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THE GALAXY.

VOL. XXIII.--FEBRUARY, 1877.--No. 2.


Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by SHELDON &
CO., in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.




ADMINISTRATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.


The second session of the Thirty-seventh Congress, from its commencement
to its close, tested the strength of the Government and the capability
of those who administered it. Disappointment, in consequence of no
decisive military success during the first few months of the war, had
caused a generally depressed feeling which begot discontent and distrust
that in various ways found expression in Congress. Democrats complained
more of the incapacity of the Executive than of the inefficiency of the
generals, and the entire Administration was censured and denounced by
them for acts which, if not strictly legal and constitutional in peace,
were necessary and unavoidable in war. Republicans, on the other hand,
were dissatisfied because so little was accomplished, and the factious
imputed military delay to mismanagement and want of energy in the
Administration. Indeed, but for some redeeming naval successes at
Hatteras and Port Royal preceding the meeting of Congress in December,
the whole belligerent operations would have been pronounced weak and
imbecile failures. Conflicting views in regard to the slavery question
in all its aspects prevailed; the Democrats insisting that fugitives
should be returned to their masters under the provisions of law, as in
time of peace. The Republicans were divided on this question, one
portion agreeing with the Democrats that all should be returned,
another claiming that only escaped slaves who belonged to loyal owners,
wherever they resided, should be returned; another portion insisted that
there should be no rendition of servants of rebel masters, even in loyal
or border States, who, by resisting the laws and setting the authorities
at defiance, had forfeited their rights and all Governmental protection.
Questions in regard to the treatment of captured rebels, and the
confiscation of all property of rebels, were agitated. What was the
actual condition of the seceding States, and what would be their status
when the rebellion should be suppressed, were also beginning to be
controverted points, especially among members of Congress. On these and
other questions which the insurrection raised, novel, perplexing, and
without law or precedent to guide or govern it, the Administration had
developed no well defined policy when Congress convened in December,
1861, but it was compelled to act, and that in such a manner as not to
alienate friends or give unnecessary offence, while maintaining the
Government in all its Federal authority and rights for the preservation
of the Union and the suppression of the rebellion.

The character and duration of the war, which many had supposed would be
brief, was still undetermined. While affairs were in this uncertain and
inchoate condition, and the Administration had no declared policy on
some of the most important questions, Congress came together fired with
indignation and revenge for a war so causeless and unprovoked. A large
portion of the members, exasperated toward the rebels by reason of the
war, and dissatisfied with delays and procrastination, which they
imputed chiefly to the Administration, were determined there should be
prompt and aggressive action against the persons, property,
institutions, and the States which had confederated to break up the
Union. There was, however, little unity among the complaining members as
to the mode and method of prosecuting the war. It was not difficult to
find fault with the Administration, but it was not easy for the
discontented to settle on any satisfactory plan of continuing it. The
Democrats complained that the President transcended his rightful
authority; the radical portion of the Republicans that he was not
sufficiently aggressive; that he was deficient in energy and too tender
of the rebels. It was at this period, after Congress had been in session
two months, and opinions were earnest but diverse and factious, with a
progeny of crude and mischievous schemes as to the conduct of affairs
and the treatment of the rebels, that Senator Sumner, in the absence of
a clearly defined policy on the part of the Administration, and while
things were not sufficiently matured to adopt one, submitted his project
for overthrowing the State governments and reducing them to a
territorial condition, and with the subversion of their governments the
abolition of slavery. It was the enunciation of a policy that was in
conflict with the Constitution, and would change the character of the
Government, but which he intended to force upon the Administration.
Though a scheme devised by himself, it had in its main features the
countenance of many and some able supporters.

President Lincoln had high respect for Mr. Sumner, but was excessively
annoyed with this presentation of the extreme, and, as he considered
them, unconstitutional and visionary theories of the Massachusetts
Senator, which were intended to commit the Government and shape its
course. It was precipitating upon the Administration issues on delicate
and deeply important subjects at a critical period--issues involving the
structure of the Government and the stability of our Federal system.
These questions might have to be ultimately met and disposed of, but it
was requisite that they should be met with caution and deliberate
consideration. The times and condition of the country were inauspicious
for considerate statesmanship. The matters in dispute, the consequences
and results of the war, were yet in embryo. There could be no union of
sentiment on Senator Sumner's plan, nor any other at that period, in the
free States, in Congress, or even in the Republican party. There were
half a dozen factions to be reconciled or persuaded to act together.
This plan was felt to be an element of discord, which, if it could not
be finally averted, might in that gloomy period, when the country was
threatened and divided, have been temporarily, at least, avoided. But
Senator Sumner, though scholarly and cultured, was not always judicious
or wisely discreet. The President, as he expressed himself, could not,
in the then condition of affairs, afford to have a controversy with
Sumner, but he so managed as to check violent and aggressive demands by
quietly interposing delay and non-action.

In the mean time, while the subjects of slavery, reconstruction, and
confiscation were being vehemently discussed, he felt the necessity of
adopting, or at least proposing, some measure to satisfy public
sentiment.

On the subject of confiscation there were differing opinions among the
Republicans themselves, in Congress, which called out earnest debate.
The Radicals, such as Thaddeus Stevens, who were in fact revolutionists
and intended that more should be accomplished by the Government than the
suppression of the rebellion and the preservation of the Union, were for
the immediate and unsparing confiscation of the property of the rebels
by act of Congress without awaiting judicial proceedings. In their view
and by their plan rebels, if not outlaws, were to be considered and
treated as foreigners, not as American citizens; the States in
insurrection were to be reduced to the condition of provinces; the
people were to be subjugated and their property taken to defray the
expenses of the war. Mr. Sumner, less crafty and calculating than
Stevens, but ardent and impulsive, was for proceeding to extreme
lengths; and, having the power, he urged that they should embrace "the
opportunity which God in his beneficence had offered" to extinguish by
arbitrary enactment slavery, and all claim to reserved sovereignty in
the States; but Judge Collamer, calm and considerate, and other milder
men were opposed to any illegal and unjustifiable enactment.

As is too often the case in high party and revolutionary times, the
violent and intriguing were likely to be successful, until it came to be
understood that the President would feel it obligatory to place upon the
extreme and unconstitutional measures his veto. A knowledge of this and
the attending fact, that his veto would be sustained, induced Congress
to pass a joint resolution, modifying the act, expounding and declaring
its meaning, instead of enacting a new and explicit law, which the
judiciary, whose province it is, would expound and construe.

The President, in order not to be misunderstood when informing the House
of Representatives that he had affixed his signature to the bill and
joint resolution, also transmitted a copy of the message he had prepared
to veto the act in its original shape, with his objections, in which he
said that by a fair construction of the act he considered persons "are
not punished without regular trials, in duly constituted courts, under
the forms and the substantial provisions of the law and the Constitution
applicable to their several cases." It was apprehended at that time, and
subsequent acts proved the apprehension well founded, that Congress or
its radical leaders were disposed to assume and exercise not only
legislative, but judicial and executive powers. Rebels were by Congress
to be condemned and their property confiscated and taken without trial
and conviction. Such was not the policy of the President, as was soon
well understood; and to reconcile him and those who agreed with him, a
provision was inserted that persons who should commit treason and be
"_adjudged guilty thereof_" should be punished. But to prevent
misconception from equivocal phraseology in a somewhat questionable act,
he explicitly made known that "regular trials in duly constituted
courts" were to be observed, and the rights of the executive and
judicial departments of the Government maintained. This precaution, and
the determination which he uniformly expressed to regard individual
rights, and not to impose penalty or inflict punishment for alleged
crimes, whether of treason or felony, until after trial and conviction,
was not satisfactory to the extremists, who were ready to treat rebels
as outlaws, and condemn them without judge or jury.

The Centralists in Congress, who were arrogating executive and judicial
as well as legislative power, authorized the President, by special
provision in this law, to extend pardon and amnesty on such occasions as
he might deem expedient. This was represented as special grace and a
great concession; but as the pardoning power is explicitly conferred on
the President by the Constitution, the permission or authorization given
by the act was entirely supererogatory. Congress could neither enlarge
nor diminish the authority of the Executive in that respect; but if the
President acquiesced, and admitted the right of the legislative body to
grant, it was evident the day was not distant that the same body, when
dissatisfied with his leniency, would claim the right to restrain or
prohibit. The ulterior design in this grant to the President of
authority which he already possessed, and of which they could not
legally deprive him, President Lincoln well understood, but felt it to
be his duty and it was his policy to have as little controversy with
Congress or any of the factions in that body as was possible, and he
therefore wisely forebore contention.

On the slavery question, the alleged cause of secession and war, there
were legal and perplexing difficulties which, in various ways,
embarrassed the Administration, and in the disturbed condition of the
country prevented, for a time, the establishment and enforcement of any
decisive policy. By the Constitution and laws, slavery and property in
slaves were recognized, and the surrender and rendition of fugitives
from service to their owners was commanded; but in a majority of the
seceding States the usurping governments and the rebel slave-owners were
in open insurrection, resisting the Federal authority, defying it and
making war upon it. Still there were many citizens in those States who
were opposed to secession, loyal to the Federal Government, and earnest
friends of the Union, who owned slaves. What policy could the
Administration adopt in regard to these two classes of citizens in the
same State? The fugitive slave law was not and could not be enforced in
States where there was organized rebellion. Should fugitive slaves be
returned to both, or either, or neither of the owners in insurrectionary
States? There were moreover five or six border States, where slavery
existed, which did not secede. The governments and a majority of the
people of those States were patriotic supporters of the Union, but there
was a large minority in each of them who were violent enemies of the
Government and of the Union. Many of them were serving in the rebel
armies. For a time there was no alternative but to return slaves to
their owners who resided in border States which had neither seceded nor
resisted the Government. The Administration was not authorized to
discriminate, for instance, between slave-owners on the eastern shore of
the Potomac in the lower counties of Maryland and those on the western
shore in Virginia. There were, however, no secessionists, through the
whole South, more malignantly hostile to the Federal Union than a large
portion of the slave-owners in the southern counties of Maryland; but
the State not having seceded, and there being no organized resistance to
the Government, masters who justified secession continued to reclaim
their slaves, while on the opposite side of the river, in Virginia,
slave-owners who claimed to be loyal or neutral, could not reclaim or
obtain a restoration of their escaped servants. The Executive was
compelled to act in each of these cases, and its policy, the dictate of
necessity in the peculiar war that existed, was denounced by each of the
disagreeing factions. Affairs were in this unsettled and broken
condition when Congress convened at its second session in December,
1861. The action of the President in these conflicting cases as they
arose, if not condemned, was not fully approved. Many, if not a
majority, in Congress were undetermined what course to take. Democrats
insisted that the laws must be obeyed in all cases, in war as in peace.
The radical portion of the Republicans began to take extreme opposite
grounds, and claim that the laws were inoperative in regard to
slavery--that slavery was at all times inconsistent with a republican
government, and should now be extinguished. Among the revolutionary
resolutions of Senator Sumner of the 11th of February were some on the
subject of slavery. Other but not dissimilar propositions, antagonistic
to slavery, found expression, increasing in intensity as the war was
prolonged. While it was evident to most persons that one of the results
of the insurrection would be, in some way or form, the emancipation of
the slaves, there was no person who seemed capable of devising a
constitutional, practical plan for its accomplishment, except by
subjugation and violence. To these the President was unwilling to
resort; yet the necessity of doing something that did not transcend the
law, was morally right, and would tend to the ultimate freedom of the
slaves was felt to be an essential and indispensable duty. Unavailing
but seductive appeals continued in the mean time to be made by the
secessionists to the people of the border slave States to unite with the
further South for the security and protection of slavery, in which they
had a common interest, and against which there was increasing hostility
through the North. It was under these circumstances, with a large and
growing portion of the North in favor of abolition--the slave States,
including the border States, opposed to the measure and for the
preservation of the institution--that the President was to prescribe a
policy on which the government in the disordered state of the country
was to be administered.

To surmount the difficulties, without setting aside the law, or giving
just offence to any, the President, with his accustomed prudence and
regard for existing legal rights, devised a course which, if acquiesced
in by those most in interest, would, he believed, in a legal way open
the road to ultimate, if not immediate, emancipation. Instead of
assenting to the demands of the radical extremists that he should, by
arbitrary proceedings, and in disregard of law and Constitution, decree
freedom to all slaves, he preferred milder and more conciliatory
measures. The authority or right of the national Government to abolish
or interfere with an institution that was reserved and belonged
exclusively to the States, he was not prepared to act upon or admit,
though entreated and urged thereto by sincere party friends, and also by
party supporters, whose sincerity was doubtful.

There could be no excuse or pretext for such interference but the
insurrection; and, even as a war measure, there were obstacles in the
condition of the border slave States, to say nothing of loyal, patriotic
citizens in the insurrectionary region, that could not be overlooked.

On the 6th of March, within less than three weeks after Senator Sumner
had submitted his revolutionary resolution, for reconstruction, and a
declaration that it is the duty of Congress "to see that everywhere in
this extensive (secession) territory slavery shall cease to exist
practically, as it has already ceased to exist constitutionally or
morally," that President Lincoln, not assenting to the assumption, sent
a message to Congress proposing a plan of voluntary and compensated
emancipation. In this message he suggested that "the United States ought
to co-operate with any State which may adopt gradual abolishment of
slavery, giving to each State pecuniary aid," etc., and he invited an
interview upon the 10th of March, with the representatives of the border
States, to consider the subject. They did not conclude at this interview
to adopt his suggestions, and some of them were much incensed that the
proposition had been made, believing it would alienate and drive many,
hitherto rightly disposed, into secession.

Nevertheless, the fact that slavery was doomed, and had received a death
blow from the war of secession, was so obvious, that the moderate and
reflecting began seriously to consider whether they ought not to give
the President's plan favorable consideration.

While the policy of voluntary emancipation, in which the States should
be aided by the national Government, was not immediately successful, it
made such advance as, by the aid of the Federal Government, led to the
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. The advocates of
immediate, general, and forcible emancipation, if not satisfied with the
conciliatory policy of the President, could not well oppose it.

Warm discussions in Congress, and altercations out of it, on most of the
important questions growing out of the war, and particularly on those of
confiscation, emancipation, and reconstruction, or the restoration of
the States to their rightful position, and the reëstablishment of the
Union, were had during the whole of the second session of the
Thirty-seventh Congress. All of these were exciting and important
questions, the last involving grave principles affecting our federal
system, and was most momentous in its consequences. As time and events
passed on, the convictions and conclusions of the President became more
clear and distinct as to the line of policy which it was his duty and
that of the Administration to pursue.

Dissenting, wholly and absolutely, from the revolutionary views and
schemes of Senator Sumner and those who agreed with him, the President
became convinced, as the subject had been prematurely introduced and
agitated, with an evident intent to forestall and shape the action of
the Government, that the actual status of the rebel States and their
true relation to the Federal Government should be distinctly understood.
The resolution of Mr. Dixon, a gentleman of culture and intelligence,
who, as well as Mr. Sumner, was a New England Senator, and also of the
same party, was, it will be observed, diametrically opposed to the
principles and the project of the Massachusetts Senator on the great,
impending, and forthcoming subject of reconstruction. It was directly
known that the President coincided with the Connecticut Senator in the
opinion that all the acts and ordinances of secession were mere
nullities, and should be so treated; that while such acts might subject
_individuals_ to penalties and forfeitures, they did not in any degree
affect the _States_ as commonwealths, and their relations to the Federal
Government; that such acts were rebellious, insurrectionary, and hostile
on the part of the _persons_ engaged in them, but that the _States_,
notwithstanding the acts and conspiracies of individuals, were still
members of the Federal Union, and that the loyal citizens of these
States had forfeited none of their rights, but were entitled to all the
protection and privileges guaranteed by the Constitution.

The theory and principles set forth in Senator Dixon's resolutions were
the opinions and convictions of the President, deliberately formed and
consistently maintained while he lived, on the subject of reconstruction
and the condition of the States and people in the insurrectionary
region. In his view there was no actual secession, no dismembering of
the Union, no change in the Constitution and Government; the relative
position of the States and the Federal Government were unchanged; the
organic, fundamental laws of neither were altered by the sectional
conspiracy; the whole people, North and South, were American citizens;
each person was responsible for his own acts and amenable to law; and he
was also entitled to the protection of the law, and the rights and
privileges secured by the Constitution. The confiscation and
emancipation schemes concerning which there was so much excitement in
Congress were of secondary consideration to the all-absorbing one of
preserving the Union.

The second session of the Thirty-seventh Congress closed on the 17th of
July. Its proceedings had been confused and uneasy, with a good deal of
discontented and revolutionary feeling, which increased toward the
close. The decisive stand which the President had taken, and which he
calmly, firmly, and persistently maintained against the extreme measures
of some of the most prominent Republicans in Congress, was
unsatisfactory. It was insinuated that his sympathies on important
measures had more of a Democratic than Republican tendency; yet the
Democratic party maintained an organized and often unreasonable, if not
unpatriotic, opposition.

Military operations, aside from naval success at New Orleans and on the
upper Mississippi, had been a succession of military reverses.
Disagreement between the Secretary of War and the General-in-Chief,
which the President could not reconcile, caused the latter to be
superseded after the disastrous result before Richmond. Dissensions in
the army and among the Republicans in Congress, the persistent
opposition of Democrats to the Administration, and the general
depression that prevailed were discouraging. "In my position," said the
President, "I am environed with difficulties." Friends on whom he felt
he ought to be able to rely were dissatisfied with his conscientious
scruples and lenity, and party opponents were unrelenting against the
Administration.

A few days before Congress adjourned, the President made another but
unsuccessful effort to dispose of the slavery question, by trying to
induce the border States to take the initiative in his plan of
compensated emancipation. The interview between him and the
representatives of the border States, which took place on the 12th of
July, convinced him that the project of voluntary emancipation by the
States would not succeed. Were it commenced by one or more of the
States, he had little doubt it would be followed by others, and
eventuate in general emancipation by the States themselves. Failing in
the voluntary plan, he was compelled, as a war necessity, to proclaim
freedom to all slaves in the rebel section, if the war continued to be
prosecuted after a certain date. This bold and almost revolutionary
measure, which would change the industrial character of many States,
could be justified on no other ground than as a war measure, the result
of military necessity. It was an unexpected and startling demonstration
when announced, that was welcomed by a vast majority of the people in
the free States. In Congress, however, neither this nor his project of
compensated emancipation was entirely acceptable to either the extreme
anti-slavery or pro-slavery men. The radicals disliked the way in which
emancipation was effected by the President. But, carried forward by the
force of public opinion, they could not do otherwise than acquiesce in
the decree, complaining, however, that it was an unauthorized assumption
by the Executive of power which belonged to Congress.

The opponents of the President seized the occasion of this bold measure
to create distrust and alarm, and the result of the policy of
emancipation in the election which followed in the autumn of 1862 was
adverse to the Administration. Confident, however, that the step was
justifiable and necessary, the President persevered and consummated it
by a final proclamation on the 1st of January, 1863.

The fact that the Administration lost ground in the elections in
consequence of the emancipation policy served for a time to promote
unity of feeling among the members when Congress convened in December.
The shock occasioned by the measure when first announced had done its
work. The timid, who had doubted the necessity and legality of the act,
and feared its consequences, recovered their equipoise, and a reaction
followed which strengthened the President in public confidence. But the
radical extremists, especially the advocates of Congressional supremacy,
began in the course of the winter to reassert their own peculiar ideas
and their intention of having a more extreme policy pursued by the
Government.

Thaddeus Stevens embraced an early opportunity to declare his extreme
views, which were radically and totally antagonistic to those of the
President. But Stevens, whose ability and acquirements as a politician,
and whose skill and experience as a party tactician were unsurpassed if
not unequalled in either branch of Congress, made no open, hostile
demonstration toward the President. He restricted himself to
contemptuous expressions in private conversation against the Executive
policy and general management of affairs. Without an attack on the
President, whom he personally liked, the Administration was sneered at
as weak and inefficient, of which little could be expected until a more
aggressive and scathing policy was adopted. His personal intercourse
with members and his talents and eloquence on the floor of the House
gave him influence with the representatives on ordinary occasions, but
his ultra radical and revolutionary ideas caused the calm and
considerate to distrust and disclaim his opinions and his leadership. It
was not until a later period, and under another Executive, less affable
but not less honest and sincere than Mr. Lincoln, that the suggestions
of Stevens were much regarded. When his disciples and adherents became
more partisan and numerous, they, in order to give him power and
consequence and reconcile their constituents, denominated him the "Great
Commoner."

If his political hopes and party schemes had been sometimes successful,
his reverses and disappointments had been much greater. Many and severe
trials during an active, embittered, and often unscrupulous partisan
experience, had tempered his enthusiasm if they had not brought him
wisdom. Defeats can hardly be said to have made him misanthropic; but
having little philosophy in his composition, he vented his spleen when
there was occasion on his opponents in ironical remarks that made him
dreaded, and which were often more effective than arguments; but his
sagacity and knowledge of men taught him that a hostile and open
conflict with a chief magistrate whose honesty even he respected, and
whose patriotism the people so generally regarded, would be not only
unavailing, but to himself positively injurious. He therefore conformed
to circumstances; and while opposed to the tolerant policy of the
Administration toward the rebels and the rebel States, he had the tact
and address, with his wit and humor, to preserve pleasant social
intercourse and friendly personal relations with the President, who well
understood his traits and purpose, but avoided any conflict with him.

For the first five or six weeks of the third session of the
Thirty-seventh Congress, Stevens improved his time in free and sarcastic
remarks on the reconstruction policy of the Government, which he
characterized as puerile and feeble, and at length, on the 8th of
January, he gave utterance to his feelings, maintaining that "with
regard to all the Southern States in rebellion, the Constitution has no
binding influence or application." He averred that "in his opinion they
were not members of the Union"; that "the ordinances of secession took
them out of the Union"; that he "would levy a tax wherever he could upon
these conquered provinces"; said he "would not only collect the tax, but
he would, as a necessary war measure, take every particle of property,
real and personal, life estate and reversion, of every disloyal man, and
sell it for the benefit of the nation in carrying on this war."

Several members of Congress hastened to deny that these sentiments and
purposes were those of the Republican party; this Mr. Stevens admitted.
He said "a very mild denial from the pleasant gentleman from New York
[Mr. Olin], and the somewhat softened and modified repudiation of the
gentleman from Indiana" (Mr. Colfax), would, he hoped, satisfy the
sensitive gentlemen in regard to him, and he "desired to say he did not
speak the sentiments of this side of the House _as a party_."; that
"for the last fifteen years he [Stevens] had always been ahead of the
party in these matters, but he had never been so far ahead but that the
members of the party had overtaken and gone ahead; and they would again
overtake him and go with him before the infamous and bloody rebellion
was ended." "They will find that they must treat those States, now
outside of the Union, as conquered provinces, and settle them with new
men, and drive the present rebels as exiles from this country." "Nothing
but extermination, or exile, or starvation, will ever induce them to
surrender to the Government."

Not very consistent or logical in his policy and views, this
subsequently Radical leader proposed to treat the Southern people
sometimes as foreigners and at other times as rebel citizens; in either
case he would tax, starve, and exile them--make provinces of their
States, and overturn their old established governments. Few,
comparatively, of the Republicans were at that time prepared to follow
Stevens or adopt his vindictive and arbitrary measures. Shocked at his
propositions, the "Great Commoner" had at that day few acknowledged
adherents. When in vindication of his scheme it was asked upon what
ground the collection of taxes could be enforced in the Southern States,
Judge Thomas, one of the ablest and clearest minds of the Massachusetts
delegation, said, "Upon this ground, that the authority of this
Government at this time is as valid over those States as it was before
the acts of secession were passed; upon the ground that every act of
secession passed by those States is utterly null and void; upon the
ground that every act legally null and void cannot acquire force because
armed rebellion is behind it, seeking to uphold it; upon the ground that
the Constitution makes us not a mere confederacy, but a _nation_; upon
the ground that the provisions of that Constitution strike through the
State government and reach directly, not intermediately, the subjects.
Subjects of whom? Of the nation--of the United States." "Who ever heard,
as a matter of public law, that the authority of a government over its
rebellious subjects was lost until that revolution was successful--was a
fact accomplished?"

Shortly after the capture of New Orleans and the establishment of
Federal authority over Louisiana, two of the Congressional districts of
that State elected representatives to Congress. The admission or
non-admission of these representatives involved the question of the
political condition of the Southern States and people in the Federal
Union, and the whole principle, in fact, of restoration and
reconstruction.

The subject was long and deliberately considered and fully discussed in
Congress. The committee on elections reported in favor of their
admission, and Mr. Dawes of Massachusetts, the chairman, stated that
"more than ordinary importance is attached to the consideration of this
subject. It is not simply whether two gentlemen shall be permitted to
occupy seats in this House. The question whether they shall be admitted
involves the principles touching the present state of the country to
which the attention of the House has more than once been called." He
said, "The question now comes up, whether any reason exists that
requires any departure from the rules and principles which have been
adopted." "An adherence to these principles is vitally important in
settling the question, how there is to be a restoration of this Union
when this war shall be drawn to a close."

The subject of admitting these representatives and the principles of a
restoration of the Union which their admission involved, was debated
with earnestness for several days, and finally decided, on the 17th of
February, in favor of admitting them, by a vote of ninety-two in the
affirmative to forty-four in the negative.

An analysis of this vote, in view of the proceedings, acts, and votes
of many of the same members a few years subsequently, after Mr.
Lincoln's death, presents some curious and interesting facts. It was not
a strictly party vote. Among those who then favored the Administration
policy of restoration were Colfax, Dawes, Delano, Fenton, Fisher of
Delaware, Wm, Kellogg, J. S. Morrill of Vermont, Governor A. H. Rice of
Massachusetts, Shellabarger, and others who opposed the restoration
policy of President Lincoln after his death and the accession of
President Johnson.

In the negative with Thaddeus Stevens were Ashley, Bingham, the two
Conklings, Kelley, McPherson, and a few others. But when reconstruction
or exclusion actually took place after the termination of the war, great
changes occurred among the members of Congress, and Stevens, the "Great
Commoner," who in 1863 had a following of less than one-third of the
representatives, rallied, four years later, more than two-thirds to his
standard against restoration and for subjugation and exclusion.

Mr. Stevens was no ordinary man. At the bar he was astute and eloquent
rather than profound, but in the Legislature of Pennsylvania and in the
management of the affairs of that State, where for a period he actively
participated and was a ruling mind, he was often rash and turbulent, and
had, not without cause, the reputation of being a not over scrupulous
politician. Personally my relations with him, though not intimate, were
pleasant and friendly. I was first introduced to him at Harrisburg in
1836, when he was a member of the convention that revised the
Constitution of Pennsylvania. We occasionally met in after years. He
expressed himself pleased with my appointment in Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet,
and, notwithstanding we disagreed on fundamental principles, he
complimented my administration of the Navy Department, and openly and
always sustained my positions, and particularly so on the subject of the
blockade, on which there were differences in the Administration. In the
Pennsylvania convention of 1836 he was probably the most eloquent
speaker, but his ideas were often visionary and radical. He ultimately
refused to sign the Constitution because the colored people were denied
the elective franchise. Severe as he exhibited himself toward the rebels
during and subsequent to the civil war, Mr. Stevens was not by nature,
as might be supposed, inhuman in his feelings and sympathies toward his
fellow men. To the colored race he seemed always more attached and
tender than to the whites, perhaps because they were enslaved and
oppressed. He was opposed to slavery, to imprisonment for debt, and to
capital punishment. There were strange contradictions in his character.
In his political career he had ardent supporters, though many who voted
with him had not a high regard for his principles. His course and
conduct in the Legislature and government of Pennsylvania did much to
debauch the political morals of that State, and in the celebrated
"buck-shot war" he displayed the bold and reckless disregard of justice
and popular rights that distinguished the latter years of his
Congressional life, when he became the acknowledged leader of the
radical reconstruction party in Congress.

In his political career and management, though strongly sustained by a
local constituency, he had experienced a series of disappointments. The
defeat of John Quincy Adams, whom he greatly admired, in 1828, and the
election of General Jackson, against whom his prejudices were
inveterate, were to him early and grievous vexations.

The attempt of Mr. Adams on his retirement to establish a national
anti-Masonic party was warmly seconded by Stevens, and with greater
success in Pennsylvania than attended his distinguished leader in
Massachusetts. The failure of the attempt was more severely felt by the
disciple than by the master. After the annihilation of the anti-Masonic
organization and the discomfiture of the buck-shot war, Stevens was
less conspicuous, though prominent for a few months in 1840, when he
came forward as an earnest advocate of the nomination of General
Harrison in that singular campaign which resulted in the General's
election. His efficiency and zeal in behalf of both the nomination and
election of the "hero of Tippecanoe" were acknowledged, and he and his
friends anticipated they would be recognized and he rewarded by a seat
in the Cabinet. But he had given offence to the great Whig leader of
that day by his preference of Harrison for President, and had moreover
an unsavory reputation, which, with the declared opposition of Clay and
Webster, caused his exclusion. It was a sore disappointment, from which
he never fully recovered. Eight years later, with the advent of General
Taylor and the defeated aspirations of the Whig leaders, who had caused
his exclusion from Harrison's Cabinet, he sought and obtained an
election to the thirty-first Congress from the Lancaster district. In
1856 he strove with all his power to secure the Presidential nomination
for John McLane of the Supreme Court, who had or professed to have had
anti-Masonic tendencies. His ill success was another disappointment; but
in 1859 he was again elected to Congress, and thereafter until his death
he represented the Lancaster district.

Disappointments had made him splenetic, but he was not, as represented
by his opponents on the two extremes, either a charlatan or a miscreant,
though possibly not wholly exempt from charges against him in either
respect. In many of his ultra radical and it may be truly said
revolutionary views--revolutionary because they changed the structure of
the Government--he coincided with Senator Sumner, who was perhaps the
leading spirit in the Senate on the subject of reconstruction, but he
did not, like the Massachusetts Senator, make any pretence that his
project to subjugate the Southern people and reduce their States to the
condition of provinces was constitutional, or by authority of the
Declaration of Independence. President Lincoln well understood the
characteristics of both these men, and, though differing from each on
the subject of restoration and reconstruction, he managed to preserve
friendly personal relations with both--retained their confidence, and
while he lived secured their general support of his Administration.
Herein President Lincoln exhibited those peculiar qualities and
attributes of mind which made him a leader and manager of men, and
enabled him in a quiet and unostentatious way to exercise his executive
ability in administering the Government during the most troublesome
period of our national history.

                        GIDEON WELLES.




ART'S LIMITATIONS.


    This rich, rank Age--does it breed giants now--
    Dantes or Michaels, Raphaels, Shakespeares? Nay!
    Its culture is of other sort to-day.
    From the stanch stem (too ready to allow
    Growths that divide the strength that should endow
    The one tall trunk) who firmly lops away,
    With wise reserve, such shoots as lead astray
    The wasted sap to some collateral bough?

    Had Dante chiselled stone, had Angelo
    Intrigued with courts, had Shakespeare dulled his pen
    With critic gauge of Chaucer, Drummond, Ben--
    What lack there were of that life-giving shade,
    Which these high-tower'd, centurial oaks have made,
    Where walk the happy nations to and fro!

                        MARGARET J. PRESTON.




APPLIED SCIENCE.

A LOVE STORY IN TWO CHAPTERS.


CHAPTER II.

CONCLUSION.

The events of the last chapter happened on the night of Friday, July 17,
1874. The following day, Saturday, broke calm, clear, and warm. Elmer
awoke early, carefully looked out of a crack in his window curtain, and
found that the chimney-builder's room was empty.

"The enemy has flown. I wonder if Alma is up?"

He uncovered a small telegraphic armature and sounder standing on the
window-seat, and touched it gently. In an instant there was a response,
and Alma replied that she was up and dressed and would soon be down.

She met him in the library, smiling, and apparently happy.

"Oh, Elmer, he has gone away. He left a note on the breakfast table,
saying that he had gone to New York, and that he should not return till
Monday or Tuesday."

"That's very good; but I think it means mischief."

Just here the breakfast bell rang. The table was set for four, but Alma
and Elmer were the only ones who could answer the call, and they sat
down to the table alone. They talked of various matters of little
consequence, and when the meal was over Elmer announced that as the day
was quiet, he should make a little photographing expedition about the
neighborhood.

"My visit here is now more than a quarter over, and I wish to take home
some photos of the place. Will you not go with me?"

"With all my heart, if I can leave father. But please not talk of going
home yet. I hope you will not go till things are settled. We want you,
Elmer. You are so wise and strong, and--you know what I mean."

"Perhaps I do. At any rate I'm not going till I have paid up that
Belford for his insults."

"Oh, let's not talk of him to-day."

This was eminently wise. They had better enjoy the day of peace that was
before them. The shadow of the coming events already darkened their
lives, though they knew it not. Mr. Denny was so much better that he
could spare Alma, and about ten o'clock she appeared, paper umbrella in
hand, at the porch, and Elmer soon joined her bearing a small camera,
and a light wooden tripod for its support.

The two spent the morning happily in each other's company, and at one
o'clock returned to dinner with quite a number of negatives of various
objects of interest about the place. After dinner the young man
retreated to his room to prepare for the battle that he felt sure would
rage on the following Monday.

He did not know all the circumstances of the trouble that had invaded
the family, but he felt sure that the confidential clerk intended some
terrible shame or exposure that in some way concerned his cousin Alma.
So it was he came to call himself her Lohengrin, come to fight her
battles, not with a sword, but with the telegraph, the camera, and the
micro-lantern.

The Sabbath passed quietly, and the Monday came. After breakfast the
student retreated to his room and tried to study, but could not.

About ten o'clock he heard a carriage of some kind stop before the
house. His room being at the rear, he could not see who had come, and
thinking that it might be merely some stray visitor, and that at least
it did not concern him, he turned to his books and made another attempt
to read.

After some slight delay he heard the carriage drive away, and the old
house became very still. Then he heard a door open down stairs, and a
moment after one of the maids knocked at his door.

"Would Mr. Franklin kindly come down stairs? Mr. Denny wished to see him
in the library."

He would come at once; and picking up a number of unmounted photographs
from the table, he prepared to go down stairs. He hardly knew why he
should take the pictures just then. There seemed no special reason why
he should show them to Mr. Denny; still, an indefinite feeling urged him
to take them with him.

The library was a small room, dark, with heavy book shelves against the
walls, and crowded with tables, desk, and easy chairs. There was a
student lamp on the centre table, and in a corner stood a large iron
safe. Mr. Denny was seated at the table with his back to the door, and
with his head supported by his hand and arm. He did not seem to notice
the arrival of his visitor, and Elmer advanced to the table and laid the
photographs upon it.

"I am glad you have come, Mr. Franklin. I wish to talk with you. I wish
to tell you something. A great affliction has fallen upon us, and I wish
you, as our guest, to be prepared for it. I think I can trust you, Elmer
Franklin. I remember your mother, my boy. You have her features--and I
will trust you for her sake. We are ruined."

"How, sir? How is that possible, with all your property?"

"Not one cent of my property--not a foot of ground, or a single brick,
or piece of shafting in the mills--belongs to me."

"This is terrible, sir. How did it happen?"

"It is a short and sad story. I was my father's only child, and there
were no other heirs. My father's last illness was very sudden, and he
left no will. He told me when he died that he had left everything to me.
We never found any will that would bear out this assertion. However,
the ordinary process of law gave me the property, and I thought myself
secure. Suddenly a will was found, in which all the property was left to
a distant relative in New York, and I was merely mentioned with some
trifling gift. I contested the will and lost the case. It was an
undoubted will, and in my father's own handwriting, and dated more than
a year before he died and when I was rusticating from college. I thought
I must needs sow my wild oats, and day after to-morrow I pay for them
all by total beggary. The devisee, by the will, acted very strangely
about the property. He did not disturb me for a very long time. He
probably feared to do so; and then he made a mortgage of one hundred
thousand dollars on the property, took the money, and went abroad."

"And he left you here in possession?"

"Yes. The interest on the mortgage became due. There was no one to pay
it, and they even had the effrontery to come to me. I refused again and
again, and every time the interest was added to the mortgage till it
rolled up to an enormous amount. Meanwhile the devisee died, penniless,
in Europe, and on Wednesday Abrams, the lawyer who holds the mortgage,
is to take possession of everything--and we--we are to go--I know not
whither."

For a few moments there was a profound silence in the room. The elder
man mourned his dreadful fate, and the son of science was ready to shout
for joy. Restraining himself with an effort, he said, not without a
tremor in his voice:

"And have you searched for any other will?"

"That is an idle question, my son. We have searched these years. Then,
too, just as I need a staff for my declining years, it breaks under me."

"You refer to Mr. Belford, sir?"

"Yes. Since I injured my foot in the mill, I have trusted all my
affairs to him, and now I sometimes think he is playing me false. Even
now, when all this trouble has come upon me, he is absent, and I have no
one to consult, nor do I find any to aid or comfort me."

"Perhaps I can aid you, sir."

"I do not know. I fear no one can avail us now."

"May I be very frank with you, sir?"

"Certainly. I am past all pride or fear. There can be nothing worse
now."

"I think, sir, you have placed too much confidence in that man. He is
not trustworthy."

"How do you know? Can you prove it?"

"Yes, sir. You remember the new chimney?"

"Yes; but he explained that, and collected all the money that had been
paid on the supposed extra height of the chimney."

"That was very easy, sir, for he had it in his own pocket. I met some of
the work people in the village, and casually asked them how high the
chimney was to be, and every man gave the real height. Mr. Belford lied
to you about it, and pocketed the difference between his measurements
and mine. Of course, when detected he promptly restored the money, and
thought himself lucky to have escaped so easily. More than that, he
claimed that the chimney was capped with stone. It is not. It is brick
to the top, and the upper courses were rubbed over with colored
plaster."

"I can hardly believe it. Besides, how can you prove it?"

"That will, sir. Look at it carefully."

So saying, Elmer selected a photograph from those on the table and
presented it to Mr. Denny.

The old gentleman looked at it carefully for a few moments, and then
said with an air of conviction--

"It is a perfect fraud. I had no idea that the man was such a thief."

"Yes, sir. Look at that bare place where the plaster has fallen off.
You can see the brick----"

"Oh, I can see. There is no need to explain the picture. Have you any
more?"

"Yes, sir; quite a number. I'm glad I brought them with me."

Mr. Denny turned them over slowly, and commented briefly upon them.

"That's the house. Very well done, my boy. That's the mill. Excellent. I
should know it at once. And--eh! what's that? The batting mill?"

"Yes, sir. That's the new building going up beyond the millpond."

"Great heavens! What an outrageous fraud! Mr. Belford told me it was
nearly done. He has drawn almost all the money for it already, and
according to this picture only one story is up. When was this picture
taken?"

"On Saturday, sir. Alma was with me. She will tell you."

Mr. Denny rang a small bell that stood at his elbow, and a maid came to
the door.

"Will you call Miss Denny, Anna?"

The maid retired, and in a moment or two Alma appeared. She seemed pale
and dejected, and she sat down at once as if weary.

"What is it, father? Any new troubles?"

"Were you with your cousin when he took this photograph?"

She looked at it a moment, and then said wearily:

"Yes. It's the batting mill."

Just here the door opened, and Mr. Belford, hat and travelling bag in
hand, as if just from the station, entered the room. The two men looked
up in undisguised amazement, but Alma cast her eyes upon the floor, and
her face seemed to put on a more ashen hue than ever.

"Ah! excuse me. I did not mean to intrude. I'm just from New York, and I
have been so successful that I hastened to lay the news before you."

"What have you to say, Mr. Belford," said Mr. Denny coldly. "There are
none but friends here, and you need not fear to speak."

Mr. Franklin hastily gathered up the pictures together, and rolling them
up, put them in his pocket, with the mental remark that he "knew of one
who was not a friend--no, not much."

"I have arranged everything," said Mr. Belford, with sublime audacity.
"The note has been taken up. I have even obtained a release of the
mortgage, and here is the cancelled note and the release. To-morrow I
will have it recorded."

"We are in no mood for pleasantry, Mr. Belford. The sheriff was here
to-day, and Abrams is to take possession on Wednesday."

"Oh, I knew that. He did not get my telegram in time, or he would have
saved you all this unnecessary annoyance. And now everything is all
serene, and there is Abrams's release in full."

He took out a carefully folded paper, and gave it to Mr. Denny. He read
it in silence, and then said:

"It seems to be quite correct. We----"

Alma suddenly dropped her head upon her breast, and slid to the floor in
a confused heap. She thought she read in that fatal receipt her death
warrant. Nature rebelled, and mercifully took away her senses.

Elmer sprang to her rescue, but Mr. Belford intruded himself.

"It is my place, Mr. Franklin. She is to be my wife."

       *       *       *       *       *

The dreary day crept to its end. Alma recovered, and retired to her
room. Mr. Denny, overcome by the excitement of the interview, was quite
ill, and the visitor, oppressed with a sense of partial defeat, took a
long walk through the country. The enemy had made such an extraordinary
movement that for the time he was disconcerted, and he wished to be
alone, that he could think over the situation. About six o'clock in the
afternoon he returned looking bright and calm, as if he had thought out
his problem and had nerved himself up to do and dare all in behalf of
the woman he loved. He went quietly to his room and began his
preparations for a vigorous assault upon the enemy.

He rolled out his micro-lantern into the middle of the room, drew up the
curtains at the window that faced Mr. Belford's chamber, and prepared to
adjust the apparatus to a new and most singular style of lantern
projections. He had hardly finished the work to his satisfaction before
he heard Alma's knock at the door. He hastily drew down the curtains,
and then invited her to come in.

She opened the door and appeared upon the threshold, the picture of
resigned and heavy sorrow. She had evidently been weeping, and the dark
dress in which she had arrayed herself seemed to intensify the look of
anguish on her face. The son of science was disconcerted. He did not
know what to say, and, with great wisdom, he said nothing.

She entered the room without a word, and sat wearily down on a trunk.
Elmer quickly rolled out the great easy chair so that it would face the
open western window.

"Sit here, Miss Denny. This is far more comfortable."

"Oh, Elmer! Have you too turned against me?"

"Not knowingly. Sit here where there is more air, and before this view
and this beautiful sunset."

She rose, and with a forlorn smile took the great chair, and then gazed
absently out of the window upon the charming landscape, brilliant with
the glow of the setting sun. Elmer meanwhile went on with his work, and
for a little space neither spoke. Then she said, with a faint trace of
impatience in her voice--

"What are you doing, Elmer?"

"Preparing for war."

"It is useless. It is too late."

"Think so?"

"Yes. Everything has been settled, and in a very satisfactory
manner--at least father is satisfied, and I suppose I ought to be."

She smiled and held out her hand to him.

"How can I ever thank you, cousin Elmer? You will not forget me when I
am gone."

"Forget you, Alma! That was unkind."

He took her hand, glanced at the diamond ring upon her finger, and
looking down upon her as she lay half reclining in the great chair, he
said, with an effort, as if the words pained him:

"Alma, you have surrendered to him."

She looked up with a startled expression, and said:

"What do you mean?"

"You have renewed your engagement with Mr. Belford?"

"Yes--of course I have. He--he is to be my husband----"

"On Wednesday."

"Yes. How did you know it?"

Instead of replying he turned to a drawer and drew forth a long ribbon
of white paper. Holding it to the light, near the window, he began to
read the words printed in dots and lines upon it.

"Here is your own confession. Here are all the messages you sent me from
the parlor, when you broke your engagement with him----"

"Oh, Elmer! Did you save that? Destroy it--destroy it at once. If he
should find it, he would never forgive me."

"You need not fear. I shall not destroy it, and it shall never cause you
any trouble."

She had risen in her excitement, and stood upon her feet. Suddenly she
flushed a rosy red, and a strange light shone in her eyes. The sun had
sunk behind the hills, and it had grown dark. As the shadows gathered in
the room a strange, mystic light fell on the wall before her. A
picture--dim, ghostly, gigantic, and surpassingly beautiful--met her
astonished eyes. She gazed at it with a beating heart, awed into
silence by its mystery and its unearthly aspect. What was it? What did
it mean? By what magic art had he conjured up this vision? She stood
with parted lips gazing at it, while her bosom rose and fell with her
rapid, excited breathing. Suddenly she threw her arms above her head,
and with a cry fell back upon the chair.

"Oh, Elmer! My heart----"

He had been gazing absently out of the window at the fading twilight,
and hearing her cry of pain, he turned hastily and said:

"Alma, what is it? Are you----"

He caught sight of the picture on the wall. He understood it at once,
and went to the stereopticon that stood at the other end of the room and
opened it. The lamp was burning brightly, and he put it out and closed
the door. Then he drew out the glass slide, held it a moment to the
light to make sure that it was Alma's portrait, and then he kissed it
passionately, and shivered it into fragments upon the hearthstone.

She heard the breaking glass, and rose hastily and turned toward him.

"Elmer, that was cruel. Why did you destroy it?"

"Because it told too much."

"It was my picture?"

"Yes. I confess with shame that I stole it when you were asleep under
the influence of the gas I gave you. It happened to be in the lantern
when you came in."

"And so I saw it pictured on the wall?"

"Yes. In that way did it betray me. Forget it, Alma. Forget me. Forget
everything. Forget that I ever came here----"

"No--never. I cannot."

"You will be married soon and go away. I presume we may never meet
again."

"Oh, Elmer, forgive me. I am the one to be forgiven. I am alone to blame
for all this sorrow. I thought I alone should suffer. But--but, Elmer,
you will not forget me, and you see--you must see that what I do is for
the best. It is the only way. I cannot see my father beggared."

The clear-headed son of science seemed to be losing his self-control.
This was all so new, so exciting, so different from the calm and steady
flow of his student life, that he knew not what to say or do. He began
to turn over his books and papers in a nervous manner, as if trying to
win back control of his own tumultuous thoughts. Fortunately Alma came
to his rescue.

"Elmer, hear me."

"Yes," he said with an effort. "Tell me about it; then perhaps we can
understand each other better."

"I will. Come and sit by me. It grows dark, and I--well, it is no
matter. It will do me good to speak of it."

"Yes, do. Sorrow shared is divided by half."

"And joy shared is doubled," she added. "But we will not talk of 'the
might have been.'"

Then she paused and looked out on the gathering night for some minutes
in silence. Elmer sat at her feet upon a low stool, and waited till she
should speak.

"Elmer, say that you will forgive me whatever happens. No matter how
dark it looks for me, forgive me--and--do not forget me. I couldn't bear
that. On Wednesday I am to be married to Mr. Belford. It is the only way
by which I can save my father. There seems no help for it, and I
consented this afternoon. Mr. Belford took up the mortgage, and I am to
be his reward."

Elmer heard her through in silence, and then he stood up before her, and
his passion broke out in fury upon her.

"Alma Denny, you are a fool."

She cowered before him, and covered her face with her hands.

"Have you no sense? Can you not see the wide pit of deceit that is
spread before you? Do you believe what he says? Will you walk into
perdition to save your father?"

"Oh, Elmer! Elmer! Spare me, spare me, for my father's sake!"

Her sobs and tears choked her utterance, and she shrank away into the
depths of the chair, in shame and terror, thankful that the darkness hid
her from his view. Still his righteous indignation blazed upon her
hotly.

"Where have you lived? What have you done, that you should be so
deceived by this man? How can you save your father? If you cannot find
that missing will, of what avail is this withdrawal of the mortgage?"

"I do not know. Oh, Elmer! I am weak, and I have no mother, and father
is----I must save him if I can--at any price."

"You cannot save him. The devisee who held the will has heirs. They can
still claim the property. Besides, how could Mr. Belford pay off that
mortgage? Depend upon it, a gigantic fraud----"

"Elmer! Thank God, you have saved----"

She fainted quietly away, and slid down upon the floor at his feet. He
called two of the maids, and with their help he took her to her room and
placed her upon her own bed. Then, bidding them care for her properly,
he returned to his own room, and the heavy night fell down on the
sorrowful house.

Far away in the northwest climbed up a ragged mass of sombre clouds.
Afar off the deep voice of the thunder muttered fitfully. The son of
science drew up his curtains and looked out on the coming storm. There
was a solemn hush and calm in the air. Nature seemed resting, and
nerving herself for the warfare of the elements.

He too had need of calm. He drew a chair to the window, and sitting
astride of it, he rested his arms upon the back, and his chin upon his
folded hands, and for an hour watched the lightning flash from ragged
cloud to ragged cloud, and gave himself to deep and anxious thought. The
thunder grew nearer and nearer. The dark veil of clouds blotted out the
stars one by one. The roar of the water falling over the dam at the mill
seemed to fill all the air with its murmur. Every leaf and flower hung
motionless.

He heard the village clock strike nine, with loud, deep notes that
seemed almost at hand. Every nerve of his body seemed strung to electric
tension, and all nature tuned to a higher pitch as if dark and terrible
things were abroad in the night.

He heard a sound of closing blinds and windows. The servants were
shutting up the house, and preparing it for the storm.

One of them knocked at his door, and asked if she should come in and
close his windows.

He opened the door, thanked her, and said he would attend to it himself.
As he closed the door and stepped back into the room, he stood upon
something and there was a little crash. Thinking it might be glass, he
lit a candle and looked for the broken object, whatever it might be.

It was Alma's engagement ring, broken in twain. It had slipped from her
nerveless finger when they took her to her room. With a gesture of
impatience, he picked up the fragments, and threw them, diamond and all,
out of the window into the garden below.

Then for another hour he sat alone in the darkness of his room, watchful
and patient. He drew up the curtain toward Alma's room. There was a
light there, and he sat gazing at her white curtain till the light was
extinguished. The other lights were all put out one after the other, and
then it became very still.

The clock struck ten. The gathering storm climbed higher up the western
sky. The lightning flashed brighter and brighter. There was a sigh in
the tree tops as if the air stirred uneasily.

Suddenly there was another light. Mr. Belford's curtain was brightly
illuminated by his candle. Elmer moved his chair so that he could watch
the window, and waited patiently till the light was put out. Then he saw
the curtain raised and the window drawn down.

"All right, my boy! That's just what I wanted. Nemesis has a clear road,
and her shadowy sword shall reach you. Now for the closed circuit
alarm."

He silently pulled off his shoes, and then, with the tread of a cat, he
felt about his room till he found on the table two delicate coils of
fine insulated wire, and a couple of tacks. Carefully opening the door,
he crept down stairs and through the hall to the door of the library.
The door was closed, and kneeling down on the mat he pushed a tack into
the door near the jamb and stuck the other in the door post. From one to
another he stretched a bit of insulated wire. Then, aided by the glare
of the flashes of lightning, that had now grown bright and frequent, he
laid the wires under the mat and along the floor to the foot of the
stairs. Then in his stockinged feet he crept upward, dropping the wires
over into the well of the stairway as he went. In a moment or two the
wires were traced along the floor of the upper entry and under the door
into his room. Here they were secured to a small battery, and connected
with a tiny electric bell that stood on the mantle shelf. To stifle its
sound in case it rang, he threw his straw hat over the bell, and then he
felt sure that at least one part of his work was done.

Louder and louder rolled the thunder. The lightning flashed brightly and
lit up the bare, mean little room where the wretch cowered and shivered
in the bed, sleepless and fearful he knew not why. He feared the storm
and the night. He feared everything. His guilty heart made terrors out
of the night and nature's healthful workings. The very storm, blessed
harbinger of clearer days and sweeter airs, terrified him.

There was a sound of rushing wind in the air. A more vivid flash
blinded him. He sat up in bed and stopped his coward ears to drown the
splendid roll of the thunder. Another flash seemed to fill the room.

Ah! What was that? His eyes seemed to start from their sockets in
terror.

There, written in gigantic letters of fire upon the wall, glowed and
burned a single word:

    FRAUD!

He stared at it and rubbed his eyes. It would not be winked out. There
was a loud crash of thunder and a furious dash of rain against the
window; then another blinding stroke of lightning. He drew the clothing
over his head in abject terror. Again the thunder rolled as if in savage
comment on the writing on the wall.

It was a mistake, a delusion. He would face the horrid accusation.

It was gone, and in its place was a picture. It seemed the top of----

Ah! It was that chimney. Already the false stucco had fallen off, and
there, pictured upon his wall in lines of fire, were the evidences of
his fraud and crime.

He sprang from the bed with an oath and looked out of the window.
Darkness everywhere. The beating rain on the window pane ran down in
blinding rivulets. A vivid flash of lightning illuminated the garden and
the house. Not a living thing was stirring. He turned toward the bed.
The terrible picture had gone. With a muttered curse upon his weak,
disordered nerves, he crept into bed and tried to sleep.

Suddenly the terrible writing glowed upon the wall again, and he fairly
screamed with fright and horror:

    MURDER!

He writhed and turned upon the bed in mortal agony. He stared at the
letters of the awful word with ashen lips and chattering teeth. What
hideous dream was this? Had his reason reeled? Could it play him
phantom tricks like this? Or was it an avenging angel from heaven
writing his crimes upon the black night?

"Great God! What was that?"

The writing disappeared, and in its place stood a picture of his
wretched victim and himself. Her fair, innocent face looked down upon
him from the darkness, and he saw his own form beside her.

He raved with real madness now. Great drops of perspiration gathered on
his face. He dared not face those beautiful eyes so calmly gazing at
him. Where had high Heaven gained such knowledge of him? How could God
punish him with such awful cruelty?

"Hell and damnation have come," he screamed in frantic terror. The
thunder rolled in deep majesty, and none heard him. The wind and rain
beat upon the house, and his ravings disturbed no one.

"Take it away! Take it away!" he cried in sheer madness and agony.

It would not move. The lightning only made the picture more startling
and awful. The sweet and beautiful face of Alice Green lived before him
in frightful distinctness, and his very soul seemed to burn to cinder
before her serene, unearthly presence.

It was her ghost revisiting the earth. Was it to always thus torment
him?

"Thank God! It has gone."

The room became pitch dark, and he fell back upon the pillow in what
seemed to him a bloody sweat. He could not sleep, and for some time he
lay trembling on the bed and trying to collect his senses and decide
whether he was in possession of his reason or not.

Suddenly there was a flash of light, and a new vision sprang into
existence before him.

An angel in long white robes seemed to be flying through the air toward
him, and above her head she held a sword. Beneath her feet was the word
"NEMESIS!" in letters of glowing fire.

The poor wretch rose up in bed, kneeled down upon the mattress, and
facing the gigantic figure that seemed to float in the air above him,
cried aloud in broken gasps.

"Pardon! For--Christ----"

He threw up his arms and screamed in delirious terror.

The angel advanced through the air toward him and grew larger and
taller. She seemed ready to strike him to the ground--and she was gone.

He fell forward flat on his face, and tears gushed from his eyes in
torrents. For a while he lay thus moaning and crying, and then he rose,
staggered to the wash basin, bathed his face with cold water, and crept
shivering and trembling into bed.

       *       *       *       *       *

The storm moved slowly away. The lightning grew less frequent, and the
thunder rolled in more subdued tones. The wind subsided, but the rain
fell steadily and drearily. One who watched heard the clock strike
twelve and then one.

Slowly the laggard hours slipped away in silence. The rain fell in
monotonous showers. The darkness hung like a pall over everything.

The wretch in his bed tossed in sleepless misery. He hardly dared look
at the blackness of the night, for fear some new vision might affright
him with ghostly warnings. What had he better do? Another night in this
haunted room would drive him insane. Had he not better fly--leave all
and escape out of sight in the hiding darkness? Better abandon the
greater prize, take everything in reach, and fly from scenes so
terrible.

He rose softly, dressed completely, took a few essentials from his
table, did them up in a bundle, and then like a cat he crept out of the
room, never to return. The house was pitch dark and as silent as a tomb.
He had no need of a light, and, feeling his way along with his hands on
the wall, he stole down stairs and through the hall till he reached the
library door. With cautious fingers he turned the handle in silence and
pushed the door open. It seemed to catch on the threshold, but it was
only for an instant, and then he boldly entered the room.

