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THE GALAXY.


VOL. XXIII.--JUNE, 1877.--No. 6.



SPRING LONGING.

What art thou doing here, O Imagination? Go away, I entreat thee by the
gods, as thou didst come, for I want thee not. But thou art come
according to thy old fashion. I am not angry with thee--only go
away.--_Marcus Antoninus._

    Lilac hazes veil the skies.
            Languid sighs
    Breathes the mild, caressing air.
    Pink as coral's branching sprays,
            Orchard ways
    With the blossomed peach are fair.

    Sunshine, cordial as a kiss,
            Poureth bliss
    In this craving soul of mine,
    And my heart her flower-cup
            Lifteth up,
    Thirsting for the draught divine.

    Swift the liquid golden flame
            Through my frame
    Sets my throbbing veins afire.
    Bright, alluring dreams arise,
            Brim mine eyes
    With the tears of strong desire.

    All familiar scenes anear
            Disappear--
    Homestead, orchard, field, and wold.
    Moorish spires and turrets fair
            Cleave the air,
    Arabesqued on skies of gold.

    Lo, my spirit, this May morn,
            Outward borne,
    Over seas hath taken wing:
    Where the mediæval town,
            Like a crown,
    Wears the garland of the Spring.

    Light and sound and odors sweet
            Fill the street;
    Gypsy girls are selling flowers.
    Lean hidalgos turn aside,
            Amorous-eyed,
    'Neath the grim cathedral towers.

    Oh, to be in Spain to-day,
            Where the May
    Recks no whit of good or evil,
    Love and only love breathes she!
            Oh, to be
    'Midst the olive-rows of Seville!

    Or on such a day to glide
            With the tide
    Of the berylline lagoon,
    Through the streets that mirror heaven,
            Crystal paven,
    In the warm Venetian noon.

    At the prow the gondolier
            May not hear,
    May not see our furtive kiss;
    But he lends with cadenced strain
            The refrain
    To our ripe and silent bliss.

    Golden shadows, silver light,
            Burnish bright
    Air and water, domes and skies;
    As in some ambrosial dream,
            On the stream
    Floats our bark in magic wise.

    Oh, to float day long just so!
            Naught to know
    Of the trouble, toil, and fret!
    This is love, and this is May:
            Yesterday
    And to-morrow to forget!

    Whither hast thou, Fancy free,
            Guided me,
    Wild Bohemian sister dear?
    All thy gypsy soul is stirred
            Since yon bird
    Warbled that the Spring was here.

    Tempt no more! I may not follow,
            Like the swallow,
    Gayly on the track of Spring.
    Bounden by an iron fate,
            I must wait,
    Dream and wonder, yearn and sing.

EMMA LAZARUS.


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




A PROGRESSIVE BABY.


LETTER III.

18 STANFIELD GARDENS, }
SOUTH KENSINGTON,     }
May 28, 1875.         }

                     *      *      *      *      *

And there you have us down to date, my Susie. The sunshine and the
crisp breezes, the innocent early teas with cresses and prawns, the
grand long nights full of sleep, have put us all right with the world
again; but after all Brighton's only a bit of West End moved off down
by the sea, and if one must live in London at all, why, it's at its
best for three or four weeks to come. And we're to get off early to
Switzerland this year, for fear that it mayn't be so easy next summer.
For Ronayne's father is clearing away to make him stand for that dreary
territory of hovels and bogs in which the paternal mansion is situate.
Fancy Ronayne an M.P.! And an Irish M.P.! I fight against it--under
cover. The dream of my heart is an _appartement avec tenasse_ in Paris,
and in summer to turn vagrants and tramps as now. It's so unlucky
Ronayne should have been the eldest son: duty, respectability, and the
proprieties have such a much stronger gripe upon him, and we're born
vagabonds, both.

But, what must be, must. Meanwhile I console myself with my
window-gardening. And you should see the house-front!--the balcony that
will be a perfect bower presently. My window-boxes, the gayest mosaics of
color, and the vestibule lined with callas, acacias, and heath--against a
background of ferns and ivy. We were never so magnificent before, and it
was Ronayne's surprise for me when we came back from the sea--he having
given our florist _carte-blanche_; whereas I, bearing a conscience, have
bargained with him always, and carefully counted my pots.

Mrs. Malise's disciplinary Johanna brought her charge for a little
visit to my nursery yesterday. And my heart aches so for that baby!
He's a great child, well made, and with his mother's wonderful
eyes--but so heavy, listless--"Meek as a work'us' child brought up on
skilly," Ronayne renders it--and though he's perfectly clean now, and
comfortably clad, nobody would dream he was a young mother's first
baby, so ornamentless and sombre-hued are his little garments.

Nurse brings back indignant accounts of the way he's left to amuse
himself, or cry his fill, when out for an airing in Kensington Gardens.
"Hours, ma'am, she keep that poor thing a-frettin' or a-sleepin' in his
perambulator, the east wind a-cuttin' about him as draughty as
draughty, while she sits on a bench a-makin' her foolish lace or
talkin' to some of them German bandmen. He never gets taken out, nor
played with, nor has any playthings. It's just cruelty to
animals--that's what it is!" finishes my nursery dragon, who is as
soft-hearted as she is grim of exterior and grammatically independent
in speech.

Mrs. Malise has been absent at suffrage meetings in Scotland and
Ireland for a month past, Miss Hedges told me when dining here just
after our return. Mrs. Stainton, the porcelain widow, was invited also,
and a curious and wonderfully interesting person we find her: the
daintiest small creature--complexion like an ivory painting, deep-set,
seeress eyes, and looking fairly spirit-like for fragility, in her long
black dress and white lace shawl. Nothing could well be more piquant
than to hear this filmy little thing, in a voice that would have fitted
Queen Mab, recount her experiences in the most widely separated circles
of life and thought, or quietly give utterance to quaint, audacious
speculations, as to mysteries that perplex so many of us concerning
this existence and the eternity it preludes. "If there be a hereafter!"
I heard some one answer to a remark of hers. "Ah, that was never a
doubt to me save for a very brief space," she replied. "I am like the
Curé de Ars--'I know some one who would be finely taken in if there
were no Paradise!'" Her exquisiteness of look, the fascinating talk,
the soft, helpless manner are so appealing that one is disposed to
treat her as some wandered denizen of the air and skies, though she
hangs effortless, her whole weight upon one, and there is scarce a
limit to her fine-lady and delicate-organization requirements.

The daughter of a Low Church dean, she became, in her husband's time,
first broad church, then rationalist; after his death, because of
extraordinary, extra natural occurrences that befell her, a
spiritualist, and now she seems to be turning toward Catholicism,
though Miss Hedges, who is a Catholic, shakes her head, and says she
always feels very hopeless of people essentially given to all manner of
vague interpretations, fanciful twistings of simple doctrine, and
æsthetic sentimental mysticism.

"Obedience is in the order of existence," says the little lady. "I long
for authority; I long for a voice I shall not question, to whose
decision I can submit all the questions that torture me."

"I tried to stay my soul with ritualism," she said, talking to Miss H.
and myself when we were alone after dinner, "and at first I thought I
was going to get some comfort out of it. I made my father furious by
entering one of Miss ----'s famous sisterhoods. But it wouldn't do.
Ritualism of course was not more illogical then than now, but the
actors weren't as well up in their parts, and how queer some of our
performances at ---- were! I remember a retreat I made there, in which
I was put into a cell bare of everything save a table and chair, and a
Testament upon the table, and there I was left alone the whole day,
seeing no creature save a Sister who, speechless, thrust my dinner and
tea in at me! You may imagine the imbecile condition in which night
found me.

"And as a punishment for some fault I was ordered to go to communion
for four months without going to confession! Miss ----, our Reverend
Mother, behaved exactly as if she had taken her notions of the external
character and dignities of her office from some swelling, stern, ridiculous
Lady Abbess in a no-popery novel! We undertook everything--teaching,
the care of hospitals, training of servants, district work, Magdalen
houses, and to these active employments we joined the contemplative,
strictly cloistered life! We had no special training for either one of
our labors; we had no completed constitutions or rule, and one was
liable, at any moment, to be whisked from one's quiet cell and sent
alone at night, across the kingdom, to some duty for which one was no
more fitted than a baby or a savage.

"I was set, in the beginning, to clean lamps, and black-lead the
grates, but failed in this business so completely that I was given a
district in East London to afflict with visitations and instructions.
Trying one day to convey some idea of the Real Presence to a voluble
old woman who was one of the sisterhood's most devoted _protégées_, I
said, 'Then, Sally, since you know _who_ is in the church, I hope you
never go in or out without showing proper respect.' 'Oh, yessum,
yessum!' she assured me. 'Indeed, 'm, I allays bobs to the eagle!' (the
brass eagle of the lectern!). With all Sally's bobbings to the eagle
and to us sisters, she was a dreadful old harpy, and made me think
always of two old women my father overheard talking one day at
Cirencester. There is a fund there which was long ago bequeathed by
some pious person for the furnishing small stipends to such aged poor
people as should daily devoutly hear mass. Of course since the revenues
have lapsed into Anglican hands this sum is used now for those who
attend the early service. And this was what my father heard:

"First old crone, _loquitur_: 'These be hard times, Betty. How d'ye
think of getting a livelihood this winter?'

"Second old crone: 'They _be_ hard, for shore, Anne, and I'm a-thinking
of taking to yorly priors (early prayers) for a quarter!'

"One of my droll, dreadful district visitor experiences I shall never
forget. In the process of my visitations I stumbled, one day, into the
room of a woman very haggard and very yellow, but as the woman was
dressed and moving actively about, I had no idea of her having any
special ailment, save dirt. But as soon as she knew who I was, a
visiting Sister, she began to tell me how ill she was--ill of a disease
that not another person in the whole kingdom had--the doctor said
so--spotted leprosy. And how physicians came constantly to see her, and
brought, each one, other physicians--how, in short of a horrible long,
she was a sort of gruesome doctor's pet!

"The woman's husband--for she was married, had eleven children, and
another baby coming soon--was working away at a cobbler's bench in the
room's only window, and she constantly appealed to him: 'Dr. So-and-So
said there wasn't another case like mine in this country, didn't he,
Jim? And he didn't see how it was it hadn't killed me off long ago--you
remember, Jim? And that young Scotch doctor that was so astonished to
see what a family I had--you haven't forgotten him, have you, Jim?' And
the man corroborated all her statements with a pride in having a wife
so uniquely afflicted impossible to describe! Then she insisted I must
see and dress the awful sores that made her shoulders and one breast a
great wound, telling me, as I half fainted over the task, that I didn't
do it half so well as any of the doctors, and begging me, when I had
finished, to stop long enough for her to give me a cup of tea in that
place, insufferable at best with the dirty cobbler and five or six of
the wretched babies, but become, after my _mauvais quart d'heure_ with
the terrible woman, a chamber of horrors in which to delay one further
instant would, I felt, make me daft, or shudderingly sea-sick, for
life!

"I stopped a year and a half in the sisterhood, trying, as I said, to make it
do; but either I'm too logical, or have too keen a sense of the ridiculous,
for the farce of our active-uncloistered-severely-contemplative-enclosed
life, a religious order without a constitution, frowned on by all the
bishops, carrying on its dearest devotional practices in hiding from
all proper ecclesiastical authority, became intolerable to me; and
when, one fine day, there came from 'Reverend Mother' an order to go
and nurse a man ill with typhus--an agricultural laborer living alone
in his cottage--and to my remonstrances that I knew nothing of the
disease, my plea for a companion less ignorant or at least clear
instructions for my own guidance, no answer was vouchsafed save an
oracular assurance that if I did my part of obedience, light would be
given me, I revolted, sent a contumacious message that though I
believed the age of miracles by no means past, I had never seen any
wrought in our order, and could not risk the poor man's life upon so
vague a prospect, and presently bid farewell to my Anglican convent and
to ritualism. Several Sisters have returned to the world since, and
four of these have gone over to Rome. Two of these have married. One,
whom I loved most dearly, is a Poor Clare in Ireland, and the other has
used her fortune to open a crèche, where she works harder than any of
her nurses, and carries, I should say, the lightest heart in London.

"I have no doubt there is more system, more decorum--I use the word in
its literal sense--in the Anglican sisterhoods now. I'm quite amazed
sometimes at the closeness of the imitation of the real thing when I go
to Margaret street, or to St. Alban's--the altars, the lights, the
confessionals, the stations, the black-cassocked figures gliding about,
removing their berettas and dropping on one knee as they pass the
altar--all the furniture; but a dreadful feeling of emptiness--as if the
house's owner had moved away! Do you ever look at the pictures and the
titles of books in the windows of the High Church bookshops? What would
have been thought of them five years ago even? And at ----'s in Oxford
street, a High Church friend tells me, they have a room into which you
may be ushered by inquiring for the 'Penitential Department,' if the card
bearing the name of a clerical voucher, which you must present, be
satisfactory, and where you may purchase disciplines--nail-studded
armlets, waist-belts--perhaps hair shirts, though I don't remember that
they figured in my friend's list.

"And, two years ago, I think it was, I witnessed a little scene that
was as extraordinary as it was absurd. I was coming up from Cromer, and
our train had halted for the usual time in the station at Norwich. It's
a large station, trains constantly rolling in and out, and crowds of
passengers, guards, porters flying about. While we waited, above the
din suddenly was heard a singular and regular thud! thud! coming down
the platform. Thud! thud! on it came, and the noise, and the queer,
sudden hush of most of the other racket made us all look eagerly out to
see what it could be. _It_ was a progression--a procession--a man in
soutane, barefooted, I believe, preceded by some sort of a servitor
carrying a monstrous book--breviary, 'Livre des Heures'--I know not
what, and a tall wooden crosier, whose foot it was that made the thud!
thud! At a little distance behind the man in the soutane, whom I
recognized directly as Mr. Lyne--the famous Father Ignatius, a self
constituted Benedictine Abbot--followed two Anglican Sisters. The
servitor and Father Ignatius betook themselves into a first-class
carriage, the Sisters remaining outside, and presently the crosier head
was thrust out of the window, and Father Ignatius appeared behind it
with hand outstretched to bless the Sisters, who knelt devoutly on the
platform to receive the benediction. Up to this point everybody had
behaved with wonderful restraint; but the last stroke was too much, and
it was amid a perfect scream of laughter from passengers, officials,
cabmen, and _gamins_, that the train steamed out of the station,
bearing the Benedictine Abbot away, but surely not leaving the lambs of
the flock comfortless."

And so she goes on for as long as you like. She has been everywhere.
She has known quantities of out-of-the-way people. She is ready at
every turn with a fresh story, an apposite bit of experience, and darts
in an instant from the perfect mimicry of a popular vicar we know, who
preaches in lavender kids, and leaving his cure of souls for a month's
holiday, pathetically from the pulpit entreats our Lord to look after
his charge until its proper shepherd returns, to some speculation
concerning personal accountability, an annunciation of the
reasonableness of purgatory, and wondering as to its various forms of
discipline for individual souls, or to dwell on minute phases of the
preservation of identity, distinctive and original character after
death, etc., and manifests altogether such an at-homeness with the
unseen world that, listening to her, I half expect phantom eyes will
look into mine if I glance back over either shoulder, bodiless
somethings start forward from dusky corners, the very sweep of my own
drawing-room curtains gets eerie, a what-not or a tabouret becomes a
tripod, my unsubstantial small guest is a priestess--and I'm glad when
Ronayne's voice breaks in, "All in the dark, the fire at its last coal,
no tea or coffee. Mrs. Stainton, you're a syren!"

Her own little sitting-room in the associate house is as heterogeneous
as herself--the room lined with soft comforts, the air heavy with the
fragrance of a profusion of flowers, the room's mistress nearly lost in
the capaciousness of a most luxurious lounging chair, her table piled
with ascetic literature; and in this chamber I encountered the other
day the very oddest of all the peculiar people to whom my friendship
for "little Malaise" has introduced me--a Miss Beauclerc, a short,
stout, dark, coarse-skinned woman of fifty odd, hair cropped close, and
an obstinate, honest, horse face.

She was exhibiting her own "spirit drawings"--mad scaramouches, things
like designs for eastern embroidery, accurate representations of
various portions of the kingdom of heaven, she assured me, and a
quantity of utterly purposeless collections of strokes and dots, to
which she gave names that would have been blasphemous in any but a
lunatic's mouth. How she explained them! How fondly she looked at them!
and what anguish she told me she endured lest they should be injured,
or perish in some unworthy way. This woman believes herself to be the
spirit bride of ----! Can you fancy it? one of the most fervent,
poetic, spiritual, gifted of all Anglican divines. She says that since
his death he has been constantly near her. She sees him often, leads
the life he prescribes, making and shunning acquaintances at his
direction, going from place to place, crossing the ocean twice even at
his pleasure. Finally she showed a photograph--the faithfulest possible
presentment of her own unideal face and person, with, floating above,
arms extended in protecting angel guise, a mistily outlined, veiled
figure surmounted by the refined, beautiful face known to everybody in
the later editions of his poems, and in the windows of church
bookshops--the poor clergyman who is allowed to rest neither in his
grave nor in any unknown country beyond. It is hard for him, hard for
Mrs. ----, were she to hear of this post-mortem masquerading and
"affinity," hard for the deluded woman who wanders about the world
alone with her crazy fancies, repudiated by her kindred, and plundered
by the brigandish among her co-believers.

Here, too, I met again the tall, thin young lady, heroine of the device
for frightening small bores--the Plymouth Sister's daughter. We talked
of a good many things, but chiefly of marriage, and the position of
unmarried women in England. The girl was as simply frank as a child.
Matrimony, and matrimony alone, offered any career to women in England.
And upon Mrs. Stainton's saying that despite her own perfect
marriage--a marriage for love, and the union so entire that there
lurked no shadowy region in her soul of which she could not make her
husband as free as herself to enter--yet all that she had seen of life
made her feel sure that, beyond a few rare exceptions, it mattered not,
ten years after marriage, whether the match had been for love solely,
or arranged, or a _mariage de convenance_, the girl assented; somewhat
bitterly remarked that ideals were very well for a heroic life, but
terrible drawbacks in the world of to-day, and that any woman would do
better for herself to accept any reasonably suitable offer than to
cling to an impossible dream, or insist upon a great amount of
sentiment. "It ought to be enough," said this girl of the period, "for
a woman to be able to decently respect a man who has the means of
placing her in such conditions as she thinks will suit her. And men do
very well without sentiment. They have their professions, their
business, their friends, their clubs. It is quite enough for them if
their wives are fairly good housekeepers and mothers, presentable at
head of their tables, pleasant hostesses in their drawing-rooms. It
sounds very mean, but what is a girl to do? We may be most of us clever
enough and tolerably well educated, but there are not among us many
brilliant geniuses who can find all comfort and happiness in a life
devoted, wholly to art or literature. What is one of the mediocre mass
to do? It's not genteel to do this, it's unfeminine to do that; one
can't stir in any direction that would have in it some spirit, some
earnest, something worth while.

"You can always do good, they tell us. I dare say; so can men; but how
many among them would like to be recommended, as life occupation, to go
making impertinent raids into poor people's houses to tell them they're
untidy, when a family has but one room to live in, and there's but one
water tap in the court, and two or three flights of stairs over which
to carry every drop; or that they're ill-smelling, and will have fever,
when an open drain and the dust bin are lodged just under the window,
and somebody's great high wall cuts off every ray of sunshine; or that
they don't know how to manage because they fare ill, when a half dozen
people must keep life in them and some covering on them on fifteen
shillings a week? Oh, I'm sick of it all! Look at mamma! She _lives_ in
jails, up alleys, in soup kitchens and dispensaries, and we girls cut
out and make up flannels, and knew about relief tickets before we could
speak, and it's all just pouring water into a sieve! Mamma's always
in agonies about some _protégée_ she's placed somewhere, who has
absconded with the family plate and wardrobe. Her people are always
getting drunk, fighting, or cheating her in some monstrous way. Her
nicest girls run off with a strolling theatre company, or to dance in
the ballet. There's no end to her miseries, and the people she spends
her whole time, strength, and all the money she can spare and beg upon
are not really much better off in the end. But even if they were? Mamma
is mamma, and I am myself, and we're differing stars. No, I stick to my
text. To be only a commonly contented married woman, with the shelter
and freedom of a wife's position, with a house to keep, children and
servants to look after, and with a certain amount of social influence,
is better than to subside into a grim or fidgetty old maid in lodgings,
with a dog and three-volume novels to get through the days and years
with; to be snubbed and sneered at by men; to have, when one's hair is
white as time can make it, the privilege of walking meekly out to
dinner behind one's grand niece, a silly chit of eighteen, married a
twelvemonth--and nobody to care whether one lives or dies, unless
perhaps a Bath chair man.

"Matrimony's the only career for women in England, but we ought to be
trained for it on Gradgrind principles. As it is, we're far too
æsthetic and sentimental for the mates we must have--if any. Poetry and
the stories of fine, gracious, self-sacrificing lives ought to be
suppressed; they're ruinous reading for this nineteenth century." And
so on and on.

"There's reason for that poor girl's bitterness," said Mrs. Stainton
when we were again alone. "A dozen years ago, in her first and second
seasons out, a more charming creature it would have been hard to
find--ingenuous, sunny tempered, a dashing, sparkling blonde beauty,
full of Irish quickness and fun, and a favorite wherever she went.
Unluckily she met Ward Cotterell--now one of the editors of 'The
Phare'--then a radiant, double first, handsome, chivalric, but as poor
and debt-laden as he was clever, and the pair fell desperately in love.
Mrs. Dixon wouldn't let them call themselves engaged. She had crippled
her own fortune, and Kate had sacrificed a great part of her own
portion, to clear a spendthrift eldest son and brother of his
difficulties, and start him afresh in Ceylon, so that aid on their part
was impossible, and Cotterell, after a year or so's trying vainly in
this and that direction, for an income, gave up the struggle, married
an heiress, who paid his debts, brought him £40,000 then, and has
inherited since £60,000, and within six months after his marriage had
his place on the 'Phare' offered him, with a salary of £1,200 a year.
'What would I not have given a year ago for any sort of hard work that
would have made me sure of £500 a year?' he said to some friend who
knew the little story.

"Poor Kate kept up pretty well. 'What else _could_ he do?' she always
says. 'He had no income, and mine would have barely given us shelter.'
But she refused offer after offer for years. Now, when she finds
admiration less freely forthcoming, and is utterly weary of everything
she has tried, or believes is in store for her, I dare say she fancies
she regrets the lost chances, but she's too genuine to make a _mariage
de convenance_, let her talk as cynically as she will.

"As for Cotterell, he hasn't a money anxiety in the world, and is
reckoned one of the most brilliant leader writers in London; but his
wife is the most commonplace woman alive--no more a companion to him
than a housemaid would be; and Cotterell's not one of the clever men
who like women to be pillows, and pillows only. He has given up
society, save that of men, almost entirely; lives in his study and his
room in the 'Phare' building, and his talk, when one meets him, is a
mixture of fatalism and wormwood, depressing to the last degree. No
hero he, and yet his fate has plenty of compensations that Kate's
lacks--power, work, and two or three children that have inherited his
wit as well as his handsome looks.

"Oh, what a world it is!--a world of infinite pettinesses. I'm
dreadfully poor and cowardly myself, but I've always had the greatest
reverence for the gift of immortality, and I used to think if I could
have chosen, I would have been born and then have died directly. But
now that I believe unbaptized babies and people whose goodness, however
perfect, is only natural, will have, in another existence, but natural
beatitude, and as such a state wouldn't at all satisfy me for an
eternity, I should have to tarry long enough to be baptized, and after
that one can't wish to run away directly from the foes one has just
promised to war against. A soul _not_ such a responsibility, and is
always thrusting in to complicate and confuse matters!

"But, do you know, I think so often what an admirable, harmonious,
earthly preface to eternal bliss in the natural order would Anglicanism
be--Anglicanism of the moderate type, a little quickened with the
evangelical element, but neither high nor low. The life, as I remember
it in the close at ----, was so pleasant, so decorous, so amiable, so
full of good, comfortable, luxurious things, so ladylike and
gentlemanly, so reputable. One kept the commandments mainly; one was
never anything but high-bred and high-toned; one did one's duty
too--taught a little in the schools; looked after the rheumatic old
bodies in cottages delightfully picturesque to sketch, but dark and
damp as graves to live in; handed buns and tea at the school treats;
one wasn't always thinking about delicate matters of conscience, about
renunciation, self-abnegation, and what it must mean to be a soldier
under a captain who neither lived delicately, nor slept softly, nor was
used to stately shelter--a crucified head whose arms are the
instruments of the Passion--and how well off one's body was!"

And I've been--no, I've been bidden to the Dialectical Society. You
don't know what that is, my barbaric New Zealander? And I didn't know
either when Mr. Malise sent me tickets for one evening, specially
urging my attendance, as there would be something well worth hearing--a
paper on "Celibacy" read by its author, a gifted young girl of only
twenty-two!

I took my tickets to my liege. "Ronayne, fount of wisdom and light,
whatever may the Dialectical Society be?"

"The Dialectical Society, madam, is a body of men and women who meet to
rake up, turn over, and discuss to all their verges subjects which the
weaker mass of mortals think upon only on compulsion, with fear and
trembling, and in mental sackcloth and ashes. And pray, what have you
to do with Dialecticals, Eve? We are _not_ going there, if that's what
those tickets mean!"

"Oh, Adam! And why not? Because I'm, unluckily, married, am I to stop
trying to improve myself, and not care to know what grand heights
happier, unhampered women are scaling? And, Adam, only see, here's to
be a paper read by a young lady only twenty-two, Mr. Malise says, and
there couldn't be anything so very dreadful to hear in the little
composition of an innocent young creature like that!"

"'Subject, Celibacy, by Eliza Stella Greatheart, M.D.,'" read Ronayne.
"Humph! charming young creature! Well, madam Lil, you'll have to
imagine what the medical young lady will say on the state she's proved
to such ripeness of years, for you're not likely to hear, and Mr.
Malise has wasted his tickets. And as if you cared what anybody could
say about single blessedness--a woman with an angel in the nursery
crib, and a husband who breathes but to serve her! Go away this
minute!" And I left monseigneur to his _moutons_, a little huffed, no
doubt, at being interrupted in the fine middle of a working
morning--always "The Growth of Language"; and you should see the pile
of MSS. I used to copy for him, but lately it has taken so much time to
sketch my baby! Every new attitude is prettier than the last, and every
day adds a charm. You need not laugh; I never had a baby before. Just
wait until you know for yourself! I've painted the darling twice, once
for Ronayne's father, though a little against the grain, for the old
gentleman thinks it dreadfully _infra dig._ that I, a lady born, and I
most especially a lady wed, should ever have been publicly catalogued
as an artist in exhibition lists and newspaper notices, and have sold
the labor of my hands, eyes, and brain in the marketplace. What would
happen if he caught sudden sight of a memento that always goes with me
in one of my boxes--a little tin sign, my first one; and how proud I
was of it!

FRAULEIN LILIAN MACFARLANE.


I don't like, for the family's sake, to imagine. When Ronayne gave him
the picture on his birthday, our joint offering, my work set in the
loveliest frame Ronayne could find, he couldn't help being pleased, and
he couldn't help knowing it was baby's very self; but if the picture
had been the work of a paid artist, I know he would have been
wonderfully soothed. The picture was on exhibition for some days in the
morning room, and being one day in the conservatory with Ronayne, I
heard his father expatiating upon the striking likeness that had been
happily caught, to a lady visitor. Presently I heard her read the
signature, "Lil. De Vere, del., 1873." "Why, it is your
daughter-in-law's work! How charming for a mother to be able to paint
such an admirable portrait of her child. That must double the picture's
value to you!"

And the _beau père_ hemmed and hawed, and made the general inarticulate
noises of an Englishman embarrassed, or wishful to make an impressive
speech, and finally got out:

"Aw, yes, yes--of course! A nice and amateur talent has Mrs. De Vere."

"Nice amateur talent!" I was fit to fly at him, and only the
brutal--yes, the brutal--grasp of my husband kept me from rushing into
the room and proclaiming "Mrs. De Vere's" antecedents--her artistic
career sketched in a few bold touches.

The world would have ended then and there. But how delightful to have
seen, first, his looks of blank horror at the idea of a daughter-in-law
who had been used to rough it, and to make her little money go a
fabulously long way.

"This is the daughter of Prof. Macfarlane!" he introduces me proudly
sometimes. I wonder if he thinks a poor scientific man like papa could
send all his young ravens about first-class, or keep a maid and a
governess with one in various continental cities where she chose, as an
eccentric whim, to abide and study art? What would he have said to my
gloves in those earlier days when I earned nothing, and most of my
allowance, beyond board and lodging, went for paints, and four pairs of
dark, carefully chosen gloves had to go through the year? What to my
lodgings at the tailor's--a poor cobbler-tailor, in Dresden? What to my
lunches of _Wurst_ beer and black bread? What to the concerts, where,
in smoke and a three-penny seat, I heard music as good as plenty which
costs me ten shillings to a guinea in London? What to all the
cheek-by-jowl encounters with the peasants in our cheap, rapturously
happy sketching tours? Bah! the poor Irishman! As if he could guess
anything about it! Why should I think twice of his "amateur talent" and
other little pin-pricks when the stiff, starved man never had, in his
whole life, one such happy day of honest work, utter freedom, and
simplest, blissfullest pleasures as have been mine by scores? Be easy,
Ronayne. Not for the Bohemian daughter-in-law shall apoplexy smite the
sovereign of Castle _Starched-stiff-O_!--which sacrilegious parody
shall be my only revenge.

And if I portray my baby in every week of her life, her father turns
her to account no less. She is beginning to chatter like a wren, and
Ronayne has a notebook devoted to her earliest attempts at speech--the
sounds, as she is progressively able to make them--the easily-conquered
ones, the impregnable rock-fortresses, the turns, substituted letters.
Sometimes I get quite furious over this anatomical process. My darling
says something with the dearest, sweetest, small voice:

"Oh, Ronayne!" I cry. "Did you hear? Three words together--'Pease,
papa, tugar!'" And I smother her in ecstasy.

"Yes, love," says Ronayne. "And do you notice how she can manage s
before a, and not before u? This morning I shook her, and nurse asked
her, 'What does papa do?' 'S-ake a baby,' she answered--but she never
says sugar. And there's the same----"

"Oh, you vivisecter," I broke in; "I'll have you to know, sir, that
_my_ baby's pretty lispings are not to be treated like the rudimental
language of a philologist's offspring! Put up that abominable book this
instant! Did a cruel father, my lammie, spear his own child with a
wicked pin, and stick her up in a case?"

I _am_ a happy woman, Susie. Too happy; I'm frightened at it. You, may
be, don't see where this comes in. If you don't, never mind. My heart
_does_ run over nowadays for all sorts of reasons, and no-reasons.

                     *      *      *      *      *

Later on Ronayne told me, apropos of the Dialectical, that his
objection was like the Frenchman's to the fox-hunt--"he'd been," if you
please--went with Dr. Thunder and the Truth-Seeker just before our trip
to Brighton. Then the subject under discussion was marriage, and Lady
----'s son read the paper--a long argument against monogamic marriage:
In the light of experience and human reason it was monstrous to make
the promises required at the altar; monogamic marriage fettered man,
made his best capabilities impossible, made women hypocrites and
slaves, made love commercial, was physiologically a cruelty and a
mistake, and so on, and so on. "You don't love Lady ----'s son. You
would love him less had you heard the things he found it possible to
say before the fifty or sixty ladies who found it possible to listen to
him, and to take some active part in the discussion that succeeded.

"They called loudly upon Dr. Thunder to speak; but he refused to rise,
preferring, I suppose, to hear how well his disciples could acquit
themselves; for he is the author of a work upon physiology which is
nick-named the 'Social Science Bible'--a book I believe to be one of
the most mischievous that has appeared within recent years--materialistic
to the last degree, degrading man, disorganizing society.

"Over a glass of wine afterward, Mr. Feldwick--I beg your pardon, the
Truth-Seeker--told me a pleasant little history of Lady ----'s son. He
says the man had, as a child and youth, a thoroughly good nature,
frank, placable, extraordinarily loving and generous, and that then he
bade fair to achieve great things as a naturalist.

"But Lady ----, who had had a hard experience of matrimony, with a
husband whose only merit was his early death, lost, when this son was
sixteen, her only other child, a boy of twelve--not an imbecile, but a
slow, feeble-minded, gentle, and very beautiful child to whom mother
and brother were passionately devoted.

"Lady ---- was nearly frantic at this loss: would see no one; retired
for a year or so to a desolate Scotch place they have, and then
suddenly went abroad. There she flew restlessly from Algeria to St.
Petersburg and Norway for awhile, seen everywhere, but nowhere long;
then followed several quieter years when she spent her time chiefly at
Berlin, Geneva, and Paris, forming in these places a large circle of
acquaintances among the most revolutionary spirits of Europe. By and by
they, mother and son, came back to London, but so changed--she in
thought and speech, he in all things--that their old friends and
kindred scarce knew how, comfortably, to maintain any intercourse with
them, and the son, at least, seemed to desire that all old ties should
be snapped asunder. The mother was for ever declaiming vague,
inconsequent tirades against all things that are; the son was cynical,
rough, disagreeable to an insufferable extent, and in their
drawing-rooms a quiet, _borné_ old friend was sure to encounter a
tremendous procession of the emancipated--the reddest of reds, unwashed
agitators of all tongues and hues, aggressive free-thinkers, poets
screaming mad indecencies and blasphemies to vindicate the office of
art; women whose mission it was, by nude dancing, posing, acting, to
educate humanity and lift it to that plane whereon to the pure all
things are pure; men of science standing on dreary pedestals of comely
things they have shattered--a procession, in short, no one of whose
members the humdrum old acquaintance would care to face a second time.

"More discouraging than all was a story that began to be whispered
among the people who had known the family most intimately in the
earlier days--the story of a young girl, a distant connection of Lady
----'s husband, who had been left an orphan when only a child, almost
friendless and quite penniless, and had been, thanks to Lady ----, most
carefully trained abroad to fill the position of musical governess, the
girl having extraordinary aptitude for music. Her studies over, she
accompanied Lady ---- during a year or two of her later wanderings on
the continent, and returned with her to London, where she soon obtained
several good teaching engagements, and sang with great success at
concerts during one season. A very pretty, winning creature she was,
Mr. Feldwick said: a dark, rich-tinted face, where every emotion
mirrored itself, and a manner as joyous, impulsive, frank as a child's,
joined to the caressing coquetry of a Frenchwoman. She spoke three or
four languages as well as English; her dancing was a thing to see in
this awkward island; and the child was altogether so fresh and sweet
that no one wondered that Lady ---- insisted that her _protégée_ must
not think of finding shelter save with her.

"But young ---- was not less sensible than his mother to the girl's
charm, and it presently became evident that he had the child's whole
heart in return. And now began difficulties. For years Lady ---- had
declaimed against the bondage, the hideous wrongs and wretchednesses of
marriage, and had never tired in depicting a glorious earth-life in the
future when the free man and woman should love each other because they
loved--but be held to no duty of loving, no responsibility--free as the
air to come and go; and young ----, fed on such food, companioned as he
had always been, was far more vehement than his mother upon the
subject, and had sworn by all his gods that civilized marriage should
never count him among its victims.

"He told the girl he loved her, but that she knew he could not marry
her; that the fetters of marriage would kill love in him; and he would
rather assume them for any woman in the world than herself. The girl
would have married him at a word; on her part there was the utter
surrender of an adoring affection; but what would it be to have Herbert
without his love?

"And she had not been so intimately a member of that household without
coming to share its opinions and sentiments, so she declared that
Herbert should give her his love, make no sacrifice for her, sully the
ethereal nature of their relation with no worldly care. They were to be
that grand pair, the coming man and woman, prophesied by Lady ---- and
her philosophers. But, most astonishingly to the young people, here
Lady ---- failed them. The coming man and woman were all very
fine--some ages hence--but to have them appear in conventional,
censorious London, in the century we live in, and in the bosom of her
family, was too much for her heroism--'Her hereditary instincts,
cowardice, and training,' her son said. Herbert might marry Mimi at any
moment; no one could ask of the Fates a more lovable wife and
daughter-in-law; but it was nonsense--worse, it was wickedness--to
dream of living after or up to their convictions in society as now
constituted. Did Herbert think for a moment what would befall Mimi if
she acted as her generosity and all their ideas would prompt her? It
would be destruction--simple destruction to the child, and if her son
could not sacrifice his principles to his love, then he was bound in
honor and pity, living in this unhappy time, to sacrifice his heart. At
any rate Mimi must be protected.

"But the young man could not deny his principles, and would not deny
his selfishness; so Lady ---- sent Mimi from her, obtaining her a good
position in one of the best schools at Brighton, begging the lady
principal, an old friend of her own, to keep upon the young girl a
watch that might almost be called a guard. She remained there a few
months, and then, one fine morning, was suddenly missing, and Lady ----
received a note from her, posted in London, to say that it was useless
to struggle longer; Herbert was bitterly unhappy and disappointed in
her, reflected on her want of love and courage, and that she, Mimi, had
chosen her part, and meant to see if one could not honestly live one's
frank life in the London of to-day.

"Lady ----'s expostulations with her son were useless. 'I like what you
have taught me, mother, and my conscience is in the matter.'

"And the same delicate conscience prevented him from supporting Mimi
pecuniarily. He said, and she confirmed, that there should be no tie
between them but love--that no other gift was fitting from one to the
other. The woman of the future would have no need of protection, or to
barter herself for care and a home; she would love out of a sphere of
fine, grand independence, self-reliance--so would and should Mimi. Poor
girl! her sphere of independence has been anything but grand and fine:
a life in shifting, third-rate lodgings, under an alias, for, keeping
her maiden style, it was simply impossible with her means to secure
anywhere a reputable shelter, singing in concerts to support herself,
and getting now and then a few lessons to give where people don't
inquire too closely if they can secure good teaching cheaply, but
bereft of all friends save a few pitying ones who now and then come to
her relief, with no young brightness in her life, separated from her
children, for she has three or four who are inexpensively taken care of
at a farm in Cumberland, at a distance too great for her to see them
save for a short autumn holiday; seeing Herbert sometimes only at very
long intervals, for he goes abroad frequently for long absences, and
leaves her with scanter ceremony than most men bestow upon a faithful
dog--the mean-spirited good-for-naught!--shabbily clad, and living,
like a rock hermit, on bread, fruit, and a salad, to make the money
cover as far as may her own and her children's simplest needs. One
can't wonder that Lady ----'s beautiful hair has turned from lustrous
brown to snowy white in these few years, or that she should be
tormented, as Mr. Feldwick says she is, with remorse lest she be to
blame for the miserable warping of her son, and the catastrophe of
Mimi's existence. She would be glad to come to Mimi's aid and that of
her grandchildren, but that Mimi never permits unless she is in
_extremis_, having, as she says, taken her lot with full warning from
Lady ----; and Mimi has a helper who asks nothing more than to succor
her from his own very moderate store--a fellow singer who met and loved
her in the days when she was free, and in these, her days of ignominy,
loves her honorably and hopelessly still, and devotes himself to any
service in her and her children's behalf that she will permit; a poor,
little, unknown, unsung Bayard, whose earthly happiness may be added to
those sadder wrecks of lives ruined by the theorizings of Lady ---- and
her co-vagrants."

What do you think of all this, Susie? Would you exchange love in the
bush for love among these "leaders of thought" in London? How, after
these wicked, cynic, dreary histories and encounters, I nestle into my
home and am so humbly grateful for its every little self-abnegation,
every straitness of bond, no less than for the unspeakable riches it
holds--that of being loved and beloving to one's heart's highest-heaped
and deepest-down-pressed measure.

Love from Ronayne and self to my dearest woman. All kindest regards to
the head of the house, and tender wishes that the new home in that
topsy-turvy region of the world may be as happy and, some day, as noisy
as that whence this journeys to you from

Lil.


18 STANFIELD GARDENS, }
March 12, 1876.       }

And do I never, in these days, see anything of my coöperative friends?
Yes, something, but less since Miss Hedges went to Düsseldorf. Mrs.
Stainton came to us a good deal early in the winter, but a month ago
she was ordered off to Bournemouth for an obstinate cough, and the long
letters I get from her are fuller of personal and spiritual matters
than of references to her late co-associates. For she's done at last
what we had all been looking for--gone over to Rome--and one hears from
her now nothing but the Church: the Church's wisdom and peace,
allusions to the saints, speculations upon states of prayer, enthusiasm
for the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, and fervent wishes that
all puzzled wayfarers may find what she has found--absolute conviction
and rest--though she owns that the new religion is fuller, far, of
struggles and crosses than the old. "What does our father, the Dean,
say?" I asked lately. "That this 'is at least a respectable vagary,'"
she wrote back, "'which one could hardly say for most of my dreams and
experiments!' Fancy papa's feeling himself authorized to speak of the
spiritual life of anything above a crayfish!--a dear old country
gentleman who is too entirely well satisfied with this world and his
lot in it ever to think of heaven except in an official way, and whose
strongest vocations are matrimony, and the writing mildly learned
antiquarian papers for the West of England Archæological Society.

"But you like stories. Here is papa's latest: One of his High Church
confreres had been diligently expounding to a navvy the doctrine of the
Trinity, and was boasting to papa of the intelligence of his neophyte.
Papa, who holds very old-fashioned, inhumanitarian ideas as to the good
or possibility of education for the masses, was scornfully incredulous
as to the navvy's getting even an idea of the mystery upon which his
friend had been instructing him. 'Will you go with me to see him, and
convince yourself?' asked the clergyman. 'Delighted,' said papa, and
off they set to find the navvy. After a little talk papa said to the
man, 'This gentleman here tells me he has been talking to you about the
Holy Trinity. Can you give me the names of the Three Persons?' 'Why,
sir,' answered the navvy, 'there's God the Father and God the Son, but,
to tell the truth, sir, I disremember the name of the other gentleman
entirely!' Now I maintain that papa's in the wrong about the navvy, and
that the ritualist clergyman had no reason to be so utterly
disconcerted, as papa declares he was, at this naïve answer. Am I
wicked, I wonder, to be repeating these stories? But you know I don't
mean the least irreverence, and I can't help seeing they're droll!
Somebody has said nobody is so irreverent as religious people, but I
always reckoned that a sour-tempered saying, judging after the sense
and not after the spirit. We have some distant Quaker connections where
I visit sometimes, and in that household if one mentions our Lord in
familiar conversation, as if He had a connection with the humble little
events of the daily life, there is always a shocked hush, as if
possibly it might not be unsacrilegious to speak of our Creator save on
meeting days, and with formal removal of all lay business and speech. I
am sure they never heard of St. Francis of Assisi preaching to the
birds. What would they have said to it?

"You hope that Mr. Feldwick's experience will not be mine, and intimate
that if the Church fails me, nothing remains for me but the unbelief of
our friends in the coöperative house. Yes, I've long felt that between
Rome and rationalism there's no logical ground on which to rest. But I
have no fears.

"Mr. Feldwick told me once that having, while a Catholic, read
somewhere that St. Philip of Neri was so distressed at ecstasies that
befell him in public that he tried the reading, before saying mass, of
books on other than spiritual subjects, to divert the usual current of
his thoughts and love, he, Mr. Feldwick, conceived this to be an
authorization for him to read romances, speculative books, what not, by
way of preparing himself to receive Holy Communion--after which history
I never wondered that he had wandered out of the Father's House after
the husks of spiritism. But it is very difficult to conceive him
responsible. If reading qualified for heaven, how high up would he not
be! But he seems rather born to accumulate all manner of heterogeneous
information, and to echo the last 'Times' leader, the last clever paper
in the 'Contemporary' or 'Fortnightly,' than to live a man's life of
independent impression, expression, and will. I always hope that
invincible ignorance and invincible prejudice may cover so much!"

Anna Hedges and the porcelain widow being gone from London, I should
see little of the remaining confederates were it not for "little
Malaise." His mother, I am sure, has given me up as a possible
disciple. I have never been able to get beyond one suffrage meeting; I
couldn't somehow sign my name to a petition that women be eligible
pupils for the study of law, and I horrified her greatly by
enthusiastic support of a proposition that garroters, wife-beaters, and
committers of ruffianly assaults upon women and children be publicly
punished with the cat. "So inhumane!" she said. "Such an education of
the brutal instincts in the spectators! Surely I did not think what
such a sight would be for the young, how much more it would inculcate
in them revenge than the gentler virtues. And society was responsible
for these criminals. They were what her neglect and their conditions
had made them. They should not be punished for what was a misfortune
rather than a fault. Our business was to train, develop these people
instead of behaving to them as they did to their unfortunate victims."
I admitted a trembling hope that something might be done for the
humanizing of the next generation of our lowest-down people, but
persisted that fear and shame seemed to me the likeliest means to stop
the sickening record of cowardly savagery that week after week comes to
us from all over England--the crimes of adults past all restraints save
forcible ones. One week I kept a list, gathered from two provincial
papers and the "Telegraph." Besides a dozen or so of the ordinary cases
where a man beats and kicks his wife, and policemen and no onlookers
interfere _because_ she's the man's wife, one costermonger had flung
his wife under a loaded van; one navvy had gouged out one of his wife's
eyes, and threatened, in the police court, "to do for her yet"; another
had pounded his wife to a horrible jelly with a flat-iron; another held
his by force upon a red-hot stove; and the last on the list, a collier,
nearly tore his wife in pieces, with the help of a bull-dog, "because
she aggerewated him by giving him a leg of veal for his dinner when
he'd made up his mind to a pair o' boiled fowls!"

But Ronayne says maliciously that Mrs. Malise has resigned me to
obscurity and the fossil period; not because it was hopeless--the
winning me--but because, after all, it didn't seem worth while. True I
had broken from the ranks, set up in business for myself, and earned my
bread for a while--but then how dreadfully ignorant I am. It was bad
enough when I didn't know who Margaret Fuller was, and had never read
Mill on "Liberty"; but the day I owned to a pocket dictionary, and my
unaided helplessness as to double consonants and such vicious words as
_separate_, _niece_, _ascension_, and so on, finished the business.

And no wonder. What do you suppose my Mabel will say, grown tall and
wise like her father, to a mother who knows more about King Arthur and
the Knights of the Round Table than about the real kings and bygone
personages of her own or any other country--a mother puzzled always as
to whether it was Alfred the Great or Sir Humphrey Davy who burnt the
cakes; a mother loving Glastonbury better than almost any spot of
English ground, and believing devoutly that there Joseph of Arimathea
planted his staff that became the winter thorn, blossoming at
Christmas, "mindful of our Lord"; that there in the church-yard of the
first hurdle-built church he and King Arthur and Queen Guinevere all
mouldered away to dust; a mother who knew no more than sufficed to
wield crayon and brush indifferently, and to love what she loves with
her whole heart?

And I'm writing her life, her little life, with all its tiny
unfoldings--a story of her being and doings, illustrated profusely with
sketches and photographs--writing it for the Mabel of by and by. Will
she forget the tenderness that's in every line and stroke when she
comes upon such a sinful juxtaposition as this which Ronayne laughed at
the other day. "Flanel peticoat?" Yes, "flanel peticoat"; it _does_
look rather queer, but that's only because we're used to the wicked
lavishness of the common fashion--and double consonants are only so
much crinoline. When I worry sometimes as to what baby'll think of her
mother being such a goose, Ronayne says the spelling and all the other
stupidities are only piquant, and that he asks of heaven nothing better
than a daughter only half as much to his taste as his wife is, which
would be very dear of him to think and tell me if he had not rather
upset it by admitting that if he had a son who persisted in spelling
warm after his mother's eccentric fashion--wharm--he, my husband, would
certainly "wharm" that boy--my boy.

And I'd sooner Mabel should laugh even unkindly at her mother's
ignorance than ever see her turning over the leaves of a set of books
wherein her mother's hand had carefully cut away every allusion to
Christian belief, every repetition of God's name--such a set as I saw
Mrs. Malise scissoring when I called upon her last.

"These are books that are accumulating for Mill," she
explained--"presents from one and another--and I'm cutting out every
word that can suggest to him the idea of any life or any world than the
only one of which he can gain a certainty through his senses; childish
impressions are so tenacious, and I mean him to be utterly free from
influence or superstition; open to believe or disbelieve in immortality
when his faculties are trained, and he can judge evidence fairly. The
Christian scheme seems to me to rest on a mass of unworthy fables; but
he is not to be taught in the sense of my conclusion. I shall guard him
from my atheism as carefully as from accepted forms of faith. Surely no
more can be exacted from a mother than to rear a child unbiassed, and
let him make his own experiences, shape his own belief. I believe there
are text-books in which no reference to any possible personal Creator
of the universe is to be found, and we hope such are in use at the
Genevan kindergarten, and Mr. Malise means, in some of his leisure
time, to write a series of stories for children in which there shall be
no hint of the supernatural; stories that shall deal only with this
living, breathing world we know; with no pretty fiction concerning a
life and personages generations of men have invented details for"--and
I--

    I seemed to move among a world of ghosts,
    And feel myself the shadow of a dream.

But Geneva and these dreary story-books are two or three years off, let
us hope. Meanwhile baby and I are grown very fond of the patient,
lonely little man, and I have him here as often as Johanna is pleased
to bring him. Great comfort, I see and hear, he has in Mabel's large,
sunny day nursery, gay with birds and pictures, well stocked with
playthings, and possessing an extraordinary wooden construction which
our little guest beholds with the eye of faith, naming it rapturously
gee-gee, and worshipping it as the king of beasts. When we are alone at
dinner I have the mites down for a few minutes at dessert, and it is
really pathetic to watch little Malaise's shy delight at getting a
little fruit and an innocent sweet or two.


THE LABURNUMS,    }
HENLEY-ON-THAMES, }
July 16, 1876.    }

Changed quarters, you see, my Susie. It was so cold all June I thought
we should be able to hold out until the end of the session at No. 18;
but July came in flaming; so more for Mabel's sake than our own we've
taken a pretty villa here at pretty Henley, for six weeks, and then
we're off for Biarritz, where we mean to settle ourselves comfortably,
and thence explore, at our leisure, all the lovely yet almost unknown
near-by country. The grandpapa paternal has written begging that we'll
leave Mabel, whom he calls "Tramp No. 3, and too small for the work,"
at Castle Starched-stiff-O; but Tramps 1 and 2 think they couldn't
possibly fare on comfortably without that small golden head bobbing
along beside them, up the hills and down the dales. Nurse is even more
gypsyish than her master and mistress, and Mabel has spent the greater
part of all her waking hours since she was two months old out of doors;
so I think we shall always have in her the hardiest of small comrades.

Miss Hedges goes with us, and we mean, she and I, to bring back between
us the entire Basque country in our portfolios.

"I'm thankful we're going to a region of picturesque men," says
Ronayne, "for I think my lot in life likely to be a little less
afflictive than it was last year. I don't much mind leading contrary
minded horses up and down by the hour, coaxing suspicious or aggressive
goats; I might even put another bull as savage as that fellow at
Twickenham through his paces; but as to posing myself, in any possible
fashion, even as a snoring shepherd, please to consider, ladies, that
it's not down in our summer programme.

"Talk of the miseries of a man with a literary wife! What are they, I
should like to be told, beside those of the unlucky mortal who's
married a 'fair artist,' and can never so much as yawn in peace again,
without being perpetuated in the act?"

"I had an eye to business when I married you, sir!" I retort. "You see
you're a fine, tall, well-made animal, and since I own you, why should
I go pay away my money for some other model who wouldn't be half so
good-looking, and whom I couldn't frighten so well into minding me? Not
pose indeed! Perhaps you would even choose to be bow-legged if so you
could escape doing your duty? And I think you're maliciously trying to
get stout. In our rides lately, I notice you puff a good deal if we
have a bit of a race, and you're really getting a quite perceptible
little bulge!"

And Ronayne, who knows very well that he's a capital figure, and whom I
accuse of keeping the lowest button of his coat fastened in order to
display his slender waist, gives an alarmed glance down at himself, and
I see, to my great amusement, that no Bass is uncorked at luncheon, my
lord consenting himself with a glass of sherry instead--a needless
self-denial, I hasten to add, for he's really no more bulging than a
greyhound! But he deserves the little scare for his attempt at
rebellion. Fancy my husband having any will of his own about stopping
in any attitude I choose him to take, and for as long as I choose! I
knew such a queer artist in London, a rather coarse, wholly uneducated
woman, but with a streak of real genius. She married the commonest,
stupidest man, a pink-and-white young idiot of a tailor, grown now to
be the "heavy father"--red, fat, lazy, letting his wife earn all the
money. Somebody scolded about him to the poor, over-worked wife. "Yes,
I know I have to keep the pot boiling," she answered, "but then Dave
saves a model, he's the kindest father to the children, and he does all
the sewing!" _He_ doesn't object to pose, not he! And how proud he is
of his wife! I found him alone in her studio one day. I looked over
some engravings after Titian while waiting, and the man said, "Them
engravings o' Titian's, now, ma'am, they're out o' drawing! But here's
a picture o' my wife's that's more the real thing," putting on the
easel, with affectionate pride, a painting in which two or three of
their children were grouped--a trashy, tawdry, grinning thing, and yet
with unmistakable touches of power. And this is a tale my husband has
reason to know by heart, I'm sure! Not pose! I wish he had Miss Hedges
for a wife! Anything like that girl's utter devotion to her work I've
never seen in a woman. Rain or shine, cold or heat, are all one to her;
she never has spiritually gray days when the grasshopper's a burden,
and Capua itself wouldn't have unnerved her arm and purpose. Work!
work! And everything turned to account.

Last summer when she was with us I fainted at some horrible tale or
other. She came into the room where I lay stretched flat upon the
floor, too miserable to speak, but conscious again. I must do her the
justice to say she had heard there was no serious cause for my
condition; but her first exclamation was,

"Oh, Lilian, what a color you are! Blue-white, ghastly, your face all
drawn, pinched--magnificent! Let me see your hands and nails. Ah,
capital! Capital! Poor little Lilian! But if you must faint, what a
chance for me! I couldn't think how I was to get the right tint for my
dying soldier. I never saw any one dead or wounded, and I am much too
stolid ever to faint myself. Crossing the channel I took my hand-mirror
and studied my face when I was desperately sick--but it was all green
and pathos--no good! But your color's the very thing--only you get pink
so fast! Oh, Lilian, if ever you faint again, have me called the very
instant you feel yourself going off!"

This may be called devotion to one's work? But grand work she's going
to do. She's full of genius, and has only to get over the
niminy-piminy-izing of the South Kensington School, and work abroad a
few years, to have a far more justly grounded fame than Rosa Bonheur's.

Already a few first great drops of her shower are falling. She's a
picture in the Academy, her first, and _on the line_--a picture to
which the hanging committee themselves took off their hats, and gave a
cheer for the artist; and a regular ovation she had on the private view
day--nobility and clergy, fellow artists and journalists, army and
navy--such a day as she says can never come again for her, let the
future have what success in store for her it may.

She has sold the picture for a thousand guineas, and her sketch in the
Black and White Exhibition has appeared in one of the illustrated
papers, the same paper offering her _carte-blanche_ for illustrations.
How I feel like swinging her in triumph before the faces of Mesdames
Malise and her friends!--a simple, frank, good girl, who never in her
life thought of crying out about a career, and a smoothing of her way,
or declared her right to devote herself to art, and to such an
unwomanly branch of it as the drawing of horses and soldiers, but set
herself obscurely at work, and toiled as faithfully as if she hadn't a
spark of genius in her--to win what she has already done, and yet will
do!

