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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May,
+1896, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: August 27, 2004 [EBook #13304]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, VOL. ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Sandra Brown and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: STUDY FROM NATURE. BY JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET.
+
+Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co.]
+
+[Illustration: MILLET'S COAT OF ARMS.
+
+Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. A facsimile of one of
+the little drawings which Millet was accustomed to make for
+acquaintances and collectors of autographs, and which he laughingly
+called his "_armes parlantes_."]
+
+[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET, DRAWN BY HIMSELF.
+
+Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. Of this portrait, drawn
+in 1847, Sensier, in his "Life" of Millet, says: "It is in crayon, and
+life-sized. The head is melancholy, like that of Albert Duerer; the
+profound regard is filled with intelligence and goodness."]
+
+
+
+
+MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE.
+
+VOL. VI.
+
+MAY, 1896.
+
+No. 6.
+
+
+
+A CENTURY OF PAINTING.
+
+JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET.--PARENTAGE AND EARLY INFLUENCES.--HIS LIFE AT
+BARBIZON.--VISITS TO MILLET IN HIS STUDIO.--HIS PERSONAL
+APPEARANCE.--HIS OWN COMMENTS ON HIS PICTURES.--PASSAGES FROM HIS
+CONVERSATION.
+
+BY WILL H. LOW.
+
+
+These papers, disclaiming any other authority than that which appertains
+to the conclusions of a practising painter who has thought deeply on the
+subject of his art, have nevertheless avoided the personal equation as
+much as possible. A conscientious endeavor has been made to consider the
+work of each painter in the place which has been assigned him by the
+concensus of opinion in the time which has elapsed since his work was
+done. In the consideration of Jean Francois Millet, however, I desire
+for the nonce to become less impersonal, for the reason that it was my
+privilege to know him slightly, and in the case of one who as a man and
+as a painter occupies a place so entirely his own, the value of recorded
+personal impressions is greater, at least for purposes of record, than
+the registration of contemporary opinion concerning him.
+
+I must further explain that, as a young student who received at his
+hands the kindly reception which the master, stricken in health, and
+preoccupied with his work, vouchsafed, I could only know him
+superficially. It may have been the spectacle of youthful enthusiasm, or
+the modest though dignified recognition of the reverence with which I
+approached him, that made this grave man unbend; but it is certain that
+the few times when I was permitted to enter the rudely built studio at
+Barbizon have remained red-letter days in my life, and on each occasion
+I left Millet with an impression so strong and vital that now, after a
+lapse of twenty years, the work which he showed me, and the words which
+he uttered, are as present as though it all had occurred yesterday. The
+reverence which I then felt for this great man was born of his works, a
+few of which I had seen in 1873 in Paris; and their constant study, and
+the knowledge of his life and character gained since then, have
+intensified this feeling.
+
+[Illustration: THE SHEEP-SHEARERS. FROM A PAINTING BY JEAN FRANCOIS
+MILLET.
+
+Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. A replica of Millet's
+picture in the Salon of 1861, which is now owned by Mr. Quincy Shaw,
+Boston, Massachusetts. Charles Jacque, who had quarrelled with Millet,
+after seeing this picture, went to him and said: "We cannot be friends;
+but I have come to say that you have painted a masterpiece."]
+
+Jean Francois Millet was born October 4, 1814, in the hamlet of Gruchy,
+a mere handful of houses which lie in a valley descending to the sea, in
+the department of the Manche, not far from Cherbourg. He was the
+descendant of a class which has no counterpart in England or America,
+and which in his native France has all but disappeared. The rude
+forefathers of our country may have in a degree resembled the French
+peasant of Millet's youth; but their Protestant belief made them more
+independent in thought, and the problems of a new country, and the lack
+of stability inherent to the colonist, robbed them of the fanatical love
+of the earth, which is perhaps the strongest trait of the peasant. Every
+inch of the ground up to the cliffs above the sea, in Millet's country,
+represented the struggle of man with nature; and each parcel of land,
+every stone in the walls which kept the earth from being engulfed in the
+floods beneath, bore marks of his handiwork. Small wonder, then, that
+this rude people should engender the painter who has best expressed the
+intimate relation between the man of the fields and his ally and foe,
+the land which he subjugates, and which in turn enslaves him. The
+inherent, almost savage, independence of the peasant had kept him freer
+and of a nobler type than the English yokel even in the time before the
+Revolution, and in the little hamlet where Millet was born, the great
+upheaval had meant but little. Remote from the capital, cultivating land
+which but for their efforts would have been abandoned as worthless,
+every man was a land-owner in a small degree, and the patrimony of
+Millet sufficed for a numerous family of which he was the eldest son.
+Sufficed, that is, for a Spartan subsistence, made up of unrelaxing
+toil, with few or no comforts, save those of a spiritual nature which
+came in the guise of religion.
+
+[Illustration: PEASANT REPOSING. FROM A PAINTING BY JEAN FRANCOIS
+MILLET, EXHIBITED IN THE SALON OF 1863.
+
+Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. This picture, popularly
+known as "The man with the hoe," was the cause of much discussion at the
+time of its exhibition. Millet was accused of socialism; of inciting the
+peasants to revolt; and from his quiet retreat in the country, he
+defended himself in a letter to his friend Sensier as follows: "I see
+very clearly the aureole encircling the head of the daisy, and the sun
+which glows beyond, far, far over the country-side, its glory in the
+skies; I see, not less clearly, the smoking plough-horses in the plain,
+and in a rocky corner a man bent with labor, who groans as he works, or
+who for an instant tries to straighten himself to catch his breath. The
+drama is enveloped in splendor. This is not of my creation; the
+expression, 'the cry of the earth,' was invented long ago."]
+
+Millet was reared by his grandmother, such being the custom of the
+country; the younger women being occupied in the service of the
+mastering earth, and the elders, no longer able to go afield, bringing
+up the children born to their children, who in turn replaced their
+parents in the never-ending struggle. This grandmother, Louise Jumelin,
+widow of Nicolas Millet, was a woman of great force of character, and
+extremely devout. The most ordinary occupation of the day was made the
+subject not of uttered prayer, for that would have entailed suspension
+of her ceaseless activity, but of spiritual example tersely expressed,
+which fell upon the fruitful soil of Millet's young imagination, and
+left such a lasting impression that to the end of his life his natural
+expression was almost Biblical in character of language.
+
+Another formative influence of this young life was that of a granduncle,
+Charles Millet, a priest who, driven from his church by the Revolution,
+had returned to his native village and taken up the simple life of his
+people, without, however, abandoning his vocation. He was to be seen
+behind his plough, his priest's robe gathered up about his loins, his
+breviary in one hand, following the furrow up and down the undulating
+fields which ran to the cliffs.
+
+[Illustration: THE MILK-CARRIER. FROM A PAINTING BY JEAN FRANCOIS
+MILLET.
+
+Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. Probably commenced at
+Cherbourg, where Millet took refuge with his family during the
+Franco-Prussian War, as Sensier mentions it on Millet's return. This
+picture, or a replica of it (Millet was fond of repeating his subjects,
+with slight changes in each case), was in his studio in 1873, and called
+forth the remark quoted in the text, about the women in his country.]
+
+Gifted with great strength, he piled up great masses of granite, to
+reclaim a precious morsel of earth from the hungry maw of the sea;
+lifting his voice, as he worked, in resonant chants of the church. He it
+was who taught Millet to read; and, later, it was another priest, the
+Abbe Jean Lebrisseux, who, in the intervals of the youth's work in the
+fields, where he had early become an efficient aid to his father,
+continued his instruction. With the avidity of intelligence Millet
+profited by this instruction, not only in the more ordinary studies, but
+in Latin, with the Bible and Virgil as text-books. His mind was also
+nourished by the books belonging to the scanty library of his
+granduncle. These were of a purely religious character--the "History of
+the Saints," the "Confessions" of St. Augustine, the letters of St.
+Jerome, and the works of Bossuet and Fenelon.
+
+[Illustration: THE GLEANERS. FROM A PAINTING IN THE LOUVRE, BY JEAN
+FRANCOIS MILLET, EXHIBITED IN THE SALON OF 1857.
+
+"The three fates of pauperism" was the disdainful appreciation of Paul
+de Saint-Victor on the first exhibition of this picture, while Edmond
+About wrote: "The picture attracts one from afar by its air of grandeur
+and serenity. It has the character of a religious painting. It is drawn
+without fault, and colored without crudity; and one feels the August sun
+which ripens the wheat." Sensier says: "The picture sold with difficulty
+for four hundred dollars. What is it worth to-day?"]
+
+In his father, whose strongest characteristic was an intense love of
+nature, Millet found an unconscious influence in the direction which his
+life was to follow. Millet recalled in after life that he would show him
+a blade of grass or a flower, and say: "See how beautiful; how the
+petals overlap; and the tree there, how strong and fine it is!" It was
+his father who was attentive to the youth's first rude efforts, and who
+encouraged him when the decisive step was to be taken, which Millet,
+feeling that his labor in the fields was necessary to the common good of
+the family, hesitated to take. The boy was in his eighteenth year when
+his father said:
+
+"My poor Francois, you are tormented between your desire to be an artist
+and your duty to the family. Now that your brothers are growing, they
+can take their turn in the fields. I have long wished that you could be
+instructed in the craft of the painter, which I am told is so noble, and
+we will go to Cherbourg and see what can be done."
+
+[Illustration: THE ANGELES, MILLET'S MOST FAMOUS PICTURE.
+
+Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. Despite its fame, this
+is distinctly not Millet's masterpiece. During his life it sold for
+about ten thousand dollars, and later for one hundred and fifty
+thousand.]
+
+Thus encouraged, the boy made two drawings--one of two shepherds in
+blouse and _sabots_, one listening while the other played a rustic
+flute; and a second where, under a starlit sky, a man came from out a
+house, carrying bread for a mendicant at his gate. Armed with these two
+designs--typical of the work which in the end, after being led astray by
+schools and popular taste, he was to do--the two peasants sought a local
+painter named Mouchel at Cherbourg. After a moment of doubt as to the
+originality of the youth's work, Mouchel offered to teach him all that
+he knew.
+
+Millet stayed with Mouchel some months. Then his father's death recalled
+him home, where his honest spirit prompted him to remain as the eldest
+son and head of the family, although his heart was less than ever in the
+fields. But this the mother, brought up in the spirit of resignation,
+would not allow him to do. "God has made you a painter. His will be
+done. Your father, my Jean Louis, has said it was to be, and you must
+return to Cherbourg."
+
+Millet returned to Cherbourg, this time to the studio of one Langlois, a
+pupil of Gros, who was the principal painter of the little city. But
+Langlois, like his first master, Mouchel, kept him at work copying
+either his own studies or pictures in the city museum. After a few
+months, though, he had the honesty to recognize that his pupil needed
+more efficient instruction than he could give him, and in August, 1836,
+he addressed a petition to the mayor and common council of the city of
+Cherbourg, who took the matter into consideration, and, with the
+authorities of the department, voted a sum of one thousand francs--two
+hundred dollars--as a yearly allowance to Millet, in order that he might
+pursue his studies in Paris. Langlois in his petition asks that he be
+permitted to "raise without fear the veil of the future, and to assure
+the municipal council a place in the memory of the world for having been
+the first to endow their country with one more great name."
+Grandiloquent promise has often been made without result; but one must
+admire the hard-headed Norman councillors who, representing a little
+provincial city which in 1884 had but thirty-six thousand inhabitants,
+gave even this modest sum to assure a future to one who might reflect
+honor on his country.
+
+[Illustration: NESTLINGS. FROM A PAINTING BY JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET, IN
+THE MUSEUM AT LILLE.
+
+Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. A notable instance of
+the scope of Millet's power, as tender in depicting children as it is
+austere in "The Gleaners."]
+
+With a portion, of this allowance, and a small addition from the
+"economies" of his mother and grandmother, Millet went to Paris in 1837.
+The great city failed to please the country-bred youth, and, indeed,
+until the end of his life, Millet disliked Paris. I remember his saying
+that, on his visits from Barbizon to the capital, he was happy on his
+arrival at the station, but when he arrived at the column of the
+Bastille, a few squares within the city, the _mal du pays_ took him
+by the throat.
+
+At first he spent all his time in the Louvre, which revealed to him what
+the little provincial museum of Cherbourg had but faintly suggested.
+Before long, however, he entered the studio of Paul Delaroche, who was
+the popular master of the time. There he won the sobriquet of the "man
+of the woods," from a savage taciturnity which was his defence in the
+midst of the _atelier_ jokes. He had come to work, and to work he
+addressed himself, with but little encouragement from master or
+comrades. Strong as a young Hercules, with a dignity which never forsook
+him, his studies won at least the success of attention. When a favorite
+pupil of the master remonstrated that his men and women were hewed from
+stone, Millet replied tranquilly, "I came here because there are Greek
+statues and living men and women to study from, not to please you or any
+one. Do I preoccupy myself with your figures made of honey and butter?"
+
+Delaroche, won by the strength of the man, at length unbent, and showed
+him such favor as a commonplace mind could accord to native superiority.
+He advised him to compete for the Prix de Rome, warning him, however,
+that whatever might be the merit of his work, he could not take it that
+year, as it was arranged that another, approaching the limit of age,
+must have it. This revolted the simple nature of Millet, who refused to
+compete, and left the school.
+
+A return to Cherbourg, where he married his first wife, who died at the
+end of two years; another sojourn in Paris, and a visit home of some
+duration; a number of portraits and pictures painted in Cherbourg and
+Havre, in which his talent was slowly asserting itself, brings us to
+1845, when he remarried. Returning to Paris with his wife, he remained
+there until 1849, when he went to Barbizon "for a time," which was
+prolonged to twenty-seven years.
+
+In all the years preceding his final return to the country, Millet was
+apparently undecided as to the definite character of his work. Out of
+place in a city, more or less influenced by his comrades in art, and
+forced to follow in a degree the dictation of necessity in the choice of
+subject, as his brush was his only resource and his family constantly
+increasing, his work of this period is always tentative. In painting it
+is luscious in color and firmly drawn and modelled, but it lacks the
+perception of truth which, when once released from the bondage of the
+city, began to manifest itself in his work. The first indication of the
+future Millet is in a picture in the Salon of 1848, "The Winnower,"
+which has, in subject at least, much the character of the work which
+followed his establishment at Barbizon. For the rest, although the world
+is richer in beautiful pictures of charmingly painted nymphs, and of
+rustic scenes not altogether devoid of a certain artificiality, and in
+at least one masterly mythological picture of Oedipus rescued from the
+tree, through Millet's activity in these years, yet his work, had it
+continued on this plane, would have lacked the high significance which
+the next twenty-five years were to show.
+
+Having endeavored to make clear the source from which Millet came, and
+indicated the formative influences of his early life, I may permit
+myself (as I warned my readers I should do) to return to my
+recollections of Barbizon in 1873, and the glimpses of Millet which my
+sojourn there in that and the following year afforded me.
+
+Barbizon lies on a plain, more vast in the impression which it makes on
+the eye than in actual area, and the village consists of one long
+street, which commences at a group of farm buildings of some importance,
+and ends in the forest of Fontainebleau. About midway down this street,
+on the way to the forest, Millet's home stood, on the right of the road.
+The house, of two low stories, had its gable to the street, and on the
+first floor, with the window breast high from the ground, was the
+dining-room. Here, in pleasant weather, with the window wide open, sat
+Millet at the head of his patriarchal table, his children, of whom there
+were nine, about him; his good wife, their days of acute misery past,
+smiling contentedly on her brood, which, if I remember rightly, already
+counted a grandchild or more: as pleasant a sight as one could readily
+see. Later, in the autumn evenings, a lamplit replica of the same
+picture presented itself. Or, if the dinner was cleared away, one would
+see Madame Millet busy with her needle, the children at their lessons,
+and the painter, whom even then tradition painted a sad and cheerless
+misanthrope, contentedly playing at dominoes with one of the children,
+or his honest Norman face wreathed in smiles as the conversation took an
+amusing turn. This, it is true, was when the master of the house was
+free from his terrible enemy, the headache, which laid him low so often,
+and which in these days became more and more frequent.