Placing his bundle upon the table, he took out a small bunch of keys,
and with his hands outstretched before him he felt for the safe. It was
easily found, and then he put in the key, unlocked the door, and swung
it open. With familiar fingers he pulled out what he knew were mere
bills and documents, and then he found the small tin box in which--

A blinding glare, an awful flash of overpowering light blazed before
him. His eyes seemed put out by its bewildering intensity, and a little
scream of terror escaped from his lips. A hand seized him by the collar
and dragged him over backward upon the floor. The blazing, burning light
filled all the room with a glare more terrible than the lightning. He
recovered his sight, and saw Nemesis standing above him, revolver in
hand, and with a torch of magnesium wire blazing in horrid flames above
his head.

"Stir hand or foot, and--you understand. There are six chambers, and I'm
a good shot."

"Let me up, you fool, or I'll kill you."

"Oh! You surprise me, Mr. Belford. I thought it was a common robber."

"No, it is not--so lower your pistol."

"No, sir. You may rise, but make the slightest resistance, and I'll blow
your brains into muddy fragments. Sit in that chair, and when I've
secured you properly, I'll hear any explanation you may make. Your
conduct is very singular, Mr. Belford, to say the least. That's it. Sit
down in the arm chair. Now I'm going to tie you into it, and on the
slightest sign of resistance I shall fire."

The poor, cowed creature sank into the chair, and the son of science
placed his strange lamp upon the table. With the revolver still in
hand, he procured a match and lit a candle on the table. Then he
extinguished his torch, and the overpowering light gave place to a more
agreeable gloom. Then he took from his pocket a tiny electric bell and a
little battery made of a small ink bottle. Then he drew forth a small
roll of wire, and securing one end to the battery, with the revolver
still in hand, he walked round the chair three times, and bound the
thief into it with the slender wire.

"Stop this fooling, boy! Lower your revolver, and let me explain
matters."

"No, sir. When I have you fast so that you can do no harm, I talk with
you--not before. Hold back your head. That's it. Rest it against the
chair while I draw this wire over your throat."

"For God's sake, stop! Do you intend to garrote me?"

"No. Only I mean to make you secure."

"This won't hold me long. I'll break your wires in a flash, you little
fool."

"No, you will not. The moment the wire is parted that bell will ring,
and I shall begin firing, and keep it up till you are disabled or dead."

The man swore savagely, but the cold thread of insulated wire over his
throat thrilled his every nerve. It seemed some magic bond, mysterious,
wonderful, and dreadful. This cool man of science was an angel of awful
and incomprehensible power. His lamp of such mystic brilliance and that
battery quite unnerved his coward heart. What awful torture, what
burning flash of lightning might not rend him to blackened fragments if
the wires were broken! To such depths of puerile ignorance and terror
did the wretch sink in his guilty fancy. He dared not move a muscle lest
the wire break. The very thought of it filled him with unspeakable
agony. The son of science placed himself before his prisoner. With the
revolver at easy rest, he said:

"Mr. Belford, I am going to call help. Do not move while I open the
door."

In mortal terror the wretch turned his head round to see what was going
on. He managed to get a glimpse of the room without breaking the wire
round his throat, and he saw the young man stoop to the floor at the
door and pick up something. Then he made some strange and rapid motions
with the fingers of his right hand, while the left still steadied the
revolver.

For several minutes nothing happened. The two men glared at each other
in silence, and then there was a sound of opening doors. One closed with
an echoing slam that resounded strangely through the old house, and then
there were light footsteps in the hall.

"Oh! Elmer! What is it? What has happened?"

"Nothing very serious--merely a common burglar. I called you because I
wished help."

"Yes, I heard the bell, and I read your message in my room by the sound.
I dressed as quickly as possible. Is there no danger?"

"No. Stand back. Do not come into the room. Call the men, and let them
wake the gardener and his son. You yourself call your father, and bid
him dress and come down at once. And, Alma, keep cool and do not be
alarmed. I need you, Alma, and you must help me."

Then the house was very still, and the watcher paced up and down before
his prisoner in silence. There came a hasty opening of doors, and
excited steps and flaring lamps in the hall.

"'Tis the young doctor. Oh! By mighty! Here's troubles!"

"Quiet, men! Keep quiet. Come in. He cannot hurt you."

The three men, shivering and anxious, peered into the room with blanched
faces and chattering teeth.

"Have you a rope?"

The calm voice of the speaker reassured them, and all three volunteered
to go for one.

"No. One is enough. And one of you had better go to Mr. Denny's room and
help him down stairs. You, John, may stop with me."

"Gods! Sir, he will spring at me!"

"Never you fear. He's fastened into the chair. Besides----"

"Ay, sir, you've the little pet! That's the kind o' argiment."

"It is a rather nice weapon--six-shooter--Colt's."

Presently, with much clatter, the gardener's son brought a rope, and
then, under Mr. Franklin's directions, they bound the man in the chair
hand and foot.

A moment after they heard Mr. Denny's crutch stalking down the stairs,
and Alma's voice assuring him that there was indeed no danger--no danger
at all.

"What does this mean, Mr. Franklin?" said the old gentleman as he came
to the door.

"Burglary, sir. That is all. You need fear nothing. We have secured the
man."

Mr. Denny entered the room leaning on Alma's arm. He saw the open safe
and the papers strewed upon the floor, and he lifted his hand and shook
his head in alarm and trouble.

"A robbery! Would they ruin me utterly? Where is the villain?"

"There, sir."

Alma turned toward the man in the chair, and clung to her father in
terror. The old man lifted his crutch as if to strike.

"My curse be upon you and yours."

"Oh, father, come away. Leave the poor wretch. Perhaps he has taken
nothing."

The men gathered round in a circle, and Elmer drew near to Alma. She
felt his presence near her, and involuntarily put out her hand to touch
him.

"My curse fall on you! Who are you? What have I done to
you--you--viper?"

The man secured in the chair, and with the wire drawn tightly over his
throat, replied not a word.

Elmer advanced toward him, and Alma, with a little cry, tried to hinder
him.

"Do not fear. He cannot move. I will release his head, and perhaps you
will recognize him."

The wire about his throat was loosened, and the wretch lifted his head
into a more comfortable position.

"Ah!"

"Great Heavens! It is Mr. Belford!"

"Yes, sir," said he. "I forgot to put away some papers, and I came down
to secure them, and while I was here that wretch surprised me,
threatened to murder me, and finally overpowered me and bound me here as
you see. If you will ask him to release me, I will get up and explain
everything."

"It's a lie," screamed Mr. Denny, lifting his crutch. "I don't believe
you--you thief--you robber! It's a lie!"

"Oh, father!" cried Alma. "Release him--let him go. He will go away
then, and leave us. He has done wrong; but let him go. It must be some
awful mistake--some----"

"No! Never! never! ne--v----"

The word died away on his lips, for on the instant there was a loud ring
at the hall door. They all listened in silence. Again the importunate
bell pealed through the echoing house.

"It is some one in distress," said Elmer. "John, do you take a light and
go to the door. Ask what is wanted before you loose the chain, and tell
them to go away unless it is a case of life or death."

They listened in breathless interest to the confused sounds in the hall.
There was a moving of locks, and then rough voices talking in suppressed
whispers. The candles flared in the cold draught of wind that swept into
the room, and the sound of the rain in the trees filled the air. Then
the door closed, and John returned, and in an excited whisper said:

"It's Mr. Jones, the sheriff."

At this word Mr. Belford struggled with his bonds, and in a broken
voice he cried:

"Oh, Mr. Denny, spare me! Let me not be arrested. I will restore
every----"

"Silence, sir!" said Elmer. "Not a word till you are spoken to. What
does he want, John?"

"He says he must see Mr. Denny. It's very important--and, oh, sir, he's
a'most beside himself, and I wouldn't let him in."

"Call him in at once," said Mr. Denny. "It is a most fortunate arrival.
The very man we want."

John returned to the hall, and in a moment an old man, gray-haired and
wrinkled, but still vigorous and strong, stood before them. He seemed a
giant in his huge great-coat, and when he removed his hat his massive
head and thick neck seemed almost leonine.

"Ah! Mr. Sheriff, you have arrived at a most opportune moment. We were
just awakened from our beds by this robber. We captured him, and we have
him here."

"Beg pardon, sir. Sorry to hear it, but 'twere another errant that
brought me here. The widow Green's daughter, Alice, she that was
missing, has been found in the mill-race--dead."

They all gave expression to undisguised astonishment, and the prisoner
in the chair groaned heavily.

"And I have come for the key of the boat house, sir, that we may go for
the--body, sir."

"How horrible! When did all this happen?"

"We dunno, sir. I'd like the key ter once."

"Certainly--certainly, Mr. Sheriff. But this man--cannot you secure him
for the night?"

"Oh, ay. But the child, sir. The boys wants your boat to go for her."

"Poor, poor Alice!" cried Alma, wringing her hands.

"John," said Elmer, "get the key for Mr. Jones. Jake, you and your
father can go with the men, and, Mr. Jones, perhaps you had better wait
with us, for we have a little matter of importance to settle, and we
need you."

"Now," said Mr. Franklin, "I have one or two questions I wish to ask the
man, and then, Mr. Jones, you will do us a favor if you will take him
away.

"Lawrence Belford, as you value your soul, where did you obtain that
will?"

If a bolt from the storm overhead had entered the room, it could not
have produced a more startling impression than did this simple question.
Mr. Denny dropped his crutch, and raised both hands in astonishment.
Alma gave a half suppressed scream, and even the sheriff and John were
amazed beyond expression.

The man in the chair made no reply, and presently the breathless silence
was broken by the calm voice of the young man repeating his question.

"I found it in the leaves of a book in the old bookcase in the mill
office."

"What?" cried Mr. Denny, leaning forward and steadying himself by the
table. "My father's will! Did you find it? Release him, John. How can we
ever thank you, Mr. Belford? It is the missing will----"

"Oh, Lawrence!" said Alma. "Why did you not tell us? why did you not
show it? How much trouble it would have saved."

"Have patience, Alma. Let Mr. Belford rise and bring the will."

"No," said Mr. Franklin. "Hear the rest of the story. Mr. Belford, you
destroyed or suppressed that will, did you not?"

"Yes, I did--damn you!"

"Good Lord!" cried the sheriff. "Did ye hear that?--destroyed it! That's
State's prison."

"Oh, Mr. Franklin, Mr. Denny! have mercy on me! Do not let them arrest
me."

The poor creature seemed to be utterly cowed and crushed in an instant.

"Marcy!" said the sheriff, taking out a pair of handcuffs. "It's little
marcy ye'll git."

"You ask for mercy!" cried Mr. Denny, his face livid with passion.
"You--you wretch! Have you not ruined me? Have you not made my child a
beggar, and carried my gray hairs in sorrow to the grave? You knew the
value of this will--and you destroyed it! Your other crimes are as
nothing to this. I could forgive your monstrous frauds in my mills----"

Mr. Belford winced and looked surprised.

"Ay! wince you may. I have found out everything, thanks to--but I'll not
couple his name with yours. And the release of the mortgage--have you
that?"

"No, sir. It is in that bag on the table."

The old gentleman eagerly took up the bundle that lay on the table, and
began with trembling fingers to open it.

"Wait a moment, Mr. Denny," said Mr. Franklin. "I should like to ask
this man a question or two."

Mr. Denny paused, and there was a profound silence in the room.

"Lawrence Belford, if you are wise, you will speak the truth. That
release is a forgery--or at least it has no legal value."

"It is not worth a straw," replied the prisoner with cool impudence;
"and on the whole, I'm glad of it. The mortgage will be foreclosed
to-morrow."

"Your share will be small, Mr. Belford. I am afraid your partner will
find some difficulty in making a settlement with you, unless he joins
you in prison."

Mr. Denny sat heavily down in an arm-chair and groaned aloud. In vain
Alma, with choking voice, tried to comfort him. The blow was too
terrible for words, and for a moment or two there was a painful silence
in the room.

Mr. Franklin seemed nervous and excited. He fumbled in his pockets as if
in search of something. Presently he advanced toward the old gentleman
and said quietly:

"Mr. Denny, can you bear one more piece of news--one more link in this
terrible chain of crime?"

"Yes," he replied slowly. "There can be nothing worse than this. Speak,
my son--let us hear everything."

"I think, sir," said the young man reverently, "that I ought to thank
God that He has enabled me to bring such knowledge as He has given me to
your service."

Then after a brief pause he added:

"There is the will, sir."

With these words he held out a small bit of sheet glass about two inches
square.

"Where?" cried Mr. Denny in amazement. "I see nothing."

"There it is--on that piece of glass. That dusky spot in the centre is a
micro-photographic copy of your father's will."

"My son, my son, do not trifle with us in this our hour of trial."

"Far be it from me to do such a thing. Alma, will you please go to my
room and bring down my lantern? And John, you may go and help Miss
Denny. Bring a sheet from the spare bed also."

"I do not know what you mean, my son. You tell me the will is destroyed,
and you say you have a copy. Is it a legal copy? and how do you know it
is really my father's will? Have you read it?"

"Yes, sir. You shall read it too presently. I have already shown it to a
lawyer, and he pronounced it correct and perfectly legal."

"But why did you not tell us of it before?"

"I have only had it a few days, sir, and I wished first to crush or
capture this robber."

"Hadn't ye better let me take him off, sir?" said the sheriff. "He's
done enough to take him afore the grand jury. Besides, we have another
bitter bill against him down in the village."

"No," said Mr. Franklin. "Let him stay and see the will. It may interest
him to know that all his villainous plans are utterly overthrown."

"Shut up, you whelp," said the man in the chair.

"Shut up--ye," replied the sheriff, administering a stout cuff to the
prisoner's ear. "Ye best hold your tongue, man."

Just here Alma and John returned with the lantern. Under Elmer's
directions they hung the sheet over one of the windows, and then the
young man prepared his apparatus for a small trial of lantern
projections. Mr. Denny sat in his chair silent and wondering. He knew
not what to say or do, and watched these preparations with the utmost
attention.

"Mr. Sheriff, if you please, you will stand near Mr. Belford, to prevent
him from attempting mischief when I darken the room. John, you may put
out all the candles save one."

Alma took her father's hand and kneeled upon the floor beside him as if
to aid and comfort him.

"Now, John, set that candle just outside the door in the entry."

A sense of awe and fear fell on them all as the room became dark, and
none save the young son of science dared breathe. Suddenly a round spot
of light fell on the sheet, and its glare illuminated the room dimly.

"Before I show the will, Mr. Sheriff, I wish you to see a photo that may
be of use to you in that little matter in the village of which you were
speaking."

Two dusky figures slid over the disk of light. They grew more and more
distinct.

"Great God! It's Alice Green!"

A passion of weeping filled the room, and Elmer opened the lantern, and
the room became light. Alma, with her head bent upon her father's knee,
was bathed in tears.

"Poor, poor lost Alice!"

"And the fellow with her? Who is he?" cried the sheriff.

"That is Mr. Belford--Mr. Lawrence Belford," said Elmer with cool
confidence. "That picture was taken through a telescope from my room on
the morning of the 13th."

"The 13th! Why, man, that was the day she was missed."

"Yes. Mr. Belford was with her that day, and perhaps he can explain her
disappearance."

The prisoner groaned in abject terror and misery. He saw it all now. His
dream pictures were explained. His defeat and detection were
accomplished through the young man's science. That he should have been
overthrown by such simple means filled him with mortification and anger.

"You shall have the picture, Mr. Sheriff. You may need it at the trial.
And now for the will."

The room became again dark, and the figures on the wall stood out sharp
and distinct on the sheet. Then the picture faded away, and in its place
appeared writing--letters in black upon white ground:


                                "SALMON FALLS, June 1, 1863.

    "I, Edward Denny, do hereby leave and bequeath to my son, John
    Denny, all of my property, both real and personal. All other
    wills I have made are hereby annulled. My near death prevents a
    more formal will.

                                      "EDWARD DENNY.

          "Witness:

                "JOHN MAXWELL, M.D."

"My father's will. Thank----"

There was a heavy fall, and Elmer opened his lantern quickly. It was too
much for the old man. He had fallen upon the floor insensible.

"A light, John, quick."

They lifted him tenderly, and with Alma's help the old sheriff and the
serving man took him away to his room.

The moment the two men were alone, the prisoner in the chair broke out
in a torrent of curses and threats. The young man quietly took up his
revolver, and said sternly:

"Lawrence Belford, hold your peace. Your threats are idle. You insulted
me outrageously the day I came here. I bear you no malice, but when you
attempted your infamous plan to capture my cousin and to ruin her
father, I sprang to their rescue with such skill as I could command. We
shall not pursue you with undue rigor, but with perfect justice----"

"Oh, Mr. Franklin, have mercy upon me! Let me go! Let me escape before
they return. I will go away--far away! Save me, save me, sir! I never
harmed you. Have mercy upon me!"

"Had you shown mercy perhaps I might now. No, sir; justice before mercy.
Hark--the officer comes."

They unfastened the ropes about Belford, and released the wires, and in
silence he went away into the night, a broken-down, crushed, and ruined
man in the hands of his grisly Nemesis.

The young man flung himself upon the lounge in the library, and in a
moment was fast asleep.

       *       *       *       *       *

The red gold of the coming day crept up the eastern sky. The storm
became beautiful in its fleecy rains in the far south. As the stars
paled, the sweet breath of the cool west wind sprang up, shaking the
raindrops in showers from the trees. The birds sang and the day came on
apace.

To one who watched it seemed the coming of a fairer day than had ever
shone upon her life. The vanished storm, the fresh aspect of nature
moved her to tears of happiness. Long had she watched the stars. They
were the first signs of light and comfort she had discovered, and now
they paled before the sun. Thus she sat by the open window in the
library and watched with a prayer in her heart.

She looked at the mantel clock. Half past four. In half an hour the
house would be stirring. All was now safe. She could return to her room.
She rose and approached the sleeper on the lounge. He slept peacefully,
as if the events of the night disturbed him not.

He smiled in his dreams, and murmured a name indistinctly. She drew back
hastily and put her hand over her mouth, while a bright blush mounted to
her face. Just here, through the sweet, still air of the morning, came
the sound of the village bell. Tears gathered in her eyes and fell
unheeded upon her hands, clasped before her.

"Poor--lost--Alice--nineteen--just my----"

"Alma."

She turned toward the sleeper with a startled cry. He was awake and
sitting up.

"What bell is that?"

"It is tolling. They have found her."

"Yes, it is a sad story. Alma?"

She advanced toward him. He noticed her tears and the morning robe in
which she was dressed.

"What is it, Elmer? Do you feel better?"

"Yes. It was a sorry night for us."

"Yes, the storm has cleared away."

He did not seem to heed what she said.

"How long have you been up?"

"Since it happened. After I saw father up stairs, I came down and found
you here asleep. And Elmer--forgive me--it was wrong, but I did not mean
to stay here so long----"

"Alma!"

"You will pardon me?"

"Oh! Pardon you--pardon you--why should I? I dreamed the angels watched
me."

"I was anxious, and we owe you so much. We can never reward you--never!"

"Reward, Alma! I want none--save----"

"Save what?"

He opened his arms wide. A new and beautiful light came into her eyes.

"Can there be greater reward than love?"

"No. Love is the best reward--and it is yours."

                        CHARLES BARNARD.




THE MURDER OF MARGARY.


Our own politics have so absorbed the attention of the press and the
public for the last six months, that events of decided international
prominence have attracted merely a brief notice, instead of the careful
discussion which their importance warranted. Even the "Eastern
question," that has so long kept the European world in a state of
excitement and anxiety almost as intense and even more painful than that
in which our own country is now plunged, excited but a fitful interest
here. It was only by an effort that we could extend our political
horizon as far east as Constantinople. All beyond was comparative
darkness. In this darkness, however, history has gone steadily on
accumulating new and important data, which must be taken note of if we
would keep up with the record of the times.

The term "Eastern question" has come to mean the political complications
arising from the presence of the Turkish empire in Europe. The
expression might much more appropriately be applied to the serious
difficulties that have for the last year and a half existed between the
governments of England and China, and which have, as it now appears,
been brought to a reasonably satisfactory conclusion. These difficulties
sprang out of the murder of an English subject, Augustus Raymond Margary
by name, who was travelling in an official capacity in a remote part of
the Chinese empire. They were still further complicated by an almost
simultaneous attack upon a British exploring expedition that had just
crossed the Chinese frontier from Burmah, with the intention of
surveying and opening up to trade an overland route between that country
and the Middle Kingdom. To understand the matter it will be necessary to
give a brief recapitulation of some events that went before.

The vast importance of establishing an overland trade route between
India and China will be seen by a glance at the map. It has been the
unrealized dream of generations of India and China merchants. "The trade
route of the future" it has been called; and when we consider the vast
marts of commerce that such a highway would bring in direct contact, it
is impossible to think the name thus enthusiastically given an
exaggeration. An overland passage between China and Burmah has long been
known and made use of by the native merchants of these countries. From
time immemorial it has served as a highway for invading armies or
peaceful caravans. How highly the two governments appreciated its
importance to the commercial prosperity of their respective subjects is
shown by the clause in a treaty concluded by them in 1769, which
stipulated that the "gold and silver road" between the two countries
should always be kept open. European travellers in Eastern lands, from
the ubiquitous Marco Polo down, have also done their best to call
attention to it. It may therefore seem somewhat strange that England,
the commercial interest of whose Indian empire would be most directly
promoted by the opening up of this new channel of trade, should have
gone so long without paying much official attention to the matter.
Recent events, however, have proved, what was probably foreseen by those
whose business it was to study up the subject, that there were grave
practical difficulties to be overcome before the plan could be
successfully carried out.

In the first place it was necessary to secure the consent of both the
Burmese and Chinese governments--a task of almost insurmountable
difficulty because of the natural dislike of these two powers to share
with another the trade monopoly they had heretofore exclusively
enjoyed. Then again there lies between the civilizations of India and
China a broad tract of wild and mountainous country, inhabited by a
mongrel race of savages, known as Shans and Kakhyens, who, while
nominally owing allegiance to one or the other of their more civilized
neighbors, practically find their chief support in levying blackmail on
all people passing through their territory.

To fit out an exploring expedition strong enough to defy the attacks of
the savages, and yet small enough not to convey the idea of an invasion,
was, therefore, a work requiring much patience and diplomacy. At length,
however, in 1867, the British Government in India succeeded in gaining
the consent of the King of Burmah to the passage through his dominions
of a mission combining the necessary strength and limits. Under the
command of Major Slade, this little army made its way safely through the
debatable land of the Kakhyens and Shans, and, entering the province of
Yunnan, penetrated as far into the Chinese empire as the city of Momien.
But here its further progress was checked.

Yunnan was at the moment in the very crisis of a rebellion against the
imperial government. The population of the province is largely
Mohammedan. How the religion of the Prophet first obtained so firm a
foothold there is still for antiquaries to discover. A semi-historical
legend says that the germs of the faith were planted by a colony of
Arabs who settled in the country more than a thousand years ago. However
this may be, it is certain that the first Mohammedans were not Chinese.
By intermarriage, propagation, and adoption, they slowly but steadily
communicated their belief to the original inhabitants, until, at the
time of which we are writing, more than a tenth of the ten million
inhabitants were fanatical Mussulmans. To the mixed race that embrace
this creed the general name of Panthays has been given, though for what
reason is not known.

In 1855 the Panthays, oppressed, it is said, by the Chinese officials,
rose up in rebellion against the imperial government. Led by an obscure
Chinese follower of Mohammed, called Tu-win-tsen, the insurrection grew
rapidly in extent and success. One imperial city after the other fell
into the hands of the rebels, until the entire western section of the
province was in their possession and organized as a separate and
independent nation, under the sovereignty of Tu-win-tsen, who had in the
mean while assumed the more euphonious title of Sultan Soleiman.

It was when Soleiman had attained the height of his glory that Major
Slade's party entered Yunnan, and it was with him as the governor _de
facto_ that the British commander entered into negotiations. Such a
proceeding, though it may have been necessary, was fatal to the further
progress of the expedition. The Chinese authorities naturally refused to
pass on a party that had, however innocently, entered into friendly
relations with its rebellious subjects. Major Slade had the good sense
to understand this. The mission retraced its steps into Burmah, and the
exploration of the "trade route of the future" was indefinitely
postponed.

The visit of the English party to Momien was the signal for a rapid
downfall of Soleiman's power. The imperial government, seriously alarmed
at the practical recognition of the rebels' independence by an outside
power, now put forth all its might to reëstablish its authority. It was
successful.

Under the energetic command of one Li-sieh-tai, a famous general who had
once himself been a rebel, the Chinese armies wrested back the country,
foot by foot, to its former governors. In 1872 Tali-fu, the last and
most important stronghold of the rebellion, was closely invested. After
a desperate resistance, it was obliged to open its gates.

The end of Soleiman was dramatic in the extreme. He was told that his
followers should be spared if he himself would surrender. He agreed to
the terms, and, after administering a dose of poison to himself, his
three wives and five children, he mounted his chair, and was borne to
the camp of his enemies, where he arrived a corpse sitting erect, the
imperial turban on his head and the keys of his capital clasped tightly
in his hand. His head, preserved in honey, was sent to Peking. The
imperial troops poured into Tali-fu. A general massacre occurred. Those
Mohammedans that were not slaughtered fled to the mountains, where they
still continued to keep up a guerilla warfare. But the rebellion was
practically at an end, and by 1874 the authority of the central
government was firmly established throughout the province.

The trade between Burmah and China, which had ceased almost entirely
during the long years of the rebellion, again sprang into activity, and
once more the attention of the Indian government was attracted to it. In
1874 a new expedition of exploration was prepared and placed under the
command of Colonel Browne. The consent of the King of Burmah was
obtained, and the British minister in Peking, Mr. Thomas Wade, was
instructed to explain the object of the mission to the Chinese
government, so that it might receive no opposition upon crossing the
Chinese frontier. It was also arranged that a special messenger should
be despatched from Peking across China to the frontier to act as
interpreter to the expedition, and to prepare the mandarins along the
route for its approach. For this responsible and dangerous service,
Augustus Raymond Margary was selected--a young man attached to the
English consular department, a perfect master of the Chinese language
and customs, and a fine type of the best class of young Englishmen.

Provided with the necessary passports from the British minister,
countersigned by the Tsung-li-yamen, the Chinese foreign office, Mr.
Margary started on his journey. He went up the Yangtsze river as far as
Hankow in one of the huge American steamers of the Shanghai Steam
Navigation Company. At Hankow, on September 4, 1874, he bade good-by to
Western civilization, and, with a Chinese teacher and two or three
Chinese attendants, began his trip through a vast and populous country,
a _terra incognita_ to Europeans.

His diary of this journey has recently been published. It is interesting
in the extreme, though devoid of those startling episodes that generally
give charm to accounts of travels in unexplored lands.

He has no old theories to prove and no ambition to start new ones, but
simply jots down his impressions of people and things with no attempt at
elaboration. The result is, we have a plain, faithful, unvarnished
picture of Chinese life and manners, as seen by an intelligent,
unprejudiced man. Upon the whole, we think this picture most decidedly
favorable to the Chinese character.

Did space permit, we should like to follow Mr. Margary, stage by stage,
through his long journey of 900 miles. The first part, through the
provinces of Yunnan and Kwei-chow as far as the city of Ch'en-yuan-fu,
was made by boat--a long and monotonous trip of four weeks, through a
country so picturesque that the "sight was at last completely satiated
with the perpetual view of the most glorious scenery that ever made the
human heart leap with wonder and delight."

At Ch'en-yuan-fu he exchanged his boat for a chair, in which he
completed his journey; traversing Kwei-chow and Yunnan, and the
debatable hill land that lies between the latter province and Burmah;
arriving in Bhamo, on the Burmese side of the border, on January 17,
1875, where he joined the expedition of Colonel Browne that was
advancing to meet him.

Except in two or three instances, he was treated with courtesy by the
people and respect by the officials. In the exceptional cases a display
of his Chinese passports sufficed to quickly change the demeanor of the
mandarins; while a few calm words of rebuke upon their want of
politeness generally caused popular mobs to disperse abashed. An
instance of this is given by him in his account of his stay at Lo-shan,
a small naval station on the Yangtsze. In returning from a visit to the
mandarin of the place, he was surrounded by a dense crowd of street
rabble, leaping and screaming like maniacs, and shouting to one another:
"I say! Come along. Here's a foreigner. What a lark! Ha, ha, ha!"
Margary descended from his chair and delivered a short address:

"Why _do_ you crowd round me in this rude manner? Is this your courtesy
to strangers? I have often heard it said that China was of all things
distinguished for civility and courtesy. But am I to take this as a
specimen of it? Shall I go back and tell my countrymen that your boasted
civility only amounts to rudeness?" "I was astonished," he adds, "at the
effect this speech produced. They listened with silence, and when I had
done walked quietly back quite abashed. Only a few remained; and over
and again after this many an irrepressible youngster was severely
rebuked for any sign of disrespect by his elders."

Contrast this with the effect which such a speech as that of Margary's,
delivered by a Chinaman, would have had upon an English or American mob,
and we cannot repress a slight feeling of sympathy with the natives of
the Flowery Kingdom when they call us "outside barbarians."

His Chinese letters of recommendation, given him by the Tsung-li-yamen
to the viceroys of the three great provinces through which he passed,
proved of inestimable value. In the viceroy of Yunnan especially he
found an unexpected ally and friend, who issued instructions to the
officials all along the road to receive the foreigner with the utmost
respect. The extent to which these instructions were carried out
depended, of course, very largely on the temperament of the local
mandarins. "Some were obsequious, others reserved, but most of them met
me with high bred courtesy worthy of praise, and such as befits a
welcome from man to man."

"Taking all these experiences together," says Sir Rutherford Alcock,
formerly British minister to China, a gentleman by no means inclined to
judge Chinese officials favorably, "the impression left is decidedly to
the advantage of the central government so far as the _bona fides_ of
the safe-conduct given is concerned."

A great deal of Margary's success was also undoubtedly due to his
personal magnetism and thorough acquaintance with Chinese habits.
Indeed, no one can read this diary without deriving from it a high idea
of the genuine attractiveness and solidity of the author's character. In
sickness, in trouble, in delay, in vexation, there runs through it all a
refreshing, manly, Anglo-Saxon spirit. Knowing as we do what is coming,
we find ourselves involuntarily catching with hope at little incidents
that seem to delay onward march. Reading these pages, it is impossible
to realize that he who wrote them is dead. It is with a mournful feeling
of utter and fatalistic helplessness that we follow this young and
generous hero while he travels, all unconsciously, down to his death. To
the very last all seems to go well with him. At Manwyne, the last city
on his journey, the renowned and dreaded Li-sieh-tai, the suppressor of
the Mohammedan rebellion, actually prostrated himself before him and
paid him the highest honors, warning the assembled chiefs of the savage
hill people that they had best take good care of the stranger, as he
came protected by an imperial passport.

On the 16th of February, 1875, Colonel Browne's expedition, accompanied
by Margary, broke up their camp at Tsitkaw, in Burmah, and advanced
toward the Chinese frontier.

Arrangements had been made with the practically independent chieftains
of this wild region for the safe passage of the party through the hilly
country. As it advanced, however, ominous rumors of a projected attack
by the hill savages and Chinese frontiersmen reached the ears of its
members. Though these rumors were generally discredited, it was thought
best to send forward Margary as a pioneer, he being well known to the
people and officials of the Chinese border town of Manwyne. Margary
willingly undertook the mission. With his Chinese teacher and
attendants, he hastened on in advance, the rest of the expedition
following more slowly. The last communications that came from him were
dated "Seray," a town just inside the Chinese frontier. He reported that
thus far the road was unmolested and the people civil. On the strength
of these advices, Colonel Browne pressed on, crossed the Chinese
frontier, and advanced as far as Seray. It was here, on the morning of
February 21, that Margary and his attendants had all been murdered, near
Manwyne.

Hardly had the news been communicated when it was found that the
expedition was surrounded by a large body of armed men, who instantly
began an attack. The assailants, a motley crowd of Kakhyens and Chinese
border men, were soon repulsed; but as reports came streaming in that
large bodies of Chinese train bands were advancing to their aid, it was
thought best to beat a retreat. This was safely effected, and by the
26th of February the expedition found itself once more at Bhamo. Thus
mournfully ended the second attempt to explore "the trade route of the
future."

       *       *       *       *       *

The mere fact that a British subject had been murdered, and a British
exploring expedition attacked on Chinese soil, would in itself have
created a grave subject for diplomatic discussion between the
governments of England and China. But the matter was rendered doubly
serious by the presence of many circumstances tending to show that the
outrage had been committed with the tacit connivance, if not at the
direct instigation, of the provincial authorities of Yunnan. The whole
affair, it was claimed, was not the result of an outbreak of
booty-seeking savages, but the culmination of a systematic plot on the
part of the Chinese officials.

In laying the matter before Prince Kung, Mr. Wade, the English minister,
plainly implied that such was his opinion, and demanded from the Chinese
government the promptest and most searching investigation.

An imperial decree was at once issued, commanding the governor of Yunnan
to proceed at once to the spot and enter upon a thorough examination of
the case. Mr. Wade, however, demanded some securer guarantee that strict
justice should be done. He submitted to the Tsung-li-yamen an ultimatum
containing three principal conditions: that such British officials as he
might see fit to appoint should go to Yunnan and assist at the
investigation; that passports should be immediately issued, to enable
another expedition to enter Yunnan by the same route; and that a sum of
$150,000 be placed in his hands as a guarantee of good faith. The
Chinese government demurred at first to these demands, but the threat of
Mr. Wade to leave Peking unless they were accepted before a certain day
finally caused it to give a reluctant consent. Some months were then
spent in diplomatic wrangling over the conditions under which the
British officials should proceed to Yunnan, and what their powers should
be on their arrival there. The Chinese government showed, in the opinion
of Mr. Wade, a strong desire to avoid fulfilling its part of the
contract. The negotiations on several occasions assumed an acute
character of danger. Both parties prepared for war. The English minister
concentrated the English fleet in the China seas; the Chinese government
bought up large supplies of arms and ammunition. But Prince Kung and his
advisers had the good sense to see that the chances in a struggle of
arms would be too unequal, and always submitted at the last moment. At
last the Chinese government, having agreed to all the preliminary
conditions, and having also despatched a high officer, Li-hang-chang, to
Yunnan to thoroughly investigate the affair, "without regard to
persons," the British minister agreed to let the English mission of
investigation proceed. Mr. Grosvenor, a secretary of legation, was
placed at its head. Li-hang-chang went on in advance.

This high official seems to have done his duty in a spirit of strict
impartiality. His reports to the government make no attempt to conceal
the guilt of the provincial officials, or to shield them from deserved
punishment. He immediately ordered the arrest of the general commanding
at Momien and a number of other local officers, pushing his inquiries
with vigor and with what appears a sincere desire to arrive at the
ground facts. In the course of his labors he came to the conclusion that
Li-sieh-tai, whom we have already mentioned, was one of the instigators,
probably the chief one, of the attack on the mission. He at once
memorialized the throne to have him arrested and brought up for trial.
In this memorial he gives what seems to us, upon an unprejudiced
comparison of testimony, the truest version of the affair. He believes
the murder of Margary and his attendants to have been the work of
"lawless offenders," greedy of gain, but that the attack upon Colonel
Browne's party was made at the secret instigation of Li-sieh-tai and
other provincial officials, although that general was not on the spot,
nor were there any soldiers concerned in the assault. He shows that
Li-sieh-tai had already written to the governor of Yunnan, telling him
that he (Li) was "taking vigorous measures to protect the region against
invasion," and that the governor had written back commanding him to stop
all further proceedings and quiet the apprehensions of the people. This
command, however, was not received until after the murder and attack had
taken place. "It appears from this, consequently" (the report adds),
"that although Li-sieh-tai had no intention of committing murder, he is
liable to a charge of having laid plans to obstruct the expedition; and
your servants have agreed, after taking counsel together, that he should
not be suffered to take advantage of his official rank as a cover for
lying evasions, gaining time with false statements, in dread of
incurring punishment."

Immediately upon receipt of this memorial a decree appeared in the
Peking "Gazette" ordering Li-sieh-tai to be degraded from his rank, and
commanding him to proceed at once to Yunnan for trial before the high
commission.

As we have said before, we think Li-hang-chang's account is
substantially correct. There are a great many circumstances tending to
exculpate Li-sieh-tai from any wish to have Margary murdered. Had such
been his wish, he might more easily have disposed of him when he passed
through _en route_ for Burmah. Moreover, at the very time of Margary's
murder, Mr. Elias, a member of the expedition, who had struck off from
the main body in order to explore another route to Momien, was
entertained by Li-sieh-tai at Muangnow, a town at some distance from the
seat of the murder. Though completely in his power, Mr. Elias received
all possible civility compatible with a determined and successful
opposition to his further advance. Now it seems absurd to believe that
Li-sieh-tai felt any stronger personal dislike for Margary than he felt
for Mr. Elias.

In regard to his complicity in the attack on the expedition, the
evidence is just as strong on the other side. He had a deep and by no
means unnatural prejudice against English exploring parties. The last
mission of the kind had entered into negotiations, as we have already
mentioned, with the enemies against whom this Chinese general was
prosecuting bitter war. The smouldering embers of the rebellion were not
even yet entirely extinguished; the presence of an armed body of
foreigners, no matter how small, who had previously shown a friendly
disposition toward the Mohammedan usurpation, might awaken new hopes in
the breasts of the still surviving rebels. This feeling, combined with
the jealous wish of the border merchants, both Chinese and Burmese, to
retain a monopoly of the overland trade, undoubtedly inspired a general
feeling of hostility among the local officials and the people, which
found a ready instrument in the greedy and savage character of the
frontier tribes. Where so much combustible matter was heaped up, it
needed but a hint to bring on the catastrophe that followed.

While Li-hang-chang and the Chinese commission were conducting the
preliminary investigations, Mr. Grosvenor and his colleagues were
approaching. Their journey across the empire was attended not only with
no opposition or difficulty, but they were received everywhere with
great and even obsequious respect. Upon arriving in Yunnan they found an
immense pile of evidence awaiting their inspection. Mr. Grosvenor's
report has not yet been published, we believe, but from general rumor,
and the fact that nothing has been heard to the contrary, we are
justified in believing that he found the state of the case to be
substantially as it was reported by the Chinese high commissioner. After
having reviewed the evidence presented, after having witnessed the
execution of a number of wretches convicted of direct complicity in the
murder of Margary, the Grosvenor commission pursued its way, escorted by
troops that had been despatched from Burmah for the purpose.

Diplomatic negotiations were once more transferred to Peking, and turned
upon the compensation to be offered by China for the violation of
international law that had occurred upon her soil. The demands of the
British minister, who had in the mean time been knighted as Sir Thomas
Wade by the Queen, as a just acknowledgment of his efficient services,
were considered too severe by the Chinese government, and at one time it
looked as if all further negotiations would be broken off.

Sir Thomas finally carried his threat to leave Peking into execution.
Prince Kung had evidently not expected so decided a step, and was
seriously alarmed by it, for the Chinese government have shown
throughout the affair a very wise disposition not to push matters to the
last extreme. Li-wang-chang (a brother, we believe, of the official who
was sent to Yunnan), the governor of the province of Chihli, the highest
and most powerful statesman in the country, was immediately granted
extraordinary powers, and sent after the English minister. After some
diplomatic fencing Sir Thomas agreed to meet the Chinese envoy at
Chefoo--a seaport about half way between Shanghai and Peking, a great
summer resort of the foreigners in China--the Newport of the eastern
world. Here, in the month of September, 1876, with much surrounding pomp
and ceremony, a convention was signed between the English and the
Chinese plenipotentiaries. The final settlement of the difficulty was
celebrated by a grand banquet, given by Li-wang-chang to Sir Thomas and
the other foreign ambassadors, who had been drawn to Chefoo by their
interest in the negotiations.

The following is a synopsis of the agreement:

     1. An imperial edict to be published throughout the Chinese
     empire, setting forth the facts of the affair, subject to the
     directions and approval of the British minister.

     2. Consular officials to visit the various towns and public
     places to see that the said imperial edict is posted where all
     can see it.

     3. The family of Margary to be paid about $250,000 indemnity.

     4. A further indemnity to be given, covering all expenses of
     the unsuccessful expedition under Colonel Browne.

     5. A special embassy of apology to be sent to England.

Then follow a number of concessions with regard to placing on a better
footing the relations of foreign ambassadors to the Chinese authorities,
the enlargement of the foreign settlement at Shanghai, etc.

But by far the most important clause is that opening up to foreign trade
four new ports on the Yangtsze river. This concession is virtually
equivalent to throwing open the whole interior of the country to foreign
merchants.

Altogether the British minister has certainly won a triumph that well
deserved a knighthood.

Undoubtedly he had a very strong indictment against the Chinese
authorities, although we cannot help regarding the matter of the murder
and the attack as more the misfortune than the fault of the central
government. Nevertheless, western nations are fully justified in rigidly
holding the Peking authorities responsible for any violation of
international duties committed anywhere within their jurisdiction; and
it is not only fair, but expedient, that when such cases do occur some
practical and important reparation should be made for them. The
concessions obtained by Sir Thomas Wade, though sweeping, are not, in
our opinion, excessive. On the other hand, the Chinese government by
granting them has fully satisfied the demands of justice. It could not
have gone further without losing the respect and incurring the dangerous
opposition of its people. Indeed, throughout the negotiations Prince
Kung and his advisers have had to contend against a powerful
anti-foreign party in the court and the nation. Strong fears were
entertained more than once that the reactionary element would get the
upper hand. Some idea of Prince Kung's difficulties may be conceived
when we read that one morning the walls of Peking were found covered
with placards bitterly denouncing the policy of the government, and
calling upon all good subjects to rise up against such unpatriotic
leaders.

When Li-wang-chang, who enjoys great popularity in his province, was en
route for Chefoo to negotiate with Sir Thomas Wade, the people of
Tien-tsin made the most determined efforts to prevent him from going
further. For a time he was literally besieged in his own _yamen_, and it
was only by the publication of a proclamation warning the people that
they were guilty of rebellion against the emperor when they hindered the
progress of his representatives, that the opposition was withdrawn.

Sir Thomas deserves the highest praise for going just far enough and no
further in his demands. Yet the last mail from China brings the news
that the foreign residents there are intensely dissatisfied with the
result of the settlement. This was to be expected. Any settlement short
of one effected by war would have met the disapproval of these gentry.
The interests of the Chinese and the foreign merchants are too
antagonistic to admit of impartial judgment on questions of this sort.
England, in their opinion, could gain greater concessions by war than by
negotiations--ergo, they would have all such troubles settled by "blood
and iron."

The London "Times" puts it very well when it says:

"Those Englishmen who reside in the treaty ports are not impartial
judges of the concessions. Too often they go to Canton or Shanghai in a
frame of mind that would exasperate a much less vain people than the
Chinese. They sometimes talk as if they thought it a mere impertinence
on the part of an inferior race to have a pride of its own, and they act
as if the chief end of the Chinese were to minister to the demands of
British trade."

                        WALTER A. BURLINGAME.




THE LETTERS OF HONORÉ DE BALZAC.


The first feeling of the reader of the two volumes which have lately
been published under the foregoing title is that he has almost done
wrong to read them. He reproaches himself with having taken a shabby
advantage of a person who is unable to defend himself. He feels as one
who has broken open a cabinet or rummaged an old desk. The contents of
Balzac's letters are so private, so personal, so exclusively his own
affairs and those of no one else, that the generous critic constantly
lays them down with a sort of dismay, and asks himself in virtue of what
peculiar privilege, or what newly discovered principle it is, that he is
thus burying his nose in them. Of course he presently reflects that he
has not broken open a cabinet nor violated a desk, but that these
repositories have been very freely and confidently emptied into his lap.
The two stout volumes of the "Correspondence de H. de Balzac,
1819-1850,"[1] lately put forth, are remarkable, like many other French
books of the same sort, for the almost complete absence of editorial
explanation or introduction. They have no visible sponsor; only a few
insignificant lines of preface and the scantiest possible supply of
notes. Such as the book is, in spite of its abruptness, we are thankful
for it; in spite, too, of our bad conscience. What we mean by our bad
conscience is the feeling with which we see the last remnant of charm,
of the graceful and the agreeable, removed from Balzac's literary
physiognomy. His works had not left much of this favoring shadow, but
the present publication has let in the garish light of full publicity.
The grossly, inveterately professional character of all his activity,
the absence of leisure, of contemplation, of disinterested experience,
the urgency of his consuming money-hunger--all this is rudely exposed.
It is always a question whether we have a right to investigate a man's
life for the sake of anything but his official utterances--his results.
The picture of Balzac's career which is given in these letters is a
record of little else but painful processes, unrelieved by reflections
or speculations, by any moral or intellectual emanation. To prevent
misconception, however, we hasten to add that they tell no disagreeable
secrets; they contain nothing for the lovers of scandal. Balzac was a
very honest man, but he was a man almost tragically uncomfortable, and
the unsightly underside of his discomfort stares us full in the face.
Still, if his personal portrait is without ideal beauty, it is by no
means without a certain brightness, or at least a certain richness of
coloring. Huge literary ogre as he was, he was morally nothing of a
monster. His heart was capacious, and his affections vigorous; he was
powerful, coarse, and kind.

The first letter in the series is addressed to his elder sister, Laure,
who afterward became Mme. de Surville, and who, after her illustrious
brother's death, published in a small volume some agreeable
reminiscences of him. For this lady he had, especially in his early
years, a passionate affection. He had in 1819 come up to Paris from
Touraine, in which province his family lived, to seek his fortune as a
man of letters. The episode is a strange and gloomy one. His vocation
for literature had not been favorably viewed at home, where money was
scanty; but the parental consent, or rather the parental tolerance, was
at last obtained for his experiment. The future author of the "Père
Goriot" was at this time but twenty years of age, and in the way of
symptoms of genius had nothing but a very robust self-confidence to
show. His family, who had to contribute to his support while his
masterpieces were a-making, appear to have regretted, the absence of
further guarantees. He came to Paris, however, and lodged in a garret,
where the allowance made him by his father kept him neither from
shivering nor from nearly starving. The situation had been arranged in a
way very characteristic of French manners. The fact that Honoré had gone
to Paris was kept a secret from the friends of the family, who were told
that he was on a visit to a cousin in the South. He was on probation,
and if he failed to acquire literary renown, his excursion should be
hushed up. This pious fraud did not contribute to the comfort of the
young scribbler, who was afraid to venture abroad by day lest he should
be seen by an acquaintance of the family. Balzac must have been at this
time miserably poor. If he goes to the theatre, he has to pay for the
pleasure by fasting. He wishes to see Talma (having to go to the play,
to keep up the fiction of his being in the South, in a latticed box). "I
shall end by giving in.... My stomach already trembles." Meanwhile he
was planning a tragedy of "Cromwell," which came to nothing, and writing
the "Héritière de Birague," his first novel, which he sold for one
hundred and sixty dollars. Through these early letters, in spite of his
chilly circumstances, there flows a current of youthful ardor, gayety,
and assurance. Some passages in his letters to his sister are a sort of
explosion of animal spirits:

     Ah, my sister, what torments it gives us--the love of glory!
     Long live grocers! they sell all day, count their gains in the
     evening, take their pleasure from time to time at some
     frightful melodrama--and behold them happy! Yes, but they pass
     their time between cheese and soap. Long live rather men of
     letters! Yes, but these are all beggars in pocket, and rich
     only in conceit. Well, let us leave them all alone, and long
     live every one!

Elsewhere he scribbles: "Farewell, _soror_! I hope to have a letter
_sororis_ to answer _sorori_, then to see _sororem_," etc. Later, after
his sister is married, he addresses her as "_the box that contains
everything pleasing; the elixir of virtue, grace, and beauty; the jewel,
the phenomenon of Normandy; the pearl of Bayeux, the fairy of St.
Lawrence, the virgin of the Rue Teinture, the guardian angel of Caen,
the goddess of enchantments, the treasure of friendship_."

We shall continue to quote, without the fear of our examples exceeding,
in the long run, our commentary. "Find me some widow, a rich heiress,"
he writes to his sister at Bayeux, whither her husband had taken her to
live. "You know what I mean. Only brag about me. Twenty-two years old, a
good fellow, good manners, a bright eye, fire, the best dough for a
husband that heaven has ever kneaded. I will give you five per cent. on
the dowry." "Since yesterday," he writes in another letter, "I have
given up dowagers and have come down to widows of thirty. Send all you
find to Lord Rhoone [this remarkable improvisation was one of his early
_noms de plume_]; that's enough--he is known at the city limits. Take
notice. They are to be sent prepaid, without crack or repair, and they
are to be rich and amiable. Beauty isn't required. The varnish goes, and
the bottom of the pot remains!"

Like many other young men of ability, Balzac felt the little rubs--or
the great ones--of family life. His mother figures largely in these
volumes (she survived her glorious son), and from the scattered
reflection of her idiosyncrasies the attentive reader constructs a
sufficiently vivid portrait. She was the old middle-class Frenchwoman
whom he has so often seen--devoted, active, meddlesome, parsimonious,
exacting veneration, and expending zeal. Honoré tells his sister:

     The other day, coming back from Paris much bothered, it never
     occurred to me to thank _maman_ for a black coat which she had
     had made for me; at my age one isn't particularly sensitive to
     such a present. Nevertheless, it would not have cost me much to
     seem touched by the attention, especially as it was a
     sacrifice. But I forgot it. _Maman_ began to pout, and you know
     what her aspect and her face amount to at those moments. I fell
     from the clouds, and racked my brain to know what I had done.
     Happily Laurence [his younger sister] came and notified me,
     and two or three words as fine as amber mended _maman's_
     countenance. The thing is nothing--a mere drop of water; but
     it's to give you an example of our manners. Ah, we are a jolly
     set of originals in our holy family. What a pity I can't put us
     into novels!

His father wished to find him an opening in some profession, and the
thought of being made a notary was a bugbear to the young man: "Think of
me as dead, if they cap me with that extinguisher." And yet, in the next
sentence, he breaks out into a cry of desolate disgust at the aridity of
his actual circumstances: "They call this mechanical rotation
living--this perpetual return of the same things. If there were only
something to throw some charm or other over my cold existence. I have
none of the flowers of life, and yet I am in the season in which they
bloom. What will be the use of fortune and pleasures when my youth has
departed? What need of the garments of an actor if one no longer plays a
part? An old man is a man who has dined, and who watches others eat; and
I, young as I am--my plate is empty, and I am hungry. Laure, Laure, my
two only and immense desires, _to be famous and to be loved_--will they
ever be satisfied?"

These occasional bursts of confidence in his early letters to his sister
are (with the exception of certain excellent pages, addressed in the
last years of his life to the lady he eventually married) Balzac's most
delicate, most emotional utterances. There is a touch of the ideal in
them. Later, one wonders where he keeps his ideal. He has one of course,
artistically, but it never peeps out. He gives up talking sentiment, and
he never discusses "subjects"; he only talks business. Meanwhile,
however, at this period, business was increasing with him. He agrees to
write three novels for eight hundred and twenty dollars. Here begins the
inextricable mystery of Balzac's literary promises, pledges, projects,
and contracts. His letters form a swarming register of schemes and
bargains through which he passes like a hero of the circus, riding half
a dozen piebald coursers at once. We confess that in this matter we have
been able to keep no sort of account; the wonder is that Balzac should
have accomplished the feat himself. After the first year or two of his
career, we never see him working upon a single tale; his productions
dovetail and overlap, and dance attendance upon each other in the most
bewildering fashion. As soon as one novel is fairly on the stocks he
plunges into another, and while he is rummaging in this with one hand,
he stretches out a heroic arm and breaks ground in a third. His plans
are always vastly in advance of his performance; his pages swarm with
titles of books that were never to be written. The title circulates with
such an assurance that we are amazed to find, fifty pages later, that
there is no more of it than of the cherubic heads. With this, Balzac was
constantly paid in advance by his publishers--paid for works not begun,
or barely begun; and the money was as constantly spent before the
equivalent had been delivered. Meanwhile more money was needed, and new
novels were laid out to obtain it; but prior promises had first to be
kept. Keeping them, under these circumstances, was not an exhilarating
process; and readers familiar with Balzac will reflect with wonder that
these were yet the circumstances in which some of his best tales were
written. They were written, as it were, in the fading light, by a man
who saw night coming on, and yet couldn't afford to buy candles. He
could only hurry. But Balzac's way of hurrying was all his own; it was a
sternly methodical haste, and might have been mistaken, in a more
lightly-weighted genius, for elaborate trifling. The close tissue of his
work never relaxed; he went on doggedly and insistently, pressing it
down and packing it together, multiplying erasures, alterations,
repetitions, transforming proof-sheets, quarrelling with editors,
enclosing subject within subject, accumulating notes upon notes.

The letters make a jump from 1822 to 1827, during which interval he had
established, with borrowed capital, a printing house, and seen his
enterprise completely fail. This failure saddled him with a mountain of
debt which pressed upon him crushingly for years, and of which he rid
himself only toward the close of his life. Balzac's debts are another
labyrinth in which we do not profess to hold a clue. There is scarcely a
page of these volumes in which they are not alluded to, but the reader
never quite understands why they should bloom so perennially. The
liabilities incurred by the collapse of the printing scheme can hardly
have been so vast as not to have been for the most part cancelled by ten
years of heroic work. Balzac appears not to have been extravagant; he
had neither wife nor children (unlike many of his comrades, he had no
illegitimate offspring), and when he admits us to a glimpse of his
domestic economy, we usually find it to be of a very meagre pattern. He
writes to his sister in 1827 that he has not the means either to pay the
postage of letters or to use omnibuses, and that he goes out as little
as possible, so as not to wear out his clothes. In 1829, however, we
find him in correspondence with a duchess, Mme. d'Abrantès, the widow of
Junot, Napoleon's rough marshal, and author of those voluminous memoirs
upon the imperial court which it was the fashion to read in the early
part of the century. The Duchess d'Abrantès wrote bad novels, like
Balzac himself at this period, and the two became good friends.

The year 1830 was the turning point in Balzac's career. Renown, to which
he had begun to lay siege in Paris in 1820, now at last began to show
symptoms of self-surrender. Yet one of the strongest expressions of
discontent and despair in the pages before us belongs to this brighter
moment. It is also one of the finest passages:

     Sacredieu, my good friend, I believe that literature, in the
     day we live in, is no better than the trade of a woman of the
     town, who prostitutes herself for a dollar. It leads to
     nothing. I have an itch to go off and wander and explore, make
     of my life a drama, risk my life; for, as for a few miserable
     years more or less!... Oh, when one looks at these great skies
     of a beautiful night, one is ready to  unbutton----

But the modesty of the English tongue forbids us to translate the rest
of the phrase. Dean Swift might have related how Balzac wished to
express his contempt for all the royalties of the earth. Now that he is
in the country, he goes on:

     I have been seeing real splendors, such as fine, sound fruit
     and gilded insects; I have been quite turning philosopher, and
     if I happen to tread upon an anthill, I say, like that immortal
     Bonaparte, "These creatures are men: what is it to Saturn, or
     Venus, or the North Star?" And then my philosopher comes down
     to scribble "items" for a newspaper. _Proh pudor!_ And so it
     seems to me that the ocean, a brig, and an English vessel to
     sink, if you must sink yourself to do it, are rather better
     than a writing-desk, a pen, and the Rue St. Denis.