Mrs. Malise. That reminds me of that household. Our latest news from
it, through Mr. Feldwick, who belongs to a "Sordello" club, for which
my liege had a hankering, only they made him an Irish member, and so
he'd no time (you wonder what a Sordello club may be? A society of
ladies and gentlemen, dear, who read Sordello with a key, and try to
find out whatever it's all about!), and Mr. Feldwick is good enough to
keep him _au courant_ of their discoveries and interpretations, and
gossips with me about the Domestic Club. About this Mr. Feldwick is
concerned. In losing Mrs. Stainton and Miss Hedges, the house lost much
in his eyes, and there have been other changes, and all so much for the
worse, that Mr. F. is seriously debating whether the place can long
continue sufficiently respectable to be honored by the presence of
himself and Smut--his pug dog. The people whom Lady ---- brings about
the place get queerer and queerer, and the ideas and schemes they
broach are----"I'm a man of the world, and something of a philosopher
myself," says Mr. F., "and I know human nature has plenty of shady
corners; but, aw, really, aw, you know there must be _some_ limit!"--which
I was glad to hear from the Truth-Seeker. Young ----'s gone off to see
if the Fiji islanders or some other outlandish creatures haven't more
morality and tenderness and general virtues than the men and women of
civilization; and when I tell you he sailed just after the death by
diphtheria of three of poor Mimi's children, leaving her to bear that,
as all things, unhelped by him, you'll wish with me, that some coppery,
tough old savage'll eat him for his investigating pains! If anything
can cure her infatuation, one would think this last stroke of barbarity
might, and perhaps then there would be some hope for the singer lover,
who has taken care of her, shared her grief--borne all the burden that
the miserable new Rousseau refused.

The food-reforming trio are gone from the associate household. "The
Food-Regenerator" has not the circulation it deserves. Its editor threw
up a secretaryship that was profitable, but cramping to a soaring,
unmercenary spirit. So the emoluments of the journal were insufficient
for the club life, and they've retired to a poor lodging where that
weary white cat, I suppose, is trying to keep the heroic little man and
all her hungry progeny--ravens, I of course meant to say, only I'd
called their mother a cat!--on broad beans and porridge and next to
nothing a week, and do the work of an office-boy besides!

The third member of the trio, the young girl who told me she was to be
a "healer," has had a sad fate. She had, it seems, some liabilities to
lung disease which she determined to starve out; so the great rations
of bran bread and prunes, which distressed Ronayne at the dinner-party,
dwindled, months ago, to two or three ounces of bread daily, and a
little fruit--the quantity becoming so small that her mother piteously
declared they could not understand how she lived at all.

Reducing her food day by day, she went, in June, to Aberystwith for
some weeks. While there, she fell asleep while reading one afternoon in
a cave on the coast, and when she wakened it was night, the rain
falling heavily, the tide risen so that all egress from the cave was
cut off, and she a prisoner. At that season of the year there was no
danger beyond that of fright and exposure to damp and chill so many
hours; for the water only rises high in the cave during great storms;
but even if she had been told this, who remembers or reasons clearly in
such sudden, awful moments? But she came out so soon as morning and the
ebbing water released her, walked the two or three miles back to her
lodging, told her story with apparent calmness, and before night was a
raving maniac, so wild and uncontrollable that her family were obliged
to place her in a lunatic asylum, and as yet there is nothing favorable
to report in her case.

Mrs. Stainton still at Bournemouth, but writing often either to Miss
Hedges or to me. In one of her last notes she says, "Do you remember
that little story I told you of Ste. Colette, the Saint who was walled
up? I think of her so often, so anxiously; I think, I almost think, it
will come to that--walling up, I'm afraid not the sanctity?--with me.
What a harbor it looks--the cloistered life! And there never seemed to
be any place for me in the world. Everything has turned to ashes in my
grasp and on my lips. Perhaps it was that the religious life was always
calling me. I repeat Père La Cordaire's saying over and over to myself,
'When we Frenchmen become religious, we do it meaning to be religious
up to the neck.'

"I should not enter an active order. I have not the strength. But the
contemplative ones draw me, draw me. Pray for me!"

Mrs. Stainton, Sybarite of Sybarites, a Carmelite, a poor Clare
sleeping on a plank, washing herself with cold water and sand, living
on begged bits, bad herrings, and limp cabbages! Shall we indeed see
that?


20th July.

Susie! Susie! what an ending I must give my letter. Little Malaise is
dead!

"Have you read the papers to-day, Lil?" Ronayne asked me as he was
dressing for dinner two days ago.

"No, they're so stupid these days; nothing but Wimbledon and padding.
Why? Is there anything to-day?"

"No, no; nothing," he answered, and though I thought his manner a
little odd, I had forgotten all about it later when Archdeacon Ryder,
who was dining with us, suddenly asked:

"Did you notice the account of that painful accident in Westbourne
Grove in this morning's 'News'? Those terrible perambulators! I wish
they could be abolished. Maid servants' arms were stouter in my day.
This stupid German nurse seems to have got dazed, or was staring
everywhere but where her business lay. An only child, the paper stated,
an editor's, but I don't remember the name. It was not one familiar to
me. Did you know it?"

"I've heard it," Ronayne answered, and would have changed the subject,
but I broke in:

"Oh, Ronayne, a German nurse! Can anything have happened to Mrs.
Malise's baby? You needn't be silent. Oh, I'm sure it's he!"

And then it all came out--the fact that the child was killed while his
nurse was trying to wheel him across the road in Westbourne Grove--but
Ronayne wouldn't have any details told me.

The poor little man! My own baby's age, and such a sweet-tempered,
patient little fellow! What a life! To come where he had but grudging
welcome, to have no real mother, no warm little places of fond
sunshine, and to go away from all this world's possibilities in that
sudden cruelty! It wrung my heart, the hardness of it all. But could I
really grieve, remembering how chill was the brief life, and
remembering, above all, the scheme that was to make of him, so helpless
and undefended, a spiritual outcast and foundling?

And since I saw his mother--I went yesterday, having first sacked
Henley of white flowers, heliotrope, and fragrant leaves--and found her
unshaken in composure, untouched by any sense of duty missed--since
then I think I have been only glad that the little soul has taken
flight.

Very white and peaceful he looked lying in his crib, and I heaped my
flowers all about him.

"How much you loved him!" Mrs. Malise said, as she stood beside me
looking at him.

"And how pretty and happy he looks! I wonder if he is happy--if he
_is_ anywhere?"

"Well, some time we shall know! And perhaps it is better for him as it
is. Often and often his father and I were perplexed as to what we ought
to do for him by and by. At any rate he's past our marring! And I hope
we shall have no more children to deal with--be responsible for."

Ronayne says I ought to add what I have only told him under my breath,
that it completes my sketch of this "advanced" woman, a mother despite
herself.

On leaving I said to her something as to where the boy would be buried.

"It is not quite settled," she replied, "but Kensal Green, I suppose.
We are both strong advocates of cremation, and wish so much that it
were a present possibility. If it were, and even a difficult one, we
should certainly bear our practical testimony to the more sanitary way
of disposing of our dead. But----"

"Heaven help you!" I interrupted; "and farewell!"

We dare not tell this to nurse, who, though she was the little fellow's
fast friend, cried out at the first news of his death:

"Oh, I am glad he is gone, the poor dear! But he was too good for them,
and I'm glad he didn't live to have his heart quite broken."

                     *      *      *      *      *

And so ends my going forth after new lights. I'm the richer for my
foray in two friends, and the certainty that, Bohemian as I am, I am
but a fossil too, and that nature fitted me exactly to my place in
making me only the contentedly obscure wife of an Irish member and your

Loving Lil.

S. F. HOPKINS.




MISS MISANTHROPE.

BY JUSTIN MCCARTHY.




CHAPTER XVI.

CHASTELARD.


"So you are really going to be an heiress, my dearest?" Mary Blanchet
said to Minola, when our heroine was settled at home again. "I knew you
ought to be, and would be if right were done; but right so often isn't
done. My brother will be so glad to hear it! but not as other people
might be glad, you know." For Mary began to be afraid that by a hasty
word she might be filling the heart of her friend with suspicion of her
brother.

"I don't know, Mary. Mr. Money, and others, I suppose, say so. I wish
it were not true; I am all right as things are, and I hate the idea of
gaining by this poor woman's death. I think I should not feel so if we
had been friends, and if I could think that it was like a kindly gift
from her, and that she wished me to have it. But it is all so
different. And then what do I want of it?"

"One can do so much good with money," said little Mary sighing. She was
thinking of her brother.

"Yes, that is true," Minola said, thinking of Mary herself and of what
she might perhaps do for her. "But don't tell any one about this,
Mary--not even your brother--if you can well help it," Minola added,
knowing what little chance there would be of Mary's keeping such a
thing secret from her brother. "It is all uncertain and only talk as
yet, you know."

"These things are never secret, dearest," Mary said with a wise shake
of the head. "Men always get to know of them. I think the birds of the
air carry the news abroad that a woman has money, or that she has not,"
and Mary sighed again gently.

"Do you see much of an alteration in the ways of men toward me already,
Mary? Do they hang around me in adoring groups? Do they lean enraptured
over me as I sweep the chords of the harp? Do they who whispered that I
sang like the crow before, now loudly declare that my voice puts the
nightingale out of conceit with his own minstrelsy?"

"Now you are only talking nonsense, dear; for we know so few men--and
then you don't play the harp, and you never sing in company. But, if
you ask me, I think I do see some difference."

"Already, Mary?"

"Well, yes, I think so; in one instance at least. Not surely that you
were not likely to have attentions enough paid to you in any case, if
you cared about them or encouraged them, and that, even if you hadn't a
sixpence in the world--but still----"

"But still it does enhance one's charms, you think? Come, Mary, tell me
the name of this mercenary admirer. Depend upon it, all his arts shall
fail."

"You are only laughing at me still, dearest, but there is something in
it I can tell you for all that. It is not my idea alone, I can assure
you. What do you think of a Duke's brother for an admirer, Minola?"

Little Mary Blanchet was a crafty little personage. She thought she
could not too soon begin working for her brother's cause by trying to
throw discredit on the motives of all other possible wooers. She had
observed when going now and then to the house of the Moneys, during the
last few days, that the returned cadet of the one great ducal house
whereof she had any knowledge was there every day, and that he was very
attentive to Minola. The same remark had been made by Mr. Money, and
had called forth an indignant objection from Lucy, who protested
against the thought of her Nola having a broken-down outcast like that
for a lover. But Mary, who was almost terrified at the idea of sitting
down in the same room with any member of the great family who owned the
mausoleum at Keeton, was not certain how far the name of a family like
that might not go with any girl, even Minola, and believed it not an
unwise precaution to begin as soon as possible throwing discredit on
his purposes.

Minola tried not to seem vexed. She had liked to talk to Mr. St. Paul
when he came, as he did every day of her stay in Victoria street. She
had liked it because it gave her no trouble in thinking, and it saved
her from having to talk to others with whom she might have felt more
embarrassed, and because it turned away attention from what might
perhaps have otherwise been observed--as she feared at least--by too
keen eyes. If Mary must suspect anything, it was a relief to find that
she only suspected this, and Minola tried to make merry with her about
her absurdity. But in her secret heart she sickened at such talk, and
such thoughts, and felt as if the very shadow of the fortune which was
expected for her, falling already on her path, was making it one of new
pain and of still less accustomed shame.

"Poverty parts good company, used to be said," Minola thought; "a
little money seems much more likely to part good company in my case."

Yet that there are advantages in a command of money was soon made very
clear to Minola. When she returned from a walk a day or two after she
found a specimen copy of Herbert Blanchet's poems awaiting her, with a
note from Victor Heron. The letter was somewhat awkward and rueful. Mr.
Heron explained that, by her express instructions, he had allowed
Blanchet to have it all his own way in the arrangement of the style of
his appearance in paper and print; and that the cost had become
something far greater than he had anticipated.

"You should never have been troubled about this," Victor went on to
say, "but that you made me promise that you alone should pay for this
thing; I wish I hadn't made any such promise, or consented that
Blanchet should have his way in the business. To think of a grown man,
who has seen the world, leaving a matter of money and business in the
hands of a girl and a poet! Blanchet has been going it."

Minola in all her trouble found room for wonder, delight, and something
like alarm in looking at the superb edition in which the poems of Mr.
Blanchet were to go before a world scarcely prepared for so much
artistic gorgeousness. All that vellum paper, rare typography, costly
and fantastic binding, and lavish illustration could do for poetry, had
been done without stint on behalf of Herbert Blanchet. The leaves were
as thick as parchment and as soft as satin. Only a very few lines of
verse appeared on each broad luxurious page. Every initial letter of a
sentence was a fantastic design. The whole school of Blanchet's
artistic friends had rushed into combination to enrich the pages, the
margins, and the covers, with fanciful illustration. If they only had
been great, or even successful and popular artists, the book might have
been worth its weight in gold. Unfortunately Mr. Blanchet's artistic
friends were not yet great or famous. The outer world--the world which,
in the opinion of the school, was wholly composed of dullards and
Philistines--knew as yet nothing about these artists, and neither
blamed them nor praised them. The volume was as large in its
superficial extent as an ordinary atlas, and some of the poems which
occupied a whole page were not more than four lines in length. The
whole thing seemed truly, in the words of a poet whom Mr. Blanchet
especially despised, "all a wonder and a wild desire."

Thinking of herself as the patroness and in some sort the parent of
such a volume, Minola felt some such mixture of pride and timidity as a
modest girl might own who has suddenly been made a princess, and is not
quite certain whether she will be able to support her position with
becoming nerve and dignity.

There came a little letter too from the poet himself. It ran in this
fashion:

    "DEAR PATRONESS AND QUEEN: The poet has not dared to send in
    unfitting casket the offering which your approval has made
    precious. The poems which are addressed to you must at least
    offer themselves in form not unworthy to be touched by your
    hand.

    "In all devotion yours,

    "HERBERT BLANCHET."

Nor did the volume want a poetical dedication. The second leaf
contained the following:

    UNTO MY LADY PATRONESS AND QUEEN.

      Upon my darkness may there well be fall
        Light of all darkness, darkness of all light;
    Starfire of amber, dew of deathlike sheen;
      Waters that burn, pale fires that sicken all,
    And shadows all aglow with saffron light;
      But comes my lady who is Glory's queen,
        And all the bright is dark, and pallid dark the bright.

Minola read this dedication again and again, puzzled, amused, angry,
hardly knowing whether to laugh or to cry. "Am I glory's queen?" she
asked of her own soul. "And if I am, am I letting light or darkness in
upon my poor poet? Am I depriving him of the amber, the dew, and the
saffron light, or not? Is it praise or blame, this dedication? I
suppose it must be praise, but I don't think anybody could tell from
its words. Oh, my dear little Mary Blanchet, why must you have a
brother--and why must that brother be a poet?"

There was one consolation--the dedication did not set forth her name,
and nobody could know who the lady patroness of the poet might be.
Minola felt inclined to be offended that she should be in any way
brought into this folly, but she was not certain whether remonstrance
or complaint might not be more ridiculous than utter silence. After all
nobody knew anything about her or cared, she said. If she were to
complain in any way, it would only grieve poor Mary, whom the thought
that her brother could have offended her friend and leader would drive
well-nigh distracted. "What does it matter if I am made a little
ridiculous in my own eyes?" she asked herself. "It is only in my own
eyes, I suppose. Mary will look on it all as delightful; her brother of
course means it for the best, and thinks it superb poetry; and there is
no one else likely to care either way. It is not much to be a little
more ridiculous in my own eyes than I have already made myself."

Perhaps--perhaps--let it be said with hesitation and much
caution--there was something not wholly unwelcome to our heroine in the
idea that she could be glory's queen and all the rest of it, to any
human creature, not to say any poet, just now. She felt humbled and
deeply depressed. In her own eyes she was lowered by what she knew of
her own heart. Her pride had received a terrible wound, almost a death
wound. The little world she had made so proudly for herself had all
crumbled into dust. It is not wonderful if at such a time there should
be, in spite of her sense of the ridiculous and her senses generally, a
certain soothing influence in the fact that there still was some one in
whose eyes she appeared a person of account and even of dignity. At all
events, let it be frankly said, that when the first shock and stir of
the ridiculous were passed, Minola was not inclined to think more
harshly than before of the poor poet who called her his patroness and
his queen. As to the expense of the publication, she was a little
startled at first, but that sensation very quickly passed away. She was
not enough of a woman of business yet to care about the cost of
anything so long as she had the money to pay. It would run her hard in
her first year of independent life, to pay this much, but then she
could pay it and live somehow, and it would only be a case for strict
economy in the future for some time. Besides, it seemed that whether
she would or not, she was likely to have much more money than she
wanted or could use for any purposes of her own. Then she was further
stimulated to carelessness by Mr. Heron's letter.

"If he thinks I care about money, or the cost of serving a friend, he
is mistaken," she said. "His caution and his protestations are thrown
away on me."

For she was much inclined to be unjust and harsh in her mind toward
Heron now. He had committed, all unconsciously, a terrible offence. He
had, without knowing it, made her fall in love with him. So she made
the best of the whole affair, cost, dedication, glory's queen, and all;
and when Mary Blanchet came to look at the precious volume, and to go
into raptures over it, Minola did her very best to seem contented, and
not even to suggest a criticism, or to ask what this or that meant. She
reminded herself that the late Lord Lytton had written contemptuously
of the "fools on fools" who "still ask what Hamlet means."

"This may be as far off from me as Hamlet from other people," she told
herself. "Why confess myself a fool by asking what anything means? And
in any case Mary Blanchet would not know any better than I."

By this resolve she made one woman happy.

But it was not only a woman on whom she had conferred happiness.
Herbert Blanchet was as happy as even his sister could have wished him
to be. The head of the poet swam in delight. He had never before been
so proud and blest. He hung over his volume for hours; he could hardly
get away from it. When he left it for a moment and tried to escape from
its fascinations, he found himself drawn back again into its presence.
He touched fondly its soft, satiny leaves as though they were the cheek
of beauty; he pressed his own cheek against them; he committed all the
follies which we understand and admire in the immemorial raptures of
the young lover or the father of the first born.

"They must see this," he cried aloud. "They can't overlook a volume
like this." "They" being, of course, that public whose opinion he had
always despised--those critics whose praise he had always declared to
be the worst censure to a man of true genius.

To do our poet justice, it must be owned that there was in his breast
for the first time a deep, strong feeling of gratitude. That emotion
came there with a strange, overwhelming force, like that of
intoxication to a man always rigidly sober before. If Minola had had
him crowned a king, she could hardly have done any greater thing for
him. Few men on earth can ever have had their dearest ambition so
sweetly gratified as it was the lot of Herbert, the poet, to find his
ambition gratified now. To have his poems so set before the world would
have been a glory and a rapture, no matter though the patron's hand had
been that of a withered old man or some fat frump of a dowager; but to
be thus lifted to his longed-for pedestal by the hand of a young and
beautiful woman was something which he had never dreamed of asleep, and
seldom allowed even into the dreams of his wild, vain waking hours. The
emotion called up by experience was as new as the experience itself.
Mr. Blanchet felt profoundly grateful. In that moment of excitement he
would probably, if need were, have laid down his life for Minola.

If Minola knew what strange effect had been wrought in the breast of
her poet, she would assuredly have thought her money well laid out,
even although she had wanted it far more than she did. "To making a man
happy, ten pounds," is the peculiar entry on which a famous essay in
the "Spectator" was founded. To make a man grateful for the first time
is surely a nobler piece of work than to make him merely happy, and it
ought fairly to cost a good deal more. Minola had made a man for the
first time both grateful and happy. The work was a little expensive in
this case, but what miser will say that the money was thrown away?

It is not likely, however, that Minola would have been quite so much
delighted if she could have known all the feelings that her generous,
improvident patronage had awakened in the poet's breast. For Mr.
Blanchet knew women well, he thought; and he did not believe that mere
kindness alone could have impelled Minola to such an act of bounty.
Nor, making every needful allowance for the friendship between Miss
Grey and his sister, did he find in that a sufficing explanation of
Minola's liberality. He set himself to think over the whole matter
coolly and impartially, and he could come to no other conclusion than
that Miss Grey admired him. He was a handsome fellow, as he knew very
well, and tall, and romantic in appearance: what could be more natural
than that a poetic young woman should fall in love with him? He felt
sure that he had fallen in deepest love with her, but it is doubtful
whether he was yet in a condition to analyze his own excited feelings
very clearly. It is certain that he was madly in love with his poems,
with their gorgeous first edition, with the pride and the prospect of
the whole affair; and of course likewise in love with the patroness to
whom he was indebted for so much of a strange delight. But how much was
love of himself and how much of Minola, he did not take time to
consider.

There was an artistic and literary association to which Blanchet
belonged, and amid which he passed most of his nights. It was not
exactly a club, for it had neither definite rules nor even a distinct
habitation. It was a little sect rather than a club. It was an
association of men who believed each in himself, and all, at least for
the present, in each other. Their essential condition of existence was
scorn of the world's ways, politics, and theories of art. They held
that man himself was a poor creature, unworthy of the artist's serious
consideration. All that related to the well-being of that wretched
animal in the way of political government they looked down upon with
mere contempt. The science which professed to concern itself about his
health, the social philosophy which would take any account of his moral
improvement, were alike ridiculous in the eyes of this æsthetic school.
If, however, any uninitiated person should imagine that in setting up
art as the only serious business of life they were likely to accept any
common definition of art, he would find himself as open to their scorn
as if he had tried to improve a bad law or subscribed to the funds of
some religious organization. Art with them was their own art. The
enlightened parson, Thwackum, in "Tom Jones," observes that "When I
mention religion I mean of course the Christian religion, and when I
speak of the Protestant religion I mean the religion of the Church of
England." It was in this spirit that the confraternity to which Mr.
Blanchet belonged defined art. They only meant their own particular
sect; out of that there was no salvation. Art, it is said, hath no
enemy but the ignorant. These artists, however, were the enemies of all
art but their own.

At the present these genial brothers regularly met of nights in the
lodgings of one of them, who happened to have a large studio in the
west central region of London, where so much of this unfashionable
story happens to be cast. Victor Heron had many times been told of the
genius that burned by night in that favored haunt, and had expressed a
modest wish to be allowed to pass for an hour within its light. Mr.
Blanchet was glad of the opportunity of introducing such a friend; for
it somehow seemed as if the consideration of any member of the
fraternity was enhanced among his brothers not a little by the fact
that he could introduce into their midst some distinguished personage
from the despised outer world. With them Victor Heron might very well
pass for a distinguished public man, as in fact he already did, with no
design of his own that way, in the eyes of Herbert Blanchet. To Victor
the school was all composed of gifted and rising men, whom it was a
pride to know or even to meet. To the school, on the other hand, Victor
was a remarkable public man, a tremendous "swell," who had done some
wondrous things in some far-off countries, and who, for all they knew
at the time, might be regarded by the world as the prospective Prime
Minister of England.

There was a peculiar principle of reciprocity tacitly recognized among
these brothers in art. No one of them would admit that there was
anything which his brother knew and he did not know. If one of them
read an author for the first time, and came to meet his fellows proud
of his freshly-acquired knowledge, he found no man among them who would
admit that he had not from his birth upward been equally familiar with
the author in question. It would be easy, surely, some one may say, to
expose such pretension. Just so; of course it would. But when one
brother had shown tonight that his friends had never read Schopenhauer,
and in point of fact could not read him if they tried, who should
guarantee that same brother against a similar exposure of his own
harmless little false pretences to-morrow when he professed to know all
about Euripides? It was not found convenient in this little circle to
examine too closely into the pretensions of each other. Live and let
live was the motto of the school so far as their esoteric professors
were concerned.

There was indeed a legend that some malign person acquainted with the
peculiarities of the school had once compelled them to invent a patron
poet. It was done in this fashion: the malign person talked confidently
and fluently to one of the order concerning a French poet, whom he
described as a gifted apostle of a kindred school, and whom he was
pleased to name De Patroque. The youth thus talked to was not to be
outdone, or even to be instructed. He gave out that he had long had his
eyes fixed reverently on the genius of the gifted De Patroque. He
talked largely, not to say bouncingly, of the great De Patroque among
his friends, who, not to be outdone in their turn, talked to him and to
others of the new apostle. The fame of De Patroque grew and grew, until
at last ill-natured persons affirmed that several essays on his genius,
and fraternal hymns of honor, were composed for him by the admirers of
his mythical career.

To this select circle Mr. Blanchet had for some time proposed to
introduce his friend Victor Heron. On the very day when the first
copies of the gorgeous poems were submitted to privileged eyes, Mr.
Blanchet called on his friend. He found the friend a little put out by
the unexpected lavishness of the manner in which the poetic enterprise
had been carried on.

"This will be an awfully expensive business, I'm afraid," Heron said,
in an embarrassed tone, for he felt that it was a sort of profanation
to talk of money matters with a young poet. "I wish you had let me do
this thing myself, Blanchet. I'd not have minded so far as I'm
concerned. But I don't know about her, you see--she may not have much
money. Then young ladies are generally so enthusiastic; she may not
have thought of what the thing would cost."

"You need not think about that," Herbert said loftily. "Miss Grey will
be a rich woman one of these days----"

"But I don't see that that much alters the matter, although I am
decidedly glad to hear it for her own sake, if it will make her any
happier than she is now--which I take it is not by any means certain.
But I don't see throwing away her money without her knowing all about
it any the more."

"Throwing away her money?" Herbert asked, in tones of lofty protest.

"Well, I don't mean that of course," the good-natured Heron hastened to
explain in all sincerity. "You know very well, my dear Blanchet, what I
think of your merits and your poems, and of all true poets. I know that
it is an honor for any one, whether man or woman, to be allowed to help
a poet to come out before the world and make a success. I only wish I
had had a chance of doing such a thing for you; but this young lady,
you know--I don't feel quite certain whether I ought to have spent her
money so freely."

"I can reassure you, I think," the poet said, with chilling dignity. "I
should never have allowed any one to do anything for me without having
satisfied myself that it was done in the unstinting spirit of
friendship, and by some one whom such kindness would not hurt."

"All right; I am glad to hear you say so, of course, but you won't
wonder at my scruples, perhaps----"

"Your scruples, my dear fellow, do you infinite honor," Mr. Blanchet
said, with a slight dash of irony in his tone, which Heron did not at
the moment perceive, being in truth engrossed by some other thoughts.
"But you may accept my assurance that there is no further occasion for
them, and we will, if you please, change the subject."

Victor did not feel by any means well satisfied that there was no
occasion for scruple, nor did he at all like his poetic friend's way of
looking at the matter. But he reflected that Blanchet might after all
have good warrant for what he had said, and that it was not for him to
cavil at the generosity of a rich girl--if she were rich--toward a poor
poet.

So they went along, the poet and his distinguished political friend, to
the scene of the artistic and literary gathering, which the latter was
so proud to see, and the former so proud to show.

We have all read in story about the effect of some little magic word,
which once spoken makes that which was lovely before seem but loathly,
and what was kindly wisdom sound like fatuous malignity. Was there some
such ill-omened charm working all that night on Victor Heron? Nothing
seemed to him like what he had expected. He was not impressed as he had
felt sure he would be by the poets and other sons of genius. They did
not seem to constitute an assembly of noble minds in whose midst he was
to feel such reverence as the rude Gauls of history or legend felt in
the presence of the Roman senators. The thoughts that he heard did not
strike him as celestial in their origin. There was a good deal of
disparagement and denunciation of absent authors and artists, which if
the talkers had not been men of genius, Victor would certainly have
thought ill-natured and spiteful. There seemed, at least, to his
untutored mind, to be little more than a technical relish of art in all
they said. It was not art they cared for, but only a clique and its
tricks. A group of discontented spinsters girding at their younger
sisters who were married could hardly have shown themselves more
narrow-minded and malign. The effect on Victor was profoundly
depressing. It was like that which might be wrought upon a youth, who
after gazing in rapture on the performance of some queen of classic
tragedy, is at his earnest desire taken to see her in her private life,
and finds her slatternly of dress, mean of speech, wholly uninspired by
her art, and only taking a genuine pleasure in disparagement or slander
of her rivals.

If Victor had known the world better, he would have known that much,
very much, of all this was but the mere affectation and nonsense of
youth. These young men were as yet among the "odious race of the
unappreciated." Yet a little, and some of them will make a success, and
will have the credit of the world for what they do, and they will turn
out good fellows, kindly, true, and even modest. Nothing makes some
young men so insufferably conceited and aggressive as the idea that
they are not successful, and that people know it. There are many of us
mortals with whom prosperity only agrees. On the other hand, some of
these youths will fail early, completely, and wholesomely in their
artistic attempts, and will find out the fact for good, and will retire
from the field altogether, and settle down to something else, and make
a success, or at least a decent living, in some other way of life, and
will forget all the worser teaching of their earlier days; and will
look back without bitterness on the time when they tried to impress a
dull world, and have no feeling of hatred for those who have done
better, but will marry and bring up children, and be Philistines and
happy. Youth has only one season--luckily for a good many of us, who
are decent fellows enough as long as we are content to be ourselves,
and can do without affectation.


CHAPTER XVII.

"UNDER BONNYBELL'S WINDOW-PANES."


But there was something more in Victor Heron's feeling of depression
that night than came from the mere fact that he had found a few young
artists not quite such heroic spirits as he thought they ought to be.
It was the demeanor of Herbert Blanchet that especially spoiled the
evening for him. In truth the head of the poet was not a strong one,
and was very easily turned by any little stimulant of whatever kind.
His volume of poems this night affected all his being. He felt sure
that he was at last about to force himself upon the recognition of the
world, and he made up his mind that Miss Grey was in love with him. He
conveyed hints of his approaching good fortune to his companions; and
he received at first with benign courtesy their compliments on the
success that seemed to await him in life and love. But when some too
forward person suggested that he could possibly guess at the name of
the heiress whose heart and hand were to bless the lucky poet, then
Blanchet became gravely and even severely dignified.

"You will excuse me, Mellifont," he said grandly, the brandy and soda
having, as was the wont of any such liquor taken by our poor poet, gone
straight upward to his head--"you will excuse me, I am sure, if I say
this is not exactly a subject for jocularity; or even, permit me to
add, for general conversation, although among friends. My distinguished
friend, Mr. Heron, will, I am sure, exactly appreciate what I say.
Things may not be so completely settled as to make it proper that they
should be spoken of as if--as if in short they were settled; you will
excuse me, Mellifont, my dear fellow--you will excuse me."

Victor Heron thought it time for him to go, and rose accordingly, and
Mr. Blanchet insisted on accompanying him down the stairs and to the
door of the house.

"I thought it right, you know," the over-dignified poet said, "to put a
stop to that sort of thing. Men have no right to make such inferences.
I should have no right myself to assume that things were settled in
that sort of way. It is not just to others--to another at least. You
appreciate my motives I am sure, Heron, my dear friend?"

"I don't know that I even quite understand what your friend was talking
about," said Heron coldly. "But if it was about any lady, I should
think such conjecturing highly improper and impertinent; and I should
be rather inclined to put a stop to it even more quickly."

"Quite my idea--I am glad you entirely concur with me, and approve of
the course I have taken. But of course you would do so. I knew I could
count on your approval. By the way, you know Mellifont?"

"The man you talked to just now?"

"Yes, Mellifont--a very good fellow, though a little too fond of
talking--I have had to reprove him more than once, I can tell you. But
a very good fellow for all that, and one of the only true artists now
alive. He is a composer--you must hear him play some bits from his
opera. He is at work on an opera, you know--or perhaps you have not
heard?"

"I have not heard--no. I am rather out of the way of such things, I
fear," said Victor, beginning to feel, in spite of himself, a certain
awe of a man who could compose an opera, and thinking that, after all,
a certain allowance must be made for the genius of one who could do
such things.

"Oh, you must hear some of it soon! We feel satisfied that it will
sound the death knell of all the existing schools of music. They are
all wrong, sir, from the first to the last, from Mozart to Wagner--all
wrong except Mellifont."

Victor was for the moment really staggered by the genius of this great
man.

"What is his opera to be called?" he asked, not venturing to hazard any
compromising observation.

"'The Seven Deadly Sins.' It is to be in seven acts, and each act is to
give an entirely new illustration of a deadly sin--which Mellifont will
show to be the only true virtues of mankind. It will make a revolution,
I can tell you."

Victor thought it could hardly fail to do that if it were at all
successful in the object set out by its author.

"It is to have seven heroines," the poet went on, still at the door,
and refusing to allow Victor to depart. "Lot's daughters--let me
see--Messalina, Locusta; Jezebel I think, Theodora, and I believe, Mrs.
Brownrigg. It will be a splendid thing."

It was not easy for Victor to get away, for the poet had to tell him of
other great works of art that were in the contemplation of members of
the school. At length Blanchet released him, thanking him grandly for
the assistance he had lent to the bringing out of his book, but adding
even more grandly some words that fell painfully on Victor's ear.

"I hope to be independent of publishers and drudgery before long; I
fancy--I rather believe it depends upon myself, and I think I owe it to
my own genius to raise myself above the necessity of drudgery. Then I
could do something worthy of myself, and the few whose praise I value."

Victor escaped at last and walked away. He was in a very discontented
mood, an unusual thing for him. He could not help believing that there
must be, or at least might be, something in the idea which Blanchet so
evidently wished people to receive. He feared that there must be
something more than mere kindly patronage in Miss Grey's generosity
toward Blanchet. The thought was strangely disagreeable to him. He
could not think with patience of such a girl being in love with such a
man. He was now disposed to exaggerate the demerits of the poet, and to
believe anything mean of one who could take a girl's money and give out
as an excuse for taking it that she was in love with him. "If I had a
sister," he thought, "and any fellow were to give such hints about her,
I wonder how I should like it, and I wonder how much of it I should
stand!"

He felt sorry, very sorry, for Minola, and perhaps a little angry with
her too for allowing to any man the chance of suggesting such things.
The more he thought of her and all he had seen of her, the less she
seemed fitted for such a lover as Mr. Blanchet. She had impressed
Victor greatly by her manners, her fresh and frank character, and the
simple, trusting generosity which was her transparent attribute. He
began to look on the poet now as a mere fortune-hunter, who was
fastening upon the girl because of the money which he expected her to
have. He did not know how consuming a passion is the vanity of the
small artistic mind--the mind which has art's ambition only and not
art's inspiration. Mr. Blanchet was not a fortune-hunter in the
ordinary sense. His poems were to him as yet much dearer than any
fortune. He was drawn to Minola not because she had money, but because
having money she was willing to spend some of it in bringing out his
poems in a handsome edition.

Our hero's quixotic temper was thoroughly roused by the thought of some
wrong which he fancied was about to be done to Minola. He was not one
of those lucky beings who can let things alone. He never could let
things alone. Had he had the gift of those who can, he would just then
have been governor of some rising colony, and would have been in a fair
way of promotion. He was tormented by the thought that there was
something he ought to do to save Minola from some vaguely terrible
fate, and by not being able to see what the something was which lay
within his power to do. Before he had walked many yards he had worked
himself into the idea that a plot of some sort was in preparation to
entrap Minola into a marriage with one who, poet or not, was wholly
unworthy of her.

His energetic spirit at length suggested something to be done. It was
not, perhaps, a very practical or useful stroke of policy, but it was
the only thing which occurred to him and the only thing which he did
just then. He started off at full speed to walk under the windows of
the house where Miss Grey was living. It was now fully midnight, and of
course he had not the slightest idea of seeing Minola, and, indeed,
would have been greatly embarrassed if he had seen her. But he started
off, nevertheless, to walk under her windows with as eager a step and
as steady a purpose as if he were really hastening to rescue her from
some imminent danger. It was only a short walk from where he then was
to Minola's lodgings; but Heron was so eager in his purpose that the
way seemed miles, which he was covering with hasty strides.

When he reached the house where Minola lived, the aspect of the place
was just such as, if he had been a lover, he might have expected or
desired to find. The house was all in darkness save for one window.
There was a looking-glass in that window, making it plain to the least
observant of human creatures that it must be the window of a bedroom.
How could a lover doubt that that must be the window of the room which
was hers, and that she then watched the stars of midnight, and that she
thought of love, and that her soul was, as Jean Paul puts it, in the
blue ether? For the moment Victor Heron found himself wishing that he
were a lover--were the lover of whom the lady, fancy-fixed in that one
lighted room, might be thinking. But if it were Minola's room, he
thought, she certainly had not him or any memory of him in her mind. It
was a clear, soft midnight, and the moon that shone on the near roof of
the British Museum seemed as poetic and as sad as though it fell on the
ruins of the Parthenon. No practice in colonial administration can
wholly squeeze the poetic and the romantic out of the breast of a young
man of Heron's time of life. As he stood there his grievance seemed as
far off as the moon herself, but not by any means so poetic and
beautiful. He paced up and down, feeling very young and odd, and unlike
his usual self. He was happy in a queer, boyish way that had a certain
shamefaced sensation about it, as when a youth for the first time
drinks suddenly of some sparkling wine, and feels his brain and senses
all aflame with delicious ecstasy, and is afraid of the feeling
although he delights in it.

It was a natural part of the half fantastic chivalry of his character
that he should have felt a sort of satisfaction in thus for the moment
being near Minola, as if by that means he were in some sort protecting
her against danger. If at that time any softer and warmer feeling than
mere friendship were mingling itself with Heron's sensations, he did
not then know it. He thought of the girl as a sweet friend, new to him,
indeed, but very dear, in whose happiness he felt deeply interested,
and over whom he had taken it into his head that he had a right to
watch. She seemed to be strangely alone in the world of London, and,
indeed, to be at the same time not suited for anything in London but
just such isolation. He never could think of her as mixing in the
ordinary society of the metropolis. He could not think of her as one of
the common crowd, following out mechanically the registered routine of
the season's amusements, listening to the commonplace talk, and
compliments, and cheap cynicism of the drawing-room and the five
o'clock tea. To him she appeared as different from all that, and as
poetically lifted above it, as if she were Hawthorne's Hilda, high up
in her Roman tower, among her doves, and near to the blue sky. Except
in the home of the Moneys, Heron had never seen Minola in anything that
even looked like society; and there was a good deal of the odd and the
fresh in that home which took it out of the range of the commonplace,
and did not interfere with his poetic idealization of Minola. Her
presence and her way of life appeared alike to him a poetic creation.
So quiet, self-sufficing a life, alone in the midst of the crowd, such
simple strength of purpose, such a tranquil choice of the kind of
existence that suited her best, such generosity and such gracious,
loving kindness--all this together made up a picture which had a
natural fascination for a chivalrous young man, who had never before
had time to allow the softer and more romantic elements of his nature
any chance of expression. It may be that for the present Minola was to
him but the first suggestion of an embodiment of all the vague,
floating thoughts and visions of love and womanhood that must now and
then cross the spiritual horizon of every young man, no matter how
closely he may be occupied with colonial affairs and the condition of
the colored races. The hero of a French story, whereof there is not
otherwise over-much good to be said, speaks with a feeling as poetic as
it is true when he says that in the nightingale's song he heard the
story of the love that he ought to have known, but which had not yet
come to him. Perhaps in the eyes and in the voice of Minola Victor
Heron unconsciously found this story told for him.

However that might be, it is certain that Heron found a curious
satisfaction this night in passing again and again before Minola's
door, and making believe to himself as if he were guarding her against
danger. He might have remained on guard in this way, heaven knows how
long--for, as we know, he was not fond of early going to bed--but that
he suddenly "was aware," as the old writers put it, of another watcher
as well as himself. It was unmistakable. Another man came up and passed
slowly once or twice under the same windows, and on the side of the
street where Heron had put himself on guard. Then the new comer,
observing, no doubt, that he was not alone, had crossed to the other
side of the street, and Heron thought he was only a chance passer and
was gone altogether. Presently, however, he crossed the road again, and
stood a short distance away from Heron as if he were watching him. Now,
though Victor Heron was not a lover, he had just as much objection as
any lover could have to being seen by observant eyes when watching
under a girl's window. The mere thought recalled him at once to
chilling commonplace. He was for going away that moment; all the
delight was gone out of his watching. But he was a little curious to
know if the new comer were really only a casual stranger whom his
movements had stirred into idle curiosity. So he went straightway down
the street and passed the unwelcome intruder. He felt sure the face of
the man was known to him, although he could not at first recall to mind
the person's identity. He felt sure, too, by the way in which the man
looked at him and then turned suddenly off, that the new comer had
recognized him as well. This was tormenting for the moment, as he went
on perplexing himself by trying to think who it was that he had seen in
this unexpected and unwished-for way. He walked slowly, and looked back
once or twice. He could not see his disturber any more. The man had
either gone away or was, perhaps, standing in the shadow of a doorway.
Suddenly an idea flashed upon Heron.

"Why, of course," he exclaimed, "it's he! I ought to have known! It's
the man from Keeton--the hated rival."

By "hated rival," however, Heron did not mean a rival in love, but only
in electioneering; for he now knew that it was Mr. Sheppard he had
seen, and he remembered how Mr. Sheppard, when he met him in Minola's
room, had seemed oddly sullen and unwilling to fraternize. This was the
reason why Heron called him the hated rival. His own idea of a rival in
an election contest was that of a person whom one ought to ask to
dinner, and treat with especial courtesy and fair offer of friendship.

Suddenly, however, another idea had occurred to him.

"What on earth can he be doing there," he asked, "under her window? Can
it be possible that he too is a lover?"

He too? Who then was _the_ lover--the other lover? Heron did not
believe, and would not admit, that Blanchet was a genuine lover at all.
The whole theory of Victor's duty to watch under Minola's windows was
based on the assumption that Blanchet was no true lover, but a cunning
hunter of fortune. Why then ask, was Mr. Sheppard too a lover? Heron
did not at the moment stop to ask himself any such question, but after
awhile the absurdity of his words occurred to him, and he was a little
amused and a good deal ashamed of his odd and hasty way of putting the
question.

"Why shouldn't he be there as well as I?" he said. "Why should he be a
lover any more than I?"

Then he began to assure himself that the hated rival must have been
there only by chance; and it is doubtful whether if he had thought much
longer over the question he would not have ended by convincing himself
that nothing but the merest chance had brought him, too, under Minola's
window panes.

It was, indeed, Minola's window under which he had been watching; and
she too was watching, and never dreamed that he was so near. She looked
from her window not long after he had gone, and saw the street all
lonely, and felt lonely herself, and shuddered, thinking that life
would ever be a dreary piece of work for her. It is a melancholy fact
that all that time, and even long after she had gone in shuddering from
the window, poor Sheppard was standing in a doorway at the opposite
side of the street, and that she not only never saw him, but never
thought of him. Her thoughts were of Victor Heron, and of her own folly
and her own love--that love which seemed such folly, which was so
hopeless, which she knew, or at least believed it was a sort of treason
against friendship to indulge, although in absolute secret.

In Uhland's pretty poem called "Departure" a youth is going on his
wanderings, and his comrades escort him a little on his way, and as
they go along they pass beneath the windows of a pretty girl. The lad
looks up, and would fain if he might have a rose from her hand, and yet
tells himself that he would not have it--for to what end to have the
rose when she whom he loved cared nothing for him, and the rose would
only wither with him, and to no purpose? When he has gone the girl
strains her eyes after him in grief, and wonders what the world is to
be to her now that he she loved is going far away, and never knew of
her love. A few timely words might have spared all the heart-ache, no
doubt; but it will be a very different world from that which we have
known when all the words that might have been timely are spoken in
time, or even when the feelings that might prompt the timely words have
learned their own meaning at the right moment to give it breath.


CHAPTER XVIII.

"COUNSEL BETRAYED."


The next morning Heron rose with a distinct purpose of doing something
to put Minola on her guard. His purpose to do something was much more
clear than his knowledge of what he had better do. Anyhow he thought he
would go and see Minola, and say something to her. When he began to
speak he would probably hit upon the thing to say. As he might have put
it himself, Providence would pull him through somehow. The first thing
was to get to speech of Minola. This, at least, ought not to be hard to
compass.

His first idea was simply to go to her house and ask to see her. But
when he was near the scene of his mounting guard the past night he
began to think of the difficulties that would be put in his way if any
one else were present. How, for example, could he possibly say what he
specially wanted to say if Mary Blanchet were present, or were even
coming and going in and out of the room, as she was almost sure to be?
On the other hand, how could he formally ask for a private conversation
with Minola without stirring all manner of absurd curiosity and
conjecture? At the very least, Mary Blanchet would be sure to ask, when
he had gone, what he had come to say; and that would, under the
circumstances, be rather embarrassing for Minola. He gave up,
therefore, the idea of seeing Miss Grey at her own house.

Another plan at once occurred to him. He knew how often Minola walked
in Regent's Park--he would go and walk there about the time which she
usually chose, and he would go again and again until he met her. So he
started off for the Park, greatly relieved in mind to be doing
anything. All the time there was a good deal of work on his account
which he might and, if he were at all a sensible young man, would have
been doing. The time that he was spending in trying to ward off from
Minola a supposed danger might, if properly used, have procured him an
interview with a Cabinet Minister, or paved the way for easy success at
the future election for Keeton. There were twenty things which Mr.
Money had often told him he must do if he would have the faintest hope
of any success in anything; and all these things he was utterly
neglecting because he chose to think that he was called on to give some
advice to a girl who perhaps would repay him with but little thanks for
his officious attempt at interference.

He walked slowly through the park, along the paths which he knew that
she loved, and made for the canal. It was a soft, gray day, with no sky
seen. The air was surcharged with moisture; but it was not raining, and
the grass was only as if a heavy dew had settled on it. The soft breath
that floated over the fields was warm and languid. Only three colors
were to be seen all across the park: the green of the grass, the gray
of the clouds, or of the one cloud rather, and the dull black of the
tree-trunks. These colors indeed were softened, and shaded away, and
blended into each other, with indefinable varieties of tone and
delicate interchanges of effect. It was just the day to make a certain
class of observer curse the stupid and foggy monotony of the English
climate. It was the day, too, to gladden the heart of a certain refined
class of artist with whom delicate effects of tone and shade are
precious and familiar. Certainly it might be called a day of poetic
atmosphere. To Victor, who had long been used to the unwinking
steadiness of a tropical sun, there was something specially refreshing
and delightful in the grass, the trees, and the cloud. He found himself
yearning in heart for a life which would leave him more time and
thought for the skies, the trees, and the air.

Suddenly the scene vanished from his eyes, and he only saw Minola Grey.
He was now approaching the canal, and he saw her leaning over the
bridge and looking into the water. It was early in the day--too early
for the nursemaids and the children, and the ordinary walkers, and
there was no one but Minola now in Heron's sight.

The girl, as she leaned on the railing of the bridge and looked into
the water, might have been adopted by any artist as a model-figure of
melancholy. If Victor had been less in a hurry with everything--if he
had remained where he then was and looked at her unperceived for a few
moments, Heaven knows what inspiration of ideas, what revealings about
himself and her might have come into his mind. But Victor waited for
nothing--seldom in life gave himself much time to think, and, in any
case, would have had an instinctive objection to even a moment's
unperceived watching of a meditating girl. He was so rejoiced at the
readiness with which his desire to meet her had been gratified, that he
thought he could hardly seize his chance too soon. In his eagerness he
even forgot that the task he had undertaken was rather embarrassing,
and that he had not yet made up his mind as to what he was going to
say. He was by Minola's side in a moment.

She was so much surprised and startled that Victor was quite ashamed of
having come upon her in such a sudden way. He had forgotten that all
women have nerves, and get startled in ways unknown to men. At least,
he assumed it must be for some reason of this kind that Minola seemed
so much disturbed when he came up, but he certainly had not supposed
that girls so clever and healthy as Miss Grey were usually troubled
with nerves.

Minola recovered herself very soon, however, and got rid of all
appearance of mere nervous embarrassment, although there was for a
while a certain constraint in her manner.

"Have you been long here?" he asked.

"Not very long; at least it did not seem long. I like to be here at
this time; there are so few people."

"Yes; I knew you were likely to be here about this time if you were
coming at all to-day," he said; an awkward remark, as it suggested that
he had come expressly to meet her.

"I come here at all manner of times," she said; "but I think I like
this time the best."

"You are not going any further, I suppose?"

"No; I thought of turning back now, and going home."

"I'll walk a little way with you if you will allow me?"

Of course she had no objection to make. They had walked in that place
often before, and it was a matter of certainty that as they did meet
they would walk together. He need hardly have asked her if she would
allow him to walk with her now.

So they turned and walked a little off the beaten track, and under the
trees. When they had walked a certain distance in one direction Victor
turned round and she turned with him, as if she were merely obeying his
signal of command. It has already been said more than once that Mr.
Heron always went on as if he were ever so much older than she, and
belonging indeed to a different stage of life. He bore himself as a man
of forty or thereabout might do with a young woman of Minola's age.

"How do you like Blanchet's book?" he asked abruptly.

"It is very beautiful, I suppose. It's a little too ornamental and
fantastic perhaps for my taste; but I suppose that is in keeping with
the style of the poems; and _he_ is delighted with the book."

"It has cost a great deal of money--much more than it ought to have
cost. I don't like the thing at all."

"But think of the joy given to the poet. It is surely not very dearly
bought at the price. I never knew of a man so happy."

"Yes, yes; that is all very well for him----"

"It is very well for me too, Mr. Heron--to be able to do a kindness for
any human creature. I dare say it has given me as much pleasure as it
has given him, and made me quite as proud too--and is not that
something to gain?"

"Still I can't help feeling uneasy about this thing. It has cost a heap
of money--much more than I ever supposed it would--and I seem as if I
had brought you into all the expense."

"How could that be, Mr. Heron? I expressly wished Mr. Blanchet to do as
he pleased; and he understood me exactly as I wished him to do. You had
nothing to do with it."

"Oh, yes! I had something to do with it; and then--excuse me--you are
rather young perhaps----"

"Perhaps I can't be expected to know my own mind; or ought not to be
trusted with the spending of my own money?"

"No, I didn't mean that; but you might not have known exactly what you
were being let in for; and it is a good deal of money for a girl to
pay."

"And in fact you don't think a girl ought to be allowed to spend her
money without some wise person of the superior sex to guide her hand?
Thank you very much, Mr. Heron, but I think I may have my own way in
this at least. I have often told you that I left Keeton because I could
not stand the control of wiser and better persons than myself. I am not
at all a good girl, Mr. Heron; I never said I was. The counsels of the
wise are sadly thrown away on me, I fear."

She spoke in a hard and ungenial tone, which he had not heard her use
before. He could not help looking at her with an expression of wonder.
She saw the expression and understood it.

"You are shocked at my want of sweet, feminine docility? I ought not to
have any ideas of my own, I suppose?"

"No, I am not shocked, and I am not at all such a ridiculous person as
you would seem to suppose, and I have none of the ideas you set down to
me; but you don't seem quite like yourself, and you speak as if you
were offended with me for something."

"Offended? Oh, no. How could I possibly be offended? I am very much
obliged, on the contrary, for the trouble you take for one who seems to
you quite unable to take care of herself."

Victor did not like her tone. There was something aggressive in it. He
was not experienced enough in the ways of society to cry content to
that which grieved his heart, and his thoughts therefore showed
themselves pretty clearly in his face.

"I don't like Blanchet's taking all this money," he said, after a
moment of silence. "I don't think a man ought to take such a helping
hand as that from--well, from----"

"From a woman, you were going to say? Why not from a woman, Mr. Heron?
Are we never to do a kind thing, we unfortunate creatures, because we
are women and are young?"

"No, I don't say that; but there are things it may become a woman to
do, and which it doesn't quite so well become a man to profit by. I
don't think Blanchet----"

"Mr. Blanchet seems to have a higher idea of what a woman's friendship
may be than you have, Mr. Heron. He does not see any degradation in
allowing a woman to hold him out a helping hand when he wants one. I
like his ideas better than yours. You say you would have done this
little service for him if you had been allowed. Why should there be any
greater degradation to him in having it done by me? At all events you
can't wonder if I don't see it all at once."

"Of course if you are satisfied and pleased, there is nothing more to
be said in the matter."

"I am satisfied and pleased. Why should I not be? I asked a friend to
let me do something to help him, and he answered me just in the spirit
in which I spoke. Of course I am glad to find that there is even one
man who could take a friendly offer in a friendly way. There are not
many such men, I suppose?"

Victor could not help smiling at her emphatic way of expressing her
scorn of men.

"I do believe you have really turned yourself misanthropical by reading
'Le Misanthrope,'" he said.

"Well, why should there not be a woman Alceste? although I never knew
any woman in real life more worthy to be classed with him than the men
we meet in real life are. Miss Alceste, I think, would sound very
prettily. I wish I could think myself entitled to bear such a name?"

"Or Miss Misanthrope," he suggested. "How would that do for a young
lady's name?"

"Admirably, I think. That would get over all the difficulty too, and
save foolish persons from thinking that one was setting up for another
Alceste. I should like very much to be called Miss Misanthrope."

"If you go on as you are doing, you will soon be entitled to bear the
name," said Victor gravely. "At the present moment I don't know that I
should much object to that."

"No! I am glad that anything I am likely to do has a chance of pleasing
you. But why should you not object just at present? Why not now as well
as at any other time?"

"Because I should like you to be a little misanthropical just now, and
a little distrustful--of men, that is to say, Miss Grey."

She colored slightly, although she had no idea of his meaning yet.

"I always thought you were full of trust in the whole human race, Mr.
Heron; I thought you liked everybody and believed in everybody. Now you
tell me to distrust all mankind."

"I didn't say that."

"No? Some particular person, then?"

"Some particular person, perhaps. At least I don't mean exactly that,"
Heron hastened to explain, his conscience smiting him at the thought
that perhaps after all he might be suggesting unjust suspicions of an
absent man who was a sort of friend. "I only mean that you are very
generous and unselfish, and that there might be persons who might try
to make use of your good nature, and whom perhaps you might not quite
understand. I don't know whether I ought to speak about this at all."

"Nor I, Mr. Heron, I am sure; for I really don't know what you are
speaking of or what mysterious danger is hanging over me. But I hope
there is something of the kind, for I should so like to resemble a
heroine of romance."

"There is not anything very romantic in prospect so far as I know," he
said, now almost wishing he had said nothing, and yet feeling in his
heart a serious fear that Minola might be led to put too much faith in
Blanchet. "But if I might speak out freely, and without any fear of
your misunderstanding me or being offended, there is something, Miss
Grey, that I should very much like to say." He spoke in an uneasy and
constrained way, forcing himself on to an ungracious task.

"You have been preaching distrust to me, Mr. Heron, and you have been
finding fault generally with all women who trust anybody. To show you
how your lessons are thrown away on me, I shall certainly trust you as
much as you like, and I shall not misunderstand anything you say nor be
offended by it." There was something of her old sweet frankness in her
manner as she spoke these words, and Heron was warmed by it.

"Well," he said at last, "you are a girl, and young, and living almost
alone, and people tell me you are going to have money. You have
promised to excuse my blunt way of talking out, haven't you? I almost
wish for your sake, as you like to live this kind of life, that you had
just enough of money to live upon and no more; but I hear that that is
not the case, or at all events is not to be. Well, the only thing is
that people who I think are not true, and are not honest, and who are
not worthy of you in any way whatever, may try to make you think that
they are true, and sincere, and all the rest of it."

"Well, Mr. Heron, what if they do?"

"You may perhaps be persuaded to believe them."

"And even if I am, what matter is that? I had much rather be deceived
in such things than know the truth, if the truth is to mean that people
are all deceitful."

"I don't think you want to understand me," he said.