+
+[Illustration: FIRST STEPS. FROM A PASTEL BY JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET.
+
+Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. As Sensier remarks,
+Millet, with nine children, had abundant opportunity to study them. This
+charming drawing was one of the collection of Millet's pastels formed by
+M. Gavet, which was unfortunately dispersed by auction soon after the
+artist's death.]
+
+The house, to resume the description of Millet's home, went back at
+right angles from the street, and contained the various apartments of
+the family, many of them on the ground floor, and all of the most modest
+character. It was a source of wonder how so large a family could inhabit
+so small a house. The garden lay in front, and extended back of the
+house. A high wall with a little door, painted green, by which you
+entered, ran along the street, and ended at the studio, which was, like
+the dining-room, on the street. The garden was pleasant with flowers and
+trees, the kitchen garden being at the rear. But a few short years ago,
+within its walls Madame Millet plucked a red rose, and gave it to me,
+saying: "My husband planted this." Outside the little green door, on
+either hand, were stone benches set against the wall, on which the
+painter's children sometimes sat and played; but it is somewhat strange
+that I never remember Millet at his door or on the village street. He
+walked a great deal, but always went out of the garden to the fields
+back of the house, and from there gained the forest or the plain. Among
+the young painters who frequented Barbizon in those days (which were,
+however, long after the time when the men of Millet's age established
+themselves there), there were, strange as it may seem, few who cared for
+Millet's work, and many who knew little or nothing of it. The prejudices
+of the average art student are many and indurated. His horizon is apt to
+be bounded by his master's work or the last Salon success, and as Millet
+had no pupils, and had ceased to exhibit at the Salon, he was little
+known to most of the youths who, as I look back, must have made Barbizon
+a most undesirable place for a quiet family to live in. An accident
+which made me acquainted with Millet's eldest son, a painter of talent,
+seemed for a time to bring me no nearer to knowing the father until one
+day some remark of mine which showed at least a sincere admiration for
+his work made the son suggest that I should come and see a recently
+completed picture.
+
+If the crowd of young painters who frequented the village were
+indifferent to Millet, such was not the case with people from other
+places. The "personally conducted" were then newly invented, and I have
+seen a wagon load of tourists, who had been driven to different points
+in the forest, draw up before Millet's modest door and express
+indignation in a variety of languages when they were refused admittance.
+There were many in those days who tried with little or no excuse to
+break in on the work of a man whose working days were already counted,
+and who was seldom free from his old enemy _migraine_. I was to
+learn this when--I hope after having had the grace to make it plain
+that, though I greatly desired to know Millet, I felt no desire to
+intrude--the son had arranged for a day when, at last, I was admitted to
+the studio.
+
+Millet did not make his appearance at once; and when he came, and the
+son had said a few kindly words of presentation, he seemed so evidently
+in pain that I managed, in a French which must have been distinguished
+by a pure New York accent and a vocabulary more than limited, to express
+a fear that he was suffering, and suggested that my visit had better be
+deferred.
+
+"No, it will pass," was his answer; and going to his easel he placed,
+with the help of his son, picture after picture, for my delectation.
+
+It was Millet's habit to commence a great number of pictures. On some of
+them he would work as long, according to his own expression, as he saw
+the scene in nature before him; for, at least at this epoch, he never
+painted directly from nature. For a picture which I saw the following
+summer, where three great hay-stacks project their mass against a heavy
+storm cloud, the shepherd seeking shelter from the impending rain, and
+the sheep erring here and there, affected by the changing weather--for
+this picture, conveying, as it did, the most intense impression of
+nature, Millet showed me (in answer to my inquiry and in explanation of
+his method of work) in a little sketch-book, so small that it would slip
+into a waistcoat pocket, the pencilled outline of the three hay-stacks.
+"It was a stormy day," he said, "and on my return home I sat down and
+commenced the picture, but of direct studies--_voila tout_." Of
+another picture, now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, of a young girl,
+life size, with a distaff, seated on a hillock, her head shaded by a
+great straw hat relieved against the sky, he told me that the only
+direct painting from nature on the canvas was in a bunch of grass in the
+foreground, which he had plucked in the fields and brought into his
+studio.
+
+[Illustration: THE SOWER. FROM A PAINTING BY JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET.
+
+From the original painting, now in the collection of Mrs. W.H.
+Vanderbilt; reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. In his
+criticism of the Salon of 1850, where the picture was first exhibited,
+Theophile Gautier thus described it: "The sower advances with rhythmic
+step, casting the seed into the furrowed land; sombre rags cover him; a
+formless hat is drawn down over his brow; he is gaunt, cadaverous, and
+thin under his livery of misery; and yet life is contained in his large
+hand, as with a superb gesture he who has nothing scatters broadcast on
+the earth the bread of the future."]
+
+On this first day, it would be difficult to say how many pictures in
+various states of advancement I saw. The master would occasionally say,
+reflectively: "It is six months since I looked at that, and I must get
+to work at it," as some new canvas was placed on the easel. At first,
+fearing that he was too ill to have me stay, I made one or two motions
+to leave. But each time, with a kindly smile, I was bidden to stay, with
+the assurance that the headache was "going better." After a time I quite
+forgot everything in enthusiasm at what I saw and the sense that I was
+enjoying the privilege of a lifetime. The life of the fields seemed to
+be unrolled before me like some vast panorama. Millet's comments were
+short and descriptive of what he aimed to represent, seldom or never
+concerning the method of his work. "Women in my country," meaning Lower
+Normandy, of course, "carry jars of milk in that way," he said,
+indicating the woman crossing the fields with the milk-can supported by
+a strap on her shoulder. "When I was a boy there were great flights of
+wild pigeons which settled in the trees at night, when we used to go
+with torches, and the birds, blinded by the light, could be killed by
+the hundred with clubs," was his explanation of another scene full of
+the confusion of lights and the whirr of the bewildered pigeons.
+
+[Illustration: CHURNING. FROM A PASTEL BY JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET, IN THE
+LUXEMBOURG GALLERY, PARIS.
+
+Delightful for a sense of air through the cool and spacious room, and
+for the sculpturesque solidity of the group composed of the woman, the
+churn, and the cat.]
+
+"And you have not seen it since you were a boy?" I asked.
+
+"No; but it all comes back to me as I work," was his answer.
+
+From picture to picture, from question to kindly answer, the afternoon
+sped, and at length, in response to a question as to the relative
+importance of subject, the painter sent his son into the house whence he
+returned with a panel a few inches square. The father took it, wiped the
+dust from it, absent-mindedly, on his sleeve, with a half caressing
+movement, and placed it on the easel. "_Voila!_ (There!)" was all
+he said. The panel represented three golden juicy pears, their fat sides
+relieved one against the other, forming a compact group which, through
+the magic of color, told of autumn sun, and almost gave the odor of
+ripened fruit. It was a lovely bit of painting, and much interested, I
+said: "Pardon me, but you seem as much or more proud of this than
+anything you have shown."
+
+"Exactly," answered Millet, with an amused smile at my eagerness.
+"Everything in nature is good to paint, and the painter's business is to
+be occupied with his manner of rendering it. These pears, a man or a
+woman, a flock of sheep, all have the same qualities for a painter.
+There are," with a gesture of his hands to make his meaning clear,
+"things that lie flat, that are horizontal, like a plain; and there are
+others which stand up, are perpendicular; and there are the planes
+between: all of which should be expressed in a picture. There are the
+distances between objects also. But all this can be found in the
+simplest thing as in the most complicated."
+
+"But," I again ventured, "surely some subjects are more important than
+others."
+
+"Some are more interesting in the sense that they add to the problems of
+a painter. When he has to paint a human being, he has to represent truth
+of action, the particular character of an individual; but he must do the
+latter when he paints a pear. No two pears are alike."
+
+I fear at the time I hardly understood the importance of the lesson
+which I then received; certainly not to the degree with which experience
+has confirmed it. But I have written it here, the sense, if not the
+actual language, because Millet has been so often misrepresented as
+seeking to point a moral through the subject of his pictures. When we
+recall the manner in which "The Angelus" was paraded through the country
+a few years ago, and the genuine sentiment of the simple scene--where
+Millet had endeavored to express "the things that lie flat, like a
+plain; and the things that stand up," like his peasants--was travestied
+by gushing sentimentalists, it is pleasant to think of the wholesome
+common sense of the great painter.
+
+[Illustration: A YOUNG SHEPHERDESS. FROM A PAINTING BY JEAN FRANCOIS
+MILLET.
+
+The background here is typical of that part of the forest of
+Fontainebleau which borders the plain of Barbizon.]
+
+The picture which I had specially come to see was meanwhile standing
+covered with a drapery, on another easel, and at length the resources of
+the studio were apparently exhausted. Millet asked me to step back a few
+paces to where a short curtain was placed on a light iron rod at right
+angles from the studio window, so that a person standing behind it saw
+into the studio while his eyes were screened from the glare of the
+window. The painter then drew the covering, and--I feel that what I am
+about to say may seem superlative, and I am quite willing to-day to
+account for it by the enthusiasm for the painter's work, which had been
+growing _crescendo_ with each successive moment passed in the
+studio. Be that as it may, the picture which I saw caused me to forget
+where I was, to forget painting, and to look, apparently, on a more
+enchanting scene than my eyes had ever beheld--one more enchanting than
+they have since seen. It was a landscape, "Springtime," now in the
+Louvre. Ah me! I have seen the picture since, not once, but many times,
+and he who will go to Paris may see it. A beautiful picture; but of the
+transcendent beauty which transfigured it that day, it has but the
+suggestion. It is still a masterpiece, however, and still conveys, by
+methods peculiarly Millet's own, a satisfying sense of the open air, and
+the charm of fickle spring. The method is that founded on the constant
+observation of nature by a mind acute to perceive, and educated to
+remember. The method is one which misses many trivial truths, and
+thereby loses the superficial look of reality which many smaller men
+have learned to give; but it retains the larger, more essential truths.
+Though dependence on memory carried to the extent of Millet's practice
+would be fatal to a weaker man, it can hardly be doubted that it was the
+natural method for him.
+
+I left the studio that day, walking on clouds. When I returned it was
+always to receive kindly and practical counsel. For Millet, though
+conscious, as such a man must be, of his importance, was the simplest of
+men. In appearance the portrait published here gives him in his youth.
+At the time of which I speak he was heavier, with a firm nose, eyes
+that, deeply set, seemed to look inwards, except, when directly
+addressing one, there was a sudden gleam. His manner of speech was slow
+and measured, perhaps out of kindness to the stranger, though I am
+inclined to think that it was rather the speech of one who arrays his
+thoughts beforehand, and produces them in orderly sequence. In dress he
+was like the ordinary _bourgeois_ in the country, wearing generally
+a woven coat like a cardigan jacket in the studio, at the door of which
+he would leave his _sabots_ and wear the felt slippers, or
+_chaussons_, which are worn with the wooden shoes. This was not the
+affectation of remaining a peasant; every one in the country in France
+wears _sabots_, and very comfortable they are.
+
+One more visit stands out prominently in my memory. It came about in
+this wise. In the summer of 1874 the "two Stevensons," as they were
+known, the cousins Robert Louis and Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson (the
+author of the recent "Life of Velasquez," and the well-known writer on
+art), were in Barbizon. It fell that the cousins, in pessimistic vein,
+were decrying modern art--the great men were all dead; we should never
+see their like again; in short, the mood in which we all fall at times
+was dominant. As in duty bound, I argued the cause of the present and
+future, and as a clinching argument told them that I had it in my power
+to convince them that at least one of the greatest painters of all time
+was still busy in the practice of his art. Millet was not much more than
+a name to my friends, and I am certain that that day when we talked over
+our coffee in the garden of Siron's inn, they had seen little or none of
+his work. I ventured across the road, knocked at the little green door,
+and asked permission to bring my friends, which was accorded for the
+same afternoon. In half an hour, therefore, I was witness of an object
+lesson of which the teacher was serenely unconscious. Of my complete
+triumph when we left there was no doubt, though one of my friends rather
+begged the question by insisting that I had taken an unfair advantage;
+and that, as he expressed it, "it was not in the game, in an ordinary
+discussion, between gentlemen, concerning minor poets, to drag in
+Shakespeare in that manner."
+
+I saw Millet but once after this, when late in the autumn I was
+returning to Paris, and went, out of respect, to bid him farewell. He
+was already ill, and those who knew him well, already feared for his
+life. Not knowing this, it was a shock to learn of his death a few
+months after--January 20, 1875. The news came to me in the form of the
+ordinary notification and convocation to the funeral, which, in the form
+of a _lettre de faire part_, is sent out on the occasion of a death
+in France, not only to intimate friends, but to acquaintances.
+
+Determined to pay what honor I could, I went to Barbizon, to find, as
+did many others gone for the same sad purpose, that an error in the
+notices sent, discovered too late to be rectified, had placed the date
+of the funeral a day later than that on which it actually occurred.
+Millet rests in the little cemetery at Chailly, across the plain from
+Barbizon, near his lifetime friend, Theodore Rousseau, who is buried
+there. I will never forget the January day in the village of Barbizon.
+Though Millet had little part in the village life, and was known to few,
+a sadness, as though the very houses felt that a great man had passed
+away, had settled over the place. I sought out a friend who had been
+Millet's friend for many years and was with him at the last, and as he
+told me of the last sad months, tears fell from his eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTERS FROM A LIFE.
+
+BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS,
+
+Author of "The Gates Ajar," "A Singular Life," etc.
+
+"THE GATES AJAR" WITH THE CRITICS AND THE PUBLIC.--THE AUTHOR'S FIRST
+STUDY.--READING REVIEWS OF ONE'S OWN BOOKS.--CORRESPONDENCE WITH READERS
+OF "THE GATES AJAR."
+
+
+As was said in the last paper, "The Gates Ajar" was written without hope
+or expectation of any especial success, and when the happy storm broke
+in truth, I was the most astonished girl in North America.
+
+From the day when Mr. Fields's thoughtful note reached the Andover
+post-office, that miracle of which we read often in fiction, and
+sometimes in literary history, touched the young writer's life; and it
+began over again, as a new form of organization.
+
+As I look back upon them, the next few years seem to have been a series
+of amazing phantasmagoria. Indeed, at the time, they were scarcely more
+substantial. A phantom among phantoms, I was borne along. Incredulous of
+the facts, and dubious of my own identity, I whirled through
+readjustments of scene, of society, of purposes, of hopes, and now, at
+last, of ambitions; and always of hard work, and plenty of it. Really, I
+think the gospel of work then, as always, and to all of us, was
+salvation from a good deal of nonsense incident to the situation.
+
+I have been told that the American circulation of the book, which has
+remained below one hundred thousand, was rather more than that in Great
+Britain. Translations, of course, were manifold. The French, the German,
+the Dutch, the Italian have been conscientiously sent to the author;
+some others, I think, have not. More applications to republish my books
+have reached me from Germany than from any other country. For a while,
+with the tenderness of a novice in such experience, I kept all these
+foreign curiosities on my book-shelves; but the throes of several New
+England "movings" have scattered their ashes.
+
+Not long ago I came across a tiny pamphlet in which I used to feel more
+honest pride than in any edition of "The Gates Ajar" which it has ever
+been my fortune to handle. It is a sickly yellow thing, covered with a
+coarse design of some kind, in which the wings of a particularly sprawly
+angel predominate.