But Balzac was fastened to the writing desk. In 1831 he tells one of his
correspondents that he is working fifteen or sixteen hours a day. Later,
in 1837, he describes himself repeatedly as working eighteen hours out
of the twenty-four. In the midst of all this (it seems singular), he
found time for visions of public life, of political distinction. In a
letter written in 1830 he gives a succinct statement of his political
views, from which we learn that he approved of the French monarchy
having a constitution, and of instruction being diffused among the lower
orders. But he desired that the people should be kept "under the most
powerful yoke possible," so that in spite of their instruction they
should not become disorderly. It is fortunate, probably, both for Balzac
and for France, that his political rôle was limited to the production of
a certain number of forgotten editorials in newspapers; but we may be
sure that his dreams of statesmanship were brilliant and audacious.
Balzac indulged in no dreams that were not.

Some of his best letters are addressed to Mme. Zulma Carraud, a lady
whose acquaintance he had made through his sister Laure, of whom she
was an intimate friend, and whose friendship (exerted almost wholly
through letters, as she always lived in the country) appears to have
been one of the brightest and most salutary influences of his life. He
writes to her in 1832:

     There are vocations which we must obey, and something
     irresistible draws me on to glory and power. It is not a happy
     life. There is within me the worship of woman (_le culte de la
     femme_), and a need of love which has never been fully
     satisfied. Despairing of ever being loved and understood by
     such a woman as I have dreamed of, having met her only under
     one form, that of the heart, I throw myself into the
     tempestuous sphere of political passions and into the stormy
     and desiccating atmosphere of literary glory. I shall fail
     perhaps on both sides; but, believe me, if I have wished to
     live the life of the age itself, instead of running my course
     in happy obscurity, it is just because the pure happiness of
     mediocrity has failed me. When one has a fortune to make, it is
     better to make it great and illustrious; because, pain for
     pain, it is better to suffer in a high sphere than in a low
     one, and I prefer dagger blows to pin pricks.

All this, though written at thirty years of age, is rather juvenile;
there was to be much less of the "tempest" in Balzac's life than is here
foreshadowed. He was tossed and shaken a great deal, as we all are, by
the waves of the time, but he was too stoutly anchored at his work to
feel the winds.

In 1832 "Louis Lambert" followed the "Peau de Chagrin," the first in the
long list of his masterpieces. He describes "Louis Lambert" as "a work
in which I have striven to rival Goethe and Byron, Faust and Manfred. I
don't know whether I shall succeed, but the fourth volume of the
'Philosophical Tales' must be a last reply to my enemies and give the
presentiment of an incontestable superiority. You must therefore forgive
the poor artist his fatigue [he is writing to his sister], his
discouragements, and especially his momentary detachment from any sort
of interest that does not belong to his subject. 'Louis Lambert' has
cost me so much work! To write this book I have had to read so many
books! Some day or other, perhaps, it will throw science into new paths.
If I had made it a purely learned work, it would have attracted the
attention of thinkers, who now will not drop their eyes upon it. But if
chance puts it into their hands, perhaps they will speak of it!" In this
passage there is an immense deal of Balzac--of the great artist who was
so capable at times of self-deceptive charlatanism. "Louis Lambert," as
a whole, is now quite unreadable; it contains some admirable
descriptions, but the "scientific" portion is mere fantastic verbiage.
There is something extremely characteristic in the way Balzac speaks of
its having been optional with him to make it a "purely learned" work.
His pretentiousness was simply colossal, and there is nothing surprising
in his wearing the mask even _en famille_ (the letter we have just
quoted from is, as we have said, to his sister); he wore it during his
solitary fifteen-hours sessions in his study. But the same letter
contains another passage, of a very different sort, which is in its way
as characteristic:

     Yes, you are right. My progress is real, and my infernal
     courage will be rewarded. Persuade my mother of this too, dear
     sister; tell her to give me her patience in charity; her
     devotion will be laid up in her favor. One day, I hope, a
     little glory will pay her for everything. Poor mother, that
     imagination of hers which she has given me throws her for ever
     from north to south and from south to north. Such journeys tire
     us; I know it myself! Tell my mother that I love her as when I
     was a child. As I write you these lines my tears start--tears
     of tenderness and despair; for I feel the future, and I need
     this devoted mother on the day of triumph! When shall I reach
     it? Take good care of our mother, Laure, for the present and
     the future.... Some day, when my works are unfolded, you will
     see that it must have taken many hours to think and write so
     many things; and then you will absolve me of everything that
     has displeased you, and you will excuse, not the selfishness of
     the man (the man has none), but the selfishness of the worker.

Nothing can be more touching than that; Balzac's natural affections were
as robust as his genius and his physical nature. The impression of the
reader of his letters quite confirms his assurance that the man proper
had no selfishness. Only we are constantly reminded that the man had
almost wholly resolved himself into the worker, and we remember a
statement of Sainte-Beuve's, in one of his malignant foot-notes, to the
effect that Balzac was "the grossest, greediest example of literary
vanity that he had ever known"--_l'amour-propre littéraire le plus avide
et le plus grossier que j'aie connu_. When we think of what Sainte-Beuve
must have known in this line, these few words acquire a portentous
weight.

By this time (1832) Balzac was, in French phrase, thoroughly _lancé_. He
was doing, among other things, some of his most brilliant work, certain
of the "Contes Drôlatiques." These were written, as he tells his mother,
for relaxation, as a rest from harder labor. One would have said that no
work would have been much harder than compounding the marvellously
successful imitation of mediæval French in which these tales are
written. He had, however, other diversions as well. In the autumn of
1832 he was at Aix-les-Bains with the Duchess of Castries, a great lady,
and one of his kindest friends. He has been accused of drawing portraits
of great ladies without knowledge of originals; but Mme. de Castries was
an inexhaustible fund of instruction upon this subject. Three or four
years later, speaking of the story of the "Duchesse de Laugeais" to one
of his correspondents, another _femme du monde_, he tells her that as a
_femme du monde_ she is not to pretend to find flaws in the picture, a
high authority having read the proofs for the express purpose of
removing them. The authority is evidently the Duchess of Castries.

Balzac writes to Mme. Carraud from Aix: "At Lyons I corrected 'Lambert'
again. I licked my cub, like a she bear.... On the whole, I am
satisfied; it is a work of profound melancholy and of science. Truly, I
deserve to have a mistress, and my sorrow at not having one increases
daily; for love is my life and my essence.... I have a simple little
room," he goes on, "from which I see the whole valley. I rise pitilessly
at five o'clock in the morning, and work before my window until
half-past five in the evening. My breakfast comes from the club--an egg.
Mme. de Castries has good coffee made for me. At six o'clock we dine
together, and I pass the evening with her. She is the finest type (_le
type le plus fin_) of woman; Mme. de Beauséant [from "Le Père Goriot"]
improved; only, are not all these pretty manners acquired at the expense
of the soul?"

During his stay at Aix he met an excellent opportunity to go to Italy;
the Duke de Fitz-James, who was travelling southward, invited him to
become a member of his party. He discourses the economical problem (in
writing to his mother) with his usual intensity, and throws what will
seem to the modern traveller the light of enchantment upon that golden
age of cheapness. Occupying the fourth place in the carriage of the
Duchess of Castries, his quarter of the total travelling expenses from
Geneva to Rome (carriage, beds, food, etc.) was to be fifty dollars! But
he was ultimately prevented from joining the party. He went to Italy
some years later.

He mentions, in 1833, that the chapter entitled "Juana," in the superb
tale of "The Maranas," as also the story of "La Grenadière," was written
in a single night. He gives at the same period this account of his
habits of work: "I must tell you that I am up to my neck in excessive
work. My life is mechanically arranged. I go to bed at six or seven in
the evening, with the chickens; I wake up at one in the morning and work
till eight; then I take something light, a cup of pure coffee, and get
into the shafts of my cab until four; I receive, I take a bath, or I go
out, and after dinner I go to bed. I must lead this life for some months
longer, in order not to be overwhelmed by my obligations. The profit
comes slowly; my debts are inexorable and fixed. Now, it is certain that
I will make a great fortune; but I must wait for it, and work for three
years. I must go over things, correct them again, put everything _en
état monumental_; thankless work, not counted, without immediate
profit." He speaks of working at this amazing rate for three years
longer; in reality he worked for fifteen. But two years after the
declaration we have just quoted, it seemed to him that he should break
down: "My poor sister, I am draining the cup to the dregs. It is in vain
that I work my fourteen hours a day; I can't do enough. While I write
this to you I find myself so weary that I have just sent Auguste to take
back my word from certain engagements that I had formed. I am so weak
that I have advanced my dinner hour in order to go to bed earlier; and I
go nowhere." The next year he writes to his mother, who had apparently
complained of his silence: "My good mother, do me the charity to let me
carry my burden without suspecting my heart. A letter for me, you see,
is not only money, but an hour of sleep and a drop of blood."

We spoke just now of Balzac's sentimental consolations; but it appears
that at times he was more acutely conscious of what he missed than of
what he enjoyed. "As for the soul," he writes to Mme. Carraud in 1833,
"I am profoundly sad. My work alone sustains me in life. Is there then
to be no woman for me in this world? My physical melancholy and _ennui_
last longer and grow more frequent. To fall from this crushing labor to
nothing--not to have near me that soft, caressing mind of woman, for
whom I have done so much!" He had, however, a devoted feminine friend,
to whom none of the letters in these volumes are addressed, but who is
several times alluded to. This lady, Mme. de Berny, died in 1836, and
Balzac speaks of her ever afterward with extraordinary tenderness and
veneration. But if there had been a passion between them, it was only a
passionate friendship. "Ah, my dear mother," he writes on New Year's
day, 1836, "I am harrowed with grief. Mme. de Berny is dying; it is
impossible to doubt it. No one but God and myself knows what my despair
is. And I must work--work while I weep!" He writes of Mme. de Berny at
the time of her death as follows. The letter is addressed to a lady with
whom he was in correspondence more or less sentimental, but whom he
never saw: "The person whom I have lost was more than a mother, more
than a friend, more than any creature can be for another. The term
_divinity_ only can explain her. She had sustained me by word, by act,
by devotion, during my worst weather. If I live, it is by her; she was
everything for me. Although for two years illness and time had separated
us, we were visible at a distance for each other. She reacted upon me;
she was a moral sun. Mme. de Mortsauf, in the 'Lys dans la Vallée,' is a
pale expression of this person's slightest qualities." Three years
afterward he writes to his sister: "I am alone against all my troubles,
and formerly, to help me to resist them, I had with me the sweetest and
bravest person in the world; a woman who every day is born again in my
heart, and whose divine qualities make the friendships that are compared
with hers seem pale. I have now no adviser in my literary difficulties;
I have no guide but the fatal thought, 'What would she say if she were
living?'" And he goes on to enumerate some of his actual and potential
friends. He tells his sister that she herself might have been for him a
close intellectual comrade if her duties of wife and mother had not
given her too many other things to think about. The same is true of Mme.
Carraud: "Never has a more extraordinary mind been more smothered; she
will die in her corner unknown! George Sand," he continues, "would
speedily be my friend; she has no pettiness whatever in her soul--none
of the low jealousies which obscure so many contemporary talents. Dumas
resembles her in this; but she has not the critical sense. Mme. Hanska
is all this; but I cannot weigh upon her destiny." Mme. Hanska was the
Polish lady whom he ultimately married, and of whom we shall speak.
Meanwhile, for a couple of years (1836 and 1837), he carried on an
exchange of opinions, of the order that the French call _intimes_, with
the unseen correspondent to whom we have alluded, and who figures in
these volumes as "Louise." The letters, however, are not love letters;
Balzac, indeed, seems chiefly occupied in calming the ardor of the lady,
who was evidently a woman of social distinction. "Don't have any
friendship for me," he writes; "I need too much. Like all people who
struggle, suffer, and work, I am exacting, mistrustful, wilful,
capricious.... If I had been a woman, I should have loved nothing so
much as some soul buried like a well in the desert--discovered only when
you place yourself directly under the star which indicates it to the
thirsty Arab."

His first letter to Mme. Hanska here given bears the date of 1835; but
we are informed in a note that he had at that moment been for some time
in correspondence with her. The correspondence had begun, if we are not
mistaken, on Mme. Hanska's side, before they met; she had written to him
as a literary admirer. She was a Polish lady of great fortune, with an
invalid husband. After her husband's death, projects of marriage defined
themselves more vividly, but practical considerations kept them for a
long time in the background. Balzac had first to pay off his debts, and
Mme. Hanska, as a Polish subject of the Czar Nicholas, was not in a
position to marry from one day to another. The growth of their intimacy
is, however, amply reflected in these volumes, and the dénouement
presents itself with a certain dramatic force. Balzac's letters to his
future wife, as to every one else, deal almost exclusively with his
financial situation. He discusses the details of this matter with all
his correspondents, who apparently have--or are expected to have--his
monetary entanglements at their fingers' ends. It is a constant
enumeration of novels and tales begun or delivered, revised or bargained
for. The tone is always profoundly sombre and bitter. The reader's
general impression is that of lugubrious egotism. It is the rarest thing
in the world that there is an allusion to anything but Balzac's own
affairs, and to the most sordid details of his own affairs. Hardly an
echo of the life of his time, of the world he lived in, finds its way
into his letters; there are no anecdotes, no impressions, no opinions,
no descriptions, no allusions to things heard, people seen, emotions
felt--other emotions, at least, than those of the exhausted or the
exultant worker. The reason of all this is of course very obvious. A man
could not be such a worker as Balzac and be much else besides. The note
of animal spirits which we observed in his early letters is sounded much
less frequently as time goes on; although the extraordinary robustness
and exuberance of his temperament plays richly into his books. The
"Contes Drôlatiques" are full of it, and his conversation was also full
of it. But the letters constantly show us a man with the edge of his
spontaneity gone--a man groaning and sighing, as from Promethean lungs,
complaining of his tasks, denouncing his enemies, and in complete ill
humor generally with life. Of any expression of enjoyment of the world,
of the beauties of nature, art, literature, history, human character,
these pages are singularly destitute. And yet we know that such
enjoyment--instinctive, unreasoning, essential--is half the inspiration
of the poet. The truth is that Balzac was as little as possible of a
poet; he often speaks of himself as one, but he deserved the name as
little as his own Canalis or his own Rubempré. He was neither a poet nor
a moralist, though the latter title in France is often bestowed upon
him--a fact which strikingly helps to illustrate the Gallic lightness of
soil in the moral region. Balzac was the hardest and deepest of
_prosateurs_; the earth-scented facts of life, which the poet puts under
his feet, he had put above his head. Obviously there went on within him
a vast and constant intellectual unfolding. His mind must have had a
history of its own--a history of which it would be most interesting to
have an occasional glimpse. But the history is not related here, even in
glimpses. His books are full of ideas; his letters have almost none. It
is probably not unfair to argue from this fact that there were few ideas
that he greatly cared for. Making all allowance for the pressure and
tyranny of circumstances, we may believe that if he had greatly cared to
_se recueillir_, as the French say--greatly cared, in the Miltonic
phrase, "to interpose a little ease"--he would sometimes have found an
opportunity for it. Perpetual work, when it is joyous and salubrious, is
a very fine thing; but perpetual work, when it is executed with the
temper which more than half the time appears to have been Balzac's, has
in it something almost debasing. We constantly feel that his work would
have been vastly better if the Muse of "business" had been elbowed away
by her larger-browed sister. Balzac himself, doubtless, often felt in
the same way; but, on the whole, "business" was what he most cared for.
The "Comédie Humaine" represents an immense amount of joy, of
spontaneity, of irrepressible artistic life. Here and there in the
letters this occasionally breaks out in accents of mingled exultation
and despair. "Never," he writes in 1836, "has the torrent which bears me
along been more rapid; never has a work more majestically terrible
imposed itself upon the human brain. I go to my work as the gamester to
the gaming-table; I am sleeping now only five hours and working
eighteen; I shall arrive dead.... Write to me; be generous; take nothing
in bad part, for you don't know how, at moments, I deplore this life of
fire. But how can I jump out of the chariot?" We had occasion in
writing of Balzac in these pages more than a year ago[2] to say that his
great characteristic, far from being a passion for ideas, was a passion
for _things_. We said just now that his books are full of ideas; but we
must add that his letters make us feel that these ideas are themselves
in a certain sense "things." They are pigments, properties, frippery;
they are always concrete and available. Balzac cared for them only if
they would fit into his inkstand.

He never "jumped out of his car"; but as the years went on he was able
at times to let the reins hang more loosely. There is no evidence that
he made the great fortune he had looked forward to; but he must have
made a great deal of money. In the beginning his work was very poorly
paid, but after his reputation was solidly established he received large
sums. It is true that they were swallowed up in great part by his
"debts"--that dusky, vaguely outlined, insatiable maw which we see
grimacing for ever behind him, like the face on a fountain which should
find itself receiving a stream instead of giving it out. But he
travelled (working all the while en route). He went to Italy, to
Germany, to Russia; he built houses, he bought pictures and pottery. One
of his journeys illustrates his singular mixture of economic and
romantic impulses. He made a breathless pilgrimage to the island of
Sardinia to examine the scoriæ of certain silver mines, anciently worked
by the Romans, in which he had heard that the metal was still to be
found. The enterprise was fantastic and impracticable; but he pushed his
excursion through night and day, as he had written the "Père Goriot." In
his relative prosperity, when once it was established, there are strange
lapses and stumbling-places. After he had built and was living in his
somewhat fantastical villa of Les Jardies at Sèvres, close to Paris, he
invites a friend to stay with him on these terms: "I can take you to
board at forty sous a day, and for thirty-five francs you will have
fire-wood enough for a month." In his joke he is apt to betray the same
preoccupation. Inviting Charles de Bernard and his wife to come to Les
Jardies to help him arrange his books, he adds that they will have fifty
sous a day and their wine. He is constantly talking of his expenses, of
what he spends in cab hire and postage. His letters to the Countess
Hanska are filled with these details. "Yesterday I was running about all
day: twenty-five francs for carriages!" The man of business is never
absent. For the first representations of his plays he arranges his
audiences with an eye to effect, like an _impresario_ or an agent. In
the boxes, for "Vautrin," "I insist upon there being handsome women."
Presenting a copy of the "Comédie Humaine" to the Austrian ambassador,
he accompanies it with a letter calling attention, in the most elaborate
manner, to the typographical beauty and the cheapness of the work; the
letter reads like a prospectus or an advertisement.

In 1840 (he was forty years old) he thought seriously of marriage--with
this remark as the preface to the announcement: "_Je ne veux plus avoir
de coeur!..._ If you meet a young girl of twenty-two," he goes on,
"with a fortune of 200,000 francs, or even of 100,000, provided it can
be used in business, you will think of me. I want a woman who shall be
able to be what the events of my life may demand of her--the wife of an
ambassador, or a housewife at Les Jardies. But don't speak of this; it's
a secret. She must be an ambitious, clever girl." This project, however,
was not carried out; Balzac had no time to marry. But his friendship
with Mme. Hanska became more and more absorbing, and though their
project of marriage, which was executed in 1850, was kept a profound
secret until after the ceremony, it is apparent that they had had it a
long time in their thoughts.

For this lady Balzac's esteem and admiration seem to have been
unbounded; and his letters to her, which in the second volume are very
numerous, contain many noble and delicate passages. "You know too well,"
he says to her somewhere, with a happy choice of words belonging to the
writer, whose diction was here and there as felicitous as it was
generally intolerable--"_Vous savez trop bien que tout ce qui n'est pas
vous n'est que surface, sottise et vains palliatifs de l'absence._" "You
must be proud of your children," he writes to his sister from Poland;
"such daughters are the recompense of your life. You must not be unjust
to destiny; you may now accept many misfortunes. It is like myself with
Mme. Hanska. The gift of her affection explains all my troubles, my
weariness, and my toil; I was paying to evil, in advance, the price of
such a treasure. As Napoleon said, we pay for everything here below;
nothing is stolen. It seems to me that I have paid very little.
Twenty-five years of toil and struggle are nothing as the purchase money
of an attachment so splendid, so radiant, so complete."

Mme. Hanska appears to have come rarely to Paris, and when she came to
have shrouded her visits in mystery; but Balzac arranged several
meetings with her abroad, and visited her at St. Petersburg and on her
Polish estates. He was devotedly fond of her children, and the tranquil,
opulent family life to which she introduced him appears to have been one
of the greatest pleasures he had known. In several passages which, for
Balzac, may be called graceful and playful, he expresses his
homesickness for her chairs and tables, her books, the sight of her
dresses. Here is something, in one of his letters to her, which is worth
quoting: "In short, this is the game that I play; four men will have
had, in this century, an immense influence--Napoleon, Cuvier, O'Connell.
I should like to be the fourth. The first lived on the blood of Europe;
_il s'est inoculé des armées_; the second espoused the globe; the third
became the incarnation of a people; I--I shall have carried a whole
society in my head. But there will have been in me a much greater and
much happier being than the writer--and that is your slave. My feeling
is finer, grander, more complete, than all the satisfactions of vanity
or of glory. Without this plenitude of the heart I should never have
accomplished the tenth part of my work; I should not have had this
ferocious courage." During a few days spent at Berlin, on his way back
from St. Petersburg, he gives his impressions of the "capital of
Brandenburg" in a tone which almost seems to denote a prevision of the
style of allusion to this locality and its inhabitants which was to
become fashionable among his countrymen thirty years later. Balzac
detested Prussia and the Prussians.

     It is owing to this charlatanism [the spacious distribution of
     the streets, etc.] that Berlin has a more populous look than
     Petersburg; I would have said "more animated" look if I had
     been speaking of another people; but the Prussian, with his
     brutal heaviness, will never be able to do anything but crush.
     To produce the movement of a great European capital you must
     have less beer and bad tobacco, and more of the French or
     Italian spirit; or else you must have the great industrial and
     commercial ideas which have produced the gigantic development
     of London; but Berlin and its inhabitants will never be
     anything but an ugly little city, inhabited by an ugly big
     people.

"I have seen Tieck _en famille_," he says in another letter. "He seemed
pleased with my homage. He had an old countess, his contemporary in
spectacles, almost an octogenarian--a mummy with a green eye-shade, whom
I supposed to be a domestic divinity.... I am at home again; it is
half-past six in the evening, and I have eaten nothing since this
morning. Berlin is the city of _ennui_; I should die here in a week.
Poor Humboldt is dying of it; he drags with him everywhere his nostalgia
for Paris."

Balzac passed the winter of 1848-'49 and several months more at
Vierzschovnia, the Polish estate of Mme. Hanska and her children. His
health had been gravely impaired, and the doctors had absolutely
forbidden him to work. His inexhaustible and indefatigable brain had at
last succumbed to fatigue. But the prize was gained; his debts were
paid; he was looking forward to owning at last the money that he should
make. He could afford--relatively speaking at least--to rest. His fame
had been solidly built up; the public recognized his greatness. Already,
in 1846, he had written: "You will learn with pleasure, I am sure, that
there is an immense reaction in my favor. At last I have conquered! Once
more my protecting star has watched over me.... At this moment the
public and the papers turn toward me favorably; more than that, there is
a sort of acclamation, a general consecration.... It is a great year for
me, dear Countess."

To be ill and kept from work was, for Balzac, to be a chained
Prometheus; but there was much during these last months to alleviate his
impatience. His letters at this period are easier, less painfully
preoccupied than at any other; and he found in Poland better medical
advice than he deemed obtainable in Paris. He was preparing a house in
Paris to receive him as a married man--preparing it apparently with
great splendor. At Les Jardies the pictures and divans and tapestries
had mostly been nominal--had been present only in grand names, chalked
grotesquely upon the empty walls. But during the last years of his life
Balzac appears to have been a great collector. He bought many pictures
and other objects of value; in particular, there figures in these
letters a certain set of Florentine furniture which he was willing to
sell again, but to sell only to a royal purchaser. The King of Holland
appears to have been in treaty for it. Readers of the "Comédie Humaine"
have no need to be reminded of the author's passion for furniture;
nowhere else are there such loving or such invidious descriptions of it.
"Decidedly," he writes once to Mme. Hanska, "I will send to Tours for
the Louis XVI. secretary and bureau; the room will then be complete.
It's a matter of a thousand francs; but for a thousand francs what can
one get in modern furniture? _Des platitudes bourgeoises, des misères
sans valeur et sans goût._"

Old Mme. de Balzac was her son's factotum and universal agent. His
letters from Vierzschovnia are filled with prescriptions of activity for
his mother, accompanied always with the urgent reminder that she is to
use cabs _ad libitum_. He goes into the minutest details (she was
overlooking the preparation of his house in the Rue Fortunée, which must
have been converted into a very picturesque residence): "The carpet in
the dining-room must certainly be readjusted. Try and make M. Henry send
his carpet-layer. I owe that man a good _pour-boire_; he laid all the
carpets, and I once was rough with him. You must tell him that in
September he can come and get his present. I want particularly to give
it to him myself."

His mother occasionally annoyed him by unreasonable exactions and
untimely interferences. There is an episode of a letter which she writes
to him at Vierzschovnia, and which, coming to Mme. Hanska's knowledge,
endangers his prospect of marriage. He complains bitterly to his sister
that his mother _cannot_ get it out of her head that he is still fifteen
years old. But there is something very touching in his constant
tenderness toward her--as well as something very characteristically
French--very characteristic of the French sentiment of family
consistency and solidarity--in the way in which, by constantly counting
upon her practical aptitude and zeal, he makes her a fellow worker
toward the great total of his fame and fortune. At fifty years of age,
at the climax of his distinction, announcing to her his brilliant
marriage, he signs himself _Ton fils soumis_. To his old friend Mme.
Carraud he speaks thus of this same event: "The dénouement of that
great and beautiful drama of the heart which has lasted these sixteen
years.... Three days ago I married the only woman I have loved, whom I
loved more than ever, and whom I shall love until death. I believe that
this union is the recompense that God has held in reserve for me through
so many adversities, years of work, difficulties suffered and
surmounted. I had neither a happy youth nor a flowering spring; I shall
have the most brilliant summer, the sweetest of all autumns." It had
been, as Balzac says, a drama of the heart, and the dénouement was of
the heart alone. Mme. Hanska, on her marriage, made over her large
fortune to her daughter.

Balzac had at last found rest and happiness, but his enjoyment of these
blessings was brief. The energy that he had expended to gain them left
nothing behind it. His terrible industry had blasted the soil it passed
over; he had sacrificed to his work the very things he worked for. One
cannot do what Balzac did and live. He was enfeebled, exhausted, broken.
He died in Paris three months after his marriage. The reader feels that
premature death is the logical, the harmonious completion of such a
career. The strongest man has but a certain fixed quantity of life to
expend, and we may expect that if he works habitually fifteen hours a
day, he will spend it while, arithmetically speaking, he is yet young.

We have been struck in reading these letters with the strong analogy
between Balzac's career and that of the great English writer whose
history was some time since so expansively written by Mr. Forster.
Dickens and Balzac take much in common; as individuals they strongly
resemble each other; their differences are chiefly differences of race.
Each was a man of affairs, an active, practical man, with a temperament
of almost phenomenal vigor and a prodigious quantity of life to expend.
Each had a character and a will--what is nowadays called a
personality--which imposed themselves irresistibly; each had a
boundless self-confidence and a magnificent egotism. Each had always a
hundred irons on the fire; each was resolutely determined to make money,
and made it in large quantities. In intensity of imaginative power, the
power of evoking visible objects and figures, seeing them themselves
with the force of hallucination, and making others see them all but just
as vividly, they were almost equal. Here there is little to choose
between them; they have had no rivals but each other and Shakespeare.
But they most of all resemble each other in the fact that they treated
their extraordinary imaginative force as a matter of business; that they
worked it as a gold mine, violently and brutally; overworked and ravaged
it. They succumbed to the task that they had laid upon themselves, and
they are as similar in their deaths as in their lives. Of course, if
Dickens is an English Balzac, he is a very English Balzac. His fortune
was the easier of the two, and his prizes were greater than the other's.
His brilliant opulent English prosperity, centred in a home and diffused
through a progeny, is in strong contrast with the almost scholastic
penury and obscurity of much of Balzac's career. But the analogy is
still very striking.

In speaking formerly of Balzac in these pages we insisted upon the fact
that he lacked charm; but we said that our last word upon him should be
that he had incomparable power. His letters only confirm these
impressions, and above all they deepen our sense of his strength. They
contain little that is delicate, and not a great deal that is positively
agreeable; but they express an energy before which we stand lost in
wonder, in an admiration that almost amounts to awe. The fact that his
devouring observation of the great human spectacle has no echo in his
letters only makes us feel how concentrated and how intense was the
labor that went on in his closet. Certainly no solider intellectual work
has ever been achieved by man. And in spite of the massive egotism, the
personal absoluteness, to which these pages testify, they leave us with
a downright kindness for the author. He was coarse, but he was tender;
he was corrupt in a way, but he was hugely natural. If he was
ungracefully eager and voracious, awkwardly blind to all things that did
not contribute to his personal plan, at least his egotism was exerted in
a great cause. The "Comédie Humaine" has a thousand faults, but it is a
monumental excuse.

                        HENRY JAMES, JR.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Paris: Calmann Lévy. 1876.

[2] December, 1875.




LOVE'S REQUIEM.


                 I.

      Bring withered autumn leaves!
      Call everything that grieves,
    And build a funeral pyre above his head!
      Heap there all golden promise that deceives,
      Beauty that wins the heart and then bereaves--
        For love is dead.


                 II.

      Not slowly did he die!
      A meteor from the sky
    Falls not so swiftly as his spirit fled;
      When with regretful, half-averted eye
      He gave one little smile, one little sigh--
        And so was sped.


                 III.

      But, oh, not yet, not yet
      Can my lost soul forget
    How beautiful he was while he did live;
      Or, when his eyes were dewy and lips wet,
      What kisses, tenderer than all regret,
        My love would give!


                 IV.

      Strew roses on his breast!
      He loved the roses best;
    He never cared for lilies or for snow.
      Let be this bitter end of his sweet quest!
      Let be the pallid silence that is rest--
        And let all go!

                        WILLIAM WINTER.




STORY OF A LION.


When Smith's Circus and Menagerie Combination Company went to Utica
James Rounders was a lusty fellow of twenty, of some natural sagacity,
and no school education. An interest in wild beasts had been developing
in him for several years, and the odor of sawdust had become grateful to
his nostrils. It was, however, only one kind of wild beast with which he
was especially occupied. The quadruped of the noble aspect, stately
gait, and tremendous roar--the lion--was the animal of Rounders's
predilection and the object of his study.

He had gotten together some leading facts--so far as the stories of
lion-killers may be regarded as such--concerning his favorite animal. He
had heard how a lion had galloped off from the suburbs of the Cape of
Good Hope with a two years' old heifer in his mouth, and jumped over a
hedge twelve feet high, taking his burden over with him. In the same
region of southern Africa another lion was seen bearing off a horse at a
canter, the neck in his mouth and the body slung behind across his back.
According to one who hunted the animal in the interior of Africa, a lion
one day sprang on an ox, his hind feet on the quarters, his fore feet
about the horns, and drew the head backward with such force as to break
the back of the animal. On another occasion the same hunter saw a lion
who took a heifer in his mouth, and though its legs trailed on the
ground, he carried it off as a cat would a rat, and jumped across a wide
ditch without difficulty. These accounts of the lion's strength were
articles of faith with James Rounders. He had been told that the royal
Bengal tiger of Asia was the equal in strength, if not the superior, of
the African lion, he having been known to smash the head of a bullock by
a single blow of his paw; but this Rounders did not believe.

He read with some difficulty, moving his lips as he did so, in order to
get the matter clearly before his mind. He regarded it as a laborious
task, and would sooner have chopped a cord of wood than read for half an
hour. Notwithstanding the irksomeness of reading, there were two books
which led him conscientiously through their pages to the end--those of
Gordon Cumming and Jules Gérard on the hunting and killing of lions. The
two volumes comprised his library, and furnished his mind with all the
literary nutriment which it required.

Rounders went to the opening performance of Smith's Circus and Menagerie
Combination Company. The ground leading up to the front of the canvas
was garnished in the usual way. There were two small parasitic tents
near the great one, on which primitive pictures hung of the woman of
enormous girth and the calf with six legs. A man stood at the flap
entrance of each, inviting people to enter and see these wonders of
nature for a moderate sum. Near by was the lemonade wagon, whose
proprietor was handing out glasses of his fluid with a briskness that
showed that many were athirst.

When he entered the great tent the brass band was blowing blatantly,
four cavaliers in rusty spangles and four dowdy women were riding round
the ring, going through the old-time preliminary called the grand entry;
for whatever else may change, the circus remains faithful to its
traditions. The Yorick of the sawdust soon followed, and said the things
which convulsed us with laughter in our tender years, and which cause us
to smile in our maturity in the recollections they bring back. It was
the same bold joke and the same grimace. The quips and quirks force on
us the fact that there is but little originality in the human mind, and
this was substantially the reflection of Rounders as he turned an
indifferent ear to the wearisome wit. He prided himself on his acumen,
and was not to be taken in with such worn buffoonery. Yet I trow that
even Rounders envied the children who gave themselves over body and soul
to the accredited man of humor.

He looked at the woman going through the hoops, the trick pony seeking
for the hidden handkerchief, and the bareback rider turning a summerset,
with a mild interest, for he had seen them or something like them
before. The strong man who threw up the cannon balls into the air, and
allowed them to fall on his nape, to roll down the hollow of his back to
the ground, hardly aroused this indifferent spectator. What he looked
forward to with curiosity was the performance of the lion-tamer, and
when it did come it exceeded his expectations.

The master of the ring, attired in what resembled the uniform of an
officer of the navy, stepped into the middle of the arena, and with the
affectation of good breeding characteristic of the class, said, "Ladies
and gentlemen: I have the honor to announce that John Brinton, the most
extraordinary and celebrated tamer of lions in the world, will appear
before you in his remarkable performance, during which every one is
requested to keep his seat. Your attention is especially directed to the
third part of it, as one of the marvels of the nineteenth century.

"To-morrow there will be a matinée at one o'clock, and in the evening
the performance at the usual hour."

The speaker bowed and retired. The band struck up "See, the Conquering
Hero Comes," as the Brinton in question came forward with that dash
which belongs to lion-tamers everywhere. He was an athletic man between
forty and fifty, of a stern countenance, and of a self-possession that
was evident as soon as he appeared. He was arrayed in flesh-colored
tights, with embroidered sky-blue velvet around the loins. He bore in
one hand a black rod, five or six feet long, and in the other a whip.
His hair was short, and he was cleanly shaved. Men who put their heads
between lions' jaws generally are, for the titillation of a straggling
hair might produce a cough that would prove tragical. He was quick and
decided in all his movements, as the lion-tamer should be, in order to
leave the beast no time to work itself up to a decision.

The cage which he entered contained two lions. One was large, grumbling,
and fierce, who had passed a part of his life in the wilds of Africa;
the other, and smaller of the two, was an emasculated beast, born behind
the bars, and was as tractable as the animal usually is that has never
known freedom. The performance consisted of three parts. The first was
of the kind common to menageries. The tamer entered by the little door
in a corner, with the celerity which all tamers employ, and stood for a
moment in the statuesque immobility to which they are also given, in
coming before the public. Having done this, he started forward with the
black rod in his left hand, approached the animals, driving them to the
end of the cage, the end of the rod nearly touching their faces. Here
they stood under protest, growling. Then he raised his whip, struck the
smaller beast, making it run from one end of the cage to the other, and
leap over his shoulder in a way familiar to people who have visited a
menagerie. He threw it down, put his foot on its prostrate body, and
folded his arms in the character of victor. He lay down on it, pulled
open its jaws, and inserted his head therein. Then he jumped up and
dismissed it, with a cut of the whip, to one corner. During this time
the larger lion had been an indifferent and surly spectator. The tamer
approached, touching him with the rod, when he jumped forward with a
growl, half crouching. Quickly the tamer caught hold of his upper jaw
and tore it open, as great, rebellious cog-wheel growls issued from the
mighty throat. Then he spurned him with his foot, bowed to the audience,
went to the door, let himself out like a flash, the two animals making a
bound against it as he disappeared.

"A, B, C," said Rounders. "Nothing new about that."

During the interim venders went about holding up photographic portraits
of the tamer, lustily shouting his professional and private virtues.
Their voices were, however, soon drowned in the clash of the brass band,
which played a prelude to what was coming. At the conclusion of this a
lone and last voice cried out, "Ice-cold lemonade," but it was promptly
suppressed by those near the crier, as Brinton again appeared.

The second part was a short drama enacted with the larger animal, whose
name was Brutus, the smaller one being driven into an adjoining cage. In
the drama Brutus was the faithful friend of his master, the tamer, who
is attacked by his enemies--a dozen supernumeraries in rusty spangles,
who simultaneously thrust their spears through the bars from the outside
of one end of the cage; when the spears are thus thrust through the
bars, the master calls on his faithful servant Brutus to save his
master's life, and rid him of his enemies, giving the command in the
words:

"To the rescue, Brutus! Down with the miscreants!"

This was the "situation." Brutus advances at the word of command, and
with a few blows from his great paws breaks the brittle spears which the
somewhat _flasque_ enemies hold from without. At this the tamer strikes
an attitude, and shouts in a melodramatic voice:

"Saved! And by this noble animal!"

These words are accompanied with the action of putting an arm
affectionately around the neck of Brutus. This is the dénouement.

He bows and retires as before, this time amid increased applause.

"Not bad," said the critical Rounders, "but nothing extra."

As Brinton disappeared the voices of the venders arose again, to be
drowned as before by the blare of the wind instruments. Silence was
restored for his next appearance. It was the third part which Rounders
desired especially to see, and a surprise was reserved for him. In it
the tamer entered the cage with a great piece of raw meat in each hand,
Brutus being still alone, standing in the middle of the cage, eagerly
looking out for his master. Brinton threw one of the pieces down in the
middle of the floor, and the beast pounced on it as only a wild beast
can, holding it between his paws as he gluttonously devoured it--not
with a lateral movement of the jaws, but cat-like--amid half stifled,
threatening growls, with menacing eyes turned from time to time toward
the tamer. What the tamer then did was the most extraordinary
performance which Rounders had ever seen, and sent thrills of admiration
down his spinal column.

Brinton calmly approached the ferocious animal feeding, and took away
from it the half finished piece of meat, and as he did so the beast
growled, but submitted! After which he waved the half consumed beef in
the air and bowed, amid great applause, in which Rounders heartily
joined. Then the tamer said:

"Brutus, you have behaved so well I shall reward you with another
piece."

Which he did, the beast seizing it and gorging himself as before. At
this point the master of the ring stepped forth again as the tamer
disappeared, and said:

"Ladies and gentlemen, when you recollect how difficult it is to take a
bone away from even a pet dog, it will give you some idea of the
marvellous performance you have just witnessed. It will be repeated
to-morrow during the day and evening."

"This is a real show," said Rounders, wound up to enthusiasm. "But how
does he do it?" This was the question which at once presented itself,
and thereafter gave him no peace. With this perplexing inquiry was
mingled a deep and abiding admiration. He was brought to a determination
to which he had been moving for two or three years. In a word, he
decided then and there to enter the vocation. He sought the man who had
sent the tingling, shivering sensation down his vertebræ, and explained
that he wanted to go with him on any terms and in any capacity.

Brinton had taken off his professional gear, and was undistinguishable
from the sombre mass of his fellow citizens. He was out on the open
space near the great tent, looking abstractedly at a man blowing with
distended cheeks into a lung-testing machine. Rounders stood before him
with the respect due to a man who snatches meat away from a ferocious
lion.

After going through his work with the beasts, Brinton was usually tired
and somewhat indifferent to the ordinary affairs of life. Other things
seemed pale after the emotions of the cage. When Rounders explained to
him what he wanted, the tamer said:

"You've got it."

"Got what?"

"The lion fever. You are lion struck. I've seen a good many like you.
Its an uphill business. Not one keeper in fifty gets the handling of the
brutes, and still the only way of going about it is to be a keeper.
Besides handling them, you must have a _specialty_--a trick, you know.
You've got to get up one yourself or worm it out of somebody else. As
for the lion man telling anybody--that is something I haven't yet met
with. You may take his life, but he won't give up his trick; it's his
pride, his pleasure, and his bread and butter."

"I want to be a keeper all the same," returned Rounders.

"Come on then," said Brinton; "for we want a keeper, as we left one at
the last town. He was a young man who had been reading in natural
history about the noble nature of the lion, and he put his hand in
between the bars to pat Brutus on the head. The surgeon examined him,
and said his arm was fractured in several places--it was a regular chaw.
We left him in the hospital. I tell you this as a warning not to go
fooling round the beasts--that is, if you're coming."

The fate of the young man of a too trusting faith in the noble nature of
the lion did not turn Rounders from his determination, and the next
morning he was a part of the establishment.

At first the tongue of the tamer was pretty closely tied touching
matters of his profession, but in due time he expanded into talk when he
saw the genuine enthusiasm of the keeper for all that related to the
subject, yet naturally practised strict reserve in everything concerning
his particular work. In a word, professional secrets remained entombed.

He thought men were born to his vocation, and there was no resisting it.
He had followed shows and hung around lion cages when he was a boy.
Toward manhood the business had exercised such a fascination that he at
last obtained employment with a tamer, whom he followed until he was
killed by his beasts. This sanguinary spectacle deterred him for the
time from the idea of entering a cage, but he continued his work.

There were two kinds of lions in the menageries--those born and raised
in the cages and those caught as whelps wild in Asia and Africa. A few
full grown were caught in pits. The first time he entered a cage was in
a small show in a provincial town. The two lions whom he then
encountered were old and sick, and bore the scars of twenty years'
whipping on their bald hides; besides, they were born and brought up
behind the bars. They growled from force of habit, but there was not
much danger in them. The posters of course announced the two brutes as
two of the most ferocious kings of the forest.

From these he passed to cage-bred lions in their prime, thence to the
wild animals, of which Brutus was one. Until the tamer was able to work
with these last, he was not considered as belonging to the rank of real
tamers. The sensation he experienced the first time he entered the cage
of wild animals was difficult to describe; it was an appreciation of
imminent danger coupled with courage. When he issued from the cage his
tights and spangled cloth felt as if they had just come out of the wash
tub. He was steeled up to the point of bravery before the brutes, but
ten minutes afterward a child could have knocked him over.

The principal secret of managing the brutes was not to be afraid of
them. When the man showed fear he was lost. The mastery was not acquired
so much through violence of treatment as an absolute sense of security
in their presence. Audacity and self-possession were necessary every
minute, every second; a moment's loss of equilibrium might prove fatal.

The buttery mode of treatment about which bookmen wrote had no existence
in fact among showmen. No man managed his beasts with kindness. When his
Brutus licked his face in his performance it looked affectionate, but it
was not; he did it because he was afraid; and when the animal went
through this osculatory business he was obliged to keep his eye on him
with all the concentration of his will, for there was something in the
beast's eyes which showed that he would sooner use his teeth than his
tongue.

There was an impression that a lion once tamed is tamed for good, as a
horse is broken to harness. This was an error; the lion had to be tamed
every day anew in order to keep him in subjection.

Rounders asked him if he meant to say that all lions were vicious. To
which he answered negatively. There were good lions and bad lions, just
as there were good and bad men. The bad beasts, however, were more
numerous than the others, for it was their nature to kill to provide for
their hunger. The book talk about their generosity was not trustworthy;
the instinct of the beast was to kill when it was hungry, but when its
stomach was full it was less dangerous. He had seen the beast in its
wild state, having hunted him in Africa. He had captured Brutus there
when the animal was two years old; he was then ten, but always retained
something of his wild nature. He was secured in a pit with his mother,
the mother being shot.

In another menagerie with which he had been connected his principal
performance was "the happy family," in which he brought together in the
same cage two lions, several wolves, a couple of bears, a sheep, a small
elephant with a monkey on his back. The crowning feature of this was the
introduction of the sheep's head into the lion's mouth, which he held
open by the upper lip with a strong grip. The sovereignty of the lions
was acknowledged by the other animals, who looked at them with fear,
getting as far away from them as the cage would permit. He had to pull
each one into the cage by force. He compelled a bear to stand with his
nose in close proximity to that of a lion; he called this the kiss of
friendship; the bear had to be kicked and pushed into position, looking
at the lion with terror; the lion did not deign to look at the bear, but
kept his eye fixed on his master, whom of course he obeyed under
protest. When the sheep was brought forward, and its head was put
between the lion's jaws, it was almost in a swooning condition, and
excited general pity. He had to get a new sheep every month, the daily
fear causing them soon to decline unto death.

The foregoing, in substance, was a portion of the talk with which
Brinton gratified himself as well as his listener, the appreciative
Rounders.

The trick of pulling away the meat from under the jaws of Brutus was
technically known under the canvas as the "meat-jerk." It continued to
remain uppermost in the mind of the new keeper.

The nomadic life had pleasures for Rounders, aside from the fascination
of the "meat-jerk." He drove a gayly colored wagon in the caravan, as it
moved through the country. At night, like the Arabs, they folded their
tents and stole away, and at dawn they were on the march. Perched on his
seat, Rounders's eyes dwelt on the landscape with its purple tints of
the morning, and his nostrils sniffed the sweet odors of Nature while
she was still in déshabille. Silently, like a variegated serpent, the
caravan crept around the hills and through the valleys. The musicians,
clad in gold and scarlet, rode through the country in their magnificent
chariot, and gave out no sound, their breath being reserved for the
towns and villages. The vestal silence remained unbroken by the
stridulous clarinet and the blatant trombones.

Every man has a weakness, and Brinton had his. He was in tender
thraldom. He loved the woman that jumped through the hoops and balloons
on a padded horse. Whenever her eyes turned on him they sent a thrill
through him more exciting than that produced by Brutus. He generally
stood near the ring-board when she appeared in public, and envied the
ringmaster the agreeable duty of assisting her to mount. Admiringly he
watched her shapely legs going through the hoops and over the garters,
as her eyes sparkled and her face flushed with the excitement, but there
was no indication of his love being returned.

When Rounders discovered this tenderness in the heart of the tamer, he
thought of Samson and Delilah, and wondered if something of the kind
could not be done with natural comeliness instead of a pair of scissors.
Guided by instinct, Rounders, who was a shrewd fellow, as has already
been said, made his court to Mlle. La Sauteuse, known in private life as
Sally Stubbs. There were conventional barriers between a keeper and a
rider, but Rounders by tact and good looks got over them, and whispered
sweet nonsense in the porches of Miss Stubbs's willing ear.

One evening, after the performance, as the moon shone athwart the great
tent, and the brass band was hushed, Sally Stubbs stood against a
background of canvas, bathed in the sheen from on high. Quiet reigned in
the tents of the elephantine woman and the calf with six legs. The
lung-tester had folded up his machine and departed. The sound of
"ice-cold lemonade" had died in the general stillness. Mlle. La Sauteuse
leaned over lovingly to the new keeper, and asked in a low, sympathetic
voice,

"What can I do for you, Jim Rounders?"

"Find out the 'meat-jerk,'" was the swift response.

"Alas," said the fair Stubbs, "when you've been as long in the tent as
I've been, you'll know that that is impossible. You might as well ask me
for a slice of the moon that is now lookin' down on this here peaceful
scene atween you and me."

"You've heard the Sunday school story about Samson and Delilah?" pursued
Rounders.

"What's that got to do with John Brinton's secret?"

"What's been done can be done again. Delilah wormed it out of Samson:
why can't Sally Stubbs worm it out of Brinton?"

"Cut off his hair, as the Bible woman did?"

"That's too thin," said Rounders rashly, without fear of theological
dogma. "That's allygory. They call it hair-cuttin', and when they call
it that, its hairsplittin'. Take my word for it, Sally Stubbs, that when
she got the secret out of that hefty, long-haired man, she did it with
her pretty ways and good looks."

Still, Miss Stubbs affirmed that such a project as Rounders entertained
was impossible; and it was true. In his weakest, or most sentimental
hours, Brinton knew how to withstand even the blandishments of the
charming Stubbs when she approached professional topics. Under her smile
he opened up like a morning-glory kissed by Aurora; but when she tried
to penetrate into the mystery of his great lion act, he closed up like
the same flower when it encounters the sun. He had a well-ordered mind
divided into compartments--business was one thing and love was another.

Meanwhile the keeper kept his eye on every movement of Brinton. He was
his shadow. When he was not occupied with the master, he was looking
after the animals. Reciprocity of kindness is a principle of nature
which Rounders had observed, and in which he had some faith,
notwithstanding the pessimist views of Brinton. He began by
familiarizing Brutus with the sight of his face, person, and voice. He
spoke to the animal in the most sympathetic accent of which he was
capable. He hung round his cage as long and as often as his duties would
permit. He reached the point of cajolery, and assumed friendship, as:

"Well, Brutus, how are you, old boy? How did you like the last feed? I'm
afraid this travellin' round in confinement, on wheels, is injurin' your
complexion. Of course you would like to be footin' it like the rest of
us. I reckon it _would_ be better for you, but it might be bad for some
of us two-legged fellows. Eh, bully boy?"

This jocularity was in strange contrast to the sombre indifference with
which the king of the forest looked down on the speaker. Rounders
infringed on the rules laid down by Brinton in giving bits of meat to
the beast whenever an opportunity presented itself; but notwithstanding
these offerings, the two sombre eyes continued to regard him with an
unchanged expression. One day, to arouse him from his condition of
indifference or latent kindness, Rounders introduced a stick under the
bars to poke him up in a friendly way, touching him on his extended
paws. The beast struck quickly, and almost caught his hand. As it was,
one of his fingers was bruised by the blow. Brinton, unperceived by
Rounders, had been standing behind him noting the incident.

"Rounders," said Brinton, "you're lucky. About two months ago a fellow
did the same thing as you've been doing, but he did not come out as well
as you."

"What befell him?" asked Rounders.

"Brutus caught his hand under the bars, pulled in his arm, reached out
his other paw in an affectionate embrace around the man's neck, pressed
him against the bars, and mashed him. When I came up it was too late. He
dropped on the sawdust and never got up again."

In noting their habits, Rounders observed that they were more afraid of
the short pole which Brinton carried into the cage than they were of the
whip. Brinton called this bit of dark wood his magic wand, which in a
measure justified its name, for as soon as he touched them with it, they
gave way and drew back to the end of the cage. He usually carried it
with him into a little tent-chamber, which was rigged up near the lion's
cage. One night, after issuing from the cage, he forgot to take the
magic wand with him, leaving it lying on the sawdust, alongside of one
of the wheels which carried the beasts. Jim Rounders picked it up with
curiosity, and found it very heavy. In a word, it was iron. He drew his
hand caressingly from one end of it to the other, as he thought of the
effects which it produced when it came in contact with the lions' noses.
As his hand softly reached down to the other end, he drew it back as if
bitten by a viper, with an exclamation that would not have met with
favor in the Young Men's Christian Association. The end was hot. He
carried the rod into the little tent-chamber, and left it there. It was
now made clear to him why the animals showed such an aversion to the end
of the magic wand.

The wife of Brutus was a lioness called Cleopatra, generally kept in
another cage. In the order of nature she was at times more affectionate
to her husband than at others, and during such periods Brutus became
irritable, and difficult to manage. It was hard to keep him down, even
with the hot iron. As they wended their way from village to village, and
town to town, over the old-fashioned turnpikes, Brutus entered one of
the irritable phases of his life, during which, it is hardly necessary
to say, the vigilant eye of Rounders was nearly always on the tamer in
his management of the brute. One night, through a chink of the little
tent-chamber, he saw Brinton standing irresolute, although behind his
time for entering the cage; the beads of sweat stood on his forehead,
and he held his heated iron in his hand; then he roused himself to
decision, spat on the heated end of the magic wand, which hissed, and
strode quickly to the cage.

This was a revelation to Rounders. It was apparent that even Brinton,
plucky as he was, had his moments of apprehension and demoralization,
from which he concluded that the danger must be real. Rounders, as usual
taking a deep interest, followed him to the cage and took his station
near the front of it. Brinton's first action as soon as he got into the
cage was to run at the nose of Brutus with his hot iron and drive him
back to one end. Rounders fancied he could almost hear the frizzle of
the flesh. He went through the first part of the performance with the
cage-bred lion, whipping him and making him jump over his shoulders in
the usual way, but he omitted that part where he tore open the jaws of
Brutus, and made him lick his face.

The dramatic event took place in the second part. Brinton in his
preoccupation of that night left the magic wand reposing against the
wheel near the door of the cage as he entered it, to play the drama.
Brutus, rebellious and gloomy, went through his part until the scene
where the spears are thrust through the bars arrived. His master gave
the word of command:

"To the rescue, Brutus! Down with the miscreants!" at the same time
pointing as usual to the spears with the enemies behind them. Brutus,
who was at the opposite end of the cage--the tamer in the centre--did
not move. Brinton gave the command a second time, stamping with his foot
to enforce it. The eyes of the lion did not turn in the direction of the
spears, as they heretofore did when the animal was ordered to the
rescue, but settled in a sombre manner on Brinton, whom the beast began
gradually to approach. At this moment Rounders, who was narrowly
watching the proceeding, observed a momentary quailing of the eye in the
tamer; still he called up his fierce expression again, and gave the
order for the third time to the gradually advancing brute, whose eyes
were steadily fixed on him. The heart of Rounders beat quick; he held
his breath. The theory then flashed through his mind about the steady
human eye being able to hold the lion in subjection or deter him from
attacking, and he scanned the eyes of Brinton. They were both fixed on
the beast, but there was no sign of the beast's quailing. Brinton cursed
and shouted at the brute, the motive of which Rounders quickly
understood, another theory being that the lion is sometimes prevented
from attacking in this way. This noise seemed rather to contribute to
the ire of the beast; besides it was presently drowned in his mighty
roar. The culminating point of anger was reached, the mane stood out on
end, and the lashing tail stiffened into a straight line, as the animal
made a bound toward Brinton, who still bore himself as if he were
complete master. Brinton fell. Quick as a flash, Rounders seized the
magic wand, burst open the little door, and made a lunge at the brute on
top of the fallen man. The men with the spears attacked him from behind,
and as the animal turned for a moment to face them, Rounders took
advantage of it to clutch Brinton, drag him to the door, and out of the
cage.

At this the applause was deafening. It was the first night in this
community, and the spectators thought it was in the play. The heart of
Rounders turned sick as he heard the admiring shouts. He pulled Brinton
into the little tent-chamber; thence he smuggled him into a room in an
adjoining hotel.

The beast had ripped the flesh from the bone nearly the length of his
leg, as the surgeon ascertained, who was secretly called in. Fortunately
no bones were broken. Five minutes after the event of the cage, the
manager of the concern came before the audience and stated that the
celebrated lion-tamer, John Brinton, who had been engaged at a fabulous
sum, and had performed before all the crowned heads of Europe, was taken
with a sudden indisposition to which he was sometimes subject, and would
be obliged to deny himself the pleasure of appearing again that evening.
Then he added some remark about the noble beast of the forest, who
probably regretted the non-appearance of its master--whom he positively
loved, as much as the people before him.

After the show was over that night, the manager asked the doctor how
long the wounded tamer would keep his bed, to which answer was made that
it would be several weeks. The manager did not know what was to be done.
Then, turning to Rounders, he said,

"There's good stuff in you. Brinton owes you his life. Don't you think
you might go into Pompey until Brinton gets on his legs?" (Pompey being
the old emasculated lion who appeared to the public in the same cage
with Brutus). To which question Rounders, picking up heart of grace,
said he thought he might.

"I mean," added the manager, "of course, in keeping Brutus out of the
cage, and confining your handling to Pompey, who is not a bad-natured
animal. Have you got the courage to go into him?"

Rounders said he had.

"I don't want any foolhardiness," continued the manager. "If you can
manage to make Pompey run around the cage a little, that will do until
Brinton recovers."

A few minutes afterward Rounders was in the room of the wounded tamer,
to whom he said:

"I'm going in to do the business with Pompey, until you get well."

The expression of languid suffering left the face of Brinton, as he
asked, "What are you going to do with him?"

"Do what you did with him--or try to."