"Indeed I do; I only want to understand you; but I fail as yet. Why not
speak out, Mr. Heron, like a man and a brother? If there is anything
you want me to know, do please make me to know it in the clearest way."

She was growing impatient.

"You will have lovers," he said, driven to despair when it seemed as if
she could not understand a mere hint of any kind; "of course you must
know that you are attractive and all that--and if you come to have
money, you will be besieged with fellows--with admirers I mean. Do be a
little distrustful--of one at least; I don't like him and I wish you
didn't--and I can't very well tell you why, only that he does not seem
to me to be manly or even honest."

She colored a little, but she also smiled faintly, for she still did
not understand him.

"I suppose I must know the man you mean, Mr. Heron; for I think he is
the only man I ever heard you say anything against, and I have not
forgotten. But what can have made you think that I needed any lecture
about him? I don't suppose he ever thought about me in that way in his
life, or would marry one of my birth and my bringing up even if I asked
him. And in any case, Mr. Heron, I would not marry him even if he asked
me. But what a shame it seems to arrange in advance for the refusing of
a man who never showed the faintest intention of making an offer."

At first Heron did not quite understand her. Then he suddenly caught
her meaning.

"Oh, that fellow? I didn't mean him. I never could have supposed that
you were likely to be taken in by him."

"To do him justice, Mr. Heron, he never seems to have any thought of
taking any one in. Such as he is he always shows himself, I think."

"Oh, I don't care about him----"

"Nor I, Mr. Heron, I assure you. But whom then do you care about--in
that sense?"

"I distrust a man who takes a woman's money in a reckless and selfish
way," Heron said impetuously. "That is a man I would not trust. Don't
trust him, Miss Grey; believe me, he is a cad--I mean a selfish and
deceitful fellow. I can't bear the thought of a girl like you being
sacrificed--or sacrificing yourself as you might do perhaps--and I tell
you that he is just the sort of man----"

"Are you speaking of Mr. Blanchet now, Mr. Heron?" Her tone was cold
and clear. She was evidently hurt, but determined now to have the whole
question out.

"Yes, I am speaking of Blanchet, of course--of whom else could I be
speaking in such a way?"

"Mr. Blanchet is my friend, Mr. Heron; I thought he was a friend of
yours as well."

"Well, I thought he was a manly, honest sort of fellow--I don't think
so now," Victor went on impetuously, warming himself as he went into
increasing strength of conviction. "I know you will hate me for telling
you this, but I can't help that. I am as much interested in your
happiness as if--as if you were my sister--and if you were my sister, I
would just do the same."

It would indeed be idle to attempt to describe the course of the
feelings that ran through Minola's breast as she listened to the words
of this kind which he continued to pour out. But out of all that swept
through her--out of shame, surprise, anger, grief, the one thought came
uppermost, and survived, and guided her--the thought that she had only
to leave Heron's appeal unanswered, and her secret was safe for ever.

She made up her mind, and was self-contained and composed to all
appearance again.

"Let us not say any more about this, Mr. Heron; I am sure you mean it
as a friend; and I never could allow myself to feel offended by
anything said in friendship. I am sorry you have such an opinion of Mr.
Blanchet; I have a much better opinion of him; I like him better than I
like most men; but you know we have just agreed that I ought to be
called 'Miss Misanthrope,' and I assure you I mean to do my very best
to deserve the name. No--please don't say any more--I had rather not
hear it indeed; and if you know anything of women, Mr. Heron, you must
know that we never take advice on these matters. No; trust to my
earning my name of Miss Misanthrope; but don't tell me of the demerits
of this or that particular man. I had rather hate men in the general
than in all the particular cases--and how long we must have talked
about this nonsense, for here is the gate of the park; and Mary
Blanchet will be thinking that I am lost!"

They almost always parted at this park gate. This time he felt that he
must not attempt to go any further with her. She smiled and nodded to
him with a manner of constrained friendliness, and went her way, and
Heron's heart was deeply moved, for he feared that he had lost his
friend.


CHAPTER XIX.

MR. ST. PAUL'S MYSTERY.


Two events occurring almost together affected a good deal some of the
people of this story. The first was the death of Mrs. Saulsbury.

Miss Grey was at once invited by the lawyers who had the charge of her
father's affairs to visit Keeton, in order to become fully acquainted
with the new disposition of things in which she had so much interest.
Thereupon Mr. Money announced that, as Miss Grey had no very close
friend to look after her interests, he was resolved to put himself in
the place of a parent or some near relation, and go with her and see
that all her interests were properly cared for. Minola was unwilling to
put him to so much trouble and loss of time, well knowing how absorbed
in business he was; but he set all her remonstrances aside with blunt,
good-humored kindness.

"Lucy is coming with us," he said, "if you don't think her in the way;
it might be pleasant for you to have a companion."

"I should so much like to go with Nola," pleaded Lucy.

"Oh, I shall be delighted if Lucy will go," Minola said, not well
knowing how to put into words her sense of all their kindness. It was
really a great relief to her to have Lucy's companionship in such a
visit. Mary Blanchet did not like to go back even for a few days to
Keeton. The poetess objected to seeing ever again the place where she
considered that art and she had been degraded by her servitude in the
court-house. So the conditions of the visit were all settled.

But there arose suddenly some new conditions which Minola had never
expected. The long looked-for vacancy at length occurred in the
representation of Keeton. The sitting member announced his
determination to resign his seat as soon as the necessary arrangements
for such a step could be put into effect. It was imperative that Victor
Heron should lose no time in throwing himself upon the vacant borough.
Mr. Money and Lucy rattled up to Minola's door one breathless morning
with the news. Lucy's eyes were positively dancing with excitement and
delight.

"It seems to me that there's going to be a regular invasion of your
borough, Miss Grey," Mr. Money said. "We're all going to be there. You
see that you are under no manner of compliment to me. I must have gone
down to Keeton in any case; it's one of the lucky things that don't
often befall a busy man like me to be able to kill the two birds with
the one stone. I must take care of our friend Heron as well as of you.
He would be doing some ridiculous thing if there were no elder to look
after him. He is as innocent of the dodges of an English election as
you are of the ways of English lawyers. So we'll be all together; that
will be very pleasant. Of course we'll not interfere with you. You
shall be just as quiet as you like while we are doing our
electioneering."

What could Minola say against all this arrangement, which seemed so
satisfactory and so delightful to her friends? It was not pleasant for
her to be brought thus into a sort of companionship with Victor Heron.
But it would be far less pleasant, it would indeed be intolerable and
not to be thought of, that she should in any way raise an objection or
make a difficulty which might hint of the feelings that possessed her.

"After all, what does it matter?" she asked herself as Mr. Money was
speaking. "I shall have to suffer this kind of thing in some way for
half my life, I suppose. It is no one's fault but my own. Why should I
disturb the arrangements of these kind people because of any weaknesses
of mine? If women will be fools, at least they ought to try to hide
their folly. This is as good practice for me as I could have."

So she told Mr. Money and Lucy that any arrangement that suited them
would suit her, and that she would be ready to go the moment he gave
the word. Then Mr. Money hastened away to look after other things, and
Lucy remained behind "to help Nola with her preparations," as she
insisted on putting it, but partly, as Minola felt only too sure, to
talk with her about Victor Heron.

Since Heron had offered her his advice in the park, and she had put it
aside, Minola and he had only met once or twice. Then he had attempted,
the first time of their meeting, to renew his apologies, and she had
put them lightly away, as she already had done the advice, and had
given him to understand that she wished to hear no more of the matter.
She had hoped that by assuming a manner of indifference she might lead
him to forget the whole affair. But he did not understand her, and
really believed that he had lost her friendship for ever by the manner
in which he had spoken against Herbert Blanchet. He was troubled for
her much more than for himself, believing, or at least fearing, that
she had set her heart on a man unworthy of her. He kept away from her
therefore, assuming that his society was no longer welcome, and
resolute not to intrude on her.

Minola had hoped that the worst was over, and that he and she were
likely to settle gradually and unnoticed by others into a condition of
ordinary acquaintanceship. This melancholy hope, to her a cruel
necessity in itself, but yet the best hope she could see now left for
her, was likely to be disturbed for a while by this ill-omened visit to
Keeton.

Minola was busy making her preparations for going to Keeton, and with a
very heavy heart. Everything about the visit was now distressing to
her. The occasion was mournful; she dreaded long talks and discussions
with Mr. Saulsbury; she dreaded meeting old acquaintances in Keeton;
she shrank from the responsibilities of various kinds that seemed to be
thrust upon her. When she left Keeton she thought she had done with it
for ever. Where was the free life she had arranged for herself? Nothing
seemed to turn out as she had expected.

Meanwhile Mary Blanchet and Lucy Money were both delighted, and in
their different ways, at the prospect of Minola's visit to Keeton. Mary
saw her leader and patroness come back rich, and ready to be
distinguished and to confer distinction. Lucy Money had the prospect of
variety, of a holiday with Minola, whom she loved, and of being very
often in the society of Victor Heron. Minola was, if anything, made
additionally sad by the thought that it was not in her power to share
their feelings, and the fear that she might seem a wet blanket
sometimes on their happiness.

Lucy had been with her all the morning, helping her with Mary to make
preparations for the journey. Minola was glad when it was found that
some things were wanting, and Lucy and Mary offered to go out and buy
them in Oxford street.

Minola was enjoying the sense of being alone, and was, at the same
time, secretly accusing herself of want of friendship because she
enjoyed it, when a card was brought to her, and she was told that the
gentleman said he wanted to speak to her, if she pleased, "rather
particular." The card was that of Mr. St. Paul. He had never visited
Minola before, nor was she even aware that he knew where she lived. She
was surprised, but she did not know of any reason why she might not see
him. She hastened down to her sitting-room, and there she found Mr. St.
Paul, as she had found Mr. Blanchet once before. Mr. St. Paul looked
even a stranger figure in her room than Mr. Blanchet had done, she
thought. He seemed far too tall for the place, and had a heedless,
lounging, half-swaggering way, which appeared as if it were compounded
of the old manner of the cavalry man and the newer habits of the
western hunter. Nothing, however, could have been more easy, confident,
and self-possessed than the way in which he came forward to greet
Minola. If he had been visiting her every day for a month before, he
could not have been more friendly and at his ease.

"How d'ye do, Miss Grey? Just in time to see you, I suppose, before you
go? I've been down to Keeton already. I'm going down again--I mean to
make my mark there somehow."

Minola thought, with a certain half-amused, half-abashed feeling, of
the remarks she had heard concerning herself and Mr. St. Paul; but she
did not show any embarrassment in her manner. Indeed, Mr. St. Paul was
not a person to allow any one to feel much embarrassed in his presence.
He was entirely easy, self-satisfied, and unaffected, and he had a way
of pouring out his confidences as though he had known Minola from her
birth upward.

"I hope you found a pleasant reception there?"

"Yes, well enough for that matter. I find my brother and his wife are
not anything like so popular as I was given to understand that they
were. I saw my brother in London--didn't I tell you?--before I went
down to Keeton, you know."

"No, I did not know that you had seen him; I hope he was glad to see
you, Mr. St. Paul?"

"Not he; I dare say he was very sorry I hadn't been wiped out by the
Indians. Do you know what being wiped out means?"

"Yes, I think I could guess that much. I suppose it means being
killed?"

"Of course. I mean to teach you all the slang of the West; I think a
nice girl never looks so nice as when she is talking good expressive
slang. Our British slang is all unmeaning stuff, you know; only
consists in calling a thing by some short vulgar word--or some long and
pompous word, the fun being in the pompousness; but the western slang
is a sort of picture-writing, don't you know?--a kind of compressed
metaphor, answering the purposes of an intellectual pemmican or
charqui. Do you know what these things are, Miss Grey?"

"Oh, yes; compressed meats of some kind, I suppose. But I don't think I
care about slang very much."

"You may be sure you will when you get over the defects of your Keeton
bringing up. But what was I going to tell you? Let me see. Oh, yes,
about my brother and his wife. The honest Keeton folks seem to have
forgotten them. But I was speaking, too, about my going to see my
brother in town. Oh, yes, I went to see him; he didn't want me, and he
made no bones about letting me know it. He thinks I have disgraced the
family; it was quite like the scene in the play--whose play is it?--I
am sure I don't remember--where Lord Foppington's brother goes to see
him, and is taken so coolly. I haven't read the play for more years
than you have lived in the world, I dare say, but it all came back upon
me in a moment. I felt like saying, 'Good-by, Foppington,' only that he
would never have understood the allusion, and would think I meant to
say he was a 'fop,' which he is not, bless him."

"Then your visit did not bring you any nearer to a reconciliation with
your brother?"

"Not a bit of it--pushed us further asunder, I think. The odd thing was
that I told him I wanted nothing from him, and that I had made money
enough for myself in the West. You would have thought that would have
fetched him, wouldn't you? Not the least in life, I give you my word."
And Mr. St. Paul laughed good-humoredly at the idea.

"I am sorry to hear it," said Minola. "I think there are quarrels and
spites enough in the world, without brothers joining in with all the
rest."

"Bad form, isn't it--don't you think? But I don't suppose in real life
brothers and sisters ever do care much for each other--do you think
they do? I haven't known any such cases--have you?"

Minola could not contribute much from her own family history to
demonstrate the affection and devotion of brothers, but she had no idea
of agreeing in the truth of Mr. St. Paul's philosophic reflections for
all that.

"I believe what you say is true enough as regards the brothers, but I
can't admit it of the sisters."

"Come now, you don't really believe that nonsense, I know."

"Believe what nonsense? That sisters may be fond of their brothers
sometimes?"

"No, I don't mean that; but that there is any real difference between
men and women in these ways--that men are all bad and women all good,
and that sort of thing. One's as bad as the other, Miss Grey. When you
have lived as long in the world as I have you'll find it, I tell you.
But I don't find much fault with either lot. I think they are both
right enough all things considered, don't you know?"

"I am sure Mary Blanchet is devoted to her brother," Miss Grey said
warmly.

"That little old maid? Well, now, do you know, I shouldn't wonder.
That's just the sort of woman to be devoted to a brother, and, of
course, he doesn't care twopence about her."

"Oh, for shame!" said Minola, not, however, feeling quite satisfied
about the strength of Herbert Blanchet's affection for his sister, even
while she felt bound, for Mary's sake, to utter her protest against his
being set down as wholly undeserving.

"But, I say," Mr. St. Paul observed, "what a fool he is! I don't think
I ever saw a more conceited cad and idiot."

"He is a very particular friend of mine, Mr. St. Paul," Miss Grey
began. "At least, his sister is one of my oldest friends."

"Yes, yes; just so. The good old spinster is a friend of yours, and you
try to like the cad brother on her account. All quite right, of course.
I should say he was just the sort of fellow to borrow the poor old
girl's money, if she had any."

"Oh, Mary has no money, and I am sure if she had she would be only too
glad to give it to him."

"Very likely; anyhow he would be only too glad to take it, you may be
sure. But I don't want to say anything against your friends, Miss Grey,
if you don't like it. Only women generally do like it, you know--and
then you may say anything you please, in your turn, against any of my
friends or relatives. I shan't be offended one bit, I can assure you."

Minola had nothing to say, and therefore said nothing. Her new
acquaintance did not allow any silence to spring up.

"Talking of friends," he said, "there is one of your friends who
politely declines any helping hand of mine in the election business at
Keeton, although I think I could do him a good turn with some of the
fellows who are out of humor with my brother. Our quixotic young friend
will have none of the help of brothers who quarrel with brothers, it
seems. Easy to see that he never had a brother."

"Mr. Heron is a man of very sensitive nature, I believe," Minola said;
"he will not do anything that he does not think exactly right, Mr.
Money says."

"Yes, so I hear. Odd, is it not? Heron always was a confounded young
fool, you know. He got into all his difficulties by bothering about
things that oughtn't to have concerned him one red cent. Well, he won't
have my disinterested assistance. There again he is a fool, for I could
have done something for him, and Money knows it--it was partly on
Money's account that I thought of taking up Heron's side of the affair,
because, so far as I am concerned, anybody else would do me just as
well so long as he opposed my brother's man."

"I can quite understand that Mr. Heron would not allow himself to be
made a mere instrument to work out your quarrel with your brother. I
think he was quite right."

The good-humored St. Paul laughed.

"All very fine, Miss Grey, and it does for a lady uncommonly well, no
doubt; but if you want to get into Parliament, it won't do to be quite
so squeamish. I am sure I should be only too happy to get the help of
Cain against Abel or Abel against Cain if I could in such a case."

"Most men would, I dare say," Minola answered, with as much severity as
she could assume under the possible penalty of Mr. St. Paul's laughter.
"But I am glad that there are some men, or that there is one man, at
least, who thinks there is some object in life higher than that of
getting into Parliament."

"Oh, as far as that goes, I quite agree with you, Miss Grey; I
shouldn't care twopence myself about a seat in Parliament--a confounded
bore, I think. But if you go in for playing a game, why, you ought to
play it, you know."

"But are there not rules in every game? Are there not such things as
fair and unfair?"

"Of course, yes; but I fancy the strong players generally make the
rules to suit their own ideas in the end. Anyhow, I never heard of any
one playing at electioneering who would have hesitated for a moment
about accepting the hand I offered to our quixotic young friend."

"I am glad he is quixotic," Minola said eagerly. "I like to think of a
man who ventures to be a Quixote."

"Very sorry to hear it, Miss Grey, for I am afraid you won't like much
to think about me. Yet, do you know, I came here to make a sort of
quixotic offer about this very election."

"I am glad to hear it; the more quixotic it is the more I shall like
it. To whom is the offer to be made? To Mr. Heron?"

"Oh, no, by Jove!--excuse me, Miss Grey--nothing of the sort. The offer
is to be made to you."

"To me?" Minola was a little surprised, but she did not color or show
any surprise. She knew very well that it was not an offer of himself
Mr. St. Paul was about to make, but it amused her to think of the
interpretation Mary Blanchet, if she could have been present, would at
once have put on his words.

"Yes, indeed, Miss Grey, to you. I have it in my power to make you
returning officer for Keeton. Do you understand what that means?"

"I know in a sort of way what a returning officer is; but I don't at
all understand how I can do his office."

"I'll show you. You shall have the fate of Keeton as much in your hands
as if you owned the whole concern--a deuced deal more, in fact, than if
you owned the whole concern, in days of ballot like these. I believe
you do own a good many of the houses there now, don't you?"

"I hardly know; but I know that if I do, I wish I didn't."

"Very well; just you try what you can get out of your influence over
your tenants--that's all."

"Then how am I to become returning officer for Keeton?"

"That's quite another thing. That depends on me."

"On you, Mr. St. Paul?"

"On me. Just listen." St. Paul had been seated in his favorite attitude
of careless indolence in a very low chair, so low that his long legs
seemed as if they stretched half way across the room. His position,
joined with an expression of self-satisfied lawlessness in his face,
might have whimsically suggested a sort of resemblance to Milton's arch
fiend "stretched out huge at length," in one of his less malign humors.
He now jumped up and stood on the hearth-rug, with his back to the
fireplace, his slightly stooping shoulders only seeming to make him
look taller than otherwise, because they might set people wondering as
to the height he would have reached if he had only stood erect and made
the most of his inches. His blue eyes had quite a sparkle of excited
interest in them, and his prematurely bald forehead looked oddly
infantine over these eyes and that keen, fearless mouth.

"Look here, Miss Grey, it's all in your hands. You know both these
fellows, don't you?"

"Both what fellows?"

"These fellows who want to get in for Keeton. You know them both. Now
which of them do you want to win?"

"What can it matter which way my wishes go--if they went any way?"

"How like a woman! How very like a woman!" and he laughed.

"What is like a woman? I know when a man says anything is like a woman,
he means to say that it is ridiculous."

"Well, that's true enough; that is about what we do mean in most cases.
What I meant in this case was only that you would not answer my
question. I put a plain direct question, to which you must have some
answer to give, and you only asked me a question in return which had
nothing to do with mine."

"Perhaps I have no answer to give. I may have the answer in my own
mind, and yet not have it to give to any one else."

"Oh, but you may really give it to me! In strictest confidence I assure
you; no living soul shall ever know from me. Come, Miss Grey, let me
know the truth. It can't possibly do you any harm--or anybody harm for
that matter, except the wrong man for I take it for granted that the
man you don't favor must be the wrong man."

"But I don't know that I ought to have anything to do with such a
matter----"

"Never mind these scruples; it's nothing; there's to be no treason in
the business, nor any unfair play. It's only this; I couldn't get in
for the borough myself, even if I tried my best, but I can send in the
one of the two whom I prefer--or, in this case, whom you prefer. I can
do this as certainly as anything in this uncertain world can be
certain."

"But how could that be?"

"_That_ it would not suit me to tell you just at present. I know a safe
way, that's all. In the teeth of the ballot I can promise you that.
Now, Miss Grey, who is to have the seat?"

"Are you really serious in this, Mr. St. Paul?"

"As serious as I ever was in my life about anything--a good deal more
serious, I dare say, than I often was about graver things and more
important men. Now then, Miss Grey, which of these two fellows is to
sit for Keeton?"

"But why do you make this offer to me?" she asked, with some
hesitation. "What have I to do with it?" There was something alarming
to her in his odd proposition, about which he was evidently quite
serious now.

"Why do I make the offer to you? Well, because I should like to please
you, because you are a sort of woman I like--a regular good girl, I
think, without any nonsense or affectation about you. Now that's the
whole reason why I offer this to you. I don't care much myself either
way, except to annoy my brother, and that can be done in fifty other
ways without half the trouble to me. I was inclined to draw out of the
whole affair, until I remembered that you knew both the fellows, and I
thought you might have a wish for one of them to go in in preference to
the other--they can't both go in, you see--and so I made up my mind to
give you the chance of saying which it should be. Now then, Miss Grey,
name your man."

He put his hands into his pockets, and coolly waited for an answer. He
had not the appearance of being in the least amused at her perplexity.
He took the whole affair in a calm, matter-of-fact way, as if it were
the most natural thing in the world.

Minola was perplexed. She did not see what right he could have to
control the coming contest in any way, and still less, what right she
could have to influence him in doing so. The dilemma was one in which
no previous experience could well guide her. She much wished she had
Mr. Money at hand to give her a word of counsel.

"Come, Miss Grey, make up your mind--or rather tell me what you have
already made up your mind to, for I am sure you have not been waiting
until now to form an opinion. Which of these two men do you want to see
in Parliament?"

There did not seem any particular reason why Minola or any girl might
not say in plain words which of two candidates she would rather see
successful.

Mr. St. Paul appeared to understand her difficulty, for he said in an
encouraging way--

"After all, you know, if you had women's rights and all that sort of
thing, you would have to give your vote for one or other of these
fellows, and I dare say you would be expected to take the stump for
your favorite candidate. So there really can't be any very serious
objection to your telling me in confidence which of the two you want to
win."

Minola could not see how there could be any objection on any moral
principle she could think of just then--being in truth a little
confused and puzzled--to her giving a voice to the wish she had formed
about the election.

"It's not the speaking out of my wish that gives me any doubt," she
said; "it is the condition under which you want me to speak. I seem to
be doing something that I have no right to do--that is, Mr. St. Paul,
if you are serious."

"I remember reading, long ago," he said, "some Arabian Nights' story,
or something of the kind, about a king, I think it was, who was brought
at night to some mysterious place and told to cut a rope there, and
that something or other would happen, he did not know what or when. The
thing seemed very simple, and yet he didn't quite like to do it without
knowing why, and how, and all about it. It strikes me that you seem to
be in the same sort of fix."

"So I am; just the same. Why can't you tell me what you are going to
do?"

"I like that! That is my secret for the present."

"And your king--the king in your story--did he cut the rope at last?"

"I am afraid I have forgotten that; but I have no doubt he did, for he
was a reasonable sort of creature, being a man, and I know that
everything came right with him in the end."

"Very well; I accept the omen of your king, and I too will cut the rope
without asking why. Of course I wish that Mr. Heron should be elected.
He is a Liberal in politics. Why do you laugh when I say that, Mr. St.
Paul?"

"Well, I didn't know that you cared much for that sort of thing, and
women are generally supposed to be reactionaries all the world over,
are they not? Well, anyhow, that's one reason, his being a Liberal.
What next?"

"I don't know that any next is wanting. But of course I think Mr. Heron
is a much cleverer man, and is likely to be much better able to get on
in the House of Commons; and then he has his complaint to make against
the government----"

"Yes; and then?"

"Then he is very much liked by people whom I like--and I like him very
much myself." Minola spoke out with perfect frankness, believing that
that was the best thing she could do, and not showing the least sign of
embarrassment.

Mr. St. Paul laughed.

"You don't like the other fellow so well?" he said.

"I am sure he is a very good man----"

"That's enough; you need not say another word. We all can tell what a
critic means when he speaks of some actor as a careful and painstaking
performer. It's just the same when a woman says a man is very good.
Then you pronounce for Heron?"

"I pronounce for Mr. Heron decidedly, if you call saying what I should
like to happen pronouncing for any one."

"In this case it is of more effect than many other pronunciamentos. You
have elected Heron, Miss Grey, if I am not much more out in my calculations
than I have been this some time. All right, I am satisfied. If you have
money to throw away, just back what's-his-name?--Sheppard--heavily, and
you are sure to get rid of it."

"And you won't tell me what all this means?"

"Not I indeed: not likely. Good day, Miss Grey. You have elected your
friend Heron, I can tell you. Odd, isn't it, that he should come to be
elected after all by me?"

He bade her good day again, and strode and shambled out of the room and
down stairs, leaving Minola much perplexed, and not quite pleased, and
yet full of a secret wonder and pride at the possibility of her having
helped to do Mr. Heron a service.

"I wonder what he would say if he knew of it?" she asked herself, and
she could hardly think that he would be greatly delighted with the
promise of such influence.


CHAPTER XX.

LOVE AND ELECTIONEERING.


The soul of Keeton, as a local orator expressed it, was stirred to its
depths by the events which succeeded. The three estates of the town,
whereof we have already spoken, were alike concerned in the election.
Had it never occurred, there would have been enough in the death of
Mrs. Saulsbury and the rearrangement of Mr. Grey's property to keep
conversation up among the middle grade of Keeton folks. But business
like that would not interest the park, and of course it had no interest
for the working class of the town. The election, on the contrary, was
of equal concern to park, semi-detached villa, and cottage, or even
garret. A contest in Keeton was an absolute novelty, so far as the
memory of living man could go back.

It may perhaps be said that the opinion of the class who alone
concerned themselves about her affairs had been, on the whole,
decidedly unfavorable to Minola. She had gone as a sort of rebel
against legitimate authority out of Keeton, and had flung herself into
the giddy vortex of London life. No one well knew what had become of
her; and that with Keeton folks was another way of saying that she must
have rushed upon destruction. Some persons held that she must have gone
upon the stage. This idea became almost a certainty when a Keeton man,
being in London on business, brought back with him from town a
play-bill announcing a new opera bouffe in which one of the minor
performers was named "Miss Mattie Grey." If the good Keeton man had
only looked in a few other play-bills, he would have no doubt found
Greys in abundance--Matties, Minnies, Nellies, and such like, Grey
being rather a favorite name with young ladies in the profession. But
he made no such investigation, and it was at once assumed that Mattie
Grey was Minola Grey in disguise--a disguise as subtle as that of the
famous knight, Sir Tristam, who, when he wanted to conceal his identity
from all observers and place himself beyond all possibility of
detection, called himself Sir Tramtrist.

When, however, it was found that Minola was to have her father's
property after all, a certain change took place in the opinion of most
persons who concerned themselves about the matter. It was assumed
generally that Mr. Grey was far too good and Christian a man to have
left his property to a girl who could be capable of acting in an opera
bouffe. Then, when Miss Grey in person came to the town in the company
of so distinguished a man as Mr. Money, even gossip started repentant
at the sound itself had made, and began to deny that it had ever made
any sound at all. Mr. Money was a sort of hero among the middle class
everywhere. He was known to have fought his way up in life, and to be
now very rich; and when Miss Grey came into the town in the company of
Mr. Money and his daughter, the report went about forthwith that Minola
Grey had got into the very best society in London, and that she was
going to marry the eldest son of Mr. Money, and to be presented at
court.

Mr. Money had taken a couple of floors of the best hotel to begin with.
He had brought his carriage with him--a carriage in which he was hardly
ever known to take a seat when in town. He had brought a sort of
retinue of servants. He went deliberately about making what Mr. St.
Paul would have called "a splurge." Mr. Money knew his Pappenheimers.
He knew that he was well known to have sprung from nothing, but he also
knew that the middle and lower classes of Keeton would have given him
little thanks if he had tried to please them by exhibiting there a
modesty becoming of his modest origin. He knew well enough that the
more he put on display the more they would think of him and of his
clients. Therefore he put on display like a garment--a garment to which
he was little used, and in which he took no manner of delight. There
was generally a little group of persons round the hotel doors at all
hours of the day waiting to see Mr. Money and his friends go out or
come in. At first Minola positively declined to go out at all, except
at night; and the recent death of her father's widow gave her a fair
excuse for remaining quietly indoors. Lucy delighted in the whole
affair, and often declared that she felt as if she had been turned into
a princess. When Mr. Heron came down he too seemed rather to enjoy it.
At least he took it all as a matter of course. The experiences of
colonial days, when the ruler of a colony, however small it may be, is
a person of majestic proportions in his own sphere, enabled him to take
Mr. Money's pomp quite seriously.

Meanwhile Mr. Augustus Sheppard had got his committee-rooms and his
displays of various kinds, and was understood to be working hard. The
election contest, so long looked for, had taken every one a little by
surprise when it showed itself so near. It was natural that Mr.
Sheppard and his friends should feel confident of the result. The
retiring representative was now an old man. He had faithfully served
out his time; he had always voted as his patrons wished him to do; he
had never made a speech in the House of Commons; he had never, indeed,
risen to his feet there at all, except once or twice to present a
petition. The delights of a Parliamentary career were, therefore, this
long time beginning to pall upon him. He had been notoriously anxious
to get out of Parliament. He had been sent into the House of Commons by
the late duke to keep the seat warm until the present duke should come
of age. But the present duke succeeded to the peerage before he came of
age, and therefore never had a chance of sitting in the House of
Commons. The man in possession was allowed to remain there through
years and years, until the present duke could be induced to return from
abroad and take some interest in the political and other affairs of
Keeton. His own son was yet too young for Parliament, and as the
sitting member found himself getting too old and begged for release,
there was nothing better to do than to get some safe and docile person
to take on him the representation of the borough for some time to come.
Those who knew Keeton could recommend no one more fitting in every
desirable way than Mr. Augustus Sheppard.

The time was when Mr. Sheppard would only have had to present the
orders of the reigning duke to the constituency of Keeton and to take
his seat in the House of Commons accordingly as if by virtue of a
sovereign patent in ancient days. But times had changed even in sleepy
Keeton. The younger generation had almost forgotten their dukes, it was
so long since a chief of the house had been among them. Even the women
had grown comparatively indifferent to the influence of the name seeing
that it had so long been only a name for them. There had been for many
years no duchesses and their lady daughters to meet at flower-shows and
charitable bazaars, by the delight of whose face, and the sound of
whose feet, and the wind of whose tresses, as the poet has it, they
could be made to feel happy and exalted. There once were brighter days
when the coming and going of the ladies at the castle gave the women of
Keeton a perpetual subject of talk, of thought, of hope, and of
quarrel. Some of the readers of this story may perhaps have spent a
little time in small towns on the banks of foreign--say of
American--rivers which have a habit of freezing up as winter comes, and
becoming useless for navigation; in fact being converted from rivers
into great frozen roads, until spring unlocks the flowers and the
streams again. Such travellers must have noticed what an unfailing
topic of conversation such a river supplies to those who dwell on its
banks. How soon will it freeze this season? On what precise day was it
closed to navigation last year--the year before--the year before that?
In what year did it freeze soonest? Do you remember that particular
year when it froze so very soon, or did not freeze for such an
unprecedented length of time? That was the same year that--no, not that
year; it was the other year, don't you remember? Then follow
contradictions and disputes, and the elders always remember the river
having been regularly in the habit of performing some feat which now it
never cares to repeat. The time of the frost melting and the river
becoming really a river again is a matter just as fruitful of
discussion. The stranger is often tempted to wonder what the people of
that place would have to talk about at all if suddenly the river were
to give up its trick of freezing, and were to remain always as fluent
as our own monotonous Thames. There seems to him some reason to fear
that the tongues of the people would become frozen as the river ceased
to freeze.

Like the freezing and the melting of their river to those who lived on
its bank was the annual visit of the ladies of the ducal family to the
womankind of Keeton in Keeton's brighter days. Girls were growing up
there now who had never seen a duchess. The arrival, the length of
stay, the probable time of departure, the appearances in public whether
more or less frequent than this time last year, the dresses worn by the
gracious ladies, the persons spoken to by them, the persons only bowed
to, the unhappy creatures who got neither speech nor salutation--it is
a fact that there was a generation of women growing up in Keeton with
whom these and such questions had never formed any part of the interest
of their lives. They could not be expected to take much interest all at
once, and as it were by instinct, in the political cause of the ducal
family.

There was therefore a good deal of uncertainty about the conditions of
the problem. The followers of the ducal family were some of them full
of hope. The reappearance of a duke and duchess and their train might
do wonders in restoring the old order of things. In Keeton petticoat
influence counted for a great deal, and in other days those who had the
promises of the wives hardly thought it worth while to go through the
form of asking the husbands. But now there was a new condition of the
political problem even in that respect. The ballot, which had made the
voter independent of the influence of his landlord or his wealthy
customer, had converted the power of the petticoat into a sort of
unknown quantity. There could be little doubt that the moral influence
and the traditional control would still prevail with some; but he must
be a rash electioneering agent who would venture to say how many votes
could thus be counted on. It is a remarkable tribute to the moral
greatness of an aristocracy that the influence thus obtained in old
days over the wives and daughters of Keeton was absolutely unearned by
any overt acts of favor or conciliation. The later dukes and their
families had always been remarkable for never making any advances
toward the townspeople. None of the traders of the town, however
wealthy and respectable, found themselves or their wives invited to any
manner of festivity up at the ducal hall. All that the noble family
ever did for the townspeople was to come at certain seasons to Keeton
and allow themselves to be looked at. This was enough for the time. The
illustrious ladies could be seen, and, as has been said, they did
sometimes speak a word to favored and envied persons. They were loved
for being great personages, not for anything they did to win such
devotion. "Love is enough," says the poet.

All these considerations, however, rendered it hard to calculate the
exact chances of opposition in the borough of Keeton. Of course
revolutionary opinions were growing up, old people found, there as well
as elsewhere. There was a new class of Conservatives springing up whom
steady, old-fashioned politicians found it not easy to distinguish from
the Radicals of their younger days. On the other hand, keen-sighted
persons could not fail to perceive that, whereas in their youth almost
all young men had a tendency to be or to fancy themselves Radicals, it
was now growing rather the fashion for immature politicians to boast
themselves Tories, and to talk of a spirited foreign policy and the
dangers of Cosmopolitanism. It would be hard to say how things might
turn out, knowing people thought, as they shook their heads, and hoped
the expected contest might not come on for some time.

Now the contest was at hand. At least the sitting member had positively
declared that he would sit no longer, and it was announced that the
Duke was coming to Keeton, and that Mr. Augustus Sheppard was to be the
Duke's candidate. No more striking proof could be given of the recent
change in the political condition of Keeton than is found in the fact
that the adoption of Mr. Sheppard as a candidate by the ducal family
did not even to the most devoted and sanguine followers of the great
house make Mr. Sheppard's election seem by any means a matter of
absolute certainty. There was a tolerably strong conviction everywhere,
long before any opposition was announced, that the Duke's candidate
would not be allowed to walk over the course and right into the House
of Commons this time. Nobody in the town would oppose the Duke very
likely, but the man to oppose would come.

Now the man actually had come. Victor Heron had issued his address and
was in Keeton. His address was original; he had positively refused from
the first to make any grand professions of superior statesmanship or
patriotism. He would tell Englishmen, he said, that he was seeking a
seat in Parliament as a way of getting redress for a great wrong done
to him, and through him to some of the principles most dear to the
country. When he had fought his battle in Parliament and won or lost,
he promised that he would then place himself in the hands of his
constituents and resign the seat if they desired. The whole address was
frank, odd, original, and perhaps seemed a little self-conceited. The
author's absorption in his subject was mistaken by many people, as will
happen sometimes, for self-conceit.

Mr. Sheppard's address, on the contrary, talked only of the good old
Conservative principles which had made England the envy and admiration
of all surrounding States; of the local interests of Keeton and the
candidate's acquaintance therewith; and of the many splendid things
done for the town by the noble family who had done it the honor to have
a park there.

"I don't think Heron's address reads half badly," Mr. Money said, one
evening in the absence of Heron, to his two companions; "on the whole,
I shouldn't wonder if it took some people, the women particularly.
Anything personal, anything in the nature of a grievance, is likely to
have a good effect on many people, especially where the injured
personage is young, and good-looking, and plucky. I wish the women had
the votes here just for this once, for I think we should stand to win
if they had."

"Then, papa, do you think we shan't win now?" Lucy asked.

Minola looked up eagerly for his answer.

"Well, Lucelet, I don't like to say; I am not quite charmed with the
look of things. I find there are a good many very strong Radicals grown
up in this place since there was a contest here before; and Heron's
not wild enough for them by half. They are a little of the red-hot
social-revolution sort of thing--the _proletaire_ business, with a dash
of the brabbling atheist--the fellows who think one is not fit to live
if he even admits the possibility of another world. I am afraid these
fellows will hold aloof from us altogether, or even take some whim of
voting against us, and they may be strong enough to turn the scale."

Minola hoped that if her friend Mr. St. Paul had really any charm by
which to extort victory for Heron as he had promised, he would not
forget to use it in good time. But she began to have less faith, and
less, in the possibility of any such feat. She was a little in the
perplexed condition of some one of mediæval times, who has entered into
a bargain for supernatural interference, and is not quite certain
whether to wish that the compact may be really carried out or that it
may prove to have been only the figment of a dream.

"I'm told we ought to have some poems done," Money went on to say. "Not
merely squibs, you know, but appeals about right and justice, and the
cause of oppressed humanity, and all that."

"I'm sure Minola could do some beautifully!" Lucy exclaimed, looking
beseechingly toward her friend.

"Oh, no; I couldn't indeed! My appeals would be dreadfully weak; they
could not rouse the spirits of any mortal creature. Now, if we only had
Mary Blanchet!"

This, it must be owned, was Minola's fun, but it gave an idea to Mr.
Money.

"Tell you what," he said; "we ought to have her brother--the bard you
used to call him, Lucelet."

"Oh, no, papa; indeed I never called him anything of the kind. I never
did, indeed, Nola."

"Well, whatever you called him, Lucelet, we can't do better than to
have him. We'll put Pegasus into harness, by Jove--a capital good use
to make of him too. I'll write to what's-his-name?--Blanchet--at once."

"But I don't think he would like it, papa; I think he would take
offence at the idea of your asking him to do poems for an election. I
don't think he would come."

"Oh, yes, he would come; we would make it worth his while. These young
fellows give themselves airs to make you girls admire them, that they
never think of trying on with men. It would be a rather telling thing
here too if it got about that we had brought a real poet specially down
from London. I'll write at once."

This seemed rather alarming to Minola.

"I doubt whether Mr. Heron would much like it," she pleaded. "I don't
know whether they are such very good friends just now. I am rather
afraid."

"Oh, yes; of course they must be good friends! Heron is not to have it
all his own way in everything anyhow. He must like the idea; he shall.
I'll write without telling him anything about it, and Heron couldn't
help being friendly to any fellow who came under his roof, as one might
say."

No one made any further objection.

"I wish Heron had not been so confoundedly particular about St. Paul,"
Mr. Money went on to say in a discontented tone. "That was absurd. St.
Paul's no worse than lots of other fellows, and in such a thing as this
we can't afford to throw away any offer of support. We have to fight
against the Duke and his lot anyhow, and the help of St. Paul couldn't
have done us any harm in that quarter, and it might have done us some
good in others. I shouldn't wonder if St. Paul had some friends and
admirers here still; and it is as likely as not that his being with us
might conciliate a few of the mad Radicals. They might like him just
because he is against his brother, the Duke."

"But Mr. Heron would not have such help as that," Lucy said, in tones
of pride.

"Oh, by Jove! if you want to carry an election--and now, I suppose, if
St. Paul has any influence at all, it will be given against us."

Minola thought of her unholy compact, and did not venture to say a word
on the subject.




THE "UNIFORMED MILITIA" SERVICE.


I spent seven years of my boyhood at school among the hills of old
Connecticut, about fifteen miles back of Bridgeport, in a region even
now in almost its primitive simplicity and pastoral beauty. It has been
left quiet and untouched between the iron ways of Housatonic and
Danbury, equidistant from both, and sufficiently far away from either
to be free from the impulse and incentive of that practical missionary
of modern progress, the railroad.

City born, but partly country bred, I understand well the sentiment of
the New Englander for his old home, and often live over again the days
in those familiar hills and valleys of Fairfield. I would revel in
enjoyment if it were possible for me to revisit them. It was there my
eyes were open to the delights of a "town muster," and my steps taught
rhythm by fife and drum.

In occasional musings I hear the old music as it used to reach me in
waves of sound, now faint, then loud, as the variable wind would waft
it, or as it escaped from obstructing hills. And I see the tall white
and red plume of the commandant, undulating with his stride, and
dipping salutes to the wind. Reader, if you have never realized the
excitement of a "general training day" in the country, you have missed
the freshest and most genuine pleasure of youth.

In the fall of 1842 occurred the Croton water celebration, a real city
holiday. The procession was long, interesting, and gorgeous, for all of
it except the military portion was profusely decorated with autumn
flowers, odorless but beautiful, rich in color and variety. It might
properly have been called the feast of dahlias.

The old fire department was out in all its glory, and richly arrayed.
It always took part in metropolitan rejoicings, heartily and
generously. But my interest was centred in the soldiers; fired then by
a longing to shoulder a musket. I waited impatiently for the freedom of
manhood and a fitting opportunity. When both came I enlisted in a city
regiment, and continued the connection till after the close of the late
civil war.

Twenty years of service with musket and sabre failed to dull my
enthusiasm. I left it, warned by the heaviness of approaching age and
the demands of business, convinced of the propriety, the usefulness,
and the value of a well regulated militia force.

Aware of how much has been said and written against such service, and
of the misapprehension of those who had never studied its organization,
its possibilities, and necessity, I propose to draw upon the practical
experience of the past twenty-five years for the purpose of correcting
wrong views without and suggesting new measures within. The service has
been charged with costliness, uselessness, and pretentious display;
with vain ambition, absence of organic purpose, and with being inimical
to the morality of the individual member. All the charges have some
foundation for their utterance, though the evils referred to are not
the legitimate results of the organization, but rather the baleful
fruit of irresponsible and ignorant commissions. The service is really
worthy of conscientious labor and the support of the people.

In the present relations of government and society, a disciplined
militia force is an essential part of the body politic, and an organism
with vitality if properly administered. The central idea of the
organization is a military body, directly from the people, for the
conservation of governmental integrity and a protection to the State.
Its collateral uses are an initial school for soldierly training, and
in cities especially a supplementary and occasional aid to the police
forces. In a general way the central idea is accepted, but in
particulars is not carried out in equity between governments and the
people. The theory is that the people are the State, and therefore must
provide their own protection, but under proper authority. The authority
exacts the service, at a great cost to the State, but denies reasonable
compensation and encouragement to the individual member; therefore the
people are not in sympathy with the organization. The service is
brought in conflict with the people, in fact with itself, and the
anomaly is presented of an organism in internal opposition. It is the
duty of legislation and constituted authority to harmonize such an
unnatural condition and change indifference into interest, ignorant
neglect into intelligent support. Only in times of strife, like our
late civil conflict, or the wars of 1812 and 1776, does the service
rise to the dignity of an establishment and a recognized power. In
times of peace it is permitted to exist, mainly in skeleton condition,
without organic discipline, because the people have a false idea of its
use and value. State military departments are not administered with
intelligence, and military codes are subject to yearly legislative
amendments without understanding; conditions of enlistment are altered,
generally to the injury of the enlisted soldier, while recruiting for
the uniformed corps languishes from lack of encouragement.

It is interesting to follow some of the changes of the New York State
code and their inconsistent applications. For instance, when the law
allowing relief from jury duty and the partial remission of assessment,
to continue during life, was amended to cover terms of enlistment only,
the Adjutant General of the State decided the amendments applied to
prior enlistments, thereby breaking a contract between the State and
enlisted men under the old law. But when the term of service was
reduced from seven to five years, enlistments under the former law were
held for the longer term. It is in such a spirit that all amendments
are interpreted in favor of the State and against the individual.
Fortunately the former provision has been reconsidered, and in a spirit
of compromise relief from jury duty is reinstated in the code for life,
but the abatement of assessments covers only terms of service. The
State considers exemption from jury duty for life a relief, the nominal
abatement of assessments during the service a benefit, and both
together ample compensation to the militiamen. They would be in part,
if immediately available, but the compensation is questionable, as the
duty is generally performed too early in life for those legislative
provisions to be of practical application. The abatement of an
assessment is of little benefit to those who, probably, are without
property till after their terms of service are completed, and the
measure fails by limitation. Fortunately the relief from jury duty is a
life provision, for it generally comes later in life, and after the
militia service is performed. One does not, however, repay the cost of
uniforms and other necessary expenses, nor the other compensate for the
time which the service requires.

The New York State code says: "All able-bodied male citizens, between
the ages of eighteen and forty-five, are subject to military duty," but
also says that minors must obtain the written consent of parents or
guardians to legalize an enlistment in a uniformed corps. Why such an
incongruous distinction between uniformed corps and ununiformed
militia? What right has the code to exact military service from a
person who is condemned by the law as incompetent for citizenship, and
is legally recognized by the law only as a child? And why exact
military service from those who are in the decline of life? There are
many who are physically able to do the duty under the age of twenty-one
and over the age of forty, but they should be regarded as exceptional.
Such service should be voluntary by the individual and optional with
the State.

Spiritual, natural, and physical laws have stamped twenty-one the
minimum age of manhood, and forty the culmination. Why should military
law assume the power to control more?

The young absorb the elements of the future, the old dispose of them;
within these life lines is practical manhood.

Patriotism enthusiastic becomes patriotism triumphant; during its
passage the sentiment hardens into use.

Fault has been found by tax-payers with State and city governments for
maintaining militia forces at such an expense. The censure is justified
by the yearly exhibit of military expenditures, which is due in part to
the unnecessary maintenance of skeleton regiments and battalions.

The prejudices of the people against soldiers in time of peace will
never be overcome till they are educated to the necessity of a military
establishment by intelligent administration of its affairs, proper
information, greater proficiency, and a more decided application of its
use. Satisfy the people of the necessity of the service, enlist their
pride in its support by its efficiency, and its maintenance may be
secured without opposition. People never grumble when they can see
their money's worth.

If States have treated their militia forces as an inferior part of
themselves, if military authorities have acted arbitrarily and
ungenerously, militiamen themselves are not blameless. They have
frittered away their opportunities, and belittled their profession, by
vain-glory and personal ambition, and invited censure by inefficient
service. Fortunately there are men and officers, companies and
regiments, who, recognizing their mission, have conscientiously
performed their duty and redeemed the service from greater obloquy.
Their work has acted like leaven to the whole body. All honor to them
for their intelligence, honest pride, and patriotic labor.

The "uniformed militia" system has a foundation of inherent strength
capable of being built upon and extended to a perfectness not at
present thought capable of. With its present incompleteness, its degree
of usefulness is positive, and even under all the adverse circumstances
referred to the condition of ably administered battalions bears upon
the side of success and prosperity. Singular as it may seem, part of
its weakness is from its own elements of apparent strength.

Recruits enlist with a very inadequate idea of its requirements. Many
go through their term of service, sometimes pleased, oftener bored, but
always with a sense of personal importance, and take their discharge
with feelings of relief.

Some members are guilty of license when in uniform that they would not
indulge in as citizens. Officers without capacity accept commissions
and occasionally intrigue for command, from ambition and vanity,
without a sense of their responsibility or a proper knowledge of their
duties. There are also elements of disorder within the lines of duty
which are hard to bear and difficult to control, because they arise
from personal animosities. The judgment of an officer is warped to his
hurt by his selfishness, wounded pride, and ambition, who will hold a
commission to the injury of his company or battalion, even with the
support of part of his command.

Is it to be wondered at that an organization with such elements of
disorder in it should be regarded with disfavor by those ignorant of
its trials, its duties, and its aims? And is it not an argument in its
favor that its discipline is able to control and surmount such
demoralizing tendencies?

It is not pleasant to deprecate a continuation of long services, but
under certain circumstances it may result in injury to a corps.
Officers of merit and distinction, with the personal veneration of
their men, have been known to outlive their usefulness by retention of
command after the freshness, activity, and judgment of their earlier
manhood have departed. The idiosyncrasies of age and confirmed habits
of authority do not readily accept advanced ideas, improvements in
methods, and the inevitable changes of time.

Recruiting for uniformed corps has been and is a process without a
system--a method without a principle; it is simply a necessity. As
conducted at present it is derogatory to the dignity of the service,
and in its practice humiliating and unpleasant to its members. The code
really offers no inducement to militiamen.

Its failure to provide proper encouragement for recruiting is a defect
which should have the serious consideration of military authorities and
legislators at the earliest opportunity. It is a matter of vital
importance to the service, and forces itself upon the attention of all
commandants to their great concern.

It seems as though battalions are expected to perpetuate themselves,
and they have to be, by force of circumstances, recruiting
organizations for the State.

Personal application and argument have to take the place of official
encouragement, and a service whose necessity, propriety, and benefits
should be patent to all is left in a measure to factitious
circumstances for a support. It is not, however, the sole purpose of
this paper to cavil at authority, to criticise military codes, or
condemn existing methods, but rather to show how the uniformed militia
forces can be better rewarded by proper recognition and acknowledgment,
and made more honorable by a higher standard of service. The
indifference of the world and the early hostility of the church to
amusements were fatal blunders which both have ascertained, and are now
atoning for generously, but too thoughtlessly. Opposition has become
permission without proper direction, and indiscriminate pleasure
anticipates regulated and orderly recreation. This is a question of as
great importance to the State as to society, of as vital interest to
the church, as of welfare to the individual. Every care should be taken
to recognize as orderly only those pleasures which have their
foundation in use.

In every community, between the extremes of the artisan, who is almost
precluded from the continuous and regular duties of a militiaman, by
his occupation and necessities, and the student, who is generally
unfitted for them by his intellectual preoccupation, is a numerous
class, for whom the service is eminently adapted. Their inclination for
occasional relief from business and clerical labors is a proper desire,
and should not be permitted to degenerate into undisciplined sport for
want of a legitimate pastime.

The militia service, on a peace footing, is really a recreation, with
an object and an organization of the most singular merit. Its system of
physical training is superior to the abnormal development of the
gymnasium, the fitful excitement of the ball-field, the constrained
pull and single purpose of the oar, and the violent termination of a
"shell" race. Its normal object, military training, is exacting,
methodical, and thorough, and moral force of character, self-reliance,
discipline of the mind, and knowledge of human nature are collateral
results of company and battalion associations. There is an element of
possible strength to the militia forces of the several States, which
may have been thought of, but never utilized. I refer to the youth in
every community who are old enough to be free from the constant
necessity of elementary study and relieved from the absorbing
application of higher educational branches, who are yet at school, but
with sufficient leisure to do well or ill--that age between the
watchful eye of maternal care and later parental authority: inchoate
manhood, rough, awkward, and susceptible; wild with their first taste
of liberty; full of anticipation and courageous in the future. The
struggle between them and society for a place is long and doubtful. The
State should adopt and help them by recognizing a cadet system to be
attached to the uniformed corps, whose officers could inaugurate no
wiser, more charitable, or more popular measure than to accept their
services. The measure of good to the boy and the measure of benefit to
the service would be reciprocal and incalculable. The cadet would take
to the "school of the soldier" with enthusiasm. It would give him
something proper to do, something right to think of; it would perfect
his growing physique with grace, and engraft on his system the elements
of manhood.

To all graduating classes in school, a membership in a cadet corps
would be an incentive, and school commissioners could make such
membership a reward of merit.

It would relieve the service from the present unpleasant feature of
recruiting by keeping behind it a subordinate corps of well-drilled
young soldiers from which its ranks could be kept full. It would
relieve officers from the drudgery of squad-drills, and give the
service the full time of their men instead of wasting six, perhaps
more, months in the present recruit classes. It would also perfect the
enlisted men and subordinate officers for their prospective duties by
detailing them for detached service in cadet corps, in grades next
higher than their own. Such detached service would be an honor and a
prime incentive for all subordinate officers.

The uniformed militia system has been the growth of years upon the
single theory of a military power direct from the people. Whatever
merit has been developed in its practice is intrinsic, and has been
brought to the surface by force of circumstances rather than by
encouragement or appreciation. Upon the minimum basis of inherent value
can be constructed a maximum power of State economy, by honoring the
service with an establishment of intelligence and efficiency. Make the
uniformed corps to the State and to the militia forces, in a
comparative, what the West Point Academy is to the United States and to
the regular army in a superlative degree.

I have treated militia service thus far as a recreation, because the
members of uniformed corps have made it so. I will now refer to it as a
duty, and endeavor to show how the service can be adjusted to the
greater benefit of the State and be made of greater use to the people.

Declare all male citizens between the ages of twenty-one and forty
subject to military duty as ununiformed militia, to be enrolled and
brigaded, but kept immobile except for emergencies, to be officered
when necessary from the subordinate officers of the uniformed corps.

The object of enrollment is twofold: to ascertain the available force
of the State, and for the purpose of special taxation, to reimburse the
State for military expenditures.

Eliminate all extrinsic material from the present force; disband
skeleton battalions; make supernumerary their officers; reduce the
force to the efficient corps now existing, or which may have to be
organized, in place of ineffective ones, for the purpose of creating
normal schools for military instruction. Never call out an ununiformed
battalion in time of peace, or put a uniformed corps in the field in
time of war; consider them component and interchangeable parts of one
system. In active service let the former be the lungs and the latter
the heart of a vital organism.

In no instance should a normal battalion be disbanded for the purpose
of officering ununiformed corps, but should be kept intact with its
field officers and company commandants--a kind of Gatling educational
battery for the propulsion of brains. It would be just as sensible to
put the West Point cadets in the field as a fighting corps as to put
some of our best regiments. Their heads are worth more to the country
than their bodies.

I have suggested special taxation of the enrolled militia to reimburse
the State for its military expenditures. It can probably be collected
more expeditiously and with less expense through a special department
of the Commissioner of Jurors than through any other channel. It is now
necessary for the Commissioner to keep lists of jurors and register all
exempts, and the plan would certainly aid him in those duties of his
department by giving him a fuller and more correct canvass of citizens.

The encouragement needed to induce men and officers to spend their
leisure hours for ten years in these normal battalions is to void the
present remission of assessment, as an inequitable provision--reimburse
them for clothing, relieve them from jury duty for life, and exempt
them from any possible future draft. With their discharges give the men
sergeants' warrants, non-commissioned officers lieutenants'
commissions, and advance officers' commissions one grade, waiting
papers for possible future services. Furnish comfortable and
substantial drill-rooms and armories, and reimburse battalions for
proper musical expenditures.

The State should hold itself responsible to the general Government for
its officers who may be touched by a draft and furnish the necessary
substitutes as compensation in part for their former and prospective
services.