+
+The print is abhorrent, and the paper such as any respectable publisher
+would prepare to be condemned for in this world and in that to come. In
+fact, the entire book was thus given out by one of the most enterprising
+of English pirates, as an advertisement for a patent medicine. I have
+never traced the chemical history of the drug; but it has pleased my
+fancy to suppose it to be the one in which Mrs. Holt, the mother of
+Felix, dealt so largely; and whose sale Felix put forth his mighty
+conscience to suppress.
+
+Of course, owing to the state of our copyright laws at that time, all
+this foreign publication was piratical; and most of it brought no
+visible consequence to the author, beyond that cold tribute to personal
+vanity on which our unlucky race is expected to feed. I should make an
+exception. The house of Sampson, Low and Company honorably offered me,
+at a very early date, a certain recognition of their editions. Other
+reputable English houses since, in the case of succeeding books, have
+passed contracts of a gentlemanly nature, with the disproportionately
+grateful author, who was, of course, entirely at their mercy. When an
+American writer compares the sturdy figures of the foreign circulation
+with the attenuated numerals of such visible returns as reach him, he is
+more puzzled in his mind than surfeited in his purse. But the relation
+of foreign publishers to "home talent" is an ancient and honorable
+conundrum, which it is not for this paper or its writer to solve.
+
+Nevertheless, I found the patent medicine "Gates Ajar" delicious, and
+used to compare it with Messrs. Fields and Osgood's edition _de
+luxe_ with an undisguised delight, which I found it difficult to
+induce the best of publishers to share.
+
+Like most such matters, the first energy of the book had its funny and
+its serious side. A man coming from a far Western village, and visiting
+Boston for the first time, is said to have approached a bartender, in an
+exclusive hotel, thus confidentially:
+
+"Excuse me, but I am a stranger in this part of the country, and I want
+to ask a question. Everywhere I go, I see posters up like this--'The
+Gates Ajar!' 'The Gates Ajar!' I'm sick to death of the sight of the
+durn thing; I haven't darst to ask what it is. Do _tell_ a fellar!
+Is it a new kind of drink?"
+
+There was a "Gates Ajar" tippet for sale in the country groceries; I
+have fancied that it was a knit affair of as many colors as the jewels
+in the eternal portals, and extremely openwork. There was a "Gates Ajar"
+collar--paper, I fear--loading the city counters. Ghastly rumors have
+reached me of the existence of a "Gates Ajar" cigar. I have never
+personally set my eyes upon these tangible forms of earthly fame. If the
+truth must be told, I have kept a cowardly distance from them. Music, of
+course, took her turn at the book, and popular "pieces" warbled under
+its title. One of these, I think, is sung in Sunday-schools to this day.
+Then there was, and still exists, the "Gates Ajar" funeral piece. This
+used to seem to me the least serious of them all; but, by degrees, when
+I saw the persistence of force in that elaborate symbol, how many
+mourning people were so constituted as to find comfort in it, I came to
+have a tolerance for it which even grows into a certain tenderness. I
+may frankly admit that I have begun to love it since I heard about the
+two ragged little newsboys who came to the eminent city florist, with
+all their savings clenched in their grimy fists, and thus made known
+their case:
+
+"Ye see, Larks he was our pardner--him an' us sold on the same beat--and
+he jes' got run over by a 'lectric, and it went over his back. So they
+tuk him to the horspittle, 'n Larks he up an' died there yestiddy. So us
+fellars we're goin' to give Larks a stylish funeril, you bet. We liked
+Larks--an' it went over his back. Say, mister, there ain't nothin' mean
+'bout _us_, come to buryin' of Larks; 'n we've voted to settle on
+one them 'Gates Ajar' pieces--made o'flowers, doncherknow. So me 'n him
+an' the other fellars we've saved up all our propurty, for we're agoin'
+ter give Larks a stylish funeril--an' here it is, mister. I told the
+kids ef there was more'n enough you's trow in a few greens, anyhow. Make
+up de order right away, mister, and give us our money's worf now,
+sure--for Larks."
+
+The gamin proudly counted out upon the marble slab of that fashionable
+flower store the sum of seventy-five cents.
+
+The florist--blessings on him--is said not to have undeceived the little
+fellows, but to have duly honored their "order," and the biggest and
+most costly "Gates Ajar" piece to be had in the market went to the
+hospital, and helped to bury Larks.
+
+Of course, as is customary in the case of all authors who have written
+one popular book, requests for work at once rained in on the new study
+on Andover Hill. For it soon became evident that I must have a quiet
+place to write in. In the course of time I found it convenient to take
+for working hours a sunny room in the farm-house of the Seminary estate,
+a large, old-fashioned building adjoining my father's house. In still
+later years I was allowed to build over, for my own purposes, the
+summer-house under the big elm in my father's garden, once used by my
+mother for her own study, and well remembered by all persons interested
+in Andover scenery. This building had been for some years used
+exclusively as a mud-bakery by the boys; it was piled with those clay
+turnovers and rolls and pies in whose manufacture the most select
+circles of Andover youth delighted.
+
+But the bakery was metamorphosed into a decent, dear little room, about
+nine by eleven, and commanding the sun on the four sides of its
+quadrangle. In fact, it was a veritable sun-bath; and how dainty was the
+tip-drip of the icicles from the big elm-bough, upon the little roof! To
+this spot I used to travel down in all weathers; sometimes when it was
+so slippery on the hill behind the carriage-house (for the garden paths
+were impassable in winter) that I have had to return to primitive
+methods of locomotion, and just sit down and coast half the way on the
+crust. Later still, when an accident and crutches put this delightful
+method of travelling out of the question, the summer-house (in a
+blizzard I delighted in the name) was moved up beside my father's study.
+I have, in fact, always had an out-of-door study, apart from the house I
+lived in, and have come to look upon it as quite a necessity; so that we
+have carried on the custom in our Gloucester house. We heartily
+recommend it to all people who live by their brains and pens. The
+incessant trotting to and fro on little errands is a wholesome thing.
+Proof-sheets, empty ink-stands, dried-up mucilage, yawning wood-boxes,
+wet feet, missing scissors, unfilled kerosene lamps, untimely thirst, or
+unromantic lunches, the morning mail, and the dinner-bell, and the
+orders of one's pet dog--all are so many imperious summonses to breathe
+the tingling air and stir the blood and muscle.
+
+Be as uncomfortable or as cross about it as you choose, an out-of-door
+study is sure to prove your best friend. You become a species of
+literary tramp, and absorb something of the tramp's hygiene. It is
+impossible to be "cooped" at your desk, if you have to cross a garden or
+a lawn thirty times a day to get to it. And what reporter can reach that
+sweet seclusion across the distant housemaid's wily and experienced art?
+What autograph or lion hunter can ruin your best chapter by bombardment
+in mid-morning?
+
+In the farm-house study I remember one of my earliest callers from the
+publishing world, that seems always to stand with clawing fingers
+demanding copy of the people least able to give it. He was an emissary
+from the "Youth's Companion," who threatened or cajoled me into a vow to
+supply him with a certain number of stories. My private suspicion is
+that I have just about at this present time completed my share in that
+ancient bargain, so patient and long-suffering has this pleasant paper
+been with me. I took particular delight in that especial visit,
+remembering the time when the "Companion" gave my first pious little
+sentence to print, and paid me with the paper for a year.
+
+"The Gates Ajar" was attacked by the press. In fact it was virulently
+bitten. The reviews of the book, some of them, reached the point of
+hydrophobia. Others were found to be in a milder pathological condition.
+Still others were gentle or even friendly enough. Religious papers waged
+war across that girl's notions of the life to come as if she had been an
+evil spirit let loose upon accepted theology for the destruction of the
+world. The secular press was scarcely less disturbed about the matter,
+which it treated, however, with the more amused good-humor of a man of
+the world puzzled by a religious disagreement.
+
+In the days of the Most Holy Inquisition there was an old phrase whose
+poignancy has always seemed to me to be but half appreciated. One did
+not say: He was racked. She was burned. They were flayed alive, or
+pulled apart with little pincers, or clasped in the arms of the red-hot
+Virgin. One was too well-bred for so bald a use of language. One
+politely and simply said: He was put to the question.
+
+The young author of "The Gates Ajar" was only put to the question.
+Heresy was her crime, and atrocity her name. She had outraged the
+church; she had blasphemed its sanctities; she had taken live coals from
+the altar in her impious hand. The sacrilege was too serious to be
+dismissed with cold contempt.
+
+Opinion battled about that poor little tale as if it had held the power
+to overthrow church and state and family.
+
+It was an irreverent book--it was a devout book. It was a strong
+book--it was a weak book. It was a religious book--it was an immoral
+book (I have forgotten just why; in fact, I think I never knew). It was
+a good book--it was a bad book. It was calculated to comfort the
+comfortless--it was calculated to lead the impressionable astray. It was
+an accession to Christian literature--it was a disgrace to the religious
+antecedents of the author; and so on, and so forth.
+
+At first, when some of these reviews fell in my way, I read them,
+knowing no better. But I very soon learned to let them alone. The kind
+notices, while they gave me a sort of courage which by temperament
+possibly I needed more than all young writers may, overwhelmed me, too,
+by a sense of my own inadequacy to be a teacher of the most solemn of
+truths, on any such scale as that towards which events seemed to be
+pointing. The unfair notices put me in a tremor of distress. The brutal
+ones affected me like a blow in the face from the fist of a ruffian.
+None of them, that I can remember, ever helped me in any sense
+whatsoever to do better work.
+
+I quickly came to the conclusion that I was not adapted to reading the
+views of the press about my own writing. I made a vow to let them alone;
+and, from that day to this, I have kept it. Unless in the case of
+something especially brought to my attention by friends, I do not read
+any reviews of my books. Of course, in a general way, one knows if some
+important pen has shown a comprehension of what one meant to do and
+tried to do, or has spattered venom upon one's poor achievement. Quite
+fairly, one cannot sit like the Queen in the kitchen, eating only bread
+and honey--and venom disagrees with me.
+
+I sometimes think--if I may take advantage of this occasion to make the
+only reply in a working life of thirty years to any of the "slashers"
+with whose devotion I am told that I have been honored--I sometimes
+think, good brother critics, that I have had my share of the attentions
+of poisoned weapons.
+
+But, regarding my reviewers with the great good humor of one who never
+reads what they say, I can afford to wish them lively luck and better
+game in some quivering writer who takes the big pile of what it is the
+fashion to call criticisms from the publisher's table, and
+conscientiously reads them through. With _this_ form of being "put
+to the question" I will have nothing to do. If it gives amusement to the
+reviewers, they are welcome to their sport. But they stab at the summer
+air, so far as any writer is concerned who has the pertinacity of
+purpose to let them alone.
+
+Long after I had adopted the rule to read no notices of my work, I
+learned from George Eliot that the same had been her custom for many
+years, and felt reenforced in the management of my little affairs by
+this great example. Discussing the question once, with one of our
+foremost American writers, I was struck with something like holy envy in
+his expression. He had received rough handling from those "critics" who
+seem to consider authors as their natural foes, and who delight in
+aiming the hardest blows at the heaviest enemy. His fame is immeasurably
+superior to that of all his reviewers put together.
+
+"Don't you really read them?" he asked, wistfully. "I wish I could say
+as much. I'm afraid I shouldn't have the perseverance to keep that up
+right along."
+
+In interesting contrast to all this discord from the outside, came the
+personal letters. The book was hardly under way before the storm of them
+set in. It began like a New England snow-storm, with a few large,
+earnest flakes; then came the swirl of them, big and little, sleet and
+rain, fast and furious, regular and irregular, scurrying and tumbling
+over each other through the Andover mails.
+
+The astonished girl bowed her head before the blast at first, with a
+kind of terrified humility. Then, by degrees, she plucked up heart to
+give to each letter its due attention.
+
+It would not be very easy to make any one understand, who had not been
+through a closely similar experience, just what it meant to live in the
+centre of such a whirlwind of human suffering.
+
+It used to seem to me sometimes, at the end of a week's reading of this
+large and painful mail, as if the whole world were one great outcry.
+What a little portion of it cried to the young writer of one little book
+of consolation! Yet how the ear and heart ached under the piteous
+monotony! I made it a rule to answer every civil letter that I received;
+and as few of them were otherwise, this correspondence was no light
+load.
+
+I have called it monotonous; yet there was a curious variety in
+monotony, such as no other book has brought to the author's attention.
+The same mail gave the pleasant word of some distinguished writer who
+was so kind as to encourage a beginner in his own art, or so much kinder
+as gently and intelligently to point out her defects; and beneath this
+welcome note lay the sharp rebuke of some obscure parishioner who found
+the Temple of Zion menaced to its foundation by my little story. Hunters
+of heresy and of autograph pursued their game side by side. Here, some
+man of affairs writes to say (it seemed incredible, but it used to
+happen) that the book has given him his first intelligent respect for
+religious faith. There, a poor colored girl, inmate of a charitable
+institution, where she has figured as in deed and truth the black sheep,
+sends her pathetic tribute:
+
+"If heaven is like _that_, I want to go, and I mean to."
+
+To-day I am berated by the lady who is offended with the manner of my
+doctrine. I am called hard names in no soft language, and advised to
+pray heaven for forgiveness for the harm I am doing by this ungodly
+book.
+
+To-morrow I receive a widower's letter, of twenty-six pages, rose-tinted
+and perfumed. He relates his personal history. He encloses the
+photographs of his dead wife, his living children, and himself. He adds
+the particulars of his income, which, I am given to understand, is
+large. He adds--but I turn to the next.
+
+This correspondent, like scores upon scores of others, will be told
+instanter if I am a spiritualist. On this vital point he demands my
+confession or my life.
+
+The next desires to be informed how much of the story is autobiography,
+and requires the regiment and company in which my brother served.
+
+And now I am haughtily taken to task by some unknown nature for allowing
+my heroine to be too much attached to her brother. I am told that this
+is impious; that only our Maker should receive such adoring affection as
+poor Mary offered to dead Roy.
+
+Having recovered from this inconceivable slap in the face, I go bravely
+on. I open the covers of a pamphlet as green as Erin, entitled,
+"Antidote to the Gates Ajar;" consider myself as the poisoner of the
+innocent and reverent mind, and learn what I may from this lesson in
+toxicology.
+
+There was always a certain share of abuse in these outpourings from
+strangers; it was relatively small, but it was enough to save my
+spirits, by the humor of it, or they would have been crushed with the
+weight of the great majority.
+
+I remember the editor of a large Western paper, who enclosed a clipping
+from his last review for my perusal. It treated, not of "The Gates Ajar"
+just then, but of a magazine story in "Harper's," the "Century," or
+wherever. The story was told in the first person fictitious, and began
+after this fashion:
+
+"I am an old maid of fifty-six, and have spent most of my life in
+boarding-houses." (The writer was, be it said, at that time, scarcely
+twenty-two.)
+
+"Miss Phelps says of herself," observed this oracle, "that she is
+fifty-six years old; and we think she is old enough to know better than
+to write such a story as this."
+
+At a summer place where I was in the early fervors of the art of making
+a home, a citizen was once introduced to me at his own request. I have
+forgotten his name, but remember having been told that he was
+"prominent." He was big, red, and loud, and he planted himself with the
+air of a man about to demolish his deadliest foe.
+
+"So you are Miss Phelps. Well, I've wanted to meet you. I read a piece
+you wrote in a magazine. It was about Our Town. It did not please Me."
+
+I bowed with the interrogatory air which seemed to be expected of me.
+Being just then very much in love with that very lovable place, I was
+puzzled with this accusation, and quite unable to recall, out of the
+warm flattery which I had heaped upon the town in cool print, any
+visible cause of offence.
+
+"You said," pursued my accuser, angrily, "that we had odors here. You
+said Our Town smelled of fish. Now, you know, _we_ get so used to
+these smells _we like 'em!_ It gave great offence to the community,
+madam. And I really thought at one time--feelin' ran so high--I thought
+it would kill the sale of your book!"
