was clothed with tufts of rigid gray hair,--an
ornament which is denied to our existing degenerates. Two horns, the
front one of unusual massiveness and length, were seated, as in several
of the African kinds, one behind the other, and were wielded by a head
of great strength and development.
More remarkable still was that great hairy Elephant, called the
Mammoth, which appears to have swarmed in those cold plains by myriads.
Of equal dimensions to the Indian species of the present age, this
denizen of the north had far more enormous curving tusks, and instead of
the naked hide of those we are familiar with, his body was encased in
black hair, with a thick under stratum of red curled wool, and bore a
long mane on the ridge of the neck.
There was, at the same time, a quadruped, nearly allied to the
elephants, but differing from them in some technical characters. With a
body equally bulky, but considerably longer, it had shorter limbs, a
broader head, small tusks in the lower, as well as large curving ones in
the upper jaw, and probably a trunk intermediate between the elephant's
and the tapir's. Truly cosmopolite as this great Mastodon was, for we
dig up his bones from all parts of the world, he had his head-quarters
in North America, where, from his dimensions and his numbers, he must
have formed a very characteristic feature of the primeval swamps and
forests. There, with his tusks, he grubbed up the young trees, whose
juicy roots he ground down with his great mammillary molar teeth, or
chewed up to a pulp the sapwood of the recent branches and spicy twigs.
And ever and anon he would resort to the broad saline marshes,--the
"Licks," as they are now called,--to lick up the crystallised salt on
their margins, so grateful to all herbivorous quadrupeds. Here, in his
eagerness to gratify his palate with the pungent condiment, he would
press farther and farther into the treacherous quagmire, till he began
to sink, and then, in his terror, he would plunge and flounder, getting
more and more deeply bemired, till at length he could struggle no more,
and the bog would close over him, and he would be no more seen till some
spectacled geologist of this nineteenth century, note-book in hand,
would go and dig up his remains, marvelling at the freshness with which
they had been preserved in the antiseptic peat.
But let us look at South America, where, as the great back-bone chain of
the Andes is being elevated out of the sea, the torrents and cataracts
are pouring down from its sides immense quantities of crumbled rock and
pasty mud, which, deposited upon the vast tabular field, brought by the
upheaving just to the level of the sea, forms that grand alluvial plain
unequalled on the face of the globe for extent, which is clothed with
the mighty forests of Guiana and Brazil, or with the tall grass and
thistles of the Pampas. The torrents still fall; and, meandering through
this glorious plain, unite and form the most majestic of rivers, ever
depositing the rich alluvium, and thus sensibly augmenting, to this day,
the breadth of their noble continent, and their own length.
Strange creatures riot here in these primal ages. The young land, hot
and moist,--moist with the unevaporated water of the depositing rivers,
and hot with the influence of the submarine volcano which is lifting it,
as well as with the beams of the tropical sun,--brings forth from its
steaming bosom, the most gigantic trees in the most profuse luxuriance.
And animal life teems too, in this riant vegetation. Millions of
insects,--ants, and termites, and beetles,--are busy at work upon the
trunks of the great trees, eating them down, and swarming in their
immense populous nests, beyond all imaginings. Surely they will soon eat
up the entire forest, dense and rapid as it grows, and there will be
nothing left but cities of insects. No fear! See those great waddling
beasts[4] with stout short legs, and enormous hoof-like claws so bent
inward that the creatures are obliged to walk on the edge of their
paws,--they are equally busy with the insects, tearing apart with their
powerful claws the earthy nests as fast as they are built, and devouring
the makers themselves by wholesale. Here is a wonderful creature, a vast
armadillo, with a body as big as a rhinoceros, covered with a convex
oval shield, formed of hexagonal plates accurately fitted to each other.
See how he approaches a fallen tree, which his unerring instinct tells
him is perforated through and through, and filled with the swarming
millions of ants; with his powerful jaws he munches up the entire mass;
the thin and papery partitions of the dusty wood are ground to powder,
and the ants are licked in and chewed into a black pulp between those
curious cylinders of teeth.
But lo! here are mightier creatures yet! See the vast Mylodon, the
Scelidothere, and the still more colossal Megathere. Ponderous giants
these! The very forests seem to tremble under their stately stride.
Their immense bulk preponderates behind, terminating in a tail of
wonderful thickness and solidity: the head is mean and awakens no
terror; the eye lacks lustre and threatens no violence, though the whole
form betokens vast power, and the stout limbs are terminated by the same
stout, inbent, sharp hoof-claws. One of them approaches that
wide-spreading locust-tree; he gazes up at the huge mud-brown structures
that resemble hogsheads affixed to the forks of the branches, and he
knows that the luscious termites are filling them to overflowing. His
lips water at the tempting sight; have them he must. But how? that heavy
sternpost of his was never made for climbing; yet see! he rears himself
up against the tree; is he about to essay the scaling? Not he: he knows
his powers better. He gives it one embrace; one strong hug; as if to
test its thickness and hold upon the earth. Now he is digging away
below, scooping out the soft soil from between the roots,--and it is
marvellous to note how rapidly he lays them bare with those great
shovel-like claws of his. Now he rears himself again; straddles wide on
his hind feet, fixing the mighty claws deep in the ground; plants
himself firmly on his huge tail, as on the third foot of a tripod, and
once more grasps the tree. The enormous hind quarters, the limbs and the
loins, the broad pelvis, the thick spinal cord supplying abundant
nervous energy to the swelling muscles, inserted in the ridged and
keeled bones, all come into play, as a _point d'appui_ for the Herculean
effort. "And now conceive the massive frame of the Megathere convulsed
with the mighty wrestling, every vibrating fibre reacting upon its bony
attachment with the force of a hundred giants: extraordinary must be the
strength and proportions of the tree, if, when rocked to and fro, to
right and left, in such an embrace, it can long withstand the efforts of
its assailant."[5] It yields; the roots fly up; the earth is scattered
wide upon the surrounding foliage; the tree comes down with a thundering
crash, cracking and snapping the great boughs like glass; the frightened
insects swarm out at every orifice; but the huge beast is in upon them;
with his sharp hoofs he tears apart the crusty walls of the earth-nests,
and licks out their living contents, fat pupæ, eggs and all, rolling
down the sweet morsels, half sucking, half chewing, with a delighted
gusto that repays him for all his mighty toil.
While the heavy giant is absorbed in his juicy breakfast, see, there
lounges along his neighbour, the Macrauchen. Equally massive, equally
heavy, equally vast, equally peaceful, the stranger resembles a huge
rhinoceros elevated on much loftier limbs; but his most remarkable
feature is an enormously long neck, like that of the camel, but carried
to the altitude of that of the giraffe. Thus he thrusts his great muzzle
into the very centre of the leafy trees, and gathering with his
prehensile and flexible lip the succulent twigs and foliage, he too
finds abundance of food for his immense body, in the teeming vegetation,
without intruding upon the supply of his fellows.
And what enormous mass is suddenly thrust up out of the quiet water of
yonder igaripé? A hoarse, hollow grunt, as it comes up, tells us that
it is alive, and now we discern that it is the head of an animal--the
Toxodon. Half hidden as it is under the shadow of the fan-palms, and the
broad, arrowy leaves of the great arums that grow out of the lake, we
see the little piggish eyes, set far up in the great head, and wide
apart, peeping with a curious union of stupidity and shrewdness; the
immense muzzle and lips; the broad cheeks armed with stiff projecting
bristles; and, as the creature opens its cavernous mouth to seize a
floating gourd, an extraordinary array of incurving teeth, strangely
bowed so as to make a series of arches of immense power. Now, with his
strong front teeth, he tears up the great fleshy arum-roots from the
clay of the bank, and grinds them to pulp; and now, with another grunt,
the vast bristly head sinks beneath the water, and we see it no more.
Hundreds of other creatures are straying around,--sloths, bats, and
monkeys, and birds of gay plumage, on the trees; ant-eaters and cavies,
lizards and snakes, on the ground; butterflies and humming-birds
hovering in the air; tapirs and turtles and crocodiles in the
waters;--but these are matters of course:--we are only thinking of such
as have passed away and left no descendants to perpetuate their forms to
our own times.
Away to the great Austral land--in our day minished to the insular
Australia and New Zealand and a few satellite isles--but then, in the
morning of creation, possibly stretching far to the north and on either
hand, so as to include the scattered groups of Polynesia in one great
continent, and even to reach so far as Madagascar on the west. This was
the region of gigantic fowls, and of marsupial quadrupeds. Kangaroos of
eight or nine feet in stature leaped over the primeval bush, and wombats
and dasyures of elephantine bulk burrowed in the hill sides, and great
lion-like beasts prowled about the plains. But surely the most
characteristic feature of the scene was impressed by the birds! Vast
struthious birds, which would have looked down with supreme contempt on
the loftiest African ostrich, whose limb-bones greatly exceeded in bulk
those of our dray horses, whose three-toed feet made a print in the clay
some eighteen inches long, and whose proud heads commanded the horizon
from an elevation of twelve feet above the ground,--terrible birds,
whose main development of might was in the legs and feet, being utterly
destitute of the least trace of wings--these strode swiftly about the
rank ferny brakes, possessing a conscious power of defence in the back
stroke of their muscular feet, and fearless of man or beast, mainly
nocturnal in their activity, concealing themselves by day in the
recesses of the dense forests, where the majestic trees were interwoven
with cable-like climbers, or couching in the midst of tall reeds and
aroideous plants that margined the great swampy lakes of these regions.
But what of our own land? What of these distant isles of the Gentiles in
that early day, when the enterprising sons of Cain, migrating from the
already straitened land of Nod, were pushing their advancing columns,
with arts and arms, in all directions over the young earth? Did any of
them reach to the as yet insular Europe, settling themselves along the
margins of its deep gulfs and draining basins? Perhaps they did, and
even explored the utmost limits of the great Atlantic island, on the
remains of which we live. What did they find here? A land of mountain
and valley, of plain and down, of lake and river, of bog and fell, of
forest and field, in some features much as now: where the oak, and elm,
and ash covered great tracts, and the birch and fir clothed the hills;
but where the yew and the laurel grew side by side with the
custard-apple and the fan-palm, and the ground was overrun with trailers
of the gourd and melon kind, but where grasses were few and scarce, the
exquisite order _Rosaceæ_, with its beautiful flowers and grateful
fruit, was rarely seen, and the aromatic _Labiatæ_--the thyme, and mint,
and sage--were as yet unknown.
And the beasts that already tenanted this fair land were for bulk and
power worthy of the domain. The Dinothere and the Mastodon wallowed and
browsed where great London now crowds its princely palaces. Through the
greenwood shades of the forests of oak wandered hippopotamuses and
rhinoceroses of several kinds, the long-tusked mammoth, and two or three
species of horses. Two gigantic oxen--a bison and a urus--roamed over
the fir-clad hills of Scotland, and a curious flat-headed ox, of small
size and minute horns, made Ireland its peculiar home. That island, too,
was the metropolis of a colossal fallow-deer, whose remains, ticketed as
those of the Irish Elk, astonish us in our museums. It stood seven feet
in height at the withers, and waved its branching antlers, eleven feet
wide, twelve feet and upwards above the ground;[6] yet its magnificent
stature could not preserve it from a not infrequent fate, that of
becoming intombed in the deep bogs of its native isle. Britain had,
moreover, a stag of scarcely less gigantic proportions, with the
reindeer of the north, and the smaller kinds with which we are now
familiar.
All these herbivores, and numberless smaller genera, some now extinct,
some surviving, were kept in check by powerful predatory tyrants, for
whose representatives we must now look to the jungles of India or the
burning karroos of Southern Africa. The Lion and the Tiger stalked over
these isles, and a terrible tiger-like creature, the Machairode, of even
superior size and power to the scourge of the Bengal jungle, with curved
and saw-edged canine-teeth, hung upon the flanks of the cervine and
bovine herds, and sprang upon the fattest of them. Then, too, there was
a vast Bear, huger and mightier than the fearful grizzly bear of
America, which haunted caves, and prowling around forced down with its
horrid paws the shaggy bull, and broke his stout neck by main force, and
dragged the body home to devour at leisure. And many of these caves, the
holes and chasms of the limestone districts, were inhabited by a
gigantic species of Hyena, which seems to have existed in great numbers,
so that the caverns are strewn all over, from end to end, with thousands
of teeth and disjointed bones, both of the hyenas themselves and of the
other carnivores; shewing that there they lived and died in successive
generations; and, mainly, of other creatures, of very varied species,
great and small, most of them cracked, and crushed, and gnawed, shewing
the plain marks of the powerful conical teeth of those obscene nocturnal
animals.
Thus I have endeavoured to draw a picture, vague and imperfect, I know,
of some of the more remarkable and prominent features of the primeval
earth, limiting the sketch to those forms which we know only by their
fossil remains. In endeavouring to paint their contour and general
appearance, and still more their habits and instincts, conjecture must
be largely at work--a conjecture, however, which takes for its basis the
anatomical exigencies of the osseous structure, and the analogy of
existing creatures the most nearly related to the fossil.
These forms, many of them so huge and uncouth, are well known as having
tenanted various regions of the earth during what is known as the
Tertiary Era, in its later periods. They certainly do not exist in those
regions now. When did their life--their species-life--terminate? I have
been assuming that they were upon the earth, as living sentient beings,
in the earliest age of what we call the historic period--that is,
according to the chronology of the Word of God, which must be true,
within the last six thousand years. This assumption is so heterodox,
that unsupported by evidence, it would be generally rejected; let us
then inquire what evidence there is that man was an inhabitant of the
globe contemporaneously with these huge giants of the bestial creation.
I do not pretend to offer positive evidence concerning the synchronism
of _all_ the animals I have been describing with man; but, as there is
no doubt that they were all contemporaneous, _inter se_, if we can
attain to good grounds for concluding his co-existence with _some_ of
them, it may be no unfair presumption that the case was so with the
others.
And first, with respect to the _Colossochelys Atlas_, that vast fossil
land tortoise of the Sewalik hills, in the north of India, whose
carapace may have covered an area of twelve or fifteen feet in diameter,
and whose entire length, as in walking, when head and tail were
protruded, could not have been much less than thirty feet. The
discoverers of this interesting relic, Dr Falconer and Major Cauntley,
have discussed the question of its probable cessation of existence with
some care; and they have come to the conclusion "that there are fair
grounds for entertaining the belief, as probable, that the
_Colossochelys Atlas_ may have lived down to an early period of the
human epoch, and become extinct since." This they infer on two grounds:
first, from the fact that, in the same strata, which are not limited to
the Sewalik hills, but extend, with the remains of this immense
tortoise, all over the great Indian area, from Ava to the Gulf of
Cambay, other tortoises, crocodiles, &c., which were contemporary with
the _Colossochelys_, have survived to the present time; and, secondly,
from mythologic and cosmogonic traditions of many eastern nations,
having reference to a tortoise of such gigantic size as to be associated
in the current fables with an elephant.[7]
Elian, the Greek naturalist, quoting Megasthenes, a still older
authority, who resided several years in India, and who collected a good
deal of interesting information concerning the country, reports that in
the sea around Ceylon there were found tortoises of such enormous
dimensions that huts were made of their shells, each shell being fifteen
cubits (or twenty-two feet) long; so that several people were able to
find comfortable shelter under it from the rain and sun.[8] And both
Strabo and Pliny[9] assert that the Chelonophagi, who inhabited the
shores of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, converted the enormous
shells of the turtles which they caught into roofs for their houses and
boats for their little voyages. It has been suggested that the
_Colossochelys_ may have given origin to these statements; but I rather
think the great sea-turtles of the genus _Chelone_ are referred to, the
convex shells of which are known in our own day to reach to a length of
eight feet or upwards.
The circumstances attending the discovery of the rhinoceros and elephant
of Siberia are very curious and interesting; since of them we have not
the fossilised skeletons, but the carcases preserved in a fresh state,
as if just dead, with (in one case) the flesh upon the bones in an
eatable state, and actually forming the food of dogs and wolves, the
skin entire, and covered with fur, and even the eyes so perfectly
preserved that the pupils could be distinctly seen.
In 1771, in the frozen gravelly soil of Wilhuji, in the northern part of
Siberia, an animal was found partially exposed. It was twelve feet in
length; its body was enveloped in a skin which had the thickness and
firmness of sole-leather, but was destitute of folds. Short hair,
strongly planted in the pores of the skin, grew on the face in tufts; it
was rigid in texture, and of a grey hue, with here and there a black
bristle, larger and stiffer than the rest. Short ash-grey hair was
observed to clothe the legs, in moderate profusion. The eyelids and
eyelashes were still visible; the remains of the brain were still in the
cavity of the skull, and the flesh of the body, in a putrefying
condition, was still beneath the skin. On the nose there were
indications of a horn having been seated, around which the integument
had formed a sort of fold.
Thus the creature was known to be a Rhinoceros, and the head and feet
were lifted, and conveyed to St Petersburg, where they are still
preserved in the Imperial Museum. Men of science soon remarked that in
very many points this specimen differed from any species now known; and,
indeed, a hairy rhinoceros was, in itself, an anomaly. Subsequent
investigations have revealed that the same species, known as _Rhinoceros
tichorhinus_, inhabited Siberia in great numbers, and is now extinct.
Nearly thirty years afterwards a still more interesting revelation
occurred. The shores of the Icy Ocean had yielded a vast number of
tusks, not distinguishable from those of the known elephants, and
capable of being worked up by ivory-manufacturers, so that they occupied
a well-recognised place in the commercial markets, and they constitute
to this day the principal supply of the Russian ivory-turners. A
fisherman living at the mouth of the Lena, being one day engaged in
collecting tusks, saw among some ice-blocks an uncouth object. The next
year he observed it still further exposed, and in the following season,
1801, he saw that it was an enormous animal, having great tusks, one of
which, with the entire side of the carcase, projected from the frozen
mass. He knew it to be a _Mammoth_, for so the fossil elephants were
called, and observed it with interest. The next season was so cold that
no change took place; but in 1803, the melting of the ice proceeded so
far that the gigantic animal fell down from the cliff entire, and was
deposited on the sand beneath. The following season the fisherman,
Schumachoff, cut out the tusks, which he sold for fifty rubles, and two
years after this the scene was visited by Mr Adams, in the service of
the Imperial Court, who has given an interesting account of his
observations, made, it must be remembered, in the seventh year after the
first discovery:--
"I found the Mammoth," observes this gentleman, "still in the same
place, but altogether mutilated... the Jakutski of the neighbourhood
having cut off the flesh, with which they fed their dogs during the
scarcity. Wild beasts, such as white bears, wolves, wolverines, and
foxes, also fed upon it, and the traces of their footsteps were seen
around. The skeleton, almost entirely devoid of its flesh, remained
whole, with the exception of one fore-leg. The head was covered with a
dry skin; one of the ears, well preserved, was furnished with a tuft of
hairs. All these parts have necessarily been injured in transporting
them a distance of 7330 miles (to St Petersburg); but the eyes have been
preserved, and the pupil of one can still be distinguished.
"The Mammoth was a male, with a long mane on the neck. The tail and
proboscis were not preserved. The skin, of which I possess
three-fourths, is of a dark-grey colour, covered with reddish wool and
black hairs; but the dampness of the spot, where it had lain so long,
had in some degree destroyed the hair. The entire carcase, of which I
collected the bones on the spot, was nine feet four inches high, and
sixteen feet four inches long, without including the tusks, which
measured nine feet six inches along the curve. The distance from the
base or root of the tusk to the point is three feet seven inches. The
two tusks together weighed three hundred and sixty pounds, English
weight, and the head alone four hundred and fourteen pounds.
"I next detached the skin of the side on which the animal had lain,
which was well preserved. This skin was of such extraordinary weight
that ten persons found difficulty in transporting it to the shore. After
this I dug the ground in different places, to ascertain whether any of
its bones were buried, but principally to collect all the hairs which
the white bears had trod into the ground while devouring the flesh.
Although this was difficult from the want of instruments, I succeeded in
collecting more than a pood (thirty-six pounds) of hair. In a few days
the work was completed, and I found myself in possession of a treasure
which amply recompensed me for the fatigues and dangers of the journey,
and the considerable expenses of the enterprise.... The escarpment of
ice was thirty-five to forty toises high; and, according to the report
of the Tungusians, the animal was, when they first saw it, seven toises
below the surface of the ice, &c. On arriving with the Mammoth at
Borchaya, our first care was to separate the remaining flesh and
ligaments from the bones, which were then packed up. When I arrived at
the Jakutsk, I had the good fortune to repurchase the tusks, and from
thence expedited the whole to St Petersburg. The skeleton is now in the
Museum of the Academy, and the skin still remains attached to the head
and feet. A part of the skin, and some of the hair of this animal were
sent by Mr Adams to Sir Joseph Banks, who presented them to the Museum
of the Royal College of Surgeons. The hair is entirely separated from
the skin, excepting in one very small part, where it still remains
attached. It consists of two sorts, common hair and bristles, and of
each there are several varieties, differing in length and thickness.
That remaining fixed on the skin is of the colour of the camel, an inch
and a-half long, very thick-set, and curled in locks. It is interspersed
with a few bristles about three inches long, of a dark-reddish colour.
Among the separate parcels of hair are some rather redder than the short
hair just mentioned, about four inches; and some bristles nearly black,
much thicker than horse hair, and from twelve to eighteen inches long.
The skin, when first brought to the Museum, was offensive; it is now
quite dry and hard, and where most compact, is half-an-inch thick. Its
colour is the dull black of the living elephants."[10]
To me this narrative possesses an intense interest, and I have gazed
with great curiosity on the bit of dried and blackened leather that is
preserved in the Museum in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, knowing it to have
presented the primal freshness of life within the present century. I
cannot help thinking that both the rhinoceros and this elephant roamed
over the plains of Siberia, not only since the creation of man, but even
since the Deluge. The freshness of their state shews that the freezing
up of their carcases must have been sudden, and immediate upon death.
What supposition so natural as that, perhaps in a blinding snowstorm,
they slipped into a crevice in the ice-cliff, were snowed up instantly,
and thus preserved by the antiseptic power of frost to this age? The
glaciers of the north may hold multitudes more of these and kindred
creatures, some of which may yet be disinterred, or thawed out, and may
lift yet more the curtain which so tantalisingly covers the conditions
of
|
Having shown that the non-flesh diet is
the more natural, and the more advantageous from the point of view of
health, let us now consider which of the two--vegetarianism or
omnivorism--is superior from the ethical point of view.
The science of ethics is the science of conduct. It is founded,
primarily, upon philosophical postulates without which no code or system
of morals could be formulated. Briefly, these postulates are, (a), every
activity of man has as its deepest motive the end termed Happiness, (b)
the Happiness of the individual is indissolubly bound up with the
Happiness of all Creation. The truth of (a) will be evident to every
person of normal intelligence: all arts and systems aim consciously, or
unconsciously, at some good, and so far as names are concerned everyone
will be willing to call the Chief Good by the term Happiness, although
there may be unlimited diversity of opinion as to its nature, and the
means to attain it. The truth of (b) also becomes apparent if the matter
is carefully reflected upon. Everything that is _en rapport_ with all
other things: the pebble cast from the hand alters the centre of gravity
in the Universe. As in the world of things and acts, so in the world of
thought, from which all action springs. Nothing can happen to the part
but the whole gains or suffers as a consequence. Every breeze that
blows, every cry that is uttered, every thought that is born, affects
through perpetual metamorphoses every part of the entire Cosmic
Existence.[2]
We deduce from these postulates the following ethical precepts: a wise
man will, firstly, so regulate his conduct that thereby he may
experience the greatest happiness; secondly, he will endeavour to bestow
happiness on others that by so doing he may receive, indirectly, being
himself a part of the Cosmic Whole, the happiness he gives. Thus supreme
selfishness is synonymous with supreme egoism, a truth that can only be
stated paradoxically.
Applying this latter precept to the matter in hand, it is obvious that
since we should so live as to give the greatest possible happiness to
all beings capable of appreciating it, and as it is an indisputable
fact that animals can suffer pain, _and that men who slaughter animals
needlessly suffer from atrophy of all finer feelings_, we should
therefore cause no unnecessary suffering in the animal world. Let us
then consider whether, knowing flesh to be unnecessary as an article of
diet, we are, in continuing to demand and eat flesh-food, acting morally
or not. To answer this query is not difficult.
It is hardly necessary to say that we are causing a great deal of
suffering among animals in breeding, raising, transporting, and killing
them for food. It is sometimes said that animals do not suffer if they
are handled humanely, and if they are slaughtered in abattoirs under
proper superintendence. But we must not forget the branding and
castrating operations; the journey to the slaughter-house, which when
trans-continental and trans-oceanic must be a long drawn-out nightmare
of horror and terror to the doomed beasts; we must not forget the
insatiable cruelty of the average cowboy; we must not forget that the
animal inevitably spends at least some minutes of instinctive dread and
fear when he smells and sees the spilt blood of his forerunners, and
that this terror is intensified when, as is frequently the case, he
witnesses the dying struggles, and hears the heart-rending groans; we
must not forget that the best contrivances sometimes fail to do good
work, and that a certain percentage of victims have to suffer a
prolonged death-agony owing to the miscalculation of a bad workman. Most
people go through life without thinking of these things: they do not
stop and consider from whence and by what means has come to their table
the flesh-food that is served there. They drift along through a mundane
existence without feeling a pang of remorse for, or even thought of, the
pain they are accomplices in producing in the sub-human world. And it
cannot be denied, hide it how we may, either from our eyes or our
conscience, that however skilfully the actual killing may usually be
carried out, there is much unavoidable suffering caused to the beasts
that have to be transported by sea and rail to the slaughter-house. The
animals suffer violently from sea-sickness, and horrible cruelty (such
as pouring boiling oil into their ears, and stuffing their ears with hay
which is then set on fire, tail-twisting, etc.,) has to be practised to
prevent them lying down lest they be trampled on by other beasts and
killed; for this means that they have to be thrown overboard, thus
reducing the profits of their owners, or of the insurance companies,
which, of course, would be a sad calamity. Judging by the way the men
act it does not seem to matter what cruelties and tortures are
perpetuated; what heinous offenses against every humane sentiment of the
human heart are committed; it does not matter to what depths of Satanic
callousness man stoops provided always that--this is the supreme
question--_there is money to be made by it_.
A writer has thus graphically described the scene in a cattle-boat in
rough weather: 'Helpless cattle dashed from one side of the ship to the
other, amid a ruin of smashed pens, with limbs broken from contact with
hatchway combings or winches--dishorned, gored, and some of them smashed
to mere bleeding masses of hide-covered flesh. Add to this the shrieking
of the tempest, and the frenzied moanings of the wounded beasts, and the
reader will have some faint idea of the fearful scenes of danger and
carnage... the dead beasts, advanced, perhaps, in decomposition before
death ended their sufferings, are often removed literally in pieces.'
And on the railway journey, though perhaps the animals do not experience
so much physical pain as travelling by sea, yet they are often deprived
of food, and water, and rest, for long periods, and mercilessly knocked
about and bruised. They are often so injured that the cattle-men are
surprised they have not succumbed to their injuries. And all this
happens in order that the demand for _unnecessary_ flesh-food may be
satisfied.
Those who defend flesh-eating often talk of humane methods of
slaughtering; but it is significant that there is considerable
difference of opinion as to what _is_ the most humane method. In England
the pole-axe is used; in Germany the mallet; the Jews cut the throat;
the Italians stab. It is obvious that each of these methods cannot be
better than the others, yet the advocates of each method consider the
others cruel. As Lieut. Powell remarks, this 'goes far to show that a
great deal of cruelty and suffering is inseparable from all methods.'
It is hard to imagine how anyone believing he could live healthily on
vegetable food alone, could, having once considered these things,
continue a meat-eater. At least to do so he could not live his life in
conformity with the precept that we should cause no unnecessary pain.
How unholy a custom, how easy a way to murder he makes for himself
Who cuts the innocent throat of the calf, and hears unmoved its
mournful plaint!
And slaughters the little kid, whose cry is like the cry of a child,
Or devours the birds of the air which his own hands have fed!
Ah, how little is wanting to fill the cup of his wickedness!
What unrighteous deed is he not ready to commit.
* * * * *
Make war on noxious creatures, and kill them only,
But let your mouths be empty of blood, and satisfied with pure
and natural repasts.
OVID. _Metam._, _lib._ xv.
That we cannot find any justification for destroying animal life for
food does not imply we should never destroy animal life. Such a cult
would be pure fanaticism. If we are to consider physical well-being as
of primary importance, it follows that we shall act in
self-preservation'making war on noxious creatures.' But this again is
no justification for 'blood-sports.'
He who inflicts pain needlessly, whether by his own hand or by that of
an accomplice, not only injures his victim, but injures himself. He
stifles what nobleness of character he may have and he cultivates
depravity and barbarism. He destroys in himself the spirit of true
religion and isolates himself from those whose lives are made beautiful
by sympathy. No one need hope for a spiritual Heaven while helping to
make the earth a bloody Hell. No one who asks others to do wrong for him
need imagine he escapes the punishment meted out to wrong-doers. That he
procures the service of one whose sensibilities are less keen than his
own to procure flesh-food for him that he may gratify his depraved taste
and love of conformity does not make him less guilty of crime. Were he
to kill with his own hand, and himself dress and prepare the obscene
food, the evil would be less, for then he would not be an accomplice in
retarding the spiritual growth of a fellow being. There is no shame in
any _necessary_ labour, but that which is unnecessary is unmoral, and
slaughtering animals to eat their flesh is not only unnecessary and
unmoral; it is also cruel and immoral. Philosophers and
transcendentalists who believe in the Buddhist law of Kârma, Westernized
by Emerson and Carlyle into the great doctrine of Compensation, realize
that every act of unkindness, every deed that is contrary to the
dictates of our nobler instincts and reason, reacts upon us, and we
shall truly reap that which we have sown. An act of brutality
brutalizes, and the more we become brutalized the more we attract
natures similarly brutal and get treated by them brutally. Thus does
Nature sternly deal justice.
'Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.'
It is appropriate in this place to point out that some very pointed
things are said in the Bible against the killing and eating of animals.
It has been said that it is possible by judiciously selecting quotations
to find the Bible support almost anything. However this may be, the
following excerpta are of interest:--
'And God said: Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, and
every tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed, to you it
shall be for meat.'--Gen. i., 29.
'But flesh with life thereof, which is the blood thereof, ye shall not
eat.'--Gen. ix., 4.
'It shall be a perpetual statute throughout your generations in all your
dwellings, that ye shall eat neither fat nor blood.'--Lev. iii., 17.
'Ye shall eat no manner of blood, whether it be of fowl, or
beast.'--Lev. vii., 26.
'Ye shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh: for the life of all flesh
is the blood thereof: whosoever eateth it shall be cut off.'--Lev.
xvii., 14.
'The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down
with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together;
and a little child shall lead them.... They shall not hurt nor destroy
in all my holy mountain.'--Isaiah lxv.
'He that killeth an ox is as he that slayeth a man.'--Isaiah lxvi., 3.
'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.'--Matt. ix., 7.
'It is good not to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor to do anything
whereby thy brother stumbleth.'--Romans xiv., 21.
'Wherefore, if meat maketh my brother to stumble I will eat no flesh for
evermore, that I make not my brother stumble.'--1 Cor. viii., 13.
The verse from Isaiah is no fanciful stretch of poetic imagination. The
writer, no doubt, was picturing a condition of peace and happiness on
earth, when discord had ceased and all creatures obeyed Nature and lived
in harmony. It is not absurd to suppose that someday the birds and
beasts may look upon man as a friend and benefactor, and not the
ferocious beast of prey that he now is. In certain parts of the world,
at the present day--the Galapagos Archipelago, for instance--where man
has so seldom been that he is unknown to the indigenous animal life,
travellers relate that birds are so tame and friendly and curious, being
wholly unacquainted with the bloodthirsty nature of man, that they will
perch on his shoulders and peck at his shoe laces as he walks.
It may be said that Jesus did not specifically forbid flesh-food. But
then he did not specifically forbid war, sweating, slavery, gambling,
vivisection, cock and bull fighting, rabbit-coursing, trusts, opium
smoking, and many other things commonly looked upon as evils which
should not exist among Christians. Jesus laid down general principles,
and we are to apply these general principles to particular
circumstances.
The sum of all His teaching is that love is the most beautiful thing in
the world; that the Kingdom of Heaven is open to all who really and
truly love. The act of loving is the expression of a desire to make
others happy. All beings capable of experiencing pain, who have nervous
sensibilities similar to our own, are capable of experiencing the effect
of our love. The love which is unlimited, which is not confined merely
to wife and children, or blood relations and social companions, or one's
own nation, or even the entire human race, but is so comprehensive as to
include all life, human and sub-human; such love as this marks the
highest point in moral evolution that human intelligence can conceive of
or aspire to.
Eastern religions have been more explicit than Christianity about the
sin of killing animals for food.
In the _Laws of Manu_, it is written: 'The man who forsakes not the law,
and eats not flesh-meat like a bloodthirsty demon, shall attain
goodness in this world, and shall not be afflicted with maladies.'
'Unslaughter is the supreme virtue, supreme asceticism, golden truth,
from which springs up the germ of religion.' _The Mahabharata._
'_Non-killing_, truthfulness, non-stealing, continence, and
non-receiving, are called Yama.' _Patanjalis' Yoga Aphorisms._
'A Yogî must not think of injuring anyone, through thought, word or
deed, and this applies not only to man, but to all animals. Mercy shall
not be for men alone, but shall go beyond, and embrace the whole world.'
_Commentary of Vivekânanda._
'Surely hell, fire, and repentance are in store for those who for their
pleasure and gratification cause the dumb animals to suffer pain.' _The
Zend Avesta._
Gautama, the Buddha, was most emphatic in discountenancing the killing
of animals for food, or for any other unnecessary purpose, and Zoroaster
and Confucius are said to have taught the same doctrine.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: See _Sartor Resartus_, Book I., chap. xi.: Book III., chap.
vii. Also an article by Prof. W. P. Montague, Ph.D.: 'The Evidence of
Design in the Elements and Structure of the Cosmos,' in the _Hibbert
Journal_, Jan., 1904.]
IV
THE ÆSTHETIC POINT OF VIEW
St. Paul tells us to think on whatsoever things are pure and lovely
(Phil. iv., 8). The implication is that we should love and worship
beauty. We should seek to surround ourselves by beautiful objects and
avoid that which is degrading and ugly.
Let us make some comparisons. Look at a collection of luscious fruits
filling the air with perfume, and pleasing the eye with a harmony of
colour, and then look at the gruesome array of skinned carcasses
displayed in a butcher's shop; which is the more beautiful? Look at the
work of the husbandman, tilling the soil, pruning the trees, gathering
in the rich harvest of golden fruit, and then look at the work of the
cowboy, branding, castrating, terrifying, butchering helpless animals;
which is the more beautiful? Surely no one would say a corpse was a
beautiful object. Picture it (after the axe has battered the skull, or
the knife has found the heart, and the victim has at last ceased its
dying groans and struggles), with its ghastly staring eyes, its
blood-stained head or throat where the sharp steel pierced into the
quivering flesh; picture it when the body is opened emitting a sickening
odour and the reeking entrails fall in a heap on the gore-splashed
floor; picture this sight and ask whether it is not the epitome of
ugliness, and in direct opposition to the most elementary sense of
beauty.
Moreover, what effect has the work of a slayer of animals upon his
personal character and refinement? Can anyone imagine a
sensitive-minded, finely-wrought _æsthetic_ nature doing anything else
than revolt against the cold-blooded murdering of terrorised animals? It
is significant that in some of the States of America butchers are not
allowed to sit on a jury during a murder trial. Physiognomically the
slaughterman carries his trade-mark legibly enough. The butcher does not
usually exhibit those facial traits which distinguish a person who is
naturally sympathetic and of an æsthetic temperament; on the contrary,
the butcher's face and manner generally bear evidence of a life spent
amid scenes of gory horror and violence; of a task which involves
torture and death.
A plate of cereal served with fruit-juice pleases the eye and
imagination, but a plate smeared with blood and laden with dead flesh
becomes disgusting and repulsive the moment we consider it in that
light. Cooking may disguise the appearance but cannot alter the reality
of the decaying _corpse_; and to cook blood and give it another name
(gravy) may be an artifice to please the palate, but it is blood, (blood
that once coursed through the body of a highly sensitive and nervous
being), just the same. Surely a person whose olfactory nerves have not
been blunted prefers the delicate aroma of ripe fruit to the sickly
smell of mortifying flesh,--or fried eggs and bacon!
Notice how young children, whose taste is more or less unperverted,
relish ripe fruits and nuts and clean tasting things in general. Man,
before he has become thoroughly accustomed to an unnatural diet, before
his taste has been perverted and he has acquired by habit a liking for
unwholesome and unnatural food, has a healthy appetite for Nature's
sun-cooked seeds and berries of all kinds. Now true refinement can only
exist where the senses are uncorrupted by addiction to deleterious
habits, and the nervous system by which the senses act will remain
healthy only so long as it is built up by pure and natural foods; hence
it is only while man is nourished by those foods desired by his
unperverted appetite that he may be said to possess true refinement.
Power of intellect has nothing whatever to do _necessarily_ with the
_æsthetic instinct_. A man may possess vast learning and yet be a boor.
Refinement is not learnt as a boy learns algebra. Refinement comes from
living a refined life, as good deeds come from a good man. The nearer we
live according to Nature's plan, and in harmony with Her, the healthier
we become physically and mentally. We do not look for refinement in the
obese, red-faced, phlegmatic, gluttonous sensualists who often pass as
gentlemen because they possess money or rank, but in those who live
simply, satisfying the simple requirements of the body, and finding
happiness in a life of well-directed toil.
* * * * *
The taste of young children is often cited by vegetarians to demonstrate
the liking of an unsophisticated palate, but the primitive instinct is
not wholly atrophied in man. Before man became a tool-using animal, he
must have depended for direction upon what is commonly termed instinct
in the selection of a diet most suitable to his nature. No one can
doubt, judging by the way undomesticated animals seek their food with
unerring certainty as to its suitability, but that instinct is a
trustworthy guide. Granting that man could, in a state of absolute
savagery, and before he had discovered the use of fire or of tools,
depend upon instinct alone, and in so doing live healthily, cannot _what
yet remains_ of instinct be of some value among civilized beings? Is not
man, even now, in spite of his abused and corrupted senses, when he sees
luscious fruits hanging within his reach, tempted to pluck them, and
does he not eat them with relish? But when he sees the grazing ox, or
the wallowing hog, do similar gustatory desires affect him? Or when he
sees these animals lying dead, or when skinned and cut up in small
pieces, does this same natural instinct stimulate him to steal and eat
this food as it stimulates a boy to steal apples and nuts from an
orchard and eat them surreptitiously beneath the hedge or behind the
haystack?
Very different is it with true carnivora. The gorge of a cat, for
instance, will rise at the smell of a mouse, or a piece of raw flesh,
but not at the aroma of fruit. If a man could take delight in pouncing
upon a bird, tear its still living body apart with his teeth, sucking
the warm blood, one might infer that Nature had provided him with
carnivorous instinct, but the very _thought_ of doing such a thing makes
him shudder. On the other hand, a bunch of luscious grapes makes his
'mouth water,' and even in the absence of hunger he will eat fruit to
gratify taste. A table spread with fruits and nuts and decorated with
flowers is artistic; the same table laden with decaying flesh and blood,
and maybe entrails, is not only inartistic--it is disgusting.
Those who believe in an all-wise Creator can hardly suppose He would
have so made our body as to make it necessary daily to perform acts of
violence that are an outrage to our sympathies, repulsive to our finer
feelings, and brutalising and degrading in every detail. To possess fine
feelings without the means to satisfy them is as bad as to possess
hunger without a stomach. If it be necessary and a part of the Divine
Wisdom that we should degrade ourselves to the level of beasts of prey,
then the humanitarian sentiment and the æsthetic instinct are wrong and
should be displaced by callousness, and the endeavour to cultivate a
feeling of enjoyment in that which to all the organs of sense in a
person of intelligence and religious feeling is ugly and repulsive. But
no normally-minded person can think that this is so. It would be
contrary to all the ethical and æsthetic teachings of every religion,
and antagonistic to the feelings of all who have evolved to the
possession of a conscience and the power to distinguish the beautiful
from the base.
When one accustomed to an omnivorous diet adopts a vegetarian régime, a
steadily growing refinement in taste and smell is experienced. Delicate
and subtle flavours, hitherto unnoticed, especially if the habit of
thorough mastication be practised, soon convince the neophyte that a
vegetarian is by no means denied the pleasure of gustatory enjoyment.
Further, not only are these senses better attuned and refined, but the
mind also undergoes a similar exaltation. Thoreau, the
transcendentalist, wrote: 'I believe that every man who has ever been
earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best
condition, has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food,
and from much food of any kind.'
V
ECONOMICAL CONSIDERATIONS
There is no doubt that the yield of land when utilized for pasturage is
less than what it will produce in the hands of the agriculturist. In a
thickly populated country, such as England, dependent under present
conditions on foreign countries for a large proportion of her food
supply, it is foolish, considering only the political aspects, to employ
the land for raising unnecessary flesh-food, and so be compelled to
apply to foreign markets for the first necessaries of life, when there
is, without doubt, sufficient agricultural land in England to support
the entire population on a vegetable regimen. As just said, a much
larger population can be supported on a given acreage cultivated with
vegetable produce than would be possible were the same land used for
grazing cattle. Lieut. Powell quotes Prof. Francis Newman of University
College, London, as declaring that--
100 acres devoted to sheep-raising will support 42 men: proportion
1.
100 acres devoted to dairy-farming will support 53 men: proportion
1-1/4.
100 acres devoted to wheat will support 250 men: proportion 6.
100 acres devoted to potato will support 683 men: proportion 16.
To produce the same quantity of food yielded by an acre of land
cultivated by the husbandman, three or four acres, or more, would be
required as grazing land to raise cattle for flesh meat.
Another point to note is that agriculture affords employment to a very
much larger number of men than cattle-raising; that is to say, a much
larger number of men are required to raise a given amount of vegetable
food than is required to raise the same amount of flesh food, and so,
were the present common omnivorous customs to give place to
vegetarianism, a very much more numerous peasantry would be required on
the land. This would be physically, economically, morally, better for
the nation. It is obvious that national health would be improved with a
considerably larger proportion of hardy country yeomen. The percentage
of poor and unemployed people in large cities would be reduced, their
labor being required on the soil, where, being in more natural,
salutary, harmonious surroundings the moral element would have better
opportunity for development than when confined in the unhealthy, ugly,
squalid surroundings of a city slum.
It is not generally known that there is often a decided _loss_ of
valuable food-material in feeding animals for food, one authority
stating that it takes nearly 4 lbs. of barley, which is a good wholesome
food, to make 1 lb. of pork, a food that can hardly be considered safe
to eat when we learn that tuberculosis was detected in 6,393 pigs in
Berlin abattoirs in one year.
As to the comparative cost of a vegetarian and omnivorous diet, it is
instructive to learn that it is proverbial in the Western States of
America that a Chinaman can live and support his family in health and
comfort on an allowance which to a meat-eating white man would be
starvation. It is not to be denied that a vegetarian desirous of living
to eat, and having no reason or desire to be economical, could spend
money as extravagantly as a devotee of the flesh-pots having a similar
disposition. But it is significant that the poor of most European
countries are not vegetarians from choice but from necessity. Had they
the means doubtless they would purchase meat, not because of any
instinctive liking for it, but because of that almost universal trait of
human character that causes men to desire to imitate their superiors,
without, in most cases, any due consideration as to whether the supposed
superiors are worthy of the genuflection they get. Were King George or
Kaiser Wilhelm to become vegetarians and advocate the non-flesh diet,
such an occurrence would do far more towards advancing the popularity of
this diet than a thousand lectures from "mere" men of science. Carlyle
was not far wrong when he called men "clothes worshippers." The
uneducated and poor imitate the educated and rich, not because they
possess that attitude of mind which owes its existence to a very deep
and subtle emotion and which is expressed in worship and veneration for
power, whether it be power of body, power of rank, power of mind, or
power of wealth. The poor among Western nations are vegetarians because
they cannot afford to buy meat, and this is plain enough proof as to
which dietary is the cheaper.
Perhaps a few straightforward facts on this point may prove interesting.
An ordinary man, weighing 140 lbs. to 170 lbs., under ordinary
conditions, at moderately active work, as an engineer, carpenter, etc.,
could live in comfort and maintain good health on a dietary providing
daily 1 lb. bread (600 to 700 grs. protein); 8 ozs. potatoes (70 grs.
protein); 3 ozs. rice, or barley, or macaroni, or maize meal, etc. (100
grs. protein); 4 ozs. dates, or figs, or prunes, or bananas, etc., and 2
ozs. shelled nuts (130 grs. protein); the cost of which need not exceed
10c. to 15c. per day; or in the case of one leading a more sedentary
life, such as clerical work, these would be slightly reduced and the
cost reduced to 8c. to 12c. per day. For one shilling per day, luxuries,
such as nut butter, sweet-stuffs, and a variety of fruits and vegetables
could be added. It is hardly necessary to point out that the housewife
would be 'hard put to' to make ends meet 'living well' on the ordinary
diet at 25c. per head per day. The writer, weighing 140 lbs., who lives
a moderately active life, enjoys good health, and whose tastes are
simple, finds the cost of a cereal diet comes to 50c. to 75c. per week.
The political economist and reformer finds on investigation, that the
adoption of vegetarianism would be a solution of many of the complex and
baffling questions connected with the material prosperity of the nation.
Here is a remedy for unemployment, drink, slums, disease, and many forms
of vice; a remedy that is within the reach of everyone, and that costs
only the relinquishing of a foolish prejudice and the adoption of a
natural mode of living plus the effort to overcome a vicious habit and
the denial of pleasure derived from the gratification of corrupted
appetite. Nature will soon create a dislike for that which once was a
pleasure, and in compensation will confer a wholesome and beneficent
enjoyment in the partaking of pure and salutary foods. Whether or no the
meat-eating nations will awake to these facts in time to save themselves
from ruin and extinction remains to be seen. Meat-eating has grown side
by side with disease in England during the past seventy years, but there
are now, fortunately, some signs of abatement. The doctors, owing
perhaps to some prescience in the air, some psychical foreboding, are
recommending that less meat be eaten. But whatever the future has in
store, there is nothing more certain than this--that in the adoption of
the vegetable regimen is to be found, if not a complete panacea, at
least a partial remedy, for the political and social ills that our
nation at the present time is afflicted with, and that those of us who
would be true patriots are in duty bound to practise and preach
vegetarianism wheresoever and whensoever we can.
VI
THE EXCLUSION OF DAIRY PRODUCE
It is unfortunate that many flesh-abstainers who agree with the general
trend of the foregoing arguments do not realise that these same
arguments also apply to abstinence from those animal foods known as
dairy produce. In considering this further aspect it is necessary for
reasons already given, to place hygienic considerations first.
Is it reasonable to suppose that Nature ever intended the milk of the
cow or the egg of the fowl for the use of man as food? Can anyone deny
that Nature intended the cow's milk for the nourishment of her calf and
the hen's egg for the propagation of her species? It is begging the
question to say that the cow furnishes more milk than her calf requires,
or that it does not injure the hen to steal her eggs. Besides, it is not
true.
Regarding the dietetic value of milk and eggs, which is the question of
first importance, are we correct in drawing the inference that as Nature
did not intend these foods for man, therefore they are not suitable for
him? As far as the chemical constituents of these foods are concerned,
it is true they contain compounds essential to the nourishment of the
human body, and if this is going to be set up as an argument in favor of
their consumption, let it be remembered that flesh food also contains
compounds essential to nourishment. But the point is this: not what
valuable nutritive compounds does any food-substance contain, but what
value, _taking into consideration its total effects_, has the food in
question as a wholesome article of diet?
It seems to be quite generally acknowledged by the medical profession
that raw milk is a dangerous food on account of the fact that it is
liable from various causes, sometimes inevitable, to contain impurities.
Dr. Kellogg writes: Typhoid fever, cholera infantum, tuberculosis and
tubercular consumption--three of the most deadly diseases known; it is
very probable also, that diphtheria, scarlet fever and several other
maladies are communicated through the medium of milk.... It is safe to
say that very few people indeed are fully acquainted with the dangers to
life and health which lurk in the milk supply.... The teeming millions
of China, a country which contains nearly one-third of the entire
population of the globe, are practically ignorant of this article of
food. The high-class Hindoo regards milk as a loathsome and impure
article of food, speaking of it with the greatest contempt as
"cow-juice," doubtless because of his observations of the deleterious
effect of the use of milk in its raw state.
The germs of tuberculosis seem to be the most dangerous in milk, for
they thrive and retain their vitality for many weeks, even in butter and
cheese. An eminent German authority, Hirschberger, is said to have found
10 per cent of the cows in the vicinity of large cities to be affected
by tuberculosis. Many other authorities might be quoted supporting the
contention that a large percentage of cows are afflicted by this deadly
disease. Other germs, quite as dangerous, find their way into milk in
numerous ways. Excreta, clinging to the hairs of the udder, are
frequently rubbed off into the pail by the action of the hand whilst
milking. Under the most careful sanitary precautions it is impossible to
obtain milk free from manure, from the ordinary germs of putrefaction to
the most deadly microbes known to science. There is little doubt but
that milk is one of the uncleanest and impurest of all foods.
Milk is constipating, and as constipation is one of the commonest
complaints, a preventive may be found in abstinence from this food. As
regards eggs, there is perhaps not so much to be said, although eggs so
quickly undergo a change akin to putrefaction that unless eaten fresh
they are unfit for food; moreover, (according to Dr. Haig) they contain
a considerable amount of xanthins, and cannot, therefore, be considered
a desirable food.
Dairy foods, we emphatically affirm, are not necessary to health. In the
section dealing with 'Physical Considerations' sufficient was said to
prove the eminent value of an exclusive vegetable diet, and the reader
is referred to that and the subsequent essay on Nutrition and Diet for
proof that man can and should live without animal food of any kind. Such
nutritive properties as are possessed by milk and eggs are abundantly
found in the vegetable kingdom. The table of comparative values given,
exhibits this quite plainly. That man can live a thoroughly healthy life
upon vegetable foods alone there is ample evidence to prove, and there
is good cause to believe that milk and eggs not only are quite
unnecessary, but are foods unsuited to the human organism, and may be,
and often are, the cause of disease. Of course, it is recognized that
with scrupulous care this danger can be minimized to a great extent, but
still it is always there, and as there is no reason why we should
consume such foods, it is not foolish to continue to do so?
But this is not all. It is quite as impossible to consume dairy produce
|
still quite young, I should say,
though you have come all the way from Kada-no-Ura by yourself, and
though you talk of your affairs in a manner that would reflect credit on
a grown-up man. Come, tell me, how old are you?”
“I am fourteen,” he answered.
“What, not more than that?”
And the master’s wife, who was by his side, could not repress her
surprise, either.
At this point the _shoji_, or paper sliding doors, opened, and in ran a
pretty little girl of about eleven. Her hair was drawn up into a little
butterfly device on the top of her head, which shook to and fro as she
ran up to her mother. Stretching out a small maple-leaf hand, with a
winsome look, she said:
“Mother, please give me a cake.”
“Why, my dear, where are your manners? What will our young friend here
think of you?”
At this the child looked around, and, for the first time becoming aware
of the boy’s presence, turned shy and sat down. Looking gently in her
face, her mother then asked her what she had been doing. Afraid of the
stranger, she whispered in her mother’s ear: “I have been playing
_oni_[6] with Sadakichi in the garden. But I don’t like Sadakichi. When
he was the _oni_ he just caught me at once.”
Footnote 6:
A play similar to tag or prisoner’s base.
“But that often happens in playing _oni_,” said the mother, with a
smile.
“Yes, but he does it too much; he has no right to catch people in the
way he does, and I don’t wish to play with him any more.”
“Well, if that is so, how would you like to play with Bunkichi here
instead?”
Accepting it as one of the duties that might fall to him, to act as the
child’s companion and caretaker, Bunkichi, rather pleased than
otherwise, offered to go out and try to amuse her. The little girl
looked into her mother’s face, and then at Bunkichi. “Mama, how long has
he been here?” she asked in a low voice.
“He only came to-day, but he’s a fine boy, and I hope you’ll be a good
little girl and show him the garden.”
But the child’s thoughts seemed suddenly to take a new turn, and,
sidling up to her mother, she begged to be given a cake. The mother
opened the little drawer of the _hibachi_,[7] and, taking out two or
three sugar-plums, put them into her hand. The child then, with barely a
glance at Bunkichi, ran through the _shoji_ out of doors.
Footnote 7:
Pronounced he-bah’chee. A wooden fire-box where a charcoal fire is
kept for warming the hands.
“Take care and don’t stumble,” her mother called out. “Do you mind just
seeing after her?” she said to Bunkichi, who at once got up and went out
on the veranda.
No sooner was Chocho Wage,[8] or “Butterfly Curls” (so named from the
way in which her hair was dressed), outside in the garden than she began
quarreling with the boy from the shop. “No, Sadakichi; I’m not going to
play with you. Mama says that the other boy who has just come is a fine
boy, and I’m going to play with him.”
Footnote 8:
Pronounced Cho’cho Wah’gay.
“What! another boy has come, has he?”
“Yes; there he is. Go and fetch him.”
Sadakichi called to Bunkichi, “You will find some _geta_[9] there, if
you will come out.”
Footnote 9:
Pronounced gay’tah. Foot-wear or wooden clogs.
So Bunkichi came out to the garden.
It was not a very large one, but it was a pretty spot, for beyond it
sparkled the bay that lay at the back of Kumano. Bunkichi had soon
joined the two others, and Sadakichi, turning to the little child, said,
“Well, shall we three play at _oni_?”
“No,” she answered; “you are always catching me, and I don’t care to
play.”
“I won’t catch you, then, Chocho, if you don’t like it.”
“All the same, I’d rather not.”
A thought struck Bunkichi, and, addressing himself to the child, he
said: “Would you like me to make you something? I would if I only had a
knife and some bamboo.”
The child was at once interested, and told Sadakichi to go and get what
was wanted. So Sadakichi strolled off and brought a knife and some
bamboo chips. “Now, then, what are you going to make?” said he.
“A nice bamboo dragon-fly,” Bunkichi answered; and, taking the knife, he
split a bit of the bamboo, shaved it fine and smooth, and fixed a little
peg in the middle of it.
Sadakichi, quickly guessing what it was, said: “Ah, it’s a dragon-fly. I
know! I once went with the _banto_[10] to Kada-no-Ura, and every one
there was flying those dragon-flies, and, now I think of it, the boy who
was selling them looked just like you.”
Footnote 10:
Clerk.
Not a bit disconcerted, Bunkichi replied: “Yes, you are quite right. I
was the boy who made them and was selling them.”
“Bah! Mr. Dragon-fly-seller!” blustered out Sadakichi, with a face of
disgust.
“Don’t speak like that,” said the little girl, turning sharply upon him,
and then to Bunkichi: “What made you sell them?” she asked, speaking out
to him for the first time.
“My father was ill in bed,” he answered, continuing to scrape the
bamboo, “and, as our family was poor, I managed to buy him rice and
medicine by selling these dragon-flies.”
Child as she was, this touching story of filial piety made her respect
Bunkichi all the more.
“Oh, wasn’t that good of him!” she said, turning to Sadakichi. “Do you
think you could have done it?”
“I—yes; only there would have been no need for me to sell dragon-flies.
I should have sold the wearing-things in our shop,” he answered,
arrogantly.
[Illustration:
“‘Why, it’s just like a real dragon-fly!’ she cried, with delight”
]
Bunkichi had now finished making the dragon-fly, and, holding it between
his hands, he spun it round, and up it went into the air with a whirring
sound, and lighted on the ground again some five or six paces away.
“Why, it’s just like a real dragon-fly!” cried the child, with delight.
“Do let me have it!” And, taking it in her hands, she tried to set it
flying, but she could only make it go up a little way.
Then Sadakichi, wishing to try his hand, pushed forward. “Let me have
it,” he said, “and I’ll show you how well I can do it”; and, seizing
hold of it, with the force of both hands he sent it flying high into the
air. “There, now—see how it goes!” and, while the little girl was
watching it with delight, the dragon-fly flew over the wall fence and
dropped into the water beyond.
The little child ran after it, followed by Sadakichi and Bunkichi. There
was a little gate in the garden, opening on a jetty. Through this they
passed and stood together on the plank, watching the dragon-fly tossing
about on the water.
“Oh, I wish we could get it,” said the little girl, looking at it
wistfully; “if it would only come just in front of us!”
“Take care,” said Sadakichi, holding her back, while the dragon-fly,
bobbing up and down among the ripples, gradually drifted farther off.
Now Bunkichi, seeing there was a small boat lying alongside the jetty,
had said to Sadakichi, “Let me row out and get it,” and was drawing the
boat toward him, when he was abruptly stopped by Sadakichi. “No, no; you
mustn’t think of putting out from the shore. If you do, you are certain
to be eaten up by the _wanizame_.”[11]
Footnote 11:
Pronounced wah-ne-zah’may, meaning a huge shark.
“Yes, it’s quite true,” chimed in the little girl. “There’s a horrid
_wanizame_ that prevents any one going on the sea. Only yesterday it
captured somebody.”
“Yes—a young man from the brewery,” said Sadakichi. “He had some barrels
in his boat, and he had gone only two or three hundred yards when the
shark came up and overturned his boat and seized him.”
“It doesn’t matter about the dragon-fly; I don’t want it; let us go back
to the house.” And the little child, frightened in good earnest, took
hold of Bunkichi’s arm.
It was the first time Bunkichi had heard about the _wanizame_. “Is it
really true, miss, that there is a _wanizame_ in the bay?” he asked.
“Yes; I can tell you it’s very serious. I don’t know how many people it
has eaten in the last month.”
“Really! But how big is it?”
“I don’t know what you would call big,” broke in Sadakichi. “But it’s
about as big as this house. If it sees a small boat, it overtakes it in
no time and topples it over, and if it is a big boat it gets in the way
and stops it so that it can’t move, and so the fishermen can’t go out,
and no cargo can come into the port. I suppose it must be want of food
that has brought it into this harbor; but, however that may be, it
thinks nothing of upsetting the small craft, so that for a month no one
has ventured out at all. Well, there was the brewer’s man. Yesterday he
thought it would be safe to go just a short distance, but he very soon
got swallowed up. And what is the consequence? Why, the fishing is
stopped, and there’s no trade, and the place is going to ruin. The
fishermen and hunters have tried over and over again to kill it with
spikes and guns and with all kinds of things. But what is the use? Their
weapons only snap in two or glance off its back, and they only get
killed themselves. So they have given up trying.”
Bunkichi listened to every word, and then suddenly went into the house
and stood before the master.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER II
BUNKICHI PLANS TO KILL THE SHARK
THE master and his wife were engaged in conversation, but on seeing
Bunkichi the merchant said, “Well, have you been to see the garden?”
“Thank you, I have enjoyed it very much,” answered Bunkichi, politely.
“Why, bless me, he has all the manners of a little _samurai_[12]!”
exclaimed the master to his wife. “There is no comparison between him
and the other boys. But dancing attendance on a little girl is not the
sort of employment for a lad who has the ambition to become the leading
merchant in Japan. No, no; he wants to get into the shop as soon as he
can and learn the ways of business—eh, my boy?”
Footnote 12:
Pronounced sahm’oo-rye. The _samurai_ were the military class of
Japan, corresponding to the knights of the middle ages in European
countries.
The master exactly interpreted Bunkichi’s wishes, and Bunkichi felt very
grateful to him, but he only answered: “I shall esteem it a great favor
to be allowed to serve you in any way. But, master, with your leave, I
would ask you: Is it true, as I hear, that there is a _wanizame_ lately
come into this bay, and that people are suffering a lot of harm from
it?”
“Ah, me! Yes, it’s a sore trouble, that _wanizame_; our fishermen are
doing nothing, our boat traffic is stopped, and if things go on in this
way the place will be ruined. All sorts of attempts have been made to
kill it, but, alas! all to no purpose.”
Then respectfully, in a kneeling posture, approaching nearer, Bunkichi
thus addressed his master: “Master, in the request I am now going to
make of you, I fear you will put me down as a child with a vain,
childish notion of doing great things; none the less, I am bold to ask
you, in all seriousness, will you give me leave to attempt the
destruction of this _wanizame_?”
The master exclaimed in astonishment: “What! You think that you are
going to kill the _wanizame_? It would be the greatest thing in the
world if you could, but already every means has been tried. Whaling-men
have tried to kill it with their harpoons, the hunters of wild game on
the mountains have tried to shoot it with their guns; but the _wanizame_
has defeated all their schemes, and, to say nothing of the money it has
cost, several men have lost their lives in their attempts to kill it,
and our citizens have given it up as hopeless. Son of a _samurai_ though
you may be, this is no task for a boy of thirteen or fourteen. No; you
may have seen in the seas around Kada-no-Ura sharks of four or five feet
in length, but just go out to the hill above the town and look over the
bay until you catch sight of our monster. The very sight of it is enough
to terrify most people.”
“You mistake me, master,” said Bunkichi, sitting up straight. “I have no
thought of trying my strength against the _wanizame_. But I have a trick
in my mind I should like to play, if you would allow me.”
“Oh, it’s a trick, is it? And what is the trick our crafty youngster is
going to propose for killing the _wanizame_, I should like to know?”
said the master, smiling.
“The plan I have is simply this: First, to make a straw figure and to
fill up the inside with poison. Then I shall dress it in a man’s clothes
and take it out into the bay, and, when we see the shark coming, throw
it out to him to eat. Sharks are senseless creatures and ready to eat
anything, so he is sure to swallow the straw man, and if he does the
poison will at once take effect and kill him. That’s my plan; what do
you think of it?”
“Yes; I think your plan of making a straw man is not at all a bad one,
and I have little doubt, as you say, that the shark would swallow it. In
that case it would certainly die and we should be free at last from our
great calamity. But wait a minute; I am afraid, when the doll is made,
there is nobody who will venture to take it out to the sea. People have
had so many bitter lessons from trying to kill this shark that, however
much money you offer, no one, I fear, will agree to take it out into the
bay.”
Bunkichi without any hesitation replied: “I will undertake the task of
taking the doll out for the shark to swallow. As I grew up by the
seaside at Kada-no-Ura, I can row a boat well and can swim better than
most people. I saw a boat just now fastened at the jetty in your garden.
Please lend it to me and I will go out alone upon the bay.”
Astonished by the audaciousness of the lad, the master said: “It is too
wild an idea, my boy. What if the shark upsets your boat? He will
swallow you up in an instant.”
“As to what you say about drowning, that doesn’t disturb me at all.
Suppose I have no luck and lose my life, there is nothing to be
regretted if by my death I succeed in removing the great calamity under
which many are now suffering. And, as I said before, it is my
determination to become the leading merchant of Japan; but if I am to
realize my ambition I must be prepared to run many risks. If fortune
favors me I shall come safe through them and attain my object; if,
however, this first venture goes against me, and I go out to sea and
fall a prey to the _wanizame_, it simply means that I must accept it as
the decree of fate, and, as far as my life is concerned, I am quite
ready to risk it.”
The master, who was much struck by his fearless determination, worthy of
the boy’s descent, said to him, “Indeed, your magnanimity is greater
than ours, but for that very reason we should be all the more sorry to
lose you.”
Saying this, he turned round to his wife, who whispered in his ear: “I
quite agree with you: if he be swallowed up by the shark, we couldn’t
possibly get another like him; send some other one instead!”
Just then in came the girl, attended by Sadakichi, who had long been
waiting for the boy, and said, “Bunkichi, please be quick and make me
another dragon-fly.”
Her mother, however, at once stopped the girl, saying: “Come, come;
Bunkichi has something else to think about besides dragon-flies: he’s
just saying that he wants to go out to sea and kill the _wanizame_.”
The girl was startled, for she was only a child. “Does he go alone?”
“Yes, that is what he says he will do.”
“Don’t, please, mother; I don’t like your sending him to sea.”
“Why, my child?”
“I want him to make me a bamboo dragon-fly.”
His curiosity aroused at hearing the little girl speak of the
dragon-fly, the father said, “What do you wish him to make for you?”
“Oh, father, it’s a bamboo dragon-fly—an amusing toy which flies up
high, whizzing,” was her confident answer.
“Ah, I see,” he remarked, as he understood the girl’s request; “that
flying bamboo thing I often see when I go out on the streets. The toy, I
remember, was first made by a boy of great filial virtue in a certain
country district, and even here they talk about him; it is clever of
you, Bunkichi, to have learned how to make them.”
Then Sadakichi interrupted, saying: “No wonder! Why, he was the hawker
of the toy; I know all about it, as I saw him selling it at
Kada-no-Ura.”
“Are you, then, the inventor of the toy?” asked the master, to whom the
boy at once replied in the affirmative. The master, who was more than
ever struck by the boy’s character, said, “Are you, then, the same boy
whom all the people talk about and praise for his devotion to his
parent?”
Then the girl, who remembered what had been told her a little while
before, said: “Father, his family was very poor, and, as his father was
laid up on his sick-bed, he sold those dragon-flies and bought medicine
or a little rice for the family. He told me so.”
As she was listening to this conversation, tears stood in the mother’s
eyes, and she said: “He is really a model boy, is he not? I can’t
possibly let him go to sea.”
The master, who was much of the same way of thinking as his wife,
answered, “Of course, I have been persuading him to give up his idea”;
and, turning to Bunkichi, said, “Yes, do give it up, my boy.”
And the girl, seemingly with the intention of inspiring the boy with
dread and deterring him from his purpose, remarked solemnly, “Oh, it is
dreadful to be swallowed by the shark on going to sea!”
Bunkichi, having once determined, was immovable. “Sir, trading to a
merchant is the same that fighting is to a knight. It has been ever
regarded honorable in a knight that he should hazard his life many a
time, even in his early youth. If fate be against him, he will be put to
death by his enemy. The knights of old faced the dangerous issues of
life or death as often as they went out to battle. As they attained to
renown by passing through these ordeals, so, too, must the merchant who
aspires after a leading position not shrink from braving many dangers in
his life. Sir, methinks the present is the opportunity given me to try
my hand; and if fate sides with me and I succeed in killing the
_wanizame_, in future I shall have courage to venture out on other great
undertakings. If one begins to be nervous at the outset, one will go on
being nervous forever; but there is no fear, I think, for a man who is
ready to sacrifice even his own life.”
The master, meeting with such unflinching determination, knew not how to
stop him, but said: “I must confess you have more in you than I thought.
I am ashamed of myself to be thus taught by you the secret of success in
trade when I should be in a position to teach you. Well said, my boy;
trading is to a business man what fighting is to a knight. If you begin
by being weak and timid, you will never be capable of bold enterprise.
If you have a mind to divine your future by embarking on this exploit,
go in for it with all your might. As to the preparations for making the
straw man, as far as buying the poison is concerned, I will do it all
for you. You had better go up to the mountain yonder, and ascertain the
place where the shark is generally to be seen coming up to the surface.
You, Sadakichi, had better take him up to the Sumiyoshi[13] bluff, and
point him out the monster if it should come up and show itself on the
surface of the water in the mouth of the harbor.”
Footnote 13:
Pronounced Soo-mee-yo’shee.
Bunkichi, who was much delighted at having gained his wish, said: “Then,
sir, please let an apothecary prepare a lot of drugs which are likely to
be the best poison for a _wanizame_, and I will go and have a lookout
for the appearance of the monster.”
As he was about to start, the girl asked him, in a little voice of
remonstrance, “But when will you make a dragon-fly for me, Bunkichi?”
“When I come back, miss,” was his reply.
“Come, come; he can’t be bothered about such a trifle now,” said her
mother.
Meanwhile the two lads, Bunkichi and Sadakichi, hand in hand, went up to
the Sumiyoshi bluff, which stood just outside the town on the eastern
side of Kumano Bay. The mountain rose precipitously from the sea, whose
fathomless water washed its southern base. A thick forest of pines
covered the mountain, and the vibrating of their needle foliage in the
breeze added a strange harp-like accompaniment to the perpetual roaring
of the waves below. On reaching the summit, Bunkichi threw himself down
on a knotty root of pine near the edge of a precipice and gazed out on
the broad expanse of Kumano Bay. As far as his view reached, no shore
could be descried; only the line where the dome of the azure sky circled
the deep blue of the ocean.
After sitting thus in silent contemplation for a few minutes, Bunkichi
suddenly turned round and said to Sadakichi: “Sea scenery is always fine
to look at, isn’t it? I am fond of this sort of rough sea. I should like
to have a swim in it.”
“Don’t talk such nonsense; you would no sooner get into it than you
would be swamped,” was the reply.
“That’s just what I like. I should dive deep down into the water and get
out of the whirlpool. And now, tell me where it is the _wanizame_
generally pops out its head.”
“It generally comes out just below this headland,” the other answered,
“at the mouth of the harbor.”
As the two boys were steadily gazing on the surface of the water, sure
enough, up came the shark, and startled Sadakichi by cleaving the water
with its back. Whether it was in frolic or in quest of prey, the monster
swam to and fro, now showing its head and now its tail. Its rock-like
back and its iron-like fins were horrible enough to inspire even men
with awe.
Sadakichi, feeling nervous at the sight, said to his companion,
“Bunkichi San, now you see the monster, you will be for giving up your
grand job, I fancy.”
“What! You don’t suppose I’m frightened, do you,” was his scornful
retort, “at the sight of such a little fish?”
“What do you say?” said the other.
“Well, if the chance came in my way, I might even kill a leviathan or a
crocodile!”
As these two were thus talking, a gust of wind from the high Nachi
Mountain swept down on the forest of Sumiyoshi and awakened the myriad
tiny harps of the pines, while the waves rolled one after another
against the rocks below. These sounds combined to drown the voices of
the lads, one of whom seemed to be persuading the other that it was time
to go back, while the other seemed to be insisting on staying a little
longer to enjoy the wild scenery and to think over the issues of his
scheme.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER III
A BOAT CAPSIZED—A HAIRBREADTH ESCAPE
THE master of the Daikokuya, who had been much struck by the wisdom and
courage of Bunkichi, lost no time in going to an apothecary to get
plenty of the poisonous stuff for the _wanizame_, while he ordered some
of his men to prepare the straw dummy.
In course of time the two lads, Bunkichi and Sadakichi, came back from
Sumiyoshi bluff. The master welcomed them into his own room, and said:
“How now, Bunkichi? Did you see the shark?”
“Yes, sir, I saw it,” was the reply.
“And now that you have seen the monster are you less disposed to go out
to sea?”
“No; on the contrary,” replied the lad, “I am the more ready to go.”
“Isn’t that obstinacy on your part?”
“Not in the least, sir,” the lad said, as he drew himself up; “the
greater the opponent, the greater the interest and strength that are
called for; and I am about to do this at the risk of my life. I well
observed the spot where the shark comes up, and noticed a large
pine-tree which projects over the sea from the precipice. If some one
will let fall a stout rope from one of its branches, I will row over to
it, and there I shall entice the shark to swallow the straw dummy; then
if the shark, in plunging about, should upset my boat, I shall take hold
of the rope and climb or be hauled up the precipice.”
The master, who was once more struck by words which showed so much
sagacity as well as courage, said:
“That’s a very good idea of yours. Then this is what we shall decide to
do, is it? I shall send out some of my young men to the Sumiyoshi bluff
to fix a rope to the pine branch from the precipice, and you will tie
the rope to your waist before you go out on your venture. I and others
will stand upon the cliff and watch you, and should you be in danger of
being swallowed by the monster, we shall lose no time in hauling you up.
Is that to be our plan of action?”
“Yes, that’s the plan,” was the boy’s reply.
“Well, then, I have bought the poison, and can soon have ready as many
as three dummies. When do you think of setting out?”
“Now, at once,” answered Bunkichi.
“That is rushing it too quickly, my lad. Wouldn’t it be better for you
to wait till to-morrow?” remonstrated the master.
“Unless things of this kind are done quickly and made easy work of, some
obstacles may arise and frustrate our plans; so I will just do it with
as little concern as you snap your fingers,” said the lad.
“You can’t do things so lightly as you say,” was the master’s reply.
And his wife, who had been listening, and who regretted having given her
consent to the boy’s rash project, added: “Bunkichi, do stay at home
to-day and spend it in preparation and do the work to-morrow.”
And the little girl also said: “I don’t care for your going to sea.”
But Bunkichi, having once made up his mind in the matter, was not to be
moved by any one’s entreaties.
“Then, by your leave, sir,” he said, “I will take that little boat at
the jetty.” And without more delay he rose up to go.
His master knew not how to stop him, but said: “No, no; that small boat
is dangerous; and, if you must go, you had better go out in the
_temmabune_.”[14]
Footnote 14:
Pronounced Tem-mah-bonn’ay. A larger boat.
“No, sir,” said the lad; “the _temmabune_ is too big for me to row
alone, so I prefer the small one.”
“But I am in great concern about your personal safety if you go alone,”
said the master. “I will give ten _rio_ to any one who will go with
you.”
Though he quickly made known this offer to the members of his household
as well as among his neighbors, no one ventured to offer himself on
account of the people’s repeated and terrible experiences. Bunkichi
soothed his master, saying that he was much freer if left to act by
himself than he would be if there were others with him. Quickly putting
the three dummies into the small boat outside the garden gate, with
marvelous coolness, as if he were going out for pleasure, he said:
“Good-by, everybody; I will go now, and be back again soon.”
The master, who was first to stir, led out to the jetty some of his
young men as well as some strong coolies. Three or four big ropes having
been made ready, he said:
“Now, Bunkichi, tie one of these to your waist.”
“It’s no use, sir, till I get near the mountain,” replied the lad, but
the master said:
“But just think, if on your way out the shark should turn up! We shall
pull you along the coast while you will row as near as you can to the
land.”
Bunkichi, who couldn’t resist the master’s persuasion, let him tie the
rope round his waist, and the master himself took hold of the end of it
and together with others went along the shore toward Sumiyoshi bluff.
Bunkichi, having been brought up at the seaside, was an excellent rower,
but as they pulled along the rope he rowed but slightly. Suddenly he
took out a dagger which had been handed down from his ancestors and
unsheathed it, smiling as he noted the temper of the steel.
Who spread the news no one knew, yet the people in the town came out in
a crowd, and every one was surprised to see a boy, alone in a boat,
sallying forth to kill the monster.
“Isn’t he a wonderfully courageous boy!”
“He is no common boy. Perhaps he may yet be as famous as our great hero
Kato Kiyomasa.”[15]
Footnote 15:
The conqueror of Korea in 594 A.D.
“Isn’t he cool!”
“Hasn’t he wonderful presence of mind!”
Such expressions as these escaped from everybody’s lips. Thus praising
him as they went along, the crowd followed the master.
From among the crowd an old woman stepped out with a rosary in one hand
and said to the master:
“Sir, please let me hold the rope, _Namu-Ami-Dabutsu_.”[16]
Footnote 16:
An expression used in one of the Buddhistic prayers. Among a certain
class of Japanese it was believed that by repeating this phrase
frequently their chances of going to heaven were increased.
The young men turned to her and said:
“Ill omen! Don’t say such a thing as _Namu-Ami-Dabutsu_. This is not the
rope for you to pull.”
In spite of the taunt she still muttered the sacred charm of the Buddha
sect, saying:
“But do let me hold it. I am the leader in pulling timbers for the
repairing of the Hongwanzi[17] temple. Yet I must have my share, because
I am sure that the lad is a hero sent by Buddha himself to save us from
our troubles. _Namu-Ami-Dabutsu_,” repeated the woman.
Footnote 17:
The headquarters of the Buddhist religion in Kioto.
Just then a maid-servant carrying a little girl on her back came along
the shore after the woman. The latter turned to the little girl and
said:
“Ah, you are the daughter of the Daikokuya. Do you want to pull this
rope, too? _Namu-Ami-Da—_”
The girl wouldn’t listen to her words, but, looking intently at the boat
in the distance, called out aloud, “Bunkichi!”
The other bystanders, who heard the name for the first time, said: “Ah,
his name is Bunkichi, is it?” and at once shouted, “Bunkichi Daimiozin,”
which is a title they give to the gods.
The lad, taking little notice of the stir on the shore, soon came to the
foot of the bluff. The master and others went up the hillside along the
edge of the precipice, while the lad began to prepare for his task.
The long summer day was already declining and a cool breeze from the far
ocean blew about his broad sleeves, and the voice of the crowd grew
fainter and fainter as, hidden by the pine-trees, they wound their way
up to the top of the hill. Yet now and then Bunkichi heard his master’s
voice faintly calling to him, to which he made reply to assure him of
his safety. Looking out toward the ocean there was no sail or boat to be
seen, probably owing to the people’s fear of meeting the shark. A
checkered bank of white and dark clouds was massed on the sky above the
horizon, while the waves chased one another below.
Any ordinary man would have quailed at such a scene as this; but
Bunkichi, with no sign of nervousness, put the straw figures in the bow
of the boat and proceeded toward the place where the shark usually made
its appearance. He could now see the master and others above the
precipice as they began attaching the rope to a strong limb of the
sturdy pine which projected seaward. Thus all the preparations were made
for hauling him up at the given signal, while the lad was also preparing
himself for the encounter and reconnoitering the scene from his boat.
At last the iron-like fin of the monster was seen to cleave the water.
Apparently rejoiced at the sight of a man, as Bunkichi’s figure must
have been now and then reflected on the water, the shark in quest of
prey raised its head above the water and made for the boat.
“Come on, you villain,” muttered the lad, who stood up in the bow with
the dummy in his hand.
The terror-stricken young men at the top of the precipice no sooner saw
the monster than they were on the point of pulling up the rope; but the
master stayed them, saying: “Steady, men, steady! Wait till he gives us
a signal.”
The master anxiously watched the lad’s action, while the crowd hardly
breathed as they stood still with hands clenched.
With a splash, Bunkichi threw the figure in the way of the _wanizame_;
the shark turned over, the white portion of its body gleamed, and it
snapped the stuffed figure, drawing it under the water. Up it came
again, and the lad threw out the second dummy; but the monster did not
take any notice of it, but made straight for the lad. Above,
|
KIPPERLING.
(AFTER R. K.)
[N.B.--No nautical terms or statements guaranteed.]
Away by the haunts of the Yang-tse-boo,
Where the Yuletide runs cold gin,
And the rollicking sign of the _Lord Knows Who_
Sees mariners drink like sin;
Where the _Jolly Roger_ tips his quart
To the luck of the _Union Jack_;
And some are screwed on the foreign port,
And some on the starboard tack;--
Ever they tell the tale anew
Of the chase for the kipperling swag;
How the smack _Tommy This_ and the smack _Tommy That_
They broached each other like a whiskey-vat,
And the _Fuzzy-Wuz_ took the bag.
Now this is the law of the herring fleet that harries the northern
main,
Tattooed in scars on the chests of the tars with a brand like the
brand of Cain:
That none may woo the sea-born shrew save such as pay their way
With a kipperling netted at noon of night and cured ere the crack of
day.
It was the woman Sal o' the Dune, and the men were three to one,
Bill the Skipper and Ned the Nipper and Sam that was Son of a Gun;
Bill was a Skipper and Ned was a Nipper and Sam was the Son of a
Gun,
And the woman was Sal o' the Dune, as I said, and the men were three
to one.
There was never a light in the sky that night of the soft midsummer
gales,
But the great man-bloaters snorted low, and the young 'uns sang like
whales;
And out laughed Sal (like a dog-toothed wheel was the laugh that Sal
laughed she):
"Now who's for a bride on the shady side of up'ards of forty-three?"
And Neddy he swore by butt and bend, and Billy by bend and bitt,
And nautical names that no man frames but your amateur nautical
wit;
And Sam said, "Shiver my topping-lifts and scuttle my foc's'le
yarn,
And may I be curst, if I'm not in first with a kipperling slued
astarn!"
Now the smack _Tommy This_ and the smack _Tommy That_ and the
_Fuzzy-Wuz_ smack, all three,
Their captains bold, they were Bill and Ned and Sam respectivelee.
And it's writ in the rules that the primary schools of kippers
should get off cheap
For a two mile reach off Foulness beach when the July tide's at
neap;
And the lawless lubbers that lust for loot and filch the yearling
stock
They get smart raps from the coastguard chaps with their blunderbuss
fixed half-cock.
Now Bill the Skipper and Ned the Nipper could tell green cheese from
blue,
And Bill knew a trick and Ned knew a trick, but Sam knew a trick
worth two.
So Bill he sneaks a corporal's breeks and a belt of pipeclayed
hide,
And splices them on to the jibsail-boom like a troopship on the
tide.
And likewise Ned to his masthead he runs a rag of the Queen's,
With a rusty sword and a moke on board to bray like the Horse
Marines.
But Sam sniffs gore and he keeps off-shore and he waits for things
to stir,
Then he tracks for the deep with a long fog-horn rigged up like a
bowchasér.
Now scarce had Ned dropped line and lead when he spots the
pipeclayed hide,
And the corporal's breeks on the jibsail-boom like a troopship on
the tide;
And Bill likewise, when he ups and spies the slip of a rag of the
Queen's,
And the rusty sword, and he sniffs aboard the moke of the Horse
Marines.
So they each luffed sail, and they each turned tail, and they
whipped their wheels like mad,
When the one he said "By the Lord, it's Ned!" and the other, "It's
Bill, by Gad!"
Then about and about, and nozzle to snout, they rammed through
breach and brace,
And the splinters flew as they mostly do when a Government test
takes place.
Then up stole Sam with his little ram and the nautical talk flowed
free,
And in good bold type might have covered the two front sheets of the
_P. M. G._
But the fog-horn bluff was safe enough, where all was weed and
weft,
And the conger-eels were a-making meals, and the pick of the tackle
left
Was a binnacle-lid and a leak in the bilge and the chip of a cracked
sheerstrake
And the corporal's belt and the moke's cool pelt and a portrait of
Francis Drake.
So Sam he hauls the dead men's trawls and he booms for the
harbour-bar,
And the splitten fry are salted dry by the blink of the morning
star.
And Sal o' the Dune was wed next moon by the man that paid his way
With a kipperling netted at noon of night and cured ere the crack of
day;
For such is the law of the herring fleet that bloats on the northern
main,
Tattooed in scars on the chests of the tars with a brand like the
brand of Cain.
And still in the haunts of the Yang-tse-boo
Ever they tell the tale anew
Of the chase for the kipperling swag;
How the smack _Tommy This_ and the smack _Tommy That_
They broached each other like a whiskey-vat,
And the _Fuzzy-Wuz_ took the bag.
5.
A BALLAD OF A BUN.
(AFTER J. D.)
'I am sister to the mountains now,
And sister to the sun and moon.'
'Heed not belletrist jargon.'
JOHN DAVIDSON.
From Whitsuntide to Whitsuntide--
That is to say, all through the year--
Her patient pen was occupied
With songs and tales of pleasant cheer.
But still her talent went to waste
Like flotsam on an open sea;
She never hit the public taste,
Or knew the knack of Bellettrie.
Across the sounding City's fogs
There hurtled round her weary head
The thunder of the rolling logs;
"The Critics' Carnival!" she said.
Immortal prigs took heaven by storm,
Prigs scattered largesses of praise;
The work of both was rather warm;
"This is," she said, "the thing that pays!"
Sharp envy turned her wine to blood--
I mean it turned her blood to wine;
And this resolve came like a flood--
"The cake of knowledge must be mine!
"I am in Eve's predicament--
I sha'n't be happy till I've sinned;
Away!" She lightly rose, and sent
Her scruples sailing down the wind.
She did not tear her open breast,
Nor leave behind a track of gore,
But carried flannel next her chest,
And wore the boots she always wore.
Across the sounding City's din
She wandered, looking indiscreet,
And ultimately landed in
The neighbourhood of Regent Street.
She ran against a resolute
Policeman standing like a wall;
She kissed his feet and asked the route
To where they held the Carnival.
Her strange behaviour caused remark;
They said, "Her reason has been lost;"
Beside her eyes the gas was dark,
But that was owing to the frost.
A Decadent was dribbling by;
"Lady," he said, "you seem undone;
You need a panacea; try
This sample of the Bodley bun.
"It is fulfilled of precious spice,
Whereof I give the recipe;--
Take common dripping, stew in vice,
And serve with vertu; taste and see!
"And lo! I brand you on the brow
As kin to Nature's lowest germ;
You are sister to the microbe now,
And second-cousin to the worm."
He gave her of his golden store,
Such hunger hovered in her look;
She took the bun, and asked for more,
And went away and wrote a book.
To put the matter shortly, she
Became the topic of the town;
In all the lists of Bellettrie
Her name was regularly down.
"We recognise," the critics wrote,
"Maupassant's verve and Heine's wit;"
Some even made a verbal note
Of Shakespeare being out of it.
The seasons went and came again;
At length the languid Public cried:
"It is a sorry sort of Lane
That hardly ever turns aside.
"We want a little change of air;
On that," they said, "we must insist;
We cannot any longer bear
The seedy sex-impressionist."
Across the sounding City's din
This rumour smote her on the ear:
"The publishers are going in
For songs and tales of pleasant cheer!"
"Alack!" she said, "I lost the art,
And left my womanhood foredone,
When first I trafficked in the mart
All for a mess of Bodley bun.
"I cannot cut my kin at will,
Or jilt the protoplastic germ;
I am sister to the microbe still,
And second-cousin to the worm!"
6.
A VIGO-STREET ECLOGUE.
(AFTER THE SAME)
Mæcenas. John. George. Arthur. Grant. Richard.
MÆCENAS.
What ho! a merry Christmas! Pff!
Sharp blows the frosty blizzard's whff!
Pile on more logs and let them roll,
And pass the humming wassail-bowl!
JOHN.
The wassail-bowl! the wind is snell!
Drinc hael! and warm the poet's pell!
MÆCENAS.
Richard! say something rustic.
RICHARD.
Lo!
The customary mistletoe,
Prehensile on the apple-bough,
Invites the usual kiss.
GEORGE.
And now
Cathartic hellebore should be
A cure for imbecility.
GRANT.
Now holly-berries have begun
To blush for Women That Have Done.
ARTHUR.
The farmer sticks his stuffy goose!
MÆCENAS.
Come, come, you grow a little loose;
That's Michaelmas; you must remember
That Michaelmas is in September!
ARTHUR.
Northward the swallow sweeps his wing.
MÆCENAS.
No, no! the bird arrives in spring!
ARTHUR.
Such knowledge fits the country clown;
We've better things to note in town.
What's Nature's lore compared with women's?
JOHN.
For this enigma go to S-m-ns;
He is the----
ARTHUR.
Yes, I am, I know,
The devil of a Romeo!
JOHN.
Hark! hark! the waits, the precious waits!
Their music beats at Heaven's gates.
MÆCENAS.
What Bodley wight will sing a stave
To match their strumming? I would have
The manly bass of Hobbes's voice;
But Unwin's house is Hobbes's choice.
George! you've a baritone at need.
GEORGE.
Alas! my famous _Keynotes_ lead
To _Discords_.
JOHN.
I've a little thing
_Of Resurrection_. Shall I sing?
ARTHUR.
Please do; but _à propos_ of what?
JOHN.
I cannot say, unless _de bottes_.
[_Proceeds to sing a Ballad of Resurrection._
A letter-card from my dear love!
O folded page of blessed blue!
She burst her many-buttoned glove,
And ripped the perforation through.
"My love, to-night, about eleven,
With never a priest or passing-bell,
We die! and meet, with luck, in Heaven,
But anyhow at least in Hell!"
Her courage very nearly failed,
In fact she swooned along the floor;
But curiosity prevailed,
She came again and read some more.
"There is no way but this to choose;
My people fain would have us wed;
But you and I have later views,
And scorn the vulgar marriage-bed.
"Far be it from me to dictate
How best to break the mortal bond,
But personally I may state
That I shall use the village pond.
"Be punctual, love, and let us meet
For weal or woe!
This line has lost a pair of feet;
The post is now about to go."
Ay, ay, she thought, to meet were well,
But if we found each other out?
You, say, in Heaven, I in Hell,
Or else the other way about!
Nay, there be heavy odds, she said,
One fate shall save us both or damn;
We surely shall be bracketed!
She ceased and sent a telegram.
To Guy le Preux de Balthazar--
Here followed his address, and then
This pregnant message--"Right you are!"
She wrote it with the office pen.
She flashed the phrase along the wires,
Then, passing by a dagger-shop,
Bought one and wiped it on her sire's
Best graduated razor-strop.
On second thoughts, she said, I lean
To poison; true, a knife like this
Looks pretty, rib and rib between,
But people very often miss.
She sought the chemist in his place;
He sampled her with searching eye;
She looked him frankly in the face,
And told a wicked, wicked lie.
"My hen," she said,--"a bantam blend--
Has hatched a poor demented chick;
To ease the gentle creature's end
I want a pint of arsenic."
The chemist deemed the order large,
But said no thing and drew the drug;
She seized and bore the sacred charge
Before her in a pewter mug.
At tea she faced her fell intent;
Dressing, she lightly laughed at doom;
Dined with the family, and spent
The evening in the drawing-room.
At ten the early rooster crowed;
Ten-thirty struck and she was gone;
She crossed alone the naked road;
The road had really nothing on.
Her golden braids hung down her back;
Within her side she felt a stitch;
And once the moon behind the wrack
Came out and caught her in a ditch.
Once ere she reached the trysting-pear
She broke the slumber of the rooks;
She wrung her hands, she tore her hair,
And did as people do in books.
From out her cloak she fetched the drug--
"Thy health, my love, in Heaven or Hell!"
Deep to the dregs she drained the mug
And dropped it, feeling far from well.
Upon the punctual stroke her fond
True lover kept the oath he swore;
Plunged softly in the village pond,
But feeling chilly swam ashore.
Next morning in the judgment-place
Two pallid prisoners were tried;
Their guilt was plain; it was a case
Of ineffective suicide.
Yestreen a member of the Force
Had found a woman deadly sick,
Lamenting, with sincere remorse,
An overdose of arsenic.
Another heard upon his beat
One darkly muttering, "This is Hell!"
His weed was wet from head to feet;
He put him in a common cell.
The Justice chewed the evidence;
His eyes were soft, his lips were bland;
It was, he said, a first offence;
He merely gave a reprimand.
"Go free, my poppets, keep the laws,
And get ye wed at once," said he;
The court indulged in rude applause;
The usher cleared the gallery.
The prison-warder, deeply stirred,
Approached the culprits at the bar;
Then haled them forth without a word
Towards the nearest Registrar.
RICHARD.
John, you surpass yourself. Next week
Expect a flattering critique!
JOHN.
The waits are whining in the cold
With clavicorn and clarigold;
They play them like a crumpled horn,
The clarigold and clavicorn.
7.
AN ODE TO SPRING IN THE METROPOLIS.
(AFTER R. LE G.)
Is this the Seine?
And am I altogether wrong
About the brain,
Dreaming I hear the British tongue?
Dear Heaven! what a rhyme!
And yet 'tis all as good
As some that I have fashioned in my time,
Like _bud_ and _wood_;
And on the other hand you couldn't have a more precise or neater
Metre.
Is this, I ask, the Seine?
And yonder sylvan lane,
Is it the _Bois_?
_Ma foi!_
_Comme elle est chic_, my Paris, my grisette!
Yet may I not forget
That London still remains the missus
Of this Narcissus.
No, no! 'tis not the Seine!
It is the artificial mere
That permeates St. James's Park.
The air is bosom-shaped and clear;
And, Himmel! do I hear the lark,
The good old Shelley-Wordsworth lark?
Even now, I prithee,
Hark
Him hammer
On Heaven's harmonious stithy,
Dew-drunken--like my grammar!
And O the trees!
Beneath their shade the hairless coot
Waddles at ease,
Hushing the magic of his gurgling beak;
Or haply in Tree-worship leans his cheek
Against their blind
And hoary rind,
Observing how the sap
Comes humming upwards from the tap-
Root!
Thrice happy, hairless coot!
And O the sun!
See, see, he shakes
His big red hands at me in wanton fun!
A glorious image that! it might be Blake's;
As in my critical capacity I took occasion to remark elsewhere,
When heaping praise
On this exceptionally happy phrase,
Although I made it up myself.
But I and Blake, we really constitute a pair,
Each being rather like an artless woodland elf.
And O the stars! I cannot say
I see a star just now,
Not at this time of day;
But anyhow
The stars are all my brothers;
(This verse is shorter than the others).
O Constitution Hill!
(This verse is shorter still).
Ah! London, London in the Spring!
You are, you know you are,
So full of curious sights,
Especially by nights.
From gilded bar to gilded bar
Youth goes his giddy whirl,
His heart fulfilled of Music-Hall,
His arm fulfilled of girl!
I frankly call
That last effect a perfect pearl!
I know it's
Not given to many poets
To frame so fair a thing
As this of mine, of Spring.
Indeed, the world grows Lilliput
All but
A precious few, the heirs of utter godlihead,
Who wear the yellow flower of blameless bodlihead!
And they, with Laureates dead, look down
On smaller fry unworthy of the crown,
Mere mushroom men, puff-balls that advertise
And bravely think to brush the skies.
Great is advertisement with little men!
_Moi, qui vous parle, L- G-ll--nn-_,
Have told them so;
I ought to know!
8.
YET.
(AFTER F. E. W.)
Sing me a drawing-room song, darling!
Sing by the sunset's glow;
Now while the shadows are long, darling;
Now while the lights are low;
Something so chaste and so coy, darling!
Something that melts the chest;
Milder than even Molloy, darling!
Better than Bingham's best.
Sing me a drawing-room song, darling!
Sing as you sang of yore,
Lisping of love that is strong, darling!
Strong as a big barn-door;
Let the true knight be bold, darling!
Let him arrive too late;
Stick in a bower of gold, darling!
Stick in a golden gate.
Sing me a drawing-room song, darling!
Bear on the angels' wings
Children that know no wrong, darling!
Little cherubic things!
Sing of their sunny hair, darling!
Get them to die in June;
Wake, if you can, on the stair, darling!
Echoes of tiny shoon.
Sing me a drawing-room song, darling!
Sentiment may be false,
Yet it will worry along, darling!
Set to a tum-tum valse;
See that the verses are few, darling!
Keep to the rule of three;
That will be better for you, darling!
Certainly better for me.
9.
ELEGI MUSARUM.
(AFTER W. W.)
[To Mr. St. Loe Strachey.]
Dawn of the year that emerges, a fine and ebullient Phœnix,
Forth from the cinders of Self, out of the ash of the Past;
Year that discovers my Muse in the thick of purpureal sonnets,
Slating diplomacy's sloth, blushing for 'Abdul the d----d';
Year that in guise of a herald declaring the close of the tourney
Clears the redoubtable lists hot with the Battle of Bays;
Binds on the brows of the Tory, the highly respectable Austin,
Laurels that Phœbus of old wore on the top of his tuft;
Leaving the locks of the hydra, of Bodley the numerous-headed,
Clean as the chin of a boy, bare as a babe in a bath;
Year that--I see in the vista the principal verb of the sentence
Loom as a deeply-desired bride that is late at the post--
Year that has painfully tickled the lachrymal nerves of the Muses,
Giving Another the gift due to Respectfully Theirs;--
_Hinc illæ lacrimæ!_ Ah, reader! I grossly misled you;
See, it was false; there is no principal verb after all!
His likewise is the anguish, who followed with soft serenading
Me as the tremulous tide tracks the meandering moon;
Climbing as Romeo clomb, peradventure by help of a flower-pot,
Where in her balconied bower lay, inexpressibly coy,
Juliet, not as the others, supinely, insanely erotic,
Pallid and yellow of hue, very degenerate souls,
Rioting round with the rapture of palpitant ichorous ardour,
But an immaculate maid, 'one,' you may say, 'of the best'!
His, I repeat, is the anguish--my journalist, eulogist critic,
Strachey, the generous judge, Saintly unlimited Loe!
Vainly the stolid _Spectator_, bewildered with fabulous bow-wows,
Sick with a surfeit of dog, ran me for all it was worth!
Vainly--if I may recur to a metaphor drawn from the ocean,
Long (in a figure of speech) tied to the tail of the moon--
Vainly, O excellent organ! with ample and aqueous unction
Once, as a rule, in a week, 'cleansing the Earth of her stain';
(Here you will possibly pardon the natural scion of poets,
Proud with humility's pride, spoiling a passage from Keats)--
Vainly your voice on the ears of impregnable Laureate-makers,
Rang as the sinuous sea rings on a petrified coast;
Vainly your voice with a subtle and slightly indelicate largess,
Broke on an obdurate world hymning the advent of Me;
When from the 'commune of air,' from 'the exquisite fabric of
Silence,'
I, a superior orb, burst into exquisite print!
What shall we say for your greeting, O good horticultural Alfred!
Royalty's darling and pride, crown of the Salisbury Press?
Now when the negligent Public, in search of a subject for dinner,
Asks for the names of your books, Lord! what a boom there will
be!
Hoarse in Penbryn are the howlings that rise for the hope of the
Cymri;
Over her Algernon's head Putney composes a dirge;
Edwin anathematises politely in various lingos;
Davidson ruminates hard over a _Ballad of Hell_;
Fondly Le Gallienne fancies how pretty the Delphian laurels
Would have appeared on his own hairy and passionate poll;
I, imperturbably careless, untainted of jealousy's jaundice,
Simply regret the profane contumely done to the Muse;
Done to the Muse in the person of Me, her patron, that never
Licked Ministerial lips, dusted the boots of the Court!
Surely I hear through the noisy and nauseous clamour of Carlton
Sobs of the sensitive Nine heave upon Helicon's hump!
II. TO MR. WILLIAM WATSON.
[On writing the first instalment of _The Purple East_, a 'fine sonnet
which it is our privilege to publish.'--_Westminster Gazette_, Dec.
16, 1895.]
Dear Mr. Watson, we have heard with wonder,
Not all unmingled with a sad regret,
That little penny blast of purple thunder,
You issued in the _Westminster Gazette_;
The Editor describes it as a sonnet;
I wish to make a few remarks upon it.
_Never, O craven England, nevermore
Prate thou of generous effort, righteous aim!_
So ran the lines, and left me very sore,
For you may guess my heart was hot with shame:
Even thus early in your ample song
I felt that something must be really wrong.
But when I learned that our ignoble nation
Lay sleeping like a log, and lay alone,
Propping, according to your information,
_Abdul the Damned on his infernal throne_,
O then I scattered to the wind my fears,
And nearly went and joined the Volunteers.
But just in time the thought occurred to me
That England commonly commits her course
To men as good at heart as even we
And possibly much richer in resource;
That we had better mind our own affairs
And leave these gentlemen to manage theirs.
It further seemed a work uncommon light
For one like you, a casual civilian,
To order half a hemisphere to fight
And slaughter one another by the million,
While you yourself, a paper Galahad,
Spilt ink for blood upon a blotting-pad.
The days are gone when sword and poet's pen
One gallant gifted hand was wont to wield;
When Taillefer in face of Harold's men
Rode foremost on to Senlac's fatal field,
And tossed his sword in air, and sang a spell
Of Roland's battle-song, and, singing, fell.
The days are gone when troubadours by dozens
Polished their steel and joined the stout crusade,
Strumming, in memory of pretty cousins,
_The Girl I left behind Me_, on parade;
They often used to rattle off a ballad in
The intervals of punishing the Saladin.
In later times, of course I know there's Byron,
Who by his own report could play the man;
I seem to see him with his Lesbian lyre on,
And brandishing a useful yataghan;
Though never going altogether strong, he
Managed at least to die at Missolonghi.
No more the trades of lute and lance are linked,
Though doubtless under many martial bonnets
Brave heads there be that harbour the distinct
Belief that they can manufacture sonnets;
But on the other hand a bard is not
Supposed to run the risk of being shot.
Then since your courage lacks a crucial test,
And politics were never your profession,
Dear Mr. Watson, won't you find it best
To temper valour with a due discretion?
That so, despite the fond _Spectator's_ booming,
Above your brow the bays may yet be blooming.
III. ENGLAND'S ALFRED ABROAD.
[M. Alfred Austin, poète-lauréat d'Angleterre, vient d'arriver à
Nice, où il a devancé la Reine. Il était, hier, dans les jardins de
Monte-Carlo. Sera-ce sous notre ciel qu'il écrira son premier
poème?--_Menton-Mondain_.]
Wrong? are they wrong? Of course they are,
I venture to reply;
For I bore'my first' (and, I hope, my worst)
A month or so gone by;
And I can't repeat it under this
Or any other sky.
What! has the public never heard
In these benighted climes
That nascent note of my Laureate throat,
That fluty fitte of rhymes
Which occupied about a half
A column of the _Times_?
They little know what they have lost,
Nor what a carnal beano
They might have spent in the thick of Lent
If only Daniel Leno
Had sung them _Jameson's Ride_ and knocked
The Monaco Casino.
Some day the croupiers' furtive eyes
Will all be wringing wet;
Even the Prince will hardly mince
The language of regret
At entertaining unawares
The famed Alhambra Pet.
But still not quite incognito
I mark the moving scene,
In a tepid zone where (like my own)
The palms are ever green,
And find myself reported as
A herald of the Queen.
Here where aloft the heavens are blue,
And blue the seas below,
I roll my eye and fondly try
To get the rhymes to go,
As I pace _The Garden that I love_,
Composing all I know.
But when my poet-pinions droop,
And all the air is wan,
I enter in to the courts of sin
And put a louis on,
And hold my heart and look again,
And lo! the thing is gone!
Wrong? is it wrong? To baser crafts
Has England's Alfred pandered,
Who once to the sign of Phœbus' shrine
With awesome gait meandered,
And ever wrote in the cause of right
According to his _Standard_?
Nay! this is life! to take a turn
On Fortune's captious crust;
To pluck the day in a human way
Like men of common dust;
But O! if England's only bard
Should absolutely bust!
A laureate never borrows on
His coming quarter's pay;
And I mean to stop or ever I pop
My crown of peerless bay;
So I'll take the next _rapide_ to Nice,
And the 'bus to Cimiez.
_MENTONE, Feb., 1896._
IV. LILITH LIBIFERA.
Exhumed from out the inner cirque of Hell
By kind permission of the Evil One,
Behold her devilish presentment, done
By Master Aubrey's weird unearthly spell!
This is that Lady known as Jezebel,
Or Lilith, Eden's woman-scorpion,
Libifera, that is, that takes the bun,
Borgia, Vivien, Cussed Damosel.
Hers are the bulging lips that fairly break
The pumpkin's heart; and hers the eyes that shame
The wanton ape that culls the cocoa-nuts.
Even such the yellow-bellied toads that slake
Nocturnally their amorous-ardent flame
In the wan waste of weary water-butts.
V. ARS POSTERA.
[On an advertisement of _A Comedy of Sighs_.]
Mr. Aubrey Beer de Beers,
You're getting quite a high renown;
Your Comedy of Leers, you know,
Is posted all about the town;
This sort of stuff I cannot puff,
As Boston says, it makes me 'tired';
Your Japanee-Rossetti girl
Is not a thing to be desired.
Mr. Aubrey Beer de Beers,
New English Art (excuse the chaff)
Is like the Newest Humour style,
It's not a thing at which to laugh;
But all the same, you need not maim
A beauty reared on Nature's rules;
A simple maid _au naturel_
Is worth a dozen spotted ghouls.
Mr. Aubrey Beer de Beers,
You put strange phantoms on our walls,
If not so daring as _To-day's_,
Nor quite so Hardy as _St. Paul's_;
Her sidelong eyes, her giddy guise,--
_Grande Dame Sans Merci_ she may be;
But there is that about her throat
Which I myself don't care to see.
Mr. Aubrey Beer de Beers,
The Philistines across the way,
They say her lips--well, never mind
Precisely what it is they say;
But I have heard a drastic word
That scarce is fit for dainty ears;
But then their taste is not the kind
Of taste to flatter Beer de Beers.
Bless me, Aubrey Beer de Beers,
On fair Elysian lawns apart
Burd Helen of the Trojan time
Smiles at the latest mode of Art;
Howe'er it be, it seems to me,
It's not important to be New;
New Art would better Nature's best,
But Nature knows a thing or two.
Aubrey, Aubrey Beer de Beers,
Are there no models at your gate,
Live, shapely, possible and clean?
Or won't they do to 'decorate'?
Then by all means bestrew your scenes
With half the lotuses that blow,
Pothooks and fishing-lines and things,
But let the human woman go!
VI. A NEW BLUE BOOK.
[It was hardly to be supposed that the young decadents who once rioted
... in the _Yellow Book_ would be content to remain in obscurity after
the metamorphosis of that periodical and the consequent exclusion of
themselves. The _Savoy_, we learn, to be edited by Mr. Arthur Symons
and Mr. Aubrey Beardsley, will appear early in December.--_Globe_.]
'The world's great age begins anew,'
Cold virtue's weeds are cast;
Our heads are light, our tales are blue,
And things are moving fast;
And no one any longer quarrels
With anybody else's morals.
A racier journal stamps its pages
With Beardsleys braver far;
A bolder Editor engages
To shame the morning star,
On _London Nights_, not near so chilly,
Sampling a shadier Piccadilly.
Satyr and Faun their late repose
Now burst like anything;
New Mænads, turning sprightlier toes,
Enjoy a jauntier fling;
With lustier lips old Pan shall play
Drain-pipes along the sewer's way.
Priapus, wrongly left for dead,
Is dead no more than Pan;
Silenus rises from his bed
And hiccups like a man;
There's something rather chaste (between us)
About Priapus and Silenus.
O cease to brew your Bodley pap
Whence
|
It comes from a root that means to
control and not let get away and run wild. It means to mix up in the
right way so that there will not be too much of anything.
And so temper means to give a good form to, by having just enough of
what makes that form.
And perhaps because heat is used to mould things and helps in mixing,
temper sometimes means heat; and when that heat gets inside us it warms
us. And that inside heat is good. A cold heart or mind will not do
anything.
Temper is not bad.
We get a lot of good words from temper; like temperament—what your
character is like; and temperature—the amount of heat in the air; and
temperance—the amount of self-control you have.
Unfortunately, the heat gets often too hot. And then we are people of
bad temper. And if you get too much of that, it leads to very serious
trouble.
I went once to the gallows with a splendid-looking boy who did not mix
things right, and got so much temper that he became a murderer!
Bad temper means lost control. To keep your temper is like riding a
high mettled horse.—You have to keep firm hold of the bit.
When the present King George was Duke of York, he came to Western
Canada, where I was a young minister. The people of Winnipeg gave him a
great reception. The streets were lined, and flags and bunting made gay
the city.
It was interesting to see the man who was to become the head later of
the greatest empire in history. But I must confess there was a part of
the procession that interested me more than even the Prince did.
It was his equerry.—The man who rode by his side on horseback. It was a
wonderful sight. He was on the back of a magnificent black charger,
with glossy flanks, and flowing mane and tail, and arching neck and
prancing feet. Powerfully built, it seemed the ambition of the horse to
hurl the driver from his back. The noise of the cheering and the bands
added to his restlessness. He curved to this side and that; stood up on
his hind legs; tossed his head between his feet; danced and careered
around until you would wonder how anybody could stay on his back.
But that rider was a great horseman. He sat there as though he were
part of the horse. With a firm hand and soothing voice, and a grip that
kept the bit solid in the mouth of his prancing charger, he danced up
the street a splendid sight.
And I thought, what a fine illustration of a strong life he was.
The man who can sit on his fiery temper, and hold it in control.
The Bible says: "He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and
he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city."
I suppose every boy here would envy Foch as he swept back the tide and
took trench after trench until he broke the Hindenburg line.
But when you hold the bridle firm on your temper you can be greater than
Foch.
Only those who have been West have ever seen a "stampede" where the
cowboys undertake to break a wild broncho, or to ride on the back of an
untamed steer.
I saw one once at Calgary, where a plunging broncho brought his four
feet together, and bucked his back, and lowered his head, and the cowboy
was hardly on his back till he was off again, and the broncho wildly
galloping down the dusty prairie.
But it was a thrilling sight when, without even reins, just one little
piece of rope, the skillful fellow, with his knees dug deep into the
broncho’s side, mastered him, and came galloping up the track in
triumph.
And it is just as fine a sight to see a girl or boy who can use this
wonderful gift of temper, and never let it use them—who masters it and
are never mastered by it.
Watch your temper, girls and boys. If it is kept under control it is a
splendid gift. If it is not, it may ruin you!
*V*
*SELFISHNESS*
My, that is a nasty little fox! If it gets into your garden it will
spoil it, sure as guns!
Not that you and I are to have no selves. That kind of a person is an
empty, silly, shallow body. You want the biggest self you can get. And
you need to care for yourself. For if you do not, you will have no self
with which to care for any one else.
And you need a true self-love, for if you stop truly loving yourself,
you will soon have nothing with which to love any one else.
But selfishness means you cannot see anybody else but yourself.
Selfishness means putting yourself in the centre and expecting everybody
and everything to dance to your music.
A little boy said to his sister, "Mary, there would be more room for me
on this sofa if one of us were to get off!"
Was he not a selfish boy? Who would want to have that kind of child
around—that expects the whole house to get out of his way so he could
blow himself?
Some one tells a story of the sweetness of the unselfish life of a
little ragged bootblack, who sold his kit to get a quarter to pay for a
notice in the paper of the death of his little brother. When the kind
newspaper man asked if it was his little brother, with a quivering chin
he said, "I had to sell my kit to do it, b-but he had his arms aroun’ my
neck when he d-died!"
The news went round and that same day at evening, he found his kit on
the doorstep, with a bunch of flowers bought with pennies by his chums,
who were touched by his unselfish act.
There is something very attractive about a girl or boy who thinks of
others and forgets self.
I have read of the wonderful St. Bernard dogs in the mountains of
Switzerland.
There is a house called a hospice, 8,000 feet above sea level, where the
monks live who keep the dogs to watch for lost travellers who may perish
in the snow.
The dogs have baskets strapped on their backs, which contain food for
lost men. They are trained so that they will find people and guide them
to the place of safety.
The story that interested me was of an Englishman who wanted to see the
dogs at work.
The monks told him that the best dog had been out for some time and they
were becoming worried over his absence.
In a few moments, in the dog came, looking completely discouraged. He
seemed to have no spirit, although all his companions were barking and
jumping around him. The old dog paid no attention, but went and lay
down in a sort of hopeless way, without even wagging his tail—like all
good dogs do that are pleased with themselves.
The explanation of the monks made me think.
They told the Englishman that that was the way the dog always acted
whenever he had failed to help any traveller.
Just think, girls and boys, of the instinct of a well-trained dog—so
deeply set on helping, that failure, even when he was not to blame for
it, made him ashamed and sad!
Surely we will at least be equal to a trained St. Bernard.
Surely we should far surpass him, by voluntarily, of our own loving
choice, seeking to help in a life of shining unselfishness.
I do not know any one who should be better able than a girl or boy to
put into their lives the spirit of this little poem, whose author I do
not know, but which I give to you:
LITTLE THINGS THAT CHEER
Just to bring to those who need
The little word of cheer;
Just to lift the drooping head
And check the falling tear;
Just to smooth a furrow from
A tired brow a while;
Just to help dispel a cloud,
Just to bring a smile—
Oh, the kindly little deeds,
As on through life we go,
How they bring the sunshine,
Only those who do them know.
Just to do the best we can,
As o’er life’s path each day,
With other pilgrims homeward bound,
We take our steady way;
Just to give a helping hand
Some weary weight to bear,
And lend a heart of sympathy
Some neighbour’s grief to share—
Oh, those kindly little deeds,
Our dear Lord notes each one,
And sheds His blessings o’er our way
Toward life’s setting sun.
*VI*
*IMPURITY*
Once in California I visited the beautiful gardens of San Francisco and
saw a very lovely flower.
Its petals were white, and when you opened up the heart, away down at
the very centre was a shape made by the base of the pistil that looked
exactly like a dove. It was a flower with a white dove at its heart.
They called it the Holy Ghost plant of South America.
It is a fine thing when a girl or boy carries within them a white heart!
There is no sin that leaves a worse stain than the sin of impurity.
It comes by unclean thoughts and words and deeds; and when it comes, it
is next to impossible to wash it out.
A man once looked at a dirty picture, and years after he had not
forgotten it! It made for him a lifelong fight!
It is almost like putting nails in a post. You may draw them out, but
you can never quite fill out the holes left. A growing tree may fill
them and a growing life may, but there is always a scar left where the
nail entered.
Some boys like to tell nasty stories, and if the boys to whom I talk
want to have white souls they should turn from nasty story-tellers the
way they would from drinking poison.
It is awful the way a dirty story sticks. It is so hard to get rid of
its memory. It is like indelible ink that you use when you want some
writing not to wear out.
The great General Grant, the United States hero of the Civil War, was
once at a party where one of those men were who think it smart to tell
such stories. Looking around, the man said, "I have a story to tell
you. There are no ladies present, are there?" "No," said Grant, "but
there are some gentlemen."
That story was never told.
Dear girls and boys, when any evil breath like that is around, think of
your dear mother or your beautiful sister, and tell your heart you must
be true to them.
"I must be true, for there are those who love me,
I must be pure, for there are those who care."
A newspaper published these verses that I think are so good. I would
like you to learn them.
While walking through a crowded down-town street the other day,
I heard a little urchin to his comrade turn and say:
"Say, Jimmy, let me tell youse, I’d be happy as a clam
If I only was de feller dat me mudder t’inks I am.
She just t’inks dat I’m a wonder, and she knows her little lad
Could never mix wid nothin’ dat was ugly, mean or bad.
Lots er times I sits and t’inks how nice ’twould be, gee whiz,
If a feller was de feller dat his mudder t’inks he is!"
My friends, be yours a life of toil or undiluted joy,
You still can learn a lesson from this small unlettered boy.
Don’t aim to be an earthly saint with eyes fixed on a star;
Just try to be the fellow that your mother thinks you are.
And how can we keep the life straight, and in a true direction?
You remember the story of Ulysses and the Sirens—how he kept himself and
his sailors from the influence of the enticing music when the sirens
played on the dangerous rocks, by filling their ears with wax; and
having himself tied to the mast till they passed in safety.
That is one way—the way of stiff stern duty and obedience to law. But
there is a better way!
A boy once was trying to make a straight track in the snow. And he did.
While the other boys left wriggling marks, his pressed straight on. When
they asked him how he did it, he said he fixed his eye on a tree on the
other side of the field and walked to the tree without looking to right
or left. That is the way always to make a straight trail. Look at
something ahead and go to it.
And we have that chance, for this is a splendid text for a girl or boy,
or man or woman—"Run with patience the race set before us, looking unto
Jesus."
The eye fixed on Him and the feet moving toward Him will help make a
straight life.
*VII*
*"I CAN’T"*
No girl or boy ever says this about anything they love to do!
No matter how hard it is, if they like it, they try at least to do it.
In fact, the harder it is, the more they try.
Who ever cares how many bumps he gets when learning to skate?
I saw a fellow once who was trying to vault over a pole. His chums
laughed and jeered. "You can’t!" they called out. Do you suppose he
stopped? No! He kept right at it until he did.
Edison, the wizard of electricity, wanted to get a jewel point hard
enough to be the right kind of an end for a phonograph needle. When it
was suggested he could not get one, he just looked at the one who said
it, and went right on and found it!
Every girl and boy should be like the man who refused to let that word
appear in his dictionary.
When I was a little boy, I was brought up in a church where they would
not sing anything but psalms. They called all others "man-made hymns"
and one member of the church had sewed up all the paraphrases at the
back for fear he might open them by mistake. That was a very foolish,
narrow way to act; but if you have anywhere in your book of life the
words, "I can’t!" just sew those leaves together so you will never see
them!
For you can—if you will, and if you want to!
And if you can’t, it is only because you won’t!
I do not know who wrote these verses and will apologize for using them,
but would like to pass them on to girls and boys:
IT CAN BE DONE
"Somebody said that it couldn’t be done;
But he, with a chuckle, replied
That maybe it couldn’t, but he would be one
Who wouldn’t say so till he’d tried.
So he buckled right in, with the trace of a grin
On his face; if he worried, he hid it.
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done—and he did it.
"Somebody scoffed: ’Oh, you’ll never do that;
At least, no one has ever done it.’
But he took off his coat, and he took off his hat,
And the first thing we knew he’d begun it.
With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin;
Without any doubting or quiddit,
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done—and he did it.
"There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done;
There are thousands to prophesy failure;
There are thousands to point out to you, one by one,
The dangers that wait to assail you.
But just buckle in with a bit of a grin,
Then take off your coat and go to it.
Just start in to sing, as you tackle the thing
That ’cannot be done’—and you’ll do it."
*VIII*
*"I FORGOT"*
Oh, how much trouble this little fox causes!
Out West near Fort William, once occurred a serious collision—all
because an engineer forgot to watch the safety signals! A great train
was wrecked and a whole railway district held up for hours; and some
lives were lost—because a brakeman forgot to guard an open switch!
It’s a bad fox, girls and boys!
It makes your character ragged and slovenly. It wastes people’s time.
It causes endless confusion. It holds up plans. Somebody forgets to do
his duty and that upsets all some one else has to do; and so it goes on
and around, until things become a regular mix-up.
There is a place for a good forgetter!
It is just to forget your worries and to forget yourself; and to forget
the nasty things people do to you; and to forget your mistakes, if you
are sorry for them; and to forget that you were not invited to
somebody’s party; and to forget that you fell down yesterday, if you got
up again and are still on your feet!
But it is important to have a good memory too.
A little girl forgot to post her mother’s letter, and it stopped the
chance of a pleasant holiday for her grandmother, who was waiting for
directions.
A little boy forgot to close the door of the nursery when he was told,
and the baby nearly died of pneumonia.
In the days of the great war so recently closed, they had to spend
millions of dollars on making shells. They had to be very carefully
made. If a shell was more than 3/1000 of an inch more in diameter than
was called for, it was sent back. It was important not to forget this.
In fact, they had to watch against fuzz getting on the shell from the
gloves worn by the workers.
One day an inspector found a shell that would not fit. Some one forgot
to watch against the fine lint and sent in the shell which was at once
sent back.
And surely if it was so important to remember all these fine points
about a death-dealing shell, it is just as important not to forget the
little things of life, that may spoil the whole day.
A bridge-builder made out all his plans and set the men to work, and
when it was put together it was seventeen feet too short, because the
plan-maker forgot one little measure that knocked the whole work out.
I read a rather strange thing that occurred across the line among our
Southern neighbours.
A bill was passed, allowing certain goods to come in free of paying
duty. Among them were what was called foreign fruit-plants. You know
what that stroke between the two words is. It is a hyphen that joins
the words and makes them one. A clerk was copying the bill and forgot
all about the hyphen, and made the bill read "fruit, plants," etc., and
for a whole year, until their parliament met, all foreign fruit came in
free; and they say the government lost nearly $2,500,000, all because a
clerk forgot a hyphen and put in a comma instead.
But it is not only the mistake that costs, but if we will just think
that it is the memories that store up our thoughts. It is the things
marked in memory that we use for all our mind’s growth.
A girl or boy who is always forgetting will some day find the life grown
up and full of emptiness; for it is what you remember that makes the
furniture in your soul’s living-rooms; and if you keep on forgetting,
your soul will have bare walls, and bare floors, and all you will hear
will be echoes.
Be alert. Keep your eyes open. Attend to business. Put your mind on
things. Do not say, "I forgot!" Be ashamed to! You have no right to
forget!
You can pardon an old man whose teeth are all out and whose hair is all
off, and who is bent with age, but you have no excuse.
Your forgetter has no right to be working at all.
Stop forgetting!—Remember!
*IX*
*"BY-AND-BY"*
"Oh, dear me! What a child that is! Johnny, will you please do that
errand for me?"
"Yes, Mother, by-and-by!"’
"Mary, will you pick up your things and tidy your room? It looks as
though a storm had struck it!"
"Oh, yes, I will, by-and-by!"
When are you going to do your home work? By-and-by!
When are you going to start that job you wanted to do? By-and-by!
When are you going to be useful? By-and-by!
When are you going to bed? By-and-by!
When are you going to get up? By-and-by!
When? When? When?—By-and-by! By-and-by! By-and-by!
"By-and-by is a very bad boy,
Shun him at once and forever;
For he that goes with By-and-by
Soon comes to the town of Never!"
They say that Rothschild, one of the wealthiest men of the world, made
the beginning of his fortune by acting at the moment. He was in
Brussels and heard the report of the battle, and spurred his horse and
paid a large sum to be ferried across a river; and got to London early
in the morning before the news was abroad; and laid the foundations of
his wealth in a few hours.
That is one of the roads to success—being prompt.
The dilly-dallying, shirking, waiting girl or boy will always be at the
tail-end of things, and will never catch up enough to catch on.
Do you want to catch on?
Then do it now—not by-and-by!
There is a little poem printed in _Messenger for the Children_. I want
to repeat it to you:
PUT-OFF TOWN
Did you ever go to Put-Off town,
Where the houses are old and tumble-down,
And everything tarries and everything drags,
With dirty streets and people in rags?
On the street of Slow lives Old Man Wait,
And his two little boys named Linger and Late;
With unclean hands and tousled hair,
And a naughty little sister named Don’t Care.
Grandmother Growl lives in this town,
With her two little daughters called Fret and Frown;
And Old Man Lazy lives all alone
Around the corner on Street Postpone.
Did you ever go to Put-Off town
To play with the little girls, Fret and Frown,
Or to the home of Old Man Wait,
And whistle for his boys to come to the gate?
To play all day in Tarry Street,
Leaving your errands for other feet?
To stop or shirk, or linger, or frown,
Is the nearest way to this old town.
*X*
*BOLDNESS*
There is a splendid kind of boldness.
One day, years ago, sometime after the death of Jesus, two of His
disciples, Peter and John, were arrested and brought before their bitter
enemies who were ready and able to kill them. And Peter, the noble
soul, stood up without a pang of fear and just told them face to face
what he thought; and then the New Testament story says: "When they saw
the boldness of Peter and John they marvelled."
It is a fine thing to see men and women and girls and boys who are not
afraid to do and stand for the right.
Listen to this story which I will give you just as I got it:
He was small for his age, worked in a signal box, and booked the trains.
One day the men were chaffing him about being so small. One of them
said:
"You will never amount to much. You will never be able to pull these
levers; you are too small."
The little fellow looked at them.
"Well," said he, "as small as I am, I can do something which none of you
can do."
"Ah! what is that?" they all said.
"I don’t know that I ought to tell you," he replied.
But they were anxious to know, and urged him to tell what he could do
that none of them were able to do. Said one of the men:
"What is it, boy?"
"I can keep from swearing and drinking!" replied the little fellow.
There were blushes on the men’s faces, and they didn’t seem anxious for
any further information on the subject.
Was not he the right kind of a bold boy?
Or what do you think of a lot of officers at a dinner, drinking and
telling unclean tales.
Everybody had to tell a story or sing a song.
One young, shy fellow said, "I cannot sing but I will give a toast in
water." And the toast he gave was "Our Mothers."
The rest were so touched by his splendid courage that they shook his
hand and thanked him, and the Colonel said it was one of the bravest
acts he ever saw.
A great Scotch preacher was so brave that it was said, "he never feared
the face of man."
Every girl and boy should be bold in that way—fearless, heroic, full of
courage and with a stiff, brave heart.
Some day you will read and study Shakespeare, and he will give you this
message:
"What’s brave, what’s noble, let’s do it, and
make death proud to take us."
Another writer, whose name I do not know, is quoted as saying:
"We make way for the man who boldly pushes past us."
Dear girls and boys, was it not a great moment for Canada when a little
handful of Canadians stood at Ypres, in the first poison gas attack and
dare to face it, and stand fast? Their boldness helped to stem the
tide, and that first stand was the beginning of the events that won the
war for the Allies.
That sort of a bold person makes history, and makes the history of their
country.
The poet Emerson puts it this way:
"Not gold, but only men can make
A people great and strong.
Men who for truth and honour’s sake
Stand fast and suffer long.
Brave men who work while others sleep,
Who dare while others fly—
They build a nation’s pillars deep
And lift them to the sky."
But there is a boldness that acts on life like foxes in a garden.
It is seen in the rude, rough, saucy, forward girl or boy.
The boy who becomes a "smart Alec." Sometimes other boys call him
"Smarty."
Or the girl who does not know how to blush; with no sense of shame. You
can always tell them. She dresses loud, and laughs loud, and makes a
fool of herself on the street; and he stares at you and acts impudently,
and thinks he is manly.
They like to be looked at, and stare back.
They lack gentle, quiet refinement, and if that spirit grows, it will
ruin the character and make the girl or boy disliked by everybody who
cares for a gentleman or a lady; and in later years they will be
ashamed.
Take a dictionary if you have one, and see the two uses of the word.
Bold—heroic, brave, gallant, courageous, fearless.
Bold—rude, without shame, impudent.
Which are you going to be?
*XI*
*REVENGE*
This is a fox whose bite brings blood.
It represents a very bad spirit.
It means, "I am going to pay him back." "I am going to get even." "You
just see, I’ll catch him and make him sorry!"
It does make him sorry, not in the sense of being penitent and wishing
he had not done it, or longing to undo it; but sorry because of the blow
he gets in return.
It is a bitter heart that takes revenge. It goes with a hard,
unforgiving spirit.
It is an awful way for girls and boys to act, because they should be so
bright and smiling. They are so fresh and sunny. They are so young they
should not grow hard like an old shell.
They ought to be all mercy, forgiveness, kindness, because they have so
much of it shown to them.
I hate to see a kiddie who is always looking for a chance to hit some
one who happened to hit him.
Johnny Pay-him-back once was hurt when he was playing with a schoolmate,
and instead of turning up a rosy face and laughing it off, the way the
sun does when a piece of mud flies up in the face of the sky, he opened
the door of his heart and this little fox began to chew away all his
finer feelings. As the fox chewed, Johnny chewed on his hurt, just the
way he was chewing a wad of gum in his mouth. The more he chewed the
hotter he grew under his collar.
You see, in your heart there is a cooling plant called Love, but the
pesky little fox chewed it all up, and he got so hot that he paid the
boy back and sent him to bed for a whole month to suffer pain; simply
because he wanted revenge.
I read of a man once who was injured by another man of high rank in
society, and he said to a friend, "Would it not be manly to resent it?"
The friend answered, "Yes, but it would be God-like to forgive!"
It is not easy to forgive. It takes a real man to do it, but it makes
you very much like God, who forgives us so much day after day!
And the gentle, forgiving spirit does so much to make the world bright,
while the revengeful spirit adds so much to its gloom. Put that in a
house or a school, and you pull down all the blinds and stop all the
music of life.
Part of the horrors of the war were bred of revenge.
Germany had piled up all she could on France in 1870. France could not
forget it, and the terrible thing about revenge is it burns so long. It
may be that even now after victory, sparks of that old fire are still
burning in the heart of France. If it should blaze up nobody can tell
how awful the results would be.
Brighten up your hearts by keeping them sweet with mercy.
Instead of making yourself dark with the desire to pay back—just shine
up a little. Keep the air fresh, and polish off your windows and put
the flowers of kindness on the sills and hand out mercy to those who
pass by.
Jesus said, "Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy." And
if you and I can’t forgive, how can we hope to be forgiven?
Oh, there is nothing like the sunny life to cast out the shadows of
hate.
It was the radiant sunshine of Pollyanna that changed a whole community
and brought two people together who had not spoken for years; so
Smile, don’t frown. Love, don’t hate.
"Are you feeling cross to-day?
Stop and smile.
And of course, if you feel gay,
Why, you’ll smile.
You will find that it will pay
If everywhere and every day
At your work or at your play
You will smile. Just smile."
It was a piece of fine advice one gave another. It was this:
"Smile a while,
And while you smile
Another smiles!
And soon there will be miles
And miles
Of smiles.
And life’s worth while
Because you smile."
May I add:
Don’t frown and groan
Or throw your stone.
But pile up high
Yes, just sky-high
Your joy and love.
Then by-and-by
Down from above
The holy dove
Will come and move
Our world with love.
*XII*
*UNTRUTHFULNESS*
"Oh, what do you want to talk so much about that?" said a boy to his
mother. "It was only a white lie!"
And the poor little silly thought that you got your opinion of a lie by
its colour!
A bad man may be white, or brown, or black, or yellow, but he is a bad
man all the same! The colour does not matter; and so is a lie a bad
thing, whether it is little or big, or white or black. I’ll tell you
why, girls and boys!
1. White lies give you a habit of telling lies, and when you get the
habit you become a liar! In fact, white lies are almost the worse of the
two, because a big black lie would scare you, but the little white lie
eats into you without you knowing it.
2. White lies are like that awful disease called Cancer.
We hear a lot about it to-day, and the doctors are puzzled because they
do not know how to trace it. But it eats and eats away until some of us
have seen most loathsome forms of it consuming the poor body, while the
life is still there, often in very intense suffering. And the doctors
say, "Take care of the first pimple and have it cut out." Cancer often
starts in a tiny spot or the smallest growth.
Now, the liar is just the same. He starts with lie pimples—just little
white spots on his language tongue, but they grow until they eat away
his best life.
In the East there is a dread disease called Leprosy.
It often begins with a little white spot, which grows and grows until
the body gets rotten, and the poor fellow who has the disease has to be
sent away by himself. And white lies grow and grow until the man
becomes an evil one, who sometimes has to be sent off by himself in a
jail, and the boy is sent off to some industrial home to keep him away
so he cannot hurt others, until he has learned a better way of talking
and living.
Be afraid of a lie!
3. They make people whom you cannot trust, and almost anything else I
would wish for you than to be one who cannot be trusted.
You can’t rely on a liar. Not only one who lies with his tongue, but
who acts lies. He gets by-and-by so full of lies that if you try to
lean on him, down you go!
Out in the West, one of the great wheat elevators at Fort William
suddenly slid down into the river, because the foundation was too weak
to hold it up.
And a liar is like that! He is a bad foundation for home or school or
society!
He caves in if any weight is put on him.
Let the girls and boys who study about these foxes watch this bad one,
and be straight and true and upright and strong, so people can be sure
of them.
I like the story I read once of a Scottish schoolboy who was called
"Little Scotch Granite." When the boys were supposed to tell how often
they had whispered in school—and if they had not at all, got a perfect
mark called "Ten"—they got the habit of saying "Ten," even when they had
broken the school rule. Little Scotty came, and although he was bright
and full of fun he would not say "Ten"—although his record got very low.
But he changed the whole school.
He was always a good sport, but he never would tell a lie to save
himself.
At the close of the term he was away down on the list, but when the
teacher said he had decided to give a special medal to the most faithful
boy in the school and asked to whom he would give it—forty voices called
out together, "Little Scotch Granite!"
*XIII*
*"I CAN’T BE BOTHERED!"*
Did you ever hear any girl or boy say that?
"Sonny, go and do that little job, will you?" "Oh, I can’t be
bothered!"
"Johnny, your sister Mary is having a hard time with her home work. Go
and see if you can help her." "Oh, I can’t be bothered!"
A load of firewood was dumped at the back gate and Billy, who was lying
kicking up his heels on the porch in the sun, was asked to go and pile
some of it in the cellar. "Oh, I can’t be bothered! Wait till Dad comes
home, he’ll do it!"
The next door neighbour had a sick baby and Nellie was asked to go to
the drug store for something. Now, Nellie really loved babies and she
was a good little kiddie usually; but she was busy on some ribbons she
was fixing for herself—so busy she forgot to shut the garden gate and
that fox came in and bit one of the flowers off her soul, and she said,
"Oh, don’t bother me!"
My, girls and boys, you let that fox loose in your garden, and he’ll
make an awful mess of it! He’ll chew up the loveliest thing and leave a
wreck!
If he gets abroad in the home or the church or the city, or society,
he’ll ruin things
|
might be assured.
There is much work still to be done in the near future in connection
with the enforcement of the act to render its provisions effective, but
I believe that I have given enough examples from the hundreds which I
have at my disposal to indicate that the ultimate effect of the Food and
Drugs Act, if it be wisely enforced, as is expected, will be very
material in benefiting the health of the community at large.
PROPRIETARY PREPARATIONS APPROVED BY COUNCIL ON PHARMACY AND CHEMISTRY.
ARISTOCHIN.
Aristochin.—CO (C_{20}H_{25}N_{2}O_{2})_{2}=C_{41}H_{46}N_{4}O_{5}, the
neutral carbonic ester of quinine.
Actions and Uses.—The same as those of quinine, but, since it is only
slowly acted on by acids, it is said not to produce disturbance of the
stomach and to be notably free from tendency to production of
cinchonism. Dosage.—The same as that of quinine, in powder, mixed with
milk sugar, dry on the tongue or suspended in liquids. Manufactured by
Farbenfabriken, vorm. Friedr. Bayer & Co., Elberfeld, Germany
(Continental Color & Chemical Co., New York).
ARISTOL.
A name applied to Thymolis iodidum, U. S. P. Manufactured by
Farbenfabriken, vorm. Friedr. Bayer & Co., Elberfeld, Germany
(Continental Color & Chemical Co., New York).
ASPIRIN.
Aspirin C_{6}H·_{4}O(CH_{3}CO)·COOH· 1:2 = C_{9}H_{8}O_{4}, the acetyl
derivative of salicylic acid.
Actions and Uses.—It acts like salicylic acid, over which it possesses
the advantage of producing less of the undesired local and systemic side
effects, on account of the slow liberation of the salicylic acid. It
passes the stomach unchanged, the decomposition beginning in the
intestine. Dosage.—0·3 to 1 gramme (5 to 15 grains) in capsules or
wafers, or dissolved in sweetened water or dry on the tongue, followed
by a swallow of water. The powder should be dispensed in waxed paper.
Manufactured by Farbenfabriken, vorm. Friedr. Bayer & Co., Elberfeld,
Germany (Continental Color & Chemical Co., New York).
BENZOSOL.
Benzosol, C_{6}H_{4}(OCH_{3}) (C_{6}H_{5}COO) = C_{14}H_{12}O_{3}, a
crystalline compound of guaiacol in which the hydrogen of the hydroxyl
is replaced by benzoyl.
Actions and Uses.—Benzosol is decomposed slowly in the intestinal tract
into guaiacol and benzoic acid which exert their proper actions. The
liberated constituents are absorbed and excreted in the urine. It is not
irritating. Its uses are analogous to those of creosote and of benzoic
acid. It is recommended in incipient pulmonary tuberculosis, as an
intestinal antiseptic in fermentation, diarrhea, typhoid fever, diabetes
mellitus and as a urinary disinfectant in cystitis, etc. Dosage.—0·2 to
0·6 gramme (3 to 10 grains), in powder, capsule, pill, or suspended in
liquids or as an emulsion. Manufactured by Farbwerke, vorm. Meister,
Lucius & Bruening, Hoechst a. M. (Victor Koechl & Co., New York).
BETA-EUCAINE HYDROCHLORIDE.
Beta-eucaine hydrochloride, C_{5}H_{7}N(CH_{3})_{3}(C_{6}H_{5}COO)·HCl,
the hydrochloride of 2,6,6 trimethyl-4-benzoyl-hydroxypiperidine.
Actions and Uses.—Beta-eucaine hydrochloride is a local anesthetic like
cocaine, but weaker and devoid of the stimulating properties of the
latter. It does not dilate the pupil, nor does it contract the
blood-vessels as does cocaine. It has the advantage of stability even on
prolonged boiling. It may be used in all cases in which cocaine is
indicated as a local anesthetic, especially in ophthalmology. Dosage.—It
may be applied in a 2 to 3 per cent. solution to the eye, 5 to 10 per
cent. for nose and throat, and 5 to 10 per cent. for ointment for
hemorrhoids. Manufactured by Chemische Fabrik auf Actien, vorm. E.
Schering, Berlin (Schering & Glatz, New York).
BETA-NAPHTHOL BENZOATE.
Beta-naphthol benzoate, C_{6}H_{5}·COO·C_{10}H_{7} = C_{17}H_{12}O_{2},
the benzoic ester of β-naphthol.
Actions and Uses.—Beta-naphthol benzoate is split up into its
constituents on reaching the intestinal tract and acts as an antiseptic.
It is said to be diuretic. It is used internally as an intestinal
antiseptic in diarrhea and typhoid fever. Externally it has been
recommended as a parasiticide in the form of 3 to 10 per cent. ointment,
and has been used in psoriasis, eczema, scabies, etc. Dosage.—0·2 to 0·5
gramme (3 to 8 grains); maximum dose, single, 1 gramme (15 grains),
daily 4 grammes (60 grains). Manufactured by Fabrik von Heyden, Radebeul
near Dresden (Merck & Co., New York).
BETOL.
Betol, C_{6}H_{4}·OH·COO (C_{10}H_{7}) = C_{17}H_{12}O_{3}, the
salicylic ester of β-naphtol.
Actions and Uses.—Betol is not affected in the stomach, but is split up
in its original components when it reaches the intestinal tract by the
pancreatic juice and intestinal secretions. It is believed to act as an
intestinal antiseptic and, being excreted in the urine, to act in a
similar way in the bladder. It has the anti-rheumatic properties of
salicylic acid. It is recommended for intestinal fermentations, catarrh
of the bladder, particularly in gonorrheal cystitis, for rheumatism,
etc. Dosage.—0·3 to 0·5 gramme (4 to 8 grains) in cachets, milk or
emulsion. Manufactured by the Heyden Chemical Works, New York.
BISMAL.
Bismal, 4 (C_{15}H_{12}O_{10})·3Bi(OH)_{3} = Bi_{3}C_{60}H_{57}O_{49}, a
compound of bismuth hydroxide and methylendigallic acid.
Actions and Uses.—Bismal is an astringent and is recommended for the
treatment of chronic diarrhea. Dosage.—0·12 to 0·3 gramme (2 to 5
grains) in cachets or powder. Manufactured by E. Merck, Darmstadt.
(Merck & Co., New York.)
BOROCHLORETONE.
A mixture of 1 part chloretone with 3 parts boric acid.
Actions and Uses.—An antiseptic and anesthetic, used externally as a
surgical dressing powder. Prepared by Parke, Davis & Co., Detroit, Mich.
BROMETONE.
Brometone, 1,1,1-tribrom-2-methyl-propan-2-ol, CBr_{3}·C(OH)
(CH_{3})·CH_{3} = C_{4}H_{7}OBr_{3}, produced by the reaction of acetone
on bromoform.
Actions and Uses.—Brometone is claimed to have the sedative action of
the bromides without the disadvantage of producing bromism. In doses of
0·3 gramme (5 grains) four or five times a day, in adults, it is claimed
to cause no unpleasant results and to produce no disturbance of the
digestive organs, and to have no appreciable effect on the secretions.
Its action is prompt and its effect is manifest for several hours. In
doses exceeding 1·6 grammes (25 grains) daily it may produce dizziness,
vertigo, anorexia, and mental hebetude, all of which symptoms disappear
on discontinuance of its use. Therapeutically it has been recommended in
mild conditions of excitation and insomnia, in so-called narcotic
abstinence, in hysteria, and in nervous affections generally. It
relieves some forms of cough and is said to produce amelioration in
about 60 per cent. of cases of epilepsy. It has been used to relieve
dizziness due to labyrinthine disturbances. Dosage.—The dose is 0·3
gramme (5 grains), to be repeated two or three times during twenty-four
hours. Manufactured by Parke, Davis & Co., Detroit, Mich.
BROMIPIN.
A bromine addition product of sesame oil, containing 10 per cent. of
bromine in organic combination.
Actions and Uses.—Bromipin acts like the bromides, but as it yields its
bromine more slowly it is thought to have less tendency to produce
brominism. The combination is not broken up in the stomach, but a
portion of the bromine is split off as soon as the oil enters the
intestine. The oil with the remaining bromine is easily absorbed, and,
similarly to other fats, is largely deposited in the tissues, where it
is slowly split up. It is said to be more lasting in its action than the
bromides. Dosage.—4 c.c. (1 fluidrachm), increased in cases of epilepsy
to from 8 to 32 c.c. (2 to 8 fluidrachms); in emulsion with peppermint
water and syrup, or pure, flavored with oil of peppermint. Manufactured
by E. Merck, Darmstadt. (Merck & Co., New York.)
BROMIPIN—33⅓ PER CENT.
A 33⅓ per cent. brominized sesame oil. Manufactured by E. Merck,
Darmstadt. (Merck & Co., New York.)
BUTYL-CHLORAL HYDRATE.
Actions and Uses.—Its action is similar to that of chloral, except that
it is said to be less depressing and more analgetic. It has been
especially recommended for facial neuralgia. Dosage.—0·3 to 1·3 grammes
(5 to 20 grains).
CALCIUM ICHTHYOL.
A derivative of ichthyol in which calcium is substituted for ammonium.
Manufactured by the Ichthyol Company, Hamburg. (Merck & Co., New York.)
CALOMELOL.
A soluble colloidal form of calomel, containing albuminoids.
Actions and Uses.—Its action is the same as that of calomel, but it is
claimed to be superior because of its solubility in water, acting more
rapidly and efficiently. Calomelol is claimed to be non-irritant and
particularly non-toxic. The indications for its use are the same as for
calomel. Dosage.—Internally the same as calomel. Externally it is used
as a dusting powder, mixed with an equal quantity of starch or of a
mixture of starch and zinc oxide, or in the form of calomelol ointment.
It should be guarded from the light. Manufactured by the Heyden Chemical
Works, New York.
CALOMELOL OINTMENT.
Actions and Uses.—It is a substitute for mercurial ointment, over which
it has the advantage of cleanliness, and it is claimed to be distinctly
superior as an inunction in syphilis, etc. Dosage.—6 grammes (90 grains)
daily for inunction in syphilis. Manufactured by the Heyden Chemical
Works, New York.
CASCARA EVACUANT.
A preparation said to contain a bitterless glucoside, obtained from the
bark of _Rhamnus Purshiana_, with aromatics.
Actions and Uses.—It is claimed that this preparation possesses the
laxative properties of cascara sagrada without the bitterness which
characterizes the ordinary extract. It is recommended for the treatment
of chronic constipation, for which cascara sagrada is one of the best
medicinal agents. Dosage.—As a laxative, 0·6 to 1 c.c. (10 to 15 minims)
three times a day; as a purgative, 1·3 to 2 c.c. (20 to 30 minims)
morning and evening. Four cubic centimeters (1 fluidrachm) may be given
in obstinate cases. Prepared by Parke, Davis & Co., Detroit, Mich.
CASCARA TONIC LAXATIVE GLOBULES.
Each globule is said to contain 0·2 gramme (3 grains) of the bitter
glucosides of _Rhamnus Purshiana_ suspended in a bland fixed oil, to
which aromatics have been added.
Actions and Uses.—The manufacturers claim that it combines the laxative
action of cascara with tonic properties of the bitter principle with the
advantage of concealment of the disagreeable taste. Dosage.—One or two
globules to be taken before retiring. Prepared by Parke, Davis & Co.,
Detroit, Mich.
CHINAPHENIN.
Chinaphenin, CO (NH·C_{6}H_{4}OC_{2}H_{5}) (C_{20}H_{23}N_{2}O_{2}) =
C_{20}H_{33}N_{3}O_{4}, the quinine carbonic acid ester of phenetidin.
Actions and Uses.—Chinaphenin combines the antiperiodic properties of
quinine with the analgesic power of phenacetin, with the advantage of
tastelessness and asserted freedom from symptoms of cinchonism produced
by the administration of the two remedies in simple mixture. It is
recommended in febrile diseases, especially la grippe; in spasmodic
conditions, such as whooping-cough; in certain forms of malaria and in
neuralgia. Dosage.—Adult: 0·3 to 0·6 gramme (5 to 10 grains) ordinarily,
1·5 to 2 grammes (22 to 30 grains), given in two doses as an antipyretic
in neuralgia and malaria; in whooping-cough: 0·13 to 0·3 gramme (2 to 5
grains), according to age. Manufactured by Farbenfabriken, vorm. Friedr.
Bayer & Co., Elberfeld, Germany (Continental Color & Chemical Co., New
York).
CHLORBUTANOL.
Chlorbutanol, 1,1,1-trichlor-2-methyl-propan-2-ol, CCl_{3}·C (OH)
(CH_{3})·CH_{3} = C_{4}H_{7}OCl_{3}, produced by the reaction of acetone
on chloroform.
Actions and Uses.—It is said to be absorbed unchanged, but to be
decomposed in the body. It is a local anesthetic with an action weaker
than that of cocaine, but sufficient to prevent vomiting from gastric
irritation. Its antiseptic action is said to be fifteen times as strong
as that of boric acid. It acts on the central nervous system similarly
to chloral, and although the claim has been made that hypnotic doses are
without effect on the circulation and respiration, independent observers
have described a fall of blood pressure and interference with
respiration in animals, and consider it fully as dangerous as chloral.
In man 100 grains caused severe symptoms, but recovery occurred. It is
claimed that no habit is induced, but this may be referable to its
restricted employment. It is recommended as a mild local anesthetic, in
dentistry, etc., as a preservative for hypodermic solutions, for
insomnia, vomiting and for spasmodic conditions. It is also said to be
useful as introductory to general anesthesia, lessening excitement and
nausea. Dosage.—The dose is from 0·3 to 1·5 gramme (5 to 20 grains) dry
or in capsules. Hypodermically as a local anesthetic a saturated aqueous
solution may be used.
CHLORETONE.
A name applied to chlorbutanol, which see. Manufactured by Parke, Davis
& Co., Detroit, Mich.
CHLORETONE INHALANT.
A solution of chloretone, camphor, menthol and oil of cinnamon in liquid
petrolatum.
Actions and Uses.—An anodyne, antiseptic, and emolient solution for use
by inhalation as a very fine spray or nebula. Manufactured by Parke,
Davis & Co., Detroit, Mich.
CITARIN.
Citarin,
CH_{2}COONa
| CH_{2}
| / | / CO O = Na_{2}C_{7}H_{6}O_{7}, the normal sodium salt of
| /
| /
| CO
CH_{2}COONa
anhydromethylene-citric acid.
Actions and Uses.—This is one of the compounds which it is claimed
increase the elimination of uric acid by forming very soluble compounds
with that substance. It has been recommended for gout and chronic
rheumatism. Dosage.—1 to 2 grammes (15 to 30 grains), largely diluted
with water. Manufactured by Farbenfabriken, vorm. Friedr. Bayer & Co.,
Elberfeld, Germany (Continental Color & Chemical Co., New York).
CREOSOTAL.
A mixture of carbonic acid esters, analogous to guaiacol carbonate,
prepared from creosote.
Actions and Uses.—Creosotal has the same action as creosote, but is
claimed to be non-toxic and devoid of irritant properties. It is
recommended as a substitute for creosote for internal exhibition in
tuberculosis, pneumonia, and as an intestinal antiseptic. Dosage.—From
0·3 to 2·0 grammes (5 to 30 grains) for children, to 1 to 4 grammes (15
to 60 grains) for adults in milk, coffee, wine, cod-liver oil or
emulsion. Externally it may be applied undiluted. Manufactured by
Farbenfabriken, vorm. Friedr. Bayer & Co., Elberfeld, Germany
(Continental Color & Chemical Co., New York). Fabrik von Heyden,
Radebeul, near Dresden.
DENTALONE.
A 30 per cent. solution of chloretone in a mixture of oils of
gaultheria, cloves and cassia.
Actions and Uses.—Dentalone possesses pronounced anesthetic properties
and is intended for use by dentists in the treatment of exposed nerves
in decayed teeth. Prepared by Parke, Davis & Co., Detroit, Mich.
DERMATOL.
A name applied to Bismuthi Subgallas, U. S. P. Manufactured by Meister,
Lucius & Bruening, Hoechst a. M. (Victor Koechl & Co., New York).
DIABETIN.
A pure, crystallized fructose (levulose), CH_{2}OH·CHOH·CHOH.
CHOH·CO·CH_{2}OH = C_{6}H_{12}O_{6}, absolutely free from dextrose
(ordinary glucose).
Actions and Uses.—Levulose is metabolized in the body by other agencies
than those that act on dextrose and most of the other sugars and appears
to be more completely utilized by the diabetic organism than the other
sugars. It is recommended for the nutrition and for sweetening the food
and drink of diabetics, in pulmonary tuberculosis, infantile
malnutrition and marasmus. Dosage:—It is given in diabetes in daily
quantities of 30 to 60 grammes (1 to 2 ounces); in grave forms of the
disease the amount is reduced to from 12 to 24 grammes (3 to 6 drachms)
daily. Manufactured by Chemische Fabrik auf Actien, vorm. E. Schering,
Berlin (Schering & Glatz, New York).
DIONIN.
Dionin, C_{17}H_{17}NO(OH) (OC_{2}H_{5}HCl) + H_{2}O =
(C_{19}H_{21}O_{3}ClN + H_{2}O), the hydrochloride of the ethyl ester of
morphine.
Actions and Uses.—It is claimed that this compound acts like morphine
without producing constipation, nausea or lassitude. It is the
conclusion of some good observers that it possesses no advantage over
codeine. Applied to the eye, it causes a local vasodilation, leading to
acute conjunctival edema. Dionin is recommended to relieve pain,
especially in respiratory affections, as an antispasmodic in
whooping-cough, for insomnia and externally in the treatment of corneal
affections, conjunctivitis, iritis, etc. Dosage.—0·015 to 0·06 gramme (¼
to 1 grain). Externally it is applied in 10 to 20 per cent. solutions.
Manufactured by E. Merck, Darmstadt. (Merck & Co., New York.)
DIURETIN.
A name applied to theobromine-sodium salicylate, which see. Manufactured
by Knoll & Co., Ludwigshafen, Germany (E. Merck & Co., New York).
DUOTAL.
A name applied to Guaiacolis Carbonas, U. S. P. Manufactured by
Farbenfabriken, vorm. Friedr. Bayer & Co., Elberfeld, Germany
(Continental Color & Chemical Company, New York).
DUOTONOL.
A name applied to a mixture of equal parts of calcium tonol and sodium
tonol. (See Tonols.)
Actions and Uses and Dosage.—See Glycerophosphates. Manufactured by
Chemische Fabrik auf Actien, vorm. E. Schering, Berlin (Schering &
Glatz, New York).
ELIXIR EUPNEIN.
A preparation said to contain in each dose of 8 c.c. (2 fluidrachms):
heroin 0·0026 gramme (1/24 grain), terpin hydrate 0·13 gramme (2 grains)
creosote 0·3 gramme (5 grains), in a menstruum containing 30 per cent.
of alcohol with glycerin and aromatic essential oils.
Actions and Uses.—From its composition it appears to be well adapted to
use in chronic cough from bronchitis, etc. Dosage.—4 to 12 c.c. (1 to 3
fluidrachms). Prepared by Schieffelin & Co., New York.
ELIXIR SAW PALMETTO.
An elixir of saw palmetto berries, sandal wood and cornsilk.
Actions and Uses.—The constituents of this preparation are credited with
diuretic properties and believed to be sedative to the genito-urinary
tract and to exert a curative action on the inflamed mucous membrane,
especially in chronic cases. Dosage.—4 to 16 c.c. (1 to 4 fluidrachms)
three times a day. Prepared by Parke, Davis & Co., Detroit, Mich.
EMPYROFORM.
A condensation product of birch tar and formaldehyde.
Actions and Uses.—Empyroform is an antipruritic, sedative and desiccant.
It is said to be superior to tar and free from irritant or toxic
effects. It is claimed to be useful in all stages of eczema, psoriasis,
lichen, urticaria, prurigo, pityriasis, etc. Dosage.—It is applied as a
5 to 10 per cent. ointment, 10 to 20 per cent. zinc paste, 10 to 20 per
cent. tincture, and 37·5 per cent. suspension. Manufactured by Chemische
Fabrik auf Actien, vorm. E. Schering Berlin (Schering & Glatz, New
York).
EPICARIN.
Epicarin, C_{6}H_{3}(OH)(COOH) (CH_{2}C_{10}H_{6}OH) 2:3:1 =
C_{18}H_{14}O_{4}, β-naphthol-hydroxy-toluic acid.
Actions and Uses.—Epicarin is a non-poisonous antiseptic and
parasiticide. Administered internally, it is excreted mostly
undecomposed. It has been found useful in the treatment of
skin-diseases, particularly scabies, tinea tonsurans, prurigo and
certain forms of eczema. Dosage.—It is used externally only in the form
of 5 to 20 per cent. ointment, with petrolatum or wool fat (lanolin) as
base, or in the form of oily or alcoholic solutions (10 per cent.).
Manufactured by Farbenfabriken, vorm. Friedr. Bayer & Co., Elberfeld,
Germany (Continental Color and Chemical Co., New York).
ERYTHROL TETRANITRATE.
Erythrol tetranitrate, C_{4}H_{6}(NO_{3})_{4} = C_{4}H_{6}O_{12}N_{4},
the tetranitrate of erythrite or butane-tetrol, C_{4}H_{6}(OH)_{4}.
Actions and Uses.—It is a vasodilator and antispasmodic, like
nitroglycerin. Its action is slower and more lasting; it begins in 15
minutes and persists for three or four hours. It is recommended in
angina pectoris and cardiac diseases. It is reported as especially
useful as a prophylactic in preventing anginal pain. Dosage.—Because of
its explosiveness it is marketed in the form of tablets, each containing
0.03 gramme (½ grain). One or two tablets every four to six hours.
Manufactured by E. Merck, Darmstadt (Merck & Co., New York).
ETHYLENEDIAMINE.
Ethylenediamine, C_{2}H_{4}(NH_{2})_{2}, a substitution compound of
ethylene and ammonia.
Actions and Uses.—It is said to be non-corrosive. It is recommended as
an albumin solvent for the solution of false membranes in diphtheria and
similar affections of the mucous membranes. It is recommended for use in
the form of kresamine (which see). Manufactured by Chemische Fabrik auf
Actien, vorm. E. Schering, Berlin (Schering & Glatz, New York).
EUCAINE.
The “Eucaines” are two closely allied synthetic bases, which were
originally differentiated as eucaine “A” and eucaine “B,” but are now
designated as “Alpha-eucaine” and “Beta-eucaine,” respectively,
alpha-eucaine being a synthetic derivative of triacetonamine, while
beta-eucaine is a synthetic derivative of vinyl-diacetonekalmine. Both
of these bases are supplied as hydrochlorides and are recommended as
substitutes for cocaine, over which they are claimed to have certain
advantages. They are described under alpha-eucaine hydrochloride and
beta-eucaine hydrochloride.
(_To be continued._)
_Report of the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry, from the Journal A. M.
A., October 20, 1906._
TYREE’S ANTISEPTIC POWDER.
Tyree’s antiseptic powder was assigned for examination to a subcommittee
of the Council, which made the following report:
_To the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry_: Your subcommittee, to whom
was assigned Tyree’s Pulv. Antiseptic Comp., marketed by J. S. Tyree,
Washington, D. C., reports as follows:
The label on the package states: “This preparation is a scientific
combination of borate of sodium, alumen, carbolic acid, glycerin and the
crystallized principles of thyme, eucalyptus, gaultheria, and mentha, in
the form of a powder,” etc.
The statement that the powder contains the crystalline principles of
thyme, eucalyptus, gaultheria and mentha is vague and misleading, since
the chief medical constituents of eucalyptus and gaultheria are liquids,
but it tends to convey the impression that the powder contains the
essential constituents of these drugs, namely, thymol, oil of eucalyptus
or eucalyptol, oil of wintergreen, or methyl salicylate, and menthol.
The literature supplied to physicians claims its composition to be:
“Parts, sod. bor., 50; alumen, 50; ac. carbol., 5; glycerin, 5; the
cryst. principles of thyme, 5; eucalyptus, 5; gaultheria, 5, and mentha,
5.”
The composition, therefore, might be expressed as follows:—
Sodium borate (borax) 50 parts, or 38·46 per cent.
Alum 50 parts, or 38·46 per cent.
Phenol (carbolic acid) 5 parts, or 3·85 per cent.
Glycerin 5 parts, or 3·85 per cent.
Thymol 5 parts, or 3·85 per cent.
Oil of eucalyptus or eucalyptol 5 parts, or 3·85 per cent.
Oil of gaultheria (or menthyl salicylate) 5 parts, or 3·85 per cent.
Menthol 5 parts, or 3·85 per cent.
Analysis of specimens purchased from different sources in the open
market were made under our direction. The reports of the chemists show
that Tyree’s antiseptic powder contains no borax, or mere traces only,
and that it contains no alum, or mere traces only. Instead, the analyses
show that boric acid and zinc sulphate are the essential constituents.
The amounts of carbolic acid, thymol, menthol, etc., contained in the
powder, if present, were far below the quantities indicated by the
formula. The presence of glycerin could not be demonstrated, and if
present the amount must be very small.
Our chemist reports:—
The result of analysis shows that different samples differ slightly in
composition, but that the following indicates the average composition of
the product:—
Per cent.
Zinc sulphate, anhydrous 15.56.
Boric acid 81.26.
Volatile matter at 100 C. for four hours 0.45.
The undetermined portion consists of salicylic acid, carbolic acid,
menthol and eucalyptol; possibly other antiseptic agents may be present
in very minute quantities.
From the above findings we conclude that Tyree’s antiseptic powder is a
mixture of boric acid and dried zinc sulphate and antiseptic bodies,
such as menthol, salicylic acid and carbolic acid, eucalyptol, etc. From
this it can be readily seen that the label which is supposed to set
forth the composition of Tyree’s antiseptic powder is not in accord with
the facts. The powder does not contain either borate of sodium or alum,
and the presence of glycerin could not be established. The antiseptic
agents, exclusive of the boric acid, are present only in small amounts.
The report of another analyst concludes as follows:
It evidently contains less than the amount stated of the principles of
thyme, eucalyptus, wintergreen and mint. It also contains a very small
amount indeed of carbolic acid, much less than that stated. We have been
unable to identify certainly the presence of glycerin, and it is
doubtful if it be present.
From the result of the analysis we feel confident that the preparation
is to all intents and purposes a mixture of boric acid and sulphate of
zinc.
The carbolic acid, thyme, eucalyptus, wintergreen, etc., if present, are
present only in sufficient amount to give the compound a satisfactory
odor.
In view of the fact that J. S. Tyree has given wide publicity to a
formula which the preceding report has shown to be a deliberate
misrepresentation of fact, it is recommended that the article be refused
recognition by the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry, and that this
report be published in the _Journal of the American Medical
Association_.
The recommendation of the subcommittee was adopted by the Council in
accordance with which the report is published.
W. A. PUCKNER, _Secretary_.
In a letter to the editor of the _Journal of the American Medical
Association_, Mr. Tyree admits changing the formula of the powder, and
says that it had been his intention to state to the medical profession
his reasons for making the change. In commenting on the letter it is
noted that Mr. Tyree does not state whether the change was made one year
ago or five years ago, but the sample for the first analysis was
purchased last February, and the first chemist’s report was submitted to
the Council March 5, 1906. On April 4th, Mr. Tyree was notified by the
Council that the composition of “Tyree’s Antiseptic Powder” did not
correspond with the formula published by him. Whether or not Mr. Tyree
is justified in offering to physicians a preparation as composed chiefly
of borax and alum, when in reality it is composed of boric acid and zinc
sulphate, is left for physicians to judge.
FRAUD AND DECEPTION IN PREPARATIONS OF COD-LIVER OIL.
The _Journal of the American Medical Association_, October 13, 1906,
exposes the fraud and deception practised by certain proprietary firms
in putting on the market preparations purporting to contain cod-liver
oil, when, in fact, they contain no oil at all. It is conceded by
pharmacologists that the value of these remedies depends on the
nutritive power of the fat, and any preparation which contains fat must
respond to simple tests which the physician can personally apply. The
preparations claiming to represent cod-liver oil are in liquid form, and
if they contain oil it must be in one of the following forms:
(1) An emulsion of the oil which may be miscible with water, but from
which the fat tends to separate and rise to the top. In this form the
fat can be seen as globules under the microscope.
(2) A solution, resulting from the saponification of the oil, containing
a soap which usually will be alkaline in reaction, especially when mixed
with water, and from which fatty acids are separated as a precipitate
when the solution is acidified.
(3) A solution of fatty acids. This will be acid in reaction and will be
precipitated by the addition of water, in which the fatty acids are not
soluble.
An examination of one of these preparations, _e. g._, Waterbury’s
Metabolized Cod-Liver Oil, which, it is claimed, “contains the
metabolized product obtained by the action of ferments on cod-liver
oil,” shows that it is neither an emulsion, a solution of soap, nor a
solution of fatty acids, and more careful analysis shows that it
contains no fat or fat acids (except the merest traces). No intelligent
physician should be misled by the extravagant and unfounded claims made
for this preparation.
Hagee’s Cordial of Cod-Liver Oil is a representative of a class of
preparations which claim to “represent the oil, but contain no fat,” and
are therefore practically worthless. The claims of therapeutic value for
such preparations can not be substantiated. Some such
|
ene.
_Dido._ Thy fortune may be greater then thy birth,
Sit downe _Æneas_, sit in _Didos_ place,
And if this be thy sonne as I suppose,
Here let him sit, be merrie louely child.
_Æn._ This place beseemes me not, O pardon me.
_Dido._ Ile haue it so, _Æneas_ be content.
_Asca._ Madame, you shall be my mother.
_Dido._ And so I will sweete child: be merrie man,
Heres to thy better fortune and good starres.
_Æn._ In all humilitie I thanke your grace.
_Dido._ Remember who thou art, speake like thy selfe,
Humilitie belongs to common groomes.
_Æn._ And who so miserable as _Æneas_ is?
_Dido._ Lyes it in _Didos_ hands to make thee blest,
Then be assured thou art not miserable.
_Æn._ O _Priamus_, O _Troy_, oh _Hecuba_!
_Dido._ May I entreate thee to discourse at large,
And truely to how _Troy_ was ouercome:
For many tales goe of that Cities fall,
And scarcely doe agree vpon one poynt:
Some say _Antenor_ did betray the towne,
Others report twas _Sinons_ periurie:
But all in this that _Troy_ is ouercome,
And _Priam_ dead, yet how we heare no newes.
_Æn._ A wofull tale bids _Dido_ to vnfould,
Whose memorie like pale deaths stony mace,
Beates forth my senses from this troubled soule,
And makes _Æneas_ sinke at _Didos_ feete.
_Dido._ What faints _Æneas_ to remember _Troy_?
In whose defence he fought so valiantly:
Looke vp and speake.
_Æn._ Then speake _Æneas_ with _Achilles_ tongue,
And _Dido_ and you Carthaginian Peeres
Heare me, but yet with _Mirmidons_ harsh eares,
Daily inur'd to broyles and Massacres,
Lest you be mou'd too much with my sad tale.
The Grecian souldiers tired with ten yeares warre;
Began to crye, let vs vnto our ships,
_Troy_ is inuincible, why stay we here?
With whose outcryes _Atrides_ being apal'd,
Summoned the Captaines to his princely tent,
Who looking on the scarres we Troians gaue,
Seeing the number of their men decreast,
And the remainder weake and out of heart,
Gaue vp their voyces to dislodge the Campe,
And so in troopes all marcht to _Tenedos_:
Where when they came, _Vlysses_ on the sand
Assayd with honey words to turne them backe:
And as he spoke to further his entent,
The windes did driue huge billowes to the shoare,
And heauen was darkned with tempestuous clowdes:
Then he alleag'd the Gods would haue them stay,
And prophecied _Troy_ should be ouercome:
And therewithall he calde false _Sinon_ forth,
A man compact of craft and periurie,
Whose ticing tongue was made of _Hermes_ pipe,
To force an hundred watchfull eyes to sleepe:
And him _Epeus_ hauing made the horse,
With sacrificing wreathes vpon his head,
_Vlysses_ sent to our vnhappie towne:
Who groueling in the mire of _Zanthus_ bankes,
His hands bound at his back, and both his eyes
Turnd vp to heauen as one resolu'd to dye,
Our Phrigian shepherd haled within the gates,
And brought vnto the Court of _Priamus_:
To whom he vsed action so pitifull,
Lookes so remorcefull, vowes so forcible,
As therewithall the old man ouercome,
Kist him, imbrast him, and vnloosde his bands,
And then, O _Dido_ pardon me.
_Dido._ Nay leaue not here, resolue me of the rest.
_Æn._ O th'inchaunting words of that base slaue,
Made him to thinke _Epeus_ pine-tree Horse
A sacrifize t'appease _Mineruas_ wrath:
The rather for that one _Laocoon_
Breaking a speare vpon his hollow breast,
Was with two winged Serpents stung to death.
Whereat agast, we were commanded straight
With reuerence to draw it into _Troy_.
In which vnhappie worke was I employd,
These hands did helpe to hale it to the gates,
Through which it could not enter twas so huge.
O had it neuer entred, _Troy_ had stood.
But _Priamus_ impatient of delay,
Inforst a wide breach in that rampierd wall,
Which thousand battering Rams could neuer pierce,
And so came in this fatall instrument:
At whose accursed feete as ouerioyed,
We banquetted till ouercome with wine,
Some surfetted, and others soundly slept.
Which _Sinon_ viewing, causde the Greekish spyes
To hast to _Tenedos_ and tell the Campe:
Then he vnlockt the Horse, and suddenly
From out his entrailes, _Neoptolemus_
Setting his speare vpon the ground, leapt forth,
And after him a thousand Grecians more,
In whose sterne faces shin'd the quenchles fire,
That after burnt the pride of _Asia_.
By this the Campe was come vnto the walles,
And through the breach did march into the streetes,
Where meeting with the rest, kill kill they cryed.
Frighted with this confused noyse, I rose,
And looking from a turret, might behold
Yong infants swimming in their parents bloud,
Headles carkasses piled vp in heapes,
Virgins halfe dead dragged by their golden haire,
And with maine force flung on a ring of pikes,
Old men with swords thrust through their aged sides,
Kneeling for mercie to a Greekish lad,
Who with steele Pol-axes dasht out their braines.
Then buckled I mine armour, drew my sword,
And thinking to goe downe, came _Hectors_ ghost
With ashie visage, blewish, sulphure eyes,
His armes torne from his shoulders, and his breast
Furrowd with wounds, and that which made me weepe,
Thongs at his heeles, by which _Achilles_ horse
Drew him in triumph through the Greekish Campe,
Burst from the earth, crying, _Æneas_ flye,
_Troy_ is a fire, the Grecians haue the towne,
_Dido._ O _Hector_ who weepes not to heare thy name?
_Æn._ Yet flung I forth, and desperate of my life,
Ran in the thickest throngs, and with this sword
Sent many of their sauadge ghosts to hell.
At last came _Pirrhus_ fell and full of ire.
His harnesse dropping bloud, and on his speare
The mangled head of _Priams_ yongest sonne,
And after him his band of Mirmidons,
With balles of wilde fire in their murdering pawes,
Which made the funerall flame that burnt faire _Troy_:
All which hemd me about, crying, this is he.
_Dido._ Ah, how could poore _Æneas_ scape their hands?
_Æn._ My mother _Venus_ iealous of my health,
Conuaid me from their crooked nets and bands:
So I escapt the furious _Pirrhus_ wrath:
Who then ran to the pallace of the King,
And at _Ioues_ Altar finding _Priamus_,
About whose withered necke hung _Hecuba_,
Foulding his hand in hers, and ioyntly both
Beating their breasts and falling on the ground,
He with his faulchions poynt raisde vp at once,
And with _Megeras_ eyes stared in their face,
Threatning a thousand deaths at euery glaunce.
To whom the aged King thus trembling spoke:
_Achilles_ sonne, remember what I was,
Father of fiftie sonnes, but they are slaine,
Lord of my fortune, but my fortunes turnd,
King of this Citie, but my _Troy_ is fired,
And now am neither father, Lord, nor King:
Yet who so wretched but desires to liue?
O let me liue, great _Neoptolemus_,
Not mou'd at all, but smiling at his teares,
This butcher whil'st his hands were yet held vp,
Treading vpon his breast, strooke off his hands.
_Dido._ O end _Æneas_, I can heare no more.
_Æn._ At which the franticke Queene leapt on his face,
And in his eyelids hanging by the nayles,
A little while prolong'd her husbands life:
At last the souldiers puld her by the heeles,
And swong her howling in the emptie ayre,
Which sent an eccho to the wounded King:
Whereat he lifted vp his bedred lims,
And would haue grappeld with _Achilles_ sonne,
Forgetting both his want of strength and hands,
Which he disdaining whiskt his sword about,
And with the wound thereof the King fell downe:
Then from the nauell to the throat at once,
He ript old _Priam_: at whose latter gaspe
_Ioues_ marble statue gan to bend the brow,
As lothing _Pirrhus_ for this wicked act:
Yet he vndaunted tooke his fathers flagge,
And dipt it in the old Kings chill cold bloud,
And then in triumph ran into the streetes,
Through which he could not passe for slaughtred men:
So leaning on his sword he stood stone still,
Viewing the fire wherewith rich _Ilion_ burnt.
By this I got my father on my backe,
This yong boy in mine armes, and by the hand
Led faire _Creusa_ my beloued wife,
When thou _Achates_ with thy sword mad'st way,
And we were round inuiron'd with the Greekes:
O there I lost my wife: and had not we
Fought manfully, I had not told this tale:
Yet manhood would not serue, of force we fled,
And as we went vnto our ships, thou knowest
We sawe _Cassandra_ sprauling in the streetes,
Whom _Aiax_ rauisht in _Dianas_ Fawne,
Her cheekes swolne with sighes, her haire all rent,
Whom I tooke vp to beare vnto our ships;
But suddenly the Grecians followed vs,
And I alas, was forst to let her lye.
Then got we to our ships, and being abourd,
_Polixena_ cryed out, _Æneas_ stay,
The Greekes pursue me, stay and take me in.
Moued with her voyce, I lept into the sea,
Thinking to beare her on my backe abourd:
For all our ships were launcht into the deepe,
And as I swomme, she standing on the shoare,
Was by the cruell Mirmidons surprizd,
And after by that _Pirrhus_ sacrifizde.
_Dido._ I dye with melting ruth, _Æneas_ leaue.
_Anna._ O what became of aged _Hecuba_?
_Iar._ How got _Æneas_ to the fleete againe?
_Dido._ But how scapt _Helen_, she that causde this warre?
_Æn._ _Achates_ speake, sorrow hath tired me quite.
_Acha._ What happened to the Queene we cannot shewe,
We heare they led her captiue into Greece,
As for _Æneas_ he swomme quickly backe,
And _Helena_ betraied _Diiphobus_
Her Louer, after _Alexander_ dyed,
And so was reconcil'd to _Menelaus_.
_Dido._ O had that ticing strumpet nere been borne:
Troian, thy ruthfull tale hath made me sad:
Come let vs thinke vpon some pleasing sport,
To rid me from these melancholly thoughts.
_Exeunt omnes._
_Enter Venus at another doore, and takes Ascanius by the sleeve._
_Venus._ Faire child stay thou with _Didos_ waiting maide,
Ile giue thee Sugar-almonds, sweete Conserues,
A siluer girdle, and a golden purse,
And this yong Prince shall be thy playfellow.
_Asca._ Are you Queene _Didos_ sonne?
_Cupid._ I, and my mother gaue me this fine bow.
_Asca._ Shall I haue such a quiuer and a bow?
_Venus._ Such bow, such quiuer, and such golden shafts,
Will _Dido_ giue to sweete _Ascanius_:
For _Didos_ sake I take thee in my armes,
And sticke these spangled feathers in thy hat,
Eate Comfites in mine armes, and I will sing.
Now is he fast asleepe, and in this groue
Amongst greene brakes Ile lay _Ascanius_,
And strewe him with sweete smelling Violets,
Blushing Roses, purple _Hyacinthe_:
These milke white Doues shall be his Centronels:
Who if that any seeke to doe him hurt,
Will quickly flye to _Citheidas_ fist.
Now _Cupid_ turne thee to _Ascanius_ shape,
And goe to _Dido_ who in stead of him
Will set thee on her lap and play with thee:
Then touch her white breast with this arrow head,
That she may dote vpon _Æneas_ loue:
And by that meanes repaire his broken ships,
Victuall his Souldiers, giue him wealthie gifts,
And he at last depart to _Italy_,
Or els in _Carthage_ make his kingly throne.
_Cupid._ I will faire mother, and so play my part,
As euery touch shall wound Queene _Didos_ heart.
_Venus._ Sleepe my sweete nephew in these cooling shades,
Free from the murmure of these running streames,
The crye of beasts, the ratling of the windes,
Or whisking of these leaues, all shall be still,
And nothing interrupt thy quiet sleepe,
Till I returne and take thee hence againe. _Exit._
Actus 3. Scena I.
_Enter Cupid solus._
_Cupid._ Now _Cupid_ cause the Carthaginian Queene,
To be inamourd of thy brothers lookes,
Conuey this golden arrowe in thy sleeue,
Lest she imagine thou art _Venus_ sonne:
And when she strokes thee softly on the head,
Then shall I touch her breast and conquer her.
_Enter Iarbus, Anna, and Dido._
_Iar._ How long faire _Dido_ shall I pine for thee?
Tis not enough that thou doest graunt me loue,
But that I may enioy what I desire:
That loue is childish which consists in words.
_Dido._ _Iarbus_, know that thou of all my wooers
(And yet haue I had many mightier Kings)
Hast had the greatest fauours I could giue:
I feare me _Dido_ hath been counted light,
In being too familiar with _Iarbus_:
Albeit the Gods doe know no wanton thought
Had euer residence in _Didos_ breast.
_Iar._ But _Dido_ is the fauour I request.
_Dido._ Feare not _Iarbus_, _Dido_ may be thine.
_Anna._ Looke sister how _Æneas_ little sonne
Playes with your garments and imbraceth you.
_Cupid._ No _Dido_ will not take me in her armes,
I shall not be her sonne, she loues me not.
_Dido._ Weepe not sweet boy, thou shalt be _Didos_ sonne,
Sit in my lap and let me heare thee sing.
No more my child, now talke another while,
And tell me where learnst thou this pretie song?
_Cupid._ My cosin _Helen_ taught it me in _Troy_.
_Dido._ How louely is _Ascanius_ when he smiles?
_Cupid._ Will _Dido_ let me hang about her necke?
_Dido._ I wagge, and giue thee leaue to kisse her to.
_Cupid._ What will you giue me? now Ile haue this Fanne.
_Dido._ Take it _Ascanius_, for thy fathers sake.
_Iar._ Come _Dido_, leaue _Ascanius_, let vs walke.
_Dido._ Goe thou away, _Ascanius_ shall stay.
_Iar._ Vngentle Queene, is this thy loue to me?
_Dido._ O stay _Iarbus_, and Ile goe with thee.
_Cupid._ And if my mother goe, Ile follow her.
_Dido._ Why staiest thou here? thou art no loue of mine?
_Iar._ _Iarbus_ dye, seeing she abandons thee.
_Dido._ No, liue _Iarbus_, what hast thou deseru'd,
That I should say thou art no loue of mine?
Something thou hast deseru'd, away I say,
Depart from _Carthage_, come not in my sight.
_Iar._ Am I not King of rich _Getulia_?
_Dido._ _Iarbus_ pardon me, and stay a while.
_Cupid._ Mother, looke here.
_Dido._ What telst thou me of rich _Getulia_?
Am not I Queene of _Libia_? then depart.
_Iar._ I goe to feed the humour of my Loue,
Yet not from _Carthage_ for a thousand worlds.
_Dido._ _Iarbus_.
_Iar._ Doth _Dido_ call me backe?
_Dido._ No, but I charge thee neuer looke on me.
_Iar._ Then pull out both mine eyes, or let me dye. _Exit Iarb._
_Anna._ Wherefore doth _Dido_ bid _Iarbus_ goe?
_Dido._ Because his lothsome sight offends mine eye,
And in my thoughts is shrin'd another loue:
O _Anna_, didst thou know how sweet loue were,
Full soone wouldst thou abiure this single life.
_Anna._ Poore soule I know too well the sower of loue,
O that _Iarbus_ could but fancie me.
_Dido._ Is not _Æneas_ faire and beautifull?
_Anna._ Yes, and _Iarbus_ foule and fauourles.
_Dido._ Is he not eloquent in all his speech?
_Anna._ Yes, and _Iarbus_ rude and rusticall.
_Dido._ Name not _Iarbus_, but sweete _Anna_ say,
Is not _Æneas_ worthie _Didos_ loue?
_Anna._ O sister, were you Empresse of the world,
_Æneas_ well deserues to be your loue,
So lovely is he that where ere he goes,
The people swarme to gaze him in the face.
_Dido._ But tell them none shall gaze on him but I,
Lest their grosse eye-beames taint my louers cheekes:
_Anna_, good sister _Anna_ goe for him,
Lest with these sweete thoughts I melt cleane away.
_Anna._ Then sister youle abiure _Iarbus_ loue?
_Dido._ Yet must I heare that lothsome name againe?
Runne for _Æneas_, or Ile flye to him. _Exit Anna._
_Cupid._ You shall not hurt my father when he comes.
_Dido._ No, for thy sake Ile loue thy father well.
O dull conceipted _Dido_, that till now
Didst neuer thinke _Æneas_ beautifull:
But now for quittance of this ouersight,
Ile make me bracelets of his golden haire,
His glistering eyes shall be my looking glasse,
His lips an altar, where Ile offer vp
As many kisses as the Sea hath sands,
In stead of musicke I will heare him speake,
His lookes shall be my only Librarie,
And thou _Æneas, Didos_ treasurie,
In whose faire bosome I will locke more wealth,
Then twentie thousand Indiaes can affoord:
O here he comes, loue, loue, giue _Dido_ leaue
To be more modest then her thoughts admit,
Lest I be made a wonder to the world.
_Achates_, how doth _Carthage_ please your Lord?
_Acha._ That will _Æneas_ shewe your maiestie.
_Dido._ _Æneas_ art thou there?
_Æn._ I vnderstand your highnesse sent for me.
_Dido._ No, but now thou art here, tell me in sooth,
In what might _Dido_ highly pleasure thee.
_Æn._ So much haue I receiu'd at _Didos_ hands,
As without blushing I can aske no more:
Yet Queene of _Affricke_, are my ships vnrigd,
My Sailes all rent in sunder with the winde,
My Oares broken, and my Tackling lost,
Yea all my Nauie split with Rockes and Shelfes:
Nor Sterne nor Anchor haue our maimed Fleete,
Our Masts the furious windes strooke ouer bourd:
Which piteous wants if _Dido_ will supplie,
We will account her author of our liues.
_Dido._ _Æneas_, Ile repaire thy Troian ships,
Conditionally that thou wilt stay with me,
And let _Achates_ saile to _Italy_:
Ile giue thee tackling made of riueld gold,
Wound on the barkes of odoriferous trees,
Oares of massie Iuorie full of holes,
Through which the water shall delight to play:
Thy Anchors shall be hewed from Christall Rockes,
Which if thou lose shall shine aboue the waues;
The Masts whereon thy swelling sailes shall hang,
Hollow Pyramides of siluer plate:
The sailes of foulded Lawne, where shall be wrought
The warres of _Troy_, but not _Troyes_ ouerthrow:
For ballace, emptie _Didos_ treasurie,
Take what ye will, but leaue _Æneas_ here.
_Achates_, thou shalt be so meanly clad,
As Seaborne Nymphes shall swarme about thy ships,
And wanton Mermaides court thee with sweete songs,
Flinging in fauours of more soueraigne worth,
Then _Thetis_ hangs about _Apolloes_ necke,
So that _Æneas_ may but stay with me.
_Æn._ Wherefore would _Dido_ haue _Æneas_ stay?
_Dido._ To warre against my bordering enemies:
_Æneas_, thinke not _Dido_ is in loue:
For if that any man could conquer me,
I had been wedded ere _Æneas_ came:
See where the pictures of my suiters hang,
And are not these as faire as faire may be?
_Acha._ I saw this man at _Troy_ ere _Troy_ was sackt.
_Æn._ I this in _Greece_ when _Paris_ stole faire _Helen_.
_Illio._ This man and I were at _Olympus_ games.
_Serg._ I know this face, he is a Persian borne,
I traueld with him to _Ætolia_.
_Cloan._ And I in _Athens_ with this gentleman,
Vnlesse I be deceiu'd disputed once.
_Dido._ But speake _Æneas_, know you none of these?
_Æn._ No Madame, but it seemes that these are Kings.
_Dido._ All these and others which I neuer sawe,
Haue been most vrgent suiters for my loue,
Some came in person, others sent their Legats:
Yet none obtaind me, I am free from all,
And yet God knowes intangled vnto one.
This was an Orator, and thought by words
To compasse me, but yet he was deceiu'd:
And this a Spartan Courtier vaine and wilde,
But his fantastick humours pleasde not me:
This was _Alcion_, a Musition,
But playd he nere so sweet, I let him goe:
This was the wealthie King of _Thessaly_,
But I had gold enough and cast him off:
This _Meleagers_ sonne, a warlike Prince,
But weapons gree not with my tender yeares:
The rest are such as all the world well knowes,
Yet how I sweare by heauen and him I loue,
I was as farre from loue, as they from hate.
_Æn._ O happie shall he be whom _Dido_ loues.
_Dido._ Then neuer say that thou art miserable,
Because it may be thou shalt be my loue:
Yet boast not of it, for I loue thee not,
And yet I hate thee not: O if I speake
I shall betray my selfe: _Æneas_ speake,
We two will goe a hunting in the woods,
But not so much for thee, thou art but one,
As for _Achates_, and his followers. _Exeunt._
_Enter Iuno to Ascanius asleepe._
_Iuno._ Here lyes my hate, _Æneas_ cursed brat,
The boy wherein false destinie delights,
The heire of furie, the fauorite of the face,
That vgly impe that shall outweare my wrath,
And wrong my deitie with high disgrace:
But I will take another order now,
And race th'eternall Register of time:
_Troy_ shall no more call him her second hope,
Nor _Venus_ triumph in his tender youth:
For here in spight of heauen Ile murder him,
And feede infection with his left out life:
Say _Paris_, now shall _Venus_ haue the ball?
Say vengeance, now shall her _Ascanius_ dye.
O no God wot, I cannot watch my time,
Nor quit good turnes with double fee downe told:
Tut, I am simple without made to hurt,
And haue no gall at all to grieue my foes:
But lustfull _Ioue_ and his adulterous child,
Shall finde it written on confusions front,
That onely _Iuno_ rules in _Rhamnuse_ towne.
_Enter Venus._
_Venus._ What should this meane? my Doues are back returnd,
Who warne me of such daunger prest at hand,
To harme my sweete _Ascanius_ louely life.
_Iuno_, my mortall foe, what make you here?
Auaunt old witch and trouble not my wits.
_Iuno._ Fie _Venus_, that such causeles words of wrath,
Should ere defile so faire a mouth as thine:
Are not we both sprong of celestiall rase,
And banquet as two Sisters with the Gods?
Why is it then displeasure should disioyne,
Whom kindred and acquaintance counites.
_Venus._ Out hatefull hag, thou wouldst haue slaine my sonne,
Had not my Doues discou'rd thy entent:
But I will teare thy eyes fro forth thy head,
And feast the birds with their bloud-shotten balles,
If thou but lay thy fingers on my boy.
_Iuno._ Is this then all the thankes that I shall haue,
For sauing him from Snakes and Serpents stings,
That would haue kild him sleeping as he lay?
What though I was offended with thy sonne,
And wrought him mickle woe on sea and land,
When for the hate of Troian _Ganimed_,
That was aduanced by my _Hebes_ shame,
And _Paris_ iudgement of the heauenly ball,
I mustred all the windes vnto his wracke,
And vrg'd each Element to his annoy:
Yet now I doe repent me of his ruth,
And wish that I had neuer wrongd him so:
Bootles I sawe it was to warre with fate,
That hath so many vnresisted friends:
Wherefore I chaunge my counsell with the time,
And planted loue where enuie erst had sprong.
_Venus._ Sister of _Ioue_, if that thy loue be such,
As these thy protestations doe paint forth,
We two as friends one fortune will deuide:
_Cupid_ shall lay his arrowes in thy lap,
And to a Scepter chaunge his golden shafts,
Fancie and modestie shall liue as mates,
And thy faire peacockes by my pigeons pearch:
Loue my _Æneas_, and desire is thine,
The day, the night, my Swannes, my sweetes are thine.
_Iuno._ More then melodious are these words to me,
That ouercioy my soule with their content:
_Venus_, sweete _Venus_, how may I deserue
Such amourous fauours at thy beautious hand?
But that thou maist more easilie perceiue,
How highly I doe prize this amitie,
Harke to a motion of eternall league,
Which I will make in quittance of thy loue:
Thy sonne thou knowest with _Dido_ now remaines,
And feedes his eyes with fauours of her Court,
She likewise in admyring spends her time,
And cannot talke nor thinke of ought but him:
Why should not they then ioyne in marriage,
And bring forth mightie Kings to Carthage towne,
Whom casualtie of sea hath made such friends?
And _Venus_, let there be a match confirmd
Betwixt these two, whose loues are so alike,
And both our Deities conioynd in one,
Shall chaine felicitie vnto their throne.
_Venus._ Well could I like this reconcilements meanes,
But much I feare my sonne will nere consent,
Whose armed soule alreadie on the sea,
Darts forth her light to _Lauinias_ shoare.
_Iuno._ Faire Queene of loue, I will deuorce these doubts,
And finde the way to wearie such fond thoughts:
This day they both a hunting forth will ride
Into these woods, adioyning to these walles,
When in the midst of all their gamesome sports,
Ile make the Clowdes dissolue their watrie workes,
And drench _Siluanus_ dwellings with their shewers,
Then in one Caue the Queene and he shall meete,
And interchangeably discourse their thoughts,
Whose short conclusion will seale vp their hearts,
Vnto the purpose which we now propound.
_Venus._ Sister, I see you sauour of my wiles,
Be it as you will haue for this once,
Meane time, _Ascanius_ shall be my charge,
Whom I will beare to _Ida_ in mine armes,
And couch him in _Adonis_ purple downe, _Exeunt._
_Enter Dido, Æneas, Anna, Iarbus, Achates, and followers._
_Dido._ _Æneas_, thinke not but I honor thee,
That thus in person goe with thee to hunt:
My princely robes thou seest are layd aside,
Whose glittering pompe _Dianas_ shrowdes supplies,
All fellowes now disposde alike to sporte,
The woods are wide, and we haue store of game:
Faire Troian, hold my golden bowe awhile,
Vntill I gird my quiuer to my side:
Lords goe before, we two must talke alone.
_Iar._ Vngentle, can she wrong _Iarbus_ so?
Ile dye before a stranger haue that grace:
We two will talke alone, what words be these?
_Dido._ What makes _Iarbus_ here of all the rest?
We could haue gone without your companie.
_Æn._ But loue and duetie led him on perhaps,
To presse beyond acceptance to your sight.
_Iar._ Why man of _Troy_, doe I offend thine eyes?
Or art thou grieude thy betters presse so nye?
_Dido._ How now Getulian, are ye growne so braue,
To challenge vs with your comparisons?
Pesant, goe seeke companions like thy selfe,
And meddle not with any that I loue:
_Æneas_, be not moude at what he sayes,
For otherwhile he will be out of ioynt.
_Iar._ Women may wrong by priuiledge of loue:
But should that man of men (_Dido_ except)
Haue taunted me in these opprobrious termes,
I would haue either drunke his dying bloud,
Or els I would haue giuen my life in gage?
_Dido._ Huntsmen, why pitch you not your toyles apace,
And rowse the light foote Deere from forth their laire.
_Anna._ Sister, see see _Ascanius_ in his pompe,
Bearing his huntspeare brauely in his hand.
_Dido._ Yea little sonne, are you so forward now?
_Asca._ I mother, I shall one day be a man,
And better able vnto other armes,
Meane time these wanton weapons serue my warre,
Which I will breake betwixt a Lyons iawes.
_Dido._ What, darest thou looke a Lyon in the face?
_Asca._ I, and outface him to, doe what he can.
_Anna._ How like his father speaketh he in all?
_Æn._ And mought I liue to see him sacke rich _Thebes_,
And loade his speare with Grecian Princes heads,
Then would I wish me with _Anchises_ Tombe,
And dead to honour that hath brought me vp.
_Iar._ And might I liue to see thee shipt away,
And hoyst aloft on _Neptunes_ hideous hilles,
Then would I wish me in faire _Didos_ armes,
And dead to scorne that hath pursued me so.
_Æn._ Stoute friend _Achates_, doest thou know this wood?
_Acha._ As I remember, here you shot the Deere,
That sau'd your famisht souldiers liues from death,
When first you set your foote vpon the shoare,
And here we met fair _Venus_ virgine like,
Bearing her bowe and quiuer at her backe.
_Æn._ O how these irksome labours now delight,
And ouerioy my thoughts with their escape:
Who would not vndergoe all kind of toyle,
To be well stor'd with such a winters tale?
_Dido._ _Æneas_, leaue these dumpes and lets away,
Some to the mountaines, some vnto the soyle,
You to the vallies, thou vnto the house.
_Exeunt omnes: manent._
_Iar._ I, this it is which wounds me to the death,
To see a Phrigian far fet to the sea,
Preferd before a man of maiestie:
O loue, O hate, O cruell womens hearts,
That imitate the Moone in euery chaunge,
And like the Planets euer loue to raunge:
What shall I doe thus wronged with disdaine?
Reuenge me on _Æneas_, or on her:
On her? fond man, that were to warre gainst heauen,
And with one shaft prouoke ten thousand darts:
This Troians end will be thy enuies aime,
Whose bloud will reconcile thee to content,
And make loue drunken with thy sweete desire:
But _Dido_ that now holdeth him so deare,
Will dye with very tidings of his death:
But time will discontinue her content,
And mould her minde vnto newe fancies shapes:
O God of heauen, turne the hand of fate
Vnto that happie day of my delight,
And then, what then? _Iarbus_ shall but loue:
So doth he
|
the farm no room
was spacious enough for so many guests--and guests of such high station; in
the castle the great hall was still well preserved, the vaulted roof was
whole--to be sure one wall was cracked and the windows were without panes,
but in summer that would do no harm; the nearness of the cellars was
convenient for the servants. So speaking, he winked at the Judge; it was
evident from his mien that he had other, more important reasons, but
concealed them.
The castle stood two thousand paces from the mansion, of stately
architecture, and of imposing bulk, the ancestral home of the ancient
house of the Horeszkos. The owner had perished at the time of the
disorders in the country;15 the domain had been entirely ruined by the
sequestrations of the government, by the carelessness of the guardians,
and by the verdicts of the courts; part had fallen to distant relatives on
the female side, the rest had been divided among the creditors. No one
wished to take the castle, for a simple gentleman could hardly afford the
cost of maintaining it; but the Count, a rich young noble and a distant
relative of the Horeszkos, when he became of age and returned home from
his travels to live near by, took a fancy to the walls, explaining that
they were of Gothic architecture, though the Judge from documents tried to
convince him that the architect was from Wilno and not a Goth. At all
events the Count wished to have the castle, and suddenly the same desire
seized the Judge, no one could tell why. They began a suit in the district
court, then in the court of appeal, before the Senate, again in the
district court and before the governor's council; finally after great
expense of money, and numerous decrees, the case returned again to the
court of domains.
The Apparitor said rightly that in the hall of the castle there was room
both for the gentlemen of the bar and for the invited guests. This hall
was as large as a refectory, and it had a vaulted roof supported on
pillars, and a stone flooring; the walls were unadorned, but clean. Upon
them were fastened the horns of stags and roes, with inscriptions telling
where and when these trophies had been obtained; there too were engraved
the armorial bearings of the hunters, with the name of each written out in
full; on the ceiling gleamed the Half-Goat, the arms of the Horeszkos.
The guests entered in order and stood about the table. The Chamberlain
took his place at the head; this honour befitted him from his age and his
office; advancing to it he bowed to the ladies, the old men, and the young
men. By him took his station a Bernardine monk, a collector of alms for
his order, and next the Bernardine was the Judge. The Bernardine
pronounced a short grace in Latin, brandy was passed to the gentlemen;
then all sat down, and silently and with relish they ate the cold
Lithuanian salad of beet leaves.16
Thaddeus, though a young man, by virtue of being a guest, had a seat at
the head of the table, with the ladies, beside His Honour the Chamberlain;
between him and his uncle there remained one empty place, which seemed to
be awaiting some one. The uncle often glanced at this place and then at
the door, as though he were assured of some one's coming and desired it;
and Thaddeus followed his uncle's glance to the door, and with him fixed
his eyes on the empty seat. Marvellous to relate, the places round about
were occupied by maidens on whom a prince might have gazed without shame,
all of them high born, and every one young and pretty; but Thaddeus kept
looking at that spot where no one was sitting. That place was a riddle;
young people love riddles. Distraught, to his fair neighbour the
Chamberlain's daughter he said only a few scattering words; he did not
change her plate or fill her glass, and he did not entertain the young
ladies with polite discourse such as would have shown his city breeding.
That one empty place allured him and dazzled him; it was no longer empty,
for he had filled it with his thoughts. Over that place ran a thousand
guesses, as after a rain, little toads hop hither and thither over a
lonely meadow; among them one form was queen, like a water lily on a fair
day raising its white brow above the surface of a lake.
The third course was being served. The Chamberlain, pouring a drop of wine
into Panna Rosa's glass and passing a plate of cucumbers to his younger
daughter, said: "I must wait on you myself, my dear daughters, though I am
old and clumsy." Thereat several young men started up from the table and
served the young ladies. The Judge, throwing a sidelong glance at Thaddeus
and adjusting somewhat the sleeves of his kontusz, poured out some
Hungarian wine and spoke thus:--
"To-day, as the new fashion bids us, we send our young men to the capital
to study, and I do not deny that our sons and grandsons have more book
learning than their elders; but each day I perceive how our young men
suffer because there are no schools that teach how to conduct oneself in
polite society. Of old, the young gentry went to the courts of the lords;
I myself was for ten years a member of the household of the Wojewoda,26
the father of His Honour the Chamberlain." (As he said this he pressed the
Chamberlain's knees.) "By his counsels he fitted me for the public
service, and did not dismiss me from his care until he had made a man of
me. In my home his memory will ever be dear; each day do I pray God for
his soul. If at his court I profited less than others, and since my return
have been ploughing the fields at home, while others, more worthy of the
regard of the Wojewoda, have since attained the highest offices in the
land, at least this much I profited, that in my home no one will ever
reproach me for failing to show respect or courtesy to all--and boldly do I
say it, courtesy is not an easy science, nor one of slight account. Not
easy, for it is not confined to moving one's legs gracefully in bowing or
to greeting with a smile each man one meets; for such fashionable courtesy
seems to me that of a merchant, not that of old Poland, nor that of a true
gentleman. Courtesy should be extended to all, but for each it is
different; for not without courtesy is the love of children for their
parents, or the regard paid by a husband to his wife in society, or that
of a master for his servants, and yet each sort of courtesy has its
distinctive mark. One must study long in order without mistake to pay to
each his due respect. And our elders did study: in noble mansions the
discourse furnished the listener a living history of his land, and the
talk among the gentry formed the household annals of the county. Thereby a
brother gentleman was made to feel that all knew of him and did not esteem
him lightly; so a gentleman kept a watch upon his own habits. But to-day
you must ask no man who he is or of what parents, with whom he has lived
or what he has done. Every man enters where he will, so long as he be not
a government spy or a beggar. As Vespasian did not smell of money,17 and
cared not to know whence it came, from what hands or lands, so now they
care not to know a man's family or habits. It suffices that he be of full
weight and that the stamp be seen upon him; thus men value friends as Jews
value money."
While speaking thus, the Judge surveyed his guests in order; for though he
always spoke fluently and with discretion, he knew that the youth of
to-day are impatient, that they are bored by long speeches, even by the
most eloquent. But all were listening in deep silence; the Judge with his
eye seemed to take counsel of the Chamberlain; the Chamberlain did not
interrupt the speech by praise, but with a frequent nodding of his head he
assented to it. The Judge ceased speaking, the other with a nod begged him
to continue. So the Judge filled the Chamberlain's beaker and his own cup,
and spoke further:--
"Courtesy is no slight thing: when a man learns to respect as is fitting
the age, birth, virtues, and ways of others, at the same time he comes to
recognise also his own dignity; as in weighing with scales, in order to
learn our own weight, we must put some one in the opposite pan. And worthy
of your especial attention is the courtesy that young men owe to the fair
sex, above all when the distinction of family, and the generosity of
fortune heighten inborn charms and talents. Through courtesy is the path
to the affections, and by it houses are joined in splendid union--thus
thought our elders. And therefore----"
Here the Judge with a sudden turn of his head nodded at Thaddeus and
bestowed on him a stern glance; it was evident that he had now reached the
climax of his speech.
Thereupon the Chamberlain tapped his golden snuffbox and said:--
"My dear Judge, in former times it was still worse. At present I know not
whether the fashion changes even us old men, or whether the young men are
better than before, but I see less cause of scandal. Ah, I remember the
times when on our fatherland there first descended the fashion of
imitating the French; when suddenly brisk young gentlemen from foreign
lands swarmed in upon us in a horde worse than the Nogai Tatars, abusing
here, in our country, God, the faith of our fathers, our law and customs,
and even our ancient garments. Pitiable was it to behold the yellow-faced
puppies, talking through their noses--and often without noses--stuffed with
brochures and newspapers of various sorts, and proclaiming new faiths,
laws, and toilets. That rabble had a mighty power over minds, for when the
Lord God sends punishment on a nation he first deprives its citizens of
reason. And so the wiser heads dared not resist the fops, and the whole
nation feared them as some pestilence, for within itself it already felt
the germs of disease. They cried out against the dandies but took pattern
by them; they changed faith, speech, laws, and costumes. That was a
masquerade, the licence of the Carnival season, after which was soon to
follow the Lent of slavery.
"I remember,--though then I was but a little child,--when the Cup-Bearer's
son came to visit my father in the district of Oszmiana, in a French
carriage; he was the first man in Lithuania who wore French clothes.
Everybody ran after him as after a buzzard;18 they envied the house before
the threshold of which the Cup-Bearer's son halted his two-wheeled chaise,
which passed by the French name of cabriolet. Within it sat two dogs
instead of footmen, and on the box a German, lean as a board; his long
legs, thin as hop-poles, were clad in stockings, and shoes with silver
buckles; the tail of his wig was tied up in a sack. The old men burst out
laughing at that equipage, but the country boors crossed themselves,
saying that a Venetian devil was travelling abroad in a German carriage.
To describe the son of the Cup-Bearer himself would be a long story;
suffice it to say that he seemed to us an ape or a parrot in a great
peruke, which he liked to compare to the Golden Fleece, and we to
elf-locks.19 At that time even if any one felt that the Polish costume was
more comely than this aping of a foreign fashion, he kept silent, for the
young men would have cried out that he was hindering culture, that he was
checking progress, that he was a traitor. Such at that time was the power
of prejudice!
"The Cup-Bearer's son announced that he was going to reform us and
introduce order and civilisation; he proclaimed to us that some eloquent
Frenchmen had made a discovery, that all men are equal--though this was
written long ago in Holy Writ and every parish priest prates of it from
the pulpit. The doctrine was ancient, the question was of its application.
But at that time such general blindness prevailed that they did not
believe the oldest things in the world if they did not read of them in a
French newspaper. The Cup-Bearer's son, despite equality, had taken the
title of marquis. It is well known that titles come from Paris, and at
that time the title of marquis was in fashion there; however, when in the
course of years the fashion changed, this same marquis took the title of
democrat; finally, with the changing fashion, under Napoleon, the democrat
arrived from Paris as a baron; if he had lived longer, perhaps he would
have shifted again, and instead of a baron would have called himself once
more a democrat. For Paris boasts of frequent changes of fashion, and
whatever a Frenchman invents is dear to a Pole.
"Thank God, that now if our young men go abroad, it is no longer for
clothes, nor to seek new laws in wretched printing shops, nor to study
eloquence in the cafes of Paris. For now Napoleon, a clever man and a
swift, gives us no time to prate or to search for new fashions. Now there
is the thunder of arms, and the hearts of us old men exult that the renown
of the Poles is spreading so widely throughout the world; glory is ours
already, and so we shall soon again have our Republic. From laurels always
springs the tree of liberty. Only it is sad that for us the years drag on
so long in idleness, and they are always so far away. It is so long to
wait!, and even news is so scarce. Father Robak,"20 he said in a lower
voice to the Bernardine, "I have heard that you have received tidings from
beyond the Niemen; perhaps you know something of our army?"
"Not a thing," answered Robak with indifference; it was evident that he
had not enjoyed listening to the talk. "Politics bore me; if I have a
letter from Warsaw, it is on business of our Order. That is the affair of
us Bernardines; why should we talk of that at supper? Here there are
laymen, whom such things do not concern."
So speaking, he looked askance at a Muscovite guest who was sitting among
the banqueters; this was Captain Rykov, an old soldier who was quartered
in a village hard by, and whom the Judge for courtesy's sake had invited
to the supper. Rykov ate with a relish, and had been mixing little in the
conversation, but at the mention of Warsaw he raised his head and said,
with a Russian accent, and with a few slips of expression:--
"Chamberlain! Ah, sir, you are always curious about Bonaparte, and are
always eager to hear from Warsaw. Ah, Fatherland! I am no spy, but I
understand Polish.--Fatherland! I feel it all, I understand! You are Poles,
I am Russian; just now we are not fighting--there is an armistice, so we
are eating and drinking together. Often at the outposts our fellows will
be chatting with the French and drinking brandy; when they cry 'Hurrah,'
then comes the cannonading. There's a Russian proverb: 'I love the man I
fight with; clasp your sweetheart to your heart, but beat her like a fur
cloak.' I say we shall have war. An adjutant of the staff came to Major
Plut21 the day before yesterday: 'Get ready for the march!' We shall move
either against the Turks or the French. O, that Bonaparte is a rare bird!
Now that Suvorov is gone maybe he will give us a drubbing. In our regiment
we used to say, when we were marching against the French, that Bonaparte
was a wizard22--well, so was Suvorov a wizard too, so there were tricks
against tricks. Once in battle, where did he disappear? To look for
Bonaparte! But he changed himself into a fox, so Suvorov became a hound;
so Bonaparte changed again into a cat; they started to claw each other,
but Suvorov became a pony. Now notice what happened with Bonaparte
finally----"
Here Rykov broke off and began to eat. At that moment the servant came in
with the fourth course, and suddenly the side doors were opened.
A new guest, young and fair, came in; her sudden appearance, her beauty
and her carriage, her toilet, all attracted the eye. Everybody greeted
her; evidently all except Thaddeus were acquainted with her. Her figure
was fine and elegant, her bosom charming; her gown was of pink silk, low
cut, and with short sleeves, the collar of lace. In her hands she twirled
a fan for mere pastime, for it was not hot; the gilded fan as it waved
spread around it a dense shower of sparks. Her head was like a milliner's
model; the hair was frizzled and curled and intertwined with pink ribbons;
amid them a diamond, half hidden from sight, shone like a star in the tail
of a comet. In a word it was a holiday toilet; several whispered that it
was too elaborate for the country and for every day. Though her skirt was
short, the eye could not see her feet, for she ran very swiftly, or rather
she glided, like the puppets that on the Festival of the Three Kings boys
hidden in booths slide to and fro. She ran in and, greeting all with a
slight bow, was about to seat herself in the place reserved for her. That
was difficult, for there were no chairs for the guests, who were sitting
in four rows on four benches; either a whole row must move or she must
climb over the bench. Skilfully she managed to squeeze in between two
benches, and then between the table and the line of those seated at it she
rolled on like a billiard ball. In her course she brushed past our young
man, and, catching a flounce on some one's knee, slipped a little, and in
her distraction supported herself on the shoulder of Thaddeus. Politely
begging his pardon, she took her seat between him and his uncle, but she
ate nothing; she only fanned herself, or twirled the handle of her fan, or
adjusted her lace collar, or with a light touch of her hand smoothed her
ringlets and the knots of bright ribbon among them.
This interruption of the conversation had lasted some four minutes.
Meanwhile there had begun at the end of the table first gentle murmurs and
then conversation in a subdued voice; the men were discussing their day's
hunting. Between the Assessor23 and the Notary24 there had arisen a
stubborn and more and more noisy dispute over a bobtailed hound, in the
ownership of which the Notary took pride, maintaining that this dog had
caught the hare; while the Assessor was demonstrating, despite the
arguments of the Notary, that that honour belonged to his own hound
Falcon. They asked the opinion of the others; so all in turn took sides
either for Bobtail or for Falcon, some as experts, others as eyewitnesses.
At the opposite end of the table the Judge was saying in a low voice to
his new neighbour: "I beg your pardon, we had to sit down, it was
impossible to put off supper till later; the guests were hungry, for they
had had a long walk over the fields; and I thought that to-day you would
not join us at table." After these words he talked quietly with the
Chamberlain over a full winecup about political affairs.
Since both ends of the table were thus occupied, Thaddeus gazed intently
at the unknown lady. He remembered that when he had first glanced at the
place he had at once guessed for whom it was destined. He blushed, and his
heart beat faster than its wont. So he now beheld, the solution of the
mystery upon which he had pondered. So it had been ordained that by his
side should sit that beauty whom he had seen in the twilight; to be sure
she now seemed of taller stature, for she was in full dress, and costume
may make one seem larger or smaller. But the hair of the first had seemed
short and of a bright golden colour, while this lady had long, curling,
raven tresses. The colour must have come from the sun's rays, which at
evenfall shed a glow over everything. At that time he had not noticed the
girl's face--she had vanished too quickly. But thought is wont to guess a
lovely face; he had imagined that surely she must have black eyes, a fair
complexion, and lips as red as twin cherries; in his neighbour he found
such a face, such eyes, and such lips. In age perhaps there was the
greatest difference; the little gardener had seemed to him a young girl,
this lady was already of ripe years. But youth never asks beauty for its
baptismal certificate; to a young man every woman is young, to a lad every
beauty seems of his own age, and to an innocent boy every sweetheart seems
a maiden.
Thaddeus, though he was now almost twenty years of age, and from childhood
had dwelt in Wilno, a large city, had been under the charge of a priest,
who looked after him and brought him up in the rules of strict
old-fashioned virtue. Therefore Thaddeus brought home to his native heath
a pure soul, a lively imagination, and an innocent heart, but at the same
time no small desire to sow his wild oats. He had some time ago resolved
that he would permit himself to enjoy in the country his long forbidden
liberty; he knew that he was handsome, he felt himself young and vigorous;
and as an inheritance from his parents he had received health and good
spirits. His name was Soplica; all the Soplicas, as is well known, are
large, strong, powerful men, apt at the soldier's trade, but less diligent
over their books.
Thaddeus had not degenerated from his forebears; he rode well on horseback
and walked well; he was not dull, but he had made little progress in his
studies, though his uncle had spared nothing on his education. He liked
better to shoot, or to practise with a sabre; he knew that they had
intended to fit him for the army, that his father in his will had
expressed this desire; while sitting in school he yearned constantly for
the sound of the drum. But his uncle had suddenly changed his first
intentions, and had sent him word to come home and to marry and take over
the farming; he had promised to give him at first a little village, and
later the whole estate.
All these virtues and good qualities of Thaddeus had attracted the gaze of
his neighbour, an observant woman. She had measured his tall and shapely
form, his strong shoulders, his broad chest, and she looked into his face,
on which a blush rose as often as the young man met her eyes. For he had
already entirely recovered from his first timidity, and looked on her with
a bold glance, in which fire blazed; even so did she gaze on him, and
their four pupils glowed opposite one another as do candles at the Advent
mass.
She started a conversation with him in French. Thaddeus had returned from
town, from school: so she asked his opinions about new books and authors,
and from his answers derived new questions; she went so far as to speak of
painting, of music, of dancing--even of sculpture! She proved herself
equally familiar with the pencil, with tunes, and with books, until
Thaddeus was petrified by so much learning, and feared that he might
become the butt of ridicule, and stammered like a little lad before his
teacher. Luckily the teacher was beautiful and lenient; his neighbour
guessed the cause of his perturbation, and shifted the talk to less deep
and difficult subjects, to the cares and troubles of existence in the
country, and how one must amuse oneself, and how divide the time in order
to make village life gay and pleasant. Thaddeus answered more boldly, and
things went better; in a half-hour they were already fast friends, they
even started jests and small quarrels. Finally she placed before him three
little balls of bread, three persons to select from; he chose the nearest.
The two daughters of the Chamberlain frowned at this; his neighbour
laughed, but she did not tell him whom that happy ball was meant to
signify.
At the other end of the table they were amusing themselves quite
differently, for there the adherents of Falcon, suddenly gathering
strength, descended pitilessly on the party of Bobtail. Mighty was the
strife; they had not yet eaten the last courses; standing up and drinking,
the two factions wrangled. But most terribly was the Notary ruffled--just
like a blackcock; when he had once begun, he poured forth his speech
without a pause, and adorned it most effectively by his gestures. (The
Notary, Pan Bolesta, had once been a lawyer; they called him the preacher,
because he was over fond of gestures.) Now he had placed his hands on his
sides, extending his elbows backward, and from under his armpits he was
thrusting forward his fingers and long nails, thereby representing two
leashes of hounds. He was just concluding his speech:--
"Hurrah! The Assessor and I let them go at once, at the very same time, as
if the two triggers on a double-barrelled gun had been pressed by one
finger. Hurrah! They started, and the hare like an arrow shot into the
field; the dogs after him----" (Here as he spoke he ran his hands over the
table and with his fingers marvellously imitated the movement of the dogs)
"the dogs after him, and they headed him off a bit from the wood. Falcon
rushed forward, a fleet dog, but with a poor head; he got the start of
Bobtail by so much, a finger's breadth; I knew that he would miss. The
hare was no common rogue; he made as if straight for the field, and after
him the pack of hounds. The rogue of a hare I Once he knew that the dogs
were in a bunch, pst! he went to the right, with a somersault, and after
him the stupid hounds; but again, zip! to the left, in just two jumps. The
dogs after him, zip! to the left, and my Bobtail, whack!"
Shouting thus the Notary leaned over the table and ran his fingers clear
to the other side, and screamed "whack" just over the ear of Thaddeus.
Thaddeus and his neighbour, suddenly startled right in the middle of a
conversation by this outburst, involuntarily withdrew their heads from
each other, like treetops tied together, when the storm parts them; their
hands, which had been lying close together under the table, quickly drew
apart, and their two faces were clothed with a single blush.
"It is true, my dear Notary," said Thaddeus, in order not to betray his
embarrassment, "it is true, without doubt; Bobtail is a finely built
hound--if he is equally good at seizing the game."
"Good at seizing!" cried the Notary, "my favourite dog; the idea of his
not being good at seizing!"
So Thaddeus once more expressed his pleasure that so handsome a dog had no
fault; regretted that he had seen him only as he was returning from the
wood, and that he had not had time to appreciate all his good points.
At this the Assessor trembled, dropped his wine-glass from his hand, and
levelled at Thaddeus the glance of a basilisk. The Assessor was less noisy
and less given to gestures than the Notary, thinner and shorter; but he
was terrible at masquerade, ball, or village diet, for they said of him
that he had a sting in his tongue. He could make up such witty jests that
you might have had them printed in the almanac; they were all so malicious
and pointed. He had formerly been a man of property, but he had entirely
squandered his inheritance from his father, and his brother's estate as
well, through cutting a figure in high society; now he had entered the
service of the government, in order to be of some importance in the
district. He was very fond of hunting, both for the sport of it and
because the peal of the horn and the sight of the circle of beaters
recalled to him the days of his youth, when he had kept many hunters and
many famous hounds. Of his whole kennel but two dogs remained, and now
they wanted to belittle the glory of one of these! So he approached, and,
slowly stroking his side whiskers, said with a laugh--but it was a laugh
full of poison:--
"A hound without a tail is like a gentleman without an office. A tail is
likewise a great help to a hound in running. And do you, sir, regard the
lack of one as a proof of excellence? However, we may refer the matter to
the judgment of your aunt. Though Pani Telimena has been living in the
capital, and has only recently been visiting our neighbourhood, yet she
knows more about hunting than do young sportsmen: for knowledge comes of
itself with years."
Thaddeus, upon whom this thunderstorm had unexpectedly descended, arose in
confusion, and for some moments said nothing, but looked upon his rival
more and more terribly and sternly; at that moment by great good luck the
Chamberlain sneezed twice. "Vivat!" cried everybody; he bowed to the
company, and slowly tapped his snuffbox with his fingers. The snuffbox was
of gold, set with diamonds, and in the middle of it was a portrait of King
Stanislaw.25 The king himself had given it to the father of the
Chamberlain; after his father the Chamberlain bore it worthily; whenever
he tapped upon it, it was a sign that he wished to have the floor for a
speech. All became silent, no one dared open his lips. He spoke:--
"Honoured gentlemen, my beloved brothers, the woods and meadows alone are
the hunter's forum, therefore such matters I will not pass upon within
doors, but I will dissolve our sitting until to-morrow, and will not
permit further argument from either faction to-day. Apparitor, call the
case for to-morrow in the field! To-morrow the Count too will be here with
all his hunting train, and you, my neighbour Judge, will ride out with us,
and Pani Telimena, and the young ladies and gentlemen; in a word we will
form a great official hunting party, and the Seneschal, too, will not deny
us his companionship."
So saying he offered his snuffbox to the old man.
The Seneschal had been sitting at the corner among the hunters; he had
been listening with closed eyes, but had said not a word, although the
young men had often inquired his opinion, for no one understood hunting
better than he. He kept silent, weighed in his fingers the pinch of snuff
that he had taken from the box, and meditated long before he finally used
it; he sneezed until the whole room echoed, and shaking his head, he said
with a bitter smile:--
"O how this saddens and amazes me in my old age! What would the hunters of
old times say of this, if they should see that amid so many gentlemen, in
so large a gathering, disputes over a hound's tail had to be debated? What
would old Rejtan say of this were he to come to life again? He would go
back to Lachowicze and lay himself in his grave. What would the old
wojewoda Niesiolowski26 say, a man who still has the finest kennel in the
world, and maintains in lordly wise two hundred hunters, and who has a
hundred waggon-loads of nets in his castle of Woroncza, and yet for so
many years has been abiding like a monk within his house? No one can
persuade him to accept an invitation to hunt; he refused even
Bialopiotrowicz27 himself! For what would he capture at your hunts? It
would be fine glory, if such a gentleman, in accordance with the present
fashion, should ride out against rabbits! In my time, sir, in hunter's
language, the boar, the bear, the elk, the wolf were known as noble
beasts, but beasts without tusks, horns, or claws were left for hired
servants or farm labourers. No gentleman would ever consent to take in
hand a musket that had been put to shame by having small shot sprinkled in
it! To be sure they kept hounds, for when they were returning from a hunt
it might happen that some wretched hare would start up from beneath a
steed; then they let loose the pack at it for sport, and the little lads
chased it on ponies before the eyes of their parents, who hardly deigned
to look on such a chase, much less to quarrel over it! So I beg that Your
Honour the Chamberlain will deign to recall your commands, and will
forgive me that I cannot ride to such a hunting party, and never will set
foot in one! My name is Hreczecha, and since the days of King Lech28 no
Hreczecha has ever ridden out after hares."
Here the laughter of the young men drowned the speech of the Seneschal.
They rose from the table; the Chamberlain moved first; this honour
befitted him from his age and his office; as he advanced he bowed to the
ladies, the old men, and the young men. After him went the Collector of
Alms, and the Judge alongside the Bernardine; at the threshold the Judge
offered his arm to the Chamberlain's wife, Thaddeus to Telimena, the
Assessor to the Carver's daughter, and finally the Notary to Panna
Hreczecha, the daughter of the Seneschal.
Thaddeus went to the stable with several of the guests, and felt
disturbed, glum, and morose; he thought over all the events of the day,
the meeting and the supper by the side of his fair neighbour--and in
particular the word "aunt" buzzed continually in his ear like an
importunate fly. He would have liked to learn more about Pani Telimena
from the Apparitor, but he could not catch him; nor did he see the
Seneschal, for immediately after supper all had followed the guests out,
as befits serving men, and had gone to prepare the rooms for rest. The
older people and the ladies slept in the mansion; the young men Thaddeus,
as the host's representative, had been directed to take to the stable,
where they were to sleep on the hay.
Within a half-hour it was as quiet on the whole estate as in a cloister
after the bell for prayer; the silence was interrupted only by the voice
of the night watchman. All were asleep. The Judge alone did not close his
eyes; as the head of the estate, he was thinking over a walking party, and
the coming entertainment within the house. He gave orders to the stewards,
the overseers, and the grain-wardens; to the scribes, the housekeeper, the
huntsmen, and the grooms; and he had to look through all the day's
accounts; finally he told the Apparitor that he wished to undress. The
Apparitor undid his belt, a belt from Sluck,29 a massive belt, on which
glittered tassels thick as helmet-plumes; on one side it was gold brocade
with purple flowers, on the reverse black silk with silver cross-stripes.
Such a belt may be worn equally well on either side, golden for a holiday,
and black for mourning. The Apparitor alone knew how to undo and fold up
this belt; he took this trouble upon himself and ended with the following
speech:--
"Where was the harm that I moved the tables to the old castle?
|
in his way, for it was just suited to his size.
His ink-horn, weighing as much as a ton of merchandise, swung by
heavy iron chains from the side of the desk. From it Gargantua, with
a pen-holder as large as the great Pillar of Enay, used to write his
Latin exercises. Master Holofernes kept him at all this for eighteen
years and eleven months, and so thorough did he become that he could
recite his Latin exercises by heart, backwards. He went on studying
after this some of the harder books for sixteen years and two months,
when he had the misfortune of losing his old teacher very suddenly.
One day, unexpectedly, Father Grandgousier called his friends around
him,--who had, by this time, gained redder noses and bigger paunches
than ever,--to see how strong his son was in Latin. He also invited a
friend of his who, he was sure, did know Latin.
[Illustration: THE FRIEND WHO KNEW LATIN.]
Then he shouted out, "Come, my little one, and show these friends of
thy father what thou hast learned of Latin. See, here is a gentleman
who knows it as he does his breviary. He shall examine thee, and tell
us how much thou hast learned under faithful Master Holofernes, whom we
all honor."
And the learned friend began on poor Gargantua, and poured on him
question after question for six mortal hours. Father Grandgousier, who,
by the way, had understood not one word of it all, turned to him at the
end triumphantly:--
"Now, good sir, art thou not convinced that my boy knows his Latin?"
Then, that learned friend, although just a little trembling, to be
sure, answered quietly enough:--
"With my Liege's permission, Prince Gargantua does not know any more
Latin than Your own Gracious Majesty."
"_What!_
WHAT!
WHAT!!!"
roared Father Grandgousier, each time making that very short word
longer and louder and fiercer, and jumping to his feet he fairly kicked
learned Master Holofernes out of the palace; meanwhile, rolling his
eyes around in his rage, and gnashing his teeth in so horrible a way
that the noses of his old friends who had sat at his table for sixty
years, and more, turned pale for once, through fright; and there
were those of the household who said that, as they fled from the
dining-room, in terror, even the paunches of these old friends seemed,
somehow, to have grown as flat as the royal pancakes they had just been
eating.
[Illustration: FLIGHT OF THE TUTOR.]
CHAPTER VII.
THE NEW MASTER FOUND FOR GARGANTUA.
[Illustration: Initial W.]
"What! not know thy Latin! After forty-eight years, seven months, and
two days! Then, my little rogue, it is to Paris thou must go."
This is what Grandgousier said to Gargantua just one week after that
luckless dinner. I will tell you how it all happened. The first thing
the old King did the next morning was to send, post-haste, to his good
friend, Don Philip of the Marshes, Viceroy of Papeligosse, who knew
Latin, and who had told him, years and years before, that poor Master
Holofernes was nothing but a bit of an old humbug (humbug was not quite
the word used at that time, but the meaning was all the same). "Come
to me, my friend," he wrote, "thou art always prating of thy Latin
scholars. Now bring one of thy wonders along with thee."
So Don Philip came in great state, as befitted a visit to his King,
accompanied by the prettiest, the jauntiest, the sharpest, the
politest, the sweetest-voiced little fellow ever seen. Don Philip
introduced the curled darling as Master Eudemon, his page.
"Your Majesty sees this child?" he asked. "He is not yet twelve years
old; yet I dare promise that he will prove to Your Majesty, if it be
your pleasure, what difference there really is between the old dreamers
of the past and the lads of the present."
"So be it," cried the old Giant, gaily, as he put on his glasses, to
see the better.
When his eyes first fell on the young page, he swore under his
breath--which sounded for all the world like stifled thunder--that
he resembled rather "a little angel than a human child." As soon as
Eudemon was called to show what he knew, he rose with youthful modesty,
and bowed with charming grace to the King, then to his master, and
then to Gargantua, who was frowning at him, and wondering within
himself what all those pretty ways meant. Then the young page opened
in a Latin so good, so pure, and so musical that what he said sounded
rather like a speech made by a Gracchus, or a Cicero, or an Emilius,
in the old days of Roman glory, than one made by a youth of that day.
After a little, Eudemon--cunning rogue that he was!--began to praise
Gargantua to the skies. He spoke first of his young Prince's virtue
and good manners; secondly, of his knowledge; thirdly, of his noble
birth; fourthly, of his personal beauty; and fifthly, the little fellow
exhorted him so movingly to revere his great father in all things that
Gargantua was so ashamed at not understanding a word of what he was
saying, and at not being able to Latin away as he did, forgetting that
a dwarf had no business whatever to criticise a young Giant, that he
began to _moo-moo_ like a cow, and to hide his face in his cap without
having ever a word to say for himself.
[Illustration: EUDEMON.]
Here it was that Father Grandgousier grew really angry. He praised
Eudemon and scolded Gargantua by turns, until at last he fell asleep
among all the big bottles that had been emptied during the pretty tale
of the learned little angel, which nobody around the table understood
but Don Philip of the Marshes and the pretty little angel himself. It
is a bold thing at all times to awake a King without his own orders;
but when that King is a Giant, it is a bolder thing to do than ever.
No one dares, for his head, disturb him, and yet, he has to be waked,
or else the next morning his sneezes will make all the houses around
tumble down, as Giant's colds in the head are just about as big as
their bodies. Now, Gargantua being a young Giant himself, was the only
one who could venture upon the liberty of waking his Father, and I have
already said what he got for his pains:--
"What! not know thy Latin! After forty-eight years, seven months, and
two days, too! Then, my little rogue, it is to Paris thou shalt go."
CHAPTER VIII.
GARGANTUA GOES TO PARIS, AND THE BIG MARE THAT TAKES HIM THERE.
[Illustration: Initial T.]
The trip to Paris being settled, the first thing to be agreed on was a
horse large enough to carry Gargantua at his ease. There was no trouble
here; for, by good luck, it happened that there had arrived, only a
few days before, the most gigantic Mare that had ever eaten hay in the
Royal Stables. She had come all the way from Africa, a present from
Fayolles, the fourth king of Numidia. When Father Grandgousier went to
look at the Mare, he found her a marvellous animal, indeed. She was as
big as six elephants, with her hoofs split into toes. Her ears hung
downward like the great ears of the goats of Languedoc. The mare was
not alone in her split toes, because history tells us that the steed
of Julius Cæsar had the self-same toes if he hadn't the ears. But she
was alone in her tail! Oh, how mighty that tail was! It was as big as
the Pillar of Saint-Mars near Langes, and just as square. If the boys
and girls who are reading this are surprised, they will only have to
think of what they have already read of the tails of those Scythian
rams which weighed more than thirty pounds each; and of the sheep of
Syria, the tails of which were so long and so heavy that they had to be
rested on a cart to be carried in comfort. The Mare, in short, was so
extraordinary a creature that, on seeing her for the first time, Father
Grandgousier could only whistle beneath his breath.
"That's the very beast to carry my son to Paris! With her, all things
will go well. He will be a great scholar one of these days."
[Illustration: GARGANTUA'S MARE.]
The next day, after breakfast, the party started on their journey.
First, there was Gargantua on his gigantic mare, and wearing boots
which his father had just given him, made out of the skin of the red
deer; then his new teacher, Ponocrates; then his servants, among whom
was the young page, Eudemon. There never was a gayer party. In the
highest spirits, and laughing loudly, they jogged on, day after day,
until they reached a point just above the City of Orleans. At this
point, they found a great forest thirty-five leagues long and seventeen
wide, or thereabout. The forest was very fertile in some ugly insects,
known as gadflies and hornets. These flies were so large and so fierce,
and so sharp-tongued and so poisonous besides, that they were the
terror of all the poor horses and asses which had to pass through the
forest. But Gargantua's Mare was equal to both flies and hornets. She
resolved to avenge all her kindred, even though they were mere dwarfs,
which had ever suffered from gadflies and hornets, and which, if she
did not help them, would continue to suffer from them. The moment she
got well into the forest, and the gadflies began to plague her, she
first shook her tail slowly and lazily to see whether or not it was in
good working order. This did not in the least frighten the insects,
which kept on plaguing and stinging her more than ever. Then it was
that she loosed that tail of hers to the right and the left. So well
did she do this, whisking it wildly here and there, far up in the air
and low down on the ground, that she whipped down the biggest trees,
one after the other, with a crash that made the hearts of the others
tremble within their very bark, with all the ease that a mower cuts
down the grass. So well did she do her work that, since she passed
through that forest, there never has been seen in it a single tree or
a single gadfly, or a single hornet, for the whole wood on that day
became the open country, and has been open country ever since.
[Illustration: PONOCRATES.]
When Gargantua, who hadn't noticed what his Mare had been doing, saw
this, he only laughed, while he said to Ponocrates in his old-time
French:--
"_Je trouve beau-ce!_"
which, translated freely into English, would mean:--
"I find this fine."
And, from that day to this, the country above the City of Orleans, in
France, has been called _La Beauce_.
CHAPTER IX.
THE PARISIANS LAUGH AT GARGANTUA.--HE TAKES HIS REVENGE BY STEALING THE
GREAT BELLS OF NÔTRE-DÂME.
[Illustration: Initial T.]
The first thing Gargantua did, on reaching Paris, was to make a resolve
that he and his people should have a gay time. Some days after, when
they had all rested well and had feasted until they were full of good
eating and drinking, Gargantua started on a stroll through the town to
find what was to be seen. The Paris Gargantua saw was not the Paris of
to-day,--not nearly so mighty a city as it has since become. But its
people then were every bit as fond of merry-making and of seeing shows
as they are now. One who lived in those days, and who boasted that he
knew the Parisians better than they did themselves, says that they
were so silly and so stupid by nature that it only took a rope-dancer,
dancing on his rope, or a Merry-Andrew playing at his tricks, or a
bawler of old scraps, or a blind fiddler, or a hurdy-gurdy in the
market-place, to appear, to draw a bigger crowd than the holiest and
most eloquent preacher. Now, a Giant like Gargantua was himself such a
show as the people of Paris had never before set their silly eyes on.
Of course they swarmed around him with staring eyes and open mouths,
pushing against him here, and knocking against him there, in their
strong desire to see as much of him as they could. They troubled him
almost as much as the flies and hornets of _La Beauce_ had troubled
his mare. Some, bolder than the rest, even ran in and out between his
legs as he strode along the street. At first, Gargantua took the crowd
good-naturedly enough. By and by, he began to think that all this
squeezing and tickling were getting just a little tiresome. He looked
around in a helpless sort of way, until, by good luck, his eyes fell
on the tall towers of _Nôtre Dâme_ Cathedral, near by. "Ha! ha! that's
the very place for me," he cried, and, without further ado, resting one
hand on the top of the roof to steady himself, he went whizzing with a
great leap past the statues of Adam and Eve, that looked wonderingly
out from their stony niches. The idle crowd was afraid to follow
Gargantua; but it stood packed up close together in the open space
which surrounded the old church, gazing at him as he went through the
air, and wondering all the time what the Giant was going to do with
their famous towers. It was not long before they found out. No sooner
was he on the roof than Gargantua caught sight of the great tanks
filled with water which were then to be found there. Chuckling to
himself, he cried: "Now for some fun! I shall pledge this good people
of Paris in a glass of wine." Up he caught one of the tanks, poised
it for a moment in the air, and then shouting out: "_To your health,
good folks!_" tipped it just a bit. Down poured its water in a full
stream. Then he threw the tank after it. Quick, before one could think
or breathe, the others followed. So sudden was the down-pour of water
that the people thought a tremendous water-spout, in passing over their
city, had burst upon them. Two hundred and sixty thousand, four hundred
and eighteen persons were drowned on that day by the water, or crushed
by the tanks, or killed by being run over by those seeking to escape.
Those who were lucky got away as fast as they could. In less than three
minutes the square was empty, for the water, as it rolled out into the
streets, washed all the dead away.
[Illustration: GARGANTUA ENTERS PARIS.]
Gargantua, who was a good-hearted Giant, little knew what mischief he
had done. After he had emptied all the tanks, and thrown them away,
he ceased to think about the people. He had only gone on the roof to
rid himself of the buzzing and nudging of the crowd; and, not hearing
any more from them, he set about amusing himself. When he caught sight
of the great bells of _Nôtre Dâme_, a happy idea struck him. He would
set them to ringing and pealing! Ah, how he was charmed! their notes
were so soft, so rich, so mellow, so tender, so golden! He wanted to
have the bells about him all the time. Just then he thought: "These
Parisians deserve a lesson for their bad manners, and I am going to
revenge myself." So he at once began to pick up the bells, one after
the other, as if they were so many buckets. When he had gathered them
all, he leaped down from the roof and strode across the city in the
direction of his hotel. Once there, a merry thought came to him, which
made him drop the bells and clap his thighs with a sound that brought
all the good wives of Paris--or those that remained after the affair of
the tanks--to their windows.
"Ho! ho! ho! I have it now! I shall keep my beautiful bells to please
my father, and pay the Parisians, all at the same time. I send my
mare home to-morrow. Every little donkey nowadays wears a collar with
jingling bells. _My_ Mare shall carry at her neck the bells of _Nôtre
Dâme!_"
[Illustration: THE CITY WAS EXCITED.]
Gargantua went straight to the stable where his Mare had already found
her fodder, and, with great care, while Gymnaste, his squire, held the
candle, placed the bells of _Nôtre Dâme_, one by one, around her neck.
The city was greatly excited at the loss of the bells; and, the next
day, there came a long line of grave, black-robed men who proved to him
in learned speeches that the holy church of _Nôtre Dâme_ had a right to
her own bells. Gargantua, now that all the excitement had passed, felt
that he had done a very silly thing, and could only say that the bells
were not lost; but that if their worships would go to the stable, they
would find them still hanging from the neck of his great Mare. After
further talk, and much good drinking, the grave, black-robed men--who,
if the whole truth were to be told, were not a little afraid of the
Giant--picked up heart to say: "Give us back our bells, and we shall
bind ourselves to give your Mare free grazing in the forest of Bière,
so long as Your Highness honors us with your presence."
Gargantua was very willing to accept this offer. The bells were taken
back in great state to _Nôtre Dâme_, where--God bless them!--they may
be seen, and heard too, when the sun shines and when the rain falls, to
this very day.
CHAPTER X.
PONOCRATES, THE NEW TEACHER, DESIRES GARGANTUA TO SHOW HIM HOW HE USED
TO STUDY WITH OLD MASTER HOLOFERNES.
[Illustration: Initial G.]
Gargantua was a good son, as we have already seen. He knew that he had
been sent to Paris to learn Latin. So, after a few days of pleasure,
he dutifully offered to begin a course of study with his new teacher,
Ponocrates. But Ponocrates himself was just a little curious to know
how old Master Holofernes had managed to teach his big pupil so as to
leave him, after fifty-three years, ten months, and ten days, just as
much a booby as he had found him. "Let Your Highness," Ponocrates said,
"do precisely as you used to do with your old master." And Gargantua,
greatly relieved, as you may imagine, began to live in Paris the very
life he used to live at home. And this is the way he lived. He woke
up between eight and nine o'clock every morning, whether it was light
or not. The first thing he did after waking was to make a tent of the
sheets of the bed, raising one of his tall legs as the centre-pole and
watching how the big sheet fell on either side. After the tent was
brought down, Gargantua would begin to gambol and roll around in his
bed, to stand on his head, to twist his huge limbs in every sort of
twirl, and to turn any number of somersaults, single, double, treble,
and quadruple, in a way that would make one of our modern acrobats turn
green with envy. After that he would rise and dress himself according
to the season. But, in the old home days, he generally wore a large
robe of rough cloth, lined with fox-skins, and so he brought out of
his trunk the very garment itself, looking rather worn and shabby.
The next thing was to comb his head with a "German comb," which was
the name given in those days to the easiest way of combing, since it
meant a comb made by the four fingers and the thumb. For old Master
Holofernes had always enjoined this habit on him, saying that it was a
waste of time for him to smooth his hair in any other way, and with any
better comb.
[Illustration: GARGANTUA GETS UP.]
Being now dressed, Gargantua went through a series of performances
which--considering that they came from a Giant--must have been very
startling, indeed. He gaped, stretched, coughed, spit, groaned,
sneezed, hiccoughed, and then, with a broad smile, declared himself
ready to breakfast on fried tripe, grilled steaks, colossal hams,
magnificent roast, and a noble soup. All this feast was made hot with
mustard, shovelled down his throat by four of his servants.
Master Ponocrates, one day, thought it his duty, as the teacher charged
with the education of his royal pupil, to suggest that it was hardly
right for him to eat so heavy a breakfast without having already taken
some exercise. Gargantua was ready with his answer.
"How can you say so, Master?" he asked; "have I not exercised enough?
Have I not stretched myself on the bed in all sorts of ways until my
muscles are sore? Isn't that enough? Pope Alexander the V. used to do
the same, by the advice of his Jewish doctor, and he lived, as you
know, until he died. I feel very well from my breakfast, and am already
beginning to think of my dinner."
[Illustration: GARGANTUA BREAKFASTS.]
Ponocrates must have been satisfied with this little speech of his
pupil; for, after grumbling a bit under his breath, all that he did was
to stroke his long beard in deep thought, while he asked himself in
wonder: "How did the Prince ever happen to hear about Pope Alexander?"
and let the young Giant continue his course, while he himself continued
to wonder.
After breakfast Gargantua went to church,--you may be sure he kept away
from _Nôtre Dâme!_ Behind him, on his way to church, went nine of the
stoutest lackeys, who bore, as if they would have liked to be doing
anything rather than that, a big basket, which contained a breviary
worthy of a Giant, since it was so heavy that, by actual weight, it was
found to weigh just eleven hundred and six pounds. With that breviary,
the devout young Prince entered the church and heard the Holy Mass from
beginning to end. On leaving the church, he always thought it the
proper thing for his breviary to be carried by oxen to his hotel. Once
there, Gargantua began to study during a short half hour, with his eyes
like good Saint Anthony's in the story,
"firmly fixed upon his book;"
while all the time, "his soul," as the clown of Paris, in his day, used
to say, "was down in the _kitchen_."
[Illustration: GARGANTUA GOES TO CHURCH.]
The dinner came soon enough after his return home to satisfy even
Gargantua, who was a great glutton. He used to smile as he saw the
table at his new lodging-house laden with a dozen rich hams, with the
best of smoked tongues, with puddings, with; fine chitterlings; and his
great throat took them all down one after the other. Every day, after
the meals, it was his practice to wash his hands with fresh wine, and
to pick his teeth with a dry pig-bone.
After that he declared himself ready for his games.
CHAPTER XI.
THE TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN GAMES OF CARDS GARGANTUA KNEW HOW TO
PLAY.--WHAT IT WAS HE SAID AFTER HE HAD GONE THROUGH THE LIST, AND WHAT
IT WAS PONOCRATES REMARKED.
[Illustration: Initial T.]
The first thing Gargantua did, on rising from the dinner table, would
be to call out in a cheery voice:--
"SPREAD THE CARPET!"
The servants understood what that meant very well. Gaily they would
unroll a large carpet, stretch it free from wrinkles, and then, in a
twinkling, lay a pack of cards in the very middle of it. Then the Giant
and his friends would sit down on the carpet, and begin playing cards.
There were just two hundred and fifteen of these games which Gargantua
knew how to play. Their names would sound odd to the card-players of
this day, and I give some of the oddest on the list, so that you may
know what queer games were then the fashion with the Giant and his
friends:--
The Bamboozler.
The Potatoes.
Scotch Hoppens.
The Cows.
The Tables.
To Steal Mustard.
Skin the Fox.
Sow the Hay.
Sell the Hay.
The Monkey.
The Combs.
The Coat-brush.
Nine Hands.
Partridges.
The Keys.
The Birch Tree.
Ninepins.
I pinch thee without laughing.
Figs of Marseilles.
Draw the Spit.
Each of these games took a whole day, lasting between dinner and the
time to enjoy a nap. Gargantua always thought it necessary to prepare
for his afternoon sleep by taking a little drink. His companions
must have been heavy drinkers,--regular old topers of the jolly
order,--because the allowance every day called for eleven pots of wine
for each man. After drinking such a quantity they would naturally feel
drowsy. They would then stretch themselves on the carpet, and snore
away, each snorer playing a different tune through his nose, in the
midst of the cards lying loosely around, and the emptied pots,--all
except Gargantua, whose breathing on such occasions was always of the
hurricane fashion, whether awake or asleep. He would sleep for two or
three hours like a good Christian, without thinking of any evil thing,
and without muttering a single bad word in his dreams. On waking, he
had a trick of giving his great ears a half-dozen shakes,--why, I don't
know,--and then bawling out for fresh wine, which he drank down in one
great gulp. Then came the only study for the day, which was rather a
mystery for all parties. Nobody could say exactly what it was, and
Master Ponocrates only smiled when asked about it. It lasted for a few
minutes only, after which Gargantua would mount, in high state, an old
mule which had already served nine kings, and briskly ride away to see
where the good people of Paris caught their rabbits.
On his return, he had a habit of running in and out of the kitchen,
with his broad nostrils swollen out like balloons, to find out what
particular roast was on the spit, until the cook, already in a stew,
was ready to tear his hair in despair. But cooks may be ever so vexed,
the meat will roast on the spit all the same, and at last get done to
a turn. All things being ready, Gargantua would sit down at table. He
always managed to have a large company of gentlemen present, who were
only too willing, for the honor of being invited to dinner by a Prince,
to serve as his attendants, should he ever need their services. Among
those of high birth who usually dined with him at this time were the
Lords De Fou, De Gourville, De Grignaut, and De Marigny.
[Illustration: GARGANTUA LOOKS INTO THE KITCHEN.]
After supper, Gargantua--being in the liveliest humor, and disposed to
look on the world with a broad laugh, showing the largest and whitest
of teeth--would play a little, or else pay an open-air visit to some of
the many pretty young ladies living in the neighborhood,--their houses
being too small for him to enter,--and, on such nights, he would not
get home until midnight. Sometimes, when he did not go out, he would
take another little supper about eight o'clock, and still another
before midnight. Then he would sleep without snoring until eight
o'clock next morning.
It was a great day for Gargantua when he reached the end of his two
hundred and fifteen games; or, rather, he intended that it should be
a great day. He had said nothing to any one; but, when he woke that
particular morning, he was noticed to be in a gayer mood than usual
while he was dressing himself, and after he had gamboled and rolled
around his bed, and stretched his limbs on it, and made his own
great tent with one leg and the sheet, and given a neat turn to his
long locks with his German comb, and gone through his usual gaping,
coughing, spitting, groaning, sneezing, and hiccoughing. But, being in
some things a very simple Giant, indeed, he had not noticed that his
teacher, Ponocrates, had very keen eyes, and could use them too. Why,
Ponocrates knew when the last game was to be played just as well as
Gargantua himself did, and he had made up his mind to be somewhere in
the room when it closed. Sure enough, listening in a corner of the big
chamber, he heard some one say: "_Here we are on our last game!_" To
which Gargantua shouted in reply: "Ho! ho! The _last_ game! Don't be
too sure of that. Gentlemen, to-morrow we shall play just as well as
to-day."
"How, Prince?" asked Ponocrates, softly, coming out of his corner.
"How, good Master? Why, by beginning our games over again."
"Not so fast; not so fast, Prince. To-morrow Your Highness will begin
with ME!"
CHAPTER XII.
GARGANTUA IS DOSED BY PONOCRATES, AND FORGETS ALL THAT HOLOFERNES HAD
TAUGHT HIM.
[Illustration: Initial W.]
While the two hundred and fifteen games, taking up just that number of
days, were being played, Master Ponocrates had not been at all idle. He
had already consulted with Master Theodore--a wise physician of that
time--and knew just what he was going to do when he had said:--
"To-morrow Your Highness will begin with ME."
The first thing was to dose Gargantua with a mysterious herb,
which made him forget all that he had ever learned under his old
teacher. This was not an original idea at all with either Theodore
or Ponocrates, for Thimotes, the music-master of Miletus, had long
before dosed, in the same way, such disciples of his as had been
unlucky enough to have first learned their notes under other musicians.
Gargantua, when asked by Ponocrates to meet certain scientific
gentlemen of Paris who had been specially invited to inspire the royal
Giant with love of knowledge, was so weak and pale after his dose that
he could only bow his head, while wondering lazily to himself what all
these heavy talks about Science had to do with the Latin, which his
good old Father Grandgousier had been so anxious for him to learn.
[Illustration: PONOCRATES DOSES GARGANTUA.]
When he had been dosed enough to forget his old studies, and even to
look up with a mild surprise when his dearly-loved Master Holofernes
was mentioned, Gargantua was put through a course of study, in which
he did not lose a single hour of the day. Only think how much he must
have learned each day! First, he was roused up, whether he wanted or
not, at four o'clock every morning, when he said his prayers. While the
attendants were rubbing his body down, a young page would read, in a
loud voice, so as to be heard above the scrubbing, some extracts from
a book of good doctrine. After this, being not more than half-dressed
yet, his practice was to visit each of his companions in his room,
and with a gentle "Get thee up, my boy! get thee up!" awake the lazy
fellow from his slumbers. Then he returned to his room, where he found
Ponocrates always ready to explain what was doubtful in the chapters
that had been read to him, and to ask him whether he had noted, as he
should, what signs the sun was entering that morning, and what aspect
he thought the moon would have that night.
It was only after this that his attendants began to dress him, to
perfume him, to curl him, and to powder him--Gargantua all the while
not once venturing to use that large, well-thumbed German comb of which
he had once been so proud. While all this was going on, the same page
would repeat the lesson of the day. Gargantua, thoroughly dosed and
brought down to a most anxious desire for study, learned after two or
three days to repeat the lessons by heart. Everybody looked glad at
this--none more so than good Master Ponocrates himself--especially when
the debate touched on such a question as the "Human State," which was
made the special lesson for two or three hours. While Gargantua was
still puzzling over the reading of the "Human State," and learning all
around the best talk about it, the big clock would strike eleven; and
then he would, with all his friends, walk soberly to the ground where
they would play at the good old game of ball, exercising their bodies
till all their muscles grew tired. From the field it was an easy way to
the house, where Gargantua, being first rubbed down and after a change
of shirt, would walk meekly, surrounded by his friends, towards the
kitchen to ask if the dinner was ready. While waiting for the cook--now
no longer in a stew, and therefore growing fatter and greasier than
ever--to send up the meal, they would recite clearly and eloquently
such sentences as had been retained from the morning-lecture. However,
Mister Appetite is stronger than Knowledge; and when dinner was ready,
they soon dropped their wise talk and began to look with eyes as big
as their stomachs towards the dining-room. Once seated at table some
one would begin to read a pleasant history of ancient heroism, and
continue reading until the wine was served. Then, if the party seemed
in a mood for it, Ponocrates would set them to chatting merrily about
the nature of all that they had before them on the table, the bread,
the wine, the water, the salt, the meats, the fish, the fruits, herbs,
roots and the mode of preparing all these. Doing this every day,
Gargantua soon learned all the passages relating to them to be found
in old classic writers, who were as dry as they were wise. Sometimes,
when the quotation did not run smooth, the old, musty, yellow parchment
itself, with its nearly rubbed-out Gothic letters, would be brought in
to settle the question; and the result was that, in a marvelously short
time, no learned doctor was Gargantua's equal in all this--no, not by
one-half.
[Illustration: GARGANTUA AT HIS LESSONS.]
They would once more take up in an easy talk the lessons read during
the morning, and, after finishing their dinner with some well-made
marmalade of quinces, would clean their teeth with a twig of the
mastic tree, and wash their hands and eyes with fresh water. Which
being done, cards were brought, not to play with, but to teach a
thousand fresh tricks and inventions which sprang directly, not only
from Architecture, but from Geometry, Astronomy, and Music. After
that, with a word from the good Master
|
think it over?" Elijah's voice was sarcastic.
"That's just it. I do want time. I know that if I accept your offer, you
and I are going to come into collision. You have one way of looking at
things, I have another. Not once, but many times, you and I are going to
look at the same thing at the same time and in different ways. When
these times come, one of us will have to give way." Winston waved aside
Elijah's attempt to interrupt. "When these times come, I may be the one
to give up, but if I am, it will be because your way appeals to my
reason as being better than my own."
Winston's meaning was clear to Elijah. The "word" that he reverenced,
the voice to which he listened and which he followed, meant not the
weight of a feather to the man before him. Elijah moistened his nervous
lips with his tongue. He had been guided to seek Winston--Winston he
must have. Impatiently he put Winston's words aside.
"All this is not to the point."
"What is?" Winston asked curtly.
"This. Will you accept my offer?"
"An equal partnership with yourself?"
"Yes."
"I suppose you realize that if I accept, the management is no longer
yours alone, but yours and mine?"
"Yes."
"And that it is my right to put forth every effort to compel you to my
way of thinking?" Winston deliberately used the word compel, instead of
persuade.
"Yes, yes!"
"Then I will think it over, Elijah, and will give you my final answer
the next time you are in Ysleta."
"Suppose I come tomorrow?" Elijah's voice was assured.
"My answer will be ready."
CHAPTER TWO
"I am so happy!" This had been the unbroken song of Amy Berl for the
five years of her married life. Maternity had not altered a line of her
girlish figure, neither had it crowned her with the rounded, satisfying
glory of womanhood. The ceaseless, parching winds had not dimmed the
lustre of her clear blue eyes, nor deadened the gloss of her soft flaxen
hair. Even the hot, dry air, so trying to most, only heightened the
beauty of her complexion, as the peach reveals the rich glow of its
color by diffusion through the meshes of its downy veil. Delicate in
face and figure, there was no suggestion of frailty, neither was there a
suggestion of strength. There was the glow of perfect health. In the
eyes that looked fearlessly and frankly into the eyes of others, there
was unmistakably a capacity for infinite happiness and infinite
suffering. This was all. The eyes were frank because they had nothing to
conceal; nor did they dream that other eyes differed from themselves.
They were fearless because they knew no sin in themselves or in others.
There was not strength of mind or of intellect to compel the fruition of
her desire for love. It must come to her without her volition or not at
all. As the flowers of the field unfold in beauty under sun and shower,
even so she grew and blossomed and was fair to look upon. As the flowers
of the field wither away in parching drought, even so would the beauty
of happiness fall from her shrinking soul. She was of a religious
nature, not because of a consciousness of its necessity to the human
soul, but because, to her, God was love and his works beautiful to look
upon. God to her was impersonal, because in her was not strength of
intellect to construct an entity from its manifestations. When Elijah
Berl came to her, she received him as a god. Her love was not selective;
it was responsive. Henceforth her daily prayers on her bended knees were
to her husband, not to the Divine Giver of every good and perfect gift.
Even when her first-born lay in her arms, the light that shone in her
eyes was not the giving of maternal love, but the thrill of assurance
that the helpless mite was but another bond that bound her happiness to
her soul and made it more her own. She gave with the unconscious
selfishness of a perfect mirror that which she received, no more, no
less.
Elijah Berl had not yet realized what his wife was, because he was
selfish in another way. He saw himself in his wife. For the present,
this sufficed. Five years of struggle in the land of golden promise had
not lessened his faith in himself, had not wearied his restless energy,
nor dulled his faith in his God. From New England's granite hills, he
believed God's hand had led him to this distant field. Since the day of
his birth, the firm, unwavering, fanatical belief that the Bible was
God's direct, unchangeable revelation to man, made him, as it had made
his father, impregnable to the assaults of reason. The figurative,
semi-scriptural language of his father and of his father's father had
been as the breath of his nostrils. It had become a part of him as it
was of his father. It was neither cant nor hypocrisy. "As it was
written," was an unanswerable dictum. The very things that had shaken
and are shaking to its foundation the faith in the Bible as an
infallible guide, only rooted Elijah the more firmly in his belief. In
California as in New England, he felt that in good time God's hand would
point out the work which He had planned for him to do. He was marking
time with restless steps, ready to swing into action when God should
give the word. Only one part of his work had he forecast in his mind. A
son of the soil, in the soil was his work to be. This was his unshaken
belief. From San Benito, under the shadow of abrupt mountains, over to
San Quentin where ragged chaparral grew as it might on the blood-red
hills, and where cottonwoods and willows throve rank on the moisture of
hidden streams, he had pitched his tent for the night and had folded it
in the morning. What mattered it to him that the scattered ranchers
looked approvingly upon his fair-haired wife, and, moved with pity for
her, cursed him as a heartless idiot; or that uncouth vaqueros shrugged
their shoulders and softly named him a locoed gringo?
The few dollars which he had brought with him from the East, had long
since been spent in his wanderings. The goodly sum which had come to him
on the death of his father, was no longer what it had been; yet he had
no thought of despair. The limit of his wanderings was narrowing in
concentric circles, and at length its centre was fixed. With almost his
last dollar, he had bought a wide ranch from a dreamy Mexican who had
then gone his way. Already the land around his was heaving and swelling
in undulating rolls that warn the mariner of a coming storm. Bearded
ranchers laughed in scorn, and mild-eyed Mexicans spoke even more
softly. What were a few seeping springs on the hillsides? What were the
hillsides themselves beside the rolling plains at their feet, where
herds of cattle fed and drank and mired themselves in green-fringed
cienagas? Elijah was disturbed no more than was Noah when he closed the
doors of his ark against the gibes of the unbelievers. His mission was
being disclosed, point by point and line by line, to his waiting eye.
Elijah deepened his springs and hoarded the water they gave. Between
rows of dark-green leaves, shrubs that faded not in summer's drouth nor
in winter's rains, he guided trickling streams, apportioning to each its
proper share. Through the day he toiled with increasing energy. Towards
each night, with Amy by his side, he rested by the door of his cottage
and looked below, over reddening hills, across the rolling plains,
beyond where the half-buried disc of the sun spread wide the golden
mantle of its light upon the wrinkling waters of the Pacific. Behind the
cottage, from the rock-strewn wash of the Rio Sangre de Cristo, the
lowest foot-hills rose to wooded slopes, grew to timbered mountains, up
and up till the forests gave way to the snow-capped peaks of the San
Bernardinos. "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills whence cometh my
help." In mid-day's toil when Elijah paused to rest his strained back,
or to wipe the perspiration from his streaming face, in the silence of
the night, when the moon lay white and still upon the slumbering
landscape, his eyes sought out the solemn mountains which were shaping
his dreams. He listened to the roar of the torrents that came faint with
distance, when the mountains wrung dry the clouds that shrouded their
peaks, or when the fierce sun swept away their winter's mantle of white.
He watched the surging flood that rolled breast-high in receding waves
through the Sangre de Cristo, tossing boulders like feathers in their
boisterous strength; watched it rush through torrid plains and finally
sink from sight beneath the sands. He watched the parched lips held to
the Tantalean cup, saw the few drops of stolen moisture quicken into
verdant life, saw, when the flood had passed by and the mountains had
ceased to give forth their murmurs, the mocking sun crackle the
up-sprung life to choking dust, and once more the shimmering heat-waves
rise in trembling agony from the tortured sands. Then the voice that was
calling him grew more distinct, the guiding hand more clearly outlined.
As the blood of Christ quickened into life the soul dead in sin, so
should the stream that bore His name quicken into blooming fields the
dead, dry sands of the desert. His lips moved reverently with his
unuttered words, a prayer for guidance, a chant of faith, as his eyes
swept from crest to crest of the blood-red hills that held the river of
the blood of Christ against the mountains of its birth.
In spite of his words to the contrary, Elijah was disturbed by Winston's
attitude. What was the flaw in his scheme that held Winston aloof?
Elijah was in an agony of doubt. Up and down the flower-scented paths,
through groves of orange, yellow with golden fruit, he paced with
restless steps. With all his soul he strained to catch an opening in the
clouds that held the future from his eyes. Little by little the sense of
depression yielded to his efforts, little by little the vision that had
kept him constant, returned to him in the full glory of perfection. He
had been watching the hills as they glowed in the light of the setting
sun. As the gray night, settling over all, blotted out the details of
the landscape, leaving the mountains a purple blur against the faint
blue of the sky, Elijah felt a strong reaction. He feared, yet longed
for the coming light; feared, lest it should prove that the plan which
had been revealed to him might be but the figment of a frenzied dream.
Amy was sitting beside him as usual, her hand in his. Her eyes dreamily
watched the shifting shadows as the sinking sun moved them to and fro in
a stately march. As the shadows deepened to darkness, her eyes closed
and her head sank upon Elijah's shoulder. Elijah could no longer endure
the strain of questioning doubt that the shadows were pouring over his
soul.
"Amy! Amy!" he called.
"What is it, Elijah?"
"I can't see, Amy. I saw it all, and now it's gone."
"What is gone, Elijah?" The voice was heavy with sleep.
"I can't sit still any longer. Let's walk. The moon will be up soon and
then I can see if I was wrong. Come."
Amy was again sleeping. He shook her gently as he rose to his feet.
"Come."
"I am so tired, Elijah." She rose and turned toward the open door.
"Let's wait until tomorrow."
"I can't wait. It's now, now!"
Amy was conscious of nothing save her overpowering drowsiness.
"Come in with me, Elijah."
"No, no! I can't." Elijah was irritated; not at Amy, but at the tingle
of opposition that played upon his strained nerves.
"Goodnight, Elijah." She put up her dreamy lips for his goodnight kiss;
but Elijah had left her and was again striding up and down, his eyes
fixed on the purple blur. Without further word, she entered the cottage
and lay down to the rest for which her eyes so longed.
One by one the stars pricked through the arching sky, filling the space
above the earth with a light that only intensified the darkness below.
Hour after hour passed by. At length a silver halo fringed the mountain
summits, a band of light softly parting the blue of the sky from the
purple of the mountains. A silver disc, barred with dense black lines,
moved grandly into the waiting sky, and twinkling stars veiled their
faces before their coming queen. Far out on the plain a banded line of
light moved against the retreating darkness. Against the hills it swept,
charging their steep slopes, creeping up their darkened gulches, glowing
on their conquered crests; on and on it swept, until the retreating
shadows sank from the earth before the hosts of light. As the outlines
of the hills came sharply into sight, Elijah's dream took substance that
would never wane again.
Amy arose, bright and fresh for the day. Upon Elijah the strained vigil
of the night had left its mark. There was no longer ecstasy. The settled
lines of his face were almost sullen in their intensity. The sparkle
died from Amy's eyes and a look of anxious questioning took its place.
With the strange unconscious conceit confined to narrow minds, she never
dreamed that her husband's preoccupation was a thing entirely apart from
herself. Wholly self-centred, her husband's smiling attention meant
approbation; preoccupation meant disapproval or resentment. Her sun was
her husband's love. In its full warm rays she basked with the happy
abandon of a well-fed animal. Preoccupation was the eclipsing shadow
that chilled her to the marrow, with no sustaining faith that it was
only obscuration, not destruction for all time. When the shadow fell,
there was no other suggestion than to beat her sounding soul with a
heathen's ardor, in order to frighten from its prey the devouring dragon
that would forever destroy her source of life and light. Now her anxiety
grew to pain; her lips were tremulous.
"What have I done to offend you, Elijah?"
"Nothing," he answered abruptly. "I'm not offended. Can't you see that
I'm absorbed in my work? I can't spend all my time in telling you that I
love you just the same as ever. Why can't you take something for
granted?"
Elijah's words were sharp-cut, almost explosive. It was not resentment
at Amy; it was the irritation of a dog who is having a bone taken from
his jaws.
Amy was cut to the depths of her sensitive soul. Her words were not a
reproach, but a hopeless wail.
"It's these miserable orange trees! I wish oranges had never grown in
this country. I was so happy before. Now you never think of me. You look
at the mountains and the springs and the orange trees, but never at me."
Her tears were flowing freely, her lips were tremulous.
Elijah was moved, but without understanding.
"Why! Haven't I always enjoyed showing them to you and talking to you
about them? You know that I always tell you every thing that I am
doing."
"Yes, I know; but you get just as enthusiastic over them to Ralph
Winston and he looks cold all the time and keeps criticising and
contradicting you. It's just the same with the other men who come to
look at your work. They don't care one single thing about you, and I do,
and I tell you so, but you won't believe me."
Amy's tears had ceased, her voice was steadier; but there was a
suggestion of the eager heart hunger that looked from her eyes.
"Winston isn't my wife, Amy--"
"And he doesn't care for you. He says things to you I would not think of
saying."
Elijah made an impatient gesture, resuming his interrupted words.
"I have a great idea, a great work. I have only shown what can be done.
To actually do it, I must have money. I know these men don't care
anything about me; I don't care anything about them, only to get them
interested and convinced. If I can only do this, it means fame and
fortune to me and, just think of what it all means! Just think! When
these great, barren, red hillsides are all covered with orchards; with
beautiful houses and thousands of happy, prosperous people; when the
snows and rains of the San Bernardinos, instead of running to waste,
will flow through tunnels and canals and make the desert blossom as the
rose; then they will all say that this is the work of one man, of me,
Elijah Berl!" Elijah's eyes kindled anew with the thought which he had
elaborated.
Amy saw and was terrified. Her soul shrank and shivered before the
vision which he had conjured up. She could not have stated to herself
the reason of her fear. Only one thought was keenly present to her, that
henceforth she would be no longer the sole centre of her husband's life.
"I don't want you to be great, Elijah. I want you, just as you are."
Elijah saw the expression of his wife, not the principle which gave it
birth. He caught a fleeting glimpse, a faint suggestion of the impelling
principle that stimulates all men to the heights of achievement; the
pride and glory of laying at the feet of love the laurels of their
triumphs, the testimonials of worth wrung from a grudging world; the
proud conviction that love is made secure by the assurance that its
object is not unworthy. He failed to see that the principles which
control a narrow though amiable mind, may be in hopeless antagonism with
the broader views of higher mental endowment. He failed to see that each
life has its limitations, that when it has given all, it can give no
more. The time had not yet come for this knowledge. Therefore it was
hidden from his eyes, that when it should come, a hopeless sorrow should
come with it. He turned again to Amy.
"I am not always going to be just what I am. I am going to do great
things and you will be proud that I am your husband."
"Don't, Elijah! Don't!" Amy clutched Elijah as if already she felt him
slipping from her grasp. "I loved you as you were. I love you as you
are. You can never be more dear to me. I don't know, Elijah; I am
afraid." She buried her head on his shoulder. "I am afraid I shall not
always be everything to you. I am so happy with you now. If I should
ever be less happy, it would kill me."
"Nonsense. Don't make pictures to get scared at." He drew his watch from
his pocket. "I must go now. You know I promised to see Ralph at Ysleta
this morning. Goodbye, and don't scare yourself any more."
Elijah began to unclasp her arms. They were reluctant rather than
resisting. He kissed her with a show of affection which was not absent,
only obscured by other things; then he saddled his horse and rode away.
Amy stood watching him with hard, dry eyes; with the unconscious
superstition of the maiden who with trembling fingers plucks one by one
the petals from a prophetic flower. "He loves me, he loves me not." She
stood watching for a motion, a gesture which should assure her that her
husband's thoughts were of her, even as hers were of him, making herself
the wretched plaything of senseless Fate, instead of resting tranquil in
the surety that she was its master.
Elijah was absorbed in himself. He grew but a speck on the trail to
Amy's watching eyes. There was not a motion which she could distort into
a recognition of her existence. The last petal had fallen. "He loves me
not."
CHAPTER THREE
Ysleta was booming and was being boomed. Avenues of graded sand, cleared
of their desert growth, stretched in prim right angles far out into the
horizon. White posts with staring, black numerals heralded city lots and
bounded patches of cactus and chaparral which were thus protected from
further molestation, and gave asylum to gophers and prairie dogs who had
not lost their wits in the booming hubbub for the sole reason that
nature had given them none to lose. Straining teams dragged great
ploughs that tore through matted roots and turned furrows which slid
back behind the parting share. Other sweating horses pulled scrapers of
sand from dusty hummocks and plumped their loads in dustier hollows.
Rows of bedraggled palms trailed out behind gangs of burrowing men or
gathered in quincunx clumps where a glaring signboard proclaimed a city
park. Thumping hammers and clinking trowels were raising uncouth
buildings around the central plaza, adding other grotesque monstrosities
to those which had already attained perfection in every detail that
rebelled against a sense of beauty. Throngs of men and women trailed
ankle deep through the new-turned sand and broke up into knots of
animated discussion, or paused before a map of Ysleta to listen to a
perspiring real estate agent repeating with tireless enthusiasm "the
beauties of eternal sunshine in a land where burning heat and blasting
cold never entered; a land where perennial spring went hand in hand with
perennial autumn, where seed time and harvest trailed side by side,
where dividing lines between summer and winter solstice were but
meaningless numerals in the cycles of succeeding years; a land that for
untold ages had slumbered and waxed fat with accumulated richness and
where the sun had stored its genial warmth against the day when
suffering humanity should wake to the knowledge of what California was
and hasten to enjoy her stored up treasures."
Blaring trumpets and booming drums accompanied aligned men, gorgeous
with purple and gold; beribboned four-in-hands with varnished carriages
trailed along behind, and a brazen-throated herald proclaimed a
bounteous repast free to all who would honor his master by partaking.
"Fall in! Fall in!" and knots of men balanced to the swing of the band
and wheeled into line, choked with dust, blinded with dust, and covered
with dust which the tearing ploughshares had softened up, and which
eager feet were beating into the air.
Into this bustle and blare, Elijah Berl rode as he had ridden many times
of late. Unmoved, save for a contemptuous pity, he looked down upon the
hurrying crowd, crazed by the lust of wealth, who bought today to sell
tomorrow, each knowing that some would be caught in the reaction that
was sure to come, but each steadfast in the confidence that his own good
sense would protect him from the general ruin. He looked down to where
the Sangre de Cristo, no longer an impetuous torrent, seeped lazily
through its bed of shining sand; at the mass of tangled shrubs and
clinging vines quickened by its waters into a riotous growth that
blossomed and fruited in the sensuous sun. Over his shoulder, he looked
at the distant slopes from which he had come. At the open door of a
redwood cottage he dismounted and entered.
"Hello, Ralph!"
At the salutation, Winston's compact athletic figure straightened from
his drawing-board.
"Oh, hello, Elijah! You're just the man I wanted to see."
"Have you decided yet?" Elijah's voice was eager.
"Do you still want me?"
"Yes. It's tomorrow now. If this is too soon, tomorrow and tomorrow are
yet to come."
"Well, Elijah, if it's all right, my answer is yes."
Elijah took Winston's hand in both of his own; his eyes spoke the words
his tongue could not utter.
"It's going to be uphill work, Elijah, but I guess we'll manage it."
"Of course we will." Elijah was striding up and down the little office.
He paused and looked thoughtfully out of the window.
"This hasn't got into your blood yet, eh?" he jerked his thumb toward
the hustling street.
"Not much! It would be fun to watch this racket if a fellow hadn't a
conscience. Do you know, I'm getting to believe that men and things are
built on the same lines. The sweeter the wine, the sharper the vinegar,
and you may pound my head for a drum if the smartest man doesn't make
the biggest kind of a fool."
"I guess that's so, if he lets himself go. I'm not going to let go."
Winston looked at Elijah with an expression that might be interpreted as
jocular or serious.
"Hold tight. I've seen men as sharp as you, crowding another fellow out
and blowing hot air into his balloon."
"Are you getting scared on my account?" Elijah smiled, looking at
Winston with confident half-closed eyes.
"No. If your bearings begin to smoke, I'm going to cool you off. It
isn't going to be all lavender and roses, Elijah. You'll find me a
pretty trying party at times, I give you fair warning."
Elijah turned from the window, looking straight at Winston.
"I'm going to begin right now. I've been at work all night. Now cool off
and let's get to work."
Winston sat down before the drawing-board.
"Here's the map of the canal line. It isn't inked in yet, but you can
see how it's going to come out. There must be two long tunnels; but
that's no great matter. It's one of three things. Tunnels, aqueducts, or
inverted siphons. It's a toss-up between tunnels and aqueducts, so far
as cost is concerned. Siphons will cost about half, but you know what a
choke or a break means, so out go siphons."
"You favor tunnels?"
"By all means. The ditch line is shortened by them, anyway. You'll save
there."
Elijah gazed long and lovingly at the map, then looked up with a
relieved sigh.
"Just a little dam will turn the whole stream into the canal."
"Yes. Just a little dam. That's easy." Winston drew a dust cloth over
the map and weighted it down. "I wish I could get reliable data on the
size of the dam it will take to turn some of this fool-money into a
channel of common sense. What I am afraid of is, that when this boom
breaks, the fools who have not been ruined, will be too badly scared to
put money into government bonds, let alone an irrigation plant, and
before they recover their wits, they'll either forget that there is such
a place as California, or use it to slug themselves with when they feel
another fool attack coming on."
"You leave that to me. I've got something more to show than a sand-flat
pegged full of white stakes. Oranges will do better than that. Dry
hillsides at nothing a square mile are going to be a thousand an acre
when we get water on them."
"Let up, Elijah. Keep your chips off from that spot. That's a safer
proposition than Ysleta lots with hot-air values, but it's the same kind
of a wheel after all. If you once get the hum of it in your ears you'll
go to pieces like all the rest."
"Are your estimates completed?"
"Yes; ready to be typed. You think they'd better be typed first, don't
you?"
"Yes. We can have them printed afterward. I don't want anything
gorgeous. Just plain, conservative figures. I have my statement of what
has been done in the three years on my ranch. There is just one thing I
have left out. It would be a telling thing to put in, but I think we can
use it to better advantage by keeping it to ourselves."
"What's that?"
Elijah drew a neatly folded sheet from his pocket. It was filled with
columns of figures.
"It's an idea of my own. What do you think of it?"
Winston looked rapidly over the sheet, then gave a low, meditative
whistle.
"Are you sure of this?"
"Dead sure. I've been making observations with self-registering
thermometers. That's the result." Elijah pointed to the sheet.
"A frostless belt!" Winston snatched the sheet from his drawing-board
and bent over the map, one finger on the sheet, the other eagerly
tracing lines on the surface of the map. "That's the greatest thing yet!
There is a big fortune for all of us in that alone."
Elijah half closed his eyes, his teeth bared with a smile suggestive of
malice.
"May I offer you some of your advice to me?"
"Certainly, and I'll take it too, when I need it. But say, Elijah, what
in the name of the immortals do you want to leave this out for? It's the
most telling thing we've got."
Elijah's eyes narrowed closely.
"I haven't got control of the whole belt yet. That's one thing. Another
is, that when orange lands get under way, there's going to be a demand
that the frostless belt isn't going to supply."
Winston's face set.
"You don't mean that you are going to sell lands for orange ranches that
you know won't grow oranges?"
"I don't _know_ that they won't grow oranges," Elijah answered doggedly.
"I only know what will."
"You are going to let people find that out at their own expense?"
"Why not? That's the way I got my information."
There was a contemptuous look on Winston's face.
"Well, I'll be hanged. God does move in a mysterious way, if you are a
fair sample of his stamping ground."
Elijah's face set with resentment. He straightened his lips for an angry
retort, but restrained himself. He answered sullenly.
"I tell you, I don't know that the land won't grow oranges. I only know
what will. I'm going to get control of this frostless belt. I found it
and there's nothing wrong in taking advantage of it. Why not tell the
Mexicans who own it now and are glad to sell for a dollar an acre, that
their land will grow oranges and that it's worth a thousand?" There was
a triumphant note in his last words.
Winston was ready to dismiss this phase of the question.
"Don't ask me. You settle that between you. I notice that the Almighty
isn't a hard one to manage when you take him in your lap and reason with
him. He usually comes around to your way of thinking."
Elijah's puritanism blinded his eyes to Winston's sarcasm. He saw only
the apparently sacrilegious blasphemy of his words. He stood aghast as a
superstitious heathen before his smitten idol. His five years of
struggle in the West had changed him in no essential point. It had only
given room for the full development of the motive that had lain dormant
in his former cramped surroundings. Side by side, yet wholly independent
the one of the other, his faith in Divine guidance, his reverence for
God, his New England land-hunger, his greed for wealth, his lust for
power, had grown and were growing with every new opportunity. He had
learned to keep in the background, to some extent, the expression of his
fanatical beliefs, not because his personal faith had waned, but in
reality because he saw that Divine guidance had less convincing weight
with others than the logic of hard, common sense. He learned only that
which he wished to learn, believed only that which he wished to believe,
did only that which he wished to do; not because of conscious hypocrisy,
but because his very faith in God's guidance had blinded his eyes to its
recognition and forbidden him to question his own desires.
Elijah thought quickly. Even Winston was hardly aware of the pause that
ensued after his last words.
"We're drifting from our point. The water question comes first. The
other can come up later."
"A good deal later, I hope," Winston replied drily. "Let's get over to
Miss Lonsdale's office. She's doing my clerical work now."
Winston was not slow in noting signs and he had seen a good many in his
relations with Elijah which had disquieted him. He went steadily on his
way, however, confident in his own strength. He gathered a few papers in
his hand and with Elijah went out into the street. They entered another
redwood cottage that bore a sign, announcing, "Helen Lonsdale,
Stenographer, Typewriter and Notary Public."
"Miss Lonsdale, my friend, Mr. Berl. We want some work done right away.
Can you attend to it?"
Miss Lonsdale acknowledged the introduction, swept aside a litter of
papers, stripped a half-written page from her machine, drew forth a
note-book, and, after pushing her cuffs from her wrists, assumed a
waiting attitude.
Winston addressed Elijah.
"I guess you're fixed now. You go on with Helen and I'll get back to my
work. If you need me, I'll come in." Then he left the office.
Elijah had all but forgotten his business in the contemplation of the
girl before him. It was with an almost unconscious feeling of resentment
that he heard Winston call her familiarly "Helen."
"I am afraid, Miss Lonsdale," he began, when he was interrupted.
"You can call me Helen. Every one does. It saves time. Time is money,
pretty fast too, just now." The words were spoken with a light ripple.
It faintly occurred to Elijah that he had heard something like her
laughter before. There was a suggestion of fresh, crisp air, the opening
of spring, of young green plants pushing through the black soil beside
New England brooks. There was a further suggestion that very hard stones
in the brook caused the soft ripples. One look in the great, liquid,
black eyes that absorbed everything and gave back nothing, took away the
disagreeable impression and replaced it with one more agreeable. There
was no perceptible pause, for while Elijah's thoughts were busy with
Helen Lonsdale, his hands were assorting his papers. He turned to Helen.
"I was going to say, that I am afraid this work will be rather dry."
Helen vouchsafed no reply, but, with eyes now bent upon her note-book
and pencil ready poised for action, waited for Elijah. He began rather
slowly and awkwardly. He was unaccustomed to dictation, and besides he
was conscious of Helen Lonsdale's beauty; but more and more rapidly he
went on, as he forgot all else in the absorbing interest of his subject.
He sorted paper from paper, went from point to point, clearly and
logically, down to the last figure that Winston had given him. He hardly
noted the flying fingers and moving hand that drew lines, and hooks, and
dots, and dashes with the graceful ease and regularity of an inanimate
machine. At length he paused, folding his papers.
Helen threw down her pencil and straightened her cramped fingers.
"Well!" she exclaimed. "You have given me the time of my life! I was on
the point of calling you off once or twice; but I didn't. I'll read it
over to you now and see if I have made any mistakes."
Elijah's face was eager, partly from Helen's indirect praise, but more
from the enthusiasm of his subject.
"Aren't you tired?" he asked.
"Tired!" she repeated. "This doesn't make me tired. It's more fun than a
toboggan slide. It's these everlasting drones who make me tired. Fellows
who haven't anything to say and who don't know how to get at it." She
took her note-book and began reading rapidly. Elijah listened, watching
her through his narrowed eyes. She laid her note-book down.
"How is it?"
"Perfect. You've got everything."
"That's a great piece of work you've got blocked out." Helen's voice was
approving.
"The work is not mine."
"No?" Helen's eyes were opened wide.
"No." Elijah's face drooped in reverent lines. "It has been given me to
do."
"A-a-h!" Helen dared to commit herself no farther. She could not trust
her eyes even. Her lids veiled them and her face assumed a look of
non-committal interest. Elijah was a new species. She had no pigeonhole,
even in the wide experience of her limited years, ready made into which
she could thrust him.
Elijah felt impelled to go farther. He wanted to look again into the
great, black eyes. He steered boldly into a sea
|
will die ere she shall grieve.
If she slight me, when I woo,
I can scorn, and let her go.
For, if she be not for me,
What care I for whom she be.
"Amarillis I Did Woo"
Amarillis I did woo,
And I courted Phillis too;
Daphne, for her love, I chose;
Cloris, for that damask rose
In her cheek, I held as dear;
Yea, a thousand liked well near.
And, in love with all together,
Fearèd the enjoying either;
'Cause to be of one possest,
Barred the hope of all the rest.
Sonnet: On A Stolen Kiss
Now gentle sleep hath closèd up those eyes,
Which waking kept my boldest thoughts in awe,
And free access unto that sweet lip lies
From whence I long the rosy breath to draw.
Methinks no wrong it were if I should steal,
From those two melting rubies, one poor kiss.
None sees the theft that would the thief reveal,
Nor rob I her of aught which she can miss.
Nay, should I twenty kisses take away,
There would be little sign I had done so.
Why then should I this robbery delay?
Oh, she may wake, and therewith angry grow.
Well, if she do, I'll back restore that one,
And twenty hundred thousand more for loan.
A Christmas Carol
So now is come our joyful feast,
Let every man be jolly;
Each room with ivy leaves is drest,
And every post with holly.
Though some churls at our mirth repine,
Round your foreheads garlands twine,
Drown sorrow in a cup of wine,
And let us all be merry.
Now all our neighbours' chimnies smoke,
And Christmas blocks are burning;
Their ovens they with baked meats choke,
And all their spits are turning.
Without the door let sorrow lie,
And if for cold it hap to die,
We'll bury it in a Christmas pie;
And evermore be merry.
Now every lad is wondrous trim,
And no man minds his labour;
Our lasses have provided them
A bagpipe and a tabour.
Young men and maids, and girls and boys
Give life to one another's joys;
And you anon shall by their noise
Perceive that they are merry.
Rank misers now do sparing shun,
Their hall of music soundeth;
And dogs thence with whole shoulders run,
So all things there aboundeth.
The country-folk themselves advance,
For Crowdy-Mutton's come out of France;
And Jack shall pipe and Jill shall dance,
And all the town be merry.
Ned Swatch hath fetched his bands from pawn,
And all his best apparel;
Brisk Nell hath bought a ruff of lawn
With droppings of the barrel.
And those that hardly all the year
Had bread to eat or rags to wear,
Will have both clothes and dainty fare,
And all the day be merry.
Now poor men to the justices
With capons make their errands;
And if they hap to fail of these,
They plague them with their warrants.
But now they feed them with good cheer,
And what they want they take in beer,
For Christmas comes but once a year,
And then they shall be merry.
Good farmers in the country nurse
The poor, that else were undone;
Some landlords spend their money worse,
On lust and pride at London.
There the roysters they do play,
Drab and dice their land away,
Which may be ours another day;
And therefore let's be merry.
The client now his suit forbears,
The prisoner's heart is easèd;
The debtor drinks away his cares,
And for the time is pleasèd.
Though others' purses be more fat,
Why should we pine or grieve at that;
Hang sorrow, care will kill a cat,
And therefore let's be merry.
Hark how the wags abroad do call
Each other forth to rambling;
Anon you'll see them in the hall,
For nuts and apples scrambling,
Hark how the roofs with laughters sound,
Anon they'll think the house goes round:
For they the cellar's depths have found,
And there they will be merry.
The wenches with their wassel-bowls
About the streets are singing;
The boys are come to catch the owls,
The wild mare in is bringing.
Our kitchen boy hath broke his box,
And to the dealing of the ox
Our honest neighbours come by flocks,
And here they will be merry.
Now kings and queens poor sheep-cotes have,
And mate with everybody;
The honest now may play the knave,
And wise men play at noddy.
Some youths will now a mumming go,
Some others play at rowland-hoe,
And twenty other gameboys moe;
Because they will be merry.
Then wherefore in these merry days
Should we, I pray, be duller?
No, let us sing some roundelays
To make our mirth the fuller.
And whilst we thus inspirèd sing,
Let all the streets with echoes ring;
Woods, and hills, and everything
Bear witness we are merry.
A Rocking Hymn
Sweet baby, sleep! what ails my dear,
What ails my darling thus to cry?
Be still, my child, and lend thine ear
To hear me sing thy lullaby.
My pretty lamb, forbear to weep;
Be still, my dear; sweet baby, sleep.
Thou blessed soul, what canst thou fear?
What thing to thee can mischief do?
Thy God is now thy father dear,
His holy Spouse, thy mother too.
Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.
Though thy conception was in sin,
A sacred bathing thou hast had;
And, though thy birth unclean hath been,
A blameless babe thou now art made.
Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;
Be still, my dear; sweet baby, sleep,
While thus thy lullaby I sing,
For thee great blessings ripening be;
Thine eldest brother is a King,
And hath a kingdom bought for thee.
Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.
Sweet baby, sleep and nothing fear,
For whosoever thee offends,
By thy protector threat'ned are,
And God and angels are thy friends.
Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.
When God with us was dwelling here,
In little babes he took delight;
Such innocents as thou, my dear,
Are ever precious in His sight.
Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.
A little infant once was He,
And, strength in weakness, then was laid
Upon His virgin-mother's knee,
That power to thee might be conveyed.
Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.
In this, thy frailty and thy need,
He friends and helpers doth prepare,
Which thee shall cherish, clothe and feed;
For of thy weal they tender are.
Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.
The King of kings, when he was born,
Had not so much for outward ease;
By Him such dressings were not worn,
Nor such like swaddling-clothes as these.
Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.
Within a manger lodged thy Lord
Where oxen lay and asses fed;
Warm rooms we do to thee afford,
An easy cradle or a bed.
Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.
The wants that He did then sustain
Have purchased wealth, my babe, for thee;
And by His torments and His pain
Thy rest and ease securèd be.
My baby, then forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.
Thou hast (yet more) to perfect this,
A promise and an earnest got
Of gaining everlasting bliss,
Though thou, my babe, perceiv'st it not;
Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.
The Marigold
When with a serious musing I behold
The grateful and obsequious marigold,
How duly every morning she displays
Her open breast, when Titan spreads his rays;
How she observes him in his daily walk,
Still bending towards him her small slender stalk;
How when he down declines, she droops and mourns,
Bedewed, as 'twere with tears, till he returns;
And how she veils her flowers when he is gone,
As if she scornèd to be lookèd on
By an inferior eye; or did contemn
To wait upon a meaner light than him.
When this I meditate, methinks the flowers
Have spirits far more generous than ours,
And give us fair examples to despise
The servile fawnings and idolatries,
Wherewith we court these earthly things below,
Which merit not the service we bestow....
Sonnet: On the Death of Prince Henry
Methought his royal person did foretell
A kingly stateliness, from all pride clear;
His look majestic seemèd to compel
All men to love him, rather than to fear.
And yet though he were every good man's joy,
And the alonely comfort of his own,
His very name with terror did annoy
His foreign foes so far as he was known.
Hell drooped for fear; the Turkey moon looked pale;
Spain trembled; and the most tempestuous sea,
(Where Behemoth, the Babylonish whale,
Keeps all his bloody and imperious plea)
Was swoln with rage, for fear he'd stop the tide
Of her o'er-daring and insulting pride.
From a Satire written to King James I
Did I not know a great man's power and might
In spite of innocence can smother right,
Colour his villainies to get esteem,
And make the honest man the villain seem?
I know it, and the world doth know 'tis true,
Yet I protest if such a man I knew,
That might my country prejudice or thee
Were he the greatest or the proudest he,
That breathes this day; if so it might be found
That any good to either might redound,
I unappalled, dare in such a case
Rip up his foulest crimes before his face,
Though for my labour I were sure to drop
Into the mouth of ruin without hope.
William Browne
To England
Hail, thou my native soil! thou blessed plot
Whose equal all the world affordeth not!
Show me who can so many crystal rills,
Such sweet-clothed valleys or aspiring hills;
Such wood-ground, pastures, quarries, wealthy mines;
Such rocks in whom the diamond fairly shines;
And if the earth can show the like again,
Yet will she fail in her sea-ruling men.
From _Britannia's Pastorals_.
The Seasons
The year hath first his jocund spring,
Wherein the leaves, to birds' sweet carolling,
Dance with the wind; then sees the summer's day
Perfect the embryon blossom of each spray;
Next cometh autumn, when the threshèd sheaf
Loseth his grain, and every tree his leaf;
Lastly, cold winter's rage, with many a storm,
Threats the proud pines which Ida's top adorn,
And makes the sap leave succourless the shoot,
Shrinking to comfort his decaying root.
From _Britannia's Pastorals_.
May Day Customs
I have seen the Lady of the May
Set in an arbour, on a holiday,
Built by the May-pole, where the jocund swains
Dance with the maidens to the bagpipe's strains,
When envious night commands them to be gone
Call for the merry youngsters one by one,
And for their well performance soon disposes:
To this a garland interwove with roses,
To that a carvèd hook or well-wrought scrip,
Gracing another with her cherry lip;
To one her garter, to another then
A handkerchief cast o'er and o'er again;
And none returneth empty that hath spent
His pains to fill their rural merriment.
From _Britannia's Pastorals_.
Birds in May
As (woo'd by May's delights) I have been borne
To take the kind air of a wistful morn
Near Tavy's voiceful stream (to whom I owe
More strains than from my pipe can ever flow),
Here have I heard a sweet bird never lin
To chide the river for his clam'rous din;
There seem'd another in his song to tell,
That what the fair stream did he liked well;
And going further heard another too,
All varying still in what the others do;
A little thence, a fourth with little pain
Conn'd all their lessons, and them sung again;
So numberless the songsters are that sing
In the sweet groves of the too-careless spring,
That I no sooner could the hearing lose
Of one of them, but straight another rose,
And perching deftly on a quaking spray,
Nigh tir'd herself to make her hearer stay.
. . . . .
Shrill as a thrush upon a morn of May.
From _Britannia's Pastorals_.
Music on the Thames
As I have seen when on the breast of Thames
A heavenly bevy of sweet English dames,
In some calm ev'ning of delightful May,
With music give a farewell to the day,
Or as they would, with an admired tone,
Greet Night's ascension to her ebon throne,
Rapt with their melody a thousand more
Run to be wafted from the bounding shore.
From _Britannia's Pastorals_.
A Concert of Birds
The mounting lark (day's herald) got on wing,
Bidding each bird choose out his bough and sing.
The lofty treble sung the little wren;
Robin the mean, that best of all loves men;
The nightingale the tenor, and the thrush
The counter-tenor sweetly in a bush.
And that the music might be full in parts,
Birds from the groves flew with right willing hearts;
But (as it seem'd) they thought (as do the swains,
Which tune their pipes on sack'd Hibernia's plains)
There should some droning part be, therefore will'd
Some bird to fly into a neighb'ring field,
In embassy unto the King of Bees,
To aid his partners on the flowers and trees
Who, condescending, gladly flew along
To bear the bass to his well-tuned song.
The crow was willing they should be beholding
For his deep voice, but being hoarse with scolding,
He thus lends aid; upon an oak doth climb,
And nodding with his head, so keepeth time.
From _Britannia's Pastorals_.
Flowers
The daisy scatter'd on each mead and down,
A golden tuft within a silver crown;
(Fair fall that dainty flower! and may there be
No shepherd grac'd that doth not honour thee!)
The primrose, when with six leaves gotten grace
Maids as a true-love in their bosoms place;
The spotless lily, by whose pure leaves be
Noted the chaste thoughts of virginity;
Carnations sweet with colour like the fire,
The fit impresas for inflam'd desire;
The harebell for her stainless azur'd hue
Claims to be worn of none but those are true;
The rose, like ready youth, enticing stands,
And would be cropp'd if it might choose the hands,
The yellow kingcup Flora them assign'd
To be the badges of a jealous mind;
The orange-tawny marigold: the night
Hides not her colour from a searching sight....
The columbine in tawny often taken,
Is then ascrib'd to such as are forsaken;
Flora's choice buttons of a russet dye
Is hope even in the depth of misery.
From _Britannia's Pastorals_.
Morning
The Muses' friend (grey-eyed Aurora) yet
Held all the meadows in a cooling sweat,
The milk-white gossamers not upwards snow'd,
Nor was the sharp and useful-steering goad
Laid on the strong-neck'd ox; no gentle bud
The sun had dried; the cattle chew'd the cud
Low levell'd on the grass; no fly's quick sting
Enforc'd the stonehorse in a furious ring
To tear the passive earth, nor lash his tail
About his buttocks broad; the slimy snail
Might on the wainscot, by his many mazes,
Winding meanders and self-knitting traces,
Be follow'd where he stuck, his glittering slime
Not yet wip'd off. It was so early time,
The careful smith had in his sooty forge
Kindled no coal; nor did his hammers urge
His neighbours' patience: owls abroad did fly,
And day as then might plead his in fancy.
From _Britannia's Pastorals_.
Night
Now great Hyperion left his golden throne
That on the dancing waves in glory shone,
For whose declining on the western shore
The oriental hills black mantles wore,
And thence apace the gentle twilight fled,
That had from hideous caverns ushered
All-drowsy Night, who in a car of jet,
By steeds of iron-grey, which mainly sweat
Moist drops on all the world, drawn through the sky,
The helps of darkness waited orderly.
First thick clouds rose from all the liquid plains;
Then mists from marishes, and grounds whose veins
Were conduit-pipes to many a crystal spring;
From standing pools and fens were following
Unhealthy fogs; each river, every rill
Sent up their vapours to attend her will
These pitchy curtains drew 'twixt earth and heaven
And as Night's chariot through the air was driven,
Clamour grew dumb, unheard was shepherd's song
And silence girt the woods; no warbling tongue
Talk'd to the Echo; satyrs broke their dance,
And all the upper world lay in a trance.
Only the curled streams soft chidings kept;
And little gales that from the green leaf swept
Dry summer's dust, in fearful whisp'rings stirred.
As loath to waken any singing bird.
From _Britannia's Pastorals_.
A Pleasant Grove
Unto a pleasant grove or such like place,
Where here the curious cutting of a hedge:
There, by a pond, the trimming of the sedge:
Here the fine setting of well-shading trees:
The walks there mounting up by small degrees,
The gravel and the green so equal lie,
It, with the rest, draws on your ling'ring eye:
Here the sweet smells that do perfume the air,
Arising from the infinite repair
Of odoriferous buds and herbs of price,
(As if it were another Paradise)
So please the smelling sense, that you are fain
Where last you walk'd to turn and walk again.
There the small birds with their harmonious notes
Sing to a spring that smileth as she floats:
For in her face a many dimples show,
And often skips as it did dancing go:
Here further down an over-arched alley,
That from a hill goes winding in a valley,
You spy at end thereof a standing lake,
Where some ingenious artist strives to make
The water (brought in turning pipes of lead
Through birds of earth most lively fashioned)
To counterfeit and mock the sylvans all,
In singing well their own set madrigal.
This with no small delight retains your ear,
And makes you think none blest but who live there.
Then in another place the fruits that be
In gallant clusters decking each good tree,
Invite your hand to crop some from the stem,
And liking one, taste every sort of them:
Then to the arbours walk, then to the bowers,
Thence to the walks again, thence to the flowers,
Then to birds, and to the clear spring thence,
Now pleasing one, and then another sense.
Here one walks oft, and yet anew begin'th,
As if it were some hidden labyrinth;
So loath to part and so content to stay,
That when the gard'ner knocks for you away,
It grieves you so to leave the pleasures in it,
That you could wish that you had never seen it.
From _Britannia's Pastorals_.
An Angler
Now as an angler melancholy standing
Upon a green bank yielding room for landing,
A wriggling yellow worm thrust on his hook,
Now in the midst he throws, then in a nook:
Here pulls his line, there throws it in again,
Mendeth his cork and bait, but all in vain,
He long stands viewing of the curled stream;
At last a hungry pike, or well-grown bream
Snatch at the worm, and hasting fast away,
He knowing it a fish of stubborn sway,
Pulls up his rod, but soft, as having skill,
Wherewith the hook fast holds the fish's gill;
Then all his line he freely yieldeth him,
Whilst furiously all up and down doth swim
Th' insnared fish, here on the top doth scud,
There underneath the banks, then in the mud,
And with his frantic fits so scares the shoal,
That each one takes his hide, or starting hole:
By this the pike, clean wearied, underneath
A willow lies.
From _Britannia's Pastorals_.
A Rill
So when the pretty rill a place espies,
Where with the pebbles she would wantonize,
And that her upper stream so much doth wrong her
To drive her thence, and let her play no longer;
If she with too loud mutt'ring ran away,
As being much incens'd to leave her play,
A western, mild and pretty whispering gale
Came dallying with the leaves along the dale,
And seem'd as with the water it did chide,
Because it ran so long unpacified:
Yea, and methought it bade her leave that coil,
Or he would choke her up with leaves and soil:
Whereat the riv'let in my mind did weep,
And hurl'd her head into a silent deep.
From _Britannia's Pastorals_.
"Glide soft, ye Silver Floods"
Glide soft, ye silver floods,
And every spring:
Within the shady woods
Let no bird sing!
Nor from the grove a turtle-dove
Be seen to couple with her love;
But silence on each dale and mountain dwell,
Whilst Willy bids his friend and joy farewell.
But (of great Thetis' train)
Ye mermaids fair,
That on the shores do plain
Your sea-green hair,
As ye in trammels knit your locks,
Weep ye; and so enforce the rocks
In heavy murmurs through the broad shores tell
How Willy bade his friend and joy farewell.
Cease, cease, ye murd'ring winds,
To move a wave;
But if with troubled minds
You seek his grave;
Know 'tis as various as yourselves,
Now in the deep, then on the shelves,
His coffin toss'd by fish and surges fell,
Whilst Willy weeps and bids all joy farewell.
Had he Arion-like
Been judged to drown,
He on his lute could strike
So rare a sowne,
A thousand dolphins would have come
And jointly strive to bring him home.
But he on shipboard died, by sickness fell,
Since when his Willy bade all joy farewell.
Great Neptune, hear a swain!
His coffin take,
And with a golden chain
For pity make
It fast unto a rock near land!
Where ev'ry calmy morn I'll stand,
And ere one sheep out of my fold I tell,
Sad Willy's pipe shall bid his friend farewell.
"Venus by Adonis' Side"
Venus by Adonis' side
Crying kiss'd, and kissing cried,
Wrung her hands and tore her hair
For Adonis dying there.
Stay (quoth she) O stay and live!
Nature surely doth not give
To the earth her sweetest flowers
To be seen but some few hours.
On his face, still as he bled
For each drop a tear she shed,
Which she kiss'd or wip'd away,
Else had drown'd him where he lay.
Fair Proserpina (quoth she)
Shall not have thee yet from me;
Nor my soul to fly begin
While my lips can keep it in.
Here she clos'd again. And some
Say Apollo would have come
To have cur'd his wounded limb,
But that she had smothered him.
From _Britannia's Pastorals_.
A Song
Gentle nymphs, be not refusing,
Love's neglect is time's abusing,
They and beauty are but lent you;
Take the one and keep the other;
Love keeps fresh what age doth smother;
Beauty gone you will repent you.
'Twill be said when ye have proved,
Never swains more truly loved:
Oh then fly all nice behaviour!
Pity fain would (as her duty)
Be attending still on Beauty,
Let her not be out of favour.
From _Britannia's Pastorals_.
Spring Morning--I
_Thomalin._
Where is every piping lad
That the fields are not yclad
With their milk-white sheep?
Tell me: is it holiday,
Or if in the month of May
Use they long to sleep?
_Piers._
Thomalin, 'tis not too late,
For the turtle and her mate
Sitten yet in nest:
And the thrustle hath not been
Gath'ring worms yet on the green,
But attends her rest.
Not a bird hath taught her young,
Nor her morning's lesson sung
In the shady grove:
But the nightingale in dark
Singing woke the mounting lark:
She records her love.
Not the sun hath with his beams
Gilded yet our crystal streams;
Rising from the sea,
Mists do crown the mountains' tops,
And each pretty myrtle drops:
'Tis but newly day.
_The Shepherd's Pipe._
Spring Morning--II
_Willie._
Roget, droop not, see the spring
Is the earth enamelling,
And the birds on every tree
Greet this morn with melody:
Hark, how yonder thrustle chants it,
And her mate as proudly vants it
See how every stream is dress'd
By her margin with the best
Of Flora's gifts; she seems glad
For such brooks such flow'rs she had.
All the trees are quaintly tired
With green buds, of all desired;
And the hawthorn every day
Spreads some little show of May:
See the primrose sweetly set
By the much-lov'd violet,
All the banks do sweetly cover,
As they would invite a lover
With his lass to see their dressing
And to grace them by their pressing:
Yet in all this merry tide
When all cares are laid aside,
Roget sits as if his blood
Had not felt the quick'ning good
Of the sun, nor cares to play,
Or with songs to pass the day
As he wont: fie, Roget, fie,
Raise thy head, and merrily
Tune us somewhat to thy reed:
See our flocks do freely feed,
Here we may together sit,
And for music very fit
Is this place; from yonder wood
Comes an echo shrill and good,
Twice full perfectly it will
Answer to thine oaten quill.
Roget, droop not then, but sing
Some kind welcome to the spring.
_The Shepherd's Pipe._
A Round
_All._
Now that the Spring hath fill'd our veins
With kind and active fire,
And made green liv'ries for the plains,
And every grove a quire:
Sing me a song of merry glee,
And Bacchus fill the bowl.
1. Then here's to thee: 2. And thou to me
And every thirsty soul.
Nor Care nor Sorrow e'er paid debt,
Nor never shall do mine;
I have no cradle going yet,
Not I, by this good wine.
No wife at home to send for me,
No hogs are in my ground,
No suit in law to pay a fee,
Then round, old Jocky, round.
_All._
Shear sheep that have them, cry we still,
But see that no man'scape
To drink of the sherry,
That makes us so merry,
And plump as the lusty grape.
* * * * *
_Welcome, welcome, do I sing,
Far more welcome than the spring;
He that parteth from you never
Shall enjoy a spring for ever._
Love, that to the voice is near
Breaking from your iv'ry pale,
Need not walk abroad to hear
The delightful nightingale.
Welcome, welcome, then I sing,
Far more welcome than the spring;
He that parteth from you never
Shall enjoy a spring for ever.
Love, that looks still on your eyes,
Though the winter have begun
To benumb our arteries,
Shall not want the summer's sun.
Welcome, welcome, then I sing, &c.
Love that still may see your cheeks,
Where all rareness still reposes,
Is a fool, if e'er he seeks
Other lilies, other roses.
Welcome, welcome, &c.
Love, to whom your soft lip yields,
And perceives your breath in kissing,
All the odours of the fields
Never, never shall be missing.
Welcome, welcome, &c.
Love, that question would anew
What fair Eden was of old,
Let him rightly study you,
And a brief of that behold.
Welcome, welcome, then I, &c.
Autumn
Autumn it was when droop'd the sweetest flow'rs,
And rivers, swoll'n with pride, o'erlook'd the banks;
Poor grew the day of summer's golden hours,
And void of sap stood Ida's cedar-ranks.
The pleasant meadows sadly lay
In chill and cooling sweats
By rising fountains, or as they
Fear'd winter's wastfull threats.
_The Shepherd's Pipe._
The Siren's Song
Steer hither, steer your wingèd pines,
All beaten mariners,
Here lie Love's undiscover'd mines,
A prey to passengers;
Perfumes far sweeter than the best
Which makes the Phoenix' urn and nest.
Fear not your ships,
Nor any to oppose you save our lips,
But come on shore,
Where no joy dies till love hath gotten more.
For swelling waves our panting breasts,
Where never storms arise,
Exchange; and be awhile our guests:
For stars gaze on our eyes.
The compass love shall hourly sing,
And as he goes about the ring,
We will not miss
To tell each point he nameth with a kiss.
CHORUS.
Then come on shore,
Where no joy dies till love hath gotten more.
_The Inner Temple Masque._
The Charm
Son of Erebus and Night,
Hie away; and aim thy flight
Where consort none other fowl
Than the bat and sullen owl;
Where upon the limber grass
Poppy and mandragoras
With like simples not a few
Hang for ever drops of dew.
Where flows Lethe without coil
Softly like a stream of oil.
Hie thee thither, gentle Sleep:
With this Greek no longer keep.
Thrice I charge thee by my wand;
Thrice with moly from my hand
Do I touch Ulysses' eyes,
And with the jaspis: Then arise,
Sagest Greek....
_The Inner Temple Masque._
Cælia
(Sonnets)
Lo, I the man that whilom lov'd and lost,
Not dreading loss, do sing again of love;
And like a man but lately tempest-toss'd,
Try if my stars still inauspicious prove:
Not to make good that poets never can
Long time without a chosen mistress be,
Do I sing thus; or my affections ran
Within the maze of mutability;
What last I lov'd was beauty of the mind,
And that lodg'd in a temple truly fair,
Which ruin'd now by death, if I can find
The saint that liv'd therein some otherwhere,
I may adore it there, and love the cell
For entertaining what I lov'd so well.
* * * * *
Why might I not for once be of that sect,
Which hold that souls, when Nature hath her right,
Some other bodies to themselves elect;
And sunlike make the day, and license night?
That soul, whose setting in one hemisphere
Was to enlighten straight another part;
In that horizon, if I see it there,
Calls for my first respect and its desert;
Her virtue is the same and may be more;
For as the sun is distant, so his power
In operation differs, and the store
Of thick clouds interpos'd make him less our.
And verily I think her climate such,
Since to my former flame it adds so much.
* * * * *
Fairest, when by the rules of palmistry
You took my hand to try if you could guess
By lines therein if any wight there be
Ordain'd to make me know some happiness;
I wish'd that those characters could explain,
Whom I will never wrong with hope to win;
Or that by them a copy might be ta'en,
By you alone what thoughts I have within.
But since the hand of Nature did not set
(As providently loath to have it known)
The means to find that hidden alphabet.
Mine eyes shall be th' interpreters alone:
By them conceive my thoughts, and tell me, fair,
If now you see her that doth love me there.
* * * * *
Were't not for you, here should my pen have rest
And take a long leave of sweet poesy;
Britannia's swains, and rivers far by west,
Should hear no more mine oaten melody;
Yet shall the song I sung of them awhile
Unperfect lie, and make no further known
The happy loves of this our pleasant Isle;
Till I have left some record of mine own.
You are the subject now, and, writing you,
I well may versify, not poetize:
Here needs no fiction: for the graces true
And virtues clip not with base flatteries.
Here could I write what you deserve of praise,
Others might wear, but I should win the bays.
* * * * *
Sing soft, ye pretty birds, while Cælia sleeps,
And gentle gales play gently with the leaves;
Learn of the neighbour brooks, whose silent deeps
Would teach him fear, that her soft sleep bereaves
Mine oaten reed, devoted to her praise,
(A theme that would befit the Delphian lyre)
Give way, that I in silence may admire.
Is not her sleep like that of innocents,
Sweet as herself; and is she not more fair,
Almost in death, than are the ornaments
Of fruitful trees, which newly budding are?
She is, and tell it, Truth, when she shall lie
And sleep for ever, for she cannot die.
Visions
(Sonnets)
I saw a silver swan swim down the Lea,
Singing a sad farewell unto the vale,
While fishes leapt to hear her melody,
And on each thorn a gentle nightingale
And many other birds forbore their notes,
Leaping from tree to tree, as she along
The panting bosom of the current floats,
Rapt with the music of her dying song:
When from a thick and all-entangled spring
A neatherd rude came with no small ado,
Dreading an ill presage to hear her sing,
And quickly struck her tender neck in two;
Whereat the birds, methought, flew thence with speed,
And inly griev'd for such a cruel deed.
* * * * *
A rose, as fair as ever saw the North,
Grew in a little garden all alone;
A sweeter flower did Nature ne'er put forth,
Nor fairer garden yet was never known:
The maidens danc'd about it morn and noon,
And learned bards of it their ditties made;
The nimble fairies by the pale-faced moon
Water'd the root and kiss'd her pretty shade.
But well-a-day, the gard'ner careless grew;
The maids and fairies both were kept away,
And in a drought the caterpillars threw
Themselves upon the bud and every spray.
God shield the stock! if heaven send no supplies,
The fairest blossom of the garden dies.
* * * * *
Down in a valley, by a forest's side,
Near where the crystal Thames rolls on her waves,
I saw a mushroom stand in haughty pride,
As if the lilies grew to be his slaves;
The gentle
|
if
introducing him.)
RICHARD (reverently). Mr. Robert Wurzel-Flummery, M. P., one of the most
prominent of our younger Parliamentarians. Oh, you...oh!... oh, how too
heavenly! (He goes back to his seat, looks up and catches CRAWSHAW'S
eye, and breaks down altogether.)
CRAWSHAW (rising with dignity). Shall we discuss it seriously, or shall
we leave it?
RICHARD. How can we discuss a name like Wurzel-Flummery seriously? "Mr.
Wurzel-Flummery in a few well-chosen words seconded the motion."...
"'Sir,' went on Mr. Wurzel-Flummery"--Oh, poor Robert!
CRAWSHAW (sitting down sulkily). You seem quite certain that I shall
take the money.
RICHARD. I am quite certain.
CRAWSHAW. Would you take it?
RICHARD (hesitating). Well--I wonder.
CRAWSHAW. After all, as William Shakespeare says, "What's in a name?"
RICHARD. I can tell you something else that Shakespeare--_William_
Shakespeare--said. (Dramatically rising) Who steals my purse with fifty
thousand in it--steals trash. (In his natural voice) Trash, Robert:
(Dramatically again) But he who filches from me my good name of Crawshaw
(lightly) and substitutes the rotten one of Wurzel--
CRAWSHAW (annoyed). As a matter of fact, Wurzel-Flummery is a very good
old name. I seem to remember some--ah--Hampshire Wurzel-Flummeries.
It is a very laudable spirit on the part of a dying man to wish
to--ah--perpetuate these old English names. It all seems to me quite
natural and straightforward. If I take this money I shall have nothing
to be ashamed of.
RICHARD. I see.... Look here, may I ask you a few questions? I should
like to know just how you feel about the whole business?
CRAWSHAW (complacently folding his hands). Go ahead.
RICHARD. Suppose a stranger came up in the street to you and said, "My
poor man, here's five pounds for you," what would you do? Tell him to go
to the devil, I suppose, wouldn't you?
CRAWSHAW (humorously). In more parliamentary language, perhaps, Richard.
I should tell him I never took money from strangers.
RICHARD. Quite so; but that if it were ten thousand pounds, you would
take it?
CRAWSHAW. I most certainly shouldn't.
RICHARD. But if he died and left it to you, _then_ you would?
CRAWSHAW (blandly). Ah, I thought you were leading up to that. That, of
course, is entirely different.
RICHARD. Why?
CRAWSHAW. Well--ah--wouldn't _you_ take ten thousand pounds if it were
left to you by a stranger?
RICHARD. I daresay I should. But I should like to know why it would seem
different.
CRAWSHAW (professionally). Ha-hum! Well--in the first place, when a man
is dead he wants his money no longer. You can therefore be certain that
you are not taking anything from him which he cannot spare. And in the
neat place, it is the man's dying wish that you should have the money.
To refuse would be to refuse the dead. To accept becomes almost a sacred
duty.
RICHARD. It really comes to this, doesn't it? You won't take it from him
when he's alive, because if you did, you couldn't decently refuse him a
little gratitude; but you know that it doesn't matter a damn to him
what happens to his money after he's dead, and therefore you can take it
without feeling any gratitude at all.
CRAWSHAW. No, I shouldn't put it like that.
RICHARD (smiling). I'm sure you wouldn't, Robert.
CRAWSHAW No doubt you can twist it about so that--
RICHARD. All right, we'll leave that and go on to the next point.
Suppose a perfect stranger offered you five pounds to part your hair
down the middle, shave off your moustache, and wear only one whisker--if
he met you suddenly in the street, seemed to dislike your appearance,
took out a fiver and begged you to hurry off and alter yourself--of
course you'd pocket the money and go straight to your barber's?
CRAWSHAW. Now you are merely being offensive.
RICHARD. I beg your pardon. I should have said that if he had left you
five pounds in his will?--well, then twenty pounds? a hundred pounds?--a
thousand pounds?--fifty thousand pounds?--(Jumping up excitedly) It's
only a question of price--fifty thousand pounds, Robert--a pink tie with
purple spots, hair across the back, trousers with a patch in the
fall myself Wurzel-Flummery--any old thing you like, you can't insult
me--anything you like, gentlemen, for fifty thousand pounds. (Lowering
his voice) Only you must leave it in your will, and then I can feel that
it is a sacred duty--a sacred duty, my lords and gentlemen. (He sinks
back into the sofa and relights his pipe.)
CRAWSHAW. (rising with dignity). It is evidently useless to prolong this
conversation.
RICHARD (waving him dorm again). No, no, Robert; I've finished. I just
took the other side--and I got carried away. I ought to have been at the
Bar.
CRAWSHAW. You take such extraordinary views of things. You must look
facts in the face, Richard. This is a modern world, and we are modern
people living in it. Take the matter-of-fact view. You may like or
dislike the name of--ah--Wurzel-Flummery, but you can't get away from
the fact that fifty thousand pounds is not to be sneezed at.
RICHARD (wistfully). I don't know why people shouldn't sneeze at money
sometimes. I should like to start a society for sneezing at fifty
thousand pounds. We'd have to begin in a small way, of course; we'd
begin by sneezing at five pounds--and work up. The trouble is that we're
all inoculated in our cradles against that kind of cold.
CRAWSHAW (pleasantly). You will have your little joke. But you know as
well as I do that it is only a joke. There can be no serious reason why
I should not take this money. And I--ah--gather that you don't think it
will affect my career?
RICHARD (carelessly). Not a bit. It'll help it. It'll get you into all
the comic papers.
[MARGARET comes in at this moment, to the relief of CRAWSHAW, who is not
quite certain if he is being flattered or insulted again.]
MARGARET. Well, have you told him?
RICHARD (making way for her on the sofa). I have heard the news, Mrs.
Crawshaw. And I have told Robert my opinion that he should have no
difficulty in making the name of Wurzel-Flummery as famous as he has
already made that of Crawshaw. At any rate I hope he will.
MARGARET. How nice of you! CRAWSHAW. Well, it's settled, then. (Looking
at his watch) This solicitor fellow should be here soon. Perhaps, after
all, we can manage something about--Ah, Viola, did you want your mother?
[Enter VIOLA.]
VIOLA. Sorry, do I interrupt a family meeting? There's Richard, so it
can't be very serious.
RICHARD. What a reputation!
CRAWSHAW. Well, it's over now.
MARGARET. Viola had better know, hadn't she?
CRAWSHAW. She'll have to know some time, of course.
VIOLA (sitting done firmly on the sofa). Of course she will. So you'd
better tell her now. I knew there was something exciting going on this
morning.
CRAWSHAW (embarrassed). Hum--ha--(To MARGARET) Perhaps you'd better tell
her, dear.
MARGARET (simply and naturally). Father has come into some property,
Viola. It means changing our name unfortunately. But your father doesn't
think it will matter.
VIOLA. How thrilling! What is the name, mother?
MARGARET. Your father says it is--dear me, I shall never remember it.
CRAWSHAW (mumbling). Wurzel-Flummery.
VIOLA (after a pause). Dick, _you_ tell me, if nobody else will.
RICHARD. Robert said it just now.
VIOLA. That wasn't a name, was it? I thought it was just a--do say it
again, father.
CRAWSHAW (sulkily but plainly). Wurzel-Flummery.
VIOLA (surprised). Do you spell it like that? I mean like a wurzel and
like flummery?
RICHARD. Exactly, I believe.
VIOLA (to herself). Miss Viola Wurzel-Flummery--I mean they'd have to
look at you, wouldn't they? (Bubbling over) Oh, Dick, what a heavenly
name! Who had it first?
RICHARD. They are an old Hampshire family--that is so, isn't it, Robert?
CRAWSHAW (annoyed). I said I thought that I remembered--Margaret, can
you find Burke there?
(She finds it, and he buries himself in the families of the great.)
MARGARET. Well, Viola, you haven't told us how you like being Miss
Wurzel-Flummery.
VIOLA. I haven't realized myself yet, mummy. I shall have to stand in
front of my glass and tell myself who I am.
RICHARD. It's all right for you. You know you'll change your name one
day, and then it won't matter what you've been called before.
VIOLA (secretly). H'sh! (She smiles lovingly at him, and then says
aloud) Oh, won't it? It's got to appear in the papers, "A marriage has
been arranged between Miss Viola Wurzel-Flummery..." and everybody will
say, "And about time too, poor girl."
MARGARET (to CRAWSHAW). Have you found it, dear?
CRAWSHAW (resentfully). This is the 1912 edition.
MARGARET. Still, dear, if it's a very old family, it ought to be in by
then.
VIOLA. I don't mind how old it is; I think it's lovely. Oh, Dick, what
fun it will be being announced! Just think of the footman throwing open
the door and saying--
MAID (announcing). Mr. Denis Clifton.
(There is a little natural confusion as CLIFTON enters jauntily in his
summer suiting with a bundle of papers under his arm. CRAWSHAW goes
towards him and shakes hands.)
CRAWSHAW. How do you do, Mr. Clifton? Very good of you to come. (Looking
doubtfully at his clothes) Er--it is Mr. Denis Clifton, the solicitor?
CLIFTON (cheerfully). It is. I must apologize for not looking the
part more, but my clothes did not arrive from Clarkson's in time. Very
careless of them when they had promised. And my clerk dissuaded me from
the side-whiskers which I keep by me for these occasions.
CRAWSHAW (bewildered). Ah yes, quite so. But you have--ah--full legal
authority to act in this matter?
CLIFTON.. Oh, decidedly. Oh, there's no question of that.