Experience furnishes proof that well made, good-fitting clothing,
stylish, but not extravagant, is much better and cheaper than the
low-priced, ugly State uniforms, ground out by contract, allotted by
sizes, and fitting by chance. There is no economy in the joint
ownership of a uniform; the nominal owner is niggardly in purchase and
the wearer careless in use. Let the uniform be chosen by corps, made in
accordance with regimental bills of dress, by individual measure, and
let the State reimburse the corps by a liberal commutation. To
reimburse battalions for their music may seem a costly item--it
certainly is a great expense to the present uniformed corps--but as the
project is based upon the idea of a self-supporting establishment,
there is no injury to the State; a nominal tax paid by the enrolled
ununiformed militia should be sufficient to pay the entire expenditures
of the State military department.

To honor discharged men and officers with a kind of brevet commission
would be an incentive for ability and efficiency, and would be of
sufficient value to invite the best class of young men to the ranks.
Whatever may be questionable in the action of Congress for reducing the
force of the regular army, there can be none in the policy of the State
for reducing its force to the lowest possible point. Every man should
be released from the ranks that can be, both in justice to himself and
for general industrial effect. The cost of company drills, regimental
brigade and division parades in time and money is immense, and out of
all proportion to the doubtful value of such services, constituted as
the force is. But a compact, thoroughly disciplined, and perfectly
drilled force, of the highest obtainable military character, is
necessary and should be well maintained for contingent purposes.

I have thrown out these views as applicable to the city and State of
New York; but the ideas can be applied to the military department of
every State, with such modifications as may be found necessary.

It would be expensive, impolitic, and unnecessary for the general
Government to keep a regular army, through years of peace, of
sufficient numerical force to meet successfully internal outbreaks or
external pressure. The militia force should be trained to be the
supporting power of the army for such contingencies. The doubts and
fears and awful suspense of the people during the early days of the
late rebellion would have been greatly lessened, perhaps quite avoided,
had the regular and militia forces been in effective readiness for the
struggle, and met the necessity of the hour. The uniformed corps could
have been ordered to the front for temporary defence, as some were, and
time given for mobilizing the ununiformed troops.

As it was all was confusion, distrust, and almost despair; only for the
instinctive loyalty and inherent courage of the people, all would have
been lost. The men of the first levy, the rank and file, were
magnificent in material, confident in ability, honest in purpose, crude
in development, difficult to discipline--it was hard for them to come
under military law. Many of their officers were adventurers without
experience or qualifications for command. They obtained commissions
through personal influence rather than by merit. Militia officers, with
all their imperfections, would have been of much greater service.

Is the affair of Bull Run to be wondered at, with such material, and in
the light of later education? It was the incisive action of the war; it
punctured the conceit of both armies.

C. H. MEDAY.




THE YOSEMITE HERMIT.


The shadows were lying tolerably long on the green hillsides when the
lumbering yellow stage, somewhat the worse for wear, drawn by four
lean, dusty horses, also somewhat the worse for wear, drew up with a
grand flourish in front of the Grand Hotel, Mariposa.

It was a long, low building, with a broad piazza in front and along one
side; the façade was painted a dingy yellow to match the stage
apparently, but the rest of the edifice had been neglected, and the
superabundant rain and superabundant sunshine of Mariposa had left
marks of their handiwork on the bare boards.

The loungers rushed out of the bar-room as soon as the wheels were
heard, and stood grouped about the broad piazza exchanging jokes with
the driver, who was known as Scotty, and asking the news from Hornitos
and other way places.

Meanwhile the "Doctor," a stout, ruddy-complexioned man, whose
appearance spoke well for his profession, descended from his seat on
the box, and, opening the stage door with an air of pride and
satisfaction, he assisted the one lady passenger to alight with a grace
which would have done credit to Chesterfield. The loungers on the
piazza started and drew back. All ceased their gibes with Scotty, and
two or three removed their hats. She was not only a woman, but a very
pretty woman--she was even beautiful.

She thanked the Doctor with a pretty grace, and turned her clear, hazel
eyes upon the admiring group, scanning each face eagerly and wistfully.
The Doctor said, "Allow me," and was about to escort her into the small
den at one side known as the "Ladies' parlor," but she swept past him
and walked straight into the bar-room, the Doctor, the loafers, and
Scotty crowding in after her and regarding her movements with an
undisguised admiration, and as much reverential curiosity as though she
had been a visitant from another sphere.

The proprietor of the "Grand" was a podgy man, with an aggressively
bald head and scaley eyes like an alligator's--though for that matter I
may be libelling the alligator. His name was Sharpe, commonly corrupted
into "Cutey" by some mysterious process.

He was pouring whiskey from a bottle into a glass, preparatory to
serving himself, when the new comer walked--she walked like an
angel--straight up to him and said, "Is this the landlord?"

Cutey was so astonished by the apparition that he dropped the glass--he
called it a glass; it was in reality a stone-china cup about half an
inch thick--and wasted the whiskey; it was only by the greatest
presence of mind that he succeeded in saving the bottle.

"Ma-a-a'm?" he stammered, clutching at his bald head to see if there
was a hat there.

The woman repeated her question; the crowd by the doorway, headed by
the Doctor, strained their ears to listen. She had a low voice,
tolerably sweet. Such music had never before been heard within those
low walls, perhaps. They wished she would say more. Old "Punks"
muttered that she 'minded him of his Lyddy--"jest sech a voice!" which
remark brought down upon him much contumely afterward, and a threat
from the Doctor to "put daylight through him." After a helpless look
around him, Cutey admitted that he _was_ the landlord, with the air of
a cornered scoundrel confessing a crime.

"Then perhaps you can tell me what I wish to know," said the woman,
fixing her clear, sweet eyes upon him. "I want to find a man named
Wilmer--James Courtney Wilmer."

Cutey shook his head sorrowfully.

"Thar be so many names," said he: "skurce any man goes by his own name.
Be he livin' in Mariposa, ma'am?"

"I do not know," was the reply, with a suggestion of tears in the
voice, at which every heart in the crowd by the door was touched and
unhappy.

Punks nudged Scotty with his elbow.

"What's that fellow's name that wus partners with Circus Jack in the
Banderita?" he whispered.

Scotty rapped his forehead with his horny hand, and ran his fingers
into his bushy, tow-colored hair, with a clutch of desperation.

"Punks," he whispered, "I allers counted you a fool, but you ain't; you
air a shinin' light! His name _wus_ Jim Wilmer."

Then, coloring up to the roots of his hair, he advanced and said:

"If you please, ma'am."

The woman turned at this, meeting a whole battery of eyes without any
seeming consciousness of it.

"There wus a feller named Jim Wilmer here--wus partners in the
Banderita, with a feller named Circ--leastways, I don't know his name,
but we called him Circus Jack, ma'am."

The woman's face--her beautiful face--turned as white as the collar at
her throat; she leaned against the bar and tried to speak, but the
words died on her lips.

Finally, with an effort, she half whispered:

"Do you know where he is now?"

Then, as the men looked at each other, she cried in a clearer tone, "Is
he _dead_?"

"No, no, ma'am. He wus here, 'taint a month," said Scotty. "I think
he's off huntin' in the hills. I'll find Circus Jack, and bring him up
here. He'll be likely to know--him and Jim wus real good friends."

"Thank you," said the stranger softly, in a voice which smote Scotty's
heart exceedingly.

The Doctor, meanwhile, had gone for Mrs. Sharpe, who presently entered,
and invited the stranger to "hev a little tea."

She was a small fair woman, with a washed-out look, and a mouth not
innocent of _dipping_, but she looked and spoke kindly, and the
stranger was glad enough to answer, "Yes," and follow her into the
dining-room. The crowd fell back as she approached, but only enough to
give her room to pass. Some stealthily touched her dress as she swept
by them, and when she had disappeared, and the door had closed, forty
tongues were loosed at once, and a scene of excitement ensued only
equalled by the one which followed on the shooting of "the Judge" by
"Little Jack," over a game of poker, in that very bar-room of the Grand
Hotel.

"Mought I ax your name, ma'am?" inquired Mrs. Sharpe.

"Marian Kingsley," was the faint reply.

"Miss or Mrs., ma'am?" pursued Mrs. Sharpe, glancing at the shapely,
white, ringless hands.

The stranger gave a slight impatient twitch. "It doesn't matter," she
said. "Call me Marian. That will do as well as anything."

Mrs. Sharpe was a washed-out woman. Many of the natural and laudable
instincts remained, perhaps being fast colors; but a horror of the
class to which she now supposed Marian to belong was one which had
faded out of her nature. She gave a slightly supercilious look, which
fell upon the woman like moonlight on ice, and pursued her inquiries.

"Came from 'Frisco?"

"I came through there. I didn't see anything of the place."

"Whar _did_ yer come from?"

"Philadelphia." The tone was changed. She evidently felt the impalpable
rudeness of the faded woman, and knew how to resent it in the same way.
More conversation ensued, in the course of which Mrs. Sharpe discovered
that Marian had a little money--enough to pay her board for a few
months--and that she had come there to find "James Courtney Wilmer."

Mrs. Sharpe had information to give as well as to take, for she knew
something of Jim.

"_We_ called him _Jim_," she said, a little scornfully. "He didn't git
no 'Courting' from _we_."

Poor Marian gave a faint smile. "There might be other James Wilmers,"
she said. "I wanted to be sure."

Mrs. Sharpe didn't think this could be the one.

"He's a rough, ragged creeter," she said, "and 's had the snakes fur
weeks at a time."

Marian shrank and cowered at this, with a pitiful look of pain on her
beautiful face.

"Hed money left him?" asked Mrs. Sharpe.

Marian nodded.

"'Twon't do him no good. Soon as he hearns of it, he'll drink himself
into snakes. Allers did when they struck a good lead on the Banderita.
Circus Jack, he loses all hisn's at poker; so thar they go."

In the course of an hour Circus Jack, scrubbed and "fixed up" to a
degree which made him almost unrecognizable by his comrades, appeared,
escorted by Scotty, also prepared by a choice toilet to enter the
presence of "the ladies."

"'Scuse my not comin' afore," said Scotty. "Hosses must be 'tended to,
and them of mine wus about dead beat."

Marian smiled graciously, if absently, and turned her clear, hazel eyes
to Circus Jack, who, with many excuses, circumlocutions, and profane
epithets, most of which he apologized for instantly, and some of which
he was evidently unconscious of, gave her all the information in his
power in regard to the man she had come to find.

No one in Mariposa knew him better. As "Jim" he was almost an integral
part of the city of "Butterflies." The butterflies, by the by, for
which the town is named, are not those which soar in the air, but
"Mariposas," fastened by long, tough filaments to the ground.

Many a night had Jim Wilmer crushed his swollen face into them, and
slept a drunken sleep with their soft wings folded sorrowfully above
him.

There was something of a mystery hung about him, which the "boys" had
never been able to fathom. Some said that he belonged to a wealthy and
aristocratic family, and had left home and become a wanderer and an
outcast, because some beautiful woman had jilted him; others said that
he had had a wife and children, that he had broken his wedded faith and
his wife's heart at the same time, and that a grim phantom followed him
wherever he went, and gave him no peace. Others told yet another story:
that he had been engaged to a beautiful girl, and had loved her and
trusted her above all telling; that his wedding day was near, when he
had stumbled upon some miserable secret, which was dead and buried, but
could not rest in its grave; that there was no room left for doubt,
which is sometimes blessed, and he had fled without a word;
disappeared, and left to her own wretched heart the task of telling her
the reason why.

Circus Jack did not tell Marian these stories, though he had heard them
all; indeed, they had all been retold and discussed in the bar-room,
not half an hour since. An average woman would have repeated them to
her, and thus tempted her to reveal the truth; but a chivalrous heart
beat under Jack's flannel shirt, and he could no more bear to hurt her
than he could have crushed a little bird to death with his hand.

If any of the stories were true, and she yet loved poor Jim, he told
her enough to wring her heart and haunt her dreams for ever.

The winter that he spent in the hollow of a great pine tree, on the rim
of Yosemite valley, was perhaps his happiest and most peaceful. Every
Yosemite tourist stops to peep inside this tree, and to wonder if a man
really lived there. "It was comfortable enough," says the hale old
pioneer of the valley below. "He had plenty of room. We both slept in
it one night."

At which the tourist peeps in again, and wonders if the long-limbed
Texan was not a bit cramped by the footboard.

When Circus Jack told Marian the story it was fresher and less
wonderful than now.

"Was the snow very deep?" she said. "Was there no danger of his
freezing to death?"

"I never hearn much about it anyhow," said Circus Jack, "'cept thet he
lived thar alone cuttin' shingles. I 'spect the snow was 'bout four or
five foot deep up thar whar he lived. He's a close-mouthed one, I tell
yer. Never git nothin' outer him, an' when he's drunk he don't tell
nothin' whatsomd-ever!"

This, with a glance half pitying, half reassuring, as though he would
promise her that the secret, whatever it might be, was safe.

One comforting doubt beat at the woman's heart all the while that Jack
was talking. "Perhaps this man was not the one!"

She mentioned this at length, and asked Jack what his quandom "partner"
was like.

"He was a slight-built feller, rayther light-complected," was the
reply. "An' han'some! I called him han'some, didn't you, Scotty?"

Scotty, thus appealed to, gave a profane assent. He had scarcely moved
a muscle since he sat down, with his eyes fixed on Marian's fair,
ever-changing face. Mrs. Sharpe, after a vain attempt to engage him in
conversation, had quietly withdrawn, having no relish for being one of
a quartette where two did all the talking.

"Was he--an--educated man?" inquired Marian hesitatingly, feeling in a
vague way that the question might offend Jack.

"Yes, he war," replied that worthy in a contemplative tone. "When he
war drunk I hev hearn him talkin' a lot of stuff like po'try. Thar's a
pile of books in my cabin now that he used ter read consid'able. _I_
can't make head nor tail to 'em. P'r'aps you might."

"I would like to see them," said Marian eagerly.

Jack nodded, and a pause ensued. At length Scotty remarked that the
"old man," meaning Cutey, was "reyther late in lightin' up," at which
Jack arose and bade the stranger "good night."

Marian put out her hand, saying, "We will be good friends, I hope."

Circus Jack took it by the finger tips cautiously, careful not to hurt
it with his horny fingers.

"I'll do ary thing in the world fur yer, madam," he replied earnestly
and ingenuously.

"There was one thing I wished to ask," she said, "though it may be a
foolish question. Did you ever notice any--ring--that he wore
or--carried?"

"They _wus_ a ring, but I'm beat ef I kin tell what kind. Once when Jim
was turrible sick, an' his hand swelled up, I wanted to file it off,
but he fought so I couldn't. He said when he got well thet it never had
ben off, nor never shouldn't be while he had life to fight."

"Can't you tell me what it was like?" she asked.

"I ain't no hand," said Circus Jack, rubbing his head. "I'd know it ef
I seed it, but----"

"Was it like this?" She drew a dainty purse from her pocket, and took
from its safest corner a plain, flat band of gold, with a small disk on
it, shaped like the half of a heart placed horizontally.

"Prezactly!" exclaimed Circus Jack with emphasis.

She opened her purse to put it back, but it fell from her hand,
scattering her little stock of money over the floor, and a moment
after, when Mrs. Sharpe came in, in response to frantic halloos from
Scotty, she found Marian in a dead faint upon the floor, with Scotty
and Circus Jack, with hands clasped behind them, kneeling on either
side of her like uncouth angels, while scattered coins and escaping
masses of golden-brown hair formed a halo about her head.

She was ashamed of and provoked at her weakness afterward; said she was
fatigued with her long and wearisome ride, and that she never fainted
before; but if she had been an accomplished diplomatist, she could have
planned nothing better for her popularity.

As for the faded-out woman, her opinion, which had been tottering under
a severe reproof from Cutey, now underwent a complete revolution.

"_Them_ kind never faints!" she said to herself dogmatically, as she
assisted Marian to her room and begged her to "take things easy like."
She patiently answered one hundred and seven inquiries that evening,
varying from, "How's the sick lady?" to, "Jim Wilmer's gal perking up a
little arter her faint?" and for the rest of Marian's stay in Mariposa
she proved that kindliness of heart had been one of the "fast colors."

It was but natural that Cutey should feel a friendly interest, since he
dealt out at least two hundred extra drinks, at highly remunerative
prices, on her account that evening; and moreover, the Doctor "tipped"
him handsomely for extra care and attention. In a week after her
arrival, Marian had learned all that anybody in Mariposa knew regarding
"Jim." She wore that curious ring upon her finger now. There were two
letters upon the disk, but no one ever had the hardihood to ask what
they were.

Punks, whose eyes were keen, and whose curiosity was keener, declared
that they were "i l," with a "little quirl-like" between.

Punks also knew--a fact which did credit to his powers and habits of
observation--that on the disk of the ring which Jim wore on his little
finger were the letters "Fa."

Punks desired to know what "Fail" spelled but "fail." He further
inquired "what they wanted to hev sech a doggoned mis'able word as thet
on a ring fur?"

"'T'orter be 'love' or sunthin'," he added critically.

It was only after much questioning in divers places, and the exercise
of a deal of patience and some finesse, that Marian learned the present
whereabouts of the half-crazed hermit "all unblessed." When last seen,
something less than a week before her arrival, he had been wandering
through the neighboring mountains, half-clothed in wretched rags,
living on berries and roots, alternately muttering and shrieking the
vagaries of his unhinged mind.

They were loth to tell her, even those who knew it. Their rude
externals seemed to have made their hearts softer. It hurt them to see
the pink color fade from her cheeks, and the shadow of sharp pain creep
over her beautiful face; so she had to learn the lesson of smiling when
her heart ached worst. The two Mexicans, cattle herders, who had seen
him, were eagerly questioned; but they could tell nothing that she did
not know, save that they were quite sure that it was Jim, and not some
other unfortunate, whom they had seen.

They gave a stupid assent when asked by Marian to secure him and bring
him into town the next time that they saw him; and a "Si, Señor,"
considerably less stupid in a subsequent private interview with Jack,
who promised them "heap money" for their labor.

Marian had the books which Jim had left in the cabin: commonplace Greek
and Latin books, which might have belonged to anybody, save that on one
fly leaf was written in a scrawling hand, "J. C. Wilmer," and this
yellow page, and this faded ink, she covered with her kisses and
baptized with her tears. And another weary week crept by.

The Doctor noticed with disapprobation strongly expressed how pale and
worn-looking the pretty woman grew. Not professionally; indeed, his
title was merely honorary, bestowed in recognition of his services in
prescribing the "Golden Anti-bilious Pills" for Bob Jinks, which, or
nature in spite of them, had effected a cure, and restored to bereft
Mariposa society an efficient and valuable member.

The Doctor's interest afforded considerable amusement to the habitués
of the "Grand" bar-room, and they fairly roared with sympathy when he
profanely expressed his sorrow to see her wasting her beauty in tears
over "another feller."

One Saturday night, two weeks and a day since Marian's arrival, the
whole population of the town were at the Grand, either drinking,
gambling, or purchasing provisions of Cutey's deputy, who presided over
the tin can department with activity and grace; and all, whatever their
occupation, were swearing vigorously and unceasingly.

Marian sat up stairs in her tiny room burning with feverish anxiety.
Her long years of home-waiting, the comfortless journey, even the first
week of uncertainty, had been easier to bear than this anxious waiting.
The Mexicans had not hesitated to say that he must be dead by this
time; but _that_ she did not believe; he might be starving, crazed,
nearly dead, but surely she might see him once more and hear him say
that he forgave her; perhaps even nurse him back to reason and health
and hope again.

The brawling and laughter down stairs made her shudder. "If I was only
a man!" she whispered fiercely, clenching her little hands. "Can I do
_nothing_ but sit here and wait? Oh, God, be merciful!" she cried.

Then suddenly a thought flashed into her mind. She did not stop to
think of it; she acted upon it.

The Doctor's partner, profoundly studying his cards, was somewhat
disconcerted to see the table kicked over, and the Doctor's "hand" on
the floor. Without a question, he put his hand back for his pistol,
when the sudden stillness in the room caught his attention, and all
that followed caused him to forget the affront.

In the centre of the room, her disordered hair flying about her face,
her clear eyes flashing with excitement, her cheeks flaming with color,
more beautiful than they had ever seen her look before, Marian stood
waiting for silence. Men crowded up to the doorways and filled the
windows, certain from the sudden quiet that "something was up."

"Won't you _help_ me?" she cried out. "What can _I_ do to find him? He
may be starving to death! He would not have left you to starve!
You"--she gasped and drew her breath hard--"you--whom he was good
to--you remember--a hundred things, but you forget him! and let
him--rave his life away--and starve to death--alone." She choked. She
could not speak another word! but she stood with her lips parted, her
eyes flashing, looking eagerly, almost angrily, from one face to
another.

Circus Jack bounded on to a table; it was rickety, and reeled with his
weight; but Punks and Bob Jinks steadied it; they were friends of
Jack's; besides, they had just won from him at poker, and felt very
friendly. "Fellers!" said Jack, "to-morrow's Sunday. I'm going out ter
hunt fer poor Jim, and ain't comin' back till I find him. Them as wants
ter 'comp'ny me kin call at my cabin to-night."

"I will go with you, Jack," said the Doctor impressively.

"Me, too, you bet!" cried Scotty.

"Count me in," growled a bass voice from the window.

"Me too," squeaked Punks. "All as'll go say, 'Ay!'"

And an "Ay!" came from those rough voices with such a ringing burst of
good will as must have startled the very birds asleep in the distant
trees.

Nay! some faint echo of it may have been heard at the very gates of
heaven itself. The tears rolled down Marian's cheeks. She tried to say,
"God bless you!" but the tears had the right of way, and the words
broke into something unintelligible.

A sudden shame came over them that they had not thought of this before.
Memories of homes, of mothers, of wives, came knocking at their hearts,
and would not be denied. The sleeves of rough and not over clean
flannel shirts were drawn across eyes that had scorned tears, through
sickness, discomfort, and disappointment.

Cutey came to the rescue.

"Gentlemen!" he said, waving his hand over the bar, "help yourselves.
My j'ints are stiff, and I can't go; but I'll treat the crowd. Free
drinks, gentlemen!"

And leaving his bar to the tender mercies of his thirsty friends, Cutey
offered his arm to Marian, and escorted her to her own door, where he
took leave of her with a low bow.

Then he went down stairs four steps at a time, lest his choice liquors
should be annihilated in his absence.

It was Monday noon when they returned. Marian sat at the window in the
easiest chair the house afforded, sickening with fever. She watched
them coming into town with a restless, helpless anxiety. She watched
them scatter to their cabins, and saw Circus Jack coming on toward the
hotel alone.

She buried her face in her hands. He had said that he would never come
back until he found him. Had they become discouraged, or----

She could not believe that they had found him. Her heart seemed to cry
out, "No! no!" Jack came up, with little Mrs. Sharpe at his heels.

"Be keerful!" said the faded woman. "She mighty poorly."

Jack came in as lightly as his heavy boots would allow.

"The boys said fur me ter tell yer they wus all dretful sorry fur yer.
We buried him jist whar we found him. He'd a ben dead nigh on to a
couple of weeks, I reckon. Don't yer look so, lady. Poor Jim! he warn't
never happy, even when he was drunk. He's better off up thar. We flung
a few stones together to mark the place, and I'll guide you and Mrs.
Sharpe thar any time."

Then, lowering his voice to a whisper, he added tenderly, "And I tuk
the ring offen his finger. He couldn't fight fur it now; an I thought
as mebby you'd like it."

He took it from the corner of his handkerchief; she held up her finger
for it, and he slipped it on. Then he saw that the letters spelled
"Faith." "Thet Punks!" he thought to himself contemptuously.

She looked up into his face with a stony smile--no tears now.

"Thank you," she said.

Four weeks afterward the Doctor lifted Marian into the stage. She was
strong enough for her journey now, she said. Two days before she had
visited the lonely cairn. It was a tiresome horseback ride too. She
seemed to be getting well very fast. The Doctor told her so.

"People never die when they wish to," she answered sadly.

Circus Jack came to the stage-door to bid her "Good-by."

"What can I do for you to thank you?" she asked earnestly.

Jack hesitated.

"Ef you wouldn't mind, ma'am," he said, "I'd like--to--kiss your hand.
I've got a dear old mother home--ef you wouldn't mind!"

Without a blush or a change of countenance she put her arm around his
neck and kissed his lips.

"Good-by, dear old fellow," she said.

Then Scotty cracked his whip, the crowd on the piazza raised their
hats--even the poor, chagrined Doctor--a subdued cheer was given, and
the lumbering stage disappeared in a cloud of dust, the nodding
mariposas on the hillside looking curiously at it as it went by.

CLARA G. DOLLIVER.




THE PUNISHED.


    Not they who know the awful gibbet's anguish,
      Not they who, while sad years go by them, in
    The sunless cells of lonely prisons languish,
      Do suffer fullest penalty for sin.

    'Tis they who walk the highways unsuspected,
      Yet with grim fear for ever at their side,
    Who clasp the corpse of some sin undetected,
      A corpse no grave or coffin lid can hide.

    'Tis they who are in their own chambers haunted
      By thoughts that like unwelcome guests intrude,
    And sit down uninvited and unwanted,
      And make a nightmare of the solitude.

ELLA WHEELER.




ALFRED DE MUSSET.


It had been known for some time that M. Paul de Musset was preparing a
biography of his illustrious brother, and the knowledge had been
grateful to Alfred de Musset's many lovers; for the author of "Rolla"
and the "Lettre à Lamartine" has lovers. The book has at last
appeared--more than twenty years after the death of its hero.[1] It is
probably not unfair to suppose that a motive for delay has been removed
by the recent death of Mme. Sand. M. Paul de Musset's volume proves, we
confess, rather disappointing. It is a careful and graceful, but at the
same time a very slight performance, such as was to be expected from
the author of "Lui et Elle" and of the indignant refutation (in the
biographical notice which accompanies the octavo edition of Alfred de
Musset's works) of M. Taine's statement that the poet was addicted to
walking about the streets late at night. As regards this latter point,
M. Paul de Musset hastened to declare that his brother had no such
habits--that his customs were those of a _gentilhomme_; by which the
biographer would seem to mean that when the poet went abroad after dark
it was in his own carriage, or at least in a hired cab, summoned from
the nearest stand. M. Paul de Musset is a devoted brother and an
agreeable writer; but he is not, from the critic's point of view, the
ideal biographer. This, however, is not seriously to be regretted, for
it is little to be desired that the ideal biography of Alfred de Musset
should be written, or that he should be delivered over, bound hand and
foot, to the critics. Those who really care for him would prefer to
judge him with all kinds of allowances and indulgences--sentimentally
and imaginatively. Between him and his readers it is a matter of
affection, or it is nothing at all; and there is something very happy,
therefore, in M. Paul de Musset's fond, fraternal reticency and
extenuation. He has related his brother's life as if it were a pretty
"story"; and indeed there is enough that was pretty in it to justify
him. We should decline to profit by any information that might be
offered us in regard to its prosaic, its possibly shabby side. To make
the story complete, however, there appears simultaneously with M. Paul
de Musset's volume a publication of a quite different sort--a memoir of
the poet by a clever German writer, Herr Paul Lindau.[2] Herr Lindau is
highly appreciative, but he is also critical, and he says a great many
things which M. Paul de Musset leaves unsaid. As becomes a German
biographer, he is very minute and exhaustive, and a stranger who should
desire a "general idea" of the poet would probably get more instruction
from his pages than from the French memoir. Their fault is indeed that
they are apparently addressed to persons whose mind is supposed to be a
blank with regard to the author of "Rolla." The exactions of bookmaking
alone can explain the long analyses and prose paraphrases of Alfred de
Musset's comedies and tales to which Herr Lindau treats his readers--the
dreariest kind of reading when an author is not in himself essentially
inaccessible. Either one has not read Alfred de Musset's comedies or
not felt the charm of them--in which case one will not be likely to
resort to Herr Lindau's memoirs--or one _has_ read them, in the
charming original, and can therefore dispense with an elaborate German
_résumé_.

      [1] "_Biographie de Alfred de Musset: sa Vie et ses Oeuvres._"
      Par PAUL DE MUSSET. Paris: Charpentier.

      [2] "_Alfred de Musset._" Von PAUL LINDAU. Berlin: Hofmann.

In saying just now that M. Paul de Musset's biography of his brother is
disappointing, we meant more particularly to express our regret that he
has given us no letters--or given us at least but two or three. It is
probable, however, that he had no more in his hands. Alfred de Musset
lived in a very compact circle; he spent his whole life in Paris, and
his friends lived in Paris near him. He was little separated from his
brother, who appears to have been his best friend (M. Paul de Musset
was six years Alfred's senior), and much of his life was passed under
the same roof with the other members of his family. Seeing his friends
constantly, he had no occasion to write to them; and as he saw little
of the world (in the larger sense of the phrase), he would have had
probably but little to write about. He made but one attempt at
travelling--his journey to Italy, at the age of twenty-three, with
George Sand. "He made no important journeys," says Herr Lindau, "and if
one excepts his love affairs, he really had no experiences." But his
love affairs, as a general thing, could not properly be talked about.
M. de Musset shows good taste in not pretending to narrate them. He
mentions two or three of the more important episodes of this class, and
with regard to the others he says that when he does not mention them
they may always be taken for granted. It is perhaps indeed in a limited
sense that Alfred de Musset's love affairs may be said to have been in
some cases more important than in others. It was his own philosophy
that in this matter one thing is about as good as another--

    Aimer est le grand point; qu'importe la maitresse?
    Qu'importe le flacon pourvu qu'on ait l'ivresse?

Putting aside the "ivresse," which was constant, Musset's life certainly
offers little material for narration. He wrote a few poems, tales, and
comedies, and that is all. He _did_ nothing, in the sterner sense of
the word. He was inactive, indolent, idle; his record has very few
dates. Two or three times the occasion to do something was offered him,
but he shook his head and let it pass. It was proposed to him to accept
a place as attaché to the French embassy at Madrid, a comfortable
salary being affixed to the post. But Musset found no inspiration in
the prospect. He had written about Spain in his earlier years--he had
sung in the most charming fashion about Juanas and Pepitas, about
señoras in mantillas stealing down palace staircases that look "blue"
in the starlight. But the desire to _see_ the picturesqueness that
he had fancied proved itself to have none of the force of a motive.
This is the fact in Musset's life which the writer of these lines finds
most regrettable--the fact of his contented smallness of horizon--the
fact that on his own line he should not have cared to go further. There
is something really exasperating in the sight of a picturesque poet
wantonly slighting an opportunity to go to Spain--the Spain of forty
years ago. It does violence even to that minimum of intellectual
eagerness which is the portion of a contemplative mind. It is annoying
to think that Alfred de Musset should have been meagrely contemplative.
This is the weakness that tells against him, more than the weakness of
what would be called his excesses. From the point of view of his own
peculiar genius, it was a good fortune for him to be susceptible and
tender, sensitive and passionate. The trouble was not that he was all
this, but that he was lax and soft; that he had too little energy and
curiosity. Shelley was at least equally tremulous and sensitive--equally
a victim of his impressions, and an echo, as it were, of his temperament.
But even Musset's fondest readers must feel that Shelley had within him
a firm, divinely-tempered spring against which his spirit might rebound
indefinitely. As regards intense sensibility--that fineness of feeling
which is the pleasure and pain of the poetic nature--M. Paul de Musset
tells two or three stories of his brother which remind one of the
anecdotes recorded of the author of the "Ode to the West Wind." "One of
the things which he loved best in the world was a certain exclamation
of Racine's 'Phædra,' which expresses by its _bizarrerie_ the trouble
of her sickened heart:

    Ariane, ma soeur, de quel amour blessée,
    Vous mourûtes aux bords où vous fûtes laissée!

When Rachel used to murmur forth this strange, unexpected plaint,
Alfred always took his head in his two hands and turned pale with
emotion."

The author describes the poet's early years, and gives several very
pretty anecdotes of his childhood. Alfred de Musset was born in 1810,
in the middle of old Paris, on a spot familiar to those many American
visitors who wander across the Seine, better and better pleased as they
go, to the museum of the Hôtel de Cluny. The house in which Musset's
parents lived was close to this beautiful monument--a happy birthplace
for a poet; but both the house and the street have now disappeared. M.
Paul de Musset does not relate that his brother began to versify in his
infancy; but Alfred was indeed hardly more than an infant when he
achieved his first success. The poems published under the title of
"Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie" were composed in his eighteenth and
nineteenth years; he had but just completed his nineteenth when the
volume into which they had been gathered was put forth. There are
certainly--if one considers the quality of the poems--few more striking
examples of literary precocity. The cases of Chatterton and Keats may
be equally remarkable, but they are not more so. These first boyish
verses of Musset have a vivacity, a brilliancy, a freedom of feeling
and of fancy which may well have charmed the little _cénacle_ to which
he read them aloud--the group of littérateurs and artists which
clustered about Victor Hugo, who, although at this time very young, was
already famous. M. Paul de Musset intimates that if his brother was at
this moment (and as we may suppose, indeed, always) one of the warmest
admirers of the great author of "Hernani" and those other splendid
productions which project their violet glow across the threshold of the
literary era of 1830, and if Victor Hugo gave kindly audience to "Don
Paez" and "Mardoche," this kindness declined in proportion as the fame
of the younger poet expanded. Alfred de Musset was certainly not
fortunate in his relations with his more distinguished contemporaries.
Victor Hugo "dropped" him; it would have been better for him if George
Sand had never taken him up; and Lamartine, to whom, in the shape of a
passionate epistle, he addressed the most beautiful of his own, and one
of the most beautiful of all poems, acknowledged the compliment only
many years after it was paid. The _cénacle_ was all for Spain, for
local color, for serenades, and daggers, and Gothic arches. It was
nothing if not audacious (it was in the van of the Romantic movement),
and it was partial to what is called in France the "humoristic" as well
as to the ferociously sentimental. Musset produced a certain "Ballade à
la Lune" which began--

    C'était dans la nuit brune
    Sur le clocher jauni,
          La lune
    Comme un point sur un i!

This assimilation of the moon suspended above a church spire to a dot
upon an _i_ became among the young Romanticists a sort of symbol of
what they should do and dare; just as in the opposite camp it became a
by-word of horror. But this was only playing at poetry, and in his next
things, produced in the following year or two, Musset struck a graver
and more resonant chord. The pieces published under the title of "Un
Spectacle dans un Fauteuil" have all the youthful grace and gayety of
those that preceded them; but they have beyond this a suggestion of the
quality which gives so high a value to the author's later and best
verses--the accent of genuine passion. It is hard to see what, just
yet, Alfred de Musset had to be passionate about; but passion, with a
poet, even when it is most genuine, is very much of an affair of the
imagination and the personal temperament (independent, we mean, of
strong provoking causes), and the sensibilities of this young man were
already exquisitely active. His poems found a great many admirers, and
these admirers were often women. Hence for the young poet, says M. Paul
de Musset, a great many romantic and "_Boccaciennes_" adventures. "On
several occasions I was awaked in the middle of the night to give my
opinion on some question of high prudence. All these little stories
having been confided to me under the seal of secrecy, I have been
obliged to forget them; but I may affirm that more than one of them
would have aroused the envy of Bassompierre and Lauzun. Women at that
time were not wholly absorbed in their care for luxury and dress. To
hope to please, young men had no need to be rich; and it served a
purpose to have at nineteen years of age the prestige of talent and
glory." This is very pretty, as well as very Gallic; but it is rather
vague, and we may without offence suspect it to be, to a certain
extent, but that conventional _coup de chapeau_ which every
self-respecting Frenchman renders to actual or potential, past,
present, or future gallantry. Doubtless, however, Musset was, in the
native phrase, _lancé_. He lived with his father and mother, his
brother and sister; his purse was empty; Seville and Granada were very
far away; and these "Andalusian passions," as M. Paul de Musset says,
were mere reveries and boyish visions. But they were the visions of a
boy who was all ready to compare reality with romance, and who, in
fact, very soon acceded to a proposal which appeared to offer a
peculiar combination of the two. It is noticeable, by the way, that
from our modest Anglo-Saxon point of view these same "Andalusian
passions," dealing chiefly with ladies tumbling about on disordered
couches, and pairs of lovers who take refuge from an exhausted
vocabulary in _biting_ each other, are an odd sort of thing for an
ingenuous lad, domiciled in the manner M. Paul de Musset describes, and
hardly old enough to have a latch-key, to lay on the family breakfast
table. But this was very characteristic all round. Musset was not a
didactic poet, and it was not for him to lose time by taking his first
steps as one. His business was to talk about love in unmistakable
terms, to proclaim its pleasures and pains with all possible eloquence;
and he would have been quite at a loss to understand why he should have
blushed or stammered in preluding to so beautiful a theme. Herr Lindau
thinks that even in the germ Musset's inspiration is already
vicious--that "his wonderful talent was almost simultaneously ripe and
corrupted." But Herr Lindau speaks from the modest Saxon point of view;
a point of view, however, from which, in such a matter, there is a
great deal to be said.

The great event in Alfred de Musset's life, most people would say, was
his journey to Italy with George Sand. This event has been
abundantly--superabundantly--described, and Herr Lindau, in the volume
before us, devotes a long chapter to it and lingers over it with
peculiar complacency. Our own sentiment would be that there is
something extremely displeasing in the publicity which has attached
itself to the episode; that there is indeed a sort of colossal
indecency in the way it has passed into the common fund of literary
gossip. It illustrates the base, the weak, the trivial side of all the
great things that were concerned in it--fame, genius, and love. Either
the Italian journey was in its results a very serious affair for the
remarkable couple who undertook it--in which case it should be left in
that quiet place in the history of the development of the individual
into which public intrusion can bring no light, but only darkness--or
else it was a piece of levity and conscious self-display; in which case
the attention of the public has been invited to it on false grounds. If
there ever was an affair it should be becoming to be silent about, it
was certainly this one; but neither the actors nor the spectators have
been of this way of thinking; one may almost say that there exists a
whole literature on the subject. To this literature Herr Lindau's
contribution is perhaps the most ingenious. He has extracted those
pages from Paul de Musset's novel of "Lui et Elle" which treat of the
climax of the relations of the hero and heroine, and he has printed the
names of George Sand and Alfred de Musset instead of the fictitious
names. The result is perhaps of a nature to refresh the jaded vision of
most lovers of scandal.

We must add that some of his judgments on the matter happen to have a
certain felicity. M. Paul de Musset has narrated the story more
briefly--having, indeed, by the publication of "Lui et Elle," earned
the right to be brief. He mentions two or three facts, however, the
promulgation of which he may have thought it proper, as we said before,
to postpone to Mme. Sand's death. One of them is sufficiently dramatic.
Musset had met George Sand in the summer of 1833, about the time of the
publication of "Rolla"--seeing her for the first time at a dinner given
to the contributors of the "Revue des Deux Mondes," at the Trois Frères
Provençaux. George Sand was the only woman present. Sainte-Beuve had
already endeavored to bring his two friends together, but the attempt
had failed, owing to George Sand's reluctance, founded on an impression
that she should not like the young poet. Alfred de Musset was
twenty-three years of age; George Sand, who had published "Indiana,"
"Valentine," and "Lélia," was close upon thirty. Alfred de Musset, as
the author of "Rolla," was a very extraordinary young man--quite the
young man of whom Heinrich Heine could say "he has a magnificent _past_
before him." Upon his introduction to George Sand, an intimacy speedily
followed--an intimacy commemorated by the lady in expansive notes to
Sainte-Beuve, whom she kept informed of its progress. When the winter
came the two intimates talked of leaving Paris together, and, as an
experiment, paid a visit to Fontainebleau. The experiment succeeded,
but this was not enough, and they formed the project of going to Italy.
To this project, as regarded her son, Mme. de Musset refused her
consent. (Alfred's father, we should say, had died before the
publication of "Rolla," leaving his children without appreciable
property, though during his lifetime, occupying a post in a government
office, he had been able to maintain them comfortably.) His mother's
opposition was so vehement that Alfred gave up the project, and
countermanded the preparations that had already been made for
departure.

"That evening toward nine o'clock," says M. Paul de Musset, "our mother
was alone with her daughter by the fireside, when she was informed that
a lady was waiting for her at the door in a hired carriage, and begged
urgently to speak with her. She went down accompanied by a servant. The
unknown lady named herself; she besought this deeply grieved mother to
confide her son to her, saying that she would have for him a maternal
affection and care. As promises did not avail, she went so far as sworn
vows. She used all her eloquence, and she must have had a great deal,
since her enterprise succeeded. In a moment of emotion the consent was
given." The author of "Lélia" and the author of "Rolla" started for
Italy together. M. Paul de Musset mentions that he accompanied them to
the mail coach "on a sad, misty evening, in the midst of circumstances
that boded ill." They spent the winter at Venice, and M. Paul de Musset
and his mother continued to hear regularly from Alfred. But toward the
middle of February his letters suddenly stopped, and for six weeks they
were without news. They were on the point of starting for Italy, to put
an end to their suspense, when they received a melancholy epistle
informing them that their son and brother was on his way home. He was
slowly recovering from an attack of brain fever, but as soon as he
should be able to drag himself along he would seek the refuge of the
paternal roof.

On the 10th of April he reappeared alone. A quarter of a century later,
and a short time after his death, Mme. Sand gave to the world, in the
guise of a novel, an account of the events which had occupied this
interval. The account was highly to her own advantage and much to the
discredit of her companion. Paul de Musset immediately retorted with a
little book which is decidedly poor as fiction, but tolerably good,
probably, as history. As a devoted brother, given all the
circumstances, it was perhaps the best thing he could do. It is
believed that his reply was more than, in the vulgar phrase, Mme. Sand
had bargained for; inasmuch as he made use of documents of whose
existence she had been ignorant. Alfred de Musset, suspecting that her
version of their relations would be given to the world, had, in the
last weeks of his life, dictated to his brother a detailed statement of
those incidents to which misrepresentation would chiefly address
itself, and this narrative Paul de Musset simply incorporated in his
novel. The gist of it is that the poet's companion took advantage of
his being seriously ill, in Venice, to be flagrantly unfaithful, and
that, discovering her infidelity, he relapsed into a brain fever which
threatened his life, and from which he rose only to make his way home
with broken wings and a bleeding heart.

Mme. Sand's version of the story is that his companion's infidelity was
a delusion of the fever itself, and that the charge was but the climax
of a series of intolerable affronts and general fantasticalities.

Fancy the great gossiping, vulgar-minded public deliberately invited to
ponder this delicate question! The public should never have been
appealed to; but once the appeal made, it administers perforce a rough
justice of its own. According to this rough justice, the case looks
badly for Musset's fellow traveller. She was six years older than he
(at that time of life a grave fact); she had drawn him away from his
mother, taken him in charge, assumed a responsibility. Their literary
physiognomies were before the world, and she was, on the face of the
matter, the riper, stronger, more reasonable nature. She had made great
pretensions to reason, and it is fair to say of Alfred de Musset that
he had made none whatever. What the public sees is that the latter,
unreasonable though he may have been, comes staggering home, alone and
forlorn, while his companion remains quietly at Venice and writes three
or four highly successful romances. Herr Lindau, who analyzes the
affair, comes to the same conclusion as the gross synthetic public; and
he qualifies certain sides of it in terms of which observant readers of
George Sand's writings will recognize the justice. It is very happy to
say "she was something of a Philistine;" that at the bottom of all
experience with her was the desire to turn it to some economical
account; and that she probably irritated her companion in a high degree
by talking too much about loving him as a mother and a sister. (This,
it will be remembered, is the basis of action with Thérèse, in "Elle et
Lui." She becomes the hero's mistress in order to retain him in the
filial relation, after the fashion of Rousseau's friend, Mme. de
Warens.) On the other hand, it seems hardly fair to make it one of
Musset's grievances that his comrade was industrious, thrifty, and
methodical; that she had, as the French say, _de l'ordre_; and that,
being charged with the maintenance of a family, she allowed nothing to
divert her from producing her daily stint of "copy."

It is easy to believe that Musset may have tried the patience of a
tranquil associate. George Sand's Jacques Laurent, in "Elle et Lui," is
a sufficiently vivid portrait of a highly endowed, but hopelessly
petulant, unreasonable, and dissipated egotist. We are far from
suspecting that the portrait is perfectly exact; no portrait by George
Sand is perfectly exact. Whatever point of view she takes, she always
abounds too much in her own sense. But it evidently has a tolerably
solid foundation in fact. Herr Lindau holds that Alfred de Musset's
life was literally blighted by the grief that he suffered in Italy, and
that the rest of his career was a long, erratic, unprofitable effort to
drown the recollection of it. Our own inclination would be to judge him
at once with more and with less indulgence. Whether deservedly or no,
there is no doubt that his suffering was great; his brother quotes a
passage from a document written five years after the event, in which
Alfred affirms that, on his return to Paris, he spent four months shut
up in his room in incessant tears--tears interrupted only by a
"mechanical" game of chess in the evening. But Musset, like all poets,
was essentially a creature of impression; as with all poets, his
sentimental faculty needed constantly to renew itself. He found his
account in sorrow, or at least in emotion, and we may say, in differing
from Herr Lindau, that he was not a man to let a grievance grow stale.
To feel permanently the need of smothering sorrow is in a certain sense
to be sobered by it. Musset was never sobered (a cynical commentator
would say he was never sober). Emotions bloomed again lightly and
brilliantly on the very stem on which others had withered. After the
catastrophe at times his imagination saved him, distinctly, from
permanent depression; and on a different line, this same imagination
helped him into dissipation.

M. Paul de Musset mentions that in 1837 his brother conceived a
"passion sérieuse" for an attractive young lady, and that the _liaison_
lasted two years--"two years during which there was never a quarrel, a
storm, a cooling-off; never a pretext for umbrage or jealousy. This is
why," he adds, "there is nothing to be told of them. Two years of love
without a cloud cannot be narrated." It is noticeable that this is the
third "passion sérieuse" that M. Paul de Musset alludes to since the
dolorous weeks which followed the return from Venice. Shortly after
this period another passion had come to the front; a passion which,
like that which led him to Italy, was destined to have a tragical
termination. This particular love affair is commemorated, in accents of
bitter melancholy, in the "Nuit de Décembre," just as the other, which
had found its catastrophe at Venice, figures, by clear allusion, in
"Nuit de Mai," published a few months before. It may provoke a
philosophic smile to learn, as we do from M. Paul de Musset--candid
biographer!--that the "motives" of these two poems are not identical,
as they have hitherto been assumed to be. It had never occurred to the
reader that one disillusionment could follow so fast upon the heels of
another. When we add that a short time afterward--as the duration of
great intimacies of the heart is measured--Alfred de Musset was ready
to embark upon "two years of love without a cloud" with still another
object--to say nothing of the brief interval containing a sentimental
episode of which our biographer gives the prettiest account--we seem to
be justified in thinking that, for a "blighted" life, that of Alfred de
Musset exhibited a certain germinal vivacity.

During his stay in Italy he had written nothing; but the five years
which followed his return are those of his most active and brilliant
productivity. The finest of his verses, the most charming of his tales,
the most original of his comedies, belong to this relatively busy
period. Everything that he wrote at this time has a depth and intensity
which distinguishes it from the jocosely sentimental productions of his
début, and from the somewhat mannered and vapidly elegant compositions
which he put forth, at wide intervals, during the last fifteen years of
his life. This was the period of Musset's intellectual virility. He was
very precocious, but he was at the same time, at first, very youthful.
On the other hand, his decline began early; in most of his later
things, especially in his verses (they become very few in number), the
inspiration visibly runs thin. "Mon verre n'est pas grand, mais je bois
dans mon verre," he had said, and both clauses of the sentence are
true. His glass held but a small quantity; the best of his
verses--those that one knows by heart and never wearies of
repeating--are very soon counted. We have named them when we have
mentioned "Rolla," the "Nuit de Mai," the "Nuit d'Aout" and the "Nuit
d'Octobre"; the "Lettre à Lamartine," and the "Stances à la Malibran."
These, however, are perfection; and if Musset had written nothing else,
he would have had a right to say that it was from his own glass that he
drank. The most beautiful of his comedies, "Il ne faut pas badiner avec
l'Amour," dates from 1834, and to the same year belongs the
"Lorenzaccio," the strongest, if not the most exquisite, of his
dramatic attempts. His two most agreeable _nouvelles_, "Emmeline" and
"Fréderic et Bernerette," appeared about the same time. But we have not
space to enumerate his productions in detail. During the fifteen last
years of his life, as we have said, they grew more and more rare; the
poet had, in a certain sense, out-lived himself. Of these last years
Herr Lindau gives a rather realistic and unflattered sketch; picturing
him especially as a figure publicly familiar to Parisian loungers, who
were used to observe him as "an unfortunate with an interesting face,
dressed with extreme care," with the look of youth and the lassitude of
age, seated in a corner of a café and gazing blankly over a marble
table on which "a half empty bottle of absinthe and a quite empty
glass" stood before him. M. Paul de Musset, in describing his brother's
later years, is mindful of the rule to glide, not to press; with a very
proper fraternal piety, he leaves a great many foibles and
transgressions in the shade. He mentions, however, Alfred's partiality
for spirits and stimulants--a taste which had defined itself in his
early years. Musset made an excessive use of liquor; in plain English,
he got drunk. Sainte-Beuve, somewhere in one of his merciless but
valuable foot-notes, alludes to the author of "Rolla" coming tipsy to
the sittings of the French Academy. Herr Lindau repeats a pun which was
current on such occasions. "Musset s'absente trop," said some one. "Il
s'absinthe trop," replied some one else. He had been elected to the
Academy in 1852. His speech on the occasion of his reception was a
disappointment to his auditors. Herr Lindau attributes the sterility of
his later years to indolence and perversity; and it is probable that
there is not a little justice in the charge. He was unable to force
himself; he belonged to the race of gifted people who must do as it
pleases them. When a literary task was proposed to him and he was not
in the humor for it, he was wont to declare that he was not a
maid-of-all-work, but an artist. He must write when the fancy took him;
the fancy took him, unfortunately, less and less frequently. With a
very uncertain income, and harassed constantly by his debts, he scorned
to cultivate a pecuniary inspiration. He died in the arms of his
brother in the spring of 1857.

He was beyond question one of the first poets of our day. If the poetic
force is measured by the _quality_ of the inspiration--by its purity,
intensity, and closely personal savor--Alfred de Musset's place is
surely very high. He was, so to speak, a thoroughly _personal_ poet.
He was not the poet of nature, of the universe, of reflection, of
morality, of history; he was the poet simply of a certain order of
personal emotions, and his charm is in the frankness and freedom, the
grace and harmony, with which he expressed these emotions. The affairs
of the heart--these were his province; in no other verses has the heart
spoken more characteristically. Herr Lindau says very justly that if he
was not the greatest poet among his contemporaries, he was at any rate
the most poetically constituted nature. A part of the rest of Herr
Lindau's judgment is worth quoting:

    He has remained the poet of youth. No one has sung so truthfully
    and touchingly its aspirations and its sensibilities, its doubts
    and its hopes. No one has comprehended and justified its follies
    and its amiable idiosyncrasies with a more poetic irony, with a
    deeper conviction. His joy was young, his sorrow was young, and
    young was his song. To youth he owes all happiness, and in youth he
    sang his brightest chants. But the weakness of youth was his fatal
    enemy, and with youth faded away his joy in existence and in
    creation.

This is exactly true. Half the beauty of Musset's writing is its simple
suggestion of youthfulness--of something fresh and fair, slim and
tremulous, with a tender epidermis. This quality, with some readers,
may seem to deprive him of a certain proper dignity; and it is very
true that he was not a Stoic. You may even call him unmanly. He cries
out when he is hurt; he resorts frequently to tears, and he talks much
about his tears. (We have seen that after his return from Venice they
formed, for four months, his principal occupation.) But his defence is
that if he does not bear things like a man, he at least, according to
Shakespeare's distinction, feels them like a man. What makes him
valuable is just this gift for the expression of that sort of emotion
which the conventions and proprieties of life, the dryness of ordinary
utterance, the stiffness of most imaginations, leave quite in the
vague, and yet which forms a part of human nature important enough to
have its exponent. If the presumption is against the dignity of deeply
poetic utterance, poor Musset is, in the vulgar phrase, nowhere--he is
a mere grotesque sound of lamentation. But if in judging him you don't
stint your sympathy, you will presently perceive him to have an
extraordinarily precious quality--a quality equally rare in literature
and in life. He has passion. There is in most poetry a great deal of
reflection, of wisdom, of grace, of art, of genius; but (especially in
English poetry) there is little of this peculiar property of Musset's.
When it occurs we feel it to be extremely valuable; it touches us
beyond anything else. It was the great gift of Byron, the quality by
which he will live in spite of those weaknesses and imperfections which
may be pointed out by the dozen. Alfred de Musset in this respect
resembled the poet whom he appears most to have admired--living at a
time when it had not begun to be the fashion to be ashamed to take
Byron seriously. Mr. Swinburne in one of his prose essays speaks of him
with violent scorn as Byron's "attendant dwarf," or something of that
sort. But this is to miss the case altogether. There is nothing
diminutive in generous admiration, and nothing dwarfish in being a
younger brother; Mr. Swinburne's charge is too coarse a way of stating
the position. Musset resembles Byron in the fact that the beauty of his
verse is somehow identical with the feeling of the writer--with his
immediate, sensible warmth--and not dependent upon that reflective
stage into which, to produce its great effects, most English poetic
expression instantly passes, and which seems to chill even while it
nobly beautifies. Musset is talked of nowadays in France very much as
Byron is talked of among ourselves; it is noticed that he often made
bad verse, and he is accused of having but half known his trade. This
sort of criticism is eminently just, and there is a weak side of the
author of "Rolla" which it is easy to attack.

Alfred de Musset, like Mr. Murray's fastidious correspondent, wrote
poetry as an amateur--wrote it, as they say in France, _en
gentilhomme_. It is the fashion, I believe, in some circles, to be on
one's guard against speaking foreign tongues too well (the precaution
is perhaps superfluous) lest a marked proficiency should expose one to
be taken for a teacher of languages. It was a feeling of this kind,
perhaps, that led Alfred de Musset to a certain affectation of
negligence and laxity; though he wrote for the magazines, he could
boast a long pedigree, and he had nothing in common with the natives of
Grub street. Since his death a new school of poets has sprung up--of
which, indeed, his contemporary, Théophile Gautier, may be regarded as
the founder. These gentlemen have taught French poetry a multitude of
paces of which so sober-footed a damsel was scarcely to have been
supposed capable; they have discovered a great many secrets which
Musset appears never to have suspected, or (if he did suspect them) to
have thought not worth finding out. They have sounded the depths of
versification, and beside their refined, consummate _facture_ Musset's
simple devices and good-natured prosody seem to belong to a primitive
stage of art. It is the difference between a clever performer on the
tight rope and a gentleman strolling along on soft turf with his hands
in his pockets. If people care supremely for form, Musset will always
but half satisfy them. It is very pretty, they will say; but it is
confoundedly unbusinesslike. His verse is not chiselled and pondered,
and in spite of an ineffable natural grace, it lacks the positive
qualities of cunning workmanship--those qualities which are found in
such high perfection in Théophile Gautier. To our own sense Musset's
exquisite feeling more than makes up for one-half the absence of
"chiselling," and the ineffable grace we spoke of just now makes up for
the other half. His sweetness of passion, of which the poets who have
succeeded him have so little, is a more precious property than their
superior science. His grace is often something divine; it is in his
grace that we must look for his style. Herr Lindau says that Heine
speaks of "truth, harmony, and grace" being his salient qualities. (By
the first, we take it, he meant what we have called Musset's passion.)
His harmony, from the first, was often admirable; the rhythm of even
some of his earliest verses makes them haunt the ear after one has
murmured them aloud.