+
+From that day to this I do not believe the idea has visited the brain of
+this estimable person that a book could circulate in any other spot upon
+the map than within his native town. This delicious bit of provincialism
+served to make life worth living for many a long day.
+
+There was fun enough in this sort of thing to "keep one up," so that one
+could return bravely to the chief end of existence; for this seemed for
+many years to be nothing less, and little else, than the exercise of
+those faculties called forth by the wails of the bereaved. From every
+corner of the civilized globe, and in its differing languages, they came
+to me--entreaties, outpourings, cries of agony, mutterings of despair,
+breathings of the gentle hope by which despair may be superseded;
+appeals for help which only the Almighty could have given; demands for
+light which only eternity can supply.
+
+A man's grief, when he chooses to confide it to a woman, is not an easy
+matter to deal with. Its dignity and its pathos are never to be
+forgotten. How to meet it, Heaven only teaches; and how far Heaven
+taught that awed and humbled girl I shall never know.
+
+But the women--oh, the poor women! I felt less afraid to answer them.
+Their misery seemed to cry in my arms like a child who must be
+comforted. I wrote to them--I wrote without wisdom or caution or skill;
+only with the power of being sorry for them, and the wish to say so; and
+if I said the right thing or the wrong one, whether I comforted or
+wearied, strengthened or weakened, that, too, I shall not know.
+
+Sometimes, in recent years, a letter comes or a voice speaks: "Do you
+remember--so many years ago--when I was in great trouble? You wrote to
+me." And I am half ashamed that I had forgotten. But I bless her because
+_she_ remembers.
+
+But when I think of the hundreds--it came into the thousands, I
+believe--of such letters received, and how large a proportion of them
+were answered, my heart sinks. How is it possible that one should not
+have done more harm than good by that unguided sympathy? If I could not
+leave the open question to the Wisdom that protects and overrules
+well-meaning ignorance, I should be afraid to think of it. For many
+years I was snowed under by those mourners' letters. In truth, they have
+not ceased entirely yet, though of course their visits are now
+irregular.
+
+I am so often asked if I still believe the views of another life set
+forth in "The Gates Ajar" that I am glad to use this opportunity to
+answer the question; though, indeed, I have been led to do so, to a
+certain extent, in another place, and may, perhaps, be pardoned for
+repeating words in which the question first and most naturally answered
+itself:
+
+"Those appeals of the mourning, black of edge and blurred with tears,
+were a mass high beneath the hand and heavy to the heart. These letters
+had the terrible and unanswerable power of all great, natural voices;
+and the chiefest of these are love and grief. Year upon year the
+recipient has sat dumb before these signs of human misery and hope. They
+have rolled upon the shore of life, a billow of solemn inspiration. I
+have called them a human argument for faith in the future life, and see
+no reason for amending the term."
+
+But why dwell on the little book, which was only the trembling
+organ-pipe through which the music thrilled? Its faults have long since
+ceased to trouble, and its friends to elate me. Sometimes one seems to
+one's self to be the least or last agency in the universe responsible
+for such a work. What was the book? Only an outcry of nature--and nature
+answered it. That was all. And nature is of God, and is mighty before
+Him.
+
+Do I believe in the "middle march" of life, as the girl did in the
+morning, before the battle of the day?
+
+For nature's sake--which is for God's sake--I cannot hesitate.
+
+Useless suffering is the worst of all kinds of waste. Unless He created
+this world from sheer extravagance in the infliction of purposeless
+pain, there must be another life to justify, to heal, to comfort, to
+offer happiness, to develop holiness. If there be another world, and
+such a one, it will be no theologic drama, but a sensible, wholesome
+scene. The largest and the strongest elements of this experimental life
+will survive its weakest and smallest. Love is "the greatest thing in
+the world," and love "will claim its own" at last.
+
+The affection which is true enough to live forever, need have no fear
+that the life to come will thwart it. The grief that goes to the grave
+unhealed, may put its trust in unimagined joy to be. The patient, the
+uncomplaining, the unselfish mourner, biding his time and bearing his
+lot, giving more comfort than he gets, and with beautiful wilfulness
+believing in the intended kindness of an apparently harsh force which he
+cannot understand, may come to perceive, even here, that infinite power
+and mercy are one; and, I solemnly believe, is sure to do so in the life
+beyond, where "God keeps a niche in heaven to hold our idols."
+
+
+
+
+FOUR-LEAF CLOVER.
+
+BY ELLA HIGGINSON.
+
+  I know a place where the sun is like gold,
+    And the cherry blooms burst with snow;
+  And down underneath is the loveliest nook,
+    Where the four-leaf clovers grow.
+
+  One leaf is for hope, and one is for faith,
+    And one is for love, you know;
+  And God put another one in for luck--
+    If you search, you will find where they grow.
+
+  But you must have hope, and you must have faith;
+    You must love and be strong--and so--
+  If you work, if you wait, you will find the place
+    Where the four-leaf clovers grow.
+
+
+
+
+A LEAP IN THE DARK
+
+BY JAMES T. MCKAY,
+
+Author of "Stella Grayland," "Larcone's Little Chap," and other stories.
+
+
+The Windhams and Mandisons were old neighbors, and Phil Windham had
+always been very much at home among the Mandisons, and especially with
+Mary, the oldest daughter, who was like a wise, kind sister to him. Now
+his own house began to break up--his brothers went West; his sisters
+married; his father, who was a chemist and inventor, was killed one day
+by an explosion. In these trying times the Mandison household was his
+chief resource, and Mary most of all.
+
+Then the Mandisons moved away. That seemed to Windham like the end of
+things. He was awfully lonely, and thought a great deal about Mary in
+the months that followed, but was not quite sure of himself; though he
+was certain there was no one else he liked and admired half so much. But
+in the following winter he went to spend the holidays with the
+Mandisons, and when he came away he and Mary were engaged.
+
+The next summer the Mandisons took a cottage at the shore, and Windham
+went to spend some weeks with them. Idly busy and calmly happy in the
+pleasant company of Mary and all the friendly house, the sunny days
+slipped by till one came that disturbed his dream. An aunt of Mary's
+arrived with her husband, Dr. Saxon, and his niece, Agnes Maine. At the
+first glance Miss Maine challenged Windham's attention. She was a tall
+and striking person, with a keen glance that he felt took his measure at
+the first look. She piqued his curiosity, and interested him more and
+more.
+
+One day he saw her and Mary together, and caught himself comparing them,
+not in Mary's favor. Panic seized him, and he turned his back on Miss
+Maine and devoted himself to Mary. Miss Maine went to stay with some
+neighbors, the Colemans. One night she was caught at the Mandisons by a
+storm. Mary asked Windham to entertain her, and he went and asked her to
+play chess. She declined coldly, and Windham turned away with such a
+look that Mary wondered what Agnes could have said so unkind. And the
+next day Miss Maine spoke so gently to him that it warmed him all
+through. Still he persistently avoided her.
+
+The Colemans got up a play in the attic of their large old house. On the
+night of the performance the place was crowded. The first two acts went
+off smoothly.
+
+Windham had been helping to shift the scenes, and was standing alone,
+looking over the animated spectacle as the audience chatted and laughed.
+Something in the play had made him think of Agnes Maine, though she was
+not in the cast, and he had not seen her. Suddenly, without any notice
+of her approach, she stood close to him, looking in his face. Her face
+was paler than usual, and her eyes had a startling light in them. She
+said only half a dozen low words, but they made him turn ghastly white.
+What she said was:
+
+"The house is on fire down-stairs."
+
+He stood looking at her an instant, long enough to reflect that any
+alarm would result in piling those gay people in an awful mass at the
+foot of the one steep and fragile stairway. The stage entrance was
+little better than an enclosed ladder, and not to be thought of.
+
+"Go and stand at the head of the stairs," he said to her.
+
+The bell rang for the curtain to rise, but he slipped back behind it,
+and it did not go up. Instead, Jeffrey Coleman appeared before it,
+bowing and smiling with exaggeration, and announced that the
+continuation of the performance had been arranged as a surprise
+below-stairs, and would be found even more exciting and interesting than
+the part already given. The audience were requested to go below quickly,
+but at the same time were cautioned against crowding, as the stair was
+rather steep and temporary. As they did not start at once, he came off
+the stage and led the way, going on down the stairs, and calling gayly
+to the rest to follow.
+
+Windham had got to the stairhead by this time. Agnes Maine stood there,
+on one side, looking calm and contained, and he took up his position on
+the other, and followed the cue given by young Coleman. He began to call
+out, extolling the absorbing and thrilling character of the performance
+down-stairs, with the extravagant epithets of the circus posters,
+laughing all the while. He urged them on when they lingered, and
+restrained them when they came too fast, addressing one and another with
+jocularity, laying his hands on some and pushing them on with assumed
+playfulness, keeping up the fire of raillery with desperate resistance.
+When screams were heard now and then from below, he made it appear to be
+only excited feminine merriment, directing attention to it, and calling
+out to those yet to come:
+
+"You hear them? Oh, yes; you'll scream, too, when you see it!"
+
+All the time, though his faculties were sufficiently strained by the
+effort he was making, he was watching Agnes Maine, who stood opposite,
+doing nothing, but looking her calm, pale self, and now and then smiling
+slightly at his extravagant humor. And he thought admiringly that her
+simple quiet did more to keep up the illusion than all his labored and
+violent simulation.
+
+It seemed as if there never would be an end to the stream of leisurely
+people who answered his banter with laugh and joke. But finally the last
+of them were fairly on the stair, and he turned to Agnes Maine with a
+suddenly transformed face.
+
+"Now--be quick!" he called.
+
+But she gave a low cry, looking away toward the farther end, where she
+caught sight of a young couple still lingering. She ran toward them,
+calling to them to hurry, and as they did not understand, she took hold
+of the girl, and made her run. Windham had followed her, and the four
+came together to the stairhead, but there they stopped, and the young
+girl broke into wild screams. The foot of the stairway was wrapped in
+smoke and flames.
+
+There was an observatory upon the house, into which Windham had once
+gone with Jeffrey Coleman, and he turned to it now, and made the three
+go up before him. He stopped and cut away a rope that held some of the
+hangings, and took it up with him. Miss Maine was standing with her arm
+about Fanny Lee, whom she had quieted.
+
+"Had she better go first?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, of course," Miss Maine answered.
+
+He fastened the rope about the girl, assured her they would let her down
+safely, and between them they persuaded her, shrinkingly, to let herself
+be swung over, and lowered to the ground. In this Miss Maine gave more
+help than young Pritchard, who shook and chattered so much as to be of
+little use. And as soon as the girl was down and Windham turned toward
+Miss Maine, Pritchard took a turn of the rope around the railing, with a
+hasty knot, went over, and slid down it, out of sight. But before he
+reached the ground, the rope broke loose, and slipped out of Windham's
+grasp as he tried to catch it.
+
+A cry came up from below. Windham turned toward Miss Maine, and they
+looked at one another, but said nothing. She was very pale and still.
+Windham glanced down and around; the fire was already following them up
+the tower. He made her come to the other side, where the balcony
+overhung the ridge of the sloping roof, got over the railing, and helped
+her to do the same, and to seat herself on the narrow ledge outside,
+holding on by the bars with her arms behind her. He let himself down by
+his hands till within two or three feet of the roof, and dropped safely
+upon it. Then he stood up, facing her just below, braced himself with
+one foot on each side of the ridge, and told her to loosen her hold and
+let herself fall forward. She did so, and he caught her in his arms as
+she fell.
+
+It was a struggle for a minute to keep his balance; and whether in the
+involuntary stress of the effort, or by an instinctive impulse,
+conscious or otherwise, he clasped her close for a moment, till her face
+touched his own. Then he put her down, and they sat on the ridge near
+each other, flushed, and short of breath. Below, on the lawn, a throng
+of people looked up at them, some motionless, some gesticulating, and
+some shouting in dumb show, their voices drowned in the fierce roar and
+crackling that raged beneath the roof and shut in the two above it in a
+kind of visible privacy. They were still a while; then Agnes asked: "Can
+we do anything more?"
+
+"No," he answered, "nothing but wait."
+
+Both saw that men were running for ladders and ropes. Presently he asked
+quietly:
+
+"Why did you come to me?"
+
+She looked up at him for a moment, then answered:
+
+"I suppose I thought you would know what to do."
+
+"Thank you," he said, in a grave, low voice.
+
+After a little the tower blazed out above them, and they moved along the
+ridge till stopped by a chimney, against which he made her lean. Then
+they sat still again. The flames rose above the eaves on one side, and
+flared higher and hotter. Soon they grew scorching, and Agnes said, with
+quickened breathing:
+
+"We couldn't stay here long."
+
+He looked at her, and the side of her face toward the fire glowed bright
+red. He took off his coat, moved close to her, and held it up between
+their faces and the flames; and they sat together so, breathing audibly,
+but not speaking, till the head of a ladder rose suddenly above the
+eaves, and a minute later the head and shoulders of Jeffrey Coleman. He
+flung a rope to Windham, who in another minute had let Miss Maine slip
+down by it to the ladder; then, throwing a noose of it over the chimney,
+he slid down himself to the eaves, and so to the ground.
+
+[Illustration: "AGNES SAID, WITH QUICKENED BREATHING, 'WE COULDN'T STAY
+HERE LONG.'"]
+
+Miss Maine stood waiting for him, pale and trembling now, but said
+nothing. Mary Mandison was with her; she had made no scene, and made
+none now.
+
+But there were sharper eyes than Mary's. That night, as Windham strolled
+on the lawn alone, Dr. Saxon confronted him, grimly puffing at his pipe.
+Then he said:
+
+"I thought you were an honest fellow."
+
+Windham leaned against a tree.
+
+"I want to be," he said feebly.
+
+"Then you'll have to look sharp," the doctor retorted. "You'd better go
+fishing with me up-country in the morning."
+
+He went, Mary making him promise to return in time for an excursion to
+Blackberry Island which he had helped her plan. He got back the night
+before; and in the morning the party set out, some going round the shore
+by stage, and some in the boat down the bay.
+
+Miss Maine went with those in the boat, and Windham went with Mary in
+the stage. Both on the way and after their arrival, he stayed by her,
+and did all he could to be useful and amusing.
+
+They lunched on a grassy bank, in the shade of a cliff, by a tumbling
+brook that streamed down from the rocks. By and by Mary remarked that
+she would like to see where the little torrent came from, and Windham
+said he would try and find out for her. He scrambled up, and soon passed
+out of sight among the bowlders. He found some tough climbing, but kept
+on, and after a while traced the stream to a clear pool where a spring
+bubbled out of a rock wall in a cave-like chamber near the top.
+
+As he reached its edge, he caught sight of the reflection in the pool of
+a woman's white dress; and, glancing up, saw Agnes Maine standing a
+little above him, on a sort of natural pedestal, in a rude niche at one
+side. She looked so like a statue that she smiled slightly at the
+confused thought of it which she saw for an instant in his face, but she
+turned grave then as their eyes met for a moment in a look of intimate
+recognition. Then he turned his away, with a sudden terror at himself,
+and leaned back against the wall, white in the face.
+
+She stepped down and passed by him. He half put out his hand to stop
+her, but drew it back, and she partly turned at the gesture, but went on
+out of his sight.
+
+He stood there for some time; then climbed down the rocks again, shaping
+his features into a careless form as he went, and came back to Mary with
+a forced smile on his face. But he forgot what he had gone for, and
+looked confused when Mary asked him if he had found it. And she
+commented:
+
+"Why, Philip, what has happened? You look as if you had seen a ghost."
+
+"I have," he answered.
+
+Mary asked no more, except by her look. Some one came and proposed a
+sail, and Windham eagerly agreed, and went out in the boat with Mary and
+others.
+
+They sailed down the bay. On the return the wind died away, and when
+they got back, the stage had gone with more than half the party, and
+Agnes Maine was not among those who were waiting. They came on board,
+and the boat headed away for home.