CRAWSHAW (introducing). My wife--and daughter. (CLIFTON bows
gracefully.) My friend, Mr. Richard Meriton.
CLIFTON (happily).Dear me! Mr. Meriton too! This is quite a situation,
as we say in the profession.
RICHARD (amused by him). In the legal profession?
CLIFTON. In the theatrical profession.(Turning to MARGARET) I am a
writer of plays, Mrs. Crawshaw. I am not giving away a professional
secret when I tell you that most of the managers in London have thanked
me for submitting my work to them.
CRAWSHAW (firmly).I understood, Mr. Clifton, that you were the solicitor
employed to wind up the affairs of the late Mr. Antony Clifton.
CLIFTON. Oh, certainly. Oh, there's no doubt about my being a solicitor.
My clerk, a man of the utmost integrity, not to say probity, would give
me a reference. I am in the books; I belong to the Law Society. But my
heart turns elsewhere. Officially I have embraced the profession of a
solicitor--(Frankly, to MRS. CRAWSHAW) But you know what these official
embraces are.
MARGARET. I'm afraid--(She turns to her husband for assistance.)
CLIFTON (to RICHARD). Unofficially, Mr. Meriton, I am wedded to the
Muses.
VIOLA. Dick, isn't he lovely?
CRAWSHAW. Quite so. But just for the moment, Mr. Clifton, I take it that
we are concerned with legal business. Should I ever wish to produce a
play, the case would be different.
CLIFTON. Admirably put. Pray regard me entirely as the solicitor for as
long as you wish. (He puts his hat down on a chair with the papers in
it, and taking off his gloves, goes on dreamily) Mr. Denis Clifton was
superb as a solicitor. In spite of an indifferent make-up, his manner of
taking off his gloves and dropping them into his hat--(He does so.)
MARGARET (to CRAWSHAW). I think, perhaps, Viola and I--
RICHARD (making a move too). We'll leave you to your business, Robert.
CLIFTON (holding up his hand). Just one moment if I may. I have a letter
for you, Mr. Meriton.
RICHARD (surprised). For me?
CLIFTON. Yes. My clerk, a man of the utmost integrity--oh, but I said
that before--he took it round to your rooms this morning, but found only
painters and decorators there. (He is feeling in his pockets and
now brings the letter out.) I brought it along, hoping that Mr.
Crawshaw--but of course I never expected anything so delightful as this.
(He hands over the letter with a bow.)
RICHARD. Thanks. (He puts it in his pocket.)
CLIFTON. Oh, but do read it now, won't you? (To MR. CRAWSHAW) One so
rarely has an opportunity of being present when one's own letters are
read. I think the habit they have on the stage of reading letters aloud
to other is such a very delightful one.
(RICHARD, with a smile and a shrug, has opened his letter while CLIFTON
is talking.)
RICHARD. Good Lord!
VIOLA. Dick, what is it?
RICHARD (reading). "199, Lincoln's Inn Fields. Dear Sir, I have the
pleasure to inform you that under the will of the late Mr. Antony
Clifton you are a beneficiary to the extent of £50,000."
VIOLA. Dick!
RICHARD. "A trifling condition is attached--namely, that you should take
the name of--Wurzel-Flummery." (CLIFTON, with his hand on his heart,
bows gracefully from one to the other of them.)
CRAWSHAW (annoyed). Impossible! Why should he leave any money to _you_?
VIOLA. Dick! How wonderful!
MARGARET (mildly). I don't remember ever having had a morning quite like
this.
RICHARD (angrily). Is this a joke, Mr. Clifton?
CLIFTON. Oh, the money is there all right. My clerk, a man of the
utmost--
RICHARD. Then I refuse it. I'll have nothing to do with it. I won't even
argue about it. (Tearing the letter into bits) That's what I think of
your money. [He stalks indignantly from the room.]
VIOLA. Dick! Oh, but, mother, he mustn't. Oh, I must tell him--[She
hurries after him.]
MARGARET (with dignity). Really, Mr. Clifton, I'm surprised at you. [She
goes out too.]
CLIFTON (looking round the room). And now, Mr. Crawshaw, we are alone.
CRAWSHAW. Yes. Well, I think, Mr. Clifton, you have a good deal to
explain--
CLIFTON. My dear sir, I'm longing to begin. I have been looking forward
to this day for weeks. I spent over an hour this morning dressing for
it. (He takes papers from his hat and moves to the sofa.) Perhaps I had
better begin from the beginning.
CRAWSHAW (interested, indicating the papers). The documents in the case?
CLIFTON. Oh dear, no just something to carry in the hand. It makes
one look more like a solicitor. (Reading the title) "Watherston v.
Towser--in re Great Missenden Canal Company." My clerk invents the
titles; it keeps him busy. He is very fond of Towser; Towser is always
coming in. (Frankly) You see, Mr. Crawshaw, this is my first real case,
and I only got it because Antony Clifton is my uncle. My efforts to
introduce a little picturesqueness into the dull formalities of the law
do not meet with that response that one would have expected.
CRAWSHAW (looking at his watch). Yes. Well, I'm a busy man, and if you
could tell me as shortly as possible why your uncle left this money
to me, and apparently to Mr. Meriton too, under these extraordinary
conditions, I shall be obliged to you.
CLIFTON. Say no more, Mr. Crawshaw; I look forward to being entirely
frank with you. It will be a pleasure.
CRAWSHAW. You understand, of course, my position. I think I may say that
I am not without reputation in the country; and proud as I am to accept
this sacred trust, this money which the late Mr. Antony Clifton has seen
fit--(modestly) one cannot say why--to bequeath to me, yet the use of
the name Wurzel-Flummery would be excessively awkward.
CLIFTON (cheerfully). Excessively.
CRAWSHAW. My object in seeing you was to inquire if it was absolutely
essential that the name should go with the money.
CLIFTON. Well (thoughtfully), you may have the name _without_ the money
if you like. But you must have the name.
CRAWSHAW (disappointed). Ah! (Bravely) Of course, I have nothing against
the name, a good old Hampshire name--
CLIFTON (shocked). My dear Mr. Crawshaw, you didn't think--you didn't
really think that anybody had been called Wurzel-Flummery before? Oh no,
no. You and Mr. Meriton were to be the first, the founders of the clan,
the designers of the Wurzel-Flummery sporran--
CRAWSHAW. What do you mean, sir? Are you telling me that it is not a
real name at all?
CLIFTON. Oh, it's a name all right. I know it is because--er--_I_ made
it up.
CRAWSHAW (outraged). And you have the impudence to propose, sir, that I
should take a made-up name?
CLIFTON (soothingly). Well, all names are made up some time or other.
Somebody had to think of--Adam.
CRAWSHAW. I warn you, Mr. Clifton, that I do not allow this trifling
with serious subjects.
CLIFTON. It's all so simple, really.... You see, my Uncle Antony was a
rather unusual man. He despised money. He was not afraid to put it in
its proper place. The place he put it in was--er--a little below golf
and a little above classical concerts. If a man said to him, "Would
you like to make fifty thousand this afternoon?" he would say--well,
it would depend what he was doing. If he were going to have a round at
Walton Heath--
CRAWSHAW. It's perfectly scandalous to talk of money in this way.
CLIFTON. Well, that's how he talked about it. But he didn't find many to
agree with him. In fact, he used to say that there was nothing, however
contemptible, that a man would not do for money. One day I suggested
that if he left a legacy with a sufficiently foolish name attached to
it, somebody might be found to refuse it. He laughed at the idea. That
put me on my mettle. "Two people," I said; "leave the same silly name to
two people, two well-known people, rival politicians, say, men whose own
names are already public property. Surely they wouldn't both take it."
That touched him. "Denis, my boy, you've got it," he said. "Upon what
vile bodies shall we experiment?" We decided on you and Mr. Meriton. The
next thing was to choose the name. I started on the wrong lines. I began
by suggesting names like Porker, Tosh, Bugge, Spiffkins--the obvious
sort. My uncle--
CRAWSHAW (boiling with indignation). How _dare_ you discuss me with your
uncle, Sir! How dare you decide in this cold-blooded way whether I am to
be called--ah--Tosh--or--ah--Porker!
CLIFTON. My uncle wouldn't bear of Tosh or Porker. He wanted a humorous
name--a name he could roll lovingly round his tongue--a name expressing
a sort of humorous contempt--Wurzel-Flummery! I can see now the happy
ruminating smile which came so often on my Uncle Antony's face in those
latter months. He was thinking of his two Wurzel-Flummerys. I remember
him saying once--it was at the Zoo--what a pity it was he hadn't enough
to divide among the whole Cabinet. A whole bunch of Wurzel-Flummerys; it
would have been rather jolly.
CRAWSHAW. You force me to say, sir, that if _that_ was the way you and
your uncle used to talk together at his death can only be described as a
merciful intervention of Providence.
CLIFTON. Oh, but I think he must be enjoying all this somewhere, you
know. I hope he is. He would have loved this morning. It was his one
regret that from the necessities of the case he could not live to
enjoy his own joke; but he had hopes that echoes of it would reach him
wherever he might be. It was with some such idea, I fancy, that toward
the end he became interested in spiritualism.
CRAWSHAW (rising solemnly). Mr. Clifton, I have no interest in
the present whereabouts of your uncle, nor in what means he has of
overhearing a private conversation between you and myself. But if, as
you irreverently suggest, he is listening to us, I should like him to
hear this. That, in my opinion, you are not a qualified solicitor at
all, that you never had an uncle, and that the whole story of the will
and the ridiculous condition attached to it is just the tomfool joke
of a man who, by his own admission, wastes most of his time writing
unsuccessful farces. And I propose--
CLIFTON. Pardon my interrupting. But you said farces. Not farces,
comedies--of a whimsical nature.
CRAWSHAW. Whatever they were, sir, I propose to report the whole matter
to the Law Society. And you know your way out, sir.
CLIFTON. Then I am to understand that you refuse the legacy, Mr.
Crawshaw?
CRAWSHAW (startled). What's that?
CLIFTON. I am to understand that you refuse the fifty thousand pounds?
CRAWSHAW. If the money is really there, I most certainly do not refuse
it.
CLIFTON. Oh, the money is most certainly there--and the name. Both
waiting for you.
CRAWSHAW (thumping the table). Then, Sir, I accept them. I feel it my
duty to accept them, as a public expression of confidence in the late
Mr. Clifton's motives. I repudiate entirely the motives that you have
suggested to him, and I consider it a sacred duty to show what I think
of your story by accepting the trust which he has bequeathed to me. You
will arrange further matters with my solicitor. Good morning, Sir.
CLIFTON (to himself as he rises). Mr. Crawshaw here drank a glass of
water. (To CRAWSHAW) Mr. Wurzel-Flummery, farewell. May I express the
parting wish that your future career will add fresh lustre to--my name.
(To himself as he goes out) Exit Mr. Denis Clifton with dignity. (But he
has left his papers behind him.)
(CRAWSHAW, walking indignantly back to the sofa, sees the papers and
picks them up.)
CRAWSHAW (contemptuously). "Watherston v. Towser--in re Great Missenden
Canal Company" Bah! (He tears them up and throws them into the fare. He
goes back to his writing-table and is seated there as VIOLA, followed by
MERITON, comes in.)
VIOLA. Father, Dick doesn't want to take the money, but I have told him
that of course he must. He must, mustn't he?
RICHARD. We needn't drag Robert into it, Viola.
CRAWSHAW. If Richard has the very natural feeling that it would be
awkward for me if there were two Wurzel-Flummerys in the House of
Commons, I should be the last to interfere with his decision. In any
case, I don't see what concern it is of yours, Viola.
VIOLA (surprised). But how can we get married if he doesn't take the
money?
CRAWSHAW (hardly understanding). Married? What does this mean, Richard?
RICHARD. I'm sorry it has come out like this. We ought to have told you
before, but anyhow we were going to have told you in a day or two. Viola
and I want to get married.
CRAWSHAW. And what did you want to get married on?
RICHARD (with a smile). Not very much, I'm afraid.
VIOLA. We're all right now, father, because we shall have fifty thousand
pounds.
RICHARD (sadly). Oh, Viola, Viola!
CRAWSHAW. But naturally this puts a very different complexion on
matters.
VIOLA. So of course he must take it, mustn't he, father?
CRAWSHAW. I can hardly suppose, Richard, that you expect me to entrust
my daughter to a man who is so little provident for himself that he
throws away fifty thousand pounds because of some fanciful objection to
the name which goes with it.
RICHARD (in despair). You don't understand, Robert.
CRAWSHAW. I understand this, Richard. That if the name is good enough
for me, it should be good enough for you. You don't mind asking Viola to
take _your_ name, but you consider it an insult if you are asked to take
_my_ name.
RICHARD (miserably to VIOLA). Do you want to be Mrs. Wurzel-Flummery?
VIOLA. Well, I'm going to be Miss Wurzel-Flummery anyhow, darling.
RICHARD (beaten). Heaven help me! you'll make me take it. But you'll
never understand.
CRAWSHAW (stopping to administer comfort to him on his way out). Come,
come, Richard. (Patting him on the shoulder) I understand perfectly. All
that you were saying about money a little while ago--it's all perfectly
true, it's all just what I feel myself. But in practice we have to make
allowances sometimes. We have to sacrifice our ideals for--ah--others. I
shall be very proud to have you for a son-in-law, and to feel that there
will be the two of us in Parliament together upholding the honour of
the--ah--name. And perhaps now that we are to be so closely related, you
may come to feel some day that your views could be--ah--more adequately
put forward from _my_ side of the House.
RICHARD. Go on, Robert; I deserve it.
CRAWSHAW. Well, well! Margaret will be interested in our news. And you
must send that solicitor a line--or perhaps a telephone message would be
better. (He goes to the door and turns round just as he is going out.)
Yes, I think the telephone, Richard; it would be safer. [Exit.]
RICHARD (holding out his hands to VIOLA). Come here, Mrs.
Wurzel-Flummery.
VIOLA. Not Mrs. Wurzel-Flummery; Mrs. Dick. And soon, please, darling.
(She comes to him.)
RICHARD (shaking his head sadly at her). I don't know what I've done,
Viola. (Suddenly) But you're worth it. (He kisses her, and then says in
a low voice) And God help me if I ever stop thinking so!
[Enter MR. DENIS CLIFTON. He sees them, and walks about very tactfully
with his back towards them, humming to himself.]
RICHARD. Hullo!
CLIFTON (to himself). Now where did I put those papers? (He hums to
himself again.) Now where--oh, I beg your pardon! I left some papers
behind.
VIOLA. Dick, you'll tell him. (As she goes out, she says to CLIFTON)
Good-bye, Mr. Clifton, and thank you for writing such nice letters.
CLIFTON. Good-bye, Miss Crawshaw.
VIOLA. Just say it to see how it sounds.
CLIFTON. Good-bye, Miss Wurzel-Flummery.
VIOLA. (smiling happily). No, not Miss, Mrs.
[She goes out.]
CLIFTON. (looking in surprise from her to him). You don't mean--
RICHARD. Yes; and I'm taking the money after all, Mr. Clifton.
CLIFTON. Dear me, what a situation! (Thoughtfully to himself) I wonder
how a rough scenario would strike the managers.
RICHARD. Poor Mr. Clifton!
CLIFTON. Why poor?
RICHARD. You missed all the best part. You didn't hear what I said to
Crawshaw about money before you came.
CLIFTON (thoughtfully). Oh I was it very--(Brightening up) But I expect
Uncle Antony heard. (After a pause) Well, I must be getting on. I wonder
if you've noticed any important papers lying about, in connection with
the Great Missenden Canal Company--a most intricate case, in which my
clerk and I--(He has murmured himself across to the fireplace, and the
fragments of his important case suddenly catch his eye. He picks up one
of the fragments.) Ah, yes. Well, I shall tell my clerk that we lost the
case. He will be sorry. He had got quite fond of that canal. (He turns
to go, but first says to MERITON) So you're taking the money, Mr.
Meriton?
RICHARD. Yes.
CLIFTON. And Mr. Crawshaw too?
RICHARD. Yes.
CLIFTON (to himself as he goes out). They are both taking it. (He stops
and looks up to UNCLE ANTONY with a smile.) Good old Uncle Antony--he
knew--he knew! (MERITON stands watching him as he goes.)
THE LUCKY ONE
A PLAY IN THREE ACTS
CHARACTERS.
GERALD FARRINGDON.
BOB FARRINGDON (his elder brother).
SIR JAMES FARRINGDON (his father).
LADY FARRINGDON (his mother).
MISS FARRINGDON (his great-aunt).
PAMELA CAREY (his betrothed).
HENRY WENTWORTH (his friend).
THOMAS TODD (his friend).
LETTY HERBERT (his friend).
MASON (his old nurse).
ACT I. At SIR JAMES FARRINGDON'S in the country.
ACT II. A private hotel in Dover Street. Two months later.
ACT III. At SIR JAMES FARRINGDON'S again. Three months later.
ACT I
[SCENE.--The hall of SIR JAMES FARRINGDON'S house in the country.]
[It is a large and pleasantly unofficial sort of room, used as a
meeting-place rather than a resting place. To be in it pledges you to
nothing; whereas in the billiard-room you are presumably pledged to
billiards. The French windows at the back open on to lawns; the door on
the right at the back will take you into the outer hall; the door on
the left leads to the servants' quarters; the door on the right in front
will disclose other inhabited rooms to you. An oak gallery runs round
two sides of the hall and descends in broad and gentle stairs down the
right side of it. Four stairs from the bottom it turns round at right
angles and deposits you fairly in the hall. Entering in this way, you
will see immediately opposite to you the large open fireplace occupied
by a pile of unlit logs--for it is summer. There is a chair on each side
of the fireplace, but turned now away from it. In the left centre of the
hall there is a gate-legged table to which trays with drinks on them,
have a habit of finding their way; it is supported on each side by a
coffin-stool. A sofa, which will take two strangers comfortably and
three friends less comfortably, comes out at right angles to the
staircase, but leaves plenty of space between itself and the stool on
its side of the table. Beneath the window on the left of the French
windows is a small table on which letters and papers are put; beneath
the window on the other side is a writing-table. The walls are decorated
impartially with heads of wild animals and of Farringdons.]
[At the present moment the inhabitants of the hall are three. HENRY
WENTWORTH, a barrister between forty, and fifty, dressed in rather a
serious tweed suit, for a summer day, is on the sofa. THOMAS TODD,
an immaculate young gentleman of twenty-five, is half-sitting on the
gate-legged table with one foot on the ground and the other swinging. He
is dressed in a brown flannel coat and white trousers, shoes and socks,
and he has a putter in his hand indicative of his usual line of thought.
The third occupant is the Butler, who, in answer to TOMMY'S ring, has
appeared with the drinks.]
[The time is about four o'clock on a June afternoon.]
TOMMY (to the Butler). Thanks, James; just leave it here. [Exit Butler.]
Whisky or lemonade, Wentworth?
WENTWORTH. Neither, thanks, Tommy.
TOMMY. Well, I will. (He pours himself out some lemonade and takes a
long drink.) I should have thought you would have been thirsty, driving
down from London a day like this. (He finishes his drink.) Let's see,
where was I up to? The sixth, wasn't it?
WENTWORTH. The sixth, Tommy. (With resignation
|
ING." The word exploded in rapture. "Nothing like it ever known in
the proprietary trade. Wait till you see the shop."
"That will be soon, won't it, sir? I think I've loafed quite long
enough."
"You're only twenty-five," his father defended him. "It isn't as if
you'd been idling. Your four years abroad have been just so much
capital. Educational capital, I mean. I've got plenty of the other kind,
for both of us. You don't need to go into the business unless you want
to."
"Being an American, I suppose I've got to go to work at something."
"Not necessarily."
"You don't want me to live on you all my life, though, I suppose."
"Well, I don't want you to want me to want you to," returned the other,
laughing. "But there's no hurry."
"To tell the truth, I'm rather bored with doing nothing. And if I can be
of any use to you in the business--"
"You're ready to resume the partnership," his father concluded the
sentence for him. "That was the foundation of it all; the old days when
I did the'spieling' and you took in the dollars. How quick your little
hands were! Can you remember it? The smelly smoke of the torches, and
the shadows chasing each other across the crowds below. And to think
what has grown out of it. God, Boyee! It's a miracle," he exulted.
"It isn't very clear in my memory. I used to get pretty sleepy, I
remember," said the son, smiling.
"Poor Boyee! Sometimes I hated the life, for you. But there was nobody
to leave you with; and you were all I had. Anyway, it's turned out well,
hasn't it?"
"That remains to be seen for me, doesn't it? I'm rather at the start of
things."
"Most youngsters would be content with an unlimited allowance, and the
world for a playground."
"One gets tired of playing. _And_ of globe-trotting."
"Good! Do you think you can make Worthington feel like home?"
"How can I tell, sir? I haven't spent two weeks altogether in the place
since I entered college eight years ago."
"Did it ever strike you that I'd carefully planned to keep you away from
here, and that our periods of companionship have all been abroad or at
summer places?"
"Yes."
"You've never spoken of it."
"No."
"Good boy! Now I'll tell you why. I wanted to be absolutely established
before I brought you back here. Not in business, alone. That came long
ago. There have been obstacles, in other ways. They're all overcome.
To-day we come pretty near to being king-pins in this town, you and I,
Hal. Do you feel like a prince entering into his realm?"
"Rather more like a freshman entering college," said the other,
laughing. "It isn't the town, it's the business that I have misgivings
about."
"Misgivings? How's that?" asked the father quickly.
"What I can do in it."
"Oh, that. My doubts are whether it's the best thing for you."
"Don't you want me to go into it, Dad?"
"Of course I want you with me, Boyee. But--well, frank and flat, I don't
know whether it's genteel enough for you."
"Genteel?" The younger Surtaine repeated the distasteful adjective with
surprise.
"Some folks make fun of it, you know. It's the advertising that makes it
a fair mark. 'Certina,' they say. 'That's where he made his money.
Patent-medicine millions.' I don't mind it. But for you it's different."
"If the money is good enough for me to spend, it's good enough for me to
earn," said Hal Surtaine a little grandiloquently.
"Humph! Well, the business is a big success, and I want you to be a big
success. But that doesn't mean that I want to combine the two. Isn't
there anything else you've ever thought of turning to?"
"I've got something of a leaning toward your profession, Dad."
"My prof--oh, you mean medicine."
"Yes."
"Nothing in it. Doctors are a lot of prejudiced pedants and hypocrites.
Not one in a thousand is more than an inch wide. What started you on
that?"
"I hardly know. It was just a notion. I think the scientific and
sociological side is what appeals to me. But my interest is only
theoretical."
"That's very well for a hobby. Not as a profession. Here we are, half an
hour late, as usual."
The sudden and violent bite of the brakes, a characteristic operation of
that mummy among railroads, the Mid-State and Great Muddy River,
commonly known as the "Mid-and-Mud," flung forward in an involuntary
plunge the incautious who had arisen to look after their things. Hal
Surtaine found himself supporting the weight of a fortuitous citizen who
had just made his way up the aisle.
"Thank you," said the stranger in a dry voice. "You're the prodigal son
of whom we've heard such glowing forecast, I presume."
"Well met, Mr. Pierce," called Dr. Surtaine's jovial voice. "Yes, that's
my son, Harrington, you're hanging to. Hal, this is Mr. Elias M. Pierce,
one of the men who run Worthington."
Releasing his burden Hal acknowledged the introduction. Elias M. Pierce,
receding a yard or so into perspective, revealed himself as a spare,
middle-aged man who looked as if he had been hewn out of a block,
square, and glued into a permanent black suit. Under his palely sardonic
eye Hal felt that he was being appraised, and in none too amiable a
spirit.
"A favorite pleasantry of your father's, Mr. Surtaine," said Pierce.
"What became of Douglas? Oh, here he is."
A clean-shaven, rather floridly dressed man came forward, was introduced
to Hal, and inquired courteously whether he was going to settle down in
Worthington.
"Probably depends on how well he likes it," cut in the dry Mr. Pierce.
"You might help him decide. I'm sure William would be glad to have you
lunch with him one day this week at the Huron Club, Mr. Surtaine."
Somewhat surprised and a little annoyed at this curiously vicarious
suggestion of hospitality, the newcomer hesitated, although Douglas
promptly supported the offer. Before he had decided what to reply, his
father eagerly broke in.
"Yes, yes. You must go, Hal," he said, apparently oblivious of the fact
that he had not been included in the invitation.
"I'll try to be there, myself," continued Pierce, in a flat tone of
condescension. "Douglas represents me, however, not only legally but in
other matters that I'm too busy to attend to."
"Mr. Pierce is president of the Huron Club," explained Dr. Surtaine.
"It's our leading social organization. You'll meet our best business men
there." And Hal had no alternative but to accept.
Here William Douglas turned to speak to Dr. Surtaine. "The Reverend
Norman Hale has been looking for you. It is some minor hitch about
that Mission matter, I believe. Just a little diplomacy wanted. He
said he'd call to see you day after to-morrow."
"Meaning more money, I suppose," said Dr. Surtaine. Then, more loudly:
"Well, the business can stand it. All right. Send him along."
With Hal close on his heels he stepped from the car. But Douglas,
having the cue from his patron, took the younger man by the arm and
drew him aside.
"Come over and meet some of our fair citizens," he said. "Nothing like
starting right."
The Pierce motor car, very large, very quietly complete and elegant,
was waiting near at hand, and in it a prematurely elderly, subdued
nondescript of a woman, and a pretty, sensitive, sensuous type of
brunette, almost too well dressed. To Mrs. Pierce and Miss Kathleen
Pierce, Hal was duly presented, and by them graciously received. As
he stood there, bareheaded, gracefully at ease, smiling up into the
interested faces of the two ladies, Dr. Surtaine, passing to his own
car to await him, looked back and was warmed with pride and gratitude
for this further honorarium to his capital stock of happiness, for he
saw already in his son the assurance of social success, and, on the
hour's reckoning, summed him up. And since we are to see much of
Harrington Surtaine, in evil chance and good, and see him at times
through the eyes of that shrewd observer and capitalizer of men, his
father, the summing-up is worth our present heed, for all that it is
to be considerably modified in the mind of its proponent, as events
develop. This, then, is Dr. Surtaine's estimate of his beloved
"Boyee," after a year of separation.
"A little bit of a prig. A little bit of a cub. Just a _little_ mite
of a snob, too, maybe. But the right, solid, clean stuff underneath.
And my son, thank God! _My_ son all through."
CHAPTER III
ESMÉ
Hal saw her first, vivid against the lifeless gray of the cement wall,
as he turned away from the Pierce car. A little apart from the human
current she stood, still and expectant. As if to point her out as the
chosen of gods and men, the questing sun, bursting in triumph through a
cloud-rift, sent a long shaft of gold to encompass and irradiate her. To
the end, whether with aching heart or glad, Hal was to see her thus, in
flashing, recurrent visions; a slight, poised figure, all gracious
curves and tender consonances, with a cluster of the trailing arbutus,
that first-love of the springtide, clinging at her breast. The breeze
bore to him the faint, wild, appealing fragrance which is the very
breath and soul of the blossom's fairy-pink.
Half-turning, she had leaned a little, as a flower leans, to the warmth
of the sunlight, uplifting her face for its kiss. She was not beautiful
in any sense of regularity of outline or perfection of feature, so much
as lovely, with the lustrous loveliness which defiantly overrides the
lapse of line and proportion, and imperiously demands the homage of
every man born of woman. Chill analysis might have judged the mouth,
with its delicate, humorous quirk at the corners, too large; the chin
too broad, for all its adorable baby dimple; the line of the nose too
abrupt, the wider contours lacking something of classic exactitude. But
the chillest analysis must have warmed to enthusiasm at the eyes;
wide-set, level, and of a tawny hazel, with strange, wine-brown lights
in their depths, to match the brownish-golden sheen of the hair, where
the sun glinted from it. As it were a higher power of her physical
splendor, there emanated from the girl an intensity and radiance of joy
in being alive and lovely.
Involuntarily Hal Surtaine paused as he approached her. Her glance fell
upon him, not with the impersonal regard bestowed upon a casual
passer-by, but with an intent and brightening interest,--the thrill of
the chase, had he but known it,--and passed beyond him again. But in
that brief moment, the conviction was borne in upon him that sometime,
somewhere, he had looked into those eyes before. Puzzled and eager he
still stared, until, with a slight flush, she moved forward and passed
him. At the head of the stairs he saw her greet a strongly built,
grizzled man; and then became aware of his father beckoning to him from
the automobile.
"Bewitched, Hal?" said Dr. Surtaine as his son came to him.
"Was I staring very outrageously, sir?"
"Why, you certainly looked interested," returned the older man,
laughing. "But I don't think you need apologize to the young lady. She's
used to attention. Rather lives on it, I guess."
The tone jarred on Hal. "I had a queer, momentary feeling that I'd seen
her before," he said.
"Don't you recall where?"
"No," said Hal, startled. "_Do_ I know her?"
"Apparently not," taunted the other good-humoredly. "You should know.
Hers is generally considered a face not difficult to remember."
"Impossible to forget!"
"In that case it must be that you haven't seen her before. But you will
again. And, then look out, Boy-ee. Danger ahead!"
"How's that, sir?"
"You'll see for yourself when you meet her. Half of the boys in town are
crazy over her. She eats 'em alive. Can't you tell the man-killer type
when you see it?"
"Oh, that's all in the game, isn't it?" returned Hal lightly. "So long
as she plays fair. And she looks like a girl of breeding and standards."
"All of that. Esmé Elliot is a lady, so far as that goes. But--well, I'm
not going to prejudice you. Here she comes now."
"Who is it with her?"
"Her uncle, Dr. Elliot. He doesn't altogether approve of us--me, I
mean."
Uncle and niece were coming directly toward them now, and Hal watched
her approach with a thrill of delight in her motion. It was a study in
harmonies. She moved like a cloud before the wind; like a ship upon the
high seas; like the swirl of swift waters above hidden depths. As the
pair passed to their car, which stood next to Dr. Surtaine's, the girl
glanced up and nodded, with a brilliant smile, to the doctor, who
returned to the salutation an extra-gallant bow.
"You seem to be friends," commented Hal, somewhat amused.
"That was more for you than for me. But the fair Esmé can always spare
one of those smiles for anything that wears trousers."
Hal moved uneasily. He felt a sense of discord. As he cast about for a
topic to shift to, the Elliot car rolled ahead slowly, and once more he
caught the woodsy perfume of the pink bloom. Strangely and satisfyingly
to his quickened perceptions, it seemed to express the quality of the
wearer. Despite her bearing of worldly self-assurance, despite the
atmosphere of modishness about her, there was in her charm something
wild and vivid, vernal and remote, like the arbutus which, alone among
flowers, keeps its life-secret virgin and inviolate, resisting all
endeavors to make it bloom except in its own way and in its own chosen
places.
CHAPTER IV
THE SHOP
Certina had found its first modest home in Worthington on a side street.
As the business grew, the staid tenement which housed it expanded and
drew to itself neighboring buildings, until it eventually gave way to
the largest, finest, and most up-to-date office edifice in the city.
None too large, fine, or modern was this last word in architecture for
the triumphant nostrum and the minor medical enterprises allied to it.
For though Certina alone bore the name and spread the fame and features
of its inventor abroad in the land, many lesser experiments had bloomed
into success under the fertilizing genius of the master-quack.
Inanimate machinery, when it runs sweetly, gives forth a definite
tone, the bee-song of work happily consummated. So this great human
mechanism seemed, to Harrington Surtaine as he entered the realm of
its activities, moving to music personal to itself. Through its wide
halls he wandered, past humming workrooms, up spacious stairways,
resonant to the tread of brisk feet, until he reached the fifth floor
where cluster the main offices. Here through a succession of open
doors he caught a glimpse of the engineer who controlled all these
lively processes, leaning easily back from his desk, fresh, suavely
groomed, smiling, an embodiment of perfect satisfaction. Before Dr.
Surtaine lay many sheaves of paper, in rigid order. A stenographer sat
in a far corner, making notes. From beyond a side door came the
precise, faint clicking of a typewriter. The room possessed an
atmosphere of calm and poise; but not of restfulness. At once and
emphatically it impressed the visitor with a sense that it was a place
where things were done, and done efficiently.
Upon his son's greeting, Dr. Surtaine whirled in his chair.
"Come down to see the old slave at work, eh?" he said.
"Yes, sir." Hal's hand fell on the other's shoulder, and the Doctor's
fingers went up to it for a quick pressure. "I thought I'd like to see
the wheels go 'round."
"You've come to the right spot. This is the good old cash-factory, and
yours truly is the man behind the engine. The State, I'm It, as Napoleon
said to Louis the Quince. Where McBeth sits is the head of the table."
"In other words, a one-man business."
"That's the secret. There's nothing in this shop that I can't do, and
don't do, every now and then, just to keep my hand in. I can put more
pull into an ad. to-day than the next best man in the business. Modesty
isn't my besetting sin, you see, Hal."
"Why should it be? Every brick in this building would give the lie to
it."
"Say every frame on these four walls," suggested Dr. Surtaine with an
expansive gesture.
Following this indication, Hal examined the decorations. On every side
were ordinary newspaper advertisements, handsomely mounted, most of them
bearing dates on brass plates. Here and there appeared a circular, or a
typed letter, similarly designated.
Above Dr. Surtaine's desk was a triple setting, a small advertisement, a
larger one, and a huge full-newspaper-page size, each embodying the same
figure, that of a man half-bent over, with his hand to his back and a
lamentable expression on his face.
Certain strongly typed words fairly thrust themselves out of the
surrounding print: "Pain--Back--Take Care--Means Something--Your
Kidneys." And then in dominant presentment--
CERTINA
CURES.
"What do you think of Old Lame-Boy?" asked Dr. Surtaine.
"From an æsthetic point of view?"
"Never mind the æsthetics of it. 'Handsome is as handsome does.'"
"What has that faded beauty done, then?"
"Carried many a thousand of our money to bank for us, Boyee. That's the
ad. that made the business."
"Did you design it?"
"Every word and every line, except that I got a cheap artist to touch up
the drawing a little. Then I plunged. When that copy went out, we had
just fifty thousand dollars in the world, you and I. Before it had been
running three months, I'd spent one hundred thousand dollars more than
we owned, in the newspapers, and had to borrow money right and left to
keep the manufacturing and bottling plant up to the orders. It was a
year before we could see clear sailing, and by that time we were pretty
near quarter of a million to the good. Talk about ads. that pull! It
pulled like a mule-team and a traction engine and a fifty-cent painless
dentist all in one. I'm still using that copy, in the kidney season."
"Do kidneys have seasons?"
"Kidney troubles do."
"I'd have thought such diseases wouldn't depend on the time of year."
"Maybe they don't, actually," admitted the other. "Maybe they're just
crowded out of the public mind by the pressure of other sickness in
season, like rheumatism in the early winter, and pneumonia in the late.
But there's no doubt that the kidney season comes in with the changes
of the spring. That's one of my discoveries, too. I tell you, Boyee,
I've built my success on things like that. It's psychology: that's what
it is. That's what you've got to learn, if you're going into the
concern."
"I'm ready, Dad. It sounds interesting. More so than I'd have thought."
"Interesting! It's the very heart and core of the trade." Dr. Surtaine
leaned forward, to tap with an earnest finger on his son's knee, a
picture of expository enthusiasm. "Here's the theory. You see, along
about March or April people begin to get slack-nerved and out-of-sortsy.
They don't know what ails 'em, but they think there's something. Well,
one look at that ad. sets 'em wondering if it isn't their kidneys. After
wonder comes worry. He's the best little worrier in the trade, Old
Lame-Boy is. He just pesters folks into taking proper care of
themselves. They get Certina, and we get their dollars. And they get
their money's worth, too," he added as an afterthought for Hal's
benefit, "for it's a mighty good thing to have your kidneys tonicked up
at this time of year."
"But, Dad," queried Hal, with an effort of puzzled reminiscence, "in the
old days Certina wasn't a kidney remedy, was it?"
"Not specially. It's always been _good_ for the kidneys. Good for
everything, for that matter. Besides, the formula's been changed."
"Changed? But the formula's the vital thing, isn't it?"
"Yes, yes. Of course. Certainly it's the vital thing: certainly. But,
you see,--well,--new discoveries in medicine and that sort of thing."
"You've put new drugs in?"
"Yes: I've done that. Buchu, for instance. That's supposed to be good
for the kidneys. Dropped some things out, too. Morphine got sort of a
bad name. The muckrakers did that with their magazine articles."
"Of course I don't pretend to know about such things, Dad. But morphine
seems a pretty dangerous thing for people to take indiscriminately."
"Well, it's out. There ain't a grain of it in Certina to-day."
"I'm glad of it."
"Oh, I don't know. It's useful in its place. For instance, you can't run
a soothing-syrup without it. But when the Pure Food Law compelled us to
print the amount of morphine on the label, I just made up my mind that
I'd have no government interference in the Certina business, so I
dropped the drug."
"Did the law hurt our trade much?"
"Not so far as Certina goes. I'm not even sure it didn't help. You see,
now we can print 'Guaranteed under the U.S. Food and Drugs Act' on every
bottle. In fact we're required to."
"What does the guaranty mean?"
"That whatever statement may be on the label is accurate. That's all.
But the public takes it to mean that the Government officially
guarantees Certina to do everything we claim for it," chuckled Dr.
Surtaine. "It's a great card. We've done more business under the new
formula than we ever did under the old."
"What is the formula now?"
"Prying into the secrets of the trade?" chuckled the elder man.
"But if I'm coming into the shop, to learn--"
"Right you are, Boyee," interrupted his father buoyantly. "There's the
formula for making profits." He swept his hand about in a spacious
circle, grandly indicating the advertisement-bedecked walls. "There's
where the brains count. Come along," he added, jumping up; "let's take a
turn around the joint."
Every day, Dr. Surtaine explained to his son, he made it a practice to
go through the entire plant.
"It's the only way to keep a business up to mark. Besides, I like to
know my people."
Evidently he did know his people and his people knew and strongly liked
him. So much Hal gathered from the offhand and cheerily friendly
greetings which were exchanged between the head of the vast concern and
such employees, important or humble, as they chanced to meet in their
wanderings. First they went to the printing-plant, the Certina Company
doing all its own printing; then to what Dr. Surtaine called "the
literary bureau."
"Three men get out all our circulars and advertising copy," he explained
in an aside. "One of 'em gets five thousand a year; but even so I have
to go over all his stuff. If I could teach him to write ads. like I do
it myself, I'd pay him ten thousand--yes, twenty thousand. I'd have to,
to keep him. The circulars they do better; but I edit those, too. What
about that name for the new laxative pills, Con? Hal, I want you to meet
Mr. Conover, our chief ad.-man."
Conover, a dapper young man with heavy eye-glasses, greeted Hal with
some interest, and then turned to the business in hand.
"What'd you think of 'Anti-Pellets'?" he asked. "Anti, opposed to, you
know. In the sub-line, tell what they're opposed to: indigestion,
appendicitis, and so on."
"Don't like it," returned Dr. Surtaine abruptly. "Anti-Ralgia's played
that to death. Lemme think, for a moment."
Down he plumped into Conover's chair, seized a pencil and made tentative
jabs at a sheet of paper. "Pellets, pellets," he muttered. Then, in a
kind of subdued roar, "I've got it! I've got it, Con! 'Pro-Pellets.'
Tell people what they're for, not what they're against. Besides, the
name has got the idea of pro-pulsion. See? Pro-Pellets, pro-pel!" His
big fist shot forward like a piston-rod. "Just the idea for a laxative.
Eh?"
"Fine!" agreed Conover, a little ruefully, but with genuine
appreciation of the fitness of the name. "I wish I'd thought of it."
"You did--pretty near. Anyway, you made me think of it. Anti-Pellets,
Pro-Pellets: it's just one step. Like as not you'd have seen it yourself
if I hadn't butted in. Now, go to it, and figure out your series on
that."
With kindly hands he pushed Conover back into his chair, gave him a
hearty pat on the shoulder, and passed on. Hal began to have an inkling
of the reasons for his father's popularity.
"Have we got other medicines besides Certina?" he asked.
"Bless you, yes! This little laxative pills business I took over from a
concern that didn't have the capital to advertise it. Across the hall
there is the Sure Soother department. That's a teething syrup: does
wonders for restless babies. On the floor below is the Cranicure Mixture
for headaches, Rub-it-in Balm for rheumatism and bruises, and a couple
of small side issues that we're not trying to push much. We're handling
Stomachine and Relief Pills from here, but the pills are made in
Cincinnati, and we market 'em under another trade name."
"Stomachine is for stomach troubles, I assume," said Hal. "What are the
Relief Pills?"
"Oh, a female remedy," replied his father carelessly. "Quite a booming
little trade, too. Take a look at the Certina collection of
testimonials."
In a room like a bank vault were great masses of testimonial letters,
all listed and double-catalogued by name and by disease.
"Genuine. Provably genuine, every one. There's romance in some of 'em.
And gratitude; good Lord! Sometimes when I look 'em over, I wonder I
don't run for President of the United States on a Certina platform."
From the testimonial room they went to the art department where Dr.
Surtaine had some suggestions to make as to bill-board designs.
"You'll never get another puller like Old Lame-Boy," Hal heard the head
designer say with a chuckle, and his father reply: "If I could I'd start
another proprietary as big as Certina."
"Where does that lead to?" inquired Hal, as they approached a side
passage sloping slightly down, and barred by a steel door.
"The old building. The manufacturing department is over there."
"Compounding the medicine, you mean?"
"Yes. Bottling and shipping, too."
"Aren't we going through?"
"Why, yes: if you like. You won't find much to interest you, though."
Nor, to Hal's surprise, did Dr. Surtaine himself seem much concerned
with this phase of the business. Apparently his hand was not so close in
control here as in the other building. The men seemed to know him less
well.
"All this pretty well runs itself," he explained negligently.
"Don't you have to keep a check on the mixing, to make sure it's right?"
"Oh, they follow the formula. No chance for error."
They walked amidst chinking trucks, some filled with empty, some with
filled and labeled bottles, until they reached the carton room where
scores of girls were busily inserting the bottles, together with folded
circulars and advertising cards, into pasteboard boxes. At the far end
of this room a pungent, high-spiced scent, as of a pickle-kitchen with a
fortified odor underlying it, greeted the unaccustomed nose of the
neophyte.
"Good!" he sniffed. "How clean and appetizing it smells!"
Enthusiasm warmed the big man's voice once more.
"Just what it is, too!" he exclaimed. "Now you've hit on the second big
point in Certina's success. It's easy to take. What's the worst thing
about doctors' doses? They're nasty. The very thought of 'em would gag a
cat. Tell people that here's a remedy better than the old medicine and
pleasant to the taste, and they'll take to it like ducks to water.
Certina is the first proprietary that ever tasted good. Next to Old
Lame-Boy, it's my biggest idea."
"Are we going into the mixing-room?" asked his son.
"If you like. But you'll see less than you smell."
So it proved. A heavy, wet, rich vapor shrouded the space about a huge
cauldron, from which came a sound of steady plashing. Presently an
attendant gnome, stripped to the waist, appeared, nodded to Dr.
Surtaine, called to some one back in the mist, and shortly brought Hal a
small glass brimming with a pale-brown liquid.
"Just fresh," he said. "Try it."
"My kidneys are all right," protested Hal. "I don't need any medicine."
"Take it for a bracer. It won't hurt you," urged the gnome.
Hal looked at his father, and, at his nod, put his lips to the glass.
"Why, it tastes like spiced whiskey!" he cried.
"Not so far out of the way. Columbian spirits, caramel, cinnamon and
cardamom, and a touch of the buchu. Good for the blues. Finish it."
Hal did so and was aware of an almost instantaneous glow.
"Strong stuff, sir," he said to his father as they emerged into a
clearer atmosphere.
"They like it strong," replied the other curtly. "I give 'em what they
like."
The attendant gnome followed. "Mr. Dixon was looking for you, Dr.
Surtaine. Here he comes, now."
"Dixon's our chief chemist," explained Dr. Surtaine as a shabby,
anxious-looking man ambled forward.
"We're having trouble with that last lot of cascara, sir," said he
lugubriously.
"In the Number Four?"
"Yes, sir. It don't seem to have any strength."
"Substitute senna." So offhand was the tone that it sounded like a
suggestion rather than an order.
As the latter, however, the chemist contentedly took it.
"It'll cost less," he observed; "and I guess it'll do the work just as
well."
To Hal it seemed a somewhat cavalier method of altering a medical
formula. But his mind, accustomed to easy acceptance of the business
which so luxuriously supplied his wants, passed the matter over lightly.
"First-rate man, Dixon," remarked Dr. Surtaine as they passed along.
"College-bred, and all that. Boozes, though. I only pay him twenty-five
a week, and he's mighty glad to get it."
On the way back to the offices, they traversed the checking and
accounting rooms, the agency department, the great rows of desks whereat
the shipping and mailing were looked after, and at length stopped before
the door of a small office occupied by a dozen women. One of these, a
full-bosomed, slender, warm-skinned girl with a wealth of deep-hued,
rippling red hair crowning her small, well-poised head, rose and came to
speak to Dr. Surtaine.
"Did you get the message I sent you about Letter Number Seven?" she
asked.
"Hello, Milly," greeted the presiding genius, pleasantly. "Just what was
that about Number Seven?"
"It isn't getting results."
"No? Let's see it." Dr. Surtaine was as interested in this as he had
been casual about the drug alteration.
"I don't think it's personal enough," pursued the girl, handing him a
sheet of imitation typewriter print.
"Oh, you don't," said her employer, amused. "Maybe you could better it."
"I have," said the girl calmly. "You always tell us to make
suggestions. Mine are on the back of the paper."
"Good for you! Hal, here's the prettiest girl in the shop, and about the
smartest. Milly, this is my boy."
The girl looked up at Hal with a smile and brightened color. He was
suddenly interested and appreciative to see to what a vivid prettiness
her face was lighted by the raised glance of her swift, gray-green eyes.
"Are you coming into the business, Mr. Surtaine?" she asked composedly,
and with almost as proprietary an air as if she had said "our business."
"I don't know. Is it the sort of business you would advise a rather lazy
person to embark in, Miss--"
"Neal," she supplied; adding, with an illustrative glance around, upon
her busy roomful, all sorting and marking correspondence, "You see, I
only give advice by letter."
She turned away to answer one of the subordinates, and, at the same
time, Dr. Surtaine was called aside by a man with a shipping-bill.
Looking down the line of workers, Hal saw that each one was simply
opening, reading, and marking with a single stroke, the letters from a
distributing groove. To her questioner Milly Neal was saying, briskly:
"That's Three and Seven. Can't you see, she says she has spots before
her eyes. That's stomach. And the lameness in the side is kidneys. Mark
it 'Three pass to Seven.' There's a combination form for that."
"What branch of the work is this?" asked Hal, as she lifted her eyes to
his again.
"Symptom correspondence. This is the sorting-room."
"Please explain. I'm a perfect greenhorn, you know."
"You've seen the ads. of course. Nobody could help seeing them. They all
say, 'Write to Professor Certain'--the trade name, you know. It's the
regular stock line, but it does bring in the queries. Here's the
afternoon mail, now."
Hundreds upon hundreds of letters came tumbling from a bag upon the
receiving-table. All were addressed to "Prof." or "Dr." Certain.
"How can my father hope to answer all those?" cried Hal.
The girl surveyed him with a quaint and delicious derision. "He? You
don't suppose he ever sees them! What are _we_ here for?"
"You do the answering?"
"Practically all of it, by form-letters turned out in the printing
department. For instance, Letter One is coughs and colds; Two,
headaches; Three, stomach; and so on. As soon as a symp-letter is read
the girl marks it with the form-letter number, underscores the address,
and it goes across to the letter room where the right answer is mailed,
advising the prospect to take Certina. Orders with cash go direct to the
shipping department. If the symp-writer wants personal advice that the
form-letters don't give, I send the inquiry upstairs to Dr. De
|
a
challenge immediately replied to by the Royalist guns near Radway. Wilmot,
of Adderbury, made the first aggressive movement in a charge upon the
Parliamentarian right, and though some success seems to have attended it,
yet it can scarcely have been of so much importance as Clarendon the
Royalist historian[B] makes out, for he writes: "The left wing, commanded
by Wilmot, had a great success, though they had to charge in worse ground,
amongst hedges and through gaps and ditches which were lined with
musketeers. Sir A. Aston, with great courage and dexterity, beat off these
musketeers with his dragoons; and then the right wing of their horse 'was
easily dispersed, and fled the chase fearlessly.' The reserve, seeing none
of the enemy's horse left, thought there was nothing more to be done but
to pursue those that fled, and could not be contained by their commanders,
but with spurs and loose reins followed the chase which the left wing had
led them. Thus while victory was unquestionable, the King was left in
danger from the reserve of the Parliament, which, pretending to be
friends, broke in upon the foot, and did great execution." Certainly in
charge and counter charge at this stage of the attack, the
Parliamentarians show to no advantage, and the dispersal of the dragoons,
musketeers, and part of Fielding's horse, seems to have taken place, but
the subsequent successful charge of Balfour's and Stapleton's brigades
makes it clear that _they_ were not involved in any disaster.
On the right wing, soon after the time of Wilmot's charge near the Sun
Rising, Rupert's troops moved down the foot of the hill in the direction
of the Kineton road and towards Ramsay's horse, which advanced to meet
them. The Parliamentary general had lined the hedgerows on his flank with
musketeers, and had placed ranks of musketeers between his horse. But as
the cavaliers[3] swept down the slope a defect was visible in the
Parliamentarian ranks, and Sir Faithful Fortescue's Irish troop threw off
their orange scarves and deserted bodily, not quite soon enough, it seems,
to save themselves, for a score or so of saddles were emptied in the
onrush of Rupert's cavaliers. The roundhead ranks were disordered, for
the troops had fired their long pieces wildly, and scarcely waiting the
meeting, they fled, leaving the musketeers to be cut up. The troops of
cavaliers swept through them scattering and destroying all in their way;
then deflecting a little to the left they pressed back the mass of
fugitives upon the foot regiments of Essex, Mandeville and Chomley which
in turn were overthrown, and the artillery captured. Even Wharton's
regiment and Fairfax's reserve were hurled back. Ramsay, the cavalry
general, was carried for two miles in the melee, and with some of his
troopers found a way through the hostile lines to Banbury.[a] Rupert
continued in unsparing pursuit even into the streets of Kineton and as far
as Chadshunt. Thus was the left wing of Lord Essex's army dispersed,
though to reform for a later phase of the fight. After so much success the
baggage proved to be too attractive to the victors, and had the time
wasted in plundering been spent in an attack upon the rear of the
Parliamentarian army, then the reign of Charles Stuart might have had a
less tragic ending. But with all this, it must be borne in mind that the
incident of the rolling up of a wing was repeated in other battles of the
war which were more disastrous to the King's cause. Sir James Ramsay at a
Court Martial at St. Albans[Vn] in November of the same year made a
vindication of his conduct.
An amusing letter from Captain Kightley tells of this phase of the fight.
He admits that in part his own regiment ran away, and it seems to be
probable that Captain John Fiennes was in no better way, though in the
subsequent rally and attack upon Prince Rupert both did very good service.
The right wing of the Puritan forces had in the meantime become
aggressive. It was the beginning of the great turning movement which was
repeated in each of the great battles of the war by the Parliamentarians,
in fact, so evident at Naseby and Marston Moor, as to compel belief in
studied uniformity of plan. The abandonment or weakening of one wing, then
the use of all the weight of the other wing with the foot as a centre
pivot, to out-flank, attack, and crush in succession the opposing wing and
centre of the Royalist army. Balfore, Meldrum, and Stapleton's brigades
charged Wilmot's cavalry with such vigour that these were thrust back upon
the three regiments of pikemen, under Lord Carnarvon, and chased up the
hill side. Cannon balls and other remains of the fight found on the hill
slopes at Lower Westcote near the Sun Rising are evidence of this attack.
The infantry under Roberts and Constable having moved forward to aid in
the attack upon Carnarvon, now wheeled upon the King's centre, which soon
became the focus of a fierce and bloody fight, for the elated Roundhead
horse, after crushing in the Royalist left wing, hurled themselves also
upon the flanks of the nearest troops of the King's centre, and the
blue-coated Broughton horsemen had a busy time of it amongst the royalist
gunners as they rode through the battery. Earl Lindsay's Lincolnshire
regiment, which he had led pike in hand, received the brunt of the attack;
it was overpowered, and the unfortunate general left for dead with a
musket ball in his thigh. The Red Regiment moved up in support, only in
turn to be cut up and almost annihilated, and Lord Willoughby was made
prisoner also in the attempt to rescue his father the Earl. Then followed
a brilliant personal fight for the royal standard, but the Puritan
horseman Copley cut down Sir Edmund Verney, knight marshal of the King's
horse, and standard bearer, and secured the prize. The success of this
attack was largely brought about by the ruse alluded to, where,
"pretending to be friends," they broke in upon the King's regiments. If
it is true that they got so near as to shake hands, the business must have
been very simple. Verney had presentiment of his death, and the severed
hand clasping the standard shaft is said to be yet sadly searched for by
the ghost of Claydon House.[Vr] On the finger of the hand was a ring, a
king's gift. Nugent says about the standard's recapture: "The Royal
standard was taken by Mr. Young, one of Sir William Constable's ensigns,
and delivered by Lord Essex to his own Secretary, Chambers, who rode by
his side. Elated by the prize, the Secretary rode about, more proudly than
wisely, waving it round his head. Whereupon in the confusion, one of the
King's officers, Captain Smith, of the Lord John Stewart's troop, seeing
the standard captured, threw round him the orange scarf of a fallen
Parliamentarian, and riding in among the lines of his enemies, told the
Secretary that 'it were a shame that so honourable a trophy of war should
be borne by a penman.' To which suggestions the credulous guardian of this
honourable trophy consenting, surrendered it to the disguised cavalier,
who galloped back with it amain, and before evening received knighthood[4]
under its shadow."
Brooke's, Hollis', and Ballard's infantry, moved across part of the ground
abandoned by Ramsay's horse to attack the right flank of the King's
centre, an attack which soon becomes as disastrous to the Royalists as
that on the other flank where Lindsay has fallen. In fact, the regiments
of foot from the Parliamentary rear with Constable's infantry and
Stapleton's horse, made a combined assault upon the King's centre, which
they commenced breaking up. In vain were the royalist reserves hurried
forward. The Blue Regiment was cut off by Sir Arthur Haselrigge. Stapleton
made a dash, and the King, who had been watching the fickle fortunes of
his soldiers from a mound (now the King's Clump) near Radway, narrowly
escaped being made a prisoner. The timely interference of a body of
royalist horse--an interference not of sufficient weight to _stop_ the
tide of the Puritan attack, but only to stay it for a few moments--enabled
the King to gain the shelter of the hill, whither also the fragments of
some of his regiments are compelled to follow.
[Illustration: II
BATTLE OF EDGE HILL.
Advance of Hampden_Retreat of Rupert & King]
Meanwhile Rupert had been lost to sight in Kineton streets. When he
learned that the fortunes of the day were, in other parts of the field, in
full flow against his cause, he and his cavaliers re-formed for the
retreat. The place is still known as Prince Rupert's Headland. There was,
however, another factor to be taken into consideration. Some of Hampden's
green-coated soldiers, stimulated no doubt by the sounds of the fight, had
in the meantime come up from Stratford-on-Avon, and were prepared to
dispute Rupert's return. They also succeeded in re-forming many of the
fugitives, in which duty Captains Cromwell,[5] Nathaniel Fiennes and
Kightley, took part.[q] The guns and infantry opened fire upon the
retreating cavaliers, who had a hard fight to regain the hill butt, for
Stapleton's horse, after fighting along the whole of the Royalist line,
chased them home. Nevertheless, two of the royal regiments refused to be
beaten; falling back upon their guns, they made a stand, probably along
the line from Radway to Bullet Hill, and there, reinforced by Rupert's
returning troops, they held their ground, repulsing the Parliamentarian
attacks, and so says Fiennes,[PB] "horse and foot stood together against
horse and foot until night, when the Royalists retired up hill." It is
probably from this stage of the fight that Bullet Hill got its name. The
braided lovelock of many a cavalier who rode so exultingly down the hill
in the afternoon sunlight had a stain of a far deeper colour 'ere sunset,
and with the phase of the fight following the straggling return of
Rupert's Horse, the events of the day seem to have ended. The King would
have tried a final charge with some unbroken regiments to test once more
the fortunes of the day, but was with difficulty persuaded from so
perilous an enterprise.
Each side claims that only the night prevented a completely victorious
issue for its cause, but when we consider that the right wing and centre
of the King's army were disorganised, and in part driven up the hill, and
that the Parliamentarians were in possession of the battle ground, the
Royalists retaining possession only of the low ground from Radway to
Bullet Hill, it seems that the advantage rested on the Puritan side.
One[a] remained master of the field of battle, the other kept the London
road.
Amongst the several estimates of the slain, it is hard to say which is
nearest the truth. Clarendon gives the number as 5,000, two parts of whom
were Parliamentarian, and one part the King's, but the probability is
that it was nearer, a half of that number. Fiennes[PB] puts down the
losses acknowledged by the Royalists themselves as 2,000. Certainly the
records show that they were exceptionally heavy in officers, one writer
adducing as a reason that "the rebel officers had fleeter horses, so not
so many of them were slain." During the cold frosty night after the battle
the wounded must of necessity have been left exposed, inasmuch as the
fight stretched over many miles of country, and was continued until night;
nor do the Royalists appear to have been debarred from searching for their
wounded, as we learn by the succour of old Sir Gervase Scroop by his son.
The King's troops says Clarenden "had not the shelter of tree or hedge,
and after a very cold night spent on the field, without any refreshment of
victual or provision for the soldiers (for the country was so disaffected
that it not only sent no provisions, but many soldiers who straggled into
the villages for relief were knocked on the head by the common people),
the King found his troops very thin." The Parliamentarians, whose baggage
had been cut up by Rupert, could not have been in much better plight; some
of them, however, fired the Dassett Beacon, and the news of the conflict
was thus flashed across country to London. Though so much is recorded of
Mr. Wilmot's (afterwards Lord Rochester, of Adderbury,) position and work
during the day, nothing other than the mere statement is made of a far
greater leader, Spencer Compton, Earl of Northampton, than that he was at
Edge Hill, with some of the best disciplined men.[MW] It would seem that
the extended movement of the Royalist forces along the hill ridge in the
early part of the day was to give support to Compton Wynyate, or get aid
therefrom. It was but three miles distant. Whether any deflection of
Hampden's force moving from Stratford-on-Avon was made to mask or retard
Compton's men is mere surmise: the main part of Hampden's rear did not
reach the field until the Sunday midnight, when Essex got reinforced by a
regiment of horse and two of foot.
The story of successive campaigns, as in this the first fight, resolves
itself into the superiority of the heavy armament of the Parliamentarian
horse. The improved status of the men added greater force at a later date.
With all the dash, and all the value of the light horse of the King for
foray, when in the field the cavalier went down before the iron armed
horse of the Parliament's army.
On the following day, the two armies again drew up, the Parliamentarians
having in the early morning retired from the hill side towards
Kineton,[PB] but neither showed any disposition to renew the fight. Essex
was pressed to do so by some of his more impetuous officers, but wanted
the daring necessary for so bold a movement. Charles sent a messenger into
the rebel lines with a pardon for Earl Essex, which "messenger returned
with so great a sense of danger as not to have observed the number and
disposition of the Parliamentary forces." Later on, Essex retired to
Warwick with his troops, and Prince Rupert is reported to have followed,
but failed to overtake them, though it is stated that he destroyed many
wagons and carriages with munitions, &c. The reconnaissance appears to
have been otherwise fruitless, for the King at once marched southward, and
received the surrender of Banbury Castle, and also subsequently of
Broughton Castle. Lord Saye, Sir Wm. Cobb, of Adderbury, and John Doyley,
Esq., were not only proclaimed traitors, but were specially exempted from
the King's pardon.[y430]
The position of the graves in which the slain were buried is about 200
yards south of Thistle Farm, the ground bearing still the name of the
Grave Field, and a wych elm marks the site of one of the graves.
The part that Oliver Cromwell played in the struggle has not unnaturally
been the cause of much comment. Carlyle[q101] characteristically cuts the
Gordian knot with the statement, "Captain Cromwell _was_ present, and did
his duty, let angry Denzil say what he will."[6] Denzil Hollis's[o226]
charge that Cromwell purposely absented himself from the field may be
fairly set aside on the ground of malice, his enmity being openly shown,
and moreover it meets contradiction in Cromwell's own statement:[Q249] "At
my first going out into this engagement, I saw our men were beaten at
every hand. I did indeed." Neither can Dugdale's[C] account of Cromwell's
hurried descent from a church steeple by means of the bell rope, when he
saw the Parliamentarian disaster, be received in the face of the letter
written by Captain Nathaniel Fiennes,[PB] which ends thus: "These persons
underwritten were all of the Right wing and never stirred from their
Troops, but they and their Troops fought till the last minute. The Lord
Generall's Regiment--Sir Philip Stapleton, Captain Draper, Serjeant Major
Gunter, Lord Brookes, Captain Sheffield, Captain Temple, Captain Cromwell;
Sir William Belfore's Regiment--Sir William Belfore, Serjeant Major
Hurrey, Lord Grey, Captain Nathaniell Fiennes, Sir Arthur Hasilrigge,
Captain Longe." It is equally curious that Captain Oliver Cromwell, of
Troop Sixty-Seven,[q100] was at Edge Hill in the place he invariably
occupied during the civil war, viz., with the victorious wing, and that
the history of the fluctuations of the fight should be repeated in so many
of the great battles, Naseby and Marston Moor to wit.
A most true and Exact
RELATION
OF
BOTH THE BATTELS FOUGHT BY
HIS EXCELLENCY
and his Forces against the bloudy Cavelliers.
The one on the 23 of _October_ last near _Keynton_
below _Edge_-Hill in _Warwickshire_,
the other at _Worcester_ by
Colonell _Brown_, Captain _Nathaniel_, and
_John Fiennes_, and
Colonell _Sands_ and some others.
Wherein the particulars of each Battel is punctually set
down at large for the full satisfaction of all people, with
the Names of the Commanders and Regiments that valiently
stood it out.
Also the number and Names of the Chief Commanders that were
slain on both sides: All which is here faithfully set down
without favour or partiality to either Army.
Written by a worthy Captain Master _Nathaniel Fiennes_, And
commanded to be Printed.
London, Printed for Joseph Hunscott
Novem. 9. 1642.
Mr. _Nathaniel Fiennes_ his Letter to his Father.
MY LORD,
I have sent to your Lordship a Relation of the last Battell fought in
_Keynton_ Field, which I shewed to the Generall and Lievtenant Generall of
the Horse, and divers Colonels and Officers, and they conceive it to be
right and according to the truth: For the ill writing of it, I desire that
your Lordship would excuse me, for I had not time to write it over again;
yet I suppose it may be read, and your Lordship may cause it to be written
faire, if your Lordship thinke it worth so much. For that which your
Lordship writeth concerning my brother _John_, is a most false and
malicious slander which that fellow hath raised upon him, that he should
be the first man that fled on the left wing, when as none of your
Lordship's sonnes were in the left wing, and my brother _John_ was not at
all in the field while the fight was; for by occasion that I intreated him
on Saturday morning, when we marched towards _Keynton_ (little dreaming of
a Battell the next day) to go to _Evesham_ (which was but three miles from
the quarter where our Troops lay, before they marched with the Army to
_Keynton_) for to take some Arms that were come thither the night before,
for such of our men as wanted Arms, and so to come after to the Rendevous
at _Keynton_. He could not come thither on Saturday with those men of both
Troops which went backe with him to _Evesham_ for their Arms, but the next
day he came thither between three or foure of the clock; at which time our
left wing being defeated, many of the Runaways met with him as he was
coming to the Army; and happily among the rest, this fellow that raised
this report; for that _Vivers_ which your Lordship mentioneth, was not
Captain _Vivers_ (for he was in _Banbury_) but a brother of his that was
in one of Colonell _Goodwin's_ Troops, and as I heard my brother say, he
saw him there; and I heard my Lord Generall say, that _Vivers_ was one of
the first that ran away: Now it seemes that those men that ran away so
timely, seeing my brother before them, reported as if he had fled from the
Army, which is so contrary to the truth, that he tooke a great deale of
pains to make his own men and Captain Vivers' men which were with him to
stand, and to stop the Runaways that came from the Army, and this he did,
and made two or three stands, and at length gathered a pretty body upon a
hill together, and with them (there being Captain Keightlye's, and Captain
Cromwell's Troope, at length came to them also) he marched towards the
Town; and hearing the enemy was there (as indeed they were with the
greatest part of their horse they made a stand, and sending forth their
Scouts to give them intelligence where the enemy and where our Forces
were, at length they came to knowledge of Colonell _Hampden's_ Brigado
that was coming another way to the Town, and so joyning themselves unto
them, they came to the Army together. My Lord Generall is very sensible of
the wrong that this fellow hath done my brother, and will inquire after
him to have him punished, as he hath written to my Lord _Wharton_
concerning him, to let you know so much. Master _Bond_ whom he citeth for
one of his authors, denies that ere he spake to my brother at all, or that
he saw any such thing of flying, as that base fellow reporteth, and this
your Lordship shall have under his hand. It had been a strange thing if my
brother that shewed so much courage at _Worcester_, should have been so
faint-hearted on this occasion; But I strange that men will give credit to
every idle fellow; if they will, they may heare that my Lord Generall and
all the Officers, every one of them ran away. But my Lord, as your
Lordship hath great cause to be thankfull, together with us, to God, that
in all these late actions of danger, hath preserved the persons and lives
of all your three Sons, so also for preserving their honors, and the honor
of Religion; that in this cause they have never flinsht, but have all of
them in their severall places and conditions been as forward to hazard
their persons into the midst of their's and God's enemies as any whosever.
And of the truth of this (though we do not vapour so much as some do)
there are enough, and those very honorable witnesses that can and will
affirm it as well as
_Your Lordship's most obedient Son_,
NATHANIEL FIENNES.
A most true Relation of the Battell fought by his Excellency and his
Forces against the bloudy Cavalliers.
The two and twentieth of _October_, being _Saturday_, his Excellency the
Earl of _Essex_ came with twelve regiments of Foot, and two and forty
Troops of Horse, and a part of the Ammunition and Artillery, to _Keynton_,
a little Market Toun, almost in the mid-way between _Stratford_ upon the
Avon, and _Banbury_, there being three Regiments of Foot, and nine or ten
Troops of Horse, with seven Pieces of Cannon, and good store of Ammunition
coming after, together with six Companies of Dragooners; the Dragooners,
and two of the Regiments of Foot, with the Cannon, and nine or ten Troops
of Horse, came to _Keynton_ on _Sunday_ night, a little before the day
went down; The Regiment, with the Lord Rochfords, came not into the Army
till Monday in the afternoon. The King's Army was lodged on Saturday
night, about Croprede and Edgecot, some 6 or 7 miles from _Keynton_; and
having, no doubt, got intelligence that part of our Army, and Artillery,
with a great part of our Ammunition was behinde us, they thought they
could not have a better opportunity to fight with our Army, especially if
they could get the advantage of the hill before us, it being a very high
and steep assent, which if they were put to the worst might serve them for
a Retreat, as it did, it being that which saved them, their Carriages, and
the Colours of their Regiments of Foot that ran away; for of those that
fought it out, we tooke most of them, excepting onely those two Regiments
that stood it out till night, and went off with their horse in an orderly
way. The enemy having resolved to give us Battell, and no whit doubting of
the Victory, they being more then we were, both in horse and foot (a
considerable Brigado of our Army being behinde) and having a great opinion
of the resolution of their Souldiers, wherein they were partly deceived,
and partly not, as it hapned also on our side; They returned back towards
_Edge Hill_, and made all possible speed to gain the hill before us (which
they did, by reason that his Excellency had not timely intelligence of
their designe, otherwise we were much neerer the hill, and might have been
possessed of it before them). And by that time our Army was drawn out of
the Town about a mile and half towards the hill, the Dragooners, and some
of the enemie's Foot were coming down the hill; Their horse having gotten
down most of them on their right hand, and placed themselves in a fair
Meadow, at the bottom of the hill; Their Cannon and Ammunition, with the
Rere of their foot, were something long ere they came down. And if we had
charged them before their Cannon and all their Foot were come down, we
might have had a great advantage: but they got all down into the Meadow at
the foot of the hill, and there drew up their Army very handsomely, their
horse being on their right Wing for the most part, and their Dragooners,
and some few Troops of horse on their left Wing; some of their prisoners
said they had four Regiments of horse on that wing also; but I could never
speak with any of our Army, that either saw any such number of horse, or
could tell what they did, unlesse they went directly to _Keynton_, to
plunder the Carriages without charging our Army at all.
For our Army, it was drawn up upon a little rising ground, and being
amongst the horse, I could not well discern how the foot were drawn up;
only I knew they were most of them a good space behinde the horse, when we
began to charge: but for the horse, there were three Regiments on the
right Wing of our Army, _viz._, The Lord Generalls Regiment commanded by
Sir _Philip Stapleton_; Sir _William Belfore's_ Regiment, Lieutenant
Generall of the Horse; and the Lord _Fielding's_ Regiment, which stood
behinde the other two, in the way of a reserve.
On the right Wing of our Army, was Sir James Ramsey, with some 24 Troops,
for many of our Troops were not in the Field that day. The Armies being
thus placed one against another with no great oddes of the winde or ground
(but what their was of winde the enemies had it, the ground being
reasonable indifferent on both sides) after many shot of Cannon which did
very little hurt amongst us, and very much amongst them, their foot
advancing for the most part against our right Wing, and their horse
against the left Wing of our Army. Their horse had the better of our horse
that were on our left Wing, and routing them, drove them back upon our
foot, and amongst the rest, upon Colonell _Hollis_ his Regiment, which was
in the Rere, and they brake through it, yet they ran not away, nor seemed
to be at all dismayed at it; but four other Regiments ran away, and fought
not at all, and many of them cast away their Colours, and so the enemy
took them up, having scarce got so much as one Colour or Cornet of those
Regiments or Troops that fought, whereas all the Colours that we got from
them, and the King's Standard, which we had a long time in our possession,
were taken out of the midst of their best Regiments that fought it out
very resolutely: Our left Wing being thus put to the worst, the day was
very desperate on our side; and had not God clearly fought for us, we had
lost it; for had the enemie's horse when they routed the left Wing, fallen
upon the Rere of our right Wing, in all probability the army had been
wholly defeated: But they made directly to the Town, and there falling
upon our Carriages, most barbarously massacred a number of poor Waggoners
and Carters that had no arms to defend themselves, and so fell to
pillaging and pursuing those that ran away, so long till they met with
Colonell _Hampden_, who with the other Brigado of the Army (which came
with the Artillery and Ammunition which was behinde) was by this time come
near to _Keynton_, and the enemie's Troops falling upon him as they
pursued our men that ran away, he gave them a stop, and discharging five
pieces of Cannon against them, he slew some of them; whereupon they
returned in some fear and disorder: But when they came back into the
Field, they found all their Infantry, excepting two Regiments, cut in
pieces or defeated and run away; for it pleased God to put such courage
into four or five of our Regiments of foot, and two Regiments of horse,
the Lord Generall's commanded by Sir _Philip Stapleton_, and Sir _William
Belfore_, that they defeated all their Regiments of foot, except two. Sir
_William Belfore's_ Regiment of horse charged a Regiment of the enemie's
foot, before any foot came up to assist him, and breaking into it cut most
of it off; and after, by the assistance of some of our foot, he defeated
another Regiment, and so we got up to the greatest part of the enemies
Ordnance, and took them, cutting off the Geers of the horses that drew
them, and killing the Gunners under the Carriages, but were forced to
leave them without any to guard them, by reason we were fain to make good
the day against severall Regiments of foot that still fought with a good
deal of resolution; especially that which was of the King's Guard, where
his Standard was, close by which Sir _William Belfore's_ Regiment rode
when they came from taking the Ordnance; and they taking us to be their
friends, and we them, some of our Company, shook hands with some of them,
which was the cause that after riding up towards the Lord Generall's
Regiment of horse, they gave fire upon Sir _William Belfore's_ Regiment,
and discerning each other to be friends, we joyned Companies; and so with
half the Lord Generall's Regiment, which his Excellency himself led up,
charging the King's Regiment, we defeated it, took the Standard, took the
Generall of the King's Army, the Earl of Lindley, and his son, and
Colonell Vavasor who was Lieutenant Colonell of that Regiment, and killed
Sir Edward Varney upon the place (who carryed the Standard), Colonell John
Munroe, and divers others: In this charge, and generally throughout the
day, the Lord Generall's Troop, consisting most of Gentlemen, carried
themselves most valiantly; and had all our Troops, of our left Wing been
made of the same metall, the enemy had not made so easie an impression
into them. And what is said of my Lord Generall's Troop, may most truly,
and to his high praise, be said of himself; and also that noble Earl, the
Earl of Bedford, Generall of the horse, for both of them rode all day,
being in the heads of the severall Troops and Regiments to give their
directions, and to bring them on upon the enemy, hazarding their persons
as far and further than any particular Souldier in the Army. By this time
all the enemie's foot being dispersed and gone excepting two Regiments,
they retiring themselves, found their Ordnance behind them without any
Guard, and there they made a stand, and made use of their Cannon, shooting
divers shot at us; at which time our Regiment of foot began to want
Powder, otherwise we had charged them both with horse and foot, which in
all probability would have utterly ruined their Infantry, for those two
Regiments were the onely stake which they had now left in the hedge: But
partly through want of Ammunition, and partly being tyred with fighting
all the day (the whole brunt of the Battell having been sustained by two
Regiments of horse, and four or five of foot) we made no great haste to
charge them, so that the enemies horse that had been pillaging at Keynton
had leisure to come about, some on one hand of us, and some on the other,
and so joyned with their foot: Yet as they came back on our left hand, Sir
_Philip Stapleton_, with his Troop, went out to charge some 4 or 5 Troops
of them which went away from him as fast as they could upon the spur to
the rest of their Company, and their foot that stood by their Ordnance,
most of the enemie's horse being gathered to their foot, most of our horse
also gathered to our foot, and so we stood horse and foot one against the
other till it was night. Our Army being thus possessed of the ground that
the enemy chose to fight upon, stood there all night; the enemy having
withdrawn their Army to the top of the hill for more security to
themselves, where they made great fires all the night long, whilst we in
the meantime drew backe some of our owne Ordnance, which they had once in
their possession, and some of their's which they had left behinde.
The next morning, a little before it was light, we drew back our Army
towards the Town to our other Brigadoe and Artillary and Ammunition that
was come and lodged there, and the enemy drew out their horse in the
morning upon the side of the hill, where staying till towards night,
whil'st the foot were retyring behinde the hill and marching away, at
length a little before night, their horse also marched away; and about an
houre after, our horse also marched towards their Quarters, the Foot and
some horse staying all night in their Quarters, in and before _Keynton_;
and the next day the whole Army both horse and foot marched towards
_Warwicke_ to refresh themselves; instead of which, if they had marched
towards _Banbury_, they would have found more victuals, and had in all
probabilities dispersed all the foot of the King's Army, and taken his
Canon and Carriages and sent his horse farther off to plunder, whereas now
because we did not follow them though they quitted the field to us which
we fought on and left their quarter before us the next day, yet they begin
to question who had the day: It is true, there were Colours and Canon
taken on both sides, without any great difference in the numbers, but for
the number and quality of men slaine and hurt, it is verily believed, they
left foure times as many at the least as we did, and in saying foure times
as many, I am confident I speake much below the truth. There were slaine
on their side the Earl of _Lindsey_ Generall of their Army, the Lord
_Aubigney_, brother to the Duke of _Richmond_, Sir _Edward Verny_
Colonell, _John Monroe_ and divers other gentlemen and Commanders, and
very many hurt. Of our side were slaine the Lord St. John, Colonell
_Charles Essex_, Lieutenant Colonell _Ramsey_ and none other
|
like best, boiled mutton or roast mutton?——said the young man
John. Like ’em both,——it a’n’t the color of ’em makes the goodness. I’ve
been kind of lonely since schoolma’am went away. Used to like to look at
her. I never said anything particular to her, that I remember, but——
I don’t know whether it was the cracker and sausage, or that the young
fellow’s feet were treading on the hot ashes of some longing that had not
had time to cool, but his eye glistened as he stopped.
I suppose she wouldn’t have looked at a fellah like me,——he said,——but
I come pretty near tryin’. If she had said, Yes, though, I shouldn’t
have known what to have done with her. Can’t marry a woman nowadays till
you’re so deaf you have to cock your head like a parrot to hear what she
says, and so long-sighted you can’t see what she looks like nearer than
arm’s-length.
Here is another chance for you,——I said.——What do you want nicer than
such a young lady as Iris?
It’s no use,——he answered.——I look at them girls and feel as the fellah
did when he missed catchin’ the trout.——’To’od ’a’ cost more butter to
cook him ’n’ he’s worth,——says the fellah.——Takes a whole piece o’ goods
to cover a girl up nowadays. I’d as lief undertake to keep a span of
elephants,——and take an ostrich to board, too,——as to marry one of ’em.
What’s the use? Clerks and counter-jumpers a’n’t anything. Sparragrass
and green peas a’n’t for them,——not while they’re young and tender.
Hossback-ridin’ a’n’t for them,——except once a year,——on Fast-day. And
marryin’ a’n’t for them. Sometimes a fellah feels lonely, and would
like to have a nice young woman, to tell her how lonely he feels. And
sometimes a fellah,——here the young man John looked very confidential,
and, perhaps, as if a little ashamed of his weakness,——sometimes a fellah
would like to have one o’ them small young ones to trot on his knee and
push about in a little wagon,——a kind of a little Johnny, you know;——it’s
odd enough, but, it seems to me, nobody can afford them little articles,
except the folks that are so rich they can buy everything, and the folks
that are so poor they don’t want anything. It makes nice boys of us young
fellahs, no doubt! And it’s pleasant to see fine young girls sittin’,
like shopkeepers behind their goods, waitin’, and waitin’, and waitin’,
’n’ no customers,——and the men lingerin’ round and lookin’ at the goods,
like folks that want to be customers, but haven’t got the money!
Do you think the deformed gentleman means to make love to Iris?——I said.
What! Little Boston ask that girl to marry him! Well, now, that’s
comin’ of it a little too strong. Yes, I guess she will marry him and
carry him round in a basket, like a lame bantam! Look here!——he said,
mysteriously;——one of the boarders swears there’s a woman comes to
see him, and that he has heard her singin’ and screechin’. I should
like to know what he’s about in that den of his. He lays low ’n’ keeps
dark,——and, I tell you, there’s a good many of the boarders would like
to get into his chamber, but he don’t seem to want ’em. Biddy could
tell somethin’ about what she’s seen when she’s been to put his room
to rights. She’s a Paddy ’n’ a fool, but she knows enough to keep her
tongue still. All I know is, I saw her crossin’ herself one day when she
came out of that room. She looked pale enough, ’n’ I heard her mutterin’
somethin’ or other about the Blessed Virgin. If it hadn’t been for the
double doors to that chamber of his, I’d have had a squint inside before
this; but, somehow or other, it never seems to happen that they’re both
open at once.
What do you think he employs himself about?——said I.
The young man John winked.
I waited patiently for the thought, of which this wink was the blossom,
to come to fruit in words.
I don’t believe in witches,——said the young man John.
Nor I.
We were both silent for a few minutes.
* * * * *
——Did you ever see the young girl’s drawing-books,——I said, presently.
All but one,——he answered;——she keeps a lock on that, and won’t show it.
Ma’am Allen (the young rogue sticks to that name, in speaking of the
gentleman with the _diamond_), Ma’am Allen tried to peek into it one day
when she left it on the sideboard. “If you please,” says she,——’n’ took
it from him, ’n’ gave him a look that made him curl up like a caterpillar
on a hot shovel. I only wished he hadn’t, and had jest given her a little
saas, for I’ve been takin’ boxin’-lessons, ’n’ I’ve got a new way of
counterin’ I want to try on to somebody.
——The end of all this was, that I came away from the young fellow’s room,
feeling that there were two principal things that I had to live for, for
the next six weeks or six months, if it should take so long. These were,
to get a sight of the young girl’s drawing-book, which I suspected had
her heart shut up in it, and to get a look into the Little Gentleman’s
room.
I don’t doubt you think it rather absurd that I should trouble myself
about these matters. You tell me, with some show of reason, that all I
shall find in the young girl’s book will be some outlines of angels with
immense eyes, traceries of flowers, rural sketches, and caricatures,
among which I shall probably have the pleasure of seeing my own features
figuring. Very likely. But I’ll tell you what _I_ think I shall find. If
this child has idealized the strange little bit of humanity over which
she seems to have spread her wings like a brooding dove,——if, in one of
those wild vagaries that passionate natures are so liable to, she has
fairly sprung upon him with her clasping nature, as the sea-flowers fold
about the first stray shell-fish that brushes their outspread tentacles,
depend upon it, I shall find the marks of it in this drawing-book of
hers,——if I can ever get a look at it,——fairly, of course, for I would
not play tricks to satisfy my curiosity.
Then, if I can get into this Little Gentleman’s room under any fair
pretext, I shall, no doubt, satisfy myself in five minutes that he is
just like other people, and that there is no particular mystery about
him.
VII.
I love to look at this “Rainbow,” as her father used sometimes to call
her, of ours. Handsome creature that she is in forms and colors, fit for
a sea-king’s bride, it is not her beauty alone that holds my eyes upon
her. Let me tell you one of my fancies, and then you will understand the
strange sort of fascination she has for me.
It is in the hearts of many men and women——let me add children——that
there is a _Great Secret_ waiting for them,——a secret of which they
get hints now and then, perhaps oftener in early than in later years.
These hints come sometimes in dreams, sometimes in sudden startling
flashes,——second wakings, as it were,——a waking out of the waking state,
which last is very apt to be a half-sleep. I have many times stopped
short and held my breath, and felt the blood leaving my cheeks, in one of
these sudden clairvoyant flashes. Of course I cannot tell what kind of a
secret this is; but I think of it as a disclosure of certain relations
of our personal being to time and space, to other intelligences, to the
procession of events, and to their First Great Cause. This secret seems
to be broken up, as it were, into fragments, so that we find here a word
and there a syllable, and then again only a letter of it; but it never is
written out for most of us as a complete sentence, in this life. I do not
think it could be; for I am disposed to consider our beliefs about such a
possible disclosure rather as a kind of premonition of an enlargement of
our faculties in some future state than as an expectation to be fulfilled
for most of us in this life. Persons, however, have fallen into
trances,——as did the Reverend William Tennent, among many others,——and
learned some things which they could not tell in our human words.
Now among the visible objects which hint to us fragments of this infinite
secret for which our souls are waiting, the faces of women are those that
carry the most legible hieroglyphics of the great mystery. There are
women’s faces, some real, some ideal, which contain something in them
that becomes a positive element in our creed, so direct and palpable a
revelation is it of the infinite purity and love. I remember two faces
of women with wings, such as they call angels, of Fra Angelico,——and I
just now came across a print of Raphael’s Santa Apollina, with something
of the same quality,——which I was sure had their prototypes in the world
above ours. No wonder the Catholics pay their vows to the Queen of
Heaven! The unpoetical side of Protestantism is that it has no women to
be worshipped.
But mind you, it is not every beautiful face that hints the Great Secret
to us, nor is it only in beautiful faces that we find traces of it.
Sometimes it looks out from a sweet sad eye, the only beauty of a plain
countenance; sometimes there is so much meaning in the lips of a woman,
not otherwise fascinating, that we know they have a message for us, and
wait almost with awe to hear their accents. But this young girl has
at once the beauty of feature and the unspoken mystery of expression.
Can she tell me anything? Is her life a complement of mine, with the
missing element in it which I have been groping after through so many
friendships that I have tired of, and through——Hush! Is the door fast?
Talking loud is a bad trick in these curious boarding-houses.
You must have sometimes noted this fact that I am going to remind you of
and to use for a special illustration. Riding along over a rocky road,
suddenly the slow monotonous grinding of the crushing gravel changes
to a deep heavy rumble. There is a great hollow under your feet,——a
huge unsunned cavern. Deep, deep beneath you, in the core of the living
rock, it arches its awful vault, and far away it stretches its winding
galleries, their roofs dripping into streams where fishes have been
swimming and spawning in the dark until their scales are white as milk
and their eyes have withered out, obsolete and useless.
So it is in life. We jog quietly along, meeting the same faces, grinding
over the same thoughts,——the gravel of the soul’s highway,——now and then
jarred against an obstacle we cannot crush, but must ride over or round
as we best may, sometimes bringing short up against a disappointment,
but still working along with the creaking and rattling and grating and
jerking that belong to the journey of life, even in the smoothest-rolling
vehicle. Suddenly we hear the deep underground reverberation that reveals
the unsuspected depth of some abyss of thought or passion beneath us.
I wish the girl would go. I don’t like to look at her so much, and yet I
cannot help it. Always that same expression of something that I ought to
know,——something that she was made to tell and I to hear,——lying there
ready to fall off from her lips, ready to leap out of her eyes and make
a saint of me, or a devil or a lunatic, or perhaps a prophet to tell the
truth and be hated of men, or a poet whose words shall flash upon the dry
stubble-field of worn-out thoughts and burn over an age of lies in an
hour of passion.
It suddenly occurs to me that I may have put you on the wrong track. The
Great Secret that I refer to has nothing to do with the Three Words. Set
your mind at ease about that,——there are reasons I could give you which
settle all that matter. I don’t wonder, however, that you confounded the
Great Secret with the Three Words.
I LOVE YOU _is_ all the secret that many, nay, most women have to tell.
When that is said, they are like China-crackers on the morning of the
fifth of July. And just as that little patriotic implement is made with
a slender train which leads to the magazine in its interior, so a sharp
eye can almost always see the train leading from a young girl’s eye
or lip to the “I love you” in her heart. But the Three Words are not
the Great Secret I mean. No, women’s faces are only one of the tablets
on which that is written in its partial, fragmentary symbols. It lies
deeper than Love, though very probably Love is a part of it. Some, I
think,——Wordsworth might be one of them,——spell out a portion of it from
certain beautiful natural objects, landscapes, flowers, and others. I can
mention several poems of his that have shadowy hints which seem to me to
come near the region where I think it lies. I have known two persons who
pursued it with the passion of the old alchemists,——all wrong evidently,
but infatuated, and never giving up the daily search for it until they
got tremulous and feeble, and their dreams changed to visions of things
that ran and crawled about their floor and ceilings, and so they died.
The vulgar called them drunkards.
I told you that I would let you know the mystery of the effect this young
girl’s face produces on me. It is akin to those influences a friend of
mine has described, you may remember, as coming from certain _voices_.
I cannot translate it into words,——only into feelings; and these I have
attempted to shadow by showing that her face hinted that revelation of
something we are close to knowing, which all imaginative persons are
looking for either in this world or on the very threshold of the next.
This young girl, about whom I have talked so unintelligibly, is the
unconscious centre of attraction to the whole solar system of our
breakfast-table. The Little Gentleman leans towards her, and she again
seems to be swayed as by some invisible gentle force towards him. That
slight inclination of two persons with a strong affinity towards each
other, throwing them a little out of plumb when they sit side by side,
is a physical fact I have often noticed. Then there is a tendency in all
the men’s eyes to converge on her; and I do firmly believe, that, if
all their chairs were examined, they would be found a little obliquely
placed, so as to favor the direction in which their occupants love to
look.
That bland, quiet old gentleman, of whom I have spoken as sitting
opposite to me, is no exception to the rule. She brought down some
mignonette one morning, which she had grown in her chamber. She gave a
sprig to her little neighbor, and one to the landlady, and sent another
by the hand of Bridget to this old gentleman.
——Sarvant, Ma’am! Much obleeged,——he said, and put it gallantly in his
buttonhole. After breakfast he must see some of her drawings. Very
fine performances,——very fine!——truly elegant productions,——truly
elegant!——Had seen Miss Linley’s needlework in London, in the year
(eighteen hundred and little or nothing, I think he said),——patronized
by the nobility and gentry, and Her Majesty,——elegant, truly elegant
productions, very fine performances; these drawings reminded him of
them;——wonderful resemblance to Nature; an extraordinary art, painting;
Mr. Copley made some very fine pictures that he remembered seeing when he
was a boy. Used to remember some lines about a portrait written by Mr.
Cowper, beginning,——
“O that those lips had language! Life has pass’d
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.”
And with this the old gentleman fell to thinking about a dead mother
of his that he remembered ever so much younger than he now was, and
looking, not as his mother, but as his daughter should look. The dead
young mother was looking at the old man, her child, as she used to look
at him so many, many years ago. He stood still as if in a waking dream,
his eyes fixed on the drawings till their outlines grew indistinct and
they ran into each other, and a pale, sweet face shaped itself out of the
glimmering light through which he saw them.
How many drawing-books have you filled,——I said,——since you began to take
lessons?——This was the first,——she answered,——since she was here; and it
was not full, but there were many separate sheets of large size she had
covered with drawings.
I turned over the leaves of the book before us. Academic studies,
principally of the human figure. Heads of sibyls, prophets, and so forth.
Limbs from statues. Hands and feet from Nature. What a superb drawing of
an arm! I don’t remember it among the figures from Michel Angelo, which
seem to have been her patterns mainly. From Nature, I think, or after a
cast from Nature.——Oh!——
——Your smaller studies are in this, I suppose,——I said, taking up the
drawing-book with a lock on it.——Yes,——she said.——I should like to
see her style of working on a small scale.——There was nothing in it
worth showing,——she said; and presently I saw her try the lock, which
proved to be fast. We are all caricatured in it, I haven’t the least
doubt. I think, though, I could tell by her way of dealing with us what
her fancies were about us boarders. Some of them act as if they were
bewitched with her, but she does not seem to notice it much. Her thoughts
seem to be on her little neighbor more than on anybody else. The young
fellow John appears to stand second in her good graces. I think he
has once or twice sent her what the landlady’s daughter calls bó-kays
of flowers,——somebody has, at any rate.——I saw a book she had, which
must have come from the divinity-student. It had a dreary title-page,
which she had enlivened with a fancy portrait of the author,——a face
from memory, apparently,——one of those faces that small children loathe
without knowing why, and which give them that inward disgust for heaven
so many of the little wretches betray, when they hear that these are
“good men,” and that heaven is full of such.——The gentleman with the
_diamond_——the Koh-i-noor, so called by us——was not encouraged, I think,
by the reception of his packet of perfumed soap. He pulls his purple
mustache and looks appreciatingly at Iris, who never sees him as it
should seem. The young Marylander, who I thought would have been in love
with her before this time, sometimes looks from his corner across the
long diagonal of the table, as much as to say, I wish you were up here by
me, or I were down there by you,——which would, perhaps, be a more natural
arrangement than the present one. But nothing comes of all this,——and
nothing has come of my sagacious idea of finding out the girl’s fancies
by looking into her locked drawing-book.
Not to give up all the questions I was determined to solve, I made an
attempt also to work into the Little Gentleman’s chamber. For this
purpose, I kept him in conversation, one morning, until he was just ready
to go up stairs, and then, as if to continue the talk, followed him as he
toiled back to his room. He rested on the landing and faced round toward
me. There was something in his eye which said, Stop there! So we finished
our conversation on the landing. The next day, I mustered assurance
enough to knock at his door, having a pretext ready.——No answer.——Knock
again. A door, as if of a cabinet, was shut softly and locked, and
presently I heard the peculiar dead beat of his thick-soled, misshapen
boots. The bolts and the lock of the inner door were unfastened,——with
unnecessary noise, I thought,——and he came into the passage. He pulled
the inner door after him and opened the outer one at which I stood. He
had on a flowered silk dressing-gown, such as “Mr. Copley” used to paint
his old-fashioned merchant-princes in; and a quaint-looking key in his
hand. Our conversation was short, but long enough to convince me that the
Little Gentleman did not want my company in his chamber, and did not mean
to have it.
I have been making a great fuss about what is no mystery at all,——a
school-girl’s secrets and a whimsical man’s habits. I mean to give up
such nonsense and mind my own business.——Hark! What the deuse is that odd
noise in his chamber?
VIII.
——If Iris does not love this Little Gentleman, what does love look like
when one sees it? She follows him with her eyes, she leans over toward
him when he speaks, her face changes with the changes of his speech, so
that one might think it was with her as with Christabel,——
That all her features were resigned
To this sole image in her mind.
But she never looks at him with such intensity of devotion as when he
says anything about the soul and the soul’s atmosphere, religion.
Women are twice as religious as men;——all the world knows that. Whether
they are any _better_, in the eyes of Absolute Justice, might be
questioned; for the additional religious element supplied by sex hardly
seems to be a matter of praise or blame. But in all common aspects they
are so much above us that we get most of our religion from them,——from
their teachings, from their example,——above all, from their pure
affections.
Now this poor little Iris had been talked to strangely in her childhood.
Especially she had been told that she hated all good things,——which every
sensible parent knows well enough is not true of a great many children,
to say the least. I have sometimes questioned whether many libels on
human nature had not been a natural consequence of the celibacy of the
clergy, which was enforced for so long a period.
The child had met this and some other equally encouraging statements
as to her spiritual conditions, early in life, and fought the battle
of spiritual independence prematurely, as many children do. If all she
did was hateful to God, what was the meaning of the approving or else
the disapproving conscience, when she had done “right” or “wrong”? No
“shoulder-striker” hits out straighter than a child with its logic. Why,
I can remember lying in my bed in the nursery and settling questions
which all that I have heard since and got out of books has never been
able to raise again. If a child does not assert itself in this way in
good season, it becomes just what its parents or teachers were, and is
no better than a plaster image.——How old was I at the time?——I suppose
about 5823 years old,——that is, counting from Archbishop Usher’s date
of the Creation, and adding the life of the race, whose accumulated
intelligence is a part of my inheritance, to my own. A good deal older
than Plato, you see, and much more experienced than my Lord Bacon and
most of the world’s teachers.——Old books, as you well know, are books of
the world’s youth, and new books are fruits of its age. How many of all
these ancient folios round me are like so many old cupels! The gold has
passed out of them long ago, but their pores are full of the dross with
which it was mingled.
And so Iris——having thrown off that first lasso, which not only fetters,
but _chokes_ those whom it can hold, so that they give themselves up
trembling and breathless to the great soul-subduer, who has them by
the windpipe——had settled a brief creed for herself, in which love of
the neighbor, whom we have seen, was the first article, and love of
the Creator, whom we have not seen, grew out of this as its natural
development, being necessarily second in order of time to the first
unselfish emotions which we feel for the fellow-creatures who surround us
in our early years.
The child must have some place of worship. What would a young girl be
who never mingled her voice with the songs and prayers that rose all
around her with every returning day of rest? And Iris was free to choose.
Sometimes one and sometimes another would offer to carry her to this or
that place of worship; and when the doors were hospitably opened, she
would often go meekly in by herself. It was a curious fact, that two
churches as remote from each other in doctrine as could well be divided
her affections.
The Church of Saint Polycarp had very much the look of a Roman
Catholic chapel. I do not wish to run the risk of giving names to the
ecclesiastical furniture which gave it such a Romish aspect; but there
were pictures, and inscriptions in antiquated characters, and there were
reading-stands, and flowers on the altar, and other elegant arrangements.
Then there were boys to sing alternately in choirs responsive to each
other, and there was much bowing, with very loud responding, and a long
service and a short sermon, and a bag, such as Judas used to hold in the
old pictures, was carried round to receive contributions. Everything was
done not only “decently and in order,” but, perhaps one might say, with
a certain air of magnifying their office on the part of the dignified
clergymen, often two or three in number. The music and the free welcome
were grateful to Iris, and she forgot her prejudices at the door of
the chapel. For this was a church with open doors, with seats for all
classes and all colors alike,——a church of zealous worshippers after
their faith, of charitable and serviceable men and women, one that took
care of its children and never forgot its poor, and whose people were
much more occupied in looking out for their own souls than in attacking
the faith of their neighbors. In its mode of worship there was a union
of two qualities,——the taste and refinement, which the educated require
just as much in their churches as elsewhere, and the air of stateliness,
almost of pomp, which impresses the common worshipper, and is often
not without its effect upon those who think they hold outward forms as
of little value. Under the half-Romish aspect of the Church of Saint
Polycarp, the young girl found a devout and loving and singularly
cheerful religious spirit. The artistic sense, which betrayed itself
in the dramatic proprieties of its ritual, harmonized with her taste.
The mingled murmur of the loud responses, in those rhythmic phrases, so
simple, yet so fervent, almost as if every tenth heart-beat, instead of
its dull _tic-tac_, articulated itself as “Good Lord, deliver us!”——the
sweet alternation of the two choirs, as their holy song floated from side
to side,——the keen young voices rising like a flight of singing-birds
that passes from one grove to another, carrying its music with it back
and forward,——why should she not love these gracious outward signs of
those inner harmonies which none could deny made beautiful the lives of
many of her fellow-worshippers in the humble, yet not inelegant Chapel of
Saint Polycarp?
The young Marylander, who was born and bred to that mode of worship,
had introduced her to the chapel, for which he did the honors for such
of our boarders as were not otherwise provided for. I saw them looking
over the same prayer-book one Sunday, and I could not help thinking
that two such young and handsome persons could hardly worship together
in safety for a great while. But they seemed to mind nothing but their
prayer-book. By and by the silken bag was handed round.——I don’t believe
she will;——so awkward, you know;——besides, she only came by invitation.
There she is, with her hand in her pocket, though,——and sure enough, her
little bit of silver tinkled as it struck the coin beneath. God bless
her! she hasn’t much to give; but her eye glistens when she gives it,
and that is all Heaven asks.——That was the first time I noticed these
young people together, and I am sure they behaved with the most charming
propriety,——in fact, there was one of our silent lady-boarders with them,
whose eyes would have kept Cupid and Psyche to their good behavior. A day
or two after this I noticed that the young gentleman had left his seat,
which you may remember was at the corner diagonal to that of Iris, so
that they have been as far removed from each other as they could be at
the table. His new seat is three or four places farther down the table.
Of course I made a romance out of this, at once. So stupid not to see it!
How could it be otherwise?——Did you speak, Madam? I beg your pardon. (To
my lady-reader.)
I never saw anything like the tenderness with which this young girl
treats her little deformed neighbor. If he were in the way of going to
church, I know she would follow him. But his worship, if any, is not with
the throng of men and women and staring children.
IX.
These young girls that live in boarding-houses can do pretty much as they
will. The female _gendarmes_ are off guard occasionally. The sitting-room
has its solitary moments, when any two boarders who wish to meet may
come together accidentally (_accidentally_, I said, Madam, and I had not
the slightest intention of italicizing the word) and discuss the social
or political questions of the day, or any other subject that may prove
interesting. Many charming conversations take place at the foot of the
stairs, or while one of the parties is holding the latch of a door,——in
the shadow of porticos, and especially on those outside balconies which
some of our Southern neighbors call “stoops,” the most charming places in
the world when the moon is just right and the roses and honeysuckles are
in full blow,——as we used to think in eighteen hundred and never mention
it.
On such a balcony or “stoop,” one evening, I walked with Iris. We were
on pretty good terms now, and I had coaxed her arm under mine,——my left
arm, of course. That leaves one’s right arm free to defend the lovely
creature, if the rival——odious wretch!——attempt to ravish her from your
side. Likewise if one’s heart should happen to beat a little, its mute
language will not be without its meaning, as you will perceive when the
arm you hold begins to tremble,——a circumstance like to occur, if you
happen to be a good-looking young fellow, and you two have the “stoop” to
yourselves.
We had it to ourselves that evening. The Koh-i-noor, as we called him,
was in a corner with our landlady’s daughter. The young fellow John
was smoking out in the yard. The _gendarme_ was afraid of the evening
air, and kept inside. The young Marylander came to the door, looked out
and saw us walking together, gave his hat a pull over his forehead and
stalked off. I felt a slight spasm, as it were, in the arm I held, and
saw the girl’s head turn over her shoulder for a second. What a kind
creature this is! She has no special interest in this youth, but she does
not like to see a young fellow going off because he feels as if he were
not wanted.
She had her locked drawing-book under her arm.——Let me take it,——I said.
She gave it to me to carry.
This is full of caricatures of all of us, I am sure,——said I.
She laughed, and said,——No,——not all of you.
I was there, of course?
Why, no,——she had never taken so much pains with me.
Then she would let me see the inside of it?
She would think of it.
Just as we parted, she took a little key from her pocket and handed it to
me.——This unlocks my naughty book,——she said,——you shall see it. I am not
afraid of you.
I don’t know whether the last words exactly pleased me. At any rate, I
took the book and hurried with it to my room. I opened it, and saw, in a
few glances, that I held the heart of Iris in my hand.
IRIS, HER BOOK.
I pray thee by the soul of her that bore thee,
By thine own sister’s spirit I implore thee,
Deal gently with the leaves that lie before thee!
For Iris had no mother to infold her,
Nor ever leaned upon a sister’s shoulder,
Telling the twilight thoughts that Nature told her.
She had not learned the mystery of awaking
Those chorded keys that soothe a sorrow’s aching,
Giving the dumb heart voice, that else were breaking.
Yet lived, wrought, suffered. Lo, the pictured token!
Why should her fleeting day-dreams fade unspoken,
Like daffodils that die with sheaths unbroken?
She knew not love, yet lived in maiden fancies,——
Walked simply clad, a queen of high romances,
And talked strange tongues with angels in her trances.
Twin-souled she seemed, a twofold nature wearing,——
Sometimes a flashing falcon in her daring,
Then a poor mateless dove that droops despairing.
Questioning all things: Why her Lord had sent her?
What were these torturing gifts, and wherefore lent her?
Scornful as spirit fallen, its own tormentor.
And then all tears and anguish: Queen of Heaven,
Sweet Saints, and Thou by mortal sorrows riven,
Save me! O, save me! Shall I die forgiven?
And then——Ah, God! But nay, it little matters:
Look at the wasted seeds that autumn scatters,
The myriad germs that Nature shapes and shatters!
If she had——Well! She longed, and knew not wherefore
Had the world nothing she might live to care for?
No second self to say her evening prayer for?
She knew the marble shapes that set men dreaming,
Yet with her shoulders bare and tresses streaming
Showed not unlovely to her simple seeming.
Vain? Let it be so! Nature was her teacher.
What if a lonely and unsistered creature
Loved her own harmless gift of pleasing feature,
Saying, unsaddened,——This shall soon be faded,
And double-hued the shining tresses braided,
And all the sunlight of the morning shaded?
——This her poor book is full of saddest follies,
Of tearful smiles and laughing melancholies,
With summer roses twined and wintry hollies.
In the strange crossing of uncertain chances,
Somewhere, beneath some maiden’s tear-dimmed glances
May fall her little book of dreams and fancies.
Sweet sister! Iris, who shall never name thee,
Trembling for fear her open heart may shame thee,
Speaks from this vision-haunted page to claim thee.
Spare her, I pray thee! If the maid is sleeping,
Peace with her! she has had her hour of weeping.
No more! She leaves her memory in thy keeping.
These verses were written in the first
|
of Art among the Ancients_, originally
published in 1764, is one of those rare books which mark an epoch in
the history of the human intellect. The German writer was the first to
formulate the idea, now familiar enough to cultivated intelligences,
that art springs up, flourishes, and decays, with the society to which
it belongs; in a word, that it is possible to write its history.[5]
This great _savant_, whose memory Germany holds in honour as the
father of classic archæology, was not content with stating a
principle: he followed it through to its consequences; he began by
tracing the outlines of the science which he founded, and he never
rested till he had filled them in. However, now that a century has
passed away since it appeared, his great work, which even yet is never
opened without a sentiment of respect, marks a date beyond which
modern curiosity has long penetrated. Winckelmann's knowledge of
Egyptian art was confined to the _pasticcios_ of the Roman epoch, and
to the figures which passed from the villa of Hadrian to the museum of
Cardinal Albani. Chaldæa and Assyria, Persia and Phœnicia, had no
existence for him; even Greece as a whole was not known to him. Her
painted vases were still hidden in Etruscan and Campanian cemeteries;
the few which had found their way to the light had not yet succeeded
in drawing the attention of men who were preoccupied over more
imposing manifestations of the Greek genius. Nearly all Winckelmann's
attention was given to the works of the sculptors, upon which most of
his comprehensive judgments were founded; and yet, even in regard to
them, he was not well-informed. His opportunities of personal
inspection were confined to the figures, mostly of unknown origin,
which filled the Italian galleries. The great majority of these formed
part of the crowd of copies which issued from the workshops of Greece,
for some three centuries or more, to embellish the temples, the
basilicas, and the public baths, the villas and the palaces of the
masters of the world. In the very few instances in which they were
either originals or copies executed with sufficient care to be fair
representations of the original, they never dated from an earlier
epoch than that of Praxiteles, Scopas, and Lysippus. Phidias and
Alcamenes, Pæonius and Polycletus, the great masters of the fifth
century, were only known to the historian by the descriptions and
allusions of the ancient authors.
[5] Winckelmann's History of Ancient Art should be read in
connection with his Remarks upon the History of Art, which is a
kind of supplement to it, and takes the place of that new
edition of which the author's premature and tragic death
deprived the world. It is an answer to the objections which made
themselves heard on every side; the preface to _Monumenti
inediti_ (Rome, 1867, 2 vols. in folio, with 208 plates) should
also be read. The method of Winckelmann is there most clearly
explained. Finally, the student of the life and labours of
Winckelmann may consult with profit the interesting work of Carl
Iusti, _Winckelmann, sein Leben, seine Werke, und seine
Zeitgenossen_, which will give him a clear idea of the state of
archæology at the time when the German _savant_ intervened to
place it upon a higher footing.
In such a case as this the clearest and most precise of verbal
descriptions is of less value than any fragment of marble upon which
the hand of the artist is still to be traced. Who would then have
guessed that the following generation would have the opportunity of
studying those splendid groups of decorative sculpture whose close
relation to the architecture of certain famous temples has taught us
so much? Who in those days dreamt of looking at, still less of
drawing, the statues in the pediments and sculptured friezes of the
Parthenon, of the Thesæum, of the temples at Ægina, at Phigalia, or at
Olympia? Now if Winckelmann was ignorant of these, the real monuments
of classic perfection, it follows that he was hardly competent to
recognise and define true archaism or to distinguish the works of
sculpture which bore the marks of the deliberate, eclectic, and
over-polished taste of the critical epochs. He made the same mistake
in speaking of architecture. It was always, or nearly always, by the
edifices of Rome and Italy, by their arrangement and decoration, that
he pretended to explain and judge the architecture of Greece.
But Winckelmann rendered a great service to art by founding a method
of study which was soon applied by Zoëga[6] and by Ennio Quirino
Visconti,[7] to the description of the works which filled public and
private galleries, or were being continually discovered by excavation.
These two _savants_ classified a vast quantity of facts; thanks to
their incessant labours, the lines of the master's rough sketch were
accented and corrected at more than one point; the divisions which he
had introduced into his picture were marked with greater precision;
the groups which he had begun to form were rendered more coherent and
compact; their features became more precise, more distinct, and more
expressive. This progress was continuous, but after the great wars of
the Revolution and the Empire its march became much more rapid, and
the long peace which saw the growth of so rich a harvest of talent,
was also marked by a great increase in the energy with which all kinds
of historical studies were prosecuted.
[6] Zoëga busied himself greatly with Egypt, and in inaugurating
the study of Coptic prepared the way for Champollion. But the
work which gave him a place among the chief scholars of
Winckelmann is unfinished; the _Bassirilievi antichi di Roma_
(Rome, 2 vols. 4to. 1808) only contains the monuments in the
Villa Albani, engraved by Piroli, with the help of the
celebrated Piranesi. A volume containing most of his essays was
given to the world by Welcker in 1817 (_Abhandlungen
herausgegeben und mit Zusätzen begleitet_, 8vo. Göttingen), who
also published his life and a volume of his correspondence
(Zoëga, _Sammlung seiner Briefe und Beurtheilung seiner Werke_,
2 vols. 8vo. Stuttgart, 1819).
[7] _Il Museo Pio-Clementino_, Visconti, vol. i. 1782; by Enn.
Quir. Visconti, vols. ii. to vii. Rome, 1784-1807. _Museum
Worsleyanum_, 2 vols. folio. London, 1794. _Monumenti Gabini
della Villa Pinciana_, Visconti, 8vo. 1797. _Description des
Antiques du Musée Royal_, begun by Visconti and continued by the
Comte de Clarac. 12mo. Paris, 1820. For the collection of the
materials and the execution of the plates in the _Iconographie
Grecque et Romain_, Visconti took advantage of his opportunities
as director of the _Musée Napoléon_, into which the art
treasures of all Europe, except England, were collected at the
beginning of this century.
But the widest, as well as the most sudden, enlargement of the horizon
was due to a rapid succession of discoveries, some the result of
persevering searches and lucky excavations, others rendered possible
by feats of induction which almost amounted to genius. It seemed as
though a curtain were drawn up, and, behind the rich and brilliant
scenery of Græco-Roman civilization, the real ancient world, the world
of the East, the father of religions and of useful inventions, of the
alphabet and of the plastic arts, were suddenly revealed to us. The
great work which was compiled by the _savants_ who accompanied
Bonaparte to Egypt first introduced the antiquities of that country to
us, and not long afterwards Champollion discovered the key to the
hieroglyphics, and thus enabled us to assign to the monuments of the
country at least a relative date.
A little later Layard and Botta freed Nineveh from the ruins of its
own buildings, and again let in the light upon ancient Assyria. But
yesterday we knew nothing beyond the names of its kings, and yet it
sprang again to the day, its monuments in marvellous preservation, its
history pictured by thousands of figures in relief and narrated by
their accompanying inscriptions. These did not long keep their secrets
to themselves, and their interpretation enables us to classify
chronologically the works of architecture and sculpture which have
been discovered.
The information thus obtained was supplemented by careful exploration
of the ruins in Babylonia, lower Chaldæa, and Susiana. These had been
less tenderly treated by time and by man than the remains of Nineveh.
The imposing ruins of the palace at Persepolis and of the tombs of the
kings, had been known for nearly two centuries, but only by the
inadequate descriptions and feeble drawings of early travellers.
Ker-Porter, Texier, and Flandrin provided us with more accurate and
comprehensive descriptions, and, thanks to their careful copies of the
writings upon the walls of those buildings, and upon the inscribed
stones of Persia and Media, Eugène Burnouf succeeded in reconstructing
the alphabet of Darius and Xerxes.
Thus, to the toils of artists and learned men, who examined the
country from the mountains of Armenia to the low and marshy plains of
Susiana, and from the deserts which border the Euphrates to the rocks
of Media and Persia, and to the philologists who deciphered the texts
and classified the monumental fragments which had travelled so far
from the scene of their creation, we owe our power to describe, upon a
sound basis and from authentic materials, the great civilisation which
was developed in Western Asia, in the basin of the Persian Gulf. There
were still many details which escaped us, but, through the shadows
which every day helped to dissipate, the essential outlines and the
leading masses began to be clearly distinguished, and the local
distinctions which, in such a vast extent of country and so long a
succession of empires, were caused by differences of race, of time,
and of physical conditions, began to be appreciated. But, in spite of
all these differences, the choice of expressive means and their
employment, from Babylon to Nineveh, and from Nineveh to Susa and
Persepolis, presented so many points of striking similarity as to
prove that the various peoples represented by those famous capitals
all sprang from the same original stock. The elements of writing and
of the arts are in each case identical. The alphabets were all formed
upon the same cuneiform principle, notwithstanding the variety in the
languages which they served. In the plastic arts, although the plans
of their buildings vary in obedience to the requirements of different
materials, their sculpture always betrays the same way of looking at
living forms, the same conventions and the same motives. Every work
fashioned by the hand of man which has been discovered within the
boundaries given above, displays community of style and unity of
origin and tradition.
* * * * *
The result of these searches and discoveries was to show clearly that
this ancient civilisation had sprung from two original sources, the
one in the valley of the Nile, the other in Chaldæa. The latter was
the less ancient of the two, and was considerably nearer our own time
than the epoch which witnessed the commencement of the long series of
Egyptian dynasties by the reign of Menes. These two civilizations met
and intermingled through the agency of the Phœnicians, and any
active and prolific interchange of ideas and products began, traces of
which are still to be found both in Egypt and Assyria.
It still remained doubtful, and the doubt has but lately been removed,
how the influence of these two great centres of cultivation was
extended to the still barbarous tribes, the ancestors of the Greeks
and Romans, who inhabited the northern and eastern shores of the
Mediterranean.
It is only within the last twenty years, since the mission of M.
Renan, that Phœnicia has become well-known to us. Several English
and French travellers, Hamilton, Fellows, Texier, among others, had
already, in the first half of the century, described the curious
monuments of Lydia, Phrygia, Cappadocia, and of the still more
picturesque Lycia, whose spoils now enrich the British Museum; people
vaguely conjectured that through those countries had progressed, stage
by stage, from the east to the west, the forms and inventions of a
system of civilization which had been elaborated in the distant
Chaldæa. But it was not till 1861 that an expedition, inspired by the
desire to clear up this very question, succeeded in demonstrating the
_rôle_ actually played by the peoples inhabiting the plateau of Asia
Minor. As for Cyprus, it was but yesterday that the explorations of
Lang and Cesnola revealed it to us, with its art half Egyptian and
half Assyrian, and its cuneiform alphabet pressed into the service of
a Greek dialect. These discoveries have put us on the alert. Not a
year passes without some lucky "find," such as that of the Palæstrina
treasure, in the immediate neighbourhood of Rome, or that made by
Salzmann at Rhodes. These pieces of good fortune allow the
archæologist to supply, one by one, the missing links of the chain
which attaches the arts of Greece and Italy to the earlier
civilizations of Egypt and Assyria.
* * * * *
While the remains of Oriental antiquity were being thus recovered
piece by piece, secrets no less interesting and documents no less
curious were continually coming to the surface to cast new light upon
the history of classic antiquity. First came the marbles of the
Parthenon, transferred by Lord Elgin to the British Museum in 1816.
Both artists and connoisseurs, after a short pause of hesitation,
agreed in asserting that the bas-reliefs of the frieze and the
sculptures of the two pediments excelled anything which had previously
entered into any European museum. Artists declared that they
experienced a sense of beauty never felt before; they were face to
face for the first time with the ideal of the Greeks, as it had been
conceived and realised at that happy period of perfection which
followed the disappearance of the last traces of archaic hardness.
That period was but too short. It was comprised in a single
generation, which was followed by one which made the first steps down
the slope of the decadence. During a single lifetime a crowd of works
were produced which, in spite of differences in material and subject,
were all stamped with the same character of easy and frank nobility,
of sincerity and elegant severity, of simplicity combined with
grandeur. The death, or even the old age of the great men who had
produced these works, was sufficient to lower the standard. Emphasis
and a striving for effect took the place of nobility; under a pretence
of sincerity, artists took to a servile imitation of nature, and
mannerism, with all its weaknesses, began to disfigure their works.
Art remained at a high level in Greece, however, longer than
elsewhere. The word decadence can hardly be pronounced in connection
with the admirable works produced in the fourth century before Christ,
and yet it cannot be denied that, so long as we were without original
examples from the great epoch of Pericles, we were without that most
necessary material for a history of Greek art, a knowledge of the most
masterly, the most pure, and the most elevated of her creations. The
literary historian might as well have attempted to trace the course of
her poetry without having read Sophocles, without having heard of the
_Electra_ or the _Œdipus Rex_.
Attention being once turned in this direction, discoveries followed
each other in rapid succession. The statues from the pediments at
Ægina, so ably restored by Thorwaldsen, were bought to form the
nucleus of the collection at Munich.[8] The study of these statues is
very instructive in making clear to us the paths which sculptors had
to follow in their progress from the stiffness and conventions of
early periods to the ease and amplitude of classic perfection. As for
the friezes from the temple of Apollo Epicurius, near Phigalia, they
too are in the British Museum.[9] Thus brought into immediate
propinquity with the marbles from the Parthenon, with which they are
almost cotemporary, they afford us some curious information. They show
us what the art of Phidias and Alcamenes became when those sculptors
had to work in what we should call "the provinces;" how much they
preserved and how much they lost of their complete excellence when
employed upon buildings erected at less cost and with less care than
those of the capital. So far as the composition is concerned, the
consummate facility and the natural _verve_ of the master who supplied
the sketches and models is never absent, but the execution, which must
have been left to local artists, betrays their inferiority by its
inequalities and general weakness. The same may be said of the figures
with which Alcamenes and Pæonius ornamented the pediments and metopes
of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. Even before the discoveries at Ægina
and Phigalia, the results of the French expedition to the Morea and
the beautiful fragments of sculpture brought to the Louvre from the
banks of the Alphæus, had given us reason to suspect this inferiority
of provincial art, and the excavations recently undertaken by Germany,
after an interval of about half a century of inaction, have finally
removed all doubts. Neither the statues nor the bas-reliefs, nor any
other part of the decoration of the temple at Olympia, possess the
nobility and purity which distinguish the great buildings on the
Athenian acropolis. They show abundant power and science, but also
perceptible inequalities, and certain signs of that exaggerated
objectivity which we now call realism. Each fresh discovery helps us
to comprehend, not without a certain sense of surprise, how much
freedom and variety Greek art possessed during its best time. There is
none of that dull uniformity which, with other races, distinguishes
most of the works of a single epoch, none of the tyranny of a single
master or school, none of the narrowness of mere _formulæ_.
[8] They were discovered in 1811 amid the ruins of one of the
temples at Ægina, by a company of excavators presided over by
Mr. Cockerell. They were bought by Prince Louis of Bavaria in
1812, and Thorwaldsen was occupied during several years in
putting together and restoring them. They were first exhibited
in the Glyptothek of Munich in 1820.
[9] The _débris_ of the temple at Bassæ was explored by the same
company in the year 1812, and a whole frieze was found, which
was bought by the British Museum in 1815.
The memorable exploration to which we have alluded, and many others
which it would take too long to enumerate, have not only made known to
us the most original and most fertile period of Greek sculpture, but
have given us much information as to that art which, when combined
with the statues of Phidias and Alcamenes, reared those splendid
creations which have been reconstructed with such skill and care by
the artist and the archæologist; we mean Greek architecture at its
best, the purest and the most complete architecture which the world
has yet seen. Every year sees the excellent example set by Stuart and
Revett,[10] in the second half of the eighteenth century, followed by
an increasing number of imitators. The smallest remains of ancient
architecture are measured and drawn with religious care; their
arrangements are explained, their elements are grouped, their
_ensemble_ is restored with a comprehension of their artistic
conditions which steadily gains in certainty and penetration. Blouet's
interesting restorations of Olympia and Phigalia, published in the
account of the French expedition to the Morea,[11] excited the
emulation of the young architects at the French Academy in Rome, and
opened to them a new course of study. Until then they had been
contented with the monumental buildings of Rome and its neighbourhood,
of Latium and Campania; a few of the more adventurous among them had
penetrated as far as Pæstum; but it was not till 1845 that they
ventured to cross the sea and to study the ruins of Greece and
Athens;[12] in later years they have travelled as far as Syria and
Asia Minor in search of objects for their pencils.[13]
[10] _The Antiquities of Athens, Measured and Delineated by J.
Stuart and N. Revett._ Folio. London, 1761.
[11] _Expédition scientifique de Morée, ordonnée par le
Gouvernement Français. Architecture, Sculpture, Inscriptions,
mesurées, dessinées, recueillies et publiées, par_ A. Blouet, A.
Ravoisié, Alph. Poirot, F. Trézel, et Fr. de Gournay. Paris,
1831-7.
[12] The restoration of the temple of Athenè Polias and of the
Parthenon, by Ballu and Paccard, dates from 1845. Since that
time the students of the French Academy have drawn and restored
all the most important monuments of Greece.
[13] One temple at Baalbec was restored in 1865 by M. Moyau; the
Mausoleum of Halicarnassus by M. Bernier in 1878, and the temple
of Athenè at Priene by M. Thomas in 1879.
But the occupants of the Villa Medici were not alone in these
researches. Doubtless, the invaluable publication which contains the
results of their labours, forms the most ample and varied collection
of documents open to the historian of architecture among the ancients.
But many other architects of different nationalities have given their
help to the work of patiently reconstructing the past.[14]
[14] In 1872 this collection consisted of sixty-one
restorations, comprising 691 original drawings upon a very large
scale, and forming fifty-two bound volumes. Thanks to M. Jules
Simon, then Minister of Public Instruction, and M. Charles
Blanc, Director of Fine Arts, the publication of the series in
its entirety was resolved upon. A commission, with M. Ernest
Vinet as secretary, was appointed to superintend the expenditure
of an annual grant of 20,000 francs voted by the Chamber. But
the work progresses very slowly. In 1881 only five sections had
appeared, the most important being the _Restauration des Temples
de Pæstum_, by Labrouste.
Examined thus closely, and by the trained eyes of professional artists
provided with all the necessary instruments, the relics of antiquity
yielded up secrets which would never have been suspected by the casual
observer. Thus Mr. Penrose discovered and explained that those walls
of the Propylæum and of the Parthenon, which seemed straight to the
eye, are in fact planned on a gentle curve;[15] he showed how this
subtle variation was calculated to add to the beauty of the buildings,
and to augment their effect. Hittorf arrived at still more important
results through the minute examination of the Sicilian ruins. He was
the first to describe the important part which painting played in the
decoration of Greek architecture; he affirmed that in many parts of
their buildings the stone or marble was painted over, and that the
various members of the architecture were distinguished by differences
of tint, which gave accent to the mouldings, and force to the figures
in relief. These ideas were too strongly opposed to modern habits of
thought to be received without strong protestations. Their partisans,
too, did something to retard their acceptance by their absolute
fashion of stating their convictions, and by certain unhappy
applications of their system; but the polychromatic principles of the
Greeks are now confirmed by too many facts to be denied.[16]
[15] F. C. PENROSE, _An Investigation of the Principles of
Athenian Architecture_. Folio, with plates. London, 1851.
[16] J. J. HITTORF, _Restitution du Temple d'Empédocle à
Sèlinonte; ou, l'Architecture polychrome chez les Grecs_, 4to.
and plates in folio. Paris, 1851.
Of the three principal branches of ancient art, that of which we know
least is painting, properly speaking; the art of Polygnotus, of
Zeuxis, and of Apelles. Of this we have but few remains, and we are
obliged to take our ideas of its excellence from the descriptions of
ancient authors. We have indeed the wall-paintings of those Campanian
cities which were so long buried under the ashes of Vesuvius;
paintings which were uncovered in great numbers under the Napoleonic
domination, and have in later times been added to every year, in spite
of the indolent fashion in which the excavations have been conducted.
Fragmentary mural paintings of the same kind have also been discovered
in Rome and in a few other neighbourhoods. But after all, great though
the interest may be which attaches to these works, it must not be
forgotten that they are Italian rather than Greek, that they are the
decorations for the most part of small provincial cities, and that
even the best of them, when compared with the productions of the fifth
and fourth centuries before our era, are examples of decadence. At the
most they enable us to recall, with some approach to probable truth,
the taste and technical methods of the Alexandrian school.[17]
Winckelmann and his immediate successors saw the ashes cleared from
the first Pompeian wall-paintings. But they possessed no standards by
which they could define the styles of those great schools of painting
which flourished in Greece between the epoch of the Persian Wars and
the beginning of the Macedonian supremacy; such a definition we may
now however attempt with at least partial success. Since the time of
Winckelmann hundreds and thousands of those painted vases of burnt
clay, which the public persist in calling Etruscan, have been
discovered, classified, described, and explained, in such a manner as
to leave unsolved scarcely any of the problems upon which they could
cast a light.
[17] See upon this subject M. Wolfgang Helbig's _Untersuchungen
ueber die Campanische Wandmalerei_. Leipsic, 1873. M. Boissier
has summed up the leading opinions in this matter in an
interesting article in the _Révue des Deux Mondes_, entitled
_Les Peintures d'Herculaneum et de Pompéi_ (October 1, 1879).
Gerhard led the way in 1831 with his famous report on the Volscian
vases;[18] numerous _savants_ have followed his example, and nearly
every day the series which they have established are enriched by new
discoveries. These vases, as we now know, were made in many places, at
Athens, at Corinth, in the Greek cities of Africa and of Magna Græcia.
They were eagerly sought after by some of the races whom the Greeks
considered barbarous, by the Græco-Scythians of the Crimea, as well as
by the Sabellians and the Etruscans; the latter imitated them now and
then more or less awkwardly, but it is unanimously acknowledged that
they are an essentially Greek product, the product of an art which
sprang up with the first awakening of the Greek genius, and was
extinguished about two hundred years before Christ, when the nation
ceased to be creative and prolific. From analogy with all that has
passed elsewhere we are justified in believing that, in each century,
the painting of these vases, which would belong to what we call the
industrial arts, followed with docility the example set by historical
painters, and that it reproduced, so far as its resources would allow,
the style and taste of their works. If we study each series of vases
in the light of the judgments passed by the ancients upon the most
celebrated painters of Greece, we may find, by a legitimate induction,
traces now of the style of Polygnotus, now of that of Zeuxis, and
again suggestions of the hands of Apelles or Protogenes; a vase here
and there may have even preserved more or less faithful imitations of
the actual works of those masters. These inductions and conjectures
certainly demand both prudence and delicacy of perception, but their
principle is incontestable, and the profit to be obtained from them is
great. In the whole wreck of antiquity there is no loss which lovers
of art find so hard to bear, as the complete annihilation of the works
of those great painters whom the ancients put at least upon the same
level as their most famous sculptors; and who would not rejoice to be
able, by the remains of contemporary though inferior productions, to
trace a reflection, distant and feeble perhaps, but yet faithful so
far as it goes, of a whole art which has been lost to the world?
[18] _Rapporto intorno i Vasi Volcenti_ (_Annali dell' Instituto
di Corrispondenza Archeologica_, vol. iii. p. 5).
The archæologists of the eighteenth century never dreamt of such
researches as these, still less of the results to which they might
lead; few of them suspected what valuable aid might be afforded to the
historian of art and of antique civilization, by the multitude of
small objects--vases, gems, glass, mirrors, bronze plaques and
figures, terra-cotta bas-reliefs, and statuettes--which are now so
eagerly sought after, and which begin to form valuable collections in
most of the great museums of Europe.[19] These objects, which were in
continual use, were manufactured in prodigious quantities for
thousands of years, and their vast numbers gave them a greatly
increased chance of being preserved. In spite of the rough usage of
man, and the slower progress of destruction due to the action of
nature, a certain number of them were sure, from the first, to find
means of escape, and, from so many examples, a few of each type have
therefore come down to us. The small size of these objects also
contributed to preserve them from destruction. In times of war and
revolution the poor and humble ones of the earth easily avoid the
catastrophes which overwhelm those who are richer, more powerful, and
more conspicuous than themselves. So it was with these little
memorials of antiquity. Their insignificance was their salvation in
the overthrow of the civilisation to which they belonged. More
numerous and better sheltered than the masterpieces of fine art, they
survived when the latter perished. Thus it is that so many of the
lighter and more fragile products of industry have survived to our
time, and have made us acquainted with modes of thought and life, and
with forms of plastic expression which we should never have known
without them. The painted vases, for instance, have preserved for us
more than one myth of which no trace can be found in poetry or
sculpture; and as for terra-cottas, to which the Tanagra statuettes
have directed so much attention, we may judge from the labours of M.
Henzey of the value which they possess for archæologists, who, though
unable, like some of our amateurs, to buy them with their weight in
gold, may compare them one with another and study their smallest
details.[20] Those statuettes, which are now classified in museums in
the order of their production, have shown us how narrow and inadequate
were the formulæ by which the early historians of the plastic arts
attempted to define the genius of the Greeks. Even now, the most
accomplished and well-informed critics are not always able to repress
a feeling of astonishment when they examine a collection of
terra-cottas. Some of these figures, no more than a span high,
resemble the marbles of the Parthenon in dignity and grandeur, others
are full of grace and playfulness in their outlines, and show a
capricious _abandon_ which disconcerts for a moment even those who are
least insensible to their charm. At the bases of such works one is apt
to look for the signature of some artist of the Renaissance or of the
eighteenth century. In reality they have existed ever since the fourth
or third century before our era, and yet there is something modern in
their appearance. But an indescribable purity of taste suffices to
betray their real origin to all those who possess knowledge and
delicate perceptions. That origin is still Greece, but Greece in her
lighter and more playful moments, when, leaving the representation of
gods and heroes, she condescends to treat the familiar objects of
domestic life, and does it with an ease of which her great writers,
notably Plato and Aristophanes, had also found the secret, when they
passed from epic tragedy to comedy, from the noblest eloquence to
hearty expressions of enjoyment.
[19] One of the first antiquaries to whom it occurred that the
examination of these little objects might lead to profitable
results was the Comte de Caylus, a _savant_ who is in some
danger of being forgotten, and who deserves that his claims to
our gratitude should be recalled to the public mind. The work in
which he has brought together the fruits of a long life spent in
travelling, in collecting, and in examining the technical
processes of the ancients, both by himself and with the help of
specialists, may be consulted with advantage (_Recueil d'
Antiquites égyptiennes, étrusques, grecques, et romains_, 6
vols. 4to. 1752-64. Supplement, 1 vol. 4to. 1767).
[20] _Recherches sur les Figures de Femmes voilées dans l'Art
Grec_, 4to. Paris, 1873. _Recherches sur un Groupe de Praxitèle,
d'après les Figurines de terre cuite_, 8vo. Paris, 1875. _Les
Figurines antiques de terre cuite du Musée du Louvre_, 4to.
1878, Morel.
These little statues interest the historian for other reasons also.
They sometimes give him, as at Tanagra, the most precise and accurate
information as to dress and social customs: sometimes, as at Tegæa,
they afford particulars of a famous though obscure form of worship, of
a divinity and of rites which are but imperfectly described in the
writings of classic authors.
This extension of knowledge and the great discoveries upon which it
was based, naturally led those who were interested in the study of the
remains of antique civilisation, to feel the necessity of
organisation, of division of labour, and of the importance of ensuring
a steady supply of the best and most trustworthy information.
Societies were therefore founded in many different centres with the
express object of meeting those wants. We cannot, of course, enumerate
them here, nor attempt to estimate their various claims to our
gratitude, but we may be permitted to allude to the good work
accomplished, during fifty years of incessant activity, by the
Association which has perhaps done more than any other for the
progress of archæology, we mean the _Instituto di Corrispondenza
Archeologica_, founded in Rome in 1829, by Bunsen, Gerhard, and the
Duc de Luynes. Thanks to the breadth of view
|
vi. 18., vii. 21., viii. 27-36., ix. 1, 38-42, 49. John xii. 31.,
Acts x. 38., 1 John, iii. 8.
[7] Mark iii. 11, 12., v. 6, 7. Luke iv. 33, 34, 41., viii. 28.
[8] Luke xxii. 53. John xiv. 30.
[9] 1 Peter v. 8.
[10] Gal. iv. 4. Col. i. 15., ii. 9.
[11] Matthew xxv. 41. Rom. xvi. 20. Col. ii. 15. Heb. ii. 14. 2
Peter ii. 4. Jude vi. 9. Rev. xii. 7-17., xx. 1, 2, 3. 10.
CHAPTER II.
And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed;
because thou hast obeyed my voice.--Gen. xxii. 18.
We now meet with a prophecy of the family from which Christ, after
the flesh, should spring. The lineal descent from Abraham to Joseph,
the husband of Mary, is given us by Matthew,[12] through forty-two
generations; and Luke[13] gives the genealogy of Jesus back to Adam,
through Abraham, in the whole seventy-four generations, showing at
once that the seed promised to Adam and Abraham, is the same, even
Jesus in whom all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.[14] The
reader will discover a difference between the names in the Old and
New Testaments, which arises from the former being translated from
the Hebrew, and the latter from the Greek language. It will also be
observed, that the genealogies given by Matthew and Luke differ,
but Matthew gives the pedigree of Joseph, and Luke that of Mary.
Although the supposed father of Jesus is said by Luke to be the
son of Heli, yet Matthew informs us Jacob begat Joseph,[15] who is
called the son of Heli, only on account of the contract for marriage
subsisting between Joseph and his daughter. This was a custom
prevalent with the Jews, and these agreements were often made by
the parents, before the parties most interested had ever seen each
other, as was the case with Isaac and Rebecca. Although Abraham's
posterity have been, as the sand on the sea shore, innumerable, and
as a nation have enjoyed exceeding great and precious privileges,
yet all the nations of the earth can never be said to be blessed in
them, unless we take the prophecy in its true light, as pointing to
Jesus "the promised blessing," whose day of "tabernacling" on earth,
Abraham by faith saw afar off, "rejoiced, and was glad."
[12] Mat. i. 1-17.
[13] Luke iii. 23-38.
[14] Genesis xii. 3., xviii. 18. Psalm lxxii. 17.
[15] Matthew i. 16. Luke iii. 23.
CHAPTER III.
The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from
between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the
gathering of the people be.--Gen. xlix. 10.
The Holy Ghost, by the mouth of the dying patriarch, Jacob, has
pointed to the epoch when he, of whom Moses and the prophets did
write, should appear. It is worthy our particular attention, that,
at the period of time when Jesus came, Judea was still governed by a
Jewish king. It is true the power of the royal Asmonean or Maccabean
race was destroyed, and Herod the Great had ascended the throne of
Israel, yet the sceptre was not departed from Judah. Herod was an
Idumean, which nation had, for nearly two centuries, been proselytes
to Judaism, and so incorporated and mingled with the Jews, as to be
regarded as one people. Judea bowed to the Roman power, yet Herod
exercised the regal authority, and was universally acknowledged
as the sovereign of Jewry, when Jesus, the prince of peace, the
king of Israel, appeared a babe at Bethlehem but no sooner was the
Shiloh come, than the sceptre departed from Judah. On the death
of Herod, which happened soon after the birth of Christ, Augustus
Cæsar divided the kingdom of Judea between Archelaus, Herod, and
Philip, the three sons of Herod. Archelaus succeeded to the half of
his father's dominions by the title of tetrarch, but not of king;
his tyranny and oppression were so great, that, in less than ten
years, he was deposed and banished to France by the emperor, who
then reduced Judea to a Roman province, and ruled it afterwards
by procurators or governors, who were sent thither and recalled
at pleasure; the taxes were now paid more directly to the Roman
empire, and gathered by the publicans; the power of life and death
was taken out of the hands of the Jews, and placed in those of the
Roman governors. The Lord, when he is pleased, can make the wrath
of man to praise him, and his enemies to minister to his glory.
This sentiment we have most strikingly illustrated in the conduct
of Caiaphas, who, in the moment he was plotting the destruction of
Jesus, and thirsting for his blood, delivered a very remarkable
prophecy,[16] the exact counterpart of the one we are now
considering, in which he declared Jesus to be the promised Shiloh,
who should gather together in one, all the children of God which
are scattered abroad, not the nations of the Jews only, but the
Gentiles also. Yes, Jesus will seek out and bring his people from
the mountains whence they are scattered; in the cloudy and dark day
he will bring his sons from afar, and his daughters from the ends of
the earth, and there shall be one fold under one shepherd, even the
glorious Shiloh.
[16] John xi. 49-52.
CHAPTER IV.
And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and
a branch shall grow out of his roots. And in that day, there
shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the
people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be
glorious.--Isaiah xi. 1. 10.
The Jews, from these prophecies, expected the Messiah would spring
from the family of David, the son of Jesse; and this led them to
preserve, with unusual attention, the genealogy of his descendants.
We have abundant testimony that Jesus is of "the house and
lineage of David."[17] By comparing scripture with scripture,[18]
we may venture to affirm, Jesus is the "glorious branch" Jehovah
hath made strong for himself. With regard to his human and divine
nature, he is both "David's son and David's Lord." He is the "root
and offspring of David," and the "bright and morning star." The
Gentiles shall come to "his light," and kings to the "brightness
of his rising." He is not only a "rod out of the stem of Jesse,"
but he is the "tree of life" whose "leaves are for the healing of
the nations," whose top shall "reach unto heaven," and his branches
"cover the earth." He is Jehovah's ensign of mercy displayed to a
rebel world, and both the Jewish and Gentile nations are invited to
enlist under the banners of the cross. Those who seek an inheritance
in the kingdom of the true David, if it be agreeable to the charter
of Immanuel's land, shall find his rest to be glorious.
[17] Since the destruction of Jerusalem, the genealogy of the Jews
is lost; the tribe or family of David cannot be distinguished from
that of Benjamin.
[18] Psalm cxxxii. 11. Isaiah ix. 6, 7., lv. 3, 4, 5. Jerem. xxiii.
5, 6., xxxiii. 15. Zech. iii. 8., vi. 12, 13.
CHAPTER V.
Thus saith the Lord, remove the diadem and take off the
crown, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it
him.--Ezekiel xxi. 26, 27.
For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king,
and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an
image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim. Afterwards
shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their
God, and David their king; and shall fear the Lord and his
goodness in the latter days.--Hosea iii. 4, 5.
The Jews themselves must confess this prophecy to be in part
fulfilled. They are wanderers from their beloved Canaan, strangers
in a strange land, scattered over all parts of the globe, and
destitute of all the local privileges which constitute a nation,
although they still retain a distinction of character; but it only
tends to make them a reproach, and their name a by-word amongst all
classes. They dwell alone, and are not now reckoned amongst the
nations of the earth. The insignia of royal dignity are useless
to them, having no king or prince on whom to bestow the crown or
diadem. They are deprived of their temple and its services, and of
all the glorious distinctions which marked it from those dedicated
to false or unknown Gods. The latter clause of this prophecy shall
as assuredly be fulfilled, for heaven and earth shall pass away,
sooner than one of the promises of God fail to be accomplished.
Yes, the children of Israel shall return, and seek the Lord their
God, and him of whom David was only a type, even King Jesus,[19]
who is of David's royal line, "and the government shall be upon
his shoulders," for he is the "wonderful counsellor, the mighty
God, the everlasting father, the prince of peace." Hasten, Lord! we
would say, the time "when the deliverer shall arise out of Zion,
and turn away ungodliness from Jacob." Assume the sceptre of thy
power, Jesus, thou king of Zion, thou "Son of the Highest! for the
Lord God has given unto thee the throne of thy father, David; thou
shalt reign over the house of Jacob for ever." "Of the increase of
thy government and peace there shall be no end; upon the throne of
David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with
judgment and with justice, from henceforth even for ever. The zeal
of the Lord of hosts will perform this."
[19] Ezek. xxi. 26, 27.
CHAPTER VI.
The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the
midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall
hearken.--Deut. xviii. 15-19.
This is one of the many precious promises given by God to Israel.
Moses is a character justly deserving our regard and veneration.
The Jewish nation held him in high estimation, and almost idolized
his memory. Perhaps our time may not be misemployed in searching
for proofs of the fulfilment of this prophecy, and in examining the
character of one (even Jesus) who declares himself to be not only a
prophet like unto Moses, but in every respect his superior; which,
if proved, will clearly warrant their giving unto Jesus far greater
honour than was even due to Moses. In drawing a comparison between
these illustrious personages, we observe; they both sprang from the
family of Jacob or Israel; Moses, when a child, was, for a time,
concealed by his parents from the persecuting Pharoah; the child
Jesus also, was, by command of God the Father, taken into Egypt,
to avoid the tyranny of Herod: thus both escaped the destruction
executed on all the other male children. Moses was raised up from
the midst of the people, from amongst his brethren the children
of Israel; Jesus having taken on him our nature, is not ashamed to
call us brethren. Moses was a prophet, called and taught of God;
Jesus is the sent, the sealed, the anointed of God, at whose call
he came forth. Moses saw God face to face; Jesus lay in the bosom
of the Father. Moses wrought miracles by the command and aid of
God; Jesus wrought many miracles in the days of his flesh, but
all in his own name and by his own power. Moses was an honoured
instrument in bringing Israel from the bondage of Egypt; but Jesus
delivers his people Israel from worse than Egyptian taskmasters,
even the bondage of sin and Satan. Moses fasted forty days before he
gave the law to Israel. Jesus fasted forty days before he entered
on his public ministry. When Moses wrought miracles in Egypt, the
magicians were obliged to confess the divine power by which he
acted. Jesus expelled the evil spirits, and they acknowledged his
almighty power. Moses commanded the sea to retire, and it obeyed
his voice. Jesus said to the tempestuous winds and sea, "Peace,
be still!" and instantly there was a great calm. Moses cured one
leper.[20] Jesus cured many. Moses chose and appointed seventy
elders over the people, on whom God bestowed the spirit of prophecy.
Jesus chose seventy apostles, whom he endowed with miraculous
powers, and sent forth to teach in the villages. Moses chose twelve
men, whom he sent to spy out the land the Israelites were about
to conquer. Jesus chose twelve apostles, and commanded them to go
forth and preach the gospel to all the world, and subject it to
his allegiance, by a more glorious power than that of arms. Moses
was in danger of being stoned by the rebellious and ungrateful
people, whom he had constantly laboured to benefit. The Jews also
took up stones to stone Jesus in return for his numerous favours.
The relations of Moses were greatly offended with him for marrying
an Ethiopian woman.[21] Jesus has espoused the Gentile church, to
the no small displeasure of the Jews. When Moses was the prophet of
Israel, they were fed with manna from heaven. Jesus miraculously
fed five thousand and seven thousand persons; he could say "I am
the living bread which came down from heaven; if any man eat of
this bread, he shall live for ever; and the bread that I will
give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."
When Moses, by God's command, stretched forth his hand, darkness
covered the land of Egypt, which was shortly followed by the awful
destruction of its first-born; when Jesus was crucified, darkness
covered the land, which, not many years after, was the scene of the
most dire calamities. Was Moses a prophet? and did he not speak
of the calamities that would befall the Jews? as such, see Jesus
teaching the people, and foretelling the time and circumstances of
his own decease, and also the siege and destruction of Jerusalem.
Was Moses as king in Jeshurun? Jesus is not only king in Zion, but
King of kings, and Lord of lords; by him kings rule, and princes
decree justice. Moses is described as an almost perfect character;
Jesus as wholly free from the least spot or stain of sin. Moses was
remarkable for meekness; Jesus, when led as a lamb to the slaughter,
opened not his mouth; when reviled, he reviled not again; when
persecuted, he blessed. Moses, by command of God, gave laws and
statutes, and instituted ordinances in Israel; Jesus instituted the
ordinance of the Lord's Supper, and gave laws and commandments to
his people. The law given by Moses tends only to condemnation, but
Jesus "has brought light and immortality to light by his gospel."
The law of Moses was designed "as a schoolmaster to bring us to
Christ;" the doctrine of Jesus is, "I am the way, the truth, and
the life." Moses acted as a mediator between God and Israel, at
the giving of the covenant on Sinai; Jesus is the great day's-man,
and the almighty mediator of the new covenant. Did Moses plead
for the rebellious Israelites? we also hear Jesus interceding for
transgressors, saying, "Father, forgive them, for they know not
what they do." Moses read the law in the ears of all Israel; Jesus
writes his laws upon the hearts of his people, and his truths in
their inward parts. When Moses descended from Mount Sinai, after
holding converse with God, his face shone exceeding bright; we are
told when Jesus was transfigured on Mount Tabor, his face shone as
the sun, and his raiment was white as the light. Did Moses choose
rather "to suffer affliction with the people of God, than enjoy
the pleasures of sin for a season?" Jesus preferred suffering
misery and woe for a time, rather than his people should endure
the everlasting punishment which their sins deserved. Did Moses
esteem the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of
Egypt? Jesus considers the odium affixed to his cross, as a more
honourable distinction than the possession of thousands of gold
and silver. Moses, as a servant, was faithful in all his house;
Jesus could say "Father, I have finished the work thou hast given
me to do," "I have glorified thee on the earth," and "those thou
gavest me, I have kept, and none of them is lost." (See John xvii.
12) Moses was permitted, from the heights of Pisgah, to view the
goodly land of promise; which was but a type of the heavenly rest
Jesus has prepared for those who love him. Moses, as a prophet, was
great in Israel; Jesus is the Lord God of the prophets, and unto him
shall the people hearken; he will give them the hearing ear and the
understanding heart, and make them willing in the day of his power.
"Every soul that will not hearken unto this prophet, shall be cut
off," for be it known to all people, "that there is none other name
under heaven given amongst men, whereby we can be saved," but that
of Jesus, who is of a truth "the prophet that was for to come." It
was said, by way of reproach, thou art this man's disciple, but we
are Moses' disciples. Let us not consider it a disgrace to own our
attachment to him, who is in every point of view far superior to
Moses, who was but his servant, and the creature of his power. Where
shall we find a person who so closely resembles Moses, as Christ?
Surely he was the prophet foretold! Yet the Jews rejected him, and
by that rejection prove that Jesus was he of whom Moses wrote--for
the Lord has executed the punishment he threatened should befall
them, if they refused to hearken unto this prophet; thus the Jews
are living monuments of the truth as it is in Jesus. Oh, may we take
warning from their calamities, and receive the sent, the sealed, the
anointed of the Father, as our prophet, priest, and king; even Jesus
the Messiah, the Christ of God!
[20] Numbers xii. 15.
[21] Numbers xii. 1.
CHAPTER VII.
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the
way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our
God.--Isaiah xl. 3.
The Prophets Isaiah and Malachi[22] were commissioned to inform the
church, that when the period should arrive for the coming of the
Messiah, a messenger would be sent to announce his near approach.
This promise was most strictly fulfilled: Jesus, the Son of the Most
High God, did not visit this our world, without first directing an
herald to proclaim his coming; even John, who was sent to prepare
the way before him.[23] This harbinger deserves our attention;
he was no ordinary character. An angel, even Gabriel, posted from
heaven to speak of his birth, and declare he should be filled with
the Holy Ghost from the first dawn of life. If such distinguishing
honour was paid to the messenger, how great that due to the master!
John demands our respect, on account of the sanctity of his life,
the simplicity of his manners, and the active zeal and ardent love
he manifested in the cause, and towards the person, of his Lord,
and for the integrity and faithfulness exhibited in every part of
his conduct towards man. He feared not to reprove sin in whatever
class of persons he beheld it, from the common soldier even to the
monarch on the throne. To a character so exemplary as John's, the
highest respect and veneration are due; and the testimony of such a
man deserves not to be lightly regarded. John's birth was six months
prior to his Lord's,[24] and being the first who used water-baptism
as a divine ordinance, he was surnamed the Baptist. He abode "in
the deserts" of Judea "until the day of his showing unto Israel,"
and had never seen his Lord (who resided at Nazareth, in Galilee),
until he came to Jordan for baptism. The testimony he then gave to
the person of Jesus merits observation. He publicly acknowledged him
to be the person whose way he was sent to prepare, and spoke of him
as one whose shoe's latchet he was not worthy to unloose. We see
John, when surrounded by his own disciples, point to Jesus, and say
"Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world," and
"this is he of whom I said, after me cometh a man which is preferred
before me; for he was before me." John gave the most decided
testimony to the Godhead of Jesus, for he said he would "baptise
with the Holy Ghost," which is the prerogative only of God. What
man can, by any means, redeem his brother, or give to God a ransom
for his soul? but John spake of his Lord as "the Lamb of God, which
taketh away the sin of the world." Yes, he is the "Lamb slain from
the foundation of the world." Under the Mosaic dispensation, the
lamb slain, as a morning and evening sacrifice, and on the great day
of atonement, was only a type of this Lamb of God's own providing,
who offered himself up as a sacrifice for the sins of many. When
the disciples of John appeared displeased at the growing popularity
of Jesus, their master instantly checked them by saying "he must
increase, but I must decrease; he that cometh from heaven is above
all." After John was cast into prison, we find him sending two of
his disciples to Jesus, to inquire if he were the Christ or not.[25]
Having heard the testimony John had before given to the person of
Jesus, we cannot suppose he had any doubts in his own mind as to his
being the Messiah, but rather that he was fully convinced of the
fact himself; and wishing his disciples to be firmly established
in the same faith, he, as the most effectual method, sent them to
Jesus for satisfactory proofs of a truth which he (John) had been
continually teaching through the whole course of his ministry. John
was a faithful witness in his master's cause, and to him we are much
indebted. But let us not bestow on him the honours due to Jesus, who
is deservedly preferred before him; for, as John justly observed, he
was before him. This is strictly true, for although Jesus did not
take on him our nature until six months after the birth of John,
yet, being God as well as man, his existence is from everlasting to
everlasting.
[22] Mal. iii. 1., iv. 5.
[23] Matt. iii. 3., xi. 2-15. Mark i. 2-8. Luke i. 5-26.
[24] Luke i. 39-44.
[25] Luke vii. 18-28.
Josephus, in his history of the Jews, speaks of John the Baptist
in the highest terms of respect and veneration: he says he had
acquired such credit and authority amongst the people by the
holiness of his life, and his disciples were so numerous, that
Herod, dreading a revolt, confined John in the castle of Macharas,
and afterwards beheaded him, for no other crime than his honest
faithfulness.[26] Herod's army was soon after totally routed by the
troops of Aretas, and the Jews considered it as a mark of Divine
vengeance for his cruel treatment of the Holy Baptist.
[26] Matt. xiv. 3-10.
CHAPTER VIII.
Therefore, the Lord himself shall give you a sign, behold a
virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name
Immanuel.--Isaiah vii. 14.
The portion of scripture now before us is highly interesting, and
demands serious attention. About seven hundred and eight years
before the birth of Jesus, the prophet Isaiah was commissioned
to tell the church, a virgin should conceive and bear a son, and
should call his name Immanuel. For proofs of the fulfilment of
this prophecy, we would refer to Matthew and Luke,[27] and request
their testimony may be read with the serious attention the
subject demands. The unblushing infidel may treat it with scorn
and ridicule; but let not one bearing the name of Christ, venture
to speak with lightness, on this so highly momentous an article of
the christian faith. We cannot suppose the Lord, after giving this
promise, would be unmindful of its accomplishment: if the birth
of Christ had been the result of natural causes, there would have
been nothing to excite surprise, nor would it have been a sign, as
the Lord himself declared it should be. If he had been born after
the manner of the children of men, no doubt he must have partaken
of their evil nature. Or if his body had been formed of the dust,
as was Adam's, how could the promise given at the fall of man,
have been fulfilled? And what relationship would there then have
existed between Christ and his church? But now he is "bone of our
bone, and flesh of our flesh." For in the fulness of time, "God
sent forth his son, made of a woman, made under the law, that he
might redeem them which are under the law." "Lo! in the volume of
the book, it is written of him," "sacrifice and offerings for sin,
thou wouldest not; but a body hast thou prepared for him." A body
subject to all the infirmities of our nature, yet wholly free from
the sinful principles, and evil propensities of the human race. His
name shall be called "Immanuel, which, being interpreted, is, God
with us," God in our nature.[28] Yes, the uncreated word was "made
flesh and dwelt amongst us and we beheld his glory, the glory as
of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." "In
him dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." The Socinian may
smile with contempt when the Deity of Jesus is attested, but is it
not written? "Behold ye despisers, and wonder and perish!" Shall
not "he that sitteth upon the circle of the heavens, laugh?--the
Lord shall have them in utter derision." We would candidly confess,
there are mysteries in this doctrine above the powers of a finite
mind fully to comprehend. But are we, for that cause, to refuse
our belief of its truth? We should indeed be reduced to a most
distressing dilemma, if we were to disbelieve every thing we cannot
fully comprehend. Who can discover or fully explain the nature,
order, and beauteous economy, displayed in the animate and inanimate
creation? They are so many problems unsolvable by man, although
by the dint of study, many of the causes and effects by which we
are encircled, have been traced up to their mighty Author, and
eagle-eyed genius has let in a world of wonders to our view; yet
much, very much, both in the heavens, the earth, and mighty deep,
remains enwrapt in clouds, or thick darkness. Even in the formation
of a blade of grass, there are operations which man cannot define.
We enjoy the genial rays of heaven's bright luminary, but who can
prove to demonstration, the sources from whence he has derived such
a constant supply of matter, as to furnish our system of worlds,
with light and heat for nearly six thousand years? In short who
can discover or fully explain the mysterious link which unites
mind to matter? But surely we do not allow ourselves to disbelieve
the reality of their existence, because we cannot enter into the
minutiæ of their nature. If there was nothing revealed, in the New
Testament, of the nature and person of Christ, but what we could
fully comprehend, we should then have some cause to refuse our
assent to its truth, and might confess it to be a cunningly devised
fable. But while great is the mystery of godliness, remember it is
God manifest in the flesh; not God putting off his Deity to take the
human nature, but it is the second person in the revealed order
of the triune Jehovah, who takes our nature into union with his
divine person, and veils his Godhead beneath the human flesh. Thus
is God and man united in the person of our glorious Immanuel; and
as if no proof should be wanting of his Deity, the angel Gabriel
when directing Mary to call his name Jesus, added: "for he shall
save his people from their sins." Thus did he give the most decided
testimony to his Godhead, for who but God, strictly speaking, can
claim a people as his own? and none but God can save them from their
sins. In regard to the Virgin Mary, we would cheerfully join in
Gabriel's salutation, "Hail! thou highly favoured of the Lord;" but,
at the same time, we would beg to observe a nice distinction with
reference to Mary, who was only one of Eve's daughters, and, though
highly honoured of the Lord in this particular instance, an honour
which never was or can be conferred on another; yet Mary's salvation
depended on the same foundation as the rest of God's children,
and it is plain Mary viewed it in the same light, for we hear her
saying, "My soul doth magnify the Lord and my spirit doth rejoice
in God my Saviour." Mary was only a creature, and consequently it
is sinful to offer her adoration, for it is written "thou shalt
worship the Lord thy God, and none other." As to her having any
particular interest at the court of heaven, Jesus has determined
that point, by saying, "Woman what have I to do with thee, mine hour
is not yet come." It is worthy observation, that whenever Jesus
spoke of Mary, he invariably called her "woman," as if at once to
silence all who he knew would in after ages bestow improper honours
on the virgin. When one said "Behold thy mother and thy brethren
stand without desiring to speak with thee," Jesus pointed to his
disciples, and said, "behold my mother and my brethren;" and added,
"whosoever shall do the will of my father who is in heaven, the
same is my mother, and sister, and brother." Whether Mary had, or
had not children, after the birth of Jesus, is to us a matter of no
importance; all it concerns us is to know she had none before.
[27] Matt. i. 18-25. Luke i. 26-38.
[28] Col. ii. 9. 1 Cor. xv. 47. Rom. ix. 5. 1 Tim. iii. 16. John i.
1., i. 14.
CHAPTER IX.
But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the
thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall He come forth unto me,
that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from
of old, from everlasting.--Micah v. 2.
We find Boaz (the husband of Ruth) was of Bethlehem, a small city
belonging to the tribe of Judah, situate about five or six miles
from Jerusalem, and his posterity continued to possess it for some
time, for it was the birth-place of David, the son of Jesse the
Bethlehemite, great grandson to Boaz. This was the city from which,
according to prophecy, the Messiah should come. If we examine the
records left by the Evangelists, we shall find a decree was issued
by Augustus Cæsar, to tax all the people of the Jews, and every
family was ordered to repair to the cities belonging to their
respective tribes. This it was, which brought the Virgin Mary from
Nazareth to Bethlehem, she being of the house and lineage of David.
It is probable the whole family of David were cited to assemble for
the purpose of being taxed; it might be with a design to humble and
mortify them, for they had a rightful claim to the throne of Judah.
If this had not been the case, it is more than probable Mary, from
her situation, would have been permitted to remain at Nazareth.
Whatever were the motives of the civil authorities, we have cause
to bless our God for thus overruling events, which distinctively
considered were oppressive, but now tend to establish the truth as
it is in Jesus. What else, humanly speaking, could have brought
Mary, a female in the humblest walk of life, to Bethlehem?--If it
were not for this circumstance, we should have wanted this proof
of Jesus being the Messiah; for we are told, he should be born at
Bethlehem, a city little among the thousands of Judah.[29] Although
a manger was the best accommodation offered for the royal babe, yet
his birth was not altogether unnoticed, or passed by, as an event
of little importance; for lo! amidst the stillness of the night,
an angelic messenger is sent to announce to Jewish shepherds, the
arrival of the chief Shepherd. No sooner are the glad tidings of
great joy communicated, but a multitude of the heavenly hosts, who
had followed with joyful haste, make the air re-echo with sounds,
sweet as the music of heaven. While charmed with the delightful
melody, and breathless to catch the strain, we distinctly hear,
"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will towards
men." The next object which arrests our attention, is a company of
Eastern philosophers, who are come to pay their adorations to the
sovereign stranger, and to welcome his arrival. But who could have
directed them to this obscure retreat, to find the infant King?
They were led thither, by a star of peculiar motion, appointed
to direct these eastern sages (probably Chaldeans), to Israel's
King. But how ill did his appearance accord with the dignity of
his character; yet notwithstanding the poverty with which he
was surrounded, they worshipped him. For he who was a babe at
Bethlehem, by the mysterious union of the human nature with the
divine person, is the same "whose goings forth have been from of
old, from everlasting." We are told that when he went forth in the
acts of creation, "the morning stars sang together, and all the
sons of God shouted for joy." What wonder then if they tuned their
golden harps afresh, when he went forth to accomplish redemption's
work, which mystery the angels are represented as desiring to look
into. He is also described as a Ruler not only in the armies of
heaven, and amongst the inhabitants of earth; but, in a more near
and interesting sense, does he reign and rule in the hearts of his
redeemed. The symbol of his authority is not an iron rod; no, he
rules them with the sceptre of his love. We would say "Gird on thy
sword upon thy thigh, O thou most mighty; and go forth, conquering
and to conquer; until every land shall own thy power, and all the
nations of the earth shall call the Redeemer blessed." May we
imitate these eastern sages, and not feel ashamed to confess our
attachment to him, who once appeared as an infant at
|
."
"It happened pretty long ago," replied Richard, laughing; "and at
forty years of age I am surely unlikely to commit an act of folly----"
"If it be not committed already?"
--"And lose your favour, even by marrying, 'the daughter of a simple
knight.'"
"With my favour you would lose this fine estate. But give me your
hand, Dick, I know you will never do aught unworthy of our good old
Cornish name of Trevelyan!"
With a grand old-fashioned air--yet one full of kindness--the proud
old man presented his thin white hand to his nephew, who pressed it
affectionately, and then rose to withdraw.
"Whither go you, Dick, so soon?"
"Oh--anywhere, uncle," replied the other, wearily.
"How, sir?"
"Merely into the lawn to enjoy a post-prandial cigar," replied
Richard, whose face wore an evident expression of annoyance, as he
bowed and quitted the room.
"We have worried him, I fear," said Downie, with a self-satisfied
smile.
"Don't use slang--it is bad in tone," replied his uncle; "but I
cannot make your brother out--I hope he is not deceiving us all.
Gad, if I thought so--if that Montreal story should prove true----"
the peer paused, and his keen blue eyes flashed with anger at the
vague thoughts that occurred to him.
"Oh, do not fear, my lord," said Downie Trevelyan, in a suave and
soothing manner; "though sham diamonds often do duty for real ones."
"What do you mean?" asked his uncle, haughtily.
Downie only smiled, and bent over his glass of Burgundy again.
"_Neb na gare y gwayn call restona,_" said Lord Lamorna,
significantly; "I hate proverbs: but this is a good old Cornish one;
'he that heeds not gain, must expect _loss_.' When do you expect
your oldest boy home from India?"
"He may arrive next week, perhaps, my lord, and he will at once
dutifully hasten to present himself to you."
"He must be well up among the Lieutenants of the Hussars now?"
"Yet he means to exchange into the Infantry."
"Why?"
"It is a matter of expedience and expense, my lord; even with forage,
batta, tentage, and so forth, he finds his regiment a very
extravagant one."
"I shall give him a cheque on Coutts and Co., for I must not forget
that you did me the honour to name him after me."
"But you did us the greater honour in being his sponsor--and in
bestowing upon him a gold sponsorial mug."
"With the _Koithgath_ of the Trevelyans for a handle, and another
perched on the lid; well, well--he may be my successor here--who
knows, who knows," mumbled the old man, as he prepared to take
his-after dinner nap, by spreading a cambric handkerchief over his
face, and Downie glided noiselessly away to the library, with a
strange and unfathomable smile on his colourless face, and he
muttered,--
"I too may say--'the time will come!'"
CHAPTER II.
RHOSCADZHEL.
On the smooth lawn his brother was walking to and fro, with a cigar
between his firm white teeth, with his heart a prey to bitter and
exciting thoughts; and though Richard Trevelyan is not, as we have
said, the hero of these pages, to the lawn we shall accompany him.
"What the deuce can be the secret spring of all this intrusive
solicitude upon my uncle's part about having me married, as if I were
a young girl in her third season?" he muttered; "I have often feared
that Downie suspected me--as a lawyer, it is natural he should
suspect every one of something more than he sees or knows; and yet--I
have been so wary, so careful! My poor Constance--still
concealment--still dissimulation for the present, and doubts of our
future! No hope for us, save in the death of that old man, ever so
good and kind to me. Did he really but know Constance, how sweet and
gentle she is! A curse be on this silly pride of birth and
fortuitous position which is our bane--this boasting of pedigree old
as the days of Bran ap Llyr, the ancestor of King Arthur. By Jove,
it is too absurd!" and he laughed angrily as he tossed away his cigar
and then sighed, as he surveyed the façade of the stately mansion,
and cast his eyes round the spacious lawn that stretched far away in
starlight and obscurity. "And yet must I stoop to this senile
folly," he added, half aloud; "for 'twere hard to see all these broad
acres go to Downie's boy, the Hussar, past me and mine!"
The seats of the Cornish aristocracy have usually little to boast of
in architecture; but the mansion of Rhoscadzhel* was an exception,
being a rare specimen of a fine old Tudor dwelling, which had
suffered more from the rude hand of civil war, than from "time's
effacing fingers," and was built, tradition avers, from the famous
quarry of Pencarrow, and of good Cornish freestone.
* Cadzhel, Cornish for castle.
A massive iron gate, between carved pillars, each surmounted by a
koithgath, or wild cat, rampant--a crest of which Lord Lamorna was as
vain as ever was old Bradwardine of his heraldic bears--gave access
to the avenue, a long and leafy tunnel that lay between the house and
the highway leading to the Land's End. The branches of the stately
old elms were interlaced overhead, like the groined arches of a
Gothic cathedral and a delightful promenade their shade afforded in
the hot days of summer, when only a patch of blue sky, or the golden
rays falling aslant, could be seen at times through their foliage.
Engrafted in the later Tudor times upon the ruins of Rhoscadzhel, of
which there is still remaining the fragment of a loopholed tower and
ponderous granite arch shrouded in ivy, with its modern
_porte-cochère_ and vestibule floored with marble, its mullioned
windows filled in with plate glass in lieu of little lozenge-panes,
its dining hall and drawing rooms lighted with gas when such was the
wish of its proprietor, the mansion, though retaining all the
characteristics of the days when Queen Bess held her court at
Greenwich and danced before the Scottish ambassador, had nevertheless
all the comforts, appliances and splendour, with which the taste and
wealth of the present age could invest it.
The great dining-hall had remained almost unchanged since the days of
the first Charles. Its vast chimney-piece, which rose nearly to the
ceiling, was covered with marvellous scrolls and legends, and
innumerable wild cats' heads among them, over all being the arms of
Trevelyan of Lamorna; _gules_, a demi-horse _argent_ issuing from the
sea, adapted from the circumstance of one of the family swimming on
horseback from the Seven Stones to the Land's End, when they were
suddenly separated from the continent by a terrible inundation of the
ocean, and as this dangerous reef is no less than nine miles from
Scilly, where a light-ship points it out to the mariner, the feat was
well worthy of being recorded, at least in heraldry.
The furniture here was quaint and old, massive and richly carved, and
though the vast stone-flagged chamber, where many a Cornish cavalier
has whilom drunk "confusion to Cromwell and the Rump," and where
still stands the great dining table with its daïs, where of old "the
carles of low degree" had sat below the salt, is sombre and gloomy,
somewhat of lightness is imparted by the splendid modern conservatory
that opens off it, with marble floor and shelves of iron fret-work
laden with rare and exotic plants.
It boasts of a chamber known as "the Queen's," wherein Henrietta
Maria had slept one night before she fled to France, and since then
no one has ever occupied the ancient bed that, like a huge
catafalque, stands upon three steps in the centre of the wainscoted
room which like several others in Rhoscadzhel, has hangings of faded
green tapestry, that are lifted to give entrance; and where the
hearths, intended for wood alone, have grotesque andirons in the form
of the inevitable koithgath on its hind legs. And on the walls of
these old chambers hung many a trophy of the past, and many a weapon
of the present day, from the great two-handed sword wielded by Henry
Lord Lamorna at the Battle of Pinkey down to the yeomanry sabre worn
by the present peer at the coronation of George IV., a peer of whose
effeminacy the said Lord Henry would have been sorely ashamed.
And many a Vandyke, Kneller, and Lely were there, with portraits of
the Trevelyans of past times, who now lay under their marble tombs in
yonder little church upon the hill, where among dust and cobwebs hung
their helmets, spurs, and gauntlets, and the iron mace of one
Launcelot Trevelyan, who was a man of vast stature; and it is as
great a source of wonder to the village children as the rickety ruin
of a gilded coach which at certain times is drawn forth to the lawn
and aired carefully, being that in which the grandfather of the
present peer brought home his bride in patches and powder, and it is
supposed to be the first vehicle of the kind ever seen in the duchy
of Cornwall. Thus, as Richard Pencarrow Trevelyan thought over all
these possessions with their traditional and family interests, of
which, by one ill-natured stroke of the pen, his proud uncle might
deprive him and his heirs for ever, a bitter sigh escaped him.
Beyond the quaint façade of the ancient house, from the mullioned
windows of which, half hidden by ivy and wild roses, there streamed
out many a light into the darkness, his eyes wandered to the fertile
fields, all bare stubble now, to the wide open moor overlooked by
many a wooded tor, and to the beautiful lawn, in the centre of which
stands one of those wonderful _logan-stones_, so peculiar to Cornwall
and Brittany, a ponderous, spheroidal mass of granite, so exquisitely
balanced that it may be oscillated by the touch even of a woman's
hand; and as he turned away to indulge in deeper reverie by the shore
of the adjacent sea, he raised his right hand and his glistening eyes
to the stars, as if some vow, as yet unuttered, was quivering on his
tongue.
"Yes?" he exclaimed, "please God and pray God, the time will come;
but not as my good uncle, and not, as the careful Downie, anticipate.
Marriage! how little do they know how, in the great lottery of life,
my kismet--as we used to say in India--has been fixed--irrevocably
fixed!"
CHAPTER III.
THE ALARM BELL.
The season was autumn now, and on the succeeding day--the last he
meant to spend at Rhoscadzhel for some time at least--Richard
Trevelyan appeared in the breakfast parlour again in shooting
costume, with a scarlet shirt having an open collar, and with a brown
leather shot-belt over his shoulder; while his uncle, who, even when
at his slender morning repast, in his elaborately flowered
dressing-gown, wore accurately fitting pale kid gloves on his
shrivelled hands, for such things were a necessity of the old lord's
existence; thus he glanced again with an air of annoyance at the
dress worn by his eldest nephew, as he considered it a solecism,
decidedly in bad taste, and that something more was due to his own
presence.
Downie's costume, a fashionable morning coat came more near his
lordship's ideas of propriety.
Mr. Jasper Funnel, in accurate black, was at the side-table, to slice
down the cold meat, pour out the coffee from its silver urn into the
beautiful Wedgewood cups, and to carve the grouse and other pies; for
Cornwall is peculiarly the land of that species of viand, as there
the denizens make pies of everything eatable, squab-pies,
pilchard-pies, muggetty-pies, and so forth.
"I heard last evening the new chime of bells you have put up in
Lamorna Church," said Richard, as he seated himself and attacked a
plate of grouse, the recent spoil of his own gun; "how pleasantly
they sound. Who rings them?"
"I cannot say--never inquired," replied the old peer, testily; "I can
only tell you one thing, Richard."
"And that is----"
"They were wrung out of my pocket by the vestry."
At this little quip, Downie obsequiously and applaudingly laughed as
loudly as he was ever known to do, and just as if he had never heard
it before.
"However, I need not grudge the poor people their chime of bells; I
am rich enough to afford them more than that, and occupying as we do
a good slice of this _Land of Tin_, for so the Phoenicians named this
Cornish peninsula of ours as early as the days of Solomon, we have
its credit to maintain; but bring us home a well-born and handsome
bird, Dick, and I shall have the bells rung till they fly to
pieces--by Jove I will! Only, as I hinted last night, let her be
worthy to represent those who lie under their marble tombs in that
old church of Lamorna; for there are bones there that would shrink in
their leaden coffins if aught plebeian were laid beside them."
Richard shrugged his shoulders, and glanced round him with impatience.
"Let us look forward, my dear uncle," said he; "in this age of
progress all men do; and of what account or avail can a dead ancestry
be?"
Downie smiled faintly, and Lord Lamorna frowned in the act of
decapitating an egg, for to his ears this sounded as rank heresy or
treason against the state.
"By heavens! nephew Richard, you talk like a Red Republican. With
these socialistic views of equality, and so forth, I fear you will
never shine in the Upper House."
"I have no desire to do so; you see how simple my tastes are----"
"In dress decidedly too much so."
"And how happy and content I am to lead the life of a quiet country
gentleman; and have done so ever since I left the Cornish Light
Infantry."
"Your demands upon my pocket are certainly so moderate, that I cannot
think you are playing me false, Dick," said the peer, with a pleasant
smile; "egad, if I thought you were doing so, I'd have you before the
Mayor of Halgaver, as our Cornish folks say!"
"Trust me, my good uncle," replied Richard Trevelyan, with a
glistening eye, and laying a hand caressingly on the old man's
shoulder, as he rose and adjusted his shot-belt; "and now I go to
have a farewell shot on the moors."
"Why a farewell shot? you have been here barely a fortnight."
"Nevertheless, I must leave Rhoscadzhel tomorrow."
"Positively?"
"Yes, uncle."
"Pardon me," continued Lamorna, drily; "but may we inquire for where?"
"Oxford--and then town after, perhaps."
"Oxford--and town too," replied his uncle, testily; "the last time
you left this for London, if General Trecarrel was right, you were
seen for a month after in his neighbourhood; and, if his story were
true--and I dare not doubt it--you did not get beyond the border of
Cornwall--and were certainly not so far as Devonshire."
"Trecarrel was, I hope, mistaken," urged Richard.
"I hope so, too."
Richard's face was pale, and to conceal his emotion, he stooped and
caressed his favourite pointer, which had bounded in when the butler
opened the door; and soon recovering from his little
agitation--whatever its secret source might be--he politely and
affectionately bade his uncle "good-bye for the present," nodded to
the silent and observant Downie, took a double-barrelled
breech-loader from the gun-room and sallied forth, unattended by
game-keepers, desiring quite as much to indulge in reverie and enjoy
a solitary ramble, as to have a shot at a passing bird.
To Richard it seemed that he had read a strangely keen, weird and
unfathomable expression in his uncle's eyes, as they followed his
departing steps on this particular morning--an expression which,
somehow, haunted him.
The season, we have said, was now autumn, and a tender, mellow tone
rested over all the landscape; Richard Trevelyan was fond of the
strange, wild district--the land of old tradition, of bold and varied
scenery--amid which his youth and so much of his manhood had been
passed, and he looked around him from time to time with admiring eyes
and an enthusiastic heart.
A soft warm shower had fallen that morning early, refreshing the
fading September leaves in the belts of coppice that girt the upland
slopes, and in the orchards, where the ripe golden apples were
dropping amid the thick sward below. Above the purple, and often
desolate moors which are so characteristic of Cornish scenery, and
where the small breed of horses, the little black cattle and
sharp-nosed sheep of the province were grazing, the wooded _tors_ or
hills stood boldly up in the distance, their foliage in most
instances presenting many varied tints. There were the brown madder,
the crisped chesnut, and the fading beech, the more faded green of
the old Cornish elm, and the russet fern below, from amid which at
every step he took the birds whirred up in coveys; while Richard,
lost in reverie--the result of his uncle's remarks of late--never
emptied a barrel at them, but walked slowly on looking round him from
time to time, and filled with thoughts that were all his own as yet.
The place where he loitered was very lonely: here and there a gray
lichen-spotted druidical monolith stood grimly up amid the silent
waste; in the distance might be seen the gray expanse of the ocean,
or some bleak looking houses slated with blue, as they usually are in
Devon and Cornwall, or perhaps some of those poorer huts, which, like
wigwams, have cob-walls; _i.e._ are built of earth, mud, and straw,
beaten and pounded together, just as they might have been in the days
of Bran the son of Llyr, or when Arthur dwelt in Tintagel.
Richard Trevelyan threw himself upon a grassy bank, and his pointer,
doubtless surprised by his neglect of all sport, lay beside him with
eyes of wonder and tongue out-lolled. In the distance, about a mile
or so away, Trevelyan could see Rhoscadzhel House shining in the
morning sunlight; and again, as on the preceding evening, he looked
around with a bitter smile upon tor and moorland, and on the wondrous
druid monoliths that stand up here and there on the bleak hill sides,
each and all of them having their own quaint name and grim old legend.
How came each to be there? "Without patent rollers; nay, without the
simplest mechanical contrivances of modern times, how was so huge a
mass transported to yonder desolate and wind-swept height? How many
yoke of oxen, how many straining scores of men must it have taken to
erect the least of them! What submission to authority, what servile
or superstitious fear must have animated the workers! No drover's
whip would have urged to such a task; no richest guerdon could have
repaid the toil; yet there the wonder stands!"
And some such thoughts as these floated through the mind of Richard,
as his eyes wandered from a cromlech or slab that rested on three
great stones, to a vast _maen_ or rock-pillar, that might be coeval
with the days when Jacob set up such a stone to witness his covenant
with Laban.
"Shall I ever wander here with Constance--and if so, when," thought
he; "assuredly not while my uncle lives; but his death--how can I
contemplate it, when he is so good, so kind, so tender, and so true
to me? Oh, let me not anticipate that."
How often in autumn, in the gloomy mornings of November, had he
pursued the fox over these desolate moors, often breakfasting by
candle-light in his red coat on a hunting morning, to the great
boredom of old Jasper Funnel?
What joy it would be to gallop over that breezy wind-swept moor, with
Constance by his side! To walk with her through yonder dense old
thicket, and tell her that every tree and twig therein were her own;
to drive by yonder cliff, Tol Pedn Penwith, the western boundary of a
beautiful bay, and where in the summer evening, the forty Isles of
Scilly seemed to be cradled in the glory of the western sun; to show
her all these places with which he was so familiar, and perhaps to
tell their children in the years to come--for all Richard's habits
and tastes were alike gentle and domestic--the old Cornish legends of
Arthur's castle at Tintagel, of the magic well of St. Keyne, and of
Tregeagle the giant--the bugbear of all Cornish little people; the
melancholy monster or fiend, who according to traditions still
believed in, haunts the Dozmare Pool, from whence he hurled the vast
granite blocks, known as his "quoits," upon the coast westward of
Penzance Head; the deep dark Pool, his dwelling place, is said to be
unfathomable and the resort of other evil spirits.
Desolate and begirt by arid and dreary hills, it presents an aspect
of gloomy horror; and then when the winter storms sweep the moorland
wastes, and the miners at the Land's End, deep, deep down in mines
below the sea, hear the enormous boulders dashed by it on the flinty
shore overhead, above all can be heard the howling of Tregeagle! For
ages he has been condemned to the task of emptying the Dozrnare Pool
by a tiny limpet-shell, and his cries are uttered in despair of the
hopelessness of the drudgery assigned him by the devil, who in
moments of impatience, hunts him round the tarn, till he flies to the
Roche Rocks fifteen miles distant, and finds respite by placing his
hideous head through the painted window of a ruined chapel, as a
bumpkin might through a horse-collar; for these, and a thousand such
stories as these, are believed in Cornwall, nor can even the whistle
of the railway from Plymouth to Penzance scare them away.
Richard Trevelyan was smiling when he remembered how often he and
Downie, when loving little brothers and playfellows, had been scared
in their cribs at night by stories of Tregeagle; and of that other
mighty giant who lies buried beneath Carn Brea, where his clenched
skeleton hand, now converted into a block of granite (having five
distinct parts, like a thumb and fingers) protrudes through the turf.
He could recall the dark hours, when as fair-haired children, they
had cowered together in one of the tapestried rooms of Rhoscadzhel,
and clasped each other's hands and necks in fear of those
hob-goblins, which people the very rock and cavern, and even the very
air of Cornwall. Downie was a man now, legal in bearing, and
cold-blooded in heart. Richard had painful doubts of him, and
remembered, that, strangely enough his hand _alone_, had always
failed to rock the logan-stone in the lawn before Rhoscadzhel, and
such monuments of antiquity, have, according to Mason, the properties
of an ordeal--the test of truth and probity:
"Behold yon huge
And unhewn sphere of living adamant,
Which, poised by magic, rests its central weight
On yonder pointed rock: firm as it seems,
Such is its strange and virtuous property,
It moves obsequious to the gentlest touch
Of him whose heart is pure; but to a traitor,
Tho' e'en a giant's prowess nerv'd his arm,
It stands as fixed as Snowdon!"
Even the childish hands of his little daughter Gartha, could rock the
logan-stone, when Downie's failed to do so. Why was this? Was there
indeed any truth in the ancient test of integrity and purity of
heart; or was it but an engine of religious imposition? And now amid
these unpleasant speculations, there came to the loiterer's ear, the
tolling of a distant bell.
He started up, and listened.
It was, beyond a doubt, the house-bell of Rhoscadzhel, and was being
rung violently and continuously, for the breeze brought the notes
distinctly over the furzy waste.
What could have happened? Fire--or was he wanted in haste? Was his
uncle indisposed; were his fears, his hopes and wishes, though
blended with sorrow, to be realised at last?
His breath came thick and painfully, and he remembered with something
of foreboding--for his Cornish breeding rendered him superstitious
and impressionable--that as he had passed Larnorna church that
morning, he had seen, on the rough lichstones at the entrance to the
sequestered church-yard, a coffin rested prior to interment, while
the soft sad psalmody of those who had borne it thither--a band of
hardy miners--floated through the still and ambient air; for the
custom of bearing the dead to their last resting place with holy
songs--a usage in the East, as old as the fourth century--is still
observed in Cornwall, that land of quaint traditions and picturesque
old memories.
Springing to his feet, Richard Trevelyan discharged both barrels of
his gun into the air, and hurried in the direction of the manor house.
As he drew nearer, the sonorous clangour of the great bell, which was
now rung at intervals, but with great vigour, continued to increase,
adding to the surprise and tumult of his heart, and the perturbation
of his spirit.
CHAPTER IV.
POWDERED WITH TEARS.
A mounted footman, who approached him at full speed, pulled up for a
moment and respectfully touched his hat, for he was one of the
Lamorna household.
"What is the matter?" asked Richard.
"Oh, sir--oh, Mr. Richard--my lord is taken very ill."
"Ill--my uncle?"
"He is quite senseless, and Mr. Downie Trevelyan has sent me for the
doctor."
"Then ride on and lose no time," replied Richard, as he hastened to
the house, where he found confusion and dismay predominant, the
servants hovering in the vestibule, conversing in whispers and
listening at the library door, while Jasper Funnel and Mrs.
Duntreath, the old housekeeper (a lineal descendant of the Dolly
Duntreath, so well-known in Cornwall), were mingling their sighs and
regrets for the loss of so good a master.
"Where is my uncle?" asked Richard, impetuously.
"In the lib--lib--library," sobbed the housekeeper, with her black
silk apron at her eyes, and as Richard advanced, Jasper Funnel softly
opened the door. The favourite nephew entered the long spacious and
splendid apartment, which occupied nearly the entire length of one of
the wings of Rhoscadzhel, its shelves of dark wainscot filled by
books in rare and magnificent bindings, with white marble busts of
the great and learned men of classical antiquity looking calmly down
on what was passing below.
The fire-place wras deep and old; but a seacoal fire was burning
cheerily in the bright steel modern grate; and as if he was in a
dream, seeing the far stretching lawn, with its tufts of waving fern
and stately lines of elm and oak, as he passed the tall windows
noiselessly on the soft Turkey carpet, Richard drew hastily near the
great arm-chair, in which his uncle was seated, dead--stone-dead,
with Downie, somewhat pale and disordered in aspect, bending over him!
The old man had suddenly passed away--disease of the heart, as it
proved eventually, had assailed him while seated at his writing-table.
On Richard's entrance and approach, Downie hurriedly took from the
table and thrust into his pocket, a document which looked most
legally and suspiciously like a "last will and testament;" but quick
though the action, Richard could perceive that the document, whatever
it was, had no signatures of any kind.
Richard knelt by his uncle's side; he felt his pulses; they had
ceased to beat; his heart was cold and still, and there came no sign
of breath upon the polished surface of the mirror he held before the
fallen jaw; with something of remorse Richard thought,--
"No later than this morning I deceived him--and he loved me so--was
ever my friend and second father!--I thought," he added aloud, to
Downie, "that his eyes wore an unusual expression this morning--a
weird, keen, farseeing kind of look, such as I never read in them
before."
"I fancied that I perceived some such expression myself, and
consequently, at his years, was the less alarmed, or shall I say
shocked, when in the very act of speaking to me, a sudden spasm came
over his features--a deep sigh, almost a faint cry escaped him, and
he sank back in his chair, when just about to write. See, there is
the pen on the floor, exactly where it fell from his relaxed fingers."
Richard's honest eyes were filled with tears, and mechanically he
picked up the pen and laid it on the desk.
"Writing, say you, Downie; and what was he writing?"
"Oh, I cannot say--a letter to his steward, I believe."
"But--I see no letter."
"He was just about to commence it," replied Downie, whose usually
pale face coloured a little.
"And that paper you pocketed in such haste, Downie, what was it?"
"Nothing, Richard, that can concern you (by-the-by, you are Lord
Lamorna now!) or that fair one whose portrait you exhibit so
ostentatiously just now."
Richard started, alike at the title so suddenly accorded to him by
his brother, and at the reference to the portrait, for in the
confusion or haste, as he bent over his dead uncle, a little
miniature, which he wore at a ribbon round his neck, depicting a very
beautiful dark-eyed woman, had slipped from his vest, and with an
exclamation of annoyance, he hastened to conceal it.
"_Who_ is the lady, Richard?" asked Downie.
"As yet, that must remain my secret," replied Richard; "a little
time, my dear fellow, and we shall have no mysteries among us."
Downie, secretly, was not ill-pleased by this diversion, in which
Richard forgot the subject of the paper.
The doctor soon came--a village practitioner--fussy and full of
importance; but nevertheless skilful; and he decided that disease of
the heart--a malady under which, though ignorant of its existence,
the deceased had long laboured--had proved the immediate cause of
death. The poor shrivelled remains of the proud old lord were
conveyed to the principal bed-room of the mansion, and there laid in
a species of state, upon a four-posted bed, that rose from a daïs,
and was all draped with black. His coronet and Order of the Bath,
together with that of St. Anne, which he received when ambassador in
Russia, were deposited at his feet upon a crimson velvet cushion,
that was tasseled with gold; while two tall footmen in complete
livery with long canes draped with crape, mounted guard beside the
coffin day and night, to their own great disgust and annoyance, till
the time of the funeral, of which Richard took the entire charge; and
which, in a spirit of affection and good taste, he resolved should be
in all respects exactly what the deceased peer would have wished it
to be.
The features of the latter became, for a time, young and beautiful in
their manliness and perfect regularity, while all the lines engraven
there by Time were smoothed out, if not completely effaced.
"How like our father, as I can remember him, he looks!" whispered
Downie, more softened than usual, by the hallowing presence of death.
But Richard was thinking of another face whom the dead man
resembled--a young and beloved face to him.
"Denzil did you say?" he stammered.
"I said our father," replied Downie, sharply.
"True, he died young," was the confused reply.
"Your mind wanders, surely?" said Downie, with a dark and
inexplicable expression in his now averted face; but Richard saw it
not, he was simply taking a farewell glance of one who had loved him
so well; his manly heart was soft, and his dark-blue eyes were full
with the tears of honest affection and gratitude.
So Audley Lord Lamorna was dead, and all now turned to Richard as
their new and future master; all the blinds in Rhoscadzhel were drawn
down by order of Mrs. Duntreath, and all went about on tiptoe or
spoke in subdued voices, especially Downie, who in his heart thought
that Richard was spending "far too much in ostrich feathers, crimson
coffins, and other mummery," among undertakers, and heraldic
painters, too; but he was more politic than to say so--even to his
wife, who, with her daughter Gartha, a pretty girl in her teens, had
been on a visit to General Trecarrel, and now duly arrived to act as
mistress of the mansion, _pro tem._, during the solemnities of which
it was to be the scene.
She was warmly welcomed by Richard Trevelyan; she was his only
brother's wife, and he had none of his own to take her place
there--as yet.
A peevish and foolish woman of fashion, who had once possessed
undoubted beauty, Mrs. Downie Trevelyan was generally treated as a
kind of cypher now by her husband; but nevertheless he consulted her
at times, on certain matters of common interest. She still clung
tenaciously to the tradition of her former beauty, and sought to
retain it by the aid of pearl powder, the faintest indication of
rouge perhaps, and by the prettiest of matronly headdresses made of
the costliest lace. She was always languid, somewhat dreary, and
spent most of her time with a novel in one hand, and a magnificent
little bottle of ether, or some strong perfume, in the other. To
Richard her society was decidedly a bore; but at this crisis he was
full of business, and occupied by a depth of thought that was
apparent to all.
Six tall servants in mourning scarfs, and in the livery of the
Trevelyans, bore upon their shoulders the crimson velvet coffin
containing the remains of the late lord, to the vault where his
forefathers lay, and where many of them had been interred by
torchlight, in times long past.
There was something feudal, stately, and solemn in the aspect of the
procession, when between two lines of all the tenantry, standing
bare-headed, it wound down the old avenue, where the leaves were
almost as thick, the sun as bright,
|
cover--of no longer feeling the beat of
the rain upon them--was in itself a soul-satisfying relief. But there
was still the dank cold of their soggy clothes against the body. They
must have heat; and he moved on to the living rooms above. He pushed
open a door and found himself in a large room of heavy oak, not draped
like the others. He might have hesitated had it not been for the sight
of a large fireplace directly facing him. When he saw that it was
piled high with wood and coal ready to be lighted, he would have
braved an army to reach it. Crossing the room, he thrust his candle
into the kindling. The flames, as though surprised at being summoned,
hesitated a second and then leaped hungrily to their meal. Wilson
thrust his cold hands almost into the fire itself as he crouched over
it.
"Come here," he called over his shoulder. "Get some of this quickly."
She huddled close to him and together they let their cold bodies drink
in the warm air. It tingled at their fingers, smarted into their
faces, and stung their chests.
"Nearer! Nearer!" he urged her. "Let it burn into you."
Their garments sent out clouds of steam and sweated pools to the tiles
at their feet; but still they bathed in the heat insatiably. He piled
on wood until the flames crackled out of sight in the chimney and
flared into the room. He took her by the shoulders and turned her
round and round before it as one roasts a goose. He took her two hands
and rubbed them briskly till they smarted; she laughed deliciously the
while, and the color on her cheeks deepened. But in spite of all this
they couldn't get very far below the surface. He noticed the dripping
fringe of her skirts and her water-logged shoes.
"This will never do," he said. "You've got to get dry--clear to your
bones. Somehow a woman doesn't look right--wet. She gets so very
wet--like a kitten. I'm going foraging now. You keep turning round and
round."
"Till I'm brown on the outside?"
"Till I come back and see if you're done."
She followed him with her eyes as he went out, and in less than five
minutes she heard him calling for her. She hurried to the next room
and found him bending over a tumbled heap of fluffy things which he
had gingerly picked from the bureau drawers.
"Help yourself," he commanded, with a wave of his hand.
"But--I oughtn't to take these things!"
"My girl," he answered in an even voice that seemed to steady her,
"when it's either these or pneumonia--it's these. I'll leave you the
candle."
"But you----"
"I'll find something."
He went out. She stood bewildered in the midst of the dimly revealed
luxury about her. The candle threw feeble rays into the dark corners
of the big room, over the four-posted oak bed covered with its
daintily monogrammed spread, over the heavy hangings at the windows,
and the bright pictures on the walls. She caught a glimpse of closets,
of a graceful dressing table, and finally saw her reflection in the
long mirror which reached to the floor.
She held the candle over her head and stared at herself. She cut but a
sorry figure in her own eyes in the midst of such spotless richness as
now surrounded her. She shivered a little as her own damp clothes
pressed clammily against her skin. Then with a flush she turned again
to the garments rifled from their perfumed hiding places. They looked
very white and crisp. She hesitated but a second.
"She'll forgive," she whispered, and threw off her dripping waist. The
clothes, almost without exception, fitted her remarkably well. She
found herself dressing leisurely, enjoying to the fullest the feel of
the rich goods. She shook her hair free, dried it as best she could,
and took some pains to put it up nicely. It was long and glossy
black, but not inclined to curl. It coiled about her head in silken
strands of dark richness.
She demurred at first at the silk dress which he had tossed upon the
bed, but she could find no other. It was of a golden yellow, dainty
and foreign in its design. It fitted snugly to her slim figure as
though it had been made for her. She stood off at a little distance
and studied herself in the mirror. She was a girl who had an instinct
for dress which had never been satisfied; a girl who could give, as
well as take, an air from her garments. She admired herself quite as
frankly as though it had been some other person who, with head
uptilted and teeth flashing in a contented smile, challenged her from
the clear surface of the mirror, looking as though she had just
stepped through the wall into the room. The cold, the wet, and for a
moment even the hunger vanished, so that as she glanced back at her
comfortable reflection it seemed as if it were all just a dream of
cold and wet and hunger. With silk soothing her skin, with the crisp
purity of spotless linen rustling about her, with the faultless gown
falling in rich splendor about her feet, she felt so much a part of
these new surroundings that it was as though she melted into
them--blended her own personality with the unstinted luxury about
her.
But her foot scuffled against a wet stocking lying as limp as water
grass, which recalled her to herself and the man who had led the way
to this. A wave of pity swept over her as she wondered if he had found
dry things for himself. She must hurry back and see that he was
comfortable. She felt a certain pride that the beaded slippers she had
found in the closet fitted her a bit loosely. With the candle held far
out from her in one hand and the other lifting her dress from the
floor, she rustled along the hall to the study, pausing there to speak
his name.
"All ready?" he shouted.
He strode from a door to the left, but stopped in the middle of the
room to study her as she stood framed in the doorway--a picture for
Whistler. With pretty art and a woman's instinctive desire to please,
she had placed the candle on a chair and assumed something of a pose.
The mellow candle-light deepened the raven black of her hair, softened
the tint of her gown until it appeared of almost transparent fineness.
It melted the folds of the heavy crimson draperies by her side into
one with the dark behind her. She had shyly dropped her eyes, but in
the excitement of the moment she quickly raised them again. They
sparkled with merriment at sight of his lean frame draped in a
lounging robe of Oriental ornateness. It was of silk and embellished
with gold-spun figures.
"It was either this," he apologized, "or a dress suit. If I had seen
you first, I should have chosen the latter. I ought to dress for
dinner, I suppose, even if there isn't any."
"You look as though you ought to make a dinner come out of those
sleeves, just as the magicians make rabbits and gold-fish."
"And you," he returned, "look as though you ought to be able to get a
dinner by merely summoning the butler."
He offered her his arm with exaggerated gallantry and escorted her to
a chair by the fire. She seated herself and, thrusting out her toes
towards the flames, gave herself up for a moment to the drowsy warmth.
He shoved a large leather chair into place to the left and, facing
her, enjoyed to himself the sensation of playing host to her hostess
in this beautiful house. She looked up at him.
"I suppose you wonder what brought me out there?"
"In a general way--yes," he answered frankly. "But I don't wish
you to feel under any obligation to tell me. I see you as you sit
there,--that is enough."
"There is so little else," she replied. She hesitated, then added,
"That is, that anyone seems to understand."
"You really had no place to which you could go for the night?"
"No. I am an utter stranger here. I came up this morning from
Newburyport--that's about forty miles. I lost my purse and my ticket,
so you see I was quite helpless. I was afraid to ask anyone for help,
and then--I hoped every minute that I might find my father."
"But I thought you knew no one here?"
"I don't. If Dad is here, it is quite by chance."
She looked again into his blue eyes and then back to the fire.
"It is wonderful how you came to me," she said.
"I saw you twice before."
"Once," she said, "was just beyond the Gardens."
"You noticed me?"
"Yes."
She leaned forward.
"Yes," she repeated, "I noticed you because of all the faces I had
looked into since morning yours was the first I felt I could trust."
"Thank you."
"And now," she continued, "I feel as though you might even understand
better than the others what my errand here to Boston was." She paused
again, adding, "I should hate to have you think me silly."
She studied his face eagerly. His eyes showed interest; his mouth
assured her of sympathy.
"Go on," he bade her.
To him she was like someone he had known before--like one of those
vague women he used to see between the stars. Within even these last
few minutes he had gotten over the strangeness of her being here. He
did not think of this building as a house, of this room as part of a
home; it was just a cave opening from the roadside into which they had
fled to escape the rain.
It seemed difficult for her to begin. Now that she had determined to
tell him she was anxious for him to see clearly.
"I ought to go back," she faltered; "back a long way into my life, and
I'm afraid that won't be interesting to you."
"You can't go very far back," he laughed. Then he added seriously, "I
am really interested. Please to tell it in your own way."
"Well, to begin with, Dad was a sea captain and he married the very
best woman in the world. But she died when I was very young. It was
after this that Dad took me on his long voyages with him,--to South
America, to India, and Africa. I don't remember much about it, except
as a series of pictures. I know I had the best of times for somehow I
can remember better how I felt than what I saw. I used to play on the
deck in the sun and listen to the sailors who told me strange stories.
Then when we reached a port Dad used to take me by the hand and lead
me through queer, crooked little streets and show me the shops and buy
whole armfuls of things for me. I remember it all just as you remember
brightly colored pictures of cities--pointed spires in the sunlight,
streets full of bright colors, and dozens of odd men and women whose
faces come at night and are forgotten in the morning. Dad was big and
handsome and very proud of me. He used to like to show me off and take
me with him everywhere. Those years were very wonderful and
beautiful.
"Then one day he brought me back to shore again, and for a while we
lived together in a large white house within sight of the ocean. We
used to take long walks and sometimes went to town, but he didn't seem
very happy. One day he brought home with him a strange woman and told
me that she was to be housekeeper, and that I must obey her and grow
up to be a fine woman. Then he went away. That was fifteen years ago.
Then came the report he was dead; that was ten years ago. After a
while I didn't mind so much, for I used to lie on my back and recall
all the places we had been together. When these pictures began to fade
a little, I learned another way,--a way taught me by a sailor. I took
a round crystal I found in the parlor and I looked into it hard,--oh,
very, very hard. Then it happened. First all I saw was a blur of
colors, but in a little while these separated and I saw as clearly as
at first all the streets and places I had ever visited, and sometimes
others too. Oh, it was such a comfort! Was that wrong?"
"No," he answered slowly, "I can't see anything wrong in that."
"She--the housekeeper--called it wicked--devilish. She took away the
crystal. But after a while I found I could see with other things--even
with just a glass of clear water. All you have to do is to hold your
eyes very still and stare and stare. Do you understand?"
He nodded.
"I've heard of that."
She dropped her voice, evidently struggling with growing excitement,
colored with something of fear.
"Don't you see how close this kept me to Dad? I've been living with
him almost as though I were really with him. We've taken over again
the old walks and many news ones. This seemed to go on just the same
after we received word that he had died--stricken with a fever in
South America somewhere."
She paused, taking a quick breath.
"All that is not so strange," she ran on; "but yesterday--yesterday in
the crystal I saw him--here in Boston."
"What!"
"As clearly as I see you. He was walking down a street near the
Gardens."
"It might have been someone who resembled him."
"No, it was Dad. He was thinner and looked strange, but I knew him as
though it were only yesterday that he had gone away."
"But if he is dead----"
"He isn't dead," she answered with conviction.
"On the strength of that vision you came here to look for him?"
"Yes."
"When you believe, you believe hard, don't you?"
"I believe the crystal," she answered soberly.
"Yet you didn't find your father?"
"No," she admitted.
"You are still sure he is here?"
"I am still sure he is living. I may have made a mistake in the place,
but I know he is alive and well somewhere. I shall look again in the
crystal to-morrow."
"Yes, to-morrow," answered Wilson, vaguely.
He rose to his feet.
"But there is still the hunger of to-day."
She seemed disappointed in the lightness with which apparently he took
her search.
"You don't believe?"
"I believe you. And I believe that you believe. But I have seen little
of such things myself. In the meanwhile it would be good to eat--if
only a few crackers. Are you afraid to stay here alone while I explore
a bit?"
She shook her head.
He was gone some ten minutes, and when he came back his loose robe
bulged suspiciously in many places.
"Madame," he exclaimed, "I beg you to observe me closely. I snap my
fingers twice,--so! Then I motion,--so! Behold!"
He deftly extricated from one of the large sleeves a can of soup, and
held it triumphantly aloft.
"Once more,--so!"
He produced a package of crackers; next a can of coffee, next some
sugar. And she, watching him with face alight, applauded vigorously
and with more genuine emotion than usually greets the acts of a
prestidigitator.
"But, oh!" she exclaimed, with her hands clasped beneath her chin,
"don't you dare to make them disappear again!"
"Madame," answered Wilson, with a bow, "that shall be your privilege."
He hurried below once more, and this time returned with a chafing-dish,
two bowls, and a couple of iron spoons which he had found in the
kitchen. In ten minutes the girl had prepared a lunch which to them was
the culmination of their happiness. Warmed, clothed, and fed, there
seemed nothing left for them.
When they had finished and had made everything tidy in the room, and
he had gone to the cellar and replenished the coal-hod, he told her
something of his own life. For a little while she listened, but soon
the room became blurred to her and she sank farther and farther among
the heavy shadows and the old paintings on the wall. The rain beat
against the muffled windows drowsily. The fire warmed her brow like
some hypnotic hand. Then his voice ceased and she drew her feet
beneath her and slept in the chair, looking like a soft Persian
kitten.
CHAPTER III
_A Stranger Arrives_
It was almost two in the morning when Wilson heard the sound of wheels
in the street without, and conceived the fear that they had stopped
before the house. He found himself sitting rigidly upright in the room
which had grown chill, staring at the dark doorway. The fire had
burned low and the girl still slept in the shadows, her cheeks pressed
against her hands. He listened with suspended breath. For a moment
there was no other sound and so he regained his composure, concluding
it had been only an evil dream. Crossing to the next room, he drew a
blanket from the little bed and wrapped the sleeping girl about with
it so carefully that she did not awake. Then he gently poked up the
fire and put on more coal, taking each lump in his fingers so as to
make no noise.
Her face, even while she slept, seemed to lose but little of its
animation. The long lashes swept her flushed cheeks. The eyes, though
closed, still remained expressive. A smile fluttered about her mouth
as though her dreams were very pleasant. To Wilson, who neither had a
sister nor as a boy or man had been much among women, the sight of
this sleeping girl so near to him was particularly impressive. Her
utter trust and confidence in his protection stirred within him
another side of the man who had stood by the gate clutching his club
like a savage. She looked so warm and tender a thing that he felt his
heart growing big with a certain feeling of paternity. He knew at that
moment how the father must have felt when, with the warm little hand
within his own, he had strode down those foreign streets conscious
that every right-hearted man would turn to look at the pretty girl;
with what joy he had stopped at strange bazaars to watch her eyes
brighten as the shopkeepers did their best to please. Those must have
been days which the father, if alive, was glad to remember.
A muffled beat as upon the steps without again brought him to
attention, but again the silence closed in upon it until he doubted
whether he had truly heard. But the dark had become alive now, and he
seemed to see strange, moving shadows in the corners and hear
creakings and rustlings all about him. He turned sharply at a soft
tread behind him only to start at the snapping of a coal in the fire
from the other side. Finally, in order to ease his mind, he crossed
the room and looked beyond the curtains into the darkness of the hall.
There was neither movement nor sound. He ventured out and peered down
the staircase into the dark chasm marking the lower hall. He heard
distinctly the sound of a key being fitted rather clumsily into the
lock, then an inrush of air as the door was thrown open and someone
entered, clutching at the wall as though unable to stand.
It never occurred to Wilson to do the natural and obviously simple
thing: awake the girl at once and steal down the stairs in the rear
until he at least should have a chance to reconnoitre. It seemed
necessary for him to meet the situation face to face, to stand his
ground as though this were an intrusion upon his own domain. The girl
in the next room was sleeping soundly in perfect faith that he would
meet every danger that should approach her. And so, by the Lord, he
would. Neither she nor he were thieves or cowards, and he refused to
allow her to be placed for a minute in such a position.
Someone followed close behind the first man who had entered and
lighted a match. As the light flashed, Wilson caught a glimpse of two
men; one tall and angular, the other short and broad-shouldered.
"The--the lights aren't on, cabby," said one of them; "but I--I can
find my way all right."
"The divil ye can, beggin' yer pardon," answered the other. "I'll jist
go ahead of ye now an'----"
"No, cabby, I don't need help."
"Jist to th' top of the shtairs, sor. I know ye're thot weak with
sickness----"
The answer came like a military command, though in a voice heavy with
weariness.
"Light a candle, if you can find one, and--go."
The cabby struck another match and applied it to a bit of candle he
found on a hall table. As the light dissolved the dark, Wilson saw the
taller man straighten before the anxious gaze of the driver.
"Sacré, are you going?" exclaimed the stranger, impatiently.
"Good night, sor."
"Good night." The words were uttered like a command.
The man went out slowly and reluctantly closed the door behind him.
The echo pounded suddenly in the distance.
No sooner was the door closed than the man remaining slumped like an
empty grain-sack and only prevented himself from falling by a wild
clutch at the bannister. He raised himself with an effort, the candle
drooping sidewise in his hand. His broad shoulders sagged until his
chin almost rested upon his breast and his big slouch hat slopped down
over his eyes. His breathing was slow and labored, each breath being
delayed as long as possible as though it were accompanied by severe
pain. It was clear that only the domination of an extraordinary will
enabled the man to keep his feet at all.
The stranger began a struggle for the mastery of the stairs that held
Wilson spellbound. Each advance marked a victory worthy of a
battlefield. But at each step he was forced to pause and rally all his
forces before he went on to the next. First he would twine his long
fingers about the rail reaching up as far as he was able; then he
would lift one limp leg and swing it to the stair above; he would then
heave himself forward almost upon his face and drag the other leg to a
level with the first, rouse himself as from a tendency to faint, and
stand there blinking at the next stair with an agonized plea as for
mercy written in the deep furrows of his face. The drunken candle
sputtered close to his side, flaring against the skin of his hand and
smouldering into his coat, but he neither felt nor saw anything. Every
sense was forced to a focus on the exertion of the next step.
Wilson had plenty of time to study him. His lean face was shaven save
for an iron-gray moustache which was cropped in a straight line from
one corner of his mouth to another. His eyes were half hidden beneath
shaggy brows. Across one cheek showed the red welt of an old sabre
wound. There was a military air about him from his head to his feet;
from the rakish angle to which his hat tumbled, to his square
shoulders, braced far back even when the rest of his body fell limp,
and to his feet which he moved as though avoiding the swing of a
scabbard. A military cape slipped askew from his shoulders. All these
details were indelibly traced in Wilson's mind as he watched this
struggle.
The last ten steps marked a strain difficult to watch. Wilson, at the
top, found his brow growing moist in sheer agony of sympathy, and he
found himself lifting with each forward heave as though his arms were
about the drooping figure. A half dozen times he was upon the point of
springing to his aid, but each time some instinct bade him wait. A man
with such a will as this was a man to watch even when he was as near
dead as he now appeared to be. So, backing into the shadows, Wilson
watched him as he grasped the post and slouched up the last stair,
seeming here to gain new strength for he held his head higher and
grasped the candle more firmly. It was then that Wilson stepped into
the radius of shallow light. But before he had time to speak, he saw
the eyes raised swiftly to his, saw a quick movement of the hand, and
then, as the candle dropped and was smothered out in the carpet, he
was blinded and deafened by the report of a pistol almost in his
face.
He fell back against the wall. He was unhurt, but he was for the
moment stunned into inactivity by the unexpectedness of the assault.
He stood motionless, smothering his breathing, alert to spring at the
first sound. And he knew that the other was waiting for the first
indication of his position to shoot again. So two, three seconds
passed, Wilson feeling with the increasing tension as though an iron
band were being tightened about his head. The house seemed to settle
into deeper and deeper silence as though it were being enfolded in
layer upon layer of felt. The dark about him quivered. Then he heard
her voice,--the startled cry of an awakened child.
He sprang across the hall and through the curtains to her side. She
was standing facing the door, her eyes frightened with the sudden
awakening.
"Oh," she trembled, "what is it?"
He placed his fingers to her lips and drew her to one side, out of
range of the door.
She snuggled closer to him and placed her hand upon his arm.
"You're not hurt?" she asked in a whisper.
He shook his head and strained his ears to the hall without.
He led her to the wall through which the door opened and, pressing her
close against it, took his position in front of her. Then the silence
closed in upon them once again. A bit of coal kindled in the grate,
throwing out blue and yellow flames with tiny crackling. The shadows
danced upon the wall. The curtains over the oblong entrance hung limp
and motionless and mute. For aught they showed there might have been a
dozen eyes behind them leering in; the points of a dozen weapons
pricking through; the muzzles of a dozen revolvers ready to bark
death. Each second he expected them to open--to unmask. The suspense
grew nerve-racking. And behind him the girl kept whispering, "What is
it? Tell me." He felt her hands upon his shoulders.
"Hush! Listen!"
From beyond the curtains came the sound of a muffled groan.
"Someone's hurt," whispered the girl.
"Don't move. It's only a ruse."
They listened once more, and this time the sound came more distinct;
it was the moaning breathing of a man unconscious.
"Stay where you are," commanded Wilson. "I'll see what the matter
is."
He neared the curtains and called out,
"Are you in trouble? Do you need help?"
There was no other reply but that spasmodic intake of breath, the
jerky outlet through loose lips.
He crossed the room and lighted the bit of remaining candle. With this
held above his head, he parted the curtains and peered out. The
stranger was sitting upright against the wall, his head fallen
sideways and the revolver held loosely in his limp fingers. As Wilson
crossed to his side, he heard the girl at his heels.
"He's hurt," she exclaimed.
Stooping quickly, Wilson snatched the weapon from the nerveless
fingers. It was quite unnecessary. The man showed not the slightest
trace of consciousness. His face was ashen gray. Wilson threw back the
man's coat and found the under linen to be stained with blood. He tore
aside the shirt and discovered its source--a narrow slit just over the
heart. There was but one thing to do--get the man into the next room
to the fire and, if possible, staunch the wound. He placed his hands
beneath the stranger's shoulders and half dragged him to the rug
before the flames. The girl, cheeks flushed with excitement, followed
as though fearing to let him out of her sight.
Under the influence of the heat the man seemed to revive a bit--enough
to ask for brandy and direct Wilson to a recess in the wall which
served as a wine closet. After swallowing a stiff drink, he regained
his voice.
"Who the devil----" he began. But he was checked by a twitch in his
side. He was evidently uncertain whether he was in the hands of
enemies or not. Wilson bent over him.
"Are you badly hurt? Do you wish me to send for a surgeon?"
"Go into the next room and bring me the leather chest you'll find
there."
Wilson obeyed. The man opened it and took out a vial of catgut, a roll
of antiseptic gauze, several rolls of bandages, and--a small,
pearl-handled revolver. He levelled this at Wilson.
"Now," he commanded, "tell me who the Devil you are."
Wilson did not flinch.
"Put it down," he suggested. "There is time enough for questions
later. Your wound ought to be attended to. Tell me what to do."
The man's eyes narrowed, but his hand dropped to his side. He realized
that he was quite helpless and that to shoot the intruder would serve
him but little. By far the more sensible thing to do was to use him.
Wilson, watching him, ready to spring, saw the question decided in the
prostrate man's mind. The latter spoke sharply.
"Take one of those surgical needles and put it in the candle flame."
Wilson obeyed and, as soon as it was sterilized, further followed his
instructions and sewed up the wound and dressed it. During this
process the stranger showed neither by exclamation nor facial
expression that he felt in the slightest what must have been
excruciating pain. At the conclusion of the operation the man
sprinkled a few pellets into the palm of his hand and swallowed them.
For a few minutes after this he remained very quiet.
Wilson glanced up at the girl. She had turned her back upon the two
men and was staring into the flames. She was not crying, but her two
tightly clenched fists held closely jammed against her cheeks showed
that she was keeping control of herself by an effort. It seemed to
Wilson that it was clearly his duty to get her out of this at once.
But where could he take her?
The stranger suddenly made an effort to struggle to his feet. He had
grasped his weapon once again and now held it aggressively pointed at
Wilson.
"What's the matter with you?" demanded Wilson, quietly stepping
forward.
"Matter?" stammered the stranger. "To come into your house and--and----"
he pressed his hand to his side and was forced to put out an arm to
Wilson for support.
"I tell you we mean you no harm. We aren't thieves or thugs. We were
driven in here by the rain."
"But how----"
"By a window in the rear. Let us stay here until morning--it is too
late for the girl to go out--and you'll be none the worse."
Wilson saw the same hard, determined look that he had noted upon the
stairs return to the gray eyes. It was clear that the man's whole
nature bade him resent this intrusion. It was evident that he
regarded the two with suspicion, although at sight of the girl, who
had turned, this was abated somewhat.
"How long have you been here?" he demanded.
"Some three or four hours."
"Are--are there any more of you?"
"No."
"Has--has there been any call for me while you have been in the
house?"
"No."
He staggered a little and Wilson suggested that he lie down once more.
But he refused and, still retaining his grip on the revolver, he bade
Wilson lead him to the door of the next room and leave him. He was
gone some fifteen minutes. Once Wilson thought he caught the clicking
as of a safe being opened. The girl, who had remained in the
background all this while, now crossed to Wilson's side as he stood
waiting in the doorway. He glanced up at her. In her light silk gown
she looked almost ethereal and added to the ghostliness of the scene.
She was to him the one thing which lifted the situation out of the
realm of sheer grim tragedy to piquant adventure from which a hundred
lanes led into the unknown.
She pressed close to his side as though shrinking from the silence
behind her. He reached out and took her hand. She smiled up at him and
together they turned their eyes once again into the dark of the room
beyond. Save for the intermittent clicking, there was silence. In this
silence they seemed to grow into much closer comradeship, each minute
knitting them together as, ordinarily, only months could do.
Suddenly there was a cessation of the clicking and quickly following
this the sound of a falling body. Wilson had half expected some such
climax. Seizing a candle from the table before the fire, he rushed in.
The stranger had fallen to the floor and lay unconscious in front of
his safe.
A quick glance about convinced Wilson that the man had not been
assaulted, but had only fainted, probably from weakness. His pulse was
beating feebly and his face was ashen. Wilson stooped to place his
hands upon his shoulders, when he caught sight of that which had
doubtless led the stranger to undertake the strain of opening the
safe--a black ebony box, from which protruded through the opened cover
the golden head of a small, quaint image peering out like some fat
spider from its web. In falling the head had snapped open so that from
the interior of the thing a tiny roll of parchment had slipped out.
Wilson, picking this up, put it in his pocket with scarcely other
thought than that it might get lost if left on the floor. Then he took
the still unconscious man in his arms and dragged him back to the
fire.
CHAPTER IV
_The Golden God Speaks_
For a while the man on the floor in his weakness rambled on as in a
delirium.
"Ah, Dios!" he muttered. "There's a knife in every hand." Then
followed an incoherent succession of phrases, but out of them the two
distinguished this, "Millions upon millions in jewels and gold." Then,
"But the God is silent. His lips are sealed by the blood of the
twenty."
After this the thick tongue stumbled over some word like "Guadiva,"
and a little later he seemed in his troubled dreams to be struggling
up a rugged height, for he complained of the stones which fretted his
feet. Wilson managed to pour a spoonful of brandy down his throat and
to rebandage the wound which had begun to bleed again. It was clear
the man was suffering from great weakness due to loss of blood, but as
yet his condition was not such as to warrant Wilson in summoning a
surgeon on his own responsibility. Besides, to do so would be
seriously to compromise himself and the girl. It might be difficult
for them to explain their presence there to an outsider. Should the
man by any chance die, their situation would be such that their only
safety would lie in flight. To the law they were already fugitives and
consequently to be suspected of anything from petty larceny to
murder.
To have forced himself to the safe with all the pain which walking
caused him, the wounded man must have been impelled by some strong and
unusual motive. It couldn't be that he had suspected Wilson and Jo of
theft, because, in the first place, he must have seen at a glance that
the safe was undisturbed; and in the second, that they had not taken
advantage of their opportunity for flight. It must have been something
in connection with this odd-looking image, then, at which he had been
so eager to look. Wilson returned to the next room. He picked the idol
from the floor. As he did so the head snapped back into place. He
brought it out into the firelight.
It looked like one of a hundred pictures he had seen of just such
curiosities--like the junk which clutters the windows of curio
dealers. The figure sat cross-legged with its heavy hands folded in
its lap. The face was flat and coarse, the lips thick, the nose squat
and ugly. Its carved headdress was of an Aztec pattern. The
cheek-bones were high, and the chin thick and receding. The girl
pressed close to his side as he held the thing in his lap with an odd
mixture of interest and fear.
"Aren't its eyes odd?" she exclaimed instantly.
They consisted of two polished stones as clear as diamonds, as
brightly eager as spiders' eyes. The light striking them caused them
to shine and glisten as though alive.
The girl glanced from the image to the man on the floor who looked now
more like a figure recumbent upon a mausoleum than a living man. It
was as though she was
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over prairies, the monarch of all he surveyed.
We have taken his land from him and pushed him beyond our
frontier. But now that the country which was once his has
been so fully settled up, there are no more frontiers over
which we can push him. This being so, our statesmen have
wisely decided to make the Indian an integral part of our
Union. This they are doing by breaking up his tribal
relation, giving him land in severalty as fast as he can be
prevailed upon to accept it, and by giving him the ballot.
The Indian is thus having civilization thrust upon him all
at once, though quite unprepared for its responsibilities.
He is made the victim of the land grabber, the shyster
lawyer, and the saloon keeper--powerful forces which he is
unable to resist in his present condition.
Dr. Charles A. Eastman, a full-blooded Sioux, who has shown in his own
development what the Indian may become with education, is quoted by the
_Tribune_ as saying:
I do not believe in trying to delay the inevitable
absorption of my race into the dominant white race of this
country. The sooner that absorption is accomplished, the
sooner the "Indian question" comes to an end, the better it
will be for all of us--and this desired result will surely
be hastened by letting down the bars in Indian Territory. As
for the liquor question, every individual Indian must solve
that for himself, just as he must solve everything else, as
an independent citizen of this country, not as a "ward," a
condition that brought with it no responsibilities.
There are between two and three hundred thousand Indians in
the United States altogether, but of real Indian customs and
beliefs there is very little left. It is only the showman
class that does the dances and wears feathers and beads, and
all the rest of the masquerading that goes to make up some
Buffalo Bill entertainment. But there is no sincerity in
such manifestations now; the real reason underlying these
things is buried in the past, when the Indian stood alone,
the maker of his own laws and customs, and not a government
ward.
Now the problem for my race is, how best to adapt itself to
the conditions belonging to the white man's civilization, to
make these his own, and, hence, to emancipate itself from
its present degraded position. This will not be accomplished
by insisting on the racial isolation, the government
protection, that we have had heretofore.
It is a difficult problem, though, simply because the Indian
character and tradition are so different from the dominant
type of the white man, and thus so difficult of
assimilation. During all the centuries of our existence as a
people we have been accustomed to live under a system of
pure Socialism. Every Indian fought and accumulated property
for his tribe, not for himself. It was the tribal, not the
individual, welfare that engrossed him. But the white man's
world is different, and the Indian must undergo a
fundamental change in order to adapt himself to it.
You see, as a race, we are absolutely ignorant of commercial
matters, how to make money--and this is essentially an age
of commercialism. The Indian is rather of a philosophical
temperament, not practical, with very little artistic
development. Some of us make good minor mechanics,
carpenters, blacksmiths, etc. But the inherited tendency of
the race is still away from the keen, matter-of-fact rivalry
and hard-headed wisdom that is at the basis of the modern
world's activity--trade.
Dr. Eastman is at present engaged in a unique task. Under the auspices of
the government, he is renaming the Indians--going to the various Sioux
reservations and giving to each person a practical name. When the old
names are not too unwieldy he retains them; otherwise he at least tries to
perpetuate in the new name some trace of the old.
MEN NOW LIVING FOR THE SAKE OF AN IDEA.
Expressions of Devotion to the Revolutionary
Cause Compared With Czar's
Address to the Duma.
Gorky, Narodny, Maxime, and other Russian revolutionists who have lately
visited the United States to further their propaganda are men who are
living for an idea.
Read Narodny's rhapsody on Russian freedom, as written for the May
_American Magazine_ by Leroy Scott:
I am nothing. Personal success, happiness--they are nothing.
Burning of home, prison, the Czar's bullet, Siberia--they
are nothing. There is only one thing--only one thing--that
Russia shall be free!...
I have been in this America one week, and already do I not
speak the English language fluently! But I shall it learn!
Then to American peoples will I speak the sufferings of
Russian peoples. I will say, "Help us be free!" and they
will help; they are rich--their hearts are great.
Then--oh, my Russia!--freedom!
"I have come from below," Maxim Gorky has written, "from the very depths
of life." And again: "Slowly have I climbed from the bottom of life to its
surface, and on my way I have watched everything with the greedy eyes of a
scout going to the promised land." This is the man who said at a dinner in
New York:
I come to America expecting to find true and warm
sympathizers among the American people for my suffering
countrymen, who are fighting so hard and bearing so bravely
their martyrdom for freedom. Now is the time for the
revolution. Now is the time for the overthrow of Czardom.
Now! Now! Now! But we need the sinews of war; the blood we
will give ourselves. We need money, money, money. I come to
you as a beggar, that Russia may be free.
By ignoring social conventions Gorky has unwittingly injured his cause. It
may be said of him, however, that he is to-day one of the foremost
literary figures of the world, and is so regarded in Europe. He has
abandoned literary ambition and the easy life of a fêted idol to serve an
idea--the idea of full Russian freedom.
With these words of men whose passion is liberty for their country may be
compared the speech of the Czar at the opening of the new Russian Duma.
The occasion and the utterance are already historical.
The Supreme Providence which gave me the care of our
fatherland moved me to call to my assistance in legislative
work elected representatives of the people. In the
expectation of a brilliant future for Russia, I greet in
your persons the best men from the empire, whom I ordered my
beloved subjects to choose from among themselves.
A difficult work lies before you. I trust that love for your
fatherland and your earnest desire to serve it will inspire
and unite you. I shall keep inviolate the institutions which
I have granted, with the firm assurance that you will devote
all your strength to the service of your country, and
especially to the needs of the peasantry, which are so close
to my heart, and to the education of the people and their
economical welfare, remembering that to the dignity and
prosperity of the state not only freedom but order founded
upon justice is necessary.
I desire from my heart to see my people happy, and hand down
to my son an empire secure, well organized, and enlightened.
May God bless the work that lies before me in unity with the
Council of the Empire and the Imperial Duma. May this day be
the day of the moral revival of Russia and the day for the
renewal of its highest forces. Approach with solemnity the
labors for which I call you, and be worthy of the
responsibilities put upon you by the emperor and people. May
God assist us!
Students the world over are now recalling dubiously the fateful French
States-General of 1789.
FROM THOSE WHO LIVE IN DARKNESS.
A Pathetic Picture of the Sadness of
Being Blind, Drawn for Us by
One Who Has Never Seen.
Helen Keller, the marvelous deaf and blind girl, whose life would be
pathetic, were it not so great a triumph over the limitations of silence
and darkness, keeps close to her fellows through the sense of touch. One
would think that, knowing others to have so much which she can never have,
her outlook would be sorrowful. But she is no pessimist. We who can see
are more depressed by our apparent inability to solve the mysteries of a
future life, or to prevent injustice in this, than is she by the physical
helplessness of blindness.
That the lot of the blind is sad, she nevertheless admits. A meeting was
held in New York a few weeks ago in the interests of the blind. The
principal speakers were Joseph H. Choate and Mark Twain. From a sick bed
Miss Keller had written a letter, which Mark Twain read to the assembled
audience, prefacing it with the statement that it deserved a place among
the classics of literature. Her picture of the sadness of being blind was
as follows:
To know what the blind man needs, you who can see must
imagine what it would be not to see, and you can imagine it
more vividly if you remember that before your journey's end
you may have to go the dark way yourself. Try to realize
what blindness means to those whose joyous activity is
stricken to inaction.
It is to live long, long days--and life is made up of days.
It is to live immured, baffled, impotent, all God's world
shut out. It is to sit helpless, defrauded, while your
spirit strains and tugs at its fetters and your shoulders
ache for the burden they are denied, the rightful burden of
labor.
The seeing man goes about his business confident and
self-dependent. He does his share of the work of the world
in mine, in quarry, in factory, in counting-room, asking of
others no boon save the opportunity to do a man's part and
to receive the laborer's guerdon.
In an instant accident blinds him. The day is blotted out.
Night envelops all the visible world. The feet which once
bore him to his task with firm and confident stride stumble
and halt and fear the forward step. He is forced to a new
habit of idleness, which, like a canker, consumes the mind
and destroys its faculties.
Memory confronts him with his lighted past. Amid the
tangible ruins of his life as it promised to be he gropes
his pitiful way.
Richard Watson Gilder wrote for this occasion a poem, which was printed on
the programs.
"Pity the Blind!" Yes, pity those
Whom day and night enclose
In equal dark; to whom the sun's keen flame
And pitchy night-time are the same;
But pity most the blind
Who cannot see
That to be kind
Is life's felicity.
THE WEALTH OF ONE IS THE ASSET OF ALL.
The Man Who Taps the Common Treasury
for His Own Pocket Is a Judas,
Says Dr. Parkhurst.
Many expressions of socialistic or quasi-socialistic opinion have lately
been written and spoken by men and women whose opinions are worth reading
and hearing. From among these expressions the following letter by the Rev.
Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst may be selected as typical of American
socialistic idealism. It accepts a principle; it proposes no method. It
was written to Charles Sprague Smith, director of the People's Institute,
at Cooper Union, New York, to be read before the institute in lieu of an
address.
The one doctrine I would specialize (meaning one to be dwelt
on in the institute work) is that of the solidarity of the
race, or, to revert to your own more usual way of stating
it, the brotherhood of man.
You stand for a great truth every time you put it before
your people that we are not our own, but that we belong to
each other; that we are all children of one household; that
we belong to the family and the family belongs to us; that
the assets of the family are the joint property of all the
children; and that any man, rich or poor, who treats his
particular holdings, large or small, as though they were not
in the truest sense a part of the common holdings of the
entire household is a renegade and a traitor to the
household.
If it is charged upon me that this smacks of socialism, all
I can say is that I do not care what you call it; it is the
doctrine that I preach in the Madison Square Presbyterian
Church, and if it is good for Madison Square it is good for
Cooper Union; anyhow, it is biblical, and contains in it a
good deal of the genius of the teaching of Jesus Christ.
Brotherhood involves reciprocity of rights and duties, but
it means that we all need each other, are all debtors to
each other, and are all intended to be trustees of the
common assets, and that any man who cuts an underground
conduit between the common treasury and his own pocket is a
modern reproduction of the original Judas, who carried the
bag and drew from it to meet his personal expenses.
WHAT A CHINESE SAYS ABOUT CHINA'S FUTURE.
Waves of Progress Are Now Sweeping
Over the Long Somnolent Flowery
Kingdom, Says Kang Yu Wan.
That there is in China a growing reform movement directed by leaders of
the younger and more progressive generation is coming to be quite
generally known. Kang Yu Wan, the president of the reform association, has
been traveling through the United States on his way from Mexico to Europe.
In his flowered silk jacket and blue-and-pink cap he looks like a
veritable teacup politician. But it will not do to judge the Chinese by
their apparel. Mr. Kang is an active reformer, and he is leading an active
movement. In a New York interview he talked freely of the new spirit in
China, saying, in part:
China is no longer in the Dark Ages. She has already reached
the point where Japan was only twenty years ago.
We have now, for example, more than twenty thousand Chinese
students pursuing advanced modern courses of study. As to
common schools, some five thousand have been started in the
one province of Canton. There are now four million Chinese
who can speak English. Our courts are being remodeled after
the English system.
The number of books we have translated into
Chinese--text-books, technical works, and treatises,
mostly--indicate how extensively the progressive movement is
spreading. We have thus appropriated to our use over ten
thousand American, English, and European works.
China is no longer asleep. She is wide awake, and fully able
to care for her interests.
See what happened a few months ago. There were eight
thousand Chinese students in the schools of Japan, enjoying
equal terms with the Japanese. Japan imposed on these
students some humiliating and unfair conditions.
China Learning Her Resources.
The eight thousand students resigned immediately and left
Japan. Shortly afterward, the Japanese government, in fear
lest the general indignation in China should result in
measures of tariff reprisal, restored the old status, and
the Chinese students returned, having carried their point.
Just as deep a sentiment has been aroused among my
countrymen by your exclusion laws. We see the immigrants
pour into your land from all countries by thousands every
week; while not only is the law-abiding, industrious
Chinaman desirous of making a living unable to come in with
these others, but our most refined and intelligent men
cannot get the mere passports for travel that they can
readily get in any other country.
China now knows her resources and her rights. There will be
no more invasions of China, for she is ready to defend
herself with cannon and with sword, if necessary.
When Mr. Kang was asked about the dreaded outbreaks against foreigners he
replied with apparent conviction that there would be no more Boxer
rebellions. In his view, education is rapidly conquering the form of
ignorance in which anti-foreign movements have their root.
AN EXILE.
By ADAH ISAACS MENKEN.
Adah Isaacs Menken was one of those restless spirits who suffer from their
own unsatisfying versatility. Daughter of a Spanish Jew and a Frenchwoman,
she was born, Dolores Adios Fuertes, near New Orleans, June 15, 1835. At
the age of seven years she made a successful stage appearance as a dancer.
She became very popular, especially at Havana, where she was known as
"Queen of the Plaza." At twenty she was married to Alexander Isaacs
Menken, at Galveston, Texas, retired from the stage, and published a
volume of poems, "Memories." Divorced from her husband, she returned to
the stage in 1858, but soon abandoned it to study sculpture.
In 1859 she was married to John C. Heenan, the pugilist, from whom she was
divorced three years later. Twice again she was married before her death,
at Paris, August 10, 1868. In the tragedy of misdirected genius she filled
a pathetic rôle.
Where is the promise of my years
Once written on my brow--
Ere errors, agonies, and fears
Brought with them all that speak in tears,
Ere I had sunk beneath my peers--
Where sleeps that promise now?
Naught lingers to redeem those hours
Still, still to memory sweet;
The flowers that bloomed in sunny bowers
Are withered all, and Evil towers
Supreme above her sister powers
Of Sorrow and Deceit.
I look along the columned years.
And see Life's riven fane
Just where it fell--amid the jeers
Of scornful lips, whose moaning sneers
Forever hiss within my ears
To break the sleep of pain.
I can but own my life is vain,
A desert void of peace;
I missed the goal I sought to gain--
I missed the measure of the strain
That lulls fame's fever in the brain,
And bids earth's tumult cease.
Myself? Alas for theme so poor!--
A theme but rich in fear;
I stand a wreck on Error's shore,
A specter not within the door,
A homeless shadow evermore,
An exile lingering here!
"KELLY AND BURKE AND SHEA."
At the last banquet of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, in New York,
President Roosevelt, the guest of the evening, asked Joseph I.C. Clarke,
the president of the "Friendly Sons," to recite "The Fighting Race."
Mr. Clarke wrote this poem at the time of the blowing-up of the Maine.
Looking over the list of dead and wounded, he remarked to his wife: "They
are all there, as usual--the Irish. Yes, here we've Kelly and Burke and
Shea----"
Within two hours he had finished the verses which are now recognized as a
lasting tribute to the fighting qualities of the Irishman. The poem makes
a point; it also expresses the conviction and the wistful pride of the old
veteran.
Mr. Clarke was born in Kingstown, Ireland, July 31, 1846, and came to the
United States in 1868. The greater part of his life has been spent in
newspaper offices--on the New York _Herald_, 1870-1883; magazine editor of
the New York _Journal_, 1883-1895; editor of the _Criterion_, 1898-1900;
Sunday editor New York _Herald_, 1903-1905. He is now engaged in writing
plays, work which has taken intervals of his time for a number of years.
THE FIGHTING RACE.
BY JOSEPH I.C. CLARKE.
"Read out the names!" and Burke sat back,
And Kelly dropped his head,
While Shea--they call him Scholar Jack--
Went down the list of dead.
Officers, seamen, gunners, marines,
The crews of the gig and yawl,
The bearded man and the lad in his 'teens,
Carpenters, coal-passers--all.
Then, knocking the ashes from out his pipe,
Said Burke in an offhand way:
"We're all in that dead man's list, by Cripe!
Kelly and Burke and Shea."
"Well, here's to the Maine, and I'm sorry for Spain,"
Said Kelly and Burke and Shea.
"Wherever there's Kellys there's trouble," said Burke.
"Wherever fighting's the game,
Or a spice of danger in grown man's work,"
Said Kelly, "you'll find my name."
"And do we fall short," said Burke, getting mad.
"When it's touch and go for life?"
Said Shea, "It's thirty-odd years, bedad,
Since I charged, to drum and fife,
Up Marye's Heights, and my old canteen
Stopped a rebel ball on its way.
There were blossoms of blood on our sprigs of green--
Kelly and Burke and Shea--
And the dead didn't brag." "Well, here's to the flag!"
Said Kelly and Burke and Shea.
"I wish 'twas in Ireland, for there's the place,"
Said Burke, "that we'd die by right,
In the cradle of our soldier race,
After one good stand-up fight.
My grandfather fell on Vinegar Hill,
And fighting was not his trade;
But his rusty pike's in the cabin still.
With Hessian blood on the blade."
"Aye, aye," said Kelly, "the pikes were great
When the word was 'Clear the way!'
We were thick on the roll in Ninety-eight--
Kelly and Burke and Shea."
"Well, here's to the pike and the sword and the like!"
Said Kelly and Burke and Shea.
And Shea, the scholar, with rising joy.
Said, "We were at Ramillies,
We left our bones at Fontenoy
And up in the Pyrenees.
Before Dunkirk, on Landen's plain,
Cremona, Lille, and Ghent,
We're all over Austria, France, and Spain,
Wherever they pitched a tent.
We've died for England, from Waterloo
To Egypt and Dargai;
And still there's enough for a corps or a crew,
Kelly and Burke and Shea."
"Well, here's to good honest fighting blood!"
Said Kelly and Burke and Shea.
"Oh, the fighting races don't die out.
If they seldom die in bed.
For love is first in their hearts, no doubt,"
Said Burke; then Kelly said,
"When Michael, the Irish Archangel, stands,
The angel with the sword,
And the battle-dead from a hundred lands
Are ranged in one big horde,
Our line, that for Gabriel's trumpet waits,
Will stretch three deep that day.
From Jehosaphat to the Golden Gates--
Kelly and Burke and Shea."
"Well, here's thank God for the race and the sod!"
Said Kelly and Burke and Shea.
MARVELS OF PRECOCITY.
The "Most Remarkable Child in the World," Which Belongs to Your Friend,
Has Had Many Distinguished Predecessors--Mozart Played the Piano at
Three, and Grotius Was a Poet at Eight.
There are few men and women in the United States who do not at least once
a year suddenly find themselves confronted by what fond fathers and doting
mothers describe as the most remarkable child in the world.
But there have been others.
Several years ago the newspapers of Europe were heralding the marvelous
achievements of a boy in Berlin, who, though only two years old, was said
to read in a most surprising manner.
* * * * *
The "learned child of Lübeck" was another of these precocious infants, but
he is credited with having such extraordinary talents that one can almost
be forgiven for doubting the veracity of the chronicler.
Tasso was another smart child, for he spoke plainly, it is said, when only
six months old. When seven years old he understood Latin and Greek, and
even composed verses, and before he was twelve, when studying law, he had
completed his course of rhetoric, poetry, logic, and ethics.
Lope de Vega was also fortunate when a boy. At five he could read Latin
and Spanish fluently, and at twelve he was master of the Latin tongue and
of rhetoric, while at fifteen he had written several pastorals and a
comedy. He is stated to have produced about eighteen hundred comedies
during his life, so perhaps it was necessary to begin when very young.
Grotius was another good poet at the age of eight; at fifteen,
accomplished in philosophy, mathematics, and jurisprudence, and at
twenty-four he was appointed advocate-general of Rotterdam.
Barrétier, at the age of nine, was master of five languages, while in his
eleventh year he made a translation from the Hebrew to the French and
added notes such as would be expected from a man of considerable
erudition.
Gustavus Vasa was another boy of excellent brain-power, for at the age of
twelve he was able to speak and write Latin, French, German, Italian,
Dutch, and Swedish, and he also understood Polish and Russian.
Pascal, at twelve, had completely mastered Euclid's Elements without any
assistance, and at sixteen he published a work on conic sections, which
Descartes was reluctant to believe had been produced by a boy.
The "Great Condé" was a boy with brains, and he made good use of them. At
eight he understood Latin, and at eleven he wrote a treatise on rhetoric.
Three years later he was thoroughly conversant with all military
exercises.
In the world of music, too, both in our own times and in the past, we find
many instances of boys giving an early indication of a remarkable career.
Handel and Mozart each showed a liking for music when young in years, and
soon made their mark.
Handel began composing a church service for voices and instruments when
only nine years old, and before he was fifteen he had composed three
operas.
Mozart began to play the piano when he was three years old, and at seven
he had taught himself the violin. At nine years of age he visited England,
and when departing gave a farewell concert at which all the symphonies
were composed by himself.
Several years ago attention was drawn to a little Polish boy who at eight
years of age could play from memory some of the most intricate
compositions of such composers as Mozart, Bach, Chopin, Rubinstein, and
others. This precocious youth, Ignace Jan Paderewski, is now the most
famous of all living pianists.
Some remarkable preachers have also started very early.
The Abbé de Rancé, founder of the monastic order of the Trappists, was a
splendid Greek scholar at twelve, and shortly afterward was appointed to
an important benefice.
Bossuet preached before a brilliant Parisian assembly at the age of
fifteen; and Fénelon, who afterward became an archbishop, also preached an
extraordinary sermon at the same age.
Patrick Henry's Call to Arms.
The Famous Speech Which, Delivered by the American Hampden in the
Virginia Convention, Kindled the Fire of Revolution in
the Thirteen Colonies in 1775.
In the thick of national crises the ability to persuade
others is the strongest power an individual can wield. Such
a power was Patrick Henry's.
From the earlier disagreements with the mother country his
influence was all for the assertion of colonial liberties.
He was born May 9, 1736. In 1765, a young man not yet
thirty, he became a member of the Virginia House of
Burgesses. The Stamp Act had excited the people. Young
Henry, with a presumption which angered many of his maturer
colleagues, offered resolutions setting forth the rights of
the colony. In the debate he suddenly uttered the words:
"Cæsar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and
George the Third----"
A clamor arose, and cries of "Treason! Treason!"
With perfect coolness the orator continued:
----"may profit by their example." Then, firmly: "If this be
treason, make the most of it!"
Thus began the public life of a man whose youth had been
most unpromising in its slovenliness and laziness, who had
failed at farming and at business, and who had succeeded at
law only after a dubious beginning which was turned into
triumph by a quite unlooked-for burst of eloquence. His
services to his country continued until his voluntary
retirement from public life in 1791, at the age of
fifty-five. Subsequently Washington and Adams offered him
high offices, but Henry declined successively to be United
States Senator, Secretary of State, Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court, or minister to France. In 1799, urged by
Washington, he consented to be elected to the Virginia
Legislature, but died June 6, before taking his seat. We
here print his great speech in the Virginia Conventon, 1775,
as recorded by his first biographer.
Mr. President: It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope.
We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the
song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of
wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty?
Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not,
and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their
temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I
am willing to know the worst, and to provide for it.
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of
experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past.
And, judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the
conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those
hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the
House?
Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately
received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer
not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this
gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike
preparations which cover our waters and darken our land.
Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have
we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called
in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the
implements of war and subjugation--the last arguments to which kings
resort.
I ask, gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be
not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible
motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy in this quarter of the world,
to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has
none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other.
They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the
British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to
them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last
ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We
have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has
been all in vain.
Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we
find, which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you,
sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done everything that could be
done, to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned, we
have remonstrated, we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves
before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the
tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament.
Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced
additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded;
and we have been spurned with contempt from the foot of the throne. In
vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and
reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope.
If we wish to be free; if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable
privileges for which we have been so long contending; if we mean not
basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long
engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the
glorious object of our contest shall be obtained--we must fight!--I
repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms, and to the God of hosts,
is all that is left us.
They tell us, sir, that we are weak--unable to cope with so formidable an
adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the
next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British
guard shall be stationed in every house?
Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire
the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and
hugging the delusive fantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us
hand and foot?
Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God
of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed in the
holy cause of Liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are
invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us.
Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God,
who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends
to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone;
it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no
election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to
retire from the contest.
There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged.
Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is
inevitable--and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come! It is vain,
sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace! peace, but there
is no peace. The war has actually begun.
The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash
of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we
here idle? What is it that the gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is
life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains
and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what course others may
take, but, as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!
FROM THE LIPS OF ANANIAS.
Confidential Chats Which Show That if Nature Would Permit Things to
Happen in the Way Some Narrators Have Described Them, the World Would
Be a Much More Interesting Place in Which to Live.
CHANGED BY ARGUMENT.
Two commercial travelers, one from London and one from New York, were
discussing the weather in their respective countries.
The Englishman said that English weather had one great fault--its sudden
changes.
"A person may take a walk one day," he said, "attired in a light summer
suit, and still feel quite warm. Next day he needs an overcoat."
"That's nothing," said the American. "My two friends, Johnston and Jones,
were once having an argument. There were eight or nine inches of snow on
the ground.
"The argument got heated, and Johnston picked up a snowball and threw it
at Jones from a distance of not more than five yards. During the transit
of that snowball, believe me
|
.
"We cannot alway have what we want," answered he.
"You can!" objected Clare.
"Nay, my child, I cannot," gravely replied her grandfather. "An' I
could, I would have alway a good, obedient little grand-daughter."
Clare played with Mr Avery's stick, and was silent.
"Leave her with me, good Barbara, and go look after thy mighty charges,"
said her master, smiling. "I will bring her within ere long."
Barbara trotted off, and Clare, relieved from the fear of her duenna,
went back to her previous subject.
"Gaffer, what do the fishes?"
"What do they? Why, swim about in the water, and shake their tails, and
catch flies for their dinner."
"What think they on, Gaffer?"
"Nay, thou art beyond me there. I never was a fish. How can I tell
thee?"
"Would they bite me?" demanded Clare solemnly.
"Nay, I reckon not."
"What, not a wild fish?" said Clare, opening her dark blue eyes.
Mr Avery laughed, and shook his head.
"But I would fain know--And, O Gaffer!" exclaimed the child, suddenly
interrupting herself, "do tell me, why did Tom kill the pig?"
"Kill the pig? Why, for that my Clare should have somewhat to eat at
her dinner and her supper."
"Killed him to eat him?" wonderingly asked Clare, who had never
associated live pigs with roast pork.
"For sure," replied her grandfather.
"Then he had not done somewhat naughty?"
"Nay, not he."
"I would, Gaffer," said Clare, very gravely, "that Tom had not smothered
the pig ere he began to lay eggs. [The genuine speech of a child of
Clare's age.] I would so have liked a _little_ pig!"
The suggestion of pig's eggs was too much for Mr Avery's gravity. "And
what hadst done with a little pig, my maid."
"I would have washed it, and donned it, and put it abed," said Clare.
"Methinks he should soon have marred his raiment. And maybe he should
have loved cold water not more dearly than a certain little maid that I
could put a name to."
Clare adroitly turned from this perilous topic, with an unreasoning
dread of being washed there and then; though in truth it was not
cleanliness to which she objected, but wet chills and rough friction.
"Gaffer, may I go with Bab to four-hours unto Mistress Pendexter?"
"An' thou wilt, my little floweret."
Mr Avery rose slowly, and taking Clare by the hand, went back to the
house. He returned to his turret-study, but Clare scampered upstairs,
possessed herself of her doll, and ran in and out of the inhabited rooms
until she discovered Barbara in the kitchen, beating up eggs for a
pudding.
"Bab, I may go with thee!"
"Go with me?" repeated Barbara, looking up with some surprise. "Marry,
Mrs Clare, I hope you may."
"To Mistress Pendexter!" shouted Clare ecstatically.
"Oh ay!" assented Barbara. "Saith the master so?"
Clare nodded. "And, Bab, shall I take Doll?"
This contraction for Dorothy must have been the favourite name with the
little ladies of the time for the plaything on which it is now
inalienably fixed.
"I will sew up yon hole in her gown, then, first," said Barbara, taking
the doll by its head in what Clare thought a very disrespectful manner.
"Mrs Clare, this little gown is cruel ragged; if I could but see time,
I had need make you another."
"Oh, do, Bab!" cried Clare in high delight.
"Well, some day," replied Barbara discreetly.
A few hours later, Barbara and Clare were standing at the door of a
small, neat cottage in a country lane, where dwelt Barbara's sister,
Marian Pendexter, [a fictitious person] widow of the village
schoolmaster. The door was opened by Marian herself, a woman some five
years the senior of her sister, to whom she bore a good deal of
likeness, but Marian was the quieter mannered and the more silent of the
two.
"Marry, little Mistress Clare!" was her smiling welcome. "Come in,
prithee, little Mistress, and thou shalt have a buttered cake to thy
four-hours. Give thee good even, Bab."
A snowy white cloth covered the little round table in the cottage, and
on it were laid a loaf of bread a piece of butter, and a jug of milk.
In honour of her guests, Marian went to her cupboard, and brought out a
mould of damson cheese, a bowl of syllabub, and a round tea-cake, which
she set before the fire to toast.
"And how fareth good Master Avery?" asked Marian, as she closed the
cupboard door, and came back.
Barbara shook her head ominously.
"But ill, forsooth?" pursued her sister.
"Marry, an' you ask at him, he is alway well; but--I carry mine eyes,
Marian."
Barbara's theory of educating children was to keep them entirely
ignorant of the affairs of their elders. To secure this end, she
adopted a vague, misty style of language, of which she fondly imagined
that Clare did not understand a word. The result was unfortunate, as it
usually is. Clare understood detached bits of her nurse's conversation,
over which she brooded silently in her own little mind, until she
evolved a whole story--a long way off the truth. It would have done
much less harm to tell her the whole truth at once; for the fact of a
mystery being made provoked her curiosity, and her imaginations were far
more extreme than the facts.
"Ah, he feeleth the lack of my mistress his wife, I reckon," said Marian
pityingly. "She must be soothly a sad miss every whither."
"Thou mayest well say so," assented Barbara. "Dear heart! 'tis nigh
upon five good years now, and I have not grown used to the lack of her
even yet. Thou seest, moreover, he hath had sorrow upon sorrow. 'Twas
but the year afore that Master Walter [a fictitious person] and Mistress
Frances did depart [die]; and then, two years gone, Mistress Kate, [a
fictitious person]. Ah, well-a-day! we be all mortal."
"Thank we God therefore, good Bab," said Marian quietly. "For we shall
see them again the sooner. But if so be, Bab, that aught befel the
Master, what should come of yonder rosebud?"
And Marian cast a significant look at Clare, who sat apparently
engrossed with a mug full of syllabub.
"Humph! an' I had the reins, I had driven my nag down another road,"
returned Barbara. "Who but Master Robin [a fictitious person] and
Mistress Thekla [a fictitious person] were meetest, trow? But lo! you!
what doth Mistress Walter but indite a letter unto the Master, to note
that whereas she hath never set eyes on the jewel--and whose fault was
that, prithee?--so, an' it liked Him above to do the thing thou wottest,
she must needs have the floweret sent thither. And a cruel deal of fair
words, how she loved and pined to see her, and more foolery belike.
Marry La'kin! ere I had given her her will, I had seen her alongside of
King Pharaoh at bottom o' the Red Sea. But the Master, what did he, but
write back and say that it should be even as she would. Happy woman be
her dole, say I!"
And Barbara set down the milk-jug with a rough determinate air that must
have hurt its feelings, had it possessed any.
"Mistress Walter! that is, the Lady--" [Note 3.]
"Ay--she," said Barbara hastily, before the name could follow.
"Well, Bab, after all, methinks 'tis but like she should ask it. And if
Master Robin be parson of that very same parish wherein she dwelleth, of
a surety ye could never send the little one to him, away from her own
mother?"
"Poor little soul! she is well mothered!" said Barbara ironically.
"Never to set eyes on the child for six long years; and then, when
Mistress Avery, dear heart! writ unto her how sweet and _debonnaire_
[pretty, pleasing] the lily-bud grew, to mewl forth that it was so great
a way, and her health so pitiful, that she must needs endure to bereave
her of the happiness to come and see the same. Marry La'kin! call yon a
mother!"
"But it is a great way, Bab."
"Wherefore went she so far off, then?" returned Barbara quickly enough.
"And lo! you! she can journey thence all the way to York or Chester when
she would get her the new fashions,--over land, too!--yet cannot she
take boat to Bideford, which were less travail by half. An' yonder
jewel had been mine, Marian, I would not have left it lie in the case
for six years, trow!"
"Maybe not, Bab," answered Marian in her quiet way. "Yet 'tis ill
judging of our neighbour. And if the lady's health be in very deed so
pitiful--"
"Neighbour! she is no neighbour of mine, dwelling up by Marton Moss!"
interrupted Barbara, as satirically as before. "And in regard to her
pitiful health--why, Marian, I have dwelt in the same house with her for
a year and a half, and I never knew yet her evil health let [hinder] her
from a junketing. Good lack! it stood alway in the road when somewhat
was in hand the which misliked her. Go to church in the rain,--nay, by
'r Lady!--and 'twas too cold in the winter to help string the apples,
and too hot in the summer to help conserve the fruits: to be sure! But
let there be an even's revelling at Sir Christopher Marres his house,
and she bidden,--why, it might rain enough to drench you, but her cloak
was thick then, and her boots were strong enough, and her cough was not
to any hurt--bless her!"
The tone of Barbara's exclamation somewhat belied the words.
"Have a care, Bab, lest--" and Marian's glance at Clare explained her
meaning.
"Not she!" returned Barbara, looking in her turn at the child, whose
attention was apparently concentrated on one of Marian's kittens, which
she was stroking on her lap, while the mother cat walked uneasily round
and round her chair. "I have alway a care to speak above yon head."
"Is there not a little sister?" asked Marian in a low tone.
"Ay," said Barbara, dropping her voice. "Blanche, the babe's name is [a
fictitious character.] Like Mrs Walter--never content with plain Nell
and Nan. Her childre must have names like so many queens. And I dare
say the maid shall be bred up like one."
The conversation gradually passed to other topics, and the subject was
not again touched upon by either sister.
How much of it had Clare heard, and how much of that did she understand?
A good deal more of either than Barbara imagined. She knew that Walter
had been her father's name, and she was well aware that "Mistress
Walter" from Barbara's lips, indicated her mother. She knew that her
mother had married again, and that she lived a long way off. She knew
also that this mother of hers was no favourite with Barbara. And from
this conversation she gathered, that in the event of something
happening--but what that was she did not realise--she was to go and live
with her mother. Clare was an imaginative child, and the topic of all
her dreams was this mysterious mother whom she had never seen. Many a
time, when Barbara only saw that she was quietly dressing or hushing her
doll, Clare's mind was at work, puzzling over the incomprehensible
reason of Barbara's evident dislike to her absent mother. What shocking
thing could she have done, thought Clare, to make Bab angry with her?
Had she poisoned her sister, or drowned the cat, or stolen the big crown
off the Queen's head? For the romance of a little child is always
incongruous and sensational.
In truth, there was nothing sensational, and little that was not
commonplace, about the character and history of little Clare's mother,
whose maiden name was Orige Williams. She had been the spoilt child of
a wealthy old Cornish gentleman,--the pretty pet on whom he lavished all
his love and bounty, never crossing her will from the cradle. And she
repaid him, as children thus trained often do, by crossing his will in
the only matter concerning which he much cared. He had set his heart on
her marrying a rich knight whose estate lay contiguous to his own: while
she, entirely self-centred, chose to make a runaway match with young
Lieutenant Avery, whose whole year's income was about equal to one week
of her father's rent-roll. Bitterly disappointed, Mr Williams declared
that "As she had made her bed, so she should lie on it;" for not one
penny would he ever bestow on her while he lived, and he would bequeath
the bulk of his property to his nephew. In consequence of this threat,
which reached, her ears, Orige, romantic and high-flown, fancied herself
at once a heroine and a martyr, when there was not in her the capacity
for either. In the sort of language in which she delighted, she spoke
of herself as a friendless orphan, a sacrifice to love, truth, and
honour. It never seemed to occur to her that in deceiving her father--
for she had led him to believe until the last moment that she intended
to conform to his wishes--she had acted both untruthfully and
dishonourably; while as to love, she was callous to every shape of it
except love of self.
For about eighteen months Walter and Orige Avery lived at Bradmond,
during which time Clare was born. She was only a few weeks old when the
summons came for her father to rejoin his ship. He had been gone two
months, when news reached Bradmond of a naval skirmish with the
Spaniards off the Scilly Isles, in which great havoc had been made among
the Queen's forces, and in the list of the dead was Lieutenant Walter
Avery.
Now Orige's romance took a new turn. She pictured herself as a widowed
nightingale, love-lorn and desolate, leaning her bleeding breast upon a
thorn, and moaning forth her melancholy lay. As others have done since,
she fancied herself poetical when she was only silly. And Barbara took
grim notice that her handkerchief was perpetually going up to tearless
eyes, and that she was not a whit less particular than usual to know
what there was for supper.
For six whole months this state of things lasted. Orige arrayed herself
in the deepest sables; she spoke of herself as a wretched widow who
could never taste hope again; and of her baby as a poor hapless orphan,
as yet unwitting of its misery. She declined to see any visitors, and
persisted in being miserable and disconsolate, and in taking lonely
walks to brood over her wretchedness. And at the end of that time she
electrified her husband's family--all but one--by the announcement that
she was about to marry again. Not for love this time, of course; no,
indeed!--but she thought it was her duty. Sir Thomas Enville--a widower
with three children--had been very kind; and he would make such a good
father for Clare. He had a beautiful estate in the North. It would be
a thousand pities to let the opportunity slip. Once for all, she
thought it her duty; and she begged that no one would worry her with
opposition, as everything was already settled.
Kate Avery, Walter's elder and only surviving sister, was exceedingly
indignant. Her gentle, unsuspicious mother was astonished and puzzled.
But Mr Avery, after a momentary look of surprise, only smiled.
"Nay, but this passeth!" [surpasses belief] cried Kate.
"Even as I looked for it," quietly said her father. "I did but think it
should maybe have been somewhat later of coming."
"Her duty!" broke out indignant Kate. "Her duty to whom?"
"To herself, I take it," said he. "To Clare, as she counteth. Methinks
she is one of those deceivers that do begin with deceiving of
themselves."
"To Clare!" repeated Kate. "But, Father, she riddeth her of Clare. The
babe is to 'bide here until such time as it may please my good Lady to
send for her."
"So much the better for Clare," quietly returned Mr Avery.
And thus it happened that Clare was six years old, and her mother was
still an utter stranger to her.
The family at Bradmond, however, were not without tidings of Lady
Enville. It so happened that Mr Avery's adopted son, Robert Tremayne,
was Rector of the very parish in which Sir Thomas Enville lived; and a
close correspondence--for Elizabethan days--was kept up between Bradmond
and the Rectory. In this manner they came to know, as time went on,
that Clare had a little sister, whose name was Blanche; that Lady
Enville was apparently quite happy; that Sir Thomas was very kind to
her, after his fashion, though that was not the devoted fashion of
Walter Avery. Sir Thomas liked to adorn his pretty plaything with fine
dresses and rich jewellery; he surrounded her with every comfort; he
allowed her to go to every party within ten miles, and to spend as much
money as she pleased. And this was precisely Orige's beau ideal of
happiness. Her small cup seemed full--but evidently Clare was no
necessary ingredient in the compound.
If any one had taken the trouble to weigh, sort, and label the
prejudices of Barbara Polwhele, it would have been found that the
heaviest of all had for its object "Papistry,"--the second, dirt,--and
the third, "Mistress Walter." Lieutenant Avery had been Barbara's
darling from his cradle, and she considered that his widow had outraged
his memory, by marrying again so short a time after his death. For
this, above all her other provocations, Barbara never heartily forgave
her. And a great struggle it was to her to keep her own feelings as
much as possible in the background, from the conscientious motive that
she ought not to instil into Clare's baby mind the faintest feeling of
aversion towards her mother. The idea of the child being permanently
sent to Enville Court was intensely distasteful to her. Yet wherever
Clare went, Barbara must go also.
She had promised Mrs Avery, Clare's grandmother, on her dying bed,
never to leave the child by her own free will so long as her childhood
lasted, and rather than break her word, she would have gone to Siberia--
or to Enville Court. In Barbara's eyes, there would have been very
little choice between the two places. Enville Court lay on the
sea-coast, and Barbara abhorred the sea, on which her only brother and
Walter Avery had died: it was in Lancashire, which she looked upon as a
den of witches, and an arid desert bare of all the comforts of life; it
was a long way from any large town, and Barbara had been used to live
within an easy walk of one; she felt, in short, as though she were being
sent into banishment.
And there was no help for it. Within the last few weeks, a letter had
come from Lady Enville,--not very considerately worded--requesting that
if what she had heard was true, that Mr Avery's health was feeble, and
he was not likely to live long--in the event of his death, Clare should
be sent to her.
In fact, there was nowhere else to send her. Walter's two sisters, Kate
and Frances, were both dead,--Kate unmarried, Frances van Barnevelt
leaving a daughter, but far away in Holland. The only other person who
could reasonably have claimed the child was Mr Tremayne; and with what
show of justice could he do so, when his house lay only a stone's throw
from the park gates of Enville Court? Fate seemed to determine that
Clare should go to her mother. But while John Avery lived, there was to
be a respite.
It was a respite shorter than any one anticipated--except, perhaps, the
old man himself. There came an evening three weeks after these events,
when Barbara noticed that her master, contrary to his usual custom,
instead of returning to his turret-chamber after supper, sat still by
the hall fire, shading his eyes from the lamp, and almost entirely
silent. When Clare's bed-time came, and she lifted her little face for
a good-night kiss, John Avery, after giving it, laid his hands upon her
head and blessed her.
"The God that fed me all my life long, the Angel that redeemed me from
all evil, bless the maid! The peace of God, which passeth all
understanding, keep thy heart and mind, through Jesus Christ our Lord;
and the blessing of God Almighty,--the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost--be upon thee, and remain with thee always!"
So he "let her depart with this blessing." Let her depart--to walk the
thorny path of which he had reached the end, to climb the painful steeps
of which he stood at the summit, to labour along the weary road which he
would tread no more. Let her depart! The God who had fed him had manna
in store for her,--the Angel who had redeemed him was strong, enough,
and tender enough, to carry this lamb in His bosom.
Barbara noted that his step was slower even than had been usual with him
of late. It struck her, too, that his hair was whiter than she had ever
noticed it before.
"Be you aweary this even, Master?"
"Something, good maid," he answered with a smile. "Even as a traveller
may well be that hath but another furlong of his journey."
Another furlong! Was it more than another step? Barbara went upstairs
with him, to relieve him of the light burden of the candle.
"Good night, Master! Metrusteth your sleep shall give you good
refreshing."
"Good night, my maid," said he. "I wish thee the like. There shall be
good rest up yonder."
Her eyes filled with tears as she turned away. Was it selfish that her
wish was half a prayer,--that he might be kept a little longer from
_that_ rest?
She waited longer than usual before she tapped at his door the next
morning. It was seven o'clock--a very late hour for rising in the
sixteenth century--when, receiving no answer, Barbara went softly into
the room and unfastened the shutters as quietly as she could. No need
for the care and the silence! There was good rest up yonder.
The shutters were drawn back, and the April sunlight streamed brightly
in upon a still, dead face.
Deep indeed was the mourning: but it was for themselves, not for him.
He was safe in the Golden Land, with his children and his Isoult--all
gone before him to that good rest. What cause could there be for grief
that the battle was won, and that the tired soldier had laid aside his
armour?
But there was need enough for grief as concerned the two survivors,--for
Barbara and little Clare, left alone in the cold, wide world, with
nothing before them but a mournful and wearisome journey, and Enville
Court the dreaded end of it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 1. So lately as 1601, an Act of Parliament forbade men to ride in
coaches, as an effeminate practice.
Note 2. This was "His Holiness' sentence," of which the Armada was "in
execution." See note, p.
Note 3. The names, and date of marriage, of Walter Avery and Orige
Williams, are taken from the Bodmin Register. In every other respect
they are fictitious characters.
CHAPTER TWO.
ON THE BORDER OF MARTON MERE.
"Thou too must tread, as we trod, a way
Thorny, and bitter, and cold, and grey."
_Miss Muloch_.
It was drawing towards the dusk of a bright day early in May. The
landscape was not attractive, at least to a tired traveller. It was a
dreary waste of sandhills, diversified by patches of rough grass, and a
few stunted bushes, all leaning away from the sea, as though they wanted
to get as far from it as their small opportunities allowed; on one side
foamed the said grey-green expanse of sea; on the other lay a little
lakelet, shining in the setting sun: in front, at some distance, a
rivulet ran from the lake to the sea. On the nearer side of the brook
lay a little village; while on the further bank was a large, well-kept
park, in which stood a grey quadrangular mansion. Beyond the park,
nearly as far as the eye could reach, stretched a wide, dreary swamp,
bounded only by the sea on the one hand and the lake on the other. The
only pretty or pleasant features in the landscape were the village and
park; and little could be seen of those for intervening sandhills.
The lake was Marton Mere; the swamp was Marton Moss; and the district
was the Fylde of Lancashire. The County Palatine was renowned, at that
time, in the eyes of the Londoners, for its air, which was "subtile and
piercing," without any "gross vapours nor foggie mists;" for the
abundance and excellence of its cattle, which were sent even then to the
metropolis; for the plentiful variety of its provisions; for its
magnificent woods, "preserved by gentlemen for beauty," to such an
extent that no wood was used for fuel, and its place was supplied by
"sea-coal" and turf; for its numerous churches, "in no part of the land
more in proportion to the inhabitants." But the good qualities of the
County Palatine were not likely to be appreciated by our weary
travellers.
The travellers were three in number:--a short, thick-set man, in a coat
of frieze as rough as his surroundings; a woman, and a child; lastly
came a pack-horse, bearing a quantity of luggage.
"Eh me!" ejaculated Barbara Polwhele, with a weary sigh. "Master, doth
any man live hereaway?"
"Eh?" queried the man, not looking back.
Barbara repeated her question.
"Ay," said he in a rough voice.
"By 'r Lady!" exclaimed Barbara, pityingly. "What manner of folk be
they, I marvel?"
"Me an' th' rest," said the man.
"Eh? what, you never--Be we anear Enville Court now?"
"O'er yon," replied the man, pointing straight forward with his whip,
and then giving it a sharp crack, as a reminder to the galloways.
"What, in the midst of yonder marsh?" cried poor Barbara.
Dick gave a hoarse chuckle, but made no other reply. Barbara's
sensations were coming very near despair.
"What call men your name, Master?" she demanded, after some minutes'
gloomy meditation.
"Name?" echoed the stolid individual before her.
"Ay," said she.
"Dick o' Will's o' Mally's o' Robin's o' Joan's o' owd Dick's,"
responded he, in a breath.
"Marry La'kin!" exclaimed Barbara, relieving her feelings by recourse to
her favourite epithet. She took the whole pedigree to be a polysyllabic
name. "Dear heart, to think of a country where the folk have names as
long as a cart-rope!"
"Bab, I am aweary!" said little Clare, rousing up from a nap which she
had taken leaning against Barbara.
"And well thou mayest, poor chick!" returned Barbara compassionately;
adding in an undertone,--"Could she ne'er have come so far as Kirkham!"
They toiled wearily on after this, until presently Dick o' Will's--I
drop the rest of the genealogy--drew bridle, and looking back, pointed
with his whip to the village which now lay close before them.
"See thee!" said he. "Yon's th' fold."
"Yon's what?" demanded Barbara.
The word was unintelligible to her, as Dick pronounced it "fowd;" but
had she understood it, she would have been little wiser. Fold meant to
her a place to pen sheep in, while it signified to Dick an enclosure
surrounded by houses.
"What is 't?" responded Dick. "Why, it's th' fowd."
"But what is `fowd'?" asked bewildered Barbara.
"Open thy een, wilt thou?" answered Dick cynically.
Barbara resigned the attempt to comprehend him, and, unwittingly
obeying, looked at the landscape.
Just the village itself was pretty enough. It was surrounded with
trees, through which white houses peeped out, clustered together on the
bank of the little brook. The spire of the village church towered up
through the foliage, close to the narrow footbridge; and beside it stood
the parsonage,--a long, low, stone house, embowered in ivy.
"Is yonder Enville Court?" asked Barbara, referring to the house in the
park.
"Ay," said Dick.
"And where dwelleth Master Tremayne?"
"Eh?"
"Master Tremayne--the parson--where dwelleth he?"
"Th' parson? Why, i' th' parsonage, for sure," said Dick, conclusively.
"Where else would thou have him?"
"Ay, in sooth, but which is the parsonage?"
"Close by th' church--where would thou have it?"
"What, yonder green house, all o'er ivy?"
"For sure."
They slowly filed into the village, rode past the church and
parsonage,--at which latter Barbara looked lovingly, as to a haven of
comfort--forded the brook, and turned in at the gates of Enville Court.
When they came up to the house, and saw it free of hindering foliage,
she found that it was a stately quadrangle of grey stone, with a stone
terrace round three sides of it, a garden laid out in grim, Dutch square
order, away from the sea; and two or three cottages, with farm-buildings
and stables, grouped behind. The horses drew up at a side door.
"Now!" lethargically said Dick, lumbering off his horse. "Con ye get
off by yoursen?"
"I'll try," grunted the rather indignant Barbara, who considered that
her precious charge, Clare, was being very neglectfully received. She
sprang down more readily than Dick, and standing on the horse-block,
lifted down little Clare.
"Hallo!" said Dick, by way of ringing the bell.
A slight stir was heard through the open door, and a young woman
appeared, fresh-looking and smiling-faced.
"Mistress Polwhele, I reckon?" she asked. "An' is this t' little lass?
Eh, God bless thee, little lass! Come in--thou'rt bound to be aweary."
Clare looked up into the girl's pleasant face, and sliding her hand
confidingly into hers, said demurely,--"I'll come."
"Dick 'll see to th' gear, Mistress," said the girl.
"Thou'd better call Sim, Dick.--I reckon you'd best come wi' me."
"What is your name?" asked Barbara, following her guide.
"Jennet," said the smiling girl.
"Well, Jennet, you are the best thing I have yet seen up hither,"
announced Barbara cynically.
"Eh, you've none seen nought yet!" said Jennet, laughing. "There's
better things here nor me, I'se warrant you."
"Humph!" returned Barbara meditatively. She doubted it very much.
Jennet paused at a door, and rapped. There was no answer; perhaps her
appeal was not heard by those within. She pushed the door a little
open, saying to Barbara, "There! you'd best go in, happen."
So Barbara, putting little Clare before her, went in.
It was a large, square, low room, sweet with the perfume of dried roses.
There were four occupants,--two ladies, and two girls. One of the
ladies sat with her back to the door, trying to catch the last ray of
daylight for her work; the other had dropped asleep. Evidently neither
had heard Jennet's knock.
It was rather an awkward state of things. Little Clare went a few feet
into the room, stopped, and looked up at Barbara for direction. At the
same moment the elder girl turned her head and saw them.
"Madam!" said Barbara stiffly.
"Aunt Rachel!" [Note 1] said the girl.
The lady who sat by the window looked round, and rose. She was young--
certainly under thirty; but rather stiff and prim, very upright, and not
free from angularity. She gave the impression that she must have been
born just as she was, in her black satin skirt, dark blue serge kirtle,
unbending buckram cap, whitest and most unruffled of starched frills,--
and have been kept ever since under a glass case.
"You are Barbara Polwhele?" she said.
Barbara dropped a courtesy, and replied affirmatively.
"Sister!" said Mistress Rachel, appealing to the sleeper.
No greater difference between two young women could well be imagined,
than that which existed in this instance. Lady Enville--for she was the
taker of the siesta--was as free from any appearance of angularity or
primness as possible. Everything about her was soft, delicate, and
graceful. She was fair in complexion, and very pretty. She had been
engaged in fancy-work, and it lay upon her lap, held lightly by one
hand, just as it had dropped when she fell asleep.
"Sister!" said Rachel again.
Lady Enville stirred, sighed, and half opened her eyes.
"Here is thy little maid, Sister."
Lady Enville opened her blue eyes fully, dropped her work on the floor,
and springing up, caught Clare to her bosom with the most exalted
expressions of delight.
"Fragrance of my heart! My rose of spring! My gem of beauty! Art thou
come to me at last, my soul's darling?"
Barbara looked on with a grim smile. Clare sat in perfect silence on
her mother's knee, suffering her caresses, but making no response.
"She is not like thee, Sister," observed Rachel.
"No, she is like her father," replied Lady Enville, stroking the child's
hair, and kissing her again. "Medoubteth if she will ever be as
lovesome as I. I was much better favoured at her years.--Art thou
aweary, sweeting?"
At last Clare spoke; but only in an affirmative monosyllable. Clare's
thoughts were mixed ones. It was rather nice to sit on that soft velvet
lap, and be petted: but "Bab didn't like her." And why did not Bab like
her?
"Thou hast not called me Mother, my floweret."
Clare was too shy for that. The suggestion distressed her. To move the
house seemed as near possibility as to frame her lips to say that short
word. Fortunately for her, Lady Enville's mind never dwelt on a subject
for many seconds at once. She turned to Barbara.
"And how goes it with thee, Barbara?"
"Well, and I thank you
|
that in the face of our ever increasing population
these natural playgrounds are destined to become a buffer against the
tensions that we, as one of the most highly civilized peoples of the
world, undergo in our daily life. Within another century they will
represent one of the few remaining opportunities for many millions of
Americans to get close to nature. As such the proper development and
preservation of mountainous areas and their values is of vital
importance to our Nation.
Mountains of the Southwestern States have been formed by three major
agencies. These are, in order of importance, shrinkage of the earth's
interior to form wrinkles on the surface; faulting, with subsequent
erosion of exposed surfaces; and volcanic action. The first method is
responsible for most of the large ranges, such as the coastal mountains
of California and the Rocky Mountains. Faulting is responsible for many
of the high plateau areas where one side may be a high rim or cliff and
the other a gently sloping incline. The Mogollon Rim, extending across a
part of Arizona and into New Mexico, is a classic example in this
category. Volcanic action may result in great masses of igneous rock
being extruded through cracks in the earth's surface or it may take the
form of violent outbursts in one comparatively small area. Several
mountain regions in Arizona and New Mexico are covered with huge fields
of extruded lava. Capulin Mountain in New Mexico is an example of a
recent volcano which built up an almost perfect cone of cinders and
lava. Less noticeable than the mountains, but important nevertheless,
are the tablelands of the Southwest. These mesas, too high to be typical
of the desert, and in most cases too low to be considered as mountains,
partake of the characteristics of both.
_Desert "Islands"_
The mountains of the Southwest have been compared to islands rising
above the surface of a sea of desert. This is an apt comparison for not
only do they differ materially from the hot, low desert in climate, but
also in flora and fauna. Few species of either plants or animals living
at these higher altitudes could survive conditions on the desert floor
with any more success than land animals could take to the open sea.
Their death from heat and aridity would only be more prolonged than that
by drowning. Thus certain species isolated on mountain peaks are often
as restricted in range as though they actually were surrounded by water.
At times this results in such striking adaptation to local conditions
that some common species become hardly recognizable. This is the
exception to the rule however; most of the animals in this book are
either of the same species as those in the Northern States or so closely
allied that to the casual observer they will seem the same. Conditions
that enable these species ordinarily associated with the snowy plains of
the Midwest and the conifer forests of the North to live in the hot
Southwest are brought about either directly or indirectly by altitude.
_Life Zones_
There are in this nucleus of four States a total of six life zones, (See
map on page x.) The two lowest, the Lower and Upper Sonoran Life Zones,
range from sea level to a maximum elevation of about 7000 feet. These
two have been covered in the book "Mammals of the Southwest Deserts."
The remaining four--Transition, Canadian, Hudsonian, and Alpine Life
Zones--will furnish the material for this book. The names of these zones
are self explanatory, because they are descriptive of those regions
whose climates they approximate. Unlike the two life zones of the
desert, which merge almost imperceptibly together, these upper zones are
more sharply defined. They may often be identified at a great distance
by their distinctive plant growth. It should be noted that plant species
are even more susceptible to environmental factors than animals and are
restricted to well defined areas within the extremes of temperature and
moisture best suited to their individual needs. Thus each life zone has
its typical plant species, and since animals in turn are dependent on
certain plants for food or cover, one can often predict many of the
species to be found in an individual area.
The Transition Life Zone in the Southwest usually lies at an altitude of
between 7000 and 8000 feet. It encompasses the change from low trees and
shrubs of the open desert to dense forest of the higher elevations. It
is characterized by open forests of ponderosa pine usually intermingled
with scattered thickets of Gambel oak. These trees are of a brighter
green than the desert growth but do not compare with the deeper color of
the firs that grow at a higher elevation.
The Canadian Life Zone begins at an altitude of about 8000 feet and
extends to approximately 9500 feet. The Douglas-fir must be considered
the outstanding species in this zone although the brilliant autumn color
of quaking aspens provides more spectacular identification of this area
during the fall. Through the winter months when this tree has shed its
leaves, the groves show up as gray patches among the dark green firs. At
this elevation there is considerable snow during winter and
correspondingly heavy rainfall in summer months. Under these favorable
conditions there is usually a colorful display of wildflowers late in
the spring.
The Hudsonian Life Zone is marked by a noticeable decrease in numbers of
plant species. At this altitude, (9500 to 11,500 feet), the winters are
severe and summers of short duration. This is the zone of white fir
which grows tall and slim so to better shed its seasonal burden of snow
and sleet. In the more sheltered places spruce finds a habitat suited to
its needs. Near the upper edge of the Hudsonian Life Zone the trees
become stunted and misshapen and finally disappear entirely. This is
timberline; the beginning of the Alpine Life Zone, or as it often
called, the Arctic-Alpine Life Zone.
Here is a world of barren rock and biting cold. At 12,000 feet and above
the eternal snows lie deep on the peaks. Yet, even though at first
glance there seems to be little evidence of life of any kind, a close
scrutiny will reveal low mat-like plants growing among the exposed rocks
and tiny paths leading to burrows in the rock slides. Among the larger
mammals there are few other than the mountain sheep that can endure the
rigors of this inhospitable region.
These are the zones of the Southwest uplands. Altitudes given are
approximate and apply to such mountain ranges as the San Francisco Peaks
of Arizona and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico. As one
travels farther north the zones descend ever lower until in the Far
North the Arctic-Alpine Life Zone is found at sea level. Since climate
more than any other factor, determines the types of plants and animals
that can live in a given area it is only natural that on these mountain
islands many species entirely foreign to the surrounding deserts are
found at home. Though it would seem that because of the relative
abundance of water at higher elevations the upland species would have
the better environment, this is not entirely true. Balanced against this
advantage are the severe winters which, in addition to freezing
temperatures, usher in a period of deep snows and famine. Even though
many species show a high degree of adaptation to these conditions, an
especially long or cold winter season will result in the death of weaker
individuals.
_Man and Wilderness_
The effects of man's presence on the upland species is perhaps not as
serious as on those of the desert. Though he has been instrumental in
upsetting the balance of nature everywhere, it has been chiefly through
agriculture and grazing. Because of the rough broken character of much
high country in the Southwest the first is impossible in many cases and
the second only partially successful. There are other factors however
which menace the future of the upland species. Among these are: hunting
pressures, predator control, and lumbering. Even fire control, admirable
as it may be for human purposes, disrupts the long cycles which are a
normal part of plant and animal succession in forested areas. These are
only a few of the means by which man deliberately or unconsciously
decimates the animal population. They are set down as a reminder that
unless conservation and science cooperate in management problems, it is
conceivable that many of our common species could well become extinct
within the next 100 years. Our natural resources are our heritage; let
us not waste the substance of our trust.
As our wilderness areas shrink it seems that our people are gradually
becoming more interested, not only in the welfare of our native species
but in their ways as well. This type of curiosity augurs well for the
future of our remaining wild creatures. In times past an interest in
mammals was limited mainly to sportsmen who often knew a great deal
about where to find game animals and how to pursue them. Their interest
usually ended with the shot that brought the quarry down. Today many
people have discovered that a study of the habits of any animal in its
native habitat is a fascinating out-of-doors hobby in a virtually
untouched field. With patience and attention to details the layman will
occasionally discover facts about the daily life of some common species
that have escaped the attention of our foremost naturalists. This is no
criticism of the scientific approach. It is recommended that for his own
benefit the nature enthusiast learn a few of the fundamentals of
zoology, particularly of classification and taxonomy, which mean the
grouping and naming of species.
_Classification of Animals_
Classification of animals is easy to understand. Briefly, they are
divided into large groups called _orders_. These are further divided
into _genera_, and the genera in turn contain one or more _species_.
Scientific names of animals are always given in Latin. Written in this
universal language they are intelligible to all scientists, regardless
of nationality. It is a mistake to shy away from them because they are
cumbersome and unfamiliar to the eye. They usually reveal some important
characteristic of the animal they stand for. This is their true
function; it seems to this writer that it is a mistake to name an animal
after a geographical location or a person, although it is frequently
done. The literal translations of specific names in this book will
illustrate this point. See how much more interesting and how much more
easily remembered those names are which describe habits or physical
attributes of the creature.
Described herein are but a part of the species native to the
Southwestern uplands. Those chosen were selected because they are either
common, rare, or unusually interesting. Collectively they make up a
representative cross section of the mammals that live above the deserts
of the Southwest.
For further information on these and other mammals of the region see the
list of references on page 123.
HOOFED ANIMALS
_Artiodactyla_
(_even-toed hoofed animals_)
This order includes all of the hoofed animals native to the United
States. These are the mammals which are ordinarily spoken of as the
"cloven-hoofed animals." An odd-toed group (_Perissodactyla_), which
includes the so-called wild horses and burros, cannot properly be
included as natives since these animals date back only to the time of
the Spanish conquest of our Southwest. In earlier geologic ages horses
ranged this continent, but in more primitive forms than those now found
in other parts of the world.
Through a study of fossil forms it has been determined that our present
hoofed animals evolved from creatures which lived on the edges of the
great tropical swamps that once covered large areas of our present land
masses. They were long-legged and splay-footed, well adapted to an
environment of deep mud and lush vegetation. As the waters gradually
disappeared and the animals were forced to take to dry land, their
strange feet underwent a slow transformation. Because they had become
accustomed to walking on the tips of their toes to stay up out of the
mud, the first toe did not touch solid ground at all in this new
environment. Since it was of no use it soon vanished entirely or became
vestigial. Some species developed a divided foot in which the second and
third toes and the fourth and fifth toes combined respectively to bear
the animal's weight. Eventually the third and fourth toes assumed this
responsibility alone, and the second and fifth toes became dew claws.
These are the cloven-hoofed animals of today. In other species the third
toe was developed to bear the weight, and this resulted in a single-toed
group of which the horse is an example. In all cases an enormous
modification of the nails or claws with which most animals are equipped
has resulted in that protective covering called the hoof. The under
surface of the foot is somewhat softer and corresponds to the heavy pad
that protects the bottom of a dog's toe. This brief explanation refers
only in the broadest sense to the order as represented in the United
States. The feet of the various species have become so specialized to
their separate ways of life that an individual can usually be easily
identified by its tracks alone. It is quite possible that many species
are still undergoing subtle changes in this respect.
With but one exception the cloven-hoofed animals of our southwestern
mountains bear either horns or antlers. The exception is the collared
peccary, "javelina," (_pecari tajacu_) which, during the heat of the
summer, sometimes ascends to the Transition Life Zone in southern
Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. Essentially an animal of the low
desert, it will not be included in this book. The species which have
hollow, permanent horns are the bighorn and pronghorn. The pronghorn is
distinctive in shedding the sheaths of its horns each year, but the
hollow, bony core remains intact. In this group both sexes bear horns.
Animals bearing antlers are the elk and the deer. The antlers are
deciduous, being shed each year at about the same time as the winter
coat. Only the males of these species have antlers, any female with
antlers can be considered abnormal.
The Southwest is fortunate in still having a number of the species of
this order native to the United States. The bison can hardly be
considered a wild species, since it exists now only through the efforts
of a few conservationists who brought it back from virtual extinction.
Mountain goats, caribou, and moose are the only other species not known
to inhabit the Southwest.
In Nature's balance the order _Artiodactyla_ seems to have been meant as
food for the large predators. Their protection against the flesh eaters
consists mainly in fleetness of foot, keen hearing, and a wide range of
vision, as evidenced by the large eyes set in the sides of the head.
They are but poorly equipped to actively resist attack by the larger
carnivores. Their best defense is flight.
Bighorn (mountain sheep)
_Ovis canadensis_ (Latin: a sheep from Canada)
Range: This species, with its several varieties, inhabits most of the
mountainous region of the western United States. In Mexico it occurs in
the northern Sierra Madres and over almost the whole length of Baja
California.
[Illustration: Habitat map]
Habitat: Among or in the vicinity of more precipitous places in the
mountains.
Description: A blocky animal, rather large, with heavy, curving horns.
Total length of adult male 5 feet. Tail about 5 inches. Weight up to 275
pounds. General color a dark gray to brown with lighter areas underneath
belly and inside of legs. The rump patch is much lighter than any other
part of the body; in most cases it can be described as white. Females
are similar in appearance to the males except that they are smaller and
the horns are much shorter and slimmer. Young, one or two, twins being
common.
Interesting as the desert varieties of this species may be in their
adaptation to an environment that seems foreign to their nature, they
cannot compare with the high mountain animal. Seen against the backdrop
of a great gray cliff or silhouetted against the skyline of a snowy
crest the bighorn has a magnificence that is thrilling. In flight it is
even more spectacular as it bounds from one narrow shelf to another in
an incredible show of surefootedness. Yet this airy grace is exhibited
by a chunky animal that often weighs well over 200 pounds. The secret
lies in the specially adapted hooves with bottoms that cling to smooth
surfaces like crepe rubber and edges that cut into snow and ice or gain
a purchase on the smallest projections of the rocks. The legs and body,
though heavy, are well proportioned and so extremely well muscled that
no matter what demands are placed on them this sheep seems to have a
comfortable reserve of power. No doubt the display of complete
coordination adds to the illusion of ease with which it ascends to the
most inaccessible places. Descents often are even more spectacular, the
animal seldom hesitating at vertical leaps of 15 feet or more down from
one narrow ledge to another.
[Illustration: bighorn]
In the high mountains where this sheep prefers to make its home it
usually ranges near or above timberline. During winter storms it may
sometimes be forced down into the shelter of the forests, but as soon as
conditions warrant it will go back to its world of barren rocks and
snow. Here, with an unobstructed view, its keen eyes can pick out the
stealthy movements of the mountain lion, the only mammal predator
capable of making any serious inroads on its numbers. It has few other
natural enemies. A golden eagle occasionally may strike a lamb and knock
it from a ledge, or a high ranging bobcat or lynx may be lucky enough to
snatch a very young one away from its mother, but these are rare
occurrences.
Bighorns depend mainly on browse for food. This is only natural since in
the high altitudes they frequent little grass can be found. Usually
there is some abundance of low shrubs growing in crevices on the rocks,
however, and many of the tiny annuals are also searched out during the
short summer season. At times a sheltered cove on the south exposure of
a mountain will become filled with such shrubs as the snowberry, and the
sheep take full advantage of such situations. As a rule they keep well
fed for, scanty though it seems, there are few competitors for the food
supply above timberline.
I have observed these sheep many times in the Rockies. Perhaps my most
memorable experience with this species was on Mount Cochran in southern
Montana. It was a gray, blustery day in September with occasional snow
flurries sweeping about the summits. On the eastern exposure of the
mountain a steep slope of slide rock extended for perhaps 1,000 feet
from one of the upper ridges to timberline. Not expecting to see any
game at that elevation, I made my way up this slope with no effort to
keep quiet. In my progress several rocks were dislodged and went
rattling down across the mass of talus. At the summit of the ridge a low
escarpment made a convenient windbreak against the gale that was tearing
the clouds to shreds as they came drifting up the opposite slope, and I
sat down to catch my breath before entering its full force. As I sat
there surveying the scene spread out below, my attention was attracted
by a low cough close by. Looking to the left about 40 feet away and 15
feet above me, I saw two magnificent rams standing on a projecting point
looking down at me. They seemed to have no fear; rather they evinced a
deep curiosity as to what strange animal this was that had wandered into
their domain. For the better part of a half hour I hardly dared breathe
for fear of frightening them. At first they gazed at me fixedly,
occasionally giving a low snorting cough and stamping their feet. Then
as I did not move, they would wheel about and change positions,
sometimes taking a long look over the mountains before bringing their
attention back. Finally when the cold had penetrated to my very bones, I
stood up. They were away in a flash, reappearing from behind their
vantage point with two ewes and an almost full-grown lamb following
them. While I watched they dashed at a sheer cliff that reared up to the
summit, and with hardly slackening speed bounded up its face until they
were lost in the clouds.
Although this happened in 1928 the experience is as vivid in my mind as
though it happened yesterday. Perhaps the most striking feature of
bighorns seen at this close range is the eyes. They might be described
as a clear, golden amber with a long oval, velvety black pupil. Credited
with telescopic vision, they must be some of the most useful as well as
beautiful eyes to be found in the animal kingdom.
Pronghorn (antelope)
_Antilocapra americana_ (Latin: antelope and goat, American)
Range: West Texas, eastern Colorado and central Wyoming to southern
California and western Nevada, and from southern Saskatchewan south into
northern Mexico.
[Illustration: Habitat map]
Habitat: Grasslands of mesas and prairies, mostly in the Upper Sonoran
Zone.
Description: A white and tan colored animal, considerably smaller than a
deer; horns with a single flat prong curving forward. Total length about
4 feet. Tail about 6 inches. Average weight 100 to 125 pounds. Color,
tan or black shading to white under belly and insides of legs. Two
conspicuous white bands under the neck, and the large white rump patch
of erectile hairs are unlike the markings of any other native animal. A
short, stiff mane of dark hairs follows the back of the neck from ears
to shoulders. Hooves black, horns also black except for the light tips
on those of older males. Both sexes horned. Young, usually two, born in
May.
[Illustration: pronghorn]
Pronghorns are unique among cloven-hoofed animals of the Southwest.
There is only one species, with several subspecies; a variety
_mexicana_, once common along the Mexican border, is considered extinct
in this country. The pronghorn has no "dew claws" like most other
animals with divided hooves. It has permanent bony cores in its horns
but sheds the outer sheaths each year. When these drop off the
succeeding sheaths are already well developed. Although at first these
new sheaths are soft and covered with a scanty growth of short stiff
hairs, corresponding to the velvet in antlered animals, it does not take
long for them to harden and become dangerous weapons. They reach full
development at about the time of the rut; bucks have been known to fight
to the death in the savage encounters that break out at this time.
Were it not for its unusual horns the pronghorn probably would be known
by a common name such as the white-tailed antelope, for the beautiful
white rump patch is undoubtedly its next most conspicuous feature.
However, at least two other animals have been named "antelope" because
their posteriors have some similarity. They are the white-tailed ground
squirrel and the antelope jackrabbit of the Sonoran Life Zone. The
ground squirrel (_Citellus leucurus_) has merely a white ventral surface
on its tail which may or may not act as a flashing signal when flipped
about, but the antelope jackrabbit (_Lepus alleni_) has a rump patch
that bears a striking likeness to the pronghorn's both in appearance and
manner of use. In both cases the rump patches are composed of long,
erectile white hairs which are raised when the animal is alarmed. In
flight they are thought to act as warning signals; at any rate they are
very effective in catching the eye, and on the open plains the
pronghorn's can be seen at a distance where the rest of the animal is
indistinguishable. It may well be, on the other hand, that this flashy
ornament is meant to attract the attention of an enemy and lead it in
pursuit of an adult individual rather than allowing it to discover the
helpless young. Neither animal can be matched in speed on level ground
by any native four-footed predator.
In times past the pronghorn usually lived in the valley and prairie
country. In the Southwest it roamed over much of both the Upper and
Lower Sonoran Life Zones, wherever suitable grass and herbage could be
found. On the prairies of the Midwest bands of pronghorns grazed in
close proximity to herds of buffalo. During the middle of the last
century it was the only animal whose numbers even approached those of
the latter. More adaptable than the buffalo, it has retreated before the
advance of civilization and taken up new ranges in rough and broken
country which is unsuited to agriculture. As a rule this is much higher
than its former range. Pronghorns are no longer found in the Lower
Sonoran Life Zone, except as small bands that have been introduced from
farther north. The greatest population now ranges in the upper portions
of the Upper Sonoran and along the lower fringe of the Transition Life
Zone. The animal has always been considered migratory to some extent
because it moved from mesa summer ranges to the protection of warmer
valleys during winter months. This habit is even more pronounced in
later years at the higher levels it now inhabits. These slim,
long-legged creatures are virtually helpless in deep snow and avoid it
whenever possible. They have even been known to mingle with cattle and
join with them at the feed racks during severe winters, an indication of
the extreme need to which shy pronghorns are sometimes reduced.
They are essentially grazing animals. In the past they ate prairie
grasses during the summer; in winter these same grasses made excellent
hay that lost little in nourishment from having dried on the roots. In
addition, they ate low herbage and nibbled leaves, buds, and fruits from
shrubs that grew along the watercourses. Their food today is much the
same except that in the many areas where they receive competition from
range cattle they undoubtedly resort to more browse than formerly.
Natural enemies of the pronghorn are legion, their success indifferent.
Every large carnivore will snap at the chance to take one, and even the
golden eagle has been known to kill them. The most serious depredations
are carried out on those young too small to follow the mother. However,
these attacks are fraught with danger, for the females are very
courageous in the defense of their young and at times several will join
in routing an enemy. In addition to this protection accorded them by
adult members of the band, the young have an almost perfect camouflage
in their plain coats that blend so closely with the color of the grass
in which they usually lie concealed. Because of their fleetness, few
adults fall prey to predators. Many attempts have been made to clock the
speed of the pronghorn in full flight but the estimates vary greatly.
Although a fast horse can keep up with one on smooth, level ground, it
is soon outdistanced on stony soil or in rough country.
[Illustration: baby pronghorn]
Bison (buffalo)
_Bison bison_ (Teutonic name given to this animal)
Range: At present bison exist only in widely scattered sanctuaries. In
Colonial times they ranged from southern Alaska to the Texas plains,
from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic, and as far south as Georgia.
They are known in historic times in Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico.
[Illustration: Habitat map]
Habitat: Mainly grasslands; a comparatively small number known locally
as "wood" bison lived in the fringes of the forests.
Description: Although bison are familiar to almost everyone, some
figures on weights and dimensions may be surprising. Bulls weigh up to
1800 lbs., reach 6 feet height at the shoulders and up to 11 feet in
length, of which about 2 feet is the short tail. Cows average much
smaller from 800 to 1000 pounds, and rarely over 7 feet long. Both sexes
have heavy, black, sharply curving horns, tapering quickly to a point,
and a heavy growth of woolly hair covering most of the head and
forequarters. A large hump lies over the latter and descends sharply to
the neck. The head is massive, horns widely spaced, and small eyes set
far apart. A heavy "goatee" swings from the lower jaw. All these
features combine to give the animal a most ponderous appearance.
Nevertheless, bison are surprisingly agile and are not creatures with
which to trifle, especially in the breeding season, when bulls will
charge with little provocation. Like most wild cattle, bison normally
bear but one calf per year. Twins are uncommon.
The history of the bison is unique in the annals of American mammalogy.
It hinges on simple economics, reflecting transfer of the western
prairies from Indian control to white. It is a pitifully short history
in its final stages, requiring only 50 years to drive a massive species,
numbering in the millions, from a well balanced existence to near
extinction. Yet considering the nature of civilization and progress
there could have been no other end, so perhaps it is well that it was
quickly over.
For countless centuries the bison had roamed the prairies, their
seasonal migrations making eddies in the great herds that darkened the
plains. They were host to the Indian, and to the gray wolf, yet so well
were they adapted to their life that these depredations were merely
normal inroads on their numbers. They drifted with the seasons and the
weather cycles, grazing on the nutritious grasses of the prairie.
Weather and food supply; these were the main factors which controlled
the "buffalo" population until the coming of the white man.
The first white man to see an American bison is thought to have been
Cortez, who in 1521 wrote of such an animal in Montezuma's collection of
animals. This menagerie was kept in the Aztec capitol on the site of
what is now Mexico City. There the bison was an exotic, hundreds of
miles south of its range. In 1540 Coronado found the Zuni Indians in
northern New Mexico using bison hides, and a short distance northeast of
that point encountered the species on the great plains. The eastern edge
of the Rio Grande Valley in New Mexico seems to have been the western
limit of bison in the Southwest. Unfavorable climate, plus the
comparatively heavy Indian population of the valley probably combined to
halt farther penetration in that direction.
From 1540 until 1840 the white man limited his activities on the western
plains to exploring. American colonization had reached the Mississippi
River, but remained there while gathering its forces for the expansion
which later settled the West. Under Mexican rule, the Southwest
progressed very slowly. Then in the span of 50 years a chain of events
occurred which determined the destiny of the West and sealed the fate of
the bison herd.
[Illustration: bison]
Outstanding among these events were: the War with Mexico, 1844; the 1849
Gold Rush to California; the Gadsden Purchase in 1854; and completion of
the transcontinental railroad in 1868. The first three added new and
important territory to the United States. This made construction of
transportation and communication facilities a vital necessity, hence the
railroad. Completion of the Union Pacific Railroad in 1868 divided the
bison population into southern and northern herds and made market
hunting profitable. Three factors contributed to extermination: profit
in the traffic of hides, meat, and bones; control of troublesome Indian
tribes through elimination of one of their major sources of food; and
finally, removal of any competition on the grassy plains of Texas and
Kansas against the great herds of Longhorn cattle which were beginning
to make Western range history. In 1874, only 6 years after completion of
the Union Pacific, the slaughter of the southern herd was complete. It
is of interest to note that not one piece of legislation was passed to
protect the southern herd.
The northern herd did slightly better. Closed seasons were established
in Idaho in 1864, in Wyoming in 1871, Montana in 1872, Nebraska in 1875,
Colorado in 1877, New Mexico in 1880, North and South Dakota in 1883.
Nevertheless, the herd dwindled, and by 1890 was nearly extinct. Since
that time, through careful management, a few small herds have been
established in Parks and refuges, but today the bison must be considered
more a domesticated animal than a wild one.
Although the animal was not as important economically to the
southwestern as to the plains Indians, it was a religious symbol of some
value. Archeological finds far west of the historic range, and dances
still used in ceremonies, reveal that several southwestern tribes sent
hunting parties eastward into bison country. This must have been very
dangerous, for plains Indians would have considered them invaders. Bison
were food, shelter, and clothing to them. Imagine their consternation
when white men began to slaughter the source of their living.
There are today but few reminders of the great herds of the west.
Perhaps one well versed in the ways of these wild cattle could still
find traces of the deeply cut trails which led to the watering places,
or shallow depressions where the clumsy beasts once wallowed in the mud.
Many of the Indian dances recall the importance of this animal to
primitive man. Perhaps our most constant reminder is the coin which
commemorates this symbol of the wild west, showing the Indian on one
side and the bison on the other.
Mule deer
_Odocoileus hemionus_ (Greek: odous, tooth and koilus, hollow. Greek:
hemionus, mule)
Range: Western half of North America from Central Canada to central
Mexico.
[Illustration: Habitat map]
Habitat: Forests and brushy areas from near sea level to lower edge of
the Alpine Life Zone.
Description: A large-eared deer with a tail that is either all black
above or black tipped. Total length of an average adult about 6 feet.
Tail about 8 inches. The coat is reddish in summer and blue-gray in
winter. Under parts and insides of legs lighter in color. Some forms of
this species have a white rump patch, others none. The tail may be
black-tipped, or black over the whole dorsal surface, but is more
sparsely haired than that of other native deer and is naked over at
least part of the under surface. Only the bucks have antlers. These are
typical in forking equally from the main beam. They are shed every year.
[Illustration: mule deer]
The mule deer is typical of the western mountains. Even in early days it
was never found east of the Mississippi and now is seldom seen east of
the Rockies. Only one species is recognized in the United States,
although over its vast range are many subspecific forms. All are notable
for the size of their ears, from which derives the common name "mule."
The black-tailed deer of the Pacific Coast, long considered a distinct
species, is now rated a subspecies of the mule deer.
In a general way the deer of the United States may be divided into two
groups, these separated geographically by the Continental Divide. East
of this line is the territory occupied by the white-tailed group;
westward of it live the mule deer. Inasmuch as species seldom stop
abruptly at geographical lines, we find in this instance that a
whitetail subspecies, locally known as the Sonora fantail, is found
along the Mexican border as far west as the Colorado River, territory
also occupied by desert-dwelling mule deer. In like fashion the mule
deer of the Rocky Mountains can even now be seen in the Badlands of
North Dakota, several hundred miles east of the Continental Divide and
well within the western range of the plains white-tailed.
Though the two species mingle in places, they are easily distinguished
from each other, even by the novice. Because in many cases the animal is
seen only in flight, the manner of running is perhaps the most prominent
field difference. The mule deer, adapted to living in rough country,
bounds away in stiff-legged jumps that look rather awkward on the level
but can carry it up a steep incline with surprising speed. The
white-tailed, on the other hand, stretches out and runs at a bobbing
gallop. Deer seldom take leisurely flight from a human, usually
straining every muscle to leave their enemy as soon as possible. In the
rough, broken country frequented by mule deer this tactic often makes
considerable commotion.
I am reminded of a herd of an estimated 70 deer that I jumped on a steep
mountainside in southern Utah. The crashing of brush, crackling of
hooves, and noise of rocks kicked loose in their flight created the
impression of a landslide.
Another easily seen field difference between mule and white-tailed deer
is the dark, short-haired tail of the former as compared with the great
white fan of the
|
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION; INGERSOLL'S OPENING PAPER
[Ingersoll-Black]
By Robert G. Ingersoll
In the presence of eternity the mountains are as transient as the
clouds.
A PROFOUND change has taken place in the world of thought. The pews are
trying to set themselves somewhat above the pulpit. The layman discusses
theology with the minister, and smiles. Christians excuse themselves
for belonging to the church, by denying a part of the creed. The idea
is abroad that they who know the most of nature believe the least about
theology. The sciences are regarded as infidels, and facts as scoffers.
Thousands of most excellent people avoid churches, and, with few
exceptions, only those attend prayer-meetings who wish to be alone. The
pulpit is losing because the people are growing.
Of course it is still claimed that we are a Christian people, indebted
to something called Christianity for all the progress we have made.
There is still a vast difference of opinion as to what Christianity
really is, although many warring sects have been discussing that
question, with fire and sword, through centuries of creed and crime.
Every new sect has been denounced at its birth as illegitimate, as
a something born out of orthodox wedlock, and that should have been
allowed to perish on the steps where it was found. Of the relative
merits of the various denominations, it is sufficient to say that
each claims to be right. Among the evangelical churches there is a
substantial agreement upon what they consider the fundamental truths of
the gospel. These fundamental truths, as I understand them, are:
That there is a personal God, the creator of the material universe; that
he made man of the dust, and woman from part of the man; that the man
and woman were tempted by the devil; that they were turned out of the
Garden of Eden; that, about fifteen hundred years afterward, God's
patience having been exhausted by the wickedness of mankind, he drowned
his children with the exception of eight persons; that afterward he
selected from their descendants Abraham, and through him the Jewish
people; that he gave laws to these people, and tried to govern them in
all things; that he made known his will in many ways; that he wrought a
vast number of miracles; that he inspired men to write the Bible; that,
in the fullness of time, it having been found impossible to reform
mankind, this God came upon earth as a child born of the Virgin Mary;
that he lived in Palestine; that he preached for about three years,
going from place to place, occasionally raising the dead, curing the
blind and the halt; that he was crucified--for the crime of blasphemy,
as the Jews supposed, but that, as a matter of fact, he was offered as
a sacrifice for the sins of all who might have faith in him; that he was
raised from the dead and ascended into heaven, where he now is, making
intercession for his followers; that he will forgive the sins of all who
believe on him, and that those who do not believe will be consigned to
the dungeons of eternal pain. These--it may be with the addition of the
sacraments of Baptism and the Last Supper--constitute what is generally
known as the Christian religion.
It is most cheerfully admitted that a vast number of people not only
believe these things, but hold them in exceeding reverence, and imagine
them to be of the utmost importance to mankind. They regard the Bible as
the only light that God has given for the guidance of his children; that
it is the one star in nature's sky--the foundation of all morality, of
all law, of all order, and of all individual and national progress. They
regard it as the only means we have for ascertaining the will of God,
the origin of man, and the destiny of the soul.
It is needless to inquire into the causes that have led so many people
to believe in the inspiration of the Scriptures. In my opinion, they
were and are mistaken, and the mistake has hindered, in countless ways,
the civilization of man. The Bible has been the fortress and defence of
nearly every crime. No civilized country could re-enact its laws, and in
many respects its moral code is abhorrent to every good and tender man.
It is admitted that many of its precepts are pure, that many of its laws
are wise and just, and that many of its statements are absolutely true.
Without desiring to hurt the feeling? of anybody, I propose to give
a few reasons for thinking that a few passages, at least, in the Old
Testament are the product of a barbarous people.
In all civilized countries it is not only admitted, but it is
passionately asserted, that slavery is and always was a hideous
crime; that a war of conquest is simply murder; that polygamy is the
enslavement of woman, the degradation of man, and the destruction of
home; that nothing is more infamous than the slaughter of decrepit men,
of helpless women, and of prattling babes; that captured maidens should
not be given to soldiers; that wives should not be stoned to death on
account of their religious opinions, and that the death penalty ought
not to be inflicted for a violation of the Sabbath. We know that
there was a time, in the history of almost every nation, when
slavery, polygamy, and wars of extermination were regarded as divine
institutions; when women were looked upon as beasts of burden, and when,
among some people, it was considered the duty of the husband to murder
the wife for differing with him on the subject of religion. Nations that
entertain these views to-day are regarded as savage, and, probably, with
the exception of the South Sea Islanders, the Feejees, some citizens
of Delaware, and a few tribes in Central Africa, no human beings can be
found degraded enough to agree upon these subjects with the Jehovah of
the ancient Jews. The only evidence we have, or can have, that a
nation has ceased to be savage is the fact that it has abandoned these
doctrines. To every one, except the theologian, it is perfectly easy to
account for the mistakes, atrocities, and crimes of the past, by
saying that civilization is a slow and painful growth; that the moral
perceptions are cultivated through ages of tyranny, of want, of crime,
and of heroism; that it requires centuries for man to put out the eyes
of self and hold in lofty and in equal poise the scales of justice;
that conscience is born of suffering; that mercy is the child of the
imagination--of the power to put oneself in the sufferer's place, and
that man advances only as he becomes acquainted with his surroundings,
with the mutual obligations of life, and learns to take advantage of the
forces of nature.
But the believer in the inspiration of the Bible is compelled to declare
that there was a time when slavery was right--when men could buy, and
women could sell, their babes. He is compelled to insist that there
was a time when polygamy was the highest form of virtue; when wars
of extermination were waged with the sword of mercy; when religious
toleration was a crime, and when death was the just penalty for having
expressed an honest thought. He must maintain that Jehovah is just as
bad now as he was four thousand years ago, or that he was just as
good then as he is now, but that human conditions have so changed that
slavery, polygamy, religious persecutions, and wars of conquest are now
perfectly devilish. Once they were right--once they were commanded by
God himself; now, they are prohibited. There has been such a change in
the conditions of man that, at the present time, the devil is in favor
of slavery, polygamy, religious persecution, and wars of conquest. That
is to say, the devil entertains the same opinion to-day that Jehovah
held four thousand years ago, but in the meantime Jehovah has remained
exactly the same--changeless and incapable of change.
We find that other nations beside the Jews had similar laws and ideas;
that they believed in and practiced slavery and polygamy, murdered women
and children, and exterminated their neighbors to the extent of their
power. It is not claimed that they received a revelation. It is admitted
that they had no knowledge of the true God. And yet, by a strange
coincidence, they practised the same crimes, of their own motion, that
the Jews did by the command of Jehovah. From this it would seem that man
can do wrong without a special revelation.
It will hardly be claimed, at this day, that the passages in the Bible
upholding slavery, polygamy, war and religious persecution are evidences
of the inspiration of that book. Suppose that there had been nothing
in the Old Testament upholding these crimes, would any modern Christian
suspect that it was not inspired, on account of the omission? Suppose
that there had been nothing in the Old Testament but laws in favor of
these crimes, would any intelligent Christian now contend that it was
the work of the true God? If the devil had inspired a book, will some
believer in the doctrine of inspiration tell us in what respect, on the
subjects of slavery, polygamy, war, and liberty, it would have differed
from some parts of the Old Testament? Suppose that we should now
discover a Hindu book of equal antiquity with the Old Testament,
containing a defence of slavery, polygamy, wars of extermination, and
religious persecution, would we regard it as evidence that the writers
were inspired by an infinitely wise and merciful God? As most other
nations at that time practiced these crimes, and as the Jews would have
practiced them all, even if left to themselves, one can hardly see
the necessity of any inspired commands upon these subjects. Is there a
believer in the Bible who does not wish that God, amid the thunders and
lightnings of Sinai, had distinctly said to Moses that man should not
own his fellow-man; that women should not sell their babes; that men
should be allowed to think and investigate for themselves, and that the
sword should never be unsheathed to shed the blood of honest men? Is
there a believer in the world, who would not be delighted to find that
every one of these infamous passages are interpolations, and that the
skirts of God were never reddened by the blood of maiden, wife, or babe?
Is there a believer who does not regret that God commanded a husband to
stone his wife to death for suggesting the worship of the sun or moon?
Surely, the light of experience is enough to tell us that slavery is
wrong, that polygamy is infamous, and that murder is not a virtue.
No one will now contend that it was worth God's while to impart the
information to Moses, or to Joshua, or to anybody else, that the Jewish
people might purchase slaves of the heathen, or that it was their duty
to exterminate the natives of the Holy Land. The deists have contended
that the Old Testament is too cruel and barbarous to be the work of a
wise and loving God. To this, the theologians have replied, that nature
is just as cruel; that the earthquake, the volcano, the pestilence and
storm, are just as savage as the Jewish God; and to my mind this is a
perfect answer.
Suppose that we knew that after "inspired" men had finished the Bible,
the devil got possession of it, and wrote a few passages; what part of
the sacred Scriptures would Christians now pick out as being probably
his work? Which of the following passages would naturally be selected
as having been written by the devil--"Love thy neighbor as thyself," or
"Kill all the males among the little ones, and kill every woman; but all
the women children keep alive for yourselves."?
It may be that the best way to illustrate what I have said of the Old
Testament is to compare some of the supposed teachings of Jehovah with
those of persons who never read an "inspired" line, and who lived and
died without having received the light of revelation. Nothing can be
more suggestive than a comparison of the ideas of Jehovah--the inspired
words of the one claimed to be the infinite God, as recorded in the
Bible--with those that have been expressed by men who, all admit,
received no help from heaven.
In all ages of which any record has been preserved, there have been
those who gave their ideas of justice, charity, liberty, love and law.
Now, if the Bible is really the work of God, it should contain the
grandest and sublimest truths. It should, in all respects, excel the
works of man. Within that book should be found the best and loftiest
definitions of justice; the truest conceptions of human liberty; the
clearest outlines of duty; the tenderest, the highest, and the noblest
thoughts,--not that the human mind has produced, but that the human mind
is capable of receiving. Upon every page should be found the luminous
evidence of its divine origin. Unless it contains grander and more
wonderful things than man has written, we are not only justified in
saying, but we are compelled to say, that it was written by no being
superior to man. It may be said that it is unfair to call attention
to certain bad things in the Bible, while the good are not so much as
mentioned. To this it may be replied that a divine being would not put
bad things in a book. Certainly a being of infinite intelligence,
power, and goodness could never fall below the ideal of "depraved and
barbarous" man. It will not do, after we find that the Bible upholds
what we now call crimes, to say that it is not verbally inspired. If the
words are not inspired, what is? It may be said that the thoughts are
inspired. But this would include only the thoughts expressed without
words. If ideas are inspired, they must be contained in and expressed
only by inspired words; that is to say, the arrangement of the words,
with relation to each other, must have been inspired. For the purpose of
this perfect arrangement, the writers, according to the Christian world,
were inspired. Were some sculptor inspired of God to make a statue
perfect in its every part, we would not say that the marble was
inspired, but the statue--the relation of part to part, the married
harmony of form and function. The language, the words, take the place
of the marble, and it is the arrangement of these words that Christians
claim to be inspired. If there is one uninspired word,--that is, one
word in the wrong place, or a word that ought not to be there,--to that
extent the Bible is an uninspired book. The moment it is admitted that
some words are not, in their arrangement as to other words, inspired,
then, unless with absolute certainty these words can be pointed out, a
doubt is cast on all the words the book contains. If it was worth God's
while to make a revelation to man at all, it was certainly worth his
while to see that it was correctly made. He would not have allowed the
ideas and mistakes of pretended prophets and designing priests to become
so mingled with the original text that it is impossible to tell where he
ceased and where the priests and prophets began. Neither will it do to
say that God adapted his revelation to the prejudices of mankind. Of
course it was necessary for an infinite being to adapt his revelation to
the intellectual capacity of man; but why should God confirm a barbarian
in his prejudices? Why should he fortify a heathen in his crimes? If a
revelation is of any importance whatever, it is to eradicate prejudices
from the human mind. It should be a lever with which to raise the human
race. Theologians Have exhausted their ingenuity in finding excuses
for God. It seems to me that they would be better employed in finding
excuses for men. They tell us that the Jews were so cruel and ignorant
that God was compelled to justify, or nearly to justify, many of their
crimes, in order to have any influence with them whatever. They tell us
that if he had declared slavery and polygamy to be criminal, the Jews
would have refused to receive the Ten Commandments. They insist that,
under the circumstances, God did the best he could; that his real
intention was to lead them along slowly, step by step, so that, in a few
hundred years, they would be induced to admit that it was hardly fair to
steal a babe from its mother's breast. It has always seemed reasonable
that an infinite God ought to have been able to make man grand enough to
know, even without a special revelation, that it is not altogether right
to steal the labor, or the wife, or the child, of another. When the
whole question is thoroughly examined, the world will find that Jehovah
had the prejudices, the hatreds, and superstitions of his day.
If there is anything of value, it is liberty. Liberty is the air of the
soul, the sunshine of life. Without it the world is a prison and the
universe an infinite dungeon.
If the Bible is really inspired, Jehovah commanded the Jewish people to
buy the children of the strangers that sojourned among them, and ordered
that the children thus bought should be an inheritance for the children
of the Jews, and that they should be bondmen and bondwomen forever.
Yet Epictetus, a man to whom no revelation was made, a man whose soul
followed only the light of nature, and who had never heard of the Jewish
God, was great enough to say: "Will you not remember that your servants
are by nature your brothers, the children of God? In saying that you
have bought them, you look down on the earth, and into the pit, on the
wretched law of men long since dead, but you see not the laws of the
gods."
We find that Jehovah, speaking to his chosen people, assured them that
their bondmen and their bondmaids must be "of the heathen that were
round about them." "Of them," said Jehovah, "shall ye buy bondmen
and bondmaids." And yet Cicero, a pagan, Cicero, who had never been
enlightened by reading the Old Testament, had the moral grandeur to
declare: "They who say that we should love our fellow-citizens, but not
foreigners, destroy the universal brotherhood of mankind, with which
benevolence and justice would perish forever."
If the Bible is inspired, Jehovah, God of all worlds, actually said:
"And if a man smite his servant or his maid with a rod, and he die under
his hand, he shall be surely punished; notwithstanding, if he continue
a day or two, he shall not be punished, for he is his money." And yet
Zeno, founder of the Stoics, centuries before Christ was born, insisted
that no man could be the owner of another, and that the title was bad,
whether the slave had become so by conquest, or by purchase. Jehovah
ordered a Jewish general to make war, and gave, among others, this
command: "When the Lord thy God shall drive them before thee, thou shalt
smite them and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with
them, nor show mercy unto them." And yet Epictetus, whom we have already
quoted, gave this marvelous rule for the guidance of human conduct:
"Live with thy inferiors as thou would'st have thy superiors live with
thee."
Is it possible, after all, that a being of infinite goodness and wisdom
said: "I will heap mischief upon them: I will spend mine arrows upon
them. They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat,
and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon
them, with the poison of serpents of the dust. The sword without, and
terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the
suckling also, with the man of gray hairs"; while Seneca, an uninspired
Roman, said: "The wise man will not pardon any crime that ought to be
punished, but he will accomplish, in a nobler way, all that is sought
in pardoning. He will spare some and watch over some, because of their
youth, and others on account of their ignorance. His clemency will not
fall short of justice, but will fulfill it perfectly."
Can we believe that God ever said of any one: "Let his children be
fatherless and his wife a widow; let his children be continually
vagabonds, and beg; let them seek their bread also out of their desolate
places; let the extortioner catch all that he hath and let the stranger
spoil his labor; let there be none to extend mercy unto him, neither let
there be any to favor his fatherless children." If he ever said these
words, surely he had never heard this line, this strain of music, from
the Hindu: "Sweet is the lute to those who have not heard the prattle of
their own children."