"Perhaps you may do it, Rounders."

"If I knew the 'meat jerk,' I don't know but I might try that on him."

"Look here, Rounders," said the reclining man, "I have a word to say to
you. You tried to get Sally Stubbs away from me; for that I didn't like
you. But what you have done to-night wipes that out, and puts something
to the credit side of your account. This being the case, let me give you
this advice: Don't try the 'meat-jerk,' and when you go into Pompey, go
at him before he has time to think."

Brinton was left in the town where he met with his mishap, under charge
of the doctor, and the train moved on to the next village, where
Rounders was to make his first appearance as a performer. He had faith
in hot iron, and as soon as he got inside of the cage door he went to
Pompey with the magic wand. The animal stood a moment and lashed his
tail, when Rounders quickly frizzled his nose before he had time for
reflection; then he gave way, retreating to one end. Here Rounders
strode toward him with his whip and gave him a cut, returned to the
middle of the cage, and stamped his foot as he had seen Brinton do. The
animal hesitated. Rounders stamped his foot again and raised his whip;
then Pompey jumped over his shoulder and up and down the ends of the car
in the traditional fashion. The new tamer pulled open his jaws, lay down
between his paws, and stood over him with a foot on his neck in sign of
victory. After which he bowed and retired. This was the whole
performance as far as the lions were concerned, the others--Cleopatra
and Brutus--being simply exhibited.

"Not bad for a beginner," said the manager when he came out of the cage.
Miss Stubbs, who was standing by in short cloud-like skirts and
flesh-colored tights, said something more handsome, being in closer
sympathy with Rounders than the manager.

For two or three weeks Rounders continued to go through a performance
like the initiatory one, but at the end of that time his ambition moved
him to do something more. Pompey was tractable, and he determined to
attempt the "meat-jerk." He had not forgotten the advice of Brinton, but
he thought it was given through jealousy. He communicated his
determination to the manager, who told him if he thought he could do it,
to go ahead, for the managerial mind was absorbed with the idea of
additional attraction. He also informed Miss Stubbs of his project, who
exhibited more solicitude, and her first impulse was to dissuade the
ambitious Rounders from the undertaking. Under such circumstances men
are not inclined to heed the words of women, and in this instance
Rounders did not. His principal aim in making the communication was to
elicit information. She knew Brinton perhaps better than any one else in
the company. Couldn't she give him some "points"? Alas! she had no
"points" to give, for, however expansive Brinton may have been under
Cupid's influence, he was as close as an oyster in what related to his
profession, as has already been said. There was but one course left for
Rounders to pursue, which was to play a close imitation of Brinton.

The night of the representation came. The first part of the lion
performance passed off, and the second was at hand. The sweat stood on
the forehead of Rounders in drops as it had on that of Brinton when
Rounders saw him on the night of his irresolution. He issued from the
little tent-chamber, with a piece of meat in each hand, as he had seen
Brinton do. Miss Stubbs stood at the door of the cage in her
professional costume, with the magic wand in her hand.

"Jim Rounders," said she solemnly, "keep cool. If you lose your presence
of mind, you're gone."

"All right, Sally Stubbs," said he reassuringly as he opened the door
and went in with the two pieces of meat. The hungry animal jumped to his
feet and switched his tail. He smelt the meat. Rounders threw him a
piece, which he seized with the voracity common to lions, and began to
eat, growling between each bite. Rounders eyed the menacing beast for a
few moments, as it fed, then approached and put out his hand, at which
there was a louder and more threatening growl. It was the growl of
warning. A low feminine voice reached Rounders's ear from the cage door,
which said,

"Jim Rounders, don't do it." But Rounders was not a man to renounce a
project when it was once lodged in his head; and he boldly reached down
to take hold of the meat on which Pompey was feeding. A gurgling growl,
rising to a high key, was the response, and a spring. Rounders was down
and the beast on top of him. At that moment the cage door flew open.
Sally Stubbs ran with the magic wand against the beast and stuck it into
his mouth, and as it went in, the act sounded like putting a steak on
the fire. She caught the prostrate man by the arm, and drew him behind
her with her free hand, and thus holding him, she dragged him backing
toward the door, holding out her rod in front to prevent a renewal of
the attack. The two got out safe together. On examination it was found
that Rounders had sustained no other injury than some severe bruises.

"No more of that, Rounders," said the manager. "I don't want the
prospects of my show ruined by a tragedy. You have had a narrow escape.
Let it be a lesson to you not to undertake a thing you don't
understand."

Rounders's first act after the rescue was to kiss Miss Stubbs on both
cheeks, saying as he did so,

"Sally Stubbs, you are the only one of the kind."

"_Mister_ Rounders," said she, pertly pushing him back, "none of them
liberties with me. I may be foolish enough to go into a cage after you,
but I'm not foolish enough to suffer them things."

After that there was no performance with the lions for over a week,
during which Rounders was despondent. He was still occupied with the
extraordinary feat of removing meat from under the jaws of a feeding
lion. It pursued him night and day, and he told Miss Stubbs that he
would never be happy until he found out the secret.

At length Brinton overtook the company, having come by railway. He was
completely restored, and as anxious to begin again as the manager to
have him do so. He was informed of the accident which had befallen him
who had attempted to walk in his traces. He turned to Rounders saying,

"Now I suppose you'll own that I wanted to do you a good turn."

"I acknowledge it--I was presumptuous and wanted tapping," answered
Rounders with proper humility.

"As I told you before," continued Brinton, "I owe you something. Sit
down here and let me talk to you."

Brinton picked up a piece of shingle, took out his knife, and whittled
as the two sat down together.

"You want to learn the business, but you begin at the wrong end. You
don't know much about lion nature, and you want to do the high art in
the profession on sight. A man must creep before he can walk. Now, you
tried to begin by walking, and you know what came of it."

This was a specimen of a bit of the talk given for the benefit and
guidance of the lion-tamer _en herbe_, and by the time Brinton got
through with his advice, his words had a salutary effect, at least for
the time being.

There was a smouldering gleam of vengeance in the eye of Brinton when he
entered the cage for the first time after his accident, which brightened
almost into a flame as he bore down on Brutus with the hot rod. He
persistently thrust it at him; the great cog-wheel growls issued from
his throat, and he tried to break down the rod with his paw; then he
ingloriously fled around the cage as Brinton chased him with his whip.
This was accompanied with curses low but intense, which would have
shocked the Christian spectators of the assembly had they heard them.

In playing the drama, Brinton took the precaution to have put in the
centre of the cage, as part of the decorations, a stump of a tree, which
was hollow, and contained a navy revolver and a bowie-knife. When he
gave the command to Brutus to leap forward against the spears, Brinton
stood alongside of the stump with one hand inside of it, his forefinger
playing with the trigger of the revolver. The apprehension of a
recurrence of the critical scene which has been narrated was however
groundless. Brutus dutifully leaped forward and smashed the brittle
spears, without hesitation, and calmly suffered himself to be embraced
as a "noble beast" afterward.

The "meat-jerk" was given with the success which usually characterized
it in the hands of Brinton, the applause being enthusiastic.

"And yet," said Rounders to Miss Stubbs, as they both stood looking at
the performance, "he does it just as I tried to do it. How easy and
natural! As he says, it's high art."

"I don't think it's anything to be compared to standin' on my
cream-colored horse and jumping through the balloons."

"Ah, Sally Stubbs, we can't see these things with the same eyes," said
Rounders, with a sigh.

Miss Stubbs noted that sigh as she had the other sighs to which Rounders
gave himself over ever since his failure. She was persuaded that the man
was incorrigible, unless that particular mystery was unfolded to him.

One day, as the caravan wound the shoulder of a steep hill, the horses
drawing the wagon containing Brutus shied at some object in the woods,
which precipitated horses and wagon down an embankment of twelve or
fifteen feet. The outside woodwork broke in several places, and the
shock knocked the door of the cage open. The driver jumped up unhurt,
but consternation was depicted on his face when his eyes turned toward
the cage. Brutus was standing on the ground lashing his sides with anger
at the bruises which he had received from the fall. Word went along the
caravan that the lion was out; all the vehicles stopped, and several of
the company's people ran to the brow of the embankment and looked down
on the scene of the catastrophe and the infuriated lion. Brinton, who
was riding in a buggy a short distance ahead of the wagon of Brutus,
jumped out and ran back to the spot where the disaster had just taken
place. He held in his hand an ordinary whip used in driving a buggy.
With this he approached the angry animal, the people falling back. When
he got near him he raised his whip menacingly. The brute made the quick
bound for which he is known, and struck him down, his claws sinking deep
into vital parts. He called out the name of Brutus with a groan. At this
juncture the animal discovered that it was his master, as he quickly
snuffed his prostrate person. That day Brinton had put on a new suit of
clothes, and when he ran toward the animal it was evident he had not
recognized him. Brinton lay unconscious on the ground, the animal not
making any further attack after his discovery of the identity. The brute
did not betray any sorrow at what he had done, nor did he give any proof
of affection. He simply became indifferent, and while he was in this
state, Rounders enticed him into another cage by the display of a piece
of meat, and as soon as he got him in, he jumped out and locked the
door.

The wounded man was picked up and conveyed to a neighboring farmhouse,
Rounders being one of those who carried him. In proceeding to the house
he revived, and when they reached it, they carefully placed him on a
couch. The nearest physician was sent for, he living two or three miles
away. Making an effort to control the manifestation of suffering,
Brinton requested all to leave the room except Rounders. His request was
complied with. He asked Rounders to sit down alongside of him, as he
could not speak loud, and he wanted to reserve his strength.

"Jim Rounders," said he with a softened expression of the eyes, "I have
something to say to you, and I want to say it before it is too late.
There was no use sending for the doctor--I won't be here long."

At this Rounders offered a consolatory word to inspire hope, but Brinton
understood with what intent it was uttered and took no notice of it.

"Jim Rounders," pursued he, "I owe you something, and I want to pay you
before I die. It's about the 'meat-jerk.'"

Naturally the curiosity of Rounders was eager.

"Like all great inventions," continued the tamer, "it's as simple as A,
B, C when you know how it's done."

The secret, as explained by the sinking man, was in substance as
follows: It is a work of several months. You begin by giving the lion a
large piece of meat, and when he has polished it to the bone, you give
another piece, and when he fastens on that you pick up the bone. After
awhile you will be able to take the bone from under his mouth as you
slip the other piece of meat in its place. In time he gets to know that
when you take the first piece away from him, though it should be only
half finished, it is to be replaced by a larger piece. Gradually you let
a little time pass between the taking away and the giving, which he will
get accustomed to. This is the time you bow to the audience as if the
feat were finished, and when you give the second piece in an indifferent
manner, as if it were of no importance, the public will not see through
it.

"Just as you did not see through it," to resume the words of Brinton,
"though you watched me like a hawk."

"How simple!" said the enthusiastic listener.

"So simple," continued the wounded man with effort, "I'm sure you wonder
to yourself you never thought of it before."

Here he gasped for breath. After a pause he gathered himself together
for another effort, and went on.

"You tried it on Pompey. He was never trained, and of course you failed.
If you are afraid of handling Brutus, you can train Pompey--as I did
Brutus."

The tamer stopped again to get breath, and the pause was longer than
those which preceded it. He was weak unto death. The faint reflection of
a smile flitted over his features as he said in a hoarse whisper,

"My last performance now--no postponement--on account of the weather."

After another long pause, in the same hoarse whisper, he said,

"This secret--will be a fortune--to you, Jim Rounders. Now shake
hands--and let--me die."

And two hands clasped. One was warm, and pulsating with vigorous life,
but the other was dead. As Rounders held the lifeless one in his, he
resolved to renounce the ungrateful profession; but after the burial of
the dead tamer, the ruling passion took possession of him again, and he
did not rest until he had performed the "meat-jerk" with Brutus. Indeed,
he was not satisfied to walk in the footsteps of Brinton, but became in
his turn a creator of a Biblical drama, which he called "Daniel in the
Lion's Den."

                        ALBERT RHODES.




A WOMAN'S GIFTS.


    First I would give thee--nay, I may and will,
    Thoughts, memory, prayers, a sacred wealth unguessed,
    My soul's own glad and beautiful bequest,
    Conveyed in voiceless reverence, deep and still,
    As angels give their thoughts and prayers to God!
    Next I would yield, in service freely made,
    All of my days and years, thy needs to fill;
    To bear or heavy cross, or thorny rod,
    Glad of my bondage, deeming it most meet:
    Oh, mystery of love, as strange as sweet,
    That love from its own wealth should be repaid!
    Last, I would give thee, if it pleased thee so,
    And for thy pleasure, wishing it increased,
    My woman's beauty, heart and lips aglow;
    But this, dear, last--so soon its charm must fade,
    It is, indeed, of all my gifts, the least!

                        MARY AINGE DEVERE.




THE MODERN PYTHIA.


The arraignment of Dr. Slade, the spiritual medium, before a London
magistrate, on a charge of vagrancy, suggests the rather trite remark
that "history repeats itself."

Spiritualism is literally "as old as the hills." Lying in a manner
dormant through long years, it has had its periodical outcroppings; as,
when absolutely prohibited by an edict of Israel's first king, B. C.
1060; when it was abjured by the Council of Ancyra of Galatia, in A. D.
314; and again when ranking highest among the popular delusions of a
people boasting of their civilization and culture, in the year of our
Lord one thousand eight hundred and seventy-six.

Having its foundations in truth, there have not been found wanting, in
the remote past as in the present, unscrupulous persons ready to erect
on those foundations the most stupendous frauds.

The mental phenomena which have given rise to what is called
spiritualism are daily exhibited in some form or other in the life and
experience of almost every one. But the simplest and perhaps the most
interesting method of exhibition is by means of the little toy called
Planchette; a brief account of some experiments with which will best
serve to illustrate the nature of the phenomena in question.

The writer and a lady friend placing the tips of their fingers lightly
on the board, the following words were traced on the paper upon which it
was placed:

"Have you courage for the future?"

"Will you not faint by the roadside?"

"You will be beset by foes within and without."

"Lions in your pathway."

"Hope and trust--trust--trust."

On being asked to whom this applied, it answered:

"The heart that needs it will understand."

A question was then put by a bystander; but instead of answering, it
went on as though continuing the former train of thought:

"Hope and trust. You will have trials you know not of." And again, "Hope
and trust."

Here another question was put by a bystander, but instead of answer came
the words:

"You will find important letters awaiting you from home. Hope and
trust."

I then asked: "To whom are these words addressed?"

_Ans._--Soon enough you will know. Hope and trust.

To a question given mentally by a bystander it answered:

"Letters awaiting you. Hope and trust."

_Ques._--Letters from whom?

_Ans._--Your home and family.

_Ques._--From what place?

_Ans._--Soon enough you will know.

_Ques._--Are they all well at home?

_Ans._--With God all things are well.

Not being able to decipher this clearly, it repeated:

"With God all things are well. Trust Him."

I confess to having been impressed with these words, so solemn were
they, so oracular, and, as it then appeared, so fitly spoken. At the
time of making these experiments I was on board one of the Pacific Mail
steamships, on my way to San Francisco; and I had reason to be
particularly solicitous in regard to my future. But my companion, in
these my first experiments, just entering a new and untried field, had
far more cause of anxiety than myself in regard to the future. To her
these warnings seemed singularly applicable. Satisfied that my
coöperator exercised no voluntary control over the board, absolutely
certain the words were not emanations of my own mind, and impelled by
curiosity, I determined to try the effect of a few test questions, and,
ridiculous as it may appear, ascertain from the instrument itself
something of its nature.

Is there any power in Planchette, or is it merely a vehicle? I asked.

_Ans._--Inactive bodies have no active agency.

_Ques._--Whence come the words of Planchette--whence her intelligence?

_Ans._--From the seat of intelligence in the one who commands me.

_Ques._--Can you foretell coming events?

_Ans._--The future is not made known to man.

_Ques._--Can you give information not in the minds of the operators?

_Ans._--No, or in the mind of some one who works me.

_Ques._--What distinction do you make between the operator and the
worker?

_Ans._--The worker may be removed from the board.

_Ques._--Are you influenced by animal magnetism?

_Ans._--Entirely.

_Ques._--Are you influenced by electricity?

_Ans._--One and the same.

_Ques._--Do the minds of the present operators influence the answers?

_Ans._--Undoubtedly.

_Ques._--Is it the result of magnetism?

_Ans._--The power of giving out.

_Ques._--Giving out what?

_Ans._--Yielding magnetism.

_Ques._--Which of the operators influences you most?

_Ans._--Neither is worth without the other.

_Ques._--Have you communications with the spirit world?

_Ans._--Disembodied spirits--no.

_Ques._--Can you be put to any practical use?

_Ans._--Man will be introduced to the world of science.

_Ques._--Is your information concerning the ordinary affairs of life of
any practical value?

_Ans._--Not much, unless the worker is reliable as an informant.

_Ques._--What is magnetism?

_Ans._--Magnetism is the force of the universe.

_Ques._--What is electricity?

_Ans._--Electricity is the outward expression of the hidden force.

_Ques._--Has magnetism or electricity anything to do with the polarity
of the needle?

_Ans._--The interchange of magnetism throughout the entire universe.

_Ques._--Give a more definite answer.

_Ans._--Currents are exchanged from earth to air and from planet to
planet.

_Ques._--Do these affect the mariner's compass?

_Ans._--Yes.

_Ques._--Can we control the local attraction of the compass?

_Ans._--Yes.

_Ques._--How? I exclaimed excitedly, as the thought flashed through my
mind that I was on the eve of a great discovery.

_Ans._--By the substitution of some other attractive force?

_Ques._--Name one.

_Ans._--Magnetized iron.[3]

_Ques._--Can the compass be so constructed as to be uninfluenced by
local attraction?

_Ans._--No, inasmuch as all surroundings are themselves magnets or the
mediums of conveyance.

_Ques._--Can the approach of storms be foretold by the amount of
electricity in the air?

_Ans._--Storms are the disturbance of the equilibrium, and therefore can
be foretold when the atmospherical balance is understood.

_Ques._--Can you give information not in the minds of the operators?

_Ans._--Planchette is a tool, and does nothing of herself.

_Ques._--A tool in the hands of whom?

_Ans._--Of those who work her.[4]

Now if these various answers came from the minds of the "workers," we
were asking questions which we ourselves were answering, we will say,
unawares, out of the depths of our consciousness. As a seeker after
truth, therefore, I became as much involved as the dreamer spoken of by
Jeremy Taylor in one of his sermons. A man who implicitly believed in
dreams, he relates--in effect--dreamed one night that all dreams were
false. "If," reasoned he on awakening, "dreams are indeed false, then is
this one false; therefore they are true. But if, as I have always
supposed, they are true, then is this dream true; therefore they must be
false."

Planchette's oracular sayings became famous among the passengers who
thronged the room to hear its predictions and to ask questions. The trip
to which I refer was made in the early part of November, 1868, while the
Presidential election was in progress, and there was naturally great
curiosity on the part of the passengers to know how their several States
had voted.

Of the six States asked about, Planchette gave the majority in figures
for one candidate or the other. On comparing these figures subsequently
with the published returns, it was found that not one answer was
correct--_not a single answer was even approximately true_.

There was a certain shipmaster on board who had left his vessel in Rio
Janeiro, with directions to the mate to bring her to San Francisco, by
way of Cape Horn. The oracle was consulted as to the position of the
ship at that particular time. Without a moment's hesitation, the
latitude and longitude of the vessel were given, placing her somewhere
off Valparaiso (Chili). "That's just where _I_ put her!" cried the
master with an ejaculation of unfeigned surprise. On reaching San
Francisco shortly after, the vessel was discovered quietly tied up at
one of the wharves. I found too, on landing, that the prophecy, "You
will find important letters awaiting you from home," was not fulfilled,
neither in my case nor in that of the other "worker."

Now in the case of putting down the position of the merchant vessel, the
"worker" who was operating with me at the time did not know how to plot
the position of a ship at sea, after the manner of seamen; and although
the method of stating a ship's position was perfectly familiar to me,
yet I _anticipated_ that the answer in regard to her would have been
given in general and indefinite terms. What was my astonishment, then,
to find distinctly written out, "Latitude 35 deg. 30 min. S.; longitude
98 deg. 40 min. W." True this position was about four thousand miles out
of the way, but where did the answer, such as it was, come from?

Continued experiments proved that in every instance where Planchette
attempted to foretell an event, it failed ignominiously; and while it
replied to questions with the utmost effrontery, it was rarely correct,
unless indeed, as it shrewdly said itself, "the worker was reliable as
an informant."

Many months after these experiments, I found myself on the shores of
southern France. Here my associations were entirely different from those
I had known in the far-off Pacific, and, desirous of ascertaining how
Planchette would comport itself under the change of conditions, I
essayed further trials.

It will be sufficient to give one example of the answers given:

"What should one do," it was asked, "when life becomes unbearable?" The
answer was contained in one word, but written in such a scrawl as to be
illegible. The question was repeated, when the same word apparently was
written in reply, but still illegible. The question was put a third
time, when Planchette, with great energy, wrote in bold characters, and
distinct, the word PRAY. On comparing this with the former answers, they
were found to be the same.

The question, however, is not as to the degree of faith to be placed in
the words of Planchette, but why should it write at all?

In attempting to answer this question, I shall confine myself mainly to
the field of daily experience, and draw illustrations from such works
only as are familiar to the great majority of readers.

Our twofold nature has often been noticed and commented upon. It has
been said that we are possessed of two separate and distinct characters:
the outward, which we present to the world, and with which we are in
some degree familiar ourselves, and that inner, deeper part of which we
know so little.

St. Paul reveals the existence of our dual nature when he exclaims with
passionate fervor, "The good that I would I do not, but the evil which I
would not, that do I. I delight in the law of God after the _inner man_,
but I see _another law in my members_ warring against the law of my
mind." Xenophon gives, in the Cyropedia, a remarkable speech, expressing
almost precisely the same idea. Araspes, a young nobleman of Media, is
overwhelmed with mortification on being detected by Cyrus in an
indiscretion in regard to a captive princess. Chided by Cyrus, "Alas,"
said he, "now I am come to a knowledge of myself, and find most plainly
that I have two souls: one that inclines me to good, another that
incites me to evil ..."--the animal versus the spiritual nature,
referred to by St. Paul.

In another place St. Paul, speaking of the "Word of God," says it is
"quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even
to the _dividing asunder of soul and spirit_, and of the joints and
marrow...." Heb. iv. 12. Hence we may term the two elements of our
duality _soul_ and _spirit_, they being two separate and distinct
entities.

The learned Doctor Whedon, in commenting on the forty-fourth verse of
the fifteenth chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians, where the
great apostle speaks of the resurrection, says the expression natural
body, as distinct from spiritual body, fails utterly to convey to the
mind of the English reader the apostle's true idea. "If," he says, "we
assume a difference between soul and spirit, and coin the word
_soulical_ as the antithesis of _spiritual_, we present his exact idea.
The Greek word _psyche_, soul or life, when used as antithetical to
_pneuma_, spirit, signifies that animating, formative, and thinking soul
or _anima_ which belongs to the animal, and which man, as animal, shares
as his lower nature with other animals. Its range is within the limits
of the five senses, within which limits it is able to think and to
reason. Such is the power of the highest animals. Overlying this is the
spirit which man shares with higher natures, by which thought transcends
the range of the senses, and man thinks of immensity, eternity,
infinity, immortality, the beautiful, the holy, and God--it is certain
that man's mind possesses both these classes or sets of thought." Now in
regard to the higher of these elements, there are very many well
authenticated cases where the extreme susceptibility of the mind (the
seat of these elements) to outward impressions, and the reaction of the
mental sensation on the nervous system, has led to the most singular
and, in some instances, even fatal results. So marvellously delicate is
this portion of our organization, that we are not always conscious of
this reaction, and as the reaction is conveyed from the nerve centres to
the muscular tissue, we actually find ourselves uttering words or making
motions unconsciously. So sensitive is the brain through the influence
of this higher nature, so subtle its functions, that it is often
impressed by means indiscernible to the bodily eye or to the ordinary
senses--by means just as mysterious as the action of magnetic attraction
or the course of the electric wave.

Byron alludes to this exquisite susceptibility with no less of truth
than beauty:

    And slight withal may be the things which bring
    Back on the heart the weight which it would fling
    Aside for ever; it may be a sound,
    A tone of music, summer's eve or spring,
    A flower, the wind, the ocean, which shall wound,
    _Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound_.

    And how or why we know not, _nor can trace_
    _Home to its cloud this lightning of the wind_ ...

Having referred to the reaction of a mental sensation on the nervous
system, let us now examine the course by which the reaction proceeds.

We are told by physiologists that stimuli applied to the nerves in
certain cases induce contraction or motion in the muscles by direct
conduction of a stimulus along a nerve, or by the conduction of a
stimulus to a nervous centre, whence it is reflected along another nerve
to the muscles. Not only mechanical and electrical, but _psychical_
stimuli "excite the nerves, whether these are ideational, emotional, or
volitional. They proceed from the brain, being themselves sometimes
induced by external causes, and sometimes originating primarily in the
great nervous centres from the _operations of the instinct, the memory,
the reason, or the will_."

When a stimulus of any kind, whether mechanical, chemical, electrical,
or vital, acts upon the living nervous substance, it produces an
impression on that nerve substance and excites within it some particular
change, and the property by which this takes place in the nerve
substance has been called its excitability or neurility. But the nerve
substance not only receives such an impression from a stimulus and is
excited to such a change, but it possesses the property of conducting
that impression in certain definite directions, and this property might
be spoken of as conductility.

When such an impression is thus conducted simply along a nerve fibre,
and thence to a muscle, it induces or excites, as we have seen, the
contraction of that muscle, and so exercises what is called a _motor_
function.

The nerve cells appear to possess, beyond the simple excitability to
general stimuli, conductility, and the peculiar receptivity which is
essential to sensation, a special or more exalted kind of excitability
which is called into play under mental or psychical stimuli by the
changes produced in the gray matter[5] in the formation of ideas,
emotions, and the will.[6]

Now if two sympathetic nerve systems operated upon by psychical stimuli
be directed to one and the same point, it is by no means difficult to
understand how the brains belonging to those systems may be brought into
telegraphic communication by means of the nerve fibres, the product of
the two minds evolved, and the resultant idea, by means of a simple
mechanical contrivance operated upon by the motor function already
explained, be transmitted to paper by the process of writing so familiar
to both. The action of the psychical stimuli on the nerve fibre, and its
transmission thence to the muscles resulting in the movement of the
board, is so subtle that we ourselves are not aware of its operation
except through the results produced.

It has just been said that two minds may be brought into telegraphic
communication by means of nerve fibres. Let us see how far the
expression is justified by facts. There are few of us who have not
experienced the truth of Solomon's saying that "if two persons lie
together, they have _heat_; but how can one be warm alone?" Even the
close proximity of two persons affects their respective temperatures,
and heat and motion we know to be correlative. It has been shown by the
physicist that mechanical force producing motion is correlative with and
convertible into heat, heat into chemical force, chemical force into
electrical force, and electrical force into magnetic force. Moreover,
that each of these is correlative and convertible into the other, all
being thus interchangeable.

"Now it is not to be supposed that the force acting in a nerve is
identical with electrical force, nor yet a peculiar kind of electricity,
nor even physically induced by it, as magnetism may be, but that in the
special action of the living nerve a force is generated peculiar to that
tissue, which is so correlated with electricity that an equivalent of
the one may in some yet unknown manner excite, give rise to, or even be
converted into the other. In this concatenation of the several forces of
nature, physical and vital, the force acting in a nerve may also be
correlated with chemical force, with the heat developed in the muscle,
and even with the peculiar molecular motions which produce muscular
contraction and all its accompanying physical and mechanical
consequences." If, then, two brains, one in London and one in New York,
may be brought into communication with each other through their
respective nerve systems and the common medium of the electric wire, and
both brought to bear on one idea--say the rate of exchange, consols, or
the price of gold--is it to be wondered at that two other brains, in
close proximity, may be brought into communication through the media of
the nerve fibres which are operated upon by a force so similar to that
which courses along the electric wire? Or is it strange that the two
sympathetic minds--two minds having a strong affinity for each
other--should combine and generate ideas? and having produced them, is
it strange they should give them expression in writing? Before the days
of Franklin, this might indeed appear strange, but it surely cannot be
so considered now.

Such, then, is the rationale of what may be termed the automatic
writing, by means of Planchette, and such writing is simply a
manifestation of what has been named psychic force. Whether operated by
one or two persons, the rationale is the same.

There is reason to believe that the phenomenon just explained was known
to the ancients, and that it was the origin of the oracles which formed
so important a feature, at one period, in the history of Greece; such,
for example, as the "Whispering Groves of Dodona," and the yet more
famous oracle of Delphi.[7] It is worthy of remark that these oracles
were not established at the first by the Greeks themselves. They were of
_foreign_ origin, having been first introduced from Egypt, then the seat
of learning.

The secret of psychic force having been once discovered, it may easily
be conceived how it would be seized upon as a means of communicating, as
the pagans supposed, with beings of another world, and how readily the
more enlightened and designing would avail themselves of it as a means
to practise upon the credulity of a superstitious people. Such were the
cunning priesthood in the temples of pagan worship. They were quick to
take advantage of a discovery that offered so powerful a leverage, and
having once secured its services, they did not scruple to shape the
utterances to suit their own selfish ends. Frequently their answers were
so framed as to admit of a double interpretation.

Croesus consulted the oracle of Delphi on the success that would
attend his invasion of the Medes. He was told that by passing the river
Halys a great empire would be ruined. He crossed, and the fall of his
own empire fulfilled the prophecy. Sometimes they were couched in vague
and mysterious terms, leaving those who solicited advice to put whatever
construction upon them their hopes or fears suggested. Compare, for
example, the first specimen of writing given in this article with the
descriptions we read in ancient history of the utterances of the Delphic
oracle. How vague and indefinite are its warnings! and then the
continual recurrence of the solemn admonition, "Hope and trust"--does it
not seem prophetic of some evil hour, when all one's hope and faith were
to be tried to the utmost?

Suppose these words had been addressed to a superstitious person by the
priestess of a temple situated in the deep recesses of a dense forest,
among the toppling crags of some lofty mountain range, or near the
gloomy habitations of the dead: it could not have failed of making a
serious impression upon the mind. It was thus that the pagan priesthood
threw about their oracles everything that could inspire the mind of the
visitor with a sense of awe. We are told that the "sacred tripod" was
placed over the mouth of a cave whence proceeded a peculiar exhalation.

On this tripod sat the Pythia--the priestess of Apollo--who, having
caught the inspiration, pronounced her oracles in extempore prose or
verse. The cave and the exhalations were mere accessories, stage
properties as it were, the more readily to impose upon those who came
to consult the oracle. So of the "sacred tripod," which was the symbol
merely of the real instrument which had given birth to this system of
fraud.

Planchette, the "sacred tripod" of the ancients, uses language of
various styles. Sometimes it will not deign to speak at all; sometimes
its answers are vague and unmeaning; sometimes singularly concise and
pertinent.

A very striking point of similarity is the occasional irrelevancy of the
answers. Tisamenus, soothsayer to the Greek army, consulted the oracle
at Delphi concerning his lack of offspring, when he was told by the
Pythia that he would win five glorious combats; and when Battus asked
about his voice he was told "to establish a city in Libya abounding in
fleeces." Such freaks are common with the modern Pythia. The resemblance
is complete.

It is to the development of psychical force, as shown by Planchette,
that the phenomena known as mesmerism and the so-called spiritualism are
undoubtedly due. In some persons this force is found to exist
abnormally, when its manifestations are certainly extraordinary. The
trouble is that we are not always satisfied with its feeble and
uncertain utterances, and are too often impelled by cupidity or other
equally unworthy motive to practise the charlatanism of the crafty
priests of old.

In the time of Nebuchadnezzar the Chaldean priesthood, the magicians and
astrologers, and those who had understanding in all visions and dreams,
possessed all the learning of the known world. Much of their learning
was transmitted to Egypt and thence to Greece, but much of it we know
was lost to the world. From all that we can gather now, however, we may
feel assured that they were not ignorant of the existence of what has
been termed psychic force, or a sixth sense, or unconscious cerebration
(for our terminology in all speculations bordering: on the
"_unknowable_" must necessarily be uncertain), and as a neighboring
people, the Israelites, communicated with their God through that medium,
they supposed, as was natural, that they could communicate with their
gods in the same way. And they were perfectly sincere in that belief.
But in the process of time and migration the theology of the Greeks came
to bear little resemblance to that of the Chaldeans. The dignity of the
priestly office and the influence of the priesthood became greatly
diminished. That the religion of these several nations had one common
origin, and that the priests and prophets of God's chosen people had
many imitators among other nations, there is abundant proof.

The story of the origin of the Pythia, for example, contains points not
without resemblance to certain passages in our own early sacred history.
The Son of God is at enmity with the serpent; the serpent pursues a
woman, and is trodden under foot by the Son. Zeus is the god of the
Greeks; Apollo is his son; Leto--or Latona--is pursued by Python, the
serpent, and is slain by Apollo. To commemorate this deed a temple was
erected at Delhi to Apollo, and the priestess was called the Pythia.
Regarded as the symbol of wisdom by the Egyptians, the serpent came to
be considered by the Greeks as representing the principle of evil.[8]
Ages before this, however, the history of our first parents, the
temptation, and the fall, and the prophecy that the Son should bruise
the serpent's head, had been recorded. The wonderful Chaldeans too had
mapped out the same story among the eternal stars, their great designs
being still traceable on the celestial globes of our common schools.

But the intellectual Greek was not long to be imposed upon. Men who
could discourse on the immortality of the soul had not much faith in the
nonsense often put forth by a priestess of Apollo. Themistocles made a
tool of the oracle in order to serve his own purposes, and Demosthenes
publicly denounced it. Convinced that the oracle was subsidized by
Philip of Macedon, and instructed to speak in his favor, he boldly
declared that the Pythia _philippized_, and bade the Athenians and
Thebans remember that "Pericles and Epaminondas, instead of listening to
the frivolous answers of the oracle, the resort of the ignorant and
cowardly, consulted only reason in the choice of their measures."

Had there been a London magistrate at hand in the days of the great
Athenian orator, it would certainly have gone hard with the poor Pythia.

No observer of human nature can doubt that we are bound by an "electric
chain," and that we are liable to impressions, the sources of which are
often unknown to us. Nor can we doubt that there have been abnormally
sensitive persons, like Swedenborg, whose receptivity was such that the
brain could be impressed by means which would entirely fail with the
normal brain. But in respect to the professional mediums,
notwithstanding the antiquity of the class and their many advocates, it
remains to be shown where they have been of the slightest practical
utility, or served any good or useful end. Nay more. It remains to be
shown wherein the modern medium is entitled to a particle more of
respect than the medium of Endor.

                        S. B. LUCE.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] This answer is the more remarkable from the fact that my mind was
intent upon the revelation of some new theory, while the other operator
was not at all familiar with the subject. The simplicity of the answer,
and its statement of what had been the common practice for years past,
made me feel for the moment that I had been very cleverly hoaxed.

[4] In every instance the writing of Planchette has been copied
_verbatim_.

[5] The gray matter of the nervous centres, the precise nature of which
is unknown.

[6] "Outlines of Physiology."

[7] There is no doubt that spirit-writing is very ancient, China alone
furnishing sufficient evidence of the fact.

"Spirit-writing," says Taylor, "is of two kinds, according as it is done
with or without a material instrument. The first kind is in full
practice in China, where, like other rites of divination, it is probably
ancient. It is called 'descending of the pencil,' and is especially used
by the literary classes. When a Chinese wishes to consult a god in this
way, he sends for a professional medium. Before the image of the god are
set candles and incense, and an offering of tea or mock money. In front
of this on another table is placed an oblong tray of dry sand. The
writing instrument is a V-shaped wooden handle, two or three feet long,
with a wooden tooth fixed at its point. Two persons hold this
instrument, each grasping one leg of it, and the point resting on the
sand. Proper prayers and charms induce the god to manifest his presence
by a movement of the point in the sand, and thus the response is
written, and there only remains the somewhat difficult and doubtful task
of deciphering it...."--_"Primitive Culture." By Ed. B. Taylor. Vol. I.,
p. 133._

[8] The serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field; "Be ye wise
as serpents."--_Bible._




ALNASCHAR.

1876.


    Here's yer toy balloons! All sizes.
    Twenty cents for that. It rises
    Jest as quick as that 'ere, Miss,
    Twice as big. Ye see it is
    Some more fancy. Make it square
    Fifty for 'em both. That's fair.

    That's the sixth I've sold since noon.
    Trade's reviving. Just as soon
    As this lot's worked off I'll take
    Wholesale figgers. Make or break,
    That's my motto! Then I'll buy
    In some first-class lottery:
    One half ticket, numbered right--
    As I dreamed about last night.

    That'll fetch it. Don't tell me!
    When a man's in luck, you see,
    All things help him. Every chance
    Hits him like an avalanche.
    Here's your toy balloons, Miss. Eh?
    You won't turn your face this way?
    Mebbe you'll be glad some day!

    With that clear ten-thousand prize
    This yer trade I'll drop, and rise
    Into wholesale. No! I'll take
    Stocks in Wall street. Make or break,
    That's my motto! With my luck,
    Where's the chance of being stuck?
    Call it Sixty Thousand, clear,
    Made in Wall street in one year.

    Sixty thousand! Umph! Let's see.
    Bond and mortgage'll do for me.
    Good. That gal that passed me by
    Scornful like--why, mebbe I
    Some day'll hold in pawn--why not?--
    All her father's prop. She'll spot
    What's my little game, and see
    What I'm after's her. He! he!

    He! he! When she comes to sue--
    Let's see. What's the thing to do?
    Kick her? No! There's the perliss!
    Sorter throw her off like this!
    Hello! Stop! Help! Murder! Hey!
    There's my whole stock got away!
    Kiting on the house tops! Lost!
    All a poor man's fortin! Cost?
    Twenty dollars! Eh! What's this?
    Fifty cents! God bless ye, Miss!

                        BRET HARTE.




AUT DIABOLUS AUT NIHIL.

THE TRUE STORY OF A HALLUCINATION.


The career of the Abbé Gérard had been an eminently successful
one--successful in every way; and even he himself was forced to
acknowledge it to be so as he reviewed his past life, sitting by a
blazing fire in his comfortable apartment in the Rue Miromeuil previous
to dressing for the Duc de Frontignan's dinner-party. Born of poor
parents in the south of France, entering the priesthood at an early age,
having received but a meagre education, and that chiefly confined to a
superficial knowledge of the most elementary treatises on theology, he
had, in twenty-five years, and solely by his own exertions, unaided by
patronage, obtained a most desirable berth in one of the leading Paris
churches, thereby becoming the recipient of a handsome salary and being
enabled to indulge his tastes as a dilettante and _homme du monde_. The
few hours snatched from those absorbed by his parochial duties he had
ever devoted to study, and his application and determination had borne
him golden fruit. Moreover, he had so cultivated his mind, and made such
good use of the rare opportunities afforded him in early life of
associating with gentlemen, that when now at length he found his
presence in demand at every house in the "Faubourg" where wit and
graceful learning were appreciated, no one would ever have suspected he
had not been bred according to the strictest canons of social
refinement.

But in his upward progress such had been his experience of life that
when, during the brief intervals of breathing time he allowed himself,
he would look below and above, he was forced to confess that at every
step a belief, an illusion had been destroyed and trodden under foot,
and he would wonder, while bracing himself for a new effort, how it
would all end, and whether the mitre he lusted for would not after all,
perhaps, be placed upon a head that doubted even the existence of a God.
He was not a bad man, but merely one of that class who have embraced the
priesthood merely as a means of raising themselves from obscurity to
eminence, and have in their intercourse with the world discovered many
flaws and blemishes in what they may at one time have considered
perfect. When his reason rejected many of the fables hitherto cherished
and believed in, the Abbé Gérard was at the beginning inclined to
abandon in despair the attempt to discern the true from the false, and
this all the more that he saw the time thus spent was, in a worldly
sense, but wasted, and that the good things of this world come to such
reapers as gather wheat and tares alike, well knowing there is a market
for them both.

During a certain period, therefore, of his struggle upward, while his
worldly ambition was aiding by sly insinuations and comparisons the
deadly work already begun by the destruction of his dreams, Henri Gérard
was nigh being an atheist. But the nature of the man was too finely
sensual for this phase to be lasting, and when at length he found
himself so far successful in his worldly aspirations as to be tolerably
sure of their complete fulfilment; when at length he found time to
examine spiritual matters apart from their direct bearing upon his
social altitude, his æsthetic sense--which by this time had necessarily
developed--he was struck by the exquisite _beauty_ of Christianity, and
thus, as a shallow philosophy had nearly induced him to become an
atheist, a deep and sensual spirit of sentimentality nearly made him a
Christian. His Madonna was the Madonna of Raphael, not that of Albert
Dürer: the woman whose placid grace of countenance creates an emotion
more subtly voluptuous than desire; not she in whose face can be
discerned the human mother of the Man of Sorrows and of Him divinely
acquainted with all grief. The Holy Spirit he adored was not the Friend
of the broken-hearted or the Healer of the blind Bartimoeus, but He
"who feedeth among the lilies"--the Alpha and Omega of all æsthetic
conception. Christianity he looked upon as the highest moral expression
of artistic perfection, and he regarded it with the same admiration he
accorded to the Antinous and the Venus of Milo. He was not, however, by
nature a pagan as some men are--men who, in the words of De Musset,
"Sont venu trop tard dans un monde trop vieux"; but the atmosphere in
which his early years had been spent had been so antagonistic to the
impulses of his nature, his inner life had been so cramped in and
starved, that when at length the key of gold opening the prison door let
in the outer air, his spirit revelled in all the wild extravagance so
often accompanying sudden and long wished-for emancipation. His nature
was perhaps not one that could have been attuned to a perfect harmony
with that of a Greek or Roman of the golden days, but one better
calculated to enjoy the hybrid atmosphere of the Italian Renaissance;
and he would have been in his element in the Rucellai Gardens,
conversing with feeble little Cosimino, or laughing with Buondelmonte
and Luigi Alamanni. He did not believe in the narrative of the Bible,
but its precepts and tendencies he appreciated and admired, although, it
must be confessed, he did not always put himself out to follow them. In
his heart he utterly rejected all idea of a future life, since it was
incompatible with his conception of the artistic unity of this; but he
would blandly acknowledge to himself that there are perhaps things we
cannot comprehend, and that beauty may have no term. He assimilated, so
far as in him lay, his duties as a priest with his ideas as a man of
culture; and his sermons were ever of love; sermons which, winged as
they were with impassioned eloquence, were deservedly popular with all:
from the scholar, who delighted in them as intellectual feasts, to the
fashionable Paris woman of the second empire, who was enchanted at
finding in the quasi-fatalistic and broadly charitable views enunciated
therein means whereby her vulgar amours might be considered in a light
more pleasing to herself and more consoling to her husband.

On the Sunday afternoon preceding the evening on which we introduce him
to the reader the Abbé had departed from his usual custom, and, by
especial request of his curé, had preached a most remarkable sermon upon
the Personality of Satan. It is a vulgar error to suppose that men
succeed best when their efforts are enlivened by a real belief in the
matter in hand. Not only some men have such a superabundance of fervid
imagination that they can, for the time being, provoke themselves into a
pseudo belief in what they know in their saner moments to be false, but
moreover a large class of men are endowed with minds so restless and so
finely strung that they can play with a sophism with marvellous
dexterity and skill, while lacking that vigorous and comprehensive grasp
of mind which the lucid exposition of a hidden truth necessitates. The
Abbé Gérard belonged a little to both these classes of beings; and
moreover, his vanity as an intellectual man provoked him to
extraordinary exertions in cases wherein he fancied he might win for
himself the glory of strengthening and verifying matters which in
themselves perhaps lacked almost the elements of existence. "Spiritual
truths," he once cynically remarked to Sainte-Beuve, whom, by the way,
he detested, "will take care of themselves; it is the nursing of
spiritual falsehood which needs all the care of the clergy." On the
Sunday in question he had surpassed himself. With biting irony he had
annihilated the disbelievers in Divine punishment, and then, with
persuasive and overwhelming eloquence, he had urged the necessity of
believing not only in hell, but in the personality of the Prince of
Evil. Women had fainted in their terror; men had been frightened into
seeking the convenient solace of the confessional, and the Archbishop
had written him a letter of the warmest thanks.

It was a triumph which a man of the nature of the Abbé Gérard
particularly enjoyed. The idea of finding himself the successful reviver
of an inanimate doctrine, while secretly conscious that he was, in
reality, a skeptic in matters of dogmatically vital importance, was to a
mind so prone to delight in paradoxes eminently agreeable. It pleased
him to see the letter of the Archbishop lying upon a volume of Strauss,
and to read the glowing and extravagant praise lavished on him in the
pages of the "Univers" after having enjoyed a sparkling draught of
Voltaire.

Such was the Abbé Gérard--the type of a class. The Duc de Frontignan,
with whom he was dining on the evening this story opens, was or rather
_is_ in many ways a no less remarkable personage in Paris society.
Possessing rank, birth, and a splendid income, he had inherited more
than a fair share of the good gifts of Providence, being endowed not
only with considerable mental power, but with the tact to use that power
to the best advantage. Although beyond doubt _clever_, he was
universally esteemed a much more intellectual man than he really was,
and this through no voluntary deceitfulness on his part, but owing to a
method he had unconsciously adopted of exhibiting his wares with their
most favorable aspect to the front. He was well read, but not deeply
read, and yet all Paris considered him a profound scholar; he was quick
and epigrammatic in his appreciation and expression of ideas, as men of
cultivation and varied experience are apt to be, but he enjoyed the
reputation of being a wit, and finally having merely lounged through the
world, impelled by a spirit of restlessness, begotten of great wealth
and idleness, society looked upon him as a bold and adventurous
traveller. One gift he most certainly possessed: he was vastly amusing
and entertaining, and resembled in one respect the Abbé Galiani, as
described by Diderot; for he was indeed "a treasure on rainy days, and
if the cabinet-makers made such things, everybody would have one in the
country." He not only knew everybody in Paris, but he possessed an
extraordinary faculty of drawing people out, and forcing them to make
themselves amusing. No man was in his society long before he discovered
himself openly discussing his most cherished hobby, or airily
scattering as seed for trivial conversation the fruit of long years of
experience and reflection. His hotel in the Rue de Varenne was the
resort of all that was most remarkable and extraordinary in the
fashionable, the artistic, the diplomatic, and the scientific world. His
intimacy with the Abbé Gérard was one of long standing: they mutually
amused each other; the keen intellect of the priest found much that was
interesting in the shallow but attractive and brilliant nature of the
layman; while the Duke entertained feelings of the warmest admiration
for a man who, having risen from nothing, enlivened the most exclusive
coteries with his graceful learning and charming wit.

It was one of the peculiar whims of Octave de Frontignan never to have
an even number of guests at his dinner table. His soirées indeed were
attended by hundreds, but his dinner parties rarely exceeded seven
(including himself), and in many cases he only invited two. On this
especial occasion the only guest asked to meet the Abbé Gérard was the
celebrated diplomatist and millionaire the Prince Paul Pomerantseff.
This most extraordinary personage had for the past six years kept Europe
in a constant state of excitement by reason of his munificence and
power. Brought up under the direct personal supervision of the Emperor
of Russia, he had done a little of everything and succeeded in all he
had undertaken. He had distinguished himself as a diplomatist and as a
soldier, and had left traces of his indomitable will in many State
papers as on many an enemy's face during the period of the Crimean war.
In London, but perhaps more especially in "the shires," his face was
well known and liked. Duchesses' daughters had sighed for him, but in
vain; and the continuance of his celibacy appeared to be as certain as
the splendor of his fortune. The Abbé Gérard had known him for many
years, and proved no exception to the general rule, for although their
friendship had never ripened into great intimacy, there was perhaps no
man in the wide circle of his acquaintance in whose society the priest
took a more lively pleasure.

"Late as usual!" cried the Duke, as Gérard hurried into the room ten
minutes after the appointed hour. "Prince, if you were so unpunctual in
your diplomatic duties as the Abbé is in his social (and I _fear_ in his
spiritual!), where would the world be?"

The Abbé stopped short, pulled out his watch, and looked at it with a
comically contrite air.

"Only ten minutes late, and I am sure when you think of the amount of
business I have to transact you can afford to forgive me," he said as he
advanced and shook hands warmly with his friends.

"You have no idea," he continued, throwing himself lazily down upon a
lounge--"you have no idea of the amount of folly I am forced to listen
to in a day! Every woman whose bad temper has got her into trouble with
her husband, and every man whose stupidity has led him into quarrelling
with his wife--one and all they come to me, pour out their misfortunes
in my ears, and expect me to arrange their affairs."

The servant announcing dinner interrupted the poor Abbé's complaints.

"I tell you what I should do," said Pomerantseff when they were seated
at table. "I should say to every man and woman who came to me on such
errands, 'My dear friend, my business is with your spiritual welfare,
and with that alone. The doctor and solicitor must take care of your
worldly concerns. It is my duty to insure your eternal felicity when the
tedium of delirium tremens and the divorce court is all over, and that
is really all one man can do.'"

"By the way, talking of spiritual matters," interrupted the Duke,
"Pomerantseff has been telling me his experience with a man you detest,
Abbé."

"I detest no man."

"I can only judge from your own words," rejoined Frontignan. "Did you
not tell me years ago that you thought Home a more serious evil than the
typhoid fever?"

"Ah, Home the medium!" cried Gérard in great disgust. "I admit you are
right. It is not possible, Prince, that you encourage Frontignan in his
absurd spiritualism."

The Prince smiled gravely.

"I do not pretend to encourage any man in anything, _mon cher Abbé_."

"But you cannot believe in it!"

"I do most certainly believe in it."

"_Dieu de Dieu!_" exclaimed Gérard. "What folly! What are we all coming
to?"

"It has always struck me as remarkable," said the Duke, "that with all
your taste for the curious and unknown, you have never been tempted into
investigating the matter, Abbé."

"I am, as you say, a lover of the curious," replied the priest, "but not
of such empty trash as spiritualism. I have enough cares with the
realities of this world without bringing upon myself the misery of
investigating the possibilities of the next."

"That is a sentiment worthy of Abbé Dubois," said Pomerantseff laughing,
and then the Duke, suddenly making some inquiry relative to the train
which was to take him and the Prince to Brunoy on a shooting expedition
the following morning, the subject for the nonce was dropped. It was
destined, however, to be revived later in the evening, for when after
dinner they were comfortably ensconced in the _tabagie_, Frontignan, who
had been greatly excited by some extraordinary manifestations related to
him by the Prince before the arrival of the Abbé, said abruptly:

"Now, Gérard, you must really let us convert you to spiritualism."

"Never!" cried the Abbé.

"It is absurd for you to disbelieve, for you know nothing about it,
since you have never been willing to attend a _séance_."

"I _feel_ it is absurd, and that is enough."

"I myself do not exactly believe in _spirits_," said Frontignan
thoughtfully.

"_À la bonne heure!_ Of course not!" cried the Abbé. "You see, Prince,
he is not quite mad after all!"

The Prince said nothing.

"I cannot doubt the existence of some extraordinary phenomena,"
continued the young Duke thoughtfully; "for I cannot bring myself to
such an exquisite pitch of philosophical imbecility as to doubt my own
senses; but, to my thinking, the exact nature of the phenomena, remains
as yet an open question. I have a theory of my own about it, and
although it may be absurd and fantastical, it is certainly no more so
than that which would have us believe the spirits of the dear old lazy
dead come back to the scenes of their lives and miseries to pull our
noses and play tambourines."

"And may I ask you," inquired the Prince, with a touch of sarcasm in his
voice, "what this theory of yours may be?"

"I will give you," said the Duke, ignoring the sneer, and stretching
himself back in his chair as he sent a ring of smoke curling daintily
toward the ceiling--"I will give you with great pleasure the result of
my reflection about this matter. It is my belief that the things--the
tangible things we create, or rather cause to appear, come from within
ourselves, and are portions of ourselves. We produce them, in the first
instance, generally with hands linked, but afterward when our nervous
organizations are more harmonized to them, they come to us of
themselves, and even against our wills. It is my belief that these are
what we term our passions and our emotions, to whose existence the
electric fluid and nervous ecstasy we cause to circulate and induce by
sitting with hands linked, merely gives a tangible and corporeal
expression. We all know that grief, joy, remorse, and many other
sensations and emotions can kill as surely and in many cases as quickly
as an assassin's dagger, and it is a well known scientific fact that
there are certain nerves in the hand between certain fingers which have
a distinct _rapport_ with the mind, and by which the mind can be
controlled. Since this is so, why is it that under certain given
conditions, such as sitting with hands linked--that thus sitting, and
while the electric fluid, drawn out by the contact of our hands, forms a
powerful medium between the inner and the outward being--why is it, I
say, that these strong emotions I have mentioned should not take
advantage of this strange river flowing to and fro between the
conceptional and the visual to float before us for a time, and give us
an opportunity of seeing and touching them, who influence our every
action in life? It is my belief that I can shake hands with my emotions;
that my conscience can become tangible and pinch my ear just as surely
as it can and does keep people awake at night by agitating their nervous
system, or in other words, by mentally pinching their ears."

"That is certainly a very fantastical idea," said the Abbé smiling. "But
if you have ever seen any of your emotions, what do they look like? I
should like to see my hasty temper sitting beside me for a minute; I
should take advantage of his being corporealized to pay him back in his
own coin, and give him a good thrashing."

"It is difficult," said the Duke gravely, "to recognize one's emotions
when brought actually face to face with them, although they have been
living in us all our lives--turning our hair gray or pulling it out;
making us stout or lean, upright or bent over. Moreover, our minor
emotions, except in cases where the medium is remarkably powerful,
outwardly express themselves to us as perfumes, or sometimes in lights.
I have reason, however, to believe I have recognized my conscience."

"I should have thought he'd have been too sleepy to move out!" laughed
the Prince.

"That just shows how wrongly one man judges another," said Octave
lazily, without earnestness, but with a certain something in his tone
that betokened he was dealing with realities. "You probably think that I
am not much troubled with a conscience; whereas the fact is that my
conscience, with a strong dash of remorse in it, is a very keen one.
Many years ago a certain episode changed the whole color and current of
my life inwardly to myself, although of course outwardly I was much the
same. Now, this episode aroused my conscience to a most extraordinary
degree, and I never 'sit' now without seeing a female figure; with a
face like that of the heroine of my episode, dressed in a queer robe,
woven of every possible color except white, who shudders and trembles as
she passes before me, holding in her arms large sheets of glass, through
which dim Bohemian glass colors pass flickering every moment."

"What a very disagreeable thing to see this weather," said the
Abbé--"everything shuddering and shaking!"

"Have you ever discovered why she goes about like the wife of a
glazier?" asked the Prince.

"For a long time I could not make out what they could be, these large
panes of glass with variegated colors passing through them; but now I
think I know."

"Well?"

"They are dreams waiting to be fitted in."

"Bravo!" cried the Abbé. "That is really a good idea! If I had only the
pen of Charles Nodier, what a charming _feuilleton_ I could write about
all this!"

Pomerantseff laid his hand affectionately on the Duke's shoulder. "_Mon
cher ami_," he said with a grave smile, "believe me, you are wholly at
fault in your speculations. Gérard here of course, naturally enough,
since he has never been willing to 'sit,' thinks we are both madmen, and
that the whole thing is folly; but you and I, who have sat and seen many
marvellous manifestations, know that it is not folly. Take the word of
a man who has had greater experience in the matter than yourself, and
who is himself a most powerful medium: the theory you have just
enunciated is utterly false."

"Prove that it is false."

"I cannot prove it, but wait and see."

"Nay; I have given it all up now. I will not meddle with spiritualism
again. It unhinged my nerves and destroyed my peace of mind while I was
investigating it."