+
+After landing they had to walk across some fields. When near the house,
+Mary missed something, and Windham went back for it. He had to cross the
+road, and as he came near it the stage passed along, with its merry
+company laughing and singing. They did not notice him among the trees,
+but he distinctly saw all who were in the open vehicle, and Miss Maine
+was not among them.
+
+She had climbed up the cliff by a gradual, roundabout path; and after
+Windham saw her, she had wandered on, lost herself for a while, and got
+back after both stage and boat had left, each party supposing she had
+gone with the other.
+
+Windham found a row-boat and started back. He knew nothing about boats;
+but the bay was very smooth, it was yet early, and he got across in due
+time. As he neared the island he saw her, in her white dress, standing
+on the bluff, and looking out toward him.
+
+Off the shore, rocks and bowlders stood thickly out of the water, and
+Windham threaded his way in among them, thinking nothing of those
+underneath. The skiff was little better than an egg-shell, being built
+of half-inch cedar; and before he knew what had happened, the point of a
+sunken rock had cut through the bows, and the boat was filling with
+water. With a landsman's instinct, he stood up on a thwart; the boat
+tipped over and went from under him. In the effort to right it, he made
+a thrust downward with one of the oars, but found no bottom; and the
+next minute Agnes saw him clinging to the side of a steep rock, with
+only his head and shoulders out of water.
+
+She did not cry out; but after he had struggled vainly to get up the
+rock, and found no other support for foot or hand than the one
+projection just above him, by which he held, he looked toward her as he
+clung there out of breath, and saw her eagerly watching him from the
+water's edge. And her voice showed the stress of her feeling, though it
+was quite clear when she called:
+
+"Can't you climb up?"
+
+"No, there is nothing to hold by."
+
+"Can you swim?"
+
+"No."
+
+She looked all about, then back to him. There was no one in sight; the
+island was out of the lines of communication, and a point just north of
+them shut off the open water. But she saw that the reef to which Windham
+clung trended in to the shore a little way off, and she called:
+
+"I think I can get out to you--keep hold till I come."
+
+She ran along the beach, but not all the way. As soon as she was
+opposite a part of the reef that seemed accessible, she walked straight
+into the water, and made her way through it, though it was two or three
+feet deep near the rocks. He saw her clamber upon them and start toward
+him, springing from one to another, wading across submerged places,
+climbing around or over the higher points. And even there, in his
+desperate plight, as he watched her coming steadily toward him, her eyes
+fixed on the difficult path, and her skirt instinctively gathered a
+little in one hand, the sight of her fearless grace thrilled through
+him, and filled him with despairing admiration.
+
+She came presently to the edge of a wider gap with clear water beneath,
+and paused for an instant. Windham called out:
+
+"Don't jump; you'll be lost!"
+
+She looked at him a moment, studied the rocks again, stepped back, then
+forward quickly, and sprang across. She slipped and fell, but got to her
+feet again, and came on as before. She went out of Windham's sight, but
+in another minute he heard a rustle above him, looked up, and saw her
+standing very near the edge, and looking down at him, panting a little,
+but otherwise calm.
+
+"Don't stand there; you will fall!" he called to her.
+
+She kneeled down and tried to reach over, but could not. She raised
+herself again, and looked all around anxiously, but saw no one; she had
+not seen any one since she left him hours before on the cliff. She
+looked down at him and asked:
+
+"Can you hold on long?"
+
+"No," he answered, "not very long."
+
+She moved back and lay down on the rock, with her face over the edge. It
+was wet and slippery, and inclined forward, so that she had to brace
+herself with one hand by a projection just below the brink. Lying so,
+she could reach down very near him.
+
+"Take hold of my hand," she said.
+
+He raised one arm with an effort, so that she caught him by the wrist,
+and his fingers closed about hers. She tried to pull him up slowly, but
+he felt that it was hopeless, and would only result in drawing her off
+the rock; so he settled back as before. He noticed that she had given
+him her left hand, and saw that there was another reason besides the
+necessity of bracing herself with her right. Her wrist was cut and
+bleeding.
+
+"Oh, you are hurt!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Never mind," she replied; "that is nothing."
+
+He looked up in her face with passionate regret. Her lips were parted,
+and her breathing came quick and deep. He felt in her wrist the hot
+blood with which all her pulses throbbed, and it went through him as
+though one current flowed in their veins. Her eyes looked full into his,
+and did not turn away till the lashes trembled over them suddenly, and
+tears gushed out upon her face. An agony of yearning took hold of
+Windham and wrung his heart.
+
+"Agnes, do you know?" he asked.
+
+And she answered, "Yes."
+
+When she could see him again, drops stood out on his forehead, and his
+eyes looked up at her with a despairing tenderness. Her lips closed, and
+her features settled into a look of answering resolve.
+
+"You must not give up," she urged. "Don't let go of my hand."
+
+"Oh, I must!" he answered. "You couldn't hold me; I should only draw you
+down."
+
+She neither looked away nor made any reply.
+
+"It would do no good," he went on. "I should only drown you too."
+
+"I don't care," she answered. "I will not let you go."
+
+"Oh, Agnes!" he responded, the faintness of exhaustion creeping over
+him, and mingling with a sharp but sweet despair.
+
+Mary was standing at the door when the stage arrived, and she saw that
+Agnes was not there. She took one of her brothers who was a good
+boatman, and started back at once. When their boat rounded the point of
+the island she was on the lookout, and was the first to see the two they
+came to succor none too soon. And before they saw her she caught sight,
+with terrible clearness, of the look in the two faces that were bent
+upon one another. It was she who supported Windham until Agnes could be
+taken off, and preparations made for getting him on board; but she
+turned her eyes away, and did not speak to him.
+
+On the way back she hardly noticed the dreary and draggled pair, who had
+little to say for themselves. Many things that had puzzled and troubled
+her ranged themselves in a dreadful sequence and order now in her
+unsuspicious mind. On their arrival she made some arrangements for their
+comfort, quietly; then went to her room, and did not come down again.
+
+Windham left early in the morning, went straight back to Dr. Saxon, and
+told him the whole story.
+
+"I hardly know whether I'm a villain or not," Windham concluded.
+
+"You might as well be," the doctor growled. "You've been a consummate
+fool, and one does about as much harm as the other. Go home now and stay
+there; and don't do anything more, for heaven's sake, until you hear
+from me."
+
+Windham went home, and was very miserable, as may be supposed. Hearing
+nothing for some time, he could not bear it, and wrote to Mary that he
+honored and admired her, and thought everything of her that he ever had
+or could. In a week he got this reply:
+
+"Mary Mandison has received Philip Windham's letter, and can only reply
+that there is nothing to be said."
+
+This stung him more deeply than silence, and he wrote that he was going
+to see her on a certain day, and begged her not to deny him. He went at
+the time, and she saw him, simply sitting still, and hearing what he had
+to say. He hardly knew what to say then, but vowed and protested, and
+finally complained of her coldness and cruelty. She replied that she was
+not cold or cruel, but only, as she had told him, there was nothing to
+be said. In the end he found this was true, and rushed away in despair.
+
+Mary had seemed calm; but when her mother came in that afternoon and
+looked for her, she found her in her room, lying on her face.
+
+When she knew who it was, she raised herself silently, looked in her
+mother's face a moment, put her arms about her neck, and hid her hot,
+dry eyes there as she used to do when a child.
+
+Late that night those two were alone together in the same place, and,
+before they parted, the mother said:
+
+"You were always my brave child, and you are going to be my brave Mary
+still."
+
+And Mary answered with a low cry:
+
+"Yes--yes; but not now--not now!"
+
+For a good while Windham felt the sensation of having run headlong upon
+a blank wall and been flung back and crippled. But the feeling wore
+itself out as the months passed.
+
+It was nearly a year before he heard from Dr. Saxon, and he had given up
+looking for anything from him, when he received a cold note, inviting
+him to call at the doctor's home, if he chose, at a certain date and
+hour. At the time set he went to the city, and rang the doctor's bell as
+the hour was striking.
+
+[Illustration: "'AGNES, DO YOU KNOW?' HE ASKED. AND SHE ANSWERED, 'YES.'"]
+
+He was shown into the library, and when the door closed behind him, he
+fell back against it. Dr. Saxon was not the only person in the room; at
+the farther end sat Agnes Maine. She knew nothing of his coming; and
+when she glanced round and saw him, she stood up and faced him, with her
+hands crossed before her, her breathing quickened, and her face flushed
+blood-red.
+
+The old doctor leaned back and looked from one to the other, studying
+them openly and keenly. When he was satisfied, he ordered Windham to
+take a chair near the window and told Agnes she might go out. She faced
+him a moment; then went away with her straight, proud carriage. The
+doctor finished something he was at, then got his pipe and filled and
+lighted it, backed up against the chimney-piece, and stood eying Windham
+with something more than his usual scowl.
+
+"Well, young man," he asked, finally, "what did you come here for?"
+
+"I came here because you asked me to."
+
+"No, sir; you didn't," the old man retorted. "I said you might come if
+you liked."
+
+Windham stood up, trembling, and replied with suppressed passion:
+
+"I came on your invitation. I did not come to be insulted."
+
+"Tut, tut," the doctor rejoined. "You needn't be so hoity-toity; you
+haven't much occasion; sit down. Have you been making any more of your
+'mistakes,' as you call them?"
+
+Windham answered emphatically: "No!"
+
+"Are you going to?" the doctor continued.
+
+"No, sir; I am not," Windham replied, with angry decision.
+
+"Well, I wouldn't; you've done enough," the doctor commented roughly.
+"You call it a mistake, but I call it blind stupidity, worse than many
+crimes. Mary is worth three of Agnes, to begin with; but it would be
+just as bad if she were a doll or a dolt. Any fellow out of
+swaddling-clothes, who has brains in his body, and isn't made of wood,
+ought to know that passion is as hard a fact as hunger, and no more to
+be left out of account. You were bound to know the chances were that it
+would have to be reckoned with, first or last, and you deliberately took
+the risk of wrecking two women's lives. I don't say anything about your
+own; you richly deserve all you got, and all that's coming to you. If
+law could be made to conform to abstract justice, it would rank your
+offence worse than many for which men pay behind bars."
+
+He went out abruptly, and after a few minutes returned with Agnes, who
+came in lingering, and apparently unwilling.
+
+"Here, Agnes, I am going out," he said. "I've been giving this young man
+my opinion of him, and haven't any more time to waste. You can tell him
+what you think of him, and send him off."
+
+He went out, and banged the door after him. Agnes leaned against it, and
+stood there downcast and perfectly still. Windham sat sunk together, as
+the doctor had left him, waiting for her to speak. But she did not, and
+after a while he got up and stood by the high desk, looking at her.
+Finally he spoke low:
+
+"Are you going to scold me, too? Mary has discarded me, and your uncle
+says I am a miserable sinner, and ought to be in the penitentiary. I
+don't deny it; but if I went there it would be for your sake. Do you
+condemn me, too? Have you no mercy for me?"
+
+A flush spread slowly over her pale face. Then she replied softly:
+
+"No, I have no right. I am no better than you."
+
+Two or three hours later Dr. Saxon sat at his desk, when Agnes entered
+and came silently and stood beside him. He did not look up, but asked
+quietly:
+
+"Well, have you packed him off?"
+
+"No," she answered under her breath; "you know I haven't."
+
+He smiled up at her. This gruff old man had a rare smile on occasion for
+those he liked. And he said:
+
+"Well, he isn't the worst they make; he's got spirit, and he can take a
+drubbing, too, when it's deserved. I tried him pretty well. Didn't I
+fire into him, though, hot shot!" He fairly grinned at the recollection.
+"I had to, you know, to keep myself in countenance. I suppose I said
+rather more than I meant--but don't you tell him so."
+
+She smiled. "I have told him so already; I told him you didn't mean a
+word you said."
+
+"You presumptuous baggage!" The doctor scowled now. "Then you told him a
+tremendous fib. I meant a deal of it. Well, he'll get his deserts yet,
+if he gets you, you deceiving minx. I told him one thing that was true
+enough, anyway"--he smiled broadly again--"I told him Mary was worth
+half a dozen of you."
+
+Agnes turned grave, and put down her head so that she hid her face.
+
+"So she is," she answered. "Oh, I'm very sorry--and ashamed!"
+
+"Well, well," the old doctor responded soberly, stroking her cheek, "it
+is a pity; but I suppose it can't be helped. Mary's made of good stuff,
+and will pull through. It wouldn't do her any good if three lives were
+spoiled instead of one. It's lucky she found out before it was too
+late."
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
+
+BY IDA M. TARBELL.
+
+LINCOLN IN CONGRESS
+
+
+_The following article is made up almost entirely of new matter. It
+includes six hitherto unpublished letters, all of them of importance in
+illustrating Lincoln's political methods and his views on public
+questions from 1843 to 1848, and an excellent report of a speech
+delivered in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1848, hitherto unknown to
+Lincoln's biographers, discovered in course of a search instituted by
+this Magazine through the files of the Boston and Worcester newspapers
+of September, 1848. The article also comprises various reminiscences of
+Lincoln in the period covered, gathered especially for this Magazine
+from associates of his who are still living._
+
+
+For eight successive years Lincoln had been a member of the General
+Assembly of Illinois. It was quite long enough, in his judgment. He
+wanted something better. In 1842 he declined re-nomination, and became a
+candidate for Congress. He did not wait to be asked, nor did he leave
+his case in the hands of his friends. He frankly announced his desire,
+and managed his own canvass. There was no reason, in Lincoln's opinion,
+for concealing political ambition. He recognized, at the same time, the
+legitimacy of the ambition of his friends, and entertained no suspicion
+or rancor if they contested places with him.
+
+"Do you suppose that I should ever have got into notice if I had waited
+to be hunted up and pushed forward by older men?" he wrote his friend
+Herndon once, when the latter was complaining that the older men did not
+help him on. "The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself
+every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.
+Allow me to assure you that suspicion and jealousy never did help any
+man in any situation. There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep
+a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to
+be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury.
+Cast about, and see if this feeling has not injured every person you
+have ever known to fall into it."
+
+Lincoln had something more to do, however, in 1842, than simply to
+announce himself in the innocent manner of earlier politics. The
+convention system introduced into Illinois in 1835 by the Democrats had
+been zealously opposed by all good Whigs, Lincoln included, until
+constant defeat taught them that to resist organization by an
+every-man-for-himself policy was hopeless and wasteful, and that if they
+would succeed they must meet organization with organization. In 1841 a
+Whig State convention had been called to nominate candidates for the
+offices of governor and lieutenant-governor; and now, in March, 1843, a
+Whig meeting was held again at Springfield, at which the party's
+platform was laid, and a committee, of which Lincoln was a member, was
+appointed to prepare an "Address to the People of Illinois." In this
+address the convention system was earnestly defended. Against this rapid
+adoption of the abominated system many of the Whigs protested, and
+Lincoln found himself supporting before his constituents the tactics he
+had once warmly opposed. In a letter to his friend John Bennett of
+Petersburg, written in March, 1843, and now for the first time
+published[1], he said:
+
+[Footnote 1: The term "unpublished" is employed in this series of
+articles to cover documents that have never been published in any
+authoritative or permanent way. Most of the documents so designated have
+never, so far as we know, been published at all; but a few have been
+printed in local newspapers, though so long ago, and under such
+circumstances, as to be practically unpublished now.]
+
+"Your letter of this day was handed me by Mr. Miles. It is too late now
+to effect the object you desire. On yesterday morning the most of the
+Whig members from this district got together and agreed to hold the
+convention at Tremont, in Tazewell County. I am sorry to hear that any
+of the Whigs of your county, or of any county, should longer be against
+conventions.