    Ulric, des mers nul oeil n'a mesuré l'abîme,
    Ni les hérons plongeurs, ni les vieux matelots;
    Le soleil vient briser ses rayons sur leur cime,
    Comme un soldat vaincu brise ses javelots.

Musset's grace, in its suavity, freedom, and unaffectedness, is
altogether peculiar; though it must be said that it is only in the
poems of his middle period that it is at its best. His latest things
are, according to Sainte-Beuve, _califichets_--baubles; they are too
much in the rococo, the Dresden china style. But as we have said
before, with his youth Musset's inspiration failed him. It failed him
in his prose as well as in his verse. "Il faut qu'une Porte soit
ouverte ou fermée," one of the last of his dramatic proverbs, is very
charming, very perfect in its way; but compared with the tones of the
"Caprices de Marianne," the "Chandelier," "Fantasio," the sentiment is
thin and the style has rather a simper. It is what the French call
_marivaudage_. There can, however, be no better example of the
absoluteness of the poetic sentiment, of its justifying itself as it
goes, of lyrical expression being as it were not only a means, but an
end, than the irresistible beauty of such effusions as the "Lettre à
Lamartine" and the "Nuit d'Aout."

    Poëte, je t'écris pour te dire que j'aime!

--that is all, literally, that Musset has to say to the "amant
d'Elvire"; and it would be easy to make merry at the expense of so
simply candid a piece of "gush." But the confidence is made with a
transparent ardor, a sublime good faith, an audible, touching tremor of
voice, which, added to the enchanting harmony of the verse, make the
thing one of the most splendid poems of our day.

    Ce ne sont pas des chants, ce ne sont que des larmes,
    Et je ne te dirai que ce que Dieu m'a dit!

Musset has never risen higher. He has, in strictness, only one
idea--the idea that the passion of love and the act of loving are the
divinest things in a miserable world; that love has a thousand
disappointments, deceptions, and pangs, but that for its sake they are
all worth enduring, and that, as Tennyson has said, more curtly and
reservedly,

    'Tis better to have loved and lost
    Than never to have loved at all.

Sometimes he expresses this idea in the simple epicurean fashion, with
gayety and with a more or less cynical indifference to the moral side
of the divine passion. Then he is often pretty, picturesque, fanciful,
but he remains essentially light. At other times he feels its relation
to the other things that make up man's destiny, and the sense of
aspiration meets with the sense of enjoyment or of regret. Then he is
at his best; then he seems an image of universally sentient youth.

        Je ne puis; malgré moi, l'infini me tourmente.
    Je n'y saurais songer sans crainte et sans espoir;
    Et quoiqu'on en ait dit, ma raison s'épouvante
    De ne pas le comprendre, et pourtant de le voir.

While we may suspect that there is something a little over-colored in
M. Paul de Musset's account of the degree to which his brother was
haunted by the religious sentiment--by the impulse to grope for some
philosophy of life--we may also feel that with the poet's sense of the
"divineness" of love there went a conviction that ideal love implies a
divine object. This is the feeling expressed in the finest lines of the
"Lettre à Lamartine"--in lines at least which, if they are not the
finest, are fine enough to quote:

    Eh bien, bon ou mauvais, inflexible ou fragile,
    Humble ou gai, triste ou fier, mais toujours gémissant,
    Cet homme, tel qu'il est, cet être fait d'argile,
    Tu l'a vu, Lamartine, et son sang est ton sang.
    Son bouheur est le tien; sa douleur est la tienne;
    Et des maux qu'ici bas il lui faut endurer,
    Pas un qui ne te touche et qui ne t'appartienne;
    Puisque tu sais chanter, ami, tu sais pleurer.
    Dis-moi, qu'en penses-tu dans tes jours de tristesse?
    Que t'a dit le malheur quand tu l'as consulté?
    Trompé par tes amis, trahi par ta maitresse,
    Du ciel et de toi-même as-tu jamais douté?
    Non, Alphonse, jamais. La triste expérience
    Nous apporte la cendre et n'éteint pas le feu.
    Tu respectes le mal fait par la Providence;
    Tu le laisses passer et tu crois à ton Dieu.
    Quelqu'il soit c'est le mien; il n'est pas deux croyances.
    Jene sais pas son nom: j'ai regardé les cieux;
    Je sais qu'ils sont à lui, je sais qu'ils sont immenses,
    Et que l'immensité ne peut pas être à deux.
    J'ai connu, jeune encor, de sévères souffrances;
    J'ai vu verdir les bois et j'ai tenté d'aimer.
    Je sais ce que la terre engloutit d'esperances,
    Et pour y recueillir ce qu'il y faut semer.
    Mais ce que j'ai senti, ce que je veux t'écrire,
    C'est ce que m'ont appris les anges de douleur;
    Je le sais mieux encor et puis mieux te le dire,
    Car leur glaive, en entrant, l'a gravé dans mon coeur.

And the rest of the poem is a lyrical declaration of belief in
immortality.

We have called the "Lettre à Lamartine" Musset's highest flight, but
the "Nuit de Mai" is almost as fine a poem--full of imaginative
splendor and melancholy ecstasy. The series of the "Nuits" is
altogether superb; with an exception made, perhaps, for the "Nuit de
Décembre," which has a great deal of sombre beauty, but which is not,
like the others, in the form of a dialogue between the Muse and the
poet--the Muse striving to console the world-wounded bard for his
troubles, and urging him to take refuge in hope and production:

    Poëte, prends ton luth et me donne un baiser;
    La fleur de l'églantier sent ses bourgeons éclore.
    Le printemps naît ce soir; les vents vout s'embraser;
    Et la bergeronette, en attendant l'aurore,
    Au premier buissons vertes commence à se poser.
    Poëte, prends ton luth et me donne un baiser.

That is impregnated with the breath of a vernal night. The same poem
(the "Nuit de Mai") contains the famous passage about the pelican--the
passage beginning

    Les plus' désespérés sont les chants les plus beaux,
    Et j'en sais d'immortels qui sont de purs sanglots----

in which the legend of the pelican opening his breast to feed his
starving young is made an image of what the poet does to entertain his
readers:

    Poëte, c'est ainsi que font les grands poëtes.
    Ils laissent s'égayer ceux qui vivent un temps;
    Mais les festins humains qu'ils servent à leurs fêtes
    Ressemblent la plupart à ceux des pélicans.

This passage is perhaps--unless we except the opening verses of
"Rolla"--Musset's noblest piece of poetic writing. We must place next
to it--next to the three "Nuits"--the admirably passionate and genuine
"Stanzas to Malibran"--a beautiful characterization of the artistic
disinterestedness of the singer who suffered her genius to consume
her--who sang herself to death. The closing verses of the poem have a
wonderful purity; to rise so high, and yet in form, in accent, to
remain so still and temperate, belongs only to great poetry; as it
would be well to remind the critic who thinks the author of the
"Stanzas to Malibran" dwarfish. There is another sort of verse in which
violence of movement is more sensible than upwardness of direction.

So far in relation to Musset's lyric genius--though we have given but a
brief and inadequate account of it. He had besides a dramatic genius of
the highest beauty, to which we have left ourself space to devote only
a few words. It is true that the drama with Musset has a decidedly
lyrical element, and that though his persons always talk prose, they
are constantly saying things which would need very little help to fall
into the mould of a stanza or a sonnet. In his dramas as in his verses,
his weakness is that he is amateurish; they lack construction; their
merit is not in their plots, but in what, for want of a better term,
one may call their sentimental perfume. The earliest of them failed
upon the stage, and for many years it was supposed they could not be
played. Musset supposed so himself, and took no trouble to encourage
the experiment. He made no concessions to contemporary "realism." But
at last they were taken up--almost by accident--and it was found that,
in the hands of actors whose education enabled them to appreciate their
delicacy, this delicacy might become wonderfully effective. If feeling
is the great quality in his verses, the case is the same in his
strange, fantastic, exquisite little _comédies_; comedies in the
literal English sense of the word we can hardly call them, for they
have almost always a melancholy or a tragical termination. They are
thoroughly sentimental; he puts before us people who convince us that
they really _feel_; the drama is simply the history of their feeling.
In the emotions of Valentin and Perdican, of Fantasio and Fortunio, of
Célio and Octave, of Carmosine and Bettine, there is something
contagious, irresistibly touching. But the great charm is Musset's
dramatic world itself, the atmosphere in which his figures move, the
element they breathe.

It seems at first like a reckless thing to say, but we will risk it: in
the _quality_ of his fancy Musset always reminds us of Shakespeare. His
little dramas go on in the country of "As you Like It" and the
"Winter's Tale"; the author is at home there, like Shakespeare himself,
and he moves with something of the Shakespearian lightness and freedom.
His fancy loves to play with human life, and in the tiny mirror which
it holds up we find something of the depth and mystery of the object.
Musset's dialogue, in its mingled gayety and melancholy, its sweetness
and irony, its allusions to real things and its kinship with a romantic
world, has an altogether indefinable magic. To speak it on the stage is
almost to make it coarse. Once Musset attempted a larger theme than
usual; in "Lorenzaccio" he wrote an historical drama on the scale of
Shakespeare's histories; that is, with multitudes of figures, scenes,
incidents, and illustrations. He laid his hand on an admirable
subject--the story of a certain Lorenzino de' Medici, who played at
being a debauchee and a poltroon in order better to put the tyrant of
Florence (his own cousin) off his guard, and serve his country by
ridding her of him. The play shows an extraordinary abundance and
vivacity of imagination, and really, out of those same "histories" of
Shakespeare, it is hard to see where one should find an equal
spontaneity in dealing with the whole human furniture of a period.
Alfred de Musset, in "Lorenzaccio," has the air of being as ready to
handle a hundred figures as a dozen--of having imagination enough for
them all. The thing has the real creative _souffle_, and if it is not
the most perfect of his productions, it is probably the most vigorous.

We have not spoken of his tales; their merit is the same as of the
_comédies_--that of spontaneous feeling, and of putting people before
us in whose feelings we believe. Besides this, they have Musset's grace
and delicacy in a perhaps excessive degree; they are the most mannered
of his productions. Two or three of them, however--"Emmeline," "Les
Deux Maîtresses," "Frédéric et Bernerette"--are masterpieces; this last
epithet is especially to be bestowed upon the letter written by the
heroine of the last-mentioned tale (an incorrigibly _volage_ grisette)
to her former lover on the occasion of his marrying and settling. The
incoherency, the garrulity, the mingled resignation and regret of an
amiable flirt of the lower orders, divided between the vivacity of her
emotion and the levity of her nature, are caught in the act; and yet it
is not fair to say of anything represented by Musset that it is caught
in the act. Just the beauty and charm of it is that it is not the exact
reality, but a something seen by the imagination--a tinge of the ideal,
a touch of poetry. We must try to see Musset himself in the same way;
his own figure needs to a certain extent the help of our imagination.
And yet, even with such help taken, we cannot but feel that he is an
example of the wasteful way in which nature and history sometimes
work--of their cruel indifference to our personal standards of
economy--of the vast amount of material they take to produce a little
result.

Alfred de Musset's exquisite organization, his exaltations and
weaknesses, his pangs and tears, his passions and debaucheries, his
intemperance and idleness, his years of unproductiveness, his
innumerable mistresses (with whatever pangs and miseries it may seem
proper to attribute to _them_), his quarrel with a woman of genius, and
the scandals, exposures, and recriminations that are so ungracefully
bound up with it--all this was necessary in order that we should have
the two or three little volumes into which his _best_ could be
compressed. It takes certainly a great deal of life to make a little
art! In this case, however, we must remember, that little is exquisite.

HENRY JAMES, JR.




REFLECTED LIGHT.


    Your eyes say, "Sweet, I love--I love you, sweet."
          Where is the blame
    If, when their mute significance I meet,
          Mine say the same?

    Nay, thank me not, nor deem your triumph near.
          The message bright
    My glance conveys--'tis but--believe, me, dear--
          Reflected light!

MARY AINGE DE VERE.




LIFE INSURANCE.--II.


The companies organized under the general law of the State of New York
are the mere creatures of that statute. Their organization, management,
powers for good or evil, opportunities for mismanagement and
corruption, are all to be traced directly to the law to which they owe
their being. It will be necessary, therefore, for an intelligent
understanding of the condition to which the business has come, to
examine the act particularly. It is chapter 463 of the laws of 1853. It
provides that any number of persons not less than thirteen may form a
corporation for the purpose of making insurance on the lives of
individuals, or against accidents, or on the health of persons, or on
live stock. Such corporators are allowed to draw their own charter, and
upon its approval by the Attorney General, that document has all the
force of positive law. It is of course subject to the provisions of the
act itself, but those provisions are so few and meagre that it is
practically left to the promoters of the scheme to draw their own
charter of incorporation. The capital stock is to be not less than
$100,000, and no provision is made for the incorporating of any company
without a capital. The rate of dividends to the stockholders, the
proportion of profits to be paid the policy-holders, and the time of
payment, are not provided for in the law, and are left to be settled by
the associates. The consequence is that no two companies are alike in
this respect. In some of them the stockholder receives an interest of
seven per cent. upon his stock, and is entitled to no more under any
circumstances, the whole surplus or profits being divided among the
policy-holders. In others, in addition to interest, the stock is
entitled to participate with the policies in the surplus. The extent of
this participation varies; in some it is fixed at ten per cent. of the
whole profits, to the stock-holders, in others twenty, and in others
thirty per cent. In all of them, however, with one exception,
participation by the policy-holders in the profits of the business is a
rule. To a greater or lesser extent, in some to the whole profits, it
is the recognized rule that the holders of policies are to receive
dividends or bonuses from the companies out of the profits. In effect,
therefore, so far as participation in the profits of the business goes,
all our companies, with the one exception before mentioned, are mutual
companies.

The act makes no provision for the government of the corporations it
allows to be created. It leaves it to the promoters to state the mode
and manner in which the corporate powers shall be exercised, and the
manner of electing trustees, or directors, and officers. The natural
consequence of this provision is, that the manner of electing trustees
and directors varies in different companies. In some of them the
stock-holders alone have any voice or vote, in others the
policy-holders are allowed, under certain restrictions, to vote, but it
is safe to say that in all of them the power is kept in the hands of
the stock-holders as far as it possibly can be; and the policy-holders
are allowed as little voice in the management of the company as the
stock-holders can permit.

The result of this vice in the formation of the company is shown in
corporations which have amassed a large reserve. There it will be seen
that the owners of one hundred thousand dollars of stock absolutely
control the entire management and disposition of twenty, thirty, or
forty millions of accumulations, as the case may be; and the real
owners of this fund--the policy-holders--have no voice in its
management and no vote for the body or board which exercises the powers
of the corporation.

It is contended by very prominent gentlemen in the life insurance
business, that this plan is the only safe one; that interference in the
management of the company by uninstructed policy-holders, not versed in
the business, would be productive of nothing but evil. They contend
that the necessary unity of management required for a business,
covering as this does long periods of time, and requiring carefully
laid plans extending into the distant future, would be greatly
endangered by the existence of a right to participate in the management
by representation on the part of so numerous and so widely scattered a
constituency. In other words, the managers of companies which have
retained in the hands of the stock-holders all the powers of the
corporation think that those powers are more safely exercised by that
small body than they would be if participated in by all the holders of
policies. It may be doubted, however, whether a constituency small in
number and capable of manipulation, and their votes of concentration
into the hands of a few men, is the safest body to manage a corporation
whose chief business is the care of the accumulations arising from the
trust imposed upon the corporation by the contract of life insurance.
The power of wielding a mass of capital amounting to many millions of
dollars is an enormous power, and it should be reposed only in a body
which should be responsible for the careful, honest administration of
the trust, at stated intervals, to the persons most interested--that
is, to the policy-holders--the owners of the trust fund. One of the
chief characteristics of English companies is, that at the annual
meeting of the interested persons a full statement of the affairs of
the company is laid before the meeting, and an opportunity offered of
critical examination and comment. Discontent is thus allowed a safety
valve to express itself through, and the managers an opportunity of
explaining their action and accounting for their conduct. Public
opinion--the public opinion of the persons interested--is allowed a
chance of expression, and all misunderstandings and misconceptions an
opportunity for examination and refutation. The right to interrogate
the managers, and ask and obtain information as to the business at such
regularly recurring intervals, is an inestimable one. It can hardly be
conceived possible that great abuses could grow up if such a right
existed; but at any rate it is apparent that the probability of such
abuses is lessened to a great extent.

But this English practice is not known among us. In life insurance
affairs we have nothing remotely approaching it. It seems to have been
the policy of our companies to restrict participation in their
management to the smallest possible number, to avoid opportunities for
questioning or explanation, and to shroud the business in the deepest
mystery.

The officers of companies responsible for this policy justify
themselves upon the broad ground that they know better what is good for
the policy-holders than they do themselves. In the light of the
evidence given before the Committee of the Assembly by life insurance
officers, and in the light of the affairs of the Continental, Security,
and Popular, it may be doubted whether this assertion proves itself. It
has the merit, however, that every honest avowal has, and it is
entitled to examination.

Why should a self-electing, self-perpetuating proprietary board,
resting upon a constituency composed solely of owners of the capital
stock, be a safer or better management than one elected by the votes of
the policy-holders at large? The only answer you can get to that query
is this: The board elected by the stock-holders are sure of their
position, and it is not in the power of a few malcontents to get up a
secret movement to oust them at the election. The more stable
management is to be preferred to one which is dependent on the
popularity of the officers with the policy-holders. It is in the nature
of things that the officers should become more or less unpopular. The
business depends for success upon the enforcement of strict rules in
dealing with the policy-holders, and the enforcement of these strict
rules, although absolutely necessary for the success of the business,
naturally tends to give fancied grievances to the persons against whom
they are enforced. If, therefore, the tenure of office of the
management depends upon the policy-holders, there is the constant
danger of frequent attempts at revolution arising from this cause, and
the consequent weakness of the officers in enforcing rules the
enforcement of which may tend to shorten their tenure of office.

I think I have fairly stated the argument. Is there anything in it? Is
the reason given any reason at all? Is it not rather a positive
argument against the system. Perhaps the best government for men and
companies is an absolute monarchy, without accountability or restraint;
there are large masses of the human race who are so governed; and it is
an open question yet whether government by the people be or be not the
best government. But certainly one thing is assured. In this day and in
this country the monarchical and the oligarchical systems are out of
date and out of place; and all attempts to introduce them or the
principles which underlie them into our system of free government by
the representatives of the governed will be failures. The doctrine of
paternal government is "played out" in affairs of nations, and it is
not to be supposed that the principle has in it any greater efficacy
when applied to the affairs of corporations. The fact is, we have too
much of this thing in all our relations political and social. The idea
that there is a class who are in their own estimation better able to
govern than the rest of mankind has been exploded by the experience of
the people of this country, and it is intolerable that we should be
forced to do homage in our private affairs to a principle which we
have, as regards public business, exploded long ago as a traditional
fallacy.

Most of the evil practices which have made the whole system of life
insurance a by-word and the scorn of the people, have arisen under this
irresponsible management. Investments in extravagant buildings, the
enormous expenditures for payments of salaries to officers and to
agents, are all the result of the secret plan of management. Does any
one suppose that if the affairs of the companies were fully and
completely exposed to the public, such payments would be permitted or
tolerated? Men are entitled to be paid for services rendered the full
equivalent of those services, but they ought not to be allowed to be
the sole judges of the value of those services, and they ought to be at
all times ready and willing to come before the persons interested, and
submit a full, fair, and clear account of their stewardship. Human
nature is of the same quality in the managers of life insurance
companies as in other men. Responsibility to some power, accountability
to some persons or body, is absolutely essential to honest management.
Men who know that they cannot or will not be called to account will
fall into loose and unbusinesslike methods and practices. Nothing can
be more dangerous to the honesty of a man than to place him in charge
of immense interests without a system of periodical accountability. A
man may be ever so honest, yet he will, if this accountability be
absent, be led to do things which he never would do if he were sure
that at a fixed period his doings would become known and he would be
required to justify them.

From these considerations and on these grounds, I come to the
conclusion that the management of a life insurance company by a board
of directors elected solely by the stock-holders is a management which
contains within itself the germs of a fatal disease, which will sooner
or later develop itself. In this respect legislation is needed. Such a
management ought to be forbidden, and a provision made for the election
of trustees by the policy-holders as well as the stock-holders, upon a
basis as to the vote and the amount of interest it should represent
which would be equitable and just.

Complaints have been made against the use of proxies in elections.
Notably these complaints have been made respecting elections in the
Mutual Life Insurance Company, a corporation which has no
stock-holders, but which consists in a membership of its
policy-holders. These policy-holders have the supreme control of the
corporation in their own hands. Its government is by them delegated to
a board of trustees thirty-six in number, divided into four classes of
nine in each class. The term of office is four years, so that nine
trustees go out of office in each year. This classification prevents
the possibility of any sudden change of management, while it leaves all
needed control in the hands of the policy-holders. If, for instance,
dissatisfaction with the management exists, and nine new trustees are
elected, it is not to be doubted but that the warning would be listened
to and the necessary change of policy effected to satisfy the
constituency. On the other hand, should the change of trustees be the
result of a combination to seize the management of the company for any
improper purpose, the first election would unmask the design and insure
its defeat by an appeal to the voters.

The objections to the use of proxies come entirely from those
policy-holders who have been defeated by their use, or fear they will
be defeated by their use, in an attempt to change the management. Does
not this prove that the great body of policy-holders believe in the
management and are determined to sustain it. In a free company based
upon the liberal principles upon which the Mutual Life is established,
any attempt to limit the franchise would be an unparalleled wrong. The
policy-holder in Chicago or in San Francisco has the same right to
exercise his right to a voice in the election of trustees as the
policy-holder who resides in New York, and there can be no reason why
he should not cast his vote by proxy, since it would result in his
disfranchisement to require him to do it in person. Be sure that if
real trouble arose, and there was an abuse to rectify, if there were
officers unmindful of their duties to rebuke, or trustees regardless of
their trust to set aside, the votes cast by proxy would be as
intelligently given as those of the residents immediately near the
office who could attend in person. Every effort to limit the right to
vote by proxy is an attempt to perpetuate power in the hands of the
policy-holders resident here, which would be quite as obnoxious to
sound principles as the government of companies solely by the
stockholders.

It would appear, on every principle of fairness and justice, that the
more full and perfect the right of the policy-holder to participate in
the election of trustees, the more stable and conservative will be the
management. On the other hand, it is quite as apparent that the
limitation of such right is attended with consequences the reverse of
those just stated, and those consequences attained in proportion to the
limitation of the right.

With the broad superstructure of a body of voting policy-holders, the
selling out of the control of a company is impossible, because no one
will be willing to pay for the possession which the next election may
deprive him of. Of all the mean and contemptible methods of robbery as
yet discovered, the selling out of a life insurance company is the
meanest and most contemptible. Too cowardly to wreck it themselves and
personally rob the widows and orphans, the trustees, who quietly
receive a bonus for their stock and retire from the management, sell
the opportunity of robbery to others. This they do too in the full
knowledge of the purpose for which they are asked to retire. When the
crash comes they may say they did not know the purpose of the
purchasers, but they did know they were to receive for their stock two
or three times its value, and that no man could afford to pay such a
price to obtain control of the company except for the purpose of making
money by irregular and questionable means. It will not do for men
entrusted with positions of a fiduciary character to make the holding
of such positions the lever for obtaining a large price for their
stock, and then claim exemption from responsibility for the misdeeds of
their successors. They were there in charge of a sacred trust, and they
have sold and betrayed that trust--for what? Why, for the enhanced
price which they got for their stock. This is the great evil of the
close corporation system. It enables one or more men to own complete
control of a company and to sell it to the highest bidder. Of course
the highly respectable gentlemen who sell, and those also who buy, will
be shocked at having imputed to them any crime or breach of trust. But
how can such sums of money be lawfully made out of life insurance stock
as to justify the price the records of the Committee on Insurance show
have been paid for it? Life insurance is or ought to be a benevolent
institution. Its management is or ought to be a trust, and every
trustee who makes use of his position to make money for himself is
false to his trust, and should never be appointed to another. Life
insurance is not to be made the sport of speculators, and the only
reliance of the unfortunate made the football of gambling operations.
Most if not all of the troubles which have arisen in the business are
to be traced to this attempt to make money out of it, honestly if
possible, but to make money at all hazards. The way to end this for
ever is to allow the policy-holders to vote, not for a minority of the
trustees, but for all of them. Representation should be equal, or it is
worthless. The representation which would leave the power to elect a
majority still in the hands of the stock-holders is not equal or just.
Money paid for premiums is as good as money paid for stock, and should
have equal voice in the management. But when you have given the
policy-holders votes, you should also see that the opportunity was
afforded to them of voting. Most of the elections are held without any
other notice than an advertisement in the corner of a crowded column of
one or two newspapers. Every policy should have printed on it the date
of the annual election, and all the information necessary to enable the
holder to be present and vote, or to be represented by proxy. Under the
present practice, few holders of policies know whether they have votes
or not, and hardly any of them ever heard of the time of holding the
election. If the present discussion of life insurance affairs does no
other good than to awaken the policy-holders to a sense of their own
responsibility for abuses of management, it will not have been in vain.
It is safe to say that watchfulness on their part would have prevented
the lavish expenditures, the unwise real estate investments, the
enormous salaries, which the investigation of the Assembly committee
has discovered. The same conservative power held over managers would be
a constant check upon any tendency to depart from the safe and regular
open pathway of honorable dealings. Under its influence there would be
few if any cases of commissions in addition to salary of officers, less
tendency to make loans to the trustees and their friends, and a general
adhesion to business rules and traditions. But above and beyond all
other reforms, the control of the company by the policy-holders would
make it impossible for greedy and scoundrel officers to gather into
their hands the entire control of the company, and then sell it out to
a rival company for four or five times what the stock cost, and an
annuity for life to the traitor who had betrayed his trust. This has
been, is now, and will be, if not prevented, the fruitful mother of all
the ills of life insurance. Just as soon as any clique get possession
of the majority of the stock, there is danger. Nay, there is always
danger; any clique may, at any time, get possession of the stock by
paying enough for it. If one price will not bring it, another will, and
the value to the wrecker depends upon the amount of assets. It is the
assets which are to pay the profit of the transaction. The money of the
policy-holders is what is sold, not the mere pittance which belongs to
the stock-holders, and it is the money of the policy-holders which is
stolen to pay the purchase money. Honorable gentlemen, prominent in
social life, elders, deacons, and vestrymen who in the past few years
have quietly pocketed two hundred for your stock and retired from the
management of life insurance companies, how are you pleased with your
own conduct? In the light of recent disclosures, does not the
ill-gotten money burn in your pockets? Truly you would not wreck a
company yourselves by transferring it to any man or number of men; but
you accomplish the same purpose by retiring. A captain who will not
himself surrender to the enemy, but who retires from the command of his
fortification knowing that the subaltern who will succeed him intends
to strike his flag, may deceive himself, but he does not long succeed
in deceiving any one else.

The evidence taken before the referee in the Continental case fully
describes and explains the methods of wrecking. A company is sold out
or reinsured in another; that is, the stock has been bought up at two
or three hundred per centum, the officers have been promised good
places, or paid in cash for their silence. Immediately the operations
of the wreckers begin. The agents of both companies go into the work
with a single aim, and that aim is to obtain the surrender of the
policies in the old company in exchange for new policies in the
purchasing corporation. The old policies represent an actual liability;
the company which has issued them is obliged to hold a certain sum
against each of them. The aggregate of these sums makes up the
"reserve" or reinsurance fund. As fast as the old policies are
cancelled this reserve is released, and when all the policies are
cancelled there is no liability at all. The new policies of course have
no liability. This is in short the whole operation of wrecking. By such
means a million or two of assets will be distributed, and in the
process the policy-holders will receive a little--a very little--and
the agents a good deal, and the officers composing the ring all that is
left. The arts, the deceptions, the false representations made in the
course of the proceeding to induce the policy-holder to give up his
policy have been fully disclosed by the evidence in question. Of course
it is suggested that the company is in a bad way, and that there is
probably no other way of securing anything unless an opportunity now
offered of changing is embraced.

Reinsurance was abandoned as a means of wrecking because it was found
the policy-holders preferred to keep the old policy and the new
guarantee together. So in the later transactions they are told that if
they do not change, they will get nothing.

The lesson of all this to the policy-holder may be written in large
letters and kept as a maxim:

    DO NOT SURRENDER YOUR POLICY.

You will never make a mistake by keeping to this motto. And
particularly the more should it be kept to when you are urged by agents
to a contrary action. You never get one-third its value even in
companies honestly managed; what you get in companies dishonestly
managed no one can tell.




FALLEN AMONG THIEVES.


BRUSSELS!

Is it not written that good Americans, when they die, go to Paris? So
Elysium to all righteous sons of Cockayne is Brussels. And yet I was
weary of it. No charms for me had the perpetual sabots and blouses, the
_braves Belges_ in jaunty uniform, the bejewelled saunterers in the
Galerie St. Hubert, the _gauche_ tourists desecrating the sombre
stillness of the St. Gudule, _la belle Anglaise_ seeing for the first
time the outrageous little manikin, the homely phaëton of good old King
Leopold with its pair of very unroyal plugs, the tirailleurs in Lincoln
green, the Parc with its music, fountains and maitrank, the Jardin des
Plantes, the boulevard, and the Ecole d'Equitation.

All lost on me. I stood at a window of the Hôtel de Flandres gazing on
the ever-moving panorama of the Grande Place with as little interest as
though my eye rested on a vacant lot in Pumpkinville.

Was it bile? No. Was it love? Yes.

Another scene was ever before my eyes: An old red-brick house on the
cliffs of Devonshire, half hid by giant oaks and elms, fragrant with
honeysuckle and jessamine, stately with avenue, lawn, and rookery; and
I saw leaning on the rustic gate beneath the chestnut trees Gwendoline
Grey: her straw hat dangling by her side, her fresh young face set in a
glory of light brown hair, her---- But it had all passed away now. The
light was gone out of my life, for but three days ago I had received a
letter from her mother deploring my altered prospects, returning my
billets and love tokens, and assuring me that Gwendoline acquiesced in
this painful decision.

My altered prospects--_hinc illæ lacrymæ_. Nine months ago I was heir
to a wealthy man, and now I was but bear-leader to the son of the Earl
of Tottenbridge. Upon the loss of my father's property, which had come
like an avalanche on us, I had left college and assumed the tutorship
of the Hon. Nigel Fairleigh, as good a lad as ever handled a cricket
bat.

After a brief run through southern Europe, I had just delivered him up
to his aunt, my lady Milton, who was to take him to Scotland, while I
was free, according to compact, to enjoy a couple of months' vacation.

How I had longed for this vacation--and now, where to go, what to do, I
knew not. For three days I had stayed with a dull uncertainty on the
spot where the blow had fallen on me.

My meditations were broken by the entrance of a garçon announcing,

"A gentleman for monsieur."

"Ah, M. Danneris, I am glad to see you. Be seated."

To say how I became acquainted with the chatty little Frenchman who
sat before me would be a difficult matter. The offer of a cigar, an
exchange of newspapers at the reading room, a passing _bon jour_ on the
stairs, had ripened under his friendly gayety into a familiarity which
had extended so far as to my passing more than one evening at his snug
office in the Rue des Allumettes, where François Danneris, advocate,
spun toils for litigious Flemish _bourgeoises_.

"My friend," he said, "you look _ennuyé_, _triste_, dull; you need
change. What do you say to a scamper over the continent?"

"I have done scampering enough lately," I replied, "and moreover my
funds----"

"_Tiens, mon ami._ Do not talk of money. It is my great happiness to
offer you an opportunity to combine business with pleasure, and take a
most delightful trip without the expenditure of a sou."

"You surprise me--and where?"

"To a beautiful manorial residence at the village of Kioske, twenty
miles beyond Buda, on the banks of the Danube--one of the most romantic
spots of eastern Europe."

"And the object?"

"To take temporary charge of the only son of the wealthy Baron von
Dressdorf. Jules von Dressdorf," added the advocate in his bland,
pleasant way, "is a boy of fifteen, who, after spending a year in an
academy in England, has been placed in a _pension_ in Brussels; but,
_hélas!_ an hereditary disease, which has developed itself more
strongly of late, has determined his father to recall him immediately.
Pericardiac, my dear sir--pericardiac; and it is most important that he
should without delay seek the quiet of his native valley."

"The terms?"

"Two hundred and fifty francs a week, and all expenses paid. When could
you start?"

"To-morrow--to-day--when you will."

"_Bien!_ There is a little difficulty I would mention; the journey is
not without small perils. Hungary, as you are aware, is now under the
ban of an Austrian tyranny."

I assured him of my sympathy.

"Hold," he cried. "It is exactly that you have no sympathy that I
select you. The Baron is already _suspect_, and the son, inheriting his
father's sentiments, has small discretion of speech. Keep Austria in
the background, I implore you."

"And are you sure that the Baron will approve of your choice of an
escort?"

"The mere fact, Monsieur Mortimer, that you were in the service--I beg
your pardon--in the family of the Earl of Tottenbridge would be
sufficient, but I am proud to say that the recommendation of François
Danneris would be a _carte blanche_ to any one to the confidence of
Baron Dressdorf. He is a noble man," he added with emotion, "and to him
I owe all I have in the world."

And then for half an hour the advocate poured into my ear the glories
of the house of Dressdorf and stories of Austrian oppression that made
me eager to serve his _protégé_. Nay, I was so interested in his case
that I believe I would have seen the youth home, if I had had to bear
all the expenses of the journey myself.

"Have you a passport?"

"It is here," I said, handing it to him--"a Foreign Office passport
that protects me all over the continent."

"Ah, I see. And this permit?"

"Ah, that belongs to my pupil, Nigel Fairleigh. We can cut that off.
Lady Milton should have had it with her, but they are not very strict
at Ostend, and I suppose her rank proved an open sesame."

"Black eyes," he read, "black hair, sharp features, high forehead,
height, five feet three. My dear Monsieur Mortimer," and he turned
eagerly toward me, "you would do me a real service, you would lay the
noble Dressdorf under the greatest obligation, if you would permit our
young charge to use this passport. It describes him to a T. The
critical nature of events, the necessity for caution, the delicate
health of the boy--nay, do not look shocked; such things are done every
day--will excuse the trifling impropriety----"

"Impossible!"

Taking no notice of the interruption, he continued. "And to tell the
truth, it was just this that bothered me. A Belgian passport is looked
upon with much suspicion, and is likely to lead to inquiry; but armed
with this, you may go from here to the Oural mountains without a
question."

At first I refused point-blank, but at last resigned myself to his
sophistry, and the bargain was closed.

"When can I see the youth?" I asked.

"Now, monsieur. I will at once escort you to the _pension_ of the Porte
de Schaerbeck, and introduce him to you."

Fifty boys of Belgian, French, American, and English extraction, seated
at a long table enjoying their afternoon's "goûté"--a post-meridian
lunch of weak brandy-and-water and grapes; a bald _maître d'école_
periodically crying, "Si-i-i-lence, messieurs. Restez-vous tranquilles!"
like a sheriff in a court of law. Such a scene met my view. I
recognized my youth in a moment; there was no mistaking the clear,
well-defined features, raven hair, and black eyes of the gentle lad who
rose to greet my companion with a grace and assurance that checked
remonstrance on the part of the half-offended usher, who simply solaced
himself with a shrug of the shoulders and a more than usually prolonged
"Si-i-i-i-i-lence, messieurs. Restez-vous tranquilles!"

"This is the gentleman, Jules, who has kindly consented to take you
home, and it is arranged that you start to-morrow," said the advocate.

The boy's big eyes looked into mine with an inquiring gaze, and then,
taking my hand, he quaintly said:

"I like you."

There was nothing impertinent in the tone or manner; it was the hearty
expression of his unsophisticated thought.

"He is an Englishman," continued M. Danneris, "and will be very kind to
you. Remember that you owe him respect and implicit obedience."

"Then he hates the Austrians--he whose country is free knows how to
give sympathy to a poor Hungarian. This good Englishman shall see for
himself how our noble people suffer at the hands of tyrants."

"Hush, hush, Jules! You must not talk like this. Is it not
extraordinary," said M. Danneris, turning to me, "that even the very
children of this oppressed race fill their minds with a sense of
wrong?"

"No wonder," I replied, "if but half you have told me is true."

"When I am a man," flashed Jules, "I will kill the Austrians--they are
not worthy to live."

"Jules," I said soothingly, "I am just going for a stroll over the
fields toward Louvain. Ask permission from monsieur, your professor, to
join me."

Danneris smiled. "That was well done," he said. "You cannot too soon
become acquainted. Call here for the boy to-morrow midday. I will see
that he is prepared."

When I said adieu to Jules that evening, after a long ramble over the
endless corn fields that bordered the "road to Waterloo," I saw with
pleasure that I had awakened in him a generous confidence. He too had,
by his artless manner, inspired in me no common interest.

We started. Six days' journey to reach Vienna, a hundred-mile trip up
the Danube to Buda, seven leagues in a _calèche_, and we should be at
Dressdorf Castle.

Uneventful the days were. Poor Jules, weary with travel, talked but
little, for which I was appropriately thankful. It was painful to see
how he shrank from the gaze of any official who might question us a
little closely as to our destination, and to watch his quivering lips
as he muttered in response to my assurances of safety, "I trust all to
the good Englishman."

As we neared the Austrian frontier he harped more on the subject of his
Austrian wrongs, and I was frequently obliged to check him. A fire
seemed consuming the boy, a burning vengeance toward the oppressor.

We reached Vienna at dusk on the sixth day, and put up at the Hôtel
d'Hollande, according to the suggestions of Danneris. Jules complained
of sick headache, and I was somewhat relieved to hear him suggest bed.

It was not till I had seen him safely settled, and had extracted a
promise from him not to leave his room, that I felt at liberty to call
a few hours my own.

Having dined, I stood on the doorstep of the hotel smoking a cigar and
revolving in my mind where I should spend my evening, when I was
accosted by a police agent making some inquiry about my passport.

"By the way," said I, "I never was in Austria before, but in France I
have been accustomed to give a gensdarme a couple of francs to take my
passport to the bureau of the police to be _visé_."

"Herr Engländer can pursue the same plan here," was the polite
rejoinder. "I shall be happy to oblige him."

Glad to be relieved of the bother, I handed him the document. He
briefly compared my person with the description, and then queried:

"And the boy?"

"He is sick and has retired; but if you desire it, you shall see him."

"No need--a boy is no great matter"; and the courteous official, with a
bow that would have graced a D'Orsay, was gone.

To the Grand Opera House, the largest in the world, I bent my steps,
and in an hour was revelling in Mme. Garcia's thrilling notes, when a
hand was laid on my shoulder and a grim, moustached, soldier-like
fellow whispered in my ear:

"Your passport, Herr Engländer."

"It is gone to the police bureau to be _visé_. I sent it from the Hôtel
d'Hollande by an officer."

For the moment he withdrew, and burning with shame, for every eye was
upon me, I turned defiantly to the stage.

"Will the Herr ride or walk?" came again the voice in my ear.

"What do you mean?"

"The Herr must go immediately to the Hôtel d'Hollande. That is all."

I expostulated, but a storm of hisses from those near enough to be
interrupted in their enjoyment of the music decided me, and I angrily
rose.

"I am at your service, sir."

We walked on without a word.

Never shall I forget the face of the fat little Dutch landlord as we
entered--surprise, sympathy, fear alternately lighting his countenance
as he poured forth a polyglot expression of his excited feelings. In
French, English, Dutch, and German he assured us he was desolated,
miserable, abandoned. Ah, but it was a good young Engländer. It was
true he had never seen the passport; he knew he should have asked for
it himself when his noble friend first came to the house; but, _bête
brouillant_ that he was, he had forgotten it.

Then followed a conference between the landlord and the officer,
resulting in my being called aside by the former and receiving the
following valuable advice:

"My dear sir, you have made a most never-to-be-sufficiently deplored
mistake. But see. Satisfy this zealous officer with a bottle of good
Stein wine, and all will be well in the morning; only do not leave the
house again to-night."

It was a bitter pill, but I swallowed it gracefully, and Herr
Polizeidiener and I clicked glasses fraternally with protestations of
mutual regard.

In the morning I was awakened by Jules, whose night's rest had done him
a world of good. Bright, vivacious, and noisy, he bounded into my room.

"Oh, Herr Mortimer, such an idea! There is a grand review of the
soldiery. Come, get up. We must go and see it. I would not miss it for
the world."

"Do not be so excited, Jules; it is the last place to which I would
dream of taking you. Your father----"

"Wrote me not to fail to see the Austrian troops if I had an
opportunity."

Perhaps there was some object in that, and to Jules's delight I
consented to take seats on the lumbering stage-coach that was to leave
the hotel with other guests bent on the same holiday excursion. I was
the more complacent as I reflected that the steamer did not leave
Vienna till five o'clock, and I thus saw a means of keeping Jules out
of further mischief.

We reached the review ground. It was indeed a gorgeous scene. Crimson
and gold, blue and silver flashed back the sun's rays, bugles sounded,
and cannon roared.

I was not quite at my ease, however, as I noticed the interest I was
exciting in a resplendent official, whose eyes were continually on me.
At last, to my dismay, he beckoned to me.

"Sir, your passport?"

"It is gone to the bureau to be _visé_," and then followed a pathetic
recital of the annoyances I had been subjected to.

"Will the Herr ride or walk?" was the stereotyped response.

"Where?"

"To Vienna. Until this passport is found the Herr must consider himself
under arrest."

In vain I pleaded the unprotected position of my young companion. All
the concession I could get was permission to speak a few words with
him, which I did with much caution, simply assuring him of my speedy
return, and extracting his promise that, if I were detained by my
"friend," he would return with the fiacre to the hotel, and quietly
await my arrival.

"I will do all the good Englishman asks of me"; and a warm pressure of
the hand made me feel that Jules understood the extremity of the case.

At once to the bureau.

I was so confident of finding the passport and utterly confounding the
officer who had given me all this trouble, that I am afraid my manner
was rather supercilious, to say the least of it.

The commissaire heard my story somewhat impatiently.

"The officer's number to whom you say you gave your passport?"

"I did not notice it."

"His name?"

"I never demanded it."

A grin on the face of the commissaire, a very sarcastic curl of the
lip, a shrug of the shoulders, an ominous silence.

"Sir," said I, somewhat sobered by the course events had taken, "I am a
British subject!"

"Zo?"

"A graduate of the University of Oxford."

"Zo?"

"Tutor in the family of the Earl of Tottenbridge."

"Zo?"

"Son of a county magistrate."

"Zo? And nevertheless you are arrested for wandering about like a rogue
and vagabond without a passport. We know not who you are, what you are,
where you come from. The question with us is, Where is your passport?
It is enough." And before I could reply his back was turned.

A whitewashed room, sixteen feet square, one barred window, one iron
bedstead, one wooden bench--such was my apartment and the inventory of
its furniture; and I felt my heart sink as the key in the door turned
with an ominous click, and I was left to enjoy my solitary meditations.

What could I do? For an hour I racked my brain. Dared I apply to the
English embassy? I would, come what might of it. A few blows on the
panel of my door brought the officer.

"I wish to make immediate application to Lord Cowley."

"I will see."

He returned in a few minutes.

"Lord Cowley is not in Vienna now. He is at the Grand Baths."

"Still, there is somebody at the embassy office. I must go there."

After a brief interview with his superior, the permission was accorded.

The officer and I reached the embassy building, and as I passed the
jovial English porter at the door, my heart rose, for already I felt
the shadow of the British lion over me.

A pale, emaciated, gentlemanly youth, with a gold eyeglass, was
standing with his back to the fire, reading a copy of the "Times,"
while at his feet lay a magnificent bull-and-mastiff, by far the more
dignified animal of the two. The exquisite gave no sign of his
knowledge of our presence.

"Ahem!"

No attention.

The dog yawned, the great clock on the wall ticked with an aggravating
loudness, and at last I broke out--

"Sir, I am in a terrible dilemma. I have lost my passport. I trusted it
to a rascally policeman to take to the bureau to get _visé_, and now I
am apprehended, put in a miserable prison, called a rogue and vagabond
by a confounded commissaire." The effect of my eloquence on the attaché
was amusing. Down went the paper.

"Oh, I say--you know--you mustn't--indeed, you mustn't. The office
can't be approached in this manner--very irregular, by Jove, very
irregular."

"What must I do? The consequences may be fearful----"

"Write to Lord John Russell at the F. O. If he knows anything about
you, you can petition Lord Cowley, and in the course of a few
weeks----"

"A few weeks! a cycle of years! I must be liberated at once. The
safety, nay, the very life of a helpless boy depends upon it."

"Oh, I say, you know, you mustn't get so excited, by Jove, you know;
you mustn't indeed. Very irregular--'pon honor, I never saw such
irregularity."

The Adam was aroused in me--I couldn't help it.

"Sir!" I roared, "you are here for the protection of the British
subject----"

"No, you know," he interrupted. "Consul, that sort of thing. By Jove,
never saw such a fellow."

"You are placed here for use or ornament. You are, sir, a failure in
either capacity."

"John!"--oh, the superciliously grand air of that little mite!--"John,
show this person the door!"

                     *      *      *      *      *

Once more in prison.

Another hour's mental rack, another resource--send for the landlord of
the Hôtel d'Hollande.

He came.

I fancy I see before me now the paunchy Dutchman, rubbing his fat hands
and condoling with me in hybrid accents.

"But now, Herr Engländer, an inspiration!" He approached me, placed his
pursy lips to my ears, and whispered: "Offer--delicately as you
can--but offer the commissaire a few of your English gold pieces, and
see the passport, he return, he come back--_vite_, quick. _Voilà
tout._"

"Bribe the commissaire?"

"Hush! yes, it is your only chance."

Heavens! what a country! Well might poor Jules rave at the Austrians!

The Dutchman left, and after a few minutes' hesitation, I summoned up
courage to knock at the door, which was promptly opened by the officer,
who respectfully demanded my requirements.

"I wish to see the commissaire."

"Surely. Will the Herr follow me?"

Where were the frowns gone? The commissaire received me in a most
gracious manner. Would I be seated?

"Sir," I stammered, for it went sorely against the grain, "my
carelessness has brought me into considerable trouble, and I feel that
with your aid alone I can rectify matters. At the same time I am aware
that I should pay some penalty for my lack of discretion. If therefore
you would give these five sovereigns to some charitable institution in
Vienna, and use some effort to find my passport, you will lay me under
a great obligation."

The great official said he would do so, and the English sovereigns
chinked in his capacious vest-pocket.

"And now, if the Herr will go to his hotel, all Vienna shall be
searched. The passport cannot be lost, and in a few hours it shall be
in his hands."

Free! It was the only time I was ever under lock and key, but I shall
never forget the exhilarating delight of that moment.

I had hardly gone twenty rods when I remembered that the boat left at
five o'clock, and I thought that I would return and tell the
commissaire to hurry up.

As I opened the door of the bureau I saw him deliberately take from a
pigeon-hole my passport, and handing it to the agent, say, "Here, take
this stupid Englishman his passport!"

"Sir," I said, stepping forward, "I will relieve you of the trouble."

Not a blush, not an apology. With a profusion of compliments and hopes
for my _bon voyage_, the commisaaire graciously bowed me out, and with
all haste I sought the Hôtel d'Hollande.

The fiacre was just driving up to the door as I arrived. I saw it all
in one moment. _The boy was not there._

I questioned the driver and passengers. It appeared that Jules had left
the carriage shortly after my departure, and as three hours had elapsed
before their return to Vienna, they concluded that he had joined me.

My excitement threw the landlord into a further convulsion of
hand-rubbing and general perplexity.

"Get me a strong saddle horse," I impetuously demanded.

"It shall be at the door in five minutes. Will not the Herr dine before
he leaves?"

"Dine! No; but let me have a flask of brandy."

Out through the paved streets to the plain. I scoured the whole country
round, peered into every carriage, searched every bush and brier, rode
up and down the neighboring lanes and highways, inquired of all I met,
and only trotted back to Vienna when darkness came on and my jaded
horse could hardly bear me home.

Then I ate and drank, and, taking a calèche, visited every police
station and hospital in Vienna. All in vain; and at three o'clock in
the morning I threw myself on my bed to snatch a few hours' sleep ere
my search should be again renewed.

I will not dwell upon the horrors of that time. Day succeeded day, and
nearly a week passed in my frantic efforts to discover the whereabouts
of the poor young Hungarian. How my heart bled for the gentle boy,
perhaps languishing in an Austrian dungeon and calling on the good
Englishman to rescue him. I lived a year in that week. At last I
resolved to telegraph to M. Danneris. "Jules is lost. For God's sake,
come at once," flashed along the wires. The answer was equally terse.
The operator at Brussels replied, "Danneris gone. Left no address."

Was ever anything so unfortunate? Ah, yes, he did talk of visiting
England, and that was the reason he could not himself escort Jules
home.

Then I knew that I must brace my nerves to the terrible effort of
telling that poor father that his child was lost; that I, by my cursed
carelessness, had been the destroyer of his peace.

"Your son has mysteriously disappeared from my charge. Hasten here."

The answer was more perplexing than the one from Brussels: "Baron von
Dressdorf not known--no such place as Kioske."

Heavens! Was I in a dream?

For three weeks I continued my search, wandering about in a haggard,
broken manner, dreading every day to be stricken with brain fever. I
could not sleep for thinking of the poor lad, whose big, pleading eyes
seemed to look up into mine from every side. He haunted me.

One day I was watching the crowd pass the corner of the Thun Strasse,
when my hand was clasped, and a cheery voice rang in my ear:

"Mortimer, old fellow, by all that's glorious! Who would ever have
thought of meeting you here?"

It was Harvey Lawson, my old college chum.

"But you are sick, man. You look clean out of condition. Come up into
my den--mind those stairs--here you are--take that arm-chair. You see
I'm 'own correspondent' to the 'Daily Growler.' There's a pipe. Will
you have beer or wine? And, now, what have you been doing with
yourself?"

I told him all, and my story certainly awakened much interest in him.

"What was the date of your leaving Brussels?"

"Wednesday, September 17."

"Just a month ago. Hand me that file of papers at your elbow."

He selected one, glanced at it a moment. "Ah, yes, here it is."

"What?" I cried eagerly, the blood flying to my face.

"What was the name of the advocate?" he persisted with all the gravity
of a judge.

"Auguste Danneris."

"And his office, 170 Rue des Allumettes?"

"Yes, yes!"

"The _pension_ in the Porte de Schaerbeck?"

"Yes."

"The youth--black eyes, black hair, high forehead, projecting chin,
height five feet three?"

"Yes."

"Spoke English well?"

"Remarkably well for a foreigner--and so young."

"Had a slight impediment in pronouncing the letter _p_."

"Yes, I tried to correct the dear boy of the habit."

"Did, eh?"

"I did, and with some success too."

"And went by the name of Jules von Dressdorf?"

"Yes."

"Then, by the lord Harry! Master Mortimer, you've immortalized yourself.
You've abducted the most accomplished little _dame d'industrie_ Paris
ever produced--you've snatched from under the very noses of a cordon of
French and Flemish police the princess of adventuresses, Adèle de la
Voix, spy, thief, forger--ay, and if suspicion points truly,
murderess--for she is believed to have poisoned an accomplice at Ghent
after consummating the robbery of the Comtesse de Nemour's jewels. A
pretty piece of business truly."

I was dazed. He handed me the journal, and I read for myself the whole
of the infamous plot.

"By George, that boarding-school dodge was an excellent one, worthy of
her greatness--threw the police off the scent for ten days," said
Harvey with a grin.

"Then, when the police got on the right track again," he continued, "it
was too late; she had eloped with you. O Lord, it's too good," and he
lay back in his chair and roared.

"By heavens, if you are not quiet, I'll pitch you out of the window."

"No, you won't. If you move a finger, I'll write and tell Gwennie Grey
all about your elopement. Why, man, if you were a child of grace, you'd
go down on your knees and implore me not to give you two columns in the
'Growler.' There, I was only joking. Don't look so blue. But I confess
it's a strong temptation. Such sensations don't crop up every day;
besides, messieurs the police are dying to know how _la belle_ Adèle
crossed the frontier."

"Do you think," I said wearily, "that the proprietor of the _pension_
was an accomplice?"

"Most assuredly not. He is an old resident, and gave his testimony with
tears in his eyes, assuring the court that Jules von Dressdorf was one
of the most docile, intelligent pupils he ever had under his roof."

"And M. Danneris?"

"Her father, I believe. His rôle was the man of reference, the
respectable 'fence' who directs the game while others do the work."

"Had my trouble with the police here anything to do with the matter?"

"Not a bit of it. They are infernal rascals, reaping where they do
not sow, and looking on careless travellers as legitimate game. Under
the present _régime_ they make half their living out of passport
irregularities."

"I suppose," I added, "I had better notify the police at Brussels."

"And be the laughing stock of Europe for your pains. No, Mortimer, lie
quiet here for a week or two, then take steamer through the
Mediterranean home. By the by, did Danneris advance you money for the
journey?"

"He gave me five hundred francs."

"Then you are not so badly off after all. Make your mind easy about
Mlle. Adèle. She is hundreds of miles away by this."

"I wonder why she did not run away from the hotel the night I went to
the theatre."

"_Quien sabe?_ Let the dead past bury its dead."

                     *      *      *      *      *

Seventeen years have passed since the occurrence of the events I have
recorded, and never till yesterday have I seen or heard one word of
Adèle de la Voix.

"Gwennie," said I to my dear little wife, on reaching my home in
southern Michigan after a visit on business to Detroit, "you remember
the heroine of my trip to Dressdorf castle, just before we were
married?"

"Surely," said the wife.

"Well, I saw Adèle de la Voix yesterday."

"You didn't! When? Where?"

"At a store in Gratiot avenue. I was making a purchase, when a woman
entered--old-looking, homely, shabby; but there was no mistaking those
black eyes, nor the sniff of the left nostril. When she was gone, I
made some inquiries about her, and here is her business card:

    "MME. JULIENNE, from Paris, reveals the past, the present, and the
    future. Can be consulted on all affairs of love, business, or law,
    and overcomes trouble of any kind. She brings together the
    separated, causes speedy marriages, and sells infallible love
    powders. Go and see for yourself. No humbug here.

    "Rooms, etc."

"And what are you going to do?"

"Do? I don't know."

"I do."

"You wise woman, what is it?"

"Write the whole story for your favorite magazine. It is as interesting
as half the fiction one reads, and contains a good moral."




THE BATTALION.


    A thousand strong we marched to battle;
      The city roared around the host;
    The tambours crashed their vaunting rattle;
      The bugles screamed their joyous boast.

    No thought had we to die asunder,
      Companions sworn, a brother throng;
    We looked to sweep through battle's thunder
      In noble lines, a thousand strong.

    But ah, the fever's poisoned arrow!
      The jungle's breath, the summer's glow!
    Our broad array grew swiftly narrow,
      And scanty hundreds met the foe.

    O splendid longings, thoughts and fancies
      Which tread the city of the soul,
    How few of all your spirit-lances
      Arrive where duty's trumpets roll!

J. W. DE FOREST.




THE FASCINATIONS OF ANGLING.


I.