Jehovah, "from the clouds and darkness of Sinai," said to the Jews:
"Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.... Thou shalt not bow down
thyself to them nor serve them; for I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous
God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, unto the
third and fourth generation of them that hate me." Contrast this with
the words put by the Hindu into the mouth of Brahma:
"I am the same to all mankind. They who honestly serve other gods,
involuntarily worship me. I am he who partaketh of all worship, and I am
the reward of all worshipers."
Compare these passages. The first, a dungeon where crawl the things
begot of jealous slime; the other, great as the domed firmament inlaid
with suns.
II.
WAIVING the contradictory statements in the various books of the New
Testament; leaving out of the question the history of the manuscripts;
saying nothing about the errors in translation and the interpolations
made by the fathers; and admitting, for the time being, that the books
were all written at the times claimed, and by the persons whose names
they bear, the questions of inspiration, probability, and absurdity
still remain.
As a rule, where several persons testify to the same transaction, while
agreeing in the main points, they will disagree upon many minor things,
and such disagreement upon minor matters is generally considered as
evidence that the witnesses have not agreed among themselves upon the
story they should tell. These differences in statement we account for
from the facts that all did not see alike, that all did not have the
same opportunity for seeing, and that all had not equally good memories.
But when we claim that the witnesses were inspired, we must admit that
he who inspired them did know exactly what occurred, and consequently
there should be no contradiction, even in the minutest detail. The
accounts should be not only substantially, but they should be actually,
the same. It is impossible to account for any differences, or any
contradictions, except from the weaknesses of human nature, and these
weaknesses cannot be predicated of divine wisdom. Why should there
be more than one correct account of anything? Why were four gospels
necessary? One inspired record of all that happened ought to be enough.
One great objection to the Old Testament is the cruelty said to have
been commanded by God, but all the cruelties recounted in the Old
Testament ceased with death. The vengeance of Jehovah stopped at the
portal of the tomb. He never threatened to avenge himself upon the dead;
and not one word, from the first mistake in Genesis to the last curse
of Malachi, contains the slightest intimation that God will punish in
another world. It was reserved for the New Testament to make known the
frightful doctrine of eternal pain. It was the teacher of universal
benevolence who rent the veil between time and eternity, and fixed the
horrified gaze of man on the lurid gulfs of hell. Within the breast of
non-resistance was coiled the worm that never dies.
One great objection to the New Testament is that it bases salvation upon
belief. This, at least, is true of the Gospel according to John, and of
many of the Epistles. I admit that Matthew never heard of the atonement,
and died utterly ignorant of the scheme of salvation. I also admit that
Mark never dreamed that it was necessary for a man to be born again;
that he knew nothing of the mysterious doctrine of regeneration, and
that he never even suspected that it was necessary to believe anything.
In the sixteenth chapter of Mark, we are told that "He that believeth
and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be
damned"; but this passage has been shown to be an interpolation, and,
consequently, not a solitary word is found in the Gospel according to
Mark upon the subject of salvation by faith. The same is also true
of the Gospel of Luke. It says not one word as to the necessity of
believing on Jesus Christ, not one word as to the atonement, not one
word upon the scheme of salvation, and not the slightest hint that it is
necessary to believe anything here in order to be happy hereafter.
And I here take occasion to say, that with most of the teachings of the
Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke I most heartily agree. The miraculous
parts must, of course, be thrown aside. I admit that the necessity of
belief, the atonement, and the scheme of salvation are all set forth
in the Gospel of John,--a gospel, in my opinion, not written until long
after the others.
According to the prevailing Christian belief, the Christian religion
rests upon the doctrine of the atonement. If this doctrine is without
foundation, if it is repugnant to justice and mercy, the fabric falls.
We are told that the first man committed a crime for which all his
posterity are responsible,--in other words, that we are accountable,
and can be justly punished for a sin we never in fact committed. This
absurdity was the father of another, namely, that a man can be rewarded
for a good action done by another. God, according to the modern
theologians, made a law, with the penalty of eternal death for its
infraction. All men, they say, have broken that law. In the economy of
heaven, this law had to be vindicated. This could be done by damning the
whole human race. Through what is known as the atonement, the salvation
of a few was made possible. They insist that the law--whatever that
is--demanded the extreme penalty, that justice called for its victims,
and that even mercy ceased to plead. Under these circumstances, God, by
allowing the innocent to suffer, satisfactorily settled with the law,
and allowed a few of the guilty to escape. The law was satisfied with
this arrangement. To carry out this scheme, God was born as a babe into
this world. "He grew in stature and increased in knowledge." At the age
of thirty-three, after having lived a life filled with kindness, charity
and nobility, after having practiced every virtue, he was sacrificed as
an atonement for man. It is claimed that he actually took our place,
and bore our sins and our guilt; that in this way the justice of God was
satisfied, and that the blood of Christ was an atonement, an expiation,
for the sins of all who might believe on him.
Under the Mosaic dispensation, there was no remission of sin except
through the shedding of blood. If a man committed certain sins, he
must bring to the priest a lamb, a bullock, a goat, or a pair of
turtle-doves. The priest would lay his hands upon the animal, and the
sin of the man would be transferred. Then the animal would be killed in
the place of the real sinner, and the blood thus shed and sprinkled upon
the altar would be an atonement. In this way Jehovah was satisfied.
The greater the crime, the greater the sacrifice--the more blood, the
greater the atonement. There was always a certain ratio between the
value of the animal and the enormity of the sin. The most minute
directions were given about the killing of these animals, and about
the sprinkling of their blood. Every priest became a butcher, and every
sanctuary a slaughter-house. Nothing could be more utterly shocking to
a refined and loving soul. Nothing could have been better calculated to
harden the heart than this continual shedding of innocent blood. This
terrible system is supposed to have culminated in the sacrifice of
Christ. His blood took the place of all other. It is necessary to shed
no more. The law at last is satisfied, satiated, surfeited. The idea
that God wants blood is at the bottom of the atonement, and rests
upon the most fearful savagery. How can sin be transferred from men to
animals, and how can the shedding of the blood of animals atone for the
sins of men?
The church says that the sinner is in debt to God, and that the
obligation is discharged by the Savior. The best that can possibly be
said of such a transaction is, that the debt is transferred, not paid.
The truth is, that a sinner is in debt to the person he has injured.
If a man injures his neighbor, it is not enough for him to get the
forgiveness of God, but he must have the forgiveness of his neighbor.
If a man puts his hand in the fire and God forgives him, his hand will
smart exactly the same. You must, after all, reap what you sow. No god
can give you wheat when you sow tares, and no devil can give you tares
when you sow wheat.
There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments--there are
consequences. The life of Christ is worth its example, its moral force,
its heroism of benevolence.
To make innocence suffer is the greatest sin; how then is it possible to
make the suffering of the innocent a justification for the criminal? Why
should a man be willing to let the innocent suffer for him? Does not
the willingness show that he is utterly unworthy of the sacrifice?
Certainly, no man would be fit for heaven who would consent that an
innocent person should suffer for his sin. What would we think of a
man who would allow another to die for a crime that he himself had
committed? What would we think of a law that allowed the innocent to
take the place of the guilty? Is it possible to vindicate a just law
by inflicting punishment on the innocent? Would not that be a second
violation instead of a vindication?
If there was no general atonement until the crucifixion of Christ, what
became of the countless millions who died before that time? And it must
be remembered that the blood shed by the Jews was not for other nations.
Jehovah hated foreigners. The Gentiles were left without forgiveness
What has become of the millions who have died since, without having
heard of the atonement? What becomes of those who have heard but have
not believed? It seems to me that the doctrine of the atonement is
absurd, unjust, and immoral. Can a law be satisfied by the execution
of the wrong person? When a man commits a crime, the law demands his
punishment, not that of a substitute; and there can be no law, human
or divine, that can be satisfied by the punishment of a substitute. Can
there be a law that demands that the guilty be rewarded? And yet, to
reward the guilty is far nearer justice than to punish the innocent.
According to the orthodox theology, there would have been no heaven had
no atonement been made. All the children of men would have been cast
into hell forever. The old men bowed with grief, the smiling mothers,
the sweet babes, the loving maidens, the brave, the tender, and the
just, would have been given over to eternal pain. Man, it is claimed,
can make no atonement for himself. If he commits one sin, and with
that exception lives a life of perfect virtue, still that one sin would
remain unexpiated, unatoned, and for that one sin he would be forever
lost. To be saved by the goodness of another, to be a redeemed debtor
forever, has in it something repugnant to manhood.
We must also remember that Jehovah took special charge of the Jewish
people; and we have always been taught that he did so for the purpose
of civilizing them. If he had succeeded in civilizing the Jews, he would
have made the damnation of the entire human race a certainty; because,
if the Jews had been a civilized people when Christ appeared,--a
people whose hearts had not been hardened by the laws and teachings of
Jehovah,--they would not have crucified him, and, as a consequence,
the world would have been lost. If the Jews had believed in religious
freedom,--in the right of thought and speech,--not a human soul could
ever have been saved. If, when Christ was on his way to Calvary, some
brave, heroic soul had rescued him from the holy mob, he would not
only have been eternally damned for his pains, but would have rendered
impossible the salvation of any human being, and, except for the
crucifixion of her son, the Virgin Mary, if the church is right, would
be to-day among the lost.
In countless ways the Christian world has endeavored, for nearly two
thousand years, to explain the atonement, and every effort has ended
in an admission that it cannot be understood, and a declaration that it
must be believed. Is it not immoral to teach that man can sin, that he
can harden his heart and pollute his soul, and that, by repenting
and believing something that he does not comprehend, he can avoid the
consequences of his crimes? Has the promise and hope of forgiveness ever
prevented the commission of a sin? Should men be taught that sin gives
happiness here; that they ought to bear the evils of a virtuous life in
this world for the sake of joy in the next; that they can repent between
the last sin and the last breath; that after repentance every stain
of the soul is washed away by the innocent blood of another; that the
serpent of regret will not hiss in the ear of memory; that the saved
will not even pity the victims of their own crimes; that the goodness
of another can be transferred to them; and that sins forgiven cease to
affect the unhappy wretches sinned against?
Another objection is that a certain belief is necessary to save the
soul. It is often asserted that to believe is the only safe way. If you
wish to be safe, be honest. Nothing can be safer than that. No matter
what his belief may be, no man, even in the hour of death, can regret
having been honest. It never can be necessary to throw away your reason
to save your soul. A soul without reason is scarcely worth saving. There
is no more degrading doctrine than that of mental non-resistance. The
soul has a right to defend its castle--the brain, and he who waives that
right becomes a serf and slave. Neither can I admit that a man, by doing
me an injury, can place me under obligation to do him a service. To
render benefits for injuries is to ignore all distinctions between
actions. He who treats his friends and enemies alike has neither love
nor justice. The idea of non-resistance never occurred to a man with
power to protect himself. This doctrine was the child of weakness, born
when resistance was impossible. To allow a crime to be committed when
you can prevent it, is next to committing the crime yourself. And yet,
under the banner of non-resistance, the church has shed the blood of
millions, and in the folds of her sacred vestments have gleamed the
daggers of assassination. With her cunning hands she wove the purple for
hypocrisy, and placed the crown upon the brow of crime. For a thousand
years larceny held the scales of justice, while beggars scorned the
princely sons of toil, and ignorant fear denounced the liberty of
thought.
If Christ was in fact God, he knew all the future. Before him, like a
panorama, moved the history yet to be. He knew exactly how his words
would be interpreted. He knew what crimes, what horrors, what infamies,
would be committed in his name. He knew that the fires of persecution
would climb around the limbs of countless martyrs. He knew that brave
men would languish in dungeons, in darkness, filled with pain; that the
church would use instruments of torture, that his followers would appeal
to whip and chain. He must have seen the horizon of the future red with
the flames of the _auto da fe_. He knew all the creeds that would spring
like poison fungi from every text. He saw the sects waging war against
each other. He saw thousands of men, under the orders of priests,
building dungeons for their fellow-men. He saw them using instruments
of pain. He heard the groans, saw the faces white with agony, the tears,
the blood
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paid. I think they got very tired of doing nothing and did not feel
quite happy with the French dinners, although the heaviest man of the
party made it a rule to devour everything that was set before him,
taking Saint Paul’s advice, and “asking no questions.” I think all the
ages of man—and woman—were represented on board, including more than
one infant “mewling and puling in its nurse’s arms.” A little sample of
the big world chipped off and sent adrift on the ocean—a ship of life,
not without its enigmas, its little ironies and uncertainties, tossed
upon the very type of uncertainty—the sea.
A ship, however, is a castle of indolence as far as the passengers are
concerned, though the crew, I suspect, would tell a very different
story, as, apart from the severe work of the engineers and stokers,
their work never seems at an end, and it is only by constant washing,
scrubbing, and sweeping that a steamer can be kept decently clean and
habitable.
To break the monotony of the five days’ voyage on the Indian Ocean
a concert was got up by an energetic young lady and her friends.
They went round the ship to discover what hidden musical or
histrionic talent might be concealed under the more or less disguised
personalities of the passengers, and they succeeded in drawing out
enough for an evening’s entertainment on the saloon deck, which was
picturesquely draped with bunting for the occasion, and a piano was
wheeled into position. Various songs were given, and a French princess,
who was among the passengers, recited. The young lady who had been the
leading spirit in organising the concert herself gave some charming
songs which she accompanied on a guitar, and a pretty song in Japanese
costume and umbrella from “The Geisha,” I think, with much spirit.
The proceeds went to the benefit of the orphans of the Messageries
Maritimes sailors.
After this violent excitement the days passed as days do at sea, the
fine weather continuing with delightful monotony. The fresh easterly
breeze was strong enough to fleck the blue plain with “white horses,”
yet not cause any trying movement of the vessel, which ploughed
steadily through the waves, driving the spray from its bows, and
causing dancing rainbows on the foamy crests as they rebounded from the
ship’s side. The sun rising in clear glory from the sea, disappeared
each evening in tranquil splendour, showing the green ray, and the
deep red along the horizon in the west afterwards, over the dark blue
sea. The dark blue above and the illuminated sky between, recalled the
favourite effect in Japanese prints by Hiroshigi, and at the same time
testified to its truth.
But all things have an end, even ocean voyages, and about four o’clock
on the morning of Friday, December the 7th, our steamer slowed down and
took on board the pilot, and we, cautiously steering past mysterious
islands under the dawn, finally cast anchor in Bombay harbour.
CHAPTER II
BOMBAY AND THE CAVES OF ELLORA
The first impression of Bombay from the sea is perhaps a little
disappointing from the pictorial point of view. The town spreads
along the low flat coast, lined with long quays without any great
domes or conspicuous noble buildings. One is aware of wharves and
factory chimneys, and even the palms and gardens of Malabar Hill, and
blue mountains inland do not altogether mitigate the commercial and
industrial aspects of the place; but the light and colour of the East
fuse all sorts of incongruities, and the feeling of touching a strange
land and of setting foot for the first time in India is sufficiently
exciting to throw a sort of glamour over everything.
The steamers cannot disembark their passengers at the quays, so they
have to be landed in boats which cluster about the sides of the big
liner. The official tug comes alongside first, and the official visit
is paid. We were due the evening before, and inquiries as to the why
and wherefore of the delay had to be satisfied. Busy agents and eager
hotel touts come on board, and all is bustle and preparation for
landing.
[Illustration: LANDING AT BOMBAY]
Our Indian friend had been unexpectedly called away and was unable to
meet us, but he committed us to the care of other friends at Bombay.
We landed, however, with our friend the French explorer, with all our
baggage, in a native boat, and by dint of a ragged lateen sail and oars
plied by a swarthy, wild-looking crew, soon reached the quay, where a
crowd of coolies waited to spring upon our belongings.
[Illustration: AWAITING THE CUSTOMS—BOMBAY]
Our French friend spoke Hindustanee fluently, fortunately for us; and
amid the clamour of tongues which surrounded us, was able to arrange
for an ox-cart to take our united baggage to the Custom-House, where,
after an interview with some languid English officials clad in white
drill and topis, having nothing contraband, we were duly passed, though
our friend, possessing firearms, was delayed longer, and of course had
to pay. The Bombay ox-carts are two-wheeled with high sides of timber,
forming a square open lattice, and drawn by a pair of oxen. Committing
our worldly goods to this delightful prehistoric vehicle, we took a
carriage—a little, one-horse, open victoria, which is the street cab of
Bombay, and similar to those in use in the towns of Italy—and drove to
the Taj Mahal Hotel, a vast, new, modern caravanserai—which, however,
was quite full, so we went on to the old-established “Watson’s” on the
Esplanade, where we got a good room with a balcony and a view. There
was also a pleasant covered terrace, or verandah, extending the whole
length of the building, which on the north side, always in shade,
faced a garden green with well-watered lawns and thickly planted with
umbrageous mango and banyan trees, amid which the ubiquitous crows of
India (resembling our hooded crow) kept up a continual cawing chorus
as they flitted about, now swooping down on some ill-considered trifle
in the street, or perching expectantly about the hotel precincts, on
the lookout for scattered crumbs. Great brown kites hovered in the
air, forming a second line of watchful but silent scavengers. The
terrace also commanded a view of the street with all its varied types
in costume, race, and colour and character. The prosperous, sleek
Parsee merchant in his curious shiny, sloping high hat, long black
alpaca or white tunic, and loose white nether garments and umbrella;
Europeans in white drill and grey or white pith helmets, which gave
a superficial family likeness to all who wore them; native servants,
Hindu, Portuguese, and half-caste, in every variety of turban and
costume, sitting or standing about in groups, waiting to be hired;
wandering minstrels, dancing women, and jugglers and tumblers trying to
catch the eye—and the small change—of the traveller; men with tom-toms
and performing monkeys, water-carriers with their dripping goat-skin
slung at their side, coolies and coolie women constantly passing to and
fro from the quays, bearing their burdens on their heads; the bearer
and the ayah in charge of faired-haired English children, passing in
and out of the gardens; the British soldier in khaki, and the native
policeman in blue with a flat yellow cap. These and such as these were
the prevailing types in the scene from the hotel balcony, from whence,
also, we could see the tram-cars, drawn by horses in big white topis,
trailing up and down the Esplanade, while motors flashed by, and smart
European ladies drove in their dog-carts. Beyond the trees of the
garden rose a modern clock tower which told the burning hours in the
familiar Westminster chimes.
[Illustration: STREET PERFORMERS—BOMBAY]
The modern British buildings of Bombay would probably in newspaper
language be described as “handsome.” There were many showy and
pretentious structures in a sort of Italian Gothic style, but they
looked imported, and were decidedly out of place in a country which
possesses such magnificent specimens of architecture of its own
growth—as one might say. The many balconied and shuttered fronts,
with projecting stories, the ridge-tiled roofs and plastered walls
that we saw in the older quarters of the town seemed, as types of
dwelling-houses at least, much more suitable and characteristic,
and such types would surely be capable of adaptation to modern
requirements. The Crawford Market is one of the sights of Bombay.
Outside, with its steep roofs, belfry, and projecting eaves it has a
rather English Gothic look, but inside the scene is entirely oriental,
crowded with natives in all sorts of colours, moving among fish, fruit,
grain, and provisions of all kinds, buying and selling amid a clamour
of tongues—a busy scene of colour and variety, in a symphony of smells,
dominated by that of the smoke of joss-sticks kept burning at some of
the stalls as well as a suspicion of opium, which pervades all the
native quarters in Indian cities. There is a sort of court or garden
enclosed by the buildings, and here the live stock is kept—all sorts of
birds and animals.
A drive through the native bazaar of Bombay is a revelation. The
carriage works its way with difficulty through the narrow, irregular
street, crowded with natives in every variety of costume (or next to
no costume), forming a wonderful moving pattern of brilliant colour,
punctuated by swarthy faces, gleaming eyes, and white teeth. Shops of
every kind line each side of the way, and these are rather dark and
cavernous openings, shaded by awnings and divided by posts or carved
pillars on the lowest story, but raised from the level of the streets
by low platforms which serve the purposes of counter and working bench
to the native merchant or craftsman who squats upon it, and often
unites the two functions in his own person. He generally carries
on his work in the presence of his whole family, apparently. All
ages and sexes crowd in and about the shops, carrying on a perpetual
conversazione, and the bazaar literally swarms with dusky, turbaned
faces, varied by the deep red sari of the Hindu women, with their
glittering armlets and anklets, or the veiled Mohammedan in her—well,
pyjamas!
The older house fronts above the shops were often rich with carving
and colour, the upper stories being generally supported over the
open shop by four columns. It reminded one of the arrangement of
a mediæval street, as also in its general aspect, the shops being
mostly workshops; and, as in the old days in Europe, could be seen
different crafts in full operation, while the finished products of
each were displayed for sale. There were tailors stitching away at
garments, coppersmiths hammering their metal into shape, leather
workers, jewellers, cook-shops, and many more, the little dark shops
in most cases being crowded with other figures besides those of the
workers—each like a miniature stage of life with an abundance of drama
going on in all. The whole bazaar, too, was gay with colour—white,
green, red, orange, yellow, and purple, of all sorts of shades and
tones, in turban or robe—a perfect feast for the eye.
In the course of our drive through the bazaar we met no less than
three wedding processions, though rather broken and interrupted by the
traffic. In one the bridegroom (who, with the Hindus and Mohammedans,
is considered the most important personage in the ceremony as well
as the spectacle) was in a carriage, on his way to fetch the bride,
in gorgeous raiment and with a crown upon his head. He was followed
by people bearing floral trophies, perhaps intended for decoration
afterwards. These consisted of gilt vases with artificial flowers
in them, arranged in rows close together, and carried in convenient
lengths on a plank or shelf by young men bearers.
Another of the bridegrooms was mounted on a horse, crowned and robed
like a Byzantine emperor with glittering caparisons and housings, a
tiny little dusky girl sitting behind him and holding on, who was said
to be his little sister.
The third bridegroom we saw was veiled, in addition to the bravery
of his glittering attire. Flowers were strewn by boys accompanying
him, and a little bunch fell into our carriage as we waited for the
procession to go by, in which, of course, the musicians went before.
We afterwards passed the house where the wedding was being celebrated,
the guests assembling in great numbers to the feast, a tremendous noise
going on, drums beating and trumpets blowing. In one of the processions
very antique-looking trumpets or horns were carried of a large size,
much resembling the military horns of ancient Roman times. These were
Hindu weddings.
We also had a glimpse of a Parsee wedding. This was in the open court
of a large house arcaded from the street, brilliantly illuminated,
where sat a great crowd of guests all attired in white.
Working right through the native bazaar we reached the Victoria
Gardens, a sort of Kew and Zoological rolled into one, being well
stocked with fine palms and many varieties of tropical trees, as well
as birds and animals, and all looking in good condition and well kept.
Many Eurasians were here walking about, looking very weird in European
dress. In these gardens are situated the Victoria and Albert Museum of
Bombay.
Sir George Birdwood had given me an introduction to H.H. the Aga
Khan and we drove out to his abode, only to find, however, that His
Highness had gone to Calcutta on his way to Japan. I was not much
more fortunate with my other introductions to the eminent Parsee Sir
Jamsetji Jijibhai, and Sir Cowasji Jehangir Readymoney. Although the
son of the latter magnate did call upon us and brought us an invitation
from Lady Jehangir, we were unable to accept it owing to the shortness
of our stay in Bombay. I understood that the Calcutta Races in December
attracted a great many of the rich Bombay residents, and this accounted
for the absence from their homes of many at that time.
We had a glimpse of some of the palaces on Malabar Hill, seeing
the latter first against a glowing sunset. Fringed with palms and
plantains, with its fantastic buildings silhouetted on the sky, it
recalled the banks of storm cloud I had seen on the voyage, with their
vaporous trees and aerial hanging gardens.
A closer acquaintance did not impress us with any conviction of the
healthiness of Malabar Hill, though of the sumptuousness of its houses,
and often their fantastic character, and the luxuriance of its palms
and gardens, there could be no doubt. We passed the grey wall of the
Tower of Silence, the burial (?) place of the Parsees, where the crows,
the kites, and the vultures were gathered together, but did not linger
there. From the hill there is certainly a magnificent view of the city
of Bombay: especially if seen just before sundown, when a golden glow
seems to transfigure the scene; and later, looking down on the vast
plain, the white houses partly hid in trees scattered along the shore,
the quays, and the ships at anchor in the bay, all seem to sink like a
dream into the roseate atmosphere of sunset. But even that lovely light
is darkened by a heavy smoke cloud drifting on the city from the forest
of gaunt factory chimneys rising in the East like the shadow of poverty
which is always cast by the riches of the West.
One rather wondered that Bombay was content to allow its best drive
to be disfigured by a continuous succession of hideous commercial
posters painted along the walls of one of its sides, the other being
lined with palms and open towards the sea. This is, however, not worse
indifference—in fact not so bad—as ours at home in allowing the posters
along the railway lines to disfigure the charming and varied landscape
of our own country.
[Illustration: INTERVIEW WITH CANDIDATES FOR THE POST OF BEARER—MOSTLY
UNBEARABLE!]
One of the first necessities to the traveller in India, especially if
he be ignorant of Hindustanee, is the engaging of a native bearer or
servant. There is always a large class of these seeking engagements.
They may be seen hanging about Messrs Cook’s Tourist Offices in groups.
They usually wear white clothes and turbans, but the half-caste
Portuguese are dressed in semi-European fashion with their cloth suits
and small, flat, round caps of the sort which used to be termed “pork
pie” in England, only lower. These are embroidered round the rim, and
a similar sort of head covering is also worn by superior caste Hindus.
For the post of bearer the traveller will find plenty of applicants
when he makes his requirements known, in fact their number is rather
embarrassing, and they all produce “chits” or letters of recommendation
from former employers. These, indeed, are the only references to go
upon, unless one happens to come with the personal testimony of a
friend. The bearers mostly register their names at Cook’s offices,
but they do not take any responsibility there for them in any way.
These native servants expect 35 rupees (and upwards) a month, with an
allowance for clothes, but out of this pay they find their own food.
If, however, their food is provided, they take less pay—about 25
rupees—but prices generally have an upward tendency. The engagement
may probably be for three or four months, which gives the ordinary
European tourist time to get round India, visiting the principal places
of interest _en route_. A rupee in India is now only worth one shilling
and four-pence, and fifteen rupees are the equivalent of a sovereign,
it should be remembered.
Of course the bearer’s travelling expenses and washing are paid as
long as he is with his master, and his fare home when his engagement
comes to an end, and then, too, probably he would get a present if
his conduct has been satisfactory. One does not generally expect
mirrors of virtue and trustiness on such terms. No doubt native
bearers vary considerably in capacity and experience as well as in
appearance, to say nothing of honesty and fidelity, and some are
better as couriers than as body or camp servants, or vice versa. Some
claim to be efficient _valets des places_ in addition to ordinary
services, but it should be remembered that the bearer caste are not
allowed to enter the sacred precincts of the great temples in India.
Our choice, influenced mainly by a personal recommendation, fell on
one Moonsawmy—a not unusual Hindu name. He had been in the service of
Sir Samuel Baker and had had some experience in tiger-shooting, or at
any rate had been out on such expeditions and in camp with the famous
traveller and sportsman, but he had also acted as courier to English
parties travelling in India, and professed to know the country well. We
had planned an excursion to the caves of Ellora from Bombay with our
friend M. Dauvergne, who had never seen them and was anxious to do so.
Having mapped out our route we started on our expedition on December
the 10th. Leaving Victoria Station, Bombay, at noon, we travelled by
the G. I. P. (Great Indian Peninsular Railway), making our first train
journey in India. The line crossed a cultivated plain at first, getting
clear of Bombay; groups of date palms here and there were suggestive of
Egypt. We passed native villages of different types, some with thatched
roofs and some with tile—brown ridge tiles not unlike what one sees in
Italy, and even corrugated iron was visible (alas!) here and there.
The low huts built of sun-dried bricks or mud with flat roofs were the
strangest and most eastern-looking. One could get glimpses, too, of the
inhabitants, the Hindu women in saris, often of red or purple or blue,
bearing on their heads water jars or bright brass or copper vessels,
with much natural grace, some also carrying little brown babies
supported by one arm on their hip.
[Illustration: A BED AT THE DAK BUNGALOW! MUNMAD (KEEP IT DA(R)K)]
Leaving the plains we entered a very interesting hill country covered
with jungle and forests where we saw many teak trees and banyans,
besides many varieties of acacia. Mountains of striking form came into
view, suggestive of castled crags. We soon afterwards passed the Thull
Ghat, where the line rises as much as 1050 feet in a distance of about
ten miles—which means a steep gradient. We passed rice fields, also
sugar canes, and a kind of Indian corn, but not maize, and castor-oil
plants which are cultivated extensively. There were interesting and
picturesque groups of natives at all the stations. Finally Munmad was
reached towards six o’clock in the evening. This was our first stage,
and the junction for Daulatabad our next, in the territory of the Nizam
of Hyderabad. We, however, decided to stay the night at Munmad and go
on the next morning—in fact, if I remember right, it was a case of
necessity, as there was no train on that evening. So we were conducted
to the Dak Bungalow, some little walk from the station, through a
native village, with our baggage carried on the heads of women coolies.
We found the bungalow a most inhospitable place of incredible bareness,
and nothing to sleep on but narrow wooden framed couches, having a sort
of stringy webbing full of holes. The gaunt draughty rooms were almost
destitute of other furniture and had no conveniences of any kind. The
native keeper of the place seemed helpless. There was no food to be
had, and he could not have cooked it if there had been, so we had to
make shift as best we could with what we had in our tea baskets. I
should not advise any one to travel in India, at least at all off the
track of hotels, without provisions and bedding. There was not much
sleep to be had that night. The beds were frightfully uncomfortable
and the room was cold. An Anglo-Indian official on the forest service
occupied the best room, we afterwards discovered, but he, as is usual,
travelled with his horses and several servants, including a cook,
and a supply of necessaries of all sorts. We left the inhospitable
bungalow early the next morning, processing through the village in
the same way as that in which we had come, with our baggage on the
heads of the coolie women. We made the acquaintance at Munmad of the
charming, frisky little palm squirrels which abound everywhere in
India—delightful little greenish-grey creatures with dark longitudinal
stripes extending from their noses to their tails. They play about the
dwellings quite familiarly, but are off like a shot up a tree and out
of sight at the smallest alarm. Scaling the trunk of a tree spirally,
they have almost the appearance of lizards, and they are certainly as
nimble.
The buffalo cow, too, is seen in every Indian village, a strange,
dusky, rough-coated beast, with a weird, half-human, but rather
sinister expression in its dark eyes, with long horns turned back upon
their necks. They walk scornfully along to be milked, with an air which
seems to say they thought the world but a poor place.
We took train to Daulatabad and entered the Nizam’s territory. A police
officer in his service was in the train, and was very intelligent
and gave us much useful information. We now passed through a more
arid-looking country than before, where cactuses and low trees grew
sparsely on burnt yellow slopes and rocky hills, often of strange form,
the country showing signs of a great upheaval from the sea.
At Daulatabad, a small road station, a tonga was waiting for us, drawn
by two poor broken-down ponies and a rather ragged red-turbaned driver.
Our destination was the town of Rozah, a drive of some ten miles and
mostly uphill, on a loose, rough road.
A conspicuous object in the landscape at Daulatabad is the ancient
fortress upon a steep hill rising abruptly from the plain. It was
a famous stronghold, but was conquered by the Mohammedans in the
thirteenth century. There are the ruins of the ancient city which it
once protected, and within the citadel are remains of Hindu temples,
one transformed into a mosque by the Moslems. Our road lay through
the shattered gates which still marked the extent of the city with
fragments of the outer walls, the whole area overgrown with trees and
herbage, and clusters of native huts here and there. The road to Rozah
is an almost continuous ascent, and in some places very steep, which
made it very hard work for the wretched ponies which dragged our tonga,
though, of course, we relieved it of our weight by walking up the worst
hills. The sun was blazing, but there was a little shade to be had
occasionally under the fine banyan trees which skirted the roadside.
Towards evening we saw the domes of Rozah on a high plateau in front
of us, and presently entered the town through a battlemented gate. It
was a Mohammedan town with many important domed tombs, but it had a
neglected and sparsely peopled aspect and a look of departed splendour.
We made our way along a straggling street, and, passing through another
gate, came out upon the other end of the plateau, from which we saw,
opening before us as far as the eye could reach towards the west, the
vast, green, fruitful plains of the Deccan. In command of this view we
found our quarters for the night—the Travellers’ Bungalow—but this,
the Nizam’s bungalow, was a great contrast to the one at Munmad, being
clean and comfortable, with good beds and sufficient furniture and
rugs, and a bath-room. The native in charge was able to provide food,
too, and to cook a dinner, which, if not exactly Parisian, was, at all
events, a vast improvement upon our last one. The sun set without a
cloud, the last golden light lingering upon the white and black domes
of the tombs around us. Then followed the afterglow, and then the
darkness fell like a curtain, but the stars were intensely bright in
the clear sky. The air was very pure and the silence of the place was
profound. We were glad to rest after our long, hot, dusty journey, but
I managed to get a sketch done before the light went.
After breakfast the next morning (December 12) we started to walk to
the caves at Ellora, which we found were only a short distance down the
hill. A winding road led us past another of the Nizam’s bungalows to a
sort of terrace in front of the first great cave, or, more properly,
rock-cut temple, the Kylas, which, coming down the hill from above, one
does not see until close upon it, and it is only on entering the court
through the great gateway that one slowly realises the wonder of it. A
huge temple of symmetric ground plan cut clean out of the great cliff,
the straight sides of which are seen rising like a vast wall above it.
A mass of intricate and richly carved detail, a veritable incrustation
of carving of extraordinary richness rises before one. Standing clear
in a spacious court, enclosed on three sides by a deep arcade cut in
the sheer sides of the cliff (which shows the tool marks), having an
outer row of massive detached columns and an inner row of engaged
columns, and deep recessed chambers.
[Illustration: THE KYLAS, CAVES OF ELLORA]
On each side of the entrance to the temple in the court stand two
isolated columns or pylons, and near these two great stone elephants.
These columns and elephants really flank a big pedestal of stone with
steps cut in it which lead up to a huge image of a Sacred Bull within a
square chamber, from which a bridge is crossed and the portico of the
temple is reached. Through this the great central hall, or nave, of
the temple is entered, divided into four parts by groups of pillars,
leaving an open passage up the middle and across to a portico on each
side. From this chamber a few steps lead to the shrine of the Lingam,
through a doorway. There are steps and doorways to each side of the
shrine which lead on to open platforms, where are five recesses richly
covered with sculptures of the Hindu mythology, as indeed is the whole
temple, both within and without. The carved treatment and the whole
idea of the scheme suggests that the original prototypes of such
temples must have been structures of wood, and the elaborate treatment
and small scale of some of the ornamental work seems reminiscent of
wood-carving.
[Illustration: WE ARE INTRODUCED TO THE CAVES OF ELLORA]
The carved work may be said to be of two kinds. There was a sort of
architectural or formal ornament in low relief resembling in style and
treatment Assyrian work, in which the lotus frequently appeared treated
as a flat rosette and used as pateræ, arranged in rows with intervals;
and there was a high relief treatment of figure sculpture. Among the
horizontal courses of carved decoration I noted a treatment of the
garland or swag, the ends being twisted through rings from which they
were represented as depending. These might have been of a Greek or
Roman pattern.
The exterior carving of the temple in the parts sheltered under eaves
and by doorways showed traces of painting—the colours being red and
green on white. The whole of the surfaces appear to have been coated
with plaster to receive colour, in the same way as may be seen at the
temple of Castor and Pollux at Girgenti.
The stone when exposed to the weather was very much blackened and
resembled the gritstone of Derbyshire in colour and texture.
The Temple was dedicated to Siva, but the whole Hindu pantheon of the
Vedic gods appeared to be sculptured in this marvellous place, as well
as the different avators of Siva.
The Hindu religion is really a great system of nature worship, all
the powers, forces, and influences being personified and symbolised,
nothing being accounted “common or unclean”—the elephant-headed Ganesha
and the monkey god Hunuman taking their place as “eligible deities”—the
whole scheme resting on the acknowledgment of the sexual origin of
life. The generative organs themselves being revered as sacred, and
symbolised in the mysterious Lingam which is enshrined in all the Hindu
temples, and the object of special devotion.
The god Siva and Parvati his spouse form the principal subject among
the sculptures of the Kylas. A striking design rather Egyptian in
feeling was to be seen in a large carved panel of Parvati represented
as seated on the water, or rather on a mass of lotus leaves and
flowers—the flower of life—with attendant elephants symmetrically
arranged on each side, showering water upon the goddess from their
trunks. In all countries religious symbols are taken from familiar
and characteristic objects common to each, although, as Count Goblet
d’Albiella points out in his most interesting and learned work on
the “Migration of Symbols,” there is also a process of exchange and
adaptation in ideas between different peoples and countries by means
of which we get imported types, which, however, become naturalised and
reappear in the form or convention peculiar to the country of their
adoption.
[Illustration: AND ITS WASPS!]
As we gazed up at the cliffs from which this wonderful structure had
been hewn, we noticed a number of green parrots fluttering about or
clinging to the sheer walls of rock—like vivid green flashes of light
upon the cold stone. Down in the court a number of extraordinarily
large-sized wasps came buzzing about us. They looked formidable enough
but did not do any damage, though their obtrusion did not facilitate
the process of a sketching against time.
Besides the Kylas, which is said to date from about 750–850 A.D., there
were a number of other and smaller temples, cut in the face of the
cliff at intervals extending along the hill on each side of the Kylas.
The most ancient is supposed to date from 200 B.C. and the latest from
the thirteenth century A.D. A guide on the spot showed us several
Buddhist temples and these were much more cave-like in character. One
had very fine massive carved and fluted columns.
The second temple we saw suggested in its plan and form an apsidal
basilica, and in detail wooden structure, the roof being carved in
close ribs, curved to the form of a pointed arch, supported by a
horizontal cornice and columns set very close together. A colossal
figure of the seated Buddha filled the view at the end of the nave, but
there was an ambulatory behind it. The figure was painted a dark red
with white drapery and black hair, the eyes, with strongly marked white
and black pupils, had a fixed stare which carried the whole length of
the Temple.
The next temple visited, also Buddhistic, was much plainer, and was
being supported by new buttresses of masonry to prevent the cliff from
falling. The third was larger but also quite plain and square cut, the
structure of the pillars and cornice being again on timber principles;
but none approached the Kylas in beauty and interest.
The village of Ellora lay on the plain among trees about a mile and a
half away from the foot of the cliff. Our guide pointed out some Jain
temples there half hidden in masses of foliage and suggested a walk
there, but by this time, between 10 and 11 o’clock in the morning, the
sun was very powerful and the heat great, and as there was no shade
till the village was reached and we had to get back to our bungalow,
we gave it up and climbed the hill again. As we left the Kylas a large
and most picturesque group of natives were squatted outside the gateway
having a sort of picnic, a day out with their wives and numerous
children, and they were wandering all over the temple chattering
and laughing as they examined the sculptures and seemingly enjoying
themselves much. They gazed at us curiously as we passed, as at some
strange animals from an unknown country.
M. Dauvergne took some photographs of the caves, while I managed to get
a coloured sketch of the Kylas, and a few notes.
We found the return journey to Daulatabad rather easier, being mostly
downhill, though it was so precipitous in places that it was a marvel
our poor ponies kept on their legs. We met many natives on the road,
both Mohammedans and Hindus, as well as herds of goats, and asses with
sacks of grain slung across their backs, black sheep and zebu carts.
We reached Daulatabad station about the middle of the day, or early
afternoon, and were fortunate enough (owing to the language at the
command of our friend who explained our wants) to get quite an
excellently cooked and nicely served tiffin in the waiting-room.
There were interesting native figures about the station, and a group
of figures at the village well not far off, where I got a sketch of
a Hindu girl in a blue sari with a water jar on her head. She had a
little round mark (Buddhist) like a red seal on her forehead, and her
name was Hashuma.
We got a train about 5.30 back to Munmad arriving there soon after
9 at night. After dining at the station we bade farewell to our
friend M. Dauvergne, who was travelling on to Bareilly, far up in the
north-western provinces to join his shooting companion. Our train from
Bombay did not leave until 3 A.M., but sleep was impossible owing to
the noise, although we had a waiting-room to ourselves. It was only
the usual conversazione which is carried on at every Indian station
by the natives who throng the platforms, often waiting all night for
a train, squatting in groups and keeping up a continual stream of
talk. We were relieved when a faithful coolie announced the arrival of
our train and carried in our bags. We had a compartment to ourselves
for the most part until nearing Bombay, our only fellow
|
a cause,
and we must find it."
"But how? That is the question," exclaimed the President almost
apologetically, for he felt, as did Count von Koenitz, that somehow an
explanation would shortly be forthcoming that would make this conference
seem the height of the ridiculous. "I have already," he added hastily,
"instructed the entire force of the National Academy of Sciences to
direct its energies toward the solution of these phenomena. Undoubtedly
Great Britain, Russia, Germany, and France are doing the same. The
scientists report that the yellow aurora seen in the north, the
earthquakes, the variation of the compass, and the eccentricities of the
barometer are probably all connected more or less directly with the
change in the earth's orbit. But they offer no explanation. They do not
suggest what the aurora is nor why its appearance should have this
effect. It, therefore, seems to me clearly my duty to lay before you all
the facts as far as they are known to me. Among these facts are the
mysterious messages received by wireless at the Naval Observatory
immediately preceding these events."
"_Post hoc, ergo propter hoc!_" half sneered Von Koenitz.
The President smiled wearily.
"What do you wish me to do?" he asked, glancing round the table. "Shall
we remain inactive? Shall we wait and see what may happen?"
"No! No!" shouted Rostoloff, jumping to his feet. "Another week and we
may all be plunged into eternity. It is suicidal not to regard this
matter seriously. We are sick from war. And perhaps Count von Koenitz,
in view of the fall of Berlin, would welcome something of the sort as an
honourable way out of his country's difficulties."
"Sir!" cried the count, leaping to his feet. "Have a care! It has cost
Russia four million men to reach Berlin. When we have taken Paris we
shall recapture Berlin and commence the march of our victorious eagles
toward Moscow and the Winter Palace."
"Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Be seated, I implore you!" exclaimed the
President.
The Russian and German ambassadors somewhat ungraciously resumed their
former places, casting at each other glances of undisguised contempt.
"As I see the matter," continued the President, "there are two distinct
propositions before you: The first relates to how far the extraordinary
events of the past week are of such a character as to demand joint
investigation and action by the Powers. The second involves the cause of
these events and their connection with and relation to the sender of the
messages signed Pax. I shall ask you to signify your opinion as to each
of these questions."
"I believe that some action should be taken, based on the assumption
that they are manifestations of one and the same power or cause," said
Monsieur Liban emphatically.
"I agree with the French Ambassador," growled Rostoloff.
"I am of opinion that the phenomena should be the subject of proper
scientific investigation," remarked Count von Koenitz more calmly. "But
as far as these messages are concerned they are, if I may be pardoned
for saying so, a foolish joke. It is undignified to take any cognizance
of them."
"What do you think, Sir John?" asked the President, turning to the
English Ambassador.
"Before making up my mind," returned the latter quietly, "I should like
to see the operator who received them."
"By all means!" exclaimed Von Koenitz.
The President pressed a button and his secretary entered.
"I had anticipated such a desire on the part of all of you," he
announced, "and arranged to have him here. He is waiting outside. Shall
I have him brought in?"
"Yes! Yes!" answered Rostoloff. And the others nodded.
The door opened, and Bill Hood, wearing his best new blue suit and
nervously twisting a faded bicycle cap between his fingers, stumbled
awkwardly into the room. His face was bright red with embarrassment and
one of his cheeks exhibited a marked protuberance. He blinked in the
glare of the electric light.
"Mr. Hood," the President addressed him courteously, "I have sent for
you to explain to these gentlemen, who are the ambassadors of the great
European Powers, the circumstances under which you received the wireless
messages from the unknown person describing himself as 'Pax.'"
Hood shifted from his right to his left foot and pressed his lips
together. Von Koenitz fingered the waxed ends of his moustache and
regarded the operator whimsically.
"In the first place," went on the President, "we desire to know whether
the messages which you have reported were received under ordinary or
under unusual conditions. In a word, could you form any opinion as to
the whereabouts of the sender?"
Hood scratched the side of his nose in a manner politely doubtful.
"Sure thing, your Honour," he answered at last. "Sure the conditions was
unusual. That feller has some juice and no mistake."
"Juice?" inquired Von Koenitz.
"Yare--current. Whines like a steel top. Fifty kilowatts sure, and maybe
more! And a twelve-thousand-metre wave."
"I do not fully understand," interjected Rostoloff. "Please explain,
sir."
"Ain't nothin' to explain," returned Hood. "He's just got a hell of a
wave length, that's all. Biggest on earth. We're only tuned for a
three-thousand-metre wave. At first I could hardly take him at all. I
had to throw in our new Henderson ballast coils before I could hear
properly. I reckon there ain't another station in Christendom can get
him."
"Ah," remarked Von Koenitz. "One of your millionaire amateurs, I
suppose."
"Yare," agreed Hood. "I thought sure he was a nut."
"A what?" interrupted Sir John Smith.
"A nut," answered Hood. "A crank, so to speak."
"Ah, 'krank'!" nodded the German. "Exactly--a lunatic! That is precisely
what I say!"
"But I don't think it's no nut now," countered Hood valiantly. "If he is
a bug he's the biggest bug in all creation, that's all I can say. He's
got the goods, that's what he's got. He'll do some damage before he gets
through."
"Are these messages addressed to anybody in particular?" inquired Sir
John, who was studying Hood intently.
"Well, they are and they ain't. Pax--that's what he calls
himself--signals NAA, our number, you understand, and then says what he
has to say to the whole world, care of the United States. The first
message I thought was a joke and stuck it in a book I was reading,
'_Silas Snooks_'----"
"What?" ejaculated Von Koenitz impatiently.
"Snooks--man's name--feller in the book--nothing to do with this
business," explained the operator. "I forgot all about it. But after the
earthquake and all the rest of the fuss I dug it out and gave it to Mr.
Thornton. Then on the 27th came the next one, saying that Pax was
getting tired of waiting for us and was going to start something. That
came at one o'clock in the afternoon, and the fun began at three sharp.
The whole observatory went on the blink. Say, there ain't any doubt in
your minds that it's _him_, is there?"
Von Koenitz looked cynically round the room.
"There is not!" exclaimed Rostoloff and Liban in the same breath.
The German laughed.
"Speak for yourselves, Excellencies," he sneered. His tone nettled the
wireless representative of the sovereign American people.
"Do you think I'm a liar?" he demanded, clenching his jaw and glaring at
Von Koenitz.
The German Ambassador shrugged his shoulders again. Such things were
impossible in a civilized country--at Potsdam--but what could you
expect----
"Steady, Hood!" whispered Thornton.
"Remember, Mr. Hood, that you are here to answer our questions," said
the President sternly. "You must not address his Excellency, Baron von
Koenitz, in this fashion."
"But the man was making a monkey of me!" muttered Hood. "All I say is,
look out. This Pax is on his job and means business. I just got another
call before I came over here--at nine o'clock."
"What was its purport?" inquired the President.
"Why, it said Pax was getting tired of nothing being done and wanted
action of some sort. Said that men were dying like flies, and he
proposed to put an end to it at any cost. And--and----"
"Yes! Yes!" ejaculated Liban breathlessly.
"And he would give further evidence of his control over the forces of
nature to-night."
"Ha! Ha!" Von Koenitz leaned back in amusement. "My friend," he
chuckled, "you--are--the 'nut'!"
What form Hood's resentment might have taken is problematical; but as
the German's words left his mouth the electric lights suddenly went out
and the windows rattled ominously. At the same moment each occupant of
the room felt himself sway slightly toward the east wall, on which
appeared a bright yellow glow. Instinctively they all turned to the
window which faced the north. The whole sky was flooded with an
orange-yellow aurora that rivalled the sunlight in intensity.
"What'd I tell you?" mumbled Hood.
The Executive Mansion quivered, and even in that yellow light the faces
of the ambassadors seemed pale with fear. And then as the glow slowly
faded in the north there floated down across the aperture of the window
something soft and fluffy like feathers. Thicker and faster it came
until the lawn of the White House was covered with it. The air in the
room turned cold. Through the window a large flake circled and lit on
the back of Rostoloff's head.
"Snow!" he cried. "A snowstorm--in August!"
The President arose and closed the window. Almost immediately the
electric lights burned up again.
"Now are you satisfied?" cried Liban to the German.
"Satisfied?" growled Von Koenitz. "I have seen plenty of snowstorms in
August. They have them daily in the Alps. You ask me if I am satisfied.
Of what? That earthquakes, the aurora borealis, electrical disturbances,
snowstorms exist--yes. That a mysterious bugaboo is responsible for
these things--no!"
"What, then, do you require?" gasped Liban.
"More than a snowstorm!" retorted the German. "When I was a boy at the
gymnasium we had a thunderstorm with fishes in it. They were everywhere
one stepped, all over the ground. But we did not conclude that Jonah was
giving us a demonstration of his power over the whale."
He faced the others defiantly; in his voice was mockery.
"You may retire, Mr. Hood," said the President. "But you will kindly
wait outside."
"That is an honest man if ever I saw one, Mr. President," announced Sir
John, after the operator had gone out. "I am satisfied that we are in
communication with a human being of practically supernatural powers."
"What, then, shall be done?" inquired Rostoloff anxiously. "The world
will be annihilated!"
"Your Excellencies"--Von Koenitz arose and took up a graceful position
at the end of the table--"I must protest against what seems to me to be
an extraordinary credulity upon the part of all of you. I speak to you
as a rational human being, not as an ambassador. Something has occurred
to affect the earth's orbit. It may result in a calamity. None can
foretell. This planet may be drawn off into space by the attraction of
some wandering world that has not yet come within observation. But one
thing we know: No power on or of the earth can possibly derange its
relation to the other celestial bodies. That would be, as you say here,
'lifting one's self by one's own boot-straps.' I do not doubt the
accuracy of your clocks and scientific instruments. Those of my own
country are in harmony with yours. But to say that the cause of all this
is a _man_ is preposterous. If the mysterious Pax makes the heavens
fall, they will tumble on his own head. Is he going to send himself to
eternity along with the rest of us? Hardly! This Hood is a monstrous
liar or a dangerous lunatic. Even if he has received these messages,
they are the emanations of a crank, as, he says, he himself first
suspected. Let us master this hysteria born of the strain of constant
war. In a word, let us go to bed."
"Count von Koenitz," replied Sir John after a pause, "you speak
forcefully, even persuasively. But your argument is based upon a
proposition that is scientifically fallacious. An atom of gunpowder can
disintegrate itself, 'lift itself by its own boot-straps!' Why not the
earth? Have we as yet begun to solve all the mysteries of nature? Is it
inconceivable that there should be an undiscovered explosive capable of
disrupting the globe? We have earthquakes. Is it beyond imagination that
the forces which produce them can be controlled?"
"My dear Sir John," returned Von Koenitz courteously, "my ultimate
answer is that we have no adequate reason to connect the phenomena which
have disturbed the earth's rotation with any human agency."
"That," interposed the President, "is something upon which individuals
may well differ. I suppose that under other conditions you would be open
to conviction?"
"Assuredly," answered Von Koenitz. "Should the sender of these messages
prophesy the performance of some miracle that could not be explained by
natural causes, I would be forced to admit my error."
Monsieur Liban had also arisen and was walking nervously up and down the
room. Suddenly he turned to Von Koenitz and in a voice shaking with
emotion cried: "Let us then invite Pax to give us a sign that will
satisfy you."
"Monsieur Liban," replied Von Koenitz stiffly, "I refuse to place myself
in the position of communicating with a lunatic."
"Very well," shouted the Frenchman, "I will take the responsibility of
making myself ridiculous. I will request the President of the United
States to act as the agent of France for this purpose."
He drew a notebook and a fountain pen from his pocket and carefully
wrote out a message which he handed to the President. The latter read it
aloud:
"_Pax_: The Ambassador of the French Republic requests me to
communicate to you the fact that he desires some further evidence
of your power to control the movements of the earth and the
destinies of mankind, such phenomena to be preferably of a harmless
character, but inexplicable by any theory of natural causation. I
await your reply.
"THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES."
"Send for Hood," ordered the President to the secretary who answered the
bell. "Gentlemen, I suggest that we ourselves go to Georgetown and
superintend the sending of this message."
Half an hour later Bill Hood sat in his customary chair in the wireless
operating room surrounded by the President of the United States, the
ambassadors of France, Germany, Great Britain, and Russia, and Professor
Thornton. The faces of all wore expressions of the utmost seriousness,
except that of Von Koenitz, who looked as if he were participating in an
elaborate hoax. Several of these distinguished gentlemen had never seen
a wireless apparatus before, and showed some excitement as Hood made
ready to send the most famous message ever transmitted through the
ether. At last he threw over his rheostat and the hum of the rotary
spark rose into its staccato song. Hood sent out a few V's and then
began calling:
"PAX--PAX--PAX."
Breathlessly the group waited while he listened for a reply. Again he
called:
"PAX--PAX--PAX."
He had already thrown in his Henderson ballast coils and was ready for
the now familiar wave. He closed his eyes, waiting for that sharp
metallic cry that came no one knew whence. The others in the group also
listened intently, as if by so doing they, too, might hear the answer if
any there should be. Suddenly Hood stiffened.
"There he is!" he whispered. The President handed him the message, and
Hood's fingers played over the key while the spark sent its singing note
through the ether.
"Such phenomena to be preferably of a harmless character, but
inexplicable by any theory of natural causation," he concluded.
An uncanny dread seized on Thornton, who had withdrawn himself into the
background. What was this strange communion? Who was this mysterious
Pax? Were these real men or creatures of a grotesque dream? Was he not
drowsing over his eyepiece in the meridian-circle room? Then a
simultaneous movement upon the part of those gathered round the operator
convinced him of the reality of what was taking place. Hood was
laboriously writing upon a sheet of yellow pad paper, and the
ambassadors were unceremoniously crowding each other in their eagerness
to read.
"To the President of the United States," wrote Hood: "In reply to your
message requesting further evidence of my power to compel the cessation
of hostilities within twenty-four hours, I"--there was a pause for
nearly a minute, during which the ticking of the big clock sounded to
Thornton like revolver shots--"I will excavate a channel through the
Atlas Mountains and divert the Mediterranean into the Sahara Desert.
PAX."
Silence followed the final transcription of the message from the
unknown--a silence broken only by Bill Hood's tremulous, half-whispered:
"He'll do it all right!"
Then the German Ambassador laughed.
"And thus save your ingenious nation a vast amount of trouble, Monsieur
Liban," said he.
VI
A Tripolitan fisherman, Mohammed Ben Ali el Bad, a holy man nearly
seventy years of age, who had twice made the journey to Mecca and who
now in his declining years occupied himself with reading the Koran and
instructing his grandsons in the profession of fishing for mullet along
the reefs of the Gulf of Cabes, had anchored for the night off the
Tunisian coast, about midway between Sfax and Lesser Syrtis. The mullet
had been running thick and he was well satisfied, for by the next
evening he would surely complete his load and be able to return home to
the house of his daughter, Fatima, the wife of Abbas, the confectioner.
Her youngest son, Abdullah, a lithe lad of seventeen, was at that moment
engaged in folding their prayer rugs, which had been spread in the bow
of the falukah in order that they might have a clearer view as they
knelt toward the Holy City. Chud, their slave, was cleaning mullet in
the waist and chanting some weird song of his native land.
Mohammed Ben Ali el Bad was sitting cross-legged in the stern, smoking a
hookah and watching the full moon sail slowly up above the Atlas Range
to the southwest. The wind had died down and the sea was calm, heaving
slowly with great orange-purple swells resembling watered silk. In the
west still lingered the fast-fading afterglow, above which the stars
glimmered faintly. Along the coast lights twinkled in scattered coves.
Half a mile astern the Italian cruiser _Fiala_ lay slowly swinging at
anchor. From the forecastle came the smell of fried mullet. Mohammed Ben
Ali was at peace with himself and with the world, including even the
irritating Chud. The west darkened and the stars burned more
brilliantly. With the hookah gurgling softly at his feet, Mohammed
leaned back his head and gazed in silent appreciation at the wonders of
the heavens. There was Turka Kabar, the crocodile; and Menish el Tabir,
the sleeping beauty; and Rook Hamana, the leopard, and there--up there
to the far north--was a shooting star. How gracefully it shot across the
sky, leaving its wake of yellow light behind it! It was the season for
shooting stars, he recollected. In an instant it would be gone--like a
man's life! Saddened, he looked down at his hookah. When he should look
up again--if in only an instant--the star would be gone. Presently he
did look up again. But the star was still there, coming his way!
He rubbed his old eyes, keen as they were from habituation to the
blinding light of the desert. Yes, the star was coming--coming fast.
"Abdullah!" he called in his high-pitched voice. "Chud! Come, see the
star!"
Together they watched it sweep onward.
"By Allah! That is no star!" suddenly cried Abdullah. "It is an
air-flying fire chariot! I can see it with my eyes--black, and spouting
flames from behind."
"Black," echoed Chud gutturally. "Black and round! Oh, Allah!" He fell
on his knees and knocked his head against the deck.
The star, or whatever it was, swung in a wide circle toward the coast,
and Mohammed and Abdullah now saw that what they had taken to be a trail
of fire behind was in fact a broad beam of yellow light that pointed
diagonally earthward. It swept nearer and nearer, illuminating the whole
sky and casting a shimmering reflection upon the waves.
A shrill whistle trilled across the water, accompanied by the sound of
footsteps running along the decks of the cruiser. Lights flashed.
Muffled orders were shouted.
"By the beard of the Prophet!" cried Mohammed Ali. "Something is going
to happen!"
The small black object from which the incandescent beam descended passed
at that moment athwart the face of the moon, and Abdullah saw that it
was round and flat like a ring. The ray of light came from a point
directly above it, passing through its aperture downward to the sea.
"Boom!" The fishing-boat shook to the thunder of the _Fiala's_
eight-inch gun, and a blinding spurt of flame leaped from the cruiser's
bows. With a whining shriek a shell rose toward the moon. There was a
quick flash followed by a dull concussion. The shell had not reached a
tenth of the distance to the flying machine.
And then everything happened at once. Mohammed described afterward to a
gaping multitude of dirty villagers, while he sat enthroned upon his
daughter's threshold, how the star-ship had sailed across the face of
the moon and come to a standstill above the mountains, with its beam of
yellow light pointing directly downward so that the coast could be seen
bright as day from Sfax to Cabes. He saw, he said, genii climbing up and
down on the beam. Be that as it may, he swears upon the Beard of the
Prophet that a second ray of light--of a lavender colour, like the eye
of a long-dead mullet--flashed down alongside the yellow beam. Instantly
the earth blew up like a cannon--up into the air, a thousand miles up.
It was as light as noonday. Deafened by titanic concussions he fell half
dead. The sea boiled and gave off thick clouds of steam through which
flashed dazzling discharges of lightning accompanied by a thundering,
grinding sound like a million mills. The ocean heaved spasmodically and
the air shook with a rending, ripping noise, as if Nature were bent upon
destroying her own handiwork. The glare was so dazzling that sight was
impossible. The falukah was tossed this way and that, as if caught in a
simoon, and he was rolled hither and yon in the company of Chud,
Abdullah, and the headless mullet.
This earsplitting racket continued, he says, without interruption for
two days. Abdullah says it was several hours; the official report of the
_Fiala_ gives it as six minutes. And then it began to rain in torrents
until he was almost drowned. A great wind arose and lashed the ocean,
and a whirlpool seized the falukah and whirled it round and round.
Darkness descended upon the earth, and in the general mess Mohammed hit
his head a terrific blow against the mast. He was sure it was but a
matter of seconds before they would be dashed to pieces by the waves.
The falukah spun like a marine top with a swift sideways motion.
Something was dragging them along, sucking them in. The _Fiala_ went
careening by, her fighting masts hanging in shreds. The air was full of
falling rocks, trees, splinters, and thick clouds of dust that turned
the water yellow in the lightning flashes. The mast went crashing over
and a lemon tree descended to take its place. Great streams of lava
poured down out of the air, and masses of opaque matter plunged into the
sea all about the falukah. Scalding mud, stones, hail, fell upon the
deck.
And still the fishing-boat, gyrating like a leaf, remained afloat with
its crew of half-crazed Arabs. Suffocated, stunned, scalded, petrified
with fear, they lay among the mullet while the falukah raced along in
its wild dance with death. Mohammed recalls seeing what he thought to be
a great cliff rush by close beside them. The falukah plunged over a
waterfall and was almost submerged, was caught again in a maelstrom, and
went twirling on in the blackness. They all were deathly sick, but were
too terrified to move.
And then the nearer roaring ceased. The air was less congested. They
were still showered with sand, clods of earth, twigs, and pebbles, it is
true, but the genii had stopped hurling mountains at each other. The
darkness became less opaque, the water smoother. Soon they could see the
moon through the clouds of settling dust, and gradually they could
discern the stars. The falukah was rocking gently upon a broad expanse
of muddy ocean, surrounded by a yellow scum broken here and there by a
floating tree. The _Fiala_ had vanished. No light shone upon the face of
the waters. But death had not overtaken them. Overcome by exhaustion and
terror Mohammed lay among the mullet, his legs entangled in the lemon
tree. Did he dream it? He cannot tell. But as he lost consciousness he
thinks he saw a star shooting toward the north.
When he awoke the falukah lay motionless upon a boundless ochre sea.
They were beyond sight of land. Out of a sky slightly dim the sun burned
pitilessly down, sending warmth into their bodies and courage to their
hearts. All about them upon the water floated the evidences of the
cataclysm of the preceding night--trees, shrubs, dead birds, and the
distorted corpse of a camel. Kneeling without their prayer rugs among
the mullet they raised their voices in praise of Allah and his Prophet.
VII
Within twenty-four hours of the destruction of the Mountains of Atlas by
the Flying Ring and the consequent flooding of the Sahara, the official
gazettes and such newspapers as were still published announced that the
Powers had agreed upon an armistice and accepted a proposition of
mediation on the part of the United States looking toward permanent
peace. The news of the devastation and flood caused by this strange and
terrible dreadnought of the air created the profoundest apprehension and
caused the wildest rumours, for what had happened in Tunis was assumed
as likely to occur in London, Paris, or New York. Wireless messages
flashed the story from Algiers to Cartagena, and it was thence
disseminated throughout the civilized world by the wireless stations at
Paris, Nauen, Moscow, and Georgetown.
The fact that the rotation of the earth had been retarded was still a
secret, and the appearance of the Ring had not as yet been connected
with any of the extraordinary phenomena surrounding it; but the
newspaper editorials universally agreed that whatever nation owned and
controlled this new instrument of war could dictate its own terms. It
was generally supposed that the blasting of the mountain chain of
Northern Africa had been an experiment to test and demonstrate the
powers of this new demoniacal invention, and in view of its success it
did not seem surprising that the nations had hastened to agree to an
armistice, for the Power that controlled a force capable of producing
such an extraordinary physical cataclysm could annihilate every capital,
every army, every people upon the globe or even the globe itself.
The flight of the Ring machine had been observed at several different
points, beginning at Cape Race, where at about four A.M. the
wireless operator reported what he supposed to be a large comet
discharging earthward a diagonal shaft of orange-yellow light and moving
at incredible velocity in a southeasterly direction. During the
following day the lookout on the _Vira_, a fishguard and scout cruiser
of the North Atlantic Patrol, saw a black speck soaring among the clouds
which he took to be a lost monoplane fighting to regain the coast of
Ireland. At sundown an amateur wireless operator at St. Michael's in the
Azores noted a small comet sweeping across the sky far to the north.
This comet an hour or so later passed directly over the cities of
Lisbon, Linares, Lorca, Cartagena, and Algiers, and was clearly
observable from Badajoz, Almadén, Seville, Cordova, Grenada, Oran,
Biskra, and Tunis, and at the latter places it was easily possible for
telescopic observers to determine its size, shape, and general
construction.
Daniel W. Quinn, Jr., the acting United States Consul stationed at
Biskra, who happened to be dining with the abbot of the Franciscan
monastery at Linares, sent the following account of the flight of the
Ring to the State Department at Washington, where it is now on file.
[See Vol. 27, pp. 491-498, with footnote, of Official Records of the
Consular Correspondence for 1915-1916.] After describing general
conditions in Algeria he continues:
We had gone upon the roof in the early evening to look at the sky
through the large telescope presented to the Franciscans by Count
Philippe d'Ormay, when Father Antoine called my attention to a
comet that was apparently coming straight toward us. Instead,
however, of leaving a horizontal trail of fire behind it, this
comet or meteorite seemed to shoot an almost vertical beam of
orange light toward the earth. It produced a very strange effect on
all of us, since a normal comet or other celestial body that left a
wake of light of that sort behind it would naturally be expected to
be moving upward toward the zenith, instead of in a direction
parallel to the earth. It looked somehow as if the tail of the
comet had been bent over. As soon as it came near enough so that we
could focus the telescope upon it we discovered that it was a new
sort of flying machine. It passed over our heads at a height no
greater than ten thousand feet, if as great as that, and we could
see that it was a cylindrical ring like a doughnut or an anchor
ring, constructed, I believe, of highly polished metal, the inner
aperture being about twenty-five yards in diameter. The tube of the
cylinder looked to be about twenty feet thick, and had circular
windows or portholes that were brilliantly lighted.
The strangest thing about it was that it carried a superstructure
consisting of a number of arms meeting at a point above the centre
of the opening and supporting some sort of apparatus from which the
beam of light emanated. This appliance, which we supposed to be a
gigantic searchlight, was focused down through the Ring and could
apparently be moved at will over a limited radius of about fifteen
degrees. We could not understand this, nor why the light was thrown
from outside and above instead of from inside the flying machine,
but the explanation may be found in the immense heat that must have
been required to generate the light, since it illuminated the entire
country for fifty miles or so, and we were able to read without
trouble the fine print of the abbot's rubric. This Flying Ring moved
on an even keel at the tremendous velocity of about two hundred
miles an hour. We wondered what would happen if it turned turtle,
for in that case the weight of the superstructure would have
rendered it impossible for the machine to right itself. In fact,
none of us had ever imagined any such air monster before. Beside it
a Zeppelin seemed like a wooden toy.
The Ring passed over the mountains toward Cabes and within a short
time a volcanic eruption occurred that destroyed a section of the
Atlas Range. [Mr. Quinn here describes with considerable detail the
destruction of the mountains.] The next morning I found Biskra
crowded with Arabs, who reported that the ocean had poured through
the passage made by the eruption and was flooding the entire desert
as far south as the oasis of Wargla, and that it had come within
twelve miles of the walls of our own city. I at once hired a donkey
and made a personal investigation, with the result that I can report
as a fact that the entire desert east and south of Biskra is
inundated to a depth of from seven to ten feet and that the water
gives no sign of going down. The loss of life seems to have been
negligible, owing to the fact that the height of the water is not
great and that many unexpected islands have provided safety for the
caravans that were _in transitu_. These are now marooned and waiting
for assistance, which I am informed will be sent from Cabes in the
form of flat-bottomed boats fitted with motor auxiliaries.
Respectfully submitted,
D. W. QUINN, Jr.,
Acting U. S. Consul.
The Italian cruiser _Fiala_, which had been carried one hundred and
eighty miles into the desert on the night of the eruption, grounded
safely on the plateau of Tasili, but the volcanic tidal wave on which
she had been swept along, having done its work, receded, leaving too
little water for the _Fiala's_ draft of thirty-seven feet. Four launches
sent out in different directions to the south and east reported no sign
of land, but immense quantities of floating vegetable matter, yellow
dust, and the bodies of jackals, camels, zebras, and lions. The fifth
launch after great hardships reached the seacoast through the new
channel and arrived at Sfax after eight days.
The mean tide level of the Mediterranean sank fifteen inches, and the
water showed marked discoloration for several months, while a volcanic
haze hung over Northern Africa, Sicily, Malta, and Sardinia for an even
longer period.
Though many persons must have lost their lives the records are
incomplete in this respect; but there is a curious document in the
mosque at Sfax touching the effect of the Lavender Ray. It appears that
an Arab mussel-gatherer was in a small boat with his two brothers at the
time the Ring appeared above the mountains. As they looked up toward the
sky the Ray flashed over and illuminated their faces. They thought
nothing of it at the time, for almost immediately the mountains were
rent asunder and in the titanic upheaval that followed they were all
cast upon the shore, as they thought, dead men. Reaching Sfax they
reported their adventures and offered prayers in gratitude for their
extraordinary escape; but five days later all three began to suffer
excruciating torment from internal burns, the skin upon their heads and
bodies began to peel off, and they died in agony within the week.
VIII
It was but a few days thereafter that the President of the United States
received the official note from Count von Koenitz, on behalf of the
Imperial German Commissioners, to the effect that Germany would join
with the other Powers in an armistice looking toward peace and
ultimately a universal disarmament. Similar notes had already been
received by the President from France, Great Britain, Russia, Italy,
Austria, Spain, and Slavia, and a multitude of the other smaller Powers
who were engaged in the war, and there was no longer any reason for
delaying the calling of an international council or diet for the purpose
of bringing about what Pax demanded as a ransom for the safety of the
globe.
In the files of the State Department at Washington there is secreted the
only record of the diplomatic correspondence touching these momentous
events, and a transcript of the messages exchanged between the President
of the
|
blandishment. He was appointed to the Council of State, and received one
of the most disorganized departments of the government to reconstruct.
This scion of an old historical family proved to be a very active wheel
in the grand and magnificent organization which we owe to Napoleon.
The councillor of State was soon called from his particular
administration to a ministry. Created count and senator by the Emperor,
he was made proconsul to two kingdoms in succession. In 1806, when
forty years of age, he married the sister of the ci-devant Marquis
de Ronquerolles, the widow at twenty of Gaubert, one of the most
illustrious of the Republican generals, who left her his whole property.
This marriage, a suitable one in point of rank, doubled the already
considerable fortune of the Comte de Serizy, who became through his wife
the brother-in-law of the ci-devant Marquis de Rouvre, made count and
chamberlain by the Emperor.
In 1814, weary with constant toil, the Comte de Serizy, whose shattered
health required rest, resigned all his posts, left the department at
the head of which the Emperor had placed him, and came to Paris, where
Napoleon was compelled by the evidence of his eyes to admit that the
count’s illness was a valid excuse, though at first that _unfatiguable_
master, who gave no heed to the fatigue of others, was disposed to
consider Monsieur de Serizy’s action as a defection. Though the senator
was never in disgrace, he was supposed to have reason to complain of
Napoleon. Consequently, when the Bourbons returned, Louis XVIII., whom
Monsieur de Serizy held to be his legitimate sovereign, treated the
senator, now a peer of France, with the utmost confidence, placed him
in charge of his private affairs, and appointed him one of his cabinet
ministers. On the 20th of March, Monsieur de Serizy did not go to Ghent.
He informed Napoleon that he remained faithful to the house of Bourbon;
would not accept his peerage during the Hundred Days, and passed that
period on his estate at Serizy.
After the second fall of the Emperor, he became once more a
privy-councillor, was appointed vice-president of the Council of State,
and liquidator, on behalf of France, of claims and indemnities demanded
by foreign powers. Without personal assumption, without ambition even,
he possessed great influence in public affairs. Nothing of importance
was done without consulting him; but he never went to court, and was
seldom seen in his own salons. This noble life, devoting itself from its
very beginning to work, had ended by becoming a life of incessant toil.
The count rose at all seasons by four o’clock in the morning, and
worked till mid-day, attended to his functions as peer of France and
vice-president of the Council of State in the afternoons, and went to
bed at nine o’clock. In recognition of such labor, the King had made
him a knight of his various Orders. Monsieur de Serizy had long worn the
grand cross of the Legion of honor; he also had the orders of the Golden
Fleece, of Saint-Andrew of Russia, that of the Prussian Eagle, and
nearly all the lesser Orders of the courts of Europe. No man was less
obvious, or more useful in the political world than he. It is easy
to understand that the world’s honor, the fuss and feathers of public
favor, the glories of success were indifferent to a man of this stamp;
but no one, unless a priest, ever comes to life of this kind without
some serious underlying reason. His conduct had its cause, and a cruel
one.
In love with his wife before he married her, this passion had lasted
through all the secret unhappiness of his marriage with a widow,--a
woman mistress of herself before as well as after her second marriage,
and who used her liberty all the more freely because her husband treated
her with the indulgence of a mother for a spoilt child. His constant
toil served him as shield and buckler against pangs of heart which he
silenced with the care that diplomatists give to the keeping of secrets.
He knew, moreover, how ridiculous was jealousy in the eyes of a society
that would never have believed in the conjugal passion of an old
statesman. How happened it that from the earliest days of his marriage
his wife so fascinated him? Why did he suffer without resistance? How
was it that he dared not resist? Why did he let the years go by and
still hope on? By what means did this young and pretty and clever woman
hold him in bondage?
The answer to all these questions would require a long history, which
would injure our present tale. Let us only remark here that the constant
toil and grief of the count had unfortunately contributed not a little
to deprive him of personal advantages very necessary to a man who
attempts to struggle against dangerous comparisons. In fact, the most
cruel of the count’s secret sorrows was that of causing repugnance to
his wife by a malady of the skin resulting solely from excessive labor.
Kind, and always considerate of the countess, he allowed her to be
mistress of herself and her home. She received all Paris; she went into
the country; she returned from it precisely as though she were still a
widow. He took care of her fortune and supplied her luxury as a steward
might have done. The countess had the utmost respect for her husband.
She even admired his turn of mind; she knew how to make him happy by
approbation; she could do what she pleased with him by simply going to
his study and talking for an hour with him. Like the great seigneurs of
the olden time, the count protected his wife so loyally that a single
word of disrespect said of her would have been to him an unpardonable
injury. The world admired him for this; and Madame de Serizy owed
much to it. Any other woman, even though she came of a family as
distinguished as the Ronquerolles, might have found herself degraded
in public opinion. The countess was ungrateful, but she mingled a charm
with her ingratitude. From time to time she shed a balm upon the wounds
of her husband’s heart.
Let us now explain the meaning of this sudden journey, and the incognito
maintained by a minister of State.
A rich farmer of Beaumont-sur-Oise, named Leger, leased and cultivated
a farm, the fields of which projected into and greatly injured the
magnificent estate of the Comte de Serizy, called Presles. This farm
belonged to a burgher of Beaumont-sur-Oise, named Margueron. The lease
made to Leger in 1799, at a time when the great advance of agriculture
was not foreseen, was about to expire, and the owner of the farm refused
all offers from Leger to renew the lease. For some time past, Monsieur
de Serizy, wishing to rid himself of the annoyances and petty disputes
caused by the inclosure of these fields within his land, had desired to
buy the farm, having heard that Monsieur Margueron’s chief ambition was
to have his only son, then a mere tax-gatherer, made special collector
of finances at Beaumont. The farmer, who knew he could sell the fields
piecemeal to the count at a high price, was ready to pay Margueron even
more than he expected from the count.
Thus matters stood when, two days earlier than that of which we write,
Monsieur de Serizy, anxious to end the matter, sent for his notary,
Alexandre Crottat, and his lawyer, Derville, to examine into all the
circumstances of the affair. Though Derville and Crottat threw some
doubt on the zeal of the count’s steward (a disturbing letter from whom
had led to the consultation), Monsieur de Serizy defended Moreau, who,
he said, had served him faithfully for seventeen years.
“Very well!” said Derville, “then I advise your Excellency to go to
Presles yourself, and invite this Margueron to dinner. Crottat will send
his head-clerk with a deed of sale drawn up, leaving only the necessary
lines for description of property and titles in blank. Your Excellency
should take with you part of the purchase money in a check on the
Bank of France, not forgetting the appointment of the son to the
collectorship. If you don’t settle the thing at once that farm will slip
through your fingers. You don’t know, Monsieur le comte, the trickery of
these peasants. Peasants against diplomat, and the diplomat succumbs.”
Crottat agreed in this advice, which the count, if we may judge by the
valet’s statements to Pierrotin, had adopted. The preceding evening
he had sent Moreau a line by the diligence to Beaumont, telling him to
invite Margueron to dinner in order that they might then and there close
the purchase of the farm of Moulineaux.
Before this matter came up, the count had already ordered the chateau of
Presles to be restored and refurnished, and for the last year, Grindot,
an architect then in fashion, was in the habit of making a weekly visit.
So, while concluding his purchase of the farm, Monsieur de Serizy also
intended to examine the work of restoration and the effect of the new
furniture. He intended all this to be a surprise to his wife when he
brought her to Presles, and with this idea in his mind, he had put some
personal pride and self-love into the work. How came it therefore that
the count, who intended in the evening to drive to Presles openly in
his own carriage, should be starting early the next morning incognito in
Pierrotin’s coucou?
Here a few words on the life of the steward Moreau become indispensable.
Moreau, steward of the state of Presles, was the son of a provincial
attorney who became during the Revolution syndic-attorney at Versailles.
In that position, Moreau the father had been the means of almost saving
both the lives and property of the Serizys, father and son. Citizen
Moreau belonged to the Danton party; Robespierre, implacable in his
hatreds, pursued him, discovered him, and finally had him executed at
Versailles. Moreau the son, heir to the doctrines and friendships of
his father, was concerned in one of the conspiracies which assailed
the First Consul on his accession to power. At this crisis, Monsieur
de Serizy, anxious to pay his debt of gratitude, enabled Moreau, lying
under sentence of death, to make his escape; in 1804 he asked for his
pardon, obtained it, offered him first a place in his government office,
and finally took him as private secretary for his own affairs.
Some time after the marriage of his patron Moreau fell in love with the
countess’s waiting-woman and married her. To avoid the annoyances of the
false position in which this marriage placed him (more than one example
of which could be seen at the imperial court), Moreau asked the count to
give him the management of the Presles estate, where his wife could
play the lady in a country region, and neither of them would be made
to suffer from wounded self-love. The count wanted a trustworthy man
at Presles, for his wife preferred Serizy, an estate only fifteen miles
from Paris. For three or four years Moreau had held the key of the
count’s affairs; he was intelligent, and before the Revolution he had
studied law in his father’s office; so Monsieur de Serizy granted his
request.
“You can never advance in life,” he said to Moreau, “for you have broken
your neck; but you can be happy, and I will take care that you are so.”
He gave Moreau a salary of three thousand francs and his residence in a
charming lodge near the chateau, all the wood he needed from the timber
that was cut on the estate, oats, hay, and straw for two horses, and a
right to whatever he wanted of the produce of the gardens. A sub-prefect
is not as well provided for.
During the first eight years of his stewardship, Moreau managed the
estate conscientiously; he took an interest in it. The count, coming
down now and then to examine the property, pass judgment on what had
been done, and decide on new purchases, was struck with Moreau’s evident
loyalty, and showed his satisfaction by liberal gifts.
But after the birth of Moreau’s third child, a daughter, he felt himself
so securely settled in all his comforts at Presles that he ceased to
attribute to Monsieur de Serizy those enormous advantages. About the
year 1816, the steward, who until then had only taken what he needed
for his own use from the estate, accepted a sum of twenty-five thousand
francs from a wood-merchant as an inducement to lease to the latter,
for twelve years, the cutting of all the timber. Moreau argued this: he
could have no pension; he was the father of a family; the count really
owed him that sum as a gift after ten years’ management; already the
legitimate possessor of sixty thousand francs in savings, if he added
this sum to that, he could buy a farm worth a hundred and twenty-five
thousand francs in Champagne, a township just above Isle-Adam, on the
right bank of the Oise. Political events prevented both the count and
the neighboring country-people from becoming aware of this investment,
which was made in the name of Madame Moreau, who was understood to have
inherited property from an aunt of her father.
As soon as the steward had tasted the delightful fruit of the possession
of the property, he began, all the while maintaining toward the world
an appearance of the utmost integrity, to lose no occasion of increasing
his fortune clandestinely; the interests of his three children served as
a poultice to the wounds of his honor. Nevertheless, we ought in justice
to say that while he accepted casks of wine, and took care of himself in
all the purchases that he made for the count, yet according to the terms
of the Code he remained an honest man, and no proof could have
been found to justify an accusation against him. According to the
jurisprudence of the least thieving cook in Paris, he shared with the
count in the profits due to his own capable management. This manner
of swelling his fortune was simply a case of conscience, that was
all. Alert, and thoroughly understanding the count’s interests, Moreau
watched for opportunities to make good purchases all the more eagerly,
because he gained a larger percentage on them. Presles returned
a revenue of seventy thousand francs net. It was a saying of the
country-side for a circuit of thirty miles:--
“Monsieur de Serizy has a second self in Moreau.”
Being a prudent man, Moreau invested yearly, after 1817, both his
profits and his salary on the Grand Livre, piling up his heap with the
utmost secrecy. He often refused proposals on the plea of want of money;
and he played the poor man so successfully with the count that the
latter gave him the means to send both his sons to the school Henri IV.
At the present moment Moreau was worth one hundred and twenty thousand
francs of capital invested in the Consolidated thirds, now paying
five per cent, and quoted at eighty francs. These carefully hidden one
hundred and twenty thousand francs, and his farm at Champagne, enlarged
by subsequent purchases, amounted to a fortune of about two hundred and
eighty thousand francs, giving him an income of some sixteen thousand.
Such was the position of the steward at the time when the Comte de
Serizy desired to purchase the farm of Moulineaux,--the ownership
of which was indispensable to his comfort. This farm consisted of
ninety-six parcels of land bordering the estate of Presles, and
frequently running into it, producing the most annoying discussions
as to the trimming of hedges and ditches and the cutting of trees. Any
other than a cabinet minister would probably have had scores of lawsuits
on his hands. Pere Leger only wished to buy the property in order
to sell to the count at a handsome advance. In order to secure the
exorbitant sum on which his mind was set, the farmer had long endeavored
to come to an understanding with Moreau. Impelled by circumstances, he
had, only three days before this critical Sunday, had a talk with the
steward in the open field, and proved to him clearly that he (Moreau)
could make the count invest his money at two and a half per cent, and
thus appear to serve his patron’s interests, while he himself pocketed
forty thousand francs which Leger offered him to bring about the
transaction.
“I tell you what,” said the steward to his wife, as he went to bed
that night, “if I make fifty thousand francs out of the Moulineaux
affair,--and I certainly shall, for the count will give me ten thousand
as a fee,--we’ll retire to Isle-Adam and live in the Pavillon de
Nogent.”
This “pavillon” was a charming place, originally built by the Prince de
Conti for a mistress, and in it every convenience and luxury had been
placed.
“That will suit me,” said his wife. “The Dutchman who lives there has
put it in good order, and now that he is obliged to return to India, he
would probably let us have it for thirty thousand francs.”
“We shall be close to Champagne,” said Moreau. “I am in hopes of buying
the farm and mill of Mours for a hundred thousand francs. That would
give us ten thousand a year in rentals. Nogent is one of the most
delightful residences in the valley; and we should still have an income
of ten thousand from the Grand-Livre.”
“But why don’t you ask for the post of juge-de-paix at Isle-Adam? That
would give us influence, and fifteen hundred a year salary.”
“Well, I did think of it.”
With these plans in mind, Moreau, as soon as he heard from the count
that he was coming to Presles, and wished him to invite Margueron to
dinner on Saturday, sent off an express to the count’s head-valet,
inclosing a letter to his master, which the messenger failed to deliver
before Monsieur de Serizy retired at his usually early hour. Augustin,
however, placed it, according to custom in such cases, on his master’s
desk. In this letter Moreau begged the count not to trouble himself to
come down, but to trust entirely to him. He added that Margueron was no
longer willing to sell the whole in one block, and talked of cutting the
farm up into a number of smaller lots. It was necessary to circumvent
this plan, and perhaps, added Moreau, it might be best to employ a third
party to make the purchase.
Everybody has enemies in this life. Now the steward and his wife had
wounded the feelings of a retired army officer, Monsieur de Reybert, and
his wife, who were living near Presles. From speeches like pin-pricks,
matters had advanced to dagger-thrusts. Monsieur de Reybert breathed
vengeance. He was determined to make Moreau lose his situation and
gain it himself. The two ideas were twins. Thus the proceedings of the
steward, spied upon for two years, were no secret to Reybert. The same
conveyance that took Moreau’s letter to the count conveyed Madame de
Reybert, whom her husband despatched to Paris. There she asked with such
earnestness to see the count that although she was sent away at nine
o’clock, he having then gone to bed, she was ushered into his study the
next morning at seven.
“Monsieur,” she said to the cabinet-minister, “we are incapable, my
husband and I, of writing anonymous letters, therefore I have come to
see you in person. I am Madame de Reybert, nee de Corroy. My husband is
a retired officer, with a pension of six hundred francs, and we live at
Presles, where your steward has offered us insult after insult, although
we are persons of good station. Monsieur de Reybert, who is not an
intriguing man, far from it, is a captain of artillery, retired in 1816,
having served twenty years,--always at a distance from the Emperor,
Monsieur le comte. You know of course how difficult it is for soldiers
who are not under the eye of their master to obtain promotion,--not
counting that the integrity and frankness of Monsieur de Reybert were
displeasing to his superiors. My husband has watched your steward for
the last three years, being aware of his dishonesty and intending to
have him lose his place. We are, as you see, quite frank with you.
Moreau has made us his enemies, and we have watched him. I have come to
tell you that you are being tricked in the purchase of the Moulineaux
farm. They mean to get an extra hundred thousand francs out of you,
which are to be divided between the notary, the farmer Leger, and
Moreau. You have written Moreau to invite Margueron, and you are going
to Presles to-day; but Margueron will be ill, and Leger is so certain
of buying the farm that he is now in Paris to draw the money. If we
have enlightened you as to what is going on, and if you want an upright
steward you will take my husband; though noble, he will serve you as he
has served the State. Your steward has made a fortune of two hundred
and fifty thousand francs out of his place; he is not to be pitied
therefore.”
The count thanked Madame de Reybert coldly, bestowing upon her the
holy-water of courts, for he despised backbiting; but for all that, he
remembered Derville’s doubts, and felt inwardly shaken. Just then he saw
his steward’s letter and read it. In its assurances of devotion and its
respectful reproaches for the distrust implied in wishing to negotiate
the purchase for himself, he read the truth.
“Corruption has come to him with fortune,--as it always does!” he said
to himself.
The count then made several inquiries of Madame de Reybert, less to
obtain information than to gain time to observe her; and he wrote a
short note to his notary telling him not to send his head-clerk to
Presles as requested, but to come there himself in time for dinner.
“Though Monsieur le comte,” said Madame de Reybert in conclusion, “may
have judged me unfavorably for the step I have taken unknown to my
husband, he ought to be convinced that we have obtained this information
about his steward in a natural and honorable manner; the most sensitive
conscience cannot take exception to it.”
So saying, Madame de Reybert, nee de Corroy, stood erect as a
pike-staff. She presented to the rapid investigation of the count a
face seamed with the small-pox like a colander with holes, a flat,
spare figure, two light and eager eyes, fair hair plastered down upon
an anxious forehead, a small drawn-bonnet of faded green taffetas lined
with pink, a white gown with violet spots, and leather shoes. The
count recognized the wife of some poor, half-pay captain, a puritan,
subscribing no doubt to the “Courrier Francais,” earnest in virtue, but
aware of the comfort of a good situation and eagerly coveting it.
“You say your husband has a pension of six hundred francs,” he said,
replying to his own thoughts, and not to the remark Madame de Reybert
had just made.
“Yes, monsieur.”
“You were born a Corroy?”
“Yes, monsieur,--a noble family of Metz, where my husband belongs.”
“In what regiment did Monsieur de Reybert serve?”
“The 7th artillery.”
“Good!” said the count, writing down the number.
He had thought at one time of giving the management of the estate to
some retired army officer, about whom he could obtain exact information
from the minister of war.
“Madame,” he resumed, ringing for his valet, “return to Presles, this
afternoon with my notary, who is going down there for dinner, and to
whom I have recommended you. Here is his address. I am going myself
secretly to Presles, and will send for Monsieur de Reybert to come and
speak to me.”
It will thus be seen that Monsieur de Serizy’s journey by a public
conveyance, and the injunction conveyed by the valet to conceal his name
and rank had not unnecessarily alarmed Pierrotin. That worthy had just
forebodings of a danger which was about to swoop down upon one of his
best customers.
CHAPTER III. THE TRAVELLERS
As Pierrotin issued from the Cafe de l’Echiquier, after treating the
valet, he saw in the gate-way of the Lion d’Argent the lady and the
young man in whom his perspicacity at once detected customers, for the
lady with outstretched neck and anxious face was evidently looking for
him. She was dressed in a black-silk gown that was dyed, a brown bonnet,
an old French cashmere shawl, raw-silk stockings, and low shoes; and in
her hand she carried a straw bag and a blue umbrella. This woman, who
had once been beautiful, seemed to be about forty years of age; but her
blue eyes, deprived of the fire which happiness puts there, told plainly
that she had long renounced the world. Her dress, as well as her whole
air and demeanor, indicated a mother wholly devoted to her household
and her son. If the strings of her bonnet were faded, the shape betrayed
that it was several years old. The shawl was fastened by a broken
needle converted into a pin by a bead of sealing-wax. She was waiting
impatiently for Pierrotin, wishing to recommend to his special care her
son, who was doubtless travelling for the first time, and with whom she
had come to the coach-office as much from doubt of his ability as from
maternal affection.
This mother was in every way completed by the son, so that the son would
not be understood without the mother. If the mother condemned herself to
mended gloves, the son wore an olive-green coat with sleeves too short
for him, proving that he had grown, and might grow still more, like
other adults of eighteen or nineteen years of age. The blue trousers,
mended by his mother, presented to the eye a brighter patch of color
when the coat-tails maliciously parted behind him.
“Don’t rub your gloves that way, you’ll spoil them,” she was saying as
Pierrotin appeared. “Is this the conductor? Ah! Pierrotin, is it you?”
she exclaimed, leaving her son and taking the coachman apart a few
steps.
“I hope you’re well, Madame Clapart,” he replied, with an air that
expressed both respect and familiarity.
“Yes, Pierrotin, very well. Please take good care of my Oscar; he is
travelling alone for the first time.”
“Oh! so he is going alone to Monsieur Moreau!” cried Pierrotin, for the
purpose of finding out whether he were really going there.
“Yes,” said the mother.
“Then Madame Moreau is willing?” returned Pierrotin, with a sly look.
“Ah!” said the mother, “it will not be all roses for him, poor child!
But his future absolutely requires that I should send him.”
This answer struck Pierrotin, who hesitated to confide his fears for
the steward to Madame Clapart, while she, on her part, was afraid of
injuring her boy if she asked Pierrotin for a care which might have
transformed him into a mentor. During this short deliberation, which was
ostensibly covered by a few phrases as to the weather, the journey, and
the stopping-places along the road, we will ourselves explain what were
the ties that united Madame Clapart with Pierrotin, and authorized the
two confidential remarks which they have just exchanged.
Often--that is to say, three or four times a month--Pierrotin, on his
way to Paris, would find the steward on the road near La Cave. As soon
as the vehicle came up, Moreau would sign to a gardener, who, with
Pierrotin’s help, would put upon the coach either one or two baskets
containing the fruits and vegetables of the season, chickens, eggs,
butter, and game. The steward always paid the carriage and Pierrotin’s
fee, adding the money necessary to pay the toll at the barriere, if
the baskets contained anything dutiable. These baskets, hampers, or
packages, were never directed to any one. On the first occasion, which
served for all others, the steward had given Madame Clapart’s address by
word of mouth to the discreet Pierrotin, requesting him never to deliver
to others the precious packages. Pierrotin, impressed with the idea
of an intrigue between the steward and some pretty girl, had gone as
directed to number 7 rue de la Cerisaie, in the Arsenal quarter, and had
there found the Madame Clapart just portrayed, instead of the young and
beautiful creature he expected to find.
The drivers of public conveyances and carriers are called by their
business to enter many homes, and to be cognizant of many secrets; but
social accident, that sub-providence, having willed that they be without
education and devoid of the talent of observation, it follows that they
are not dangerous. Nevertheless, at the end of a few months, Pierrotin
was puzzled to explain the exact relations of Monsieur Moreau and Madame
Clapart from what he saw of the household in the rue de la Cerisaie.
Though lodgings were not dear at that time in the Arsenal quarter,
Madame Clapart lived on a third floor at the end of a court-yard, in a
house which was formerly that of a great family, in the days when the
higher nobility of the kingdom lived on the ancient site of the Palais
des Tournelles and the hotel Saint-Paul. Toward the end of the sixteenth
century, the great seigneurs divided among themselves these vast spaces,
once occupied by the gardens of the kings of France, as indicated by the
present names of the streets,--Cerisaie, Beautreillis, des Lions, etc.
Madame Clapart’s apartment, which was panelled throughout with ancient
carvings, consisted of three connecting rooms, a dining-room, salon, and
bedroom. Above it was the kitchen, and a bedroom for Oscar. Opposite
to the entrance, on what is called in Paris “le carre,”--that is, the
square landing,--was the door of a back room, opening, on every floor,
into a sort of tower built of rough stone, in which was also the well
for the staircase. This was the room in which Moreau slept whenever he
went to Paris.
Pierrotin had seen in the first room, where he deposited the hampers,
six wooden chairs with straw seats, a table, and a sideboard; at the
windows, discolored curtains. Later, when he entered the salon, he
noticed some old Empire furniture, now shabby; but only as much as all
proprietors exact to secure their rent. Pierrotin judged of the bedroom
by the salon and dining-room. The wood-work, painted coarsely of a
reddish white, which thickened and blurred the mouldings and figurines,
far from being ornamental, was distressing to the eye. The floors, never
waxed, were of that gray tone we see in boarding-schools. When Pierrotin
came upon Monsieur and Madame Clapart at their meals he saw that their
china, glass, and all other little articles betrayed the utmost poverty;
and yet, though the chipped and mended dishes and tureens were those
of the poorest families and provoked pity, the forks and spoons were of
silver.
Monsieur Clapart, clothed in a shabby surtout, his feet in broken
slippers, always wore green spectacles, and exhibited, whenever he
removed his shabby cap of a bygone period, a pointed skull, from the top
of which trailed a few dirty filaments which even a poet could scarcely
call hair. This man, of wan complexion, seemed timorous, but withal
tyrannical.
In this dreary apartment, which faced the north and had no other outlook
than to a vine on the opposite wall and a well in the corner of the
yard, Madame Clapart bore herself with the airs of a queen, and moved
like a woman unaccustomed to go anywhere on foot. Often, while thanking
Pierrotin, she gave him glances which would have touched to pity an
intelligent observer; from time to time she would slip a twelve-sous
piece into his hand, and then her voice was charming. Pierrotin had
never seen Oscar, for the reason that the boy was always in school at
the time his business took him to the house.
Here is the sad story which Pierrotin could never have discovered, even
by asking for information, as he sometimes did, from the portress of
the house; for that individual knew nothing beyond the fact that the
Claparts paid a rent of two hundred and fifty francs a year, had no
servant but a charwoman who came daily for a few hours in the morning,
that Madame Clapart did some of her smaller washing herself, and paid
the postage on her letters daily, being apparently unable to let the sum
accumulate.
There does not exist, or rather, there seldom exists, a criminal who is
wholly criminal. Neither do we ever meet with a dishonest nature which
is completely dishonest. It is possible for a man to cheat his master
to his own advantage, or rake in for himself alone all the hay in
the manger, but, even while laying up capital by actions more or
less illicit, there are few men who never do good ones. If only from
self-love, curiosity, or by way of variety, or by chance, every man has
his moment of beneficence; he may call it his error, he may never do it
again, but he sacrifices to Goodness, as the most surly man sacrifices
to the Graces once or twice in his life. If Moreau’s faults can ever
be excused, it might be on the score of his persistent kindness in
succoring a woman of whose favors he had once been proud, and in whose
house he was hidden when in peril of his life.
This woman, celebrated under the Directory for her liaison with one
of the five kings of that reign, married, through that all-powerful
protection, a purveyor who was making his millions out of the
government, and whom Napoleon ruined in 1802. This man, named Husson,
became insane through his sudden fall from opulence to poverty; he flung
himself into the Seine, leaving the beautiful Madame Husson pregnant.
Moreau, very intimately allied with Madame Husson, was at that time
condemned to death; he was unable therefore to marry the widow, being
forced to leave France. Madame Husson, then twenty-two years old,
married in her deep distress a government clerk named Clapart, aged
twenty-seven, who was said to be a rising man. At that period of our
history, government clerks were apt to become persons of importance;
for Napoleon was ever on the lookout for capacity. But Clapart, though
endowed by nature with a certain coarse beauty, proved to have no
intelligence. Thinking Madame Husson very rich, he feigned a great
passion for her, and was simply saddled with the impossibility of
satisfying either then or in the future the wants she had acquired in a
life of opulence. He filled, very poorly, a place in the Treasury that
gave him a salary of eighteen hundred francs; which was all the
new household had to live on. When Moreau returned to France as the
secretary of the Comte de Serizy he heard of Madame Husson’s pitiable
condition, and he was able, before his own marriage, to get her an
appointment as head-waiting-woman to Madame Mere, the Emperor’s mother.
But in spite of that powerful protection Clapart was never promoted; his
incapacity was too apparent.
Ruined in 1815 by the fall of the Empire, the brilliant Aspasia of the
Directory had no other resources than Clapart’s salary of twelve hundred
francs from a clerkship obtained for him through the Comte de Serizy.
Moreau, the only protector of a woman whom he had known in possession of
|
get his dinner. Nor had anything
been seen or heard at one o'clock, when Patten came back, and it became
Shirley and Neale's turn to go out. And thereupon arose a difficulty. In
the ordinary course the two elder clerks would have left for an hour and
the manager would have been on duty until they returned. But now the
manager was not there.
"You go," said Neale to Shirley. "I'll wait. Perhaps Mr. Joseph will
come out."
Shirley went--but neither of the partners emerged from the private room.
As a rule they both went across to the Scarnham Arms Hotel at half-past
one for lunch--a private room had been kept for them at that old-world
hostelry from time immemorial--but now they remained within their
parlour, apparently interned from their usual business world. And Neale
had a very good idea of what they were doing. The bank's strong room was
entered from that parlour--Gabriel and Joseph were examining and
checking its contents. The knowledge distressed Neale beyond measure,
and it was only by a resolute effort that he could give his mind to his
duties.
Two o'clock had gone, and Shirley had come back, before the bell rang
again. Neale went into the private room and knew at once that something
had happened. Gabriel stood by his desk, which was loaded with papers
and documents; Joseph leaned against a sideboard, whereon was a decanter
of sherry and a box of biscuits; he had a glass of wine in one hand, and
a half-nibbled biscuit in the other. The smell of the sherry--fine old
brown stuff, which the clerks were permitted to taste now and then, on
such occasions as the partners' birthdays--filled the room.
"Neale," said Gabriel, "have you been out to lunch? No? Take a glass of
wine and eat a biscuit--we shall all have to put off our lunches for an
hour or so."
Neale obeyed--more because he was under order than because he was
hungry. He was too much bothered, too full of vague fears, to think of
his midday dinner. He took the glass which Joseph handed to him, and
picked a couple of biscuits out of the box. And at the first sip Gabriel
spoke again.
"Neale!" he said. "You've been here five years, so one can speak
confidentially. There's something wrong--seriously wrong. Securities are
missing. Securities representing--a lot!"
Neale's face flushed as if he himself had been charged with abstracting
those securities. His hand shook as he set down his glass, and he looked
helplessly from one partner to another. Joseph merely shook his head,
and poured out another glass of sherry for himself: Gabriel shook his
head, too, but with a different expression.
"We don't know exactly how things are," he continued. "But there's the
fact--on a superficial examination. And--Horbury! Of all men in the
world, Horbury!"
"I can't believe it, Mr. Chestermarke!" exclaimed Neale. "Surely, sir,
there's some mistake!"
Joseph brushed crumbs of biscuit off his beard and wagged his head.
"No mistake!" he said softly. "None! The thing is--what's best to do?
Because--he'd have laid his plans. It'll all have been thought
out--carefully."
"I'm afraid so," assented Gabriel. "That's the worst of it. Everything
points to premeditation. And when a man has been so fully trusted----"
A knock at the door prefaced the introduction of Shirley's head. He
glanced into the room with an obvious desire to see what was going on,
but somehow contrived to fix his eyes on the senior partner.
"Lord Ellersdeane, sir," he announced. "Can he see you?"
The two partners looked at each other in evident surprise; then Gabriel
moved to the door and bowed solemnly to some person outside.
"Will your lordship come in?" he said politely.
Lord Ellersdeane, a big, bustling, country-squire type of man, came into
the room, nodding cheerily to its occupants.
"Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Chestermarke," he said. "I understand Horbury
isn't at home, but of course you'll do just as well. The Countess and I
only got back from abroad night before last. She wants her jewels, so
I'll take 'em with me, if you please."
Gabriel Chestermarke, who was drawing forward a chair, took his hand off
it and stared at his visitor.
"The Countess's--jewels!" he said. "Does your lordship mean----"
"Deposited them with Horbury, you know, some weeks ago--when we went
abroad," replied Lord Ellersdeane. "Safe keeping, you know--said he'd
lock 'em up."
Gabriel turned slowly to Joseph. But Joseph shook his head--and Neale,
glancing from one partner to the other, felt himself turning sick with
apprehension.
CHAPTER III
MR. CHESTERMARKE DISCLAIMS LIABILITY
Gabriel Chestermarke, after that one look at his nephew, turned again to
the Earl, politely motioning him to the chair which he had already drawn
forward. And the Earl, whose eyes had been wandering over the pile of
documents on the senior partner's desk, glancing curiously at the open
door of the strong room, and generally taking in a sense of some unusual
occurrence, dropped into it and looked expectantly at the banker.
"There's nothing wrong?" he asked suddenly. "You look--surprised."
Gabriel stiffened his already upright figure.
"Surprised--yes!" he answered. "And something more than surprised--I am
astonished! Your lordship left the Countess's jewels with our manager?
May I ask when--and under what circumstances?"
"About six weeks ago," replied the Earl promptly. "As a rule the jewels
are kept at my bankers in London. The Countess wanted them to wear at
the Hunt Ball, so I fetched them from London myself. Then, as we were
going off to the Continent two days after the ball, and sailing direct
from Kingsport to Hamburg, I didn't want the bother of going up to town
with them, and I thought of Horbury. So I drove in here with them one
evening--the night before we sailed, as a matter of fact--and asked him
to lock them up until our return. And as I said just now, we only got
home the night before last, and we're going up to town tomorrow, and the
Countess wants them to take with her. Of course, you've got 'em all
right?"
Gabriel Chestermarke spread out his hands.
"I know nothing whatever about them!" he said. "I never heard of them
being here."
"Nor I," affirmed Joseph. "Not a word!"
Gabriel looked at Neale, and drew Lord Ellersdeane's attention to him.
"Our senior clerk--Mr. Neale," he said. "Neale--have you heard of this
transaction?"
"Never!" replied Neale. "Mr. Horbury never mentioned it to me."
Gabriel waved his hand towards the open door of the strong room.
"Any valuables of that sort would have been in there," he remarked.
"There is nothing of that sort there--beyond what I and my nephew know
of. I am sure your lordship's jewels are not there."
"But--Horbury?" exclaimed the Earl. "Where is he? He would tell you!"
"We don't know where Mr. Horbury is," answered Gabriel "The truth may as
well be told--he's missing. And so are some of our most valuable
securities."
The Earl slowly looked from one partner to another. His face flushed,
almost as hotly as if he himself had been accused of theft.
"Oh, come!" he said. "Horbury, now, of all men! Come--come!--you don't
mean to tell me that Horbury's been playing games of that sort? There
must be some mistake."
"I shall be glad to be assured that I am making it," said Gabriel
coolly. "But it will be more to the purpose if your lordship will tell
us all about the deposit of these jewels. And--there's an important
matter which I must first mention. We have not the honour of reckoning
your lordship among our customers. Therefore, whatever you handed to
Horbury was handed to him privately--not to us."
Joseph Chestermarke nodded his head at that, and the Earl stirred a
little uneasily in his chair.
"Oh, well!" he said. "I--to tell you the truth, I didn't think about
that, Mr. Chestermarke. It's true I don't keep any account with
you--it's never seemed--er, necessary, you know. But, of course, I knew
Horbury so well--he's a member of our golf club and our archæological
society--that----"
"Precisely," interrupted Gabriel, with a bow. "You came to Mr. Horbury
privately. Not to the firm."
"I came to him knowing that he was your manager, and a man to be
thoroughly trusted, and that he'd have safes and things in which he
could deposit valuables in perfect safety," answered the Earl. "I never
reflected for a moment on the niceties of the matter. I just explained
to him that I wanted those jewels taken care of, and handed them over.
That's all!"
"And--their precise nature?" asked Gabriel.
"And--their value?" added Joseph.
"As to their nature," replied the Earl, "there was my wife's coronet,
her diamond necklace, and the Ellersdeane butterfly, of which I suppose
all the world's heard--heirloom, you know. It's a thing that can be worn
in a lady's hair or as a pendant--diamonds, of course. As to their
value--well, I had them valued some years ago. They're worth about a
hundred thousand pounds."
Gabriel turned to his desk and began to arrange some papers on it, and
Neale, who was watching everything with close attention, saw that his
fingers trembled a little. He made no remark, and the silence was next
broken by Joseph Chestermarke's soft accents.
"Did Horbury give your lordship any receipt, or acknowledgment that he
had received these jewels on deposit?" he asked. "I mean, of course, in
our name?"
The Earl twisted sharply in his chair, and Neale fancied that he saw a
shade of annoyance pass over his good-natured face.
"Certainly not!" he answered. "I should never have dreamt of asking for
a receipt from a man whom I knew as well as I knew--or thought I
knew--Horbury. The whole thing was just as if--well, as if I should ask
any friend to take care of something for me for a while."
"Did Horbury know what you were giving him?" asked Joseph.
"Of course!" replied the Earl. "As a matter of fact, he'd never seen
these things, and I took them out of their case and showed them to him."
"And he said he would lock them up?--in our strong room?" suggested the
soft voice.
"He said nothing about your strong room," answered the Earl. "Nor about
where he'd put them. That was understood. It was understood--a tacit
understanding--that he'd take care of them until our return."
"Did your lordship give him the date of your return?" persisted Joseph,
with the thorough-going air of a cross-examiner.
"Yes--I told him exactly when we should be back," replied the Earl. "The
twelfth of May--day before yesterday."
Joseph moved away from the sideboard towards the hearth, and leaning
against the mantelpiece threw a glance at the strong room.
"The jewels are not in our possession," he said, half indolently. "There
is nothing of that sort in there. There are two safes in the outer room
of the bank--I should say that Mr. Neale here knows everything that is
in them. Do you know anything of these jewels, Neale?"
"Nothing!" said Neale. "I never heard of them."
Gabriel looked up from his papers.
"None of us have heard of them," he remarked. "Horbury could not have
put them in this strong room without my knowledge. They are certainly
not there. The safes my nephew mentioned just now are used only for
books and papers. Your lordship's casket is not in either."
The Earl rose slowly from his chair. It was evident to Neale that he was
more surprised than angry: he looked around him as a man looks whose
understanding is suddenly brought up against something unexplainable.
"All I know is that I handed that casket to Mr. Horbury in his own
dining-room one evening some weeks ago," he said. "That's certain! So I
naturally expect to find it--here."
"And it is not here--that is equally certain," observed Gabriel. "What
is also certain is that our manager--trusted in more than he should have
been!--is missing, and many of our valuable securities with him.
Therefore----"
He spread his hands again with an expressive gesture and once more bent
over his papers. Once more there was silence. Then the Earl started--as
if a thought had suddenly occurred to him.
"I say!" he exclaimed, "don't you think Horbury may have put those
jewels away in his own house?"
Joseph Chestermarke smiled a little derisively.
"A hundred thousand pounds' worth!" he said softly. "Not very likely!"
"But he may have a safe there," urged the Earl. "Most people have a safe
in their houses nowadays--they're so handy, you know, and so cheap.
Don't you think that may be it?"
"I am not familiar with Horbury's domestic arrangements," said Gabriel.
"I have not been in his house for some years. But as we are desirous of
giving your lordship what assistance we can, we will go into the house
and see if there is anything of the sort. Just tell the housekeeper we
are coming in, Neale."
The Earl nodded to Mrs. Carswell as she received him and the two
partners in the adjacent hall.
"This lady will remember my calling on Mr. Horbury one evening a few
weeks ago," he said. "She saw me with him in that room."
"Certainly!" assented Mrs. Carswell, readily enough. "I remember your
lordship calling on Mr. Horbury very well. One night after dinner--your
lordship was here an hour or so."
Gabriel Chestermarke opened the door of the dining-room--an
old-fashioned apartment which looked out on a garden and orchard at the
rear of the house.
"Mrs. Carswell," he said, as they all went in, "has Mr. Horbury a safe
in this room, or in any other room? You know what I mean."
But the housekeeper shook her head. There was no safe in the house.
There was a plate-chest--there it was, standing in a recess by the
sideboard; she had the key of it.
"Open that, at any rate," commanded Gabriel. "It's about as unlikely as
anything could be, but we'll leave nothing undone."
There was nothing in the plate-chest but what Gabriel expected to find
there. He turned again to the housekeeper.
"Is there anything in this house--cupboard, chest, trunk, anything--in
which Mr. Horbury kept valuables?" he asked. "Any place in which he was
in the habit of locking up papers, for instance?"
Mrs. Carswell again shook her head. No, she knew of no such place or
receptacle. There was Mr. Horbury's desk, but she believed all its
drawers were open. Her belief proved to be correct: Gabriel himself
opened drawer after drawer, and revealed nothing of consequence. He
turned to the Earl with another expressive spreading out of his hands.
"I don't see what more we can do to assist your lordship," he said. "I
don't know what more can be done."
"The question is--so it seems to me--what is to be done," replied the
Earl, whose face had been gradually growing graver. "What, for instance,
are you going to do, Mr. Chestermarke? Let us be plain with each other.
You disclaim all liability in connection with my affair?"
"Most certainly!" exclaimed Gabriel. "We know nothing of that
transaction. As I have already said, if Horbury took charge of your
lordship's property, he did so as a private individual, not on our
behalf, not in his capacity as our manager. If your lordship had been a
customer of ours----"
"That would have been a very different matter," said Joseph. "But as we
have never had any dealings with your lordship----"
"We have, of course, no liability to you," concluded Gabriel. "The true
position of the case is that your lordship handed your property to
Horbury as a friend, not as manager of Chestermarke's Bank."
"Then let me ask you, what are you going to do?" said the Earl. "I mean,
not about my affair, but about finding your manager?"
Gabriel looked at his nephew: Joseph shook his head.
"So far," said Joseph, "we have not quite considered that. We are not
yet fully aware of how things stand. We have a pretty good idea, but it
will take another day."
"You don't mean to tell me that you're going to let another day elapse
before doing something?" exclaimed the Earl. "Bless my soul!--I'd have
had the hue and cry out before noon today, if I'd been you!"
"If you'd been Chestermarke's Bank, my lord," remarked Joseph, in his
softest manner, "that's precisely what you would not have done. We don't
want it noised all over the town and neighbourhood that our trusted
manager has suddenly run away with our money--and your jewels--in his
pocket."
There was a curious note--half-sneering, half-sinister--in the junior
partner's quiet voice which made the Earl turn and look at him with a
sudden new interest. Before either could speak, Neale ventured to say
what he had been wanting to say for half an hour.
"May I suggest something, sir?" he said, turning to Gabriel.
"Speak--speak!" assented Gabriel hastily. "Anything you like!"
"Mr. Horbury may have met with an accident," said Neale. "He was fond of
taking his walks in lonely places--there are plenty outside the town. He
may be lying somewhere even now--helpless."
"Capital suggestion!--much obliged to you," exclaimed the Earl. "Gad! I
wonder we never thought of that before! Much the most likely thing. I
can't believe that Horbury----"
Before he could say more, the door of the dining-room was thrown open, a
clear, strong voice was heard speaking to some one without, and in
walked a handsome young woman, who pulled herself up on the threshold to
stare out of a pair of frank grey eyes at the four startled men.
CHAPTER IV
THE MODERN YOUNG WOMAN
Mrs. Carswell, who had left the gentlemen to themselves after opening
the plate-chest, followed the new-comer into the room and looked
appealingly at the senior partner.
"This is Miss Fosdyke, sir," she said, as if accounting for the
unceremonious entrance. "Mr. Horbury's----"
But Miss Fosdyke, having looked round her, entered the arena of
discussion as abruptly as she had entered the room.
"You're Mr. Chestermarke!" she said, turning to Gabriel. "I remember
you. What's all this, Mr. Chestermarke? I come down from London to meet
my uncle, and to go on with him to Scotland for a holiday, and I learn
that he's disappeared! What is it? What has happened? Why are you all
looking so mysterious? Is something wrong? Where is my uncle?"
Gabriel, who had assumed his stereotyped expression of calm attention
under this tornado of questions, motioned Joseph to place a chair for
the young lady. But Miss Fosdyke shook her head and returned to the
attack.
"Please don't keep anything back!" she said. "I am not of the
fainting-to-order type of young woman. Just say what is the matter, if
you please. Mrs. Carswell knows no more----"
"Than we do," interrupted Joseph, with one of his peculiar smiles.
"Hadn't you better sit down?"
"Not until I know what has happened," retorted the visitor. "Because if
anything has happened there will be something for me to do, and it's
foolish to sit down when one's got to get up again immediately. Mr.
Chestermarke, are you going to answer my questions?"
Gabriel bowed stiffly.
"I have the honour of addressing----" he began.
"You have the honour--if you like to put it so--of addressing Miss Betty
Fosdyke, who is Mr. John Horbury's niece," replied the young lady
impatiently. "Mrs. Carswell has told you that already. Besides--you saw
me, more than once, when I was a little girl. And that's not so very
long ago. Now, Mr. Chestermarke, where is my uncle?"
"I do not know where your uncle is," replied Gabriel suddenly, and
losing his starchiness. "I wish to Heaven I did!"
"None of us know where Mr. John Horbury is," repeated Joseph, in his
suavest tones. "We all wish to Heaven we did!"
The girl turned and gave the junior partner a look which took in every
inch of him. It was a look which began with a swift speculation and
ended in something very like distaste. But Joseph Chestermarke met it
with his usual quiet smile.
"It would make such a lot of difference--if we knew!" he murmured. "As
it is--things are unpleasant."
Miss Fosdyke finished her reflection and turned away.
"I remember you now," she said calmly. "You're Joseph Chestermarke. Now
I will sit down. And I insist on being told--everything!"
"My dear young lady!" exclaimed Gabriel, "there is next to nothing to
tell. If you will have the unpleasant truth, here it is. Your uncle,
whom we have trusted for more years than I care to mention, disappeared
on Saturday evening, and nobody knows where he is, nor whither he went.
All we know is that we find some of our property missing--valuable
securities. And this gentleman--Lord Ellersdeane--tells us that six
weeks ago he entrusted jewels worth a hundred thousand pounds to your
uncle's keeping--they, too, are missing. What can we think?"
The girl's face had flushed, and her brows had drawn together in an
angry frown by the time Gabriel had finished, and Neale, silently
watching her from the background, saw her fingers clench themselves. She
gave a swift glance at the Earl, and then fixed her eyes steadily on
Gabriel.
"Are you telling me that my uncle is a--thief?" she demanded. "Are you,
Mr. Chestermarke?"
"I'm not, anyhow!" exclaimed the Earl. "I--I--so far as I'm concerned, I
say there's some mistake."
"Thank you!" she answered quietly. "But--you, Mr. Chestermarke?
Come--I'm entitled to an answer."
Gabriel showed signs of deep annoyance. He had the reputation of being a
confirmed woman-hater, and it was plain that he was ill at ease in
presence of this plain-spoken young person.
"You appear to be a lady of much common sense!" he said. "Therefore----"
"I have some common sense," interrupted Miss Fosdyke coolly. "And what
amount I possess tells me that I never heard anything more ridiculous in
my life than the suggestion that my uncle should steal anything from
anybody! Why, he was, and is, I hope, a fairly well-to-do man! And if he
wanted money, he'd only to come to me. It so happens that I'm one of the
wealthiest young women in England. If my uncle had wanted a few
thousands or tens of thousands to play ducks and drakes with, he'd only
to ring me up on the telephone, and he'd have had whatever he asked for
in a few hours. That's not boasting, Mr. Chestermarke--that's just plain
truth. My uncle a thief! Mr. Chestermarke!--there's only one word for
your suggestion. Don't think me rude if I tell you what it is.
It's--bosh!"
Gabriel's colourless face twitched a little, and he drew himself up.
"I have no acquaintance with modern young ladies," he remarked icily. "I
daresay they have their own way of looking at things--and of expressing
themselves. I, too, have mine. Also I have my own conclusions, and----"
"I say, Mr. Chestermarke!" said the Earl, hastening to intervene in what
seemed likely to develop into a passage-at-arms. "We're forgetting the
suggestion made just before this lady--Miss Fosdyke, I think?--entered.
Don't let's forget it--it's a good one."
Miss Fosdyke turned eagerly to the Earl.
"What suggestion was it?" she asked. "Do tell me? I'm sure you agree
with me--I can see you do. Thank you, again!"
"This gentleman," said the Earl, pointing to Neale, who had retreated
into a corner and was staring out of the window, "suggests that Horbury
may have met with an accident, you know, and be lying helpless
somewhere. I sincerely hope he isn't but----"
Miss Fosdyke jumped from her chair. She turned an indignant look on
Gabriel and let it go on to Joseph.
"You don't mean to tell me that you have not done anything to find my
uncle?" she exclaimed with fiery emphasis. "You've surely had some
search made?--surely!"
"We knew nothing of his disappearance until ten o'clock this morning,"
replied Gabriel, half-angrily.
"But--since then? Why, you've had five hours!" she said. "Has nothing
been done? Haven't you even told the police?"
"Certainly not!" answered Gabriel. "It is not our policy."
Miss Fosdyke made one step to the door and flung it open.
"Then I shall!" she exclaimed. "Policy, indeed! High time I came down
here, I think! Thank you, Lord Ellersdeane--and the other gentleman--for
the suggestion. Now I'll go and act on it. And when I act, Mr.
Chestermarke, I do it thoroughly!"
The next moment she had slammed the door, and Gabriel Chestermarke
glanced at his partner.
"Annoying!" he said. "A most unpleasant young woman! I should have
preferred not to tell the police until--well, at any rate, tomorrow. We
really do not know to what extent we are--but then, what's the use of
talking of that now? We can't prevent her going to the police-station."
"Why, really, Mr. Chestermarke," observed the Earl, "don't you think
it's the best thing to do? To tell you the truth, considering that I'm
concerned, I was going to do the very same thing myself."
Gabriel bowed stiffly.
"We could not have prevented your lordship either," he said, with
another wave of the white hands which seemed to go so well with the
habitual pallor of his face. "All that is within your lordship's
jurisdiction--not in ours. But--especially since this young lady seems
determined to do things in her way--I will tell your lordship why we are
slow to move. It is purely a business reason. It was, as I said, ten
o'clock when we heard that Horbury was missing. That in itself was such
a very strange and unusual thing that my partner and I at once began to
examine the contents of our strong room. We had been so occupied five
hours when your lordship called. Do you think we could examine
everything in five hours? No--nor in ten, nor in twenty! Our task is not
one quarter complete! And why we don't wish publicity at once in
here--we hold a vast number of securities and valuables belonging to
customers. Title-deeds, mortgages--all sorts of things. We have
valuables deposited with us. Up to now we don't know what is safe and
what isn't. We do know this--certain securities of our own, easily
convertible on the market, are gone! Now if we had allowed it to be
known before, say, noon today, that our manager had disappeared, and
these securities with him, what would have been the result? The bank
would have been besieged! Before we let the public know, we ourselves
want to know exactly where we are. We want to be in a position to say to
Smith, 'Your property is safe!'; to Jones, 'Your deeds are here!' Does
your lordship see that? But now, of course," concluded Gabriel, "as this
Miss Fosdyke can and will spread the news all over the town--why, we
must face things."
The Earl, who had listened to all this with an evident desire to
comprehend and to sympathize, nodded his head.
"I see--I see, Mr. Chestermarke," he said. "But I say!--I've got another
notion--I'm not a very quick thinker, and I daresay my idea came out of
Mr. Neale's suggestion. Anyway, it's this--for whatever it's worth. I
told you that we only got home night before last--early on Saturday
evening, as a matter of fact. Now, it was known in the town here that
we'd returned--we drove through the Market-Place. Mayn't it be that
Horbury saw us, or heard of our return, and that when he went out that
evening he had the casket in his pocket and was on his way to
Ellersdeane, to return it to me? And that--on his way--he met with some
mishap? Worth considering, you know."
"I daresay a great many theories might--and will--be raised, my lord,"
replied Gabriel. "But----"
"Does your lordship also think--or suggest--that Horbury also carried
our missing securities in his pocket?" asked Joseph quietly. "Because
we, at any rate, know they're gone!"
"Oh, well!" said the Earl, "I--I merely suggest it, you know. The
country between here and Ellersdeane is a bit rough and wild--there's
Ellersdeane Hollow, you know--a queer place on a dark night. And if a
man took a short cut--as many people do--through the Hollow, there are
places he could fall into. But, as I say, I merely suggest that as a
reasonable theory."
"What does your lordship propose to do?" asked Gabriel.
"I certainly think inquiry should be set going," answered the Earl.
"Already done," remarked Joseph drily. "Miss Fosdyke has been with the
police five minutes."
"I mean--it should be done by us," said the Earl.
"Very well," said Gabriel suddenly, "it shall be done, then. No doubt
your lordship would like to give the police your own story. Mr. Neale,
will you go with Lord Ellersdeane to Superintendent Polke? Your duty
will be to give him the mere information that Mr. Horbury left his house
at a quarter to eight on Saturday evening and has not been heard of
since. No more, Neale. And now," he concluded, with a bow to the Earl,
"your lordship will excuse my partner and myself if we return to a
singularly unpleasant task."
Lord Ellersdeane and Neale left the bank-house and walked towards the
police-station. They crossed the Market-Place in silence, but as they
turned the corner of the Moot Hall, the elder man spoke, touching his
companion's shoulder with a confidential gesture.
"I don't believe a word of all that, Mr. Neale!" he said. "Not one
word!"
Neale started and glanced at the Earl's moody face.
"Your lordship doesn't believe--?" he began, and checked himself.
"I don't believe that Horbury's done what those two accuse him of,"
affirmed the Earl. "Not for one moment! I can't account for those
missing securities they talk about, but I'll stake my honour that
Horbury hasn't got 'em! Nor my wife's jewels either. You heard and saw
how astounded that girl was. By the by--who is she!"
"Mr. Horbury's niece--Miss Fosdyke--from London," replied Neale.
"She spoke of her wealth," remarked the Earl.
"Yes," said Neale. "She must be wealthy, too. She's the sole proprietor
of Fosdyke's Brewery."
"Ho-ho!" laughed the Earl. "That's it, eh? Fosdyke's Entire! Of
course--I've seen the name on no end of public-houses in London. Sole
proprietor? Dear me!--why, I have some recollection that Fosdyke, of
that brewery, was at one time a member of Parliament."
"Yes," assented Neale. "He married Mr. Horbury's sister. Miss Fosdyke is
their only child. Mr. Fosdyke died a few years ago, and she came into
the property last year when she was twenty-one."
"Lucky young woman!" muttered the Earl. "Fine thing to own a big
brewery. Um! A very modern and up-to-date young lady, too: I liked the
way she stood up to your principals. Of course, she'll have told Polke
all the story by this time. As for ourselves--what had we better do?"
Neale had considered that question as he came along.
"There's only one thing to do, my lord," he answered. "We want the
solution of a problem: what became of Mr. Horbury last Saturday night?"
CHAPTER V
THE SEARCH BEGINS
Polke, superintendent of the Scarnham police force, a little, round,
cheery-faced man, whose mutton-chop whiskers suggested much
business-like capacity and an equal amount of common sense, rose from
his desk and bowed as the Earl of Ellersdeane entered his office.
"I know what your lordship's come for!" he said, with a twinkle of the
eye which betokened infinite comprehension. "The young lady's been
here."
"And has no doubt told you everything?" remarked the Earl, as he dropped
into the chair which the superintendent drew forward. "Has she?"
"Pretty well, my lord," replied Polke, with a chuckle. "She's not one to
let much grass grow under her feet, I think."
"Given you the facts, I suppose?" asked the Earl.
Polke motioned to Neale to seat himself, and resumed his own seat. He
put his fingers together over his desk and looked from one to the other
of his visitors.
"I'll give the young lady this much credit," he said. "She can tell one
what she wants in about as few words as could possibly be used! Yes, my
lord--she told me the facts in a couple of sentences. Her uncle
disappeared--nobody knows where he is--suspected already of running away
with your lordship's jewels and Chestermarke's securities. A very nice
business indeed!"
"What do you think of it?" asked the Earl.
"As a policeman, nothing--so far," answered Polke, with another twinkle.
"As a man, that I don't believe it!"
"Nor do I!" said the Earl. "That is, I don't believe that Horbury's
appropriated anything. There's some mistake--and some mystery."
"We can't get away from the fact that Mr. Horbury has disappeared,"
remarked Neale, looking at the superintendent. "That's all I'm sent here
to tell you, Mr. Polke."
"That's an accepted fact," agreed Polke. "But he's not the first man
who's disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Some men, as your
lordship knows, disappear--and reappear with good reasons for their
absence. Some never reappear. Some men aren't wanted to reappear. When a
man disappears and he's wanted--why, the job is to find him."
"What does Miss Fosdyke wish?" asked the Earl, nodding assent to these
philosophies. "She would say, of course."
"Miss Fosdyke's way, my lord--so far as I could gather from ten minutes'
talk with her--is to tell people what to do," answered Polke drily.
|
Some of the antecedent work was
done in attempting to disprove the old “spontaneous generation” theory
as to the origin of organisms; some in searching for the causes of
disease and some in the study of fermentation and putrefaction.
SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.
Speculation as to the first origin of life is as old as history and
doubtless older. Every people of antiquity had its own legends, as for
example, the account in Genesis. This question never can be definitely
settled, even though living matter should be made in the laboratory.
The doctrine of the “spontaneous origin” of particular animals or
plants from dead material under man’s own observation is a somewhat
different proposition and may be subjected to experimental test. The
old Greek philosophers believed it. Anaximander (B.C. 610-547) taught
that some animals are derived from moisture. Even Aristotle (B.C.
384-322) said that “animals sometimes arise in soil, in plants, or
in other animals,” _i.e._, spontaneously. It can be stated that this
belief was general from his day down through the Dark and Middle Ages
and later. Cardano (A.D. 1501-1576) wrote that water gives rise to
fish and animals and is also the cause of fermentation. Van Helmont
(1578-1644) gives directions for making artificial mice. Kircher
(1602-1680) describes and figures animals _produced under his own eyes_
by water on plant stems.
However, many thinkers of the seventeenth century doubted the truth
of this long-established belief. Francesco Redi (1626-1698) made a
number of experiments which tended to prove that maggots did not
arise spontaneously in meat, as was generally believed, but developed
only when flies had an opportunity to deposit their eggs on the
meat. It seems that by the latter part of this century the idea that
organisms large enough to be seen with the naked eye could originate
spontaneously was generally abandoned by learned men.
The work of Leeuwenhoek served to suspend for a time the subject of
spontaneous generation, only to have it revived more vigorously later
on. He is usually called “The Father of the Microscope,” though the
compound microscope was invented probably by Hans Zansz or his son
Zacharias, of Holland, about 1590. Leeuwenhoek used a simple lens,
but his instruments were so much more powerful that they opened up an
entirely new and unknown world. (Fig. 1.)
Anthony van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) was apprenticed to a linen draper
and accumulated a comfortable fortune in this business. He became
interested in the grinding of spectacle lenses, then an important
industry in Delft, Holland, where he lived, and did a great deal of
experimental work in this line, mainly for his own enjoyment. Finally
he succeeded in making a lens so powerful that he could see in water
and various infusions very minute living bodies never before observed.
Leeuwenhoek contributed 112 papers to the Royal Society of Great
Britain, the first in 1673, many of them accompanied by such accurate
descriptions and drawings, for example a paper submitted September
12, 1683, that there is no doubt that he really saw bacteria and was
the first to do so (Fig. 2). Rightly may he be styled “The Father
of Bacteriology,” if not of the microscope. He says in one paper:
“With the greatest astonishment I observed that everywhere through
the material I was examining were distributed _animalcules_ of the
most microscopic dimness which moved themselves about in a remarkably
energetic way.” Thus he considered these living objects to be animals,
from their motion, and this belief held sway for nearly two hundred
years.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Leeuwenhoek’s Microscope. A is the simple
bi-convex lens held firmly in place. In front of this is the small
table, B, with the support, C, on the tip of which the object to be
examined was held. This support could be brought nearer to or removed
further away from the lens and held firmly in place by the screw, D.
E is a second screw for raising or lowering the entire table. A concave
mirror that Leeuwenhoek sometimes used to focus more light on the
object under examination, is shown at the right.]
Leeuwenhoek was a pure observer of facts and made no attempt at
speculation, but his discoveries soon started the theorists to
discussing the origin of these minute organisms. Most observers, as
was probably to be expected, believed that they arose spontaneously.
Needham, in 1749, described the development of microörganisms
around grains of barley in water. Bonnet, in 1768, suggested that
probably Needham’s animalcules came from ova in the liquid. The Abbot
Spallanzani, in 1769, called attention to the crudeness of Needham’s
methods and later, in 1776, attempted to disprove spontaneous origin
by heating infusions of organic material in flasks and then _sealing_
them. His critics raised the objections that heating the liquids
destroyed their ability to support life, and that sealing prevented
the access of fresh air which was also necessary. The first objection
was disproved by the accidental cracking of some of the flasks which
thereafter showed an abundant growth. This accident seemed also to
support the second objection, and Spallanzani did not answer it. Though
Spallanzani’s experiments failed to convince his opponents, they led to
important practical results, since François Appert, in 1810, applied
them to the preserving of fruits, meats, etc., and in a sense started
the modern canning industry.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--The first drawings of bacteria by Leeuwenhoek.
The dotted line _C-D_ indicates the movement of the organism.]
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--Schultze’s experiment. The set of bulbs next to
the face contained KOH and the other set concentrated H₂SO₄. Air was
drawn through at frequent intervals from May until August but no growth
developed in the boiled infusion.]
From Spallanzani to Schultze, there were no further experiments to
prove or disprove spontaneous generation. Schultze, in 1836, attempted
to meet the second objection to Spallanzani’s experiment, _i.e._,
the exclusion of air, by drawing air through his boiled infusions,
first causing it to bubble through concentrated sulphuric acid to
kill the “germs” (Fig. 3.). His flasks fortunately showed no growths,
but his critics claimed that the strong acid changed the properties
of the air so that it would not support life. This experiment of
Schultze’s, though devised for a different purpose, was really the
first _experiment_ in the use of _chemical disinfectants_, though
Thaer (page 31) had used chemicals in a practical way. Schwann, in
1837, modified this experiment, by drawing the air through a tube
heated to destroy the living germs (Fig. 4). His experiments were
successful but the “spontaneous generation” theorists raised the same
objection, _i.e._, the change in the air by heating. This was the first
_experiment_ in which the principle of “_dry heat_” or “_hot air_”
sterilization was used. Similar arguments were brought forward, also
to the use of _cotton plugs_ as filters by Schroeder and Dusch in 1859
(Fig. 5). This was the first use of the principle of _sterilization by
filtration_. It remained for Chevreuil and Pasteur to overcome this
objection in 1861 by the use of flasks with long necks drawn out to a
point and bent over. These permitted a full access of air by diffusion
but kept out living germs, since these cannot fly but are carried
mechanically by air currents or fall of their own weight (Fig. 6.).
Hoffman, the year before (1860), had made similar experiments but these
remained unnoticed. The Pasteur flasks convinced most scientists that
“spontaneous generation” has never been observed by man, though some
few, notably Dr. Charlton Bastian, of England, vigorously supported the
theory from the early seventies until his death in November, 1915.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.--Schwann’s experiment. After boiling, as shown
in the diagram, and cooling, air was drawn into the flask by aspiration
while the coiled tube was kept hot with the flame.]
[Illustration: FIG. 5.--Schroeder and Dusch’s experiment. The
aspirating bottle drew the air through the flask after it had been
filtered by the cotton in the tube.]
[Illustration: FIG. 6.--Pasteur’s flask.]
[Illustration: FIG. 7.--Tyndall’s box. One side is removed to show
the construction. The bent tubes at the top are to permit a free
circulation of air into the interior. The window at the back has one
corresponding in the front (removed). Through these the beam of light
sent through from the lamp at the side was observed. The three tubes
received the infusion and were then boiled in an oil bath. The pipette
was for filling the tubes. (Popular Science Monthly, April, 1877.).]
John Tyndall, in combating Bastian’s views showed that boiled infusions
left open to the air in a closed box through which air circulated
did not show any growth of organisms provided the air was so free of
particles that the path of a ray of light sent through it from side to
side could not be seen (Fig. 7). Or if such sterilized infusions were
exposed to dust-free air, as in the high Alps, the majority showed
no growth, while all infusions in dusty air did show an abundance of
organisms. Tyndall’s experiments confirmed those of Pasteur and his
predecessors and showed that the organisms developed from “germs”
present in the air falling into the liquids and not spontaneously.
While Tyndall’s experiments were of great value as indicated, they
probably were harmful in another way. These “germs in the air” were
considered by bacteriologists as well as laymen to include necessarily
many _disease germs_ and to indicate the very general, if not
universal, presence of these latter _in the air_. This idea led to many
erroneous practices in sanitation and disinfection which even to this
day are not eliminated.
CAUSATION OF DISEASE.
The transmission of disease from person to person was recognized by the
ancients of European and Asiatic countries. Inoculation of smallpox was
practiced in China and India probably several thousand years ago and
was introduced by Lady Mary Wortley Montague into England in 1721, from
Constantinople. These beliefs and practices do not seem to have been
associated with any speculations or theories as to the cause of the
disease.
Apparently the first writer on this subject was Varo, about B.C. 70,
who suggested that fevers in swampy places were due to invisible
organisms. The treatment of wounds during the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries by hot wine fomentations and by the application of plasters
was based on the theory that the _air_ brought about conditions in the
wounds which led to suppuration. These practices were indeed primitive
antisepsis, yet were not based on a _germ theory_ of the conditions
which were partially prevented. Fracastorius (1484-1553), in a work
published in 1546, elaborated a theory of “disease germs” and “direct
and indirect contagion” very similar to modern views, though based
on no direct pathological knowledge. Nevertheless Kircher (mentioned
already) is usually given undeserved credit for the “contagium vivum”
theory. In 1657 by the use of simple lenses he observed “worms” in
decaying substances, in blood and in the pus from bubonic plague
patients (probably rouleaux of corpuscles in the blood, certainly not
bacteria in any case). Based on these observations and possibly also on
reading the work of Fracastorius, his theory of a “living cause” for
various diseases was published in 1671, but received little support.
The discoveries of Leeuwenhoek which proved the existence of
microscopic organisms soon revived the “contagium vivum” idea of
Kircher. Nicolas Andry in a work published in 1701 upheld this view.
Lancisi in 1718 advanced the idea that “animalcules” were responsible
for malaria, a view not proved until Laveran discovered the malarial
parasite in 1880.[1] Physicians ascribed the plague which visited
Southern France in 1721 to the same cause, and many even went so far as
to attribute all disease to animalcules, which brought the theory into
ridicule. Nevertheless the “contagium vivum” theory survived, and even
Linnaeus in his _Systema Naturæ_ (1753-6) recognized it by placing the
organisms of Leeuwenhoek, the contagia of diseases and the causes of
putrefaction and fermentation in one class called “Chaos.”
Plenciz, a prominent physician and professor in the Vienna Medical
School, published in 1762 a work in which he gave strong arguments for
the “living cause” theory for transmissable diseases. He taught that
the agent is evidently transmitted through the air and that there is
a certain period of incubation pointing to a multiplication within
the body. He also believed that there was a specific agent for each
disease. His writings attracted little attention at the time and the
“contagium vivum” theory seems to have been almost lost sight of for
more than fifty years. Indeed, Oznam, in 1820, said it was no use to
waste time in refuting hypotheses as to the animal nature of contagium.
Isolated observers, were, however, keeping the idea alive, each in
his own locality. In 1787 Wollstein, of Vienna, showed that the pus
from horses with glanders could infect other horses if inoculated
into the skin. Abilgaard, of Copenhagen, made similar experiments at
about the same time. In 1797 Eric Viborg, a pupil of Abilgaard’s,
published experiments in which he showed the infectious nature not
only of the pus but also of the nasal discharges, saliva, urine, etc.,
of glandered horses. Jenner in 1795-98 introduced vaccination as a
method of preventing smallpox. This epoch-making discovery attracted
world wide attention and led to the overcoming of this scourge which
had devastated Europe for centuries, but contributed little or nothing
to the question of the causation of disease. Prevost’s discovery of
the cause of grain rust (_Puccinia graminis_) in 1807 was the _first
instance of an infectious disease of plants_ shown to be _due to a
microscopic plant organism_, though not a bacterium in this case.
Doubtless one reason why the work on glanders and grain rust attracted
little attention among the practitioners of human medicine was owing to
the prevalent belief in man’s complete separation from all lower forms
of life. The evolutionists had not yet paved the way for experimental
medicine.
In 1822 Gaspard showed the poisonous nature of material from infected
wounds by injecting it into animals and causing their death. Tiedemann
(1822), Peacock (1828) described “little bodies” in the muscles of
human cadavers which Hilton (1832) considered to be parasitic in
nature. Paget (1835) showed that these bodies were round worms and
Owen (1835) described them more accurately and gave the name _Trichina
spiralis_ to them. Leidy (1846) found organisms in the muscles of
hogs which he considered to be the same as Owen’s Trichina and paved
the way for the work of Zenker (1860) in showing the pathological
relation between the Trichina of pork and human Trichinosis. Bearing
on the “contagium vivum” theory was the rediscovery of the “itch mite”
(_Sarcoptes scabiei_) by Renucci (1834), an Italian medical student.
This had been declared several hundred years before but had been lost
sight of. Chevreuil and Pasteur, in 1836, showed that putrefaction did
not occur in meat protected from contamination, and suggested that
wound infection probably resulted from entrance of germs from without.
Bassi, investigating a disease of silkworms in Italy, demonstrated
that a certain mold-like fungus (_Botrytis bassiana_) was the cause in
1837. This was the _first instance of a microscopic vegetable organism_
proved to be capable of _causing disease in an animal_.
Boehm, in 1838, observed minute organisms in the stools of cholera
patients and conjectured that they might have a causal connection
with the disease. Dubini of Milan in 1838 discovered the _Ankylostoma
duodenale_ which later was further described by Omodei in 1843 and
shown to be the cause of Egyptian chlorosis by Griesinger (1851).
The fungous nature of favus, a scalp disease, was recognized by
Schönlein in 1839, and the organism was afterward called “_Achorion
schoenleinii_.” Berg, in 1839-41, showed that thrush is likewise due to
a fungus, “_Oidium albicans_.”
These discoveries led Henle, in 1840, to publish a work in which
he maintained that all contagious diseases must be due to living
organisms, and to propound certain postulates (afterward restated
by Koch and now known as “Koch’s postulates” p. 233) which must be
demonstrated before one can be sure that a given organism is the
specific cause of a given disease. The methods then in vogue and the
instruments of that period did not enable Henle to prove his claims,
but he must be given the credit for establishing the “contagium vivum”
theory on a good basis and pointing the way for men better equipped to
prove its soundness in after years.
[Illustration: PLATE II
SIR JOSEPH LISTER]
In 1842-43 Gruby showed that Herpes tonsurans, a form of ringworm, is
due to the fungus _Trichophyton tonsurans_. Klencke, in 1843, produced
generalized tuberculosis in a rabbit by injecting tuberculous material
into a vein in the ear, but did not carry his researches further.
In 1843, Doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a paper in which he
contended that puerperal fever was contagious. Liebert identified the
_Peronospora infestans_ as the cause of one type of potato rot in 1845.
The skin disease Pityriasis (tinea) versicolor was shown to be due to
the _Microsporon furfur_ by Eichstedt in 1846. In 1847 Semmelweiss of
Vienna recommended disinfection of the hands with chloride of lime by
obstetricians because he believed with Holmes in the transmissibility
of puerperal fever through poisons carried in this way from the
dissecting room but his theories were ridiculed.
[Illustration: PLATE III
ROBERT KOCH]
Pollender, in 1849, and Davaine and Rayer, in 1850, independently
observed small rod-like bodies in the blood of sheep and cattle
which had died of splenic fever (anthrax). That Egyptian chlorosis,
afterward identified with Old World “hookworm disease,” is caused by
the _Ankylostoma duodenale_ was shown by Greisinger in 1851. In the
same year the _Schistosomum hematobium_ was shown to be the cause
of the “Bilharzia disease” by Bilharz. Küchenmeister discovered the
tapeworm, _Tænia solium_, in 1852, Cohn, an infectious disease of
flies due to a parasitic fungus (_Empusa muscæ_) in 1855, and Zenker
showed the connection between trichinosis of pork (“measly pork”)
and human trichinosis (1860) as indicated above. The organisms just
mentioned are, of course, not bacteria, but these discoveries proved
conclusively that _living things of one kind or another, some large,
most of them microscopic, could cause disease in other organisms_ and
stimulated the search for other “living contagiums.” In 1863 Davaine,
already mentioned, showed that anthrax could be transmitted from
animal to animal by inoculation of blood, but only if the blood
contained the minute rods which he believed to be the cause. Davaine
later abandoned this belief because he transmitted the disease with
old blood in which he could find no rods. It is now known that this
was because the bacilli were in the “spore” form which Davaine did not
recognize. He thus missed the definite proof of the bacterial nature
of anthrax because he was not familiar with the life history of the
organism which was worked out by Koch thirteen years later. In 1865
Villemin repeatedly caused tuberculosis in rabbits by subcutaneous
injection of tuberculous material and showed that this disease must be
infectious also. In the same year Lord Lister introduced antiseptic
methods in surgery. He believed that wound infections were due to
microörganisms getting in from the air, the surgeon’s fingers, etc.,
and without proving this, he used carbolic acid to kill these germs
and prevent the infection. His pioneer experiments made modern surgery
possible. In this year also, Pasteur was sent to investigate a disease,
Pebrine, which was destroying the silkworms in Southern France. He
showed the cause to be a protozoan which had been seen previously by
Cornalia and described by Nägeli under the name _Nosema bombycis_ and
devised preventive measures. This was the _first infectious disease_
shown to be _due to a protozoan_. In 1866 Rindfleisch observed small
pin-point-like bodies in the heart muscle of persons who had died
of wound infection. Klebs, in 1870-71, published descriptions and
names of organisms he had found in the material from similar wounds,
though he did not establish their causal relation. Bollinger, in
1872, discovered the spores of anthrax and explained the persistence
of the disease in certain districts as due to the resistant spores.
In 1873 Obermeier observed in the blood of patients suffering from
recurrent fever long, flexible spiral organisms which have been named
_Spirochæta obermeieri_. Lösch ascribed tropical dysentery to an ameba,
named by him _Amœba coli_, in 1875. Finally, Koch, in 1876, isolated
the anthrax bacillus, worked out the life history of the organism
and reproduced the disease by the injection of pure cultures and
recovered the organism from the inoculated animals, thus establishing
beyond reasonable doubt its causal relationship to the disease. This
was the _first instance of a bacterium_ proved to be the cause of a
_disease in animals_. Pasteur, working on the disease at the same time,
confirmed all of Koch’s findings, though his results were published
the next year, 1877. Bollinger determined that the _Actinomyces bovis_
(_Streptothrix bovis_) is the cause of actinomycosis in cattle in
1877. Woronin in the same year discovered a protozoan (_Plasmodiophora
brassicæ_) to be the cause of a disease in cabbage, the _first proved
instance of a unicellular animal causing a disease in a plant_. In 1878
Koch published his researches on wound infection in which he showed
beyond question that microörganisms are the cause of this condition,
though Pasteur in 1837, had suggested the same thing and Lister had
acted on the theory in preventing infection.
These discoveries, especially those of Koch, immediately attracted
world-wide attention and stimulated a host of workers, so that within
the next ten years most of the bacteria which produce disease in
men and animals were isolated and described. It is well to remember
that the first _specific_ disease of man proved to be caused by a
_bacterium_ was _tuberculosis_, by Koch in 1882.
Progress was greatly assisted by the introduction of anilin dyes as
suitable stains for organisms by Weigert in 1877, by Koch’s application
of special technic and gelatin cultures for isolation and study, 1881,
and the great improvements in the microscope by Prof. Abbé, of Jena.
Laveran’s discovery of the malarial parasite in 1880 turned attention
to protozoa as the causes of disease and led to the discovery of the
various piroplasmoses and trypanosomiases in man and the lower animals.
Pasteur’s protective inoculations in chicken cholera and anthrax
directed attention to the possibility of using bacteria or their
products as a specific protective or curative means against particular
diseases. This finally led to the discovery of diphtheria antitoxin by
Behring, and independently by Roux, in 1890, a discovery which opened
up the wide field of immunity which is so persistently cultivated at
the present time.
[Illustration: PLATE IV
LOUIS PASTEUR]
While the causation of disease by bacteria has probably attracted
most attention, especially in the popular mind, it should not be
forgotten that this is but one of the numerous ways in which these
organisms manifest their activities, and in a sense it is one of
their least-important ways, since other kinds are essential in many
industries (dairying, agriculture) and processes (sewage purification)
and are even _indispensable for the very existence of all green plants
and hence of animals, including man himself_.
PUTREFACTION AND FERMENTATION.
The idea that there is a certain resemblance between some infectious
diseases and the processes of putrefaction and fermentation seems to
have originated during the discussion on spontaneous generation and
the “contagium vivum” theory which followed Leeuwenhoek’s discoveries.
Plenciz (1762) appears to have first formulated this belief in writing.
He considered putrefaction to be due to the “animalcules” and said that
it occurred only when there was a coat of organisms on the material
and only when they increased and multiplied. Spallanzani’s experiments
tended to support this view since his infusions did not “spoil” when
boiled and sealed. Appert’s practical application of this idea has been
mentioned.
Thaer, in his _Principles of Rational Agriculture_, published in the
first quarter of the nineteenth century, expressed the belief that the
“blue milk fermentation” was probably due to a kind of fungus that
gets in from the air, and stated that he had prevented it by treating
the milk cellars and vessels, with sulphur fumes or with “oxygenated
hydrochloric acid” (hypochlorous acid).
In 1836 Chevreuil and Pasteur showed that putrefaction did not occur
in meat protected from contamination. In 1837 Caignard-Latour, in
France, and Schwann, in Germany, independently showed that alcoholic
fermentation in beer and wine is due to the growth of a microscopic
plant, the yeast, in the fermenting wort. C. J. Fuchs described the
organism which is commonly called the “blue milk bacillus” in 1841 and
conjectured that the souring of milk was probably bacterial in origin.
It remained for Pasteur to prove this in 1857. During the following
six or seven years Pasteur also proved that acetic acid fermentation,
as in vinegar making, butyric acid fermentation (odor of rancid butter
and old cheese) and the ammoniacal fermentation of urea, so noticeable
around stables, were each due to different species of bacteria. Pasteur
also, during the progress of this work, discovered the class of
organisms which can grow in the absence of free oxygen--the anaërobic
bacteria. There is no question that Pasteur from 1857 on did more to
lay the foundations of the science of bacteriology than any other
one man. Influenced by Pasteur’s work von Hesseling, in 1866, stated
his belief that the process of cheese ripening, like the souring of
milk, was associated with the growth of fungi, and Martin also, in
1867, stated that cheese ripening was a process which was akin to
alcoholic, lactic and butyric fermentations. Kette, in 1869, asserted
the probability of Pasteur’s researches furnishing a scientific basis
for many processes of change in the soil. In 1873 Schlösing and Müntz
showed that nitrification must be due to the action of microörganisms,
though the discovery of the particular ones remained for Winogradsky
in 1889. Thus the belief that fermentation and putrefaction are due to
microörganisms was as well established by the early eighties of the
last century as that similar organisms are the causes of infectious
diseases.
STUDY OF FORMS.
An important part of the scientific knowledge of living organisms is
dependent on a study of their forms and relationships. As has been
stated, Leeuwenhoek considered bacteria to be “animalcules” because
they showed independent movement. But little attention was paid to
the natural history of these animalcules for nearly a hundred years
after Leeuwenhoek. During the last quarter of the eighteenth century,
however, workers busied themselves chiefly with the discovery and
description of new forms. Among these students were Baron Gleichen,
Jablot, Lesser, Reaumur, Hill and others. Müller, of Copenhagen, in
1786 published the first attempt at classification, a most important
step in the study of these organisms. Müller introduced the terms
Monas, Proteus and Vibrio, which are still in use. Ehrenberg, in his
work on _Infusoria_, or the organisms found in infusions, published
in 1838, introduced many generic names in use at present, but still
classed the bacteria with protozoa. Joseph Leidy, the American
naturalist, considered that the “vibrios” of previous writers were
plants and not “animalcules.” He seems to have been the first to have
made this distinction (1849). Perty (1852) recognized the presence of
spores in some of his organisms. Ferdinand Cohn (1854) classed the
bacteria among plants. Nägeli (1857) proposed the name “Schizomycetes”
or “fission fungi,” which is still retained for the entire class of
bacteria. Cohn in the years 1872-1875 established classification on
a modern basis and added greatly to the knowledge of morphology and
natural history of bacteria. He described spore formation and the
development of spores into active bacteria, and showed the close
relationships as well as differences between the bacteria and the lower
algæ. Robert Koch was a pupil of Cohn.
An examination of the accompanying chronological table will show how
the investigations and discoveries in connection with “spontaneous
generation,” the “contagium vivum” theory and putrefaction and
fermentation must have been mutually suggestive:
1546. Fracastorius, disease germs theory and direct and indirect
contagion.
1671. Kircher, “contagium vivum” theory.
1675. Leeuwenhoek, first saw bacteria, “animalcules.”
1701. Andry, “animalcules” cause of diseases.
1718. Lancisi, “animalcules” cause of malaria.
1749. Needham, described development of organisms in water around
barley grains.
1762. Plenciz, arguments for “living cause” theory and that
“animalcules” cause putrefaction.
1768. Bonnet, suggested that probably Needham’s organisms came from
germs in the liquid.
1776. Spallanzani, boiled and sealed infusions.
1786. Müller, first classified “animalcules.”
1787. Wollstein, glanders pus infectious.
1795-1798. Jenner, vaccination against smallpox.
1797. Viborg, transmitted glanders repeatedly.
1807. Prevost, grain rust, _Puccinia graminis_. _The first instance
of a microscopic plant organism shown to be the cause of a disease in
a higher plant._
1810. Appert, directions for “canning.”
1822. Gaspard, infectiousness of material from wounds.
1834. Renucci, itch--itch mite (_Sarcoptes scabiei_).
1835. Paget and Owen, _Trichina spiralis_.
1836. Schultze, air through acid to kill “germs.”
1837. Chevreuil and Pasteur, protected meat did not putrefy;
suggested wound infection due to entrance of germs from without.
1837. Caignard-Latour, Schwann, alcoholic fermentation--yeast.
1837. Schwann, air through heated tubes to kill germs.
1837. Bassi, muscardine of silkworms, _Botrytis bassiana_. _The first
instance of a microscopic plant organism shown to be the cause of a
disease in an animal._
1838. Boehm, cholera, saw organisms in stools (not the cause).
1838. Dubini discovered _Ankylostoma duodenale_.
1838. Ehrenberg, study of forms.
1839. Schönlein, Favus, _Achorion schoenleinii_.
1839-41. Berg, Thrush, _Oidium albicans_.
1840. Henle, theory of contagious diseases.
1841. Fuchs, bacterial cause of blue milk.
1842-43. Gruby, Herpes tonsurans, _Trichophyton tonsurans_.
1843. Klencke, inoculations of tuberculous material into rabbit.
1843. Holmes, puerperal fever contagious.
1845. Liebert, a potato rot, _Peronospora infestans_.
1846. Leidy, Joseph (American Naturalist), _Trichina spiralis_ in
pork.
1846. Eichstedt, Pityriasis versicolor, _Microsporon furfur_.
1847. Semmelweiss, recommended disinfection to prevent puerperal
fever. Not followed.
1849. Leidy, considered “vibrios” to be plants.
1849. Pollender, Anthrax, saw rods in blood.
1850. Davaine and Rayer, Anthrax, saw rods in blood.
1851. Griesinger, Egyptian chlorosis, _Ankylostoma duodenale_.
1851. Bilharz, Bilharzia disease, _Schistosomum hematobium_.
1852. Kückenmeister, tapeworm, _Tænia solium_.
1852. Perty, saw spores in bacteria.
1854. Cohn, classed bacteria as plants.
1855. Cohn, disease of flies, _Empusa muscæ_.
1857. Nägeli, named bacteria, Schizomycetes.
1857. Pasteur, lactic, acetic, butyric acid fermentation.
1860. Zenker, Trichinosis, _Trichinella spiralis_.
1861. Pasteur, disproof of spontaneous generation.
1863. Davaine, transmitted anthrax by blood injections.
1865. Pasteur, Pebrine of silkworms, _Nosema bombycis_. _The first
instance of a protozoan shown to be the cause of a disease in a
higher animal._
1865. Villemin, repeatedly transmitted tuberculosis to rabbits.
1865. Lister, introduced antisepsis in surgery.
1860. Rindfleisch, Pyemia, organisms in the pus.
1866. Von Hesseling, cheese ripening.
1867. De Martin, cheese
|
distant
barking resounded from the interior of the hull. Certainly there was a
living dog there, imprisoned perhaps, for it was possible that the
hatches were hermetically closed. But they could not see it, the deck
of the capsized vessel being still invisible.
"If there be only a dog there, Mr. Hull," said Mrs. "Weldon," we shall
save it."
"Yes, yes!" cried little Jack, "we shall save it. I shall give it
something to eat! It will love us well! Mama, I am going to bring it a
piece of sugar!"
"Stay still, my child," replied Mrs. Weldon smiling. "I believe that
the poor animal is dying of hunger, and it will prefer a good mess to
your morsel of sugar."
"Well, then, let it have my soup," cried little Jack. "I can do without
it very well."
At that moment the barking was more distinctly heard. Three hundred
feet, at the most, separated the two ships. Almost immediately a dog of
great height appeared on the starboard netting, and clung there,
barking more despairingly than ever.
"Howik," said Captain Hull, turning toward the master of the
"Pilgrim's" crew, "heave to, and lower the small boat."
"Hold on, my dog, hold on!" cried little Jack to the animal, which
seemed to answer him with a half-stifled bark.
The "Pilgrim's" sails were rapidly furled, so that the ship should
remain almost motionless, less than half a cable's length from the
wreck.
The boat was brought alongside. Captain Hull, Dick Sand and two sailors
got into it at once.
The dog barked all the time. It tried to hold on to the netting, but
every moment it fell back on the deck. One would say that its barks
were no longer addressed to those who were coming to him. Were they
then addressed to some sailors or passengers imprisoned in this ship?
"Is there, then, on board some shipwrecked one who has survived?" Mrs.
Weldon asked herself.
A few strokes of the oars and the "Pilgrim's" boat would reach the
capsized hull.
But, suddenly, the dog's manner changed. Furious barks succeeded its
first barks inviting the rescuers to come. The most violent anger
excited the singular animal.
"What can be the matter with that dog?" said Captain Hull, while the
boat was turning the stern of the vessel, so as to come alongside of
the part of the deck lying under the water.
What Captain Hull could not then observe, what could not be noticed
even on board the "Pilgrim," was that the dog's fury manifested itself
just at the moment when Negoro, leaving his kitchen, had just come
toward the forecastle.
Did the dog then know and recognize the master cook? It was very
improbable.
However that may be, after looking at the dog, without showing any
surprise, Negoro, who, however, frowned for an instant, returned to the
crew's quarters.
Meanwhile the boat had rounded the stern of the ship. Her aftboard
carried this single name: "Waldeck."
"Waldeck," and no designation of the port attached. But, by the form of
the hull, by certain details which a sailor seizes at the first glance,
Captain Hull had, indeed, discovered that this ship was of American
construction. Besides, her name confirmed it. And now, this hull, it
was all that remained of a large brig of five hundred tons.
At the "Waldeck's" prow a large opening indicated the place where the
collision had occurred. In consequence of the capsizing of the hull,
this opening was then five or six feet above the water--which explained
why the brig had not yet foundered.
On the deck, which Captain Hull saw in its whole extent, there was
nobody.
The dog, having left the netting, had just let itself slip as far as
the central hatch, which was open; and it barked partly toward the
interior, partly toward the exterior.
"It is very certain that this animal is not alone on board!" observed
Dick Sand.
"No, in truth!" replied Captain Hull.
The boat then skirted the larboard netting, which was half under water.
A somewhat strong swell of the sea would certainly submerge the
"Waldeck" in a few moments.
The brig's deck had been swept from one end to the other. There was
nothing left except the stumps of the mainmast and of the mizzen-mast,
both broken off two feet above the scuttles, and which had fallen in
the collision, carrying away shrouds, back-stays, and rigging.
Meanwhile, as far as the eye could see, no wreck was visible around the
"Waldeck"--which seemed to indicate that the catastrophe was already
several days old.
"If some unhappy creatures have survived the collision," said Captain
Hull, "it is probable that either hunger or thirst has finished them,
for the water must have gained the store-room. There are only dead
bodies on board!"
"No," cried Dick Sand, "no! The dog would not bark that way. There are
living beings on board!"
At that moment the animal, responding to the call of the novice, slid
to the sea, and swam painfully toward the boat, for it seemed to be
exhausted.
They took it in, and it rushed eagerly, not for a piece of bread that
Dick Sand offered it first, but to a half-tub which contained a little
fresh water.
"This poor animal is dying of thirst!" cried Dick Sand.
The boat then sought a favorable place to board the "Waldeck" more
easily, and for that purpose it drew away a few strokes. The dog
evidently thought that its rescuers did not wish to go on board, for he
seized Dick Sand by his jacket, and his lamentable barks commenced
again with new strength.
They understood it. Its pantomime and its language were as clear as a
man's language could be. The boat was brought immediately as far as the
larboard cat-head. There the two sailors moored it firmly, while
Captain Hull and Dick Sand, setting foot on the deck at the same time
as the dog, raised themselves, not without difficulty, to the hatch
which opened between the stumps of the two masts.
By this hatch the two made their way into the hold.
The "Waldeck's" hold, half full of water, contained no goods. The brig
sailed with ballast--a ballast of sand which had slid to larboard and
which helped to keep the ship on her side. On that head, then, there
was no salvage to effect.
"Nobody here," said Captain Hull.
"Nobody," replied the novice, after having gone to the foremost part of
the hold.
But the dog, which was on the deck, kept on barking and seemed to call
the captain's attention more imperatively.
"Let us go up again," said Captain Hull to the novice.
Both appeared again on the deck.
The dog, running to them, sought to draw them to the poop.
They followed it.
There, in the square, five bodies--undoubtedly five corpses--were lying
on the floor.
By the daylight which entered in waves by the opening, Captain Hull
discovered the bodies of five negroes.
Dick Sand, going from one to the other, thought he felt that the
unfortunates were still breathing.
"On board! on board!" cried Captain Hull.
The two sailors who took care of the boat were called, and helped to
carry the shipwrecked men out of the poop.
This was not without difficulty, but two minutes after, the five blacks
were laid in the boat, without being at all conscious that any one was
trying to save them. A few drops of cordial, then a little fresh water
prudently administered, might, perhaps, recall them to life.
The "Pilgrim" remained a half cable's length from the wreck, and the
boat would soon reach her.
A girt-line was let down from the main-yard, and each of the blacks
drawn up separately reposed at last on the "Pilgrim's" deck.
The dog had accompanied them.
"The unhappy creatures!" cried Mrs. Weldon, on perceiving those poor
men, who were only inert bodies.
"They are alive, Mrs. Weldon. We shall save them. Yes, we shall save
them," cried Dick Sand.
"What has happened to them?" demanded Cousin Benedict.
"Wait till they can speak," replied Captain Hull, "and they will tell
us their history. But first of all, let us make them drink a little
water, in which we shall mix a few drops of rum." Then, turning round:
"Negoro!" he called.
At that name the dog stood up as if it knew the sound, its hair
bristling, its mouth open.
Meanwhile, the cook did not appear.
"Negoro!" repeated Captain Hull.
The dog again gave signs of extreme fury.
Negoro left the kitchen.
Hardly had he shown himself on the deck, than the dog sprang on him and
wanted to jump at his throat.
With a blow from the poker with which he was armed, the cook drove away
the animal, which some of the sailors succeeded in holding.
"Do you know this dog?" Captain Hull asked the master cook.
"I?" replied Negoro. "I have never seen it."
"That is singular," murmured Dick Sand.
* * * * *
CHAPTER IV.
THE SURVIVORS OF THE "WALDECK."
The slave trade was still carried on, on a large scale, in all
equinoctial Africa. Notwithstanding the English and French cruisers,
ships loaded with slaves leave the coasts of Angola and Mozambique
every year to transport negroes to various parts of the world, and, it
must be said, of the civilized world.
Captain Hull was not ignorant of it. Though these parts were not
ordinarily frequented by slave-ships, he asked himself if these blacks,
whose salvage he had just effected, were not the survivors of a cargo
of slaves that the "Waldeck" was going to sell to some Pacific colony.
At all events, if that was so, the blacks became free again by the sole
act of setting foot on his deck, and he longed to tell it to them.
Meanwhile the most earnest care had been lavished on the shipwrecked
men from the "Waldeck." Mrs. Weldon, aided by Nan and Dick Sand, had
administered to them a little of that good fresh water of which they
must have been deprived for several days, and that, with some
nourishment, sufficed to restore them to life.
The eldest of these blacks--he might be about sixty years old--was soon
able to speak, and he could answer in English the questions which were
addressed to him.
"The ship which carried you was run into?" asked Captain Hull, first of
all.
"Yes," replied the old black. "Ten days ago our ship was struck, during
a very dark night. We were asleep----"
"But the men of the 'Waldeck'--what has become of them?"
"They were no longer there, sir, when my companions and I reached the
deck."
"Then, was the crew able to jump on board the ship which struck the
'Waldeck'?" demanded Captain Hull.
"Perhaps, and we must indeed hope so for their sakes."
"And that ship, after the collision, did it not return to pick you up?"
"No."
"Did she then go down herself?"
"She did not founder," replied the old black, shaking his head, "for we
could see her running away in the night."
This fact, which was attested by all the survivors of the "Waldeck,"
may appear incredible. It is only too true, however, that captains,
after some terrible collision, due to their imprudence, have often
taken flight without troubling themselves about the unfortunate ones
whom they had put in danger, and without endeavoring to carry
assistance to them.
That drivers do as much and leave to others, on the public way, the
trouble of repairing the misfortune which they have caused, that is
indeed to be condemned. Still, their victims are assured of finding
immediate help. But, that men to men, abandon each other thus at sea,
it is not to be believed, it is a shame!
Meanwhile, Captain Hull knew several examples of such inhumanity, and
he was obliged to tell Mrs. Weldon that such facts, monstrous as they
might be, were unhappily not rare.
Then, continuing:
"Whence came the 'Waldeck?'" he asked.
"From Melbourne."
"Then you are not slaves?"
"No, sir!" the old black answered quickly, as he stood up straight. "We
are subjects of the State of Pennsylvania, and citizens of free
America!"
"My friends," replied Captain Hull, "believe me that you have not
compromised your liberty in coming on board of the American brig, the
'Pilgrim.'"
In fact, the five blacks which the "Waldeck" carried belonged to the
State of Pennsylvania. The oldest, sold in Africa as a slave at the age
of six years, then brought to the United States, had been freed already
many years ago by the Emancipation Proclamation. As to his companions,
much younger than he, sons of slaves liberated before their birth, they
were born free; no white had ever had the right of property over them.
They did not even speak that "negro" language, which does not use the
article, and only knows the infinitive of the verbs--a language which
has disappeared little by little, indeed, since the anti-slavery war.
These blacks had, then, freely left the United States, and they were
returning to it freely.
As they told Captain Hull, they were engaged as laborers at an
Englishman's who owned a vast mine near Melbourne, in Southern
Australia. There they had passed three years, with great profit to
themselves; their engagement ended, they had wished to return to
America.
They then had embarked on the "Waldeck," paying their passage like
ordinary passengers. On the 5th of December they left Melbourne, and
seventeen days after, during a very black night, the "Waldeck" had been
struck by a large steamer.
The blacks were in bed. A few seconds after the collision, which was
terrible, they rushed on the deck.
Already the ship's masts had fallen, and the "Waldeck" was lying on the
side; but she would not sink, the water not having invaded the hold
sufficiently to cause it.
As to the captain and crew of the "Waldeck," all had disappeared,
whether some had been precipitated into the sea, whether others were
caught on the rigging of the colliding ship, which, after the
collision, had fled to return no more.
The five blacks were left alone on board, on a half-capsized hull,
twelve hundred miles from any land.
Then oldest of the negroes was named Tom. His age, as well as his
energetic character, and his experience, often put to the proof during
a long life of labor, made him the natural head of the companions who
were engaged with him.
The other blacks were young men from twenty-five to thirty years old,
whose names were Bat (abbreviation of Bartholomew), son of old Tom,
Austin, Acteon, and Hercules, all four well made and vigorous, and who
would bring a high price in the markets of Central Africa. Even though
they had suffered terribly, one could easily recognize in them
magnificent specimens of that strong race, on which a liberal
education, drawn from the numerous schools of North America, had
already impressed its seal.
Tom and his companions then found themselves alone on the "Waldeck"
after the collision, having no means of raising that inert hull,
without even power to leave it, because the two boats on board had been
shattered in the boarding. They were reduced to waiting for the passage
of a ship, while the wreck drifted little by little under the action of
the currents. This action explained why she had been encountered so far
out of her course, for the "Waldeck," having left Melbourne, ought to
be found in much lower latitude.
During the ten days which elapsed between the collision and the moment
when the "Pilgrim" arrived in sight of the shipwrecked vessel the five
blacks were sustained by some food which they had found in the office
of the landing-place. But, not being able to penetrate into the
steward's room, which the water entirely covered, they had had no
spirits to quench their thirst, and they had suffered cruelly, the
water casks fastened to the deck having been stove in by the collision.
Since the night before, Tom and his companions, tortured by thirst, had
become unconscious.
Such was the recital which Tom gave, in a few words, to Captain Hull.
There was no reason to doubt the veracity of the old black. His
companions confirmed all that he had said; besides, the facts pleaded
for the poor men.
Another living being, saved on the wreck, would doubtless have spoken
with the same sincerity if it had been gifted with speech.
It was that dog, that the sight of Negoro seemed to affect in such a
disagreeable manner. There was in that some truly inexplicable
antipathy.
Dingo--that was the name of the dog--belonged to that race of mastiffs
which is peculiar to New Holland. It was not in Australia, however,
that the captain of the "Waldeck" had found it. Two years before Dingo,
wandering half dead of hunger, had been met on the western coast of
Africa, near the mouth of the Congo. The captain of the "Waldeck" had
picked up this fine animal, who, being not very sociable, seemed to be
always regretting some old master, from whom he had been violently
separated, and whom it would be impossible to find again in that desert
country. S. V.--those two letters engraved on his collar--were all that
linked this animal to a past, whose mystery one would seek in vain to
solve.
Dingo, a magnificent and robust beast, larger than the dogs of the
Pyrenees, was then a superb specimen of the New Holland variety of
mastiffs. When it stood up, throwing its head back, it equaled the
height of a man. Its agility--its muscular strength, would be
sufficient for one of those animals which without hesitation attack
jaguars and panthers, and do not fear to face a bear. Its long tail of
thick hair, well stocked and stiff like a lion's tail, its general hue
dark fawn-color, was only varied at the nose by some whitish streaks.
This animal, under the influence of anger, might become formidable, and
it will be understood that Negoro was not satisfied with the reception
given him by this vigorous specimen of the canine race.
Meanwhile, Dingo, if it was not sociable, was not bad. It seemed rather
to be sad. An observation which had been made by old Tom on board the
"Waldeck" was that this dog did not seem to like blacks. It did not
seek to harm them, but certainly it shunned them. May be, on that
African coast where it wandered, it had suffered some bad treatment
from the natives. So, though Tom and his companions were honest men,
Dingo was never drawn toward them. During the ten days that the
shipwrecked dog had passed on the "Waldeck," it had kept at a distance,
feeding itself, they knew not how, but having also suffered cruelly
from thirst.
Such, then, were the survivors of this wreck, which the first surge of
the sea would submerge. No doubt it would have carried only dead bodies
into the depths of the ocean if the unexpected arrival of the
"Pilgrim," herself kept back by calms and contrary winds, had not
permitted Captain Hull to do a work of humanity.
This work had only to be completed by bringing back to their country
the shipwrecked men from the "Waldeck," who, in this shipwreck, had
lost their savings of three years of labor. This is what was going to
be done. The "Pilgrim," after having effected her unloading at
Valparaiso, would ascend the American coast as far as California. There
Tom and his companions would be well received by James W. Weldon--his
generous wife assured them of it--and they would be provided with all
that would be necessary for them to return to the State of Pennsylvania.
These honest men, reassured about the future, had only to thank Mrs.
Weldon and Captain Hull. Certainly they owed them a great deal, and
although they were only poor negroes, perhaps, they did not despair of
some day paying this debt of gratitude.
CHAPTER V.
S. V.
Meanwhile, the "Pilgrim" had continued her course, making for the east
as much as possible. This lamentable continuance of calms did not cease
to trouble Captain Hull--not that he was uneasy about two or three
weeks' delay in a passage from New Zealand to Valparaiso, but because
of the extra fatigue which this delay might bring to his lady passenger.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Weldon did not complain, and philosophically took her
misfortune in patience.
That same day, February 2d, toward evening, the wreck was lost sight of.
Captain Hull was troubled, in the first place, to accommodate Tom and
his companions as conveniently as possible. The crew's quarters on the
"Pilgrim," built on the deck in the form of a "roufle," would be too
small to hold them. An arrangement was then made to lodge them under
the forecastle. Besides, these honest men, accustomed to rude labors,
could not be hard to please, and with fine weather, warm and
salubrious, this sleeping-place ought to suffice for the whole passage.
The life on board, shaken for a moment from its monotony by this
incident, then went on as usual.
Tom, Austin, Bat, Acteon, and Hercules would indeed wish to make
themselves useful. But with these constant winds, the sails once set,
there was nothing more to do. Meanwhile, when there was a veering
about, the old black and his companions hastened to give a hand to the
crew, and it must be confessed that when the colossal Hercules hauled
some rope, they were aware of it. This vigorous negro, six feet high,
brought in a tackle all by himself.
It was joy for little Jack to look at this giant. He was not afraid of
him, and when Hercules hoisted him up in his arms, as if he were only a
cork baby, there were cries of joy to go on.
"Lift me very high," said little Jack.
"There, Master Jack!" replied Hercules.
"Am I very heavy?"
"I do not even feel you."
"Well, higher still! To the end of your arm!" And Hercules, holding the
child's two little feet in his large hand, walked him about like a
gymnast in a circus. Jack saw himself, tall, taller, which amused him
very much. He even tried to make himself heavy--which the colossus did
not perceive at all.
Dick Sand and Hercules, they were two friends for little Jack. He was
not slow in making himself a third--that was Dingo.
It has been said that Dingo was not a sociable dog. Doubtless that held
good, because the society of the "Waldeck" did not suit it. On board
the "Pilgrim" it was quite another thing. Jack probably knew how to
touch the fine animal's heart. The latter soon took pleasure in playing
with the little boy, whom this play pleased. It was soon discovered
that Dingo was one of those dogs who have a particular taste for
children. Besides, Jack did it no harm. His greatest pleasure was to
transform Dingo into a swift steed, and it is safe to affirm that a
horse of this kind is much superior to a pasteboard quadruped, even
when it has wheels to its feet. So Jack galloped bare-back on the dog,
which let him do it willingly, and, in truth, Jack was no heavier to it
than the half of a jockey to a race-horse.
But what a break each day in the stock of sugar in the store-room!
Dingo soon became a favorite with the whole crew. Alone, Negoro
continued to avoid any encounter with the animal, whose antipathy was
always as strong as it was inexplicable.
Meanwhile, little Jack had not neglected Dick Sand, his friend of old,
for Dingo. All the time that was unclaimed by his duties on board, the
novice passed with the little boy.
Mrs. Weldon, it is needless to say, always regarded this intimacy with
the most complete satisfaction.
One day, February 6th, she spoke of Dick to Captain Hull, and the
captain praised the young novice in the highest terms.
"That boy," he said to Mrs. Weldon, "will be a good seaman some day,
I'll guarantee. He has truly a passion for the sea, and by this passion
he makes up for the theoretical parts of the calling which he has not
yet learned. What he already knows is astonishing, when we think of
the short time he has had to learn."
"It must be added," replied Mrs. Weldon, "that he is also an excellent
person, a true boy, very superior to his age, and who has never merited
any blame since we have known him."
"Yes, he is a good young man," continued the captain, "justly loved and
appreciated by all."
"This cruise finished," said Mrs. Weldon, "I know that my husband's
intention is to have him follow a course of navigation, so that, he may
afterwards obtain a captain's commission."
"And Mr. Weldon is right," replied Captain Hull. "Dick Sand will one
day do honor to the American marine."
"This poor orphan commenced life sadly," observed Mrs. Weldon. "He has
been in a hard school!"
"Doubtless, Mrs. Weldon; but the lessons have not been lost on him. He
has learned that he must make his own way in this world, and he is in a
fair way to do it."
"Yes, the way of duty!"
"Look at him now, Mrs. Weldon," continued Captain Hull. "He is at the
helm, his eye fixed on the point of the foresail. No distraction on the
part of this young novice, as well as no lurch to the ship. Dick Sand
has already the confidence of an old steersman. A good beginning for a
seaman. Our craft, Mrs. Weldon, is one of those in which it is
necessary to begin very young. He who has not been a cabin-boy will
never arrive at being a perfect seaman, at least in the merchant
marine. Everything must be learned, and, consequently, everything must
be at the same time instinctive and rational with the sailor--the
resolution to grasp, as well as the skill to execute."
"Meanwhile, Captain Hull," replied Mrs. Weldon, "good officers are not
lacking in the navy."
"No," replied Captain Hull; "but, in my opinion, the best have almost
all begun their career as children, and, without speaking of Nelson and
a few others, the worst are not those who began by being cabin-boys."
At that moment they saw Cousin Benedict springing up from the rear
companion-way. As usual he was absorbed, and as little conscious of
this world as the Prophet Elias will be when he returns to the earth.
Cousin Benedict began to walk about on the deck like an uneasy spirit,
examining closely the interstices of the netting, rummaging under the
hen-cages, putting his hand between the seams of the deck, there, where
the pitch had scaled off.
"Ah! Cousin Benedict," asked Mrs. Weldon, "do you keep well?"
"Yes--Cousin Weldon--I am well, certainly--but I am in a hurry to get
on land."
"What are you looking for under that bench, Mr. Benedict?" asked
Captain Hull.
"Insects, sir," returned Cousin Benedict. "What do you expect me to
look for, if not insects?"
"Insects! Faith, I must agree with you; but it is not at sea that you
will enrich your collection."
"And why not, sir? It is not impossible to find on board some specimen
of----"
"Cousin Benedict," said Mrs. Weldon, "do you then slander Captain Hull?
His ship is so well kept, that you will return empty-handed from your
hunt."
Captain Hull began to laugh.
"Mrs. Weldon exaggerates," replied he. "However, Mr. Benedict, I
believe you will lose your time rummaging in our cabins."
"Ah! I know it well," cried Cousin Benedict, shrugging his shoulders.
"I have had a good search----"
"But, in the 'Pilgrim's' hold," continued Captain Hull, "perhaps you
will find some cockroaches--subjects of little interest, however."
"Of little interest, those nocturnal orthopters which have incurred the
maledictions of Virgil and Horace!" retorted Cousin Benedict, standing
up straight. "Of little interest, those near relations of the
'periplaneta orientalis' and of the American kakerlac, which
inhabit----"
"Which infest!" said Captain Hull.
"Which reign on board!" retorted Cousin Benedict, fiercely.
"Amiable sovereignty!"
"Ah! you are not an entomologist, sir?"
Never at my own expense."
"Now, Cousin Benedict," said Mrs. Weldon, smiling, "do not wish us to
be devoured for love of science."
"I wish, nothing, Cousin Weldon," replied, the fiery entomologist,
"except to be able to add to my collection some rare subject which
might do it honor."
"Are you not satisfied, then, with the conquests that you have made in
New Zealand?"
"Yes, truly, Cousin Weldon. I have been rather fortunate in conquering
one of those new staphylins which till now had only been found some
hundreds of miles further, in New Caledonia."
At that moment Dingo, who was playing with Jack, approached Cousin
Benedict, gamboling.
"Go away! go away!" said the latter, pushing off the animal.
"To love cockroaches and detest dogs!" cried Captain Hull. "Oh! Mr.
Benedict!"
"A good dog, notwithstanding," said little Jack, taking Dingo's great
head in his small hands.
"Yes. I do not say no," replied Cousin Benedict. "But what do you want?
This devil of an animal has not realized the hopes I conceived on
meeting it."
"Ah! my goodness!" cried Mrs. Weldon, "did you, then, hope to be able
to classify it in the order of the dipters or the hymenopters?"
"No," replied Cousin Benedict, seriously. "But is it not true that this
Dingo, though it be of the New Zealand race, was picked up on the
western coast of Africa?"
"Nothing is more true," replied Mrs. Weldon, "and Tom had often heard
the captain of the 'Waldeck' say so."
"Well, I had thought--I had hoped--that this dog would have brought
away some specimens of hemipteras peculiar to the African fauna."
"Merciful heavens!" cried Mrs. Weldon.
"And that perhaps," added Cousin Benedict, "some penetrating or
irritating flea--of a new species----"
"Do you understand, Dingo?" said Captain Hull. "Do you understand, my
dog? You have failed in all your duties!"
"But I have examined it well," added the entomologist, with an accent
of deep regret. "I have not been able to find a single insect."
"Which you would have immediately and mercilessly put to death, I
hope!" cried Captain Hull.
"Sir," replied Cousin Benedict, dryly, "learn that Sir John Franklin
made a scruple of killing the smallest insect, be it a mosquito, whose
attacks are otherwise formidable as those of a flea; and meanwhile you
will not hesitate to allow, that Sir John Franklin was a seaman who was
as good as the next."
"Surely," said Captain Hull, bowing.
"And one day, after being frightfully devoured by a dipter, he blew and
sent it away, saying to it, without even using _thou_ or _thee_: 'Go!
the world is large enough for you and for me!'"
"Ah!" ejaculated Captain Hull.
"Yes, sir."
"Well, Mr. Benedict," retorted Captain Hull, "another had said that
long before Sir John Franklin."
"Another?"
"Yes; and that other was Uncle Toby."
"An entomologist?" asked Cousin Benedict, quickly.
"No! Sterne's Uncle Toby, and that worthy uncle pronounced precisely
the same words, while setting free a mosquito that annoyed him, but
which he thought himself at liberty to _thee_ and _thou_: 'Go, poor
devil,' he said to it, 'the world is large enough to contain us, thee
and me!'"
"An honest man, that Uncle Toby!" replied Cousin Benedict. "Is he dead?"
"I believe so, indeed," retorted Captain Hull, gravely, "as he has
never existed!"
And each began to laugh, looking at Cousin Benedict.
Thus, then, in these conversations, and many others, which invariably
bore on some point of entomological science, whenever Cousin Benedict
took part, passed away long hours of this navigation against contrary
winds. The sea always fine, but winds which obliged the schooner to
tack often. The "Pilgrim" made very little headway toward the east--the
breeze was so feeble; and they longed to reach those parts where the
prevailing winds would be more favorable.
It must be stated here that Cousin Benedict had endeavored to initiate
the young novice into the mysteries of entomology. But Dick Sand had
shown himself rather refractory to these advances. For want of better
company the savant had fallen back on the negroes, who comprehended
nothing about it. Tom, Acteon, Bat, and Austin had even finished by
deserting the class, and the professor found himself reduced to
Hercules alone, who seemed to him to have some natural disposition to
distinguish a parasite from a thysanuran.
So the gigantic black lived in the world of coleopteras, carnivorous
insects, hunters, gunners, ditchers, cicindelles, carabes, sylphides,
moles, cockchafers, horn-beetles, tenebrions, mites, lady-birds,
studying all Cousin Benedict's collection, not but the latter trembled
on seeing his frail specimens in Hercules' great hands, which were hard
and strong as a vise. But the colossal pupil listened so quietly to the
professor's lessons that it was worth risking something to give them.
While Cousin Benedict worked in that manner, Mrs. Weldon did not leave
little Jack entirely unoccupied; She taught him to read and to write.
As to arithmetic, it was his friend Dick Sand who inculcated the first
elements.
At the age of five, one is still only a little child, and is perhaps
better instructed by practical games than by theoretical lessons
necessarily a little arduous.
Jack learned to read, not in a primer, but by means of movable letters,
printed in red on cubes of wood. He amused himself by arranging the
blocks so as to form words. Sometimes Mrs. Weldon took these cubes and
composed a word; then she disarranged them, and it was for Jack to
replace them in the order required.
The little boy liked this manner of learning to read very much. Each
day he passed some hours, sometimes in the cabin, sometimes on the
deck, in arranging and disarranging the letters of his alphabet.
Now, one day this led to an incident so extraordinary, so unexpected,
that it is necessary to relate with some detail.
It was on the morning of February 9th, Jack, half-lying on the deck,
was amusing himself forming a word which old Tom was to put together
again, after the letters had been mixed. Tom, with his hand over his
eyes so as not to cheat, as he agreed, would see nothing, and did see
nothing of the work of the little boy.
Of these different letters, about fifty in number, some were large,
others small. Besides, some of these cubes carried a figure, which
taught the child to form numbers as well as to form words.
These cubes were arranged on the deck, and little Jack was taking
sometimes one, sometimes another, to make a word--a truly great labor.
Now, for same moments, Dingo was moving round the young child, when
suddenly it stopped. Its eyes became fixed, its right paw was raised,
its tail wagged convulsively. Then, suddenly throwing itself on one of
the cubes, it seized it in its mouth and laid it on the deck a few
steps from Jack.
This cube bore a large letter--the letter S.
"Dingo, well Dingo!" cried the little boy, who at first was afraid that
|
better-formed trees has same uses as the other oaks. Also known as
_rock oak_.
[Illustration: EASTERN RED OAK
(_Quercus borealis maxima_)]
Leaves: Simple, alternate, 5″-8″ long, 7-11 lobes, bristle-tipped;
smooth above and below, but occasionally with small tufts of reddish
brown hair beneath.
Twigs: Greenish brown to reddish brown. _Buds_ pointed, light brown,
smooth.
Fruit: An _acorn_, ¾″-1¼″ long; _cup_ usually saucer-shaped, about an
inch in diameter, covers only ¼ of the nut; _cup scales_ reddish brown,
narrow, tight, sometimes fuzzy on the edges. Kernel bitter as is true of
the next 3 species of oaks.
General: _Bark_ brown and gray, with smooth flat-topped ridges
separated by shallow fissures when older. A _large_ and rapid-growing
tree. Often planted for shade. _Wood_ has many uses; principally
utilized for flooring, railroad ties and construction lumber.
[Illustration: SCARLET OAK
(_Quercus coccinea_)]
Leaves: Simple, alternate, 4″-7″ long, 7-9 rather narrow,
bristle-tipped lobes; smooth except for small tufts of hair beneath.
Very deep spaces between lobes. Generally turn scarlet in autumn.
Twigs: Reddish brown, smooth when mature. _Buds_ blunt-pointed,
usually round in cross section, dark reddish brown; _upper half wooly_.
Fruit: An _acorn_, ½″-1″ long, kernel white; _cup_ thin, bowl-like,
covering about ½ of the nut; _cup scales_ sharp-pointed, smooth, tight.
General: _Bark_ on young trees, smooth, light brown; on older trunks
ridged, darker. _Inner bark reddish._ Drooping dead lower branches
persist for many years. A _medium_ to _large_-sized tree, commonly found
on dry soils. _Wood_ inferior to red oak, but often sold under that
name.
[Illustration: BLACK OAK
(_Quercus velutina_)]
Leaves: Simple, alternate, 5″-9″ long, 5-7 lobes, bristle-tipped;
dark green and usually shiny above; paler, _more or less covered with
rusty-brown fuzz beneath_. Yellowish brown in autumn. Often confused
with those of scarlet oak.
Twigs: Reddish brown, usually fuzzy. _Buds_ blunt-pointed, ridged,
yellow-gray, wooly.
Fruit: An _acorn_, about ¾″ long, kernel yellow; _cup_ bowl-like,
covering from ⅓ to ½ or more of the nut; _cup scales_ sharp-pointed,
form a loose fringe at the rim, covered with whitish wooly hairs.
General: _Bark_ on young stems smooth, dark brown; on older trunks
dull black, furrowed, forming irregular blocks. _Inner bark
orange-yellow._ A _medium_ to _large_-sized tree. _Wood_ has the same
uses as that of red oak.
[Illustration: PIN OAK
(_Quercus palustris_)]
Leaves: Similar to those of scarlet oak but generally smaller,
fewer-lobed, with more narrow and deeper spaces between lobes. Smooth on
both surfaces.
Twigs: Dark red-brown, shiny, slender, _often thorn-like_. _Buds_
rounded, smooth, smaller than those of scarlet oak.
Fruit: An _acorn_, about ½″ long, often striped with dark lines;
_cup_ thin, saucer-shaped, encloses about ⅓ of nut; _cup scales_ tight,
dark-margined.
General: _Bark_ grayish brown, rather smooth for many years; old
trunks with shallow fissures and narrow flat ridges. _Medium_-sized and
highly valued street tree. Frequents wet woodland sites. Has the
smallest leaves, buds and acorns of _all_ native _oaks_. Drooping dead
lower branches persist for many years. _Wood_ has same uses as red oak
but is less desirable because of numerous branch knots.
[Illustration: AMERICAN BEECH
(_Fagus grandifolia_)]
Leaves: Simple, alternate, 3″-4″ long, sharp-toothed, leathery; light
green and glossy above, yellow-green with silky hairs below; veins
prominent, parallel. Some leaves often cling to the branches all winter.
Twigs: Slender, brownish gray. _Buds_ reddish brown, sharp-pointed,
_cigar-shaped_; end bud ¾″-1″ long.
Fruit: A shiny brown _triangled_ nut, ½″-¾″ long, usually two
enclosed in a stalked prickly bur which splits into 4 parts when ripe;
edible.
General: _Bark_ smooth, never furrowed, bluish gray throughout life,
with dark blotches when older. A _large_ tree. Most numerous in the
northern part of the State. _Wood_ used mainly for railroad ties, paper
pulp, boxes, furniture and flooring.
[Illustration: SUGAR MAPLE
(_Acer saccharum_)]
Leaves: Simple, opposite, 5-lobed, about 4″ in diameter; smooth,
bright green, paler below; margin with few large teeth.
Twigs: Reddish brown to light brown. _Buds_ brown, _sharp_-pointed;
narrowly cone-shaped.
Fruit: Consists of 2 winged seeds on a stalk; borne in clusters,
brown, seed wings ½″ to 1″ long, almost parallel to each other; matures
in autumn. Fruit stalks and sometimes the seeds persist into the winter.
General: _Bark_ grayish, on older trunks ridged or with long, thick,
curled plates. A _large_, long-lived, desirable timber and shade tree.
_Wood_ used for furniture, flooring; “tapped for sap for making maple
syrup.” Often called _hard maple_.
[Illustration: RED MAPLE
(_Acer rubrum_)]
Leaves: Simple, opposite, generally 3-lobed; about 4″ in diameter;
margin with many small teeth.
Twigs: Shiny, green when young, becoming red, with numerous light
spots (lenticels). _Leaf buds_ dark red, blunt-pointed; _flower buds_
round, clustered.
Fruit: Paired winged seeds suspended on a slim stem; reddish brown;
wing 1″ or less in length; matures in late spring.
General: _Bark_ on young trees gray and smooth, on older trees
becoming darker and with long scaly ridges. A _medium_-sized tree.
Common on both swampy and dry sites. A showy tree, usually with reddish
flowers and reddish fruit in the spring, and crimson leaves in autumn.
_Wood_ has uses similar to those of sugar maple except where strength
and hardness are of importance. Often called _soft maple_.
[Illustration: SILVER MAPLE
(_Acer saccharinum_)]
Leaves: Simple, opposite, 5-lobed, very deep spaces between lobes,
teeth coarse; about 5″ in diameter, _silvery_ below.
Twigs: Green in early spring, turning orange-brown, with many light
colored dots (lenticels). Distinctive odor when broken. _Buds_ of two
distinct types: the small pointed leaf buds toward end of twig, and
rounded, clustered flower buds below. Lower branches with up-turned
tips.
Fruit: Largest of the native maples; wings may be 2″ long, curving
inwards; matures in spring.
General: _Bark_ on young trees smooth and gray; on older trees broken
into long, narrow loose strips. A _medium_-sized tree usually found
along streams. Sometimes planted as a shade tree. _Wood_ has uses
similar to those of red maple. This species is classed as a soft maple.
[Illustration: NORWAY MAPLE
(_Acer platanoides_)]
Leaves: Simple, opposite, generally 7-lobed, 4½″-5″ in diameter.
_Milky sap_ is evident after breaking the _leaf stem_. Leaves are
heavier and thicker than those of sugar maple.
Twigs: Stout, reddish brown. _Buds_ red and green, blunt; end bud
much larger than side ones; _bud scales_ with keel-like ridges.
Fruit: Wings wide-spreading, larger than those of sugar maple.
Matures in autumn.
General: _Bark_ on young tree light brown, smooth; on older trees it
becomes closely fissured but not scaly, dark in color. A tree of
_medium_-size. _Imported_ from Europe and planted extensively as a
street tree. The leaves are often attacked by an aphid insect which
produces quantities of a sticky substance, spotting vehicles and
sidewalks. This species is classed as a soft maple.
[Illustration: BUTTERNUT
(_Juglans cinerea_)]
Leaves: Compound, alternate; _leaflets_ 11 to 17, each 3″-5″ long,
small-toothed; dark yellow-green above, paler, hairy below. End leaflet
same size as side leaflets. Main _leaf-stem_ with conspicuous sticky
hairs. One of the last trees to unfold its leaves in spring, and the
first to shed them in autumn.
Twigs: Stout, greenish-gray to tan, rough, brittle. _Pith
chocolate-brown, chambered._ _Buds_ light brown, hairy, not covered with
scales; end bud ½″-¾″ long, side buds smaller. Fringe of short hairs
between leaf-scar and bud.
Fruit: An oblong _nut_, 1½″-2½″ long, covered with a hairy, _sticky
husk_. Nut pointed at one end, shell rough, oily kernel _sweet_.
General: _Bark_ on young trunks rather smooth, light-gray; later
darker, deeply furrowed with wide, smooth, flat-topped ridges. A _small_
to _medium_-sized tree. _Wood_ used chiefly for furniture, instrument
cases, and boxes. Also called _white walnut_.
[Illustration: EASTERN BLACK WALNUT
(_Juglans nigra_)]
Leaves: Compound, alternate; leaflets 15 to 23, each 3″-4″ long,
small-toothed; dark yellow-green above, paler, hairy below. _End leaflet
absent or very small._ Main _leaf-stem_ with very fine hairs.
Twigs: Stout, orange-brown to dark brown, roughened by large leaf
scars, easily broken; pith pale brown, chambered. _Buds_ gray, downy;
side buds ⅙″ long, end bud larger.
Fruit: A round _nut_, 1″-2″ in diameter, shell rough, covered with a
thick, almost smooth, green _spongy husk_; oily kernel _sweet_.
_Flowers_ in drooping green catkins, appearing with the unfolding
leaves, which is also true of butternut.
General: _Bark_ dark brown to gray-black, with narrow ridges. A
_large_-sized tree, found locally on rich soils mainly in the southern
part of the State. _Wood_ valuable for quality furniture, veneer, gun
stocks and musical instruments.
[Illustration: SHAGBARK HICKORY
(_Carya ovata_)]
Leaves: Compound, alternate; _leaflets_ usually 5, each 4″ to 7″
long, the lower pair smallest, margins fine-toothed; fragrant when
crushed. Larger than those of pignut hickory, with which it is sometimes
confused.
Twigs: Stout, often hairy, gray-brown to reddish brown, with numerous
light spots (lenticels). _Buds_ large, with 3-4 outer dark brown,
loosely fitting, nearly smooth scales; inner scales velvety; _end buds_
½″-¾″ long.
Fruit: Nearly round, 1″-2½″ in diameter; husk thick, splits into 4
pieces when ripe; _nut_ white, _4-ridged_, pointed at one end, usually
_thin-shelled_; kernel _sweet_.
General: _Bark_ at first smooth and gray, soon breaking into long and
loosely-attached plates that gives the trunk a shaggy appearance. A
_medium_-sized tree found on a variety of sites but most common on good
soils; grows slowly. _Wood_ used principally for tool handles. The wood
of all hickories is valuable to the farmer for fuel and smoking meat.
[Illustration: SHELLBARK HICKORY
(_Carya laciniosa_)]
Leaves: Compound, alternate; _leaflets_ usually 7, each 4″-7″ long,
hairy beneath, margins fine-toothed. Dried _leaf-stems_ often cling all
winter.
Twigs: Somewhat stouter than shagbark hickory, usually hairy, often
angled, orange-brown, with numerous orange spots (lenticels). _Buds_
very large, with 6-8 outer dark brown, loosely fitting keeled scales;
_end buds_ ¾″-1″ long. Prominent orange-colored _leaf scars_.
Fruit: Nearly round to almost egg-shaped, 1¾″-2¾″ long; _husk_ thick,
splits into 4 pieces when ripe; _nut_ yellowish white to reddish brown,
_4- to 6-ridged_, pointed at both ends, usually _thick-shelled_; kernel
_sweet_. _Flowers_ appear in catkins, as do all the hickories, when
leaves are mature.
General: _Bark_ like that of shagbark hickory but often with
straighter plates (less shaggy). A _medium_-sized tree that prefers wet
soils. _Wood_ has same uses as shagbark hickory.
[Illustration: MOCKERNUT HICKORY
(_Carya tomentosa_)]
Leaves: Compound, alternate; _leaf-stems with fine hairs_; _leaflets_
7 to 9, each 4″-8″ long, margins finely to coarsely toothed; golden
glandular dots beneath; _very fragrant_ when crushed.
Twigs: Stout, hairy, reddish brown to brownish gray, with numerous
pale spots (lenticels). _Buds_ large, egg-shaped, with 3-5 outer
yellowish brown, densely hairy scales; _end buds_ ½″-¾″ long. _Leaf
scars_ distinctly 3-lobed.
Fruit: Nearly round to egg-shaped, 1½″-2″ long; husk thick, splits
into 4 pieces when ripe; _nut_ reddish brown, _slightly ridged_,
_thick-shelled_; kernel _sweet_.
General: _Bark_ gray to dark gray, tight; irregularly
shallow-fissured when older. A _medium_-sized tree found mostly in the
southern part of the State. _Wood_ has same uses as shagbark hickory.
[Illustration: PIGNUT HICKORY
(_Carya glabra_)]
Leaves: Compound, alternate; _leaflets_ usually 5, each 3″-6″ long;
margins fine-toothed. Entire leaf smooth. Averages smaller than shagbark
hickory.
Twigs: Medium-stout, not hairy, reddish brown, with numerous pale
spots (lenticels). _Buds_ egg-shaped and pointed, smallest of the native
hickories, with more than 6 scales; outer scales often fall off during
the winter, _end buds_ ¼″-½″ long.
Fruit: Usually pear-shaped, 1″-2½″ long; _husk_ thin, remains closed
or splits partly when ripe; _nut_ brownish white, _not ridged_, usually
_thick-shelled_; _kernel sweet but with bitter after-taste_.
General: _Bark_ gray to dark gray, usually tight; shallow fissured
when older. A _medium_-sized tree of drier locations. _Wood_ has same
uses as shagbark hickory.
[Illustration: BITTERNUT HICKORY
(_Carya cordiformis_)]
Leaves: Compound, alternate; _leaf-stem_ slender, somewhat downy;
_leaflets_ 7-11, each 3″-6″ long, narrow margins finely to coarsely
toothed.
Twigs: Medium-stout, smooth, orange-green to gray-brown, with
numerous pale spots (lenticels). _Buds_ covered with 4 _sulphur-yellow_,
gland-dotted scales, _end buds_ ⅓″-¾″ long, _flattened_.
Fruit: Nearly round, ¾″-1½″ in diameter; _husk_ thin, yellowish
gland-dotted, splits about to the middle into 4 sections when ripe;
_nut_ light reddish brown or gray-brown, not ridged, _thin-shelled_;
kernel with red-brown skin, _bitter_.
General: _Bark_ gray, tight; remains rather smooth for many years;
with narrow ridges when older. A _medium_-sized tree, usually found near
streams; grows more rapidly and its wood is lighter than any of the
other native hickories. _Wood_ has same uses as shagbark hickory.
[Illustration: SWEET BIRCH
(_Betula lenta_)]
Leaves: Simple, alternate, about 3½″ long, unevenly saw-toothed; dull
green above, yellow-green beneath, with some white hairs at the points
where veins join; usually heart-shaped at the base.
Twigs: Green and somewhat downy when young, becoming red-brown,
smooth and shiny. _Strong wintergreen flavor._ _Buds_ reddish brown,
sharp-pointed, shiny.
Fruit: A very small winged _nut_. These nuts, together with small
scales, form a cone-like structure about 1½″ long. Sketch shows twig in
spring with male and female flowers. All birches have similar fruiting
structures.
General: _Bark_ on young trees dark reddish brown, tight, marked with
pale horizontal lines (lenticels), resembling bark of young black
cherry; becoming black and breaking into large plates. _Medium_-sized
tree. _Wood_ used chiefly for furniture, boxes, and other containers.
Distillation of the bark and twigs produces “oil-of-wintergreen.” Also
known as _black birch_.
[Illustration: YELLOW BIRCH
(_Betula lutea_)]
Leaves: Simple, alternate; similar to sweet birch but base usually
rounded.
Twigs: Like sweet birch but paler, and more downy when young.
_Wintergreen flavor faint._ _Buds_ slightly downy, dull, yellowish
brown. Sketch shows winter twig with lateral buds and partially grown
female flowers.
Fruit: Similar to sweet birch.
General: _Bark_ on very young trees golden gray, shiny; later yellow,
forming ragged ends which curl and can be readily peeled in thin, narrow
strips, highly inflammable, and ideal to start a fire under wet
conditions. On very old trunks bark becomes darker, coarse and platy. A
_medium_ to _large_ tree. Found mostly in the northern part of the
State. _Wood_ principally used for furniture, interior finish, boxes and
other containers.
[Illustration: RIVER BIRCH
(_Betula nigra_)]
Leaves: Simple, alternate, 1½″-3″ long, dark green above,
yellow-green below, wedge-shaped at the base, margins usually with large
teeth.
Twigs: Slender, at first greenish and hairy, later turning reddish
brown, smooth; with pale horizontal lines (lenticels). _Buds_
sharp-pointed and shiny, smooth or slightly fuzzy.
Fruit: Similar to sweet birch.
General: _Bark_ reddish brown or cinnamon, peeling off in curled,
shaggy strips; on older trunks becoming dark colored and rough.
_Medium_-sized tree; found almost entirely along the lower reaches of
our larger streams. _Wood_ lighter, softer, and less valuable than sweet
birch and yellow birch.
[Illustration: PAPER BIRCH
(_Betula papyrifera_)]
Leaves: Simple, alternate, 2″-3″ long, oval, sharply toothed, dark
green above, lighter below.
Twigs: At early age greenish and fuzzy, later turning dark gray;
irregularly marked with raised orange colored dots (lenticels). _Buds_
dark brown, sticky. Immature male catkins at the ends of the twigs in
autumn and winter, as is true of all the birches.
Fruit: Similar to sweet birch. Mature in July.
General: _Bark_ creamy, to chalky white, peeling easily. Once the
bark is removed, it is not renewed. A _small_ to _medium_-sized tree.
Often found with several stems growing together, occurring naturally
only in the northern part of the State. Also called _canoe birch_ and
_white birch_. _Wood_ has uses similar to those of yellow birch, but
principally used for spools, clothes-pins, toothpicks and paper pulp.
[Illustration: GRAY BIRCH
(_Betula populifolia_)]
Leaves: Simple, alternate, triangular in shape, with long tapering
point, 2½″-3″ long, smooth above and below, tremulous. Leaf-stems very
slender. Turn yellow in autumn, as is true of all birches.
Twigs: Slender, greenish brown, rough due to small warty glands.
_Buds_ sharp-pointed, gummy.
Fruit: Similar to sweet birch but shorter (¾″ long).
General: _Bark_ dull white, not peeling into thin paper-like layers
as is the case with paper birch; dark colored on the branches; orange
inner bark. Usually with triangular-shaped black patches on the trunk. A
_small_ short-lived tree, usually growing in clumps. Occurs chiefly in
the northeastern counties. _Wood_ of little commercial value; chiefly
used for fuel.
[Illustration: BLACK LOCUST
(_Robinia pseudoacacia_)]
Leaves: Compound, alternate; _leaflets_ 1″-2″ long, margins smooth.
Twigs: Angled, somewhat zigzag, brittle, with short stout prickles;
no end bud, side _buds_ small and hidden in winter.
Fruit: A thin, flat _pod_, 2″-4″ long; usually with 4-8 seeds; splits
into halves when ripe. Flowers white, showy, very fragrant in drooping
clusters, appearing in May and June.
General: _Bark_ rough, furrowed, thick. A _medium_-sized tree. Often
seen along farm fences and roads. _Wood_ is durable in contact with the
soil and in demand for posts, poles, railroad ties, and mine timbers.
Unfortunately, several insects and wood rots often cause heavy damage,
especially to trees on poor soils.
[Illustration: COMMON HONEYLOCUST
(_Gleditsia triacanthos_)]
Leaves: Compound and doubly-compound, alternate; _leaf-stem_ grooved
above, hairy; _leaflets_ 1″ long, usually fine-toothed on margins.
Twigs: Medium stout, shiny, greenish brown to reddish brown, zigzag,
smooth, often with long branched thorns; no end bud, very small side
_buds_.
Fruit: A leathery pod, 10″-18″ long, flat, usually twisted, with
numerous seeds; often of high sugar content; eaten by some animals. Does
not split into 2 halves, as does the pod of black locust.
General: _Bark_ on young trees greenish brown with many long, raised,
horizontal lines (lenticels); later brown to nearly black, fissured and
with thick plates. A _medium_-sized tree; usually found as a native near
streams; also planted as a shade tree. Branched thorns on the trunk and
limbs make it easy to identify in winter. There is a thornless variety.
_Wood_ is mainly used for fence posts, general construction, and
furniture.
[Illustration: WHITE ASH
(_Fraxinus americana_)]
Leaves: Compound, opposite; _leaflets_ 5-9, each 3″-5″ long, stalked,
somewhat silvery beneath; margins entire or with few rounded teeth
toward the tip.
Twigs: Stout, usually smooth, gray-brown, with few large pale spots
(lenticels). _Buds_ blunt, dark brown. _Leaf scars_ half-circular but
notched at top.
Fruit: A _winged seed_, 1″-2″ long, ¼″ wide, shaped like a canoe
paddle, in hanging clusters which often remain attached for several
months after ripening in autumn.
General: _Bark_ gray-brown, with _diamond-shaped_ fissures when
older. A _large_ tree; trunk usually long and straight; commonly
occurring on rich soils. _Wood_ important for such special uses as
handles, vehicle parts and athletic equipment (practically all baseball
bats); valuable for curved parts in furniture.
[Illustration: BLACK ASH
(_Fraxinus nigra_)]
Leaves: Compound, opposite; _leaflets_ 7-11, each 3″-5″ long, _not
stalked_ except end one, dark green above, lighter green beneath with
some rusty hairs; margins saw-toothed.
Twigs: Stout, at first somewhat hairy, becoming smooth, gray or
red-brown, with many large pale spots (lenticels). _Buds_ dark brown to
black, end bud pointed. _Leaf scars_ nearly circular, with raised
margins; not notched at the top.
Fruit: Resembles that of white ash but is usually smaller (1″-1¾″
long and ⅜″ wide).
General: _Bark_ grayish, when older becoming corky-ridged or scaly;
knobs frequent on the trunk. A _medium_-sized tree that prefers cool,
_swampy sites_. _Wood_ is generally lighter in weight and weaker than
white ash but used for the same purposes.
[Illustration: TULIPTREE
(_Liriodendron tulipfera_)]
Leaves: Simple, alternate, 4″-6″ in diameter, generally 4-lobed,
bright green, turning yellow in autumn.
Twigs: In spring and summer, green, sometimes with purplish tinge;
during winter reddish brown, smooth, shiny. _Buds_ large, smooth,
flattened, “duck-billed.”
Fruit: At first green, turning light brown when ripe in autumn;
_cone-like_, 2½″-3″ long, made up of winged seeds. Greenish yellow
_tulip-like_ flowers in May or June.
General: _Bark_ at first dark green and smooth; whitish vertical
streaks soon appearing; later dark gray and furrowed. A _large_ tree,
the _tallest_ of the eastern hardwoods. It grows rapidly and is an
important timber and shade tree. The _wood_ is valuable for veneer and
many other uses. Also known as _tulip poplar_.
[Illustration: CUCUMBERTREE MAGNOLIA
(_Magnolia acuminata_)]
Leaves: Simple, alternate, 4″-12″ long, smooth above, downy beneath;
margins smooth or sometimes wavy.
Twigs: Reddish brown, shiny, with peppery smell and taste. _Buds_
covered with greenish white silky hairs; _end buds_ ½″-¾″ long. _Leaf
scars_ horseshoe shaped.
Fruit: When young, like a small green cucumber. When mature in
autumn, 3″-4″ long, a cluster of small red pods, each containing two
scarlet seeds; often remains attached all winter. _Flowers_ large (3″
long), greenish yellow, single, upright; appear from April to June.
General: _Bark_ gray-brown to brown, developing long narrow furrows
and loose scaly ridges. A _medium_-sized tree, found mainly in the
western half of the State. _Wood_ used mainly for interior finish,
furniture and containers.
[Illustration: AMERICAN ELM
(_Ulmus americana_)]
Leaves: Simple, alternate, 4″-6″ long, unequal at the base, rather
rough on the upper surface; usually _soft-hairy below_; veins prominent;
margin coarsely toothed. _Leaf-stem_ short.
Twigs: Slender, zigzag, brown, smooth or slightly hairy. _Leaf buds_
⅛″-¼″ long, flattened. _Flower buds_ larger, below leaf buds. _Bud
scales_ red-brown, smooth or downy; margins dark.
Fruit: A seed surrounded by an oval, thin papery wing, ½″ long,
deeply notched at the tip; ripening in spring and borne in clusters;
wing with scattered hairs along margin. _Flowers_ and fruit appear
before the leaves, as is true of slippery elm.
General: _Bark_ dark gray to gray-brown, with long corky ridges; on
older trees separated by diamond-shaped fissures. A _large_ and highly
prized shade tree. The drooping crown often gives it a _vase-shaped_
appearance. Found locally throughout Pennsylvania, mainly on moist
areas. The hard, tough _wood_ has many uses, including the manufacture
of boxes, barrels and furniture.
[Illustration: SLIPPERY ELM
(_Ulmus fulva_)]
Leaves: Simple, alternate, 5″-7″ long; _usually larger than those of
American elm, rough on both sides_ or soft-hairy below; margin coarsely
toothed. _Leaf-stem_ short.
Twigs: Stouter than on American elm, _grayish and rather rough_.
_Buds_ slightly larger than those of American elm, and more round—seldom
flattened. _Bud scales_ brown to almost black, rusty-haired.
Fruit: Like that of American elm but somewhat larger (¾″ long); wing
margin not hairy and slightly notched at the tip.
General: _Bark_ similar to American elm but of lighter color, softer,
and fissures not diamond-shaped in outline. _Inner bark sticky and
fragrant._ A _medium_-sized tree usually found near streams. Crown does
not droop like that of American elm. The _wood_ is commonly marketed
with the preceding species.
[Illustration: COMMON HACKBERRY
(_Celtis occidentalis_)]
Leaves: Simple, alternate, 2″-4″ long, slender pointed; margin sharp
toothed; base unequal; often rough above, slightly hairy and veins
prominent on undersides; _3-veined at base_. _Leaf-stem_ somewhat downy
and grooved; fairly long (compared to elm).
Twigs: Slender, reddish brown, _with chambered white pith_. _Buds_
small, sharp-pointed, closely pressed to the twig.
Fruit: Resembles a cherry, dark purple in color, ¼″-½″ diameter,
sweet but with very little flesh covering the pitted stone; borne singly
on a long slender stem; ripens in autumn.
General: _Bark_ gray-brown with characteristic warty projections or
irregular ridges. A _small_ tree. “Witches-brooms” are common. Most
common on limestone soils in moist locations. Sometimes mistaken for
elm. _Wood_ used principally for furniture, boxes and other containers.
[Illustration: QUAKING ASPEN
(_Populus tremuloides_)]
Leaves: Simple, alternate, 1½″-3″ in diameter, light green, smooth
above and below, nearly circular; margins with fine teeth; leaf-stems
thin and flattened, causing the leaves to tremble in the slightest
breeze. Yellowish-green when unfolding in spring.
Twigs: Slender, reddish brown, smooth, shiny. _Pith_ star-shaped,
white. _Buds_ sharp-pointed, smooth, shiny, often curved inward.
Fruit: A small (¼″ long) _capsule_ containing 10-12 seeds; capsules
spirally arranged on a 4″ long drooping stalk, maturing in early summer.
Each tiny cottony seed surrounded by long silky threads.
General: _Bark_ thin, pale yellow-green to silvery gray when young,
eventually becoming dark brown or gray and rough. A _small_ to
_medium_-sized tree, of rapid growth but short-lived. Often one of the
first forest trees to become established on recently burned areas; the
most widely distributed tree of North America. Most common in northern
Pennsylvania. _Wood_ used chiefly for paper pulp.
[Illustration: BIGTOOTH ASPEN
(_Populus grandidentata_)]
Leaves: Simple, alternate, 3″-4″ long, dark green above, paler below,
margins with coarse teeth; _leaf-stems_ flattened; silvery when
unfolding in spring.
Twigs: Rather stout, brownish gray, sometimes with a coating of pale,
wooly down. _Buds_ blunt-pointed, dull, seldom curved, _often wooly_.
Fruit: Similar to quaking aspen. _Flowers_, in the form of hanging
catkins, appear before the leaves in the spring, as is the case with
quaking aspen.
General: _Bark_ similar to that of quaking aspen, but usually darker.
A _small_ to _medium_-sized tree; short-lived. Most common in southern
Pennsylvania. _Wood_ used chiefly for paper pulp.
[Illustration: BLACK WILLOW
(_Salix nigra_)]
Leaves: Simple, alternate, long and narrow, short-stemmed, sharp
pointed, fine teeth on the margin, average length 3″; dark green above,
much lighter below. The _stipules_ (“small leaves” at the base of
leaf-stems of the main leaves) remain through most of the summer.
Twigs: Slender, brittle at the base, bright reddish brown to
orange-green. _Buds_ covered by a single scale, small, cone-shaped,
sharp-pointed.
Fruit: Small brown _capsule_, ¼″ long, borne in long hanging
clusters; ripens in May or June. Each tiny _seed_ surrounded by tufts of
long silky hair.
General: _Bark_ thick, dark brown, separating into broad, flat plates
or ridges as the tree grows older. A _small_ to _medium_-sized tree.
Only native willow which grows to a fair size. Found mainly in moist
situations. Often several trunks arise from the same root system.
Weeping willow (S. babylonica) and brittle willow (S. fragilis) are
introduced trees often planted for ornamental purposes.
[Illustration: BLACK CHERRY
(_Prunus serotina_)]
Leaves: Simple, alternate, narrow, with tapering tip, shiny above,
paler below and usually with reddish brown hairs near the base; 2″-5″
long, margins with short incurved teeth.
Twigs: Smooth, redd
|
volume, all Americans love best
"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle."
After the failure of his business, when Irving saw that he must write
something at once to meet his ordinary living expenses, he went up to
London and prepared several sketches, which he sent to his friend,
Henry Brevoort, in New York. Among them was the story of Rip Van
Winkle. This, with the other sketches, was printed in handsome form as
the first number of a periodical, which was offered for sale at
seventy-five cents. Though "The Sketch Book," as the periodical was
called, professed to be edited by "Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.," every one
knew that Washington Irving was the real author. In fact, the best
story in the first number, "Rip Van Winkle," was represented to be a
posthumous writing of Diedrich Knickerbocker, the author of the
"History of New York."
There are few Americans who do not know the story of "Rip Van Winkle"
by heart; for those who have not read the story, have at least seen
the play in which Joseph Jefferson, the great actor, has made himself
so famous.
Attached to the story is a note supposed to have been written by
Diedrich Knickerbocker, which a careless reader might overlook, but
which is an excellent introduction to the story. Says he:
"The story of Rip Van Winkle may seem incredible to many, but
nevertheless I give it my full belief, for I know the vicinity of our
old Dutch settlements to have been very subject to marvelous events
and appearances. Indeed, I have heard many stranger stories than this
in the villages along the Hudson; all of which were too well
authenticated to admit of a doubt. I have even talked with Rip Van
Winkle myself, who, when I last saw him, was a very venerable old man,
and so perfectly rational and consistent on every point, that I think
no conscientious person could refuse to take this into the bargain;
nay, I have seen a certificate on the subject, taken before a country
justice, and signed with a cross, in the justice's own handwriting.
The story, therefore, is beyond the possibility of doubt."
Rip was truly an original character. He had a shrewish wife who was
always scolding him; and he seems to have deserved all the cross
things she said to him, for he had "an insuperable aversion to all
kinds of profitable labor--in other words, he was as lazy a fellow as
you could find in all the country side."
Nevertheless, every one liked him, he was so good-natured. "He was a
great favorite among all the good wives of the village, who took his
part in all the family squabbles; and never failed whenever they
talked those matters over in their evening gossipings, to lay all the
blame on Dame Van Winkle. The children of the village, too, would
shout with joy whenever he approached. He assisted at their sports,
made their playthings, taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles, and
told them long stories of ghosts, witches, and Indians. Whenever he
went dodging about the village, he was surrounded by a troop of them,
hanging on his skirts, clambering on his back, and playing a thousand
tricks on him with impunity; and not a dog would bark at him
throughout the neighborhood."
You can't find much fault with a man who is so well liked that even
the dogs will not bark at him. You are reminded of Irving himself, who
for so many years was so idle; and yet who, out of his very idleness,
produced such charming stories.
"Rip Van Winkle," continues the narrative, "was one of those happy
mortals, of foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy,
eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or
trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. If
left to himself, he would have whistled life away in perfect
contentment; but his wife kept continually dinning in his ears about
his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was bringing on his
family."
This description is as perfect and as delightful as any in the English
language. Any one who cannot enjoy this has no perception of human
nature, and no love of humor in his composition. In time Rip
discovered that his only escape from his termagant wife was to take
his gun, and stroll off into the woods with his dog. "Here he would
sometimes seat himself at the foot of a tree, and share the contents
of his wallet with Wolf, with whom he sympathized as a fellow sufferer
in persecution. 'Poor Wolf,' he would say, 'thy mistress leads thee a
dog's life of it; but never mind, my lad, whilst I live thou shalt
never want a friend to stand by thee!' Wolf would wag his tail, look
wistfully into his master's face, and if dogs can feel pity, I verily
believe he reciprocated with all his heart."
Rip is just the sort of fellow to have some sort of adventure, and we
are not at all astonished when we find him helping the dwarf carry his
keg of liquor up the mountain. The description of "the odd-looking
personages playing at nine-pins" whom he finds on entering the
amphitheater, is a perfect picture in words; for the truly great
writer is a painter of pictures quite as much as the great artist.
"They were dressed in a quaint outlandish fashion; some wore short
doublets, others jerkins, with long knives in their belts. Their
visages, too, were peculiar: one had a large head, broad face, and
small piggish eyes; the face of another seemed to consist entirely of
nose, and was surmounted by a white sugar-loaf hat, set off with a
little red cock's tail. They all had beards of various shapes and
colors. There was one who seemed to be the commander. He was a stout
old gentleman, with a weather-beaten countenance; he wore a laced
doublet, broad belt and hanger, high-crowned hat and feather, red
stockings, and high-heeled shoes, with roses in them.... What seemed
particularly odd to Rip was, that though these folks were evidently
amusing themselves, yet they maintained the gravest faces, the most
mysterious silence, and were, withal, the most melancholy party of
pleasure he had ever witnessed. Nothing interrupted the stillness of
the scene but the noise of the balls, which, whenever they were
rolled, echoed along the mountains like rumbling peals of thunder."
But now comes a surprise. Rip indulges too freely in the contents of
the keg and falls asleep. When he wakes he finds a rusty old gun
beside him, and he whistles in vain for his dog. He goes back to the
village; but every thing and everybody is strange and changed. Putting
his hand to his chin he finds that his beard has grown a foot. He has
been sleeping twenty years.
But you must read the story for yourselves. It will bear reading many
times, and each time you will find in it something to smile at and
enjoy.
CHAPTER XI
LITERARY SUCCESS IN ENGLAND
"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" also purports to be written by Diedrich
Knickerbocker, and it is only less famous than "Rip Van Winkle." When
he was a boy, Irving had gone hunting in Sleepy Hollow, which is not
far from New York city; and in the latter part of his life he bought a
low stone house there of Mr. Van Tassel and fitted it up for his
bachelor home.
"The outline of this story," says his nephew Pierre Irving, "had been
sketched more than a year before[+] at Birmingham, after a
conversation with his brother-in-law, Van Wart, who had been dwelling
on some recollections of his early years at Tarrytown, and had touched
upon a waggish fiction of one Brom Bones, a wild blade, who professed
to fear nothing, and boasted of his having once met the devil on a
return from a nocturnal frolic, and run a race with him for a bowl of
milk punch. The imagination of the author suddenly kindled over the
recital, and in a few hours he had scribbled off the framework of his
renowned story, and was reading it to his sister and her husband. He
then threw it by until he went up to London, where it was expanded
into the present legend."
[Footnote +: That is, before it was finally written and published.]
No sooner had the first number of the "Sketch Book," as published in
New York, come to England, than a periodical began reprinting it, and
Irving heard that a publisher intended to bring it out in book form.
That made him decide to publish it in England himself, and he did so
at his own expense. The publisher soon failed, and by Scott's help, as
already explained, Irving got his book into the hands of Murray.
Murray finally gave him a thousand dollars for the copyright. But when
it was published, it proved so very popular that Murray paid him five
hundred more. From that time forward he received large sums for his
writings, both in the United States and in England.
The "Sketch Book" was followed by "Bracebridge Hall," consisting of
stories and sketches of the same character; and later by the "Tales of
a Traveller."
In the "Tales of a Traveller" we are most interested in "Buckthorne
and his Friends," a series of English stories, with descriptions of
literary life in London. Most famous of all is the account of a
publishers' dinner, with a description of the carving partner sitting
gravely at one end, with never a smile on his face, while at the other
end of the table sits the laughing partner; and the poor authors are
arranged at the table and are treated by the partners according to the
number of editions their books have sold.
Irving's father was a Scotchman, and his mother was an Englishwoman;
and one of his sisters and one of his brothers, as we have already
learned, lived in England for many years. It is not strange, then,
that England became to him a second home, and that many of his best
stories and descriptions in the "Sketch Book," "Bracebridge Hall," and
the "Tales of a Traveller" relate to English characters and scenes.
CHAPTER XII
IRVING GOES TO SPAIN
When Irving went to Liverpool in 1815, it was his intention to travel
on the continent of Europe. As we have seen, business reasons made
that impossible. But after the publication and success of the "Sketch
Book" he was free. He was now certain of an income, and his reputation
was so great that he attracted notice wherever he went.
In 1820, after having spent five years in England, he at last set out
on his European journey. We cannot follow him in all his wanderings;
but one country that he visited furnished him the materials for the
most serious, and in one way the most important part of his literary
work. This was Spain. Here he spent a great deal of time, returning
again and again; and finally he was appointed United States minister
to that country.
He first went to Spain to collect materials for the "Life and Voyages
of Christopher Columbus." This was a much more serious work than
anything he had before undertaken. It was, unlike the history of New
York, a genuine investigation of facts derived from the musty old
volumes of the libraries of Spanish monasteries and other ancient
collections. It was a record of the life of the discoverer of America
that was destined to remain the highest authority on that subject.
Murray, the London publisher, paid him over fifteen thousand dollars
for the English copyright alone.
In his study among the ruins of Spain, Irving found many other things
which greatly interested him--legends, and tales of the Moors who had
once ruled there, and of the ruined beauties of the Moorish palace of
the Alhambra. His imagination was set on fire, he was delighted with
the images of by-gone days of glittering pageantry which his fancy
called up. Before his history of Columbus was finished, he began the
writing of a book so precisely to his taste that he could not restrain
himself until it was finished. This was the "Chronicle of the Conquest
of Granada"--a true history, but one which reads more like a romance
of the Middle Ages than a simple record of facts.
This was followed by four other books based on Spanish history and
legend. It seemed as if Irving could never quite abandon this
entrancing subject, for during the entire remainder of his life he
went back to it constantly.
When his great history of the life of Columbus was published and
proved its merit, Irving was honored in a way he had little expected
in his more idle days. The Royal Society of Literature bestowed upon
him one of two fifty-guinea[+] gold medals awarded annually, and the
University of Oxford conferred the degree of L.L.D.
[Footnote +: Two hundred and fifty dollars.]
The "Life of Columbus" was followed in 1831 by the "Voyages of the
Companions of Columbus." In the following year Irving returned to the
United States after an absence of seventeen years.
He was no longer an idle young man unable to fix his mind on any
serious work; he had become the most famous of American men of
letters. When he reached New York his countrymen hastened to heap
honors upon him, and almost overwhelmed him with public attentions.
CHAPTER XIII
"THE ALHAMBRA"
Just before Irving's return to the United States in 1832, he prepared
for publication some sketches which he had made three or four years
before while living for a few months in the ruins of the Alhambra, the
ancient palace of the Moorish kings when they ruled the kingdom of
Granada. Next to the stories of "Rip Van Winkle" and the "Legend of
Sleepy Hollow," nothing that Irving has written has proved more
popular than this volume of "The Alhambra;" and it has made the
ancient ruin a place of pilgrimage for tourists in Europe ever since.
In this volume Irving not only describes in his own peculiarly
charming manner his experiences in the halls of the Alhambra itself,
but he gives many of the stories and legends of the place, most of
which were told to him by Mateo Ximenes, a "son of the Alhambra," who
acted as his guide. This is the way he came to secure Mateo's
services:
"At the gate were two or three ragged, super-annuated soldiers, dozing
on a stone bench, the successors of the Zegris and the Abencerrages;
while a tall, meagre valet, whose rusty-brown cloak was evidently
intended to conceal the ragged state of his nether garments, was
lounging in the sunshine and gossipping with the ancient sentinel on
duty. He joined us as we entered the gate, and offered his services to
show us the fortress.
"I have a traveler's dislike to officious ciceroni, and did not
altogether like the garb of the applicant.
"'You are well acquainted with the place, I presume?'
"'Nobody better; in fact, sir, I am a son of the Alhambra.'
"'The common Spaniards have certainly a most poetical way of
expressing themselves. 'A son of the Alhambra!' the appellation caught
me at once; the very tattered garb of my new acquaintance assumed a
dignity in my eyes. It was emblematic of the fortunes of the place,
and befitted the progeny of a ruin."
Accompanied by Mateo, the travelers pass on to "the great vestibule,
or porch of the gate," which "is formed by an immense Arabian arch, of
the horseshoe form, which springs to half the height of the tower. On
the keystone of this arch, is engraven a gigantic hand. Within the
vestibule, on the keystone of the portal, is sculptured, in like
manner, a gigantic key," emblems, say the learned, of Moorish
superstition and religious belief.
"A different explanation of these emblems, however, was given by the
legitimate son of Alhambra, and one more in unison with the notions of
the common people, who attach something of mystery and magic to
everything Moorish, and have all kinds of superstitions connected with
this old Moslem fortress. According to Mateo, it was a tradition
handed down from the oldest inhabitants, and which he had from his
father and grandfather, that the hand and key were magical devices on
which the fate of the Alhambra depended. The Moorish king who built it
was a great magician, or, as some believed, had sold himself to the
devil, and had laid the whole fortress under a magic spell. By this
means it had remained standing for several years, in defiance of
storms and earthquakes, while almost all other buildings of the Moors
had fallen to ruin and disappeared. This spell, the tradition went on
to say, would last until the hand on the outer arch should reach down
and grasp the key, when the whole pile would tumble to pieces, and all
the treasures buried beneath it by the Moors would be revealed."
The travelers at once made application to the governor for permission
to take up their residence in the palace of the Alhambra, and to their
astonishment and delight he placed his own suite of apartments at
their disposal, as he himself preferred to live in the city of
Granada.
Irving's companion soon left him, and he remained sole lord of the
palace. For a time he occupied the governor's rooms, which were very
scantily furnished; but one day he came upon an eerie suite of rooms
which he liked better. They were the rooms that had been fitted up for
the beautiful Elizabetta of Farnese, the second wife of Philip V.
"The windows, dismantled and open to the wind and weather, looked into
a charming little secluded garden, where an alabaster fountain
sparkled among roses and myrtles, and was surrounded by orange and
citron trees, some of which flung their branches into the chambers."
This was the garden of Lindaraxa.
"Four centuries had elapsed since the fair Lindaraxa passed away, yet
how much of the fragile beauty of the scenes she inhabited remained!
The garden still bloomed in which she delighted; the fountain still
presented the crystal mirror in which her charms may once have been
reflected; the alabaster, it is true, had lost its whiteness; the
basin beneath, overrun with weeds, had become the lurking-place of the
lizard, but there was something in the very decay that enhanced the
interest of the scene, speaking as it did of the mutability, the
irrevocable lot of man and all his works."
In spite of warnings of the dangers of the place, Irving had his bed
set up in the chamber beside this little garden. The first night was
full of frightful terrors. The garden was dark and sinister. "There
was a slight rustling noise overhead; a bat suddenly emerged from a
broken panel of the ceiling, flitting about the room and athwart my
solitary lamp; and as the fateful bird almost flouted my face with his
noiseless wing, the grotesque faces carved in high relief in the cedar
ceiling, whence he had emerged, seemed to mope and mow at me.
"Rousing myself, and half smiling at this temporary weakness, I
resolved to brave it out in the true spirit of the hero of the
enchanted house," says the narrator. So taking his lamp in his hand he
started out to make a midnight tour of the palace.
"My own shadow, cast upon the wall, began to disturb me," he
continues. "The echoes of my own footsteps along the corridors made me
pause and look around. I was traversing scenes fraught with dismal
recollections. One dark passage led down to the mosque where Yusef,
the Moorish monarch, the finisher of the Alhambra, had been basely
murdered. In another place I trod the gallery where another monarch
had been struck down by the poniard of a relative whom he had thwarted
in his love."
In a few nights, however, all this was changed; for the moon, which
had been invisible, began to "roll in full splendor above the towers,
pouring a flood of tempered light into every court and hall."
Says Irving, "I now felt the merit of the Arabic inscription on the
walls--'How beauteous is this garden; where the flowers of the earth
vie with the stars of heaven. What can compare with the vase of yon
alabaster fountain filled with crystal water? Nothing but the moon in
her fullness, shining in the midst of an unclouded sky!"
"On such heavenly nights," he goes on, "I would sit for hours at my
window inhaling the sweetness of the garden, and musing on the
checkered fortunes of those whose history was dimly shadowed out in
the elegant memorials around. Sometimes, when all was quiet, and the
clock from the distant cathedral of Granada struck the midnight hour,
I have sallied out on another tour and wandered over the whole
building; but how different from my first tour! No longer dark and
mysterious; no longer peopled with shadowy foes; no longer recalling
scenes of violence and murder; all was open, spacious, beautiful;
everything called up pleasing and romantic fancies; Lindaraxa once
more walked in her garden; the gay chivalry of Moslem Granada once
more glittered about the Court of Lions!
"Who can do justice to a moonlight night in such a climate and in such
a place? The temperature of a summer night in Andalusia is perfectly
ethereal. We seem lifted up into an ethereal atmosphere; we feel a
serenity of soul, a buoyancy of spirits, an elasticity of frame, which
render mere existence happiness. But when moonlight is added to all
this, the effect is like enchantment. Under its plastic sway the
Alhambra seems to regain its pristine glories. Every rent and chasm of
time; every moldering tint and weather-stain is gone; the marble
resumes its original whiteness; the long colonnades brighten in the
moonbeams; the halls are illuminated with a softened radiance--we
tread the enchanted palace of an Arabian tale!"
When one may journey with such a companion, through a whole volume of
enchantment and legend and moonlight, it is not strange that "The
Alhambra" has been one of the most widely read books ever produced by
an American writer.
CHAPTER XIV
THE LAST YEARS OF IRVING'S LIFE
Some people have thought that Irving's long residence abroad indicated
that he did not care so much as he should for his native land. But the
truth is, the years after his return to the United States were among
the happiest of his life; and more and more he felt that here was his
home.
In 1835 he purchased, as I have already said, a small piece of land on
the Hudson, on which stood the Van Tassel house mentioned in the
"Legend of Sleepy Hollow." It was an old Dutch cottage which had stood
for so many years that it needed to be almost entirely rebuilt; and
Irving spent a considerable sum of money to fit it up as his bachelor
quarters. First he shared it with one of his bachelor brothers; but
soon he invited his brother Ebenezer to come with his family of girls
to occupy it with him.
As the years went on, Irving took a delight in this cottage that can
hardly be expressed. At first he called it "Wolfert's Roost";
afterward the name was changed to "Sunnyside," the name by which it is
still known. Little by little he bought more land, he planted trees,
and cultivated flowers and vegetables. At one time he boasts that he
has become so proficient in gardening that he can raise his own fruits
and vegetables at a cost to him of little more than twice the market
price.
During this period several books were published, among them a
description of a tour on the prairies which he took soon after his
return from abroad; a collection of "Legends of the Conquest of Spain"
which had been lying in his trunk since his residence in the Alhambra
seven or eight years before; and "Astoria," a book of Western life and
adventure, describing John Jacob Astor's settlement on the Columbia
river.
It was his wish to write a history of the conquest of Mexico, for
which he had collected materials in Spain; but hearing that Prescott,
the well-known American historian, was at work on the same subject, he
gave it up to him.
The chief work of his later years was his "Life of George Washington."
This was a great undertaking, of which he had often thought. He was
actually at work on it for many years, and it was finally published
only a short time before his death in 1859.
Irving's friends in the United States had long wished to give him some
honor or distinction. He had been offered several public offices,
among them the secretaryship of the navy; but he had declined them
all. But in 1842, when Daniel Webster was secretary of state, Irving
was nominated minister to Spain. It was Webster's idea, and he took
great delight in carrying out his plan. After the notification of his
nomination had been sent to Irving, and Webster thought time enough
had elapsed for him to receive it, he remarked to a friend:
"Washington Irving is now the most astonished man in the city of New
York."
When Irving heard the news he seemed to think less of the distinction
conferred upon him than of the unhappiness of being once more banished
from his home. "It is hard--very hard," he murmured, half to himself;
"yet," he added, whimsically enough (says his nephew), being struck
with the seeming absurdity of such a view, "I must try to bear it.
_God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb_." Later, however, Irving
speaks of this as the "crowning honor of his life."
He remained abroad four years, when he sent in his resignation, and
hurried home to spend his last years at Sunnyside.
His first thought was to build an addition to his cottage, in order to
have room for all his nieces and nephews. His enjoyment in every
detail of the work was almost that of a boy. Though now an old man, he
seemed as sunny and as gay as ever. Every one who knew him loved him;
and all the people who now read his books must have the same
affectionate fondness for this most delightful of companions.
In the United States he met both Dickens and Thackeray. His friendship
with Dickens was begun by a letter which Irving wrote to the great
novelist, enthusiastically praising his work. At once Dickens replied
in a long letter, fairly bubbling over with delight and friendship.
Here is a part of it:
"There is no man in the world who could have given me the heartfelt
pleasure you have. There is no living writer, and there are very few
among the dead, whose approbation I should feel so proud to earn. And
with everything you have written upon my shelves, and in my thoughts,
and in my heart of hearts, I may honestly and truly say so.
"I have been so accustomed to associate you with my pleasantest and
happiest thoughts, and with my leisure hours, that I rush at once into
full confidence with you, and fall, as it were, naturally, and by the
very laws of gravity, into your open arms.... My dear Washington
Irving, I cannot thank you enough for your cordial and generous
praise, or tell you what deep and lasting gratification it has given
me. I hope to have many letters from you, and to exchange a frequent
correspondence. I send this to say so....
"Always your faithful friend,
"CHARLES DICKENS."
The warmth of feeling which Dickens displays on receiving his first
letter from Irving, we must all feel when we have become as well
acquainted with Irving's works as Dickens was.
Washington Irving died on the 28th of November, 1859, at his dear
Sunnyside, and now lies buried in a cemetery upon a hill near by, in a
beautiful spot overlooking the Hudson river and Sleepy Hollow.
* * * * *
NOTE.--The thanks of the publishers are due to G. P. Putnam's Sons for
kind permission to use extracts from the Works of Washington Irving.
THE STORY OF EDGAR ALLAN POE
[Illustration: _EDGAR ALLAN POE_.]
EDGAR ALLAN POE
CHAPTER I
THE ARTIST IN WORDS
Who has not felt the weird fascination of Poe's strangely beautiful
poem "The Raven"? Perhaps on some stormy evening you have read it
until the "silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain" has
"thrilled you, filled you, with fantastic terrors never felt before."
That poem is the almost perfect mirror of the life of the man who
wrote it--the most brilliant poetic genius in the whole range of
American literature, the most unfortunate and unhappy.
Poe had a singular fate. When Longfellow and Bryant and Lowell and
Holmes were winning their way to fame quietly and steadily, Poe was
writing wonderful poems and wonderful stories, and more than that, he
was inventing new principles and new artistic methods, on which other
great writers in time to come should build their finest work; yet he
barely escaped starvation, and the critics made it appear that,
compared with such men as Longfellow and Bryant, he was more notorious
than really great. Lowell in his "Fable for Critics" said:
"There comes Poe,... three fifths of him genius, and two fifths sheer
fudge."
But now, fifty years after his death, we see how great a man Poe was.
Poe invented the modern art of short story writing. His tales were
translated into French by a famous writer named Charles Baudelaire.
Other French writers saw how fine they were and modeled their work
upon them. They learned the art of short story writing from Poe. Then
these French stories were translated into English, and English and
American writers have imitated them and adopted similar methods of
writing.
Conan Doyle's detective stories would probably never have been written
had not Poe first composed "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"; and the
stories of horror and fear so common to-day are possible because Poe
wrote "William Wilson," "The Black Cat," and other stories of the same
kind.
Have you ever learned to scan poetry? If you have, you know that the
rules which tell you that a foot is composed of one long syllable and
one short one, two short syllables and one long one, or whatever else
it may be, are frequently disregarded. You know, too, that some lines
are cut off short at the end, and others are made a little too long.
Why is this permitted? In his "Rationale of Verse," Poe explained all
these things, and showed how the learned of past ages had made
mistakes. In a subsequent chapter we shall see just what the relation
between music and poetry is, and what Poe taught about the art of
making poetry.
For years people thought that Poe's "The Philosophy of Composition,"
in which he tells in what a cold-blooded way he wrote "The Raven," was
a joke; but in later times we have learned to understand what he meant
and to know that he was very sensible in his methods of working.
When Poe was young he was not a very remarkable poet; but, as years
went on and he learned more and more the art of writing, he rewrote
and rewrote his verses until at last in conscious art he was almost,
if not quite, the master poet of America.
CHAPTER II
POE'S FATHER AND MOTHER
Edgar Allan Poe was descended on his father's side from a
Revolutionary hero, General David Poe. The Poes were a good family of
Baltimore, where many of them still live as prominent citizens. It is
said that General Poe was descended from one of Cromwell's officers,
who received grants of land in Ireland. One of the poet's ancestors,
John Poe, emigrated from Ireland to Pennsylvania; and from there the
Poes went to Maryland. General Poe was an ardent patriot both before
and during the Revolution.
General Poe's son David, the eldest, was not much like his father. In
Baltimore he enjoyed himself with his friends and played at amateur
theatricals with the Thespian Club. He was supposed to be studying
law. For this purpose he went to live with an uncle in Augusta,
Georgia; but his father soon heard that he had given up law to become
an actor. General Poe was very angry and after that allowed the young
man to shift for himself.
Edgar Allan Poe's mother was an English actress, whose mother had also
been an actress. She was born at sea, and as she went with her mother
on her travels from town to town, naturally the daughter learned the
mother's art as a means of self-support, and in time became very
successful.
At seventeen, her mother having married again, Elizabeth Arnold, for
that was her name, was thrown upon her own resources. She joined a
Philadelphia company, and remained with it for the next four years. In
June, 1802, she acted in Baltimore, and perhaps it was there that
David Poe, Jr., first saw her. She was pretty and gay, yet a good girl
and a very fine actress.
She soon married a young Mr. Hopkins, who had been playing with the
company, and for the following two years the young couple lived in
Virginia. It was then that David Poe, Jr., having left his uncle's
home at Augusta and gone on the stage in Charleston, joined the same
company. He was not a very good actor; and he never rose to a high
place in his profession.
In the following year Mr. Hopkins died, and a few months later young
David Poe married Mrs. Hopkins, who had been Elizabeth Arnold.
Mr. and Mrs. David Poe were now husband and wife, and very poor, as
most actors are. Soon after their marriage they went to Boston, and
remained for some years. There Edgar Poe, their second son, was born,
January 19, 1809.
While Edgar was still a little child his parents went to Richmond,
Virginia, to fill an engagement in the theater there. Misfortune
followed them. His father died in poverty, and his mother did not
survive him long. Edgar and his brother and sister were thus left
penniless orphans. But good friends took care of them.
Edgar was adopted by a Mrs. Allan, the wife of a wealthy man in the
city of Richmond. She was very fond of the bright little boy, and as
long as she lived he had a good home. He was petted and spoiled; but
those were almost the only years of his life when he had plenty of
money. He was very fond of his adoptive mother, and held her memory
dear to the day of his death. He was now known as Edgar Allan.
CHAPTER III
YOUNG EDGAR ALLAN
Edgar was a beautiful child, with dark eyes, curly dark hair, and
lively manners. At six he could read, draw, and dance. After dessert,
sometimes they would put him up on the old-fashioned table, where he
would make amusement for the company. He could speak pieces, too, and
did it so well that people were astonished. He understood how to
emphasize his words correctly. He had a pony and dogs, with which he
ran about; and everywhere he was a great favorite.
In June, 1815, when Edgar was about six years old, his adoptive father
and mother, with an aunt, went to England to stay several years.
Before starting, Mr. Allan bought a Murray's reader, two Murray's
spelling books, and another book to keep the little fellow busy on the
long sailing voyage across the Atlantic; for at that time a trip to
England occupied several weeks instead of a few days as now. When the
family reached London and were settled down, Edgar was sent to a
famous English school.
This school was at Stoke Newington, a quiet, old-fashioned country
town, only a few miles out from London. Here was the house of
Leicester, the favorite of Queen Elizabeth, whose story you may read
in Scott's "Kenilworth"; and here too was the house of Anne Boleyn's
ill-fated lover, Earl Percy.
The Manor House School, as it was called, was in a quaint and very old
building, with high walls about the grounds, and great spiked,
iron-studded gates. Here the boys lived and studied, seldom returning
home, and seldom going outside the grounds
|
the kingliness of the
stock, the doctrine that the king should be the son of a king, is better
satisfied by the succession of the late king’s bastard son than by
sending for some distant kinsman, claiming perhaps only through females.
Still bastardy, if it was often convenient to forget it, could always be
turned against a man. The succession of a bastard was never likely to be
quite undisputed or his reign to be quite undisturbed.
Now William succeeded to his duchy under the double disadvantage of being
at once bastard and minor. He was born at Falaise in 1027 or 1028, being
the son of Robert, afterwards duke, but then only Count of Hiesmois, by
Herleva, commonly called Arletta, the daughter of Fulbert the tanner.
There was no pretence of marriage between his parents; yet his father,
when he designed William to succeed him, might have made him legitimate,
as some of his predecessors had been made, by a marriage with his mother.
In 1028 Robert succeeded his brother Richard in the duchy. In 1034 or
1035 he determined to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He called on his
barons to swear allegiance to his bastard of seven years old as his
successor in case he never came back. Their wise counsel to stay at
home, to look after his dominions and to raise up lawful heirs, was
unheeded. Robert carried his point. The succession of young William was
accepted by the Norman nobles, and was confirmed by the overlord Henry
King of the French. The arrangement soon took effect. Robert died on
his way back before the year 1035 was out, and his son began, in name at
least, his reign of fifty-two years over the Norman duchy.
The succession of one who was at once bastard and minor could happen only
when no one else had a distinctly better claim William could never have
held his ground for a moment against a brother of his father of full age
and undoubted legitimacy. But among the living descendants of former
dukes some were themselves of doubtful legitimacy, some were shut out by
their profession as churchmen, some claimed only through females. Robert
had indeed two half-brothers, but they were young and their legitimacy
was disputed; he had an uncle, Robert Archbishop of Rouen, who had been
legitimated by the later marriage of his parents. The rival who in the
end gave William most trouble was his cousin Guy of Burgundy, son of a
daughter of his grandfather Richard the Good. Though William’s
succession was not liked, no one of these candidates was generally
preferred to him. He therefore succeeded; but the first twelve years of
his reign were spent in the revolts and conspiracies of unruly nobles,
who hated the young duke as the one representative of law and order, and
who were not eager to set any one in his place who might be better able
to enforce them.
Nobility, so variously defined in different lands, in Normandy took in
two classes of men. All were noble who had any kindred or affinity,
legitimate or otherwise, with the ducal house. The natural children of
Richard the Fearless were legitimated by his marriage with their mother
Gunnor, and many of the great houses of Normandy sprang from her brothers
and sisters. The mother of William received no such exaltation as this.
Besides her son, she had borne to Robert a daughter Adelaide, and, after
Robert’s death, she married a Norman knight named Herlwin of Conteville.
To him, besides a daughter, she bore two sons, Ode and Robert. They rose
to high posts in Church and State, and played an important part in their
half-brother’s history. Besides men whose nobility was of this kind,
there were also Norman houses whose privileges were older than the amours
or marriages of any duke, houses whose greatness was as old as the
settlement of Rolf, as old that is as the ducal power itself. The great
men of both these classes were alike hard to control. A Norman baron of
this age was well employed when he was merely rebelling against his
prince or waging private war against a fellow baron. What specially
marks the time is the frequency of treacherous murders wrought by men of
the highest rank, often on harmless neighbours or unsuspecting guests.
But victims were also found among those guardians of the young duke whose
faithful discharge of their duties shows that the Norman nobility was not
wholly corrupt. One indeed was a foreign prince, Alan Count of the
Bretons, a grandson of Richard the Fearless through a daughter. Two
others, the seneschal Osbern and Gilbert Count of Eu, were irregular
kinsmen of the duke. All these were murdered, the Breton count by
poison. Such a childhood as this made William play the man while he was
still a child. The helpless boy had to seek for support of some kind.
He got together the chief men of his duchy, and took a new guardian by
their advice. But it marks the state of things that the new guardian was
one of the murderers of those whom he succeeded. This was Ralph of
Wacey, son of William’s great-uncle, Archbishop Robert. Murderer as he
was, he seems to have discharged his duty faithfully. There are men who
are careless of general moral obligations, but who will strictly carry
out any charge which appeals to personal honour. Anyhow Ralph’s
guardianship brought with it a certain amount of calm. But men, high in
the young duke’s favour, were still plotting against him, and they
presently began to plot, not only against their prince but against their
country. The disaffected nobles of Normandy sought for a helper against
young William in his lord King Henry of Paris.
The art of diplomacy had never altogether slumbered since much earlier
times. The king who owed his crown to William’s father, and who could
have no ground of offence against William himself, easily found good
pretexts for meddling in Norman affairs. It was not unnatural in the
King of the French to wish to win back a sea-board which had been given
up more than a hundred years before to an alien power, even though that
power had, for much more than half of that time, acted more than a
friendly part towards France. It was not unnatural that the French
people should cherish a strong national dislike to the Normans and a
strong wish that Rouen should again be a French city. But such motives
were not openly avowed then any more than now. The alleged ground was
quite different. The counts of Chartres were troublesome neighbours to
the duchy, and the castle of Tillières had been built as a defence
against them. An advance of the King’s dominions had made Tillières a
neighbour of France, and, as a neighbour, it was said to be a standing
menace. The King of the French, acting in concert with the disaffected
party in Normandy, was a dangerous enemy, and the young Duke and his
counsellors determined to give up Tillières. Now comes the first
distinct exercise of William’s personal will. We are without exact
dates, but the time can be hardly later than 1040, when William was from
twelve to thirteen years old. At his special request, the defender of
Tillières, Gilbert Crispin, who at first held out against French and
Normans alike, gave up the castle to Henry. The castle was burned; the
King promised not to repair it for four years. Yet he is said to have
entered Normandy, to have laid waste William’s native district of
Hiesmois, to have supplied a French garrison to a Norman rebel named
Thurstan, who held the castle of Falaise against the Duke, and to have
ended by restoring Tillières as a menace against Normandy. And now the
boy whose destiny had made him so early a leader of men had to bear his
first arms against the fortress which looked down on his birth-place.
Thurstan surrendered and went into banishment. William could set down
his own Falaise as the first of a long list of towns and castles which he
knew how to win without shedding of blood.
When we next see William’s distinct personal action, he is still young,
but no longer a child or even a boy. At nineteen or thereabouts he is a
wise and valiant man, and his valour and wisdom are tried to the
uttermost. A few years of comparative quiet were chiefly occupied, as a
quiet time in those days commonly was, with ecclesiastical affairs. One
of these specially illustrates the state of things with which William had
to deal. In 1042, when the Duke was about fourteen, Normandy adopted the
Truce of God in its later shape. It no longer attempted to establish
universal peace; it satisfied itself with forbidding, under the strongest
ecclesiastical censures, all private war and violence of any kind on
certain days of the week. Legislation of this kind has two sides. It
was an immediate gain if peace was really enforced for four days in the
week; but that which was not forbidden on the other three could no longer
be denounced as in itself evil. We are told that in no land was the
Truce more strictly observed than in Normandy. But we may be sure that,
when William was in the fulness of his power, the stern weight of the
ducal arm was exerted to enforce peace on Mondays and Tuesdays as well as
on Thursdays and Fridays.
It was in the year 1047 that William’s authority was most dangerously
threatened and that he was first called on to show in all their fulness
the powers that were in him. He who was to be conqueror of Maine and
conqueror of England was first to be conqueror of his own duchy. The
revolt of a large part of the country, contrasted with the firm loyalty
of another part, throws a most instructive light on the internal state of
the duchy. There was, as there still is, a line of severance between the
districts which formed the first grant to Rolf and those which were
afterwards added. In these last a lingering remnant of old Teutonic life
had been called into fresh strength by new settlements from Scandinavia.
At the beginning of the reign of Richard the Fearless, Rouen, the
French-speaking city, is emphatically contrasted with Bayeux, the once
Saxon city and land, now the headquarters of the Danish speech. At that
stage the Danish party was distinctly a heathen party. We are not told
whether Danish was still spoken so late as the time of William’s youth.
We can hardly believe that the Scandinavian gods still kept any avowed
worshippers. But the geographical limits of the revolt exactly fall in
with the boundary which had once divided French and Danish speech,
Christian and heathen worship. There was a wide difference in feeling on
the two sides of the Dive. The older Norman settlements, now thoroughly
French in tongue and manners, stuck faithfully to the Duke; the lands to
the west rose against him. Rouen and Evreux were firmly loyal to
William; Saxon Bayeux and Danish Coutances were the headquarters of his
enemies.
When the geographical division took this shape, we are surprised at the
candidate for the duchy who was put forward by the rebels. William was a
Norman born and bred; his rival was in every sense a Frenchman. This was
William’s cousin Guy of Burgundy, whose connexion with the ducal house
was only by the spindle-side. But his descent was of uncontested
legitimacy, which gave him an excuse for claiming the duchy in opposition
to the bastard grandson of the tanner. By William he had been enriched
with great possessions, among which was the island fortress of Brionne in
the Risle. The real object of the revolt was the partition of the duchy.
William was to be dispossessed; Guy was to be duke in the lands east of
Dive; the great lords of Western Normandy were to be left independent.
To this end the lords of the Bessin and the Côtentin revolted, their
leader being Neal, Viscount of Saint-Sauveur in the Côtentin. We are
told that the mass of the people everywhere wished well to their duke; in
the common sovereign lay their only chance of protection against their
immediate lords. But the lords had armed force of the land at their
bidding. They first tried to slay or seize the Duke himself, who chanced
to be in the midst of them at Valognes. He escaped; we hear a stirring
tale of his headlong ride from Valognes to Falaise. Safe among his own
people, he planned his course of action. He first sought help of the man
who could give him most help, but who had most wronged him. He went into
France; he saw King Henry at Poissy, and the King engaged to bring a
French force to William’s help under his own command.
This time Henry kept his promise. The dismemberment of Normandy might
have been profitable to France by weakening the power which had become so
special an object of French jealousy; but with a king the common interest
of princes against rebellious barons came first. Henry came with a
French army, and fought well for his ally on the field of Val-ès-dunes.
Now came the Conqueror’s first battle, a tourney of horsemen on an open
table-land just within the land of the rebels between Caen and Mezidon.
The young duke fought well and manfully; but the Norman writers allow
that it was French help that gained him the victory. Yet one of the many
anecdotes of the battle points to a source of strength which was always
ready to tell for any lord against rebellious vassals. One of the
leaders of the revolt, Ralph of Tesson, struck with remorse and stirred
by the prayers of his knights, joined the Duke just before the battle.
He had sworn to smite William wherever he found him, and he fulfilled his
oath by giving the Duke a harmless blow with his glove. How far an oath
to do an unlawful act is binding is a question which came up again at
another stage of William’s life.
The victory at Val-ès-dunes was decisive, and the French King, whose help
had done so much to win it, left William to follow it up. He met with
but little resistance except at the stronghold of Brionne. Guy himself
vanishes from Norman history. William had now conquered his own duchy,
and conquered it by foreign help. For the rest of his Norman reign he
had often to strive with enemies at home, but he had never to put down
such a rebellion again as that of the lords of western Normandy. That
western Normandy, the truest Normandy, had to yield to the more
thoroughly Romanized lands to the east. The difference between them
never again takes a political shape. William was now lord of all
Normandy, and able to put down all later disturbers of the peace. His
real reign now begins; from the age of nineteen or twenty, his acts are
his own. According to his abiding practice, he showed himself a merciful
conqueror. Through his whole reign he shows a distinct unwillingness to
take human life except in fair fighting on the battle-field. No blood
was shed after the victory of Val-ès-dunes; one rebel died in bonds; the
others underwent no harder punishment than payment of fines, giving of
hostages, and destruction of their castles. These castles were not as
yet the vast and elaborate structures which arose in after days. A
single strong square tower, or even a defence of wood on a steep mound
surrounded by a ditch, was enough to make its owner dangerous. The
possession of these strongholds made every baron able at once to defy his
prince and to make himself a scourge to his neighbours. Every season of
anarchy is marked by the building of castles; every return of order
brings with it their overthrow as a necessary condition of peace.
* * * * *
Thus, in his lonely and troubled childhood, William had been schooled for
the rule of men. He had now, in the rule of a smaller dominion, in
warfare and conquest on a smaller scale, to be schooled for the conquest
and the rule of a greater dominion. William had the gifts of a born
ruler, and he was in no way disposed to abuse them. We know his rule in
Normandy only through the language of panegyric; but the facts speak for
themselves. He made Normandy peaceful and flourishing, more peaceful and
flourishing perhaps than any other state of the European mainland. He is
set before us as in everything a wise and beneficent ruler, the protector
of the poor and helpless, the patron of commerce and of all that might
profit his dominions. For defensive wars, for wars waged as the faithful
man of his overlord, we cannot blame him. But his main duty lay at home.
He still had revolts to put down, and he put them down. But to put them
down was the first of good works. He had to keep the peace of the land,
to put some cheek on the unruly wills of those turbulent barons on whom
only an arm like his could put any cheek. He had, in the language of his
day, to do justice, to visit wrong with sure and speedy punishment,
whoever was the wrong-doer. If a ruler did this first of duties well,
much was easily forgiven him in other ways. But William had as yet
little to be forgiven. Throughout life he steadily practised some
unusual virtues. His strict attention to religion was always marked.
And his religion was not that mere lavish bounty to the Church which was
consistent with any amount of cruelty or license. William’s religion
really influenced his life, public and private. He set an unusual
example of a princely household governed according to the rules of
morality, and he dealt with ecclesiastical matters in the spirit of a
true reformer. He did not, like so many princes of his age, make
ecclesiastical preferments a source of corrupt gain, but promoted good
men from all quarters. His own education is not likely to have received
much attention; it is not clear whether he had mastered the rarer art of
writing or the more usual one of reading; but both his promotion of
learned churchmen and the care given to the education of some of his
children show that he at least valued the best attainments of his time.
Had William’s whole life been spent in the duties of a Norman duke,
ruling his duchy wisely, defending it manfully, the world might never
have known him for one of its foremost men, but his life on that narrower
field would have been useful and honourable almost without a drawback.
It was the fatal temptation of princes, the temptation to territorial
aggrandizement, which enabled him fully to show the powers that were in
him, but which at the same time led to his moral degradation. The
defender of his own land became the invader of other lands, and the
invader could not fail often to sink into the oppressor. Each step in
his career as Conqueror was a step downwards. Maine was a neighbouring
land, a land of the same speech, a land which, if the feelings of the
time could have allowed a willing union, would certainly have lost
nothing by an union with Normandy. England, a land apart, a land of
speech, laws, and feelings, utterly unlike those of any part of Gaul, was
in another case. There the Conqueror was driven to be the oppressor.
Wrong, as ever, was punished by leading to further wrong.
With the two fields, nearer and more distant, narrower and wider, on
which William was to appear as Conqueror he has as yet nothing to do. It
is vain to guess at what moment the thought of the English succession may
have entered his mind or that of his advisers. When William began his
real reign after Val-ès-dunes, Norman influence was high in England.
Edward the Confessor had spent his youth among his Norman kinsfolk; he
loved Norman ways and the company of Normans and other men of French
speech. Strangers from the favoured lands held endless posts in Church
and State; above all, Robert of Jumièges, first Bishop of London and then
Archbishop of Canterbury, was the King’s special favourite and adviser.
These men may have suggested the thought of William’s succession very
early. On the other hand, at this time it was by no means clear that
Edward might not leave a son of his own. He had been only a few years
married, and his alleged vow of chastity is very doubtful. William’s
claim was of the flimsiest kind. By English custom the king was chosen
out of a single kingly house, and only those who were descended from
kings in the male line were counted as members of that house. William
was not descended, even in the female line, from any English king; his
whole kindred with Edward was that Edward’s mother Emma, a daughter of
Richard the Fearless, was William’s great-aunt. Such a kindred, to say
nothing of William’s bastardy, could give no right to the crown according
to any doctrine of succession that ever was heard of. It could at most
point him out as a candidate for adoption, in case the reigning king
should be disposed and allowed to choose his successor. William or his
advisers may have begun to weigh this chance very early; but all that is
really certain is that William was a friend and favourite of his elder
kinsman, and that events finally brought his succession to the English
crown within the range of things that might be.
But, before this, William was to show himself as a warrior beyond the
bounds of his own duchy, and to take seizin, as it were, of his great
continental conquest. William’s first war out of Normandy was waged in
common with King Henry against Geoffrey Martel Count of Anjou, and waged
on the side of Maine. William undoubtedly owed a debt of gratitude to
his overlord for good help given at Val-ès-dunes, and excuses were never
lacking for a quarrel between Anjou and Normandy. Both powers asserted
rights over the intermediate land of Maine. In 1048 we find William
giving help to Henry in a war with Anjou, and we hear wonderful but vague
tales of his exploits. The really instructive part of the story deals
with two border fortresses on the march of Normandy and Maine. Alençon
lay on the Norman side of the Sarthe; but it was disloyal to Normandy.
Brionne was still holding out for Guy of Burgundy. The town was a
lordship of the house of Bellême, a house renowned for power and
wickedness, and which, as holding great possessions alike of Normandy and
of France, ranked rather with princes than with ordinary nobles. The
story went that William Talvas, lord of Bellême, one of the fiercest of
his race, had cursed William in his cradle, as one by whom he and his
should be brought to shame. Such a tale set forth the noblest side of
William’s character, as the man who did something to put down such
enemies of mankind as he who cursed him. The possessions of William
Talvas passed through his daughter Mabel to Roger of Montgomery, a man
who plays a great part in William’s history; but it is the disloyalty of
the burghers, not of their lord, of which we hear just now. They
willingly admitted an Angevin garrison. William in return laid siege to
Domfront on the Varenne, a strong castle which was then an outpost of
Maine against Normandy. A long skirmishing warfare, in which William won
for himself a name by deeds of personal prowess, went on during the
autumn and winter (1048–49). One tale specially illustrates more than
one point in the feelings of the time. The two princes, William and
Geoffrey, give a mutual challenge; each gives the other notice of the
garb and shield that he will wear that he may not be mistaken. The
spirit of knight-errantry was coming in, and we see that William himself
in his younger days was touched by it. But we see also that coat-armour
was as yet unknown. Geoffrey and his host, so the Normans say, shrink
from the challenge and decamp in the night, leaving the way open for a
sudden march upon Alençon. The disloyal burghers received the duke with
mockery of his birth. They hung out skins, and shouted, “Hides for the
Tanner.” Personal insult is always hard for princes to bear, and the
wrath of William was stirred up to a pitch which made him for once depart
from his usual moderation towards conquered enemies. He swore that the
men who had jeered at him should be dealt with like a tree whose branches
are cut off with the pollarding-knife. The town was taken by assault,
and William kept his oath. The castle held out; the hands and feet of
thirty-two pollarded burghers of Alençon were thrown over its walls, and
the threat implied drove the garrison to surrender on promise of safety
for life and limb. The defenders of Domfront, struck with fear,
surrendered also, and kept their arms as well as their lives and limbs.
William had thus won back his own rebellious town, and had enlarged his
borders by his first conquest. He went farther south, and fortified
another castle at Ambrières; but Ambrières was only a temporary conquest.
Domfront has ever since been counted as part of Normandy. But, as
ecclesiastical divisions commonly preserve the secular divisions of an
earlier time, Domfront remained down to the great French Revolution in
the spiritual jurisdiction of the bishops of Le Mans.
* * * * *
William had now shown himself in Maine as conqueror, and he was before
long to show himself in England, though not yet as conqueror. If our
chronology is to be trusted, he had still in this interval to complete
his conquest of his own duchy by securing the surrender of Brionne; and
two other events, both characteristic, one of them memorable, fill up the
same time. William now banished a kinsman of his own name, who held the
great county of Mortain, _Moretoliam_ or _Moretonium_, in the diocese of
Avranches, which must be carefully distinguished from Mortagne-en-Perche,
_Mauritania_ or _Moretonia_ in the diocese of Seez. This act, of
somewhat doubtful justice, is noteworthy on two grounds. First, the
accuser of the banished count was one who was then a poor serving-knight
of his own, but who became the forefather of a house which plays a great
part in English history, Robert surnamed the Bigod. Secondly, the vacant
county was granted by William to his own half-brother Robert. He had
already in 1048 bestowed the bishopric of Bayeux on his other
half-brother Odo, who cannot at that time have been more than twelve
years old. He must therefore have held the see for a good while without
consecration, and at no time of his fifty years’ holding of it did he
show any very episcopal merits. This was the last case in William’s
reign of an old abuse by which the chief church preferments in Normandy
had been turned into means of providing for members, often unworthy
members, of the ducal family; and it is the only one for which William
can have been personally responsible. Both his brothers were thus placed
very early in life among the chief men of Normandy, as they were in later
years to be placed among the chief men of England. But William’s
affection for his brothers, amiable as it may have been personally, was
assuredly not among the brighter parts of his character as a sovereign.
The other chief event of this time also concerns the domestic side of
William’s life. The long story of his marriage now begins. The date is
fixed by one of the decrees of the council of Rheims held in 1049 by Pope
Leo the Ninth, in which Baldwin Count of Flanders is forbidden to give
his daughter to William the Norman. This implies that the marriage was
already thought of, and further that it was looked on as uncanonical.
The bride whom William sought, Matilda daughter of Baldwin the Fifth, was
connected with him by some tie of kindred or affinity which made a
marriage between them unlawful by the rules of the Church. But no
genealogist has yet been able to find out exactly what the canonical
hindrance was. It is hard to trace the descent of William and Matilda up
to any common forefather. But the light which the story throws on
William’s character is the same in any case. Whether he was seeking a
wife or a kingdom, he would have his will, but he could wait for it. In
William’s doubtful position, a marriage with the daughter of the Count of
Flanders would be useful to him in many ways; and Matilda won her
husband’s abiding love and trust. Strange tales are told of William’s
wooing. Tales are told also of Matilda’s earlier love for the Englishman
Brihtric, who is said to have found favour in her eyes when he came as
envoy from England to her father’s court. All that is certain is that
the marriage had been thought of and had been forbidden before the next
important event in William’s life that we have to record.
Was William’s Flemish marriage in any way connected with his hopes of
succession to the English crown? Had there been any available bride for
him in England, it might have been for his interest to seek for her
there. But it should be noticed, though no ancient writer points out the
fact, that Matilda was actually descended from Alfred in the female line;
so that William’s children, though not William himself, had some few
drops of English blood in their veins. William or his advisers, in
weighing every chance which might help his interests in the direction of
England, may have reckoned this piece of rather ancient genealogy among
the advantages of a Flemish alliance. But it is far more certain that,
between the forbidding of the marriage and the marriage itself, a direct
hope of succession to the English crown had been opened to the Norman
duke.
CHAPTER III.
WILLIAM’S FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND.
A.D. 1051–1052.
WHILE William was strengthening himself in Normandy, Norman influence in
England had risen to its full height. The king was surrounded by foreign
favourites. The only foreign earl was his nephew Ralph of Mentes, the
son of his sister Godgifu. But three chief bishoprics were held by
Normans, Robert of Canterbury, William of London, and Ulf of Dorchester.
William bears a good character, and won the esteem of Englishmen; but the
unlearned Ulf is emphatically said to have done “nought bishoplike.”
Smaller preferments in Church and State, estates in all parts of the
kingdom, were lavishly granted to strangers. They built castles, and
otherwise gave offence to English feeling. Archbishop Robert, above all,
was ever plotting against Godwine, Earl of the West-Saxons, the head of
the national party. At last, in the autumn of 1051, the national
indignation burst forth. The immediate occasion was a visit paid to the
King by Count Eustace of Boulogne, who had just married the widowed
Countess Godgifu. The violent dealings of his followers towards the
burghers of Dover led to resistance on their part, and to a long series
of marches and negotiations, which ended in the banishment of Godwine and
his son, and the parting of his daughter Edith, the King’s wife, from her
husband. From October 1051 to September 1052, the Normans had their own
way in England. And during that time King Edward received a visitor of
greater fame than his brother-in-law from Boulogne in the person of his
cousin from Rouen.
Of his visit we only read that “William Earl came from beyond sea with
mickle company of Frenchmen, and the king him received, and as many of
his comrades as to him seemed good, and let him go again.” Another
account adds that William received great gifts from the King. But
William himself in several documents speaks of Edward as his lord; he
must therefore at some time have done to Edward an act of homage, and
there is no time but this at which we can conceive such an act being
done. Now for what was the homage paid? Homage was often paid on very
trifling occasions, and strange conflicts of allegiance often followed.
No such conflict was likely to arise if the Duke of the Normans, already
the man of the King of the French for his duchy, became the man of the
King of the English on any other ground. Betwixt England and France
there was as yet no enmity or rivalry. England and France became enemies
afterwards because the King of the English and the Duke of the Normans
were one person. And this visit, this homage, was the first step towards
making the King of the English and the Duke of the Normans the same
person. The claim William had to the English crown rested mainly on an
alleged promise of the succession made by Edward. This claim is not
likely to have been a mere shameless falsehood. That Edward did make
some promise to William—as that Harold, at a later stage, did take some
oath to William—seems fully proved by the fact that, while such Norman
statements as could be denied were emphatically denied by the English
writers, on these two points the most patriotic Englishmen, the strongest
partisans of Harold, keep a marked silence. We may be sure therefore
that some promise was made; for that promise a time must be found, and no
time seems possible except this time of William’s visit to Edward. The
date rests on no direct authority, but it answers every requirement.
Those who spoke of the promise as being made earlier, when William and
Edward were boys together in Normandy, forgot that Edward was many years
older than William. The only possible moment earlier than the visit was
when Edward was elected king in 1042. Before that time he could hardly
have thought of disposing of a kingdom which was not his, and at that
time he might have looked forward to leaving sons to succeed him. Still
less could the promise have been made later than the visit. From 1053 to
the end of his life Edward was under English influences, which led him
first to send for his nephew Edward from Hungary as his successor, and in
the end to make a recommendation in favour of Harold. But in 1051–52
Edward, whether under a vow or not, may well have given up the hope of
children; he was surrounded by Norman influences; and, for the only time
in the last twenty-four years of their joint lives, he and William met
face to face. The only difficulty is one to which no contemporary writer
makes any reference. If Edward wished to dispose of his crown in favour
of one of his French-speaking kinsmen, he had a nearer kinsman of whom he
might more naturally have thought. His own nephew Ralph was living in
England and holding an English earldom. He had the advantage over both
William and his own older brother Walter of Mantes, in not being a
reigning prince elsewhere. We can only say that there is evidence that
Edward did think of William, that there is no evidence that he ever
thought of Ralph. And, except the tie of nearer kindred, everything
would suggest William rather than Ralph. The personal comparison is
almost grotesque; and Edward’s early associations and the strongest
influences around him, were not vaguely French but specially Norman.
Archbishop Robert would plead for his own native sovereign only. In
short, we may be as nearly
|
her stepfather
for cruel treatment. The defendant was a preacher, and the jury brought
in a verdict for $4000, the maximum sum allowed, and petitioned the
Judge to allow them to find damages in a heavier amount.
One of the most celebrated causes Mr. Toombs was engaged in before the
war was a railroad case heard in Marietta, Ga., in September, 1858.
Howell Cobb and Robert Toombs were employed on one side, while Messrs.
Pettigru and Memminger, of Charleston, giants of the Carolina bar, were
ranged in opposition. The ordeal was a very trying one. The case
occupied seven days. Mr. Toombs, always an early riser, generally
commenced his preparation in this case at half-past five in the morning.
The hearing of the facts continued in the courthouse until seven in the
evening, and the nights were passed in consultation with counsel.
Attendants upon this celebrated trial declared that Toombs's manner in
the courtroom was indifferent. That, while other lawyers were busy
taking notes, he seemed to sit a listless spectator, rolling his head
from side to side, oblivious to evidence or proceeding. And yet, when
his time came to conclude the argument, he arose with his kingly way,
and so thorough was his mastery of the case, with its infinite detail,
its broad principles, and intricate technicalities, that his argument
was inspiring and profound. His memory seemed to have indelibly pictured
the entire record of the seven days, and to have grouped in his mind the
main argument of counsel. It was a wonderful display of retentiveness,
acumen, learning, and power. On one occasion, while a member of the
United States Senate, he came to Georgia to attend a session of the
Supreme Court in Milledgeville. He writes his wife: "I have had a hard,
close week's work. The lawyers very kindly gave way and allowed my cases
to come on this week, which brought them very close together, and as I
was but ill prepared for them, not having given them any attention last
winter, and but little this spring, I have been pretty much speaking all
day and studying all night." In March, 1856, Mr. Toombs wrote to his
wife, whom he had left in Washington City, that the spring term of
Wilkes court would be the most laborious and disagreeable he ever
attended. Says he: "For the first time in my life, I have business in
court of my own--that is, where I am a party. The Bank of the State of
Georgia has given me a year's work on my own account. If I live I will
make the last named party repent of it."
At another time he wrote: "I had fine weather for Elbert, and a
delightful trip. Everything went well in Elbert with my business." It
usually did. There was no county in which he was more of an autocrat
than in Elbert. He never failed to carry the county in politics, even
when Elbert had a candidate of her own for Congress. His legal advice
was eagerly sought, and he was more consulted than any other man in
Georgia about public and private affairs. The reason of his phenomenal
success as counsel was that, united with his learning and forensic
power, he had a genius for detail. He was a natural financier. He used
to tell President Davis, during the early days of the Confederacy, that
four-fifths of war was business, and that he must "organize" victory.
During the sessions of Elbert court his arguments swept the jury, his
word was law outside. His talk was inspiring to the people. His rare and
racy conversation drew crowds to his room every night, and to an
occasional client, who would drop in upon his symposium to confer with
him, he would say, with a move of his head, "Don't worry about that now.
I know more about your business than you do, as I will show you at the
proper time." His fees at Elbert were larger than at any other court
except his own home in Wilkes. It was during the adjournment of court
for dinner that he would be called out by his constituents to make one
of his matchless political speeches. He never failed to move the crowds
to cheers of delight.
On one occasion he was at Roanoke, his plantation in Stewart County, Ga.
He writes his wife: "I was sent for night before last to appear in
Lumpkin to prosecute a case of murder: but as it appeared that the act
was committed on account of a wrong to the slayer's marital rights, I
declined to appear against him." Mr. Toombs was the embodiment of
virtue, and the strictest defender of the sanctity of marriage on the
part of man as well as woman. His whole life was a sermon of purity and
devotion.
Judge William M. Reese, who practiced law with Mr. Toombs, and was his
partner from 1840 to 1843, gives this picture of Toombs at the bar: "A
noble presence, a delivery which captivated his hearers by its intense
earnestness: a thorough knowledge of his cases, a lightning-like
perception of the weak and strong points of controversy; a power of
expressing in original and striking language his strong convictions; a
capacity and willingness to perform intellectual labor; a passion for
the contest of the courthouse; a perfect fidelity and integrity in all
business intrusted to him, with charming conversational powers--all
contributed to an immense success in his profession. Such gifts, with a
knowledge of business and the best uses of money, were soon rendered
valuable in accumulating wealth."
Although Mr. Toombs often appeared in courts to attend to business
already in his charge, he gave out that he would not engage in any new
causes which might interfere with his Congressional duties. The
absorbing nature of public business from 1850 to 1867 withdrew him from
the bar, and the records of the Supreme Court of Georgia have only about
twenty-five cases argued by him in that time. Some of these were of
commanding importance, and the opinions of the Justices handed down in
that time bear impress of the conclusiveness of his reasoning and the
power of his effort before that tribunal. Judge E. H. Pottle, who
presided over the courts of the Northern Circuit during the later years
of Toombs's practice, recalls a celebrated land case when Robert Toombs
was associated against Francis H. Cone--himself a legal giant. Toombs's
associate expected to make the argument, but Cone put up such a powerful
speech that it was decided that Toombs must answer him. Toombs
protested, declaring that he had been reading a newspaper, and not
expecting to speak, had not followed Judge Cone. However, he laid down
his paper and listened to Cone's conclusion, then got up and made an
overmastering forensic effort which captured Court and crowd.
The last appearance Toombs ever made in a criminal case was in the
Eberhart case in Oglethorpe County, Ga., in 1877. He was then
sixty-seven years of age, and not only was his speech fine, but his
management of his case was superb. He had not worked on that side of the
court for many years, but the presiding Judge, who watched him closely,
declared that he never made a mistake or missed a point.
It was during a preliminary hearing of this case that Toombs resorted to
one of his brilliant and audacious motions, characteristic of him. The
State wanted to divide the case and try the principals separately.
Father and son were charged with murder. The defense objected, but was
overruled by the Court. General Toombs then sprung the point that Judge
Pottle was not qualified to preside, on the ground of a rumor that he
had selected the men of the jury panel instead of drawing them. Toombs
further argued that the Court was not competent to decide the question
of fact. Judge Pottle vacated the bench and the clerk of court called
Hon. Samuel H. Hardeman to preside. Toombs and Benjamin H. Hill, his
assistant, contended that the clerk had no right to appoint a judge.
Judge Hardeman sustained the point and promptly came down, when Judge
Pottle resumed the bench and continued the case--just the result that
Toombs wanted. This case attracted immense comment, and in the
Constitution of 1877 a provision was made, growing out of this incident,
providing for the appointment of judges _pro hac vice_.
He was a bitter enemy to anything that smacked of monopoly, and during
the anti-railroad agitation of 1879-80, he said: "If I was forty-five
years old I would whip this fight." Still, he was an exceedingly just
man. Linton Stephens, noted for his probity and honor, said he would
rather trust Robert Toombs to decide a case in which he was interested
than any man he ever saw.
During the last five years of General Toombs's life he was seldom seen
in the courtroom. He was sometimes employed in important causes, but his
eyesight failed him, and his strength was visibly impaired. His
addresses were rather disconnected. His old habit of covering his points
in great leaps, leaving the intervening spaces unexplained, rendered it
difficult to follow him. His mind still acted with power, and he seemed
to presume that his hearers were as well up on his subject as he was.
His manner was sometimes overbearing to the members of the bar, but no
man was more open to reason or more sobered by reflection, and he was
absolutely without malice. He was always recognized as an upright man,
and he maintained, in spite of his infirmities, the respect and
confidence of the bench and bar and of the people.
Chief Justice Jackson said: "In the practice of law this lightning-like
rapidity of thought distinguished Toombs. He saw through the case at a
glance, and grasped the controlling point. Yielding minor hillocks, he
seized and held the height that covered the field, and from that
eminence shot after shot swept all before it. Concentrated fire was
always his policy. A single sentence would win his case. A big thought,
compressed into small compass, was fatal to his foe. It is the clear
insight of a great mind only that shaped out truth in words few and
simple. Brevity is power, wherever thought is strong. From Gaul Cæsar
wrote '_Veni, vidi, vici._' Rome was electrified, and the message
immortalized. Toombs said to this Court, 'May it please your
Honor--Seizin, Marriage, Death, Dower,' and sat down. His case was won,
the widow's heart leaped with joy, and the lawyer's argument lives
forever."
CHAPTER III.
IN THE LEGISLATURE.
When Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun were waging their "irrepressible
conflict," the county of Wilkes in the State of Georgia was nursing
discordant factions. Just across the river in Carolina lived the great
Nullifier. The Virginia settlers of Wilkes sided with him, while scores
of North Carolinians, who had come to live in the county, swore by "Old
Hickory." This political difference gave rise to numerous feuds. The two
elements maintained their identity for generations, and the divisions
became social as well as political. The Virginians nursed their State
pride. The sons of North Carolina, overshadowed by the Old Dominion,
clung to the Union and accepted Andrew Jackson, their friend and
neighbor, as oracle and leader. The earliest political division in
Georgia was between the Clarke and Crawford factions. General John
Clarke, a sturdy soldier of the Revolution, came from North Carolina,
while William H. Crawford, a Virginian by birth and a Georgian by
residence, led the Virginia element. The feud between Clarke and
Crawford gave rise to numerous duels. Then came George M. Troup to
reënforce the Crawford faction and defend States' Rights, even at the
point of the sword. Troup and Clarke were rival candidates for Governor
of Georgia in 1825, and the Toombs family ardently fought for Troup.
Young Toombs was but fifteen years of age, but politics had been burnt
into his ardent soul. Wilkes had remained a Union county until this
campaign, when the Troup and Toombs influence was too strong for the
North Carolina faction. Wilkes, in fact, seemed to be a watershed in
early politics. It was in close touch with Jackson and Calhoun, with
Clarke and Crawford, and then with Clarke and Troup. On the one side the
current from the mountain streams melted into the peaceful Savannah and
merged into the Atlantic; on the other they swept into the Tennessee and
hurried off to the Father of Waters.
Robert Toombs cast his first vote for Andrew Jackson in 1832. He
abandoned the Union Democratic-Republican party, however, after the
proclamation and force bill of the Administration and joined the States'
Rights Whigs. When young Toombs was elected to the General Assembly of
Georgia in October, 1837, parties were sharply divided. The Democrats,
sustained by the personal popularity of "Old Hickory," were still
dominant in the State. The States' Rights Whigs, however, had a large
following, and although not indorsing the doctrines of Calhoun, the
party was still animated by the spirit of George M. Troup. This
statesman, just retired from public life, had been borne from a sick-bed
to the United States Senate Chamber to vote against the extreme measures
of President Jackson. The Troup men claimed to be loyal to the
Constitution of their country in all its defined grants, and conceded
the right of the Chief Magistrate to execute the office so delegated,
but they resisted what they believed to be a dangerous latitude of
construction looking to consolidated power. Robert Toombs was not a
disciple of Calhoun. While admiring the generalities and theories of the
great Carolinian, the young Georgian was a more practical statesman. The
States' Rights Whigs advocated a protective tariff and a national bank.
They believed that the depreciation of the currency had caused the
distress of the people in the panic of 1837, and no man in this stormy
era more vigorously upbraided the pet-bank and sub-treasury system than
Robert Toombs. He introduced a resolution in the legislature declaring
that President Van Buren had used the patronage of the government to
strengthen his own party; that he had repudiated the practices and
principles of his patriotic antecedents, and "had sought out antiquated
European systems for the collection, safe keeping, and distribution of
public moneys--foreign to our habits, unsuited to our conditions,
expensive and unsafe in operation." Mr. Toombs contended, with all the
force that was in him, that a bank of the United States, properly
regulated, was "the best, most proper and economical means for handling
public moneys." Robert Toombs would not have waited until he was
twenty-seven years of age before entering public life, had not the
sentiment of his county been hostile to his party. Wilkes had been a
Union county, but in 1837 it returned to the lower house two Democrats,
and Robert A. Toombs, the only Whig. Nothing but his recognized ability
induced the people to make an exception in his favor. Besides his
reputation as an orator and advocate, Toombs had just returned from the
Creek war, where he had commanded a company and served under General
Winfield Scott in putting down the insurrection of Neahmatha, the Indian
chief. He now brought to public life the new prestige of a soldier.
After this, "Captain Toombs" was never defeated in his county. He was
returned at the annual elections in 1839, 1840, 1842, and 1843--and
succeeded in preserving at home an average Whig majority of 100 votes.
He did not care for the State Senate, preferring the more populous body,
then composed of 200 members. Parties in the State were very evenly
balanced, but Mr. Toombs preserved, in the varying scale of politics, a
prominent place in the house. He was made chairman of the Judiciary
Committee by his political opponents. He served as a member of the
Committee on Internal Improvements, as chairman of the all-important
Committee on Banking, chairman of the Committee on State of the
Republic, and in 1842 received the vote of the Whig minority in the
house for Speaker. In 1840 the Whigs gained control of the government.
The Harrison tidal wave swept their best men to the front in State and
national councils. Charles J. Jenkins of Richmond was elected speaker of
the house, and Mr. Toombs, as chairman of the Banking Committee, framed
the bill which repealed the law authorizing the issue of bank bills to
the amount of twice their capital stock. He went right to the marrow of
honest banking and sound finance by providing for a fund to redeem the
outstanding bills, and condemned the course of the State banks in
flooding the State with irredeemable promises to pay.
It was at this session of the General Assembly that Mr. Toombs displayed
the skill and sagacity of a statesman in fearlessly exposing a seductive
scheme for popular relief. He was called upon to confront public clamor
and to fight in the face of fearful odds, but he did not falter.
Just before the General Assembly of 1840 adjourned, Governor McDonald
sent an urgent message to both houses calling upon them to frame some
means for the speedy relief of the people. The situation in Georgia was
very distressing. The rains and floods of that year had swept the crops
from the fields, and there was much suffering among the planters. Coming
upon the heel of the session, the Whig members of the legislature looked
upon the message as a surprise, and rather regarded it as a shrewd
political stroke. Mr. Toombs was equal to the emergency. He quickly put
in a resolution asking the Governor himself to suggest some means of
popular relief--throwing the burden of the problem back upon the
executive. But Governor McDonald was armed. He drew his last weapon from
his arsenal, and used it with formidable power. He sent in an elaborate
message to the houses recommending that the State make a large loan and
deposit the proceeds in bank, to be given out to the people on good
security. The Senate committee, in evident sympathy with the scheme for
relief, reported a bill authorizing the issue of two million six-year
eight-per-cent. bonds to be loaned to private citizens, limiting each
loan to one thousand dollars, and restricting the notes to three years,
with eight per cent. interest.
The report of the House Committee was prepared by Robert Toombs. It was
the most admirable and statesmanlike document of that day. Mr. Toombs
said that deliberation had resulted in the conviction that the measure
suggested by His Excellency should not be adopted. While his committee
was duly sensible of and deeply regretted the pecuniary embarrassment of
many of their fellow-citizens, he felt constrained by a sense of public
duty to declare that he deemed it unwise and impolitic to use the
credit, and pledge the property and labor of the whole people, to supply
the private wants of a portion only of the people. The use of the public
credit, he went on to say, was one of the most important and delicate
powers which a free people could confide in their representatives; it
should be jealously guarded, sacredly protected, and cautiously used,
even for the attainment of the noblest patriotic ends, and never for the
benefit of one class of the community to the exclusion or injury of the
rest, whether the demand grew out of real or supposed pecuniary
difficulties. To relieve these difficulties by use of the public credit
would be to substitute a public calamity for private misfortune, and
would end in the certain necessity of imposing grievous burdens in the
way of taxes upon the many for the benefit of the few. All experience,
Mr. Toombs went on to declare, admonish us to expect such results from
the proposed relief measures, to adopt which would be to violate some
of the most sacred principles of the social compact. All free
governments, deriving their just powers from, and being established for
the benefit of, the governed, must necessarily have power over the
property, and consequently the credit, of the governed to the extent of
public use, and no further. And whenever government assumed the right to
use the property or credit of the people for any other purpose, it
abused a power essential for the perfection of its legislative duties in
a manner destructive of the rights and interests of the governed, and
ought to be sternly resisted by the people. The proposed measures, he
contended, violated these admitted truths, asserted the untenable
principle that governments should protect a portion of the people, in
violation of the rights of the remainder, from the calamities consequent
on unpropitious seasons and private misfortunes.
He must have been an indifferent or careless spectator of similar
financial schemes, Mr. Toombs declared, who could persuade himself that
this plan of borrowing money, to lend again at the same rate of
interest, could be performed without loss to the State. That loss must
be supplied by taxation, and to that extent, at least, it will operate
so as to legislate money from the pocket of one citizen to that of
another. The committee declared that it knew of no mode of legislative
relief except the interposition of unconstitutional, unwise, unjust, and
oppressive legislation between debtor and creditor, which did not need
their condemnation.
The argument was exhaustive and convincing. Never were the powers of the
State or the soundness of public credit more strongly set forth. The
whole scheme of relief was abandoned, and the General Assembly
adjourned.
The relief measures, however, had a great effect upon the campaign.
Rejected in the legislature under the rattling fire and withering
sarcasm of Toombs, they were artfully used on the hustings. "McDonald
and Relief" was the slogan. Men talked airily about "deliverance and
liberty." Mr. Toombs declared that "humbuggery was reduced to an exact
science and demonstrated by figures." The Act compelling the banks to
make cash payments was represented as an unwise contraction of the
currency and a great oppression to the people. Governor McDonald was
consequently reëlected over William C. Dawson, the Whig nominee.
Robert Toombs was not a candidate for reëlection in 1841. He worked hard
at the polls for the Whig ticket, and although his candidate for
Governor received a majority of one in Wilkes County, the Whigs were
defeated for the legislature. When he returned to the Assembly in 1842
he still found Governor McDonald and the Democrats supporting a central
bank and the sub-treasury. They clamored to restore public finances to
the old system. The Democrats held the legislature and elected to the
United States Senate Walter T. Colquitt over Charles J. Jenkins.
Although a member of the minority party, Mr. Toombs was appointed
chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Here his high character and moral
courage shone conspicuously. He proved a stone wall against the perfect
flood of legislation designed for popular relief. To use his own words:
"The calendar was strong with a heterogeneous collection of bills
proposing stay-laws." He reported as "unwise, inexpedient, and
injurious," proposed Acts "to protect unfortunate debtors"; "to redeem
property in certain cases"; also a bill to "exempt from levy and sale
certain classes of property." He held with Marshall the absolute
inviolability of contracts; he believed in common honesty in public and
private life; he was strict in all business obligations; he denounced
the Homestead Act of 1868, and declared in his last days that there was
"not a dirty shilling in his pocket." Mr. Toombs was nothing of the
demagogue. He was highminded, fearless, and sincere, and it may be said
of him what he afterward declared so often of Henry Clay, that "he would
not flatter Neptune for his trident or Jove for his power to thunder."
He was called upon at this session to fight the repeal of the law he had
framed in 1840, to regulate the system of banking. He declared in
eloquent terms that the State must restrict the issue of the banks and
compel their payment in specie. The experiment of banking on public
credit had failed, he said. It had brought loss to the government,
distress to the people, and had sullied the good faith of Georgia.
It was at this session of the legislature that the Democrats proposed a
vote of censure upon John McPherson Berrien, United States Senator from
Georgia, for his advocacy of a national bank. Mr. Toombs ardently
defended Senator Berrien. He said that the State legislature was not the
custodian of a senator's conscience, and held that the people of Georgia
sanctioned the expediency and utility of a national bank. When the
resolution of censure came up in the house, the Whigs refused to vote,
and raised the point of "no quorum." Speaker _pro tem_. Wellborn, who
presided, counted a quorum and declared the resolutions adopted. Mr.
Toombs fired up at this unusual decision. He threw himself before the
Speaker with impetuous appeal and called for a reversal of the decision.
But it was a Democratic house, and the Speaker was sustained by a vote
of 96 to 40.
The craze for internal improvements now swept over the country. The
Whigs were especially active, and we find resolutions adopted by the
General Assembly, calling on the Federal Government to create ports of
entry and to build government foundries and navy yards on the Southern
seaboard. Mr. Toombs was chairman of the Committee of Internal
Improvements, but his efforts were directed toward the completion of the
Western and Atlantic Railroad. These enterprises had overshadowed the
waterways, and the railway from Charleston, S. C., to Augusta, Ga., one
of the very first in the country, had just been completed. Already a
company had embarked upon the construction of the Georgia Railroad, and
on May 21, 1837, the first locomotive ever put in motion on the soil of
Georgia moved out from Augusta. A local paper described the event in
sententious terms:
This locomotive started beautifully and majestically from
the depository and, following the impetus given, flew with
surprising velocity on the road which hereafter is to be
her natural element.
The General Assembly decided that these rail lines should have an outlet
to the West. This great road was finally built and operated from Atlanta
to Chattanooga, and is still owned by the State, a monument to the
sagacity and persistency of Toombs and his associates in 1840. The great
possibilities of these iron highways opened the eyes of the statesmen
of that day, Mr. Calhoun seemed to drop for a time his philosophical
studies of States and slavery and to dream of railroads and commercial
greatness. He proposed the connection of the Atlantic Ocean with the
Mississippi River and the great West, through Cumberland Gap--a
brilliant and feasible scheme. Governor Gilmer of Georgia declared in
his message that these projected roads "would add new bonds to the
Union." But King Cotton, with his millions in serfdom, issued his
imperial decrees, and not even this great railroad development could
keep down the tremendous tragedy of the century.
One of the measures to which Mr. Toombs devoted great attention during
his legislative term was the establishment of a State Supreme Court.
This bill was several times defeated, but finally in 1843 passed the
house by a vote of 88 to 86. It was the scene of many of his forensic
triumphs. He also introduced, during the sessions of 1842 and 1843,
bills to abolish suretyship in Georgia. This system had been severely
abused. In the flush times men indorsed without stint, and then during
the panic of 1837 "reaped the whirlwind." Fortunes were swept away,
individual credit ruined, and families brought to beggary by this
reckless system of surety. What a man seldom refused to do for another,
Mr. Toombs strove to reach by law. But the system had become too firmly
intrenched in the financial habits of the people. His bill, which he
distinctly stated was to apply alone to future and not past contracts,
only commanded a small minority of votes. It was looked upon as an
abridgment of personal liberty. Mr. Toombs exerted all of his efforts in
behalf of this bill, and it became quite an issue in Georgia. It is not
a little strange that when Robert Toombs was dead, it was found that his
own estate was involved by a series of indorsements which he had given
in Atlanta to the Kimball House Company. Had he maintained the activity
of his younger days, he would probably have turned this deal into a
profitable investment. The complication was finally arranged, but his
large property came near being swept away under the same system of
surety he had striven to abolish.
CHAPTER IV.
ELECTED TO CONGRESS.
Entering public life about the same time, living a short distance apart,
professing the same political principles, practicing in the same courts
of law, were Alexander H. Stephens of Taliaferro and Robert Toombs of
Wilkes. Entirely unlike in physical organism and mental make-up,
differing entirely in origin and views of life, these two men were close
personal friends, and throughout an eventful period of more than half a
century, preserved an affectionate regard for each other.
Mr. Stephens was delicate, sensitive, conservative, and sagacious, while
Toombs was impetuous, overpowering, defiant, and masterful. Stephens was
small, swarthy, fragile, while Toombs was leonine, full-blooded, and
majestic. And yet in peace and war these two men walked hand in hand,
and the last public appearance of Robert Toombs was when, bent and
weeping, he bowed his gray head at the coffin and pronounced the funeral
oration over Alexander Stephens.
In the General Assembly of 1843, Robert Toombs was a member of the
house, but his ability and power had marked him as a candidate for
Congress, and Mr. Stephens had already been promoted from the State
Senate to a seat in the national legislature at Washington. The law
requiring the State to choose congressmen on the district plan had been
passed, and the General Assembly was then engaged in laying off the
counties into congressional districts. The bill, as first reported,
included the counties of Wilkes and Taliaferro in the second district of
Georgia. Here was a problem. Toombs and Stephens had been named as Whig
candidates for the Clay campaign of 1844. To have them clash would have
been to deprive the State of their talents in the national councils. It
would be interesting to speculate as to what would have been the result
had these two men been opposed. Stephens was naturally a Union man, and
was no very ardent advocate of slavery. Toombs inherited the traditions
of the Virginia landowners. It is not improbable that the firmness of
the one would have been a foil for the fire of the other. History might
have been written differently had not the conference committee in the
Georgia Legislature in 1843 altered the schedule of districts, placing
Taliaferro in the seventh and Wilkes in the eighth Congressional
district. Both were safely Whig, and the future Vice-President and
premier of the Southern Confederacy now prepared for the canvass which
was to plunge them into their duties as members of the national
Congress.
Robert Toombs had already made his appearance in national politics in
1840. Although still a member of the Georgia Legislature, he took a deep
interest in the success of the Whig ticket for President. His power as a
stump speaker was felt in eastern Georgia, where the people gathered at
the "log cabin and hard cider" campaigns. The most daring feat of young
Toombs, just thirty years old, was in crossing the Savannah River and
meeting George McDuffie, the great Democrat of South Carolina, then in
the zenith of his fame. An eye-witness of this contest between the
champions of Van Buren and Harrison declared that McDuffie was
"harnessed lightning" himself. He was a nervous, impassioned speaker.
When the rash young Georgian crossed over to Willington, S. C., to meet
the lion in his den, Toombs rode horseback, and it was noticed that his
shirt front was stained with tobacco juice, and yet Toombs was a
remarkably handsome man. "Genius sat upon his brow, and his eyes were as
black as death and bigger than an ox's." His presence captivated even
the idolators of McDuffie. His argument and invective, his overpowering
eloquence, linger in the memory of old men now. McDuffie said of him: "I
have heard John Randolph of Roanoke, and met Burgess of Rhode Island,
but this wild Georgian is a Mirabeau."
In 1844 Robert Toombs was a delegate to the Baltimore convention which
nominated Henry Clay, and during this visit he made a speech in New York
which attracted wide attention. It threatened to raise a storm about his
head in Georgia. In his speech he arraigned Mr. Calhoun for writing his
"sugar letter" to Louisiana, and for saying that he would protect sugar
because it was the production of slave labor. Mr. Toombs declared: "If
any discrimination is made between free and slave labor it ought to be
in favor of free labor." "But," said he, "the Whigs of Georgia want no
such partial protection as Mr. Calhoun offers; they want protection for
all classes of labor and home industry. The Whigs protest against these
efforts to prejudice the South against the North, or the North against
the South. They have a common interest as well as a common history. The
blood that was mingled at Yorktown and at Eutaw cannot be kept at enmity
forever. The Whigs of Bunker Hill are the same as the Whigs of Georgia."
Mr. Toombs was actually charged in this campaign with being an
Abolitionist. He was accused of saying in a speech at Mallorysville,
Ga., during the Harrison campaign, that slavery was "a moral and
political evil." This was now brought up against him. Mr. Toombs
admitted saying that slavery was a political evil. He wrote a ringing
letter to his constituents, in which he declared that "the affected fear
and pretended suspicion of a part of the Democratic press in relation to
my views are well understood by the people. I have no language to
express my scorn and contempt for the whole crew. I have no other reply
to make to these common sewers of filth and falsehood. If I had as many
arms as Briareus they would be too few to correct the misrepresentations
of speeches I have made in the past six months."
It was on the 3d of October, 1844, that Robert Toombs spoke at a
memorable political meeting in Augusta, Ga. Augusta was in the heart of
the district which he was contesting for Congress, and the Democrats, to
strengthen their cause, brought over McDuffie from South Carolina. Large
crowds were present in the shady yard surrounding the City Hall; seats
had been constructed there, while back in the distance long trenches
were dug, and savory meats were undergoing the famous process of
barbecue. Speaking commenced at ten o'clock in the morning, and, with a
short rest for dinner, there were seven hours of oratory. People seldom
tired in those days of forensic meetings. Toombs was on his mettle. He
denounced the Democrats for dragging the slavery question before the
people to operate upon their fears. It was a bugbear everlastingly used
to cover up the true question at issue. It was kept up to operate on
the fears of the timid and the passions and prejudices of the
unsuspecting.
The young Whig then launched into a glowing defense of the National
Bank. The Democrats had asked where was the authority to charter a bank?
He would reply, "Where was the authority, in so many words, to build
lighthouses? Democrats were very strict constructionists when it was
necessary to accomplish their political purposes, but always found a way
to get around these doubts when occasion required." He taunted McDuffie
with having admitted that Congress had power to charter a bank.
Mr. Toombs contended that a tariff, with the features of protection to
American industry, had existed since the foundation of the government.
This great system of "plunder" had been supported by Jefferson.
Eloquently warming up under the Democratic charge that the tariff was a
system of robbery, Mr. Toombs appealed to every Whig and Democrat as an
American who boasted of this government as "a model to all nations of
the earth; as the consummation of political wisdom; who asks the
oppressed
|
, indeed, a political end
which it might advance; it might conciliate the supporters of Saul,
and smooth David's way to the throne. But there is in it such depth
and fulness of feeling that one can think of it only as a genuine
cardiphonia--a true voice of the heart. The song dwells on all that
could be commended in Saul, and makes no allusion to his faults. His
courage and energy in war, his happy co-operation with Jonathan, his
advancement of the kingdom in elegance and comfort, are all duly
celebrated. David appears to have had a real affection for Saul, if
only it had been allowed to bloom and flourish. His martial energy
had probably awakened his admiration before he knew him personally;
and when he became his minstrel, his distressed countenance would
excite his pity, while his occasional gleams of generous feeling
would thrill his heart with sympathy. The terrible effort of Saul
to crush David was now at an end, and like a lily released from a
heavy stone, the old attachment bloomed out speedily and sweetly.
There would be more true love in families and in the world, more of
expansive, responsive affection, if it were not so often stunted by
reserve on the one hand, and crushed by persecution on the other.
The song embalms very tenderly the love of Jonathan for David.
Years had probably elapsed since the two friends met, but time had
not impaired the affection and admiration of David. And now that
Jonathan's light was extinguished, a sense of desolation fell on
David's heart, and the very throne that invited his occupation seemed
dark and dull under the shadow cast on it by the death of Jonathan.
As a prize of earthly ambition it would be poor indeed; and if ever
it had seemed to David a proud distinction to look forward to, such
a feeling would appear very detestable when the same act that opened
it up to him had deprived him for ever of his dearest friend, his
sweetest source of earthly joy. The only way in which it was possible
for David to enjoy his new position was by losing sight of himself;
by identifying himself more closely than ever with the people;
by regarding the throne as only a position for more self-denying
labours for the good of others. And in the song there is evidence of
the great strength and activity of this feeling. The sentiment of
patriotism burns with a noble ardour; the national disgrace is most
keenly felt; the thought of personal gain from the death of Saul
and Jonathan is entirely swallowed up by grief for the public loss.
"Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon; lest
the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the
uncircumcised triumph!" In David's view, it is no ordinary calamity
that has fallen on Israel. It is no common men that have fallen, but
"the beauty of Israel," her ornament and her glory, men that were
never known to flinch or to flee from battle, men that were "swifter
than eagles, and stronger than lions." It is not in any obscure
corner that they have fallen, but "on her high places," on Mount
Gilboa, at the head of a most conspicuous and momentous enterprise.
Such a national loss was unprecedented in the history of Israel,
and it seems to have affected David and the nation generally as the
slaughter at Flodden affected the Scots, when it seemed as if all
that was great and beautiful in the nation perished--"the flowers o'
the forest were a' weed awa'."
A word on the general structure of this song. It is not a song that
can be classed with the Psalms. Nor can it be said that in any marked
degree it resembles the tone or spirit of the Psalms. Yet this need not
surprise us, nor need it throw any doubt either as to the authorship of
the song or the authorship of the Psalms. The Psalms, we must remember,
were avowedly composed and designed for use in the worship of God.
If the Greek term _psalmoi_ denotes their character, they were songs
designed for use in public worship, to be accompanied with the lyre,
or harp, or other musical instruments suitable for them. The special
sphere of such songs was--the relation of the human soul to God. These
songs might be of various kinds--historical, lyrical, dramatical; but
in all cases the paramount subject was, the dealings of God with man,
or the dealings of man with God. It was in this class of composition
that David excelled, and became the organ of the Holy Ghost for the
highest instruction and edification of the Church in all ages. But it
does not by any means follow that the poetical compositions of David
were restricted to this one class of subject. His muse may sometimes
have taken a different course. His poems were not always directly
religious. In the case of this song, whose original place in the book
of Jasher indicated its special character, there is no mention of the
relation of Saul and Jonathan to God. The theme is, their services
to the nation, and the national loss involved in their death. The
soul of the poet is profoundly thrilled by their death, occurring in
such circumstances of national disaster. No form of words could have
conveyed more vividly the idea of unprecedented loss, or thrilled
the nation with such a sense of calamity. There is not a line of the
song but is full of life, and hardly one that is not full of beauty.
What could more touchingly indicate the fatal nature of the calamity
than that plaintive entreaty--"Tell it not in Gath, publish it not
in the streets of Askelon"? How could the hills be more impressively
summoned to show their sympathy than in that invocation of everlasting
sterility--"Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither let
there be rain upon you, or fields of offerings"? What gentler veil
could be drawn over the horrors of their bloody death and mutilated
bodies than in the tender words, "Saul and Jonathan were loving and
pleasant in their lives, and in their deaths they were not divided"?
And what more fitting theme for tears could have been furnished to the
daughters of Israel, considering what was probably the prevalent taste,
than that Saul had "clothed them with scarlet and other delights, and
put on ornaments of gold upon their apparel"? Up to this point Saul
and Jonathan are joined together; but the poet cannot close without
a special lamentation for himself over him whom he loved as his own
soul. And in one line he touches the very kernel of his own loss, as
he touches the very core of Jonathan's heart--"thy love to me was
wonderful, passing the love of women." Such is the Song of the Bow.
It hardly seems suitable to attempt to draw spiritual lessons out of
a song, which, on purpose, was placed in a different category. Surely
it is enough to point out the exceeding beauty and generosity of
spirit which sought in this way to embalm the memory and perpetuate the
virtues of Saul and Jonathan; which blended together in such melodious
words a deadly enemy and a beloved friend; which transfigured one of
the lives so that it shone with the lustre and the beauty of the other;
which sought to bury every painful association, and gave full and
unlimited scope to the charity that thinketh no evil. _De mortuis nil
nisi bonum_, was a heathen maxim,--"Say nothing but what is good of the
dead." Surely no finer exemplification of the maxim was ever given than
in this "Song of the Bow."
To "thoughts that breathe and words that burn," like those of this
song, David could not have given expression without having his whole
soul stirred with the desire to repair the national disaster, and
by God's help bring back prosperity and honour to Israel. Thus,
both by the afflictions that saddened his heart and the stroke of
prosperity that raised him to the throne, he was impelled to that
course of action which is the best safeguard under God against the
hurtful influences both of adversity and prosperity. Affliction might
have driven him into his shell, to think only of his own comfort;
prosperity might have swollen him with a sense of his importance, and
tempted him to expect universal admiration;--both would have made him
unfit to rule; by the grace of God he was preserved from both. He was
induced to gird himself for a course of high exertion for the good of
his country; the spirit of trust in God, after its long discipline,
had a new field opened for its exercise; and the self-government
acquired in the wilderness was to prove its usefulness in a higher
sphere. Thus the providence of his heavenly Father was gradually
unfolding His purposes concerning him; the clouds were clearing off
his horizon; and the "all things" that once seemed to be "against
him" were now plainly "working together for his good."
CHAPTER II.
_BEGINNING OF DAVID'S REIGN AT HEBRON._
2 SAMUEL ii. 1-7.
The death of Saul did not end David's troubles, nor was it for a
good many years that he became free to employ his whole energies
for the good of the kingdom. It appears that his chastisement for
his unbelieving spirit, and for the alliance with Achish to which
it led, was not yet completed. The more remote consequences of that
step were only beginning to emerge, and years elapsed before its evil
influence ceased altogether to be felt. For in allying himself with
Achish, and accompanying his army to the plain of Esdraelon, David
had gone as near to the position of a traitor to his country as he
could have gone without actually fighting against it. That he should
have acted as he did is one of the greatest mysteries of his life;
and the reason why it has not attracted more notice is simply because
the worst consequences of it were averted by his dismissal from the
Philistine army through the jealousy and suspicion of their lords.
But for that step David must have been guilty of gross treachery
either in one direction or another; either to his own countrymen, by
fighting against them in the Philistine army; or to King Achish, by
suddenly turning against him in the heat of the battle, and creating
a diversion which might have given a new chance to his countrymen.
In either case the proceeding would have been most reprehensible.
But to his own countrymen he would have made himself especially
obnoxious if he had lent himself to Achish in the battle. Whether
he contemplated treachery to Achish is a secret that seems never to
have gone beyond his own bosom. All the appearances favoured the
supposition that he would fight against his country, and we cannot
wonder if, for a long time, this made him an object of distrust and
suspicion. If we would understand how the men of Israel must have
looked on him, we have only to fancy how we should have viewed a
British soldier if, with a troop of his countrymen, he had followed
Napoleon to the field of Waterloo, and had been sent away from the
French army only through the suspicion of Napoleon's generals. In
David's case, all his former achievements against the Philistines,
all that injustice from Saul which had driven him in despair to
Achish, his services against the Amalekites, his generous use of
the spoil, as well as his high personal character, did not suffice
to counteract the bad impression of his having followed Achish to
battle. For after a great disaster the public mind is exasperated;
it is eager to find a scapegoat on whom to throw the blame, and it
is unmeasured in its denunciations of any one who can be plausibly
assailed. Beyond all doubt, angry and perplexed as the nation was,
David would come in for a large share of the blame; his alliance with
Achish would be denounced with unmeasured bitterness; and, probably
enough, he would have to bear the brunt of many a bitter calumny in
addition, as if he had instigated Achish, and given him information
which had helped him to conquer.
His own tribe, the tribe of Judah, was far the friendliest, and the
most likely to make allowance for the position in which he had been
placed. They were his own flesh and blood; they knew the fierce and
cruel malignity with which Saul had hunted him down, and they knew
that, as far as appearances went, his chances of getting the better
of Saul's efforts were extremely small, and the temptation to throw
himself into the hands of Achish correspondingly great. Evidently,
therefore, the most expedient course he could now take was to establish
himself in some of the cities of Judah. But in that frame of recovered
loyalty to God in which he now was, he declined to take this step,
indispensable though it seemed, until he had got Divine direction
regarding it. "It came to pass, after this, that David inquired of the
Lord saying, Shall I go up to any of the cities of Judah? And the Lord
said unto him, Go up. And David said, Whither shall I go up? And He
said, Unto Hebron." The form in which he made the inquiry shows that
to his mind it was very clear that he ought to go up to one or another
of the cities of Judah; his advisers and companions had probably the
same conviction; but notwithstanding, it was right and fitting that no
such step should be taken without his asking direction from God. And
let us observe that, on this occasion, prayer was not the last resort
of one whom all other refuge had failed, but the first resort of one
who regarded the Divine approval as the most essential element for
determining the propriety of the undertaking.
It is interesting and instructive to ponder this fact. The first
thing done by David, after virtually acquiring a royal position, was
to ask counsel of God. His royal administration was begun by prayer.
And there was a singular appropriateness in this act. For the great
characteristic of David, brought out especially in his Psalms, is
the reality and the nearness of his fellowship with God. We may find
other men who equalled him in every other feature of character--who
were as full of human sympathy, as reverential, as self-denying, as
earnest in their efforts to please God and to benefit men; but we
shall find no one who lived so closely under God's shadow, whose
heart and life were so influenced by regard to God, to whom God was
so much of a personal Friend, so blended, we may say, with his very
existence. David therefore is eminently himself when asking counsel
of the Lord. And would not all do well to follow him in this? True,
he had supernatural methods of doing this, and you have only natural;
he had the Urim and Thummim, you have only the voice of prayer; but
this makes no real difference, for it was only in great national
matters that he made use of the supernatural method; in all that
concerned his personal relations to God it was the other that he
employed. And so may you. But the great matter is to resemble David
in his profound sense of the infinite value and reality of Divine
direction. Without this your prayers will always be more or less
matters of formality. And being formal, you will not feel that you
get any good of them. Is it really a profound conviction of yours
that in every step of your life God's direction is of supreme value?
That you dare not even change your residence with safety without
being directed by Him? That you dare not enter on new relations
in life,--new business, new connections, new recreations--without
seeking the Divine countenance? That endless difficulties, troubles,
complications, are liable to arise, when you simply follow your own
notions or inclinations without consulting the Lord? And under the
influence of that conviction do you try to follow the rule, "In all
thy ways acknowledge Him"? And do you endeavour to get from prayer
a trustful rest in God, an assurance that He will not forsake you,
a calm confidence that He will keep His word? Then, indeed, you
are treading in David's footsteps, and you may expect to share his
privilege--Divine direction in your times of need.
The city of Hebron, situated about eighteen miles to the south of
Jerusalem, was the place to which David was directed to go. It was a
place abounding in venerable and elevating associations. It was among
the first, if not the very first, of the haunts of civilised men in the
land--so ancient that it is said to have been built seven years before
Zoan in Egypt (Numb. xiii. 22). The father of the faithful had often
pitched his tent under its spreading oaks, and among its olive groves
and vine-clad hills the gentle Isaac had meditated at eventide. There
Abraham had watched the last breath of his beloved Sarah, the partner
of his faith and the faithful companion of his wanderings; and there
from the sons of Heth he had purchased the sepulchre of Machpelah,
where first Sarah's body, then his own, then that of Isaac were laid to
rest. There Joseph and his brethren had brought up the body of Jacob,
in fulfilment of his dying command, laying it beside the bones of
Leah. It had been a halting-place of the twelve spies when they went
up to search the land; and the cluster of grapes which they carried
back was cut from the neighbouring valley, where the finest grapes
of the country are found to this day. The sight of its venerable
cave had doubtless served to raise the faith and courage of Joshua
and Caleb, when the other spies became so feeble and so faithless. In
the division of the land it had been assigned to Caleb, one of the
best and noblest spirits the nation ever produced; afterwards it was
made one of the Levitical cities of refuge. More recently, it had
been one of the places selected by David to receive a portion of the
Amalekite spoil. No place could have recalled more vividly the lessons
of departed worth and the victories of early faith, or abounded more
in tokens of the blessedness of fully following the Lord. It was a
token of God's kindness to David that He directed him to make this city
his headquarters. It was equivalent to a new promise that the God of
Abraham and of Isaac and Jacob would be the God of David, and that his
public career would prepare the way for the mercies in the prospect of
which they rejoiced, and sustain the hope to which they looked forward,
though they did not in their time see the promise realised.
It was a further token of God's goodness that no sooner had David
gone up to Hebron than "the men of Judah came and anointed him king
over the house of Judah." Judah was the imperial or premier tribe,
and though this was not all that God had promised to David, it was
a large instalment. The occasion might well awaken mingled emotions
in his breast--gratitude for mercies given and solicitude for the
responsibility of a royal position. With his strong sense of duty,
his love of righteousness and hatred of wickedness, we should expect
to find him strengthening himself in the purpose to rule only in the
fear of God. It is just such views and purposes as these we find
expressed in the hundred and first Psalm, which internal evidence
would lead us to assign to this period of his life:--
"I will sing of mercy and of judgment:
Unto Thee, O Lord, will I sing.
I will behave myself wisely in a perfect way.
O when wilt Thou come unto me?
I will walk within my house with a perfect heart.