+
+"On last Wednesday evening a meeting of all the Whigs then here from all
+parts of the State was held, and the question of the propriety of
+conventions was brought up and fully discussed, and at the end of the
+discussion a resolution recommending the system of conventions to all
+the Whigs of the State was unanimously adopted. Other resolutions also
+were passed, all of which will appear in the next 'Journal.' The meeting
+also appointed a committee to draft an address to the people of the
+State, which address will also appear in the next 'Journal.' In it you
+will find a brief argument in favor of conventions, and, although I
+wrote it myself, I _will_ say to you that it is conclusive upon the
+point, and cannot be reasonably answered.
+
+"The right way for you to do is to hold your meeting and appoint
+delegates anyhow, and if there be any who will not take part, let it be
+so.
+
+"The matter will work so well this time that even they who now oppose
+will come in next time. The convention is to be held at Tremont on the
+fifth of April; and, according to the rule we have adopted, your county
+is to have two delegates--being double the number of your
+representation.
+
+"If there be any good Whig who is disposed still to stick out against
+conventions, get him, at least, to read the argument in their favor in
+the 'Address.'"[2]
+
+[Footnote 2: The original of this letter is owned by E.R. Oeltjen of
+Petersburg, Illinois.]
+
+The "brief argument" which Lincoln thought so conclusive, "if he did
+write it himself," justified his good opinion. After its circulation
+there were few found to "stick out against conventions." The Whigs of
+the various counties in the Congressional district met as they had been
+ordered to do, and chose delegates. John J. Hardin of Jacksonville,
+Edward D. Baker and Abraham Lincoln of Springfield, were the three
+candidates for whom these delegates were instructed.
+
+To Lincoln's keen disappointment, the delegation from Sangamon County
+was instructed for Baker. A variety of social and personal influences,
+besides Baker's popularity, worked against Lincoln. "It would astonish,
+if not amuse, the older citizens," wrote Lincoln to a friend, "to learn
+that I (a stranger, friendless, uneducated, penniless boy, working on a
+flat-boat at ten dollars per month) have been put down here as the
+candidate of pride, wealth, and aristocratic family distinction." He was
+not only accused of being an aristocrat, he was called "a deist." He had
+fought, or been about to fight, a duel. His wife's relations were
+Episcopalian and Presbyterian. He and she attended a Presbyterian
+church. These influences alone could not be said to have defeated him,
+he wrote, but "they levied a tax of considerable per cent. upon my
+strength."
+
+The meeting that named Baker as its choice for Congress appointed
+Lincoln one of the delegates to the convention. "In getting Baker the
+nomination," Lincoln wrote to Speed, "I shall be fixed a good deal like
+a fellow who is made a grooms-man to a man that has cut him out, and is
+marrying his own dear 'gal.'" From the first, however, he stood bravely
+by Baker. "I feel myself bound not to hinder him in any way from getting
+the nomination; I should despise myself were I to attempt it," he wrote
+certain of his constituents who were anxious that he should attempt to
+secure the nomination in spite of his instructions. It was soon evident
+to both Lincoln and Baker that John J. Hardin was probably the strongest
+candidate in the district, and so it proved when the convention met in
+May, 1843, at Pekin.
+
+It has frequently been charged that in this Pekin convention, Hardin,
+Baker, and Lincoln agreed to take in turn the three next nominations to
+Congress, thus establishing a species of rotation in office. This charge
+cannot be sustained. What occurred at the Pekin convention has been
+written out for this magazine by one of the only two surviving
+delegates, the Hon. J.M. Ruggles of Havana, Illinois.
+
+"When the convention assembled," writes Mr. Ruggles, "Baker was there
+with his friend and champion delegate, Abraham Lincoln. The ayes and
+noes had been taken, and there were fifteen votes apiece, and one in
+doubt that had not arrived. That was myself. I was known to be a warm
+friend of Baker, representing people who were partial to Hardin. As soon
+as I arrived Baker hurried to me, saying: 'How is it? It all depends on
+you.' On being told that notwithstanding my partiality for him, the
+people I represented expected me to vote for Hardin, and that I would
+have to do so, Baker at once replied: 'You are right--there is no other
+way.' The convention was organized, and I was elected secretary. Baker
+immediately arose, and made a most thrilling address, thoroughly
+arousing the sympathies of the convention, and ended by declining his
+candidacy. Hardin was nominated by acclamation; and then came the
+episode.
+
+"Immediately after the nomination, Mr. Lincoln walked across the room to
+my table, and asked if I would favor a resolution recommending Baker for
+the next term. On being answered in the affirmative, he said: 'You
+prepare the resolution, I will support it, and I think we can pass it.'
+The resolution created a profound sensation, especially with the friends
+of Hardin. After an excited and angry discussion, the resolution passed
+by a majority of one."
+
+Lincoln supported Hardin as energetically as he had Baker. In a
+letter[3] to the former, hitherto unpublished, written on May 11th, just
+after the convention, he says:
+
+    "Butler informs me that he received a letter from you in which
+    you expressed some doubt as to whether the Whigs of Sangamon
+    will support you cordially. You may at once dismiss all fears on
+    that subject. We have already resolved to make a particular
+    effort to give you the very largest majority possible in our
+    county. From this no Whig of the county dissents. We have many
+    objects for doing it. We make it a matter of honor and pride to
+    do it; we do it because we love the Whig cause; we do it because
+    we like you personally; and, last, we wish to convince you that
+    we do not bear that hatred to Morgan County that you people have
+    seemed so long to imagine. You will see by the 'Journal' of this
+    week that we propose, upon pain of losing a barbecue, to give
+    you twice as great a majority in this county as you shall
+    receive in your own. I got up the proposal.
+
+    "Who of the five appointed is to write the district address? I
+    did the labor of writing one address this year, and got thunder
+    for my reward. Nothing new here.
+
+    Yours as ever,
+
+    "A. LINCOLN."
+
+    "P.S. I wish you would measure one of the largest of those
+    swords we took to Alton, and write me the length of it, from tip
+    of the point to tip of the hilt, in feet and inches. I have a
+    dispute about the length[4].
+
+    A. L."
+
+[Footnote 3: The originals of both the letters on this page addressed by
+Lincoln to Hardin are owned by the daughter of General Hardin, Mrs.
+Ellen Hardin Walworth of New York City.]
+
+[Footnote 4: The swords referred to in this postscript are those used in
+the Shields-Lincoln duel. See MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE for April, 1896.]
+
+
+LINCOLN WORKS FOR THE NOMINATION IN 1846.
+
+Hardin was elected, and in 1844 Baker was nominated and elected. Lincoln
+had accepted his defeat by Hardin manfully. He had secured the
+nomination for Baker in 1844. He felt that his duty toward his friends
+was discharged, and that the nomination in 1846 belonged to him. Through
+the terms of both Hardin and Baker, he worked persistently and carefully
+to insure his own nomination. With infinite pains-taking he informed
+himself about the temper of every individual whom he knew or of whom he
+heard. In an amusing letter to Hardin, hitherto unpublished, written in
+May, 1844, while the latter was in Congress, he tells him of one
+disgruntled constituent who must be pacified, giving him, at the same
+time, a hint as to the temper of the "Locofocos."
+
+    "Knowing that you have correspondents enough, I have forborne to
+    trouble you heretofore," he writes; "and I now only do so to get
+    you to set a matter right which has got wrong with one of our
+    best friends. It is old Uncle Thomas Campbell of Spring Creek
+    (Berlin P.O.). He has received several documents from you, and
+    he says they are old newspapers and old documents, having no
+    sort of interest in them. He is, therefore, getting a strong
+    impression that you treat him with disrespect. This, I know, is
+    a mistaken impression, and you must correct it. The way, I leave
+    to yourself. Robert W. Canfield says he would like to have a
+    document or two from you.
+
+    "The Locos here are in considerable trouble about Van Buren's
+    letter on Texas, and the Virginia electors. They are growing
+    sick of the tariff question, and consequently are much
+    confounded at Van Buren's cutting them off from the new Texas
+    question. Nearly half the leaders swear they won't stand it. Of
+    those are Ford, T. Campbell, Ewing, Calhoun, and others. They
+    don't exactly say they won't go for Van Buren, but they say he
+    will not be the candidate, and that _they_ are for Texas
+    anyhow.
+
+    "As ever yours,
+
+    "A. LINCOLN."
+
+[Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN 1860.--HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED.
+
+From an ambrotype taken in Springfield, Illinois, in 1860, and given by
+Lincoln to J. Henry Brown, a miniature artist who had gone to
+Springfield to paint a portrait of the President for Judge Read of
+Pennsylvania. The ambrotype is now in a collection in Boston. A
+companion picture, made at the same time, is owned by Mr. William H.
+Lambert of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was reproduced as the
+frontispiece to MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE for March, 1896 (see note to this
+frontispiece).]
+
+[Illustration: GENERAL JOHN J. HARDIN.
+
+After a portrait owned by Mrs. Julia Duncan Kirby, Jacksonville,
+Illinois. John J. Hardin was born at Frankfort, Kentucky, January 6,
+1810; was educated at Transylvania University; removed to Jacksonville,
+Illinois, in 1830, and there began practising law. He at once became
+active in politics, and in 1834 was a candidate for Prosecuting
+Attorney, an officer at that time chosen by the legislature. He was
+defeated by Stephen A. Douglas, then a recent arrival from Vermont. In
+1836 he was elected to the lower branch of the General Assembly, and
+served three terms. In the session of 1836-37, he was one of the few
+members who opposed the internal improvements scheme. He was elected to
+Congress from the Sangamon district in 1843, and served until 1845. For
+some time he was a general in the State militia. In the Mexican War, he
+was colonel of the First Illinois Regiment, and was killed at the battle
+of Buena Vista, February 23, 1847. General Hardin was a man of brilliant
+parts. He was an able lawyer, and at the time of his death had risen to
+the leadership of the Whig party in his State. It was through his
+intercession, aided by Dr. R.W. English, that the unpleasantness between
+Lincoln and Shields in 1842 was amicably settled and a duel
+prevented.--_J. McCan Davis_.]
+
+[Illustration: COLONEL EDWARD D. BAKER.
+
+From the Civil War collection of Mr. Robert Coster. Edward Dickinson
+Baker was born in London, February 24, 1811. In his infancy his parents
+emigrated to America, and his father became a teacher at Philadelphia.
+There Edward was apprenticed to a weaver; but he disliked the trade, and
+soon gave it up and left home. He drifted to Belleville, Illinois, about
+1826, and was followed a year later by his parents. For several months
+he drove a dray in St. Louis, Missouri; then removed to Carrollton,
+Illinois, and studied law. His early experience at the bar was
+disheartening, and upon becoming a member of the Christian church he
+resolved to enter the ministry; but political success about this time
+caused a change of mind, and robbed the pulpit of a splendid ornament.
+In 1835 he removed to Springfield, and in 1837 was elected to the
+legislature. He achieved immediate distinction as an orator, and for the
+ensuing fifteen years he ranked among the foremost lawyers and
+politicians of the State. He was reflected to the House in 1838, served
+in the State Senate from 1840 to 1844, and was then elected to Congress.
+Upon the breaking out of the Mexican War he returned home, and raised a
+regiment of which he was commissioned colonel. After the war he removed
+to Galena, and was there sent back to Congress. In 1851 he went to the
+Isthmus of Panama with four hundred laborers to engage in the
+construction of the Panama Railroad. In 1852 he went to San Francisco,
+California, where he at once became the leader of the bar. He was not
+successful there in any of his political aspirations, and removed to
+Oregon. That State at once made him a United States Senator. The Civil
+War coming on, he resigned his seat in the Senate, raised "the
+California regiment," immediately went to the front, and was killed at
+Ball's Bluff, October 20, 1861.--. _J. McCan Davis_.]
+
+In 1844, being a presidential elector, Lincoln entered the canvass with
+ardor. Henry Clay was the candidate, and Lincoln shared the popular
+idolatry of the man. His devotion was not merely a sentiment, however.
+He had been an intelligent student of Clay's public life, and his
+sympathy was all with the principles of the "gallant Harry of the West."
+Throughout the campaign he worked zealously, travelling all over the
+State, speaking and talking. As a rule he was accompanied by a Democrat.
+The two went unannounced, simply stopping at some friendly house. On
+their arrival the word was sent around, "the candidates are here," and
+the men of the neighborhood gathered to hear the discussion, which was
+carried on in the most informal way, the candidates frequently sitting
+tipped back against the side of the house, or perched on a rail,
+whittling during the debates. Nor was all of this electioneering done by
+argument. Many votes were still cast in Illinois out of personal liking,
+and the wily candidate did his best to make himself agreeable,
+particularly to the women of the household. The Hon. William L.D. Ewing,
+a Democrat who travelled with Lincoln in one campaign, used to tell a
+story of how he and Lincoln were eager to win the favor of one of their
+hostesses, whose husband was an important man in his neighborhood.
+Neither had made much progress until at milking-time Mr. Ewing started
+after the woman of the house as she went to the yard, took her pail, and
+insisted on milking the cow himself. He naturally felt that this was a
+master stroke. But receiving no reply from the hostess, to whom he had
+been talking loudly as he milked, he looked around, only to see her and
+Lincoln leaning comfortably over the bars, engaged in an animated
+discussion. By the time he had his self-imposed task done, Lincoln had
+captivated the hostess, and all Mr. Ewing received for his pains was
+hearty thanks for giving her a chance to have so pleasant a talk with
+Mr. Lincoln.[5]
+
+[Footnote 5: Interview with Judge William Ewing of Chicago.]
+
+[Illustration: THE CARTER SCHOOLHOUSE PRECINCT, INDIANA, WHERE LINCOLN
+RENEWED ACQUAINTANCE WITH OLD NEIGHBORS IN 1844.]
+
+
+Lincoln's speeches at this time were not confined to his own State. He
+made several in Indiana, being invited thither by prominent Whig
+politicians who had heard him speak in Illinois. The first and most
+important of his meetings in Indiana was at Bruceville. The Democrats,
+learning of the proposed Whig gathering, arranged one, for the same
+evening, with Lieutenant William W. Carr of Vincennes as speaker. As
+might have been expected from the excited state of politics at the
+moment, the proximity of the two mass-meetings aroused party loyalty to
+a fighting pitch. "Each party was determined to break up the other's
+speaking," writes Miss O'Flynn, in a description of the Bruceville
+meeting prepared for this Magazine from interviews with those who took
+part in it. "The night was made hideous with the rattle of tin pans and
+bells and the blare of cow-horns. In spite of all the din and uproar of
+the younger element, a few grown-up male radicals and partisan women
+sang and cheered loudly for their favorites, who kept on with their flow
+of political information. Lieutenant Carr stood in his carriage, and
+addressed the crowd around him, while a local politician acted as grand
+marshal of the night, and urged the yelling Democratic legion to surge
+to the schoolhouse, where Abraham Lincoln was speaking, and run the
+Whigs from their headquarters. Old men now living, who were big boys
+then, cannot remember any of the burning eloquence of either speaker. As
+they now laughingly express it: 'We were far more interested in the
+noise and fussing than the success of the speakers, and we ran backward
+and forward from one camp to the other.'
+
+Fortunately, the remaining speeches in Indiana were made under more
+dignified conditions. One was delivered at Rockport; another "from the
+door of a harness shop" near Gentryville, Lincoln's old home in Indiana;
+and a third at the "Old Carter School" in the same neighborhood. At the
+delivery of the last many of Lincoln's old neighbors were present, and
+they still tell of the cordial way in which he greeted them and of the
+interest he showed in every familiar spot.
+
+"'I was a young fellow,' Mr. Redmond Grigsby says, 'and took a long time
+to get to the speaking. When I got to the out-skirts of the crowd, Mr.
+Lincoln saw me, and called out: "If that isn't Red Grigsby, then I'm a
+ghost." He then came through the crowd and met me. We shook hands and
+talked a little. His speech was good, and was talked about for a long
+while around in this section. The last words of his speech at the Carter
+schoolhouse were: 'My fellow-citizens, I may not live to see it, but
+give us protective tariff, and we will have the greatest country on the
+globe.'"