It is the cheerful verdict of all anglers that they find no other
pastime so fascinating. This conclusion is not based upon the mere
mechanism of the art, but upon the fact that it is eminently healthful,
rational, and elevating, blending the picturesque and exhilarating in
such equal proportions as to exactly meet the demands of the quiet
student, the contemplative philosopher, and the care-worn man of
business, whose wearied or exhausted nature covets just the solitude
and repose which no other recreation so abundantly furnishes.

This of course could not be said of angling if it had no other
attraction than the excitement it affords. But I am sure no one ever
became an enthusiastic angler who had no other or higher conceptions of
its possibilities. The mere act of taking fish is but a minor note in
the full volume of harmony which comes to its appreciative disciples
amid the vast solitudes where they find their best sport and highest
pleasure. Ask any true angler what pictures come up most vividly before
him as "the time of the singing of birds" draweth nigh, when it is
right to "go a-fishing." His answer will not be, "The rise and strike
of trout or salmon," although both will pass upon the canvas like rays
of sunshine upon the quiet repose of a forest landscape. He will rather
discourse to you of flowing river, of murmuring brook, of cloud-capped
mountain, of waving forest, of sunshine and shadow, of rapid and
cascade, of tent and camp fire, of silence and solitude, of cozy nook,
of undisturbed repose, of refreshing slumber, of invigorated health,
and the _abandon_ of delight which neither word nor pencil can
adequately portray. I have heard such "simple wise men" talk of their
favorite pastime until they glowed with ecstasy, without once naming
fish or fishing. That is but the body of the art. Its spirit consists
in what is seen and felt. An angler, "born so," as Walton hath it,
retains a more vivid recollection of the foam-encircled pool where
salmon love to congregate than of the "rise" and "strike" which gave
him his early morning's exhilaration. While he soon forgets the "play"
and weight of the fish captured, he never forgets the picturesque
surroundings of the struggle. He may forget the last homily he read, or
the last sermon to which he listened, but never the thrill of devout
ecstasy which came to him while wandering along some forest pathway, or
while gently floating with the current of his favorite river, bathed in
sunshine and fanned by summer zephyrs. After many days, these blissful
moments come back to him like divine benedictions. Be sure, O carping
critic, the gentle art has its spiritual and æsthetic as well as its
physical and intellectual attributes.

As a mere physical pastime, angling stands foremost among all the known
sources of pleasurable recreation. It blends active exercise with
fascinating excitement in such healthful proportions as to ensure the
fortunate participant equally against wearisome monotony and excessive
fatigue. The pure mountain air in which he is constantly enveloped is a
perpetual tonic, while the exercise it compels gives steadiness to the
nerves and solidity to the muscles.

As a mental renovator it is equally effective. There can be no
protracted lassitude while the brain is constantly quickened into
refreshing vitality by the novel and exhilarating surroundings of
mountain and forest and river, and the rise and strike and struggle of
trout or salmon.

And to those who have neither physical nor mental ailment, but who are
conscious of a spiritual need--of some more vivid appreciation of the
goodness and beneficence of the Heavenly Father than most men attain
unto while writhing under the harrow of business or bewildered by the
shallow superficialities or noisy clatter of artificial life--the quiet
places where the pursuit of the gentle art takes them, the silence and
shadow of the sombre forest, the twitter and song of the solitary
woodbird, the clear shining stars, which hang like silver lamps above
his tent or cabin, and the reposeful hush which comes to his soul like
whispered benedictions--these all tend to intensify his gratitude, to
quicken his spiritual pulse, and to give to him a higher and a keener
appreciation of his spiritual obligations.

There may be those who engage in angling only as they engage in the
coarser amusements which, for a time, divert the mind and banish
_ennui_. But all such soon weary of it, and never reach the higher
plane of the pleasant pastime. To do so requires a placid temper, a
thoughtful if not a poetic appreciation of the picturesque, a moderate
love of solitude, a patient habit, and a quiet disposition. To find
delectation in his walks, the angler need not be an ascetic or a
stickler for creeds; but I do not think the heart of Gallio, who "cared
for none of these things," would have been made glad when "the voice of
the turtle was heard in the land," and it was right to "go a-fishing,"
because I cannot imagine him a man of a teachable disposition or of a
lovable nature, who took pleasure in the society or teachings of the
gentle Master of the Galilean fishermen. Izaak Walton might have had
equal skill with rod and reel without his saintly faith; but his
"Complete Angler" never would have attained the high place it has held
and will ever hold in the affections of the contemplative men of all
time had he not been imbued with the spirit of reverent humility and
such a loving sense of the Infinite Beneficence as to find in all the
beauty and sublimity of Nature evidence of His great goodness and
loving kindness to the children of men. He may not, like Enoch, have
"walked with God," but in all his walks he saw God's handiwork; and
this consciousness multiplied many fold the pleasure he sought and
always found in the pursuit of his favorite recreation.


II.

There are times and seasons for salmon fishing as for all things. But
all times and all seasons are not alike. Nor are all places. The best
time to fish for salmon, where salmon are to be fished for, is the
first hour the water is in condition; that is, as soon as the spring
freshets have subsided, and the water, by falling back into its natural
channel, has become freed from the surface rubbish washed into it, and
sufficiently settled to render your line visible to the eye of the
fish. This time varies on different rivers, according to their length,
their volume, and the character of the soil through which they flow. On
some rivers the drainage is so limited that a fly may be cast
successfully so soon as the ice disappears. There are, however, but few
rivers on either side the Gulf, or in either of the Provinces, where
the best fishing is attainable before the first of June. The "season"
continues from that time on to the middle of August, although there is
often good sport into September, when the last "run" begin their
journey. But no "posted" angler would care to be compelled to take the
chances of sport after the close of August, as only very few fish come
up from the sea later, and those remaining in the river are wearied
from their long journeyings, or are torpid from their protracted
absence from the sea.

Within the period named--June to the middle of August--salmon are gamy
and muscular, wherever found, whether one or fifty miles from the
ocean. But the pools most coveted are those in closest proximity to
salt water. Salmon are at their best when they begin their upward
journey. The fresh element in which they find themselves seems to give
them new life and friskiness, and when hooked they fight with a
strength and fierceness not exhibited in the same measure afterward. A
twenty-pound salmon fresh from the sea gives you the play of a
thirty-pound fish taken weeks after he has made his way far up toward
the headwaters of a fifty or a hundred-mile river.

This fact, however, is not only not perceptible to the novice, but the
sport furnished by the capture of a salmon at any point in a river, or
at any stage of his sojourn in fresh water, is so grandly exhilarating
and so full of the intensest excitement, that it is a matter of but
trifling moment where a fish is struck so long as the angler strikes
him.

But the season _is_ important. The earlier weeks on any river are to be
preferred, not alone because the fish have more vitality, but because,
as a rule, they are more abundant. With an unerring instinct which is
as mysterious as it is wonderful, they seek the rivers where they were
born upon the return of every spring. If the rivers are in condition
for their ascent, they begin their journey at once. But the rivers are
not always in this condition when salmon first come to them; and if
they are not, they wait their opportunity, and then move forward with
the regularity and steadiness of an army under marching orders. Hence
they are ordinarily found in greatest numbers at the first rush; and
they are most fortunate who are duly placed, at favorite pools, to bid
them welcome.

What I know of this phase of salmon angling I have learned from
experience and observation, under circumstances which enable me to
speak with more confidence than would be otherwise becoming. I have
fished for three years on what I believe to be one of the very best
rivers on the continent; best not merely because of the abundance and
weight of its fish, but because also of its size and length, the
magnificence of its scenery, and the great number of its splendid
pools. My first two seasons extended from July 10 to August 10; and
they are seasons which will be for ever remembered with delight. I did
not deem it possible that I should ever experience any higher pleasure
this side that "pure river of water, clear as crystal," which fills so
large a place in the entrancing picture of the bright hereafter. My
catch exceeded my highest expectations, the sport from first to last
was magnificent and kingly, and the river, and the scenery, and the
surroundings embodied so much of beauty and grandeur, that my cup of
joy was filled to overflowing. If I had left the river with no other
knowledge than I then possessed of what had been and of what might be,
I would have lived on content with the happy impression that I had
experienced the highest possibilities of the gentle art. Every hour was
an hour of sunshine--whether casting, or striking, or killing--whether
slowly ascending or swiftly schuting the rapids--whether shouting in
very ecstasy of delight or quietly discoursing of the pleasures of
angling, around the camp fire, grateful to a kind Providence which had
"cast my lines in such pleasant places," and filled with devout
thanksgiving that time and opportunity had been given me to understand
why the good men, and the thoughtful men, and the simple wise men of
all ages had written so enthusiastically and sung so glowingly of the
gentle art.

But, while thus pluming myself upon what I had achieved and
experienced, fancying that I had reached the highest pleasure
attainable from the art of angling, I learned that while I had done
well I could do much better earlier in the season. And so I found; for
by a combination of circumstances as fortunate as they were gratifying,
my third season gave me the first "run" and such experience and sport
as will for ever remain a golden memory.


III.

With a companion as venerable in years and as full of enthusiasm as
myself, we set our faces toward the bay of Chaleur on as bright and
beautiful a June morning as ever gladdened the world. Hitherto the
journey had been tedious and circuitous--by rail and steamer. But, like
the world in general, the Provinces are progressive, and on this
occasion an "all-rail" route enabled us to do in two days what it
formerly took six to accomplish, and the 10th of June found us encamped
in a beautiful valley encircled by magnificent mountains, with a
majestic river at our feet grandly marching to the sea, but in
unwelcome volume and raging with frightful turbulence. The melted snow
was pouring down from the hills in such torrents as to overflow banks
and lowlands, and to preclude all hope of angling until an abatement of
the flood. It only remained for us to imitate the patriotic Germans on
the Rhine, and "watch and wait." And for ten days we watched and waited
with such patience as we could muster, and with such diversion as could
be found in casting for trout in a neighboring brook which found its
way to the river in our immediate neighborhood.


IV.

It was the tenth day of our waiting, and while the river was rushing
with such fury as to render holding a canoe in the current with any
appliances at our command impracticable, that I succeeded in reaching
an eddy caused by a huge bowlder still buried beneath the waters. I
could not anchor, and my frail bark was kept in constant motion by the
swirling eddy, when, after repeated casts, I had a rise. The fish
leaped to such an unusual height, and with such seeming determination
that the lure should not escape him, that I was startled and barely
escaped a backward plunge in my anxiety to make a sure "strike." From
the "feel," which ran like electricity from my submerged fly to the
tips of my fingers, I knew that the hook had effectively performed its
work, and was "fastened in a sure place." With this conviction I felt
bold to begin the work resolutely, although I knew that if I succeeded
in making a capture, I must do so under circumstances more difficult
than any I had ever before encountered in any waters or with any fish.
I was literally hemmed in. I dared not allow the monster to get outside
the restricted circle of the eddy, for if he should reach the current,
which was sweeping downward at the rate of ten miles an hour, I would
be utterly powerless to check him, because it would be impossible to
prevent him from rushing over the boiling rapids, which were thundering
within fifty feet of the lower edge of the eddy. My only hope of fish
or canoe was to hold both under the shelter of the rock which caused
the eddy. To do this required a shorter line than it is ever wise to
retain at the opening of a fight with a thirty-pound salmon. But
everything--fish, rod, and line--had to be risked. It was hold all or
lose everything; and with a shout which made the whole camp lookers-on,
I began the fight; now hopeful, now in despair; now with the fish
leaping within fifty feet of the canoe, and now lashing the water with
the fierceness of a tiger; now dashing toward the current as if
determined to break off or drag the canoe with him, and anon sullenly
permitting himself to be reeled up to within ten feet of the gaff; now
sinking and sulking, and now rushing and leaping as if he would twist
off his own neck in his attempts to shake the cruel barb from his
lacerated jaw; now at handsome holding distance, peaceful as a lamb,
and seemingly ready for the _coup de grace_, and anon dashing hither
and thither, as if looking for some open door to freedom; but all in
vain. If his mettle was up, so was mine, and at that moment I would
sooner have lost a fortune than that fish. I had kept him within bounds
and well in hand; had got him within a foot of the gaff, sure of
victory, and was shouting to my gaffer, "Now then, let him have it!"
when, like a flash, he shot under the canoe, and would have smashed
everything in a moment had not my watchful guide, seeing the situation
and the danger in the twinkling of an eye, swung round our boat so that
I could place the tip of my rod beyond the stern of the canoe, and thus
escaped the greatest misfortune that can befall a salmon angler. It was
quickly and skilfully done, and in five minutes more the first salmon
of the season was gaffed, and the first victory achieved. The shout
from my own canoe was caught up by the excited lookers-on, and we
paddled to camp thrilled with the excitement of the contest, and happy
as it is possible for an angler to be--and there are possibilities of
happiness to anglers inconceivable to any who have never killed a
salmon.

We accepted this first fish as the forerunner of the good time hoped
for. And the good time came of which, for the delectation of those who
have been or would like to be "there" themselves, I subjoin a few
samples.


V.

I had as my immediate companion an enthusiastic angler in all waters,
but who had not as yet had the good fortune to take a salmon. The flood
had somewhat receded; but it was still necessary to place our canoes in
the eddies, and cast crosswise into the edges of the current. I had
landed a fish of moderate size, and was watching my friend trying his
'prentice hand, at salmon casting, occasionally directing him by my
fancied superior knowledge of the art, when a very large fish rose to
his fly, and he struck him with a suddenness and force which was
certainly complimentary to his muscle if not so illustrative of his
skill. For it is always dangerous to strike too hard. It does not
require a great pressure to force the barb home, while a heavy strike
or a too sudden twitch is apt either to break something or tear the
hook from the fish's jaw. In this case the hook held. For a moment fish
and fisher seemed alike astonished, and neither stirred; but it was
only for a moment. Directly away flew the fish--the line spinning from
the reel as if harnessed to a locomotive. Fortunately the eddy, which
made out from the point of an island, extended some quarter of a mile,
and before it was passed over, the Judge began to appreciate the
situation, the magnitude of the work in hand, and the difficulties he
was likely to encounter before he could call the fish his own. He held
him with a steady hand. He answered every call for line with a
promptness and caution which indicated great tact, and he lost no
opportunity to reel in when practicable. For a time it seemed probable
that he would kill his fish without being carried into the central
current. But no such luck awaited him; for after two hours of patient
waiting and working--of rushing, and leaping, and sulking--the frenzied
fish made for the centre of the river with such impetuosity that it
would have been as easy to stop the flow of the river itself as to
check him in his mad career. Where he led the canoe was obliged to
follow; and follow it did for more than two miles, with occasional
respites at available eddies, and occasional dashes up stream, putting
the canoe men to their best trumps to prevent the reel from becoming
exhausted by these upward flights.

Thus the battle progressed for more than three hours, when the fish
approached the canoe of one of the party, which was anchored near a
bank covered with overhanging brush. He rushed with such speed that the
Indians in the anchored canoe had barely time to get out of the way,
when the fish dashed between them and the bank, but so closely that
when he halted for an instant near the surface, one of the Indians,
whose movements were as quick as those of the fish himself, gaffed him
and so saved him "as by fire," for in an instant more he would have
been caught in the overhanging brush toward which he was moving, and
where, had he reached it, he would have been inevitably lost. He
weighed thirty-six pounds--the largest fish taken during our month's
sojourn on the river. But the most marvelous part of the story is that
the brute was hooked foul in the side, rendering the fight and the
capture of so large a fish a double victory.

Many events in the Judge's life will be forgotten, but this first fight
with his first salmon will remain a pleasant memory for ever.


VI.

Here is another experience which all anglers will appreciate. I was
anchored in an eddy at the head of a favorite pool while the current in
the channel of the river was so strong that it was deemed impossible to
make headway against it. The pool in which I was casting was full of
hidden rocks; but for that very reason it was one of the very best on
the river. After an unusually long cast, a fish rose to my fly and was
hooked. On the instant he dashed for the head of the pool, but by the
time the anchor was shipped he reversed his movement with a rush,
carrying with him more than two hundred feet of line. The canoe, having
been forced into the channel, was sweeping downward with great
rapidity, when I became conscious that my line was hitched. The only
hope of rescue was to force the canoe back against the heavy
current--and the order to do so was answered by such a display of skill
and muscle as I had never before and have never since witnessed. The
paddles bent like withs, and for a moment not an inch of headway was
obtained. "We can't move her," was the mournful wail of my faithful
Indians. "You can and must. Away with her!" was all I could say to
them; and "away" it was. After a desperate struggle the canoe reached a
point on a line with the rock on which I was caught, when off the line
flew with a spring which indicated the great tension to which it had
been subjected. "Now let her go!" and down we went, swept by the
current, past rocks, into eddies and over rapids for a mile before I
succeeded in getting the fish in a position where I could check him or
place him where I desired. This I did, however, in time, by getting
below him and holding the canoe broadside to the current. This enabled
me to handle him at will, and the gaffer soon brought him to book. He
weighed twenty-nine pounds.


VII.

One other incident. To have it appreciated, however, I must premise
that the manner in which an angler plays a fish depends largely upon
the condition of the river. Where, after a strike, you can pass into
still water or into a moderate current, the position of your canoe is
of no great moment. But if you are forced into very swift water, to
allow a fish to have his way, and to make no attempt to gaff him until
he is exhausted or until you can force him up to within gaffing
distance against the current, is to find yourself at the end of the
battle so far from your pool as to render a return unpleasantly
tedious. Under such circumstances the order of battle with experts is
as follows: The moment the fish starts down stream push below him with
all possible despatch, reeling up the attained slack as the distance
decreases. When the desired position is reached the canoe is thrown
across the current and allowed to float with it. As the fish is above
you, it is comparatively easy, with the aid of the current, to guide
him downward with a very moderate pressure. In this position, with the
exercise of proper caution and skill, the fish can generally be brought
near enough to be gaffed long before he is the least exhausted.

This mode of killing is not only exciting, but very hazardous. The
fish, when brought close up to the canoe, sometimes dashes beneath it,
to the great peril of rod, reel, and leader, if not to the
perpendicularity of the canoe itself. To illustrate: I had struck a
large fish, and was playing him in the manner detailed, to my entire
satisfaction. I had never been better pleased with the behavior of any
fish, and I had him under such perfect control that I foolishly began
to deem myself perfect master of the situation. In his strugglings the
fish had crossed and recrossed the channel a hundred times--had rushed
up stream and dashed down stream with the speed and eccentricity of a
boomerang, but had failed to get beyond the restraint of a steady
tension. I had reached a point in the struggle where I would not have
given a farthing to be insured against accidents, when, while holding
him within twenty feet of my tip, he turned his head down stream and
dashed directly under the centre of the canoe, bearing my rod with him,
and bending it double before I knew whether I stood on my head or my
heels. And then came a crack, and a tear, and a snap, splintering the
second joint of my rod, and breaking my tip like a pipe stem. I
supposed, of course, that the wrench had released the fish, and I began
to reel in as disconsolate as a defeated candidate for office. But,
hollo! the fish is not off! When the crash came the line had rendered
so freely that there was no unusual strain upon the hook, and he was
still fast. But what of that? How could I save him with such a wreck?
The idea that it was possible, with skilful handling, added a
hundredfold to the excitement, and put me on my mettle. So, finding
that the line was free, and that by keeping the dangling pieces in
proper position I could still manipulate the reel, I renewed the
contest, and after floating a mile or two with the current, brought him
to gaff. I mourned, of course, the destruction of my favorite rod--the
best I ever handled, which had served me, without a crack, for two
years, and which I would not have exchanged for any rod I ever saw.
There was nothing gorgeous about it; but it had life in every fibre,
and responded with every cast, from tip to butt, with such spring and
elasticity as rendered casting with it a real pleasure.


VIII.

And apropos of the old adage that wise men learn from experience. After
this fish had thus made shipwreck of my favorite rod, the Judge, with a
generosity which is characteristic of the true angler--and no man has
the spirit of the true angler who is not generous--proffered me the use
of his untried bamboo. It was, and still is, the handsomest piece of
salmon rod workmanship I ever saw, and felt in the handling as if it
were as good to go as it was handsome to look at. He had hesitated,
with the excusable timidity of the novice, to use it himself, and
wished it tried, that he might report the result to its maker. I, of
course, felt complimented by this proof of confidence in my skill, and
consented, with the promise that I would do my best to preserve it
intact, but that I must save my fish if I had to risk every inch of my
harness.

The pool in which the test was to be made was directly in front of our
camp, and the water was still in excessive volume, and the flow
unpleasantly impetuous. I soon caught the hang of the rod, and was
making experimental casts of a hundred feet or more, quite delighted
with its spring and play, when I had a rise from the most dangerous
spot in the pool. Afraid to strike with my usual force, I simply raised
my tip an inch or two, and felt that he was as securely hooked as if I
had a "double hitch" around him. And it is curious this instinctive
consciousness of a secure or of a frail hold of your fish the instant
you strike him. Every observant angler has this consciousness; and
nothing is more common at such a moment than the remark, "I am afraid
he is not well hooked"; or, "Ah! that struck home"; and all the after
play--whether timidly or fearlessly--depends largely upon the "feel" of
the strike.

At the outset I knew that if my fish escaped, it would not be because
he was not well hooked; and, with this assurance, the play began. He
took to the swiftest water at the first dash; he fairly leaped over the
rapids at the foot of the pool, the canoe following with the speed of a
race-horse, for half a mile, when he cried a halt, much to my
satisfaction, for was I not entrusted with the finest rod that had ever
wet its tip in the Cascapedia? Unlike my old companion, with which I
had fought an hundred such battles, I was ignorant of the strain this
elegant bamboo would bear, and so fought this battle as timidly as if I
had never before broken a lance or captured a salmon. But a necessity
was upon me. Its power of resistance must be tested, and the monster I
was fighting must be kept in hand, if every joint in the rod should be
reduced to splinters. So, ounce by ounce, the pressure was increased.
Every new rush of the fish was met by augmented resistance on my part,
until I found the rod capable of as hard work and as heavy a pressure
as I had ever placed upon any rod I had ever handled. With what
mathematical precision it curved from tip to reel! How grandly it took
the butt, and with what grace it resumed its original form when
relieved of an unusual pressure! To handle it soon became a delight,
and I found myself procrastinating the contest from the mere pleasure I
experienced in watching its perfect movement.

When at length I concluded to make a finish of the struggle, had placed
my canoe below the fish, and was gathering him in, by slow approaches,
not dreaming of disaster or defeat, the ferocious brute dashed for the
canoe, passing under it near the stern like a flash, and threatening to
make as complete shipwreck of the Judge's bamboo as the fish of the day
previously had made of my own lance-wood. But, like others before me, I
had learned from the enemy how to fight. The moment I saw what was
coming I threw my rod down parallel with the side of the canoe,
allowing the tip to extend beyond it, with the reel outward, so as to
give the line free play. The experiment was a success. The line
followed the fish without a hitch, and the beautiful rod remained
intact! The furious brute was outflanked, and, as if in despair, he
gave up the battle, and in ten minutes was gaffed.

The rod was a success. It had passed every ordeal grandly, and it was
handed back to its owner with the comforting assurance, "It will do."

                     *      *      *      *      *

These are but specimen illustrations of the pleasure and exhilaration
which come to those who "go-a-fishing" for salmon. But the pastime
holds its votaries for other reasons than the mere excitement it
affords them. A diversion which reaches only to the material of our
natures can never acquire a permanent place in the affections of men of
thoughtful habit. It is proof, therefore, of the satisfying and
elevating character of the gentle art, that its disciples never weary
of the pleasure it affords them. Indeed, the most enthusiastic anglers,
and those who best illustrate its refining and invigorating influence,
are those who have passed into "the sere and yellow leaf" with rod and
reel as their inseparable companions. Like the virtues, it grows by
what it feeds upon; and as the sun becomes more and more attractive in
its mellow beauty, as it silently and gently sinks from view, so do the
pleasures of angling become increasingly fascinating to its happy
votaries as they near the gateway of their final rest. Ah! unhappy they
who, in making haste to be rich, fail to avail themselves of the
opportunity which angling affords to garner up such pleasant memories
as would cast perennial rays of refreshing sunshine upon the too often
sombre pathway of old age!

GEORGE DAWSON.




EXECUTIVE PATRONAGE AND CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.


Late writers on the English Constitution draw a contrast rather
unfavorable to us between their Parliamentary and our Presidential
Government. Our Executive is a fixture for four years and reëligible.
He is responsible, and not shielded by any such legal fiction as "The
king can do no wrong." In Great Britain, the cabinet, selected from the
legislature, is the real executive body. "In its origin it belongs to
the legislative part of the State; in its functions it belongs to the
executive part." By a conventional code, the ministry or "the
Government" can be changed by a vote of want of confidence, or by a
defeat of the ministry in the House of Commons on a governmental
measure. Our Cabinet holds a subordinate position. The Constitution
contemplates, but does not define, "executive departments." Seven have
been established by law, some of which have been divided into inferior
departments called bureaus. The Cabinet is the political family of the
President. The "heads of departments" are his constitutional advisers,
and aid in the execution of his high functions. They are not held
responsible for good government, are not liable to votes of censure for
their policy, although for convenience sake, a kind of semi-official
connection subsists betwixt them and the Federal Legislature.

The "principal officer in each of the executive departments" has a
staff of subordinates. The various officers of the United States
constitute the machinery of government, and the appointment of a large
proportion of them is vested in the President. These various civil
officers, so appointed, are for the execution of public business. The
conduct of public business and the care of the public interests are,
under the President's supervision and control, largely committed to
these functionaries. With the growth of the country in territorial
area, population, and wealth, the enormous increase of taxation and
expenditures and the assumption by the Federal Government of State
duties and prerogatives, the number of officials has increased to
100,000. The civil list in 1859 numbered 44,527; in 1875, 94,119. The
rolls show a larger list of paid dependents since the war than there
was during the war. All these officers hold their places by the tenure
of the President's will. They are to be found in every neighborhood in
the Union, and constitute a large army, dangerous to the welfare and
perpetuity of the republic.

The theory is that all public offices are for administrative efficiency
and the public weal. Up to the beginning of General Jackson's term of
office, there had been, during the forty years of his six predecessors,
112 removals of such officers as required for their appointment "the
advice and consent of the Senate." These few removals were not made
from caprice, or to punish enemies, or to reward partisans, but for
cause and by strict rule. The power of removal was exerted so
exceptionally, only for just and salutary purposes, and was never used
as an instrument of party success. Public policy dictated its exercise.
Offices were not regarded as the private property of the President, or
as the perquisites of a party, but as trusts for the general good.

General Jackson's accession to the Presidency began a revolution.
Differences of opinion were punished by removal from office, and
partisanship was rewarded with places of profit. His successors have
adhered too closely to a precedent which has almost solidified into a
party law, or a principle of American politics. No party can claim
exemption from the sin of using the civil list for party ends. The
Whig, Democratic, and Republican parties, in the distribution of
"patronage," in Federal, State, and municipal governments, are alike
obnoxious to censure. The poison has infiltrated every vein and artery
of the body politic. Every branch of federal and of State service has
suffered from the vicious maxim that offices are spoils to be divided
among the victors in a party contest. Too often the condition precedent
to appointment is unquestioning submission to party decrees,
indiscriminate support of party candidates and party measures. The
right to remove incumbents is now a conceded Presidential prerogative,
acquiesced in by all parties.

The power of removal, under the influence of a false political
philosophy, has been perverted into the duty of removal so as to give
the offices to the winning party. A new President of different politics
from his predecessor is expected to make sweeping changes, amounting
even to a "total administrative cataclysm." The appointment of a
political antagonist excites surprise, and requires an explanation or
apology. Experience of the working of an office, ability, honesty,
fitness, are not conclusive. "Off with his head," is the remorseless
decree when a place is needed for a partisan. Each incoming
administration is bedeviled by hordes of applicants, as greedy as the
daughters of the horseleech. The plagues of Egypt scarcely symbolize
the number and clamorousness of the mendicants. General Harrison,
honest old man, in one month fell a victim to the tormentors, and
General Taylor's death was probably hastened by a similar infliction.

Executive patronage is dependent on the revenue and expenditures of the
Government and on the number of persons employed by the Government, or
who receive money from the public treasury. To appoint and remove at
will is a dangerous prerogative, royal in its proportions. Some of the
ablest statesmen and constitutional lawyers have denied the right of
the President to remove without cause, especially in such appointments
as required the concurrence of the Senate.[3] The practice of the
Government seems to have settled the question differently. Conceding
_pro hoe vice_ the constitutionality, the evils, as illustrated in our
history, are none the less great.

      [3] Reports to the Senate in 1825, 1835, and 1844, contain able
      discussions of "Executive Patronage."

I. There has been a reversal of the theory of our institutions in
respect to officers. In 1835 Mr. Webster said in the United States
Senate:

    Government is an agency created for the good of the people, and
    every person in office is an agent and servant of the people.
    Offices are created not for the benefit of those who are to fill
    them, but for the public convenience; and they ought to be no more
    in number, nor should higher salaries be attached to them, than the
    public service requires. The difficulty in practice is to prevent a
    direct reversal of all this; to prevent public offices from being
    considered as intended for the use and emolument of those who can
    obtain them. There is a headlong tendency to this.... There is
    another, and perhaps a greatly more mischievous result, from
    extensive patronage in the hands of a single magistrate, and that
    is, that men in office have begun to think themselves mere agents
    and servants of the appointing power, and not agents of the
    Government or the country.

Offices are looked upon as the prey of political parties, as spoils to
be distributed. The well-being of the country, with appointer and
appointees, becomes a secondary consideration. Office-holders, holding
by the "tenure of partisan zeal and service" are regarded as receiving
pap from the party, and therefore under special obligations to make
sacrifices for its success. Hence federal officers, holding their
places for the benefit of the party, are assessed for contributions for
electioneering purposes and the recalcitrants are dismissed or tabooed.
This system is unfavorable to manly independence. Fearing removal,
incumbents become parasites, with chameleon facility adapting the
complexion of their politics to the color of the appointing power.
Government becomes also an almoner to bestow charities. Pensioning,
never justifiable except in special exigencies, becomes the rule. Some
apprehension of the evils of governmental allowances without an
equivalent possibly induced Dr. Johnson, in the first edition of his
dictionary, to define "Pensioner, a slave of the State, hired by a
stipend to obey his master."

II. Government becomes a kind of close corporation for the benefit of
the party in power. Party adherents, pets, favorites, get the
dividends; civil service thus affording, as Mr. Bright phrased it for
England, "a system of out-door relief to the poorer saplings of
aristocracy." As a necessary consequence, patriotism and attachment to
principles among those corporators become feebler, and servility to
party stronger.

III. The Government suffers in its administration. In appointments
other tests than the Jeffersonian, "Is he honest, is he faithful, is he
capable?" are applied. The right to employment should grow solely out
of superior capacity and attainments. Official patronage is a trust for
promoting the general welfare. The present system, forgetful of general
interests, instead of securing the best men, often gets instead the
incapable. A good official system is hardly possible with constant
changes in the _personnel_. If continuance in office be dependent on
other considerations than discharge of duties, a stimulus to diligence
and fidelity is taken away. The best motive for learning a task
thoroughly should be furnished. Not unfrequently one defeated in his
aspirations for Congress receives a Federal appointment. A popular
condemnation becomes a stepping stone to a higher position. What should
be regarded as a rebuke is made a plea for promotion.

IV. The tendency of the abuse of Executive patronage is to make those
in the civil service mere placemen and mere tools or willing servitors
of the President. To quote again from Mr. Webster:

    A competition ensues, not of patriotic labors, not of rough and
    severe toils for the public good, not of manliness, independence,
    and public spirit, but of complaisance, of indiscriminate support
    of executive measures, of pliant subserviency and gross adulation.

By personal effort, by money contributions, through the press, in
nominating assemblies, at the polls, office-holders work for him in
whom they have their official being. An incumbent of the Presidency, a
candidate for reëlection, has a large number of men and their families
interested in his success, and swayed by the temptation of interest to
secure his renomination and reëlection; add to these the hungry
expectants, whose eyes and hopes are fixed on Washington, and it can be
seen that the power and the practice of giving offices to partisans
operate on the fears of all who are in and the hopes of those who wish
to get in. The Executive himself is armed with undue influence and
power and subjected to a temptation to dishonesty if he covets a
reëlection. The "spoils" in the hands of a President, granted or
withdrawn at pleasure, give fearful odds in a popular or party contest.
Our Presidential elections are pervaded by an element not favorable to
fairness or purity. A dangerous mass of private and personal interest
is thrown into the scale, and selfishness usurps the place of
patriotism and a sense of public duty.

V. Distribution of so many and such valuable offices as party rewards
degrades parties from organizations upon principle, for patriotic
political ends, to mere combinations for expediency and for personal
ends. Because of the power and patronage of the President; and the
centralizing effects of federal legislation, all State and local
elections are subordinate to the quadrennial agitation for the highest
federal officer. So ramifying is this federal influence, the election
of a constable in Montana is decided by his relation to a "national"
party. State and county officers are nominated upon "national"
platforms, and support of Hayes or Tilden determines governors,
Congressmen, judges, superintendents of education, mayors, sheriffs,
policemen. Local interests are subordinated to the Presidential
struggle. The attention and ability of the people of a State are
diverted from State development to national concerns, or rather to the
question, who is to be empowered to bestow Executive patronage? In the
mind of the masses the President is the government. A Presidential
election has ceased to be a contest of ideas, or to decide a political
policy. It is a gigantic party struggle. Overwhelming importance
attaches to it, because the victor has a cornucopia of "patronage
bribery" to give to whom he likes. In other days, the canvass which
preceded elections was educatory. Able men, on opposite sides, face to
face, discussed grave questions of constitutional law or federal
policy. In the nullification controversy of South Carolina there was a
war of giants. The speeches of O'Neal, Harper, Johnston, Hamilton,
Hayne, Preston, McCuffie, and Calhoun were such masterly expositions of
the relations of the States to the general Government as would have
done credit to Edmund Burke. In other contests, North and South, were
discussions by our ablest statesmen of fundamental principles of higher
abstractions. In the last contest much of the "stump" speaking was the
veriest twaddle, an appeal to prejudice, and hate, and sectionalism,
full of scurrility, personality, and vulgar anecdote. The press, so
essential to free institutions, partakes of the degeneracy, and thus
politics is degraded from a noble science to a disgusting scramble for
spoils.

VI. Treating the civil service as legitimate rewards for partisan zeal
diminishes official responsibility, lowers the standard of official
integrity, and stimulates corruption by augmenting the means of
corruption. The rapid growth of patronage, far beyond what is required
for efficiency of administration, is readily suggestive of evil. A
spirit of subserviency is not favorable to the growth of the highest
qualities. Ceasing to regard office as a trust for the public good, the
holder loses a strong motive for integrity. Favoring servility, or
sycophancy, to conciliate superiors, very easily loosens the restraints
of conscience. Vigorous attachment to principles yields to devotion to
party. Public morals are corrupted by false maxims, by increase of
temptation, by loss of patriotism. Places are multiplied for partisans.
Contracts are let to partisans. Frauds, the logical consequence of
lowering office to be mere pay for party services, are covered up, or
palliated, to prevent damage to "the party."

If these evils be not greatly exaggerated, reform seems an imperative
necessity. It is hard to correct governmental abuses. Society is prone
to run in ruts. To suggest the supernumerariness of an office, or a
reduction of salaries, raises a howl among the _ins_ as if the
liberties of the country were imperilled. Those useful legislators,
like George W. Jones of Tennessee, and Holman of Indiana, who watch for
abuses and scent afar a "ring," are always unpopular. It is needful to
get back to first principles and to indoctrinate the public anew with
correct notions as to the object of an office and the duties of a
public officer. The Koran says: "A ruler who appoints any man to an
office when there is in his dominions another man better qualified for
it sins against God and against the State." To dismiss a faithful and
capable incumbent to gratify party resentment, or to gratify a friend,
is utterly in disharmony with the purpose of administrative machinery.
Our Government is an agency for the public weal. It is not in an
antagonistic position to "the people of the United States," but their
servant to accomplish their legal will and to promote their prosperity.
People were not created for offices, but offices for the people. As
soon as the public service ceases to be subserved the offices should at
once cease. While the office is necessary, and the incumbent discharges
its duties satisfactorily, there should be no needless change. A
citizen accepting a public trust, and doing his duty faithfully, should
be allowed to enjoy his manhood and be protected from the exactions of
a superior power. If, as has been asserted, "no vacancies" greet the
eyes of applicants for places in Washington, it is a hopeful sign and
most praiseworthy.

When vacancies do occur, or new offices are created, some competition
among the candidates for employment would ensure more efficient
service. Superiority of parts or attainments is a better qualification
for bureau or clerical duties than activity in a ward meeting. Men of
the best energy and capacity are not likely to be obtained by an
arbitrary partition of places among the districts whose representatives
sustain the Administration. England has reached the competitive test by
slow steps. Employees in the several departments were, for a long time,
clerks to the minister, and were paid out of the fees received from
those who had business with the department. The sale of offices and
exaction of fees occasioned serious abuses. By several acts of
Parliament in this century, a civil service has been established, a
public status assigned to clerks, and their salaries are now paid out
of the public exchequer. By the test of competitive examinations, and
by placing on a better basis the relation betwixt public servants and
the nation, the service has been much improved.

The application of some competitive test for certain grades of office
might be supplemented by requiring the President, in all cases of
nominations to the Senate to fill vacancies, to state the reasons for
removal, if any had been made. Laws might be passed modifying the
absoluteness of the right of removal. In 1789, in a discussion in the
House of Representatives, Mr. Madison said:

    To displace a man from office whose merits require that he should
    be continued in it would be an act of maladministration, and the
    wanton removal of meritorious officers would subject the President
    to impeachment and removal from his own high trust.

The Constitution of the Confederate States had this provision:

    The principal officer in each of the executive departments, and all
    persons connected with the diplomatic service, may be removed from
    office at the pleasure of the President. All other civil officers
    of the executive departments may be removed at any time by the
    President, or other appointing power, when their services are
    unnecessary, or for dishonesty, incapacity, inefficiency,
    misconduct, or neglect of duty; and when so removed, the removal
    shall be reported to the Senate, together with the reasons
    therefor.

A further provision forbade the President to reappoint to the same
office, during the recess, any person who had been rejected by the
Senate.

To make the President ineligible, as was done in the Confederate States
Constitution, and as President Hayes recommends, would take from the
Executive the temptation to use the appointing power to receive a
renomination or reëlection. As the term of a Chief Magistrate draws
near its end, and he becomes more deeply interested in being his own
successor, he may make his appointments and direct his administration
to increase popularity and accomplish his own ambitious ends. He might
look to party management, and ward meetings, and manipulated caucuses,
rather than to the general welfare. The evil of re-eligibility is
increased by the failure of our electoral colleges to effect what was
designed. These colleges have no independence, and most mechanically
register the decrees of caucuses. What was intended to be a check on
party has become its pliant instrument.

As essential to reduction of Executive patronage, and disarming the
President of the dangerous influence and power growing out of it, there
should be a persevering and a large reduction of federal expenditures.
General Jackson, in 1836, truly said, "No political maxim is better
established than that which tells us that an improvident expenditure of
the public money is the parent of profligacy, and that no people can
hope to perpetuate their liberties who long acquiesce in a policy which
taxes them for objects not necessary to the legitimate and real wants
of their government." Large revenue and expenditure give an excuse if
they do not make the necessity for increasing the number of persons
employed by the government. With expenditure comes an army of agents,
contractors, officers interested in keeping up extravagance and
multiplying officials. Patronage flows from the fountain of public
income. To reduce patronage and ensure honest government, it is
indispensable that the Government should extort no more money from the
people than is needful for a just and economical administration. Our
governments, federal, State, and municipal, need to be taught, by
constitutional limitation and a sound public opinion, that a citizen's
property is his as against every demand, except for a just, honest, and
economical administration of the government.

As helping reform and growing out of it, a reorganization of parties is
needed. The present parties have "played out." Parties are essential in
republics, but they should represent intelligent patriotism, be
organized on practical, living issues, and be vitalized by principles.
Who is wise enough to tell what differentiates the Republican and the
Democratic parties? What distinctive principles divide them? Who can
"locate" the parties on such questions as tariff, currency, expenditure,
civil service reform, character of the government, boundary between
reserved and delegated powers? Issues like secession and slavery, no
longer disputed or doubted, should have no influence in forming or
keeping alive parties. Obsolete shibboleths should not alienate those
who are otherwise agreed. A party not crystallizing around vital issues,
not having "the dignity of contention" for principles, becomes a machine
to put up A or put down B. The _ins_ and the _outs_ make now the two
centres of the dividing parties, which have become cliques and cabals
controlled by caucuses.

This is a most opportune season for reorganization of political
parties, and a readjustment on broad and living issues. It is wrong to
be carrying about the dead corpse of the past. A new generation has
grown up since 1860. The spirit of the age is not what it was two
decades since. The young men know next to nothing of Whiggery and
Democracy. To make secession, or slavery, or the "bloody shirt" a
rallying cry, is as absurd as to exhume the embargo or the alien and
sedition laws. The inertia of society is great, and men cohere from
traditions of the past. The reform bill of 1832 was long delayed in
England, in its practical results, because the statesmen of 1832
continued in public life. So now effete parties are kept alive for
partisan or patriotic ends by those who seem not to have realized that
we are living in a new America.

It seems a plain duty to gather up what survives of our constitutional
federal republic, of the labors of the past, and with a catholic spirit
to combine for reformation of abuses, for national conciliation, for
purifying parties, for saving the republic. A party equally of order
and of progress, in favor of retrenchment, economy, low taxes, sound
currency, civil service reform, preservation of State and of federal
honor, strict adherence to the Constitution, keeping federal and State
governments within their separate and defined spheres of action, while
encountering the hostility of extremists, would rally to its support
enough of intelligence and patriotism to repress sectionalism and hate,
and bring our lately discordant States into a fraternal union, based on
fixed law, mutual toleration and respect, and exact justice.

J. L. M. CURRY.




THREE PERIODS OF MODERN MUSIC.


In "Punch's Almanack" for this year is an illustration, in three
compartments, of the subject "Music at Home." The first is called
"Drawing-room Music of the Past." A young lady sits at one of those
little spindle-legged piano-fortes, hardly larger than a large
washstand, and somewhat shaped like one, with which our grandmothers
and great grandmothers, and the men who composed music for them, were
not only satisfied, but delighted. Her hands are moving, light and
level, over the little key-board, and the dainty turn of her head shows
that she is captivated by the sounds that she is eliciting. Around her
is gathered a family group of some dozen people, old and young, from
the grandfather to the little grandchild who sits upon a hassock at her
lovely mother's knee. They are all entranced by the music. Plainly
there is not a sound in the room but that which is produced by the fair
performer. The souls of all that company are enchained; their hearts if
not their eyes are brimming with emotion. A spell of tenderness and
grace has been cast upon them; and they have given themselves up to him
who has woven it. The faces of all are lightly tinged with sadness, but
it is an elevated and elevating sadness; a sadness that is mingled with
a joy silent, deep, and strong, a joy far above hilarity. The most
impressive figure of the group is the grandfather, who sits with his
arm lying listlessly across the instrument and his head slightly bowed,
as, we may be sure, he is carried back by the sweet strains to a time
when one who does not appear in the group was by his side in all the
charms of early womanhood. The composition is so touching, so filled
with purest, sweetest sentiment, that it is impossible to look at it
long without being moved almost to tears by the tender and serene
pathos with which it is pervaded. The legend tells us that the music
which has wrought this spell is "A Melody by Mozart."

In the second compartment of the triptique, which is labelled
"Drawing-room Music of the Present," a young lady also sits at a
piano-forte. It is a grand, a very grand piano-forte; a tremendous
institution, the invisible end of which stretches far into infinitude.
Plainly it is one of those awful instruments which have received a gold
medal at all the expositions. The lid is propped up so that it looks
like a gigantic trap set to catch some gigantic bird or vermin. The
performer's shoulders and arms, which emerge in a somewhat alarming
manner from their scanty covering, are in violent agitation. Her hands
are flung into the air as they poise for an instant over the upper part
of the long key-board, ready to pounce down upon the shuddering notes
below, and from the great gaping instrument a flock of startled and
affrighted quavers, semiquavers, and demisemiquavers is pouring out
pell-mell over the assembled hearers. Hearers! No. The great
drawing-room is filled with a crowd of people who have evidently been
bidden to listen to the music. But they are undergoing it with stolid
indifference as they talk or try to talk, either almost shouting or
whispering into each other's deafened ears and bewildered brains. The
only person who takes any interest in the performance is the performer
herself. The motive power here is "A brilliant fantasia for the piano
by Signor Rumblestominski."

The third compartment is entitled "Drawing-room music of the Future."
Here five performers are laboring at and around the piano-forte, the
top of which has been taken off. They are all men; tough-brained-looking
fellows: one a violinist, one a violoncellist; two are at the key-board,
and one stands music in hand and mouth wide open. They are toiling as if
at day's work by the piece; and all are singing. They are engaged upon
"Twenty-four consecutive interdependent Logarithmic studies for Violin
and Violoncello, with Double Differential and Integral accompaniment for
the Piano-forte, supplemented by Unisonal Descriptive and Corroborative
vocal exposition in five modern languages." They have evidently got well
into harness, and have dragged their hearers some distance over their
rugged road, which is a "hard road to travel." The mass of the assembled
company are rushing madly for the door. On an ottoman in the foreground
sit five victims, four young ladies and a bald-headed old gentleman, who
are all fast asleep. At one side a determined fellow sits with his
elbows on his knees grasping his head with both hands, resolved to
endure unto the end. Not even in the faces of the performers is there
the slightest manifestation of the soothing, the elevating, or even the
pleasurably exciting influence which belongs peculiarly to music. With
dogged determination they are working out a knotty intellectual problem.
They do not exhibit even the tickled vanity of musical virtuosity; they
are there--to use a cant phrase of musical criticism--to "interpret"
what the composer has with infinite toil and trouble put upon paper; and
very tough work they find it; somewhat like reading mathematics written
in the Basque language. And their souls are unmoved. The musical sounds
go through their ears straight to their brains, leaving their hearts
untouched. They are engaged in an intellectual process.

Of these designs, the last two, although they are laughable
caricatures, express with very little exaggeration (allowing for the
notes made visible in the second) the character, the quality, and the
effect of certain schools of musical composition. The first is not a
caricature, as any one will see; but although it is quite the contrary,
it is not on the other hand idealized. It merely represents with
skilful touch and felicitous arrangement what might have actually
occurred and what doubtless did many times occur in drawing-rooms at
the end of the last century and the first years of this; indeed, what
might happen and even does happen now. There has been a change in
costume and in manners; but there is none in the effect upon musical
souls of a melody by Mozart.

And these designs illustrate three periods in modern music: two through
which it has passed and one upon which it seems now to be entering. By
modern music I mean music since the days of Palestrina. What was
written before that time, nearly or remotely, although it may have
historical importance and interest, is of little or no value as music.
Indeed, it hardly is music as we know and feel it. Not that I would
imply that Palestrina invented modern music, or even that he alone of
contemporary composers was a gifted and accomplished master of his art.
Roland de Lattre, called Orlandus Lassus, chief of the Gallo-Belgic
school, might dispute the palm with him.[4] But this conceded, it
remains that in Orlandus Lassus we have the best product of the ancient
school, adhering to the ancient style and bringing it to its highest
perfection; while in Palestrina we have the beginning of the modern
school and style, the distinctive trait of which may broadly be said to
be the use of melody and harmony of independent value under constant
governance of the principle of tonality. Before the time of
Palestrina--say A.D. 1550, he having been born about 1524 and having
died about 1594, which year closed the life of Orlandus Lassus, who was
born in 1520--before that time music was polyphonic. But it was not
merely, as that term implies, many-voiced, or in several parts; for
that it is now; but the parts moved without any æsthetic relation to
each other, and with the same independence of the æsthetic effect of
the whole. Their progression was according to certain rules; but these
conformed to, the object of the composer seemed to be to make his work
as intricate as possible. Certain figures--for they could hardly be
called melodies--one or two or three or more--were repeated again and
again and again by the various voices, each one going or seeming to go
its own way, entirely regardless of the others--regardless of anything
except the rules of the counterpoint of the day. The combining result
was a tangled skein of sound which could be unravelled only as it had
been put together, by rule. Instead of an emotional expression it was
an intellectual puzzle in sound. Moreover the whole composition was
without any bond of unity; it was, so to speak, and in its effect it
was really, in no particular key.

      [4] For an able setting forth of the claims of Orlandus Lassus,
      see Frederic Louis Ritter's excellent "History of Music," First
      Series, published by Oliver Ditson & Co.

Upon music in this condition there came about three hundred years ago a
great change. Polyphonetic writing gave way, gradually but with some
rapidity, to the movement of parts in a harmony of independent absolute
beauty--that is, beauty, in the simple succession of its chords--and to
the union with this harmony of a leading melody, also valuable for its
independent, absolute beauty. Thus came into being what I have
heretofore called "absolute music," which has been known to the world
only about three hundred years, and in its full and complete
development only about one hundred and fifty. At the same time, with
this use of harmony and melody of absolute beauty and value, came in a
great controlling principle or law, upon the operation and influence of
which, in fact, the æsthetic effect of the new music chiefly if not
entirely depended. This law or principle was tonality. I have been told
that in a publication which I have never seen--although most probably
it has been sent to me, to go, with the greater part of the printed
matter and not a few of the letters that I receive, unread into my
waste-basket--I have been held up as a dreadful example of musical
incompetence on the ground that I cannot "appreciate Wagner's
magnificent [or splendid, or something of that sort] tonality." Of
course it cuts me to the heart to show that my criticaster was
thoroughly ignorant of the very meaning of the word that he used--a
word which is the name of a principle of paramount importance and
significance in the art of music, which, I believe, he in some sort
professes. But the demands of truth are inexorable.

Tonality is something which cannot be magnificent or splendid; nor can
it be attributed to a composer as being in the slightest degree a claim
to admiration. Indeed, one composer can hardly possess it in a greater
degree than another; and the writer of an ephemeral ballad, or of
"Thou, thou reignest in this bosom," has it, although not more largely,
with stronger manifestation than Mozart or Beethoven. And yet it so
happens that Wagner is in his later works _less_ governed by the law of
tonality than any other known composer of the day.

Tonality is simply the relation of a musical phrase, or air, or longer
composition, to a keynote or tonic chord. To this tonic chord the
harmonies of the composition must bear a close and constantly felt
relationship. The harmony almost always opens with this chord, and
continually recurs to it; and either in its simple form or in some of
its inversions, it, its dominant and subdominant, are the perceptibly
ruling harmonies of the composition; and upon this tonic chord the
composition always ends. That is tonality; nothing more nor less; and
to the influence of this principle of tonality is due the distinctive
character of modern music. Strange as it will probably seem to most
amateurs, news as we have already seen it is to one professor, it was
not until after Palestrina's time that the law of tonality asserted
itself in music, and that compositions were clearly written with any
tonic, that is, manifestly and strikingly in any particular key.[5] But
it so happens that Wagner's method of composition has actually led him
somewhat away from this principle of tonality. Any musical person will
see that in recitative there is much less relation of harmony to the
tonic than in airs or in choruses; and Wagner's prolonged, almost
endless recitatives are wearisome partly from the very fact that we are
so long at sea drifting hither and thither without the rudder of
tonality. But what did this matter to the criticaster? He had heard the
word tonality, and it was a round, mouth-filling word, somewhat new
withal, and therefore good for use against an ignoramus. Perhaps he
thought it meant sonority or something of the kind; or he connected it
with that lovely phrase "tone-poem." Well, in any case, it has served
his purpose astonishingly.

      [5] It is not necessary that I should give authority for this to
      any competent person who is acquainted with the music of the
      ancient composers; but whoever chooses to do so may find the
      subject fully discussed in Helmholtz's great work, _passim_.

After the introduction of the principle of tonality music developed
with remarkable rapidity. In one hundred and fifty years it made more
progress toward an ideal beauty and as a means of emotional expression
than it had made in the thousands of years that had passed since the
first note was sung. For by this principle of tonality, melody and
harmony as we know them became possible. All that went before was
either the vague, formless, unsymmetrical production of popular mood
and fancy, or the dry formula-work of musical pedants. And yet within a
century we have such a result as Stradella's divine _Aria di chiesa Se
i miei sospiri_, which, whether for its melody, its harmony, or its
emotional expression, intense yet kept within the bounds of a lofty and
almost serene dignity, is unsurpassed by any vocal work which has been
since produced. It has been said by some that this air was not written
by Stradella. M. Fetis, however, does not doubt it; and the result of
the discussion is that it is assigned to the great Italian singer. The
story of his having saved his life by singing it--two assassins who
followed him into a cathedral to put him to death for having robbed a
nobleman of his beautiful mistress having been disarmed and sent off
repentant by the charm of his voice and of the music--is probably known
to many of my readers. Did any of them ever hear in a composition by
Wagner or Liszt, or any of that crew, a melody of which it could be
believed or for a moment supposed that it would produce such an effect,
even if it were sung by a seraph?

It was not, however, until the first quarter of the last century that
what is in a large sense the modern school of music came to full
growth. Then appeared Bach and Handel. They came suddenly; as suddenly
as Marlow and Shakespeare into the field of dramatic poetry, as
suddenly as Raphael and Titian into that of painting. Not indeed
without roots in the past and a growth from them, but with a
marvellously quick and strong development, and an unfolding of flower
and fruit that seemed as if it were--as indeed it was--the blooming of
a century plant. And as is ever the case in art, the utmost limit of
attainment seems to have been reached at the first bound. What was
dramatic poetry before the half century which began with Marlow and
Shakespeare? What was painting before the like period of its glory? And
what have either been since? This position may be claimed for Handel,
with the fullest recognition of the genius of Mozart (Haydn, great,
enchanting, truly inspired as he was, is yet out of the question), and
even of the almost awful genius of Beethoven. But when we remember that
the Hallelujah Chorus, _Lascia chio pianza_, the renowned _Largo_ in G
so grandly performed by Mr. Thomas's orchestra at his last subscription
concert, are from the same hand, and that these are only examples
(which I cite because they are so well known) of a creative power which
seems to have been equally great and various in its manifestations--when
we take into consideration the healthiness, the virility of Handel's
tone of thought, there being, I believe, in all his known works, not a
single passage marked by morbid feeling or even exaggerated sentiment,
although of intensest feeling there is overpowering expression, as for
example in the _Largo_ just referred to, and when we give due weight to
the copiousness of his production, he being the most voluminous of all
the great composers, if we measure his works by their quantity and not
by their numbers, in which an oratorio or an opera would count only one,
we can hardly hesitate, except in favor of Beethoven, in reckoning him
as the greatest creative mind in music. And as to Beethoven, deeply as
he sunk his shaft into the profound of human emotion, mightily as he
moves us, deftly as he expresses even the lighter moods of feeling
(rarely, however, without some passing touch which, if pushed a little
further, might become almost fierceness), is there not sometimes, and
perhaps more than sometimes, a morbidness, noble, magnificent, but still
morbidness, in his moods? We are overwhelmed by the grandeur, and are
swallowed up in the gloom of his graver compositions; but when we emerge
are we in as healthy a state of mind as that in which we find ourselves
after listening to Handel or reading Shakespeare--even if we read such
tragedies as "Hamlet," "Othello," and "King Lear"? Then, too, it must be
remembered how carefully Beethoven nursed his genius; how regardless he
was of every consideration except the expression of his own thought; and
how comparatively limited was his productiveness, or certainly his
production.