The Prince shrugged his shoulders.

"Prince, leave him alone," said the Abbé smiling. "His theory is a great
deal more sensible than yours; and if I could bring myself to believe
that at your _séances_ any real phenomenon _does_ take place (which of
course no sane person can), I should be much more apt to accept
Frontignan's interpretation of the matter. Let us follow it out a little
further, for the mere sake of talking nonsense. Doubtless the dominant
passion of a man would be the most likely to appear--that is to say,
would be the most tangible."

"That would depend," replied the Duke, "upon circumstances. If the
phenomenon should take place while the man is alone, doubtless it would
be so; but if while at a _séance_ attended by many people, the
apparition would be the product of the master passions of all, and thus
it is that many of the visions which appear at _séances_ where the
sitters are not harmonized are most remarkable and unrecognizable
anomalies."

"I thought I understood from Mme. de Girardin that certain spirits
always appeared."

"Pooh, pooh! Mme. de Girardin never went deep enough into the matter.
The most ravishing vision I ever saw was when I fancied I saw love."

"What? Love! An emanation from yourself?"

The Duke sighed.

"Ah, that is what proved to me that what I saw could not be love. That
sentiment has been too long extinguished in me to awaken to a corporeal
expression."

"What made you think it was love?" asked Pomerantseff.

"It was a white dove with something I cannot express that was human
about it. I felt ineffably happy while it was with me."

"Your theory is false, I tell you," said the Russian. "What you saw
probably was love."

"Then it would have been God!" cried the Abbé.

"Why?"

"I believe with Novalis that 'love is the highest reality,'" replied
Gérard; then he added with a laugh, "No, Duke, what you saw was an
emanation from yourself--a master passion. It was the corporeal
embodiment of your love of pigeon-shooting!"

"Perhaps," laughed the Duke.

"I tell you what, _mon ami_," said Pomerantseff rising, as he saw the
Abbé making preparations to depart. "I am glad that my appetite,
corporealized and separated from my discretion, is not in your wine
cellar. Your Johannisberg would suffer!"

"Prince, you must drive me home," said the Abbé. "I cannot get into a
draughty cab at this hour of the night."

"_Très volontiers!_ Good night, Duke. Remember to-morrow morning, at
half-past nine, at the Gare de Lyon," said the Prince.

"Remember to-morrow night at half-past ten, at Mme. de Langeac's,"
bawled the Abbé; and so they left. The young nobleman hurried down the
cold staircase and into the Prince's brougham.

"What a pity," exclaimed the Abbé when they were once fairly started,
"that a man with all the mind of De Frontignan should give himself up to
such wild ideas and dreams!"

"You are not very complimentary," rejoined the other smiling gravely;
"for you know that so far as believing in spirits I am as bad if not
worse than he is."

"Ah, but _you_ are jesting."

"On my honor as a gentleman, I am not jesting. See here." As he spoke
Pomerantseff seized the Abbé's hand. "You heard me tell the Duke just
now that I believed he had seen the spirit of love. Well, the sermon you
preached the day before yesterday, which all Paris is talking about, and
in which you endeavored to prove the personality of the devil to be a
fact, was truer than perhaps you believed when you preached it. Why
should not Frontignan have seen the spirit of love _when I know and have
seen the devil_?"

"_Mon ami_, you are insane!" cried Gérard. "Why, the devil does not
exist!"

"I tell you I have seen him--the God of all Evil, the Prince of
Desolation!" cried the other in an excited voice. "And what is more, _I
will show him to you_!"

"Show the devil to _me_!" exclaimed the Abbé, half terrified, half
amused. "Why, you are out of your mind!"

The Prince laid his other hand upon the arm of the Abbé, who could feel
he was trembling with excitement.

"You know my address," he said in a quick, passionate voice. "When you
feel--as I tell you you surely will--desirous of investigating this
further, send for me, and I promise, on my honor as a gentleman, to show
you the devil, so that you cannot doubt. I will do this on one
condition."

The Abbé felt almost faint; for apart from the wildness of the words
thus abruptly and unexpectedly addressed to him, the hand of the Prince
which lay upon his own, as if to keep him still, seemed to be pouring
fire and madness into him. He tried to withdraw it, but the other
grasped the fingers tight.

"On one condition," repeated Pomerantseff in a lower tone.

"What condition?" murmured the poor Abbé.

"That you trust yourself entirely to me until we reach the place of
meeting."

"Prince, let go my hand! You are hurting me! I will promise to do as you
say when I want to go to your infernal meeting."

He wrenched his hand away, pulled down the carriage window and let the
cold night air in.

"Pomerantseff, you are a madman; you are dangerous. Why the devil did
you grasp my hand in that way? My arm is numb."

The Prince laughed.

"It is only electricity. I was determined, since you doubted the
existence of the devil, to make you promise to come and see him."

"I never promised!" exclaimed the Abbé. "I only promised to trust myself
to you if the horrible desire should ever seize me to investigate your
mad words further. But you need not be afraid of that. God forbid I
should indulge in such folly!"

The Prince smiled.

"God has nothing to do with this," he remarked simply. "You will come."

The carriage had now turned up the street in which the Abbé lived, and
they were but a few doors from his house.

"My dear Prince," said Gérard earnestly, "let me say a few words to you
at parting. You know I am not a bigot, so that your words--which many
might think blasphemous--I care nothing about; but remember we are in
the Paris of the nineteenth century, not in the Paris of Cazotte, and
that we are eminently practical nowadays. Had you asked me to go with
you to see some curious atrocity, no matter how horrible, I might, were
it interesting, have accepted; but when you invite me to go with you to
see the devil you really must excuse me; it is too absurd."

"Very well," replied Prince Pomerantseff. "Of course I know you will
come; but think the matter over well. Remember, I promise to show the
devil to you so that you can never doubt of his personality again. This
is not one of the wonders of electro-biology, but simply a fact: _the
devil exists, and you shall see him_. Good night."

Gérard, as he turned into his _porte cochère_, and made his way up
stairs, was more struck than perhaps he confessed even to himself by the
quiet tone of certainty and assurance in which the Prince uttered these
words; and on reaching his apartment he sat down by the blazing fire,
lighted a cigarette, and began considering in all its bearings what he
felt convinced was a most remarkable case of mania and mental
derangement. In the first place, was the Prince deceived himself, or
merely endeavoring to deceive another? The latter theory he at once
rejected; not only the character and breeding of the man, but his
nervous earnestness about this matter, rendered such a supposition
impossible. Then he himself was deceived--and yet how improbable! Gérard
could remember nothing in what he knew or had heard of the Prince that
could lead him to suppose his brain was of the kind charlatans and
pseudo-magicians can successfully bewitch. On the contrary, although of
a country in which the grossest superstitions are rife, he himself had
led such an active, healthy life, partly in Russia and partly in
England, that his brain could hardly be suspected of derangement. An
intimate and practical acquaintance with most of the fences in "the
shires," and all the leading statesmen of Europe, can hardly be
considered compatible with a morbid disposition and superstitious
nature.

No; the Abbé confessed to himself that the man who deceived Pomerantseff
must have been of no ordinary ability. That he had been deceived was
beyond all question, but it was certainly marvellous. In practical
matters, the Abbé was even forced to confess to himself, he would
unhesitatingly take the Prince's advice, sooner than trust to his own
private judgment; and yet here was this model of keen, healthy, worldly
wisdom gravely inviting him to meet the devil face to face, and not only
this, but promising that it should be no unintelligible freak of
electro-biology, but as a simple fact. Gérard smoked thirty cigarettes
without coming to any satisfactory solution of the enigma. What if after
all he, the Abbé Gérard, for once should abandon the line of conduct he
had laid down for himself, and, to satisfy his curiosity, and perhaps
with the chance of restoring to its proper equilibrium a most valuable
and comprehensive mind, overlook his determination never to endanger his
peace of mind by meddling with the affairs of spiritualists? He could
picture to himself the whole thing: they would doubtless be in a
darkened room; an apparition clothed in red, and adorned with the
traditional horns, would make its appearance, and there would very
likely be no apparent evidence of fraud. Even supposing some portion of
the absurd theory enunciated by the Duke de Frontignan were true, and
some strange thing begotten of electric fluid and overwrought
imagination were to make its appearance, that could hardly be considered
by a sane man as being equivalent to an interview with the devil. The
Abbé told himself that it would be most likely impossible to _detect_
any fraud, but he felt convinced that should the Prince find this
phenomenon pooh-poohed, after a full investigation, by a man of sense
and culture, his faith in it would be shaken, and ere long he would come
to despise it.

All the remarkable stories he had heard about spiritualism from Mme. de
Gérardin and others, and which he hitherto paid no heed to, came back
to-night to the Abbé as he sat ruminating over the extraordinary offer
just made him. He had heard of dead people appearing, and _that_ was
sufficiently absurd, for he did not believe in a future life; but the
devil----The idea was preposterous! Poor Luther, indeed, might throw his
ink-pot at him, but no enlightened Roman Catholic priest could be
expected to believe in his existence, no matter how much he might be
forced--for obvious reasons--to preach about it, and represent it as a
fact in sermons. Yes; he would unhesitatingly consent to investigate the
matter, and discover the fraud he felt certain was lurking somewhere,
but that the Prince seemed to feel so certain of his consent; and he
feared by thus fulfilling an idly expressed prophecy to plunge the
unhappy man still deeper in his slough of superstition. One thing was
certain, the Abbé told himself with a smile--nothing on earth or from
heaven or hell--if the two latter absurdities existed--could make _him_
believe in the devil. No, not even if the devil should come and take him
by the hand, and all the hosts of heaven flock to testify to his
identity. By this time, having smoked and thought himself into a state
of blasphemous idiocy, our worthy divine threw away his cigarette, went
to bed, and read himself into a nightmare with a volume of Von Helmont.
The following morning still found him perplexed as to what course to
adopt in this matter. As luck (or shall we say--the devil?) would have
it, while he was trifling in a listless way with his breakfast, there
called to see him the only priest in whose judgment, purity, and
religious fervor he had any confidence. It is probable, to such an
extent was his mind engrossed by the subject, that no matter who might
have called, he would have discussed the extraordinary conduct of Prince
Pomerantseff with him; but insomuch as the visitor chanced to be the
very man best calculated to direct his judgment in the matter, he,
without unnecessary delay, laid the whole affair before him.

"You see, _mon cher_," said Gérard in conclusion, "my position is just
this: It appears to me that this person, whom I will not name, has been
trifled with by Home and other so-called spiritualists to such an extent
that his mind is really in danger. Now, although of course we are
forbidden to have any dealings with such people, or to participate in
any way in their infamous, foolish, and unholy practices, surely it
would be the act of a Christian if a clear, healthy-minded man were to
expose the fraud, and thus save to society a man of such transcendent
ability as my friend. Moreover, should I determine to accept his mad
invitation, I hardly think I could be said to participate in any of the
scandalous and perhaps blasphemous rites he may have to perform to bring
about the supposed result. What do you think of it, and what do you
advise?"

His friend walked up and down the room for a few minutes, turning the
matter over carefully in his mind, and then, coming up to where the Abbé
lay lazily stretched upon a lounge, he said earnestly,

"_Mon cher_ Henri, I am very glad you have asked me about this. It
appears to me that your duty is quite clear. You perhaps have it in your
power, as you yourself have seen, to save, not only, as you say, a
_mind_, but what I wish I could feel you prized more highly--a soul. You
must accept the invitation."

The Abbé rose in delight at having found another man who, taking the
responsibility off his shoulders, commanded him as a duty to indulge his
ardent curiosity.

"But," continued the other in a solemn voice, "before accepting, you
must do one thing."

The Abbé threw himself back on the lounge in disgust.

"Oh, pray, of course," he exclaimed petulantly. "I am quite aware of
that."

"Not only pray, but _fast_, and that for seven days at least, my dear
brother."

This was a very disagreeable view of the matter, but the Abbé was equal
to the occasion. After a pause, during which he appeared absorbed in
religious reflection, he rose, and taking his friend by the hand--

"You are right," said he, "as you always are. Although of course I know
the evil spirit cannot harm an officer of God's Holy Catholic church,
even supposing, for the sake of argument, my poor friend can invoke
Satan, yet if I am to do any good, if I am to save my friend from
destruction, I must be armed with extraordinary grace, and this, as you
truly divine, can only come by fasting."

The other wrung his hand warmly. "I knew you would see it in its proper
light, my dear Henri," he said, "and now I will leave you to recover
your peace of mind by religious meditation."

The Abbé smiled gravely, and let his friend depart. The following letter
was the result of this edifying interview between the two divines:

     "MON CHER PRINCE: No doubt you will feel very triumphant when
     you learn that my object in writing this letter is to accept
     your offer of presentation to _Sa Majesté_; but I do not care
     whether you choose to consider this yielding to what is only in
     part whimsical curiosity a triumph or no. I will not write to
     you any cut-and-dried platitudes about good and evil, but I
     frankly assure you that one of the strongest reasons which
     induces me to go with you on this fool's errand is a belief
     that I can discover the absurdity and imposture, and cure you
     of a hallucination which is unworthy of you.

                        "_Tout à vous_,

                            "HENRI GÉRARD."

For two days he received no reply to this letter, nor did he happen, in
the interval, to meet the Prince in society, although he heard of him
from De Frontignan and others; but on the third day the following note
was brought to him:

     "MON CHER AMI: There is no question of triumph, any more than
     there is of deception. I will call for you this evening at
     half-past nine. You must remember your promise to trust
     yourself entirely to me.

                        "_Cordialement à vous_,

                            "POMERANTSEFF."

So the matter was now arranged, and he, the Abbé Gérard, the renowned
preacher of the celebrated ---- church, was to meet that very night, by
special appointment, at half-past nine, the Prince of Darkness; and this
in January, in Paris--at the height of the season in the capital of
civilization. As may be well imagined, during the remainder of that
eventful day, until the hour of the Prince's arrival, the Abbé did not
enjoy his customary placidity. A secretary of the Turkish embassy who
called at four found him engaged in a violent discussion with one of the
Rothschilds about the early Christians' belief in demons, as shown by
Tertullian and others, while Lord Middlesex, who called at half-past
five, found he had captured Faure, installed him at the piano, and was
inducing him to hum snatches from "Don Juan." When his dinner hour
arrived, having given orders to his valet to admit no one lest he should
be discovered _not_ fasting, he hastily swallowed a few mouthfuls,
fortified himself with a couple of glasses of Chartreuse verte, and
lighting an enormous "imperial," awaited the coming of the messenger of
Satan. At half-past nine o'clock precisely the Prince arrived. He was in
full evening dress (but contrary to his usual custom, wearing no
decoration or ribbon in his buttonhole), and his face was of a deadly
pallor.

"_Mon Dieu!_" exclaimed the Abbé, "What is the matter with you, _mon
cher_? You are looking very ill. We had better postpone our visit."

"No; it is nothing," replied the Prince gravely. "Let us be off without
delay. In matters of this sort waiting is unbearable."

The Abbé rose, and rang the bell for his hat and cloak. The appearance
of the Prince, his evident agitation, and his unfeigned impatience,
which seemed to betoken terror, were far from reassuring, but the Abbé
promptly quelled any misgivings he might have felt. Suddenly a thought
struck him; a thought which certainly his brain would never have
engendered had it been in its normal condition.

"Perhaps I had better change my dress, and go _en pékin_?" he inquired
anxiously.

The ghost of a sarcastic smile flitted across the Prince's face, as he
replied,

"No, certainly not. Your _soutane_ will be in every way acceptable.
Come, let us be off."

The Abbé made a grimace, put on his hat, flung his cloak around his
shoulders, and followed the Prince down stairs. He remarked with some
surprise that the carriage awaiting them was not the Prince's.

"I have hired a carriage for the occasion," remarked Pomerantseff
quietly, noticing Gerard's glance of surprise. "I am unwilling that my
servants should suspect anything of this."

They entered the carriage, and the coachman, evidently instructed
beforehand where to go, drove off without delay. The Prince immediately
pulled down the blinds, and taking a silk pocket handkerchief from his
pocket, began quietly to fold it lengthwise.

"I must blindfold you, _mon cher_," he remarked simply, as if announcing
the most ordinary fact.

"_Diable!_" cried the Abbé, now becoming a little nervous. "This is very
unpleasant! I believe you are the devil yourself."

"Remember your promise," said Pomerantseff, as he carefully covered his
friend's eyes with the pocket handkerchief, and effectually precluded
the possibility of his seeing anything until he should remove the
bandage. After this nothing was said. The Abbé heard the Prince pull up
the blind, open the window, and tell the coachman to drive faster. He
endeavored to discover when they turned to the right, and when to the
left, but in a few minutes got bewildered and gave it up in despair. At
one time he felt certain they were crossing the river.

"I wish I had not come," he murmured to himself. "Of course the whole
thing is folly, but it is a great trial to the nerves, and I shall
probably be upset for many days."

On they drove; the time seemed interminable to the Abbé.

"Are we near our destination yet?" he inquired at last.

"Not very far off," replied the other, in what seemed to Gérard a most
sepulchral tone of voice. At length, after a drive of perhaps half an
hour, but which seemed to the Abbé double that time, Pomerantseff
murmured in a low tone, and with a profound sigh which sounded almost
like a sob, "Here we are," and at that moment the Abbé felt the carriage
was turning, and heard the horses' hoofs clatter on what he imagined to
be the stones of a courtyard. The carriage stopped. Pomerantseff opened
the door himself, and assisted the blindfolded priest to alight.

"There are five steps," he said as he held the Abbé by the arm. "Take
care."

The Abbé stumbled up the five steps. They had now entered a house, and
Gérard imagined to himself it was probably some old hotel, like the
Hôtel Pimodan, where Gautier, Beaudelaire, and others at one time were
wont to assemble to disperse the cares of life in the fumes of opium.
When they had proceeded a few yards, Pomerantseff warned him that they
were about to ascend a staircase, and up many shallow steps they went,
the Abbé regretting every instant more and more that he had allowed his
vulgar curiosity to lead him into an adventure which could be productive
of nothing but ridicule and shattered nerves. When at length they had
reached the top of the stairs, the Prince guided him by the arm through
what the Abbé imagined to be a hall, opened a door, closed and locked it
after them, walked on again, opened another door, which he closed and
locked likewise, and over which the Abbé heard him pull a heavy curtain.
The Prince then took him again by the arm, advanced him a few steps, and
said in a low whisper, "Remain quietly standing where you are, and do
not attempt to remove the pocket handkerchief until you hear voices."

The Abbé folded his arms and stood motionless while he heard the Prince
walk away a few yards. It was evident to the unfortunate priest that the
room in which he stood was not dark, for although he could see nothing,
owing to the pocket handkerchief, which had been bound most skilfully
over his eyes, there was a sensation of being in strong light, and his
cheeks and hands felt, as it were, illuminated. Suddenly a horrible
sound sent a chill of terror through him--a gentle noise as of naked
flesh touching the waxed floor--and before he could recover from the
shock occasioned by the sound, the voices of many men, voices of men
groaning or wailing in some hideous ecstasy, broke the stillness,
crying--"Father of all sin and crime, Prince of all despair and anguish,
come to us, we implore thee!"

The Abbé, wild with terror, tore off the pocket handkerchief. He found
himself in a large, old-fashioned room, panelled up to the lofty ceiling
with oak, and filled with great light, shed from innumerable tapers
fitted into sconces on the wall--light which, though naturally _soft_,
was almost fierce by reason of its greatness, for it proceeded from at
least two hundred tapers. He had then been after all right in his
conjectures: he was evidently in a chamber of some one of the many
old-fashioned hotels which are to be seen in the Ile St. Louis, and
indeed in all the antiquated quarters of Paris. It was reassuring, at
all events, to know one was not in Hades, and to feel tolerably certain
that a sergeant de ville could not be many yards distant. All this
passed into his comprehension like a flash of lightning, for hardly had
the bandage left his eyes ere his whole attention was riveted upon a
group before him.

Twelve men--Pomerantseff among the number--of all ages, from twenty-five
to fifty-five, all dressed in evening dress, and all, so far as one
could judge at such a moment, men of culture and refinement, knelt or
rather lay nearly prone upon the floor, with hands linked. They were
bowing forward and kissing the floor--which might account for the
strange sound heard by Gérard--and their faces were illuminated with a
light of hellish ecstasy--half distorted as if in pain, half smiling as
if in triumph. The Abbé's eyes instinctively sought out the Prince. He
was the last on the left hand side, and while his left hand grasped that
of his neighbor, his right was sweeping nervously over the floor as if
seeking to animate the boards. His face was more calm than those of the
others, but of a deadly pallor, and the violet tints about the mouth and
temples showed he was suffering from intense emotion. They were all,
each one after his own fashion, praying aloud, or rather moaning, as
they writhed in ecstatic adoration.

"Oh, Father of Evil, come to us!"

"Oh, Prince of Endless Desolation, who sitteth by the bed of suicides,
we adore thee!"

"Oh, creator of eternal anguish! oh, king of cruel pleasures and
famishing desires, we worship thee!"

"Come to us, with thy foot upon the hearts of widows, thy hair lucid
with the slaughter of innocence, and thy brow wreathed with the chaplet
of despair!"

The heart of the Abbé turned cold and sick as these beings, hardly human
by reason of their great mental exaltation, swayed before him.

Suddenly--or rather the full conception of the fact was sudden, for the
influence had been gradually stealing over him--he felt a terrible
coldness, a coldness more piercing than any he had before experienced
even in Russia; and with the coldness there came to him the certain
knowledge of the presence of some new being in the room. Withdrawing his
eyes from the semi-circle of men, who did not seem to be aware of his,
the Abbé's, presence, and who ceased not in their blasphemies, he
turned them slowly around, and as he did so they fell upon a newcomer, a
thirteenth, who seemed to spring into existence from the air before his
very eyes.

He was a young man of apparently twenty, very tall, with bright golden
hair falling from his forehead like a girl's. He was dressed in evening
dress, and his cheeks were flushed as if with wine or pleasure, but from
his eyes there gleamed a look of inexpressible sadness, of intense
despair. The group of men had evidently become aware of his presence at
the same moment, for they all fell prone upon the floor adoring, and
their words were now no longer words of invocation, but words of praise
and worship. The Abbé was frozen with horror; there was no room in his
breast for the lesser emotion of fear; indeed, the horror was so great
and all-absorbing as to charm and hold him spellbound. He could not
remove his eyes from the thirteenth, who stood before him calmly, with a
faint smile playing over his intellectual and aristocratic face--a smile
which only added to the intensity of the despair gleaming in his clear
blue eyes. Gérard was struck first with the sadness, then with the
beauty, and then with the intellectual vigor of that marvellous
countenance. The expression was not unkind: haughtiness and pride could
be read only in the high-bred features, short upper lip, and nobly
moulded limbs; for the face betokened, save for the flush upon the
cheeks, only great sadness. The eyes were fixed upon those of Gérard,
and he felt their soft, subtle, intense light penetrate into every nook
and cranny of his soul and being. This being simply stood and gazed upon
the priest as the worshippers grew more wild, more blasphemous, more
cruel. The Abbé could think of nothing but the face before him, and the
great desolation that lay folded over it as a veil. He could think of no
prayer, although he could remember there were prayers. Was this
despair--the despair of a man drowning in sight of land--being shed
into him from the sad blue eyes? Was it despair, or was it death? Ah,
no; not death. Death was peaceful, and this was violent and lively. Was
there no refuge, no mercy, no salvation anywhere? Perhaps, but he could
not remember while those sad blue eyes still gazed upon him. He could
not remember, and still he could not entirely forget. He felt that help
would come to him if he sought it, and yet he could hardly tell how to
seek it. Moreover, by degrees the blue eyes--it seemed as if their
color, their great blueness, had some fearful power--began pouring into
him a more hideous pleasure. It was the ecstasy of great pain, becoming
a delight, the ecstasy of being beyond all hope and of being thus
enabled to look with scorn upon the author of hope. The blue eyes still
gazed sadly with a soft smile of despair upon him. Gérard knew that in
another moment he would not sink, faint, or fall, but that he would--oh,
much worse!--he would smile. At this very instant a name--a familiar
name, and one which the infernal worshippers had made frequent use of,
but which he had never remarked before--struck his ear; the name of
Christ. Where had he heard it? He could not tell. It was the name of a
young man; he could remember that, and nothing more. Again the name
sounded--"Christ." There was another word like Christ which seemed at
some time to have brought an idea first of great suffering and then of
great peace. Aye, peace, but no pleasure. No delight like this shed from
these marvellous blue eyes. Again the name sounded--"Christ."

Ah! the other word was cross (_croix_). He remembered now; along thing
with a short thing across it.

Was it that as he thought of these things the charm of the blue eyes and
their great sadness lessened in intensity? We dare not say, but as some
faint conception of what a cross was flitted through the Abbé's brain,
although he could think of no prayer, of no distinct use of this cross,
he drew his right hand slowly up, and feebly made the sign across his
breast.

The vision vanished.

The men adoring ceased their clamor, and lay crouched up against each
other as if some strong electric power had been taken from them, and
great weakness had succeeded. But for a moment; and then they rose
trembling and with loosened hands, and stood for an instant feebly
gazing at the Abbé, who felt faint and exhausted, and heeded them not.
With extraordinary presence of mind, the Prince walked quickly up to
him, pushed him out of the door by which they had entered, followed him,
and locked the door behind them, thus precluding the possibility of
being immediately pursued by the others. Once in the next room, the Abbé
and Pomerantseff paused for an instant to recover breath, for the
swiftness of their flight had exhausted them, worn out as they both were
mentally and physically; but during this brief interval the Prince, who
appeared to be retaining his presence of mind by a merely mechanical
effort, carefully replaced over his friend's eyes the bandage which the
Abbé held tightly grasped in his hand. Then he led him on, and it was
not until the cold air struck them that they noticed they had left their
hats behind.

"_N'importe!_" muttered Pomerantseff. "It would be dangerous to return";
and hurrying the Abbé into the carriage which awaited them, he bade the
coachman speed them away "_au grand galop_!"

Not a word was spoken; the Abbé lay back as one in a swoon, and heeded
nothing until he felt the carriage stop, and the Prince uncovered his
eyes and told him he had reached home. He alighted in silence, and
passed into his house without a word. How he reached his apartment he
never knew, but the following morning found him raging with fever and
delirious. When he had sufficiently recovered, after the lapse of a few
days, to admit of his reading the numerous letters awaiting his
attention, one was put into his hand which had been brought on the
second night after the one of the memorable _séance_. It ran as follows:

                              "JOCKEY CLUB, January 26, 186-.

     "MON CHER ABBÉ: I am afraid our little adventure was too much
     for you; in fact, I myself was very unwell all yesterday, and
     nothing but a Russian bath has pulled me together. I can hardly
     wonder at this, however, for I have never in my life been
     present at so powerful a _séance_, and you may comfort yourself
     with the reflection that _Son Altesse_ has never honored any
     one with his presence for so long a space of time before. Never
     fear about your illness; it is merely nervous exhaustion, and
     you will be well soon; but such evenings must not often be
     indulged in if you are not desirous of shortening your life. I
     shall hope to meet you at Mme. de Metternich's on Monday.

                        "_Tout à vous_,

                            "POMERANTSEFF."

Whether or no Gérard was sufficiently recovered to meet his friend at
the Austrian embassy on the evening named, we do not know, nor does it
concern us; but he is certainly enjoying excellent health now, and is no
less charming than before his extraordinary adventure.

Such is the true story of a meeting with the devil in Paris not many
years ago; a story true in every particular, as can be easily proved by
a direct application to any of the persons concerned in it, for they are
all living still. The key to the enigma we cannot find, for we certainly
do not put faith in any of the theories of spiritualists; but that an
apparition such as we have described did appear in the way and under the
circumstances we have described, is a fact, and we must leave the
satisfactory solution of the difficulty to more profound psychologists
than ourselves.




ON READING SHAKESPEARE.

CONCLUSION.


Probably no play of Shakespeare's, probably no other play or poem of a
high degree of merit, is so much neglected as "Troilus and Cressida" is.
I have met intelligent readers of Shakespeare, who thought themselves
unusually well acquainted with his writings, and who were so, who
understood him and delighted in him, but who yet had never read "Troilus
and Cressida." They had, in one way and another, got the notion that it
is a very inferior play, and not worth reading, or at least not to be
read until after they were tired of all the others--a time which had not
yet come. There seems to be a slur cast upon this play; the reason of
which is its very undramatic character, and the consequent
non-appearance of its name in theatrical records. No one has heard of
any actor's or actress's appearance, even in the last century, as one of
the personages in "Troilus and Cressida." Its name has not been upon the
playbills for generations, although even "Love's Labor's Lost" has once
in a while been performed. Hence it is almost unknown, except to the
thorough Shakespearian readers, who are very few; fewer now, in
proportion to the largely increased leisurely and instructed classes,
than they were two hundred years ago, much to the shame of our vaunted
popular education and diffusion of knowledge. And yet this neglected
drama is one of its author's great works; in one respect his greatest.
"Troilus and Cressida" is Shakespeare's wisest play in the way of
worldly wisdom. It is filled choke-full of sententious, and in most
cases slightly satirical revelations of human nature, uttered with a
felicity of phrase and an impressiveness of metaphor that make each one
seem like a beam of light shot into the recesses of man's heart. Such
are these:

                     In the reproof of chance
    Lies the true proof of men.

              The wound of peace is surety;
    Surety secure; but modest doubt is called
    The beacon of the wise.

    What is aught, but as 'tis valued?

                     'Tis mad idolatry
    To make the service greater than the god.

    A stirring dwarf we do allowance give
    Before a sleeping giant.

    'Tis certain greatness once fall'n out with fortune
    Must fall out with men too; what the declin'd is
    He shall as soon read in the eyes of others
    As feel in his own fall; for men, like butterflies,
    Show not their mealy wings but to the summer;
    And not a man, for being simply man,
    Hath any honor.

Besides passages like these, there are others of which the wisdom is
inextricably interwoven with the occasion. One would think that the
wealth of such a mine would be daily passing from mouth to mouth as the
current coin of speech; and yet of all Shakespeare's acknowledged plays,
there are only two, "The Comedy of Errors" and "The Winter's Tale,"
which do not furnish more to our store of familiar quotations than this
play does, rich though it is with Shakespeare's ripest thought and most
splendid utterance. And yet by a strange compensating chance, it
furnishes the most often quoted line; a line which not one in a million
of those that use it ever saw where Shakespeare wrote it, or if they had
any brains behind their eyes, they would not use it as they do. For by
another strange chance it happens that this line is entirely perverted
from the meaning which Shakespeare gave it. As it is constantly quoted,
it is not Shakespeare's. The line is:

    One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

This has come to be always quoted with the meaning implied in the
following indication of emphasis: "One touch of _nature_ makes the
_whole world_ kin." Shakespeare wrote no such sentimental twaddle. Least
of all did he write it in this play, in which his pen "pierces to the
dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow, and is
a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." The line which
has been thus perverted into an exposition of sentimental brotherhood
among all mankind, is on the contrary one of the most cynical utterances
of an undisputable moral truth, disparaging to the nature of all
mankind, that ever came from Shakespeare's pen. Achilles keeps himself
aloof from his fellow Greeks, and takes no part in the war, sure that
his fame for valor will be untarnished. Ulysses contrives to provoke him
into a discussion, and tells him that his great deeds will be forgotten
and his fame fade into mere shadow, and that some new man will take his
place, unless he does something from time to time to keep his glory
bright. For men forget the great thing that was done, in favor of the
less that is done now.

    For time is like a fashionable host
    That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
    And with his arms outstretched as he would fly,
    Grasps in the comer. Welcome ever smiles,
    And farewell goes out sighing. O let not virtue seek
    Remuneration for the thing it was;
    For beauty, wit,
    High birth, vigor of bone, desert in service,
    Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
    To envious and calumniating time.

And then he immediately adds that there is one point on which all men
are alike, one touch of human nature which shows the kindred of all
mankind--that they slight familiar merit and prefer trivial novelty. The
next lines to those quoted above are:

    One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,
    That all with one consent praise new-born gauds.
    Though they are made and moulded of things past;
    And give to dust that is a little gilt
    More sand than gilt oe'rdusted.

The meaning is too manifest to need or indeed to admit a word of
comment, and it is brought out by this emphasis: "_One_ touch of nature
makes the _whole world kin_"--that one touch of their common failing
being an uneasy love of novelty. Was ever poet's or sage's meaning so
perverted, so reversed! And yet it is hopeless to think of bringing
about a change in the general use of this line and a cessation of its
perversion to sentimental purposes, not to say an application of it as
the scourge for which it was wrought; just as it is hopeless to think of
changing by any demonstration of unfitness and unmeaningness a phrase in
general use--the reason being that the mass of the users are utterly
thoughtless and careless of the right or the wrong, the fitness or the
unfitness, of the words that come from their mouths, except that they
serve their purpose for the moment. That done, what care they? And what
can we expect, when even the "Globe" edition of Shakespeare's works has
upon its very title-page and its cover a globe with a band around it, on
which is written this line in its perverted sense, that sense being
illustrated, enforced, and deepened into the general mind by the union
of the band-ends by clasped hands. I absolve, of course, the Cambridge
editors of the guilt of this twaddling misuse of Shakespeare's line; it
was a mere publisher's contrivance; but I am somewhat surprised that
they should have even allowed it such sanction as it has from its
appearance on the same title-page with their names.

The undramatic character of "Troilus and Cressida," which has been
already mentioned, appears in its structure, its personages, and its
purpose. We are little interested in the fate of its personages, not
merely because we know what is to become of them, for that we know in
almost any play which has an historical subject; but the play is
constructed upon such a slight plot that it really has neither dramatic
motive nor dramatic movement. The loves of "Troilus and Cressida" are of
a kind which are interesting only to the persons directly involved in
them; Achilles's sulking is of even less interest; and the death of
Hector affects us only like a newspaper announcement of the death of
some distinguished person, so little is he really involved in the action
of the drama. There is also a singular lack of that peculiar
characteristic of Shakespeare's dramatic style, the marked distinction
and nice discrimination of the individual traits, mental and moral, of
the various personages. Ulysses is the real hero of the play; the chief,
or at least the great purpose of which is the utterance of the Ulyssean
view of life; and in this play Shakespeare is Ulysses, or Ulysses
Shakespeare. In all his other plays Shakespeare so lost his personal
consciousness in the individuality of his own creations that they think
and feel as well as act like real men and women other than their
creator, so that we cannot truly say of the thoughts and feelings which
they express, that Shakespeare says thus or so; for it is not
Shakespeare who speaks, but they with his lips. But in Ulysses,
Shakespeare, acting upon a mere hint, filling up a mere traditionary
outline, drew a man of mature years, of wide observation, of profoundest
cogitative power, one who knew all the weakness and all the wiles of
human nature, and who yet remained with blood unbittered and soul
unsoured--a man who saw through all shams and fathomed all motives, and
who yet was not scornful of his kind, not misanthropic, hardly cynical
except in passing moods; and what other man was this than Shakespeare
himself? What had he to do when he had passed forty years but to utter
his own thoughts when he would find words for the lips of Ulysses? And
thus it is that "Troilus and Cressida" is Shakespeare's wisest play. If
we would know what Shakespeare thought of men and their motives after he
reached maturity, we have but to read this drama; drama it is, but with
what other character who shall say? For, like the world's pageant, it
is neither tragedy nor comedy, but a tragi-comic history, in which the
intrigues of amorous men and light-o'-loves and the brokerage of panders
are mingled with the deliberations of sages and the strife and the death
of heroes.

The thoughtful reader will observe that Ulysses pervades the serious
parts of the play, which is all Ulyssean in its thought and language.
And this is the reason or rather the fact of the play's lack of
distinctive characterization. For Ulysses cannot speak all the time that
he is on the stage; and therefore the other personages, such as may,
speak Ulyssean, with, of course, such personal allusion and peculiar
trick as a dramatist of Shakespeare's skill could not leave them without
for difference. For example, no two men could be more unlike in
character than Achilles and Ulysses, and yet the former, having asked
the latter what he is reading, he, uttering his own thought, says as
follows with the subsequent reply:

    _Ulyss._--A strange fellow here
    Writes me: That man, how dearly ever parted,[9]
    How much in having, or without or in,
    Cannot make boast to have that which he hath
    Nor feels not what he owes but by reflection,
    As when his virtues shining upon others
    Heat them, and they retort that heat again
    To the first giver.

    _Achil._--This is not strange, Ulysses.
    The beauty that is borne here in the face
    The bearer knows not, but commends itself
    To others' eyes; nor doth the eye itself,
    That most pure spirit of sense, behold itself,
    Not going from itself; but eye to eye opposed,
    Salutes each other with each other's form,
    For speculation turns not to itself
    Till it hath travelled and is mirror'd there
    Where it may see itself. This is not strange at all.

Now these speeches are made of the same metal and coined in the same
mint; and they both of them have the image and superscription of William
Shakespeare. No words or thoughts could be more unsuited to that bold,
bloody egoist, "the broad Achilles," than the reply he makes to Ulysses;
but here Shakespeare was merely using the Greek champion as a lay figure
to utter his own thoughts, which are perfectly in character with the
son of Autolycus. Ulysses thus flows over upon the whole serious part of
the play. Agamemnon, Nestor, Æneus, and the rest all talk alike, and all
like Ulysses. That Ulysses speaks for Shakespeare will, I think, be
doubted by no reader who has reached the second reading of this play by
the way which I have pointed out to him. And why, indeed, should Ulysses
not speak for Shakespeare, or how could it be other than that he should?
The man who had written "Hamlet," "King Lear," "Othello," and "Macbeth,"
if he wished to find Ulysses, had only to turn his mind's eye inward;
and thus we have in this drama Shakespeare's only piece of introspective
work.

But there is another personage who gives character to this drama, and
who is of a very different sort. Thersites sits with Caliban high among
Shakespeare's minor triumphs. He was brought in to please the mob. He is
the Fool of the piece, fulfilling the functions of Touchstone, and
Launce, and Launcelot, and Costard. As the gravediggers were brought
into "Hamlet" for the sake of the groundlings, so Thersites came into
"Troilus and Cressida." As if that he might leave no form of human
utterance ungilded by his genius, Shakespeare in Thersites has given us
the apotheosis of blackguardism and billingsgate. Thersites is only a
railing rascal. Some low creatures are mere bellies with no brain.
Thersites is merely mouth, but this mouth has just enough coarse brain
above it to know a wise man and a fool when he sees them. But the
railings of this deformed slave are splendid. Thersites is almost as
good as Falstaff. He is of course a far lower organization
intellectually, and somewhat lower, perhaps, morally. He is coarser in
every way; his humor, such as he has, is of the grossest kind; but still
his blackguardism is the ideal of vituperation. He is far better than
Apemantus in "Timon of Athens," for there is no hypocrisy in him, no
egoism, and, comfortable trait in such a personage, no pretence of
gentility. For good downright "sass" in its most splendid and aggressive
form, there is in literature nothing equal to the speeches of Thersites.

"Troilus and Cressida" is also remarkable for its wide range of style,
because of which it is a play of great interest to the student of
Shakespeare, who here adapted his style to the character of the matter
in hand. The lighter parts remind us of his earlier manner; the graver
are altogether in his later. He did this unconsciously, or almost
unconsciously, we may be sure. None the less, however, is the play
therefore valuable in a critical point of view, but rather the more so.
It is a standing and an undeniable warning to us not to lean too much
upon any one special trait of style in estimating the time in
Shakespeare's life at which a play was produced. Moreover it illustrates
the natural course of style development, showing that it is not only
gradual, but not by regular degrees; that is, that a writer does not
pass at one period absolutely from one style to another, dropping his
previous manner and taking on another, but that he will at one time
unconsciously recur to his former manner or manners, and at a late
period show traces of his early manner. Strata of his old fashion thrust
themselves up through the newer formation. "Troilus and Cressida" is so
remarkable in this respect that the chief of the absolute-period
critics, the Rev. Mr. Fleay, has been obliged to invent a most
extraordinary theory to account for it. His view is that there are three
plots interwoven, each of which is distinct in manner of treatment, and,
moreover, that each of these was composed at a different time from the
other two. He would have us believe that the parts embodying the Troilus
and Cressida story were written in Shakespeare's earliest period, those
concerning Hector in his middle period, and the Ajax parts in the last.
That these three stories were interwoven is manifest; but they came
naturally together in this Greek historical play--for it is that--and
their interweaving was hardly to have been avoided; the manner of each
is not distinct from that of the other, although there is, with
likeness, a noticeable unlikeness; but the notion that therefore
Shakespeare first wrote the Troilus and Cressida part as a play, and
then years afterward added the Hector part, and again years afterward
the Ajax and Ulysses part, seems to me only a monstrous contrivance of
an honest and an able man in desperate straits to make his theory square
with fact. As to detail upon this subject, I shall only notice one
point. Tag-rhymes, or rhymed couplets ending a scene or a speech in
blank verse or in prose, are regarded by the metre-critics (and justly
within reason) as marks of an early date of composition. Now in "Troilus
and Cressida" these abound. It contains more of them than any other
play, except one or two of the very earliest. The important point,
however, is that these rhymes appear no less in the Ulysses and Ajax
scenes of the play than in the others--a sufficient warning against
putting absolute trust in such evidence.

Among those few of Shakespeare's plays which are least often read is
"All's Well that Ends Well." This one, however, is to the earnest
student one of the most interesting of the thirty-seven which bear his
name; not only because it contains some of his best and most thoughtful
work, but because, being Shakespeare's all through, it is written in two
distinct styles--styles so distinct that there can be no doubt that as
it has come down to us it is the product of two distinct periods of his
dramatic life, and those the most distant, the first and the last. Its
singularity in this respect gives it a peculiar value to the student of
Shakespeare's style and of his mental development. There is not an
interweaving of styles as in "Troilus and Cressida"; the two are
distinctly separable; and there is external historical evidence which
supports the internal.

We have a record in Francis Meres's "Palladis Tamia" of a play by
Shakespeare called "Love's Labor's Won"; and there is no reasonable
doubt that that was the first name of "All's Well that Ends Well." As
the "Palladis Tamia" was published in 1598, this play was produced
before that year, and all the evidence, internal and external, goes to
show that Shakespeare wrote it soon after "Love's Labor's Lost," and as
a counterpart to that comedy. The difference of its style in various
parts had been remarked upon in general terms; but I believe that this
difference was first specially indicated in the following passage, which
I cannot do better here than to quote from the introduction to my
edition of the play published in 1857; and I do so with the greater
freedom because the particular traits which it discriminated have been
lately, in the present year, insisted upon by the Rev. Mr. Fleay, in his
very useful and suggestive, but not altogether to be trusted
"Shakespeare Manual," to which I have before referred.

"It is to be observed that passages of rhymed couplets, in which the
thought is somewhat constrained and its expression limited by the form
of the verse, are scattered freely through the play, and that these are
found side by side with passages of blank verse in which the thought, on
the contrary, so entirely dominates the form, and overloads and weighs
it down, as to produce the impression that the poet, in writing them,
was almost regardless of the graces of his art, and merely sought an
expression of his ideas in the most compressed and elliptical form. The
former trait is characteristic of his youthful style; the latter marks a
certain period of his maturer years. Contracted words, which Shakespeare
used more freely in his later than in his earlier works, abound; and in
some passages words are used in an esoteric sense, which is distinctive
of the poet's style about the time when 'Measure for Measure' was
produced. Note, for instance, the use of 'succeed' in 'owe and succeed
thy weakness,' in Act II., Sc. 4 of that play, and in 'succeed thy
father in manners,' Act I., Sc. 1 of this. It is to be observed also
that the advice given by the Countess to Bertram when he leaves
Rousillon is so like that of Polonius to Laertes in a similar situation,
that either the latter is an expansion of the former, or the former a
reminiscence of the latter; and as the passage is written in the later
style, the second supposition appears the more probable. Finally, it is
worthy of remark that both the French officers who figure in this play
as First Lord and Second Lord are somewhat strangely named _Dumain_, and
that in 'Love's Labor's Lost' Dumain is also the name of that one of the
three attendants and brothers in love of the King who has a post in the
army; which, when taken in connection with other circumstances, is at
least a hint of some relation between the two plays."

If the reader who has gone thoughtfully through the plays in the course
which I have indicated will take up this one, he will find in the very
first scene evidence and illustration of these views. It is almost
entirely in prose, which itself shows the weight of Shakespeare's mature
hand. The first blank verse is the speech of the Countess, in which she
gives a mother's counsel to Bertram as he is setting out for the wars,
as is pointed out above, and which is unmistakably of the "Hamlet"
period. Then comes a speech by Helen beginning,

    O were that all! I think not on my father:
    And these great tears grace his remembrance more
    Than those I shed for him--

and ending with this charming passage, referring to the growth of her
love for Bertram:

                'Twas pretty, though a plague,
    To see him every hour; to sit and draw
    His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls
    In our heart's table; heart too capable
    Of every line and trick of his sweet favor:
    But now he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy
    Must sanctify his reliques. Who comes here?

It is needless to say to the advanced student of Shakespeare's style
that this is in his later manner. A little further on is Helen's speech
to the detestable Parolles, beginning with the mutilated line, "Not my
virginity yet," which is followed by some ten, in which she pours out in
Euphuistic phrase her love for Bertram, saying that he has in her "a
mother, and a mistress, and a friend, a counsellor, a traitress, and a
dear"; and yet further,

    His humble ambition, proud humility,
    His jarring concord, and his discord dulcet,
    His faith, his sweet disaster, with a world
    Of pretty, fond, adoptious Christendoms
    That blinking Cupid gossips.

This will remind the reader of Scott's Euphuist, Sir Piercie Shafton,
who, if I remember aright, uses some of these very phrases, in which
Shakespeare has beaten Lilly at his own weapons, and made his affected
phraseology the vehicle of the touching utterance of real feeling.
"Euphues" was published in 1580, when Shakespeare was only sixteen years
old; and this passage, although it may have been written or perhaps
altered later, was probably a part of the play as it was first produced.
The scene ends with the following speech by Helen, which, for its
peculiar characteristics, is worth quoting entire. The reader who will
compare it with "Love's Labor's Lost" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
will have not a moment's doubt as to the time when it was written:

    Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie
    Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky
    Gives us free scope, only doth backward pull
    Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.
    What power is it which mounts my love so high
    That makes me see and cannot feed mine eye?
    The mightiest space in fortune nature brings
    To join like likes and kiss like native things.
    Impossible be strange attempts to those
    That weigh their pains in sense and do suppose
    What hath been cannot be: whoever strove
    To show her merit that did miss her love?
    The king's disease--my project may deceive me,
    But my intents are fixed and will not leave me.

Besides its formal construction and its rhyme, this passage is overmuch
afflicted with youngness to be accepted as the product of any other
than Shakespeare's very earliest period. Of like quality to this are
other passages scattered through the play. For example, the Countess's
speech, Act I., Sc. 3, beginning, "Even so it was with me"; all the
latter part of Act II., Sc. 1, from Helen's speech, "What I can do,"
etc., to the end, seventy lines; passages in the third scene of this
act, which the reader cannot now fail at once to detect for himself;
Helen's letter, Act III., Sc. 4, and Parolles's, Act IV., Sc. 3; and
various passages in the last act. Shakespeare, I have no doubt, wrote
this play at first nearly all in rhyme in the earliest years of his
dramatic life, and afterward, late in his career, possibly on two
occasions, rewrote it and gave it a new name; using prose, to save time
and labor, in those passages the elevation of which did not require
poetical treatment, and in those which were suited to such treatment
giving us true, although not highly finished specimens of his grand
style.

A few of the plays now remain unnoticed; but our purpose is accomplished
without further particular remark. The reader who has gone thus far with
me needs me no longer as a guide. The Roman plays, "Coriolanus," "Julius
Cæsar," and "Antony and Cleopatra," particularly the last, should now
receive his careful attention. In "The Winter's Tale," "The Tempest,"
and "Henry VIII." he will find the very last productions of
Shakespeare's pen, and in the first and the third of these he will find
marks of hasty work both in the versification and in the construction;
but the touch of the master is unmistakable quite through them all, and
"The Tempest" is one of the most perfect of his works in all respects.
No true lover of Shakespeare should neglect the Sonnets, although many
do neglect them. They are inferior to the plays; but only to them.

As to helps to the understanding of Shakespeare, those who can
understand him at all need none except a good critical edition. And by a
good critical edition I mean only one which gives a good text, with
notes where they are needed upon obscure constructions, obsolete words
or phrases, manners and customs, and the like. Of the plays in the
Clarendon Press series, "The Merchant of Venice," "Richard II.,"
"Macbeth," "Hamlet," and "King Lear," better editions cannot be had,
particularly for readers inexperienced in verbal criticism. Those who
find any difficulty which the notes to those editions do not explain may
be pretty sure that, with the exception of a very few passages the
corruption of which is admitted on all hands, the trouble is not with
Shakespeare or the editor. Shakespeare read in the way which I have
indicated, and with the help of such an edition, has a high educating
value, and in particular will give the reader an insight into the
English language, if not a mastery of it, that is worth a course of all
the text-books of grammar and rhetoric that have been written ten times
over. As to editions, I shall give only one caution. Do not get Dyce's.
Mr. Dyce was a scholar, a man of fine taste, most thoroughly read in
English literature, particularly in that of the Elizabethan period. He
was a man for whom I had a very high respect, and whom I had reason to
regard with a somewhat warmer feeling than that of a mere literary
acquaintance. This and my deference to his age and his position
prevented me from saying during his life what there is no reason that I
should not say now--that in my opinion he was one of the most
unsuccessful of Shakespeare's editors. His edition is one of the worst
that has been published in the last century, both for its text and,
except as to their learning, for its notes. With all my deferential
respect for him,[10] I was prepared for this result before the
appearance of the first of his three editions. Being in correspondence
with him, and on such terms that I could make such a request, I asked
him to send me some sheets of his edition while it was passing through
the press. He replied that he could not do this; but the reason that he
gave was, not any unwillingness to confide them to me, but that it was
then impossible, because after his edition was half struck off he had
cancelled the greater part of it on account of changes in his opinions
as to the reading of so many passages! And this after he was well in
years; after having passed his life in the study of Elizabethan
literature; and after having edited Beaumont and Fletcher! I was never
more amazed. Such a man could have no principles of criticism. How could
he guide others who after such study was not sure of his own way? With
all his knowledge of the literature and the literary history of the
Elizabethan period, he seemed to lack the power of putting himself in
sympathy with Shakespeare as he wrote. Hence the crudity and incongruity
of his text, his vacillating opinions, and the weakness and poverty of
his annotation.

Of criticism of what has been called the higher kind, I recommend the
reading of very little, or better, none at all. Read Shakespeare; seek
aid to understand his language, if that be in any way obscure to you;
but that once comprehended, apprehension of his purpose and meaning will
come untold to those who can attain it in any way. In my own edition I
avoided as much as possible the introduction of æsthetic criticism, not
because I felt incapable of writing it; for it is easy work; on the
contrary, I freely essayed it when it was necessary as an aid to the
settlement of the text, or of like questions; and by its use I think
that I succeeded in establishing some points of importance. But in my
judgment the duty of an editor is performed when he puts the reader, as
nearly as possible, in the same position, for the apprehension of his
author's meaning, that he would have occupied if he had been
contemporary with him and had received from him a correct copy of his
writings. More than this seems to me to verge upon impertinence. Upon
this point I find myself supported by William Aldis Wright,[11] who is
in my judgment the ablest of all the living editors of Shakespeare; who
brings to his task a union of scholarship, critical judgment, and common
sense, which is very rare in any department of literature, and
particularly in Shakespearian criticism, and whose labors in this
department of letters are small and light in comparison with the graver
studies in which he is constantly engaged. He, in the preface to his
lately published edition of "King Lear" in the Clarendon Press series,
says: "It has been objected to the editions of Shakespeare's plays in
the Clarendon Press series that the notes are too exclusively of a
verbal character, and that they do not deal with æsthetic, or as it is
called, the higher criticism. So far as I have had to do with them, I
frankly confess that æsthetic notes have been deliberately and
intentionally omitted, because one main object in these editions is to
induce those for whom they are especially designed to read and study
Shakespeare himself, and not to become familiar with opinions about him.
Perhaps, too, it is because I cannot help experiencing a certain feeling
of resentment when I read such notes, that I am unwilling to intrude
upon others what I should regard myself as impertinent. They are in
reality too personal and objective, and turn the commentator into a
showman. With such sign-post criticism I have no sympathy. Nor do I wish
to add to the awful amazement which must possess the soul of Shakespeare
when he knows of the manner in which his works have been tabulated, and
classified, and labelled with a purpose, after the most approved method,
like modern _tendenzschriften_. Such criticism applied to Shakespeare is
nothing less than gross anachronism."

Not a little of the Shakespearian criticism of this kind that exists is
the mere result of an effort to say something fine about what needs no
such gilding, no such prism-play of light to enhance or to bring out its
beauties. I will not except from these remarks much of what Coleridge
himself has written about Shakespeare. But the German critics whom he
emulated are worse than he is. Avoid them. The German pretence that
Germans have taught us folk of English blood and speech to understand
Shakespeare is the most absurd and arrogant that could be set up.
Shakespeare owes them nothing; and we have received from them little
more than some maundering mystification and much ponderous platitude.
Like the western diver, they go down deeper and stay down longer than
other critics, but like him too they come up muddier. Above all of them,
avoid Ulrici and Gervinus. The first is a mad mystic, the second a very
literary Dogberry, endeavoring to comprehend all vagrom men, and
bestowing his tediousness upon the world with a generosity that
surpasses that of his prototype. Both of them thrust themselves and
their "fanned and winnowed opinions" upon him in such an obtrusive way
that if he could come upon the earth again and take his pen in his hand,
I would not willingly be in the shoes of either. He would hand them down
to posterity the laughing stock of men for ever.

Not Shakespeare only has suffered from this sort of criticism. The great
musicians fare ill at their hands. One of them, Schlüter, writing of
Mozart, says of his E flat, G minor, C (Jupiter) symphonies:

     It is evident that these three magnificent works--produced
     consecutively and at short intervals--are the embodiment of
     _one_ train of thought pursued with increasing ardor; so that
     taken as a whole they form a grand _trilogy_.... These three
     grandest of Mozart's symphonies (the first lyrical, the second
     tragic-pathetic, and the third of ethical import) correspond to
     his three greatest operas, "Figaro," "Don Giovanni," and "Die
     Zauberflöte."

Now, I venture to say, that there is no such consecutive train of
thought, and no such correspondence. Ethical import in the Jupiter and
in the "Zauberflöte," and correspondence between them! Mozart did not
evolve musical elephants out of his moral consciousness. But a German
professor of _esthetik_ is not happy until he has discovered a trilogy
and an inner life. Those found, he goes off with ponderous serenity into
the _ewigkeit_.