I will set no base thing before mine eyes:
I hate the work of them that turn aside;
It shall not cleave to me.
A froward heart shall depart from me:
I will know no evil thing.
Whoso privily slandereth his neighbour, him will I destroy;
Him that hath an high look and a proud heart will not I
suffer.
Mine eyes shall be upon the faithful of the land that they
may dwell with me:
He that walketh in a perfect way, he shall minister unto me.
He that worketh deceit shall not dwell within my house;
He that speaketh falsehood shall not be established before
mine eyes.
Morning by morning will I destroy all the wicked of the land;
To cut off all the workers of iniquity from the city of the
Lord."[1]
By a singular coincidence, the first place to which the attention
of David was called, after his taking possession of the royal
position, was the same as that to which Saul had been directed in
the same circumstances--namely, Jabesh-gilead. It was far away from
Hebron, on the other side of Jordan, and quite out of the scope of
David's former activities; but he recognised a duty to its people,
and he hastened to perform it. In the first place, he sent them a
gracious and grateful message of thanks for the kindness shown to
Saul, the mark of respect they had paid him in burying his body.
Every action of David's in reference to his great rival evinces
the superiority of his spirit to that which was wont to prevail in
similar circumstances. Within the Scriptures themselves we have
instances of the dishonour that was often put on the body of a
conquered rival. The body of Jehoram, cast ignominiously by Jehu,
in mockery of his royal state, into the vineyard of Naboth, which
his father Ahaz had unrighteously seized, and the body of Jezebel,
flung out of the window, trodden under foot, and devoured by dogs
are instances readily remembered. The shocking fate of the dead body
of Hector, dragged thrice round the walls of Troy after Achilles'
chariot, was regarded as only such a calamity as might be looked for
amid the changing fortunes of war. Mark Antony is said to have broken
out into laughter at the sight of the hands and head of Cicero, which
he had caused to be severed from his body. The respect of David for
the person of Saul was evidently a sincere and genuine feeling; and
it was a sincere pleasure to him to find that this feeling had been
shared by the Jabeshites, and manifested in their rescuing Saul's
body and consigning it to honourable burial.
In the next place, he invokes on these people a glowing benediction
from the Lord: "The Lord show kindness and truth to you;" and he
expresses his purpose also to requite their kindness himself. "Kindness
and truth." There is something instructive in the combination of these
two words. It is the Hebrew way of expressing "true kindness," but
even in that form, the words suggest that kindness is not always true
kindness, and mere kindness cannot be a real blessing unless it rest
on a solid basis. There is in many men an amiable spirit which takes
pleasure in gratifying the feelings of others. Some manifest it to
children by loading them with toys and sweetmeats, or taking them to
amusements which they know they like. But it does not follow that such
kindness is always true kindness. To please one is not always the
kindest thing you can do for one, for sometimes it is a far kinder
thing to withhold what will please. True kindness must be tested by its
ultimate effects. The kindness that loves best to improve our hearts,
to elevate our tastes, to straighten our habits, to give a higher tone
to our lives, to place us on a pedestal from which we may look down on
conquered spiritual foes, and on the possession of what is best and
highest in human attainment,--the kindness that bears on the future,
and especially the eternal future, is surely far more true than that
which, by gratifying our present feelings, perhaps confirms us in many
a hurtful lust. David's prayer for the men of Jabesh was an enlightened
benediction: "God show you kindness and truth." And so far as he may
have opportunity, he promises that he will show them the same kindness
too.
We need not surely dwell on the lesson which this suggests. Are
you kindly disposed to any one? You wish sincerely to promote his
happiness, and you try to do so. But see well to it that your
kindness is true. See that the day shall never come when that which
you meant so kindly will turn out to have been a snare, and perhaps a
curse. Think of your friend as an immortal being, with either heaven
or hell before him, and consider what genuine kindness requires of
you in such a case. And in every instance beware of the kindness
which shakes the stability of his principles, which increases the
force of his temptations, and makes the narrow way more distasteful
and difficult to him than ever.
There can be no doubt that David was moved by considerations of
policy as well as by more disinterested motives in sending this
message and offering this prayer for the men of Jabesh-gilead.
Indeed, in the close of his message he invites them to declare for
him, and follow the example of the men of Judah, who have made him
king. The kindly proceeding of David was calculated to have a wider
influence than over the men of Jabesh, and to have a conciliating
effect on all the friends of the former king. It would have been
natural enough for them to fear, considering the ordinary ways of
conquerors and the ordinary fate of the friends of the conquered,
that David would adopt very rigid steps against the friends of his
persecutors. By this message sent across the whole country and across
the Jordan, he showed that he was animated by the very opposite
spirit: that, instead of wishing to punish those who had served
with Saul, he was quite disposed to show them favour. Divine grace,
acting on his kindly nature, made him forgiving to Saul and all his
comrades, and presented to the world the spectacle of an eminent
religious profession in harmony with a noble generosity.
But the spirit in which David acted towards the friends of Saul did
not receive the fitting return. The men of Jabesh-gilead appear
to have made no response to his appeal. His peaceable purpose
was defeated through Abner, Saul's cousin and captain-general of
his army, who set up Ishbosheth, one of Saul's sons, as king in
opposition to David. Ishbosheth himself was but a tool in Abner's
hands, evidently a man of no spirit or activity; and in setting him
up as a claimant for the kingdom, Abner very probably had an eye to
the interests of himself and his family. It is plain that he acted
in this matter in that spirit of ungodliness and wilfulness of which
his royal cousin had given so many proofs; he knew that God had given
the kingdom to David, and afterwards taunted Ishbosheth with the
fact (iii. 9); perhaps he looked for the reversion of the throne if
Ishbosheth should die, for it needed more than an ordinary motive to
go right in opposition to the known decree of God. The world's annals
contain too many instances of wars springing from no higher motive
than the ambition of some Diotrephes to have the pre-eminence. You
cry shame on such a spirit; but while you do so take heed lest you
share it yourselves. To many a soldier war is welcome because it is
the pathway to promotion, to many a civilian because it gives for the
moment an impulse to the business with which he is connected. How
subtle and dangerous is the feeling that secretly welcomes what may
spread numberless woes through a community if only it is likely to
bring some advantage to ourselves! O God, drive selfishness from the
throne of our hearts, and write on them in deepest letters Thine own
holy law, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."
The place chosen for the residence of Ishbosheth was Mahanaim, in
the half-tribe of Manasseh, on the east side of the Jordan. It is a
proof how much the Philistines must have dominated the central part
of the country that no city in the tribe of Benjamin and no place
even on the western side of the Jordan could be obtained as a royal
seat for the son of Saul. Surely this was an evil omen. Ishbosheth's
reign, if reign it might be called, lasted but two short years. No
single event took place to give it lustre. No city was taken from
the Philistines, no garrison put to flight, as at Michmash. No deed
was ever done by him or done by his adherents of which they might
be proud, and to which they might point in justification of their
resistance to David. Ishbosheth was not the wicked man in great
power, spreading himself like the green bay-tree, but a short-lived,
shrivelled plant, that never rose above the humiliating circumstances
of its origin. Men who have defied the purpose of the Almighty have
often grown and prospered, like the little horn of the Apocalypse;
but in this case of Ishbosheth little more than one breath of the
Almighty sufficed to wither him up. Yes, indeed, whatever may be the
immediate fortunes of those who unfurl their own banner against the
clear purpose of the Almighty, there is but one fate for them all in
the end--utter humiliation and defeat. Well may the Psalm counsel
all, "Kiss ye the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish from the way,
if once His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that
put their trust in Him."
FOOTNOTE:
[1] From the use of the expression "city of the Lord," it has been
inferred by some critics that this Psalm must have been written after
the capture and consecration of Jerusalem. But there is no reason
why Hebron might not have been called at that time "the city of the
Lord." The Lord had specially designated it as the abode of David; and
that alone entitled it to be so called. Those who have regarded this
Psalm as a picture of a model household or family have never weighed
the force of the last line, which marks the position of a king, not
a father. The Psalm is a true statement of the principles usually
followed by David in public rule, but not in domestic administration.
CHAPTER III.
_BEGINNING OF CIVIL WAR._
2 SAMUEL ii. 12-32
The well-meant and earnest efforts of David to ward off strife and
bring the people together in recognising him as king were frustrated,
as we have seen, through the efforts of Abner. Unmoved by the solemn
testimony of God, uttered again and again through Samuel, that He had
rejected Saul and found as king a man after His own heart; unmoved by
the sad proceedings at Endor, where, under such awful circumstances,
the same announcement of the purpose of the Almighty had been repeated;
unmoved by the doom of Saul and his three sons on Mount Gilboa, where
such a striking proof of the reality of God's judgment on his house
had been given; unmoved by the miserable state of the kingdom, overrun
and humiliated by the Philistines and in the worst possible condition
to bear the strain of a civil war,--this Abner insisted on setting up
Ishbosheth and endeavouring to make good his claims by the sword. It
was never seen more clearly how "one sinner destroyeth much good."
As to the immediate occasion of the war, David was quite innocent,
and Abner alone was responsible; but to a feeling and patriotic
heart like David's, the war itself must have been the occasion of
bitter distress Did it ever occur to him to think that in a sense
he was now brought, against his will, into the position which he had
professed to King Achish to be willing to occupy, or that, placed as
he now was in an attitude of opposition to a large section of his
countrymen, he was undergoing a chastisement for what he was rash
enough to say and to do then?
In the commencement of the war, the first step was taken by Abner.
He went out from Mahanaim, descended the Jordan valley, and came to
Gibeon, in the tribe of Benjamin, a place but a few miles distant from
Gibeah, where Saul had reigned. His immediate object probably was to
gain such an advantage over David in that quarter as would enable
him to establish Ishbosheth at Gibeah, and thus bring to him all the
prestige due to the son and successor of Saul. We must not forget that
the Philistines had still great influence in the land, and very likely
they were in possession of Gibeah, after having rifled Saul's palace
and appropriated all his private property. With this powerful enemy
to be dealt with ultimately, it was the interest of Abner to avoid a
collision of the whole forces on either side, and spare the slaughter
which such a contest would have involved. There is some obscurity in
the narrative now before us, both at this point and at other places.
But it would appear that, when the two armies were ranged on opposite
sides of the "pool" or reservoir at Gibeon, Abner made the proposal
to Joab that the contest should be decided by a limited number of
young men on either side, whose encounter would form a sort of play or
spectacle, that their brethren might look on, and, in a sense, enjoy.
In the circumstances, it was a wise and humane proposal, although we
get something of a shock from the frivolous spirit that could speak of
such a deadly encounter as "play."
David was not present with his troops on this occasion, the management
of them being entrusted to Joab, his sister's son. Here was another
of the difficulties of David--a difficulty which embarrassed him for
forty years. He was led to commit the management of his army to his
warlike nephew, although he appears to have been a man very unlike
himself. Joab is much more of the type of Saul than of David. He is
rough, impetuous, worldly, manifesting no faith, no prayerfulness,
no habit or spirit of communion with God. Yet from the beginning
he threw in his lot with David; he remained faithful to him in the
insurrection of Absalom; and sometimes he gave him advice which was
more worthy to be followed than his own devices. But though Joab was
a difficulty to David, he did not master him. The course of David's
life and the character of his reign were determined mainly by those
spiritual feelings with which Joab appears to have had no sympathy. It
was unfortunate that the first stage of the war should have been in the
hands of Joab; he conducted it in a way that must have been painful to
David; he stained it with a crime that gave him bitter pain.
The practice of deciding public contests by a small and equal number of
champions on either side, if not a common one in ancient times, was,
at any rate, not very rare. Roman history furnishes some memorable
instances of it: that of Romulus and Aruns, and that of the Horatii
and the Curiatii; while the challenge of Goliath and the proposal to
settle the strife between the Philistines and the Hebrews according
to the result of the duel with him had taken place not many years
before. The young men were accordingly chosen, twelve on either side;
but they rushed against each other with such impetuosity that the whole
of them fell together, and the contest remained undecided as before.
Excited probably by what they had witnessed, the main forces on either
side now rushed against each other; and when the shock of battle
came, the victory fell to the side of David, and Abner and his troops
were signally defeated. On David's side, there was not a very serious
loss, the number of the slain amounting to twenty; but on the side of
Abner the loss was three hundred and sixty. To account for so great
an inequality we must remember that in Eastern warfare it was in the
pursuit that by far the greatest amount of slaughter took place. That
obstinate maintenance of their ground which is characteristic of modern
armies seems to have been unknown in those times. The superiority of
one of the hosts over the other appears usually to have made itself
felt at the beginning of the engagement; the opposite force, seized
with panic, fled in confusion, followed close by the conquerors, whose
weapons, directed against the backs of the fugitive, were neither
caught on shields, nor met by counter-volleys. Thus it was that Joab's
loss was little more than the twelve who had fallen at first, while
that of Abner was many times more.
Among those who had
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warm season, abundant nourishment to herbivorous animals.
Some trees of small size also appear here and there, or even form
themselves into thickets and woods. But, in general, the vegetation of
these dreary regions, placed on the limits of the habitable earth, is
characterized by a paucity of species and a stunted growth.
Firs and pines, existing in vast numbers, and retaining a perpetual
though gloomy verdure, characterize the transition from the frigid to
the northern temperate zone. This last extends from the parallels of 50°
to 40° north latitude, and in its southern borders, the beech, the lime,
and the chestnut, mingle with the trees peculiar to more southern
regions. The meadows and pastures, especially those in the vicinity of
the sea and in the mountain-valleys, are clothed with a brilliant
verdure, which we in vain look for in the other sections of the globe.
The warm temperate zone, extending to 25°, presents in general a less
beautiful vegetation; for although the heat is greater the humidity is
less constant. But it is in the torrid latitudes that Nature displays
all her magnificence. There the species of tribes, which in other
climates are herbaceous, become shrubs, and the shrubs trees. Ferns rise
into trunks equal to those of pines in the northern regions of Europe;
balsams, gums, and resins, exude from the bark; aromatic fruits and
flowers abound; and the savage, as he roams the woods, satisfies his
hunger with the spontaneous offerings of the soil. Here also are all the
climates of the globe, and almost all their productions united; for,
while the plains are covered with the gorgeous vegetation of the
tropics, the lofty mountains display the forms that occur in the colder
regions, and the places intermediate in elevation all the graduated
transitions from these to the warmest parallels.
The vegetation of the seas presents much less diversity than that of the
land. It is less luxuriant, less elegant, less ornamented, and less
productive of substances directly useful to man. There is also less
distinction between marine plants of different latitudes; for the great
currents of the ocean, and other causes, render its temperature more
equable than that of the atmosphere.
The numerous and diversified forms which plants assume, their
distribution over the globe, their various qualities and uses, and
their internal organization, are subjects which have long occupied the
attention of observers. In their reproduction, growth, and maturation,
phenomena are presented to us, which are well calculated to excite our
admiration; and the curious and diversified apparatus of tubes and
cells, in which are circulated the fluids derived from the atmosphere
and the earth, although apparently more simple than that of the animal
economy, affords a profound as well as an interesting subject of
research.
All parts of the earth's surface, even the deep recesses of caves and
mines, the snows of the polar and alpine regions, and the bottom of the
sea, are more or less covered with plants. The same may be said
respecting animals, which, being much more diversified in their forms
and internal structure, and endowed with more wonderful faculties, lead
the mind, by the contemplation of their mechanism and habits, to a
nearer approach to the great Creator of all things.
From the gigantic elephant that roams among the splendid forests of the
warmer regions of the earth, the unwieldy hippopotamus that plunges in
the pools and marshes of the African wilds, and the timid and graceful
giraffe that bounds over the sandy desert, down to the little dormouse
that we find slumbering in its winter retreat, to the lemming that in
congregated myriads overruns the fields of the North, or to the mole
that burrows under our feet, we find an astonishing variety of beings,
exhibiting forms, instincts, passions, and pursuits, which adapt them
for the occupation of every part of the globe. The woods, the plains,
the mountains, and the sands of the sea, are replete with life. The
waters, too, whether of the ocean or of the land, teem with animated
beings. Scarcely is a particle of matter to be found that does not
present inhabitants to our view; and a drop of ditch-water is a little
world in itself, stored with inmates of corresponding magnitude.
The consideration of the anatomical structure and external conformation
of the many thousands of living creatures that come under our view,
would of itself occupy many volumes, were it presented in detail; and
even the simplest outline in which it could be produced would require
more space than can be devoted to it here. All departments of Nature are
full of wonders; but this excels the rest in interest, and is
proportionally more difficult to be studied; although men, contented
with superficial knowledge, may fancy themselves masters of her secrets
when they have merely learned to distinguish some hundreds of objects
from each other.
Man, separated from all other animals by peculiarities of corporeal
organization, not less than by those intellectual faculties which are
not in any considerable degree participated by the other inhabitants of
the globe, and who is capable of subsisting in every climate, from the
arid regions of the torrid zone to the frozen confines of the poles,
also belongs in some measure to the study of nature. But the
consideration of man includes a multitude of subjects that do not
properly belong to Natural History, in the limited sense in which we use
the term. It might even be said that it embraces all human knowledge.
Thus, the constitution of the human mind, and the structure of the human
body, as well as its healthy and morbid phenomena, together with the
means of regulating the former and of counteracting the latter, may
certainly be included in it.
Natural history, however, in its more limited acceptation, may be
considered as comprehending the three great kingdoms of Nature,--the
mineral, the vegetable, and the animal,--the sciences treating of which
are named Mineralogy, Botany, and Zoology. The first of these
departments of knowledge comprehends, along with the consideration of
simple minerals, that of the masses produced by the aggregation of these
substances, and the changes effected upon them by natural causes. Botany
teaches us to distinguish and arrange the subjects of the vegetable
kingdom, points out the forms and functions of their organs,
investigates their internal structure, traces them in their distribution
over the surface of the globe, and makes known the various properties
which render them noxious or useful to us. Zoology treats of the various
tribes of animals, marks their external forms, compares their various
organs, describes their habits, discloses the laws which regulate their
distribution over the continents and islands, arranges them into
families according to principles deduced from their structure, and in
general makes us acquainted with all that belongs to their history.
Although it is unnecessary here to offer any extended remarks on the
cultivation of the vast field which is thus opened up to us, yet, the
science of animals being intimately connected with the Series of Lives
which we propose to offer to the public, it may not be improper to give
a short account of its origin and progress.
In the History of Zoology, four eras are marked by the names of four
great cultivators of that science. All knowledge of nature must have
commenced in the observation of individuals, or in an intuitive
perception of their properties bestowed upon the first man. We may
suppose, however, that at some period not remote from the creation of
the human race men were left to their own resources, when they were
necessarily forced to examine the nature and qualities of plants and
animals, as well as of all natural objects with which they came into
contact. The son would learn from the father, and impart to his
descendants a certain degree of knowledge acquired by observation. Where
the art of writing was unknown, science would advance but slowly; and
even where it was practised, the privilege would probably belong to
individuals or families, so that the mass would still be left to their
ordinary resources. Those who lived in the remote ages antecedent to the
Christian era probably knew as much of natural history as the unlettered
peasant of our own age and country. Whatever may have been the
acquirements of the priests, the sole depositaries of science in ancient
India, Chaldea, and Egypt, they perished amid the revolutions of
empires. The Sacred Scriptures, however, show that Moses, who was
learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, had bestowed considerable
attention on the animal world; but as these writings were not intended
for our instruction in natural knowledge, the observations which they
contain on the subject have no reference to systematic arrangement. In
short, whatever may have been the knowledge possessed by the subjects of
the Pharaohs, or the Hebrews and Greeks of the earlier ages, we do not
find that it had assumed any definite form, or constituted a body of
doctrine, until the time of Alexander the Great. At this epoch the
illustrious Aristotle collected the observations of his predecessors;
added to them those, more extensive and more important, which were made
by himself; and, although deeply engaged in the study of other subjects,
succeeded in collecting a mass of facts, and in eliciting from them
general principles, the accuracy of many of which might surprise us, did
we not reflect that, in this department at least, he followed the true
method by which the physical sciences have in our times received so vast
an augmentation. He, however, stands alone among the writers of remote
antiquity in this field; for, if others followed in his steps, their
works have been lost.
Among the Romans, by whom the sciences were carried from Greece to
Western Europe, there must have been many naturalists of considerable
attainments; but the only writer of that nation whose descriptions have
come down to us is Pliny the Elder, who flourished under Vespasian. His
books on natural history are compiled from the writings of others, and
may be considered as a general collection of all that was known in his
time. Although he must have possessed opportunities of observing the
many rare animals that were brought from all parts of the world to Rome,
it does not appear that, by original observation, he added much to the
mass of facts; still he may be viewed as marking the second epoch in the
history of zoology, more especially as his works supplied the materials
out of which naturalists in later ages have constructed their systems.
As to Ælian, a Greek writer, whose treatise was also a compilation, his
merits were much fewer, and his absurdities more numerous than those of
his predecessor. Both were fond of the marvellous, but he was eminently
addicted to falsehood.
During the long ages of barbarism that succeeded the destruction of the
Roman empire all the sciences were lost. On the revival of learning some
feeble efforts were made to rescue natural history from its degraded
condition; and at the commencement of the sixteenth century appeared
several works on fishes, by Paolo Giovio, Pierre Belon, Rondelet, and
Salviani. Belon wrote on birds also, and his observations are remarkable
considering the period at which he lived. Conrad Gesner, a physician of
Zurich, in his History of Animals, presented a compilation, arranged in
alphabetical order, of all that the ancients had left on the subject;
and Aldrovandi, after the labour of sixty years, left behind him an
immense work on natural history, comprising no less than fourteen folio
volumes. In the seventeenth century, we find our own Ray and Willughby
among the most successful students of nature. Besides these celebrated
individuals, there were others, such as Jonston and Redi, who laboured
in the field of zoology; but perhaps the most original authors of this
period were Swammerdam and Reaumur, whose minute observations, in
entomology especially, have not been excelled in accuracy by those of
any subsequent writers. It was not, however, until the middle of the
eighteenth century, that a new era was formed by the labours of Linnæus,
who was the first to collect all the known productions of nature, to
class them according to simple principles derived from the observation
of facts, and to invent a nomenclature at once efficient and
comprehensive.
Since the time of that philosopher natural history in all its branches
has been cultivated with extreme ardour. The writers of this period have
been numerous beyond those of any former epoch; and as anatomical
investigation was successfully applied to the study of zoology, while
the objects known were immensely increased, it was soon found that the
classifications of the great reformer of the science were in many
respects deficient, and that he had frequently associated objects which
have too little affinity to be grouped together in the same class or
order. The Systema Naturæ, in place of forming a complete catalogue of
all the objects of nature, "became," to use the words of an accomplished
author, "a mere sketch of what was to be done afterwards. Even more
recent naturalists touched with a timid hand upon the natural grouping
of the highest branches of the science, and it was reserved for a mighty
genius of our own time to open the path to us, and to smooth the
difficulties of that path, by precisely determining the limits of the
great divisions, by exactly defining the lesser groups, by placing them
all according to the invariable characters of their internal structure,
and by ridding them of the accumulations of synonymes and absurdities
which ignorance, want of method, or fertility of imagination, had heaped
upon them."[A] This "mighty genius," it is almost unnecessary to add,
was the illustrious Cuvier, who, although by no means the only great,
and possibly not even the greatest zoologist of his time, may, if we
are disposed to mark an epoch by a single name, be selected for that
purpose. But even this celebrated writer has, in his Règne Animal,
merely presented a sketch, leaving to others the task of completing the
various departments. They who think otherwise forget that the generic
and specific characters of the systematist, necessarily condensed, are
very inadequate to convey any other than the most superficial knowledge
of the diversified objects of nature.
These, then, were the men who progressively reared the structure of
zoology. Aristotle was a universal genius; but with respect to natural
history he is to be looked upon chiefly as a zoologist. Pliny was a
collector of every thing known in his time, whether true or fabulous,
that related to animals, minerals, and plants. Linnæus arranged all the
objects of nature. He was perhaps greater as a zoologist than as a
botanist, although, in the latter capacity, his labours have been more
highly appreciated, because there have been more cultivators of the
science of plants, of which the study requires less laborious
investigation, and to many persons is more attractive. Lastly, Cuvier,
an original genius, an acute observer, and an accurate reasoner,
profiting by the accumulated knowledge of ages, remodelled the system of
zoology, and, in his Règne Animal, arranged the series of animals
according to principles elicited from the investigation of their
structure and relations.
The present volume includes the lives of the more eminent zoologists,
from Aristotle to Linnæus. Those who succeeded the latter will furnish
ample materials for another.
It is scarcely necessary to remark, that these volumes may either be
considered as complete in themselves, or as introductory to a general
and particular description of the various tribes of animals. A work on
this most extensive subject is a great desideratum in English
literature,--not that books on this department of science are wanting,
but because we have none that present a continuous view of the families
end species of the different classes, at once intelligible to the
student of nature, attractive to the general reader, and free from that
meagreness of phraseology necessarily peculiar to the composers of
systematic catalogues.
It is not now required of us to point out the advantages that might
result from the establishment of natural history as a branch of popular
education. These advantages have been repeatedly pressed on the notice
of the public; and, although the system has not been as yet adopted, the
time cannot be far distant when the elements of mineralogy, botany, and
zoology shall be taught in our schools, along with those branches of
knowledge which at present occupy the field, to the exclusion of others
not less adapted for the improvement of the youthful mind. "To
constitute such pursuits a prominent part of elementary education," says
a popular writer, "would without doubt be erroneous: it is, however,
certain that none are more eminently fitted to fill the minds of youth
with admiration of the numerous contrivances and proofs of design
afforded in every part of the creation, and to inspire them with exalted
conceptions of the Supreme Being."[B] We are of opinion,
notwithstanding, that they ought to occupy a distinct place in
elementary education, because they possess many important
recommendations, of which those mentioned are certainly not the least.
The study of nature may be pursued in any degree, as a relaxation from
other studies, as a pleasing occupation invigorating alike to the mind
and the body, or as a science capable of calling into action the noblest
faculties of man, and of affording employment to intellects of even a
higher order than any of those who have hitherto acquired distinction in
the walks of literature. Natural history has already to boast of an
Aristotle, a Ray, a Reaumur, a Linnæus, a Haller, a Hunter, and a
Cuvier. What other science can rank abler men among its cultivators?
And, as is remarked by one of the most eminent naturalists that this
country has produced, the late president of the Linnæan Society, "How
delightful and how consolatory it is, among the disappointments and
anxieties of life, to observe science, like virtue, retaining its relish
to the last!"
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Mrs R. Lee's Memoirs of Baron Cuvier, p. 51.
[B] Quarterly Review, vol. xxxvi. p. 219.
ARISTOTLE.
SECTION I.
_Remarkable Events in the Life of Aristotle._
Introductory Remarks--Birth and Parentage of Aristotle--He
studies Philosophy under Plato--Is highly distinguished in
the Academy--Retires to Atarneus on the Death of his
Master--Marries--Is invited by Philip to superintend the
Education of Alexander--Prosecutes his Studies at the
Court--On the Succession of Alexander, returns to Athens,
where he sets up a School in the Lyceum--Corresponds with
Alexander, who supplies Means for carrying on his
Investigations--Alexander finds Fault with him for
publishing some of his Works, and after putting Callisthenes
to Death, exalts his Rival Xenocrates--On the Death of
Alexander, he is accused by his Enemies of Impiety, when he
escapes to Chalcis, where he dies soon after--His personal
Appearance and Character--His Testament--History of his
Writings--Great Extent of the Subjects treated of by
him--His Notions on elementary Bodies--The Material
Universe--The Changes to which the Earth has been subjected,
and the Eternity of its Existence--Conclusion.
Natural History, considered as a science or body of doctrine, commenced
with Aristotle, the founder of the Peripatetic School, and one of the
most illustrious philosophers of antiquity. His writings were held in
the highest estimation by his own countrymen the Greeks, as well as by
the Romans: they were considered as the most authentic sources of
knowledge, after the revival of learning in Europe; and even at the
present day their influence may be traced in the works of many who have
not so much as bestowed upon them a cursory glance. It is therefore fit
that we should begin our biographical sketches with that celebrated
author, the more especially as he did not confine himself to a single
branch of natural history, but, like all great minds, possessed an
extensive acquaintance with objects of various classes. It is he only,
whose comprehensive glance seizes upon what is common to numerous
tribes, that can duly estimate what ought to be considered as
distinctive of a particular group, or can form rules for the arrangement
and description of the beings which compose it. The three greatest
naturalists whom the world has produced, Aristotle, Linnæus, and Cuvier,
were men whose conceptions were enlarged by the most expanded views.
Others have excelled them in particular departments, but none have
equalled them in general knowledge.
Aristotle was born at Stagira, a city of the Thracian Chersonesus, in
the first year of the 99th Olympiad, or the 384th before the Christian
era. His father, Nicomachus, was physician to Amyntas, king of
Macedonia, the father of Philip, and grandfather of Alexander the Great.
Of his mother, we only know that her name was Phestis, and that, like
her husband, she was originally from Chalcis. His family claimed descent
from Machaon, the son of Esculapius. Having lost his parents at an early
age, he went to reside with Proxenus, a citizen of Atarneus in Mysia,
the friend to whose guardianship he had been left. According to some
authorities, not being observed very strictly by those who had the
immediate charge of his education, he spent a great part of his youth in
licentious indulgences, by which he dissipated nearly the whole of a
large patrimony. It is also said that he entered into the military
profession, but finding it disagreeable soon renounced it, and, as a
means of subsistence, sold medicines at Athens. But most of these
reflections on his juvenile character may perhaps be attributed to
slander.
However this may be, it became necessary for him to choose an
employment; and, on going to Delphi to consult the oracle, he was
directed to proceed to Athens, and apply himself to the study of
philosophy. This he accordingly did, and at the age of seventeen
commenced his career as a pupil of Plato.
Being of an ardent temperament, he addicted himself to his new pursuit
with so much energy, that he determined to reduce his hours of repose to
the smallest possible limits. For this purpose he placed a metallic
basin beside his couch, and on lying down held out one of his hands with
an iron ball in it, that the noise produced by the collision might awake
him should he happen to slumber. Such intensity of application, in a
penetrating and subtile mind, could not fail to render him highly
successful in his studies. We accordingly find that he had not been long
in the academy when he was distinguished above all the other scholars;
and it is said that Plato used to call him the mind of his school, and
to compare him to a spirited colt that required the application of the
rein to restrain its ardour.
He has been accused of disrespect and ingratitude to his aged master,
and with having set up a school in opposition to him. The author of this
charge was Aristoxenus, his own pupil; but it is well known that he was
personally an enemy to Aristotle, because that philosopher, in choosing
a successor, had preferred Theophrastus. It is doubted, besides,
whether he taught publicly until after Plato's death, which happened in
348 B. C.
Speusippus, the nephew of the sage just named, having been appointed to
succeed him in his school, Aristotle, retiring from Athens, went to
reside with Hermeias, governor of Assus and Atarneus in Mysia. Here he
remained three years; but his friend having been executed, by command of
Artaxerxes, as a rebel against Persia, he was obliged to seek refuge in
Mytelene, taking with him Pythias, the kinswoman and adopted daughter of
Hermeias, to whose memory he afterwards erected a statue in the temple
of Delphos. This lady, endeared to him by the gratitude which he felt
towards her father, and by the distress to which she had been reduced by
his death, he married in the thirty-seventh year of his age. She died,
however, soon after their union, leaving an infant daughter, who
received the same name.
A short time having elapsed, he was invited by Philip to superintend the
education of his son. This distinction he no doubt owed in part to his
previous intimacy with the King of Macedonia; but it must also have
arisen from the great celebrity which he enjoyed, as excelling in all
kinds of science, and especially in the doctrine of politics. Alexander
had attained the age of fifteen when the management of his studies was
confided to Aristotle, then in his forty-second year. There is ground,
however, for presuming that previous to this period the philosopher had
been consulted respecting the instruction of the young prince.
The master, it has been said, was worthy of his pupil, and the pupil of
his master. In our opinion the master was worthy of a better pupil, and
the pupil might have had a better master. At all events, Alexander, who
was ambitious of excelling in every pursuit, must have profited greatly
in the acquisition of knowledge by the lessons of the most
eminently-endowed philosopher of his age. According to Plutarch and
Aulus Gellius, he was instructed by him in rhetoric, physics, ethics,
and politics; and so high was the estimation in which he held his
preceptor, that he is said to have declared, that "he was not less
indebted to Aristotle than to his father; since if it was through the
one that he lived, it was through the other that he lived well." It is
also supposed that he had been initiated in the abstruse speculations
respecting the human soul, the nature of the Divinity, and other
subjects, on which his master had not yet promulgated his notions to the
world.
During his residence at the court of Macedonia, Aristotle did not
exclusively devote himself to his duties as instructor of the young
prince, but also took some share in public business, and continued his
philosophical researches. For the latter purpose Philip is said to have
granted him liberal supplies of money. In consideration of his various
merits the king also rebuilt his native city, Stagira, which had been
destroyed in the wars, and restored it to its former inhabitants, who
had either been dispersed or carried into slavery.
Alexander had scarcely completed his twentieth year when the
assassination of his father, by Pausanias, one of the officers of the
guard, called him to the throne. Aristotle, however, continued to
reside at the court two years longer; when some misunderstanding having
arisen, he left the young monarch at the commencement of his celebrated
expedition into Asia, and returned to Athens. It has been alleged that
he accompanied his former pupil as far as Egypt; but the fact is not
certain, although circumstances would seem to render it probable.
He was well received at Athens, on account of the benefits which Philip
had conferred, for his sake, on the inhabitants of that city; and,
obtaining permission from the magistrates to occupy the Lyceum, a large
enclosure in the suburbs, he proceeded to form a school. It was his
custom to instruct his disciples while walking with them; and for this
reason the new sect received the name of Peripatetics, or walking
philosophers. In the morning he delivered his acroatic lectures to his
select pupils, imparting to them the more abstruse parts of metaphysical
science; and in the evening gave to his visiters or the public at large
exoteric discourses, in which the subjects discussed were treated in a
popular style. As the Lyceum soon acquired great celebrity, scholars
flocked to it from all parts of Greece. Xenocrates, who shared with him
the lessons of Plato, had by this time succeeded Speusippus in the
Academy, and it has been alleged that Aristotle established his seminary
in contemptuous opposition; observing, that it would be shameful for him
to be silent while the other taught publicly. But although the rival
sages of those days cannot be supposed to have been influenced by a
gentler spirit than animates those of our own times, there is no reason
for attributing to the Stagirite in this matter any other motive than a
laudable desire of seeking his own interest by communicating knowledge
to those who were desirous of receiving it.
In this manner he gave public lectures at Athens thirteen years, during
the greater part of which time he did not cease to correspond with
Alexander. That celebrated prince had placed at his disposal several
thousand persons, who were occupied in hunting, fishing, and making the
observations which were necessary for completing his History of Animals.
He is moreover said to have given the enormous sum of 800 talents for
the same purpose; while he also took care to send to him a great variety
of zoological specimens, collected in the countries which he had
subdued.
The misunderstanding which had begun before Aristotle parted from his
royal pupil, but which had not prevented the good offices of the latter,
increased towards the end of his career. One of the first occasions
seems to have been offered by the philosopher, who, having published his
works on physics and metaphysics, received from Alexander, who was
piqued at his having divulged to the world the valuable knowledge which
he had obtained from him in his youth, the following letter:--
"Alexander to Aristotle, wishing all happiness. You have
done amiss in publishing your books on the speculative
sciences. In what shall I excel others if what you taught me
privately be communicated to all? You know well that I would
rather surpass mankind in the more sublime branches of
learning than in power. Farewell."
This epistle exhibits the king as a very exclusive personage; and,
joined to what history has recorded of his actions, tends to show that
selfishness, however refined or disguised, was the main source of his
insatiable ambition. One of the sincerest pleasures of a great mind is
to communicate to others all the blessings that it possesses. On other
occasions he appeared to entertain a wish to mortify the philosopher by
exalting his rival Xenocrates, who had nothing to recommend him besides
a respectable moral character. It has even been asserted by some, that
the conqueror, after he had put Callisthenes to death, intended the same
fate for Aristotle.
This Callisthenes was a kinsman and disciple of the other, through whose
influence, it is said, he was appointed to attend the king on his
Asiatic expedition. His republican sentiments and independent spirit,
however, rendered him an indifferent courtier; while his rude and
ill-timed reflections finally converted him into an object of suspicion
or dislike. The conspiracy of Hermolaus affording Alexander a plausible
pretext for getting rid of his uncourtly monitor, he caused him to be
apprehended and put to death. Some say that he was exposed to lions,
others that he was tortured and crucified; but, in whatever way he met
his end, it is generally agreed that his life was sacrificed to gratify
the enmity of his sovereign. Aristotle naturally espoused the cause of
his relative, and from that period harboured a deep resentment against
his destroyer. It has even been alleged that he was privy to the
supposed design of murdering the victorious prince; but of this there is
no satisfactory evidence.
Notwithstanding the coolness which thus existed between "Macedonia's
madman" and "the Stagirite," the latter continued to enjoy at least an
appearance of protection, which prevented his enemies from seriously
molesting him. But as the splendour of his talents, his success in
teaching, and the celebrity which he had acquired in all parts of
Greece, had excited the animosity of those who found themselves eclipsed
by the brightness of his genius, no sooner was Alexander dead, than they
stirred up a priest, named Eurymedon, with whom was associated
Demophilus, a powerful citizen, to prefer a charge of impiety against
him before the court of Areopagus, on the ground that he had
commemorated the virtues of his wife and of his friend Hermeias with
such honours as were exclusively bestowed on the gods. Warned by the
fate of Socrates under similar circumstances, he judged it prudent to
retire; remarking, that he wished to spare the Athenians the disgrace of
committing another act of injustice against philosophy.
He effected his escape, with a few friends, to Chalcis in Euboea,
where he died soon after, in the year 322 B.C., and the 63d of his age;
having, on his deathbed, appointed Theophrastus of Lesbos, one of his
favourite pupils, his successor at the Lyceum. Various accounts are
given of his demise; but it is probable that an overexcited mind, and a
body worn out by disease, were the real causes of his dissolution.
According to Procopius and others, Aristotle drowned himself in the
Euboean Euripus, because he could not discover the cause of its ebbing
and flowing, which are said to take place seven times a-day. Sir Thomas
Browne, in his Enquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors, refutes this
assertion on the following grounds:--In the first place, his death is
related to have taken place in two ways by Diogenes Laertius; the one,
from Eumolus and Phavorinus, that being accused of impiety for composing
a hymn to his friend Hermeias, he withdrew to Chalcis, where he drank
poison; the other, by Apollodorus, that he died of a disease in his
stomach, in his sixty-third year. Again, the thing is in itself
unreasonable, and therefore improbable; for Aristotle was not so apt to
be vexed by the difficulty of accounting for natural phenomena, nor is
there any evidence that he endeavoured to discover the ebb and flow of
the Euripus, for he has made no mention of it in his works. Lastly, the
phenomenon itself is disputable; and it appears from a comparison of
testimonies on the subject, that the stream in question flows and ebbs
only four times a-day, as is the case with other parts of the sea,
though it is subject to irregularities dependent upon the winds and
other causes. "However, therefore, Aristotle died," concludes our
author, "what was his end, or upon what occasion, although it be not
altogether assured, yet that his memory and worthy name shall live, no
man will deny, nor gratefull schollar doubt: and if, according to the
Elogie of Solon, a man may be onely said to be happy after he is dead,
and ceaseth to be in the visible capacity of beatitude: or if, according
unto his own Ethicks, sence is not essentiall unto felicity, but a man
may be happy without the apprehension thereof; surely in that sence he
is pyramidally happy, nor can he ever perish but in the Euripe of
ignorance, or till the torrent of barbarisme overwhelme all."
With respect to personal appearance, Aristotle was not highly favoured.
He was of short stature, with slender legs, and remarkably small eyes.
His voice was shrill, and his utterance hesitating. Although his
constitution was feeble, he seems to have enjoyed good health. His moral
character has been impeached by some; but we may presume that it was not
liable to any serious imputation, otherwise his faults would not have
escaped the observation of his numerous enemies, who yet could only
prefer against him some vague charges of impiety.
Aristotle was not merely a philosopher; he was also what would at the
present day be called a gentleman and a man of the world. In accordance
with this character he dressed magnificently, wore rings of great value,
shaved his head and face, contrary to the practice of the other scholars
of Plato, and freely indulged in social intercourse. He was twice
married. By his first wife, Pythias, he had a daughter of the same name,
who was married to Nicanor, the son of Proxenus. His second wife was
Herpylis, a native of Stagira, by whom he had a son, called Nicomachus.
It is difficult to determine his real character. Those who seem to find
pleasure in reviling him, assert that he was a parasite, a habitual
glutton and drunkard, a despiser of the gods, a vain person, whose chief
care was to ornament
|
as this young man could say: "Yes, I was in the battle
of the Marne"; to be able to break off, and step back a yard or two,
correcting one's self critically: "No... it was _here_ the General
stood when I told him our batteries had got through..." or: "This is
the very spot where the first seventy-five was trained on the valley. I
can see the swathes it cut in the Bavarians as they swarmed up at us a
third and fourth time...."
Troy suddenly remembered a bit of _Henry V._ that M. Gantier had been
fond of quoting:
And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accurst they were not here,
And hold their manhood cheap, when any speaks
That fought with us....
Ah, yes--ah, yes--to have been in the battle of the Marne!
* * * * *
On the way back, below the crest of the hill, the motor stopped at the
village church and the officer jumped down. "Some of our men are buried
here," he said.
Mrs. Belknap, with a murmur of sympathy, caught up the bunch of roses
she had gathered in the ravaged garden of the château, and they picked
their way among the smashed and slanting stones of the cemetery to a
corner behind the church where wooden crosses marked a row of fresh
graves. Half-faded flowers in bottles were thrust into the loose earth,
and a few tin wreaths hung on the arms of the crosses.
Some of the graves bore only the date of the battle, with "Pour la
France," or "Priez pour lui"; but on others names and numbers had been
roughly burnt into the crosses.
Suddenly Troy stopped short with a cry.
"What is it?" his mother asked. She had walked ahead of him to the
parapet overhanging the valley, and forgetting her roses she leaned
against the low cemetery wall while the officer took up his story.
Troy made no answer. Mrs. Belknap stood with her back to him, and he did
not ask her to turn. He did not want her, or any one else, to read the
name he had just read; of a sudden there had been revealed to him the
deep secretiveness of sorrow. But he stole up to her and drew the
flowers from her hand, while she continued, with vague inattentive
murmurs, to follow the officer's explanations. She took no notice of
Troy, and he went back to the grave and laid the roses on it.
On the cross he had read: "September 12, 1914. Paul Gantier, --th
Chasseurs à pied."
"Oh, poor fellows... poor fellows. Yes, that's right, Troy; put the
roses on their graves," Mrs. Belknap assented approvingly, as she picked
her way back to the motor.
IV
The 10th of November came, and they sailed.
The week in the steamer was intolerable, not only because they were
packed like herrings, and Troy (who had never known discomfort before)
had to share his narrow cabin with two young German-Americans full of
open brag about the Fatherland; but also because of the same eternally
renewed anecdotes among the genuine Americans about the perils and
discomforts they had undergone, and the general disturbance of their
plans.
Most of the passengers were in ardent sympathy with the Allies, and hung
anxiously on the meagre wirelesses; but a flat-faced professor with
lank hair, having announced that "there were two sides to every case,"
immediately raised up a following of unnoticed ladies, who "couldn't
believe all that was said of the Germans" and hoped that America would
never be "drawn in"; while, even among the right-minded, there subsisted
a vague feeling that war was an avoidable thing, which one had only to
reprobate enough to prevent its recurrence.
They found New York--Mrs. Belknap's New York--buzzing with
war-charities, yet apparently unaware of the war. That at least was
Troy's impression during the twenty-four hours before he was packed off
to school to catch up with his interrupted studies.
At school he heard the same incessant war-talk, and found the same
fundamental unawareness of the meaning of the war. At first the boys
were very keen to hear his story, but he described what he had seen so
often--and especially his haunting impressions of the Marne--that they
named him "Marny Belknap," and finally asked him to cut it out.
The masters were mostly frankly for the Allies, but the Rector had given
out that neutrality was the attitude approved by the Government, and
therefore a patriotic duty; and one Sunday after chapel he gave a little
talk to explain why the President thought it right to try to keep his
people out of the dreadful struggle. The words duty and responsibility
and fortunate privilege recurred often in this address, and it struck
Troy as odd that the lesson of the day happened to be the story of the
Good Samaritan.
When he went home for the Christmas holidays everybody was sending toys
and sugar-plums to the Belgian war-orphans, with little notes from
"Happy American children" requesting to have their gifts acknowledged.
"It makes us so _happy_ to help," beaming young women declared with a
kind of ghoulish glee, doing up parcels, planning war-tableaux and
charity dances, rushing to "propaganda" lectures given by handsome
French officers, and keeping up a kind of continuous picnic on the ruins
of civilization.
Mr. and Mrs. Belknap had inevitably been affected by the surrounding
atmosphere.
"The tragedy of it--the _tragedy_--no one can tell who hasn't seen it
and been through it," Mrs. Belknap would begin, looking down her long
dinner-table between the orchids and the candelabra; and the pretty
women and prosperous men would interrupt their talk, and listen for a
moment, half absently, with spurts of easy indignation that faded out
again as they heard the story oftener.
After all, Mrs. Belknap wasn't the _only_ person who had seen a
battlefield! Lots and lots more were pouring home all the time with
fresh tales of tragedy: the Marne had become--in a way--an old story.
People wanted something newer... different....
And then, why hadn't Joffre followed up the offensive? The Germans were
wonderful soldiers after all.... Yes, but such beasts... sheer
devils.... Here was Mr. So-and-so, just back from Belgium--such horrible
stories--really unrepeatable! "Don't you want to come and hear them, my
dear? Dine with us to-morrow; he's promised to come unless he's summoned
to Washington. But do come anyhow; the Jim Cottages are going to dance
after dinner...."
In time Mrs. Belknap, finding herself hopelessly out-storied,
out-charitied, out-adventured, began insensibly to take a calmer and
more distant view of the war. What was the use of trying to keep up her
own enthusiasm when that of her audience had flagged? Wherever she went
she was sure to meet other ladies who had arrived from France much more
recently, and had done and seen much more than she had. One after
another she saw them received with the same eagerness--"Of course we all
know about the marvellous things you've been doing in France--your
wonderful war-work"--then, like herself, they were superseded by some
later arrival, who had been nearer the front, or had raised more money,
or had had an audience of the Queen of the Belgians, or an autograph
letter from Lord Kitchener. No one was listened to for long, and the
most eagerly-sought-for were like the figures in a movy-show, forever
breathlessly whisking past to make way for others.
Mr. Belknap had always been less eloquent about the war than his wife;
but somehow Troy had fancied he felt it more deeply. Gradually, however,
he too seemed to accept the situation as a matter of course, and Troy,
coming home for the Easter holidays, found at the family table a large
sonorous personage--a Senator, just back from Europe--who, after rolling
out vague praises of France and England, began insidiously to hint that
it was a pity to see such wasted heroism, such suicidal determination on
the part of the Allies to resist all offers of peace from an enemy so
obviously their superior.
"She wouldn't be if America came in!" Troy blurted out, reddening at the
sound of his voice.
"America?" some one playfully interjected; and the Senator laughed, and
said something about geographical immunity. "They can't touch _us_. This
isn't our war, young man."
"It may be by the time I'm grown up," Troy persisted, burning redder.
"Well," returned the Senator good-humouredly, "you'll have to hurry, for
the economists all say it can't last more than a year longer. Lord
Reading told me----"
"There's been misery enough, in all conscience," sighed a lady, playing
with her pearls; and Mr. Belknap added gravely: "By the time Troy grows
up I hope wars and war-talk will be over for good and all."
"Oh, well--at his age every fellow wants to go out and kill something,"
remarked one of his uncles sympathetically.
Troy shuddered at the well-meant words. _To go out and kill something!_
They thought he regarded the war as a sport, just as they regarded it
as a moving-picture show! As if any one who had had even a glimpse of it
could ever again think with joy of killing! His boy's mind was sorely
exercised to define the urgent emotions with which it laboured. _To save
France_--that was the clear duty of the world, as he saw it. But none of
these kindly careless people about him knew what he meant when he said
"France." Bits of M. Gantier's talk came back to him, embodying that
meaning.
"Whatever happens, keep your mind keen and clear: open as many windows
on the universe as you can...." To Troy, France had been the biggest of
those windows.
The young tutor had never declaimed about his country; he had simply
told her story and embodied her ideals in his own impatient, questioning
and yet ardent spirit. "Le monde est aux enthousiastes," he had once
quoted; and he had shown Troy how France had always been alive in every
fibre, and how her inexhaustible vitality had been perpetually nourished
on criticism, analysis and dissatisfaction. "Self-satisfaction is
death," he had said; "France is the phoenix-country always rising from
the ashes of her recognized mistakes."
Troy felt what a wonderful help it must be to have that long rich past
in one's blood. Every stone that France had carved, every song she had
sung, every new idea she had struck out, every beauty she had created in
her thousand fruitful years, was a tie between her and her children.
These things were more glorious than her battles, for it was because of
them that all civilization was bound up in her, and that nothing that
concerned her could concern her only.
V
"It seems too absurd," said Mrs. Belknap; "but Troy will be eighteen
to-morrow. And that means," she added with a sigh, "that this horrible
war has been going on for three whole years. Do you remember, dearest,
your fifteenth birthday was on the very day that odious Archduke was
assassinated? We had a picnic on the Morterasch."
"Oh, dear," cried Sophy Wicks, flinging her tennis-racket into the air
with a swing that landed it in the middle of the empty court--"perhaps
that's the reason he's never stopped talking about the war for a single
minute since!"
Around the big tea-table under the trees there was a faint hush of
disapproval. A year before, Sophy Wicks's airy indifference to the
events that were agitating the world had amused some people and won the
frank approval of others. She did not exasperate her friends by
professions of pacifism, she simply declared that the war bored her; and
after three years of vain tension, of effort in the void, something in
the baffled American heart whispered that, things being as they were,
she was perhaps right.
But now things were no longer as they had been. Looking back, Troy
surveyed the gradual development of the war-feeling as it entered into a
schoolboy's range of vision. He had begun to notice the change before
the sinking of the _Lusitania_. Even in the early days, when his
school-fellows had laughed at him and called him "Marny," some of them
had listened to him and imitated him. It had become the fashion to have
a collection of war-trophies from the battlefields. The boys' sisters
were "adopting war-orphans" at long distance, and when Troy went home
for the holidays he heard more and more talk of war-charities, and
noticed that the funds collected were no longer raised by dancing and
fancy-balls. People who used the war as an opportunity to have fun were
beginning to be treated almost as coldly as the pacifists.
But the two great factors in the national change of feeling were the
_Lusitania_ and the training-camps.
The _Lusitania_ showed America what the Germans were, Plattsburg tried
to show her the only way of dealing with them.
Both events called forth a great deal of agitated discussion, for if
they focussed the popular feeling for war, they also gave the opponents
of war in general a point of departure for their arguments. For a while
feeling ran high, and Troy, listening to the heated talk at his parents'
table, perceived with disgust and wonder that at the bottom of the
anti-war sentiment, whatever specious impartiality it put on, there was
always the odd belief that life-in-itself--just the mere raw fact of
being alive--was the one thing that mattered, and getting killed the one
thing to be avoided.
This new standard of human dignity plunged Troy into the lowest depths
of pessimism. And it bewildered him as much as it disgusted him, since
it did away at a stroke with all that gave any interest to the fact of
living. It killed romance, it killed poetry and adventure, it took all
the meaning out of history and conduct and civilization. There had never
been anything worth while in the world that had not had to be died for,
and it was as clear as day that a world which no one would die for could
never be a world worth being alive in.
Luckily most people did not require to reason the matter out in order to
feel as Troy did, and in the long run the _Lusitania_ and Plattsburg won
the day. America tore the gag of neutrality from her lips, and with all
the strength of her liberated lungs claimed her right to a place in the
struggle. The pacifists crept into their holes, and only Sophy Wicks
remained unconverted.
Troy Belknap, tall and shy and awkward, lay at her feet and blushed and
groaned inwardly at her wrong-headedness. All the other girls were
war-mad; with the rupture of diplomatic relations the country had burst
into flame, and with the declaration of war the flame had become a
conflagration. And now, having at last a definite and personal concern
in the affair, every one was not only happier but more sensible than
when a perpetually thwarted indignation had had to expend itself in
vague philanthropy.
It was a peculiar cruelty of fate that made Troy feel Miss Wicks's
indifference more than the zeal of all the other young women gathered
about the Belknap tennis-court. In spite of everything, he found her
more interesting, more inexhaustible, more "his size" (as they said at
school), than any of the gay young war-goddesses who sped their
tennis-balls across the Belknap court.
It was a Long Island Sunday in June. A caressing warmth was in the air,
and a sea-breeze stirred the tops of the lime branches. The smell of
fresh hay-cocks blew across the lawn, and a sparkle of blue water and a
dipping of white sails showed through the trees beyond the hay-fields.
Mrs. Belknap smiled indulgently on the pleasant scene: her judgement of
Sophy Wicks was less severe than that of the young lady's
contemporaries. What did it matter if a chit of eighteen, having taken
up a foolish attitude, was too self-conscious to renounce it?
"Sophy will feel differently when she has nursed some of our own
soldiers in a French base hospital," she said, addressing herself to the
disapproving group.
The young girl raised her merry eyebrows. "Who'll stay and nurse Granny
if I go to a French base hospital? Troy, will _you_?" she suggested.
The other girls about the tea-table laughed. Though they were only
Troy's age, or younger, they did not mind his being teased, for he
seemed only a little boy to them, now that they all had friends or
brothers in the training-camps or on the way to France. Besides, though
they disapproved of Sophy's tone, her argument was unanswerable. They
knew her precocious wisdom and self-confidence had been acquired at the
head of her grandmother's household, and that there was no one else to
look after poor old paralytic Mrs. Wicks and the orphan brothers and
sisters to whom Sophy was mother and guardian.
Two or three of the young men present were in uniform, and one of them,
Mrs. Belknap's nephew, had a captain's double bar on his shoulder. What
did Troy Belknap and Sophy Wicks matter to young women playing a last
tennis-match with heroes on their way to France?
The game began again, with much noise and cheerful wrangling. Mrs.
Belknap walked toward the house to welcome a group of visitors, and Miss
Wicks remained beside the tea-table, alone with Troy. She was leaning
back in a wide basket-chair, her thin ankles in white open-work
stockings thrust out under her short skirt, her arms locked behind her
thrown-back head. Troy lay on the ground and plucked at the tufts of
grass at his elbow. Why was it that, with all the currents of vitality
flowing between this group of animated girls and youths, he could feel
no nearness but hers? The feeling was not particularly agreeable, but
there was no shaking it off: it was like a scent that has got into one's
clothes. He was not sure that he liked her, but he wanted to watch her,
to listen to her, to defend her against the mockery and criticism in the
eyes of the others. At this point his powers of analysis gave out, and
his somewhat extensive vocabulary failed him. After all, he had to fall
back on the stupid old school phrase: she was "his size"--that was all.
"Why do you always say the war bores you?" he asked abruptly, without
looking up.
"Because it does, my boy; and so do you, when you hold forth about it."
He was silent, and she touched his arm with the tip of her swinging
tennis-shoe. "Don't you see, Troy, it's not our job--not just now,
anyhow. So what's the use of always jawing about it?"
She jumped up, recovered her racket, and ran to take her place in a new
set beside Troy's cousin, the captain.
VI
It was not "his job"--that was the bitter drop in all the gladness.
At last what Troy longed for had come: his country was playing her part.
And he, who had so watched and hoped and longed for the divine far-off
event, had talked of it early and late to old and young, had got himself
laughed at, scolded, snubbed, ridiculed, nicknamed, commemorated in a
school-magazine skit in which "Marne" and "yarn" and "oh, darn," formed
the refrain of a lyric beginning "Oh _say_, have you _heard_ Belknap
_flap_ in the breeze?"--he, who had borne all the scoldings and all the
ridicule, sustained by a mysterious secret faith in the strength of his
cause, now saw that cause triumph, and all his country waving with flags
and swarming with khaki, while he had to stand aside and look on,
because his coming birthday was only his nineteenth.... He remembered
the anguish of regret with which he had seen M. Gantier leave St. Moritz
to join his regiment, and thought now with passionate envy of his
tutor's fate. "Dulce et decorum est..." the old hackneyed phrase had
taken on a beauty that filled his eyes with tears.
Eighteen--and "nothing doing" till he was twenty-one! He could have
killed the cousins and uncles strutting about in uniform and saying:
"Don't fret, old man--there's lots of time. The war is sure to last
another four years." To say that, and laugh, how little they must know
of what war meant!
It was an old custom in the Belknap family to ask Troy what he wanted
for his birthday. The custom (according to tradition) had originated on
his sixth anniversary, when, being given a rabbit with ears that
wiggled, he had grown very red and stammered out: "I _did_ so want a
'cyclopedia...."
Since then he had always been consulted on the subject with a good deal
of ceremony, and had spent no little time and thought in making a
judicious choice in advance. But this year his choice took no thinking
over.
"I want to go to France," he said immediately.
"To France----?" It struck his keen ears that there was less surprise
than he had feared in Mr. Belknap's voice.
"To France, my boy? The Government doesn't encourage foreign travel just
now."
"I want to volunteer in the Foreign Legion," said Troy, feeling as if
the veins of his forehead would burst.
Mrs. Belknap groaned, but Mr. Belknap retained his composure.
"My dear chap, I don't think you know much about the Foreign Legion.
It's a pretty rough berth for a fellow like you. And they're as likely
as not," he added carelessly, "to send you to Morocco or the Cameroon."
Troy, knowing this to be true, hung his head.
"Now," Mr. Belknap continued, taking advantage of his silence, "my
counter-proposition is that you should go to Brazil for three months
with your Uncle Tom Jarvice, who is being sent down there on a big
engineering job. It's a wonderful opportunity to see the country--see it
like a prince too, for he'll have a special train at his disposal. Then,
when you come back," he continued, his voice weakening a little under
the strain of Troy's visible inattention, "we'll see...."
"See what?"
"Well--I don't know... a camp... till it's time for Harvard...."
"I want to go to France at once, father," said Troy, with the voice of a
man.
"To do _what_?" wailed his mother.
"Oh, any old thing--drive an ambulance," Troy struck out at random.
"But, dearest," she protested, "you could never even learn to drive a
Ford runabout!"
"That's only because it never interested me."
"But one of those huge ambulances--you'll be killed!"
"Father!" exclaimed Troy, in a tone that seemed to say: "Aren't we out
of the nursery, at least?"
"Don't talk to him like that, Josephine," said Mr. Belknap, visibly
wishing that he knew how to talk to his son himself, but perceiving that
his wife was on the wrong tack.
"Don't you see, father, that there's no use talking at all? I'm going to
get to France anyhow."
"In defiance of our wishes?"
"Oh, you'll forget all that later," said Troy.
Mrs. Belknap began to cry, and her husband turned on her.
"My dear, you're really--really--_I understand Troy!_" he blurted out,
his veins swelling too.
"But if the Red Cross is to send you on that mission to Italy, why
shouldn't Troy wait and go as your secretary?" Mrs. Belknap said,
tacking skilfully.
Mr. Belknap, who had not yet made up his mind to accept the mission,
made it up on the instant. "Yes, Troy--why not? I shall be going
myself--in a month or so."
"I want to go to France," said his son. And he added, laughing with
sudden courage: "You see, you've never refused me a birthday present
yet."
VII
France again--France at last! As the cliffs grew green across the bay he
could have knelt to greet them--as he hurried down the gang-plank with
the eager jostling crowd he could have kissed the sacred soil they were
treading.
The very difficulties and delays of the arrival thrilled and
stimulated him, gave him a keener sense of his being already a humble
participant in the conflict. Passports, identification papers, sharp
interrogatories, examinations, the enforced surrendering of keys and
papers: how different it all was from the old tame easy landings, with
the noiseless motor waiting at the dock, and France lying safe and open
before them whichever way they chose to turn!
On the way over many things had surprised and irritated him--not least
the attitude of some of his fellow-passengers. The boat swarmed with
young civilians, too young for military service, or having, for some
more or less valid reason, been exempted from it. They were all pledged
to some form of relief work, and all overflowing with zeal: "France" was
as often on their lips as on Troy's. But some of them seemed to be
mainly concerned with questions of uniform and rank. The steamer seethed
with wrangles and rivalries between their various organisations, and now
and then the young crusaders seemed to lose sight of the object of their
crusade--as had too frequently been the case with their predecessors.
Very few of the number knew France or could speak French, and most of
them were full of the importance of America's mission. This was
Liberty's chance to Enlighten the World; and all these earnest youths
apparently regarded themselves as her chosen torch-bearers.
"We must teach France efficiency," they all said with a glowing
condescension.
The women were even more sure of their mission; and there were plenty of
them, middle-aged as well as young, in uniform too, cocked-hatted,
badged and gaitered--though most of them, apparently, were going to sit
in the offices of Paris war-charities, and Troy had never noticed that
Frenchwomen had donned khaki for that purpose.
"France must be purified," these young Columbias proclaimed. "Frenchmen
must be taught to respect Women. We must protect our boys from
contamination... the dreadful theatres... and the novels... and the
Boulevards.... Of course we mustn't be hard on the French, for they've
never known Home Life, or the Family... but we must show them... we
must set the example...."
Troy, sickened by their blatancy, had kept to himself for the greater
part of the trip; but during the last days he had been drawn into talk
by a girl who reminded him of Miss Wicks, though she was in truth
infinitely prettier. The evenings below decks were long, and he sat at
her side in the saloon and listened to her.
Her name was Hinda Warlick, and she came from the Middle West. He
gathered from her easy confidences that she was singing in a suburban
church choir while waiting for a vaudeville engagement. Her studies had
probably been curtailed by the task of preparing a repertory, for she
appeared to think that Joan of Arc was a Revolutionary hero, who had
been guillotined with Marie Antoinette for blowing up the Bastille; and
her notions of French history did not extend beyond this striking
episode. But she was ready and eager to explain France to Troy, and to
the group of young men who gathered about her, listening to her piercing
accents and gazing into her deep blue eyes.
"We must carry America right into the heart of France--for she has got a
great big heart, in spite of _everything_," Miss Warlick declared. "We
must teach her to love children and home and the outdoor life, and you
American boys must teach the young Frenchmen to love their mothers. You
must set the example.... Oh, boys, do you know what my ambition is? It's
to organize an Old Home Week just like ours, all over France from
Harver right down to Marseilles--and all through the devastated regions
too. Wouldn't it be lovely if we could get General Pershing to let us
keep Home Week right up at the front, at 'Eep and Leal and Rams, and all
those martyr cities--right close up in the trenches? So that even the
Germans would see us and hear us, and perhaps learn from us too?--for
you know we mustn't despair even of teaching the Germans!"
Troy, as he crept away, heard one young man, pink and shock-headed,
murmur shyly to the Prophetess: "Hearing you say this has made it all so
clear to me----" and an elderly Y.M.C.A. leader, adjusting his
eye-glasses, added with nasal emphasis: "Yes, Miss Warlick has expressed
in a very lovely way what we all feel: that America's mission is to
contribute the _human element_ to this war."
"Oh, good God!" Troy groaned, crawling to his darkened cabin. He
remembered M. Gantier's phrase, "Self-satisfaction is death," and felt a
sudden yearning for Sophy Wicks's ironic eyes and her curt "What's the
use of jawing?"
* * * * *
He had been for six months on his job, and was beginning to know
something about it: to know, for instance, that nature had never meant
him for an ambulance-driver.
Nevertheless he had stuck to his task with such a dogged determination
to succeed that after several months about the Paris hospitals he was
beginning to be sent to exposed sectors.
His first sight of the desolated country he had traversed three years
earlier roused old memories of the Gantier family, and he wrote once
more to their little town, but again without result. Then one day he
was sent to a sector in the Vosges which was held by American troops.
His heart was beating hard as the motor rattled over the hills, through
villages empty of their inhabitants, like those of the Marne, but
swarming with big fair-haired soldiers. The land lifted and dipped
again, and he saw ahead of him the ridge once crowned by M. Gantier's
village, and the wall of the terraced garden, with the horn-beam arbour
putting forth its early green. Everything else was in ruins: pale
weather-bleached ruins over which the rains and suns of three years had
passed effacingly. The church, once so firm and four-square on the hill,
was now a mere tracery against the clouds; the hospice roofless, the
houses all gutted and bulging, with black smears of smoke on their inner
walls. At the head of the street a few old women and children were
hoeing vegetables before a row of tin-roofed shanties, and a Y.M.C.A.
hut flew the stars-and-stripes across the way.
Troy jumped down and began to ask questions. At first the only person
who recognized the name of Gantier was an old woman too frightened and
feeble-minded to answer intelligibly. Then a French territorial who was
hoeing with the women came forward. He belonged to the place and knew
the story.
"M. Gantier--the old gentleman? He was mayor, and the Germans took him.
He died in Germany. The young girl--Mlle. Gantier--was taken with him.
No, she's not dead.... I don't know.... She's shut up somewhere in
Germany... queer in the head, they say.... The sons--ah, you knew
Monsieur Paul? He went first.... What, the others?... Yes: the three
others--Louis at Notre Dame de Lorette; Jean on a submarine: poor
little Félix, the youngest, of the fever at Salonika. _Voilà_.... The
old lady? Ah, she and her sister went away... some charitable people
took them, I don't know where.... I've got the address somewhere...." He
fumbled, and brought out a strip of paper on which was written the name
of a town in the centre of France.
"There's where they were a year ago.... Yes, you may say: _there's a
family gone--wiped out_. How often I've seen them all sitting there,
laughing and drinking coffee under the arbour! They were not rich, but
they were happy and proud of each other. That's over."
He went back to his hoeing.
* * * * *
After that, whenever Troy Belknap got back to Paris he hunted for the
surviving Gantiers. For a long time he could get no trace of them; then
he remembered his old governess, Mme. Lebuc, for whom Mrs. Belknap had
found employment in a refugee bureau.
He ran down Mme. Lebuc, who was still at her desk in the same big room,
facing a row of horse-hair benches packed with tired people waiting
their turn for a clothing-ticket or a restaurant card.
Mme. Lebuc had grown much older, and her filmy eyes peered anxiously
through large spectacles before she recognized Troy. Then, after tears
and raptures, he set forth his errand, and she began to peer again
anxiously, shuffling about the bits of paper on the desk, and confusing
her records hopelessly.
"Why, is that _you_?" cried a gay young voice; and there, on the other
side of the room, sat one of the young war-goddesses of the Belknap
tennis-court, trim, uniformed, important, with a row of bent backs in
shabby black before her desk.
"Ah, Miss Batchford will tell you--she's so quick and clever," Mme.
Lebuc sighed, resigning herself to chronic bewilderment.
Troy crossed to the other desk. An old woman sat before it in threadbare
mourning, a crape veil on her twitching head. She spoke in a low voice,
slowly, taking a long time to explain; each one of Miss Batchford's
quick questions put her back, and she had to begin all over again.
"Oh, these refugees!" cried Miss Batchford, stretching a bangled arm
above the crape veil to clasp Troy's hand. "Do sit down, Mr.
Belknap.--Dépêchez-vous, s'il vous plaît," she said, not too unkindly,
to the old woman; and added, to Troy: "There's no satisfying them."
At the sound of Troy's name the old woman had turned her twitching
head, putting back her veil. Her eyes met Troy's, and they looked at
each other doubtfully. Then--"Madame Gantier!" he exclaimed.
"Yes, yes," she said, the tears running down her face.
Troy was not sure if she recognized him, though his name had evidently
called up some vague association. He saw that most things had grown far
off to her, and that for the moment her whole mind was centred on the
painful and humiliating effort of putting her case to this strange young
woman who snapped out questions like a machine.
"Do you know her?" asked Miss Batchford, surprised.
"I used to, I believe," Troy answered.
"You can't think what she wants--just everything! They're all alike. She
wants to borrow five hundred francs to furnish a flat for herself and
her sister."
"Well, why not?"
"Why, we don't lend money, of course. It's against all our principles.
We give work, or relief in kind--that's what I'm telling her."
"I see. Could I give it to her?"
"What--all that money? Certainly _not_. You don't know them!"
Troy shook hands and went out into the street to wait for Mme. Gantier;
and when she came he told her who he was. She cried and shook a great
deal, and he called a cab and drove
|
that a salt air arose between the irises which thickly bordered it, and
that the sunken rock-ledges were fragrant with sea-pink and the
stone-convolvulus. The moving tidal water was grass-green, save where
dusked with long, mauve shadows.
"Let us rest here," said the Body. "It is so sweet in the sunlight, here
by this cool water."
The Will smiled as he threw himself down upon a mossy slope that reached
from an oak's base to the pebbly margins.
"It is ever so with you," he said, still smiling. "You love rest, as the
wandering clouds love the waving hand of the sun."
"What made you think of that?" asked the Soul abruptly, who till that
moment had been rapt in silent commune with his inmost thoughts.
"Why do you ask?"
"Because I, too, was thinking that just as the waving hand of the sun
beckons the white wandering clouds, as a shepherd calls to his scattered
sheep, so there is a hand waving to us to press forward. Far away,
yonder, a rainbow is being woven of sun and mist. Perhaps, there, we may
come upon that which we have come out to see."
"But the Body wishes to rest. And, truly, it is sweet here in the
sunflood, and by this moving green water, which whispers in the reeds
and flags, and sings its own sea-song the while."
"Let us rest, then."
And, as we lay there, a great peace came upon us. There were hushed
tears in the eyes of the Soul, and a dreaming smile upon the face of the
Will, and, in the serene gaze of the Body, a content that was exceeding
sweet. It was so welcome to lie there and dream. We knew a rare
happiness in that exquisite quietude.
After a time, the Body rose, and moved to the water-edge.
"It is so lovely," he said, "I must bathe"--and with that he threw
aside his clothes, and stood naked among the reeds and yellow flags
which bordered the inlet.
The sun shone upon his white body, the colour of pale ivory. A delicate
shadow lightly touched him, now here, now there, from the sunlit green
sheaths and stems among which he stood. He laughed out of sheer joy and
raised his arms, and made a splashing with his trampling feet.
Looking backward with a blithe glance, he cried:
"After all, it is good to be alive: neither to think nor to dream, but
just content _to be_."
Receiving no answer, he laughed merrily, and, plunging forward, swam
seaward against the sun-dazzle.
His two companions watched him with shining eyes.
"Truly, he is very fair to look upon," said the Soul.
"Yes," added the Will, "and perhaps he has chosen the better part
elsewhere as here."
"Can it be the better part to prefer the things of the moment of those
of Eternity?"
"What is Eternity?"
For a few seconds the Soul was silent. It was not easy for him to
understand that what was a near horizon to him was a vague vista,
possibly a mirage, to another. He was ever, in himself, moving just the
hither side of the narrow mortal horizon which Eternity swims in upon
from behind and beyond. The Will looked at him questioningly, then spoke
again:
"You speak of the things of Eternity. What is Eternity?"
"Eternity is the Breath of God."
"That tells me nothing."
"It is Time, freed from his Mortality."
"Again, that tells me little. Or, rather, I am no wiser. What is
Eternity to _us_?"
"It is our perpetuity."
"Then is it only a warrant against Death?"
"No, it is more. Time is our sphere: Eternity is our home."
"There is no other lesson for you in the worm, and in the dust?"
"What do you mean, brother?"
"Does dissolution mean nothing to you?"
"What is dissolution?"
It was now the Will who stared with wondering eyes. To him that question
was as disquieting as that which he had asked the Soul. It was a minute
before he spoke again.
"You ask me what is dissolution? Do you not understand what death means
to _me_?"
"Why to you more than to me, or to the Body?"
"What is it to you?"
"A change from a dream of Beauty, to Beauty."
"And at the worst?"
"Freedom: escape from narrow walls--often dark and foul."
"In any case nothing but a change, a swift and absolute change, from
what was to what is?"
"Even so."
"And you have no fear?"
"None. Why should I?"
"Why should you not?"
Again there was a sudden silence between the two. At last the Soul
spoke:
"Why should I not? I cannot tell you. But I have no fear. I am a Son of
God."
"And we?"
"Ah, yes, dear brother: you, too, and the Body."
"But we perish!"
"There is the resurrection of the Body."
"Where--when?"
"As it is written. In God's hour."
"Is the worm also the Son of God?"
The soul stared downward into the green water, but did not answer. A
look of strange trouble was in his eyes.
"Is not the Grave on the hither side of Eternity?"
Still no answer.
"Does God whisper beneath the Tomb?"
At this the Soul rose, and moved restlessly to and fro.
"Tell me," resumed the Will, "what is Dissolution?"
"It is the returning into dust of that which was dust."
"And what is dust?"
"The formless: the inchoate: the mass out of which the Potter makes new
vessels, or moulds new shapes."
"But _you_ do not go into dust?"
"I came from afar: afar I go again."
"But we--we shall be formless: inchoate?"
"You shall be upbuilded."
"How?"
The Soul turned, and again sat by his comrade.
"I know not," he said simply.
"But if the Body go back to the dust, and the life that is in him be
blown out like a wavering flame; and if you who came from afar, again
return afar; what, then, for me, who am neither an immortal spirit nor
yet of this frail human clan?"
"God has need of you."
"When--where?"
"How can I tell what I cannot even surmise?"
"Tell me, tell me this: if I am so wedded to the Body that, if he
perish, I perish also, what resurrection can there be for me?"
"I do not know."
"Is it a resurrection for the Body if, after weeks, or years, or scores
of years, his decaying dust is absorbed into the earth, and passes in a
chemic change into the living world?"
"No: that is not a resurrection: that is a transmutation."
"Yet that is all. There is nothing else possible. Dust unto dust. As
with the Body, so with the mind, the spirit of life, that which I am,
the Will. In the Grave there is no fretfulness any more: neither any
sorrow, or joy, or any thought, or dream, or fear, or hope whatsoever.
Hath not God Himself said it, through the mouth of His prophet?"
"I do not understand," murmured the Soul, troubled.
"Because the Grave is not your portion."
"But I, too, must know Death!"
"Yes, truly--a change what was it?--a change from a dream of Beauty, to
Beauty!"
"God knows I would that we could go together--you, and he yonder, and I;
or, if that cannot be, he being wholly mortal, then at the least you and
I."
"But we cannot. At least, so it seems to us. But I--I too am alive, I
too have dreams and visions, I too have joys and hopes, I too have
despairs. And for me--_nothing_. I am, at the end, as a blown flame."
"It may not be so. Something has whispered to me at times that you and I
are to be made one."
"Tell me: can the immortal wed the mortal?"
"No."
"Then how can we two wed, for I am mortal. My very life depends on the
Body. A falling branch, a whelming wave, a sudden ill, and in a moment
that which was is not. He, the Body, is suddenly become inert,
motionless, cold, the perquisite of the Grave, the sport of the maggot
and the worm: and I--I am a subsided wave, a vanished spiral of smoke, a
little fugitive wind-eddy abruptly ended."
"You know not what is the end any more than I do. In a moment we are
translated."
"Ah, is it so with you? O Soul, I thought that you had a profound
surety!"
"I know nothing: I believe."
"Then it may be with you as with us?"
"I know little: I believe."
"When I am well I believe in new, full, rich, wonderful life--in life in
the spiritual as well as the mortal sphere. And the Body, when he is
ill, he, too, thinks of that which is your heritage. But if _you_ are
not sure--if _you_ know nothing--may it not be that you, too, have fed
upon dreams, and have dallied with Will-o'-the-wisp, and are an
idle-blown flame even as I am, and have only a vaster spiritual outlook?
May it not be that you, O Soul, are but a spiritual nerve in the dark,
confused, brooding mind of Humanity? May it not be that you and I and
the Body go down unto one end?"
"Not so. There is the word of God."
"We read it differently."
"Yet the Word remains."
"You believe in the immortal life?--You believe in Eternity?"
"Yes."
"Then what is Eternity?"
"Already you have asked me that!"
"You believe in Eternity. What is Eternity?"
"Continuity."
"And what are the things of Eternity?"
"Immortal desires."
"Then what need for us who are mortal to occupy ourselves with what must
be for ever beyond us?"
Thereat, with a harsh laugh, the Will arose, and throwing his garments
from him, plunged into the sunlit green water, with sudden cries of joy
calling to the Body, who was still rejoicefully swimming in the
sun-dazzle as he breasted the tide.
An hour later we rose, and, silent again, once more resumed our way.
IV
It was about the middle of the afternoon that we moved inland, because
of a difficult tract of cliff and bouldered shore. We followed the
course of a brown torrent, and were soon under the shadow of the
mountain. The ewes and lambs made incessantly that mournful crying,
which in mountain solitudes falls from ledge to ledge as though it were
no other than the ancient sorrow of the hills.
Thence we emerged, walking among boulders green with moss and grey with
lichen, often isled among bracken and shadowed by the wind-wavering
birches, or the finger-leafed rowans already heavy with clusters of
ruddy fruit. Sometimes we spoke of things which interested us: of the
play of light and shadow in the swirling brown torrent along whose banks
we walked, and by whose grayling-haunted pools we lingered often, to
look at the beautiful shadowy unrealities of the perhaps not less
shadowy reality which they mirrored: of the solemn dusk of the pines; of
the mauve shadows which slanted across the scanty corn that lay in green
patches beyond lonely crofts; of the travelling purple phantoms of
phantom clouds, to us invisible, over against the mountain-breasts; of a
solitary seamew, echoing the wave in that inland stillness.
All these things gave us keen pleasure. The Body often laughed joyously,
and talked of chasing the shadow till it should turn and leap into him,
and he be a wild creature of the woods again, and be happy, knowing
nothing but the incalculable hour. It is an old belief of the Gaelic
hill-people.
"If one yet older be true," said the Will, speaking to the Soul, "you
and Shadow are one and the same. Nay, the mystery of the Trinity is
symbolised here again--as in us three; for there is an ancient forgotten
word of an ancient forgotten people, which means alike the Breath, the
Shadow, and the Soul."[1]
As we walked onward we became more silent. It was about the sixth hour
from noon that we saw a little coast-town lying amid green pastures,
overhung, as it seemed, by the tremulous blue band of the sea-line. The
Body was glad, for here were friends, and he wearied for his kind. The
Will and the Soul, too, were pleased, for now they shared the common lot
of mortality, and knew weariness as well as hunger and thirst. So we
moved towards the blue smoke of the homes.
"The home of a wild dove, a branch swaying in the wind, is sweet to it;
and the green bracken under a granite rock is home to a tired hind; and
so we, who are wayfarers idler than these, which blindly obey the law,
may well look to yonder village as our home for to-night."
So spoke the Soul.
The Body laughed blithely. "Yes," he added, "it is a cheerier home than
the green bracken. Tell me, have you ever heard of The Three Companions
of Night?"
"The Three Companions of Night? I would take them to be Prayer, and
Hope, and Peace."
"So says the Soul--but what do _you_ say, O Will?"
"I would take them to be Dream, and Rest, and Longing."
"We are ever different," replied the Body, with a sigh, "for the Three
Companions of whom I speak are Laughter, and Wine, and Love."
"Perhaps we mean the same thing," muttered the Will, with a smile of
bitter irony.
We thought much of these words as we passed down a sandy lane hung with
honeysuckles, which were full of little birds who made a sweet
chittering.
Prayer, and Hope, and Peace; Dream, and Rest, and Longing; Laughter, and
Wine, and Love: were these analogues of the Heart's Desire?
When we left the lane, where we saw a glow-worm emitting a pale fire as
he moved through the green dusk in the shadow of the hedge, we came upon
a white devious road. A young man stood by a pile of stones. He stopped
his labour and looked at us. One of us spoke to him.
"Why is it that a man like yourself, young and strong, should be doing
this work, which is for broken men?"
"Why are you breathing?" he asked abruptly.
"We breathe to live," answered the Body, smiling blithely.
"Well, I break stones to live."
"Is it worth it?"
"It's better than death."
"Yes," said the Body slowly, "it is better than death."
"Tell me," asked the Soul, "why is it better than death?"
"Who wants not to want?"
"Ah--it is the need to want, then, that is strongest!"
The stone-breaker looked sullenly at the speaker.
"If you're not anxious to live," he said, "will you give me what money
you have? It is a pity good money should be wasted. I know well where I
would be spending it this night of the nights," he added abruptly in
Gaelic.
The Body looked at him with curious eyes.
"And where would you be spending it?" he asked, in the same language.
"This is the night of the marriage of John Macdonald, the rich man from
America, who has come back to his own town, and is giving a big night of
it to all his friends, and his friends' friends."
"Is that the John Macdonald who is marrying Elsie Cameron?" demanded the
Body eagerly.
"Ay, the same; though it may be the other daughter of Alastair Rua, the
girl Morag."
A flush rose to the face of the Body. His eyes sparkled.
"It is Elsie," he said to the man.
"Belike," the stone-breaker muttered indifferently.
"Do you know where Alastair Rua and his daughters are?"
"Yes, at Beann Marsanta Macdonald's big house of the One-Ash Farm."
"Can you show me the way?"
"I'm going that way."
Thereat the Body turned to his comrades:
"I love her," he said simply; "I love Morag Cameron."
"She is not for your loving," answered the Will sharply; "for she has
given troth to old Archibald Sinclair."
The Body laughed.
"Love is love," he said lightly.
"Come," interrupted the Soul wearily; "we have loitered long enough. Let
us go."
We stood looking at the stone-breaker, who was gazing curiously at us.
Suddenly he laughed.
"Why do you laugh?" asked the Soul.
"Well, I'm not for knowing that. But I'll tell you this: if you two wish
to go into the town, you have only to follow this road. And if _you_
want to come to One-Ash Farm, then you must come this other way with
me."
"Do not go," whispered the Soul.
But the Body, with an impatient gesture, drew aside. "Leave me," he
added: "I wish to go with this man. I will meet you to-morrow morning at
the first bridge to the westward of the little town yonder, just where
the stream slackens over the pebbles."
With reluctant eyes the two companions saw their comrade leave. For a
long time the Will watched him with a bitter smile. Redeeming love was
in the longing eyes of the Soul.
When the Body and the stone-breaker were alone, as they walked towards
the distant farm-steading, where already were lights, and whence came a
lowing of kye in the byres, for it was the milking hour, they spoke at
intervals.
"Who were those with you?" asked the man.
"Friends. We have come away together."
"What for?"
"Well, as you would say, to see the world."
"To see the world?" The man laughed. "To see the world! Have you money?"
"Enough for our needs."
"Then you will see nothing. The world gives to them that already have,
an' more than have."
"What do you hope for to-night?"
"To be drunk."
"That is a poor thing to hope for. Better to think of the laugh and the
joke by the fireside; and of food and drink, too, if you will: of the
pipes, and dancing, and pretty girls."
"Do as you like. As for me, I hope to be drunk."
"Why?"
"Why? Because I'll be another man then. I'll have forgotten all that I
now remember from sunrise to sundown. Can you think what it is to break
a hope in your heart each time you crack a stone on the roadside?
That's what I am, a stone-breaker, an' I crack stones inside as well as
outside. It's a stony place my heart, God knows."
"You are young to speak like that, and you speak like a man who has
known better days."
"Oh, I'm ancient enough," said the man, with a short laugh.
"What meaning does that have?"
"What meaning? Well, it just means this, that I'm as old as the Bible.
For there's mention o' me there. Only there I'm herding swine, an' here
I'm breaking stones."
"And is _your_ father living?"
"Ay, he curses me o' Sabbaths."
"Then it's not the same as the old story that is in the Bible?"
"Oh, nothing's the same an' everything's the same--except when you're
drunk, an' then it's only the same turned outside in. But see, yonder's
the farm. Take my advice, an' drink. It's better than the fireside, it's
better than food, it's better than kisses, ay it's better than love,
it's as good as hate, an' it's the only thing you can drown in except
despair."
Soon after this the Body entered the house of the Beann Marsanta
Macdonald, and with laughter and delight met Morag Cameron, and others
whom his heart leaped to see.
At midnight, the Will sat in a room in a little inn, and read out of two
books, now out of one, now out of the other. The one was the Gaelic
Bible, the other was in English and was called _The One Hope_.
He rose, as the village clock struck twelve, and went to the window. A
salt breath, pungent with tide-stranded seaweed, reached him. In the
little harbour, thin shadowy masts ascended like smoke and melted. A
green lantern swung from one. The howling of a dog rose and fell. A
faint lapping of water was audible. On a big fishing-coble some men were
laughing and cursing.
Overhead was an oppressive solemnity. The myriad stars were as the
incalculable notes of a stilled music, become visible in silence. It was
a relief to look into unlighted deeps.
"These idle lances of God pierce the mind, slay the spirit," the Will
murmured, staring with dull anger at the white multitude.
"If the Soul were here," he added bitterly, "he would look at these
glittering mockeries as though they were harbingers of eternal hope. To
me they are whited sepulchres. They say _we live_, to those who die;
they say _God endures,_ to Man that perisheth; they whisper the Immortal
Hope to Mortality." Turning, he went back to where he had left the
books. He lifted one, and read:--
"_Have we not the word of God Himself that Time and Chance happeneth to
all: that soon or late we shall all be caught in a net, we whom Chance
hath for his idle sport, and upon whom Time trampleth with impatient
feet? Verily, the rainbow is not more frail, more fleeting, than this
drear audacity._"
With a sigh he put the book down, and lifted the other. Having found the
page he sought, he read slowly aloud:--
"_... but Time and Chance happeneth to them all. For man also knoweth
not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the
birds that are caught in the snare, even so are the sons of men snared
in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them._"
He went to the window again, brooding darkly. A slight sound caught his
ear. He saw a yellow light run out, leap across the pavement and pass
like a fan of outblown flame. Then the door closed, and we heard a step
on the stone flags. He looked down. The Soul was there.
"Are you restless? Can you not sleep?" he asked.
"No, dear friend. But my heart is weary because of the Body. Yet before
I go, let me bid you read that which follows upon what you have just
read. It is not only Time and Chance upon which to dwell; but upon this,
that God knows that which He does, and the hour and the way, and sees
the end in the beginning."
And while the Soul moved softly down the little windy street, the Will
opened the Book again, and read as the Soul had bidden.
"It may be so," he muttered, "it may be that the dreamer may yet wake to
behold his dream--As thou knowest not what is the way of the wind, even
so thou knowest not the work of God Who doeth all?"
With that he sighed wearily, and then, afraid to look again at the
bitter eloquence of the stars, lit a candle as he lay down on his bed,
and watched the warm companionable flame till sleep came upon him, and
he dreamed no more of the rue and cypress, but plucked amaranths in the
moonshine.
Meanwhile the Soul walked swiftly to the outskirts of the little town,
and out by the grassy links where clusters of white geese huddled in
sleep, and across the windy common where a tethered ass stood, with
drooping head, his long, twitching ears now motionless. In the
moonlight, the shadow of the weary animal stretched to fantastic
lengths, and at one point, when the startled Soul looked at it, he
beheld the shadow of the Cross.
When he neared One-Ash Farm he heard a loud uproar from within. Many
couples were still dancing, and the pipes and a shrill flute added to
the tumult. Others sang and laughed, or laughed and shouted, or cursed
hoarsely. Through the fumes of smoke and drink rippled women's laughter.
He looked in at a window, with sad eyes. The first glance revealed to
him the Body, his blue eyes aflame, his face flushed with wine, his left
arm holding close to his heart a bright winsome lass, with hair
dishevelled, and wild eyes, but with a wonderful laughing eagerness of
joy.
In vain he called. His voice was suddenly grown faint. But what the ear
could not hear, the heart heard. The Body rose abruptly.
"I will drink no more," he said.
A loud insensate laugh resounded near him. The stone-breaker lounged
heavily from a bench, upon the servant's table.
"I am drunk now, my friend," the man cried with flaming eyes. "I am
drunk, an' now I am as reckless as a king, an' as serene as the Pope,
an' as heedless as God."
The Soul turned his gaze and looked at him. He saw a red flame rising
from grey ashes. The ashes were his heart. The flame was his impotent,
perishing life.
Stricken with sorrow, the Soul went to the door, and entered. He went
straight to the stone-breaker, who was now lying with head and arms
prone on the deal table.
He whispered in the drunkard's ear. The man lifted his head, and stared
with red, brutish eyes.
"What is that?" he cried.
"Your mother was pure and holy. She died to give you her life. What will
it be like on the day she asks for it again?"
The man raised an averting arm. There was a stare of horror in his eyes.
"I know you, you devil. Your name is Conscience."
The Soul looked at the Speaker. "I do not know," he answered simply;
"but I believe in God."
"In the love of God?"
"In the love of God."
"He dwells everywhere?"
"Everywhere."
"Then I will find Him, I will find His love, _here_"--and with that the
man raised the deathly spirit to his lips again, and again drank. Then,
laughing and cursing, he threw the remainder at the feet of his unknown
friend.
"Farewell!" he shouted hoarsely, so that those about him stared at him
and at the new-comer.
The Soul turned sadly, and looked for his strayed comrade, but he was
nowhere to be seen. In a room upstairs that friend whom he loved was
whispering eager vows of sand and wind; and the girl Morag, clinging
close to him, tempted him as she herself was tempted, so that both stood
in that sand, and in the intertangled hair of each that wind blew.
The Soul saw, and understood. None spoke to him, a stranger, as he went
slowly from the house, though all were relieved when that silent,
sad-eyed foreigner withdrew.
Outside, the cool sea-wind fell freshly upon him. He heard a corncrake
calling harshly to his mate, where the corn was yellowing in a little
stone-dyked field; and a night-jar creeping forward on a juniper,
uttering his whirring love-note; and he blessed their sweet, innocent
lust. Then, looking upward, he watched for a while the white procession
of the stars. They were to him the symbolic signs of the mystery of God.
He bowed his head. "Dust of the world," he muttered humbly, "dust of
the world."
Moving slowly by the house--so doubly noisy, so harshly discordant,
against the large, serene, nocturnal life--he came against the gable of
an open window. On the ledge lay a violin, doubtless discarded by some
reveller. The Soul lifted it, and held it up to the night-wind. When it
was purified, and the vibrant wood was as a nerve in that fragrant
darkness, he laid it on his shoulder and played softly.
What was it that he played? Many heard it, but none knew what the strain
was, or whence it came. The Soul remembered, and played. It is enough.
The soft playing stole into the house as though it were the cool
sea-wind, as though it were the flowing dusk. Beautiful, unfamiliar
sounds, and sudden silences passing sweet, filled the rooms. The last
guests left hurriedly, hushed, strangely disquieted. The dwellers in the
farmstead furtively bade good-night, and slipt away.
For an hour, till the sinking of the moon, the Soul played. He played
the Song of Dreams, the Song of Peace, the three Songs of Mystery. The
evil that was in the house ebbed. Everywhere, at his playing, the
secret obscure life awoke. Nimble aerial creatures swung, invisibly
passive, in the quiet dark. From the brown earth, from hidden
sanctuaries in rocks and trees, green and grey lives slid, and stood
intent. Out of the hillside came those of old. There were many eager
voices, like leaves lapping in a wind. The wild-fox lay down, with red
tongue lolling idly: the stag rose from the fern, with dilated nostrils;
the night-jar ceased, the corncrake ceased, the moon-wakeful thrushes
made no single thrilling note. The silence deepened. Sleep came stealing
softly out of the obscure, swimming dusk. There was not a swaying reed,
a moving leaf. The strange company of shadows stood breathless. Among
the tree-tops the loosened stars shone terribly--lonely fires of
silence.
The Soul played. Once he thought of the stone-breaker. He played into
his heart. The man stirred, and tears oozed between his heavy lids. It
was his mother's voice that he heard, singing-low a cradle-sweet song,
and putting back her white hair that she might look earthward to her
love. "Grey sweetheart, grey sweetheart," he moaned. Then his heart
lightened, and a moonlight of peace hallowed that solitary waste place.
Again, at the last, the Soul thought of his comrade, heavy with wine in
the room overhead, drunken with desire. And to him he played the
imperishable beauty of Beauty, the Immortal Love, so that, afterwards,
he should remember the glory rather than the shame of his poor frailty.
What he played to the girl's heart only those women know who hear the
whispering words of Mary the Mother in sleep, when a second life
breathes beneath each breath.
When he ceased, deep slumber was a balm upon all. He fell upon his knees
and prayed.
"Beauty of all Beauty," he prayed, "let none perish without thee."
It was thus that we three, who were one, realised how Prayer and Hope
and Peace, how Dream and Rest and Longing, how Laughter and Wine and
Love, are in truth but shadowy analogues of the Heart's Desire.
V
At dawn we woke. A movement of gladness was in the lovely tides of
morning--delicate green, and blue, and gold. The spires of the grasses
were washed in dew; the innumerous was as one green flower that had lain
all night in the moonshine.
We had agreed to meet at the bridge over the stream where it lapsed
through gravelly beaches just beyond the little town.
There the Soul and the Will long awaited the Body. The sun was an hour
risen, and had guided a moving multitude of gold and azure waters
against the long reaches of yellow-poppied sand, and to the bases of the
great cliffs, whose schist shone like chrysolite, and whose dreadful
bastions of black basalt loomed in purple shadow, like suspended
thunder-clouds on a windless afternoon.
The air was filled with the poignant sweetness of the loneroid or
bog-myrtle, meadow-sweet, and white wild-roses. The green smell of the
bracken, the delicate woodland odour of the mountain-ash, floated
hitherward and thitherward on the idle breath of the wind, sunwarm when
it came across the sea-pinks and thyme-set grass, cool and fresh when it
eddied from the fern-coverts, or from the heather above the
hillside-boulders where the sheep lay, or from under the pines at the
bend of the sea-road where already the cooing of grey doves made an
indolent sweetness.
The Soul was silent. He had not slept, but, after his playing in the
dark, peace had come to him.
Before dawn he had gone into the room where the Will lay, and had
looked long at his comrade. In sleep the Will more resembled him, as
when awake he the more resembled the Body. A deep pity had come upon the
Soul for him whom he loved so well, but knew so little.
Why was it, he wondered, that he felt less alien from the Body? Why was
it that this strange, potent, inscrutable being, whom both loved, should
be so foreign to each? The Body feared him. As for himself, he, too,
feared him at times. There were moments when all his marvellous
background of the immortal life shrank before the keen gaze of his
friend. Was it possible that Mind could have a life apart from mortal
substances? Was it possible? If so----
It was here that the Will awoke, and smiled at his friend.
He gave no greeting, but answered his thought.
"Yes," he said gravely, and as though continuing an argument, "it is
impossible, if you mean the mortal substance of our brother, the Body.
But yet not without material substance. May it not be that the Mind may
have an undreamed-of shaping power, whereby it can instantly create?"
"Create what?"
"A new environment for its need? Drown it in the deepest gulfs of the
sea, and it will, at the moment it is freed from the body, sheathe
itself in a like shape, and habit itself with free spaces of air, so
that it may breathe, and live, and emerge into the atmosphere, there to
take on a new shape, to involve itself in new circumstances, to live
anew?"
"It is possible. But would that sea-change leave the mind the same or
another?"
"The Mind would come forth one and incorruptible."
"If in truth, the Mind be an indivisible essence?"
"Yes, if the mind be one and indivisible."
"You believe it so?"
"Tell me, are you insubstantial? You, yourself, below this accident of
mortality?"
"I know not what you mean."
"You were wondering if, after all, it were possible for me to have a
life, a conscious, individual continuity, apart from this mortal
substance in which you and I now share--counterparts of that human home
we both love and hate, that moving tent of the Illimitable, which at
birth appears a speck on sands of the Illimitable, and at death again
abruptly disappears. You were wondering this. But, tell me: have you
yourself never wondered how you can exist, as yourself, apart from
something of this very actuality, this form, this materialism to which
you find yourself so alien in the Body?"
"I am spirit. I am a breath."
"But you are you?"
"Yes, I am I."
"The surpassing egotism is the same, whether in you, the Soul, who are
but a breath; or in me, the Will, who am but a condition; or in our
brother, the Body, a claimant to Eternal Life while perishing in his
mortality!"
"I live in God. Whence I came, thither shall I return."
"A breath?"
"It may be."
"Yet you shall be you?"
"Yes; I."
"Then that breath which will be you must have form, even as the Body
must have form."
"Form is but the human formula for the informulate."
"Nay, Form _is_ life."
"You have ever one wish, it seems to me, O Will: to put upon me the
heavy yoke of mortality."
"Not so: but to lift it from myself."
"And the Body?"
"Where did you leave him last night?"
"You remember what he said about the Three Companions of Night:
La
|
justice are at hand to check his evil practices. As to the
judge, he is to pronounce his decisions in public and give reasons for
his ruling. The politician is jealously watched by his political
opponents. The public functionary, if he is unjust in his dealings, is
likely sooner or later to be brought to an account. But the physician,
on very many occasions, can be morally sure that his conduct will never
be publicly scrutinized. Such is the nature of his ministrations, and
such too is the confidence habitually reposed in his integrity, that he
is and must be implicitly trusted in matters in which, if he happens to
be unworthy of his vocation, he may be guilty of the most outrageous
wrongs.
The highest interests of earth are in his hands. If he is not
conscientious, or if he lets himself be carried about by every wind of
modern speculations, he can readily persuade himself that a measure is
lawful because it is presently expedient, that acts can justly be
performed because the courts do not punish them; and thus he will often
violate the most sacred rights of his patients or of their relatives.
Who has more frequent opportunities than a licentious Doctor to seduce
the innocent, to pander to the passions of the guilty, to play into the
hands of greedy heirs, who may be most willing to pay him for his
services? No one can do it more safely, as far as human tribunals are
concerned. As a matter of fact, many, all over this land and other
lands, are often guilty of prostituting their noble profession to the
vilest uses. The evil becomes all the more serious when false doctrines
are insinuated, or publicly advocated, which throw doubt upon the most
sacred principles of morality. True, the sounder and by far the larger
portion of medical men protest against these false teachings by their
own conduct at least; but it very frequently happens that the honest man
is less zealous in his advocacy of what is right than is the
propagandist of bold speculations and dangerous new theories in the
spreading of what is pernicious.
The effect thus produced upon many minds is to shake their convictions,
to say the least; and I need not tell you, gentlemen, that weak
convictions are not likely to be proof against violent and repeated
temptations. In fact, if a physician, misled by any of those many
theories which are often inculcated or at least insinuated by false
scientists, can ever convince himself, or even can begin to surmise
that, after all, there may be no such thing as a higher law before which
he is responsible for even his secret conduct, then what is to prevent
him from becoming a dangerous person to the community? If he see much
temporal gain on the one hand, and security from legal prosecution on
the other, what would keep him in the path of duty and honesty?
Especially if he can once make himself believe that, for all he knows,
he may be nothing more than a rather curiously developed lump of matter,
which is to lose forever all consciousness in death. Why should he not
get rid of any other evolved lump of matter if it stand in the way of
his present or prospective happiness? Those are dangerous men who
inculcate such theories; it were a sad day for the medical profession
and for the world at large if ever they found much countenance among
physicians. Society cannot do without the higher law; this law is to be
studied in Medical Jurisprudence.
It is my direct object, gentlemen, to explain this law to you in its
most important bearings, and thus to lay before you the chief duties of
your profession. The principal reason why I have undertaken to deliver
this course of lectures--the chief reason, in fact, why the Creighton
University has assumed the management of this Medical College--is that
we wish to provide for the West, as far as we are able, a goodly supply
of conscientious physicians, who shall be as faithful and reliable as
they will be able and well informed; whose solid principles and sterling
integrity shall be guarantees of upright and virtuous conduct.
That this task of mine may be successfully accomplished, I will endeavor
to answer all difficulties and objections that you may propose. I will
never consider it a want of respect to me as your professor if you will
urge your questions till I have answered them to your full satisfaction.
On the contrary, I request you to be very inquisitive; and I will be
best pleased with those who show themselves the most ready to point out
those difficulties, connected with my lectures, which seem to require
further answers and explanations.
LECTURE II.
CRANIOTOMY.
Gentlemen:--In my first lecture I proved to you the existence and the
binding power of a higher law than that of human legislators, namely, of
the eternal law, which, in His wisdom, the Creator, if He created at
all, could not help enacting, and which He is bound by His wisdom and
justice to enforce upon mankind.
We are next to consider what are the duties which that higher law
imposes upon the physician. In this present lecture I will confine
myself to one duty, that of respect for human life.
A duty is a bond imposed on our will. God, as I remarked before, imposes
such bonds, and by them He directs free beings to lead worthy lives. As
He directs matter by irresistible physical laws, so He directs
intelligent and free beings by moral laws, that is, by laying duties or
moral bonds upon them, which they ought to obey, which He must require
them to obey, enforcing His commands by suitable rewards and
punishments. Thus He establishes and enforces the moral order.
Now the duties He lays upon us are of three classes. First, there are
duties of reverence and honor towards Himself as our sovereign Lord and
Master. These are called the duties of Religion, the study of which does
not belong to Medical Jurisprudence. The other classes of duties regard
ourselves and our fellow-men, with these we are to deal in our lectures.
I. Order requires that the meaner species of creatures shall exist for
the benefit of the nobler; the inert clod of earth supports vegetable
life, the vegetable kingdom supplies the wants of animal life, the brute
animal with all inferior things subserves the good of man; while man,
the master of the visible universe, himself exists directly for the
honor and glory of God. In this beautiful order of creation, man can use
all inferior things for his own benefit.
This is what reason teaches concerning our status in this world; and
this teaching of reason is confirmed by the convictions of all nations
and all ages of mankind. The oldest page of literature that has come
down to us, namely, the first chapter of the first book of Holy Writ,
lays down this same law, and no improvement has been made in it during
all subsequent ages. Whether we regard this writing as inspired, as
Christians and Jews have always done, or only as the testimony of the
most remote antiquity, confirmed by the acceptance of all subsequent
generations, it is for every sensible man of the highest authority.
Here is the passage: "God said, Let us make man to our image and
likeness; and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the
fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every
creeping creature that creepeth upon the earth." And later on in
history, after the deluge, God more explicitly declared the order thus
established, saying to Noe and his posterity: "Every thing that moveth
and liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herbs have I
delivered them to you." But He emphatically adds that the lives of men
are not included in this grant; they are directly reserved for His own
disposal. "At the hand of every man," He says, "will I require the life
of man."
All things then are created for man; man is created directly for God,
and is not to be sacrificed for the advantage of a fellow-man. Thus
reason and Revelation in unison proclaim that we can use brute animals
as well as plants for our benefit, taking away their lives when it is
necessary or useful to do so for our own welfare; while no man is ever
allowed to slay his fellow-man for his own use or benefit: "At the hand
of every man will I require the life of man."
II. The first practical application I will make of these general
principles to the conduct of physicians is this: a physician and a
student of medicine can, with a safe conscience, use any brute animal
that has not been appropriated by another man, whether it be bug or bird
or beast, to experiment upon, whatever specious arguments humane
societies may advance to the contrary. Brute animals are for the use of
man, for his food and clothing, his mental and physical improvement, and
even his reasonable recreations. Man can lawfully hunt and fish and
practise his skill at the expense of the brute creation, notwithstanding
the modern fad of sentimentalists. The teacher and the pupil can use
vivisection, and thus to some extent prolong the sufferings of the brute
subject for the sake of science, of mental improvement, and intelligent
observation. But is not this cruelty? and has a man a right to be cruel?
No man has a right to be cruel; cruelty is a vice, it is degrading to
man's noble nature. But vivisection practised for scientific purposes is
not cruel. Cruelty implies the _wanton_ infliction of pain: there are
people who delight in seeing a victim tortured; this is cruelty or
savagery, and is a disgrace to man. Even to inflict pain without
benefit is cruel and wrong; but not when it is inflicted on the brute
creation for the benefit of man, unless the pain should be very great
and the benefit very small. Certainly it is right to cultivate habits of
kindness even to animals; but this matter must not be carried to excess.
The teaching of humane societies condemning all vivisection is due to
the exaggeration of a good sentiment and to ignorance of first
principles. For they suppose that sufferings inflicted on brute animals
are a violation of their rights. Now we maintain that brute animals have
no rights in the true sense of the word. To prove this thesis we must
explain what a right is and how men get to have rights. A _right_ is a
moral claim to a thing, which claim other persons are obliged to
respect. Since every man has a destiny appointed for him by his Creator,
and which he is to work out by his own acts, he must have the means
given him to do so. For to assign a person a task and not to give him
the means of accomplishing it would be absurd. Therefore the Creator
wants him to have those means, and forbids every one to deprive him of
those means. Here is the foundation of rights. Every man, in virtue of
the Creator's will, has certain advantages or claims to advantages
assigned him which no other man may infringe. Those advantages and
claims constitute his rights, guaranteed him by the Creator; and all
other men have the _duty_ imposed on them to respect those rights. Thus
rights and duties are seen to be correlative and inseparable; the rights
lodged in one man beget duties in other men. The same Creator that
assigns rights to one man lays upon all others duties to respect those
rights, that thus every free being may have the means of working out its
Heaven-appointed destiny.
Thus it is apparent that rights and duties suppose free beings, persons;
now an irrational animal is not a person; it is not a free being, having
a destiny to work out by its free acts; it is therefore incapable of
having duties. Duties are matters of conscience; therefore they cannot
belong to the brute animal; for it has no conscience. And, since rights
are given to creatures because of the duties incumbent on them, brute
animals are incapable of having rights. When a brute animal has served
man's purpose, it has reached its destiny.
III. But it is entirely different with man: there is what we may call an
infinite distance between man and brute. Every man is created directly
for the honor and service not of other men, but of God Himself: by
serving God man must work out his own destiny--eternal happiness. In
this respect all men are equal, having the same essence or nature and
the same destiny. The poor child has as much right to attain eternal
happiness as the rich child, the infant as much as the gray-bearded
sire. Every one is only at the beginning of an endless existence, of
which he is to determine the nature by his own free acts. In this
infinite destiny lies the infinite superiority of man over the brute
creation.
That all men are equal in their essential rights is the dictate of
common-sense and of sound philosophy. This truth may not flatter kings
and princes; but it is the charter of human rights, founded deeper and
broader in nature and on the Creator's will than any other claim of
mankind. As order requires the subordination of lower natures to higher,
so it requires equality of essential rights among beings of the same
nature. Now all men are of the same nature, hence they have all the same
essential rights.
If any people on earth must stand by these principles, certainly the
American people must do so; for we have put them as the
foundation-stones of our civil liberty. There is more wisdom than many,
even of its admirers, imagine in the preamble to our Declaration of
Independence; upon it we are to base the most important rights and
duties which belong to Jurisprudence. The words of the preamble read as
follows: "We hold these truths as self-evident, that all men are created
equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable
rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness." I feel convinced, gentlemen, and I will take it for granted
henceforth, unless you bring objections to the contrary, that you all
agree with me on this important point that _every man has a natural
right to his life, a right which all other men are solemnly bound to
respect_. It is his chief earthly right. It is called an _inalienable_
right; by which term the fathers of our liberty meant a right which
under no circumstances can be lawfully disregarded. A man who takes it
upon himself to deprive another of life commits two grievous wrongs: one
towards his victim, whose most important right he violates, and one
towards God, who has a right to the life and service of His creatures.
"Thou shalt not kill" is a precept as deeply engraven on the human heart
by reason itself as it was on the stone tables of the Ten Commandments
by Revelation.
So far we have chiefly considered murder as a violation of man's right
to his life. We must now turn our attention to God's right, which the
murderer violates. It may indeed happen that a man willingly resigns
his right to live, that he is tired of life, and longs and implores for
some one to take it away. Can you then do it? You cannot. His life does
not belong to him alone, but to God also, and to God principally; if you
destroy it, you violate God's right, and you will have to settle with
Him. God wills this man to live and serve Him, if it were only by
patient endurance of his sufferings.
For a man may be much ennobled and perfected by the practice of patience
under pain and agony. Some of the noblest characters of history are most
glorious for such endurance. The suicide rejects this greatness; he robs
God of service and glory, he rebels against his Creator. Even Plato of
old understood the baseness of suicide, when he wrote in his dialogue
called "Phædon" that a man in this world is like a soldier stationed on
guard; he must hold his post as long as his commander requires it; to
desert it is cowardice and treachery; thus, he says, suicide is a
grievous crime.
This being so, can a Doctor, or any other man, ever presume to
contribute his share to the shortening of a person's life by aiding him
to commit suicide? We must emphatically say No, even though the patient
should desire death: the Doctor cannot, in any case, lend his
assistance to violate the right and the law of the Creator: "Thou shalt
not kill."
I have no doubt, gentlemen, that some of you have been saying to
yourselves, Why does the lecturer insist so long upon a point which is
so clear? Of course, none of us doubts that we can in no case aid a
patient to commit suicide. My reason for thus insisting on this matter
is that here again we are dealing with a living issue. There are to-day
physicians and others who deny this truth, not in their secret practice
only, but, of late, to justify their conduct, they have boldly
formulated the thesis that present apparent expediency can lawfully be
preferred to any higher consideration. Here is the fact. At a
Medico-Legal Congress, held in the summer of 1895, Dr. Bach, one of its
leading lights, openly maintained it as his opinion that "Physicians
have the moral right to end life when the disease is incurable, painful,
and agonizing."
What his arguments were in support of his startling proposition, I have
not been able to learn. But I know that a cry of horror and indignation
has gone up from many a heart. Many have protested in print; but unless,
on an occasion like this, moralists raise their voice against it with
all the influence which sound principles command, the saying of
Dr. Bach may at least shake the convictions of the rising generation of
physicians. The only argument for Dr. Bach's assertion that I can
imagine--and it is one proceeding from the heart rather than the
head--is that it is cruel to let a poor man suffer when there is no
longer hope of recovery. It is not the Physician that makes him suffer;
it is God who controls the case, and God is never cruel.
He knows His own business, and forbids you to thwart His designs. If the
sufferer be virtuous, God has an eternity to reward his patient
endurance; if guilty, the Lord often punishes in this world that He may
spare in the next. Let Him have His way, if you are wise; His command to
all is clear, "Thou shalt not kill."
One rash utterance, like that of Dr. Bach, can do an incalculable amount
of harm. Why, gentlemen, just think what consequences must follow if his
principle were, admitted! For the only reason that could give it any
plausibility would be that the patient's life is become useless and
insupportable. If that were a reason for taking human life away, then it
would follow that, whenever a man considers his life as useless and no
longer supportable, he could end it, he could commit suicide. That
reasoning would practically justify almost all suicides. For, when
people kill themselves, it is, in almost all cases, because they
consider their lives useless and insupportable. Whether it results from
physical or from moral causes that they consider their life a burden,
cannot, it seems to me, make any material difference; grief, shame,
despair are as terrible sufferings as bodily pains. If, then, we accept
Dr. Bach's principle, we must be prepared for all its baneful
consequences.
IV. But are there no exceptions to the general law, "Thou shalt not
kill"? Are there no cases in which it is allowed to take another's life?
What about justifiable homicide? There are three cases of this nature,
gentlemen; namely, self-defence, capital punishment inflicted by the
state, and active warfare. With only one of these can a physician, as
such be concerned or think himself concerned. He is not a public hangman
executing a sentence of a criminal court; nor is he acting as a soldier
proceeding by public authority against a public foe. As to the plea of
self-defence, it must be correctly understood, lest he usurp a power
which neither human nor divine law has conferred upon him.
1. _Self-defence._ It is a dictate of common-sense, already quoted by
Cicero as a universally received maxim of Jurisprudence in his day, that
it is justifiable to repel violence by violence, even if the death of
our unjust assailant should result. In such a case, let us consider what
really takes place. A ruffian attempts to take away my life; I have a
right to my life. I may, therefore, protect it against him; and, for
that purpose, I may use all lawful means. A lawful means is one that
violates no law, one that I may use without giving any one reasonable
ground of complaint. Suppose I have no other means to protect my life
than by shooting my aggressor; has he a right to complain of my conduct
if I try to do so? No, because he forces me to the act; he forces me to
choose between my life and his. Good order is not violated if I prefer
my own life: well-ordered charity begins at home. But is not God's right
violated? It is; for God has a right to my life and to that of my
assailant. The ruffian who compels me to shoot him is to blame for
bringing both our lives into danger; he is responsible for it to God.
But the Creator will not blame me for defending my life by the only
means in my power, and that when compelled by an unjust assailant, who
cannot reasonably find fault with my conduct.
But it may be objected that no evil act may be done to procure a good
result, that a good end does not justify a bad means. That is a correct
principle, and we will consider it carefully some other day. But my act
of necessary self-defence is not evil, and therefore needs no
justification; for the means I employ are, under the circumstances,
well-ordered and lawful means, which violate no one's rights, as has
just been shown. Of course the harm I do to the aggressor is just only
in as far as it is strictly necessary to defend the inalienable right I
have to life or limb or very valuable property. Hence I must keep within
the just limits of self-defence. To shoot an assailant, when I am in no
serious danger, or when I can free myself some other way, or when I act
through malice, would not be self-defence, but unjustifiable violence on
my part.
2. The principles that make it lawful for a man to defend his own life
with violence against an unjust assailant will also justify a parent in
thus defending his children, a guardian his wards; and in fact any one
may forcibly defend any other human being against unjust violence. A
parent or guardian not only can, but he is in duty bound to, defend
those under his charge by all lawful means. Similarly the physician
would be obliged to defend his patient by the exercise of his profession
in his behalf.
Now the only case in which the need of medical treatment against unjust
aggression could become a matter for discussion in Jurisprudence is the
case of a mother with child. Is the child under those circumstances
really an unjust aggressor? Let us study that important case with the
closest attention. Let all the rays of light we have gathered so far be
focussed on this particular point. Can a physician ever be justified in
destroying the life of a child, before or during its birth, by
craniotomy or in any other manner, in order to save its mother's life,
on the plea that the child is an unjust assailant of the life of its
mother? Put the case in a definite shape before you. Here is a mother in
the pangs of parturition. An organic defect, no matter in what shape or
form, prevents deliverance by the ordinary channels. All that medical
skill can do to assist nature has been done. The case is desperate.
Other physicians have been called in for consultation, as the civil law
requires before it will tolerate extreme measures. All agree that, if no
surgical operation is performed, both mother and child must die. There
are the Cæsarian section, the Porro operation, laparotomy,
symphysiotomy, all approved by science and the moral law. But we will
suppose an extreme case; namely, the circumstances are so unfavorable
for any of these operations--whether owing to want of skill in the
Doctors present, or for any other reason--that none can safely be
attempted; any of them would be fatal to the mother.
In this extreme case of necessity, can the Doctor break the cranium of
the living child, or in any way destroy its life with a view to save the
mother? If three consulting physicians agree that this is the only way
to save her, he will not be molested by the law courts for performing
the murderous operation. But will the law of nature and of nature's God
approve or allow his conduct? This is the precise question under our
consideration. We have seen that the infant, a true human being, has a
right to live, as well as its mother. "All men are created equal, and
have an equal right to life," declares the first principle of our
liberty. The Creator, too, as reason teaches, has a clear right to the
child's life; that child may answer a very special purpose of
Providence. But whether it will or not, God is the supreme and the only
Master of life and death, and He has laid down the strict prohibition,
"Thou shalt not kill."
Now comes the plea of self-defence against an unjust aggressor. If the
child is such, if it _unjustly_ attacks its mother's life, then she can
destroy it to save herself, and her physician can aid the innocent
against the guilty party. But can it be proved that the infant is an
unjust aggressor in the case? There can be no intentional or _formal_
guilt in the little innocent babe. But can we argue that the actual
situation of the child is an unjust act, unconsciously done, yet
_materially_ unjust, unlawful? Thus, if a madman would rush at me with a
sharp sword, evidently intent on killing me, he may be called an unjust
aggressor; though, being a raving maniac, he does not know what crime he
is committing, and is _formally_ innocent of murderous intent.
_Materially_ considered, the act is unjust, and I can defend myself
lawfully as against any other unjust assailant. Such is the common
teaching of moralists. But can the innocent babe be classed in the same
category with the raving maniac? Why should it? It is doing nothing; it
is merely passive in the whole process of parturition.
Will any one object that the infant has no right to be there at all? Who
put it there? The only human agents in the matter were its parents. The
mother is more accountable for the unfortunate situation than the child.
Certainly you could not, to save the child, directly kill the mother,
treating her as an unjust assailant of her child's life? Still less can
you treat the infant as an unjust assailant of its mother's life.
The plea of self-defence against unjust aggression being thus ruled out
of court in all such cases, and no other plea remaining for the
craniotomist, we have established, on the clearest principles of Ethics
and Jurisprudence, that it is never allowed directly to kill a child as
a means to save its mother's life. It would be a bad means, morally
evil; and no moral evil can ever be done that good may come of it; the
end cannot justify an evil means. In theory all good men agree with us
that the end can never justify the means. But in practice it seems to be
different with some of the medical profession. Of late, however, the
practice of craniotomy and all equivalent operations upon living
subjects has gone almost entirely out of fashion among the better class
of physicians.
Allow me, gentlemen, to conclude this lecture with the reading of two
extracts from articles of medical writers on the present state of
craniotomy in their profession. You will find them in accord with the
conclusions at which we have arrived by reasoning upon the principles of
Jurisprudence.
Dr. W. H. Parish writes ("Am. Eccles. Review," November, 1893, p. 364):
"The operations of craniotomy and embryotomy are to-day of relatively
infrequent occurrence, and many obstetricians of large experience have
never performed them. Advanced obstetricians advocate the performance of
the Cesarian section or its modification--the Porro operation--in
preference to craniotomy, because nearly all the children are saved,
and the unavoidable mortality among mothers is not much higher than that
which attends craniotomy. Of one hundred women on whom Cesarian section
is performed under _favorable conditions_ and with _attainable_ skill,
about ninety-five mothers should recover and fully the same number of
children. Of one hundred craniotomies, ninety-five mothers or possibly a
larger number will recover, and of course none of the children. The
problem resolves itself into this: Which shall we choose--Cesarian
section with one hundred and ninety living beings as the result, or
craniotomy with about ninety-five living beings?"
Even if a liberal deduction be made for unfavorable circumstances and
deficient skill, the results, gentlemen, will still leave a wide margin
in favor of Cesarian section. My second extract is from an article of
Dr. M. O'Hara, and it is supported by the very highest authorities (ib.
p. 361): "Recently [August 1, 1893] the British Medical Association, the
most authoritative medical body in Great Britain, at its sixty-first
annual meeting, held at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, definitely discussed the
subject before us. In the address delivered at the opening of the
section of Obstetric Medicine and Gynecology, an assertion was put forth
which I regard as very remarkable, my recollection not taking in any
similar pronouncement made in any like representative medical body. The
authoritative value of this statement, accepted as undisputed by the
members of the association, which counts about fifteen thousand
practitioners, need not be emphasized.
"Dr. James Murphy ('British Medical Journal,' August 26, 1893), of the
University of Durham, made the presidential address. He first alluded to
the perfection to which the forceps had reached for pelves narrowed at
the brim, and the means of correcting faulty position of the foetus
during labor. He then stated: 'In cases of great deformity of the
pelvis, it has long been the ambition of the obstetrician, where it has
been impossible to deliver a living child _per vias naturales_, to find
some means by which that child could be born alive with comparative
safety to the mother; and that time has now arrived. It is not for me to
decide,' he says, 'whether the modern Cesarian section, Porro's
operation, symphysiotomy, ischiopubotomy, or other operation is the
safest or most suitable, nor yet is there sufficient material for this
question to be decided; but when such splendid and successful results
have been achieved by Porro, Leopold, Saenger, and by our own Murdoch
Cameron, I say it deliberately and with whatever authority I possess,
and I urge it with all the force I can master, that we are not now
justified in destroying a living child; and while there may be some
things I look back upon with pleasure in my professional career, that
which gives me the greatest satisfaction is that I have never done a
craniotomy on a living child.'"
You will please notice, gentlemen, that when this distinguished Doctor
said, "We are not _now_ justified in destroying a living child," he was
speaking from a medical standpoint, and meant to say that such
destruction is now scientifically unjustifiable, is a blunder in
surgery. From a moral point of view it is not only now, but it was
always, unjustifiable to slay a child as a means to save the mother's
life; a good end cannot justify an evil means, is a truth that cannot be
too emphatically inculcated. This is one of the most important subjects
on which Medical Jurisprudence has been improved, and most of its
text-books are deficient. The improvement is explained with much
scientific detail in an address of the President, Samuel C. Busey, M.D.,
before the Washington Obstetrical and Gynecological Society ("Am.
Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children," vol. xvii.
n. 2).
LECTURE III.
ABORTION.
Abortion, gentlemen, is the theme of my present lecture.
I. An important point to be determined is the precise time when the
human embryo is first animated by its own specific principle of life,
its human soul. It is interesting to read what various conjectures have
been ventured on this subject by the learned of former ages. They were
totally at sea. Though gifted with keen minds, they had not the proper
data to reason from. And yet some of those sages made very shrewd
guesses. For instance, as early as the fourth century of our era,
St. Gregory of Nyssa taught the true doctrine, which modern science has
now universally accepted. He taught that the rational soul is created by
Almighty God and infused into the embryo at the very moment of
conception. Still, as St. Gregory could not prove the certainty of his
doctrine, it was opposed by the majority of the learned.
The Schoolmen of the Middle Ages, while condemning abortion from the
time of conception, preferred the opinion of Aristotle, that the
rational soul is not infused till the foetus is sufficiently developed to
receive it. The embryo lived first, they taught, with a vegetable life;
after a few days an animal soul replaced the vegetative principle; the
human soul was not infused into the tiny body till the fortieth day for
a male, and the eightieth day for a female child. All this sounds very
foolish now; and yet we should not sneer at their ignorance; had we
lived in their times, we could probably have done no better than they.
It was not till 1620 that Fienus, a physician of Louvain, in Belgium,
published the first book of modern times that came near the truth. He
maintained that the human soul was created and infused into the embryo
three days after conception. Nearly forty years later, in 1658, a
religious priest, called Florentinius, wrote a book in which he taught
that, for all we know, the soul may be intellectual or human from the
first moment of conception; and the Pope's physician Zachias soon after
maintained the thesis as a certainty that the human embryo has from the
very beginning a human soul.
Great writers applauded Fienus and his successors; universities favored
their views; the Benedictines, the Dominicans, and the Jesuits supported
them. Modern science claims to have proved beyond all doubt that the
same soul animates the man that animated the foetus from the very moment
of conception. The "Medical Jurisprudence" of Wharton and Stillé quotes
Dr. Hodge of the Pennsylvania University as follows (p. 11): "In a most
mysterious manner brought into existence, how wonderful its formation!
Imperfect in the first instance, nay, even invisible to the naked eye,
the embryo is nevertheless endowed, at once, with the principles of
vitality; and although retained in the system of its mother, it has, in
a strict sense, an independent existence. It immediately manifests all
the phenomena of _organic_ life; it forms its own fluids and circulates
them; it is nourished and developed; and, very rapidly from being a
_rudis indigestaque moles_, apparently an inorganic drop of fluid, its
organs are generated and its form perfected. It daily gains strength and
grows; and, while still within the organ of its mother, manifests some
of the phenomena of animal life, especially as regards mobility. After
the fourth month its motions are perceptible to the mother, and in a
short period can be perceived by other individuals on close
investigation.
"The usual impression," the authors add, "and one which is probably
still maintained by the mass of the community, is that the embryo is
perfected at the period of quickening--say the one hundred and twelfth
or one hundred and twentieth day. When the mother first perceives
motion, is considered the period when the foetus becomes animated--when
it receives its spiritual nature into union with its corporeal.
"These and similar suppositions are, as has been already shown, contrary
to all fact, and
|
valleys. The land of Goshen seemed a gigantic chessboard the green and
yellow squares of which were indicated by the color of grain and by
palms growing on their boundaries; but on the ruddy sand of the desert
and its white hills a patch of green or a clump of trees and bushes
seemed like a lost traveller.
On the fertile land of Goshen from each hill shot up a dark grove of
acacias, sycamores, and tamarinds which from a distance looked like
our lime-trees; among these were concealed villas with rows of short
columns, or the yellow mud huts of earth-tillers. Sometimes near the
grove was a white village with flat-roofed houses, or above the trees
rose the pyramidal gates of a temple, like double cliffs, many-colored
with strange characters. From the desert beyond the first row of
hills, which were a little green, stared naked elevations covered with
blocks of stone. It seemed as if the western region, sated with excess
of life, hurled with regal generosity to the other side flowers and
vegetables, but the desert in eternal hunger devoured them in the
following year and turned them into ashes.
The stunted vegetation, exiled to cliffs and sands, clung to the lower
places until, by means of ditches made in the sides of the raised
highroad, men conducted water from the canals to it. In fact, hidden
oases between naked hills along that highway drank in the divine
water. In these oases grew wheat, barley, grapes, palms, and
tamarinds. The whole of such an oasis was sometimes occupied by one
family, which when it met another like itself at the market in
Pi-Bailos might not even know that they were neighbors in the desert.
On the fifteenth of Mesore the concentration of troops was almost
finished. The regiments of Prince Rameses, which were to meet the
Asiatic forces of Nitager, had assembled on the road above the city of
Pi-Bailos with their camp and with some military engines.
The heir himself directed all the movements. He had organized two
parties of scouts. Of these the first had to watch the enemy, the
other to guard its own army from attack, which was possible in a hilly
region with many ravines. Rameses, in the course of a week, rode
around and examined all the regiments, marching by various roads,
looking carefully to see if the soldiers had good weapons and warm
mantles for the night hours, if in the camps there was dried bread in
sufficiency as well as meat and dried fish. He commanded, besides,
that the wives, children, and slaves of warriors marching to the
eastern boundary should be conveyed by canal; this diminished the
number of chariots and eased the movements of the army.
The oldest generals admired the zeal, knowledge, and caution of the
heir, and, above all, his simplicity and love of labor. His court,
which was numerous, his splendid tent, chariots, and litters were left
in the capital, and, dressed as a simple officer, he hurried from
regiment to regiment on horseback, in Assyrian fashion, attended by
two adjutants.
Thanks to this concentration, the corps itself went forward very
swiftly, and the army was near Pi-Bailos at the time appointed.
It was different with the prince's staff, and the Greek regiment
accompanying it, and with some who moved military engines.
The staff, collected in Memphis, had the shortest road to travel;
hence it moved latest, bringing an immense camp with it. Nearly every
officer, and they were young lords of great families, had a litter
with four negroes, a two-wheeled military chariot, a rich tent, and a
multitude of boxes with food and clothing, also jars full of beer and
wine. Besides, a numerous troop of singers and dancers, with music,
had betaken themselves to journey behind the officers; each woman
must, in the manner of a great lady, have a car drawn by one or two
pair of oxen, and must have also a litter.
When this throng poured out of Memphis, it occupied more space on the
highway than the army of Prince Rameses. The march was so slow that
the military engines which were left at the rear moved twenty-four
hours later than was ordered. To complete every evil the female
dancers and singers, on seeing the desert not at all dreadful in that
place, were terrified and fell to weeping. To calm these women it was
necessary to hasten with the night camp, pitch tents, arrange a
spectacle, and a feast afterward.
The night amusement in the cool, under the starry sky, with wild
nature for a background, pleased dancers and singers exceedingly; they
declared that they would travel thenceforth only through the desert.
Meanwhile Prince Rameses sent an order to turn all women back to
Memphis at the earliest and urge the march forward.
His dignity Herhor, minister of war, was with the staff, but only as a
spectator. He had not brought singers himself, but he made no remarks
to officers. He gave command to carry his litter at the head of the
column, and accommodating himself to its movements, advanced or rested
under the immense fan with which his adjutant shaded him.
Herhor was a man of forty and some years of age, strongly built,
concentrated in character. He spoke rarely, and looked at people as
rarely from under his drooping eyelids. He went with arms and legs
bare, like every Egyptian, his breast exposed; he had sandals on his
feet, a short skirt about his hips, an apron with blue and white
stripes. As a priest, he shaved his beard and hair and wore a panther
skin hanging from his left shoulder. As a soldier, he covered his head
with a small helmet of the guard; from under this helmet hung a
kerchief, also in blue and white stripes; this reached his shoulders.
Around his neck was a triple gold chain, and under his left arm a
short sword in a costly scabbard. His litter, borne by six black
slaves, was attended always by three persons: one carried his fan,
another the mace of the minister, and the third a box for papyrus.
This third man was Pentuer, a priest, and the secretary of Herhor. He
was a lean ascetic who in the greatest heat never covered his shaven
head. He came of the people, but in spite of low birth he occupied a
high position in the state; this was due to exceptional abilities.
Though the minister with his officials preceded the staff and held
himself apart from its movements, it could not be said that he was
unconscious of what was happening behind him. Every hour, at times
every half hour, some one approached Herhor's litter,--now a priest of
lower rank, an ordinary "servant of the gods," a marauding soldier, a
freedman, or a slave, who, passing as it were indifferently the silent
retinue of the minister, threw out a word. That word Pentuer recorded
sometimes, but more frequently he remembered it, for his memory was
amazing.
No one in the noisy throng of the staff paid attention to these
details. The officers, sons of great lords, were too much occupied by
running, by noisy conversation, or by singing, to notice who
approached the minister; all the more since a multitude of people were
pushing along the highway.
On the sixteenth of Mesore the staff of Prince Rameses, together with
his dignity the minister, passed the night under the open sky at the
distance of five miles from the regiments which were arranged in
battle order across the highway beyond the city of Pi-Bailos.
In that early morning which precedes our six o'clock, the hills grew
violet, and from behind them came forth the sun. A rosy light flowed
over the land of Goshen. Villages, temples, palaces of magnates, and
huts of earth-tillers looked like sparks and flames which flashed up
in one moment from the midst of green spaces. Soon the western horizon
was flooded with a golden hue, and the green land of Goshen seemed
melting into gold, and the numberless canals seemed filled with molten
silver. But the desert hills grew still more marked with violet, and
cast long shadows on the sands, and darkness on the plant world.
The guards who stood along that highway could see with the utmost
clearness fields, edged with palms, beyond the canal. Some fields were
green with flax, wheat, clover; others were gilded with ripening
barley of the second growth. Now earth-tillers began to come out to
field labor, from huts concealed among trees; they were naked and
bronze-hued; their whole dress was a short skirt and a cap. Some
turned to canals to clear them of mud, or to draw water. Others
dispersing among the trees gathered grapes and ripe figs. Many naked
children stirred about, and women were busy in white, yellow, or red
shirts which were sleeveless.
There was great movement in that region. In the sky birds of prey
from the desert pursued pigeons and daws in the land of Goshen. Along
the canal squeaking sweeps moved up and down, with buckets of
fertilizing water; fruit-gatherers appeared and disappeared among the
trees, like colored butterflies. But in the desert, on the highway,
swarmed the army and its servants. A division of mounted lancers shot
past. Behind them marched bowmen in caps and petticoats; they had bows
in their hands, quivers on their shoulders, and broadswords at their
right sides. The archers were accompanied by slingers who carried bags
with missiles and were armed with short swords.
A hundred yards behind them advanced two small divisions of footmen,
one division armed with darts, the other with spears. Both carried
rectangular shields; on their breasts they had thick coats, as it were
armor, and on their heads caps with kerchiefs behind to ward off the
sun-rays. The caps and coats had blue and white stripes or yellow and
black stripes, which made those soldiers seem immense hornets.
Behind the advance guard, surrounded by a retinue of mace-bearers,
pushed on the litter of the minister, and behind it, with bronze
helmets and breastplates, the Greek companies, whose measured tread
called to mind blows of heavy hammers. In the rear was heard the
creaking of vehicles, and from the side of the highway slipped along
the bearded Phoenician merchant in his litter borne between two asses.
Above all this rose a cloud of golden dust, and heat also.
Suddenly from the vanguard galloped up a mounted soldier and informed
Herhor that Prince Rameses, the heir to the throne, was approaching.
His worthiness descended from the litter, and at that moment appeared
a mounted party of men who halted and sprang from their horses. One
man of this party and the minister began to approach each other,
halting every few steps and bowing.
"Be greeted, O son of the pharaoh; may he live through eternity!" said
the minister.
"Be greeted and live long, O holy father!" answered Rameses; then he
added,--
"Ye advance as slowly as if your legs were sawn off, while Nitager
will stand before our division in two hours at the latest."
"Thou hast told truth. Thy staff marches very slowly."
"Eunana tells me also," here Rameses indicated an officer standing
behind him who was covered with amulets, "that ye have not sent scouts
to search ravines. But in case of real war an enemy might attack from
that side."
"I am not the leader, I am only a judge," replied the minister,
quietly.
"But what can Patrokles be doing?"
"Patrokles is bringing up the military engines with his Greek
regiment."
"But my relative and adjutant, Tutmosis?"
"He is sleeping yet, I suppose."
Rameses stamped impatiently, and was silent. He was a beautiful youth,
with a face almost feminine, to which anger and sunburn added charm.
He wore a close-fitting coat with blue and white stripes, a kerchief
of the same color behind his helmet, a gold chain around his neck, and
a costly sword beneath his left arm.
"I see," said the prince, "that thou alone, Eunana, art mindful of my
honor."
The officer covered with amulets bent to the earth.
"Tutmosis is indolent," said the heir. "Return to thy place, Eunana.
Let the vanguard at least have a leader."
Then, looking at the suite which now surrounded him as if it had
sprung from under the earth on a sudden, he added,--
"Bring my litter. I am as tired as a quarryman."
"Can the gods grow tired?" whispered Eunana, still standing behind
him.
"Go to thy place!" said Rameses.
"But perhaps thou wilt command me, O image of the moon, to search the
ravines?" asked the officer, in a low voice. "Command, I beg thee, for
wherever I am my heart is chasing after thee to divine thy will and
accomplish it."
"I know that thou art watchful," answered Rameses. "Go now and look
after everything."
"Holy father," said Eunana, turning to the minister, "I commend my
most obedient service to thy worthiness."
Barely had Eunana gone when at the end of the marching column rose a
still greater tumult. They looked for the heir's litter, but it was
gone. Then appeared, making his way through the Greek warriors, a
youth of strange exterior. He wore a muslin tunic, a richly
embroidered apron, and a golden scarf across his shoulder. But he was
distinguished above all by an immense wig with a multitude of tresses,
and an artificial beard like cats' tails.
That was Tutmosis, the first exquisite in Memphis, who dressed and
perfumed himself even during marches.
"Be greeted, Rameses!" exclaimed the exquisite, pushing aside officers
quickly. "Imagine thy litter is lost somewhere; thou must sit in mine,
which really is not fit for thee, but it is not the worst."
"Thou hast angered me," answered the prince. "Thou sleepest instead of
watching the army."
The astonished exquisite stopped.
"I sleep?" cried he. "May the man's tongue wither up who invented that
calumny! I, knowing that thou wouldst come, have been ready this hour
past, and am preparing a bath for thee and perfumes."
"While thus engaged, the regiment is without a commander."
"Am I to command a detachment where his worthiness the minister of war
is, and such a leader is present as Patrokles?"
Rameses was silent; meanwhile Tutmosis, approaching him, whispered,--
"In what a plight thou art, O son of the pharaoh! Without a wig, thy
hair and dress full of dust, thy skin black and cracked, like the
earth in summer. The queen, most deserving of honor, would drive me
from the court were she to look at thy wretchedness."
"I am only tired."
"Then take a seat in my litter. In it are fresh garlands of roses,
roast birds, and a jug of wine from Cyprus. I have kept also hidden in
the camp," added he in a lower voice, "Senura."
"Is she here?" asked the prince; and his eyes, glittering a moment
before, were now mist covered.
"Let the army move on," said Tutmosis; "we will wait here for her."
Rameses recovered himself.
"Leave me, tempter! The battle will come in two hours."
"What! a battle?"
"At least the decision as to my leadership."
"Oh, laugh at it!" smiled the exquisite. "I would swear that the
minister of war sent a report of it yesterday, and with it the
petition to give thee the corps of Memphis."
"No matter if he did. To-day I have no thought for anything but the
army."
"In thee this wish for war is dreadful, war during which a man does
not wash for a whole month, so as to die in-- Brr! But if thou couldst
see Senura, only glance at her--"
"For that very reason I shall not glance at her," answered Rameses,
decisively.
At the moment when eight men were bringing from beyond the Greek ranks
the immense litter of Tutmosis for the use of Rameses, a horseman
raced in from the vanguard. He dropped from his horse and ran so
quickly that on his breast the images of the gods or the tablets with
their names rattled loudly. This was Eunana in great excitement.
All turned to him, and this gave him pleasure apparently.
"Erpatr, the loftiest lips," cried Eunana, bending before Rameses.
"When, in accordance with thy divine command, I rode at the head of a
detachment, looking carefully at all things, I noticed on the highroad
two beautiful scarabs. Each of these sacred beetles was rolling an
earth ball toward the sands near the roadside--"
"What of that?" interrupted Rameses.
"Of course," continued Eunana, glancing toward Herhor, "I and my
people, as piety enjoins, rendered homage to the golden symbols of the
sun, and halted. That augury is of such import that no man of us would
make a step forward unless commanded."
"I see that thou art a pious Egyptian, though thou hast the features
of a Hittite," answered the worthy Herhor; and turning to certain
dignitaries standing near, he added,--
"We will not advance farther by the highway, for we might crush the
sacred beetles. Pentuer, can we go around the road by that ravine on
the right?"
"We can," answered the secretary. "That ravine is five miles long,
and comes out again almost in front of Pi-Bailos."
"An immense loss of time!" interrupted Rameses, in anger.
"I would swear that those are not scarabs, but the spirits of my
Phoenician usurers," said Tutmosis the exquisite. "Not being able,
because of their death, to receive money from me, they will force me
now to march through the desert in punishment!"
The suite of the prince awaited the decision with fear; so Rameses
turned to Herhor,--
"What dost thou think of this, holy father?"
"Look at the officers," answered the priest, "and thou wilt understand
that we must go by the ravine."
Now Patrokles, leader of the Greeks, pushed forward and said to the
heir,--
"If the prince permit, my regiment will advance by the highway. My
soldiers have no fear of beetles!"
"Your soldiers have no fear of royal tombs even," added the minister.
"Still it cannot be safe in them since no one has ever returned."
The Greek pushed back to the suite confounded.
"Confess, holy father," hissed the heir, with the greatest anger,
"that such a hindrance would not stop even an ass on his journey."
"True, but no ass will ever be pharaoh," retorted the minister,
calmly.
"In that case thou, O minister, wilt lead the division through the
ravine!" exclaimed Rameses. "I am unacquainted with priestly tactics;
besides, I must rest. Come with me, cousin," said he to Tutmosis; and
he turned toward some naked hills.
CHAPTER II
Straightway his worthiness Herhor directed his adjutant who carried
the mace to take charge of the vanguard in place of Eunana. Then he
commanded that the military engines for hurling great stones leave the
road, and that the Greek soldiers facilitate passage for those engines
in difficult places. All vehicles and litters of staff-officers were
to move in the rear.
When Herhor issued commands, the adjutant bearing the fan approached
Pentuer and asked,--
"Will it be possible to go by this highway again?"
"Why not?" answered the young priest. "But since two sacred beetles
have barred the way now, we must not go farther; some misfortune might
happen."
"As it is, a misfortune has happened. Or hast thou not noticed that
Prince Rameses is angry at the minister? and our lord is not
forgetful."
"It is not the prince who is offended with our lord, but our lord with
the prince, and he has reproached him. He has done well; for it seems
to the young prince, at present, that he is to be a second Menes."
"Or a Rameses the Great," put in the adjutant.
"Rameses the Great obeyed the gods; for this cause there are
inscriptions praising him in all the temples. But Menes, the first
pharaoh of Egypt, was a destroyer of order, and thanks only to the
fatherly kindness of the priests that his name is still
remembered,--though I would not give one brass uten on this, that the
mummy of Menes exists."
"My Pentuer," added the adjutant, "thou art a sage, hence knowest that
it is all one to us whether we have ten lords or eleven."
"But it is not all one to the people whether they have to find every
year a mountain of gold for the priests, or two mountains of gold for
the priests and the pharaoh," answered Pentuer, while his eyes
flashed.
"Thou art thinking of dangerous things," said the adjutant, in a
whisper.
"But how often hast thou thyself grieved over the luxuries of the
pharaoh's court and of the nomarchs?" inquired the priest in
astonishment.
"Quiet, quiet! We will talk of this, but not now."
In spite of the sand the military engines, drawn each by two bullocks,
moved in the desert more speedily than along the highway. With the
first of them marched Eunana, anxiously. "Why has the minister
deprived me of leadership over the vanguard? Does he wish to give me a
higher position?" asked he in his own mind.
Thinking out then a new career, and perhaps to dull the fears which
made his heart quiver, he seized a pole and, where the sands were
deeper, propped the balista, or urged on the Greeks with an outcry.
They, however, paid slight attention to this officer.
The retinue had pushed on a good half hour through a winding ravine
with steep naked walls, when the vanguard halted a second time. At
this point another ravine crossed the first; in the middle of it
extended a rather broad canal.
The courier sent to the minister of war with notice of the obstacle
brought back a command to fill the canal immediately.
About a hundred soldiers with pickaxes and shovels rushed to the work.
Some knocked out stones from the cliff; others threw them into the
ditch and covered them with sand.
Meanwhile from the depth of the ravine came a man with a pickaxe
shaped like a stork's neck with the bill on it. He was an Egyptian
slave, old and entirely naked. He looked for a while with the utmost
amazement at the work of the soldiers; then, springing between them on
a sudden, he shouted,--
"What are ye doing, vile people? This is a canal."
"But how darest thou use evil words against the warriors of his
holiness?" asked Eunana, who stood there.
"Thou must be an Egyptian and a great person, I see that," said the
slave; "so I answer thee that this canal belongs to a mighty lord; he
is the manager and secretary of one who bears the fan for his
worthiness the nomarch of Memphis. Be on thy guard or misfortune will
strike thee!"
"Do your work," said Eunana, with a patronizing tone, to the Greek
soldiers who began to look at the slave.
They did not understand his speech, but the tone of it arrested them.
"They are filling in all the time!" said the slave, with rising fear.
"Woe to thee!" cried he, rushing at one of the Greeks with his
pickaxe.
The Greek pulled it from the man, struck him on the mouth, and brought
blood to his lips; then he threw sand into the canal again.
The slave, stunned by the blow, lost courage and fell to imploring.
"Lord," said he, "I dug this canal alone for ten years, in the night
time and during festivals! My master promised that if I should bring
water to this little valley he would make me a servant in it, give me
one fifth of the harvests, and grant me freedom--do you hear? Freedom
to me and my three children!--O gods!"
He raised his hands and turned again to Eunana,--
"They do not understand me, these vagrants from beyond the sea,
descendants of dogs, brothers to Jews and Phoenicians! But listen,
lord, to me! For ten years, while other men went to fairs and dances
or sacred processions, I stole out into this dreary ravine. I did not
go to the grave of my mother, I only dug; I forgot the dead so as to
give freedom with laud to my children, and to myself even one free day
before death. Ye, O gods, be my witnesses how many times has night
found me here! how many times have I heard the wailing cries of hyenas
in this place, and seen the green eyes of wolves! But I did not flee,
for whither was I, the unfortunate, to flee, when at every path terror
was lurking, and in this canal freedom held me back by the feet? Once,
beyond that turn there, a lion came out against me, the pharaoh of
beasts. The pickaxe dropped from my hands, I knelt down before him,
and I, as ye see me, said these words: 'O lord! is it thy pleasure to
eat me? I am only a slave.' But the lion took pity, the wolf also
passed by; even the treacherous bats spared my poor head; but thou, O
Egyptian--"
The man stopped; he saw the retinue of Herhor approaching. By the fan
he knew him to be a great personage, and by the panther skin, a
priest. He ran to the litter, therefore, knelt down, and struck the
sand with his forehead.
"What dost thou wish, man?" asked the dignitary.
"O light of the sun, listen to me!" cried the slave. "May there be no
groans in thy chamber, may no misfortune follow thee! May thy works
continue, and may the current not be interrupted when thou shalt sail
by the Nile to the other shore--"
"I ask what thy wish is," repeated Herhor.
"Kind lord," said the man, "leader without caprice, who conquerest the
false and createst the true, who art the father of the poor, the
husband of the widow, clothing for the motherless, permit me to spread
thy name as the equal of justice, most noble of the nobles."[1]
[1] Authentic speech of a slave.
"He wishes that this canal be not filled in," said Eunana.
Herhor shrugged his shoulders and pushed toward the place where they
were filling the canal. Then the despairing man seized his feet.
"Away with this creature!" cried his worthiness, pushing back as
before the bite of a reptile.
The secretary, Pentuer, turned his head; his lean face had a grayish
color. Eunana seized the man by the shoulders and pulled, but, unable
to drag him away from the minister's feet, he summoned warriors. After
a while Herhor, now liberated, passed to the other bank of the canal,
and the warriors tore away the earth-worker, almost carrying him to
the end of the detachment. There they gave the man some tens of blows
of fists, and subalterns who always carried canes gave him some tens
of blows of sticks, and at last threw him down at the entrance to the
ravine.
Beaten, bloody, and above all terrified, the wretched slave sat on the
sand for a while, rubbed his eyes, then sprang up suddenly and ran
groaning toward the highway,--
"Swallow me, O earth! Cursed be the day in which I saw the light, and
the night in which it was said, 'A man is born!' In the mantle of
justice there is not the smallest shred for a slave. The gods
themselves regard not a creature whose hands are for labor, whose
mouth was made only for weeping, and whose back is for clubs. O death,
rub my body into ashes, so that there, beyond on the fields of Osiris,
I be not born into slavery a second time."
CHAPTER III
Panting with anger, Prince Rameses rushed up the hill, while behind
him followed Tutmosis. The wig of the exquisite had turned on his
head, his false beard had slipped down, and he carried it in his hand.
In spite of exertion he would have been pale had it not been for the
layers of rouge on his face.
At last Rameses halted at the summit. From the ravine came the outcry
of warriors and the rattle of the onrolling balistas; before the two
men stretched the immense plain of Goshen, bathed continually in
sun-rays. That did not seem land, but a golden cloud, on which the
mind painted a landscape in colors of silver, ruby, pearl, and topaz.
"Look," cried the heir to Tutmosis, stretching out his hand, "those
are to be my lands, and here is my army. Over there the loftiest
edifices are palaces of priests, and here the supreme chief of the
troops is a priest! Can anything like this be suffered?"
"It has always been so," replied Tutmosis, glancing around with
timidity.
"That is not true! I know the history of this country, which is hidden
to thee. The leaders of armies and the masters of officials were the
pharaohs alone, or at least the most energetic among them. Those
rulers did not pass their days in making offerings and prayers, but in
managing the state."
"If it is the desire of his holiness to pass his days that way?" said
Tutmosis.
"It is not my father's wish that nomarchs should govern as they please
in the capitals of provinces. Why, the governor of Ethiopia considered
himself as almost equal to the king of kings. And it cannot be my
father's wish that his army should march around two golden beetles
because the minister of war is a high priest."
"He is a great warrior," whispered Tutmosis, with increasing
timidity.
"He a great warrior? Because he dispersed a handful of Libyan robbers
ready to flee at the mere sight of Egyptians. But see what our
neighbors are doing. Israel delays in paying tribute and pays less and
less of it. The cunning Phoenician steals a number of ships from our
fleet every year. On the east we are forced to keep up a great army
against the Hittites, while around Babylon and Nineveh there is such a
movement that it is felt throughout all Mesopotamia.
"And what is the outcome of priestly management? This, that while my
great-grandfather had a hundred thousand talents of yearly income and
one hundred and sixty thousand troops, my father has barely fifty
thousand talents and one hundred and twenty thousand troops.
"And what an army! Were it not for the Greek corps, which keeps them
in order as a dog watches sheep, the Egyptian soldiers to-day would
obey only priests and the pharaoh would sink to the level of a
miserable nomarch."
"Whence hast thou learned this?" asked Tutmosis, with astonishment.
"Am I not of a priestly family? And besides, they taught me when I was
not heir to the throne. Oh, when I become pharaoh after my
father,--may he live through eternity!--I will put my bronze-sandalled
foot on their necks. But first of all I will seize their treasures,
which have always been bloated, but which from the time of Rameses the
Great have begun to swell out, and to-day are so swollen that the
treasure of the pharaoh is invisible because of them."
"Woe to me and to thee!" sighed Tutmosis. "Thou hast plans under which
this hill would bend could it hear and understand them. And where are
thy forces, thy assistance, thy warriors? Against thee the whole
people will rise, led by a class of men with mighty influence. But who
is on thy side?"
Rameses listened and fell to thinking. At last he said,--
"The army--"
"A considerable part of it will follow the priests."
"The Greek corps--"
"A barrel of water in the Nile."
"The officials--"
"Half of them belong to the priests."
The prince shook his head sadly, and was silent.
From the summit they went down by a naked and stony slope to the
opposite base of the hill. Then Tutmosis, who had pushed ahead
somewhat, cried,--
"Has a charm fallen on my eyes? Look, Rameses! Why, a second Egypt is
concealed between these cliffs!"
"That must be an estate of some priest who pays no taxes," replied the
prince, bitterly.
In the depth before their feet lay a rich valley in the form of a fork
the tines of which were hidden between cliffs. At the juncture of the
tines a number of servants' huts were visible, and the beautiful
little villa of the owner or manager. Palm-trees grew there, grapes,
olives, figs with aerial roots, cypresses, even young baobabs. In the
centre flowed a rivulet, and at the source of it, some hundreds of
yards higher up, small gardens were visible.
When they had gone down among grape-vines covered with ripe clusters,
they heard a woman's voice which called, or rather sang in pensive
notes:
"Where art thou gone from me, where art thou, hen of mine? Thou hast
fled, thou art gone from me. I give thee drink and clean grain; what I
give is so good that slaves envy thee. Where art thou gone, my
hen--wilt thou not answer me? Night will come down on thee, think of
that; thou wilt not reach thy home, where all are at work for thee.
Come; if thou come not, a falcon will fly from the desert and tear the
heart out of thee. If he come thou wilt call in vain, as I now call in
vain to thee. Give answer, or I shall be angry and leave this place.
If I leave thou'lt go home on thy own feet."
The song came toward the two men. The songstress was a few yards from
them when Tutmosis thrust his head from between the bushes, and
said,--
"Just look, Rameses, but that is a beautiful maiden!"
Instead of looking, the prince sprang into the path and stopped the
road before the songstress. She was really a beautiful maiden, with
Grecian features and a complexion like ivory. From under the veil on
her head peeped forth an immense mass of dark hair, wound in a knot.
She wore a white trailing robe which she held on one side with her
hand; under the transparent covering were maiden breasts shaped like
apples.
"Who art thou?" cried Rameses.
The threatening furrows vanished from his forehead and his eyes
flashed.
"O Jehovah! O Father!" cried she, frightened, halting motionless on
the path.
But she grew calm by degrees, and her velvety eyes resumed their
expression of mild sadness.
"Whence hast thou come?" inquired she of Rameses, with a voice
trembling a little. "I see that thou art a soldier, but it is not
permitted soldiers to come here."
"Why is it not permitted?"
"Because this is the land of a great lord named Sesofris."
"Ho! ho!" laughed Rameses.
"Laugh not, for thou wilt grow pale soon. The lord Sesofris is
secretary to the lord Chaires, who carries his fan for the most worthy
nomarch of Memphis. My father has seen him and fallen on his face
before him."
"Ho! ho! ho!" repeated Rameses, laughing continually.
"Thy words are very insolent," said the maiden, frowning. "Were
kindness not looking from thy face, I should think thee a mercenary
from Greece or a bandit."
"He is not a bandit yet, but some day he may become the greatest
bandit this land has ever suffered," said Tutmosis the exquisite,
arranging his wig.
"And thou must be a dancer," answered the girl, grown courageous. "Oh!
I am even certain that I saw thee at the fair in Pi-Bailos, enchanting
serpents."
The two young men fell into perfect humor.
"But who art thou?" asked Rameses of the girl, taking her hand, which
she drew back.
"Be not so bold. I am Sarah, the daughter of
|
any time entered into the mind of man. Its object was new. It was to
prepare us with fitness of character, through a state of trial, for
mutual association with the pure and lovely in the kingdom of heaven.
This is presented in all the gospel, as the chief end of the Christian's
life. Until Christ, no such reward was offered to mankind, nor means
provided for its attainment.
Many of the philosophers in old times had ideas of a future state, but
they were mixed with a great deal of uncertainty and misgivings.
Ancient legislators endeavored to inculcate the idea of rewards and
punishments after death, to give sanction to their laws. This was the
sole end in view, and when their laws were virtuous, it was a noble, a
praiseworthy end. But the religion of Christ is related to the same
object, brings it about; and, also, has a nobler end in view, and that
is to prepare us here for a more noble society among the citizens of
the kingdom of God in the great hereafter.
In all the older religions the good of the present was the direct, and
the first object, but in the religion of Christ it is the second. The
first great object of the gospel of Christ is to prepare us for the
realities of eternity.
There is a great contrast between adhering to morality from the motive
of present profit, in expectation of future reward, and living such a
life as to qualify us for the realization of future happiness.
The character of those who are governed by these different principles is
not the same. On the first principle, present utility, we may have mere
moralists, men practicing simple justice, temperance and sobriety. On
the second, we must add to those graces of moral nature faith in God,
resignation to his will, and habitual piety. The first will make us very
good citizens in a civil government, but will never be sufficient to
make us Christians. So the religion of Christ insists upon purity of
heart and benevolence, or charity, because these are essential to the
end proposed.
"That the present existence is one of trial with reference to another
state of being, is confirmed by all that we know in what is termed the
course of nature. Probation is the only key that unfolds to us the
designs of God in the history of human affairs, the only clue that
guides us through the pathless wilderness, and the only plan upon which
this world could possibly have been formed, or upon which its history
can be explained."
This world was not formed upon a plan of unconditioned happiness,
because it is overspread with miseries. Neither was it formed upon a
plan of unconditioned misery, for there are many joys interspersed
throughout the whole. It was not formed for the unconditional existence
of both vice and virtue, for that is no plan at all, the two elements
being, as we know, destructive of each other. By the way, in this very
fact we find the grand necessity for the remedial scheme.
The mixture of vice and virtue, of happiness and misery, is a necessary
result of a state of probation, trials and sufferings consequent upon
offending or violating the will of heaven.
The doctrine of the religion of Christ, with its ultimate object and its
ideas of God and man, of the present and the future life, and of the
relations which these all bear to each other, was and is wholly unheard
of until you come to the teachings of Christ. No other religion ever
drew such pictures of the worthlessness of earthly-mindedness and of
living merely for this present world. And no other ever set out such
beautiful, lively and glorious pictures of heavenly-mindedness, along
with the joys of a future world, nor such pictures of victory over death
and the grave, nor of the last judgment, nor of the triumphs of the
redeemed in that tremendous day. The personal character of the great
author, Christ, is as new and peculiar to this religion as anything else
that we can possibly name--"He spake as never man spake."
He is the only founder of a religion which is "unconnected with all
human policy and government," and, as such, should not be prostituted to
any mere worldly purposes whatever. Numa, Mohammed, and even Moses,
blended their religious institutions with their civil, and by such means
controlled their adherents. Christ neither exercised nor accepted such
power. He rejected every motive which controlled other leaders, and
chose those which others avoided. Power, honor, riches and pleasure were
alike disregarded. He seemed to court poverty, sufferings and death.
Many impostors and enthusiasts have tried to impose upon the world with
pretended communications from the world of spirits--some of them have
died rather than recant; but no history is found to show one who made
his own sufferings and death a necessary part of his plan and essential
elements in his mission. This distinguishes the Savior of the world from
all mere enthusiasts and imposters. He declared his death in all its
minutia; with a prophet's vision he saw it, declared it was necessary,
and voluntarily endured it; and he was neither a madman nor idiot. Look
at his lessons, his precepts and his wonderful conduct, and then
imagine him insane if you can. Still, if he was not what he pretended to
be, he can be viewed in no other light; and yet under the character of a
madman he deserves much attention on account of such sublime and
_rational insanity_. There is no other person known in the world's
history so _rationally_ and _sublimely_ mad.
In what madman's career can you find such a beautiful lesson as his
instructions given upon the mount. What other leader enforced his
precepts and lessons upon men's credulity with such assurances of reward
as, "Come, ye blessed of my father! Inherit the kingdom prepared for you
from the foundation of the world; for I was an hungered, and ye gave me
meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took
me in; I was naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I
was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him,
saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee; or thirsty,
and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in; or
naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick and in prison, and
came unto thee? Then shall he answer and say unto them, Verily, I say
unto you, inasmuch as you have done it to the least of these, my
brethren, ye have done it unto me."
Before the appearance of Christ there existed nothing like the faith of
Christ and Christianity upon the face of the earth. The Jews alone had a
few of its types and shadows, but the great mystery of Christ had been
kept hid since the world began. All the Gentile nations were wrapped up
in the very worst idolatry, having little or no connection whatever with
morality, except to corrupt it with the infamous examples of their gods.
"They all worshiped a multitude of gods and demons, whose favor they
sought by obscene and ridiculous ceremonies, and whose anger they tried
to appease with the most abominable cruelties." With them, heaven was
open only to legislators and conquerors, the civilizers and destroyers
of mankind. This was the summit of their religion, and even this was
limited to a few prodigies of genius and learning, which was but little
regarded and understood by the great masses. One common cloud of
ignorance and superstition involved them. At this time Christ came as a
teacher; his appearance was like a rising sun, dispelling the darkness
and blessing the earth with light and heat.
If any man can believe that the son of a carpenter, together with twelve
of the meanest and most illiterate mechanics, unassisted by any
superhuman wisdom and power, should be able to invent and promulgate a
system of theology and ethics the most sublime and perfect, which all
such men as Plato, Aristotle and Cicero had overlooked, and that they,
by their own wisdom, repudiated every false virtue, though universally
admired, and that they admitted every true virtue, though despised and
ridiculed by all the rest of the world--if any man can believe that they
were _impostors_ for no other purpose than the promulgation of truth,
_villains_ for no purpose but to teach honesty, and _martyrs_ with no
prospect of honor or advantage; or that they, as false witnesses, should
have been able, in the course of a few years, to have spread this
religion over the most of the known world, in opposition to the
interests, ambition and prejudices of mankind; that they triumphed over
the power of princes, the intrigues of states, the forces of custom, the
blindness of zeal, the influence of priests, the arguments of orators,
and the philosophy of the world, without any assistance from God, he
must be in possession of more faith than is necessary to make him a
Christian and continues an unbeliever from mere credulity. If the
credulous infidel, whose convictions are without evidence and against
evidence, should, after all, be in the right, and Christianity prove to
be a fable, what harm could ensue from being a Christian? Are Christian
rulers more tyrannical and their Christian subjects more ungovernable?
Are the rich more insolent _when Christianized_? Are poor Christians
most insolent and disorderly? Does Christianity make worse parents and
worse children? Does it make husbands and wives, friends and neighbors
less trustworthy? Does it not make men and women more virtuous and happy
in every situation in life? If Christianity is a fable, it is one the
belief of which retains men and women in a regular and uniform life of
virtue, piety and devotion to truth. It gives support in the hour of
distress, of sickness and death.
"If there were a few more Christians in the world it would be very
beneficial to themselves and by no means detrimental to the public."
THE RESURRECTION OF THE CHRIST.
"He, who gave life to man at first,
Can restore it when it is lost."
Our Savior claimed to be the Son of God, and put the validity of his
claim on this, that he should die openly by crucifixion, be buried, and
rise from the dead upon the third day. Among all the impostors known in
earth's history there is not one instance of a _plot_ like this fact. A
mere plot of this nature would be hard to manage. That the first part of
this prophesy was fulfilled even our enemies admit. It has not been
alleged by infidels of any note that the crucifixion was a fraud, and
did not take place, and that Jesus, as a consequence, did not die.
The chief priests seem to have had considerable concern about the
prediction of the resurrection. Why this? Was it because they had
discovered in the person of Christ an impostor, a mere cheat? No; this
alone would have caused them to utterly disregard the prediction of his
resurrection. Those priests saw something in the character of Christ
which caused them to fear the fulfillment of his prediction. What other
person ever created such a concern about such an event? There is not a
similar case in the world's history. What other dead person was ever
known to create such a feeling as that which moved his enemies to
confront him, if possible, in his rising power. Those priests had,
doubtless, witnessed his miracles again and again. It is beyond all
question true that they feared him in his death. If they had seen no
wonderful power exerted during his life they certainly would have feared
none after he was dead. The fear of the chief priests over the Savior's
dead body is an insurmountable evidence of the mighty works which he
accomplished during his life. Those priests addressed themselves to the
Roman governor, and requested a guard placed around the tomb; three days
and nights would settle the question, for the prediction would terminate
on the third day. Pilate granted the request, and a guard was set to
watch; they sealed the door of the sepulcher, placing the seal of the
state upon the great stone. The object of the seal was, doubtless, for
the satisfaction of all parties concerned in this matter.
It was a precaution against fraud. If the seal upon a door or box is
broken we know at once that it has been meddled with. When Darius thrust
Daniel among the lions he put his seal upon the door of the den, to
satisfy himself and his court that no human hand had interfered for
Daniel's delivery. When he came to the den and found his seal unbroken,
he was satisfied. A seal thus used is of the nature of a covenant. If
you deliver sealed writings to an individual his acceptance amounts to a
covenant between you that the same shall be delivered just as they were
received. If the seal is broken, it is a manifestation of attempted
fraud. There is no special agreement needed in order to the existence of
covenants by seals; it is an agreement which men are placed under by the
laws of nations. The sealing of the sepulcher where the body of Jesus
lay was to impose, by all the solemnities of the Roman state,
obligations upon all the parties interested in the person of Christ. It
was a grand effort on the part of the authorities to prevent any
interference with the dead body.
When impostors are known they become odious, and are but little noticed.
How was it with Christ? When the popular sentiment was that he was a
prophet the priests and scribes sought his life, believing that his
death would end his cause? When they and the people learned that he was
an impostor (?) they thought him unsafe after he was dead.
The prediction of Christ that he would rise the third day was publicly
known throughout Jerusalem; but why the chief priests should concern
themselves so much about it as to take all the steps to prevent its
fulfillment, is a puzzling question with infidels. Was it because they
had detected him as a cheat and an impostor? No, this is an unreasonable
conclusion. It must have been a secret conviction touching his mighty
power. The seal was a proper check upon the guards; the Jews could have
no other object in having it placed there. They were not so foolish as
to think, that by this contrivance they would outstrip Providence.
Guards were set to watch, and, doubtless, did their whole duty. But what
are sentinels when the power of Omnipotence is put forth? An angel of
the Lord makes his appearance. The keepers saw him, and fell down like
dead men. The angel rolled away the stone, and the conqueror came forth
to live in the hearts of millions, and to live forevermore.
The disciples, receiving power from on high, soon make their appearance
in Jerusalem, and boldly assert the fact of the resurrection. The
murderers of the Savior were there. What do the priests do next? They
had bribed the soldiers to tell a lie which was so base that it only
needed to be told in order to be known as a lie. Next, they arrest the
apostles; they beat them, they scourge them, and bid them shut their
mouths, and insist that they shall say no more about this matter. They
did not seem to regard them as liars and impostors, else they would
doubtless have charged them with the fraud. They try to assassinate and
murder these witnesses of the resurrection. They prevailed with Herod to
put one of them to death; but they never seemed to think of charging
them with stealing the body away. Their orator, Tertullus, could not
have missed such a topic as imposition and fraud if any had been
practiced. He did not seem to think of anything of the sort, but
contented himself with the charge of sedition, heresy, and the
profanation of the temple. Yet the very question of the resurrection was
under consideration; for Festus tells Agrippa, that the Jews had
"certain questions against Paul of one Jesus, which was dead, whom Paul
affirmed to be alive." After this Agrippa heard Paul's testimony, and so
far was he from suspecting imposition, that he said, "Almost thou
persuadest me to be a Christian."
Not long after the resurrection the apostles were taken before the
council and sanhedrim of the Children of Israel. They make their own
defense, a part of which is in these words: "The God of our fathers
raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree." The first impulse
of the council was to slay them all; but Gamaliel, one of the council,
stood up and related the history of several impostors who perished in
former days, and said: "If this work be of men it will come to nought,
but if it be of God ye can not overthrow it." He advised them to refrain
from the men and let time tell the story. The tree shall be known by its
fruits. The council acquiesced; they gave the apostles a whipping and
let them go.
A resurrection is a thing to be ascertained by men's senses. We all know
whether a man is dead by the same means by which we know whether a man
is alive. There are those who claim that "a resurrection could not be
proven by any amount of testimony, because of its being contrary to the
course of nature." But this is mere prejudice and ignorance. First: Who
can measure the extent of natural possibilities? Are they generally
known? Is it a greater thing to give life to a body once dead than to a
body that never was alive? The objection rests upon the thought that
testimony should be respected only in such cases as seem to us possible,
or in the ordinary course of nature. According to this, no amount of
evidence could establish the fact that water freezes and becomes solid
in a country where such is not the ordinary course of nature. Does a
man's ability in discerning and his truthfulness in reporting depend
upon the skill or ignorance of those who hear? We know facts that seem
to be as much contrary to the course of nature as anything could
possibly be. But, in all candor, I must claim that in appealing to the
settled course of nature, in a case like the one under consideration,
the question is referred not to the laws of evidence or maxims of
reason, but to the prejudices of men and to their mistakes, which are
many. Men form a notion of nature from what they see; so, under
different surroundings, their notions about the course of nature will
differ. The objection falls worthless at the feet of the INFINITE ONE.
There is no greater difficulty in accounting for the fact that the dead
live again than there is in accounting for the fact that they did live.
PUBLIC NOTORIETY OF THE SCRIPTURES.
Origen was born in the year one hundred and eighty-five of the Christian
dispensation, and lived sixty-eight years. He gives in his writings five
thousand seven hundred and sixty-five quotations from the New Testament.
Tertullian gives eighteen hundred and two quotations from the New
Testament. Clemens, of Alexandria, labored in the year one hundred and
ninety-four. He gives us three hundred and eighty-four quotations from
the New Testament. Ireneus lived in the year one hundred and
seventy-eight. He gives us seven hundred and sixty-seven quotations from
the New Testament, making a grand total of eight thousand seven hundred
and twenty-three quotations, given by four ancient writers.
If all the copies of the New Testament in the world were destroyed, the
whole, with the exception of eleven verses, could be reproduced from the
writings of men who lived prior to the Nicene Council. Unbelievers quote
from all ancient heathen authors as though they were books of yesterday,
without manifesting the least doubt in reference to their authenticity
or authorship. The evidences necessary to establish genuineness of
authorship are ten-fold greater in the case of the New Testament
Scriptures than in the case of the histories of Alexander, Julius Cæsar
and Cyrus, as given by ancient writers.
The notoriety of the New Testament writings during the first centuries
is without a parallel among all ancient writings. Their effect upon
society during those centuries can never be explained in harmony with
unbelief. But this is not all that is to be considered. Their notoriety
extends over the centuries between us and the times of the apostles.
Such notoriety is the grand support upon which the New Testament stands.
All other ancient writings stand upon the same kind of evidence, but
this kind of evidence is more than ten-fold greater in the support of
our religion than it is in the support of any other ancient documents.
We may obtain some idea of the influence of the New Testament Scriptures
during the first centuries from the statements of Gibbon. He says there
were "six millions of Christians in existence in the year three hundred
and thirteen." It is reasonable to allow that there were three millions
in the year one hundred and seventy-five. Under the best emperors of the
second century books were cheap. Thousands of persons engaged in writing
histories for a livelihood. It is allowed that there were as many as
fifteen thousand copies of the four gospels in circulation among the
people in the last quarter of the second century. This state of things
seems to convey the idea that it would be hard work to introduce
successfully any corruption into the text after this period of time. It
would be too easily detected.
There is also a grand argument in favor of the genuineness of our
religion, which is in the fact that it was in deathly opposition to both
Judaism and Paganism, its success being the destruction of both. If
Christianity was an imposition, its success during the first three
centuries of our era is utterly inexplicable.
WHAT PEOPLE HAVE BEEN AND DONE WITHOUT THE BIBLE.
Our ancestors complained of the reign of wickedness; we complain of it
and our posterity will complain of it. I sometimes think we are all a
set of complainers and grumblers.
Of ancient pagans it is said: "They worshiped and served the creature
more than the Creator." Of their idols Persius, who was a Roman
satirical poet, born A.D. 34, said:
"O, cares of men! O, world all fraught
With vanities! O, minds inclined
Towards earth, all void of heavenly thought!"
Sedulius, an ancient Christian poet, and by nativity a Scotchman, says
of the same:
"Ah! wretched they that worship vanities,
And consecrate dumb idols in their heart--
Who their own Maker, God on high, despise,
And fear the works of their own hands and art!
What fury, what great madness doth beguile
Men's minds that man should ugly shapes adore
Of birds, or bulls, or dragons, or the vile
Half-dog, half-man, on knees for aid implore."
One of their own poets jests them thus:
"Even now I was the stock of an old fig tree,
The workman doubting what I then should be,
A bench or god, at last a god made me."
The Romans, for a time, were without images for any religious use, but
afterwards they received into their city the idols of all the nations
they conquered; and as they became the lords of the whole earth, they
became slaves to the idols of all the world. Seneca says: "The images of
the gods they worship, those they pray unto with bended knees, _those_
they admire and adore, and contemn the artificers who made them."
The character and condition of their gods was worse than their own. The
common opinion touching their god of gods, _Jupiter_, was that he was
entombed in Crete, and his monument was there to be seen. Lactantius
_wittily_ says: "Tell me, I beseech you, how can the same god be alive
in one place and dead in another; have a temple dedicated to him in one
place and a tomb erected in another?" Callimachus, in his hymn on
_Jupiter_, calls the Cretians liars in this very respect. He says:
"The Cretians always lyars are, who raised unto thy name
A sepulchre, that never dyest, but ever art the same."
Lactantius informs us in book 10, chapter 20, that they gave divine
honor to notorious common prostitutes, as unto _goddesses_, to _Venus_,
or _Faula_, to _Lapa_, the nurse of _Romulus_, so called among the
shepherds for her common prostitution, and to Flora, who enriched
herself by her crime, and then, by will, made the people of Rome her
heir, and, also left a sum of money by which her birthday was yearly
celebrated with games, which, in memory of her, they called _Floralia_.
They claimed that their great goddess, _Juno_, was both the wife and
sister of Jupiter; and Jupiter, and the other gods, they held, were no
better that adulterers, sodomites, murderers and thieves. Such was not
held in private but published to the world. They were described by their
painters in their tables, by their poets in their verses, and acted by
their players upon their stages. (Lactantius, b. 5, ch. 21.)
As respects the manner in which they worshiped their gods, Alexander, in
his Dierum Genialium, b. 6, ch. 26, insists that the most odious thing
in their history was the effusion of human blood in the service of their
gods. This same author says, "This unnatural, barbarous practice spread
itself well nigh over the known world; it was in use among the Trojans,
as it seems from Virgil's lines touching Æneas:
"Their hands behind their backs he bound whom he had destined
A sacrifice unto the ghosts, and on whose flames to shed
Their blood he purposed."--_Ænead._
Some ignorant infidels seem at a great loss to understand why the Lord
should order the groves and altars of the heathen destroyed. (Again and
again their groves were cut down.) The children of Israel were to make
no offerings in the groves. If infidels will only exercise common sense
inside of the history of the worship of Priapus and Berecynthia, they
will cease fretting over the destruction of those beautiful forests.
Those groves were the most corrupt places upon the earth, places of
retirement from the altar into prostitution, carried on as a matter of
worship pleasing to Priapus. Here, on account of becoming modesty, the
half can not be told. The removal of nuisances in our own country is
conducted upon the same principles upon which groves were destroyed by
the Israelites.
Lycurgus dedicated an image to laughter, to be worshiped as a god, and
this is said to be "the only law he ever made pertaining to religion."
While his great object was to make warriors, he ordained some things
noted for the education of youth. He ordained other laws so much in
favor of lust and all carnality of the worst kind, that it might justly
be said he made his entire commonwealth ludicrous. He instituted
wrestlings, dances and other exercises of boys and girls naked, to be
done in public at divers times of the year, in the presence both of
young and old men. Adultery was also approved and permitted by the laws
of Lycurgus. Plato and Aristotle advocated community of women, of goods
and possessions, to the end that no man should have anything peculiar to
himself, or know his own children. This was ordained by Plato, in order
to establish in the commonwealth such a perfect unity that no man might
be able to say, that is thine, or this is mine.
Aristotle, in the second book of his "_Politiques_," sets forth many
other detestable things. Lactantius, in the third of his Divine
Institutions, shows that Plato's community of property and women took
away frugality, abstinence, shamefacedness, modesty and justice itself.
Plato, like Lycurgus, ordained that young men should, for the increase
of their physical strength and agility of body, at certain times
exercise themselves naked; that girls and servant-maids should dance
naked among the young men; that women in the flower of their youth
should dance, run, wrestle and ride with young men naked as well as
they, which, says Plato, "whosoever misliketh understandeth not how
profitable it is for the commonwealth."
The morality of ancient times may be clearly seen in the fact that all
manner of debasing things were brought to the front. How could men be
persuaded that adultery should be punished when they were taught from
infancy that it was a virtue among the gods? _Lucian_ gives his
experience thus, "When I was yet a boy, and heard out of _Homer_ and
_Hesiod_ of the adulteries, fornications, rapes and seditions of the
gods, truly I thought that those things were very excellent, and began
even then to be greatly affected towards them, for I could not imagine
that the gods themselves would ever have committed adultery if they had
not esteemed the same lawful and good." To all this it may be added that
the opinions of the ancient philosophers concerning virtue, vice, the
final happiness, and the state of the spirit after death, were diverse
and contradictory. The Epicurean doctrine was, that sovereign happiness
consisted in pleasure. They granted a God, but denied his Providence; so
virtue was without a spur, and vice without a bridle.
The Stoics also granted a Divine Providence, but they maintained such a
fatal necessity that they blunted the edge of all virtuous efforts and
excused themselves in vicious conduct. Both Stoics and Epicureans
doubted the immortality of the human spirit, and thereby opened the way
to all manner of licentiousness.
I am persuaded that eternity alone will fully reveal the consequences of
a denial of a future life and retribution; it is a physical leprosy
which removes all the most powerful incentives to virtue and loosens up
the soul to all manner of lustful gratifications.
A man once remarked: "I have lived four years an avowed infidel. I have
boasted that I would live a good man and die an infidel. I have formed
the acquaintance of all the leading infidels of my country, and I am now
prepared to candidly confess that I do not believe any man can keep a
good heart without the fear of God. Such is my observation and
experience."
THE LATEST EVOLUTIONARY CONFLICT.
THEY FIRST WISH IT TO BE SO, THEN SOON, WITHOUT PROOF, THEY ASSERT THAT
IT IS SO!
(_From the Cincinnati Gazette, of June 26, 1880._)
"Prof. Huxley is assured that the doctrine of evolution, so far as the
animal world is concerned, is no longer a speculation, but a statement
of historical fact, taking its place along side of those accepted truths
which must be taken into account by philosophers of all schools."
This statement was the summing up of an address delivered at the Royal
Institution on the 19th of March. The address was specifically an
account of "The Coming of Age of the Origin of Species"--it being nearly
twenty-one years since Darwin's work bearing that name was first
published.
The lecturer glanced at the general replacement of the catastrophic
theory of geology by the uniformitarian hypothesis, claimed that many of
the most important breaks in the line of the descent of plants and
animals had been filled, noticed the great advance made in the science
of embryology, and held that the amount of our knowledge respecting the
mammalia of the Tertiary epoch had increased fifty-fold since Darwin's
work appeared, and in some directions even approaches completeness. The
lecture closed with these words: "Thus when, on the first of October
next, 'The Origin of Species' comes of age, the promise of its youth
will be amply fulfilled and we shall be prepared to congratulate the
venerated author of the book, not only that the greatness of his
achievement and its enduring influence upon the progress of knowledge
have won him a place beside Harvey, but, still more, that, like Harvey,
he has lived long enough to outlast detraction and opposition, and to
see the stone that the builders rejected become the head-stone of the
corner."
This is plain and emphatic speaking, but it has not been suffered to
pass unchallenged.
Dr. Charles Elam, a writer who has already more than once measured
swords with the school of naturalists of which Professor Huxley is a
foremost champion, has been moved to respond to this latest utterance.
He has contributed to the _Contemporary Review_ a paper entitled "The
Gospel of Evolution," which, whatever may be its conclusiveness, is one
of the sharpest attacks recently sustained by the opposing party.
Acknowledging at the start Mr. Darwin's pre-eminence as a naturalist,
and Prof. Huxley's equal accomplishments in the department of biology,
he yet ventures to continue his doubt regarding the evidence of their
peculiar doctrines. He first cites Darwin's admissions that it would be
fatal to his theory if any organs existed which could not have been
evolved by minute selective modifications, and his further concession
that "man, as well as every other animal, presents structures which, as
far as we can judge, are not now of any service to him, nor have been so
during any former part of his existence. Such structures can not be
accounted for by any form of selection or by the inherited effects of
the use and disuse of parts."
Having contrasted Darwinism proper with its exaggerations, in the system
of Haeckel, who regards Darwin's admissions of an original creation as
contemptible, and recognizes only one force in the universe--the
mechanical, Dr. Elam compares Huxley's statement in his American
addresses that belief which is not based upon evidence is not only
illogical but immoral, with his last assertion that evolution is a fact,
doubted only by persons "who have not reached the stage of emergence
from ignorance." In 1862 Huxley also said--republishing the statements
as late as 1874:
"Obviously, if the earliest fossiliferous rocks now known are coeval
with the commencement of life, and if their contents give us any just
conception of the nature and the extent of the earliest fauna and flora,
the insignificant amount of modification which can be demonstrated to
have taken place in any one group of animals or plants is quite
incompatible with the hypothesis that all living forms are the results
of a necessary process of a progressive development, entirely comprised
within the time represented by the fossiliferous rocks."
Since this confession was uttered, whatever discoveries may have been
made, there has not been the faintest indication of the development of
any new species by artificial selection, the individuals of which are
fertile among themselves and infertile with the parent stock. It may
properly be alleged that there has not been time enough for such a slow
process, but it yet remains as true as ever that there is no direct
evidence in nature of what the Darwinians call _favorable variation_. It
is the unwritten law of nature that one race must die that another may
live, this other, in its turn, subserving the same end. Without this law
nature would be a chaotic impossibility. If natural selection were a
real agency, we ought to meet with frequent, if not constant, evidences
of transition, and a slow and gradual, but perceptible improvement in
species, especially marked in those whose generations succeed each other
rapidly. But we see nothing of the kind. But did selection really exist,
it would be incompetent to account for a multitude of structures and
functions to which any efficient cause should be applicable, notably to
the earliest rudiments of useful organs. Such organs as the eye and the
internal ear are quite out of reach of any explanation by natural
selection. Since the development of the eyes, due to the simultaneous
growth of parts from within and without, the organ itself would be
absolutely useless until it had attained such a degree of development as
to admit of these separate parts meeting, and so the principle of
preserving any useful variety would be quite inapplicable. The same is
true of the internal ear.
Dr. Elam next passes in review Haeckel's Geneology of Man from the
Lowest Monera to his Present Station as Lord of Creation. What the
Germans call invention of species to fill troublesome gaps is
illustrated in many ways, but we have room only
|
Parliament and in office, and was doing well. All men said all
good things of him. Then there was a word or two spoken between
the Marquis and the Baronet, and just a word also with Lord Alfred
himself. Lord Alfred had no objection to the name of Hotspur. This
was in October, while George Hotspur was still declaring that Gilbsy
knew nothing of getting up a head of game; and then Lord Alfred
promised to come to Humblethwaite at Christmas. It was after this
that George owned to a few debts. His confession on that score did
him no harm. Sir Harry had made up his mind that day. Sir Harry had
at that time learned a good deal of his cousin George's mode of life
in London, and had already decided that this young man was not one
whom it would be well to set upon the pinnacle.
And yet he had liked the young man, as did everybody. Lady Elizabeth
had liked him much, and for a fortnight had gone on hoping that all
difficulties might have solved themselves by the young man's marriage
with her daughter. It need hardly be said that not a word one way or
the other was spoken to Emily Hotspur; but it seemed to the mother
that the young people, though there was no love-making, yet liked
each other. Sir Harry at this time was up in London for a month or
two, hearing tidings, seeing Lord Alfred, who was at his office; and
on his return, that solution by family marriage was ordered to be for
ever banished from the maternal bosom. Sir Harry said that it would
not do.
Nevertheless, he was good to the young cousin, and when the time was
drawing nigh for the young man's departure he spoke of a further
visit. The coverts at Humblethwaite, such as they were, would always
be at his service. This was a week before the cousin went; but by the
coming of the day on which the cousin took his departure Sir Harry
regretted that he had made that offer of future hospitality.
CHAPTER II.
OUR HEROINE.
"He has said nothing to her?" asked Sir Harry, anxiously, of his
wife.
"I think not," replied Lady Elizabeth.
"Had he said anything that meant anything, she would have told you?"
"Certainly she would," said Lady Elizabeth.
Sir Harry knew his child, and was satisfied that no harm had been
done; nevertheless, he wished that that further invitation had
not been given. If this Christmas visitor that was to come to
Humblethwaite could be successful, all would be right; but it had
seemed to Sir Harry, during that last week of Cousin George's sojourn
beneath his roof, there had been more of cousinly friendship between
the cousins than had been salutary, seeing, as he had seen, that any
closer connection was inexpedient. But he thought that he was sure
that no great harm had been done. Had any word been spoken to his
girl which she herself had taken as a declaration of love, she would
certainly have told her mother. Sir Harry would no more doubt his
daughter than he would his own honour. There were certain points
and lines of duty clearly laid down for a girl so placed as was his
daughter; and Sir Harry, though he could not have told whence the
knowledge of these points and lines had come to his child, never for
a moment doubted but that she knew them, and would obey them. To know
and to obey such points of duty were a part of the inheritance of
such an one as Emily Hotspur. Nevertheless, it might be possible that
her fancy should be touched, and that she herself should know nothing
of it,--nothing that she could confide even to a mother. Sir Harry
understanding this, and having seen in these last days something as
he thought of too close a cousinly friendship, was anxious that Lord
Alfred should come and settle everything. If Lord Alfred should be
successful, all danger would be at an end, and the cousin might come
again and do what he liked with the coverts. Alas, alas! the cousin
should never have been allowed to show his handsome, wicked face at
Humblethwaite!
Emily Hotspur was a girl whom any father would have trusted; and
let the reader understand this of her, that she was one in whom
intentional deceit was impossible. Neither to her father nor to any
one could she lie either in word or action. And all these lines and
points of duty were well known to her, though she knew not, and had
never asked herself, whence the lesson had come. Will it be too much
to say, that they had formed a part of her breeding, and had been
given to her with her blood? She understood well that from her, as
heiress of the House of Humblethwaite, a double obedience was due
to her father,--the obedience of a child added to that which was
now required from her as the future transmitter of honours of the
house. And yet no word had been said to her of the honours of the
house; nor, indeed, had many words ever been said as to that other
obedience. These lessons, when they have been well learned, have ever
come without direct teaching.
But she knew more than this, and the knowledge had reached her in the
same manner. Though she owed a great duty to her father, there was
a limit to that duty, of which, unconsciously, she was well aware.
When her mother told her that Lord Alfred was coming, having been
instructed to do so by Sir Harry; and hinted, with a caress and a
kiss, and a soft whisper, that Lord Alfred was one of whom Sir Harry
approved greatly, and that if further approval could be bestowed Sir
Harry would not be displeased, Emily as she returned her mother's
embrace, felt that she had a possession of her own with which neither
father nor mother might be allowed to interfere. It was for them, or
rather for him, to say that a hand so weighted as was hers should not
be given here or there; but it was not for them, not even for him, to
say that her heart was to be given here, or to be given there. Let
them put upon her what weight they might of family honours, and of
family responsibility, that was her own property;--if not, perhaps,
to be bestowed at her own pleasure, because of the pressure of that
weight, still her own, and absolutely beyond the bestowal of any
other.
Nevertheless, she declared to herself, and whispered to her mother,
that she would be glad to welcome Lord Alfred. She had known him well
when she was a child of twelve years old and he was already a young
man in Parliament. Since those days she had met him more than once in
London. She was now turned twenty, and he was something more than ten
years her senior; but there was nothing against him, at any rate, on
the score of age. Lord Alfred was admitted on every side to be still
a young man; and though he had already been a lord of one Board or
of another for the last four years, and had earned a reputation for
working, he did not look like a man who would be more addicted to
sitting at Boards than spending his time with young women. He was
handsome, pleasant, good-humoured, and full of talk; had nothing
about him of the official fogy; and was regarded by all his friends
as a man who was just now fit to marry. "They say that he is such a
good son, and such a good brother," said Lady Elizabeth, anxiously.
"Quite a Phoenix!" said Emily, laughing. Then Lady Elizabeth began
to fear that she had said too much, and did not mention Lord Alfred's
name for two days.
But Miss Hotspur had by that time resolved that Lord Alfred should
have a fair chance. If she could teach herself to think that of all
men walking the earth Lord Alfred was the best and the most divine,
the nearest of all men to a god, how excellent a thing would it be!
Her great responsibility as to the family burden would in that case
already be acquitted with credit. The wishes of her father, which on
such a subject were all but paramount, would be gratified; and she
herself would then be placed almost beyond the hand of misfortune to
hurt her. At any rate, the great and almost crushing difficulty of
her life would so be solved. But the man must have enough in her eyes
of that godlike glory to satisfy her that she had found in him one
who would be almost a divinity, at any rate to her. Could he speak as
that other man spoke? Could he look as that other one looked? Would
there be in his eye such a depth of colour, in his voice such a sound
of music, in his gait so divine a grace? For that other one, though
she had looked into the brightness of the colour, though she had
heard the sweetness of the music, though she had watched the elastic
spring of the step, she cared nothing as regarded her heart--her
heart, which was the one treasure of her own. No; she was sure of
that. Of her one own great treasure, she was much too chary to give
it away unasked, and too independent, as she told herself, to give
it away unauthorized. The field was open to Lord Alfred; and, as her
father wished it, Lord Alfred should be received with every favour.
If she could find divinity, then she would bow before it readily.
Alas for Lord Alfred! We may all know that when she thought of it
thus, there was but poor chance of success for Lord Alfred. Let him
have what of the godlike he might, she would find but little of it
there when she made her calculations and resolutions after such
fashion as this. The man who becomes divine in a woman's eyes, has
generally achieved his claim to celestial honours by sudden assault.
And, alas! the qualities which carry him through it and give the halo
to his head may after all be very ungodlike. Some such achievement
had already fallen in the way of Cousin George; though had Cousin
George and Lord Alfred been weighed in just scales, the divinity of
the latter, such as it was, would have been found greatly to prevail.
Indeed, it might perhaps have been difficult to lay hold of and bring
forward as presentable for such office as that of a lover for such
a girl any young man who should be less godlike than Cousin George.
But he had gifts of simulation, which are valuable; and poor Emily
Hotspur had not yet learned the housewife's trick of passing the web
through her fingers, and of finding by the touch whether the fabric
were of fine wool, or of shoddy made up with craft to look like wool
of the finest.
We say that there was but small chance for Lord Alfred; nevertheless
the lady was dutifully minded to give him all the chance that it was
in her power to bestow. She did not tell herself that her father's
hopes were vain. Of her preference for that other man she never told
herself anything. She was not aware that it existed. She knew that he
was handsome; she thought that he was clever. She knew that he had
talked to her as no man had ever talked before. She was aware that
he was her nearest relative beyond her father and mother, and that
therefore she might be allowed to love him as a cousin. She told
herself that he was a Hotspur, and that he must be the head of the
Hotspurs when her father should be taken from them. She thought
that he looked as a man should look who would have to carry such a
dignity. But there was nothing more. No word had been said to her on
the subject; but she was aware, because no word had been said, that
it was not thought fitting that she should be her cousin's bride. She
could not but know how great would be the advantage could the estates
and the title be kept together. Even though he should inherit no
acre of the land,--and she had been told by her father that such
was his decision,--this Cousin George must become the head of the
House of Hotspur; and to be head of the House of Hotspur was to
her a much greater thing than to be the owner of Humblethwaite and
Scarrowby. Gifts like the latter might be given to a mere girl, like
herself,--were to be so given. But let any man living do what he
might, George Hotspur must become the head and chief of the old House
of Hotspur. Nevertheless, it was not for her to join the two things
together, unless her father should see that it would be good for her
to do so.
Emily Hotspur was very like her father, having that peculiar cast of
countenance which had always characterized the family. She had the
same arch in her eyebrows, indicating an aptitude for authority; the
same well-formed nose, though with her the beak of the eagle was less
prominent; the same short lip, and small mouth, and delicate dimpled
chin. With both of them the lower part of the face was peculiarly
short, and finely cut. With both of them the brow was high and broad,
and the temples prominent. But the girl's eyes were blue, while those
of the old man were brightly green. It was told of him that when a
boy his eyes also had been blue. Her hair, which was very plentiful,
was light in colour, but by no means flaxen. Her complexion was as
clear as the finest porcelain; but there were ever roses in her
cheeks, for she was strong by nature, and her health was perfect. She
was somewhat short of stature, as were all the Hotspurs, and her feet
and hands and ears were small and delicate. But though short, she
seemed to lack nothing in symmetry, and certainly lacked nothing in
strength. She could ride or walk the whole day, and had no feeling
that such vigour of body was a possession of which a young lady
should be ashamed. Such as she was, she was the acknowledged beauty
of the county; and at Carlisle, where she showed herself at least
once a year at the county ball, there was neither man nor woman,
young nor old, who was not ready to say that Emily Hotspur was, among
maidens, the glory of Cumberland.
Her life hitherto had been very quiet. There was the ball at
Carlisle, which she had attended thrice; on the last occasion,
because of her brother's death, she had been absent, and the family
of the Hotspurs had been represented there only by the venison and
game which had been sent from Humblethwaite. Twice also she had spent
the months of May and June in London; but it had not hitherto suited
the tone of her father's character to send his daughter out into all
the racket of a London season. She had gone to balls, and to the
opera, and had ridden in the Park, and been seen at flower-shows;
but she had not been so common in those places as to be known to the
crowd. And, hitherto, neither in town or country, had her name been
connected with that of any suitor for her hand. She was now twenty,
and the reader will remember that in the twelve months last past, the
House of Humblethwaite had been clouded with deep mourning.
The cousin was come and gone, and the Baronet hoped in his heart
that there might be an end of him as far as Humblethwaite was
concerned;--at any rate till his child should have given herself to a
better lover. Tidings had been sent to Sir Harry during the last week
of the young man's sojourn beneath his roof, which of all that had
reached his ears were the worst. He had before heard of recklessness,
of debt, of dissipation, of bad comrades. Now he heard of worse than
these. If that which he now heard was true, there had been dishonour.
But Sir Harry was a man who wanted ample evidence before he allowed
his judgment to actuate his conduct, and in this case the evidence
was far from ample. He did not stint his hospitality to the future
baronet, but he failed to repeat that promise of a future welcome
which had already been given, and which had been thankfully accepted.
But a man knows that such an offer of renewed hospitality should be
repeated at the moment of departure, and George Hotspur, as he was
taken away to the nearest station in his cousin's carriage, was quite
aware that Sir Harry did not then desire that the visit should be
repeated.
Lord Alfred was to be at Humblethwaite on Christmas-eve. The
emergencies of the Board at which he sat would not allow of an
earlier absence from London. He was a man who shirked no official
duty, and was afraid of no amount of work; and though he knew how
great was the prize before him, he refused to leave his Board before
the day had come at which his Board must necessarily dispense with
his services. Between him and his father there had been no reticence,
and it was clearly understood by him that he was to go down and win
twenty thousand a year and the prettiest girl in Cumberland, if his
own capacity that way, joined to all the favour of the girl's father
and mother, would enable him to attain success. To Emily not a word
more had been said on the subject than those which have been already
narrated as having been spoken by the mother to the daughter. With
all his authority, with all his love for his only remaining child,
with all his consciousness of the terrible importance of the matter
at issue, Sir Harry could not bring himself to suggest to his
daughter that it would be well for her to fall in love with the guest
who was coming to them. But to Lady Elizabeth he said very much. He
had quite made up his mind that the thing would be good, and, having
done so, he was very anxious that the arrangement should be made. It
was natural that this girl of his should learn to love some youth;
and how terrible was the danger of her loving amiss, when so much
depended on her loving wisely! The whole fate of the House of Hotspur
was in her hands,--to do with it as she thought fit! Sir Harry
trembled as he reflected what would be the result were she to come to
him some day and ask his favour for a suitor wholly unfitted to bear
the name of Hotspur, and to sit on the throne of Humblethwaite and
Scarrowby.
"Is she pleased that he is coming?" he said to his wife, the evening
before the arrival of their guest.
"Certainly she is pleased. She knows that we both like him."
"I remember when she used to talk about him--often," said Sir Harry.
"That was when she was a child."
"But a year or two ago," said Sir Harry.
"Three or four years, perhaps; and with her that is a long time. It
is not likely that she should talk much of him now. Of course she
knows what it is that we wish."
"Does she think about her cousin at all?" he said some hours
afterwards.
"Yes, she thinks of him. That is only natural, you know."
"It would be unnatural that she should think of him much."
"I do not see that," said the mother, keen to defend her daughter
from what might seem to be an implied reproach. "George Hotspur is a
man who will make himself thought of wherever he goes. He is clever,
and very amusing;--there is no denying that. And then he has the
Hotspur look all over."
"I wish he had never set his foot within the house," said the father.
"My dear, there is no such danger as you think," said Lady Elizabeth.
"Emily is not a girl prone to fall in love at a moment's notice
because a man is good-looking and amusing;--and certainly not with
the conviction which she must have that her doing so would greatly
grieve you." Sir Harry believed in his daughter, and said no more;
but he thoroughly wished that Lord Alfred's wedding-day was fixed.
"Mamma," said Emily, on the following day, "won't Lord Alfred be very
dull?"
"I hope not, my dear."
"What is he to do, with nobody else here to amuse him?"
"The Crutchleys are coming on the 27th."
Now Mr. and Mrs. Crutchley were, as Emily thought, very ordinary
people, and quite unlikely to afford amusement to Lord Alfred. Mr.
Crutchley was an old gentleman of county standing, and with property
in the county, living in a large dull red house in Penrith, of
whom Sir Harry thought a good deal, because he was a gentleman who
happened to have had great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers. But
he was quite as old as Sir Harry, and Mrs. Crutchley was a great deal
older than Lady Elizabeth.
"What will Lord Alfred have to say to Mrs. Crutchley, mamma?"
"What do people in society always have to say to each other? And the
Lathebys are coming here to dine to-morrow, and will come again, I
don't doubt, on the 27th."
Mr. Latheby was the young Vicar of Humblethwaite, and Mrs. Latheby
was a very pretty young bride whom he had just married.
"And then Lord Alfred shoots," continued Lady Elizabeth.
"Cousin George said that the shooting wasn't worth going after," said
Emily, smiling. "Mamma, I fear it will be a failure." This made Lady
Elizabeth unhappy, as she thought that more was meant than was really
said. But she did not confide her fears to her husband.
CHAPTER III.
LORD ALFRED'S COURTSHIP.
The Hall, as the great house at Humblethwaite was called, consisted
in truth of various edifices added one to another at various periods;
but the result was this, that no more picturesque mansion could be
found in any part of England than the Hall at Humblethwaite. The
oldest portion of it was said to be of the time of Henry VII.; but it
may perhaps be doubted whether the set of rooms with lattice windows
looking out on to the bowling-green, each window from beneath its
own gable, was so old as the date assigned to it. It is strange how
little authority can usually be found in family records to verify
such statements. It was known that Humblethwaite and the surrounding
manors had been given to, or in some fashion purchased by, a certain
Harry Hotspur, who also in his day had been a knight, when Church
lands were changing hands under Henry VIII. And there was authority
to prove that that Sir Harry had done something towards making a
home for himself on the spot; but whether those very gables were a
portion of the building which the monks of St. Humble had raised for
themselves in the preceding reign, may probably be doubted. That
there were fragments of masonry, and parts of old timber, remaining
from the monastery was probably true enough. The great body of the
old house, as it now stood, had been built in the time of Charles
II., and there was the date in the brickwork still conspicuous on the
wall looking into the court. The hall and front door as it now stood,
very prominent but quite at the end of the house, had been erected in
the reign of Queen Anne, and the modern drawing-rooms with the best
bedrooms over them, projecting far out into the modern gardens, had
been added by the present baronet's father. The house was entirely
of brick, and the old windows,--not the very oldest, the reader will
understand, but those of the Caroline age,--were built with strong
stone mullions, and were longer than they were deep, beauty of
architecture having in those days been more regarded than light. Who
does not know such windows, and has not declared to himself often
how sad a thing it is that sanitary or scientific calculations
should have banished the like of them from our houses? Two large
oriel windows coming almost to the ground, and going up almost to
the ceilings, adorned the dining-room and the library. From the
drawing-rooms modern windows, opening on to a terrace, led into the
garden.
You entered the mansion by a court that was enclosed on two sides
altogether, and on the two others partially. Facing you, as you drove
in, was the body of the building, with the huge porch projecting on
the right so as to give the appearance of a portion of the house
standing out on that side. On the left was that old mythic Tudor
remnant of the monastery, of which the back wall seen from the court
was pierced only with a small window here and there, and was covered
with ivy. Those lattice windows, from which Emily Hotspur loved to
think that the monks of old had looked into their trim gardens, now
looked on to a bowling-green which was kept very trim in honour of
the holy personages who were supposed to have played there four
centuries ago. Then, at the end of this old building, there had been
erected kitchens, servants' offices, and various rooms, which turned
the corner of the court in front, so that only one corner had, as
it were, been left for ingress and egress. But the court itself was
large, and in the middle of it there stood an old stone ornamental
structure, usually called the fountain, but quite ignorant of water,
loaded with griffins and satyrs and mermaids with ample busts, all
overgrown with a green damp growth, which was scraped off by the
joint efforts of the gardener and mason once perhaps in every five
years.
It often seems that the beauty of architecture is accidental. A great
man goes to work with great means on a great pile, and makes a great
failure. The world perceives that grace and beauty have escaped him,
and that even magnificence has been hardly achieved. Then there grows
up beneath various unknown hands a complication of stones and brick
to the arrangement of which no great thought seems to have been
given; and, lo, there is a thing so perfect in its glory that he who
looks at it declares that nothing could be taken away and nothing
added without injury and sacrilege and disgrace. So it had been, or
rather so it was now, with the Hall at Humblethwaite. No rule ever
made for the guidance of an artist had been kept. The parts were out
of proportion. No two parts seemed to fit each other. Put it all on
paper, and it was an absurdity. The huge hall and porch added on by
the builder of Queen Anne's time, at the very extremity of the house,
were almost a monstrosity. The passages and staircases, and internal
arrangements, were simply ridiculous. But there was not a portion
of the whole interior that did not charm; nor was there a corner of
the exterior, nor a yard of an outside wall, that was not in itself
eminently beautiful.
Lord Alfred Gresley, as he was driven into the court in the early
dusk of a winter evening, having passed through a mile and a half
of such park scenery as only Cumberland and Westmoreland can show,
was fully alive to the glories of the place. Humblethwaite did not
lie among the lakes,--was, indeed, full ten miles to the north of
Keswick; but it was so placed that it enjoyed the beauty and the
luxury of mountains and rivers, without the roughness of unmanageable
rocks, or the sterility and dampness of moorland. Of rocky fragments,
indeed, peeping out through the close turf, and here and there coming
forth boldly so as to break the park into little depths, with now and
again a real ravine, there were plenty. And there ran right across
the park, passing so near the Hall as to require a stone bridge in
the very flower-garden, the Caldbeck, as bright and swift a stream
as ever took away the water from neighbouring mountains. And to the
south of Humblethwaite there stood the huge Skiddaw, and Saddleback
with its long gaunt ridge; while to the west, Brockleband Fell seemed
to encircle the domain. Lord Alfred, as he was driven up through the
old trees, and saw the deer peering at him from the knolls and broken
fragments of stone, felt that he need not envy his elder brother if
only his lines might fall to him in this very pleasant place.
He had known Humblethwaite before; and, irrespective of all its
beauties, and of the wealth of the Hotspurs, was quite willing to
fall in love with Emily Hotspur. That a man with such dainties
offered to him should not become greedy, that there should be no
touch of avarice when such wealth was shown to him, is almost more
than we may dare to assert. But Lord Alfred was a man not specially
given to covetousness. He had recognized it as his duty as a man not
to seek for these things unless he could in truth love the woman who
held them in her hands to give. But as he looked round him through
the gloaming of the evening, he thought that he remembered that Emily
Hotspur was all that was loveable.
But, reader, we must not linger long over Lord Alfred's love. A few
words as to the father, a few as to the daughter, and a few also as
to the old house where they dwelt together, it has been necessary to
say; but this little love story of Lord Alfred's,--if it ever was a
love story,--must be told very shortly.
He remained five weeks at Humblethwaite, and showed himself willing
to receive amusement from old Mrs. Crutchley and from young Mrs.
Latheby. The shooting was quite good enough for him, and he won
golden opinions from every one about the place. He made himself
acquainted with the whole history of the house, and was prepared to
prove to demonstration that Henry VII.'s monks had looked out of
those very windows, and had played at bowls on that very green. Emily
became fond of him after a fashion, but he failed to assume any
aspect of divinity in her eyes.
Of the thing to be done, neither father nor mother said a word to
the girl; and she, though she knew so well that the doing of it was
intended, said not a word to her mother. Had Lady Elizabeth known how
to speak, had she dared to be free with her own child, Emily would
soon have told her that there was no chance for Lord Alfred. And Lady
Elizabeth would have believed her. Nay, Lady Elizabeth, though she
could not speak, had the woman's instinct, which almost assured her
that the match would never be made. Sir Harry, on the other side,
thought that things went prosperously; and his wife did not dare to
undeceive him. He saw the young people together, and thought that he
saw that Emily was kind. He did not know that this frank kindness was
incompatible with love in such a maiden's ways. As for Emily herself,
she knew that it must come. She knew that she could not prevent it. A
slight hint or two she did give, or thought she gave, but they were
too fine, too impalpable to be of avail.
Lord Alfred spoke nothing of love till he made his offer in form. At
last he was not hopeful himself. He had found it impossible to speak
to this girl of love. She had been gracious with him, and almost
intimate, and yet it had been impossible. He thought of himself that
he was dull, stupid, lethargic, and miserably undemonstrative. But
the truth was that there was nothing for him to demonstrate. He had
come there to do a stroke of business, and he could not throw into
this business a spark of that fire which would have been kindled
by such sympathy had it existed. There are men who can raise such
sparks, the pretence of fire, where there is no heat at all;--false,
fraudulent men; but he was not such an one. Nevertheless he went on
with his business.
"Miss Hotspur," he said to her one morning between breakfast and
lunch, when, as usual, opportunity had been given him to be alone
with her, "I have something to say to you, which I hope at any rate
it will not make you angry to hear."
"I am sure you will say nothing to make me angry," she replied.
"I have already spoken to your father, and I have his permission. I
may say more. He assures me that he hopes I may succeed." He paused
a moment, but she remained quite tranquil. He watched her, and could
see that the delicate pink on her cheek was a little heightened, and
that a streak of colour showed itself on her fair brow; but there
was nothing in her manner to give him either promise of success or
assurance of failure. "You will know what I mean?"
"Yes, I know," she said, almost in a whisper.
"And may I hope? To say that I love you dearly seems to be saying
what must be a matter of course."
"I do not see that at all," she replied with spirit.
"I do love you very dearly. If I may be allowed to think that you
will be my wife, I shall be the happiest man in England. I know how
great is the honour which I seek, how immense in every way is the
gift which I ask you to give me. Can you love me?"
"No," she said, again dropping her voice to a whisper.
"Is that all the answer, Miss Hotspur?"
"What should I say? How ought I to answer you? If I could say it
without seeming to be unkind, indeed, indeed, I would do so."
"Perhaps I have been abrupt."
"It is not that. When you ask me--to--to--love you, of course I know
what you mean. Should I not speak the truth at once?"
"Must this be for always?"
"For always," she replied. And then it was over.
He did not himself press his suit further, though he remained at
Humblethwaite for three days after this interview.
Before lunch on that day the story had been told by Emily to her
mother, and by Lord Alfred to Sir Harry. Lady Elizabeth knew well
enough that the story would never have to be told in another way. Sir
Harry by no means so easily gave up his enterprise. He proposed to
Lord Alfred that Emily should be asked to reconsider her verdict.
With his wife he was very round, saying that an answer given so
curtly should go for nothing, and that the girl must be taught her
duty. With Emily herself he was less urgent, less authoritative,
and indeed at last somewhat suppliant. He explained to her how
excellent would be the marriage; how it would settle this terrible
responsibility which now lay on his shoulders with so heavy a weight;
how glorious would be her position; and how the Hotspurs would still
live as a great family could she bring herself to be obedient. And he
said very much in praise of Lord Alfred, pointing out how good a man
he was, how moral, how diligent, how safe, how clever,--how sure,
with the assistance of the means which she would give him, to be one
of the notable men of the country. But she never yielded an inch. She
said very little,--answered him hardly a word, standing close to him,
holding by his arm and his hand. There was the fact, that she would
not have the man, would not have the man now or ever, certainly would
not have him; and Sir Harry, let him struggle as he might, and talk
his best, could not keep himself from giving absolute credit to her
assurance.
The visit was prolonged for three days, and then Lord Alfred left
Humblethwaite Hall, with less appreciation of all its beauties than
he had felt as he was first being driven up to the Hall doors. When
he went, Sir Harry could only bid God bless him, and assure him that,
should he ever choose to try his fortune again, he should have all
the aid which a father could give him.
"It would be useless," said Lord Alfred; "she knows her own mind too
well."
And so he went his way.
CHAPTER IV.
VACILLATION.
When the spring-time came, Sir Harry Hotspur with his wife and
daughter, went up to London. During the last season the house in
Bruton Street had been empty. He and his wife were then mourning
their lost son, and there was no place for the gaiety of London in
their lives. Sir Harry was still thinking of his great loss. He was
always thinking of the boy who was gone, who had been the apple of
his eye, his one great treasure, the only human being in the world
whose superior
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across the turf and into the thicket,
the sunshine seemed really to become green, and the contrast between
the bright glow poured on the lawn and the black shadow of the brake
made an odd flickering light, in which all the grotesque postures of
stem and root began to stir; the wood was alive. The turf beneath him
heaved and sank as with the deep swell of the sea. He fell asleep, and
lay still on the grass, in the midst of the thicket.
He found out afterwards that he must have slept for nearly an hour. The
shadows had changed when he awoke; his senses came to him with a sudden
shock, and he sat up and stared at his bare limbs in stupid amazement.
He huddled on his clothes and laced his boots, wondering what folly had
beset him. Then, while he stood indecisive, hesitating, his brain a
whirl of puzzled thought, his body trembling, his hands shaking; as
with electric heat, sudden remembrance possessed him. A flaming blush
shone red on his cheeks, and glowed and thrilled through his limbs. As
he awoke, a brief and slight breeze had stirred in a nook of the matted
boughs, and there was a glinting that might have been the flash of
sudden sunlight across shadow, and the branches rustled and murmured
for a moment, perhaps at the wind’s passage.
He stretched out his hands, and cried to his visitant to return; he
entreated the dark eyes that had shone over him, and the scarlet lips
that had kissed him. And then panic fear rushed into his heart, and he
ran blindly, dashing through the wood. He climbed the _vallum_, and
looked out, crouching, lest anybody should see him. Only the shadows
were changed, and a breath of cooler air mounted from the brook; the
fields were still and peaceful, the black figures moved, far away,
amidst the corn, and the faint echo of the high-pitched voices sang
thin and distant on the evening wind. Across the stream, in the cleft
on the hill, opposite to the fort, the blue wood smoke stole up a
spiral pillar from the chimney of old Mrs. Gibbon’s cottage. He began
to run full tilt down the steep surge of the hill, and never stopped
till he was over the gate and in the lane again. As he looked back,
down the valley to the south, and saw the violent ascent, the green
swelling bulwarks, and the dark ring of oaks; the sunlight seemed to
play about the fort with an aureole of flame.
“Where on earth have you been all this time, Lucian?” said his cousin
when he got home. “Why, you look quite ill. It is really madness of you
to go walking in such weather as this. I wonder you haven’t got a
sunstroke. And the tea must be nearly cold. I couldn’t keep your father
waiting, you know.”
He muttered something about being rather tired, and sat down to his
tea. It was not cold, for the “cozy” had been put over the pot, but it
was black and bitter strong, as his cousin expressed it. The draught
was unpalatable, but it did him good, and the thought came with great
consolation that he had only been asleep and dreaming queer,
nightmarish dreams. He shook off all his fancies with resolution, and
thought the loneliness of the camp, and the burning sunlight, and
possibly the nettle sting, which still tingled most abominably, must
have been the only factors in his farrago of impossible recollections.
He remembered that when he had felt the sting, he had seized a nettle
with thick folds of his handkerchief, and having twisted off a good
length, and put it in his pocket to show his father. Mr. Taylor was
almost interested when he came in from his evening stroll about the
garden and saw the specimen.
“Where did you manage to come across that, Lucian?” he said. “You
haven’t been to Caermaen, have you?”
“No. I got it in the Roman fort by the common.”
“Oh, the twyn. You must have been trespassing then. Do you know what it
is?”
“No. I thought it looked different from the common nettles.”
“Yes; it’s a Roman nettle—_urtica pilulifera_. It’s a rare plant.
Burrows says it’s to be found at Caermaen, but I was never able to come
across it. I must add it to the _flora_ of the parish.”
Mr. Taylor had begun to compile a _flora_ accompanied by a _hortus
siccus_, but both stayed on high shelves dusty and fragmentary. He put
the specimen on his desk, intending to fasten it in the book, but the
maid swept it away, dry and withered, in a day or two.
Lucian tossed and cried out in his sleep that night, and the awakening
in the morning was, in a measure, a renewal of the awakening in the
fort. But the impression was not so strong, and in a plain room it
seemed all delirium, a phantasmagoria. He had to go down to Caermaen in
the afternoon, for Mrs. Dixon, the vicar’s wife, had “commanded” his
presence at tea. Mr. Dixon, though fat and short and clean shaven,
ruddy of face, was a safe man, with no extreme views on anything. He
“deplored” all extreme party convictions, and thought the great needs
of our beloved Church were conciliation, moderation, and above all
“amolgamation”—so he pronounced the word. Mrs. Dixon was tall,
imposing, splendid, well fitted for the Episcopal order, with gifts
that would have shone at the palace. There were daughters, who studied
German Literature, and thought Miss Frances Ridley Havergal wrote
poetry, but Lucian had no fear of them; he dreaded the boys. Everybody
said they were such fine, manly fellows, such gentlemanly boys, with
such a good manner, sure to get on in the world. Lucian had said
“Bother!” in a very violent manner when the gracious invitation was
conveyed to him, but there was no getting out of it. Miss Deacon did
her best to make him look smart; his ties were all so disgraceful that
she had to supply the want with a narrow ribbon of a sky-blue tint; and
she brushed him so long and so violently that he quite understood why a
horse sometimes bites and sometimes kicks the groom. He set out between
two and three in a gloomy frame of mind; he knew too well what spending
the afternoon with honest manly boys meant. He found the reality more
lurid than his anticipation. The boys were in the field, and the first
remark he heard when he got in sight of the group was:
“Hullo, Lucian, how much for the tie?” “Fine tie,” another, a stranger,
observed. “You bagged it from the kitten, didn’t you?”
Then they made up a game of cricket, and he was put in first. He was
l.b.w. in his second over, so they all said, and had to field for the
rest of the afternoon. Arthur Dixon, who was about his own age,
forgetting all the laws of hospitality, told him he was a beastly muff
when he missed a catch, rather a difficult catch. He missed several
catches, and it seemed as if he were always panting after balls, which,
as Edward Dixon said, any fool, even a baby, could have stopped. At
last the game broke up, solely from Lucian’s lack of skill, as
everybody declared. Edward Dixon, who was thirteen, and had a swollen
red face and a projecting eye, wanted to fight him for spoiling the
game, and the others agreed that he funked the fight in a rather dirty
manner. The strange boy, who was called De Carti, and was understood to
be faintly related to Lord De Carti of M’Carthytown, said openly that
the fellows at his place wouldn’t stand such a sneak for five minutes.
So the afternoon passed off very pleasantly indeed, till it was time to
go into the vicarage for weak tea, homemade cake, and unripe plums. He
got away at last. As he went out at the gate, he heard De Carti’s final
observation:
“We like to dress well at our place. His governor must be beastly poor
to let him go about like that. D’ye see his trousers are all ragged at
heel? Is old Taylor a gentleman?”
It had been a very gentlemanly afternoon, but there was a certain
relief when the vicarage was far behind, and the evening smoke of the
little town, once the glorious capital of Siluria, hung haze-like over
the ragged roofs and mingled with the river mist. He looked down from
the height of the road on the huddled houses, saw the points of light
start out suddenly from the cottages on the hillside beyond, and gazed
at the long lovely valley fading in the twilight, till the darkness
came and all that remained was the somber ridge of the forest. The way
was pleasant through the solemn scented lane, with glimpses of dim
country, the vague mystery of night overshadowing the woods and
meadows. A warm wind blew gusts of odour from the meadowsweet by the
brook, now and then bee and beetle span homeward through the air,
booming a deep note as from a great organ far away, and from the verge
of the wood came the “who-oo, who-oo, who-oo” of the owls, a wild
strange sound that mingled with the whirr and rattle of the night-jar,
deep in the bracken. The moon swam up through the films of misty cloud,
and hung, a golden glorious lantern, in mid-air; and, set in the dusky
hedge, the little green fires of the glowworms appeared. He sauntered
slowly up the lane, drinking in the religion of the scene, and thinking
the country by night as mystic and wonderful as a dimly-lit cathedral.
He had quite forgotten the “manly young fellows” and their sports, and
only wished as the land began to shimmer and gleam in the moonlight
that he knew by some medium of words or colour how to represent the
loveliness about his way.
“Had a pleasant evening, Lucian?” said his father when he came in.
“Yes, I had a nice walk home. Oh, in the afternoon we played cricket. I
didn’t care for it much. There was a boy named De Carti there; he is
staying with the Dixons. Mrs. Dixon whispered to me when we were going
in to tea, ‘He’s a second cousin of Lord De Carti’s,’ and she looked
quite grave as if she were in church.”
The parson grinned grimly and lit his old pipe.
“Baron De Carti’s great-grandfather was a Dublin attorney,” he
remarked. “Which his name was Jeremiah M’Carthy. His prejudiced
fellow-citizens called him the Unjust Steward, also the Bloody
Attorney, and I believe that ‘to hell with M’Carthy’ was quite a
popular cry about the time of the Union.”
Mr. Taylor was a man of very wide and irregular reading and a tenacious
memory; he often used to wonder why he had not risen in the Church. He
had once told Mr. Dixon a singular and _drolatique_ anecdote concerning
the bishop’s college days, and he never discovered why the prelate did
not bow according to his custom when the name of Taylor was called at
the next visitation. Some people said the reason was lighted candles,
but that was impossible, as the Reverend and Honorable Smallwood
Stafford, Lord Beamys’s son, who had a cure of souls in the cathedral
city, was well known to burn no end of candles, and with him the bishop
was on the best of terms. Indeed the bishop often stayed at Coplesey
(pronounced “Copsey”) Hall, Lord Beamys’s place in the west.
Lucian had mentioned the name of De Carti with intention, and had
perhaps exaggerated a little Mrs. Dixon’s respectful manner. He knew
such incidents cheered his father, who could never look at these
subjects from a proper point of view, and, as people said, sometimes
made the strangest remarks for a clergyman. This irreverent way of
treating serious things was one of the great bonds between father and
son, but it tended to increase their isolation. People said they would
often have liked to asked Mr. Taylor to garden-parties, and
tea-parties, and other cheap entertainments, if only he had not been
such an _extreme_ man and so _queer_. Indeed, a year before, Mr. Taylor
had gone to a garden-party at the Castle, Caermaen, and had made such
fun of the bishop’s recent address on missions to the Portuguese, that
the Gervases and Dixons and all who heard him were quite shocked and
annoyed. And, as Mrs. Meyrick of Lanyravon observed, his black coat was
perfectly _green_ with age; so on the whole the Gervases did not like
to invite Mr. Taylor again. As for the son, nobody cared to have him;
Mrs. Dixon, as she said to her husband, really asked him out of
charity.
“I am afraid he seldom gets a real meal at home,” she remarked, “so I
thought he would enjoy a good wholesome tea for once in a way. But he
is such an _unsatisfactory_ boy, he would only have one slice of that
nice plain cake, and I couldn’t get him to take more than two plums.
They were really quite ripe too, and boys are usually so fond of
fruit.”
Thus Lucian was forced to spend his holidays chiefly in his own
company, and make the best he could of the ripe peaches on the south
wall of the rectory garden. There was a certain corner where the heat
of that hot August seemed concentrated, reverberated from one wall to
the other, and here he liked to linger of mornings, when the mists were
still thick in the valleys, “mooning,” meditating, extending his walk
from the quince to the medlar and back again, beside the mouldering
walls of mellowed brick. He was full of a certain wonder and awe, not
unmixed with a swell of strange exultation, and wished more and more to
be alone, to think over that wonderful afternoon within the fort. In
spite of himself the impression was fading; he could not understand
that feeling of mad panic terror that drove him through the thicket and
down the steep hillside; yet, he had experienced so clearly the
physical shame and reluctance of the flesh; he recollected that for a
few seconds after his awakening the sight of his own body had made him
shudder and writhe as if it had suffered some profoundest degradation.
He saw before him a vision of two forms; a faun with tingling and
prickling flesh lay expectant in the sunlight, and there was also the
likeness of a miserable shamed boy, standing with trembling body and
shaking, unsteady hands. It was all confused, a procession of blurred
images, now of rapture and ecstasy, and now of terror and shame,
floating in a light that was altogether phantasmal and unreal. He dared
not approach the fort again; he lingered in the road to Caermaen that
passed behind it, but a mile away, and separated by the wild land and a
strip of wood from the towering battlements. Here he was looking over a
gate one day, doubtful and wondering, when he heard a heavy step behind
him, and glancing round quickly saw it was old Morgan of the White
House.
“Good afternoon, Master Lucian,” he began. “Mr. Taylor pretty well, I
suppose? I be goin’ to the house a minute; the men in the fields are
wantin’ some more cider. Would you come and taste a drop of cider,
Master Lucian? It’s very good, sir, indeed.”
Lucian did not want any cider, but he thought it would please old
Morgan if he took some, so he said he should like to taste the cider
very much indeed. Morgan was a sturdy, thick-set old man of the ancient
stock; a stiff churchman, who breakfasted regularly on fat broth and
Caerphilly cheese in the fashion of his ancestors; hot, spiced elder
wine was for winter nights, and gin for festal seasons. The farm had
always been the freehold of the family, and when Lucian, in the wake of
the yeoman, passed through the deep porch by the oaken door, down into
the long dark kitchen, he felt as though the seventeenth century still
lingered on. One mullioned window, set deep in the sloping wall, gave
all the light there was through quarries of thick glass in which there
were whorls and circles, so that the lapping rose-branch and the garden
and the fields beyond were distorted to the sight. Two heavy beams,
oaken but whitewashed, ran across the ceiling; a little glow of fire
sparkled in the great fireplace, and a curl of blue smoke fled up the
cavern of the chimney. Here was the genuine chimney-corner of our
fathers; there were seats on each side of the fireplace where one could
sit snug and sheltered on December nights, warm and merry in the
blazing light, and listen to the battle of the storm, and hear the
flame spit and hiss at the falling snowflakes. At the back of the fire
were great blackened tiles with raised initials and a date—I.M., 1684.
“Sit down, Master Lucian, sit down, sir,” said Morgan.
“Annie,” he called through one of the numerous doors, “here’s Master
Lucian, the parson, would like a drop of cider. Fetch a jug, will you,
directly?”
“Very well, father,” came the voice from the dairy and presently the
girl entered, wiping the jug she held. In his boyish way Lucian had
been a good deal disturbed by Annie Morgan; he could see her on Sundays
from his seat in church, and her skin, curiously pale, her lips that
seemed as though they were stained with some brilliant pigment, her
black hair, and the quivering black eyes, gave him odd fancies which he
had hardly shaped to himself. Annie had grown into a woman in three
years, and he was still a boy. She came into the kitchen, curtsying and
smiling.
“Good-day, Master Lucian, and how is Mr. Taylor, sir?”
“Pretty well, thank you. I hope you are well.”
“Nicely, sir, thank you. How nice your voice do sound in church, Master
Lucian, to be sure. I was telling father about it last Sunday.”
Lucian grinned and felt uncomfortable, and the girl set down the jug on
the round table and brought a glass from the dresser. She bent close
over him as she poured out the green oily cider, fragrant of the
orchard; her hand touched his shoulder for a moment, and she said, “I
beg your pardon, sir,” very prettily. He looked up eagerly at her face;
the black eyes, a little oval in shape, were shining, and the lips
smiled. Annie wore a plain dress of some black stuff, open at the
throat; her skin was beautiful. For a moment the ghost of a fancy
hovered unsubstantial in his mind; and then Annie curtsied as she
handed him the cider, and replied to his thanks with, “And welcome
kindly, sir.”
The drink was really good; not thin, nor sweet, but round and full and
generous, with a fine yellow flame twinkling through the green when one
held it up to the light. It was like a stray sunbeam hovering on the
grass in a deep orchard, and he swallowed the glassful with relish, and
had some more, warmly commending it. Mr. Morgan was touched.
“I see you do know a good thing, sir,” he said. “Is, indeed, now, it’s
good stuff, though it’s my own makin’. My old grandfather he planted
the trees in the time of the wars, and he was a very good judge of an
apple in his day and generation. And a famous grafter he was, to be
sure. You will never see no swelling in the trees he grafted at all
whatever. Now there’s James Morris, Penyrhaul, he’s a famous grafter,
too, and yet them Redstreaks he grafted for me five year ago, they be
all swollen-like below the graft already. Would you like to taste a
Blemmin pippin, now, Master Lucian? there be a few left in the loft, I
believe.”
Lucian said he should like an apple very much, and the farmer went out
by another door, and Annie stayed in the kitchen talking. She said Mrs.
Trevor, her married sister, was coming to them soon to spend a few
days.
“She’s got such a beautiful baby,” said Annie, “and he’s quite
sensible-like already, though he’s only nine months old. Mary would
like to see you, sir, if you would be so kind as to step in; that is,
if it’s not troubling you at all, Master Lucian. I suppose you must be
getting a fine scholar now, sir?”
“I am doing pretty well, thank you,” said the boy. “I was first in my
form last term.”
“Fancy! To think of that! D’you hear, father, what a scholar Master
Lucian be getting?”
“He be a rare grammarian, I’m sure,” said the farmer. “You do take
after your father, sir; I always do say that nobody have got such a
good deliverance in the pulpit.”
Lucian did not find the Blenheim Orange as good as the cider, but he
ate it with all the appearance of relish, and put another, with thanks,
in his pocket. He thanked the farmer again when he got up to go; and
Annie curtsied and smiled, and wished him good-day, and welcome,
kindly.
Lucian heard her saying to her father as he went out what a
nice-mannered young gentleman he was getting, to be sure; and he went
on his way, thinking that Annie was really very pretty, and speculating
as to whether he would have the courage to kiss her, if they met in a
dark lane. He was quite sure she would only laugh, and say, “Oh, Master
Lucian!”
For many months he had occasional fits of recollection, both cold and
hot; but the bridge of time, gradually lengthening, made those dreadful
and delicious images grow more and more indistinct, till at last they
all passed into that wonderland which a youth looks back upon in
amazement, not knowing why this used to be a symbol of terror or that
of joy. At the end of each term he would come home and find his father
a little more despondent, and harder to cheer even for a moment; and
the wall paper and the furniture grew more and more dingy and shabby.
The two cats, loved and ancient beasts, that he remembered when he was
quite a little boy, before he went to school, died miserably, one after
the other. Old Polly, the pony, at last fell down in the stable from
the weakness of old age, and had to be killed there; the battered old
trap ran no longer along the well-remembered lanes. There was long
meadow grass on the lawn, and the trained fruit trees on the wall had
got quite out of hand. At last, when Lucian was seventeen, his father
was obliged to take him from school; he could no longer afford the
fees. This was the sorry ending of many hopes, and dreams of a
double-first, a fellowship, distinction and glory that the poor parson
had long entertained for his son, and the two moped together, in the
shabby room, one on each side of the sulky fire, thinking of dead days
and finished plans, and seeing a grey future in the years that advanced
towards them. At one time there seemed some chance of a distant
relative coming forward to Lucian’s assistance; and indeed it was quite
settled that he should go up to London with certain definite aims. Mr.
Taylor told the good news to his acquaintances—his coat was too green
now for any pretence of friendship; and Lucian himself spoke of his
plans to Burrows the doctor and Mr. Dixon, and one or two others. Then
the whole scheme fell through, and the parson and his son suffered much
sympathy. People, of course, had to say they were sorry, but in reality
the news was received with high spirits, with the joy with which one
sees a stone, as it rolls down a steep place, give yet another bounding
leap towards the pool beneath. Mrs. Dixon heard the pleasant tidings
from Mrs. Colley, who came in to talk about the Mothers’ Meeting and
the Band of Hope. Mrs. Dixon was nursing little Æthelwig, or some such
name, at the time, and made many affecting observations on the general
righteousness with which the world was governed. Indeed, poor Lucian’s
disappointment seemed distinctly to increase her faith in the Divine
Order, as if it had been some example in Butler’s _Analogy_.
“Aren’t Mr. Taylor’s views very _extreme?_” she said to her husband the
same evening.
“I am afraid they are,” he replied. “I was quite _grieved_ at the last
Diocesan Conference at the way in which he spoke. The dear old bishop
had given an address on Auricular Confession; he was _forced_ to do so,
you know, after what had happened, and I must say that I never felt
prouder of our beloved Church.”
Mr. Dixon told all the Homeric story of the conference, reciting the
achievements of the champions, “deploring” this and applauding that. It
seemed that Mr. Taylor had had the audacity to quote authorities which
the bishop could not very well repudiate, though they were directly
opposed to the “safe” Episcopal pronouncement.
Mrs. Dixon of course was grieved; it was “sad” to think of a clergyman
behaving so shamefully.
“But you know, dear,” she proceeded, “I have been thinking about that
unfortunate Taylor boy and his disappointments, and after what you’ve
just told me, I am sure it’s some kind of judgment on them both. Has
Mr. Taylor forgotten the vows he took at his ordination? But don’t you
think, dear, I am right, and that he has been punished: ‘The sins of
the fathers’?”
Somehow or other Lucian divined the atmosphere of threatenings and
judgments, and shrank more and more from the small society of the
countryside. For his part, when he was not “mooning” in the beloved
fields and woods of happy memory, he shut himself up with books,
reading whatever could be found on the shelves, and amassing a store of
incongruous and obsolete knowledge. Long did he linger with the men of
the seventeenth century; delaying in the gay sunlit streets with Pepys,
and listening to the charmed sound of the Restoration Revel; roaming by
peaceful streams with Izaak Walton, and the great Catholic divines;
enchanted with the portrait of Herbert the loving ascetic; awed by the
mystic breath of Crashaw. Then the cavalier poets sang their gallant
songs; and Herrick made Dean Prior magic ground by the holy incantation
of a verse. And in the old proverbs and homely sayings of the time he
found the good and beautiful English life, a time full of grace and
dignity and rich merriment. He dived deeper and deeper into his books;
he had taken all obsolescence to be his province; in his disgust at the
stupid usual questions, “Will it pay?” “What good is it?” and so forth,
he would only read what was uncouth and useless. The strange pomp and
symbolism of the Cabala, with its hint of more terrible things; the
Rosicrucian mysteries of Fludd, the enigmas of Vaughan, dreams of
alchemists—all these were his delight. Such were his companions, with
the hills and hanging woods, the brooks and lonely waterpools; books,
the thoughts of books, the stirrings of imagination, all fused into one
phantasy by the magic of the outland country. He held himself aloof
from the walls of the fort; he was content to see the heaped mounds,
the violent height with faerie bulwarks, from the gate in the lane, and
to leave all within the ring of oaks in the mystery of his boyhood’s
vision. He professed to laugh at himself and at his fancies of that hot
August afternoon, when sleep came to him within the thicket, but in his
heart of hearts there was something that never faded—something that
glowed like the red glint of a gypsy’s fire seen from afar across the
hills and mists of the night, and known to be burning in a wild land.
Sometimes, when he was sunken in his books, the flame of delight shot
up, and showed him a whole province and continent of his nature, all
shining and aglow; and in the midst of the exultation and triumph he
would draw back, a little afraid. He had become ascetic in his studious
and melancholy isolation, and the vision of such ecstasies frightened
him. He began to write a little; at first very tentatively and feebly,
and then with more confidence. He showed some of his verses to his
father, who told him with a sigh that he had once hoped to write—in the
old days at Oxford, he added.
“They are very nicely done,” said the parson; “but I’m afraid you won’t
find anybody to print them, my boy.”
So he pottered on; reading everything, imitating what struck his fancy,
attempting the effect of the classic meters in English verse, trying
his hand at a masque, a Restoration comedy, forming impossible plans
for books which rarely got beyond half a dozen lines on a sheet of
paper; beset with splendid fancies which refused to abide before the
pen. But the vain joy of conception was not altogether vain, for it
gave him some armor about his heart.
The months went by, monotonous, and sometimes blotted with despair. He
wrote and planned and filled the waste-paper basket with hopeless
efforts. Now and then he sent verses or prose articles to magazines, in
pathetic ignorance of the trade. He felt the immense difficulty of the
career of literature without clearly understanding it; the battle was
happily in a mist, so that the host of the enemy, terribly arrayed, was
to some extent hidden. Yet there was enough of difficulty to appall;
from following the intricate course of little nameless brooks, from
hushed twilight woods, from the vision of the mountains, and the breath
of the great wind, passing from deep to deep, he would come home filled
with thoughts and emotions, mystic fancies which he yearned to
translate into the written word. And the result of the effort seemed
always to be bathos! Wooden sentences, a portentous stilted style,
obscurity, and awkwardness clogged the pen; it seemed impossible to win
the great secret of language; the stars glittered only in the darkness,
and vanished away in clearer light. The periods of despair were often
long and heavy, the victories very few and trifling; night after night
he sat writing after his father had knocked out his last pipe, filling
a page with difficulty in an hour, and usually forced to thrust the
stuff away in despair, and go unhappily to bed, conscious that after
all his labour he had done nothing. And these were moments when the
accustomed vision of the land alarmed him, and the wild domed hills and
darkling woods seemed symbols of some terrible secret in the inner life
of that stranger—himself. Sometimes when he was deep in his books and
papers, sometimes on a lonely walk, sometimes amidst the tiresome
chatter of Caermaen “society,” he would thrill with a sudden sense of
awful hidden things, and there ran that quivering flame through his
nerves that brought back the recollection of the matted thicket, and
that earlier appearance of the bare black boughs enwrapped with flames.
Indeed, though he avoided the solitary lane, and the sight of the sheer
height, with its ring of oaks and moulded mounds, the image of it grew
more intense as the symbol of certain hints and suggestions. The
exultant and insurgent flesh seemed to have its temple and castle
within those olden walls, and he longed with all his heart to escape,
to set himself free in the wilderness of London, and to be secure
amidst the murmur of modern streets.
II.
Lucian was growing really anxious about his manuscript. He had gained
enough experience at twenty-three to know that editors and publishers
must not be hurried; but his book had been lying at Messrs. Beit’s
office for more than three months. For six weeks he had not dared to
expect an answer, but afterwards life had become agonizing. Every
morning, at post-time, the poor wretch nearly choked with anxiety to
know whether his sentence had arrived, and the rest of the day was
racked with alternate pangs of hope and despair. Now and then he was
almost assured of success; conning over these painful and eager pages
in memory, he found parts that were admirable, while again, his
inexperience reproached him, and he feared he had written a raw and
awkward book, wholly unfit for print. Then he would compare what he
remembered of it with notable magazine articles and books praised by
reviewers, and fancy that after all there might be good points in the
thing; he could not help liking the first chapter for instance. Perhaps
the letter might come tomorrow. So it went on; week after week of sick
torture made more exquisite by such gleams of hope; it was as if he
were stretched in anguish on the rack, and the pain relaxed and kind
words spoken now and again by the tormentors, and then once more the
grinding pang and burning agony. At last he could bear suspense no
longer, and he wrote to Messrs. Beit, inquiring in a humble manner
whether the manuscript had arrived in safety. The firm replied in a
very polite letter, expressing regret that their reader had been
suffering from a cold in the head, and had therefore been unable to
send in his report. A final decision was promised in a week’s time, and
the letter ended with apologies for the delay and a hope that he had
suffered no inconvenience. Of course the “final decision” did not come
at the end of the week, but the book was returned at the end of three
weeks, with a circular thanking the author for his kindness in
submitting the manuscript, and regretting that the firm did not see
their way to producing it. He felt relieved; the operation that he had
dreaded and deprecated for so long was at last over, and he would no
longer grow sick of mornings when the letters were brought in. He took
his parcel to the sunny corner of the garden, where the old wooden seat
stood sheltered from the biting March winds. Messrs. Beit had put in
with the circular one of their short lists, a neat booklet, headed:
_Messrs. Beit & Co.’s Recent Publications_.
He settled himself comfortably on the seat, lit his pipe, and began to
read: “_A Bad Un to Beat:_ a Novel of Sporting Life, by the Honorable
Mrs. Scudamore Runnymede, author of _Yoicks, With the Mudshire Pack,
The Sportleigh Stables_, etc., etc., 3 vols. At all Libraries.” The
_Press_, it seemed, pronounced this to be “a charming book. Mrs.
Runnymede has wit and humor enough to furnish forth half-a-dozen
ordinary sporting novels.” “Told with the sparkle and vivacity of a
past-mistress in the art of novel writing,” said the _Review_; while
Miranda, of _Smart Society_, positively bubbled with enthusiasm. “You
must forgive me, Aminta,” wrote this young person, “if I have not sent
the description I promised of Madame Lulu’s new creations and others of
that ilk. I must a tale unfold; Tom came in yesterday and began to rave
about the Honorable Mrs. Scudamore Runnymede’s last novel, _A Bad Un to
|
had selected for
study. Now I enter your room in the middle of the night, and take the
liberties of an old acquaintance. Forgive me, on account of my
disordered brain, dear Fräulein, and--may you have a good night's
rest."
He bent his head slightly, and left the room.
As soon as she heard him go up stairs, she hurried into the little
ante-chamber, closed the outer door, bolted it, and then stood still a
short time, listening, with her trembling body pressed close against
the door, and her hands clenched on the latch. He walked slowly up a
few steps, and then paused again, as if he had suddenly become absorbed
in some dreamy thought. She shuddered, sighed heavily, and tottered
back into the sitting-room. Her dress seemed too tight for her, for she
slipped out of it like a butterfly from its chrysalis, and then in the
airiest night costume, sat down at the open piano. It was an old,
much-worn instrument, of very poor tone, and as she ran her slender
fingers lightly over the keys, it sounded in the entry outside like the
distant music of a harp.
The young man had just reached the topmost stair when he heard it.
"There! she is playing the sonata, after all," he said to himself. "A
strange, obstinate person. What can she have suffered from fate?
To-morrow I will take more notice of her. It's a pity she is so ugly,
and yet--what does it matter? There is a charm in her finger-tips. What
wonderful music!"
He stood still a moment listening to the familiar tones, which seemed
to express all the familiar thoughts that had been wandering in a
confused chaos through his mind. Suddenly he heard a voice from within.
"Is that you, Edwin?"
"Of course it is I," he replied.
The next instant he had opened the door and entered the room which was
brightly lighted by the moonbeams.
CHAPTER II.
This room, termed by its occupants' friends "the tun," was a large
three-windowed apartment, with walls painted light grey, a floor
scoured snow white, and over the windows instead of curtains, three
narrow green calico lambrequins of the simplest pattern. A desk stood
at the right-hand window, a small turning-lathe at the left, and in the
spaces between the casements two tall bookcases; there were two beds
placed against the wall, several cane chairs and small chests made of
white wood, and finally, a low, smoky ceiling, which here and there
showed large cracks, and threatened to fall. But the room, spite of
its simplicity, had an aristocratic air from the presence of two
copperplate engravings of Raphael's paintings, framed in plain
brown wood, that hung over the beds, and two antique busts on the
bookcases,--one a head of Aristotle, the other the gloomy-eyed,
stern-browed Demosthenes. Even the low stove was adorned with a piece
of sculpture at which no one is ever weary of gazing--the mask of
Michael Angelo's young prisoner, who, with closed lids, lets his
beautiful head sink on his shoulder as if weary of torture and longing
for sleep. Here, however, the moonlight did not reach: it merely fell
obliquely across the bed placed against the wall.
On this bed, with his eyes fixed upon the door, lay a young man, whose
pale features, almost feminine in their delicacy, were framed in a
wreath of thick, fair locks. It was difficult to guess his age from his
countenance, since the boyish expression of mirth that dwelt about his
mouth contrasted strangely with the mature beauties of the finely cut
features. He was wrapped in a light quilt, and a book lay open on the
chair beside him. When Edwin entered, he slowly rose and held out a
white delicately formed hand.
"Well," said he, "was it very fine? Has it done you good?"
"Good evening, Balder," replied Edwin, "or rather, good morning! You
see I do everything thoroughly, even rioting at night. But I see I must
not leave you alone again, child. I really believe you have been
reading by moonlight."
A deep flush crimsoned the face of the recumbent youth. "Don't be
angry," said he in a clear, musical voice. "I could not sleep; and, as
the lamp had burned out and the room was so bright,--but now tell me
About it. Has the remedy already produced an effect?"
"To-morrow you shall hear as much as you wish, but not a syllable now,
to punish you for your carelessness in spoiling your eyes and heating
your head. Do you know that your forehead is burning again?" And he
passed his hand tenderly over the soft hair. "I will complain of you to
the physician in ordinary. And you don't seem to have touched your
supper; there is the plate with your bread and butter."
"I wasn't hungry," replied the youth, letting his head fall gently back
on the pillow. "Besides, I thought if you came home late, and, after
the unusual excitement, might perhaps feel inclined to eat something."
Edwin brought the plate to the bed. "If you don't want me to be
seriously angry, you artful fellow," said he, "you will have the
goodness to repair the omission at once. But to make it easier for you,
I'll take half myself. Heavens! what is to be done with such a
disobedient child? So divide fairly, or I'll complain of you to-morrow
to Jungfrau Reginchen, who will soon bring you to reason."
Again a vivid blush crimsoned the young man's face, but Edwin pretended
not to notice it. He had sat down on the bed, and was beginning to eat,
from time to time pushing a piece into his brother's mouth, who
submitted with a half smile. "The bread is good," said Edwin; "the
butter might be better. But that is Reginchen's weak point. Now a drink
as fresh as our cellar affords."
He poured out a class of water, and swallowed it at a single gulp.
"Balder," said he, "I am returning to truth and nature, after having
incurred the danger of being enervated by luxury. Just think, I had
some ice-cream at the theatre. It could not be helped; others eat it,
and a philosopher must become familiar with everything. Besides, it
wasn't worth the five groschen, for I learned nothing new, and only
regretted that _you_ could not have it. Once, and no more, good night."
While undressing, he said to himself, "This shameless moon! As soon as
we have any extra money, we must get curtains, so that we can be able
to close our eyes on such nights. However, the illumination is very
moderate, compared to that of an opera-house. It took me so by surprise
as I entered the box, that I would gladly have retreated and seen the
whole spectacle from the corridor outside. Believe me, child, the
doorkeepers have the real and best enjoyment. To walk up and down in
the cooler passages over soft carpets, with the faint buzzing and
sighing of the orchestra in one's ears, interrupted at times by a
louder passage with the drums and trumpets, which, smothered by the
walls, sounds like a melodious thunder-storm, and often, when some
belated great lady rustles in, to obtain a glimpse through the door of
the Paradise of painted houris in tights, and the wonderful sunrises
and sunsets,--it is really an enviable situation, compared with that of
the poor mortals in the purgatory within, who, in return for their
money, are cooped up in plush, and must atone for the sins of the
Messrs. Taglioni, while feeling as if all their fine senses were being
hammered upon at once. A time will come when people will read of these
barbarities with a shudder, and envy us because we have nerves to
endure them."
"And yet you remained to the end."
"I? Why yes; in the first place I had a very comfortable seat; the box
to which my ticket admitted me is like a little parlor, and happened to
be almost empty. And then--but I will close the window. The air is
beginning to grow cool,--don't you feel it? Besides, your friend
Friezica has crept away."
Balder made no reply; but though his eyes were apparently closed,
steadily watched Edwin, who, in a fit of absence of mind had thrown
himself upon the bed only half undressed, and turned his face toward
the wall. A half hour elapsed without any movement from either.
Suddenly Edwin turned, and his eyes met his brother's quiet, anxious
gaze.
"I see it won't do, child," said he. "For the first time in our lives,
we are playing a farce with each other; at least I am, in trying to
keep something from you. It is very foolish. What is the use of a man
having a brother, especially one to whom he might be called married,
except to share everything with him, not only the bread and butter, and
whatever else he eats, but also what is gnawing at _him_. I will
confess what has happened, though it is really nothing remarkable; a
great many people have already experienced it; but when we feel it for
the first time in our own persons, all our 'philosophy, Horatio,' will
not permit us to dream what a singularly delightful, uncomfortable,
troublesome, melancholy,--in a word, insane condition it is."
He had sprung from his bed and was now crouching on the foot of
Balder's, half sitting, half leaning back, so that he was in shadow,
and looked past his brother at the opposite wall.
"Prepare yourself to hear something very unexpected," he said, still in
a tone which showed that he was making an effort to speak at all. "Or
do you already know all I wish to tell you, young clairvoyant? So much
the better. Then my confession will weary you, and at least one of us
will be able to sleep. In short, my dear fellow, it is very ridiculous
to say, but I believe it is only too true: I am in the condition which
our physician in ordinary desired, in order to cast out the devil by
Beelzebub; that is, I am in love, and as hopelessly, absurdly, and
senselessly, as any young moth that ever flew into a candle. Pray,
child," he continued, starting to his feet again and beginning to pace
up and down the room, "first hear how it came about, that you may
realize the full extent of my madness. You know that I am twenty-nine
years old, and hitherto have been spared this childish disease. It is
not necessary for everybody to catch the scarlet fever. As for the
natural and healthy attractions of the 'fair sex,' I was old enough
when our dear mother died, to feel that a woman like her would hardly
appear on earth a second time. For the daily necessities of living and
loving--which every human heart needs to retain its requisite warmth--I
was abundantly supplied in our brotherly affection, to say nothing of
the miserable, unamiable, and yet love-needing human race. And then,
ought a man to have for his profession the science of pure reason, and,
like any other thoughtless mortal, make a fool of himself over the
first woman's face he sees, without any cause except that the lightning
has struck him. Heaven knows why? It seems incredible, but I fear I
have accomplished the impossible."
He sat down on the bed again, but this time so that his face was turned
toward Balder. "I will allow you to study me thoroughly, without any
mercy," he said, smiling. "This is the way a man looks, who suddenly
becomes the sport of the elements,--whose reflection, wisdom, pride,
and whatever else the trash may be called, are of no avail. I always
shuddered when I read the story of the magnetic mountain. When I was a
boy, I thought, defiantly, if I had only been on the ship, I would have
set so many sails, sent so many men to work the oars, and steered in
such a way, that the spell would not have reached me. And so I thought
this evening, daring the whole of the first hour. But--
'Tales of magic e'er so strange,
Woman's wiles to truth can change.'
The helm is broken, the oars refuse their service, and the very portion
of my nature that was steel and iron, most resistlessly obeys the
attraction of the magnet, and really assists in making keel and deck
spring asunder."
He leaned back again, and passed his hand over his brow. The hand
trembled, and a cold perspiration stood on his forehead.
"There is only one thing I don't understand," said Balder, moving aside
to make room for his brother; "why must all this be hopeless?"
"Just listen, my boy, and you will understand all, even the
incomprehensible part, over which I am still puzzling my brains. For I
am no artist, and can only give you a poor, shadowy outline of a
certain face. I entered the box, which was perfectly empty, and I hoped
it would remain so. Clad in my fourteen-thaler summer-suit and without
gloves, I did not seem to myself exactly fit for society, and the
person who opened the box looked at me as if he wanted to say, 'You
ought to be up in the gallery, my friend, instead of in this holy of
holies, to which I usually admit only people belonging to the great or
_demi monde_.' I also did not like to sit down, simple as the matter
might seem to be, on a chair that was better dressed than I. However,
the mischief was done; I determined to assume a very elegant
deportment, such as I had noticed at private colleges in young
diplomatists, and hitherto had always considered mere buffoonery. So I
leaned back in my chair like an Englishman, and glanced now at the
stage, now at the parquet. As I have already said, there was such a
buzzing and fluttering down below, the poor creatures in white gauze
glittering with gold and huge wreaths of flowers tossed their arms and
legs about so wildly, and the violins quavered so madly, that I already
began to think: 'if this goes on long, _you_ will go too.' Suddenly the
door of the box was thrown wide open; while I had squeezed through a
narrow chink, a young lady rustled in, a diminutive servant in livery
and high shirt-collar, which almost sawed off the youngster's huge red
ears, removed a blue silk cloak, the doorkeeper casting a contemptuous
glance at me, rushed forward, drew up a chair, and officiously put a
play-bill on the balustrade. The lady said a few words to the boy in an
undertone, then chose the corner seat nearest the stage, raised a tiny
opera-glass, and, without taking the slightest notice of me, instantly
became absorbed in her enjoyment of art.
"I ought now to describe her to you; but description has its
difficulties. Do you remember the pastille picture from the Dresden
gallery, painted by a Frenchman,--I have forgotten his name,--stay, I
think it was Liotard; we saw a photograph of it in the medical
counsellor's book of beauty?--_la belle Chocoladière_ was written
underneath. Well, the profile before me was something like that, and
yet very very different, far more delicate, pure, and childlike,
without any of the pretentious, cold-hearted expression of the
shop-girl, whose numerous admirers and constant practice in breaking
hearts had gradually transformed her face into a mere alabaster
mask. But the shape of the nose, the long lashes, the proud little
mouth,--enough, your imagination will supply the rest.
"Well, the first quarter of an hour passed very tolerably. From the
first moment I saw no one except my neighbor, who showed me only a
quarter of her face, charming as the tiny sickle of the moon; but to
make amends for that, I studied her dark brown hair, which without any
special ornament, was drawn in smooth bands over her white forehead,
and simply fastened at the back with two coral pins of Italian form. A
few short curls fell on the white neck, and seemed to me to have a very
enviable position, though they remained in the shade. As to her dress,
I am unable to say whether it was in the latest fashion, and according
to French taste, for I have not the necessary technical knowledge; but
a certain instinct told me that nothing could be more elegant, more
aristocratic in its simplicity; there was not the smallest article of
jewelry about her person, she did not even wear ear-rings; her
high-necked dress was fastened at the throat with a little velvet bow,
without a brooch. The hands which held the opera-glass--tiny little
hands--were cased in light grey gloves, so I could not see whether she
wore rings.
"I had noticed that there was a universal movement when she entered the
box. Hundreds of lorgnettes were instantly directed toward her, and
even the _première danseuse_, who was just making her highest leap,
momentarily lost her exclusive dominion over her admirers. But my
beauty seemed to be very indifferent to this homage. She did not turn
her eyes from the stage, at which she gazed with an earnestness, a
devotion, that was both touching and ludicrous. When the first act was
over, and a storm of applause burst forth, it was charming to see how
she hastily laid aside the opera-glass to clap her hands too, more like
a child when it wants another biscuit and says 'please, please,' than
an aristocratic patroness of the fine arts, who occasionally
condescends to join in the applause of the populace.
"She had dropped her handkerchief, a snowy, lace-trimmed bit of cobweb,
which could easily have been put away in a nutshell. I hastily raised
and handed it to her, muttering a few not particularly brilliant words.
She looked at me without the slightest change of expression, and
graciously bowed her thanks like a princess. Not a word was vouchsafed
me. Then she again raised her lorgnette, and, during the entire
intermission, apparently devoted herself to an eager study of the
various toilettes; at least her glass remained a long time turned
toward the opposite box, which was full of ladies.
"I would have given much to have heard her voice, in order to discover
whether she was a foreigner; but no matter how I racked my brain, I
could think of nothing to say. Besides, she looked as if at the first
liberty I might take, she would rise with an annihilating glance, and
leave me alone.
"I was just working hard to concoct some polite remark about ballets in
general and this one in particular, when the intermission ended and she
was again entirely absorbed in the spectacle below.
"A thought flashed through my mind, which, as you will acknowledge, did
me great credit, but unfortunately met with no success. I left the box,
ate the ice-cream already mentioned, and while wiping my beard,
strolled up and down the corridor several times as if weary of the
performance, and carelessly asked the doorkeeper if he knew the lady
who was sitting in the stranger's box. But he replied that this was the
first time he had ever seen her; the opera-house had been reopened
to-night with the new ballet. So, with my purpose unaccomplished, I
retired, and went back to my post.
[Illustration: "As she glided past me, I felt an electric shock to the
very tips of my toes."]
"Meantime my seat had been occupied; a very much over-dressed foreign
couple, American or English nabobs blazing with jewels, had planted
themselves in the best seats beside the beauty. At first I was inclined
to assert my rights, but I really liked to stand in the dark corner and
seeing and hearing nothing of the elegant tastelessness around, gaze
only at the charming shape of the head, the fair neck with its floating
curls, slender shoulders, and a small portion of the sweet face. I
heard the gentleman address her in broken French. She replied without
embarrassment, in the best Parisian accent. Now I knew what I wanted to
learn. She was a natural enemy, in every sense of the word!
"If I tell you, brother, that during the next two hours I stood like a
statue, thinking of nothing except how one can live to be twenty-nine
years old, before understanding the meaning of the old legend of the
serpent in Paradise,--you will fancy me half mad. You wrong me, my dear
fellow, I was _wholly_ mad--a frightful example of the perishableness
of all manly virtues. I beg Father Wieland's pardon a hundred times,
for having reviled him as a pitiful coxcomb, because he allows his
Greek sages, with all their strength of mind and stoical dignity, to
come to disgrace for the smile of a Lais or Musarion. Here there was
not even a smile, no seductive arts were used, and yet a poor private
tutor of philosophy lays down his arms and surrenders at discretion,
because a saucy little nose, some black eyelashes, and ditto curls, did
not take the slightest notice of him.
"But you ought to go to sleep, child; I'll cut my story short. Besides,
it must be tiresome enough to a third person. Five minutes before the
curtain fell for the last time she rose; some one had knocked softly at
the door of the box. As she glided past me, I felt an electric shock to
the very tips of my toes. This was a great piece of good luck, or I
should hardly have been able to shake off my stupor quickly enough to
follow her. Outside stood the gnome with the high shirt-collar and
tow-colored head, gazing at her respectfully with wide open eyes. The
little blue cloak was on his arm. She hastily threw on the light wrap,
almost without his assistance, though he stood on tip-toe, drew the
hood over her head, and hurried toward the stairs, the lad and my
insignificant self following her. Every one she passed started and
looked after her in astonishment.
"At the entrance below stood an elegant carriage. The dwarf opened the
door, made an unsuccessful attempt to lift his mistress in, then swung
himself up behind, and away dashed the equipage before I had sense
enough to jump into a droschky and follow it.
"'Perhaps it is better so,' I thought, when I was once more left alone.
Of what use would it be to follow her? And now I endeavored to become a
philosopher again in the most audacious sense of the word, namely, a
private tutor of logic and metaphysics, an individual most graciously
endowed by the government with permission to starve, _sub specie
acterni_,--from whom if he becomes infatuated with princesses, the
_veina legendi_ ought to be withdrawn, since it is a proof that he has
not understood even the first elements of worldly wisdom.
"There! you have now the whole story. I hoped to have been able to
spare you the recital, trusting that the vision would vanish at
last, if I could cool my excited blood by rambling about a few
hours in the night air. But unfortunately I did not succeed. The
Lindens were swarming with lovers, the music still sounded in my ears,
shooting stars darted across the sky, and, above all, the sentimental
witching light of the moon, altering the aspect of everything which it
touched,--yes, my last hope is sleep, which has often heretofore cooled
the fever of my nerves. Look, the moon is just sinking behind yonder
roof; our night-lamp has gone out; let us try whether we can at last
obtain some rest."
He rose slowly from his brother's bed, like a person who finds it
difficult to move his limbs, passed his hand caressingly over the cheek
of the silent youth, and said: "I can't help it, child; I really ought
to have kept it to myself, for I know you always take my troubles to
heart far more than I do. It is this confounded habit of sharing
everything with you! Well, it is no great misfortune after all. We
shall be perfectly sensible--entirely cured of our folly--to-morrow,
and if anything should still be out of order, for what purpose has
Father Kant written the admirable treatise on 'the power the mind
possesses to rule the sickly emotions of the heart by the mere exercise
of will'?"
He stooped, pressed his lips lightly upon the pale forehead of the
youth, and then threw himself upon his bed. A few notes of the piano
still echoed on the air, but these too now died away, and in fifteen
minutes Balder perceived by Edwin's calm, regular breathing, that he
had really fallen asleep. He himself still lay with his eyes wide open,
gazing quietly at the mask of the prisoner on the stove, absorbed in
thoughts, which, for the present, may remain his secret.
CHAPTER III.
We have now to relate the little that is to be told of the two
brothers' former life.
About thirty years before, their father, during a holiday excursion,
had made their mother's acquaintance; he was then a young law-student
from Silesia, and she the beautiful daughter of the owner of a small
estate in Holstein, who had other views for his favorite child than to
give her to the first embryo Prussian lawyer, who had enjoyed a few
days' hospitality at his house. And yet no objections were made. All,
who knew the young girl, declared that it had always been impossible to
oppose her quietly expressed wishes; she had possessed so much power
over all minds, both by her great beauty and the gentle nobleness of
her nature, which in everything she did and said always seemed to hit
the right mark, with that almost prophetic insight into the confused
affairs of the world, which is said to have been peculiar to German
seeresses. What particular attractions she found in the unassuming
stranger, that she wanted him and no one else for her husband, was not
easy to discover. Yet to her last hour she had no occasion to repent,
that, with firm resolution, beneath which perhaps passionate emotions
were concealed, she had aided in removing all the obstacles that stood
in the way of a speedy marriage. As she herself brought little dowry,
except her wealth of golden hair, which when unbound must have reached
nearly to her knees, and as the young lawyer had still a long time of
probation before him ere he could establish a home of his own, they
would have had little happiness if both or either had considered
themselves too good for a subordinate position. The post of bookkeeper
in one of the largest institutions in Berlin had just become vacant.
When the young jurist applied for it, he was forced to hear from all
quarters that he was doing far from wisely in resigning his profession
and giving up all chance of rising to higher offices and dignities,
merely for the sake of an early and certain maintenance. He declared
that he knew what he was doing, and, as he had the best testimonials,
drove his competitors from the field, and, after a betrothal of a few
months, installed his beautiful young wife in the comfortable lodgings
assigned to the accountant.
Ambition is only one phase of the universal human longing for
happiness. He who has his life's happiness embodied in a beloved form
at his side, can easily forget the formless dreams of his aspiring
youth, especially if, as was the case here, the joy which appears so
trifling to the eyes of the proud world nevertheless excites the envy
of those close at hand, and the narrow limits of the household horizon
do not bind down the soul. This, however, was chiefly owing to the
fair-haired wife. She had what is called a tinge of romance, a
dissatisfaction with the dry, bare reality of things around her, a
longing to gild the grey light of every-day existence with the
treasures of her own heart and a lively imagination, and amid the
oppressive uniformity of her household cares, retained a play of fancy,
that with all her toil and weariness kept her young and gay. She
herself said people ought to follow the example of the birds, who,
while building their nests, did not sweat as if working for daily
wages, but as they flew to and fro sang, eat a berry, or perhaps soared
so high into the air, that one might suppose they would never return to
their lowly bush. As this arose from a necessity of her nature, and she
never boasted of it, though she never denied it, her poetic taste built
a brighter world above this dreary, prosaic one, and was a source of
constant rejuvenation to her more practical husband. He never emerged
from the state of transfiguration that surrounds the honeymoon, and
even after he had been married many years, felt when sitting in his
office over his account-books, as much impatience to rejoin his beloved
wife, as he had ever experienced as an enthusiastic young lawyer, in
the earliest days of his love.
In his circumstances there was no outward improvement; his sons grew
up, and no promotion or increase of salary could be thought of. But
nevertheless their happiness increased, and their stock of youth, love,
and romance seemed to grow greater as the children grew. The mother,
who bore the beautiful name of Nanna, would not hear of calling her
first-born Fritz or Carl, but gave him the name of Edwin. But the boy
himself made no preparations to accommodate himself to the lyrically
adorned idyl of his parents. His outward appearance was insignificant
and remained so; a tall lad with awkward limbs, which were all the more
unmanageable because their master in the upper story was thinking of
very different matters than how he ought to move his arms and legs;
besides, the boy's mind was fixed upon other things than the fairy
tales his mother told him, or any of the elegancies with which she
surrounded her child. A thoughtful, analytic mind developed in him at
an early age; his mother, for the first time in her life was seriously
angry with her dear husband, declaring that the father's horrible
calculating of figures had gone to the child's head and entered his
blood. She tormented herself a long time in trying to efface this
instinctive taste, but was at last forced to relinquish her efforts
when the boy went to school and brought home the most brilliant
testimonials of his progress; yet a secret vexation still gnawed at her
heart, all the more unbanishable as for nine years he remained the only
child. At last she gave birth to a second, a boy, who promised to make
ample amends for the disappointment caused by the apparently sober,
prosaic nature of her oldest son. This child was in every respect the
exact image of his mother; beautiful as the day, with rich golden
curls; he liked nothing better than to be lulled to sleep with fairy
tales, cultivate flowers, and learn little stories by heart. The mother
seemed to grow young again in her radiant delight in the possession of
this innocent creature, to whom the name of Balder, the God of Spring,
appeared to her exactly suited. Any one who had seen her at that time,
would scarcely have believed her to be the mother of her older son,
the long-legged schoolboy with the grave, prematurely old face; so
young and smiling, so untried by life, did she look, that her fair
head seemed bathed in perpetual sunlight. But it was only a short
spring-time of joy. Balder had not yet commenced to distinguish between
poetry and reality, when his mother was suddenly attacked by a violent
nervous fever, and after a few days' illness, during which she
recognized neither husband nor children, she left them forever.
It was a blow which brought her husband to a state of despair which
bordered upon madness. But upon the older boy the event had a strange
effect. There was, at first, an outburst of wild, passionate grief,
such as, from his steady, quiet temperament, no one would have
expected. Now it was evident how passionately he had loved his mother,
with a fervor for which he had never found words. Up to the time of the
funeral it was impossible to induce him to eat; he pushed away his
favorite dishes with loathing, and only a little milk crossed his lips
just before he went to bed. When he returned with his father from the
churchyard, and, himself like a corpse, saw in his father's face every
sign of breaking down under the misery of a happiness so cruelly
destroyed, while little Balder gazed in perplexity at him with his dead
mother's eyes, a great transformation seemed to take place in the older
brother's soul. His convulsed face grew suddenly calm, he pushed from
his forehead his thin straight hair, and, going up to his father, said:
"We must now see how we can get along without mother. You shall never
be dissatisfied with me again." Then he sat down on the floor beside
the child, and began to play with him as his mother used to do; a thing
to which, hitherto, with all his love for the little one, he had never
condescended. Balder stretched out his hands to him, and laughingly
prattled on in his merry way. The father seemed to take no notice of
anything that was passing around him. Weeks and months elapsed before
he even outwardly returned to his old habits.
But even then there was not much gained. The portion of him which had
been a calculating-machine faultlessly continued its work, but the
human affections were totally destroyed. Had not Edwin, with a prudence
wonderful in one so young, managed the affairs of the little household
when the old maid servant could not get along alone, everything would
have been in confusion. When, during the year after his mother's death,
the child had a fall which injured his knee so severely that he
remained delicate ever after, the last hope which Edwin had of seeing
the father take a firm hold of life vanished. He now showed that he had
only existed in the reflected lustre left behind by his beautiful wife
in the bright-eyed boy. When those eyes grew dim, he could no longer
bear the light of day. Without any special illness, he took to his bed
and never rose from it again.
The orphaned children were received by one of their father's relatives,
a well-to-do official in Breslau, who had a number of children of his
own, and could therefore only give his foster sons a moderate share of
care and support. They were sent to board in a teacher's family, and
fared no worse than hundreds of other parentless boys. Balder felt the
disaster least. He had a charm that everywhere won hearts, and his
delicate helplessness did the rest. People did not find it so easy to
get along with Edwin. A taciturnity and cool reserve, together with the
early superiority of his judgment, made him uncomfortable, and, as it
always gave him the appearance of not desiring love, people did not see
why they should force it upon him. Besides, among all to whom he owed
gratitude, there was not a single person to whom he desired to be bound
by any closer ties. Thus his little brother remained the sole object of
his affectionate anxiety, and it was touching to see how closely,
during his play hours, he kept him by his side, spending his scanty
stock of pocket-money solely for his pleasure, and shortening his hours
of sleep that he might devote his entire afternoon to the sickly child.
Years elapsed. When Edwin went to the university, for despite his
poverty and the burning desire for independence, he could not make up
his mind to begin any practical business, Balder was about eight years
old. He had been unable to go to school on account of his feeble
health, as his knee required constant care, and he could not have borne
to sit on the school-room benches. But notwithstanding this, he was far
in advance of most boys of his age, for he
|
, the _King George’s Packet_ will load with rum
for Whitehaven; and Sir Holman declares that first mate Jack Paul shall
sail therein, a passenger-guest, for home. Sir Holman is able to promise
this, since the fat, florid rescued one is the child of Shipowner Donald
of Donald, Currie & Beck, owners of the _King George’s Packet_.
“Which makes me,” expounds Sir Holman, his nose in the sangaree, “a kind
of son-in-law to the brig itself.”
He grumblingly intimates--he is far gone in sangaree at the time--that a
fleet of just such sea-trinkets as the _King George’s Packet_, so far
as he has experimented with the marital condition, constitutes the one
redeeming feature of wedlock.
“And so,” concludes the excellent Sir Holman, “you’re to go home with
the rum, guest of the ship itself; and the thing I could weep over is
that I cannot send my kit aboard and sail with you.”
Two days go by, and the _King George’s Packet_ is sighted off Port
Royal; twenty-four hours later its master, Captain Macadam---a Solway
man--is drinking Sir Holman’s sangaree. Making good his word, Sir Holman
sends for first mate Jack Paul, and that business of going passenger to
Whitehaven is adjusted.
“True!” observes Captain Macadam, when he understands--“true, the
_George_ isn’t fitted up for passengers. But”--turning to first mate
Jack Paul--“you’ll no mind; bein’ a seaman yours eh?”
“More than that, Captain,” breaks in Sir Holman, “since the port is
reeling full of yellow jack, some of your people might take it to sea
with them. Should aught go wrong, now, why here is your passenger, a
finished sailorman, to give you a lift.”
Captain Macadam’s face has been tanned like leather. None the less,
as he hears the above the mahogany hue thereof lapses into a pasty,
piecrust color. Plainly that word yellow jack fills his soul with fear.
He mentions the wearisome fact to first mate Jack Paul, as he and that
young gentleman, after their cigars and sangaree with Sir Holman, are
making a midnight wake for the change house whereat they have bespoken
beds.
“It’s no kindly,” complains Captain Macadam, “for Sir Holman to let me
run my brig blindfold into sic a snare. But then he has a fourth share
in the tea, and another in the rum; and so, for his profit like, he lets
me tak’ my chances. He’d stude better wi’ God on high I’m thinkin’, if
he’d let his profit gone by, and just had a pilot boat standin’ off and
on at Port Royal, to gi’ me the wink to go wide. I could ha’ taken the
tea to New York weel enou’. But bein’ I’m here,” concludes the disturbed
Captain, appealing to first mate Jack Paul, “what would ye advise?”
“To get your tea ashore and your rum aboard as fast as you may.”
“Ay! that’ll about be the weesdom of it!”
Captain Macadam can talk of nothing but yellow jack all the way to the
change house.
“It’s the first time I was ever in these watters,” he explains
apologetically, “and now I can smell fever in the air! Ay! the hond o’
death is on these islands! Be ye no afeard, mon?”
First mate Jack Paul says that he is not. Also he is a trifle irritated
at the alarm of the timorous Captain Macadam.
“That’ll just be your youth now!” observes the timorous one. “Ye’re no
old enou’ to grasp the responsibeelities.”
At four in the morning Captain Macadam comes into first mate Jack Paul’s
room at the change house. He is clad in his linen sleeping suit, and his
teeth are chattering a little.
“It’s the bein’ ashore makes my teeth drum,” he vouchsafes. “But what
I wushed to ask ye, lad, is d’ye believe in fortunes? No? Weel, then,
neither do I; only I remembered like that lang syne a wierd warlock sort
o’ body tells me in the port o’ Leith, that I’m to meet my death in the
West Injies. It’s the first time, as I was tellin’ ye, that ever I comes
pokin’ my snout amang these islands; and losh! I believe that warlock
chiel was right. I’ve come for my death sure.”
Captain Macadam promises his crew’ double grog and double wages, and
works night and day lightering his tea ashore, and getting his rum casks
into the _King George’s Packet_. Then he calls a pilot, and, with a
four-knot breeze behind him, worms his way along the narrow, corkscrew
channel, until he finds himself in open water.
Then the pilot goes over the side, and Captain Macadam takes the brig.
He casts an anxious eye astern at Port Royal, four miles away.
“I’ll no feel safe,” says he, “while yon Satan’s nest is under my
quarter. And afterward I’ll no feel safe neither. How many days, mon, is
a victeem to stand by and look for symptoms?”
First mate Jack Paul, to whom the query is put, gives it as his opinion
that, if they have yellow fever aboard, it will make its appearance
within the week.
“Weel that’s a mercy ony way!” says Captain Macadam with a sigh.
There are, besides first mate Jack Paul, and the Captain with his two
officers, twelve seamen and the cook--seventeen souls in all--aboard
the _King George’s Packet_ as, north by east, it crawls away from Port
Royal. For four days the winds hold light but fair. Then come head
winds, and the brig finds itself making long tacks to and fro in
the Windward Passage, somewhere between Cape Mazie and the Mole St.
Nicholas.
“D’ye see, mon!” cries Captain Macadam, whose fears have increased,
not diminished, since he last saw the Jamaica lights. “The vera weather
seeks to keep us in this trap! I’ll no be feelin’ ower weel neither, let
me tell ye!”
First mate Jack Paul informs the alarmed Captain that to fear the fever
is to invite it.
“I’m no afeard, mon,” returns Captain Macadam, with a groan, “I’m just
impressed.”
The timidities of the Captain creep among the mates and crew; forward
and aft the feeling is one of terror. The _King George’s Packet_ becomes
a vessel of gloom. There are no songs, no whistling for a wind. Even
the cook’s fiddle is silent, and the galley grows as melancholy as the
forecastle.
It is eight bells in the afternoon of the fourth day, when the man at
the wheel calls to Captain Macadam. He tosses his thumb astern.
“Look there!” says he.
Captain Macadam peers over the rail, and counts eleven huge sharks. The
monsters are following the brig. Also, they seem in an ugly mood, since
ever and anon they dash at one another ferociously.
“It’ll be a sign!” whispers Captain Macadam. Then he counts them.
“There’ll be ‘leven o’ them,” says he; “and that means we’re ‘leven to
die!” After this he dives below, and takes to the bottle.
Bleared of eye, shaken of hand, Captain Macadam on the fifth morning
finds first mate Jack Paul on the after deck. The eleven sharks are
still sculling sullenly along in the slow wake of the wind-bound brig.
“Be they there yet?” asks Captain Macadam, looking over the stern with a
ghastly grin. Then answering his own query: “Ay! they’ll be there--the
‘leven of ‘em!”
First mate Jack Paul, observing their daunting effect on the
over-harrowed nerves of Captain Macadam, is for having up his pistols to
take a shot at the sharks; but he is stayed by the other.
“They’ll be sent,” says Captain Macadam; “it’ll no do to slay ‘em, mon!
But losh! ain’t a sherk a fearfu’ feesli?” Then, seeing his hand shake
on the brig’s rail: “It’s the rum. And that’s no gude omen, me takin’ to
the rum; for I’m not preeceesely what you’d ca’ a drinkin’ body.”
Two hours later Captain Macadam issues from his cabin and seeks first
mate Jack Paul, where the latter is sitting in the shade of the main
sail.
“Mon, look at me!” he cries. “D’ye no see? I tell ye, Death has found me
oot on the deep watters!”
The single glance assures first mate Jack Paul that Captain Macadam is
right. His eyes are congested and ferrety; his face is flushed. Even
while first mate Jack Paul looks, he sees the skin turn yellow as a
lemon. He thumbs the sick man’s wrist; the pulse is thumping like a
trip-hammer. Also, the dry, fevered skin shows an abnormal temperature.
“Your tongue!” says first mate Jack Paul; for he has a working knowledge
of yellow jack.
It is but piling evidence upon evidence; the tongue is the color of
liver. Three hours later, the doomed man is delirious. Then the fever
gives way to a chill; presently he goes raving his way into eternity,
and the _King George’s Packet_ loses its Captain.
First mate Jack Paul sews the dead skipper in a hammock with his own
fingers; since, mates, crew and cook, not another will bear a hand.
When the hammock sewing is over, the cook aids in bringing the corpse
on deck. As the body slips from the grating into the sea, a thirty-two
pound shot at the heels, the cook laughs overboard at the sharks, still
hanging, like hounds upon a scent, to the brig’s wake.
“Ye’ll have to dive for the skipper, lads!” sings out the cook.
Offended by this ribaldry, first mate Jack Paul is on the brink of
striking the cook down with a belaying pin. For his own nerves are
a-jangle, and that misplaced merriment rasps. It is the look in the
man’s face which stays his hand.
“Ye’ll be right!” cries the cook, as though replying to something in the
eye of first mate Jack Paul. “Don’t I know it? It is I who’ll follow the
skipper! I’ll just go sew my own hammock, and have it ready, shot and
all.”
As the cook starts for the galley, a maniac yell is heard from the
forecastle. At that, he pauses, sloping his ear to listen.
“I’ll have company,” says he.
First the cook; then the mates; then seven of the crew. One after the
other, they follow a thirty-two pound shot over the side; for after the
Captain’s death the sailors lose their horror of the plague-killed ones,
and sew them up and slip them into the sea as readily as though they are
bags of bran. The worst is that a fashion of dull panic takes them, and
they refuse their duty. There is no one to command, they say; and, since
there can be no commands, there can be no duty. With that they hang
moodily about the capstan, or sulk in their bunks below.
First mate Jack Paul takes the wheel, rather than leave the _King
George’s Packet_ to con itself across the ocean. As he is standing
at the wheel trying to make a plan to save the brig and himself, he
observes a sailor blundering aft. The man dives below, and the next
moment, through the open skylights, first mate Jack Paul hears him
rummaging the Captain’s cabin. In a trice, he lashes the wheel, and
slips below on the heels of the sailor. As he surmises, the man is at
the rum. Without word spoken, he knocks the would-be rum guzzler over,
and then kicks him up the companion way to the deck.
Pausing only to stick a couple of pistols in his belt, first mate Jack
Paul follows that kicked seaman with a taste for rum. He walks first to
the wheel. The wind is steady and light; for the moment the brig will
mind itself. Through some impulse he glances over the stern; the sharks
are gone. This gives him a thought; he will use the going of the sharks
to coax the men.
The five are grouped about the capstan, the one who was struck is
bleeding like tragedy. First mate Jack Paul makes them a little speech.
“There are no more to die,” says he. “The called-for eleven are dead,
and the sharks no longer follow us. That shows the ship free of menace;
we’re all to see England again. And now, mates”--there is that in the
tone which makes the five look up--“I’ve a bit of news. From now, until
its anchors are down in Whitehaven basin, I shall command this ship.”
“You?” speaks up a big sailor. “You’re no but a boy!”
“I’m man enough to sail the brig to England, and make you work like a
dog, you swab!” The look in the eye of first mate Jack Paul, makes the
capstan quintette uneasy. He goes on: “Come, my hearties, which shall
it be? Sudden death? or you to do your duty by brig and owners? For, as
sure as ever I saw the Solway, the first who doesn’t jump to my order,
I’ll plant a brace of bullets in his belly!”
And so rebellion ceases; the five come off their gloomings and their
grumblings, and spring to their work of sailing the brig. It is labor
night and day, however, for all aboard; but the winds blow the fever
away, the gales favor them, one and all they seem to have worn out
the evil fortune which dogged them out of Kingston. The _King George’s
Packet_ comes safe, at the last of it, into Whitehaven---first mate Jack
Paul and his crew of five looking for the lack of sleep like dead folk
walking the decks.
Donald, Currie & Beck pay a grateful salvage on brig and cargo to first
mate Jack Paul and the five, for bringing home the brig. This puts six
hundred pounds into the pockets of first mate Jack Paul, and one-fifth
as much into the pockets of each of the five. Then Donald, Currie & Beck
have first mate Jack Paul to dinner with the firm.
“We’ve got a ship for ye,” says shipowner Donald, as the wine is being
passed. “Ye’re to be Captain.”
“Captain!” repeats first mate Jack Paul. “A ship for me?”
“Who else, then!” returns shipowner Donald. “Ay! it’s the _Crantully
Castle_, four hundred tons, out o’ Plymouth for Bombay. Ye’re to be
Captain; besides, ye’re to have a tenth in the cargo. And now if that
suits ye, gentlemen”--addressing shipowners Currie & Beck--“let the
firm of Donald, Currie & Beck fill up the glasses to the _Crantully
Castle_ and its new Captain, Jack Paul.”
CHAPTER IV--THE KILLING OF MUNGO
Captain Jack Paul and his _Grantully Castle_ see friendly years
together. They go to India, to Spain, to the West Indies, to the
Mediterranean, to Africa. While Captain Jack Paul is busy with the
_Grantully Castle_, piling up pounds and shillings and pence for owners
Donald, Currie & Beck, he is also deep with the books, hammering at
French, Spanish and German. Ashore, he makes his way into what best
society he can find, being as eager to refine his manners as refine his
mind, holding the one as much an education as is the other. Finally he
is known in every ocean for the profundity of his learning, the
polish of his deportment, the power of his fists, and the powder-like
explosiveness of his temper.
It is a cloudy October afternoon when Captain Jack Paul works the
_Grantully Castle_ out of Plymouth, shakes free his canvas, and fills
away on the starboard tack for Tobago. The crew is an evil lot, and a
spirit of mutiny stirs in the ship. Captain Jack Paul, who holds that
a good sailor is ever a good grumbler, can overlook a deal in favor of
this aphorism; and does. On the sixth day out, however, when his first
officer, Mr. Sands, staggers below with a sheath-knife through his
shoulder, it makes a case to which no commander can afford to seem
blind.
“It was Mungo!” explains the wounded Mr. Sands.
Captain Jack Paul goes on deck, and takes his stand by the main mast.
“Pipe all hands aft, Mr. Cooper,” he says to the boatswain.
The crew straggle aft. They offer a circling score of brutal faces; in
each the dominant expression is defiance.
“The man Mungo!” says Captain Jack Paul. “Where is he?”
At the word, a gigantic black slouches out from among his mates. Sloping
shoulders, barrel body, long, swinging arms like a gorilla’s, bandy
legs, huge hands and feet, head the size and shape of a cocoanut, small,
black serpent eyes, no soul unless a fiend’s soul, Mungo is at once
tyrant, pride and leader of the forecastle. Rumor declares that he has
sailed pirate in his time, and should be sun-drying in chains on the
gibbet at Corso Castle.
As he stands before Captain Jack Paul, Mungo’s features are in a black
snarl of fury. It is in his heart to do murderously more for his captain
than he did for first officer Sands. He waits only the occasion before
making a spring. Captain Jack Paul looks him over with a grim stare as
he slouches before him.
“Mr. Cooper,” says Captain Jack Paul after a moment, during which he
reads the black Mungo like a page of print, “fetch the irons!”
The boatswain is back on deck with a pair of steel wristlets in briefest
space. He passes them to Captain Jack Paul. At this, Mungo glowers,
while the mutinous faces in the background put on a dull sullenness.
There are a brace of pistols in the belt of Captain Jack Paul, of which
the sullen dull ones do not like the look. Mungo, a black berserk, cares
little for the pistols, seeing he is in a white-hot rage, the hotter for
being held in present check. Captain Jack Paul, on his part, is in no
wise asleep; he notes the rolling, roving, bloodshot eye, like the eye
of a wild beast at bay, and is prepared.
“Hold out your hands!” comes the curt command.
Plainly it is the signal for which Mungo waited. With a growling roar,
bear-like in its guttural ferocity, he rushes upon Captain Jack Paul.
The roaring rush is of the suddenest, but the latter is on the alert.
Quick as is Mungo, Captain Jack Paul is quicker. Seizing a belaying-pin,
he brings it crashing down on the skull of the roaring, charging black.
The heavy, clublike pin is splintered; Mungo drops to the deck, a
shivering heap. The great hands close and open; the muscles clutch and
knot under the black skin; there is a choking gurgle. Then the mighty
limbs relax; the face tarns from black to a sickly tallow. Mouth agape,
eyes wide and staring, Mungo lies still.
Captain Jack Paul surveys the prostrate black. Then he tosses the irons
to Boatswain Cooper.
“They will not be needed, Mr. Bo’sen,” he says. “Pipe the crew for’ard!”
The keen whistle sings; the mutinous ones scuttle forward, like fowls
that hear the high scream of some menacing hawk..
It is two bells in the evening; the port watch, in charge of the
knife-wounded Mr. Sands, has the deck. The dead Mungo, tight-clouted in
a hammock, lies stretched on a grating, ready for burial.
Captain Jack Paul comes up from his cabin. In his hand he carries a
prayer-book. Also those two pistols are still in his belt.
“Turn out the watch below!” is the word.
The crew makes a silent half-circle about the dead Mungo. That
mutinous sullenness, recently the defiant expression of their faces, is
supplanted by a deprecatory look, composite of apology and fear. It
is as though they would convince Captain Jack Paul of their tame and
sheep-like frame of thought. The fate of Mungo has instructed them; for
one and all they are of that criminal, coward brood, best convinced by a
club and with whom death is the only conclusive argument. As they stand
uncovered about the rigid one in the clouted hammock, they realize in
full the villainy of mutiny, and abandon that ship-rebellion which has
been forecastle talk and plan since ever the Plymouth lights went out
astern.
Captain Jack Paul reads a prayer, and the dead Mungo is surrendered to
the deep. As the body goes splashing into the sea, Captain Jack Paul
turns on the subdued ones.
“Let me tell you this, my men!” says he. His tones have a cold,
threatening ring, like the clink of iron on arctic ice. “The first of
you who so much as lifts an eyebrow in refusal of an order shall go the
same voyage as the black. And so I tell you!”
Captain Jack Paul brings the _Grantully Castle_ into Tobago, crew as it
might be a crew of lambs. Once his anchors are down, he signals for the
port admiral. Within half an hour the gig of that dignitary is
alongside.
The Honorable Simpson, Judge Surrogate of the Vice-Admiralty Court of
Tobago, with the Honorable Young, Lieutenant-Governor of the colony, to
give him countenance, opens court in the after cabins of the _Grantully
Castle_. The crew are examined, man after man. They say little, lest
they themselves be caught in some law net, and landed high and dry
in the Tobago jail. First Officer Sands shows his wound and tells his
story.
Throughout the inquiry Captain Jack Paul sits in silence, listening
and looking on. He puts no questions to either mate or crew. When First
Officer Sands is finished, the Honorable Simpson asks:
“Captain, in the killing of the black, Mungo, are you in conscience
convinced that you used no more force than was necessary to preserve
discipline in your ship?”
“May it please,” returns Captain Jack Paul, who has not been at his
books these years for nothing, and is fit to cope with a king’s counsel
--“may it please, I would say that it was necessary in the course of
duty to strike the mutineer Mungo. This was on the high seas. Whenever
it becomes necessary for a commanding officer to strike a seaman, it is
necessary to strike with a weapon. Also, the necessity to strike carries
with it the necessity to kill or disable the mutineer. I call your
attention to the fact that I had loaded pistols in my belt, and
could have shot the mutineer Mungo. I struck with a belaying-pin in
preference, because I hoped that I might subdue him without killing him.
The result proved otherwise. I trust your Honorable Court will take due
account that, although armed with pistols throwing ounce balls, weapons
surely fatal in my hands, I used a belaying-pin, which, though a
dangerous, is not necessarily a fatal weapon.”
Upon this statement, the Honorable Simpson and the Honorable Young
confer. As the upcome of their conference, the Honorable Simpson
announces judgment, exonerating Captain Jack Paul.
“The sailor Mungo, being at the time on the high seas, was in a state
of mutiny.” Thus runs the finding as set forth in the records of the
Vice-Admiralty Court of Tobago. “The sailor Mungo was mutinous under
circumstances which lodged plenary power in the hands of the master
of the vessel. Therefore, the homicide was justifiable, because it had
become the only means of maintaining the discipline required for the
safety of the ship.”
The court rises, and Captain Jack Paul bows the Honorable Simpson and
the Honorable Young over the side. When they are clear, First Officer
Sands addresses Captain Jack Paul.
“Are the crew to be set ashore, sir?” he asks.
“What! Mr. Sands, would you discharge the best crew we’ve ever had?”
He continues as though replying to his first officer’s look of
astonishment. “I grant you they were a trifle uncurried at first. The
error of their ways, however, broke upon them with all clearness in the
going of Mungo. As matters now are, compared to the _Grantully Castle_,
a dove-cote is a merest theatre of violence and murderous blood. No,
Mr. Sands; we will keep our crew if you please. Should there be further
mutiny, why then there shall be further belaying-pins, I promise you.”
The _Grantully Castle_ goes finally back to England, the most peaceful
creature of oak and cordage that ever breasted the Atlantic. Cargo
discharged, the ship is sent into winter overhaul.
“As for you, sir,” remarks owner Donald, of Donald, Currie & Beck,
shoving the wine across to Captain Jack Paul, “ye’re just a maister
mariner of gold! Ye’ll no wait ashore for the _Grantully Castle_. We’ve
been buildin’ ye a new ship at our Portsmouth yards. She’s off the ways
a month, and s’uld be sparred and rigged and ready for the waves by now.
We’ve called her _The Two Friends_.”
CHAPTER V--THE SAILOR TURNS PLANTER
The wooded April banks of the Rappahannock are flourishing in the new
green of an early Virginia spring. The bark _Two Friends_, Captain Jack
Paul, out of Whitehaven by way of Lisbon, Madeira, and Kingston, comes
picking her dull way up the river, and anchors midstream at the foot of
the William Jones plantation. Almost coincident with the splash of the
anchors, the _Two Friends_ has her gig in the water, and the next moment
Captain Jack Paul takes his place in the stern sheets.
“Let fall!” comes the sharp command, as he seizes the tiller-ropes.
The four sailors bend their strong backs, the four oars swing together
like clockwork, and the gig heads for the plantation landing where a
twenty-ton sloop, current-vexed, lies gnawing at her ropes.
At twenty-six, Captain Jack Paul is the very flower of a quarter-deck
nobility. He has not the advantage of commanding height; but the lean,
curved nose, clean jaw, firmly-lined month, steady stare of the brown
eyes, coupled at the earliest smell of opposition with a frowning falcon
trick of brow like a threat, are as a commission to him, signed and
countersigned by nature, to be ever a leader of men. In figure he is
five feet seven inches, and the scales telling his weight consent to
one hundred and forty-five pounds. His hands and feet are as small as a
woman’s. By way of offset to this, his shoulders, broad and heavy, and
his deep chest arched like the deck of a whale-back, speak of anything
save the effeminate. In his movements there is a feline graceful
accuracy> with over all a resolute atmosphere of enterprise. To his men,
he is more than a captain; he is a god. Prudent at once and daring, he
shines a master of seamanship, and never the sailor serves with him who
would not name him a mariner without a flaw. He is born to inspire
faith in men. This is as it should be, by his own abstract picture of a
captain, which he will later furnish Doctor Franklin:
“Your captain,” he will say, when thus informing that philosopher, “your
captain, Doctor, should have the blind confidence of his sailors. It is
his beginning, his foundation, wanting which he can be no true captain.
To his men your captain must he prophet, priest and king. His authority
when off-shore is necessarily absolute, and therefore the crew should
be as one man impressed that the captain, like the sovereign, can do no
wrong. If a captain fail in this, he cannot make up for it by severity,
austerity or cruelty. Use force, apply restraint, punish as he may, he
will always have a sullen crew and an unhappy ship.”
The nose of the gig grates on the river’s bank, and Captain Jack Paul
leaps ashore. He is greeted by a tall, weather-beaten old man--grizzled
and gray. The form of the latter is erect, with a kind of ramrod
military stiffness. His dress is the rough garb of the Virginia overseer
in all respects save headgear. Instead of the soft wool hat, common of
his sort, the old man cocks over his watery left eye a Highland bonnet,
and this, with its hawk’s feather, fastened by a silver clasp, gives to
his costume a crag and heather aspect altogether Scotch.
The gray old man, with a grinning background of negro slaves, waits for
the landing of Captain Jack Paul. As the latter springs ashore, the old
man throws up his hand in a military salute.
“And how do we find Duncan Macbean!” cries Captain Jack Paul. “How also
is my brother! I trust you have still a bale or two of winter-cured
tobacco left that we may add to our cargo!”
“As for the tobacco, Captain Paul,” returns old Duncan Macbean, “ye’re
a day or so behind the fair, since the maist of it sailed Englandward
a month hack, in the brig _Flora Belle_. As for your brother William of
whom ye ask, now I s’uld say ye were in gude time just to hear his dying
words.”
“What’s that, Duncan Macbean!” exclaims Captain Jack Paul. “William
dying!”
“Ay, dying! He lies nearer death than he’s been any time since he and I
marched with General Braddock and Colonel Washington, against the red
salvages of the Ohio. But you s’uld come and see him at once, you his
born brother, and no stand talking here.”
“It’s lung fever, Jack,” whispers the sick man, as Captain Jack Paul
draws a chair to the side of the bed. “It’s deadly, too; I can feel it.
I’ll not get up again.”
“Come, come, brother,” retorts Captain Jack Paul cheerfully, “you’re no
old man to talk of death--you, with your fewer than fifty years. I’ll
see you up and on your pins again before I leave.”
[Illustration: 0071]
“No, Jack, it’s death. And you’ve come in good time, too, since there’s
much to talk between us. You know how our cousin left me his heir, if I
would take his name of Jones?”
“Assuredly I know.”
“And so,” continues the dying man, “my name since his passing away has
been William Paul Jones. Now when it is my turn to go, I must tell you
that, by a clause of the old man’s will, he writes you in after me as
legatee. I’m to die, Jack; and you’re to have the plantation. Only you
must clap ‘Jones’ to your name, and be not John Paul, but John Paul
Jones, as you take over the estate.”
“What’s this? I’m to heir the plantation after you?”
“So declares the will. On condition, however, that you also take the
name of Jones. That should not be hard; ‘Jones’ is one of our family
names, and he that leaves you the land was our kinsman.”
“Why, then,” cries Captain Jack Paul, “I wasn’t hesitating for that.
Paul is a good name, but so also is Jones. Only, I tell you, brother, I
hate to make my fortune by your death.”
“That’s no common-sense, Jack. I die the easier knowing my going makes
way for your good luck. And the plantation’s a gem, Jack; never a cold
or sour acre in the whole three thousand, but all of it warm, sweet
land. There’re two thousand acres of woods; and I’d leave that stand.”
The dying man, being Scotch, would give advice on his deathbed. “The
thousand acres now under plow are enough.” Then, after a pause: “Ye’ll
be content ashore? You’re young yet; you’re not so wedded to the sea, I
think, but you’ll turn planter with good grace?”
“No fear, William. I’ve had good fortune by the sea; but then I’ve met
ill fortune also. By and large, I shall be very well content to turn
planter.”
“It’s gainful, Jack, being a planter is. Only keep Duncan Macbean by
you to manage, and he’ll turn you in one thousand golden guineas profit
every Christmas day, and you never to lift hand or give thought to the
winning of them.”
“Is the plantation as gainful as that? Now I have but three thousand
guineas to call mine, after sailing these years.”
“Ay! it’s gainful, Jack. If you will work, too, there’s that to keep
you busy. There’s the grist mill, the thirty slaves, the forty horses,
besides the cows and swine and sheep to look after; as well as the negro
quarters, the tobacco houses, the stables, and the great mansion itself
to keep up. They’ll all serve to fill in the time busily, if you
should like it that way. Only Jack, with the last of it, always leave
everything to Duncan Macbean. A rare and wary man is old Duncan, and
saving of money down to farthings.”
“Whose sloop is that at the landing!” asks Captain Jack Paul, willing to
shift the subject.
“Oh, yon sloop! She goes with the plantation; she’ll be yours anon,
brother. And there you are: When the sea calls to you, Jack, as she will
call, you take the sloop. Cato and Scipio are good sailors, well trained
to the coast clear away to Charleston.”
And so William Paul Jones dies, and John Paul takes his place on the
plantation. His name is no longer John Paul, but John Paul Jones; and,
as his dying brother counselled, he keeps old Duncan Macbean to be the
manager.
When his brother is dead, Captain Jack Paul joins his mate, Laurence
Edgar, on the deck of the _Two Friends_, swinging tide and tide on her
anchors.
“Mate Edgar,” says Captain Jack Paul, “it is the last time I shall plank
this quarterdeck as captain. I’m to stay; and you’re to take the ship
home to Whitehaven. And now, since you’re the captain, and I’m no more
than a guest, suppose you order your cabin boy to get us a bottle of the
right Madeira, and we’ll drink fortune to the bark and her new master.”
CHAPTER VI--THE FIRST BLOW IN VIRGINIA
It is a soundless, soft December evening. The quietly falling flakes
are cloaking in thin white the streets and roofs of Norfolk. Off shore,
a cable’s length, an English sloop of war, eighteen guns, lies tugging
at her anchors. In shore from the sloop of war rides the peaceful
twenty-ton sloop of Planter Paul Jones. The sailor-planter, loitering
homeward from a cruise to Charleston and the coast towns of the
Carolinas, is calling on friends in Norfolk. Both the war sloop and the
peace sloop seem almost deserted in the falling snow. Aside from the
harbor light burning high in the rigging, and an anchor watch of two
sailors muffled to the ears, the decks of neither craft show signs of
life.
Norfolk’s public hall is candle-lighted to a pitch of unusual
brilliancy; the waxed floors are thronged with the beauty and gentility
of the Old Dominion, as the same find Norfolk expression. It is indeed
a mighty social occasion; for the local élite have
|
overhead, but a few
belated asters and goldenrods under foot. Squirrels are busy hiding
winter stores, gathered under the nut trees, and on the wild hawthorns.
A thicket of witch hazel is slowly dropping its yellowing leaves. You
might not have noticed it at all, had not one of the trees suddenly
called attention to itself by tweaking your ear! It is such a surprise to
feel in the silent woods the sharp sting of a shot from a silent air gun.
You stand still, listening, and feeling of your ear. It is a fine frosty
October day, and still. As you listen, another shot strikes the dead
leaves at your feet. Where do they come from? This question you will
probably not be able to answer at once; but while you are looking in the
bushes from which the missile seemed to come, thinking to rout some joker
from his ambush, you discover the blossoms of the witch hazel. Each one
is waving four little yellow petals, and among these delicate blossoms
the bullet pods are bunched. Some of these are yawning wide open, each
showing two empty seed pockets, but you do not find any seeds.
Cut a bundle of these things, and carry them home. Put them in a vase of
water. The delicate fragrance of the flowers will go through the house,
and every one will marvel that any tree or bush can be found in blossom
at the very end of the year. Now the strangest thing will happen. Above
the quiet talk around the evening lamp sounds the sharp click, as of a
bit of metal, or a bead striking the wall with considerable force. Every
one sits up to listen. A second click, this time on the glass covering a
picture, is located, and a little black object, smaller than an apple
seed, pointed and tipped with white, is picked up from the floor. It is
this seed which was thrown against the glass; and it does not require a
Sherlock Holmes to prove that it came out of one of the witch hazel seed
pods. If each person takes a twig, and keeps an eye upon the pods, that
show a slight opening, more than one of the pods will be seen when they
burst, and throw their seeds. The warmth of the indoor air springs the
trigger, and the tiny projectiles fly.
How surprised the squirrels must be when the witch hazel guns are
bombarding the dry leaf carpet of the woods! How much pleasure it gives
you to take your friends to the thicket, and explain to them the meaning
of those scattering shots the pods are firing each crisp autumn day! If
it is rainy weather the pods will all be closed. But let the sun come
out, and dry them, and the game begins again.
Can any one wonder that witch hazel trees grow in companies? Each little
tree flings its seeds in all directions, and for each seed planted a
little tree may come. Twenty feet from the parent tree the pods are able
to throw their seeds.
Extract of witch hazel is obtained by boiling twigs and leaves of this
tree in a still with alcohol. The Indians taught white men that this
plant contained a drug which had soothing and curative powers when rubbed
upon sprains and bruises. Whether there is any truth in this notion or
not, the belief is still strong, and people continue to rub extract of
witch hazel on their bruises, even though many doctors say there is
nothing medicinal in it but the alcohol.
[Illustration: The beech tree opens its two kinds of flowers after the
long, pointed winter buds have opened, and the lengthening shoot has
spread out its leaves.]
[Illustration: Catkins, staminate and pistillate, of a hornbeam and a
birch; catkins and acorn flowers of an oak]
In England the witch elm corresponds to our own witch hazel. No one in
the mining regions would dare to sink a shaft for coal unless he had
warrant for doing so from the actions of a divining rod in the hands of a
competent person. In other regions the digging of a well depends upon the
same thing, and this idea prevails in many parts of this country. An old
fellow who can “water witch” may be found in most old-fashioned
communities. If you wish to dig a well, you must call on him to locate
the site. He cuts a y-shaped twig from the witch hazel, trims it, and is
ready for the ceremony. Grasping one of the two tips in each hand, and
holding the main stem erect, he paces over the ground you have chosen. In
his rigid hands the supple twigs waver, and finally the wand bends
downward. This, according to popular belief, is the proper place to find
good water, and plenty of it. The water witch moves away, again holding
the stem erect. He comes back finally, and as he crosses the spot again,
the wand goes down. Now every one is sure that this is the spot, and the
well is dug. If the seer’s prediction comes true, his reputation
improves, and scoffers concede that “there may be something in it, after
all.” In regions where the witch hazel does not grow, a twig of wild plum
tree will do.
THE OAK FAMILY
The fifty kinds of oak trees that are native to America are about evenly
divided on the two sides of the Rocky Mountains. No Western oaks are
found in the Eastern states, and none of our Eastern kinds grows wild on
the other side of the mountains. The backbone of the continent is a bar
that neither group has been able to pass.
To know fifty different kinds of oaks by sight, so as to call each one by
its right name, is not an easy task; and yet it is not so difficult as it
at first might seem. To begin with, any tree we meet, which bears acorns,
we at once recognise as an oak. By this one sign, we are able to set this
great family apart from every other tree. As soon as they are old enough,
all oaks bear acorns. If a tree which we suspect to be an oak has no
acorn to show us, on or under the tree, a little close looking will
usually find some acorn cups still hanging on, or lying where they fell
upon the ground.
The leaves of oaks are distinctive. In general, they are all simple, and
their outline is oval. The borders are variously cut by deep or shallow
bays, between sharp points or rounding finger-like lobes. They are
leathery in texture, compared with leaves of most trees. After a little
practice, we learn to recognise oak leaves, no matter how variously cut
their borders may be.
In spring the flowers of oaks come out with the leaves. A fringe of
catkins at the base of the new shoot is composed of pollen-bearing
flowers. In the angles of the new leaves farther up the stem, we shall
find the little acorn flowers, usually in twos. This is the flower
arrangement of all the oaks; staminate and pistillate flowers on the new
shoots, separate and very different from each other, but always close
together, and always both kinds on each tree. The fringe of catkins falls
as soon as the pollen is shed. Little, red, forked tongues are thrust out
by the pistillate flowers to catch the golden dust when it is flying
through the air, and thus to set seed. All through the summer, the little
acorns are growing. We can find them in their tiny cups in the angles of
the leaves.
In the autumn the acorns are ripe, and falling. Some trees will show
acorns of two sizes, half-grown ones on the new shoots, and full-sized
ones on the bare twigs, just back of the new shoots.
This peculiarity divides the oak family into two great groups. One group
is composed of trees which have light-coloured bark, bear a crop every
year, and in winter are bare of fruit. This is known as the White Oak
Group. Its leaves have rounded margin lobes which do not end in sharp
points, as many of the lobes of oak leaves do.
All of the oaks whose leaves have pointed, spiny lobes on their margin
belong to the Black Oak Group. The bark of these trees is usually
dark-coloured. The acorns require two years of growth. For this reason,
there are half-grown acorns on the tree all winter, waiting for the
second summer to bring them to maturity. Every autumn the acorns which
are ripe are found on the twigs just back of the leafy shoots, which grew
during the past summer. These acorns have completed their second year of
growth.
When we hear any one speak of annual-fruited and biennial-fruited oaks,
we know that the White Oak and Black Oak Groups are meant. If you see an
oak tree whose leaves are cut into sharp pointed lobes, you will find
acorns of two sizes on its twigs. If you look across the fence and see a
pale-barked oak with finger-lobed leaves, and not a spiny point on their
margins, you will know that acorns of but one size will be found. Fix
these three points in mind. Then study all the oak trees you can find.
Trees of the White Oak Group have:
1. Rounded lobes on their leaf margins.
2. Acorns ripe in a single season.
3. Pale-coloured bark.
Trees of the Black Oak Group have:
1. Spiny-pointed lobes on their leaves.
2. Acorns requiring two seasons to ripen.
3. Dark-coloured bark
THE WHITE OAK
Those who know trees best agree that there is no nobler broad-leaved tree
in the American forests than the White Oak. Tree lovers in England have
but one native oak upon which to spend their loyal devotion, the tree
worship inherited from Druid ancestors, whose temples were their sacred
groves of oaks. The same feeling is in our blood, and roused at sight of
an aged white oak, with stout, buttressed trunk, and great horizontal
limbs supporting a rounded dome, much broader than high.
The tree is grey in winter. It stands bare of leaves, clothed in its
pale, scaly bark. This is the time to study the framework of the dome.
The limbs are twisted and gnarled, and their branches end in dense
thickets of twigs. Each twig bears the winter buds, and five buds are
clustered at the tip of each.
In spring these buds open, and a leafy shoot comes out of each. At the
base are the yellow, fringed catkins of the sterile flowers, and above
them, in the angles between leaves and twig, the fertile flowers thrust
out forked tongues for pollen. These will be acorns next autumn, if the
pollen falls upon them, and thus sets seed.
All summer the leaves are green, with pale linings, and when summer ends,
they turn to rich shades of purplish red. The sweet acorns are ripe, and
as they fall, thrifty squirrels are all about, gathering them into their
hidden store-houses for winter use. Plenty of the thin, shallow cups we
shall find, but the kernels are scarce, unless we come when they are
falling in October.
The Indians taught the early colonists in America to use acorns of this
species for food. They boiled them, like hominy, and found them not only
nourishing, but good to eat.
If you find solitary white oaks growing here and there in a mixed woods,
you may wonder how they were planted thus. The tree cannot scatter its
own seeds. It depends upon the work of scampering nut-gatherers, in fur
coats, that put away more acorns than they can eat during the long
winter. An acorn that is left over in one of the dark pockets along a
squirrel’s run-way sprouts in the spring, and in a few years it is a
sturdy oak sapling. All oaks are dependent on outside help in planting.
White oak lumber is very high-priced. The wood of this tree we rarely see
nowadays except in the most expensive oak furniture. The beautiful satiny
streaks that are the chief ornament of the grain in polished table tops,
are bands of fibres that radiate from the central pith to the bark. When
oak is “quarter-sawed,” these _pith rays_, called “mirrors,” show to best
advantage. They are most numerous in the wood of the white oak.
THE BUR OR MOSSY-CUP OAK
The largest acorn I know is the fruit of the bur oak, and it is borne in
a mossy cup, indeed. The cup’s scales are drawn out into long, hairy
points, and those near the rim form a loose fringe. Once in a while you
may find an acorn almost covered up in its husk. But as a rule, the nut
is a little more than half-covered. Sometimes these nuts are two inches
long, but this is not usual. They are over an inch long, and almost as
broad, and the meat is white and sweet. No wonder squirrels harvest the
crop, and young trees spring up wherever an acorn is missed by the hungry
creatures.
The bur oak is a shaggy tree, for it sheds its bark in big flakes, like
the sycamore. The small branches are stout, and their bark is developed
into corky wings, like the sweet gum. The tree is irregular in shape,
too, its gnarled limbs are thrown out in any direction, and so the top is
often unsymmetrical. But it is a rugged and picturesque tree, in spite of
all its faults, and it adds beauty of an unusual kind to parks and
woodlands.
In Sioux City, Iowa, an aged bur oak stands in Riverside Park. It is
called “The Council Oak,” for it was a venerable tree in the days when
the Indians lived on the banks of the Missouri River. Under this tree
their chieftains used to meet the white men, and talk over the questions
that interested both. Here treaties were drawn up and signed that kept
peace between the red and white men.
I promise a great deal of pleasure to any one who plants a mossy-cup
acorn. The seedling tree is wonderfully vigorous in growth. The leaves
are often a foot long in the first years of the tree’s life. The blades
are thick, lustrous above, and woolly lined, the finger lobes irregular,
and two opposite, deep sinuses near the middle of the leaf cut it almost
in two!
Before the tree is more than a sapling it blossoms and bears big acorns
in their handsome mossy cups. There is no stage in the life of one of
these oaks that is not beautiful and interesting.
This tree is found from Nova Scotia to Western Texas. It forms forests in
Winnipeg, and “oak openings” in Minnesota and Dakota. It is as much at
home in the hot, arid stretches of the plains of the West and Southwest
as in the raw, damp air of the New England coasts. In the rich valley of
the Ohio River it reached nearly two hundred feet in height in the virgin
forests.
Unlike many oaks, it may be safely transplanted while young.
THE LIVE OAK
The citizen of New Orleans takes his Northern visitors to Audubon Park,
and points with pride to the giant live oak trees. He does not hesitate,
for he knows that the noble pair called “George Washington,” and “Martha
Washington,” though crippled now by tornadoes, are more noted the country
over than any monument or building in this famous old city. In Charleston
and other Southern cities it is the same. Famous old live oaks adorn the
parks and avenues, and the same trees are planted year by year to take
the places of the veterans when age and storms shall make an end of their
long lives.
These trees wear a crown of green throughout the year. The leaves last
but one year, but they cling to the twigs and remain green until they are
gradually pushed off by the opening of new leafy shoots. In spring the
new leaves are much brighter than the darker old ones. Everywhere the
trees are draped with the sage-green ropes of “Spanish moss,” which is
not a moss at all, but a flowering plant that steals its living by
lodging its roots in crevices in the bark of trees.
The live oak acorns are dainty, dark-brown nuts, set in hoary,
long-stemmed cups. Each year there is a good crop of acorns, and they are
sweet, and pleasant to the taste. The Indians depended upon them for
food, roasting or boiling them. They also skimmed the boiling pot to
collect the oil, which the early colonists said was much like oil of
almonds.
The “knees of oak” that early ship-builders used to brace the sides of
vessels, were taken from live oak trees, where the great boughs spring
out from the short, stout trunks. This natural joint is better than any
bolted union of two pieces of timber. The scarcity of these trees makes
it impossible now to supply these knees, but no steel frame serves the
purpose quite so well. The wood is as beautiful as white oak for the
making of handsome furniture, though it splits more easily, and is harder
for the cabinet-maker to use.
The tree grows throughout the South to Texas; also in Mexico, and Lower
California. Its Northern limit is Virginia.
A friend who has for a near neighbour the majestic McDonough Oak,
patriarch among the noble live oaks of the Audubon Park, New Orleans,
writes interestingly of the habits of this species.
“The live oak sheds its leaves _in the spring_, just before the new
leaves open. So, for a brief time the tree stands leafless. In this
period, however, the tree puts out catkins in great abundance, so that
the tree does not appear bare. These catkins are light brown, and have a
soft, velvety appearance, and a tree has an absolute change of colour.
During this blossom time the splendid form of the trunk and the great
limbs is revealed. When the new leaves appear, the framework of branch
and bough is concealed by leafage so dense as to be impenetrable to sun
or eye. The tree is a symmetrical, shining green dome. The crown of the
McDonough oak is over two hundred feet in diameter.”
THE POST OAK
The post oak, a small, rugged tree, is noticeable in winter, because its
leaves usually hang on until the open buds in spring push them off. The
colour of this winter foliage is yellowish brown, and not at all striking
nor beautiful. The bark is brown and deeply furrowed. The twigs wear a
yellow fuzz. The leaves are coarse, stiff and rough, four to five inches
long, tapering from three broad, squarish lobes to a narrow base, and a
short leaf stalk. They are lined with brownish wool, and are dark green
and shining above in summer.
The acorns of the post oak are borne in a plentiful annual crop. Each is
dainty and trim, in a shallow cup of loose, blunt-pointed scales. The
kernel is sweet. In the days when wild game roamed the woods, wild
turkeys fattened on these acorns, and some people call the tree the
“turkey oak.”
Another name for this tree is “iron oak,” for its wood is hard, and
heavy, and close-grained. It makes admirable posts and railroad ties,
because it does not rot in contact with water. It is used in
boat-building, and for barrel staves. “Knees” of post oak (the angles
between trunk and branch) form most admirable timbers to be used in the
framework of boats.
THE SWAMP WHITE OAK
The swamp white oak is a rugged and ragged tree, with drooping branches
and crooked twigs, covered with greyish brown bark which peels in thin
flakes from branches and trunk. This habit of shedding its bark in
irregular plates reminds us strongly of the sycamore, which carries this
habit to excess. The leaves of this oak are large, wedge-shaped at the
base, wavy-toothed or lobed, and broadening towards the tips. They are
dark green above, and lined with white down. The acorns are borne in
pairs on long stems. The oval nut is hairy at its tip, and sits in a
rough cup made of scales, sometimes fringed at the border. The kernel is
sweet and eatable, not only for beasts, but for man. If one were lost in
the woods, he need not starve nor die of thirst, if he is near a stream,
and can get the fruit of a swamp white oak, which stands by the water
side. He will do well to make a fire, and roast the acorns, which will
improve their nutty flavour, and make them more digestible.
This white oak is more beautiful in May than at any other season of the
year. The young leaves are pale green, and the tree top is illuminated by
the silky hairs that line them. The whiteness of the down is dimmed as
summer advances. In the autumn the leaves turn yellow, but never red.
The wood of this oak is not distinguished in the lumber trade from any
other white oak. The demand for it for the building of houses and boats,
and for agricultural implements and vehicles, is greater than the supply.
It is too expensive now to be used as it was a few years ago, for fuel,
railroad ties, and fence posts.
THE CHESTNUT OAK
The chestnut oak has leaves which are much like those of the chestnut
tree. They are larger, and wider, however, and have rounded lobes at the
ends of the side veins, making a very regular wavy margin, compared with
that of most oak leaves. The lining is often silky, and always much paler
than the upper surface. This tree is an exception to the rule that the
annual-fruited oaks have pale bark. This one has bark so dark in colour
that it is often mistaken for one of the Black Oak Group, although its
wavy leaf margins, and its annual crop of acorns, prove it to belong to
the White Oak Group.
The acorns are very long, and smooth, and they sit in thin cups lined
with down, and covered with small swollen scales. They are usually borne
alone on short stems. This is one of the largest and sweetest acorns. The
squirrels pack them among their winter’s stores.
The wood of chestnut oak is hard, and strong, and durable in contact with
the soil. The bark is especially rich in tannic acid. For this reason
many of the finest trees yield only tan bark, because the peelers take
the bark, and leave the log to fall a prey to forest fires.
THE BLACK OAK
The black oak, which gives its name to the large group of
biennial-fruited oaks, is one of our handsome, sturdy forest trees. It
grows from Maine to Florida, and west to Minnesota, Kansas, and Eastern
Texas. Its bark is very dark grey or brown, and thick, with rough, broken
ridges and deep furrows. Under this outer layer is a yellow belt, rich in
tannin. This gives the tree the name “yellow oak,” and since its bark is
valuable in tanning leather, it is some times called the “tan bark oak.”
The tree is not graceful nor symmetrical, but there is a picturesqueness
and strength about it that redeems its coarseness and irregularity. This
species would be planted oftener for shade, were there not so many
beautiful oaks to choose from. In the wild, however, a giant black oak is
a noble feature of the landscape.
In early spring the large downy winter buds begin to swell, and soon the
leaves push rapidly out. The whole tree top flushes crimson in the
sunshine. The red glow is from the crinkly, half-awake baby leaves, whose
brilliance is softened by a silky covering of white hairs. In a day the
leaves turn green, and most of their silky covering is shed.
The bloom of the black oak consists of a fringe of yellow catkins at the
base of each shoot, and pairs of red-tongued acorn flowers in the angles
of some of the leaves. Back of the new shoot the half-grown acorns of the
previous season are seen. In autumn the new crop is well along and the
full-grown acorns, which have taken two seasons to ripen, are ready to be
shed. Each kernel sits in a straight-sided cup of loosely shingled
scales, which form a fringe at the margin. The kernel is bitter, and
yellow, as it is in most of the species of the Black Oak Group.