+
+"After the speaking was over, Mr. Josiah Crawford invited Abraham
+Lincoln and John W. Lamar to go home with him. As they rode along, Mr.
+Lincoln talked over olden times. He asked about a saw pit in which he
+had worked when a young boy. Mr. Crawford said it was still in
+existence, and that he would drive around near it. The three men,
+Lincoln, Crawford, and Lamar, went up into the woods where the old pit
+was. It had partly fallen down; the northwest corner, where Lincoln used
+to stand when working, was propped up by a large forked stick against a
+tree. Mr. Lincoln said: 'This looks more natural than I thought it would
+after so many years since I worked here.' During the time spent at Mr.
+Crawford's home, Mr. Lincoln went around inspecting everything."[6]
+
+[Footnote 6: Lincoln in Indiana in 1844. Unpublished MS. by Anna
+O'Flynn.]
+
+So vivid were the memories which this visit to Gentryville aroused, so
+deep were Lincoln's emotions, that he even attempted to express them in
+verse.
+
+[Illustration: THE REV. PETER CARTWRIGHT.
+
+The Rev. Peter Cartwright, the most famous itinerant preacher of the
+pioneer era, was born in Amherst County, Virginia, on James River,
+September 1, 1785. His father was a Revolutionary soldier, and soon
+after peace was declared the family moved to the wildest region of
+Kentucky. The migrating party consisted of two hundred families, guarded
+by an armed escort of one hundred men. Peter was a wild boy; but in his
+sixteenth year he was persuaded by his mother to join the Methodist
+Church. He at once displayed a wonderful talent for exhorting, and at
+the age of seventeen he became a licensed exhorter. A year later he
+became a regular travelling preacher. His reputation soon spread over
+Kentucky and Ohio. He hated slavery, and in 1823, to get into a free
+State, he and his wife (he had married Frances Gaines in 1808) and their
+seven children removed to Illinois. They settled in the Sangamon valley,
+near Springfield. For the next forty years he travelled over the State,
+most of the time on horseback, preaching the gospel in his unique and
+rugged fashion. His district was at first so large (extending from
+Kaskaskia to Galena) that he was unable to traverse the whole of it in
+the same year. He was elected to the legislature in 1828 and again in
+1832; Lincoln, in the latter year, being an opposing candidate. In 1846
+he was the Democratic nominee for Congress against Lincoln, and was
+badly beaten. Peter Cartwright enjoyed, perhaps, a larger personal
+acquaintance with the people of Illinois than any other man ever had.
+His name was familiar in every household in the West. Up to 1856 (he
+wrote an autobiography in that year) he had baptized twelve thousand
+persons and preached five hundred funeral sermons. His personality was
+quaint and original. A native vigor of intellect largely overbalanced
+the lack of education. He was a great wit, and often said startling
+things. His religion sometimes bordered upon fanaticism. He was fearless
+and aggressive, and was no respecter of persons. It was not a rare thing
+for him to descend from the pulpit, and by sheer physical force subdue a
+disorderly member of his congregation. On one occasion, attending a
+dinner given by Governor Edwards, he requested the governor to "say
+grace," observing that the ceremony was about to be dispensed with. The
+wife of a Methodist brother objected to family worship; Peter Cartwright
+shut her outdoors and kept her there until she became convinced of her
+error. At Nashville, Tennessee, as he was about to begin a sermon, a
+distinguished-looking stranger entered the church; some one whispered to
+him that it was Andrew Jackson; whereupon he at once blurted out, "Who
+is General Jackson? If he don't get his soul converted, God will damn
+him as quick as he would a Guinea nigger!" Attending the general
+conference in New York, he astonished the hotel clerk by asking for an
+axe "to blaze his way" up the six flights of stairs, so that he would
+not get lost on the return trip. He died in 1872, after having been a
+member of the Methodist Church for more than seventy-one years.--_J.
+McCan Davis_.]
+
+
+LINCOLN'S POSITION IN 1845 ON THE SLAVERY QUESTION.
+
+In this campaign of 1844 the annexation of Texas was one of the most
+hotly discussed questions. The Whigs opposed annexation, but their
+ground was not radical enough to suit the growing body of Abolitionists
+in the country, who nominated a third candidate, James G. Birney.
+Lincoln was obliged to meet the arguments of the Abolitionists
+frequently in his campaigning. In 1845, while working for Congress, he
+found the abolition sentiment stronger than ever. Prominent among the
+leaders of the third party in the State were two brothers, Williamson
+and Madison Durley of Hennepin, Illinois. They were outspoken advocates
+of their principles, and even operated a station of the underground
+railroad. Lincoln knew the Durleys, and, when visiting Hennepin to
+speak, solicited their support. They opposed their liberty principles.
+When Lincoln returned to Springfield he wrote Williamson Durley a letter
+which has never before been published,[7] and which sets forth with
+admirable clearness his exact position on the slavery question at that
+period. It must be regarded, we think, as the most valuable document on
+the question which we have up to this point in Lincoln's life.
+
+
+[Footnote 7: This letter is dated October 3, 1845. It is now owned by
+the son of Williamson Durley, Mr. A.W. Durley of West Superior,
+Wisconsin. Mr. C.W. Durley of Princeton, Illinois, kindly secured the
+copy for us from his brother.]
+
+[Illustration: SCHOOLHOUSE AT BRUCEVILLE, INDIANA, WHERE LINCOLN SPOKE
+FOR CLAY IN 1844.]
+
+    "When I saw you at home," Lincoln began, "it was agreed that I
+    should write to you and your brother Madison. Until I then saw
+    you I was not aware of your being what is generally called an
+    Abolitionist, or, as you call yourself, a Liberty man, though I
+    well knew there were many such in your county.
+
+    "I was glad to hear that you intended to attempt to bring about,
+    at the next election in Putnam, a union of the Whigs proper and
+    such of the Liberty men as are Whigs in principle on all
+    questions save only that of slavery. So far as I can perceive,
+    by such union neither party need yield anything on _the_
+    point in difference between them. If the Whig abolitionists of
+    New York had voted with us last fall, Mr. Clay would now be
+    President, Whig principles in the ascendant, and Texas not
+    annexed; whereas, by the division, all that either had at stake
+    in the contest was lost. And, indeed, it was extremely probable,
+    beforehand, that such would be the result. As I always
+    understood, the Liberty men deprecated the annexation of Texas
+    extremely; and this being so, why they should refuse to cast
+    their votes [so] as to prevent it, even to me seemed wonderful.
+    What was their process of reasoning, I can only judge from what
+    a single one of them told me. It was this: 'We are not to do
+    _evil_ that _good_ may come.' This general proposition
+    is doubtless correct; but did it apply? If by your votes you
+    could have prevented the _extension_, etc., of slavery,
+    would it not have been _good_, and not _evil_, so to
+    have used your votes, even though it involved the casting of
+    them for a slave-holder? By the _fruit_ the tree is to be
+    known. An _evil_ tree cannot bring forth _good_ fruit.
+    If the fruit of electing Mr. Clay would have been to prevent the
+    extension of slavery, could the act of electing have been evil?
+
+    "But I will not argue further. I perhaps ought to say that
+    individually I never was much interested in the Texas question.
+    I never could see much good to come of annexation, inasmuch as
+    they were already a free republican people on our own model. On
+    the other hand, I never could very clearly see how the
+    annexation would augment the evil of slavery. It always seemed
+    to me that slaves would be taken there in about equal numbers,
+    with or without annexation. And if more _were_ taken
+    because of annexation, still there would be just so many the
+    fewer left where they were taken from. It is possibly true, to
+    some extent, that, with annexation, some slaves may be sent to
+    Texas and continued in slavery that otherwise might have been
+    liberated. To whatever extent this may be true, I think
+    annexation an evil. I hold it to be a paramount duty of us in
+    the free States, due to the Union of the States, and perhaps to
+    liberty itself (paradox though it may seem), to let the slavery
+    of the other States alone; while, on the other hand, I hold it
+    to be equally clear that we should never knowingly lend
+    ourselves, directly or indirectly, to prevent that slavery from
+    dying a natural death--to find new places for it to live in,
+    when it can no longer exist in the old. Of course I am not now
+    considering what would be our duty in cases of insurrection
+    among the slaves. To recur to the Texas question, I understand
+    the Liberty men to have viewed annexation as a much greater evil
+    than ever I did; and I would like to convince you, if I could,
+    that they could have prevented it, without violation of
+    principle, if they had chosen.
+
+    "I intend this letter for you and Madison together; and if you
+    and he or either shall think fit to drop me a line, I shall be
+    pleased.
+
+    "Yours with respect,
+
+    "A. LINCOLN."
+
+
+LINCOLN AND HARDIN.
+
+
+As the time drew near for the convention of 1846 Lincoln learned that
+Hardin proposed to contest the nomination with him. Hardin certainly was
+free to do this. He had voluntarily declined the nomination in 1844,
+because of the events of the Pekin convention, but he had made no
+promise to do so in 1846. Many of the Whigs of the district had not
+expected him to be a candidate, however, arguing that Lincoln, because
+of his relation to the party, should be given his turn. "We do not
+entertain a doubt," wrote the editor of the "Sangamo Journal," in
+February, 1846, "that if we could reverse the positions of the two men,
+a very large portion of those who now support Mr. Lincoln most warmly
+would support General Hardin quite as warmly." Although Lincoln had
+anticipated that Hardin would enter the race, it made him anxious and a
+little melancholy.
+
+"Since I saw you last fall," he wrote on January 7, 1846, to his friend
+Dr. Robert Boal of Lacon, Illinois, in a letter hitherto unpublished[8],
+"I have often thought of writing you, as it was then understood I would;
+but, on reflection, I have always found that I had nothing new to tell
+you. All has happened as I then told you I expected it would--Baker's
+declining, Hardin's taking the track, and so on.
+
+[Footnote 8: This letter is still in the possession of Dr. Boal of
+Lacon, Illinois, and the right of publication was secured for the
+Magazine by W.B. Powell of that city.]
+
+"If Hardin and I stood precisely equal--that is, if _neither_ of us
+had been to Congress, or if we _both_ had--it would not only accord
+with what I have always done, for the sake of peace, to give way to him;
+and I expect I should do it. That I _can_ voluntarily postpone my
+pretensions, when they are no more than equal to those to which they are
+postponed, you have yourself seen. But to yield to Hardin under present
+circumstances seems to me as nothing else than yielding to one who would
+gladly sacrifice me altogether. This I would rather not submit to. That
+Hardin is talented, energetic, unusually generous and magnanimous, I
+have, before this, affirmed to you, and do not now deny. You know that
+my only argument is that 'turn about is fair play.' This he, practically
+at least, denies.
+
+"If it would not be taxing you too much, I wish you would write me,
+telling the aspect of things in your county, or rather your district;
+and also send the names of some of your Whig neighbors to whom I might,
+with propriety, write. Unless I can get some one to do this, Hardin,
+with his old franking list, will have the advantage of me. My reliance
+for a fair shake (and I want nothing more) in your county is chiefly on
+you, because of your position and standing, and because I am acquainted
+with so few others. Let me hear from you soon."
+
+[Illustration: HENRY CLAY.
+
+From a carbon reproduction, by Sherman and McHugh of New York City, of a
+daguerreotype in the collection of Peter Gilsey, Esq., and here
+reproduced through his courtesy.]
+
+Lincoln followed the vibrations of feeling in the various counties with
+extreme nicety, studying every individual whose loyalty he suspected or
+whose vote was not yet pledged. "Nathan Dresser is here," he wrote to
+his friend Bennett, on January 15, 1846, "and speaks as though the
+contest between Hardin and me is to be doubtful in Menard County. I know
+he is candid, and this alarms me some. I asked him to tell me the names
+of the men that were going strong for Hardin; he said Morris was about
+as strong as any. Now tell me, is Morris going it openly? You remember
+you wrote me that he would be neutral. Nathan also said that some man
+(who, he could not remember) had said lately that Menard County was
+again to decide the contest, and that made the contest very doubtful. Do
+you know who that was?
+
+"Don't fail to write me instantly on receiving, telling me
+all--particularly the names of those who are going strong against
+me[9]."
+
+[Footnote 9: This letter, hitherto unpublished, is owned by E. R.
+Oeltjen of Petersburg, Illinois.]
+
+In January, General Hardin suggested that, since he and Mr. Lincoln were
+the only persons mentioned as candidates, there be no convention, but
+the selection be left to the Whig voters of the district. Lincoln
+refused.
+
+"It seems to me," he wrote Hardin, "that on reflection you will see the
+fact of your having been in Congress has, in various ways, so spread
+your name in the district as to give you a decided advantage in such a
+stipulation. I appreciate your desire to keep down excitement; and I
+promise you to 'keep cool' under all circumstances.... I have always
+been in the habit of acceding to almost any proposal that a friend would
+make, and I am truly sorry that I cannot in this. I perhaps ought to
+mention that some friends at different places are endeavoring to secure
+the honor of the sitting of the convention at their towns respectively,
+and I fear that they would not feel much complimented if we shall make a
+bargain that it should sit nowhere."[10]
+
+
+[Footnote 10: From a letter published in the "Sangamo Journal" of
+February 26, 1846, and which is not found in any collection of Lincoln's
+letters and speeches.]
+
+After General Hardin received this refusal he withdrew from the contest,
+in a manly and generous letter which was warmly approved by the Whigs of
+the district. Both men were so much loved that a break between them
+would have been a disastrous thing for the party. "We are truly glad
+that a contest which in its nature was calculated to weaken the ties of
+friendship has terminated amicably," said the "Sangamo Journal."
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT C. WINTHROP, SPEAKER OF THE THIRTIETH CONGRESS.
+
+Born in Boston in 1809, graduated at Harvard, and studied law with
+Daniel Webster. Winthrop's career as a statesman began with his election
+to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1834. He remained there
+until elected to Congress in 1840, where he served ten years. In 1847 he
+was elected Speaker by the Whigs. In 1850 Winthrop was appointed Senator
+to take Daniel Webster's place, but he was defeated in his efforts to be
+re-elected. Candidate for governor in the same year, he was also
+defeated. He retired from politics after this, though often offered
+various candidacies. Winthrop was especially noted as an orator.]
+
+The charge that Hardin, Baker, and Lincoln tried to ruin one another in
+this contest for Congress has often been denied by their associates, and
+never more emphatically than by Judge Gillespie, an influential
+politician of the State. In an unpublished letter Judge Gillespie says:
+"Hardin was one of the most unflinching and unfaltering Whigs that ever
+drew the breath of life. He was a mirror of chivalry, and so was Baker.
+Lincoln had boundless respect for, and confidence in, them both. He knew
+they would sacrifice themselves rather than do an act that could savor
+in the slightest degree of meanness or dishonor. Those men, Lincoln,
+Hardin, and Baker, were bosom friends, to my certain knowledge....
+Lincoln felt that they could be actuated by nothing but the most
+honorable sentiments towards him. For although they were rivals, they
+were all three men of the most punctilious honor, and devoted friends. I
+knew them intimately, and can say confidently that there never was a
+particle of envy on the part of one towards the other. The rivalry
+between them was of the most honorable and friendly character, and when
+Hardin and Baker were killed (Hardin in Mexico, and Baker at Ball's
+Bluff) Lincoln felt that in the death of each he had lost a dear and
+true friend[11]."
+
+[Footnote 11: From an unpublished letter by Joseph Gillespie, owned by
+Mrs. Ellen Hardin Walworth of New York City.]
+
+[Illustration: COURTHOUSE AT PETERSBURG, MENARD COUNTY, WHERE LINCOLN
+WAS NOMINATED FOR CONGRESS.]