I have been asked, apropos of these articles, to give some advice as to
the formation of Shakespeare clubs. The best thing that can be done
about that matter is to let it alone entirely. According to my
observation, Shakespeare clubs do not afford their members any
opportunities of study or even of enjoyment of his works which are not
attainable otherwise. And how should they do so except by the formation
of libraries for the use of their members? In this respect they may be
of some use, but not of much. Few books, a very few, are necessary for
the intelligent and earnest student of Shakespeare, and those almost
every such student can obtain for himself. As I have said, a good
critical edition is all that is required; and whoever desires to wander
into the wilderness of Shakespearian commentary will find in the public
libraries ample opportunities of doing so. I have observed that those
who read Shakespeare most and understand him best do not use even
critical editions, except for occasional reference, but take the text by
itself, pure and simple. An edition with a good text, brief
introductions to each play, giving only ascertained facts, and a few
notes, glossological and historical, at the foot of the page, is still a
desideratum. Quiet reading with such an edition as this at hand will do
more good than all the Shakespeare clubs ever established have done. I
have seen something of such associations; and I have observed in them a
tendency on one hand to a feeble and fussy literary antiquarianism, and
on the other to conviviality; a thing not bad in itself, and indeed,
within bounds, much better than the other; but which has as little to
do as that has (and it could not have less) with an intelligent study of
Shakespeare. There is hardly anything less admirable to a reasonable
creature than the assemblage at stated times of a number of
semi-literary people to potter over Shakespeare and display before each
other their second-hand enthusiasm about "the bard of Avon," as they
generally delight to call him. Now, a true lover of Shakespeare never
calls him the bard of Avon, or a bard of anything; and he reads him o'
nights and ponders over him o' days while he is walking, or smoking, or
at night again while he is waking in his bed. If he is too poor to buy a
copy offhand, he saves up his pennies till he can get one, and he does
not trouble himself about the commentators or the mulberry tree. He
would not give two pence to sit in a chair made of it; for he knows that
he could not tell it from any other chair, and that it would not help
him to understand or to enjoy one line in "Hamlet," or "Lear," or
"Othello," or "As You Like It," or "The Tempest." These remarks have no
reference of course to such societies as the Shakespeare Societies of
London, past and present. They are associations of scholars for the
purpose of original investigations, and which they print for the use of
their subscribers, and for the republication of valuable and scarce
books and papers having a bearing upon Shakespeare and the literary
history of his time. We have no such material in this country. Whoever
wishes to go profoundly into the study of Shakespearian, or rather of
Elizabethan literature, would do well to obtain a set of the old
Shakespeare Society's publications, and to become a subscriber to the
other Shakespeare society, which is doing good thorough work. Clubs
might well be formed for the obtaining of these books and others, for
the use of their members who cannot afford or who do not care to buy
them for their own individual property; although a book really owned is,
I cannot say exactly why, worth more to a reader than one belonging to
some one else. But all other Shakespeare clubs are mere vanity. The true
Shakespeare lover is a club unto himself.

                        RICHARD GRANT WHITE.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] _I. e._, gifted, endowed with parts.

[10] See "Shakespeare's Scholar," _passim._

[11] Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and one of the editors of the
Cambridge edition.




THE PHILTER.

A LEGEND OF KING ARTHUR'S TIME.


    Dying afar in Brittany,
      The gallant Tristram lay;
    His gentle bride's sweet ministry,
      Her tender touch and way,
    That erstwhile brought the rest he sought,
      No more held soothing sway.

    The naming of her tuneful name,
      Isoude--so sweet to hear
    Because its music was the same
      With one long holden dear--
    Now, like a bell discordant, fell,
      And brought but mocking cheer.

    Her eyne so blue, with lids so white,
      Her tresses from their snood,
    That rippling ambered all the light
      About her where she stood,
    Served only now to cloud his brow
      Who longed for lost Isoude--

    Isoude, who charmed him once when storm
      Had blown his ship ashore
    On Ireland's coast; Isoude, whose form
      Bewitched him more and more,
    As mem'ry came, his love to flame,
      When hope, alas! was o'er:

    Isoude, who sailed with him the sea
      Across to Cornwall land,
    To marry Mark, whose treachery
      Did Tristram's faith command
    To win her grace for kingly place,
      And his own heart withstand.

    On sultry deck becalmed they pine;
      Careless, their thirst to ease,
    A philter--mixt for bridal wine--
      Her lip beguiles, and his:
    O subtle draught unconscious quaffed!
      They drained it to the lees--

    Until in Tristram's knightly form
      All joy for her seemed blent;
    Until her cheek could only warm
      Beneath his gaze intent;
    Until her heart sought him apart,
      Whoever came or went;

    Until the potion did beget
      An all-enduring spell;
    Albeit Cornwall's king now met
      And liked her fairness well,
    And claimed her hand, while through the land
      Rang sound of marriage bell;

    Until, as fragrance from a flower,
      True love outbrake control,
    And dropped its sweetness as a shower
      Of pearls, that threadless roll
    To find their rest in some near nest;
      Her home, Sir Tristram's soul!

    And he, though frequent jousts he won;
      Though many a valiant deed
    Of prowess made his fame outrun
      The claim of knightly creed;
    Though maidens oft their glances soft
      Bestowed in tenderest meed;

    Though Brittany upon him prest
      A bride, in gratitude
    For service done; and though the quest
      Of sacred grail subdued
    His full heart-beat of smothered heat--
      He loved but _Queen_ Isoude!

    And now with holy vows all tossed
      Of fever's frantic sway--
    As mariner whose bark is crossed
      Upon a peaceful way
    By winds that lure from purpose pure
      And well-meant plans bewray--

    He bade a trusty servitor
      To Cornwall's queen forthwith.
    "Take this," he said, "and show to her
      How great my languor, sith
    This signet's round will not be found
      To bear one hurted lith.

    "Say that Sir Tristram prays her aid,
      And so he prays not vain,
    Let sails of silken white be made,
      Whose gleam shall heal my pain,
    As hither borne some favoring morn,
      Love claims his own again!

    "But if she yield no heed to these
      Fond cravings of love's breath,
    Then bearing on the burdened breeze
      Let sail that shadoweth,
    Of darkest dark, beshroud the bark,
      A presage of my death."

    So spake the Lord of Lyonesse,
      And bode his joy or bale;
    While jealous of her right to bless,
      The wife Isoude, grown pale
    As buds of light that shrink from night,
      Made sad and lonely wail:

    "Alas! all one the loss to me,
      My lord alive or dead,
    If life of his by sorcery
      Of this fair queen be fed."
    Then adding, "Be her answer _nay_,
      Hope yet to hope is wed."

    She scanned the sea. On waves of balm
      A white sail of rare glow
    Came rounding to the harbor's calm
      With fullest promise--lo!
    Bleak winds arise, as false she cries,
      "_A black sail entereth_ slow."

    Too weak to battle with his grief,
      Sir Tristram breathed a sigh--
    "Alack, that Isoude's sweet relief
      Should fail me where I lie:
    Sith not for me her face to see,
      Is but to droop and die."

    Black sails are hoisted now in truth!
      They wing two forms to rest:
    For Cornwall's queen a-cold, in ruth,
      Fell prone on Tristram's breast;
    And Cornwall's knight for kinsman's right
      Of shrine had made request.

    A letter lay upon the bier,
      And this the word it bare:
    "O love is sweet, O love is dear,
      And followeth everywhere
    Whoso has drained the chalice stained
      With its red wine and rare.

    "O love is dear, O love is sweet,
      And yet, of faith's decree
    Would Honor quench beneath stern feet
      Love's bloom if that need be.
    O King, one wills. But Love distils
      His philters fatefully!"

    Then did the King in penitence
      Weep dole for these two dead.
    Some slight remorse had pricked his sense
      That he through wile had wed
    His best knight's love; alas, to prove
      Such end, so ill bestead!

    In royal crypt he bade the twain
      Be laid; and there a vine,
    O'er which the murderous scythe was vain,
      Sprang up the graves to twine,
    Defying death with its green breath:
      True plant of seed divine!

                      MARY B. DODGE.




MISS MISANTHROPE.

BY JUSTIN MCCARTHY.


CHAPTER I.

MISS MISANTHROPE.

The little town of Dukes-Keeton, in one of the more northern of the
midland counties, had in its older days two great claims to
consideration. One was a park, the other a sweetmeat. The noble family
whose name had passed through many generations of residence at the place
had always left their great park so freely open to every one, that it
came to be like the common property of the public, and the town had
grown into fame by the manufacture of the sweetmeat which bore its name
almost everywhere in the track of the meteor-flag of England. But as
time went on other places took to manufacturing the sweetmeat so much
better, and selling it so much more successfully than "Keeton," as the
town was commonly called, could do, that "Keeton" itself had long since
retired from the business, and was content to import the delicacy which
still bore its own name in consignments of canisters from Manchester or
London. During many years the heir of the noble family had deserted the
park, and absolutely never came near it or near England even, and
everything that gave the town a distinct reason for existence seemed to
be passing rapidly into tradition. It had lain out of the track of the
railway system for a long time, and when the railway system at length
enclosed it in its arms, the attention seemed to have come too late. All
the heat of life appeared to have chilled out of Dukes-Keeton in the
mean time, and it lay now between two railways almost as inanimate and
hopeless a lump as the child to whom the Erl-king's touch is fatal in
his father's arms.

The park, with its huge palace-like, barrack-like house, not a castle,
and too great to be called merely a hall, lies almost immediately
outside the town. From streets and shops the visitor passes straightway
through the gates of the great enclosure. Every stranger who has seen
the house is taken at once to see another object of interest.

In the centre of the park was a broad, clear space, made by the felling
and removing of every tree, until it spread there sharp and hard as a
burnt-out patch in a forest. Gravel and small shells made the pavement
of this space, and thus formed a new contrast with the turf, the
grasses, and the underwood of the park all around. In the midst of this
open space there rose a large circular building: a tower low in height
when the bulk enclosed by its circumference was considered, and standing
on a great square platform of solid masonry with steps on each of its
sides. The tower itself reminded one of the tomb of Cecilia Metella, or
some other of the tombs that still stand near Rome. It was in fact the
mausoleum which it had pleased the father of the present owner to have
erected for himself during his lifetime. He lavished money on it, cared
nothing for the cost of materials and labor, planned it out himself,
watched every detail, and stood by the workmen as they toiled. Within he
had prepared a lordly reception-room for his dead body when he should
come to die. A superb sarcophagus of porphyry, fit to have received the
remains of a Cæsar, was there. When the work was done and all was ready,
the lonely owner visited it every day, unlocked its massive gate, and
went in, and sat sometimes for hours in his own mausoleum. He was
growing insane, people thought, in these later days, and they counted on
his soon becoming an actual madman. So far, however, he showed no
greater madness than in wasting his money on a huge tomb, and wasting so
much of his time in visiting it prematurely. The tomb proved a vanity in
a double sense. For the noble owner was seized with a sudden mania for
travel, and resolved to go round the world. Somewhere in mid ocean he
was attacked by fever, or what alarmed people called the plague, and he
died, and his body had to be committed without much delay or ceremonial
to the sea. He had built his monument to no purpose. He was never to
occupy it. It stood a vast and solid gibe at the vanity of its founder.

Over the great gate through which the mausoleum was entered were three
heads sculptured in stone. One was that of a man in the prime of
manhood, with lips and eyebrows contracted and puckered, forehead
wrinkled, eyes full of anxious strain, all telling of care, of pain, of
sleepless struggle against difficulty, watchfulness to ward off danger.
This was Life. The next was the face of the same man with the eyes
closed and the cheeks sunken, and the expression of one who had fallen
into sleep from pain--the struggle and agony gone indeed, but their
shadow still resting on the brows and the lips: and that of course was
Death. The third piece of carving showed the same face still, but now
with clear eyes looking broadly and brightly forward, and with features
all noble, serene, and glad. This was Eternity. These three faces were
the wonder and admiration of the neighborhood, and had been for now some
years back employed to solve the problem of existence for all the little
lads and lasses of Keeton who might otherwise have failed sometimes to
see the harmonious purpose working in all things. The sculptor had it
all his own way, and took care that Life should have the worst of it.
Keeton was in almost all its conditions a place of rather sleepy
contentment, and its people could be trusted to take just as much of the
moral as was good for them, and not to carry to extremes the lesson as
to the discomfort and dissatisfaction of the probationary life-period.
Otherwise there might perhaps be a chance that impressionable, not to
say morbid, persons would desire to hurry very rapidly through the dark
and anxious vestibule of life in order to get into the broad bright
temple of Eternity.

Some thought like this was passing through the mind of Miss Minola Grey,
who sat on the steps of the tomb and looked up into the faces
illustrative of man's struggle and final success. Life had long been
wearing a hard and difficult appearance to her, and she would perhaps
have been glad enough sometimes if she could have got into the haven of
quiet waters which, in the minds of so many people and in so many
symbolic representations, is made to stand for Eternity. She was a
handsome, graceful girl, rather tall, fair-haired, with deep bluish gray
eyes which seemed to darken as they looked earnestly at any one--eyes
which might be described in Matthew Arnold's words as "too expressive to
be blue, too lovely to be gray"--with a broad forehead, from which the
hair was thrown back in disregard of passing fashions. Perhaps it was
her attitude, as she leaned her chin upon her hand and looked up at the
mausoleum--perhaps it was the presence of that gloomy building
itself--that made her face seem like an illustration of melancholy.
Certainly her face was pale and a little wanting in fulness, and the
lips were of the kind that one can always think of as tremulous with
emotion of some kind. This was a beautiful summer evening, and all the
park around was green, sunny, and glad. The dry bare spot on which the
tomb was built seemed like a gray and withering leaf on a bright branch;
and the figure of the girl was more in keeping with the melancholy
shadow of the mausoleum than the joyousness of the sun and the trees and
the whole scene all around.

Indeed, there was a good deal of melancholy in the girl's mind at that
moment. She was taking leave of the place: had come to say it a
farewell. That park had been her playground, her studio, her stage, her
world of fancy and romance and poetry since her infancy. She had driven
her brother as a horse there, and had played with him at hunting lions.
She had studied landscape drawing there from the days when a half
staggery stroke with some blotches out of it was supposed to represent a
tree, and a thing shaped like the trade-mark on Mr. Bass's beer bottles
stood for a mountain. As she grew up she came there to read and to idle
and to think. There she revelled in all the boundless fancies and
extravagant ambitions of a clever, half-poetic child. There she was in
turn the heroine of every book that delighted her, and the heroine of
stories which had never been put into print. Heroes of surpassing
beauty, strength, courage, and devotion had rambled under these trees
for years with her, nor had the new-comer's presence ever been made a
cause of jealousy or complaint by the one whom his coming displaced.
They were a strange procession of all complexions and garbs. Achilles
the golden-haired had been with her in his day, and so had the
melancholy Master of Ravenswood: and the young Djalma, the lover of
Adrienne of the "Juif Errant," forgotten of English girls to-day; and
Nello, the proud gondolier lad with the sweet voice, who was loved by
the mother and the daughter of the Aldinis; and the unnamed youth who
went mad for Maud; and Henry Esmond, and Stunning Warrington, and Jane
Eyre's Rochester, and ever so many else. Each and all of these in turn
loved her and was passionately loved by her, and all had done great
things for her; and for each she had done far greater things. She had
made them victorious, crowned them with laurels, died for them. It was a
peculiarity of her temperament that when she read some pathetic story it
was not at the tragic passages that her tears came. It was not the
deaths that touched her most. It was when she read of bold and generous
things suddenly done, of splendid self-sacrifice, of impossible rescue
and superhuman heroism, that she could not keep down her feelings, and
was glad when only the watching, untelltale trees could see the tears in
her eyes.

She had, however, two heroes chief over all the rest, whose story she
found it impossible to keep apart, and whom she blended commonly into
one odd compound. These were Hamlet and Alceste, the "Misanthrope" of
Molière. It was sometimes Alceste who offered to be buried quick with
Ophelia in the grave; and it was often Hamlet who interjected his scraps
of poetic cynicism between the pretty and scandalous prattlings of
Célimène and her petticoaterie. But perhaps Alceste came nearest to the
heart of our young maid as she grew up. She said to herself over and
over again that "C'est n'estimer rien qu'estimer tout le monde." She
refused "d'un coeur la vaste complaisance qui ne fait de mérite aucune
différence," and declared that "pour le trancher net l'ami du genre
humain n'est point du tout mon fait." No doubt there was unconscious or
only half conscious affectation in this, as there is in the ways of
almost all young people who are fond of reading; and her way of thinking
herself a girl-Alceste would probably have vanished with other whims, or
been supplanted by fancies of imitation caught from other models, if
everything had gone well with her. But several causes conspired as she
grew into a woman to make her think very seriously that Alceste was not
wrong in his general estimate of men and their merits. She was intensely
fond of her mother, and when her mother died her father married again,
his second wife being a young woman who put him under the most absolute
control, being not by any means an ill-natured person, but only
strong-willed, serene, and stupid. Then her brother, to whom she was
devoted, and who was her absolute confidant, went away to Canada,
declaring he would not stand a stepmother, and that as soon as his
sister grew old enough to put away domestic control he would send for
her; and he soon got married and became a prominent member of the
Dominion Legislature, and in none of his not over frequent letters said
a word about his promise to send for her. Now, her father was some time
dead; her stepmother had married Mr. Saulsbury, an elderly Nonconformist
minister, who was shocked at all the ways of Alceste's admirer, and with
whom she could not get on. It would take a very sweet and resigned
nature to make one who had had these experiences absolutely in love with
the human race, and especially with men; and Alceste accordingly became
more dear than ever to Miss Grey.

Now she was about to leave the place and open of her own accord a new
chapter in life. She had to escape at once from the dislike of some and
the still less endurable liking of others. She was determined to go, and
yet as she looked around upon the place, and all its dear sweet memories
filled her, it is no wonder if she envied the calmness of the face that
symbolized eternal rest. At last she broke down, and covered her face
with her hands, and gave herself up to tears.

Her quick ears, however, heard sounds which she knew were not those of
the rustling woods. She started to her feet and dried her eyes hastily.
Straight before her now there lay the long broad path through the trees
which led up to the gate of the mausoleum. The air was so exquisitely
pure and still that the footfall of a person approaching could be
distinctly heard by the girl, although the newcomer was yet far away.
She could see him, however, and recognized him, and she had no doubt
that he had seen her. A thought of escape at first occurred to her; but
she gave it up in a moment, for she knew that the person approaching had
come to seek her, and must have seen her before she saw him. So she sat
down again defiantly and waited. She did not look his way, although he
raised his hat to her more than once.

As he comes near we can see that he is a handsome, rather stiff looking
man, with full formal dark whiskers, clearly cut face, and white teeth.
His hat is very shiny. He wears a black frock coat buttoned across the
chest, and dark trowsers, and dainty little boots, and gray gloves, and
has a diamond pin in his necktie. He is Mr. Augustus Sheppard, a very
considerable person indeed in the town. Dukes-Keeton, it should be said,
had three classes or estates. The noble owners of the park and the
guests whom they used to bring to visit them in their hospitable days
made one estate. The upper class of the town made another estate; and
the working people and the poor generally made the third. These three
classes (there were at present only two of them represented in Keeton)
were divided by barriers which it never occurred to any imagination to
think of getting over. Mr. Augustus Sheppard was a leading man among the
townspeople. His father was a solicitor and land agent of old standing,
and Mr. Augustus followed his father's profession, and now did by far
the greater part of its work. He was a member of the Church of England
of course, but he made it part of his duty to be on the best terms with
the Dissenters, for Keeton was growing to be very strong in dissent of
late years. Mr. Augustus Sheppard had done a great deal for the mental
and other improvement of the town. It was he who got up the Mutual
Improvement Society, and made himself responsible for the rent of the
hall in which the winter course of lectures, organized by him, used to
take place; and he always gave a lecture himself every season, and he
took the chair very often and introduced other lecturers. He always
worked most cordially with the Rev. Mr. Saulsbury in trying to restrict
the number of public houses, and he was one of the few persons whom Mrs.
Saulsbury cordially admired. He had a word of formal kindness for every
one, and was never heard to say an ill-natured thing of any one behind
his or her back. He was vaguely believed to be ambitious of worldly
success, but only in a proper and becoming way, and far-seeing people
looked forward to finding him one day in the House of Commons.

As he came near the mausoleum he raised his hat again, and then the girl
acknowledged his salute and stood up.

"A very lovely evening, Miss Grey."

"Yes," said Miss Grey, and no more.

"I have been at your house, Miss Grey, and saw your people; and I heard
that possibly you were in the park. I thought perhaps you would have
been at home. When I saw you last night you seemed to believe that you
would be at home all the day." This was said in a gentle tone of implied
reproach.

"_You_ spoke then of walking in the park, Mr. Sheppard."

"And I have kept my word, you see," Mr. Sheppard said, not observing the
implied reason for her change of purpose.

"Yes, I see it now," she answered, as one who should say, "I did not
count upon it then."

Of all men else, Minola Grey would have avoided him. She knew only too
well what he had come for. She would perhaps have disliked him for that
in any case, but she certainly disliked him on his own account. His
formal and heavy manners impressed her disagreeably, and she liked to
say things that puzzled and startled him. It was a pleasure to her to
throw some paradox or odd saying at him, and watch his awkward attempts
to catch it, and then while he was just on the point of getting at some
idea of it to bewilder him with some new enigma. To her he seemed to be
what he was not, simply a sham, a heavy piece of hypocrisy. Formalism
and ostentatious piety she recognized as part of the business of a
Nonconformist minister, in whom they were excusable, as his grave garb
would be, but they seemed insufferably out of place when adopted by a
layman and a man of the world, who was still young.

"I am glad to have found you at last," Mr. Sheppard said, with a grave
smile.

"You might have found me at first," Minola said, quoting from Artemus
Ward, "if you had come a little sooner, Mr. Sheppard. I have only lately
escaped here."

"I wish I had known, and I would have come a great deal sooner. May I
take the liberty of sitting beside you?"

"I am going to stand, Mr. Sheppard. But that need not prevent you from
sitting."

"I should not think of sitting unless you do. Shall we walk a little
among the trees? This is a gloomy spot for a young lady."

"I prefer to stand here for a little, Mr. Sheppard, but don't let me
keep you from enjoying a walk."

"Enjoying a walk?" he said, with a grave smile and solemn emphasis.
"Enjoying a walk, Miss Grey--and without you?"

She deliberately avoided meeting the glance with which he was
endeavoring to give additional meaning to this polite speech. She knew
that he had come to make love to her; and though she was longing to have
the whole thing done with, as it must be settled one way or the other,
she detested and dreaded the ordeal, and would have put it off if she
could. So she did not give any sign of having understood or even heard
his words, and the opportunity for going on with his purpose, which he
had hoped to extract, was lost for the moment. In truth, Mr. Sheppard
was afraid of this girl, and she knew it, and liked him none the more
for it.

"I have been studying something with great interest, Mr. Sheppard," she
began, as if determined to cut him off from his chance for the present.
"I have made a discovery."

"Indeed, Miss Grey? Yes--I saw that you were in deep contemplation as I
came along, and I wondered within myself what could have been the
subject of your thoughts."

She colored a little and looked suddenly at him, asking herself whether
he could have seen her tears. His face, however, gave no explanation,
and she felt assured that he had not seen them.

"I have found, Mr. Sheppard, that some of the weaknesses of men are
alive in the insect world."

"Indeed, Miss Grey? Some of the affections of men do indeed live, we are
told, in the insect world. So beautifully ordained is everything----"

"The affectations I meant, not the affections of men, Mr. Sheppard.
Could you ever have believed that an insect would be capable of a
deliberate attempt at imposture?"

"I should certainly not have looked for anything of the kind, Miss Grey.
But there is unfortunately so much of evil mixed up with all----"

"So there is. I was going to tell you that as I came here and passed
through the garden, my attention was directed--is not that the proper
way to put it?"

"To put it, Miss Grey?"

"Yes; my attention was directed to a large, heavy, respectable
blue-bottle fly. He kept flying from flower to flower, and burying his
stupid head in every one in turn, and making a ridiculous noise. I
watched his movements for a long time. It was evident to the meanest
understanding that he was trying to attract attention and was hoping the
eyes of the world were on him. You should have seen his pretence at
enjoying the flowers and drinking in sweetness from them--and he stayed
longest on the wrong flowers!"

"Dear me! Now why did he do that?"

"Because he didn't know any better, and he was trying to make us think
he did."

"But, Miss Grey--a fly--a blue-bottle! Now really--how did you know what
he was thinking of?"

"I watched him closely--and I found him out at last. Have you not
guessed what the meaning of the whole thing was?"

"Well, Miss Grey, I can't say that I quite understand it just yet; but I
am sure I shall be greatly interested on hearing the explanation."

"It was simply the imposture of a blue-bottle trying to pass himself off
as a bee! It was man's affectation put under the microscope!"

Mr. Sheppard looked up at her in the hope of catching from her face some
clear intimation as to whether she was in jest or earnest, and demeaning
himself accordingly. But her eyes were cast down and he could not make
out the riddle. Driven by desperation, he dashed in, to prevent the
possible propounding of another before he had time to come to his point.

"All the professions of men are not affectations, Miss Grey! Oh, no: far
from it indeed. There are some feelings in our breasts which are only
too real!"

She saw that the declaration was coming now and must be confronted.

"I have long wished for an opportunity of revealing to you some of my
feelings, Miss Grey, and I hope the chance has now arrived. May I
speak?"

"I can't prevent you from speaking, Mr. Sheppard."

"You will hear me?"

He was in such fear of her and so awkward about the terms of his
declaration of love that he kept clutching at every little straw that
seemed to give him something to hold on to for a moment's rest and
respite.

"I had better hear you, I suppose," she said with an air of profound
depression, "if you will go on, Mr. Sheppard. But if you would please
me, you would stop where you are and say no more."

"You know what I am going to say, Miss Grey--you must have known it this
long time. I have asked your natural guardians and advisers, and they
encourage me to speak. Oh, Miss Grey--I love you. May I hope that I may
look forward to the happiness of one day making you my wife?"

It was all out now, and she was glad. The rest would be easy. He looked
even then so prosaic and formal that she did not believe in any of his
professed emotions, and she was therefore herself unmoved.

"No, Mr. Sheppard," she said, looking calmly at him straight in the
face. "Such a day will never come. Nothing that I have seen in life
makes me particularly anxious to be married; and I could not marry you."

He had expected evasion, but not bluntness. He knew well enough that the
girl did not love him, but he had believed that he could persuade her to
marry him. Now her pointblank refusal completely staggered him.

"Why not, Miss Grey?" was all he could say at first.

"Because, Mr. Sheppard, I really much prefer not to marry you."

"There is not any one else?" he asked, his face for the first time
showing emotion and anger.

The faint light of a melancholy smile crossed Minola's face. He grew
more angry.

"Miss Grey--now, you must tell me that! I have a right to ask--yes: and
your people would expect me to ask. You must tell me _that_."

"Well," she said, "if you force me to it, and if you will have an
answer, I must give you one, Mr. Sheppard. I have a lover already, and I
mean to keep him."

Mr. Sheppard was positively shocked by the suddenness and coolness of
this revelation. He recovered himself, however, and took refuge in
unbelief.

"Miss Grey, you don't mean it, I know--I can't believe it. Why, I have
known you and seen you grow up since you were a child. Mrs. Saulsbury
couldn't but know----"

"Mrs. Saulsbury knows nothing of me: we know nothing of each other. I
_have_ a lover, Mr. Sheppard, for all that. Do you want to know his
name?"

"I should like to know his name, certainly," the breathless Sheppard
stammered out.

"His name is Alceste----"

"A Frenchman!" Sheppard was aghast.

"A Frenchman truly--a French gentleman--a man of truth and courage and
spirit and honor and everything good. A man who wouldn't tell a lie or
do a mean thing, or flatter a silly woman, or persecute a very unhappy
girl--no, not to save his soul, Mr. Sheppard. Do you happen to know any
such man?"

"No such man lives in Keeton." He was surprised into simple earnestness.
"At least I don't know of any such man."

"No; you and he are not likely to come together and be very familiar.
Well, Mr. Sheppard, that is the man to whom I am engaged, and I mean to
keep my engagement. You can tell Mrs. Saulsbury if you like."

"But you haven't told me his other name."

"Oh--I don't know his other name."

"Miss Grey! Don't know his other name?"

"No: and I don't think he has any other name. He has but the one name
for me, and I don't want any second."

"Where does he live, then--may I ask?"

"Oh, yes--I may as well tell you all now, since I have told you so much.
He only lives in a book, Mr. Sheppard; in what you would call a play,"
she added with contemptuous expression.

"Oh, come now--I thought you were only amusing yourself." A smile of
reviving satisfaction stole over his face. "I'm not much afraid of a
rival like that, Miss Grey--if he is my only rival."

"I don't know why you talk of a rival," the young woman answered, with a
scornful glance at him; "but I can assure you he would be the most
dangerous rival a living man could have. When I find a man like him, Mr.
Sheppard, I hope he will ask me to marry him; indeed, when I find such a
man I'll ask him to marry me--and if he be the man I take him for, he'll
refuse me. I have told you all the truth now, Mr. Sheppard, and I hope
you will think I need not say any more."

"Still, I'm not quite without hope that something may be done," Mr.
Sheppard said. "How if I were to study your hero's ways and try to be
like him, Miss Grey?"

A great brown heavy velvety bee at the moment came booming along, his
ponderous flight almost level with the ground and not far above it. He
sailed in and out among the trees and branches, now burying himself for
a few seconds in some hollow part of a trunk, and then plodding through
air again.

"Do you think it would be of any use, Mr. Sheppard," she calmly asked,
"if that honest bee were to study the ways of the eagle?"

"You are not complimentary, Miss Grey," he said, reddening.

"No: I don't believe in compliments: I very much prefer truth."

"Still there are ways of conveying the truth--and of course I never
professed to be anything very great and heroic----"

He was decidedly hurt now.

"Mr. Sheppard," she said, in a softer and more appealing tone, "I don't
want to quarrel with you or with anybody, and please don't drive me on
to make myself out any worse than I am. I don't care about you, and I
never could. We never could get on together. I don't care for any man--I
don't like men at all. I wouldn't marry you if you were an emperor. But
I don't say anything against you; at least I wouldn't if you would only
let me alone. I am very unhappy sometimes--almost always now; but at
least I mean to make no one unhappy but myself."

"That's what comes of books and poetry and solitary walks and nonsense!
Why can't you listen to the advice of those who love you?"

She turned upon him angrily again.

"Well, I am not speaking of myself now, but of your--your people, who
only desire your good. Mr. Saulsbury, Mrs. Saulsbury----"

"Once for all, Mr. Sheppard, I shall not take their advice; and if you
would have me think of you with any kindness at all, any memory not
disagreeable and--and detestable, you will not talk to me of their
advice. Even if I had been inclined to care for you, Mr. Sheppard, you
took a wrong way when you came in their name and talked of their
authority. Next time you ask a girl to marry you, Mr. Sheppard, do it in
your own name."

He caught eagerly at the kind of negative hope that seemed to be held
out to him.

"If that's an objection," he began, "I assure you that I came quite of
my own motion, and I am the last man in the world to endeavor to bring
any unfair means to bear. Of course it is not as if they were your own
parents, and I can quite understand how a young lady must feel----"

"I don't know much of how young ladies feel," Minola said quietly, "but
I know how I feel, Mr. Sheppard, and you know it too. Take my last word.
I'll never marry you. You only waste your time, and perhaps the time of
somebody else as well--some good girl, Mr. Sheppard, who would be glad
to marry you and whom you will be quite ready to make love to the day
after to-morrow."

Her heart was hardened against him now, for she thought him mean and
craven and unmanly. Perhaps, according to her familiar creed, she ought
rather to have thought him manly, meanness being in that sense one of
the attributes of man. She did not believe in the genuineness of his
love, and in any case no thought was more odious to her than that of a
man pressing a girl to marry him if she did not love him and was not
ready to meet him half way.

There was a curious contrast between these two figures as they stood on
the steps of that great empty tomb. The contrast was all the more
singular and even the more striking because the two might easily have
been described in such terms as would seem to suggest no contrast. If
they were described as a handsome young man (for he was scarcely more
than thirty) and a handsome young woman, the description would be
correct. He was rather tall, she was rather tall; but he was formal,
severe, respectable, and absolutely unpicturesque--she was picturesque
in every motion. His well-made clothes sat stiffly on him, and the first
idea he conveyed was that he was carefully dressed. Even a woman would
not have thought, at the first glance at least, of how _she_ was
dressed. She only impressed one with a sense of the presence of graceful
and especially emotional womanhood. The longer one looked at the two the
deeper the contrast seemed to become. Both, for example, had rather thin
lips; but his were rigid, precise, and seeming to part with a certain
deliberation and even difficulty. Hers appeared, even when she was
silent, to be tremulous with expression. After a while it would have
seemed to an observer, if any observing eye were there, that no power on
earth could have brought these two into companionship.

"I won't take this as your final answer," he said, after one or two
unsuccessful efforts to speak. "You will consider this again, and give
it some serious reflection."

She only shook her head, and once more seated herself on the steps of
the monument as if to suggest that now the interview was over.

"You are not walking homeward?" he asked.

"I am staying here for awhile."

He bade her good morning and walked slowly away. A rejected lover looks
to great disadvantage when he has to walk away. He ought to leap on the
back of a horse, and spur him fiercely and gallop off; or the curtain
ought to fall and so finish up with him. Otherwise, even the most heroic
figure has something of the look of one sneaking off like a dog told
imperatively to "go home." Mr. Sheppard felt very uncomfortable at the
thought that he probably did not seem dignified in the eyes of Miss
Grey. He once glanced back uneasily, but perhaps it was not a relief to
find that she was not looking in his direction.


CHAPTER II.

THE EVE OF LIBERTY.

Miss Grey remained in the park until the sun had gone down and the
stars, with their faint light, seemed as she moved homeward to be like
bright sparkles entangled among the high branches of the trees. She had
a great deal to think of, and she troubled herself little about the
mental depression of her rejected lover. All the purpose of her life was
now summed up in a resolve to get away from Keeton and to bury herself
in London.

She knew that any opposition to her proposal on the part of those who
were still supposed to be her guardians would only be founded on an
objection to it as something unwomanly, venturous, and revolutionary,
and not by any means the result of any grief for her going away. Ever
since her mother's death and her father's second marriage she had only
chafed at existence, and found those around her disagreeable, and no
doubt made herself disagreeable to them. She had ceased to feel any
respect for her father when he married again, and he knew it and became
cold and constrained with her. Only just before his death had there
been anything like a revival of their affection for each other. He had
been a man of some substance and authority in his town, had built
houses, and got together property, and he left his daughter a not
inconsiderable annuity as a charge upon his property, and placed her
under the guardianship of the elderly and respectable Nonconformist
minister, who, as luck would have it, afterward married his young widow.
Minola had seen so many marriages during her short experience, and had
disliked two at least of them so thoroughly, that she was much inclined
to say with one of her heroes that there should be no more of them. For
a long time she had made up her mind that when she came of age she would
go to London and live there. She still wanted a few months of the time
of independence, but the manner in which Mr. Augustus Sheppard was
pressed upon her by himself and others made her resolve to anticipate
the course of the seasons a little, and go away at once. In London she
made up her mind that she would lead a life of enchantment: of
delightful and semi-savage solitude, in the midst of the crowd; of wild
independence and scorn of all the ways of men, with books at her
command, with the art galleries and museums, of which she had read so
much, always within easy reach, and the streets which were alive for her
with such sweet and dear associations all around her.

Miss Grey knew London well. She had never yet set foot in it, or been
anywhere out of her native town; but she had studied London as a general
may study the map of some country which he expects one day to invade.
Many and many a night, when all in the house but she were fast asleep,
she had had the map of London spread out before her, and had puzzled her
way through the endless intricacies of its streets. Few women of her
age, or of any age, actually living in the metropolis, had anything like
the knowledge of its districts and its principal streets that she had.
She felt in anticipation the pride and delight of being able to go
whither she would about London without having to ask her way of any one.
Some particular association identified every place in her mind. The
living and the dead, the romantic and the real, history and fiction, all
combined to supply her with labels of association, which she might
mentally put upon every quarter and district, and almost upon every
street which had a name worth knowing. As we all know Venice before we
have seen it, and when we get there can recognize everything we want to
see without need of guide to name it for us, so Minola Grey knew London.
It is no wonder now that her mind was in a perturbed condition. She was
going to leave the place in which so far all her life literally had been
passed. She was going to live in that other place which had for years
been her dream, her study, her self-appointed destiny. She was going to
pass away for ever from uncongenial and odious companionship, and to
live a life of sweet, proud, lonely independence.

The loneliness, however, was not to be literal and absolute. In all
romantic adventures there is companionship. The knight has his squire,
Rosalind has her Celia. Minola Grey was to have her companion in her
great enterprise. It had not indeed occurred to her to think about the
inconvenience or oddness of a girl living absolutely alone in London,
but the kindly destinies had provided her with a comrade. Having
lingered long in the park and turned back again and again for another
view of some favorite spot, having gathered many a leaf and flower for
remembrance, and having looked up many times with throbbing heart at the
white, trembling stars that would shine upon her soon in London, Miss
Grey at last made up her mind and passed resolutely out at the great
gate and went to seek this companion. She was glad to leave the park now
in any case, for in the fine evenings of summer and autumn it was the
custom of Keeton people to make it their promenade. All the engaged
couples of the place would soon be there under the trees. When a lad and
lass were seen to walk boldly and openly together of evenings in that
park, and to pass and repass their neighbors without effort at avoiding
such encounters, it was as well known that they were engaged as though
the fact had been proclaimed by the town-crier. A jury of Keeton folk
would have assumed a promise of marriage and proceeded to award damages
for its breach if it were proved that a young man had walked openly for
any three evenings in the park with a girl whom he afterward declined to
make his wife. Minola did not care to meet any of the joyous couples or
their friends, and even already the twitter of voices and the titter of
feminine laughter were beginning to make themselves heard among the
darkling paths and across the broad green lanes of the park.

From the gates of the park one passed, as has been said already, almost
directly into the town. The town itself was divided in twain by a river,
the river spanned by a bridge which had a certain fame from the fact of
its having been the scene of a brave stand and a terrible slaughter
during the civil wars after Charles I. had set up his standard at
Nottingham. To be sure there was not much left of the genuine old bridge
on which the fight was fought, nor did the broad, flat, handsome, and
altogether modern structure bear much resemblance to the sort of bridge
which might have crossed a river in the days of the Cavaliers. Residents
of Keeton always, however, boasted of the fact that one of the arches of
the bridge was just the same underneath as it had always been, and
insisted on bringing the stranger down by devious and grassy paths to
the river's edge in order that he might see for himself the old stones
still holding together which had perhaps been shaken by the tramp of
Rupert's troopers. On the park side of the bridge lay the genteeler and
more pretentious houses, the semi-detached villas and lodges and
crescents of Keeton; and there too were the humbler cottages. On the
other side of the bridge were the business streets and the clustering
shops, most of them old-fashioned and dark, with low, beetling fronts
and narrow panes in the windows, and only here and there a showy and
modern establishment, with its stucco front and its plate glass. The
streets were all so narrow that they seemed as if they must be only
passages leading to broader thoroughfares. The stranger walked on and
on, thinking he was coming to the actual town of Dukes-Keeton, until he
walked out at the other side and found he had left it behind him.

Minola Grey crossed the bridge, although her own home lay on the side
nearest the park, and made her way through the narrow streets. She
glanced with a shudder at one formal official looking house of dark
brick which she had to pass, and the door of which bore a huge brass
plate with the words "Sheppard & Sheppard, Solicitors and Land Agents."
Another expression of dislike or pain crossed her handsome, pale, and
emotional face when she passed a little lane, closed at the further end
by the heavy, sombre front of a chapel, for it was there that she had
even still to pass some trying, unsympathetic hours of the Sunday
listening to a preacher whose eloquence was rather too familiar to her
all the week. At length she passed the front of a large building of
light-colored stone, with a Greek portico and row of pillars and high
flight of steps, and which to the eye of any intelligent mortal had
"Court House" written on its very face. Miss Grey went on and passed its
front entrance, then turning down a narrow street, of which the building
itself formed one side, she came to a little open door, went in, ran
lightly up a flight of stone steps, and found herself in dun and dimly
lighted corridors of stone.

A ray or two of the evening light still flickered through the small
windows of the roof. But for this all would seemingly have been dark.
Minola's footfall echoed through the passages. The place appeared
ghostly and sad, and the presence of youth, grace, and energetic
womanhood was strangely out of keeping with all around. The whole
expression and manner of Miss Grey brightened, however, as she passed
along these gaunt and echoing corridors. In the sunlight of the park
there seemed something melancholy in the face of the girl which was not
in accord with her years, her figure, and her deep, soft eyes. Now, in
this dismal old passage of damp resounding stone, she seemed so joyous
that her passing along might have been that of another Pippa. The place
was not very unlike a prison, and an observer might have been pleased to
think that, as the light step of the girl passed the door of each cell,
and the flutter of her garments was faintly heard, some little gleam of
hope, some gentle memory, some breath of forgotten woods and fields,
some softening inspiration of human love, was borne in to every
imprisoned heart. But this was no prison; only the courthouse where
prisoners were tried; and its rooms, occupied in the day by judges,
lawyers, policemen, public, suitors, and culprits, were now locked,
empty, and silent.

Minola went on, singing to herself as she went, her song growing louder
and bolder until at last it thrilled finely up to the stone roofs of the
grim halls and corridors. For Minola was of that temperament to which
resolve of any kind soon brings the excitement of high spirits, and she
sang now out of sheer courage and purpose.

Presently she stopped at a low, dark, oaken door which looked as if it
might admit to some dingy lumber-room or closet; and this door opened
instantly and she was in presence of a pretty and cheerful little
picture. The side of the building where the room was set looked upon the
broadest and clearest space in the town, and through the open window
could be seen distinctly the glassy gray of the quiet river and even
the trees of the park, a dark mass beneath the pale summer sky. Although
the room was lit only by the twilight, in which the latest lingering
reflection of the sunset still lived, it looked bright to the girl who
had come from the heavy dusk and gloom of the corridors with their
roof-windows and their rows of grim doors. A room ought to look bright,
too, when the visitor on just appearing on its threshold is rushed upon
and clasped and kissed and greeted as "You dear, dear darling." Such a
welcome met Miss Grey, and then she was instantly drawn into the room,
the door of which was closed behind her.

The occupant of the room who thus welcomed Minola was a woman not far
short probably of forty years of age. She was short, she was decidedly
growing fat, she had a face which ought from its outlines and its color
to be rather humorous and mirthful than otherwise, and a pair of very
fine, deep, and consequently somewhat melancholy eyes. These eyes were
the only beauty of Miss Mary Blanchet's face. She had not good sight,
for all their brightness. When any one talked with her at some little
distance across a room, or even across a broad table, he could easily
see by the irresponsive look of the eyes--the eyes which never quite
found a common focus with his even during the most animated interchange
of thought--that Miss Blanchet had short sight. But Miss Blanchet always
frankly and firmly declined to put on spectacles. "I have only my eyes
to boast of, my dear," she said to all her female advisers, "and I am
not going to cover them with ugly spectacles, you may be sure." Hers was
a life of the simplest vanity, the most innocent affectation. Her eyes
had driven her into poetry, love, and disappointment. She was understood
to have loved very deeply and to have been deserted. None of her friends
could quite remember the lover, but every one said that no doubt there
must have been such a person. Miss Blanchet never actually spoke of
him, but she somehow suggested his memory.

Miss Blanchet was a poetess. She had published by subscription a volume
of verses, which was favorably noticed in the local newspapers and of
which she sent a copy to the Queen, whereof Her Majesty had been kindly
pleased to accept. Thus the poetess became a celebrity and a sort of
public character in Dukes-Keeton, and when her father died it was felt
that the town ought to do something for one who had done so much for it.
It made her custodian of the courthouse, entrusted with the charge of
seeing that it was kept clean, ventilated, water-besprinkled; that when
assizes came on, the judges' rooms were fittingly adorned and that
bouquets of flowers were placed every morning on the bench on which they
sat. This place Miss Blanchet had held for many years. The rising
generation had forgotten all about her poetry, and indeed, as she seldom
went out of her own little domain, had for the most part forgotten her
existence.

When Minola Grey was a little girl her mother was one of Miss Mary
Blanchet's chiefest patronesses. It was in great measure by the
influence of Minola's father that Miss Blanchet obtained her place in
the courthouse. Little Minola thought her a great poetess and a
remarkably beautiful woman, and accepted somehow the impression that she
had a romantic and mysterious love history. It was a rare delight for
her to be taken to spend an evening with Miss Blanchet, to drink tea in
her pretty and well kept little room, to walk with her through the stone
passages of the courthouse, and hear her repeat her poems. As Minola
grew she outgrew the poems, but the affection survived; and after her
mother's death she found no congenial or sympathetic friend anywhere in
Keeton but Mary Blanchet. The relationship between the two curiously
changed. The tall girl of twenty became the leader, the heroine, the
queen; and Mary Blanchet, sensible little woman enough in many ways,
would have turned African explorer or joined in a rebellion of women
against men if Miss Grey had given her the word of command.

"I know your mind is made up, dear, now that you have come," Miss
Blanchet said when the first rapture of greeting was over.

Minola took off her hat and threw it on the little sofa with the air of
one who feels thoroughly at home. It may be remarked as characteristic
of this young woman that in going toward the sofa she had to pass the
chimney-piece with its mirror, and that she did not even cast a glance
at her own image in the glass.

"Mary," she asked gravely, "am I a man and a brother, that you expect me
to change my mind? You are not repenting, I hope?"

"Oh, no, my dear. I have all the advantages, you know. I am so tired of
this place and the work--dear me!"

"And I hate to see you at such work. You might almost as well be a
servant. Years ago I made up my mind to take you out of this wretched
place as soon as I should be of age and my own mistress."

"Well, I have sent in my resignation, and I am free. But I am a little
afraid about you. You have been used to every luxury--and the
carriage--and all that."

"One of my ambitions is to drive in a hansom cab. Another is to have a
latch-key. Both will soon be gratified. I am only sorry for one thing."

"What is that, dear?"

"That we can't be Rosalind and Celia; that I can't put on man's clothes
and liberty."

"But you don't like men--you always want to avoid them."

Miss Grey said nothing in defence of her own consistency. She was
thinking that if she had been a man, she would have been spared the
vexation of having to listen to Mr. Augustus Sheppard's proposals.

"I suspect," Miss Blanchet said, "that people will say we are more like
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza."

"Which of us is the Sancho?"

"Oh, I of course; I am the faithful follower."

"You--poor little poetess, full of dreams, and hopes, and unselfishness!
Why, I shall have to see that you get something to eat at tolerably
regular intervals."

"How happy we shall be! And I shall be able to complete my poem! Do you
know, Minola," she said confidentially, "I do believe I shall be able to
make a career in London. I do indeed! The miserable details of daily
life here pressed me down, down," and she pressed her own hand upon her
forehead to illustrate the idea. "There, in freedom and quiet, I do
think I shall be able to prove to the world that I am worth a hearing!"

This was a tender subject with Miss Grey. She could not bear to disturb
by a word the harmless illusion of her friend, and yet the almost fierce
truthfulness of her nature would not allow her to murmur a sentence of
unmeaning flattery.

"One word, Mary," she said; "if you grow famous, no marrying--mind!"

Little Miss Blanchet laughed and then grew sad, and cast her eyes down.

"Who would ask me to marry, my dearest? And even if they did, the buried
past would come out of the grave--and----"

She slightly raised both hands in deprecation of this mournful
resurrection.

"Well, I have all to go through with my people yet."

"They won't prevent you?" Miss Blanchet asked anxiously.

"They can't. In a few months I should be my own mistress; and what is
the use of waiting? Besides, they don't really care--except for the sake
of showing authority and proving to girls that they ought to be
contented slaves. They know now that I am no slave. I do believe my
esteemed step-father--or step-stepfather, if there is such a word--would
consent to emancipate me if he could do so with the proper
ceremonial--the slap on the cheek."

The allusion was lost on Miss Blanchet.

"Mr. Saulsbury is a stern man indeed," she said, "but very good; that we
must admit."

"All good men, it seems, are hard, and all soft men are bad."

"What of Mr. Augustus Sheppard?" Miss Blanchet asked softly. "How will
he take your going away?"

"I have not asked him, Mary. But I can tell you if you care to know. He
will take it with perfect composure. He has about as much capacity for
foolish affection as your hearth-broom there."

"I think you are mistaken, Minola--I do indeed. I think that man is
really----"

"Well. Is really what?"

"You won't be angry if I say it?"

Minola seemed as if she were going to be angry, but she looked into the
little poetess's kindly, wistful eyes, and broke into a laugh.

"I couldn't be angry with you, Mary, if I had ten times my capacity for
anger--and that would be a goodly quantity! Well, what is Mr. Sheppard
really, as you were going to say?"

"Really in love with you, dear."

"You kind and believing little poetess--full of faith in simple true
love and all the rest of it! Mr. Sheppard likes what he considers a
respectable connection in Keeton. Failing in one chance he will find
another, and there is an end of that."

"I don't think so," Miss Blanchet said gravely. "Well, we shall see."

"We shall not see him any more. We shall live a glorious, lonely,
independent life. I shall study humanity from some lofty garret window
among the stars. London shall be my bark and my bride, as the old songs
about the Rovers used to say. All the weaknesses of humanity shall
reveal themselves to me in the people next door to us and over the way.
I'll study in the British Museum! I'll spend hours in the National
Gallery! I'll lie under the trees in Epping Forest! I _think_ I'll go to
the gallery of a theatre! _Liberté, liberté, cherie!_" And Miss Grey
proceeded to chant from the "Marseillaise" with splendid energy as she
walked up and down the room with clasped hands of mock heroic passion.

"You said something about a man and a brother just now, dear," Miss
Blanchet gently interposed. "I have something to tell you about a man
and a brother. _My_ brother is back again in London."

Miss Blanchet made this communication in the tone of one who is trying
to seem as if it would be welcome.

"Your brother? He has come back?" Miss Grey did not like to add, "I am
so sorry," but that was exactly what she would have said if she had
spoken her mind.

"Yes, my dear--quite reformed and as steady as can be, and going to make
a great name in London. Oh, you may trust him to this time--you may
indeed."

Miss Grey's handsome and only too expressive features showed signs of
profound dissatisfaction.

"I couldn't help telling him that we were going to live in London--one's
brother, you know."

"Yes, one's brother," Miss Grey said with sarcastic emphasis. "They are
an affectionate race, these brothers! Then he knows all about our
expedition? Has he been here, Mary?"

"Oh, no, dear; but he wrote to me--such beautiful letters! Perhaps you
would like to read them?"

Miss Grey was silent, and was evidently fighting some battle with
herself. At last she said:

"Well, Mary dear, it can't be helped, and I dare say he won't trouble to
come very often to see _us_. But I hope he will come as often as you
like, for you might be terribly lonely. I don't care to know anybody. I
mean to study human nature, not to know people."

"But you have some friends in London, and you are going to see them."

"Oh--Lucy Money; yes. She was at school with us, and we used to be fond
of each other. I think of calling to see her, but she may be changed
ever so much, and perhaps we shan't get on together at all. Her father
has become a sort of great man in London, I believe--I don't know how.
They won't trouble us much, I dare say."

The friends then sat and talked for a short time about their project. It
is curious to observe that though they were such devoted friends they
looked on their joint purpose with very different eyes. The young woman,
with her beauty, her spirit, and her talents, was absolutely sincere and
single-minded, and was going to London with the sole purpose of living a
free, secluded life, without ambition, without thought of any manner of
success. The poor little old maid had her head already filled with wild
dreams of fame to be found in London, of a distinguished brother, a
bright career, publishers seeking for everything she wrote, and her name
often in the papers. Devoted as she was to Miss Grey, or perhaps because
she was so devoted to her, she had already been forming vague but
delightful hopes about the reformed brother which she would not now for
all the world have ventured to hint to her friend.


CHAPTER III.

THE MAN WITH A GRIEVANCE.

Late that same night a young man stepped from a window in one of the
rooms on the third floor in the Hôtel du Louvre in Paris, and stood in
the balcony. It was a balcony in that side of the hotel which looks on
the Rue de Rivoli. The young man smoked a cigar and leaned over the
balcony.

It was a soft moonlight night. The hour was late and the streets were
nearly silent. The latest omnibus had gone its way, and only now and
then a rare and lingering _voiture_ clicked and clattered along, to
disappear round the corner of the place in front of the Palais Royal.
The long line of gas lamps, looking a faint yellow beneath the hotel and
the Louvre Palace across the way, seemed to deepen and deepen into
redder sparks the further the eye followed them to the right as they
stretched on to the Place de la Concorde and the Champs Elysées. To the
left the young man, leaning from the balcony, could see the tower of St.
Jacques standing darkly out against the faint, pale blue of the
moonlighted sky. The street was a line of silver or snow in the
moonlight.

The young man was tall, thin, dark, and handsome. He was unmistakably
English, although he had an excitable and nervous way about him which
did not savor of British coolness and composure. He seemed a person not
to take anything easily. Even the moonlight, and the solitude, and the
indescribably soothing and philosophic influence of the contemplation of
a silent city from the serene heights of a balcony, did not prevail to
take him out of himself into the upper ether of mental repose. He pulled
his long moustaches now and then, until they met like a kind of strap
beneath his chin, and again he twisted their ends up as if he desired to
appear fierce as a champion duellist of the Bonapartist group. He
sometimes took his cigar from his lips and held it between his fingers
until it went out, and when he put it into his mouth again he took
several long puffs before he quite realized the fact that he was puffing
at what one might term dry stubble. Then he pulled out a box of fusees
and lighted his cigar in an irritated way, as if he were protesting that
really the fates were bearing down upon him rather too heavily, and that
he was entitled to complain at last.

"Good evening, sir," said a strong, full British voice that sounded just
at his elbow.

The young man, looking round, saw that his next-door neighbor in the
hotel had likewise opened his window and stepped out on his balcony. The
two had met before, or at least seen each other before, once or twice.
The young man had seen the elder with some ladies at breakfast in the
hotel, and that evening he and his neighbor had taken coffee side by
side on the boulevards and smoked and exchanged a few words.

The elder man's strong, rather under-sized figure showed very clearly in
the moonlight. He had thick, almost shaggy hair, of an indefinable dark
brownish color--hair that was not curly, that was not straight, that did
not stand up, and yet could evidently never be kept down. He had a rough
complexioned face, with heavy eyebrows and stubby British whiskers. His
hands were large and reddish-brown and coarse. He was dressed
carelessly--that is, his clothes were evidently garments that had cost
money, but he did not seem to care how he wore them. Any garment must
fall readily into shapelessness and give up trying to fit well on that
unheeding figure. The Briton did not seem exactly what one would at once
assume to be a gentleman. Yet he was not vulgar, and he was evidently
quite at his ease with himself. He looked somehow like a man who had
money or power of some kind, and who did not care whether people knew it
or did not know it. Our younger Briton had at the first glance taken him
for the ordinary English father of a family, travelling with his
womankind. But he had not seen him for two minutes at the breakfast
table before he observed that the supposed heavy father was never in a
fuss, had a way of having all his orders obeyed without trouble or
misunderstanding, and for all his strong British accent talked French
with entire ease and a sort of resolute grammatical accuracy.

"Staying in Paris?" the elder man said--he too was smoking--when the
younger had replied to his salutation.

"No; I am going home--I mean I am going to England--to-morrow."

"Ay, ay? I almost wish I were too. I'm taking my wife and daughters for
a holiday. I don't much care for holidays myself. I hadn't time for
enjoyment of such things when I could enjoy them, and of course when you
get out of the way of enjoying yourself you never get into it again;
it's a sort of groove, I suppose. Anyhow, we don't ever enjoy much, our
people. You are English, I suppose?"

"Yes, I am English."

"Wish you weren't? I see."

Indeed, the tone in which the young man answered the question seemed to
warrant this interpretation.

"Excuse me; I didn't say that," the young man said, a little sharply.

"No, no; I only thought you meant it. We are not bound, you know, to
keep rattling up the Rule Britannia always among ourselves."

"I can assure you I am not at all inclined to rattle the Rule Britannia
too loudly," the young man said, tossing the end of his cigar away and
looking determinedly into the street with his hands dug deeply into his
pockets.

The elder man smoked for a few seconds in silence, and looked up and
down the long straight line of street.

"Odd," he said abruptly. "I always think of Balzac when I look into the
streets of Paris, and when I give myself time to think. Balzac sums up
Paris to me."

"Yes," said the younger man, talking for the first time with an
appearance of genuine interest in the conversation; "but things must be
greatly changed since that time even in Paris, you know."