[Illustration: Leaves, mossy-cup acorns and warty twigs of the bur oak]
[Illustration: The horizontal limbs of the pin oak form a regular
pyramidal head]
The large, downy, pointed buds of this oak will often determine its name
for us when we are confused by the shapes of the leaves. Often the red
oak and the black oak “run together” in their leaf forms. To determine
the tree’s name we must call in the buds, the acorns, and their cups, and
the general shape of the trees, and consider all these points together.
Black oak leaves are thick, coarse, and leathery. Crumple one in your
hand, and you cringe at the harsh scratching noise it makes. They vary
from four to ten inches in length, and from two to six inches in breadth.
The margins are deeply cut into seven or nine broad, bristly-toothed
lobes, with rounded bays between. The upper surface is dark green in
summer, shining and smooth, or sometimes hairy. The lining is brownish
and a remnant of the scurfy down is found in the neighbourhood of the
veins. In autumn these leaves turn brownish-yellow, but rarely show a
tinge of red.
The bark of black oak is stripped and carried to the tan-yards. Or it
furnishes a yellow dye, used in the printing of calicoes. The wood is
used in house-building, and in the manufacture of furniture.
THE RED OAK
The red oak is the tree most likely to be mistaken for the black oak. The
bark is brown, with a decided red tinge. The twigs are also reddish, and
the wood is red-brown. The inner bark has the same tinge instead of the
orange-coloured lining the black oak bark has.
The red oak is a large, stately tree, sometimes 150 feet in height, and
far more symmetrical than the black oak. Its leaves vary greatly in the
depth of their marginal clefts, but in general they are oval in outline,
and their lobes and sinuses are triangular. These lobes always point
forward, rather than outward, along the sides of the leaf, and they
always end in the sharp, spiny points that belong to the leaves of all
the trees that fall into the Black Oak Group. Red oak leaves are thinner
than those of black oak, and not so harsh when crumpled in the hand.
Their linings are pale green and smooth in summer. Their autumn colour is
deep red.
The buds of the red oak are pointed, smooth, reddish, and about
one-fourth of an inch long. They are much smaller, and lack the down of
the buds of the black oak.
Red oak acorns are the most distinct feature of this species. They are
large, often over an inch in length, and broad, and they sit in saucers,
instead of cups. These saucers are made of close scales, and they curl in
closely at the top as if to tighten their hold on the nut, which extends
two-thirds its height above this rim. The kernel is white, and extremely
bitter.
THE SCARLET OAK
The scarlet oak need not be confused with either the red or black oaks,
for it is a far more dainty tree than either in its trim trunk, graceful
curving branches, very slim twigs, and deeply cut leaves. In form, these
leaves are oval, but so much of the “cloth” is cut away by the four or
six deep bays along the sides that a small amount of green is left to do
leaf duty. The slender lobes are strengthened by the branching veins,
each of which ends in a spiny point. These almost skeleton leaves are
beautifully lustrous and thin, a trifle paler beneath and sometimes hairy
tufted at the veins. They are rarely six inches long, and the side lobes
sometimes measure five inches from tip to tip. The leaf stems are long
and flexible, and the whole tree top is as light and feathery and
tremulous in a breeze as that of a honey locust or a willow. In autumn
the scarlet oak blazes like a torch above the duller reds and browns of
the woods, and keeps its brilliancy later than any other oak.
The acorn differs from the black oak in being smaller and daintier, and
in having its cup drawn in tightly at the rim. The scales are smooth and
close-pressed; the kernel white and bitter.
THE PIN OAK
The pin oak has foliage much like the scarlet oak, but coarser and not so
lustrous. Often a pin oak tree has leaves that approach the red oak in
form, and these lead to confusion, if leaves alone are consulted in
determining the name of the tree. There are better signs in any pin oak
that set it apart from its larger-leaved relative. Consult the acorns.
They are plump little nuts, as broad as long, rarely measuring one-half
inch either way, pale brown, streaked with black in straight lines, down
from the pointed tips, and they sit in shallow, saucer-like cups made of
close reddish scales. As they fall, the nuts roll out of the cups, which
are lined with hair. The kernel is white and bitter and yet, late in
winter, it is very common to find them gnawed open by some hungry little
four-foot, whose winter store threatens to run short.
The pin oak takes its name from the fact that its branches are thickly
set with short, pin-like twigs, many of which die but do not fall. These
stubs stay on for several years. This fact alone will soon enable us to
recognise the tree from a distance. No other species is so close-twigged,
and the symmetrical form of this tree is very striking in the winter. It
is a pyramid with many small branches thrust out horizontally from the
main shaft. Below the middle of the tree, the long branches have a
downward thrust, and the lowest ones often sweep the ground. Above the
middle of the tree the branches are horizontal, and they gradually become
shorter, and the tree ends in a pointed tip. There is no oak that I know
which has so much the pyramidal form of evergreens like the firs,
hemlocks, and spruces.
On the avenues of the city of Washington, we shall find superb double
rows of American trees. On one which leads to the Navy Yard, I remember
the beautiful pin oaks, uniform in size, perfect in symmetry, that stood
in a double row along the sides of the avenue. To the crowds of tourists
who visit the capital city every year, I hope that this will be an object
lesson. In most towns and cities every owner plants the trees he likes in
front of his house, so our streets and avenues present a mixture of trees
of all ages, sizes, kinds, and conditions. The better way is for the city
to plant the same tree in double lines, the whole length of a street, as
has of late years been done in Washington. One needs only to see these
trees coming on, each year adding beauty and dignity to the city, to
realise that such planting may be done easily anywhere in the country,
where trees as beautiful as the pin oaks grow wild.
THE WILLOW OAK
A Southern tree with slender twigs and narrow leaves like those of a
willow, surprises us by bearing acorns! It is the willow oak, a
beautiful, graceful tree for shade and for avenue planting. The tree
naturally chooses wet ground, but it thrives where the soil is deep and
well drained. I remember a fine large willow oak in John Bartram’s garden
in Philadelphia, and a young tree in the Arnold Arboretum in Boston. This
little one grows rapidly, but the frost nips its twigs in the winter. The
species grows wild from New York southward, just back from the sea coast,
to Texas. In swampy land, it is found from Missouri southward.
Willow oak acorns are downy, yellow-brown, and set in shallow
saucer-shaped cups. The kernel is orange-yellow, and bitter. Half-grown
acorns are found with the ripe ones on these trees, and the dark, rough
bark agrees with others of the Black Oak Group. Though the leaves have
rarely a side lobe, but are mostly narrow and plain-margined, the tip
ends in a spine, as all black oak leaves should.
TREES WITH WINGED SEEDS
Why do the trees grow in such mixed groves, when Nature does the
planting? Here and there we find solid groves of beech or oak, but the
forest is, for the most part, a gathering together of all kinds of trees.
A part of the beauty of any woodland is this variety in the planting.
Under a tall oak we find a hornbeam, and under this the witch hazel, and
under the witch hazel, a carpet of low woodland plants. We may walk in a
straight line, or follow a woodland path a mile, and find every tree we
meet is different from all the rest.
Many reasons explain the order in which Nature plants forests. One of the
best of these is found in the kind of seeds trees bear. We shall find
that trees most widely scattered are those whose seeds are winged. It is
not hard to find, from May until far past midwinter, trees bearing light,
winged seeds. All through the summer, the wind is busy sowing the seeds
of the early-fruiting trees. In autumn, and all through the winter, the
sowing of the larger crop goes on.
Let us begin our study with the maples, whose winged seeds every child
knows. From the silver maple, whose seeds are dry before the first of
June, there is a procession of ripening maple seeds that lasts throughout
the year. A high wind shakes off the silver maple’s keys in showers in
late May. Watch those in the tree-tops. The wind has a better chance up
there. Each key, loosening from its twig, turns round and round in a
dizzy whirl, and sails away still whirling as it falls, the heavy seed
end always pointed downward. A tree is soon stripped, and the ground
littered under it. But a great deal larger area than the tree’s shadow
has the seeds scattered over it: the stronger the wind, the further these
seeds go. Before the summer is over, a crop of little maple trees springs
up from this sowing.
The red maple’s scarlet seed clusters turn brown, and the little winged
seeds take flight in June. Lighter and smaller, they are carried longer
distances than the seeds of the silver maple, and a crop of little red
maples follows this June sowing of the trees.
I remember walking in a corn field in late June; the corn had been last
ploughed a month before. Among the weeds that had grown up in this short
time was a crop of young red maples, now six inches high. It was amazing
to see these little trees grow so plentifully in a cultivated field. I
looked for the seed tree, and there it stood on the edge of the field,
the only maple tree in sight. A few young trees were growing in the
matted grass of the roadside under the tree, but the great crop was from
the seeds that flew out to the mellow ground between the corn rows. The
disappointed seeds, those which fell and did not grow, were under the
tree and in the dusty road.
In the autumn the hard maple, which we call the sugar maple, ripens its
winged seeds. So does the three-leaved box elder (which is a maple) and
the Norway maple, now a very familiar street tree. The wind takes its
time, and the trees stubbornly hang on to their seeds, so that these
maples are busy all winter with the sowing. Every day they give up a few,
and many seeds that fall on the snow are picked up, again and again, by
the wind and thus carried further and further away.
The maple seed, with its curiously one-sided wing, is the sign by which
the maple family is easily recognised. Other trees have winged seeds, but
none have the peculiar form of this one.
All summer long
|
in tow as prizes. In addition, she was flying
at her mast head this signal, "Have destroyed eight vessels."
Dewey's ships moved over toward the city of Manila, took their
positions in line and remained quiet.
"What time is it?" asked Marie of the Spanish officer who stood
near her.
"Twelve-thirty," answered he, as he looked at his watch.
Marie whiled away the afternoon watching the Spaniards on Corregidor
island burying their dead comrades. She wanted to go home, but she
feared to go past Dewey's fleet.
That evening things became solemnly quiet; and the blazing sun, as its
face reddened into nightly slumber beyond the watery horizon of the
Pacific, bade farewell to a finished deed, which, in the history of
naval warfare, has never been surpassed; while the pale-faced moon,
moving slowly up her appointed path, looked calmly down with her
quartered cheek in silent benediction on the blazing hulls of the
Spanish ships as they slowly cremated their dead and dying.
The next day the Spanish Commandante on Corregidor discovered that
Dewey had blockaded the port of Manila, so he restrained Marie from
starting home for nearly a week.
Finally, she got permission to go. As she passed Dewey's fleet she
was surprised to find everything so peaceful and to see dozens of
native canoes hovering along the port-holes of his vessels, selling
fruit and curios to his men.
Marie reached home in the early evening, and found her old mother
frantic because of her absence and the excitement that had taken place.
During the next few weeks while Dewey was waiting for reinforcements
from home, many strange things occurred on shore. The Filipinos
captured or killed nearly all of the smaller Spanish garrisons
distributed throughout the islands. On May 26, they secretly cut
down the Spanish guards walking their beats along the western side of
the little town of Cavite, and let in a horde of Tagalos well armed
with bolos, who crept up near a large stone cathedral, built in 1643,
in which the Spaniards, as a military necessity after their defeat by
Dewey, were making their headquarters. These Filipinos made a mad rush
through the back door of the building and captured all the Spaniards
being quartered therein. This feat also gave them possession of another
lot of Mauser and Remington rifles and a goodly store of ammunition,
for which they had been yearning.
Dewey had no men whom he could spare to send ashore; therefore, he had
left these surrendered Spaniards to take care of themselves. Evidently
he did not anticipate an attack upon the garrison at Cavite, or
he might have landed enough marines from his battleships to have
prevented it.
When Marie heard about the capture of the Spanish garrison at Cavite
by the Filipinos, she at once rowed over there to see what was going
to be done with the prisoners. This was the first time she had been
at Cavite since the day of her lover's tragic death. She found the
Filipinos jubilant over their new fire-arms. But many of them had
never before used a gun and they were very awkward with them, so
that accidents were constantly occurring. The privileges of target
practice given to Marie by the Spaniards, in times past, now found a
new reward. She organized the Filipinos into squads for this training,
arranged suitable targets for them, supervised the loading and cleaning
of their guns, and by voluntary assent became the leader in a whole
lot of nefarious mischief in the neighborhood.
But what about her lover's dying request and the vow she registered
in her aching soul as she left the scene of his death? By remaining
away from the graves of our loved ones we may check memory and
enthrone reason, thus more rapidly overcoming sorrow. By constantly
resorting to places of grief we keep that grief, whatever may have
been its cause, fresh on the tablets of our memories. The fact that
Marie had not returned to Cavite, the scene of her sorrow, for about
two months, helped her to forget it and to flirt with fate among the
very troops who had caused it. Now that she had returned to Cavite,
old visions began to haunt her. Shooting at wooden targets was not
desperate enough to appease her nature; she longed for bloodshed.
Between herself and a few Filipino leaders she concocted a scheme
that would be hilarious, avenge the death of him whom she had
briefly mourned, as well as the deaths of Rizal and thousands of
other Filipinos who had been shot or strangled by the Spaniards,
and satisfy the longings of her innermost nature. It was this: a
pit twenty feet in diameter and ten feet deep was to be dug on the
higher ground a few miles southwest of Cavite. Each morning twenty
of the captured Spaniards were to be marched out to this pit and
made to slide down a bamboo pole into it. The Filipino soldiers,
armed with their newly-captured rifles, were then to stand around
the brink of this pit and use these half-starved Spaniards for living
targets. Marie gloated over her new enterprise. What sport! How she
enjoyed it! The Filipino's marksmanship was poor and many of their
unfortunate prisoners were shot over a dozen times before they were
stilled in death. This bloody practice was kept up until over two
hundred Spaniards had been slain.
About this time rumors of what was being done reached the ears
of General Anderson. He ordered it stopped, and sent food ashore,
under American escorts, for the Spanish prisoners. These prisoners,
before being led to the slaughter, were housed by the Filipinos
in an unfinished portion of the old convent at Cavite, and in some
large stone buildings without floors and with only a few windows,
heavily barricaded with iron bars, formerly used by the natives for
storage purposes for various cargoes of raw materials, preparatory
to exportation. These buildings were dark, damp and infested with a
multiplicity of insectivora.
The Spaniards, imprisoned therein, were fed by the Filipinos on a
very small ration of uncooked rice. This they had to pound into meal,
and eat it out of their hands. Water, although plentiful, was denied
them, except in small quantities. They had no beds, but slept on
the bare ground. Many of them were practically nude. They had staid
by their guns on the Spanish fleet until their ships began to sink;
then they had jumped overboard and swam ashore, taking off most of
their clothes before making the attempt. The Filipinos had little
clothing to give them and no disposition to share what they did have.
These half-starved wretches, pale, lean and ghostly looking, many
of them sick with fever and other ailments, none of them with a
cent of money, were a sickening sight to the American troops whom
General Anderson sent ashore to investigate their circumstances
and conditions. Of course the healthier ones were marched out and
killed first. Some of them began to cry when the American officers,
pushing the Filipino sentries aside, poked their vigorous manly faces
through the openings of the massive doors to see who and what was on
the inside; but most of them propped themselves up on one elbow and
held out the other hand for something to eat. Others indicated by
motions that they wanted paper and pencils, so as to write letters
home, telling their loved ones in far-off Spain that they were still
alive, and asking for money.
As the Americans began to empty their haversacks and hand hard-tack
and Boston baked beans to them, some of the prisoners seized them by
the fingers and kissed the backs of their hands in grateful homage
for their kindness. A few of the more ignorant ones, who had heard so
much about the cruelty of the American soldiers, and who, upon sight
of our officers, believing the end was near, had sought a kneeling
attitude and begun to pray, gradually sank back into a reclining
posture and held out their hands for a morsel of food.
The Filipino guards sulked when they were displaced by the American
sentries, and some of them had to be forced from their posts of
fiendish duty at the point of the bayonet. They considered these
Spaniards as reprisals, constituting their own private property, with
whom they could do as they pleased without any justifiable interference
on the part of anybody. Marie Sampalit slapped an American private
who had been sent to displace a Filipino sentry whom she had just
stationed at one of the prison doors. He promptly knocked her down with
the butt of his rifle. What she said in reply he could not understand.
CHAPTER IV.
THE INTERVAL
After avenging her lover's death, Marie returned again to Manila
where she remained at home until the Filipino uprising against the
American troops in the spring of 1899. During this interval of nine
months, she daily frequented the places of rendezvous of the American
troops stationed in and around Manila. She also went to the officers'
homes in the city where their wives and children were stopping. She
did their washing, and cared for the children. Her congeniality made
her a favorite. Some of the American ladies offered to bring her back
to America with them for a house-hold servant.
From them she learned to speak the English language nearly as fluently
as Spanish. The American soldiers were kind and polite to her. She
made considerable money by doing washing for them. It was noticeable
that she was gradually improving the old bamboo home in Manila. In a
few months she had come into possession of more money than she thought
there was in the entire world. Most of it was American gold--largely
in five dollar denominations. (This is what the United States used in
paying the soldiers.) These she took to the Spanish bank in Manila
and exchanged them for Mexican silver, which, until the United
States began to issue special coins for the Philippine islands,
was the standard medium of exchange in the archipelago.
Marie began to dress better. Her penia cloth gave way to Chinese silks;
her wooden hair combs to expensive ones inlaid with gold, bought at
the Spanish bazar down town. Many little comforts were bought for her
home. Still the washings kept growing larger. She and her mother could
be seen back of their shack, in the shade, pounding American soldiers'
white uniforms on large boulders from early morning till night.
Aguinaldo, who had previously sold out his country and gone to
Singapore, after commissioning Dimiguez, upon hearing that war
was about to begin between the United States and Spain, made his
way northward to Hongkong. After the battle of Manila Bay, Dewey
despatched the revenue cutter, "McCulloch," to Hongkong to cable
home the news of his splendid victory. On her return to Manila,
she permitted Aguinaldo to come along.
After a brief conversation with Admiral Dewey on board the "Olympia,"
he went ashore at Cavite, his boyhood home, began to organize the
Filipinos into a powerful army, captured 1500 Spanish soldiers who
were holding out-lying posts, and hemmed in the city of Manila.
On August 13, following, Dewey and General Merritt, by a union of
their forces, captured the city of Manila which offered but slight
resistance. Aguinaldo's native troops rushed forward with the Americans
in the charge that was made by the land forces and they insisted on
looting the city. General Merritt refused this and ordered them to
withdraw beyond the city limits. This they did after considerable
wrangling. Then the Americans established out-posts on every road and
pathway leading to and from the city, completely around the town;
and they were given instructions by the commanding officer not to
allow any Filipino troops to enter the city.
Aguinaldo discarded his uniform one evening, completely
disguised himself as a Filipino fruit-vender, and made his way
into Manila. Naturally, he slipped around to the home of his old
friends, the Sampalits. He sat in a semi-darkened room, with all the
hinged-windows to the shack tightly closed and stroked Marie's soft
black hair with his left hand. As he engaged her and her mother in
conversation in subdued tones, he little thought that in so short a
time Marie would be associated with him in a series of bloody tragedies
that would revolutionize the government of the islands forever.
"Marie," said he, "I'm going to force the Americans to acknowledge
the independence of the Philippine islands, or I shall not permit
the rest of their army to land. Dewey tells me he has sent home for
reinforcements. There is no use for us to let these troops land, if
America instead of Spain is going to govern the islands. What we want
is absolute independence with myself as president of the new Filipino
Republic. If the Americans won't concede this to us, let's fight!"
"That's what I say!" declared Marie. "Let's drive the foreign devils
off the islands or slay them all. Here's father dead and--Dimiguez,
too"--Marie's voice trembled--"I tell you it's too much. Let's kill
every one of them!"
"Yes; but say Marie, we must keep quiet about all this," cautioned
Aguinaldo. "I'll tell you what I have in mind. We'll wait about four
weeks and by that time if Dewey hasn't received definite instructions
from Washington, and if he won't give me any satisfaction, I'm going
to go to Malolos, proclaim myself Dictator of the Philippines, appoint
a cabinet and a congress from among some of the bright young Filipinos
here in Manila who have been educated abroad, draw up a Revolutionary
form of government, and begin to administer the affairs of these
islands just as I please.
"We'll keep our present army in the field, and if the Americans do
land we'll shut them up in Manila, so that they will have nothing at
their command but the city to regulate. This won't amount to much as
compared with the rest of the islands which I will dominate."
"Are you sure the Americans won't land a powerful army, cut through
your lines around Manila and drive you out of Malolos, or capture you
and your officials at that place? It seems to me I would go farther
inland--say to San Isidro," said Marie.
Aguinaldo thought a moment, then replied: "That's true, in a sense,
Marie; but I have got to be on or near the railroad where I can have
easy and rapid access to Manila. Malolos is not far from here and
it is situated on the railroad. It has some very large buildings in
which our legislative sessions could be held. I think it the place
for the undertaking.
"To be on the safe side, I believe I will have our troops erect a
series of fortifications between here and there along the railroad
track, so that if the Americans do attempt to advance by that route
I can easily stop them."
"I think that would be a good scheme," said Marie. "Malolos is about
twelve miles from Manila Bay; besides, the bay is shallow in the
north end, so that heavy boats could not go up there. This will make
it impossible for Dewey to shell the place with his fleet. We've got
to watch out for that--no matter what we do. My! but those American
ships can shoot! Did you hear about me shooting at 'em with that
cannon on Corregidor island when they entered the bay? I mighty near
got one of their vessels."
"No," said Aguinaldo, "I have not heard very much about the firing
off Corregidor, but as I came from Hongkong the other day on the
"McCulloch" I noticed that the Spanish fortifications on the island
had all been dismantled."
"Why! they killed a man right at my feet, the very first shot," said
Marie; "and then one of their boats drew nearer and fired several
times more and they killed every Spaniard in the relief guard which
was near by,--seven of them in all."
"And I was terribly worried about Marie," interrupted her mother who
had listened to the conversation with deepest interest. "She had been
gone for a week, and I hadn't heard a word from her."
"Oh! well, I don't pity the Spaniards any for what the Americans did
to them," interjected Aguinaldo, with some emphasis.
"Be careful," said old lady Sampalit, putting her finger on her lips,
"don't speak too loud."
Aguinaldo continued in a lower voice: "They killed your husband. They
shot Rizal. They strangled Dimigeuz. They tortured to death several
hundred of our young fellows in the dungeons. They have left ridges
of dead wherever their armies have moved among us. I tell you they
deserved all they got."
Mrs. Sampalit and Marie had grown heavy hearted. Aguinaldo looked at
his watch. It was after ten P. M.
"I wonder," said Aguinaldo, hesitatingly, "how I shall be able to
get back to our lines tonight."
"Don't go!" said Marie, in an emphatic whisper, "stay over night!"
"Yes, do!" entreated the old lady, "I'm nervous."
"It might be best; it would surely be the safest thing to do," said
Aguinaldo, in a meditating manner.
"We sleep on bamboo beds," said Marie. "There stands mine. You may use
it tonight, and I will sleep on the floor. I don't mind. Mother and
I frequently lie down on the floor near the window, when the nights
are sultry."
The next morning Aguinaldo arose very early, made his way to the
edge of the city and stealthily stole out threw the Americans' lines,
never again to return to Manila until General Funston brought him back,
two years later, a captive.
He made his way to Malolos, a few weeks after this conversation,
declared himself "Dictator of the Philippines," appointed a Filipino
congress, set up a government of his own and began to run the general
affairs in the interior of Luzon.
CHAPTER V.
FILIPINO UPRISING
The close of the eventful year of 1898 was near at hand. General Otis
had been made governor-general of the islands. He had received about
15,000 troops from home. These had all been landed and were quartered
in the city of Manila.
Preparations had begun by the American troops for a great day of field
sports to be held on the Luneta--a beautiful narrow park paralleling
Manila bay and extending southward from the walled-city about four
miles--on New Year's day, 1899.
On the afternoon of January I, as planned, the exercises were
begun. The afternoon program consisted of foot races, running high
jumps, wheelbarrow race, fat man's race, running broad jump, high
kicking, fancy club swinging, tumbling, shot-put, sack race, tugs of
war, five boxing contests, base ball, foot ball, and pole vaulting.
Situated on the Luneta, about a mile south of the walled city, and
distant from Manila bay about 100 feet, is a large bandstand. This
served as headquarters for the exercises. The day was perfect--clear,
cool and calm.
About 2:00 P.M. over 40,000 natives, soldiers (including jack-tars
from Dewey's fleet, Spaniards and Americans) and foreign residents
had assembled around this bandstand to hear the Address of Welcome and
to witness the sports. When the speaker arose to deliver the address,
for which he was afterward voted, and presented with, a medal by the
Eight Army Corps, he said in part (verbatim report):
"On behalf of these committeemen who have spared no efforts to make
these Field Day Exercises a success, and this occasion one long to
be remembered by those who have assembled here this afternoon, I bid
you, one and all--officers, soldiers, sailors and civilians of every
nationality--a hearty welcome."
"Again to you, the members of Admiral Dewey's fleet, I feel obligated
to extend a separate and special welcome; for without your chivalrous
devotion to duty last May Day, yon shell-riven wrecks (part of unraised
Spanish fleet visible above the bay) would not bespeak the down-fall
of a sister nation, and we ourselves would not have been permitted
to assemble here this afternoon. There is no braver man on land or
sea than the American marine; and on behalf of the entire American
army of occupation, I bid you a most cordial welcome."
Touching upon the question of territorial expansion, the speaker said:
"This was a war for humanity, not for conquest. But simply because
it suddenly closed and left us in possession of large tracts of
new territory, is no reason why these spoils of war should be given
up. I hold this to be true Americanism: that wherever the old flag
is established through sacrifice of American blood, whether it be on
the barren sands of the desert, at the frigid extremes of the earth,
or on the rich and fertile islands of the sea, there is should remain
triumphant, shedding forth beams of liberty to the oppressed, shouts
of defiance to the oppressor, and furnish protection and enlightenment
to all who come beneath its streaming folds forever!" (applause).
A chubby Filipino maiden, standing near the speaker's stand, and
who had listened intently to every word of the address, because she
now understood the English tongue, quietly elbowed her way through
the dense crowd which was gradually becoming more compressed, until
she reached a car drawn by two Chinese ponies on the old street car
line running south from Manila to Fort Malate and back. Taking the
car she rode up town to the Escolta. Going into the postoffice, she
hastily wrote and mailed to Aguinaldo at Malolos a letter containing
an account of what was said. It follows:
"Manila, P. I., Jan. 1, 1899.
My Dear General:
Those wretched Americans are holding some kind of exercises on the
Luneta this afternoon. I heard one of the speeches. It was awful
bad. The fellow talked loud. He swung his hands in the air and the
crowd seemed to get terribly excited over what he was saying.
He told about that treaty of peace, and he said no power under the
sun would haul down the American flag from over Manila.
It made me angry. I am going right out to the Filipino trenches to
see my Uncle (Colonel Miguel). He'll fix those fellows. I'll bet
he'll haul down their flag before tomorrow morning.
Goodby,
Marie."
The evening program on the Luneta, which followed the afternoon
exercises, was largely literary in its nature. It consisted of music
by the California band, singing by the famous Washington Male Quartet,
fancy dancing, selected recitations, and stump speeches. In addition,
Privates Green and Martin boxed four rounds, much to the satisfaction
of the natives.
The program had just been completed when the Master of Ceremonies
received from the American general in charge a note telling
him to announce the conclusion of the program at once and to
order all soldiers to report immediately at their respective
regimental headquarters;--trouble had been reported at the
out-posts. Reinforcements were hastened to several of the out-post
reserves, and it appeared that the expected insurrection was at hand.
After the out-break by the Filipinos on New Year's night, it was
evident to both sides that it was only a question of a short time when
blood would be spilled in abundance. The Filipinos occupied all of the
block-houses--some seventeen in number--around the city of Manila. This
forced the Americans to stand in the open and do guard duty exposed.
The Filipino troops were saucy. They couldn't understand why men should
be armed with rifles and not be permitted to shoot. They tormented
the American soldiers daily with hideous pranks. They grew bolder,
and pushed their out-posts forward until they stood within a few feet
of the American sentries.
Marie went out and back through the American lines at will. She
secretly kept the Filipino army thoroughly posted on the arrival of
new troops from America. Occasionally she would take the train and
go up to Malolos to see Aguinaldo. She was the best posted person
in the Philippines as to what was going on in each of the hostile
armies. Nobody suspected her. She was respected by the American
troops. Everybody came to know her.
Just before dusk, on the evening of February 4th, 1899, Marie
and her mother left the city of Manila, in a cariole, drawn by a
Chinese pony which they had recently purchased. They had in it all of
their most precious household trinkets. As they passed Colonel John
M. Stotsenberg, commanding the 1st Nebraska volunteers, stationed
on McLeod's hill at the eastern edge of Manila, he recognized them,
and called to Marie, "Where are you going?"
"Out on a little trip," retorted Marie.
"How soon will you be back?" asked he.
"O, I can't tell," responded Marie. "Mother is getting so nervous
that we thought best to go away for awhile."
"Say, Marie," said the colonel, "do you know who the Filipino officer
is in command of all those thousands of troops that are now assembling
in the ravines between the hills along the far side of the river
valley, yonder?"
"No, I do not," she declared with an emphatic swing of her head.
But she was lying. It was Colonel Miguel, her own uncle. She knew about
it. He had secretly informed her that he was preparing to attack the
city and burn it and that he was going to exterminate the American
army of occupation and all foreign residents that fell into the hands
of his mighty army. He told her that he had chosen the east side of
the city as his main point of attack, so that Dewey could not reach
his troops with the shells from his gun boats in case he tried to
assist the American army, without elevating his guns and shooting
completely over the city--a thing wholly impractical within itself,
as Dewey could not determine whether his shells would be falling
among the Filipino or the American troops. It was he who advised her
to take her mother and flee to the hills for refuge.
Colonel Stotsenberg then asked Marie if she knew anything about the
proposed attack on the city by her people. This, she denied also. The
colonel's face flushed. Pulling back the flap of his tent, he said
emphatically: "Do you see that gun, Marie? Tell those fellows over
there when you pass their lines that I said they could have trouble
whenever they want it."
Marie drove on.
Inside the colonel's tent stood a large gun from the Utah battery,
mounted, loaded, ready for action; its threatening nose was
pointed directly at the line of little brown men assembled across
the valley. The Filipinos were smarting for trouble. They wanted it
badly. Wherever and whenever possible they improved every opportunity
to bring it about. The trouble came. Colonel Stotsenberg that night
used the cannon he had pointed out to Marie. A long pile of mangled
forms lying at the base of the river hills on the opposite of the
valley next morning told the results.
CHAPTER VI.
AS A SPY
Marie was well equipped by instinct and experience for a spy. The
tragic nature of such work was exceptionally inviting to her. When
a chance came to undertake it, she lost no time in embracing the
opportunity.
After passing out through the American lines, she drove on down the
slope of the hill and crossed the San Juan River on the old stone
bridge where the fighting was begun that night by young Grayson of
the Nebraska regiment. After reaching the Filipinos' lines she at once
reported to her uncle, Colonel Miguel, and had an extended interview
with him.
Secret plans were agreed upon whereby she was to become the colonel's
chief scout. Two Filipino soldiers were sent to accompany her old
mother to the little town of Angono on the eastern bank of Lake Laguna
de Bay, near its northern end. A native family, quite familiar with
the Sampalits and related to them, lived in this village. Marie stayed
with the troops in the field. Her young brain danced at the thought
of more bloodshed. She must be in the fight.
Just what part Marie took in the attack made upon the Americans by
the Filipinos on the night of February 4th, and in the fighting on
February 5th, the world will never know. The two main figures in
these operations were Colonel Miguel, in command of the main portion
of the Filipino forces, and Colonel Stotsenberg, who commanded the
1st Nebraska volunteers. Before the close of the war these men were
both shot; consequently, there is no one left to tell the story,
and history is silent on the point.
After the fight of February 4 and 5, the entire line of block-houses
and intrenchments circumscribing Manila, were in the hands of the
Americans. From the Pasig river on the east, around the city to the
bay on the north, this line was commanded by Major-General MacArthur;
the corresponding semi-circle on the south, by Major-General Anderson.
During the next seven weeks, fresh troops were constantly
arriving. Each side was preparing for the long, inevitable conflict.
At day break, on March 25, General MacArthur, leaving Hall's brigade
in the trenches and placing those of Otis and Hale on the firing line,
which was over seven miles in length, made a brilliant charge along
the entire front on the Filipinos' breastworks about a mile and a
half distant and constructed parallel to those of the Americans'.
Before night he had cut the Filipino army into hopeless fragments;
had advanced his own army over nine miles; had inflicted a terrible
loss upon Aguinaldo's troops; had demonstrated to them the difference
between a determined American advance and an irresolute Spanish one;
and had taken up in earnest the invasion of Luzon, the capture of
the Filipinos' temporary capital, Malolos, the overthrow of their
provisional government, and the establishment of American sovereignty
throughout the entire archipelago.
That night, about eleven o'clock, a nervous Filipino woman came walking
down along the American out-post reserves which, during actual war,
are usually only from 100 to 200 feet in the rear of the sentries. She
reached Company "G's" reserve of the 1st South Dakota Volunteers,
where she was ordered to halt. She refused, but acted as though she
did not understand. Drawing a large bamboo bonnet down over her face
to conceal her identity, she mumbled something apparently to herself,
and walked rapidly on. In a moment she was seized; her bonnet was
torn off; her identity revealed: it was Marie.
She had been counting the American out-posts and the reserves to see
if the defeated Filipinos, with the reinforcements which they had
received, would be warranted in making a night attack.
She boldly denied her identification; fought, scratched,
scrambled--making it necessary to employ two privates, a corporal
and a sergeant to send her to the rear.
When she was taken before Major William F. Allison, commanding the
3rd battalion of the South Dakotas, who was acting as field-officer
that night, he ordered her restrained until morning. A tired private
was detailed to guard her. He gave her a rubber poncho, and insisted
that she wrap herself up in it and lie down to sleep. Although she
drew the poncho about her to keep herself warm (it grew very chilly
before morning) she refused to sleep, and made repeated efforts to
escape. Her teeth chattered and she seemed distressed--evidently
through fear of what the morning might bring to her.
The next day she was set free, after taking a solemn oath to return
to Manila and not take any further part in the insurrection. She
pleaded earnestly for her liberty, and voluntarily promised that
after her return to Manila she would do washing free of charge for
the American soldiers who were sick in quarters.
After being liberated, Marie walked eastward, following an irregular
sled-road; that is, a road-way used by the Filipinos for sledding
their rice to market. This is done by means of a bamboo sled drawn
over the dry ground by a caribou. She followed this road for over
two miles until she came to the San Mateo river.
Although given a few hardtack by her captors at the time of her
release, she was getting hungry. As she approached the stream she
noticed an old Filipino standing near his bamboo cabin which was neatly
tucked away oh the slope of a deep ravine near by. Turning from her
pathway which had now grown somewhat indistinct she approached the
old gentleman.
When quite close to him she said, "Buenos dias," (Good morning in
Spanish.)
"Magandang umaga," (Good morning, in Tagalo), muttered the old man.
After a brief conversation during which Marie told him that she had
been captured by the Americans, had been terribly misused and he had a
miraculous escape, he invited her into his cabin where his aged wife
gave her something to eat. This breakfast consisted of boiled rice,
some fish which the old man had just brought from his set lines in
the San Mateo river, and some bacon which he had found along the
trail made by the American's pack train the day before.
While the old couple were outside of their home--he breaking up
some bamboo with which to re-kindle the fire, and she, cleaning the
fish--Marie ransacked the house. She stole a large diamond ring which
the old man had taken from the finger of a Spanish officer during
the previous insurrection. She opened an old mahogany chest and took
from it a rosary valued at several hundred dollars; also a gold lined
cup which the old man, himself, had stolen from a Spanish priest,
and some Spanish coins.
After a hearty lunch, she started on.
Crossing the river at the rapids, on the boulders which projected
above the water, she quickened her steps and hurried along. Changing
her course to the southward, she started for the northern end of Lake
Laguna de Bay to see her mother.
She had not gone far through a small clump of timber when she came
upon the corpse of a Filipino soldier who had been shot in the previous
day's engagement,--perhaps by a stray ball. Hastily stealing the cross
which hung from a small cord about his neck, and a valueless ring from
one of his fingers, she seized his Mauser rifle and his cartridge belt
which was partly filled with ammunition, and then resumed her journey.
A short distance ahead was a large opening--an old rice field
well cleared. She had scarcely begun to cross it when she heard a
noise. She turned and saw the bow-legged old man whom she had robbed,
with a machete in his hand, coming after her as fast as he could. He
had discovered that the rosary was missing, and upon looking around,
that several other things were gone; therefore he at once started
in pursuit of the fiend who had just enjoyed his hospitality. Marie
was not disturbed. Raising to her shoulder the rifle which she had
just found, she took deliberate aim and at the first shot laid him
low in death.
She reached the small native village of Angono, where her mother was
stopping, about four o'clock in the afternoon of March 26th.
The old lady was wonderfully elated to receive the new jewels which
Marie had stolen. She put on the rosary and danced about in the native
hut like a young child on Christmas morning, when it sees the gorged
stocking fastened to its bed.
CHAPTER VII.
OFF FOR BALER
That night Marie had a good rest. The next morning, fired with ambition
and discontent, she lit her accustomed cigarette and started for
Manila. Instead of going overland, she went in a row boat via the
Pasig river which drains the lake into Manila bay and which flows
through the city of Manila situated at its mouth.
While stealthily prowling around through Manila during the next few
days, Marie accidentally discovered that plans were being carried
out by the Americans to relieve the remnant of the old Spanish
garrison of fifty men stationed at the little town of Baler, near
the eastern coast of Luzon. This garrison was of course surrendered
to the American forces with the remainder of the Spanish army on
August 13, 1898, but as all lines of communication with them had been
destroyed by the Filipinos they had never been officially notified
of the capitulation. Scouting parties brought in the information that
they were being besieged by a horde of blood-thirsty Filipinos which
outnumbered them ten to one, and that it was only a question of time
before all would be exterminated.
Accordingly, Admiral Dewey and General Otis decided that something
must be done at once to relieve them. A rescuing party was formed and
placed aboard
|
the country, the heat not being sufficient as
yet to make walking tiresome, the two friends, who had finished
breakfast at nine o'clock because they rose at six, took their straw
bonnets, threw light silk mantles over their shoulders, and having
instructed Poucette not to leave the house, started off in high spirits,
saying:
"We will walk in the direction of the Tower."
Agathe remembered the road, which they had already taken once. On
leaving Chelles they crossed the railroad and followed the Gournay road
bordered by ditches full of water. That road was short; on turning to
the left they soon reached the bank of the Marne at the bridge where
there was a toll of one sou for each person. This charge, apparently
very trifling, made that part of the country very unfrequented; for the
peasant looks a long while before spending a sou--two, in fact, when one
is obliged to return; they preferred to take a route which was often
much longer, but which did not force them to put their hands into their
pockets.
The two friends crossed the bridge; since leaving Chelles they had not
met a living soul--not a peasant, not a carter, not an ass. The bridge,
which was long and solidly built, was also deserted. Nor was there a
sign of life on the Marne--not a boat, not a fisherman was to be seen.
But they had already observed that solitude the first time that they had
come in that direction; and now that the aspect of the country was
changed, the trees having renewed their foliage, the meadows their
verdure, the fields their grasses and flowers, the more solitary the
spot, the more inclined they were to admire all the majesty of nature,
all the beauties of creation.
"Why, we were misinformed as to having to pay to cross this bridge!"
said Agathe; "here we are at the end of it, and I see no one at all. Do
you suppose we are to toss the sou into the water; that would be
decidedly amusing."
The words were hardly out of her mouth when a man suddenly appeared in
front of her. He came from a house at the left which belonged to a
beautiful estate called the Maison Blanche, of which this same man was
the concierge; to this function he added that of collector of tolls at
the bridge.
"Monsieur," said Honorine, after paying her two sous, "which road must
we take to go to the estate called the Tower?"
"Pass through the village of Gournay, straight ahead, then turn to the
left."
"Is it very far?"
"It's close by. The village of Gournay's so small that it don't take
long to walk through it; then you take the road to Noisy-le-Grand."
The two young women walked on, and soon found themselves in the village
square, where there was a pretty bourgeois house embellished with the
name of the Château Vert, probably because of the color of its blinds.
Next to it was a dealer in wines, the only one in the district; which
fact spoke well for the sobriety of the people.
Opposite was a little church and beside that a small cemetery. The
toll-gatherer was right: everything was diminutive in that place, which
had less than a hundred and thirty inhabitants.
The little square was shaded by noble trees which gave it a charm of its
own. Trees are not proud; they grow as well in a small village as on the
fashionable promenade of a city; ordinarily indeed they are finer in the
village; everything has its compensations.
Our travellers found some children on the square, who pointed out the
road to Noisy-le-Grand. As they walked in that direction the country
became more picturesque, less monotonous, and the ladies soon spied, on
a slight eminence, a very pretty house, flanked by a graceful turret
which overlooked the whole country.
"That is where Paul and his dog live!" cried Agathe.
"Hush, child!" said Honorine; "if that gentleman should happen to be
passing, and should hear you speak of him in that way, what would he
think of us?"
"Why, my dear love, I am simply repeating what they say at Chelles; how
do you want me to speak of him, since nobody knows him by any other
name? No matter, this estate of his makes a very fine appearance; it's
like a château. Let us walk along this road--it will bring us nearer."
As she spoke Agathe ran ahead. Honorine followed her, but more slowly.
They were then on rather a narrow road, shaded on one side by walnut
trees, and intersected by numerous paths.
Suddenly Agathe heard a shriek; recognizing her friend's voice, she
turned and saw, about a hundred yards behind her, a cow coming from one
of the paths, at full speed, and rushing straight at Honorine, who had
an excessive fear of cows and dared not advance or retreat; she simply
stood where she was and shrieked.
Agathe instantly ran back, to try to protect her friend; but she was too
far away to reach her in advance of the cow, and the animal was within a
few feet of Honorine, when suddenly an enormous dog, rushing down from a
hill near by, arrived on the scene and jumped in front of the cow,
barking furiously as if to forbid her to take another step. Ami's
frantic barking--for it was Ami who had come to their assistance--did in
fact terrify the cow; she stopped, turned tail and retreated by the path
by which she had come.
"Oh! thanks! thanks! good dog!" cried Agathe, who had been terribly
frightened for her friend, and who came up at that moment. But
Honorine's fright had been so great that it had deprived her of
consciousness; she had fallen to the ground in a swoon.
"Oh! mon Dieu! she is unconscious! Honorine! dear love! come to
yourself! the danger is all over. She doesn't hear me--she doesn't open
her eyes! And no one near! How can I obtain help here?"
Ami walked about the unconscious woman, then gazed at Agathe, who was in
dire distress; he seemed to be trying to read in her eyes what she
wanted of him. Suddenly he bounded away and disappeared.
The girl knelt beside her companion, raised her head and rested it
against her breast, took her hands and called her name. But Honorine
did not recover consciousness, and Agathe, in despair, cast her eyes
over the deserted fields, crying:
"Mon Dieu! no one will come to our help!"
At that moment a small boy, poorly clad, with bare feet and hair waving
in the wind, appeared on a piece of rising ground from which he could
see the path.
Agathe saw him and called to him:
"Go and bring us some water, I beg you, my friend; call someone to come
and help me take care of my friend."
The boy's only reply was a sneering laugh; then he went away, leaping in
the air and crying:
"They're afraid of the cow! that's good! I'll throw stones at the cow
again and make her run at folks."
The small boy disappeared, but the girl's wishes had been understood by
Ami; he ran where he knew that he would find his master, and by pulling
persistently at his jacket made him understand that it was urgently
necessary that he should go with him.
When Agathe was beginning to lose hope she saw the noble beast returning
toward her, while his eyes seemed to say:
"Help is coming!"
And his master was soon by his side.
"Oh! monsieur--I beg you--my dear friend has fainted!" cried Agathe.
Paul had already taken a phial from his pocket, and he held it to
Honorine's nose, saying to the girl:
"It's nothing; don't be alarmed; your friend will come to herself in a
moment. What was the cause of this accident?"
"Fright; a cow came running straight toward my friend, who is terribly
afraid of them; and but for your good dog, who ran up and drove the cow
away, she would certainly have been wounded."
"See, she is coming to herself."
Honorine opened her eyes at that moment. The first person she saw was
Agathe, who was leaning over her and gazing anxiously into her face. The
young woman smiled as she muttered:
"I am an awful coward, am I not? But it isn't my fault; I was so
frightened that----"
Honorine interrupted herself, for she had caught sight of Ami's master,
who was standing a few steps away, regarding her attentively; he still
held in his hand the little phial he had used to restore her to
consciousness.
It was an easy matter for the two ladies to examine at their ease the
individual of whom they had heard so much; and the result of their
examination was not unfavorable to him; for although, when seen at a
distance, his bushy beard gave him a somewhat forbidding aspect, on
looking at him nearer at hand and at leisure, one saw that his features
were handsome and distinguished, that his eyes were not always fierce,
that his expression was neither threatening nor calculated to inspire
alarm.
Agathe, divining her friend's amazement, made haste to say:
"This gentleman came to my assistance, for you didn't come to
yourself--I did not know what to do--oh! I was very unhappy!"
"But that cow that was running at me--how did I escape being hurt?"
"Because this good old dog here ran up to defend you, threw himself in
front of her and barked and jumped at her nose! Oh! it was magnificent!
And then, after putting the cow to flight, he ran to fetch his master to
help me bring you to yourself.--Oh! how fine that was, Ami! Come, come
here and let me embrace you!"
The girl put her arms about the dog's neck and patted and caressed him;
he submitted with a very good grace, wagging his tail, and looking at
his master from time to time, as if to inform him that he already knew
the two ladies.
Honorine rose and bowed gracefully to the owner of the Tower, saying:
"Pray accept all my thanks, monsieur, and excuse me for having disturbed
you in your walk."
"You owe me no thanks, madame; it is a duty to make oneself of use when
one has the opportunity. You do not need this phial any more?"
"No, monsieur, I feel much better; but--this is very strange--I don't
know whether it is the result of my fright, but I seem to have no legs,
they give way under me; I feel as if I were going to fall."
"Well! that would be nice!" cried Agathe, doing her utmost to support
her companion. "What are we to do if you can't walk? There are no cabs
or omnibuses here, and we are quite a long way from home."
Ami's master, who, after offering his flask, had started to walk away,
stopped when he discovered the embarrassment of the two friends. He
realized that they still needed him, but it was evident that he
hesitated, that it was hard for him not to be guided by his ordinary
instinct of aloofness. But Agathe, without speaking, looked at him with
an almost imploring expression, and her eyes expressed her thought so
fully that Paul walked back toward them, murmuring:
"If I can be of any further use to you--take my arm, madame; lean on it
without fear, and I will help you to walk."
"Oh! you are too kind, monsieur! I am afraid of abusing----"
"No, no, take monsieur's arm, since he is kind enough to offer it,"
cried Agathe; "for if you had only mine to support you, we might both
fall by the way; it is a long way from here to Chelles."
Honorine decided to put her arm through the arm which their new
acquaintance offered her. Agathe supported her friend on the other side,
and they started.
"Where were you ladies going when the cow frightened you?"
"We will return to Chelles, monsieur, if you please. When we came out
this morning, we had no definite destination; we just set out for a
walk.--That is to say," continued Agathe, "we came this way in order to
see the estate of the Tower, of which we have heard a great deal since
we came to Chelles."
Honorine nudged her friend, to bid her keep silent, but Agathe paid no
heed.
"We had just caught sight of it as we turned into that road; and as it
seemed to us very pretty at a distance, we were going nearer in order to
see it at closer quarters. We did not expect to make the acquaintance of
its owner,--for monsieur is the owner of the Tower, I believe?"
"Yes, mademoiselle," replied Ami's master curtly, while Honorine nudged
her friend again to make her keep silent; but she continued to pay no
heed to the admonition.
"Oh! I recognized monsieur at once; we met him one day when we were
looking for a certain field. It was then that your dog came to me and
made advances. He doesn't do that to everybody, does he, monsieur?"
"Assuredly not, mademoiselle. He is not lavish of his friendship! And he
has one great advantage over men, in that he never gives it except to
those who deserve it."
"Then I ought to be proud of his friendship for me. Oh! you splendid
dog! you good old dog! Look, Honorine; see how he walks around us, and
how pleased he looks!"
It was a fact that Ami kept circling about the three persons who were
walking along arm-in-arm. Sometimes he darted ahead, but he very soon
returned, looked up in his master's face with a joyous yelp or two,
then made the circuit of the little group anew, as if to make sure that
they had not separated.
This pantomime on Ami's part did not escape his master, whose face,
which wore an expression of annoyance when he first offered his arm to
Honorine, began to be less severe.
Honorine, who still felt very weak, was forced to lean heavily on the
arm of her escort, and she apologized therefor:
"I beg pardon, monsieur," she murmured; "I am tiring you, I am obliged
to lean so heavily on you. But I am not very strong, and the slightest
shock is enough to make me ill."
"Lean on me, madame; it does not tire me in the least."
"We have had bad luck for our first walk; do you often meet cows alone
in the fields?"
"Very rarely, madame; and I am much surprised that that cow, which
probably belongs to a good woman who lives near me, should have escaped
and attacked you, for I know that she is not vicious; she must herself
have been attacked or irritated by some one, to behave so."
"Oh! wait, monsieur," cried Agathe; "I remember now; while my dear
friend was unconscious, and I was looking all about and calling for
help, a little boy seven or eight years old appeared on a mound near by;
he stared at me and laughed, and when I asked him to go for help, he
laughed louder and sneered at me and made faces; then he ran away,
jumping about and crying:
"'That's good! I like that!' "
"All is explained then, madame; that little boy probably played some
cruel trick on the cow, which thereupon fled from the pasture where she
was peacefully grazing."
"Oh! that was very naughty of the little fellow!"
"Mon Dieu!" said Honorine, "I wonder if it was the child whom they call
at Chelles the lost child?"
"Yes, madame, it was he undoubtedly. I saw him prowling about in the
direction of Noisy-le-Grand. I am not surprised to find that he has been
up to some mischief."
"Why, in that case, the boy must be naturally perverse," said Agathe;
"is there no way of reforming him?"
"I have tried, without success; he defies punishment, he is insensible
to entreaties; he has a most intractable disposition. If age and common
sense do not change him, he will be a detestable man."
While conversing thus they had reached Chelles, and as they entered the
village they met Monsieur and Madame Droguet, accompanied by Monsieur
Luminot and Doctor Antoine, who were going for a walk in the country.
When she espied the new sojourners at Chelles arm-in-arm with the owner
of the Tower, Madame Droguet nearly fell backward; she stepped on the
feet of Monsieur Luminot, her escort, saying:
"Great heaven! just look! what does this mean?"
On his side the former dealer in wines dug his elbow into Monsieur
Droguet's ribs.
"On my word!" he exclaimed; "will you look! this is surprising!"
Thereupon Monsieur Droguet, always ready to dance, made a pirouette
which brought him nose to nose with the doctor, crying:
"What is it that's so surprising? what's the matter? why did Luminot say
that?"
As for the doctor, having no one to attack, he contented himself with
bowing to Honorine and Agathe, although his face betrayed the surprise
he felt at meeting them in the company of Paul and his dog.
Monsieur Luminot also bowed. Père Droguet was on the point of following
their example, but his wife suddenly caught his arm.
"Well, monsieur, what are you going to do?" she demanded; "can you think
of such a thing as bowing to people who have never been to call on me
since they have lived in the neighborhood? It's very uncivil of them! I
have a very poor opinion of those women; and they're hardly settled here
before they go about with that ill-licked cub, that Monsieur Paul who
also has treated us all very rudely! That was all that was necessary to
confirm my opinion concerning those women. Let us go on, messieurs;
forward, march! You see, that wretched fellow didn't even bow to us."
"The ladies bowed," said Monsieur Luminot.
"Because you bowed first; it would have been very pretty if they hadn't
returned your bow! Come, Monsieur Luminot, let us go on, I beg; do you
propose to remain in admiring contemplation before the skirts of those
ladies?"
And Madame Droguet, having given her husband a push to make him go
forward, dragged Monsieur Luminot and the doctor away, and almost made
them run.
"Oh! what a strange woman!" cried Agathe with a laugh; "what eyes she
made at us! Did you see, Honorine? One would say she wanted to turn us
to stone."
"Doubtless that is Madame Droguet, whom Doctor Antoine has often
mentioned to us."
"And that little slim man who stands on one leg when he looks at you is
probably her husband."
When the ladies reached their house, Honorine took her arm from her
escort's, saying:
"This is our modest abode; would you not like to come in a moment and
rest, monsieur? I must have fatigued you terribly."
"I thank you, madame," Paul replied, bowing, "but I will continue my
walk."
"Oh! do come in a moment, monsieur," said Agathe; "see, your good dog
seems to invite you; he has already gone in."
Paul's only reply was to call his dog which quickly returned to his
side; then he hurried away, after saluting the ladies.
"What a strange man!" murmured Honorine.
"All the same, my dear love, we were very lucky to meet him; and he
doesn't frighten me at all now. Do you still think that he has a
terrifying look?"
"No, oh, no! but he went away very abruptly."
III
THE EFFECTS OF MUSIC AND OF A MATELOTE
It was a magnificent morning and the clock had just struck nine, when
Edmond Didier appeared, very carefully dressed, at his friend
Freluchon's, who had just left his bed.
"What, you lazy fellow! not dressed yet! And it's nine o'clock, and the
weather is superb, and the first days of June are the finest of the
whole year!"
"Bah! what do I care for all that? It matters little to me what time it
is. I rise late because I sat up very late. A little egg-supper, with
some very interesting ladies from the Folies-Dramatiques. Artistes, you
see--they are the only really agreeable women!"
"You exaggerate, Freluchon, my dear fellow! We have artistes also who
put on airs and are forever posing in company."
"To them we say _zut!_--dramatic style.--But how fine you are this
morning! Have you something on hand for to-day?"
"Certainly; this is the day that we are going to Chelles, to see those
ladies I spoke to you about."
"_We are going_ is very pretty! you are going, perhaps--that's all
right. But why should I, who don't know the ladies in question--why
should I go with you?"
"Because it's somewhere to go; it will give you a chance to see that
part of the suburbs of Paris, which is very beautiful. We will dine
there; we will have a _matelote;_ Gournay is famous for them and it's
close by."
"That's an inducement; I am passionately fond of _matelote._ In Parisian
restaurants it's execrable, as a general rule; you can't get a good one
unless you are right on the water."
"While I go to call on the ladies, you can find out the best restaurant
and order the dinner."
"The best place to get a _matelote_ is ordinarily the house of some
fisherman who sells wine."
"Oh! Freluchon, if you knew with what pleasure I shall see the lovely
Agathe again! Her name is Agathe----"
"So you told me."
"She has dark-blue eyes with such a sweet, amiable expression; a
slender, graceful figure; perfect grace in every movement----"
"Like a cat."
"Come, dress quickly, and we will go to the Strasbourg station."
"Are we going to Strasbourg first? That will be the longest way."
"Pshaw! if you began to talk nonsense!----"
"I hope to continue.--Well, if it must be, I proceed to sacrifice
myself. After all, a day in the country will do me good, and I shall not
be sorry to form a little acquaintance with some rustic beauty. A woman
of nature--that will be a novelty; for the stage is very far from
nature.--Speaking of nature, do you know what has happened to
Chamoureau?"
"I have heard that he has made a fortune--or inherited one; twenty
thousand francs a year; is it true?"
"Quite true; and, what is even truer, since he became rich, he doesn't
speak to his old friends. He hardly looks at me--at me, whom he never
used to quit! He puts on the airs of a great noble! As you can imagine,
it amuses me beyond words; and so, not long ago, I said to him in the
foyer at the Opéra, where he seemed to be in deadly terror that I would
take his arm:
"'My poor Chamoureau, how is it that, in becoming rich, you have become
a bigger fool than you were? I assure you that wealth doesn't require a
man to be insolent; I know that it often makes them so, but there's no
obligation about it.'
"Chamoureau stood there like an utter idiot; he mumbled a lot of words
that had no sort of connection with one another, and ended by saying
that it was proper for him to adopt a different demeanor, as he was
going to be married."
"Aha! he is going to be married! and to whom?"
"Can't you guess?"
"Some wealthy retired groceress?"
"No, no! he would do much better to marry a groceress. The drivelling
idiot! he is going to marry the lovely brunette, Madame Sainte-Suzanne."
"Thélénie! is it possible?"
"It's a fact; he told me under the seal of secrecy; he tells
everybody--under the same seal."
"But it was your duty to impress it upon him that he is doing an insane
thing, that this marriage will make him very unhappy, that all the men
with any good looks in Paris have known Madame Sainte-Suzanne
intimately."
"I was careful to do nothing of the kind; he would have believed that I
said it from envy, from spite; and then, d'ye see, I am not sorry to see
him do this crazy thing. If Chamoureau were a good fellow, if he had
shown himself in prosperity a man of heart, devoted to his friends, then
I would have done my utmost to prevent him from tying himself to that
lady. But as he did nothing of the kind, as he is nothing better than an
ass, a selfish fool overflowing with vanity, who pretended to mourn for
his wife in order to make himself interesting, why, let him roll in the
muck, let him swallow with his eyes closed all the lies his lovely
Thélénie tells him; let him roll there till he falls into a ditch, into
which that lady will not fail to push him! it will be a good thing!
There's no harm done if fools are punished from time to time. I never
pity the discomfiture of those people who are insolent in
prosperity.--Now I am ready; let us go; that is to say, let us go to the
Café Anglais to breakfast--just a cutlet; I shall save myself for the
_matelote_--and then to the station."
The two friends breakfasted together. But Edmond gave Freluchon hardly
time to eat; he said to him every minute:
"Let us go; you have eaten enough; if you eat any more, you won't do
honor to the _matelote_."
"I assure you that I shall; the journey, you know, and the country air;
and then we shall not dine as soon as we arrive.--Garçon! a cup of
chocolate."
"Great heaven! he is going to drink chocolate too! Why, it will make you
ill!"
"On the contrary, it will do me good; it's a habit which I learned from
a little Spanish dancer, who danced the _yota_, _bolera_, et cetera, at
the Folies-Nouvelles, and who quivered so when she looked at her feet.
Ah! my dear fellow, such a quivering!"
"That is no reason for drinking chocolate! I have known English women,
but I don't eat plum-pudding!"
"Well! you make a mistake; you should always adopt the tastes of your
lady friends; then you end by eating everything."
At last Edmond succeeded in dragging Freluchon from the café; but the
little man, as a precautionary measure, put in his pocket the rolls that
he had not had time to eat. They arrived at the station, only to find
that they had three-quarters of an hour to wait for the train.
"You see, I should have had plenty of time to soak my rolls in my
chocolate!" cried Freluchon as they paced the floor of the waiting
room. "Oh! these lovers! how unpleasant they are at table!--I say! they
sell cake here; I am going to fill my pockets in case of accidents.--If
this fellow Edmond were only amiable! I do whatever he wants, I follow
him to a place where I don't know a cat, and he doesn't say a word, he
looks as dismal as a night cap! Are you going to be like this all the
way to Chelles?"
"Oh! Freluchon, if you knew what I feel when I think that I am going to
see that fascinating girl again! It seems to me that when I am with her,
I shall not dare to say a word."
"Well! that will be lovely! You will give them a very pretty idea of
your intelligence!"
"A man ceases to have any when he is in love!"
"In that case, I have an excellent reason for never falling in love.
_Fichtre!_ I don't propose to lose my intelligence; it's a thing that
can't be replaced."
"Do you think she'll be glad to see me?"
"What a question! It's as if you should ask me if I know how many times
I blew my nose yesterday."
"If they should receive me coldly--with that frigid courtesy that means:
'Monsieur, you are welcome this once--it's all right--but you will
gratify us by not coming again' ----"
"Why, you would say to them: 'Mesdames, you will be the losers; I
improve rapidly on acquaintance' ----"
"Ah! there's the bell, the signal for the train; let's hurry."
"Hurry! what an extraordinary man! What's the use of hurrying? there's
always room in the cars; as the saying goes: 'When there's no more room,
there is still some.' "
The two friends took their seats, and the train started. Freluchon
scrutinized their travelling companions. Two elderly women, a child, and
three men, two of whom instantly began to smoke, in the teeth of the
regulations, deeming it perfectly natural to gratify a brutish taste at
the risk of setting the carriage on fire and roasting a considerable
number of travellers. What vile cads such people are!
Freluchon admired the landscape, as much as one can admire it from a
railway train. The country was very pretty through Raincy; but Edmond
looked at nothing, saw nothing. Whenever the train stopped, he wanted to
alight, thinking that they had arrived; Freluchon was obliged to hold
him back by the coat, saying:
"We are not at Chelles; do you mean to go the rest of the way on foot?"
At last they reached the Chelles station. The two friends alighted and
Edmond asked a peasant woman:
"Which way to Chelles, if you please?"
"To your left, up the hill."
"And the _matelote_ country, madame?" asked Freluchon.
"To your right, monsieur; follow the main road, take the first road to
the left, cross the bridge, and you're in Gournay."
"Infinitely obliged. I will go in that direction, Edmond, while you go
to Chelles; you will find me at the best restaurant, cabaret or
grill-room in Gournay. It is now one o'clock; I trust that I shall see
you again by four; three hours to pay your respects is a very generous
allowance. I am going to try to find a shepherdess of the Florian type;
if it come to the worst I will be content with a bather of the Courbet
type.--Bah! he isn't listening; he's already on his way; he continues to
be amiable!"
Agathe was at the piano, singing and accompanying herself. Honorine,
seated by the window, was working at embroidery, glancing frequently in
the direction of the Tower.
Several days had passed since the adventure of the cow; they had seen
neither Paul nor his dog, and Madame Dalmont had just observed:
"I am sure that that gentleman was sorely annoyed to be obliged to walk
home with us; that was why he ran away without listening, I think, to my
invitation to him to rest a moment."
"Why, yes, he did listen, because he answered: 'I must continue my
walk.' --Ah! the dog is more agreeable than his master!"
And the two friends had relapsed into silence.
Poucette entered the salon.
"Mesdames, here's a fine young man who wants to know if he can have the
honor of seeing you."
"A young man--did he give his name?"
"Monsieur Edmond Didier."
"Edmond Didier! Oh! my dear friend, that's the young man, who--the young
man, who--you know--who took so much trouble to help you to buy this
house."
"Yes, yes; I remember very well; but that's no reason why you should
blush so. Why, you are all confused. Come, come, Agathe, control
yourself.--Show the gentleman in, Poucette."
"Oh! my dear love, does my hair look nice? I didn't have time to braid
it this morning."
"You look very sweet. But do sit still, don't jump about on your chair
like that; this young man will think that you have nervous spasms."
"O Honorine! how unkind you are!"
Edmond's appearance put an end to this conversation. He entered the room
very modestly, apologizing for his presumption. One is generally well
received when one displays some fear of coming inopportunely. The young
man's courteous, gentlemanly demeanor and his reserved manners
prepossessed Honorine in his favor. As for Agathe, the flush that
overspread her cheeks, her confusion, her eyes, which she was afraid to
turn upon the new arrival, demonstrated clearly enough that his presence
caused her the most intense emotion; and her voice was almost inaudible
when she replied to Edmond's greeting and inquiry for her health.
But when the first awkward moment had passed, the young man, reassured
by the cordial welcome he had received, became amiable and sprightly,
recovered his spirits, and his conversation soon afforded much
amusement to the ladies, to whom he gave all the news of Paris. Then he
spoke enthusiastically of the house, the situation, the outlook.
"We also have a very pretty garden," murmured Agathe.
"If I were not afraid of being presumptuous, I would ask to see it."
"With pleasure, monsieur; landed proprietors, you know, are always
flattered to exhibit their property; and it should be more excusable in
us than in others, we have been landed proprietors such a short time!"
They walked in the garden, which the young man found charming, as he did
the whole house. Agathe began to be less embarrassed, she recovered her
gayety, laughed at the slightest provocation, and, when she did so,
disclosed such fresh red lips and such pretty teeth that it would have
been a pity for her not to laugh, in very truth.
"It is very good of you, monsieur," said Honorine, "to remember your
promise and to think of coming to see us. But perhaps you know someone
at Chelles?"
"No, madame, absolutely no one. The desire to present my respects to you
was quite sufficient to bring me here; furthermore, I was anxious to
know if you were satisfied with your purchase."
"Yes, monsieur, very well satisfied. Agathe and I like this neighborhood
very much."
"Have you plenty of society?"
"We might have, if we wanted it; but we do not seek it; society is often
a nuisance in the country. We have a call now and then from the local
doctor, an old man and rather pleasant. I think that we shall go no
farther; what we have seen has given us no desire to join in the
festivities of our neighbors, has it, Agathe?"
"Oh! no, indeed! tiresome eccentricities--perfectly intolerable with
their chatter, in which there is never an interesting word. It's so
amusing to listen to that! What a difference when one is with people
who--whom we like! then the time passes so quickly!"
"Yes, indeed; too quickly, in fact; for I fear that I presume too far,
that I incommode you by prolonging my call."
"Oh! no, monsieur, our time is entirely at our disposal; and if there is
no necessity for your hurrying back to Paris----"
"Not in the least, madame; I too am master of my time--too much so,
indeed."
"Have you no business?"
"Pardon me, I trade on the Bourse. I am thinking seriously about earning
money."
During this dialogue between Edmond and Honorine, Agathe frequently
glanced at her friend, and her eyes seemed to say:
"Well! do you propose to let this young man go away like this? Aren't
you going to invite him to dine with us? He was so courteous to us in
Paris; he certainly deserves to have us pay him that compliment."
Honorine understood Agathe's pantomime perfectly, but she was amused by
her impatience. However, when Edmond again spoke
|
shade of softness in the cold, never-bright eyes
and anticipated another rejoinder than the sentence that stands at the
head of this chapter.
"And so you know nothing of this gentleman beyond what he has told you
of his character and antecedents?" he said--the slender white fingers,
his aunt fancied, looked cruel even in their idleness, lightly linked
together while his elbows rested upon the arms of his chair.
"My dear Winston! what a question! Haven't I told you that he is my
husband's namesake and godson! I was at his fathers house a score of
times, at least, in dear Frederic's life-time. It was a charming place,
and I never saw a more lovely family. I recollect this boy perfectly,
as was very natural, seeing that his name was such a compliment to my
husband. He was a fine, manly little fellow, and the eldest son. The
christening-feast was postponed, for some reason I do not now remember,
until he was two years old. It was a very fine affair. The company was
composed of the very elite of that part of Maryland, and the Bishop
himself baptized the two babies--Frederic, and a younger sister. I know
all about him, you see, instead of nothing!"
"What was the date of this festival?" asked Winston's unwavering voice.
"Let me see! We had been married seven years that fall. It must have
been in the winter of 18--."
"Twenty-three years ago!" said Winston, yet more quietly. "Doubtless,
your intimacy with this estimable and distinguished family continued up
to the time of your husband's death?"
"It did."
"And afterward?"
Mrs. Button's color waned, And her voice sank, as the inquisition
proceeded. "Dear Frederic's" death was not the subject she would have
chosen of her free will to discuss with this man of steel and ice.
"I never visited them again. I could not--"
If she hoped to retain a semblance of composure, she must shift her
ground.
"I returned to my father's house, which was, as you know, more remote
from the borders of Maryland--"
"You kept up a correspondence, perhaps?" Winston interposed, overlooking
her agitation as irrelevant to the matter under investigation.
"No! For many months I wrote no letters at all, and Mr. Chilton was
never a punctual correspondent. The best of friends are apt to be
dilatory in such respects, as they advance in life."
"I gather, then, from what you have ADMITTED"--there was no actual
stress upon the word, but it stood obnoxiously apart from the remainder
of the sentence, to Mrs. Sutton's auriculars--"from what you have
admitted, that for twenty years you have lost sight of this gentleman
and his relatives, and that you might never have remembered the
circumstance of their existence, had he not introduced himself to you at
the Springs this summer."
"You are mistaken, there!" corrected the widow, eagerly. "Rosa Tazewell
introduced him to Mabel at the first 'hop' she--Mabel--attended there.
He is very unassuming. He would never have forced himself upon my
notice. I was struck by his appearance and resemblance to his father,
and inquired of Mabel who he was. The recognition followed as a matter
of course."
"He was an acquaintance of Miss Tazewell--did you say?"
"Yes--she knew him very well when she was visiting in Philadelphia last
winter."
"And proffered the introduction to Mabel?" the faintest imaginable
glimmer of sarcastic amusement in his eyes, but none in his accent.
"He requested it, I believe."
"That is more probable. Excuse my frankness, aunt, when I say that it
would have been more in consonance with the laws controlling the conduct
of really thoroughbred people, had your paragon--I use the term in no
offensive sense--applied to me, instead of to you, for permission to pay
his addresses to my ward. I am willing to ascribe this blunder, however,
to ignorance of the code of polite society, and not to intentional
disrespect, since you represent the gentleman as amiable and
well-meaning. I am, furthermore, willing to examine his certificates
of character and means, with a view to determining what are his
recommendations to my sister's preference, over and above ball-room
graces and the fact that he is Mr. Sutton's namesake, and whether
it will be safe and advisable to grant my consent to their marriage.
Whatever is for Mabel's real welfare shall be done, while I cannot
but wish that her choice had fallen upon some one nearer home The
prosecution of inquiries as to the reputation of one whose residence is
so distant, is a difficult and delicate task."
"If you will only talk to him for ten minutes he will remove your
scruples,--satisfy you that all is as it should be," asserted Mrs.
Sutton, more confidently to him than herself.
"I trust it will be as you say--but credulity is not my besetting sin.
I am ready to see the gentleman at any hour you and he may see fit to
appoint."
"I will send MR. CHILTON to you at once, then." Mrs. Sutton collected
the scattering remnants of hope and resolution, that she might deal a
parting shot.
"Winston is an AWFUL trial to my temper, although he never loses his
own," she was wont to soliloquize, in the lack of a confidante to whom
she could expatiate upon his eccentricities and general untowardness.
His marked avoidance of Frederic's name in this conference savored
to her of insulting meaning. She had rather he had coupled it with
opprobious epithets whenever he referred to him, than spoken of him as
"this" or "that gentleman." If he took this high and chilly tone, with
Mabel's wooer, there was no telling what might be the result of the
affair.
"Don't mind him if he is stiff and uncompromising for a while," she
enjoined upon Frederic, in apprising him of the seignior's readiness to
grant him audience, "It is only his way, and he is Mabel's brother."
"I will bear the latter hint in mind," rejoined the young man, with the
gay, affectionate smile he often bestowed upon her. "I don't believe he
can awe me into resignation of my purpose, or provoke me into dislike of
the rest of the family."
Mabel was in her aunt's room, plying her with queries, hard to be
evaded, touching the tenor and consequences of her recent negotiations,
when a servant brought a message from her brother. She was wanted in the
study. The girl turned very white, as she prepared to obey, without an
idea of delay or of refusal.
"O Auntie! what if he should order me to give Frederic up!" she
ejaculated, pausing at the door, in an agony of trepidation. "I never
disobeyed him in my life."
"He will not do that, dear, never fear! He can find no pretext for
such summary proceedings. And should he oppose your wishes, be firm of
purpose, and do not forsake your affianced husband," advised the old
lady, solemnly. "There is a duty which takes precedence, in the sight
of Heaven and man, of that you owe your brother. Remember this, and take
courage."
Mabel's roses returned in profusion, when, upon entering the arbiter's
dread presence, she saw Frederic Chilton, standing on the opposite side
of the table from that at which sat her brother at his ease, his white
fingers still idly interlaced, his pale patrician face emotionless as
that of the bust of Apollo upon the top of the bookcase behind him. It
was Frederic who led her to a chair, when she stopped, trembling midway
in the apartment, and his touch upon her arm inspirited her to raise her
regards to Winston's countenance at the sound of his voice.
"I have sent for you, Mabel, that I may repeat in you hearing the reply
I have returned to Mr. Chilton's application for my sanction to your
engagement--I should say, perhaps, to your reciprocal attachment. The
betrothal of a minor without the consent, positive or implied, of her
parent or guardian is, as I have just explained to Mr. Chilton, but
an empty name in this State. I have promised, then, not to oppose
your marriage, provided the inquiries I shall institute concerning Mr.
Chilton's previous life, his character, and his ability to maintain you
in comfort, are answered satisfactorily. He will understand and excuse
my pertinacity upon this point when he reflects upon the value of the
stake involved in this transaction."
In all their intercourse, Frederic had no more gracious notice
from Mabel's brother than this semi-apology, delivered with stately
condescension, and a courtly bow in his direction.
It sounded very grand to Mabel, whose fears of opposition or severity
from her Mentor had shaken courage and nerves into pitiable distress.
Frederic could desire nothing more affable than Winston's smile; no more
abundant encouragement than was afforded by his voluntary pledge. Had
not the thought savored of disloyalty to her lover, she would have
confessed herself disappointed that his reply did not effervesce with
gratitude, that his deportment was distant, his tone constrained.
"I appreciate the last-named consideration, Mr. Aylett, I believe,
thoroughly, as you do. I have already told you that I invite, not
shirk, the investigation you propose. I now repeat my offer of whatever
facility is at my command for carrying this on. No honorable man could
do less. Unless I mistake, you wish now to see your sister alone."
He bent his head slightly, and without other and especial salutation to
his betrothed, withdrew.
Odd, white dints came and went in Winston's nostrils--the one and
unerring facial sign of displeasure he ever exhibited, if we except a
certain hardening of eye and contour that chiselled his lineaments into
a yet closer resemblance to marble.
"He is very sensitive and proud, I know," faltered Mabel, hastily
marking these, and understanding what they portended.
"You need not like him the less on that account, always provided that
the supports of his pride are legitimate and substantial," answered her
brother, carelessly transferring to his tablets several names from a
sheet of paper upon the table--the addresses of persons to whom Frederic
had referred him for confirmation of his statements regarding his social
and professional standing.
"I hope, for your sake, Mabel," he pursueds pocketing the memoranda,
"that this affair may be speedily and agreeably adjusted; while I cannot
deny that I deprecate the unseemly haste with which Mrs. Sutton and
her ally have urged it on, in my absence. Had they intended to court
suspicion, they could not have done it more effectually. You could not
have had a more injudicious chaperone to the Springs."
"Indeed, brother, she was not to blame," began the generous girl,
forgetting her embarrassment in zealous defence of the aunt she loved.
"It was not she who presented me to Mr. Chilton, and she has never
attempted to bias my decision in any manner."
"I have heard the history in detail." Had his breeding been less fine,
he would have yawned in her face. "I know that you are indebted for Mr.
Chilton's acquaintanceship to Miss Tazewell's generosity. But in strict
justice, Mrs. Sutton should be held responsible for whatever unhappiness
may arise from the intimacy. You were left by myself in her charge."
"I do not believe it will end unhappily," Mabel was moved to reply,
with spirit that became her better than the shyness she had heretofore
displayed, or the submissive demeanor usual with her in tête-à-têtes
with her guardian.
He smiled in calm superiority.
"I have expressed my hope to that effect. Of expectations it will be
time enough to speak when I am better informed upon divers points. I
am not one to take much for granted, am less sanguine than my romantic
aunt, or even than my more practical sister. Assuming, however, that
all is as you would have it, your wish would be, I suppose, for an early
marriage?"
"There has been little said about that," responded Mabel,
reddening--then rallying to add smilingly--"such an arrangement would
have involved the taking for granted a good many things--your consent
among them."
Winston passed over the addenda.
"But that little, especially when uttered by Mr. Chilton, trenched upon
the inexpediency of long engagements--did it not?"
Mabel was mute, her eyes downcast.
"I agree with him there, at any rate. You are nineteen years of age; he
twenty-five. Your property is unincumbered, and can be transferred
to your keeping at very short notice. Mr. Chilton represents that his
income from his patrimonial estate, eked out by professional gains, is
sufficient to warrant him in marrying forthwith. I shall see that no
time is lost in making the inquiries upon which depends the progress of
the negotiation. Business calls me North in a week or ten days. I shall
stop a day in Philadelphia, and settle your affair."
The frightfully business-like manner of disposing of her happiness
appalled the listener into silence. The loss of Frederic; the
destruction of her love-dream; the weary years of lonely wretchedness
that would follow the bereavement, were to him only unimportant
incidentals to her "affair;" weighed in the scale of his impartial
judgment no more than would unconsidered dust. For the first time in the
life to which he had been the guiding-star, she ventured to wonder if
the unswerving rectitude that had elevated him above the level of other
men, in her esteem and affection, were so glorious a thing after all; if
a tempering, not of human frailty, but of charity for the shortcomings,
sympathy for the needs, of ordinary mortals, would not subdue the
effulgence of his talents and virtues into mild lustre, more tolerable
to the optics of fallible beholders.
Unsuspicious, with all his astuteness, of her sacrilegious doubts,
Winston proceeded:
"In the event of your marriage, you would desire, no doubt, that Mrs.
Sutton should take up her abode with you? You would find her useful in
many ways, and she would get on amicably with her husband's godson."
"I do not think she expects to go with me," answered Mabel, staggered by
his coolly confident air. "I certainly have never entertained the
idea. I imagined that she would remain with you, while you needed her
services."
"That will not be long. I shall be married on the 10th of October."
"Married! brother!" starting up in amazement. "You are not in earnest!"
"I should not jest upon such a theme," replied Winston, in grave rebuke.
"My plans are definitely laid. It is not my purpose to keep them secret
a day longer. I meant to communicate them to yourself and Mrs. Sutton
this afternoon, but yours claimed precedence."
Mabel sat down again, totally confounded, and struggling hard with
her tears. The thought of her brother's marriage was not in itself
disagreeable. She had often lamented his insensibility to the
attractions of such women as she fancied would add to his happiness, and
grace the high place to which his wife would be exalted. She never
liked to hear him called invulnerable; repelled the hypothesis of
his incurable bachelorhood as derogatory to his heart and head. This
unlooked-for intelligence, had it reached her in a different way, would
have delighted as much as it astonished her. The fear lest her consent
to wed Frederic and leave Ridgeley might be the occasion of discomfort
and sadness to her forsaken brother had shadowed all her visions of
future bliss. She ought to have hailed with unmixed satisfaction the
certainty that he would not miss her sisterly ministrations, or feel the
need of her companionship in that of one nearer and dearer than was
his child-ward. She had striven not to resent even in her own mind, his
cavalier treatment of her lover; had hearkened respectfully and without
demur to his unsympathizing calculations of what was possible and what
feasible in the project of her union with the man of her choice. For how
could he know anything of the palpitations, the anxieties, the raptures
of love, when he was a stranger to the touch of a kindred emotion? He
meant well; he had her welfare in view; unfortunate as was his style of
discussing the means for insuring this--for he loved her dearly, dearly!
She must never question this, although he had dealt the comfortable
persuasion a cruel blow; wounded her in a vital part by withholding
from her the circumstance of his attachment and betrothal until the near
approach of the wedding day rendered continued secrecy inexpedient. No
softening memory of his affianced had inclined him to listen with kindly
warmth to her timid avowals, or Frederic's manly protestations of their
mutual attachment. He recognized no analogy in the two cases; stood
aloof from them in the flush of his successful love, as if he had never
known the pregnant meaning of the word. Smarting under the sense of
injury to pride and affection, her language, when she could trust her
voice, was a protest that, in Winston's judgment, ill beseemed her age
and station.
"Why did you not tell me of this earlier, brother? It was unjust and
unkind to keep me in the dark until now."
"You forget yourself, Mabel. I am not under obligation to account to you
for my actions."
He said it composedly, as if stating a truth wholly disconnected with
feeling on his part or on hers.
"I have given you the information to which you refer, in season for you
to make ample preparation for my wife's reception. And, mark me, she
must see no sulkiness, no airs of strangeness or intolerance, because
I have managed a matter that concerns me chiefly, as seemed to me best.
Say the same to Mrs. Sutton, if you please; also that I will submit to
no dictation, and ask no advice."
Mabel's anger seldom outlived its utterance. The hot sparkle in her
eye was quenched by moisture, as she laid her hand caressingly upon her
brother's.
"Winston! you cannot suppose that we could be wanting in cordiality to
any one whom you love, much less to your wife. Let her come when she
may, she will be heartily welcomed by us both. But this has
fallen suddenly upon me, and I am a little out of sorts to-day, I
believe--excited and nervous--and, O, my darling! my oldest and best of
friends! I hope your love will bring to you the happiness you deserve."
The tears had their course, at last, bathing the hand she bowed to kiss.
The simple ardor of the outbreak would have affected many men to a show
of responsive weakness. Even Winston Aylett's physiognomy was more human
and less statuesque, as he patted her head, and bade her be composed.
"If you persist in enacting Niobe, I shall believe that you are
chagrined at the prospect of having the sister you have repeatedly
besought me to give you," he said, playfully--for him. "You have
not asked me her name, and where she lives. What has become of your
curiosity? I never knew it to be quiescent before."
"I thought you would tell me whatever it was best for me to know,"
replied Mabel, drying her eyes.
If she had said that she was too well-trained to assail him with
interrogatories he had not invited, it would have been nearer the mark.
"There is nothing relating to her which I desire to conceal," he
rejoined, with some stiffness, "or she would never have become my
promised wife. She is a Miss Dorrance, the daughter of a widow residing
in the vicinity of Boston, Massachusetts. I met her first at Trenton
Falls, where a happy accident brought me into association with her
party. I travelled with them to the Lakes and among the White Mountains,
and, while in Boston, visited her daily. We were betrothed a week ago,
and having, as I have observed, an aversion to protracted engagements,
I prevailed upon her to appoint the tenth of next mouth as our marriage
day. There you have the story in brief. I have not Mrs. Sutton's talents
as a raconteur, nor her disposition to turn hearts inside out for the
edification of her auditors."
"Does she--Miss Dorrance--look like anybody I know?" asked Mabel,
hesitating to declare herself dissatisfied with the skeleton love-tale,
yet uncertain how to learn more.
"A roundabout way of asking if she is passable in appearance," Winston
said, with his smile of conscious superiority. "Judge for yourself!"
taking from his pocket a miniature.
"How beautiful! What a very handsome woman?" the sister exclaimed at
sight of the pictured face.
"You are correct. She is, moreover, a thorough lady, and
highly-educated. Ridgeley will have a queenly mistress. The likeness is
considered faithful, but it does not do her justice."
He took it from Mabel, and they scanned it together; she resting
against his shoulder. She felt his chest heave twice; heard him swallow
spasmodically in the suppression of some mighty emotion, and the
palpable effort drew her very near to him. She never doubted from that
moment, what she had more cause in after days to believe, that he loved
the woman he had won with a fervor of passion that seemed foreign to his
temperament as the evidence of it was to his conduct.
The September sun was near the horizon, and between the bowed shutters
one slender, gilded arrow shot athwart the portrait, producing a
marvellous and sinister change in its expression. The large, limpid eyes
became shallow and cunning; the smile lurking about the mouth was the
more treacherous and deadly for its sweetness; while the burnished coils
of hair brushed away from the temples had the opaline tints and sinuous
roll of a serpent.
Mabel shrank back before the horror of the absurd imagination.
Winston raised the picture to his lips.
"My peerless one!"
CHAPTER III. -- UNWHOLESOME VAPORS.
"DORRANCE!" repeated Frederic, after his betrothed, when she rehearsed
to him in their moonlight promenade upon the piazza the leading
incidents of her brother's wooing. "She lives near Boston, you say, and
her mother is a widow?"
"Yes. What have you ever heard about her?"
"Nothing whatever. I was startled by the name--but very foolishly! I
once knew a family of Dorrances--New Yorkers--but the father, a retired
naval officer, was alive, and all the daughters were married. The
youngest of them would be, by this time, much older than you judge the
original of the miniature to be."
"She is not more than twenty-two, at the most," Mabel was sure.
Frederic's hurried articulation and abstracted manner excited her
curiosity, and unrestrained by Winston's curb, it was not "quiescent."
The thought was spoken so soon as it was formed.
"There was something unpleasant in your intercourse with them, then? or
something objectionable in the people themselves? Could they have been
relatives of this widow and her daughter? The name is not a common one
to my ears."
"Nor to mine; yet we have no proof to sustain your supposition. I should
be very sorry--"
He stopped.
Mabel studied his perturbed countenance with augmented uneasiness.
"Was not the family respectable?"
"Perfectly, my shrewd little catechist!" seeming to shake off an
uncomfortable incubus, as he laughed down at her serious face. "They
vaunted themselves upon the antiquity of their line, and were more
liberal in allusions to departed grandeur than was quite well-bred. When
I knew them they were not wealthy, or in what they would have called
'society.' Indeed, the mother kept a private boarding-house near
the law-school I attended. There were several sons--very decent,
enterprising fellows. But one lived at home, and a daughter, the wife of
a lieutenant in the navy, whom I never saw. I boarded with them for six
months, or thereabout."
"You never saw the daughter! How was that?"
"I must have expressed myself awkwardly if I conveyed any such idea. I
did not meet the seafaring husband who was off upon a long cruise.
The wife I met constantly--knew very well. You need not look at me so
intently, love, as if you feared that some dark mystery lurked behind
this matter-of-fact recital. If I do not tell you every event of my
former life, it is not because it was vile. I could not sustain
the light of your innocent eyes if I had ever been guilty of aught
dishonorable or criminal. But even the follies and mistakes of a young
man's early career are not fit themes for your ears. And I was no wiser,
no more wary, than other youths of the same age; was apt to believe that
fair which was only specious, and that I might play, uninjured, with
edged tools. Nor had I seen you then, my treasure--my snow-drop of
purity! Mabel! do you know how solemn a thing it is to be loved and
trusted by a man, as I love and confide in you? It terrifies me when I
think of the absoluteness of my dependence upon your fidelity--of how
rich I am in having you--how poor, wretched, and miserable I should be
without you. I shall not draw a free breath until you are mine beyond
the chance of recall."
"Nobody else wants me!" breathed Mabel in his ear, nestling within
the arm that enfolded and held her tightly in the corner of the
piazza shaded by the creeper. "The danger of losing me is not imminent
to-night, at all events," she resumed, presently, with a touch of the
sportiveness that lent her manner an airy charm in lighter talk than
that which had engrossed her for the past hour.
The evening was warm and still to sultriness, and the moonlight,
filtered into pensive pallor through a low-lying haze, yet sufficed to
show how confidingly Imogene leaned upon her attendant in sauntering
down the long main alley of the garden. Rosa was at the piano in the
parlor, singing to the enamored Alfred. Mrs. Sutton had withdrawn to
her own room to ruminate upon the astounding disclosure of her nephew's
engagement, while Winston bent over his study-table busy with the
interrupted letter his aunt had seen in his portfolio.
"There is no one here who has the leisure or the disposition to contest
your rights, you perceive," said Mabel, running through a laughing
summary of their companions' occupations.
"Betrothals are epidemic in this household and neighborhood," Winston
was writing. "There are no fewer than three pairs of turtles cooing down
stairs as I pen this to you, my bird of paradise. The case that next to
mine--to ours--commands my interest is that of my sister. I came home to
learn that the little Mabel I used to hold on my knee had entered into
an engagement--conditional upon my sanction--with that traditional
tricky personage, a Philadelphia lawyer--Mr. Frederic Chilton, at the
door of whose manifold perfections, as set forth by my loquacious aunt,
you may lay the blame of this delayed epistle. I know nothing of this
aspirant to the dignity of brotherhood with myself, saving the facts
that he is tolerably good looking, claims to be the scion of an old
Maryland family, and that self-conceit is apparently his predominant
quality."
"What is that?" asked Frederic, halting before the windows, of the
drawing-room, as a wild, sorrowful strain, like the wail of a breaking
heart, arose upon the waveless air.
Rosa was a vocalist of note in her circle, and she had never rendered
anything with more effect than she did the song to which even the
preoccupied strollers among the garden borders stayed their steps to
listen. Through the open casement Mabel and her lover could see the face
of the musician, slightly uplifted toward the moonlight; her eyes, dark
and dreamy, as under the cloud of many years of weary waiting and final
hopelessness. Her articulation was always pure, but the passionate
emphasis of every word constrained the breathless attention of her
audience to the close of the simple lay:
"Thy name was once the magic spell
By which my thoughts were bound;
And burning dreams of light and love
Were wakened by the sound.
My heart beat quick when stranger-tongues,
With idle praise or blame,
Awoke its deepest thrill of joy
To tremble at thy name.
"Long years, long years have passed away,
And altered is thy brow;
And we who met so fondly once
Must meet as strangers now.
The friends of yore come 'round me still,
But talk no more of thee,
'Twere idle e'en to wish it now,
For what art thou to me?"
"Yet still thy name--thy blessed name!
My lonely bosom fills,
Like an echo that hath lost itself
Among the distant hills,
That still, with melancholy note,
Keeps faintly lingering on,
When the joyous sound that woke it first
Is gone--forever gone!"
"A neat conceit that last verse, and the music is a fair imitation of a
dying bugle-echo!" said Winston Aylett to himself, resuming the writing
he had suspended for a minute. "That girl should take to the stage. If
one did not know better, her eyes and singing together would delude him
into the idea that she had a heart. Honest Alfred evidently believes
that she has, and that the patient labor of love will win it for
himself. Bah!"
Frederic and Mabel retired noiselessly from their post of observation,
as "honest Alfred" made a motion to take in his the hand lying prone and
passive upon the finger-board. They exchanged a smile, significant and
tender, in withdrawing.
"We understand the signs of the times," whispered Frederic, at the upper
turn of their promenade. "Heaven bless all true lovers under the sun!"
"Don't!" said Rosa, vehemently, snatching away her hand from her
suitor's hold. "Leave me alone! If you touch me again I shall scream!
I think you were made up without nerves, either in the heart or in the
brain--if you have any!"
Before the aghast Alfred rallied from the recoil occasioned by her
gesture and words, her feet were pattering over the oaken hall and
staircase in rapid retreat to her chamber.
"You are really happy, then?" queried Mabel. "Quite content?"
"Did I not tell you awhile ago that I was not satisfied?" returned
Chilton. "Two months since I should, in anticipation of this hour, have
declared that it would be fraught with unalloyed rapture. I was
happier yesterday than I am to-day. It is not merely that we must part
to-morrow, or that your brother's precautionary measures and disapproval
of what has passed between us have acted like a shower-bath to the
fervor of my newly born hopes. I am willing that my life should be
subjected to the utmost rigor of his researches, and another month, at
farthest, will reunite us. Nor do I believe in presentiments. I am more
inclined to attribute the uneasiness that has hovered over me all the
day to physical causes. We will call it a mild splenetic case, induced
by the sultry weather, and the very slow on coming of the storm presaged
by your dewless roses."
He laughed naturally and pleasantly. Having confessed to what he
regarded as a ridiculous succumbing of his buoyant spirit to atmospheric
influences, he shook off the nightmare as if it had never sat upon him.
Mabel was grave still.
"There is something weirdly oppressive in the night," she said, in a
low, awed tone. "But the burden you describe has weighed me down since
morning. While Rosa was singing, I felt suddenly removed from you by a
horrid gulf. What if all this should be the preparation to us for some
impending danger?"
"Sweet! these are unwholesome vapors of the imagination. Nothing can be
a disaster that leaves us to one another," was the text of Frederic's
fond soothing; and by the time Mrs. Sutton descended from her chamber of
meditation, to remind Imogene that the seeds of ague and fever lurked in
the river-fogs, the couple from the piazza came into the lighted parlor,
all smiles and animation, wondering, jocosely, what had become of the
recent occupants of the apartment.
Neither reappeared until breakfast-time next morning. Rosa was like
freshly-poured champagne, in sweet and sparkle. Alfred, rueful and limp,
as if the dripping clouds that verified Mabel's prediction had
soaked him all night. He was dry and comfortable--to carry out the
figure--within twenty minutes after his beloved fluttered, like a tame
canary, into the chair next his own--in five more, was more truly her
slave, living in, and upon her smiles--adoring her very caprices as he
had never admired another woman's virtues--than he had been prior to the
brief, but tempestuous scene over night. She was the life of the
party assembled in the dining-room. Imogene had caught cold, walking
bareheaded in the evening air, and Tom condoled with her upon her
influenza and sore-throat too sincerely to do justice to the rest of
his friends and his breakfast. Mr. Aylett was never talkative, and his
unvarying, soulless politeness to all produced the conserving effect
upon chill and low spirits that the atmosphere of a refrigerator does
upon whatever is placed within it. Mrs. Sutton's motherly heart was
yearning pityingly over the lovers who were soon to be sundered, while
Mabel's essay at cheerful equanimity imposed upon nobody's credulity.
Frederic comported himself like a man--the more courageously because
the host's cold eye was upon him, and he surmised that sighs and
sentimentality would meet very scant indulgence in that quarter.
Moreover, he was not so unreasonable as to descry insupportable
hardships in this parting. By agreement with Mr. Aylett and his sister,
he was, if all went prosperously, to revisit Ridgeley at the end of six
weeks, when his design was to entreat his betrothed to name the wedding
day. The prospect might well support him under the present trial. He
bore Rosa's badinage gallantly, tossing back sprightly and telling
rejoinders that called forth the smiling applause of the auditors, and
commanded her respectful recognition of him as a foeman worthy of her
steel.
"Nine o'clock," said Winston, at length, consulting his watch, and
pushing back his chair. "The carriage will be at the door in fifteen
minutes, Mr. Chilton. The road is heavy this morning, and the stage
passes the village at ten."
"I shall be ready," responded Frederic. "I am sorry your carriage and
coachman must be exposed to the rain."
"That is nothing. They are used to it. I never alter my plan of travel
on account of the weather, how ever severe the storm. This warm rain can
hurt nobody."
"It is pouring hard," remarked Mrs. Button, solicitously. "And that
stage is wretchedly uncomfortable in the best weather. I wish you
could be persuaded to stay with us until it clears off, Mr. Chilton,
and"--making a bold push--"I am sure my nephew concurs in my desire."
"Mr. Chilton should require no verbal assurance of my hospitable
feelings toward him and my other guests," said Mr. Aylett,
frigidly--smooth as ice-cream. "If I forbear to press him to prolong his
stay, it is in reflection of the golden law laid down for the direction
of hosts--'Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.'"
"You are both
|
Francis Mackenzie on the kilt--Now
fallen into disuse--Present dress of men--Gairloch
hose--Dress of women--The mutch--Maiden's headdress--Dr
Mackenzie on maiden's hair and on mutches 125
CHAPTER VII.--WAYS AND MEANS.
Sources of livelihood--Industry of women--Dwellings--Byres
adjoining--No chimneys--Gradual improvement--Gardens
rare--Fevers and consumption--Food--Absence of
pigs--Whisky--Illicit distillation--Fuel--Torasgian--Cabar
lar--Peat creel--Carts--Sledges before roads were made 132
CHAPTER VIII.--AGRICULTURE AND STOCK.
Little agriculture in ancient days--Black cattle--Blood
taken from living cattle--The bowmen--Hill shielings
miserable places--Introduction of sheep farming--Sheep
farms forested--Sheep deteriorate pasture--Ancient breed of
sheep--Present farms--Run-rig--Crofts established in
Gairloch--Crofters' crops--The cas-chrom--Sir G. S.
Mackenzie on imperfect agriculture--On indolence--The
Highland husbandman--His negligence--Sir Francis Mackenzie
on imperfect cultivation--On manures--On the cas-chrom--On
lack of industry--On absence of gardens--Introduction of the
potato 136
CHAPTER IX.--FISHERIES.
Gairloch fishermen and fish--Herring fisheries--Lobsters and
crabs--Oysters--Gairloch cod fishery--Under Sir Alexander
Mackenzie, 1721 to 1766--In 1792--Sir G. S. Mackenzie's
account of it under Sir Hector--Lines and hooks formerly
home-made--First foreign hooks in 1823--Cod fishery in 1884
and 1885--Salmon fishery--Bag-nets--Diminution in stock of
salmon 143
CHAPTER X.--POSTS AND ROADMAKING.
Post-runners to Gairloch--Dr Mackenzie's account--Donald
Charles--Roderick M'Lennan--William Cross--M'Leay--Iain Mor
am Post--General Wade's road--Bridges in Gairloch--Road from
Gairloch to Poolewe--The Dowager Lady Mackenzie's account of
road-making--Destitution Committee contribute to
road-making--Road to Fionn loch 147
CHAPTER XI.--SUPERSTITIONS OF ISLE MAREE.
Isle Maree conspicuous--The wishing-tree--Her Majesty's
offering--St Maelrubha permitted sacrifices of
bulls--Continued to 1678--Latterly associated with cure of
insanity--Treatment of lunatics--Still continued--Dr
Mitchell's description--Circular enclosure supposed to be
Druidical--Graves of the prince and princess--The
well--Description of the wishing-tree--Trees of Isle
Maree--Probability of the legend of Isle Maree--Name of
island derived from St Maelrubha--St Maelrubha worshipped 150
CHAPTER XII.--SUPERSTITIONS OF ISLE MAREE--_continued._
Druidical sacrifices engrafted on Christianity--Resort to
Isle Maree for cure of lunacy probably ancient--Parallel
superstitions--Bull sacrifice at Kirkcudbright--Sacrifices
of bulls not confined to the saint's day--Descriptions of
proceedings for cure of lunatics--MacCulloch's
description--No form of words--Recent cases--St Maelrubha
and St Ruffus identical--Mad dog dipped in the well--Sad
consequences--Quotations as to Pagan practices engrafted on
Christianity 153
CHAPTER XIII.--SUPERSTITIONS GENERALLY.
Highlanders' surroundings suggest superstition--Gradual
diminution of it--Older superstitions--Loch Maree water
cure--The Fox Point--Coins found--The Cathair mor and
Sitheanan Dubha--Gairloch fairy tale--The Shiant Isles'
fairy--Eilean Suainne--Fairies seen on Isle Ewe in
1883--Lights and music of fairies noticed at Mellon
Charles--William M'Lean gets a bagpipe chanter from the
fairies--The Gille Dubh of Loch a Druing--Superstitious
fancies--The Loch of the Beast--Evidence of the appearance
of the beast--Proceedings for its suppression--Rorie and the
mermaid 158
CHAPTER XIV.--WITCHCRAFT AND MAGIC.
Rudha Chailleach--Witchcraft and magic still believed
in--Jessie the cripple, a witch--Depriving milk of its
fruit--Kenlochewe case in presbytery records--Kenneth
Mackenzie, the maighstair sgoil, punishes the witch at
Strath--His cows recover--Recent cases--The
sian--Description of it--Duncan M'Rae--His song--Entrusted
with a keg of gold for Prince Charlie--Hides the keg in the
Fedan Mor--Renders it invisible by the sian--The wife of the
Cibear Mor sees the keg--The cave at Meallan a Ghamhna--The
cave and weapons concealed by the sian--Seen by several
women recently--Another similar case on Loch Maree--Alastair
Mor an t' Sealgair--Runs the blockade by means of the
sian--His variations of the sian--Other examples of
Alastair's and his father's powers--The wind made favourable
by magic 163
CHAPTER XV.--VISIONS AND SECOND-SIGHT.
Distinction between visions and second-sight--Old Alastair's
vision of Hector Roy and his bodyguard--A young man sees a
ghost--Two men see a woman in a house--Spectre seen before a
shoot--Two kinds of second-sight--Jessie the cripple--Ducked
as a witch--Her vision of a shepherd, his dog and sheep,
fulfilled--The smith's son sees a crowd on Poolewe
bridge--His vision fulfilled--The great storm on Loch
Ewe--Great sight at Mellon Udrigil--Fleet of ships and boats
filled with red coats--Visions of soldiers in red uniforms
near Inveran--These visions compared with similar sights
elsewhere 169
CHAPTER XVI.--BARDS AND PIPERS.
Ancient bards an illustrious class--Ossian's poems--Office
of bard or seannachie--Bards of recent
date--Ceilidh--Antiquity of bagpipes--Office of piper in old
days--In the present day--Love of pipe music in
Gairloch--Some old Gairloch bards--Ruaridh Breac--The
English bard--Duncan M'Rae--Roderick Campbell, piper and
fiddler--The Piobaire Ban--List of living Gairloch pipers 173
CHAPTER XVII.--HEREDITARY PIPERS OF THE GAIRLOCH FAMILY.
The Mackays--Rorie Mackay, piper to John Roy
Mackenzie--Alastair Breac, and his son and grandson--His
brother Donald--John Mackay, the blind piper--Taught by the
M'Crimmons--Piper to the two first baronets of Gairloch--His
compositions--Anecdotes of his life with the M'Crimmons--His
songs and poems--Angus Mackay--Piper to Sir Alexander, third
baronet--Moladh Mairi--John Mackay, piper to Sir
Hector--Emigrates to America--A splendid piper--His
offspring 177
CHAPTER XVIII.--WILLIAM MACKENZIE AND MALCOLM MACLEAN.
William Mackenzie a catechist--His song to Balone's
sister--His song lampooning a wedding party--His consequent
dismissal--Malcolm Maclean a notorious bacchanalian--His
beautiful daughter--His wife's resignation illustrated by an
anecdote--Translation by Professor Blackie of his song to
his daughter 180
CHAPTER XIX.--WILLIAM ROSS, THE GAIRLOCH BARD.
William Ross, a grandson of the "Blind piper"--His
youth--His travels--Appointed schoolmaster of Gairloch--Dies
young--Monument over his grave--Estimate of his poetry 183
CHAPTER XX.--ALEXANDER CAMPBELL, BARD TO SIR HECTOR.
Alastair Buidhe's ancestry and youth--Appointed
ground-officer and bard to Sir Hector--Instructed to remove
the roof from a defaulting tenant's house--His prudent
artifice approved by Sir Hector--Dr Mackenzie's
recollections of Alastair as bard--His bad health, and
death--His character--His friendship with William Ross--His
descendants--His poetry highly appreciated 185
CHAPTER XXI.--ALEXANDER GRANT, THE GREAT BARD OF SLAGGAN.
Sandy Grant's ancestry--His enormous stature and
strength--His appearance, portrait, and poetry--Reputed to
have second-sight--Anecdote--Sandy Grant discovers cheeses
stolen in Loch Carron--His descendants 187
CHAPTER XXII.--JOHN MACKENZIE OF THE "BEAUTIES."
John's ancestry and youth--His mechanical skill--An accident
disables him--Collects Gaelic poems--Devotes himself to
literary work--List of books he translated--Known as a poet
and piper--Anecdote of his humour--Buys a ship and her
cargo--Gives up the bargain--Monument to his memory 189
CHAPTER XXIII.--LIVING GAIRLOCH BARDS.
Alexander Mackenzie, of Oban--Duncan Mackenzie, the
Kenlochewe bard--Short memoir--His poetry--His epithalamium
on the marriage of Sir Kenneth Mackenzie--Translation of it
by Professor Blackie--Alexander Cameron, the Tournaig
bard--His song in praise of Tournaig--English translation by
Mr W. C. Good--Alexander Bain--His elegy on the late Dr
Kennedy--English translation 192
CHAPTER XXIV.--THE POOLEWE ARTIST.
Paucity of art in Gairloch--Finlay Mackinnon--His
characteristics--His yearning for art as a young
boy--Assisted by Mr Davis, R.A., and others--His watercolour
sketches 200
CHAPTER XXV.--JAMES MACKENZIE'S GAIRLOCH STORIES.
Short Account of James Mackenzie--William Roy Mackenzie and
the exciseman--Kenneth and John Mackenzie of Rona and the
press-gang--John M'Gregor of Londubh escapes from the
press-gang, but is killed by a fall over a rock--Murdo
Mackenzie, or Murdo's son, marries Lord Breadalbane's
daughter and takes possession of a lugger full of smuggled
spirit--Anecdote of Sir Hector Mackenzie and M'Leod of
Raasay's boat--Mackenzie of Kernsary and James Mackenzie's
grandfather--The whale in Loch Ewe drowns three men--A story
of Rob Donn--The Loch Broom herring fishery--The other Rob
Roy Macgregor and the Dundonnell estates--Cases of drowning
in Loch Maree--Hector Mackenzie, William Urquhart and his
son, and Kenneth Mackenzie--A Kenlochewe man rolls
overboard--Kenneth Mackenzie and Gregor Macgregor carried
down by the Talladale river--John M'Ryrie--Kenneth
Urquhart--Sandy Mackenzie--The Stornoway packet and the
whale--Wreck of M'Callum's schooner at Melvaig--A sea
captain buried in Isle Ewe--The loss of the "Glenelg"--Wreck
of the "Helen Marianne" of Campbeltown--Wreck of the "Lord
Molyneux" of Liverpool--John Macdonald, the drover of Loch
Maree--The murder of Grant, the peddler, by M'Leod, who is
at length hung--Death of the Shieldaig shoemaker and his
companions at Lochinver 201
PART III.--NATURAL HISTORY OF GAIRLOCH.
CHAPTER I.--PHYSICAL FEATURES.
Area and boundaries of Gairloch--Sea-board--Long valley
bisecting the parish--Ranges and groups of
mountains--Islands in the sea--Fresh-water
lochs--Rivers--Woods--Caves--Waterfalls--The Steall a
Mhuinidh--Victoria Falls--Letterewe waterfall--Kerry
falls--Flowerdale waterfalls--Scenic beauties 219
CHAPTER II.--CLIMATE AND WEATHER.
Healthy climate of north-west Highlands--Changeable
weather--Sir G. S. Mackenzie on the climate--Dr Mackenzie on
the old-fashioned summers--Former abundance of
nuts--Strawberries on 4th June, also cherries--Short summer
nights--Aurora borealis--Rarity of intense frosts--Spring
mist presages snow--A hard winter--Sunsets from the Gairloch
Hotel--Cloudscapes--Colouring of landscapes 222
CHAPTER III.--ANECDOTES AND NOTES.
Birds, formerly rare in Gairloch, now plentiful, and _vice
versâ_--Dr Mackenzie's remarks on this point--Eagles in
Gairloch--Anecdote of Craig-Tollie eagle and roe
deer--Confirmation from Martin's book--Also from story of
Kirghiz eagles, &c.--Anecdote of Kenlochewe eagle and the
cat--Subject of a well-known Gaelic riddle--Eagle at
Talladale--Two-and-a-half brace of eagles killed in Gairloch
before breakfast--Sea-gulls--How they were driven from
Eilean Ruaridh--Sounds of various birds at
Inveran--Insects--Midges and wasps--Her Majesty's remarks on
them--Rhyme on midges--Preventive measures--Other
insects--Animals in general--Vermin--Marten's fur--Wild
cats--Wild cat in Loch Tollie island--Highland
cattle--Goats--Ponies 227
CHAPTER IV.--LOWER FORMS OF LIFE.
Diffusion of life--Luminosity of footprints on boggy
ground--Reptiles--Fresh-water fish--Shells--Molluscs--The
spout fish--How to take it--Sea anemones--Love of
flowers--Localities recommended to
botanists--Grasses--Mosses--Lichens--List of a
few--Seaweeds--Fungi--Conclusion 233
CHAPTER V.--MAMMALS OF GAIRLOCH.
List of Gairloch mammals, with notes--Notes on Arctic fox in
Gairloch and elsewhere 236
CHAPTER VI.--BIRDS OF GAIRLOCH.
List of Gairloch birds, with notes 241
CHAPTER VII.--FLOWERING PLANTS OF GAIRLOCH.
List imperfect--A word to visitors--Destruction of plants by
sheep--Bouquets of wildflowers--Seasons for them--Rarer
plants--List of flowering plants 256
CHAPTER VIII.--SHELLS OF GAIRLOCH, BY REV. JOHN M'MURTRIE, M.A.
Paper by Rev. John M'Murtrie, M.A., on "Springtide at
Gairloch, a Study of small Shells"--Appendix, with list of
shells 265
CHAPTER IX.--THE GEOLOGY OF LOCH MAREE AND NEIGHBOURHOOD,
BY WILLIAM JOLLY, F.G.S., F.R.S.E.
Long controversy--Attack by eminent geologists--Others enter
the lists--Prospect of early peace--Conditions of the
problem well exhibited round Loch Maree--Succession of
rocks--Hebridean gneiss--Torridon red
sandstone--Quartzite--Its annelid borings--Its fucoid
remains--Limestone--The "Logan" rock--The eastern
gneiss--The controversy--Other noteworthy geological
phenomena--Faults--Glaciation--Denudation--Rock
junctions--The valley of the hundred hills--Curious
impressions on Torridon sandstone near Talladale--The Fionn
and Dubh loch--The Trias at Loch Gruinard 271
CHAPTER X.--MINERALS OF GAIRLOCH, BY PROFESSOR W. IVISON
MACADAM, F.C.S., F.I.C., M.M.S., &c., Edinburgh.
List of minerals and localities 289
PART IV.--GUIDE TO GAIRLOCH AND LOCH MAREE.
CHAPTER I.--GAIRLOCH OF THE PRESENT DAY.
No town in Gairloch--List of townships or hamlets--Ministers
and services--Free churches and ministers--Schools--School
Board--Table of Schools, with average attendance--List of
school teachers--Side schools--School rate--Obstacles to
regular attendance--Annual inspections--Registrar of Births,
Deaths, and Marriages--Pauperism--Poor-rates--Pauper
lunatics--Medical officer--The county road--Private
roads--Policemen--Justices of the Peace--Licensed
houses--Postal
arrangements--Telegraph--Carrier--Bank--Markets--Preventive
service--Steamers--Rifle corps--Its three
sections--Principal houses in Gairloch--Poolewe Public Hall 293
CHAPTER II.--APPROACHES AND ROADS.
Approach from Achnasheen--From Loch Carron--From Loch
Torridon--From Gruinard--By steamer--By boat from
Ullapool--On foot--Main road maintained by the
county--Private roads--Loch Maree a highway 299
CHAPTER III.--ACHNASHEEN TO KENLOCHEWE.
Dingwall and Skye railway--The Gairloch mail-car--Natural
terraces like railway embankments--Loch Rosque--Remains of
ancient ironworks--The Clach an t' Shagart at Bad a
Mhanaich--Luibmhor in Gairloch--View of Scuir
Mhullin--Persistent inquirer--Hill resembling a
profile--Glen Dochartie--View of Loch
Maree--Trysting-place--More old ironworks--View of Beinn
Eay--Kenlochewe--Hugh Miller on this name--Kenlochewe
village and hotel--Culinellan churchyard--The Cnoc a
Chrochadair--Ath nan ceann--Two routes to Gairloch 301
CHAPTER IV.--KENLOCHEWE TO TALLADALE.
Tagan farm--Glas Leitire woods--Ru Nohar--Umbrella-like
firs--Her Majesty's description of the road--Glen
Grudidh--Old fir trees--Eilean Grudidh--Wild stretch of road
described by Her Majesty--Hamlet of Talladale--The Loch
Maree Hotel--Accommodation--Angling--Visit of Her
Majesty--Commemorative Gaelic inscription on a
boulder--English translation 305
CHAPTER V.--TALLADALE TO THE GAIRLOCH HOTEL.
Road through woods--The Victoria Falls--Garavaig
ironworks--Slatadale farm--Old road to west of Craig
Tollie--View of the islands of Loch Maree--Feur loch--Loch
Bad na Sgalaig--Kerry falls--Kerry bridge--Her Majesty's
interview with Lews' people here--Kerrysdale House--Resort
of fairies--Charleston--Flowerdale House--Port na heile--The
Gairloch--Established church--The Leabaidh na Ba
Bàine--Gairloch churchyard--Old ironworks--Monument to John
Mackenzie of the "Beauties"--The Crasg--The Cnoc a
Croiche--The Gairloch Hotel--Accommodation and
arrangement--Sea-bathing--Boating--Angling--Fine view 308
CHAPTER VI.--THE GAIRLOCH HOTEL TO POOLEWE.
Achtercairn--Views of Strath and the hills of Skye--Deep
gorge--Geikie on geology of a curious hill--The
Shoe-stone--Funeral heaps--Lochan nan Airm--The Glen--Craig
Bhadain an Aisc--Blar na Fala--Loch Tollie--Its
crannog--Surrounding hills--Distant views--Old road--View of
Loch Maree--Beinn Aridh Charr--Spidean Moirich--Croft
Brae--Hamlet of Croft--Ceann a Chro, or Cruive End--The
Still--The Hill of evil counsel--The Trossachs of Loch
Maree--Poolewe village--The church--The inn--Pool
House--Other houses--Londubh--The Inverewe burial-ground 312
CHAPTER VII.--POOLEWE TO AULTBEA.
The pool--Srondubh--Inverewe House and gardens--Description
from the _Times_--Loch nan Dailthean--Tournaig--The Dowager
Lady Mackenzie's residence--Description of the garden from
the _Times_--Coile Aigeascaig--Mac Gille Riabhaich's
cave--Bleeding living cattle--Tournaig farm--Loch
Tournaig--Dunan--The road ascends--Views--Drumchork--Aultbea--
Townships--Houses--Anchorage--Aultbea inn 318
CHAPTER VIII.--EXCURSIONS FROM KENLOCHEWE.
Drives--Expedition to Loch Torridon--Cromasaig--Fe
Leoid--Loch Clair--Maelrubha's seat--Carn Anthony--Coire
Cheud Cnoc--Precipices of Liathgach--Her Majesty's
remarks--Sguir Dubh--Lochan an Fheidh--Loch
Torridon--Village--Mr Darroch and Torridon House--Ploc of
Torridon--The heights of Kenlochewe--Glen Cruaidh
Choillie--Glen na Muic--Excursions on foot by the path on
the east side of Loch Maree--Excursions on Loch Maree 321
CHAPTER IX.--EXCURSIONS FROM TALLADALE.
Drives and walks--Expeditions on Loch Maree--The
steamer--Boats 326
CHAPTER X.--EXCURSIONS FROM GAIRLOCH.
The south side of Gairloch--Shieldaig--Leac nan
Saighead--Badachro--Loch Bad na h' Achlais--Port
Henderson--Opinan--Cave--South Erradale--Ancient
ironworks--Point--Views--North side of
Gairloch--Achtercairn--Strath--Carn Dearg--Little Sand
farm--Big Sand--Iron furnace--North Erradale--Wonderful
cave--Peterburn--Altgreshan--Melvaig--The Leac--Rudha
Reidh--Stac Buidhe--Other drives--Tour of Loch
Maree--Boating expeditions--Walks--Geikie on geological
features 327
CHAPTER XI.--EXCURSIONS FROM POOLEWE.
West side of Loch Ewe--Cliff House--Cuil an Scardain--Boor--
Views--Naast--Inverasdale--Brae--Midtown--Coast--Board
school--Firemore--Telegraph to Stornoway--Meallan na
Ghamhna--Caves--Loch a Druing woods--Cove--The village--The
cave--Natural arch--Fionn Loch excursion--Craig an
Fhithich--Inveran wood and farm--Inveran river--Loch
Kernsary--Innis a Bhaird--Kernsary farm--Fionn Loch--Fine
view--Other excursions by road--Walks--Craig Bhan 332
CHAPTER XII.--EXCURSIONS FROM AULTBEA.
To Mellon Charles--Cuilchonich--Bual na luib--Mellon
Charles--Mellon Udrigil--Laide--The Loch of the
Beast--Second Coast--Old church of Sand--Sandy
beach--Curious rocks--First Coast and Second Coast--Mill
Bay--Cadha Beag--Little Gruinard--Fisherfield--Meikle
Gruinard river--Excursions by water 337
CHAPTER XIII.--EXCURSION BY STEAMER ON LOCH MAREE.
Road to north end of Loch Maree--Opinions of the
scenery--Leading characteristics--Tollie pier--Fox
Point--Clearness of water--Sweetheart's
stepping-stones--Fhridh Dhorch--Ardlair--Cave of the king's
son--The minister's stone--Clach a Mhail--Uamh a
Mhail--Rudha Chailleach--The white horse--The Bull rock--The
cave of gold--Gold mining in
Scotland--Mountains--Letterewe--Limestone
quarry--Waterfall--Furnace--Innis
Ghlas--Coppachy--Regoilachy--Slioch--Cladh nan
Sasunnach--Fasagh--Tagan--Ru Nohar--Undercliffs of Meall a
Ghiubhais--Woods of Glas Leitire--View of Glen Grudidh--Aid
na h' Eigheamh--Isle Maree--Whittier's verses--Eilean
Suainne--Eilean Dubh na Sroine--Garbh Eilean--Eilean
Ruaridh--The planted island--Wild
fowl--Talladale--Slatadale--Doire--Craig Tollie--Bay of
Corree--Rudha Aird an Anail--Cave--Heather burning 340
CHAPTER XIV.--THE FIONN LOCH AND ITS DUBH LOCH,
BY WILLIAM JOLLY.
Name--Approaches--Loch Kernsary--View of Fionn
Loch--Mountains described--Visits to the loch--Lochanan
Beannoch--Beinn Aridh Charr--Black-throated divers--Beinn
Lair--Narrow glen--Old hill fort--Craig an Dubh
Loch--Pegmatite--Dubh Loch--Thunder
shower--Islands--Birds--Marten cats 349
CHAPTER XV.--LOCH GRUINARD, BY WILLIAM JOLLY.
Loch Ewe--Mountain view--Aultbea--Moraines--Summer
Isles--Distant views--Old Chapel--Caves--Modern
Cave-dweller--Gruinard House--Gruinard river--Mountains of
Loch na Sheallag 355
CHAPTER XVI.--ANGLING IN SEA LOCHS.
Several classes of anglers--Outfit recommended--Two usual
modes of sea fishing--Trolling for lythe--Artificial
sand-eels--Handline fishing--Scalps--Fishes captured--Conger
eels--Large halibut--Large skate 359
CHAPTER XVII.--ANGLING IN LOCH MAREE.
Excessive fishing--Reserved water--Species of
fish--Char--Salmon--Sea-trout--Bull-trout--Finnocks--Property
in salmon and sea-trout--Large brown trout--Ferox not a
separate species--Variations in trout--So-called ferox not
worth eating--Gizzard trout 361
CHAPTER XVIII.--ANGLING IN FRESH-WATER LOCHS.
Permission required--Trout scarcer than formerly--Dr
Mackenzie accounts for this--The tarry sheep--Fionn
Loch--Angling deteriorated--Good day's angling--The Dubh
loch--Three trout at a cast--Bait fishing for trout--Loch
Kernsary--Char--Char and trout, and pink and white-fleshed
trout, indistinguishable to the taste--Burn fishing--Best
time for trout fishing--Eels--Pike--Their introduction
described by Dr Mackenzie--Re-introduced in Sir Kenneth's
time 363
CHAPTER XIX.--SALMON ANGLING.
Salmon rivers--The Ewe--Cruives--The old cruive used for
crossing the river--Roderick Campbell and an American
merchant drowned--The new cruive--Gradual diminution of
stock of salmon--Length of the Ewe--Pools on the east
side--Pools on the other side--Runs of salmon and
grilse--Kelts--Bull-trout--Sea-trout--Large salmon--Best
flies--Dr Mackenzie's anecdote of Sir Humphrey Davy--John
Bright--Odd incidents--Damaged fly--Successful fishing after
a friend--Hooking a fish after losing another--Was it a
rise?--Fish taking when line slack--Kelt caught
twice--Holding on for five hours--Angler compared to the
evil one--Water-bailiffs--John Glas--Sandy Urquhart--His
loquacity--Fishing on the Ewe--Tailing salmon--Spiked
gloves--Bags of salmon now and formerly--Singular mode of
fishing by Sir Hector--Charms of the Ewe--Other salmon
rivers in Gairloch 366
CHAPTER XX.--DEER FORESTS AND GROUSE SHOOTING.
The red deer--Free to roam--Antiquity of--Formerly
scarce--Meaning of "forested"--List of deer
forests--Estimated yield and stock--Stag season--A
"royal"--Best heads--Hinds--Deer-stalking--Great caution
required--Staghounds not much used now--Quotation from John
Taylor, the "Water-Poet"--Present system of letting deer
forests--Colonel Inge in Gairloch--Misconceptions with
regard to deer forests--Opinions of the Crofters
Commission--Depopulation not due to deer forests--Deer
forests not suitable for occupation by crofters--Loss of
mutton and wool insignificant--Depredations by deer on
crofters' crops easily remedied--Deterioration of pasture by
deer not proved--Demoralization of gillies not due to
forests--Summary of opinions--Substantial benefits conferred
by deer forests--Afford employment to a greater extent than
sheep farms--Recommendation by Commissioners--Grouse
shooting--Grouse not abundant--Disease infrequent--Late
birds--Mixed bags--Separate grouse shootings 372
LIST OF BOOKS AND MSS. QUOTED OR REFERRED TO 381
STATEMENT OF AUTHORITIES FOR TRADITIONS, &C., EMBODIED IN
THIS BOOK 383
TABLES.
I. Mountains of Gairloch 387
II. Distances 387
III. Population of Gairloch 390
IV. Ministers of the parish of Gairloch 390
V. Lairds of Gairloch 391
APPENDICES.
A. Genealogical Account of the MacRas, by Rev. John Macrae,
who died 1704 395
B. Tour in Scotland by Thomas Pennant in 1772 396
C. Old Statistical Account of Scotland, 1792 399
D. Dr MacCulloch's Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland,
1811 to 1821 400
E. New Statistical Account of Scotland, 1836 403
F. Records of the Presbytery of Dingwall 408
G. Records and Extracts relating to Sir George Hay and the
Manufacture of Iron 412
H. Addenda on St Maelrubha, and Ecclesiastical History 415
Glossary of Gaelic Names and Words.
The pronunciation is given approximately in parentheses. In many cases
no combination of letters pronounced in English fashion can accurately
represent the Gaelic pronunciation.
The pronunciation of _ch_ is almost the same in Gaelic as in German.
Sometimes the _ch_ is best rendered as an aspirate only, the _c_ being
treated as if silent.
The letter _c_, unless followed by _h_, is always pronounced in Gaelic
like the English _k_, a letter not found in Gaelic.
The Gaelic pronunciation of the letters _b_, _d_, and _g_ is soft, and
they are often sounded more as if they were _p_, _t_, and _k_.
In Ross-shire Gaelic _sr_ is pronounced as if it were _str_, and _rt_ as
if it were _rst_.
The consonant _d_ before the vowels _e_ and _i_, whether followed by
another vowel or not, is pronounced as if it were _j_.
The consonant _s_ before the vowels _i_ or _e_ is sounded as _sh_.
The consonant _l_ has a liquid double sound, unlike anything in English;
it may be approximated by lisping the vowel _u_ before and the letter
_y_ after the ordinary sound of the letter _l_.
The letter _h_ after the consonants _d_, _f_, _g_, _t_, and _s_, in
Ross-shire Gaelic, renders those consonants silent; _bh_ and _mh_ are
usually pronounced like _v_, a letter not found in the Gaelic alphabet.
Sometimes _adh_ seems to be pronounced very like _ag_.
The possessive case is frequently formed in Gaelic by the insertion of
the letter _h_ after the initial consonant, and of the letter _i_ after
the vowel in the first or second syllable.
The aspirate _h_ is often inserted between the definite article and a
noun beginning with a vowel. Sometimes the letter _t_ is similarly
inserted before a noun commencing with a consonant. These, and some
other changes, are made for the sake of euphony.
The vowel sounds can only be defined with difficulty. The attempts made
in this glossary are but imperfect. It may be stated that _ach_ is
generally pronounced _och_; _ao_ and _u_, as _oo_; _ea_, as _a_ in
"bake"; _a_, _e_, and _i_, usually as in French; _ei_, sometimes as _a_
in "bake," and sometimes as _i_ in "bin"; and _ai_ is sometimes almost
like _u_ in "dull," and sometimes like _a_ in "tan."
Anyone des
|
: FIG. 5.--Germination of Morning Glory, _a_, caulicle; _b_,
cotyledons; _c_, plumule; _d_, roots.]
[Illustration: FIG. 6.--Germination of Sunflower.]
After drawing the Morning-Glory series, let them draw the Sunflower or
Squash in the same way, then the Bean, and finally the Pea. Let them write
answers to the following questions:
MORNING-GLORY.[1]
[Footnote 1: It has been objected that the Morning-Glory seed is too small
to begin upon. If the teacher prefer, he may begin with the Squash, Bean,
and Pea. The questions will require but little alteration, and he can take
up the Morning-Glory later.]
Tell the parts of the Morning-Glory seed.
What part grows first?
What becomes of the seed-covering?
What appears between the first pair of leaves?
Was this to be seen in the seed?
How many leaves are there at each joint of stem after the first pair?
How do they differ from the first pair?
SUNFLOWER OR SQUASH.
What are the parts of the seed?
What is there in the Morning-Glory seed that this has not?
How do the first leaves change as the seedling grows?
BEAN.
What are the parts of the seed?
How does this differ from the Morning-Glory seed?
How from the Sunflower seed?
How do the first pair of leaves of the Bean change as they grow?
How many leaves are there at each joint of stem?[1]
[Footnote 1: There are two simple leaves at the next node to the
cotyledons; after these there is one compound leaf at each node.]
How do they differ from the first pair?
PEA.
What are the parts of the seed? Compare it with the Morning-Glory,
Sunflower, and Bean.
How does it differ in its growth from the Bean?
What have all these four seeds in common?
[Illustration: FIG. 7.--Germination of Pea. _a_, caulicle; _b_,
cotyledons; _c_, plumule; _d_, roots.]
[Illustration: FIG. 8.--Germination of Bean.]
What has the Morning-Glory seed that the others have not?
What have the Bean and Pea that the Morning-Glory has not?
How does the Pea differ from all the others in its growth?
What part grows first in all these seeds?
From which part do the roots grow?
What peculiarity do you notice in the way they come up out of the
ground?[1]
[Footnote 1: This question refers to the arched form in which they come
up. In this way the tender, growing apex is not rubbed.]
The teacher must remember that, unless the pupils have had some previous
training, they will first have to learn to use their eyes, and for this
they will need much judicious help. They should be assisted to see what is
before them, not told what is there. It is absolutely necessary that these
questions should be thoroughly understood and correctly answered before
any conclusions are drawn from them. For this purpose abundant material is
indispensable. It is better not to attempt these lessons on seeds at
all, unless there is material enough for personal observation by all the
pupils.
After this preliminary work has been done, the names of the parts can
be given to the pupils. They may be written under each drawing
thus,--A=Caulicle;[1] B=Cotyledons; C=Roots; D=Plumule. The whole plantlet
in the seed is the _embryo_ or _germ_, whence the sprouting of seeds is
called _germination_.
[Footnote 1: The term radicle is still in general use. The derivation
(little root) makes it undesirable. Dr. Gray has adopted caulicle (little
stem) in the latest edition of his text-book, which I have followed. Other
writers use the term hypocotyl, meaning under the cotyledons.]
I consider this the best order to study the seeds because in the
Morning-Glory the cotyledons are plainly leaves in the seed; and in the
Squash or Sunflower[2] the whole process is plainly to be seen whereby
a thick body, most unlike a leaf, becomes an ordinary green leaf with
veins.[3] In the Sunflower the true leaves are nearly the same shape as
the cotyledons, so that this is an especially good illustration for the
purpose. Thus, without any hint from me, my pupils often write of the
Bean, "it has two thick leaves and two thin leaves." In this way the Bean
and Pea present no difficulty. The cotyledons in the first make apparently
an unsuccessful effort to become leaves, which the second give up
altogether.
[Footnote 2: The large Russian Sunflower is the best for the purpose.]
[Footnote 3: These lessons are intended, as has been said, for children
over twelve years of age. If they are adapted for younger ones, it is
especially important to begin with a seed where the leaf-like character
of the cotyledons is evident, or becomes so. Maple is excellent for the
purpose. Morning-Glory is too small. Squash will answer very well. I think
it characteristic of the minds of little children to associate a term with
the first specimen to which it is applied. If the term cotyledon be given
them first for those of the Bean and Pea they will say when they come to
the Morning-Glory, "but those are _leaves_, not cotyledons. Cotyledons are
large and round." It will be very difficult to make them understand that
cotyledons are the first seed-leaves, and they will feel as if it were a
forced connection, and one that they cannot see for themselves.]
The teacher's object now is to make the pupils understand the meaning of
the answers they have given to these questions. In the first place, they
should go over their answers and substitute the botanical terms they have
just learned for the ones they have used.
COMPARISON OF THE PARTS OF THE SOAKED SEEDS.
_Morning-Glory_. A seed covering. Some albumen. Two cotyledons. A
caulicle.
_Sunflower_. An outer covering.[1] An inner covering. Two cotyledons. A
caulicle.[2]
[Footnote 1: The so-called seed of Sunflower is really a fruit. The outer
covering is the wall of the ovary, the inner the seed-coat. Such closed,
one-seeded fruits are called akenes.]
[Footnote 2: The plumule is sometimes visible in the embryo of the
Sunflower.]
_Bean_. A seed covering. Two cotyledons. A caulicle. A plumule.
_Pea_. The same as the Bean.
They have also learned how the first leaves in the last three differ from
those of the Morning-Glory, being considerably thicker in the Sunflower,
and very much thicker in the Bean and Pea. Why should the Morning-Glory
have this jelly that the others have not? Why do the first leaves of the
Sunflower change so much as the seedling grows? What becomes of their
substance? Why do those of the Bean shrivel and finally drop off? By this
time some bright pupil will have discovered that the baby-plant needs food
and that this is stored around it in the Morning-Glory, and in the leaves
themselves in the others. It is nourished upon this prepared food, until
it has roots and leaves and can make its own living. The food of the
Morning-Glory is called _albumen_; it does not differ from the others in
kind, but only in its manner of storage.[1]
[Footnote 1: Reader in Botany. III. Seed-Food.]
Also the questions have brought out the fact that the Bean and Pea
have the plumule ready formed in the seed, while the Morning-Glory and
Sunflower have not. Why should this be? It is because there is so much
food stored in the first two that the plumule can develop before a root is
formed, while in the others there is only nourishment sufficient to enable
the plantlet to form its roots. These must make the second leaves by their
own labor.
3. _Comparison with other Dicotyledons_.--The pupils should now have other
seeds to compare with these four. Let them arrange Flax, Four o-clock,
Horsechestnut, Almond, Nasturtium, Maple-seeds, etc., under two heads.
_Seeds with the Food stored _Seeds with the Food stored
outside the plantlet in the embryo itself
(Albuminous)_. (Exalbuminous)_.
Flax. Four-o'clock. Acorn. Horsechestnut. Almond.
Morning-Glory. Maple. Sunflower. Squash.
Bean. Pea. Nasturtium.
They may also be divided into those with and without the plumule.
_Without Plumule_. _With Plumule_.
Flax. Maple. Sunflower. Acorn. Horsechestnut.
Four-o'clock. Almond. Bean. Pea.
Morning-Glory. Squash. Nasturtium.
Those with plumules will be seen to have the most abundant nourishment. In
many cases this is made use of by man.
These last can be again divided into those in which the cotyledons come up
into the air and those where they remain in the ground.
_In the Air_. _In the Ground_.
Bean. Almond. Squash. Acorn. Horsechestnut.
Pea. Nasturtium.
In the latter the cotyledons are so heavily gorged with nourishment that
they never become of any use as leaves. As Darwin points out, they have
a better chance of escaping destruction by animals by remaining in the
ground.
The cotyledons are very good illustrations of the different uses to which
a single organ may be put, and the thorough understanding of it will
prepare the pupils' minds for other metamorphoses, and for the theory that
all the various parts of a plant are modified forms of a very few members.
4. _Nature of the Caulicle_.--Probably some of the pupils will have called
the caulicle the root. It is, however, of the nature of stem. The root
grows only at the end, from a point just behind the tip; the stem
elongates throughout its whole length. This can be shown by marking the
stem and roots of a young seedling with ink. India ink must be used, as
common ink injures the plants. Dip a needle in the ink and prick a row
of spots at equal distances on a young root. Corn is very good for this
purpose, but Morning-Glory or Bean is better for experiments on the
stem. The plants should then be carefully watched and the changes in
the relative distance of the spots noted. The experiment is very easily
conducted with the seedlings growing on sponge, with their roots in the
moist air of the tumbler, as before described.
Dr. Goodale says of this experiment,--"Let a young seedling of corn be
grown on damp paper in the manner described in No. 1,[1] and when the
longest root is a few centimetres long let it be marked very carefully by
means of India ink, or purple ink, put on with a delicate camel's-hair
pencil just one centimetre apart. Plants thus marked are to be kept under
favorable conditions with respect to moisture and warmth, so that growth
will be as rapid as possible. The marks on the older part of the root
will not change their relative distance, but the mark at the tip will be
carried away from the one next it, showing that the growth has taken place
only at this point. Such experiments as the one described are perfectly
practicable for all classes of pupils except the very youngest. How far
the details of these experiments should be suggested to the pupils, or
rather how far they should be left to work out the problem for themselves,
is a question to be settled by the teacher in each case. The better plan
generally is to bring the problem in a very clear form before the whole
class, or before the whole school, and ask whether anybody can think of a
way in which it can be solved; for instance, in this case how can it be
found out whether roots grow only at their tip or throughout their whole
length. If the way is thought out by even a single pupil the rest will be
interested in seeing whether the plan will work successfully."
[Footnote 1: Concerning a Few Common Plants, page 25.]
I have been more successful in pricking the roots than in marking them
with a brush.
The caulicle can be proved by the manner of its growth to be of the nature
of stem, not root. The main root grows from its naked end. Roots can also
grow from the sides of the caulicle, as in Indian Corn. In this, it acts
precisely as does the stem of a cutting. It can be prettily shown with the
seedlings by breaking off a bean at the ground and putting the slip in
water. It will throw out roots and the pupil will readily understand that
the caulicle does the same thing.
Darwin has made very interesting experiments on the movements of
seedlings. If the teacher wishes to repeat some of the experiments he will
find the details very fully given in "The Power of Movement of Plants."[1]
The pupils can observe in their growing seedlings some of the points
mentioned and have already noticed a few in their answers. They have said
that the caulicle was the part to grow first, and have spoken of the
arched form of the young stem. Their attention should also be drawn to the
root-hairs, which are well seen in Corn, Wheat, and Oats. They absorb the
liquid food of the plants. A secondary office is to hold the seed firmly,
so that the caulicle can enter the ground. This is shown in Red Clover,
which may be sown on the surface of the ground. It puts out root-hairs,
which attach themselves to the particles of sand and hold the seed. These
hairs are treated more fully in the lessons on roots.
[Footnote 1: The Power of Movement in Plants. By Charles Darwin. London.
John Murray, 1880.]
[Footnote 1: Reader in Botany. IV. Movements of Seedlings.]
5. _Leaves of Seedlings_.--Coming now to the question as to the number of
leaves at each joint of the stem, the Morning-Glory, Sunflower, and Bean
will present no difficulty, but probably all the pupils will be puzzled by
the Pea. The stipules, so large and leaf-like, look like two leaves,
with a stem between, bearing other opposite leaves, and terminating in a
tendril, while in the upper part it could not be told by a beginner which
was the continuation of the main stem. For these reasons I left this out
in the questions on the Pea, but it should be taken up in the class. How
are we to tell what constitutes a single leaf? The answer to this question
is that buds come in the _axils_ of single leaves; that is, in the inner
angle which the leaf makes with the stem. If no bud can be seen in the
Pea, the experiment may be tried of cutting off the top of the seedling
plant. Buds will be developed in the axils of the nearest leaves, and it
will be shown that each is a compound leaf with two appendages at its
base, called stipules, and with a tendril at its apex. Buds can be forced
in the same way to grow from the axils of the lower scales, and even from
those of the cotyledons, and the lesson may be again impressed that organs
are capable of undergoing great modifications. The teacher may use his own
judgment as to whether he will tell them that the tendril is a modified
leaflet.
[Illustration: FIG. 9. 1. Grain of Indian Corn. 2. Vertical section,
dividing the embryo, _a_, caulicle: _b_, cotyledon; _c_, plumule. 3.
Vertical section, at right angles to the last.]
6. _Monocotyledons_.--These are more difficult. Perhaps it is not worth
while to attempt to make the pupils see the embryo in Wheat and Oats. But
the embryo of Indian Corn is larger and can be easily examined after long
soaking. Removing the seed-covering, we find the greater part of the seed
to be albumen. Closely applied to one side of this, so closely that it
is difficult to separate it perfectly, is the single cotyledon. This
completely surrounds the plumule and furnishes it with food from the
albumen. There is a line down the middle, and, if we carefully bend back
the edges of the cotyledon, it splits along this line, showing the
plumule and caulicle within. The plumule consists of successive layers of
rudimentary leaves, the outer enclosing the rest (Fig. 10, 1, _c_). The
latter is the first leaf and remains undeveloped as a scaly sheath (Fig.
10, 2, _c_). In Wheat and Oats the cotyledon can be easily seen in the
largest seedlings by pulling off the dry husk of the grain. The food will
he seen to have been used up.
[Illustration: FIG. 10. 1. Germination of Indian corn. 2. Same more
advanced. _a_, caulicle; _c_1, first leaf of the plumule, sheathing the
rest; _c_2, second leaf; _c_3, third leaf of the plumule; _d_, roots.]
The series of Corn seedlings, at least, should be drawn as before and
the parts marked, this time with their technical terms. The following
questions should then be prepared.
CORN.
What are the parts of the seed?
Compare these parts with the Morning-Glory, Sunflower, Bean, and Pea.
Where is the food stored?
How many cotyledons have Corn, Wheat, and Oats?
How many have Bean, Pea, Morning-Glory, and Sunflower?
Compare the veins of the leaves of each class and see what difference you
can find.
This will bring up the terms dicotyledon and monocotyledon. _Di_ means
two, _mono_ means one. This difference in the veins, netted in the first
class, parallel in the second, is characteristic of the classes. Pupils
should have specimens of leaves to classify under these two heads.
Flowering plants are divided first into these two classes, the
Dicotyledons and the Monocotyledons.
If Pine-seeds can be planted, the polycotyledonous embryo can also be
studied.
7. _Food of seedlings_.--The food of the Wheat seedling may be shown in
fine flour. [1]"The flour is to be moistened in the hand and kneaded until
it becomes a homogeneous mass. Upon this mass pour some pure water and
wash out all the white powder until nothing is left except a viscid lump
of gluten. This is the part of the crushed wheat-grains which very closely
resembles in its composition the flesh of animals. The white powder washed
away is nearly pure wheat-starch. Of course the other ingredients, such as
the mineral matter and the like, might be referred to, but the starch at
least should be shown. When the seed is placed in proper soil, or upon a
support where it can receive moisture, and can get at the air and still be
warm enough, a part of the starch changes into a sort of gum, like that on
postage stamps, and finally becomes a kind of sugar. Upon this sirup the
young seedling feeds until it has some good green leaves for work, and as
we have seen in the case of some plants it has these very early."
[Footnote 1: Concerning a Few Common Plants, page 18.]
The presence of starch can be shown by testing with a solution of iodine.
Starch is turned blue by iodine and may thus be detected in flour, in
seeds, in potatoes, etc.
After all this careful experimental work the subject may be studied in the
text-book and recited, the recitation constituting a thorough review of
the whole.
A charming description of the germination of a seed will be found in the
Reader. V. The Birth of Picciola.
_Gray's Lessons_. Sect. II, 8-14. III. _How Plants Grow_. Sect. I, 22, 23.
II.
III
ROOTS.
This subject can be treated more conveniently while the young seedlings
are still growing, because their roots are very suitable for study. It
seems best, therefore, to take it up before examining the buds.
1. _Study of the Roots of Seedlings_.--One or two of the seedlings should
be broken off and the slips put into a glass of water. They will be
studied later. Bean and Sunflower are the best for the purpose.
Begin by telling the pupils to prepare for their first lesson a
description of the roots of their seedlings. Those grown on sponge or
paper will show the development of the root-hairs, while those grown on
sand are better for studying the form of the root. Give them also some
fleshy root to describe, as a carrot, or a radish; and a spray of English
Ivy, as an example of aërial roots.
Throughout these lessons, the method is pursued of giving pupils specimens
to observe and describe before teaching them botanical terms. It is better
for them to name the things they see than to find examples for terms
already learned. In the first case, they feel the difficulty of expressing
themselves and are glad to have the want of exact terms supplied. This
method is discouraging at first, especially to the younger ones; but,
with time and patience, they will gradually become accustomed to describe
whatever they can see. They have, at any rate, used their eyes; and,
though they may not understand the real meaning of anything they have
seen, they are prepared to discuss the subject intelligently when they
come together in the class. If they will first write out their unassisted
impressions and, subsequently, an account of the same thing after they
have had a recitation upon it, they will be sure to gain something in the
power of observation and clear expression. It cannot be too strongly
urged that the number of facts that the children may learn is not of the
slightest consequence, but that the teacher should aim to cultivate the
quick eye, the ready hand, and the clear reason.
The root of the Morning-Glory is _primary_; it is a direct downward growth
from the tip of the caulicle. It is about as thick as the stem, tapers
towards the end, and has short and fibrous branches. In some plants the
root keeps on growing and makes a _tap-root_; in the Bean, it soon becomes
lost in the branches. These are all simple, that is, there is but one
primary root. Sometimes there are several or many, and the root is then
said to be _multiple_. The Pumpkin is an example of this. The root of
the Pea is described in the older editions of Gray's Lessons as being
multiple, but it is generally simple. Indian Corn, also, usually starts
with a single root, but this does not make a tap-root, and is soon
followed by many others from any part of the caulicle, or even from the
stem above, giving it the appearance of having a multiple root.
The root of the Radish is different from any of these; it is _fleshy_.
Often, it tapers suddenly at the bottom into a root like that of
the Morning-Glory with some fibres upon it. It is, in fact, as the
Morning-Glory would be if the main root were to be thickened up by
food being stored in it. It is a primary tap-root. The radish is
_spindle-shaped_, tapering at top and bottom, the carrot is _conical_, the
turnip is called _napiform_; some radishes are shaped like the turnip.
The aërial roots of the English Ivy answer another purpose than that of
giving nourishment to the plant. They are used to support it in climbing.
These are an example of _secondary_ roots, which are roots springing
laterally from any part of the stem. The Sweet Potato has both fleshy and
fibrous roots and forms secondary roots of both kinds every year.[1] Some
of the seedlings will probably show the root-hairs to the naked eye. These
will be noticed hereafter.
[Footnote 1: Gray's Lessons, p. 35, Fig. 86.]
[Illustration: FIG. 11.--1. Tap-root. 2. Multiple root of Pumpkin. 3.
Napiform root of Turnip. 4. Spindle-shaped root of Radish. 5. Conical root
of Carrot. 6. Aërial roots of Ivy.]
It is my experience that pupils always like classifying things under
different heads, and it is a good exercise. The following table may be
made of the roots they have studied, adding other examples. Dr. Gray says
that ordinary roots may be roughly classed into fibrous and fleshy.[1]
Thomé classes them as woody and fleshy.[2]
[Footnote 1: Gray's Lessons, p. 34.]
[Footnote 2: Text-book of Structural and Physiological Botany. Otto Thomé.
Translated and edited by Alfred W. Bennett, New York. John Wiley and Sons.
1877. Page 75.]
ROOTS.
|
------------------------------------------
| |
_Primary_. _Secondary_.
| |
-------------------------------- |
| | |
_Fibrous_. _Fleshy_. Roots of cuttings
| Aërial roots.
------------------- Sweet potatoes.[3]
| |
_Simple_. _Multiple_. _Simple_.
Morning Glory. Pumpkin Carrot.
Sunflower. Radish.
Pea. Turnip.
Bean. Beet.
Corn. Corn.
[Footnote 3: The Irish potato will very likely be mentioned as an example
of a fleshy root. The teacher can say that this will be explained later.]
2. _Fleshy Roots_.--The scholars are already familiar with the storing
of food for the seedling in or around the cotyledons, and will readily
understand that these roots are storehouses of food for the plant. The
Turnip, Carrot, and Beet are _biennials_; that is, their growth is
continued through two seasons. In the first year, they make a vigorous
growth of leaves alone, and the surplus food is carried to the root in the
form of a syrup, and there stored, having been changed into starch, or
something very similar. At the end of the first season, the root is filled
with food, prepared for the next year, so that the plant can live on its
reserve fund and devote its whole attention to flowering. These roots
are often good food for animals. There are some plants that store their
surplus food in their roots year after year, using up in each season the
store of the former one, and forming new roots continually. The Sweet
Potato is an example of this class. These are _perennials_. The food in
perennials, however, is usually stored in stems, rather than in roots, as
in trees. _Annuals_ are generally fibrous-rooted, and the plant dies after
its first year. The following experiment will serve as an illustration of
the way in which the food stored in fleshy roots is utilized for growth.
Cut off the tapering end of a carrot and scoop out the inside of the
larger half in the form of a vase, leaving about half of the flesh behind.
Put strings through the upper rim, fill the carrot cup with water, and
hang it up in a sunny window. Keep it constantly full of water. The
leaf-buds below will put forth, and grow into leafy shoots, which, turning
upwards, soon hide the vase in a green circle. This is because the dry,
starchy food stored in the carrot becomes soft and soluble, and the supply
of proper food and the warmth of the room make the leaf-buds able to grow.
It is also a pretty illustration of the way in which stems always grow
upward, even though there is enough light and air for them to grow
straight downwards. Why this is so, we do not know.
3. _Differences between the Stem and the Root.--_Ask the pupils to tell
what differences they have found.
_Stems_. _Roots_.
Ascend into the air. Descend into the ground.
Grow by a succession of similar Grow only from a point
parts, each part when young just behind the tip.
elongating throughout.
Bear organs. Bear no organs.
There are certain exceptions to the statement that roots descend into the
ground; such as aërial roots and parasitic roots. The aërial roots of the
Ivy have been mentioned. Other examples of roots used for climbing are
the Trumpet Creeper _(Tecoma radicans)_, and the Poison Ivy _(Rhus
Toxicodendron)_. Parasitic roots take their food ready-made from the
plants into which they strike. The roots of air-plants, such as certain
orchids, draw their nourishment from the air.
The experiment of marking roots and stem has been already tried, but it
should be repeated. Repetition of experiments is always desirable, as it
fixes his conclusions in the pupil's mind. The stem grows by a succession
of similar parts, _phytomera_, each part, or _phyton_, consisting of node,
internode, and leaf. Thus it follows that stems must bear leaves. The
marked stems of seedlings show greater growth towards the top of the
growing phyton. It is only young stems that elongate throughout. The older
parts of a phyton grow little, and when the internode has attained a
certain length, variable for different stems and different conditions, it
does not elongate at all.
The root, on the contrary, grows only from a point just behind the tip.
The extreme tip consists of a sort of cap of hard tissue, called the
root-cap. Through a simple lens, or sometimes with the naked eye, it can
be distinguished in most of the roots of the seedlings, looking like a
transparent tip. "The root, whatever its origin in any case may be, grows
in length only in one way; namely, at a point just behind its very
tip. This growing point is usually protected by a peculiar cap, which
insinuates its way through the crevices of the soil. If roots should grow
as stems escaping from the bud-state do,--that is, throughout their whole
length--they would speedily become distorted. But, since they grow at the
protected tips, they can make their way through the interstices of soil,
which from its compactness would otherwise forbid their progress."[1]
[Footnote 1: Concerning a few Common Plants, p. 25.]
The third difference is that, while the stem bears leaves, and has buds
normally developed in their axils, roots bear no organs. The stem,
however, especially when wounded, may produce buds anywhere from the
surface of the bark, and these buds are called _adventitious_ buds. In the
same manner, roots occasionally produce buds, which grow up into leafy
shoots, as in the Apple and Poplar.[1]
[Footnote 1: See Gray's Structural Botany, p. 29.]
It should be made perfectly clear that the stem is the axis of the plant,
that is, it bears all the other organs. Roots grow from stems, not steins
from roots, except in certain cases, like that of the Poplar mentioned
above. This was seen in the study of the seedling. The embryo consisted of
stem and leaves, and the roots were produced from the stem as the seedling
grew.
For illustration of this point, the careful watching of the cuttings
placed in water will be very instructive. After a few days, small, hard
lumps begin to appear under the skin of the stem of the broken seedling
Bean. These gradually increase in size until, finally, they rupture the
skin and appear as rootlets. Roots are always thus formed under the outer
tissues of the stem from which they spring, or the root from which they
branch. In the Bean, the roots are in four long rows, quartering the stem.
This is because they are formed in front of the woody bundles of the stem,
which in the seedling Bean are four. In the Sunflower the roots divide the
circumference into six parts. In some of my cuttings of Beans, the stem
cracked in four long lines before the roots had really formed, showing the
parenchyma in small hillocks, so to speak. In these the gradual formation
of the root-cap could be watched throughout, with merely a small lens. I
do not know a better way to impress the nature of the root on the pupil's
mind. These forming roots might also be marked very early, and so be shown
to carry onward their root-cap on the growing-point.
4. _Root-hairs_. These are outgrowths of the epidermis, or skin of the
root, and increase its absorbing power. In most plants they cannot be seen
without the aid of a microscope. Indian Corn and Oats, however, show them
very beautifully, and the scholars have already noticed them in their
seedlings. They are best seen in the seedlings grown on damp sponge. In
those grown in sand, they become so firmly united to the particles of
soil, that they cannot be separated, without tearing the hairs away from
the plant. This will suggest the reason why plants suffer so much from
careless transplanting.
The root-hairs have the power of dissolving mineral matters in the soil
by the action of an acid which they give out. They then absorb these
solutions for the nourishment of the plant. The acid given out was first
thought to be carbonic acid, but now it is supposed by some experimenters
to be acetic acid, by others to vary according to the plant and the time.
The action can be shown by the following experiment, suggested by Sachs.
[Illustration: Fig. 12. I. Seedling of _Sinapis alba_ showing root-hairs.
II. Same, showing how fine particles of sand cling to the root-hairs.
(Sachs.)]
Cover a piece of polished marble with moist sawdust, and plant some seeds
upon it. When the seedlings are somewhat grown, remove the sawdust, and
the rootlets will be found to have left their autographs behind. Wherever
the roots, with their root-hairs have crept, they have eaten into the
marble and left it corroded. The marks will become more distinct if the
marble is rubbed with a little vermilion.
In order that the processes of solution and absorption may take place, it
is necessary that free oxygen should be present. All living things must
have oxygen to breathe, and this gas is as needful for the germination of
seeds, and the action of roots and leaves, as it is for our maintenance of
life. It is hurtful for plants to be kept with too much water about their
roots, because this keeps out the air. This is the reason why house-plants
are injured if they are kept too wet.
A secondary office of root-hairs is to aid the roots of seedlings to enter
the ground, as we have before noticed.
The root-hairs are found only on the young parts of roots. As a root grows
older the root-hairs die, and it becomes of no further use for absorption.
But it is needed now for another purpose, as the support of the growing
plant. In trees, the old roots grow from year to year like stems, and
become large and strong. The extent of the roots corresponds in a general
way to that of the branches, and, as the absorbing parts are the young
rootlets, the rain that drops from the leafy roof falls just where it is
needed by the delicate fibrils in the earth below.[1]
[Footnote 1: Reader in Botany. VI. The Relative Positions of Leaves and
Rootlets.]
5. _Comparison of a Carrot, an Onion, and a Potato_.--It is a good
exercise for a class to take a potato, an onion, and a carrot or radish to
compare, writing out the result of their observations.
The carrot is a fleshy root, as we have already seen. The onion consists
of the fleshy bases of last year's leaves, sheathed by the dried remains
of the leaves of former years, from which all nourishment has been drawn.
The parallel veining of the leaves is distinctly marked. The stem is a
plate at the base, to which these fleshy scales are attached. In the
|
91.
=BL= Proposed by Elgin, on behalf of Imperial government, as a measure
of pardon for those implicated in the Rebellion of 1837-1838, 287; Act
passed, 292. =Mc= Mackenzie takes advantage of, 480. =Bib.=: Dent, _Last
Forty Years_.
=Amusements in Canada=. =Hd= Contemporary accounts of, in 1781, 221-224.
=Anadabijou=. =Ch= Montagnais chief, makes long harangue to Champlain,
10; his relations with Champlain, 50-51.
=Anahotaha=. =L= Huron chief, joins Dollard at Long Sault, 69.
=Andastes=. A once-powerful tribe, who spoke a dialect of the Iroquois,
but were at deadly enmity with the Five Nations, by whom, according to
Parkman, they were nearly destroyed about the year 1672. =Index=: =Ch=
Indian tribe of Virginia, 90; adopted into the Hurons and spoke their
language, 90.
=Andehoua=. =Ch= Indian youth baptized, 233.
=Anderson, Captain=. =Dr= British officer killed at Sault au Matelot
barrier, 130.
=Anderson, A. Caulfield=. An officer of the Hudson's Bay Company,
employed for many years in the New Caledonia district, under Dr.
McLoughlin. =Index=: =D= In charge at Alexandria, on the Lower Fraser,
186; explores a road from Kamloops to the Lower Fraser, 186.
=Anderson, Anthony=. =Mc= Given command of the rebels, 360; moves on
Toronto, 363; takes prisoners, 364; victim of Powell's treachery, 365.
=Anderson, David= (1814-1885). Born in London, England. Educated at
Edinburgh Academy and at Exeter College, Oxford. Vice-principal of St.
Bees College, Cumberland, 1841-1847, and incumbent of All Saints',
Derby, 1848-1849. Came to the Red River Settlement as bishop of Rupert's
Land, 1849. Remained until 1864, when he returned to England.
Subsequently vicar of Clifton and chancellor of St. Paul's Cathedral,
London. =Bib.=: Works: _Notes on the Flood; Net in the Bay_. For biog.
_see_, Mockridge, _The Bishops of the Church of England in Canada and
Newfoundland_; Machray, _Life of Archbishop Machray_.
=Andros, Sir Edmund= (1637-1713). Appointed governor of New York, 1674;
governor of all the New England colonies, 1685. Recalled on account of
his extreme unpopularity, 1688. Subsequently governor of Virginia,
1692-1698. =Index=: =F= Governor of New England, 263; seized and
imprisoned, 266. =L= His offer respecting liquor traffic, 173. =Bib.=:
Whitmore, _Andros Tracts_ (Prince Soc., 1868-1874); Ferguson, _Essays in
American History_.
=Aneda=. =Ch= An Indian chief, 29.
=Aneda=. An evergreen, used by Jacques Cartier and his men as a remedy
against scurvy. Parkman suggests that it was a spruce, or, more
probably, an arbor-vitæ. Douglas believes it to have been balsam.
Cartier spells the name _ameda_, and Lescarbot, _annedda_. =Index=: =Ch=
Remedy for scurvy, 29; the Iroquois word for spruce tree, 30.
=Ange Gardien=. A village on the St. Lawrence, north shore, below
Quebec. Index: =WM= Wolfe seriously ill at, 154.
[Illustration: Old Fort, near Annapolis Royal
From the John Ross Robertson collection]
=Angers, Auguste Rèal= (1838- ). Born in Quebec. Studied law, and
called to the bar; made Q.C. 1880, and the same year appointed a
puisne judge of the Superior Court of Quebec. Lieutenant-governor of
Quebec, 1887; resigned and called to the Senate, 1892. Minister of
agriculture, 1892-1895; president of the Council, 1896. =Bib.=: Morgan,
_Can. Men_; Chapais, _Angers_ (Men of the Day).
=Anglican Church.= _See_ Church of England.
=Anglin, Timothy Warren= (1822-1886). Born in Ireland. Came to St. John,
New Brunswick, 1849. Established _Weekly Freeman_ that year. Elected to
New Brunswick Legislature for St. John, 1860. Opposed Confederation.
Elected to the House of Commons, 1867, for Gloucester. Elected Speaker,
1874, and again in 1878. =Index=: =C= Demands disallowance of New
Brunswick Act abolishing separate schools, 73. =T= Elected for St. John
to New Brunswick Assembly on Anti-Confederate ticket, 85; member of
Smith government, 91; his influence, 93; differences with colleagues in
railway matter, 94; resigns his seat, 1865, 95; defeated for county of
St. John, 1866, 109. =Bib.=: Dent, _Can. Por._
=Angus, Richard Bladworth= (1831- ). Born at Bathgate, near Edinburgh.
Came to Canada, 1857, and joined the staff of the Bank of Montreal. Rose
steadily in the service of the bank, and in 1869 became general manager.
President of the Bank of Montreal, 1910; and director of the Canadian
Pacific Railway. =Index=: =Md= Director of Canadian Pacific Railway
syndicate, 236. =Bib.=: Morgan, _Can. Men_; _Canadian Who's Who_.
=Anian, Strait of.= Dr. Ruge says that the name arose through a
misunderstanding of Marco Polo's book (bk. 3, ch. 5). His Ania "is no
doubt the present Anam, but the Dutch cartographers thought that this
land was in north-east Asia, and called the strait that was said to
separate the continents the Strait of Anian." The name appears for the
first time on Gerh. Mercator's famous maritime chart of 1569. =Index=:
=D= History of search for, 2; De Fuca's voyage to, 9; Carver's River of
Oregon, 20. =Bib.=: Soph. Ruge, _Fretum Aniam_; Dawson, _Canada_.
=Annand, William= (1808-1892). Born in Halifax County. Entered the Nova
Scotia Assembly as one of the members for Halifax, 1836; financial
secretary in Howe's ministry, 1860-1863. An active opponent of
Confederation. Formed the first Anti-Confederate or repeal government in
Nova Scotia, 1867; retired in 1874 to accept the position of immigration
agent at London, where he died. =Index=: =H= Elected to represent
Halifax in Nova Scotia Legislature, as Joseph Howe's colleague, 1836,
29; assumes control of _Nova Scotian_, 74-75; publishes _Morning
Chronicle_, 75; advocates central non-sectarian college for Nova Scotia,
82; becomes financial secretary of province, 169; Wm. Miller brings
action against for libel, 188; goes to London, 1866, as Anti-Confederate
delegate, 192; becomes head of Nova Scotia government, 202; member of
repeal delegation to London, 1868, 204; turns against Howe, 208, 209,
217; receives vote of thanks from Nova Scotia Legislature, 218. =Bib.=:
Campbell, _History of Nova Scotia_; Saunders, _Three Premiers of Nova
Scotia_.
=Annapolis Royal.= When Nicholson, with his fleet and New England
troops, captured Port Royal in 1710, he changed the name to Annapolis
Royal, in honour of Queen Anne. It was besieged the following year by
the Acadians with their Micmac and Penobscot allies, but the New England
garrison held the fort. Under treaty of Utrecht, 1713, ceded to England
by France. In 1744 Paul Mascarene successfully defended the place
against Du Vivier. _See also_ Port Royal. =Bib.=: Calnek and Savary,
_History of the County of Annapolis_; Nicholson, _Journal of the Capture
of Annapolis_ (N. S. Hist. Soc., vol. 1).
=Anne, Saint.= =L= Chapel dedicated to, in the church at Quebec, 84;
chapels erected to, at Beaupré, 101; relic of, 102.
=Annexation to United States.= A fitful movement, never reaching serious
proportions, and generally the result of temporary or local
dissatisfaction with political conditions, or of commercial depression.
Goldwin Smith was for many years its prophet. =Index=: =Md= Favoured by
small wing of Reform party, 23; manifesto issued by business men of
Montreal, its causes, 39, 40, 95; opposition to Confederation raises
hopes of American party, 118; movement in Nova Scotia, 145; movement in
British Columbia, 149; Goldwin Smith, the gloomy prophet of, 293;
advocated by Edward Farrer, 312-313. =Mc= W. L. Mackenzie not in favour
of, 10. =BL= Manifesto of 1849, 336; Sir John Abbott on, 336; advocated
by many of the Radicals of Lower Canada, 343. =C= Advocated by
Democratic party in Quebec, 26; said by Elgin to be popular among
commercial classes in 1849, 44; countenanced by Sir John Abbott and L.
H. Holton, 44-45; what it would mean for Quebec, 64. =B= Threatened by
repeal of Corn Laws in 1846, 31, 32; the Montreal Manifesto, 36-37;
sentiment for, charged against Clear Grits, 42; opposition charged with,
in Confederation debate, 185; Brown holds that Reciprocity scheme
designed to promote, 194; charge of, denied by Canada First party, 237.
=E= Sentiment for, in 1847, 5; Elgin on, 58; Montreal Manifesto, 80-82;
advocated by the _Parti Rouge_, 109; Elgin's efforts to counteract
movement, 189-190; Durham on, 192-193; conditions favouring movement,
194-195; repeal of Reciprocity Treaty designed to promote, 202. =P=
Threatened in Ninety-Two Resolutions, 92-93; advocated in 1848, and
since Confederation, 96; advocated by Papineau, O'Callaghan, and their
friends, 97. =Bib.=: Dent, _Last Forty Years_; Weir, _Sixty Years in
Canada_; Kirby, _Counter Manifesto to the Annexationists of Montreal_;
Denison, _The Struggle for Imperial Unity_.
=Anse des Mères.= =WM= Frigates stationed at, 87; British vessels
anchored at, 124.
=Anstruther's Regiment.= =WM= In the attack on Quebec, 135; secures
Sillery road, 183; detachment keeps Bougainville's corps in check, 189.
=Antell.= =Dr= A disaffected Montrealer, 122.
=Anticosti=. The first mention of the island is in Cartier's narrative
of his first voyage, 1534. The following year he again visited the
island, which he named Isle de l'Assomption. On the origin of the
present Indian name, _see_ W. F. Ganong's note, Royal Society _Trans._,
1889, II, 51. Placed under jurisdiction of Newfoundland in 1763;
transferred to Canada, 1774. =Bib.=: Huard, _Labrador et Anticosti_;
Guay, _Lettres sur l'île Anticosti_; Schmitt, _Monographie de l'île
d'Anticosti;_ Lewis, _Menier and his Island_.
=Apprenticeship, System of.= =L= Adopted with new-comers, in New France,
78.
=Archambault, Louis.= =C= Confirms statements as to Cartier's action in
connection with alleged alterations in British North America Act, 103.
=E= Member of Seigniorial Commission, 186.
=Archibald, Sir Adams George= (1814-1892). Educated at Pictou Academy.
Studied law; in 1838 called to the bar of Prince Edward Island; and to
that of Nova Scotia in 1839. Elected to the Nova Scotia Assembly for
Colchester, 1851. Attorney-general of Nova Scotia, 1860-1863. Delegate
to the various Conferences leading up to Confederation. Became
secretary of state for the provinces in first Dominion ministry.
Lieutenant-governor of Manitoba, 1870-1872; and of Nova Scotia,
1873-1883. Knighted, 1885. =Index=: =Md.= Secretary of state for
provinces in first Dominion ministry, 135; succeeds MacDougall as
lieutenant-governor of the North-West Territories, 161-162. =H= Becomes
solicitor-general and member of Executive Council of Nova Scotia, 1856,
157; attorney-general, 1860, 169; leader of the opposition, 176;
delegate to Charlottetown Conference, 1864, 177; supports
Confederation, 186; goes to England as delegate to complete
Confederation, 189; his interview with Joseph Howe, 189; member of first
Dominion ministry, 1867, 198; retires from ministry, and succeeded by
Howe, 226. =C= First lieutenant-governor of Manitoba, 130. =T= Delegate
from Nova Scotia to Charlottetown Conference, 73; delegate to Quebec
Conference, 77; secretary of state in first Dominion ministry, 129.
=Bib.=: _Expulsion of Acadians_ (N. S. Hist. Soc., vol. 5). For biog.,
_see_ Dent, _Can. Por._; Rose, _Cyc. Can. Biog._
=Archibald, Samuel George William= (1777-1846). Born in Colchester
County, Nova Scotia. Studied law and practised in Nova Scotia; obtained
a seat in the Legislature; became Speaker, solicitor-general, and
afterwards attorney-general of the province. Chief-justice of Prince
Edward Island, 1824-1828, remaining Speaker of the Nova Scotia Assembly
and solicitor-general, during the whole term of his incumbency of the
chief-justiceship. =Index=: =H= Contributes to _The Club_ in Howe's
_Nova Scotian_, 10; in House of Assembly, 18; leader of popular party,
35; becomes Speaker, 57; appointed Master of the Rolls, 74. =Bib.=:
Campbell, _History of Nova Scotia_.
=Archives.= Provision was made by the Parliament of Canada, in 1872, for
an Archives Branch, and Douglas Brymner was appointed Dominion
Archivist. His first report appeared in 1873. The earlier reports were
of a preliminary nature, but in 1884 the first of the important series
of calendars was included in the report. Abbé Verreau made a special
report on historical material in Europe bearing on Canadian history,
published in 1874. A report on manuscript material in the colonial
archives at Paris, by Edouard Richard, was published as a supplement to
the report for 1899. Dr. Brymner died in 1902, and Arthur G. Doughty was
appointed Dominion Archivist in 1904. The report for 1905, in 3 vols.,
represented a new departure; the publication of calendars was abandoned,
and replaced by volumes containing series of documents relating to
definite subjects, systematically arranged. The archives were moved into
a special building in 1907. In 1910 began the issue of a series of
publications, containing historical journals and other special material.
Provincial archives, of a more or less distinct character, have also
been established in the provinces of Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia,
British Columbia, Manitoba, and Alberta. =Index=: =Hd= Quoted, 254;
Haldimand collection in, 319.
=Arctic Archipelago.= Embraces the islands lying north of the mainland
of Canada. Transferred to the Dominion by an Imperial order-in-council,
Sept. 1, 1880. =Bib.=: Johnson, _Canada's Northern Fringe_.
=Argall, Sir Samuel.= Born in Walthamstow, England. A type of the
founders of British colonial dominion. Sent, May, 1609, with a small
vessel to the new settlement at Jamestown, Va., to trade and fish. The
following year took out Lord Delaware to Jamestown, arriving in time to
save the colony from starvation. In 1812 carried off Pocahontas to the
settlement of Jamestown. Later in the year sent with a vessel of 14 guns
to destroy the French settlements on the north coast, regarded as
infringing on the Virginia patent. Captured Mount Desert, St. Croix, and
Port Royal. On return voyage forced the commandant at New Amsterdam to
recognize English suzerainty by hauling down the Dutch flag and running
up the English. May, 1617, made deputy governor of Virginia. In 1620
served against the Algerine pirates under Sir Robert Mansell. Knighted
in 1622. In 1625 admiral of a squadron cruising after a hostile Dunkirk
fleet, and took some prizes. In October, 1625, with the futile
expedition against Cadiz under Lord Wimbledon. Died, 1626. =Bib.=:
Argall's own narrative; Parkman, _Pioneers of France_; Calnek and
Savary, _History of the County of Annapolis_.
=Argenson, Pierre de Voyer, Vicomte d'= (1626-1710). Succeeded Jean de
Lauson as governor of New France, 1658. His governorship marked by
personal quarrels with Laval, and a series of humiliating raids
throughout the colony by the Iroquois. Recalled in 1661. =Index=: =F=
Arrives as governor, 43; on Laval, 45. =L= His opinion of Laval, 29;
hostility to Maisonneuve, 176. =Bib.=: Parkman, _Old Régime_; Douglas,
_Old France in the New World_.
=Argyll, John Douglas Sutherland Campbell, ninth Duke of= (1845- ).
Married H. R. H. Princess Louise, 1871; succeeded to dukedom, 1900.
Represented Argyllshire in Parliament, 1868-1878. Governor-general of
Canada (as Marquis of Lorne), 1878-1883. Founded Royal Society of
Canada, 1881. =Index=: =Md= Refers Letellier difficulty to Imperial
government, 249-250. =Bib.=: Works: _Memories of Canada and Scotland_;
_Imperial Federation_; _Canadian Pictures_; _Passages from the Past_.
For biog., _see_ Dent, _Can. Por._; _Who's Who_; Collins, _Canada under
the Administration of Lord Lorne_.
=Arkansas River.= =L= Reached by Jolliet and Marquette, 146.
=Armistice.= In War of 1812. =Index=: =Bk= Effects of, 261-263, 269,
272; termination of, 270; position of enemy strengthened during its
continuance, 272.
=Armour, John Douglas= (1830-1903). Educated at Upper Canada College and
the University of Toronto; studied law and called to the bar, 1853; made
Q.C., 1867; Bencher of the Law Society, 1871. Appointed a puisne judge
of the Court of Queen's Bench of Ontario, 1877; raised to the
chief-justiceship, 1887. Chief-justice of Ontario and president of the
Court of Appeal, 1890. Judge of the Supreme Court of Canada, 1902; in
the same year represented Canada on the Alaska Boundary Commission.
=Bib.=: Morgan, _Can. Men_; Dent, _Can. Por._
=Armstrong, Lawrence.= Came to Nova Scotia as lieutenant-colonel of
General Philipps's regiment. Appointed to the governor's Council, 1720.
Appointed lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia, 1724; held office until
1739. Served in America for more than thirty years. Committed suicide,
1739. =Bib.=: Campbell, _History of Nova Scotia_; _Selections from the
Public Documents of Nova Scotia_, ed. by Akins.
=Arnold, Benedict= (1741-1801). A druggist at New Haven, Conn. When the
War of Independence broke out, in 1775, organized an expedition against
British on Lake Champlain. The same year led a body of picked men to
Quebec by way of the Kennebec and Chaudière. After the unsuccessful
assault on Quebec, was in several small engagements near Montreal;
finally driven out of the province. Given command of Philadelphia; took
offence at slights put upon him by Congress, and attempted to betray
West Point to Clinton. Afterwards commanded a corps of American refugees
on the British side; settled for a time in the West Indies; died in
London. =Index=: =Dr= Captures and abandons Fort St. Johns, 83; his
early life, 104; assigned command of expedition against Quebec, 105;
constitution of his force, 106; his march through the wilderness,
107-109; assisted by the _habitants_, 110; crosses St. Lawrence and
lands at Wolfe's Cove, 110; sends summons for surrender of Quebec, 111;
retires to Pointe aux Trembles, 111; repulsed and wounded in attack on
Quebec, 128; surrender of his men, 131; is transferred to Montreal,
132-135; advances to meet Foster, 142; burns château of Senneville, 143;
his narrow escape, 147; in command of American ships on Lake Champlain,
155; defeated near Crown Point, 156. =S= Applies for grant of land in
Upper Canada, 104. =Hd= His repulse at Quebec, 112; the invasion, 127;
his "Address to the People of America," 227; commissioners sent to
Montreal to confer with, 276; furnishes list of rebels to Clinton, 281.
_See also_ Montgomery; Ethan Allen; American Invasion. =Bib.=: Arnold,
_Life of Benedict Arnold_; Todd, _The Real Benedict Arnold_; Sparks,
_American Biography_; Codman, _Arnold's Expedition to Quebec_; Henry,
_Arnold's Campaign against Quebec_; Smith, _Arnold's March from
Cambridge to Quebec_; Jones, _The Campaign for the Conquest of Canada in
1776_; _Cyc. Am. Biog._
=Arnoux.= =WM= King's surgeon, Montcalm carried into house of, 218.
=Aroostook War=, 1839. =W= Arose out of unsettled boundary question
between Maine and New Brunswick, 135. =Bib.=: Sprague, _The
North-Eastern Boundary Controversy and the Aroostook War_.
=Arrangement of 1830.= Provided that United States vessels should have
access to ports in the British West Indies, in return for a similar
privilege granted to British vessels in the ports of the United States.
=Arthur.= Clergyman. =Index=: =S= Teaches school at Niagara, 167-168.
=Arthur, Sir George= (1784-1854). The last lieutenant-governor of Upper
Canada, 1838-1841. The chief event of his tenure of office was the
suppression of the Upper Canadian Rebellion. Had been successively
governor of Honduras and Van Diemen's Land previous to his Canadian
appointment; and on leaving Canada appointed to the governorship of
Bombay. =Index=: =Mc= Governor of Upper Canada, 435; disregards clemency
petitions, 435; learns of intended attack on Canada, 441; renews reward
for Mackenzie's capture, 445; proposes exchange of prisoners and
refugees, 463; United States refuses, 463. =Bk= Organizes military
gathering at Queenston Heights, 313. =Sy= Succeeds Sir F. B. Head, 109;
reactionary in his views, 109-110; his attitude towards responsible
government, 125-126; cautioned by colonial secretary, 127; instructed to
act in harmony with new governor-general, 144; meets him at Montreal,
153; explains his position and views, 156-161; receives governor-general
at Toronto, and hands over seal of province, 197. =R= His efforts to
repel American attacks, 117; Ryerson disappointed in, 118; proposes
division of Clergy Reserves, 119. _See_ Rebellion of 1837 (Upper
Canada). =Bib.=: Kingsford, _History of Canada_; Dent, _Upper Canadian
Rebellion_; Bradshaw, _Self-Government in Canada_; Read,
_Lieutenant-Governors of Upper Canada_.
=Asgill, Sir Charles= (1762-1823). A lieutenant in Cornwallis's army,
1780. Taken prisoner at Yorktown, condemned to death by the Americans,
to avenge death of a Revolutionary officer. Marie Antoinette having been
interested in his fate, interceded, and Asgill was released. Afterwards
served in the Low Countries and in Ireland. =Index=: =Dr= Chosen by lot
for retaliatory hanging, 198. =Bib.=: _Cyc. Am. Biog._
=Ashburton, Alexander Baring, Baron= (1774-1848). Entered Parliament in
1806. Opposed measures against American commerce. President of board of
trade and master of mint, 1834. Raised to peerage, 1835. Commissioner at
Washington for settlement of boundary dispute, 1842. =Index=: =BL=
Settles difficulties between Great Britain and the United States, 118.
=Bib.=: _Dict. Nat. Biog._
=Ashburton, John Dunning, First Baron= (1731-1783). =Index=: =Dr=
Opposes Quebec Act in House of Commons, 65. =Bib.=: _Dict. Nat. Biog._
=Ashburton Treaty.= Negotiated between Great Britain and the United
States, 1842, Lord Ashburton acting for the former and Daniel Webster on
behalf of the latter. Provided for the settlement of the international
boundary between Maine and Canada. Of the territory in dispute, the
United States got about seven-twelfths and Canada five-twelfths. Also
provided for the determination of the boundary in the St. Mary River
and thence to the Lake of the Woods; for the free navigation of the St.
John River; for the suppression of the slave trade, and for the
extradition of criminals. =Index=: =Sy= Sydenham takes part in
negotiations leading to, 336. =W= Boundary question settled by, 135. =T=
Settlement of, checks projected railway from St. Andrews to Quebec, 53.
=BL= Settlement of, 118. =Bib.=: Dent, _Last Forty Years_; Winsor,
_Narrative and Critical History,_ Vol. vii; White, _The Ashburton
Treaty_, in _Univ. Mag._, October, 1907; _The Ashburton Treaty: an
Afterword_, in _Univ. Mag._, December, 1908; Houston, _Canadian
Constitutional Documents_; Hertslet, _Treaties and Conventions_.
=Assembly.= _See_ House of Assembly.
=Assiniboia.= One of the provisional districts carved out of the
North-West Territories, in 1882. Now included in the provinces of
Alberta and Saskatchewan, principally in the latter.
=Assiniboine Indians.= A tribe of the Siouan family; first mentioned in
the Jesuit _Relation_ of 1640. They separated from the parent stock
early in the seventeenth century, and moved north and north-west to the
region about Lake Winnipeg. Later they spread over the country west of
Lake Winnipeg, to the foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains. Their
population was estimated at 8000 in 1829. One-half this number perished
in the smallpox epidemic of 1836. They are now settled on reservations
in Alberta, and in Montana. =Bib.=: Hodge, _Handbook of American
Indians_.
=Assiniboine River.= Discovered by La Vérendrye in 1736. Fort Rouge was
built at the mouth of the river in that year, as well as Fort La Reine,
near the present city of Portage la Prairie. From the latter fort, two
years later, La Vérendrye set forth on his memorable journey to the
Mandan Indians on the Missouri. Before the close of the century, both
the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company had trading
establishments at various points on the river. First named Rivière St.
Charles; afterwards Rivière des Assiliboilles, and Stone Indian River;
finally settling in present form. =Bib.=: Bryce, _Assiniboine River and
its Forts_ (R. S. C., 1892); Dawson, _Canada and Newfoundland_; Burpee,
_Search for the Western Sea_; Hind, _Canadian Red River and Assiniboine
and Saskatchewan Expeditions_.
=Association of Canadian Refugees.= =Mc= Formed in 1839, 448; object of,
independence of Canada, 449; ended further expeditions against Canada,
449.
=Astor, John Jacob= (1763-1848). Founder of Astor Fur Company. =Index=:
=Bk= Sends news of declaration of war in 1812, 204. =Bib.=: Bryce,
_Hudson's Bay Company_; _Cyc. Am. Biog._
=Astor Fur Company.= =Index=: =D= Founds Astoria, 64. _See also_ Pacific
Fur Company.
=Astoria.= Established by Pacific Fur Company, 1811. Turned over to the
North West Company, 1813, and renamed Fort George. The scene of
Washington Irving's delightful narrative _Astoria_. The fort stood on
the banks of the Columbia River, near its mouth. =Index=: =D= Acquired
by North West Company, 71, 149; in possession of United States after War
of 1812, 133-134; claimed by United States, 150; American flag raised
over, 150. =Bib.=: Franchère, _Voyage to the North-West Coast of
America_; Cox, _Adventures on the Columbia River_; Ross, _Adventures of
First Settlers on Columbia River_; _Henry-Thompson Journals_, ed. by
Coues; Bryce, _Hudson's Bay Company_; Bradbury, _Travels in the Interior
of America in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811_.
=Astorians.= Name applied to members of the two expeditions fitted out
by John Jacob Astor, to found trading establishment at the mouth of the
Columbia. One party sailed around the Horn in the _Tonquin_; the other
went overland by way of the Missouri and the Columbia. =Index=: =D=
Their influence upon development of Pacific coast, 4; their first
vessel, the _Tonquin_, captured by natives and the crew murdered, 1811,
37; the overland expedition, 71. _See also_ Pacific Fur Company;
_Tonquin_.
=Atahualpa.= =D= Vessel, attacked by Milbank Sound savages, 1805, 37.
=Atalanta.= =Hd= Vessel in which Haldimand embarked for England, 309.
=Atalante.= =WM= French frigate, loads stores at Sorel, 243.
=Athabaska.= One of the provisional districts formed out of the
North-West Territories in 1882; area about 122,000 square miles. Now
divided between the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta, forming the
northern half of each.
=Athabaska Lake.= First discovered by Peter Pond, about 1778. Ten years
later the first trading post on the lake was built by Roderick McKenzie
of the North West Company, and named Fort Chipewyan. It was afterwards
moved to the north side of the lake. =Index=: Frobisher's men penetrate
to, 5; importance of in fur trade, 21, 24; called Lake of the Hills, 24.
=Athabaska Pass.= Discovered by David Thompson of the North West
Company, in January, 1811. The pass was used thereafter by the traders
as a route from the Athabaska to the Columbia. =Index=: =D= Discovered
by David Thompson, 58.
=Athabaska River.= Rises in the watershed range of the Rocky Mountains,
close to the head waters of the north branch of the North Saskatchewan,
and after a course of 765 miles empties into Athabaska Lake. Discovered
by Peter Pond in 1778. =Index=: =MS= Pond builds post on, 21; named also
Elk River and Rivière à la Biche, 21.
=Atkins, D. A.= =S= Opens school at Napanee, 167.
=Attignaouantans.= =Ch= Huron tribe (the Bears), 88, 91.
=Attigninonghacs.= =Ch= Huron tribe devoted to the French, 92.
=Aube-Rivière, François Louis de Pourroy de l'.= Appointed bishop of
Quebec, Aug. 16, 1739. Arrived at Quebec, Aug. 12, 1740, and died of
fever on the 20th of the same month. =Index=: =L= Bishop of Quebec, 12.
=Aubère, Father Joseph.= =Ch= Jesuit missionary, his labours in Acadia,
236.
=Aubert, Joseph.= =Ch= Director of the Company of New France, 170.
=Aubert de Gaspé, Philippe= (1786-1871). French-Canadian writer.
=Index=: =L= His description of Canadians, 118. =Bib.=: Works: _Les
Anciens Canadiens_, translated into English by Mrs. Pennie, and by C. G.
D. Roberts; _Mémoires_. For biog., _see_ Casgrain, _Biographies
Canadiennes_; Roy, _Étude sur "Les Anciens Canadiens_" (R. S. C., 1906).
=Aubert de la Chesnaye, Charles= (1630-1702). Born at Amiens. Came to
Canada, 1655. Chief clerk of the Compagnie des Indes Occidentales, 1665.
Engaged in the fur-trade at Cataraqui, 1674. In 1677 obtained a grant of
Ile Dupas. In 1679 made a visit to Paris, and in 1683 back again at
Cataraqui. In 1696 prepared an important memoir on the commerce of the
colony. =Index=: =L= His description of Canadians, 117-118; his
liberality on occasion of Quebec fire, 186. =Bib.=: Parkman, _Old
Régime_.
=Aubert de la Chesnaye, Jacques.= =F= Trader, La Barre's dealings with,
175.
=Aubry.= =WM= Force gathered by, and Ligneris, dispersed, 146.
=Aubry.= =Ch= Priest of De Monts's expedition, at Ste. Croix, 25.
=Auckland, George Eden, Earl of= (1784-484
|
his
healing, not in the name of God, but in his own name and his own
authority.
Yet he claimed no authority to decide the questions of the Law; though
many applied to him in difficult cases, these he referred to the learned
in the Law, saying, "Do ye as the scribes command." Yet it was complained
that he paid no great attention to their commands himself, nor for his
followers. Nor did he rebuke men when he saw them transgressing the Law
even in the greater transgressions. Thus I have heard it said of him, that
once with his followers, he met a man laboring on the Sabbath day, a sin
which, according to the Law, was punished with stoning. But all he said
unto him was this: "Man, if thou knowest what thou doest, blessed art
thou; but if thou knowest not, accursed art thou, and a transgressor of
the Law."(6) This is, indeed, a dark saying. Is each man, then, to choose
for himself which commands of the Law he shall do, and which not? The
fence of the Law, which our Sages have built up with such labor and toil,
would be stricken down at one stroke. Yet perhaps in this he only followed
the principle of our Sages who have said, "The Sabbath was made for you,
not you for the Sabbath."
Such was the manner of life of this Jesus up to the time when I first saw
him in the Temple. Men knew not what to make of him; many regarded him as
a prophet because of the signs and the wonders which he did; and those who
were looking forward to the blessed day in which Israel would be free
again under its own king hoped that he was Elijah come again to prepare
the way for the new kingdom.
III.
EARLIER TEACHING.
SERMON IN THE SYNAGOGUE OF THE GALILÆANS.
It must have been a year after I had first seen Jesus that I saw him again
the second time in Jerusalem. It fell out in this wise: I was proceeding
one morning to the meeting of the Sanhedrim, when, as I came near the
Synagogue of the Galilæans in the Fish-Market, I found a crowd of men
entering in. I asked one of them what was going forward, and he said,
"Jesus the Nazarene will expound the Law." So I determined to take the
morning service in this synagogue rather than with my colleagues in the
Temple, and went in, the people giving way before me, as was my due as a
member of the Sanhedrim.
Now, this synagogue of the Galilæans differed in naught from the rest of
the synagogues of the Jews. It cannot be that thou hast not visited one of
these when thou wast in the Holy City, but perchance thy memory is dim
after all these years, and I will in a few words explain to thee its
arrangement. In the wall at the west end was the cabinet containing the
scrolls of the Law, with a curtain before it, for this is, as it were, the
Holy of Holies of the synagogue. The men go up to this, on to the platform
before it, by three steps. Then comes a vacant space, in the midst of
which stands a dais, with a reading-desk whereon the Law is read: this we
call by your Greek name _bema_. Then in the rest of the hall sit the folk,
arranged in benches one after another, somewhat as in your theatres. Now,
as I came in, they had said the morning psalms, and most of the Eighteen
Blessings, and shortly after the reading of the Law began. The curtain was
drawn aside from the holy ark, the scroll of the Law was taken thence, to
the singing of psalms unto the _bema_. Then, as is customary, the
messenger of the congregation summoned first to the reading of the Law a
Cohen, a descendant of Aaron, one of the priestly caste. And after he had
read some verses of the Law in the holy tongue, the dragoman read its
translation into Chaldee, so as to be understanded of the unlearned folk,
and of the women who were in the gallery outside the synagogue, and
separated from it by a grating. Then after the priest came a Levite, who
also read some verses, and after him an ordinary Israelite. Then the
messenger of the synagogue called out, "Let Rabbi Joshua ben Joseph
arise." Then Jesus the Nazarene went up to the _bema_ and read his
appointed verses, and these were translated as before by the dragoman. And
after the reading of the Law was concluded, the _Parnass_, or president of
the congregation, requested Jesus to read the _Haphtara_, the lesson from
the prophets; and this he did, using the cantillation with which we chant
words of Holy Scripture. Yet never heard I one whose voice so thrilled me,
and brought home to one the import of the great words; and this was
strange, for his accent was, as I had before noticed, that of the Galilæan
peasantry, at which we of Jerusalem were wont to scoff. Then, after the
Law had been returned to the ark with song and psalm, Jesus turned round
to the people on the _bema_ and began his discourse. It is near five-and-
twenty years since I heard him, and much have I forgotten in that long
time. But many of his sayings still ring in my ears, and I will here put
down, as far as possible in order, all that I can remember of the
discourse.(7)
"It hath been written by the Prophet Esaias: Behold, his reward is with
him, and his work before him. Yea, behold a man and his work before him.
He that worketh not, let him not eat. Yet he that plougheth, let him
plough in hope; he that thresheth, thresh in hope of partaking. Howbeit,
he who longs to be rich is like a man who drinketh seawater: the more he
drinketh the more thirsty he becomes, and never leaves off drinking till
he perish. Blessed is he who also fasts that he may feed the poor: for it
is more blessed to give than to receive. Yet let thy alms sweat into thy
hands until thou know to whom thou givest. Where there are pains, thither
hastens the physician: that which is weak shall be saved by that which is
strong. For the sake of the weak I was weak, for the sake of the hungry I
hungered, for the sake of the thirsty I thirsted. But woe to those who
have yet hypocritically taken from others; who are able to help
themselves, and yet wish to take from others: for each man shall give
account in the day of judgment.
"That which thou hatest thou shalt not do to another. Good things must
come; he is blessed through whom they come. Love covereth a multitude of
sins; so never be joyful save when you look upon your brother's
countenance in love. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath. For the
greatest of crimes is this: if a man shall sadden his brother's spirit.
Blessed, too, are they who mourn for the perdition of unbelievers. Do not
give occasion to the Wicked One. Who is the Wicked One? He that tempts.
Yet none shall reach the kingdom of heaven unless he have been tempted:
for our Father which is in heaven would rather the repentance of a sinner
than his correction. Yet he will cleanse the house of his kingdom from all
offence. Be, therefore, careful and prudent and wise, lest any of you be
caught in the snares of the devil, for that ancient enemy goes about
buffeting.
"If thou hast seen thy brother, thou hast seen thy Lord, God the Father,
whose fatherland is everywhere, in heaven and upon earth. Far and near,
the Lord knoweth his own. So grieve not the holy spirit which is in you,
nor extinguish the light which shines in you. Guard the flesh pure, and
the signet spotless, so that ye may take hold upon eternal life. For our
possessions are in heaven; therefore, sons of men, purchase unto
yourselves by these transitory things which are not yours, what is yours,
and shall not pass away."
I cannot tell thee, Aglaophonos, how deeply this discourse affected me.
Just as the Hellenes are eager to find each day some new beauty in man or
the world, or some new truth about the relation of things, so we Hebrews
rejoice in finding new ideals in the relations of men. Each of our Sages
prides himself on this--that he has said some maxim of wisdom that none had
thought of before him, and so each of them is remembered in the minds of
men by one or more of his favorite maxims. But it is rare if in a whole
lifetime a sage sayeth more than one word fit to be treasured up among
men. Yet was this man Jesus dropping pearls of wisdom from his mouth in
prodigal profusion. As each memorable word fell from his lips, a murmur of
delighted surprise passed round the synagogue, and each man looked to his
neighbor with brightened eyes. Some of the thoughts, indeed, I had heard
from other of our Sages, but never in so pointed a form, surely never in
such profusion from a single sage.
And if what was said delighted us, the manner in which it was said
entranced us still more. The voice of the speaker answered to the thoughts
he expressed, as the Kinnor of David, according to our Sages, turned the
wind into music. When he spoke of love, his voice was as the cooing dove;
when he denounced the oppressor, it clanged like a silver trumpet. Indeed,
his whole countenance and bearing changed in like manner, so that every
word he uttered seemed to be the outcome of his whole being.
But most of all was it the vividness of his eyes that impressed his words
upon us. I had seen them flashing with scorn in the Temple, I now saw them
melting with tenderness in the synagogue; and there was this of strange in
them, that they seemed to speak other and deeper words. As he gazed upon
us, I felt as if all my inmost being was bare to the gaze of those eyes.
They seemed to know all my secret thoughts and sins; and yet I felt not
ashamed, for as they saw the sins, so they seemed to speak forgiveness of
them.
What I felt then, others felt with me, for, as I afterwards learnt, each
man felt the same as the eyes of Jesus fell upon him; and most curious it
was that each man thought as I did, that the eyes of the speaker were upon
him during the whole of the discourse. I have seen here in Alexandria
portraits of men painted by your subtlest artists, in which, from whatever
place you looked at them, the eyes seemed to gaze upon you. So was it with
Jesus. Not alone did I, who was, as a member of the Sanhedrim, sitting
immediately before him, feel his eyes pierce to my soul, but all who were
in that synagogue felt the same. Nor did the effect die away after I had
left the synagogue; for days and days afterwards, whenever I closed my
eyes, or gazed for long on the wall, I could see the eyes of Jesus, and
with it his whole face gazing upon me.
I had left the synagogue a little before the others, because a messenger
had been sent from the Sanhedrim to seek for a member who should make up
the quorum of Twenty-Three; and this messenger, hearing that a member of
the Sanhedrim was in the synagogue of the Galilæans, sent in to summon me.
When the sitting was over, I sought for Jesus again, but found that he had
left the city. And for a time I neither saw nor heard aught more of him,
save such rumors as came to the Holy City from Galilee. About this time
many joined themselves unto him, going whithersoever he went. Those, too,
who had joined themselves to Jochanan passed over to him, for Jochanan had
been slain by Herod, whom he had rebuked for his wicked living. It was,
indeed, said that Herod had also captured this Jesus when he found that he
was following in the footsteps of Jochanan; but this proved to be untrue,
and the multitude thronged more and more after Jesus, and from this time
he began to teach them regularly, after the manner of our Sages. Yet he
did not pronounce decisions of Halacha on questions of our Law; indeed, he
disclaimed all interference with such questions. "I am not come," he said,
"to take away from the Law of Moses, nor to add to the Law of Moses am I
come." Only one saying of his have I heard of wherein he said aught at
variance with the Torah. When the children of a man who had recently died
asked him in what way should the property be divided, he said, "Let son
and daughter inherit alike." In this, as in other things, he was more
favorable to the claims of the women than the Law and the Sages. For this
reason, perhaps, it was that many women followed after him, even joined in
prayer with him and those with him, against the custom of our nation.
Hence arose much scandal among the more rigidly pious among us, who follow
the saying of Joseph ben Jochanan, "Engage not in much converse with
women." But I have heard naught of evil that resulted from this free
mingling of men and women among his followers. Yet Jesus was not against
the due subordination of women, for he also said, "Let the wife be in
subordination to her husband."
Thou must know that among us our Sages are of two kinds, the Halachists
and the Hagadists. The former deal with matters of the Law according to
the tradition they have received from their teacher; but the latter
expound the words of the Scripture, and deal with the moral relations of
man to man. Some of our Sages, indeed, like the great Hillel, who died
when I was a child, have been equally masters both of the Halacha and the
Hagada; and in many ways the teaching of Jesus seems to have resembled, if
it did not follow, that of Hillel. I must tell thee one anecdote about
this Hillel which is well known amongst us. He was distinguished for his
evenness of temper, and men would often in sport try to make him lose it.
A heathen came before him one day, and declared that he would become a Jew
if only Hillel would tell him the whole Law while he stood upon one foot,
hoping thereby to irritate Hillel by his presumption. But Hillel said
only, "What thou wilt not for thyself, do not to thy neighbor. This is the
whole of the Law; all the rest is but commentary thereon. Go and learn."
Now, among the disciples of Hillel was one who compiled for the heathen a
summary of the Law in the spirit of Hillel; and it seemed to me, from what
I heard of Jesus' teaching, that he had learnt much from this summary,
which is called "THE TWO WAYS." I will have a copy written out for thee,
for it is very short.
Now, in all the teaching of Jesus which I heard of about this time, he
seems to have expanded, but in no wise modified, the teaching of "The Two
Ways." Above all, he seems to have warned men against the evil feelings
within, that lead to sins against the Law, and therein differed somewhat
from the practice of our Sages, who think that by doing the Law and
keeping to it rightful feelings shall grow, and evil thoughts fly away.
Yet while in many ways Jesus seemed to be of the School of Hillel, in
others he cast in his lot with the men among us who claim to be especially
favored of God, because--thou wilt smile, Aglaophonos--because they are
poor. Thou hast read our Psalms, and knowest with what insistence the poor
and the righteous, the rich and the wicked, are identified in them. Many
of our nation have taken this to heart, and as it were pride themselves
upon their humility, as some of them call themselves _Ebionim_, or the
Poor; some, the _Zaddikim_, or Righteous; some, _Chasidim_, or Pious. Thou
canst not call them a sect, for in a way they include the whole nation. In
the Eighteen Blessings which form the staple of our daily prayers, the
Lord is blessed as the Guardian and Refuge of the _Zaddikim_. Now, it was
chiefly among these men, whether they called themselves _Ebionim_, or
_Zaddikim_, or _Chasidim_, that Jesus found his chief adherents, though he
seems to give his preference to the _Ebionim_, who have always been
insisting upon the blessedness of the poor. Now, these men consider
themselves to be beyond all others the servants of the Lord, and identify
themselves with that picture of the servant which has been given by the
Prophet Esaias. Thus in all these ways Jesus appealed to the more earnest
part of our nation, and in him were conjoined most of the movements that
had touched us most deeply. If any had said at this time, "Jesus the
Nazarene is a follower of Jochanan the Baptizer, and preaches 'The Two
Ways' to the Poor," none could have gainsaid him.
Yet all were wondering what he would say to the other side of our nation's
hopes. The life of our nation had begun with a deliverance; our chief
national feast recalls that deliverance from Egypt to us every year as the
spring comes round. We have become subject to all the great kingdoms that
have grown up round us, yet again and again we have been delivered from
each. Thou and I have often wondered how it has come about that both
Hellenes and Hebrews, who feel ourselves in different ways higher than
these stolid Romans who rule us, have yet become subject to them. Thy
nation hath acquiesced in their rule; my people never will. Every man who
promises greatness among us is hoped for as the Deliverer. Many men about
this time began to ask, Will Jesus the Nazarene be the Deliverer?
IV.
THE TWO WAYS.
Now, this is the "CATECHISM OF THE TWO WAYS" which I have had copied out
for thee, for in it is the essence of the teaching of Jesus, as he himself
recognized in speaking to me, as thou wilt shortly hear.
"There are two ways, one of life and one of death, but there is a great
difference between the two ways. Now, the way of life is this: first, Thou
shalt love God who made thee; secondly, thy neighbor as thyself, and all
things whatsoever thou wouldest not should be done to thee, do thou also
not do to another. Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery,
thou shalt not corrupt boys, thou shalt not commit fornication, thou shalt
not steal, thou shalt not use witchcraft, thou shalt not use enchantments,
thou shalt not kill an infant whether before or after birth, thou shalt
not covet thy neighbor's goods.
"Thou shalt not forswear thyself, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou
shalt not revile, thou shalt not bear malice.
"Thou shalt not be double-minded nor double-tongued; for duplicity of
tongue is a snare of death.
"Thy speech shall not be false nor vain.
"Thou shalt not be covetous, nor an extortioner, nor a hypocrite, nor
malignant, nor haughty. Thou shalt not take evil counsel against thy
neighbor.
"Thou shalt hate no man, but some thou shalt rebuke, and for some thou
shalt pray, and some thou shalt love above thine own soul.
"My child, flee from all evil, and from all that is like unto it.
"Be not soon angry, for anger leadeth to murder; nor given to party-
spirit, nor contentious, nor quick-tempered, for from all these are
generated murders.
"My child, be not lustful, for lust leadeth to fornication; neither be a
filthy talker, nor a lifter-up of the eyes, for from all these things are
generated adulteries.
"My child, be not thou an observer of birds, for it leadeth to idolatry;
nor a charmer, nor an astrologer, nor a user of purifications; nor be thou
willing to look on those things, for from all these is generated idolatry.
"My child, be not a liar, for lying leadeth to theft; nor a lover of
money, nor fond of vainglory, for from all these things are generated
thefts.
"My child, be not a murmurer, for it leadeth to blasphemy; neither self-
willed, nor evil-minded, for from all these things are generated
blasphemies.
"Be thou long-suffering, and merciful, and harmless, and quiet, and good,
and trembling continually at the words which thou hast heard.
"Thou shalt not exalt thyself, nor shalt thou give presumption to thy
soul. Thy soul shall not be joined to the lofty, but with the just and
lowly shalt thou converse.
"The events that happen to thee shalt thou accept as good, knowing that
without God nothing taketh place.
"My child, thou shalt remember night and day him that speaketh to thee the
word of God.
"But thou shalt seek out day by day the faces of the saints, that thou
mayest rest in their words.
"Thou shalt not desire division, but shalt make peace between those at
strife; so thou shalt judge justly. Thou shalt not respect a person in
rebuking for transgressions.
"Thou shalt not be of two minds whether it shall be or not.
"Be not one that stretcheth out his hands to receive, but shutteth them
close for giving.
"If thou hast, thou shalt give with thine hands a ransom for thy sins.
"Thou shalt not hesitate to give, nor when thou givest shalt thou murmur,
for thou shalt know who is the good recompenser of the reward.
"Thou shalt not turn away from him that needeth, but shalt share all
things with thy brother, and shalt not say that they are thine own; for if
ye are fellow-sharers in that which is imperishable, how much more in
perishable things.
"Thou shalt not take away thine hand from thy son or from thy daughter,
but from their youth up shalt thou teach them the fear of God.
"Thou shalt not in thy bitterness lay commands on thy man-servant or thy
maid-servant, who hope in the same God, lest they should not fear him who
is God over you both; for He cometh not to call men according to the
outward appearance, but to those whom the Spirit hath prepared.
"But ye, servants, shall be subject to your masters as to a figure of God
in reverence and fear.
"Thou shalt hate all hypocrisy, and everything which is not pleasing to
the Lord.
"Thou shalt not forsake the commandments of the Lord, but shalt keep what
thou hast received, neither adding thereto nor taking away from it.
"Thou shalt confess thy transgressions, and shalt not come to thy prayer
with an evil conscience. This is the way of life.
"But the way of death is this. First of all, it is evil and full of curse;
murders, adulteries, lusts, fornications, thefts, idolatries, witchcrafts,
sorceries, robberies, false-witnessings, hypocrisies, double-heartedness,
deceit, pride, wickedness, self-will, covetousness, filthy talking,
jealousy, presumption, haughtiness, flattery.
"Persecutors of the good, hating truth, loving a lie, not knowing the
reward of righteousness, not cleaving to that which is good nor to
righteous judgment, watching not for the good but for the evil, far from
whom is meekness and patience, loving vain things, seeking after reward,
not pitying the poor, not toiling with him who is vexed with toil, not
knowing Him that made them, murderers of children, destroyers of the image
of God, turning away from him that is in need, vexing him that is
afflicted, advocates of the rich, lawless judges of the poor, wholly
sinful.
"Take heed that no one make thee to err from this way of teaching, since
he teacheth thee not according to God."
V.
THE WOMAN TAKEN IN ADULTERY.
THE RICH YOUNG MAN.
It must have been many months after I had heard him discourse in the
Galilæan synagogue that I again saw Jesus the Nazarene. We in Jerusalem
had our own concerns to think of.
At this time the long monopoly of rule by the Sadducees was gradually
being broken. Of the three divisions of the Sanhedrim, that of the
ordinary Israelites had become almost entirely composed of the Pharisees;
I myself had been elected as one of that party, and even in the other two
sections of the Priests and of the Levites, many, especially among the
latter, held with the Pharisees. Nor was this without influence upon the
political issues of the times. The Sadducees, being the sacerdotal party,
had no cause why they should be dissatisfied with the position they held
in the State under the Romans; but we of the Pharisees felt far otherwise
about the national hopes for deliverance. Since my days the influence of
the Pharisees has become predominant in the nation, and I foresee that the
struggle between us and the Romans cannot be delayed for long. At the time
of which I am writing, the hegemony had not yet passed over to the
Pharisees, and it was of import for us all to know whether any man of
influence was on our side, or on that of the Sadducees, or whether he
cared for neither, and cast in his lot with the smaller sects.
Now, it happened about this time that I was attending my place in the
Sanhedrim of Israelites, to judge of a case of adultery. But in this
matter our Sages, and especially those of the Pharisaic tradition, had
made great changes in the Law as laid down for us by Moses; for he, as
thou knowest, commands that a woman taken in adultery shall be stoned to
death. Now, for a long time among us there has been an increasing horror
of inflicting the death penalty. If a Sanhedrim inflicts capital
punishment more than once in seven years, it is called a Sanhedrim of
murderers. Yet the Law of Moses declared that whosoever was guilty of
adultery would be put to death. What, then, was to be done? It is against
the principle of justice that any should be punished for an offence of
which he is ignorant. Hence, in capital offences, our Sages, to mercy
inclined, have laid it down that a man must be assumed to be ignorant of
the guilt of the offence, unless it be proved that he had been solemnly
warned of its gravity; and in our Law proof can only be given by two
simultaneous witnesses. Hence it is impossible to obtain conviction for a
woman who hath committed adultery, unless proof is given that she hath
been previously warned by two persons at once. This can scarcely ever be.
No Jewish woman in my time has ever been stoned as the Law commands for
this sin. Some think that this is too great a leniency, and of evil result
for the morality of the folk.
When I arrived at the hall of polished stones near the Temple, in which
the Sanhedrim holds its sittings, the trial had nearly come to a
conclusion. The inquiry had been made if any two credible witnesses had
given the woman the preliminary caution, and none answering to the call,
it remained only for the _Ab Beth Din_, the president of the court, to
dismiss the prisoner with the words of caution and advice which are
customary on such occasions: "My daughter, perhaps thou wert led into sin
by too much wine, or by thoughtlessness, or perhaps by thy youth;
perchance it was mixing in crowds, or wicked companions that led thee to
sin: go, and for the sake of the great Name, do not bring it to pass that
thou must be destroyed by the water of jealousy." And with these words the
court was dismissed, and several of us were appointed to take the woman to
her home, and induce the man, her husband, to take her to him once again.
Now, as we were passing through the courts of the Temple, we saw Jesus the
Nazarene in one of the smaller courts, seated, teaching the people, some
of whom sat at his feet. But it seemed to some of us a favorable
opportunity to test what he would say as regards the Law of Moses relating
to adultery: for if he would declare that the Law must be carried out in
all its rigor, that would show that our Sages were more merciful than he;
if, on the other hand, he adopted the opinion of our Sages, that would in
so far commit him to support their attitude towards the Law in general. In
any case, it seemed a suitable occasion to test his power of dealing with
the Law, and it is customary among us to put such test cases before the
younger Sages.
We therefore turned aside and entered into the smaller court, and all rose
to do honor to the Sanhedrim. Then one of us said to him, "Rabbi, this
woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now, Moses in the Law hath
commanded that such should be stoned: what sayest thou?" Now, when the man
told him that the woman had been taken in the very act of adultery, a deep
blush passed over his face, and he turned his eyes downwards. Then he bent
down to the ground, hiding his face altogether from us, and writing, as it
were, something on the sand of the floor. Now, at first, I thought of the
cry of the money-changers that I had heard, and felt ashamed in my soul
that such a question should be brought before this man, of all men: for
our Sages have said, "The greatest of sins is this--to bring a blush upon
thy neighbor's face in public." But the others thought not of this, but
once more they asked him, "Rabbi, what sayest thou shall be done in this
case?" Then, without raising his head, Jesus said in a low tone, "Let him
among you that is without sin cast the first stone." Then we saw that his
shame had been for us, and for our want of feeling in putting such a
question in the very presence of her who had sinned. And in this matter we
hold that sin can be in thought as well as in act, and which of us could
say that we were without sin even in thought? So, in very shame, we turned
and went, and left Jesus alone with the woman.
Yet, after we had come away from him, Matathias ben Meshullam said, "That
is well,--we are rightly rebuked; but yet, dost thou not see that this man
hath not answered our question, nor do we know, as we wished, what
attitude he takes towards the carrying out of the Law? I hear that each
morning he preaches to the people in the Temple. Let us now tomorrow put
such questions to him that he cannot evade, and find out to which of our
parties he belongs; for this is a man that is getting great weight with
the people, and it imports us to know where he stands with regard to us."
So it was determined among us that the next morning a Sadducee and a
Pharisee should put to him queries which should determine what views he
held on the great questions which distinguished the two great parties of
the State.
But that very afternoon I was to learn that this Jesus had to deal with
questions with which none of our parties concerned themselves. For, as I
was coming near to Gethsemane, I met Jesus with a band of men and women
going out towards Bethany, and I passed them with the salutation of
"Peace." But as I passed, a young man whom I knew, that had recently come
into great possessions upon the death of his father, came up and asked,
"Who is that man whom thou hast just greeted?" and I said, "Jesus the
Nazarene." Then, suddenly, he set off running to catch them up, and being
curious, I turned and followed him. When I reached them I found the young
man kneeling before Jesus, gazing up to him, and he said, "Good Master, I
have inherited great possessions; what shall I do that I may inherit the
life everlasting?" Jesus said to him, "Call not me 'Good;' none is good
but the One. If thou wouldest enter into life, do the commandments." The
young man asked, "Which?" Jesus said, using the doctrine of "The Two
Ways," "Do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear
false witness, do not defraud, honor thy father and thy mother, and love
thy neighbor as thyself." Then the young man said, "All these things have
I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?" Then Jesus said, "One thing
thou lackest: go thy way, sell all thou hast, and give unto the poor, and
thou shalt have heavenly treasures: come then and follow me." The young
man began to scratch his head, and seemed in doubt. Then Jesus said unto
him, "How is it thou canst say, 'I have done the Law and the Prophets,'
since it is written in the Law, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself'?
Behold, many of thy brothers, sons of Abraham, are clothed but in dung,
and die for hunger, while thy house is full of many goods, and there goeth
not forth aught from it unto them." But the young man rose, and went away
in sorrow and confusion. Then Jesus looked round upon those who were
there, and said, "How hard it is for them that trust in riches to enter
into the kingdom of God! It is easier for an elephant to go through a
needle's eye, as the saying is, than for a rich man to enter into the
kingdom of God." Then a murmur arose among all those present, and they
began to move on, and I left them. And I said to myself, "This man is
neither Pharisee, nor Sadducee, nor Herodian; these be the thoughts of the
Ebionim."
VI.
THE TESTINGS IN THE TEMPLE.
Now, on the morrow, many of us who had agreed together to test the
opinions of this Jesus went to the Temple and found Jesus walking in the
corridors. Then he that was of most authority among us said unto Jesus,
"Rabbi, we would ask certain questions of thee;" and Jesus answered, "Ask,
and it shall be answered unto thee."
Thou must know that among us Jews there be two chief schools of thought,
or rather thou mightest say, parties of the State. The one holds with the
High Priest and the rulers, and is mainly made up of those whom ye
Hellenes call the Best, and their retainers. These be known as the
Sadducees, for their leaders are mainly of the family of the High Priest
Sadduk. Now, the other party is in some sort the party of the Demos, in
that they seek to lessen the power of the High Priests and their families.
But with us, as thou knowest, all things turn upon religion, and this
second party differ chiefly from the Sadducees, for that they are more in
earnest with the matters of the Law, and chiefly they fear the influence
of thy nation, Aglaophonos, in drawing the Israelite away from the Law.
Therefore have they increased precept upon precept, so as to make, as they
say, a fence round the Law. And as they would separate themselves from the
heathen by this fence, they call themselves Pharisees, that is,
Separatists.
Now, it was nowise easy to learn whether a man was of the one party or the
other
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stream,[111] though easily fordable towards its mouth. The Belus
(Namâané) flows through it towards the north, washing Acre itself, and
is a stream of even greater volume than the Kishon, though it has but a
short course.
The third of the Phoenician plains, as we proceed from south to north,
is that of Tyre. This is a long but comparatively narrow strip, reaching
from the Ras-el-Abiad towards the south to Sarepta on the north, a
distance of about twenty miles, but in no part more than five miles
across, and generally less than two miles. It is watered about midway
by the copious stream of the Kasimiyeh or Litany, which, rising east of
Lebanon in the Buka’a or Coelesyrian valley, forces its way through the
mountain chain by a series of tremendous gorges, and debouches upon the
Tyrian lowland about three miles to the south-east of the present city,
near the modern Khan-el-Kasimiyeh, whence it flows peaceably to the sea
with many windings through a broad low tract of meadow-land. Other
rills and rivulets descending from the west flank of the great mountain
increase the productiveness of the plain, while copious fountains of
water gush forth with surprising force in places, more especially at
Ras-el-Ain, three miles from Tyre, to the south.[112] The plain is, even
at the present day, to a large extent covered with orchards, gardens,
and cultivated fields, in which are grown rich crops of tobacco, cotton,
and cereals.
The plain of Sidon, which follows that of Tyre, and is sometimes
regarded as a part of it,[113] extends from a little north of Sarepta to
the Ras-el-Jajunieh, a distance of about ten miles, and resembles that
of Tyre in its principal features. It is long and narrow, never more
than about two miles in width, but well-watered and very fertile. The
principal streams are the Bostrenus (Nahr-el-Auly) in the north, just
inside the promontory of Jajunieh, the Nahr-Sanîk, south of Sidon, a
torrent dry in the summer-time,[114] and the Nahr-ez-Zaherany, two and
a half miles north of Sarepta, a river of moderate capacity. Fine
fountains also burst from the earth in the plain itself, as the
Ain-el-Kanterah and the Ain-el-Burâk,[115] between Sarepta and the
Zaherany river. Irrigation is easy and is largely used, with the result
that the fruits and vegetables of Saïda and its environs have the name
of being among the finest of the country.[116]
The plain of Berytus (Beyrout) is the most contracted of all the
Phoenician plains that are at all noticeable. It lies south, south-east,
and east of the city, intervening between the high dunes or sand-hills
which form the western portion of the Beyrout peninsula, and the skirts
of Lebanon, which here approach very near to the sea. The plain begins
at Wady Shuweifat on the south, about four miles from the town of
Beyrout, and extends northwards to the sea on the western side of
the Nahr Beyrout. The northern part of the plain is known as
Ard-el-Burâjineh. The plain is deficient in water,[117] yet is
cultivated in olives and mulberries, and contains the largest olive
grove in all Syria. A little beyond its western edge is the famous
pine forest[118] from which (according to some) Berytus derived its
name.[119]
The plain of Marathus is, next to Sharon, the most extensive in
Phoenicia. It stretches from Jebili (Gabala) on the north to Arka
towards the south, a distance of about sixty miles, and has a width
varying from two to ten miles. The rock crops out from it in places and
it is broken between Tortosa and Hammam by a line of low hills running
parallel with the shore.[120] The principal streams which water it are
the Nahr-el-Melk, or Badas, six miles south of Jebili, the Nahr Amrith,
a strong running brook which empties itself into the sea a few miles
south of Tortosa (Antaradus), the Nahr Kublé, which joins the Nahr
Amrith near its mouth, and the Eleutherus or Nahr-el-Kabir, which
reaches the sea a little north of Arka. Of these the Eleutherus is the
most important. “It is a considerable stream even in summer, and in
the rainy season it is a barrier to intercourse, caravans sometimes
remaining encamped on its banks for several weeks, unable to
cross.”[121] The soil of the plain is shallow, the rock lying always
near the surface; the streams are allowed to run to waste and form
marshes, which breed malaria; a scanty population scarcely attempts more
than the rudest and most inefficient cultivation; and the consequence is
that the tract at present is almost a desert. Nature, however, shows its
capabilities by covering it in the spring-time from end to end with a
“carpet of flowers.”[122]
From the edges of the plains, and sometimes from the very shore of the
sea, rise up chalky slopes or steep rounded hills, partly left to nature
and covered with trees and shrubs, partly at the present day cultivated
and studded with villages. The hilly region forms generally an
intermediate tract between the high mountains and the plains already
described; but, not unfrequently, it commences at the water’s edge, and
fills with its undulations the entire space, leaving not even a strip
of lowland. This is especially the case in the central region between
Berytus and Arka, opposite the highest portion of the Lebanon; and again
in the north between Cape Possidi and Jebili, opposite the more northern
part of Bargylus. The hilly region in these places is a broad tract
of alternate wooded heights and deep romantic valleys, with streams
murmuring amid their shades. Sometimes the hills are cultivated in
terraces, on which grow vines and olives, but more often they remain in
their pristine condition, clothed with masses of tangled underwood.
The mountain ranges, which belong in some measure to the geography of
Phoenicia, are four in number--Carmel, Casius, Bargylus, and Lebanon.
Carmel is a long hog-backed ridge, running in almost a straight line
from north-west to south-east, from the promontory which forms the
western protection of the bay of Acre to El-Ledjun, on the southern
verge of the great plain of Esdraelon, a distance of about twenty-two
miles. It is a limestone formation, and rises up abruptly from the side
of the bay of Acre, with flanks so steep and rugged that the traveller
must dismount in order to ascend them,[123] but slopes more gently
towards the south, where it is comparatively easy of access. The
greatest elevation which it attains is about Lat. 32º 4´, where it
reaches the height of rather more than 1,200 feet; from this it falls
gradually as it nears the shore, until at the convent, with which the
western extremity is crowned, the height above the sea is no more than
582 feet. In ancient times the whole mountain was thickly wooded,[124]
but at present, though it contains “rocky dells” where there are “thick
jungles of copse,”[125] and is covered in places with olive groves and
thickets of dwarf oak, yet its appearance is rather that of a park
than of a forest, long stretches of grass alternating with patches of
woodland and “shrubberies, thicker than any in Central Palestine,” while
the larger trees grow in clumps or singly, and there is nowhere, as in
Lebanon, any dense growth, or even any considerable grove, of forest
trees. But the beauty of the tract is conspicuous; and if Carmel means,
as some interpret, a “garden” rather than a “forest,” it may be held
to well justify its appellation. “The whole mountain-side,” says one
traveller,[126] “was dressed with blossoms and flowering shrubs and
fragrant herbs.” “There is not a flower,” says another,[127] “that I
have seen in Galilee, or on the plains along the coast, that I do not
find on Carmel, still the fragrant, lovely mountain that he was of old.”
The geological structure of Carmel is, in the main, what is called “the
Jura formation,” or “the upper oolite”--a soft white limestone, with
nodules and veins of flint. At the western extremity, where it overhangs
the Mediterranean, are found chalk, and tertiary breccia formed of
fragments of chalk and flint. On the north-east of the mountain, beyond
the Nahr-el-Mukattah, plutonic rocks appear, breaking through the
deposit strata, and forming the beginning of the basalt formation
which runs through the plain of Esdraelon to Tabor and the Sea of
Galilee.[128] Like most limestone formations, Carmel abounds in caves,
which are said to be more than 2,000 in number,[129] and are often of
great length and extremely tortuous.
Carmel, the great southern headland of Phoenicia, is balanced in a
certain sense by the extreme northern headland of Casius. Mount Casius
is, strictly speaking, the termination of a spur from Bargylus; but
it has so marked and peculiar a character that it seems entitled to
separate description. Rising up abruptly from the Mediterranean to the
height of 5,318 feet, it dominates the entire region in its vicinity,
and from the sea forms a landmark that is extraordinarily conspicuous.
Forests of fine trees clothe its flanks, but the lofty summit towers
high above them, a bare mass of rock, known at the present day as
Jebel-el-Akra, or “the Bald Mountain.” It is formed mainly of the same
cretaceous limestone as the other mountains of these parts, and like
them has a rounded summit; but rocks of igneous origin enter into
its geological structure; and in its vegetation it more resembles the
mountain ranges of Taurus and Amanus than those of southern Syria and
Palestine. On its north-eastern prolongation, which is washed by the
Orontes, lay the enchanting pleasure-ground of Daphné, bubbling with
fountains, and bright with flowering shrubs, where from a remote
antiquity the Syrians held frequent festival to their favourite
deity--the “Dea Syra”--the great nature goddess.
The elevated tract known to the ancients as Bargylus, and to modern
geographers as the Ansayrieh or Nasariyeh mountain-region, runs at right
angles to the spur terminating in the Mount Casius, and extends from the
Orontes near Antioch to the valley of the Eleutherus. This is a distance
of not less than a hundred miles. The range forms the western boundary
of the lower Coelesyrian valley, which abuts upon it towards the east,
while westward it looks down upon the region, partly hill, partly
lowland, which may be regarded as constituting “Northern Phoenicia.”
The axis of the range is almost due north and south, but with a slight
deflection towards the south-east. Bargylus is not a chain comparable
to Lebanon, but still it is a romantic and picturesque region. The lower
spurs towards the west are clothed with olive grounds and vineyards,
or covered with myrtles and rhododendrons; between them are broad open
valleys, productive of tobacco and corn. Higher up “the scenery becomes
wild and bold; hill rises to mountain; soft springing green corn gives
place to sterner crag, smooth plain to precipitous heights;”[130] and
if in the more elevated region the majesty of the cedar is wanting,
yet forests of fir and pine abound, and creep up the mountain-side, in
places almost to the summit, while here and there bare masses of rock
protrude themselves, and crag and cliff rise into the clouds that hang
about the highest summits. Water abounds throughout the region, which
is the parent of numerous streams, as the northern Nahr-el-Kebir, which
flows into the sea by Latakia, the Nahr-el-Melk, the Nahr Amrith, the
Nahr Kublé, the Nahr-el-Abrath, and many others. From the conformation
of the land they have of necessity short courses; but each and all of
them spread along their banks a rich verdure and an uncommon fertility.
But the _great_ range of Phoenicia, its glory and its boast is
Lebanon. Lebanon, the “White Mountain”[131]--“the Mont Blanc
of Palestine”[132]--now known as “the Old White-headed Man”
(Jebel-esh-Sheikh), or “the Mountain of Ice” (Jebel-el-Tilj), was to
Phoenicia at once its protection, the source of its greatness, and its
crowning beauty. Extended in a continuous line for a distance of above
a hundred miles, with an average elevation of from 6,000 to 8,000 feet,
and steepest on its eastern side, it formed a wall against which the
waves of eastern invasion naturally broke--a bulwark which seemed to say
to them, “Thus far shall ye go, and no further.” The flood of conquest
swept along its eastern flank, down the broad vale of the Buka’a, and
then over the hills of Galilee; but its frowning precipices and its
lofty crest deterred or baffled the invader, and the smiling region
between its summit and the Mediterranean was, in the early times at any
rate, but rarely traversed by a hostile army. This western region it
was which held those inexhaustible stores of forest trees that supplied
Phoenicia with her war ships and her immense commercial navy; here were
the most productive valleys, the vineyards, and the olive grounds, and
here too were the streams and rills, the dashing cascades, the lovely
dells, and the deep gorges which gave her the palm over all the
surrounding countries for variety of picturesque scenery.
The geology of the Lebanon is exceedingly complicated. “While the
bulk of the mountain, and all the higher ranges, are without exception
limestone of the early cretaceous period, the valleys and gorges
are filled with formations of every possible variety, sedimentary,
metamorphic, and igneous. Down many of them run long streams of trap
or basalt; occasionally there are dykes of porphyry and greenstone, and
then patches of sandstone, before the limestone and flint recur.”[133]
Some slopes are composed entirely of soft sandstone; many patches are of
a hard metallic-sounding trap or porphyry; but the predominant formation
is a greasy or powdery limestone, bare often, but sometimes clothed with
a soft herbage, or with a thick tangle of shrubs, or with lofty forest
trees. The ridge of the mountain is everywhere naked limestone rock,
except in the comparatively few places which attain the highest
elevation, where it is coated or streaked with snow. Two summits are
especially remarkable, that of Jebel Sunnin towards the south, which is
a conspicuous object from Beyrout,[134] and is estimated to exceed the
height of 9,000 feet,[135] and that of Jebel Mukhmel towards the north,
which has been carefully measured and found to fall a very little short
of 10,200 feet.[136] The latter, which forms a sort of amphitheatre,
circles round and impends over a deep hollow or basin, opening out
towards the west, in which rise the chief sources that go to form the
romantic stream of the Kadisha. The sides of the basin are bare and
rocky, fringed here and there with the rough knolls which mark the
deposits of ancient glaciers, the “moraines” of the Lebanon. In this
basin stand “the Cedars.” It is not indeed true, as was for a long time
supposed, that the cedar grove of Jebel Mukhmel is the sole remnant
of that primeval cedar-forest which was anciently the glory of the
mountain. Cedars exist on Lebanon in six other places at least, if not
in more. Near Tannurin, on one of the feeders of the Duweir, a wild
gorge is clothed from top to bottom with a forest of trees, untouched
by the axe, the haunt of the panther and the bear, which on examination
have been found to be all cedars, some of a large size, from fifteen to
eighteen feet in girth. They grow in clusters, or scattered singly,
in every variety of situation, some clinging to the steep slopes,
or gnarled and twisted on the bare hilltops, others sheltered in the
recesses of the dell. There are also cedar-groves at B’sherrah; at El
Hadith; near Dûma, five hours south-west of El Hadith; in one of
the glens north of Deir-el-Kamar, at Etnub, and probably in other
places.[137] But still “the Cedars” of Jebel Mukhmel are entitled to
pre-eminence over all the rest, both as out-numbering any other cluster,
and still more as exceeding all the rest in size and apparent antiquity.
Some of the patriarchs are of enormous girth; even the younger ones have
a circumference of eighteen feet; and the height is such that the birds
which dwell among the upper branches are beyond the range of an ordinary
fowling-piece.
But it is through the contrasts which it presents that Lebanon has its
extraordinary power of attracting and delighting the traveller. Below
the upper line of bare and worn rock, streaked in places with snow, and
seamed with torrent courses, a region is entered upon where the freshest
and softest mountain herbage, the greenest foliage, and the most
brilliant flowers alternate with deep dells, tremendous gorges, rocky
ravines, and precipices a thousand feet high. Scarcely has the voyager
descended from the upper region of naked and rounded rock, when he
comes upon “a tremendous chasm--the bare amphitheatre of the upper basin
contracts into a valley of about 2,000 feet deep, rent at its bottom
into a cleft a thousand feet deeper still, down which dashes a river,
buried between these stupendous walls of rock. All above the chasm is
terraced as far as the eye can reach with indefatigable industry. Tiny
streamlets bound and leap from terrace to terrace, fertilising them as
they rush to join the torrent in the abyss. Some of the waterfalls are
of great height and of considerable volume. From one spot may be counted
no less than seven of these cascades, now dashing in white spray over a
cliff, now lost under the shade of trees, soon to reappear over the
next shelving rock.”[138] Or, to quote from another writer,[139]--“The
descent from the summit is gradual, but is everywhere broken by
precipices and towering rocks, which time and the elements have
chiselled into strange fantastic shapes. Ravines of singular wildness
and grandeur furrow the whole mountain-side, looking in many places like
huge rents. Here and there, too, bold promontories shoot out, and
dip perpendicularly into the bosom of the Mediterranean. The ragged
limestone banks are scantily clothed with the evergreen oak, and
the sandstone with pines; while every available spot is carefully
cultivated. The cultivation is wonderful, and shows what all Syria might
be of under a good government. Miniature fields of grain are often seen
where one would suppose that the eagles alone, which hover round them,
could have planted the seed. Fig-trees cling to the naked rock; vines
are trained along narrow ledges; long ranges of mulberries on terraces
like steps of stairs cover the more gentle declivities; and dense groves
of olives fill up the bottoms of the glens. Hundreds of villages are
seen, here built amid labyrinths of rock, there clinging like swallows’
nests to the sides of cliffs, while convents, no less numerous, are
perched on the top of every peak. When viewed from the sea on a morning
in early spring, Lebanon presents a picture which once seen is never
forgotten; but deeper still is the impression left on the mind, when one
looks down over its terraced slopes clothed in their gorgeous foliage,
and through the vistas of its magnificent glens, on the broad and bright
Mediterranean.”
The eastern flank of the mountain falls very far short of the western
both in area and in beauty. It is a comparatively narrow region, and
presents none of the striking features of gorge, ravine, deep dell, and
dashing stream which diversify the side that looks westward. The steep
slopes are generally bare, the lower portion only being scantily clothed
with deciduous oak, for the most part stunted, and with low scrub of
juniper and barberry.[140] Towards the north there is an outer barrier,
parallel with the main chain, on which follows a tolerably flat and
rather bare plain, well watered, and with soft turf in many parts, which
gently slopes to the foot of the main ascent, a wall of rock generally
half covered with snow, up which winds the rough track whereby
travellers reach the summit. Rills of water are not wanting; flowers
bloom to the very edge of the snow, and the walnut-tree flourishes in
sheltered places to within two or three thousand feet of the summit; but
the general character of the tract is bare and bleak; the villages are
few; and the terraced cultivation, which adds so much to the beauty
of the western side, is wanting. In the southern half of the range the
descent is abrupt from the crest of the mountain into the Buka’a, or
valley of the Litany, and the aspect of the mountain-side is one of
“unrelieved bareness.”[141]
There is, however, one beauty at one point on this side of the Lebanon
range which is absent from the more favoured western region. On the
ascent from Baalbek to the Cedars the traveller comes upon Lake Lemone,
a beautiful mountain tarn, without any apparent exit, the only sheet
of water in the Lebanon. Lake Lemone is of a long oval shape, about
two miles from one end to the other, and is fed by a stream entering at
either extremity, that from the north, which comes down from the village
of Ainât, being the more important. As the water which comes into
the lake cannot be discharged by evaporation, we must suppose some
underground outlet,[142] by which it is conveyed, through the limestone,
into the Litany.
The eastern side of Lebanon drains entirely into this river, which is
the only stream whereto it gives birth. The Litany is the principal
of all the Phoenician rivers, for the Orontes must be counted not to
Phoenicia but to Syria. It rises from a small pool or lake near Tel
Hushben,[143] about six miles to the south-west of the Baalbek ruins.
Springing from this source, which belongs to Antilibanus rather than
to Lebanon, the Litany shortly receives a large accession to its waters
from the opposite side of the valley, and thus augmented flows along the
lower Buka’a in a direction which is generally a little west of south,
receiving on either side a number of streams and rills from both
mountains, and giving out in its turn numerous canals for irrigation.
As the river descends with numerous windings, but still with the same
general course, the valley of the Buka’a contracts more and more, till
finally it terminates in a gorge of a most extraordinary character.
Nothing in the conformation of the strata, or in the lie of ground,
indicates the coming marvel[144]--the roots of Lebanon and Hermon appear
to intermix--and the further progress of the river seems to be barred by
a rocky ridge stretching across the valley from east to west, when lo!
suddenly, the ridge is cut, as if by a knife, and a deep and narrow
chasm opens in it, down which the stream plunges in a cleft 200 feet
deep, and so narrow that in one place it is actually bridged over by
masses of rock which have fallen from the cliffs above.[145] In the
gully below fig-trees and planes, besides many shrubs, find a footing,
and the moist walls of rock on either side are hung with ferns of
various kinds, among which is conspicuous the delicate and graceful
maidenhair. Further down the chasm deepens, first to 1,000 and then
to 1,500 feet, “the torrent roars in the gorge, milk-white and swollen
often with the melting snow, overhung with semi-tropical oleanders,
fig-trees, and oriental planes, while the upper cliffs are clad
with northern vegetation, two zones of climate thus being visible at
once.”[146] Where the gorge is the deepest, opposite the Castle of
Belfort (the modern Kulat-esh-Shukif), the river suddenly makes a turn
at right angles, altering its course from nearly due south to nearly
due west, and cuts through the remaining roots of Lebanon, still at
the bottom of a tremendous fissure, and still raging and chafing for
a distance of fifteen miles, until at length it debouches on the coast
plain, and meanders slowly through meadows to the sea,[147] which it
enters about five miles to the north of Tyre. The course of the Litany
may be roughly estimated at from seventy to seventy-five miles.
The other streams to which Lebanon gives birth flow either from its
northern or its western flank. From the northern flank flows one stream
only, the Nahr-el-Kebir or Eleutherus. The course of this stream is
short, not much exceeding thirty miles. It rises from several sources at
the edge of the Coelesyrian valley, and, receiving affluents from either
side, flows westward between Bargylus and Lebanon to the Mediterranean,
which it enters between Orthosia (Artousi) and Marathus (Amrith) with a
stream, the volume of which is even in the summer-time considerable. In
the rainy season it constitutes an important impediment to intercourse,
since it frequently sweeps away any bridge which may be thrown across
it, and is itself unfordable. Caravans sometimes remain encamped upon
its banks for weeks, waiting until the swell has subsided and crossing
is no longer dangerous.[148]
From the western flank of Lebanon flow above a hundred streams of
various dimensions, whereof the most important are the Nahr-el-Berid
or river of Orthosia, the Kadisha or river of Tripolis, the Ibrahim
or Adonis, the Nahr-el-Kelb or Lycus, the Damour or Tamyras, the Auly
(Aouleh) or Bostrenus, and the Zaherany, of which the ancient name is
unknown to us. The Nahr-el-Berid drains the north-western angle of the
mountain chain, and is formed of two main branches, one coming down from
the higher portion of the range, about Lat. 34º 20´, and flowing to
the north-west, while the other descends from a region of much less
elevation, about Lat. 34º 30´, and runs a little south of west to the
point of junction. The united stream then forces its way down a gorge
in a north-west direction, and enters the sea at Artousi, probably
the ancient Orthosia.[149] The length of the river from its remotest
fountain to its mouth is about twenty miles.
The Kadisha or “Holy River” has its source in the deep basin already
described, round which rise in a semicircle the loftiest peaks of the
range, and on the edge of which stand “the Cedars.” Fed by the perpetual
snows, it shortly becomes a considerable stream, and flows nearly due
west down a beautiful valley, where the terraced slopes are covered with
vineyards and mulberry groves, and every little dell, every nook and
corner among the jagged rocks, every ledge and cranny on precipice-side,
which the foot of man can reach, or on which a basket of earth can be
deposited, is occupied with patch of corn or fruit-tree.[150] Lower down
near Canobin the valley contracts into a sublime chasm, its rocky walls
rising perpendicularly a thousand feet on either side, and in places not
leaving room for even a footpath beside the stream that flows along
the bottom.[151] The water of the Kadisha is “pure, fresh, cool, and
limpid,”[152] and makes a paradise along its entire course. Below
Canobin the stream sweeps round in a semicircle towards the north, and
still running in a picturesque glen, draws near to Tripolis, where it
bends towards the north-west, and enters the sea after passing
through the town. Its course, including main windings, measures about
twenty-five miles.
The Ibrahim, or Adonis, has its source near Afka (Apheca) in Lat. 34º 4´
nearly. It bursts from a cave at the foot of a tremendous cliff, and its
foaming waters rush down into a wild chasm.[153] Its flow is at first
towards the north-west, but after receiving a small tributary from
the north-east, it shapes its course nearly westward, and pursues
this direction, with only slight bends to the north and south, for the
distance of about fifteen miles to the sea. After heavy rain in Lebanon,
its waters, which are generally clear and limpid, become tinged with the
earth which the swollen torrent detaches from the mountain-side,[154]
and Adonis thus “runs purple to the sea”--not however once a year only,
but many times. It enters the Mediterranean about four miles south of
Byblus (Jebeil) and six north of Djouni.
The Lycus or Nahr-el-Kelb (“Dog River”) flows from the northern and
western flanks of Jebel Sunnin. It is formed by the confluence of three
main streams. One of these rises near Afka, and runs to the south of
west, past the castle and temples of Fakra, to its junction with the
second stream, which is formed of several rivulets flowing from the
northern flank of Sunnin. Near Bufkeiya the river constituted by the
union of these two branches is joined by a third stream flowing from the
western flank of Sunnin with a westerly course, and from this point the
Lycus pursues its way in the same general direction down a magnificent
gorge to the Mediterranean. Both banks are lofty, but especially that to
the south, where one of Lebanon’s great roots strikes out far, and dips,
a rocky precipice, into the bosom of the deep.[155] Low in the depths of
the gorge the mad torrent dashes over its rocky bed in sheets of foam,
its banks fringed with oleander, which it bathes with its spray. Above
rise jagged precipices of white limestone, crowned far overhead by many
a convent and village.[156] The course of the Nahr-el-Kelbis about equal
to that of the Adonis.
The Damour or Tamyras drains the western flank of Lebanon to the south
of Jebel Sunnin (about Lat. 33º 45´), the districts known as Menassif
and Jourd Arkoub, about Barouk and Deir-el-Kamar. It collects the waters
from an area of about 110 square miles, and carries them to the sea in
a course which is a little north of west, reaching it half-way between
Khan Khulda (Heldua) and Nebbi Younas. The scenery along its banks is
tame compared with that of the more northern rivers.
The Nahr-el-Auly or Bostrenus rises from a source to the north-east of
Barouk, and flows in a nearly straight course to the south-west for a
distance of nearly thirty-five miles, when it is joined by a stream
from Jezzin, which flows into it from the south-east. On receiving this
stream, the Auly turns almost at a right angle, and flows to the west
down the fine alluvial track called Merj Bisry, passing from this point
through comparatively low ground, and between swelling hills, until it
reaches the sea two miles to the north of Sidon. Its entire course is
not less than sixty miles.
The Zaherany repeats on a smaller scale the course of the Bostrenus. It
rises near Jerjû’a from the western flank of Jebel Rihan, the southern
extremity of the Lebanon range, and flows at first to the south-west.
The source is “a fine large fountain bursting forth with violence, and
with water enough for a mill race.”[157] From this the river flows in
a deep valley, brawling and foaming along its course, through tracts of
green grass shaded by black walnut-trees for a distance of about five
miles, after which, just opposite Jerjû’a, it breaks through one of the
spurs from Rihan by a magnificent chasm. The gorge is one “than which
there are few deeper or more savage in Lebanon. The mountains on each
side rise up almost precipitously to the height of two or three thousand
feet above the stream, that on the northern bank being considerably the
higher. The steep sides of the southern mountain are dotted with shrub,
oak, and other dwarf trees.”[158] The river descends in its chasm still
in a south-west direction until, just opposite Arab Salim, it “turns
round the precipitous corner or bastion of the southern Rihan into a
straight valley,” and proceeds to run due south for a short distance.
Meeting, however, a slight swell of ground, which blocks what would seem
to have been its natural course, the river “suddenly turns west,” and
breaking through a low ridge by a narrow ravine, pursues its way by
a course a little north of west to the Mediterranean, which it enters
about midway between Sidon and Sarepta.[159] The length of the stream,
including main windings, is probably not more than thirty-five miles.
We have spoken of the numerous promontories, terminations of spurs from
the mountains, which break the low coast-line into fragments, and go
down precipitously into the sea. Of these there are two between Tyre and
Acre, one known as the Ras-el-Abiad or “White Headland,” and the
other as the Ras-en-Nakura. The former is a cliff of snow-white chalk
interspersed with black flints, and rises perpendicularly from the sea
to the height of three hundred feet.[160] The road, which in some places
impends over the water, has been cut with great labour through the rock,
and is said by tradition to have been the work of Alexander the Great.
Previously, both here and at the Ras-en-Nakura, the ascent was by steps,
and the passes were known as the Climaces Tyriorum, or “Staircases of
the Tyrians.” Another similar precipice guards the mouth of the Lycus on
its south side and has been engineered with considerable skill, first by
the Egyptians and then by the Romans.[161] North of this, at Djouni, the
coast road “traverses another pass, where the mountain, descending to
the water, has been cut to admit it.”[162] Still further north, between
Byblus and Tripolis, the bold promontory known to the ancients as
Theu-prosopon, and now called the Ras-esh-Shakkah, is still unconquered,
and the road has to quit the shore and make its way over the spur by
a “wearisome ascent”[163] at some distance inland. Again, “beyond the
Tamyras the hills press closely on the sea,”[164] and there is “a rocky
and difficult pass, along which the path is cut for some distance in the
rock.”[165]
The effect of this conformation of the
|
* *
_Hast thou no favors to ask of Me?_ Give Me, if thou wilt, a list of all
thy desires, all the wants of thy soul. Tell Me, simply, of all thy pride,
sensuality, self-love, sloth; and ask for My help in thy struggles to
overcome them.
Poor child! be not abashed; many that had the same faults to contend
against are now saints in heaven.
They cried to Me for help, and by degrees they conquered.
Do not hesitate to ask for temporal blessings,--health, intellect, success.
I can bestow them, and never fail to do so, where they tend to make the
soul more holy. What wouldst thou this day, My child?... If thou didst but
know how I long to bless thee!...
* * * * *
_Hast thou no interests which occupy thy mind?_
Tell Me of them all.... Of thy vocation. What dost thou think? What dost
thou desire? Wouldst thou give pleasure to thy mother, thy family, those
in authority over thee? what wouldst thou do for them?
And for Me hast thou no ardor? Dost thou not desire to do some good to the
souls of those thou lovest, but who are forgetful of Me?
Tell Me of one in whom thou hast interest; the motive that actuates; the
means thou wouldst employ.
Lay before Me thy failures, and _I_ will teach thee the cause.
Whom wouldst thou have to help thee? The hearts of all are in My keeping,
and _I_ lead them gently wheresoever _I_ will. Rest assured, all who are
needful to thee, _I_ will place around thee.
_Oh! My child, tell Me of all thy weariness_: who has grieved thee?
treated thee with contempt? wounded thy self-love?
Tell Me all, and thou wilt end by saying, all is forgiven, all forgotten
... and _I_, surely _I_ will bless thee!...
_Art thou fearful of the future?_ Is there in thy heart that vague dread
that thou canst not define, but which nevertheless torments thee?
Trust in My Providence.... _I_ am present with thee, _I_ know all, and _I_
will never leave thee nor forsake thee.
Are there around thee those seemingly less devout than formerly, whose
coldness or indifference have estranged thee from them without real
cause?...
Pray for them. _I_ can draw them back to thee if they are necessary to the
sanctification of thy soul.
_What are the joys of which thou hast to tell Me?_
Let Me share thy pleasures; tell Me of all that has occurred since
yesterday to comfort thee, please thee, to give thee joy!
That fear suddenly dispelled, that unexpected success, that token of
affection, the trial that proved thee stronger than thou thoughtest....
My child, _I_ sent it all; why not show some gratitude, and simply thank
thy LORD?
Gratitude draws down a blessing, and the Great Benefactor likes His
children to remind Him of His Goodness.
_Hast thou no promises to make to Me?_ I can read thy heart; thou knowest
it; thou mayst deceive man, but thou canst never deceive God. Be sincere.
_Art thou resolved to avoid all occasions of sin?_ To renounce that which
tempts thee; never again to open the book that excites thine imagination?
Not to bestow thine affection on one who is not devout, and whose presence
steals the peace from thy soul?
Wilt thou go now and be loving and forbearing towards one who has vexed
thee?...
Good, My child!... Go, then, return to thy daily toil; be silent, humble,
resigned, charitable; then return to Me with a heart yet more loving and
devoted, and _I_ shall have for thee fresh blessings.
XXIII.
"There will soon be none left," said S. Francis de Sales, "who will love
poor sinners but GOD and myself."
Oh! why do we fail in love towards those poor sinful ones! Are they not
very much to be pitied?
When they are prosperous, pray for them; but when misfortune comes (and
trouble weighs heavily upon the wicked), death depriving them of the only
beings they did not hate, afflicting them with a loathsome disease,
delivering them up to scorn and misery--oh! then, when all this comes upon
them, love them freely. It is by affection alone that we can reach the
worst characters, and the souls that are steeped in sin.
How many have died impenitent, who, if only some one had cared for them
and shown them love, might have become at last saints in heaven! Oh! the
sins that are committed, oh! the souls we suffer to wander from GOD, and
all because we are so wanting in love towards them.
XXIV.
Let us always be on our guard against _Prejudice_.
Some women have a way (of which they themselves are unconscious) of
turning the cold shoulder to some one member of their family.
For what reason? They cannot say, simply because the cause is never very
clearly defined and in this lies all the mischief.
Perhaps an air of indifference they may have fancied, and which arose
merely from fatigue, or trouble that could not be confided to them.
A word misinterpreted, because heard at a time when they felt
discontented, and their morbid imagination made everything appear in a
false light.
Some scandal to which they ought never to have listened, or, at least,
should have endeavored to fathom, going direct to the person concerned and
seeking an explanation.
And behold the result: they in their turn become cold, reserved, and
suspicious, misinterpreting the slightest gesture... in a few days arises
a coldness, from the feeling they are no longer beloved; then follow
contempt and mistrust, finally, a hatred that gnaws and rends the very
heart.
It all springs up imperceptibly, till at last the family life is one of
bitterness and misery.
They console, or better still, excuse themselves, with the thought of
their suffering, never considering how much pain they give to others, nor
where the fault lies.
XXV.
Let it rest! Ah! how many hearts on the brink of anxiety and disquietude
by this simple sentence have been made calm and happy!
Some proceeding has wounded us by its want of tact; _let it rest_; no one
will think of it again.
A harsh or unjust sentence irritates us; _let it rest_; whoever may have
given vent to it will be pleased to see it is forgotten.
A painful scandal is about to estrange us from an old friend; _let it
rest_, and thus preserve our charity and peace of mind.
A suspicious look is on the point of cooling our affection; _let it rest_,
and our look of trust will restore confidence....
Fancy! we who are so careful to remove the briers from our pathway for
fear they should wound, yet take pleasure in collecting and piercing our
hearts with the thorns that meet us in our daily intercourse with one
another. How childish and unreasonable we are!
XXVI.
Of all the means placed by Providence within our reach, whereby we may
lead souls to Him, there is one more blessed than all others,--intercessory
prayer.
* * * * *
How often, in the presence of one deeply loved, but, alas! estranged from
GOD, the heart of mother or wife has felt a sudden impulse to say an
earnest word, propose an act of devotion, to paint in glowing colors the
blessings of faith and the happiness of virtue... and she has stopped,
deterred by an irresistible fear of how the words may be received; and she
says to herself, poor woman, "To-morrow I shall be braver."
* * * * *
Poor mother! poor wife! go and tell to your Heavenly FATHER all you would,
but _dare_ not, say to the loved one who gives you so much pain.
Lay that sin-sick soul before the LORD, as long ago they laid the
paralytic man who could not, or perhaps _would_ not, be led to Him.
Plead for him with the long-suffering SAVIOUR, as you would plead with an
earthly master, upon whom depended all his future welfare, and say to Him
simply, "LORD, have patience with him yet a little longer."
Tell GOD of all your anxiety, your discouragements, the means employed for
success.
Ask Him to teach you what to say and how to act. One sentence learned of
GOD in prayer will do more for the conversion of a soul than all our poor
human endeavors. _That_ sentence will escape our lips involuntarily. We
may not remember that we have said it, but it will sink deep into the
heart, making a lasting impression, and silently fulfilling its mission.
* * * * *
You are, perhaps, surprised, after many years, to see such poor results.
Ah! how little can you judge!...
Do you know what you have gained? In the first place, time--often a
physical impossibility to sin, which you may attribute to chance, but
which was, in reality, the work of Providence; and is it nothing, one sin
the less, in the life of an immortal soul?... Then a vague uneasiness
which will soon allow of no rest, a confidence which may enable you to
sympathize, more liberty left you for the exercise of religious acts; you
no longer see the contemptuous smile at your acts of devotion. Is all this
_nothing_?
Ah! if, while on your knees praying for the one you would have reconciled
to GOD, you could but see what is passing in his soul,--the wrestlings, the
remorse he strives vainly to stifle; if you could see the work of the Holy
Spirit in the heart, gently but firmly triumphing over the will, how
earnestly, how incessantly, would you continue to pray!
Only have patience to wait--perseverance not to grow weary.
It is the want of patience that often makes us exacting towards those we
desire to help.
More haste, less speed, is an old saying; the more we are exacting, the
less likely are we to succeed.
Men like to act freely, and to have the credit of their actions.
It is because we have not learned to persevere that the work seems never
to progress.
Courage, then! the ground may seem too dry for cultivation, but each
prayer will be as a drop of water; the marble may be very hard, but each
prayer is like the hammer's stroke that wears away its roughness.
XXVII.
The sweet peace of GOD bears the outward token of resignation.
When the Holy Spirit dwells within us everything seems bright.
Everything may not be exactly as we would wish it, but we accept all with
a good grace.... For instance, some change in our household or mode of
living upsets us. If GOD is with us, He will whisper, "Yield cheerfully
thy will; in a little while all will be forgotten."
Some command or employment wounds our pride; if GOD is with us, He will
say to us, "Be submissive, and _I_ will come to thine aid."
We may dislike a certain neighborhood; the society there may be repulsive
to us, and we are about to become morbid: GOD will tell us to continue
gracious and smiling, for He will recompense the little annoyances we may
experience. If you would discern in whom GOD'S Spirit dwells, watch that
person, and notice whether you ever hear him murmur.
XXVIII.
I WANT TO BE HOLY
Heavenly Father, aid Thy child, who longs to become holy!
But then, I must be patient under humiliation, let myself be forgotten,
and be even pleased at feeling myself set aside.
_Never mind! I am resolved; I wish to be holy!_
But I must never excuse myself, never be impatient, never out of temper.
_Never mind! I am resolved; I wish to be holy!_
Then I must continually be doing violence to my feelings,--submitting my
will always to that of my superiors, never contentious, never sulky,
finishing every work begun, in spite of dislike or ennui.
_Never mind! I am resolved; I wish to be holy!_
But then, I must be always charitable towards all around me; loving them,
helping them to the utmost of my power, although it may cause me trouble.
_Never mind! I am resolved; I wish to be holy!_
But I must constantly strive against the cowardice, sloth, and pride of my
nature, renouncing the world, the vanity that pleases, the sensuality that
rejoices me, the antipathy that makes me avoid those I do not like.
_Never mind! I am resolved; I still wish to be holy!_
Then, I shall have to experience long hours of weariness, sadness, and
discontent. I shall often feel lonely and discouraged.
_Never mind! I am resolved; I wish to be holy!_ for then I shall have Thee
always with me, ever near me. LORD, help me, for I want to be holy!
* * * * *
HOW TO BECOME HOLY
Oh! it is quite easy, if I fulfil every duty to the best of my ability;
and many who had no more to do than I have become saints.
One day is the same as another. Prayer, worldly business, calls to be
devout, charitable, and faithful,--these are the duties that each hour
brings in its turn; and if I am faithful in their fulfilment, GOD will be
always ready to help me, and then what signifies a little ennui, pain, or
misfortune?
* * * * *
THE SANCTIFICATION OF DAILY DUTIES
I will perform them as in GOD'S sight, conscious that He is present, and
smiling on my efforts.
I will perform each as if I had but one to accomplish, striving to render
it as perfect as possible.
I will fulfil each duty as if upon that one alone depended my salvation.
* * * * *
MOTIVES FOR SANCTIFYING MY ACTIONS
GOD expects me to honor Him by that action.
GOD has attached a special blessing to that action, and awaits its
fulfilment to bestow it.
GOD notes each action; and of them all hereafter I must give an account.
GOD will see that I love Him, if I strive to fulfil every duty, in spite
of weariness and trouble.
I honor GOD by this action; and I, poor, weak, sinful child, am allowed to
glorify Him, in place of those who blaspheme and rebel against the Divine
will.
XXIX.
They say there is nothing which communicates itself so quickly amongst the
members of a family as an expression of coldness or discontent on the face
of one of its members. It is like the frost that chills us. This is not
altogether true; there is something which is communicated with equal
rapidity and greater force--I mean the smiling face, the beaming
countenance, the happy heart.
XXX.
LITTLE WORRIES
There is not a day in our lives that we are not distressed by some one of
those numberless little worries that meet us at every step, and which are
inevitable.
The wound made may not be deep; but the constant pricks, each day renewed,
imbitter the character, destroy peace, create anxiety, and make the family
life, that otherwise would be so sweet and peaceful, almost unendurable.
Life is full of these little miseries. Each hour brings with it its own
trouble.
Here are some of the little worries: An impatient word escapes our lips in
the presence of some one in whose estimation we would stand well.
A servant does his work badly, fidgets us by his slowness, irritates us by
his thoughtlessness, and his awkward blunders make us blush.
A giddy child in its clumsiness breaks something of value, or that we
treasure on account of its associations; we are charged with a message of
importance, and our forgetfulness makes us appear uncourteous, perhaps
ungrateful; some one we live with is constantly finding fault, nothing
pleases them. If, when night comes, we find we have not experienced these
little worries, then we ought to be grateful to GOD. Each of these, and
many more, are liable to befall us every day of our life.
* * * * *
HOW TO BEAR LITTLE WORRIES
In the first place, expect them. Make them the subject of our morning
prayers, and say to ourselves, Here is my daily cross, do I accept
willingly? Surely! for it is GOD Who sends it. After all... these little
troubles, looked at calmly, what are they? Ah, if there were never any
worse!
Secondly, we must be prepared for them. You know, if you wish to break the
force of a blow falling on you, you naturally bend the body; so let us act
with regard to our souls.
Accustom yourself, wrote a pious author, to stoop with sweet
condescension, not only to exigencies (that is your duty), but to the
simple wishes of those who surround you--the accidents which may intervene;
you will find yourself seldom, if ever, crushed.
To _bend_ is better than to _bear_; to bear is often a little hard; to
bend implies a certain external sweetness that yields all constraint,
sacrificing the wishes, even in holy things, when they tend to cause
disagreements in the family circle.
Submission often implies an entire resignation to all that GOD permits.
The soul that endures feels the weight of its trouble. The soul that
yields scarcely perceives it.
Blessed are those docile ones; they are those whom GOD selects to work for
Him.
XXXI.
TO OBTAIN PEACE
Approach the Blessed Sacrament, O restless soul, in search of peace, and,
humbly kneeling there, pour forth bravely, slowly, and with earnest
desire, the following prayer:--
O JESUS, gentle and humble of heart, hear me!
From the desire of being esteemed,
From the desire of being loved,
From the desire to be sought,
Deliver me, JESUS.
From the desire to be mourned,
From the desire of praise,
From the desire of preference,
From the desire of influence,
From the desire of approval,
From the desire of authority,
From the fear of humiliation,
From the fear of being despised,
From the fear of repulse,
From the fear of calumny,
From the fear of oblivion,
From the fear of ridicule,
From the fear of injury,
From the fear of suspicion,
Deliver me, JESUS.
That others may be loved more than myself. JESUS grant this desire.
That others may be more highly esteemed.
That others may grow and increase in honor, and I decrease. JESUS, grant
me to desire it.
That others may be employed, and I set aside. JESUS, grant me to desire
this.
That others may attract the praise, and myself be forgotten.
That others may be preferred in all.
Grant me the utmost holiness of which I am capable, then let others be
holier than myself. JESUS, grant me to desire it!
Oh, if GOD hearkens,--and hearken He surely will, if your prayer has been
sincere,--what joy in your heart, what peace on your countenance, what
sweetness will pervade your whole life!
More than half one's troubles arise from an exaggerated idea of one's own
importance, and the efforts we make to increase our position in the world.
Lacordaire says, that the sweetest thing on earth is to be forgotten by
all, with the exception of those who love us. All else brings more trouble
than joy; and as soon as we have completed our task here, and fulfilled
our mission, the best thing for us to do is to disappear altogether.
* * * * *
Let us each cultivate carefully and joyously the portion of soil
Providence has committed to our care. Let us never be hindered or
distracted by ambitious thoughts, that we could do better, or a false zeal
tempting us to forsake our daily task with the vain desire to surpass our
neighbors.... Let this one thought occupy our minds. To do _well_ what is
given us to do, for this is all that GOD requires at our hands. It may be
summed up in four words,--simply, zealously, cheerfully, completely.
* * * * *
Then if we _are_ slighted, misunderstood, maligned, or persecuted, what
does it matter? These injuries will pass away; but the peace and love of
GOD will remain with us forever, the reward of our faith and patience. The
love of GOD! Who can describe all the joy, strength, and consolation it
reveals?
Never has human love, in its brightest dreams, been able to form any idea
of all the sweetness the love of GOD imparts to the soul, and which is
brought still nearer to us in the Blessed Sacrament.
I can well understand the words of a loving soul: "With heaven so near,
and daily communion with our GOD, how can we ever repine!"
XXXII.
AFTER HOLY COMMUNION
OUR FATHER WHICH ART IN HEAVEN
O JESUS! it is Thou Who biddest me say, FATHER! _My Father!_ Oh how that
Name rejoices my heart! _My Father!_ I can no longer feel alone; and
whatever may happen to me this day, I feel I am protected, comforted,
beloved.
JESUS! let me dwell on the sweetness of those words: _My Father!_ I need
not lift my eyes to heaven, Thou art within me, and where Thou dwellest
heaven must be.
Yes! heaven is within me! heaven with all its peace and love; and if I
keep free from guile this day, my day will be one of heavenly joy, and in
addition, the privilege of suffering for Thee.
HALLOWED BE THY NAME
To hallow Thy Name, O LORD, is to pronounce it with reverence and awe.
To-day I will pray more fervently, try to realize Thy Presence, Thy
Goodness, Thy Love; and my heart shall be a sanctuary into which nothing
shall penetrate that could be displeasing unto Thee.
To _hallow Thy Name_ is to call upon it fervently, to have it constantly
upon my lips; above all, before taking an important step, when there are
difficulties to be overcome, I will softly whisper the Invocation, which
is the secret of all holy living! "JESUS, meek and humble of heart, have
pity upon me."
THY KINGDOM COME
O JESUS, Thy kingdom is within my heart, reign there in all Thy
sovereignty and power, reign there absolutely!
My King! what dost Thou require of me to-day? Thy commandments, my rule of
life, my daily duties,--these are Thy commands that I will promise to obey;
more than that, I will regard all in authority over me as Thine
Ambassadors, speaking to me in Thy Name. What matters the tone or the
harshness of the order?
What does it signify if some unexpected command upsets all my previous
plans? It is Thy Voice I hear, Thou LORD, Whom I will obey always, and in
all things.
Thy kingdom is also in the hearts of others; and there would I see Thee
reigning. Then to whom can I speak of Thee this day? What counsels can I
give? What moments may I seize, in which, without wounding the feelings,
or parading my zeal, I may be allowed to speak a few words of piety? LORD,
let me have the opportunity to help another to love Thee!
THY WILL BE DONE IN EARTH, AS IT IS IN HEAVEN
Yes, yes! Thy Will be done! Thy sweet all-perfect Will!
What wilt Thou send me to-day?
Humiliation? Provocation? Sufferings? A fresh rending of the heart? A
disappointment? Shall I see myself misjudged, falsely suspected, despised?
I accept beforehand all that Thou sendest me; and if through weakness I
weep, suffer it to be so; if I murmur, check me; if I am vexed, correct
me; if hopeless, encourage me.
Yes, yes! Let Thy sweet and holy Will be done!
Even, O LORD, if to glorify Thee, I must be humiliated, suffering,
useless, and forsaken, still, LORD, stay not Thine Hand, I am wholly
Thine.
GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD
How blessed, O LORD, to depend only upon Thee... behold me, Thy child,
waiting with outstretched hand to receive Thy benefits.
Grant me my temporal blessings,--clothing, nourishment, shelter... but not
too much of anything; and let me have the happiness of sharing my
blessings with those poorer than myself to-day. Grant me the blessing of
intelligence, that I may read, or hear one of those golden counsels that
elevate the soul, and lend wings to the thoughts.
Grant me the loving heart, O my FATHER! that I may feel for a moment how I
love Thee, and Thy love towards me; let me sacrifice myself for the
welfare of another. Give me the Bread of Life, the Holy Eucharist! I have
just received it, LORD! Grant me again ere long that great blessing.
And then, give all these blessings to those I love, and who love me!
FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES, AS WE FORGIVE THEM THAT TRESPASS AGAINST US
When I pronounce the word of pardon, what a weight seems lifted from my
heart.
I will not only banish every feeling of hatred, I will efface every
painful remembrance. O GOD, if Thou forgivest me, as I forgive others,
what mercy for me!
Thou seest I bear no malice, that I forget all injuries....
I have been offended by _words_; I forget them; by actions, I forget them;
by omissions, thoughts, desires; they are all forgotten.
Ah! in all these ways I have offended Thee, and Thou wilt forget, even as
I have forgotten.
I will be very merciful, so that Thou mayst have mercy upon me.
LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION, BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL
Now, as I leave Thine altar, I go to encounter temptation.
O SAVIOUR! help me, keep me, and warn me of my danger!
Let me shun all occasions of evil, and if by weakness or allurements I am
led into paths of sin, if I fall, oh! rescue me speedily, that I may fall
upon my knees, confessing my sin, and imploring pardon.
Sin! this is the evil from which I beseech Thee to deliver me; other
troubles that may happen, I accept; they are sent to try me and to purify,
and come from Thee; but sin, I have no pleasure in it! Oh! when in the
hour of temptation I fall away, LORD, hearken to the cry that I now raise
to Thee in all sincerity; I _will_ it not! it is not wilful! I go from Thy
Presence, but, JESUS, Thou art with me! In work, in prayer, in suffering,
let all be done in Thee!
XXXIII.
"Mother," asked a child, "since nothing is ever lost, where do all our
thoughts go?"
"To GOD," answered the mother gravely, "who remembers them forever."
"Forever!" said the child. He bent his head, and, drawing closer to his
mother, murmured, "I am frightened!"
Which of us have not felt the same?
XXXIV.
One more solemn thought: How old are you? Nineteen. Have you reckoned the
number of minutes that have elapsed since your birth? The number is
startling: nine millions, three hundred and thirty-three thousand, two
hundred.... Each of those minutes has flown to GOD; GOD has examined them
and weighed them, and for them you must give account.
Each minute bears its own impress (as a coin bears the impress of the
Sovereign), and only those marked with the image of GOD will avail you for
eternity.
Is not this thought one to make you tremble?
"I never could understand," writes Guérin, "the feeling of security some
have that their works must find favor with GOD--as if our duties were
confined to the narrow limits of this little world. To be a good son,
statesman, or brother, is not all that is required of us; GOD demands far
more than this from those for whom He has destined a crown of glory
hereafter."
XXXV.
One great characteristic of holiness is never to be exacting, never to
complain.
Each complaint drags us down a degree in our upward course.
By complaining, I do not mean the simple imparting of our troubles to
others.
Complaint savors always of a little bad temper, and a slightly vindictive
spirit.
* * * * *
The saints were never exacting.
Contented with their lot, they never desired anything that was withheld
from them.
"I have asked," said a holy soul, "for something I thought needful; they
have forgotten to answer me, or perhaps would not bestow it. Why need I be
disquieted? If it were really necessary, GOD would quickly provide means
to obtain it." How few could enter into this feeling; and yet it is but
the echo of CHRIST'S own words, "Your FATHER in Heaven knoweth that ye
have need of all these things."
XXXVI.
Joy in life is like oil in a lamp. When the oil gets low the wick is
consumed, emitting a black vapor, and sending forth only a lurid glow,
which does not give light.
A life without joy passes away unprofitably, shedding around it only gloom
and sorrow.
If every morning in a simple prayer,--in those fifteen minutes' meditation
(which only seem hard when we do not practise it),--we opened our hearts to
GOD, as we open our windows to the sun and air, GOD would fill it with
that calm, sweet joy which elevates the soul, prevents it feeling the
weight of troubles, and makes it overflow with benevolence.
But joy does not mean levity, witty sayings, or repartee... it is
habitual serenity.
Through a clear atmosphere we can always see the sky; it seems so light
and full of elasticity.
A serene sky is always pure... clouds may pass across it, but they do not
stain it.
So it is with the heart that early in the morning opens to receive GOD'S
Peace.
XXXVII.
"You are never out of temper," was once said to a woman well known to be
much tried at home; "is it that you do not feel the injustice, the
annoyances?"--"I feel them as much as you do," she replied; "but they do
not hurt me."--"You have, then, some special balm?"--"Yes; for the
vexations caused by people, I have _affection_; for those of circumstances,
I have prayer; and over every wound that bleeds, I murmur the words, 'Thy
Will be done.'"
XXXVIII.
MY DAILY CROSS
If I have no cross to bear to-day, I shall not advance heavenwards.
A cross (that is, anything that disturbs our peace) is the spur which
stimulates, and without which we should most likely remain stationary,
blinded with empty vanities, and sinking deeper into sin.
A cross helps us onwards, in spite of our apathy and resistance.
To lie quietly on a bed of down may seem a very sweet existence, but
pleasant ease and rest are not the lot of a Christian; if he would mount
higher and higher, it must be by a rough road.
Alas, for those who have no daily cross!
Alas, for those who repine and fret against it!
* * * * *
WHAT WILL BE MY CROSS TO-DAY?
Perhaps that person, with whom Providence has placed me, and whom I
dislike, whose look of disdain humiliates me, whose slowness worries me,
who makes me jealous by being more beloved, more successful, than myself,
whose chatter and lightheartedness, even her very attentions to myself,
annoy me.
Or it may be that person that I think has quarrelled with me, and my
imagination makes me fancy myself watched, criticised, turned into
ridicule.
She is always with me; all my efforts to separate are frustrated; by some
mysterious power she is always present, always near.
* * * * *
This is my heaviest cross; the rest are light in comparison.
Circumstances change, temptations diminish, troubles lessen; but those
people who trouble or offend us are an ever-present source of irritation.
HOW TO BEAR THIS DAILY CROSS
Never manifest, in any way, the ennui, the dislike, the involuntary
shudder, that her presence produces; force myself to render her some
little service--never mind if she never knows it; it is between GOD and
myself. Try to say a little good of her every day, of her talents, her
character, her tact, for there is all that to be found in her. Pray
earnestly for her, even asking GOD to help me to love her, and to spare
her to me.
Dear companion! blessed messenger of GOD'S mercy! you are, without knowing
it, the means for my sanctification, and I will not be ungrateful.
Yes! though the exterior be rude and repellent, yet to you I owe it that I
am kept from greater sin; you, against whom my whole nature rebels... how
I ought to love you!
XXXIX.
Who is anxious for a beloved one's eternal welfare?
We interest ourselves for their success, their prosperity; we ask GOD to
keep them from harm and misfortune; we try to start them well in the
world, to make them of reputation, to procure them pleasure.
To spare them trouble, we sacrifice our own ease and enjoyment....
Oh, that is all very beautiful, very right; but what should we do for the
soul?
Do we pray to GOD that this soul may become humble, pure, devoted?
Do we take as much pains to procure him the little devotional book that
will really help him, as we should to obtain a transient pleasure?
Do we help him, unseen, towards that act of charity, humiliation, or
self-renunciation? Have we courage not to spare the soul the trial that we
know will purify?
Does it seem too hard for you?
Ah! then you do not know what real love is. Does not GOD love us? Yet GOD
lets us suffer; even sends the suffering.
Love is given us to help us onwards, nearer to GOD. The most blessed is
that which draws us nearest to Him; and in proportion as it leads to GOD
we realize its blessedness.
The essence of true love is not its _tenderness_, but its strength, power
of endurance, its purity, its self-renunciation.
The mistake we make is when we seek to be beloved, instead of loving. What
makes us cowardly is the fear of losing that love.
Never forget this: A selfish heart desires love for itself; a Christian
heart delights to love--without return.
XL.
To learn never to waste our time is perhaps one of the most difficult
virtues to acquire.
A well-spent day is a source of pleasure. To be constantly employed, and
never asking, "What shall I do?" is the secret of much goodness and
happiness.
Begin, then, with promptitude, act decisively, persevere; if interrupted,
be amiable, and return to the work unruffled, finish it carefully--these
will be the signs of a virtuous soul.
XLI.
Are you full of peace? _Pray!_ Prayer will preserve it to you.
Are you tempted? _Pray!_ Prayer will sustain you.
Have you fallen? _Pray!_ Prayer will raise you.
Are you discouraged? _Pray!_ Prayer will reassure and comfort you.
XLII.
The young are seldom forbearing, because they so little understand the
frailties of poor human nature.
Oh! if you could only witness the terrible struggles passing in the heart
of that friend whose vivacity annoys you, whose fickleness provokes you,
whose faults sometimes even make you blush....
Oh! if you saw the tears that are shed in secret, the vexation felt
against self (perhaps on your
|
summit[8].
The spirit, which is infinite possibility passing into infinite
actuality, has drawn and draws at every moment the cosmos from
chaos, has collected diffused life into the concentrated life of
the organ, has achieved the passage from animal to human life, has
created and creates modes of life ever more lofty. The work of the
spirit is not finished and never will be finished. Our yearning
for something higher is not vain. The very yearning, the infinity
of our desire, is proof of the infinity of that process. The plant
dreams of the animal, the animal of man, man of superman; for this,
too, is a reality, if it be reality that with every historical
movement man surpasses himself. The time will come when the great
deeds and the great works now our memory and our boast will be
forgotten, as we have forgotten the works and the deeds, no less
great, of those beings of supreme genius who created what we call
human life and seem to us now to have been savages of the lowest
grade, almost men-monkeys. They will be forgotten for the document
of progress is in _forgetting_; that is, in the fact being entirely
absorbed in the new fact, in which, and not in itself, it has
value. But we cannot know what the future states of Reality will
be, in their determined physiognomy and succession, owing to the
'dignity' established in the Philosophy of the Practical, by which
the knowledge of the action and of the deed follows and does not
precede the action and the deed. _Mystery_ is just the _infinity of
evolution_; were this not so, that concept would not arise in the
mind of man, nor would it be possible to abuse it, as it has been
abused by being transported out of its place, that is to say, into
the consciousness of itself, which the spiritual activity should
have and has to the fullest degree, that is, the consciousness of
its eternal categories.
The neglect of the moment of mystery is the true reason of the
error known as the _Philosophy of History_, which undertakes
to portray the plan of Providence and to determine the formula
of progress. In this attempt (when it does not affirm mere
philosophemes, as has very often happened), it makes the effort
to enclose the infinite in the finite and capriciously to decree
concluded that evolution which the universal spirit itself cannot
conclude, for it would thus come to deny itself. In logic that
error has been gnoseologically defined as the pretension of
treating the individual as though it were the universal, making
the universal individual; here it is to be defined in other words
as the pretension of treating the finite as though it were the
infinite, of making the infinite finite.
But the unjustified transportation of the concept of mystery from
history, where it indicates the future that the past prepares
and does not know, into philosophy, causes to be pointed as
mysteries which give rise to probabilities and conjectures,
problems that consist of philosophical terms, and should therefore
be philosophically solved. But if the infinite progress and the
infinite perfectibility of man is to be affirmed, although we do
not know the concrete forms that progress and perfectibility will
assume (not knowing them, because now it imports not to _know_, but
to _do_ them), then there is no meaning in positing as a mystery
the immortality of the individual soul, or the existence of God;
for these are not _facts_ that may or may not happen sooner or
later, but _concepts_ that must be proved to be in themselves
thinkable and not contradictory. Their thinkability will indeed be
a mystery, but of the kind that it is a duty to make clear, because
synonymous with obscurity or mental confusion. What has so far been
demonstrated has been their unthinkability in the traditional form.
Nor is it true that they correspond to profound demands of the
human soul. Man does not seek a god external to himself and almost
a despot, who commands and benefits him capriciously, nor does he
aspire to an immortality of insipid ease; but he seeks for that God
which he has in himself, and aspires to that activity which is both
Life and Death[9].
Thus Croce affirms that evolution, development, is demanded by the
very nature of spirit. In spirit the problem of the one and the
many is solved. The yearnings of man towards something higher, and
towards a unity that shall lie behind and stabilise all thought, are
but expressions of the nature of Life. The dissatisfaction of such
a thought is due to psychological illusion, comparable to a "dream
of an art so sublime that every work of art really existing would by
comparison appear contemptible." There is no intuition that cannot
be clearly expressed; vague dreams of the Madonna of the Future end
inevitably in an empty canvas. So too, according to Croce, is a dream
of transcendence empty of content, because inexpressible; based on no
clear intuition, but on a confusion between the historical judgment and
some vague conception of the transcendental. And thus the life of the
spirit is left a mystery.
We will not attempt any discussion of Croce's fundamental pantheism,
neither will we as yet criticise his definition of Beauty. Instead,
we will begin our constructive work by considering the psychological
accompaniment of a perception of beauty and from that starting-point
try to reach a conception and a definition that will carry us beyond
Croce's into a region less empty of love, a region that shines with a
light of its own. Dead moons are lovely, but they owe their loveliness
to living light. Cold philosophies too are only beautiful when a
beautiful spirit makes them seem to live.
Let us, then, turn to the psychological effects of that which appeals
as beautiful to some individual mind, leaving on one side, for the
time, all consideration of the reason why a particular object should
rouse a sense of beauty in a particular mind.
Now unquestionably the beauty we perceive is never satisfying, or
if it satisfies at all it does so but for a moment. Almost at once
dissatisfaction follows, or rather unsatisfaction.
There is a yearning for something, a sense of something lacking.
It is vague--so vague that the only representation of it that has
ever adequately expressed at once its aspirations, its lack and its
indeterminateness, is Blake's drawing "I want--I want." Of these three
things it is compounded, of lack, of aspiration, and of self-ignorance
that knows neither what it lacks nor what it desires; and these three
determine its salient character--that of an impulse. That it is really
an impulse becomes clear directly we examine its effects. It produces
a desire to create. In the young, the uncontrolled, the illiterate,
the creative impulse may be definitely sexual. Passion is undoubtedly
stimulated in simple natures by the beautiful, and we shall see when we
come to discuss the evolution of aesthetic sensibility that this fact
is of the profoundest spiritual import. For the moment we need only
note that this sex-impulse is creative. In natures artistically more
developed yet not truly originative, the creative impulse is a desire
to repeat the thing that has given this sense of beauty--to paint the
sunset, to play the sonata, to declaim the poem. Yet even here we must
note the germ of originality. The repetition is no mere reproduction.
Elimination and emphasis make it in some measure a new creation. This
is obvious in the less rigid arts, painting and music; but it is
present even where the form is definite. Hear two different people, or
the same person in two different moods, read the same poem, and see
how different a thing it can be! In more artistic natures still, truly
original, the desire to create is conscious, the desire to reproduce
less. The thing created need not, probably will not, be of the same
kind. The moon-glade on the sea enriching by contrast the blackness of
the rocky headland, will inspire the musician to write, not a moonlight
sonata, for true music is free from sensuous symbolism, but a pure
rhythm of sound. To suggest visual symbols in sound is to prostitute
music, to drive it back into the sensationalism from which it has freed
itself. It is, further, to confuse the mind by attempting to combine
two incompatible media of technical expression. As animal passion is to
love, so is Carrier's "La Chasse" to a Bach prelude[10].
We see, then, that the psychological effect of the beautiful is to
produce a creative impulse, based on the lack and the aspiration
which give rise to a sense of yearning desire. We see that it is
indeterminate, for it attempts to satisfy itself in very various
ways. We see that in so far as it creates successfully, it finds some
satisfaction.
Now all this fits admirably with Croce's theory of beauty. Beauty is
for us the expression of that of which we have intuition. In realising
the beauty of a symphony or picture we have ourselves re-created the
intuition of the artist. In realising the beauty of a natural scene
we have expressed an intuition of the reality that lies behind that
scene; a creative act. We shall later go beyond Croce in this matter,
referring our creative act to a re-creation of the intuition of God,
and this will lead us to consider the aesthetic meaning of God's
creation; but for the time we need not pursue this thought.
Our next business is, clearly, to analyse the yearning which precedes
the creative act. We have said that this originates in dissatisfaction.
What is this dissatisfaction? One other thing produces a feeling that
is not merely analogous, but absolutely identical. When you love a
person intensely and are uncertain if it is reciprocated, because
no sign, or no sufficient sign, is given, you experience the same
dissatisfaction, the same yearning and the same creative impulse. In
primitive natures the impulse may fulfil itself in sexual excitement;
in higher ones it is expressed in art. It is a commonplace to say that
some of the world's greatest creative work is done under the stimulus
of love. The poems of lovers furnish the most prominent example, not
only their love poems, but the poems inspired by their love, like the
_Divina Commedia_; but we need not seek far for examples in the other
arts. Beethoven's Fourth Symphony was inspired by his love for the
Countess Theresa von Brunswick. Tchaikovsky found inspiration in his
Platonic love for Nadejda von Meck, whom he had never seen. His sad,
abnormal friendships were an inspiration to Michael Angelo.
Now in both cases, paradoxical as it may seem, the dissatisfaction
is due to receiving without giving. At first sight this seems to be
exactly the opposite of the truth. Surely a man is pouring out his
love, and receiving no return, one is inclined to say. But a moment's
thought will convince us that the first statement is the true one.
All the beauty, all the grace, all the interest and the charms of the
loved one are given to us in unstinted measure, and we can give nothing
in return. We may not even express our love, our desire to serve,
but in the trivial services that convention allows. Yet how we prize
these little services that we can render! How we seek out opportunity
of rendering them! We receive; we can give no adequate return. It is
that which determines our dissatisfaction. If the gift of our love is
refused, dissatisfaction is most poignant. Commonly we say that the
beloved refuses to give anything in such a case. Exactly the reverse
is true. The beloved gives, and cannot avoid giving, but will receive
nothing from us.
Now think of a perfect marriage or a perfect friendship. There is
little trace of dissatisfaction there; only rest and happiness. We
receive, but we give again, and our gift may be given without measure;
may equal, or nearly equal what we receive; may at least be all that we
can give. There is perfect reciprocity, and in reciprocity we find rest.
The creative impulse does not cease, service and gifts do not cease,
but the spirit is free from longing dissatisfaction.
Turn now to the dissatisfaction produced by appreciation of the
beautiful. We receive everything, we can give nothing at all (to the
beautiful thing); and so dissatisfaction is at its highest. We love
the thing in which we find beauty, but the love is one-sided. The
cases are identical. It is no mere phrase when we speak of the love of
beauty and the beauty of love. Unwittingly we express the truth of an
absolute interdependence. _Love is relationship, beauty the expression
of relationship._ In this sentence lies our thesis. Croce calls Beauty
the expression of an Intuition; we shall define that intuition as
the intuition of Relationship, Love being the relationship itself,
intuitively known; known, that is, as Reality--as the fundamental
quality of Personal Being, which is the only ultimate Reality. Because
the intuition of Love is expressed, it enters immediately the domain
of Aesthetic. Doubtless it is conceptualised; and hand in hand with
this theoretic activity of the spirit goes the practical. Love is
essentially practical, and, as Croce says, you can never separate or
give priority to either the theoretic or the practical activity. The
difference, then, between beauty and love that is returned lies in the
fact that in the second there is reciprocity. You give, as well as
receiving. In all love there is some reciprocity; the loved one cannot
help being conscious of, and receiving, something of the spirit that
moves out in such wise. The love of a being seen but once is purely
aesthetic. Only this corresponds to the aesthetic appreciation of a
scene, and even this not exactly; for the being is potentially capable
of receiving, the scene is not.
It is worth noticing at this point that, though Greek thought arrived
at no adequate idea of beauty, Greek Mythology did arrive at complete
understanding. And this gives little cause for wonder, considering to
what a level the love of the beautiful developed in ancient Greece,
and considering too how myth represents the unreasoned, intuitive
wishes and ideas of an infantile age[11]. We often wonder at the depths
which mythology plumbs. Accepting Croce's scheme, it is the more easy
to understand. The myth of Pygmalion is subtly suggestive. Pygmalion
created beauty, and longed for it to reciprocate his love, and out of
his longing life and love were born. Beauty was for him one-sided love;
hence his yearning and his dissatisfaction.
But we are not Pygmalions. Our Galatea never comes to life. Why
then should we strive still to create? Why like the man in the old
play, should we proceed with an endless task: "When will you finish
Campaspe?" "Never finish, for always in absolute beauty there is
somewhat above art[12]." Croce simply takes activity as the character
of spirit and leaves it at that, admitting, but not really explaining,
the fact that men are dissatisfied with the mystery of it all. We,
approaching with a different presupposition, accepting God and not
rejecting metaphysic, may hope to find some fuller explanation. We
do in fact go on creating something that cannot reciprocate. Why?
First of all, by our creative act we learn more of the meaning of the
Reality that is around us, and the Reality that is ourself. We find the
creative godhead of our personality, we exercise our self in its true
function of godhead. Moreover, we create a gift to other men, whether
technically or otherwise. If we cannot give to nature, we can at least
give our understanding of nature to our fellows:
Better to sit at the water's birth
Than a sea of waves to win,
To live in the love that floweth forth
Than the love that floweth in.
Be thy heart a well of love, my child,
Flowing, and free, and sure,
For a cistern of love, though undefiled
Keeps not the spirit pure[13].
And neither does the spirit that is a cistern of beauty fulfil itself,
nor remain pure.
Our aesthetic activity is, then, our first contact with Reality,
paving the way to an understanding of the meaning of that Reality.
In spite of Croce, we cannot agree that a full appreciation of
this meaning could be considered as achieved if the end is simply
longing--dissatisfaction. In the very fact that beauty produces in us
a yearning, that issues in a creative activity which does not, and
cannot, satisfy the yearning, we have evidence that the solution is not
found. In the identity of psychological content produced by beauty and
by unrequited love we find the clue we seek. In the restfulness of a
perfect friendship, of an intercourse which knows no subject that must
not be touched upon, fears no jarring note, whatever matter comes upon
the scene, can give all the keys in perfect trust, knowing that trust
will never be regretted, and hold the other's keys knowing there is the
same confidence on that side; that can see with the other's eyes, and
never fear to be itself misunderstood; in that restfulness the problems
of beauty, of life, of Reality itself find answer.
Let us repeat. The unsatisfyingness of beauty is due to the fact that
you are taking and not giving. In order to give _something_, to others,
though not to the object that roused in you the sense of beauty, you
create by some technique. What is it you are receiving? An intuition,
which you express to yourself creatively and to others through its
effect on your character;--to which further, if you are an artist,
you give external, technical expression. This intuition which you
receive is the first stage of knowledge--of the knowledge of Reality.
So far, agreeing with Croce, we agree with Bergson; and moreover we
leave room for mysticism, since mysticism becomes the appreciation of
relationship, and logic paves the way for suitable activity to develop
our side of the relationship. The meaning of this becomes clearer when
we consider Croce's explanation of the process of perceiving beauty
in the work of an artist, be it picture, symphony, or poem. He points
out that in appreciating a work of art you enter into the mind of the
creator, follow his intuition, and create the expression afresh for
yourself. On the degree in which you can do this depends the fullness
of your appreciation of the work.
But when you see beauty in a natural object the matter is less clear.
Croce would say that you are in the first stage of knowing that object,
and he is unquestionably right so far. But can we not, using the
analogy of the picture or the poem, go on to say that you are following
out the idea of the creator of the natural object--that you are in
touch with the Cosmic Idea, which is the Idea of a Personal God? If so,
there is indeed room for mysticism, for mysticism becomes simply the
realisation that you are in fact doing this. Moreover, Beauty and Love
at once fall into relation. Beauty is not simply expression, but the
expression of a relation, and it is incomplete because the relation is
not yet reciprocal. Love is that relation itself.
In another aspect, beauty is seen as the meeting-place for love, since
it is the expression of an intuition of Reality, and Reality is rooted
and grounded in love. Where there is limitation either of one or both
of two persons, expression is needed to provide a meeting-place--speech
or sign for the lesser artist, music, poetry, or picture for the
greater. Each expression is a symbol of the reality it incarnates;
in so far as it reaches out beyond its own immediate apprehension of
that reality. All expression, all art, is symbolic and has a mystical
aspect, else it would be either complete and all-embracing or devoid of
real content. So far the symbolists are right.
But this opens up a wide problem. If Beauty be the formulated intuition
of Reality, which, because of its incompleteness, represents in symbols
things that are beyond its immediate purview, and if Reality be, as
we have elsewhere argued[14], grounded on Personal Relationship, the
self-expression of Love, does beauty cease when personal relations
become perfect? For we have argued that a symbol belongs to the domain
of the imperfect, not the perfect[15]. If so, has beauty any meaning
for God? At this point we clearly come into contact with the problem of
God's creative activity. We have said[16] that the creation of God must
be the creation of something new. We have said that Love, of its own
nature, demands expansion, is centrifugal as well as centripetal, and
in this centrifugality of love we sought the Divine Impulse to create
new personalities. But behind lurked always the question "How could
a God whose experience was perfect and embraced already all Reality,
create anything that was new?" The reciprocity of perfected love would
be new for the personal beings He had created; but His self-limitation
which the freedom of those beings necessitated would not be new for
Him, for self-abnegation is an eternal part of love, since love is
substantiated as itself by creative self-surrender, transcendence by
immanence. Would the _result_ of His self-limitation be new for Him,
implicit as it is in His Being as Love? Would the experience of the
reciprocal love of His children be a new thing for Him?
No doubt the problem, as belonging to the domain of the Transcendent,
is not soluble for us, whose transcendence, whose intuition of the
Real, is so incomplete. But because in such measure as we do know the
Real we are ourselves transcendent, we can at least hope to touch the
fringe of His garment; and Croce's proof that pure intuition--which
Bergson also urges to be our _point d'appui_ with the Real--belongs to
the domain of aesthetic, gives us a fresh clue in our investigation.
Beauty is expression. This is Croce's statement; and in it we find
what we need, provided that we expand the definition into 'the
expression of Relation.' If there be a Personal God as we believe,
whose experience is Reality, He must always be expressing that Reality.
There is no consciousness without expression. But the expression
of knowledge of the Real is Beauty. God's Being must be full of an
overwhelming Beauty. But part of His Nature, as Love, is centrifugal.
That centrifugal part must also be expressed. The artist follows his
expression by technical application; he paints for eye or ear, to
satisfy himself and to communicate his intuition. In so far as he
fails in his expression, the result is ugly. In so far, also, as God's
creation fails, through its own inevitable condition of the freedom
of man, the result is ugly. Ugliness is the aesthetic, or theoretical
aspect of sin; in its practical aspect sin is uneconomic, un-moral.
Now if one thing is more certain than another, it is that Beauty is
for ever new. Each sense of beauty is a new creation, a fresh activity
of the spirit, be it inspired never so often by the same object. And
this means that to know the Real is for ever a new thing. God's love
is always new for Himself. His self-knowledge is creation perpetually
renewed. It follows, _a fortiori_, that His knowledge of the beings He
creates and is creating is each moment new. Because knowledge is in its
first movement Beauty, there can be no stagnancy in Eternal Being, no
dead level of satiety in Eternal Life.
Beauty is expression. For God it is the expression of His relation to
Himself as transcendent, and of the substantiation of His transcendence
through His relation to others as immanent, in the first stage of
the movement of that relation towards and into transcendence. Beauty
is the expression of a relation, and is ever new. But the relation
itself is Love. God is Love; that love is expressed as Beauty; and
Beauty is necessarily eternal, because it is the knowledge of Reality.
God is Love. This is to say that God IS because He is a relation,
to Himself and to others. Here is the inmost heart of Trinitarian
Doctrine, as we have seen[17]. Because He is Love, He expresses that
Reality in activity. But activity has two sides, the theoretical and
the practical. His expression is, on the theoretic side, Beauty, and
is hence for ever new for Him. He is for Himself a Relation, known
intuitively and expressed as Beauty, and His intuition of this Reality
is ever new. On the practical side it is Creation, full of purpose
(economic aspect) and of goodness (moral aspect); new for us, His
creatures, but only achieving, for us even, its full newness as we come
to know the Reality which is the experience of the Love that is perfect
in Him alone; only achieving its full newness as we begin ourselves to
know, to express, and to create: as we become gods ourselves. And what
He creates is real, beautiful, and new.
Beauty is eternal. It is the meeting-place of personal beings for ever;
but it is a symbol only so long as these personal beings are imperfect,
and their knowledge incomplete. Beauty and knowledge become coextensive
as immediate intuition extends its boundaries till logic has no more
a place, or rather till logic and intuition cover the same ground. So
too with the practical; the useful extends its boundaries till it is
coextensive with the good, and the two become one and the same. The
activity that remains is as God's activity. Love is itself because it
is both knowing and doing; absolute Being is the circle of these two
inseparables.
Before we proceed it will be as well to remind ourselves once more of
the psychological fact that has caused us to modify Croce's definition
of beauty by introducing the idea of relation. This characteristic
consequence of a vision of the beautiful is the sense of longing, akin
to the longing of unreciprocated love, which issues in some creative
act. This act may be a conscious attempt to produce something of
aesthetic value--a work of art--or it may simply be an attempt to make
our _milieu_ harmonious. The housewife may be stimulated to re-cover
the cushions, to tidy the house, or to re-arrange the room; the mother
may try to make her children happier; the selfish man or the fractious
child may try to make life more complete and harmonious by loving
deeds, however short-lived. The most commonplace mind may feel a
religious impulse; a sense of wonder and reverence. Men have always
been perplexed by the apparently close connection between the beautiful
and the good, between the beautiful and the sublime. This connection
becomes clear in the light of our definition. Beauty is seen as the
first step towards an understanding of Reality, and that Reality is
Love, personal relationship, reciprocity. Relationship between finite
persons first (yet not transient even here, because personality is
essentially infinite, and persons are only limited in so far as they
have failed as yet to achieve personality), but relationship that finds
its origin and explanation in the personal, creative, Triune Being of
God[18]. The perception of beauty is accompanied by emotion; free, as
emotion is in itself, though aroused by external conditioning[19];
yet unsatisfied, thwarted, and so with a vein of sadness in its joy.
Its joy is the joy of beginning to understand. All understanding is
pleasure. One smiled with pleasure when one first grasped Euclid's
forty-seventh proposition, even. But here we understand the beauty as
a symbol and a meeting-place. It makes us feel less lonely and less
isolated. Its sadness is the sadness of an incomplete understanding.
We see in a beautiful thing a thing that can receive nothing from us,
while it gives much to us. Yet the very fact that beauty does make us
'feel religious' shows that somehow we do realise that we can give
something to God, and find a little satisfaction in doing so; that even
nature is not so impersonal as we were inclined to think. Our desire to
create beautiful things is a sign that we understand our self also, our
destined godhead, and that we too wish to reveal our self by creating
for others, and giving to others. It is a sign that we understand that
our relations with God and with our fellows are reciprocal.
Croce gives the clue when he shows that aesthetic is the first stage of
the spirit's activity. Bergson strikes a note that wakes an answering
harmony when he urges that intuition brings us nearer to Reality than
does intellect directed toward practical aims, even though some of his
deductions displease; Kant and Hegel indicate the eternal value of
aesthetic when they urge that it belongs to the highest and last stage.
But Croce gives no reason for the longing that beauty forces upon us;
nor indeed for the activity of spirit at all; he merely assumes spirit
as a datum, and is defined by its activity.
But if we regard beauty as the expression of a perceived relationship,
almost as one-sided love, the whole falls into place. Through beauty we
get into touch with Reality, which Reality is, in its completeness,
the mutual activity of Love. The basis of Love's activity is Love's
freedom, even its freedom to limit itself. Mankind is winning freedom
out of determined conditions; which conditions are the creation, the
expression, of God's love, through self-limitation. Because they are
the expression of God's knowledge of the Reality of Love, they are
beautiful. The winning of freedom by man is achieved through adaptative
relation to the environment. As this adaptation becomes conscious--as
we gain intuitive knowledge of the environment--the sense of beauty is
born, for we express our knowledge of this relation to ourselves; and
make efforts towards further adaptation. These efforts are creative;
and as we progress our creation becomes more and more altruistic; a
creation for others with our relationship to them held consciously
before us. These few words will suffice to show how perfectly our
thesis fits in with the evolutionary views we have previously
enunciated. The development of this side of the argument may be left
for the present.
One other matter requires a brief consideration, and then we can
leave the general outline of our theory and proceed to a more
detailed treatment of certain parts of it. This is the old, unsolved
problem whether beauty is subjective or objective; whether a thing is
beautiful in itself, or whether it is only our thinking that makes it
so. Croce has made it perfectly clear that the thing or the scene
which we erroneously call beautiful, meaning that it is beautiful in
itself, physically beautiful, is simply the "stimulus to aesthetic
reproduction, which presupposes previous production. Without preceding
aesthetic intuitions of the imagination, nature cannot arouse any at
all." Perhaps Croce's own thesis would gain in clearness and coherence
if, starting from the sense of beauty aroused by a work of art as the
re-creation of the artist's intuition by the spectator, he had accepted
the religious implication, and argued that appreciation of so-called
natural beauty, was the re-creation by man of God's intuition. But,
with his prejudice against religion, he naturally could not boldly
accept God as the Primal Artist, even though to do so would have made
his theory far more complete, and would have saved him from relegating
the chief factor of man's life to the realm of psychological illusion.
To return to the immediate question, there can, of course, be no doubt
that since beauty is an activity of the spirit, the expression of an
intuition, beauty itself must be purely subjective. Equally, there
can be no doubt that without the objective Reality the intuition
could never be called into being. (We call it definitely objective
for man, since all our argument in previous works has driven us to
the conclusion that there is a necessary dualism for man as long as
freedom is incomplete, love imperfect; as long, that is, as man is
becoming.)
This grows more and more clear as one analyses the things that have
roused in oneself the keenest sense of beauty. I think of a copse
starred with snowdrops and aconite amid bare trunks under a steel-grey
sky--a day in late autumn in water-meadows; emerald peacock-tails of
weed in the river, and lights of madder and old gold--blue sea covered
with pearly Portuguese men-o'-war and white surf breaking on black lava
rocks--perhaps a dozen such landmarks, to me a priceless possession,
to another about as interesting as an album of picture-postcards from
somebody else's travels. In mercy partly, partly in self-defence, one
withholds these things from all but the few who care to understand.
Let each fill in his own; for there are in every life such moments,
when one is in touch with a larger life, and it is these moments which
make a man, as Masefield has wonderfully shown in his poem _Biography_.
Then there are the hours when human triumphs rouse in us the same
ecstasy. Bach preludes and fugues, with their palaces reared by perfect
stone added architecturally to perfect stone; the dainty certainties
of Mozart; the sad gaiety and foreboding meditations of Chopin;
the delicate cadences of Swinburne; the lusty, open-air searchings
of Masefield, saddened by the obsession of sunset transience; the
gentle longing of the refrain of the _Earthly Paradise_; the
massive synthesis of the _Dynasts_; the sorrow of _Deirdre_ and
_Violaine_; the ethereal atmosphere of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_;
pictures--architecture--it is all endless. Now the first thing we
notice is that if we are in the wrong mood these things may have
little or no appeal. I may walk in Water-meads and feel nothing of
their charm. Bach may be mere noise, if I want to think of something
else. Again the Madonna of the Magnificat may leave me unmoved, if my
attention is on other matters. Those whose sense of beauty is really
keen can never be unstirred by the beautiful, unless their attention
is so rivetted on other things that they do not observe it at all, but
most of us are of commoner clay; we can notice a thing yet hardly be
aware of its beauty.
Here, in either case, our ordinary speech hits the nail exactly on
the head: "I am not in a receptive mood," we say. I do not receive
what these things have to give. In an appreciative mood I take
something from the thing that seems to me beautiful--this act is my
intuition--and use it as the basis of my creative work--my expression.
I need the presentation of an external object, or its memory, for that
creation. Now, as we have just seen, a host of very different objects
excite in an individual emotion of beauty in a pre-eminent degree,
while if we reckon the objects which excite it in a less acute form,
the tale is endless; yet the emotion all excite is sufficiently
the same in content, in spite of its multiplicity of form, to be
expressed by the single term beauty. One is tempted to speak loosely
of this effect of the beautiful on us as an emotion, though clearly
it is not one, since it is expression. An emotion may be beautiful
immediately it is known and expressed in this act of knowing, but the
emotion is not beautiful any more than any other object is beautiful.
Nevertheless, this loose usage of the term has one advantage. It draws
our attention to the close relationship that binds together beauty and
emotion. We have seen elsewhere that in the realm of emotion exists
the freedom that lies between the incoming perception and the outgoing
activity, forming the bond between the first and last, and determining
the form of the response to the stimulus[20]. In the recognition of
beauty there is freedom and emotion, as there is in every creative
act. But the activity is dependent on stimulus, and every stimulus is
primarily perceptual, though not necessarily in the strict sense of
being perceived by an organ of sense. The perception may be wholly
internal, the self being its own object in introspection[21]; the
intuition may be the intuition of love itself. Here we see the origin
of the common, yet I believe erroneous, statement that "beauty, as we
understand it, is only for sense and for sensuous imagination[22]." If
Beauty be the expression of an intuition of Reality, as Croce says, and
Reality be ultimately the activity of Personal Being, which activity
is relationship, as we have seen reason to claim[23], Beauty is not
dependent on sense perception alone. Further, because the activity of
personal relation is
|
make those chaps squeedge up together a bit."
"But the basket's so tickle, Mike, and their weight might send it over
sidewise. If it did the basket would go nearly flat, the lid would be
burst off, and where should be we then?"
"I know where I should be, sir," said Mike--"indoors."
"You wouldn't have time, for those beasts are so wonderfully active
that this one would be out of the basket like a flash of lightning."
"Would he, sir? Then don't you do it. Let him be. What is it, sir--a
leopard?"
"Oh no, not a leopard, Mike."
"What, then? One of those big monkeys we've never yet got a sight of?"
"Monkey? Oh no."
"What is it, then, sir?"
"Well, you see, Mike, I don't know myself yet," said Harry, laughing.
Mike looked at him sharply, then at the three Siamese, whose faces
were contorted with mirth, and back at his young master.
"Humbugging me," he said sharply. "That's it, is it, Master Harry?
Yah! I don't believe there's anything in the old hamper at all."
He went round the basket from the other direction, so as to reach the
door, and as he got behind the two men on the lid, he turned.
"I do wonder at you, Master Harry, laughing at a fellow like that, and
setting these niggers to make fun of me. Yah!"
He raised one foot and delivered a tremendous kick at the bottom of
the basket, startling the two squatting men on the lid so that one
sprang up and the other leaped off on to the bamboo floor of the
verandah, while a violent commotion inside the basket showed that its
occupant had also been disturbed.
"Something else for you to laugh at," said Mike, and he slipped in and
closed the door.
Harry smiled, the man returned to his perch on the lid, frowning and
looking very serious, while the occupant of the basket settled down
quietly again, making Harry more curious than ever as to what it might
be; but he mastered his desire to go and peer through the split bamboo
so tightly woven together, and waited impatiently for the coming of
his friend and companion.
"I believe it's a big monkey, after all," he said to himself. "Sree
always said he was sure there were monsters right away in the jungle,
just about the same as the one father saw at Singapore, brought from
Borneo. It was precious quiet, though, till Mike kicked the basket.
How savage it made him to be laughed at!"
He glanced at the basket again, and then at the old hunter and his
men, all three squatting down on their heels, chewing away at their
betel-nut, and evidently in calm, restful enjoyment of the habit.
"Just like three cows chewing their cud," said Harry to himself, and
then feeling that it was the best way to avoid the temptation to look
into the basket, he went along the verandah to the corner of the
house, just as his father reached the next corner, coming to join
them.
"Well, has Phra come?" he cried.
"No, father, not yet."
"Found out what's in the basket?" said Mr. Kenyon, smiling.
"No; haven't looked."
"Well done, Hal; I didn't give you credit for so much self-denial. But
there, I think we have waited long enough. Let's go and see now what
we've got."
"No, no, don't do that," said Harry excitedly. "Phra would be so
disappointed if we began before he had time to get here."
"Ah well, he will not be disappointed," said Mr. Kenyon, "for here he
is."
As he spoke a boat came in sight, gliding along the river at the
bottom of the garden--a handsomely made boat, propelled by a couple of
rowers standing one in the bow, the other astern, facing the way they
were going, and propelling the vessel after the fashion of Venetian
gondoliers, their oars being secured to a stout peg in the side by a
loop of hemp.
Harry started off down the garden to meet the passenger, who was
seated amidships beneath an awning; and as the men ran the craft
deftly up to the landing-place, a dark-complexioned, black-haired lad
sprang on to the bamboo platform, looking wonderfully European as to
his dress, for it was simply of white flannel. It was the little
scarlet military cap and the brightly tinted plaid sarong with kris at
the waist which gave the Eastern tinge to his appearance.
"Well," he said, in excellent English, as he joined Harry, "what have
they got? Something from their traps in the jungle?"
"Don't know anything. There they are yonder. We waited till you came."
"Oh," said the Siamese lad, with a gratified look, "I like that. I'm
afraid I shouldn't have waited, Hal."
"Oh, but then you're a prince," said Harry.
The Siamese lad stopped short.
"If you're going to chaff me about that, I shall go back," he said.
"All right; I won't then," said Harry. "You can't help it, can you?"
"Of course I can't, and I shan't be able to help it when I'm king some
day."
"Poor fellow, no; how horrible!" said Harry mockingly.
"There you go again. You've got one of your teasing fits on to-day."
"No, no, I haven't. It's all right, Phra, and I won't say another word
of that sort. Come along."
"Good-morning," said Mr. Kenyon, as the boys reached the verandah.
"Come to see our prize?"
"Yes, Mr. Kenyon. What is it you have this time?"
"We are waiting to see. Harry here wanted it to be kept for you."
The new-comer turned to give Harry a grateful nod and a smile, and
then walked with his host along the verandah, and turned the corner.
The moment he appeared, the hunter and the two men leaped up excitedly
and dropped upon their knees, raising their hands to the sides of
their faces and lowering their heads till their foreheads nearly
touched the bamboo floor.
The young Prince said a few words sharply in his own language, and the
men sprang up.
"Now then, Mr. Kenyon," he said, "let's see what is in the basket."
"What have you got, Sree?" asked Mr. Kenyon.
"Very fine, big snake, Sahib," was the reply.
"A snake?" cried Harry excitedly. "Ugh!"
"A big one?" said the merchant uneasily. Then, recalling the habit of
exaggeration so freely indulged in by these people as a rule, he asked
the size.
"Long as two men and a half, Sahib," said Sree. "Very thick, like
man's leg. Very heavy to carry."
"Humph! Twelve or fourteen feet long, I suppose," said Mr. Kenyon. "Is
it dangerous?"
"No, Sahib. I find him asleep in the jungle. He eat too much; go to
sleep for long time. Didn't try to bite when we lift him into the
basket. Very heavy."
"What do you say, Prince?" said the merchant. "Shall we have the lid
off and look at it?"
"Yes. I won't be afraid," was the reply. "Will you, Hal?"
"Not if the brute's asleep; but if it's awake and pops out at us, I
shall run for your boat."
"And leave your poor father in the lurch?" said Mr. Kenyon.
"But you'd run too, wouldn't you, father?"
"Not if the snake threw one of its coils round me."
"Then I suppose I shall have to stay," said Harry slowly.
"Perhaps it would be as well," said Mr. Kenyon drily--"You won't run,
will you?"
The young Siamese laughed merrily, and showed his white teeth.
"I don't know," he said; "I'm afraid I should. Snakes are so strong,
and they bite. I think it would be best to go with Harry."
The hunter said something very humbly in the native tongue.
"He says that he and his men would hold tight on to the snake if it
were angry, and shut it up again; but I don't believe they could. They
would all run away too."
"I don't think there is any danger," said Mr. Kenyon gravely. "These
things always try to escape back to the jungle, and they are, I
believe, more frightened of us than we are of them. We'll have a look
at the creature, then, out here, for I have no suitable place for it
at present."
"You could turn the birds out of the little aviary and let it loose
there, father."
"Good idea, Hal; but let's see it first. Look here, Sree; you and your
men must lay hold of the brute if it tries to escape."
"Yes, Sahib; we catch it and shut the lid down again."
"That's right," said the merchant. "Yes, who's that? Oh, you, Mike.
Come to see the prisoner set free? Come and stand a little farther
this way."
"Thank you, sir; yes, sir," said the man.
Harry nudged the Prince, and the nudge was returned, with a laughing
glance.
"No danger, is there, sir?" said Mike respectfully.
"I hope not," said Mr. Kenyon; "but you will be no worse off than we
are. Like to go back before the basket is opened?"
"Isn't time, sir; they've nearly got it open now."
"Run round the other way, Mike," cried Harry.
"Me, sir? No, thank you," replied the man. "I don't want to run."
Meanwhile the two bearers were holding the lid of the basket firmly
down while Sree pulled out eight stout elastic skewers of bamboo,
which had held the lid tightly in place. And as one after the other
was slowly and carefully extracted with as little movement of the
basket as possible, so as not to irritate the snake if awake, or to
disturb it if asleep, the interest and excitement increased till only
one was left, when Harry glanced at Mike, who stood with eyes widely
staring, cheeks puffed out, and fists clenched, as if about to start
off at full speed.
Sree looked up at Mr. Kenyon as the two men pressed down harder and he
stood ready to pull out the last skewer.
"Out with it," said Mr. Kenyon, and a thrill ran through all present
as the last piece of bamboo was withdrawn.
But still the lid was pressed down, and of this the hunter took hold,
said a few words to his two men, who stood back right and left, ready
to help if necessary, while their master had stationed himself at the
back of the basket, facing his employer and the two boys. He held the
lid with outstretched hands, and once more he paused and looked at Mr.
Kenyon as if waiting for orders to proceed, his aim of course being to
make the whole business as impressive as possible.
"Now then, off with it," cried Harry, and in spite of their
excitement, to the amusement of the two boys the hunters took off the
lid with a tremendous flourish, and stood back smiling with triumph.
"Just like Mike taking the dish-cover off a roast peacock," as Harry
afterwards said.
It was too much for the last-mentioned personage. As the basket was
laid open for the gentlemen to see its contents, Mike took half a
dozen steps backward as fast as he could, and with his eye fixed upon
the open basket he was in the act of turning to run, when he saw
everyone else stand fast.
"Lies pretty quiet at the bottom," said Harry, advancing with Phra,
Mr. Kenyon keeping close behind.
"Only a little one," said the young Prince, rather contemptuously.
"Here! I say, Sree; what do you mean by this?" cried Harry.
"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Phra. "This is one of your tricks, Hal."
"That it isn't," cried the boy.
"Where is the snake, Sree?" said Mr. Kenyon. "The basket's empty."
CHAPTER III
SREE'S PRISONER
The hunter took a couple of steps forward, looked down into the
basket, looked up, half stunned with astonishment, looked in the lid,
then outside it, lifted up the basket and peered under it, threw down
the lid, felt in his sarong, and then, as there was no heavy boa
twelve or fourteen feet long in its folds, he turned fiercely to the
two men in turn to ask them angrily in their own tongue what they had
done with the snake.
Both of them felt in their sarongs and began to protest volubly that
they had not touched it; that it was there just now, for they had
heard it and felt the weight. It was there--it must be there--and
their master had better look again.
"It's a conjuring trick," said Phra, who looked annoyed.
"I had nothing to do with it, then," said Harry. "I hadn't, honour
bright," he added hurriedly as his companion looked doubtingly at him.
"Here, Sree, have you begun to learn juggling?"
"No, Sahib; it was a lovely snake, all yellow, with big brown spots
and purple shadows all over the dark parts. One of these sons of
wickedness must have taken it out to sell it to some ship captain to
carry away. Surely Sree would not try to cheat the good Sahibs and his
Prince by playing tricks like an Indian juggler. Here, Michael; you
heard the snake inside before the master came?"
"Yes," said Mike, who looked quite brave now, as he approached and
looked into the basket searchingly. "I'm sure I heard it plainly, but
there's no snake here now. There has been one here, though, for you
can smell it."
"Yes, there has been one here," cried Harry eagerly. "Then where is it
gone?"
"Something dreadful has blinded all our eyes, Sahib, so that we cannot
see. Thrust in your hand and feel if it is there."
Harry shrank for the moment, for the idea of feeling after a snake
that had been rendered invisible was startling; but feeling ashamed
the next moment of his superstitious folly, he plunged his hand down
into the basket, felt round it, and stood up.
"There's nothing in there," he said.
"Well, you could see that there was not," said his father shortly.
"But there has been one there quite lately," said Harry. "Smell my
fingers, Phra."
"Pouf! Serpent!" cried the young Prince, with a gesture of disgust.
"It must have got away."
Sree took hold of the basket, bent down into it, looked all round, and
then to the surprise of all he stood it up again, turned it round a
little, and then jumped in, to stand upright.
The surprise came to an end directly, for Sree pointed downward, and
as he did so he thrust his toes through the bottom of the basket,
where no hole had been apparent, but which gave way easily to the
pressure of the man's foot from within, thus showing that it must have
been broken at that one particular place.
"What! A hole in the bottom for the reptile to crawl out? That was
wise of you, Sree!"
"I was wise, Sahib, and the basket had no hole in it when we put the
snake in."
"Then it must have made one, and forced its way through."
Sree was silent, and looked at Mike as if waiting for him to speak.
But Mike had not the least intention of speaking, and stood with his
lips pinched together, perfectly dumb.
"Why, of course!" cried Harry excitedly; "I see now. Mike gave the
basket a tremendous kick as he went by it, and startled the serpent,
and made it swing about. Why, Mike, you must have broken a hole
through then."
"Master Harry, I--" began Mike.
"Yes, Sahib, that was it; he broke a hole through, and once the
snake's head was through he would force his way right out."
"One minute," said Mr. Kenyon rather anxiously; "tell me, Harry: are
you perfectly sure that the snake was there?"
"Certain, father."
"And you saw Michael kick the basket?"
"Oh yes, father; and Michael knows he did."
"That's right enough, sir; but I didn't mean to let the brute out."
"No, no, of course not," said Mr. Kenyon anxiously: "but if the
serpent was in that basket a short time ago and is gone now, it must
either be in one of the rooms here by the verandah or just beneath the
house."
"Ow!" ejaculated Mike, with a look of horror, as he glanced round; and
then he shouted as he pointed to an opening in one corner of the
verandah, where a great bamboo had been shortened for the purpose of
ventilating the woodwork beneath the bungalow, "That's the way he has
gone, sir; that's the way he has gone."
It seemed only too probable, for it was just the kind of place in
which a fugitive, gloom-loving reptile would seek for a hiding-place;
while as if to prove the truth of Mike's guess there was a sharp,
squeaking sound heard somewhere below the house, and one after the
other three rats dashed out of the opening, darted across the
verandah, and sprang into the garden, disappearing directly amongst
the plants.
"Yes," said Mr. Kenyon; "the reptile seems to have gone under the
house."
"And he will clear away all the rats, Sahib," said Sree, in a tone of
voice which seemed to add, "and what could you wish for better than
that?"
"But I think that my son and I would rather have the rats, my man.
What do you say, Hal?"
"Yes, father; of course. We can't live here with a horrible thing like
that always lying in wait for us. How long did you say it was, Sree?"
"Two men and a half, Sahib."
"And that's a man and a half too long, Sree. What's to be done?"
Sree looked disconsolately at the merchant, and slowly rubbed his
blacking-brush-like hair.
"The Sahib told me to bring everything I could find in the jungle, and
this was a lovely snake, all yellow and brown and purple like
tortoiseshell. The Sahib would have been so pleased."
"No doubt, if I could have got it shut up safely in some kind of cage;
but you see you have let it go."
"If the Sahib will pardon me," said the man humbly.
"Of course; yes, it was not your fault, but Michael's. Well, Michael,
how are you going to catch this great snake?"
"Me catch it, sir?" said Mike mildly.
"Yes, of course; we can't leave it at liberty here."
"I thought perhaps you would shoot at it, sir, or Master Harry would
have a pop at it with his gun."
"That's all very well, Mike; but it's of no use to shoot till you can
see it," cried Harry.
"How can we drive it out, Sree?" said Mr. Kenyon. "We must get rid of
it somehow."
Sree shook his head.
"I'm afraid it will go to sleep now, Sahib," he said.
"For how long?"
"Three weeks or a month, Sahib. Until it gets hungry again."
"Why not get guns and two of us stand near here to see if it comes out
of this hole, while the others go from room to room hammering on the
floor?"
"That sounds well," said the merchant.
"And it would be good to try first if a cat would go down. Snakes do
not like cats or the mongoose, and the cat might drive it out. Cats
hate snakes."
"That sounds like a good plan, too, Sree. Suppose we try that first.
We have a cat, but what about a mongoose? Have you got one?"
"I had one when I was in Hindooland, Sahib, but perhaps it is dead
now."
"If not, it's of no use to us now," said Mr. Kenyon sarcastically.
"Here, Hal, go in and get the two guns hanging in my room. Bring the
powder-flasks and pouches too. Be careful, my lad; the guns are
loaded."
"Come along, Phra," said Harry.
"No, I am going back for my gun."
"I meant to lend you one of mine," said the merchant quietly. "You two
lads ought to be able to shoot that reptile if we succeed in driving
it out."
"Ah!" cried the young Siamese eagerly. "Thank you."
He looked gratefully at Mr. Kenyon, and then followed Harry into the
bungalow.
"This is a nice job," said the latter. "We shall never drive the brute
out. This place was built as if they wanted to make a snug,
comfortable home for a boa constrictor. There are double floors,
double ceilings, and double walls. There's every convenience for the
brute, whether he wants to stay a week or a year."
"Never mind; it will be good fun hunting him. Where are the guns?"
"Here, in father's room," said the boy, leading the way into the
lightly furnished bed-chamber with its matted floor and walls, bath,
and couch well draped with mosquito net.
One side was turned into quite a little armoury, guns and swords being
hung against the wall, while pouches, shot-belts, and powder-flasks
had places to themselves.
"Take care," said Harry, as he took down and handed a gun to his
companion, who smiled and nodded.
"Yes," he said; "but it isn't the first time I've had hold of a gun."
"Well, I know that, Phra. You needn't turn rusty about it. I only said
so because it comes natural to warn any one to be careful."
"Hist! Listen," said the Prince, holding up his hand.
Harry had heard the sound at the same moment. It was a strange,
rustling, creeping sound, as of horny scales passing over wood in the
wall to their right.
A look of intelligence passed between the boys, and they stood
listening for a few moments, which were quite sufficient to satisfy
them that the object of their visit within was gliding slowly up
between the bamboos of the open wall, probably to reach the
palm-thatched roof.