As to his moodiness, it must, on the other hand, be considered that it
is the peculiar function of music to express moods. Man's soul is
stirred by emotions which cannot be given utterance in words, and which
would remain unexpressed but for music, which to the musically
organized is a means of communication and of sympathy. There is a
question at least whether an art whose function it is to give
expression to inward feeling too subtle for words, an expression which
is above all words, which gives form to the formless and utterance to
the unspeakable, is not rightfully and of necessity at times morbid and
moody; whether if it were not so it would not fail in doing that which
is the very reason of its being. The supremacy lies between Handel and
Beethoven; and we shall find ourselves inclined to assign it now to one
and now to the other, according to the mood in which we are, which will
depend greatly on which of the two we have just heard.

And yet, as to pure music, irrespective of psychological
significance--that is, the expression of an ideal of beauty in musical
form--Mozart stands first among all composers. Another mind so fertile
in thoughts of the finest and highest kind of beauty is unknown in the
history of any art, Shakespeare being of course always excepted.
Writing, like Shakespeare, always for money, and not hesitating to put
his hand to any task that would bring him a return, driven by sharp
necessity almost to the prostitution of his genius, driven in his
boyhood, by an exacting father, to write as an infant prodigy for the
support of the family, dying at the early, and, as far as the mind is
concerned, the immature, age of thirty-seven, he left behind him, in
the mass of his compositions, much that was hastily produced merely to
meet the needs of the moment. And yet in it all what transcendent
beauty of form! He had rarely even a fitting occasion for the exercise
of his faculties. Rarely is he not superior to the subject which he
undertakes to illustrate. Like Shakespeare, he throws away beautiful
thoughts upon mean and trivial subjects. Contrary to the supposition of
the Roman Pope, with Mozart it was the jug that was begun to be made
and the vase that issued from his hand.[6] "Don Giovanni" his greatest
or at least his richest work, is full of examples of this incongruity
between the occasion and the production. In a previous paper I pointed
out an example in the _andante_ of Leporello's catalogue song. Another
is the trio in masks. Only elsewhere in his own works can be found
examples of an equally enchanting beauty of musical form. In its
thought, and in the elevation and finish of that thought, it reaches
the highest attainable pitch of perfection. This single trio is of more
worth than all that many composers of repute have written in all their
lives. For example: If it were a question between the destruction of
this brief passage and all of Mendelsohn's compositions, the trio
should be preserved without a moment's hesitation. Just as the Madonna
Sixtina is worth ten times over all the canvases of Giulio Romano; and
as a single mutilated figure of the frieze of the Parthenon, or the
Venus of Milo, outweighs all the perfect marbles of Canova and of
Thorwaldsen. Such is the transcendent value of the supreme in art.

      [6] Amphora cepit Institui, currente rota cur urceus exit?--_Hor.
      Ad Pisones._

In all the works of the great composers of the modern school--the only
real school--of music, from Bach to Beethoven, including Haydn, there
is a supreme dominant feeling for beauty of form, shown chiefly in
melody, but hardly less apparent in harmony. Indeed, without this
feeling they would not have been great. The rule is absolute: no form,
no art; for art is proportion, symmetry. Melody is a series of musical
proportions; like a series of arches the lines of which are harmonious.
These melodic ideas they elaborated with the utmost care. It is
generally supposed that ideas in art come spontaneously; and of all
this might seem truest of musical ideas, which are not, like those
expressed in language, in painting, in sculpture, or in architecture,
required to conform themselves to a type or a purpose. They do come
indeed to the musical artist, but not spontaneously in the form in
which he presents them. They would not come up if they were not in the
soil; but the soil must be cultivated and the growth must be pruned and
trained into seeming naturalness and spontaneousness of beauty.
Milton's lines--

    Where the bright seraphim in burning row
    Their loud, uplifted angel trumpets blow--

seem like a splendid spontaneous outburst of poetical expression. But
we know that their splendor and their spontaneous seeming is the result
of elaboration, of erasure, of interlineation, of recasting. The
thought we may believe came in a moment, but it was worked with
consummate care and art into the form in which the poet gave it to the
world. So it is even with melody, the most spontaneous-seeming part of
music. We may be sure that even Mozart, most fertile of all composers
in melody, the greatest master of instrumentation, elaborated his
themes and his treatment of them, if not on paper, at least in his mind
before he put his conceptions into score. And the reason, the occasion
for this elaboration was the desired attainment of the highest possible
perfection of form. I need hardly say to any musician that I am not
speaking of technical form, either of harmonic progression or of the
cast of a composition, as for example the sonata form, the symphonic
form, the dramatic form, but of the form of intrinsic absolute value
which appeals to the general craving for and appreciation of beauty.
This beauty of form cannot be disregarded in any art without failure to
attain the highest place in the world's estimation, no matter how
marvellous and admirable the powers displayed in another direction. For
lack of this excellence Rembrandt can never take the highest place, but
must be content with the admiration of those who can appreciate his
mastery of manipulation, a technical excellence. Of all great painters,
Turner is most imperfect in this respect. But Turner can hardly be said
to have dealt with form at all. Hence a certain weakness amid all his
glory. He painted distance, light. Among painters he is the king of
space, the prince of the powers of the air.

Absolutely essential as beauty of form is in music, the reason of it,
unlike that of the same quality in other arts, is beyond our
apprehension. I at least find it so. I have heard it, and seen it upon
paper, and considered it all my life. I have taken it in at eye and ear
together. I have read and have pondered; but I never have been able to
detect musical genius in its working, as I have, or have fancied that I
have, done in other arts. I can find no reason for the existence of
this beauty except that it is beautiful. I can see clearly, and I have
sometimes thought that I could with some satisfactory approach to
clearness tell in words, what the composer has done; but the how, and
above all the why, is as much hidden from me as it was from him. For
that it was unknown to him I am sure, not because I could not discover
it, but from the very nature of the case.

Beauty of form in music is absolute, independent, self-existent. This
is true of all natural beauty. There is no obligation upon beauty as
there is, for instance, upon mathematical truth or moral goodness. But
in all imitative art there is an obligation of conformity at least to
an ideal type of what is represented. But music the moment it becomes
imitative becomes ridiculous; it steps out of the proper limits of the
art. For example, Haydn's "cheerful roaring lion" and "flexible tiger"
in the "Creation." But it should be remembered that what is imitative
and false in that aspect may have an essential beauty given by the
genius of the composer. For example, the second and the fourth
movements of the "Pastoral Symphony," and Haydn's own illustration of
the passage, "softly purling glides through silent glades the limpid
brook," in Raphael's song, "Rolling in foaming billows."

Music in its higher forms--I will not say its highest, but those which
bring it within the pale of consideration in æsthetics--is without
relations of any kind, except those which it bears to the soul of the
composer and to that of the hearer. Even words are only the occasion of
it, the suggestion. An embroidery of music with words is like the
semi-pictorial explanatory addition to the Egyptian temples. The
hieroglyphics tell us the story indeed, but if we are near enough to
distinguish them, they only mar the effect of the architecture. So if
in song the words are for any reason sufficiently salient to attract
attention to themselves, they mar the music. In sacred music
innumerable foolish and canting verses have become associated with
fervor of feeling and sublimity of aspiration because of the music of
which they have been made the vehicle. We do not really think of the
words. And so in "Don Giovanni," in "Fidelio," we overlook the
childishness of the poetry, if it must be called poetry, and regard it
only as affording suggestions and occasions for the music.

Modern music was presented under these conditions until about half a
century ago, when beauty of form and emotional expression began to be
disregarded in favor of finish and brilliancy of execution. This was
brought about in a great measure by the mechanical improvement of the
pianoforte and the extension of its scale. This improvement and
extension were made, it is true, in part to meet the demands of
performers; but on the other hand, they made performance possible. I
believe that there has been no more pernicious influence upon music
than the transformation which the piano-forte has undergone since
Beethoven's time, and its diffusion over all the world. I do not refer
to the cruelties which it is daily the means of inflicting upon
inoffensive families and true lovers of music, but to the effect that
it has had upon composition and upon performance. The former it has
helped to be at once flashy, dull, intricate, and shallow; the latter
it has led to be astonishing. Brilliancy, a crowd of notes, sonority,
all without beauty of form or emotional suggestiveness--this is the
music which the modern grand piano-forte has brought upon us. Not only
piano-forte music, but in a measure all music, has become a brilliant
fantasia by Signor Rumblestominski. We do not sit in passive silence to
listen to it; we talk, or are tempted to talk, against it; and the
praise we give it is not a look of serene joy, with that tinge of
sadness which Shakespeare had in mind when he made Jessica say, "I'm
never merry when I hear sweet music," but a clapping of the hands and
congratulation upon a brilliant triumph. And then we turn aside and go
on again with our society gabble. Orchestral leaders and performers are
not content unless they have a very full score to "interpret." They
must have a big brilliant noise. The pitch has been raised until
singers shriek, in order that the tone of the instruments may be
brilliant. Our ears must be shot through and through with piercing
shafts of sound. The time is quickened until _allegro_ has become
_presto_, and _presto_ a maddened, indistinguishable rush. Even
Theodore Thomas loses some of the majesty of the final movement of the
"Fifth Symphony" by too quick a movement; and in the Trio of the
Scherzo he drives the basses into a headlong scramble up and down the
scale. When the clear succession of notes becomes indistinguishable,
musical form, and with it musical beauty, is lost; and the performance
becomes a mere victory over musical difficulties. And this quickening
of the time is exactly what should not have taken place. Our orchestras
have increased in size and in volume of sound since the days of Mozart
and Beethoven. As larger bodies, therefore, their movement should be a
little slower to produce the effect which the great composers had in
mind. But in our rage for brilliancy we have hastened the movement; as
if we should make an elephant gallop like a horse. Moreover we have
fallen into the fatal error of making the finish, if not the difficulty
of execution, superior to the presentation of beauty in form and in
expression.

This condition of musical taste has been accompanied or followed--we
cannot surely say as effect from cause--by a withering of the creative
musical faculty in all its fairest, highest branches. After Weber's
death, which deprived the world of the only musician who promised to be
worthy to follow Beethoven, came Schubert and Mendelssohn, neither of
them very strong men; the latter decidedly weak, and deficient in
creative faculty; the former far more fertile and original. Since their
time there has been a blank in the annals of music of the higher kind.
The creative faculty seems to be dead. It is not so; for nature is
exhaustless, and in his due time the new composer will come. But new
conceptions of beautiful musical forms are unknown to the present
generation--indeed, were so to the foregoing. There is Schumann; but
Schumann is only the strongest and best of the non-creative composers.
He writes very elegantly, with harmonies unexceptionable and pleasing;
his taste is generally exquisite; his handling of his themes masterly.
But to what great end? None. He could not create a melody; and his
harmony is plainly contrived, not conceived. All of Schumann's music
that I ever heard, from symphony down to piano-forte music, is not
worth Beethoven's Sonata in C sharp minor, or Mozart's quartet in C.[7]
They have a certain sort of beauty and charm while you are hearing
them, but you don't hanker after them; passages from them don't come to
you when you are alone with troubled thoughts, and comfort you, hearten
you, and build you up, as the remembered strains of Handel, Mozart, and
Beethoven do. Simply, they are without real melody: they have only a
well manufactured imitation of melody. Such enjoyment as they give is
in a great measure intellectual. We admire the composer's skilful
musical processes. Hence he is admired by professional musicians. And I
remark, in passing, that professional criticism in any art, although it
has a certain value, has not valid, determining power, and is not very
trustworthy as a guide. It too generally runs on methods, processes,
technicalities. If you would learn to paint, listen to the criticisms
of a well instructed, capable painter; but if you would know and feel
the highest things in art, remain an amateur and study nature and
Raphael and Titian and Tintoretto.

      [7] No. 6, Breitkopf and Härtel.

As to the other composers who were Schumann's contemporaries, they
wrote in a condition of hopeless incapacity, except as to their
acquired mastery of their craft. They are ever uncertain themselves
what they would be at. Compare them with the real composers. Those men
knew they had something to do, and they did it. They felt that they had
something to say, and they said it. These are always about doing
something; they are ever entangled in some complicated toil of sound,
out of which they cannot find their way; they are hanging by the very
eyelids upon some discord that they are afraid to resolve; they are
always sounding a note of preparation, announcing that they are about
to do something, which they never do. Their music is written in the
paulo-post-future tense.

Under such circumstances it is not surprising that music, ceasing to be
merely beautiful and emotional, has, in its decay, sprouted a fungus
and monstrous intellectuality. Wagner's musical figures have become as
intricate, and often as ugly, as those of a Chinese puzzle; and the
entertainment is to see how they fit each other and the words to which
they are adapted. In his orchestral work we have the most masterly
instrumental coloring; a knowledge and an elaboration which is
unsurpassed, and also uninspired. It is great technical work, and no
wonder that professional musicians admire it. But what is its real
value? Take, for example, the finale to the overture to the
"Meistersinger." It is very impressive materially, and as a work of
instrumental art. It becomes tremendous from mere muscular activity and
accumulation of physical force. The violins rush frantically up and
down the finger-board; the violoncellos are ready to jump over their
bridges; the trumpets blow blood out of their eyes; and there is
general frenzy. But what is all this hurly-burly about? What are the
ideas? Look at them. There are, after all, but three, or it may be
four, notes in a chord, and a melody is--well, a melody; an
unmistakable sort of thing, one would think, although so hard to
define. What is there here of harmony or of melody that would be
valuable for its own sake? Strip this music of all its instrumental
elaboration, tone down its noisy self-assertion, and look at the bare
ideas as they can be played with two hands upon a piano-forte, or with
four strings in a quartet, and what are they worth? Would a circle of
cultivated musical people sit entranced by them if they were played
upon an old harpsichord! No, I take it. And if not, their worth is
little.

Instrumentation, and all manner of elaboration--orchestral and
choral--is of value only when it enhances and sets forth ideas,
melodies, harmonies--in a word, musical forms which in themselves have
the value which belongs to beauty and expression. Else, like the gift
of tongues without the spirit of love, it is literally sounding brass
and tinkling cymbals. There is in some of this work--notably in
Wagner's--an evidence of sustaining power which deserves and commands a
certain respect. But such sustaining power, so applied, is like figures
of caryatides supporting some poor decadent frieze. They bend and
strain and keep it up. But why, we are tempted to say to them, do you
strain to keep up that poor, commonplace stuff, which would not be
looked at if it stood not upon your heads? Let it fall! You are all
that keep it from tumbling into a dust-heap and seeming the rubbish
that it is. It seems to be a consciousness of their deficiency in
melody and in emotional expression which drives such composers of the
present day as aim to write in the higher style to make their music
"interdependent, logarithmic, differential, integral, and
corroborative," and to strive to make up in intellectual elaboration
what they lack in inspiration.

This condition of things in music is not to be bettered by endeavor.
Genius alone can do that, when brought into contact with the power of
appreciating genius. And genius, although conscious of its power, is
ever ignorant of its tendency, and never works but for its own ends;
while those who hear and understand its utterances do so with no higher
purpose than the delight they bring them. When I hear a man talk of
doing something to elevate his art, however much I may respect his
taste, his acquirements, or his aims, I then begin to doubt, if I have
not before doubted, his ability to write a sentence worth reading, to
make a picture worth looking at, or a song worth hearing.

RICHARD GRANT WHITE.




SPRING.


    Spring gives the order, "Forward, march!"
      'Tis borne along the eager line;
    Breathes through the boughs of rustling larch,
      And murmurs in the pine.

    "March!" At the sound, impatient, springs
      The mountain rill, with rippling glee,
    And rolling through the valley, brings
      Its tribute to the sea.

    "March!" and upon each sunny hill
      Old winter's allies, ice and snow,
    Start at the music of the rill,
      And join its onward flow.

    "March!" Down among the fibrous roots
      Of oaks we hear the summons ring.
    The long-chilled life-blood upward shoots
      To hail the coming spring.

    "March!" and along each narrow neck,
      Across the plain, and up the steep,
    The spring tide clears the winter's wreck
      With its resistless sweep.

    Advancing in unbroken lines,
      New allies rush to join its bands,
    Till winter, in despair, resigns
      The sceptre to its hands.

    On southern slopes, in quiet glades,
      And where the brooklets murmuring run,
    The grass unsheathes its tiny blades
      To temper in the sun.

    Flora unfurls her banner bright
      Above the field of flashing green,
    And crocus blooms in lines of light
      Throw back the sunlight's sheen.

    The birds on every budding tree
      Take up anew the old refrain:
    The spring has come: rejoice all ye
      Who breathe its air again.

H. R. H.




DRIFT-WOOD.


THE TRAVELLERS.

May brings the travelling season. Thanks to steam and Cook, we can all
find time for a trip to Florida or Labrador, if not to Lapland and
Thibet. Travel is a pastime of both sexes, all ages, all sorts and
conditions of men. Lord Bateman was a noble lord, a noble lord he was
of high degree; and, adds the ballad, "he determined to go abroad,
strange countries for to see." Cheek by jowl with Lord Bateman, in the
railroad car, is Samuel Shears, Esq., his lordship's tailor, on the
same errand.

"Pa, I think we ought to go to Paris," says matronly Mrs. Brood.

"Why do you think that, my dear?" asks paterfamilias.

"Because I do," rejoins the lady, wheeling in a circle of small radius.
Impressed by that logic, Brood has his trunks mended, and embarks his
family on the first available steamer.

Mrs. B's spring of action is that the Breeds have started, or that the
McBrides went last year. Fashion pries us out of our comfortable
domesticity, our cozy home-keeping ruts, which we exchange for the
miseries of inns and the perils of voyaging; precisely as custom,
gathering at length the force of law, "moves" a hundred thousand
hapless New Yorkers, more or less, every May, with smash of household
goods, cost, loss, hurry, flurry, and worry--they exchange houses as in
the children's game everybody changes "chairs" or "corners" to see who
will get the worst of it. This is a species of May travelling with all
its curses and none of its compensations.

Presently our European voyagers will be sending home the tale of their
misadventures. They fell among the London servants--soft and sweet to
the face, perfect devils behind your back; stealing all your provisions
under pretence of perquisites, and drinking enough beer in a week to
last an American a year; whereas, if you yourself so much as send for a
glass of ice-water at the hotel, the butler grumbles at the messenger,
"Those Americans lap water like dogs!" At Paris our pilgrims fall a
prey to landlords who charge the price of new furniture for every
microscopic scratch on a chair, besides cheating them out of a thousand
francs extra rent, as a parting token, on the ground that the laws
require a certain notice of quitting.

A more agreeable theme will be the people our travellers meet. Whoever
goes from another American city to New York is struck by the strange
faces he sees--phizzes and figures that make Hans Breitmann commonplace
and Nast a portrait painter instead of a caricaturist. Could one have
suspected such oddities in human shape, such outlandish rigs? The New
Yorker going to London is still more surprised at the queer-looking
specimens he sees there, surpassing the fancy of Dickens and
Cruikshank: plenty of Bagstocks, Peggotys and Skewtons; perfumed old
beaux, with enormous gloves, too long in the fingers, and with an
eyeglass held muscularly in one eye socket by screwing up the face; and
all sorts of people belonging to the last century, and magically coming
out of bandboxes a hundred years old.

So, at least, writes Augustus from London; and presently, as if whisked
off by an enchanter, we hear of the youth in Naples, "the noisiest city
in Europe," he says, where all the people chatter incessantly--"the
dirtiest city, too, and one of the most delightful." There is something
enviable to us desk-tethered mortals in these wide-striding rovers who
one week are in Copenhagen and the next in Constantinople. "Hang it,"
says Brown, coming down to breakfast in Brussels and finding that Smith
has gone, "I meant to bid Smith good-by, and forgot it. But I shall run
across him in Smyrna next month, and can do it then."

Before we have digested the Neapolitan missive of Augustus, and its
funny account of his fellow voyagers--how the men kissed all their male
friends at parting, as women do with us, and, after kissing, ran again
to the car windows to blow and throw last kisses--we see the traveller
in Toledo, and reeling off his diary to us in some such fashion as
this: "Here we find Burgos, formerly the capital of Castile and Leon,
showing signs of former greatness, but now fallen to decay. It has a
magnificent cathedral, a convent, and a nunnery, in which the people
seem to have spent all their money, the rest of the city being mostly
in ruins. Next we come to the Escurial, that vast pile, embracing
palace, monastery, and cathedral, with burying place for the reigning
kings. Leaving Madrid for a few moments, we will look at Toledo. Toledo
is one of the old cities of Spain, and was a place of some importance
when taken by the Romans, about 200 B.C. It had at one time 200,000
inhabitants; now but 17,000. What struck me so strangely was, why they
should build up such a city among these rocky hills, not a tree or
shrub to be seen outside the city, and very few inside," etc.

I quite like to read these travellers' letters, with their odd jumpings
from city to city and century to century. True, a man might girdle the
earth as many times as the Wandering Jew, without reaping a tithe of
the instruction that Xavier de Maistre got from his "Voyage Autour de
Ma Chambre"; and again, one untravelled, humorous pen made a small
Connecticut town more talked of than any other of its size in the
United States--I mean, of course, Danbury. Still, the exhilaration of
travel, and its habit of observation, do lend freshness to writing.
Then the returned traveller has a fund of new ideas for us
stay-at-homes, and his story is agreeable provided he does not
pronounce his French and German too abominably. He corrects our fancies
by his experience. Who does not know Mrs. Norton's "A soldier of the
Legion lay dying in Algiers," and has not conjured up an image of "fair
Bingen on the Rhine"? "_Fair_ Bingen!" cries Miss Kate contemptuously,
when we ask her memory of the place. "Why, Bingen is nothing--not
handsome, not picturesque, not poetic, not even clean. In fact, it is
the smelliest place on earth, except Cologne." So the traveller
modifies our stay-at-home impressions.

Again, we always notice signs of mental growth and widening in our
returned travellers. Besides, for a time they are less anxious over
details, less overcome by trivial mishaps; they have an agreeable
_aplomb_; they bring a certain refreshing atmosphere of leisure to our
round of careful routine. One palpable danger of the traveller is
becoming a slave to his guide-book, as some opera-goers are to the
libretto; he is verifying the assertions of his Murray, when he should
be seeing the landscape or the cathedral; he spends the time he has for
picture galleries in checking off the catalogue, as if hired to certify
that the alleged contents are there. Travellers who see only what the
books tell them to see bring us home no facts and opinions of value.

The earth has now been so tracked from pole to equator that the
traveller, to gain the world's attention, must see old things with new
eyes, or must ferret out new paths and places. Still, for a Stanley
and a Cameron mankind has immeasurable wonder; so has it for some
tremendous exploring sportsman like Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Cumming,
who takes only an ordinary paragraph to describe such an episode as the
crunching to death of his gun-bearer on a certain Indian "nullah,"
adding: "This was a sad termination to what had been a brief but
successful _chasse_--my bag during the trip consisting of seven tigers,
a panther, and a bear."

As to types of travellers, they have nearly all been drawn--the
irascible, the erratic, the English, the _nil admirari_, the
enthusiastic, and so on. Travelling is bad for some people, like Jack
Peters, who had his cards in Europe printed "Mr. Jacques Petersilli,"
pretending it to be easier for his European friends to get the hang of
that title, of which the "silly" part was all acquired across the sea.

The ex-Reverend Christopher Cheeseman, tutor and philosopher, is a
voyager of a sort perhaps destined to be more generally known among us.
He visits Europe as often as he can procure his passage and pocket
money in return for his valuable services as escort and adviser. He
arranges the preliminaries of purchasing the tickets and outfits, but,
once afloat, allows little to burden him with anxiety. Aboard ship he
is recognized as a good teller of stories, some serious but not
truthful, some comic but not truthful, these last being nicely
graduated in delicacy from the boudoir to the mess table. Reaching
England, he has prayers put up in the established church for the safe
arrival of "Christopher Crozier Cheeseman and party"--the humor being
that he is only the courier or nominally useful man of the persons who
pay for him, and whom he lumps as "party." He studies the peerage
attentively, carefully deciphering the mysteries of the coats of arms
on the equipages. In England, when visiting the cathedrals, he
expresses a great desire to be a monk (probably of the _bon vivant_
sort), and actually pushes his asceticism to the point of attending
religious services with great regularity; but at Rome the rogue will do
as Romans do, and may be found any Sunday afternoon listening to the
band on the Pincio. He likes best to travel as tutor to some ingenuous
youth, because it comes handy to leave the lad to fight a duel in
France, or gamble in Germany, or fall in love in Switzerland, while the
judicious mentor is supplied with funds to take a little diversion on
his own account, after his arduous duties. But let us stop at the
threshold of this sketch, because it is plainly one for the skilled
novelist, rather than the rambling, loitering prattler, to undertake.

                     *      *      *      *      *

SWINDLERS AND DUPES.

The number of people ready to buy $200 watches for $20, and then to
find them not worth $10, was made known by a recent exposure of
pretended Kansas "lotteries." A like eagerness maintains "gift
concerts" and similar swindles. Conducted honestly, they would earn
fortunes for their projectors, whose instinct, however, is for a total
swindle.

The gift swindle is known by its circular, with its voluble assurances
that "ticket-holders can confide in our honor"; that the drawing is to
be done from two boxes, a securely blindfolded deacon at one and a real
blind girl at the other; that all funds received will "remain
inviolably pledged for prizes and donations"; that the result of the
drawing of the 9,999 prizes by the 99,990 ticket-holders will be
telegraphed the same night to all parts of the United States and to
Mexico and Canada, and the prizes distributed the day following; that
agents may trust the honesty of the enterprise, "as its founders are
men of high standing," and so on.

One trick is the "cash assessment on prizes." The investor is notified
that he has drawn a $150 prize, deliverable on the payment of "the
usual five per cent. for handling," which sum he will "please forward"
to the Grand Atlantic and Great Western Monster Gift Carnival and
Bottle Washer's Library Fund Association. The gudgeon protests that
there was no such condition on his ticket, but not liking to lose $150
by grudging $7.50, "forwards" this sum, and receives $150 worth of
stock in the Seashore Gold-Mining Company, or 3 undivided acres in the
Atahualpa Swamp--"the directors of the association having recently
decided to invest the receipts for their wards, the ticket-holders, in
this splendid property." There really need be no ticket drawing or
tickets for this swindle, as people who never heard of the enterprise
can be informed of their luck, and will all the more quickly forward
their "five per cent."

Some readers may remember B. Sharp & Co.'s fine "gift enterprise,"
whose drawing was postponed so many times on the plea that "the last
drawn numbers are as fortunate as the first," as indeed they were. It
begged ticket-holders to "exhibit to your friends and neighbors the
many rich presents we have so generously bestowed upon you." The
"committee" were engaged in the herculean labors of "drawing and
registering tickets at the rate of 6,000 per week, and in packing and
expressing prizes"; but alas! "owing to unforeseen expenses we have
been put to in purchasing presents for our ticket-holders," this is
what happened:

    _We are compelled to make an assessment of_ 5 PER CENT. _on all
    prizes over fifty dollars_ ($50) awarded to them; and in order to
    expedite the business of the distribution in packing and forwarding
    the gifts, ticket-holders must within _ten days_ after notification
    of the value of the gift awarded to them, forward to us the amount
    of per centage, with directions for the packing and expressing of
    their gift, or else at the expiration of that time it will be
    forfeited.

Then there was B. Flat's "National Engineers Gift Enterprise," which
with a spice of humor announced that it was controlled by the class of
men for whose benefit it was devised--"all engineers." It had as
"references" a "State senator" of New York and another of Illinois, a
lithographer, an editor, a hardware merchant, and other like
distinguished personages, whose callings were proudly set forth,
presumably to show that they were not mere adventurers. An enlightened
press, if we may believe the circulars, backed up this "association."
"Its managers are men of the strictest integrity," said one Milwaukee
paper; "We believe they will discharge all their obligations to
purchasers of tickets with punctuality and integrity," said a second;
"An institution above suspicion, and worthy in every respect of public
patronage. The managers we believe to be honest, reliable, and
trustworthy," said a third. "The safest investment of the kind in
America," said one Chicago paper, unless the circular falsifies;
"Considered as a sure success," said a second. One New York paper is
quoted as commending the enterprise, and another as thinking that
"$30,000 for $2.00 is worth chancing." But when the thing went to
pieces, and B. Flat escaped on bail, it was announced that "the swindle
had been exposed by the press," as indeed it was.

                     *      *      *      *      *

PEGASUS IN HARNESS.

The muse that in our day quits Parnassus to pay gossiping visits among
the pill-kneaders, and to lounge in the haunts of trade, has of late
been pressed into service by the guild of beggars. Perceiving,
doubtless, that fortunes are got in teas, trousers, and tooth washes by
sheer dint of literary advertising, the mendicants too have quaffed the
Pierian spring, and now leave their sheets of verses at our doors for
the accommodating price of "whatever you choose to give." The rogues
have learned wisdom by experience. When a long-winded legislator
troubles his fellow Solons with an unwelcome speech, he is sometimes
gently rebuked by cries of "Oh, print the rest!" That is what the
professional beggars have learned to do. Habitually cut off in their
tale of woe at the door sill by an unfeeling "There's nothing for you!"
they have learned to print the rest, and now before Dora the doormaid
can utter her formula of rejection, a neat circular is in her hand, on
which is printed: "Please give this to the lady or gentleman. Will call
in an hour."

Such, in fact, was the inscription on a printed page left at the Maison
Quilibet this very morning, purporting to be a "copy of verses by a
party of mechanics," as indeed one may easily believe that it is, from
the internal evidence of such stanzas as these:

    For many weeks we work have sought,
      But work we cannot procure.
    Sad distress has been our lot,
      To go from door to door.

    May want upon you never frown,
      Nor in your dwelling come;
    May Heaven pour its blessings down
      On every friendly soul.

    Lord Jesus, thou hast shed thy blood
      For thousands such as we;
    Many despise the poor tradesman's lot,
      But to Thy Cross I flee.

Suddenly shifting then from poesy to prose, the circular continues:

    A BLESSING.--May the blessings of God await you; may the bright sun
    of glory shine above thy bed; may the gates of plenty, honor, and
    happiness be ever open to thee; may no sorrow distress thy days,
    and when the dim curtain of death is closing around thy last sleep,
    and the lamp of life extinguishing, may it not receive one rude
    blast to hasten its extinction.

Thus having propitiated the æsthetic feeling as well as the benevolent
heart of the householder, the circular proceeds to business by
declaring that "the bearers are a party of unemployed tradesmen, who,"
etc. There is, of course, no resisting the appeal to buy the poem and
the benediction; only, when Dora the doormaid is afterward questioned
how many unemployed tradesmen formed the party, and she answers, "Only
one, ma'am, and he's no tradesman," we look at each other as we do when
"The Blind Man's Prayer" is given to us in the street car by some
bright-eyed little girl, or some boy who meanwhile munches an apple.
"It's my uncle," says the lad, if asked whether he is perhaps, the
person alluded to in the lines, "You see before you a poor, blind man,"
etc.; and I fancy that the literature of mendicancy has now become
important enough to furnish a large variety of printed forms, so that
the regular customer can choose for himself whether in any particular
season he will be a poor blind man, or a lady that has seen better
days, or a party of poetical mechanics.

PHILIP QUILIBET.




SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.


THE SURVEY IN CALIFORNIA.


In Lieutenant Wheeler's report of operations on the geographical and
geological survey of the Territories west of the 100th meridian during
1876, we find the first explanation of the origin of the name
California. The mountainous country of Mexico has three climates
through which the traveller passes in going from the sea to the high
country, the hot, the temperate, and the cold zones. The Mexicans call
them _tierra caliente_, _tierra templada_, and _tierra fria_. They
entered the present region of California from Sonora or New Mexico, and
on their way passed a lake now called Lake Elizabeth, on the border of
the California desert. There a violent west wind blows night and day.
It is a real _sirocco_, dry, and so hot as to remind one of a blast
from a furnace. The Mexicans accordingly made the country beyond it the
fourth in their series of ascending temperatures, and named it _tierra
california_, the country hot as a furnace.

This report is one of the most valuable produced by the survey. During
the year the great area in California which lies below the level of the
sea was examined to ascertain whether it could be filled and maintained
as a lake by a canal from the Colorado river, and the decision is in
the negative. The depressed area covers about 1,600 square miles in
California, and the difference between the rainfall and the evaporation
is so small that if the whole Colorado river were poured into the
basin, it would cover only 556 square miles of surface, or little more
than one-third the basin. Filling would cease at that level for the
reason that the whole supply of the river would disappear in vapor. The
slope of the Colorado river is extraordinary, 2.13 feet per mile at
Stone's Ferry, and 1.21 feet at Camp Mohave, which may be compared with
eight inches, the average fall of the Mississippi per mile. At Stone's
Ferry the velocity is 3.217 feet per second and the discharge 18,410
cubic feet. Great difficulties stand in the way of the proposed canal,
and the engineers do not think the lake, if it could be formed, would
have an appreciable effect upon the climate of the surrounding region.
The primary object of this survey is to carry the grand triangulation
of the continent across the country under its jurisdiction, and to map
the surface so as to enable the Government to put the ground properly
in market. In addition to these objects a great amount of valuable work
is done in geology and natural history.

Prof. Jules Marcou, geologist attached to the survey, points out that
the valleys of Santa Clara and Santa Barbara in California may become
the site of _true_ artesian oil wells. The ordinary flowing oil well is
supposed to obtain the force which lifts its oil above the surface
level from confined gases in the earth, but in California the lift will
be obtained in precisely the same manner as in the case of artesian
wells for water. There are strata of sandstone impregnated with the
petroleum, and these strata are lifted up on the mountain sides, so
that a well bored at a low point in the valley would be supplied from a
reservoir some thousands of feet high. The wells will have to be about
three thousand feet deep.

The naturalists of the survey noted many singular phenomena of animal
life. On the islands off the coast there is a race of liliputian foxes
which is supposed to have been derived from the Gray fox, its small
size and perfect fearlessness, together with its insect diet, being due
to its confinement to the islands. This animal is so small that even
the sheep breeders do not fear it. It lies under the cactus plants for
its noonday nap, and to this fact must be due the remarkable
circumstance noticed in skinning a number of them. In every instance
the interior surface of the hide was perforated by cactus spines, and
in one individual the hide was fairly coated within by these spines,
some of which had become soft with age. There were so many that a knife
could not have pierced the hide without touching the spines!

Another fact developed was that the great dread of the grizzly bear is
resulting in his rapid extinction. Strychnine is considered
indispensable to the outfit of a California shepherd, and the grizzlies
have been killed or forced to the mountains, where they still linger in
considerable numbers in the chapparal. It is noticeable that the Rocky
mountain grizzly is a tame creature compared with his brother of the
Sierra Nevada, who does not hesitate to take the initiative in a combat
with man.

                     *      *      *      *      *

A GERMAN SAVANT AMONG THE SIOUX.

Prof. Virchow lately informed the Berlin Anthropological Society that
an intrepid young German traveller, Herr von Horn von der Horck, is now
(January, 1877) living among the Sioux Indians busily engaged in taking
plaster casts for craniological studies. Von der Horck made a journey
to the Polar sea last summer, returning by way of Lapland, where he
made enormous collections of bones, skulls, and casts. Prof. Virchow
says these collections are more complete in Scandinavian ethnology than
all that European museums outside of Scandinavia contain. One result of
this journey was the discovery of a continuous water way between the
Gulf of Bothnia and the Polar sea, though not one that is capable of
navigation. A lake, called Wawalo Lampi, lies on the divide between
these two bodies of water, and sends a river to each. The northward
flowing one is the Ivallo and the southward the Kititui. We are glad to
welcome so enthusiastic and thorough a student to this country. It is
precisely work like his that is needed in America, and the time for
accomplishing it is rapidly passing away. We have too much theory and
too little real investigation in American ethnology, and while the men
of hypotheses are talking about the origin of the Indians, and
endeavoring to trace them to Asiatic stocks through the medium of
language, the race is fast losing its purity by intermarriage, as it
has already lost the most distinctive of its peculiarities by
intercourse with the whites.

                     *      *      *      *      *

BALLOONING FOR AIR CURRENTS.

It is well known to meteorologists that the wind vanes as ordinarily
placed near the surface do not give a true indication of the wind. Even
when the vane is not over a city or town where the air currents near
the earth are affected by the direction of the streets, the varying
character of the surface in respect to radiation and absorption of heat
will modify them. It is therefore for good reasons that vanes are
perched up on high flagstaffs fixed on the roofs of buildings. Some of
these are more than a hundred feet above the ground, but recent
observations in Paris show that this is not enough. Small India-rubber
balloons a foot in diameter and with an ascensional force of about one
ounce were sent up, and as they rose slowly, at the rate of twelve feet
per second, the effect of the air currents upon them could be easily
marked. This was found to be very variable at heights of less than one
or two hundred metres (300 to 600 feet). The conclusion was that no
observations at lower levels were trustworthy.

                     *      *      *      *      *

THE GREATEST OF RIFLES.

In spite of the familiarity with great cannon which the advances in gun
construction of late years have produced, the experiments with the
100-ton gun of the Italian government have not failed to awaken general
interest and wonder. It fires a 2,000-pound shell, and a charge of 240
pounds of powder is but a portion of what the gun will bear. These
light charges have to be used if the penetrative effects of the gun
under unfavorable conditions are to be studied, for with its full
charge the weapon simply destroys anything that is put before it.
Comparative results cannot be obtained when the only effect is complete
ruin. It is somewhat remarkable that an over confident iron founder
should have chosen this weapon to test once more the value of _cast_
iron for defensive armor. His idea was that armor could be made so hard
by chilling the surface that the shot would be broken to pieces upon
it, and experiments with a good iron and guns of small calibre had
encouraged the hope. But a 2,000-pound shell and 400 pounds of powder
in the 100-ton gun proved anew the unfitness of this material for armor
plating. The shot had a velocity of 1,494 feet per second, and it
smashed through an 8-inch plate of wrought iron, a wood layer, and a
14-inch plate of chilled cast iron. The ruin produced was greater than
in any other experiment, the cast iron breaking into fragments. The
power of this gun, the greatest rifle ever made, is such that a solid
22-inch plate of the best English wrought iron is completely penetrated
by its shot.

                     *      *      *      *      *

VIENNA BREAD.

A "Vienna bakery" has been one of the most prominent objects at each of
the last three international exhibitions, and probably there are many
housekeepers who would be glad to know how this delicious bread is
made. Unfortunately success does not always follow imitation, and
several attempts to introduce the manufacture of this bread have
failed, even when Vienna bakers were employed in the work; and yet
there is absolutely no secret in the process. One of the American
commissioners to the Vienna exhibition, Prof. E. N. Horsford, gave an
elaborate report on this bread, and since he came to the conclusion
that it _can_ be made elsewhere, we will recount some of the causes
upon which in his opinion its excellence depends. These are the mode of
baking, the mode of making, the use of fresh "compressed yeast" which
produces no acetic acid in fermentation, the use of selected flour, the
mode of milling, and the kind of wheat.

    _The Baking._--The loaf should be so small that fifteen or twenty
    minutes will be sufficient to cook it through in an oven which is
    heated to a temperature of about 500 deg., or the melting point of
    bismuth. The rolls should not touch each other.

    _The Mixing._--The proportions are:

    8 pounds of flour,
    3 quarts of milk and water, in equal proportions,
    3-1-2 ounces of pressed yeast,
    1 ounce of salt,

    which should make about 380 rolls of the ordinary "Kaiser semmel"
    size. The milk and water in equal parts are first mixed and allowed
    to come to the usual temperature of a kitchen, and a small amount of
    flour is then mixed in it so as to make a thin emulsion. The yeast is
    added and well mixed in, first crumbling it in the hand, and the pan
    is left covered for three-quarters of an hour. Then the rest of the
    flour is slowly mixed in, with thorough kneading. The dough is left
    for two hours and a half, "at the end of which time it presents a
    smooth, tenacious, puffed, homogeneous mass, of slightly yellowish
    color." It is weighed into pound masses (all bread must be sold by
    weight in Europe), each of which is cut into twelve rolls. The
    proportions for twelve rolls should therefore be about as follows:
    1-4 pound of flour, 1-5 pints milk and water, 1-10 ounce pressed
    yeast, and 1-32 ounce of salt. The small masses of dough have a
    thickness of three-quarters of an inch, and the workman, laying the
    back of his left forefinger in the centre of one, pulls out and folds
    up the corners of the irregular mass, and pinches them together. The
    little lump of dough is then reversed upon a smooth board, and after
    remaining there long enough to finish "rising," they are placed in
    the hot oven by means of a wooden shovel.

    _The Yeast._--Pressed yeast, which is now made in America, is
    obtained by skimming the froth from mash while it is in active
    fermentation. The yeast is repeatedly washed with cold water until
    it settles pure and white in the water. It forms a tenacious mass
    which is pressed in a bag. It will keep about eight days in summer,
    and indefinitely if put on ice.

    _The Flour._--Only a selected part of the flour is used in Vienna
    for the manufacture of white bread and rolls, amounting to about
    forty-five per cent. of the wheat. Precisely the same grades are
    not produced in the American process of milling, but Dr. Horsford
    thinks that good, fresh middlings flour will compare favorably with
    the average Hungarian flour.

    _The Milling._--A peculiar mode of milling wheat has grown up in
    Austria and Hungary, which is almost the antipodes of the old and
    crude methods of grinding. It is called "high milling," and
    consists in cracking the wheat by successive operations down to the
    required size. First the wheat is run through a coarse mill, which
    takes off the beard at one end and the germ at the other. The
    resulting powder is then sifted, to separate the grits from the
    dross and flour, and the central part is again cracked, and the
    products sifted. Some flour is produced in each of these steps, but
    the best of the wheat kernel is still in the condition of grits,
    and the bran and outer coat of the kernel having been separated by
    the sifting, the pure grits are now cracked once more, and number
    one flour is produced. All the other flour from these three
    operations is purified from bran, mixed and ground, making number
    two flour. In short, the essential characteristic of the Austrian
    system of milling lies in a gradual process of reducing the wheat,
    with careful separation of the products, or cleaning, at each step.
    These products are quite numerous, as the following list shows:

        _Class._    _Percentage._

        A.               { Lady groats.
        B.        4.25   { Table groats, fine.
        C.               { Table groats, coarse.
        0.               { Extra imperial flour.
        1.        5.53     Extra fine flour.
        2.        5.76     Ordinary fine flour.
        3.        5.51     _Extra roll or semmel flour._
        4.        6.48     _Common roll or semmel flour._
        5.        7.12     First pollen flour.
        6.       13.30     Second pollen flour.
        7.       11.85     First dust flour.
        8.        9.95     Second dust flour.
        9.        4.36     Brown pollen flour.
        10.        6.32     Fort flour.
        F.        8.94     Fine bran.
        G.        6.87     Coarse bran.
        H.        3.76     Chicken feed, loss, and dirt.
                ----
                100

    This chicken feed consists of the foreign seeds, the tares, which
    grow up with the wheat, and which are separated before milling. In
    the above list only 39 to 40 per cent. of the flour is fit for white
    bread making.

    _The Wheat._--Last of all, in following back the processes of
    Vienna bread making, we come to one of the essential requirements,
    a proper kind of wheat. "The virtues of this bread," says Dr.
    Horsford, "had their origin principally in the Hungarian wheat.
    These are not due to any particular variety of wheat, or to any
    marked peculiarity of soil or mode of fertilizing, or to a mean
    annual temperature characterizing the climate of Hungary as a
    whole, but to _a peculiarity of climate_, uniting especial dryness
    of the air during the hot season, from the time of the development
    of the milk of the berry, through the period of its segregation of
    the various constituents of the grain, down to its being housed for
    thrashing." The Hungarian wheat is red, shrivelled, and hard, and
    it is this hardness that fits it so well to the successive
    crackings which constitute the process of "high milling."

Vienna bread is white, fine grained, perfectly sweet, aromatic,
agreeable without butter, thoroughly baked, and has a tender crust, and
Dr. Horsford shows dearly that this combination of excellences is not
the result of an art, but of the joint operation of many arts. Its
introduction may be made an economical act, for its peculiar succulence
makes butter or other condiment unnecessary. It is, however,
essentially a _baker's_ bread, for it should be eaten on the day it is
made, and is at its best immediately after becoming cold. There is
little room for expecting it to replace the kind of bread in vogue in
American homes, for that is just as much the result of peculiar
circumstances as the product of the Hungarian farm, the Austrian mill,
and the Vienna oven. Economy in labor is just as much a consideration
in most American families as it is in our workshops, and the
semi-weekly or weekly baking is the means by which it is obtained. But
American housewives can improve their bread by adopting from the
Austrian system the whitening of the yeast by washing, the small loaf,
and the rapid baking. The use of selected flour can hardly be obtained
unless the millers are offered a market for the darker flour that
remains. In Europe that is at hand in the nutritious "black" bread
which is everywhere _the_ staff of life, white bread being a luxury
taken only with coffee. In fact it is American cake that the Vienna
roll comes in competition with, and the habit of making cake almost
daily, which obtains in so many American homes, shows that there is
time and labor which can be turned to the production of the Vienna
bread if desired.

                     *      *      *      *      *

MODERN LOSS IN WARFARE.

The German government has just published the official statistics of the
losses in the war with France. The total killed and wounded was 3,919
officers and 60,978 men. The killed and dead of wounds were 1,374
officers and 16,877 men, the proportion being 1 killed to 3.44 wounded
among the officers, and 1 to 5 among the men. The infantry lost 57,943,
artillery 4,266, and cavalry 2,236. Fighting in line, and at such a
distance as modern weapons command, have made the loss by artillery a
minimum; 5,084 of the casualties being due to artillery and 55,862 to
rifle practice. One noteworthy item is the proportion--12,717 out of
the whole number--that were struck about the head and shoulders. This
is held to show that the French troops fired high, but it may also be
due to the attention now paid to field defences. It is quite possible
also that all modern rifles are sighted a trifle too high.

                     *      *      *      *      *

A NEW TREASURY RULE.

The Secretary of the Treasury has lately issued a circular which
affects rather uncomfortably the interests of educational, scientific,
and literary institutions. They are allowed by law to import books,
instruments, and illustrative collections free of duty, and the
Secretary now says that the sale or distribution of articles imported
in this way will not be allowed. They must be retained in the
institutions that bring them into the country. It is quite probable
that advantage has sometimes been taken of the law's liberality in this
respect, but we fear this circular will really defeat the purpose of
the law. Collections of all kinds in colleges and schools are kept up
by a system of exchange, which is very necessary to them on account of
the small sums of money at their disposal. To break up this system in
the case of European specimens would be especially hard, for each
institution would then be forced to import single specimens at much
greater cost and trouble; or what is more likely, it would be found
cheaper to pay the duty; that is, purchase through a dealer. So long as
the exchange is confined to the circle of institutions which the law
was designed to benefit, we cannot see that its provisions are unduly
taken advantage of.

                     *      *      *      *      *

A HYGIENIC SCHOOL.

Dr. Agnew, the celebrated oculist of New York, has indicated his idea
of a school for little children, in which health should be a first
consideration, as follows: "If we could effect some alterations in the
style of school architecture in our school houses, especially the
primary departments, it would be a great desideratum. One of the
greatest evils at present existing is the method of constructing the
school room and of conducting the same. I never could understand why
children of the primary age are kept sitting on benches for a large
number of hours at a time. School houses ought to be built like the
hospital building at the corner of Lexington avenue and Forty-second
street, used for cripples, where there is in the upper story a large
room, called the solarium, which is in fact a large play room, exposed
to the sun, where these little ones are kept the greater part of the
time. The upper story of the school houses should be so constructed;
and children should be encouraged to bring their toys and playthings
with them; and then, instead of changing the age of admission from four
years, it might be kept as it is; and instead of shortening the hours
of attendance, lengthen them. Of course it should be taken for granted
that the school house is constructed for the accommodation of the poor
children, and in this light it would be better that such children
should spend most of the day in school houses having good sanitary
conditions, rather than, as they now do, in tenement houses. Thus you
would have these primary schools with plenty of air and light, which
you can get in the upper story, and children would be glad to come
early, and remain until three or four o'clock, or even later in the
afternoon."

                     *      *      *      *      *

MICROSCOPIC COMPARISON OF BLOOD CORPUSCLES.

Dr. J. G. Richardson of Philadelphia, whose views upon the subject of
proving blood stains by the use of the microscope have been described
in this Miscellany, has lately prepared slides for the microscope so as
to show blood corpuscles from two different animals on the same field.
He did this by flowing two drops of blood down the slide, and nearly in
contact. Dr. C. L. Mees has modified this proceeding. He spreads the
blood by Johnston's method, which is to touch a drop of blood to the
accurately ground edge of a slide, and then draw it gently over the
face of the other slide, leaving a beautifully spread film. In this way
one kind of blood is spread upon the slide, and another on the cover.
When dry, one half of each is carefully scraped off with a smoothly
sharpened knife, and the cover inverted upon the slide in such position
as to bring the remaining portions of the film into apposition. When
thus prepared the magnified image can be photographed.

                     *      *      *      *      *

THE SUMMER SCIENTIFIC SCHOOLS.

The Peabody Academy of Science at Salem, Massachusetts, will open the
second session of its summer school of biology July 6, the course to
continue for six weeks. Four days in each week will be given to
lectures and laboratory work, and one day to a dredging expedition.
Entomology, together with spiders, crustacea, and vertebrate anatomy,
will be the especial subjects of study this year, and as usual the
advantages enjoyed by this institution for studying marine zoology will
be fully utilized. Dr. A. S. Packard, assisted by Messrs. Emerton and
Kingsley, will have charge of zoölogy, Mr. Robinson of botany, Rev. Mr.
Bolles of microscopy, and Mr. Cooke of the dredging parties. Fees, $15,
or for lectures only, $5. Board $5 to $7 weekly. Application should be
made to Dr. Packard.

A four weeks' school will be opened at the State normal school, West
Chester, Pennsylvania, beginning July 11. Zoölogy and botany will be
taught by Prof. M. W. Harrington, geology and physiological chemistry
by Mr. V. C. Vaughan, and mineralogy by George G. Groff, all these
gentlemen being connected with the University of Michigan. Elocution
and industrial drawing will also be taught. Fees are for board and
tuition $30, and tuition alone $12. Apply to Mr. George L. Maris,
principal.

Scientific excursions seem to be the order of the day. Mr. Woodruff of
Detroit has planned one to make the tour of the world; and Mr. J. B.
Steere of Michigan university, who spent several years in a journey of
scientific character, says: "The expedition will probably leave New
York in October or November next, going directly to the mouth of the
Amazon, where some time will be spent in making collections in natural
history. The island of Marajo will be the principal field for this
work. Rio Janeiro will probably be called in at, on the way to the
Straits of Magellan, which will be reached in January or February (the
summer season there), and a stay will be made for the purpose of
collecting. The expedition will then make its way northwest, cruising
among several of the rarely visited groups of islands in the central
Pacific, where there is every opportunity for making large and valuable
collections of sea shells and corals as well as of the myriads of other
and rarer things brought up by the dredge. Some stay will probably be
made in New Guinea; but the next great object of interest will be the
island of Borneo. It is supposed that the northeast and central part of
this great island, which are the parts still unknown, can be best
reached through the assistance of the Dutch traders at Macassar on the
island of Celebes, where the expedition will touch on its way. It seems
probable that entering from the east side, with the proper guides and
interpreters, the interior of the island can be reached and explored,
and perhaps a party may be able to reach the west coast. Borneo is less
known than Central Africa, and there is a grand opportunity here for
Americans to solve the great problem of its interior lakes and
plateaus. A journey through an unexplored country like this cannot fail
also to give opportunity for collecting many new species of animals and
plants. From Borneo the expedition will make its way to the Philippine
islands, where there is great room still for discovery, not only in
natural history, but also in fixing the geographical knowledge of the
islands, which is at present very faulty. Several of the larger islands
of the group are entirely unknown in respect to their animal and
vegetable life. From the Philippines the expedition will go to the
island of Formosa, off the coast of China. This island is rich in
objects of interest to the naturalist, and the east and central parts
of the island are unknown. There are Chinese traders who visit the west
coast for the purpose of trade with the natives, and through their help
there is no doubt that much new work can be done in that locality. The
expedition will then visit Canton, and some others of the coast towns
of China, and begin its return voyage by way of Singapore, which is a
depot for all that is rare and curious in the East. Ceylon will then be
touched at, and the expedition will pass through the Red sea and Suez
canal. It is intended to spend some time in the Mediterranean in
visiting various places of interest, and to return home by way of
England. The voyage is expected to occupy two years' time, and to cost
students $2,500 per year, this sum paying costs of expeditions inland
and everything except personal expenses, clothing, etc. All the
collections made will belong to those who make them." This plan seems
to follow about the same line as Mr. Steere's own journey, and it would
certainly be a great advantage to the excursionists to be under the
guidance of an explorer who has so lately been over the ground. We
believe the company is nearly completed.

A similar trip is proposed in France, where a society supported by the
liberality of M. Bischofsheim, the well known banker, has been formed
for the purpose of encouraging periodical voyages. The travellers will
be scientific men, Dwuyn l'Lhuys being at their head, and as in the
American expedition, the vessel will be commanded by a naval officer.
The first voyage will be from Marseilles, and will occupy less than a
year, the line of travel being to America and India.

                     *      *      *      *      *

THE WAGES VALUE OF STEAM POWER.

Prof. Leone Levi, in a lecture to workingmen on "Work and Wages,"
estimated the amount of capital required to carry on some of the
industries in Great Britain. There are 20,000,000 acres of land
cultivated, which at £8 is £160,000,000. The cotton trade requires
£80,000,000, wool trade £30,000,000, iron trade £30,000,000, merchant
marine £70,000,000; railways have £600,000,000 invested in them, and
the waterworks, gasworks, docks, and other undertakings all call for
similar vast sums. Construction may be considered as the fixation of
work, and here we have about a thousand million pounds worth of fixed
labor. Labor in use deals with figures and values that are quite as
large. The annual industrial production of France is £480,000,000, and
of this £200,000,000 is labor, the remainder being _called_ material,
though if the items of its cost were ascertained, current labor would
be found to make up a great portion of that sum also.

But taking French manufactures as they are reported, we can obtain from
them an estimate of the value of machines. The first steam engine was
introduced into that country by the city of Paris in 1789, the year of
revolution. At that time the cost of labor in manufactures was 60 per
cent. and of material 40 per cent. of the whole cost. On this basis the
£280,000,000 worth of material used now would require £420,000,000 of
labor to work it up. The present industrial population of France is
8,400,000, though all are not fully effective, and on the old basis
this would have to be increased to 17,640,000 persons. The other
divisions of population, tradesmen, etc., would also increase, and the
result is finally apparent that France is not large enough to contain
and raise food for the people that would be needed to carry on the
modern business on the old methods. The _man_ power of the steam
machinery introduced into the industries is estimated at 31,500,000,
and as it replaces £220,000,000 worth of labor, we may reckon the wages
of a steam man power at £7, or $35, per year, exclusive of food (fuel)
and lodging.

                     *      *      *      *      *

THE NEGRO'S COLOR.