"Changed? Not a bit of it. The outsides of course. The Louvre was half a
ruin the other day, and now it's getting all right again. That's change,
if you like to call it so. But the heart of things is just the same.
Balzac stands for Paris, believe you me."

"I don't believe a word of it--not a word! I mean--excuse me--that I
don't agree with you."

"Yes, yes: I understand what you mean. I'm not offended. Well?"

"Well--I don't believe a bit that men and women ever were like that. You
mean to tell me that people were made without hearts in Paris or
anywhere else? Do you believe in a place peopled by cads and sneaks and
curs--and the women half again as bad as the men?"

The young man grew warm, and the elder drew him out, and they discussed
Balzac as they stood in the balcony and looked down on silent
moonlighted Paris. The elder man smoked and smiled and shrugged his
shoulders good-humoredly. The younger was as full of gesture and
animation as if his life depended on the controversy.

"All right," the elder said at last. "I like to hear you talk, but Paris
is Balzac to me still. Going to be in London some time?"

"I suppose so: yes," in a tone of sudden depression and discontent.

"I wish we might meet. I live in London, and I wish you would come and
see me when we get back from our--holiday we'll call it."

The young man turned half away and leaned on the balcony as if he were
looking very earnestly for something in the direction of the Champs
Elysées. Then he faced his companion suddenly and said,

"I think you had much better not have anything to do with me: I should
only prove a bore to you, or to anybody."

"How is that?"

"Well--in short, I'm a man with a grievance."

"Ay, ay? What's your grievance? Whom has it to do with?"

The young man looked up quickly, as if he did not quite understand the
brusque ways of his new acquaintance, who put his questions so directly.
But the new acquaintance seemed good-humored and quite at his ease, and
evidently had not the least idea of being rude or over-inquisitive. He
had only the way of one apparently used to ordering people about.

"My grievance is against the Government," the young man said with a
grave politeness, almost like self-assertion.

"Government here: in France?"

"No, no: our own Government."

"Ay, ay? What have they been doing? _You_ haven't invented anything--new
cannon--flying machine--that sort of thing?"

"No: nothing of the kind--I wish I had--but how did you know?"

"How did I know what?"

"That I hadn't invented anything?"

"Why, I knew it by looking at you. Do you think I shouldn't know an
inventor? You might as well ask me how I know a man has been in the
army. Well, about this grievance of yours?"

"I dare say you will know my name," the young man said with a sort of
reluctant modesty, which contrasted a little oddly with the quick
movements and rapid talk which usually belonged to him. Then his manner
suddenly changed, and he spoke in a tone of something like irritation,
as if he had better have the whole thing out at once and be done with
it--"My name is Heron--Victor Heron."

"Heron--Heron?" said the other, turning over the name in his memory.
"Well, I don't know I'm sure--I may have heard it--one hears all sorts
of names. But I don't remember just at the moment."

Mr. Heron seemed a little surprised that his revelation had produced no
effect. He had made up his mind somehow that his new friend was mixed up
with politics and public affairs.

"You'll remember Victor Heron of the St. Xavier's Settlements?" he said
decisively.

"Heron of the St. Xavier's Settlements? Ah, yes, yes. To be sure. Yes, I
begin to remember now. Of course, of course. You're the fellow who got
us into the row with the Portuguese or the Dutch, or who was it? About
the slave trade, or something? I remember it in the House."

"I am the fool," Mr. Heron went on volubly--"the blockhead, the idiot,
that thought England had principles, and honor, and a policy, and all
the rest of it! I haven't lived in England very much. I'm the son of a
colonist--the Herons are an old colonial family--and you can't think,
you people always in England, how romantic and enthusiastic we get about
England, we silly colonists, with our old-fashioned ways. When I got
that confounded appointment--it was given in return for some old
services of my father's--I believe I thought I was going to be another
sort of Raleigh, or something of the kind."

"Just so; and of course you were ready to tumble into any sort of
scrape. You are hauled over the coals--snubbed for your pains?"

"Yes--I was snubbed."

"Of course: they'll soon work the enthusiasm out of you. But that's a
couple of years ago--and you weren't recalled?"

"No. I wasn't recalled."

"Well, what's your grievance then?"

"Why--don't you see?--my time is out--and they've dropped me down. My
whole career is closed--I'm quietly thrown over--and I'm only
twenty-nine!" The young man caught at his moustache with nervous hands
and kicked with one foot against the rails of the balcony. He gazed into
the street, and his eyes sparkled and twinkled as if there were tears in
them. Perhaps there were, for Mr. Heron was evidently a young man of
quicker emotions than young men generally show in our days. He made
haste to say something, apparently as if to escape from himself.

"I am leaving Paris in the morning."

"Then why don't you go to bed and have a sleep?"

"Well, I don't feel like sleeping just yet."

"You young fellows never know the blessing of sleep. I can sleep
whenever I want to--it's a great thing. I make it a rule though to do
all my sleeping at night, whenever I can. You leave Paris in the
morning? Now that's a thing I don't like to do. Paris should never be
seen early in the morning. London shows to the best advantage early; but
Paris--no!"

"Why not?" Mr. Heron asked, stimulated to a little curiosity.

"Paris is a beauty, you know, a little on the wane, and wanting to be
elaborately made up and curled and powdered and painted, and all that.
She's a little of a slattern underneath the surface, you know, and
doesn't bear to be taken unawares--mustn't be seen for at least an hour
or two after she has got out of bed. All the more like Balzac's women."

Perhaps the elder man had observed Mr. Heron's sensitiveness more
closely and clearly than Heron fancied, and was talking on only to give
him time to recover his composure. Certainly he talked much more volubly
and continuously than appeared at first to be his way. After a while he
said, in his usual style of blunt but not unkind inquiry--

"Any of your people living in London?"

"No--in fact, I haven't any people in England--few relations now left
anywhere."

"Like Melchisedek, eh? Well, I don't know that he was the most to be
pitied of men. You have friends enough, I suppose?"

"Not friends exactly--acquaintances enough, I dare say--people to call
on, people who remember one's name and who ask one to dinner. But I
don't know that I shall have much time for cultivating acquaintanceships
in the way of society."

"Why so? What are you going to London to do?"

"To get a hearing, of course. To make the whole thing known. To show
that I was in the right, and that I only did what the honor of England
demanded. I trust to England."

"What's England got to do with it? England is only so many men and women
and children all concerned in their own affairs, and not caring twopence
about you and me and our wrongs. Besides, who has accused you? Who has
found fault with you? Your time is out, and there's an end."

"But they have dropped me down--they think to crush me."

"If they do, it will be by severely letting you alone; and what can you
do against that? You can't quarrel with a man merely because he ceases
to invite you to dinner, and that's about the way of it."

"I'll fight this out for all that."

"You'll soon get tired of it. It's beating the air, you know. Of course,
if you want to annoy the Government, you could easily get some of us to
take up your case--no difficulty about that--and make you the hero of a
grievance and a debate, and so on."

"I want nothing of the kind! I don't want any one to trouble himself
about me, and I don't care to be taken in hand by any one. If Englishmen
will not listen to a plain statement of right, why then----But I know
they will."

The conviction itself was expressed in the tone of one who by its very
assertion protests against a rising doubt and tries to stifle it.

"Very good," said the other. "Try it on. We shall soon see. I have a
sort of interest in the matter, for I had a grievance myself, and I have
still, only I went about things in a different way--looking for redress,
I mean."

"What did you do?"

"It's a longish story, and quite a different line from yours, and it
would bore you to hear, even if you understood it. I got into the House
and made myself a nuisance. I put money in my purse; it came in somehow.
I watch the department that I once belonged to with the eye of a lynx.
Well, I shall look out for you and give you a hand if I can, always
supposing it would annoy the Government--any Government--I don't care
what."

Mr. Heron looked at him with wonder and incredulity.

"Terrible lack of principle, you think? Not a bit of it; I'm a strong
politician; I stick to my side through thick and thin. But in their
management of departments, you know--contracts, and all
that--governments are all the same; the natural enemies of man. Well, I
hope to see you. I am going to have a sleep. Let me give you my
address--though in any case I think we are certain to meet."

They parted with blunt expression of friendly inclination on the one
side and a doubtful, half-reluctant acknowledgment on the other. Heron
remained standing in his balcony looking at the changes of the moonlight
on the silent streets and thinking of his career and his grievance.

The nearer he came to England the colder his hopes seemed to grow. Now
upon the threshold of the country he had so longed to reach, he was
inclined to linger and loiter and to put off his entrance. Everything
that was so easy and clear a few thousand miles off began to show itself
perplexed and difficult. "When shall I be there?" he used to ask himself
on his homeward journey. "What have I come for?" he began to ask himself
now.

Times had indeed changed very suddenly with Victor Heron. He had come
into the active world perhaps rather prematurely. When very young, under
the guidance of an energetic and able father who had been an
administrator of some distinction in England's service among her
dependencies, he had made himself somewhat conspicuous in one of the
colonies; and when an opportunity occurred, after his father's death, of
offering him a considerable position, the Government appointed him to
the administration of a new settlement. It is hardly necessary for us to
go any deeper into the story of his grievance than he has already gone
himself in a few words. Except as an illustration of his character, we
have not much to do with the story of his career as an administrator. It
was a very small business altogether; a quarrel in a far off, lately
appropriated, and almost wholly insignificant scrap of England's
domains. Probably Mr. Heron was in the wrong, for he had been stimulated
wholly by a chivalrous enthusiasm for the honor of England's principles
and a keen sense of what he considered justice. The Government had
dealt very kindly with him in consideration of his youth and of his
father's services, and had merely dropped him down.

This to a young man like Heron was simply killing with kindness. He
could have stood up stoutly against impeachment, trial, punishment, any
manner of exciting ordeal, and commanded his brave heart to bear it. But
to be quietly allowed to go his way was intolerable, and, being accused
of nothing, he was rushing back to England to insist on being accused of
something. A chief of any kind in a small dependency is a person of
overwhelming greatness and importance in his own sphere. Every eye there
is literally on him. He diffuses even a sort of impression as if he were
a good deal too large for his sphere, like the helmet of such portentous
size in the courtyard of Otranto. To come down all at once to be an
ordinary passenger to England, an ordinary "No. 257, au 3me" at the
Hôtel du Louvre in Paris, an obscure personage getting out at the
Charing Cross station and calling a hansom, nobody caring whence he has
come, or capable, even after elaborate reminder, of calling to memory
his story, his grievance, or his identity--this is something to try the
soul of a patient man. Mr. Heron was not patient.

He was a young Quixote out of time and place. He never could let
anything alone. He could not see a grievance without trying to set it
right. The impression that anybody was being wronged or cheated affected
and tormented him as keenly as a discordant note or an inharmonious
arrangement of colors might disturb persons of loftier artistic soul. In
the colonies queer old ideas survive long after they have died out of
England, and the traveller from the parent country comes often on some
ancient abstraction there as he might upon some old-fashioned garment.
Heron started into life with a full faith in the living reality of
divers abstractions which people in England have long since dissected,
analyzed, and thrown away. He believed in and spoke of progress, and
humanity, and brotherhood, and such like vaguenesses as if they were
real things to work for and love. People who regard abstractions as
realities are just the very persons who turn solid and commonplace
realities into shining and splendid abstractions. Young Heron regarded
England not as an island with a bad climate, where some millions of
florid men made money or worked for it, but as a sort of divine
influence inspiring youth to noble deeds and patriotic devotion. He was
of course the very man to get into a muddle when he had anything to do
with the administration of a new settlement. If the muddle had not lain
in his way, he would assuredly have found it.

He had so much to do now on his further way home in helping elderly
ladies on that side who could not speak French, and on this side who
could not speak English; in seeing that persons whom he had never set
eyes on before were not neglected at buffets, left behind by trains, or
overcharged by waiters; in giving and asking information about
everything, that he had not much time to think about the St. Xavier's
settlements and his personal grievance. When the suburbs of London came
in sight, with their trim rows of stucco-fronted villas and cottages,
and their front gardens ornamented with the inevitable evergreens, a
thrill of enthusiasm came up in Heron's breast, and he became feverish
with anxiety to be in the heart of the great capital once again. Now he
began to see familiar spires, and domes, and towers, and then again
huge, unfamiliar roofs and buildings that were not there when he was in
London last, and that puzzled him with their presence. Then the train
crossed the river, and he had glimpses of the Thames, and Westminster
Palace, and the embankment with its bright garden patches and its little
trees, and he wondered at the ungenial creatures who see in London
nothing but ugliness. To him everything looked smiling, beautiful, alive
with hope and good omen.

Certainly a railway station, an arrival, a hurried transaction, however
slight and formal, with a customs officer, are a damper on enthusiasm of
any kind. Heron began to feel dispirited. London looked hard and
prosaic. His grievance began to show signs of breaking out again amid
the hustling, the crowd, the luggage, and the exertion, as an old wound
might under similar circumstances, if one in his haste and eagerness
were to strain its hardly closed edges.

It was when he was in a hansom driving to his hotel that Heron, putting
his hand in his waistcoat pocket, drew out a crumpled card which he had
thrust in there hastily and forgotten. The card bore the name of

    "MR. CROWDER E. MONEY,
    Victoria street,
    Westminster."

Heron remembered his friend of Paris. "An odd name," he thought. "I have
heard it before somewhere. I like him. He seems a manly sort of fellow."

Then he found himself wondering what Mr. Money's daughters were like,
and wishing he had observed them more closely in Paris, and asking
whether it was possible that girls could be pretty and interesting with
such an odd name.




DRIFT-WOOD.


THE SPINNING OF LITERATURE.

"Of making many books there is no end," sighed a preacher in times when
industrious readers might presumably have kept the run of current
literature. Our advantage over Solomon is the utter hopelessness of
reading the new works, not to speak of standard acres in the libraries.
In this holiday season, chief hatching-time of books, it is pleasant to
see them flocking out in numbers so vast. "Germany published 11,315
works of all classes in 1873, 12,070 in 1874, 12,516 in 1875." We rub
our hands over statistics like these, because they check any mad
ambition to master German contemporary literature; and besides, there
are "1,622 newspapers and periodical publications in the German empire."
As for the new works in our own tongue, the only way of getting through
them would obviously be to do as legislators do with the laws they
pass--"read them by title."

Earlier ages, that had not reached this happy hopelessness, produced
great bookworms. When the old monks had devoured their convent
libraries, they were fain to pay vast sums occasionally for extra
reading, as St. Jerome did for the works of Origen; whereas now a
reviewer can only glance at his "complimentary copies" of new books, so
numerous are they. Bacon argued against abridgements, as if the body of
literature could be compassed in his day. A century or two ago there
were prodigious Porsons and Johnsons; but such gluttons are now rare. It
is true that Mill, between his fourth and eighth years, read in the
original all Herodotus and a good part of Xenophon, Lucian, Isocrates,
Diogenes Laertius, Plato, and the Annual Register, besides Hume, Gibbon,
Robertson, Miller, Mosheim, and other historians; while before the age
of thirteen he had mastered the whole of Homer, Virgil, Horace, Sallust,
Thucydides, Aristotle's Rhetoric and Logic, Tacitus, Juvenal,
Quinctilian, parts of Ovid, Terence, Nepos, Cæsar, Livy, Lucretius,
Cicero, Polybius, and many other authors, besides learning geometry,
algebra, and the differential calculus. But that lad was crammed
scientifically like a Strasbourg goose; our ordinary modern writers are
not walking cyclopædias, and are rarely prodigious readers. It is no
longer a reproach even for a man not to know all the literature of his
specialty; while, as for general reading, when the "Publisher's
Circular" tells us that the different books that mankind have made are
numbered by millions, we sit down in a most comfortable despair, and
pick to our liking.

Thanks to modern fecundity, critics rarely molest authors with demands
for the _raison d'être_ of a new book. The reviewer's question used to
be, "Why did the man publish? What need was there? What is he trying to
show?" One pontiff is said to have suggested burning up all the
different books in the world, except six thousand, so that the rest
might be read. There used to be pleas for condensations, as if people
were still fondly hoping to compass the realm of literature and science,
the blessed era of hopelessness having not yet dawned. But it is idle to
plead against diffuseness now, when writers are paid by the page or
line. "I want," said the editor of "La Situation" to Dumas, "a story
from you, entitled 'Terreur Prussienne à Francfort'--60 _feuilletons_ of
400 lines each; total, 84,000 lines." "And if it makes only 58?"
responded Dumas. "I require 60, of 400 lines each, averaging 31 letters
each line--744,000 letters." At noon of the day agreed upon, the
manuscript was in the hands of M. Hollander. If Sir Critic ever came
with foot-rule and condensing-pump to gravely detect diffusiveness in
the "Terreur Prussienne," it must have diverted the high contracting
parties.

It is said that a dialogue of Dumas the elder created a revolution in
the French mode of paying romance literature. Dumas, who was reckoned by
the line, one day introduced, they say, into his _feuilleton_ this
thrilling passage:

    My son!
    My mother!
    Listen!
    Speak!
    Seest thou?
    What?
    This poniard!
    It is stained--
    With blood!
    Whose?
    Thy father's.
    Ah!!!

After that Dumas was paid by the letter. To say sooth, the same
incident, with a different catastrophe, is related of Ponson Du Terrail,
who, one day, in his "Resurrection de Rocambole," filled about a column
with dialogue of this character:

    Who?
    I.
    You?
    Yes.
    He shuddered.

Accordingly, as the story goes, the author being summoned before the
editor of the "Petit Journal," was notified that if this monosyllabic
chat went on, he would be paid by the word. "Very well," replied the
obliging novelist, "I will change my style;" and next day, M. Millaud
was astounded to find the _feuilleton_ introducing a pair of stammerers
talking in this agreeable fashion:

     "Wou-wou-would you de-de-de-deceive me, you wr-wr-wretch?" said
     the old corsair in a tone of thunder.

     "I ne-ne-ne-never de-de-de-deceived an-an-an-anybody,"
     exclaimed Baccarat, imitating the other's defect in
     pronunciation.

     "Wh-wh-wh-where is Ro-ro-rocam-bo-bole?"

     "You ne-ne-never will kn-know."

"He will make all his characters stutter soon," said Millaud. "We had
better pay him by the line." Of course this is a story _faite à
plaisir_, as is also the one that as soon as Dumas made his first
contract by the line, enchanted with the arrangement, he invented dear
old Grimaud, who only opened his mouth to utter "yes," "no," "what?"
"ah!" "bah!" and other monosyllables; but when the editor, who knew the
cash price of "peuh" and "oh," declared he would only pay for lines half
full, Grimaud was slaughtered the next morning. However, these yarns
show that the French can satirize their jerky, staccato style of
_feuilleton_, with each sentence staked off in a paragraph by itself,
like some grimacing clown, who expects each particular joke or
handspring to be observed individually, and to be greeted with separate
applause. Across the channel we of course find the English journals
going to the other extreme, in insular pride, and packing distinct
subjects into the same paragraph.

Greek and Roman Tuppers used, no doubt, to "reel off a couple of hundred
lines, standing on one foot;" but the veneering of a thin layer of ideas
upon a thick layer of words is naturally the special trait of our age of
cheap ink and paper, of steam printing, and of paying for writing by
long measure. The "Country Parson" is a favorite writer of this sort,
whose excellence is in "the art of putting things," rather than in
having many things to put. The essays of the "Spectator," "Guardian,"
"Tatler," "Rambler," rarely gave only a pennyworth of wit to an
intolerable deal of words; but our modern periodical essay achieves
success by taking some such assertion as "Old maids are agreeable," or
"Old maids are disagreeable," and wire-drawing it into sundry yards of
readable matter. Macbeth's

    The Devil damn thee black, thou cream-fac'd loon!
    Where got'st thou that goose-look?

would supply a modern playwright with a square foot of gold-beaten
invective. "True poems," said Irving, "are caskets which enclose in a
small compass the wealth of the language--its family jewels." But when
poems are paid by the line, bards are pardonable for diffuseness. And
then, besides diffuseness, our age has wonderful literary fecundity. Few
people know how much painters paint, and how much great writers write;
for the bards of a single poem, as Mr. Stedman shows, are exceptional,
and rich quantity as well as rich quality is the usual rule for
greatness, whether of novelist, poet, essayist, metaphysician, or
historian. So here we come upon another source of the accumulated floods
of literature. The other day I was looking through a prodigious list of
the works of Alexandre Dumas, _père_. There were 127 of them, mostly
novels--"Monte Christo," "Three Musketeers," "Bragelonne," and the rest
that we used to read. They made 244 volumes; but the plays were not
included, and many slighter miscellanies did not seem to be there; and
the posthumous work on cookery was certainly not there; and of course
there was no effort to collect everything from "Le Mois," "La Liberté,"
and the half dozen other journals he edited or wrote in; so that I doubt
not the writings of this illustrious man, if ever brought together in a
complete edition, would make at least 150 works of 300 or 400 stout
volumes. And in English literature we have many Salas and Southworths. I
remember an announcement in the "Lancet" that "Mr. G. A. Sala is
completely restored to health, and in the full discharge of his
professional duties." An expressive term, that "full discharge"!

Again, some popular authors employ apprentices to do the bulk of their
work, only touching it up with mannerisms, and so turn out much more
than if they wrought it all. The world, too, has now accumulated a
myriad handbooks of facts and compilations of statistics, which enable
writers with a fondness for theory, like Buckle, to have all their
material ready to spin into generalization. Then there is a popular
education toward prolixity in the telegraphic part of newspapers. The
associated press writers from Washington seem to be selected for their
inability to be terse and pithy, and dribble out the simplest fact with
pitiful iteration. The special news-writers, being often at their wits'
end for their dole of day's work, can hardly be asked to be laconic. The
special messages which the ocean wires bring, doubtless with exquisite
terseness and picturesqueness, are most carefully interwritten and
diluted; so that, for example, the words "Thiers spoke at Coulmiers"
become "M. Adolphe Thiers, president of the French Republic before the
accession of the present Chief Executive, Marshal MacMahon, delivered an
address, or rather made some remarks partly in the nature of an oration
or speech on subjects connected with matters of interest at the present
time, at the town of Coulmiers, which is situated"--and here follow a
dozen lines from the Cyclopædia, but dated at Paris, giving the
geography, history, and commerce of Coulmiers. One can fancy in the
"Atlantic cable" columns of the "Morning Meteor" the tokens of a
standing prescription to dilute foreign facts with nine parts domestic
verbiage; and this kind of "editing" educates mankind to padding and
patching with superfluous material.

It is harder for French writers to be prolix. The French writer is
inevitably epigrammatic first, and, if diffusive afterward, it is with
malice aforethought. If we compare, for example, publicists like Guizot
and Gladstone, while each has that perfect command of his material,
instead of letting the material command him, which marks the skilful
writer, yet the Englishman sometimes seems to require two or three
consecutive sentences to bring out his thought, whereas M. Guizot packs
it into one. But Guizot deliberately goes on to put the identical
statement into two or three paraphrased forms. For example, in the
"History of Civilization in Europe" there is usually a terse sentence or
two in each paragraph which contain the whole of it, packed into
briefest compass; were these key sentences repeated on the side of the
page as marginal notes, the reader could master the book by mastering
the margins. When an English writer is diffuse, he cannot help it; when
a French writer is diffuse, he effects it by sheer effort at repetition.

And we humble hack scribblers, who confidingly slip our daily, and
weekly, and monthly mites into the vast mass of current reading turned
out for an omnivorous public--let us hope that the world's maw may long
remain unsated and the market unglutted.


GROWTH OF AMERICAN TASTE FOR ART.

While to many it has seemed a pity that the Johnston gallery should be
broken up, yet this distribution of its treasures scatters the seeds of
art education. Besides, the prices obtained at the sale must impress
many wealthy men with a conviction valuable to the interests of art;
namely, that pictures, like diamonds, are a safe investment, as well as
a source of enjoyment and fame. Considering that the times are hard, and
that pictures are luxuries, the sum thus paid for art treasures, so soon
after the centennial purchases, is a proof of the number of good patrons
that can be counted on when works of value are for sale. But the works
must be of value. At a former auction in New York "old masters" brought
these prices: Madonna Del Correggio, $30; two Murrillos, $160 and $90; a
landscape of Salvator Rosa, $55; a Tintoretto, $115; a Guido, $35; "St.
John," by Sir Joshua Reynolds, $15--and so on. Every few months we find
a so-called Titian or Raphael going for the price of the frame. Such
auctions tell a story as emphatic as that of the Johnston gallery.

When the German painters were considering whether they should send
canvases to the Centennial Exposition the "Allgemeine Zeitung" reminded
them "that their works bring twice as much in America as in Germany."
But each successive sale here shows that most buyers now know what is
worth getting and what is not, though naturally some painters are the
rage who will be forgotten fifty years hence. Still, the cynics are
wrong in decrying the eagerness to buy painters who are in fashion. What
harm in a millionaire's ordering a picture _d'ameublement_, to suit a
particular room or panel, or in his ordering from the bookseller a
hundred volumes of current novels? If the picture be good, whether
bought by the foot for furnishing or whether painted under the
microscope, its sale may aid the profession of art.

Comparing the Johnston sale with some of the famous auctions of the past
four years at the hotel Drouot, we find that in the Paturle collection
twenty-eight canvases bought $90,000, being all works of masters. The
general prices were not higher than the Johnston prices, but Ary
Scheffer's Marguerites brought 40,000 and 35,000 francs; a Troyon,
63,000; and Leopold Robert's admirable "Fishers of the Adriatic," 83,000
francs. The gallery of the Pereires brought 1,785,586 francs, which was
rather higher than the Johnston total, but I believe there were more
masterpieces. A head by Greuze brought 32,500 francs. The highest prices
seemed to be carried off by the Dutch painters, who were in force, and
three works by Hobbema, a country residence, a forest scene, and a
windmill, brought respectively 50,000, 81,000, and 30,000 francs.

The prices for good pictures, taking into account agreeableness of
subject and state of preservation, seem to be much the same in New York
and Paris, though French newspapers fancy American taste for art to be
at barbarian pitch. They should learn otherwise from the American
painting and sculpture in Paris, London, Vienna, Florence, and Rome;
they might learn otherwise from the discriminating appreciation of their
own artists at such sales as Mr. Johnston's. The worst statuary as well
as by far the best at Philadelphia last year was Italian, and some of
the worst painting as well as the best was Spanish. There is some
monstrous governmental art, no doubt, with us, but as for popular taste,
there is nothing in America so vulgar as the cheap glass necklaces, tin
spangles, and painted trinkets on the sacred images in the churches of
Southern Europe. American travellers speak of the contrast between the
beautiful cathedral and its hideous painted images bedizened with trash
to which dollar-store jewels are gems of art; and the approaches to a
splendid church or castle are very likely bedecked with clumsy,
unvolatile angels, most terrestrial and unlovely. It is true that the
decoration of temples and the adoration of images, whether under heathen
or Christian auspices, has always fostered art; but American popular
taste, low as it is supposed to be, would hardly set up in churches
statues of painted wood only fit for tobacco shops. In Rome, where
American taste is looked down upon, they have annual shows of painted
wooden figures of saints and angels, in all hues, each uglier than the
other, to be sold for putting upon the altars as votive offerings. In
fact, wherever the "Latin race" is, the popular taste runs to blocks of
the Virgin and Child resembling the lay figures in a tailor's shop.

The leading thought on this subject is that art has made greater strides
in the United States within the past twenty years than for the century
preceding. Twenty years ago there was comparatively no art public at
all. There were not a quarter part as many foreign pictures here as
to-day; there were not a fourth part as many American artists. The
department of American water colors has been substantially created
within ten years. The facilities for art education have been quadrupled
within the same period, and the wealthy who form galleries have
multiplied in like proportion. American progress in science and
mechanism, though so great, falls short of American progress in taste
and American productivity in the fine arts.

                        PHILIP QUILIBET.




SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.


PROTECTION FROM LIGHTNING.

Prof. Clerk Maxwell says that the ordinary lightning rod is a great
mistake. It acts to discharge electricity from the clouds at all
possible opportunities, but these discharges are smaller than would
occur without the rod. The true method is to encase the building in a
network of rods, when it will take its charge quietly like a Leyden jar.
Taking the case of a powder mill, it would be sufficient to surround it
with a conducting material, to sheathe its roof, walls, and ground-floor
with thick sheet copper, and then no electrical effect could occur
within it on account of any thunderstorm outside. There would be no need
of any earth connection. We might even place a layer of asphalte between
the copper floor and the ground, so as to insulate the building. If the
mill were then struck with lightning, it would remain charged for some
time, and a person standing on the ground outside and touching the wall
might receive a shock, but no electrical effect would be perceived
inside, even on the most delicate electrometer.

This sheathing with sheet copper is not necessary. It is quite
sufficient to enclose the building with a network of a good conducting
substance. For instance, if a copper wire, say No. 4, B. W. G. (0.238
inches diameter), were carried round the foundation of the house, up
each of the corners and gables, and along the ridges, this would
probably be a sufficient protection for an ordinary building against any
thunderstorm in this climate. The copper wire may be built into the wall
to prevent theft, but should be connected to any outside metal, such as
lead or zinc on the roof, and to metal rain-water pipes. In the case of
a powder-mill it might be advisable to make the network closer by
carrying one or two additional wires over the roof and down the walls to
the wires at the foundations. If there are water or gas pipes which
enter the building from without, these must be connected with the system
of conducting wires; but if there are no such metallic connections with
distant points, it is not necessary to take any pains to facilitate the
escape of the electricity into the earth. But it is not advisable to put
up a tail pointed conductor.


STEAM MACHINERY AND PRIVATEERING.

Mr. Barnaby, a prominent English naval constructor, has written a
memorandum on the British mercantile marine as an adjunct to the navy in
time of war. He points out that privateering has been made obsolete, not
merely by popular feeling, but also by the progress of the arts. A
privateer, he thinks, must be prepared to meet regular ships of war of
about the same strength. This the introduction of steam machinery has
made impossible. War ships are built for security, merchant steamers for
economical work, and the different objects have necessitated different
arrangements. In a word, the machinery of war ships is carefully
disposed below the water line, that of marine vessels is usually above
the water line. The latter would therefore be much more subject to
injury from shot than the other. This state of things excludes from
service as privateers all but the swiftest vessels, and Mr. Barnaby
thinks that the use of the merchant marine "would be confined to ships
that could save themselves by their speed if they met a ship of war,
whether armored or not," and that only those which can steam eleven and
a half or twelve knots an hour can be considered serviceable for
privateering. This limits the number of vessels available for this
service to 400 or 500, and the common idea that England can, in case of
war, "cover the sea" with her ships is proved to be untrue. Even these
vessels could not be used as privateers except against certain nations.
The Government would be compelled to buy them, and this would cost, he
estimates, a hundred to a hundred and fifty million dollars. This
addition to the regular fleet he thinks would enable England to "close
up every hostile port, and the slow steamers and the helpless sailing
ships might cross the seas in such security (privateering not being
admissible) that merchandise would be as safe in the English ship as in
the neutral." The fault in all this reasoning is that a ship of inferior
speed is certain to meet with a swifter antagonist, and therefore become
a capture. Our experience with the Confederate cruisers was that the
efforts of a very large navy may be eluded and defied for years, without
regard to the sailing qualities on either side.


MAN AND ANIMALS.

The influence upon animals of their association with man formed the
subject of an interesting discussion in the British Association meeting.
Mr. Shaw read a paper "On the Mental Progress of Animals During the
Human Period," and Dr. Grierson mentioned an instance of intelligence
which had come under his own notice. Five years ago a barrel was put up
in his garden at the top of a high pole. The barrel was perforated with
holes and divided in the centre. In the course of two days two starlings
visited the barrel, and returned on the following day, and in about a
week afterward two pairs of starlings came and occupied it, and brought
up their young. They were very wild starlings, and readily took flight
when any person went near the barrel. In the second year four pairs of
starlings occupied the barrel, and they were much tamer than the
previous ones, and this last year there were a number of pairs of
starlings so tame that they would almost allow him to take hold of them.
They had now changed their mode of speaking, for the starlings in his
garden frequently articulated words.


THE LIMBS OF WHALES.

Whales have rudimentary limbs, and Prof. Struthers concludes that such
muscles existed in the whale-bone whales, but in ordinary teethed whales
they were merely represented by fibrous tissue. These muscles existing
in the true bottle-nosed whale had a special interest, as the teeth in
that whale were rudimentary and functionless. He had found these muscles
in the forearms of whales largely mixed with fibrous tissue, so the
transition was easy. Prof. MacAlister of Dublin thinks that whales were
not of very ancient origin, for the existence of the rudimentary limbs
tends to show that a sufficient length of time has not elapsed since the
use of the limb was essential to the earlier animal to produce its
complete obliteration.


OUR EDUCATIONAL STANDING.

The advance which this country has made in educational facilities of all
grades within its hundred years of life was summarized as follows by
Prof. Phelps, President of the National Educational Association:

"Prior to 1776 but nine colleges had been established, and not more than
five were really efficient. Now there are more than 400 colleges and
universities, with nearly 57,000 students, and 3,700 professors and
teachers. Then little was done for the higher education of women. Now
there are 209 female seminaries, 23,445 students, and 2,285 teachers.
There are also 322 professional schools of various classes, excluding
23,280 students and 2,490 instructors. Then normal schools had no
existence. Now there are 124, with 24,405 students and 966 instructors.
There were then no commercial colleges. Now 127 are in operation, with
25,892 students and 577 teachers. Then secondary and preparatory schools
had scarcely a name by which to live. Now 1,122 are said to exist,
affording instruction to 100,593 pupils, and giving employment to 6,163
teachers. The kindergarten is a very recent importation. In 1874 we were
blessed with 55 of these human nurseries, with 1,636 pupils and 125
teachers. Now 37 States and 11 Territories report an aggregate of more
than 13,000,000 school population, or more than four times the total
population of the country in 1776. Then the school enrollment was of
course unknown. Now it amounts to the respectable figure of about
8,500,000. Then the schools were scattered and their number
correspondingly restricted. Now they are estimated at 150,000, employing
250,000 teachers. The total income of the public schools is given at
$82,000,000, their expenditures at $75,000,000, and the value of their
property at $165,000,000. The number of illiterates by the census of
1870 above the age of ten years, in round numbers, was 5,500,000. Of
these more than 2,000,000 were adults, upward of 2,000,000 more were
from fifteen to twenty-one years of age, and 1,000,000 were between ten
and fifteen years. Of the number between fifteen and twenty-one years it
is estimated that about one-half have passed the opportunity for
education."


SURFACE MARKINGS.

Mr. James Croll, in a letter to "Nature" (July 13, 1876), incidentally
mentions the lessons that may be derived from the configurations of the
earth's surface.

     "Given the hardly perceptible wearing of water and time, a
     cañon a mile deep, and many hundreds of miles long, has
     resulted from the flowing of a stream. Given glacial 'abrasion'
     and time enough, then valleys of rounded section and firths and
     lake-basins of a particular kind probably resulted from the
     flowing of ice.

     "Where a stream flows from source to mouth on a gradual slope,
     there has been no great disturbance of level since the stream
     began to work. Where ice fills the dales there are no cañons.
     Where ice has filled dales and has left fresh marks, cañons are
     short and small. In mountain regions, where ice-marks are rare
     or absent, cañons are of great depth and length, apparently
     because their streams have flowed in the same channels ever
     since the mountains were raised. But where cañons are marked
     features, these lakes, firths, and dales of rounded section are
     very rare, or do not exist. It seems therefore that hollows
     which have, in fact, been carved out of the earth's surface may
     be known for water-work or for ice-work by their shape, and
     that firths, dales, and lakes may mark the sites of local
     glacial periods; and cañons the sites of climates that have not
     been glacial since the streams began to flow."


THE OLDEST STONE TOOLS.

One of the problems which geologists now propose to themselves is to
ascertain definitely whether the existence of man before the close of
the glacial epoch can be certainly proved. The method of proof consists
in the examination of formations older than those of that epoch, in the
hope of finding in them bones or implements of human origin. Mr. S. B.
J. Skertchly thinks he has done this. In the valley sides around the
town of Brandon, in England, "are preserved patches of brick-earth,
which are valuable as affording the only workable clay in the district.
Whenever these beds are well exposed they are seen to underlie the
chalky boulder-clay of glacial age. Of this there cannot be the
slightest doubt, for the glacial bed is typically developed and not in
the slightest degree reconstructed. In these beds I have been so
fortunate as to find palæolithic implements in two places; and in one of
them quantities of broken bones and a few fresh-water shells. The
implements are of the oval type, boldly chipped, but without any of the
finer work which distinguishes the better made palæolithic implements.
Although it would be rash to lay too great a stress upon the characters
of these implements, it is nevertheless worthy of remark that they do
belong to the crudest type. Equally rough specimens are found in the
gravels above the boulder-clay, and even among neolithic finds. Still
these very antique implements certainly do seem to belong to an earlier
stage of civilization, if we regard them as examples of the best
workmanship of their makers." These, he thinks, are the oldest specimens
of man's handiwork known, and prove him to have lived before the
culmination of the glacial epoch.


ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH PEOPLE.

An anthropologist, M. Turbino, has written a paper on the relations of
the people who inhabit Spain and Portugal, from which it appears that
those civilized races present a heterogeneity that reminds us forcibly
of the condition in which the savage tribes of America were at the time
of the discovery, and indeed are still. There is found in the Spanish
races no unity of origin or of physique. There is not only
dissimilarity, but also antithesis and opposition. M. Turbino endeavored
to show that the same diversity existed in the region of morals, in
language, in art, and in the ideas of right and law, and that thus there
is really no Spanish race and no means of establishing in the Iberian
Peninsula a centralized state.

Broca, in discussing these facts, asserted that the same state of things
exists everywhere; that the idea of race as applied to the people of
the present political divisions is untrue. The only great barriers of
states are their geographical limits.


THE ENGLISH METEORITE.

Prof. Maskelyne, of the British Museum, seems to be particularly
gratified by the fall of a metallic meteorite in England. He says:

     "It is, indeed, an iron meteorite, and the special interest of
     this statement lies in the fact that, though our great
     collection of 311 distinct meteorites at the Museum contains
     104 indubitable iron meteorites, the falls of only seven of the
     latter were witnessed. The collection contains eight stony
     meteorites that have fallen in the British Islands; but the
     Rowton meteorite is only the second iron meteorite known as
     having been found in Great Britain."

It weighs seven and three-quarter pounds, is angular in shape, and he
supposes that it is but the fragment of a much larger aerolite, since
one loud explosion was heard and rumbling sounds, which may have denoted
others, were heard before it fell.


THE BOOMERANG.

Mr. A. W. Howitt, after many years' observation in Australia, reports
that the boomerang, though a singular, is not the marvellous instrument
which we are told of in some books of travel; especially does he deny it
the power of continuing its flight after striking its object, and also
the power of returning with exact aim to the thrower's hand. That might
be in an instrument which was made with theoretical perfectness, but as
it is the return flight is very wild. He had a trial made by several
natives, one of them a boomerang thrower of great skill. The ground was
good, and the only drawback was a light sea breeze. He found that the
throws could be placed in two classes, one in which the boomerang was
held when thrown in a plane perpendicular to the horizon, the other in
which one plane of the boomerang was inclined to the left of the
thrower.

In the first method of throwing the missile proceeded, revolving with
great velocity, in a perpendicular plane for say one hundred yards, when
it became inclined to the left, travelling from right to left. It then
circled upward, the plane in which it revolved indicating a cone, the
apex of which would lie some distance in front of the thrower. "When the
boomerang in travelling passed round to a point above and somewhat to
the right of the thrower, and perhaps one hundred feet above the ground,
it appeared to become stationary for a moment; I can only use the term
_hovering_ to describe it. It then commenced to descend, still revolving
in the same direction, but the curve followed was reversed, the
boomerang travelling from left to right, and, the speed rapidly
increasing, it flew far to the rear. At high speed a sharp whistling
noise could be heard. In the second method, which was shown by 'bungil
wunkun,' and elicited admiring ejaculations of 'ko-ki' from the black
fellows, the boomerang was thrown in a plane considerably inclined to
the left. It there flew forward for say the same distance as before,
gradually curving upward, when it seemed to 'soar' up--this is the best
term--just as a bird may be seen to circle upward with extended wings.
The boomerang of course was all this time revolving rapidly. It is
difficult to estimate the height to which it soared, making, I think,
two gyrations; but judging from the height of neighboring trees on the
river bank, which it surmounted, it may have reached one hundred and
fifty feet. It then soared round and round in a decreasing spiral, and
fell about one hundred yards in front of the thrower. This was performed
several times. The descending curve passed the thrower, I think, three
times.

     "Another method of throwing was mentioned; namely, to throw the
     boomerang in such a manner that it would strike the ground with
     its flat side some distance in front of the thrower. It would
     then rise upward in a spiral, returning in the same. This was
     not attempted, as it was decided the boomerang was not strong
     enough. A final throw in a vertical plane, so that the missile
     struck the ground violently fifty or sixty yards in advance,
     terminated the display. It ricocheted three times with a
     twanging noise and split along the centre. My black friends
     said they should soon manufacture a number of the best
     constructed 'wunken' to show me. I observed that the spectators
     stood about a hundred yards on one side of the thrower, and
     when the boomerang in its gyrations approached us, every black
     fellow had his eyes sharply fixed on it. The fact stated by
     them that it was dangerous was well shown in one instance,
     where it suddenly wheeled and flew so close over us that I and
     Toolabar fell over each other in dodging it."


A WESTERN LAVA FIELD.

Lieutenant Ruffner describes one of the great lava outflows in the West
in a way that serves to set before the reader the magnitude of the
eruptions which have made America _par excellence_ the volcanic
continent. It is in New Mexico.

From the Conejos river, in Colorado, one continuous sheet of lava covers
the face of the country to the south, for eighty miles unbroken; and
then for fifty miles further is now exhibited in outlying areas and
detached masses, separated from the main body by the exercise of the
power of erosion through prolonged ages. One hundred and thirty miles in
length, and perhaps thirty in breadth at its widest, the area of a
principality lies swallowed up for ever. From craters existing probably
in the San Antonio mountain and in the Ute Peak, near the boundary of
Colorado, and possibly from other centres, this flood poured over the
land. Reaching to the east, it was checked by the mountains of the
Sangre de Cristo range; flowing to the west, the mountains and hills of
the main divide, and the spur now between the Chama and the Rio Grande,
limited its extent. To the south it was deflected westwardly by the spur
of the mountains called the Picuris range, some fifteen miles south of
Taos. Protected by this spur, we find the east bank of the Rio Grande
for many miles free from the flux. Confined on the west by the slopes of
the Jemez mountains, the breadth of the field is narrowed. But from the
village of San Ildefonso to Pena Blanca, we find the lava on both sides
of the Rio Grande, spreading to the east as far as the Santa Fé creek.
Secondary centres in the Jemez mountains possibly contributed to this
extension, but the main force of the eruptions was probably felt further
to the north. However, in this vicinity the edges and extremity of the
field have been reached, and there has been so much erosion in places
since its deposition, that outlying masses, as in the bluffs to the west
of San Felipe, alone remain. Throughout the whole region thus depicted,
the lava field is the great and controlling element. The streams that
have eaten their way through it with untold difficulty are found in
narrow and deep cañons having no land for cultivation. A dangerous feat
for man to descend these precipices, the passage by an animal of burden
is almost impossible. The Rio Grande passes for eighty miles or more
through its black abyss, with walls of seven or eight hundred feet in
height, crowned with perpendicular cliffs of solid lava, two and three
hundred feet high. Throughout the whole region there is no agriculture.


THE PRINCIPLE OF CEPHALIZATION.

In the last of a series of papers on cephalization (or brain
development) as a fundamental principle in the development of the system
of animal life, Prof. Dana says ("American Journal," October, 1876): "I
would refer to the case among mammals for an illustration of the
principle that the lowest forms are those having their locomotive
functions located in the posterior parts of the body; and that in the
higher the forces, or force organs, are more and more forward in the
structure. For example, in the whale the tail is the propelling organ,
and is of enormous power and magnitude, and the brain is very small, and
is situated far from the head extremity in a great mass of flesh and
bone furnished with poor organs of sense; a grade up, in the horse or
ox, the tail or posterior extremity is no longer an organ of locomotion,
and is little more than a caudal whip lash, and locomotion is performed
by organs situated more anteriorly, the legs, and a well-formed head
carries a brain which is a vastly higher organ of intelligence than that
of the whale, but the legs are simply organs of locomotion, and the
hinder are the more powerful; and higher up, in the tiger or cat, the
fore legs--not the hind legs--are the organs of chief muscular force,
and these have higher functions than that of simple locomotion, and
further, the body is proportionately shortened, and the head is
shortened anteriorly, or in the jaws, and approximates thus toward the
condition of man. The existence or not of a switch-like tail, as in
ordinary quadrupeds, has little bearing on the question of the degree of
cephalization, since the organ is not an organ of locomotion, or one
indicating a large posterior development of muscular bone. But,
approaching man in the system of life, even this seems to have
significance."


CURIOSITIES OF THE HERRING FISHERY.

The hot weather last summer affected even the herring fishery. The
fishermen off the Scotch coast had been supplied with sea thermometers
by the Scottish Meteorological Society, and they found that during one
week, when the sea water showed a temperature of 58 deg. to 59 deg., no
fish were caught. But when the temperature fell to 55 deg. the herring
were caught in great abundance. Indeed, they flocked to the land in such
numbers that many nets were taken to the bottom with their weight, and
the fishermen lost considerable sums from this odd mishap. The action of
the Meteorological has produced important results. The entirely new
discovery has been made that the herring love cold water, and in seasons
when the temperature of the sea water rises, they keep away from the
land, in deeper water, between the fifteen to eighteen fathoms for which
the nets are calculated. The colder the weather the greater is the take
of fish; 1875, a year when the water was considerably and continuously
warmer than 1874, having been a poor year, while the latter was a better
one. This action of the fish makes it probable that it likes a given
range of temperature, neither too high nor too low. In cold water this
belt of agreeable temperature is found nearer the sun-warmed surface,
and the fish creep inshore. Many singular facts relating to this fishery
are known. If a thunderstorm occurs, the fishermen expect a good catch
on that day, but the next day they will get none except in deep water,
and the supposition is that the fish are leaving the land. The herring
has a strong sense of locality, always returning to the same ground.
Experienced dealers can tell by inspection in just what sea or loch a
given lot of fish were caught.


NATURAL GAS IN FURNACES.

A paper describing the use of natural gas in the puddling furnaces at
Leechburg, Pa., was presented by Mr. A. L. Holley to the American
Institute of Mining Engineers. This well is about twenty miles northeast
of Pittsburg, on one of the side tributaries of the Alleghany river. It
had been drilled in search of oil to a depth of 1,250 feet in 1871, but
none was found. A great flow of gas was developed, however, accompanied
by a slight spray of salt water, and this has continued with little or
no diminution to the present time. The gas in its escape has been
discharged through a five-inch pipe, and at a pressure of from sixty to
eighty pounds per square inch. The rolling mill of Messrs. Roger &
Burchfield is on the opposite side of the river, and it has been for
some years devoted to the production of fine grades of sheet iron from
charcoal pig metal, by puddling and in knobbling fires. The usual weekly
product of the mill has been thirty tons of No. 3 tin plates and fifty
tons of No. 24 to twenty-eight sheets.

The well was bought by this firm for $1,000, and the gas is led across
the river, a distance of 500 feet, through a three-inch pipe. It is
distributed through half-inch pipes, and at a pressure of about
forty-five pounds per square inch, to several of the furnaces. No
essential alteration in any of the furnaces has been found necessary in
the use of the gas fuel, except to brick up the fire bridge and to put
in the gas and air pipes. The old grate used for coal is loosely covered
with bricks and cinder, so that a slight percolation of air may take
place through them. The gas is admitted through a half-inch pipe, and
blows toward the fire-bridge through eighteen or twenty one-eighth inch
jets. The air is blown in, at about 2 lbs. pressure, through two one and
one-eighth-inch jets, obliquely down upon the centre of the hearth, and
a very perfect combustion is obtained. A great improvement is effected
in the quality of the product of the puddling furnaces by the combined
action of the gas and air blast. The air is blown in during the melting,
but it is then shut off until the boiling begins. It is then turned on
full, and a violent boiling action is maintained without any rabbling.
Many advantages result from the use of this fuel. The product of the
mill has increased about thirty per cent., from sixty to seventy tons of
coal are saved daily, besides the labor necessary to fire with it, and a
poorer quality of iron can be used in making the tin plate. Thus the
iron now used is credited to the furnace at $45 per ton, while charcoal
blooms have cost $80. These are certainly enormous advantages, and
though every mill cannot have a permanent gas well, it must be more
economical to produce such results by making coal into gas than to
continue using it in the solid form. The gas at Leechburg is used in
fourteen furnaces and under seven boilers. Its composition is carbonic
acid, 0.35; carbonic oxide, 0.26; illuminating hydrocarbons, 0.56;
hydrogen, 4.79; marsh gas, C H_{4}, 89.65; ethyl hydride, C_{2} H_{6},
4.39; specific gravity, 0.558. This analysis shows about 57 per cent. of
carbon and 42 per cent. of hydrogen. If the well discharges one million
cubic feet of gas daily, it would weigh about sixty tons, yielding
thirty-nine tons of carbon. Mr. Holley calculates that it equals about
150 tons of bituminous coal, such as is found in the Pittsburg region.


SOUTH CAROLINA PHOSPHATES.

In England the favorite source of phosphates of lime is the "Cambridge
coprolites." These are small, hard, gray nodules, obtained by washing a
stratum, of about one foot in thickness, lying in the upper greensand
formation in Cambridgeshire. Similar coprolites are found and mined in
other districts of England, but they are of inferior quality, containing
more oxide of iron and alumina. These give the tribasic phosphate of
lime, which results from the application of sulphuric acid to the
nodules, a tendency to "go back" to the insoluble condition. French
nodules are of inferior quality from another cause. They contain very
much silica, sometimes even forty per cent. The Cambridge coprolites are
so much esteemed that buyers of artificial manure often stipulate that
it shall be made from them. As a consequence the privilege of mining the
ground is costly, sometimes as much as $1,500 an acre being paid. The
yield is about three hundred tons to the acre. An English chemist
reports that the South Carolina phosphate, made in factories situated in
and near Charleston, ranks next in value to this Cambridge product. It
contains 54 per cent. of tribasic phosphate of lime, 14 per cent. of
carbonate of lime, 3-1/2 per cent. of iron oxide and alumina, 2-1/2 per
cent. of fluoride of calcium, and 15 per cent. of silica. It consists of
bone fragments derived from animal species which are now extinct. These
bones have accumulated in old river beds, and the mining operations are
compelled to follow the sinuosities of these streams. Though a supply
derived from such sources is necessarily limited, the quantity known to
be available is very great, and has been estimated to last a century
with a yearly extraction of 50,000 tons. In addition to the river
phosphate is a lighter deposit, occurring in a stratum of sand and clay
about two feet thick; but this is not so valuable, though it is softer
and easier ground. The river deposit is nearly black, and when ground
makes a very dark powder. It is a great favorite, and in some respects
the finest natural source of phosphatic manure in the world.


RARE METALS FROM OLD COINS.

The operations of the Government assay office in Frankfort during the
last year have developed the fact that gold, platinum, palladium, and
selenium are found in old silver coins and also in ores which were
formerly supposed to be nearly pure sulphides and oxides of lead and
silver. From 400,000 pounds of silver and 5,000 pounds of gold were
obtained twelve pounds of platinum, two pounds of palladium, and several
pounds of selenium. To obtain these the gold is first precipitated from
the solution by ferrous chloride, all the other metals by iron turnings.
The precipitate is first submitted to the action of ferric chloride to
dissolve the copper, and the residue is fused with charcoal and soda to
separate the selenium. The regulus from this operation is dissolved, and
a compound of selenium and palladium, or of these with platinum, is
obtained. They are composed of equal atoms of the two metals and form
hard brilliant plates. The presence of these metals in coins is less
remarkable than in such ores as those of Commern and Mechernich on the
west bank of the Rhine. These ores occur as small granules of galena in
a soft sandstone, their origin being still a mooted point. The ore
yields a very soft and pure lead, though the presence of pyrite prevents
the manufacture of the virgin lead used in making the best brands of
white paint.


A FRENCH MOUNTAIN WEATHER STATION.

The French government has placed on the top of the Puy de Dome a
meteorological observatory, which, as that is the highest land in
France, answers to our stations on Mt. Washington and Pike's Peak. It
is, however, constructed in a style very different from those somewhat
forbidding abodes. At the top is an observatory tower, placed on a
platform, and upon this is placed the anemometer, especially constructed
to withstand the force of the storms. Within the tower is a well hole
fifty feet deep, which leads to a tunnel more than a hundred feet long,
at the end of which is placed the keeper's house. This is a massive
building, situated a short distance from the top, where it is partly
protected by rocks. The whole work cost $45,000, and $20,000 more will
be spent in supplying it with apparatus.


MIGRATION OF THE LEMMING.

A new theory has been broached to explain the migrations of the Norway
lemming, a variety of field mouse. Every few years an immense body of
these animals leaves their habitat and proceed westward, attacking every
obstacle in front in preference to flanking it, until it reaches the
sea, which the little animals boldly enter, only to perish there. No
conceivable advantage to the lemming is known to have ever resulted from
these long and arduous marches. The losses in swimming large rivers,
from fire, the attacks of predatory animals, hunger, and fatigue, are so
great that but few reach the sea, and the remnant always perish there.
Mr. W. Duppa Crotch, who has studied the habits of these animals for ten
years, now suggests that they are moved by an hereditary instinct, and
that their prehistoric home was some country west of Sweden, and now
covered by the Atlantic. The same kind of reasoning would allot an
Atlantic origin to the progenitors of the grasshoppers, which have been
such plagues in this country for a few years, for, as stated in the
August "Galaxy," those which moved eastward in 1875 did not halt until
they perished on the ocean beach or in its waves. Mr. Crotch has thrown
new light on some of the habits of the lemming. According to him, says
"Nature," the migration is not all completed in one year, as formerly
supposed, nor do they, as stated, form processions and cut their way
through obstacles; but, breeding several times in the season, they
gather in batches, and at intervals make a move westward. Their
pugnacity, he states, is astonishing, and the approach of any animal, or
even the shadow of a cloud, arouses the anger of this small creature
like a guinea pig, and they back against a stone or rock uttering shrill
defiance. Our author found, in most examples, a bare patch on the rump,
due to their rubbing against the said buttress of support when at bay.
He wonders why a bare patch, and not a callosity, should not result from
this innate, apparently hereditary habit.


NEW DISCOVERY OF NEOLITHIC REMAINS.

A very interesting discovery of human remains has been made in a cave in
Cravanch, about two miles northwest of Belfort, France. Some workmen,
excavating in a quarry of Jurassic limestone, found the opening to the
cave, the bottom of which was covered with stalagmites, while there were
no corresponding stalactites hanging from the roof. Some of these
calcareous columns appear to be artificial piles covered with the
limestone sheeting. Between them, and also covered with stalagmite, were
a quantity of human skeletons, with the skulls raised above the rest of
the bodies. A number of weapons and implements, together with a mat of
plaited meshes, have been found, all belonging to the polished stone
period. It is thought that careful search may uncover remains of an
earlier date. The cave is quite large, a hundred feet long and forty
wide and high. It was at once taken possession of by the authorities and
placed under the charge of Mr. Felix Voulot, who hopes to extract at
least one skeleton entire.


OCTOBER WEATHER.

The most noticeable features of the month are: the hurricane of the 17th
to 23d; lower temperatures in the districts east of the Rocky mountains;
large excess of rainfall in some districts and large deficiencies in
others; low water in the rivers.