But it was not to do so without hindrance, for after darting another
look at his companion Phra cocked his gun, walked close to the wall,
and after listening again and again he placed the muzzle of his piece
about six inches from the thin teak matting-covered boarding, and
fired.
The result was immediate. Whether hit or only startled by the shot,
the reptile fell with a loud thud and there was the evident sound of
writhing and twisting about.
"Well done, Phra! You've shot him!" cried Harry; "but if he dies there
we shall have to take the floor up to get him out."
"What is it, boys? Have you seen the snake?"
"No, sir. I heard it in the wall, and fired."
"Yes, and you have hit it, too," said the merchant. "Listen."
The boys were quite ready to obey, and all stood attentively trying to
analyse the meaning of the movements below the floor.
It proved to be easy enough, for the violent writhings ceased, and the
serpent began to ascend the side of the room again in the hollow wall.
They went on tip-toe to the spot they had marked down, and as soon as
they were still again they could hear the faint _crick, crick, crick_
of the scales on the wood, as the serpent crawled from beneath the
floor and extended itself more and more up the side, so that it was
plain enough to trace the length upward, till evidently a good six
feet had been reached.
"My turn now," said Harry, cocking his piece. "Shall I fire father?"
"No; it would only bring it down again, and if it dies beneath the
floor or in the wall it will be a great nuisance to get it out. It
will mean picking the place to pieces."
"Let it go on up into the roof, then."
"Yes," said Mr. Kenyon; "if it gets up there it will be sure to
descend to the eaves, and if we keep a pretty good watch we shall see
it coming down slowly, and you will both get a good shot at it."
They stood listening for a few minutes longer, and then the _crick,
crick_ in the wall ceased, and it was evident that a long and heavy
body was gliding along over the ceiling.
"Now then, boys, out with you, and I think I'll bring a gun too; but
you shall have the honour of shooting the brute if you can. By the
way, I don't think Sree has exaggerated as to the reptile's length,
and I shall be glad to get rid of such a neighbour."
"It's not moving now," said Harry, in a whisper.
"Yes, I can hear it," said Phra, whose ears were preternaturally
sharp; "it's creeping towards where it can see the light shine
through, and it will come out right on the roof."
The little party hurried out to where Mike and the three Siamese were
anxiously watching the hole in the corner of the verandah, the three
latter armed with bamboo poles, and their long knives in their
waist-folds, while Mike had furnished himself with a rusty old cavalry
sword which he had bought in London, and brought with him because he
thought it might some day prove to be useful.
Their watching in the verandah came to an end on the appearance of the
little party, and they were posted ready to rush in to the attack of
the reptile if it should be shot and come wriggling down off the attap
thatch.
But for some minutes after the whole party had commenced their
watching there was no sign of the escaped prize, not the faintest
rustle or crackle of the crisp, sun-dried roof.
Phra began to grow impatient at having to stand in the hot sun holding
a heavy gun ready for firing, and Harry was little better, for the
effort of watching in the dazzling glare affected his eyes.
"Can't you send somebody inside to bang the ceiling with a stick, Mr.
Kenyon?" said Phra at last.
"Yes," said that gentleman. "This is getting rather weary work. Here,
Mike, go indoors and listen till you hear the snake rustling over the
ceiling of my room, and then thump loudly with a bamboo."
"Yes, sir," said Mike promptly, and he took two steps towards the
house, and then stopped and coughed.
"Well, what is it?" said Mr. Kenyon.
"I beg pardon, sir; but suppose the beast has taken fright at seeing
you all waiting for him, and got into the house to hide."
"Yes?" said Mr. Kenyon.
"And is scrawming about all over the floor. What shall I do then?"
"Don't lose a chance; hit it over the head or tail with all your
might."
Mike looked warmer than ever, and began to wipe the great drops of
perspiration off his forehead.
"Yes, sir," he said respectfully.
"We must not stop to be nice now, for it seems to be hopeless to think
of capturing the reptile again, and I can't have such a brute as that
haunting the place."
"No, sir, of course not," said Mike.
"Well go on," said Mr. Kenyon sharply. "You are not afraid, are you?"
"Oh no, sir, not a bit; but--"
Mr. Kenyon shrugged his shoulders and strode into the house, while the
two lads burst out laughing.
"I say, Mike, you are a brave one!" cried Harry.
"Now, look here," cried the man, "don't you go making the same mistake
as the master. I'm not a bit afraid."
"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Phra.
"No, sir," said the man angrily; "not a bit afraid; but I've got a
mother in England, and I don't like to be rash."
"You never are, Mike."
"No, sir, and I won't be. I'm sure every one ought to look before he
leaps when it's over a dangerous place, and--Ah! look out; here he
comes."
There was a yell, too, from Sree and his two men, who dashed forward
together, as all at once the great serpent seemed to dart suddenly
from under a fold of the palm-leaf thatch, make an effort to glide
along the slope from the neighbourhood of those who were waiting for
it, and then failing from the steepness of the incline, rolled over
and over, writhing and twining, towards the edge where the bamboo
supports formed the pillars of the verandah.
"Here, hi! stop!" roared the boys; but it was all in vain, for the
excited Siamese men were deaf to everything save their own impulses,
which prompted them to recover the escaped prize, and obtain their
promised reward.
"Here, I don't want to shoot one of them," cried Phra, stamping in his
disappointment.
"No, no, don't fire," cried Harry, throwing up his gun. "Here, hi,
Mike! Now's your time; go and help. Lay hold of his tail, but don't be
rash."
For the serpent had rapidly reached the edge of the thatch and fallen
into one of the flower beds with a heavy thud which proclaimed its
weight. But the next minute that was a flower bed no longer.
The serpent began the work of destruction by struggling violently as
it drew itself up into a knot, and the three Siamese finished the
work. They seemed to have not the slightest fear of the great
glistening creature whose scales shone in the sun, but dashed at it to
try and pinion it down to the ground.
There was a furious hissing, mingled with loud shouts, panting,
rustling, and the sound of heavy blows delivered on the earth and the
bamboo flooring of the verandah, as the serpent freed its tail and
lashed about furiously. Then there was a confused knot composed of
reptile and men, rolling over, heaving and straining, and a gaily
coloured sarong was thrown out, to fall a few yards away.
"Can't you get a shot at it, boys?" cried Mr. Kenyon, as he rushed
out.
"Impossible, father."
"Yes, impossible," repeated Mr. Kenyon.
"What fun!" cried Phra excitedly. "They want to catch him alive. Look,
Hal, look."
Harry was doing nothing else, and forgetful of all his repugnance he
approached so near the struggling knot that he had a narrow escape
from a heavy flogging blow delivered by the serpent's tail, one which
indented the soft earth with a furrow.
"Ugh! you beast!" cried Harry, kicking at one of the reptile's folds,
which just then offered itself temptingly; but before the boy's foot
could reach it the fold was a yard away and the struggle going on more
fiercely than ever.
It was the fight of three stout, strong men against that elongated,
tapering mass of bone and muscle, with fierce jaws at one end, a
thick, whip-like portion at the other, and the men seemed to be
comparatively helpless, being thrown here and there in spite of the
brave way in which they clung to the writhing form. The end soon
arrived, for the reptile made one tremendous effort to escape,
wrenched itself free enough to throw a couple of folds of its tail
round the thick bamboo pillar which supported the roof, took advantage
of the purchase afforded, and threw off its three adversaries, to
cling there with half its body undulating and quivering in the air,
its head with its eyes glittering fiercely, and its forked tongue
darting in and out, menacing its enemies and preparing to strike.
The men were up again in an instant, ready to resume the attack, Sree
giving his orders in their native tongue.
"I'll get hold of his neck," he panted, "and you two catch his tail.
Keep him tight to the bamboo, and I'll hold his head close up and ask
the master to tie it to the upright."
"Stand back, all of you!" cried Mr. Kenyon. "Now, boys, get into the
verandah and fire outward. You have a fine chance."
"No, no, Sahib," cried the hunter imploringly. "The snake is nearly
tired out now, and in another minute we shall have caught it fast."
"Nonsense," cried Mr. Kenyon; "it is far too strong for you. You are
all hurt now."
"A few scratches only, Sahib, and we could not bear to see so fine a
snake, which the master would love to have, killed like that."
"Thinking of reward, Sree?" said the merchant, smiling.
Harry whispered something to Phra, who nodded.
"Let them have another try, father," cried the boy. "Phra and I don't
mind missing a shot apiece."
"Very well," said Mr. Kenyon, and turning to the men--"Take it alive,
then, if you can."
From wearing a dull, heavy look of disappointment the faces of the
Siamese were all smiles once more, and they prepared to rush in at
their enemy on receiving a word from Sree, who now advanced with one
of the bamboo poles he had picked up, and held out the end toward the
quivering, menacing head of the snake.
The latter accepted the challenge directly and struck at the end of
the thick pole, its jaws opening and closing, and the dart of the
drawn-back head being quicker than the eye could follow.
Sree was as quick, though. The slightest movement of the wrist threw
the end of the pole aside, and the serpent missed it three times
running. After that it refused to strike, but drew back its head and
swung it from side to side till it was teased into striking once more.
This time there was a sharp jar of the bamboo, as the reptile's teeth
closed upon the wood, and the pole was nearly jerked out of the man's
hands. But he held on firmly without displaying the slightest fear,
swaying to and fro as the reptile dragged and gave.
"Better kill it at once, Sree," cried Mr. Kenyon.
"Pray no, Sahib. He is very strong, but we shall tire him out. I am
going to have his neck bound to the great bamboo pillar with a
sarong."
"My good fellow," cried the merchant, "if you do it will drag the
pillar down."
"And pull half the roof off," said Phra. "Yes, they are very strong,
these big serpents."
"I'm afraid he would, Sahib," said the hunter mildly. "Now, if I had
time I could go into the jungle and get leaves to pound up and give
him, and he would be asleep so that we could put him in the basket."
"Well, hadn't you better go and fetch some?" cried Harry
mischievously. "Here, Mike, come and hold this bamboo while Sree
goes."
There was a burst of laughter at this, in which the Siamese joined,
for Mike's features were for a moment convulsed with horror; the next
he grasped the fact that a joke was being made at his expense, and
stood shaking his head and pretending to be amused.
"We had better have a shot, my lads," said Mr. Kenyon. "It is too
unmanageable a specimen to keep, and I shall be quite content with the
skin."
"Let them have another try, Mr. Kenyon," said Phra eagerly. "It is
grand to see them fight. Perhaps they will win this time."
"Very well," said Mr. Kenyon, smiling.
"Go and help them, Phra," said Harry, laughing.
"It's so hot," said the young Siamese, "and one would be knocked about
so, and have all one's clothes torn off. Besides, you can't take hold,
only by clinging round it with your arms, and snakes are not nice. But
I will, if you will."
"All right," said Harry; "only let's have the tail."
Mike looked at the boys in horror, as if he thought they had gone mad.
But at that moment Sree gave a sign to his two followers, after
finding that the reptile was so much exhausted that he could force its
head in any direction, for it still held on tightly with its teeth.
There was a rush, and the two men seized the creature's tail and began
to unwind it from the pillar by walking round and round.
"Hurrah! they've mastered it,"
|
true, I grant it; but I always confined myself to
gallantry, and never went so far as to do what he has done.
SCA. But what was he to do? He sees a young person who wishes him
well; for he inherits it from you that all women love him. He thinks
her charming, goes to see her, makes love to her, sighs as lovers
sigh, and does the passionate swain. She yields to his pressing
visits; he pushes his fortune. But her relations catch him with her,
and oblige him to marry her by main force.
SIL. (_aside_). What a clever cheat!
SCA. Would you have him suffer them to murder him? It is still better
to be married than to be dead.
ARG. I was not told that the thing had happened in that way.
SCA. (_showing_ SILVESTRE). Ask him, if you like; he will tell
you the same thing.
ARG. (_to_ SILVESTRE). Was he married against his wish?
SIL. Yes, Sir.
SCA. Do you think I would tell you an untruth?
ARG. Then he should have gone at once to a lawyer to protest against
the violence.
SCA. It is the very thing he would not do.
ARG. It would have made it easier for me to break off the marriage.
SCA. Break off the marriage?
ARG. Yes
SCA. You will not break it off.
ARG. I shall not break it off?
SCA. No.
ARG. What! Have I not on my side the rights of a father, and can I
not have satisfaction for the violence done to my son?
SCA. This is a thing he will not consent to.
ARG. He will not consent to it?
SCA. No.
ARG. My son?
SCA. Your son. Would you have him acknowledge that he was frightened,
and that he yielded by force to what was wanted of him? He will take
care not to confess that; it would be to wrong himself, and show
himself unworthy of a father like you.
ARG. I don't care for all that.
SCA. He must, for his own honour and yours, say that he married of
his own free will.
ARG. And I wish for my own honour, and for his, that he should say
the contrary.
SCA. I am sure he will not do that.
ARG. I shall soon make him do it.
SCA. He will not acknowledge it, I tell you.
ARG. He shall do it, or I will disinherit him.
SCA. You?
ARG. I.
SCA. Nonsense!
ARG. How nonsense?
SCA. You will not disinherit him.
ARG. I shall not disinherit him?
SCA. No.
ARG. No?
SCA. No.
ARG. Well! This is really too much! I shall not disinherit my son!
SCA. No, I tell you.
ARG. Who will hinder me?
SCA. You yourself.
ARG. I?
SCA. Yes; you will never have the heart to do it.
ARG. I shall have the heart.
SCA. You are joking.
ARG. I am not joking.
SCA. Paternal love will carry the day.
ARG. No, it will not.
SCA. Yes, yes.
ARG. I tell you that I will disinherit him.
SCA. Rubbish.
ARG. You may say rubbish; but I will.
SCA. Gracious me, I know that you are naturally a kind-hearted man.
ARG. No, I am not kind-hearted; I can be angry when I choose. Leave
off talking; you put me out of all patience. (_To_ SYLVESTRE)
Go, you rascal, run and fetch my son, while I go to Mr. Géronte and
tell him of my misfortune.
SCA. Sir, if I can be useful to you in any way, you have but to order
me.
ARG. I thank you. (_Aside_) Ah! Why is he my only son? Oh! that
I had with me the daughter that Heaven has taken away from me, so
that I might make her my heir.
SCENE VII.--SCAPIN, SYLVESTRE.
SIL. You are a great man, I must confess; and things are in a fair
way to succeed. But, on the other hand, we are greatly pressed for
money, and we have people dunning us.
SCA. Leave it to me; the plan is all ready. I am only puzzling my
brains to find out a fellow to act along with us, in order to play a
personage I want. But let me see; just look at me a little. Stick
your cap rather rakishly on one side. Put on a furious look. Put your
hand on your side. Walk about like a king on the stage. {Footnote:
Compare the 'Impromptu of Versailles'.} That will do. Follow me. I
possess some means of changing your face and voice.
SIL. I pray you, Scapin, don't go and embroil me with justice.
SCA. Never mind, we will share our perils like brothers, and three
years more or less on the galleys are not sufficient to check a noble
heart.
ACT II.
SCENE I.--GÉRONTE, ARGANTE.
GER. Yes, there is no doubt but that with this weather we shall have
our people with us to-day; and a sailor who has arrived from Tarentum
told me just now that he had seen our man about to start with the
ship. But my daughter's arrival will find things strangely altered
from what we thought they would be, and what you have just told me of
your son has put an end to all the plans we had made together.
ARG. Don't be anxious about that; I give you my word that I shall
remove that obstacle, and I am going to see about it this moment.
GER. In all good faith, Mr. Argante, shall I tell you what? The
education of children is a thing that one could never be too careful
about.
ARG. You are right; but why do you say that?
GER. Because most of the follies of young men come from the way they
have been brought up by their fathers.
ARG. It is so sometimes, certainly; but what do you mean by saying
that to me?
GER. Why do I say that to you?
ARG. Yes.
GER. Because, if, like a courageous father, you had corrected your
son when he was young, he would not have played you such a trick.
ARG. I see. So that you have corrected your own much better?
GER. Certainly; and I should be very sorry if he had done anything at
all like what yours has done.
ARG. And if that son, so well brought up, had done worse even than
mine, what would you say?
GER. What?
ARG. What?
GER. What do you mean?
ARG. I mean, Mr. Géronte, that we should never be so ready to blame
the conduct of others, and that those who live in glass houses should
not throw stones.
GER. I really do not understand you.
ARG. I will explain myself.
GER. Have you heard anything about my son?
ARG. Perhaps I have.
GER. But what?
ARG. Your servant Scapin, in his vexation, only told me the thing
roughly, and you can learn all the particulars from him or from some
one else. For my part, I will at once go to my solicitor, and see
what steps I can take in the matter. Good-bye.
SCENE II.--GÉRONTE (_alone_).
GER. What can it be? Worse than what his son has done! I am sure I
don't know what anyone can do more wrong than that; and to marry
without the consent of one's father is the worst thing that I can
possibly imagine. {Footnote: No exaggeration, if we consider that
this was said two hundred years ago, and by a French father.}
SCENE III--GÉRONTE, LÉANDRE.
GER. Ah, here you are!
LEA. (_going quickly towards his father to embrace him_). Ah!
father, how glad I am to see you!
GER. (_refusing to embrace him_). Stay, I have to speak to you
first.
LEA. Allow me to embrace you, and....
GER. (_refusing him again_). Gently, I tell you.
LEA. How! father, you deprive me of the pleasure of showing you my
joy at your return?
GER. Certainly; we have something to settle first of all.
LEA. But what?
GER. Just stand there before me, and let me look at you.
LEA. What for?
GER. Look me straight in the face.
LEA. Well?
GER. Will you tell me what has taken place here in my absence?
LEA. What has taken place?
GER. Yes; what did you do while I was away?
LEA. What would you have me do, father?
GER. It is not I who wanted you to do anything, but who ask you now
what it is you did?
LEA. I have done nothing to give you reason to complain.
GER. Nothing at all?
LEA. No.
GER. You speak in a very decided tone.
LEA. It is because I am innocent.
GER. And yet Scapin has told me all about you.
LEA. Scapin!
GER. Oh! oh! that name makes you change colour.
LEA. He has told you something about me?
GER. He has. But this is not the place to talk about the business,
and we must go elsewhere to see to it. Go home at once; I will be
there presently. Ah! scoundrel, if you mean to bring dishonour upon
me, I will renounce you for my son, and you will have to avoid my
presence for ever!
SCENE IV.--LÉANDRE (_alone_).
LEA. To betray me after that fashion! A rascal who for so many
reasons should be the first to keep secret what I trust him with! To
go and tell everything to my father! Ah! I swear by all that is dear
to me not to let such villainy go unpunished.
SCENE V.--OCTAVE, LÉANDRE, SCAPIN.
OCT. My dear Scapin, what do I not owe to you? What a wonderful man
you are, and how kind of Heaven to send you to my help!
LEA. Ah, ah! here you are, you rascal!
SCA. Sir, your servant; you do me too much honour.
LEA. (_drawing his sword_). You are setting me at defiance, I
believe...Ah! I will teach you how....
SCA. (_falling on his knees_). Sir!
OCT. (_stepping between them_). Ah! Léandre.
LEA. No, Octave, do not keep me back.
SCA. (_to_ LÉANDRE). Eh! Sir.
OCT. (_keeping back_ LÉANDRE). For mercy's sake!
LEA. (_trying to strike_). Leave me to wreak my anger upon him.
OCT. In the name of our friendship, Léandre, do not strike him.
SCA. What have I done to you, Sir?
LEA. What you have done, you scoundrel!
OCT. (_still keeping back_ LÉANDRE). Gently, gently.
LEA. No, Octave, I will have him confess here on the spot the perfidy
of which he is guilty. Yes, scoundrel, I know the trick you have
played me; I have just been told of it. You did not think the secret
would be revealed to me, did you? But I will have you confess it with
your own lips, or I will run you through and through with my sword.
SCA. Ah! Sir, could you really be so cruel as that?
LEA. Speak, I say.
SCA. I have done something against you, Sir?
LEA. Yes, scoundrel! and your conscience must tell you only too well
what it is.
SCA. I assure you that I do not know what you mean.
LEA. (_going towards_ SCAPIN _to strike him_). You do not
know?
OCT. (_keeping back_ LÉANDRE). Léandre!
SCA. Well, Sir, since you will have it, I confess that I drank with
some of my friends that small cask of Spanish wine you received as a
present some days ago, and that it was I who made that opening in the
cask, and spilled some water on the ground round it, to make you
believe that all the wine had leaked out.
LEA. What! scoundrel, it was you who drank my Spanish wine, and who
suffered me to scold the servant so much, because I thought it was
she who had played me that trick?
SCA. Yes, Sir; I am very sorry, Sir.
LEA. I am glad to know this. But this is not what I am about now.
SCA. It is not that, Sir?
LEA. No; it is something else, for which I care much more, and I will
have you tell it me.
SCA. I do not remember, Sir, that I ever did anything else.
LEA. (_trying to strike_ SCAPIN). Will you speak?
SCA. Ah!
OCT. (_keeping back_ LÉANDRE). Gently.
SCA. Yes, Sir; it is true that three weeks ago, when you sent me in
the evening to take a small watch to the gypsy {Footnote:
_Égyptienne_. Compare act v. scene ii. _Bohémienne_ is a more
usual name.} girl you love, and I came back, my clothes spattered with
mud and my face covered with blood, I told you that I had been attacked
by robbers who had beaten me soundly and had stolen the watch from
me. It is true that I told a lie. It was I who kept the watch, Sir.
LEA. It was you who stole the watch?
SCA. Yes, Sir, in order to know the time.
LEA. Ah! you are telling me fine things; I have indeed a very
faithful servant! But it is not this that I want to know of you.
SCA. It is not this?
LEA. No, infamous wretch! it is something else that I want you to
confess.
SCA. (_aside_). Mercy on me!
LEA. Speak at once; I will not be put off.
SCA. Sir, I have done nothing else.
LEA. (_trying to strike_ SCAPIN). Nothing else?
OCT. (_stepping between them_). Ah! I beg....
SCA. Well, Sir, you remember that ghost that six months ago cudgelled
you soundly, and almost made you break your neck down a cellar, where
you fell whilst running away?
LEA. Well?
SCA. It was I, Sir, who was playing the ghost.
LEA. It was you, wretch! who were playing the ghost?
SCA. Only to frighten you a little, and to cure you of the habit of
making us go out every night as you did.
LEA. I will remember in proper time and place all I have just heard.
But I'll have you speak about the present matter, and tell me what it
is you said to my father.
SCA. What I said to your father?
LEA. Yes, scoundrel! to my father.
SCA. Why, I have not seen him since his return!
LEA. You have not seen him?
SCA. No, Sir.
LEA. Is that the truth?
SCA. The perfect truth; and he shall tell you so himself.
LEA. And yet it was he himself who told me.
SCA. With your leave, Sir, he did not tell you the truth.
SCENE VI.--LÉANDRE, OCTAVE, CARLE, SCAPIN.
CAR. Sir, I bring you very bad news concerning your love affair.
LEA. What is it now?
CAR. The gypsies are on the point of carrying off Zerbinette. She
came herself all in tears to ask me to tell you that, unless you take
to them, before two hours are over, the money they have asked you for
her, she will be lost to you for ever.
LEA. Two hours?
CAR. Two hours.
SCENE VII.--LÉANDRE, OCTAVE, SCAPIN.
LEA. Ah! my dear Scapin, I pray you to help me.
SCA. (_rising and passing proudly before_ LÉANDRE). Ah! my dear
Scapin! I am my dear Scapin, now that I am wanted.
LEA. I will forgive you all that you confessed just now, and more
also.
SCA. No, no; forgive me nothing; run your sword through and through
my body. I should be perfectly satisfied if you were to kill me.
LEA. I beseech you rather to give me life by serving my love.
SCA. Nay, nay; better kill me.
LEA. You are too dear to me for that. I beg of you to make use for me
of that wonderful genius of yours which can conquer everything.
SCA. Certainly not. Kill me, I tell you.
LEA. Ah! for mercy's sake, don't think of that now, but try to give
me the help I ask.
OCT. Scapin, you must do something to help him.
SCA. How can I after such abuse?
LEA. I beseech you to forget my outburst of temper, and to make use
of your skill for me.
OCT. I add my entreaties to his.
SCA. I cannot forget such an insult.
OCT. You must not give way to resentment, Scapin.
LEA. Could you forsake me, Scapin, in this cruel extremity?
SCA. To come all of a sudden and insult me like that.
LEA. I was wrong, I acknowledge.
SCA. To call me scoundrel, knave, infamous wretch!
LEA. I am really very sorry.
SCA. To wish to send your sword through my body!
LEA. I ask you to forgive me, with all my heart; and if you want to
see me at your feet, I beseech you, kneeling, not to give me up.
OCT. Scapin, you cannot resist that?
SCA. Well, get up, and another time remember not to be so hasty.
LEA. Will you try to act for me?
SCA. I will see.
LEA. But you know that time presses.
SCA. Don't be anxious. How much is it you want?
LEA. Five hundred crowns.
SCA. You?
OCT. Two hundred pistoles.
SCA. I must extract this money from your respective fathers' pockets.
(_To_ OCTAVE) As far as yours is concerned, my plan is all
ready. (_To_ LÉANDRE) And as for yours, although he is the
greatest miser imaginable, we shall find it easier still; for you
know that he is not blessed with too much intellect, and I look upon
him as a man who will believe anything. This cannot offend you; there
is not a suspicion of a resemblance between him and you; and you know
what the world thinks, that he is your father only in name.
LEA. Gently, Scapin.
SCA. Besides, what does it matter? But, Mr. Octave, I see your father
coming. Let us begin by him, since he is the first to cross our path.
Vanish both of you; (_to_ OCTAVE) and you, please, tell Silvestre
to come quickly, and take his part in the affair.
SCENE VIII.--ARGANTE, SCAPIN.
SCA. (_aside_). Here he is, turning it over in his mind.
ARG. (_thinking himself alone_). Such behaviour and such lack of
consideration! To entangle himself in an engagement like that! Ah!
rash youth.
SCA. Your servant, Sir.
ARG. Good morning, Scapin.
SCA. You are thinking of your son's conduct.
ARG. Yes, I acknowledge that it grieves me deeply.
SCA. Ah! Sir, life is full of troubles; and we should always be
prepared for them. I was told, a long time ago, the saying of an
ancient philosopher which I have never forgotten.
ARG. What was it?
SCA. That if the father of a family has been away from home for ever
so short a time, he ought to dwell upon all the sad news that may
greet him on his return. He ought to fancy his house burnt down, his
money stolen, his wife dead, his son married, his daughter ruined;
and be very thankful for whatever falls short of all this. In my
small way of philosophy, I have ever taken this lesson to heart; and
I never come home but I expect to have to bear with the anger of my
masters, their scoldings, insults, kicks, blows, and horse-whipping.
And I always thank my destiny for whatever I do not receive.
ARG. That's all very well; but this rash marriage is more than I can
put up with, and it forces me to break off the match I had intended
for my son. I have come from my solicitor's to see if we can cancel
it.
SCA. Well, Sir, if you will take my advice, you will look to some
other way of settling this business. You know what a law-suit means
in this country, and you'll find yourself in the midst of a strange
bush of thorns.
ARG. I am fully aware that you are quite right; but what else can I
do?
SCA. I think I have found something that will answer much better. The
sorrow that I felt for you made me rummage in my head to find some
means of getting you out of trouble; for I cannot bear to see kind
fathers a prey to grief without feeling sad about it, and, besides, I
have at all times had the greatest regard for you.
ARG. I am much obliged to you.
SCA. Then you must know that I went to the brother of the young girl
whom your son has married. He is one of those fire-eaters, one of
those men all sword-thrusts, who speak of nothing but fighting, and
who think no more of killing a man than of swallowing a glass of
wine. I got him to speak of this marriage; I showed him how easy it
would be to have it broken off, because of the violence used towards
your son. I spoke to him of your prerogatives as father, and of the
weight which your rights, your money, and your friends would have
with justice. I managed him so that at last he lent a ready ear to
the propositions I made to him of arranging the matter amicably for a
sum of money. In short, he will give his consent to the marriage
being cancelled, provided you pay him well.
ARG. And how much did he ask?
SCA. Oh! at first things utterly out of the question.
ARG. But what?
SCA. Things utterly extravagant.
ARG. But what?
SCA. He spoke of no less than five or six hundred pistoles.
ARG. Five or six hundred agues to choke him withal. Does he think me
a fool?
SCA. Just what I told him. I laughed his proposal to scorn, and made
him understand that you were not a man to be duped in that fashion,
and of whom anyone can ask five or six hundred pistoles! However,
after much talking, this is what we decided upon. "The time is now
come," he said, "when I must go and rejoin the army. I am buying my
equipments, and the want of money I am in forces me to listen to what
you propose. I must have a horse, and I cannot obtain one at all fit
for the service under sixty pistoles."
ARG. Well, yes; I am willing to give sixty pistoles.
SCA. He must have the harness and pistols, and that will cost very
nearly twenty pistoles more.
ARG. Twenty and sixty make eighty.
SCA. Exactly.
ARG. It's a great deal; still, I consent to that.
SCA. He must also have a horse for his servant, which, we may expect,
will cost at least thirty pistoles.
ARG. How, the deuce! Let him go to Jericho. He shall have nothing at
all.
SCA. Sir!
ARG. No; he's an insolent fellow.
SCA. Would you have his servant walk?
ARG. Let him get along as he pleases, and the master too.
SCA. Now, Sir, really don't go and hesitate for so little. Don't have
recourse to law, I beg of you, but rather give all that is asked of
you, and save yourself from the clutches of justice.
ARG. Well, well! I will bring myself to give these thirty pistoles
also.
SCA. "I must also have," he said, "a mule to carry...."
ARG. Let him go to the devil with his mule! This is asking too much.
We will go before the judges.
SCA. I beg of you, Sir!
ARG. No, I will not give in.
SCA. Sir, only one small mule.
ARG. No; not even an ass.
SCA. Consider....
ARG. No, I tell you; I prefer going to law.
SCA. Ah! Sir, what are you talking about, and what a resolution you
are going to take. Just cast a glance on the ins and outs of justice,
look at the number of appeals, of stages of jurisdiction; how many
embarrassing procedures; how many ravening wolves through whose claws
you will have to pass; serjeants, solicitors, counsel, registrars,
substitutes, recorders, judges and their clerks. There is not one of
these who, for the merest trifle, couldn't knock over the best case
in the world. A serjeant will issue false writs without your knowing
anything of it. Your solicitor will act in concert with your
adversary, and sell you for ready money. Your counsel, bribed in the
same way, will be nowhere to be found when your case comes on, or
else will bring forward arguments which are the merest shooting in
the air, and will never come to the point. The registrar will issue
writs and decrees against you for contumacy. The recorder's clerk
will make away with some of your papers, or the instructing officer
himself will not say what he has seen, and when, by dint of the
wariest possible precautions, you have escaped all these traps, you
will be amazed that your judges have been set against you either by
bigots or by the women they love. Ah! Sir, save yourself from such a
hell, if you can. 'Tis damnation in this world to have to go to law;
and the mere thought of a lawsuit is quite enough to drive me to the
other end of the world.
ARG. How much does he want for the mule?
SCA. For the mule, for his horse and that of his servant, for the
harness and pistols, and to pay a little something he owes at the
hotel, he asks altogether two hundred pistoles, Sir.
ARG. Two hundred pistoles?
SCA. Yes.
ARG. (_walking about angrily_). No, no; we will go to law.
SCA. Recollect what you are doing.
ARG. I shall go to law.
SCA. Don't go and expose yourself to....
ARG. I will go to law.
SCA. But to go to law you need money. You must have money for the
summons, you must have money for the rolls, for prosecution,
attorney's introduction, solicitor's advice, evidence, and his days
in court. You must have money for the consultations and pleadings of
the counsel, for the right of withdrawing the briefs, and for
engrossed copies of the documents. You must have money for the
reports of the substitutes, for the court fees {1} at the conclusion,
for registrar's enrolment, drawing up of deeds, sentences, decrees,
rolls, signings, and clerks' despatches; letting alone all the
presents you will have to make. Give this money to the man, and there
you are well out of the whole thing.
{1} _Épices_, "spices," in ancient times, equalled
_sweetmeats_, and were given to the judge by the side which
gained the suit, as a mark of gratitude. These _épices_ had long
been changed into a compulsory payment of money when Molière wrote.
In Racine's _Plaideurs_, act ii. scene vii., Petit Jean takes
literally the demand of the judge for _épices_, and fetches the
pepper-box to satisfy him.
ARG. Two hundred pistoles!
SCA. Yes, and you will save by it. I have made a small calculation in
my head of all that justice costs, and I find that by giving two
hundred pistoles to your man you will have a large margin left--say,
at least a hundred and fifty pistoles--without taking into
consideration the cares, troubles, and anxieties, which you will
spare yourself. For were it only to avoid being before everybody the
butt of some facetious counsel, I had rather give three hundred
pistoles than go to law. {Footnote: What would Molière have said if
he had been living now!}
ARG. I don't care for that, and I challenge all the lawyers to say
anything against me.
SCA. You will do as you please, but in your place I would avoid a
lawsuit.
ARG. I will never give two hundred pistoles.
SCA. Ah! here is our man.
SCENE IX.--ARGANTE, SCAPIN, SILVESTRE, _dressed out as a bravo_.
SIL. Scapin, show me that Argante who is the father of Octave.
SCA. What for, Sir?
SIL. I have just been told that he wants to go to law with me, and to
have my sister's marriage annulled.
SCA. I don't know if such is his intention, but he won't consent to
give the two hundred pistoles you asked; he says it's too much.
SIL. S'death! s'blood! If I can but find him, I'll make mince-meat of
him, were I to be broken alive on the wheel afterwards.
(ARGANTE _hides, trembling, behind_ SCAPIN.)
SCA. Sir, the father of Octave is a brave man, and perhaps he will
not be afraid of you.
SIL. Ah! will he not? S'blood! s'death! If he were here, I would in a
moment run my sword through his body. (_Seeing_ ARGANTE.) Who is
that man?
SCA. He's not the man, Sir; he's not the man.
SIL. Is he one of his friends?
SCA. No, Sir; on the contrary, he's his greatest enemy.
SIL. His greatest enemy?
SCA. Yes.
SIL. Ah! zounds! I am delighted at it. (_To_ ARGANTE) You are an
enemy of that scoundrel Argante, are you?
SCA. Yes, yes; I assure you that it is so.
SIL. (_shaking_ ARGANTE'S _hand roughly_). Shake hands,
shake hands. I give you my word, I swear upon my honour, by the sword
I wear, by all the oaths I can take, that, before the day is over, I
shall have delivered you of that rascally knave, of that scoundrel
Argante. Trust me.
SCA. But, Sir, violent deeds are not allowed in this country.
SIL. I don't care, and I have nothing to lose.
SCA. He will certainly take his precautions; he has relations,
friends, servants, who will take his part against you.
SIL. Blood and thunder! It is all I ask, all I ask. (_Drawing his
sword_.) Ah! s'death! ah! s'blood! Why can I not meet him at this
very moment, with all these relations and friends of his? If he would
only appear before me, surrounded by a score of them! Why do they not
fall upon me, arms in hand? (_Standing upon his guard_.) What!
you villains! you dare to attack me? Now, s'death! Kill and slay!
(_He lunges out on all sides; as if he were fighting many people at
once_.) No quarter; lay on. Thrust. Firm. Again. Eye and foot. Ah!
knaves! ah! rascals! ah! you shall have a taste of it. I'll give you
your fill. Come on, you rabble! come on. That's what you want, you
there. You shall have your fill of it, I say. Stick to it, you
brutes; stick to it. Now, then, parry; now, then, you. (_Turning
towards_ ARGANTE and SCAPIN.) Parry this; parry. You draw back?
Stand firm, man! S'death! What! Never flinch, I say.
SCA. Sir, we have nothing to do with it.
SIL. That will teach you to trifle with me.
SCENE X.--ARGANTE, SCAPIN.
SCA. Well, Sir, you see how many people are killed for two hundred
pistoles. Now I wish you a good morning.
ARG. (_all trembling_). Scapin.
SCA. What do you say?
ARG. I will give the two hundred pistoles.
SCA. I am very glad of it, for your sake.
ARG. Let us go to him; I have them with me.
SCA. Better give them to me. You must not, for your honour, appear in
this business, now that you have passed for another; and, besides, I
should be afraid that he would ask you for more, if he knew who you
are.
ARG. True; still I should be glad to see to whom I give my money.
SCA. Do you mistrust me then?
ARG. Oh no; but....
SCA. Zounds! Sir; either I am a thief or an honest man; one or the
other. Do you think I would deceive you, and that in all this I have
any other interest at heart than yours and that of my master, whom
you want to take into your family? If I have not all your confidence,
I will have no more to do with all this, and you can look out for
somebody else to get you out of the mess.
ARG. Here then.
SCA. No, Sir; do not trust your money to me. I would rather you
trusted another with your message.
ARG. Ah me! here, take it.
SCA. No, no, I tell you; do not trust me. Who knows if I do not want
to steal your money from you?
ARG. Take it, I tell you, and don't force me to ask you again.
However, mind you have an acknowledgment from him.
SCA. Trust me; he hasn't to do with an idiot.
ARG. I will go home and wait for you.
SCA. I shall be sure to go. (_Alone_.) That one's all right; now
for the other. Ah! here he is. They are sent one after the other to
fall into my net.
SCENE XI.--GÉRONTE, SCAPIN.
SCA. (_affecting not to see_ GÉRONTE). O Heaven! O unforeseen
misfortune! O unfortunate father! Poor Géronte, what will you do?
GER. (_aside_). What is he saying there with that doleful face?
SCA. Can no one tell me whereto find Mr. Géronte?
GER. What is the matter, Scapin?
SCA. (_running about on the stage, and still affecting not to see
or hear_ GÉRONTE). Where could I meet him, to tell him of this
misfortune?
GER. (_stopping_ SCAPIN). What is the matter?
SCA. (_as before_). In vain I run everywhere to meet him. I
cannot find him.
GER. Here I am.
SCA. (_as before_). He must have hidden himself in some place
which nobody can guess.
GER. (_stopping_ SCAPIN _again_). Ho! I say, are you blind?
Can't you see me?
SCA. Ah! Sir, it is impossible to find you.
GER. I have been near you for the last half-hour. What is it all
about?
SCA. Sir....
GER. Well!
SCA. Your son, Sir....
GER. Well! My son....
SCA. Has met with
|
:--
The Good Man,
When-he-falleth-in-Love
And-getteth-Snubbed,
Breaketh Forth In-to Tears:
But-the-Ungawdly Careth Notta Damn!
For Woman,
She-is-but-Vanity
Ay, Verily, and False-Curls.
And-the-Wooing Thereof Is Bitterness.
For-he-Wasteth-his-Substance-Upon-Her,
Taking-her-Pic-nics and Balls.
And she Danceth with some
Other Feller.
Oh-hh SLUSH!!!
A window-shade floated sideways, revealing to the peerer's gaze a
gnome with blue ears beating out the tempo with the fire-tongs for a
quartette, consisting of an aeroplane, a Salvation Army captain, a white
rabbit, and an Apache, while a motley crowd circulated around them.
In the intensity of his relief, Cyrus the Gaunt took a great resolve:
"Invited or not invited, I'm going to that party."
MacLachan's "Home of Fashion" on the corner was long since dark,
but Cyrus's pedal fantasia on the panels brought forth the indignant
proprietor.
"What have you got for me to go to a fancy party in, Mac?" demanded his
disturber.
"Turnverein or Pansy Social Circle?" inquired the practical tailor.
"Neither. A dead swell party."
"Go as ye are-rr, ye fule!" said the Scot, and slammed the door.
"Perfectly simple," said Cyrus the Gaunt. "I'll do it."
He hastened around to Schwartz's to wash his hands and smut his face
artistically.
III
Upon the reiterated testimony of the Oldest Inhabitant, Our Square had
never before witnessed such scenes or heard such sounds of revelry
by night as the Bonnie Lassie's surprise party, given for her by her
friends of the far-away world. None of us was bidden in at first, as
the Bonnie Lassie had not the inviting in her hands. But to her--little
loyalist that she is!--a celebration without her own neighbors was
unthinkable; so she sent her messengers forth and gathered us in from
our beds, from Schwartz's, from Lavansky's Pinochle Parlors, from
the late shift of the "Socialist Weekly Battlecry," and even from the
Semi-Annual Soirée and Ball of the Sons of Gentlemen of Goerck Street,
far out on our boundaries of influence; and though we wore no fancier
garb than our best, we made a respectable showing, indeed.
Along with the early comers, and while Cyrus the Gaunt was still putting
the final touches to his preparation, there appeared at the hospitable
door an unexpected guest, a woman of sixty with a strong, bent figure,
and a square face lighted by gleaming eyes with fixed lines about
them. The black-hued Undertaker who had constituted himself master of
ceremonies met her at the door, and immediately hustled her within.
"While I have not the privilege of this lady's personal acquaintance,"
he announced, "I have the honor of presenting, ladies and gentlemen, the
eminent and professional chaperon, Mrs. Sparkles."
The newcomer paused, blinking and irresolute. "But I did not know--"
she began, in a faintly foreignized accent From a far corner the Bonnie
Lassie spied her, and flew across the floor, flushed, radiant, and
confused. "You!" she cried--and there was something in her voice that
drew upon the pair curious looks from the other guests. "Oh, Madame! Why
didn't you let me know?"
The newcomer set her finger to her lips. "I am incognita. What is it the
somber person called me? Mrs. Sparkles? Yes." The Bonnie Lassie nodded
her comprehension. "If I had known that you were making fête this
evening--I cannot see your work now."
"Indeed, you can. I'll shut just us two into the studio. They won't
miss me." She gently pushed the new guest through a side door, which
she closed after them. Confronted with the little sculptor's work, the
visitor moved about with a swift certainty of judgment, praising this
bit with a brief word, shrugging her shoulders over that, indicating by
a single touch of the finger the salient defect of another, while her
hostess followed her with anxious eyes.
"Not bad," murmured the critic. "You have learned much. What is under
that sheet?"
"Experiments," answered the girl reluctantly.
The woman swept the covering aside. Beneath were huddled a number of
studies, some finished, others in the rough, ungrouped.
"All the same subject, _n'est-ce-pas?_"
"Yes."
The visitor examined them carefully. "Very interesting. Any more of
this?"
"Some notes in pencil."
"Let me see them."
The Bonnie Lassie drew out and submitted a sheaf of papers.
"You have done very badly with this," was the verdict, after
concentrated study. "Or else--you have worked hard and honestly upon
it?"
"Harder than on anything I've done."
"There are signs of that, too. What is it you are aiming at? What is the
subject? Inside, I mean?" She tapped her forehead and regarded with her
luminous stare the eager girl-face before her.
"Why, I hardly know. At first it was one thing, then it changed. I
had thought of doing him as 'The Pioneer.' 'Something lost beyond the
ranges,' you know." The woman nodded. "Then later, I wanted to do 'The
Last American,' and I modeled him for that."
"Good!" The older woman's endorsement was emphatic. "How Lincoln-like
the formation of the face is, here." She touched one of the unfinished
bits. "That's the American of it. Or _is_ it? Albrecht Dürer did the
same thing in his ideal Knight four centuries ago. You know it?
It's like a portrait of Lincoln. Did you consciously mould that line
in?"
"Ah!" The girl contemplated her own work with glowing eyes. "That's
the haunting resemblance I felt but couldn't catch when I first saw my
model."
"It isn't in most of these."
"My fault. It must have been there, underneath, all the time."
"Hm! You consider those pretty faithful studies?"
"As faithful as I could make them. But I haven't been able to catch
and fix the face. It's most provoking," she added fretfully, "but I'm
constantly having to remodel." Before she had finished, the elderly
woman's swift hands were busy with the figures, manipulating them here
and there, until they were presently set out in a single row with the
sketches interspersed. "Read from left to right," she said curtly. "Is
not that the order of time in which the work was done?"
[Illustration: Read from left to right 082]
"Pure magic!" breathed the girl. "How could you know?"
"How could I help but know? Child, child! Can't you see you have the
biggest subject ready to your hand that any artist could pray for?" The
girl looked her question mutely. "The man is making himself. How? God
knows--the God that helps all real work. Look! See how the lines of
grossness _there_"--she touched the first figure in her marshaled line
--"have planed out _here_." The swift finger found a later study. "How
could you miss it! The upbuilding of character, resolve, manhood, and
with it all something gentler and finer softening it. You have half-done
it, but only half, because you have not understood. _Why_ have you not
understood?"
"Because I'm not a genius."
"Who knows? To have half-done it is much. The master-genius, Life, has
been carving that face out before your eyes. You need but follow."
"Tell me what to do."
"Leave it alone for six months. Come back and take the face as it will
be then."
"Then will be too late," said the girl in a low voice.
"What!" cried the critic, startled. "Your model isn't dying, is he?"
"Oh, no. I--I had something else in mind."
"Dismiss it. Have nothing else in mind but to finish this." She paused.
"I have seen all I need to. Let us return to your friends."
Hardly had the hostess seated her guest in the most comfortable corner
of the big divan when there was a stir at the door, and a rangy,
big-boned figure, clad in the unmistakable garb of honest labor,
appeared, blinking a little at the lights. Instantly the Undertaker, in
his rôle of official announcer, dashed forward to greet him. "Gentlemen
_and_ ladies," he proclaimed, "introducing Mr. Casey Jones, late of the
Salt Lake Line."
"Sing it, you Son of Toil!" shouted somebody, and Cyrus the Gaunt
promptly obliged, in a clear and robust baritone, leading the chorus
which came in jubilantly.
The elderly "Mrs. Sparkles" was not interested in the harmony; but she
was interested in the face of her hostess, which had flushed a startled
pink. She asked a question under cover of the music.
"That is your model, is it not?"
"Yes."
"What is he in real life?"
"As you see him."
"In--deed? What is he doing it for?"
"Two and a half a day, I believe."
"Quite enough. But why?"
"I never asked him." And the Bonnie Lassie tripped over to her newest
guest, leaving her next-to-newest quite busy with thought.
Owing to the demands upon a hostess,
Cyrus the Gaunt saw very little of her in the brief hour remaining to
him. One dance he succeeded in claiming.
"You see," he remarked, "I came to your party anyway, although
uninvited."
"I didn't give it. It was a surprise," she explained. "But the job?"
"They've put me on an hour later."
"You still like it?"
"It limits one socially more than being a model," he replied solemnly.
"But you are sticking to it?" she persisted.
"Oh, yes, I'm sticking to it, all right."
"Even if--No matter what happens?"
"What is going to happen?" he asked gravely.
"Nothing," she said hurriedly. "But it's the job for the job's sake with
you now, isn't it?"
"I like the feel of it, if that's what you mean. The feel of being
competent to hold it down."
She nodded with content in her eyes. But he was troubled.
"You had something in mind--" he began, when another partner claimed
her, while he was dragged off to assist in an improvised glee-club.
His time was up all too soon, and without chance of a further word from
her, other than a formal farewell. In the little rear hallway whither he
had made his way through his protesting fellow-revelers, he reached up
for his coat, and felt something lightly brush the top of his head.
He looked up. It was a sprig of mistletoe. At the same moment two firm
hands closed over his eyes, and light, swift lips just grazed his cheek.
Cyrus the Gaunt fell a-trembling. He turned slowly, and found himself
confronting a total stranger. The stranger had gray hair and a tired
face lighted by crinkly eyes. "Oh!" said Cyrus the Gaunt with an
irrepressible bitterness of disappointment.
"Frankness," observed his salutant, "may or may not be a compliment to
the object of it." Cyrus remained mute. "Who did you _hope_ it was?"
Silence seemed still the best policy. "If you are offended"--the eyes
twinkled with added keenness--"I will apologize honorably."
"Let me do it for you," said Cyrus the Gaunt politely, and kissed the
unknown square upon the lips.
She drew back. "Well!" she began; then she laughed. "The _entente
cordiale_ having been established, _what_ are you doing here, Cyrus
Staten?"
He gasped and gaped. "Do I know you?"
"Having neither memory nor manners, you do not. But I spent weeks at
your country place when you were a boy, painting your father. Permit
me to introduce myself." And she gave a name so great that even Cyrus's
comprehensive carelessness of art was not ignorant of it.
"Great snakes!" he ejaculated. "I--I'm sorry I kissed you."
"Oh, I'm human. I rather liked it," she chuckled, "even though I am old
and stately. But how have you contrived to preserve your incognito?"
"Easy enough. This is another world. Look out!" he added as the curtain
behind them moved. "Somebody's coming." The hanging swung aside and the
Bonnie Lassie emerged. "Oh!" she said in surprise. "Do you know each
other?"
"We were becoming acquainted when you interrupted," replied the woman.
She turned a disconcerting gaze upon her hostess. "Where did you get
him?" she demanded, exactly as if Cyrus weren't there. "Oh, please!"
cried the girl.
"Don't mind me," said Cyrus politely, sensible that something was going
on which he didn't grasp. "I'm used to it." He turned to the mighty
artist. "You see, in real life I'm a studio model."
"Are you?" retorted the genius. "I thought you were an engineer. Now I
begin to suspect you are a fraud. Well, I have something to say to Miss
Prim, here. Run you away and play with your job."
"So that's your young Lincoln," she observed, as Cyrus moodily accepted
his dismissal, and passed out.
"He doesn't know it."
"You have missed even more than I thought, in him."
"I've done my best," said the girl dispiritedly. "He's too big for
little me."
"Hm! You haven't told me yet where you got him."
"'The wild wind blew him to my close-barred door,'" quoted the girl.
"A good many wild winds have blown about Cyrus Staten from time to
time."
"Who?"
"Cyrus Staten; don't you _know_ him?"
"No, I picked him up from the bench in Our Square."
"Which the Statens used to own, by the way. Well, the _facilis
descensus_ of an idle waster from the world of white lights and black
shadows to a park-bench is nothing new."
"Does he look like an idle waster?"
"He does _not_. Therein lies a miracle. What is he doing now?"
"Running the steam-roller, outside." The face of the girl melted into
lovely and irrepressible mirth.
"Ah! That explains much. But not all. What is your part in this?"
"You have seen it." She nodded backward toward the studio.
"Not that. As a woman? What have you been doing to that boy to make him
what he is?"
The girl took her soft lip grievously between her teeth for a moment
before answering. "I've been playing my child's tricks with a real
man--and now I'm being sorry."
"And paying for it?"
The Bonnie Lassie's head drooped.
"Is he paying for it, too?"
"No."
"No? Well, when I played a little surprise on him and kissed him under
the mistletoe, I thought that tall and massive youth was going to faint
away like a school-miss in my supporting arms, until he saw who it was.
What do you suppose his expectations--"
"You had no right to take such an advantage," flashed the girl, turning
crimson.
"So?" The great woman smiled. "But I think my own thoughts. When one
pays, or the other pays, that is well. It is the chance of the play. But
when both pay--oh, that is wrong, wrong, wrong as wrong can be!"
"I can't help it," said the girl, very low. "There is a previous debt."
And she turned aside a face so woe-begone that her interrogator forbore
further pressure.
"At least," she said, "the artist must complete the work, at whatever
cost to the woman. You will finish _that?_" She jerked her head toward
the studio.
"I--I suppose so. If I can."
On the way home the genius caught a glimpse of Cyrus the Gaunt upon
his triumphal chariot, and halted her auto the better to laugh. As the
lumbering, clamoring monster drew opposite, she signaled. Cyrus did
something abstruse to the mechanism, which groaned and clanked itself
into stillness.
"Young man," she hailed, "I have a message for you."
"From whom?" said Cyrus hopefully. "From myself. This is it: Be
careful."
"I am," said Cyrus with conviction, "the carefulest captain that ever
ploughed the stormy pave."
"Be careful," she repeated, disregarding his interpretation, "or she'll
make a man of you yet. The process is sometimes painful--like most
creative processes, Home, Joseph."
Many of the Bonnie Lassie's outlander guests passed Cyrus the Gaunt that
night, but none other identified or noticed him. The latest departures
were two heavily swathed youths who paused to light cigarettes in the
lee of Cyrus's iron steed.
"Some little farewell party, wasn't it?" the engineer overheard them
say. "Why wasn't the happy Bascom there?"
"Not back from Europe yet. I understand Morris Cartwright fixed things
up, and the engagement is to be formally announced on his return."
"It's a shame," growled the first speaker. "Bascom's all right, but he's
old enough to be her father. Wasn't she a dream and a vision to-night!"
"It was one of those legacy engagements, I believe. Dead-father's-wish
sort of thing. All right, I suppose, so long as there's no one else. Who
was the engineer guy? He seemed to be a reg'lar feller."
The twain passed on, leaving Cyrus the Gaunt stiff and stricken in his
seat. How he got through the next hour he hardly knew. He remembered
vaguely a protest from sundry citizens who resented being charged off
the cross-walks by a zigzagging juggernaut, a query from Terry the Cop
whether he was off his feed, and the startled face of old man Sittser,
who paused to pass the time of night on his way home from the late
shift on the linotype and was incontinently cursed for his pains. Full
consciousness of the practical world was brought back to Cyrus by the
purring of a sleek auto close at hand as he curved out at the corner for
his straightaway course. He was just gathering momentum when he caught
sight of the Bonnie Lassie's face, white and wistful, soft-eyed and
miserable, confronting darkness and vacancy from within the luxurious
limousine.
Well, nobody can catch a sixty-horsepower motor-car with a ten-ton
steamroller.
Cyrus, to do him justice, tried his best. They stopped one dollar and
forty cents out of his Saturday's envelope for what he and the roller
did to the barriers and lanterns. By the time he had swung into the
cross-street, trailing wreckage, the Bonnie Lassie was out of sight and
out of his world.
IV
Winter comes, stern and sharp, like an unpaid landlord, to Our Square,
with sleet and gale for its agents of eviction. No longer are the
benches blithe with the voice of love or play or gossip. The wind has
blown them all away. A few tenacious leaves still cling, withered,
brown, and clattering, to the trees, "bare, ruin'd choirs where late'
the sweet birds sang," and a few hardy stragglers beat across the
unprotected spaces, just to maintain, as it were, the human right of way
against the gray rigor of the skies. But, for the most part, we of Our
Square, going about our concerns, huddle as close as may be to the lee
of walls, for--though we would not for the world have it known--many
of us are none too warmly clad. Behind the blank opaqueness of the
bordering windows one may surmise much want and penury and cold, which,
also, we keep to ourselves. Our Square has its pride. We do not publish
our trials.
Perhaps Cyrus the Gaunt knew as much of them as any. For, by
imperceptible gradations, he had become the 'confidant, the judge, the
arbiter of our difficulties, and the friend of the shyest, the hardest,
and the proudest of us alike. His engine-seat was become a throne, from
whence he dispensed every good thing but charity. That word and all that
follows in its train he hated. Which shows that he had learned
Our Square. After hours he would "drop in," almost secretly, on some
friend; and it was a curious coincidence that Cyrus's friends were
chosen apparently on the basis of need and distress. He had that rare
knack of helping out without involving the aided one in the coils of
obligation. There is nothing Our Square wouldn't have done for Cyrus the
Gaunt. I believe he could even have been elected alderman.
Winter drove Cyrus from his perch and put a brake on the thunder-wagon
before the job was quite finished. There still remained some final
repairs which must now wait for the spring, on the side where the Bonnie
Lassie's little house stood, bleak and desolate. Not wholly deserted,
however, for one brave and happy dancer still stuck to her post in the
window, lifting a thrilled face to the sky. Other employment claimed
Cyrus the Gaunt until his iron steed should come out of the stable; a
day job on a stationary engine around in Pike Street. Our
Square remarked with concern that the indoor employment didn't seem
to suit Cyrus the Gaunt. He became gaunter and thinner and more
melancholy-looking, and more than once he was seen on wild nights,
when nobody was supposed to be out late, staring at the now quite
unembarrassed house with the quaint little door and the broad vestibule.
But though the light and cheer that Our Square had seen grow in Cyrus's
face in the early days of his job, were graying over, there increased
the new understanding and sympathy and determination, in lines that he
had put there himself in the building of his new manhood. Thus, only, in
this perplexing world, does a man lift himself by his own boot-straps.
Though Cyrus the Gaunt could boast a thousand friends, he had accepted
but one intimate. That was MacLachan the tailor. Every day they lunched
on frankfurters and kohlrabi at Schwartz's. Thither Cyrus was wont to
have his scanty mail sent from the house where he lodged. One blustery
December day the tailor arrived late, to find his friend fingering a
pink slip of paper, of suggestive appearance.
"Ye'll have been aimin' a bit ootside!" commented MacLachan.
Cyrus flipped the paper over to him.
"Save us!" cried the awe-stricken Scot. "It's a thousan' dollars. All in
the one piece!"
"Two months overdue. He didn't have my address, I suppose."
"Ha'e ye been drawin' a lottery?"
"No. It's a bet. Also my release. I'd almost forgotten. My time's up."
"Ye'll not be leavin' us?" said the tailor. Cyrus avoided his eyes.
"I'm through, Mac," he said dully. "It's no use. It's not worth while.
Nothing's worth while." There was a long pause. "Mon," said MacLachan
finally, "ha'e ye tho't what this'll mean to Our Square?"
Cyrus the Gaunt thought. Behind the curtain of his impenetrable face
there passed a panorama of recent memories; events which had, for the
first time in his career, made him one with the fabric of life. Faces
appealed to him; hands were outstretched to him confidently for the
friendly help that he could give so well; the voices of the children
hailed him as a fellow; the baseball team which did most of its practice
at noon on the asphalt claimed a corner of his memory; his ears rang
with the everyday greetings of his own people, and another panorama,
summoned up by the pink slip, faded away. Cyrus folded the check and put
it carefully in the pocket of his overalls.
"Ye'll be stayin' here," said MacLachan contentedly, having read his
expression.
Cyrus nodded. Then the tailor's dour-ness fell from him for the moment.
He laid a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Laddie," he said, "the little
bronze dancer is in the window yet."
Cyrus turned a haggard face to him. "I know," he said.
"Do ye make nothin' o' that?"
"Nothing. You know why--what she went away for."
"I ha'e haird."
"Well, I'm learning to forget."
"The little bronze dancer is in the window yet," repeated the obstinate
Scot.
How Cyrus won through that long winter is his own affair. Our Square
respects other people's troubles. It asked no questions. Finally winter
broke and fled before a southeast wind full of fragrance, and the
trees began to whisper important tidings to each other; and a pioneer
butterfly of the deepest, most luminous purple-black, with buff edges to
its wings, arrived and led the whole juvenile populace such a chase as
surely never was since the Pied Piper fluted his seductions long ago;
and the benches came out of their long retreat, fresh-painted, to stand
sturdy and stiff in their old places; and so did Cyrus's thun-der-wagon,
whereon he perched nightly once more, and was even more than before the
taciturn, humorous, kindly, secret, friendly adviser to all and sundry.
Then, one crisp March evening he became aware of a strong, bent,
feminine figure beckoning him from the curbstone. Clanging to a halt, he
heard a voice, unforgettable through its tinge of foreign accent, say:
--
"How do you do? I have been seeing your face all through my travels."
Cyrus took off his working-cap and shook hands. "So I have come back to
look at it. It's thin. Would you like to be painted?"
"I don't think so, thank you. I've been sculped within an inch of my
life."
"So I have understood," said the Very Great Woman with a smile not
devoid of sympathy. "You are not done with it yet. She is coming."
The face of Cyrus the Gaunt lighted marvelously.. "Coming back to Our
Square?" he cried. Then the light faded. "But--"
"But me no buts. She is coming. I did it. I found that she had never
finished you. So I told her that if she did not come back and finish, I
would take you away from her and finish you myself. And, oh, I am as bad
a sculptor as I am a good painter---almost!" Her laughter rang in
the chill air. "So she comes. And I have traveled all the way to this
impossible spot to play traitor. The question is: Are you a man? You
look it, at last!"
"The question is--Will you answer me one?"
"No! No! No! No! No! Put your questions where they belong. Farewell, my
Phaëthon of the Slums."
The world was mad with the wine of the wind the night the Bonnie Lassie
came back to Our Square. All our trees waved their lean arms in welcome
and sent down little buds as messengers of joy over her return. Of
living welcomers there was none, for the gale had swept all humans
before it, except Terry the Cop, and he didn't recognize her, from the
distance, in her other-worldly raiment. That must have cost her a pang.
Unnoticed she crept into the little, old, quaint, friendly house, and
its doors closed behind her like the reassurance of a friendly arm. She
set herself in the dark window where the blithe dancer still tripped it,
faithful and lonely, and waited for Cyrus the Gaunt. But when she saw
his face, the Bonnie Lassie didn't sculp. She cried.
Cyrus mounted to his seat and pulled the lever over. The engine was
running badly that night, and the wind almost blew him from his perch.
Aside from the improbability that the little sculptor would brave such
weather, the charioteer was presently so immersed in his own immediate
concerns that he all but forgot the prospective visit. When he had
brought his charge to its senses and reduced it to some control, he was
interrupted by the plight of a belated push-cart woman, who was dragging
anchor and drifting fast to leeward under the furious impulsion of the
nor'easter. Cyrus had just dragged her almost from under his ponderous
wheels, when a beam flashed in his eyes, and he looked up to see a truck
close upon them. His yell split the darkness. The truck-driver, with
a mighty wrench, swung his vehicle sharp to the left, and up on the
sidewalk.
The uptilted lights shone full into the lower window of the little, old,
friendly house. Pressed against that window Cyrus saw the apparition
of a tear-softened, desolate visage. Reason, prudence, and propriety
deserted their posts in his brain simultaneously. A dozen long-legged
leaps carried him as far as the vestibule of the little house. There his
knees basely weakened. Perhaps her heart divined his step and sent her
forth to meet him; or perhaps it was his old ally, Chance, that brought
her into the vestibule as he stood there shaking.
"Oh!" she cried, and shrank back into a corner, with a deprecatory
movement, which to him was infinitely pathetic.
"I'm sorry," said Cyrus. "I saw your face and thought you were
in trouble. If--if you wanted me to sit for you again," he said
composedly, "I should be very glad to, until you've finished your
sketch."
"Oh, no. I couldn't ask you. I couldn't think of--after--what--what--"
Her voice waned into silence.
"Don't feel that way at all," he encouraged her with resolved
cheerfulness. "I can be a model and nothing more, again, I assure you."
Her upturned eyes implored him. "Don't be cruel," she said.
"Cruel?" he repeated wonderingly.
"Not at all. I'll be polite. It isn't too late to offer my best wishes.
Though I'm not sure I know the name."
"What name?"
"Your--your married name."
"Then you don't know?" she gasped. The brain of Cyrus the Gaunt suddenly
went numb. "I know you went away from us to get married."
"I did," she quavered. "But I couldn't. I--I--I tried to make myself
go through with it. I couldn't. No woman could when--when--" Her voice
trembled into silence.
A boisterous back-draft of the tempest thrust its way through the door
and puffed out the little vestibule light. With a sense of irreparable
loss impending he felt, rather than heard, her moving from him into the
blackness of the outer world. Yet his mind seemed clogged and chained as
he strove to grasp the meaning of what she had said--or was it what she
had left unsaid?
And in a moment she would be gone forever.
Suddenly--miracle of miracles!--he felt those soft, strong hands on his
arm, and heard her sobbing appeal: "Oh, Cyrus! Aren't you ever going to
smile at me inside again?"
His arms went out. The Bonnie Lassie's hands slipped up to his shoulder.
The flower-face pressed, close and cold and sweet, against his.
[Illustration: Her hands slipped to his shoulder 110]
"Love of my heart!" he cried, "I'll never do anything else all my life
long."
Summer is tyrant in Our Square now. The leaves droop, flaccid and dusty,
on the trees, and the sun gives a shrewish welcome to the faithful
who still cling to the benches. Gone is Cyrus's chariot of flame and
thunder. The work is done. Gone, too, is Cyrus, and with him the Bonnie
Lassie, after a wedding duly set forth with much pomp and splendor in
the public prints. Among those present was Our Square.
So now the little, quaint, old, friendly house stands vacant, with eager
sunbeams darting about it in search of entry. Vacant but not cheerless,
for behind the panes, against which the Bonnie Lassie once pressed
her sorrowful face, troop the elfin company of her dream-children, the
dancing figurines. Cyrus the Gaunt would have it so. He deeded her the
house as a wedding-gift, that the happy dancers might remain with us
lonely and unforgetting folk. They are the promise that one day Our
Bonnie Lassie will come back to Our Square.
THE CHAIR THAT WHISPERED
An Idyl of Our Square
SPRING was in Our Square when I first saw the two of them. They sat on a
bench under the early lilacs. It must have been the beginning of it all
for them, I think, for there was still a dim terror in her face, and he
gestured like one arguing stormily. At the last she smiled and drew a
cluster of the lilac bloom down to her cheek. It was not deeper-hued
than her eyes, nor fresher than her youth. They rose and passed me,
alone on my bench, and I, who am wise in courtships, having watched so
many bud and blossom on the public seats of Our Square, saw that this
was no wooing, but some other persuasion, though what I could not guess.
So those two drifted out of sight; out of mind, too, for life in our
remote, unconsidered, and slum-circled little park is a complex and
swiftly changing actuality, and it crowds in with many pressures upon a
half-idle old pedagogue like myself. It was the Little Red Doctor
who, weeks later, recalled the episode, one blistering evening of the
summer's end. He captured me as I emerged from the "penny-circulator"
with my thumb in a book.
"What are we ruining our eyes with to-night?" he demanded.
I held up the treasure.
"'Victory,'" he read. "Good! He'll like Conrad."
Perceiving what was expected, I fulfilled the requirements by asking:
"Who will like Conrad?"
"The Gnome."
I remembered that I had not seen Leon Coventry since the day he passed
me with the girl who had youth and spring and terror in her face.
"Am I to loan it to him?"
"You're to read it to him."
"When?"
"To-night. It's your turn to sit up."
"Is the Gnome ill?"
"Worse."
"Mad?"
"Haunted."
"Since when has your practice branched out into the supernatural,
doctor?"
"Oh, as for that, his trouble is physical too."
"Is it anything that a simple lay mind could grasp?"
The Little Red Doctor grunted. "His legs have turned to lamp-wicking. I
don't vouch for the diagnosis. It's his own."
"Paralysis?" I hazarded.
"Grip," was the Little Red Doctor's curt rejoinder.
"Don't tell me that grip turns a young Hercules's legs to lamp-wicks?" I
objected.
"Grip does if the young Hercules's legs are fools enough
to carry him out and around the city with a temperature of
one-naught-four-point-two," retorted the Little Red Doctor with
bitter exactitude. "Under such conditions grip turns to pneumonia.
And pneumonia is the favorite ally of my old friend, Death."
"You don't mean that the Gnome is going to die?"
"Not of pneumonia: that fight was fought out some weeks ago. But what
pneumonia doesn't do to a young Hercules worry may. Another aid of my
old friend, Death, worry is. That's a bothersome Gnome, tossing about
in the heat with his sick brain full of plots to get away and no legs to
carry'em out. His next try will be his last."
"Then he got away once?"
"On all fours. As far as the sidewalk. There Cyrus the Gaunt and the
Bonnie Lassie found him and brought him back. Cyrus was on duty again
last night."
"I began to see. I'm to be watchdog. It's No
|
store of the world's imperishable assets and which, in not a few
fields of endeavour and achievement, held the leading place among the
nations of the earth.
And I speak in the firm faith that, after its people shall have shaken
off and made atonement for the dreadful spell which an evil fate has
cast upon them, that former Germany will arise again and, in due
course of time, will again deserve and attain the good-will and
respect of the world and the affectionate loyalty of all those of
German blood in foreign lands.
_But I know that neither Germany nor this country nor the rest of the
world can return to happiness and peace and fruitful labour until it
shall have been made manifest, bitterly and unmistakably manifest, to
the rulers who bear the blood-guilt for this wanton war and to their
misinformed and misguided peoples that the spirit which unchained it
cannot prevail, that the hateful doctrines and methods in pursuance of
which and in compliance with which it is conducted are rejected with
abhorrence by the civilized world, and that the overweening ambitions
which it was meant to serve can never be achieved._
_The fight for civilization which we all fondly believed had been won
many years ago must be fought over again. In this sacred struggle it
is now our privilege to take no mean part, and our glory to bring
sacrifices._
Our one and supreme task, the one purpose to which all others must
give way, is to bring this war to a successful conclusion. One of the
means toward that end is to make the Liberty Loan a veritable triumph,
an overwhelming expression of our gigantic economic strength.
To accomplish that, let each one of us feel himself personally
responsible, let each one of us work as if our life depended on the
result. And, in a very real sense, does not our national life, aye,
our individual life depend on the outcome of this war?
Would life be tolerable if the power of Prussianism, run mad and
murderous, held the world by the throat, if the primacy of the earth
belonged to a government steeped in the doctrines of a barbarous past
and supported by a ruling caste which preaches the deification of
sheer might, which despises liberty, hates democracy and would destroy
both if it could?
To that spirit and to those doctrines, we, citizens of America and
servants, as such, of humanity, will oppose our solemn and unshakable
resolution "to make the world safe for democracy," and we will say,
with a clear conscience, in the noble words which more than five
hundred years ago were uttered by the Parliament of Scotland:
"_It is not for glory, or for riches, or for honour that we
fight, but for liberty alone which no good man loses but with
his life._"
PRUSSIANIZED GERMANY
From an address before the Harrisburg, Pa.,
Chamber of Commerce September 26, 1917
PRUSSIANIZED GERMANY
I speak as one who has seen the spirit of the Prussian governing class
at work from close by, having at its disposal and using to the full
practically every agency for moulding the public mind.
I have watched it proceed with relentless persistency and profound
cunning to instil into the nation the demoniacal obsession of
power-worship and world-dominion, to modify and pervert the
mentality--indeed the very fibre and moral substance--of the German
people, a people which until misled, corrupted and systematically
poisoned by the Prussian ruling caste, was and deserved to be an
honoured, valued and welcome member of the family of nations.
I have hated that spirit ever since it came within my ken many years
ago; hated it all the more as I saw it ruthlessly pulling down a
thing which was dear to me--the old Germany to which I was linked by
ties of blood, by fond memories and cherished sentiments.
The difference in the degree of guilt as between the German people and
their Prussian or Prussianized rulers and leaders for the monstrous
crime of this war and the atrocious barbarism of its conduct is the
difference between the man who, acting under the influence of a
poisonous drug, runs amuck in mad frenzy and the unspeakable
malefactor who administered that drug, well knowing and fully
intending the ghastly consequences which were bound to follow.
The world fervently longs for peace. But there can be no peace
answering to the true meaning of the word--no peace permitting the
nations of the earth, great and small, to walk unarmed and
unafraid--until the teaching and the leadership of the apostles of an
outlaw creed shall have become discredited and hateful in the sight
of the German people; until that people shall have awakened to a
consciousness of the unfathomable guilt of those whom they have
followed into calamity and shame; until a mood of penitence and of a
decent respect for the opinions of mankind shall have supplanted the
sway of what President Wilson has so trenchantly termed "truculence
and treachery."
God strengthen the conscience and the understanding, the will and the
power of the German people so that they may find the only way which
will give to the world an early peace, the only road which, in time,
will lead Germany back into the family of nations from which it is now
an outcast.
From each successive visit to Germany for twenty-five years I came
away more appalled by the sinister transmutation Prussianism had
wrought amongst the people and by the portentous menace I recognized
in it for the entire world.
It had given to Germany unparalleled prosperity, beneficent and
advanced social legislation, and not a few other things of value, but
it had taken in payment the soul of the race. _It had made a "devil's
bargain."_
And when this war broke out in Europe I knew that the issue had been
joined between the powers of brutal might and insensate ambition on
the one side and the forces of humanity and liberty on the other;
between darkness and light.
Many there were at that time--and amongst them men for whose character
I had high respect and whose motives were beyond any possible
suspicion--who saw their own and America's duty in strict neutrality,
mentally and actually, but personally I believed from the beginning of
the war, whether we liked all the elements of the Allies' combination
or not--and I certainly did not like the Russia of the Czars--that the
cause of the Allies was America's cause.
I believed that this was no ordinary war between peoples for a
question of national interest, or even national honour, but a
conflict between fundamental principles, aims and ideas. And so
believing I was bound to feel that the natural lines of race, blood
and kinship could not be the determining lines for one's attitude and
alignment, but that each man, regardless of his origin, had to decide
according to his judgment and conscience on which side was the right
and on which was the wrong and take his stand accordingly, whatever
the wrench and anguish of the decision. And thus I took my stand three
years ago.
But whatever one's views and feelings, whatever the country of one's
birth or kin, only one course was left for all those claiming the
privilege of American citizenship when after infinite forbearance the
President decided that our duty, honour and safety demanded that we
take up arms against the Imperial German Government, and by action of
Congress the cause and the fight against that Government were declared
our cause and our fight.
The duty of loyal allegiance and faithful service to his country,
even unto death, rests, of course, upon every American. But, if it be
possible to speak of a comparative degree concerning what is the
highest as it is the most elementary attribute of citizenship, that
duty may almost be said to rest with an even more solemn and
compelling obligation upon Americans of foreign origin than upon
native Americans.
For we Americans of foreign antecedents are here not by the accidental
right of birth, but by our own free choice for better or for worse.
We are your fellow-citizens because we made solemn oath of allegiance
to America. Accepting that oath as given in good faith you have opened
to us in generous trust the portals of American opportunity and
freedom, and have admitted us to membership in the family of
Americans, giving us equal rights in the great inheritance which has
been created by the blood and the toil of your ancestors, asking
nothing from us in return but decent citizenship and adherence to
those ideals and principles which are symbolized by the glorious flag
of America.
Woe to the foreign-born American who betrays the trust which you have
reposed in him!
Woe to him who considers his American citizenship merely as a
convenient garment to be worn in fair weather but to be exchanged for
another one in time of storm and stress!
Woe to the German-American, so called, who, in this sacred war for a
cause as high as any for which ever people took up arms, does not feel
a solemn urge, does not show an eager determination to be in the very
forefront of the struggle; does not prove a patriotic jealousy, in
thought, in action and in speech to rival and to outdo his native-born
fellow-citizen in devotion and in willing sacrifice for the country of
his choice and adoption and sworn allegiance, and of their common
affection and pride.
As Washington led Americans of British blood to fight against Great
Britain, as Lincoln called upon Americans of the North to fight their
very brothers of the South, so Americans of German descent are now
summoned to join in our country's righteous struggle against a people
of their own blood, which, under the evil spell of a dreadful
obsession, and, Heaven knows! through no fault of ours, has made
itself the enemy of this peace-loving Nation, as it is the enemy of
peace and right and freedom throughout the world.
To gain America's independence, to defeat oppression and tyranny, was
indeed to gain a great cause.
To preserve the Union, to eradicate slavery, was perhaps a greater
still.
To defend the very foundations of liberty and humanity, the very
groundwork of fair dealing between nations, the very basis of
peaceable living together among the peoples of the earth against the
fierce and brutal onslaught of ruthless, lawless, faithless might; to
spend the lives and the fortunes of this generation so that our
descendants may be freed from the dreadful calamity of war and the
fear of war, so that the energies and billions of treasure now devoted
to plans and instruments of destruction may be given henceforth to
fruitful works of peace and progress and to the betterment of the
conditions of the people--that is the highest cause for which any
people ever unsheathed its sword.
He who shirks the full measure of his duty and allegiance in that
noblest of causes, be he German-American, Irish-American, or any other
hyphenated American, be he I.W.W. or Socialist or whatever the
appellation, does not deserve to stand amongst Americans or, indeed,
amongst free men anywhere.
He who tries, secretly or overtly, to thwart the declared will and aim
of the Nation in this holy war is a traitor, and a traitor's fate
should be his.
THE POISON GROWTH OF PRUSSIANISM
Address at a Mass Meeting in Auditorium, Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, January 13, 1918
THE POISON GROWTH OF PRUSSIANISM
I
The speech I am about to make is attuned to the spirit and the fact of
war.
A few days ago, as you all know, President Wilson once more spoke to
this nation and to the world in a great and noble message of splendid
vision--holding up a veritable beacon light of right and justice for
all peoples.
We all pray with eager and earnest hope that the German people will
recognize the spirit and meaning of that lofty utterance and that,
casting aside the odious leadership of the militarists, they will
grasp the hand stretched out to them in such generous and unselfish
meaning.
Even as I speak the leaven of that great message may be working in
Germany with potent effect. I have no information other than what you
all have, but I hope I am not over-sanguine in giving heed to a
feeling that some parts of what I am going to say are perhaps in
process of being superseded by events that may be forming.
Let us all trust that it be so, and that we may soon be enabled to
substitute for the harsh accents of arraignment and enmity the
feelings and the language of peaceful intercourse and of that new
relationship which the President's leadership is seeking to bring
about amongst all the nations.
But until that "consummation devoutly to be wished" is attained, let
us take care lest we permit the hope of it to diminish our effort or
to weaken our determination. Neither hope nor any other motive or
influence must be suffered for one moment to divert us from the stern
and resolute pursuit, to the utmost of our capacity, of our high and
solemn purpose as it has been proclaimed in the great messages of
America's spokesman and leader.
* * * * *
In attempting to deal with the questions that I shall discuss, I must
apologize for using the personal pronoun a good deal more than would
seem consonant with due modesty. My excuse is that whatever weight my
observations may have with you, lies mainly in the fact that I am of
German birth, that until the outbreak of the war I kept in close touch
with German men and affairs, that I loved the old Germany and that the
conclusions which I am about to state I have reached in grief and
bitter disappointment.
For these reasons, also, what I shall say from personal knowledge and
observation and in a personal way may have some effect upon those
among my fellow-citizens of my own blood whose eyes may not have been
opened fully to the difference between the Germany they knew and the
Germany of 1914, and who, owing to insufficient and incorrect
information, may not yet have discerned with entire clearness the path
of right and duty nor perceived the true inwardness of the
unprecedented tragedy which has befallen the world.
II
The world has been hurt within these past three years as it was never
hurt before. In the gloomy and accusing procession of infinite sorrow
and pain which was started on that thrice accursed day of July, 1914,
the hurt inflicted on Americans of German descent takes its tragically
rightful place.
The iron has entered our souls. We have been wantonly robbed of
invaluable possessions which have come down to us through the
centuries; we have been rendered ashamed of that in which we took
pride; we have been made the enemies of those of our own blood; our
very names carry the sound of a challenge to the world.
Surely we have all too valid a title to rank amongst those most
bitterly aggrieved by Prussianism, and to align ourselves in the very
forefront of those who in word and deed are fighting to rid the world
for ever of that malignant growth.
Heaven knows, I do not want, by anything I may be saying or doing, to
add one ounce to the burden of the world's execration which rests
already with crushing weight upon the rulers of Germany and their
misguided people. Nor do I seek forgiveness for my German birth by
demonstrative zeal in action or speech.
I was and am proud of the great inheritance which came to me as a
birthright and of the illustrious contributions which the German
people have made to the imperishable assets of the world. Until the
outbreak of the war in 1914, I maintained close and active personal
and business relations in Germany. I was well acquainted with a number
of the leading personages of the country. I served in the German army
thirty years ago. I took an active interest in furthering German art
in America.
I do not apologize for, nor am I ashamed of, my German birth. But I am
ashamed--bitterly and grievously ashamed--of the Germany which stands
convicted before the high tribunal of the world's public opinion of
having planned and willed war; of the revolting deeds committed in
Belgium and northern France, of the infamy of the _Lusitania_ murders,
of innumerable violations of The Hague convention and the law of
nations, of abominable and perfidious plotting in friendly countries
and shameless abuse of their hospitality, of crime heaped upon crime
in hideous defiance of the laws of God and men.
I cherish the memories of my youth, but these very memories make me
cry out in pain and wrath against those who have befouled the
spiritual soil of the old Germany, in which they were rooted.
I revere the high ideals and fine traditions of that old Germany and
the time-honoured conceptions of right conduct which my parents and
the teachers of my early youth bade me treasure throughout life, but
all the more burning is my resentment, all the more deeply grounded my
hostility, against the Prussian caste who trampled those ideals,
traditions and conceptions in the dust.
Long before the war, I had come to look upon Prussianism as amongst
the deadliest poison growths that ever sprang from the soil of the
spirit of man.
When the war broke out in Europe, when Belgium was invaded, I searched
my conscience and my judgment in sorrow and anguish, the powerful
voice of blood arguing against the still, small voice of right.
And it became clear to me to the point of solemn and unshakable
conviction that Prussianism, in mad infatuation, had committed the
crowning sin of outraging and defying the conscience of the world and
of challenging right to mortal combat against might, and that the
cause which the Allies were defending was our cause, because it was
the cause of peace, humanity, justice, and liberty (aye, liberty, even
though Russia, then under autocratic rule, happened to be arrayed on
that side, and even though diplomats and rulers made that sacred cause
the basis and excuse for territorial barter and trade and spoils
hunting).
In accordance with this conviction--a conviction that is unshakable--I
have acted and spoken ever since, but I did not feel that it would be
either right or fitting for me publicly to state and agitate my views
so long as our country was neutral.
Now, America, the never-defeated, has thrown her sword into the scale,
because to do so was indispensable for the vindication of the basic
and elementary principles of right and peace among the nations, no
less than for our own honour and our own safety, the preservation of
our institutions and our very destiny.
To co-operate towards the successful conclusion of the war is the one
and supreme duty of every American, regardless of birth, of sympathies
and of political views. The American of German descent who, in this
time of test and trial, does not serve the land of his adoption with
the utmost measure of single-minded devotion and with every ounce of
his power, perjured himself when he took his oath of allegiance and
proves himself guilty of treacherous duplicity.
Thank Heaven! the number of those lukewarm in their patriotism, or
failing in loyalty, is very small indeed, far too small to affect the
record of Americans of German birth for good citizenship and service
to the country in peace and war.
There is abundant evidence that the overwhelming majority, indeed all
but an insignificant minority, meant what they said when they swore
full and sole allegiance to America, that they will prove themselves
wholly worthy of the high privilege of citizenship and of the
generous trust of their native fellow-citizens, and that they will
not fail or falter under any test whatsoever.
_We will not permit the blood in our veins to drown the conscience in
our breast. We will heed the call of honour beyond the call of race._
We will wear as a badge of honour the abuse and spite of those who
place another cause, whatever it be, above the Nation's cause and who
see hypocrisy or hidden motives behind the plain profession of
unconditional loyalty on the part of the American of foreign birth,
because unconditional American loyalty is not in them.
Yet, it is not enough for us Americans of German descent to do our
duty by our country and fellow-citizens, however fully and
unreservedly, if we do it in resigned and oppressed silence. I believe
we should speak out. We must give voice to our unflinching loyalty and
to our deep conviction of the justice of America's cause.
It is hard indeed for us to arraign publicly the country from which
we sprang and to turn against our own kith and kin, however deep our
detestation of their wrongdoing under the spiritual and actual sway of
the Prussian caste and however sincere our allegiance to America. It
will be easily understood by all fair-minded men that right-thinking
persons will shrink from so speaking and acting as to lay themselves
open to the accusation of being time-servers or popularity seekers,
and to expose their motives to misconstruction.
These scruples are honourable, and they are felt by many whose
patriotic loyalty and devotion are beyond all question. But, to my
thinking, they are stamped out by the iron tread of the times.
I believe that we should speak out, we Americans of German birth,
because we have been misrepresented to our fellow-citizens and to the
world by a small minority of professional spokesmen and pernicious
agitators, by no means all of German birth.
We must protect the German name, as far as it is in our keeping, in
America, if, alas, we cannot protect it elsewhere.
It has always, and rightly, been an honoured name here, and those who
bore it have ever done their full share for the common weal, in the
works of peace no less than in every crisis of the Nation's history.
Let us do what in us lies to preserve the names we bear in honour and
good standing amongst our fellow-citizens.
I believe that we should speak out, because our voices may reach the
ear and the conscience of the German people when no other voices can,
and because they _will_ reach the ear of its rulers. These, I know,
counted upon the moral, if not the actual, support of the German-born
in America to the extent, at least, of preventing our joining the war,
and now, when we have joined, they count upon that support to agitate
for an inconclusive and unrighteous peace.
I believe that we should speak out to convince our native-born
fellow-citizens that our fundamental conceptions of right and wrong
are like theirs, that _the taint is not in the German blood, but in
the system of rulership_, that we are with them and of them
wholeheartedly, single-mindedly and unreservedly; because if we failed
in conveying to them that conviction in the hour of our common
country's stress and trial, there would ensue the calamity of a
spiritual, if not an actual, breach between them and us which it would
take a generation to heal.
III
There are some of you, probably, who will still find it hard to
believe that the Germany you knew can be guilty of the crimes which
have made it an outlaw amongst the nations. But do you know modern
Germany? Unless you have been there within the last twenty-five years,
not once or twice, but at regular intervals; unless you have looked
below the glittering surface of the marvellous material progress and
achievement and seen how the soul of Germany was being eaten away by
the virulent poison of Prussianism; unless you have watched and
followed the appalling transformation of German mentality and morality
under the nefarious and puissant influence of the priesthood of
power-worship, you do not know the Germany of this day and generation.
It is not the Germany of old, the land of our affectionate
remembrance. It is not the Germany which men now of middle age or over
knew in their youth. It is not the Germany of the first Emperor
William, a modest and God-fearing gentleman. It is not the Germany,
even, of Bismarck, man of blood and iron though he was, who had
builded a structure which, whilst not founded on liberty, yet was
capable and gave promise of going down into history as one of the
greatest examples of enlightened and even beneficent autocracy; who,
in the contemplative and mellowed wisdom of his old age, often warned
the nation against the very spirit which, alas, came to have sway over
it, and against the very war which that spirit unchained.
The Germany which brought upon the world the immeasurable disaster of
this war, and at whose monstrous deeds and doctrines the civilized
nations of the earth stand aghast, started into definite being less
than thirty years ago. I can almost lay my finger upon the date and
circumstances of its ill-omened advent.
Less than thirty years ago, a "new course" was flamboyantly proclaimed
by those in authority, and the term "new course" became the order of
the day. With it and from it there came a truly marvellous quickening
of the energies and creative abilities of the nation, a period of
material achievement and of social progress, in short, a national
forward movement almost unequalled in history. The world looked on in
admiration, perhaps not entirely free from a tinge of envy. Germany
was conquering the earth by peaceful penetration; _and no one stood in
its way_. It had free access to all the seas and all the lands.
But with that "new course" and from it there also came a new god, a
false and evil god. He exacted as sacrifices for his altars the
time-honoured ideals of the fathers, and other high and noble things.
And his commands were obeyed.
There came upon the German people a whole train of new and baneful
influences and impulses, formidably stimulating as a powerful drug.
There came, amongst other evils, materialism and covetousness and
irreligion; overweening arrogance, an impatient contempt for the
rights of the weak, a mania for world dominion, and a veritable lunacy
of power worship. There came also a fixed and irrational distrust of
the intentions of other nations, for the evil which had crept into
their own souls made them see evil in others, and that distrust was
nurtured carefully and deliberately by those in authority.
And, finally, there came "the day" in which the "new course," fatally
and inevitably, was bound to culminate. There came the old temptation,
as old as humanity itself. The Tempter took the Prussian and
Prussianized rulers up a high mountain and showed them all the riches
and power of the world. Showed them the great countries and capitals
of the earth teeming with peaceful labour--Brussels, Paris, London,
aye, and New York, and told them: "Look at these. Use your power
ruthlessly and they are yours." And those rulers did not say: "Get
thee behind me, Satan;" but they said: "Lead on, Satan, and we shall
follow thee." And follow him they did, and brought upon the green
earth the red ruin of hell.
And with rejoicing they greeted "the day." It was to bring them, as
one German in an important position here expressed it to me, in
August, 1914, "a merry war and victory before the year is out."
IV
Truly, history affords no parallel to the spiritual poisoning and the
resulting horrible transmutation of a whole people, such as
Prussianism wrought in the incredibly short period of one generation.
Nor would I believe that such a dreadful phenomenon could possibly
take place were it not for the evidence of my own eyes and my own
ears.
My observations led me to think, however, that Prussianism had reached
the crest of its influence some years before the war and that liberal
tendencies were beginning to make headway against it.
There were many men in Germany before the war who were opposed to and
saw the dangers arising from militarist ambition and jingo teaching
and raised their voices against them in warning. There was the
ever-increasing Socialist vote which--although Socialism in the German
Empire does not mean what it means in Russia and amongst the
extremists in our country--did mean opposition to Junker methods and
reactionary tendencies.
I am by no means sure that the very growth and spread of that liberal
spirit did not have some influence in causing the militarist clique to
precipitate the war, as throughout history autocracy has resorted
frequently to the unity-compelling force of war in order to arrest,
divert and thwart liberalism and independence.
To deceive the German people, and steel them to patriotic
determination and sacrifice, the Prussian rulers and their spokesmen
affirmed at the beginning of the war, and have kept reaffirming ever
since with nauseating reiteration and disgusting hypocrisy, that
theirs was a _defensive war_, forced upon them by wicked and envious
neighbours. A defensive war, indeed!
Let me review very rapidly the circumstances which surrounded the
beginning of the war. Austria, after the friction of long standing
between the two countries, which had reached its culminating point in
the murder of the Austrian heir-apparent, sent an ultimatum to Serbia.
The conditions of that ultimatum, although unexampled in their
severity and sweeping demands, were accepted by Serbia almost in their
entirety.
Austria insisted on acceptance to the very letter, unconditional and
absolute, within twenty-four hours or war, whereupon Russia declared
that, if war was thus forced upon little Serbia, she would stand by
her. After much backing and filling, at the last minute, Austria
shrank from the calamity of a world conflagration and declared herself
ready to enter into friendly negotiations with Russia. The frightful
danger which threatened the world seemed to be on the way of being
removed.
But the Prussian militarist party, seeing in their grasp the
opportunity for which they had planned and plotted these thirty years,
were not willing to let it go by, and they did not shrink from the
catastrophe which was involved.
Heretofore Austria had held the centre of the stage and Germany had
professed herself unable to interfere. But when Austria was on the
point of receding, Germany did interfere, and, on the plea of the
menace of the Russian mobilization (a mobilization which there is
reason to suspect was deliberately provoked through machinations from
Berlin), started the war by an ultimatum to Russia, which was
tantamount to declaring war, on the very day on which Austria yielded.
Let it be remembered that whatever menace the Russian mobilization may
have contained was infinitely greater against Austria than against
Germany, and yet Austria, on the last day in July, 1914, declared
herself ready to negotiate.
I know something from actual and personal experience of the plotting
of the Prussian war party, and how for a full generation they had
endeavoured again and again to bring about a situation which would
force war upon the world. I know of my personal knowledge that the
stage was set for it six or seven years ago in connection with the
Agadir episode.
I know that the Pan-Germans meant to have a footing in South America,
and, once there, would have threatened and had prepared to threaten,
this very country of ours.
I know that Austria, in 1913, meant to conquer Serbia, and so informed
her then ally, Italy, believing that she could do so with impunity.
And I know that Austria did not believe that her ultimatum to Serbia
in July, 1914, would bring on a serious war.
I know it, because the week following the outbreak of the war I saw a
letter just arrived from a gentleman in high position in Austria,
connected with the Austrian Foreign Office, in which, writing to New
York under date of about July 20, 1914, he said:
"We are now passing through a nerve-wearing time because of
our difficulty with Serbia, but by the time this letter
reaches you everything will be all right again. The Serbians
have been intriguing against us these many years, and this
time they must be settled with for good and all. We shall go
in and take Belgrade, but inasmuch as we have given assurance
to Russia that we shall not permanently interfere with the
integrity and independence of Serbia, and inasmuch as neither
Russia nor her allies are ready to fight, the whole thing
will be a military promenade and will have no serious
consequences."
A defensive war! Was it a defensive war which Prussianism was thinking
of when it declined England's repeated offer for a reduction by both
countries of the building of warships; when it refused at the last
Hague conference to discuss the limitation of standing armies and
armaments; when Germany--alone amongst the great nations--rejected our
offer of a treaty of arbitration?
Years before the war, Nietzsche, than whom no man had greater
influence in shaping the trend of German thought in the past thirty
years, wrote:
"You shall love peace as a means to prepare for new wars. You
say that a good cause may hallow even war, but I say to you
that it is a good war which hallows every cause."
On July 29, 1914, the well-informed German newspaper, _Vorwaerts_,
declared:
"The camarilla of war-lords is working with absolutely
unscrupulous means to carry out their fearful designs to
precipitate a world war."
In October, 1914, three months after the outbreak of the war,
Maximilian Harden, one of the ablest and most influential of
German publicists, wrote:
"Let us renounce those miserable efforts to excuse the
actions of Germany in declaring war. It is not against
our will that we have thrown ourselves into this gigantic
adventure. The war has not been imposed upon us by others
and by surprise. We have willed the war. It was our duty to
will it. We decline to appear before the tribunal of united
Europe. We reject its jurisdiction. One principle alone
counts and no other--one principle which contains and sums
up all the others--_might_."
I could go on for hours quoting similar views and sentiments from the
utterances of leading German writers and educators before and since
the war. It is worth mentioning, though, that Maximilian Harden has
seen a new light, and for some time has been courageously speaking and
writing in a very different strain. There are a number of influential
men in Germany who, like him, have undergone a change of mind and
heart. Strong and outspoken assertions of liberal sentiment and
independent aspirations have found utterance in that country in the
course of the last six months, such as have not been heard within its
frontiers these many years.
A defensive war! There are certain telegrams (generally unknown in
Germany, even to this day) from Sir Edward Grey, the British Minister
for Foreign Affairs, to the British Ambassador in Germany, sent during
the week preceding the outbreak of the war in Europe, which by
themselves are conclusive testimony to the contrary. In these
messages, the British Foreign Minister went almost on his knees to beg
Germany to consent to a conference in order to avoid war.
He went to the utmost limits in promising benevolent consideration for
Germany's view-point and wishes, then and in the future, and he stated
that if Germany would put forward any reasonable proposition honestly
calculated to maintain peace, England would support it with all of its
influence, and if France and Russia would not fall in line England
would promptly separate itself from these two countries.
These overtures and pleas met with no response from the Masters of
Germany. They declared war.
It is probably true that the Russian Pan-Slavists had planned war
sooner or later, just as the Pan-Germans did. War might _perhaps_ have
come then or at some other time, even if the Prussian rulers had not
precipitated it. But the fact remains that it was the Imperial German
Government which _did_ declare war. For having anticipated that
"perhaps," and resolved it according to their own plans and wishes,
for that, their initial crime, and for those which followed, the
rulers of the German people will have to answer before the judgment
seat of God and history. Upon them rests the blood-guilt for this
dreadful catastrophe which has befallen the world.
V
A few days ago I read a poem addressed to Germany, of which these
lines have remained in my memory:
"Oh, land of now, oh, land of then,
Dear God, the dreams, the dreams of men!
Enslaved, immersed in greed and hate,
Where are the things which made you great?"
The things which made Germany great are not dead, and the world cannot
afford to allow them to die. They belong to the immortal possessions
of the human race.
They have passed, for the time being, alas, out of the keeping of the
mass of the German people, whose glorious inheritance they were.
They are now in the keeping of that minority, not, perhaps, very
|
crowd took up the word, "To the
lantern, to the lantern, to the lantern!"
There was no uncertainty about that voice, and at that, and the
Commissioner’s meaning gesture, Sélincourt’s sword-arm dropped to his
side again. If Madame turned pale her rouge hid it, and her manner
continued calm to the verge of indifference. When the shouting outside
had died down a little she turned politely to the man beside her.
"Monsieur, your hand incommodes me; if you would have the kindness to
remove it"; and under her eye, and the faint, stinging sarcasm which
flavoured its glance, he coloured heavily and withdrew a pace. Then he
produced a paper, drawing from its rustling folds fresh confidence and a
return to his official bearing.
"The ci-devant Vicomte de Sélincourt," he said in loud, harsh tones;
and, as Sélincourt made a movement, "You, too, are arrested."
"But this is an outrage," stammered the Vicomte, "an outrage, fellow,
for which you shall suffer. On what charge—by what authority?"
The man shrugged fat shoulders across which lay the tri-colour scarf.
"Charge of treasonable correspondence with Austria," he said shortly;
"and as to authority, I am the Commune’s delegate. But, ma foi,
Citizen, there is authority for you if you don’t like mine," and, with a
gesture which he admired a good deal, he waved an arm towards the
street, where the clamour raged unchecked. As he spoke a stone came
flying through the glass, and a sharp splinter struck Sélincourt upon
the cheek, drawing blood, and an oath.
"You had best come with me before those outside break in to ask why we
delay," said the delegate meaningly.
Madame de Montargis surveyed her guests. She was too well-bred to smile
at their dismay, but something of amusement, and something of scorn,
lurked in her hazel eyes. Then, with her usual slow grace, she took
Sélincourt’s arm, and walked towards the door, smiling, nodding,
curtsying, speaking here a few words and there a mere farewell, whilst
the Commissioner followed awkwardly, spitting now and then to relieve
his embarrassment, and decidedly of the opinion that these aristocrats
built rooms far too long.
"Chère Adèle, ’t is au revoir."
"Marquise, I cannot express my regrets."
"Nay, Duchesse, mine is the discourtesy, though a most unintentional
one. I must rely upon the kindness of my friends to forgive it me."
Aline de Rochambeau walked after her cousin, but participated in none of
the farewells. She felt cold and very bewildered; her only instinct to
keep close to the one protector she knew. To stay behind never occurred
to her. In the vestibule Madame de Montargis paused.
"Dupont!" she called sharply, and the stout major-domo of the
establishment emerged from a group of frightened servants.
"Madame—" Dupont’s knees were shaking, but he contrived a presentable
bow.
Madame’s eyes had lost their smile, but the scorn remained. She spoke
aloud.
"Discharge those three fools who ran in just now, and see that in future
I have lackeys who know their place," and with that she walked on again.
All the way down the grand staircase the noise of the mob pursued them.
In the vestibule more of the Guard waited with an officer, and yet
another Commissioner. The three men in authority conferred for a
moment, and then the Commissioners hurried their prisoners to a side
door where a fiacre stood waiting. They passed out, and behind them the
door was shut and locked. Then, for the first time, Madame seemed to be
aware of her cousin’s presence.
"Aline—little fool!—go back—but on the instant—"
"Ma cousine——"
"Go back, I say. Mon Dieu, Mademoiselle, what folly!"
The girl put her hand on the door, tried it, and said, in a low, shaking
voice:
"But it is locked——"
"Decidedly, since those were my orders," growled the second
Commissioner. "What’s all this to-do? Who ’s this, Renard? Send her
back."
"But I ask you how?" demanded Renard, "since the door is locked inside,
and—Heavens, man, they are coming this way!"
Lenoir uttered an imprecation.
"Here, get in, get in!" he shouted, pushing the girl as he spoke. "It
is the less matter since the house and all effects are to be sealed up.
Get in, I say, or the mob will be down on us!"
Madame gave him a furious glance, and took her seat beside her trembling
cousin. Sélincourt and Renard followed. Lenoir swung himself to the
box-seat, and the fiacre drove off noisily, the sound of its wheels on
the rough cobble-stones drowning by degrees the lessening outcries of
the furious crowd behind.
CHAPTER III
SHUT OUT BY A PRISON WALL
The fiacre drew up at the gate of La Force. M. le Vicomte de Sélincourt
got down, bowed politely, and assisted Madame de Montargis to alight.
He then gave his hand to her cousin, and the little party entered the
prison. Mme la Marquise walked delicately, with an exaggeration of that
graceful, mincing step which was considered so elegant by her admirers.
She fanned herself, and raised a scented pomander ball to her nostrils.
"Fi donc! What an air!" she observed with petulant disgust.
Renard of the dramatic soul shrugged his shoulders. It was vexing not to
be ready with a biting repartee, but he was consoled by the conviction
that a gesture from him was worth more than many words from some lesser
soul. His colleague Lenoir—a rough, coarse-faced hulk—scowled fiercely,
and growled out:
"Eh, Mme l’Aristocrate, it has been a good enough air for many a poor
devil of a patriot, as the citizen gaoler here can tell you, and turn
and turn about’s fair play." And with that he spat contemptuously in
Madame’s path, and scowled again as she lifted her dainty petticoats a
trifle higher but crossed the inner threshold without so much as a
glance in his direction.
Bault, the head gaoler of La Force, motioned the prisoners into a dull
room, used at this time as an office, but devoted at a later date to a
more sinister purpose, for it was here in days to come—days whose shadow
already rested palpably upon the thick air—that the hair of the
condemned was cut, and their arms pinioned for the last fatal journey
which ended in the embraces of Mme Guillotine.
Bault opened the great register with a clap of the leaves that betokened
impatience. He was a nervous man, and the times frightened him; he
slept ill at nights, and was irritable enough by day.
"Your names?" he demanded abruptly.
Mme de Montargis drew herself up and raised her arched eyebrows,
slightly, but quite perceptibly.
"I am the Marquise de Montargis, my good fellow," she observed, with
something of indulgence in her tone.
"First name, or names?" pursued Citizen Bault, unmoved.
"Laure Marie Josèphe."
"And you?" turning without ceremony to the Vicomte.
"Jean Christophe de Sélincourt, at your service, Monsieur. Quelle
comédie!" he added, turning to Mme de Montargis, who permitted a slight,
insolent smile to lift her vermilion upper lip. Meanwhile the
Commissioners were handing over their papers.
"Quite correct, Citizens." Then, with a glance around, "But what of
this demoiselle? There is no mention of her that I can see."
Lenoir laughed and swore.
"Eh," he said, "she was all for coming, and I dare say a whiff of the
prison air, which the old Citoyenne found so trying, will do her no
harm."
Bault shook a doubtful head, and Renard threw himself with zeal into the
role of patriot, animated at once by devotion to the principles of
liberty, and loyalty to law and order.
"No, no, Lenoir; no, no, my friend. Everything must be done in order.
The Citoyenne sees now what comes of treason and plots. Let her be
warned in time, or she will be coming back for good. For this time
there is no accusation against her."
He spoke loudly, hand in vest, and felt himself every inch a Roman; but
his magniloquence was entirely lost on Mademoiselle, for, with a cry of
dismay, she caught her cousin’s hand.
"Oh, Messieurs, let me stop! Madame is my guardian, my place is with
her!"
Mme de Montargis looked surprised, but she interrupted the girl with
energy.
"Silence then, Aline! What should a young girl do in La Force? Fi
donc, Mademoiselle!"—as the soft, distressed murmur threatened to break
out again,—"you will do as I tell you. Mme de Maillé will receive you;
go straight to her at the Hotel de Maillé. Present my apologies for not
writing to her, and—
"Sacrebleu!" thundered Lenoir furiously, "this is not Versailles, where
a pack of wanton women may chatter themselves hoarse. Send the young
one packing, Bault, and lock these people up. Are the Deputies of the
Commune to stand here till nightfall listening to a pair of magpies?
Silence, I say, and march! The old woman and the young one, both of you
march, march!"
He laid a large dirty hand on Mlle de Rochambeau’s shoulder as he spoke,
and pushed her towards the door. As she passed through it she saw her
cousin delicately accepting M. de Sélincourt’s proffered arm, whilst her
left hand, flashing with its array of rings, still held the sweet
pomander to her face. Next moment she was in the street.
Her first thought was for the fiacre which had conveyed them to the
prison, but to her despair it had disappeared, and there was no other
vehicle in sight.
As she stood in hesitating bewilderment, she was aware of the sound of
approaching wheels, and looking up she saw three carriages coming, one
behind the other, at a brisk pace. There were three priests in the
first, one of them so old that all the solicitous assistance of the two
younger men was required to get him safely down the high step and
through the gate. In the second were two ladies, whose faces seemed
vaguely familiar. Was it a year or only an hour ago that they had
laughed and jested at Mme de Montargis’ brilliant gathering? They
looked at her in the same half uncomprehending manner, and passed on.
The last carriage bore the De Maillé crest, but a National Guard
occupied the box-seat in place of the magnificent coachman Aline had
seen the day before, when Mme de Maillé had taken her old friend’s
daughter for a drive through Paris.
The door of the chariot opened, and Mme De Maillé, pale, almost
fainting, was helped out. She looked neither to right nor left, and
when Aline started forward and would have spoken, the National Guard
pushed her roughly back.
"Go home, go home!" he said, not unkindly; "if you are not arrested,
thank the saints for it, for there are precious few aristocrats as lucky
to-day"; and Aline shrank against the wall, dumb with perturbation and
dismay.
As in a dream she listened to the clang of the prison gate, the roll of
departing wheels, and it was only when the last echo died away that the
mist which hung about her seemed to clear, and she realised that she was
alone in the deserted street.
Alone! In all her nineteen years she had never been really alone
before. As a child in her father’s château, as a girl in her
aristocratic convent, she had always been guarded, sheltered, guided,
watched. She had certainly never walked a yard in the open street, or
been touched by a man’s hand, as the Commissioner Lenoir had touched her
a few minutes since. She felt her shoulder burn through the thin muslin
fichu that veiled it so discreetly, and the blood ran up, under her
delicate skin, to the roots of the curling hair, where gold tints showed
here and there through the lightly sprinkled powder.
It was still very hot, though so late in the afternoon, and the sun,
though near its setting, shot out a level ray or two that seemed to make
palpable the strong, brooding heat of the evening.
Aline felt dazed, and so faint that she was glad to support herself
against the rough prison wall. When she could control her trembling
thoughts a little, she began to wonder what she should do. She had only
been a week in Paris, she knew no one except her cousin, the Vicomte,
and Mme de Maillé, and they were in prison—they and many, many more.
For the moment these frowning walls stood to her for home, or all that
she possessed of home, and she was shut outside, in a dreadful world,
full of unknown dangers, peopled perhaps with persons who would speak to
her as Lenoir had done, touch her even,—and at that she flushed again,
shuddered and looked wildly round.
A very fat woman was coming down the street,—the fattest woman Mlle de
Rochambeau had ever seen, yes, fatter even than Sister Josèphe, she
considered, with that mechanical detachment of thought which is so often
the accompaniment of great mental distress.
She wore a striped petticoat and a gaily flowered gown, the sleeves of
which were rolled up to display a pair of huge brown arms. She had a
very broad, sallow face, and little pig’s eyes sunk deep in rolls of
crinkled flesh. Aline gazed at her, fascinated, and the woman returned
the look. In truth, Mlle de Rochambeau, with her rose-wreathed hair,
her delicate muslin dress, her fichu trimmed with the finest
Valenciennes lace, her thin stockings and modish white silk shoes, was a
sufficiently arresting figure, when one considered the hour and the
place. The fat woman hesitated a moment, and in that moment
Mademoiselle spoke.
"Madame——"
It was the most hesitating essay at speech, but the woman stopped and
swung her immense body round until she faced the girl.
"Eh bien, Ma’mselle," she said in a thick, drawling voice.
Mademoiselle moistened her dry lips and tried again.
"Madame—I do not know—can you tell me,—oh! you look kind, can you tell
me what to do?"
"What to do, Ma’mselle?"
"Oh yes, Madame, and—and where to go?"
"Where to go, Ma’mselle?"
"Yes, Madame."
"But why, Ma’mselle?"
When anything terrible happens to the very young, they are unable to
realise that the whole world does not know of their misfortune. Thus to
Mlle de Rochambeau it appeared inconceivable that this woman should be
in ignorance of so important an event as the arrest of the Marquise de
Montargis and her friends. It was only when, to a puzzled expression,
the woman added a significant tap of the gnarled forefinger upon the
heavy forehead, and, with a shrug of voluminous shoulders, prepared to
pass on, that it dawned upon her that here perhaps was help, and that it
was slipping away from her for want of a little explanation.
"Oh, Madame," she exclaimed desperately, "do listen to me. I am Mlle de
Rochambeau, and it is only a week since I came to Paris to be with my
cousin, the Marquise de Montargis, and now they have arrested her, and I
have nowhere to go."
A sound of voices came from behind the great gate of the prison.
"Walk a little way with me," said the fat woman abruptly. "There will
be more than you and me in this conversation if we loiter here like
this. Continue, then, Ma’mselle—you have nowhere to go? But why not to
your cousin’s hotel then?"
"My cousin would have had me do so, but the Commissioners would not
permit it. Everything must be sealed up they said, the servants all
driven out, and no one to come and go until they had finished their
search for treasonable papers. My cousin is accused of corresponding
with Austria on behalf of the Queen," Mlle de Rochambeau remarked
innocently, but something in her companion’s change of expression
convicted her of her imprudence, and she was silent, colouring deeply.
The fat woman frowned.
"Madame, your cousin, had a large society; her friends would protect
you."
Aline shook her head.
"I don’t know who they are, Madame. Mme de Maillé, to whom my cousin
commended me, is also in prison, and others too,—many others, the driver
of the carriage said. I have nowhere to go, nowhere to go, nowhere at
all, Madame."
"Sainte Vierge!" exclaimed the fat woman. The ejaculation burst from
her with great suddenness, and she then closed her lips very tightly and
walked on for some moments in silence.
"Have you any money?" was her next contribution to the conversation, and
Mademoiselle started and put her hand to her bosom. Until this moment
she had forgotten it, but the embroidered bag containing her cousin’s
winnings reposed there safely enough, neighboured by her broken string
of pearls. She drew out the bag now and showed it to her companion, who
gave a sort of grunt, and permitted a new crease, expressive of
satisfaction, to appear upon her broad countenance.
"Eh bien!" she exclaimed. "All is easy. Money is a good key,—a very
good key, Ma’mselle. There are very few doors it won’t unlock, and mine
is not one,—besides the coincidence! Figure to yourself that I was but
now on my way to ask my sister, who is the wife of Bault, the head
gaoler of La Force, whether she could recommend me some respectable
young woman who required a lodging. I did not look, it is true, for a
noble demoiselle,"—here the smooth voice took a tone which caused
Mademoiselle to glance up quickly, but all she saw was a narrowing of
the eyes above a huge impassive smile, and the flow of words
continued,—"la, la, it is all one to me, if the money is safe. There is
nothing to be done without money."
Mlle de Rochambeau drew a little away from her companion. She was
unaccustomed to so familiar a mode of speech, and it offended her.
The little, sharp eyes flashed upon her as she averted her face, and the
voice dropped back into its first tone.
"Well then, Ma’mselle, it is easily settled, and I need not go to my
sister at all to-night. It grows dark so early now, and I have no fancy
for being abroad in the dark; but one thing and another kept me, and I
said to myself, ’Put a thing off often enough, and you’ll never do it at
all.’ My cousin Thérèse was with me, the baggage, and she laughed; but
I was a match for her. ’That’s what you’ve done about marriage,
Thérèse,’ I said, and out of the shop she bounced in as fine a temper as
you’d see any day. She’s a light thing, Thérèse is; and, bless me, if I
warned her once I warned her a hundred times! Always gadding
abroad,—and her ribbons—and her fal-lals—and the fine young men who were
ready to cut one another’s throats for her sake! No, no, that’s not the
way to get a husband and settle oneself in life. Look at me. Was I
beautiful? But certainly not. Had I a large dot? Not at all. But
respectable,—Mon Dieu, yes! No one in all Paris can say that Rosalie
Leboeuf is not respectable; and when Madame, your cousin, comes out of
prison and hears you have been under my roof, I tell you she will be
satisfied, Ma’mselle. No one has ever had a word to say against me. I
keep my shop, and I pay my way, even though times are bad. Regular money
coming in is not to be despised, so I take a lodger or two. I have one
now, a man. A man did I say? An angel, a patriot, a true patriot; none
of your swearing, drinking, hiccupping, lolloping loafers, who think if
they consume enough strong liquor that the reign of liberty will come
floating down their throats of itself. He is a worker this one; sober
and industrious is our Citizen Dangeau, and a Deputy of the Commune,
too, no less."
Mlle de Rochambeau, slightly dazed by this flow of conversation, felt a
cold chill pass over her. Commissioners of the Commune, Deputies of the
Commune! Was Paris full of them? And till this morning she had never
heard of the Commune; it had always been the King, the Court; and now,
to her faint senses, this new word brought a suggestion of fear, and she
seemed for a moment to catch a glimpse of a black curtain vibrating as
if to rise. Behind it, what? She reeled a little, gasped, and caught
at her companion’s solid arm. In a moment it was round her.
"Courage, Ma’mselle, courage then! See, we are arrived. It is better
now, eh?"
Mademoiselle drew a long breath, and felt her feet again. They were in
an alley crowded with small third-rate shops, and so closely set were
the houses that it was almost dark in the narrow street. Mme Leboeuf
led the way into one of the dim entrances, where a strong mingled odour
of cabbages, onions, and apples proclaimed the nature of the commodities
disposed of.
"Above, it will be light enough still," asserted Rosalie between her
panting breaths. "This way, Ma’mselle; one small step, turn to the
left, and now up."
They ascended gradually into a sort of twilight, until suddenly a sharp
turn in the stair brought them on to a landing with a fair-sized window.
Opposite was a gap in the dingy line of houses, and through this gap
shone the strong red of the setting sun.
Mlle de Rochambeau looked out, first at the gorgeous pageant in the sky,
and then, curiously, at the strangeness of her new surroundings. She
saw a tangle of mean slums, streets nearly all gutter, from which rose
sounds of children squabbling, cats fighting, and men swearing. Suddenly
a woman shrieked, and she turned, terrified, to realise that a man was
passing them on his way down the stair.
She caught a momentary but very vivid impression of a tall figure
carried easily, a small head covered with short, dark, curling hair, and
a pair of eyes so blue and piercing that her own hung on them for an
instant in surprise before they fell in confusion. The owner of the
eyes bowed slightly, but with courtesy, and passed on. Madame Leboeuf
was smiling and nodding.
"Good evening, Citizen Dangeau," she said, and broke, as he passed, into
renewed panegyrics.
CHAPTER IV
THE TERROR LET LOOSE
Jacques Dangeau was at this time about eight-and-twenty years of age.
He was a successful lawyer, and an ardent Republican, a friend of
Danton, and a fairly prominent member of the Cordeliers’ Club.
Under a handsome, well-controlled exterior he concealed an unbounded
enthusiasm and a passionate devotion to the cause of liberty. When
Dangeau spoke, his section listened. He carried always in his mind a
vision of the ideal State, in the service of which a race should be
trained from infancy to the civic virtues, inflamed with a pure ambition
to spend themselves for humanity. He saw mankind, shedding brutishness
and self, become sober, law-abiding, just;—in a word, he possessed those
qualities of vision and faith without which neither prophet nor reformer
can influence his generation. Dangeau had the gift of speech, and,
carried on a flood of burning words, some perception of the ultimate
Ideal would rise upon the hearts of even the most degraded among his
hearers. For the moment they too felt the glow of a reflected altruism,
and forgot that to them, and to their fellows, the Revolution meant
unpunished pillage, theft recognised, and murder winked at.
As Dangeau walked through the darkening streets his heart burned in him.
The events of the last month had brought the ideal almost within grasp.
The grapes of liberty had been trodden long enough in the vats of
oppression. Now the long ferment was nearing its close, and the time
approached when the wine of life should be free to all; and that
glorious moment of anticipation held no dread of intoxication or excess.
Truly a patriot might be hopeful at this juncture. Capet and his
family, sometime unapproachable, lay prisoners now, in the firm grip of
the Commune, and the possession of such hostages enabled Paris to laugh
at the threats of foreign interference. The proclamation of the
Republic was only a matter of weeks, and then—renewed visions of a
saturnian reign,—peace and plenty coupled with the rigid virtues of old
Rome,—rose glowingly before his eyes.
As he entered the Temple gates he came down to earth with a sigh. He
was on his way to take his turn of a duty eminently distasteful to
him,—that of guarding the imprisoned King and his family. As a patriot
he detested Louis the Tyrant, as a man he despised Louis the man; but
the spectacle of fallen greatness was disagreeable to his really
generous mind, and he was of sufficiently gentle habits to revolt from
the position of intrusive familiarity into which he was forced with
regard to the women of the party.
The Tower of the Temple, where the unfortunate Royal Family of France
were at this time confined, was to be reached only by traversing the
Palace of the same name, and crossing the court and garden where the
work of demolishing a mass of old houses, which encroached too nearly
upon Capet’s prison, was still proceeding. Patriotic ardour had seen a
spy behind every window, a concealed courtier in every niche; so the
buildings were doomed, and falling fast, whilst from the debris arose a
strong enclosing wall pierced by a couple of guarded entries. Broken
masonry lay everywhere, and Dangeau stumbled precariously as he made his
way over the rubble. The workmen had been gone this half-hour, but as
he halted and called out, a man with a lantern advanced and piloted him
to the Tower.
The Commune was responsible for the prisoners of the Temple, and the
actual guarding of them was delegated to eight of its Deputies. These
were on duty for forty-eight hours at a stretch, and were relieved by
fours every twenty-four hours.
As Dangeau entered the Council-room, those whose term of duty was
finished were already leaving. The office of gaoler was an unpopular
one, and most men, having once satisfied their curiosity about the
prisoners, were very unwilling to approach them again. The sight of
misfortune is only pleasing to a mind completely debased, and most of
these Deputies were worthy men enough.
Dangeau was met almost on the threshold by a fair-haired, eager-looking
youth, who hailed him warmly as Jacques, and, linking his arm in his,
led him, unresisting, into the deep embrasure of the window.
"What is it, Edmond?" inquired Dangeau, an unusually attractive smile
lighting up his rather grave features. It was plain that this young man
roused in him an amused affection.
"Nothing," said Edmond aloud, "but it is so long since I saw you. Have
you been dead, buried, or out of Paris?"
"Since the arm you pinched just now is reasonably solid flesh and blood,
you may conclude that during the past fortnight Paris has been rendered
inconsolable by my absence," said Dangeau, laughing a little.
Edmond Cléry threw an imperceptible glance at his fellow-Commissioners.
Two being always with the prisoners, there remained four others, and of
these a couple were playing cards at the wine-stained table, and two
more lounged on the doorstep smoking a villanously rank tobacco and
talking loudly.
Certainly no one was in the least interested in the conversation of
Citizens Dangeau and Cléry. Yet for all that Edmond dropped his voice,
not to a whisper, but to that smooth monotone which hardly carries a
yard, and yet is distinctly audible to the person addressed. In this
voice he asked:
"You have not been to the Club?"
Dangeau shook his head.
"Nor seen Hébert, Marat, Jules Dupuis?"
An expression of distaste lifted Dangeau’s finely cut lip.
"I have existed without that felicity," he observed, with a slightly
sarcastic inflexion.
"Then you have been told—have heard—nothing?"
"My dear Edmond, what mysteries are these?"
Edmond Cléry leaned a little closer, and dropped his voice until it was
a mere tenuous thread.
"They have decided on a massacre," he said.
"A massacre?"
"Yes, of the prisoners."
"Just Heaven! No!"
"It is true. Things have fallen from Hébert once or twice. He and
Marat have been closeted for hours—the devil’s own alliance that—and the
plan is of their hatching. Two days ago Hébert spoke at the Club. It
was late, Danton was not there. They say—" Cléry hesitated, and stole
a glance at his companion’s set face,—"they say he wishes to know
nothing."
"A lie," said Dangeau very quietly.
"I don’t know. There, Jacques, don’t look at me like that! How can I
tell? I tell you my brain reels at the thought of the thing."
"What did Hébert say? He spoke?"
"Yes; said the people must be fleshed,—there was not sufficient
enthusiasm. Paris as a whole was quiescent, apathetic. This must be
changed, an elixir was needed. What? Blood,—blood of traitors,—blood
of aristocrats,—oppressors of the people. Bah!—you can fancy the rest
well enough."
"Did any one else speak?"
"Marat said the Jacobins were with us."
"Robespierre?"
"In it, of course, but would n’t dirty those white hands for the world,"
said Cléry, sneering.
"No one opposed it?"
"Oh, yes, but hooted down almost at once. You know Dupuis’s bull voice?
It did his friends a good turn, bellowing slackness, lack of patriotism,
and so on. I wish you had been there."
Dangeau shook his head.
"I could have done nothing."
"Ah, but you could; there ’s no one like you, Jacques. Danton thunders,
and Marat spits out venom, and Hébert panders to the vile in us, but you
really make us see an ideal, and wish to be more worthy of it. I said
to Barrassin, ’If only Dangeau were here we should be spared this
shame.’"
The boy’s face flushed as he spoke, but Dangeau looked down moodily.
"I could have done nothing," he repeated. "If they spoke as openly as
that it is because their plans are completed. Did you hear any more?"
Edmond looked a little confused.
"Not there,—but—well, I was told,—a friend told me,—it was for
to-morrow," and he looked up to find Dangeau’s eyes fixed steadily on
him.
"A friend, Edmond? Who? Thérèse?"
Cléry coloured hotly.
"Why not Thérèse, Jacques?"
"Oh, if you like to play with gunpowder it’s no business of mine,
Edmond; but the girl is Hébert’s mistress, and as dangerous as the
devil, that’s all. And so she told you that?"
Cléry nodded, a trifle defiantly.
"To-morrow," said Dangeau slowly; "where?"
"At all the prisons. One or two of the gaolers are warned, but I do not
believe they will be able to do anything."
Dangeau was thinking hard.
"They sent me away on purpose," he said at last.
"Curse them!" said Cléry in a shaking voice.
Dangeau did not swear, but he nodded his head as who should say Amen,
and his face was bitter hard.
"Is anything intended here?" he asked sharply.
"No, not from head-quarters; but Heaven knows what may happen when the
mob tastes blood."
Dangeau gave a short laugh.
"Why, Jacques?" said Cléry, surprised.
"Why, Edmond," repeated Dangeau sardonically, "I was thinking that it
would be a queer turn for Fate to play if you and I were to die
to-morrow, fighting in defence of Capet against the people."
"You would do that?" asked Edmond.
"But naturally, my friend, since we are responsible for him."
He had been leaning carelessly against the wall, but as he spoke he
straightened himself.
"Our friends upstairs will be getting impatient," he said aloud. "Who
takes the night duty with me?"
Cléry was about to speak, but received a warning pressure of the arm.
He was silent, and Legros, one of the loungers, came forward.
Dangeau and he went out together. Upstairs silence reigned. The two
Commissioners on duty rose with an air of relief, and passed out. The
light of a badly trimmed oil-lamp showed that the little party of
prisoners were all present, and Dangeau saluted them with a grave
inclination of the head that was hardly a bow. His companion, clumsily
embarrassed, shuffled with his feet, spat on the floor, and lounged to a
seat.
The Queen raised her eyebrows at him, and, turning slightly, smiled and
nodded to Dangeau. Mme Elizabeth bowed abstractedly and turned again to
the chessboard which stood between her and her brother. Mme Royale
curtsied, but the little Dauphin did not raise his head from some
childish game which occupied his whole attention. His mother, after
waiting a moment, called him to her and, laying one of her long delicate
hands on his petulantly twitching shoulder, observed gently:
"Fi donc, my son; did you not see these gentlemen enter? Bid them good
evening!"
The child tossed his head, but as his father’s gaze met him, he hung it
down again, saying in a clear childish voice, "Good evening, Citizens."
Mme Elizabeth’s colour rose perceptibly at the form of address, but the
Queen smiled, and, giving the boy’s shoulder a little tap of dismissal,
she turned to Dangeau.
"We forget our manners in this solitude, Monsieur," she said in her
peculiarly soft and agreeable voice. Then after a pause, during which
Dangeau, to his annoyance, felt that his face was flushing, "It is
Monsieur Dangeau, is it
|
the
Intelligence did not temporarily precede that of the universe--but (in
the order of things), because, by its nature, Intelligence precedes the
world that proceeds from it, of which it is the cause, type[26] and
model, and cause of unchanged perpetual persistence.
HOW INTELLIGENCE CONTINUES TO MAKE THE WORLD SUBSIST.
This is how Intelligence continues to make the world subsist. Pure
Intelligence and Being in itself constitute the genuine (intelligible)
World that is prior to everything, which has no extension, which
is weakened by no division, which has no imperfection, even in its
parts, for none of its parts are separated from its totality. This
world is the universal Life and Intelligence. Its unity is both
living and intelligent. In it each part reproduces the whole, its
totality consists of a perfect harmony, because nothing within it is
separate, independent, or isolated from anything else. Consequently,
even if there were mutual opposition, there would be no struggle.
Being everywhere one and perfect, the intelligible World is permanent
and immutable, for it contains no internal reaction of one opposite
on another. How could such a reaction take place in this world, since
nothing is lacking in it? Why should Reason produce another Reason
within it, and Intelligence produce another Intelligence[27] merely
because it was capable of doing so? If so, it would not, before having
produced, have been in a perfect condition; it would produce and enter
in motion because it contained something inferior.[28] But blissful
beings are satisfied to remain within themselves, persisting within
their essence. A multiple action compromises him who acts by forcing
him to issue from himself. The intelligible World is so blissful that
even while doing nothing it accomplishes great things, and while
remaining within itself it produces important operations.
THE SENSE-WORLD CREATED NOT BY REFLECTION, BUT BY SELF-NECESSITY.
2. The sense-world draws its existence from that intelligible World.
The sense-world, however, is not really unitary; it is indeed multiple,
and divided into a plurality of parts which are separated from each
other, and are mutually foreign. Not love reigns there, but hate,
produced by the separation of things which their state of imperfection
renders mutually inimical. None of its parts suffices to itself.
Preserved by something else, it is none the less an enemy of the
preserving Power. The sense-world has been created, not because the
divinity reflected on the necessity of creating, but because (in the
nature of things) it was unavoidable that there be a nature inferior to
the intelligible World, which, being perfect, could not have been the
last degree of existence.[29] It occupied the first rank, it had great
power, that was universal and capable of creating without deliberation.
If it had had to deliberate, it would not, by itself, have expressed
the power of creation. It would not have possessed it essentially.
It would have resembled an artisan, who, himself, does not have the
power of creating, but who acquires it by learning how to work. By
giving something of itself to matter, Intelligence produced everything
without issuing from its rest or quietness. That which it gives is
Reason, because reason is the emanation of Intelligence, an emanation
that is as durable as the very existence of Intelligence. In a seminal
reason all the parts exist in an united condition, without any of
them struggling with another, without disagreement or hindrance. This
Reason then causes something of itself to pass into the corporeal mass,
where the parts are separated from each other, and hinder each other,
and destroy each other. Likewise, from this unitary Intelligence,
and from the Reason that proceeds thence, issues this universe whose
parts are separate and distinct from each other, some of the parts
being friendly and allied, while some are separate and inimical. They,
therefore, destroy each other, either voluntarily or involuntarily,
and through this destruction their generation is mutually operated.
In such a way did the divinity arrange their actions and experiences
that all concur in the formation of a single harmony,[30] in which
each utters its individual note because, in the whole, the Reason that
dominates them produces order and harmony. The sense-world does not
enjoy the perfection of Intelligence and Reason: it only participates
therein. Consequently, the sense-world needed harmony, because it was
formed by the concurrence of Intelligence and necessity.[31] Necessity
drives the sense-world to evil, and to what is irrational, because
necessity itself is irrational; but Intelligence dominates necessity.
The intelligible World is pure reason; none other could be such. The
world, which is born of it, had to be inferior to it, and be neither
pure reason, nor mere matter; for order would have been impossible
in unmingled matter. The sense-world, therefore, is a mixture of
matter and Reason; those are the elements of which it is composed. The
principle from which this mixture proceeds, and which presides over
the mixture, is the Soul. Neither must we imagine that this presiding
over the mixture constitutes an effort for the Soul; for she easily
administers the universe, by her presence.[32]
THE WORLD SHOULD NOT BE BLAMED FOR ITS IMPERFECTIONS.
3. For not being beautiful this world should not be blamed; neither
for not being the best of corporeal worlds; nor should the Cause,
from which it derives its existence, be accused. To begin with,
this world exists necessarily. It is not the work of a reflecting
determination. It exists because a superior Being naturally begets it
in His own likeness. Even if its creation were the result of reflective
determination, it could not shame its author; for the divinity made the
universe beautiful, complete and harmonious. Between the greater and
lesser parts He introduced a fortunate accord. A person who would blame
the totality of the world from consideration of its parts is therefore
unjust. He should examine the parts in their relation to the totality,
and see whether they be in accord and in harmony with it. Then the
study of the whole should continue down to that of the least details.
Otherwise criticism does not apply to the world as a whole, but only
to some of its parts. For instance, we well know how admirable, as
a whole, is man; yet we grant that there would be justification for
criticism of a separate hair, or toe, or some of the vilest animals, or
Thersites, as a specimen of humanity.
THE WORLD'S TESTIMONY TO ITS CREATOR.
Since the work under consideration is the entire world, we would, were
our intelligence attentively to listen to its voice, hear it exclaim
as follows: "It is a divinity who has made Me, and from the divinity's
hands I issued complete, including all animated beings, entire and
self-sufficient, standing in need of nothing, since everything is
contained within Me; plants, animals, the whole of Nature, the
multitude of the divinities, the troupe of guardians, excellent souls,
and the men who are happy because of virtue. This refers not only
to the earth, which is rich in plants and animals of all kinds; the
power of the Soul extends also to the sea. Nor are the air and entire
heaven inanimate. They are the seat of all the excellent Souls, which
communicate life to the stars, and which preside over the circular
revolution of the heaven, a revolution that is eternal and full of
harmony, which imitates the movement of Intelligence by the eternal and
regular movement of the stars around one and the same centre, because
heaven has no need to seek anything outside of itself. All the beings
I contain aspire to the Good; all achieve Him, each according to its
potentiality. Indeed, from the Good depends the entire heaven,[33]
my whole Soul, the divinities that inhabit my various parts, all the
animals, all the plants, and all my apparently inanimate beings. In
this aggregation of beings some seem to participate only in existence,
others in life, others in sensation, others in intelligence, while
still others seem to participate in all the powers of life at one
time;[34] for we must not expect equal faculties for unequal things, as
for instance sight for the fingers, as it is suitable to the eye; while
the finger needs something else; it needs its own form, and has to
fulfil its function."
OPPOSITION AMONG INANIMATE BEINGS.
4. We should not be surprised at water extinguishing fire, or at
fire destroying some other element. Even this element was introduced
to existence by some other element, and it is not surprising that
it should be destroyed, since it did not produce itself, and was
introduced to existence only by the destruction of some other element
(as thought Heraclitus and the Stoics[35]). Besides, the extinguished
fire is replaced by another active fire. In the incorporeal heaven,
everything is permanent; in the visible heaven, the totality, as well
as the more important and the most essential parts, are eternal.
The souls, on passing through different bodies, (by virtue of their
disposition[36]), themselves change on assuming some particular form;
but, when they can do so, they stand outside of generation, remaining
united to the universal Soul. The bodies are alive by their form, and
by the whole that each of them constitutes (by its union with a soul),
since they are animals, and since they nourish themselves; for in
the sense-world life is mobile, but in the intelligible world it is
immobile. Immobility necessarily begat movement, self-contained life
was compelled to produce other life, and calm being naturally exhaled
vibrating spirit.
OPPOSITION AMONG ANIMALS.
Mutual struggle and destruction among animals is necessary, because
they are not born immortal. Their origin is due to Reason's embracing
all of matter, and because this Reason possessed within itself all the
things that subsist in the intelligible World. From what other source
would they have arisen?
OPPOSITION AMONG HUMANS.
The mutual wrongs of human beings may however very easily all be caused
by the desire of the Good (as had been thought by Democritus[37]).
But, having strayed because of their inability to reach Him, they
turned against each other. They are punished for it by the degradation
these evil actions introduced within their souls, and, after death,
they are driven into a lower place, for none can escape the Order
established by the Law of the universe (or, the law of Adrastea[38]).
Order does not, as some would think, exist because of disorder, nor
law on account of lawlessness; in general, it is not the better that
exists on account of the worse. On the contrary, disorder exists only
on account of order, lawlessness on account of law, irrationality on
account of reason, because order, law and reason, such as they are here
below, are only imitations (or, borrowings). It is not that the better
produced the worse, but that the things which need participation in the
better are hindered therefrom, either by their nature, by accident,
or by some other obstacle (as Chrysippus thought that evils happen
by consequence or concomitance). Indeed, that which succeeds only in
acquiring a borrowed order, may easily fail to achieve it, either
because of some fault inherent in its own nature, or by some foreign
obstacle. Things hinder each other unintentionally, by following
different goals. Animals whose actions are free incline sometimes
towards good, sometimes towards evil (as the two horses in Plato's
Phaedrus).[39] Doubtless, they do not begin by inclining towards evil;
but as soon as there is the least deviation at the origin, the further
the advance in the wrong road, the greater and more serious does the
divergence become. Besides, the soul is united to a body, and from
this union necessarily arises appetite. When something impresses us at
first sight, or unexpectedly, and if we do not immediately repress the
motion which is produced within us, we allow ourselves to be carried
away by the object towards which our inclination drew us. But the
punishment follows the fault, and it is not unjust that the soul that
has contracted some particular nature should undergo the consequences
of her disposition (by passing into a body which conforms thereto).
Happiness need not be expected for those who have done nothing to
deserve it. The good alone obtain it; and that is why the divinities
enjoy it.
LACK OF HAPPINESS SHOULD BE BLAMED ON THE SOUL THAT DOES NOT DESERVE IT.
5. If then, even here below, souls enjoy the faculty of arriving at
happiness, we should not accuse the constitution of the universe
because some souls are not happy; the fault rather lies with their
weakness, which hinders them from struggling courageously enough in
the career where prizes are offered to virtue. Why indeed should we
be astonished that the spirits which have not made themselves divine
should not enjoy divine life? Poverty and diseases are of no importance
to the good, and they are useful to the evil (as thought Theognis).[40]
Besides, we are necessarily subject to diseases, because we have a
body. Then all these accidents are not useless for the order and
existence of the universe. Indeed, when a being is dissolved into its
elements, the Reason of the universe uses it to beget other beings,
for the universal Reason embraces everything within its sphere of
activity. Thus when the body is disorganized, and the soul is softened
by her passions, then the body, overcome by sickness, and the soul,
overcome by vice, are introduced into another series and order. There
are things, like poverty and sickness, which benefit the persons who
undergo them. Even vice contributes to the perfection of the universe,
because it furnishes opportunity for the exercise of the divine
justice. It serves other purposes also; for instance, it increases the
vigilance of souls, and excites the mind and intelligence to avoid the
paths of perdition; it also emphasizes the value of virtue by contrast
with the evils that overtake the wicked. Of course, such utilities
are not the cause of the existence of evils; we only mean that, since
evils exist, the divinity made use of them to accomplish His purposes.
It would be the characteristic of a great power to make even evils
promote the fulfilment of its purposes, to cause formless things to
assist in the production of forms. In short, we assert that evil is
only an omission or failure of good. Now a coming short of good must
necessarily exist in the beings here below, because in them good is
mingled with other things; for this thing to which the good is allied
differs from the good, and thus produces the lack of good. That is why
"it is impossible for evil to be destroyed":[41] because things are
successively inferior, relatively to the nature of the absolute Good;
and because, being different from the Good from which they derive their
existence, they have become what they are by growing more distant from
their principle.
IN SPITE OF APPARENT MISFORTUNE TO THE GOOD NO HARM CAN HAPPEN TO THEM.
6. It is constantly objected that fortune maltreats the good, and
favors the evil in opposition to the agreement that ought to exist
between virtue and happiness. The true answer to this is that no
harm can happen to the righteous man, and no good to the vicious
man.[42] Other objectors ask why one man is exposed to what is contrary
to nature, while the other obtains what conforms thereto. How can
distributive justice be said to obtain in this world? If, however, the
obtaining of what conforms to nature do not increase the happiness of
the virtuous man, and if being exposed to what is contrary to nature
do not diminish the wickedness of the vicious man, of what importance
(as thought Plato[43]), are either of these conditions? Neither will it
matter if the vicious man be handsome, or the virtuous man ugly.
THE SLAVERY OF THE GOOD AND VICTORY OF THE EVIL SEEM TO ACCUSE
PROVIDENCE.
Further objections assert that propriety, order and justice demand the
contrary of the existing state of affairs in the world, and that we
could expect no less from a Providence that was wise. Even if it were
a matter of moment to virtue or vice, it is unsuitable that the wicked
should be the masters, and chiefs of state, and that the good should
be slaves; for a bad prince commits the worst crimes. Moreover, the
wicked conquer in battles, and force their prisoners to undergo the
extremities of torments. How could such facts occur if indeed a divine
Providence be in control? Although indeed in the production of some
work (of art), it be especially the totality that claims attention,
nevertheless, the parts must also obtain their due, especially when
they are animated, living and reasonable; it is just that divine
Providence should extend to everything, especially inasmuch as its
duty is precisely to neglect nothing. In view of these objections we
shall be forced to demonstrate that really everything here below is
good, if we continue to insist that the sense-world depends on supreme
Intelligence, and that its power penetrates everywhere.
PERFECTION MUST NOT BE SOUGHT IN THINGS MINGLED WITH MATTER.
7. To begin with, we must remark that to show that all is good in the
things mingled with matter (and therefore of sense), we must not expect
to find in them the whole perfection of the World which is not soiled
by matter, and is intelligible; nor should we expect to find in that
which holds the second rank characteristics of that which is of the
first. Since the world has a body, we must grant that this body will
have influence on the totality, and expect no more than that Reason
will give it that which this mixed nature was capable of receiving.
For instance, if we were to contemplate the most beautiful man here
below, we would be wrong in believing that he was identical with the
intelligible Man, and inasmuch as he was made of flesh, muscles and
bones, we would have to be satisfied with his having received from
his creator all the perfection that could be communicated to him to
embellish these bones, muscles and flesh, and to make the ("seminal)
reason" in him predominate over the matter within him.
EVIL IS ONLY A LOWER FORM OF GOOD.
Granting these premises, we may start out on an explanation of the
above mentioned difficulties. For in the world we will find remarkable
traces of the Providence and divine Power from which it proceeds.
Let us take first, the actions of souls who do evil voluntarily; the
actions of the wicked who, for instance, harm virtuous men, or other
men equally evil. Providence need not be held responsible for the
wickedness of these souls. The cause should be sought in the voluntary
determinations of those souls themselves. For we have proved that the
souls have characteristic motions, and that while here below they are
not pure, but rather are animals (as would naturally be the case with
souls united to bodies).[44] Now, it is not surprising that, finding
themselves in such a condition, they would live conformably to that
condition.[45] Indeed, it is not the formation of the world that made
them descend here below. Even before the world existed, they were
already disposed to form part of it, to busy themselves with it, to
infuse it with life, to administer it, and in it to exert their power
in a characteristic manner, either by presiding over its (issues),
and by communicating to it something of their power, or by descending
into it, or by acting in respect to the world each in its individual
manner.[46] The latter question, however, does not refer to the subject
we are now considering; here it will be sufficient to show that,
however these circumstances occur, Providence is not to be blamed.
IT IS A MATTER OF FAITH THAT PROVIDENCE EMBRACES EVERYTHING HERE BELOW,
EVEN THE MISFORTUNES OF THE JUST.
But how shall we explain the difference that is observed between the
lot of the good and the evil? How can it occur that the former are
poor, while others are rich, and possess more than necessary to satisfy
their needs, being even powerful, and governing cities and nations?
(The Gnostics and Manicheans) think that the sphere of activity of
Providence does not extend down to the earth.[47] No! For all of the
rest (of this world) conforms to (universal) Reason, inasmuch as
animals and plants participate in Reason, Life and Soul. (The Gnostic)
will answer that if Providence do extend to this earth, it does not
predominate therein. As the world is but a single organism, to advance
such an objection is the part of somebody who would assert that the
head and face of man were produced by Nature, and that reason dominated
therein, while the other members were formed by other causes, such as
chance or necessity, and that they were evil either on this account, or
because of the importance of Nature. Wisdom and piety, however, would
forbid the admission that here below not everything was well, blaming
the operation of Providence.
HOW SENSE-OBJECTS ARE NOT EVIL.
8. It remains for us to explain how sense-objects are good and
participate in the (cosmic) Order; or at least, that they are not
evil. In every animal, the higher parts, such as the face and head,
are the most beautiful, and are not equalled by the middle or lower
parts. Now men occupy the middle and lower region of the universe. In
the higher region we find the heaven containing the divinities; it is
they that fill the greater part of the world, with the vast sphere
where they reside. The earth occupies the centre and seems to be one
of the stars. We are surprised at seeing injustice reigning here below
chiefly because man is regarded as the most venerable and wisest being
in the universe. Nevertheless, this being that is so wise occupies but
the middle place between divinities and animals, at different times
inclining towards the former or the latter. Some men resemble the
divinities, and others resemble animals; but the greater part continue
midway between them.
THE GOOD MAY NEGLECT NATURAL LAWS WHICH CARRY REWARDS.
It is those men who occupy this middle place who are forced to undergo
the rapine and violence of depraved men, who resemble wild beasts.
Though the former are better than those whose violence they suffer,
they are, nevertheless, dominated by them because of inferiority in
other respects, lacking courage, or preparedness.[48] It would be no
more than a laughing matter if children who had strengthened their
bodies by exercise, while leaving their souls inviolate in ignorance,
should in physical struggle conquer those of their companions, who
had exercised neither body nor soul; if they stole their food or soft
clothing. No legislator could hinder the vanquished from bearing the
punishment of their cowardliness and effeminacy, if, neglecting the
gymnastic exercises which had been taught them, they did not, by their
inertia, effeminacy and laziness, fear becoming fattened sheep fit to
be the prey of wolves? They who commit this rapine and violence are
punished therefor first because they thereby become wolves and noxious
beasts, and later because (in this or some subsequent existence) they
necessarily undergo the consequences of their evil actions (as thought
Plato[49]). For men who here below have been evil do not die entirely
(when their soul is separated from their bodies). Now in the things
that are regulated by Nature and Reason, that which follows is always
the result of that which precedes; evil begets evil, just as good
begets good. But the arena of life differs from a gymnasium, where the
struggles are only games. Therefore, the above-mentioned children which
we divided into two classes, after having grown up in ignorance, must
prepare to fight, and take up arms, an display more energy than in the
exercises of the gymnasium. As some, however, are well armed, while the
others are not, the first must inevitably triumph. The divinity must
not fight for the cowardly; for the (cosmic) law decrees that in war
life is saved by valor, and not by prayers.[50] Nor is it by prayers
that the fruits of the earth are obtained; they are produced only by
labor. Nor can one have good health without taking care of it. If
the evil cultivate the earth better, we should not complain of their
reaping a better harvest.[51] Besides, in the ordinary conduct of life,
it is ridiculous to listen only to one's own caprice, doing nothing
that is prescribed by the divinities, limiting oneself exclusively to
demanding one's conservation, without carrying out any of the actions
on which (the divinities) willed that our preservation should depend.
DEATH IS BETTER THAN DISHARMONY WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE.
Indeed it would be better to be dead than to live thus in contradiction
with the laws that rule the universe. If, when men are in opposition
to these laws, divine Providence preserved peace in the midst of
all follies and vices, it would deserve the charge of negligence in
allowing the prevalence of evil. The evil rule only because of the
cowardice of those who obey them; this is juster than if it were
otherwise.
PROVIDENCE SHOULD NOT BE EXTENDED TO THE POINT OF SUPPRESSING OUR OWN
INITIATIVE.
9. Nor should the sphere of Providence be extended to the point of
suppressing our own action. For if Providence did everything, and
Providence alone existed, it would thereby be annihilated. To what,
indeed, would it apply? There would be nothing but divinity! It
is indeed incontestable that divinity exists, and that its sphere
extends over other beings--but divinity does not suppress the latter.
For instance, divinity approaches man, and preserves in him what
constitutes humanity; that is, divinity makes him live in conformity
to the law of Providence, and makes him fulfil the commandments of
that law. Now, this law decrees that the life of men who have become
virtuous should be good both here below and after their death; and
that the evil should meet an opposite fate. It would be unreasonable
to expect the existence of men who forget themselves to come and save
the evil, even if the latter addressed prayers to the divinity. Neither
should we expect the divinities to renounce their blissful existence to
come and administer our affairs; nor that the virtuous men, whose life
is holy and superior to human conditions, should be willing to govern
the wicked. The latter never busy themselves with promoting the good
to the governing of other men, and themselves to be good (as thought
Plato[52]). They are even jealous of the man who is good by himself;
there would indeed be more good people if virtuous men were chosen as
chiefs.
THOUGH MEN ARE ONLY MEDIOCRE THEY ARE NEVER ABANDONED BY PROVIDENCE.
Man is therefore not the best being in the universe; according to his
choice he occupies an intermediate rank. In the place he occupies,
however, he is not abandoned by Providence, which ever leads him
back to divine things by the numerous means it possesses to cause
the triumph of virtue. That is the reason why men have never lost
rationality, and why, to some degree, they always participate in
wisdom, intelligence, art, and the justice that regulates their mutual
relations. Even when one wrongs another, he is still given credit
for acting in justice to himself, and he is treated according to his
deserts.[53] Besides, man, as a creature, is handsome, as handsome as
possible, and, by the part he plays in the universe, he is superior to
all the animals that dwell here below.
IT IS RIDICULOUS TO COMPLAIN OF THE LOWER NATURE OF ANIMALS.
No one in his senses would complain of the existence of animals
inferior to man, if, besides, they contribute towards the embellishment
of the universe. Would it not be ridiculous to complain that some
of them bite men, as if the latter had an imprescriptible right to
complete security? The existence of these animals is necessary; it
procures us advantages both evident and still unknown, but which will
be revealed in the course of time. Thus there is nothing useless
in animals, either in respect to themselves, or to man.[54] It is,
besides, ridiculous to complain because many animals are wild, when
there are even men who are such; what should surprise us most is that
many animals are not submissive to man, and defend themselves against
him.[55]
IF UNJUST ACTS ARE PRODUCED ASTROLOGICALLY THEN DIVINE REASON IS TO
BLAME.
10. But if men be evil only in spite of themselves, and involuntarily,
it would be impossible to say that those who commit injustices, and
those who suffer them are responsible (the former for their ferocity,
and the latter for their cowardice.[56] To this we answer that if the
wickedness of the former (as well as the cowardice of the latter) be,
necessarily, produced by the course of the stars, or by the action of
a principle of which it is only the effect, then it is explained by
physical reasons. But if it be the very Reason of the universe that
produces such things, how does it not thereby commit an injustice?
EVEN INVOLUNTARINESS DOES NOT AFFECT SPONTANEITY THAT IS RESPONSIBLE.
Unjust actions are involuntary only in this sense that one does not
have the will to commit a fault; but this circumstance does not hinder
the spontaneity of the action. However, when one acts spontaneously,
one is responsible for the fault; one would avoid responsibility for
the fault only if one were not the author of the action. To say that
the wicked are such necessarily, does not mean that they undergo
an external constraint, but that their character is constituted by
wickedness. The influence of the course of the stars does not destroy
our liberty, for, if every action in us were determined by the exterior
influence of such agents, everything would go on as these agents
desired it; consequently, men would not commit any actions contrary
to the will of these agents. If the divinities alone were the authors
of all our actions, there would be no impious persons; therefore,
impiety is due to men. It is true that, once the cause is given, the
effects will follow, if only the whole series of causes be given. But
man himself is one of these causes; he therefore does good by his own
nature, and he is a free cause.
EVEN THE SHADOWS ARE NECESSARY TO THE PERFECTION OF A PICTURE.
11. Is it true that all things are produced by necessity, and by the
natural concatenation of causes and effects, and that, thus, they are
as good as possible? No! It is the Reason which, governing the world,
produces all things (in this sense that it contains all the "seminal
reasons"), and which decrees that they shall be what they are. It is
Reason that, in conformity with its rational nature, produces what
are called evils, because it does not wish everything to be equally
good. An artist would not cover the body of a pictured animal with
eyes.[57] Likewise, Reason did not limit itself to the creation of
divinities; it produced beneath them guardians, then men, then animals,
not by envy (as Plato remarks[58]); but because its rational essence
contains an intellectual variety (that is, contains the "seminal
reasons" of all different beings). We resemble such men as know little
of painting, and who would blame an artist for having put shadows in
his picture; nevertheless, he has only properly disposed the contrasts
of light. Likewise, well-regulated states are not composed of equal
orders. Further, one would not condemn a tragedy, because it presents
personages other than heroes, such as slaves or peasants who speak
incorrectly.[78] To cut out these inferior personages, and all the
parts in which they appear, would be to injure the beauty of the
composition.[59]
IT IS REASONABLE FOR THE REASON TO ASSIGN SOULS TO DIFFERENT RANKS IN
THE UNIVERSE.
12. Since it is the Reason (of the world) which produced all things
by an alliance with matter, and by preserving its peculiar nature,
which is to be composed of different parts, and to be determined by
the principle from which it proceeds (that is, by Intelligence), the
work produced by Reason under these conditions could not be improved
in beauty. Indeed, the Reason (of the world) could not be composed of
homogeneous and similar parts; it must, therefore, not be accused,
because it is all things, and because all its parts differ from others.
If it had introduced into the world things which it had not previously
contained, as for instance, souls, and had forced them to enter into
the order of the world without considering their nature, and if it
had made many become degraded, Reason would certainly be to blame.
Therefore, we must acknowledge that the souls are parts of Reason,
and that Reason harmonizes them with the world without causing their
degradation, assigning to each that station which is suitable to her.
DIVINE JUSTICE EXTENDS ALSO INTO PAST AND FUTURE.
13. There is a further consideration that should not be overlooked,
namely: that if you desire to discover the exercise of the distributive
Justice of the divinity, it is not sufficient to examine only the
present; the past and future must also be considered. Those who, in a
former life, were slave-owners, if they abused their power, will be
enslaved; and this change would be useful to them. It impoverishes
those who have badly used their wealth; for poverty is of service
even to virtuous people. Likewise, those who kill will in their turn
be killed; he who commits homicide acts unjustly, but he who is its
victim suffers justly. Thus arises a harmony between the disposition
of the man who is maltreated, and the disposition of him who maltreats
him as he deserved. It is not by chance that a man becomes a slave,
is made prisoner, or is dishonored. He (must himself) have committed
the violence which he in turn undergoes. He who kills his mother will
be killed by his son; he who has violated a woman will in turn become
a woman in order to become the victim of a rape. Hence, the divine
Word[80] called Adrastea.[60] The orderly system here mentioned really
is "unescapeable," truly a justice and an admirable wisdom. From the
things that we see in the universe we must conclude that the order
which reigns in it is eternal, that it penetrates everywhere, even
in the smallest thing; and that it reveals an admirable art not only
in the divine things, but also in those that might be supposed to
be beneath the notice of Providence, on account of their minuteness.
Consequently, there is an admirable variety of art in the vilest
animal. It extends even into plants, whose fruits and leaves are so
distinguished by the beauty of form, whose flowers bloom with so much
grace, which grow so easily, and which offer so much variety. These
things were not produced once for all; they are continually produced
with variety, because the stars in their courses do not always exert
the same influence on things here below. What is transformed is not
transformed and metamorphosed by chance, but according to the laws of
beauty, and the rules of suitability observed by divine powers. Every
divine Power acts according to its nature, that is, in conformity with
its essence. Now its essence is to develop justice and beauty in its
actualizations; for if justice and beauty did not exist here, they
could not exist elsewhere.
THE CREATOR IS SO WISE THAT ALL COMPLAINTS AMOUNT TO GROTESQUENESS.
14. The order of the universe conforms to divine Intelligence without
implying that on that account its author needed to go through the
process of reasoning. Nevertheless, this order is so perfect that he
who best knows how to reason would be astonished to see that even with
reasoning one could not discover a plan wiser than that discovered as
realized in particular natures, and that this plan better conforms to
the laws of Intelligence than any that could result from reasoning.
It can never, therefore, be proper to find fault with the Reason
that produces all things because of any (alleged imperfections) of
any natural object, nor to claim, for the beings whose existence has
begun, the perfection of the beings whose existence had no beginning,
and which are eternal, both in the intelligible World, and in this
sense-world. That would amount to wishing that every being should
possess more good than it can carry, and to consider as insufficient
the form it received. It would, for instance, amount to
|
controlled the Court of the Seine under the category of possible judges,
the stuff of which judges are made. Thus classified, he did not achieve
the reputation for capacity which his previous labors had deserved.
Just as a painter is invariably included in a category as a landscape
painter, a portrait painter, a painter of history, of sea pieces, or of
genre, by a public consisting of artists, connoisseurs, and simpletons,
who, out of envy, or critical omnipotence, or prejudice, fence in his
intellect, assuming, one and all, that there are ganglions in every
brain--a narrow judgment which the world applies to writers, to
statesmen, to everybody who begins with some specialty before being
hailed as omniscient; so Popinot’s fate was sealed, and he was hedged
round to do a particular kind of work. Magistrates, attorneys, pleaders,
all who pasture on the legal common, distinguish two elements in
every case--law and equity. Equity is the outcome of facts, law is the
application of principles to facts. A man may be right in equity but
wrong in law, without any blame to the judge. Between his conscience and
the facts there is a whole gulf of determining reasons unknown to the
judge, but which condemn or legitimatize the act. A judge is not God;
the duty is to adapt facts to principles, to judge cases of infinite
variety while measuring them by a fixed standard.
France employs about six thousand judges; no generation has six thousand
great men at her command, much less can she find them in the legal
profession. Popinot, in the midst of the civilization of Paris, was just
a very clever cadi, who, by the character of his mind, and by dint of
rubbing the letter of the law into the essence of facts, had learned to
see the error of spontaneous and violent decisions. By the help of his
judicial second-sight he could pierce the double casing of lies in
which advocates hide the heart of a trial. He was a judge, as the great
Desplein was a surgeon; he probed men’s consciences as the anatomist
probed their bodies. His life and habits had led him to an exact
appreciation of their most secret thoughts by a thorough study of facts.
He sifted a case as Cuvier sifted the earth’s crust. Like that great
thinker, he proceeded from deduction to deduction before drawing his
conclusions, and reconstructed the past career of a conscience as Cuvier
reconstructed an Anoplotherium. When considering a brief he would often
wake in the night, startled by a gleam of truth suddenly sparkling
in his brain. Struck by the deep injustice, which is the end of these
contests, in which everything is against the honest man, everything
to the advantage of the rogue, he often summed up in favor of equity
against law in such cases as bore on questions of what may be termed
divination. Hence he was regarded by his colleagues as a man not of
a practical mind; his arguments on two lines of deduction made their
deliberations lengthy. When Popinot observed their dislike to listening
to him he gave his opinion briefly; it was said that he was not a good
judge in this class of cases; but as his gift of discrimination was
remarkable, his opinion lucid, and his penetration profound, he was
considered to have a special aptitude for the laborious duties of an
examining judge. So an examining judge he remained during the greater
part of his legal career.
Although his qualifications made him eminently fitted for its difficult
functions, and he had the reputation of being so learned in criminal
law that his duty was a pleasure to him, the kindness of his heart
constantly kept him in torture, and he was nipped as in a vise between
his conscience and his pity. The services of an examining judge are
better paid than those of a judge in civil actions, but they do not
therefore prove a temptation; they are too onerous. Popinot, a man of
modest and virtuous learning, without ambition, an indefatigable
worker, never complained of his fate; he sacrificed his tastes and
his compassionate soul to the public good, and allowed himself to be
transported to the noisome pools of criminal examinations, where he
showed himself alike severe and beneficent. His clerk sometimes would
give the accused some money to buy tobacco, or a warm winter garment,
as he led him back from the judge’s office to the Souriciere, the
mouse-trap--the House of Detention where the accused are kept under the
orders of the Examining Judge. He knew how to be an inflexible judge
and a charitable man. And no one extracted a confession so easily as
he without having recourse to judicial trickery. He had, too, all the
acumen of an observer. This man, apparently so foolishly good-natured,
simple, and absent-minded, could guess all the cunning of a prison
wag, unmask the astutest street huzzy, and subdue a scoundrel. Unusual
circumstances had sharpened his perspicacity; but to relate these we
must intrude on his domestic history, for in him the judge was the
social side of the man; another man, greater and less known, existed
within.
Twelve years before the beginning of this story, in 1816, during the
terrible scarcity which coincided disastrously with the stay in
France of the so-called Allies, Popinot was appointed President of the
Commission Extraordinary formed to distribute food to the poor of his
neighborhood, just when he had planned to move from the Rue du Fouarre,
which he as little liked to live in as his wife did. The great lawyer,
the clear-sighted criminal judge, whose superiority seemed to his
colleagues a form of aberration, had for five years been watching legal
results without seeing their causes. As he scrambled up into the lofts,
as he saw the poverty, as he studied the desperate necessities which
gradually bring the poor to criminal acts, as he estimated their long
struggles, compassion filled his soul. The judge then became the Saint
Vincent de Paul of these grown-up children, these suffering toilers.
The transformation was not immediately complete. Beneficence has its
temptations as vice has. Charity consumes a saint’s purse, as roulette
consumes the possessions of a gambler, quite gradually. Popinot went
from misery to misery, from charity to charity; then, by the time he had
lifted all the rags which cover public pauperism, like a bandage under
which an inflamed wound lies festering, at the end of a year he had
become the Providence incarnate of that quarter of the town. He was
a member of the Benevolent Committee and of the Charity Organization.
Wherever any gratuitous services were needed he was ready, and did
everything without fuss, like the man with the short cloak, who spends
his life in carrying soup round the markets and other places where there
are starving folks.
Popinot was fortunate in acting on a larger circle and in a higher
sphere; he had an eye on everything, he prevented crime, he gave work to
the unemployed, he found a refuge for the helpless, he distributed
aid with discernment wherever danger threatened, he made himself the
counselor of the widow, the protector of homeless children, the sleeping
partner of small traders. No one at the Courts, no one in Paris, knew of
this secret life of Popinot’s. There are virtues so splendid that they
necessitate obscurity; men make haste to hide them under a bushel. As to
those whom the lawyer succored, they, hard at work all day and tired
at night, were little able to sing his praises; theirs was the
gracelessness of children, who can never pay because they owe too much.
There is such compulsory ingratitude; but what heart that has sown good
to reap gratitude can think itself great?
By the end of the second year of his apostolic work, Popinot had turned
the storeroom at the bottom of his house into a parlor, lighted by the
three iron-barred windows. The walls and ceiling of this spacious room
were whitewashed, and the furniture consisted of wooden benches like
those seen in schools, a clumsy cupboard, a walnut-wood writing-table,
and an armchair. In the cupboard were his registers of donations, his
tickets for orders for bread, and his diary. He kept his ledger like a
tradesman, that he might not be ruined by kindness. All the sorrows of
the neighborhood were entered and numbered in a book, where each had its
little account, as merchants’ customers have theirs. When there was any
question as to a man or a family needing help, the lawyer could always
command information from the police.
Lavienne, a man made for his master, was his aide-de-camp. He redeemed
or renewed pawn-tickets, and visited the districts most threatened with
famine, while his master was in court.
From four till seven in the morning in summer, from six till nine
in winter, this room was full of women, children, and paupers, while
Popinot gave audience. There was no need for a stove in winter; the
crowd was so dense that the air was warmed; only, Lavienne strewed straw
on the wet floor. By long use the benches were as polished as varnished
mahogany; at the height of a man’s shoulders the wall had a coat of
dark, indescribable color, given to it by the rags and tattered clothes
of these poor creatures. The poor wretches loved Popinot so well that
when they assembled before his door was opened, before daybreak on a
winter’s morning, the women warming themselves with their foot-brasiers,
the men swinging their arms for circulation, never a sound had disturbed
his sleep. Rag-pickers and other toilers of the night knew the house,
and often saw a light burning in the lawyer’s private room at unholy
hours. Even thieves, as they passed by, said, “That is his house,” and
respected it. The morning he gave to the poor, the mid-day hours to
criminals, the evening to law work.
Thus the gift of observation that characterized Popinot was necessarily
bifrons; he could guess the virtues of a pauper--good feelings nipped,
fine actions in embryo, unrecognized self-sacrifice, just as he could
read at the bottom of a man’s conscience the faintest outlines of a
crime, the slenderest threads of wrongdoing, and infer all the rest.
Popinot’s inherited fortune was a thousand crowns a year. His wife,
sister to M. Bianchon _Senior_, a doctor at Sancerre, had brought him
about twice as much. She, dying five years since, had left her fortune
to her husband. As the salary of a supernumerary judge is not large,
and Popinot had been a fully salaried judge only for four years, we may
guess his reasons for parsimony in all that concerned his person and
mode of life, when we consider how small his means were and how great
his beneficence. Besides, is not such indifference to dress as stamped
Popinot an absent-minded man, a distinguishing mark of scientific
attainment, of art passionately pursued, of a perpetually active mind?
To complete this portrait, it will be enough to add that Popinot was one
of the few judges of the Court of the Seine on whom the ribbon of the
Legion of Honor had not been conferred.
Such was the man who had been instructed by the President of the
Second Chamber of the Court--to which Popinot had belonged since his
reinstatement among the judges in civil law--to examine the Marquis
d’Espard at the request of his wife, who sued for a Commission in
Lunacy.
The Rue du Fouarre, where so many unhappy wretches swarmed in the early
morning, would be deserted by nine o’clock, and as gloomy and squalid as
ever. Bianchon put his horse to a trot in order to find his uncle in the
midst of his business. It was not without a smile that he thought of the
curious contrast the judge’s appearance would make in Madame d’Espard’s
room; but he promised himself that he would persuade him to dress in a
way that should not be too ridiculous.
“If only my uncle happens to have a new coat!” said Bianchon to himself,
as he turned into the Rue du Fouarre, where a pale light shone from
the parlor windows. “I shall do well, I believe, to talk that over with
Lavienne.”
At the sound of wheels half a score of startled paupers came out from
under the gateway, and took off their hats on recognizing Bianchon; for
the doctor, who treated gratuitously the sick recommended to him by the
lawyer, was not less well known than he to the poor creatures assembled
there.
Bianchon found his uncle in the middle of the parlor, where the benches
were occupied by patients presenting such grotesque singularities of
costume as would have made the least artistic passer-by turn round
to gaze at them. A draughtsman--a Rembrandt, if there were one in our
day--might have conceived of one of his finest compositions from seeing
these children of misery, in artless attitudes, and all silent.
Here was the rugged countenance of an old man with a white beard and
an apostolic head--a Saint Peter ready to hand; his chest, partly
uncovered, showed salient muscles, the evidence of an iron constitution
which had served him as a fulcrum to resist a whole poem of sorrows.
There a young woman was suckling her youngest-born to keep it from
crying, while another of about five stood between her knees. Her white
bosom, gleaming amid rags, the baby with its transparent flesh-tints,
and the brother, whose attitude promised a street arab in the future,
touched the fancy with pathos by its almost graceful contrast with the
long row of faces crimson with cold, in the midst of which sat this
family group. Further away, an old woman, pale and rigid, had the
repulsive look of rebellious pauperism, eager to avenge all its past
woes in one day of violence.
There, again, was the young workman, weakly and indolent, whose brightly
intelligent eye revealed fine faculties crushed by necessity struggled
with in vain, saying nothing of his sufferings, and nearly dead for lack
of an opportunity to squeeze between the bars of the vast stews where
the wretched swim round and round and devour each other.
The majority were women; their husbands, gone to their work, left it
to them, no doubt, to plead the cause of the family with the ingenuity
which characterizes the woman of the people, who is almost always queen
in her hovel. You would have seen a torn bandana on every head, on every
form a skirt deep in mud, ragged kerchiefs, worn and dirty jackets, but
eyes that burnt like live coals. It was a horrible assemblage, raising
at first sight a feeling of disgust, but giving a certain sense of
terror the instant you perceived that the resignation of these souls,
all engaged in the struggle for every necessary of life, was purely
fortuitous, a speculation on benevolence. The two tallow candles which
lighted the parlor flickered in a sort of fog caused by the fetid
atmosphere of the ill-ventilated room.
The magistrate himself was not the least picturesque figure in the midst
of this assembly. He had on his head a rusty cotton night-cap; as he had
no cravat, his neck was visible, red with cold and wrinkled, in contrast
with the threadbare collar of his old dressing-gown. His worn face had
the half-stupid look that comes of absorbed attention. His lips, like
those of all men who work, were puckered up like a bag with the strings
drawn tight. His knitted brows seemed to bear the burden of all the
sorrows confided to him: he felt, analyzed, and judged them all. As
watchful as a Jew money-lender, he never raised his eyes from his books
and registers but to look into the very heart of the persons he was
examining, with the flashing glance by which a miser expresses his
alarm.
Lavienne, standing behind his master, ready to carry out his orders,
served no doubt as a sort of police, and welcomed newcomers by
encouraging them to get over their shyness. When the doctor appeared
there was a stir on the benches. Lavienne turned his head, and was
strangely surprised to see Bianchon.
“Ah! It is you, old boy!” exclaimed Popinot, stretching himself. “What
brings you so early?”
“I was afraid lest you should make an official visit about which I wish
to speak to you before I could see you.”
“Well,” said the lawyer, addressing a stout little woman who was still
standing close to him, “if you do not tell me what it is you want, I
cannot guess it, child.”
“Make haste,” said Lavienne. “Do not waste other people’s time.”
“Monsieur,” said the woman at last, turning red, and speaking so low as
only to be heard by Popinot and Lavienne, “I have a green-grocery truck,
and I have my last baby to nurse, and I owe for his keep. Well, I had
hidden my little bit of money----”
“Yes; and your man took it?” said Popinot, guessing the sequel.
“Yes, sir.”
“What is your name?”
“La Pomponne.”
“And your husband’s?”
“Toupinet.”
“Rue du Petit-Banquier?” said Popinot, turning over his register. “He
is in prison,” he added, reading a note at the margin of the section in
which this family was described.
“For debt, my kind monsieur.”
Popinot shook his head.
“But I have nothing to buy any stock for my truck; the landlord came
yesterday and made me pay up; otherwise I should have been turned out.”
Lavienne bent over his master, and whispered in his ear.
“Well, how much do you want to buy fruit in the market?”
“Why, my good monsieur, to carry on my business, I should want--Yes, I
should certainly want ten francs.”
Popinot signed to Lavienne, who took ten francs out of a large bag, and
handed them to the woman, while the lawyer made a note of the loan in
his ledger. As he saw the thrill of delight that made the poor hawker
tremble, Bianchon understood the apprehensions that must have agitated
her on her way to the lawyer’s house.
“You next,” said Lavienne to the old man with the white beard.
Bianchon drew the servant aside, and asked him how long this audience
would last.
“Monsieur has had two hundred persons this morning, and there are eight
to be turned off,” said Lavienne. “You will have time to pay your early
visit, sir.”
“Here, my boy,” said the lawyer, turning round and taking Horace by the
arm; “here are two addresses near this--one in the Rue de Seine, and the
other in the Rue de l’Arbalete. Go there at once. Rue de Seine, a young
girl has just asphyxiated herself; and Rue de l’Arbalete, you will find
a man to remove to your hospital. I will wait breakfast for you.”
Bianchon returned an hour later. The Rue du Fouarre was deserted; day
was beginning to dawn there; his uncle had gone up to his rooms; the
last poor wretch whose misery the judge had relieved was departing, and
Lavienne’s money bag was empty.
“Well, how are they going on?” asked the old lawyer, as the doctor came
in.
“The man is dead,” replied Bianchon; “the girl will get over it.”
Since the eye and hand of a woman had been lacking, the flat in which
Popinot lived had assumed an aspect in harmony with its master’s. The
indifference of a man who is absorbed in one dominant idea had set its
stamp of eccentricity on everything. Everywhere lay unconquerable
dust, every object was adapted to a wrong purpose with a pertinacity
suggestive of a bachelor’s home. There were papers in the flower vases,
empty ink-bottles on the tables, plates that had been forgotten, matches
used as tapers for a minute when something had to be found, drawers or
boxes half-turned out and left unfinished; in short, all the confusion
and vacancies resulting from plans for order never carried out. The
lawyer’s private room, especially disordered by this incessant rummage,
bore witness to his unresting pace, the hurry of a man overwhelmed with
business, hunted by contradictory necessities. The bookcase looked as
if it had been sacked; there were books scattered over everything,
some piled up open, one on another, others on the floor face downwards;
registers of proceedings laid on the floor in rows, lengthwise, in front
of the shelves; and that floor had not been polished for two years.
The tables and shelves were covered with ex votos, the offerings of
the grateful poor. On a pair of blue glass jars which ornamented the
chimney-shelf there were two glass balls, of which the core was made up
of many-colored fragments, giving them the appearance of some singular
natural product. Against the wall hung frames of artificial flowers, and
decorations in which Popinot’s initials were surrounded by hearts and
everlasting flowers. Here were boxes of elaborate and useless cabinet
work; there letter-weights carved in the style of work done by
convicts in penal servitude. These masterpieces of patience, enigmas of
gratitude, and withered bouquets gave the lawyer’s room the appearance
of a toyshop. The good man used these works of art as hiding-places
which he filled with bills, worn-out pens, and scraps of paper. All
these pathetic witnesses to his divine charity were thick with dust,
dingy, and faded.
Some birds, beautifully stuffed, but eaten by moth, perched in this
wilderness of trumpery, presided over by an Angora cat, Madame Popinot’s
pet, restored to her no doubt with all the graces of life by some
impecunious naturalist, who thus repaid a gift of charity with a
perennial treasure. Some local artist whose heart had misguided his
brush had painted portraits of M. and Madame Popinot. Even in the
bedroom there were embroidered pin-cushions, landscapes in cross-stitch,
and crosses in folded paper, so elaborately cockled as to show the
senseless labor they had cost.
The window-curtains were black with smoke, and the hangings absolutely
colorless. Between the fireplace and the large square table at which the
magistrate worked, the cook had set two cups of coffee on a small table,
and two armchairs, in mahogany and horsehair, awaited the uncle and
nephew. As daylight, darkened by the windows, could not penetrate to
this corner, the cook had left two dips burning, whose unsnuffed wicks
showed a sort of mushroom growth, giving the red light which promises
length of life to the candle from slowness of combustion--a discovery
due to some miser.
“My dear uncle, you ought to wrap yourself more warmly when you go down
to that parlor.”
“I cannot bear to keep them waiting, poor souls!--Well, and what do you
want of me?”
“I have come to ask you to dine to-morrow with the Marquise d’Espard.”
“A relation of ours?” asked Popinot, with such genuine absence of mind
that Bianchon laughed.
“No, uncle; the Marquise d’Espard is a high and puissant lady, who has
laid before the Courts a petition desiring that a Commission in Lunacy
should sit on her husband, and you are appointed----”
“And you want me to dine with her! Are you mad?” said the lawyer, taking
up the code of proceedings. “Here, only read this article, prohibiting
any magistrate’s eating or drinking in the house of either of two
parties whom he is called upon to decide between. Let her come and see
me, your Marquise, if she has anything to say to me. I was, in fact,
to go to examine her husband to-morrow, after working the case up
to-night.”
He rose, took up a packet of papers that lay under a weight where he
could see it, and after reading the title, he said:
“Here is the affidavit. Since you take an interest in this high and
puissant lady, let us see what she wants.”
Popinot wrapped his dressing-gown across his body, from which it was
constantly slipping and leaving his chest bare; he sopped his bread in
the half-cold coffee, and opened the petition, which he read, allowing
himself to throw in a parenthesis now and then, and some discussions, in
which his nephew took part:--
“‘To Monsieur the President of the Civil Tribunal of the Lower Court of
the Department of the Seine, sitting at the Palais de Justice.
“‘Madame Jeanne Clementine Athenais de Blamont-Chauvry, wife of
M. Charles Maurice Marie Andoche, Comte de Negrepelisse, Marquis
d’Espard’--a very good family--‘landowner, the said Mme. d’Espard living
in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, No. 104, and the said M. d’Espard
in the Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve, No. 22,’--to be sure, the
President told me he lived in this part of the town--‘having for her
solicitor Maitre Desroches’--Desroches! a pettifogging jobber, a man
looked down upon by his brother lawyers, and who does his clients no
good--”
“Poor fellow!” said Bianchon, “unluckily he has no money, and he rushes
round like the devil in holy water--That is all.”
“‘Has the honor to submit to you, Monsieur the President, that for a
year past the moral and intellectual powers of her husband, M. d’Espard,
have undergone so serious a change, that at the present day they have
reached the state of dementia and idiocy provided for by Article 448 of
the Civil Code, and require the application of the remedies set forth
by that article, for the security of his fortune and his person, and to
guard the interest of his children whom he keeps to live with him.
“‘That, in point of fact, the mental condition of M. d’Espard, which
for some years has given grounds for alarm based on the system he has
pursued in the management of his affairs, has reached, during the last
twelvemonth, a deplorable depth of depression; that his infirm will was
the first thing to show the results of the malady; and that its effete
state leaves M. the Marquis d’Espard exposed to all the perils of his
incompetency, as is proved by the following facts:
“‘For a long time all the income accruing from M. d’Espard’s estates are
paid, without any reasonable cause, or even temporary advantage,
into the hands of an old woman, whose repulsive ugliness is generally
remarked on, named Madame Jeanrenaud, living sometimes in Paris, Rue
de la Vrilliere, No. 8, sometimes at Villeparisis, near Claye, in the
Department of Seine et Marne, and for the benefit of her son, aged
thirty-six, an officer in the ex-Imperial Guards, whom the Marquis
d’Espard has placed by his influence in the King’s Guards, as Major in
the First Regiment of Cuirassiers. These two persons, who in 1814
were in extreme poverty, have since then purchased house-property of
considerable value; among other items, quite recently, a large house
in the Grand Rue Verte, where the said Jeanrenaud is laying out
considerable sums in order to settle there with the woman Jeanrenaud,
intending to marry: these sums amount already to more than a hundred
thousand francs. The marriage has been arranged by the intervention of
M. d’Espard with his banker, one Mongenod, whose niece he has asked
in marriage for the said Jeanrenaud, promising to use his influence
to procure him the title and dignity of baron. This has in fact been
secured by His Majesty’s letters patent, dated December 29th of last
year, at the request of the Marquis d’Espard, as can be proved by His
Excellency the Keeper of the Seals, if the Court should think proper to
require his testimony.
“‘That no reason, not even such as morality and the law would concur in
disapproving, can justify the influence which the said Mme. Jeanrenaud
exerts over M. d’Espard, who, indeed, sees her very seldom; nor account
for his strange affection for the said Baron Jeanrenaud, Major with whom
he has but little intercourse. And yet their power is so considerable,
that whenever they need money, if only to gratify a mere whim, this
lady, or her son----’ Heh, heh! _No reason even such as morality and the
law concur in disapproving!_ What does the clerk or the attorney mean to
insinuate?” said Popinot.
Bianchon laughed.
“‘This lady, or her son, obtain whatever they ask of the Marquis
d’Espard without demur; and if he has not ready money, M. d’Espard draws
bills to be paid by the said Mongenod, who has offered to give evidence
to that effect for the petitioner.
“‘That, moreover, in further proof of these facts, lately, on the
occasion of the renewal of the leases on the Espard estate, the farmers
having paid a considerable premium for the renewal of their leases on
the old terms, M. Jeanrenaud at once secured the payment of it into his
own hands.
“‘That the Marquis d’Espard parts with these sums of money so little of
his own free-will, that when he was spoken to on the subject he seemed
to remember nothing of the matter; that whenever anybody of any weight
has questioned him as to his devotion to these two persons, his replies
have shown so complete an absence of ideas and of sense of his own
interests, that there obviously must be some occult cause at work to
which the petitioner begs to direct the eye of justice, inasmuch as it
is impossible but that this cause should be criminal, malignant, and
wrongful, or else of a nature to come under medical jurisdiction;
unless this influence is of the kind which constitutes an abuse of moral
power--such as can only be described by the word _possession_----‘The
devil!” exclaimed Popinot. “What do you say to that, doctor. These are
strange statements.”
“They might certainly,” said Bianchon, “be an effect of magnetic force.”
“Then do you believe in Mesmer’s nonsense, and his tub, and seeing
through walls?”
“Yes, uncle,” said the doctor gravely. “As I heard you read that
petition I thought of that. I assure you that I have verified, in
another sphere of action, several analogous facts proving the unlimited
influence one man may acquire over another. In contradiction to the
opinion of my brethren, I am perfectly convinced of the power of the
will regarded as a motor force. All collusion and charlatanism apart,
I have seen the results of such a possession. Actions promised during
sleep by a magnetized patient to the magnetizer have been scrupulously
performed on waking. The will of one had become the will of the other.”
“Every kind of action?”
“Yes.”
“Even a criminal act?”
“Even a crime.”
“If it were not from you, I would not listen to such a thing.”
“I will make you witness it,” said Bianchon.
“Hm, hm,” muttered the lawyer. “But supposing that this so-called
possession fell under this class of facts, it would be difficult to
prove it as legal evidence.”
“If this woman Jeanrenaud is so hideously old and ugly, I do not see
what other means of fascination she can have used,” observed Bianchon.
“But,” observed the lawyer, “in 1814, the time at which this fascination
is supposed to have taken place, this woman was fourteen years younger;
if she had been connected with M. d’Espard ten years before that, these
calculations take us back four-and-twenty years, to a time when the lady
may have been young and pretty, and have won for herself and her son a
power over M. d’Espard which some men do not know how to evade. Though
the source of this power is reprehensible in the sight of justice, it
is justifiable in the eye of nature. Madame Jeanrenaud may have been
aggrieved by the marriage, contracted probably at about that time,
between the Marquis d’Espard and Mademoiselle de Blamont-Chauvry, and at
the bottom of all this there may be nothing more than the rivalry of
two women, since the Marquis had for a long time lived apart from Mme.
d’Espard.”
“But her repulsive ugliness, uncle?”
“Power of fascination is in direct proportion to ugliness,” said the
lawyer; “that is the old story. And then think of the smallpox, doctor.
But to proceed.
“‘That so long ago as in 1815, in order to supply the sums of money
required by these two persons, the Marquis d’Espard went with his two
children to live in the Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve, in
rooms quite unworthy of his name and rank’--well, we may live as
we please--‘that he keeps his two children there, the Comte Clement
d’Espard and Vicomte Camille d’Espard, in a style of living quite
unsuited to their future prospects, their name and fortune; that he
often wants money, to such a point, that not long since the landlord,
one Mariast, put in an execution on the furniture in the rooms; that
when this execution was carried out in his presence, the Marquis
d’Espard helped the bailiff, whom he treated like a man of rank, paying
him all the marks of attention and respect which he would have shown to
a person of superior birth and dignity to himself.’”
The uncle and nephew glanced at each other and laughed.
“‘That, moreover, every act of his life, besides the facts with
reference to the widow Jeanrenaud and the Baron Jeanrenaud, her son, are
those of a madman; that for nearly ten years he has given his thoughts
exclusively to China, its customs, manners, and history; that he refers
everything to a Chinese origin; that when he is questioned on the
subject, he confuses the events of the day and the business of
yesterday with facts relating to China; that he censures the acts of
the Government and the conduct of the King, though he is personally much
attached to him, by comparing them with the politics of China;
“‘That this monomania has driven the Marquis d’Espard to conduct devoid
of all sense: against the customs of men of rank, and, in opposition to
his own professed ideas as to the duties of the nobility, he has joined
a commercial undertaking, for which he constantly draws bills which, as
they fall due, threaten both his honor and his fortune, since they
stamp him as a trader, and in default of payment may lead to his being
declared insolvent; that these debts, which are owing to stationers,
printers, lithographers, and print-colorists, who have supplied the
materials for his publication, called A Picturesque History of China,
now coming out in parts, are so heavy that these tradesmen have
requested the petitioner to apply for a Commission in Lunacy with regard
to the Marquis d’Espard in order to save their own credit.’”
“The man is mad!” exclaimed Bianchon.
“You think so, do you?” said his uncle. “If you listen to only one bell,
you hear only one sound.”
“But it seems to me----” said Bianchon.
“But it seems to me,” said Popinot, “that if any relation of mine wanted
to get hold of the management of my affairs, and if, instead of being a
humble lawyer, whose colleagues can, any day, verify what his condition
is, I were a duke of the realm, an attorney with a little cunning, like
Desroches, might bring just such a petition against me.
“‘That his children’s education has been
|
_If no new Conquest is design'd,_
_If no new Beauty fill his Mind?_
_Let Fools and Fops, whose Talents lie_
_In being neat, in being spruce,_
_Be drest in Vain, and Tawdery;_
_With Men of Sense, 'tis out of use:_
_The only Folly that Distinction sets_
_Between the noisy fluttering Fools and Wits._
_Remember,_ Iris _is away;_
_And sighing to your Valet cry,_
_Spare your Perfumes and Care, to-day_
_I have no business to be gay,_
_Since_ Iris _is not by._
_I'll be all negligent in Dress,_
_And scarce set off for Complaisance;_
_Put me on nothing that may please,_
_But only such as may give no Offence._
Say to your self, as you are dressing, 'Would it please Heaven, that I
might see _Iris_ to-day! But oh! 'tis impossible: Therefore all that I
shall see will be but indifferent Objects, since 'tis _Iris_ only that
I wish to see.' And sighing, whisper to your self:
The Sigh.
_Ah! charming Object of my wishing Thought!_
_Ah! soft Idea of a distant Bliss!_
_That only art in Dreams and Fancy brought,_
_To give short Intervals of Happiness._
_But when I waking find thou absent art,_
_And with thee, all that I adore,_
_What Pains, what Anguish fills my Heart!_
_What Sadness seizes me all o'er!_
_All Entertainments I neglect,_
_Since_ Iris _is no longer there:_
_Beauty scarce claims my bare Respect,_
_Since in the Throng I find not her._
_Ah then! how vain it were to dress, and show;_
_Since all I wish to please, is absent now!_
'Tis with these Thoughts, _Damon_, that your Mind ought to be employ'd,
during your time of Dressing. And you are too knowing in Love, to be
ignorant,
_That when a Lover ceases to be blest_
_With the dear Object he desires,_
_Ah! how indifferent are the rest!_
_How soon their Conversation tires!_
_Tho' they a thousand Arts to please invent,_
_Their Charms are dull, their Wit impertinent._
TEN o'CLOCK.
_Reading of Letters._
My _Cupid_ points you now to the Hour in which you ought to retire
into your Cabinet, having already past an Hour in Dressing: and for a
Lover, who is sure not to appear before his Mistress, even that Hour is
too much to be so employ'd. But I will think, you thought of nothing
less than Dressing while you were about it. Lose then no more Minutes,
but open your Scrutore, and read over some of those Billets you have
received from me. Oh! what Pleasures a Lover feels about his Heart, in
reading those from a Mistress he entirely loves!
The Joy.
_Who, but a Lover, can express_
_The Joys, the Pants, the Tenderness,_
_That the soft amorous Soul invades,_
_While the dear_ Billetdoux _he reads:_
_Raptures Divine the Heart o'erflow,_
_Which he that loves not cannot know._
_A thousand Tremblings, thousand Fears,_
_The short-breath'd Sighs, the joyful Tears!_
_The Transport, where the Love's confest;_
_The Change, where Coldness is exprest;_
_The diff'ring Flames the Lover burns,_
_As those are shy, or kind, by turns._
However you find'em, _Damon_, construe 'em all to my advantage:
Possibly, some of them have an Air of Coldness, something different
from that Softness they are usually too amply fill'd with; but where
you find they have, believe there, that the Sense of Honour, and my
Sex's Modesty, guided my Hand a little against the Inclinations of my
Heart; and that it was as a kind of an Atonement, I believed I ought
to make, for something I feared I had said too kind, and too obliging
before. But where-ever you find that Stop, that Check in my Career of
Love, you will be sure to find something that follows it to favour
you, and deny that unwilling Imposition upon my Heart; which, lest you
should mistake, Love shews himself in Smiles again, and flatters more
agreeably, disdaining the Tyranny of Honour and rigid Custom, that
Imposition on our Sex; and will, in spite of me, let you see he reigns
absolutely in my Soul.
The reading my _Billetdoux_ may detain you an Hour: I have had so much
Goodness to write you enow to entertain you for so long at least, and
sometimes reproach my self for it; but, contrary to all my Scruples,
I find my self disposed to give you those frequent Marks of my
Tenderness. If yours be so great as you express it, you ought to kiss
my Letters a thousand times; you ought to read them with Attention, and
weigh every Word, and value every Line. A Lover may receive a thousand
endearing Words from a Mistress, more easily than a Billet. One says a
great many kind things of course to a Lover, which one is not willing
to write, or to give testify'd under one's Hand, signed and sealed. But
when once a Lover has brought his Mistress to that degree of Love, he
ought to assure himself, she loves not at the common rate.
Love's Witness.
_Slight unpremeditated Words are borne_
_By every common Wind into the Air;_
_Carelessly utter'd, die as soon as born,_
_And in one instant give both Hope and Fear:_
_Breathing all Contraries with the same Wind,_
_According to the Caprice of the Mind._
_But_ Billetdoux _are constant Witnesses,_
_Substantial Records to Eternity;_
_Just Evidences, who the Truth confess,_
_On which the Lover safely may rely;_
_They're serious Thoughts, digested and resolv'd;_
_And last, when Words are into Clouds devolv'd._
I will not doubt, but you give credit to all that is kind in
my Letters; and I will believe, you find a Satisfaction in the
Entertainment they give you, and that the Hour of reading 'em is not
disagreeable to you. I could wish, your Pleasure might be extreme, even
to the degree of suffering the Thought of my Absence not to diminish
any part of it. And I could wish too, at the end of your Reading, you
would sigh with Pleasure, and say to your self--
The Transport.
_O_ Iris! _While you thus can charm,_
_While at this Distance you can wound and warm;_
_My absent Torments I will bless and bear,_
_That give me such dear Proofs how kind you are._
_Present, the valu'd Store was only seen,_
_Now I am rifling the bright Mass within._
_Every dear, past, and happy Day,_
_When languishing at_ Iris' _Feet I lay;_
_When all my Prayers and all my Tears could move_
_No more than her Permission, I should love:_
_Vain with my Glorious Destiny,_
_I thought, beyond, scarce any Heaven cou'd be._
_But, charming Maid, now I am taught,_
_That Absence has a thousand Joys to give,_
_On which the Lover present never thought,_
_That recompense the Hours we grieve._
_Rather by Absence let me be undone,_
_Than forfeit all the Pleasures that has won._
With this little Rapture, I wish you wou'd finish the reading my
Letters, shut your Scrutore, and quit your Cabinet; for my Love leads
to eleven o'clock.
ELEVEN o'CLOCK.
_The Hour to write in._
If my _Watch_ did not inform you 'tis now time to write, I believe,
_Damon_, your Heart wou'd, and tell you also that I should take it
kindly, if you would employ a whole Hour that way; and that you should
never lose an Occasion of writing to me, since you are assured of the
Welcome I give your Letters. Perhaps you will say, an Hour is too
much, and that 'tis not the mode to write long Letters. I grant you,
_Damon_, when we write those indifferent ones of Gallantry in course,
or necessary Compliment; the handsome comprizing of which in the fewest
Words, renders 'em the most agreeable: But in Love we have a thousand
foolish things to say, that of themselves bear no great Sound, but have
a mighty Sense in Love; for there is a peculiar Eloquence natural alone
to a Lover, and to be understood by no other Creature: To those, Words
have a thousand Graces and Sweetnesses; which, to the Unconcerned,
appear Meanness, and easy Sense, at the best. But, _Damon_, you and I
are none of those ill Judges of the Beauties of Love; we can penetrate
beyond the Vulgar, and perceive the fine Soul in every Line, thro' all
the humble Dress of Phrase; when possibly they who think they discern
it best in florid Language, do not see it at all. _Love_ was not born
or bred in Courts, but Cottages; and, nurs'd in Groves and Shades,
smiles on the Plains, and wantons in the Streams; all unador'd and
harmless. Therefore, _Damon_, do not consult your Wit in this Affair,
but _Love_ alone; speak all that he and Nature taught you, and let the
fine Things you learn in Schools alone: Make use of those Flowers you
have gather'd there, when you converst with States-men and the Gown.
Let _Iris_ possess your Heart in all its simple Innocence, that's the
best Eloquence to her that loves: and that is my Instruction to a Lover
that would succeed in his Amours; for I have a Heart very difficult to
please, and this is the nearest way to it.
Advice to Lovers.
Lovers, _if you wou'd gain a Heart,_
_Of_ Damon _learn to win the Prize;_
_He'll shew you all its tend'rest part,_
_And where its greatest Danger lies;_
_The Magazine of its Disdain,_
_Where Honour, feebly guarded, does remain._
_If present, do but little say;_
_Enough the silent Lover speaks:_
_But wait, and sigh, and gaze all day;_
_Such Rhet'rick more than Language takes._
_For Words the dullest way do move;_
_And utter'd more to shew your Wit than Love._
_Let your Eyes tell her of your Heart;_
_Its Story is, for Words, too delicate._
_Souls thus exchange, and thus impart,_
_And all their Secrets can relate._
_A Tear, a broken Sigh, she'll understand;_
_Or the soft trembling Pressings of the Hand._
_Or if your Pain must be in Words exprest,_
_Let 'em fall gently, unassur'd and slow;_
_And where they fail, your Looks may tell the rest:_
_Thus_ Damon _spoke, and I was conquer'd so._
_The witty Talker has mistook his Art;_
_The modest Lover only charms the Heart._
_Thus, while all day you gazing sit,_
_And fear to speak, and fear your Fate,_
_You more Advantages by Silence get,_
_Than the gay forward Youth with all his Prate._
_Let him be silent here; but when away,_
_Whatever Love can dictate, let him say._
_There let the bashful Soul unveil,_
_And give a loose to Love and Truth:_
_Let him improve the amorous Tale,_
_With all the Force of Words, and Fire of Youth:_
_There all, and any thing let him express;_
_Too long he cannot write, too much confess._
O _Damon_! How well have you made me understand this soft Pleasure! You
know my Tenderness too well, not to be sensible how I am charmed with
your agreeable long Letters.
The Invention.
_Ah! he who first found out the way_
_Souls to each other to convey,_
_Without dull Speaking, sure must be_
_Something above Humanity._
_Let the fond World in vain dispute,_
_And the first Sacred Mystery impute_
_Of Letters to the learned Brood,_
_And of the Glory cheat a God:_
_'Twas_ Love _alone that first the Art essay'd,_ }
_And_ Psyche _was the first fair yielding Maid,_ }
_That was by the dear_ Billetdoux _betray'd._ }
It is an Art too ingenious to have been found out by Man, and too
necessary to Lovers, not to have been invented by the God of Love
himself. But, _Damon_, I do not pretend to exact from you those Letters
of Gallantry, which, I have told you, are filled with nothing but fine
Thoughts, and writ with all the Arts of Wit and Subtilty: I would
have yours still all tender unaffected Love, Words unchosen, Thoughts
unstudied, and Love unfeign'd. I had rather find more Softness than Wit
in your Passion; more of Nature than of Art; more of the Lover than the
Poet.
Nor would I have you write any of those little short Letters, that are
read over in a Minute; in Love, long Letters bring a long Pleasure: Do
not trouble your self to make 'em fine, or write a great deal of Wit
and Sense in a few Lines; that is the Notion of a witty Billet, in any
Affair but that of Love. And have a care rather to avoid these Graces
to a Mistress; and assure your self, dear _Damon_, that what pleases
the Soul pleases the Eye, and the Largeness or Bulk of your Letter
shall never offend me; and that I only am displeased when I find them
small. A Letter is ever the best and most powerful Agent to a Mistress,
it almost always persuades, 'tis always renewing little Impressions,
that possibly otherwise Absence would deface. Make use then, _Damon_,
of your Time while it is given you, and thank me that I permit you
to write to me: Perhaps I shall not always continue in the Humour of
suffering you to do so; and it may so happen, by some turn of Chance
and Fortune, that you may be deprived, at the same time, both of my
Presence, and of the Means of sending to me. I will believe that such
an Accident would be a great Misfortune to you, for I have often heard
you say, that, 'To make the most happy Lover suffer Martyrdom, one need
only forbid him Seeing, Speaking and Writing to the Object he loves.'
Take all the Advantages then you can, you cannot give me too often
Marks too powerful of your Passion: Write therefore during this Hour,
every Day. I give you leave to believe, that while you do so, you are
serving me the most obligingly and agreeably you can, while absent;
and that you are giving me a Remedy against all Grief, Uneasiness,
Melancholy, and Despair; nay, if you exceed your Hour, you need not
be asham'd. The Time you employ in this kind Devoir, is the Time that
I shall be grateful for, and no doubt will recompense it. You ought
not however to neglect Heaven for me; I will give you time for your
Devotion, for my _Watch_ tells you 'tis time to go to the Temple.
TWELVE o'CLOCK.
_Indispensible Duty._
There are certain Duties which one ought never to neglect: That of
adoring the Gods is of this nature; and which we ought to pay, from
the bottom of our Hearts: And that, _Damon_, is the only time I will
dispense with your not thinking on me. But I would not have you go to
one of those Temples, where the celebrated Beauties, and those that
make a profession of Gallantry, go; and who come thither only to see,
and be seen; and whither they repair, more to shew their Beauty and
Dress, than to honour the Gods. If you will take my advice, and oblige
my wish, you shall go to those that are least frequented, and you shall
appear there like a Man that has a perfect Veneration for all things
Sacred.
The Instruction.
Damon, _if your Heart and Flame,_
_You wish, should always be the same,_
_Do not give it leave to rove,_
_Nor expose it to new Harms:_
_Ere you think on't, you may love,_
_If you gaze on Beauty's Charms:_
_If with me you wou'd not part,_
_Turn your Eyes into your Heart._
_If you find a new Desire_
_In your easy Soul take fire,_
_From the tempting Ruin fly;_
_Think it faithless, think it base:_
_Fancy soon will fade and die,_
_If you wisely cease to gaze._
_Lovers should have Honour too,_
_Or they pay but half Love's due._
_Do not to the Temple go,_
_With design to gaze or show:_
_Whate'er Thoughts you have abroad,_
_Tho' you can deceive elsewhere,_
_There's no feigning with your God;_
_Souls should be all perfect there._
_The Heart that's to the Altar brought,_
_Only Heaven should fill its Thought._
_Do not your sober Thoughts perplex,_
_By gazing on the Ogling Sex:_
_Or if Beauty call your Eyes,_
_Do not on the Object dwell;_
_Guard your Heart from the Surprize,_
_By thinking_ Iris _doth excell._
_Above all Earthly Things I'd be,_ }
Damon, _most belov'd by thee;_ }
_And only Heaven must rival me._ }
ONE o'CLOCK.
_Forc'd Entertainment._
I Perceive it will be very difficult for you to quit the Temple,
without being surrounded with Compliments from People of Ceremony,
Friends, and Newsmongers, and several of those sorts of Persons, who
afflict and busy themselves, and rejoice at a hundred things they have
no Interest in; Coquets and Politicians, who make it the Business
of their whole Lives, to gather all the News of the Town; adding
or diminishing according to the Stock of their Wit and Invention,
and spreading it all abroad to the believing Fools and Gossips; and
perplexing every body with a hundred ridiculous Novels, which they
pass off for Wit and Entertainment; or else some of those Recounters
of Adventures, that are always telling of Intrigues, and that make
a Secret to a hundred People of a thousand foolish things they have
heard: Like a certain pert and impertinent Lady of the Town, whose
Youth and Beauty being past, sets up for Wit, to uphold a feeble Empire
over idle Hearts; and whose Character is this:
The Coquet.
Melinda, _who had never been_
_Esteem'd a Beauty at fifteen,_
_Always amorous was, and kind:_
_To every Swain she lent an Ear;_
_Free as Air, but false as Wind;_
_Yet none complain'd, she was severe._
_She eas'd more than she made complain;_
_Was always singing, pert, and vain._
_Where-e'er the Throng was, she was seen,_
_And swept the Youths along the Green;_
_With equal Grace she flatter'd all;_
_And fondly proud of all Address,_
_Her Smiles invite, her Eyes do call,_
_And her vain Heart her Looks confess._
_She rallies this, to that she bow'd,_
_Was talking ever, laughing loud._
_On every side she makes advance,_
_And every where a Confidence;_
_She tells for Secrets all she knows,_
_And all to know she does pretend:_
_Beauty in Maids she treats as Foes:_
_But every handsome Youth as Friend._
_Scandal still passes off for Truth;_
_And Noise and Nonsense, Wit and Youth._
Coquet _all o'er, and every part,_
_Yet wanting Beauty, even of Art;_
_Herds with the ugly, and the old;_
_And plays the Critick on the rest:_
_Of Men, the bashful, and the bold,_
_Either, and all, by turns, likes best:_
_Even now, tho' Youth be langisht, she_
_Sets up for Love and Gallantry._
This sort of Creature, _Damon_, is very dangerous; not that I fear
you will squander away a Heart upon her, but your Hours; for in
spight of you, she'll detain you with a thousand Impertinencies, and
eternal Tattle. She passes for a judging Wit; and there is nothing so
troublesome as such a Pretender. She, perhaps, may get some knowledge
of our Correspondence; and then, no doubt, will improve it to my
Disadvantage. Possibly she may rail at me; that is her fashion by
the way of friendly Speaking; and an aukward Commendation, the most
effectual way of Defaming and Traducing. Perhaps she tells you, in a
cold Tone, that you are a happy Man to be belov'd by me: That _Iris_
indeed is handsome, and she wonders she has no more Lovers; but the
Men are not of her mind; if they were, you should have more Rivals.
She commends my Face, but that I have blue Eyes, and 'tis pity my
Complexion is no better: My Shape but too much inclining to fat.
Cries--She would charm infinitely with her Wit, but that she knows too
well she is Mistress of it. And concludes,--But all together she is
well enough.--Thus she runs on without giving you leave to edge in a
word in my defence; and ever and anon crying up her own Conduct and
Management: Tells you how she is opprest with Lovers, and fatigu'd
with Addresses; and recommending her self, at every turn, with a
perceivable Cunning: And all the while is jilting you of your good
Opinion; which she would buy at the price of any body's Repose, or
her own Fame, tho' but for the Vanity of adding to the number of
her Lovers. When she sees a new Spark, the first thing she does, she
enquires into his Estate; if she find it such as may (if the Coxcomb
be well manag'd) supply her Vanity, she makes advances to him, and
applies her self to those little Arts she usually makes use of to gain
her Fools; and according to his Humour dresses and affects her own.
But, _Damon_, since I point to no particular Person in this Character,
I will not name who you shall avoid; but all of this sort I conjure
you, wheresoever you find 'em. But if unlucky Chance throw you in their
way, hear all they say, without credit or regard, as far as Decency
will suffer you; hear 'em without approving their Foppery; and hear 'em
without giving 'em cause to censure you. But 'tis so much Time lost to
listen to all the Novels this sort of People will perplex you with;
whose Business is to be idle, and who even tire themselves with their
own Impertinencies. And be assur'd after all there is nothing they can
tell you that is worth your knowing. And _Damon_, a perfect Lover never
asks any News but of the Maid he loves.
The Enquiry.
Damon, _if your Love be true_
_To the Heart that you possess,_
_Tell me what have you to do_
_Where you have no Tenderness?_
_Her Affairs who cares to learn,_
_For whom he has not some Concern?_
_If a Lover fain would know_
_If the Object lov'd be true,_
_Let her but industrious be_
_To watch his Curiosity;_
_Tho' ne'er so cold his Questions seem,_
_They come from warmer Thoughts within._
_When I hear a Swain enquire_
_What gay_ Melinda _does to live,_
_I conclude there is some Fire_
_In a Heart inquisitive;_
_Or 'tis, at least, the Bill that's set_
_To shew_, The Heart is to be let.
TWO o'CLOCK.
_Dinner-Time._
Leave all those fond Entertainments, or you will disoblige me, and
make Dinner wait for you; for my _Cupid_ tells you 'tis that Hour.
_Love_ does not pretend to make you lose that; nor is it my Province to
order you your Diet. Here I give you a perfect Liberty to do what you
please; and possibly, 'tis the only Hour in the whole four and twenty
that I will absolutely resign you, or dispense with your even so much
as thinking on me. 'Tis true, in seating your self at Table, I would
not have you placed over-against a very beautiful Object; for in such
a one there are a thousand little Graces in Speaking, Looking, and
Laughing that fail not to charm, if one gives way to the Eyes, to gaze
and wander that way; in which, perhaps, in spight of you, you will find
a Pleasure: And while you do so, tho' without design or concern, you
give the fair Charmer a sort of Vanity, in believing you have placed
your self there, only for the advantage of looking on her; and she
assumes a hundred little Graces and Affectations which are not natural
to her, to compleat a Conquest, which she believes so well begun
already. She softens her Eyes, and sweetens her Mouth; and in fine,
puts on another Air than when she had no Design, and when you did not,
by your continual looking on her, rouze her Vanity, and encrease her
easy Opinion of her own Charms. Perhaps she knows I have some Interest
in your Heart, and prides her self, at least, with believing she has
attracted the Eyes of my Lover, if not his Heart; and thinks it easy to
vanquish the whole, if she pleases; and triumphs over me in her secret
Imaginations. Remember, _Damon_, that while you act thus in the Company
and Conversation of other Beauties, every Look or Word you give in
favour of 'em, is an Indignity to my Reputation; and which you cannot
suffer if you love me truly, and with Honour: and assure your self,
so much Vanity as you inspire in her, so much Fame you rob me of; for
whatever Praises you give another Beauty, so much you take away from
mine. Therefore, if you dine in Company, do as others do: Be generally
civil, not applying your self by Words or Looks to any particular
Person: Be as gay as you please: Talk and laugh with all, for this is
not the Hour for Chagrin.
The Permission.
_My_ Damon, _tho' I stint your Love,_
_I will not stint your Appetite;_
_That I would have you still improve,_
_By every new and fresh Delight._
_Feast till_ Apollo _hides his Head,_
_Or drink the Am'rous God to_ Thetis' _Bed._
_Be like your self: All witty, gay!_
_And o'er the Bottle bless the Board;_
_The list'ning Round will, all the Day,_
_Be charm'd, and pleas'd with every Word._
_Tho'_ Venus' _Son inspire your Wit,_
_'Tis the_ Silenian _God best utters it._
_Here talk of every thing but me,_
_Since ev'ry thing you say with Grace:_
_If not dispos'd your Humour be,_
_And you'd this Hour in silence pass;_
_Since something must the Subject prove,_
_Of_ Damon's _Thoughts, let it be Me and Love._
_But,_ Damon, _this enfranchised Hour,_
_No Bounds, or Laws, will I impose;_
_But leave it wholly in your pow'r,_
_What Humour to refuse or chuse;_
I Rules prescribe _but to your Flame;_
_For I, your Mistress, not Physician, am._
THREE o'CLOCK.
_Visits to Friends._
Damon, my _Watch_ is juster than you imagine; it would not have you
live retired and solitary, but permits you to go and make Visits. I am
not one of those that believe Love and Friendship cannot find a place
in one and the same Heart: And that Man would be very unhappy, who, as
soon as he had a Mistress, should be obliged to renounce the Society
of his Friends. I must confess, I would not that you should have so
much Concern for them, as you have for me; for I have heard a sort of
a Proverb that says, _He cannot be very fervent in Love, who is not
a little cold in Friendship._ You are not ignorant, that when _Love_
establishes himself in a Heart, he reigns a Tyrant there, and will not
suffer even Friendship, if it pretend to share his Empire there.
Cupid.
Love _is a God, whose charming Sway_
_Both Heaven, and Earth, and Seas obey;_
_A Power that will not mingled be_
_With any dull Equality._
_Since first from Heaven, which gave him Birth,_
_He rul'd the Empire of the Earth;_
_Jealous of Sov'reign Pow'r he rules,_
_And will be absolute in Souls._
I should be very angry if you had any of those Friendships which one
ought to desire in a Mistress only; for many times it happens that you
have Sentiments a little too tender for those amiable Persons; and many
times Love and Friendship are so confounded together, that one cannot
easily discern one from the other. I have seen a Man flatter himself
with an Opinion, that he had but an Esteem for a Woman, when by some
turn of Fortune in her Life, as marrying, or receiving the Addresses of
Men, he has found by Spite and Jealousies within, that that was Love,
which he before took for Complaisance or Friendship. Therefore have a
care, for such Amities are dangerous: Not but that a Lover may have
fair and generous Female Friends, whom he ought to visit; and perhaps I
should esteem you less, if I did not believe you were valued by such,
if I were perfectly assured they were Friends and not Lovers. But have
a care you hide not a Mistress under this Veil, or that you gain not a
Lover by this Pretence: For you may begin with Friendship, and end with
Love; and I should be equally afflicted should you give it or receive
it. And though you charge our Sex with all the Vanity, yet I often find
Nature to have given you as large a Portion of that common Crime, which
you would shuffle off, as asham'd to own; and are as fond and vain of
the Imagination of a Conquest, as any _Coquet_ of us all: tho' at the
same time you despise the Victim, you think it adds a Trophy to your
Fame. And I have seen a Man dress, and trick, and adjust his Looks and
Mein, to make a Visit to a Woman he lov'd not, nor ever could love, as
for those he made to his Mistress; and only for the Vanity of making a
Conquest upon a Heart, even unworthy of the little Pains he has taken
about it. And what is this but buying Vanity at the Expense of Sense
and Ease; and with Fatigue to purchase the Name of a conceited Fop,
besides that of a dishonest Man? For he who takes pains to make himself
beloved, only to please his curious Humour, tho' he should say nothing
that tends to it, more than by his Looks, his Sighs, and now and then
breaking into Praises and Commendations of the Object; by the care he
takes, to appear well drest before her, and in good order; he lyes in
his Looks, he deceives with his Mein and Fashion, and cheats with every
Motion, and every Grace he puts on: He cozens when he sings or dances;
he dissembles when he sighs; and every thing he does, that wilfully
gains upon her, is Malice prepense, Baseness, and Art below a Man of
Sense or Virtue: and yet these Arts, these Cozenages, are the Common
Practices of the Town. What's this but that damnable Vice, of which
they so reproach our Sex; that of jilting for Hearts? And 'tis in vain
that my Lover, after such foul Play, shall think to appease me, with
saying, _He did it to try how easy he could conquer, and of how great
force his Charms were: And why should I be angry if all the Town loved
him, since he loved none but_ Iris? Oh foolish Pleasure! How little
Sense goes to the making of such a Happiness! And how little Love must
he have for one particular Person, who would wish to inspire it into
all the World, and yet himself pretend to be insensible! But this,
_Damon_, is rather what is but too much practiced by your Sex, than any
Guilt I charge on you: tho' Vanity be an Ingredient that Nature very
seldom omits in the Composition of either Sex; and you may be allowed
a Tincture of it at least. And, perhaps, I am not wholly exempt from
this Leaven in my Nature, but accuse myself sometimes of finding a
secret Joy of being ador'd, tho' I even hate my Worshipper. But if any
such Pleasure touch my Heart, I find it at the same time blushing in my
Cheeks with a guilty Shame, which soon checks the petty Triumphs; and
I have a Virtue at soberer Thoughts, that I find surmounts my Weakness
and Indiscretion; and I hope _Damon_ finds the same: For, should he
have any of those Attachments, I should have no pity for him.
The Example.
Damon, _if you'd have me true,_
_Be you my Precedent and Guide:_
_Example sooner we pursue,_
_Than the dull Dictates of our Pride._
_Precepts of Virtue are too weak an Aim:_
_'Tis Demonstration that can best reclaim._
_Shew me the Path you'd have me go;_
_With such a Guide I cannot stray:_
_What you approve, whate'er you do,_
_It is but just I bend that way._
_If true, my Honour favours your Design;_
_If false, Revenge is the result of mine._
_A Lover true, a Maid sincere,_
_Are to be priz'd as things divine:_
_'Tis Justice makes the Blessing dear,_
_Justice of Love without Design._
_And she that reigns not in a Heart alone,_
_Is never safe, or easy, on her Throne._
FOUR o'CLOCK.
_General Conversation._
In this
|
five, ten, twenty, fifty horsepower twenty-four hours a
day, for the greater part of the year. Within a quarter of a mile of
the great majority of farms (outside of the dry lands themselves)
there are such streams. Only a small fraction of one per cent of them
have been put to work, made to pay their passage from the hills to the
sea.
The United States government geological survey engineers recently made
an estimate of the waterfalls capable of developing 1,000 horsepower
and over, that are running to waste, unused, in this country. They
estimated that there is available, every second of the day and night,
some 30,000,000 horsepower, in dry weather--and twice this during the
eight wet months of the year. The waterfall capable of giving up 1,000
horsepower in energy is not the subject of these chapters. It is the
small streams--the brooks, the creeks, the rivulets--which feed the
1,000 horsepower torrents, make them possible, that are of interest to
the farmer. These small streams thread every township, every county,
seeking the easiest way to the main valleys where they come together
in great rivers.
What profitable crop on your farm removes the least plant food? A
bee-farmer enters his honey for the prize in this contest. Another
farmer maintains that his ice-crop is the winner. But electricity
generated from falling water of a brook meandering across one's acres,
comes nearer to the correct answer of how to make something out of
nothing. It merely utilizes the wasted energy of water rolling down
hill--the weight of water, the pulling power of gravity. Water is
still water, after it has run through a turbine wheel to turn an
electric generator. It is still wet; it is there for watering the
stock; and a few rods further down stream, where it drops five or ten
feet again, it can be made to do the same work over again--and over
and over again as long as it continues to fall, on its journey to the
sea. The city of Los Angeles has a municipal water plant, generating
200,000 horsepower of electricity, in which the water is used three
times in its fall of 6,000 feet; and in the end, where it runs out of
the race in the valley, it is sold for irrigation.
One water-horsepower will furnish light for the average farm; five
water-horsepower will furnish light and power, and do the ironing and
baking. The cost of installing a plant of five water-horsepower should
not exceed the cost of one sound young horse, the $200 kind--under
conditions which are to be found on thousands of farms and farm
communities in the East, the Central West, and the Pacific States.
This electrical horsepower will work 24 hours a day, winter and
summer, and the farmer would not have to grow oats and hay for it on
land that might better be used in growing food for human beings. It
would not become "aged" at the end of ten or fifteen years, and the
expense of maintenance would be practically nothing after the first
cost of installation. It would require only water as food--waste
water. Two hundred and fifty cubic feet of water a minute, falling ten
feet, will supply the average farm with all the conveniences of
electricity. This is a very modest creek--the kind of brook or creek
that is ignored by the man who would think time well spent in putting
in a week capturing a wild horse, if a miracle should send such a
beast within reach. And the task of harnessing and breaking this
water-horsepower is much more simple and less dangerous than the task
of breaking a colt to harness.
PART I
WATER-POWER
ELECTRICITY FOR THE FARM
CHAPTER I
A WORKING PLANT
The "agriculturist"--An old chair factory--A neighbor's
home-coming--The idle wheel in commission again--Light, heat and
power for nothing--Advantages of electricity.
Let us take an actual instance of one man who did go ahead and find
out by experience just how intricate and just how simple a thing
electricity from farm water-power is. This man's name was Perkins, or,
we will call him that, in relating this story.
Perkins was what some people call, not a farmer, but an
"agriculturist,"--that is, he was a back-to-the-land man. He had been
born and raised on a farm. He knew that you must harness a horse on
the left side, milk a cow on the right, that wagon nuts tighten the
way the wheel rims, and that a fresh egg will not float.
He had a farm that would grow enough clover to fill the average dairy
if he fed it lime; he had a boy coming to school age; and both he and
his wife wanted to get back to the country. They had their little
savings, and they wanted, first of all, to take a vacation, getting
acquainted with their farm. They hadn't taken a vacation in fifteen
years.
He moved in, late in the summer, and started out to get acquainted
with his neighbors, as well as his land. This was in the New England
hills. Water courses cut through everywhere. In regard to its
bountiful water supply, the neighborhood had much in common with all
the states east of the Mississippi, along the Atlantic seaboard, in
the lake region of the central west, and in the Pacific States. With
this difference; the water courses in his neighborhood had once been
of economic importance.
A mountain river flowed down his valley. Up and down the valley one
met ramshackle mills, fallen into decay. Many years ago before
railroads came, before it was easy to haul coal from place to place
to make steam, these little mills were centers of thriving industries,
which depended on the power of falling water to make turned articles,
spin cotton, and so forth. Then the railroads came, and it was easy to
haul coal to make steam. And the same railroads that hauled the coal
to make steam, were there to haul away the articles manufactured by
steam power. So in time the little manufacturing plants on the river
back in the hills quit business and moved to railroad stations. Then
New England, from being a manufacturing community made up of many
small isolated water plants, came to be a community made up of huge
arteries and laterals of smoke stacks that fringed the railroads.
Where the railroad happened to follow a river course--as the
Connecticut River--the water-power plants remained; but the little
plants back in the hills were wiped off the map--because steam power
with railroads at the front door proved cheaper than water-power with
railroads ten miles away.
One night Perkins came in late from a long drive with his next-door
neighbor. He had learned the first rule of courtesy in the country,
which is to unhitch his own side of the horse and help back the buggy
into the shed. They stumbled around in the barn putting up the horse,
and getting down hay and grain for it, by the light of an oil lantern,
which was set on the floor in a place convenient to be kicked over. He
went inside and took supper by the light of a smoky smelly oil lamp,
that filled the room full of dark corners; and when supper was over,
the farmwife groped about in the cellar putting things away by the
light of a candle.
The next day his neighbor was grinding cider at his ramshackle water
mill--one of the operations for which a week must be set aside every
fall. Perkins sat on a log and listened to the crunch-crunch of the
apples in the chute, and the drip of the frothy yellow liquid that
fell into waiting buckets.
"How much power have you got here?" he asked.
"Thirty or forty horsepower, I guess."
"What do you do with it, besides grinding cider to pickle your
neighbors' digestion with?"
"Nothing much. I've got a planer and a moulding machine in there, to
work up jags of lumber occasionally. That's all. This mill was a
chair-factory in my grandfather's day, back in 1830."
"Do you use it thirty days in a year?"
"No; not half that."
"What are you going to do with it this winter?"
"Nothing; I keep the gate open and the wheel turning, so it won't
freeze, but nothing else. I am going to take the family to Texas to
visit my wife's folks for three months. We've worked hard enough to
take a vacation."
"Will you rent me the mill while you are gone?"
"Go ahead; you can have it for nothing, if you will watch the ice."
"All right; let me know when you come back and I'll drive to town and
bring you home."
* * * * *
Three months went by, and one day in February the city man, in
response to a letter, hitched up and drove to town to bring his
neighbor back home. It was four o'clock in the afternoon when they
started out, and it was six--dark--when they turned the bend in the
road to the farm house. They helped the wife and children out, with
their baggage, and as Perkins opened the door of the house, he reached
up on the wall and turned something that clicked sharply.
Instantly light sprang from everywhere. In the barn-yard a street lamp
with an 18-inch reflector illuminated all under it for a space of 100
feet with bright white rays of light. Another street lamp hung over
the watering trough. The barn doors and windows burst forth in light.
There was not a dark corner to be found anywhere. In the house it was
the same. Perkins led the amazed procession from room to room of the
house they had shut up for the winter. On the wall in the hall
outside of every room was a button which he pushed, and the room
became as light as day before they entered. The cellar door, in
opening, automatically lighted a lamp illuminating that cavern as it
had never been lighted before since the day a house was built over it.
Needless to say, the farmer and his family were reduced to a state of
speechlessness.
"How the deuce did you do it?" finally articulated the farmer.
"I put your idle water wheel to work," said Perkins; and then,
satisfied with this exhibition, he put them back in the sleigh and
drove to his home, where his wife had supper waiting.
While the men were putting up the team in the electric lighted barn,
the farmwife went into the kitchen. Her hostess was cooking supper on
an electric stove. It looked like a city gas range and it cooked all
their meals, and did the baking besides. A hot-water tank stood
against the wall, not connected to anything hot, apparently. But it
was scalding hot, by virtue of a little electric water heater the size
of a quart tin can, connected at the bottom. Twenty-four hours a day
the water wheel pumped electricity into that "can," so that hot water
was to be had at any hour simply by turning a faucet. In the laundry
there was an electric pump that kept the tank in the attic filled
automatically. When the level of water in this tank fell to a certain
point, a float operated a switch that started the pump; and when the
water level reached a certain height, the same float stopped the pump.
A small motor, the size of a medium Hubbard squash operated a washing
machine and wringer on wash days. This same motor was a
man-of-all-work for this house, for, when called on, it turned the
separator, ground and polished knives and silverware, spun the sewing
machine, and worked the vacuum cleaner.
Over the dining room table hung the same hanging shade of old days,
but the oil lamp itself was gone. In its place was a 100-watt
tungsten lamp whose rays made the white table cloth fairly glisten.
The wires carrying electricity to this lamp were threaded through the
chains reaching to the ceiling, and one had to look twice to see where
the current came from. In the sitting room, a cluster of electric
bulbs glowed from a fancy wicker work basket that hung from the
ceiling. The housewife had made use of what she had throughout the
house. Old-fashioned candle-shades sat like cocked hats astride
electric bulbs. There is little heat to an electric bulb for the
reason that the white-hot wire that gives the light is made to burn in
high vacuum, which transmits heat very slowly. The housewife had taken
advantage of this fact and from every corner gleamed lights dressed in
fancy designs of tissue paper and silk.
"Now we will talk business," said Perkins when supper was over and
they had lighted their pipes.
The returned native looked dubious. His New England training had
warned him long ago that one cannot expect to get something for
nothing, and he felt sure there was a joker in this affair.
"How much do I owe you?" he asked.
"Nothing," said Perkins. "You furnish the water-power with your idle
wheel, and I furnish the electric installation. This is only a small
plant I have put in, but it gives us enough electricity to go around,
with a margin for emergencies. I have taken the liberty of wiring your
house and your horse-barn and cow-barn and your barn-yard. Altogether,
I suppose you have 30 lights about the place, and during these long
winter days you will keep most of them going from 3 to 5 hours a night
and 2 or 3 hours in the early morning. If you were in town, those
lights would cost you about 12 cents an hour, at the commercial rate
of electricity. Say 60 cents a day--eighteen dollars a month. That
isn't a very big electric light bill for some people I know in
town--and they consider themselves lucky to have the privilege of
buying electricity at that rate. Your wheel is running all winter to
prevent ice from forming and smashing it. It might just as well be
spinning the dynamo.
"If you think it worth while," continued Perkins,--"this $18 worth of
light you have on tap night and morning, or any hour of the day,--we
will say the account is settled. That is, of course, if you will give
me the use of half the electricity that your idle wheel is grinding
out with my second-hand dynamo. We have about eight electrical
horsepower on our wires, without overloading the machine. Next spring
I am going to stock up this place; and I think about the first thing I
do, when my dairy is running, will be to put in a milking machine and
let electricity do the milking for me. It will also fill my silo,
grind my mowing-machine knives, saw my wood, and keep water running in
my barn. You will probably want to do the same.
"But what it does for us men in the barn and barn-yard, isn't to be
compared to what it does for the women in the house. When my wife
wants a hot oven she presses a button. When she wants to put the
'fire' out, she presses another. That's all there is to it. No heat,
no smoke, no ashes. The same with ironing--and washing. No oil lamps
to fill, no wicks to trim, no chimneys to wash, no kerosene to kick
over and start a fire."
"You say the current you have put in my house would cost me about $18
a month, in town."
"Yes, about that. Making electricity from coal costs money."
"What does it cost here?"
"Practically nothing. Your river, that has been running to waste ever
since your grandfather gave up making chairs, does the work. There is
nothing about a dynamo to wear out, except the bearings, and these can
be replaced once every five or ten years for a trifle. The machine
needs to be oiled and cared for--fill the oil cups about once in three
days. Your water wheel needs the same attention. That's all there is
to it. You can figure the cost of your current yourself--just about
the cost of the lubricating oil you use--and the cost of the time you
give it--about the same time you give to any piece of good machinery,
from a sulky plow to a cream separator."
This is a true story. This electric plant, where Perkins furnishes the
electric end, and his neighbor the water-power, has been running now
for two years, grinding out electricity for the two places twenty-four
hours a day. Perkins was not an electrical engineer. He was just a
plain intelligent American citizen who found sufficient knowledge in
books to enable him to install and operate this plant. Frequently he
is away for long periods, but his neighbor (who has lost his original
terror of electricity) takes care of the plant. In fact, this farmer
has given a lot of study to the thing, through curiosity, until he
knows fully as much about it now as his city neighbor.
He had the usual idea, at the start, that a current strong enough to
light a 100 candlepower lamp would kick like a mule if a man happened
to get behind it. He watched the city man handle bare wires and
finally he plucked up courage to do it himself.
It was a 110-volt current, the pressure used in our cities for
domestic lighting. The funny part about it was, the farmer could not
feel it at all at first. His fingers were calloused and no current
could pass through them. Finally he sandpapered his fingers and tried
it again. Then he was able to get the "tickle" of 110 volts. It wasn't
so deadly after all--about the strength of a weak medical battery,
with which every one is familiar. A current of 110 volts cannot do any
harm to the human body unless contact is made over a very large
surface, which is impossible unless a man goes to a lot of trouble to
make such a contact. A current of 220 volts pressure--the pressure
used in cities for motors--has a little more "kick" to it, but still
is not uncomfortable. When the pressure rises to 500 volts (the
pressure used in trolley wires for street cars), it begins to be
dangerous. But there is no reason why a farm plant should be over 110
volts, under usual conditions; engineers have decided on this pressure
as the best adapted to domestic use, and manufacturers who turn out
the numerous electrical devices, such as irons, toasters, massage
machines, etc., fit their standard instruments to this voltage.
[Illustration: Farm labor and materials built this crib and stone
dam]
As to the cost of this co-operative plant--it was in the neighborhood
of $200. As we have said, it provided eight electrical horsepower on
tap at any hour of the day or night--enough for the two farms, and a
surplus for neighbors, if they wished to string lines and make use of
it.
The dynamo, a direct-current machine, 110 volts pressure, and what is
known in the trade as "compound,"--that is, a machine that maintains a
constant pressure automatically and does not require an attendant--was
picked up second-hand, through a newspaper "ad" and cost $90. The
switchboard, a make-shift affair, not very handsome, but just as
serviceable as if it were made of marble, cost less than $25 all told.
The transmission wire cost $19 a hundred pounds; it is of copper, and
covered with weatherproofed tape. Perkins bought a 50-cent book on
house-wiring, and did the wiring himself, the way the book told him
to, a simple operation. For fixtures, as we have said, his wife
devised fancy shades out of Mexican baskets, tissue paper, and silk,
in which are hidden electric globes that glow like fire-flies at the
pressing of a button. The lamps themselves are mostly old-style carbon
lamps, which can be bought at 16 cents each retail. In his living room
and dining room he used the new-style tungsten lamps instead of
old-style carbon. These cost 30 cents each. Incandescent lamps are
rated for 1,000 hours useful life. The advantage of tungsten lights is
that they give three times as much light for the same expenditure of
current as carbon lights. This is a big advantage in the city, where
current is costly; but it is not so much of an advantage in the
country where a farmer has plenty of water-power--because his current
costs him practically nothing, and he can afford to be wasteful of it
to save money in lamps. Another advantage he has over his city cousin:
In town, an incandescent lamp is thrown away after it has been used
1,000 hours because after that it gives only 80% of the light it did
when new--quite an item when one is paying for current. The experience
of Perkins and his neighbor in their coöperative plant has been that
they have excess light anyway, and if a few bulbs fall off a fifth in
efficiency, it is not noticeable. As a matter of fact most of their
bulbs have been in use without replacing for the two years the plant
has been in operation. The lamps are on the wall or the ceiling, out
of the way, not liable to be broken; so the actual expense in
replacing lamps is less than for lamp chimneys in the old days.
Insurance companies recognize that a large percentage of farm fires
comes from the use of kerosene; for this reason, they are willing to
make special rates for farm homes lighted by electricity. They
prescribe certain rules for wiring a house, and they insist that their
agent inspect and pass such wiring before current is turned on. Once
the wiring is passed, the advantage is all in favor of the farmer
with electricity over the farmer with kerosene. The National Board of
Fire Underwriters is sufficiently logical in its demands, and powerful
enough, so that manufacturers who turn out the necessary fittings find
no sale for devices that do not conform to insurance standards.
Therefore it is difficult to go wrong in wiring a house.
Finally, as to the added value a water-power electric plant adds to
the selling price of a farm. Let the farmer answer this question for
himself. If he can advertise his farm for sale, with a paragraph
running: "Hydroelectric plant on the premises, furnishing electricity
for light, heat, and power"--what do you suppose a wide-awake
purchaser would be willing to pay for that? Perkins and his neighbor
believe that $1,000 is a very modest estimate added by their electric
plant to both places. And they talk of doing still more. They use only
a quarter of the power of the water that is running to waste through
the wheel. They are figuring on installing a larger dynamo, of say 30
electrical horse-power, which will provide clean, dry, safe heat for
their houses even on the coldest days in winter. When they have done
this, they will consider that they are really putting their small
river to work.
CHAPTER II
A LITTLE PROSPECTING
Small amount of water required for an electric plant--Exploring, on
a dull day--A rough and ready weir--What a little water will
do--The water wheel and the dynamo--Electricity consumed the
instant it is produced--The price of the average small plant, not
counting labor.
The average farmer makes the mistake of considering that one must have
a river of some size to develop power of any practical use. On your
next free day do a little prospecting. We have already said that 250
cubic feet of water falling 10 feet a minute will provide light, heat
and small motor power for the average farm. A single water horsepower
will generate enough electricity to provide light for the house and
barn. But let us take five horsepower as a desirable minimum in this
instance.
[Illustration: Measuring a small stream with a weir]
In your neighborhood there is a creek three or four feet wide,
toiling along day by day, at its task of watering your fields. Find a
wide board a little longer than the width of this creek you have
scorned. Set it upright across the stream between the banks, so that
no water flows around the ends or under it. It should be high enough
to set the water back to a dead level for a few feet upstream, before
it overflows. Cut a gate in this board, say three feet wide and ten
inches deep, or according to the size of a stream. Cut this gate from
the top, so that all the water of the stream will flow through the
opening, and still maintain a level for several feet back of the
board.
This is what engineers call a weir, a handy contrivance for measuring
the flow of small streams. Experts have figured out an elaborate
system of tables as to weirs. All we need to do now, in this rough
survey, is to figure out the number of square inches of water flowing
through this opening and falling on the other side. With a rule,
measure the depth of the overflowing water, from the bottom of the
opening to the top of the dead level of the water behind the board.
Multiply this depth by the width of the opening, which will give the
square inches of water escaping. For every square inch of this water
escaping, engineers tell us that stream is capable of delivering,
roughly, one cubic foot of water a minute.
Thus, if the water is 8 inches deep in an opening 32 inches wide, then
the number of cubic feet this stream is delivering each minute is 8
times 32, or 256 cubic feet a minute. So, a stream 32 inches wide,
with a uniform depth of 8 inches running through our weir is capable
of supplying the demands of the average farm in terms of electricity.
Providing, of course, that the lay of the land is such that this water
can be made to fall 10 feet into a water wheel.
Go upstream and make a rough survey of the fall. In the majority of
instances (unless this is some sluggish stream in a flat prairie) it
will be found feasible to divert the stream from its main channel by
means of a race--an artificial channel--and to convey it to a not
far-distant spot where the necessary fall can be had at an angle of
about 30 degrees from horizontal.
If you find there is _twice_ as much water as you need for the amount
of power you require, a five-foot fall will give the same result. Or,
if there is only _one-half_ as much water as the 250 cubic feet
specified, you can still obtain your theoretical five horsepower if
the means are at hand for providing a fall of twenty feet instead of
ten. Do not make the very common mistake of figuring that a stream is
delivering a cubic foot a minute to each square inch of weir opening,
simply because it _fills_ a certain opening. It is the excess water,
falling _over_ the opening, after the stream has set back to a
permanent dead level, that is to be measured.
This farmer who spends an idle day measuring the flow of his brook
with a notched board, may say here: "This is all very well. This is
the spring of the year, when my brook is flowing at high-water mark.
What am I going to do in the dry months of summer, when there are not
250 cubic feet of water escaping every minute?"
There are several answers to this question, which will be taken up in
detail in subsequent chapters. Here, let us say, even if this brook
does flow in sufficient volume only 8 months in a year--the dark
months, by the way,--is not electricity and the many benefits it
provides worth having eight months in the year? My garden provides
fresh vegetables four months a year. Because it withers and dies and
lies covered with snow during the winter, is that any reason why I
should not plow and manure and plant my garden when spring comes
again?
A water wheel, the modern turbine, is a circular fan with curved iron
blades, revolving in an iron case. Water, forced through the blades of
this fan by its own weight, causes the wheel to revolve on its axis;
and the fan, in turn causes a shaft fitted with pulleys to revolve.
The water, by giving the iron-bladed fan a turning movement as it
rushes through, imparts to it mechanical power. The shaft set in
motion by means of this mechanical power is, in turn, belted to the
pulley of a dynamo. This dynamo consists, first, of a shaft on which
is placed a spool, wound in a curious way, with many turns of
insulated copper wire. This spool revolves freely in an air space
surrounded by electric magnets. The spool does not touch these
magnets. It is so nicely balanced that the weight of a finger will
turn it. Yet, when it is revolved by water-power at a predetermined
speed--say 1,500 revolutions a minute--it generates electricity,
transforms the mechanical power of the water wheel into another form
of energy--a form of energy which can be carried for long distances on
copper wires, which can, by touching a button, be itself converted
into light, or heat, or back into mechanical energy again.
If two wires be led from opposite sides of this revolving spool, and
an electric lamp be connected from one to the other wire, the lamp
will be lighted--will grow white hot,--hence _incandescent light_.
The instant this lamp is turned on, the revolving spool feels a
stress, the magnets by which it is surrounded begin to pull back on
it. The power of the water wheel, however, overcomes this pull. If one
hundred lights be turned on, the backward pull of the magnets
surrounding the spool will be one hundred times as strong as for one
light. For every ounce of electrical energy used in light or heat or
power, the dynamo will require a like ounce of mechanical power from
the water wheel which drives it.
The story is told of a canny Scotch engineer, who, in the first days
of dynamos, not so very long ago, scoffed at the suggestion that such
a spool, spinning in free air, in well lubricated bearings, could
bring his big Corliss steam engine to a stop. Yet he saw it done
simply by belting this "spool," a dynamo, to his engine and asking the
dynamo for more power in terms of light than his steam could deliver
in terms of mechanical power to overcome the pull of the magnets.
Electricity must be consumed the instant it is generated (except in
rare instances where small amounts are accumulated in storage
batteries by a chemical process). The pressure of a button, or the
throw of a switch causes the dynamo instantly to respond with just
enough energy to do the work asked of it, always in proportion to the
amount required. Having this in mind, it is rather curious to think of
electricity as being an article of export, an item in international
trade. Yet in 1913 hydro-electric companies in Canada "exported" by
means of wires, to this country over 772,000,000 kilowatt-hours (over
one billion horsepower hours) of electricity for use in factories near
the boundary line.
This 250 cubic feet of water per minute then, which the farmer has
measured by means of his notched board, will transform by means of its
falling weight mechanical power into a like amount of electrical
power--less friction losses, which may amount to as much as 60% in
very small machines, and 15% in larger plants. That is, the brook
which has been draining your pastures for uncounted ages contains the
potential power of 3 and 4 young horses--with this difference: that it
works 24 hours a day, runs on forever, and requires no oats or hay.
And the cost of such an electric plant, which is ample for the needs
of the average farm, _is in most cases less than the price of a good
farm horse_--the $200 kind--not counting labor of installation.
It is the purpose of these chapters to awaken the farmer to the
possibilities of such small water-power as he or his community may
possess; to show that the generating of electricity is a very simple
operation, and that the maintenance and care of such a plant is within
the mechanical ability of any American farmer or farm boy; and to show
that electricity itself is far from being the dangerous death-dealing
"fluid" of popular imagination. Electricity must be studied; and then
it becomes an obedient, tireless servant. During the past decade or
two, mathematical wizards have studied electricity, explored its
atoms, reduced it to simple arithmetic--and although they cannot yet
tell us _why_ it is generated, they tell us _how_. It is with this
simple arithmetic, and the necessary manual operations that we have to
do here.
CHAPTER III
HOW TO MEASURE WATER-POWER
What is a horsepower?--How the Carthaginians manufactured
horsepower--All that goes up must come down--How the sun lifts
water up for us to use--Water the ideal power for generating
electricity--The weir--Table for estimating flow of streams, with a
weir--Another method of measuring--Figuring water horsepower--The
size of the wheel--What head is required--Quantity of water
necessary.
If a man were off in the woods and needed a horsepower of energy to
work for him, he could generate it by lifting 550 pounds of stone or
wood, or whatnot, one foot off the ground, and letting it fall back in
the space of one second. As a man possesses capacity for work equal to
one-fifth horsepower, it would take him five seconds to do the work of
lifting the weight up that the weight itself accomplished in falling
down. All that goes up must come down; and by a nice balance of
physical laws, a falling body hits the ground with precisely the same
force as is required to lift it to the height from which it falls.
The Carthaginians, and other ancients (who were deep in the woods as
regards mechanical knowledge) had their slaves carry huge stones to
the top of the city wall; and the stones were placed in convenient
positions to be tipped over on the heads of any besieging army that
happened along. Thus by concentrating the energy of many slaves in one
batch of stones, the warriors of that day were enabled to deliver
"horsepower" in one mass where it would do the most good. The farmer
who makes use of the energy of falling water to generate electricity
for light, heat, and power does the same thing--he makes use of the
capacity for work stored in water in being lifted to a certain height.
As in the case of the gasoline engine, which burns 14 pounds of air
for every pound of gasoline, the engineer of the water-power plant
does not have to concern himself with the question of how this
natural source of energy happened to be in a handy place for him to
make use of it.
The sun, shining on the ocean, and turning water into vapor by its
heat has already lifted it up for him. This vapor floating in the air
and blown about by winds, becomes chilled from one cause or another,
gives up its heat, turns back into water, and falls as rain. This
rain, falling on land five, ten, a hundred, a thousand, or ten
thousand feet above the sea level, begins to run back to the sea,
picking out the easiest road and cutting a channel that we call a
brook, a stream, or a river. Our farm lands are covered to an average
depth of about three feet a year with water, every gallon of which has
stored in it the energy expended by the heat of the sun in lifting it
to the height where it is found.
The farmer, prospecting on his land for water-power, locates a spot on
a stream which he calls Supply; and another spot a few feet down hill
near the same stream, which he calls Power. Every gallon of water that
falls between these two points, and is made to escape through the
revolving blades of a water wheel is capable of work in terms of
foot-pounds--an amount of work that is directly proportional to the
_quantity_ of water, and to the _distance_ in feet which it falls to
reach the wheel--_pounds_ and _feet_.
_The Efficient Water Wheel_
And it is a very efficient form of work, too. In fact it is one of the
most efficient forms of mechanical energy known--and one of the
easiest controlled. A modern water wheel uses 85 per cent of the total
capacity for work imparted to falling water by gravity, and delivers
it as rotary motion. Compare this water wheel efficiency with other
forms of mechanical power in common use: Whereas a water wheel uses 85
per cent of the energy of its water supply, and wastes only 15 per
cent, a gasoline engine reverses the table, and delivers only 15 per
cent of the energy in gasoline and wastes 85 per cent--and it is
rather a high-class gasoline engine that can deliver even 15 per cent;
a steam engine, on the other hand, uses about 17 per cent of the
energy in the coal under its boilers and passes the
|
next: exchanging in an instant the hail of a boon companion for the
tone of a noble.
"And is your young master also a friend of this Nicholas Toussaint?"
was the next question.
"No," said Adrian, "he has been forbidden the house. M. Toussaint does
not approve of his opinions."
"Ha! That is so, is it," rejoined the stranger with his former gayety.
"And now enough: where will you lodge me until morning?"
"If my closet will serve you," Felix answered with a hesitation he
would not have felt a few minutes before, "it is at your will. I will
bring some food there at once, and will let you out if you please at
five." And Adrian added some simple directions, by following which his
guest might reach the Rue des Lombards without difficulty.
An hour later if the thoughts of those who lay sleepless under that
roof could have been traced, some strange contrasts would have
appeared. Was Felix Portail thinking of his dead father, or of his
sweetheart in the Rue des Lombards, or of his schemes of ambition? Was
he blaming the crew of whom until to-day he had been one, or sullenly
cursing those factious Huguenots as the root of the mischief? Was
Adrian thinking of his kind master, or of his master's daughter? Was
the guest dreaming of his narrow escape? or revolving plans beside
which Felix's were but the schemes of a rat in a drain? Perhaps Marie
alone--for Susanne slept a child's sleep of exhaustion--had her
thoughts fixed on him, who so few hours before had been the centre of
the household.
But such is life in troubled times. Pleasure and pain come mingled
together, and men snatch the former even from the midst of the latter
with a trembling joy; knowing that if they wait to go a pleasuring
until the sky be clear, they may wait until nightfall.
When Adrian called his guest at cock-crow the latter rose briskly and
followed him down to the door. "Well, young sir," he said on the
threshold, as he wrapped his cloak round him and took his sheathed
sword in his hand, "I am obliged to you. When I can do you a service,
I will."
"You can do me one now," replied the clerk bluntly, "It is ill work
having to do with strangers in these days. You can tell me who you
are, and to which side you belong."
"Which side? I have told you--my own. And for the rest," continued the
soldier, "I will give you a hint." He brought his lips near the
other's ear, and whispered, "Kiss Marie--for me!"
The clerk looked up aflame with anger, but the other was already gone
striding down the street. Yet Adrian received an answer to his
question. For as the stranger disappeared in the gloom, he broke
out with an audacity that took the listener's breath away into a
well-known air,
"Hau! Hau! Papegots!
Faites place aux Huguenots!"
and trilled it as if he had been in the streets of Rochelle.
"Death!" exclaimed the clerk, getting back into the house, and barring
the door, "I thought so. He is a Huguenot. But if he takes his neck
out of Paris unstretched, he will have the fiend's own luck, and the
Béarnais' to boot!"
II.
When the clerk went upstairs, again, he heard voices in the back room.
Felix and Marie were in consultation. The girl was a different being
this morning. The fire and fury of the night had sunk to a still
misery: and even to her it seemed over dangerous to stay in the house
and confront the rage of the mob. Mayenne might not after all return
yet: and in that case the Sixteen would assuredly wreak their spite on
all, however young or helpless, who might have had to do with the
removal of the body. "You must seek shelter with some friend," Felix
proposed, "before the city is astir. I can go to the University. I
shall be safe there."
"Could you not take us with you?" Marie suggested meekly.
He shook his head, his face flushing. It was hard to confess that he
had power to destroy, but none to protect. "You had better go to
Nicholas Toussaint's," he said. "He will take you in, though he will
have nothing to do with me."
Marie assented with a sigh, and rose to make ready. Some few valuables
were hidden or secured, some clothes taken; and then the little party
of four passed out into the street, leaving but one solemn tenant in
their home. The cold light of a November morning gave to the lane an
air even in accustomed eyes of squalor and misery. The kennel running
down the middle was choked with nastiness, while here and there the
upper stories leaned forward so far as to obscure the light.
The fugitives regarded these things little after the first shivering
glance, but hurried on their road; Felix with his sword, and Adrian
with his club marching on either side of the girls. A skulking dog got
out of their way. The song of a belated reveller made them shrink
under an arch. But they fell in with nothing more formidable until
they came to the high wooden gates of the courtyard in front of
Nicholas Toussaint's house.
To arouse him or his servants, however, without disturbing the
neighborhood was another matter. There was no bell; only a heavy iron
clapper. Adrian tried this cautiously, with little hope of being
heard. But to his joy the hollow sound had scarcely ceased when
footsteps were heard crossing the court, and a small trap in one of
the gates was opened. An elderly man with high cheek bones and curly
gray hair looked out. His eyes lighting on the girls lost their
harshness. "Marie Portail!" he exclaimed. "Ah! poor thing, I pity you.
I have heard all. I only returned to the city last night or I should
have been with you. And Adrian?"
"We have come," said the young man respectfully, "to beg shelter for
Mistress Marie and her sister. It is no longer safe for them to remain
in the Rue de l'Arbre Sec."
"I can well believe it," cried Toussaint vigorously. "I do not know
where we are safe nowadays. But there," he added in a different tone,
"no doubt the Sixteen are acting for the best."
"You will take them in then?" said Adrian, with gratitude.
But to his astonishment the citizen shook his head, while an awkward
embarrassment twisted his features. "It is impossible!" he said
reluctantly.
Adrian doubted if he had heard aright. Nicholas Toussaint was known
for a bold man; one whom the Sixteen disliked, and even suspected of
Huguenot leanings, but had not yet dared to attack. He was a dealer in
Norman horses, and this both led him to employ many men, reckless
daring fellows, and made him in some degree necessary to the army.
Adrian had never doubted that he would shelter the daughter of his old
friend; and his surprise on receiving this rebuff was extreme.
"But, Monsieur Toussaint--" he urged--and his face reddened with
generous warmth as he stood forward. "My master is dead! Foully
murdered! He lies who says otherwise, though he be of the Sixteen! My
mistress has few friends now to protect her, and those of small power.
Will you send her and the child from your door?"
"Hush, Adrian," cried the girl, lifting her head proudly, yet laying
her hand on the clerk's sleeve with a tender touch of acknowledgment
that brought the blood in redoubled force to his cheeks. "Do not press
our friend overmuch. If he will not take us in from the streets, be
sure he has some good reason to offer."
But Toussaint was dumb. Shame--a shame augmented tenfold by the
clerk's fearlessness--was so clearly written on his face, that Adrian
uttered none of the reproaches which hung on his lips. It was Felix
who came forward, and said contemptuously, "So you have grown
strangely cautious of a sudden, M. Toussaint?"
"Ha! I thought you were there, or thereabouts!" replied the
horse-dealer, regaining his composure at once, and eyeing him with
strong disfavor.
"But Felix and I," interposed Adrian eagerly, "will fend for
ourselves."
Toussaint shook his head. "It is impossible," he said surlily.
"Then hear me!" cried Felix with excitement. "You do not deceive me.
It is not because of your daughter that you have forbidden me the
house, and will not now protect my sister! It is because we shall
learn too much. You have those under your roof, whom the crows shall
pick yet! You, I will spare for Madeline's sake; but your spies I will
string up, every one of them by----" and he swore a frightful oath
such as the Romanists used.
Toussaint's face betrayed both fear and anger. For an instant he
seemed to hesitate. Then exclaiming "Begone, parricide! You would have
killed your own father!" he slammed the trap-door, and was heard
retreating up the yard with a clatter, which sufficiently indicated
his uneasiness.
The four looked at one another. Daylight had fully come. The noise of
the altercation had drawn more than one sleepy face to neighboring
casements. In a short time the streets would be alive with people, and
even a delay of a few minutes might bring immediate danger. They
thought of this; and moved away slowly and reluctantly, Susanne
clinging to Adrian's arm, while Felix strode ahead scowling. When they
had placed, however, a hundred yards or so between themselves and
Toussaint's gates, they stopped, a chill sense of desolation upon most
of them. Whither were they to go? Felix urged curtly that they should
seek other friends. But Marie declined. If Nicholas Toussaint dared
not take them in, no other of their friends would. She had given up
hope, poor girl, and longed only to get back to their home, and the
still form, which it now seemed to her she should never have deserted.
They were standing discussing this when a cry caused them to turn. A
girl was running hatless along the street towards them; a girl tall
and plump of figure in a dark blue robe, with a creamy slightly
freckled face, a glory of wavy golden hair about it, and great gray
eyes that could laugh and cry at once, even as they were doing now.
"Oh, Marie," she exclaimed taking her in her arms; "my poor little
one! Come back! You are to come back at once!" Then disengaging
herself, with a blushing cheek and more reserve she allowed Felix to
embrace her. But though that young gentleman made full use of his
permission, his face did not clear. "Your father has just turned my
sister from his door, as he turned me a month ago," he said bitterly.
Poor girl, she quailed; looking at him with a tender upward glance
meant for him only. "Hush!" she begged him. "Do not speak so of him.
And he has sent to fetch them back again. He says he cannot keep them
himself, but if they will come in and rest he will see them safely
disposed of later. Will not that do?"
"Excellently, Miss Madeline," cried Adrian gratefully. "And we thank
your father a thousand times."
"Nay but--" she said slyly--"that permission does not extend to you,"
"What matter?" he said stoutly.
"What matter if Marie be safe you mean," she replied demurely. "Well,
I would I had so gallant a--clerk," with a glance at her own handsome
lover. "But come, my father is waiting at the gate for us." Yet
notwithstanding that she urged haste, she and Felix were the last to
turn. When she at length ran after the others her cheeks betrayed her.
"I can see what you have been doing, girl," her father cried angrily,
meeting her just within the door. "For shame, hussy! Go to your room,
and take your friends with you." And he aimed a light blow at her,
which she easily evaded.
"They will need breakfast," she persisted bravely. She had seen her
lover, and though the interview might have had its drawbacks--best
known to herself--she cared little for a blow in comparison with that.
"They will take it in your room," he retorted. "Come, pack, girl! I
will talk to you presently," he added, with meaning.
The Portails drew her away. To them her room was a haven of rest,
where they felt safe, and could pour out their grief, and let her pity
and indignation soothe them. The horror of the last twenty-four hours
fell from them. They seemed to themselves to be outcasts no longer.
In the afternoon Toussaint reappeared. "On with your hoods," he cried
briskly, his good humor re-established. "I and half a dozen stout lads
will see you to a place where you can lie snug for a week."
Marie asked timidly about her father's funeral. "I will see to it,
little one," he answered. "I will let the curate of St. Germain know.
He will do what is seemly--if the mob let him," he added to himself.
"But father," cried Madeline, "where are you going to take them?"
"To Philip Boyer's."
"What!" cried the girl in much surprise. "His house is small and
Philip and his wife are old and feeble."
"True," answered Portail. "But his hutch is under the Duchess's roof.
There is a touch of _our great man_ about Madame. Mayenne the crowd
neither overmuch love, nor much fear. He will die in his bed. But with
his sister it is a word and a blow. And the Sixteen will not touch
aught that is under her roof."
The Duchess de Montpensier was the sister of Henry Duke of Guise,
Henry the Scarred, _Our great man_, as the Parisians loved to call
him. He had been assassinated in the antechamber of Henry of Valois
just a twelvemonth before this time; and she had become the soul of
the League, having more of the headstrong nature which had made him
popular, than had either of his brothers, Mayenne or D'Aumale.
"I see," said Madeline, kissing the girls, "you are right, father."
"Impertinent baggage!" he cried. "To your prayers and your needle. And
see that while we are away you keep close, and do not venture into the
courtyard."
She was not a nervous girl, but the bare, roomy house seemed lonely
after the party had set out. She wandered to the kitchen where the two
old women-servants were preparing, with the aid of a turnspit, the
early supper; and learned here that only old Simon, the lame ostler,
was left in the stables, which stood on either side of the courtyard.
This was not reassuring news: the more as Madeline knew her father
might not return for another hour. She took refuge at last in the long
eating-room on the first floor; which ran the full depth of the house,
and had one window looking to the back as well as several facing the
courtyard. Here she opened the door of the stove, and let the cheery
glow play about her.
But presently she grew tired of this, and moved to the rearward
window. It looked upon a narrow lane, and a dead wall. Still, there
was a chance of seeing some one pass, some stranger; whereas the
windows which looked on the empty courtyard were no windows at all--to
Madeline.
The girl had not long looked out before her pale complexion, which the
fire had scarcely warmed, grew hot. She started, and looked into the
room behind her nervously: then looked out again. She had seen
standing in a nook of the wall opposite her, a figure she knew well.
It was that of her lover, and he seemed to be watching the house.
Timidly she waved her hand to him, and he, after looking up and down
the lane, advanced to the window. He could do this safely, for it was
the only window in the Toussaints' house which looked that way.
"Are you alone?" he asked softly, looking up at her.
She nodded.
"And my sisters?" he continued.
"Have gone to Philip Boyer's. He lives in one of the cottages on the
left of the Duchess's yard."
"Ah! And you? Where is your father, Madeline?" he murmured.
"He has gone to take them. I am quite alone; and two minutes ago I was
melancholy," she added, with a smile that should have made him happy.
"I want to talk to you," he replied gravely. "May I get up if I can,
Madeline?"
She shook her head, which of course meant no. And she said, "It is
impossible." But she still smiled.
There was a pipe which ran up the wall a couple of feet or so on one
side of the casement. Before she well understood his purpose, or that
he was in earnest he had gripped this and was halfway up to the
window.
"Oh, do take care," she cried. "Do not come, Felix. My father will be
so angry!" Woman-like she repented now, when it was too late. But
still he came on, and when his hand was stretched out to grasp the
sill, all her fear was only lest he should fall. She seized his wrist,
and helped him in. Then she drew back. "You should not have done it,
Felix," she said severely.
"But I wanted to see you so much, Madeline," he urged, "and the
glimpse I had of you this morning was nothing."
"Well then, you may come to the stove and warm yourself, sir. Oh! how
cold your poor hands are, my boy! But you must not stay."
But stolen moments are sweet and apt to be long drawn out. She had a
great deal to say, and he had a great deal, it seemed, to ask--so much
to ask indeed, that gradually a dim sense that he was thinking of
other things than herself--of her father and the ways of the house,
and what guests they had, came over her.
It chilled her to the heart. She drew away from him, and said,
suddenly, "Oh, Felix!" and looked at him.
Nothing more. But he understood her and colored; and tried to ask, but
asked awkwardly, "What is the matter, dearest?"
"I know what you are thinking of," she said with grave sorrow, "Oh! it
is too bad! It is base of you, cruel! You would use even me whom you
love to ruin my friends!"
"Hush!" he answered, letting his gloomy passion have vent for the
moment, "they are not your friends, Madeline. See what they have done
for me. It is they, or the troubles they have set on foot, that have
killed my father!" And he swore solemnly--carried away by his mistaken
resentment--never again to spare a Huguenot save her father and one
other.
She trembled and tried to close her ears. Her father had told her a
hundred times that she could not be happy with a husband divided from
her by a gulf so impassable. She had said to him that it was too late.
She knew it. She had given Felix her heart and she was a woman. She
could not take it back, though she knew that nothing but unhappiness
could come of it.
"God forgive you!" she moaned in that moment of strained insight; and
sank in her chair as though she would weep.
He fell on his knees by her with a hundred words of endearment, for he
had conquered himself again. And she let him soothe her. She had never
loved him more than now, when she knew the price she must pay for him.
She closed her eyes--for the moment--to that terrible future, and he
was holding her in his arms, when without warning a heavy footstep
rang on the stairs by the door.
They sprang apart. If even then he had had presence of mind, he might
have reached the window. But he hesitated, looking in her startled
eyes. "Is it your father?" he whispered.
She shook her head. "He cannot have returned. We should have heard the
gates opened. There is no one in the house," she murmured faintly.
But still the footsteps came on: and stopped at the door. Felix looked
round in despair. Close beside him, and just behind the stove was the
door of a closet. He took two strides, and before he or she had
thought of the consequences, was within it. Softly he drew the door to
again; and she sank terrified on a chair, as the door of the room
opened.
He who came in was a man of thirty-five, a stranger to her. A man with
a projecting chin. His keen gray eyes wore at the moment of his
entrance an impatient expression, but when he caught sight of her,
this passed away. He came across the floor smiling. "Pardon me," he
said--but said it as if no pardon were needed, "I found the stables
insupportably dull. I set out on a voyage of discovery. I have found
my America!" And he bowed in a style which puzzled the frightened
girl.
"You want to see my father?"' she said tremulously. "He----"
"Has gone to the Duchess's. I know it. And very ill-natured it was of
him to leave me in the stable, instead of intrusting me to your care,
mistress. La Nouë," he continued, "is in the stable still, asleep on a
bundle of hay, and a pretty commotion there will be when he finds I
have stolen away!"
Laughing with an easy carelessness that struck the citizen's daughter
with fresh astonishment, the stranger drew up the big armchair, which
was commonly held sacred to M. Toussaint's use, and threw himself into
it; lazily disposing his booted feet in the glow which poured from the
stove, and looking across at his companion with open and somewhat bold
admiration in his eyes. At another time she might have been offended:
or she might not. Women are variable. Now her fears lest Felix should
be discovered dulled her apprehension.
Yet the name of La Nouë had caught her ear. She knew it well, as all
France and the Low Countries knew it in those days, for the name of
the boldest and staunchest warrior on the Huguenot side.
"La Nouë?" she murmured, misty suspicions beginning to take form in
her mind.
"Yes, pretty one," replied he laughing. "La Nouë and no other. Does
Bras-de-fer pass for an ogre here in Paris that you tremble so at his
name? Let me----"
But whatever the proposition he was going to offer, it came to
nothing. The dull clash of the gates outside warned both of them that
Nicholas Toussaint and his party had returned. A moment later a hasty
tread sounded on the stairs; and an elderly man wearing a cloak burst
in upon them.
His eyes swept the room while his hand still held the door, and it was
clear that what he saw did not please him. He came forward stiffly,
his brows knitted. But he said nothing; seeming uncertain and
embarrassed.
"See!" the first comer said, looking quietly up at him, but not
offering to move. "Now what do you think of your ogre? And by the
rood, he looks fierce enough to eat babes! There, old friend," he
continued speaking to the elder man in a different tone, "spare your
lecture. This is Toussaint's daughter, and as staunch I will warrant
as her father."
The old noble--he had but one arm she saw--still looked at her with
disfavor. "Girls have sweethearts, sire," he said shrewdly.
For a moment the room seemed to go round with her. Though something
more of reproach and playful defence passed between the two men, she
did not hear it. The consciousness that her lover was listening to
every word and that from this moment La Nouë's life was in his hands,
numbed her brain. She sat helpless, hardly aware that half a dozen men
were entering, her father one of them. When a lamp was called for--it
was growing dark--she did not stir: and Toussaint, not seeing her,
fetched it himself.
But by the time he came back she had partly recovered herself. She
noted that he locked the door carefully behind him. When the lamp was
set on the table, and its light fell on the harsh features of the men,
a ray passed between them, and struck her pale face. Her father saw
her.
"By heaven!" he cried furiously. "What does the wench here?" No one
answered; but all turned and looked at her where she cowered back
against the stove. "Go, girl!" Toussaint cried, beside himself with
passion. "Begone! and presently I will----"
"Nay, stop!" interposed La Nouë. "Your daughter knows too much. We
cannot let her go thus."
"Knows too much? How?" and the citizen tossed his head like a bull
balked in his charge.
"His majesty----"
"Nay, let his majesty speak for himself--for once," said the man with
the gray eyes--and even in her terror and confusion Madeline saw that
all turned to him with a single movement. "Mistress Toussaint did but
chat with La Nouë and myself, during her father's absence. But she
knows us; or one of us. If any be to blame it is I. Let her stay. I
will answer for her fidelity."
"Nay, but she is a woman, sire," some one objected.
"Ay, she is, good Poulain," and he turned to the speaker with a
singularly bright smile. "So we are safe, for there is no woman in
France would betray Henry of Bourbon!"
A laugh went round. Some one mentioned the Duchess.
"True!" said Henry, for Henry it was, he whom the Leaguers called the
Béarnais and the Politiques the King of Navarre, but whom later
generations have crowned as the first of French kings--Henry the
Great. "True! I had forgotten her. I must beware of her gold scissors.
We have two crowns already, and want not another of her making. But
come, let us to business without ceremony. Be seated, gentlemen; and
while we consider whether our plans hold good, Mistress Toussaint--"
he paused to look kindly at the terrified girl--"will play the sentry
for us."
Madeline's presence within a few feet of their council-board was soon
forgotten by the eager men sitting about it. And in a sense she forgot
them. She heard, it is true, their hopes and plans, the chief a scheme
to surprise Paris by introducing men hidden in carts piled with hay.
She heard how Henry and La Nouë had entered, and who had brought them
in, and how it was proposed to smuggle them out again; and many
details of men and means and horses; who were loyal and who
disaffected, and who might be bought over, and at what price. She even
took note of the manner of each speaker as he leaned forward, and
brought his face within the circle of light, marking who were known to
her before, substantial citizens these, constant at mass and market,
and who were strangers; men fiercer-looking, thinner, haughtier, more
restless, with the stamp of constant peril at the corners of their
eyes, and swords some inches longer than their neighbors'.
She saw and heard this and reasoned dully on it. But all the time her
mind was paralyzed by a dreadful sense of some great evil awaiting
her, something with which she must presently come face to face, though
her faculties had not grasped it yet. Men's lives! Ah, yes, men's
lives! The girl had been bred in secret as a Huguenot. She had been
taught to revere the great men of the religion, and not the weakness
of the cause, not even her lover's influence had sapped her loyalty to
it.
Presently there was a stir about the table. The men rose. "Then that
arrangement meets your views, sire," said La Nouë.
"Perfectly. I sleep to-night at my good friend Mazeau's," the king
answered, "and leave to-morrow about noon by St. Martin's gate. Yes,
let that stand."
He did not see--none of them saw--how the girl in the shadow by the
stove started; nor did they mark how the last trace of color fled from
her cheeks. Madeline was face to face with her fate, and knew that her
own hand must work it out. The men were separating. Henry bade
farewell to one and another, until only three or four beside Toussaint
and La Nouë remained with him. Then he prepared himself to go, and
girt on his sword, talking earnestly the while. Still engaged in low
converse with one of the strangers, he walked slowly lighted by his
host to the door, forgetting to take leave of the girl. In another
minute he and they would have disappeared in the passage, when a
hoarse cry escaped from Madeline's lips.
It was little more than a gasp, but it was enough for men whose nerves
were strained. All--at the moment they had their backs to her, their
faces to the king--turned swiftly. "Ha!" cried Henry at once, "I had
forgotten my manners. I was leaving my most faithful sentry without a
word of thanks, or a keepsake by which to remember Henry of France."
She had risen, and was supporting herself--but she swayed as she
stood--by the arm of the chair. Never had her lover been so dear to
her. As the king approached, the light fell on her face, on her
agonized eyes, and he stopped short. "Toussaint!" he cried sharply.
"Your daughter is ill. Look at her!" But it was noticeable that he
laid his hand on his sword.
"Stay!" she cried, the word ringing shrilly through the room. "You are
betrayed! There is some one--there--who has heard--all! Oh, sire,
mercy! mercy!"
As the last words passed the girl's writhing lips she clutched at her
throat: seemed to fight a moment for breath: then with a stifled
shriek fell senseless to the ground.
A second's silence. Then a whistling sound as half a dozen swords were
snatched from the scabbards. The veteran La Nouë sprang to the door:
others ran to the windows and stood before them. Only Henry--after a
swift glance at Toussaint, who pale and astonished, leaned over his
daughter--stood still, his fingers on his hilt. Another second of
suspense, and before any one spoke, the cupboard door swung open, and
Felix Portail, pale to the lips, stood before them.
"What do you here?" cried Henry, restraining by a gesture those who
would have flung themselves upon the spy.
"I came to see her," Felix said. He was quite calm, but a perspiration
cold as death stood on his brow, and his distended eyes wandered from
one to another. "You surprised me. Toussaint knows that I was her
sweetheart," he murmured.
"Ay, wretched man, to see her! And for what else?" replied Henry, his
eyes, as a rule, so kindly, bent on the other in a gaze fixed and
relentless.
A sudden visible quiver--as it were the agony of death--shot through
Portail's frame. He opened his mouth, but for a while no sound came.
His eyes sought the nearest sword with horrid intentness. He gasped,
"Kill me at once, before she--before----"
He never finished the sentence. With an oath the nearest Huguenot
lunged at his breast, and fell back, foiled by a blow from the King's
hand. "Back!" cried Henry, his eyes flashing as another sprang
forward, and would have done the work. "Will you trench on the King's
justice in his presence? Sheath your swords, all save the Sieur de la
Nouë, and the gentlemen who guard the windows!"
"He must die!" cried several voices, as the men still pressed forward
viciously.
"Think, sire! Think what you do," cried La Nouë himself, warning in
his voice. "He has the life of every man here in his hand? And they
are your men, risking all for the cause."
"True," replied Henry, smiling; "but I ask no man to run a risk I will
not take myself."
A murmur of dissatisfaction burst forth. Several drew their swords
again. "I have a wife and child!" cried one recklessly, bringing his
point to the thrust. "He dies!"
"He does not die!" exclaimed the King, his voice so ringing through
the room that all fell back once more; fell back not so much because
it was the King who spoke as in obedience to the voice which two
months before had rallied the flying squadrons at Arques, and years
before had rung out hour after hour and day after day above the long
street fight of Cahors. "He does not die!" repeated Henry, looking
from one to another, with his chin thrust out, "I say it. I! And there
are no traitors here!"
"Your majesty," said La Nouë after a moment's pause, "commands our
lives."
"Thanks, Francis," Henry replied instantly changing his tone. "And now
hear me, gentlemen. Think you that it was a light thing in this girl
to give up her lover? She might have let us go to our doom, and we
none the wiser! Would you take her gift and make her no requital? That
were not royal. And now for you, sir"--he turned to Felix who was
leaning half-fainting against the wall--"hearken to me. You shall go
free. I, who this morning played the son to your dead father, give you
your life for your sweetheart's sake. For her sake be true. You shall
go out alive and safe into the streets of Paris, which five minutes
ago you little thought to see again. Go! And if you please, betray
us, and be damned! Only remember that if you give up your king and
these gentlemen who have trusted you, your name shall go down the
centuries--and stand for treachery!"
He spoke the last words with such scorn that a murmur of applause
broke out even among those stern men. He took instant advantage of it.
"Now go!" he said hurriedly. "You can take the girl there with you.
She has but fainted. A kiss will bring her to life. Go, and be
silent."
The man took up his burden and went, trembling; still unable to speak.
But no hand was now raised to stop him.
When he had disappeared La Nouë turned to the king. "You will not now
sleep at Mazeau's, sire?"
Henry rubbed his chin. "Yes; let the plan stand," he answered. "If he
betray one, he shall betray all."
"But this is madness," urged La Nouë.
The king shook his head, and smiling clapped the veteran on the
shoulder. "Not so," he said. "The man is no traitor: I say it. And you
have never met with a longer head than Henry's."
"Never," assented La Nouë bluntly, "save when there is a woman in it!"
The curtain falls. The men have lived and are dead. La Nouë, the
Huguenot Bayard, now exist only in a dusty memoir and a page of
Motley. Madame de Montpensier is forgotten; all of her, save her
golden scissors. Mayenne, D'Aumale, a verse preserves their names.
Only Henry--the "good king" as generations of French peasants called
him--remains a living figure: his strength and weakness, his sins and
virtues, as well known, as thoroughly appreciated by thousands now as
in the days of his life.
Therefore we cannot hope to learn much of the fortunes of people so
insignificant--save for that moment when the fate of a nation hung on
their breath--as the Portails and Tou
|
, sober, Caroline Abbott, who lived two turnings away, was
seeking a companion for a year’s travel. Lilia gave up her house, sold
half her furniture, left the other half and Irma with Mrs. Herriton, and
had now departed, amid universal approval, for a change of scene.
She wrote to them frequently during the winter--more frequently than she
wrote to her mother. Her letters were always prosperous. Florence she
found perfectly sweet, Naples a dream, but very whiffy. In Rome one had
simply to sit still and feel. Philip, however, declared that she was
improving. He was particularly gratified when in the early spring she
began to visit the smaller towns that he had recommended. “In a place
like this,” she wrote, “one really does feel in the heart of things, and
off the beaten track. Looking out of a Gothic window every morning, it
seems impossible that the middle ages have passed away.” The letter was
from Monteriano, and concluded with a not unsuccessful description of
the wonderful little town.
“It is something that she is contented,” said Mrs. Herriton. “But no one
could live three months with Caroline Abbott and not be the better for
it.”
Just then Irma came in from school, and she read her mother’s letter to
her, carefully correcting any grammatical errors, for she was a loyal
supporter of parental authority--Irma listened politely, but soon
changed the subject to hockey, in which her whole being was absorbed.
They were to vote for colours that afternoon--yellow and white or yellow
and green. What did her grandmother think?
Of course Mrs. Herriton had an opinion, which she sedately expounded, in
spite of Harriet, who said that colours were unnecessary for children,
and of Philip, who said that they were ugly. She was getting proud of
Irma, who had certainly greatly improved, and could no longer be called
that most appalling of things--a vulgar child. She was anxious to form
her before her mother returned. So she had no objection to the leisurely
movements of the travellers, and even suggested that they should
overstay their year if it suited them.
Lilia’s next letter was also from Monteriano, and Philip grew quite
enthusiastic.
“They’ve stopped there over a week!” he cried. “Why! I shouldn’t have
done as much myself. They must be really keen, for the hotel’s none too
comfortable.”
“I cannot understand people,” said Harriet. “What can they be doing all
day? And there is no church there, I suppose.”
“There is Santa Deodata, one of the most beautiful churches in Italy.”
“Of course I mean an English church,” said Harriet stiffly. “Lilia
promised me that she would always be in a large town on Sundays.”
“If she goes to a service at Santa Deodata’s, she will find more beauty
and sincerity than there is in all the Back Kitchens of Europe.”
The Back Kitchen was his nickname for St. James’s, a small depressing
edifice much patronized by his sister. She always resented any slight on
it, and Mrs. Herriton had to intervene.
“Now, dears, don’t. Listen to Lilia’s letter. ‘We love this place, and
I do not know how I shall ever thank Philip for telling me it. It is
not only so quaint, but one sees the Italians unspoiled in all their
simplicity and charm here. The frescoes are wonderful. Caroline, who
grows sweeter every day, is very busy sketching.’”
“Every one to his taste!” said Harriet, who always delivered a platitude
as if it was an epigram. She was curiously virulent about Italy, which
she had never visited, her only experience of the Continent being an
occasional six weeks in the Protestant parts of Switzerland.
“Oh, Harriet is a bad lot!” said Philip as soon as she left the room.
His mother laughed, and told him not to be naughty; and the appearance
of Irma, just off to school, prevented further discussion. Not only in
Tracts is a child a peacemaker.
“One moment, Irma,” said her uncle. “I’m going to the station. I’ll give
you the pleasure of my company.”
They started together. Irma was gratified; but conversation flagged,
for Philip had not the art of talking to the young. Mrs. Herriton sat
a little longer at the breakfast table, re-reading Lilia’s letter. Then
she helped the cook to clear, ordered dinner, and started the housemaid
turning out the drawing-room, Tuesday being its day. The weather was
lovely, and she thought she would do a little gardening, as it was quite
early. She called Harriet, who had recovered from the insult to St.
James’s, and together they went to the kitchen garden and began to sow
some early vegetables.
“We will save the peas to the last; they are the greatest fun,” said
Mrs. Herriton, who had the gift of making work a treat. She and her
elderly daughter always got on very well, though they had not a great
deal in common. Harriet’s education had been almost too successful. As
Philip once said, she had “bolted all the cardinal virtues and couldn’t
digest them.” Though pious and patriotic, and a great moral asset for
the house, she lacked that pliancy and tact which her mother so much
valued, and had expected her to pick up for herself. Harriet, if she had
been allowed, would have driven Lilia to an open rupture, and, what was
worse, she would have done the same to Philip two years before, when he
returned full of passion for Italy, and ridiculing Sawston and its ways.
“It’s a shame, Mother!” she had cried. “Philip laughs at everything--the
Book Club, the Debating Society, the Progressive Whist, the bazaars.
People won’t like it. We have our reputation. A house divided against
itself cannot stand.”
Mrs. Herriton replied in the memorable words, “Let Philip say what he
likes, and he will let us do what we like.” And Harriet had acquiesced.
They sowed the duller vegetables first, and a pleasant feeling of
righteous fatigue stole over them as they addressed themselves to the
peas. Harriet stretched a string to guide the row straight, and Mrs.
Herriton scratched a furrow with a pointed stick. At the end of it she
looked at her watch.
“It’s twelve! The second post’s in. Run and see if there are any
letters.”
Harriet did not want to go. “Let’s finish the peas. There won’t be any
letters.”
“No, dear; please go. I’ll sow the peas, but you shall cover them
up--and mind the birds don’t see ‘em!”
Mrs. Herriton was very careful to let those peas trickle evenly from
her hand, and at the end of the row she was conscious that she had never
sown better. They were expensive too.
“Actually old Mrs. Theobald!” said Harriet, returning.
“Read me the letter. My hands are dirty. How intolerable the crested
paper is.”
Harriet opened the envelope.
“I don’t understand,” she said; “it doesn’t make sense.”
“Her letters never did.”
“But it must be sillier than usual,” said Harriet, and her voice began
to quaver. “Look here, read it, Mother; I can’t make head or tail.”
Mrs. Herriton took the letter indulgently. “What is the difficulty?” she
said after a long pause. “What is it that puzzles you in this letter?”
“The meaning--” faltered Harriet. The sparrows hopped nearer and began
to eye the peas.
“The meaning is quite clear--Lilia is engaged to be married. Don’t cry,
dear; please me by not crying--don’t talk at all. It’s more than I could
bear. She is going to marry some one she has met in a hotel. Take the
letter and read for yourself.” Suddenly she broke down over what might
seem a small point. “How dare she not tell me direct! How dare she
write first to Yorkshire! Pray, am I to hear through Mrs. Theobald--a
patronizing, insolent letter like this? Have I no claim at all? Bear
witness, dear”--she choked with passion--“bear witness that for this
I’ll never forgive her!”
“Oh, what is to be done?” moaned Harriet. “What is to be done?”
“This first!” She tore the letter into little pieces and scattered it
over the mould. “Next, a telegram for Lilia! No! a telegram for Miss
Caroline Abbott. She, too, has something to explain.”
“Oh, what is to be done?” repeated Harriet, as she followed her mother
to the house. She was helpless before such effrontery. What awful
thing--what awful person had come to Lilia? “Some one in the hotel.” The
letter only said that. What kind of person? A gentleman? An Englishman?
The letter did not say.
“Wire reason of stay at Monteriano. Strange rumours,” read Mrs.
Herriton, and addressed the telegram to Abbott, Stella d’Italia,
Monteriano, Italy. “If there is an office there,” she added, “we might
get an answer this evening. Since Philip is back at seven, and the
eight-fifteen catches the midnight boat at Dover--Harriet, when you go
with this, get 100 pounds in 5 pound notes at the bank.”
“Go, dear, at once; do not talk. I see Irma coming back; go quickly....
Well, Irma dear, and whose team are you in this afternoon--Miss Edith’s
or Miss May’s?”
But as soon as she had behaved as usual to her grand-daughter, she went
to the library and took out the large atlas, for she wanted to know
about Monteriano. The name was in the smallest print, in the midst of a
woolly-brown tangle of hills which were called the “Sub-Apennines.” It
was not so very far from Siena, which she had learnt at school. Past it
there wandered a thin black line, notched at intervals like a saw,
and she knew that this was a railway. But the map left a good deal to
imagination, and she had not got any. She looked up the place in “Childe
Harold,” but Byron had not been there. Nor did Mark Twain visit it in
the “Tramp Abroad.” The resources of literature were exhausted: she
must wait till Philip came home. And the thought of Philip made her try
Philip’s room, and there she found “Central Italy,” by Baedeker, and
opened it for the first time in her life and read in it as follows:--
MONTERIANO (pop. 4800). Hotels: Stella d’Italia, moderate only; Globo,
dirty. * Caffe Garibaldi. Post and Telegraph office in Corso Vittorio
Emmanuele, next to theatre. Photographs at Seghena’s (cheaper in
Florence). Diligence (1 lira) meets principal trains.
Chief attractions (2-3 hours): Santa Deodata, Palazzo Pubblico, Sant’
Agostino, Santa Caterina, Sant’ Ambrogio, Palazzo Capocchi. Guide
(2 lire) unnecessary. A walk round the Walls should on no account be
omitted. The view from the Rocca (small gratuity) is finest at sunset.
History: Monteriano, the Mons Rianus of Antiquity, whose Ghibelline
tendencies are noted by Dante (Purg. xx.), definitely emancipated itself
from Poggibonsi in 1261. Hence the distich, “POGGIBONIZZI, FAUI IN LA,
CHE MONTERIANO SI FA CITTA!” till recently enscribed over the Siena
gate. It remained independent till 1530, when it was sacked by the Papal
troops and became part of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. It is now of small
importance, and seat of the district prison. The inhabitants are still
noted for their agreeable manners.
*****
The traveller will proceed direct from the Siena gate to the Collegiate
Church of Santa Deodata, and inspect (5th chapel on right) the charming
Frescoes....
Mrs. Herriton did not proceed. She was not one to detect the hidden
charms of Baedeker. Some of the information seemed to her unnecessary,
all of it was dull. Whereas Philip could never read “The view from the
Rocca (small gratuity) is finest at sunset” without a catching at the
heart. Restoring the book to its place, she went downstairs, and looked
up and down the asphalt paths for her daughter. She saw her at last,
two turnings away, vainly trying to shake off Mr. Abbott, Miss Caroline
Abbott’s father. Harriet was always unfortunate. At last she returned,
hot, agitated, crackling with bank-notes, and Irma bounced to greet her,
and trod heavily on her corn.
“Your feet grow larger every day,” said the agonized Harriet, and gave
her niece a violent push. Then Irma cried, and Mrs. Herriton was annoyed
with Harriet for betraying irritation. Lunch was nasty; and during
pudding news arrived that the cook, by sheer dexterity, had broken
a very vital knob off the kitchen-range. “It is too bad,” said Mrs.
Herriton. Irma said it was three bad, and was told not to be rude. After
lunch Harriet would get out Baedeker, and read in injured tones about
Monteriano, the Mons Rianus of Antiquity, till her mother stopped her.
“It’s ridiculous to read, dear. She’s not trying to marry any one in the
place. Some tourist, obviously, who’s stopping in the hotel. The place
has nothing to do with it at all.”
“But what a place to go to! What nice person, too, do you meet in a
hotel?”
“Nice or nasty, as I have told you several times before, is not the
point. Lilia has insulted our family, and she shall suffer for it. And
when you speak against hotels, I think you forget that I met your father
at Chamounix. You can contribute nothing, dear, at present, and I think
you had better hold your tongue. I am going to the kitchen, to speak
about the range.”
She spoke just too much, and the cook said that if she could not give
satisfaction--she had better leave. A small thing at hand is greater
than a great thing remote, and Lilia, misconducting herself upon a
mountain in Central Italy, was immediately hidden. Mrs. Herriton flew to
a registry office, failed; flew to another, failed again; came home,
was told by the housemaid that things seemed so unsettled that she had
better leave as well; had tea, wrote six letters, was interrupted by
cook and housemaid, both weeping, asking her pardon, and imploring to
be taken back. In the flush of victory the door-bell rang, and there was
the telegram: “Lilia engaged to Italian nobility. Writing. Abbott.”
“No answer,” said Mrs. Herriton. “Get down Mr. Philip’s Gladstone from
the attic.”
She would not allow herself to be frightened by the unknown. Indeed
she knew a little now. The man was not an Italian noble, otherwise the
telegram would have said so. It must have been written by Lilia. None
but she would have been guilty of the fatuous vulgarity of “Italian
nobility.” She recalled phrases of this morning’s letter: “We love this
place--Caroline is sweeter than ever, and busy sketching--Italians full
of simplicity and charm.” And the remark of Baedeker, “The inhabitants
are still noted for their agreeable manners,” had a baleful meaning now.
If Mrs. Herriton had no imagination, she had intuition, a more useful
quality, and the picture she made to herself of Lilia’s FIANCE did not
prove altogether wrong.
So Philip was received with the news that he must start in half an hour
for Monteriano. He was in a painful position. For three years he had
sung the praises of the Italians, but he had never contemplated having
one as a relative. He tried to soften the thing down to his mother, but
in his heart of hearts he agreed with her when she said, “The man may
be a duke or he may be an organ-grinder. That is not the point. If Lilia
marries him she insults the memory of Charles, she insults Irma, she
insults us. Therefore I forbid her, and if she disobeys we have done
with her for ever.”
“I will do all I can,” said Philip in a low voice. It was the first time
he had had anything to do. He kissed his mother and sister and puzzled
Irma. The hall was warm and attractive as he looked back into it from
the cold March night, and he departed for Italy reluctantly, as for
something commonplace and dull.
Before Mrs. Herriton went to bed she wrote to Mrs. Theobald, using plain
language about Lilia’s conduct, and hinting that it was a question on
which every one must definitely choose sides. She added, as if it was an
afterthought, that Mrs. Theobald’s letter had arrived that morning.
Just as she was going upstairs she remembered that she never covered
up those peas. It upset her more than anything, and again and again she
struck the banisters with vexation. Late as it was, she got a lantern
from the tool-shed and went down the garden to rake the earth over them.
The sparrows had taken every one. But countless fragments of the letter
remained, disfiguring the tidy ground.
Chapter 2
When the bewildered tourist alights at the station of Monteriano, he
finds himself in the middle of the country. There are a few houses round
the railway, and many more dotted over the plain and the slopes of the
hills, but of a town, mediaeval or otherwise, not the slightest sign. He
must take what is suitably termed a “legno”--a piece of wood--and
drive up eight miles of excellent road into the middle ages. For it is
impossible, as well as sacrilegious, to be as quick as Baedeker.
It was three in the afternoon when Philip left the realms of
commonsense. He was so weary with travelling that he had fallen asleep
in the train. His fellow-passengers had the usual Italian gift of
divination, and when Monteriano came they knew he wanted to go there,
and dropped him out. His feet sank into the hot asphalt of the platform,
and in a dream he watched the train depart, while the porter who ought
to have been carrying his bag, ran up the line playing touch-you-last
with the guard. Alas! he was in no humour for Italy. Bargaining for a
legno bored him unutterably. The man asked six lire; and though Philip
knew that for eight miles it should scarcely be more than four, yet he
was about to give what he was asked, and so make the man discontented
and unhappy for the rest of the day. He was saved from this social
blunder by loud shouts, and looking up the road saw one cracking his
whip and waving his reins and driving two horses furiously, and behind
him there appeared the swaying figure of a woman, holding star-fish
fashion on to anything she could touch. It was Miss Abbott, who had just
received his letter from Milan announcing the time of his arrival, and
had hurried down to meet him.
He had known Miss Abbott for years, and had never had much opinion about
her one way or the other. She was good, quiet, dull, and amiable,
and young only because she was twenty-three: there was nothing in her
appearance or manner to suggest the fire of youth. All her life had
been spent at Sawston with a dull and amiable father, and her pleasant,
pallid face, bent on some respectable charity, was a familiar object
of the Sawston streets. Why she had ever wished to leave them was
surprising; but as she truly said, “I am John Bull to the backbone, yet
I do want to see Italy, just once. Everybody says it is marvellous, and
that one gets no idea of it from books at all.” The curate suggested
that a year was a long time; and Miss Abbott, with decorous playfulness,
answered him, “Oh, but you must let me have my fling! I promise to have
it once, and once only. It will give me things to think about and talk
about for the rest of my life.” The curate had consented; so had Mr.
Abbott. And here she was in a legno, solitary, dusty, frightened, with
as much to answer and to answer for as the most dashing adventuress
could desire.
They shook hands without speaking. She made room for Philip and his
luggage amidst the loud indignation of the unsuccessful driver, whom it
required the combined eloquence of the station-master and the station
beggar to confute. The silence was prolonged until they started. For
three days he had been considering what he should do, and still more
what he should say. He had invented a dozen imaginary conversations, in
all of which his logic and eloquence procured him certain victory. But
how to begin? He was in the enemy’s country, and everything--the hot
sun, the cold air behind the heat, the endless rows of olive-trees,
regular yet mysterious--seemed hostile to the placid atmosphere of
Sawston in which his thoughts took birth. At the outset he made one
great concession. If the match was really suitable, and Lilia were bent
on it, he would give in, and trust to his influence with his mother to
set things right. He would not have made the concession in England;
but here in Italy, Lilia, however wilful and silly, was at all events
growing to be a human being.
“Are we to talk it over now?” he asked.
“Certainly, please,” said Miss Abbott, in great agitation. “If you will
be so very kind.”
“Then how long has she been engaged?”
Her face was that of a perfect fool--a fool in terror.
“A short time--quite a short time,” she stammered, as if the shortness
of the time would reassure him.
“I should like to know how long, if you can remember.”
She entered into elaborate calculations on her fingers. “Exactly eleven
days,” she said at last.
“How long have you been here?”
More calculations, while he tapped irritably with his foot. “Close on
three weeks.”
“Did you know him before you came?”
“No.”
“Oh! Who is he?”
“A native of the place.”
The second silence took place. They had left the plain now and
were climbing up the outposts of the hills, the olive-trees still
accompanying. The driver, a jolly fat man, had got out to ease the
horses, and was walking by the side of the carriage.
“I understood they met at the hotel.”
“It was a mistake of Mrs. Theobald’s.”
“I also understand that he is a member of the Italian nobility.”
She did not reply.
“May I be told his name?”
Miss Abbott whispered, “Carella.” But the driver heard her, and a grin
split over his face. The engagement must be known already.
“Carella? Conte or Marchese, or what?”
“Signor,” said Miss Abbott, and looked helplessly aside.
“Perhaps I bore you with these questions. If so, I will stop.”
“Oh, no, please; not at all. I am here--my own idea--to give all
information which you very naturally--and to see if somehow--please ask
anything you like.”
“Then how old is he?”
“Oh, quite young. Twenty-one, I believe.”
There burst from Philip the exclamation, “Good Lord!”
“One would never believe it,” said Miss Abbott, flushing. “He looks much
older.”
“And is he good-looking?” he asked, with gathering sarcasm.
She became decisive. “Very good-looking. All his features are good, and
he is well built--though I dare say English standards would find him too
short.”
Philip, whose one physical advantage was his height, felt annoyed at her
implied indifference to it.
“May I conclude that you like him?”
She replied decisively again, “As far as I have seen him, I do.”
At that moment the carriage entered a little wood, which lay brown and
sombre across the cultivated hill. The trees of the wood were small and
leafless, but noticeable for this--that their stems stood in violets as
rocks stand in the summer sea. There are such violets in England,
but not so many. Nor are there so many in Art, for no painter has the
courage. The cart-ruts were channels, the hollow lagoons; even the
dry white margin of the road was splashed, like a causeway soon to be
submerged under the advancing tide of spring. Philip paid no attention
at the time: he was thinking what to say next. But his eyes had
registered the beauty, and next March he did not forget that the road to
Monteriano must traverse innumerable flowers.
“As far as I have seen him, I do like him,” repeated Miss Abbott, after
a pause.
He thought she sounded a little defiant, and crushed her at once.
“What is he, please? You haven’t told me that. What’s his position?”
She opened her mouth to speak, and no sound came from it. Philip waited
patiently. She tried to be audacious, and failed pitiably.
“No position at all. He is kicking his heels, as my father would say.
You see, he has only just finished his military service.”
“As a private?”
“I suppose so. There is general conscription. He was in the Bersaglieri,
I think. Isn’t that the crack regiment?”
“The men in it must be short and broad. They must also be able to walk
six miles an hour.”
She looked at him wildly, not understanding all that he said, but
feeling that he was very clever. Then she continued her defence of
Signor Carella.
“And now, like most young men, he is looking out for something to do.”
“Meanwhile?”
“Meanwhile, like most young men, he lives with his people--father,
mother, two sisters, and a tiny tot of a brother.”
There was a grating sprightliness about her that drove him nearly mad.
He determined to silence her at last.
“One more question, and only one more. What is his father?”
“His father,” said Miss Abbott. “Well, I don’t suppose you’ll think it
a good match. But that’s not the point. I mean the point is not--I mean
that social differences--love, after all--not but what--I--”
Philip ground his teeth together and said nothing.
“Gentlemen sometimes judge hardly. But I feel that you, and at
all events your mother--so really good in every sense, so really
unworldly--after all, love-marriages are made in heaven.”
“Yes, Miss Abbott, I know. But I am anxious to hear heaven’s choice. You
arouse my curiosity. Is my sister-in-law to marry an angel?”
“Mr. Herriton, don’t--please, Mr. Herriton--a dentist. His father’s a
dentist.”
Philip gave a cry of personal disgust and pain. He shuddered all over,
and edged away from his companion. A dentist! A dentist at Monteriano. A
dentist in fairyland! False teeth and laughing gas and the tilting
chair at a place which knew the Etruscan League, and the Pax Romana,
and Alaric himself, and the Countess Matilda, and the Middle Ages, all
fighting and holiness, and the Renaissance, all fighting and beauty! He
thought of Lilia no longer. He was anxious for himself: he feared that
Romance might die.
Romance only dies with life. No pair of pincers will ever pull it out of
us. But there is a spurious sentiment which cannot resist the unexpected
and the incongruous and the grotesque. A touch will loosen it, and the
sooner it goes from us the better. It was going from Philip now, and
therefore he gave the cry of pain.
“I cannot think what is in the air,” he began. “If Lilia was determined
to disgrace us, she might have found a less repulsive way. A boy of
medium height with a pretty face, the son of a dentist at Monteriano.
Have I put it correctly? May I surmise that he has not got one penny?
May I also surmise that his social position is nil? Furthermore--”
“Stop! I’ll tell you no more.”
“Really, Miss Abbott, it is a little late for reticence. You have
equipped me admirably!”
“I’ll tell you not another word!” she cried, with a spasm of terror.
Then she got out her handkerchief, and seemed as if she would shed
tears. After a silence, which he intended to symbolize to her the
dropping of a curtain on the scene, he began to talk of other subjects.
They were among olives again, and the wood with its beauty and wildness
had passed away. But as they climbed higher the country opened out, and
there appeared, high on a hill to the right, Monteriano. The hazy green
of the olives rose up to its walls, and it seemed to float in isolation
between trees and sky, like some fantastic ship city of a dream. Its
colour was brown, and it revealed not a single house--nothing but the
narrow circle of the walls, and behind them seventeen towers--all that
was left of the fifty-two that had filled the city in her prime. Some
were only stumps, some were inclining stiffly to their fall, some were
still erect, piercing like masts into the blue. It was impossible to
praise it as beautiful, but it was also impossible to damn it as quaint.
Meanwhile Philip talked continually, thinking this to be great evidence
of resource and tact. It showed Miss Abbott that he had probed her to
the bottom, but was able to conquer his disgust, and by sheer force of
intellect continue to be as agreeable and amusing as ever. He did not
know that he talked a good deal of nonsense, and that the sheer force
of his intellect was weakened by the sight of Monteriano, and by the
thought of dentistry within those walls.
The town above them swung to the left, to the right, to the left again,
as the road wound upward through the trees, and the towers began to glow
in the descending sun. As they drew near, Philip saw the heads of people
gathering black upon the walls, and he knew well what was happening--how
the news was spreading that a stranger was in sight, and the beggars
were aroused from their content and bid to adjust their deformities; how
the alabaster man was running for his wares, and the Authorized Guide
running for his peaked cap and his two cards of recommendation--one from
Miss M’Gee, Maida Vale, the other, less valuable, from an Equerry to the
Queen of Peru; how some one else was running to tell the landlady of the
Stella d’Italia to put on her pearl necklace and brown boots and empty
the slops from the spare bedroom; and how the landlady was running to
tell Lilia and her boy that their fate was at hand.
Perhaps it was a pity Philip had talked so profusely. He had driven
Miss Abbott half demented, but he had given himself no time to concert
a plan. The end came so suddenly. They emerged from the trees on to the
terrace before the walk, with the vision of half Tuscany radiant in the
sun behind them, and then they turned in through the Siena gate, and
their journey was over. The Dogana men admitted them with an air of
gracious welcome, and they clattered up the narrow dark street, greeted
by that mixture of curiosity and kindness which makes each Italian
arrival so wonderful.
He was stunned and knew not what to do. At the hotel he received no
ordinary reception. The landlady wrung him by the hand; one person
snatched his umbrella, another his bag; people pushed each other out of
his way. The entrance seemed blocked with a crowd. Dogs were barking,
bladder whistles being blown, women waving their handkerchiefs, excited
children screaming on the stairs, and at the top of the stairs was Lilia
herself, very radiant, with her best blouse on.
“Welcome!” she cried. “Welcome to Monteriano!” He greeted her, for he
did not know what else to do, and a sympathetic murmur rose from the
crowd below.
“You told me to come here,” she continued, “and I don’t forget it. Let
me introduce Signor Carella!”
Philip discerned in the corner behind her a young man who might
eventually prove handsome and well-made, but certainly did not seem so
then. He was half enveloped in the drapery of a cold dirty curtain, and
nervously stuck out a hand, which Philip took and found thick and damp.
There were more murmurs of approval from the stairs.
“Well, din-din’s nearly ready,” said Lilia. “Your room’s down the
passage, Philip. You needn’t go changing.”
He stumbled away to wash his hands, utterly crushed by her effrontery.
“Dear Caroline!” whispered Lilia as soon as he had gone. “What an angel
you’ve been to tell him! He takes it so well. But you must have had a
MAUVAIS QUART D’HEURE.”
Miss Abbott’s long terror suddenly turned into acidity. “I’ve told
nothing,” she snapped. “It’s all for you--and if it only takes a quarter
of an hour you’ll be lucky!”
Dinner was a nightmare. They had the smelly dining-room to themselves.
Lilia, very smart and vociferous, was at the head of the table; Miss
Abbott, also in her best, sat by Philip, looking, to his irritated
nerves, more like the tragedy confidante every moment. That scion of the
Italian nobility, Signor Carella, sat opposite. Behind him loomed a bowl
of goldfish, who swam round and round, gaping at the guests.
The face of Signor Carella was twitching too much for Philip to study
it. But he could see the hands, which were not particularly clean, and
did not get cleaner by fidgeting amongst the shining slabs of hair.
His starched cuffs were not clean either, and as for his suit, it had
obviously been bought for the occasion as something really English--a
gigantic check, which did not even fit. His handkerchief he had
forgotten, but never missed it. Altogether, he was quite unpresentable,
and very lucky to have a father who was a dentist in Monteriano. And
why, even Lilia--But as soon as the meal began it furnished Philip with
an explanation.
For the youth was hungry, and his lady filled his plate with spaghetti,
and when those delicious slippery worms were flying down his throat, his
face relaxed and became for a moment unconscious and calm. And Philip
had seen that face before in Italy a hundred times--seen it and loved
it, for it was not merely beautiful, but had the charm which is the
rightful heritage of all who are born on that soil. But he did not want
to see it opposite him at dinner. It was not the face of a gentleman.
Conversation, to give it that name, was carried on in a mixture of
English and Italian. Lilia had picked up hardly any of the latter
language, and Signor Carella had not yet learnt any of the former.
Occasionally Miss Abbott had to act as interpreter between the lovers,
and the situation became uncouth and revolting in the extreme. Yet
Philip was too cowardly to break forth and denounce the engagement. He
thought he should be more effective with Lilia if he had her alone,
and pretended to himself that he must hear her defence before giving
judgment.
Signor Carella, heartened by the spaghetti and the throat-rasping wine,
attempted to talk, and, looking politely towards Philip, said, “England
is a great country. The Italians love England and the English.”
Philip, in no mood for international amenities, merely bowed.
“Italy too,” the other continued a little resentfully, “is a great
country. She has produced many famous men--for example Garibaldi and
Dante. The latter wrote the ‘Inferno,’ the ‘Purgatorio,’ the ‘Paradiso.’
The ‘Inferno’ is the most beautiful.” And with the complacent tone of
one who has received a solid education, he quoted the opening lines--
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
Che la diritta via era smarrita--
a quotation which
|
number of books that have been processed through Distributed Proofreaders
has grown fast, with a total of 3,000 books in February 2004, 5,000 books in
October 2004 and 7,000 books in May 2005, 8,000 books in February 2006 and
10,000 books in March 2007, with five books produced per day and 52,000
volunteers in December 2007.
From the website one can access a program that allows several proofreaders to be
working on the same book at the same time, each proofreading on different pages.
This significantly speeds up the proofreading process. Volunteers register and
receive detailed instructions. For example, words in bold, italic or underlined,
or footnotes are always treated the same way for any book. A discussion forum
allows them to ask questions or seek help at any time. A project manager
oversees the progress of a particular book through its different steps on the
website.
The website gives a full list of the books that are: a) completed, i.e.
processed through the site and posted to Project Gutenberg; b) in progress, i.e.
processed through the site but not yet posted, because currently going through
their final proofreading and assembly; c) being proofread, i.e. currently being
processed. On August 3, 2005, 7,639 books were completed, 1,250 books were in
progress and 831 books were being proofread. On May 1st, 2008, 13,039 books were
completed, 1,840 books were in progress and 1,000 books were being proofread.
Each time a volunteer (proofreader) goes to the website, s/he chooses a book,
any book. One page of the book appears in two forms side by side: the scanned
image of one page and the text from that image (as produced by OCR software).
The proofreader can easily compare both versions, note the differences and fix
them. OCR is usually 99% accurate, which makes for about 10 corrections a page.
The proofreader saves each page as it is completed and can then either stop work
or do another. The books are proofread twice, and the second time only by
experienced proofreaders. All the pages of the book are then formatted, combined
and assembled by post-processors to make an eBook. The eBook is now ready to be
posted with an index entry (title, subtitle, author, eBook number and character
set) for the database. Indexers go on with the cataloging process (author's
dates of birth and death, Library of Congress classification, etc.) after the
release.
Volunteers can also work independently, after contacting Project Gutenberg
directly, by keying in a book they particularly like using any text editor or
word processor. They can also scan it and convert it into text using OCR
software, and then make corrections by comparing it with the original. In each
case, someone else will proofread it. They can use ASCII and any other format.
Everybody is welcome, whatever the method and whatever the format.
New volunteers are most welcome too at Distributed Proofreaders (DP),
Distributed Proofreaders Europe (DP Europe) and Distributed Proofreaders Canada
(DPC). Any volunteer anywhere is welcome, for any language. There is a lot to
do. As stated on both websites, "Remember that there is no commitment expected
on this site. Proofread as often or as seldom as you like, and as many or as few
pages as you like. We encourage people to do 'a page a day', but it's entirely
up to you! We hope you will join us in our mission of 'preserving the literary
history of the world in a freely available form for everyone to use'."
5. BECOMING MULTILINGUAL
What about languages? First Project Gutenberg's books are mostly in English. As
it has been based in the United States since 1971, it has focused on the
English-speaking community in the country and worldwide. Multilingualism started
in 1997.
In October 1997, Michael Hart expressed his intention to include books in other
languages. At the beginning of 1998, the catalog had a few titles in French (10
titles), German, Italian, Spanish and Latin. In July 1999, Michael wrote: "I am
publishing in one new language per month right now, and will continue as long as
possible."
In February 2004, there were works in 25 languages. In July 2005, there were
works in 42 languages, including Iroquoian, Sanskrit and the Mayan languages.
The seven main languages -- with more than 50 books -- were English, French,
German, Finnish, Dutch, Spanish and Chinese. In December 2006, there were books
in 50 languages. They were ten main languages, the above ones plus Italian,
Portuguese and Tagalog. In April 2008, there were books in 55 languages, with
eleven main languages, the above ones plus Latin. Esperanto was not far with 45
books, and Swedish followed with 40 books.
French is the second main language after English. On February 13, 2004, there
were 181 books in French (out of a total of 11,340 books). On May 16, 2005,
there were 547 books in French (out of a total of 15,505 books). The number
tripled in 15 months. On July 27, 2005, there were 577 books in French (out of a
total of 16,800 books). On December 16, 2006, there were 966 books in French
(out of a total of 19,996 books). On April 21, 2008, there were 1,168 books in
French (out of a total of 25,004 books). The number of French books is expected
to rise significantly in a few years, when Project Gutenberg Europe will run at
full speed.
What were the first books posted in French? They were six novels by Stendhal and
two novels by Jules Verne, all released in early 1997. The six novels by
Stendhal were: L'Abbesse de Castro, Les Cenci, La Chartreuse de Parme, La
Duchesse de Palliano, Le Rouge et le Noir and Vittoria Accoramboni. The two
novels by Jules Verne were: De la terre à la lune and Le tour du monde en
quatre-vingts jours. In early 1997, whereas Project Gutenberg offered no English
version of any of Stendhal's writings (yet), three of Jules Verne's novels were
available in English: 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas (original title: Vingt mille
lieues sous les mers), posted in September 1994; Around the World in 80 Days
(original title: Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours), posted in January
1994 and From the Earth to the Moon (original title: De la terre à la lune),
posted in September 1993. Stendhal and Jules Verne were followed by Edmond
Rostand with Cyrano de Bergerac, posted in March 1998.
In late 1999, the "Top 20" --the 20 most downloaded authors-- included Jules
Verne at 11 and Emile Zola at 16. They still have a very good ranking in the
present "Top 100".
As a side remark, the first "images" ever made available by Project Gutenberg
were French Cave Paintings, posted in April 1995, with an XHTML version posted
in November 2000. This book contains four photos of paleolithic paintings found
in a grotto located in Ardèche, a region of south-eastern France. These photos,
which are copyrighted, were made available to Project Gutenberg thanks to Jean
Clottes, a French general curator for cultural heritage (conservateur général du
patrimoine), for everyone to enjoy them.
In 2004, multilingualism became one of the priorities of Project Gutenberg, like
internationalization. Michael Hart went off to Europe, with stops in Paris,
Brussels and Belgrade. He gave a lecture on February 12, 2004 at UNESCO (United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) headquarters in
Paris. He chaired a discussion at the French National Assembly on February 13.
The following week, he addressed the European Parliament, in Brussels. He also
met with the team of Project Rastko, in Belgrade, to support the creation of
Distributed Proofreaders Europe (launched in December 2003) and Project
Gutenberg Europe (launched in January 2004).
The launching of Distributed Proofreaders Europe (DP Europe) by Project Rastko
was indeed a very important step. DP Europe uses the software of the original
Distributed Proofreaders and is dedicated to the proofreading of books for
Project Gutenberg Europe. Since its very beginnings, DP Europe has been a
multilingual website, with its main pages translated into several European
languages by volunteer translators. DP Europe was available in 12 languages in
April 2004 and 22 languages in May 2008.
The long-term goal is 60 languages and 60 linguistic teams representing all the
European languages. When it gets up to speed, DP Europe will provide books for
several national and/or linguistic digital libraries, for example Projet
Gutenberg France for France. The goal is for every country to have its own
digital library (according to the country copyright limitations), within a
continental network (for France, the European network) and a global network (for
the whole planet).
A few lines now on Project Rastko, which launched such a difficult and exciting
project for Europe, and catalysed volunteers' energy in both Eastern and Western
Europe (and anywhere else: as the internet has no boundaries, there is no need
to live in Europe to register). Founded in 1997, Project Rastko is a
non-governmental cultural and educational project. One of its goals is the
online publishing of Serbian culture. It is part of the Balkans Cultural Network
Initiative, a regional cultural network for the Balkan peninsula in
south-eastern Europe.
In May 2005, Distributed Proofreaders Europe finished processing its 100th
eBook. In June 2005 Project Gutenberg Europe was launched with these first 100
books. PG Europe operates under "life +50" copyright laws. DP Europe supports
Unicode to be able to proofread books in numerous languages. Created in 1991 and
widely used since 1998, Unicode is an encoding system that gives a unique number
for every character in any language, contrary to the much older ASCII that was
meant only for English and a few European languages.
On August 3, 2005, 137 books were completed (processed through the site and
posted to Project Gutenberg Europe), 418 books were in progress (processed
through the site but not yet posted, because currently going through their final
proofreading and assembly), and 125 books were being proofread (currently being
processed). On May 10th, 2008, 496 books were completed, 653 books were in
progress and 91 books were being proofread.
6. PUBLIC DOMAIN VS. COPYRIGHT
As stated in the Project Gutenberg FAQ, "the public domain is the set of
cultural works that are free of copyright, and belong to everyone equally", i.e.
that books that can be digitized to be freely available on the internet. But the
task of Project Gutenberg isn't made any easier by the increasing restrictions
to the public domain. In former times, 50% of works belonged to the public
domain, and could be freely used by everybody. A much tougher legislation was
set in place over the centuries, step by step, especially during the 20th
century, despite our so-called "information society". In 2100, 99% of works
might be governed by copyright, with a meager 1% for public domain.
In the Copyright HowTo section, Project Gutenberg presents its own rules for
confirming the public domain status of books according to US copyright laws.
Here is a summary. Works published before 1923 entered the public domain no
later than 75 years from the copyright date. (All these works are now in the
public domain.) Works published between 1923 and 1977 retain copyright for 95
years. (No such works will enter the public domain until 2019.) Works created
from 1978 on enter the public domain 70 years after the death of the author if
the author is a natural person. (Nothing will enter the public domain until
2049.) Works created from 1978 on enter the public domain 95 years after
publication (or 120 years after creation) if the author is a corporate one.
(Nothing will enter the public domain until 2074.) Other rules apply too. The
copyright law was amended 11 times between 1976 and now.
Much more restrictive than the previous one, the current legislation became
effective after the promulgation of amendments to the 1976 Copyright Act, dated
October 27th, 1998. As explained by Michael Hart in July 1999: "Nothing will
expire for another 20 years. We used to have to wait 75 years. Now it is 95
years. And it was 28 years (+ a possible 28 year extension, only on request)
before that, and 14 years (+ a possible 14 year extension) before that. So, as
you can see, this is a serious degrading of the public domain, as a matter of
continuing policy."
These amendments were a major blow for digital libraries and deeply shocked
their founders, beginning with Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg in
1971, and John Mark Ockerbloom, founder of The Online Books Page in 1993. But
how were they to measure up to the major publishing companies?
Michael wrote in July 1999: "No one has said more against copyright extensions
than I have, but Hollywood and the big publishers have seen to it that our
Congress won't even mention it in public. The kind of copyright debate going on
is totally impractical. It is run by and for the 'Landed Gentry of the
Information Age.' 'Information Age'? For whom?"
John wrote in August 1999: "I think it's important for people on the web to
understand that copyright is a social contract that's designed for the public
good -- where the public includes both authors and readers. This means that
authors should have the right to exclusive use of their creative works for
limited times, as is expressed in current copyright law. But it also means that
their readers have the right to copy and reuse the work at will once copyright
expires. In the US now, there are various efforts to take rights away from
readers, by restricting fair use, lengthening copyright terms (even with some
proposals to make them perpetual) and extending intellectual property to cover
facts separate from creative works (such as found in the "database copyright"
proposals). There are even proposals to effectively replace copyright law
altogether with potentially much more onerous contract law."
The political authorities continually speak about an information age while
tightening the laws relating to the dissemination of information. The
contradiction is obvious. This problem has also affected Australia (forcing
Project Gutenberg of Australia to withdraw dozens of books from its collections)
and several European countries. In a number of countries, the rule is now life
of the author plus 70 years, instead of life plus 50 years, following pressure
from content owners, with the subsequent "harmonization" of national copyright
laws as a response to the "globalization of the market".
But there is still hope for some books published after 1923. According to Greg
Newby, director of PGLAF (Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation), one
million books published between 1923 and 1964 could also belong to the public
domain, because only 10% of copyrights were actually renewed. Project Gutenberg
tries to locate these books. In April 2004, with the help of hundreds of
volunteers at Distributed Proofreaders, all Copyright Renewal records were
posted for books from 1950 through 1977. So, if a given book published during
this period is not on the list, it means the copyright was not renewed, and the
book fell into the public domain. In April 2007, Stanford University used this
data to create a Copyright Renewal Database, searchable by title, author,
copyright date and copyright renewal date.
7. FROM THE PAST TO THE FUTURE
The bet made by Michael Hart in 1971 succeeded. Project Gutenberg counted 10
books online in August 1989; 100 books in January 1994; 1,000 books in August
1997; 2,000 books in May 1999; 3,000 books in December 2000; 4,000 books in
October 2001; 5,000 books in April 2002; 10,000 books in October 2003; 15,000
books in January 2005; 20,000 books in December 2006 and 25,000 books in April
2008.
But Project Gutenberg's results are not only measured in numbers, which can't
compete yet with the number of print books in the public domain. The results
also include the major influence that the project has had. As the oldest
producer of free books on the internet, Project Gutenberg has inspired many
other digital libraries, for example Projekt Gutenberg-DE for classic German
literature and Projekt Runeberg for classic Nordic (Scandinavian) literature, to
name only two, which started respectively in 1992 and 1994.
Project Gutenberg keeps its administrative and financial structure to the bare
minimum. Its motto fits into three words: "Less is more". The minimal rules give
much space to volunteers and to new ideas. The goal is to ensure its
independence from loans and other funding and from ephemeral cultural
priorities, to avoid pressure from politicians or economic interests. The aim is
also to ensure respect for the volunteers, who can be confident their work will
be used not just for decades but for centuries. Volunteers can network through
mailing lists, weekly or monthly newsletters, discussion lists, wikis and
forums.
Donations are used to buy equipment and supplies, mostly computers and scanners.
Founded in 2000, the PGLAF (Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation) has
only three part-time employees.
More generally, Michael should be given more credit as the real inventor of the
electronic book (eBook). If we consider the eBook in its etymological sense,
that is to say a book that has been digitized to be distributed as an electronic
file, it is now 37 years old and was born with Project Gutenberg in July 1971.
This is a much more comforting paternity than the various commercial launchings
in proprietary formats that peppered the early 2000s. There is no reason for the
term "eBook" to be the monopoly of Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and others. The
non-commercial eBook is a full eBook, and not a "poor" version, just as
non-commercial electronic publishing is a fully-fledged way of publishing, and
as valuable as commercial electronic publishing. Project Gutenberg eTexts are
now called eBooks, to use the recent terminology in the field.
In July 1971, sending a 5K file to 100 people would have crashed the network of
the time. In November 2002, Project Gutenberg could post the 75 files of the
Human Genome Project, with files of dozens or hundreds of megabytes, shortly
after its initial release in February 2001, because it was public domain. In
2004, a computer hard disk costing US$140 could potentially hold the entire
Library of Congress. And we probably are only a few years away from a storage
disk capable of holding all the print media of our planet.
What about documents other than text? In September 2003, Project Gutenberg
launched Project Gutenberg Audio eBooks. As of December 2006, there are 367
computer-generated audio books and 132 human-read audio books. The number of
human-read books should greatly increase over the next few years. There were 412
books in May 2008. As for computer-generated books, they won't be stored in a
specific section any more, but "converted" when requested from the existing
electronic files in the main collections. Voice-activated requests will be
possible, as a useful tool for visually impaired readers.
Launched at the same time, The Sheet Music Subproject is dedicated to digitized
music sheet. It also contains a few music recordings. Some still pictures and
moving pictures are also available. These new collections should take off in the
future.
But digitizing books remains the priority, and there is a big demand, as
confirmed by the tens of thousands of books that are downloaded every day. For
example, on July 31, 2005, there were 37,532 downloads for the day, 243,808
downloads for the week, and 1,154,765 downloads for the month. On May 6, 2007,
there were 89,841 downloads for the day, 697,818 downloads for the week, and
2,995,436 downloads for the month. A few days later, the number of downloads for
the month hit the landmark of 3 million downloads. On May 8, 2008, there were
115,138 downloads for the day, 714,323 downloads for the week, and 3,055,327
downloads for the month. This only for transfers from ibiblio.org (University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill), the main book distribution site (which also
hosts the website). The Internet Archive is the backup distribution site and
provides unlimited disk space for storage and processing.
Project Gutenberg has 40 mirror sites in many countries and is looking for new
ones. It also encourages the use of P2P for sharing its books.
The "Top 100" lists the top 100 books and the top 100 authors for the previous
day, the last 7 days and the last 30 days.
Project Gutenberg books can also help bridge the "digital divide." They can be
read on a computer or a secondhand PDA costing just a few dollars. Solar-powered
PDAs offer a good solution in remote regions and developing countries.
Later on, it is hoped machine translation software will be able to convert the
books from one to another of 100 languages. In ten years from now, it is
possible that machine translation will be judged 99% satisfactory (research is
very active on that front, but there is still a lot to do), allowing for the
reading of literary classics in a choice of many languages. In 2004, Project
Gutenberg was in touch with a European project studying how to combine
translation software and human translators, somewhat as OCR software is now
combined with the work of proofreaders.
37 years after the beginnings of Project Gutenberg, Michael Hart describes
himself as a workaholic who devotes his entire life to his project, because he
thinks electronic books will become the "killer ap(plication)" of the computer
revolution. He considers himself a pragmatic and farsighted altruist. For years
he was regarded as a nut but now he is respected. He wants to change the world
through freely-available books that can be used and copied endlessly. Reading
and culture for everyone at minimal cost. Project Gutenberg's mission can be
stated in eight words: "To encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks,"
by everybody, and by every possible means. While implementing new ideas, new
methods and new software.
According to him, there might be 25 million books belonging to public domain in
the main regional and national libraries in the world, without counting various
editions. If Gutenberg allowed everyone to get print books at little cost,
Project Gutenberg could allow everyone to get a library of electronic books at
no cost on a cheap device like a USB drive. So far, in April 2008, 25,000
high-quality books were available for free.
Let us give the last word to Michael, whom I asked in August 1998: "What is your
best experience with the internet?" His answer was: "The notes I get that tell
me people appreciate that I have spent my life putting books, etc., on the
internet. Some are quite touching, and can make my whole day." Ten years later,
he confirms that his answer would still be the same.
8. CHRONOLOGY
[*1971/07 = year/month]
1971/07: Michael Hart keyed in The United States Declaration of Independence
(eBook #1) and informed the first 100 internet users. Project Gutenberg was
born.
1972: He keyed in The United States Bill of Rights (eBook #2).
1973: He keyed in The United States Constitution (eBook #5).
1974-88: He keyed in parts of the Bible and several works of Shakespeare.
1989/08: The King James Bible (eBook #10).
1991/01: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Caroll (eBook #11).
1991/06: Peter Pan, by James Barrie (eBook #16).
1991: Digitization of one book per month.
1992: Digitization of two books per month.
1993: Digitization of four books per month.
1993/12: Creation of three main sections: Light Literature, Heavy Literature,
Reference Literature.
1994: Digitization of eight books per month.
1994/01: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (eBook #100).
1995: Digitization of 16 books per month.
1996-97: Digitization of 32 books per month.
1997/08: La Divina Commedia di Dante, in Italian (eBook #1000).
1997: Launching of Project Gutenberg Consortia Center (PGCC).
1998-2000: Digitization of 36 books per month.
1999/05: Don Quijote, by Cervantès, in Spanish (eBook #2000).
2000: Creation of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (PGLAF).
2000/10: Charles Franks started Distributed Proofreaders to assist Project
Gutenberg.
2000/12: A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, 3rd volume, by Proust, in French
(eBook #3000).
2001/08: Creation of Project Gutenberg of Australia.
2001/10: The French Immortals Series (eBook #4000).
2001: Digitization of 104 books per month.
2001: Distributed Proofreaders became the main source of Project Gutenberg
books.