The chemical character of the coloring matter in the negro's skin has
been investigated by Dr. F. P. Floyd, in the laboratory of the
University of Virginia. Strips of skin were well washed with water and
alcohol, in order to remove fatty matter, and then cautiously scraped
with a blunt scalpel, to loosen up the pigment granules. This must be
carefully done, for an examination of the scraped skin shows that the
whole substance of the cuticular tissue may easily be broken up and
mingled with the pigment, which cannot then be obtained pure. But by
selecting the most strongly colored parts and treating them carefully,
the following points were established: The coloring matter is insoluble
in water, alcohol, and ether. It is also unaffected by dilute acids or
dilute solutions of alkali. The strong acids, even concentrated nitric
acid, attack it but slowly. Chlorine destroys it especially in presence
of alkali. Heated for some time with a strong solution of sodium
hydrate, it is gradually dissolved, and from the diluted solution it
may be partially precipitated on neutralization with an acid. The ash
of the negro skin gave twice as much ash as the white skin, or 2.4 per
cent. against 1.15 per cent. Analyses of the ash for iron showed 2.28
per cent. of metallic iron in the black and 1.21 per cent. in the white
skin. These facts confirm the general impression that the color of the
negro's skin is nearly allied to the "melanin," or black pigment of the
choroid coat in the eye. Both seem to be products of alteration of the
blood.

This pigment appears to be similar to or identical with the black
coloring matter of feathers. When perfectly white hair or feathers are
heated gently with dilute sulphuric acid, they dissolve completely,
though slowly. Black or brown feathers leave an insoluble residue. This
subject was lately presented to the London Chemical Society by Messrs.
W. R. Hodgkinson and H. C. Sorby. They took feathers of the English
rook, which contain one per cent. of pigment, and having cut the vanes
from the central rib, cleaned them from fat by treatment with alcoholic
ammonia. Warm dilute sulphuric acid was then applied, until it was no
longer colored, and the residue was treated with dilute hydrochloric
acid and boiling alcohol and ether. Black pigment is usually found in
black, brown, and dark red hair, but in the latter it is associated
with a brown pigment that is soluble in dilute sulphuric acid.

Experiments were made by Dr. Floyd to determine the position of the
pigment in the negro's skin. Many Southern physicians are under the
impression that a blister upon the black skin is white, or nearly so.
But this was disproved by experiment, and the microscope showed that
the granules were dispersed through the whole of the cuticle, though
less dense at the surface than in the deeper tissues. In fact Dr. Floyd
thinks that the pigment originates in the outer layer of true skin,
"its production being probably connected with the loss of vitality of
the cells, and that it accompanies those cells all the way to the
surface, where it is mechanically removed by desquamation." The
alteration of the red blood corpuscles to black pigment may be due to
feeble circulation in the superficial capillaries. The diseases of
negroes, and their extreme sensitiveness to low temperatures, sustain
this view.

                     *      *      *      *      *

The jurisdiction of London extends over 756 square miles; its area
embraces 78,000 acres. It contains 4,000,000 of inhabitants, increasing
at the rate of 75,000 a year, of various nationalities.


The rapidity of sewing machine work, even when not working beyond an
ordinary manufacturing speed, is seen in the manufacture of 110
three-bushel sacks per hour, containing 35,640 stitches, or close on
600 per minute.


The pine woods of Michigan are said to contain in standing trees--

    In Eastern Michigan       13,500,000,000 feet.
    In Western Michigan       11,500,000,000  "
    In Upper Peninsular       19,500,000,000  "
                              --------------
        Total                 44,500,000,000


A manufacturer lately sued the city of Paris for about $15,000 on the
ground that the water supplied by the new works was so good that he
could not make gelatine, and his business was therefore ruined! The
suit was dismissed with costs.


A paste made of fifty-one parts of finely shaved stearine, melted in
seventy-two parts of previously warmed oil of turpentine, will restore
the polish to furniture. When cool rub on with a woollen rag, and when
dry rub thoroughly with a clean dry cloth.


This winter is said to have been the coldest known in Russia for 153
years! In St. Petersburg the thermometer has been -32 deg. Reaumur, or
40 deg. below zero, Fahrenheit. Drivers have frozen in their seats, and
the police kept large fires burning in the streets at night.


The difference between exploding powder under water and above ground is
shown in the relative effect of 50,000 pounds of giant powder fired in
the great Hell Gate blast, and the small quantity of 370 pounds of
black powder which is the service charge of the 80-ton cannon at
Shoebury, England. The former made but little shock or sound. The
latter has shaken houses to pieces by the force of the concussion wave
produced in the air. The first blood shed by the gun was that of a half
dozen sea gulls. A canister shot, containing 2,170 balls, burst just in
front of a large flock of them.


The United States issued 15,911 patents in 1876, and received 22,408
applications.


Important works in construction and other branches of engineering are
now sometimes continued at night by means of the electric light. The
buildings for the French international exhibition are pushed in this
way, and the method is used at the Taybridge Works and others in
England.


Among the interesting facts which have been developed by the careful
study of ants is the existence of piracy among them. Mr. McCook has
noticed that ants descending from trees with abdomens full of honey dew
were waited for by workers from the hill, seeking food, and compelled
to disgorge their accumulations. If this was not done willingly, force
was used.


The walrus has a singular mode of adapting his attack upon enemies to
the circumstances in which he is placed. They can shiver ice from four
to six inches thick by rising from below and striking it with their
huge heads. An exploring party near Novaya Zemla, while walking over a
field of new ice, noticed a herd of walruses following them under the
ice. They presently began operations, and broke the field in pieces on
all sides of the party, which barely escaped by running for the main
pack ice near by.


Oxford university, England, has a revenue of about $2,000,000 yearly,
43 professors, 160 lecturers and tutors, 2,400 undergraduates (1875),
of whom 24 per cent. hold scholarships worth from $150 to $500 yearly.
Seventy-five per cent. of these read for honors as follows: 33 per
cent. for the school of Literæ Humaniores (philosophy, classical
history, and philology), 20 per cent. for the school of modern history,
17 per cent. theology, 15 per cent. law, 7 per cent. mathematics, and
6.5 per cent. physical science. There are 360 fellows, of whom 140 are
resident and engaged in teaching. The average endowment of a fellowship
is $1,250. The average number of pupils to one professor or teacher is
in Literæ Humaniores 5 1-2; in mathematics 6, in physical science 7, in
modern history 5, in law 15 1-2.


Prof. von Zech lately mingled politics and science in a paper read
before the Wurtemburg Anthropological Society. He compared the returns
of a recent election with the known ethnological characteristics of the
kingdom of Wurtemburg, and found that in districts where light hair and
eyes predominated the government won the election. The black-haired and
black-eyed portions of the population seemed to favor democracy and
social reform, and the Ultramontanes form a medium class so far as
complexion is concerned.


The misfortunes of the deaf and dumb are greatly lessened by the
substitution of lip-reading for other modes of conversation. The words
are read from the movement of the lips so that the deaf can join in an
ordinary conversation. In beginning the instruction the lips must be
moved slowly, but in time the pupil gains such facility that the words
of a public speaker can be taken as well by a deaf person in the
audience as by any other. Deaf mutes are frequently very intelligent,
and it may be that the "kindergarten" system, which is a necessity in
their case, has something to do with their proficiency. In the Clark
Institute children are received at the age of five years, and the first
year's instruction consists in laying sticks and rings in designs
imitated from the teacher. Weaving, card pricking, and drawing are also
taught. From this beginning the pupil's development goes on through
physical studies, such as zoölogy, botany, physiology, and geography.
After these come higher mathematics, geology, chemistry, history,
psychology, etc.




CURRENT LITERATURE.


It would seem, or rather it would have seemed, almost impossible to
present Shakespeare in any new light, so much has been written by the
wise and the foolish, the learned and the ignorant, the bright and the
dull, the competent and the incompetent, upon that marvellous man. But
Mr. George Wilkes has managed to write a goodly octavo which, while it
contains nothing absolutely new upon this subject, presents it as a
whole in a fresh aspect.[8] Mr. Wilkes says, in his brief preface, a
few words which seem to be candid and truly modest. Rigorous criticism,
he tells us, will not be unwelcome, not because he has any vain
confidence in his own views, but "because they are put forward in good
faith in order to elicit truth concerning a genius who is the richest
inheritance of the intellectual world." He adds that he presents his
book rather as a series of inquiries than as dogmatic doctrine, and
that even if his views are controverted, he must be a gainer, "for it
can never be a true source of mortification to relinquish opinions in
favor of those which are shown to be better." This is indeed the
fairest, best spirit of literary candor, and it is expressed with manly
ingenuousness. If the author really feels what he utters so well, and
we are both bound and willing to believe that he does so, he has set an
example of a virtue which should be very much commoner than it is.

      [8] "_Shakespeare, from an American Point of View_: Including an
      Inquiry as to his Religious Faith and his Knowledge of Law. With
      the Baconian Theory Considered." By GEORGE WILKES. 8vo, pp. 471.
      New York: D. Appleton & Co.

In giving to Mr. Wilkes's book the consideration which is due to its
careful and intelligent preparation, we are, however, somewhat puzzled
at the outset. What is an American point of view in regard to a
literary subject, and above all a subject the historical position of
which is previous, not only to the Declaration of Independence, but to
the settlement of New England? We can apprehend what an "American"
point of view might be as to a question of politics, or of society, or
even of morals, in the present day; but what such a _distinctive_
view could be even on those subjects, considered as they present
themselves at a time when our forefathers, just like the forefathers of
the present British people, were in England or in Scotland, we can
hardly divine. And as to literature, the difficulty seems still
greater. For, in the first place, literature and art are of no country
and no time, except historically, and moreover the literature of a
language and a race belong to that race and the speakers of that
language wherever they may be. A man of English blood and speech loses
no right in Shakespeare, he loses no right in any English author,
because he happens to be born in New England instead of Old England, or
in Australia instead of the Isle of Wight or of Man. Political
divisions have nothing to do with literature. We hear nothing of
Prussian literature or of Austrian literature; it is all
German--"Deutsch." And the eminent German philologist Mentzner, in his
great English grammar, that awful book in three octavo volumes, draws
for his countless illustrations quite as freely upon Bryant, Irving,
Longfellow, Hawthorne, Prescott, and their countrymen, as upon
Tennyson, Browning, Macaulay, and theirs. English literature is the
literature of the English race wherever it may be. It has nothing to do
with the distinctions British and American. They are political only.
This is true of all literature, even that of the day; but especially
and absolutely is it true of all English literature that was produced
before there was any New England. Shakespeare belongs to the people now
in England because when he wrote he and their forefathers lived
together in England and spoke the same tongue; and exactly for that
reason he belongs to all of us here who are of his race and tongue.
There is not the slightest difference between the relations of the two
people to the one man. This consideration applies, without
qualification, to all English literature before 1620; with slight
external, unessential modification, to that between 1620 and 1776; and
with somewhat greater external, but still unessential modification, to
all that has been produced since.

Mr. Wilkes, however, may reasonably reply that while he may or may not
agree with this view of English literature, there is in either case an
American point of view as to every subject--a view taken from the
position in which Americans stand politically and socially; a position
which affects their vision and their judgment of all subjects,
including literature, even in the form of dramatic poetry, the most
absolute form in which it can exist. He is to a certain extent right;
and waiving the question as to whether such a view is likely to have
any peculiar value, particularly in regard to dramatic poems produced
in the other hemisphere nearly three hundred years ago, let us see what
in this guise Mr. Wilkes has to present to us.

He opens his book with a reference to the "Baconian theory," as it is
called; that is, the notion that the plays published in 1623 as "Mr.
William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies," were
actually written by the great Bacon, incorrectly called Lord Bacon.
This notion, which may in a certain sense be called "American," because
of its setting forth by Miss Delia Bacon, a New England woman, some
twenty years ago, is not and never was worth five minutes' serious
consideration by any sane human being. It is too foolish to be talked
about. No man who really knows anything about the subject has ever
given this fancy a moment's entertainment; and we regret to see that
Mr. Wilkes is at the pains of examining it carefully all through his
book. It is not worthy of refutation. We therefore set small store by
the probabilities which he accumulates against it. There is no more
ground for reasonable doubt that William Shakespeare did and Francis
Bacon did not write the plays attributed to the former than there is
for doubt that Horace Greeley did and William Henry Seward did not edit
the "Tribune" between the years 1845 and 1865. That Bacon was their
author is indeed an American point of view, it having been taken not
only by Miss Bacon, but by Judge Holmes of Missouri, and by an unknown
American writer in "Frazer's Magazine" for August, 1874. But we are
inclined to think that Miss Bacon's book is unknown to Mr. Wilkes
except at second hand, else he would not speak of that tremendous
octavo tome as a "pamphlet," which he does twice. It was as heavy
metaphorically as it was in avoirdupois. It fell dead from the press.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote the introduction to it, says in his "Old
Home" that he believes that it never had but one reader, a young man of
his acquaintance. He probably had not seen Mr. Grant White's statement,
made in some of his Shakespearian books or writings, that "for his
sins" he had read every word of it. And we must say from our knowledge
of it, that the reading ought to go largely to his credit in his
account with purgatory. Judge Holmes's book is very able and ingenious;
so much so that it is to be regretted that he did not give his learning
and his reasoning powers to better business. In Mr. Wilkes's book we
probably have heard the last of this American view of Shakespeare.

Our author also gives much attention to the questions of Shakespeare's
religious faith and his knowledge of the law. He is of the opinion that
Shakespeare was a Roman Catholic, and that he had not studied law. In
both cases we think Mr. Wilkes wrong. Such evidence as Shakespeare's
works afford goes, we think, decidedly in favor of their writer's
having been a Protestant of unusually "broad church" views for his
time, and of his having made some study at least of the attorney's part
of law. After considering all that Mr. Wilkes urges, we find nothing in
his ingeniously extracted evidence to shake our faith in these
probabilities. But in any case all this is of small importance. Suppose
Shakespeare to have been a Romanist, and never to have entered an
attorney's office: of what moment are these conclusions to the reader
of his plays? The facts were important to Shakespeare himself, but are
of only the slightest interest to any one else.

Mr. Wilkes's American point of view is finally and chiefly that which
he takes of Shakespeare's social feeling, according to his--Mr.
Wilkes's--conception of it. He says of him that it seems strange that
"unlike all the great geniuses of the world who had come before or
[have] come after him, he should be the only one so deficient in that
beneficent tenderness toward his race, so vacant of those sympathies
which usually accompany intellectual power, as never to have been
betrayed into one generous aspiration in favor of popular liberty. Nay,
worse than this, worse than his servility to royalty and rank, we never
find him speaking of the poor with respect, or alluding to the working
classes without detestation or contempt." This view of the great
poet-dramatist is repeated over and over again, all through Mr.
Wilkes's book. The point is not a new one. It has been considered by
one or two of Mr. Wilkes's predecessors, and has been set aside as of
no significance by those who have brought it up for consideration. We
cannot congratulate Mr. Wilkes upon his success in establishing his
position. The subject is of some interest, and for example we take Mr.
Wilkes's remarks in his twenty-third chapter, which is entirely devoted
to the support he finds for it in the first part of "Henry VI." He
quotes passages in which La Pucelle (Joan of Arc) calls herself "a
shepherd's daughter," speaks of her "contemptible estate," and her
"base vocation"; in which Talbot expresses his insulted feeling at a
proposal that he, when a prisoner, should have been proposed in
exchange for a "baser man of arms," and in which he and other noblemen
speak with contempt of peasants. And then he exclaims, "Lords, lords,
lords; nothing but princes and lords, and The People never alluded to
except as _worthless peasants_, or to be scorned as _scabs_, and
_hedge-born_ swains." The reply to all this is much like the famous one
as to the stealing of the kettle; which was first, that the defendant
did not take the kettle; next that he returned it; and finally that the
plaintiff never had any kettle. First these sentiments are not put
forth as those of the writer of the play, but as those of the
personages who figured in the historical incidents therein dramatized;
next it is undeniable that such were the feelings which noblemen and
gentlemen of Henry VI.'s time, and of the time when this play was
written, had and expressed toward peasants; and finally, whether or no
it makes no difference as to Shakespeare's sentiments in regard to his
humbler fellow men; for _Shakespeare did not write this play_. No
editor or competent critic of Shakespeare believes that Shakespeare
wrote one single scene of the first part of "King Henry VI." True the
same feeling is expressed by noblemen and gentlemen in plays which
Shakespeare did write; and we notice this particular passage chiefly
because of its evidence that Mr. Wilkes, although an intelligent and
careful reader of Shakespeare, is not sufficiently acquainted with the
history and the literature of his time, or with dramatic literature
generally, to undertake to pass judgment upon Shakespeare from the
higher points of view, however he may be so to judge him from "an
American point of view." For the assertion that Shakespeare was in this
respect "unlike all the great geniuses of the world" is absolutely
untrue. If Mr. Wilkes will carefully examine the works of the
playwrights contemporary with Shakespeare, he will find their _dramatis
personæ_ equally made up of "lords, lords, lords," and he will find the
lords speaking in just such a way of the common people. If they did not
do so, the portraiture would be unfaithful; it would not "hold the
mirror up to nature." And if he will look through the plays of Molière,
who stands next to Shakespeare as a dramatist, and who was like him a
player and a man of the people, he will find all the lords and
gentlemen who ruffle through his delightful pages speaking with
contempt and ridicule of the lower classes. Moreover, it is absolutely
untrue that Shakespeare was even thus indirectly a sycophant to kings
and nobles, and a maintainer of their essential superiority. On fitting
occasions he puts into their own mouths satires against themselves,
their rank, and their pretensions; and he shows, when opportunity
offers, a warm sympathy with and tenderness for the lowly and the
oppressed. Whoever chooses to do so may find this shown in a few pages
of Mr. Grant White's essay on Shakespeare's genius. ("Life and Genius
of Shakespeare," pp. 298-302.) If we are to have a peculiarly American
view of Shakespeare, pray let us have one founded upon thorough
knowledge and taken in a fair spirit. Not that we mean that Mr. Wilkes
is intentionally unfair, but that his judgment has been perverted by
his strong democratic feeling, and that he seems not to have been able
to investigate his subject with the research which it properly demands.

We are sorry to observe also a reckless tone of disparagement running
through Mr. Wilkes's book. True, Shakespeare's reputation may be able
to bear it; but for the very reason of Shakespeare's preëminence the
world--the thoughtful part of it at least--would welcome a close,
careful, and competent examination of his claims, even in an adverse
spirit. Such an examination Mr. Wilkes, notwithstanding the
voluminousness and the method of his book, has not been able to give
them. It is not--for example, in his chapter on the "Merchant of
Venice"--by calling Antonio a "blackguard" and a "ruffian," and
Bassanio "an unprincipled, penniless adventurer, a mere tavern
spendthrift and carouser, who borrows money that he may cheat a wealthy
maiden of her dower," by calling Gratiano and Lorenzo "poodles and
parasites," the first of whom "is willing to put up with Portia's
waiting maid Nerissa," that Mr. Wilkes can hope to win respect for an
American view of Shakespeare. If Mr. Wilkes had informed himself more
thoroughly in regard to the manners of Antonio's time, he would have
found that in those days men, otherwise kind-hearted and generous,
treated Jews as he treated Shylock; that Nerissa was probably, if not
surely, as well born and as well bred as her mistress was; and that
Bassanio's desire to marry an heiress, beautiful, loving, and by him
beloved, was not peculiar to the hero of the "Merchant of Venice."
Indeed, very estimable men have not been found averse to such a
proceeding in these days, and even in America. And what is strange the
beautiful heiresses have forgiven them, and if they behaved kindly and
lovingly as husbands, have been very happy, strange as it may seem. Why
should Mr. Wilkes speak of Bassanio's going to Belmont "to swindle
Portia"? He does no such thing. Such criticism of Shakespeare, if it
were truly and representatively American, would justly hold America up
to the world's ridicule.

Scattered through Mr. Wilkes's book, making us regret the more such
passages as we have noticed, are others which show fine insight and
robust common sense. In this very chapter on the "Merchant of Venice"
there are two or three pages of sound criticism of the dull and pompous
platitudes of the sham-profound German critics, for which we thank the
author. They are well and heartily written, and they do not overstep
the bounds of literary decorum. In many parts, Mr. Wilkes's book,
although it is a very unsafe guide, contains stimulating suggestions to
reflection.

                     *      *      *      *      *

Lord Amberly, the recently deceased son and heir of Earl Russel, left
an elaborate work behind him upon the religions of the world, which has
just been republished here.[9] Apart from its teachings, or rather its
tendencies, which would be stamped as "infidel" by all orthodox
Christians, the book is valuable. For it is the result of very
profound, painstaking research. It contains nothing particularly new,
but it presents, in a tolerably compact form, a critical view of the
whole subject of religious beliefs and ceremonies, in all time and in
all countries. Its author evidently means to be fair; and from his
point of view he is so. The book is full of information upon a subject
which is now attracting unusual attention from a class of minds which,
twenty-five or thirty years ago, would have shrunk in horror from any
such examination; and its value in this respect is enhanced by an
index, which makes it a useful book of reference.

      [9] "_An Analysis of Religious Belief._" By Viscount AMBERLY.
      8vo, pp. 745. New York: D. M. Bennett.

--Mr. Frothingham, who has rapidly taken the place of leader in a new
school of morals and religion, but whose followers are yet few, has
added another book to those which have been recently noticed in our
pages.[10] It is composed of some of those discourses--for they cannot
be called sermons, in the ordinary sense of the word--which he delivers
to his disciples on Sunday; delivering them on that day because it is
convenient for the purpose. It must be admitted that they teach a very
high and pure morality. But we confess that the title of the book, "The
Spirit of the New Faith," seems to us a misnomer; for we seek in it in
vain for the evidences of any faith. Indeed, its principal object seems
to be the inculcation of morality without faith; the teaching that, to
an upright life--truly Christian, that is, in spirit--(for Mr.
Frothingham would probably spurn the name) no faith of any sort is
necessary. In the sermon--not the first in order--which gives the
volume its name, we remark a strange perversion or misconception of the
chiefest Christian virtue. Mr. Frothingham writes in a kindly, generous
spirit which excludes scorn; but he approaches scorn in his remarks
upon charity, at which he almost scoffs. He says of it: "Charity is not
equivalent to brotherhood; it is not synonymous with brotherhood, or
even with appreciation. Charity can be unjust: it is unjust in its
pity. Pity, indeed, is its essence." Were this a true definition of
charity, Mr. Frothingham might be justified in the tone he takes toward
it. But the very spirit of charity is at war not only with injustice,
but with arrogance, and with phariseeism of all kinds. Its very essence
is the assumption of good motives, even on the part of those who differ
radically from us in conduct and belief. It is the great moral
equalizer of the world. We are surprised that a thinker of Mr.
Frothingham's clearness and subtlety of mind should have so failed in
appreciating a quality which does not inculcate, but which _is_ love
and respect for others.

      [10] "_The Spirit of the New Faith._ A Series of Sermons." By
      OCTAVIUS BROOKS FROTHINGHAM. 16mo, pp. 272. New York: G. P.
      Putnam's Sons.

                     *      *      *      *      *

Few persons are aware of the vast and varied range of duties which are
connected with what is called, "for short," a geological and
geographical survey of the Territories.[11] The second edition of the
catalogue of publications made in connection with the survey, of which
Dr. F. V. Hayden is director, enumerates forty-one publications issued
within ten years, among which are annual reports of the work done since
1867, bulletins, the issue of which began in 1874, and important
monographs on ancient and modern fauna and flora of the region
examined. Dr. Hayden's own geological work is necessarily limited by
his heavy duties as director of the whole survey, but his long study of
the West gives him unusual qualifications for assembling and discussing
the work of others. He has a minute description with map of the Upper
Arkansas valley and its glaciation, and of the old lake system of the
West. During the early portion of the Tertiary the whole country, "from
the Arctic circle to the Isthmus of Darien," was occupied with lakes,
some of which were immense in size. In after times thousands of small
lakes took their place, and these have finally disappeared. Many of
these were expansions of the rivers, like most modern lakes. The old
valleys are now occupied by a diluvial deposit, the counterpart of the
Loess of the Rhine, and almost the same in composition. The
agricultural future of all that valley region is very promising, for
from some mysterious cause, the rainfall seems to be increasing over
the whole area. Buried trees of great size prove that Nebraska has not
always been the grassy waste it now is, and the revolutions of nature
may restore its forests. Mr. Aughey figures some arrow-heads which he
found in this deposit fifteen and twenty feet from the top, and in such
a position as to assure him of their true age. Leaving the admirable
geological study of Dr. Peale, we come to Mr. Eudlich's examination of
the San Juan mines. This is a kind of work which government explorers
should do more of, though until the mines are worked deeper, the
information obtained is not very full. The veins are reported to be
probably of Cretaceous age, or they may date from the beginning of the
Tertiary. Dr. Hayden reports that when the coming season's work is
finished "the most rugged and mountainous portion of our continent"
will have been surveyed. It is his intention to map it in an atlas of
six sheets, each covering about 11,500 square miles. The cartographical
work of the survey is excellent. This volume contains eighty-eight maps
and views, executed in a most creditable manner.

      [11] "_United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the
      Territories._" F. V. HAYDEN, United States Geologist in charge.
      Annual Report, 1877. Colorado and adjacent Territories.
      Government Printing Office.

--We have also received two of the "Miscellaneous Publications"[12] of
the survey, one being the last and crowning work of America's great
invertebrate palæontologist, Dr. F. B. Meek.[13] The names "Meek and
Hayden" have an association in American scientific work that is
historic, and in the "Report on Invertebrate, Cretaceous, and Tertiary
Fossils of the Upper Missouri Country" are assembled the results of
painstaking labors extending through many years. The volume is worthy
to stand as a monument to such an author. The introduction contains a
description, in the author's characteristically concise style, of the
formations in which the fossils were found. The fossils described
include all the invertebrates from the prescribed region, and it is
indicative of the author's position in regard to palæontological work
in America, that nearly all the species were originally described by
him. This profound knowledge of the subject and the painstaking
attention to the discussion of types, and of their synonomy, make the
work, as Dr. Hayden truly says, "one of the most important
contributions ever made to the science of palæontology in any portion
of the world." Forty-five lithographic plates, by Meek and Swinton, and
numerous woodcuts, illustrate the book.

      [12] _The Same._ Catalogue of Publications. Second edition,
      Revised to December 31, 1876.

      [13] _The Same._ Report on Invertebrate Palæontology. F. B. MEEK.

--Dr. Packard's "Monograph of the Geometrid Moths"[14] is the next
important publication of this survey. It is the first complete treatise
on the American species of these moths. The author describes between
three and four hundred species, and thinks it not unlikely that nearly
a thousand will be ultimately found on the continent. The collections
have been made by many travellers, and at points extending from Polaris
bay to Texas. Great attention is paid to generic and specific
description, and to synonomy, besides which a complete bibliography of
the subject is added. Dr. Packard's work is therefore well suited to
serve for immediate instruction, as well as a standard for reference.
The admirably executed plates increase its value for both uses.

      [14] _The Same._ Monograph of the Geometrid Moths or Phalænidæ.
      By A. S. PACKARD, Jr., M.D.

--Captain Ludlow's report of his visit to the Yellowstone Park in 1875
is one of the most interesting books the Government has published.[15]
He found that the army of American vandals has turned its footsteps
toward this national museum of wonders, and every year they go to it in
hundreds and thousands to admire and destroy the delicate lace work
which nature has spent centuries in weaving. The Park contains the most
remarkable glaciers on this continent, and the constantly flowing and
splashing water has built up a basin of opal around each fountain.
These basins are curiously convoluted and fretted, and are composed
almost entirely of quartz deposited from the water, their light gray
color contrasting beautifully with the deeply tinted water. Wherever
they are solid the idiotic visitor writes his name, and thousands of
these unimprisoned lunatics have been there. Wherever the basins are
most delicate and wonderful, the savage white man strikes them with an
axe and carries home "a specimen." Captain Ludlow found two women
climbing around one geyser called the Castle, from the numerous little
pinnacles and towers it has built up, "with tucked up skirts and rubber
shoes, armed one with an axe, the other with a spade." When he first
saw the Beehive, the most remarkable of the geysers in point of height,
throwing its stream two hundred feet high from a small aperture, he had
a pang in anticipation of the destruction that he felt sure would come
upon it. And with good reason. The next day he returned to camp just in
time to run in and save the Beehive, the pride of the Park, from the
uplifted axe of _a woman_! He urges the Government to spend $10,000 or
thereabouts in protecting this beautiful place from the assaults of
these iconoclasts, who break down ten times as much as they carry off.
We regret to see that his recommendation is unheeded. A governor is
appointed for the Park, but he has no salary, and probably does not
remain on the ground. Captain Ludlow very truly says that the presence
of a small party there to open roads, preserve the Park, and keep a
careful record of the geysers would well repay its cost in the increase
of knowledge and pleasurable travel it would bring to our people.

      [15] "_Report of a Reconnaissance to the Yellowstone National
      Park in the Summer of 1875._" By WILLIAM LUDLOW, Captain of
      Engineers. War Department, Washington.

                     *      *      *      *      *

Mr. David A. Wells has made a good choice in presenting Bastiat's
writings on political economy,[16] for his essays are as sound in
principle as they are homely in method. He tried to make people see the
true meaning of the phrases and theories which are the common staple of
conversation among the industrial classes. For instance, he meets the
assertion that a country gains wealth when the government employs a
great number of people by pointing out that the personal expenditures
of the people are reduced by just the amount of the taxes. When the
government takes a dollar from a citizen to pay a laborer, the citizen
has just one dollar less to hire the laborer for his own use. The
country gains no wealth by such a transaction, but merely makes an
exchange of employers. This proposition, which M. Bastiat insists upon
through many arguments, is of more vital interest to France than to us.
It refers to a form of folly that is chronic there, but sporadic here,
and its most threatening outbreak (during the "ring rule" in New York)
was violently cured by the panic of 1873. But the importance of
inculcating sound views on this subject is just as necessary here as
there. Probably the larger part of Tweed's stealings ultimately found
their way to laboring men, but who shall say that New York has gained
wealth by his career? M. Bastiat's views on interest, capital, taxes,
encouragement of fine arts by the State, public works, the spendthrift,
government, etc., are excellent, and expressed in an ingenious and
taking way. It is hard to give to dissertations on such subjects that
"blood-curdling interest" which Mark Twain promised in his agricultural
memoranda; but M. Bastiat certainly unites an unusual interest of style
to sensible and simple views. Mr. Wells may count the reproduction of
these essays as one of the many valuable public services he has done
his countrymen.

      [16] "_Essays on Political Economy._" By FREDERICK BASTIAT.
      Translation revised by David A. Wells. New York: G. P. Putnam's
      Sons.

                     *      *      *      *      *

A hundred and four years have passed since John Howard paid that visit
to Bedford jail which first directed his attention to the improvement
of the prisoners' condition. The work began with the study of prisons;
a hundred years has turned it into the study of the prisoner. Mr.
Dugdale[17] discovered in 1874 the criminal family which has become
notorious as containing Margaret, "the mother of criminals." She was
one of six sisters, of whom one is not traceable; four gave rise to
mixed criminal and pauper lines, and Margaret to a distinctively
criminal line. To these sisters Mr. Dugdale gives the name _Jukes_, and
he has followed up seven generations, containing 540 known persons of
Juke blood, and 169 known persons of other blood who became allied to
the Jukes in one way or another. All told, this criminal family
contains 709 known persons, and probably 500 undiscovered members,
forming the most numerous criminal lineage ever studied. Mr. Dugdale's
pamphlet is a profoundly interesting analysis of the history of this
family, and the tendencies that have governed it. The remarkable fact
is developed that the strongest criminal tendencies are on the female
side, and pauper tendencies on the male side. Crime and pauperism are
psychologically one and the same, one or the other being manifested as
the individual's character is strong or weak. A life may exhibit an
innocent childhood, a criminal maturity, and a pauper old age. The same
phases may be developed more slowly, and appear in successive
generations, or even in alternate generations. Intemperance is no doubt
frequently the immediate cause of crime, as seen in so many murders.
But Mr. Dugdale shows that the common belief that criminal tendencies
are the result of intemperance is not true, while the reverse is true,
that these tendencies produce physical degeneration, which craves the
stimulus of drink. These investigations show that the pauper is almost
irreclaimable. His mental weakness neutralizes every effort made for
his welfare, but the active criminal has strength enough to do better
if he will. As to women, it is shown that their immorality is the
precise counterpart of crime in the man, and it is to this fact that we
owe the steady development of our criminal population. Illegitimacy is
not in itself a cause of crime, but the environment of neglect in which
the illegitimate live is a fruitful cause. We cannot detail all the
conclusions of this close and exhaustive study of criminal character.
They are as numerous as they are disagreeable to read and contemplate.

      [17] "_The Jukes._ A Study In Crime, Pauperism, Disease, and
      Heredity." By R. L. DUGDALE. With an Introduction by Elisha
      Harris, M.D. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

--Dr. Bowen's pamphlet on "Dyspepsia," published by Loring, is so good,
so comforting, and so plain to persons who do not know any more of
medicine than is necessary to have the various diseases, that we are
glad to point it out to our readers. He says there is no case of
dyspepsia that cannot be cured, except such as are complicated with
other troubles that are necessarily fatal. He opposes the starvation
treatment, but does not give general directions for cure, saying that
each case must be studied and treated for itself.

                     *      *      *      *      *

Dr. Stillman's "Seeking the Golden Fleece"[18] is worth reading for its
faithful picture of a long sea voyage in the olden time. Nearly a
hundred passengers left New York in the Pacific, the captain and owner
being obliged to slink on board, to avoid attachments sued out against
them by other passengers who were dissatisfied and left behind. The
voyage consumed 194 days, and the narrative of its incidents is much
the most interesting part of the book. As to the author's experience in
California, we can sum it up in the common phrase, "The old story." He
was one of the first argonauts. He saw Sacramento when it had
half-a-dozen shanties, San Francisco when millions of dollars worth of
goods lay on the hillsides, for lack of sufficient warehouses, when the
mines were yielding well, and cooks were cheap at $300 a month. Dr.
Stillman's narrative is one of the best that has appeared of California
in the days of the pioneers.

      [18] "_Seeking the Golden Fleece._ A Record of Pioneer Life in
      California." By J. D. B. STILLMAN. A. Roman & Co.

                     *      *      *      *      *

Mr. Habberton shows how fit he is to be the editor of selections from
standard authors by publishing the Roger de Coverly papers[19] without a
note or emendation. We have these celebrated numbers of the "Spectator"
in all the grace and humor of the originals, and with the quaint flavor
which age has necessarily added to them unimpaired. The editor informs
us that after a careful hunt through the book market, he finds the
previous editions of Sir Roger out of print, and for that reason he
publishes this one, though his first plan for the "Select British
Essayists" did not include it. He thinks the publication peculiarly
timely now, when "the standard of letters threatens to become vastly
different from that under which English literature has gained whatever
it possesses of real value." We do not agree with him in anticipating
the complete shelving of Sir Roger in case this threatened change
really takes place. In all times the really great authors will be read
by the few, and talked about by the many. But however that may be, Mr.
Habberton's handsome and convenient collection of these papers will be
welcomed by the many who are glad to learn how famous authors wrote,
and yet have not taste enough for classical reading to attack the whole
"Spectator" itself.

      [19] "_Sir Roger de Coverly:_ Consisting of the Papers Relating
      to Sir Roger, which were Originally Published in the 'Spectator.'"
      With an Introductory Essay by JOHN HABBERTON. New York: G. P.
      Putnam's Sons. $1.25.

                     *      *      *      *      *

The disciples of Swedenborg will read with interest a little book of a
mildly controversial character by B. F. Barrett, which endeavors to
show what the New Church really is.[20] The controversy is not with the
unbelievers in Swedenborg, but with some prominent persons among his
disciples. Its object is to show that the New Jerusalem, or New Church,
is not an organized and visible body of people united by a creed and a
form of worship more or less uniform. This view, although, as the
writer says, it has prevailed among the students of Swedenborg for
nearly a hundred years and is probably held by a large majority of them
at the present day, he regards as an utterly mistaken conception. He,
on the contrary, regards the theory of separation as false and vicious.
The function of Swedenborgianism, if so it must be called, he believes
to be to uproot and destroy the mischievous spirit of sect, to exalt
charity above faith, life above doctrine, both inside and outside of
all the churches. This he regards as that second coming of the Lord
which Swedenborg taught; and this he sees in the signs of the times.
Few of us know really what Swedenborgianism is; and some of us have
tried in vain to discover what there is in it which captivates some
clear-headed as well as true-hearted men. But if this be
Swedenborgianism, who of us is there that will not bid it God speed?

      [20] "_The New Church:_ Its Nature and Whereabout. Being a
      Critical Examination of the Popular Theory, with some
      Illustrations of its Tendency and Legitimate Fruits." By B. F.
      BARRETT. 16mo, pp. 213. Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen &
      Haffelfinger.

--"The Library of Swedenborg,"[21] edited by Mr. Barrett, is to consist
of twelve handy volumes, giving a complete summary of Swedenborg's
system in a series of extracts from his writings, grouped together
under appropriate headings, indicating the special doctrine they
illustrate. These volumes are of the most convenient size and neatly
printed and bound. They are, in short, in every respect in contrast
with the bulky tomes in which Swedenborg's system is usually and so
repulsively presented. Three volumes of the series have thus far been
published.

      [21] "_Volume Third The Swedenborg Library._" Edited by B. F.
      BARRETT. Freedom, Rationality, and Catholicity. From the Writings
      of Emanuel Swendenborg. Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen &
      Haffelfinger.

                     *      *      *      *      *

A book the author of which publishes his own portrait as a frontispiece
is opened with prejudice by most sensible men, we believe, and
phrenology is not regarded with great favor by the majority of such
readers. But here is a book which is able to stand up against both
these prejudices.[22] Whatever we may think of phrenology, we cannot
withhold our hearty approval of the methods of teaching which are
recommended by Mr. Sizer. He would have the teacher study his pupil,
watch the action of his mind, detect his propensities, and then direct
his efforts accordingly. The author does not content himself with
generalities; he goes into particulars; he indicates temperaments,
describes mental traits and modes of action, and gives good counsel as
to their direction. His views of training include the moral as well as
the mental side of the pupil, and also his physical nature. Children
trained according to the system here recommended and set forth would
have the most made of them that their organizations permit. We commend
the book to all teachers and parents. It will interest them, and if
they study it and follow its counsels, it will profit their children.
As to the phrenology of it, they may let that go. Like the allegory of
"The Faerie Queene," it won't bite them.

      [22] "_How to Teach according to Temperament and Mental
      Development_; or, Phrenology in the School Room and the Family."
      By NELSON SIZER. 16mo, pp. 331. New York: Wells & Co.

                     *      *      *      *      *

In poetry we have before us this month only a sacred tragedy, the
writer of which we fear has been misled into verse-writing by an
ambition to justify his parents' choice of a name.[23] The incidents of
his tragedy are of course derived from the Old Testament, and in every
case in which they are in any way modified it is for the worse. His
poetry reminds us of that dreary stuff that was written before the
appearance of Marlowe and the other Elizabethan dramatists. We wonder
that the writer undertook a subject which had been so ably handled by
others before him, and particularly by Charles Heavysege, to whose
vigorous and highly picturesque dramatic poem[24] we direct the
attention of our poetry-loving readers.

      [23] "_King Saul:_ A Tragedy." By BYRON A. BROOKS. 16mo, pp. 144.
      New York: Nelson & Phillips.

      [24] Published by Osgood & Company.




NEBULÆ.


--The result of months of agitation and negotiation is that to Russia
is left the task of driving the Turks out of Europe single-handed.
Well, Russia is content, and not only content, but pleased. She does
not object to being left to seek her own ends by her own means, and
would like nothing better than to have all the other powers take the
position of disinterested bystanders while she whops poor little Johnny
Turk, and takes as much as she likes of his territory by way of
indemnity. She meant this all along, and it has been amusing to see how
she has with a combination of tact and persistency attained her end. Of
course as to her motives there can be no doubt; they are purely
philanthropic and religious. It is for the Christians in the Turkish
provinces, about whom England began the disturbance, the result of
which promises to be Russia's success and her own discomfiture. The
attitude of Turkey wins respect and sympathy. It has been manly in
tone, and in diplomacy not unskilful. The Turks have always shown a
combination of stubbornness and craft which have made them, except in
the field, more than a match for their Christian enemies. Without
approving Turkish faith or life, we may yet admire the firmness and
dignity with which they have refused to submit to a dictation which
would exclude them from the rank of independent nations. They made the
mistake of not putting the Czar palpably in the wrong, which they would
have done by sending the embassy to St. Petersburg to treat of
disarmament. But he would have probably wriggled but of this position
in some way; and of this they may have felt sure. Plainly the Turks
feel that they are in a crisis of their national existence, and they
are desperate. They know of course that between Great Britain and
Russia there is a determination to drive them out of Europe, and that
their only safety thus far has been in the rivalry and jealousy of
those two powers. Since the effort is to be made, they feel that they
are in as good a condition to resist it now as they ever will be; and
with the desperation of their character they have gone into the unequal
fight. What will be the end, no one can foresee; but of one thing we
may be sure, that the British Government will not fight for the Turks,
and as certainly they will not fight with Russia against them. Neither
Germany nor Austria is likely to spend blood and treasure for the
aggrandizement of Russia. Therefore, although some publicists look for
a great change in the map of Europe, it seems rather that the result of
the war, even if it be unfavorable to Turkey, will be little more than
the liberation and autonomy of one or two of the provinces.


--The personal nature of our politics was never more apparent than it
is at present. On all sides, and in regard to all questions, we meet
with evidence of it. Whether it be in regard to great questions of
national importance, the formation of parties, or some little State or
county matter, the point generally first raised is how Mr. ---- or Mr.
---- will be likely to feel about it. The subject is not discussed upon
broad grounds of right, of law, or of policy, but with regard to the
effect that it will have upon such or such an "interest," which is
represented by Mr. ----, the said interest being sometimes that of a
railway, or a "ring," but generally that of a knot of professional
politicians. This seems strange in a country where the government is
"of the people, by the people, and for the people." Our democracy has
subjected us to the condition of the old Roman clients. We do not have
leaders in politics, but users; men who use us for their own advantage.


--China and Japan are turning the tables upon us bravely. We have been
sending missionaries to them for two hundred years and more, and now a
young disciple of Buddha comes among us to criticise our religion and
to tell us that the moral principles and the conduct of Christians are
of a lower standard than those taught by Confucius; and a Japanese
publicist criticises our politics in our leading review, and tells us
that we are the slowest people on the face of the earth, and are tied
hand and foot by our paper constitutions. There will probably not be
many converts to Buddhism; and as probably the Constitution of the
United States will not be set aside as a worthless piece of paper in
this generation. None the less, however, are these return-missionary
efforts of our extremely Oriental friends very significant signs of the
times. They show two things: first, the little real effect which, after
all, the West has produced upon the East; and last, the freedom of
thought and discussion which is now pervading the world. It is safe to
say that our Chinese and Japanese critics will be listened to with
respect; and that not in a mere spirit of tolerance and politeness. The
world has changed its position greatly in such respects within the last
thirty or fifty years. The petition in the English prayer-book in favor
of "Jews, Turks, heretics, and infidels," which found its counterpart
in the extemporaneous prayers of other orthodox religious sects, is
beginning to sound rather antiquated. The idea of holding up Dr.
Gottheil, for instance, as a proper subject for especial prayer, is to
most sensible people rather ridiculous, however good Christians they
may be. Investigation has found the principles of a high morality in
other religious creeds than those of Western Europe and America; and
charity, that chiefest of Christian virtues, has taught us to judge
others, if we judge them at all, by standards of general application
with allowance for peculiar conditions. We have discovered that
political sagacity was not confined to the founders of the political
systems of modern Europe. It is found that the human mind is much the
same under like conditions in all countries and in all times; and we
are approaching gradually to Tennyson's "parliament of man" and
"federation of the world."


--A sadder story has not been told for a long while than that of the
mother and daughter who were excluded from the Shaker settlement at
Whitewater, where they had been for fourteen years, and after leaving
which, and seeking in vain the means of livelihood, they, in despair,
took poison, and died in each other's arms. The sadness is not so much
in their death; for to that they were at any time liable; and loving
each other fondly, as they manifestly did, in their voluntary death
they were not divided. But the mother was at first driven to the Shaker
community fourteen years ago, with her little girl, because she had
been deserted by the father of her child, to whom she had not been
married. She had weakly yielded to the impulse of nature without
fortifying herself by a legal claim upon the father of her child, and
the world, instead of treating her tenderly and helping her, turned its
back upon her and told her that she and the child that she had borne
were fit only to starve or to live in a county poor house. After
fourteen years of the cold, colorless, and unnatural life of the
Shakers, the daughter showed that she was not an abstraction or a
forked radish, and behaved like a woman, perhaps not a prudent one, to
the young men of the community. She was told that such behavior was
only fit for the world's people, and that she and her daughter must go.
But the world's people had driven out the mother herself upon something
such grounds years before; and now when she came back she was met by
the same stony front. Let us not be misunderstood; we are not
justifying or even palliating the mother's conduct. We pass that point
by without consideration. But the point remains that for an error,
which, however great, was in the course of nature, the mother became an
outcast, and that for indiscretion, also in the course of nature, on
the daughter's part, both afterward were turned away from the Shaker
community; and then they found the world so hard, and life in it so
bitter, that, although one was still in the prime of life and the other
in its early morning, they chose rather death together. They might have
been base and unnatural, hard-hearted, malicious, slanderous,
revengeful, covetous, grasping, utterly regardless of the happiness
and, within the law, of the rights of others, the mother might not have
loved her child, the child might not have loved her mother, and yet the
world would not have driven them to the Shakers and the Shakers would
not have driven them out again into the world to die. It is an old
story, we do not hesitate to say an old wrong, of which every man and
woman with an unperverted heart admits the cruelty in the abstract, but
of which the collective world is always ready to be guilty. A woman who
"gets a husband," no matter by what base arts or design, is "received";
a woman who gives the world a child otherwise than according to law is
cast out, often by those who are not worthy to touch the hem of her
garment. It is not necessary to justify women who err in this way
before condemning the pharisaic righteousness which stones them into
despair. "Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more."


--Compare the wrong done in such a case with the conduct of a
"respectable" young woman whose sudden disappearance from her home near
Waterford, New York, caused much excitement. She reappeared after a
week's absence, and accused three young men of the place of abducting
her. They were rather wild fellows, and they were arrested. But upon
investigation the story was found to be a pure fabrication. The girl
had gone suddenly off to visit some of her relatives; and to gratify
some feeling, whatever it might have been, she trumped up this
accusation. It is impossible to conceive a fouler, baser act. And yet
she will not be an outcast; she is "respectable"; no one will venture
to call her a "bad girl." But suppose that He who said "neither do I
condemn thee" were to decide between the relative fitness of the two
for a place in His kingdom--is there any doubt in whose favor He would
speak? The law cannot decide as He would decide; and the world is right
in insisting upon the chastity of woman; but is the world right in
regarding chastity as the only female virtue, or at least in regarding
a lapse from continence as the only wrong which should exclude woman
from the pale of decent society, and deprive her of a right to earn her
living among other women? Is it right in asking only one question in
regard to a woman's conduct and in "receiving" a married woman, merely
because she is married, although she may make her home a little hell
for her husband and her children? We are not advocating looseness upon
the former point, but only comparing the world's treatment of natural
error with its treatment of essential and malicious wrong-doing. If the
one should be condemned--and it should be--what should be done in case
of the other? Motive gives every act its true character; and if we
teach women that a life filled with acts the motives of which are mean
and malicious may be "respectable," are we not subjecting them to a
daily discipline of moral degradation?


--And with it all there is such a foolish, deplorable, ruinous neglect
of the proper instruction of young women. They are taught heaps of
things that are of no possible use to them, and they are not taught
those which concern them most nearly. Here is this miserable
"Throop-Price" affair, as it is called, in which a young lady belonging
to a family of some culture and social position is actually taken
before a clergyman and half married before she knows it; but suspecting
that something is wrong, and being assured by the clergyman that the
ceremony he is performing solemnizes a real, binding marriage, she
flies off, but is immediately induced to go before the Mayor, and is
there married out of hand when she meant to do no such thing. It seems
incredible; but it is actually true. We make, as we should do, an awful
fuss about marriage, and a good marriage is, as it should be, the
desire of a young woman's heart, and yet in regard to all the
essentials of marriage as well as the duties and personal relations of
married life, we leave them in ignorance. There would seem to be but
two ways about this matter: one, the French way of keeping young girls
in seclusion and absolute ignorance, and then marrying them off as a
sort of business transaction--an arrangement that does not suit our
social life, and which, it must be confessed, does not tend to produce
the best state of morals in France; the other to give young girls
reasonable liberty, under the general supervision of their parents and
family, but in this case to arm them with knowledge, to let them know
what marriage is legally, ceremonially, socially, and physiologically.
This is a safe way, and the only safe one. Let this be done, and then
if a girl "goes wrong" in any way, it is merely one of those
unavoidable misfortunes which some of us have to encounter.


--Was there ever anything so amazing as this blue-glass craze that has
taken possession of about two-thirds of those who are included in the
term "everybody"? It would seem as if there were no limit to man's
credulity, particularly upon those subjects which concern him most
nearly, religion and the preservation of bodily health. In both he is
ready to listen to any plausible person who will tell him to "do some
great thing." Tell him that he must live a life morally pure and
physically clean and sober, that he must not sin against his own
consciousness of right, and that he must wash himself and eat simple,
wholesome food, conform himself to the indications of his physical
structure, and he will assent in a careless way, and immediately
violate every rule of sound morals and physiology. But tell him that he
must make a pilgrimage to Rome, or that he must lift six or seven
hundred pounds daily, swallow pills and bitters, or live in a blue
conservatory, and he will prick up his long ears, and do it if he can.
What wonder that quacks all make money, and that the "patent medicine
interest" should have a representative in Congress! But quacks and
patent medicines usually must have the benefit of a few years of
copious advertising before they effect their purpose; whereas blue
glass was written into popular favor with the dash of a pen. It trebled
in price in less than so many weeks. The notion that light should be
filtered of every ray but the blue one to produce the best effect upon
the human body and brain is certainly one of the most fantastic that
has been broached since the days of the medical mountebanks. The best
use to which this glass can be put is to the making of hot-beds. Let
our early lettuce and pease by all means be brought forward under
sashes glazed in blue. What cauliflowers we shall have, and what
cabbages! At present the crop of cabbage heads, to be sure, promises to
be very large through the intervention of blue glass; but much the
greater number of them appear to be growing upon human shoulders.


--Science, or self-styled science, however, insists on playing its
tricks with colors as with other matter--if color be matter. There is
now a budding theory that the eye is and always has been in a state of
development, and that we are yet to discover new colors of which we
have at present no idea. In support of this it is urged that in early
literature we find only the strong primary colors mentioned--red, blue,
black; black, however, being the absence of true color. It is supposed
that the other colors were not seen; and in support of this it is urged
that Aristotle assigns only four colors to the rainbow. But surely this
is scientific trifling. It is natural that early writers upon any
subject should notice only the strongest and most salient points
connected with it. Its finer gradations become the subject of
subsequent discussion. Particularly might this be expected to be the
case in the ruder states of society. It is not that the senses cannot
perceive; for the savage senses are very keen, as is well known, but
that language, perhaps even the mind, does not discriminate. It is
content with broad and marked distinctions. So with regard to the eye
and color. We may be very sure that a perfect eye sees, and has always
seen, all possible color. But unless led thereto by science or art, or
love of beauty in dress or ornamentation, the observer is content with
noticing the strong tints, red, blue, yellow, black, white--and green
also, which is so widely spread over nature. But as to a new color,
that is quite impossible, unless some new gradation or combination of
color may have a new name given to it. For in the spectrum we have a
perfect gradation of colors, all that are in the ray; and after we pass
the primaries, the others are but combinations and gradations. To get a
new color we must wait for a new eye and a new sun.


--Where will the desire for championship not lead some one of us, and
where will it end? We have champion walkers and skaters, champion
boot-blacks and bill-posters; and out at the West the other day a lad
employed in a newspaper office to wrap papers for the mails announced
himself as the champion paper-wrapper, and challenged anybody to wrap
with him--the most in so many hours. The last champion performance is
that of a "professor of dancing" (Anglèce, a dancing master), who
waltzed for five consecutive hours. It was an occasion. We are told
how, after waltzing some half-a-dozen persons, male and female, out of
breath, the "intrepid professor" kept on; how he changed partners
without stopping his regular steps; how he drank a glass of wine now
and then, while stepping in time to the music; and how, when after
waltzing steadily for four hours and a half, he showed some signs of
faltering, slices of lemon were put into his mouth, ten minutes after
swallowing which "the professor revived." Then he became dizzy, and
peppermint lozenges were given him. On he went, and in the last five
minutes of his stint showed his pluck by "putting in fancy steps"; and
his wife, who was now his partner--a sort of nursing partner, it would
seem--occasionally whispered "nods of encouragement," a performance
which beats the professor's all hollow. "Nods and becks and wreathed
smiles" are very natural and very charming on appropriate occasions;
but whispered nods are something quite inconceivable. The professor
held out, and at half-past twelve "a grand huzza rang out." Is not this
rather a pitiful spectacle? If a man dances, let him dance well. If to
teach dancing is his vocation, let him get, and let him prize, a
reputation for teaching it well. That is reasonable and respectable.
But that a man should spend five whole consecutive hours, nearly a
quarter of a day, in dancing for the mere sake of showing that he could
keep it up and dance ever so many people down, is rather a sad
exhibition of smallness. All these exhibitions spring, not from the
desire to do well, which is always and in all things honorable, but
from that of doing something that other people cannot do, which is not
very admirable. Some other "professor," not to be bluffed, will now
challenge this professor; and we shall have a dance for the
championship. Then some other professor in Europe will be fired with
ambition, and we shall have a grand International Dancing Contest for
the Championship of the World. Well, it will be a little better, but
not much, than the eating and drinking matches which sometimes take
place in England, in which two half-beastly creatures gorge and guzzle
in a contest wherein the victor would probably be beaten by almost any
four-legged swine. Emulation is a spur to exertion the moral excellence
of which is at least questionable; and when it leads to dancing five
hours on a stretch or eating five pounds of bacon at a sitting, we see
a little what its essence is.


--The curiosities of advertising come out strongly at the far West.
Here is the "Denver Rocky Mountain News" all ablaze with displayed
announcements, some of which are of an extraordinary and whimsical
character. One man cries out in enormous type, "Deadwood on getting
rich if you only save your money; no need of going to the Black Hills
if you can buy Groceries at these figures"; another exclaims in very
big black letters, "Store your Stoves! and avoid trouble, dirt, rust,
hard work, and _profanity_"--the latter a piece of advice very
pertinent, it would seem, to the region; another insinuates in a sort
of colossal pica that although "Bragg and Stick'em may have a larger
stock of men's furnishing goods than all the other houses in the United
States put together," the right place to get things cheap and elegant
is his establishment (who are the loudly advertising rivals that he
pillories as Bragg and Stick'em does not appear); another firm of
traders announce themselves as the "Chicago Square-Dealing House";
another, a jeweller, informs the Western world that in consequence of
the "great failure of the Milton Gold jewelry company in London, their
entire stock has been consigned to us to raise money as soon as
possible"--the idea of a consignment from London to Denver does not
seem to strike the Western mind as it does us who are somewhat nearer
London; two undertakers announce their business by enormous prints of
black-plumed hearses; and the paper itself publishes a "black list" of
debts for sale, ingeniously adding that a dollar a week will be
credited to the debtors during the publication; one advertisement is
headed, "Drunkard, Stop!" an appeal which seems quite in place; for the
most important and interesting announcement of all, headed, "Don't you
forget it!" is that a certain man has "the best stock of Straight
Kentucky Sour-mash Bourbon and Rye _Whiskey_ in the Far West." He may
be sure that the Denver people will not forget that.