_Areas of High Pressure._--These have generally appeared in the Upper
Missouri valley, from whence their movements have been south and
eastward across the country. Their advance has been frequently marked by
high northerly winds and gales, especially when preceded by decidedly
low-pressure areas, in the more northern districts and on the Texas
coast. When rainy weather has preceded them, the fall in the temperature
has been sufficient to turn the rain into sleet and snow, while frequent
and heavy frosts have been produced.

_Areas of Low Pressure._--Nine have been traced. Excepting the hurricane
of the 17th to 23d, the centres of all have moved over the northern
sections, and further northward than during previous Octobers. They have
been frequently accompanied by barometric troughs, extending south or
southwestward toward the Gulf, in which rainy weather and high winds or
gales have prevailed.

_Temperatures._--

                   _Maximum._     _Minimum._

Albany              70 deg.         23 deg.
Boston              70  "           26  "
Buffalo             73  "           24  "
Cape May            73  "           34  "
Chicago             73  "           28  "
Cincinnati          74  "           29  "
Cleveland           75  "           26  "
Detroit             72  "           24  "
Duluth              67  "           23  "
Jacksonville        85  "           43  "
Marquette           73  "           28  "
Mt. Washington      48  "            5  "
New Orleans         84  "           50  "
New York            73  "           31  "
Pike's Peak         41  "          -2  "
Philadelphia        75  "           31  "
San Diego           80  "           48  "
San Francisco       72  "           52  "
Washington          78  "           30  "

The first frost of the season is reported from a large number of
stations, and first snow from about twenty.

_Verifications._--The average is 92.8 per cent. for the weather; 90.1,
wind direction; 91.1, temperature; 87.7, barometric changes. For the
whole country the average verified is 90.4 per cent. There were four
omissions to predict out of 3,720, or 0.1 percent.

A severe earthquake shock was felt at San Francisco at 9:20 p.m., on the
6th, lasting ten seconds; motion from northwest to southeast. A second
and lighter shock was felt the same day.


FRENCH NATIONAL ANTIQUITIES.

Probably few American travellers visit a collection of antiquities,
infinitely older than the paintings, statues, and relics of mediæval
life, or even than those of Roman and Grecian age, but which is as
freely open to them, near Paris. This is the museum which has been
established in the château of Saint Germain. France has been
particularly fortunate in rescuing fragments of the life which existed
within her borders long before the day of the very earliest races to
which history points us. These fragments have sometimes been preserved
in the most fortuitous manner, and afford unique illustrations of the
remarkable accidents to which man is occasionally indebted for his
knowledge. The fossil man of Denyse, whatever his age may have been, has
been preserved for our inspection by becoming overwhelmed in a volcanic
eruption. The skeleton of Mentone was found by Rivière while engaged in
a systematic search among French caves. Other caves in France have
preserved evidences sufficiently distinct for us to gain valuable hints
of ancient life. In fact all the ages of man, so far as they are
recognized, and all the kinds of proof concerning them, are well
represented in French collections. During the reign of the late Emperor
this museum was founded, and has received the case of many noted French
_savants_ who have won distinction in this field of research. The walls
are covered by finely painted maps illustrating the distribution of
caves, and rock shelters, and places where instruments of stone, bone,
and bronze have been found. Pictures are also exhibited which illustrate
the views of former social customs which are thought to be supported by
the material evidences assembled in the château. In the cases are not
only large collections of celts, but also the carved bones, horn, and
stones which, by their distribution through the stalagmite of caves, or
through the gravel of ancient river beds, give infallible proof of the
presence of man. One floor contains a collection not less interesting,
though illustrating the manners of a much later age. It is formed of the
military weapons, bridges, fortifications, camps, etc., which were
constructed to illustrate the "life of Cæsar," by Napoleon. This
collection is, and will probably remain, unique. At the meeting of the
Geographical Congress last year, these great engines of war were taken
to the park and exhibited in action. The museum is now placed under the
control of the historical commission for constructing the map of Gaul.
This body is publishing a series of maps and engravings to illustrate
the progress of the science of the prehistoric and subsequent periods. A
catalogue of the collections has been made and is sold to visitors.
There is also in the establishment a special library in which has been
collected by M. Gabriel de Mortillet all the books relating to
prehistoric antiquities, and which is open free on certain days to the
public.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is found that insects preserve their colors better under yellow glass
than in any other color. The curtains of entomological show-cases and
the blinds of the room should be yellow. Only in this way can the
delicate carmine tints of some insect wings be preserved.


A student of animal nature announces a case of two hens, who by joint
efforts hatched one chick. They have since, for some weeks, been
parading the yard, each clucking and manifesting all the anxiety and
care of a true mother over this one. The hens never quarrel, or show the
least appearance of jealousy or rivalry.


M. Tresca, who has charge of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, the
institution which in Paris answers to our Patent Office, says that
drawings of new inventions are more useful than models, are cheaper, and
are very much oftener consulted. In Paris the model room is covered with
dust and rarely entered.


The French weather bureau intends not only to study the thunderstorm,
hailstorm, rainfall, inundations, and frosts, with especial reference to
their effects upon agriculture, but also to experiment upon the
asserted effect of smoke as a preventive to frost. The experiments will
be extensive and may cover a large valley.


To discover by the spectroscope the smallest quantity of a gaseous or
very volatile hydrocarbon, the Messrs. Negri introduce a small quantity
of the gaseous mixture into a tube. This mixture should not contain
oxygen, carbonic oxide, or carbonic acid; and the pressure is to be
reduced to not more than twenty millimetres. Then if a hydrocarbon is
present, the passage of a spark from a Ruhmkorff's coil will cause the
appearance of a sky-blue light. Viewed with the spectroscope, this
presents the spectrum of carbon, and generally so brilliant as to mask
totally the spectra of other gases present.


The rare metals cerium, lauthanum, and didymium have been lately
investigated by Drs. Hillebrand and Norton, in Bunsen's laboratory.
Cerium looks like iron, having both its color and lustre, but is
heavier, and has the hardness of calcite. It tarnishes slowly in dry air
and rapidly in moist air. It ignites so readily that pieces scratched
off inflame, and its wire burns more brilliantly than magnesium wire.
Lauthanum is a little harder, but also a little lighter. It tarnishes
more easily and inflames less easily than cerium. Didymium resembles
lauthanum. The metals were all obtained by electrolysis of the
chlorides.


It is stated that a week's work in Birmingham comprises, among its
various results, the fabrication of 14,000,000 pens, 6,000 bedsteads,
7,000 guns, 300,000,000 cut nails, 100,000,000 buttons, 1,000 saddles,
5,000,000 copper or bronze coins, 20,000 pairs of spectacles, six tons
of papier maché wares, over £30,000 worth of jewelry, 4,000 miles of
iron and steel wire, ten tons of pins, five tons of hairpins and hooks
and eyes, 130,000 gross of wood screws, 500 tons of nuts and screw bolts
and spikes, fifty tons of wrought iron hinges, 350 miles' length of wax
for vestas, forty tons of refined metal, forty tons of German silver,
1,000 dozens of fenders, 3,500 bellows, 800 tons of brass and copper
wares--these, with a multitude of other articles, being exported to
almost all parts of the civilized world.


The aërated beverages of which Americans are so fond should not be kept
in copper vessels, for carbonic acid (which is the gas present)
dissolves this metal with great avidity. From three-hundredths to
one-tenth of a grain of copper per gallon has been found in aërated
lemonade, ginger ale, soda water, etc.


In making the ultimate analysis of organic compounds by combustion, with
lead chromate and metallic copper reduced by hydrogen, the results
obtained are too high, on account of the expulsion of hydrogen, which
had been occluded by the copper. Heating the copper to 150 deg. C. does
not prevent the error, which may be .05 per cent.


Mayer & Walkoff, who have been experimenting on the respiration of
plants, find that the action goes on both in light and darkness, and
that changes of temperature within normal limits have little effect.
There is no direct relation between growth in length and respiration, a
conclusion that is in conflict with that of previous experiments.


The famous "Blue Grotto" in the island of Capri, Italy, has been
investigated spectroscopically. Most of the light enters through the
water, which absorbs the red rays entirely and so much of the yellow as
to make the D line scarcely visible. The green, blue, and indigo rays
are very bright, and the F and _b_ lines unite in a well marked
absorption line.


The springs of Weissenburg in the Bernese Oberland yield a water which
is popularly supposed to have the power of cicatrizing cavities in the
lungs, but its analysis shows no reason for such a power. Sulphates of
lime and magnesia are its principal solid ingredients, with chloride and
a little iodide of lithium and an organic compound having the odor of
blackberries.


The mountains about Innsbruck in the Tyrol, as well as other parts of
the Alps, present the singular phenomenon of a climate more moderate at
a considerable elevation than in the valleys. Prof. Kerner finds that
there is a warm region midway up the mountain, lying between two colder
zones above and below it. We have heretofore referred to a similar
phenomenon in Indiana.


It is remarked by anthropologists that differences of color are one of
the most marked signs of race. The Aryan word for caste is _Varanum_,
meaning color, and the Aryans are supposed to have used it to
distinguish themselves from the Dasyuf, with whom they came in contact
on crossing the Indus, when migrating from Central Asia. The first
migrating wave from that centre of human creation can no longer be
traced, and only its remnants are found among the most degraded of the
hill tribe and slave population in India. Prof. Rollesten thinks that
the earliest races of man were preëminently of the Australioid type,
which is now brown-skinned and wavy haired, with long narrow heads.


Messrs. Gladstone & Tribe have been investigating the results of the
decomposition of alcohol by aluminium. When absolute alcohol, in which
iodine has been dissolved, is poured upon finely divided aluminium in a
flask, energetic action takes place and large quantities of hydrogen are
evolved. A pasty mass remains, and this heated to 100 deg. C., gives off
alcohol, and leaves a solid residue, which liquefies at 275 deg. C.,
alcohol and an oily body containing iodine passing over. At a higher
temperature, this product was again decomposed, with formation of
alcohol, ethylene, and alumina. But the most interesting results were
obtained under diminished pressure. Then a greenish white solid
sublimed, and this was found to be aluminic ethylate. This is therefore
the second known organometallic body, containing oxygen, which is
capable of distillation, cacodylic oxide being the other.




CURRENT LITERATURE.


Prof. Huxley's ingenious if somewhat shallow evasion of the Biblical
account of creation, by crediting it to Milton rather than to Moses, has
perhaps aroused many minds to inquire what modern theologians really do
think of the first chapters of Genesis. This question is answered by a
recent publication[12] by Dr. Cocker of the Michigan State University.
In the "Theistic Conception of the World" he treats the first two
chapters of the Bible as a poem, which he calls the "symbolical hymn of
creation." It has an exordium, six strophes, each with its refrain, and
an episode. He does not believe the sacred narrative intends to describe
the exact mode of forming the world, nor even to set the successive
events in order. It is an ascription, designed to embody in symbolical
language the fact that all existence is derived from God. One paragraph
will show the broad ground on which this conclusion is based:

     A cursory reading of the narrative will convince any one that
     its purpose is not to enlarge men's views of nature, but to
     teach them something concerning nature's God. It says nothing
     about the forces of nature, the laws of nature, the
     classifications of natural history, or the size, positions,
     distances, and motions of the heavenly bodies. From first to
     last, every phenomenon and every law is linked immediately to
     some act or some command of God. It is God who creates, God who
     commands, God who names, God who approves, and God who blesses.
     Strike out the allusions to God, and the narrative is
     meaningless. Clearly it was never intended to teach science. It
     has obviously one purpose, to reveal and keep before the minds
     of men the grand truth _that Jehovah is the sole Creator and
     Lord of the heavens and the earth_; and it leaves the
     scientific comprehension of nature to the natural powers with
     which God has endowed man for that end.

But the author believes that the Mosaic account is practically correct,
or perhaps we should say harmonious with the truth. It may be truthful
without being all the truth, or truthful and still be very defective. He
considers that when scientific knowledge is complete, the Scripture,
rightly interpreted, will be found in harmony with its final
conclusions. How Moses was made acquainted with the events of creation
is a matter upon which it is impossible to be positive. The author sees
no objection to the suggestion that he may have witnessed a series of
pictures or visions, the result of which upon his mind is given in the
hymn of creation. This explanation of the Biblical narrative forms but a
small part of the work, which is chiefly given to a discussion of the
views and positive discoveries of scientific men which relate to the
production of the world. It is a remarkable tribute to the overmastering
power of positive knowledge. Science and theology are mingled in an
extraordinary way, but a way that is now necessary, for there is not one
province of human thought that has not been compelled to acknowledge the
great possibilities of inductive reasoning. Dr. Cocker labors to
establish the old faith on the new ground. He is a man of great reading
and has a strong belief in the religion to which he has given his heart.
Every question is approached in the firm faith that when rightly
interpreted it will be found to sustain the Christian religion. This is
the fundamental fault of the work. It is a plea for a cause that does
not need it, for a cause that is quite as apt to lose as to gain by the
defence. The difficulty with this method of meeting the hypothesis of
science is that the scientific views are themselves in a state of
unstable equilibrium. They may topple at any moment, and then the
correspondence that eager devotees have found between them and the Bible
is a slur that falls altogether on the religion and not on the science.
This is a great error, and those who are drawn into it belittle the
cause that is dear to them. While our author is catholic in his reading,
he does not seem to assign to all writers in his field their just value.
His quotations, the fresh, the obsolete, the trustworthy, and the
doubtful, are mingled in a confusion that only the experienced can
penetrate. His book is creditable to his unshaken faith, and it
presents the religious aspect of modern knowledge in a thorough manner.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is not strange that under the present condition of the general mind
the question as to the right of the State to teach religion at the
public expense should be regarded with unusual interest. This question
has been very ably discussed by the Rev. Dr. Spear, whose book upon the
subject,[13] originally published as a series of essays in "The
Independent," is notably thorough and notably calm and judicial in tone.
Dr. Spear considers the subject in both its constitutional and its
equitable aspect, and the conclusion to which he is led is that "the
public school, like the State, under whose authority it exists, by whose
taxing power it is supported, should be simply a civil institution,
absolutely secular and not at all religious in its purposes, and all
practical questions involving this principle should be settled in
accordance therewith." He admits that this logical result of his
argument excludes the Bible from the public school, just as it excludes
the Westminster Catechism, the Koran, or any of the sacred books of
heathenism. But, as he justly says, this conclusion pronounces no
judgment against the Bible and none for it; it simply omits to use it
and declines to inculcate the religion which it teaches. It is difficult
to see how any other view of the case can be taken consistently with the
spirit of our institutions, from the Constitution of the United States
downward; and it is a cheering promise of the disappearance of bigotry,
even in its milder forms, when we see this view set forth by a
distinguished orthodox minister of the Gospel. There still, however,
remains this question in connection with religious toleration and
religious qualifications--Does a religion one element of which is
absolute subservience to the will of a foreign potentate or prelate, the
Roman or the Greek, for example, and which undertakes to deal with a
civil relation, marriage for example, come properly within the provision
for universal religious toleration, or does it not, for the reasons
assigned, assume a relation to the State more or less political?

       *       *       *       *       *

Captain Whittaker's "Life of General Custer"[14] can no more be
estimated by fixed biographical rules than the meteoric career of his
hero can be compared to the regular and peaceful lives of other men. Not
often, perhaps, does the biographer devote himself with such
enthusiastic _abandon_ to his task, and seldom is there to be found
within the covers of a single volume such an infinite variety of
incident and personal reminiscence. The chapters which deal with the
early youth of General Custer are exceedingly interesting photographs,
as it were, of a certain phase of American domestic and academic life.
The characteristics of the child, the sorrows of the "plebe," and the
aspirations and experiences of the cadet, are faithfully narrated. The
first service of the subaltern, and his initiation into the perils and
responsibilities of an officer in time of war, are interwoven with
Custer's own recollections of his generals and their campaigns. We are
irresistibly reminded of Lever in the style of the narration, and of
that dashing creature "O'Malley" in the adventures of our own dragoon.
The story of General Custer's wooing is quaintly told, and shines like a
bow of promise through all the clouds of his stormy career; it is a
romance by itself. _Apropos_ of the charge which we are told won the boy
general his star, we clip a bit of word painting which could only have
been written by "one who has been there":

     Were you ever in a charge--you who read this now by the winter
     fireside, long after the bones of the slain have turned to
     dust, when peace covers the land? If not, you have never known
     the fiercest pleasure of life. The chase is nothing to it; the
     most headlong hunt is tame in comparison. In the chase the game
     flees, and you shoot; here the game shoots back, and every leap
     of the charging steed is a peril escaped or dashed aside. The
     sense of power and audacity that possesses the cavalier, the
     unity with his steed, both are perfect. The horse is as wild as
     the man: with glowing eyeballs and red nostrils, he rushes
     frantically forward at the very top of his speed, with huge
     bounds as different from the rhythmic precision of the gallop
     as the sweep of the hurricane is from the rustle of the breeze.
     Horse and rider are drunk with excitement; feeling and seeing
     nothing but the cloud of dust, the scattered flying figures;
     conscious of only one mad desire, to reach them, to smite,
     smite, smite!

The author of this book is too much of an artist, too much of a poet,
perhaps, to divest his battle descriptions of anything that is doubtful
in fact, if only it is eulogistic of his hero or picturesque in its
nature. He has an eye for color, and prefers to have his picture a showy
and effective one even if some of the accessories are purely of the
imagination. We cannot consider the letters of the "Times" special
correspondent as a reliable history of the events immediately following
the battle of Gettysburg, although they are undoubtedly glowing
bulletins of the exploits of General Kilpatrick and his temporary
subordinate, General Custer. Nor can we accept the statement of the
Detroit "Evening News" for an entirely correct report of the grand
review at Washington, in 1865, when he hands down to posterity that
sober-sided old warrior, Provost Marshal General Patrick, as one who
"had ridden down the broad avenue bearing his reins in his teeth, and
his sabre in his only hand"; although the Mazeppa act in which Custer
immediately followed is not overdrawn by the "News," because that would
be "painting the lily." There are several other extracts from newspapers
of a similar nature, but we have not space to refer to them. Captain
Whittaker's book offers material for that "coming historian," but cannot
be looked upon as an entirely safe historical authority. Colonel Chesney
says, "Accept no one-sided statement from any national historian who
rejects what is distasteful in his authorities, and uses only what suits
his own theory.... Gather carefully from actual witnesses, high and low,
such original material as they offer for the construction of the
narrative. This once being safely proved, judge critically and calmly
what was the conduct of the chief actor; how far his insight, calmness,
personal control over others, and right use of his means were concerned
in the result." The great fault of this otherwise attractive biography
is the unwise partisanship which, as Captain Whittaker shows, was so
injurious to his hero in life and which even in death does not forsake
him. At page 282 Captain Whittaker says of alleged envy and jealousy of
Custer in certain quarters:

     A great deal of this was due to the boasting and sarcastic
     remarks of his injudicious friends, who could not be satisfied
     with praising their own chief without depreciating others.

Thus the author, after warning his readers of the pit into which so many
others have fallen, proceeds in the most inconsistent manner to fall
into it himself.

Had we space, we could here make many extracts entirely free from the
foregoing objections. Many new descriptions of Indian life, never before
in print, are here given; some excellent essays on the prominent phases
of American military life; and many anecdotes and biographical sketches
of the officers who fell with Custer on the "Little Big-horn," with
portraits, are also given. The volume is a very large, handsome octavo,
illustrated by two portraits of General Custer (one an excellent
likeness on steel), and many full-page woodcuts, and seems especially
seasonable as a holiday present. No biographical collection can be
considered complete without it, and we should think it would have an
especial charm to military readers. That Mrs. Custer is to receive a
share of the receipts from its sale will not lessen its circulation.

       *       *       *       *       *

Palestine is certainly an inexhaustible source of books, and Dr.
Ridgaway[15] tells us the reason why. Travellers' descriptions of the
grand mountain scenery, its strange deserts, its ancient customs,
transmitted from the dawn of history, its trees a thousand years of age,
and its mighty ruins, contribute to and intensify the interest which the
Christian feels in that region alone of all the earth. Of late years
this country has been the scene of systematic explorations and the theme
of an important series of critical works. Dr. Ridgaway's volume deserves
a place in this series, though he has little of novelty to present. But
the author has produced just the book that was needed, the one which it
might be supposed the first traveller there would have written. Leaving
out nearly all the every-day incidents of travel, he aims to extract
from each place he saw just what is of interest to the Bible student. He
is to be congratulated on a rare ability to discriminate between the
important and entertaining and what is matter-of-course. The plan of his
journey, which was made in company with eleven others, mostly clergymen,
was to follow the route of the Israelites from Egypt to Palestine, and
then to visit every place made memorable by the life of Christ, besides
many others of Biblical interest. He tried to be critical, and
constantly discusses the pros and cons for admitting the received
location of prominent points; but in this he is not very successful, and
seems to decline at length into helpless acquiescence. He rejects the
innovations and doubts of such men as Robinson and Baker, and
acknowledges that the sacred sites have for the most part been
identified. But there is a limit to even his credulity. He swallowed
easily the "exact spot" where the cradle lay, but strained at the
fragment of a column on which Mohammed is to sit when he judges the
world, and says, "I was unable to resist the temptation to straddle it!"
Perhaps the secret of Dr. Ridgaway's success is that he has omitted
those rhapsodies which are natural enough amid such scenes, but which we
get our fill of without going to Palestine. He is too full of the real
situation to turn to fanciful imaginations, and as a consequence he
gives us the best companion to the Bible which we know of. The critical
results of his journey are small, but as a careful summary of what
others have finally settled upon his work is authentic. A large number
of engravings, of the best execution, bring the landscape and buildings
vividly before us. Many of them are from Dr. Ridgaway's sketches, others
from photographs, and the only fault we have to find is the omission of
titles to them, an omission which is artistic, but inconvenient.

--Lieutenant Ruffner[16] does not give a very assuring picture of New
Mexico, considered as a possible State in our Union. It has never
prospered; its population and area of cultivated land being smaller now
than three hundred years ago. As these changes are no doubt due to the
operation of natural causes, about which scientific men do not agree,
the immediate future of the country does not appear very flattering.
Wide as the spread of westward migration has been, it has hardly
affected New Mexico. Lieutenant Ruffner says: "The line once crossed, a
foreign country is entered. Foreign faces and a foreign tongue are
encountered." For twenty-six years the Territory has formed a part of
our country, but in that time our civilization has hardly made an
impression upon it. The author, without directly saying so, seems to
regard the scheme for making it a State with disfavor, and his readers
will agree with him. He has done his country a service by this
painstaking and impartial description of a region which few but army
officers know anything about.

--It is a very difficult thing nowadays to write a book of travels that
can interest the general public. A hundred years ago a man who had
circumnavigated the world was a remarkable object, and people would
crowd to see him, and read his works with avidity. But what a change the
last century has produced. Compare the difference of tone between 1776
and 1876, and then go back and compare 1676 with the former year. There
is not anything like a parity of advance between the two centuries. The
traveller and sailor was as much of a hero in 1776 as was the captain of
the Vittoria, the last ship of Magellan's fleet when he sailed into
Cadiz in 1522, having been round the earth and lost a day in the
operation; just as Mr. Phileas Fogg, of later fame, gained one by going
in the opposite direction. Men who have been to China and India,
Australia and New Zealand, are too plentiful to-day to excite notice;
and when it comes to writing books about their adventures, it is
necessary to be cautious to avoid treading in old tracks and wearying
the reader. The man who describes a voyage round the world to-day must
be a character of interest in himself, or he will not interest his
audience. The writer of the book now before us[17] possesses the
qualifications for the task seldom possessed by the professional
traveller, who is apt to bore one with long stories. He has the eye of a
newspaper correspondent, the quick intuition as to what is or is not
interesting _per se_, and has actually succeeded in making an
interesting and readable book of three hundred pages out of a subject
nearly worn out. Mr. Vincent started from New York in a clipper ship,
went round the Horn to San Francisco, thence to Hawaii, where he
remained some weeks, thence to New Zealand and Australia, finally to
Calcutta, and thence home to New York, after a prolonged tour through
India, Siam, and China. The incidents of the latter tour formed the
basis of his first book, the "Land of the White Elephant," the success
of which encouraged him to this, his second venture. The chief
characteristic of Mr. Vincent's second work is its freshness and
interest. He seems to be profoundly impressed with the truth of the
saying of Thales of Miletus, that "the half is sometimes more than the
whole." The taste and judgment of the author are shown by what he leaves
out as much as by what he leaves in. There is hardly a dull page in the
book, and in each place he only notes what is curious, leaving out of
the question all that is commonplace. More could not be asked of him.

       *       *       *       *       *

We have received the first number of the "Archives of the National
Museum at Rio de Janeiro."[18] This is a scientific institution, and
from the number of officers named it appears to be prepared for
inaugurating thorough work in archæology, geology, botany, zoölogy, etc.
Its aim, however, is not merely the study of pure science, but its
application to the immediate welfare of man through agriculture and the
industries. The director general is Dr. Netto, and the secretary Dr.
Joao Joaquin Pizarro. Most of the officers are Brazilians, but our
countryman, Prof. Hartt, is director of the "sciencias physicas,"
including geology, mineralogy, and palæontology. This first number of
the "Archivos" contains papers in the Portuguese language on aboriginal
remains, one by Prof. Wiener and Prof. Hartt, and one by Dr. Netto on a
botanical subject.

       *       *       *       *       *

Prof. Walker's work in both the Census Bureau and the Indian Department
shows how original and critical his mind is. The first fruit of his
activity as a professional teacher of political economy is an extended
treatise on the question of wages.[19] He seems to have found himself
unable to make the views of the systematic writers always harmonize with
his own conceptions, and his work is to a considerable extent
controversial. One of his prominent objects of attack is the wage-fund
theory, which is that wages are paid out of capital, that a certain
portion of the capital in every country is charged with this duty, and
that the rate of wages could be accurately determined if the amount of
this fund and the total number of laborers could be ascertained. This
theory makes the savings of past labor to be the source from which wages
are paid. Prof. Walker argues that "wages are, in a philosophical view
of the subject, paid out of the product of present industry, and hence
that production furnishes the true measure of wages." Labor is an
article which the employer buys because it forms a necessary part of a
certain product which he intends to sell. The price which he expects to
obtain for the product controls the amount he can afford to pay for the
labor. It is true that the money paid must necessarily come from past
savings unless the laborers wait for their pay, as they formerly did in
this country. But in making this payment capital merely _advances_ the
money, and its possessor receives interest for its use; the amount of
this interest being another element that is controlled by the price
which the manufacturer expects to obtain for the product. Prof. Walker
thinks it not surprising that the erroneous wage-fund theory found
acceptance in England, where the facts on which it is based were first
observed. But he marvels that American thinkers can accept it, for the
condition of some classes of laborers here was, so late as half a
century ago, a decided disproof of it. Farm hands, for instance, were
formerly often paid at the end of the year, for the reason that there
was not capital enough in farmers' hands to make the advances necessary
for weekly or monthly payments. Here was a case in which the employer
clearly had to wait for the product before he could pay the wages. No
past savings were available for the purpose. The author's arguments are
always clearly put and forcible, but his position loses strength by the
very character of his task. He has so completely separated the wages
question from all others, that we miss the natural collocation of wages
with the other items which make up the cost of a product. The capitalist
has one and the same purpose in buying raw material and labor, and no
discussion of the subject can seem complete that does not proceed from
the likeness or unlikeness of these two components of value. Another
theory which our author combats strongly is that the interest of the
employer is sufficient to keep wages up to the highest profitable point.
He holds that the laborer must be active in his own interests, or he
will never obtain that rate of payment which is necessary to his proper
maintenance. Bad food reduces the quantity and quality of the laborer's
work, so that more men have to be hired for a given task, and the
employer pays more in the end for his product, than when wages are good;
but even this prospective loss is not sufficient to keep employers from
experimenting to find just that point to which wages may be lowered
without affecting food disastrously. This disposition of the employer
can be combatted only by the resistance of the laborer. Prof. Walker
thinks there is a "constantly imminent danger that bodies of laborers
will not soon enough or amply enough resent industrial injuries which
may be wrought by the concerted action of employers or by slow and
gradual changes in production, or by catastrophes in business, such as
commercial panics." Of course he does not advocate strikes, which "are
the insurrections of labor," but even these are to be judged by their
results. The results may or may not justify them. He considers that
coöperation is a real panacea that can successfully take the place of
violent measures. He denies the assertion that coöperation gets rid of
the capitalist. It merely avoids the business man, who in the present
order of things borrows the capital, hires the laborers, and directs the
business. Practically he is a salaried man. Prof. Walker finds
difficulty in giving this man a title suitable for use in treatises on
political economy. He objects to "undertaker" and "adventurer," because
they have other meanings, and suggests the French _entrepreneur_. The
objections are well taken, but the middleman is not only a reality; he
also has a name by which he is known in business. If Prof. Walker wants
to have a cellar dug or rock blasted, he can go to Pennsylvania and find
a "venturer" to undertake the work; and there seems to be no good reason
why a term that is already in common use and well understood should be
rejected by the schoolmen. This is a valuable contribution to political
economy, so valuable, in fact, that we can only _say_ that it should be
read, not demonstrate the fact in a short notice.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Elsie's Motherhood"[20] is a story in which piety of the Sunday-school
kind is curiously contrasted with villany in the shape of Ku Klux
outrages. Elsie's children are all sweetness, obedience, and kisses, and
live in an atmosphere of goodness that is revolting because it is
monstrous. There is a suspicion of political purpose associated with the
appearance of the book just at this time which does not improve it.

--The author of "Near to Nature's Heart"[21] shows abundant powers of
invention, but his imagination is not sufficiently well regulated for
the production of a natural or even plausible story. The individual who
is so intimate with nature is a young girl whose father has fled from
England and hidden himself in the forests of the Hudson river on account
of a quarrel with his brother, which he (erroneously) supposes to have
been a fatal one. His seclusion is so complete that his daughter grows
up almost without the sight of man or womankind except the three who are
in her father's hut, and the consequence is a partial reversion to the
wild state from which we are nowadays supposed to have been somewhat
removed by the process of evolution. The author dresses the nymph in a
style that ingeniously indicates the character he desires to paint. "Her
attire was as simple as it was strange, consisting of an embroidered
tunic of finely dressed fawn skin, reaching a little below the knee, and
ending in a blue fringe. Some lighter fabric was worn under it, and
encased the arms. The shapely neck and throat were bare, though almost
hidden by a wealth of wavy golden tresses that flowed down her
shoulders. Her hat appeared to have been constructed out of the skin of
the snowy heron, with its beak and plumage preserved intact, and dressed
into the jauntiest style. Leggings of strong buckskin, that formed a
protection against the briers and roughness of the forest, were clasped
around a slender ankle, and embroidered moccasins completed an attire
that was not in the style of the girl of the period, even a century
ago." This nymph was fishing, and for a float used the bud of a water
lily! This is quite characteristic of the author's idea throughout. In
losing civilization this girl put on all the supposed graces and none of
the known brutishness of the wild state. The result is an incongruous
character, but it is quite in harmony with the general notion that the
natural state is one of greater perfection than that we really dwell in.
As for the story, it relates to Revolutionary times, introduces
Washington and the Continental army, with battles, dangers, and other
lively and thrilling situations. In plot it is crude and rough. The
author makes the artistic mistake of introducing religion as a principal
element of his tale, though it does not relate to a time or to persons
characteristically religious. The variety of incident, the presence of
historical characters, including Washington and "Captain" Molly, and a
certain _quantum_ of real skill in the author, will no doubt make this
book acceptable to the uncritical, but it does not deserve the attention
of others. We notice that the publishers announce the "fourteenth
thousand," which is the best indication of the book's popularity.

       *       *       *       *       *

The ranks of the rhymers of the day are thronged with women, among the
better of whom is the author of "Edelweiss,"[22] who has gathered her
occasional verses into a pretty volume under the title of that graceful
and tender little poem. Her title-page bears no publisher's name and her
dedication to friends, whose loving kindness has welcomed them one by
one, and at whose request they have been gathered together, seems to
imply that they are privately printed. If this is because no publisher
would undertake the production of the volume, we do not wonder; not
because of the inferiority of the poems, for they are much better than
many that do find publishers. They belong to a large class in which the
world cannot be brought to take any great interest--verses expressive of
various emotions, love, devotion, resignation, and so forth, which are
all uttered with fervor or with tenderness, verses graceful in style,
and in good rhythm, and which yet produce no great impression; while on
the other hand they are much above that sentimental or that sententious
twaddle which sometimes finds many admirers. It is sad to see so much of
this sort of verse published; for it is the occasion and the sign of
woful disappointment to persons of unusual intelligence and true poetic
feeling, who, however, have not in any great measure the poetic faculty.

--"Frithiof's Saga" has been often translated into English, and we have
here the result of one more effort to give us the great Swedish poem in
our own language.[23] The principal difference between this translation
and its predecessors is that this preserves the changing metres of the
original. It was undertaken chiefly because it seems the Swedes have not
been satisfied with the previous translations because they did not
follow the metre of the original. The reason is not a good one, and the
result of the attempt to conform to it is not very happy. There is no
question of pleasing the Swedes with a translation into English. It is
English ears that are to be consulted by what is written in English,
whether original or not. The Swedes have the original; that is for them;
the English version is for us. The effect of the many and great changes
in the rhythm and in the form of the verse is not pleasant to our taste;
and indeed we are inclined to think that the best translation of this or
of any other "Saga" would be into rhythmic prose, which embodied the
spirit, but did not simulate the form of the original.

--It is very unfortunate for what is often called American literature,
that almost all attempts to treat any part of our history poetically or
dramatically are miserable failures. Among the verse books before us two
are of this kind; one by Mr. George L. Raymond,[24] who has written in
what he supposes is the ballad form some things which are not at all
ballad-like, and which are dreary stuff under whatever name; and the
other a thing which Mr. Martin F. Tupper[25] seems to suppose is a drama
in blank verse upon the events of our war of independence. A more stupid
and ridiculous performance we have rarely seen. That it should be read
through by any one seems to us quite insupposable. And yet, although he
has written this and "Proverbial Philosophy," Mr. Tupper is a D. C. L.
of Oxford and an F. R. S.

--Something of a far higher quality than this is Mr. Bayard Taylor's
"National Ode" written for the Centennial celebration. It is to be
regretted, we think, that Mr. Taylor was not able to give himself up
entirely to poetical composition. He has the poetic faculty, and his
verse is nervous and manly, far better, we think, than his prose. Had he
been a poet only, he might have taken a still higher place in
contemporary literature. This poem, well known to the public, is one of
his finest and most spirited efforts. The present edition[26] is very
handsomely illustrated and printed.

--Charles Sprague is an "American" poet of the last generation, who is
almost forgotten, and indeed quite unknown to readers of the present
day. He has something of Campbell in his style--Campbell in his calm and
serious moods. It may have been desirable to reprint his poems and
essays in an attractive volume,[27] with his portrait; but we fear that
he belongs to the class of middling writers of prose and verse who were
much talked of by our fathers chiefly because they were "American."

--One of the best of the many volumes of verse upon our table is the
collection of poems by Mrs. S. M. B. Piatt.[28] Mrs. Piatt's muse is
often thoughtful, but in all that she has given us, of which much is
attractive in form and suggestive in substance, these lines that follow
are the most valuable. They refer to the altar which Paul found at
Athens "To the Unknown God":

    Because my life was hollow with a pain
      As old as death: because my eyes were dry
    As the fierce tropics after months of rain,
      Because my restless voice said, "Why?" and "Why?"

    Wounded and worn, I knelt within the night
      As blind as darkness--Praying? And to Whom?--
    When yond' _cold crescent cut my folded sight_,
      And showed a phantom Altar in my room.

    It was the Altar Paul at Athens saw.
      The Greek bowed there, but not the Greek alone!
    The ghosts of nations gathered, wan with awe,
      And laid their offerings on that shadowy stone.

    The Egyptian worshipped there the crocodile;
      There they of Nineveh the bull with wings;
    The Persian there with swart, sun-lifted smile
      Felt in his soul the writhing fire's bright stings.

    There the weird Druid held his mistletoe;
      There, for the scorched son of the sand, coiled bright,
    The torrid snake was hissing sharp and low;
      And there the Western savage paid his rite.

    "Allah," the Moslem darkly muttered there;
      "Brahma," the jewelled Indies of the East
    Sighed through their spices with a languid prayer;
      "Christ?" faintly questioned many a paler priest.

    And still the Athenian Altar's glimmering Doubt
      On all religions--evermore the same.
    What tears shall wash its sad inscription out?
      What hand shall write thereon His other name?

The last five lines of Mrs. Piatt's poem express finely the feeling as
to God and religion which now fills countless numbers of the truest
hearts and brightest minds.

--"As You Like It" has just been published in the "Clarendon Press
Series of Shakespeare's Select Plays." Mr. Grant White, in his article
"On Reading Shakespeare," in the present number of "The Galaxy," has
said so much in regard to this series and its present editor,[29]
William Aldis Wright, that it is only necessary for us to record here
the appearance of this edition of Shakespeare's most charming comedy,
and to say that Shakespeare's lovers and students will find in it some
new views which are interesting, and appear to be sound, and a copious
and careful body of annotation.

--Of poetry, or rather of verse, as we before remarked, our table is
full this month, and with it we have a dictionary to teach us to rhyme
withal.[30] "Walker's Rhyming Dictionary" has had complete possession of
this field for three quarters of a century, and we are not sure that it
will be supplanted by Mr. Barnum's. His new plan is very systematic. He
classifies his words in groups--single rhymes, double rhymes, triple,
quadruple, and even quintuple rhymes; and then he divides and subdivides
and parcels off his words under separate headings. He does not give
definitions. The book will be valuable to the student of the English
language, more so, we are inclined to think, than to the mere
rhyme-hunter, who will prefer to run his finger and his eye down a
column of words arranged merely according to their final letters.

--Mr. Tennyson's new dramatic poem is before us in the elegant Boston
typography of Ticknor & Field's worthy successors.[31] The poet laureate
added little to his fame by his previous dramatic work, "Queen Mary"; he
will gain less by this. It is good of course to a certain degree, but
it is only "fair to middling" Tennysonian work. We find in it not a
passage that stirs us, not one that charms. It puts the story of the
Norman Conquest of England into a dramatic form and into good blank
verse, with sound and sensible treatment of the subject, and that is
all. Its author's good taste, and above all his experience, his
dexterity, acquired by such long practice, are manifest on every page;
but there is little more. He dedicates it to the present Lord Lytton, in
evident desire to wipe out the memory of the old feud between him and
Bulwer Lytton; but that was too black and too bitter to be sponged away
with a little sugar and water.

--Mr. Latham Cornell Strong is modest in his preface about his
collection of verse,[32] although he is rather too elaborately
metaphorical in his way of blushing properly. He says, as to the flaws
in his poems, that he "has a reasonable confidence that they will not
all be discovered by any one reader." This may be true from the probable
fact that no one reader will read them all; we think that we have met
with enough of them to show that Mr. Strong might well have refrained
himself from publication. For example, we think that a true poet could
hardly have written many such passages as these, and there are many such
in the volume:

    The night is rising from the trees,
      Her _hands_, uplifted, _trail_ with stars

    The moon hath flung _its banners_ on the sward

    Old Rupert named, _alone of all the rest_
      She most esteemed, for he had brought her flowers,
    To wreathe her tresses and make manifest
      His sympathy for her, _in many ways expressed_

The last four lines unite incorrectness, tameness, and inelegance with
remarkable and fatal facility.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] "_The Theistic Conception of the World._ An Essay in Opposition to
Certain Tendencies of Modern Thought." By B. F. COCKER, D.D., LL.D. New
York: Harper & Brothers.

[13] "_Religion and the State_; or, The Bible and the Public Schools."
By SAMUEL T. SPEAR, D.D. 12mo, pp. 393. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.

[14] "_A Complete Life of General George A. Custer_," etc. By F.
WHITTAKER, Brevet Captain Sixth N. Y. V. Cavalry. New York: Sheldon &
Co.

[15] "_The Lord's Land_: A Narrative of Travels in Sinai, Arabia,
Petræa, and Palestine, from the Red Sea to the Entering in of Hamath."
By HENRY B. RIDGAWAY, D.D. New York: Nelson & Phillips.

[16] "_New Mexico and the New Mexicans_: A Political Problem." By an
Officer of the Army.

[17] "_Through and Through the Tropics._" By FRANK VINCENT, Jr. New
York: Harper & Brothers. 1876.

[18] "_Archivos do Musen Nacional do Rio de Janeiro._" Imprensa
Industrial.

[19] "_The Wages Question._ A Treatise on Wages and the Wages Class." By
FRANCIS A. WALKER. New York: Henry Holt & Co. $3.50.

[20] "_Elsie's Motherhood._" A Sequel to "Elsie's Womanhood." By MARTHA
FINLEY (FARQUHARSON). New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.

[21] "_Near to Nature's Heart._" By Rev. E. P. ROE. New York: Dodd, Mead
& Co.

[22] "_Edelweiss_: An Alpine Rhyme." By MARY LOWE DICKINSON. New York,
1876.

[23] "_Frithiof's Saga._ A Norse Romance." By ESAIS FEGNER, Bishop of
Wexio. Translated from the Swedish by Thomas A. Holcombe and Martha and
Lyon Holcombe. 16mo, pp. 213. Chicago: S. C. Griggs & Co.

[24] "_Colony Ballads_, etc., etc., etc., etc." By GEORGE L. RAYMOND.
16mo, pp. 95. New York: Hurd & Houghton.

[25] "_Washington_: A Drama in Five Acts." By MARTIN F. TUPPER. 16mo,
pp. 67. New York: James Miller.

[26] "_The National Ode._ The Memorial Freedom Poem." By BAYARD TAYLOR.
Illustrated. 8vo, pp. 74. Boston: William E. Gill & Co.

[27] "_The Poetical and Prose Writings of Charles Sprague._" 16mo, pp.
207. Boston: A. Williams & Co.

[28] "_That New World, and Other Poems._" By Mrs. S. M. B. PIATT. 16mo,
pp. 130. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.

[29] "_Shakespeare._" Select Plays. "As You Like It." Edited by WILLIAM
ALDIS WRIGHT, M.A., Bursar of Trinity College, Cambridge. 16mo, pp. 168.
Oxford: at the Clarendon Press.

[30] "_A Vocabulary of English Rhymes._" Arranged on a new plan. By the
Rev. SAMUEL W. BARNUM. 18mo, pp. 767. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

[31] "_Harold_: A Drama." By ALFRED TENNYSON. 16mo, pp. 170. Boston:
James B. Osgood & Co.

[32] "_Castle Windows._" By LATHAM CORNELL STRONG. 16mo, pp. 229. Troy:
H. B. Nims & Co.




NEBULÆ.


--The evolutionists manifestly feel that they are put upon their defence
in the matter of religion. As far as they themselves are concerned, they
are at peace with their own consciences; but nevertheless they do not
sit easily under the charge of atheism which is very generally brought
against them by that part of the world to which science does not stand
in place of religion. They are now making desperate efforts to show that
they have a religion, and Mr. M. J. Savage has written a very clever
book upon the subject, entitled "The Religion of Evolution." Mr. Savage
is a very pronounced evolutionist; he sticks at nothing in the most
extravagant form of the new theory, and the attitude which he would take
toward religion is clearly shown in the title of his previous volume on
a kindred subject, "Christianity the Science of Manhood." It is safe to
say that although Mr. Savage and others like him may call themselves
Christians and believe themselves to be so, and may live lives worthy of
the name, no man who twenty-five years ago was a professed believer in
the Christian religion, and comparatively very few of those who are so
now, would accept the term _science_ as applicable to Christianity or to
religion at all. For science means knowledge, knowledge of facts, and
cautious logical deductions from those facts; whereas the very essence
of religion is a faith which holds itself above knowledge and reason, a
faith which is not only the substance of things hoped for, but the
evidence of things not seen. And this great definition, one of the
greatest ever given, applies not particularly to the faith of the
Christian religion, but to all faiths--Judaism, Mohammedanism, Buddhism,
and the rest. The true religionist will sooner accept one of these as a
religion than a religion of evolution, or than he will consent to accept
Christianity as a science of anything--of manhood, or even of God-hood.

--It is with this view of religion, this feeling about it, that the
evolutionists have to deal when they endeavor to free themselves from
the charge of irreligion. This is a state of the case which some of them
do not seem to appreciate at its full importance. They shirk it, or at
least they slight it; but Mr. Savage, it must be admitted, meets it
fairly and boldly. He takes the position that such a view of religion is
unworthy of a reasonable creature, and he brushes it aside with little
ceremony and with some dexterity. But his chief difficulty is with the
conception which lies at the foundation of all religions--the idea of
god. Granted a god, or gods, and religion follows as a matter of course;
and conversely, no god, no religion. Therefore the evolutionists, those
of them who feel, or who see the necessity of a religion, of whom Mr.
Savage may be taken as a fair representative, go about to provide
themselves and the rest of the universe with a god, and they do it in
this fashion. It is shown to the satisfaction of the evolutionists, and
also of very many who have no respect for their theory, that the Mosaic
cosmogony--that is, the account in Genesis of the creation of the earth
and its inhabitants, and all the visible universe--has never been
proved, and is incapable of proof, and that it holds its place in
popular belief solely because of its supposed connection with
Christianity; that it is merely a tradition (from however high and
venerable a source), and that it rests upon no knowledge or study of the
facts which it professes to explain; that it is in no way connected with
Christianity, which would stand on its own merits equally whether the
world were six thousand or six million years old, and whether it and its
inhabitants were made in six days or six æons; that it--the Mosaic
account of the origin of the world--explains nothing, but simply tells
dogmatically that God made all and that God did so and so; that no
intelligent person would think of resting satisfied with the Mosaic
account, had it not come to be regarded as a requirement of religion to
do so, but that this has become so fixed that the whole orthodox system
is the natural and logical outgrowth of the Mosaic account of the
beginning of things: "the prevailing belief about God, the nature and
the fall of man, total depravity, the need and the schemes for
supernatural redemption, the whole structure, creed, and ritual of the
Church, the common belief about the nature and efficacy of prayer
meetings, the whole system of popular revivals, limited salvation, and
everlasting punishment"--all and each being built on the foundation of
the Mosaic cosmogony. Therefore for the vast number of intelligent
thoughtful people to whom the Mosaic account of the creation is no
longer authoritative, although it may be mythically instructive, the
foundation of their religion is gone. It is then assumed that religion
must rest upon a veneration for the creative power or agent to which the
present _cosmos_ owes its existence, and that as the traditional God or
Creator of Genesis has been eliminated from cognition by science, his
place in religion must be taken by the power by which he is supplanted.
Hence we have the god of evolution and the religion of evolution.

--But what is this god of evolution? In a very remarkable series of
papers which have appeared for some months past in "Macmillan's
Magazine," upon Natural Religion, remarkable equally for the subtlety
and closeness of their thought and their clearness of style, something
called Nature is set up as God; Mr. Savage's god, as nearly as we can
make out, is the law of evolution--the formative power by which the
universe passed from a mass of fluid fire, revolving in space, into
suns, and suns and planets, and their inhabitants. In either case it
amounts to about the same thing. What is nature? We may be sure the word
is not used in the sense which it has when we say that a man admires
nature, loves nature, or observes nature, nor in that which it has when
we speak of the nature of things or the nature in a work of the
imagination, or the nature of man, or "the nature of the beast." What is
it then? We are very sure that the "Macmillan" writer, with all his
delicacy of thought and command of expression, could not say exactly
what he means when he speaks of this Nature which is so worthy of
reverence and of love. For this reason, and for no other, we may be
sure, he has left the word undefined. This is important; for, as Mr.
Savage says in his eleventh chapter, when he proposes the question
whether evolution and Christianity are antagonistic, so that one
necessarily excludes the other--"that depends upon definitions."

--The truth is that this whole question is one greatly of definitions.
What do you mean by God? what by Nature? what by religion? We are
inclined to think that if the two parties on one side and the other of
the great question of the day were to have a preliminary settlement of
definitions, it would become plain that there could be no discussion,
certainly no profitable discussion, between them--no more than there
could be a fight between a deep-sea fish and a chamois. They would find
that there was no ground on which they could meet, no point on which
they could come in contact! To one God is, and must be, a person, an
individual, who, however spiritual, eternal, omniscient, and
omnipresent, is yet as much a person as a man having a will, with
purposes, affections, feelings, sentiments, as indeed every spiritual
being must have--a being who can be feared, revered, admired, loved.
Religion to these men is worship of this person, obedience to his will
because it is his, faith in him, love of him. The god of the
evolutionists, on the other hand, is, if Nature, a mere manifestation or
result; if a law, a mere mode or rule of action. As to the religion of
evolution, we cannot, with all Mr. Savage's help, and that of the
"Macmillan" writer (who, we are sure, must be a man of mark, or at least
one who will become so), discover what it is, except a conformity to
what may be called the law of nature; but that is something of which a
healthy beast or a drop of water is quite as capable as a man is; and
such conformity implies feeling quite as much in one of these cases as
in the other. It implies feeling in no case; and religion without
feeling, sentiment, and faith is no religion at all in the sense which
the word has had from the beginning of its use to this day. The
religious man finds in _his_ God a being whom he can love and lean upon,
who has a right to his obedience, to whom he can be loyal, whom he can
address, calling him Father, as we are told that Christ did. But you
cannot love a law. True, David says, "O how I love thy law"; but the law
that he loved was the will of the Supreme Being, and he loved it because
it was His. It was not a mode of action or of evolution that he loved.
Nor can you obey such a law, although you may conform to it; nor can you
be loyal to it, for you cannot be loyal to an abstraction. As to
fatherhood, this law-god of evolution is the father of nothing except as
two and two are the father and mother of four. Therefore, while we
regard such books as Mr. Savage's as interesting expositions of the
condition as to super-scientific subjects into which modern science has
brought many of its votaries, we cannot see that they do anything toward
refuting the charge brought against science (as it is among the
evolutionists), that it is at war with religion, and takes away all the
grounds of religious faith. For that which the evolutionists set up as a
god religious people regard as the mere creature of the true God; and
what they set up as religion the others regard utterly lacking in all
the essentials of religion. It would be much better for the
evolutionists to face this whole question boldly, as Mr. Savage does in
part, and to say that the result of their investigations is the belief
that there is no God, and consequently that there need not be, and in
fact cannot be, any religion in the sense in which that word has for
centuries been used. Moreover, we cannot see the grounds of one pretence
which is made by the evolutionists, and which is implied if not in terms
set up in all their writings that are not purely scientific and have
what may be called a moral character, such as the book before us. This
is that their theory accounts for everything, and is more consistent
with reason than that of those who accept with faith the book of
Genesis. The evolution theory is, in the words of Mr. Savage, "that the
whole universe, suns, planets, moons, our earth, and every form of life
upon it, vegetable and animal, up to man, together with all our
civilization, has developed from a primitive fire-mist or nebula that
once filled all the space now occupied by the worlds; and that this
development has been according to laws and methods and forces still
active and working about us to-day." But if it be granted, or even
proved, that this is true, we cannot see how it satisfies the reason
when we come to the question of creation and a creator. For what a
stupendous, unutterably stupendous, and almost inconceivable thing was
that fire-mist that filled all space and had in it not only the germs
and possibilities of suns and moons and planets and our earth, but of
man and _all his civilization_; and those laws and methods and forces
according to which the universe and man and his civilization have been
evolved from a fire-mist--what inconceivable things they are! Now who
made the fire-mist and the law of evolution? We cannot see that reason
is satisfied by the substitution of a fire-mist and a law of evolution
for the will of a creator and a specific creation of the suns and stars
and planets, including the earth, and man, and his possibilities of
civilization. The thing is as broad one way as it is long the other. As
far as the fact of creation goes, in either case the belief must be a
matter of faith, not of reason. With regard to the anthropomorphism of
the Hebrew story, that is shared, and must be shared, by all
religions--that is, all religious which rest upon the notion of a
personal God. The limitations of man's nature, the limitations of
language, make anthropomorphic metaphor necessary when a man speaks of a
god. Even the evolutionists cannot get rid of the necessity of faith.

       *       *       *       *       *

--Dr. Richardson's papers published in "Nature," and designed to prove
the advantage, and in fact the real necessity of experimenting on
animals in order to be ready to save human life, contain many
interesting facts and deserve to be widely read in view of the current
discussion as to the propriety of permitting the practice of
vivisection. The following case affords conclusive proof of the learned
and humane physiologist's argument. He says: "Dr. Weir Mitchell of
Philadelphia, in the year 1869, made the original and remarkable
observation that if a part of the body of a frog be immersed in simple
syrup, there soon occurs in the crystalline lens of the eyeball an
opaque appearance resembling the disease called cataract. He extended
his observations to the effects of grape sugar, and obtained the same
results. He found that he could induce the cataractic condition
invariably by this experiment, or by injecting a solution of sugar with
a fine needle, subcutaneously, into the dorsal sac of the frog. The
discovery was one of singular importance in the history of medical
science, and explained immediately a number of obscure phenomena. The
co-existence of the two diseases, diabetes and cataract, in man had been
observed by France, Cohen, Hasner, Mackenzie, Duncan, Von Graafe, and
others, and Von Graafe had stated that after examining a large number of
diabetic patients in different hospitals, he had found one-fourth
affected with cataract. Before Mitchell's observation there was not a
suspicion as to the reason of this connection, and a flood of light,
therefore, broke on the subject the moment he proclaimed the new
physiological fact. Still more, Mitchell showed that the cataract he was
able to induce by experiment was curable also by experiment, a truth
which will one day lead to the cure of cataract without operation. Then,
but not till then, the splendid character of this original
investigation, and the debt that is due to one of the most original,
honest, laborious workers that ever in any age cultivated the science
and art of medicine, will be duly recognized." Upon receiving
intelligence of this discovery, Dr. Richardson undertook experiments to
discover the cause of this dependence of cataract upon diabetes. He
found that whenever the specific gravity of the blood was raised to ten
degrees above the normal standard, and remained so for a short time,
cataract followed. He also found that the disease so produced could be
cured by removing the salts which had been introduced into the blood.
This certainly points to a cure for cataract which shall be really
radical, and adds another to the results which justify, even upon
humanitarian grounds, physiological experiments, at the expense of the
animal creation, within prescribed limits.

       *       *       *       *       *

--Mr. Sorby has lately made some calculations of the probable size of
the invisible atoms which compose material substances. Dr. Royston
Pigott determined that the smallest visual angle which we can well
appreciate is that covering a hole of 11.4 inches diameter at a distance
of 1,100 yards. This corresponds to about six seconds of an arc. In a
microscope magnifying 1,000 diameters this would make visible a particle
one-three-millionth part of an inch thick. But Mr. Sorby is inclined to
think that a size between 1/80,000 and 1/100,000 of an inch is about the
limit of the visibility of minute objects, even with the best
microscopes. Now, taking the mean of the calculations made by Stoney,
Thomson, and Clerk-Maxwell, we have 21,770 as the number of atoms of any
permanent gas required to cover one-thousandth of an inch, when lying
end to end. By a series of calculations which produce numbers entirely
beyond human conception, (10,317,000,000,000 atoms in 1/100,000,000 of a
cubic inch, for instance) he reached the conclusion that there are in
the length of 1/80,000 of an inch (the smallest visible object) about
2,000 molecules of water, or 520 of albumen, and therefore, in order to
see the ultimate constitution of organic bodies, it would be necessary
to use a magnifying power from 500 to 2,000 times greater than those we
now possess. With this result settled, he was able to make one of those
radical predictions which are so rarely possible to the careful
scientist; namely, that the atom will never be seen by man. It is not
that instruments cannot be made powerful enough (though that is no doubt
true), but that the waves of light are too coarse to distinguish the
limits of such an extremely small distance. To see atoms we should need
light waves only one-two-thousandth of their actual length. At present
we are as far from that attainment as we are from reading a newspaper,
with the naked eye, at the distance of one-third of a mile.