2002: Distributed Proofreaders became an official Project Gutenberg site.
2002/04: The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (eBook #5000).
2002: Digitization of 203 books per month.
2003/08: "Best of Gutenberg" CD with 600 books.
2003/09: Launching of Project Gutenberg Audio eBooks.
2003/10: The number of books doubled in 18 months, going from 5,000 to 10,000.
2003/10: The Magna Carta (eBook #10000).
2003/12: First DVD, with 9,400 books.
2003: Digitization of 348 books per month.
2003: Project Gutenberg Consortia Center (PGCC) became an official Project
Gutenberg site.
2003/12: Launching of Distributed Proofreaders Europe by Project Rastko.
2004/01: Launching of Project Gutenberg Europe by Project Rastko.
2004/02: Michael Hart went off to Europe (Paris, Brussels, Belgrade).
2004/02: Michael Hart's presentation at UNESCO headquarters, in Paris.
2004/02: Michael Hart's visit to the European Parliament, in Brussels.
2004/10: 5,000 books processed by Distributed Proofreaders.
2004: Digitization of 338 books per month.
2005/01: The Life of Reason, by George Santayana (eBook #15000).
2005/05: 7,000 books processed by Distributed Proofreaders.
2005/05: First 100 books processed by Distributed Proofreaders Europe.
2005/06: 16,000 books in Project Gutenberg.
2005/06: First 100 books in Project Gutenberg Europe.
2005/07: 500 books at Project Gutenberg of Australia.
2005/10: 5th anniversary of Distributed Proofreaders.
2005: Digitization of 252 books per month.
2006/01: Launching of Project Gutenberg PrePrints.
2006/02: 8,000 books processed by Distributed Proofreaders.
2006/05: Creation of the Distributed Proofreaders Foundation.
2006/07: 35th anniversary of Project Gutenberg.
2006/07: New DVD, with 17,000 books.
2006/11: Launching of the Project Gutenberg News website.
2006/12: 20,000 books in Project Gutenberg.
2006/12: 400 books processed by Distributed Proofreaders Europe.
2006: Digitization of 345 books per month.
2007/03: 10,000 books processed by Distributed Proofreaders.
2007/04: 1,500 books in Project Gutenberg of Australia.
2007/07: Creation of Project Gutenberg Canada (PGC).
2007/12: Launching of Distributed Proofreaders of Canada (DPC).
2007: Digitization of 338 books per month.
2008/03: 100 books in Project Gutenberg of Canada.
2008/04: 25,000 books in Project Gutenberg.
2008/04: English Book Collectors, by William Younger Fletcher (eBook #25000).
2008/05: 500 books in Project Gutenberg Europe.
9. STATS
*All the stats below are the main Project Gutenberg stats. Stats about other
Project Gutenberg sites (Australia, Canada, Europe) are provided in Project
Gutenberg News.
= A Few Milestones
1,000 books in August 1997.
2,000 books in May 1999.
3,000 books in December 2000.
4,000 books in October 2001.
5,000 books in April 2002.
10,000 books in October 2003.
15,000 books in January 2005.
20,000 books in December 2006.
25,000 books in April 2008.
= New Books: Yearly Averages
2001: 1,244 books per year.
2002: 2,432 books per year.
2003: 4,176 books per year.
2004: 4,058 books per year.
2005: 3,019 books per year.
2006: 4,141 books per year.
2007: 4,049 books per year.
= New Books: Monthly Averages
2001: 104 books per month.
2002: 203 books per month.
2003: 348 books per month.
2004: 338 books per month.
2005: 252 books per month.
2006: 345 books per month.
2007: 338 books per month.
= New Books: Weekly Averages
2001: 24 books per week.
2002: 47 books per week.
2003: 79 books per week.
2004: 78 books per week.
2005: 58 books per week.
2006: 80 books per week.
2007: 78 books per week.
= A Few eBooks
eBook #1: The United States Declaration of Independence (1776) [posted in July
1971].
eBook #2: The United States Bill of Rights (1789) [posted in 1972].
eBook #5: The United States Constitution (1787) [posted in 1973].
eBook #10: The King James Bible (1769) [posted in August 1989].
eBook #11: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Caroll (1865) [posted in
January 1991].
eBook #16: Peter Pan, by James Barrie (1904) [posted in June 1991].
eBook #100: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (1590-1613) [posted in
January 1994].
eBook #1000: La Divina Commedia di Dante (1321, in Italian) [posted in August
1997].
eBook #2000: Don Quichote, by Cervantès (1605, in Spanish) [posted in May 1999].
eBook #3000: A l'ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs, vol. 3, by Marcel Proust
(1919, in French) [posted in December 2000].
eBook #4000: The French Immortals Series (1905) [posted in October 2001].
eBook #5000: The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (early 16th century) [posted in
April 2002].
eBook #10000: The Magna Carta (early 13th century) [posted in October 2003].
eBook #15000: The Life of Reason, by George Santayana (1906) [posted in January
2005].
eBook #20000: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne (1869),
audio book [posted in December 2006].
eBook #25000: English Book Collectors, by William Younger Fletcher (1902)
[posted in April 2008].
= Number of Languages With 50+ Books
January 2004: 25 languages.
July 2005: 42 languages.
December 2006: 50 languages.
April 2008: 55 languages.
= Main Languages
July 2005: English, French, German, Finnish, Dutch, Spanish, Chinese. [Out of a
total of 16,800 books on July 27, 2005, 14,548 books are in English, 577 books
in French, 349 books in German, 218 books in Finnish, 130 books in Dutch, 103
books in Spanish and 69 books in Chinese.]
December 2006: English, French, German, Finnish, Dutch, Spanish, Italian,
Chinese, Portuguese, Tagalog. [Out of a total of 19,996 books on December 16,
2006, 17,377 books are in English, 966 books in French, 412 books in German, 344
books in Finnish, 244 books in Dutch, 140 books in Spanish, 102 books in
Italian, 69 books in Chinese, 68 books in Portuguese and 51 books in Tagalog.]
April 2008: English, French, German, Finnish, Dutch, Portuguese, Chinese,
Spanish, Italian, Latin, Tagalog. [Out of a total of 25,004 books on April 21,
2008, 21,475 books are in English, 1,168 books in French, 530 books in German,
433 books in Finnish, 326 books in Dutch, 217 books in Portuguese, 196 books in
Chinese, 180 books in Spanish, 128 books in Italian, 55 books in Latin and 54
books in Tagalog.]
= Downloads From ibiblio.org
*ibiblio.org is the main downloading site. The downloads of mirror sites are not
included here.
July 31, 2005: 37,532 files downloaded in the day; 243,808 files downloaded in
the week; 1,154,765 files downloaded in the month.
May 6, 2007: 89,841 files downloaded in the day; 697,818 files downloaded in the
week; 2,995,436 files downloaded in the month.
May 8, 2008: 115,138 files downloaded in the day; 714,323 files downloaded in
the week; 3,055,327 files downloaded in the month.
10. LINKS
Distributed Proofreaders (DP): https://www.pgdp.net/
Distributed Proofreaders Canada (DPC): http://www.pgdpcanada.net/
Distributed Proofreaders Europe (DP Europe): http://dp.rastko.net/
Hart, Michael (blog): http://hart.pglaf.org/
Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/
Project Gutenberg / Catalog: https://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/
Project Gutenberg / File Recode Service:
https://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/recode.php
Project Gutenberg / Top 100: https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/scores/top
Project Gutenberg Canada (PGC): http://www.gutenberg.ca/
Project Gutenberg Consortia Center (PGCC): http://www.gutenberg.us/
Project Gutenberg Europe (PG Europe): http://pge.rastko.net/
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (PGLAF): https://www.pglaf.org/
Project Gutenberg News (PG News): http://www.pg-news.org/
Project Gutenberg of Australia: https://gutenberg.org.au/
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Project Gutenberg PrePrints: http://preprints.readingroo.ms/
Projekt Gutenberg-DE: http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/
Project Runeberg: http://runeberg.org/
Copyright © 2008 Marie Lebert
End of Project Gutenberg's Project Gutenberg (1971-2008), by Marie Lebert
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|
,” he apologized, “but American company
is such a treat in this town that I’m going to inquire whether my
presence would be distasteful. If not, may I dine with you?”
“Be seated, by all means,” Darrin responded, with as much heartiness as
he could summon.
When the soup had been taken away and fish set before them, Matthews
asked:
“Don’t you find the patrol work a dreadful bore?”
“It’s often monotonous,” Dave agreed, “but there are some exciting
moments that atone for the dulness of many of the hours.”
“And frightfully dangerous work,” Matthews suggested.
“Fighting, I believe, has never been entirely separated from danger,”
retorted Dalzell, with a grin.
“Have you sunk anything lately?”
Both naval officers appeared to be too busy with their fish to hear the
question.
Matthews looked astonished for only a moment. Then he waited until they
were half through with the roast before he inquired:
“How do you like the work of the depth bombs? Are they as useful as it
was believed they would be?”
Dave Darrin glanced up quickly. There was no glint of hostility in his
eyes. He smiled, and his voice was agreeable as he rejoined:
“Now, I know you will not really expect an answer to that question, Mr.
Matthews. The officers and men of the service are under orders not to
discuss naval matters with those not in the service.”
“P-p-pardon me, won’t you?” stammered Matthews, a flush appearing under
either temple.
“Certainly,” Dave agreed. “Men not in the service do not readily
comprehend how necessary it is for Navy men not to discuss their work,
especially in war-time.”
Matthews soon changed the subject. After they had gone forth from the
dining room he shook hands with them cordially, and took his leave.
“Is he genuine?” asked Dalzell.
“Must be,” Dave replied. “His passport was in form. You know how it is
with civilians, Danny-boy. Knowing themselves to be decent and loyal,
they cannot understand why service men cannot take them at their own
valuation.”
Just as the two were going out for another stroll the double doors flew
briskly open to admit a group of more than a dozen British naval
officers.
“Hullo, there, Darrin! I say there, Dalzell!”
Surrounded by Britain’s naval officers, our two Americans had to undergo
almost an ordeal of handshaking in the lobby.
“But I thought you were far out on the water, Chetwynd,” Dave remarked
to one of the officers.
“And so I was, but a bad break in a shaft sent me in,” grumbled the
commander of an English destroyer. “Beastly luck! And I was needed out
there,” he added, in a whisper, “for the Germans are attempting a big
drive underseas. We’ve new information, Darrin, that they’ve more than
twice the usual number of submersibles loose in these waters.”
“I’ve been told the same,” Dave nodded, quietly.
“What brought you in?”
“Shell hits, I think they were, though one dent might have been made by
a torpedo,” Darrin answered.
“Then you had a fight.”
“A short one.”
“And the German pest?”
“Went to the bottom. I know, for we saw her sink, and her conning tower
was so damaged that she couldn’t have kept the water out, once she went
under. Besides, we found the surface of the water covered with oil.”
“I’ll wager you did,” agreed Chetwynd, heartily. “You Yankee sailors
have sunk dozens of the pests.”
“And hope to sink scores more,” Darrin assured him.
“Oh, you’ll do it,” came the confident answer. “But come on upstairs
with us. We’ve a private parlor and a piano, and plan a jolly hour or
two.”
From one end of the room, in a lull in the singing, an exasperated
English voice rose on the air.
“What I can’t understand,” the speaker cried, “is that the enemy appear
to have every facility for getting the latest gossip right out of this
port. And they know every time that a liner, a freighter or a warship
sails from this port. There is some spy service on shore that
communicates with the German submarine commanders.”
“I’d like to catch one of the rascally spies!” Dan uttered to a young
English officer.
“What would you do with him?” bantered the other.
“Cook him!” retorted Dan, vengefully. “I don’t know in just what form;
probably fricassee him.”
Little did Dalzell dream how soon the answer to the spy problem would
come to him.
CHAPTER II
THE MEETING WITH A PIRATE
Thirty-six hours’ work at the dry dock, with changing shifts, put the
“Logan” in shape to start seaward again.
Under another black sky, moving into thick weather, the “Logan” swung
off at slow speed, with little noise from engines or propellers.
“I feel as if something were going to happen to-night,” said Dalzell,
coming to the bridge at midnight after a two-hour nap. A little shudder
ran over his body.
“I hope something does,” agreed Darrin, warmly. “But remember—no Jonah
forebodings!”
“I—I think it will be something good!” hesitated Dalzell.
“Good or bad, have me called at six bells,” Dave instructed his second
in command. “Before that, of course, if anything turns up.”
He went slowly down and entered the chart-room, closing the curtains
after him. Taking off his sheepskin coat and hanging it up, Dave dropped
into a chair, pulling a pair of blankets over him. Inside of thirty
seconds he was sound asleep, dreaming, perhaps, of the night before at
the hotel, when he had enjoyed the luxury of removing his clothing and
sleeping between sheets.
At three o’clock to the minute a messenger entered and roused him. How
Darrin hated to get up! He was horribly sleepy, yet he was on his feet
in a twinkling, removing the service blouse that he had worn while
sleeping, and dashing cold water in his face. A hurried toilet
completed, he drew on and buttoned his blouse, next donned his sheepskin
coat and cap, and went out into the dark of the early morning.
“All secure, sir!” reported Dalzell, from the bridge, meaning that
reports had come in from all departments of the craft that all was well.
“You had better turn in, Mr. Dalzell,” Dave called, before he began to
pace the deck.
“I’m not sleepy, sir,” lied Dalzell, like the brave young gentleman that
he was in all critical times. Dan knew that from now until sun-up was
the tune that called for utmost vigilance.
Darrin busied himself, as he did frequently every day, by going about
the ship, on deck and below deck, on a tour of inspection. This occupied
him for nearly an hour. Then he climbed to the bridge.
“Better turn in and get a nap, Danny-boy,” he urged, in an undertone.
“Say!” uttered Danny Grin. “You must know something big is coming off,
and you don’t want me to have a hand in it!”
Dave picked up his night glass and began to use it in an effort to help
out his subordinate, who stood near him. From time to time Dan also used
a glass. A freshening breeze blew in their faces as the boat lounged
indolently along on its way. It was drowsy work, yet every officer and
man needed to be constantly on the alert.
Despite his denials that he was sleepy, Danny Grin braced himself
against a stanchion of the bridge frame and closed his eyes briefly,
just before dawn. He wouldn’t have done it had he been the ranking
officer on the bridge, but he felt ghastly tired, and Darrin and Ensign
Tupper were there and very much awake.
With a start Dan presently came to himself, realizing that he had lost
consciousness for a few seconds.
“Oh, it’s all right,” Dan murmured to himself. “Neither Davy nor Tup
will know that I’m slipping in half a minute of doze.”
His eyes closing again, despite the roll of the craft, he was soon sound
enough asleep to dream fitfully.
And so he stood when the first streaks of dawn appeared astern. It was
still dark off over the waters, but the slow-moving destroyer stood
vaguely outlined against the eastern streaks in the sky.
Ensign Tupper was observing the compass under the screened binnacle
light, and Darrin, glass to his eyes, was peering off to northward when
the steady, quick tones of a man of the bow watch reached the bridge:
“’Ware torpedo, coming two points off port bow!”
That seaman’s eyesight was excellent, for the torpedo was still far
enough away so that Dave had time to order a sharp swerve to port, and
to send a quick signal to the engine room. As the craft turned she
fairly jumped forward. The “Logan” was now facing the torpedo’s course,
and seemed a bare shade out of its path, but the watchers held their
breath during those fractions of a second.
Then it went by, clearing the destroyer amidships by barely two feet.
Nothing but the swiftness of Darrin’s orders and the marvelously quick
responses from helmsman and engineer had saved the destroyer from being
hit.
On Dave’s lips hovered the order to dash forward over the course by
which the torpedo had come, which is the usual procedure of destroyer
commanders when attacking a submarine.
Instead, as the idea flashed into his head, he ordered the ship stopped.
Danny Grin had come out of his “forty winks” at the hail of the bow
watch. Now Dave spoke to him hurriedly. Dalzell fairly leaped down from
the bridge, hurrying amidships.
“All hands stand by to abandon ship!” rang the voice of Ensign Tupper,
taking his order from Darrin. The alarm to abandon ship was sounded all
through the ship.
There was a gasp of consternation, but Dalzell had already met and
spoken to three of the junior officers, and these quickly carried the
needed word.
The light was yet too faint, and would be for a few minutes, to find
such a tantalizingly tiny object as a submarine’s periscope at a
distance even of a few hundred yards. Lieutenant-Commander Darrin,
therefore, had hit upon a simple trick that he hoped would prove
effective. All depended upon the speed with which his ruse could be
carried out. Cold perspiration stood out over Darrin as he realized the
chances he was taking.
“Bow watch, there! Keep sharp lookout for torpedoes! Half a second might
save us!”
Tupper stood with hand on the engine-room telegraph. He already had
warned the engineer officer in charge to stand by for quick work.
Dalzell and the officers to whom Darrin had spoken saw to it that nearly
all of the men turned out and rushed to the boats. Even the engineer
department off watch came tumbling up in their distinctive clothing.
To an onlooker it would have appeared like a real stampede for the
boats. Tackle creaked, making a louder noise than usual, but seeming to
“stick” as an effort was made to lower loaded boats. The men in boats
and at davits were grinning, for their officers had explained the trick.
Dawn’s light streaks had become somewhat more distinct as Dave peered
ahead. Mr. Beatty and three men crouched low behind one of the forward
guns.
The submarine commander must have rubbed his eyes, for, while he had
observed no signs of a hit, he saw the American craft drifting on the
water and the crew frantically trying to abandon ship.
Then the thing for which Darrin had hoped and prayed happened. The enemy
craft’s conning tower appeared above water four hundred yards away.
“The best shot you ever made in your life, Mr. Beatty!” called Dave in
an anxious voice.
The officer behind the gun had been ready all the time. At the first
appearance of the conning tower he had drawn the finest sight possible.
The three-inch gun spoke. It seemed ages ere the shell reached its
destination.
Then what a cheer ascended as the crew came piling on board from the
boats. The conning tower of the submarine had been fairly struck and
wrecked.
“Half speed ahead!” commanded Dave’s steady voice, while Dan gave the
helmsman his orders. As Tupper sent the signal below the “Logan”
gathered headway.
But Darrin had not finished, for on the heels of his first order came
the second:
“Open on her with every gun!”
After the wrecking of his conning tower the German commander began to
bring his craft to the surface. Perhaps it was his intention to
surrender.
“Full speed ahead!” roared Darrin, and Ensign Tupper rang in the signal.
The hull of the submarine was hardly more than awash when five or six
shots from the “Logan” struck it at about the same time.
Veering around to the southward the “Logan” prepared to circle the dying
enemy. The German craft filled and sank, and Darrin presently gazed
overboard at the oil-topped waters through which he was passing.
“A wonderful job! I wonder that you had the nerve to risk it,” muttered
Dalzell.
“I don’t know whether it was a wonderful job, or a big fool risk,” Dave
almost chattered. “It would have been a fool trick if I had lost the
ship by it. I don’t believe that I shall ever try it again.”
“If you hadn’t done just what you did, a second torpedo would have been
sent at you,” murmured Dalzell. “You saved the ‘Logan’ and ‘got’ the
enemy, if you want to know.”
Grinning, for the responsibility had not been theirs, and the ruse had
“worked,” the men of the watch returned to their usual stations, while
those off duty returned to their “watch below.” Darrin, however, was
shaking an hour later. He had dropped the usual method of defense for
once and had tried a trick by which he might have lost his craft. As
commander he knew that he had discretionary powers, but at the same time
he realized that he had taken a desperate chance.
“Oh, stop that, now!” urged Danny Grin. “If you had steamed straight at
the submarine you would have taken even bigger chances of losing the
‘Logan.’ Even had she given up the fight and dived, there wasn’t light
enough for you to follow by any trail of bubbles the enemy might have
left. The answer, David, little giant, is that the submarine is now at
the bottom, and every Hun aboard is now a dead man. In this war the
commander who wins victories is the only one who counts.”
Through that day Dave and Dan slept, alternately, only an hour or two at
a time. All they sighted were three cargo steamers, two headed toward
Liverpool and one returning to “an American port.”
At nine o’clock in the evening Darrin, after another hour’s nap, softly
parted the curtains of the chart-room door and peered out. He saw a
young sailor standing just back of the open doorway of the radio room.
Slight as it was there was a something in the sailor’s attitude of
listening that Darrin did not quite like. He stepped out on the deck.
Sighting him, the sailor saluted.
“Jordan!” called Dave, even before his hand reached his visor cap in
acknowledgment of the salute.
“Yes, sir!” answered the seaman, coming to attention.
“You belong to this watch?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your station is with the stern watch?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then what are you doing forward?”
“I left my station, by permission, to go below, sir.”
“Have you been below?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then why are you loitering here?”
Seaman Jordan hesitated, shifted on his feet, glanced down, then
hurriedly replied:
“I—I don’t know, sir. I just stopped here a moment. There’s a relief
man in my place, sir.”
“Return to your station, Jordan!”
“Aye, aye, sir,” replied the sailor, saluting, wheeling and walking
away.
“And I’ll keep my eye on you,” mused Darrin, as he watched the departing
sailor. “I may be wrong, but when I first sighted him there was a look
on that lad’s face that I didn’t like.”
Even before he reached his station Seaman Jordan was quaking inwardly
more apprehensively than is usual with a sailor caught in a slight
delinquency.
CHAPTER III
QUICK “DOINGS” OVER THE SHOAL
For several days after that Darrin and the “Logan” cruised back and
forth over the area assigned for patrol. During these days nothing much
happened out of the usual. Then came a forenoon when Darrin received a
wireless message, in code, ordering him to report back at once to the
commanding officer of the destroyer patrol.
Mid afternoon found the “Logan” fifteen miles off the port of
destination.
“Be on the alert every instant,” was the order Darrin gave out to
officers and men. “There have been several sinkings, the last month, in
these waters. We are nearing Fisherman’s Shoal, which is believed to be
a favorite bit of ground for submarines that hide on the bottom.”
Over Fisherman’s Shoal the water was only about seventy feet in
depth—an ideal spot for a lurking, hiding undersea craft.
Five minutes later the bow lookout announced quietly:
“Trail of bubbles ahead, sir.”
Leaving Ensign Phelps on the bridge, Dave and Dan darted down and
forward.
A less practised eye might have seen nothing worth noting, but to the
two young officers the trail ahead was unmistakable, though Darrin
quickly brought up his glass to aid his vision.
“Pass the word for slow speed, Mr. Dalzell,” Dave commanded, quietly.
“We want to keep behind that craft for a moment. Pass word to Mr. Briggs
to stand by ready to drop a depth bomb.”
Quietly as the orders were given, they were executed with lightning
speed. The destroyer began to move more slowly, keeping well behind the
bubble trail. At any instant, however, the “Logan” could be expected to
leap forward, dropping the depth bomb at just the right moment. Then
would come a muffled explosion, and, if the bomb were rightly placed, a
broad coating of oil would appear upon the surface.
Dave was now in the very peak of the bow. Watching the bubbly trail he
knew that the hidden enemy craft was moving more slowly than the
destroyer, and he signalled for bare headway. And now the bubbles were
rising as though from a stationary object under the waves.
“Buoy, there!” he ordered, quickly. “Overboard with it.”
Slowly the destroyer moved past the spot, but the weighted, bobbing buoy
marked the spot plainly.
“Have a diver ready, Mr. Dalzell,” Dave called. “Make ready to clear
away a launch!”
In the matter of effective speed Darrin’s officers and crew had been
trained to the last word. Only a few hundred yards did the “Logan” move
indolently along, then lay to.
Soon after that the diver and launch were ready. Dave stepped into the
launch to take command himself.
“May I go, too, sir?” asked Dan Dalzell, saluting. “I haven’t seen this
done before.”
“Clear away a second launch, Mr. Dalzell. The crew will be armed. You
will take also a corporal and squad of marines.”
That meant the entire marine force aboard the “Logan.” Dalzell quickly
got his force together, while Darrin gave orders to pull back to where
the bobbing buoy lay on the water.
“Ready, diver?” called Dave, as the launch backed water and stopped
beside the buoy.
“Aye, aye, sir.” The diver’s helmet was fitted into position and the air
pump started. The diver signalled that he was ready to go down.
“Men, stand by to help him over the side,” Darrin commanded. “Over he
goes!”
Hugging a hammer under one arm the diver took hold of the flexible cable
ladder as soon as it had been lowered. Sailors paid out the rope, life
line and air pipe as the man in diver’s suit vanished under the water.
Down and down went the diver, a step at a time. The buoy had been placed
with such exactness that he did not have to step from the ladder to the
sandy bottom. Instead, he stepped on to the deck of a great lurking
underseas craft.
He must have grinned, that diver, as he knelt on top of the gray hull
and hammered briskly, in the International Code, this message to the
Germans inside the submarine shell:
“Come up and surrender, or stay where you are and take a bomb! Which do
you want?”
Surely he grinned hard, under his diver’s mask, as he noted the time
that elapsed. He knew full well that his hammered message had been heard
and understood by the trapped Huns. He could well imagine the panic that
the receipt of the message had caused the enemy.
“We’ll send you a bomb, then?” the diver rapped on the hull with his
hammer. “I’m going up.”
To this there came instant response. From the inside came the hammered
message:
“Don’t bomb! We’ll rise and surrender!”
Chuckling, undoubtedly, the diver signalled and was hoisted to the
surface. The instant that his head showed above water the seaman-diver
nodded three times toward Darrin. Then he was hauled into the boat, and
the launch pulled away from the spot.
“It took the Huns some time to make up their minds?” queried Dave Darrin
smilingly, after the diver’s helmet had been removed.
“They didn’t answer until they got the second signal, sir,” replied the
diver.
Dalzell’s launch was hovering in the near vicinity, filled with sailors
and marines, a rapid-fire one-pounder mounted in the bow.
Both boats were so placed as not to interfere with gun-fire from the
“Logan.” Officers and men alike understood that the Huns might attempt
treachery after their promise to surrender.
Soon the watchers glimpsed a vague outline rising through the water. The
top of a conning tower showed above the water, then the rest of it, and
last of all the ugly-looking hull rose until the craft lay fully exposed
on the surface of the sea.
The critical moment was now at hand. It would be possible for the
submarine to torpedo the destroyer; there was grave danger of the
attempt being made even though the vengeful Germans knew that in all
probability their own lives would pay the penalty.
The hatch in the tower opened and a young German officer stepped out,
waving a white handkerchief. He was followed by several members of the
crew. It was evident that the enemy had elected to save their lives, and
smiles of grim satisfaction lighted the faces of the watchful American
jackies.
“Give way, and lay alongside,” Dave ordered his coxswain, while
signalling Dalzell to keep his launch back for the present.
Then Dave addressed the young German officer:
“You understand English?”
“Yes,” came the reply, with a scowl.
“We are coming alongside. Your officers and men will be searched for
weapons, then transferred, in detachments, to our launch, and taken
aboard our craft.”
The German nodded, addressing a few murmured words to his men, who moved
well up forward on the submarine’s slippery deck.
As the launch drew alongside two seamen leaped to the submarine’s deck
and held the lines that made the launch fast to it.
Half a dozen armed seamen sprang aboard, with Darrin, who signalled to
the second launch to come up on the other side of the German boat.
“Be good enough, sir, to order the rest of your men on deck,” Dave
directed, and the German officer shouted the order in his own tongue.
More sullen-looking German sailors appeared through the conning tower
and lined up forward.
“Did you command here?” Dave demanded of the officer.
“No; my commander is below. I am second in command.”
Dave stepped to the conning tower, bawling down in English:
“All hands on deck. Lively.”
Another human stream answered. Darrin turned to the German officer to
ask:
“Are all your crew on deck now?”
Quickly counting, the enemy officer replied:
“Yes; all.”
“And your captain?”
“I do not know why he is not here. I cannot give him orders.”
By this time the marines were aboard from the second launch. Already the
first detachment of German sailors, after search, was being transferred
to the launch.
“Corporal,” called Darrin, “take four men and go below to find the
commander. Watch out for treachery, and shoot fast if you have to.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” returned the corporal, saluting and entering the tower.
His men followed him closely.
“I’ve seen the outside of enough of these pests,” said Dave to his chum.
“Suppose we go below and see what the inside looks like. The German
submarines are different from our own.”
Dalzell nodded and followed, at the same time ordering a couple of
stalwart sailors to follow. A boatswain’s mate now remained in command
on the submarine deck.
“You get back there!” growled the corporal. Dave reached the lower deck
just in time to see the corporal pointing his revolver at a protesting
German naval officer.
“Look what he’s been doing, sir,” called the corporal. “Look on the
floor, sir.”
On the deck lay a heap of charred papers, still smoking.
[Illustration: Charred papers still smoking.]
“If I’d got down a minute earlier, sir, he wouldn’t have had a chance to
have that nice little bonfire,” grumbled the corporal.
Dave gave a great start as he took his first look at the face of the
German captain.
As for the German, he seemed at least equally disconcerted. Dave Darrin
was the first to recover.
“I cannot say that I think your German uniform becoming to a man of your
name, Mr. Matthews,” Darrin uttered, in savage banter.
“Matthews?” repeated the German, in a puzzled voice, though he spoke
excellent English. “I cannot imagine why you should apply that name to
me.”
“It’s your own fault if you can’t,” Darrin retorted. “It’s the name you
gave me at the hotel.”
“I’ve never seen you until the present moment,” declared the German,
stoutly.
“Surely you have,” Danny Grin broke in. “And how is your firm in
Chicago, Mr. Matthews?”
“Chicago?” repeated the German, apparently more puzzled than before.
“If Matthews isn’t your name, and I believe it isn’t,” Darrin continued,
“by what name do you prefer to be addressed.”
“I am Ober-Lieutenant von Bechtold,” replied the German.
“Very good, von Bechtold; will you stand back a bit and not bother the
corporal?”
Dave bent over to stir the charred, smoking heap of paper with his foot.
But the job had been too thoroughly done. Not a scrap of white paper
could be found in the heap.
“Of course you do not object to telling me what papers you succeeded in
burning,” Darrin bantered.
Ober-Lieutenant von Bechtold smiled.
“You wouldn’t believe me, if I told you, so why tax your credulity?”
came his answer.
“Perhaps you didn’t have time to destroy all your records,” Dave went
on. “Under the circumstances I know you will pardon me for searching the
boat.”
Thrusting aside a curtain, Dave entered a narrow passageway near the
stern. Off this passageway were the doors of two sleeping cabins on
either side. Dave opened the doors on one side and glanced in. Dan
opened one on the other side, but the second door resisted his efforts.
“This locked cabin may contain whatever might be desired to conceal,”
Dan hinted.
Turning quickly, Darrin saw that von Bechtold had followed. This the
corporal had permitted, but he and a marine private had followed, to
keep their eyes on the prisoner.
“If you have the key to this locked door, Captain, it will save us the
trouble of smashing the door,” Dave warned. He had followed the usual
custom in terming the ober-lieutenant a captain since he had an
independent naval command.
“I do not know where the key is,” replied von Bechtold, carelessly. “You
may break the door down, if you wish, but you will not be repaid for
your trouble.”
“I’ll take the trouble, anyway,” Darrin retorted. “Mr. Dalzell, your
shoulder and mine both together.”
As the two young officers squared themselves for the assault on the door
a black cloud appeared briefly on von Bechtold’s face. But as Darrin
turned, after the first assault, the deep frown was succeeded by a dark
smile of mockery.
Bump! bump! At the third assault the lock of the door gave way so that
Dave and Dan saved themselves from pitching into the room headfirst.
“Oh, whew!” gasped Danny Grin.
An odor as of peach-stone kernels assailed their nostrils. They thought
little of this. It was a sight, rather than the odor, that instantly
claimed their attention.
For on the berth, over the coverlid, and fully dressed in civilian
attire of good material, lay a man past fifty, stout and with prominent
abdomen. He was bald-headed, the fringe of hair at the sides being
strongly tinged with gray.
At first glance one might have believed the stranger to be merely
asleep, though he would have been a sound sleeper who could slumber on
while the door was crashing in. Dave stepped close to the berth.
Dalzell followed, and after them came the submarine’s commander.
“You will go back to the cabin and remain there, Mr. von Bechtold,” Dave
directed, without too plain discourtesy. “Corporal, detail one of your
men to remain with the prisoner, and see that he doesn’t come back here
unless I send for him. Also see to it that he doesn’t do anything else
except wait.”
Scowling, von Bechtold withdrew, the marine following at his heels.
As Darrin stepped back into the cabin he saw the stranger lying as they
left him.
“Dead!” uttered Dave, bending over the man and looking at him closely.
“He lay down for a nap. Look, Dan, how peaceful his expression is. He
never had an intimation that it was his last sleep, though this looks
like suicide, not accidental death, for the peach-stone odor is that of
prussic acid. He has killed himself with a swift poison. Why? Is it that
he feared to fall into enemy hands and be quizzed?”
“A civilian, and occupying an officer’s cabin,” Dan murmured. “He must
have been of some consequence, to be a passenger on a submarine. He
wasn’t a man in the service, or he would have been in uniform.”
“We’ll know something about him, soon, I fancy,” Darrin went on. “Here
is a wallet in his coat pocket, also a card case and an envelope well
padded with something. Yes,” glancing inside the envelope, “papers. I
think we’ll soon solve the secret of this civilian passenger who has met
an unplanned death.”
“Here, you! Stop that, or I’ll shoot!” sounded, angrily, the voice of
von Bechtold’s guard behind them.
But the German officer, regardless of threats, had dashed past the
marine, and was now in the passageway.
“Here, I’ll soon settle you!” cried the marine, wrathfully. But he
didn’t, for von Bechtold let a solid fist fly, and the marine, caught
unawares, was knocked to the floor.
All in a jiffy von Bechtold reached his objective, the envelope.
Snatching it, he made a wild leap back to the cabin, brushing the marine
private aside like a feather.
“Grab him!” yelled Dave Darrin, plunging after the German. “Don’t let
him do anything to that envelope!”
CHAPTER IV
THE TRAIL TO STRANGE NEWS
Fortune has a way of favoring the bold. The corporal and a marine were
in the corridor behind Darrin. The ober-lieutenant’s special guard had
been hurled aside.
Hearing the outcries, the other two marines in the cabin sprang toward
the German officer. One of these von Bechtold tripped and sent
sprawling; the other he struck in the chest, pushing him back.
Just an instant later von Bechtold went down on his back, all five of
the marines doing their best to get at him in the same second. But the
German had had time to knock the lid from a battery cell and to plunge
the envelope into the liquid contained in the jar. Then the German was
sent to the mat by his assailants.
Darrin, following, his whole thought on the envelope, plunged his right
hand down into the fluid, gripping the package that had been snatched
from him.
“Sulphuric acid!” he exclaimed, and made a quick dive for a lidded fire
bucket that rested in a rack. The old-fashioned name for sulphuric acid
is vitriol, and its powers in eating into human flesh are well known.
Darrin’s left hand sent the lid of the bucket flying. Hand and envelope
were thrust into the water with which, fortunately, the bucket was
filled. When sulphuric acid in quantity is added to water heat is
generated, but a small quantity of the acid may be washed from the flesh
with water to good advantage if done instantly. After a brief washing of
the hand Dave drew it out, patting it dry with a handkerchief. Thus the
hand, though reddened, was saved from painful injury. The envelope he
allowed to remain in the water for some moments.
“Von Bechtold, you are inclined to be a nuisance here,” Darrin said
coolly. “I am going to direct these men to take you above.”
“I am helpless,” replied the German, sullenly, from the floor, where he
now lay passive, two marines sitting on him ready to renew the struggle
if he so desired.
“Take him above, you two men,” Darrin ordered, “and take especial pains
to see that he doesn’t try to escape by jumping into the water.”
At this significant remark von Bechtold paled noticeably for a moment.
Then his ruddy color came back. He got upon his feet with a resentful
air but did not resist the marines who conducted him up to the deck.
Dave now drew out the envelope, which had become well soaked, and took
out the enclosure, a single sheet. The writing at the top of the sheet
was obliterated. Darrin did not read German fluently, but at the bottom
of the sheet he found a few words and phrases that he was able to
translate. Their meaning made him gasp.
“Danny-boy,” he murmured to his chum, “I want you to make quick work of
transferring the prisoners to the ‘Logan.’ Keep back two of the German
engineer crew, and send word to Ensign Phelps to come over on the
launch’s next trip with two men of our engine-room force, and to bring
along also six seamen and a petty officer. Phelps will take charge of
this craft as prize officer.”
The submarine was soon cleared of her officers and crew. Ensign Phelps
and his own men came over and took command. Two German engine-room men
had been kept back to assist the Americans. On the last trip Darrin and
Dalzell returned to the undersea boat and gave the order to Ensign
Phelps to proceed on his way to the base port.
As soon as the prize with its captors was under way, Darrin went to the
chart-room of the “Logan,” sent for the marine corporal, and ordered
that Ober-Lieutenant von Bechtold be brought before him.
As the prisoner was ushered in Dave rose courteously, bowed and pointed
to a chair.
“Be seated, if you please. Now, Herr Ober-Lieutenant, your
second-in-command and your crew will be taken ashore as ordinary
prisoners of war, and turned over to the British military prison
authorities. Of course you are aware that your own imprisonment will
take place under somewhat different circumstances.”
Von Bechtold, who had accepted the proffered chair, gazed stolidly at
this American naval commander, who was several years younger than
himself.
“I fear that I do not understand you,” the German replied.
|
you, to warn you that there have been
important discoveries by the engineers and that they may be through in a
few days. From now on watch every single document that is sent through
your hands. Don’t let it out of your sight from the moment it is
delivered to you until you have filed it and placed it properly in the
vaults. Understand?”
Bob, his face grave, nodded. “I’ll see that nothing like that happens.
But who could be after these new plans?”
Merritt Hughes shrugged his shoulders.
“Bob, if I could answer that question this problem would be comparatively
simple. The answer may be right here in this department; again it may be
some outside force that we can only guess at.”
“Are you working alone on this case?” Bob continued.
A shadow of a frown passed over Merritt Hughes’ face.
“I wish I were; I’d feel more sure of my ground.”
“That means Condon Adams is also on the job,” put in Bob, for he knew of
the sharp feeling between his uncle and Adams, another ace operative of
the bureau of investigation. They had been together on several cases and
at every opportunity Adams had tried to obtain all of the credit for the
successful outcome of their efforts. He was both unpleasant and ruthless,
but he had a faculty of getting results, and Bob knew that for this
reason alone he was able to retain his position.
The fact that Condon Adams was on the case placed a different light on it
for Bob, for Adams had a nephew, Tully Ross, who was in the archives
division of the department with Bob. There was nothing in common between
the two young men. Tully was short of stature, with a thick chest and
short, powerful arms. His eyebrows were dark and heavy, set close above
his rather small eyes, and his whole face reflected an innate cruelty
that Bob knew must exist. If Condon Adams was also on the case, it meant
that Tully Ross would be doing his best to help his uncle for like Bob,
Tully was intent upon getting into the bureau of investigation.
Bob’s lips snapped into a thin, firm line. All right, if that was the way
it was to be, he’d see that Tully had a good fight.
Merritt Hughes smiled a little grimly.
“Thinking about Tully Ross?” he asked.
Bob nodded.
“Then you know what we’re up against. It’s two against two and if you and
I win I’m sure that I can get you into the bureau. If we don’t, then
Tully may go up. What do you say?”
“I say that we’re going to win,” replied Bob, and there was stern
determination in his words.
“That’s the way to feel. Keep up that kind of spirit and you’ll get in
the bureau before you know it. In the meantime, don’t let any tricks get
away from you in this routine. Watch every document that comes into your
hands and let me know at the slightest unusual happening in this
division.”
“I’ll even put eyes in the back of my head,” grinned Bob as his uncle
stood up and donned his topcoat.
“How long will you work tonight?” asked Merritt Hughes as he opened the
door which gave access to the hallway.
“Probably two hours; maybe even three.”
“Watch yourself. Goodnight.”
Then he was gone and Bob was alone in the high-vaulted room where the
rays from the light on his desk failed to penetrate into the deep shadows
and a strange feeling of premonition crept over him. For a moment he felt
that someone was watching him and to dispel this feeling he turned on the
glaring top lights.
The room was empty!
Chapter III
BOB HAS A VISITOR
★
Bob turned off the top lights and returned to his desk, which was one of
half a dozen in the long and rather narrow room at one corner of the
building.
As he sat down he could hear the beat of the rain against the window and
looking out could see, through the curtain of water, the dimmed lights of
the sprawling city. On a clear night the view was awe-inspiring, but on
this night his only thought was to complete his work and to return to the
warmth and comfort of his own room.
Bob delved into the pile of papers which had accumulated in the wire
basket on his desk. They must be filed and the proper notations made.
There was nothing of especial importance, or he would not have been
working alone for it was a rule of the division that when documents of
great importance were to be filed, at least two clerks and usually the
chief of the division must be on hand. Sometimes even armed guards came
in while the filing was taking place for some of the secrets in the great
vaults across the corridor were worth millions to unscrupulous men and to
other powers.
But until tonight, until his uncle’s words had aroused him, Bob had felt
his own work was rather commonplace. There was nothing in his life which
compared with the excitement and the almost daily daring of the men in
the bureau of investigation of the Department of Justice.
The hours were rather long, the work was routine and his companions,
though pleasant, were satisfied with their own careers. They were not
looking ahead and dreaming of the day when they might wear one of the
little badges which identified a Department of Justice agent.
Then Bob realized that he must stop his day dreaming. Or was it day
dreaming after all? His uncle had said that there was now a possibility
that he might join the department. But this was no time to ponder about
that. He could think of his future when he returned to his room.
Bob went to a filing case which was along the inside wall of the room and
extracted a folder. Taking it back to his desk he started making entries
of the papers which were on his desk. He worked slowly but thoroughly,
and his handwriting was clear and definite.
Others might be faster than Bob in the filing work in the division, but
there were none more accurate and when his work was done the chief of the
division always knew that the task was well cared for.
Bob worked for more than an hour, stopping only once or twice to
straighten up in his chair, for it was tiring work going back to the desk
after a full day of the same type of work.
When the file was complete, he returned it to the case along the wall and
sorted the papers which remained on his desk. They belonged in four
different files and he drew these from the cases and placed them in a row
atop his desk.
The air in the room seemed stuffy and Bob walked to one of the windows
and opened it several inches—just enough to let in fresh air, yet not far
enough for the sharp wind to blow rain into the room. Far below him a car
horn shrieked as an unwary pedestrian tried to beat a stop light.
Bob went back to his desk. Another hour and his work would be done. He
picked up his pen and resumed the task.
Bob later recalled that he had heard a clock boom out the hour of nine
and it must have been nearly half an hour later when the door which led
to the corridor opened quietly and a man stepped inside.
The young clerk, at his desk, was so intent upon his work that he did not
sense there was a newcomer in the room until the visitor was almost
behind him.
Then Bob swung around with a jerk and recognized Tully Ross. There was a
momentary flare of anger in Bob’s face.
“Next time you come in, make a little noise,” he snapped. “I thought a
ghost was creeping up on me.”
“I’m not much of a ghost,” retorted Tully, taking off his topcoat and
shaking it vigorously to get the water off. “I didn’t know you would be
working tonight.”
“Couldn’t get through this afternoon,” replied Bob, “and so much material
has been coming in lately I was afraid that if I let it go another day
I’d be swamped.”
“Next time that happens let me know and I’ll give you a hand,”
volunteered Tully as he sat down at his own desk, which was two down from
Bob.
Bob nearly laughed aloud for the thought of Tully volunteering to help
anyone else was almost fantastic. Each clerk had a special type of filing
and each was not supposed to exchange work with the other. In this way
there was little chance for the others to know what documents were going
through for permanent filing.
“Thanks, Tully, that’s nice of you,” said Bob, “but I don’t know what the
chief would say.”
“He’d never need to know,” said Tully swinging around in his chair.
“But if he did find out that we were helping each other, we’d both be out
of a job and I can’t afford to take that kind of a risk.”
“Neither can I right now,” conceded Tully, “but I hope to get into
something better soon. This doesn’t pay enough for a fellow with my
brains and ability.”
“I’ll admit that it doesn’t pay a whole lot,” replied Bob, “but a fellow
has to eat these days.”
“Some day I’m going to be over in the Department of Justice,” said Tully
definitely. “It may not be tomorrow or next week, but I’m going to get
there.”
“I think you will,” agreed Bob. “You’ve got the determination to keep at
it until you do.” What he failed to add was that Tully’s uncle would do
everything in his power to see that Tully got the promotion and it was no
secret that Condon Adams had powerful political connections that might be
helpful in getting Tully into the bureau of investigation.
Chapter IV
THE DOOR MOVES
★
Tully was in a talkative mood and at such times he displayed a pleasing
personality. This was one of those times, but to Bob it was more than a
little irritating for he had work to do and every minute passed in
talking with Tully meant additional time at his desk.
“I’ve had a funny feeling lately that things were tightening up in here,”
said Tully. “Even tonight this room doesn’t feel just right.”
“It’s the wind and the rain,” said Bob, looking up from his work. “When
the sun is out tomorrow you’ll feel much better.”
“I don’t know about that. Say, Bob, you haven’t heard of anything special
breaking? Something may be coming over from the engineers that is
unusually important.”
Bob couldn’t honestly say no, so he made an indefinite answer.
“There’s always talk,” he said.
“Sure, I know, but this time it’s different. I’ve heard that the radio
division has made some startling discoveries that more than one foreign
power would give a few millions to have in its possession.”
“What, for instance?”
“That’s just it,” confessed Tully. “There’s only vague talk; nothing you
can put your finger on.”
“I thought they kept that stuff pretty well under cover,” said Bob, who
was determined to feel out Tully and learn just how much the other clerk
knew. It was evident now that Condon Adams had been talking to his
nephew, probably telling him in substance much of what Merritt Hughes had
divulged to Bob earlier in the evening and now Tully was on a fishing
expedition to learn just what Bob knew. Well, two could play that game
and Bob, his head bent over his work, smiled to himself.
“Well, they never advertise the papers they’re sending over for the
permanent files,” Tully said, “but you know how things get around in the
department. Sometimes we have a pretty good idea what’s going through
even though it is all under seal and in a special code.”
Bob nodded, for Tully was right. In spite of the secrecy which usually
surrounded the filing of important documents, the clerks often knew what
was going through their hands, for even the walls in Washington seemed to
have eyes and ears and whispers flitted from one department to another in
a mysterious underground manner which was impossible to stop. Sometimes
the conjecture of the clerks was right; again they might all be wrong.
But it was on such talk as this that secrets sometimes slipped away and
into the hands of men and women for whom they had never been intended.
Bob’s division, which filed all of the radio documents, had enjoyed a
particularly good record. The chief, Arthur Jacobs, had been in charge
since before World War days, and he had used extreme care in the
selection of the personnel. There was yet to come the first major leak
and Bob hoped fervently that it would not happen while he was in the
division.
Tully puttered around his own desk, shoving papers here and there and
obviously making an effort to appear interested. Once he glanced sharply
at Bob, who was intent on his own work.
Finally Tully stood up and walked to one of the windows. He gazed out for
several minutes and Bob, glancing up at him, got the impression that
Tully was trying to make up his mind what to do.
The next thing Bob noticed, Tully was on the other side of the room,
pulling open one of the filing cases. The floor was carpeted and his
steps from the window to the filing cases had been noiseless.
There was no rule against a clerk opening one of the cases, for the
documents kept there were of no major importance. Something in Tully’s
attitude caught Bob’s attention. Then he realized that Tully was looking
into one of the files which was under Bob’s supervision and there was a
strict rule against that.
Bob hesitated for a moment. It seemed a little foolish to make an issue
over that. Probably Tully had done it absentmindedly. Then he remembered
his uncle’s warning to watch everything going on in the division.
“Tully, you’re in the wrong file,” said Bob.
Tully turned around quickly, his face flushing darkly.
“No harm, I guess. I just wondered what you’ve been doing and how you’ve
been handling your file. I heard Jacobs complimenting you the other day
and thought I could get some good pointers by looking your stuff over.”
“That’s okay, Tully. I’ll show you sometime when Jacobs is here, but you
know the rule about the files. I’ll have to ask you to close that one.”
“And suppose I don’t?” snapped Tully.
“Oh, you’ll close it all right,” said Bob. His voice was still calm and
even, but there was a note of warning that Tully dared not ignore.
Bob closed the file on his desk and stood up, stretching his long,
powerful arms. Tully didn’t miss the significance of the motion for Bob
had a well founded reputation as a boxer.
Tully turned back to the filing case and slammed the steel drawer shut.
“There you are, Pollyanna,” he retorted. “That file doesn’t look so good
after all.”
“Just so it suits Jacobs; that’s all that concerns me,” said Bob, sitting
down again.
Tully picked up his topcoat to leave.
“Well, anyway I don’t envy you staying on here alone tonight. This place
is giving me the creeps.”
After Tully had departed, Bob was able to concentrate fully on his own
work. A clock boomed out again, but he was too preoccupied to count the
number of strokes. For all he knew it might have been ten o’clock, or
perhaps even eleven.
A sharp knock at the door disturbed Bob.
“Who is it?” he demanded.
“Guard. Just checking up. How long are you going to be here?”
It was the first time in many nights of overtime work that a guard had
ever checked up, but Bob decided that it might be a new rule placed in
effect without his knowledge.
“Half an hour at least,” he replied.
Apparently satisfied, the guard moved on and Bob could hear his footsteps
growing fainter as he bent to his task again.
But he was not to work long uninterruptedly. The telephone buzzed and
there was obvious irritation in his voice when he answered. But it
vanished when he recognized his uncle’s voice.
“I was a little worried,” explained Merritt Hughes, “when I phoned your
room and found you weren’t in. Everything all right?”
“Yes, except I’ve had too many interruptions,” said Bob. Then he hastened
to explain. “I don’t mean you though. Tully Ross was in and sat around
for nearly an hour without doing anything except making me nervous.”
“Did he hint at anything?” asked Bob’s uncle.
“Yes. The same thing you mentioned. Evidently Condon Adams has told him
about it. You know Tully wants a position in the bureau of investigation,
too.”
“Sure, every youngster in the country would like it,” replied Merritt
Hughes. “Better stop for tonight and run along home and get some sleep. I
want you on the alert every hour of the day. You’re in the office from
now on.”
“I’ll be through in less than half an hour,” promised Bob. “Then I’ll go
directly home.”
“It’s a bad night and getting worse. Take a taxi and don’t run the risk
of catching cold.”
This Bob promised to do and with a sigh hung up the telephone receiver
and bent once more to the task of finishing the filing.
As the hours of the night advanced, the wind grew colder and Bob arose
and closed the window. The air in the room was now damp and it would have
been easy to allow his mind to run riot for the building was strangely
silent. Noises from the street, far below, were smothered in the sound of
the rain, driven against the windows.
A slight creak startled Bob and he whirled toward the door. Even in the
dim light which his desk light cast he could see the handle of the door
moving. Fascinated, he watched. The handle was moving slowly, as though
every effort was being made to guard against any possible noise. Bob
remained motionless in his chair as though he had suddenly turned to
stone.
Chapter V
A SLIVER OF STEEL
★
The time seemed endless. Actually it could only have been seconds that
Bob sat there watching the turning of the doorknob. Then the knob started
back. Unseen fingers had learned what they wanted to know. The door was
not locked.
Through the hulking building there seemed no sound except Bob’s own
strained breathing. In the corridor it was as quiet as in the room, yet
someone must be outside the door, testing the lock.
Bob shook his head. He must be dreaming. His nerves must be over-wrought
from too much work and on edge from the talk he had earlier in the
evening with his uncle.
Reaching out, he tilted the shade of his desk lamp back and a flood of
light struck the doorknob. No! His eyes had not tricked him. The knob was
still turning. There was a faint click and then the knob remained
stationary.
Bob leaped into action. In one fast lunge he was across the room, his
hands gripping the doorknob. He tugged hard, but the door refused to
open. Then he paused for hurried footsteps were going down the hall. Bob
shouted lustily. Perhaps his cry would reach the guard at the elevators.
Then he shook the door. It couldn’t be locked, of that he felt sure.
Bracing himself again he tugged at the door and almost fell over
backwards when it suddenly opened.
Bob stepped into the corridor. There was no one in sight but from a
distance he could hear someone hurrying toward him. A guard came around a
turn in the corridor.
“Did you call just then?” demanded the watchman.
“I’ll say I did,” replied Bob. “Someone was trying the door here and when
I tried to open it, the door stuck. Then I let out a whoop. Didn’t you
see anyone?”
“No one came my way,” said the guard quickly, but his eyes did not meet
Bob’s squarely. “We’d better look along this end of the corridor. If
someone was here, he might have slipped into one of the other offices.”
Bob shook his head.
“No, he wouldn’t have done that. Besides, I distinctly remember hearing
him running down toward the elevators.”
“Well, I wasn’t asleep and no one came my way,” insisted the guard.
“Maybe you were dreaming a little. You look kind of tired.”
“I am tired, but this was no dream,” insisted Bob. Then he remembered the
door. What had made it stick? It hadn’t been locked.
“Give me your flashlight,” said Bob and the guard handed over a shiny,
metal tube.
Bob turned the beam of light on the floor, and searched closely.
“What are you looking for?” asked the guard.
“For the reason why the door stuck,” said Bob tartly. Then he found it—a
thin sliver of steel that had been inserted as a wedge. It was an
innocent enough looking piece, but when placed properly in a door could
cause considerable delay.
Bob picked it up and placed it in his pocket. Although he was not aware
of it at the time, it was the first piece of evidence in a mystery which
was to pull him deep into its folds and require weeks of patient effort
to untangle.
The guard had edged over to the door and now reached out to pull it shut.
Only a sharp order from Bob stopped him.
“Keep your hands off the doorknob,” he ordered. “Someone was tampering
here and I don’t want you messing your hands around the place.”
The guard hesitated as though undecided whether to obey Bob, and the
clerk stood up and doubled up a fist.
“Better not touch that door.” There was a steelly quietness in the words
that decided the guard, and he stepped well back into the corridor.
“You’d better get back to your post. I’ll take care of this situation,”
said Bob. “I’ll keep your flashlight and return it to you when I leave
the building. I want to do a little scouting around and may need this
light.”
The guard grumbled something under his breath, but retreated down the
corridor and finally vanished from sight. Bob disliked him thoroughly for
his attitude had been one of sullen defiance; so unusual from the men
generally on duty at night. It might be well to speak to Jacobs about it
in the morning.
Just to make sure that no one came along and touched the doorknob, Bob
took out his handkerchief and tied it around the knob in a manner which
would protect possible fingerprints.
That done, he picked up the flashlight again and started to reconnoiter
in the corridor, trying one door after another. There was just a
possibility that the marauder had found a hiding place in an office which
had been left unlocked. Bob knew that it was almost a useless quest, for
the offices were checked each night.
He made the rounds along one side of the corridor and started back on the
side opposite his own office. The night lights were on and at the far end
of the corridor it was necessary for him to use the flashlight.
Door after door proved unyielding to his touch and he was about to give
up the quest when he came upon a door that swung inward when his hands
gripped the knob.
Bob drew back suddenly and flashed the beam of light into the long room,
which was almost identical with the one in which he had been working.
What he saw there startled him more than he dared to admit later, and he
stepped inside and moved toward the nearest desk.
The ray from the flashlight revealed the utter confusion in the room.
Baskets of papers on top of the desks had been upset and even the drawers
in the filing cabinets had been pulled out and their contents hurled
indiscriminately over the floor.
A slight sound startled Bob and he swung around, the beam of light
focusing on the door.
It was closing—swiftly and silently.
Bob leaped forward, stumbled over a wastepaper basket, and then reached
the door which clicked shut just before he could grasp the handle.
Bob tugged hard on the door, but like the one which led to his own
office, it stuck.
Could it be another wedge of steel? Bob wondered and braced himself for
another lusty tug. The door gave way and Bob toppled backward in a heap,
the flashlight falling and blinking out.
Bob had fallen heavily and for a moment he remained motionless on the
floor listening for the sound of someone moving along the corridor. He
could have shouted for the guard, but an inward distrust of the man kept
him from doing that. Instead, he groped around for the flashlight, turned
it on, and got to his feet, considerably shaken in mind and body by the
experiences of the last few minutes.
The young clerk reached for the light switch and a glare of light flooded
the room, revealing even further the destruction which had been wrought
there.
Bob looked around. Hundreds of papers had been strewn on the floor; some
of them had been ruthlessly destroyed and he wondered how many valuable
documents would be lost when they finally checked up.
But this was no time for inaction, he decided, and he hastened to one of
the desks and picked up a telephone. He dialed quickly, but it was nearly
a minute before a sleepy voice answered.
“Hello, Uncle Merritt?” asked Bob anxiously.
“No, I’m not home; I’m still at the building. I wish you’d get down here
as soon as you can.
“No, I haven’t had an accident, but some mighty strange things have been
going on around this floor tonight. One of the offices has been
completely ransacked. I’m in it now. Papers have been thrown all over and
the filing cases opened and a lot of stuff destroyed.
“Who did it? Gosh, I wish I knew. Someone’s been shutting doors on me and
leaving steel wedges in them. It’s giving me the creeps.”
“I’ll be right down,” promised the Department of Justice agent.
Bob placed the receiver back on its hook and backed out of the room. The
fewer things he touched the better it would be and as he drew the door
shut, he was careful to keep his hands off the knob for there was a
possibility of valuable fingerprints being there.
An eerie feeling raced up and down Bob’s spine as he turned toward the
door which opened into the office where he worked. The building was so
quiet it was disturbing, yet he knew some unknown marauder had been busy
on the floor while he had been bent over his desk. Could the unknown be
after the radio secrets his uncle had hinted about? It was certainly
worth considering.
Bob reached the door that led into the office where he worked and stopped
suddenly. He felt cold all over as he stared at the doorknob. He
remembered distinctly having wrapped his own handkerchief around the knob
to preserve possible fingerprints. But there was no handkerchief there
now and the door was slightly ajar. The light had been on when he stepped
into the hall, but now the room was in inky darkness.
Chapter VI
IN THE DARKENED ROOM
★
Bob paused on the threshold of the long office, staring into the
blackness of the room. After his recent experiences he couldn’t be blamed
for hesitating a moment.
Should he close the door, back into the hall and await his uncle’s
arrival or should he snap on the lights and see what had taken place in
the room? It seemed to Bob that he pondered those questions for several
minutes; actually it was less than five seconds.
He reached for the light switch at the left of the doorway and pushed the
button. But there was no answering blaze of light; only the dead click of
the switch.
Bob knew then that the lights had been tampered with, that more than
likely someone was lurking in the shadowy darkness of the office. His
better judgment told him to wait until he could summon assistance, but
some other urge drove him on. He couldn’t explain it later; he simply
went ahead.
The young filing clerk stepped across the threshold, the flashlight in
his hand aimed down the center of the room. Then he turned on the flash
and a beam of light cut through the darkness.
Bob gasped. The light showed papers strewn over the floor and the drawers
from desks and filing cases pulled indiscriminately out and dumped on the
floor.
The shock of the confusion in the office brought him up short. Then he
started to swing the light about the room to determine the full extent of
the damage by the marauder.
A slight noise to the right caught Bob’s attention and he turned in that
direction. Instinctively he knew that danger lurked there, and he tensed
his body. It came before he was ready; something hurtling out of the
dark; something that struck his right hand a numbing blow; something that
sent the flashlight crashing to the floor where the lens and the bulb
shattered and the light went out.
But the blow sent Bob into action. He must get back to the door and get
it closed; that would cut off the one avenue of escape for the intruder.
The clerk leaped backward, his hands reaching out for the doorway. He
collided with someone else; someone wearing a topcoat still damp from the
rain outside.
Bob thought quickly. He must find some way to stop the other if for only
an instant. He drew back his right foot and swift kick connected with the
unknown’s shins with such force that an involuntary cry rang through the
room. Bob leaped on and crashed into the half opened door. With anxious
fingers he found the key on the inside, slammed the door shut and turned
the lock.
That done Bob dropped down on the floor where he would have a chance to
rest, to collect his wits, and to plan his future course of action.
For a time there was no sound in the room. He could not even catch the
breathing of the other man and he thought of the possibility that the
other had slipped out the door before he had closed it. Then he dismissed
that as an impossibility for there had not been sufficient time for that.
Bob knew every inch of the long office; knew where every desk and chair
was located and every window. As his eyes became more accustomed to the
dark he could pick out the lighter blots which were the windows.
Then a slight noise caught his attention. The unknown was moving,
probably on his hands and knees, feeling his way toward the door. Bob
couldn’t resist a chuckle as he thought of the dismay that would spread
through the other when he found the door securely locked and the key
missing.
Just to be on the safe side, Bob edged away from the door and sought
shelter behind a nearby desk. To make sure that he would move noiselessly
he slipped off his shoes and placed them beside a filing cabinet where he
wouldn’t fall over them if it was necessary for him to make a sudden
move.
Strangely enough Bob felt very calm. His heart beat rapidly and his
breath came shorter and faster, but his mind was remarkably clear, his
hands steady. He was glad now that he did not have the flashlight, for
using it would only have made him a target for the marauder.
Bob wondered how long it would take his uncle to reach the scene.
Probably another ten minutes, for Merritt Hughes lived a considerable
distance from the building. What might happen inside that room in the
next ten minutes was something that Bob didn’t care to guess about.
As Bob listened he could hear the almost noiseless movements of the other
man and knew that he was nearing the door. Then he heard hands moving
along the woodwork—finally the gentle turning of the doorknob. Then there
was the sharp rattle of the knob as though a sudden wave of anger had
swept over the man at the realization that he had been trapped in the
room.
Bob moved away from the door, crawling on his hands and knees, and he
kept going until he was well down the room and right at the steel cabinet
where the radio documents were filed. With cautious hands he felt along
the front of the case. So far the drawers had not been pulled out for
they were identified only by key numbers instead of by the name of the
type of papers which they contained.
This was one cabinet Bob was determined to protect, for, after what his
uncle had told him earlier in the night, he felt sure that this was the
object of the unknown’s visit.
Once more the doorknob was rattled sharply; then silence again shrouded
the room and Bob felt his nerves tightening. It was tough waiting alone
in the darkness. He wondered if the other man possessed a gun and if he
would have the nerve to use it if an emergency caught him.
Bob strained his ears for some sound of the other’s maneuvers. A faint
sort of “plop” made him smile. It sounded very much like a shoe being
placed gently on the floor. Several seconds later there was a similar
sound and Bob knew that they were now on even terms; neither one of them
having his shoes on. This man was no fool; he was determined to keep his
own movements as secret as possible.
Then Bob heard a sound which was anything but heartening. The unknown was
coming toward him. He could hear the gentle scrape of knees as the man
crawled along the floor. He was evidently feeling his way along the
filing cabinets and Bob moved out toward the center of the room where he
found protection between two desks, set fairly close together.
His action was not a minute too soon, for he had barely settled himself
in his new position when he saw a darker shadow moving along in front of
the filing cases. The man was less than six feet away, and breathing very
quietly, but steadily.
Bob held his own breath as the man passed along the row of filing cases.
Evidently he was going to make the rounds of the room in an effort to
catch Bob by surprise, overpower him, and take away the key. Bob chuckled
inwardly at that thought. He was too familiar with the room to be caught
in that manner.
Moving out slightly from behind the shelter of the desks, he saw the man
reach a window and raise his head so that he could look down on the
street. It was a temptation that Bob couldn’t resist and he picked up an
inkwell on the desk beside him, took careful aim, and hurled the heavy
glass container.
Just as he threw the inkwell, Bob slipped and the noise attracted the
attention of the other man. He leaped to his feet and whirled about. The
glass container, instead of striking the man’s head, hit his shoulder,
glanced into the window and crashed its way on out into the darkness.
There was a cry of pain from the intruder and then a sharp burst of flame
as a bullet scarred the top of the desk which shielded Bob.
Bob went cold all over. There was no more fun in this thing. It was
deadly serious now and he knew that his very life might depend on the
events of the coming minutes for this man was cornered and capable of
shooting his way out if necessary.
Chapter VII
SIRENS IN THE NIGHT
★
As the echoes of the shot died in the room, Bob realized that he had been
foolish in throwing the inkwell. It had unduly alarmed the other man and
placed his own life in jeopardy. The slug from the gun had come much
closer than Bob wanted it to.
There was only one consolation. The shot should attract the attention of
the guards on duty in the building and within a minute they should be at
the door, battering their way in. Against superior numbers Bob felt that
the intruder would not put up a resistance with gun play.
Bob stared at the windows. The head and shoulders of the unknown had
disappeared and the distant noises of the street were clearer now,
drifting in through the broken window.
Merritt Hughes should arrive at almost any minute and Bob felt that the
wise and sensible thing now was to play as safe as possible and await the
arrival of help.
Crouched down between the desks, he was in a position to watch the file
with the radio documents and he knew that if they were molested he would
fight with all his strength to protect them.
As the seconds passed into minutes Bob felt his muscles tensing and his
nerves becoming tighter.
There was no sound in the room; there had been no sound since the echoes
of the shot had died away. Had his missile disabled the other man; had
the shot been fired involuntarily? They were questions he couldn’t
answer.
Why didn’t a night guard appear in the corridor outside? Bob believed
that he would have risked a call for help if anyone passed. But strain as
he might, he could hear no one outside the door.
Then Bob broke into a cold sweat. The man who had fired the shot was
almost beside him.
Bob had been so intent upon listening for some sound in the corridor that
he had failed to hear the unknown crawling toward his own hiding place.
Bob sensed, rather than saw, what was happening. He could hear the steady
breathing of the other and he held his own breath. Would the man crawl on
down the room toward the doorway or would he turn in between the desks
where Bob had sought shelter?
The dark blob that was the other’s head and shoulders appeared between
the desks and Bob waited for an agonizing interval. Then the figure moved
on and Bob could breathe once more.
That had been a close call.
Then came another sound that brought Bob back to the alert. There was the
faint shrilling of a siren.
Was it a fire alarm? Bob listened intently. No, it was sharper, more
penetrating. A police car. That was
|
structure, either in
masonry or earthworks, and to understand these the first thing
necessary is a plan, and this is just what is wanting in most guides
or handbooks of castles. With a good plan not only the age and much of
the details of any castle can be ascertained, but sometimes the work
recorded in the Pipe or Fabric rolls may be recognised. Original plans
indeed there are none; no doubt the military architects, like their
ecclesiastical brethren, drew and worked from designs and plans, but
these have not been preserved. No such thing is known to exist as an
original design or a working drawing of a Norman or even an Edwardian
castle. In ecclesiastical researches, from the known uniformity of the
arrangements, this want is scarcely felt, but the plan and details of
a castle vary with the disposition of the ground or the caprice of
the builder, and although a hall, a kitchen, a chapel, a well, and
a barrack are indispensable features in a castle, these parts have
nothing of the regularity of position of a nave or choir, a cloister,
a chapter-house, or a refectory. Nevertheless, great as is the variety
in both the plans and details of castles even of the same age, their
architects and engineers worked by certain rules, so that if these be
studied a clue will be obtained to the age of the work executed. The
dimensions, plan, and profile of the earthworks, the presence, absence,
or figure of the keep, the thickness of the walls, the plan, figure,
proportion and position of the mural towers, the character of the
entrance, the material employed, and the particulars of the masonry,
all, if carefully observed, afford a clue to the date of the building
or of some of its parts, so that as a general proposition, a Norman
castle may be known from one of the early English period, or from those
of the first or second Edward, and still more readily from those built
in the reign of Richard the Second. What these rules are, in what these
differences consist, will appear further on.
Mediæval architecture has only been scientifically studied during
the last forty or fifty years, and military architecture for a still
shorter period. Rickman, who first taught us to read the date of
a building in its details, was induced to turn his attention to
architecture by the advice of Mr. Blore, who died but the other day.
But Rickman, a member of the Society of Friends, scarcely notices
castles, and they have by no means shared in the flood of light
directed by Willis upon our cathedrals. Rickman’s rules, however,
apply as much to one class of buildings as to the other. What has been
done, and what has to be done, towards a history of the architecture
of castles, though aided by contemporary records and especially by
sheriffs’ accounts and Fabric rolls, has been mainly attained by
attention to the internal evidence afforded by the buildings themselves
and their earthworks. Even where the castle is a ruin, where the ashlar
casing has been stripped off, and little left but the rubble and
concrete of the interior of the walls, as at Bramber, Saffron-Walden,
and Thurnham, and the disintegrating effect of the weather has had full
play, it is not impossible, nor very often difficult, to detect the
general age of the several parts of the building by the thickness of
the walls and the character of the materials and workmanship, as well
as by the outline of the works. The absence of ornament and the general
removal of window-dressings and door-cases often, it is true, render
the absolute date difficult to discover, but even then, the general
figure of the openings, the rough contour of the arches, the position
and proportion of the buttresses may be detected, and a tolerably safe
conclusion formed. Perhaps, on the whole, the greatest difficulties the
military antiquary has to contend with are those where, as at Norwich,
Lancaster, York, Oxford, Caermarthen, or Haverfordwest, the building is
converted into a gaol, or where, as at Appleby and Chilham, it is part
of or attached to a modern residence. Warwick, so remarkable on many
accounts, is especially so for the skilful manner in which it has been
made suitable for modern habitation without materially obscuring its
ancient parts, and this merit may be claimed for Tamworth, and perhaps
for Raby.
Our county historians are often diffuse upon the descent of a castelry,
and the particulars of its area and tenures, but their descriptions of
the buildings are seldom intelligible. Even Surtees, so distinguished
for the wealth and lucidity of his style, whose history of Durham
contains, entombed in folio, chapters that in a more accessible form
would have met with far more than antiquarian attention, never attempts
scientific description. Hunter, whose histories of Hallamshire and
of the Deanery of Doncaster are perfect as records of the descent of
families and property, is not at home in architectural detail; and even
Whitaker, who, with Hunter, was quite aware of the interest which
attaches to earthworks, gives plans of but few of them, and says very
little about the details of the castles. To come down to the latest
period, even Raine, Hodgson, and Eyton, in their histories of Durham,
Northumberland, and Salop, so copious and so accurate in all matters
of record, pass by with but short notice the various earthworks and
castles in which those counties are so rich, and the details of which
would be so valuable. We look in vain in the pages of these writers for
any general conclusions as to the age, style, and points of resemblance
or difference between these works, points which certainly fall within
the province of the topographer.
The great work of King, the “Munimenta Antiqua,” three-quarters of
a century or more older than most of the above, and full of absurd
theories, misplaced learning, and fanciful and incorrect descriptions,
recognises the importance of plans and details, and although those
given with great show of accuracy are often very incorrect, they are
worth a good deal, and with all its absurdities the book is on the
whole valuable.
The “Vetusta Monumenta,” a work of the same school and period,
includes a few castles, and gives plans and sections of two, the Tower
and Hedingham, correctly, and in great detail. Unfortunately, these
large and needlessly expensive plates are accompanied by no proper
descriptions. The voluminous works of the industrious Britton include
very few castles, but what there are, as Rochester, Kenilworth, and
Castle Rising, are drawn and planned with extreme accuracy. The
drawings of Grose and the brothers Buck serve to show the condition of
many English castles a century ago, though the descriptions of Grose
are poor, and his drawings are by no means clear. Buck’s perspective
is very incorrect, but this allows of the bringing into view more of a
building than can really be seen at once, which has its advantages.
Since the rise, during the last twenty years, of numerous county
archæological societies, castles have received more attention; but no
distinct work has appeared upon English castles, though many of the
most remarkable are noticed by Mr. Parker in his excellent works on
domestic architecture. More recently has appeared the book of the late
Mr. Wykeham Martin upon his ancestral castle of Ledes, a work not only
well illustrated and furnished with an excellent ground-plan, but in
which the architecture and arrangements of the fortress are treated in
a scientific manner, and his conclusions supported, in many instances,
by original documents.
England contains many curious and some grand examples of military
architecture; but that insular position and those industrious habits
which have given her internal peace have not been favourable to the
erection of fortresses of the larger class: for these we must pass to
the Continent, and especially to France. In France not only were the
works of imperial Rome of a grand and substantial character, but they
were adopted and employed by the people after the fall of the empire,
and both Franks and Visigoths, unlike our English Saxons, practised
the arts of attack and defence upon Roman principles, and remodelled
the older works to meet the later circumstances of the period. In the
southern provinces, especially, are still to be found castles and
fortified towns such as Tholouse, Narbonne, Beziers, and Carcassonne,
where the old Roman circumvallation has been preserved, and may still
be recognised amidst the additions and alterations of succeeding ages.
Like the Romans, their successors made use of earthworks and of timber
both for attack and defence, and for permanent works employed masonry
of a very Roman character. Such accounts as have descended to us of
the great sieges of the Middle Ages show that the machines and methods
in use were those handed down by tradition from Rome, many of them
being such as Cæsar employed, while others were the same as those
sculptured on the column of Trajan or described by Vegetius. Mines and
countermines, battering-rams, balistæ, catapults, the cat, the mouse,
the sow, and a large family of devices for reaching under cover the
wall to be undermined, were all derived from Roman warfare, and were
employed, if not with the skill and discipline of Rome, with a degree
of vigour and boldness that was scarcely less effective.
Moreover, the political circumstances of France were eminently
favourable to the construction of great military works. The great
duchies and scarcely subordinate kingdoms which afterwards composed
the French monarchy were, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries,
independent states, each with an open frontier needing defences, and
with a brave and wealthy baronage very able and very willing to supply
them. Hence France contains within its present borders not only cities
of Roman origin and celebrated under the immediate successors of the
Romans, but the remains of the castle-palaces of the dukes and barons
of Normandy and Brittany; of Burgundy, Provence, Navarre, Flanders,
Anjou, and many a lesser province; and he is but little qualified to
judge of castles or of fortified mediæval cities who is unacquainted
with Arques, or Falaise, or Loches; Coucy or Château-Gaillard, or
Etampes; Carcassonne, Avignon, Villeneuve, or Beaucaire, or the
splendid restoration of Pierrefonds.
The possession of these great works has drawn forth, though tardily,
a few writers capable of comprehending and describing them. Those in
Normandy are the subject of the well-known lectures of M. de Caumont,
delivered at Caen in 1830 and published in 1835. They contain a very
interesting section on military works, with plans and elevations
which, though roughly executed and on a small scale, are valuable; his
descriptions are clear, and his conclusions generally sound. Others,
before M. de Caumont, have described particular structures, but he
seems to have been the first to attempt a general classification based
upon a critical examination of the examples in his own province.
Of detached writings, monographs, may be mentioned those of M. Deville
upon Château-Gaillard, Tancarville, and Arques, published in 1828,
1834, and 1839. The first is particularly strong in its history of the
castle and of its famous siege, and the last excellent both in history
and description; and all three are accompanied by clear ground-plans.
The great work of Viollet-le-Duc, though not confined to military
architecture, contains by much the most comprehensive, as well as the
most detailed, account of French castles yet given to the world; and
as, besides the general resemblance between all European castles,
those of the eleventh and twelfth centuries in Normandy are almost
counterparts of those of the same period, and often built by the same
nobles or their sons, in England, it has deservedly become our chief
authority. Also the castles of France, being on a larger scale and
often more perfect than our own, M. Le-Duc has been able to explain
more satisfactorily than could have been done here, certain details,
such, for example, as those of the gateway, drawbridge, and portcullis,
and especially of the timber superstructures for vertical defence,
known as “_hourdes_” and “_bretasches_,” terms represented with us
by the “hoard” of a London builder, and the “brattice” of the mining
engineer. M. Le-Duc’s work has given occasion and matter for a small
volume from the press of Mr. Parker. There is besides a work in German,
“_Geschichte der Militär-Architectur des fruhern Mittelalters_,” by
M. G. H. Krieg von Hochfelden, which contains much of great interest
concerning German castles, as well as a general notice of those in
France and England.
Although military architecture in England, setting aside the works of
the Romans, begins with the age, and probably with the actual period,
of the Norman Conquest, the country contains numerous examples of
military works of an earlier, and in many instances no doubt of a
very remote, time. These works, executed in earth, or at least of
which no parts but banks, mounds, and ditches remain, are sometimes
of great size, but usually of extreme simplicity of plan. Of most of
them, the Roman again excepted, the relative age is all that we can
hope to ascertain, but even from this knowledge we are at present
very far; and although it is probable that the simple encampments, of
irregular outline, and on high ground, are the work of the earliest
inhabitants of Britain, and those of circular or more regular outline,
having higher banks, and placed in more accessible positions, are the
works of the post-Roman period, yet the outlines are often so mixed,
and the arrangement of the mounds and banks so alike, that it cannot
always certainly be said what is sepulchral, what merely commemorative
or monumental, and what military; what the works of the earlier or
later Celts, what of the Saxons, what of their Danish conquerors, and
sometimes even, though not often, what is Roman.
The particulars of these various earthworks, so different in plan
and extending over so many centuries, deserve a separate notice, and
therefore, though originally intended to have been here treated of, it
seemed more prudent to lay this branch of the subject aside for the
present, in the hope that it may be taken up when the completion of
the larger scale Ordnance Maps shall afford more accurate and copious
data than now can conveniently be procured. The subject, in fact,
should have entered into the instructions given to the officers of the
Survey, by which means we should at least have avoided the obscure and
sometimes contradictory system of nomenclature by which these works
have been designated at different periods of this great, and in most
respects admirable, national undertaking.
But, although it be expedient here to pass by in silence those
earthworks, irregular, rectangular, or concentric, which have no direct
connexion with the subsequent castles of masonry, and therefore with
military architecture, there remain, nevertheless, certain earthworks
which are so connected, and which must therefore here be noticed, and
are of importance sufficient to require a separate chapter for their
consideration.
CHAPTER II.
EARTHWORKS OF THE POST-ROMAN AND ENGLISH PERIODS.
But little is recorded of the internal condition of Britain between the
departure of the Legions, A.D. 411, and the arrival of the Northmen
in force thirty or forty years later; but whatever may have been the
effect of Roman dominion, or of the infusion of Roman blood, upon the
social or commercial character of the Britons, it is at least certain
that they had made little progress in the construction of places of
defence. The Romans dealt rather with the country than with the people.
The foreign trade under the Roman sway was no doubt considerable, and
much land was under cultivation, but the Britons seem to have acquired
but few of the Roman arts, and nothing of the Roman discipline.
Neither have their descendants, the Welsh, many customs which can
be traced distinctly to a Roman origin; and although there are many
words in their language which show its origin to be cognate with the
Latin, there are comparatively few which can, with any probability,
be shown to be derived from the Latin. How far against the Scots and
Picts they made use of Roman tactics or employed Roman weapons is but
little known. In defending themselves against the Northmen they, no
doubt, took advantage of the Roman walls at Richborough and Lymne, and
afterwards of Pevensey, but on the whole with only temporary success;
and from these they were driven back upon the earthworks of their
probably remote predecessors. There is not a shadow of evidence that
they constructed any new defensive works in masonry upon the Roman
models, or even repaired those that were left to them in the same
material.
There do, however, remain certain earthworks which seem to be laid
out according to Roman rules, but which contain no traces of Roman
habitations, are not connected with great Roman roads, and the banks
and ditches of which are of greater height and depth than those
generally in use among the Romans in Britain, and which therefore
there seems reason to attribute to the post-Roman Britons. Such are
Tamworth, Wareham, Wallingford, possibly Cardiff, though upon a
Roman road, and the additions to the Roman works at York. The name
Wallingford, “the ford of the Welsh,” may be quoted in support of
this view. It is difficult to understand how it is that there are no
remains in masonry which may be attributed to this period, for it is
impossible that with the example of the Romans before their eyes, and
a certain admixture of Roman blood in the veins of many of them, the
Britons should not have possessed something of the art of construction.
This difficulty does not occur in Gaul, whence the Romans were never
formally withdrawn. On the Continent indeed, generally, buildings are
found of all ages, from the Roman period downwards. Gregory of Tours,
in his “Historia Francorum,” written towards the end of the sixth
century, describes the fortified place of Merliar as of great extent
and strength, in which there were included a sweet-water lake, gardens,
and orchards; and M. de Caumont cites a description of an episcopal
castle on the Moselle in the same century, which was defended by thirty
towers, one of which contained a chapel, and was armed with a balista,
and within the place were cultivated lands and a water-mill; and there
were many such, like the defences of Carcassonne, of mixed Roman and
post-Roman work, that is, of work executed before and about the fifth
century.
In Britain, the course of events was different. The Northmen, men of
the sea, and accustomed to life in the open air, had no sympathies with
the Celts, and utterly disdained what remained of Roman civilisation;
slaying or driving out the people, and burning and destroying the
Roman buildings, which, in consequence, are in England fragmentary,
and in most cases only preserved by having been covered up with earth
or incorporated into later structures. The Roman works were mostly
on too large a scale for the wants of new settlers, and even where
these occupied the Roman towns they cared not to restore or complete
the walls, but buried what remained of them in high earthen banks,
upon which they pitched their palisades, and within which they threw
up their moated citadels. The Northmen respected nothing, adopted
nothing. Their earliest mission was one of violence and destruction.
They appear, in the south and east at least, in a large measure to have
slain and driven out the people of the land, and to have abolished such
institutions as they possessed. But not the less did they carry with
them the seeds of other institutions of a far more vigorous and very
healthful character. Whether Saxons, Angles, or Jutes, though landing
on the shores of Britain in quite independent parties, they had the
substance of their speech, their customs, and their gods in common.
They had the same familiarity with the sea, the same indisposition
to occupy Roman buildings, the same absence of all sympathy with the
native Britons. If they still held most of their lands in common, the
house and the homestead were already private property. Their family
ties were strong, as is shown in the nomenclature of their villages. As
they conquered, they settled, and practised agriculture, and as they
embraced Christianity they gradually established those divisions, civil
and ecclesiastical, sokes and rapes, tythings, hundreds, wapentakes,
and parishes, which still remain to attest the respect to which they
had attained for law and order, for the rights of private property, and
their capacity for self-government.
Much akin to, and before long to be incorporated into the English
nation, were the Norsemen from the seaboard country north of the Elbe,
the Danes of English history and of local tradition, who in the eighth
century played the part of the Saxons in the fifth. They scoured the
same seas, and harassed the Saxons as the Saxons had harassed the
Britons, only the invaders and the invaded being, generally, of the
same blood, finally coalesced, and the distinctions between them became
well-nigh effaced; still, for three centuries, the ninth, tenth, and
eleventh, the Danish name was the terror of the British Isles. They
infested every strand, anchored in every bay, ascended every river,
penetrated and laid waste the interior of the country.
Orkney is full of their traces, their language is the key to the
topographical nomenclature of Caithness, the gigantic works at
Flamborough Head are attributed to them; the great cutting, by which
they carried a branch of the Thames across Southwark, is on record. In
the year A.D. 1000, Ethelred found them forming much of the population
of Cumberland. Such terminations as _eye_, _ness_, _holm_, and _by_, so
common along the shores of England, or over the lands watered by the
Trent and the Humber, the Tees and the Tyne, and not unknown on the
western coast, show the extent and permanence of their settlements.
It does not, however, appear that the Danish earthworks differed
materially from those thrown up by the other northern nations in
England. Camps tending to the circular form and headlands fortified
by segmental lines of bank and ditch belong to all, and all when they
settled and acquired property underwent very similar changes in their
habits and modes of life.
No doubt, among the earlier works of the Northmen, those thrown up to
cover their landing and protect their ships, were the semicircular
lines of ditch and bank found on capes and headlands and projecting
cliffs on various parts of the sea-coast. Usually they are of limited
area, as the invaders came commonly in very small bodies, but the
Flamborough entrenchment has a line of bank and ditch three and a half
miles long, of a most formidable character, and including a very large
area.
Along the coast of South Wales are many small camps, probably of
Danish origin, such as Sully, Porthkerry, Colhugh, Dunraven, Pennard,
Penmaen, five others on the headland of Gower, and five or six along
the southern shore of Pembrokeshire. Besides these material traces
of the invaders, are a long list of such names as Haverford (fiord),
Stackpole, Hubberton, Angle, Hubberston, Herbrandston, Gateholm,
Stockholm, Skomer, Musselwick, Haroldston, Ramsey, Strumble, Swansea,
savouring intensely of the Baltic. The Dinas’ Head between Newport
and Fishguard bays, though bearing a Welsh name, is fortified by an
entrenchment due without doubt to the Northmen.
These and similar works evidently belong to the earlier period of the
northern invasions, when the long black galleys of the vikings visited
at not infrequent intervals the British and Irish shores, before they
settled in either land. In the fifth and sixth centuries settlements
began to be formed in Britain, and speedily assumed dimensions very
formidable to the natives. The south-eastern coast of Britain, infested
even in Roman times by the sea-rovers, and thence known as the Saxon
shore, had been fortified by the Romans, but the works, intrinsically
strong, were too weak in British hands to stem the progress of the foe.
In A.D. 530, Cerdic and Cynric took the Isle of Wight, and slew many
Britons at a place where Wightgar was afterwards buried, and where he
probably threw up the work which bore his name, and afterwards, as now,
was known as Carisbroke. In 547, Ida, the “flame-bearer” of the Welsh
bards, founded Bebbanburgh, now Bamborough, and enclosed it first by
a hedge [hegge], and afterwards by a wall; and in 552 Cynric engaged
the Britons at Sorbiodunum, afterwards Searo-burh, and now Old Sarum;
as did in 571 Cuthwulf or Cutha at Bedcanford or Bedford, in each of
these two latter places, as at Carisbroke and probably at Twynham or
Christchurch, throwing up the works which yet remain. The conquest of
the Romano-British cities of Cirencester, Bath, and Gloucester, and
the whole left bank of the Severn, from the Avon of Bristol to that
of Worcester, was the immediate consequence of the victory of Deorham
in 571, and was followed by the possession of Pengwern, afterwards
Shrewsbury, a most important post, and one by means of which the
Mercians, and after them the Normans, held the Middle March of Wales.
All along the line from Christchurch and Carisbroke, by Berkeley and
Gloucester, Worcester, Warwick and Shrewsbury, earthworks were then
thrown up, most of which are still to be seen.
With the social changes among the invaders changed also the character
of their military, or rather of their mixed military and domestic,
works. The British encampments, intended for the residence of a tribe
having all things in common, were, both in position and arrangements,
utterly unsuited to the new inhabitants. The Roman stations, intended
for garrisons, save where they formed part of an existing city, were
scarcely less so, nor were the earlier works of the Northmen suited
to their later wants. These were mostly of a hasty character, thrown
up to cover a landing or to hold at bay a superior force. No sooner
had the strangers gained a permanent footing in a district than their
operations assumed a different character. Their ideas were not, like
those of the Romans, of an imperial character; they laid out no great
lines of road, took at first no precautions for the general defence or
administration of the country. Self-government prevailed. Each family
held and gave name to its special allotment. This is the key to the
plan of the later and great majority of purely English earthworks. They
were not intended for the defence of a tribe or territory, nor for the
accommodation of fighting men, but for the centre and defence of a
private estate, for the accommodation of the lord and his household,
for the protection of his tenants generally, should they be attacked,
and for the safe housing, in time of war, of their flocks and herds.
These works, thrown up in England in the ninth and tenth centuries,
are seldom, if ever, rectangular, nor are they governed to any great
extent by the character of the ground. First was cast up a truncated
cone of earth, standing at its natural slope, from twelve to even
fifty or sixty feet in height. This “mound,” “motte,” or “burh,” the
“Mota” of our records, was formed from the contents of a broad and
deep circumscribing ditch. This ditch, proper to the mound, is now
sometimes wholly or partially filled up, but it seems always to have
been present, being in fact the parent of the mound. Berkhampstead is
a fine example of such a mound, with the original ditch. At Caerleon,
Tickhill, and Lincoln it has been in part filled up; at Cardiff it was
wholly so, but has recently been most carefully cleared out, and its
original depth and breadth are seen to have been very formidable.
Though usually artificial, these mounds are not always so. Durham,
Launceston, Montacute, Dunster, Restormel, Nant cribba, are natural
hills; Windsor, Tickhill, Lewes, Norwich, Ely, and the Devizes, are
partly so; at Sherborne and Hedingham the mound is a natural platform,
scarped by art; at Tutbury, Pontefract and Bramber, where the natural
platform was also large, it has been scarped, and a mound thrown up
upon it.
Connected with the mound is usually a base court or enclosure,
sometimes circular, more commonly oval or horseshoe-shaped, but if
of the age of the mound always more or less rounded. This enclosure
had also its bank and ditch on its outward faces, its rear resting on
the ditch of the mound, and the area was often further strengthened
by a bank along the crest of the scarp of the ditch. Now and then,
as at Old Sarum, there is an additional but slighter bank placed
outside the outer ditch, that is, upon the crest of the counterscarp.
This was evidently intended to carry a palisade, and to fulfil the
conditions of the covered-way along the crest of one of Vauban’s
counterscarps. Where the enclosure is circular, the mound is either
central, as at Pickering, or Mileham, or at Old Sarum, where it is
possibly an addition to an older work, such as Badbury, or it stands on
one side, as at Tutbury. Where the area is oblong or oval, the mound
may be placed near one end, as at Bramber. At Windsor and Arundel it
is on one side of an oblong enclosure, producing a sort of hourglass
constriction, and where this is the case a part of its ditch coincides
with the ditch of the place. Where the court is only part of a circle
it rests upon a part of the ditch of the mound. At Sarum there are
two ditches concentrically arranged. At Berkhampstead the mound is
outside the court. On the whole, as at Tickhill, Castle Acre, and
Lincoln, it is most usual to see the mound on the edge of the court,
so that it forms a part of the general “enceinte” of the place. Where
the base court is of moderate area, as at Builth and Kilpeck, its
platform is often slightly elevated by the addition of a part of the
contents of the ditch, which is rarely the case in British camps. At
Wigmore and Builth, where the mound stands on the edge of a natural
steep, the ditch is there discontinued. The base court is usually two
or three times the area of the mound, and sometimes, as at Wallingford
or Warwick, much more. No doubt the reason for placing the mound on
one side rather than in the centre of the court was to allow of the
concentration of the lodgings, stables, &c., on one spot, and to make
the mound form a part of the exterior defences of the place.
The mound and base court, though the principal parts, were not always
the whole work. Often there was on the outside of the court and applied
to it, as at Brinklow and Rockingham, a second enclosure, also with
its bank and ditch, frequently of larger area than the main court,
though not so strongly defended. It was intended to shelter the
flocks and herds of the tenants in case of an attack. At Norham, the
castle ditch was used for this purpose as late as the reign of Henry
VIII. There are several cases in which the mound is placed within a
rectangular enclosure, which has given rise to a notion that the whole
was Roman. Tamworth is such a case, and there, fortunately, the mound
is known historically to have been the work of Æthelflaed, as is that
of Leicester, similarly placed. From this and from the evidence of
the earthworks themselves a like conclusion may be drawn as to the
superadded mounds at Wareham, Wallingford, and Cardiff. At Helmsley, as
at Castle Acre, Brougham, and Brough, the earthworks stand upon part of
a Roman camp, and at Kilpeck and Moat Lane, near Llanidloes, part of
the area may possibly be British.
East Anglia contains some fine examples of these moated mounds,
combined with rectangular encampments. Castle Acre is an excellent
example, as are, in a less degree, Mileham and Buckenham.
When the English lord took up his abode within a Roman camp or station,
he often turned the Roman works, whether of earth or masonry, to
account, and threw up his bank in one corner, altering the contiguous
banks and ditches to suit his new arrangements. Thus at Pevensey,
Leicester, Cambridge, Lincoln, Southampton, Winchester, Chichester,
Caerleon, Chester, English mounds and base courts are placed within
Roman enclosures which either are or were walled. At Auldchester, near
Bicester, the Roman Alauna, is a mound of later date than the camp.
At Plessy, Tamworth, Wallingford, Wareham, Cardiff, are found mounds
decidedly of later date than the enclosing works. There are also cases
where the mound is placed within an earthwork with something of a
tendency to the rectangular, though scarcely to be pronounced either
Roman or Romano-British. Such are Clare, Hereford, Eaton-Socon, where
the mound is very small indeed; and Lilbourne. Tempsford is very
peculiar: it is a small rectangular enclosure close to the Ouse, and in
one corner, upon the bank, is a small mound.
The group of works, of which the mound was the principal feature,
constituted a Burh. The burh was always fortified, and each inhabitant
of the surrounding township was bound to aid in the repair of the
works, almost always of timber, a material which the Saxons, like other
German nations, appear usually to have preferred for building purposes
to stone, though some of their towns were walled, as Colchester and
Exeter, and Domesday records the custom of repairing the walls of
Oxford, Cambridge, and Chester.
In these English, as before them in the British works, the ditches were
sometimes used to contain and protect the approaches. This is well seen
at Clun and Kilpeck. At Tutbury the main approach enters between two
exterior platforms, and skirts the outer edge of the ditch, until it
reaches the inner entrance. The object was to place the approach under
the eyes and command of the garrison.
As there are still some archæologists whose experience entitles their
opinions to respect, who attribute these moated mounds to the Britons,
it will be necessary to point out that the attribution of them to the
English, though materially strengthened by the evidence of the works
themselves, does not wholly, or even mainly, rest upon it. While the
British camps are either præhistoric or unnoticed even in the earliest
histories, and the age of the Roman works is only deducible from their
plan and style, and from the known and limited period of the Roman stay
in Britain, English works are continually mentioned in the chronicles,
and the names of their founders and date of the construction of many
of them are on record. Thus Taunton was founded by Ine a little before
721-2, when Queen Æthelburh destroyed it. The original earthworks
still remaining are considerable, and formed part of the defences
of a fortress erected long afterwards. In the ninth century, as the
Danish incursions became more frequent, works of defence became more
general, and are largely mentioned directly, or by implication, in the
Anglo-Saxon chronicle. In 868-9, the Danish army was at Nottingham, a
strong natural position, in which it was
|
aving his house, Chilcote walked forward quickly and aimlessly. With
the sting of the outer air the recollection of last night's adventure
came back upon him. Since the hour of his waking it had hung about with
vague persistence, but now in the clear light of day it seemed to stand
out with a fuller peculiarity.
The thing was preposterous, nevertheless it was genuine. He was wearing
the overcoat he had worn, the night before, and, acting on impulse, he
thrust his hand into the pocket and drew out the stranger's card.
“Mr. John Loder!” He read the name over as he walked along, and it
mechanically repeated itself in his brain--falling into measure with
his steps. Who was John Loder? What was he? The questions tantalized
him till his pace unconsciously increased. The thought that two men so
absurdly alike could inhabit the same, city and remain unknown to each
other faced him as a problem: it tangled with his personal worries
and aggravated them. There seemed to be almost a danger in such an
extraordinary likeness. He began to regret his impetuosity in thrusting
his card upon the man. Then, again, how he had let himself go on the
subject of Lexington! How narrowly he had escaped compromise! He turned
hot and cold at the recollection of what he had said and what he might
have said. Then for the first time he paused in his walk and looked
about him.
On leaving Grosvenor Square he had turned westward, moving rapidly till
the Marble Arch was reached; there, still oblivious to his surroundings,
he had crossed the roadway to the Edgware Road, passing along it to
the labyrinth of shabby streets that lie behind Paddington. Now, as he
glanced about him, he saw with some surprise how far he had come.
The damp remnants of the fog still hung about the house-tops in a filmy
veil; there were no glimpses of green to break the monotony of tone; all
was quiet, dingy, neglected. But to Chilcote the shabbiness was restful,
the subdued atmosphere a satisfaction. Among these sad houses, these
passers-by, each filled with his own concerns, he experienced a sense
of respite and relief. In the fashionable streets that bounded his own
horizon, if a man paused in his walk to work out an idea he instantly
drew a crowd of inquisitive or contemptuous eyes; here, if a man halted
for half an hour it was nobody's business but his own.
Enjoying this thought, he wandered on for close upon an hour, moving
from one street to another with steps that were listless or rapid, as
inclination prompted; then, still acting with vagrant aimlessness, he
stopped in his wanderings and entered a small eating-house.
The place was low-ceiled and dirty, the air hot and steaming with the
smell of food, but Chilcote passed through the door and moved to one
of the tables with no expression of disgust, and with far less furtive
watchfulness than he used in his own house. By a curious mental twist he
felt greater freedom, larger opportunities in drab surroundings such as
these than in the broad issues and weighty responsibilities of his own
life. Choosing a corner seat, he called for coffee; and there, protected
by shadow and wrapped in cigarette smoke, he set about imagining himself
some vagrant unit who had slipped his moorings and was blissfully
adrift.
The imagination was pleasant while it lasted, but with him nothing was
permanent. Of late the greater part of his sufferings had been comprised
in the irritable fickleness of all his aims--the distaste for and
impossibility of sustained effort in any direction. He had barely
lighted a second cigarette when the old restlessness fell upon him; he
stirred nervously in his seat, and the cigarette was scarcely burned out
when he rose, paid his small bill, and left the shop.
Outside on the pavement he halted, pulled out his watch, and saw
that two hours stretched in front before any appointment claimed his
attention. He wondered vaguely where he might go to--what he might do
in those two hours? In the last few minutes a distaste for solitude had
risen in his mind, giving the close street a loneliness that had escaped
him before.
As he stood wavering a cab passed slowly down the street. The sight of
a well-dressed man roused the cabman; flicking his whip, he passed
Chilcote close, feigning to pull up.
The cab suggested civilization. Chilcote's mind veered suddenly and he
raised his hand. The vehicle stopped and he climbed in.
“Where, sir?” The cabman peered down through the roof-door.
Chilcote raised his head. “Oh, anywhere near Pall Mall,” he said.
Then, as the horse started forward, he put up his hand and shook the
trap-door. “Wait!” he called. “I've changed my mind. Drive to Cadogan
Gardens--No. 33.”
The distance to Cadogan Gardens was covered quickly. Chilcote had
hardly realized that his destination was reached when the cab pulled up.
Jumping out, he paid the fare and walked quickly to the hall-door of No.
33.
“Is Lady Astrupp at home?” he asked, sharply, as the door swung back in
answer to his knock.
The servant drew back deferentially. “Her ladyship has almost finished
lunch, sir,” he said.
For answer Chilcote stepped through the door-way and walked half-way
across the hall.
“All right,” he said. “But don't disturb her on my account. I'll wait
in the white room till she has finished.” And, without taking further
notice of the servant, he began to mount the stairs.
In the room where he had chosen to wait a pleasant wood-fire brightened
the dull January afternoon and softened the thick, white curtains, the
gilt furniture, and the Venetian vases filled with white roses. Moving
straight forward, Chilcote paused by the grate and stretched his hands
to the blaze; then, with his usual instability, he turned and passed to
a couch that stood a yard or two away.
On the couch, tucked away between a novel and a crystal gazing-ball,
was a white Persian kitten, fast asleep. Chilcote picked up the ball and
held it between his eyes and the fire; then he laughed superciliously,
tossed it back into its place, and caught the kitten's tail. The little
animal stirred, stretched itself, and began to purr. At the same moment
the door of the room opened.
Chilcote turned round. “I particularly said you were not to be
disturbed,” he began. “Have I merited displeasure?” He spoke fast, with
the uneasy tone that so often underran his words.
Lady Astrupp took his hand with a confiding gesture and smiled.
“Never displeasure,” she said, lingeringly, and again she smiled. The
smile might have struck a close observer as faintly, artificial. But
what man in Chilcote's frame of mind has time to be observant where
women are concerned? The manner of the smile was very sweet and almost
caressing--and that sufficed.
“What have you been doing?” she asked, after a moment. “I thought I was
quite forgotten.” She moved across to the couch, picked up the kitten,
and kissed it. “Isn't this sweet?” she added.
She looked very graceful as she turned, holding the little animal up.
She was a woman of twenty-seven, but she looked a girl. The outline of
her face was pure, the pale gold of her hair almost ethereal, and her
tall, slight figure still suggested the suppleness, the possibility of
future development, that belongs to youth. She wore a lace-colored gown
that harmonized with the room and with the delicacy of her skin.
“Now sit down and rest--or walk about the room. I sha'n't mind which.”
She nestled into the couch and picked up the crystal ball.
“What is the toy for?” Chilcote looked at her from the mantel-piece,
against which he was resting. He had never defined the precise
attraction that Lillian Astrupp held for him. Her shallowness soothed
him; her inconsequent egotism helped him to forget himself. She never
asked him how he was, she never expected impossibilities. She let him
come and go and act as he pleased, never demanding reasons. Like the
kitten, she was charming and graceful and easily amused; it was possible
that, also like the kitten, she could scratch and be spiteful on
occasion, but that did not weigh with him. He sometimes expressed
a vague envy of the late Lord Astrupp; but, even had circumstances
permitted, it is doubtful whether he would have chosen to be his
successor. Lillian as a friend was delightful, but Lillian as a wife
would have been a different consideration.
“What is the toy for?” he asked again.
She looked up slowly. “How cruel of you, Jack! It is my very latest
hobby.”
It was part of her attraction that she was never without a craze. Each
new one was as fleeting as the last, but to each she brought the same
delightfully insincere enthusiasm, the same picturesque devotion. Each
was a pose, but she posed so sweetly that nobody lost patience.
“You mustn't laugh!” she protested, letting the kitten slip to the
ground. “I've had lessons at five guineas each from the most fascinating
person--a professional; and I'm becoming quite an adept. Of course
I haven't been much beyond the milky appearance yet, but the milky
appearance is everything, you know; the rest will come. I am trying to
persuade Blanche to let me have a pavilion at her party in March, and
gaze for all you dull political people.” Again she smiled.
Chilcote smiled as well. “How is it done?” he asked, momentarily amused.
“Oh, the doing is quite delicious. You sit at a table with the ball in
front of you; then you take the subject's hands, spread them out on the
table, and stroke them very softly while you gaze into the crystal; that
gets up the sympathy, you know.” She looked up innocently. “Shall I show
you?”
Chilcote moved a small table nearer to the couch and spread his hands
upon it, palms downward. “Like this, eh?” he said. Then a ridiculous
nervousness seized him and he moved away. “Some other day,” he said,
quickly. “You can show me some other day. I'm not very fit this
afternoon.”
If Lillian felt any disappointment, she showed none. “Poor old thing!”
she said, softly. “Try to sit here by me and we won't bother about
anything.” She made a place for him beside her, and as he dropped into
it she took his hand and patted it sympathetically.
The touch was soothing, and he bore it patiently enough. After a moment
she lifted the hand with a little exclamation of reproof.
“You degenerate person! You have ceased to manicure. What has become of
my excellent training?”
Chilcote laughed. “Run to seed,” he said, lightly. Then his expression
and tone changed. “When a man gets to my age,” he added, “little social
luxuries don't seem worth while; the social necessities are irksome
enough. Personally, I envy the beggar in the street--exempt from
shaving, exempt from washing--”
Lillian raised her delicate eyebrows. The sentiment was beyond her
perception.
“But manicuring,” she said, reproachfully, “when you have such nice
hands. It was your hands and your eyes, you know, that first appealed to
me.” She sighed gently, with a touch of sentimental remembrance. “And
I thought it so strong of you not to wear rings--it must be such a
temptation.” She looked down at her own fingers, glittering with jewels.
But the momentary pleasure of her touch was gone. Chilcote drew away his
hand and picked up the book that lay between them.
“Other Men's Shoes!” he read. “A novel, of course?”
She smiled. “Of course. Such a fantastic story. Two men changing
identities.”
Chilcote rose and walked back to the mantel-piece.
“Changing identities?” he said, with a touch of interest.
“Yes. One man is an artist, the other a millionaire; one wants to know
what fame is like, the other wants to know how it feels to be really
sinfully rich. So they exchange experiences for a month.” She laughed.
Chilcote laughed as well. “But how?” he asked.
“Oh, I told you the idea was absurd. Fancy two people so much alike
that neither their friends nor their servants see any difference! Such a
thing couldn't be, could it?”
Chilcote looked down at the fire. “No,” he said, doubtfully. “No. I
suppose not.”
“Of course not. There are likenesses, but not freak likenesses like
that.”
Chilcote's head was bent as she spoke, but at the last words he lifted
it.
“By Jove! I don't know about that!” he said. “Not so very long ago I saw
two men so much alike that I--I--” He stopped.
Lillian smiled.
He colored quickly. “You doubt me?” he asked.
“My dear Jack!” Her voice was delicately reproachful.
“Then you think that my--my imagination has been playing me tricks?”
“My dear boy! Nothing of the kind. Come back to your place and tell me
the whole tale?” She smiled again, and patted the couch invitingly.
But Chilcote's balance had been upset. For the first time he saw Lillian
as one of the watchful, suspecting crowd before which he was constantly
on guard. Acting on the sensation, he moved suddenly towards the door.
“I--I have an appointment at the House,” he said, quickly. “I'll look in
another day when--when I'm better company. I know I'm a bear to-day. My
nerves, you know.” He came back to the couch and took her hand; then he
touched her cheek for an instant with his fingers.
“Good-bye,” he said. “Take care of yourself--and the kitten,” he added,
with forced gayety, as he crossed the room.
That afternoon Chilcote's nervous condition reached its height. All day
he had avoided the climax, but no evasion can be eternal, and this he
realized as he sat in his place on the Opposition benches during the
half-hour of wintry twilight that precedes the turning-on of the lights.
He realized it in that half-hour, but the application of the knowledge
followed later, when the time came for him to question the government
on some point relating to a proposed additional dry-dock at Talkley, the
naval base. Then for the first time he knew that the sufferings of
the past months could have a visible as well as a hidden side--could
disorganize his daily routine as they had already demoralized his will
and character.
The thing came upon him with extraordinary lack of preparation. He sat
through the twilight with tolerable calm, his nervousness showing only
in the occasional lifting of his hand to his collar and the frequent
changing of his position; but when the lights were turned on, and he
leaned back in his seat with closed eyes, he became conscious of a
curious impression--a disturbing idea that through his closed lids he
could see the faces on the opposite side of the House, see the rows of
eyes, sleepy, interested, or vigilant. Never before had the
sensation presented itself, but, once set up, it ran through all his
susceptibilities. By an absurd freak of fancy those varying eyes seemed
to pierce through his lids, almost through his eyeballs. The cold
perspiration that was his daily horror broke out on his forehead; and at
the same moment Fraide, his leader, turned, leaned over the back of his
seat, and touched his knee.
Chilcote started and opened his eyes. “I--I believe I was dozing,” he
said, confusedly.
Fraide smiled his dry, kindly smile. “A fatal admission for a member of
the Opposition,” he said. “But I was looking for you earlier in the day,
Chilcote. There is something behind this Persian affair. I believe it to
be a mere first move on Russia's part. You big trading people will find
it worth watching.”
Chilcote shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, I don't know,” he said. “I
scarcely believe in it. Lakely put a match to the powder in the 'St.
George's', but 'twill only be a noise and a puff of smoke.”
But Fraide did not smile. “What is the feeling down at Wark?” he asked.
“Has it awakened any interest?”
“At Wark? Oh, I--I don't quite know. I have been a little out of touch
with Wark in the last few weeks. A man has so many private affairs to
look to--” He was uneasy under his chief's scrutiny.
Fraide's lips parted as if to make reply, but with a certain dignified
reticence he closed them again and turned away.
Chilcote leaned back in his place and furtively passed his hand over his
forehead. His mind was possessed by one consideration--the consideration
of himself. He glanced down the crowded, lighted House to the big
glass doors; he glanced about him at his colleagues, indifferent
or interested; then surreptitiously his fingers strayed to his
waistcoat-pocket.
Usually he carried his morphia tabloids with him, but to-day by a
lapse of memory he had left them at home. He knew this, nevertheless he
continued to search, while the need of the drug rushed through him with
a sense of physical sickness. He lost hold on the business of the House;
unconsciously he half rose from his seat.
The man next him looked up. “Hold your ground, Chilcote,” he said.
“Rayforth is drying up.”
With a wave of relief Chilcote dropped back into his place. Whatever the
confusion in his mind, it was evidently not obvious in his face.
Rayforth resumed his seat, there was the usual slight stir and pause,
then Salett, the member for Salchester, rose.
With Salett's first words Chilcote's hand again sought his pocket, and
again his eyes strayed towards the doors, but Fraide's erect head and
stiff back just in front of him held him quiet. With an effort he pulled
out his notes and smoothed them nervously; but though his gaze was fixed
on the pages, not a line of Blessington's clear writing reached his
mind. He glanced at the face of the Speaker, then at the faces on the
Treasury Bench, then once more he leaned back in his seat.
The man beside him saw the movement. “Funking the drydock?” he
whispered, jestingly.
“No”--Chilcote turned to him suddenly--“but I feel beastly--have felt
beastly for weeks.”
The other looked at him more closely. “Anything wrong?” he asked. It was
a novel experience to be confided in by Chilcote.
“Oh, it's the grind-the infernal grind.” As he said it, it seemed to
him suddenly that his strength gave way. He forgot his companion, his
position, everything except the urgent instinct that filled mind and
body. Scarcely knowing what he did, he rose and leaned forward to
whisper in Fraide's ear.
Fraide was seen to turn, his thin face interested and concerned, then
he was seen to nod once or twice in acquiescence, and a moment later
Chilcote stepped quietly out of his place.
One or two men spoke to him as he hurried from the House, but he shook
them off almost uncivilly, and, making for the nearest exit, hailed a
cab.
The drive to Grosvenor Square was a misery. Time after time he changed
from one corner of the cab to the other, his acute internal pains
prolonged by every delay and increased by every motion. At last, weak in
all his limbs, he stepped from the vehicle at his own door.
Entering the house, he instantly mounted the stairs and passed to his
own rooms. Opening the bedroom door, he peered in cautiously, then
pushed the door wide. The light had been switched on, but the room
was empty. With a nervous excitement scarcely to be kept in check, he
entered, shut and locked the door, then moved to the wardrobe, and,
opening it, drew the tube of tabloids from the shelf.
His hand shook violently as he carried the tube to the table. The strain
of the day, the anxiety of the past hours, with their final failure,
had found sudden expression. Mixing a larger dose than any he had before
allowed himself, he swallowed it hastily, and, walking across the room,
threw himself, fully dressed, upon the bed.
IV
To those whose sphere lies in the west of London, Fleet Street is little
more than a name, and Clifford's Inn a mere dead letter. Yet Clifford's
Inn lies as safely stowed away in the shadow of the Law Courts as any
grave under a country church wall; it is as green of grass, as gray of
stone, as irresponsive to the passing footstep.
Facing the railed-in grass-plot of its little court stood the house in
which John Loder had his rooms. Taken at a first glance, the house had
the deserted air of an office, inhabited only in the early hours; but,
as night fell, lights would be seen to show out, first on one floor,
then on another--faint, human beacons unconsciously signalling each
other. The rooms Loder inhabited were on the highest floor; and
from their windows one might gaze philosophically on the tree-tops,
forgetting the uneven pavement and the worn railing that hemmed them
round. In the landing outside the rooms his name appeared above his
door, but the paint had been soiled by time, and the letters for the
most part reduced to shadows; so that, taken in conjunction with the
gaunt staircase and bare walls, the place had a cheerless look.
Inside, however, the effect was somewhat mitigated. The room on the
right hand, as one entered the small passage that served as hall, was of
fair size, though low-ceiled. The paint of the wall-panelling, like
the name above the outer door, had long ago been worn to a dirty and
nondescript hue, and the floor was innocent of carpet; yet in the middle
of the room stood a fine old Cromwell table, and on the plain
deal book-shelves and along the mantel-piece were some valuable
books--political and historical. There were no curtains on the windows,
and a common reading-lamp with a green shade stood on a desk. It was the
room of a man with few hobbies and no pleasures--who existed because he
was alive, and worked because he must.
Three nights after the great fog John Loder sat by his desk in the light
of the green-shaded lamp. The remains of a very frugal supper stood on
the centre-table, and in the grate a small and economical-looking fire
was burning.
Having written for close on two hours, he pushed back his chair and
stretched his cramped fingers; then he yawned, rose, and slowly walked
across the room. Reaching the mantel-piece, he took a pipe from the
pipe-rack and some tobacco from the jar that stood behind the books.
His face looked tired and a little worn, as is common with men who have
worked long at an uncongenial task. Shredding the tobacco between his
hands, he slowly filled the pipe, then lighted it from the fire with a
spill of twisted paper.
Almost at the moment that he applied the light the sound of steps
mounting the uncarpeted stairs outside caught his attention, and he
raised his head to listen.
Presently the steps halted and he heard a match struck. The stranger
was evidently uncertain of his whereabouts. Then the steps moved forward
again and paused.
An expression of surprise crossed Loder's face, and he laid down his
pipe. As the visitor knocked, he walked quietly across the room and
opened the door.
The passage outside was dark, and the new-comer drew back before the
light from the room.
“Mr. Loder--?” he began, interrogatively. Then all at once he laughed
in embarrassed apology. “Forgive me,” he said. “The light rather dazzled
me. I didn't realize who it was.”
Loder recognized the voice as belonging to his acquaintance of the fog.
“Oh, it's you!” he said. “Won't you come in?” His voice was a little
cold. This sudden resurrection left him surprised--and not quite
pleasantly surprised. He walked back to the fireplace, followed by his
guest.
The guest seemed nervous and agitated. “I must apologize for the hour of
my visit,” he said. “My--my time is not quite my own.”
Loder waved his hand. “Whose time is his own?” he said.
Chilcote, encouraged by the remark, drew nearer to the fire. Until this
moment he had refrained from looking directly at his host; now,
however, he raised his eyes, and, despite his preparation, he recoiled
unavoidably before the extraordinary resemblance. Seen here, in the
casual surroundings of a badly furnished and crudely lighted room, it
was even more astounding than it had been in the mystery of the fog.
“Forgive me,” he said again. “It is physical--purely physical. I am
bowled over against my will.”
Loder smiled. The slight contempt that Chilcote had first inspired rose
again, and with it a second feeling less easily defined. The man seemed
so unstable, so incapable, yet so grotesquely suggestive to himself.
“The likeness is rather overwhelming,” he said; “but not heavy enough
to sink under. Come nearer the fire. What brought you here? Curiosity?”
There was a wooden arm-chair by the fireplace. He indicated it with a
wave of the hand; then turned and took up his smouldering pipe.
Chilcote, watching him furtively, obeyed the gesture and sat down.
“It is extraordinary!” he said, as if unable to dismiss the subject.
“It--it is quite extraordinary!”
The other glanced round. “Let's drop it,” he said. “It's so confoundedly
obvious.” Then his tone changed. “Won't you smoke?” he asked.
“Thanks.” Chilcote began to fumble for his cigarettes.
But his host forestalled him. Taking a box from the mantel-piece, he
held it out.
“My one extravagance!” he said, ironically. “My resources bind me to
one; and I think I have made a wise selection. It is about the only vice
we haven't to pay for six times over.” He glanced sharply at the face so
absurdly like his own, then, lighting a fresh spill, offered his guest a
light.
Chilcote moistened his cigarette and leaned forward. In the flare of the
paper his face looked set and anxious, but Loder saw that the lips did
not twitch as they had done on the previous occasion that he had given
him a light, and a look of comprehension crossed his eyes.
“What will you drink? Or, rather, will you have a whiskey? I keep
nothing else. Hospitality is one of the debarred luxuries.”
Chilcote shook his head. “I seldom drink. But don't let that deter you.”
Loder smiled. “I have one drink in the twenty-four hours--generally at
two o'clock, when my night's work is done. A solitary man has to look
where he is going.”
“You work till two?”
“Two--or three.”
Chilcote's eyes wandered to the desk. “You write?” he asked.
The other nodded curtly.
“Books?” Chilcote's tone was anxious.
Loder laughed, and the bitter note showed in his voice.
“No--not books,” he said.
Chilcote leaned back in his chair and passed his hand across his face.
The strong wave of satisfaction that the words woke in him was difficult
to conceal.
“What is your work?”
Loder turned aside. “You must not ask that,” he said, shortly. “When a
man has only one capacity, and the capacity has no outlet, he is apt to
run to seed in a wrong direction. I cultivate weeds--at abominable labor
and a very small reward.” He stood with his back to the fire, facing
his visitor; his attitude was a curious blending of pride, defiance, and
despondency.
Chilcote leaned forward again. “Why speak of yourself like that? You are
a man of intelligence and education.” He spoke questioningly, anxiously.
“Intelligence and education!” Loder laughed shortly. “London is cemented
with intelligence. And education! What is education? The court dress
necessary to presentation, the wig and gown necessary to the barrister.
But do the wig and gown necessarily mean briefs? Or the court dress
royal favor? Education is the accessory; it is influence that is
essential. You should know that.”
Chilcote moved restlessly in his seat. “You talk bitterly,” he said.
The other looked up. “I think bitterly, which is worse. I am one of
the unlucky beggars who, in the expectation of money, has been denied
a profession--even a trade, to which to cling in time of shipwreck; and
who, when disaster comes, drift out to sea. I warned you the other night
to steer clear of me. I come under the head of flotsam!”
Chilcote's face lighted. “You came a cropper?” he asked.
“No. It was some one else who came the cropper--I only dealt in
results.”
“Big results?”
“A drop from a probable eighty thousand pounds to a certain eight
hundred.”
Chilcote glanced up. “How did you take it?” he asked.
“I? Oh, I was twenty-five then. I had a good many hopes and a lot of
pride; but there is no place for either in a working world.”
“But your people?”
“My last relation died with the fortune.”
“Your friends?”
Loder laid down his pipe. “I told you I was twenty-five,” he said, with
the tinge of humor that sometimes crossed his manner. “Doesn't that
explain things? I had never taken favors in prosperity; a change
of fortune was not likely to alter my ways. As I have said, I was
twenty-five.” He smiled. “When I realized my position I sold all my
belongings with the exception of a table and a few books--which I
stored. I put on a walking-suit and let my beard grow; then, with my
entire capital in my pocket, I left England without saying good-bye to
any one.”
“For how long?”
“Oh, for six years. I wandered half over Europe and through a good part
of Asia in the time.”
“And then?”
“Then? Oh, I shaved off the beard and came back to London!” He looked at
Chilcote, partly contemptuous, partly amused at his curiosity.
But Chilcote sat staring in silence. The domination of the other's
personality and the futility of his achievements baffled him.
Loder saw his bewilderment. “You wonder what the devil I came into the
world for,” he said. “I sometimes wonder the same myself.”
At his words a change passed over Chilcote. He half rose, then dropped
back into his seat.
“You have no friends?” he said. “Your life is worth nothing to you?”
Loder raised his head. “I thought I had conveyed that impression.”
“You are an absolutely free man.”
“No man is free who works for his bread. If things had been different
I might have been in such shoes as yours, sauntering in legislative
byways; my hopes turned that way once. But hopes, like more substantial
things, belong to the past--” He stopped abruptly and looked at his
companion.
The change in Chilcote had become more acute; he sat fingering his
cigarette, his brows drawn down, his lips set nervously in a conflict of
emotions. For a space he stayed very still, avoiding Loder's eyes; then,
as if decision had suddenly come to him, he turned and met his gaze.
“How if there was a future,” he said, “as well as a past?”
V
For the space of a minute there was silence in the room, then outside
in the still night three clocks simultaneously chimed eleven, and their
announcement was taken up and echoed by half a dozen others, loud and
faint, hoarse and resonant; for all through the hours of darkness the
neighborhood of Fleet Street is alive with chimes.
Chilcote, startled by the jangle, rose from his seat; then, as if driven
by an uncontrollable impulse, he spoke again.
“You probably think I am mad--” he began.
Loder took his pipe out of his mouth. “I am not so presumptuous,” he
said, quietly.
For a space the other eyed him silently, as if trying to gauge his
thoughts; then once more he broke into speech.
“Look here,” he said. “I came to-night to make a proposition. When I
have made it you'll first of all jeer at it--as I jeered when I made
it to myself; then you'll see its possibilities--as I did; then,”--he
paused and glanced round the room nervously--“then you'll accept it--as
I did.” In the uneasy haste of his speech his words broke off almost
unintelligibly.
Involuntarily Loder lifted his head to retort, but Chilcote put up his
hand. His face was set with the obstinate determination that weak men
sometime exhibit.
“Before I begin I want to say that I am not drunk--that I am neither mad
nor drunk.” He looked fully at his companion with his restless glance.
“I am quite sane--quite reasonable.”
Again Loder essayed to speak, but again he put up his hand.
“No. Hear me out. You told me something of your story. I'll tell you
something of mine. You'll be the first person, man or woman, that I have
confided in for ten years. You say you have been treated shabbily. I
have treated myself shabbily--which is harder to reconcile. I had every
chance--and I chucked every chance away.”
There was a strained pause, then again Loder lifted his head.
“Morphia?” he said, very quietly.
Chilcote wheeled round with a scared gesture. “How did you know that?”
he asked, sharply.
The other smiled. “It wasn't guessing--it wasn't even deduction. You
told me, or as good as told me, in the fog--when we talked of
Lexington. You were unstrung that night, and I--Well, perhaps one gets
over-observant from living alone.” He smiled again.
Chilcote collapsed into his former seat and passed his handkerchief
across his forehead.
Loder watched him for a space; then he spoke. “Why don't you pull up?”
he said. “You are a young man still. Why don't you drop the thing before
it gets too late?” His face was unsympathetic, and below the question in
his voice lay a note of hard ness.
Chilcote returned his glance. The suggestion of reproof had accentuated
his pallor. Under his excitement he looked ill and worn.
“You might talk till doomsday, but every word would be wasted,” he said,
irritably. “I'm past praying for, by something like six years.”
“Then why come here?” Loder was pulling hard on his pipe. “I'm not a
dealer in sympathy.”
“I don't require sympathy.” Chilcote rose again. He was still agitated,
but the agitation was quieter. “I want a much more expensive thing than
sympathy--and I am willing to pay for it.”
The other turned and looked at him. “I have no possession in the world
that would be worth a fiver to you,” he said, coldly. “You're either
under a delusion or you're wasting my time.”
Chilcote laughed nervously. “Wait,” he said. “Wait. I only ask you to
wait. First let me sketch you my position--it won't take many words:
“My grandfather was a Chilcote of Westmoreland; he was one of the first
of his day and his class to recognize that there was a future in trade,
so, breaking his own little twig from the family tree, he went south to
Wark and entered a ship-owning firm. In thirty years' time he died,
the owner of one
|
of the most southern (San Diego) in 1769, and that of the most northern
(San Francisco) in 1776, two years only before Cook's arrival at Nootka
Sound.
In point of fact, the contested territory had been utterly neglected by
Spain. All the energies, such as they were, of her Mexican colonies were
much more advantageously applied to the improvement of the vast and rich
countries which they had conquered, principally to the discovery and
working of the richest and most productive mines of the precious metals
as yet known.
Anson's expedition was purely military, and confined to southern
latitudes. But the narrative drew the public attention towards the
Pacific ocean, and gave a new impulse to the spirit of discovery. Almost
immediately after the peace of 1763 voyages were undertaken for that
purpose by the Governments of England and France: the Pacific was
explored: the Russians on the other hand had, more than thirty years
before, ascertained the continuity of the American continent from
Behring's Straits to Mount St. Elias. It was then, and not till then,
that Spain, or rather the Mexican Government, awakening from its long
lethargy, extended its missions to New California. In the year 1774,
Perez, with his pilot, Martinez, sailed as far north as the northern
extremity of Queen Charlotte's Island, having anchored in Nootka Sound,
and, as Martinez asserts, perceived the entrance of Fuca's Straits. New
and important discoveries were made by Quadra and Heceta in the year
1775. The sequel is well known.
But on what foundation did the claim of Spain rest? If she had indeed an
absolute right to the whole country bordering on the Pacific, derived
either from natural or international law, or from usages generally
recognized, it matters but little, as respects right, whether other
nations had acquiesced in, or opposed her claim. If there was no
foundation for that absolute and exclusive right of sovereignty, Spain
could transfer nothing more to the United States than the legitimate
claims derived from her discoveries.
The discovery gives an incipient claim not only to the identical spot
thus discovered, but to a certain distance beyond it. It has been
admitted that the claim extends generally, though not universally, as
far inland as the sources of rivers emptying into the sea where the
discovery has been made. The distance to which the right or claim
extends along the sea shore may not be precisely defined, and may vary
according to circumstances. But it never can be unlimited; it has never
been recognized beyond a reasonable extent. Spain was the first European
nation which discovered and occupied Florida. A claim on that account to
the absolute sovereignty over the whole of the Atlantic shores as far as
Hudson's Bay, or the 60th degree of latitude, would strike every one as
utterly absurd. A claim on the part of Spain to the sovereignty of all
the shores of the Pacific, derived from her having established missions
in California, would be similar in its nature and extent, and equally
inadmissible. It cannot be sustained as a natural right, nor by the
principles of international law, nor by any general usage or precedent.
The claim of Spain rested on no such grounds.
It was derived from the bull of Pope Alexander VI., which the Spanish
monarchs obtained in the year 1493, immediately after the discovery of
America by Columbus. By virtue of that bull, combined with another
previously granted to Portugal, and with modifications respecting the
division line between the two Powers, the Pope granted to them the
exclusive sovereignty over all the discoveries made or to be made in all
the heathen portions of the globe, including, it must be recollected,
all the countries in America bordering on the Atlantic, as well as those
on the Pacific ocean. Yet, even at that time, the Catholic Kings of
England, and France did not recognize the authority of the Pope on such
subjects; as evidently appears by the voyages of Cabot under the orders
of Henry VII. of England, and of Cartier under those of the King of
France, Francis I. Subsequently, the colonies planted by both countries,
from Florida to Hudson's Bay, were a practical and continued protest and
denial of the Spanish claim of absolute sovereignty over the whole of
America: whilst the acquiescence of Spain was tantamount to an
abandonment of that claim where it was resisted. Ridiculous as a right
derived from such a source may appear at this time, it was not then thus
considered by Spain; and the western boundary of Brazil is to this day
regulated by the division line prescribed by the Pope.
I am not aware of any other principle by which the claim ever was or
can be sustained, unless it be the idle ceremony of taking possession,
as it is called. The celebrated Spaniard who first discovered the
Pacific ocean, "Balboa, advancing up to the middle in the waves, with
his buckler and sword, took possession of that ocean in the name of the
King his master, and vowed to defend it, with his arms, against all his
enemies."--(_Robertson._)
I have dwelt longer on this subject than it may seem to deserve. The
assertion of the solidity of this ancient exclusive Spanish claim has
had an apparent effect on public opinion fatal to the prospect of an
amicable arrangement. I am also fully satisfied that the resort to
vulnerable arguments, instead of strengthening, has a tendency to lessen
the weight of the multiplied proofs, by which the superiority of the
American over the British claim has been so fully established.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] I allude here only to the compromise proposed by Great Britain. Her
actual claim, as explicitly stated by herself, is to the whole
territory, limited to a right of joint occupancy, in common with other
States, leaving the right of exclusive dominion in abeyance.
NUMBER II.
It has, it is believed, been conclusively proved that the claim of the
United States to absolute sovereignty over the whole Oregon territory,
in virtue of the ancient exclusive Spanish claim, is wholly unfounded.
The next question is, whether the other facts and arguments adduced by
either party establish a complete and absolute title of either to the
whole; for the United States claim it explicitly; and, although the
British proposal of compromise did yield a part, yet her qualified claim
extends to the whole. It has been stated by herself in the following
words: "Great Britain claims no exclusive sovereignty over any portion
of that territory. Her present claim, not in respect to any part, but to
the whole, is limited to a right of joint occupancy, in common with
other States, leaving the right of exclusive dominion in abeyance." And,
again: "The qualified rights which Great Britain now possesses over the
whole of the territory in question, embrace the right to navigate the
waters of those countries, the right to settle in and over any part of
them, and the right freely to trade with the inhabitants and occupiers
of the same. * * * * * * It is fully admitted that the United States
possess the same rights; but beyond they possess none."
In the nature of things, it seems almost impossible that a complete and
absolute right to any portion of America can exist, unless it be by
prescriptive and undisputed _actual_ possession and settlements, or by
virtue of a treaty.
At the time when America was discovered, the law of nations was
altogether unsettled. More than a century elapsed before Grotius
attempted to lay its foundation on Natural Law and the moral precepts of
Christianity; and, when sustaining it by precedents, he was compelled to
recur to Rome and Greece. It was in reality a new case, to which no
ancient precedents could apply,[2] for which some new rules must be
adopted. Gradually, some general principles were admitted, never
universally, in their nature vague and often conflicting. For instance,
discovery varies, from the simple ascertaining of the continuity of
land, to a minute exploration of its various harbors, rivers, &c.; and
the rights derived from it may vary accordingly, and may occasionally be
claimed to the same district by different nations. There is no precise
rule for regulating the time after which the neglect to occupy would
nullify the right of prior discovery; nor for defining the extent of
coast beyond the spot discovered to which the discoverer may be
entitled, or how far inland his claim extends. The principle most
generally admitted was, that, in case of a river, the right extended to
the whole country drained by that river and its tributaries. Even this
was not universally conceded. This right might be affected by a
simultaneous or prior discovery and occupancy of some of the sources of
such river by another party; or it might conflict with a general claim
of contiguity. This last claim, when extending beyond the sources of
rivers discovered and occupied, is vague and undefined: though it would
seem that it cannot exceed in breadth that of the territory on the coast
originally discovered and occupied. A few examples will show the
uncertainty resulting from those various claims, when they conflicted
with each other.
The old British charters extending from sea to sea have already been
mentioned. They were founded, beyond the sources of the rivers emptying
into the Atlantic, on no other principle than that of contiguity or
continuity. The grant in 1621 of Nova Scotia, by James the First, is
bounded on the north by the river St. Lawrence, though Cartier had more
than eighty-five years before discovered the mouth of that river and
ascended it as high up as the present site of Montreal, and the French
under Champlain had several years before 1621 been settled at Quebec.
But there is another case more important, and still more in point.
The few survivors of the disastrous expedition of Narvaez, who, coming
from Florida, did in a most extraordinary way reach Culiacan on the
Pacific, were the first Europeans who crossed the Mississippi. Some
years later, Ferdinand de Soto, coming also from Florida, did in the
year 1541 reach and cross the Mississippi, at some place between the
mouth of the Ohio and that of the Arkansas. He explored a portion of the
river and of the adjacent country; and, after his death, Moscoso, who
succeeded him in command, did, in the year 1543, build seven brigantines
or barques, in which, with the residue of his followers, he descended
the Mississippi, the mouth of which he reached in seventeen days. Thence
putting to sea with his frail vessels, he was fortunate enough to reach
the Spanish port of Panuco, on the Mexican coast. The right of discovery
clearly belonged to Spain; but she had neglected for near one hundred
and fifty years to make any settlement on the great river or any of its
tributaries. The French, coming from Canada, reached the Mississippi in
the year 1680, and ascended it as high up as St. Anthony's Falls; and La
Salle descended it in 1682 to its mouth. The French Government did, in
virtue of that second discovery, claim the country, subsequently founded
New Orleans, and formed several other settlements in the interior, on
the Mississippi or its waters. Spain almost immediately occupied
Pensacola and Nacogdoches, in order to check the progress of the French
eastwardly and westwardly; but she did not attempt to disturb them in
their settlements on the Mississippi and its tributaries. We have here
the proof of a prior right of discovery being superseded, when too long
neglected, by that of actual occupancy and settlement.
The French, by virtue of having thus discovered the mouth of the
Mississippi, of having ascended it more than fifteen hundred miles, of
having explored the Ohio, the Wabash, and the Illinois, from their
respective mouths to their most remote sources, and of having formed
several settlements as above mentioned, laid claim to the whole country
drained by the main river and its tributaries. They accordingly built
forts at Le Boeuf, high up the Alleghany river, and on the site where
Pittsburgh now stands. On the ground of discovery or settlement, Great
Britain had not the slightest claim. General, then Colonel Washington,
was the first who, at the age of twenty-two, and in the year 1754,
planted the British banner on the Western waters. The British claim was
founded principally on the ground of contiguity, enforced by other
considerations. The strongest of these was, that it could not consist
with natural law, that the British colonies, with a population of near
two millions, should be confined to the narrow belt of land between the
Atlantic and the Alleghany Mountains, and that the right derived from
the discovery of the main river should be carried to such an extent as
to allow the French colonies, with a population of fifty thousand,
rightfully to claim the whole valley of the Mississippi. The contest was
decided by the sword. By the treaty of peace of 1763, the Mississippi,
with the exception of New Orleans and its immediate vicinity, was made
the boundary. The French not only lost all that part of the valley which
lay east of that river, but they were compelled to cede Canada to Great
Britain.
It may, however, happen that all the various claims from which a title
may be derived, instead of pertaining to several Powers, and giving rise
to conflicting pretensions, are united and rightfully belong to one
nation alone. This union, if entire, may justly be considered as giving
a complete and exclusive title to the sovereignty of that part of the
country embraced by such united claims.
The position assumed by the British Government, that those various
claims exclude each other, and that the assertion of one forbids an
appeal to the others, is obviously untenable. All that can be said in
that respect is, that if any one claim is alone sufficient to establish
a complete and indisputable title, an appeal to others is superfluous.
Thus far, and no farther, can the objection be maintained. The argument
on the part of the United States in reality was, that the Government
considered the title derived from the ancient exclusive Spanish claim as
indisputable; but that, if this was denied, all the other just claims of
the United States taken together constituted a complete title, or at
least far superior to any that could be adduced on the part of Great
Britain.
It is not intended to enter into the merits of the question, which has
been completely discussed, since the object of this paper is only to
show that there remain on both sides certain debatable questions; and
that therefore both Governments may, if so disposed, recede from some
of their pretensions, without any abandonment of positive rights, and
without impairing national honor and dignity.
Although Great Britain seems, in this discussion, to have relied almost
exclusively on the right derived from actual occupancy and settlement,
she cannot reject absolutely those derived from other sources. She must
admit that, both in theory and practice, the claims derived from prior
discovery, from contiguity, from the principle which gives to the first
discoverer of the mouth of a river and of its course a claim to the
whole country drained by such river, have all been recognized to a
certain, though not well-defined extent, by all the European nations
claiming various portions of America. And she cannot deny the facts,
that (as Mr. Greenhow justly concludes) the seashore had been generally
examined from the 42d, and minutely from the 45th to the 48th degree of
latitude, Nootka Sound discovered, and the general direction of the
coast from the 48th to the 58th degree of latitude ascertained, by the
Spanish expeditions, in the years 1774 and 1775, of Perez, Heceta, and
Bodego y Quadra; that the American Captain Gray was the first who, in
1792, entered into and ascertained the existence of the River Columbia,
and the place where it empties into the sea; that, prior to that
discovery, the Spaniard Heceta was the first who had been within the
bay, called Deception Bay by Meares, into which the river does empty;
that, of the four navigators who had been in that bay prior to Gray's
final discovery, the Spaniard Heceta and the American Gray were the only
ones who had asserted that a great river emptied itself into that bay,
Heceta having even given a name to the river (St. Roc), and the entrance
having been designated by his own name (Ensennada de Heceta), whilst the
two English navigators, Meares and Vancouver, had both concluded that no
large river had its mouth there; that, in the year 1805, Lewis and
Clarke were the first who descended the river Columbia, from one of its
principal western sources to its mouth; that the first actual occupancy
in that quarter was by Mr. Astor's company, on the 24th of March, 1811,
though Mr. Thompson, the astronomer of the British Northwest Company,
who arrived at Astoria on the 15th of July, may have wintered on or near
some northern source of the river in 52 degrees north latitude; that
amongst the factories established by that American company one was
situated at the confluence of the Okanagan with the Columbia, in about
49 degrees of latitude; that the 42d degree is the boundary, west of the
Stony Mountains, established by treaty between Spain, now Mexico, and
the United States; that the 49th degree is likewise the boundary, from
the Lake of the Woods to the Stony Mountains, established by treaty
between Great Britain and the United States; and that therefore the
right of the United States, which may be derived from the principle of
contiguity or continuity, embraces the territory west of the Stony
Mountains contained between the 42d and 49th degrees of latitude.
Omitting other considerations which apply principally to the territory
north of Fuca Straits, where the claims of both parties are almost
exclusively derived from their respective discoveries, including those
of Spain, it may be rationally inferred from the preceding enumeration
that there remain various questions which must be considered by Great
Britain as being still doubtful and debatable, and that she may
therefore, without any abandonment of positive rights, recede from the
extreme pretensions which she has advanced in the discussion respecting
a division of the territory. But, although conjectures may be formed,
and the course pursued by the Government of the United States may have
an influence on that which Great Britain will adopt, it does not belong
to me to discuss what that Government may or will do. This paper is
intended for the American, and not for the English public; and my
attention has been principally directed to those points which may be
considered by the United States as doubtful and debatable.
It was expressly stipulated that nothing contained in the conventions of
1818 and 1827 should be construed to impair, _or in any manner affect_,
the claims which either of the contracting parties may have to any part
of the country westward of the Stony or Rocky Mountains. After the most
cool and impartial investigation of which I am capable, I have not been
able to perceive any claim on the part of Great Britain, or debatable
question, respecting the territory south of Fuca's Straits, but the
species of occupancy by the British Fur companies between the year 1813
and October 20th, 1818; and this must be considered in connection with
the restoration of "all territory, places, and possessions whatsoever,
taken by either party from the other during the war," provided for by
the treaty of Ghent. To this branch of the subject belongs also the
question whether the establishment of trading factories with Indians may
eventually give a right to sovereignty. My opinion was expressed in the
American counter-statement of the case, dated 19th December, 1826: "It
is believed that mere factories, established solely for the purpose of
trafficking with the natives, and without any view to cultivation and
permanent settlement, cannot, of themselves, and unsupported by any
other consideration, give any better title to dominion and absolute
sovereignty than similar establishments made in a civilized country."
However true this may be as an abstract proposition, it must be admitted
that, practically, the modest British factory at Calcutta has gradually
grown up into absolute and undisputed sovereignty over a population of
eighty millions of people.
The questions which, as it appears to me, may be allowed by the United
States to be debatable, and therefore to make it questionable whether
they have a complete right to the whole Oregon territory, are:
1st. The Nootka convention, which applies to the whole, and which,
though not of primary importance, is nevertheless a fact, and the
inferences drawn from it a matter of argument.
2dly. The discovery of the Straits of Fuca.
3dly. North of those straits; along the sea shores, the discoveries of
the British contrasted with those of the American and Spanish
navigators; in the interior, the question whether the discovery of the
mouth and the navigation of one of its principal branches, from its
source to the mouth of the river, implies without exception a complete
right to the whole country drained by all the tributaries of such river;
and also the British claim to the whole territory drained by Frazer's
river--its sources having been discovered in 1792 by Sir Alexander
Mackenzie, factories having been established upon it by the British as
early as the year 1806, and the whole river thence to its mouth having
been for a number of years exclusively navigated by British subjects.
It appears to me sufficient generally to suggest the controverted
points. That which relates to Fuca's Straits is the most important, and
deserves particular consideration.
If Fuca's voyage in 1592 could be proved to be an authentic document,
this would settle at once the question in favor of the United States;
but the voyage was denied in the introduction to the voyage of the Sutil
and Mexicano. This was an official document, published under the
auspices of the Spanish Government, and intended to vindicate Spain
against the charges, that she had contributed nothing to the advancement
of geography in those quarters. This negative evidence was confirmed by
Humboldt, who says that no trace of such voyage can be found in the
archives of Mexico. Unwilling to adduce any doubtful fact, I abstained
from alluding to it in the statement of the American case in 1826. Later
researches show that, although recorded evidences remain of the voyages
of Gali from Macao to Acapulco in 1584, of the Santa Anna (on board of
which was, as he says, Fuca himself) from Manilla to the coast of
California, where she was captured in 1587 by Cavendish, and of Vizcaino
in 1602-1603, and even of Maldonado's fictitious voyage in 1588, yet no
trace has been found in Spain or Mexico of Fuca's, or any other similar
voyage, in 1692, or thereabout.
On reading with attention the brief account published by Purchas, I will
say that the voyage itself has much internal evidence of its truth, but
that the inference or conclusion throws much discredit on the whole. The
only known account of the voyage is that given verbally at Venice in
1596, by Fuca, a Greek pilot, to Mr. Lock, a respectable English
merchant, who transmitted it to Purchas.
Fuca says that he had been sent by the Viceroy of Mexico to discover the
straits of Anian and the passage thereof into the sea, which they called
the North Sea, which is _our Northwest Sea_; that between 47 and 48
degrees of latitude he entered into a broad inlet, through which he
sailed more than twenty days; and, being then come into the North Sea
already, and not being sufficiently armed, he returned again to
Acapulco. He offered then to Mr. Lock to go into England and serve her
Majesty in a voyage for the discovery perfectly of the Northwest passage
into the South Sea. If it be granted that the inlet through which he
had sailed was really the same as the straits which now bear his name,
that sea into which he emerged, and which he asserts to be _our
Northwest Sea_, must have been that which is now called Queen
Charlotte's Sound, north of Quadra and Vancouver's Island, in about 51
degrees of latitude. _Our Northwest Sea_ was that which washes the
shores of Newfoundland and Labrador, then universally known as far north
as the vicinity of the 60th degree of latitude. Hudson's Straits had not
yet been discovered, and the discovery of Davis's Straits might not be
known to Fuca. But no navigator at that time, who, like he, had sailed
across both the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans, could be ignorant that
the northern extremity of Newfoundland, which lies nearly in the same
latitude as the northern entrance of Fuca's Straits, is situated sixty
or seventy degrees of longitude east of that entrance. The only way to
reconcile the account with itself is, to suppose that Fuca believed that
the continent of America did not, on the side of the Atlantic, extend
further north than about the 60th degree, and was bounded northwardly by
an open sea, which extended as far west as the northern extremity of the
inlet through which he had sailed. It is true nevertheless that, between
the years 1774 and 1792, there was a prevailing opinion amongst the
navigators that Fuca had actually discovered an inlet leading towards
the Atlantic. Prior to the year 1787 they were engaged in seeking for
it, and the Spaniards had for that purpose explored in vain the sea
coast lying south of the 48th degree; for it is well known that Fuca's
entrance lies between the 48th and 49th, and not between the 47th and
48th degrees of latitude, as he had announced.
The modern discovery of that inlet is due to Captain Barclay, an
Englishman, commanding the Imperial Eagle, a vessel owned by British
merchants, but which was equipped at, and took its departure from
Ostend, and which sailed under the flag of the Austrian East India
Company. The British Government, which has objected to the American
claim derived from Captain Gray's discovery of the mouth of the river
Columbia, on the ground that he was a private individual, and that his
vessel was not a public ship, cannot certainly claim anything in virtue
of a discovery by a private Englishman, sailing under Austrian colors.
In that case, and rejecting Fuca's voyage, neither the United States nor
England can lay any claim on account of the discovery of the straits.
Subsequently, the Englishman, Meares, sailing under the Portuguese flag,
penetrated, in 1768, about ten miles into the inlet, and the American,
Gray, in 1789, about fifty miles. The pretended voyage of the sloop
Washington throughout the straits, under the command of either Gray or
Kendrick, has no other foundation than an assertion of Meares, on which
no reliance can be placed.
In the year 1790 (1791 according to Vancouver) the Spaniards, Elisa and
Quimper, explored the straits more than one hundred miles, discovering
the Port Discovery, the entrance of Admiralty Inlet, the Deception
Passage, and the Canal de Haro. In 1792 Vancouver explored and surveyed
the straits throughout, together with their various bays and harbors.
Even there he had been preceded in part by the Sutil and Mexicano; and
he expresses his regret that they had advanced before him as far as the
Canal del Rosario.
Under all the circumstances of the case, it cannot be doubted that the
United States must admit that the discovery of the straits, and the
various inferences which may be drawn from it, are doubtful and
debatable questions.
That which relates to a presumed agreement of Commissioners appointed
under the treaty of Utrecht, by which the northern boundary of Canada
was, from a certain point north of Lake Superior, declared to extend
westwardly along the 49th parallel of latitude, does not appear to me
definitively settled. As this had been assumed many years before, as a
positive fact, and had never been contradicted, I also assumed it as
such and did not thoroughly investigate the subject. Yet I had before me
at least one map (name of publisher not recollected), of which I have a
vivid recollection, on which the dividing lines were distinctly marked
and expressly designated, as being in conformity with the agreement of
the Commissioners under the treaty of Utrecht. The evidence against the
fact, though in some respects strong, is purely negative. The line,
according to the map, extended from a certain point near the source of
the river Saguenay, in a westerly direction, to another designated
point on another river emptying either into the St Lawrence or James's
Bay; and there were, in that way, four or five lines following each
other, all tending westwardly, but with different inclinations
northwardly or southwardly, and all extending, from some apparently
known point on a designated river, to another similar point on another
river; the rivers themselves emptying themselves, some into the river
St. Lawrence and others into James's Bay or Hudson's Bay, until, from a
certain point lying north of Lake Superior, the line was declared to
extend along the 49th degree of latitude, as above stated. It was with
that map before me that the following paragraph was inserted in the
American statement of December, 1826:
"The limits between the possessions of Great Britain in North
America, and those of France in the same quarter, namely, Canada
and Louisiana, were determined by Commissioners appointed in
pursuance of the treaty of Utrecht. From the coast of Labrador to a
certain point North of Lake Superior, those limits were fixed
according to certain metes and bounds; and from that point the line
of demarcation was agreed to extend indefinitely due west, along
the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude. It was in conformity
with that arrangement that the United States did claim that
parallel as the northern boundary of Louisiana. It has been
accordingly thus settled, as far as the Stony Mountains, by the
convention of 1818 between the United States and Great Britain; and
no adequate reason can be given why the same boundary should not be
continued as far as the claims of the United States do extend, that
is to say, as far as the Pacific ocean."
It appears very extraordinary that any geographer or map-maker should
have invented a dividing line, with such specific details, without
having sufficient grounds for believing that it had been thus determined
by the Commissioners under the treaty of Utrecht. It is also believed
that Douglass' Summary (not at this moment within my reach) adverts to
the portion of the line from the coast of Labrador to the Saguenay.
Finally, the allusion to the 49th parallel, as a boundary fixed in
consequence of the treaty of Utrecht, had been repeatedly made in the
course of preceding negotiations, as well as in the conferences of that
of the year 1826; and there is no apparent motive, if the assertion was
known by the British negotiators not to be founded in fact, why they
should not have at once denied it. It may be, however, that the
question having ceased to be of any interest to Great Britain since the
acquisition of Canada, they had not investigated the subject. It is of
some importance, because, if authenticated, the discussion would be
converted from questions respecting undefined claims, into one
concerning the construction of a positive treaty or convention.
It is sufficiently clear that, under all the circumstances of the case,
an amicable division of the territory, if at all practicable, must be
founded in a great degree on expediency. This of course must be left to
the wisdom of the two Governments. The only natural, equitable, and
practicable line which has occurred to me, is one which, running through
the middle of Fuca Straits, from its entrance to a point on the main,
situated south of the mouth of Frazer's river, should leave to the
United States all the shores and harbors lying south, and to Great
Britain all those north of that line, including the whole of Quadra and
Vancouver's Island. It would be through Fuca's Straits a nearly easterly
line, along the parallel of about 48½ degrees, leaving to England the
most valuable and permanent portion of the fur trade, dividing the
sea-coast as nearly as possible into two equal parts, and the ports in
the most equitable manner. To leave Admiralty Inlet and its Sounds to
Great Britain, would give her a possession in the heart of the American
portion of the territory. Whether from the point where the line would
strike the main, it should be continued along the same parallel, or run
along the 49th, is a matter of secondary importance.
If such division should take place, the right of the inhabitants of the
country situated on the upper waters of the Columbia to the navigation
of that river to its mouth, is founded on natural law; and the principle
has almost been recognized as the public law of Europe. Limited to
commercial purposes, it might be admitted, but on the express condition
that the citizens of the United States should in the same manner, and to
the same extent, have the right to navigate the river St. Lawrence.
But I must say that, whatever may be the ultimate destinies of the
Oregon territory, I would feel great regret in seeing it in any way
divided. An amicable division appears to me without comparison
preferable to a war for that object between the two countries. In every
other view of the subject it is highly exceptionable. Without adverting
for the present to considerations of a higher nature, it may be
sufficient here to observe, that the conversion of the northern part of
the territory into a British colony would in its effects make the
arrangement very unequal. The United States are forbidden by their
Constitution to give a preference to the ports of one State over those
of another. The ports within the portion of territory allotted to the
United States would of course remain open to British vessels; whilst
American vessels would be excluded from the ports of the British colony,
unless occasionally admitted by special acts depending on the will of
Great Britain.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] Grotius, however, sustains the right of occupation by a maxim of the
Civil Roman Code.
NUMBER III.
Beyond the naked assertion of an absolute right to the whole territory,
so little in the shape of argument has been adduced, and so much warmth
has been exhibited in the discussion of the subject, that it cannot be
doubted that the question has now become, on both sides, one of feeling
rather than of right. This, in America, grows out of the fact that, in
this contest with a European nation, the contested territory is in
America and not in Europe. It is identical with the premature official
annunciation, that the United States could not acquiesce in the
establishment of any new colony in North America by any European nation.
This sentiment was already general at the time when it was first
publicly declared; and now that it has been almost universally avowed,
there can be no impropriety in any private citizen to say, as I now do,
that I share in that feeling to its full extent. For the Americans,
Oregon is or will be home: for England, it is but an outpost, which may
afford means of annoyance, rather than be a source of real power. In
America all have the same ultimate object in view; we differ only with
respect to the means by which it may be attained.
Two circumstances have had a tendency to nourish and excite these
feelings. The British fur companies, from their position, from their
monopolizing character, from their natural influence upon the Indians,
and from that, much greater than might have been expected, which they
have constantly had upon the British Government in its negotiations with
the United States, have for sixty years been a perpetual source of
annoyance and collisions. The vested interests of the Hudson Bay Company
are at this moment the greatest obstacle to an amicable arrangement. It
is at the same time due to justice to say that, as far as is known, that
company has acted in Oregon in conformity with the terms of the
convention, and that its officers have uniformly treated the Americans,
whether visitors or emigrants, not only courteously, but with great
kindness.
If the British colonies on the continent of America were an independent
country, or were they placed in their commercial relations, at least
with the United States, on the same footing as the British possessions
in Europe, these relations would be regulated by the reciprocal
interests and wants of the parties immediately concerned. Great Britain
has an undoubted right to persist in her colonial policy; but the result
has
|
, and then, by the favour he curried with great lords about the
king, procure unjust decisions in his favour; or, if that was too
round-about, to seize the disputed manor by force of arms, and rely on
his influence and Sir Oliver's cunning in the law to hold what he had
snatched. Kettley was one such place; it had come very lately into his
clutches; he still met with opposition from the tenants; and it was to
overawe discontent that he had led his troops that way.
By two in the morning, Sir Daniel sat in the inn room, close by the
fireside, for it was cold at that hour among the fens of Kettley. By his
elbow stood a pottle of spiced ale. He had taken off his visored
headpiece, and sat with his bald head and thin dark visage resting on
one hand, wrapped warmly in a sanguine-coloured cloak. At the lower end
of the room about a dozen of his men stood sentry over the door or lay
asleep on benches; and, somewhat nearer hand, a young lad apparently of
twelve or thirteen was stretched in a mantle on the floor. The host of
the "Sun" stood before the great man.
"Now, mark me, mine host," Sir Daniel said, "follow but mine orders,
and I shall be your good lord ever. I must have good men for head
boroughs, and I will have Adam-a-More high constable; see to it
narrowly. If other men be chosen, it shall avail you nothing; rather it
shall be found to your sore cost. For those that have paid rent to
Walsingham I shall take good measure--you among the rest, mine host."
"Good knight," said the host, "I will swear upon the cross of Holywood I
did but pay to Walsingham upon compulsion. Nay, bully knight, I love not
the rogue Walsinghams; they were as poor as thieves, bully knight. Give
me a great lord like you. Nay; ask me among the neighbours, I am stout
for Brackley."
"It may be," said Sir Daniel drily. "Ye shall then pay twice."
The innkeeper made a horrid grimace; but this was a piece of bad luck
that might readily befall a tenant in these unruly times, and he was
perhaps glad to make his peace so easily.
"Bring up yon fellow, Selden!" cried the knight.
And one of his retainers led up a poor, cringing old man, as pale as a
candle, and all shaking with the fen fever.
"Sirrah," said Sir Daniel, "your name?"
"An't please your worship," replied the man, "my name is
Condall--Condall of Shoreby, at your good worship's pleasure."
"I have heard you ill reported on," returned the knight. "Ye deal in
treason, rogue; ye trudge the country leasing; y' are heavily
suspicioned of the death of severals. How, fellow, are ye so bold? But I
will bring you down."
"Right honourable and my reverend lord," the man cried, "here is some
hodge-podge, saving your good presence. I am but a poor private man, and
have hurt none."
"The under-sheriff did report of you most vilely," said the knight.
"'Seize me,' saith he, 'that Tyndal of Shoreby.'"
"Condall, my good lord; Condall is my poor name," said the unfortunate.
"Condall or Tyndal, it is all one," replied Sir Daniel coolly. "For, by
my sooth, y' are here, and I do mightily suspect your honesty. If you
would save your neck, write me swiftly an obligation for twenty pound."
"For twenty pound, my good lord!" cried Condall. "Here is midsummer
madness! My whole estate amounteth not to seventy shillings."
"Condall or Tyndal," returned Sir Daniel, grinning, "I will run my peril
of that loss. Write me down twenty, and when I have recovered all I may,
I will be good lord to you, and pardon you the rest."
"Alas! my good lord, it may not be; I have no skill to write," said
Condall.
"Well-a-day!" returned the knight. "Here, then, is no remedy. Yet I
would fain have spared you, Tyndal, had my conscience suffered.--Selden,
take me this old shrew softly to the nearest elm, and hang me him
tenderly by the neck, where I may see him at my riding. Fare ye well,
good Master Condall, dear Master Tyndal; y' are post-haste for Paradise;
fare ye then well!"
"Nay, my right pleasant lord," replied Condall, forcing an obsequious
smile, "an ye be so masterful, as doth right well become you, I will
even, with all my poor skill, do your good bidding."
"Friend," quoth Sir Daniel, "ye will now write two score. Go to! y' are
too cunning for a livelihood of seventy shillings. Selden, see him write
me this in good form, and have it duly witnessed."
And Sir Daniel, who was a very merry knight, none merrier in England,
took a drink of his mulled ale, and lay back, smiling.
Meanwhile the boy upon the floor began to stir, and presently sat up and
looked about him with a scare.
"Hither," said Sir Daniel; and as the other rose at his command and came
slowly towards him, he leaned back and laughed outright. "By the rood!"
he cried, "a sturdy boy!"
The lad flashed crimson with anger, and darted a look of hate out of his
dark eyes. Now that he was on his legs, it was more difficult to make
certain of his age. His face looked somewhat older in expression, but it
was as smooth as a young child's; and in bone and body he was unusually
slender, and somewhat awkward of gait.
"Ye have called me, Sir Daniel," he said. "Was it to laugh at my poor
plight?"
"Nay, now, let laugh," said the knight. "Good shrew, let laugh, I pray
you. An ye could see yourself, I warrant ye would laugh the first."
"Well," cried the lad, flushing, "ye shall answer this when ye answer
for the other. Laugh while yet ye may!"
"Nay, now, good cousin," replied Sir Daniel, with some earnestness,
"think not that I mock at you, except in mirth, as between kinsfolk and
singular friends. I will make you a marriage of a thousand pounds, go
to! and cherish you exceedingly. I took you, indeed, roughly, as the
time demanded; but from henceforth I shall ungrudgingly maintain and
cheerfully serve you. Ye shall be Mrs. Shelton--Lady Shelton, by my
troth! for the lad promiseth bravely. Tut! ye will not shy for honest
laughter; it purgeth melancholy. They are no rogues who laugh, good
cousin.--Good mine host, lay me a meal now for my cousin, Master
John.--Sit ye down, sweetheart, and eat."
"Nay," said Master John, "I will break no bread. Since ye force me to
this sin, I will fast for my soul's interest.--But, good mine host, I
pray you of courtesy give me a cup of fair water; I shall be much
beholden to your courtesy indeed."
"Ye shall have a dispensation, go to!" cried the knight. "Shalt be well
shriven, by my faith! Content you, then, and eat."
But the lad was obstinate, drank a cup of water, and, once more wrapping
himself closely in his mantle, sat in a far corner, brooding.
In an hour or two there rose a stir in the village of sentries
challenging and the clatter of arms and horses; and then a troop drew up
by the inn-door, and Richard Shelton, splashed with mud, presented
himself upon the threshold.
"Save you, Sir Daniel," he said.
"How! Dickie Shelton!" cried the knight; and at the mention of Dick's
name the other lad looked curiously across. "What maketh Bennet Hatch?"
"Please you, sir knight, to take cognisance of this packet from Sir
Oliver, wherein are all things fully stated," answered Richard,
presenting the priest's letter. "And please you farther, ye were best
make all speed to Risingham; for on the way hither we encountered one
riding furiously with letters, and by his report, my Lord of Risingham
was sore bestead, and lacked exceedingly your presence."
"How say you? Sore bestead?" returned the knight. "Nay, then, we will
make speed sitting down, good Richard. As the world goes in this poor
realm of England, he that rides softliest rides surest. Delay, they say,
begetteth peril; but it is rather this itch of doing that undoes men;
mark it, Dick. But let me see, first, what cattle ye have
brought.--Selden, a link here at the door!"
And Sir Daniel strode forth into the village street, and, by the red
glow of a torch, inspected his new troops. He was an unpopular neighbour
and an unpopular master; but as a leader in war he was well beloved by
those who rode behind his pennant. His dash, his proved courage, his
forethought for the soldiers' comfort, even his rough gibes, were all to
the taste of the bold blades in jack and salet.
"Nay, by the rood!" he cried, "what poor dogs are these? Here be some as
crooked as a bow, and some as lean as a spear. Friends, ye shall ride in
the front of the battle; I can spare you, friends. Mark me this old
villain on the piebald! A two-year mutton riding on a hog would look
more soldierly! Ha! Clipsby, are ye there, old rat? Y' are a man I could
lose with a good heart; ye shall go in front of all, with a bull's-eye
painted on your jack, to be the better butt for archery; sirrah, ye
shall show me the way."
"I will show you any way, Sir Daniel, but the way to change sides,"
returned Clipsby sturdily.
Sir Daniel laughed a guffaw.
"Why, well said!" he cried. "Hast a shrewd tongue in thy mouth, go to! I
will forgive you for that merry word.--Selden, see them fed, both man
and brute."
The knight re-entered the inn.
"Now, friend Dick," he said, "fall to. Here is good ale and bacon. Eat
while that I read."
Sir Daniel opened the packet, and as he read his brow darkened. When he
had done he sat a little, musing. Then he looked sharply at his ward.
"Dick," said he, "y' have seen this penny rhyme?"
The lad replied in the affirmative.
"It bears your father's name," continued the knight; "and our poor shrew
of a parson is, by some mad soul, accused of slaying him."
"He did most eagerly deny it," answered Dick.
"He did?" cried the knight, very sharply. "Heed him not. He has a loose
tongue; he babbles like a jack-sparrow. Some day, when I may find the
leisure, Dick, I will myself more fully inform you of these matters.
There was one Duckworth shrewdly blamed for it; but the times were
troubled, and there was no justice to be got."
"It befell at the Moat House?" Dick ventured, with a beating at his
heart.
"It befell between the Moat House and Holywood," replied Sir Daniel
calmly; but he shot a covert glance, black with suspicion, at Dick's
face. "And now," added the knight, "speed you with your meal; ye shall
return to Tunstall with a line from me."
Dick's face fell sorely.
"Prithee, Sir Daniel," he cried, "send one of the villains! I beseech
you let me to the battle. I can strike a stroke, I promise you."
"I misdoubt it not," replied Sir Daniel, sitting down to write. "But
here, Dick, is no honour to be won. I lie in Kettley till I have sure
tidings of the war, and then ride to join me with the conqueror. Cry not
on cowardice; it is but wisdom, Dick; for this poor realm so tosseth
with rebellion, and the king's name and custody so changeth hands, that
no man may be certain of the morrow. Toss-pot and Shuttle-wit run in,
but my Lord Good-Counsel sits o' one side, waiting."
With that, Sir Daniel, turning his back to Dick, and quite at the
farther end of the long table, began to write his letter, with his mouth
on one side, for this business of the Black Arrow stuck sorely in his
throat.
Meanwhile, young Shelton was going on heartily enough with his
breakfast, when he felt a touch upon his arm, and a very soft voice
whispering in his ear.
"Make not a sign, I do beseech you," said the voice, "but of your
charity teach me the straight way to Holywood. Beseech you, now, good
boy, comfort a poor soul in peril and extreme distress, and set me so
far forth upon the way to my repose."
"Take the path by the windmill," answered Dick, in the same tone; "it
will bring you to Till Ferry; there inquire again."
And without turning his head, he fell again to eating. But with the tail
of his eye he caught a glimpse of the young lad called Master John
stealthily creeping from the room.
"Why," thought Dick, "he is as young as I. 'Good boy' doth he call me?
An I had known, I should have seen the varlet hanged ere I had told him.
Well, if he goes through the fen, I may come up with him and pull his
ears."
Half an hour later, Sir Daniel gave Dick the letter and bade him speed
to the Moat House. And again, some half an hour after Dick's departure,
a messenger came, in hot haste, from my Lord of Risingham.
"Sir Daniel," the messenger said, "ye lose great honour, by my sooth!
The fight began again this morning ere the dawn, and we have beaten
their van and scattered their right wing. Only the main battle standeth
fast. An we had your fresh men, we should tilt you them all into the
river. What, sir knight! Will ye be the last? It stands not with your
good credit."
"Nay," cried the knight, "I was but now upon the march.--Selden, sound
me the tucket.--Sir, I am with you on the instant. It is not two hours
since the more part of my command came in, sir messenger. What would ye
have? Spurring is good meat, but yet it killed the charger.--Bustle,
boys!"
By this time the tucket was sounding cheerily in the morning, and from
all sides Sir Daniel's men poured into the main street and formed before
the inn. They had slept upon their arms, with chargers saddled, and in
ten minutes five score men-at-arms and archers, cleanly equipped and
briskly disciplined, stood ranked and ready. The chief part were in Sir
Daniel's livery, murrey and blue, which gave the greater show to their
array. The best armed rode first; and away out of sight, at the tail of
the column, came the sorry reinforcement of the night before. Sir Daniel
looked with pride along the line.
"Here be the lads to serve you in a pinch," he said.
"They are pretty men, indeed," replied the messenger. "It but augments
my sorrow that ye had not marched the earlier."
"Well," said the knight, "what would ye? The beginning of a feast and
the end of a fray, sir messenger"; and he mounted into his saddle. "Why!
how now!" he cried. "John! Joanna! Nay, by the sacred rood! where is
she?--Host, where is that girl?"
"Girl, Sir Daniel?" cried the landlord. "Nay, sir, I saw no girl."
"Boy, then, dotard!" cried the knight. "Could ye not see it was a wench?
She in the murrey-coloured mantle--she that broke her fast with water,
rogue--where is she?"
"Nay, the saints bless us! Master John, ye called him," said the host.
"Well, I thought none evil. He is gone. I saw him--her--I saw her in the
stable a good hour agone; 'a was saddling a grey horse."
"Now, by the rood!" cried Sir Daniel, "the wench was worth five hundred
pound to me and more."
"Sir knight," observed the messenger, with bitterness, "while that ye
are here, roaring for five hundred pounds, the realm of England is
elsewhere being lost and won."
"It is well said," replied Sir Daniel.--"Selden, fall me out with six
crossbowmen; hunt me her down. I care not what it cost; but, at my
returning, let me find her at the Moat House. Be it upon your head.--And
now, sir messenger, we march."
And the troops broke into a good trot, and Selden and his six men were
left behind upon the street of Kettley, with the staring villagers.
CHAPTER II
IN THE FEN
It was near six in the May morning when Dick began to ride down into the
fen upon his homeward way. The sky was all blue; the jolly wind blew
loud and steady; the windmill-sails were spinning; and the willows over
all the fen rippling and whitening like a field of corn. He had been all
night in the saddle, but his heart was good and his body sound, and he
rode right merrily.
The path went down and down into the marsh, till he lost sight of all
the neighbouring landmarks, but Kettley windmill on the knoll behind
him, and the extreme top of Tunstall Forest far before. On either hand
there were great fields of blowing reeds and willows, pools of water
shaking in the wind, and treacherous bogs, as green as emerald, to tempt
and to betray the traveller. The path lay almost straight through the
morass. It was already very ancient; its foundation had been laid by
Roman soldiery; in the lapse of ages much of it had sunk, and every here
and there, for a few hundred yards, it lay submerged below the stagnant
waters of the fen.
About a mile from Kettley, Dick came to one such break in the plain line
of causeway, where the reeds and willows grew dispersedly like little
islands and confused the eye. The gap, besides, was more than usually
long; it was a place where any stranger might come readily to mischief;
and Dick bethought him, with something like a pang, of the lad whom he
had so imperfectly directed. As for himself, one look backward to where
the windmill-sails were turning black against the blue of heaven--one
look forward to the high ground of Tunstall Forest, and he was
sufficiently directed, and held straight on, the water washing to his
horse's knees, as safe as on a highway.
Half-way across, and when he had already sighted the path rising high
and dry upon the farther side, he was aware of a great splashing on his
right, and saw a grey horse, sunk to its belly in the mud, and still
spasmodically struggling. Instantly, as though it had divined the
neighbourhood of help, the poor beast began to neigh most piercingly. It
rolled, meanwhile, a bloodshot eye, insane with terror; and as it
sprawled wallowing in the quag, clouds of stinging insects rose and
buzzed about it in the air.
"Alack!" thought Dick, "can the poor lad have perished? There is his
horse, for certain--a brave grey! Nay, comrade, if thou criest to me so
piteously, I will do all man can to help thee. Shalt not lie there to
drown by inches!"
And he made ready his crossbow, and put a quarrel through the creature's
head.
Dick rode on after this act of rugged mercy, somewhat sobered in spirit,
and looking closely about him for any sign of his less happy predecessor
in the way.
"I would I had dared to tell him further," he thought; "for I fear he
has miscarried in the slough."
And just as he was so thinking, a voice cried upon his name from the
causeway side, and looking over his shoulder, he saw the lad's face
peering from a clump of reeds.
"Are ye there?" he said, reining in. "Ye lay so close among the reeds
that I had passed you by. I saw your horse bemired, and put him from his
agony! which, by my sooth! an ye had been a more merciful rider, ye had
done yourself. But come forth out of your hiding. Here be none to
trouble you."
"Nay, good boy, I have no arms, nor skill to use them if I had," replied
the other, stepping forth upon the pathway.
"Why call me 'boy'?" cried Dick. "Y' are not, I trow, the elder of us
twain."
"Good Master Shelton," said the other, "prithee forgive me. I have none
the least intention to offend. Rather I would in every way beseech your
gentleness and favour, for I am now worse bestead than ever, having lost
my way, my cloak, and my poor horse. To have a riding-rod and spurs, and
never a horse to sit upon! And before all," he added, looking ruefully
upon his clothes--"before all, to be so sorrily besmirched!"
"Tut!" cried Dick. "Would ye mind a ducking? Blood of wound or dust of
travel--that's a man's adornment."
"Nay, then, I like him better plain," observed the lad. "But, prithee,
how shall I do? Prithee, good Master Richard, help me with your good
counsel. If I come not safe to Holywood, I am undone."
"Nay," said Dick, dismounting, "I will give more than counsel. Take my
horse, and I will run awhile, and when I am weary we shall change again,
that so, riding and running, both may go the speedier."
So the change was made, and they went forward as briskly as they durst
on the uneven causeway, Dick with his hand upon the other's knee.
"How call ye your name?" asked Dick.
"Call me John Matcham," replied the lad.
"And what make ye to Holywood?" Dick continued.
"I seek sanctuary from a man that would oppress me," was the answer.
"The good Abbot of Holywood is a strong pillar to the weak."
"And how came ye with Sir Daniel, Master Matcham?" pursued Dick.
"Nay," cried the other, "by the abuse of force! He hath taken me by
violence from my own place; dressed me in these weeds; ridden with me
till my heart was sick; gibed me till I could 'a' wept; and when certain
of my friends pursued, thinking to have me back, claps me in the rear
to stand their shot! I was even grazed in the right foot, and walk but
lamely. Nay, there shall come a day between us; he shall smart for all!"
"Would ye shoot at the moon with a hand-gun?" said Dick. "'Tis a valiant
knight, and hath a hand of iron. An he guessed I had made or meddled
with your flight, it would go sore with me."
"Ay, poor boy," returned the other, "y' are his ward, I know it. By the
same token, so am I, or so he saith; or else he hath bought my
marriage--I wot not rightly which; but it is some handle to oppress me
by."
"Boy again!" said Dick.
"Nay, then, shall I call you girl, good Richard?" asked Matcham.
"Never a girl for me," returned Dick. "I do abjure the crew of them!"
"Ye speak boyishly," said the other. "Ye think more of them than ye
pretend."
"Not I," said Dick stoutly. "They come not in my mind. A plague of them,
say I! Give me to hunt and to fight and to feast, and to live with jolly
foresters. I never heard of a maid yet that was for any service, save
one only; and she, poor shrew, was burned for a witch and the wearing of
men's clothes in spite of nature."
Master Matcham crossed himself with fervour, and appeared to pray.
"What make ye?" Dick inquired.
"I pray for her spirit," answered the other, with a somewhat troubled
voice.
"For a witch's spirit?" Dick cried. "But pray for her and ye list; she
was the best wench in Europe, was this Joan of Arc. Old Appleyard the
archer ran from her, he said, as if she had been Mahoun. Nay, she was a
brave wench."
"Well, but, good Master Richard," resumed Matcham, "an ye like maids so
little, y' are no true natural man; for God made them twain by
intention, and brought true love into the world, to be man's hope and
woman's comfort."
"Faugh!" said Dick. "Y' are a milk-sopping baby, so to harp on women. An
ye think I be no true man, get down upon the path, and whether at fists,
backsword, or bow and arrow, I will prove my manhood on your body."
"Nay, I am no fighter," replied Matcham eagerly. "I mean no tittle of
offence. I meant but pleasantry. And if I talk of women, it is because I
heard ye were to marry."
"I to marry!" Dick exclaimed. "Well, it is the first I hear of it. And
with whom was I to marry?"
"One Joan Sedley," replied Matcham, colouring. "It was Sir Daniel's
doing; he hath money to gain upon both sides; and, indeed, I have heard
the poor wench bemoaning herself pitifully of the match. It seems she is
of your mind, or else distasted to the bridegroom."
"Well! marriage is like death, it comes to all," said Dick, with
resignation. "And she bemoaned herself? I pray ye now, see there how
shuttle-witted are these girls: to bemoan herself before that she had
seen me! Do I bemoan myself? Not I. An I be to marry, I will marry
dry-eyed! But if ye know her, prithee, of what favour is she? fair or
foul? And is she shrewish or pleasant?"
"Nay, what matters it?" said Matcham. "An y' are to marry, ye can but
marry. What matters foul or fair? These be but toys. Y' are no milksop,
Master Richard; ye will wed with dry eyes anyhow."
"It is well said," replied Shelton. "Little I reck."
"Your lady wife is like to have a pleasant lord," said Matcham.
"She shall have the lord Heaven made for her," returned Dick. "I trow
there be worse as well as better."
"Ah, the poor wench!" cried the other.
"And why so poor?" asked Dick.
"To wed a man of wood," replied his companion. "O me, for a wooden
husband!"
"I think I be a man of wood, indeed," said Dick, "to trudge afoot the
while you ride my horse; but it is good wood, I trow."
"Good Dick, forgive me," cried the other. "Nay, y' are the best heart in
England; I but laughed. Forgive me now, sweet Dick."
"Nay, no fool words," returned Dick, a little embarrassed by his
companion's warmth. "No harm is done. I am not touchy, praise the
saints."
And at that moment the wind, which was blowing straight behind them as
they went, brought them the rough flourish of Sir Daniel's trumpeter.
"Hark!" said Dick, "the tucket soundeth."
"Ay," said Matcham, "they have found my flight, and now I am unhorsed!"
and he became pale as death.
"Nay, what cheer!" returned Dick. "Y' have a long start, and we are near
the ferry. And it is I, methinks, that am unhorsed."
"Alack, I shall be taken!" cried the fugitive. "Dick, kind Dick, beseech
ye help me but a little!"
"Why, now, what aileth thee?" said Dick. "Methinks I help you very
patently. But my heart is sorry for so spiritless a fellow! And see ye
here, John Matcham--sith John Matcham is your name--I, Richard Shelton,
tide what betideth, come what may, will see you safe in Holywood. The
saints so do to me again if I default you. Come, pick me up a good
heart, Sir White-face. The way betters here; spur me the horse. Go
faster! faster! Nay, mind not for me; I can run like a deer."
So, with the horse trotting hard, and Dick running easily alongside,
they crossed the remainder of the fen, and came out upon the banks of
the river by the ferryman's hut.
CHAPTER III
THE FEN FERRY
The river Till was a wide, sluggish, clayey water, oozing out of fens,
and in this part of its course it strained among some score of
willow-covered, marshy islets.
It was a dingy stream; but upon this bright, spirited morning everything
was become beautiful. The wind and the martens broke it up into
innumerable dimples; and the reflection of the sky was scattered over
all the surface in crumbs of smiling blue.
A creek ran up to meet the path, and close under the bank the ferryman's
hut lay snugly. It was of wattle and clay, and the grass grew green upon
the roof.
Dick went to the door and opened it. Within, upon a foul old russet
cloak, the ferryman lay stretched and shivering; a great hulk of a man,
but lean and shaken by the country fever.
"Hey, Master Shelton," he said, "be ye for the ferry? Ill times, ill
times! Look to yourself. There is a fellowship abroad. Ye were better
turn round on your two heels and try the bridge."
"Nay; time's in the saddle," answered Dick. "Time will ride, Hugh
Ferryman. I am hot in haste."
"A wilful man!" returned the ferryman, rising. "An ye win safe to the
Moat House, y' have done lucky; but I say no more." And then catching
sight of Matcham, "Who be this?" he asked, as he paused, blinking, on
the threshold of his cabin.
"It is my kinsman, Master Matcham," answered Dick.
"Give ye good day, good ferryman," said Matcham, who had dismounted,
and now came forward, leading the horse. "Launch me your boat, I
prithee; we are sore in haste."
The gaunt ferryman continued staring.
"By the mass!" he cried at length, and laughed with open throat.
Matcham coloured to his neck and winced; and Dick, with an angry
countenance, put his hand on the lout's shoulder.
"How now, churl!" he cried. "Fall to thy business, and leave mocking thy
betters."
Hugh Ferryman grumblingly undid his boat, and shoved it a little forth
into the deep water. Then Dick led in the horse, and Matcham followed.
"Ye be mortal small made, master," said Hugh, with a wide grin;
"something o' the wrong model, belike.--Nay, Master Shelton, I am for
you," he added, getting to his oars. "A cat may look at a king. I did
but take a shot of the eye at Master Matcham."
"Sirrah, no more words," said Dick. "Bend me your back."
They were by that time at the mouth of the creek, and the view opened up
and down the river. Everywhere it was enclosed with islands. Clay banks
were falling in, willows nodding, reeds waving, martens dipping and
piping. There was no sign of man in the labyrinth of waters.
"My master," said the ferryman, keeping the boat steady with one oar, "I
have a shrewd guess that John-a-Fenne is on the island. He bears me a
black grudge to all Sir Daniel's. How if I turned me up stream and
landed you an arrow-flight, above the path? Ye were best not meddle with
John Fenne."
"How, then? is he of this company?" asked Dick.
"Nay, mum is the word," said Hugh. "But I would go up water, Dick. How
if Master Matcham came by an arrow?" and he laughed again.
"Be it so, Hugh," answered Dick.
"Look ye, then," pursued Hugh. "Sith it shall so be, unsling me your
crossbow--so: now make it ready--good; place me a quarrel. Ay, keep it
so, and look upon me grimly."
"What meaneth this?" asked Dick.
"Why, my master, if I steal you across, it must be under force or fear,"
replied the ferryman; "for else, if John Fenne got wind of it, he were
like to prove my most distressful neighbour."
"Do these churls ride so roughly?" Dick inquired. "Do they command Sir
Daniel's own ferry?"
"Nay," whispered the ferryman, winking. "Mark me! Sir Daniel shall down.
His time is out. He shall down. Mum!" And he bent over his oars.
They pulled a long way up the river, turned the tail of an island, and
came softly down a narrow channel next the opposite bank. Then Hugh held
water in midstream.
"I must land you here among the willows," he said.
"Here is no path but willow swamps and quagmires," answered Dick.
"Master Shelton," replied Hugh, "I dare not take ye nearer down, for
your own sake now. He watcheth me the ferry, lying on his bow. All that
go by and owe Sir Daniel goodwill he shooteth down like rabbits. I heard
him swear it by the rood. An I had not known you of old days--ay, and
from so high upward--I would 'a' let you go on; but for old days'
remembrance, and because ye had this toy with you that's not fit for
wounds or warfare, I did risk my two poor ears to have you over whole.
Content you; I can no more, on my salvation!"
Hugh was still speaking, lying on his oars, when there came a great
shout from among the willows on the island, and sounds followed as of a
strong man breasting roughly through the wood.
"A murrain!" cried Hugh. "He was on the upper island all the while!" He
pulled straight for shore. "Threat me with your bow, good Dick; threat
me with it plain," he added. "I have tried to save your skins, save you
mine!"
The boat ran into a tough thicket of willows with a crash. Matcham,
pale, but steady and alert, at a sign from Dick ran along the thwarts
and leaped ashore; Dick, taking the horse by the bridle, sought to
follow, but what with the animal's bulk, and what with the closeness of
the thicket, both stuck fast. The horse neighed and trampled; and the
boat, which was swinging in an eddy, came on and off and pitched with
violence.
"It may not be, Hugh; here is no landing," cried Dick; but he still
struggled valiantly with the obstinate thicket and the startled animal.
A tall man appeared upon the shore of the island, a longbow in his hand.
Dick saw him for an instant, with the corner of his eye, bending the bow
with a great effort, his face crimson with hurry.
"Who goes?" he shouted. "Hugh, who goes?"
"'Tis Master Shelton, John,"
|
to be thought
unalterable sexual characters, one may be bold enough to hazard the
prophecy that women who have had scientific training will, if they
happen to become mothers, hardly be disposed to give their minds at the
very outset to the rather complex and difficult work, say, of making an
accurate scientific inventory of the several modes of infantile
sensibility, visual, auditory, and so forth, and of the alterations in
these from day to day.
It is for the coarser fibred man, then, to undertake much of the earlier
experimental work in the investigation of child-nature. And if fathers
will duly qualify themselves they will probably find that permission
will little by little be given them to carry out investigations, short,
of course, of anything that looks distinctly dangerous to the little
being’s comfort.
At the same time it is evident that a complete series of observations of
the infant can hardly be carried out by a man alone. It is for the
mother, or some other woman with a pass-key to the nursery, with her
frequent and prolonged opportunities of observation to attempt a careful
and methodical register of mental progress. Hence the importance of
enlisting the mother or her female representative as collaborateur or at
least as assistant. Thus supposing the father is bent on ascertaining
the exact dates and the order of appearance of the different articulate
sounds, which is rather a subject of passive observation than of active
experiment; he will be almost compelled to call in the aid of one who
has the considerable advantage of passing a good part of each day near
the child.[7]
-----
Footnote 7:
The great advantage which the female observer of the infant’s mind has
over her male competitor is clearly illustrated in some recent studies
of childhood by American women. I would especially call attention to a
study by Miss M. W. Shinn of the University of California
(_Development of a child. Notes on the writer’s niece_), where the
minute and painstaking record (_e.g._, of the child’s colour
discrimination and visual space exploration) points to the ample
opportunity of observation which comes more readily to women.
-----
As the wee thing grows and its nervous system becomes more stable and
robust more in the way of research may of course be safely attempted. In
this higher stage the work of observation will be less simple and
involve more of special psychological knowledge. It is a comparatively
easy thing to say whether the sudden approach of an object to the eye of
a baby a week or so old calls forth the reflex known as blinking: it is
a much more difficult thing to say what are the preferences of a child
of twelve months in the matter of simple forms, or even colours.
The problem of the order of development of the colour-sense in children
looks at first easy enough. Any mother, it may be thought, can say which
colours the child first recognises by naming them when seen, or picking
them out when another names them. Yet simple as it looks, the problem is
in reality anything but simple. A German investigator, Professor Preyer
of Berlin, went to work methodically with his little boy of two years in
order to see in what order he would discriminate colours. Two colours,
red and green, were first shown, the name added to each, and the child
then asked: “Which is red?” “Which is green?” Then other colours were
added and the experiments repeated. According to these researches this
particular child first acquired a clear discriminative awareness of
yellow. Preyer’s results have not, however, been confirmed by other
investigators, as M. Binet of Paris, who followed a similar method of
inquiry. Thus according to Binet it is not yellow but blue which carries
the day in the competition for the child’s preferential recognition.
What, it may be asked, is the explanation of this? Is it that children
differ in the mode of development of their colour-sensibility to this
extent, or can it be that there is some fault in the method of
investigation? It has been recently suggested that the mode of testing
colour-discrimination by naming is open to the objection that a child
may get hold of one verbal sound as ‘red’ more easily than another as
‘green’ and that this would facilitate the recognition of the former. If
in this way the recognition of a colour is aided by the retention of its
name, we must get rid of this disturbing element of sound. Accordingly
new methods of experiment have been attempted in France and America.
Thus Professor Baldwin investigates the matter by placing two colours
opposite the child’s two arms and noting which is reached out to by
right or left arm, which is ignored. He has tabulated the results of a
short series of these simple experiments for testing childish
preference, and supports the conclusions of Binet, as against those of
Preyer, that blue comes in for the first place in the child’s
discriminative recognition.[8] It is however easy to see that this
method has its own characteristic defects. Thus, to begin with, it
evidently does not directly test colour discrimination at all, but the
liking for or interest in colours, which though it undoubtedly implies a
measure of discrimination must not be confused with this. And even as a
test of preference it is very likely to be misapplied. Thus supposing
that the two colours are not equally bright, then the child will grasp
at one rather than at the other, because it is a brighter object and not
because it is this particular colour. Again if one colour fall more into
the first and fresh period of the exercise when the child is fresh and
active, whereas another falls more into the second period when he is
tired and inactive, the results would, it is evident, give too much
value to the former. Similarly, if one colour were brought in after
longer intervals of time than another it would have more attractive
force through its greater novelty.
-----
Footnote 8:
_Mental Development in the Child and the Race_, chap. iii.
-----
Enough has been said to show how very delicate a problem we have here to
deal with. And if scientific men are still busy settling the point how
the problem can be best dealt with, it seems hopeless for the amateur to
dabble in the matter.
I have purposely chosen a problem of peculiar complexity and delicacy in
order to illustrate the importance of that training which makes the
mental eye of the observer quick to analyse the phenomenon to be dealt
with so as to take in all its conditions. Yet there are many parts of
this work of observing the child’s mind which do not make so heavy a
demand on technical ability, but can be done by any intelligent observer
prepared for the task by a reasonable amount of psychological study. I
refer more particularly to that rich and highly interesting field of
exploration which opens up when the child begins to talk. It is in the
spontaneous utterances of children, his first quaint uses of words, that
we can best watch the play of the instinctive tendencies of thought.
Children’s talk is always valuable to a psychologist; and for my part I
would be glad of as many anecdotal records of their sayings as I could
collect.
Here, then, there seems to be room for a relatively simple and unskilled
kind of observing work. Yet it would be a mistake to suppose that even
this branch of child-observation requires nothing but ordinary
intelligence. To begin with, we are all prone, till by special training
we have learned to check the inclination, to read far too much of our
older thought and sentiment into children. As M. Drox observes, _nous
sommes dupes de nous-mêmes lorsque nous observous ces chers bambins_.[9]
-----
Footnote 9:
_L’Enfant_, p. 142.
-----
Again, there is a subtle source of error connected with the very
attitude of undergoing examination which only a carefully trained
observer of childish ways will avoid. A child is very quick in spying
whether he is being observed, and as soon as he suspects that you are
specially interested in his talk he is apt to try to produce an effect.
This wish to say something startling, wonderful, or what not, will, it
is obvious, detract from the value of the utterance.
But once more the saying which it is so easy to report has had its
history, and the observer who knows something of psychology will look
out for facts, that is to say, experiences of the child, suggestions
made by others’ words which throw light on the saying. No fact is really
quite simple, and the reason why some facts look so simple is that the
observer does not include in his view all the connections of the
occurrence which he is inspecting. The unskilled observer of children is
apt to send scraps, fragments of facts, which have not their natural
setting. The value of psychological training is that it makes one as
jealously mindful of wholeness in facts as a housewife of wholeness in
her porcelain. It is, indeed, only when the whole fact is before us, in
well-defined contour, that we can begin to deal with its meaning. Thus
although those ignorant of psychology may assist us in this region of
fact-finding, they can never accomplish that completer and exacter kind
of observation which we dignify by the name of Science.[10]
-----
Footnote 10:
Since writing the above I have had my opinion strongly confirmed by
reading a record of sayings of children carried out by women students
in an American Normal College (_Thoughts and Reasonings of Children_,
classified by H. W. Brown, Teacher of Psychology in State Normal
School, Worcester, Mass., with introduction by E. H. Russell,
Principal: reprinted from the _Pedagogical Seminary_). Many of the
quaint sayings noted down lose much of their psychological point from
our complete ignorance of the child’s home-experience, companionships,
school and training.
-----
One may conclude then that women may be fitted to become valuable
labourers in this new field of investigation, if only they will acquire
a genuine scientific interest in babyhood, and a fair amount of
scientific training. That a large number of women will get so far is I
think doubtful: the sentimental or æsthetic attraction of the baby is
apt to be a serious obstacle to a cold matter-of-fact examination of it
as a scientific specimen. The natural delight of a mother in every new
exhibition of infantile wisdom or prowess is liable to blind her to the
exceedingly modest significance of the child’s performances as seen from
the scientific point of view. Yet as I have hinted, this very fondness
for infantile ways, may, if only the scientific caution is added, prove
a valuable excitant to study. In England, and in America, there is
already a considerable number of women who have undergone some serious
training in psychology, and it may not be too much to hope that before
long we shall have a band of mothers and aunts busily engaged in noting
and recording the movements of children’s minds.
I have assumed here that what is wanted is careful studies of individual
children as they may be approached in the nursery. And these records of
individual children, after the pattern of Preyer’s monograph, are I
think our greatest need. We are wont to talk rather too glibly about
that abstraction, ‘the child,’ as if all children rigorously
corresponded to one pattern, of which pattern we have a perfect
knowledge. Mothers at least know that this is not so. Children of the
same family will be found to differ very widely (within the
comparatively narrow field of childish traits), as, for example, in
respect of matter-of-factness, of fancifulness, of inquisitiveness.
Thus, while it is probably true that most children at a certain age are
greedy of the pleasures of the imagination, Nature in her well-known
dislike of monotony has taken care to make a few decidedly
unimaginative. We need to know much more about these variations: and
what will best help us here is a number of careful records of infant
progress, embracing examples not only of different sexes and
temperaments, but also of different social conditions and nationalities.
When we have such a collection of monographs we shall be in a much
better position to fill out the hazy outline of our abstract conception
of childhood with definite and characteristic lineaments.
At the same time I gladly allow that other modes of observation are
possible and in their way useful. This applies to older children who
pass into the collective existence of the school-class. Here something
like collective or statistical inquiry may be begun, as that into the
contents of children’s minds, their ignorances and misapprehensions
about common objects. Some part of this inquiry into the minds of
school-children may very well be undertaken by an intelligent teacher.
Thus it would be valuable to have careful records of children’s progress
carried out by pre-arranged tests, so as to get collections of examples
of mental activity at different ages. More special lines of inquiry
having a truly experimental character might be carried out by experts,
as those already begun with reference to children’s “span of
apprehension,” _i.e._, the number of digits or nonsense syllables that
can be reproduced after a single hearing, investigations into the
effects of fatigue on mental processes, into the effect of number of
repetitions on the certainty of reproduction, into musical sensitiveness
and so forth.
Valuable as such statistical investigation undoubtedly is, it is no
substitute for the careful methodical study of the individual child.
This seems to me the greatest desideratum just now. Since the teacher
needs for practical reasons to make a careful study of individuals he
might well assist here. In these days of literary collaboration it might
not be amiss for a kindergarten teacher to write an account of a child’s
mind in co-operation with the mother. Such a record if well done would
be of the greatest value. The co-operation of the mother seems to me
quite indispensable, since even where there is out-of-class intercourse
between teacher and pupil the knowledge acquired by the former never
equals that of the mother.
II.
THE AGE OF IMAGINATION.
_Why we call Children Imaginative._
One of the few things we seemed to be certain of with respect to
child-nature was that it is fancy-full. Childhood, we all know, is the
age for dreaming, for decking out the world as yet unknown with the gay
colours of imagination; for living a life of play or happy make-believe.
So that nothing seems more to characterise the ‘Childhood of the World’
than the myth-making impulse which by an overflow of fancy seeks to hide
the meagreness of knowledge.
Yet even here, perhaps, we have been content with loose generalisation
in place of careful observation and analysis of facts. For one thing,
the play of infantile imagination is probably much less uniform than is
often supposed. There seem to be matter-of-fact children who cannot rise
buoyantly to a bright fancy. Mr. Ruskin, of all men, has recently told
us that when a child he was incapable of acting a part or telling a
tale, that he never knew a child “whose thirst for visible fact was at
once so eager and so methodic”.[11] We may accept the report of Mr.
Ruskin’s memory as proving that he did not idle away his time in
day-dreams, but, by long and close observation of running water, and the
like, laid the foundations of that fine knowledge of the appearances of
nature which everywhere shines through his writings. Yet one may be
permitted to doubt whether a writer who shows not only so rich and
graceful a style but so truly poetic an invention could have been _in
every respect_ an unimaginative child.
-----
Footnote 11:
_Præterita_, p. 76.
-----
Perhaps the truth will turn out to be the paradox that most children are
at once matter-of-fact observers _and_ dreamers, passing from the one to
the other as the mood takes them, and with a facility which grown people
may well envy. My own observations go to show that the prodigal out-put
of fancy, the revelling in myth and story, is often characteristic of
one period of childhood only. We are apt to lump together such different
levels of experience and capacity under that abstraction ‘the child’.
The wee mite of three and a half, spending more than half his days in
trying to realise all manner of pretty, odd, startling fancies about
animals, fairies, and the rest, is something vastly unlike the boy of
six or seven, whose mind is now bent on understanding the make and go of
machines, and of that big machine, the world.
So far as I can gather from inquiries sent to parents and other
observers of children, a large majority of boys and girls alike are for
a time fancy-bound. A child that did not want to play and cared nothing
for the marvels of story-land would surely be regarded as queer and not
just what a child ought to be. Yet, supposing that this is the right
view, there still remains the question whether imagination always works
in the same way in the childish brain. Science is beginning to aid us in
understanding the differences of childish fancy. For one thing it is
leading us to see that a child’s whole imaginative life may be specially
coloured by the preponderant vividness of a certain order of images,
that one child may live imaginatively in a coloured world, another in a
world of sounds, another rather in a world of movements. It is easy to
note in the case of certain children of the more lively and active turn,
how the supreme interest of story as of play lies in the ample range of
movement and bodily activity. Robinson Crusoe is probably for the boyish
imagination, more than anything else, the goer and the doer.[12]
-----
Footnote 12:
The different tendencies of children towards visual, auditory, motor
images, etc., are dealt with by F. Queyrat, _L’Imagination et ses
variétés chez l’enfant_. _Cf._ an article by W. H. Burnham,
“Individual Differences in the Imagination of Children,” _Pedagogical
Seminary_, ii., 2.
-----
With this difference in the elementary constituents of imagination,
there are others which turn on temperament, tone of feeling, and
preponderant directions of emotion. Imagination is intimately bound up
with the life of feeling, and will assume as many directions as this
life assumes. Hence, the familiar fact that in some children imagination
broods by preference on gloomy and terrifying objects, religious and
other, whereas in others it selects what is bright and gladsome; that
while in some cases it has more of the poetic quality, in others it
leans rather to the scientific or to the practical type.
Enough has been said perhaps to show that the imaginativeness of
children is not a thing to be taken for granted as existing in all
children alike. It is eminently a variable faculty requiring a special
study in the case of each new child.
But even waiving this fact of variability it may, I think, be said that
we are far from understanding the precise workings of imagination in
children. We talk, for example, glibly about their play, their
make-believe, their illusions; but how much do we really know of their
state of mind when they act out a little scene of domestic life, or of
the battle-field? We have, I know, many fine observations on this head.
Careful observers of children and conservers of their own childish
experiences, such as Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Jean Paul, Madame Necker,
George Sand, R. L. Stevenson, tell us much that is valuable: yet I
suspect that there must be a much wider and finer investigation of
children’s action and talk before we can feel quite sure that we have
got at their mental whereabouts, and know how they feel when they
pretend to enter the dark wood, the home of the wolf, or to talk with
their deities, the fairies.
Perhaps I have said enough to justify my plea for new observations and
for a reconsideration of hasty theories in the light of these. Nor need
we object to a fresh survey of what is perhaps the most delightful side
of child-life. I often wonder indeed when I come across some precious
bit of droll infantile acting, or of sweet child-soliloquy, how mothers
can bring themselves to lose one drop of the fresh exhilarating draught
which daily pours forth from the fount of a child’s phantasy.
Nor is it merely for the sake of its inherent charm that children’s
imagination deserves further study. In the early age of the individual
and of the race what we enlightened persons call fancy has a good deal
to do with the first crude attempts at understanding things.
Child-thought, like primitive folk-thought, is saturated with myth,
vigorous phantasy holding the hand of reason—as yet sadly rickety in his
legs—and showing him which way he should take. In the moral life again,
we shall see how easily the realising force of young imagination may
expose it to deception by others, and to self-deception too, with
results that closely simulate the guise of a knowing falsehood. On the
other hand a careful following out of the various lines of imaginative
activity may show how moral education, by vividly suggesting to the
child’s imagination a worthy part, a praiseworthy action, may work
powerfully on the unformed and flexible structure of his young will,
moving it dutywards.
_Imaginative Transformation of Objects._
The play of young imagination meets us in the domain of
sense-observation: a child is fancying when he looks at things and
touches them and moves among them. This may seem a paradox at first, but
in truth there is nothing paradoxical here. It is an exploded
psychological fallacy that sense and imagination are wholly apart. No
doubt, as the ancients told us, phantasy follows and is the offspring of
sense: we live over again in waking and sleeping imagination the sights
and sounds of the real world. Yet it is no less true that imagination in
an active constructive form takes part in the very making of what we
call sense-experience. We _read_ the visual symbol, say, a splash of
light or colour, now as a stone, now as a pool of water, just because
imagination drawing from past experience supplies the interpretation,
the group of qualities which composes a hard solid mass, or a soft
yielding liquid.
A child’s fanciful reading of things, as when he calls the twinkling
star a (blinking) eye, or the dew-drops on the grass tears, is but an
exaggeration of what we all do. His imagination carries him very much
farther. Thus he may attribute to the stone he sees a sort of
stone-soul, and speak of it as feeling tired of a place.
This lively way of envisaging objects is, as we know, similar to that of
primitive folk, and has something of crude nature-poetry in it. This
tendency is abundantly illustrated in the metaphors which play so large
a part in children’s talk. As all observers of them know they are wont
to describe what they see or hear by analogy to something they know
already. This is called by some, rather clumsily I think, apperceiving.
For example, a little boy of two years and five months, on looking at
the hammers of a piano which his mother was playing, called out: ‘There
is owlegie’ (diminutive of owl). His eye had instantly caught the
similarity between the round felt disc of the hammer divided by a piece
of wood, and the owl’s face divided by its beak. In like manner the boy
C. called a small oscillating compass-needle a ‘bird’ on the ground of
its slightly bird-like form, and of its fluttering movement.[13] Pretty
conceits are often resorted to in this assimilation of the new and
strange to the familiar, as when a child seeing dew on the grass said,
‘The grass is crying,’ or when stars were described as “cinders from
God’s star,” and butterflies as “pansies flying”.[14] Other examples of
this picturesque mode of childish apperception will meet us below.
-----
Footnote 13:
The references to the child C. are to the subject of the memoir given
below, chap. xi.
Footnote 14:
W. H. Burnham, _loc. cit._, p. 212 f.
-----
This play of imagination in connexion with apprehending objects of sense
has a strong vitalising or personifying element. That is to say, the
child sees what we regard as lifeless and soulless as alive and
conscious. Thus he gives not only body but soul to the wind when it
whistles or howls at night. The most unpromising things come in for this
warming vitalising touch of the child’s fancy. He will make something
like a personality out of a letter. Thus one little fellow aged one year
eight months conceived a special fondness for the letter W, addressing
it thus: ‘Dear old boy W’. Another little boy well on in his fourth
year, when tracing a letter L happened to slip so that the horizontal
limb formed an angle thus, [L-like character]. He instantly saw the
resemblance to the sedentary human form and said: “Oh, he’s sitting
down”. Similarly when he made an F turn the wrong way and then put the
correct form to the left thus, [F reversed F], he exclaimed: “They’re
talking together”.
Sometimes this endowment of things with feeling leads to a quaint
manifestation of sympathy. Miss Ingelow writes of herself: When a little
over two years old, and for about a year after “I had the habit of
attributing intelligence not only to all living creatures, the same
amount and kind of intelligence that I had myself, but even to stones
and manufactured articles. I used to feel how dull it must be for the
pebbles in the causeway to be obliged to lie still and only see what was
round about. When I walked out with a little basket for putting flowers
in I used sometimes to pick up a pebble or two and carry them on to have
a change: then at the farthest point of the walk turn them out, not
doubting that they would be pleased to have a new view.”[15]
-----
Footnote 15:
See her article, “The History of an Infancy,” _Longman’s Magazine_,
Feb., 1890.
-----
This is by no means a unique example of a quaint childish expression of
pity for what we think the insentient world. Plant-life seems often to
excite the feeling. Here is a quotation from a parent’s chronicle: “A
girl aged eight, brings a quantity of fallen autumn leaves in to her
mother, who says, ‘Oh! how pretty, F.!’ to which the girl answers: ‘Yes,
I knew you’d love the poor things, mother, I couldn’t bear to see them
dying on the ground’. A few days afterwards she was found standing at a
window overlooking the garden crying bitterly at the falling leaves as
they fell in considerable numbers.”
I need not linger on the products of this vitalising and personifying
instinct, as we shall deal with them again when inquiring into
children’s ideas about nature. Suffice it to say that it is wondrously
active and far-reaching, constituting one chief manifestation of
childish fancy.
Now it may be asked whether all this analogical extension of images to
what seem to us such incongruous objects involves a vivid and illusory
apprehension of these as transformed. Is the eyelid realised and even
_seen_ for the moment as a sort of curtain, the curtain-image blending
with and transforming what is present to the eye? Are the pebbles
actually viewed as living things condemned to lie stiffly in one place?
It is of course hard to say, yet I think a conjectural answer can be
given. In this imaginative contemplation of things the child but half
observes what is present to his eyes, one or two points only of supreme
interest in the visible thing, whether those of form, as in assimilating
the piano-hammer to the owl, or of action, as the _falling_ of the leaf,
being selectively alluded to: while assimilative imagination overlaying
the visual impression with the image of a similar object does the rest.
In this way the actual field of objects is apt to get veiled,
transformed by the wizard touch of a lively fancy.
No doubt there are various degrees of illusion here. In his
matter-of-fact and really scrutinising mood a child will not confound
what is seen with what is imagined: in this case the analogy recalled is
distinguished and used as an explanation of what is seen—as when C.
observed of the panting dog: ‘Dat bow-wow like puff-puff’. On the other
hand when another little boy aged three years and nine months seeing the
leaves falling exclaimed, “See, mamma, the leaves is flying like
dickey-birds and little butterflies,” it is hard not to think that the
child’s fancy for the moment transformed what he saw into these pretty
semblances. And one may risk the opinion that, with the little thinking
power and controlling force of will which a child possesses, such
assimilative activity of imagination always tends to develop a degree of
momentary illusion. There is, too, as we shall see later on, abundant
evidence to show that children at first quite seriously believe that
most things, at least, are alive and have their feelings.
There is another way in which imagination may combine with and transform
sensible objects, _viz._, by what is commonly called association. Mr.
Ruskin tells us that when young he associated the name ‘crocodile’ with
the creature so closely that the long series of letters took on
something of the look of its lanky body. The same writer speaks of a Dr.
Grant, into whose therapeutic hands he fell when a child. "The name (he
adds) is always associated in my mind with a brown powder—rhubarb or the
like—of a gritty or acrid nature.... The name always sounded to me
gr-r-ish and granular."
We can most of us perhaps, recall similar experiences, where colours and
sounds, in themselves indifferent, took on either through analogy or
association a decidedly repulsive character. How far, one wonders, does
this process of transformation of things go in the case of imaginative
children? There is some reason to say that it may go very far, and that,
too, when there is no strong feeling at work cementing the combined
elements. A child’s feeling for likeness is commonly keen and subtle,
and knowledge of the real relations of things has not yet come to check
the impulse to this free far-ranging kind of assimilation. Before the
qualities and the connexions of objects are sufficiently known for them
to be interesting in themselves, they can only acquire interest through
the combining art of childish fancy. And the same is true of associated
qualities. A child’s ear may not dislike a grating sound, a harsh noise,
as our ear dislikes it, merely because of its effect on the sensitive
organ. _En revanche_ it will like and dislike sounds for a hundred
reasons unknown to us, just because the quick strong fancy adding its
life to that of the senses gives to their impressions much of their
significance and much of their effect.
There is one new field of investigation which is illustrating in a
curious way the wizard influence wielded by childish imagination over
the things of sense. It is well known that a certain number of people
habitually ‘colour’ the sounds they hear, imagining, for example, the
sound of a vowel, or of a musical tone, to have its characteristic tint
which they are able to describe accurately. This ‘coloured hearing,’ as
it is called, is always traced back to the dimly recalled age of
childhood. Children are now beginning to be tested and it is found that
a good proportion possess the faculty. Thus, in some researches on the
minds of Boston school-children, it was found that twenty-one out of
fifty-three, or nearly 40 per cent., described the tones of certain
instruments as coloured.[16] The particular colour ascribed to an
instrument, as also the degree of its brightness, though remaining
constant in the case of the same child, varied greatly among different
children, so that, for example, one child ‘visualised’ the tone of a
fife as pale or bright, while another imaged it as dark.[17] It is
highly probable that both analogy and association play a part here.[18]
As was recently suggested to me by a correspondent the instance given by
Locke of the analogy between scarlet and the note of a trumpet may
easily be due in part at least to association of the tone with the
scarlet uniform.
-----
Footnote 16:
See the article by G. Stanley Hall, “The Contents of Children’s
Minds,” _Princeton Review_. New Series, 1883. _Cf._ the same writer’s
volume, _The Contents of Children’s Minds on entering School_, 1894.
-----
Footnote 17:
_Ibid._, p. 265.
Footnote 18:
This has been well brought out by Professor Flournoy of Geneva in his
volume _Des Phénomènes de Synopsie_ (audition colorée), chap. ii.
-----
I may add that I once happened to overhear a little girl of six talking
to herself about numbers in this wise: “Two is a dark number,” “forty is
a white number”. I questioned her and found that the digits had each its
distinctive colour; thus one was white; two, dark; three, white; four,
dark; five, pink; and so on. Nine was pointed and dark, eleven dark
green, showing that some of the digits were much more distinctly
visualised than others. Just three years later I tested her again and
found she still visualised the digits, but not quite in the same way.
Thus although one and two were white and black and five pink as before,
three was now grey, four was red, nine had lost its colour, and eleven
oddly enough had turned from dark green to bright yellow. This case
suggests that in early life new experiences and associations may modify
the tint and shade of sounds. However this be, children’s coloured
hearing is worth noting as the most striking example of the general
tendency to overlay impressions of the senses with vivid images. It
seems reasonable to suppose that coloured hearing and other allied
phenomena, as the picturing of numbers, days of the week, etc., in a
certain scheme or diagrammatic arrangement, when they show themselves
after childhood are to be viewed as survivals of early fanciful
brain-work. This fact taken along with the known vividness of the images
in coloured hearing, which in certain cases approximate to
sense-perceptions, seems to me to confirm the view here put forth that
children’s imagination may alter the world of sense in ways which it is
hard for our older and stiff-jointed minds to follow.
I have confined myself here to what I have called the _play_ of
imagination, the magic transmuting of things through the sheer
liveliness and wanton activity of childish fancy. How strong, how vivid,
how dominating such imaginative transformation may become will of course
be seen in cases where violent feeling, especially fear, gives
preternatural intensity to the mind’s realising power. But this will be
better considered later on.
This transformation of the actual surroundings is of course restrained
in serious moments, and in intercourse with older and graver folk. There
is, however, a region of child-life where it knows no check, where the
impulse to deck out the shabby reality with what is bright and gay has
all its own way. This region is Play.
_Imagination and Play._
The interest of child’s play in the present connexion lies in the fact
that it is the working out into visible shape of an inner fancy. The
actual presentation may be the starting-point of this process of
imaginative projection: the child, for example, sees the sand, the
shingle and shells, and says, ‘Let us play keeping a shop’. Yet this is
accidental. The source of play is the impulse to realise a bright idea:
whence, as we shall see by-and-by, its close kinship to art as a whole.
This image is the dominating force, it is for the time a veritable _idée
fixe_, and everything has to accommodate itself to this. Since the image
has to be acted out, it comes into collision with the actual
surroundings. Here is the child’s opportunity. The floor is instantly
mapped out into two hostile territories, the sofa-end becomes a horse, a
coach, a ship, or what not, to suit the exigencies of the play.
This stronger movement and wider range of imagination in children’s
pastime is explained by the characteristic and fundamental impulse of
play, the desire to be something, to act a part. The child-adventurer as
he personates Robinson Crusoe or other hero steps out of his every-day
self and so out of his every-day world. In realising his part he
virtually transforms his surroundings,
|
Publication._
#FORCED ACQUAINTANCES.# By EDITH ROBINSON. 12mo. $1.50.
A famous American author writes that this is "a very amusing and
well-told story, original and infinitely amusing. The differences in
character and temperament, the thousand and one little situations
that are derived from these differences, are very cleverly
delineated. The elaboration of the narrative, which winds along
through the household duties and the neighbors' peculiarities, is
something after the style of Miss Austen."
#THE LIFE AND WORKS OF GIORDANO BRUNO.# A new volume of the English
and Foreign Philosophical Library. 408 pages. 8vo. With portrait.
$4.50.
#FAMILIAR SHORT SAYINGS OF GREAT MEN.# By S. ARTHUR BENT, A. M. Fifth
edition, revised and enlarged. 12mo. Vellum cloth. $2.00.
Indispensable to students, writers, and libraries. It gives a
collection of short, sententious sayings of all times, such as are
constantly referred to, but are not to be found in other books of
reference. A short sketch of each speaker, and the circumstances
attending each remark, is also given. This new edition has been
thoroughly revised and corrected throughout, with new indexes and
tables of authors, and the addition of over fifty pages, bringing the
work down to the latest time, and quoting eighty authors not before
included, and containing over three hundred new sayings from Agassiz,
Choate, President Cleveland, Emerson, Evarts, Carlyle, Gladstone,
Wellington, Parnell, etc.
#THE COURSE OF EMPIRE.# Being Outlines of the Chief Political Changes
in the History of the World. Arranged by Centuries, with variorum
illustrations, by C. G. WHEELER. With 25 maps. 1 vol. 12mo. $2.00.
A very valuable historical work, which should be kept in every
library for reference and for the vigor of its delineations of the
great historic epochs.
#FAMILIAR ALLUSIONS.# A Handbook of Miscellaneous Information,
including the names of Celebrated Statues, Paintings, Palaces,
Country Seats, Ruins, Churches, Ships, Streets, Clubs, Natural
Curiosities, and the like. By WILLIAM A. WHEELER and CHARLES G.
WHEELER. 1 vol. 12mo. $2.00.
#EVENTS AND EPOCHS IN RELIGIOUS HISTORY.# By JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE,
D.D. Illustrated. 12mo. $2.00.
The Catacombs, as Cemeteries and as Martyrs' Retreats; The Buddhist
Monks of Central Asia; The Christian Monks; Augustine, Anselm,
Bernard; Jeanne d'Arc's Visions, Victories, and Death; Savonarola and
the Renaissance; Luther; Loyola; The Mystics--Neo-Platonists, German
Pietists, Fénelon, Swedenborg, Emerson; George Fox; The Huguenots,
Waldenses, Albigenses; John Wesley; The Moravians and Methodists.
#SONS AND DAUGHTERS.# By the author of "The Story of Margaret Kent."
12mo. $1.50.
An eminent Boston critic writes: "This should be THE novel of the
season. The lively fancy of the author touches lightly and wittily
upon several of the popular interests of the day, such as Shakespeare
societies, the Browning craze, mind cure, etc., and from titlepage to
finis there is not a dull paragraph. So brilliant and entertaining a
story as 'Sons and Daughters' is not often met with, and it should
have, as it deserves, the widest reading."
The remarkable popularity and great sales which made "Margaret Kent"
one of the foremost books of the last year (or of the last decade)
seem likely to be repeated in this new novel by the same author. It
sparkles with the real life and deep feeling, and has the same
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conjure by wherever the best of literature is known.
#HAPPY DODD.# By ROSE TERRY COOKE, author of "The Deacon's Week,"
etc. 12mo. $1.50.
"Happy Dodd" is a beautiful and tender novel of New-England life
especially adapted for home reading, and breathing out a
strengthening spirit of Christian love and heroism.
#SCOTT'S THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL.# Edited, with Notes and
Introduction, by W. J. ROLFE, A. M. 1 vol. 12mo. Beautifully
illustrated. 75 cents.
#THE EVOLUTION OF THE SNOB.# By THOMAS SERGEANT PERRY. 16mo. $1.00.
A keen and brilliant social study, by one of the most spirited
writers of Boston.
#GOETHE'S FAUST: A Commentary.# By DENTON J. SNIDER. 2 vols. 12mo.
$3.50.
A learned and valuable treatise on the greatest of German poems,
giving its history, critical standards, and outline, and careful
analyses and explanations of all the scenes and situations, as seen
from a philosophical point of view.
#SCOTT'S THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL.# An entirely new edition of
this famous and popular poem, from _new plates_, with nearly _one
hundred_ new illustrations by leading American artists. Elegantly and
appropriately bound, with full gilt edges. In box. Cloth, $6.00;
padded calf, tree-calf, or antique morocco, $10.00. A few copies in
crushed Levant, with silk linings, $25.00.
"The Lay of the Last Minstrel" is larger than its predecessors, the
Holiday volumes published under Mr. Anthony's supervision, and its
broad and handsome pages offer very favorable opportunities for the
display of the illustrations, which are masterpieces of modern
engraving.
The immediate and permanent success of "The Lady of the Lake,"
"Marmion," etc., has encouraged the publishers to bring out this not
less popular and famous poem. It is produced in the same style, and
with the same careful and elaborate style of illustration, regardless
of cost, while Mr. Anthony's skilful supervision is sufficient
guarantee that the work is elegant and tasteful as well as correct.
#THE PETERKIN PAPERS.# By LUCRETIA P. HALE. New Holiday edition,
revised and enlarged, uniform with "Davy and the Goblin." Square 4to.
Illustrated with a great number of new pictures. $1.50.
The continued popularity of these inimitable stories has compelled
the issue of this new and enlarged edition, with new illustrations
and type. "The Lady from Philadelphia," "Agamemnon," "Solomon John,"
and other characters of these stories have become household words in
thousands of American families; and the publication of a worthy and
comely edition of so delightful a classic will be hailed with joy by
many old friends and new.
#MURAL PAINTING.# By FREDERIC CROWNINSHIELD. 1 vol. Square 8vo. With
numerous diagrams and full-page illustrations. $3.00.
This series of papers has excited great interest and attention in
"The American Architect;" and in its present enlarged and amended
form, with many new illustrations, is still more valuable.
#THE VIRGINIA CAMPAIGN OF GENERAL POPE IN 1862.# Being Volume II. of
Papers read before the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts.
With Maps and Plans. 1 vol. 8vo. $3.00.
A careful and dispassionate account of the great retreat from the
Rapidan to the Potomac, with the stories of its terrible battles,
prepared by prominent military officers, and dealing with the Second
Bull-Run campaign, the Fitz-John Porter affair, and other interesting
matters.
#SONGS AND SATIRES.# A volume of poems. By JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE. 1
vol. 12mo. $1.00.
The range and versatility of these poems add to their other
attractions, and make the volume a very popular one. Mr. Roche's
_vers de société_, printed in "Life," and other publications, are of
singular delicacy and originality, and the best of them are
incorporated in this volume, together with many heretofore
unpublished poems.
#GENIUS IN SUNSHINE AND IN SHADOW.# By M. M. BALLOU, author of
"Edge-tools of Speech." 1 vol. 12mo. $1.50.
Mr. Ballou has for many years been known as one of the most
industrious, accurate, and entertaining of American scholars. The
present volume (his latest work) is a peculiarly interesting one,
full of anecdotes and _memorabilia_, which set forth the intimate
inner lives of the world's heroes and notables. They have been
gathered from the most recondite sources, and skilfully massed in
attractive array, forming a great collection, that is at once
valuable and interesting.
* * * * *
A WONDERFUL WORK OF ART.
Mrs. Browning's Love Sonnets.
#SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE.# By ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
Illustrated by LUDVIG SANDÖE IPSEN. 1 vol. Oblong folio (pages 13×16
inches), beautifully bound, gilt top. $15.00; full tree-calf,
$30.00.
This magnificent work has been a labor of love for years with the
artist, who is the prince of decorators, and has lavished upon it all
the resources of his imagination and skill. The result is a
magnificent monument to the poems that are enshrined therein, and a
series of designs, the equals of which as a mere treasury of
decoration and invention, apart from their significance in
illustrating the immortal verse of Mrs. Browning, have never been
issued in America. Each sonnet is prefaced by a richly ornamental
half-title, on a full page, and is surrounded by a handsome border,
emblematic in its design and composition. Mr. Ipsen has for many
years been recognized as the foremost leader of art-decoration for
books, both inside and outside, and has set more fashions for
imitation than any other artist. This book is his crowning work, and
will afford an inexhaustible treasury of decoration for students of
art, and a life-study for all lovers of beauty and symmetry. Mrs.
Browning's sonnets are among the noblest productions of ancient or
modern literature; and their literary excellence and incomparable
beauty of diction insure for them certain immortality.
* * * * *
#RECOLLECTIONS OF EMINENT MEN, and Other Papers.# By EDWIN PERCY
WHIPPLE. 1 vol. Crown 8vo. With new steel portrait of the author, and
preceded by the Memorial Address delivered by the Rev. Dr. C. A.
BARTOL. $1.50; in half-calf, $3.00.
A new book by Mr. Whipple is a literary event; and so many years have
elapsed since his last publication, that the interest will be more
intense in the present volume, which contains some of his most
charming and characteristic papers, including monographs on Sumner,
Motley, Agassiz, Choate, and George Eliot.
#STORIES OF ART AND ARTISTS.# By CLARA ERSKINE CLEMENT. 1 vol. 8vo.
Profusely illustrated. In cloth, $4.00; in half parchment cloth,
$4.50.
This work, historical and descriptive, gives a complete résumé of the
History of Art, with accounts of the various schools, sketches, and
anecdotes of all the great artists, with portraits and reproductions
of their works. The author is well known as a charming writer and an
acknowledged authority on art criticism and history.
#PERSIA AND THE PERSIANS.# By Hon. S. G. W. BENJAMIN, late U. S.
Minister to the Court of Persia. 1 vol. 8vo. With portrait and many
illustrations. Beautifully bound. $5.00. Half calf, $9.00.
The author is, perhaps, the best living authority on Persia, and this
book embodies the results of his observation and experience during
the years of his residence as United States Minister, combining novel
and entertaining adventures and descriptions, with political and
other observations of great value. His rare skill as a landscape
painter has availed to give many choice pictures of the great Asiatic
realm, with its stores of poetry and legend, its strange customs, and
its romantic scenery and architecture.
#CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS.# By JULIAN HAWTHORNE. 1 vol. 12mo. With
portrait. $1.25.
A series of very delightful essays and papers, with reminiscences and
other memorable papers, prepared by one of the most skilful and
interesting of American authors, and calculated to attract and keep
the attention of all readers. It includes a great variety of valuable
miscellany, and several papers that have already become classic among
people of cultivation and acumen.
#THE HOUSE AT HIGH BRIDGE.# By EDGAR FAWCETT. 1 vol. 12mo. $1.50.
The announcement of an entirely new novel from the pen of the writer
of "Adventures of a Widow," etc., is sufficient to pique the
curiosity of many readers, who find in this author the best traits of
modern literature. "The House at High Bridge" is an entirely new
work, not having been published serially.
#NORA PERRY'S NEW SONGS AND BALLADS.# 12mo. Gilt top and rough edges.
$1.50.
A new volume of poems by Nora Perry is now ready, and its publication
will be welcomed with great interest by the thousands of admirers of
this brilliant and piquant writer.
#AFTER THE BALL, HER LOVER'S FRIEND, AND OTHER POEMS.# By NORA PERRY.
New edition. Two volumes in one. $1.75.
A re-issue of the entire collected poetical works of Nora Perry,
previous to the publication of "New Songs and Ballads." They were
formerly published in two volumes, but are now made into one.
#RANKELL'S REMAINS.# A Novel. By BARRETT WENDELL, author of "The
Duchess Emilia." 1 vol. 12mo. $1.00.
"Powerfully and wonderfully done as a piece of characterization....
The book has deserved its success because more than any other of its
kind it is comprehensible, forcible, and readable."--_Commercial
Bulletin._
"The telling is remarkably well done. It is full of power and the
intensity of underlying tragedy," says Nora Perry, in _The
Independent._
"A bitter, caustic, stinging satire, a book of power."--_Chicago
Times._
#A MURAMASA BLADE.# A Story of Feudalism in Old Japan. By LOUIS
WERTHEIMBER. 1 vol. 8vo. Beautifully illustrated by Japanese artists.
$3.00; in red Japanese brocade, $5.00.
Mr. Wertheimber, of a scholarly Austrian family, went to Japan about
the year 1870, and spent many years there, in the service of the
Japanese Government. He was an extensive traveller among the inland
districts and villages; and contributed many articles and series to
the _Japan Mail_, and other publications. The present book is a
romance of the sword, full of charming local color, true to life as
it is in Japan, and full of deep and enchaining interest. Its
mechanical make-up is sumptuous in every respect.
#AGNES SURRIAGE.# A Novel. By EDWIN LASSETTER BYNNER, author of
"Damen's Ghost," "Penelope's Suitors," etc. $1.50.
Founded upon a romantic episode in early Massachusetts history,
introducing by name prominent people of the day, with descriptions of
their characters and appearance, weaving in historical events, such
as the Louisburg Expedition, Church Squabbles, and the Spinning
Craze, and giving a realistic picture of life under the royal
governors,--a book which, apart from the thrilling interest of the
story, is of permanent value as a painstaking study of an historical
epoch.
#SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS.# By Hon. JUSTIN S. MORRILL.
$1.50.
The well-known and erudite Senator from Vermont has, in this work,
condensed the fruits of years of curious research in a strange and
unfamiliar field. The result is a rarely entertaining volume of great
value to all scholars and public men, and interesting to all readers.
A small edition was privately printed some time since, and met with
such praise and appreciation that Senator Morrill has since carefully
revised and materially augmented it for publication.
#THE MINISTER'S CHARGE.# By W. D. HOWELLS, author of "The Rise of
Silas Lapham," "Indian Summer," etc. $1.50.
"In this great novel of the people Henry James finds that Mr. Howells
touches high-water mark; and sees an important and valuable work in
this minute and subtle registering of the heavy-witted countryman's
slow development under city conditions. However that may be,
Howells's pure, inimitable fun is enough to carry any story he may
write. Like all true fun, this has a most searching pathos all the
time just at hand; and never is the real dignity of character of this
actual Yankee forgotten or trifled with."--_Boston Transcript._
#COUNT XAVIER.# By HENRY GRÉVILLE. 1 vol. 16mo. $1.00.
This is the latest and one of the best of the novels of the author of
"Dosia," the most popular and famous of Parisian novelists.
#LIBER AMORIS.# By HENRY BERNARD CARPENTER. 1 vol. 16mo. Gilt top and
rough edges. $1.75.
A brilliant and picturesque romance in verse, dealing with the period
of the Minnesingers, in the Rheinland, Padua, and Auvergne. Mr.
Carpenter has long been known as one of our most spirited and
vigorous poets.
#MARY MAGDALENE, AND OTHER POEMS.# By Mrs. RICHARD GREENOUGH. With
photograph of Greenough's statue of the Magdalen on the side of the
cover. 50 cents.
The
MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON,
In Four Volumes. Quarto.
With more than 500 Illustrations by famous artists and engravers, all
made for this work.
Edited by JUSTIN WINSOR, LIBRARIAN OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
Among the contributors are:--
Gov. JOHN D. LONG,
Dr. O. W. HOLMES,
Hon. CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS,
JOHN G. WHITTIER,
Rev. PHILLIPS BROOKS, D.D.,
Rev. J. F. CLARKE, D.D.,
Rev. E. E. HALE, D.D.,
Rev. A. P. PEABODY, D.D.,
Hon. ROBERT C. WINTHROP,
Col. T. W. HIGGINSON,
Hon. J. HAMMOND TRUMBULL,
Professor ASA GRAY,
Admiral G. H. PREBLE,
Gen. F. W. PALFREY,
HENRY CABOT LODGE.
* * * * *
VOLUME I. treats of the Geology, Fauna, and Flora; the Voyages and
Maps of the Northmen, Italians, Captain John Smith, and the Plymouth
Settlers; the Massachusetts Company, Puritanism, and the Aborigines;
the Literature, Life, and Chief Families of the Colonial Period.
VOL. II. treats of the Royal Governors; French and Indian Wars;
Witches and Pirates; The Religion, Literature, Customs, and Chief
Families of the Provincial Period.
VOL. III. treats of the Revolutionary Period and the Conflict around
Boston; and the Statesmen, Sailors, and Soldiers, the Topography,
Literature, and Life of Boston during that time; and also of the Last
Hundred Years' History, the War of 1812, Abolitionism, and the Press.
VOL. IV. treats of the Social Life, Topography, and Landmarks,
Industries, Commerce, Railroads, and Financial History of this
Century in Boston; with Monographic Chapters on Boston's Libraries,
Women, Science, Art, Music, Philosophy, Architecture, Charities, etc.
* * * * *
*** _Sold by subscription only. Send for a Prospectus to the
Publishers,_
TICKNOR AND COMPANY, Boston.
THE STUDENTS' SERIES OF
STANDARD POETRY.
Edited by W. J. Rolfe, A.M.
-> All these books are equally suited to the use of the student, and
that of the general reader. They should have a place in every
library, public or private. Price 75 cents each.
* * * * *
I. SCOTT'S LADY OF THE LAKE.
The text is correctly printed for the first time in fifty years. The
_notes_ (88 pp.) include Scott's and Lockhart's, and are fuller than
in any other edition, English or American. The _illustrations_ are
mainly of the _scenery_ of the poem, from sketches made on the spot.
II. TENNYSON'S THE PRINCESS.
The _notes_ (50 pp.) give the history of the poem, _all_ the readings
of the earlier editions, selected comments by the best English and
American critics, full explanations of all allusions, &c. The
_illustrations_ are from the elegant Holiday edition.
III. SELECT POEMS OF TENNYSON.
Including the Lady of Shalott, the Miller's Daughter, Oenone, the
Lotos-Eaters, The Palace of Art, A Dream of Fair Women, Morte
d'Arthur, The Talking Oak, Ulysses, Locksley Hall, The Two Voices,
St. Agnes' Eve, Sir Galahad, The Brook, &c. The text is from the
latest English edition (1884). The notes (50 pp.) include a careful
collation of the earlier editions, with explanatory and critical
comments. The _illustrations_ are of high character.
IV. SCOTT'S MARMION.
With copious Notes and introductory matter. The text is now correctly
printed _for the first time_.
V. YOUNG PEOPLE'S TENNYSON.
Containing a great number of the works of the Poet Laureate most
adapted to young readers, with interesting commentaries and cuts.
VI. BYRON'S CHILDE HAROLD.
A new and carefully annotated edition of this great poem, with many
fine illustrations from the Holiday edition.
VII. SCOTT'S THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL.
Beautifully illustrated and copiously annotated, with the most lovely
scenes along the Scottish border.
VIII. TENNYSON'S ENOCH ARDEN. (In Press.)
THE CHOICEST EDITIONS
OF THE
SIX GREAT MODERN POEMS.
Drawn and engraved under the care of A. V. S. ANTHONY. Each in one
volume, 8vo, elegantly bound, with full gilt edges, in a neat box.
Each poem, in cloth, $6.00; in tree calf, or antique morocco, $10.00;
in crushed levant, extra, with silk linings, $25.00. Copiously
illustrated after drawings by Thomas Moran, E. H. Garrett, Harry
Fenn, A. B. Frost, and other distinguished artists.
THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL.
Crowded with beautiful illustrations, and richly and sumptuously
bound.
"Illustrations wonderfully lustrous and effective."--_Capital._
CHILDE HAROLD.
With more than 100 noble Illustrations, of great artistic value and
beauty, representing the splendid scenery and architecture of the
Rhine, Greece, Italy, etc.
THE PRINCESS.
The most famous poem of ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON. With 120 new and
beautiful Illustrations.
"The most superb book of the season. The exquisite binding makes
a fit casket for Tennyson's enchanting 'Princess.'"--_Hartford
Journal._
THE LADY OF THE LAKE.
A superb fine-art edition, with 120 Illustrations. The choicest
edition of Scott's wonderful poem of Scottish chivalry.
"On page after page are seen the great dome of Ben-an rising in
mid-air, huge Ben-venue throwing his shadowed masses upon the
lakes, and the long heights of Ben Lomond hemming the
horizon."--_Atlantic Monthly._
LUCILE.
By OWEN MEREDITH. With 160 Illustrations.
The high peaks of the Pyrenees, the golden valleys of the Rhineland,
and the battle-swept heights of the Crimea.
"This new edition is simply perfect--paper, type, printing, and
especially the illustrations,--a most charming Christmas
gift."--_American Literary Churchman._
MARMION.
With more than 100 Illustrations, and Borders.
"Wild Scottish beauty. Never had a poem of stately and immortal
beauty a more fitting setting."--_Chicago Inter-Ocean._
* * * * *
_For Sale by Booksellers. Sent, postpaid, on receipt of price, by the
Publishers,_
TICKNOR AND COMPANY, Boston.
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|
who believe in it. They
will not believe in the agency of the Holy Spirit; but they will believe
in a change of heart from the use of purely human means, and those will
be governed by precisely the same laws in both views of the subject. We
will therefore attempt to give what will be called the evangelical view
of conversion, and leave it for persons of different views to account for
the _power_ which produces this change in their own way.
The first inquiry is this, What are the degrees of activity among the
faculties as governed by the ordinary laws of exercise?
1. Thus some of the faculties, especially those termed religious, are
brought into a very great degree of _activity_. This arises from the
great extent and importance of the objects with which they are brought
into relation.
2. The propensities in general, and Self-esteem and Approbativeness in
particular, are deprived of their ordinary stimulus, and for a time
become in a measure paralysed; as self, and the objects which excite the
propensities, appear much diminished by contrast. To some, the contrast
appears so great that they feel humbled as in the dust.
3. By little and little the higher sentiments become accustomed to this
newly acquired higher degree of activity, and spontaneously range in
their newly acquired world of objects. Every thing is now viewed as in
the light of eternity. Man is now not only known, but felt to be an
immortal being with a soul of uncounted worth. There is often a degree of
exaltation of the feelings, and an increased mental power, which greatly
surprises those who knew them in their former state. This appears in
their deep insight into divine things, and in their exalted devotional
exercises.
4. As the religious sentiments become more and more evangelized, or, in
other words, as growth in grace progresses, they acquire an habitual, an
uncontested ascendency over the propensities, and take the religious lead
of their newly acquired masters.
In all this change, great, thorough, radical, and abiding as it really
is, we recognise only the operation of the same general laws which
characterise all great changes in mental character. The physical organs
are affected powerfully; and the emotions are only in exact proportion to
the felt importance of their objects. If exerted too much at one time,
or too frequently for the healthy endurance of the cerebral organs,
inflammation follows, and, with it, religious mania.
Next, inasmuch as different minds are very differently constituted,
so are they differently affected by the actual process of conversion
to a holy life. We shall be better understood, when we say that the
temperament, age, education, intellectual and affective faculties,
&c., all have an influence in relation to the manner in which their
minds will be brought to the realisation of religious truth, and to
experience its sanctifying efficacy. Hence it is of immense importance,
that those whose office it is to bring religious truth to bear upon
the minds of their fellow-men, should understand the peculiar nature
of the minds on which they are to exert their action. In short, they
should understand phrenology familiarly and practically, and should
apply it daily to their fellow-men. We will put one or two cases. If,
for instance, Conscientiousness be a strong faculty in an individual,
with Cautiousness also large, and at the same time he has gone on for
many years in a careless worldly course of unbelief, the religious
teacher would be likely to bring vividly to his mind that searching
attribute of the Almighty, viz. his justice, which cannot look upon
sin but with abhorrence. He would point out the purity of heaven, and
contrast it with the impurity of a world lying in wretchedness, and
depict the nature, desert, and awfulness of sin, &c. &c. In this way he
would probably excite remorse and apprehension. But if the individual
have respectable reasoning powers, he should be impressed with the utter
hopelessness of entering Heaven while remaining in his sins. He cannot
fail to see at once, that Heaven is no place for him, until he becomes
fit for its society. The importance of things connected with religion,
should be clearly set forth and contrasted with the temporary, fleeting,
unsatisfactory things of this world.
We may reasonably expect, that labours of this kind rendered discreetly,
prayerfully, and in faith, will be availing through the influences of the
Holy Spirit.
We would here remark, that we should never judge of the genuineness of
a conversion by any special, infallible process the individual may have
gone through. It may have been a slow, gradual process, as would be
likely to be the case of a naturally finely organised young person, whose
moral and religious education had been well conducted; or it may be quiet
or unobserved, as in an individual of a large organ of Reverence, and the
higher sentiments generally, but of a sluggish temperament. It may have
been violent, overwhelming, and attended by a remarkable experience—as
the seeing of visions, &c.—if the individual have been of an ardent
temperament, and with large perceptive organs and large Marvellousness.
Equally diverse will be the growth in grace of different individuals.
Some will be almost like ground by the way side, some like stony places,
some like good ground covered with thorns, and some still like good
ground. Aside from peculiarities of individual character, external
circumstances, whether favourable or otherwise, may exert a very great
degree of influence. They may be like the genial influences of a summer’s
sun after refreshing showers, or they may be as the chills of the winter
frost.
Equally diverse will be the ultimately formed Christian character of
different individuals. But all who are truly pious, will show some
indubitable signs of it in their subsequent life and character; “By their
_fruits_ ye shall know them.” Whether they have the same mind which was
in Jesus in its general cast; whether they be changed in the general
spirit and temper of the mind; whether they have love to, and faith in,
Christ, meekness, benevolence, sincerity, tenderness, simplicity of life,
love to the brethren, &c.
The means that are rendered effectual in regeneration by the agency of
the Holy Spirit are equally diverse. But your next enquiry is, how do we
know that the Holy Spirit has any agency in the conversion of sinners? We
answer, we only know by the Scriptures that He is the agent. The point is
not strictly susceptible of any other proof. But this is certain, that
the agency must be one beyond our own; no one could convert himself. We
know, too, that persons who have resisted all the influence of a pious
education, cogent preaching, example, the ordinary and extraordinary
providences of God, &c., have, when alone, and without any apparent
external influence, been suddenly brought to feel the great power and
efficacy of religion. All must therefore acknowledge the influence to be
mysterious. It would indeed be difficult, as we believe, to account for
revivals wholly from natural causes. Still, however, this point rests
upon Scripture; _and phrenology certainly contributes nothing to render
the Scripture doctrine less easy of belief_.
It is proper to notice here, that when conversions appear mysterious,
or when sudden and in advanced life, they are almost miraculous. It is
not the _ordinary_ method, in which the mind is prepared for the hearty
reception of divine truth. The _new principle_ introduced into the mind
is, as we before said, no new _faculty_. The expression is at best
obscure, and calculated to produce erroneous impressions. In one of our
beautiful hymns it is thus expressed—
But when the Holy Ghost imparts
A knowledge of a Saviour’s love,
Our wand’ring, weary, restless hearts
Are then renewed no more to rove.
Now a _new principle_ takes place,
Which guides and animates the will,
This love,—another name for grace,—
Constrains to good, and bars from ill.
Here the _new principle_, which is otherwise expressed as love to God, is
no other than this. The higher sentiments are excited into predominating
activity, and led to contemplate with love and gratitude the government
of God and the wonderful love, revealed in the great work of redemption
of fallen men, a work in which he now feels himself especially
interested. It is a change of the _balance_ and _direction_ of the
faculties. They have seized hold of new things, which are now regarded
as all important; but before they were looked upon with indifference.
In relation to the mental faculties, it is not a new principle, but a
new _administration, produced by a change of majority_. Hence the mental
decisions are different. The actions spring from different motives—from a
prevailing love to God, and obedience to his will.
In thus far speaking of conversion, we have shown what the Holy Spirit
does not do, rather than what He does. We have done this to narrow down
the field of mystery to its due limits, and to impress our readers
with the necessity and importance of understanding and applying the
true principles of mind in relation to religious action, as well as to
education and self-culture. Having done this, we believe we have gone the
full extent to which reason can go. We must look to revelation, and that
alone, for whatever further light is obtained on this subject. In doing
so, we are confident the reader will find nothing inconsistent with our
views. What is not explained in revelation is known only to the Almighty,
and is therefore a mystery past finding out.
The great laws which regulate the growth, exercise, and rest of the
organs, and the force of the principle of habit or repetition, all go
to show the following propositions to be eminently true and of immense
importance.
1. That it is unphrenological, as well as unsafe and presumptuous,
to allow children to grow up without early, constant, and judicious
religious instruction and example. Where these are neglected, a sudden
change may come over the person late in life; but this is hardly to be
expected. How much better to commence and continue in the right course,
than to go on wrong for years, trusting to a miracle to set us right.
When to do so, we must turn quite round, and, as it were, to go back and
begin anew!
2. That religion does not consist in belief merely, and that the work
of grace requires long training of the faculties to give them strength,
stability, habit, and harmonious action, so that the person will be
constantly in the easy, delightful exercise of the Christian graces. One
of this cast and _training_, where organisation favours its strong and
healthy development, will show by his life and conversation that his
religion not only sets well upon him, but is a part of him and pervades
him throughout. It will beam forth upon his countenance, his gestures,
his gait, his subdued, simple, and kind manners. His habitual obedience
as a dutiful child of his heavenly Father, will show itself in his
appointments, promises, and engagements. “With the blessing of God,”
“With divine permission,” &c. will habitually be his language. It will
show itself in his crosses, his self-denials, his labours of love, and by
the ejaculation, “Thy will be done,” &c.; his moderation in relation to
the objects of this world; his longing after immortality; his devotional
habits, &c.
When we commenced our article, we had intended to have cited Scripture to
show the harmony of all the above views with it; but we feel confident
that our views will so readily call to mind all those passages of
Scripture which harmonise with them, that it would be in a measure
unnecessary. Besides, we did not promise to attempt a full view of the
subject, but rather to embolden others to do so. We should delight to see
a small work, written on the subject. It would be the _vade mecum_ of all
those who exert themselves in the cause of religious education, and the
dissemination of Christian truth.
S. J.
ARTICLE III.
ON DUELLING.
_To the Editor of the American Phrenological Journal._
Having examined the heads of several gentlemen, since I have been in
the southern states, who have fought DUELS, I have been struck with
the fact, that most of them have _Combativeness moderately_ developed,
_Cautiousness large_, and _Approbativeness very large_. This has led me
to reflect upon the principles in our nature which instigate and keep up
the practice of duelling.
Duelling is a pretended display of courage, personal prowess, or
bravery, in defence of one’s character and honour. But it strikes me
that, on phrenological principles, with such an organisation as I have
alluded to, a man can be neither truly _brave_ nor _courageous_, natural
_fear_ or actual _cowardice_ being the more legitimate result of such
a conformation. Hence it would follow, if we are permitted to take the
cases alluded to as proper data from which to reason, that the fighting
of duels is _no test_ of courage at all; but rather the result of fear,
or (as I shall hereafter show) they generally evince a want of _moral_
courage in those who engage in them; and this view, if I mistake not,
exactly corresponds with the popular notion upon this subject. But
suppose they _did_ display courage; what then? What is this boasted
courage, of which we hear so much?
Courage may be divided into two kinds—_physical_ and _moral_. The
former, when analysed, will be found to consist mainly in the exercise
of Combativeness; and this is one of the lower propensities, common
to man and brute. Of course, then, physical courage is a low passion;
and one that is often displayed in the bull-dog or game-cock far more
powerfully than in the most gallant knight that ever shivered a lance,
or the most renowned hero that ever waded to the temple of fame through
fields of carnage and blood. But moral courage, which is made up of
_Combativeness_, _Firmness_, _Self-esteem_, and the _higher sentiments_,
and which enables us to go boldly forward in our own integrity and
strength, and on all occasions support the _right_, and do whatever
Conscientiousness, Benevolence, affection, and the reasoning faculties
dictate, is an exalted feeling—a noble sentiment—and none can show too
much of it; for, since it cannot be exercised but in a worthy cause, it
is incapable of being perverted or abused.
The manifestation of physical courage is proper when exerted in
defence of our natural rights; but is very liable to be abused, and
when misdirected, instead of its being a virtue, it becomes one of the
worst of vices. Man is not the natural enemy of man; and we live in a
community which professes to be regulated by wholesome laws. Therefore,
when one man voluntarily turns this instrument of defence against his
fellow-man, or exercises it improperly upon a brute, he tramples upon the
laws, and is justly held amenable and punishable. Such a manifestation
of Combativeness or courage is a plain _perversion_ of a naturally good
faculty, and becomes odious and sinful; and such I cannot but conceive
to be the _kind_ of manifestation of this feeling which generally takes
place in duelling.
“But,” says the advocate of duelling, “must I submit, then, when I am
insulted, to be disgraced?” Certainly not, sir; but, in order to preserve
your character from infamy, you should be careful not to employ means
which, instead of rescuing it, actually adds to its degradation; or, in
other words, in order to preserve your _honour_, you should not resort to
means really _dishonourable_.
But with the view to appreciate the weight of this subject, I have
endeavoured to bring it home to myself, and consider what reply I would
make in case I should be _challenged_. In our country, where we have no
_Court of Honour_, (an institution, by the way, which I think ought to
be set up,) I would say to the challenger, “Sir, if you think yourself
injured or insulted beyond the redress of civil laws, I am willing to
submit the case to gentlemen of honourable standing, and settle it
according to their decision.” If he would not listen to this proposal,
but still insisted on fighting, I would say to him, “Sir, neither my
conscience nor my judgment will allow me to be so fool-hardy as to throw
my life away by meeting a man who seeks my blood, nor will my humanity
nor my moral feelings allow me to imbrue my hands in the blood of a
fellow-being.”
Should he then call me a coward, I would reply, “Sir, you show _no
proof_ of it. I hold that fighting duels is more frequently an evidence
of a _want_ of _moral_ courage, than a proof of physical courage. If,
by my course, I display no proof of the _latter_, I certainly do of the
_former_, by thus braving public opinion on a point which I consider
wrong. But suppose you _did_ thus prove my want of physical courage, you
only show that my _intellectual_ and _moral faculties_ are stronger than
my _brute propensities_; and is this a disgrace to a rational being?” Let
the advocates of this practice say what they will in vindication of it,
and attempt to justify it on the ground of its expediency, necessity,
&c., the fact is, all their reasonings upon the subject are shallow,
sophistical, and disgraceful in a civilised, or more especially Christian
community.
The only proper grounds on which to meet the question, are its
_reasonableness_ and its _justice_. Is it _rational_? is it right? In
a barbarous community, where _might_ is held as the only grounds of
_right_, the doctrine might meet with favour; but among us, who reject
such a principle of action, and who profess to be governed by established
laws, it is evidently _irrational_; nay, a gross neglect of duty in
those who profess to administer our laws, to permit individuals thus
to set them at defiance, and under the excitement of passion execute
vengeance on each other. But, on the scope of right, the question does
not admit of debate. Not only do the principles of our holy religion,
in the broadest and most direct terms, condemn all such practices as
sinful, but every moral principle of our nature revolts at them. True,
were we to suppress the influence of our moral sentiments, and exercise
our reasoning faculties in connection with our selfish propensities only,
we might say, “injury for injury,” “blow for blow;” but even then we
could not say, “death for insult,” for there is no comparison between
the two. An insult is limited in its consequence to time; death reaches
to eternity. But phrenology teaches us, that we have no right to settle
a question of this nature, without exercising our reasoning faculties in
connection with the moral sentiments; and I defy any one to prove that
the _latter_ ever sanctioned duelling. Nothing can be clearer than that
to _decline_ a challenge would be an act of _moral_ courage, and as much
more _honourable_ than to accept, as the moral feelings are above the
animal instincts. If, therefore, any one choose to differ with me in
opinion upon this point, he is welcome to do so, and I envy him not his
privilege, for I hold mine to be the legitimate conclusion of a rational
and moral view of the subject; ergo, the opposite conclusion must spring
from the predominance of the brute propensities acting in concert with
the intellect.
Again; I am aware that it will be urged, as the most specious argument
in favour of duelling, that, in this matter, we are bound to respect
_public opinion_. But it has been clearly shown, that public opinion (or
that part of it which still advocates this practice) is unquestionably
_wrong_ on this subject; and in this enlightened age, every honest man,
and every brave man, is bound to _resist_ public opinion in all matters
that interfere with humanity, justice, and moral obligation, and thus
set forth the noble example of _correcting_ public opinion. And more
especially is it the prerogative of phrenology, above all other sciences,
(inasmuch as it enables us clearly to analyse the passions and motives
of men,) to wield its giant strength, against those vices which neither
civilisation nor Christianity has yet been able to subdue.
_Public opinion_, forsooth! And what is public opinion? What but an
evanescent and a capricious thing—a fickle dame, ever varying, ever
changing—that raises a man a hero and a demi-god to-day, and tramples
him in the dust as a base wretch and outcast to-morrow? Look at the
Protean aspects of public opinion in the different ages of the world,
and among the different nations of the earth. Look at public opinion in
the different epochs of the Roman empire, and of the Grecian states.
Behold its changes. Look at it under the mighty Egyptian, Babylonian,
Assyrian, Medean, and Persian dynasties. Compare public opinion at the
present day in China, with that in the United States. Compare it among
our rude Saxon forefathers, with that which prevailed in the days of
William the Conqueror. And in English society, what mighty changes has
it not undergone since the days of Henry the Eighth. Look at the changes
produced on public opinion by a Solon, a Zoroaster, a Pythagoras, a
Homer, a Socrates, or a Plato; an Alexander, a Cæsar, or an Alfred. See
the tyrant bow its neck to the mild, but sublime influence of the Gospel,
wherever it has been introduced. See it bend again before the influence
of philosophy, science, and the arts, and, more especially, before
improvements in our political and civil codes. And are we to be told,
then, that, amid the full glare of light and knowledge which beams upon
us, we are passively and submissively to bow to this capricious tyrant,
and not dare to raise our voices against its cruel and absurd edicts? No.
Reason forbids it; morality forbids it; Heaven forbids it. Let the light
of science and morality, then, clear the mist from our eyes; and let us
go on to _refine_ and _correct_ public opinion, until every vestige of
barbarism and superstition are expunged from our herald-roll. And what is
duelling but a vestige of barbarism that has too long formed a foul blot
upon our national escutcheon?
Mobile, March 12th, 1839.
ARTICLE IV.
REMARKS ON THE POSSIBILITY OF INCREASING THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CEREBRAL
ORGANS BY ADEQUATE EXERCISE OF THE MENTAL FACULTIES. By Andrew Combe, M.
D.
(Continued from No. 6 of this Journal, page 191.)
The next enquiry, and one of not less moment, is to discover _why the
increase does not follow in every instance_? and what are the conditions
which favour it? Multitudes of the young, engaged in the same mental
exercise, manifest no proportionate increase of power or organ; and yet,
if the rule holds good in one instance, there must be causes for every
exception, and to these I shall now direct a few remarks, but necessarily
of a crude and imperfect kind.
The first impeding cause is one already alluded to. On looking at the
analogous instance of muscular increase from muscular action, it will
be granted at once that, in some constitutions, there is a much greater
susceptibility of change than in others. In the nervous system, the
same principle of the influence of the original type undoubtedly holds
good; and while some are easily susceptible of mental impressions and
cerebral improvement, others are the reverse. Here, then, is one ground
of difference of result.
Another fact in regard to muscular development is, that while it is
favoured by due exercise, it is prevented alike by insufficient and by
excessive action, and that _what constitutes due exercise to one, may be
insufficient for another, and excessive for a third_. From this follows
the acknowledged axiom—That exercise ought to be adapted in kind and
degree to the individual constitution, otherwise it will fail to increase
either the muscles or the general strength. I have elsewhere[1] shown
that the same law applies to the brain and nervous system, and that, if
we act regardless of its existence, we inevitably fail in successfully
attaining our object. From ignorance of physiology, however, on the part
of teachers and parents, and ignorance of the connection subsisting
between the brain and the mind, this law has been utterly neglected in
practice. In our larger schools, accordingly, we have from one hundred
to one hundred and fifty boys in each class, or from five hundred to six
hundred in all, subjected to precisely the same amount of work, and to
the same general management, in so far as the period of confinement and
mental activity are concerned; and the individual powers and wants of
each constitution are as little consulted, as if the whole were cast of
the same material, and the same mould—and the result is what we behold
and lament. In some, the degree of mental exercise is adapted to their
capability, and they improve; in others, it falls much short, and their
powers languish from inaction; while in a third portion it goes as far
beyond the limit, and their minds and organs are worn out and impaired.
Healthy vigour is another essential to healthy growth, whether of the
brain or of the body; but, from general ignorance of physiology, this has
been, and still is, equally disregarded in the treatment of the young. In
our public schools, the whole pupils of a large class are set to the same
task, and undergo precisely the same confinement and absence of wholesome
bodily action. It matters not whether they be robust or weak, indolent or
vivacious, fond of play or fond of books. It never occurs to us that what
may be sport to one is a heavy burden to another; and that the length
of confinement, and absence of food, which a robust boy can withstand,
may seriously injure one of a weaker constitution. It is needless to
add, that nothing can be less in accordance with the dictates of a sound
physiology than the ordinary arrangements of our schools; and, judging
from the very inadequate results with which so much labour is repaid,
and the very indifferent health which attends it, it may be inferred,
that no discipline can be less in accordance with the laws of nature, or
less available as a means of improving the minds and brains of those who
are subjected to it. The young, on account of their growing and rapid
nutrition, stand doubly in need of a pure and bracing air, and of ample
muscular exercise out of doors; and yet, so entirely is this condition
disregarded in our plans of education, that in the winter the whole day
is spent in the close and corrupted atmosphere of the school, and the
exercise is restricted to little more than walking to and from it. It is
in vain to think that the brain is not injured in its development, and
the mind not weakened in its powers, by this neglect. The brain partakes
in the general qualities of the constitution. If the body be imperfectly
nourished and supported, the brain is weakened in common with the rest of
the system, and the mind is retarded in its progress, and often impaired
in vigour, by otherwise inadequate causes.
Another circumstance which tends in youth to impede the vigorous growth
of the brain and impair its action, and which owes its existence equally
to ignorance of the laws of physiology, is error in diet. No fact can be
more certain, or, indeed, is more generally admitted, than that the young
require wholesome nourishing food, in larger quantities and at shorter
intervals than when arrived at maturity. Accordingly, undue abstinence
is admitted to be very hurtful in early life. And yet, notwithstanding
the abstract acknowledgment of the fact, the practice of society is
diametrically opposed to it, to the manifold injury of the young. The
proper interval which ought to separate breakfast from dinner, because
that at which vigorous appetite usually returns in healthy and active
young people, is from four to five hours.[2] Beyond that time, waste goes
on without any compensating supply, and exhaustion consequently follows,
attended by weariness and a deteriorated state even of the digestive
organs. So far are we, however, from conforming to the indications of
nature in this respect, that the prevailing plan is, to make young
people breakfast early, say at eight o’clock, that they may go to school
in time; and, instead of giving them a good dinner, with an hour or
two of relaxation, about four or five hours later, their lessons are
considered more necessary than food, and while they are pushed on almost
without interruption, dinner is postponed till eight or nine hours after
breakfast, being at least three, and often five, hours after the time at
which it is wanted by nature.
From much observation I am persuaded, not only that the growth and
activity of the brain are impaired by this sad conduct, but that a
great deal of the delicacy and bad health of the rising generation,
and particularly a great deal of the increasing liability to dyspepsia
which pervades society, is owing to the same preposterous departure from
the laws of the Creator. It is no apology for the evil to say that it
cannot be helped—that there is so much to be learned that the whole day
must be given to it. When we become wiser, we shall discover that it is
easier and pleasanter to learn in accordance with, than in opposition
to, nature’s laws; and if we were once convinced of the fact, there
would be no difficulty in altering the practice. We all admit that
sleep is necessary, and that nature intended the night for repose; and,
consequently, neither parent nor teacher thinks of setting his child to
school in the night-time, however anxious he may be for its progress.
And, in like manner, let society once be convinced that food at proper
intervals is essential to the well-being of the young, and both time and
opportunity will be found for giving it.
Another cause of failure in invigorating a faculty, and increasing an
organ by its active exercise, seems to be an inadequate temperament.
What is excitement to the faculties and brain of a person of a quick
nervous or sanguine temperament, may prove utterly unexciting to the
faculties and brain of one with a low apathetic lymphatic temperament;
and, consequently, improvement in the faculty and organ may follow in
the former, while no change on either will occur in the latter. The
susceptibility will thus vary according to the nature of the original
constitution; and hence, in attempting to develope any mental power,
we can expect to be successful only when we are certain that we have
really the means of exciting and keeping up its activity. A mere passing
stimulus will not suffice to increase nutrition and growth.
Perhaps, also, we sometimes fail from applying a wrong stimulant. In
seeking to improve a faculty, common sense dictates that it should be
exercised upon its most agreeable and perfect productions. Thus, in
cultivating a _taste for music_, we ought to present to the faculty the
most beautiful and harmonious music, because that is the best calculated
to excite it to agreeable and sustained activity. Accordingly, such is
the plan by which we cultivate the taste in communities. But when we take
an individual who has naturally no great liking for music, but in whom it
is desirable that the talent should be developed, we do not stimulate the
faculty to healthful exercise by daily accustoming it to the perception
and discrimination of fine sounds, but we set him or her to labour for
hours every day in producing sounds, remarkable at first only for being
so discordant and disagreeable as to make every one keep as far from
their source as possible; and thus our aim is defeated, and the taste
injured rather than improved. It is true, that by stoical perseverance
some arrive ultimately at the power of producing sounds pleasing to
their own ears; but it will be found that it is only then that their
musical faculty _begins_ to be improved, and that its activity is felt
to be delightful. Many never arrive at that point, and, after years of
ineffectual labour, give up the attempt in despair.
I do not mean by these remarks, that _playing on an instrument_ should
be taught merely by listening to good music. Playing is a mechanical
exercise, calling other faculties into activity, and cannot be acquired
without practice. Besides, playing is not music, but only the means
by which it is produced; and, so far as regards the music alone, the
enjoyment is quite as great _whoever_ produces it, as if we ourselves
did. Often, however, the mistake is committed of thinking that we are
using the most effectual means to develope a taste for music, when we
place the young person at an old piano to rattle out discordant sounds
for several hours a day; and we are grieved and disappointed at the
ultimate failure of an experiment which, in the very nature of things,
could not possibly succeed. By assiduous practice on an instrument we
exercise the _mechanical_ faculties, and may thus develope _their_ organs
to an increased extent. But to produce the same effect on the faculty of
Tune, we must stimulate it to sustained activity, by daily accustoming it
to the hearing of exquisite music, and by guiding the judgment to the
appreciation of beauties. We may then hope to promote increased action
and growth in its organ.
I believe that in regard to some of the other faculties we commit a
similar mistake, and imagine that education fails to invigorate them and
develope their organs, when, in fact, our endeavours have been wrongly
directed, and could not be successful; but the present paper has run
already to so great a length, that I must postpone any farther remarks on
this part of the subject till another opportunity.
Before taking leave, however, I would again enforce the absolute
necessity of physiological knowledge for the successful guidance of
teachers and parents. If the size of the cerebral organs admits of
being increased by judicious exercise, and impaired or retarded by
mismanagement, it obviously becomes an indispensable qualification
for those who undertake their right direction to possess an accurate
acquaintance with the functions and laws of the animal economy; and it
is rather strange that we should have gone on to the present day without
such an obvious truth having been universally perceived and acted upon.
Having now shown, 1st, That judicious mental exercise promotes the
development of the cerebral organs in youth; 2dly, That there is strong
presumptive evidence in proof of the same effect taking place even
in mature age; 3dly, That we are still little acquainted with other
important physiological conditions which act powerfully in modifying the
results of exercise; and 4thly, That the knowledge of these conditions
would greatly extend the efficacy of moral and intellectual education,
and multiply our means of advancing the moral welfare and happiness of
the race; I do not require to add another word to induce phrenologists to
collect additional evidence on all the doubtful points, and to prosecute
the enquiry with persevering accuracy, and with a constant view to its
important practical advantage.
[1] “Principles of Physiology,” &c. 5th edit. p. 292, &c.
[2] See “The Physiology of Digestion considered with Relation
to the Principles of Dietetics.” Second edition, p. 198.
We have selected the above article from the “Edinburgh Phrenological
Journal” for the purpose of calling the attention of phrenologists in
this country to the important principles which it contains. The article
comes from the pen of a gentleman who probably understands the physiology
of the brain, and its real functions, better than any other man living.
It is unnecessary for us to dwell on the importance of correctly
understanding the above principles, as connected with phrenology, and the
desirableness of collecting additional evidence, in order to elucidate
them, and show their numerous applications to the various duties and
pursuits of life. We would therefore solicit for publication in this
Journal, facts showing the positive increase, either in _size_ or
_activity_, of any particular organ or organs; and also communications
tending to illustrate
|
of central and Southern Africa they are of common occurrence.
The Lion leads a solitary life, living with his mate only during the
breeding season. Selous says that in South Africa one more frequently
meets four or five Lions together than single specimens, and troops of
ten or twelve are not extraordinary. His experience taught him that
the South African Lion prefers feasting off the game some hunter has
killed to exerting himself to capture his own prey. This is why he
regularly follows nomadic tribes wherever they go; he regards them as
his tributary subjects and the taxes he levies on them are indeed of
the heaviest kind.
The Cubs are usually two or three and the Lioness treats them with
great tenderness. They play together like Kittens. In well-managed
zoological gardens Lions are now bred as carefully as Dogs; and even in
circuses, where the animals have but little room and often insufficient
nourishment, they are born and sometimes grow up. The cubs are at
first rather clumsy. They are born with their eyes open and are about
half the size of a Cat. Towards the close of the first year they are
about the size of a strong Dog. In the third year the mane begins to
appear on the male, but full growth and distinction of sex, according
to Brehm, are only completed in the sixth or seventh year. Lions in
captivity have lived to be seventy years old.
Brehm, who loved the Lion and was probably better acquainted with his
habits than any other traveler, says: "The most prominent naturalists
give the Lion credit for qualities which in my opinion include nobility
enough. And whoever has become more closely acquainted with that
animal; whoever has, like myself, intimately known a captive Lion for
years, must think as I do; he must love and esteem it as much as a
human being can love and esteem any animal."
A SYMBOL.
BY IRWIN RUSSELL.[1]
Over the meadow there stretched a lane,
Parting the meadow in segments twain;
And through the meadow and over the sod
Where countless feet had before him trod--
With a wall forever on either hand
Barring the lane from the meadow-land,
There walked a man with a weary face,
Treading the lane at a steadfast pace.
On before him, until the eye
To gauge the distance could no more try,
To where the meadow embraced the sky,
The lane still stretched, and the walls still barred
The dusty lane from the meadow sward.
He paid no heed to the joyous calls
That came from men who had leaped the walls--
Who paused a moment in song or jest,
To hail him "Brother, come here and rest!"
For the Sun was marching toward the West,
And the man had many a mile to go,
And time is swift and toil is slow.
The grassy meadows were green and fair
Bestudded with many a blossom rare,
And the lane was dusty, and dry, and bare;
But even there, in a tiny shade
A jutting stone in the wall had made,
A tuft of clover had lately sprung--
It had not bloomed for it yet was young--
The spot of green caught the traveler's eye,
And he plucked a sprig, as he passed by;
And then, as he held it, there came a thought
In his musing mind, with a meaning fraught
With other meanings.
"Ah, look!" said he,
"The spray is one--and its leaves are three,
A symbol of man, it seems to me,
As he was, as he is, and as he will be!
One of the leaves points back, the way
That I have wearily walked to-day;
One points forward as if to show
The long, hard journey I've yet to go;
And the third one points to the ground below.
Time is one, and Time is three:
And the sign of Time, in its Trinity--
Past, Present, Future, together bound
In the simplest grass of the field is found!
The lane of life is a dreary lane
Whose course is over a flowery plain.
Who leaps the walls to enjoy the flowers
Forever loses the wasted hours.
The lane is long, and the lane is bare,
'Tis tiresome ever to journey there;
But on forever the soul must wend--
And who can tell where the lane will end?"
The thought was given. Its mission done,
The grass was cast to the dust and sun;
And the sun shone on it, and saw it die
With _all three leaves_ turned toward the _sky_.
[1] Died in 1878. The Century Co. published a small volume of his poems
a few years ago. This poem has never before been printed.--ED.
[Illustration: From col. Chi. Acad. Sciences.
CACTI.
1/2 Life-size.
Copyright 1898,
Nature Study Pub. Co., Chicago.]
THE CACTUS.
PROF. W. K. HIGLEY.
Because the Greeks in olden times applied the word Cactus to a prickly
plant, Linnæus, often called the Father of Botany, gave the same name
to our wonderful American growth and since his time these strange and
varied plants have borne this nomenclature.
We can hardly imagine any group of plants more interesting. There are
over eight hundred varieties of curious and unexpected forms, bearing
tubular or rotate flowers most varied in size and color--white, pink,
purple, yellow, crimson, deep red--all beautiful and fascinating,
and in our Northern country, protected in the conservatories. The
Night-blooming Cereus is most renowned, most admired of all.
The Cacti are commonly found in the United States, in Mexico, and in
South America, and some species are cultivated on the borders of the
Mediterranean Sea, where the fruit is eaten.
They vary in size from an inch or two in height to enormous growths of
fifty or sixty feet (_Cereus giganteus_) which stand like telegraph
poles, sometimes nearly bare, sometimes with many vertical branches,
reminding one of a huge candelabrum. Then again some forms are nearly
spherical, while others are long, jointed, and square, one species
(_Echinocactus visnaga_) grows about nine feet in height with a
diameter of three feet or more and a single plant of this species will
sometimes weigh a ton. One of our most common forms is flat and broad.
This, the Prickly Pear or Indian Fig (_Opentia Vulgario_), is the only
species found as far north as Wisconsin and New York.
As many of the Cacti require but little care, they are quite
extensively cultivated, not only for the rare beauty of their flowers,
but for economic purposes. However, nearly all are worthy of culture
because of their peculiar forms.
In structure they are fitted for growth in the most arid regions;
they abound in the deserts of New Mexico and southward, in many cases
obtaining their food from a soil in which no other plant will grow,
their thick coats enabling them to retain moisture and vitality for
many weeks. Specimens of the Prickly Pear have been known to grow after
lying on a dry floor, in a closed room, for six months and they have
blossomed when left in this condition for some time.
These plants, which are more or less succulent, are usually protected
from the ravages of animal life by a formidable array of spines and
prickles. Those who have carelessly handled our common Prickly Pear can
attest to the intensely irritating character of its defensive armor.
Thus does nature provide for the care of its otherwise defenseless
forms.
A form of the Prickly Pear (_Opuntia coccinellifera_) is cultivated
in Mexico for the purpose of raising the Cochineal insect (_Coccus
cacti_) which feeds upon it. Some of these plantations contain as many
as 50,000 plants. The females are placed on the Cactus in August and in
about four or five months the first gathering of the Cochineal takes
place, being then ready for the market.
There are many other interesting uses to which these plants are put.
When suffering from thirst animals will tear off the hard outer
fibers and eagerly devour the moist, juicy interior of the stems. The
Moki Indian basket makers use the fiber in their work. This they dye
different colors and wind around the foundations, giving strength and
beauty. The spines of one species (_Echinocactus visnaga_) are used by
the Mexicans as toothpicks. It has been estimated that a single plant
may bear upward of 50,000 spines.
A unique and beautiful sight was a group of Cacti blooming in a
Colorado garden, where the owner had spent much time and expense in
gathering together many varieties, and one was made to realize how
remarkable a thing Nature had lavished upon us: for, as Mr. Grant Allen
has said: "The Cactuses are all true American citizens by birth and
training, and none of them are found truly indigenous in any part of
the Old World."
MYTHS AND THE MISTLETOE.
On Christmas Eve the bells were rung;
On Christmas Eve the chant was sung;
That only night in all the year
Saw the stoled priest the chalice near;
The damsel donned her kirtle sheen;
The hall was dressed with Holly green;
Forth to the woods did merry men go
To gather in the Mistletoe.
The Mistletoe, particularly that which grows on the Oak, was held in
great veneration by the Britons. At the beginning of their year the
Druids went in solemn procession into the forests, and raised a grass
altar at the foot of the finest Oak, on which they inscribed the names
of those gods which were considered the most powerful. After this the
chief Druid, clad in a white garment, ascended the tree and cropped
the Mistletoe with a consecrated golden pruning-hook, the other Druids
receiving it in a pure, white cloth, which they held beneath the tree.
The Mistletoe was then dipped in the water by the principal Druid and
distributed among the people as a preservative against witchcraft and
disease. If any part touched the ground it was considered an omen of
some dreadful misfortune.
In the Eddas of mythological Norse lore, Loke, the evil spirit, is
said to have made the arrow with which he wounded Balder (Apollo), the
son of Friga (Venus), of a branch of Mistletoe. Balder was charmed
against everything which sprang from fire, earth, air, and water, but
the Mistletoe, springing from neither of these, was fatal, and Balder
was not restored to the world till by a general effort of the other
gods. In some parts of Germany and Switzerland it is believed that by
holding in the hand a branch of Mistletoe one will be enabled not only
to see, but to converse with departed spirits.
The Druids, partly because the Mistletoe was supposed to grow only on
the Apple tree and the Oak, and also on account of the usefulness of
the fruit, paid great attention to its cultivation. Many old rites and
ceremonies, in connection with the Apple, are practiced to this day in
some parts of England. On Christmas Eve the farmers and their men take
a huge bowl of cider, with a smoking piece of toasted bread in it and,
carrying it to the orchard, salute the Apple trees with great ceremony,
in order to make them bear well next season.
The wassail bowl drank on Christmas Eve, and on other church festivals,
was compounded of old ale, sugar, nutmegs, and roasted apples, of which
each person partook, taking out an apple with a spoon and then a deep
draught out of the bowl.
Under the Mistletoe of Christmas, the custom of kissing has been handed
down to us by our Saxon ancestors, who, on the restoration of Apollo,
dedicated the plant to Venus, the Goddess of Love and Beauty. It was
placed entirely under her control, thus preventing its ever again being
used against her in future ages.--_E. K. M._
[Illustration: From col. Chi. Acad. Sciences.
FLYING SQUIRREL.
1/2 Life-size.
Copyright 1898,
Nature Study Pub. Co., Chicago.]
THE FLYING-SQUIRREL.
With the exception of Australia, Squirrels are found in all parts
of the globe; they extend tolerably far north and are found in the
hottest parts of the South. As a family they are lively, quick, and
nimble in their movements, both in trees and upon the ground, Flying
Squirrels alone being ill at ease when upon the surface of the earth.
In compensation for this, however, they are possessed of a faculty
which enables them to make exceedingly long leaps, which they take in
an obliquely descending direction.
The nocturnal Flying Squirrels, says Brehm, differ from the diurnal
Tree Squirrels mainly in having their fore and hind legs connected by
a wide flying-membrane. This membrane acts as a parachute, and enables
them to execute considerable leaps with ease, in an inclined plane from
above downward. This membrane consists of a stout skin, extending along
both sides of the body, thickly grown with hair on the upper side,
while the lower one shows but a scanty covering. A bony spur at the
first joint of the fore-legs gives especial strength to the membrane.
The tail serves as an effective rudder and is always vigorous, though
it is not of the same conformation in the different species, one group
having it simply bushy, while the other has the hair on it arranged in
two lateral rows. There are also slight differences in the structure of
the teeth.
The Flying Squirrel of North America, Assapan, is next to the smallest
variety of the whole species, the Jaguan, or East Indian, being the
largest, nearly equaling a cat in size.
The fur of the North American Flying Squirrels is exceedingly soft
and delicate. In captivity they suffer themselves, by day, to be
gently handled, making no effort to bite with their little sharp teeth
as other Squirrels do. Overcome with sleep they lie curled up in
their cage, as much hidden from view as possible, rarely bestirring
themselves before nine o'clock at night. Then, "on the upper edge
of the sleeping-box, which one must give them as a substitute for
their nest, a round little head becomes visible; the body follows
and soon one of the little creatures sits on the narrow edge of the
box in a graceful Squirrel-like attitude, the flying membrane half
folded against its body, half hanging down in a soft curve. The small,
expanded ears move back and forth as does the bewhiskered muzzle, and
the large, dark eyes inquisitively scan the cage and surroundings. If
nothing suspicious is visible, the Assapan glides down like a shadow,
always head first, whether the plane be inclined or vertical, without
any noise, without a perceptible movement of the limbs, the greater
part of which is covered with the membrane. It proceeds on the woven
ceiling of the cage, back downward, as if it walked on level ground; it
rope-dances over thin twigs with unsurpassed precision and agility at a
uniform speed; spreading its membrane to the full, it darts through the
whole space of the cage like an arrow, and the next instant seems glued
to the perch, without having made an effort to regain its balance.
During all this moving about it picks up a crumb, a nut, a grain of
meat from its dish; drinks, sipping more than it laps, washes its head
with saliva, combs its hair with the nails of its fore-feet, smooths it
with the soles of its small paws, turning, stretching, stooping all the
while, as if its skin were a bag in which its body sits quite loosely.
After hunger and thirst are somewhat appeased, and the toilet over, a
playful humor succeeds. Up and down, head upward or inverted, along the
ceiling, or the floor, running, jumping, gliding, soaring, hanging,
sitting, rushing ahead as if it could move a thousand joints at once,
as if there were no such thing as gravity to be overcome."
HUMMING-BIRDS.
If these exquisite little creatures are called Humming-birds, you
little folk may ask, why wasn't the Bee called a Buzzard because it
buzzes?
Well, really, that is a question which I will not attempt to answer,
but the fact remains that no other name would have been so appropriate
for these jewel-like birds but the one above, on account of the humming
sound which they produce when hovering in their curious fashion over a
tempting blossom, and feeding on its contents while suspended in air.
There are four hundred and sixty-seven species of these little birds,
and no two of them, 'tis said, make precisely the same sound, one
producing a noise exactly like the whizzing of a wheel driven by
machinery, while that of another is very like the droning hum of a
large Bee. But no two voices in even one human family, you know, are
alike, so it is not amazing that the rule holds good among the birds.
You can capture and tame these lovely little creatures, too, though
I wouldn't advise you to keep them in a cage very long. They will
pine away and look very doleful if you do. Rather, after you have
accustomed them to your presence, and fed them regularly upon the
honey and syrup and other sweets which they dearly love, open the cage
door and give them their liberty. A gentleman once did this and was
delighted to see them return to their old quarters in a very little
while. By watching them the next morning after setting them free again,
he found they had been pining for a nice fresh garden Spider which they
had been accustomed to daintily pick from the center of his web. He had
provided them with Spiders and Flies, but they wanted to flit about and
search for themselves. For dessert they liked the sweets which he gave
them, so back they went to their cage, instead of extracting it from
the flowers with their long bills, as they were wont to do.
A Humming-bird one summer built its nest in a butternut tree very near
a lady's window. She could look right down into its nest, and one day,
as it began to rain, she saw the mother-bird take one or two large
leaves from a tree near by and cover her little birdlings with it. She
understood how to make an umbrella, didn't she?
[Illustration: From col. Chi. Acad. Sciences.
HUMMING-BIRDS.
Life-size.
Copyright 1898,
Nature Study Pub. Co., Chicago.]
HUMMING-BIRDS.
"Minutest of the feathered kind,
Possessing every charm combined,
Nature, in forming thee, designed
That thou shouldst be
"A proof within how little space
She can comprise such perfect grace,
Rendering thy lovely fairy race
Beauty's epitome."
It has been said that what a beautiful sonnet is to the mind, one
of these fairy-like creations is to the eyes. This is true even in
the case of mounted specimens, which must necessarily have lost some
of their iridescence. Few can hope to see many of them alive. The
gorgeous little birds are largely tropical, the northern limit of their
abundance as species being the Tropic of Cancer. They are partial to
mountainous regions, where there is diversity of surface and soil
sufficient to meet their needs within a small area. The highlands of
the Andes in South America are the regions most favored by a large
number of species. They are most abundant in Ecuador, the mountain
heights affording a home for more than one hundred species. Columbia
has about one hundred species; Bolivia and Peru claim about ninety-six;
then follow, in consecutive order, Central America, Brazil, Venezuela,
Mexico, Guiana, the West Indies, and the United States.
The eastern part of the United States has but one representative of the
Humming-bird family, and only seventeen species have been found within
the limits of the country. As ten of these really belong to the Mexican
group, we can claim ownership of only seven, most of which, however,
migrate far south in winter. Only one of these, the Anna, spends the
winter in the warm valleys of California.
Most of the Hummers are honey-lovers, and they extract the sweetest
juices of the flowers.
The "soft susurrations" of their wings, as they poise above the
flowers, inserting their long beaks into tubes of nectar, announce
their presence. Some of the Warblers and Kinglets will sometimes poise
in this way before a leaf and peck an insect from its surface, but
it is not a regular habit with them. The Hummer's ability to move
backwards while on the wing is one of the most wonderful features of
its flight, and this movement, Mr. Ridgway says, is greatly assisted by
a forward flirt of the bird's expanded tail.
The nests of the Humming-birds are of cup-shape and turban-shape, are
composed chiefly of plant-down, interwoven and bound together with
Spider webs, and decorated with lichens and mosses. Usually the nest is
saddled upon a horizontal or slanting branch or twig, but that of the
Hermit Hummer is fastened to the sides of long, pointed leaves, where
they are safe from Monkeys and other predaceous animals.
"Dwelling in the snowy regions of the Andes are the little gems called
Hill-stars," says Leander S. Keyser, "which build a structure as large
as a man's head, at the top of which there is a small, cup-shaped
depression. In these dainty structures the eggs are laid, lying like
gems in the bottom of the cups, and here the little ones are hatched.
Some of them look more like bugs than birds when they first come from
the shell. The method of feeding the young is mostly by regurgitation;
at least such is the habit of the Ruby-throat, and no doubt many others
of the family follow the fashions of the Humming-bird land. The process
is as follows: The parent bird thrusts her long bill far down into the
throat of her bantling, and then, by a series of forward plunges that
are really terrible to witness, the honey food is pumped from the old
bird's craw into that of the youngster. So far as is known the babies
enjoy this vigorous exercise and suffer no serious consequences from
it."
CHRISTMAS TREES.
FRED. A. WATT.
Our Christmas tree is a relic of the old heathen times and came down
to us as a part of the Yule festival. It seems to have originated in
Germany and can be traced back as far as the year 1604 with certainty,
and as it was an established custom at that time it is evidently much
older.
How the early man conceived the idea is open to dispute, but in my
opinion it is due to an old superstition which has some believers even
to this day. It is said that any maid who is not kissed under the
Mistletoe at Christmas will not be married during the year following.
I have no doubt that the anxiety of the young ladies to be always
found under the Mistletoe on that day has led to the profuse green
decorations, from which it is only a step to the Christmas tree.
It was introduced into the Court of St. James in 1840 by Prince Consort
Albert of Saxe-Cobourg, and the custom spread rapidly through the
aristocratic families of London and was almost immediately adopted by
all classes throughout England.
It was introduced into the court at Paris in 1830 by the Duchess of
Orleans and is now a French custom.
It seems, however, that in our own country it has taken deepest root.
Here, by reason of the democratic nature of the people, it may be said
to be distinctively American, as the German who first introduced it
undoubtedly became an American citizen long ago and his successors are
probably numbered among our best citizens even to the present time. Our
people of all nationalities have adopted it and we find it installed
in our churches, our family gatherings, our schools, and private
clubs. Our nineteenth century inventor has even tried to change it
into an affair of cast iron, through whose hollow trunk and branches
gas pipes are conducted and gas jets among the branches take the place
of candles. One of the results of all this is that the demand for
Christmas trees and Christmas greens has grown to enormous proportions
in our larger cities and furnishes employment during the latter part of
September and through November and December to a number of people who
make a business of gathering the gay green branches and transporting
them to market.
While traveling through the southern part of Maine a few years ago, I
was struck by the symmetry and beauty of a tract of Evergreen Trees
and remarked that they would make good Christmas trees. I afterward
found that such was likely to be their fate, as men who make a business
of "clam-whopping" and fishing during the summer months turned their
attention during the fall to the business of gathering these trees and
shipping them to New York, Philadelphia, and Boston.
In looking the subject up to determine what became of all these Trees I
found an industry which I had not dreamed of. I find that the Christmas
greens for New York City were first shipped from Keyport, N. J. That
as the demand for them assumed larger proportions the raw material
was exhausted in that neighborhood, but the inhabitants having become
interested in the business, and finding it a source of profit, have
continued to advance into the surrounding country, little by little,
until now they are gathering Spruce from Maine, New Hampshire, and
Vermont, Princess Pine from Vermont, White Pine from Michigan and even
Wisconsin, Laurel and Holly from the South, and in fact they can now
gather only Balsam on the home grounds in paying quantities.
In addition to the above-named evergreens, quantities of Ground Pine,
Cape Flowers, Fir, Hemlock, the plants of the Club Mosses, berried
Black Alder, Quill Weed, and Mistletoe are sought out and gathered
wherever found and shipped--the Christmas trees to New York where they
lie piled up by thousands along West street facing the dock lines, for
several weeks before the holidays, and the other greens to Keyport and
vicinity where they are made up into stars, anchors, crosses, wreaths,
hearts, triangles, horseshoes, and miles of roping for decorative
purposes.
For the entire length of Monmouth county the families within a mile
of the bay shore are nearly all engaged in the business of making
these decorations at this season. Four miles from Keyport is the town
of Keansburg which now surpasses the former place in this industry.
Neighbors are referred to as "making" or "not making" and numbers of
new faces appear in the town, attracted by the industry from the north,
south, and west. The wages paid are not high but anyone who can "make"
can always find a position during the busy season.
The small villages along this strip of country now present a pretty
appearance. The houses are almost hidden behind stacks of evergreens
of all kinds. A peep into a detached summer kitchen will disclose a
group of girls gathered around a long table piled high with evergreens,
and at first glance they appear to be principally engaged in pleasant
conversation, but you will not have to watch them long before you are
aware that their busy fingers are turning out Christmas decorations at
an astonishing rate. Or, if you should happen to look in at night, you
might see the tables and evergreens pushed to one side and gay groups
of girls and young boat-builders, oystermen, and fishermen engaged in a
lively neighborhood dance.
Materials other than evergreens are used in this industry to a
considerable extent; laths are used to make frames for the stars and
crosses. Willows are gathered in quantities from the marshes with which
frames for wreaths are made, but the trade in rattan is probably the
most benefited, as nothing else will give such satisfaction in making
the frames for hearts, anchors, and other decorations of this kind.
The completed decorations are shipped to New York, Philadelphia, and
Boston, but not to Chicago. In Chicago we find a different state of
affairs. We are so near the evergreen forests of Wisconsin, where
Christmas trees may be had for practically nothing, that the cost of
transportation alone from New Jersey would be greater than the price
realized would amount to.
Numbers of hulks of condemned vessels lie in and around Chicago which
are practically worthless. These boats are taken in the fall by seamen
who are out of employment up along the Wisconsin coast and there loaded
with evergreens, are brought back to the Chicago river and docked,
and lie there until the load is disposed of to the holiday trade. The
decorations are mainly manufactured in the city in the store-rooms of
the dealers.
That the business of bringing these trees down from the north is not
without serious danger and hardship is evidenced by the wreck of the
schooner S. Thal, which occurred off the coast near Glencoe, Ill., a
short time ago, in which five lives were lost. Five lives yielded up
that our children may enjoy an hour of pleasure!
Do they ever think of the cost?
A WINTER'S WALK.
Gleamed the red sun athwart the misty haze
Which veiled the cold earth from its loving gaze,
Feeble and sad as hope in sorrow's hour--
But for thy soul it still hath warmth and power;
Not to its cheerless beauty wert thou blind;
To the keen eye of thy poetic mind
Beauty still lives, though nature's flowrets die,
And wintry sunsets fade along the sky!
And naught escaped thee as we strolled along,
Nor changeful ray, nor bird's faint chirping song.
Blessed with a fancy easily inspired,
All was beheld, and nothing unadmired;
From the dim city to the clouded plain,
Not one of all God's blessings given in vain.
--_Hon. Mrs. Norton._
THE SILK-WORM.
The Caterpillar, or Silkworm, is at first of a dark color, but soon
becomes light, and in its tints much resembles the perfect insect--a
circumstance common in Caterpillars. Its proper food is the Mulberry,
though it will likewise eat the Lettuce, and some few other plants, on
which, however, it does not thrive equally well, and the silk yielded
is of a poor quality.
The Silkworm is about eight weeks in arriving at maturity, during which
period it changes its skin four or five times. When about to cast its
skin it ceases to eat, raises the forepart of the body slightly, and
remains in perfect repose. In this state it necessarily continues for
a time, in order that the new skin, which is at this time forming, may
become sufficiently mature to enable the Caterpillar to burst through
the old one. This operation is performed thus: The forepart of the old
skin is burst; the Silkworm then, by continually writhing its body,
contrives to thrust the skin back to the tail and disengage itself;
this is difficult, however, since it is no uncommon occurrence for them
to die from not being able to free themselves.
When full grown the Silkworm commences spinning its web in some
convenient spot, and as it does not change the position of the hinder
portions of its body much, but continues drawing its thread from
various points, and attaching it to others, it follows that after a
time its body becomes, in a great measure, enclosed by the thread. The
work is then continued from one thread to another, the Silkworm moving
its head and spinning in a zig-zag way, bending the forepart of the
body back to spin in all directions within reach, and shifting the
body only to cover with silk the part which was beneath it. In this
way it encloses itself in a cocoon much shorter than its own body.
During the time of spinning the cocoon the Silkworm decreases in length
considerably, and after the work is done it is not half its original
length. At this time it becomes quite torpid, soon changes its skin,
and appears in the form of a chrysalis. In this state the animal
remains about three weeks; it then bursts its case and comes forth in
the imago state, the moth having previously dissolved a portion of the
cocoon by means of a fluid which it ejects. The moth is short lived;
the female in many instances dies almost immediately after she has laid
her eggs; the male survives her but a short time.
China was the first country in which the labors of the Silkworm were
availed of, and Aristotle was the first Greek author who mentions it.
It was not until the fifteenth century that the manufacture of silk was
established in England. The raising of Silkworms in the United States
has been attempted with success in the Southern States, and especially
in California. As the Silkworms in Europe are affected by disease,
immense quantities of eggs are sent from this country.
Reeling from the cocoons is only performed in countries where the
silk is produced. In plain silk-weaving the process is much the same
as in weaving wool or linen, but the weaver is assisted by a machine
for the even distribution of the warp, which frequently consists of
eight thousand separate threads in a breadth of twenty inches. The
Jacquard loom, invented by a weaver of Lyons, has been the means of
facilitating and cheapening the production of fancy or figured silks to
an extraordinary extent.
The Pan-American delegates during their tour through this country were
presented with silk flags by the Woman's Silk-Culture Association of
Philadelphia. The flags were made from material produced in the United
States.
The eggs from which our photograph was taken are "live eggs," and
if properly handled will hatch out in the spring. In order to bring
about this result care must be taken that they do not become too warm;
freezing will not hurt them, but heat or dampness will cause them to
hatch or spoil.
Forty thousand eggs weigh about one ounce, and when hatched will
produce about one hundred pounds of fresh cocoons.
[Illustration: Life-size.
No. 1--Silkworm eggs. No. 2--Fourth-stage Worm.
No. 3--Pupa in Cocoon. No. 4--Cocoon. No. 5--Male Moth.
No. 6--Female Moth. No. 7--Unspun Silk. No. 8--Raw
Manufactured Silk. No. 9--Manufactured Silk.]
ANIMALS' RIGHTS.
That there is pain and evil, is no rule
That I should make it greater, like a fool.
--_Leigh Hunt_.
Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.
--_Wordsworth_.
"A good man," said Plutarch, "will take care of his Horses and Dogs,
not only while they are young, but when old and past service."
The organs of sense, and consequently feeling itself, are the same as
they are in human creatures. I can't imagine how a man not hardened in
blood and massacre is able to see a violent death, and the pangs of it,
without concern.--_Bernard de Mandeville, 1723._
However we may differ as to speculative points of religion, justice
is a rule of universal extent and invariable obligation. See that no
brute of any kind, whether intrusted to thy care or coming in thy
way, suffer through thy neglect or abuse. Let no views of profit, no
compliance with custom, and no fear of the ridicule of the world, even
tempt thee to the least act of cruelty or injustice to any creature
whatsoever. But let this be your invariable rule everywhere, and at
all times, to do unto others as, in their condition, you would be done
unto.--_Humphry Primatt, D. D., 1776._
But a full-grown Horse or Dog is, beyond comparison, a more rational,
as well as more conversable animal than an infant of a day, a week, or
even a month old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it
avail? The question is not, Can they _reason_? nor, Can they _talk_?
but, Can they _suffer_?--_Jeremy Bent
|
is revealed even more remarkably than in the _Apologia_. But
they are never long enough to be tedious, and contain much that is
amusing, be the humour unconscious or intentional; and even if we can
rarely give whole-hearted admiration to the style, we cannot but
marvel at its dexterity, while its very _bizarrerie_ is not without
its charm.
This is hardly the place for a disquisition upon African Latin. It is
sufficient here to say that the two main features of the style of
Apuleius are its archaism and its extreme floridity. It has been
asserted that this strange style is of purely African growth,[4] and
that it owes much of its oriental wealth of colour to the Semitic
element that must still have formed so large a proportion of the
population of Africa. But there seems little really to support this
view; it is probable that, allowing for the personal factor, in this
case exceptionally important, and the eccentricities to which
Apuleius' erudition may have led him, we are confronted with no more
than an exaggerated revival of the Asiatic style of oratory. No doubt
the seed fell on good ground, but it is impossible to set one's finger
on any definitely African element.[5]
[Footnote 4: For a vivacious exposition of this view cf. Monceaux,
_Les Africains_. Paris, 1894.]
[Footnote 5: See the chapter on Apuleius in Norden's admirable work,
_Die antike Kunstprosa_, Leipzig, 1898.]
The style presents grave difficulties to the translator. The English
language will not carry the requisite amount of bombast; the
assonances and the puns are generally incapable of reproduction. Even
when this allowance has been made, it is in many cases impossible to
give anything approximating to a translation in natural English. I
can only trust that the English of this translation has not wholly
lost the colour to which Apuleius owes so much of his charm. The
sacrifice is not so great in these works as it must necessarily be in
any English translation of the more exotic and more brilliant-hued
_Metamorphoses_, better known as _The Golden Ass_. But in any case the
cooler tints and sobriety of our native language must--even in hands
less unskilled than mine--fail to do justice to the fantastic Latin of
the original. The vivacity of French coupled with the richness and
warmth of Italian would need to be combined to produce anything
approaching a really good translation, even of the least fantastic
works of Apuleius.
THE APOLOGIA
1. For my part, Maximus Claudius, and you, gentlemen who sit beside
him on the bench, I regarded it as a foregone conclusion that Sicinius
Aemilianus would for sheer lack of any real ground for accusation cram
his indictment with mere vulgar abuse; for the old rascal is notorious
for his unscrupulous audacity, and, further, launched forth on his
task of bringing me to trial in your court before he had given a
thought to the line his prosecution should pursue. Now while the most
innocent of men may be the victim of false accusation, only the
criminal can have his guilt brought home to him. It is this thought
that gives me special confidence, but I have further ground for
self-congratulation in the fact that I have you for my judge on an
occasion when it is my privilege to have the opportunity of clearing
philosophy of the aspersions cast upon her by the uninstructed and of
proving my own innocence. Nevertheless these false charges are on the
face of them serious enough, and the suddenness with which they have
been improvised makes them the more difficult to refute. For you will
remember that it is only four or five days since his advocates of
malice prepense attacked me with slanderous accusations, and began to
charge me with practice of the black art and with the murder of my
step-son Pontianus. I was at the moment totally unprepared for such a
charge, and was occupied in defending an action brought by the
brothers Granius against my wife, Pudentilla. I perceived that these
charges were brought forward not so much in a serious spirit as to
gratify my opponents' taste for wanton slander. I therefore
straightway challenged them, not once only, but frequently and
emphatically, to proceed with their accusation. The result was that
Aemilianus, perceiving that you, Maximus, not to speak of others, were
strongly moved by what had occurred, and that his words had created a
serious scandal, began to be alarmed and to seek for some safe refuge
from the consequences of his rashness.
2. Therefore as soon as he was compelled to set his name to the
indictment, he conveniently forgot Pontianus, his own brother's son,
of whose death he had been continually accusing me only a few days
previously. He made absolutely no mention of the death of his young
kinsman[6]; he abandoned this most serious charge, but--to avoid the
appearance of having totally abandoned his mendacious accusations--he
selected, as the sole support of his indictment, the charge of
magic--a charge with which it is easy to create a prejudice against
the accused, but which it is hard to prove. Even that he had not the
courage to do openly in his own person, but a day later presented the
indictment in the name of my step-son, Sicinius Pudens, a mere boy,
adding that he appeared as his representative. This is a new method.
He attacks me through the agency of a third person, whose tender age
he employs to shield his unworthy self against a charge of false
accusation. You, Maximus, with great acuteness saw through his designs
and ordered him to renew his original accusation in person. In spite
of his promise to comply, he cannot be induced to come to close
quarters, but actually defies your authority and continues to skirmish
at long range with his false accusations. He persistently shirks the
perilous task of a direct attack, and perseveres in his assumption of
the safe rôle of the accuser's legal representative. As a result, even
before the case came into court, the real nature of the accusation
became obvious to the meanest understanding. The man who invented the
charge and was the first to utter it had not the courage to take the
responsibility for it. Moreover the man in question is Sicinius
Aemilianus, who, if he had discovered any true charge against me,
would scarcely have been so backward in accusing a stranger of so many
serious crimes, seeing that he falsely asserted his own uncle's will
to be a forgery although he knew it to be genuine: indeed he
maintained this assertion with such obstinate violence, that even
after that distinguished senator, Lollius Urbicus, in accordance with
the decision of the distinguished consulars, his assessors, had
declared the will to be genuine and duly proven, he continued--such
was his mad fury--in defiance of the award given by the voice of that
most distinguished citizen, to assert with oaths that the will was a
forgery. It was only with difficulty that Lollius Urbicus refrained
from making him suffer for it.
[Footnote 6: I conjecture: _de morte cognati adolescentis subito
tacens tanti criminis descriptione destitit, ne tamen omnino desistere
calumnia magiam, &c._]
3. I rely, Maximus, on your sense of justice and on my own innocence,
but I hope that in this trial also we shall hear the voice of Lollius
raised impulsively in my defence; for Aemilianus is deliberately
accusing a man whom he knows to be innocent, a course which comes the
more easy to him, since, as I have told you, he has already been
convicted of lying in a most important case, heard before the Prefect
of the city. Just as a good man studiously avoids the repetition of a
sin once committed, so men of depraved character repeat their past
offence with increased confidence, and, I may add, the more often they
do so, the more openly they display their impudence. For honour is
like a garment; the older it gets, the more carelessly it is worn. I
think it my duty, therefore, in the interest of my own honour, to
refute all my opponent's slanders before I come to the actual
indictment itself. For I am pleading not merely my own cause, but that
of philosophy as well, philosophy, whose grandeur is such that she
resents even the slightest slur cast upon her perfection as though it
were the most serious accusation. Knowing this, Aemilianus' advocates,
only a short time ago, poured forth with all their usual loquacity a
flood of drivelling accusations, many of which were specially invented
for the purpose of blackening my character, while the remainder were
such general charges as the uninstructed are in the habit of levelling
at philosophers. It is true that we may regard these accusations as
mere interested vapourings, bought at a price and uttered to prove
their shamelessness worthy of its hire. It is a recognized practice on
the part of professional accusers to let out the venom of their
tongues to another's hurt; nevertheless, if only in my own interest, I
must briefly refute these slanders, lest I, whose most earnest
endeavour it is to avoid incurring the slightest spot or blemish to my
fair fame, should seem, by passing over some of their more ridiculous
charges, to have tacitly admitted their truth, rather than to have
treated them with silent contempt. For a man who has any sense of
honour or self-respect must needs--such at least is my opinion--feel
annoyed when he is thus abused, however falsely. Even those whose
conscience reproaches them with some crime, are strongly moved to
anger, when men speak ill of them, although they have been accustomed
to such ill report ever since they became evildoers. And even though
others say naught of their crimes, they are conscious enough that such
charges may at any time deservedly be brought against them. It is
therefore doubly vexatious to the good and innocent man when charges
are undeservedly brought against him which he might with justice bring
against others. For his ears are unused and strange to ill report, and
he is so accustomed to hear himself praised that insult is more than
he can bear. If, however, I seem to be anxious to rebut charges which
are merely frivolous and foolish, the blame must be laid at the door
of those, to whom such accusations, in spite of their triviality, can
only bring disgrace. I am not to blame. Ridiculous as these charges
may be, their refutation cannot but do me honour.
4. To begin then, only a short while ago, at the commencement of the
indictment, you heard them say, 'He, whom we accuse in your court, is
a philosopher of the most elegant appearance and a master of eloquence
not merely in Latin but also in Greek!' What a damning insinuation!
Unless I am mistaken, those were the very words with which Tannonius
Pudens, whom no one could accuse of being a master of eloquence, began
the indictment. I wish that these serious reproaches of beauty and
eloquence had been true. It would have been easy to answer in the
words, with which Homer makes Paris reply to Hector:--
[Greek: ou toi apoblêt' esti theôn erikudea dôra·
hossa ken autoi dôsin, hekôn d' ouk an tis heloito].--
which I may interpret thus: 'The most glorious gifts of the gods are
in no wise to be despised; but the things which they are wont to give
are withheld from many that would gladly possess them.' Such would
have been my reply. I should have added that philosophers are not
forbidden to possess a handsome face. Pythagoras, the first to take
the name of 'philosopher', was the handsomest man of his day. Zeno
also, the ancient philosopher of Velia, who was the first to discover
that most ingenious device of refuting hypotheses by the method of
self-inconsistency, that same Zeno was--so Plato asserts--by far the
most striking in appearance of all the men of his generation. It is
further recorded of many other philosophers that they were comely of
countenance and added fresh charm to their personal beauty by their
beauty of character. But such a defence is, as I have already said,
far from me. Not only has nature given me but a commonplace
appearance, but continued literary labour has swept away such charm as
my person ever possessed, has reduced me to a lean habit of body,
sucked away all the freshness of life, destroyed my complexion and
impaired my vigour. As to my hair, which they with unblushing
mendacity declare I have allowed to grow long as an enhancement to my
personal attractions, you can judge of its elegance and beauty. As you
see, it is tangled, twisted and unkempt like a lump of tow, shaggy and
irregular in length, so knotted and matted that the tangle is past the
art of man to unravel. This is due not to mere carelessness in the
tiring of my hair, but to the fact that I never so much as comb or
part it. I think this is a sufficient refutation of the accusations
concerning my hair which they hurl against me as though it were a
capital charge.
5. As to my eloquence--if only eloquence were mine--it would be small
matter either for wonder or envy if I, who from my earliest years to
the present moment have devoted myself with all my powers to the sole
study of literature and for this spurned all other pleasures, had
sought to win eloquence to be mine with toil such as few or none have
ever expended, ceasing neither night nor day, to the neglect and
impairment of my bodily health. But my opponents need fear nothing
from my eloquence. If I have made any real advance therein, it is my
aspirations rather than my attainments on which I must base my claim.
Certainly if the aphorism said to occur in the poems of Statius
Caecilius be true, that innocence is eloquence itself, to that extent
I may lay claim to eloquence and boast that I yield to none. For on
that assumption what living man could be more eloquent than myself? I
have never even harboured in my thoughts anything to which I should
fear to give utterance. Nay, my eloquence is consummate, for I have
ever held all sin in abomination; I have the highest oratory at my
command, for I have uttered no word, I have done no deed, of which I
need fear to discourse in public. I will begin therefore to discourse
of those verses of mine, which they have produced as though they were
something of which I ought to be ashamed. You must have noticed the
laughter with which I showed my annoyance at the absurd and illiterate
manner in which they recited them.
6. They began by reading one of my _jeux d'esprit_, a brief letter in
verse, addressed to a certain Calpurnianus on the subject of a
tooth-powder. When Calpurnianus produced my letter as evidence against
me, his desire to do me a hurt blinded him to the fact that if
anything in the letter could be urged as a reproach against me, he
shared in that reproach. For the verses testify to the fact that he
had asked me to send him the wherewithal to clean his teeth:
_Good morrow! friend Calpurnianus, take
The salutation these swift verses make.
Wherewith I send, responsive to thy call,
A powder rare to cleanse thy teeth withal.
This delicate dust of Arab spices fine
With ivory sheen shall make thy mouth to shine,
Shall smooth the swollen gums and sweep away
The relics of the feast of yesterday.
So shall no foulness, no dark smirch be seen,
If laughter show thy teeth their lips between._
I ask you, what is there in these verses that is disgusting in point
either of matter or of manner? What is there that a philosopher should
be ashamed to own? Unless indeed I am to blame for sending a powder
made of Arabian spices to Calpurnianus, for whom it would be more
suitable that he should
_Polish his teeth and ruddy gums_,
as Catullus says, after the filthy fashion in vogue among the
Iberians.
7. I saw a short while back that some of you could scarcely restrain
your laughter, when our orator treated these views of mine on the
cleansing of the teeth as a matter for savage denunciation, and
condemned my administration of a tooth-powder with fiercer indignation
than has ever been shown in condemning the administration of a poison.
Of course it is a serious charge, and one that no philosopher can
afford to despise, to say of a man that he will not allow a speck of
dirt to be seen upon his person, that he will not allow any visible
portion of his body to be offensive or unclean, least of all the
mouth, the organ used most frequently, openly and conspicuously by
man, whether to kiss a friend, to conduct a conversation, to speak in
public, or to offer up prayer in some temple. Indeed speech is the
prelude to every kind of action and, as the greatest of poets says,
proceeds from 'the barrier of our teeth'. If there were any one
present here to-day with like command of the grand style, he might say
after his fashion that those above all men who have any care for their
manner of speaking, should pay closer attention to their mouth than to
any other portion of their body, for it is the soul's antechamber, the
portal of speech, and the gathering place where thoughts assemble. I
myself should say that in my poor judgement there is nothing less
seemly for a free-born man with the education of a gentleman than an
unwashen mouth. For man's mouth is in position exalted, to the eye
conspicuous, in use eloquent. True, in wild beasts and cattle the
mouth is placed low and looks downward to the feet, is in close
proximity to their food and to the path they tread, and is hardly
ever conspicuous save when its owner is dead or infuriated with a
desire to bite. But there is no part of man that sooner catches the
eye when he is silent, or more often when he speaks.
8. I should be obliged, therefore, if my critic Aemilianus would
answer me and tell me whether he is ever in the habit of washing his
feet, or, if he admits that he is in the habit of so doing, whether he
is prepared to argue that a man should pay more attention to the
cleanliness of his feet than to that of his teeth. Certainly, if like
you, Aemilianus, he never opens his mouth save to utter slander and
abuse, I should advise him to pay no attention to the state of his
mouth nor to attempt to remove the stains from his teeth with oriental
powders: he would be better employed in rubbing them with charcoal
from some funeral pyre. Least of all should he wash them with common
water; rather let his guilty tongue, the chosen servant of lies and
bitter words, rot in the filth and ordure that it loves! Is it
reasonable, wretch, that your tongue should be fresh and clean, when
your voice is foul and loathsome, or that, like the viper, you should
employ snow-white teeth for the emission of dark, deadly poison? On
the other hand it is only right that, just as we wash a vessel that is
to hold good liquor, he who knows that his words will be at once
useful and agreeable should cleanse his mouth as a prelude to speech.
But why should I speak further of man? Even the crocodile, the monster
of the Nile--so they tell me--opens his jaws in all innocence, that
his teeth may be cleaned. For his mouth being large, tongueless, and
continually open in the water, multitudes of leeches become entangled
in his teeth: these, when the crocodile emerges from the river and
opens his mouth, are removed by a friendly waterbird, which is allowed
to insert its beak without any risk to itself.
9. But enough of this! I now come to certain other of my verses, which
according to them are amatory; but so vilely and coarsely did they
read them as to leave no impression save one of disgust. Now what has
it to do with the malpractices of the black art, if I write poems in
praise of the boys of my friend Scribonius Laetus? Does the mere fact
of my being a poet make me a wizard? Who ever heard any orator produce
such likely ground for suspicion, such apt conjectures, such
close-reasoned argument? 'Apuleius has written verses!' If they are
bad, that is something against him _qua_ poet, but not _qua_
philosopher. If they be good, why do you accuse him? 'But they were
frivolous verses of an erotic character.' So that is the charge you
bring against me? and it was a mere slip of the tongue when you
indicted me for practising the black art? And yet many others have
written such verse, although you may be ignorant of the fact. Among
the Greeks, for instance, there was a certain Teian, there was a
Lacedaemonian, a Cean, and countless others; there was even a woman, a
Lesbian, who wrote with such grace and such passion that the sweetness
of her song makes us forgive the impropriety of her words; among our
own poets there were Aedituus, Porcius, and Catulus, with countless
others. 'But they were not philosophers.' Will you then deny that
Solon was a serious man and a philosopher? Yet he is the author of
that most wanton verse:
_Longing for thy body and the kiss of thy sweet lips._
What is there so lascivious in all my verses compared with that one
line? I will say nothing of the writings of Diogenes the Cynic, of
Zeno the founder of Stoicism, and many other similar instances. Let me
recite my own verses afresh, that my opponents may realize that I am
not ashamed of them:
_Critias my treasure is and you,
Light of my life, Charinus, too
Hold in my love-tormented heart
Your own inalienable part.
Ah! doubt not! with redoubled spite
Though fire on fire consume me quite,
The flames ye kindle, boys divine,
I can endure, so ye be mine.
Only to each may I be dear
As your own selves are, and as near;
Grant only this and you shall be
Dear as mine own two eyes to me._
Now let me read you the others also which they read last as being the
most intemperate in expression.
_I lay these garlands, Critias sweet,
And this my song before thy feet;
Song to thyself I dedicate,
Wreaths to the Angel of thy fate.
The song I send to hymn the praise
Of this, the best of all glad days,
Whereon the circling seasons bring
The glory of thy fourteenth spring;
The garlands, that thy brows may shine
With splendour worthy spring's and thine,
That thou in boyhood's golden hours
Mayst deck the flower of life with flowers.
Wherefore for these bright blooms of spring
Thy springtide sweet surrendering,
The tribute of my love repay
And all my gifts with thine outweigh.
Surpass the twinèd garland's grace
With arms entwined in soft embrace;
The crimson of the rose eclipse
With kisses from thy rosy lips.
Or if thou wilt, be this my meed
And breathe thy soul into the reed;
Then shall my songs be shamed and mute
Before the music of thy flute._
10. These are the verses, Maximus, which they throw in my teeth, as
though they were the work of an infamous rake and had lover's garlands
and serenades for their theme. You must have noticed also that in this
connexion they further attack me for calling these boys Charinus and
Critias, which are not their true names. On this principle they may as
well accuse Caius Catullus for calling Clodia Lesbia, Ticidas for
substituting the name Perilla for that of Metella, Propertius for
concealing the name Hostia beneath the pseudonym of Cynthia, and
Tibullus for singing of Delia in his verse, when it was Plania who
ruled his heart. For my part I should rather blame Caius Lucilius,
even allowing him all the license of a satiric poet, for prostituting
to the public gaze the boys Gentius and Macedo, whose real names he
mentions in his verse without any attempt at concealment. How much
more reserved is Mantua's poet, who, when like myself he praised the
slave-boy of his friend Pollio in one of his light pastoral poems,
shrinks from mentioning real names and calls himself Corydon and the
boy Alexis. But Aemilianus, whose rusticity far surpasses that of the
shepherds and cowherds of Vergil, who is, in fact, and always has been
a boor and a barbarian, though he thinks himself far more austere than
Serranus, Curius, or Fabricius, those heroes of the days of old,
denies that such verses are worthy of a philosopher who is a follower
of Plato. Will you persist in this attitude, Aemilianus, if I can show
that my verses were modelled upon Plato? For the only verses of Plato
now extant are love-elegies, the reason, I imagine, being that he
burned all his other poems because they were inferior in charm and
finish. Listen then to the verses written by Plato in honour of the
boy Aster, though I doubt if at your age it is possible for you to
learn to appreciate literature:
_Thou wert the morning star among the living
Ere thy fair light had fled;--
Now having died, thou art as Hesperus giving
New light unto the dead._[7]
[Footnote 7: Shelley's translation.]
There is another poem by Plato dealing conjointly with the boys Alexis
and Phaedrus:
_I did but breathe the words 'Alexis fair',
And all men gazed on him with wondering eyes,
My soul, why point to questing beasts their prize?
'Twas thus we lost our Phaedrus; ah! beware!_
Without citing any further examples I will conclude by quoting a line
addressed by Plato to Dion of Syracuse:
_Dion, with love thou hast distraught my soul._
11. Which of us is most to blame? I who am fool enough to speak
seriously of such things in a law-court? or you who are slanderous
enough to include such charges in your indictment? For sportive
effusions in verse are valueless as evidence of a poet's morals. Have
you not read Catullus, who replies thus to those who wish him ill:
_A virtuous poet must be chaste. Agreed.
But for his verses there is no such need._
The divine Hadrian, when he honoured the tomb of his friend the poet
Voconius with an inscription in verse from his own pen, wrote thus:
_Thy verse was wanton, but thy soul was chaste_,
words which he would never have written had he regarded verse of
somewhat too lively a wit as proving their author to be a man of
immoral life. I remember that I have read not a few poems by the
divine Hadrian himself which were of the same type. Come now,
Aemilianus, I dare you to say that that was ill done which was done by
an emperor and censor, the divine Hadrian, and once done was recorded
for subsequent generations. But, apart from that, do you imagine that
Maximus will censure anything that has Plato for its model, Plato
whose verses, which I have just read, are all the purer for being
frank, all the more modest for being outspoken? For in these matters
and the like, dissimulation and concealment is the mark of the sinner,
open acknowledgement and publication a sign that the writer is but
exercising his wit. For nature has bestowed on innocence a voice
wherewith to speak, but to guilt she has given silence to veil its
sin.
12. I say nothing of those lofty and divine Platonic doctrines, that
are familiar to but few of the elect and wholly unknown to all the
uninitiate, such for instance as that which teaches us that Venus is
not one goddess, but two, each being strong in her own type of love
and several types of lovers. The one is the goddess of the common
herd, who is fired by base and vulgar passion and commands not only
the hearts of men, but cattle and wild beasts also, to give themselves
over to the gratification of their desires: she strikes down these
creatures with fierce intolerable force and fetters their servile
bodies in the embraces of lust. The other is a celestial power endued
with lofty and generous passion: she cares for none save men, and of
them but few; she neither stings nor lures her followers to foul
deeds. Her love is neither wanton nor voluptuous, but serious and
unadorned, and wins her lovers to the pursuit of virtue by revealing
to them how fair a thing is nobility of soul. Or, if ever she commends
beautiful persons to their admiration, she puts a bar upon all
indecorous conduct. For the only claim that physical beauty has upon
the admiration is that it reminds those whose souls have soared above
things human to things divine, of that beauty which once they beheld
in all its truth and purity enthroned among the gods in heaven.
Wherefore let us admit that Afranius shows his usual beauty of
expression when he says:
_Only the sage can love, only desire
Is known to others_;
although if you would know the real truth, Aemilianus, or if you are
capable of ever comprehending such high matters, the sage does not
love, but only remembers.
13. I would therefore beg you to pardon the philosopher Plato for his
amatory verse, and relieve me of the necessity of offending against
the precepts put by Ennius into the mouth of Neoptolemus by
philosophizing at undue length; on the other hand if you refuse to
pardon Plato, I am quite ready to suffer blame on this count in his
company. I must express my deep gratitude to you, Maximus, for
listening with such close attention to these side issues, which are
necessary to my defence inasmuch as I am paying back my accusers in
their own coin. Your kindness emboldens me to make this further
request, that you will listen to all that I have to say by way of
prelude to my answer to the main charge with the same courtesy and
attention that you have hitherto shown.
I beg this, since I have next to deal with that long oration, austere
as any censor's, which Pudens delivered on the subject of my mirror.
He nearly exploded, so violently did he declaim against the horrid
nature of my offence. 'The philosopher owns a mirror, the philosopher
actually possesses a mirror.' Grant that I possess it: if I denied it,
you might really think that your accusation had gone home: still it is
by no means a necessary inference that I am in the habit of adorning
myself before a mirror. Why! suppose I possessed a theatrical
wardrobe, would you venture to argue from that that I am in the
frequent habit of wearing the trailing robes of tragedy, the saffron
cloak of the mimic dance, or the patchwork suit of the harlequinade? I
think not. On the contrary there are plenty of things of which I enjoy
the use without the possession. But if possession is no proof of use
nor non-possession of non-use, and if you complain of the fact that I
look into the mirror rather than that I possess it, you must go on to
show when and in whose presence I have ever looked into it; for as
things stand, you make it a greater crime for a philosopher to look
upon a mirror than for the uninitiated to gaze upon the mystic emblems
of Ceres.
14. Come now, let me admit that I _have_ looked into it. Is it a crime
to be acquainted with one's own likeness and to carry it with one
wherever one goes ready to hand within the compass of a small mirror,
instead of keeping it hidden away in some one place? Are you ignorant
of the fact that there is nothing more pleasing for a man to look upon
than his own image? At any rate I know that fathers love those sons
most who most resemble themselves, and that public statues are decreed
as a reward for merit that the original may gladden his heart by
looking on them. What else is the significance of statues and
portraits produced by the various arts? You will scarcely maintain the
paradox that what is worthy of admiration when produced by art is
blameworthy when produced by nature; for nature has an even greater
facility and truth than art. Long labour is expended over all the
portraits wrought by the hand of man, yet they never attain to such
truth as is revealed by a mirror. Clay is lacking in life, marble in
colour, painting in solidity, and all three in motion, which is the
most convincing element in a likeness: whereas in a mirror the
reflection of the image is marvellous, for it is not only like its
original, but moves and follows every nod of the man to whom it
belongs; its age always corresponds to that of those who look into the
mirror, from their earliest childhood to their expiring age: it puts
on all the changes brought by the advance of years, shares all the
varying habits of the body, and imitates the shifting expressions of
joy and sorrow that may be seen on the face of one and the same man.
For all we mould in clay or cast in bronze or carve in stone or tint
with encaustic pigments or colour with paint, in a word, every attempt
at artistic representation by the hand of man after a brief lapse of
time loses its truth and becomes motionless and impassive like the
face of a corpse. So far superior to all pictorial art in respect of
truthful representation is the craftsmanship of the smooth mirror and
the splendour of its art.
15. Two alternatives then are before us. We must either follow the
precept of the Lacedaemonian Agesilaus, who had no confidence in his
personal appearance and refused to allow his portrait to be painted or
carved; or we must accept the universal custom of the rest of mankind
which welcomes portraiture both in sculpture and painting. In the
latter case, is there any reason for preferring to see one's portrait
moulded in marble rather than reflected in silver, in a painting
rather than in a mirror? Or do you regard it as disgraceful to pay
continual attention to one's own appearance? Is not Socrates said
actually to have urged his followers frequently to consider their
image in a glass, that so those of them that prided themselves on
their appearance might above all else take care that they did no
dishonour to the splendour of their body by the blackness of their
hearts; while those who regarded themselves as less than handsome in
personal appearance might take especial pains to conceal the meanness
of their body by the glory of their virtue? You see; the wisest man of
his day actually went so far as to use the mirror as an instrument of
moral discipline. Again, who is ignorant of the fact that Demosthenes,
the greatest master of the art of speaking, always practised pleading
before a mirror as though before a professor of rhetoric? When that
supreme orator had drained deep draughts of eloquence in the study of
Plato the philosopher, and had learned all that could be learned of
argumentation from the dialectician Eubulides, last of all he betook
himself to a mirror to learn perfection of delivery. Which do you
think should pay greatest attention to the decorousness of his
appearance in the delivery of a speech? The orator when he wrangles
with his opponent or the philosopher when he rebukes the vices of
mankind? The man who harangues
|
, she would never have been weak
enough to marry Silas!”
“Sallie was a poor, foolish girl,” said Marion, sadly, “and for that
very reason Silas abuses her now.”
“I think a girl is a fool to marry a man she doesn’t love,” said Miss
Allyn, sharply, “particularly when he has no money and she doesn’t even
respect him!”
“So do I,” said Marion, stoutly, “but Sallie did not know any better.
She’s just like dozens of other women—she has never done any thinking.
Why, Alma, some of the women in the country are a different order of
beings from you city women. They think that marrying is the only end
and aim of existence.”
“Poor things! I pity them, and I despise them, too,” said Miss Allyn,
sadly. “There is no excuse for such reasoning at this stage of the
world’s progress. There are so many fields of usefulness for a woman
to-day.”
“Well, I am glad that Dollie and I are safely out of the rut,” said
Marion, thankfully. “We’ve got a chance to develop and see something of
the world before we marry and settle down.”
“Oh, but I’m going to marry some day,” said Dollie, merrily, as she
clambered into bed and placed her pretty plump arms above her head.
“Ralph says he won’t wait very long after he is able to support me.”
“I’ll have to scold Ralph a little,” said Marion, pinching her sister’s
dimpled arm as it lay on the pillow. “He must not be in such a hurry to
rob me of my sister, not that I blame him a bit, do you?” she added,
laughing.
“Not a bit,” said Miss Allyn, quickly. “I’m half in love with her
myself. Still, I’d rather she’d marry a millionaire, and she could do
it just as easily. Ralph Moore is all right, but he’s too poor for
Dollie.”
“Oh, Miss Allyn!” cried both girls in half serious horror. “Who ever
would have dreamed of you harboring such sentiments?”
“Well, I’ve got ’em, and I might as well be honest,” was the answer.
“Dollie’s too pretty to have to spend her life in a poor man’s home. I
want to see diamonds in her golden hair and fine lace on those white
shoulders, and I don’t see why she can’t love a rich man as well as a
poor one.”
“If she could it would be all right, and I would agree with you,” said
Marion, thoughtfully.
“Well, I’ll never love any one but Ralph,” said Dollie, stoutly, “and I
don’t care if he is poor. It just makes me love him still the harder.”
“You are a brave little kitten,” said Marion, smoothing the golden
hair, “but what is it, Alma, you look so terribly serious?”
Miss Allyn was just raising her hand to turn off the gas for the girls
before going to her own room, but she waited long enough to make a
candid statement.
“I know a young man that would make a lovely husband for one of you
girls,” she said, slowly. “He’s an only child, and he’s as rich as
Crœsus.”
“Who is he?” asked Marion, half rising on her pillow.
Miss Allyn turned off the gas before she answered.
“His name is Reginald Brookes, and he is a medical student. He’s
exactly the kind of a man you should marry.”
CHAPTER V.
MISS ALLYN’S SECRET.
Marion never quite knew what kept her silent after Miss Allyn had
mentioned the name of Reginald Brookes, but she allowed her friend to
leave the room without saying a word, although she had news that would
have interested both of her companions greatly.
“I am surprised that she did not see him at the depot,” she thought, as
she lay silently beside Dollie, “but I guess they left too quickly.”
For an hour after that Marion’s mind wandered restlessly. It had been
an exciting day as well as a painful one. She rehearsed over and over
the scene in the old kitchen—her parents’ grief when she first saw them
and their rejoicing later.
The glimpse of the old home had stirred memories of her childhood, but
it had also brought back all the old loathing for country life and made
her wondrously contented with her present surroundings.
“Poor Sallie! How I pity her!” she exclaimed, then listened
breathlessly to see if she had awakened Dollie.
“The dear child! How happy she is in her love for Ralph!” she mused.
“Well, if she loves him and he is kind to her, what does it matter?
After all, it is one’s happiness that is to be considered first. Oh,
I wonder if I shall ever be really and truly happy?” Then, strangely
enough, two faces appeared suddenly before her mind. They were both
handsome, both young, and both fired with manly purpose, and peculiarly
enough, they were both of men who possessed great riches.
The first picture was that of a tall young man, with dark, trusting
eyes and a tender smile that was almost irresistible.
The other was of a blonde, with bright, laughing blue eyes, yet with
a frankness and alertness of expression which won one’s confidence
immediately.
The first picture was that of an old friend who was now abroad—Mr.
Archibald Ray, the young man who had aided her in her search for
Dollie. The other was that of Reginald Brookes, the medical student—the
one whom her friend, Miss Allyn, had said was just the kind of a man
that she should marry.
When the girls awoke the next morning they were as happy as larks.
There was so much to be talked over in regard to their plans for the
future.
Miss Allyn went downtown to her work, early, as usual, but she
astonished the girls by coming in at noon and bringing a tall, dark
gentleman with her.
“My _fiancé_, Mr. Colebrook,” she said, with a deep blush. “You must
forgive me, girls, but I could not tell you any sooner.”
“Oh, how perfectly lovely!” cried Dollie, giving her a hug. “To think
that you, too, are in love, and we never even guessed it!”
Marion smiled as cordially as possible as she greeted Mr. Colebrook,
but there was something about him that repelled her strangely.
Once before in her life she had experienced the same sensation, and
as she thought of it now she could feel herself becoming awkward and
embarrassed.
“We are on our way to a matinee,” said Miss Allyn, hurriedly, “but I
could not resist the temptation of just bringing him in and introducing
him.”
“We are ever so glad you did,” said Dollie, so cordially that Marion’s
hesitating manner passed unnoticed for the time.
Miss Allyn’s every expression spoke of confidence in her lover. She
looked at him shyly, but with such trust in her glance that to Marion
she hardly seemed like the same little woman.
“How she does love him!” cried Dolly, the moment they had gone.
Marion still said nothing, but bit her lips savagely. She was wondering
why her friend’s _fiancé_ should have pressed her hand so tenderly when
he said good-by at parting.
“What’s the matter, Marion? You look so glum!” said Dollie, after a
minute. She had been dusting the room, while Marion put the dressing
case in order.
“I don’t like that man, that Mr. Colebrook,” said Marion, slowly. “I
hope I may be wrong, but I don’t trust him, Dollie.”
Dollie dropped her duster and gave a little cry. “Oh, Marion, don’t say
that!” she exclaimed. “You are so keen in your intuitions, and read
people so cleverly that I shall begin this moment to tremble for Alma.”
“Well, I hope I am mistaken,” was Marion’s answer. “But, nevertheless,
I shall keep an eye on him whenever I can, for I have never felt such a
dreadful feeling at sight of a person unless there was something about
them that wasn’t trustworthy.”
“I know,” said Dollie, sadly, “you felt that way about Mr. Lawson. Oh,
if you had only acted upon your first impulse with our rascally boarder
I might never have fallen into his clutches, Marion.”
“I hope this fellow isn’t a hypnotist like Mr. Lawson,” said Marion,
slowly, “but there’s one thing sure—he has cast a spell over Miss
Allyn. He’s made her love him, and I call that wonderful.”
“Do you suppose he is rich,” said Dollie, remembering Miss Allyn’s
conversation the evening before.
“Did you notice her eyes?” asked Marion, sagely. “Why, that girl is so
much in love with him she doesn’t even think about it. I’d be willing
to declare she’s forgotten that there is such a thing as money—and to
think of her reading us such a lecture on finance!”
Both girls laughed heartily, but Marion’s smile ended in a sigh.
She was not able to shake off her impression of Mr. Colebrook.
“Hello! Can I come in?” called a voice outside the door.
Dollie opened it quickly and admitted a youth of seventeen,
frank-faced and healthy and brimming over with good nature.
“Oh, Bert, is that you?” called Marion, quickly. “Come right in, so I
can tell you all about my visit to the country.”
“Have they erected a headstone to my memory in the Poor Farm graveyard
yet?” asked the boy, “and is the village of Hickorytown draped in
mourning for my decease?”
“No, neither,” said Marion, laughing, “but they all think you are dead,
Bert. That letter of mine to Matt Jenkins, telling him of your death,
was accepted by them all, in spite of the made-up signature.”
“You did me a big favor when you wrote that letter, Marion,” said Bert,
quickly, “and I’ll never forget it if I live to be a hundred; but see
here, I’ve got some news for you that will make your eyes stick out!
There is a personal in the paper for Ila de Parloa, the singer.”
He held out a scrap of paper toward Marion as he spoke, and the girl’s
face flushed and paled alternately as she read it.
“A manager of some theatrical troupe wants my address,” she said to
Dollie. “He tried to get it from the manager of that concert hall where
I sang, but old Vandergrift was so mad that he wouldn’t give it to him.”
“I’ll bet there’s lots of them that want you, and that will give you a
good price, too, Marion,” said Bert Jackson, eagerly. “If you say so,
I’ll look this up and see what there is in it.”
“Wait a minute—let me think,” said the fair girl, slowly; then she
shook her head with a decided motion. “No, I will not listen to their
offers at present,” she said, emphatically. “I am to enter Charity
Hospital as a nurse next Monday. It is a noble profession, and I feel,
some way, that I am called to it.”
CHAPTER VI.
TESTING A LOVER.
Marion had ample opportunity to observe George Colebrook in the next
two days, for Miss Allyn was furnishing her little flat, and her
_fiancé_ was assiduous in his attentions to her.
“I’m a little puzzled about George,” Miss Allyn confided to Marion as
they were busily arranging and rearranging the new furniture.
Dollie was out in the little kitchen making some tea, so Marion knew
instinctively that Miss Allyn had something on her mind that she did
not wish any one else to know about. She looked at her inquiringly, and
with so much sympathy in her face that Alma Allyn stopped in her work
and came over and stood by her.
“You think I’m a fool for being so much in love, don’t you, Marion?”
she asked, smilingly. “Well, let me tell you how it was; George and
I were children together. He wasn’t a very good boy, and I suppose
I sympathized with him. He was always in some scrape or other, and
everybody was down on him. Well, when we grew up there was no one
else. George made love to me, and I let him, but then we were too
poor to think of marrying. When mother died and I went home to her
funeral, I found him there. We had then been separated two years, but
had corresponded regularly. Almost immediately after the funeral he
asked me to marry him, and I was so utterly lonely that I accepted him
thoughtlessly. Not that I didn’t love him, Marion, for I did love him
dearly. Someway he grew into my life and seems almost a part of it.”
“And do you trust him, Alma?” asked Marion, as she paused. “Are you
sure that he will treat you right and be a good husband to you?”
Alma Allyn’s face clouded a little as she made her reply. In spite of
her great love, she was still able to reason.
“I did trust him when I promised to marry him,” she said, slowly, “but
something has happened since that is puzzling me, Marion. George is not
the same man that he was at mother’s funeral.”
Marion’s lips framed a question that she did not ask. There was no need
to ask it, for Miss Allyn was already answering it instinctively.
“He wanted me to marry him as soon as he got back from England, where
he had to go on business, he said, and that is why I decided to
take this flat with Dollie, but in the last two days he has changed
his mind. He is not going to England, yet he says nothing about our
marriage.”
Marion bit her lips and thought quietly for a moment. She could see
that her friend was suffering, and she dreaded to say anything that
would add to her sorrow.
“He may be undecided,” she said at last, “or perhaps he is planning
something different, Alma, but if I were in your place, I would come
right out and ask him.”
Miss Allyn was a trifle pale when she spoke again, and it was plain to
Marion that she had doubts of her lover.
“If I thought he did not love me, I would release him at once,” she
said, quietly, “but he has professed to love me for years, so why
should I doubt him?”
“There is no reason why you should,” said Marion, firmly. “It is very
probable that he is just waiting for something, some business matter or
affair of some kind before he says anything.”
“Well, I hope it will soon be settled, for this suspense is mighty
unpleasant, I can tell you,” said Miss Allyn, smiling a little. “Why,
for the first time in my life, Marion, I’m not fit to attend to
business.”
“Love affairs are dreadful things,” said Marion, trying to laugh it
over. “I’m so glad that up to date I have never been affected.”
“Oh, I’m not so sure,” said Miss Allyn, more gayly. “You were pretty
sweet on Mr. Ray, and you may as well own it, and, by the way, is he
coming back to this country ever?” she asked.
“They are to sail next week, he and Adele,” was the answer, “but I
shall be in the hospital then, so I suppose I can’t see them.”
“Love will find the way,” quoted Miss Allyn, slyly. “You can trust that
Mr. Ray to find you, Marion.”
Dollie entered just then, evidently in a state of great excitement.
“Oh, girls!” she screamed, half crying, “I’m just frightened to death.
I’ve broken my hand glass into a thousand pieces.”
“That means seven years of bad luck,” said Miss Allyn, laughing; “and a
half a dollar to buy a new hand glass.”
“Never mind, Dollie,” said Marion, who was not at all superstitious.
“You’ll be earning six dollars a week after this, so it won’t take long
to buy the new glass.”
“Oh, but I’m to save every penny to buy my trousseau,” said Dollie,
brightening. “You keep forgetting, Marion, that I’m going to be
married.”
“There is little danger of her forgetting it while you are around,
Dimples,” said Miss Allyn, laughing. “You take pains to remind her of
it every fifteen minutes.”
“Here comes Mr. Colebrook,” was Dollie’s whispered reply. “Quick, come
out in the kitchen with me, Marion, so we won’t interrupt the lovers.”
“Nonsense!” cried Miss Allyn, as she darted toward the kitchen. “I’ll
go out there myself and see if he misses me.”
Dollie followed her into the kitchen of the little flat and closed the
door softly, leaving Marion alone in their pretty parlor.
“Oh, all alone, Miss Marlowe,” was Mr. Colebrook’s greeting. “Well, for
once in my life I am deucedly lucky.”
Marion looked up in surprise, but controlled her feelings wonderfully.
It had popped into her head to test her friend’s lover a little.
“Why do you think yourself lucky in finding me alone,” she asked,
archly, as she went on arranging the furniture.
“Because you are the sweetest girl that I ever met,” was the
astonishing reply, “and I am lucky in having a chance to say so.”
For a moment Marion could hardly believe her ears; then a great feeling
of pity for Miss Allyn swept through her every fibre.
Almost involuntarily she glanced toward the kitchen door, but it was
tightly closed, so she breathed a little more freely.
“Miss Marlowe—Marion,” cried Mr. Colebrook, suddenly, “have you no eyes
to see how much I admire you? Why, I’ve been crazy with admiration ever
since I met you. You are as beautiful as a saint, and I am desperately
in love with you.”
Poor Marion’s breath came with a little gasp now. It was almost
impossible for a girl with her honest nature to grasp such a situation.
Here was her best friend’s betrothed husband actually making love to
her. He had the open assurance to tell her that he loved her.
As she stood almost paralyzed by her emotions, he seized her hand in
both his own, and before she could stop him he had kissed it fervently.
Suddenly one word issued from the pale girl’s lips.
“Traitor!”
She hissed it out slowly, her tone tense and vibrating.
The fellow drew back as if he had been stung.
The next instant Alma Allyn opened the kitchen door and stepped calmly
between them.
CHAPTER VII.
MARION RECEIVES A CALLER.
“Thank you, Marion.”
This was all that Miss Allyn said as she paused beside the two, her
dearest friend and the man who was her lover. Her face was of a
death-like pallor, and her eyes were gleaming, but there was nothing
further to tell how terribly she was suffering.
With the utmost coolness she drew the ring from her finger and was
about to hand it to him, when she changed her mind suddenly.
“No, I won’t give it back. I’ll keep it,” she said, quietly. “It will
be a constant reminder of a man’s perfidy. Any time when you want the
price of it let me know. You are mean enough to ask for it,” she said,
with a shrug of her shoulders.
George Colebrook’s face was a study for a moment. He looked first at
one of the girls and then at the other.
“You had better go,” said Miss Allyn, coolly. “You can see that you are
out of place. My friends, like myself, despise a traitor.”
With a glance of hatred toward Marion, the fellow turned and fled.
The moment he was gone, Miss Allyn dropped heavily on the sofa.
“It has killed her!” cried Dollie, darting to her side.
“She has fainted. Bring some water,” was Marion’s answer.
“It is all for the best, dear; do try and think so,” urged Marion a few
minutes later, when Miss Allyn opened her eyes.
Miss Allyn drew herself up slowly and looked around.
“So it is all over, my dream of love,” she said, very slowly. “Well,
I guess I’ve got spunk enough to pull me through. Where’s that
looking-glass, Dollie. I want to smash the pieces.”
That was the last the girls heard of Miss Allyn’s love affair. Her
lover’s name was buried in oblivion from that very moment.
If Miss Allyn grieved for him, she did not show it, but, if anything,
she became a trifle more sad and pessimistic.
“It would have killed me, I know,” Dollie told Marion in confidence.
“Why, if Ralph should deceive me, I’d commit suicide, I’m certain.”
“Well, then, you’d be a little goose, that’s all I’ve got to say,” was
Marion’s answer. “Why, any one would think to hear you, Dollie, that
Ralph was the only man in the world worth having.”
“Sometimes I think he is,” said Dollie, complacently. Her faith in her
lover was something that passed comprehension.
That evening both Dollie and Miss Allyn went out, Dollie with her lover
and Miss Allyn on business. As Marion seated herself in a big arm-chair
in the semi-darkness, she looked around their little home with a sigh
of genuine pleasure.
“I almost hate to leave it,” she said aloud. “It is so sweet, so
homelike and so beautifully cosy.”
There was a peal of the bell just at that very moment, which was so
shrill that it brought her to her feet in a second.
“Our callers are coming early,” she thought as she went to look for the
door opener, “but everything looks cosy even if we are not all settled.”
“I am looking for Miss Marion Marlowe,” said a voice on the stairs as
Marion stepped out into the hall.
“I have been to her old address and they sent me here. I wonder, if I
should find her, if she would be willing to see me?”
Marion’s laugh rippled out merrily at this naive request, and she held
out her hand cordially to her unexpected caller.
“I am delighted to see you, Dr. Brookes,” she said, smiling, “but I am
very sorry that both my friend and my sister are absent this evening.
They would both have stayed at home if we had known you were coming.”
“Oh, I am not so difficult to entertain as all that,” was the jolly
answer. “One young lady at a time is enough, I find, Miss Marlowe. I am
not so piggish as to want a dozen.”
“They say there is safety in a multitude,” said Marion, slyly. “No
danger of falling in love when there are plenty of them. It’s the
monopoly of one that proves fatal, they tell me.”
“So you think falling in love a fatality, do you?” asked the young man,
quickly. “Well, if that is the case, I confess that I’m a fatalist.”
“It has fatal consequences, I have discovered,” said Marion, half
sadly, “although I must admit that I speak from observation and not
experience.”
“A confession that I am glad to hear you make, Miss Marlowe,” said her
caller almost seriously; “for most of the women that men meet nowadays
are either just recovering from some heart malady or at the actual
crisis of the disease, or else, what is worse, they have so thoroughly
recovered from some violent attack as to render them immune from ever
having another.”
“Poor things! I pity them,” said Marion, laughing, “but I can fancy
that none of the three classes would afford very desirable companions.
Still, we are all liable to infection of that kind,” she added, as she
offered him a chair, “and up to the present time no one has produced a
preventive.”
“No, nor an antidote,” was the answer, in the same serious voice, “but
now tell me, Miss Marlowe, about your plans for the future.”
He spoke with so much sympathetic interest that Marion did not dream of
resenting it; rather, it seemed most natural for her to sit there and
tell him all about her plans.
He was to be a physician and she a nurse. They had many hopes and
aspirations in common.
The evening passed so quickly that Marion was astonished when at ten
o’clock the young man rose to leave her.
“I shall arrange to come over to Charity often,” he said at parting. “I
know several of the doctors there, so I can do so easily.”
“I hope I shall like it,” said Marion, soberly. “It seems such a noble
profession to be caring for the sick and suffering.”
“It is terribly hard work, though,” said Mr. Brookes, somewhat
discouragingly, “and I wish it was almost any other hospital than
Charity.”
Marion was about to reply, when she heard Miss Allyn coming up the
stairs.
She bit her lips with amusement as she pictured what was about to
follow.
She had not told either Miss Allyn or Dollie that she knew this young
man, so she was prepared for something like a scene from Miss Allyn.
“Good-night, Miss Marlowe,” said young Brookes, holding out his hand.
“Good-night,” Marion answered, her lips curving into a smile, “and I do
hope you will keep your promise about coming to Charity.”
“I will, indeed,” said the young man, softly. The next moment he turned
and confronted Miss Allyn.
“Miss Allyn! Alma! Is it possible?” he cried in astonishment.
“Hello, Reggie, what the mischief are you doing here?” was the answer.
Then as Miss Allyn caught sight of Marion, she added promptly: “Oh, I
see, you are making love to the noblest girl in creation!”
CHAPTER VIII.
A PROPHECY CAME TRUE.
“Well, if you are not a sly one,” remarked Miss Allyn, as soon as she
and Marion were alone in the little parlor.
Marion indulged in a hearty laugh before she told her how she had met
young Brookes and his mother on the train the day she came back from
the country.
“Will you take my advice and marry him if he asks you,” said Miss
Allyn, shortly. “There are not many men like Reginald Brookes, Marion,
I can tell you.”
“Is he better than Mr. Ray?” asked Marion, jokingly. “I have been
trying to answer that question for myself all the evening.”
“Poor Mr. Ray! His chances are fading,” said Miss Allyn, smiling.
“Well, it wouldn’t be fair to the absent to praise his rival, so I’ll
decline the responsibility of answering your question.”
“That’s just like you, Alma,” said Marion, soberly. “You are the most
loyal woman that I ever met or heard of.”
“Well, I know another that answers to that description,” said Miss
Allyn, quickly. “Do you want to see her?”
She grasped Marion by the shoulders and whirled her around so that she
faced the mirror directly over the mantel.
Marion blushed and was about to speak, when Dollie tapped on the door.
Her lover, Ralph Moore, was with her and begged the girls to let him
come in a minute.
“Come right in, Brother Ralph,” said Marion, teasingly. “Come in and
see Dollie’s new home, and I’ll introduce you to Miss Allyn.”
Ralph Moore was a handsome fellow, with charming manners, and since his
engagement to Dollie he was just like a big brother to Marion.
“It’s very pretty,” he said, admiringly. “I hope I’ll soon be able to
furnish as pretty a one for Dollie.”
“What, and take her away from me?” asked Miss Allyn, quickly. “Well,
that settles it, Mr. Moore. You can consider me your sworn enemy.”
“Oh, you’ll have to live with us,” retorted Dollie. “We’ll take a
bigger flat and all live together.”
“No, thanks,” said Miss Allyn, laughing; “none of that for me. Do you
suppose I could stand it to see you forever spooning?”
After a laugh at this remark, Mr. Moore took his departure, boldly
kissing his sweetheart in the tenderest manner.
“Good-by, Ralph,” said Marion. “I will not see you again. I have an
engagement to-morrow night, and Monday I go to the Island.”
“Well, good luck, Sister Marion,” said Ralph, taking her hand; then he
turned toward Dollie with a pleading expression.
“Yes, you can kiss her, seeing it’s Marion,” said Dollie, laughing,
“but just look out for yourself, sir. If I ever catch you kissing any
other girl, why, I’d just scratch your eyes out, even if I do love you.”
“I won’t take any chances,” said Ralph, in mock terror; then he kissed
Marion good-by and said good night to Miss Allyn.
“A mighty fine fellow,” was Miss Allyn’s comment.
“A noble young man,” was Marion’s answer. “We can never forget how
loyally he has defended us.”
Miss Allyn knew what she meant, and nodded her head. She had heard the
story of Ralph Moore’s strange deed, how he had appropriated a jewel
from his aunt and pawned it to keep the girls from starvation.
“I’d trust a man like that anywhere,” she said, slowly, “for no matter
what he did, no one would suffer by it; he would look at both sides of
a brook before he jumped it.”
The girls were soon in bed and sound asleep. They had had a tiresome
day, but would have been absolutely happy had not the unfaithfulness of
Miss Allyn’s lover cast a cloud upon their thoughts.
Early Monday morning Marion said good-by to her friend and to her
sister, for Miss Allyn and Dollie were going down town together, as it
was Dollie’s first day of service as a typewriter.
At ten o’clock Marion started out. Her boat left at eleven from the
East Twenty-sixth street dock, and she had a permit in her pocket which
the clerk at Charity Hospital had sent her.
It was to be a strange experience, and Marion trembled a little. Some
way she dreaded to see the sights that she was about to encounter.
“There are prisoners and crazy people of all kinds up there,” she
whispered to herself. “I just dread to face such misery, and yet some
one has to do it.”
She had packed her little trunk and sent it on before her, so now she
had nothing but a handbag to carry, and she quite enjoyed the ride from
Harlem in the elevated train.
Marion had just reached the street from the elevated station, when the
sharp clang of a bell startled her from her reflections.
There was a large group of people about half way down the block, and in
an instant an ambulance came dashing around the corner.
“A woman either sick or drunk,” said somebody near her.
Marion walked along slowly, so as not to get in the crowd which, like
all New York crowds, seemed to spring right up through the sidewalk.
“Get out of the way there, will you!” shouted a burly policeman, as he
rushed up. “Stand back there and give the doctor a chance. Move on, I
say, or I’ll club the heads off’n you!”
Marion shrank back a little, but she was the only one. The others
swarmed about the ambulance as though the officer had not spoken.
In the twinkling of an eye the ambulance swung around and a physician
in uniform sprang to the curbing.
The crowd fell back a little when the officer resorted to vigorous
measures, and the next moment Marion caught sight of a woman lying on
the sidewalk, with her head actually falling over the curb into the
gutter.
“Run out the stretcher,” ordered the physician as another officer
arrived on the scene. He picked the woman up bodily and laid her on the
floor of the ambulance, which was fitted with a mattress and blankets.
A break in the crowd enabled her to see clearly. In a second she was
staring hard, her breath almost choking her.
There was something familiar about the woman’s dress, which was of a
plain, dark homespun, so common in the country.
The next moment Marion had pressed forward until she obtained a clear
view of the poor creature’s face, and then a cry burst from her lips
that made the crowd stare at her.
“It is Sallie—Sallie Green!” she cried hysterically.
The ambulance bell clanged and there was a swaying of the crowd. Before
she could collect her senses the ambulance dashed off, carrying Silas
Johnson’s wretched wife to a cot in Bellevue Hospital.
Sallie had kept her word—she had “run away to the big city.”
CHAPTER IX.
MARION MEETS A MISSIONARY.
Marion made her way down to the dock, feeling almost dazed at what she
had seen. She was endeavoring to decide what was her duty in the matter.
She heard the clang of the bell as the ambulance dashed into Bellevue
Hospital yard, but she was too late to see more, for the great gate
closed as she reached it.
She took her permit from her pocket and glanced at it eagerly. It was
dated, so she knew she must use it that day, and, furthermore, it was
now five minutes of eleven, so there was no time to be spent in helping
Sallie.
“They’ll take good care of her, I am sure,” she whispered to herself,
“and, anyway, I can write to Silas as soon as I get up there. He can’t
be so bad but what he’ll come and get her.”
In less than five minutes she was on the dock, and here for a moment
Marion almost forgot poor Sallie. There were several policemen standing
around, as if waiting for something, and on the deck of the _Thomas
Brennan_, the ferryboat that was to convey her to Blackwell’s Island,
and which was moored to the dock, she could see several more men in
blue uniforms waiting.
As soon as Marion passed the dock entrance an officer came up to her.
Marion handed him her permit and he turned and nodded to the captain.
“Go right on deck, miss. The prisoners will stay down below,” he said,
kindly, as he led Marion over and helped her down the gangplank.
Marion glanced around the boat, which looked anything but attractive,
and was soon on the deck as the officer had directed her.
Just as she reached it a great covered wagon came lumbering down to the
dock.
“Here she comes at last! Here’s the ‘Black Maria!’” cried the captain;
then he gave some orders and at once all was activity.
Marion’s eyes were widely opened when she saw what followed, for there
were fourteen prisoners in the “Black Maria,” two of the worst ones
being handcuffed together.
In the quickest possible manner they were driven on to the boat, a
guard standing at each side of the gangplank to keep them from jumping
overboard.
As soon as they were all on, the order was given to start, and the boat
was soon ploughing its way up the East River and among the craft that
dotted the water.
“Is this a strange sight for you, miss?” asked a voice behind Marion.
The young girl turned quickly and confronted an elderly woman.
“It is, indeed,” said Marion promptly, “and it is about the saddest
sight that I ever dreamed of,” she added.
“Are you a nurse?” asked the woman again in a courteous manner.
“Not yet,” answered Marion, “but I am accepted on probation. I am on my
way to the Charity Hospital.”
The woman looked at her kindly, but Marion’s gaze was wandering. She
was trying to realize her extraordinary surroundings.
“Those are ‘ten-day’ men,” said the woman, as she saw Marion staring at
two of the deck hands on the steamer. “In other words, they have been
sent up for ten days and are allowed to work on the boat.”
Marion opened her eyes in absolute surprise. She had never before heard
of such an arrangement.
“Why, that is ever so much better than keeping them shut up,” she
said, quickly. “Poor fellows! I am sorry for them. They haven’t all got
bad faces.”
“And they are not all bad; now,” said the woman again. “I can assure
you, I have many good friends among the prisoners.”
Marion turned and looked at her with interest. She seemed to be both a
refined and an intelligent person.
“I am a Bible reader,” said the woman, smiling. “I visit some of the
islands every day, and my principal duty is to read the Bible to the
prisoners.”
Marion’s smile changed instantly into an expression of wonderment.
“Do they like that, madam?”
|
the Coffee-house for breakfast.
"It's a fine day, sir," said Sparrow, as he took his order.
"Now that you draw my attention to it, I observe that it is a very fine
day." Then he laughed. "Sparrow, why is it that every innkeeper says
the same thing to a guest--a fine day or a nasty day, as the case may
be? It is neither informing nor original. Why, the devil, do you not
get a new greeting?"
"I don't know, sir--I don't know. It is easy to say, and does not give
offense. You are the first, begging your pardon, sir, who ever found
fault with it. I used the same in London."
"You come from London?" said Sir Edward, carelessly.
"Three years ago, on Saint Jamina's day last past. I remember I waited
on you one night at the Golden Lion."
"Your memory is better than mine," looking at him more closely.
"Like enough--like enough, sir. It is much more natural that I should
remember. I dare say, you did not so much as look at me."
Parkington shook his head.
"Who else was in the party?" he said.
"I did not know any of them, sir, you or any of the others. But I knew
your face the moment I clapped eyes on it, last evening."
"Oh, I see," breathing easy, again.
His breakfast finished, Sir Edward paid his score, and was escorted to
the door by Sparrow, who bowed him out.
For a little while, he watched the people, the tradesmen, mechanics and
shopkeepers, who made Church Street and the dock below it the busiest
place in America.
This was the business section. All trade was confined within its
limits. There was no trespassing on Prince George Street, or King
George, or Tabernacle, or Duke of Gloucester, or Charles, or North-East
Streets; they were reserved for the aristocracy. The land along them
belonged to the Bordleys, the Collohans, the Ogles, and the Lloyds,
the Pacas, the Brices and the Taskers, the two Charles Carrolls, the
Worthingtons, the Hammonds and the Ridouts. They cared for no intrusion
on their privacy; and, on occasion of a rout or ball at their town
houses, they roped off the street in which it was located, to keep the
common people out.
Presently, Parkington sauntered up Church Street to the Circle, and,
attracted by a large placard which was posted on the church, he crossed
to read it:
It was a notice by the wardens of the parish.
"_All the laws of the Province and the English statutes relating
to religious worship, particularly Section 14, Chapter 2, of First
Elizabeth, oblige all persons not having a lawful excuse to resort
to their parish church or chapel on every Sunday, and on other days
ordained to be kept as holy days, and then and there to abide in decent
manner during the time of common prayer, preaching or other services of
God._"
"Rather unusual," said young Mr. Brice's voice, behind him.
"I never saw its like before," said Parkington. "I thought Annapolis
was a particularly religious town."
"I guess religion is all right; it is simply the observance of it that
has gone to decay. Would not you like to see our Courts in session?
Come along."
They cut through School Street and came out on the Public Circle, in
the centre of which stood the dilapidated State House.
"This building is a disgrace to the Colony," said Mr. Brice. "It is
high time we were getting another."
"We have just as bad in London," said Parkington.
They entered by a hall and went into the court room, opposite to the
door of which was the judge's seat, with the full length portrait of
Queen Anne, presenting a charter to the City, high above it. Young
Brice's father, John Brice, the Chief Justice of the Province, was
presiding, in robes of scarlet faced with black velvet, and, as they
entered, he was sentencing a man, convicted of manslaughter, to be
branded in the hand with the letter M. Immediately after, another was
called, who had been convicted of horse stealing, and sentenced to
death.
"It seems to me," said Parkington, "that there is no justice in such
punishments. There is too much difference in them."
"Horse stealing is a felony;" said Mr. Brice; "and all felonies are
punishable with death."
"I know. But why should you hang a man because he stole something? You
hang a man for murder, you hang a man for theft; surely, the two crimes
do not justify the same punishment."
"I think you are right, and that we will come to it in time. Indeed,
I think my father is of the same opinion, though he has no power to
change it. Listen to this case; the defendant has plead guilty."
"Mr. Prosecutor," said the judge, "let me have the indictment. John
Farrin, stand up. You have plead guilty to as dastardly and cowardly a
crime as I have ever known. You have disfigured your wife for life and,
possibly, crippled her as well. You have cut off both her ears and one
of her toes. I greatly regret that the law is such I cannot inflict
adequate punishment upon you. I wish I could send you to prison for ten
years. As it is, I will give you the limit. The sentence of the Court
is, that you undergo a year's imprisonment, and then to find security
for good behavior. Adjourn the Court until two o'clock."
Meanwhile, in the garden of the Governor's residence, Martha Stirling
was entertaining visitors. Jane Falconer and Edith Tyler were her
particular friends, and they had come over, from their homes on Prince
George Street, to discuss the aftermath of the ball, on the previous
night.
"Martha," said Miss Falconer, "I do not wonder that Captain Herford was
jealous. The way you carried on with Sir Edward Parkington was really
scandalous."
"And what was yours, my dear?"
"Mine?"
"Yes, yours," said Miss Stirling; "as I remember, you and Edith were
with him just as much as I--or, perhaps, a _little_ less."
Miss Tyler laughed. "A little less!" she said. "He danced with me but
once. How many times did he favor you?"
"Oh, two or three."
"Indeed! Six or eight I should say, and nearer the latter than the
former."
"That sounds like jealousy."
"Oh, no, it does not!" said Miss Tyler. "I care nothing for Sir Edward,
beyond the fact that he is an agreeable partner. Indeed, I do not care
enough to flirt with him."
"Nor I," said Miss Falconer.
"Well, girls, I am glad to hear you say so," Miss Stirling observed,
"for I intend to flirt with him outrageously."
"Last night, for instance?" said Miss Tyler.
"Last night was only a beginning."
"So far as I observed," said Miss Falconer, "Sir Edward is ready to
meet you more than half way."
Miss Stirling laughed. "Such was my observation, too. At the same time,
I observed that young Mr. Marbury was exceedingly attentive," looking
at Miss Tyler.
"To me, do you mean? Perhaps--but it has gone on so long as not to
occasion comment. I am sorry for George--a nice fellow but with
impossible parents."
"Who are the Marburys?" said Miss Stirling.
"Nobodies," said Miss Tyler. "So far as I know them, this is their
history: Henry Marbury came out from England, as a Redemptioner. They
freed him in four years, with the usual allowance of a year's provision
of corn, fifty acres of land, a gun, a pistol and ammunition. The land
was in the neighborhood of Frederick-Town: there, Marbury went, and
his old master supposed that Annapolis had seen the last of him. But
Marbury prospered; his fifty acres expanded into two hundred and fifty,
and, then, into a thousand, and, then, into five thousand. His personal
property grew in proportion; he, himself, possessed Redemptioner and
convict servants, by the score. In short, he amassed great wealth.
Then, his thoughts turned back to Annapolis; he brought the family
here, and installed them in a fine house on Duke of Gloucester Street.
Since which time, he has struggled for recognition; while he has not
earned it for himself or wife, young George Marbury and his sister
Judith are received, and we all like them. They know their parents'
limitations but they are not ashamed; to them, they are Marburys,
without any claim to social recognition or regard. They have won it for
themselves."
"Just as our ancestors won it in the past," observed Miss Falconer.
"They may not have been Redemptioners, but that was because there was
no one here to buy them."
"Is not that a bit sweeping, Jane?" said Miss Tyler.
"Well, perhaps it is; but I know people in this Colony who forget their
ancestors after a few generations."
"And so do I--and, since they wish them forgot, let us forget them."
"It is this about the Marburys--the old people, I mean--which I
admire," said Miss Stirling: "they are perfectly natural. They may use
some large words improperly, or fracture a canon of good taste, but
they are genuine withal. They are not snobs. As for George Marbury and
Judith, I have met none in Annapolis who are nicer. Young Mr. Marbury
told me, last night, they are considering the entertaining of a large
company at a country house, somewhere, which they have bought recently.
He seemed a bit timid about it, rather fearful that those he asked
might be averse to coming. I promptly said, if he and his sister should
ask me, I would come."
"Oh! there will be no trouble on that score--we all will come," said
Miss Falconer. "It is Hedgely Hall, over in St. Mary's County. The last
Saxton died about two years ago, and it was sold to the Marburys by his
executors. It is on the banks of the Patuxent, and as pretty a place as
there is in the Colony."
"Exit the Saxtons, enter the Marburys," said Miss Tyler, sententiously.
"Why, Edith!" exclaimed Miss Falconer. "I never imagined you disliked
the Marburys."
"And I do not," said Miss Tyler, "I do not; but it grieves me to see
the old families dying out and the new ones coming in."
"Which being the case, however, and we unable to prevent it, what do
you say to a row on the river?" Miss Stirling broke in.
They went down to the wharf at the foot of the garden. A word to the
boat-master, and, presently, the Governor's barge shot out, manned by
eight negroes, in the red and gray of his Excellency's colors. Miss
Stirling bade the others aboard, and herself took the tiller.
"Straight away!" she ordered.
The blacks bent to their work, while the young ladies settled back
among the cushions, under the awning, and gossiped. Presently, when the
waves of the Bay began to roll, the barge was put about and headed up
the Severn.
They were just opposite the Governor's grounds, when a boat, running
with astonishing swiftness, rushed by them, a hundred yards away. It
was an Indian canoe, fitted with a keel, two leg o' mutton sails and a
jib, and seemed fairly to skim the water.
"George Marbury?" said Miss Stirling.
"It is," said Miss Tyler; "and that boat will be the death of him,
yet."
"Wherefore?" asked Miss Stirling. "It seems to me to be uncommonly
speedy. I shall ask him to take me in it, sometime."
"If you are in search of death, it were well do so. It is swift--as
swift and fast as any craft afloat, and, also, the most dangerous. The
ease with which it can capsize is miraculous."
"Then he is handling it marvelously well."
"He handles it as well as any man could possibly do, but that is not
enough--it, simply, gives him a little chance. Were he a poor sailor,
he would not get twenty feet from the dock. Now, watch him; he is going
to tack across our front. Let the wind veer, ever so little, and the
chances are.... There, what did I tell you!" as, without a moment's
warning, the canoe capsized. "Row for it, boys! row!"
They found Marbury holding to the canoe with one hand, while, with the
other, he was endeavoring to support Sir Edward Parkington, who, in the
overturning, had been struck on the head and rendered unconscious.
"It is nothing!" Marbury averred, when they were dragged aboard the
barge. "Parkington has got a rap on the head, and he shipped a bit too
much water, that's all. He will come out of it in a moment, if you
women give him a chance--all he wants is air."
"What do you suppose he would have wanted, if we had not been close by
when you capsized?" inquired Miss Tyler.
"I am not called upon to suppose," said Marbury, looking up, with a
laugh, through his disheveled hair. "I am very well content as it is."
"And you ought to be, sir!" said Miss Falconer, "to take Sir Edward out
in such a crazy contraption."
"He said he could swim," Marbury protested. "He offered to lay me five
pistoles, he could out-swim me across the Severn."
Just then Sir Edward opened his eyes, stared wildly around, and
struggled weakly to arise.
"Where am I?" he gasped; "where am I?"
"In the Governor's barge," said Marbury. "Lie still."
Sir Edward's eyes closed; then, they opened again.
"I remember," he said, more strongly. "We overturned, and something
struck me. What are we doing in the Governor's barge?"
"We picked you up," Miss Stirling answered. "We were fortunate enough
to be close at hand."
Sir Edward tried to sit up; Martha Stirling sprang forward, and let him
rest against her until they reached the wharf. Then, in the arms of two
stout boatmen, he was borne ashore and up to the Governor's mansion.
Here, he struggled to his feet.
"Put me down!" he said. "I have sufficiently recovered, and am,
moreover, in no condition to present myself before his Excellency,
or in such company. The ladies will accept, I know, my most grateful
thanks and humble service, and permit me to retire, for the time. Wet
clothes are most uncomfortable. I will to my lodgings. Mr. Marbury,
your arm."
V
HEDGELY HALL AND MARBURY, SENIOR
The tale of the capsized canoe was at the Coffee-house, that evening,
in advance of them. Among the young men, the opinion was that it
was worth a wetting to be rescued by the Governor's niece and her
companions. The older heads were not so sure; and some were for rating
George Marbury, soundly, for exposing one, who could know nothing of
the danger, to the perils of so hazardous a craft.
But Parkington, himself, soon set the matter right and took the
burden on himself. He had gone, he said, fully warned of the risk,
and accepted the result as his due--very much his due, since the
overturning had been brought about by his own carelessness in shifting
his weight. This, young Marbury had, of course, denied; and, there, it
rested--though there were those who, considering the skill of the one,
and the lack of it in the other, could place the responsibility, and,
however it was, neither of them lost in public esteem by the incident.
The next few weeks passed quickly enough. Sir Edward was the guest, in
turn, of every one in town, who pretended to gentility. He dined, among
others, at the Carrolls', the Brices', the Ogles', and the Scotts';
he supped with the Worthingtons, the Ridouts, and the Bordleys; he
attended a rout at Daniel Dulany's, and an evening affair given for
him by the Governor, where he was presented to the best that the
Province could boast. Incidentally, he borrowed two hundred pounds from
his Excellency.
He held his own at lou, bluff and piquet, he drank moderately and with
judgment; he paid his share, always, and a bit besides; the clothes,
which Pinkney, the tailor, provided, while rich and fine were neither
unduly expensive or noticeably ornate. Among a set of young men, who
were noted for the lavishness of their attire, his was modest and
conservative. In short, among the men there was not a more popular man
in Annapolis.
With the fair sex, he was discriminating and impartial in his
attention. Naturally, as especially committed by Lord Baltimore to the
good offices of his Excellency, these were bestowed in particular on
the Governor's niece--and with that no fault could be found--otherwise,
they were weighed to a nicety. If he led Miss Falconer through the
minuet, he contrived to show himself among Miss Tyler's most devoted;
if he chanced to sit beside Miss Paca at dinner, he took care to see
that due court was paid to Miss Jennings; and, so, through the list.
And, withal, with such skill, that never did he appear as doing it of
intention--in fine, he made friends with them all, a thing hard to
manage, where one is the most sought after in the town.
Early June saw the Marbury house-party assembled at Hedgely Hall.
They went by water, from Annapolis, in their host's own schooner, and
landed directly at the plantation on the Patuxent River. There had been
few declinations, and these only by men who were held in the Capital
by business. The ladies included Miss Stirling, Miss Fordyce, Miss
Tyler, Miss Jennings, the men, Sir Edward Parkington, Mr. Paca, Mr.
Worthington, Mr. Constable, Captain Herford; in addition, the Platers,
who had been recently married were to come from Sotterly, a short
distance away, and the Snowdens from Montpelier.
Hedgely Hall was one of the handsomest places in Maryland. Rebuilt by
John Hedgely, as a wedding gift to his bride, she had barely entered
its doors when a fatal illness seized her and she died. He never
married again, (though there were many damsels willing) and persisted
in declining all office under the government. He had no town house,
and rarely resorted to Annapolis. When he did, it was for a very brief
time. He devoted himself to his estate, and lavished on it his care and
affection. When he died, and his executors came to take account, it was
discovered that he had also lavished on it most of his fortune. This,
with the further fact that his next heir was a cousin in Virginia, with
a plantation of his own, and nothing to make him abandon it in favor of
an inheritance on the Patuxent, led to its sale.
And Henry Marbury, having the ready cash, coupled with an ardent
desire to acquire, became the purchaser. In justice to him, let it be
understood, that he sought not to enter the great world. He bought
it for his son, and a fitting place from which his daughter could be
married. He hoped that she would marry above her class; he proposed
that she should, if money could effect it; but he knew, in his shrewd,
hard-headed way, that much of the success of his plans rested upon the
girl herself. As for George, he looked to him to marry well and found a
family. He himself was an outsider, and always would be. George was to
be the first of the new line--the Marbury, of Hedgely Hall.
It is astonishing what the possession of a country-seat of known fame
will make for gentility, even where one has small claim. And George
Marbury and his sister Judith had the ways and appearance of the
gentle-born. Somewhere, in the past, a forebear must have been of the
class.
As for the Hall itself: the approach was by a great avenue, a hundred
and twenty feet wide, lined on either side by tulip and poplar trees,
that extended from the Patuxent, half a mile away. The house was of
English brick, large and square, with wings which served for offices
and bachelor quarters, the kitchen and the store rooms. A huge hall ran
directly through it, with the drawing room on the right, the library
and dining room on the left. The walls were of wood, panelled and done
in white, and covered with paintings and portraits (the latter, alas,
not of the Marburys, but of Hedgelys dead and gone). The ceiling,
doors, window-frames and mantels were carved in arabesque. Behind the
dining-room, and opening from it, was a huge conservatory. Back of the
house, or in front, if you choose, for these houses had no rear, was
a long sweep of velvety lawn, dropping away in terrace on terrace,
with hedges of box and privet, and beds of roses, lilies of the valley
and lavender scattered among daffodils, heart's ease, cowslip and
jonquils. Beyond lay the park, with great trees, reaching as far as
the eye could see. Two thousand acres and more was the Hall's domain,
of tobacco and wheat fields, meadow and orchard, all cultivated with a
thoroughness which old Marbury had learned, in the lean years, when he
was struggling upward to wealth.
As for old Marbury, himself, he was not exactly what Miss Tyler had
termed, "impossible." _Difficult_ was nearer the proper term. He was
brusque of manner and sparing of words, and his ways were not engaging,
but, underneath, was a kindly spirit and an honest heart. He would not
have shone amid the wits of the Coffee-house (had he ever ventured
there), nor did he at his own board, after the cloth was gone and the
wine was on. And he knew it, and was silent--or, as was generally the
case, he retired, and George took his place at the head of the table.
And, as old Marbury did, so did his wife. They were well mated. The
affairs of the household, and the more onerous duties, she assumed and
executed, the lighter graces were laid on Judith's shoulders. And, to
their credit, be it said, that no host or hostess in Annapolis was more
at ease, or had more of the _savoir faire_, and knew how to use it,
than this son and daughter of the Redemptioner.
And, now, was their test:--asking guests for dinner or supper was
vastly different from having them in the house for a week. This party
marked their first appearance, in a social sense, among the landed
families of the Province.
They had arrived at Hedgely Hall two hours before supper; the ladies
retired to their rooms to rest, the men to whatever place pleased their
fancy. It was a sultry day in May, when the first heat of the coming
summer seems doubly warm.
Martha Stirling had been sitting by her window, which gave view of
the garden and park, idly drumming on the sill, her thoughts of Sir
Edward Parkington. She had seen much of him in the last few weeks. She
was debating whether it was wise to see so much of him in the future.
He was, to be sure, vouched for by Lord Baltimore, which might stand
with the Governor and the men, but was not especially in his favor so
far as the gentle sex was concerned. Not that there was the slightest
ground for suspicion--on the contrary, his conduct had been most
circumspect. But was it well to favor him when there were so many who
sought her? For, with him at her side, there came a restraint upon the
rest, a deference to the stranger of rank. She could not play him off
against the others, nor them against him. She had tried it, many times,
and always with the same result--failure. He either dominated the
situation or else eliminated himself entirely. In either case, he was
the victor--and a victor, seemingly, all unconscious of it. The man was
tantalizingly fascinating. He could do everything well: fence, dance,
play cards, make love, talk sense or nonsense. And with it all, he was
handsome as the devil--and might be the devil, for all she knew--or
the Governor knew. Why, they did not know even whether or not he was
married!
She stopped, amazed. So far, as she was aware, no one had ever thought
about it,--they had assumed that he was unmarried--and he had let them
assume it. Was he a blackguard, or was he a gentleman? She paused,
and, in her mind, ran back over the occurrences of the last few weeks.
No, blackguard he was not. He had gone as far with her as with any
one--farther, doubtless--and, despite a certain gallantry, he had not
transgressed beyond the bound, even if he were married--and, surely, a
little could be excused a man, travelling alone, in a foreign land.
She wondered if Mr. Paca knew, or Mr. Worthington, or George
Marbury--or any of their party. She beat a tattoo on the window ledge
and reflected.--She would make it her business to ascertain. The more
she thought of it, the more she wanted to know.
Just then she discerned Parkington, himself, emerging from among the
trees of the park. He was coming slowly, his head on his breast, his
walking stick trailing behind. Presently, he stopped, cast a quick
glance toward the house, and, apparently seeing no one, crossed to the
shadow of a bush and flung himself on the turf.
Instantly, Miss Stirling arose. She was dressed for the evening, but,
womanlike, she cast a last look in the mirror, pressed both hands to
her hair, took a final dash of perfume, and went down stairs and out.
She was going to find out from him.
She was quite sure, indeed, it seemed the easiest thing in the world
to ask him the simple question--until she came up to it--then, she was
not so sure, nor did it appear so easy. In fact, it was distinctly
not easy--it was to be approached gradually, and by indirection--and,
may be, not to be arrived at that afternoon. It was not so simple a
question: are you married?--at least, not when Sir Edward Parkington
was concerned. He had a way about him that did not encourage
familiarity; a certain set look of the mouth, a gleam of the eye--and
the subject was pursued no further.
The turf deadened her footsteps, and she stood, for a moment, looking
down upon him, before he raised his eyes. Instantly, he was up and
bowing low.
"Your pardon," he said; "I was dreaming; I did not hear you."
"Dreaming--of what?" she asked.
"Of nothing. Dreams that were without form or color."
"Can one dream nothing?" she inquired, knowing well he
equivocated--there had been a frown on his face as she approached.
"One always dreams nothing--'such stuff as dreams are made of.'
Moreover, the place and the hour impel it," and he swung his hand
around him.
"It is a fine old place," she said, seeing he would shift the talk.
He nodded. "A fine place, though I should not call it old, at least, to
us English."
"All things are relative; it is old to this country, which is new. Just
as you are Sir Edward Parkington and a great man, _here_."
"While in England, you mean," he laughed, "I am only one of a vast
number--an insignificant atom among the nobility."
"Yes--and _I_, that am not even noble, am, here, the toast of a
Province."
"In which England joins!" with a bow.
"I was proving a proposition, sir, not seeking a compliment."
"It is proven," he said. "One will admit anything, grant anything, on
such an afternoon as this, and with such surroundings; I would give a
man my last shilling, a woman--if she were pretty--my--my soul."
"The usual way--the man would get something, the woman nothing. No
woman wants your soul, even were it yours to give."
"Or even if I had a soul," he appended.
"Oh, no!" she said. "You do not get me to arguing on that topic. No
one knows, so every one believes what his conscience dictates. I am
orthodox, and go along with the Church. I do not care what you believe,
and I do not want to know. So far as I am concerned, every one can take
care of his own hereafter--he alone will have to pay penalty, if he is
in error."
He listened with a curious smile. "A bit advanced, my lady, for all
your orthodoxy. You best not tell your views abroad."
"My views are for myself, alone. We women are supposed to have none--to
stay put, as it were--and I am going to stay put; but I shall think
what I please." She shrugged her shoulders, and laughed. "Goodness!
what turned the talk to religion--neither of us has any to speak of."
"And, hence, we may safely discuss it without offense to either--it is
believers only who are intolerants."
She held up her hands in protest. "No more, I thank you. Let us find
a pleasanter topic.... I heard you were leaving us very soon--for
Philadelphia. Is it so?"
"This is the first I knew of it. Who told you?"
She affected to think. "I, really, cannot remember. Some one, in
Annapolis, but who it was I do not know."
"Because it interested you so little."
"No--because I thought you would have told me, were it true. Yet, why
should you not be moving on--one does not visit America to see only one
place?"
"No, I suppose not; I must move on, sometime, but I am in no haste, I
assure you. I came to America, intending to loiter indefinitely." There
was a queer smile on his face. He was thinking of his father's parting
admonition.
She did not observe the smile--and it would have conveyed nothing
to her if she had. She was occupied with his words. "Intending
to loiter indefinitely" did not smack of a wife, left behind in
England--unless--unless the wife were the cause of his indefinite
loiter.
"You have a complaisant family," she remarked.
"Yes!" he said, and laughed; "yes, I have a very complaisant family."
Then he abruptly changed the subject.--"Shall we walk in the park, or
do you prefer the esplanade--or shall we walk, at all?"
"The esplanade, by all means," she said, not daring to venture an
immediate return to the subject.
For it was evident that he had deliberately veered, and, as she had
assumed to treat him, hitherto, as unmarried, she might not, now,
shift her attitude without just cause. And she had no cause--not even
a suspicion that was based on anything. Moreover, for her to question
it, now, would be inexcusable, and, if she were wrong, would cause a
break in their friendship. And that she was not prepared to chance. In
fact, at the present moment, she did not know whether she preferred
Sir Edward Parkington or Richard Maynadier. The one was a great catch
and a charming man, but he was an American--and, besides, was not
sufficiently responsive to her charms; the other was a Britisher, but,
she feared, was not for her, who could bring no fortune with her.
She stole a glance at her companion. He was slowly plucking to pieces a
rose.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Testing _your_ affection:--love me, love me not; love me--shall I
continue."
"Pray do," she said; "I am curious to know the answer."
"It is undecided, then?" banteringly.
"Yes--sometimes I do, and sometimes I do not, and sometimes--I am in a
state of equipoise. Let the rose tell what it is, at present."
"Nay: if you are not constant, the message has no merit--begone!"
and he tossed the flower from him. "Ho, fellow!" to a man in
servant's clothes, who was passing at a little distance, "I forgot my
walking-stick; you will find it by yonder bush--fetch it."
The man glanced up, hesitated the fraction of a second, then a smile
passed over his face, and he acquiesced.
"Very well, sir," he answered, and went on.
The voice was deep and full, as of one accustomed to giving orders
rather than receiving them.
Miss Stirling stopped, stared--and, then, went swiftly in pursuit.
Parkington watched her in surprise.
"Mr. Marbury!" she called. "Mr. Marbury!"
The tall figure, in osnaburg breeches and shirt, heavy shoes and coarse
worsted stockings, swung around, and laughed.
"I trust you are well, Miss Stirling," he said--"Oh," as she began to
explain for Sir Edward--"it is not the first time I have been taken
for one of my own servants, and besides I come by it honestly. The
feathers made the birds, Miss.--Sir Edward Parkington, I presume; I
have heard my son speak of you," and he held out a hand that bore all
the evidences of toil and hardship, and that was, distinctly, not the
hand of a gentleman.
"I am delighted to meet you, Mr. Marbury," said Parkington. "This is----
"But you did not expect to meet me in such clothes, hey?" with a quiet
little chuckle. "Well, you see, I'm more at home in them. You were
saying that this is----"
"A magnificent place--quite the finest I have seen in America."
It was a particular happy speech. Next to his son and daughter, Hedgely
Hall was his pride.
"That it is, sir, that it is!" he exclaimed. "There is none finer
to the Northward, and few to the Southward--except it be Westover,
or Shirley, and one or two in South Carolina--at least, so my ship
captains tell me; I have never seen them for myself. It will be a fine
estate for George--Marbury of Hedgely Hall is better than a Marbury
of Frederick-Town. Make yourself at home, sir, make yourself at home.
Supper is at seven o'clock. I must get out of these clothes before
then--the family doesn't like 'em. I will send your stick after you,
sir."
"I beg of you, Mr. Marbury, not to bother!" Parkington exclaimed. "It
can wait until----"
But a wave of the hand was the only answer, as he passed out of hearing
up the avenue. The other looked after him thoughtfully.
"So, that is Marbury, the elder!" he said. "I think I want to see more
of him--a very interesting character." He turned to Miss Stirling, and
swept her his most profound bow. "Your pardon, mademoiselle! Shall we
continue the walk?"
VI
THE MISTAKE
At supper, that evening, every one sat where he wished. They went in
without regard to precedence, and Sir Edward found himself between Miss
Tyler and Miss Marbury, the latter taking the place of her mother, who
was indisposed.
Old Marbury was at the head of the table. He had changed his servant's
apparel for a quiet suit of black, his iron gray hair was unpowdered
and unbagged, but was tied at his neck with a narrow ribbon. His
greeting to the guests had been purely formal; and, now, he cut and
served the
|
of the
trees is like a jewel. Knowing the future I begat her (41). This girl is
called Marishā and is created for the trees. Let this great one,
multiplying the race of Soma, be your wife (42). By the half of your
energy and that of mine, your son, the Patriarch Daksha will be born of
her (43). That one, effulgent like fire, will multiply the creation
well-nigh destroyed by your fire-like energy (44)".
Thereupon in accordance with the words of Soma restraining their anger
against the trees the Prachetas duly married Marisha (45). Then they all
mentally thought of conception in Marisha. O Bhārata, the Patriarch
Daksha was born of Marisha through the tenth Prachetas with a portion of
Soma’s energy (46). Then to multiply the race of Soma he created various
offspring, mobile, immobile, two legged and four legged sons. Having
created mentally first the sons Daksha created his daughters (47). Of
them Dharma espoused ten and Kagyapa thirteen. The Lord Daksha then
conferred on the king Soma the remaining ones called Nakshatras or
planets (48), They gave birth to gods, sky-rangers, cows, Nagas,
Danavas, Gandharvas, Apsaras and various other beings (49). Since then,
O king, creatures are being engendered by sexual intercourse. Their
predecessors were created by (mere) thinking, seeing and touching (50).
Janemejaya said:—You had described before the birth of the gods, demons,
Gandharvas, serpents and Rakshasas as well as that of the high-souled
Daksha (51). O sinless one, you have said that Daksha sprang from the
right thumb of Brahmā and his wife from the left. How could they then
enter into a matrimonial alliance? (52) How could the great ascetic
Daksha attain to the energy of Prachetas? Being a grand-son of Soma how
could he become his father-in-law? I have grave doubts in this, O Vipra,
it behoves you to remove them (53).
Vaishampayana said:—Origin and destruction are always present in the
elemental creation. The Rishis and the wise are not bewildered at it
(54). O king, the Dakshas are born in every yuga. There is one Daksha in
one yuga and another in another. The learned make no mistakes in it
(55). O king, there was formerly no priority of birth among them—they
were considered elder by asceticism and their prowess was the cause
thereof (56). He, who knows the mobile and immobile creation of Daksha,
gets offspring and when the lease of his life runs out is worshipped in
the celestial region (57).
CHAPTER III. AN ACCOUNT OF VARIOUS FAMILIES; DAKSHA’S OFFSPRING.
Janamejaya said:—O Vaishampāyana, do thou describe at length the origin
of the gods, Dānavas, Gandharvas, serpents and Rakshasas (1).
Vaishampāyana said:—O king, hear how Daksha created progeny when he was
commanded by Swayambhuva, saying "create progeny." (2) The capable
Daksha first created his mental offspring—the Rishis, gods, Gandharvas,
Asuras, Rākshasas, Yakshas, goblins, Pishāchas, beasts, birds, and
reptiles (3). When this his mind-born creation did not multiply, for
such was the thought of the intelligent Mahādeva, the Patriarch,
thinking again of the multiplication of his creation and desirous of
creating progeny by sexual intercourse, married Asniki, the daughter of
the Patriarch Virana, engaged in a penance for a son and capable of
giving birth to a great race (4–6). Thereupon the energetic Patriarch
Daksha begat five thousand sons on Asniki, the daughter of Virana (7).
Beholding those great men desirous of multiplying progeny, the celestial
saint Nārada, ever fond of carrying news, for their destruction and for
his own imprecation, said (8). Afraid of Daksha and his imprecation the
ascetic Kaçyapa begat on his daughter the same celestial saint Nārada
who had been begotten by Brahmā (9). Nārada was formerly begotten by
Brahmā; and then that foremost of celestial saints (Kaçyapa) again begat
that best of ascetics on Asniki, daughter of Virana (10). Undoubtedly by
him the sons of Daksha, celebrated under the name of Haryaswas were
freed from attachment to body through scriptural knowledge and rendered
invisible (11). When Daksha, of immeasurable prowess, was ready to
destroy Nārada, Parameshti (Brahmā), with leading saints before him,
begged him (not to do it) (12). Thereupon Daksha made this contract with
Parameshti that his son Nārada would be born as the son of his
(Daksha’s) daughter (13). Thereupon Daksha gave away his daughter unto
Parameshti: and the Rishi, in fear of the imprecation of Daksha, begat
Nārada on her (14).
Janamejaya said:—O foremost of the twice-born, I wish to hear truly why
Daksha’s sons were killed by the great saint Nārada (15).
Vaishampāyana said:—When the highly energetic sons of Daksha called
Haryaswas came there with a view to multiply the progeny Nārada said to
them (19), "O ye sons of Daksha, how stupid you are all, since you do
not know the cause of all and still desire to create progeny; with out
knowing him who is in heaven, earth and nether region how do you wish to
create progeny?" (17) Hearing his words those descendants of Daksha,
without caring for each other, repaired to various directions to see the
cause of all (18). Having restrained vital airs, and attained to the
pure Brahman they secured emancipation. Even now they have not returned
like the rivers from the ocean (19). When the Haryaswas were thus lost
sight of, Daksha, the son of Prachetas, capable of creating progeny,
again begat one thousand sons on the daughter of Virana (20). When those
Shavalashwas were again desirous of multiplying progeny they were
addressed by Narada with the self-same words (21). They then spoke
amongst themselves, "The great saint Nārada has spoken the just thing.
We should follow the footsteps of our brothers; there is no doubt about
that (22). Learning the dimension of the earth, we will, at ease and
with whole minded attention, create progeny in due order (23)". They, by
the same way, repaired to various directions. Even now they have not
returned like the rivers from the ocean (24). When the Shavalāshwas too
were lost sight of, Daksha, possessed by anger, said to Nārada:—"Do thou
meet with destruction and experience the pain of living in the womb
(25)". Since then, O king, if a brother issues out in quest of another
he meets with destruction. So the learned should not do it (26). Knowing
his sons thus exiled and destroyed the Patriarch Daksha again begat
sixty daughters on the daughter of Virana. This we have heard (27). O
descendant of Kuru, the Patriarch Kaçyapa, the Moon, Dharma and other
Rishis took their wives from among those daughters of Daksha (28). Of
them Daksha conferred ten on Dharma, thirteen on Kaçyapa, twenty seven
on the Moon, four on Arishtanemi, two on Vahuputra, two on Angiras and
two on the learned Krisāshwa. Hear from me their names (29–30).
Arundhuti, Vasu, Yami, Lamvā, Bhānu, Marutvati, Sankalpa Muhurta, Sādhyā
and Vishwā, these ten, O descendant of Bharata, were the wives of
Dharma. Hear from me of their offspring (31). Vishwadevas were the sons
of Vishwā and Sādhyā gave birth to Sādhyas. Marutvati was the mother of
Maruts and Vāsus were the sons of Vasu (32). Bhānus were the sons of
Bhānu and the Muhurttas of Muhurtta (33). Gosha was born of Lamvā and
Nāgavithi of Yami. Arundhuti gave birth to all the herbs of the earth
(34). The Deity of determination, the soul of all, took his birth from
Sankalpa and Vrihalamva took his birth from Nāgabitha (35). O king, all
the daughters, whom Daksha conferred on the Moon, have been celebrated
by the name of _Nakshatras_ or _planets_ in astrology (36). The
celestials, who have profuse effulgence before them, were celebrated by
the name of eight Vasus. I will mention their names at length (37). Apa,
Dhruva, Soma, Dhara, Anila, Anala, Pratyusha, and Pravasha—these eight
are known as eight Vasus (38), Apa’s sons were Vaitandya, Srānta and
Muni. Dhruva’s son was the Divine Kāla, the destroyer of creatures (39).
Soma’s son was the Divine Varchas who begat Varcaaswi. Dhara’s son was
Dravina the carrier of sacrificial oblations. He begat on his wife
Manoharā, Sishira, Prāna and Ramana (40). Anila’s wife was Shivā whose
son was Manojava. Anila, whose course is not known, had two sons (41).
Agni’s son Kumara shone in the thickets of Sara grass. His names are
Shakha, Vishakha, Naigameya and Prishthaja (42). And on account of his
being an offspring of Kirtikās⁹ he was called Kartikeya: With the fourth
part of his energy Agni created Skanda and Sanat Kumar (43).
Pratyusha’s son was the Rishi Devala whose two sons were forgiving and
observant of hard austerities (44). Shorn of attachment Vrihaspati’s
sister, the beautiful Yogasiddhā, who led a life of celibacy, ranged all
over the earth (45). She became the wife of the eighth Vasu Prabhasa.
The noble Patriarch Vishwakarma was born of her (46). He made chariots
for the celestials, was their architect, the maker of thousands of fine
things and dresses and the foremost of artizans. Adopting his art as
their profession mankind are now making their livelihoods (47-48). By
the grace of Siva and having her heart purified by virtue of asceticism,
Surabhi gave birth, through Kaçyapa, to the eleventh Rudra (49). O
descendant of Bharata, Ajaikapāt, Ahir-Budhna, Rudrashwa, Tasta, Srimān
and Vishwarupa, those were the highly illustrious sons of Tastu (50).
Hara, Vahurupa, Tryamvaka, Aparājita, Vrishākapi, Sambhu, Kapardi,
Raivata, Mrigavyadha, Sarpa and Kapāli—these are known as the eleven
Rudras who lord over the three worlds (51-52). O foremost of Bhāratas,
in Purānas, hundreds, of such Rudras of incomparable energy, have been
mentioned who have spread over the mobile and immobile creation (53). O
foremost of Bhāratas, hear from me of the wives of Kaçyapa who have
spread over all the worlds: They are Aditi, Diti, Dana, Aristha, Suravā,
Surabhi, Vinatā, Tāmrā, Krodhavashā, Irā, Kadru, Muni and Swasā; hear
now of their offspring (54-55). In the previous Manwantara they were
twelve leading celestials. In the Manwantara of Vaivaswata they used to
address one another by the name of Tushita (56). During the reign of the
present highly illustrious Manu Chakshusha, they all assembled together
for the benefit of all creatures and said (57). "Let us all enter into
the womb of Aditi to be born in the Manwantara of Vaivaswata and we will
attain well-being (58)".
Vaishampāyana said:—Having said this during the Manwantara of Manu
Chakshusha, they were begotten on Aditi, daughter of Daksha by Kagyapa
the son of Marichi (59). Sakra and Vishnu were also born of her.
Besides, O descendant of Bharata, Aryamā, Dhātā, Twastā, Pushā,
Vivashmān, Savitā, Mitra, Varuna, Ansha, and the highly effulgent
Bhaga—these eight were also born of Aditi; so it is said (60-61). Those
who passed by the name of _Tushita_ during the Manwantara of Chakshusha
were known as twelve Adityas during the Manwantara of Vaivaswata (62).
The twenty seven wives of Soma, observant of vows and of incomparable
energy, gave birth to luminous bodies as their offspring (63).
Arishthanemi’s wives had sixteen sons. The learned Patriarch Vahuputra
had four sons:—Vidyut (lightning), Açani (thunder-bolt), Megha (cloud)
and Indradhanu (rain-bow) (64). The best of works _Riks_ originated from
Pratyangiras and the celestial saint Krishāswa begat deities presiding
over various celestial weapons (65).
O child, these deities take their births again after a thousand Yugas.
Of them thirty three¹⁰ take birth of their own accord (66). As in this
world the sun rises and sets, so O king, the origin and disappearance of
all these gods are also mentioned. They appear and disappear at every
Yuga (67-68).
Kaçyapa begat on Diti two sons, the powerful Hiranyakashipu and
Hiranyaksha. This we have heard (69). He had a daughter (also) by name
Sinhikā whom Viprachitti espoused. Her highly powerful sons were
celebrated by the name of Saihinkeyas. It is said, O king, that their
number was ten thousand (70). They had, O thou having mighty arms,
hundreds and thousands of sons and grandsons. Hear now from me of the
children of Hiranykashipu (71). He had four sons of well-known
prowess—Anurhāda, Hrāda, and the energetic Pralhāda (72). And Sanghrāda
was the fourth. Hrāda’s son was Hrada. Sangrada’s sons were Sunda and
Nisunda (73). Anurahada’s sons were Ayu, Sivi and Kāla. Virochana was
Pralhada’s son; and his son was Vali (74). O king, Vali had a hundred
sons, of whom Vāna was the eldest. Dhritarashtra, Surya, Chandramā,
Indratapana, Kumbhanabha, Gardhabhaksha, Kukshi and others were their
names. Of them Vāna was the eldest, powerful and a beloved votary of
Paçupati (75–76). In the previous Kalpa, Vāna, having propitiated the
Divine Lord of Uma, prayed to him for the boon "I shall remain by your
side." (77). Vāna begat on his wife Lohita, a son, by name Indradamana.
Hundreds and thousands of Asuras yielded to his power (78). The five
sons of Hiranyaksha were learned and highly powerful—they were Jarjara,
Sakuni, Bhutasantāpana, the powerful Mahānābha and Kālanabha. Hundred
sons of dreadful prowess were born to Danu. They were all ascetic and
endued with great energy. Hear their names in order of precedence
(79–80). Dwimurdhā, Shakuni, Shankushira, Vibhu, Shankukarna, Virava,
Gaveshtha, Dundubhi, Ayomukha, Shamvara, Kapila, Vāmana Marichi,
Maghavāna, Ira, Vrika, Vikshovana, Ketu, Ketuvirya, Shatahrada,
Indrajit, Satyajit, Vajranābha, the powerful Mahānābha, Kālanabha
Ekachakra, the highly powerful and mighty-armed Taraka, Vaishvanara,
Pulomā, Victravana, Mahāsura, Swarbhanu, Vrishaparva, the great Asura
Tuhunda, Sukhshma, Nichandra, Urnanabha, Mahāgiri, Asilomā, Sukeshi,
Shatha, Valaka, Mada, Gaganamurdha, the great ascetic Kumbhanābha,
Pramada, Daya, Kupatha, the energetic Hayagriva, Vaisripa, Virupaksha,
Supatha, Hara, Ahara, Hiranyakashipu, Salya and the energetic
Viprachitta—these sons of Danu were begotten by Kaçyapa. Amongst those
highly powerful Dinavas Viprachitta was the head (81-89). O king, I
cannot enumerate the offspring, sons and grandsons, of all these Dānavas
(90). Sarvana’s daughter was Prabhā, Puloma’s daughter was Sachi,
Hayasira’s daughter was Upadānavi and Vrishaparva’s daughter was
Sharmishthā (91).
Vaishwānara had two daughters Pulomā and Kalikā-they were both highly
powerful, gave birth to many children and were the wives of Kaçyapa, the
son of Marichi (92). They gave birth to sixty thousand Dānavas; of them
fourteen thousand lived in the city of Hiranya (93). Being observant of
rigid austerities Kaçyapa begat highly powerful Dānavas called Poulamas
and Kālakeyās (94). Those living in the city of Hiranya were placed by
Brahmā above destruction even by the gods. They were afterwards killed
by Savyasachi in battle (95). Nahusha was Prabhā’s son, Jayanta was
Sachi’s son, Sarmisthā gave birth to Puru and Upadānavi gave birth to
Dushmanta (96). Viprachitta begat on Singhikā another class of highly
dreadful Dānavas (97). By the union of Daity and Danava energies they
grew of dreadful prowess. Those thirteen highly powerful Dānavas were
celebrated by the name of Sainghikeyas (98). They were the powerful
Aisha, Nabha, Vala, Vatāpi, Namuchi, Ilvala, Khasrima, Anjika, Naraka,
Kālanābha, Shara, Potarana, and the energetic Vajranābha (99-100). Of
them Rāhu, the represser of the sun and the moon, was the eldest. Hrāda
had two sons, Suka and Tuhunda (101). Sunda begat on Tāraka a son by
name Mārachi, another (by name) Sivamana, energetic like a celestial
(102). All these Dānavas, multiplying the race of Danu, were great.
Their sons and grandsons were hundreds and thousands in number (103).
The noble Nivātakavachas endued with great asceticism were born in the
race of the Daitya Sanghrāda(104). Those Danavas, living in the city of
Manimati, begat three Koti offspring. The gods could not destroy them
and they were slain by Arjuna (105). It is said that Tāmrā gave birth to
six highly powerful daughters—Kake, Sweni, Bhāsi, Sugrivi, Suchi, and
Gidhrika (106). Kāki gave birth to crows, Uluki to owls, Sweni to Swena
birds, Bhāsi to Bhāsa birds, Gidhri to vultures, Suchi to waterfowls and
Sugrivi to horses, camels and asses. Such is the description of Tāmrā’s
family (107-108). Vinata had two sons, Aruna and Garuda. Suparna, the
foremost of birds, grew immensely powerful by his own action (109).
Surasā gave birth to a thousand highly powerful serpents and high-souled
sky-rangers of many heads (110). Powerful, and many headed Nagas endued
with immeasurable energy, the offspring of Kadru, were born as being
subject to Suparna (111). Amongst them Sesha, Vāsuki, Takshaka,
Airavata, Mahāpadma, Kamvala, Aswatara, Ekapatra, Shankha, Karko taka,
Dhananjāya, Mohāneela, Mahākarna, Dhritarashtra, Valāhaka, Kuhara,
Pushpapangstra, Durmukha, Sumukha, Shankhapala, Kapilā, Vāmana, Nahusha,
Sangkaroma and Manu were the heads. Fourteen thousand sons and grand
sons of these dreadful serpents were devoured by Garuda, living on
serpents. Know this class to be full of anger. All animals having teeth,
those born on land, birds and those produced by water are the offspring
of Dhara. Surabhi gave birth to kine and buffaloes (112-117). Ira
produced trees, creepers, groves and all kinds of grasses and Khasa gave
birth to Yakshas, Rakshas, Munis and Apsarās (118). Aristha gave birth
to the powerful Gandharvas of unmitigated prowess and the mobile and
immobile creation is said to have originated from Kaçyapa (119).
Hundreds and thousands of sons and grandsons have been born to them.
Such was the creation, O my child, in Swarochisha Manwantara (120). I
shall now describe to you the creation of the Patriarch Brahmā who
offered oblation to fire at the long-extending sacrifice of Varuna in
Vaivaswata Manwantara (121). Formerly when seven Rishis were procreated
by his mind the grand-father considered them as his sons (122).
O descendant of Bharata, when the conflict between the gods and demons
raged on, Diti, who had her sons slain, began to propitiate Kaçyapa
(123). Being duly adored by her and propitiated, Kaçyapa pleased her by
giving a boon. She too prayed for a highly powerful son for killing
Indra. That great ascetic, when thus begged, conferred on her the same
boon (124-125). Having conferred on her the boon without the least
anxiety the son of Marichi said:—"If being pure and observant of vows
you can hold your conception for one hundred years you will give birth
to such a son as will slay Indra (126–127)." O monarch, saying so be it
and being pure Diti obtained her conception from her that great ascetic
husband (128). Thinking of one of the leadings gods of immeasurable
power and infusing energy which the immortals even can not destroy he
knew Diti. Then that one of great vows repaired to a hilly region for
carrying on penances (129-130). From that day the slayer of Pāka (Indra)
began to seek her fault. One day before hundred years were complete
Diti, without washing her feet, lay down on her bed. Beholding her
impure state the king of gods entered into her abdomen and made her
asleep (131-132).
Then the holder of thunderbolt sundered the embryo into seven pieces.
Cut into pieces with the thunderbolt the embryo began to cry (133).
Sakra again and again prevented him saying "Do not cry! Do not cry!" The
embryo was then divided into seven pieces. Indra too, the slayer of
enemies, worked up with anger, again cut every piece into seven portions
with his thunder-bolt. From them originated the gods called Maruts, O
foremost of Bharatas (134-135). Because they were addressed by Maghavan
(saying "Do not weep" _Ma ruda_) so the Maruts were born and they all
became of help to the holder of thunder-bolt (136). When creatures thus
multiplied, O Janamejaya, Hari consoled that foremost of gods of
immeasurable energy, and then conferred kingdoms on various Patriarchs
of whom Prithu was first installed as king (137-138). That Hari is the
heroic person Vishnu, Jishnu, the Patriarch, the king of rains and is
the air in his visible form. The whole universe is His (139). O foremost
of Bharatas, he, who is informed of this creation of creatures, and he
who reads or hears the auspicious birth of the Maruts, has no fear of
being born again in this world—what of fear in the next world (140)?
⁹ They are nymphs and the nurses of Kumara.
¹⁰ The thirty three gods are:—8 Vasus, 11, Rudras, 12 Adityas, Brahma
and Indra.
CHAPTER IV. A QUERY REGARDING THE ORIGIN OF THE ARTICLES OF FOOD.
Janamejaya said:—Having installed Prithu the son of Vena, in the office
of the Lord Paramount the Patriarch began to confer kingdoms on Soma and
others (1). He placed Soma in charge of the twice-born, herbs, planets,
stars, sacrifices and hard austerities (2). He then installed Varuna as
the king of waters, Vaishravana as the lord of kings, Vishnu the king of
Adityas, Pāvaka the king of Vasus, Laksha the king of Patriarchs, Vāsava
the king of Maruts, Pralhāda of incomperable energy the king of Daityas,
and and Danavas, Yama, the offspring of the sun, as the king of the
departed manes, Nārāyana as the king of Mātris, vows, Mantrās, kine,
Yakshas, Rākshasas and kings and Siva, having the emblem of a bull, as
the king of Sādhyas and Rudras (3–7). He then ordered Viprachitta to
become the king of the Dānavas and made Girisha (Siva) the holder of
mace, the king of all ghosts and goblins (8). He made Himavān, the king
of mountains, and the ocean the king of rivers and appointed the greatly
power Vāyu as the king of smell, bodiless creatures, sound, ether and
earth (9). He made the lord Chitraratha the king of Gandarvas, Vāsuki,
the king of Nāgas and Takshaka the king of serpents (10). He ordered
Airavat to become the king of the elephants, Ushaishrava, of the horses
and Garuda the king of birds, tiger the king of beasts and the bull, the
king kine, Plaksha the king of trees, and, installed Parjanya as the
king of ocean, rivers, showers and Adityas (11—13). He installed Sesha
as the king of wild animals and Takshaka, the king of reptiles and
serpents (14). He made Kāmadeva the king of Gandharvas and Asuras and
Samvatsara the king of seasons, months, days, fortnights, moments,
conjunctions of planets, Parvas, Kālas, Kāshthās, Pramāsha, Ayanas,
Mathematics and all conjunctions. Having divided the kingdom in such an
order Brahmā placed all the guardians of the quarters. He installed
Sudhanna, the son of the Patriarch Vairaja as the Protector of the
eastern quarter. He placed in the South the high-souled Sankhapāda, the
son of the Patriarch Kardama. He installed the high-souled Ketuman, the
son of Raja, as the king of the West. And he made the irrepressible,
Hirany roma, the son of the Patriarch Prajanya, the king of the North.
Even now they have been piously ruling over their respective provinces
of the earth consisting of seven insular continents and mountains. By
all those kings Prithu was appointed as the Lord Pāramonnt in a Rajshuya
sacrifice according to rites laid down in the Vedas, O king (15–23).
After the expiration of the highly vigorous Manwantara of Chakshusha the
Patriarch Brahmā conferred the kingdom on Manu Vaivaswata. If you wish
to listen, O sinless king, I shall give you at length an account (of his
life) for your help. This has been described fully in Purana. It is
sacred and confers fame, longevity, residence in heaven and auspicious
ness (24–25).
Janamejaya said:—O Vaishampāyana, do thou describe in full, the birth of
Prithu and how by that high-souled one this earth was milched (26); how
was she milched by the ancestral manes, gods, Rishis, Daityas, Nagas,
Yakshas, serpents, mountains, Pishachas, Gandharvas, the leading
Brāhmanas, Rakshasas, and other great creatures, (27–28). Do thou also
describe fully, O Vaishampāyana, their various vessels, the calves and
the various articles in order, for which she was milched (29). Do thou
also relate, why formerly Vena’s arm was churned by the angry Rishis
(30).
Vaishampāyana said:—O Janamejaya, listen, with attention and
concentrated mind, I shall give you a detailed account of Prithu, the
son of Vena (31). O monarch, I do not describe this unto him, who is
impure, little-witted, who is not a worthy disciple, who does not
observe vows, who is ungrateful and injures people (32). O king, do thou
listen duly to this theme described by the god-like Rishis which secures
heaven, longevity, fame and riches (for all) (33). He, who having
saluted the Brāhmanas daily, listens to the birth story of Vena’s son,
Prithu, does not grieve for iniquities committed by him (34).
CHAPTER V. AN ACCOUNT OF VENA AND PRITHU.
Vaishampāyana said:—Formerly the Patriarch Anga, born in the race of
Atri, and equally all-powerful like him, became the protector of
religion (1). A highly impious son by name Vena was born to him. That
Patriarch was begotten on Sunithā the daughter of Death (2). Imbibing
the defect of his maternal grand-father, that son of Kāla’s daughter
deviated from his own duties and preached freedom of conduct in the
world (3). That king established an irreligious order and disregarding
Vedic observances he engaged in impious actions (4). During his
administration the study of the Vedas and the performance of the Vedic
rites were suspended. And the celestials did not get Soma juice
consecrated in Yajnas (5). Such was the dreadful promise of the
Patriarch that no one would perform, even at the time of destruction,
either Homa or Yajna (6). O foremost of Kurus, (he said) I am worthy of
being adored, I am the agent of Yajna, I am identical with Yajna—you
should dedicate all your Yajnas and Homas unto me (7). Beholding him
thus transgress the order and partake unduly and unfairly of the
sacrificial offerings the great Rishis, headed by Marichi, said (8):–"We
shall enter upon the initiation ceremony for many long years—therefore
do not act irreligiously, O Vena, for such is the eternal religion (9).
After the death of Atri you have forsooth been born as a Patriarch. And
you made the contract that you would govern the subjects" (10). After
they had said this the wicked and ill-disposed Vena, laughing, said to
all those great Rishis, the following evil words (11). Vena said "Who
else will be the founder of religion? Whom shall I hear? Who else is
superior to me on this earth in learning, energy, prowess, asceticism
and truth (12)? All creatures and especially all forms of religion have
originated from me. You are all stupid and void of consciousness and
therefore you do not know me (13). If I wish I can burn down the earth
or overflow it with water. I can obstruct the heaven and earth: there is
no need of discussing it (14)". When the noble Rishis could not make
Vena humble on account of his pride and egotism, they, worked up with
anger, belaboured that highly powerful king and began to churn his left
thigh (15–16). When the thigh of that king was thus churned there arose
from it a greatly short and dark person (17). O Janamejaya, he stood
there, stricken with fear and folding his arms. Beholding him thus
possessed by fear Atri said to him "Nishida" _Sit down_ (18). O foremost
of speakers, he became the originator of the race of Nishadas (hunters)
and procreated the race of fishermen begotten of the sins of Vena (19).
And Tukhāras, Tumuras and other races taking delight in impiety who live
on the Vindhya mountain were also born of Vena (20). Thereupon, those
high-souled Rishis, worked up with anger, began to churn the right arm
of Vena like a piece of wood used for kindling fire (21). From that arm
originated Prithu resembling the very flame, and burning in effulgence
like the fire itself (22). The highly illustrious Prithu was born with
his most excellent prime bow _Ajagava_, heavenly arrows and a highly
lustrous coat of mail to protect his body (23-24). At his birth all the
creatures were filled with delight and Vena too, O monarch, repaired to
the celestial region (25). O descendant of Kuru, the great Prithu, a
good son, being born he saved Vena from the hell called _Put_¹¹ (26).
Taking all the jewels the oceans came to him with water for his
installation (27). The Divine Brahmā with the Devas, the offspring of
Angiras, and all other creatures, mobile and immobile, came there and
installed the effulgent king, the son of Vena, the lord of an extensive
kingdom (28-29). The highly energetic and powerful son of Vena, Prithu,
was installed as the first king by the leading Rishis conversant with
the Vedas and other scriptures (
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be
remembered as a rush job at the eleventh hour. It was about this time
that night bombing by enemy aircraft first became troublesome.
La Boudrelle was visited for the third time on the 15th, the division
being in support, and work was started roofing in the big ammunition
dump at La Creche, but before the task could be completed, the unit
moved with the division to 2nd Army Training Area, south-west of St.
Omer.
Divisional Headquarters was established at Fauquembergues, and the
11th Field Company in the little village of Recquebrœucq on the River
Aa.
2. A SHARE IN THE 3RD BATTLE OF YPRES.
The visit to the training area was for the purpose of resting,
training, and re-fitting, in preparation for more strenuous days to
come; and lasted until September 25th. This was a very delightful
period, the accommodation for all ranks being good, the country people
very kindly, and the weather favourable. Opportunities for training
were also good, and the unit was in a very good state when it started
marching northward with the division on September 25th, to take part
in the Third Battle of Ypres.
Before leaving the training area the company attended two noteworthy
parades, one on the 19th September, when the Divisional Engineers
assembled with full transport, and carried out evolutions under the
C.R.E., and another on the 22nd, when the whole of the 3rd Division,
less artillery and transport, was inspected by the Commander-in-Chief,
F.-M. Sir Douglas Haig.
The march northwards with the 11th A.I. Brigade Group was viâ
Blaringhem, Eecke and Poperinghe, to Ypres, which was reached on the
30th September. The company took over from the 529th Field Company,
R.E. (3rd British Division) and billeted in cellars and shelters among
the ruins just south of the prison. The horse lines were at Brandhoek,
with, later, an advanced camp east of Ypres.
The night of the harvest moon at Poperinghe will always be remembered
for a remarkable display of bombing by enemy aeroplanes. Uncomfortable
as the situation was for troops crowded in tents, some amusement was
to be derived from the efforts of certain machine guns, which,
chattering hysterically whenever a Boche ’plane was caught in the beam
of a searchlight, threw streams of tracer bullets at a target some
thousands of yards out of range. No doubt it relieved the gunners’
feelings.
The great British offensive in the Ypres salient, to which the capture
of the Messines ridge had been a prelude, had opened on July 31st,
when the 3rd Australian Division captured “The Windmill” on the
extreme south flank of the battle. After some pauses and delays, it
was now, in the late autumn of 1917, in full swing. A constant
succession of heavy, but comparatively shallow pushes, it might almost
be called the Battle of the Roads, so much did the impetus of the
attack depend on the use of the highways converging on the ruined
town, and so enormous and impressive was the congestion of road
traffic. The great road from Poperinghe to Ypres was covered day and
night with streams of everything on wheels or feet which went to make
or help an army, all dribbling in clouds of dust and profanity through
the bottle-neck at Vlamertinghe. On the enemy side of Ypres the road
best known to the 3rd Division was that which led to Zonnebeke. Here
the congestion of traffic was complicated by the insistent attentions
of the enemy artillery, which periodically pitted the route with shell
holes and left the roadside littered with dead horses and broken
vehicles, and sometimes with more dreadful wreckage.
Besides the limbers taking ammunition to the nearer guns, ration
limbers and wagons laden with Engineer stores, the forward road was
thronged with pack animals, which in hundreds carried ammunition to
the less accessible batteries. On the outward journey they were led by
dogged men on foot; returning light with the men in the saddle, the
cavalcade stood not upon the order of its going, and no matter the
rank of the pedestrian, he unhesitatingly gave it the road.
Particularly after the rain came was the road past Mill Cot to Kink
Dump, Devils Crossing, and Zonnebeke, a place of evil memory.
For three weeks the company, working from Ypres, was continuously
employed in the battle area in the divisional sector north of the
Zonnebeke Railway. The 3rd Australian Division delivered a very
successful attack on October 4th, when the Broodseinde Ridge was
captured. When it was relieved by the 66th Division, the company
remained in the area working with this division until after its attack
of October 9th. The 3rd Division then returned to the line and
advanced again on October 12th.
Early in the month the weather broke and torrents of rain converted
the shell-torn earth into a dreadful quagmire. Tracks across the
wilderness of mud and shell holes had to be reconnoitred, marked out
and duckboarded wherever possible; roads patched up to carry the guns.
The tracks were all marked by distinctive letters or names; two
well-remembered ones were Jack and Jill. Strange materials were used
for road making; the dead body of a mule or two might be seen tumbled
into a shell hole and covered with the smashed up remains of some
vehicle. Piles of shells were known to be used in emergency to
hurriedly fill a hole in some urgently required roadway. Causeways
were built for mules and men across the bog which marked the original
course of the Zonnebeke stream, and many concrete dugouts repaired and
made habitable. On all these arduous tasks the company was engaged and
suffered a steady drain of casualties.
Under these conditions the possession of ample comforts funds,
supplied chiefly by friends in Australia, contributed considerably to
the comfort and efficiency of the unit, as it rendered possible the
supply of hot drinks and food at all hours to the different parties,
and of emergency chocolate rations to parties on exposed work.
Worthy of special note during this period was the work done by Lieut.
J. M. Norton and a small party of surveyors in laying down an
elaborate system of jumping-off tapes for the attack of October 4th,
and a similar task carried out by Lieut. S. W. Matters previous to the
attack of October 9th. On the 4th, Lieut. H. St. A. Murray and a party
of sappers and attached infantry (the 11th A.T. Brigade had supplied a
permanent working party of three officers and 100 other ranks who
lived and worked with the company) pushed forward on the top of the
Broodseinde Ridge immediately behind the attacking infantry, and dug
and wired a number of strong points. The transport, both pack and
wheeled, carried out very difficult and dangerous tasks under Captain
O. B. Williams and Lieut. W. H. Thomas, M.C., and the work of the
surveyors was also particularly arduous and valuable. Lieut. H. St. A.
Murray received the Military Cross, 2nd Corpl. C. P. Atkins the
Meritorious Service Medal, and 2nd Corpl. A. M. Stewart, 2nd Corpl. J.
J. Mace, Lance-Corpl. W. G. Toft, Driver A. H. Furniss, and Sapper F.
G. Bugden, the Military Medal.
3. REVISITING OLD HAUNTS.
On being relieved in Ypres by the 12th Canadian Field Company
Engineers, the company moved on the 22nd of October back to
Recquebrœucq (dismounted by train, transport by road), and rested and
re-fitted until 12th November, 1917, when the division once more went
into the line, in Flanders, re-visiting one of its old haunts in the
Le Touquet――Pont Rouge and Warneton sectors, taking over from the 8th
British Division.
The 11th Field Company A.E. was placed in reserve, took over a camp
near Wulverghem (28 T.10.a.5, 9), and commenced work on pipe burying,
artillery positions, drainage, and the like. Regular winter warfare
conditions commenced, and much useful work was effected.
While the company was in Wulverghem Camp (which by the way, the
sappers scornfully christened “Gutza Camp,” from its forlorn
appearance, but which proved not so uncomfortable) several daylight
bombing raids by enemy aeroplanes in force took place, and on one
occasion the company suffered the loss of Corpl. Gray, killed, and
C.-S.-M. Brander seriously wounded.
After a month in the line, the division was relieved by the 2nd
Australian Division, and went into Corps reserve, with headquarters at
Meteren, and the 11th Field Company, A.E., moved into Mahutonga Camp,
on Waterloo Road, near Neuve Eglise. A programme of training was
commenced, but most of the available strength was soon absorbed on
various back areas works, and finally the division somewhat
unexpectedly took over the Armentières sector from the 38th (Welsh)
Division. This unit went into the line with the 11th A.I. Brigade on
the right, and billeted in the big jute factory near the emergency
bridge over the Lys, on the outskirts of Armentières.
As usual, there was no lack of work for the sappers. The trench system
required a great deal of development, particularly with a view to a
step by step defence in depth, and a number of dugout jobs were taken
over from the 38th Division. Lys river bridges again came under the
company’s care, but on a stretch of the river a little south of the
crossings familiar during the previous winter. Charges had to be
overhauled, leads repaired and tested, magazines rebuilt.
The billets were comfortable, but, as usual, throughout the cold
weather, the fuel supply was a “burning” problem. In the jute factory
it was not incapable of solution, as alongside the boiler house there
were a large number of coal heaps. These were watched over by the
factory caretaker and liberally placarded with notices, “Not to be
touched,” but if each sapper in a section moving from cookhouse to
billets casually picked up a lump of coal, the section stove need
never go cold.
A holiday from the line work was granted on Christmas Day, and full
advantage was taken of it for seasonable feasting. The officers and
sergeants, who attended first their section dinners, and afterwards
the meals in their own messes, had rather a trying day.
The town of Armentières was much changed since the previous visit.
With the exception of a few caretakers, all the inhabitants had gone,
and dreadful tales were told of their experiences when the Boche
shelled the place heavily with high explosive and gas about the time
of the Messines Battle.
The stay in this sector was quite short, the 57th Division (British)
relieving the 3rd Australian Division on 3rd January, 1918, the 11th
Field Company, A.E., returning to Mahutonga Camp.
The next move was into the Le Touquet――Pont Rouge sector with the 11th
A.I. Brigade, the 11th Field Co., A.E., taking over from the 5th Field
Coy., A.E., 2nd Australian Division, on 31st January, 1918.
With the help of a permanent working party from the 11th A.I. Bde.,
great progress was made in improving the drainage and the whole system
of defences of the area. The Company lived very comfortably in the
familiar Weka Lines at Romarin, with the transport in the same camp.
The wagons had a busy time on this sector and delivered large amounts
of material to the dumps at Motor Car Corner and Le Gheer. The old
German system of trenches west of the river, which had sheltered the
enemy during the Company’s tenancy of this sector the previous spring,
were now occupied by us and were very little damaged, having been
quietly evacuated by the Boche after Messines. It was very interesting
to study his methods, and the concrete dugouts in particular were a
monument to his industry. In less then 3,000 yards of line, in the
front and support trenches alone――i.e., in a strip of country not more
then 300 yards deep――there were found over 70 concrete dugouts and
shelters. Many were small, but the smallest involved a great deal of
labour in this exposed and water-logged region.
The 3rd Australian Division was now due for its turn in the training
area and was relieved by the 2nd Australian Division on March 3rd.
The 5th Field Company took over Weka Lines and the sector from the
11th, which moved by train and road for dismounted personnel and
transport respectively, to Bainghem-le-Comte, about 14 miles from
Boulogne.
CHAPTER III.
THE DEFENCE OF AMIENS.
“Every position should be strengthened as far as time admits
with the object of reducing the number of men required to
hold it, and of thereby adding to the strength of the
general reserve.”
_Field Service Regulations._
1. THE MOVE.
The month of March, 1918, found the 3rd Australian Division enjoying a
well-earned rest in billets between St. Omer and Boulogne. Every
division considers its every rest well earned, but after the long
winter in the line on the Belgian border with even its turn in reserve
broken by an excursion to the old trenches south of Armentières, the
3rd had settled down with a particularly comfortable feeling of
conscious rectitude.
The 11th Field Company had reached its obscure little village of
Bainghem-le-Comte on March 6th, and by the middle of the month was
comfortable, judging comfort by the standard of soldiers in the field,
to whom a rude bunk of saplings in a reasonably weatherproof barn,
with a tin can stove, represent the best which can be hoped for.
Spring came early; on southward hillsides the sun shone warm at noon,
and not even a bomb disturbed either work or play.
Then came the German offensive, of which the first hint was the ugly
throbbing of distant heavy gunfire. At short notice the division
commenced to move, and the dismounted portion of the company entrained
on the 22nd at Lottingen and Desvres, while the transport under Lieut.
Rutledge took to the road.
In the strenuous pilgrimage of the next few days, the first stage was
towards the north; detraining at Caestre (north of Hazebrouck) the
company marched to Eecke (night of 22nd-23rd). Then on the 24th the
direction was reversed, and by march and motor ’bus it moved to
Wardrecques, east of St. Omer. Meanwhile the transport had moved to
Esquerdes, and thence to Renescure, and on the 24th rejoined the
company, and the whole proceeded to a thorough overhaul of all stores
and equipment, and the rigorous discarding of all non-essentials.
The news from the battle area in the south came through in brief
outline in rare newspapers and much more vividly by word of mouth, in
startling rumours; but all of it was serious. Nevertheless the general
feeling was one of relief, almost of elation; the long-talked enemy
blow had fallen and we were to help the counter-stroke which all were
convinced must sooner or later be delivered. The war-like activity in
all this familiar region behind the Flanders front was sufficiently
exhilarating in itself. In addition to the 3rd Australian, the New
Zealand and the 4th Australian Divisions were on the move. Battalions
marched and counter-marched across the country with bands playing in
the thin sunshine, and the pavé roads literally swayed under the
torrent of motor lorries and ’buses. Such animation in the war country
is always accompanied by one or other of the twin banes of the foot
soldier, mud or dust; on this occasion cold clouds of the latter added
to the joys of “full marching order with blankets.”
Very early in the cold and frosty morning of the 26th the company
moved again, all tuned up in readiness for that open warfare which we
were expected to experience. As throughout the whole move it came
under the orders of the 11th Brigade Group, and was commanded by Capt.
O. B. Williams, the O.C., Major R. J. Donaldson being acting C.R.E.
After something more than the usual delays, entrainment took place at
Arques, including transport, about three p.m. Detrainment was at
Doullens, and took place at 12.30 next morning, after several hours in
the train waiting just outside the station, while Boche planes
energetically bombed the neighbourhood. From Doullens the company
marched at once some six miles to Thievres, where the sappers were
picked up by motor ’buses and taken to Franvillers, between Amiens and
Albert, debussing at 7 a.m. The long wait at Arques, and again at
Doullens, the toilsome march to Thievres, and the bitterly cold ’bus
ride (for the morning of March 27th deserves to be remembered for its
searching wind alone), all combined with the absence of hot food and
drink to make the journey one of the most arduous in the history of
the unit.
But the scenes on the road that bleak March morning were enough to
stir the thinnest blood. The pitiful flight of a civilian population
before an advancing enemy has often been described; it is enough to
say that to all ranks first came a full understanding of war and a
common anger against the enemy. Also there came no little pride of
country, so extreme was the relief with which the people welcomed the
arrival of “les Australiens.”
A halt at Franvillers allowed of the preparation of welcome food, and
even more welcome hot drink. Meanwhile, the transport, after a cold
and foodless all night march, arrived and established itself in a
little wood west of the village. Early in the afternoon Company
Headquarters and 1, 3, and 4 sections moved on again a short distance
to Heilly, on the river Ancre, and chose billets among the deserted
houses.
The 3rd Australian Division had now arrived in the Somme country and
there was much satisfaction in the knowledge. Just as in Australia no
miner can claim to have travelled unless he has been to Moonta, so no
good Australian knew anything of war until he had been “on the Somme.”
The sapper’s eye saw other causes for satisfaction; the steep dry
banks invited the dugout builder, and the streams wanting bridges, and
the bridges wanting demolition charges, spoke of real engineering work
to be done.
The Officers of the Company at this time were as follows:―Major R. J.
Donaldson was in command, but for a few days more (until March 31st)
was acting C.R.E. vice Lieut.-Col. T. R. Williams, D.S.O., on leave.
Capt. O. B. Williams was second in command. Capt. G. L. A. Thirkell
had charge of No. 1 section, Lt. S. W. Matters No. 2, Lt. W. H.
Thomas, M.C., No. 3, while Lt. R. W. Lahey was painfully hurrying from
leave in the South of France to resume command of No. 4. Lt. R. G.
Rutledge was in charge of the transport. The company was at full
strength and still had nearly one half of its original members. G.
Brodie was C.S.M., H. G. Whitrow (who held the position throughout the
whole history of the unit) C.Q.M.S. (somewhat irreverently known as
the Quarter-Bloke); and W. Russel, mounted Sergeant.
2. BETWEEN THE SOMME AND ANCRE.
On its arrival in front of Amiens, on the 27th March, 1918, the 3rd
Australian Division was ordered to hold a line running from
Sailly-le-Sec on the Somme to Mericourt l’Abbé on the Ancre, to
prevent the enemy advancing along the high ridge which lies between
the two rivers and runs down to the town of Corbie at their
confluence. This ridge commands a wide view to the westward, the
cathedral at Amiens being clearly visible. The situation was obscure,
but the proximity of the enemy was indicated by his intermittent
shelling of the road from Franvillers to Heilly with high velocity
guns. Straight from their fatiguing journey the troops took up their
positions, the 11th A.I. Brigade on the right of the main Bray road;
and early in the evening working parties of the 11th Field Company
moved out from Heilly and commenced trench digging.
The task ahead was enormous. A new defensive system had to be
established, and there were no R.E. dumps of tools and material, very
few maps available, very little information of any kind.
Reconnaissance for tools and material, of bridges and streams and
water supply, was thus of the highest importance, and was put in hand
early. Other work, more important than trench digging, soon developed
for the sappers. The map will show how important in this sector were
the river-crossings, and accommodation for various commands was
urgently required.
The bridges in Corbie, La Neuville, and Bonnay had been roughly
prepared for demolition, chiefly by the 173rd Tunnelling Coy., R.E.,
and the 1st Field Squadron, R.E., but a great deal of work was called
for, both to ensure certainty and completion of destruction in case of
necessity, and reasonable safety under normal conditions. This work
was put in hand, No. 2 section first moving to Bonnay and starting it,
the remainder of the company also proceeding there for convenience of
control on the evening of the 29th. On the 30th, No. 3 section moved
to Corbie and took over the Corbie, La Neuville group of bridges. It
was on this day that the enemy attacked our line from the direction of
Sailly Laurette, but was beaten off with heavy loss. While the attack
was on Capt. O. B. Williams with a small party was engaged in an
examination of the steel bridge over the Somme at Bouzencourt, near
Sailly-le-Sec. The vicinity of the bridge came under heavy shell fire,
and as the party approached it one shell hit and detonated a
demolition charge which was on the bridge, blowing down the towers of
the lifting span, but not destroying the bridge. For his work in
connection with this reconnaissance Corpl. Johns received the Military
Medal.
Under the conditions of modern warfare, reasonably secure
accommodation for the Headquarters of Brigades and Battalions is of
great importance, and in particular these centres required to be able
to maintain their signal connections and carry on their work at night
without exposed lights to attract enemy aircraft. In the chalk country
deep dugouts provide the best accommodation, and the company was soon
busy on a number of these, in “Shrapnel Gully,” in the banks south of
Marrett Wood, at 11th Brigade Headquarters, in the wood near the
gravel pits north of Corbie, and in a number of other spots. At first
the lack of suitable material, and to some extent the inexperience of
the men at this work, were handicaps, but they were neutralised by
sheer hard work.
Before the programme could be more than started, another aspect of the
bridge question demanded attention. The available crossings over the
Ancre were few and well known, and would certainly be heavily shelled
in the event of a Boche attack. To ensure the supply of ammunition to
the guns east of the river, emergency crossings were obviously needed,
and were reconnoitred and put in hand. A crossing north of Bonnay,
with two trestle bridges over the main streams of the Ancre, a number
of culverts, and a long length of rough corduroy, was started by the
11th Field Company on April 3rd and finished on the 5th.
On the evening of the 5th a sudden demand was made for a crossing
south of Bonnay. All ordinary working parties were already employed,
but a hasty gathering up was made of all batmen, cooks, a few spare
drivers, the O.C.’s groom, and so on, and with this party, Lt. Matters
threw a three-bay pontoon bridge and a two-bay Weldon trestle bridge
across the two main streams, in pitch darkness. The bridges were in
use by midnight, and the men concerned were more than a little proud
to be the first to put the company’s bridging gear to real use.
Meanwhile the enemy had pressed forward on the south side of the
Somme, and was reported to be very close to the steel bridge at
Bouzencourt already mentioned. It was decided that the bridge should
be destroyed and this was done early in the morning of the 6th by a
party from No. 1 section, under Capt. Thirkell and Sergt. Oliver,
assisted by C.S.M. Brodie. The main span of the bridge was cut and
dropped into the canal. Sergt. Oliver received the Military Medal.
Sketches of this bridge and of the bridges over the Ancre, of
panoramas from O.P.’s, and other features of interest, were made by
Spr. Vasco, of the unit, well known as a caricaturist, and were used
to illustrate the war diary. Unfortunately, Spr. Vasco died of disease
in England before the end of the summer.
The war at this stage was not without its compensations. After the
plains of Flanders the broad views from the downs were refreshing, and
it was interesting to be able so frequently to see your enemy in the
open. Billeting in the deserted villages was good, and the abandoned
live stock of the country-side added variety to the menu. No. 3
section kept a poultry farm at their billet in Corbie and paid tribute
to Company Headquarters in the produce thereof. They were also in the
possession of a cow tended by “Bluey” Graham, the section Q.M. More
than one revolution occurred in No. 3 after that time, and several
Q.M.’s were deposed, but Graham can still claim to be the only section
Q.M. who ever kept a vache. Unfortunately, while leading it along the
road by a string one day he met a member of the French Mission….
On the 8th April No. 1 section moved into a rough bivouac in a chalk
quarry overlooking the Somme, in order to be nearer their work. The
2nd Australian Tunnelling Coy. took charge of the various bridges on
the 18th, thus releasing Nos. 2 and 3 sections, and next day No. 2
joined No. 1 in their riverside quarry. With more men available, the
dugout industry increased apace.
Meanwhile the difficulty of supplying the industry with timber had
become acute. Salvage operations in Corbie and neighbouring villages
had yielded small supplies, and corps managed to send a little from
time to time, but the demand increased much faster than the supply.
Two or three Queensland bushmen from No. 4 section were early set to
work with pitsaws in one of the woods, and helped appreciably, but the
problem was not solved until a steam saw milling plant was
“souvenired” from Corbie, repaired, and erected on the banks of the
Ancre near Bonnay.
This developed into quite a prosperous, if entirely unofficial
concern, and large quantities of sawn timber were produced from the
plantations along the river.
On the 24th the enemy delivered his attack on Villers-Brettoneux, and
the 3rd Divisional sector was heavily shelled. Company Headquarters
and 3 and 4 sections were shelled out of Bonnay, losing several
horses, but otherwise escaping without serious loss, but 1 and 2
sections in their quarry position were less fortunate, both Lieut.
Matters and Lieut. Melbourne (who had just taken over No. 1 section)
being wounded rather badly, and several men gassed. Driver J. H.
Cannell subsequently received the Military Medal for rescuing a badly
wounded man in Bonnay under very trying circumstances.
After this experience an open-air life seemed preferable to the
somewhat damaged billets in Bonnay, so a camp was established in an
open valley just west of Heilly. The first site chosen was rather
unfortunate, as within a day or two a battery of 8in. hows. planted
themselves alongside, and a move of three or four hundred yards along
the valley had to be made to avoid these noisy neighbours.
A new Brigade Headquarters being called for in Heilly, it was decided
to burrow into a huge old retaining wall which ran round part of the
Chateau grounds. The sappers were not without hope of finding buried
treasure――preferably in the shape of a well-stocked and forgotten wine
cellar――behind this mysterious old wall, but all they found was loose
and treacherous filling, making the work slow and arduous.
The work of the section cooks deserves to be mentioned, particularly
under the conditions which prevailed on this sector, when each section
was split into parties working various shifts on dugouts and other
work, coming and going and expecting meals at all hours of the day and
night. No. 2 section will always remember the hot roast meal prepared
for them in the quarry on the 24th April by Sapper Castle, literally
cooked between bursts of shelling and the cook most of the time in a
gas mask.
The unit was issued with its first Lewis gun on this sector, for
defence against low-flying aircraft, and shortly afterwards had an
object lesson in the efficacy of the weapon when the famous German
airman Von Richtofen was shot down by a Lewis gun belonging to an
Australian Field Artillery Battery. His bright red triplane crashed
quite close to a party of sappers of the company.
On the 1st of May the 9th Field Company, coincident with the relief of
the 11th Brigade by the 9th Brigade, took over the work in forward
areas; the plans prepared by the company surveyors of the old French
trenches partly occupied by our troops, and of the extensive new works
dug by them, were handed over. Work was continued at the saw mill, at
the “Hole in the wall” above-mentioned, and a good deal of work was
done in various Headquarters’ dugouts in the extraordinary series of
trenches which had been dug under corps supervision between the Ancre
and the Hallue. A good deal of the novelty of the situation had now
worn off, the supply of adventitious aids to the rationing had failed,
and a regular trench warfare routine had been established when the 3rd
Division was relieved by the 2nd and the 11th Field Coy. by the 7th,
on May the 10th. The 3rd Division passed into close reserve, and the
11th Field Company moved to Pont Noyelles on the Hallue, and took over
various Corps jobs from the 6th Field Company.
3. PONT NOYELLES.
The few days rest in the valley of the Hallue will be memorable to
members of the company chiefly by reason of the glorious weather and
the beauty of the country-side in its garb of late spring. Even thus
early in what was destined to be a hot and dry summer, the sun shone
warm enough to make the deep lagoons along the river attractive to
bathers. The quarters taken over were all crowded practically under
one roof right on the main cross roads in Pont Noyelles, and as the
Boche bombing planes were rather active, the greater part of the
company was shifted out of the village into two tented camps by the
riverside. Work was not very exacting, and consisted of improvements
to the bridge crossings over the Hallue and the development of the
trench system designed as a bridge head defence in front of Pont
Noyelles and Querrieu. The 86th Labour Company, R.E., supplied parties
for these works, supervised by the 11th Field Company.
It has frequently been remarked, throughout the history of the unit,
that release from strenuous line work was generally followed by an
increase of sickness. No doubt the rest following heavy and absorbing
work brought about re-action, physical as well as mental.
This occasion was no exception to the rule, as an outbreak of
influenza, or some such disease, led to the evacuation to hospital of
a considerable number of men, a total of 34 being lost to the unit in
this way in five days ending May 15th. No. 1 section suffered
particularly severely, and a number of original members of the unit,
men rather advanced in years, after surviving two winters, were
invalided out of the service as the result of this outbreak.
While the Division was out of the line it was inspected by the
Commander-in-Chief, F.-M. Sir Douglas Haig, a Brigade group at the
time, and the dismounted portion of the 11th Field Company took part
in the 11th Brigade parade. Very short notice was received, and right
up to the morning of the inspection there had been no opportunity for
even a proper section parade, since leaving the rest area in March.
Nevertheless, the Company, rising to the situation, carried out the
necessary movements, including a march past, with precision and
success. The transport were not on this parade, but were carefully
inspected about the same time by the A.A. and Q.M.G., 3rd Division,
and the C.R.E.
Pont Noyelles was left on May 21st, when the 3rd Division relieved the
4th Australian Division in the Villers Brettoneux sector. The 4th
Field Company A.E. took over the Corps works in the Hallue valley, and
the 13th Field Company A.E. was relieved in the line. Company
Headquarters was established in a railway cutting just north of the
Bois l’Abbé, near Villers Brettoneux, together with 2, 3, and 4
sections. The remainder of No. 1 section went to Blangy-Tronville,
together with some of the surveyors, for whom there was no
accommodation suitable for map work in the cutting, while the horse
lines were established at Lamotte, a little further along the river.
4. SUMMER AT VILLERS BRETTONEUX.
The line held by the 3rd Division at Villers Brettoneux, which
junctioned with the French on the right opposite Monument Wood, was so
close to the town that the support line actually ran through one
corner near the railway station. The possession of the town with its
command of the Somme valley was of great importance; the enemy had
captured it once, only to be turned out again; and signs were not
wanting that he intended to attack again, and soon. These
considerations enjoined a more than ordinary alertness on the defence,
and a vigorous artillery programme of counter preparation.
The 11th Field Company had a direct interest in the artillery
programme, because a fine pair of 8in. “hows.” lived just outside
their railway cutting, and were very active. Such neighbours naturally
“drew crabs” (as the saying was, i.e., attracted enemy fire), but
fortunately no great harm was done during the company’s tenancy.
The camp in the railway cutting was, as a matter of fact, soon made
reasonably safe against shell fire by burrowing into the solid chalk.
Gas was a more insidious danger; gas shelling was frequent, and
sometimes extraordinarily heavy, as on the night of the 25-26th, when
Villers Brettoneux, the Bois l’Abbé, and the valley between were
literally drenched with mustard gas from many thousands of shells.
Fortunately the immediate vicinity of the camp escaped the worst of
it, and the vigilance of doubled gas guards prevented casualties in
the camp itself.
Although a number of shells, both high explosive and gas, fell at
different times right in the cutting, the most serious damage resulted
from a mysterious something which screamed into the camp one night,
broke all the crockery in the officers
|
homme et des animaux domestiques,’ Paris,
1860, 2nd edit., 1877-79.--_Diesing, C. M._, ‘Systema helminthum,’
Vienna, 1850.--_Dujardin, F._, ‘Histoire naturelle des helminthes
ou vers intestineaux,’ Paris, 1845.--_Goeze, T. A. S._, ‘Versuch
einer Naturgeschichte der Eingeweidewürmer thierischer Körper,’
Blankenburgh, 1782.--_Küchenmeister, F._, ‘Die in und an dem Körper des
lebenden Menschen vorkommenden Parasiten,’ Leipsic, 1855, 2nd. edit.,
1878-79; Eng. edit., by Lankester, 1857.--_Le Clerc, D._, ‘A Natural
and medicinal History of Worms bred in the bodies of men and other
animals’ (_sic_), Browne’s edit., London, 1721.--_Leuckart, R._, ‘Die
menschlichen Parasiten, und die von ihren herruhrenden Krankheiten,’
Leipsic und Heidelberg, 1863-1876.--_Redi, F._, ‘De animalculis vivis
quæ in corporibus animalium vivorum reperiuntur, observationes;’ Coste’s
edition, Amstelædami, 1688.--_Rudolphi, C. A._, ‘Entozoorum sive vermium
intestinalium historia naturalis,’ Amsterdam, 1808.--_Idem_, ‘Entozoorum
Synopsis,’ Berlin, 1819.--_Van Beneden, P. J._, ‘Animal Parasites and
Messmates,’ London, 1876.
Several of the above works, while professing to deal with human
parasites only, cover more or less of the whole ground of helminthology.
Leuckart’s work is invaluable in this respect; and in the matter of
literary references of a professional kind Davaine’s treatise is itself
well nigh exhaustive. In any ordinary volume it is not possible to
give a complete bibliography of parasitism. I make no pretension to
do so here; nevertheless, the large number of modern memoirs that I
have received from the distinguished writers themselves, enables me to
render this part of my book very useful. As second only in importance
to the above-mentioned works may be added the following--whether minor
treatises, memoirs, monographs, comprehensive articles, or reports of a
general or special character, respectively. As such it will be seen that
some of them are sufficiently comprehensive, and their mere enumeration
will enable the beginner to realise something like a fair estimate of
the scope of helminthology. In the case of my own works I have ventured
to add references to reviews and notices, because many of the latter
contain valuable original suggestions made by the various anonymous
writers.
BIBLIOGRAPHY (No. 2).--_Bastian, H. C._, “On the Anatomy and Physiology
of the Nematoids, parasitic and free,” ‘Philosophical Transactions,’
1865 (see also Bibliog., No. 60).--_Cobbold, T. S._, ‘Worms; a series of
lectures on Practical Helminthology,’ London, 1872; Italian edition by
Tommasi. Milan, Florence, &c., 1873.--_Idem_, ‘The Internal Parasites
of our Domesticated Animals,’ London, 1873; Italian edit. by Tommasi,
Florence, 1874.--_Idem_, ‘Tapeworms (Human), their Sources, Varieties,
and Treatment,’ London, 3rd edit., 1875. Reviews (1st and 2nd edit.,
with ‘Threadworms’), in ‘Brit. and For. Med.-Chir. Review’ for 1867,
p. 433; in ‘Edin. Med. Journ.’ for 1866-67, p. 107; in ‘Lancet,’
Nov. 10th, 1866; in ‘Popular Science Review,’ Oct. 1st, 1866; in
‘Intellectual Observer,’ Oct. 1866; in ‘Med. Press and Circular,’
Jan. 16th, 1867; again in the ‘Lancet,’ for March 13th, 1867; and in
‘Dublin Quart. Journ. of Medical Science’ for 1867, 3rd edit.; in the
‘Field,’ Sept. 25th, 1875; and in ‘Popular Science Review’ for Jan.,
1876.--_Idem_, ‘Catalogue of the Specimens of Entozoa in the Museum
of the Royal College of Surgeons of England,’ London, 1866; noticed
in the ‘Lancet’ for March 24th, 1866, p. 321.--_Idem_, “On the best
Methods of displaying Entozoa in Museums,” ‘Journ. Linn. Soc.,’ vol.
viii, p. 170.--_Idem_, ‘New Entozootic Malady,’ &c., 1864; popular
brochure, reviewed in the ‘Lancet,’ Feb. 4th, 1865, p. 128; in the
‘Athenæum,’ Jan. 21st, 1865, p. 87; in the ‘British Med. Journal,’
Jan., 1865; in the ‘Veterinary Review and Stockowners’ Journal,’ No.
2, New Series, Feb., 1865, p. 76; in the ‘Reader,’ Feb. 4th, 1865, p.
142; in ‘Med. Times and Gaz.’ for June 2nd, 1865; in the ‘Field’ for
March 18th, 1865.--_Idem_, “Parasites of Man,” forming a series of
articles contributed to the ‘Midland Naturalist,’ 1878-79.--_Idem_,
“Notes on Entozoa contained in the various Metropolitan Museums,” in
‘Lancet,’ May 13th, 1865, p. 503.--_Idem_, “Report on _Plica polonica_,
in reference to Parasites,” in ‘Pathological Soc. Trans.,’ 1866, p.
419.--_Idem_, “Report on Experiments respecting the Development and
Migrations of the Entozoa,” ‘British Assoc. Reports’ (Bath Meeting)
for 1864, p. 111; and briefly noticed in ‘Lancet’ for Sept. 24th,
1864.--_Idem_, Miscellaneous observations, including “Note on Parasites
in the Lower Animals,” in ‘Dub. Med. Press’ for Feb. 11th, 1863, p.
154.--_Idem_, “Vegetables, Fruits, and Water considered as sources of
Intestinal Worms;” in the ‘Popular Science Review’ for Jan., 1865, p.
163.--_Idem_ (anonymously), “On Comparative Pathology and Therapeutics”
(in relation to Entozoötics); leading art. in ‘Lancet’ for Dec. 9th,
1865, p. 652.--_Idem_, “List of Entozoa, including Pentastomes, from
animals dying at the Zoological Society’s Menagerie, between 1857-60
inclusive, with descriptions of several new species,” ‘Proc. Zool.
Soc.,’ 1861.--_Idem_, “Remarks on all the Human Entozoa,” ‘Proc. Zool.
Soc.,’ 1862; abstracts in ‘Brit. Med. Journ.’ for 1862, and in ‘Edinb.
New Phil. Journ.,’ vol. xvii, new series, 1863, p. 145; in Report of
the ‘Proceed. of the Brit. Assoc. at Cambridge,’ 1862.--_Idem_, “Our
Food-producing Ruminants, and the Parasites which reside in them;
being the Cantor Lectures of the Society for the Encouragement of
Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce,” delivered in 1871, and pub. in the
‘Journal of the Soc. of Arts’ for that year.--_Davaine, C._, “Les
Cestoïdes,” in ‘Dict. Encycl. des Sci. Med.,’ Paris, 1876.--_Eberth,
C. J._, ‘Untersuchungen ueber Nematoden,’ Leipsic, 1863.--_Heller,
A._, “Darmschmarotzer,” in Von Ziemssen’s ‘Handbuch,’ Bd. vii, 1876;
and in the American edition of the same, 1877.--_Jones, T. R._, “List
of Entozoa of Greenland,” taken from _Krabbe_; ‘Arctic Manual,’ 1875,
p. 179.--_Krabbe, H._, ‘Helminthologiske Undersogelser,’ Copenhagen,
1865.--_Leuckart, R._, ‘Die Blasenbandwürmer und ihre Entwicklung,’
Giessen, 1856.--_Moquin-Tandon, A._, “Epizoa and Entozoa,” in Hulme’s
edit. of his ‘Elements of Medical Zoology,’ London, 1871.--_Nordmann,
A. von_, ‘Mikrographische Beiträge zur Naturgeschichte der wirbellosen
Thiere,’ Berlin, 1832.--_Olsson, P._, “Entozoa, iakttagna hos
Skandanaviska hafsfiskar.,” Lund, ‘Univ. Årsskrift,’ 1867.--_Owen,
R._, “Entozoa,” art. in Todd’s ‘Cyclopædia of Anat. and Physiol.,’
London, 1839.--_Idem_, “Entozoa,” ‘Lectures (iv and v) on the
Comp. Anat. and Physiol. of the Invertebrate Animals,’ London,
1855.--_Pagenstecher, H. A._, ‘Trematodenlarven und Trematoden,’
Heidelberg, 1857.--_Rhind, W._, ‘A Treatise on the Nature and Cure of
Intestinal Worms, &c.,’ London, 1829.--_Rolleston, G._, “Characteristics
of Nematelminthes and Platyelminthes,” in his ‘Forms of Animal
Life,’ Oxford, 1870.--_Schneider, A._, ‘Monographie der Nematoden,’
Berlin, 1866.--_Siebold, C. von._, “Parasiten,” art. in Wagener’s
‘Handwörterbuch der Physiol., &c.,’ 1845.--_Idem_, “Helminthes,” Book
v, in Burnett’s edit. of Siebold and Stannius’ ‘Comparative Anatomy,’
London and Boston, 1854.--_Thomson, A._, “Entozoa,” in the art. “Ovum,”
in Todd’s ‘Cyclop. of Anat. and Physiol.,’ London, 1859.--_Van Beneden,
P. J._, ‘Mémoire sur les Vers Intestineaux,’ Paris, 1858.--_Idem_, “Les
Vers Cestoïdes,” ‘Mém. de l’Acad. Roy.,’ Brussels, 1850.--_Verrill,
A. E._, “The External and Internal Parasites of Man and the Domestic
Animals,” ‘Rep. of Board of Agriculture,’ Connecticut, U.S., 1870.--_Von
Baer, K. E._, ‘Observations on Entozoa;’ in an analytical notice of
his article “Beiträge zur Kentniss der niedern Thiere,” from ‘Nova
Acta Nat. Cur.,’ tom. xiii, in the ‘Zool. Journ.,’ vol. iv, p. 250,
1828-29.--_Wagener, G. R._, ‘Beiträge zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der
Eingeweidewürmer,’ Haarlem, 1857.--_Weinland, D. F._, ‘An Essay on the
Tapeworms of Man,’ Cambridge, U.S., 1858.
BOOK I.
PARASITES OF MAN.
Whatever notions people may entertain respecting the dignity of the
human race, there is no gainsaying the fact that we share with the lower
animals the rather humiliating privilege and prerogative of entertaining
a great variety of parasites. These are for the most part entozoal in
habit. As the parasites are apt to cause suffering to the bearer, a
superstitious age sought to interpret their presence as having some
connection with human wrong-doing. We can now afford to smile at such
erroneous ideas. The intimate relation subsisting between parasitic
forms dwelling in man and animals, and their interdependence upon one
another, alone suffices to preclude the idea that parasites have been
arbitrarily placed within the human bearer. It would seem, indeed, that
our existence is essential to the welfare and propagation of certain
species of parasites. Possibly it is only by accepting the hypothesis
of “Natural Selection” that we can escape the somewhat undignified
conclusion that the entozoa were expressly created to dwell in us, and
also that we were in part designed and destined to entertain them. View
the matter as we may, the internal parasites of man and animals strictly
conform to a few well-known types of structure, but these types branch
out into infinitely varied specific forms. The vulgar mind sees nothing
attractive in the morphology and organisation of a parasitic worm, and
common-place conceptions of the beautiful cannot be expected to embrace
within their narrow grasp the marvelous harmony and order that pervade
the structure and economy of the individual members of this remarkable
class of beings.
SECTION I.--TREMATODA (Flukes).
_Fasciola hepatica_, Linneus.--The first form I have to consider is
the common liver fluke. The part this entozoon plays in the production
of disease will be fully stated when treating of the parasites of the
sheep and other ruminants. About twenty instances of its occurrence
in the human body have been recorded. It has been found beneath the
skin in the sole of the foot (Giesker), and also under the scalp
(Harris), and behind the ear (Fox). Its more frequent seat is in the
liver and gall-ducts (Pallas, Brera, Bidloo, Malpighi) and gall-bladder
(Partridge). The alleged cases by Bauhin, Wepfer, and Chabert are
spurious, as is probably also that given by Mehlis. Duval’s case appears
to be genuine, but the occurrence of the worm in the portal vein was
accidental. Dr Murchison has recorded a case, occurring at St Thomas’s
Hospital, where a solitary specimen was found in the liver. Dr H. V.
Carter also met with the worm in a young Hindoo.
In the second half of the present work I shall reproduce Blanchard’s
admirable figure of the sexually mature worm (Fig. 61), accompanied
by a categorical statement respecting the known facts of development.
In this place, however, I may observe that the cases recorded by
Giesker, Harris, and Fox had clearly pointed to the circumstance that
the higher larvæ of this fluke must be armed cercariæ, otherwise they
could not have bored their way through the human skin. As we shall
see, Dr Willemoes-Suhm’s investigations have furnished evidence as to
the truth of this supposition. For anatomical details I refer to my
introductory treatise. In the adult state the liver fluke has been known
from the earliest times. We have clear evidences that it was described
by Gabucinus in the year 1547, and also subsequently by Cornelius Gemma,
who, in a work published some thirty years later, refers to an epizootic
disease prevalent in Holland during the year 1552, and which was very
justly attributed to the parasite in question. After this date many
writers described the liver fluke more or less accurately, and entire
volumes were devoted to the consideration of the formidable disease
which it occasions. The nomenclature of the parasite has been a subject
of controversy. Amongst naturalists in general the common liver fluke
is often described under the combined generic and specific name of
_Distoma hepaticum_; but the title is both incorrect and inappropriate.
The proper generic appellation of this parasite is _Fasciola_, as
first proposed by the illustrious Linneus (1767) and subsequently
adopted by F. Müller (1787), Brera (1811), Ramdohr (1814), and others.
Unfortunately Retzius (1786) and Zeder (1800) changed the generic
title without good cause, and the majority of writers, following their
authority, refused to employ the original name, although a consideration
of the distinctive types of structure severally displayed by the genera
_Distoma_ and _Fasciola_ fairly demanded the retention of the Linnean
title. In later times M. Blanchard (1847) strongly advocated the
original nomenclature, and I have myself continually urged its adoption.
On somewhat different grounds Professor Moquin-Tandon followed the same
course.
In the sexually mature state the liver fluke commonly measures three
fourths of an inch in length, occasionally reaching an entire inch or
even sixteen lines; its greatest breadth also varying from half an
inch to seven or eight lines transversely; body very flat, presenting
distinct dorsal and ventral surfaces, frequently curled toward the
latter during life; upper or anterior end suddenly constricted, produced
and pointed in the centre, forming the so-called head and neck;
posterior extremity less acuminated, sometimes rounded, or even slightly
truncated; margins smooth, occasionally a little undulated, especially
towards the upper part; oral sucker terminal, oval, rather smaller than
the ventral acetabulum, which is placed immediately below the root of
the neck; reproductive orifices in the middle line, a little below the
oral sucker; intromittent organ usually protruded and spirally curved;
a central, light-coloured space, covering two thirds of the body from
above downwards, marks the region of the internal male reproductive
organs, being bordered on either side and below by a continuous dark
band, indicating the position of the so-called yolk-forming organs; a
small, brown-coloured, rosette-like body situated directly below the
ventral acetabulum, marks the limits of the uterine duct; a series of
dark lines, branching downwards and outwards on either side, indicate
the position of the digestive organs; general color of the body pale
brownish yellow, with a slight rose tint. The surface of the body,
though smooth to the naked eye, is clothed throughout with small
epidermal spines which diminish in size towards the tail.
If any argument were necessary to show how desirable it is to
furnish full descriptions of the commoner kinds of parasite, I could
adduce numerous instances that have been brought under my notice
where professional men and others have been entirely mistaken as to
the essential nature of their parasitic finds. Thus, I have known an
instance where a great authority on the diseases of dogs has persisted
in asserting for the free proglottides of a tapeworm a nematode origin;
and, in like manner, human tapeworm-segments have frequently been
mistaken for independent fluke parasites. One of the most remarkable
instances of this kind is that which I have elsewhere described as
an error on the part of Dr Chabert. My reasons for so regarding his
interpretation of the facts observed by him stand as follows:
In the ‘Boston Medical and Surgical Journal’ for the years 1852-53-54,
Dr J. X. Chabert described several cases of Tænia, and he averred that
the tapeworms were associated with numerous specimens of _Distoma
hepaticum_. The passage of distomes by patients during life was even
regarded by Dr Chabert as indicative of the presence of Tænia within
the intestines. Surely, I remarked, Dr Chabert was mistaken. Are not
these so-called distomes the well-known _proglottides_? Not willingly
doubting Dr Chabert’s statements, but desirous, if possible, of
verifying the accuracy of his conclusions, I wrote to him (March 22nd,
1864) requesting the loan of a specimen, but I was not fortunate enough
to receive a reply. In the “Case of Tænia” in a boy four and a half
years old, given in the 49th vol. of the journal, Dr Chabert writes as
follows:--“In consequence of his passing the _Distoma hepaticum_, I
concluded he must be afflicted with Tænia.” Further on it is added, that
the administration of an astringent injection “caused the discharge of
innumerable small worms (_Distoma hepaticum_).” I think this is quite
decisive. The idea of “innumerable” flukes being expelled in this way is
altogether out of the question.
The only genuine case in which any considerable number of Distomata,
of this species, have been observed in the human subject is the one
recently recorded by Dr Prunac. In this instance two flukes were vomited
along with blood immediately after the administration of salines (sel
de Seignette), and about thirty were passed per anum. On the following
day, some tapeworm proglottides having been evacuated, both salts and
male-fern extract were administered. This caused the expulsion of an
entire tapeworm, and also about twenty more flukes. Notwithstanding
this successful treatment the hæmatemesis returned in about a month,
when, finally, three more flukes were vomited and the bleeding ceased.
Had not the parasites been submitted for identification to a competent
observer (Prof. Martins, of Montpellier), some doubt might have been
entertained as to the genuineness of this remarkable case. In reference
to Dr Prunac’s comments on the facts of fluke-parasitism in man, I will
only remark that Dr Kerr’s Chinese cases, to which he refers, were
probably due to _Distoma crassum_ and not to _D. hepaticum_. The Chinese
flukes will be noticed below.
BIBLIOGRAPHY (No. 3).--Full references to details of the cases by
Partridge, Fox, and Harris are given in Appendix B. to Lankester’s
Edit. of _Küchenmeister’s_ Manual. See also the works of Davaine and
_Leuckart_ (_l. c._ Bibl. No. 1).--_Carter, H. V._, “Note on _Distoma
hepaticum_” (from a patient under the care of Mr Pandoorung), ‘Bombay
Med. and Physical Soc. Trans.’ (Appendix), 1862.--_Chabert, J. X._
(quoted above). Murchison, C., ‘Clinical Lectures on Diseases of the
Liver,’ (2nd Edit., Appendix), London, 1877.--_Prunac_, De la Douve ou
Distome hépatique chez l’homme; in ‘Gazette des Hôpitaux’ for December,
1878 (p. 1147). For further references in this work, see Bibliog. No. 49.
_Distoma lanceolatum_, Mehlis.--At least three instances of the
occurrence of this small fluke in the human body have been observed.
The authority for these cases rests, severally, with Bucholz, who
found them in the gall bladder in considerable numbers at Weimar; with
Chabert, who expelled a large number from the intestines of a girl in
France; and with Küchner, who obtained forty-seven specimens from a
girl in Bohemia. Probably many similar instances have been overlooked,
and Küchenmeister hints that Duval’s parasites (above mentioned) may
have been this species. Although this worm will again be incidentally
noticed in connection with bovine parasites (and its ciliated larvæ
will also be referred to when discussing the characters of the embryo
of Bilharzia), I here subjoin a diagnosis of the characters of the
adult parasite. The lancet-shaped liver fluke is a small flat helminth,
measuring rather more than the third of an inch in length, and about
one line and a half in breadth, being also especially characterised by
its lanceolate form; the widest part of the body corresponds with a
transverse line drawn across the spot where the vitellaria terminate
below, and from this point, on either side, the width of the animal
becomes gradually narrowed towards the extremities; both ends are
pointed, but the inferior or caudal one more obtusely than the anterior
or oral end; the general surface is smooth throughout, and unarmed; the
reproductive orifices are placed in the central line immediately in
front of the ventral sucker, and below the point at which the intestine
bifurcates; the oral sucker is nearly terminal, and 1/50″ in breadth,
the ventral acetabulum being about the same diameter; the testes form
two lobed organs placed one in front of the other in the middle line
of the body and directly below the ventral sucker; the uterine canal
is remarkably long, forming a series of tolerably regular folds, which
occupy the central and hinder parts of the body, reaching almost to
the caudal extremity. The vitelligene glands cover a limited space, on
either side of the centre of the body near the margin. The _foramen
caudale_ communicates with a contractile vesicle, which passes upwards
in the form of a central trunk-vessel, early dividing into two main
branches; these latter reach as far forwards as the œsophageal bulb,
opposite which organ they suddenly curve upon themselves, retracing
their course for a considerable distance backwards; the digestive canals
are slightly widened towards their lower ends, which occupy a line
nearly corresponding with the commencement of the lower fifth of the
body; the ova are conspicuous within the uterine folds, which present a
dark brownish color in front, passing to a pale yellow color below.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--The lancet-shaped fluke (_Distoma lanceolatum_),
showing the disposition of the digestive and reproductive organs
internally. Viewed from behind; mag. about 12 diameters. After
Blanchard.]
In reference to Kichner’s remarkable case I reproduce an abstract of it
from Leuckart’s account (‘Die menschlichen Parasiten,’ Bd. i, s. 608),
the original particulars of which were communicated to Leuckart by Dr
Kichner himself:--
“Dr Kichner’s patient was a young girl, the daughter of the parish
shepherd at Kaplitz, having been accustomed to look after the sheep
ever since she was nine years old. The pasture where the animals
fed was enclosed by woods, being traversed by two water dykes, and
being, moreover, also supplied by ten little stagnant pools. These
reservoirs harboured numerous amphibia and mollusks (such as _Lymnæus_
and _Paludina_), and the child often quenched her thirst from the half
putrid water. Probably she also partook of the watercresses growing in
the ditches. At length her abdomen became much distended, the limbs much
emaciated, and her strength declined. Half a year before death she was
confined to her bed, being all the while shamefully maltreated by her
step-mother. Dr Kichner only saw her three days before her death, and
ascertained that she had complained of pain (for several years) over the
region of the liver. A _sectio cadaveris_ was ordered by the Government,
when (in addition to the external evidences of the cruel violence to
which the poor creature had been subjected) it was found that she had
an enormously enlarged liver, weighing eleven pounds. The gall-bladder
which was very much contracted and nearly empty, contained eight calculi
and forty-seven specimens of the _Distoma lanceolatum_, all of which
were sexually mature.”
As I have remarked in a former comment on this singular case, one can
have no difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that these parasites
were obtained from the girl’s swallowing trematode larvæ, either in
their free or in their encysted condition. Leuckart says it was not
possible to ascertain whether the parasites had any connection with the
gall-stones, or whether the two maladies, so to speak, were independent
of each other; yet this question might possibly have been solved if the
calculi had been broken up in order to ascertain their structure. It
is just possible that dead distomes may have formed their nuclei, and
if so, the circumstance would, of course, point to the worms as the
original source of the malady.
So far as I am aware, the actual transformations undergone by the
larvæ of _Distoma lanceolatum_ have not been observed. The _Planorbis
marginatus_ has been confidently referred to as the intermediate bearer
of the cercariæ of the common fluke, and Leuckart supposes that the same
mollusk harbours the larvæ of this species. The ciliated embryos carry
a boring spine or tooth, and it is most probable that the higher larvæ
are similarly armed.
BIBLIOGRAPHY (No. 4).--_Kichner_ (see _Leuckart_), quoted
above.--_Cobbold_, ‘Entozoa’ (p. 187).--The case by Bucholz (reported as
one of _Fasciola hepatica_) is given by _Jördens_ in his work (quoted by
Diesing and Leuckart) ‘Entomologie und Helminthologie des menschlichen
Körpers,’ (s. 64, tab. vii, fig. 14), 1802.--_Chabert’s_ French case is
quoted by _Rudolphi_ in his ‘Entozoorum sive vermium,’ &c. (_loc. cit._,
Bibl. No. 1), p. 326, 1808.
_Distoma crassum_, Busk.--This large species was originally discovered
by Prof. Busk in the duodenum of a Lascar who died at the Seamen’s
Hospital, 1843. It, however, remained undescribed until 1859, when, with
the discoverer’s approval, I gave some account of it to the Linnean
Society.
Of the fourteen original specimens found by Mr Busk, several have been
lost. The one that he himself gave me I handed over to Prof. Leuckart,
and it is figured in his work (‘Die mensch. Par.,’ s. 586). A second
is preserved in the museum attached to the Middlesex Hospital, and a
third is contained in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. This
last-named specimen is the best of the original set. It supplied me with
the few details of structure figured in outline in my ‘Introductory
Treatise’ (fig. 42, p. 123), published in 1864; and it also in part
formed the basis of the description of the species communicated to
the Linnean Society in June, 1859 (“Synopsis of the Distomidæ,” p. 5,
‘Proceedings,’ vol. v). The late Dr Lankester, it is true, was the first
to give a distinctive title to this entozoon (_Distoma Buskii_); but
as the discoverer objected to this nomenclature, and as Dr Lankester’s
proposed terms were unaccompanied by any original description, I
requested Mr Busk to suggest a new name for the worm, which he
accordingly did. As I subsequently pointed out, Von Siebold had already
employed the compound title _Distoma crassum_ to designate a small fluke
infesting the house-martin (_Hirundo urbica_); but for reasons similar
to those which contributed to set aside Dr Lankester’s nomenclature, the
title adopted in my synopsis at length came to be recognised by Leuckart
and by other well-known helminthologists. Before this recognition took
place, Dr Weinland, of Frankfort, had so far accepted Lankester’s
nomenclature as to call the species _Dicrocœlium Buskii_. In my judgment
there are no sufficient grounds for retaining Dujardin’s genus. Further,
I may observe that, in addition to the above-mentioned specimens, two
others are preserved in the Museum at King’s College. Thus, only five
out of the fourteen specimens are still in existence.
No well-authenticated second instance of the occurrence of this worm
took place until the year 1873, when a missionary and his wife from
China consulted Dr George Johnson respecting parasites from which they
were suffering. After a brief interval, both of Dr Johnson’s patients
were by an act of courtesy on the part of this eminent physician placed
under my professional care. I need hardly add that Dr Johnson had from
the very first recognised the trematode character of the parasites. From
the patients themselves I ascertained that they had been resident in
China for about four years. During that period they had together freely
partaken of fresh vegetables in the form of salad, and also occasionally
of oysters, but more particularly of fish, which, in common with the
oysters, abound in the neighbourhood of Ningpo. From their statements it
appeared to me that to one or other of these sources we must look for
an explanation of the fact of their concurrent infection. Fluke larvæ,
as we know, abound in mollusks and fish; but whether any of the forms
hitherto found in oysters or in fish have any genetic relation to the
flukes of man, is a question that cannot very well be settled in the
absence of direct experimental proof. I should add that it was not until
after their visit to the interior of the country, some 130 miles distant
from Ningpo, that the symptoms (which Dr Johnson in the first instance,
and myself subsequently, considered to have been due to the presence
of the parasites) made their appearance. Whilst in the country the
missionary and his wife freely partook of freshwater fish, and on one
occasion they received a quantity of oysters that had been sent up from
Ningpo. The husband assured me that the fish were always thoroughly well
cooked.
If it be asked what were the symptoms produced, I can only furnish
such few and hitherto unpublished particulars as the missionary
himself supplied. I need hardly say that he was a highly cultured and
intelligent gentleman, since only such persons are chosen for missionary
work in China.
From inquiries made by me on the 29th of January, 1875, I learnt
that they left Ningpo in November, 1872, and travelled thence 130
miles into the interior of the country. In the following September,
or about ten months subsequently, the missionary was attacked with
diarrhœa, which persisted until expulsion of some of the parasites had
occurred. According to the patient’s statements this result, so far,
was entirely due to his having been placed on a milk diet; this course
of treatment having been recommended by Dr Henderson, of Shanghae. The
patient himself always suspected the presence of intestinal worms of
some sort or other, although a Japanese doctor laughed at the idea of
such a thing. Some other doctor treated this missionary for parasites,
administering both male-fern and santonine without effect.
It was not until several months had elapsed that his wife was attacked
with diarrhœa. In both cases there was more or less flatus. The motions
were white, and there were other indications implying that the liver was
affected. Later on, symptoms of indigestion, with heartburn, set in and
became very severe. Streaks of blood appeared in the fæces, but there
was no dysentery. For the most part these symptoms were attributed to
the effects of climate.
When, in the month of February, 1875, I saw the missionary a second
time, professionally, I found that all the old symptoms had returned.
He had a foul tongue, the surface of the body was cold, he felt
chills, and the pulse, though regular, registered ninety-six to the
minute. Indigestion, nausea, headache, and diarrhœa had reappeared.
Notwithstanding these febrile symptoms, so satisfied was the patient
himself that all his ailments were entirely due to the presence of
parasites, that I felt inclined
|
."
There was silence on the verandah of the Newburys for the space of ten
seconds. Then Frances burst out with: "Mother, you know neither of us
can go tomorrow. If it were any other day! But the day of the picnic!"
"I'm sorry, but one of you must go," said Mrs. Newbury firmly. "Your
father said so when I called at the store to show him the letter.
Grandmother Newbury would be very much hurt and displeased if her
invitation were disregarded--you know that. But we leave it to
yourselves to decide which one shall go."
"Don't do that," implored Frances miserably. "Pick one of us
yourself--pull straws--anything to shorten the agony."
"No; you must settle it for yourselves," said Mrs. Newbury. But in
spite of herself she looked at Cecilia. Cecilia was apt to be looked
at, someway, when things were to be given up. Mostly it was Cecilia
who gave them up. The family had come to expect it of her; they all
said that Cecilia was very unselfish.
Cecilia knew that her mother looked at her, but did not turn her face.
She couldn't, just then; she looked away out over the hills and tried
to swallow something that came up in her throat.
"Glad I'm not a girl," said Ralph, when Mrs. Newbury had gone into the
house. "Whew! Nothing could induce me to give up that picnic--not if a
dozen Grandmother Newburys were offended. Where's your sparkle gone
now, Fran?"
"It's too bad of Grandmother Newbury," declared Frances angrily.
"Oh, Fran, she didn't know about the picnic," said Cecilia--but still
without turning round.
"Well, she needn't always be so annoyed if we don't go when we are
invited. Another day would do just as well," said Frances shortly.
Something in her voice sounded choked too. She rose and walked to the
other end of the verandah, where she stood and scowled down the road;
Ralph and Elliott, feeling uncomfortable, went away.
The verandah was very still for a little while. The sun had quite set,
and it was growing dark when Frances came back to the steps.
"Well, what are you going to do about it?" she said shortly. "Which of
us is to go to the Bay Shore?"
"I suppose I had better go," said Cecilia slowly--very slowly indeed.
Frances kicked her slippered toe against the fern _jardinière_.
"You may see Nan Harris somewhere else before she goes back," she said
consolingly.
"Yes, I may," said Cecilia. She knew quite well that she would not.
Nan would return to Campden on the special train, and she was going
back west in three days.
It was hard to give the picnic up, but Cecilia was used to giving
things up. Nobody ever expected Frances to give things up; she was so
brilliant and popular that the good things of life came her way
naturally. It never seemed to matter so much about quiet Cecilia.
* * * * *
Cecilia cried herself to sleep that night. She felt that it was
horribly selfish of her to do so, but she couldn't help it. She awoke
in the morning with a confused idea that it was very late. Why hadn't
Mary called her, as she had been told to do?
Through the open door between her room and Frances's she could see
that the latter's bed was empty. Then she saw a little note, addressed
to her, pinned on the pillow.
Dear Saint Cecilia [it ran], when you read this I shall be on
the train to Ashland to spend the day with Grandmother
Newbury. You've been giving up things so often and so long
that I suppose you think you have a monopoly of it; but you
see you haven't. I didn't tell you this last night because I
hadn't quite made up my mind. But after you went upstairs, I
fought it out to a finish and came to a decision. Sara
Beaumont would keep, but Nan Harris wouldn't, so you must go
to the picnic. I told Mary to call me instead of you this
morning, and now I'm off. You needn't spoil your fun pitying
me. Now that the wrench is over, I feel a most delightful glow
of virtuous satisfaction!
Fran.
If by running after Frances Cecilia could have brought her back,
Cecilia would have run. But a glance at her watch told her that
Frances must already be halfway to Ashland. So she could only accept
the situation.
"Well, anyway," she thought, "I'll get Mary to point Sara Beaumont out
to me, and I'll store up a description of her in my mind to tell Fran
tonight. I must remember to take notice of the colour of her eyes.
Fran has always been exercised about that."
It was mid-forenoon when Frances arrived at Ashland station.
Grandmother Newbury's man, Hiram, was waiting for her with the pony
carriage, and Frances heartily enjoyed the three-mile drive to the Bay
Shore Farm.
Grandmother Newbury came to the door to meet her granddaughter. She
was a tall, handsome old lady with piercing black eyes and thick white
hair. There was no savour of the traditional grandmother of caps and
knitting about her. She was like a stately old princess and, much as
her grandchildren admired her, they were decidedly in awe of her.
"So it is Frances," she said, bending her head graciously that Frances
might kiss her still rosy cheek. "I expected it would be Cecilia. I
heard after I had written you that there was to be a gubernatorial
picnic in Claymont today, so I was quite sure it would be Cecilia. Why
isn't it Cecilia?"
Frances flushed a little. There was a meaning tone in Grandmother
Newbury's voice.
"Cecilia was very anxious to go to the picnic today to see an old
friend of hers," she answered. "She was willing to come here, but you
know, Grandmother, that Cecilia is always willing to do the things
somebody else ought to do, so I decided I would stand on my rights as
'Miss Newbury' for once and come to the Bay Shore."
Grandmother Newbury smiled. She understood. Frances had always been
her favourite granddaughter, but she had never been blind,
clear-sighted old lady that she was, to the little leaven of
easy-going selfishness in the girl's nature. She was pleased to see
that Frances had conquered it this time.
"I'm glad it is you who have come--principally because you are
cleverer than Cecilia," she said brusquely. "Or at least you are the
better talker. And I want a clever girl and a good talker to help me
entertain a guest today. She's clever herself, and she likes young
girls. She is a particular friend of your Uncle Robert's family down
south, and that is why I have asked her to spend a few days with me.
You'll like her."
Here Grandmother Newbury led Frances into the sitting-room.
"Mrs. Kennedy, this is my granddaughter, Frances Newbury. I told you
about her and her ambitions last night. You see, Frances, we have
talked you over."
Mrs. Kennedy was a much younger woman than Grandmother Newbury. She
was certainly no more than fifty and, in spite of her grey hair,
looked almost girlish, so bright were her dark eyes, so clear-cut and
fresh her delicate face, and so smart her general appearance. Frances,
although not given to sudden likings, took one for Mrs. Kennedy. She
thought she had never seen so charming a face.
She found herself enjoying the day immensely. In fact, she forgot the
Governor's picnic and Sara Beaumont altogether. Mrs. Kennedy proved to
be a delightful companion. She had travelled extensively and was an
excellent _raconteur_. She had seen much of men and women and
crystallized her experiences into sparkling little sentences and
epigrams which made Frances feel as if she were listening to one of
the witty people in clever books. But under all her sparkling wit
there was a strongly felt undercurrent of true womanly sympathy and
kind-heartedness which won affection as speedily as her brilliance won
admiration. Frances listened and laughed and enjoyed. Once she found
time to think that she would have missed a great deal if she had not
come to Bay Shore Farm that day. Surely talking to a woman like Mrs.
Kennedy was better than looking at Sara Beaumont from a distance.
"I've been'rewarded' in the most approved storybook style," she
thought with amusement.
In the afternoon, Grandmother Newbury packed Mrs. Kennedy and Frances
off for a walk.
"The old woman wants to have her regular nap," she told them.
"Frances, take Mrs. Kennedy to the fern walk and show her the famous
'Newbury Bubble' among the rocks. I want to be rid of you both until
tea-time."
Frances and Mrs. Kennedy went to the fern walk and the beautiful
"Bubble"--a clear, round spring of amber-hued water set down in a cup
of rock overhung with ferns and beeches. It was a spot Frances had
always loved. She found herself talking freely to Mrs. Kennedy of her
hopes and plans. The older woman drew the girl out with tactful
sympathy until she found that Frances's dearest ambition was some day
to be a writer of books like Sara Beaumont.
"Not that I expect ever to write books like hers," she said hurriedly,
"and I know it must be a long while before I can write anything worth
while at all. But do you think--if I try hard and work hard--that I
might do something in this line some day?"
"I think so," said Mrs. Kennedy, smiling, "if, as you say, you are
willing to work hard and study hard. There will be a great deal of
both and many disappointments. Sara Beaumont herself had a hard time
at first--and for a very long first too. Her family was poor, you
know, and Sara earned enough money to send away her first manuscripts
by making a pot of jelly for a neighbour. The manuscripts came back,
and Sara made more jelly and wrote more stories. Still they came back.
Once she thought she had better give up writing stories and stick to
the jelly alone. There did seem some little demand for the one and
none at all for the other. But she determined to keep on until she
either succeeded or proved to her own satisfaction that she could make
better jelly than stories. And you see she did succeed. But it means
perseverance and patience and much hard work. Prepare yourself for
that, Frances, and one day you will win your place. Then you will look
back to the 'Newbury Bubble,' and you will tell me what a good
prophetess I was."
They talked longer--an earnest, helpful talk that went far to inspire
Frances's hazy ambition with a definite purpose. She understood that
she must not write merely to win fame for herself or even for the
higher motive of pure pleasure in her work. She must aim, however
humbly, to help her readers to higher planes of thought and
endeavour. Then and only then would it be worth while.
"Mrs. Kennedy is going to drive you to the station," said Grandmother
Newbury after tea. "I am much obliged to you, Frances, for giving up
the picnic today and coming to the Bay Shore to gratify an old woman's
inconvenient whim. But I shall not burden you with too much gratitude,
for I think you have enjoyed yourself."
"Indeed, I have," said Frances heartily. Then she added with a laugh,
"I think I would feel much more meritorious if it had not been so
pleasant. It has robbed me of all the self-sacrificing complacency I
felt this morning. You see, I wanted to go to that picnic to see Sara
Beaumont, and I felt quite like a martyr at giving it up."
Grandmother Newbury's eyes twinkled. "You would have been beautifully
disappointed had you gone. Sara Beaumont was not there. Mrs. Kennedy,
I see you haven't told our secret. Frances, my dear, let me introduce
you two over again. This lady is Mrs. Sara Beaumont Kennedy, the
writer of _The Story of Idlewild_ and all those other books you so
much admire."
* * * * *
The Newburys were sitting on the verandah at dusk, too tired and too
happy to talk. Ralph and Elliott had seen the Governor; more than
that, they had been introduced to him, and he had shaken hands with
them both and told them that their father and he had been chums when
just their size. And Cecilia had spent a whole day with Nan Harris,
who had not changed at all except to grow taller. But there was one
little cloud on her content.
"I wanted to see Sara Beaumont to tell Frances about her, but I
couldn't get a glimpse of her. I don't even know if she was there."
"There comes Fran up the station road now," said Ralph. "My eyes,
hasn't she a step!"
Frances came smiling over the lawn and up the steps.
"So you are all home safe," she said gaily. "I hope you feasted your
eyes on your beloved Governor, boys. I can tell that Cecilia
forgathered with Nan by the beatific look on her face."
"Oh, Fran, it was lovely!" cried Cecilia. "But I felt so sorry--why
didn't you let me go to Ashland? It was too bad you missed it--and
Sara Beaumont."
"Sara Beaumont was at the Bay Shore Farm," said Frances. "I'll tell
you all about it when I get my breath--I've been breathless ever since
Grandmother Newbury told me of it. There's only one drawback to my
supreme bliss--the remembrance of how complacently self-sacrificing I
felt this morning. It humiliates me wholesomely to remember it!"
Elizabeth's Child
The Ingelows, of Ingelow Grange, were not a marrying family. Only one
of them, Elizabeth, had married, and perhaps it was her "poor match"
that discouraged the others. At any rate, Ellen and Charlotte and
George Ingelow at the Grange were single, and so was Paul down at
Greenwood Farm.
It was seventeen years since Elizabeth had married James Sheldon in
the face of the most decided opposition on the part of her family.
Sheldon was a handsome, shiftless ne'er-do-well, without any violent
bad habits, but also "without any backbone," as the Ingelows declared.
"There is sometimes hope of a man who is actively bad," Charlotte
Ingelow had said sententiously, "but who ever heard of reforming a
jellyfish?"
Elizabeth and her husband had gone west and settled on a prairie farm
in Manitoba. She had never been home since. Perhaps her pride kept her
away, for she had the Ingelow share of that, and she soon discovered
that her family's estimate of James Sheldon had been the true one.
There was no active resentment on either side, and once in a long
while letters were exchanged. Still, ever since her marriage,
Elizabeth had been practically an outsider and an alien. As the years
came and went the Ingelows at home remembered only at long intervals
that they had a sister on the western prairies.
One of these remembrances came to Charlotte Ingelow on a spring
afternoon when the great orchards about the Grange were pink and white
with apple and cherry blossoms, and over every hill and field was a
delicate, flower-starred green. A soft breeze was blowing loose petals
from the August Sweeting through the open door of the wide hall when
Charlotte came through it. Ellen and George were standing on the steps
outside.
"This kind of a day always makes me think of Elizabeth," said
Charlotte dreamily. "It was in apple-blossom time she went away." The
Ingelows always spoke of Elizabeth's going away, never of her
marrying.
"Seventeen years ago," said Ellen. "Why, Elizabeth's oldest child must
be quite a young woman now! I--I--" a sudden idea swept over and left
her a little breathless. "I would really like to see her."
"Then why don't you write and ask her to come east and visit us?"
asked George, who did not often speak, but who always spoke to some
purpose when he did.
Ellen and Charlotte looked at each other. "I would like to see
Elizabeth's child," repeated Ellen firmly.
"Do you think she would come?" asked Charlotte. "You know when James
Sheldon died five years ago, we wrote to Elizabeth and asked her to
come home and live with us, and she seemed almost resentful in the
letter she wrote back. I've never said so before, but I've often
thought it."
"Yes, she did," said Ellen, who had often thought so too, but never
said so.
"Elizabeth was always very independent," remarked George. "Perhaps she
thought your letter savoured of charity or pity. No Ingelow would
endure that."
"At any rate, you know she refused to come, even for a visit. She said
she could not leave the farm. She may refuse to let her child come."
"It won't do any harm to ask her," said George.
In the end, Charlotte wrote to Elizabeth and asked her to let her
daughter visit the old homestead. The letter was written and mailed in
much perplexity and distrust when once the glow of momentary
enthusiasm in the new idea had passed.
"What if Elizabeth's child is like her father?" queried Charlotte in a
half-whisper.
"Let us hope she won't be!" cried Ellen fervently. Indeed, she felt
that a feminine edition of James Sheldon would be more than she could
endure.
"She may not like us, or our ways," sighed Charlotte. "We don't know
how she has been brought up. She will seem like a stranger after all.
I really long to see Elizabeth's child, but I can't help fearing we
have done a rash thing, Ellen."
"Perhaps she may not come," suggested Ellen, wondering whether she
hoped it or feared it.
But Worth Sheldon did come. Elizabeth wrote back a prompt acceptance,
with no trace of the proud bitterness that had permeated her answer to
the former invitation. The Ingelows at the Grange were thrown into a
flutter when the letter came. In another week Elizabeth's child would
be with them.
"If only she isn't like her father," said Charlotte with foreboding,
as she aired and swept the southeast spare room for their expected
guest. They had three spare rooms at the Grange, but the aunts had
selected the southeast one for their niece because it was done in
white, "and white seems the most appropriate for a young girl," Ellen
said, as she arranged a pitcher of wild roses on the table.
"I think everything is ready," announced Charlotte. "I put the very
finest sheets on the bed, they smell deliciously of lavender, and we
had very good luck doing up the muslin curtains. It is pleasant to be
expecting a guest, isn't it, Ellen? I have often thought, although I
have never said so before, that our lives were too self-centred. We
seemed to have no interests outside of ourselves. Even Elizabeth has
been really nothing to us, you know. She seemed to have become a
stranger. I hope her child will be the means of bringing us nearer
together again."
"If she has James Sheldon's round face and big blue eyes and curly
yellow hair I shall never really like her, no matter how Ingelowish
she may be inside," said Ellen decidedly.
When Worth Sheldon came, each of her aunts drew a long breath of
relief. Worth was not in the least like her father in appearance.
Neither did she resemble her mother, who had been a sprightly,
black-haired and black-eyed girl. Worth was tall and straight, with a
long braid of thick, wavy brown hair, large, level-gazing grey eyes, a
square jaw, and an excellent chin with a dimple in it.
"She is the very image of Mother's sister, Aunt Alice, who died so
long ago," said Charlotte. "You don't remember her, Ellen, but I do
very well. She was the sweetest woman that ever drew breath. She was
Paul's favourite aunt, too," Charlotte added with a sigh. Paul's
antagonistic attitude was the only drawback to the joy of this
meeting. How delightful it would have been if he had not refused to be
there too, to welcome Elizabeth's child.
Worth came to hearts prepared to love her, but they must have loved
her in any case. In a day Aunt Charlotte and Aunt Ellen and shy,
quiet Uncle George had yielded wholly to her charm. She was girlishly
bright and merry, frankly delighted with the old homestead and the
quaint, old-fashioned, daintily kept rooms. Yet there was no
suggestion of gush about her; she did not go into raptures, but her
pleasure shone out in eyes and tones. There was so much to tell and
ask and remember the first day that it was not until the second
morning after her arrival that Worth asked the question her aunts had
been dreading. She asked it out in the orchard, in the emerald gloom
of a long arcade of stout old trees that Grandfather Ingelow had
planted fifty years ago.
"Aunt Charlotte, when is Uncle Paul coming up to see me? I long to see
him; Mother has talked so much to me about him. She was his favourite
sister, wasn't she?"
Charlotte and Ellen looked at each other. Ellen nodded slyly. It would
be better to tell Worth the whole truth at once. She would certainly
find it out soon.
"I do not think, my dear," said Aunt Charlotte quietly, "that your
Uncle Paul will be up to see you at all."
"Why not?" asked Worth, her serious grey eyes looking straight into
Aunt Charlotte's troubled dark ones. Aunt Charlotte understood that
Elizabeth had never told Worth anything about her family's resentment
of her marriage. It was not a pleasant thing to have to explain it all
to Elizabeth's child, but it must be done.
"I think, my dear," she said gently, "that I will have to tell you a
little bit of our family history that may not be very pleasant to hear
or tell. Perhaps you don't know that when your mother married
we--we--did not exactly approve of her marriage. Perhaps we were
mistaken; at any rate it was wrong and foolish to let it come between
us and her as we have done. But that is how it was. None of us
approved, as I have said, but none of us was so bitter as your Uncle
Paul. Your mother was his favourite sister, and he was very deeply
attached to her. She was only a year younger than he. When he bought
the Greenwood farm she went and kept house for him for three years
before her marriage. When she married, Paul was terribly angry. He was
always a strange man, very determined and unyielding. He said he would
never forgive her, and he never has. He has never married, and he has
lived so long alone at Greenwood with only deaf old Mrs. Bree to keep
house for him that he has grown odder than ever. One of us wanted to
go and keep house for him, but he would not let us. And--I must tell
you this although I hate to--he was very angry when he heard we had
invited you to visit us, and he said he would not come near the Grange
as long as you were here. Oh, you can't realize how bitter and
obstinate he is. We pleaded with him, but I think that only made him
worse. We have felt so bad over it, your Aunt Ellen and your Uncle
George and I, but we can do nothing at all."
Worth had listened gravely. The story was all new to her, but she had
long thought there must be a something at the root of her mother's
indifferent relations with her old home and friends. When Aunt
Charlotte, flushed and half-tearful, finished speaking, a little
glimmer of fun came into Worth's grey eyes, and her dimple was very
pronounced as she said,
"Then, if Uncle Paul will not come to see me, I must go to see him."
"My dear!" cried both her aunts together in dismay. Aunt Ellen got her
breath first.
"Oh, my dear child, you must not think of such a thing," she cried
nervously. "It would never do. He would--I don't know what he would
do--order you off the premises, or say something dreadful. No! No!
Wait. Perhaps he will come after all--we will see. You must have
patience."
Worth shook her head and the smile in her eyes deepened.
"I don't think he will come," she said. "Mother has told me something
about the Ingelow stubbornness. She says I have it in full measure,
but I like to call it determination, it sounds so much better. No, the
mountain will not come to Mohammed, so Mohammed will go to the
mountain. I think I will walk down to Greenwood this afternoon. There,
dear aunties, don't look so troubled. Uncle Paul won't run at me with
a pitchfork, will he? He can't do worse than order me off his
premises, as you say."
Aunt Charlotte shook her head. She understood that no argument would
turn the girl from her purpose if she had the Ingelow will, so she
said nothing more. In the afternoon Worth set out for Greenwood, a
mile away.
"Oh, what will Paul say?" exclaimed the aunts, with dismal
forebodings.
Worth met her Uncle Paul at the garden gate. He was standing there
when she came up the slope of the long lane, a tall, massive figure of
a man, with deep-set black eyes, a long, prematurely white beard, and
a hooked nose. Handsome and stubborn enough Paul Ingelow looked. It
was not without reason that his neighbours called him the oddest
Ingelow of them all.
Behind him was a fine old farmhouse in beautiful grounds. Worth felt
almost as much interested in Greenwood as in the Grange. It had been
her mother's home for three years, and Elizabeth Ingelow had loved it
and talked much to her daughter of it.
Paul Ingelow did not move or speak, although he probably guessed who
his visitor was. Worth held out her hand. "How do you do, Uncle Paul?"
she said.
Paul ignored the outstretched hand. "Who are you?" he asked gruffly.
"I am Worth Sheldon, your sister Elizabeth's daughter," she answered.
"Won't you shake hands with me, Uncle Paul?"
"I have no sister Elizabeth," he answered unbendingly.
Worth folded her hands on the gatepost and met his frowning gaze
unshrinkingly. "Oh, yes, you have," she said calmly. "You can't do
away with natural ties by simply ignoring them, Uncle Paul. They go on
existing. I never knew until this morning that you were at enmity with
my mother. She never told me. But she has talked a great deal of you
to me. She has told me often how much you and she loved each other and
how good you always were to her. She sent her love to you."
"Years ago I had a sister Elizabeth," said Paul Ingelow harshly. "I
loved her very tenderly, but she married against my will a shiftless
scamp who--"
Worth lifted her hand slightly. "He was my father, Uncle Paul, and he
was always kind to me; whatever his faults may have been I cannot
listen to a word against him."
"You shouldn't have come here, then," he said, but he said it less
harshly. There was even a certain reluctant approval of this composed,
independent niece in his eyes. "Didn't they tell you at the Grange
that I didn't want to see you?"
"Yes, they told me this morning, but _I_ wanted to see you, so I came.
Why cannot we be friends, Uncle Paul, not because we are uncle and
niece, but simply because you are you and I am I? Let us leave my
father and mother out of the question and start fair on our own
account."
For a moment Uncle Paul looked at her. She met his gaze frankly and
firmly, with a merry smile lurking in her eyes. Then he threw back his
head and laughed a hearty laugh that was good to hear. "Very well," he
said. "It is a bargain."
He put his hand over the gate and shook hers. Then he opened the gate
and invited her into the house. Worth stayed to tea, and Uncle Paul
showed her all over Greenwood.
"You are to come here as often as you like," he told her. "When a
young lady and I make a compact of friendship I am going to live up to
it. But you are not to talk to me about your mother. Remember, we are
friends because I am I and you are you, and there is no question of
anybody else."
The Grange Ingelows were amazed to see Paul bringing Worth home in his
buggy that evening. When Worth had gone into the house Charlotte told
him that she was glad to see that he had relented towards Elizabeth's
child.
"I have not," he made stern answer. "I don't know whom you mean by
Elizabeth's child. That young woman and I have taken a liking for each
other which we mean to cultivate on our own account. Don't call her
Elizabeth's child to me again."
As the days and weeks went by Worth grew dearer and dearer to the
Grange folk. The aunts often wondered to themselves how they had
existed before Worth came and, oftener yet, how they could do without
her when the time came for her to go home. Meanwhile, the odd
friendship between her and Uncle Paul deepened and grew. They read and
drove and walked together. Worth spent half her time at Greenwood.
Once Uncle Paul said to her, as if speaking half to himself,
"To think that James Sheldon could have a daughter like you!"
Up went Worth's head. Worth's grey eyes flashed. "I thought we were
not to speak of my parents?" she said. "You ought not to have been the
first to break the compact, Uncle Paul."
"I accept the rebuke and beg your pardon," he said. He liked her all
the better for those little flashes of spirit across her girlish
composure.
One day in September they were together in the garden at Greenwood.
Worth, looking lovingly and regretfully down the sun-flecked avenue of
box, said with a sigh, "Next month I must go home. How sorry I shall
be to leave the Grange and Greenwood. I have had such a delightful
summer, and I have learned to love all the old nooks and corners as
well as if I had lived here all my life."
"Stay here!" said Uncle Paul abruptly. "Stay here with me. I want you,
Worth. Let Greenwood be your home henceforth and adopt your crusty old
bachelor uncle for a father."
"Oh, Uncle Paul," cried Worth, "I don't know--I don't think--oh, you
surprise me!"
"I surprise myself, perhaps. But I mean it, Worth. I am a rich, lonely
old man and I want to keep this new interest you have brought into my
life. Stay with me. I will try to give you a very happy life, my
child, and all I have shall be yours."
Seeing her troubled face, he added, "There, I don't ask you to decide
right here. I suppose you have other claims to adjust. Take time to
think it over."
"Thank you," said Worth. She went back to the Grange as one in a
dream and shut herself up in the white southeast room to think. She
knew that she wanted to accept this unexpected offer of Uncle Paul's.
Worth's loyal tongue had never betrayed, even to the loving aunts, any
discontent in the prairie farm life that had always been hers. But it
had been a hard life for the girl, narrow and poverty-bounded. She
longed to put forth her hand and take this other life which opened so
temptingly before her. She knew, too, that her mother, ambitious for
her child, would not be likely to interpose any objections. She had
only to go to Uncle Paul and all that she longed for would be given
her, together with the faithful, protecting fatherly love and care
that in all its strength and sweetness had never been hers.
She must decide for herself. Not even of Aunt Charlotte or Aunt Ellen
could she ask advice. She knew they would entreat her to accept, and
she needed no such incentive to her own wishes. Far on into the night
Worth sat at the white-curtained dormer window, looking at the stars
over the apple trees, and fighting her battle between inclination and
duty. It was a hard and stubbornly contested battle, but with that
square chin and those unfaltering grey eyes it could end in only one
way. Next day Worth went down to Greenwood.
"Well, what is it to be?" said Uncle Paul without preface, as he met
her in the garden.
"I cannot come, Uncle Paul," said Worth steadily. "I cannot give up my
mother."
"I don't ask you to give her up," he said gruffly. "You can write to
her and visit her. I don't want to come between parent and child."
"That isn't the point exactly, Uncle Paul. I hope you will not be
angry with me for not accepting your offer. I wanted to--you don't
know how much I wanted to--but I cannot. Mother and I are so much to
each other, Uncle Paul, more, I am sure, than even most mothers and
daughters. You have never let me speak of her, but I must tell you
this. Mother has often told me that when I came to her things were
going very hard with her and that I was heaven's own gift to comfort
and encourage her. Then, in the ten years that followed, the three
other babies that came to her all died before they were two years old.
And with each loss Mother said I grew dearer to her. Don't you see,
Uncle Paul, I'm not merely just one child to her but I'm _all_ those
children? Six years ago the twins were born, and they are dear, bright
little lads, but they are very small yet, so Mother has really nobody
but me. I know she would consent to let me stay here, because she
would think it best for me, but it wouldn't be really best for me; it
couldn't be best for a girl to do what wasn't right. I love you, Uncle
Paul, and I love Greenwood, and I want to stay so much, but I cannot.
I have thought it all over and I must go back to Mother."
Uncle Paul did not say one word. He turned his back on Worth and
walked the full length of the box alley twice. Worth watched him
wistfully. Was he very angry? Would he forgive her?
"You are an Ingelow, Worth," he said when he came back. That was all,
but Worth understood that her decision was not to cause any
estrangement between them.
A month later Worth's last day at the Grange came. She was to leave
for the West the next morning. They were all out in Grandfather
Ingelow's arcade, Uncle George and Aunt Charlotte and Aunt Ellen and
Worth, enjoying the ripe mellow sunshine of the October day, when Paul
Ingelow came up the slope. Worth went to meet him with outstretched
hands. He took them both in his and looked at her very gravely.
"I have not come to say goodbye, Worth. I will not say it. You are
coming back to me."
Worth shook her brown head sadly. "Oh, I cannot, Uncle Paul. You
know--I told you--"
"Yes, I know," he interrupted. "I have been thinking it all over every
day since. You know yourself what the Ingelow determination is. It's a
good thing in a good cause but a bad thing in a bad one. And it is no
easy thing to conquer when you've let it rule you for years as I have
done. But I have conquered it, or you have conquered it for me. Child,
here is a letter. It is to your mother--my sister Elizabeth. In it I
have asked her to forgive me, and to forget our long estrangement. I
have asked her to come back to me with you and her boys. I want you
all--all--at Greenwood and I will do the best I can for you all."
"Oh, Uncle Paul," cried Worth, her face aglow and quivering with
smiles
|
of water.
"What is it now, 208?" The voice at the head of the table put the
question with a note of exasperation in it.
"Please 'um, another helpin'."
The sister's lips set themselves close. "Pass up 208's plate," she said.
The empty plate, licked clean of molasses on the sly, went up the line
and returned laden with three "bloomin' beauties" as 208 murmured
serenely to herself. She ate one with keen relish, then eyed the
remaining two askance and critically. Freckles grew anxious. What next?
Contrary to all rules 208's head, after slowly drooping little by
little, lower and lower, dropped finally with a dull thud on the edge of
the table and a force that tipped the plate towards her. Freckles
doubled up again; she had seen through the man[oe]uvre: the three
remaining cakes slid gently into the open half--low apron neck and were
safely lodged with the other four.
"Number 208 sit up properly or leave the table."
The sister spoke peremptorily, for this special One Three-hundredth was
her daily, almost hourly, thorn in the flesh. The table stopped eating
to listen. There was a low moan for answer, but the head was not
lifted. Number 206 took this opportunity to give her a dig in the ribs,
and Number 205 crowded her in turn. To their amazement there was no
response.
"Number 208 answer at once."
"Oh, please, 'um, I've got an awful pain--oo--au--." The sound was low
but piercing.
"You may leave the table, 208, and go up to the dormitory."
208 rose with apparent effort. Her hands were clasped over the region
where hot corn-meal cakes are said to lie heavily at times. Her face was
screwed into an expression indicative of excruciating inner torment. As
she made her way, moaning softly, to the farther door that opened into
the cheerless corridor, there was audible a suppressed but decided
giggle. It proceeded from Freckles. The monitor warned her, but,
unheeding, the little girl giggled again.
A ripple of laughter started down the three tables, but was quickly
suppressed.
"Number 207," said the much-tried and long-suffering sister, "you have
broken the rule when under discipline. Go up to the dormitory and don't
come down again to-night." This was precisely what Freckles wanted. She
continued to sniff, however, as she left the room with seemingly
reluctant steps. Once the door had closed upon her, she flew up the two
long flights of stairs after Flibbertigibbet whom she found at the
lavatory in the upper dormitory, cleansing the inside of her apron from
molasses.
Oh, but those cakes were good, eaten on the broad window sill where the
two children curled themselves to play at their favorite game of "making
believe about the Marchioness"!
"But it's hot they be!" Freckles' utterance was thick owing to a large
mouthful of cake with which she was occupied.
"I kept 'em so squeezin' 'em against my stommick."
"Where the pain was?"
"M-m," her chum answered abstractedly. Her face was flattened against
the window in order to see what was going on below, for the electric
arc-light at the corner made the street visible for the distance of a
block.
"I've dropped a crumb," said Freckles ruefully.
"Pick it up then, or yer'll catch it--Oh, my!"
"Wot?" said Freckles who was on her hands and knees beneath the window
searching for the crumb that might betray them if found by one of the
sisters.
"Git up here quick if yer want to see--it's the Marchioness an' another
kid. Come on!" she cried excitedly, pulling at Freckles' long arm. The
two little girls knelt on the broad sill, and with faces pressed close
to the window-pane gazed and whispered and longed until the electric
lights were turned on in the dormitory and the noise of approaching feet
warned them that it was bedtime.
Across the street from the Asylum, but facing the Avenue, was a great
house of stone, made stately by a large courtyard closed by wrought-iron
gates. On the side street looking to the Asylum, the windows in the
second story had carved stone balconies; these were filled with bright
blossoms in their season and in winter with living green. There was
plenty of room behind the balcony flower-boxes for a white Angora cat to
take her constitutional. When Flibbertigibbet entered the Asylum in
June, the cat and the flowers were the first objects outside its walls
to attract her attention and that of her chum, Freckles. It was not
often that Freckles and her mate were given, or could obtain, the chance
to watch the balcony, for there were so many things to do, something for
every hour in the day: dishes to wash, beds to make, corridors to sweep,
towels and stockings to launder, lessons to learn, sewing and catechism.
But one day Flibbertigibbet--so Sister Angelica called the little girl
from her first coming to the Asylum, and the name clung to her--was sent
to the infirmary in the upper story because of a slight illness; while
there she made the discovery of the "Marchioness." She called her that
because she deemed it the most appropriate name, and why "appropriate"
it behooves to tell.
Behind the garbage-house, in the corner of the yard near the railroad
tracks, there was a fine place to talk over secrets and grievances.
Moreover, there was a knothole in the high wooden fence that inclosed
the lower portion of the yard. When Flibbertigibbet put her eye to this
aperture, it fitted so nicely that she could see up and down the street
fully two rods each way. Generally that eye could range from butcher's
boy to postman, or 'old clothes' man; but one day, having found an
opportunity, she placed her visual organ as usual to the hole--and
looked into another queer member that was apparently glued to the other
side! But she was not daunted, oh, no!
"Git out!" she commanded briefly.
"I ain't in." The Eye snickered.
"I'll poke my finger into yer!" she threatened further.
"I'll bite your banana off," growled the Eye.
"Yer a cross-eyed Dago."
"You're another--you Biddy!" The Eye was positively insulting; it winked
at her.
Flibbertigibbet was getting worsted. She stamped her foot and kicked the
fence. The Eye laughed at her, then suddenly vanished; and
Flibbertigibbet saw a handsome-faced Italian lad sauntering up the
street, hands in his pockets, and singing--oh, how he sang! The little
girl forgot her rage in listening to the song, the words of which
reminded her of dear Nonna Lisa and her own joys of a four weeks'
vagabondage spent in the old Italian's company. All this she confessed
to Freckles; and the two, under one pretence or another, managed to make
daily visits to the garbage house knothole.
That hole was every bit as good as a surprise party to them. The Eye was
seen there but once more, when it informed the other Eye that it
belonged to Luigi Poggi, Nonna Lisa's one grandson; that it was off in
Chicago with a vaudeville troupe while the other Eye had been with Nonna
Lisa. But instead of the Eye there appeared a stick of candy twisted in
a paper and thrust through; at another time some fresh dates, strung on
a long string, were found dangling on the inner side of the fence--the
knothole having provided the point of entrance for each date; once a
small bunch of wild flowers graced it on the yard side. Again, for three
months, the hole served for a circulating library. A whole story found
lodgement there, a chapter at a time, torn from a paper-covered novel.
Flibbertigibbet carried them around with her pinned inside of her blue
denim apron, and read them to Freckles whenever she was sure of not
being caught. Luigi was their one boy on earth.
_The Marchioness of Isola Bella_, that was the name of the story; and if
Flibbertigibbet and Freckles on their narrow cots in the bare upper
dormitory of the Orphan Asylum on ----nd Street, did not dream of
sapphire lakes and snow-crowned mountains, of marble palaces and
turtledoves, of lovely ladies and lordly men, of serenades and guitars
and ropes of pearl, it was not the fault either of Luigi Poggi or the
_Marchioness of Isola Bella_. But at times the story-book marchioness
seemed very far away, and it was a happy thought of Flibbertigibbet's to
name the little lady in the great house after her; for, once, watching
at twilight from the cold window seat in the dormitory, the two orphan
children saw her ladyship dressed for a party, the maid having forgotten
to lower the shades.
Freckles and Flibbertigibbet dared scarcely breathe; it was so much
better than the _Marchioness of Isola Bella_, for this one was real and
alive--oh, yes, very much alive! She danced about the room, running from
the maid when she tried to catch her, and when the door opened and a
tall man came in with arms opened wide, the real Marchioness did just
what the story-book marchioness did on the last page to her lover: gave
one leap into the outstretched arms of the father-lover.
While the two children opposite were looking with all their eyes at this
unexpected _dénouement_, the maid drew the shades, and Freckles and
Flibbertigibbet were left to stare at each other in the dark and cold.
Flibbertigibbet nodded and whispered:
"That takes the cake. The _Marchioness of Isola Bella_ ain't in it!"
Freckles squeezed her hand. Thereafter, although the girls appreciated
the various favors of the knothole, their entire and passionate
allegiance was given to the real Marchioness across the way.
IV
One day, it was just after Thanksgiving, the Marchioness discovered her
opposite neighbors. It was warm and sunny, a summer day that had strayed
from its place in the Year's procession. The maid was putting the Angora
cat out on the balcony among the dwarf evergreens. The Marchioness was
trying to help her when, happening to look across the street, she saw
the two faces at the opposite window. She stared for a moment, then
taking the cat from the window sill held her up for the two little girls
to see. Flibbertigibbet and her mate nodded vigorously and smiled,
making motions with their hands as if stroking the fur.
The Marchioness dropped the cat and waved her hand to them; the maid
drew her back from the window; the two girls saw her ladyship twitch
away from the detaining hand and stamp her foot.
"Gee!" said Flibbertigibbet under her breath, "she's just like us."
"Oh, wot's she up ter now?" Freckles whispered.
Truly, any sane person would have asked that question. The Marchioness,
having gained her point, was standing on the window seat by the open
window, which was protected by an iron grating, and making curious
motions with her fingers and hands.
"Is she a luny?" Freckles asked in an awed voice.
Flibbertigibbet was gazing fixedly at this apparition and made no reply.
After watching this pantomime a few minutes, she spoke slowly:
"She's one of the dumb uns; I've seen 'em."
The Marchioness was now making frantic gestures towards the top of their
window. She was laughing too.
"She's a lively one if she is a dumber," said Freckles approvingly.
Flibbertigibbet jumped to her feet and likewise stood on the window
sill.
"Gee! She wants us to git the window open at the top. Here--pull!" The
two children hung their combined weight by the tips of their fingers
from the upper sash, and the great window opened slowly a few inches;
then it stuck fast. But they both heard the gleeful voice of their
opposite neighbor and welcomed the sound.
"I'm talking to you--it's the only way I can--the deaf and dumb--"
The maid lifted her down, struggling, from the window seat, and they
heard the childish voice scolding in a tongue unknown to them.
Flibbertigibbet set immediately about earning the right to learn the
deaf-and-dumb alphabet; she hung out all monitor Number Twelve's
washing--dish towels, stockings, handkerchiefs--every other day for two
weeks in the bitter December weather. She knew that this special monitor
had a small brother in the Asylum for Deaf Mutes; this girl taught her
the strange language in compensation for the child's time and labor. It
was mostly "give and take" in the Asylum.
"That child has been angelic lately; I don't know what's going to
happen." Long-suffering Sister Agatha heaved a sigh of relief.
"Oh, there is a storm brewing you may be sure; this calm is unnatural,"
Sister Angelica replied, smiling at sight of the little figure in the
yard dancing in the midst of an admiring circle of blue-nosed girls. "I
believe they would rather stand and watch her than to run about and get
warm. She is as much fun for them as a circus, and she learns so
quickly! Have you noticed her voice in chapel lately?"
"Yes, I have"; said Sister Agatha grumpily, "and I confess I can't bear
to hear her sing like an angel when she is such a little fiend."
Sister Angelica smiled. "Oh, I'm sure she'll come out all right; there's
nothing vicious about her, and she's a loyal little soul, you can't deny
that."
"Yes, to those she loves," Sister Agatha answered with some bitterness.
She knew she was no favorite with the subject under discussion. "See her
now! I shouldn't think she would have a whole bone left in her body."
They were playing "Snap-the-whip". Flibbertigibbet was the snapper for a
line of twenty or more girls. As she swung the circle her legs flew so
fast they fairly twinkled, and her hops and skips were a marvel to
onlookers. But she landed right side up at last, although breathless,
her long braid unloosened, hair tossing on the wind, cheeks red as
American beauty roses, and gray eyes black with excitement of the game.
Then the bell rang its warning, the children formed in line and marched
in to lessons.
The two weeks in December in which Flibbertigibbet had given herself to
the acquisition of the new language, proved long for the Marchioness.
Every day she watched at the window for the reappearance of the two
children at the bare upper window opposite; but thus far in vain.
However, on the second Saturday after their first across-street meeting,
she saw to her great joy the two little girls curled up on the window
sill and frantically waving to attract her attention. The Marchioness
nodded and smiled, clapped her hands, and mounted upon her own broad
window seat in order to have an unobstructed view over the iron grating.
"She sees us, she sees us!" Freckles cried excitedly, but under her
breath; "now let's begin."
Flibbertigibbet chose one of the panes that was cleaner than the others
and putting her two hands close to it began operations. The Marchioness
fairly hopped up and down with delight when she saw the familiar symbols
of the deaf-and-dumb alphabet, and immediately set her own small white
hands to work on her first sentence:
"Go slow."
Flibbertigibbet nodded emphatically; the conversation was begun again
and continued for half an hour. It was in truth a labor as well as a
work of love. The spelling in both cases was far from perfect and, at
times, puzzling to both parties; but little by little they became used
to each other's erratic symbols together with the queer things for which
they stood, and no conversation throughout the length and breadth of New
York--yes, even of our United States--was ever more enjoyed than by
these three girls. Flibbertigibbet and the Marchioness did the
finger-talking, and Freckles helped with the interpretation. In the
following translation of this first important exchange of social
courtesies, the extremely peculiar spelling, and wild combinations of
vowels in particular, are omitted: but the questions and answers are
given exactly as they were constructed by the opposite neighbors.
"Go slow." This as a word of warning from the Marchioness.
"You bet."
"Isn't this fun?"
"Beats the band."
"What is your name?"
Flibbertigibbet and her chum looked at each other; should it be nickname
or real name? As they were at present in society and much on their
dignity they decided to give their real names.
"Aileen Armagh." Thereupon Flibbertigibbet beat upon her breast to
indicate first person singular possessive. The Marchioness stared at her
for a minute, then spelled rather quickly:
"It's lovely. We call you something else."
"Who's we?"
"Aunt Ruth and I."
"What do you call me?"
"Flibbertigibbet."
"Git off!" cried Flibbertigibbet, recklessly shoving Freckles on to the
floor. "Gee, how'd she know!" And thereupon she jumped to her feet and,
having the broad window sill to herself, started upon a rather
restricted coon dance in order to prove to her opposite neighbor that
the nickname belonged to her by good right. Oh, but it was fun for the
Marchioness! She clapped her hands to show her approval and catching up
the skirt of her dainty white frock, slowly raised one leg at a right
angle to her body and stood so for a moment, to the intense admiration
of the other girls.
"That's what they call me here," said Flibbertigibbet when they got down
to conversation again.
"What is hers?" asked the Marchioness, pointing to Freckles.
"Margaret O'Dowd, but we call her Freckles."
How the Marchioness laughed! So hard, indeed, that she apparently
tumbled off the seat, for she disappeared entirely for several minutes,
much to the girls' amazement as well as chagrin.
"It's like she broke somethin'," whimpered Freckles; "a bone yer
know--her nose fallin' that way when she went over forrard."
"She ain't chany, I tell yer; she's jest Injy rubber," said
Flibbertigibbet scornfully but with a note of anxiety in her voice. At
this critical moment the Marchioness reappeared and jumped upon the
seat. She had a curious affair in her hand; after placing it to her
eyes, she signalled her answer:
"I can see them."
"See what?"
"The freckles."
"Wot's she givin' us?" Freckles asked in a perplexed voice.
"She's all right," said Flibbertigibbet with the confidence of superior
knowledge; "it's a tel'scope; yer can see the moon through, an' yer
freckles look to her as big as pie-plates."
Freckles crossed herself; it sounded like witches and it had a queer
look.
"Ask her wot's her name," she suggested.
"What's your name?" Flibbertigibbet repeated on her fingers.
"Alice Maud Mary Van Ostend."
"Gee whiz, ain't that a corker!" Flibbertigibbet exclaimed delightedly.
"How old are you?" She proceeded thus with her personal investigation
prompted thereto by Freckles.
"Most ten;--you?"
"Most twelve."
"And Freckles?" The Marchioness laughed as she spelled the name.
"Eleven."
"Ask her if she's an orphant," said Freckles.
"Are you an orphan, Freckles says."
"Half," came the answer. "What are you?"
"Whole," was the reply. "Which is your half?"
"I have only papa--I'll introduce him to you sometime when--"
This explanation took fully five minutes to decipher, and while they
were at work upon it the maid came up behind the Marchioness and,
without so much as saying "By your leave", took her down struggling from
the window seat and drew the shades. Whereupon Flibbertigibbet rose in
her wrath, shook her fist at the insulting personage, and vowed
vengeance upon her in her own forceful language:
"You're an old cat, and I'll rub your fur the wrong way till the sparks
fly."
At this awful threat Freckles looked alarmed, and suddenly realized that
she was shivering, the result of sitting so long against the cold
window. "Come on down," she pleaded with the enraged Flibbertigibbet;
and by dint of coaxing and the promise of a green woollen watch-chain,
which she had patiently woven, and so carefully, with four pins and an
empty spool till it looked like a green worm, she succeeded in getting
her away from the dormitory window.
V
If the _Marchioness of Isola Bella_ had filled many of Flibbertigibbet's
dreams during the last six months, the real Alice Maud Mary Van Ostend
now filled all her waking hours. Her sole thought was to contrive
opportunities for more of this fascinating conversation, and she and
Freckles practised daily on the sly in order to say more, and quickly,
to the real Marchioness across the way.
By good luck they were given a half-hour for themselves just before
Christmas, in reward for the conscientious manner in which they made
beds, washed dishes, and recited their lessons for an entire week. When
Sister Angelica, laying her hand on Flibbertigibbet's shoulder, had
asked her what favor she wanted for the good work of that week, the
little girl answered promptly enough that she would like to sit with
Freckles in the dormitory window and look out on the street, for maybe
there might be a hurdy-gurdy with a monkey passing through.
"Not this cold day, I'm sure," said Sister Angelica, smiling at the
request; "for no monkey could be out in this weather unless he had an
extra fur coat and a hot water bottle for his toes. Yes, you may go but
don't stay too long in the cold."
But what if the Marchioness were to fail to make her appearance! They
could not bear to think of this, and amused themselves for a little
while by blowing upon the cold panes and writing their names and the
Marchioness' in the vapor. But, at last--oh, at last, there she was! The
fingers began to talk almost before they knew it. In some respects it
proved to be a remarkable conversation, for it touched upon many and
various topics, all of which proved of equal interest to the parties
concerned. They lost no time in setting about the exchange of their
views.
"I'm going to a party," the Marchioness announced, smoothing her gown.
"What time?"
"Five o'clock, but I'm all ready. I am going to dance a minuet."
This was a poser; but Flibbertigibbet did not wish to be outdone,
although there was no party for her in prospect.
"I can dance too," she signalled.
"I know you can--lovely; that's why I told you."
"I wish I could see you dance the minute."
The Marchioness did not answer at once. Finally she spelled "Wait a
minute," jumped down from the broad sill and disappeared. In a short
time she was back again.
"I'm going to dance for you. Look downstairs--when it is dark--and
you'll see the drawing-room lighted--I'll dance near the windows."
The two girls clapped their hands and Flibbertigibbet jumped up and down
on the window sill to express her delight.
"When do you have to go to bed?" was the next pointed question from
Alice Maud Mary.
"A quarter to eight."
"Who puts you in?"
This was another poser for even Flibbertigibbet's quick wits.
"Wot does she mane?" Freckles demanded anxiously.
"I dunno; anyhow, I'll tell her the sisters."
"The sisters," was the word that went across the street.
"Oh, how nice! Do you say your prayers to them too?"
Freckles groaned. "Wot yer goin' to tell her now?"
"Shut up now till yer hear me, an' cross yerself, for I mane it." Such
was the warning from her mate.
"No; I say them to another lady--Our Lady."
"Oh gracious!" Freckles cried out under her breath and began to snicker.
"What lady?" The Marchioness looked astonished but intensely interested.
"The Holy Virgin. I'll bet she don't know nothin' 'bout Her," said
Flibbertigibbet in a triumphant aside to Freckles. The Marchioness' eyes
opened wider upon the two children across the way.
"That is the mother of Our Lord, isn't it?" she said in her dumb way.
The two children nodded; no words seemed to come readily just then, for
Alice Maud Mary had given them a surprise. They crossed themselves.
"I never thought of saying my prayers to His mother before, but I shall
now. He always had a mother, hadn't he?"
Flibbertigibbet could think of nothing to say in answer, but she did the
next best thing: she drew her rosary from under her dress waist and held
it up to the Marchioness who nodded understandingly and began to fumble
at her neck. In a moment she brought forth a tiny gold chain with a
little gold cross hanging from it. She held it up and dangled it before
the four astonished eyes opposite.
"Gee! Yer can't git ahead of _her_, an' I ain't goin' to try. She's just
a darlint." Flibbertigibbet's heart was very full and tender at that
moment; but she giggled at the next question.
"Do you know any boys?"
One finger was visible at the dormitory window. The Marchioness laughed
and after telling them she knew ever so many began to count on her
fingers for the benefit of her opposite neighbors.
"One, two, three, four, five," she began on her right hand--
"I don't believe her," said Freckles with a suspicious sniff.
Flibbertigibbet turned fiercely upon her. "I'd believe her if she said
she knew a thousand, so now, Margaret O'Dowd, an' yer hold yer tongue!"
she cried; but in reprimanding Freckles for her want of faith she lost
count of the boys.
"I must go now," said the Marchioness; "but when the drawing-room
downstairs is lighted, you look in--there'll be one boy there to dance
with me. Be sure you look." Suddenly the Marchioness made a sign that
both girls understood, although it was an extra one and the very
prettiest of all in the deaf-and-dumb alphabet of the affections: she
put her fingers to her lips and blew them a kiss.
"Ain't she a darlint!" murmured Flibbertigibbet, tossing the same sign
across the street. When the Marchioness had left the window, the two
girls spent the remaining minutes of their reward in planning how best
to see the dance upon which they had set their hearts. They thought of
all the places available, but were sure they would not be permitted to
occupy them. At last Flibbertigibbet decided boldly, on the strength of
a good conscience throughout one whole week, to ask at headquarters.
"I'm goin' straight to Sister Angelica an' ask her to let us go into the
chapel; it's the only place. Yer can see from the little windy in the
cubby-hole where the priest gits into his other clothes."
Freckles looked awestruck. "She'll never let yer go in there."
Her mate snapped her fingers in reply, and catching Freckles' hand raced
her down the long dormitory, down the two long flights of stairs to the
schoolroom where Sister Angelica was giving a lesson to the younger
girls.
"Well, Flibbertigibbet, what is it now?" said the sister smiling into
the eager face at her elbow. When Sister Angelica called her by her
nickname instead of by the Asylum number, Flibbertigibbet knew she was
in high favor. She nudged Freckles and replied:
"I want to whisper to you."
Sister Angelica bent down; before she knew it the little girl's arms
were about her neck and the child was telling her about the dance at the
stone house across the way. The sister smiled as she listened to the
rush of eager words, but she was so glad to find this madcap telling her
openly her heart's one desire, that she did what she had never done
before in all her life of beautiful child-consecrated work: she said
"Yes, and I will go with you. Wait for me outside the chapel door at
half-past four."
Flibbertigibbet squeezed her around the neck with such grateful vigor
that the blood rushed to poor Sister Angelica's head. She was willing,
however, to be a martyr in such a good cause. The little girl walked
quietly to the door, but when it had closed upon her she executed a
series of somersaults worthy of the Madison Square Garden acrobats.
"What'd I tell yer, what'd I tell yer!" she exclaimed, pirouetting and
somersaulting till the slower-moving Freckles was a trifle dizzy.
Within a quarter of an hour the three were snugly ensconced in the
window niche of the "cubby-hole," so Flibbertigibbet termed the
robing-room closet, and looking with all their eyes across the street.
They were directly opposite what Sister Angelica said must be the
drawing-room and on a level with it. As they looked, one moment the
windows were dark, in the next they were filled with soft yet brilliant
lights. The lace draperies were parted and the children could see down
the length of the room.
There she was! Hopping and skipping by the side of her father-lover and
drawing him to the central window. Behind them came the lovely young
lady and the Boy! The two were holding hands and swinging them freely as
they laughed and chatted together.
"That's the Boy!" cried Flibbertigibbet, wild with excitement.
"And that must be the Aunt Ruth she told about--oh, ain't she just
lovely!" cried Freckles.
"Watch out now, an' yer'll see the minute!" said Flibbertigibbet,
squeezing Sister Angelica's hand; Sister Angelica squeezed back, but
kept silence. She was learning many things before unknown to her. The
four came to the middle window and looked out, up, and all around. But
although the two children waved their hands wildly to attract their
attention, the good people opposite failed to see them because the
little window suffered eclipse in the shadow of the large electric
arc-light's green cap.
"She's goin' to begin!" cried Flibbertigibbet, clapping her hands.
The young lady sat down at the piano and began to play. Whether
Flibbertigibbet expected a variation of a "coon dance" or an Irish jig
cannot be stated with certainty, but that she was surprised is a fact;
so surprised, indeed, that for full two minutes she forgot to talk. To
the slow music, for such it was--Flibbertigibbet beat time with her
fingers on the pane to the step--the Marchioness and the Boy, pointing
their daintily slippered feet, moved up and down, back and forth,
swinging, turning, courtesying, bowing over the parquet floor with such
childishly stately yet charming grace that their rhythmic motions were
as a song without words.
The father-lover stood with his back to the mantel and applauded after
an especially well executed flourish or courtesy; Aunt Ruth looked over
her shoulder, smiling, her hands wandering slowly over the keys. At
last, the final flourish, the final courtesy. The Marchioness' dress
fairly swept the floor, and the Boy bowed so low that--well,
Flibbertigibbet never could tell how it happened, but she had a warm
place in her heart for that boy ever after--he quietly and methodically
stood head downwards on his two hands, his white silk stockings and
patent leathers kicking in the air.
The Marchioness was laughing so hard that she sat down in a regular
"cheese" on the floor; the father-lover was clapping his hands like mad;
the lady swung round on the piano stool and shook her forefinger at the
Boy who suddenly came right side up at last, hand on his heart, and
bowed with great dignity to the little girl on the floor. Then he, too,
laughed and cut another caper just as a solemn-faced butler came in with
wraps and furs. But by no means did he remain solemn long! How could he
with the Boy prancing about him, and the Marchioness playing at
"Catch-me-if-you-can" with her father-lover, and the lady slipping and
sliding over the floor to catch the Boy who was always on the other side
of the would-be solemn butler? Why, he actually swung round in a circle
by holding on to that butler's dignified coat-tails!
Nor were they the only ones who laughed. Across the way in one of the
Orphan Asylum windows, Sister Angelica and the children laughed too, in
spirit joining in the fun, and when the butler came to the window to
draw the shades there were three long "Ah's," both of intense
disappointment and supreme satisfaction.
"Watch out, now," said Flibbertigibbet excitedly on the way down into
the basement for supper and dishwashing, for it was their turn this
week, "an' yer'll see me dance yer a minute in the yard ter-morrow."
"Yer can't dance it alone," replied doubting Freckles; "yer've got to
have a boy."
"I don't want one; I'll take you, Freckles, for a boy." Clumsy Freckles
blushed with delight beneath her many beauty-spots at such promise of
unwonted graciousness on the part of her chum, and wondered what had
come over Flibbertigibbet lately.
* * * * *
A few hours afterwards when they went up to bed, they whispered together
again concerning the dance, and begged Sister Angelica to let them have
just one peep from the dormitory window at their house of delight--a
request she was glad to grant. They opened one of the inside blinds a
little way, and exclaimed at the sight. It was snowing. The children
oh'ed and ah'ed under their breath, for a snowstorm at Christmas time in
the great city is the child's true joy. At their opposite neighbor's a
faint light was visible in the balcony room; the wet soft flakes had
already ridged the balustrade, powdered the dwarf evergreens, topped the
cap of the electric arc-light and laid upon the concrete a coverlet of
purest white.
The long bare dormitory filled with the children--the fatherless and
motherless children we have always with us. Soon each narrow cot held
its asylum number; the many heads, golden, brown, or black, busied all
of them with childhood's queer unanchored thoughts, were pillowed in
safety for another night.
And without the snow continued to fall upon the great city. It graced
with equal delicacy the cathedral's marble spires and the forest of
pointed firs which made the numberless Christmas booths that surrounded
old Washington Market. It covered impartially, and with as pure a white,
the myriad city roofs that sheltered saint and sinner, whether among the
rich or the poor, among the cherished or castaways. It fell as thickly
upon the gravestones in Trinity's ancient churchyard as upon the freshly
turned earth in a corner of the paupers' burying
|
turn to a greater Sir Richard--the son of
Roger Grenville and Thomasin Cole of Slade.
My task will be on this occasion comparatively light;
'His praise is hymned by loftier harps than mine.'
The famous deeds of the great man to whom I have now to call attention
have been celebrated by such writers as his kinsman Sir Walter Raleigh;
by Carew; by that master of portraiture Lord Clarendon; by Charles
Kingsley; and by Tennyson; and I shall of course offer no apology for
not using any words of my own, where I can use theirs: for, as Fuller
said of the Ashburnhams, 'My poor and plain pen, though willing, is
unable to add any lustre to this family of stupendous antiquity.'
Sir Richard, then, was born in 1540; and, when only sixteen years of
age, served in Hungary, under the Emperor Maximilian, against the
Turks, and was present with Don John of Austria, at the battle of
Lepanto. He afterwards assisted in the reduction of Ireland; and,
whilst there, filled the office of Sheriff of Cork. When Sheriff of
Cornwall in 1577, he arrested Francis Tregian for harbouring Cuthbert
Mayne, a recusant priest (see _sub_ 'The Arundells'). In 1571 he
represented his native county in Parliament, and was knighted. On 19th
May, 1585, he sailed from Plymouth with the first colonists, on a
voyage to the new-found land of Virginia, of which voyage Thomas Hariot
gave a 'Briefe and True Report,' printed in 1588: on his homeward
passage he fell in with a Spanish ship of 300 tons, richly laden, from
St. Domingo, which he boarded on a raft, his own boats being lost or
disabled; and in 1586 he made a second visit to Virginia, pillaging
the towns of the Spaniards, and taking many prisoners. With Raleigh
he seems to have made one or two similar expeditions, gathering much
experience, if not much pecuniary advantage.[9]
When the Spanish invasion was projected, Sir Richard was, almost as
a matter of course, elected on the Council for the defence of the
country, and he received the Queen's special commands not to quit
Cornwall during the peril. On this occasion, he is said to have
provided '303 men at his own cost, armed with 129 shot, 69 corsletts,
and 179 bows.' Of the result there is no need to speak here; but it
has always been a matter of pride for West-country men to think how
large a share in the destruction of the Invincible Armada was performed
by the gallant sailors who quietly dropped out of Plymouth Sound, and
harassed their huge opponents for days, till, what with shot, and
storm, and tempest, scarce one of the Spaniards was left to tell the
tale of their utter, and irretrievable defeat.
Kingsley has thus admirably described Sir Richard's appearance:[10]
'The forehead and whole brain are of extraordinary loftiness, and
perfectly upright; the nose long, aquiline, and delicately pointed;
the mouth, fringed with a short, silky beard, small and ripe, yet
firm as granite, with just pout enough of the lower lip to give
hint of that capacity of noble indignation which lay hid under
its usual courtly calm and sweetness; if there be a defect in the
face, it is that the eyes are somewhat small, and close together,
and the eyebrows, though delicately arched, and without a trace of
peevishness, too closely pressed down upon them; the complexion is
dark, the figure tall and graceful; altogether the likeness of a
wise and gallant gentleman, lovely to all good men, awful to all
bad men; in whose presence none dare say or do a mean or a ribald
thing; whom brave men left, feeling themselves nerved to do their
duty better, while cowards slipped away, as bats and owls before the
sun. So he lived and moved; whether in the Court of Elizabeth, giving
his counsel among the wisest; or in the streets of Bideford, capped
alike by squire and merchant, shopkeeper and sailor; or riding along
the moorland roads between his houses of Stow and Bideford, while
every woman ran out to her door to look at the great Sir Richard; or
sitting in the low, mullioned window at Burrough, with his cup of
malmsey before him, and the lute to which he had just been singing
laid across his knees, while the red western sun streamed in upon his
high, bland forehead and soft curling locks; ever the same steadfast,
God-fearing, chivalrous man, conscious (as far as a soul so healthy
could be conscious) of the pride of beauty, and strength, and valour,
and wisdom, and a race and name which claimed direct descent from
the grandfather of the Conqueror, and was tracked down the centuries
by valiant deeds and noble benefits to his native shire, himself
the noblest of his race. Men said that he was proud--but he could
not look round him without having something to be proud of; that he
was stern and harsh to his sailors--but it was only when he saw in
them any taint of cowardice or falsehood; that he was subject, at
moments, to such fearful fits of rage, that he had been seen to snatch
glasses from the table, grind them to pieces in his teeth, and swallow
them--but that was only when his indignation had been aroused by some
tale of cruelty and oppression; and, above all, by those West Indian
devilries of the Spaniards, whom he regarded (and in those days
rightly enough) as the enemies of God and man.'[11]
And the noble old house at Stow, with its chapel licensed by Bishop
Brantingham of Exeter, in 1386,[12] of which no vestige, alas!
remains, was worthy of being the abode of such a hero. It would be but
unprofitable labour to attempt a fresh description of it after the
graphic account which Kingsley gives:
'Old Stow House stands,' says he, 'or rather stood, some four miles
within the Cornish border, on the northern slope of the largest and
loveliest of those coombes'--which he had just been describing in a
memorable passage of a preceding chapter (the sixth) in 'Westward
Ho!' 'Eighty years _after_ Sir Richard's time there arose a huge
Palladian pile, bedizened with every monstrosity of bad taste, which
was built, so the story runs, by Charles II. for Sir Richard's
great-grandson, the heir of that famous Sir Bevil who defeated the
Parliamentary troops at Stratton, and died soon after, fighting
valiantly at Lansdowne over Bath. But like most other things which
owed their existence to the Stuarts, it rose only to fall again.
An old man who had seen, as a boy, the foundation of the new house
laid, lived to see it pulled down again, and the very bricks and
timber sold upon the spot; and since then the stables have become
a farmhouse, the tennis-court a sheep-cote, the great quadrangle a
rick-yard; and civilization, spreading wave on wave so fast elsewhere,
has surged back from that lonely corner of the land--let us hope
only for awhile.[13] 'But I am not writing of that great _new_ Stow
House, of the past glories whereof quaint pictures still hang in the
neighbouring houses;... I have to deal with a simpler age, and a
sterner generation; and with the _old_ house, which had stood there,
in part at least, from grey and mythic ages... a huge, rambling
building, half-castle, half-dwelling-house.... On three sides, to
the north, west and south, the lofty walls of the old ballium still
stood, with their machicolated turrets, loopholes, and dark downward
crannies for dropping stones and fire on the besiegers;... but the
southern court of the ballium had become a flower-garden, with quaint
terraces, statues, knots of flowers, clipped yews and hollies, and all
the pedantries of the topiarian art. And, towards the east, where the
vista of the valley opened, the old walls were gone, and the frowning
Norman keep, ruined in the wars of the Roses, had been replaced by
the rich and stately architecture of the Tudors. Altogether, the
house, like the time, was in a transitionary state, and represented
faithfully enough the passage of the old middle age into the new life
which had just burst into blossom throughout Europe, never, let us
pray, to see its autumn or its winter.
'From the house on three sides the hills sloped steeply down, and
from the garden there was a truly English prospect. At one turn they
could catch, over the western walls, a glimpse of the blue ocean
flecked with passing sails; and at the next, spread far below, range
on range of fertile park, stately avenue, yellow autumn woodland, and
purple heather moors, lapping over and over each other up the valley
to the old British earthwork, which stood black and furze-grown on
its conical peak; and, standing out against the sky, on the highest
bank of the hill which closed the valley to the east, the lofty tower
of Kilkhampton Church, rich with the monuments and offerings of five
centuries of Grenvilles.'
Such were old Stow, and its gallant owner Sir Richard. And the women of
the Grenville home seem, for the most part, to have been as fair and
virtuous and accomplished as their husbands were sagacious and brave.
Polwhele, in after-times, particularly noticed the remarkable beauty
of Sir Richard's great-great-granddaughter Mary, the daughter of the
Honourable Bernard Grenville, of Stow. Sir Richard married Mary, the
daughter of Sir John St. Leger; but the lovely dame had, like the wife
of her illustrious grandson, Sir Bevill, to give up what was dearest
to her in the world, to the cruel necessities of the troubled times in
which they lived.
Yet I cannot doubt that these women had the spirits of Roman matrons
within them; and would have assented to Lovelace's lines had their
husbands whispered the couplet to them:
'I could not love thee, dear, so much
Lov'd I not honour more.'
To return to Sir Richard:--In 1591 we find him acting as Vice-Admiral
of a squadron sent out to intercept the richly-laden Spanish fleet on
its return from the West Indies; a service of the utmost importance,
as, in capturing or sinking the Indian supplies, observes Mr. Arber,
England'stopped the sources of Philip's power to hurt herself.' How
the English ships were surprised in their lurking-place 'at Flores[14]
in the Azores,' and how valiantly Sir Richard Grenville fought and died
for Queen and country, let Raleigh and Tennyson tell.
It was towards the end of August, whilst the Admiral, Lord Thomas
Howard,[15] with six of her Majesty's ships and a few smaller vessels
and pinnaces, was at anchor at Flores, when news suddenly came of the
near approach of the great Spanish fleet. Many of the Englishmen were
ill on shore, while others were filling the ships with ballast, or
collecting water. Imperfectly manned and ballasted as they were, there
was nothing for it--at least so Lord Howard appears to have thought--in
the face of so enormously preponderating a force as they found was
close at hand, but to weigh anchor, and escape as they best could: and
so it became a complete _sauve qui peut_; some of the ships were even
compelled to slip their cables. Sir Richard, as Vice-Admiral, was the
last to start, delaying to do so till the final moment, in order to
collect several of his sick crew who were on the island, and who, if
he had left them there, must have been lost. This noble delay of his
resulted in the safety of the remainder of the fleet; but it cost Sir
Richard and his crew their lives; and the little _Revenge_, which had
four or five times narrowly escaped shipwreck, her existence: but she
was, as Admiral Hawkins described her, 'ever a ship loaden, and full
fraught with ill successe.' Grenville refused to 'cut his mainsail, and
cast about,' and so run from the enemy; but persuaded his crew that he
would contrive to pass through the two great Spanish squadrons which
intercepted him, 'in despight of them, and would enforce those of Sivil
to give him way.' It was the story of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylæ
acted over again. The huge _San Philip_ of 1,500 tons (carrying 'three
tier of ordinance on a side, and eleven pieces on every tier; she shot
eight forth right out of her chase, besides those of her stern ports'),
however, loomed to windward of the small English ship; and 'becalmed
his sails in such sort as the _Revenge_ could neither make way, nor
feel the helm;' and then--
'Sir Richard spoke and he laughed, and we roared a hurrah, and so
The little _Revenge_ ran on sheer into the heart of the foe,
With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below;
For half of their fleet to the right, and half to the left were seen,
And the little _Revenge_ ran on thro' the long sea lane between.'
What end could there be, but one, to courage so chivalric, so
desperate, and so devoted as this? 'After the _Revenge_ was entangled
with this _Philip_,' says Raleigh, 'four other boarded her--(_i.e._,
laid her aboard)--two on her larboard, and two on her starboard. The
fight thus beginning at three o'clock in the afternoon, continued very
terrible all that evening. But the great _San Philip_ having received
the lower tier of the _Revenge_, discharged with cross-bar shot,
shifted herself with all diligence from her sides, utterly misliking
her first entertainment. Some say that the ship foundered, but we
cannot report for truth, unless we are assured. The Spanish ships were
filled with companies of soldiers, in some two hundred, beside the
mariners; in some five, in others eight, hundred. In ours there were
none at all besides the mariners, but the servants of the commanders,
and some few voluntary gentlemen only. After many interchanged vollies
of great ordnance and small shot, the Spaniards deliberated to enter
the _Revenge_, and made divers attempts, hoping to force her, by the
multitudes of their armed soldiers and musketeers, but were still
repulsed again and again, and at all times beaten back into their own
ships, or into the seas.'
'And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand,
For a dozen times they came with their pikes and musqueteers,
And a dozen times we shook 'em off, as a dog that shakes his ears
When he leaps from the water to the land.'
'In the beginning of the fight,' Sir Walter Raleigh continues, 'the
_George Noble_, of London, having received some shot through her, by
the armadas, fell under the lee of the _Revenge_, and asked Sir Richard
what he would command him, being but one of the victuallers, and of
small force; Sir Richard bade him save himself, and leave him to his
fortune. After the fight had thus, without intermission, continued
while the day lasted, and some hours of the night, many of our men were
slain and hurt, and one of the great gallions of the armada, and the
admiral of the hulks both sunk, and in many other of the Spanish ships
great slaughter was made.'
The marvel is how a fragment of the brave little craft was still
afloat, for
'Ship after ship the whole night long, their high-built galleons
came,
Ship after ship, the whole night long, with their battle-thunder
and flame,
Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and
her shame.
For some were sunk, and some were shattered, and some could fight
us no more--
God of battles! was ever a battle like this in the world before?'
'Some write,' says Raleigh, 'that Sir Richard was very dangerously hurt
almost in the beginning of the fight, and lay speechless for a time
before he recovered. But two of the _Revenge's_ own company brought
home in a ship of Lime (Lyme Regis) from the islands, examined by some
of the lords and others, affirm that he was never so wounded as that he
forsook the upper deck, till an hour before midnight; and then being
shot into the body with a musket as he was a dressing, was again shot
into the head, and withal his chururgion wounded to death. This agreeth
also with an examination taken by Sir Francis Godolphin,[16] of four
other mariners of the same ship being returned, which examination
the said Sir Francis sent unto Master William Killegrue,[17] of Her
Majesty's Privy Chamber.'
But to return to the fight; 'the Spanish ships which attempted to board
the _Revenge_, as they were wounded and beaten off, so always others
came in their places, she having never less than two mighty gallions
by her sides, and aboard her: so that ere the morning, from three of
the clock of the day before, _there had been fifteen several armadas
assailed her; and all so ill-approved their entertainment, as they
were by the break of day far more willing to hearken to a composition
than hastily to make any more assaults or entries_. But as the day
encreased, so our men decreased; and as the light grew more and more,
by so much more grew our discomforts; for none appeared in sight but
enemies, saving one small ship called the _Pilgrim_, commanded by
Jacob Whiddon, who hovered all night to see the success; but in the
morning bearing with the _Revenge_, was hunted like a hare amongst many
ravenous hounds, but escaped.
'All the powder of the _Revenge_ to the last barrel was now spent, all
her pikes broken, forty of her best men slain, and the most part of
the rest hurt. In the beginning of the fight she had but one hundred
free from sickness, and four score and ten sick, laid in hold upon
the ballast. A small troop to man such a ship, and a weak garrison
to resist so mighty an army. By those hundred all was sustained, the
vollies, boardings, and enterings of fifteen ships of war, besides
those which beat her at large (_i.e._, from a little distance off). On
the contrary, the Spaniards were always supplied with soldiers brought
from every squadron; all manner of arms and powder at will. Unto ours
there remained no comfort at all, no hope, no supply either of ships,
men, or weapons; the masts all beaten overboard, all her tackle cut
asunder, her upper work altogether razed, and in effect evened she was
with the water, but the very foundation of a ship, nothing being left
overhead either for flight or defence.' Mr. O. W. Brierly's recently
engraved picture of this stage of the fight, showing the little
_Revenge_ with her mainsail down and lying over her 'like a pall,'
surrounded by her over-towering enemies, still afraid to approach the
dangerous little barque, gives a vivid, and probably accurate idea of
the tremendous odds against which the devoted Englishmen had to contend.
'Sir Richard, finding himself in this distress, and unable any longer
to make resistance, having endured, in this fifteen hours' fight, the
assault of fifteen different armadas, all by turns aboard him, and by
estimation eight hundred shot of great artillery, besides many assaults
and entries; and that the ship and himself must needs be possessed of
the enemy, who were now all cast in a ring round about him, now gave
the order to destroy his gallant craft:
'"We have fought such a fight for a day and a night
As may never be fought again!
We have won great glory, my men!
And a day less or more
At sea or ashore
We die--does it matter when?
Sink me the ship, Master Gunner--sink her, split her in twain!
Fall into the hands of God! not into the hands of Spain!"'
To this δαιμονίη ἀρετὴ [Greek: daimoniê aretê] (as Froude calls it)
of the fiery Sir Richard the master-gunner readily assented; but,
according to Raleigh's account, the captain and master pointed out that
the Spaniards would doubtless give them good terms, and that there were
still some valiant men left on board their little ship whose lives
might hereafter be of service to England. Sir Richard was probably
by this time too weak and wounded to contest the matter further; the
counsels of the captain and master prevailed; and the master actually
succeeded in obtaining for conditions _that all their lives should be
saved, the crew sent to England, and the officers ransomed_. In vain
did the master-gunner protest and even attempt to commit suicide:
Tennyson has summed up the story in one sad line:
'And the lion lay there dying, and they yielded to the foe.'
Sir Richard was now removed to the ship of the Spanish admiral, 'the
_Revenge_ being marvellous unsavoury, filled with blood and bodies of
dead and wounded men like a slaughter-house.'
And now--
'How died he? Death to life is crown, or shame--'
There, on the deck of Don Alfonso Bassano's ship, in the midst of the
Spanish captains, who crowded round to wonder at the man who had so
long defied their deadly attacks, two or three days after the fight
between 'the mastiffs of England and the bloodhounds of Spain,' the
grand old Cornish warrior's spirit left the body, speaking his last
words thus--in Spanish, so John Huighen van Linschoten (in 'Hakluyt's
Voyages') tells us:
'Here die I, Richard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind; for that
I have ended my life as a true soldier ought to do, fighting for his
Country, Queen, Religion and Honour: my soul willingly departing from
this body, leaving behind the lasting fame of having behaved as every
valiant soldier is in duty bound to do.'
Lord Bacon says of the fight that it was 'Memorable euen beyond credit,
and to the Height of some Heroicall Fable.'
And well might Ruskin, in his 'Bibliotheca Pastorum' (i. 33), class the
Cornish hero with Arnold of Sempach, Leonidas and Curtius as a type of
'the divinest of sacrifices--that of the patriot for his country'! Well
might the gentle Evelyn exclaim: 'Than this what have we more? What can
be greater?' And well might gallant old Sir John Hawkins wish that this
story might be 'written in our Chronicles,'--as it has been, by Raleigh
and by Tennyson,--in 'letters of Gold.'
The Spanish fleet were not permitted to enjoy the fruits of this, their
hard-earned and almost only capture during the war; for, a few days
after the battle, a great storm arose from the west and north-west,
dispersing their battle-ships, and also the West Indian fleet (the
cause of the English Expedition) which had now joined them; and
sinking, off the coast of St. Michael, fourteen sail, together with
the _Revenge_--which seemed to disdain to survive her commander--with
200 Spaniards on board her.
'So it pleased them,' says Raleigh, 'to honour the burial of that
renowned ship the _Revenge_, not suffering her to perish alone, for the
great honour she achieved in her life-time.' A noble elegy! which even
Tennyson's genius has been unable to surpass.
This is not perhaps the time or the place to consider how it was
possible for this one little English vessel with a crew of 100 men, to
contend so long against 50 (or according to some accounts 53) Spanish
galleons with 10,000 men, sinking four of the largest, and slaying
1,000 Spaniards; but it was no doubt owing to more causes than one:--to
the low and short hull, which made her more manageable--to superior
gunnery and seamanship--but mainly to the stoutest, freest, and
fiercest _hearts_ upon earth--the hearts of Englishmen. They _believed_
they were more than a match for their foes, and confidence begat
victory; and if ever there was an English victory, in the fullest sense
of the word, it was the triumphant loss of the '_Revenge_.'
The Spanish proverb ran
'Guerra con todo il mondo;--y paz con Inghilterra;'
and it has well been said that the episode of the _Revenge_ dealt
a deadlier blow to the fame and moral strength of Spain, than even
the defeat of the Armada itself.[18] But Sir Richard was not left
without a witness. Passing over his son John, who, Carew says, followed
Raleigh, and was drowned in the ocean, which 'became his bedde of
honour;' and also another son Sir Bernard, who died in 1605, after
having served as Sheriff of Cornwall and M.P. for Bodmin--as not
being of such transcendent merit as either Sir Bernard's father or
son--we come to the 'immortal' Sir Bevill Grenville, eldest son of the
said Sir Bernard and his wife Elizabeth Beville of Killigarth near
Polperro--(or, according to another account, of Brinn)--a man no whit
inferior in loyalty and courage to his illustrious grandsire.
Sir Bevill was born, somewhat unexpectedly, on 23rd March, 1595, at
Brinn--probably Great Brinn, the seat of the Bevills, but not a stone
of the old mansion is now standing--in the little Cornish parish of
Withiel; four years after the little _Revenge_ went down by the island
crags,
'To be lost evermore in the main.'
He was doubtless carefully brought up at Stow--the _old_ Stow--which
was in those days a sort of nursery for the better sort of young
Cornishmen. The late Rev. R. S. Hawker, vicar of Morwenstow, has given
us the following pleasant picture of it in Sir Bevill's days:
'On the brow of a lofty hill,[19] crested with stag-horned trees,
commanding a deep and woodland gorge wherein "the Crooks of Combe"
(the curves of a winding river) urge onward to the "Severn Sea,"
still survive the remains of famous old Stow, that historic abode of
the loyal and glorious Sir Bevill, the Bayard of old Cornwall, "sans
peur et sans reproche," in the thrilling Stewart wars. No mansion
on the Tamar-side ever accumulated so rich and varied a store of
association and event. Thither the sons of the Cornish gentry were
accustomed to resort, to be nurtured and brought up with the children
of Sir Bevill Grenville and Lady Grace; for the noble knight was
literally the "glass wherein" the youth of those ancient times "did
dress themselves." There their graver studies were relieved by manly
pastimes and athletic exercise. Like the children of the Persians,
they were taught "to ride, to bend the bow, and to speak the truth."
At hearth and hall every time-honoured usage and festive celebration
was carefully and reverently preserved. Around the walls branched
the massive antlers of the red deer of the moors, the trophies of
many a bold achievement with horse and hound. At the buttery-hatch
hung a tankard, marked with the guest's and the traveller's peg, and
a manchet, flanked with native cheese, stood ready on a trencher
for any sudden visitant who might choose to lift the latch; for the
Grenville motto was, "An open door and a greeting hand." A troop of
retainers, servants, grooms, and varlets of the yard, stood each in
his place, and under orders to receive with a welcome the unknown
stranger, as well as their master's kinsman or friend.'
To Mr. Hawker's graceful pen we are also indebted for the following
capital ballad:
SIR BEVILL--THE GATE SONG OF STOW.
'Arise, and away! for the King and the land;
Farewell to the couch and the pillow:
With spear in the rest, and with rein in the hand,
Let us rush on the foe like a billow.
'Call the hind from the plough, and the herd from the fold,
Bid the wassailer cease from his revel;
And ride for Old Stow, where the banner's unrolled
For the cause of King Charles and Sir Bevill.
'Trevanion is up, and Godolphin is nigh,
And Harris of Hayne's o'er the river;
From Lundy to Loo, "One and all" is the cry,
And "The King and Sir Bevill for ever!"
'Ay! by Tre, Pol, and Pen, ye may know Cornish men,
'Mid the names and the nobles of Devon;
But if truth to the King be a signal, why then
Ye can find out the Grenville in heaven.
'Ride! ride with red spur! there is death in delay,
'Tis a race for dear life with the devil;
If dark Cromwell prevail, and the King must give way,
This earth is no place for Sir Bevill.
'So at Stamford he fought, and at Lansdowne he fell,
But vain were the visions he cherished;
For the great Cornish heart that the King loved so well,
In the grave of the Grenville is perished.'
From Stow Bevill Grenville went to the famous old West-country college,
Exeter College, Oxford; where he was placed under Dr. Prideaux (one,
I fancy, of the worthy family of Prideaux Place, Padstow). He shortly
afterwards entered Parliament, and going to Scotland, in command of a
troop of horse, with the King, was knighted.[20]
The relations of Sir Bevill and Clarendon were peculiar. Clarendon
had quarrelled with Sir Bevill's fiery brother, Sir Richard (created,
according to Whitelocke, Baron of Lostwithiel in 1644), a man of high
spirit and of considerable bravery and military skill, but with an
unlucky facility for getting into scrapes and troubles of all sorts.
He begins with a squabble with his wife's brother-in-law, the powerful
Earl of Suffolk, which ends in Sir Richard's having to pay a fine of
£8,000, besides undergoing sixteen months' imprisonment in the Fleet.
He afterwards served in Ireland, and on his return to England, finding
it a matter of considerable difficulty to get his arrears of pay,
resorted to the following questionable artifice for the purpose. He
pretended to lend a not unwilling ear to the Parliament's suggestion,
that in return for being paid the money due to him, he should transfer
his sword from the King's cause to theirs. Indeed, he even went so far
as to take the command of a body of Roundhead horse, and marched upon
Basing. But on reaching Hounslow he, without much difficulty, persuaded
all his officers and men to proceed to Oxford instead, where he placed
the services of his whole party at the King's disposal, whereupon the
Parliamentarians righteously enough dubbed him'skellum' (scoundrel)
and'renegado.' He did yeoman's service for the King in Cornwall,
and Charles left the blockade of Plymouth in his charge--a blockade
which, as we know, was finally abandoned. The whole story is given in
Llewellyn Jewitt's 'History of Plymouth,' together with a scornful
letter to Sir Richard from the defenders. And I notice that in a letter
from Sir R. Grenville to his nephew, the Earl of Bath, then only about
sixteen years old, he is reported to have said, 'We have here made a
stand with our forces and the garrisons of Salt Ash, Milbrooke and
others considerable have come up and added to our former, and we hope
well.' The letter is dated 'Truro, 29 July, 1644.'
There appears to have been no sufficient reason why he should have been
asked to surrender his post of 'the King's General in the West'[21] in
favour of Lord Hopton, but he was compelled to do so; and on giving up
his command he refused to serve under that officer, upon which he was
forthwith 'clapped up' in Launceston Gaol, to the great dissatisfaction
of many of the Cornish officers and soldiers, who attributed their
ultimate discomfiture to the absence of Sir Richard from the field.[22]
Clarendon (his foe), and the prejudiced and inaccurate Echard, give
very unflattering accounts of Sir Richard; but his grand-nephew, George
Lord Lansdowne, published a skilful and temperate vindication of him
against their aspersions; and Sir Richard printed his own 'Defence'
in Holland, dating it 28th January, 1654. Whilst in Holland, by the
way, he seems to have attempted reprisals upon the Earl of Suffolk;
for we find that one of Milton's Latin 'State Letters' is addressed to
the Archduke Leopold of Austria, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands
(undated), to the effect that Sir Charles Harbord, an Englishman, has
had certain goods and household stuff violently seized at Bruges by Sir
Richard Grenville. The goods had originally been sent from England to
Holland in 1643 by the then Earl of Suffolk, in pledge for a debt owing
to Harbord; and Grenville's pretext was that he also was a creditor
of the Earl, and had obtained a decree of the English Chancery in
his favour. Now, by the English law, neither was the present Earl of
Suffolk bound by that decree, nor could the goods be distrained under
it. The decision of the Court to that effect was transmitted, and
his Serenity was requested to cause Grenville to restore the goods,
inasmuch as it was against the comity of nations that anyone should be
allowed an action in foreign jurisdiction which he would not be allowed
in the country where the cause of the action first arose. The letter
ends thus:
'The justice of the case itself and the universal reputation of your
Serenity for fair dealing have moved us to commend the matter to your
attention; and, if at any time there shall be occasion to discuss the
rights or convenience of your subjects with us, I promise that you
shall find our diligence in the same not remiss, but at all times most
ready.'
Clarendon and Sir Richard both went into exile, and more than once
hurled reproaches at each other; but the crowning misfortune of
Grenville's life was the refusal of Charles II., on Sir Richard's
failing to justify some statements which he had made against Lord
Clarendon, to let him appear at Court. This broke the old man's heart.
He let his beard grow from that time; and died soon afterwards.[23]
Hals, delighting, as usual, to say anything sour and disagreeable of
his fellow-countymen, states in his MSS. that when Sir Richard, at the
death of Charles I., 'for safe gaurd of his life fled beyond the seas,'
he passed most of his time 'in france and Itally, sufferinge greate
wants and necessities,' and 'was at Length comparitively starved to
Death.... His son Richard Grenvill, in the Interregnum of Cromwell, was
executed at Tyburne for robbinge Passengers on the high way to Relieve
his necessity. Moreover Sir Thomas Grenvill Kt. at
|
FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 6. No. 2, SERIAL No. 150
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.
[Illustration: PHOTOGRAPHED FROM A PRINT
THE DEATH OF CÆSAR, BY J L. GÉRÔME.]
_JULIUS CÆSAR_
_Cæsar’s Associates and Opponents_
FIVE
The most distinguished of Cæsar’s contemporaries was Cicero. With an
exceptional education, he entered politics, where, in spite of scant
means and ignoble ancestry, he finally attained to the consulship,
63 B. C. Throughout his career, an ardent supporter of the Republic,
he opposed the arbitrary rule of Cæsar; and in the Civil War he
favored the Senatorial party. In the troubles following Cæsar’s
murder Cicero heroically defended the Republic in many a brilliant
oration; and in this cause he sacrificed his life. Though possessed
of many noble qualities, his vacillation, artistic temperament, and
supersensitiveness unfitted him for statesmanship.
Cicero’s chief claims to greatness lie in the fields of literature and
philosophy. He was a poet of no mean ability. His “Orations,” with
their kaleidoscopic range of mood and choice of words, are the most
brilliant in the Latin language. The painstaking labor required for
this supreme mastery of speech is shown in his rhetorical works. His
“Letters,” written in simple style, lay bare a human heart, with all
its shortcomings and aspirations, while through their wide range of
topics they bring the reader into intimate touch with the spirit of the
age. Of farther-reaching influence are his works on political science
and philosophy. His “Republic” aims to discover the best form of
government, and to examine into the foundations of national prosperity.
His many philosophic writings set forth the various Greek schools of
thought, especially the Platonic and the Stoic. Through the medium of a
diction so perfect as to make Latin the universal language of culture
for centuries to come, Cicero successfully transplanted Greek thought
to Latin soil. Nor did his influence cease there; from his philosophy
the Church fathers drew inspiration; and in it centuries later the
scholars of the Renaissance first found the vitalizing spark of Greek
culture.
Of Cæsar’s immediate associates, Cassius, Brutus, and Antony are most
interesting, if only for their important rôles in Shakespeare’s “Julius
Cæsar.” Though showered with offices, Cassius, a malcontent, bore a
grudge against Cæsar for being his master, and began to plot against
him. He found many influential men, who, jealous of Cæsar’s power, were
themselves anxious to divide the spoils of government. To give the plot
an air of respectability, he won over Brutus, ostensibly a student and
man of letters, but at heart an unfeeling usurer. Appointed by Cæsar
governor of Cisalpine Gaul and prætor, Brutus became an assassin of his
benefactor.
Among the three near associates of Cæsar, Mark Antony was far the
ablest, and possessed the merit of remaining faithful till the death
of the benefactor. He had filled many military and civil offices with
distinction, and was Cæsar’s colleague in the consulship at the time
of the murder. Shortly before this event, at a public festival, Antony
offered Cæsar a crown, alleging that it was from the people. Although
Cæsar would gladly have welcomed any device for legitimizing his rule,
he refused the kingly title because of its unpopularity.
The assassination left Antony sole consul. Having control of Cæsar’s
papers and property, he skilfully used these advantages to make himself
absolute. In a clever oration at the funeral he turned the feelings of
the populace against the murderers, who thereupon fled from Rome. With
young Octavianus (Octavius) he patched up a temporary alliance, and in
combination they defeated the armies of Brutus and Cassius in the two
battles of Philippi, 42 B. C. The beaten generals committed suicide,
and the victors divided the empire between them, Antony taking the
East and Octavianus the West. The later history of Antony is told in
connection with Cleopatra.
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 6. No. 2, SERIAL No. 150
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.
[Illustration: RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF THE DEIFIED JULIUS CÆSAR--ROMAN
FORUM]
_JULIUS CÆSAR_
_The Portrait Sculpture and the Reproduction of Buildings in this
Number of The Mentor_
SIX
In the Rome of Cæsar Hellenic influence was active, not only in
literature and philosophy, but also in art. The Roman portrait
sculpture of this period reveals Greek knowledge and skill; but its
essential character was determined by native tradition. The earliest
Roman portraits were waxen death masks formed from a moulding over
the face. Hence they were mechanically accurate but utterly devoid
of animation. Though this material has perished, the visitor to the
museums of Rome will find in relief many a family group in which
the faces retain the mask-like quality. Only in a slighter degree
does the principle apply to portrait sculpture in the round. At
its best the Republican face accordingly is intensely realistic
yet with no intimation of the inner spirit. Commonly the hair is
indicated by parallel scratches made by firm chisel strokes. By these
characteristics many busts and statues may be easily dated. It should
be noticed, too, that in the Republican age the portrait heads, as
distinguished from statues, include in addition to the head scarcely
more than the neck, and that the bust is a gradual development during
the subsequent period. With this criterion we are able to assign the
Brutus of this number of The Mentor to the administration of Claudius,
41-54 A. D. In the colossal portrait of Cæsar of the National Museum
at Naples the bust is a modern restoration, and we may only cherish
the reasonable faith that the head is genuine, though somewhat later
than his lifetime. The famous Cæsar of the British Museum, comprising
head and neck, would satisfy the criterion here formulated, but fails
to pass another even more important test. The indication of the
pupil in the eye was not devised till after Hadrian, 117-138 A. D.,
and accordingly this head could be no earlier. Recently it has been
suggested, with some reason, that the work is a modern study. If so, it
is a great success, as it most admirably expresses the physique and the
character of the famous man.
Another aid to identification is the circumstance that a colossus could
represent no one but a preéminent person; and this criterion favors
the Neapolitan head of Cæsar mentioned above. The colossus statue in
the Conservatori Palace seems to be authentic, but was made a half
century or more after his death. The face is fuller than the literary
description or the coins would warrant, but the difference may well be
due to idealization. The images on coins are doubtless true likenesses,
but in the case of his sculptured portraits we can only deal in
probabilities.
For Pompey we are in a less fortunate condition. The colossal statue
in the Palazzo Spada, a detail of which is given in this number, has
long passed as the image at the feet of which Cæsar met his death;
but the proof is insufficient, and it seems at least as likely that
it represents an emperor. Other portraits are equally uncertain.
The Madrid bust of Cicero is genuine, and well represents the
orator’s great intelligence with a momentary expression of scorn.
The better-known Vatican head, the bust of which is modern, is also
genuine and stands second in merit. For Cleopatra there are no certain
sculptural portraits. The reclining woman of the Ariadne type has been
mistaken for her because of the snake, as she is known to have died by
the bite of an asp. The illustration is given merely because it long
passed for Cleopatra and is a Greek work of rare beauty. Her true image
is shown on coins.
The various reproductions of edifices are not creations of the fancy,
but have been carefully worked out by archæologists from remains of
buildings according to the well established principles of architecture.
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 6. No. 2, SERIAL No. 150
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.
THE MENTOR · DEPARTMENT OF BIOGRAPHY
MARCH 1, 1918
JULIUS CÆSAR
By GEORGE WILLIS BOTSFORD
_Late Professor of History, Columbia University. Author of “Story of
Rome,” “History of Rome,” etc._
_MENTOR GRAVURES_
JULIUS CÆSAR
THE ROMAN FORUM IN THE TIME OF CÆSAR
THE RIVER TIBER IN THE TIME OF CÆSAR
_MENTOR GRAVURES_
CÆSAR CROSSING THE RUBICON
DEATH OF CÆSAR
RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF THE DEIFIED CÆSAR
[Illustration: From History of Rome, by G. W. Botsford, The Macmillan
Co., Publishers
JULIUS CÆSAR]
Entered as second-class matter March 10, 1913, at the postoffice at New
York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Copyright, 1918, by The
Mentor Association, Inc.
_Rome’s Conquest of the Civilized World_
To understand the world in which Cæsar lived it is necessary first to
review the growth of the Roman Empire. Four hundred years before the
beginning of the Christian era Rome was a small city, an independent
state, it is true, but in possession of a territory no larger than an
American county. In a succession of wars lasting through a century and
a third (400-264 B. C.), she gained control of the whole peninsula of
Italy. In another century (264-167 B. C.), through a new series of
wars, she built up an empire that nearly surrounded the Mediterranean
Sea. This rapid expansion of power is one of the most notable events in
the world’s history. In the present number of The Mentor, however, we
are less concerned with the process of conquest than with its result.
When Rome subdued a foreign state, she exercised her right of war in
depriving it of a great part of its wealth, including money, land,
and art treasures, not only paintings and marbles, but works of great
intrinsic value in bronze, silver, and gold. These confiscations and
the subsequent taxes levied by the imperial government, together with
the illegal exactions of officials, tended to impoverish the world for
the enrichment of Rome and of the few citizens who monopolized the
offices. The conquest differentiated the freemen of the empire into
three distinct classes: the few wealthy Romans, who governed the world,
the masses of Roman citizens who, though in possession of the right to
vote had gained no advantage by the conquest, and the subjects, barred
from all share in the imperial government and greatly oppressed by its
officials.
[Illustration: JULIUS CÆSAR
In the Capitoline Museum, Rome]
Rome became a great city with a population of about a million, who
had gathered from all parts of the empire. Some had come as slaves,
others to seek their fortunes, while others had been driven from the
surrounding districts by the pinch of poverty. As freemen could find
little work in the city, there grew up a great mob of idlers, who lived
in large part on food doled out to them by the state as the price of
their votes.
The ruling class was represented by the Senate, which was the chief
governing body. Generally the senators were the most cultured and
intelligent people at Rome; but they had all the faults of a narrow
plutocracy; through long enjoyment of wealth and power the class was
thoroughly corrupted and enfeebled. Hence the Senate proved incapable
of governing and protecting the empire and even of preventing the
frequent outbreaks of anarchy in the capital.
[Illustration: TEMPLE OF JUPITER--CAPITOLINE
As it appeared in the time of Cæsar]
_Early Life of Cæsar_
Such in brief was the world in which Gaius Julius Cæsar lived (100-44
B. C.) Belonging to the bluest-blooded aristocracy, he began life
with all the advantages of wealth and family repute. As a boy and
youth he enjoyed the best education of the time. It consisted mainly
in the study and imitation of Greek writers, especially orators,
in preparation for a career as public speaker and statesman. Rome
had derived her civilization from Greece; and every business man or
diplomatist had to speak the Greek language, which was the chief medium
of communication throughout the Mediterranean world.
In company with other young aristocrats Cæsar in early life indulged
in all the dissipations and vices of his class. The foppish negligence
of his attire proclaimed him a rake, while exorbitant luxuries, costly
entertainments, forbidden love-intrigues, gambling--in brief, the
indulging of a great variety of expensive tastes--exhausted his fortune
and loaded him with debts so portentous that he could never hope to pay
them by legal means. Through all these immoralities he kept a sound
mind and a body capable of extreme activity and endurance, though in
his later years he was subject to fainting and to epileptic fits.
The clearness and quickness of his intelligence was such that he could
carry on several lines of thought and keep a number of stenographers[1]
occupied simultaneously with his dictations. These extraordinary mental
powers enabled him to master the most complex political situations
and on the battlefield to turn many a defeat into victory. For the
knowledge necessary to his manifold activities he devoured the contents
of a multitude of books on a great variety of subjects. He was an
orator of splendid power, a writer of clear and simple Latin, a man
of scientific taste, interested in the customs and character of the
peoples with whom he came in contact, and in the phenomena of nature;
a general with few equals in the world’s history, and a statesman
variously estimated by modern historians.
[1] In that age stenography was a well-developed art, essential to
the work of a secretary.
[Illustration: THE ROMAN FORUM (restored), northwest side]
[Illustration: From History of Rome, by G. W. Botsford, The Macmillan
Co., Publishers
A ROMAN FEAST]
At the beginning of his career he cast his lot with the popular party.
This policy meant little more than a preference for dealing with the
Assembly rather than with the Senate. In theory the Assembly comprised
all the citizens; practically it was attended by the idler members of
the populace. There was no democracy; for those citizens that lived too
far from Rome to attend the Assembly had no voice in the government,
and the vast majority of people in the empire were subjects. It was
expected that a leader of the popular party should propose to the
Assembly bills for the benefit of the masses of citizens, particularly
of the populace, and for checking the powers and privileges of the
aristocracy.
Cæsar was by no means a believer in human equality. Speaking in early
life at the funeral of an aunt, he gave the following account of his
family’s genealogy: “My aunt Julia derived her lineage on her mother’s
side from a race of kings, and on her father’s side from the immortal
gods; for her mother’s family trace their origin to King Ancus Marcius,
and her father’s to Venus, of whose stock we are a branch. We unite in
our pedigree, accordingly, the sacred majesty of kings, who are the
most exalted among men, and the divine majesty of gods, to whom kings
themselves are subject.” Men of such pretensions could never descend to
the level of peasants and artisans, nor believe that the world would
benefit by popular rule.
[Illustration: POMPEY
In the Palazzo Spada, Rome]
_His Wars and His Consulship_
Through an attractive personality, political intrigue sometimes verging
dangerously on conspiracy, and the lavish use of borrowed money, Cæsar
rapidly made his way upward through the higher offices in the routine
order. In those times the surest avenue to political power was success
in military command; and for the years 61-60 B. C. Cæsar was appointed
governor of “Farther Spain.” On his arrival he found his province
at peace; but he managed to stir up trouble with some neighboring
tribes of mountaineers who were beyond the border of the empire. After
imposing upon them orders that they could not obey, he made war upon
them. They had little wealth to plunder, but he took captive great
numbers, whom he sold into slavery. As governor he found other ways
of making money, mostly illegal; so that he was able to reward his
soldiers, pay his huge debts, and have something left for the future.
In this policy he acted like former governors, but with greater
cleverness.
[Illustration: JULIUS CÆSAR
In the National Museum, Naples]
Returning to Rome, he gained the Consulship, which was the highest
standing office (59 B. C.) There were two consuls; and his colleague
was Bibulus, a stupid person, who chanced to be a political
adversary. For the first time Cæsar was in a position to display
his statesmanship. Two great problems were pressing, the economic
improvement of the masses throughout the empire and their protection
from the greedy oppression of Roman officials. Against the obstruction
of his colleague Cæsar carried a law through the Assembly for the
division of large tracts of public land among the needier citizens--a
measure which brought him great popularity. Although it did nothing to
benefit the subjects, it was a step in the right direction. Another
law, worked out in great detail, aimed to prevent officers of the
empire from committing extortion upon the subjects. Though doubtless
well intended, this law proved ineffective because no one in power
cared to enforce it. Most of his consular year, however, he devoted to
winning influential friends and to securing for himself an opportunity
for further military exploits after the expiration of his Consulship.
The territory placed under his government for this purpose included
especially Cisalpine Gaul--substantially the Po Basin--and Narbonensis,
a strip of land extending along the southern coast of Gaul, now France.
Disturbances beyond his borders gave him a pretext for war, which
lasted eight years (58-50 B. C.), and which resulted in the conquest
of Gaul. In accomplishing this end Cæsar employed his most brilliant
generalship, including lightning-like movements and daring strategy.
When we consider that he had had little experience in warfare, we must
regard his achievements as marvellous. The conquest was accompanied
by great cruelty to the conquered. On one occasion more than fifty
thousand captives were sold into slavery; on another he beheaded the
senators of a conquered community and sold all the people as slaves.
At another time he massacred an entire tribe, numbering more than four
hundred thousand men, women, and children. The plunder, and especially
the sale of captives, brought the victor enormous wealth, a part of
which he devoted to buying supporters at Rome. After overawing Gaul
with terrorism he adopted a policy of conciliation, by which he won the
fidelity of the survivors. Although in entering upon the conquest Cæsar
had merely his own aggrandizement in mind, he must in the end have come
to an appreciation of the value of the new province to the empire. Even
after the vast slaughter and enslavement of the bravest Gauls, the
survivors were full of vitality. The country was rich in agricultural
and mineral resources, and the Rhone River formed a convenient outlet
for the country’s products in the direction of Rome. This acquisition
added great strength to the empire, and prepared the ground for the
extension of Roman civilization into western and central Europe. The
conquest was, in fact, the greatest achievement of Cæsar’s genius.
[Illustration: From History of Rome, by G. W. Botsford, The Macmillan
Co., Publishers
WARFARE IN CÆSAR’S TIME]
[Illustration: ROMAN LEGIONARY SOLDIER
From Duruy’s “History of Rome”]
[Illustration: GALLIC SOLDIER]
No sooner had he finished this work than he came to blows with the
Senate, which feared his towering ambition. A civil war ensued (49-45
B. C.) The champion of the Senate was Pompey, who also had met with
great success in war. Though in appearance the struggle was between
Cæsar and the Republic, its real object was to determine which of the
two leading generals should be master of the Roman world. Pompey was
defeated and killed; and in the end Cæsar subdued the whole empire
to his will. He ruled as Dictator, appointed to that office by the
submissive Senate.
_His Reforms as Dictator_
[Illustration: ROMAN WORKS OF APPROACH
Showing parts of a Gallic wall in which stones are intermixed with
beams]
During the civil war and the year following its close Cæsar gave
attention to internal reforms. Humanely and prudently he forgave
political offenders, and associated with himself in the government
many who had fought against him in the war. He sought to reconcile old
hatreds and to introduce an era of good feeling. There can be no doubt
of his sympathy with the subject peoples. Those in authority in the
provinces were no longer to enrich themselves and their friends by
oppression, but were held strictly accountable to the Dictator. Roman
citizenship was a highly-prized possession, as it meant justice and an
enviable social standing to the possessor. Cæsar granted it freely to
individuals and to entire communities. Obviously, his aim was the rapid
equalization of all freemen of the empire.
He took especial interest in public improvements at Rome. Among these
works was the completion of the temple to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva
on the Capitoline Hill. The earlier temple had been destroyed by fire,
and the construction of the new building required about thirty-six
years. This was the largest and most stately temple in the city. Cæsar
laid out a public square, named after his family the Julian Forum, in
which he erected a temple to Venus Genetrix (ancestress), from whom
he claimed descent. In it he placed a graceful statue of the goddess,
carved by Arcesilaus, the most famous sculptor of the age. It is a
remarkable example of clinging transparent drapery. In this public
exhibition of his descent from a goddess Cæsar boldly displayed his
egotism, which was further exalted by decrees of the Senate proclaiming
him a god. It was not till after his death, however, that a temple
was actually erected, at the east end of the Roman Forum, for his
worship.[2] The Curia, Senate House, Cæsar began to rebuild, but its
completion was left to Augustus, who named it the Curia Julia, after
the Julian family, to which Cæsar, and by adoption Augustus, belonged.
On the south side of the Forum he began the construction of the
Basilica Julia, afterward finished by Augustus. It was a great hall
intended for judicial and mercantile business. These are but a small
part of the vast improvements that he planned for Rome, Italy, and
the empire. The greater number remained mere schemes. To us the most
interesting was the cutting of a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth,
a work that has had to await the skill of the modern engineer.
[2] The temple of the deified Cæsar, the ruins of which is pictured
in this number.
As supreme pontiff Cæsar was the head of the state religion and
guardian of the sacred lore. In this capacity he reformed the
calendar, which in his day had fallen into dire confusion. The
improvement consisted essentially in the adoption of the Egyptian solar
year of 365¼ days. The Julian calendar remained in force throughout
the civilized world till 1582, when it was superseded by that of Pope
Gregory XIII, who introduced a more exact system.
[Illustration: ROMAN FASCES
Bundle of rods and axe bound together and borne before emperors and
other rulers as symbols of power]
[Illustration: THE BASILICA JULIA--Roman Forum (restored)]
[Illustration: A DENARIUS
Stamped with the head of Cæsar. A denarius was a silver coin worth
about 20 cents]
_Personal Appearance, Friends and Character_
The Romans as a people belonged to the Mediterranean race, and the
great majority, therefore, were short and dark, like the Sicilians of
today. Cæsar, however, was tall and fair, with round, well-proportioned
limbs and black piercing eyes. His portraits on coins and in sculpture
show a spare face with a high, broad forehead inclined to baldness,
representing a physique too delicate to sustain the enormous activities
of his brain. To the end of his days he paid, perhaps, an excessive
attention to his personal appearance, and was especially gratified when
the Senate in his honor decreed him the privilege of wearing a laurel
wreath; for he found it a means of covering his baldness. There was in
his face and manner a frank sympathy that won the hearts of all those
that came into close touch with him; and in spite of brutal conquests
he developed an expression of gentleness and clemency mentioned by
writers of his age.
The greatest of his contemporaries was Cicero, who by sheer energy and
ability had worked his way to the highest offices, and had rescued the
state from a dangerous conspiracy. Though he was a consummate political
orator, Cicero’s tastes lay chiefly in the direction of literary
and philosophic composition, pleasant country life, and association
with intellectual men. Cæsar tried to win him as a political ally;
but Cicero and those intimate associates that loved the Republic
feared Cæsar’s autocratic methods and ambition. This aloofness of the
intellectual class drove Cæsar to seek friends and helpers in the lower
ranks of society and among his subordinate military officers. Although
a few of these people served him faithfully, the great majority were
incompetent to fill the offices that he gave them, and were bent only
on shirking duty and enriching themselves. On such a basis no man,
however great, can build up a just and efficient system of government.
[Illustration: CICERO
In the Vatican Museum, Rome]
[Illustration: CICERO
In the Madrid Museum. Considered the most authentic marble portrait of
the great orator]
[Illustration: From History of Rome, by G. W. Botsford, The Macmillan
Co., Publishers
POMPEY]
In spite of many admirable qualities Cæsar shared fully in the moral
looseness of the age, which set at naught all marriage relations.
Not even his friends at Rome, nor friendly kings who gave him their
hospitality, could trust their wives to his honor. With Cleopatra,
queen of Egypt, he had associated in her capital; but he shocked even
his dissolute countrymen by bringing her to Rome and into his own house.
_An Imitation of Alexander_
[Illustration: POMPEY’S THEATER (restored)
First theater in Rome built of stone]
That Cæsar desired absolute power, not merely for his own enjoyment
but in the conviction that with it he could best serve the empire,
can hardly be disputed; but whether or not he wished the kingly title
no one can know. While he was in the Orient the glamor of Alexander’s
achievements seems to have overcome him; and under this spell he
neglected the work of improving the empire to plan the conquest of the
great Parthian kingdom, Rome’s only surviving rival. In this scheme the
conqueror got the better of the statesman. A motive to the new war,
in itself unnecessary, was to escape from the situation at Rome--from
flattery, intrigue, the incompetence of officials, from deadly though
silent envy and hatred, which were making his life every day more
unendurable. As the conqueror of Parthia he could overwhelm all
opposition and mold the empire as clay in the potter’s hands. For the
remainder of his days he could dwell serene on the pinnacle of glory;
and at his death, having no son of his own, he could bequeath the
regenerated world to his grandnephew Octavius, a youth of great promise
whom he had adopted as a son.
[Illustration: CLEOPATRA
In the Vatican Museum, Rome]
From all that we can learn, however, success in the Parthian war
would have been a catastrophe to European civilization. In wealth and
population, in the resources of war and peace, the Oriental part of
the empire would have overbalanced the European. The capital would
have shifted to Alexandria or farther east; and Oriental absolutism
would have dominated the civilized world. Three centuries after Cæsar,
autocracy was to come even to Europe. It came with its bureaucratic
accompaniment to destroy the little that remained of economic strength
and intellectual freedom, and to drag to ruin the decaying civilization
of the ancient world.
Cæsar, however, was not destined even to set out for Parthia. On March
15 (44 B. C.), the Senate met to take the last measures preparatory
to his departure. The place of session was the Senate House which
Pompey had built near his theater. Scarcely had Cæsar entered and taken
his seat when a throng of about sixty senators gathered round him,
pretending to greet him and to offer a petition. They were conspirators
who had engaged in a plot for his assassination, through no especial
love for the Republic, but for various personal reasons. Many had
gained office and wealth under his patronage; but in their greed for
greater wealth and political glory they lost all sense of gratitude.
The best among them was Marcus Brutus, in his own social circle a
philosopher and an idealist, but in business a hard, relentless usurer.
Caius Cassius, the brain of the conspiracy, was a plunderer of the
provinces and a robber of temples, whom envy drove into the plot. By
such men was Cæsar slain. It was a crime perpetrated upon the civilized
world, which had to endure thirteen more years of desolating civil
war (44-31 B. C.), before Octavius, the young heir to Cæsar, could
gain the mastery and bring the empire to peace. This young man, known
to history as Augustus, though less brilliant than his granduncle,
possessed a far greater degree of practical wisdom. It was he, rather
than Cæsar, who gave the Roman world an organization under which it was
to enjoy more than two centuries of prosperity and happiness. Viewed in
this light, the wisest act of the great Cæsar was the choice of this
youth of delicately modeled features and frail body as his son and
successor.
[Illustration: OCTAVIUS
Called “Augustus.” In the Vatican Museum, Rome]
[Illustration: MARCUS BRUTUS
In the National Museum, Naples. Found at Pompeii]
* * * * *
THE PASSING OF CÆSAR--“On March 15 (the Ides of March), 44 B. C.,
Cæsar entered the Senate Chamber and took his seat. His presence awed
men, in spite of themselves, and the conspirators had determined to
act at once, lest they should lose courage to act at all. He was
familiar and easy of access. They gathered round him. He knew them
all. There was not one from whom he had not a right to expect some
sort of gratitude, and the movement suggested no suspicion. One had a
story to tell him; another some favor to ask. Tullius Cimber, whom he
had just made governor of Bithynia, then came close to him with some
request which he was unwilling to grant. Cimber caught his gown, as
if in entreaty, and dragged it from his shoulders. Cassius, who was
standing behind, stabbed him in the throat. He started up with a cry,
and caught Cassius’s arm. Another poinard entered his breast, giving a
mortal wound. He looked round, and seeing not one friendly face, but
only a ring of daggers pointing at him, he drew his gown over his head,
gathered the folds about him that he might fall decently, and sank
down without uttering another word. Cicero was present. Brutus, waving
his dagger, shouted to Cicero, congratulating him that liberty was
restored. The Senate rose with shrieks and confusion, and rushed into
the Forum. The crowd outside caught the words that Cæsar was dead and
scattered to their houses. The murderers, some of them bleeding from
wounds which they had given one another in their eagerness, followed,
crying that the tyrant was dead, and that Rome was free.”--_James
Anthony Froude._
[Illustration: THE FALLEN CONQUEROR
A reproduction of the pen drawing of the figure of Cæsar made by the
painter Gérôme as a preliminary sketch for his great picture of the
assassination of Cæsar]
_SUPPLEMENTARY READING_: JULIUS CÆSAR, by G. Ferrero; JULIUS CÆSAR,
a sketch, by J. A. Froude; JULIUS CÆSAR, by W. W. Fowler (Heroes of
the Nations Series); JULIUS CÆSAR, by J. Abbott; LIFE OF CÆSAR, in
Plutarch’s Lives.
⁂ Information concerning these books may be had on application to the
Editor of The Mentor.
_THE CONQUERORS_
[Illustration: Copyright by Braun, Clement & Co. Original painting
owned by John Wanamaker
THE CONQUERORS
This powerful painting by Pierre Fritel pictures the grim progress of
the great conquerors of the world through an avenue of death lined by
the victims of the world’s wars. Cæsar rides in the center--beside and
behind are Tamerlane, Alexander, Attila, Charlemagne, Napoleon and
other world conquerors.]
It is Human Desire that makes world history--desire for conquest,
possession, and control. The Conqueror of the World must have his will.
He treads the peoples of the earth under his feet, and spreads ruin in
his path. He knows no social distinctions--this Re-molder of Humanity.
The habitations of poor and rich alike are demolished, and the
treasured possessions of city and town desecrated. Monuments of revered
memory are razed to the ground, and new monuments to the Conqueror are
raised to the sky. Nations are subjugated; governments are revised;
territory is re-assigned; new laws are made. The people bow under the
yoke; the Conqueror is enthroned with pomp and ceremony, and hailed as
Master of the World.
And then--something happens that saves the world for the people. Some
call it the “Hand of Fate”; those that live in the faith call it the
“Will of God.” But history tells us that final defeat awaits the man
that aspires to be Conqueror of the World.
* * * * *
Tamerlane, the Tartar tyrant, called “the Scourge of God,” swept the
hordes of Asia before him in world conquest. He died suddenly while
preparing to invade China. Alexander of Macedon, called “the Great,”
made himself master of the world of his day. He forestalled Fate by
dissipating his young life away, and died broken-hearted, sighing for
more worlds to conquer. Hannibal, the Carthaginian, carried the spirit
of conquest across the Mediterranean to Spain, Italy, and over the
Alps. He threatened Rome itself, and as
|
as’ tyranny: “Irritated
she asked me if I wanted to revive the tyranny of Hippias.”
Again in his _Lysistrata_ (v. 678) this master of wanton wit points to
the same thing, declaring the female sex to be very good at riding and
fond of driving: “Woman loves to get on horseback and to stick there.”
Aristophanes mocks similarly those, of whom he says, in verse 60 of the
same play, that “They are aboard their barks.” “They are mounted on
their chargers.” For —— signifies both a ship and a horse. Plango in
Asclepiades, Brunck’s _Analecta_, vol. I., 217, affects the same figure.
“When she in horsemanship vanquished the ardent Philaenis, whilst
her Hesperian coursers foamed under her reins.”
Yet more expert in this kind of amorous riding than Philaenis herself,
this ardent votary of pleasure thanks Venus in this epigram, that she
has been able so to exhaust certain Hesperian gallants, whom she had
mounted, that they had left her with wanton members all drooping, and
feeling no desire left in them. To bestride men was also the favourite
pastime of Lysidicé, who was never tired in the service of Venus, of
whom the following epigram of Asclepiades treats:
“Many a horse has she ridden beneath her, yet never galled her thigh
with all her nimble movements.”
Courtesans consecrated to Venus a whip, a bit, a spur, in order to
signify, that with their clients they like best to pose themselves in
that way, and that they preferred riding themselves to being
ridden,—nothing more.
It is the same when in Apuleius, Fotis satiated her Lucius with the
pleasures of the undulating Venus:
“Saying this she leaped upon the couch and, seated upon me
backwards, plying her hips, vibrating her lithe spine lasciviously,
she satiated me with the delights of the undulating Venus, till both
of us exhausted, powerless and with useless limbs, sunk down,
exhaling our souls in mutual embraces” (_Metamorph._, II., ch. II).
The next figure,—the man lying supine and the woman turning her back to
him, is executed by Rangoni with Ottavia, under the direction of Tullia:
RANGONI: Look how stiff I stand! But I want to try the bliss in a
new way.
TULLIA: In a new way? No! I swear by my wanton soul you shall not.
You shall not take a new way.
RANGONI: It was a slip of the tongue; I meant to say a new posture.
TULLIA: And what sort of one? I have an idea... what they call the
horse of Hector. Lie down on your back, Rangoni; let your puissant
spear stand firm to the enemy, who is to be pierced, Well done!
OTTAVIA: What must I do, Tullia?
TULLIA: Clip Rangoni between your thighs, mounting him a-straddle.
His cutlass as he lies should meet your sheath poised over it. Why!
you’ve taken the position admirably. Excellent!
RANGONI: Oh! what a back, worthy of Venus! Oh! the ivory sides! Oh!
the inviting buttocks!
TULLIA: No naughty words! He who praises the buttocks, slanders the
vulva! You know better, Ottavia! Her greedy vulva has swallowed your
bristling member whole, Rangoni.
OTTAVIA: Quick, Rangoni, it is coming!... quick, quick, help me!
RANGONI: I am coming, Ottavia,—I am come! Are you?—Are you, darling!
TULLIA: How now? Are you so quickly done up, you two? (Aloysia
Sigaea, Dial. VI).
The pygiacic[15] mysteries, to which Eumolpus in Petronius (Satires, ch.
cxl), invites a young girl, refer to the posture practised by the man
lying on his back, with the woman upon him, her back turned towards him.
“Eumolpus did not hesitate to invite the young girl to the pygiacic
mysteries, but begged of her to seat herself upon the goodness known
to her (that being himself, to whose goodness the mother had
recommended her daughter), and ordered Corax to get on his stomach
under the bed on which he was, so that with his hands pressed
against the floor, he might assist with his movements those of his
master. Corax obeyed, beginning with slow undulations responding to
those of the young girl. When the crisis was approaching, Eumolpus
exhorted Corax with a loud voice to quicken up his movements. Thus
placed between his servant and his mistress, the old man took his
pleasure as in a swing.”
Would it be surprising, if in these posterior mysteries, Eumolpus’
member had perchance gone wrong, and taken by mistake one orifice for
the other?
You will find this figure represented in a copper-plate engraving in the
very elegant book of d’Hancarville, _Monuments du culte secret des dames
romaines_, ch. xxv, and you will be glad to know the note, with which
the learned annotator accompanies the same.
“This attitude is to the taste of many men, and even the ladies find
an increase of pleasure in practising it. It is supposed, that
Priapus penetrates farther in, and that the fair one by her
movements procures for herself a more voluptuous delight, and a more
abundant libation.”
Is it possible for the man, conveniently, to manage the business while
turning his back to the woman lying on her back? Experts must decide.
Aloysia Sigaea says with good common sense:
“There are many postures it is impossible to execute, even supposing
the joints and loins of the candidates for the sacred joys of Venus
more flexible than can be believed. By dint of pondering and
reflection more ideas occur to the fancy than it is practicable to
realize: Nothing is inconceivable to the longings of an unbridled
will; nothing difficult to a furious and unregulated imagination.
Love will find out a way; and an ardent fancy level mountains. Only
the body is unable to comply with everything the mind, good or bad,
suggests.”
In another work of d’Hancarville’s, _Monuments de la vie privée des
douze Césars_, plate XXVII., you find represented men seated and
copulating with women, who are facing them; plate XV., in the same book
presents to your curiosity a man sitting and working a woman, who turns
her back on him. Augustus is seated: he is attacking backwards, with
true imperial audacity, Terentia[16], the wife of Maecenas, after
drawing her onto his lap; Maecenas is present, asleep—asleep of course
only for the Emperor. You may see a similar posture in the _Contes et
Nouvelles en vers_ by Jean de la Fontaine: it is on the plate appended
to the tale, called _Le Tableau_, p. 223, vol. II., Amsterdam, 1762.
Nothing is more frequent than conjunction whilst standing, the woman
with her back to the man; it is indeed very easy to do it that way in
any place, as you have only to lift up the fair one’s petticoats, and
out with your weapon; it is, therefore, the best manner for those who
have to make instantaneous use of an opportunity, when it is important
to be sharp about it, as may happen, when you take your pleasure in
secret. Thus Priapus complains of the wives and daughters of his
neighbors, who came incessantly to him burning with ticklish desires.
“Cut off my genital member, which every night and all night long my
neighbours’ wives and daughters, for ever and for ever in heat, more
wanton than sparrows in springtide, tire to death,—or I shall
burst!...” (_Priapeia_, XXV).
I remember a medical man of our time, one of the most celebrated
professors, (I had nearly uttered his name), who to emphasize this,
called his daughter, and pointing to the blushing girl, while his
hearers could not help smiling said: “This girl I fabricated standing.”
A representation of this position is to be found in the _Monuments de la
vie privée de douze Césars_, pl. XLVI., and another in the _Monuments du
culte secrets des dames romaines_, pl. XIII.
But further, a man may join himself to a woman standing face to face by
supporting her in such a way, that her whole body is lifted up, her
thighs resting on the man’s hips, or else by lifting up the lower part
of her body, whilst the upper part is resting on a couch. Will you feast
your eyes with a representation of this not ungraceful position? If so
you will not omit to look at plate XXIV of the _Monuments du culte
secret des dames romaines_, and plate XL of the _Monuments de la vie
privée des douze Césars_; Ovid, if I am not mistaken, had his eyes on
one or the other of these figures:
“Milanion was supporting Atalanta’s legs on his shoulders; if they
are fine legs this is how they should be held” (_Art of Love_, III.,
vv. 775, 776). The former of these modes is no doubt that described
by Aloysia Sigaea, Past Mistress of these naughtinesses, and with a
vivacity, a grace, and elegance that leaves nothing to be desired:
“La Tour came forward instantly.... I had thrown myself on the foot
of the bed”—(Tullia is speaking)—“I was naked; his member was erect.
Without more ado he grasps in either hand one of my breasts, and
brandishing his hard and inflamed lance between my thighs, exclaims
“Look Madam, how this weapon is darting at you, not to kill you, but
to give you the greatest possible pleasure. Pray, guide this blind
applicant into the dark recess, so that it may not miss its
destination; I will not remove my hands from where they are, I would
not deprive them of the bliss they enjoy.” I do as he wishes, I
introduce myself the flaming dart into the burning centre; he feels
it, drives in, pushes home.... After one or two strokes I felt
myself melting away with incredible titillation, and my knees all
but gave way. “Stop”, I cried—“stop my soul, it is escaping!” “I
know”, he replied, laughing, “from where. No doubt your soul wants
to escape through this lower orifice, of which I have possession;
but I keep it well stoppered.” Whilst speaking he endeavoured, by
holding his breath, still further to increase the already enormous
size of his swollen member. “I am going to thrust back your escaping
soul”, he added, poking me more and more violently. His sword
pierced yet deeper into the quick. Redoubling his delicious blows,
he filled me with transports of pleasure,—working so forcefully
that, albeit he could not get his whole body into me, he impregnated
me with all his passion, all his lascivious desires, his very
thoughts, his whole delirious soul by his voluptuous embraces. At
last feeling the approach of the ecstasy and the boiling over of the
liquid, he slips his hands under my buttocks, and lifts me up
bodily. I do my part; I twine my arms closely round his form, my
thighs and legs being at the same time inter-twisted and entangled
with his, so that I found myself suspended on his neck in the air,
lifted clean off the ground; I was thus hanging, as it were, fixed
on a peg. I had not the patience to wait for him, as he was going
on, and again I swooned with pleasure. In the most violent raptures
I could not help crying out—“I feel all... I feel all the delights
of Juno lying with Jupiter. I am in heaven.” At this moment La Tour,
pushed by Venus and Cupido to the acmé of voluptuousness, poured a
plenteous flood of his well into the genial hold, burning like fire.
The creeper does not cling more closely round the walnut tree than I
hold fast to La Tour with my arms and legs” (Dial. VI).
As to the last manner by means of which copulation may be achieved, the
man standing with the woman half lifted up, Conrad practises it with
slight modifications.
(TULLIA speaking): “He opened my thighs—I do not dislike Conrad,
though I am not particularly partial to him. I neither consented,
nor refused. As to him, he fancied a novel posture, and not at all a
bad one. I was lying on my back; he raised my right thigh on his
shoulder, and in this position he transfixed me, while I was
awaiting the event, without greatly desiring it. He had at the same
time extended my left thigh along his right thigh. His tool plunged
into the root, he began to push and poke, quicker and quicker. What
need to say more? Picture the conclusion for yourself” (Dial. VI).
Last of all, a man can get into a woman turning her back to him after
the manner of the quadrupeds, who can have no connection with their
females otherwise than by mounting upon them from behind[17]. Some
authorities have held that a woman conceives easier while on all fours.
Lucretius says:
“... Women are said to conceive more readily when down after the
manner of beasts, as the organs can absorb the seed best so, when
the bosom is depressed and the loins lifted” (_Of the Nature of
Things_, IV., vv. 1259-1262).
Also Aloysia Sigaea:
“Some people pretend that the fashion to make love indicated by
Nature is that one where the woman offers herself for copulation
after the manner of the animals, bent down with the hips raised; the
virile ploughshare penetrates thus more conveniently into the female
furrow, and the seminal flow waters the field of love.... The
doctors, however, are against this posture; they say it is
incompatible with the conformation of the parts destined for
generation.” (Dial. VI.)
However this may be, it happens frequently, that women cannot be managed
in any other way. Given an obese man and a woman likewise obese or with
child, how are they to do the thing otherwise? This is the reason why,
so they say, Augustus having married Livia Drusilla, divorced wife of
Tiberius Nero and already six months gone in pregnancy, had connection
with her after the manner of animals. Plate VII of the _Monuments de la
vie privée des douze Césars_ will give you an idea of the posture
assumed by both of them. But why should we not give you the annotations
whereby the learned editor has elucidated the plate? Here they are:
“This Drusilla was the famous Livia, the wife of Tiberius Nero, who
had been one of Anthony’s friends. Augustus fell violently in love
with her, and Tiberius gave her up to him, although she was at the
time six months with child. A good many jokes were made about the
eagerness of the Emperor, and one day, while they were all at table,
and Livia was reclining by Augustus, one of those naked children,
whom matrons used to educate for their pleasures, going up to Livia
said: “What are you doing here? yonder is your husband”, pointing to
Nero, “there he is”[18]. Soon afterwards Livia was confined, and the
Romans said openly, that lucky people get children three months
after being married, which passed into a proverb. One historian says
that Augustus was obliged to caress his wife “after the manner of
beasts” on account of her pregnancy, and it was to this luxurious
attitude that the cameo of Apollonius, the celebrated gem-cutter of
the time of Augustus, makes allusion. True that the state in which
Livia was may have made this posture necessary: but it seems that it
was at all times to the taste of the Ancients, either because they
considered this attitude favorable for procreation, as Lucretius
maintains, or because they found it to be a refinement of
voluptuousness. The most extraordinary and least natural postures
have always appeared to rakes as enhancing the pleasure of the
conjunction. But it must be admitted that imagination still outruns
actual possibilities.”
A singular reason for the necessity of encountering a woman backwards is
given by Aloysia Sigaea, with her usual sagacity:
“For pleasure, one likes a vulva which is not placed too far back,
so as to be entirely hidden by the thighs; it should not be more
than nine or ten inches from the navel. With the greater number of
girls the pubis goes so far down, that it may easily be taken as the
other way of pleasure. With such coition is difficult. Theodora
Aspilqueta could not be deflowered, till she placed herself prone on
her stomach, with her knees drawn up to her sides. Vainly had her
husband tried to manage her, while lying on her back, he only lost
his oil” (Dialogue VII).
Ovid recommends this way with women who begin to be wrinkled:
“Likewise you, whose stomach Lucina has marked with wrinkles, mount
from behind, like the flying Parthian with his steed” (_Art of
Love_, III., v. 785, 86).
The same advice also seems to be given by him a little before:
“Let them be seen from behind whose backs are sightly” (v. 774).
But besides necessity, it is a fact that women are worked in this way
out of mere caprice, variety offering the greatest pleasure. It is
simply for this reason that Tullia suffers Fabrizio to do her that way,
in Aloysia Sigaea:
“As Aloysio got up” (Tullia speaks) “Fabrizio makes ready for
another attack. His member is swollen up, red and threatening. “I
beg of you “Madam”, he says, “turn over on your face.” I did as he
wished. When he saw my buttocks, whiter than ivory and snow, “How
beautiful you are!” he cried. “But raise yourself on your knees and
bend your head down.” I bow my head and bosom, and lift my buttocks.
He thrust his swift-moving and fiery dart to the bottom of my vulva,
and took one of my nipples in either hand. Then he began to work in
and out, and soon sent a sweet rivulet into the cavity of Venus. I
also felt unspeakable delight, and had nearly fainted with lust. A
surprising quantity of seed secreted by Fabrizio’s loins filled and
delighted me; a similar flow of my own exhausted my forces. In that
single assault I lost more vigour than in the three preceding ones”
(Dialogue VI.)[19].
This copulation from the back is practicable in another very pleasant
fashion, an excellent reproduction of which can be seen in the _Monument
du culte secret des dames romaines_, plate XXVIII. A woman is
represented with her hands placed on the ground, while the lower part of
the body is lifted up and suspended by cords; she is turning her back to
the man who stands. This seems to be much the same position as was taken
up by the wife of the artisan Apuleius speaks of in his _Metamorphoses_
(book IX), whom “bending over her, the lover planed with his adze, while
she leant forward over a cask.” An engraving showing this ingenious
attitude is appended to the story of _The Tub_ in the _Contes et
Nouvelles en vers_ of Jean de La Fontaine, vol. II., p. 215.
FOOTNOTES - OF COPULATION
-----
Footnote 13:
This method was not unknown at the time of Aristophanes, as we see
from the following passage of the _Peace_:
“So that you may straightway, lifting up the girl’s legs,
accomplish high in air the mysteries” (v. 889, 890).
And in the _Birds_ he says:
“For this girl, your first messenger, why! I will lift up her legs
and will in between her thighs” (v. 1254, 55).
Footnote 14:
Readers will find another figure given in some of the books: “The man
should be standing, while the woman reclines sideways on the bed.”
Footnote 15:
From —— buttock.
Footnote 16:
Dio Cassius, LIV., 19: “He was so fond of her, that one day he matched
her against Livia, as to which of them was the most beautiful.” It was
no bad idea to engage them in such a match, but think you he suffered
them to fight this out in any costume but that in which the Goddesses
three presented themselves before the dazed eyes of Paris?
Footnote 17:
Pliny has treated this at great length in his _Natural History_ (Book
X., ch. 63).
Footnote 18:
Compare Dio Cassius, bk. XLVIII., ch. 44.
Footnote 19:
The thing itself is very old; Aristophanes alludes to it in the
_Peace_:
“To wrestle on the ground, to stand on all fours” (v. 896).
And in the _Lysistrata_:
“I will not squat down like a lioness carved on a knife-handle”
(v. 231).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER II
ON PEDICATION
SO much for copulation in the normal way. We will now discuss another
mode of pleasure,—that due to introduction of the member into the anus.
A man who exercises his member in the anus, be it of a man or a woman,
pedicates; he is called a pederast, pedicon, drawk[20], and the other
party, who allows himself to be invaded in that way, is called the
patient, cinaedus, catamite[21], minion, effeminate; if adult or worn
out, he is named exolete. The masculine pleasure (so called because
women allowed themselves much more rarely to be pedicated than men) is
appreciated equally by the active party, the pedicon, as by the passive
party, the patient. The pleasure of the pedicon is easy to understand,
as the enjoyment of the virile member consists in the intensity of the
friction; the pleasure felt by the patient by the introduction of the
member in his entrails is more difficult to make out,—at least for my
feeble intelligence, for such practices are quite strange to me. Do not
believe, however, that the pleasure of the patient is only secondary,
nor yet that he prostitutes himself only in order to do the same
afterwards himself, nor that he remedies in this way the sluggishness of
his own member by the vigorous working of another man’s nerve causing a
pleasurable titillation of the posterior, analogous to that which
Antonius Panormitanus (_Hermaphroditus_, I., 20), tells us may be
produced by inserting the fingers in the anus[22], or still better, by
beating the same locality with rods, according to Aloysia Sigaea:
“Amongst the men of our acquaintance, I have heard the Marquis
Alfonso say that rods act as spurs to the amorous battle; without
them he would be sluggish and impotent. He has his buttocks flogged
with rods vigorously, his wife being present lying ready on the bed.
During the flagellation his tool begins to stiffen, and the more
violent the strokes are, the stronger is the tension. When he feels
himself in proper condition, he precipitates himself upon his wife,
works her with rapid movement, and inundates her with the heavenly
gifts of Venus and wins all the delights a man may find in Love”[23]
(Dialogue V).
What else was it but this that so stirred Rousseau, the precocious
genius of Geneva, and his boyish member, and brought such ideas into his
head, when on one occasion Mlle. Lambercier, cracking the whip upon the
buttocks of the child, inflicted that punishment, which he afterwards
was longing for all the rest of his life? Hear him relate the
circumstance himself in his merry way and with his habitual charm of
style, in the first book of the _Confessions_; we only omit small
matters, added by the immortal author for the amplification of the
narrative:
“As Mlle. Lambercier had for us the affection of a mother, so she
had the authority of one, and she carried the latter so far as to
inflict upon us the punishment of children when we had deserved it.
For a long time she only used threats, and such a threat of a novel
punishment seemed very dreadful to me; but after the execution I
found the experience less terrible than the expectation, and the
oddest thing was, the punishment made me more partial to her, who
had inflicted it, than I had been previously. I stood in fact in
need of all this affection for her and of all my natural mildness,
in order to hold back from provoking the same punishment by acting
so as to deserve it, for I had found in the pain, and even in the
shame, a mixed feeling, in which sensuality predominated, and which
left me with more desire than apprehension of experiencing the same
treatment over again from the same hand. Who would believe that this
chastisement of a child eight years old by the hand of a maiden of
thirty should have influenced my tastes, my longings, my passions
for the remainder of my life? Tormented by I know not what, my eye
feasted ardently upon good-looking females; they constantly came
into my mind doing to me as Mlle. Lambercier had done. Imagining
only what I had experienced, my desires did not pass beyond the sort
of voluptuous feeling I had known already. In my foolish fancies, in
my erotic fury, in the extravagant acts to which they incited me
sometimes, I borrowed in imagination the help of the other sex,
without ever dreaming it was good for any other use than that which
I wanted to make of it. When in the course of time I had grown up to
manhood, my old taste of childhood associated itself so much with
the other, that I never could divert the desires which fired my
senses; and this absurdity, joined to my natural timidity, made me
always anything but enterprising with women, as I dared not say all
or could not do all I wanted; the sort of enjoyment, of which the
other was for me but the last stage, could neither be initiated by
the one who longed for it, nor guessed by the other who might have
granted it. Thus I have passed through life coveting, yet not daring
to tell the persons I loved most what it was I coveted. Never bold
enough to declare my inclination, I amused it as least by ideas in
connection with it. One may judge what such avowals must have cost
me, considering that all through my life, seized in the presence of
those I loved by the fury of a passion which bereft me of voice,
hearing and sense, and made me tremble all over convulsively, I
never could venture to tell them my folly, and ask them to add the
one familiarity which I wanted to the other ones. I only got to it
once in my childhood, with another child of my age, and the proposal
came from her.”
However to return to our proper subject, from which we have strayed. If
pleasure felt by the passive party cannot be conceived to be of a kind,
which through the anus is communicated to the mentula (member), we must
come to the conclusion that the _patient_ experiences in the anus the
same kind of irritation which the other party feels in his genital
parts; that, therefore, the _patient_ feels in that place a real
pleasure unknown to those who have not tried it[24]. Martial at any rate
speaks out without any circumlocution of this rut of the anus:
“Of his anus, split to the naval, not a vestige is left to Carinus;
for all that he is in rut to the very navel. Oh! the scurvy lot of
the wretch! Bottom he has none,—but he _will_ be a cinede” (VI.,
37).
An ardour of this strange sort even affected Tullia, as she confesses
herself in the pages of Aloysia Sigaea:
“Seeing resistance was in vain, I yielded to the madmen. Aloysio
bends forward over my buttocks, brings his javelin to the back-door,
knocks, pushes, finally with a mighty effort bursts in. I gave a
groan. Instantly he withdraws his weapon from the wound, plunges it
in the vulva and spurts a flood of semen into the wanton furrow of
my womb. When all was over, Fabrizio attacks me in the same fashion.
With one rapid thrust he introduced his spear, and in less than no
time made it disappear in my entrails; for a little time he plays at
come and go, and scarce credible as it may sound, I found myself
invaded by a prurient fury to such an extent that I have no doubt,
that I should get accustomed to it very well, if I chose” (Dialogue
VI).
Coelius Rhodiginus confirms this pruriency of the anus in ch. 10. of XV.
book of his _Lectiones antiquae_.
“We know”, he says, “that the minions experience a very great
pleasure in undergoing this shameful act.”
And he gives a reason for it, whether good or bad the doctors may
decide: “With people whose seminal ducts are not in normal condition, be
it that those leading to the mentula are paralysed, as is the case with
eunuchs and the like, or for any other reason, the seminal fluid flows
back to its source. If this fluid is very abundant with them, it
accumulates in great quantities, and then the part where the secretion
is accumulated longs for friction. People thus situated like above
everything to play the part of _patients_.”
Be this as it may, nothing is more certain than the fact of such
enjoyment on the part of the _patient_. So highly did the Roman cinedes
prize a stiff member between their buttocks, that they could not see a
big mentula without their mouths watering; they were ready to give their
last penny to enjoy the favours of a man extraordinarily gifted in that
way.
Juvenal, IX., v. 32-36:
“Destiny governs man; it influences the parts, which the toga
covers. If your star pales, useless will be the length and strength
of your member to you,—even though Virro shall have seen you naked
with lips that water.”
Martial, I., 97:
“He wants to know why I think he is a minion? We bathe together; he
never raises his eyes, but gazes with devouring looks at the
sodomites; and cannot behold their members without his lips
trembling.”
And again, II., 51:
“Oftentimes you have no more than a single penny in your box, and
that penny more worn than your anus, Hyllus; yet neither baker nor
wine shop will have it, but some man who sports an enormous member.
Your unfortunate belly must starve for your anus; while the latter
devours, the former is famished.”
It is therefore not astonishing that the public baths resounded with
plaudits, when men with extraordinary members entered them.
Martial, IX., 34:
“If you hear clapping of hands in the bathing hall, Flaccus, you may
be sure some deformed person’s enormous member is there.”
Juvenal, VI., v. 373, 374:
“Far seen, pointed at by all men’s fingers, he enters the baths.”
It was not without some art that the patients performed their functions.
But their business was made up of these two chief requirements:
depilation and knowing how to use the haunches.
_Patients_ took care in the first place to remove the hair carefully
from all parts of their body[25]; from the lips, arms, chest, legs, the
virile parts, and in particular from the altar of passive lust, the
anus: Martial, II., 62:
“Pluck out the hair from breast and legs and arms; keep your member
cropped and ringed with short hair; all this, we know, you do for
your mistress’ sake, Labienus. But for whom do you depilate your
posteriors?”
And IX., 28:
“While you, Chrestus, appear thus with your parts all hairless, with
a mentula like a vulture’s neck, and a head as shining as a
prostitute’s buttocks with never a hair appearing on your leg, and
with your pallid lips all shorn and bare, you talk of Curius,
Camillus, Numa, Ancus, of all the hairy heroes we have ever read of
in history, and spout big words and threatenings against theatres
and the times. Let but some big-limbed man come into sight, you call
him with a nod, and take him off....”
And he says, IX., 58:
“Nought is worse worn than Hedylus’ rags, save one thing only (he
cannot deny it himself), his anus;—this is worse worn than his
rags.”
In a similar way he has spoken before of the anus of Hyllus as more worn
by friction than a poor man’s last penny (II., 51), and Suetonius (_Life
of Otho_, ch. xii) speaks similarly of the body of Otho, given to the
habits of a catamite, and Catullus (Carm. 33) reproaches the younger
Vibennius: “You could not sell your hairy buttocks for a doit.”
For the same reason _Galba_ requested Icelus to get depilated before he
was to take him aside. Suetonius, Galba, ch. xxii:
“He was very much given to the intercourse between men, and amongst
such he preferred men of ripe age, exolets. It is said that when
Icelus, one of his old bedfellows, came to Spain, to inform him of
Nero’s death, he, not content with kissing him closely before
everyone present, asked him to get at once depilated, and then took
him aside with him quite alone.”
Moreover even those depilated their anus, who by dint of a rough head of
hair and a bristly beard, tried hard to simulate the gravity of the
ancient Philosophers. Martial, IX., 48:
“Democritus and Zeno and ambiguous Plato,—all the sages whose
portraits we see decked with bristling hair,—you prate of; you might
well be Pythagoras’ heir and successor; while from your own chin
hangs no less imposing a beard. But as bearded man it is a shame for
you to receive a rigid member between your smooth posteriors.”
Juvenal, II., v. 8-13
|
from any Land.
At other times I have seen several Birds floating upon the Water,
which being driven by some Tempest from the Coasts of _Spain_ and
_Portugal_, have been tired in their flight, and so drowned. This
happens frequently in the great Ocean, where they meet with no Land
to fly to in several hundreds of Leagues; and sometimes even in the
_Mediterranean_, in the Mid-Seas between the _Christian_ and _Barbary_
Shores. In blowing Weather, among other Birds flying cross, we saw a
Hawk making to our Ship, then under good and swift Sail, which perched
upon the round-top of the Main-mast; which one of the Seamen espying,
he presently run up the Shrouds, and brought down the Hawk, which made
no attempt to fly away, being quite spent. But not long after, the Hawk
recovering his Spirits by rest and meat which was given him, took wing
and got away from the Fellow, notwithstanding all the care he took to
secure his new Adventure, which he hoped to have made Mony of at the
next Port that we should come to.
26. A strong Levant still blowing, and the Sea very rough and
boisterous, the Gale continuing almost right a stern, we run these 24
hours above 70 Leagues.
27. We found our selves by our observations, that we were in the
Latitude of 42 degrees 17 minutes, and began to be very sensible of our
nearer approach to the South, the Weather being excessive hot. In the
Afternoon we heard the report of several Guns fired at about seven or
eight Leagues distance, as we guessed. At eight of the Clock at night
another Gun was fired somewhat near us, which we thought might be from
an _Algerine_ Man of War, who gave a signal to his Consorts, and who
answered by several flashes of Powder. Whereupon our Trumpeters sounded
a Point of War, but no return was made. However, the Captain quartered
his Men, and the Decks were cleared, and all things made ready in order
to a Fight the next Morning; as soon as day appeared, we saw the Sea
clear, no Ships being in view any way: so that we concluded that they
were Merchant-Ships, with their Convoy, standing to the Northward.
28. Dreadful Lightnings in the Clouds towards the Evening; after which
great Dews fell: the Weather extream hot.
29. We saw a Pilot-fish swim by the sides of the Ship, and several
Bonito's and Albicores playing, as it were with their Heads above
Water. The Wind took us short in the night, and soon after there was
a stark Calm; and we had great reason to bless God for it: For had
we continued our Course that night, we had either run a-ground, or
had been cast upon the Rocks near to _Peniche_ in _Portugal_. The
fault was mis-reckoning, and haling in too soon to make the _Southern
Cape_: though the Seamen, to salve their Credit, and to excuse their
Error, which had like to have proved so fatal to us, pretended that we
were set in by a strong Current. God make us thankful for this great
Deliverance.
30. This Morning we were surprized to see our selves within four or
five Leagues of the Shore, when we had thought that we had been above
twenty. In the Afternoon, the Wind coming on fresh, we weathered the
westermost Isle of the _Barlings_. On the greatest of which, being as
we guessed, above half a Mile in length, the _Portuguese_ have built a
Fort to hinder the _Barbary_ Pirates from careening their Ships there,
or taking in fresh Water. The Land of it very high, and bore off us S.
E. by E. By it lie several Rocks. The other Islands are distant about a
League. I told five of them: the greatest of which last lie somewhere
inward to the Shore.
For two Nights together about this time (28 and 29) the Sky being
very hazy, the Sun set in a colour as deep as Blood, which was very
astonishing. We were then in the Latitude of 40.
31. Betimes in the Morning we sailed by the Rock of _Lisbon_, at some
distance, which was scarce discernible by reason of the cloudiness of
the Weather. Two _Turks_ Men of War are now plying to the Windward of
us; but dare not come up to speak with us, perceiving that we are only
laden with Powder and Bullet.
_September 1._ In the Morning we made Cape _St. Vincent_. I went on
Shore with the Lieutenant and several others in our Pinnace, which we
drove into one of the Coves; and were forced to climb up a Rock, the
ascent of which was very dangerous and troublesome; and made more so by
the Rays of the Sun, which were reflected with that vehemence, that the
Heat was almost intolerable. Having gained the top, we were met by an
Officer and some Soldiers, who had us into the Castle, the middlemost
of the three, which are built along that Promontory for the Security
of the Coasts, and entertained us with Wine, Grapes, and Marmalade.
They told us, that a Squadron of English Men of War sailed by the day
before. We here met with two Vessels belonging to _Dartmouth_, laden
with Fish from _Newfoundland_, bound for _Alicant_. All along the
Coasts, at the distance of about two or three Leagues, are several
Watch-towers built to give notice of Pirates.
Becalmed for the most part these two or three days.
5. In the Morning we weathered the Point of _Cadiz_, and came to an
Anchor in the _Bay of Bulls_, about half a League from the great
_Porgoe_; and in the Afternoon went on shore. We were entertained by
the _English_ Consul, and carried by him to view the Fortifications,
which are esteemed to be as regular as any in _Christendom_; built
in the same place where the Town had been attacked formerly by the
_English_, under the Conduct of the Earl of _Essex_ in the Reign of
Q. _Elizabeth_. Plays are usually here, as in other parts of _Spain_,
acted on a _Sunday_. During the time of our stay, was represented the
History of the Patience of _Job_, the Devil brought upon the Stage,
tempting _Job_'s Wife in a drolling way, which caused great Laughter
and Merriment among the Spectators. At _Malaga_, as the Merchants told
us, the _Sunday_ before we arrived there, was acted the _Schism of
England_ in the time of King _Henry_ the Eighth, whom the _Spaniards_
will not yet forgive, for Divorcing himself from Q. _Catherine_, their
Country-Woman.
9. We sailed from _Cadiz_.
10. This Afternoon we were forced to Anchor, not far from _Cape
Spartel_ or _Sprat_, as the Seamen call it, not being able to weather
the Point.
11. This day we came to an Anchor in _Tangier-Bay_, with Sir _Thomas
Allen_'s Squadron.
_Tangier_ lies within the Entrance into the _Strait_ of the
_Mediterranean_, in the Latitude of about 35°, 36´. It is situated in
the bottom of a Bay, and is built on the side of the Hill, overlooking
the Sea, encompassed with high Walls to the Land-ward, and commanded
by a strong Castle. The Heats would be very troublesome but for the
Sea-breezes which cool and fan the Air. In the Castle I met with a
_Roman_ Monument, erected to the Honour of _P. Belius_, a great Officer
and Souldier in _Trajan_'s time; who, among his other Titles, is
there stiled, PPO. FIG. MAURITANIAE. TINGITANAE: which since has been
taken away, and presented to the University of _Oxon_ by Sir _Hugh
Cholmondley_, and now serves to adorn the _Area_ about the _Theatre_.
The _English_ have two Churches here, (though they only make use of
one, the other being reserved against all Accidents) both of them
very neat and convenient; though not to be compared with the Church
of the _Portuguese_, retained still, according to the Articles of
Agreement, when the King of _Portugal_ made over the Right and Title,
and gave the Possession of _Tangier_ to the Crown of _England_, by
the Canons Regulars, belonging to it, which is very stately, and
adorn'd with rich Images, and supported by Marble Pillars. Toward one
end of the _English_ Church, just by the Vestiary, which had been
formerly a _Turkish_ Mosch, and afterward the Chappel of a Convent of
_Dominicans_, is a Monumental Stone-Table in _Arabick_ Characters,
containing an account of the Houses, Lands, and other Revenues
belonging to it, set up in the 743 year of the _Hegira_, that is,
of Christ 1341. The Mole is in good forwardness, they having gained
above 200 yards in the Sea, in order to the making of a good and safe
Harbour for Ships to ride in, which lye open to Wind and Waves; the
outward side to the Seaward somewhat sloping. The Garrison is in so
good a posture of Defence, that they defy _Taffiletta_ and all his
Forces. Here we met with great Civilities from Colonel _Norwood_,
Deputy-Governour, and the Gentlemen belonging to the Garrison. Sir
_Harry Mildmay_ and Mr. _Goodland_, two of King _Charles_ the First his
Judges, are here; but who have the Liberty of the Town. Now, at our
being here, come in several _Moors_ from _Arzilla_, and among the rest,
the Father of one of _Gayland_'s Wives, to get a Passage for _Algiers_.
Old _Tangier_ lyes at some little distance, where they find very
frequently in digging several pieces of _Roman_ Coin. But for the
above-mentioned, and the other Curiosities and Antiquities of
_Tangier_, of which I forbear to make mention, from the imperfect and
hasty Observations of two days, the greatest part of which being taken
up by the Entertainment of our obliging Country-men, you may consult
with great pleasure and satisfaction, a little Book called _The present
State of Tangier_, written by a very ingenious Gentleman, and printed
in the Year 1676.
There is a vast _draught_ of _water_ poured continually out of the
_Atlantick_ into the _Mediterranean_, the mouth or entrance of which
between _Cape Spartel_ or _Sprat_, as the _sea-men_ call it, and _Cape
Trafalgar_, may be near 7 leagues wide, the _current_ setting strong
into it, and not losing its force till it runs as far as _Malaga_,
which is about 20 leagues within the _Streights_. By the benefit of
this _Current_, tho' the wind be contrary, if it does not over-blow,
_Ships_ easily turn into the _gut_, as they term the _narrow passage_,
which is about 20 miles in length. At the end of which are two Towns,
_Gibraltar_ on the coast of _Spain_, which gives denomination to
the _Streight_, and _Ceuta_ on the _Barbary_ coast: at which places
_Hercules_ is supposed to have set up his _Pillars_. What becomes
of this great quantity of water poured in this way, and of that,
which runs from the _Euxine_ into the _Bosporous_ and _Propontis_,
and is carried at last through the _Hellespont_ into the _Ægæan_ or
_Archipelago_, is a curious _speculation_, and has exercised the wit
and understanding of _Philosophers_ and _Navigators_. For there is no
sensible rising of the _water_ all along the _Barbary Coast_, even down
to _Alexandria_, the land beyond _Tripoli_, and that of _Ægypt_, lying
very low, and easily overflowable. They observe indeed, that the water
rises 3 feet, or 3 feet and an half, in the _gulph_ of _Venice_, and as
much, or very near as much, all along the _Riviera_ of _Genoa_, as far
as the river _Arno_: but this rather adds to the wonder.
I here omit to speak at large of the several _Hypotheses_ which
have been invented to solve this difficulty: such as _subterraneous
vents_, cavities and indraughts, _exhalations_ by the _Sun-beams_, the
running out of the water on the _African side_, as if there were a
kind of circular motion of the water, and that it only flowed in upon
the _Christian_ shore: which latter I look upon as a meer fancy, and
contrary to all observation.
My conjecture is, that there is an _under-Current_, whereby as great
a quantity of water is carried out, as comes flowing in. To confirm
which, besides what I have said above about the difference of tides
in the _offing_, and at the _Shore_ in the _Downs_, which necessarily
supposes an _under-Current_, I shall present you with an instance of
the like nature in the _Baltick Sound_, as I received it from an able
Seaman, who was at the making of the tryal.
He told me, that being there in one of the _King's_ Frigats, they
went with their _Pinnace_ into the _middle stream_, and were carried
violently by the _Current_: that soon after they sank a _bucket_ with
a large _Cannon_ bullet to a certain _depth_ of water, which gave
check to the boats motion, and sinking it still lower and lower, the
_boat_ was driven a-head to wind-ward against the upper _Current_: the
_current_ aloft, as he added, not being above 4 or 5 _fathom_ deep, and
that the lower the bucket was let fall, they found the _under-Current_
the stronger. I designed to have made the _Experiment_ in the
_Streights-Channel_; but both times I past, the Easterly wind blew
so hard, that there was no putting out the boat with any safety; nor
indeed at those times had we any leisure for such a _Curiosity_; which
those, who liv'd at _Tangier_, might have tryed without any difficulty
or danger.
This conjecture, how likely or unlikely soever, will stand or fall
according to the certainty of the _Observations_, which shall be made
there, which I will endeavour to procure in order to the further
establishment, or utter overthrow of it.
13. We weighed out of _Tangier_ and turned into the _Strait_, though
against the Wind. The distance between _Gibraltar_ Cape, which gives
name to the _Straits_, and is joyned to the Continent of _Spain_ and
_Ceuta_ a well-built and strongly fortified Town, lying under the Hill
_Alybe_, called so by the _Greeks_, which the Seamen commonly call,
as do some _Spanish_ Writers, _Apes-hill_, from the great number of
Apes which used formerly to haunt there, (at which places _Hercules_ is
feigned to have set up his Pillars) may be about six Leagues; tho' both
Lands lying very high (for we saw the Clouds much below them) it does
not appear in the middle of the Current, out of a tall Ship, scarce
half so broad.
14. Little Wind stirring.
15. A great Mist all the Sea over, so that we could scarce see three
lengths of the Ship, which began to vanish in the Afternoon; and than
we descryed the _Cape of Malaga_ at about four Leagues distance; and
came to an Anchor that Night. The City lies under a high Hill, and
is the Seat of a Bishop, who is at this time a Natural Son of King
_Philip_ the Fourth, of the Order of St. _Dominic_. Here the Merchants
told us, that it had not rained for seven Months together, except a day
or two for an Hour: and that the _Algerines_, who were then breaking
with us, had not been able to have set a Fleet to Sea about two years
before, if they had not been furnished with Masts from _England_; and
that they were now in Expectation of another Ship laden with the same,
notwithstanding the Rupture, which was as good as began. I only make a
Query, Whether _Jews_ or _English_ Men were the Freighters?
16. The next Morning the Governour immediately returned our Salute Gun
for Gun: soon after we weighed from _Malaga_ Road, the Weather very
hot. Some Rain fell at Night, though very moderately. In the Evening,
after we had sailed about eighteen Leagues, we were becalm'd. The Sea
being quiet, we saw a great number of _Tortoises_ swimming above Water,
several _Bottle-noses_, fish of about three yards long, and very thick,
and Hawks flying over to the _Barbary_ Coast. The Hills of _Granada_
were seen plainly by us, though at a great distance.
The Wind coming Easterly, we kept at Sea, beating and plying to and
again for these four days, scarce gaining sixteen Leagues of our way,
and were forc'd to come to an Anchor in the _Bay of Adera_, where there
is a strong Cittadel, about thirty four or thirty five Leagues from
_Malaga_.
21. We passed by _Cape de Gata_: but the Levant wind still blowing,
having continued almost in that Point for above two Months, as we
computed from what they had told us at _Tangier_, we could make but
little progress in our Voyage.
25. Between three and four of the Clock in the Morning the Tornado's
began to blow, and the Wind violent for the time, with such continued
Flashes of Lightning for several hours, as that the whole Sky seemed
to be on fire, intermixed with terrible Claps of Thunder, after which
followed great showers of Rain.
25. The Wind still contrary, we descryed _Cape St. Martin_ at about
fifteen Leagues distance. Tacking about and standing off to Seaward,
next Morning 27. we found that we had lost about three Leagues of our
way.
28. We were athwart _Orlando's Gap_ within two Leagues of the Shore,
_Cape St. Martin_ bearing off us _N._ by _W._ The Wind now still; but
a swelling Sea coming from the Westward, which is usual before a Wind,
which drives the Water before it.
On _Michaelmas-day_ we were up with the Island _Ivica_, or _Ivise_, as
the Mariners call it, and the Wind blowing fair, we stood our Course;
and the next day at Noon we made the _Island Majorca_, situate over
against the Kingdom of _Valentia_, and came to an Anchor in the _Bay_
of the City, being forced in hither for want of fresh Water. In the
Afternoon the Boat was sent on shore; but the Vice-Roy would not give
us Prattick, not bringing a Patent from _Malaga_.
_Octob. 1._ The Secretary was sent with the King's Pass to the
Vice-Roy to demand Prattick, who presently summoned the Officers of
the _Sanita_. After long Debates and Delays they consented, and came
to the _Mole_ to receive him. He went directly to the Governour to
acquaint him, that we were ready to Salute the City with what number
of Guns he pleased, if he would engage upon his Honour to give us as
many. He replied, that he would give us three for five; and wondered,
that we being but a single Ship, should make such a Demand. The
Secretary told him, That we were to be treated as an Admiral, having
a Flag on our Maintop; and that the Governour of _Malaga_ had done
it. To this he said, That _Majorca_ was a Kingdom, that he was the
King's Representative, and that by Reason of the Miscarriage of his
Predecessor, when Monsieur _de Beaufort_, the _French_ Admiral was
there, he had received strict Orders from _Madrid_ not to do the
like. The Secretary replied, That we had an Ambassador on board, and
had as strict Orders, and should answer as severely for the Breach
of them. His last Answer was, That we might, with our Sails loose,
keep before the Town, till we had furnished our selves with what we
wanted. Upon receiving this Message, the Ambassador dispatched away one
_Joseph Gabriel Cortez_, a _Spaniard_, but employed by the _English_
Merchants trading to that Island, then on board our Ship, to acquaint
him, That when we were ready to go away, we would loose our Sails,
and not before. We landed within the _Mole_; the Walk upon it about
four or five Yards broad; at the Extremity of which is a very large
and stately Gate, which leads into the City. We went into the great
Church, somewhat wider than _Westminster-Abbey_, but darkish within:
the Portal very magnificent, adorned with several Marble Statues in
Niches one over another. The High Altar very plain and unadorned: but
others extraordinary rich and glorious. Not far from the City are
several Mills to grind their Olives, Oyl being the great Commodity of
the Island.
2. The next Morning we weighed, without taking any kind of notice of
the Town, sailing all along in sight of the Island, which presented
us with a pleasing and delightful Prospect; the Valleys, lying under
the Hills, fruitful of Wine and Corn. The whole Island is judged to be
about sixty Leagues in Compass, and in length about fifteen: which we
sailed from the Westermost Point, where lies the Isle _Dragovera_, at
a very little distance to the Eastermost, where there is built a small
Fort. To the S. S. E. lie several little Islands, called the _Cabreas_;
between which and _Majorca_ we steered.
3. We were athwart _Port Maon_ in _Minorca_; a fine level Country,
having but one Hill in it N. W. by W. as it bore off us. In the Evening
the Wind very scant.
4. This day, as yesterday, excessive hot.
5. In the Afternoon we descryed the Main Land of _Provence_.
6. We were over against the Islands _Hieres_ and the Highland of
_Thoulon_.
7, 8. These two Days becalmed; and the Sea extraordinary smooth.
9. We were over against the Westermost part of the _Alpes_, which we
distinctly saw at about twenty Leagues distance, and appeared far
higher than the Hills of _Granada_.
10. We sailed by _Final_ and _Ventimiglia_.
12. We came in the Morning to an Anchor over against the _Mole_, and
not far from the Lantern in _Genoa_. Having obtained Prattick of the
_Maestri della Sanita_, after a little demur about the Salute, the
Senate being assembled, and some of them protesting upon their Honours,
and ready to produce their Registers, that they never saluted the Ship
wherein was an Ambassador of _France_ or _Spain_, as not taking any
notice of the Person who did bear that Character, 'till they had first
intimation, that the Ship was arrived in their Port by its saluting the
Town. It was agreed that the Ship should Salute the Town with eleven
Guns, which they were to answer, as they did, with an equal number:
and after a little pause, they saluted the Ambassador with nineteen
more, which was answered with as many. After this, the Duke and
Senate sent the Master of the Ceremonies to wait upon the Ambassador:
who going away, returned soon after with a Present of Calves, Fowl,
Wine, Sweetmeats, _&c._ and acquainted his Lordship, that they had
deputed six of their Gentlemen to Complement him, and wait upon him;
which Civility he thought fit to refuse, desiring to be _Incognito_.
But however, going ashore, he was welcomed by the _Illustrissimi
Signiori_, the _Durazzo's_, two Brothers, the elder of which had been
Ambassador for the Republick, in the Court of _England_, and the other
at _Constantinople_, and by them carried to see the _Villas_ out of
Town. The figure of _Genoa_ is Semicircular, beginning from the Lantern
Westward, lying under an high Hill, upon the rising of which the
several Houses, built of Marble, afford a very fine Prospect, and add
much to the Beauty and Glory of the place. _Strada nuova_ perchance
is the most stately Street in the whole World. The new Church of the
_Annunciata_, built by the _Lomellini_, where a thousand may go up the
stairs abreast at the same time, for curious Painting, rich Altars,
and exactness of Architecture, incomparable. The _Duome_ also and the
Church of the _Theatins_ very stately and curious. Other matters I
purposely omit.
14. In the Evening we set Sail from _Genoa_.
Becalmed for the most part these three Days, though helped somewhat
forward by the Breezes that blew off the shore after Sun set.
18. In the Afternoon we made the Island _Gorgonia_, about nine Leagues
from _Livorne_; a little round Island, with a Castle on the top.
19. In the Morning we came to an Anchor in _Livorne_ Road, about a Mile
from the Town: the Road large and secure, especially to the Northward.
The Ambassador keeps on Board, the Governour refusing to Salute the
Ship first, though he had formerly saluted the _French_; pretending
that every Convoy might carry a Flag; and alledging that his Master,
the Grand Duke, was as great and absolute, as the Republick of _Genoa_:
and that they had rather throw themselves upon the King of _England_,
than do a thing which might prove of such an ill Consequence. Sir _John
Finch_, his Majesty's Resident, together with Sir _Thomas Baines_,
came from _Florence_ to Complement the Ambassador, and immediately
dispatched away a Courier to the Grand Duke about the Salute; who
referred the whole Affair to the Governor: and he making a Protest that
he was ready to pay all the respect which was due to the Ambassador's
Character and Quality, upon the fore-mentioned Pretensions, six days,
after our arrival, absolutely refused to Salute the Ship first.
_Livorne_ is the great Magazine of Trade for the _Levant_, being a free
Port: Merchants of all Countries residing here, _Armenians_ especially,
and _Jews_; which latter enjoy great Priviledges, without wearing any
distinct Mark in their Hats or Habits, whereby they may be known. They
are allow'd the publick Exercise of their Religion: their Synagogue
large and handsome. The Port inward has a _Mole_ for the Duke's Galleys
and other small Vessels to ride in: the Entrance of which is chained
up every Night. Hard by is the Statue of Duke _Ferdinand_ in Marble,
raised upon an high Pedestal; under which are four Slaves in Brass,
in different Postures, very large, and above the ordinary proportion,
but done with exquisite and admirable Art. Two Castles to the Seaward
well fortified: the Town Walls very high, and the four Gates strongly
guarded: below which is a Ditch of about fifteen or twenty yards over,
and very deep. No Stranger is allowed to view the Works, nor Souldier
permitted to come out of the Castles. About four thousand Slaves are
there, as the Merchants told us, who are lockt up in the _Bagno_ every
Night. The _Piazza_, where the Merchants meet, is adorned with Marble
Pillars, which sustain the Porticos: at the East end of which is the
great Church whose Roof appears very glorious, having several Circles
richly gilded and painted with curious Figures.
The broad Street is paved between two and three yards on each side with
Free-stone.
27. In the Afternoon we weighed out of _Livorne_ Road, and sailed by
the Islands _Gorgonia_ and _Capraria_, seeing _Corsica_ at a distance.
28. We lay beating at Sea all this Day, the Wind being contrary.
29. This Day we were forced back, the contrary Winds still continuing.
30. We weighed a second time, and sailed by three small Islands,
_Capraria_, _Planasia_, and _Monte Christi_. We saw also _Gigio_ and
_Sanuti_, two other small Islands near the Main: but we made but little
way, by reason of ill Weather for 4 or 5 Days.
_Novemb. 5._ At Evening we saw the Eruptions of Fire from _Stromboli_,
which lies to the N. W. of _Sicily_. Sometimes it flamed very bright
Light as a _Beacon_, at other times there appeared only a glorious kind
of Light, like that of an ordinary Star when the Air is thick and hazy.
They say that it flames most in rainy Weather.
6. In the Morning we were up within a League of it, and plainly
perceived it to smoke. It is of a round figure, and, as we gathered,
may be about three or four Miles in compass. It bore W. by S. of us.
Not far from it lye scattered several other Islands, called by the
Ancients _Æoliœ_ and _Vulcaniœ_: among which are _Lipara_, a long
flattish Island, and _Vulcanello_, which smokes most. This Afternoon we
came to an Anchor in eight Fathom Water in the _Phare_ of _Messina_,
in the mid Stream between _Scylla_ and _Charybdis_: a violent and
strong Current setting against us, and the Wind not high enough, so as
to be able to stemm it. The breadth of the _Strait_ from _Messina_
to _Rhegium_ may be about a League. The Land is very high on the
_Calabrian_ side, where are very steep Rocks, and great depth of Water,
above 150 Fathom, as they told us: but on the _Sicilian_ side, near
_Charybdis_ Shole-water, and usually an Eddy. On the Sandy Banks stands
the Phare or Watch-tower. Several Currents meeting in this narrow
Passage, cause a great rippling of the Water: and great quantity of
Water coming in, as the Winds drive, in great quantity meeting with the
Shole, is broken into Waves. The Eddies here are caused by the meeting
of the different Currents by which the Waters are sometimes carried
N. and sometimes S. the great danger is, lest they drive the Ship on
either side. We have had Lightning for seven or eight Nights together.
7. We sail'd by _Ætna_, now called _Mongibel_, where the Sea widens ten
or eleven Leagues over. Now we see plainly the Smoke briskly issuing
out of the _Crater_, the _Limbus_ of which was all black. The uppermost
part of the Mountain was covered with Snow, except some streaks of
Ashes, as we judge, which lie as it were in a Gutter, spread here and
there.
8. We espied a _Saettia_ at about 3 Leagues distance, and making up to
her, found her forsaken. The Captain sent several Seamen on board, and
carried the Vessel to _Smyrna_.
Scanty Wind for several Days: and the Lightning still continued.
13. We were up with _Cape Modona_, the Southernmost Cape of the
_Morea_, and sailed by _Coron_. The Land very high, the Hills of
_Arcadia_ lying Eastward from us. The Weather excessive hot at
this time, as it is in _England_ at _Midsummer_. We espied from
our Maintop-mast five Sail of great Ships, which we supposed to be
_Tripolines_, who did not think fit to come up and speak with us. But
afterward we heard for certain, that they were part of the _Venetian_
Fleet.
14. We lay for the most part becalmed over against _Cape Matapan_: but
in the Evening the Wind blowing fresh, we sailed between the Island of
_Cerigo_ and the Main Land of _Greece_; it being about three Leagues
over to _Cape Angelo_.
15. We entred the Arches, and steered through the North Channel,
leaving _Melo_ and _Antimelo_ on the Starboard-quarter, at some Leagues
distance.
16. Betimes in the Morning we were athwart _Negropont_, and sailed
between it and _Andros_. The _Bocca_ lies S. W. and N. E.
17. We sailed by _Chios_ or _Scio_, which is very mountainous toward
the middle. It is about four Leagues distant from _Cape Caraboroun_,
or the _Cape of the black Nose_, as the _Turkish_ word signifies,
which the Seamen, in their usual way of corrupting Names, call _Cape
Jobbernoule_, the _Corinœum_ of the Ancients, a Promontory of the
famous Mountain _Mimas_, which runs along the Southern side of the _Bay
of Smyrna_.
This Day the _Smyrna_ Fleet from _England_ comes up to us very luckily,
to our great Satisfaction and Joy.
18. We are now got into the _Bay of Smyrna_, and come to an Anchor
without the Castle, not far from St. _Jacomo's Point_, as the Seamen
call it, or rather _Sangiac Point_. In the Afternoon the Consul, with
several Gentlemen of the Factory, came to wait upon my Lord Ambassador,
and desired his Lordship to defer his Entrance into _Smyrna_ till the
Twentieth, that he might be received with greater Honour. That Evening
we heard a great howling of _Jackalls_ upon the Hills.
20. The Consul with the Nation, accompanied with his _Druggermen_ and
_Janizaries_ in their _Habit_, together with several _French_, _Dutch_
and _Genoese_ Merchants, residing in that famous Emporium, came to the
Village near the Castle, who there expected us with Horses. Upon our
going ashore, the _Leopard_ fired fifty one Guns. We made about 140
Horse; and immediately upon our setting forth, we rode for about three
Miles together under the Hill to the S. W. of _Smyrna_; the places
adjoyning set thick with Olive, Fig, and Almond-trees. Afterwards
we clambered over some rocky Ascents; but the Horses of the Country
being sure-footed, we were in no danger of falling. Some little way
we were forced to ride on the Sea-shore, and soon after came to the
Jews burying place, whose Monuments lie flat upon the ground. As soon
as we entred into the City, we found the Streets full of _Greeks_,
_Armenians_, _Turks_, and _Jews_, whom Curiosity had drawn together to
see and observe our Cavalcade; the _English_ Ships, which were in the
_Bay_, firing their Guns, as we past near the Shore. And so after three
hours riding the Ambassador was brought to the Consul's House, where
Lodgings were provided for him. During our stay we
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