+
+After Hardin's withdrawal, Lincoln went about in his characteristic way
+trying to soothe his and Hardin's friends. "Previous to General Hardin's
+withdrawal," he wrote one of his correspondents,[12] "some of his
+friends and some of mine had become a little warm; and I felt ... that
+for them now to meet face to face and converse together was the best way
+to efface any remnant of unpleasant feeling, if any such existed. I did
+not suppose that General Hardin's friends were in any greater need of
+having their feelings corrected than mine were."
+
+[Footnote 12: From an unpublished letter to Judge James Berdan of
+Jacksonville, Illinois, dated April 26, 1846. The original is now owned
+by Mrs. Mary Berdan Tiffany of Springfield, Illinois.]
+
+In May, Lincoln was nominated. His Democratic opponent was Peter
+Cartwright, the famous Methodist exhorter. Cartwright had been in
+politics before, and made an energetic canvass. His chief weapon against
+Lincoln was the old charges of deism and aristocracy; but they failed of
+effect, and in August, Lincoln was elected.
+
+The contest over, sudden and characteristic disillusion seized him.
+"Being elected to Congress, though I am grateful to our friends for
+having done it, has not pleased me as much as I expected," he wrote
+Speed.
+
+
+LINCOLN GOES TO WASHINGTON.
+
+In November, 1847, Lincoln started for Washington. The city in 1848 was
+little more than the outline of the Washington of 1896. The Capitol was
+without the present wings, dome, or western terrace. The White House,
+the City Hall, the Treasury, the Patent Office, and the Post-Office were
+the only public buildings standing then which have not been rebuilt or
+materially changed. The streets were unpaved, and their dust in summer
+and mud in winter are celebrated in every record of the period. The
+parks and circles were still unplanted. Near the White House were a few
+fine old homes, and Capitol Hill was partly built over. Although there
+were deplorable wastes between these two points, the majority of the
+people lived in this part of the city, on or near Pennsylvania Avenue.
+The winter that Lincoln was in Washington, Daniel Webster lived on
+Louisiana Avenue, near Sixth Street; Speaker Winthrop and Thomas H.
+Benton on C Street, near Third; John Quincy Adams and James Buchanan,
+the latter then Secretary of State, on F Street, between Thirteenth and
+Fourteenth. Many of the senators and congressmen were in hotels, the
+leading ones of which were Willard's, Coleman's, Gadsby's, Brown's,
+Young's, Fuller's, and the United States. Stephen A. Douglas, who was in
+Washington for his first term as senator, lived at Willard's. So
+inadequate were the hotel accommodations during the sessions that
+visitors to the town were frequently obliged to accept most
+uncomfortable makeshifts for beds. Seward, visiting the city in 1847,
+tells of sleeping on "a cot between two beds occupied by strangers."
+
+The larger number of members lived in "messes," a species of
+boarding-club, over which the owner of the house occupied usually
+presided. The "National Intelligencer" of the day is sprinkled with
+announcements of persons "prepared to accommodate a mess of members."
+Lincoln went to live in one of the best known of these clubs, Mrs.
+Sprigg's, in "Duff Green's Row," on Capitol Hill. This famous row has
+now entirely disappeared, the ground on which it stood being occupied by
+the new Congressional Library.
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT SMITH, COLLEAGUE OF LINCOLN'S IN CONGRESS.
+
+Born in New Hampshire in 1802; removed to Illinois in 1832. A member of
+the legislature from 1836 to 1840, and of Congress from 1843 to 1849.
+During the war, paymaster in the United States Army at St. Louis. Died
+at Alton in 1868.]
+
+At Mrs. Sprigg's, Lincoln had as mess-mates several Congressmen: A.R.
+McIlvaine, James Pollock, John Strohm, and John Blanchard, all of
+Pennsylvania, Patrick Tompkins of Mississippi, Joshua R. Giddings of
+Ohio, and Elisha Embree of Indiana. Among his neighbors in messes on
+Capitol Hill were Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, Alexander H. Stephens of
+Georgia, and Jefferson Davis of Mississippi. Only one of the members of
+the mess at Mrs. Sprigg's in the winter of 1847-1848 is now living, Dr.
+S.C. Busey of Washington, D.C. He sat nearly opposite Lincoln at the
+table.
+
+"I soon learned to know and admire him," says Dr. Busey[13], "for his
+simple and unostentatious manners, kind-heartedness, and amusing jokes,
+anecdotes, and witticisms. When about to tell an anecdote during a meal
+he would lay down his knife and fork, place his elbows upon the table,
+rest his face between his hands, and begin with the words, 'That reminds
+me,' and proceed. Everybody prepared for the explosions sure to follow.
+I recall with vivid pleasure the scene of merriment at the dinner after
+his first speech in the House of Representatives, occasioned by the
+descriptions, by himself and others of the Congressional mess, of the
+uproar in the House during its delivery.
+
+[Footnote 13: "Personal Reminiscences and Recollections," by Samuel C.
+Busey, M.D., LL.D., Washington, D.C., 1895.]
+
+[Illustration: "LONG JOHN" WENTWORTH, COLLEAGUE OF LINCOLN'S IN
+CONGRESS.
+
+Wentworth removed to Chicago from New Hampshire in 1836, where he
+published the "Chicago Democrat." He was twice Mayor of Chicago, and
+served in Congress from 1843 to 1851. He was an ardent anti-slavery man.
+He died in 1888.]
+
+"Congressman Lincoln was always neatly but very plainly dressed, very
+simple and approachable in manner, and unpretentious. He attended to his
+business, going promptly to the House and remaining till the session
+adjourned, and appeared to be familiar with the progress of
+legislation."
+
+The town offered then little in the way of amusement. The Adelphi
+Theatre was opened that winter for the first time, and presented a
+variety of mediocre plays. At the Olympia were "lively and beautiful
+exhibitions of model artists." Herz and Sivori, the pianists, then
+touring in the United States, played several times in the season; and
+there was a Chinese Museum. Add the exhibitions of Brown's paintings of
+the heroes of Palo Alto, Resaca, Monterey, and Buena Vista, and of
+Powers's "Greek Slave," the performances of Dr. Valentine, "Delineator
+of Eccentricities," a few lectures, and numerous church socials, and you
+have about all there was in the way of public entertainment in
+Washington in 1848. But of dinners, receptions, and official gala
+affairs there were many. Lincoln's name appears frequently in the
+"National Intelligencer" on committees to offer dinners to this or that
+great man. He was, in the spring of 1849, one of the managers of the
+inaugural ball given to Taylor. His simple, sincere friendliness and his
+quaint humor won him soon a sure, if quiet, social position. He was
+frequently invited to Mr. Webster's Saturday breakfasts, where his
+stories were highly relished for their originality and drollery.
+
+[Illustration: STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS, COLLEAGUE OF LINCOLN'S IN CONGRESS.
+
+Member of the United States House of Representatives during the
+twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth Congresses. In 1846 Douglas was chosen
+Senator by the Democrats.]
+
+[Illustration: WILLIAM A. RICHARDSON, COLLEAGUE OF LINCOLN'S IN
+CONGRESS.
+
+Richardson removed to Illinois from Kentucky about 1831. He was a
+prominent Democratic politician, serving in the state legislature and in
+Congress. He was a captain in the Mexican War, Governor of the territory
+of Nebraska in 1858, and in 1863 the successor of Douglas in the United
+States Senate. He died in 1875.]
+
+[Illustration: SIDNEY BREESE, COLLEAGUE OF LINCOLN'S IN CONGRESS.
+
+Sidney Breese was born at Whitesboro, New York, July 15, 1800; graduated
+from Union College, New York, in 1818; and at once removed to Illinois,
+where he was admitted to the bar. He became active in the Democratic
+party, and served in many important positions: United States District
+Attorney, Judge of the Supreme Court, and United States Senator. He died
+in 1878.]
+
+Dr. Busey recalls his popularity at one of the leading places of
+amusement on Capitol Hill.
+
+"Congressman Lincoln was very fond of bowling," he says, "and would
+frequently join others of the mess, or meet other members in a match
+game, at the alley of James Casparis, which was near the boarding-house.
+He was a very awkward bowler, but played the game with great zest and
+spirit, solely for exercise and amusement, and greatly to the enjoyment
+and entertainment of the other players and bystanders by his criticisms
+and funny illustrations. He accepted success and defeat with like good
+nature and humor, and left the alley at the conclusion of the game
+without a sorrow or disappointment. When it was known that he was in the
+alley, there would assemble numbers of people to witness the fun which
+was anticipated by those who knew of his fund of anecdotes and jokes.
+When in the alley, surrounded by a crowd of eager listeners, he indulged
+with great freedom in the sport of narrative, some of which were very
+broad. His witticisms seemed for the most part to be impromptu, but he
+always told the anecdotes and jokes as if he wished to convey the
+impression that he had heard them from some one; but they appeared very
+many times as if they had been made for the immediate occasion."
+
+Another place where he became at home and was much appreciated was in
+the post-office at the Capitol. "During the Christmas holidays," says
+Ben: Perley Poore, "Mr. Lincoln found his way into the small room used
+as the post-office of the House, where a few jovial _raconteurs_
+used to meet almost every morning, after the mail had been distributed
+into the members' boxes, to exchange such new stories as any of them
+might have acquired since they had last met. After modestly standing at
+the door for several days, Mr. Lincoln was reminded of a story, and by
+New Year's he was recognized as the champion story-teller of the
+Capitol. His favorite seat was at the left of the open fireplace, tilted
+back in his chair, with his long legs reaching over to the chimney jamb.
+He never told a story twice, but appeared to have an endless
+_repertoire_ of them always ready, like the successive charges in a
+magazine gun, and always pertinently adapted to some passing event. It
+was refreshing to us correspondents, compelled as we were to listen to
+so much that was prosy and tedious, to hear this bright specimen of
+Western genius tell his inimitable stories, especially his reminiscences
+of the Black Hawk War."
+
+[Illustration: ORLANDO B. FICKLIN, COLLEAGUE OF LINCOLN'S IN CONGRESS.
+
+Ficklin was a Kentuckian who settled in Illinois in 1830. He served four
+terms in the state legislature, four terms in Congress, and filled many
+important posts in the Democratic party, of which he was a leader. He
+died in 1885.]
+
+
+LINCOLN'S WORK IN THE THIRTIETH CONGRESS.
+
+
+But Lincoln had gone to Washington for work, and he at once interested
+himself in the Whig organization formed to elect the officers of the
+House. There was only a small Whig majority, and it took skill and
+energy to keep the offices in the party. Lincoln's share in achieving
+this result was generally recognized. As late as 1860, twelve years
+after the struggle, Robert C. Winthrop of Massachusetts, who was elected
+speaker, said in a speech in Boston wherein he discussed Lincoln's
+nomination to the Presidency: "You will be sure that I remember him with
+interest, if I may be allowed to remind you that he helped to make me
+the speaker of the Thirtieth Congress, when the vote was a very close
+and strongly contested vote."
+
+[Illustration: GENERAL JOHN A. MCCLERNAND, COLLEAGUE OF LINCOLN'S IN
+CONGRESS.
+
+Came to Illinois from Kentucky when a boy. Served in Black Hawk War, and
+was one of the earliest editors of the State. Served three terms in the
+state legislature, and in Congress. Was active in the war, rising to the
+rank of major-general. General McClernand is still living in
+Springfield, Illinois.]
+
+A week after Congress organized, Lincoln wrote to Springfield: "As you
+are all so anxious for me to distinguish myself, I have concluded to do
+so before long;" and he did it--but not exactly as his Springfield
+friends wished. The United States were then at war with Mexico, a war
+that the Whigs abhorred. Lincoln had used his influence against it; but,
+hostilities declared, he had publicly affirmed that every loyal man must
+stand by the army. Many of his friends, Hardin, Baker, and Shields,
+among others, were at that moment in Mexico. Lincoln had gone to
+Washington intending to say nothing in opposition to the war. But the
+administration wished to secure from the Whigs not only votes of
+supplies and men, but a resolution declaring that the war was just and
+right. Lincoln, with others of his party in Congress, refused his
+sanction, voting a resolution that the war had been "unnecessarily and
+unconstitutionally" begun. On December 22d he made his debut in the
+House by the famous "Spot Resolutions," a series of searching questions
+so clearly put, so strong historically and logically, that they drove
+the administration step by step from the "spot" where the war began, and
+showed that it had been the aggressor in the conquest. In January
+Lincoln followed up these resolutions with a speech in support of his
+position. His action was much criticised in Illinois, where the sound of
+the drum and the intoxication of victory had completely turned attention
+from the moral side of the question, and Lincoln found himself obliged
+to defend his position with even his oldest friends.
+
+[Illustration: THE CAPITOL AT WASHINGTON IN 1846]
+
+The routine work assigned him in the Thirtieth Congress was on the
+Committee on the Post-office and Post Roads. Several reports were made
+by him from this committee. These reports, with a speech on internal
+improvements, cover his published work in the House up to July. Then he
+made a speech which was at the time quoted far and wide.
+
+In July Zachary Taylor had been nominated at Philadelphia for President
+by the Whigs. Lincoln had been at the convention, and went back to
+Washington full of enthusiasm. "In my opinion we shall have a most
+overwhelming, glorious triumph," he wrote a friend. "One unmistakable
+sign is that all the odds and ends are with us--Barnburners, Native
+Americans, Tyler men, disappointed office-seekers, Locofocos, and the
+Lord knows what. This is important, if in nothing else, in showing which
+way the wind blows."
+
+In connection with Alexander H. Stephens, with whom he had become a warm
+friend, Toombs, and Preston, Lincoln formed the first Congressional
+Taylor Club, known as the "Young Indians." Campaigning had already begun
+on the floor of Congress, and the members were daily making speeches for
+the various candidates. On July 27th Lincoln made a speech for Taylor.
+It was a boisterous election speech, full of merciless caricaturing, and
+delivered with inimitable drollery. It kept the House in an uproar, and
+was reported the country over by the Whig press. The "Baltimore
+American," in giving a synopsis of it, called it the "crack speech of
+the day," and said of Lincoln: "He is a very able, acute, uncouth,
+honest, upright man, and a tremendous wag, withal.... Mr. Lincoln's
+manner was so good-natured, and his style so peculiar, that he kept the
+House in a continuous roar of merriment for the last half hour of his
+speech. He would commence a point in his speech far up one of the
+aisles, and keep on talking, gesticulating, and walking until he would
+find himself, at the end of a paragraph, down in the centre of the area
+in front of the clerk's desk. He would then go back and take another
+_head_, and _work down_ again. And so on, through his capital
+speech."
+
+
+LINCOLN GOES TO NEW ENGLAND.--A NEW SPEECH.
+
+This speech, as well as the respect Lincoln's work in the House had
+inspired among the leaders of the party, brought him an invitation to
+deliver several campaign speeches in New England at the close of
+Congress, and he went there early in September. There was in New
+England, at that date, much strong anti-slavery feeling. The Whigs
+claimed to be "Free Soilers" as well as the party which appropriated
+that name, and Lincoln, in the first speech he made, defined carefully
+his position on the slavery question. This was at Worcester,
+Massachusetts, on September 12th. The Whig State convention had met to
+nominate a candidate for governor, and the most eminent Whigs of
+Massachusetts were present. Curiously enough the meeting was presided
+over by ex-Governor Levi Lincoln, a descendant, like Abraham Lincoln,
+from the original Samuel of Hingham. There were many brilliant speeches
+made; but if we are to trust the reports of the day, Lincoln's was the
+one which by its logic, its clearness, and its humor, did most for the
+Whig cause. "Gentlemen inform me," says one Boston reporter, who came
+too late for the exercises, "that it was one of the best speeches ever
+heard in Worcester, and that several Whigs who had gone off on the Free
+Soil fizzle have come back again to the Whig ranks."
+
+A report was made and printed in the Boston "Advertiser," though it has
+hitherto been entirely overlooked by biographers of Lincoln. A search
+made for this magazine through the files of the Boston and Worcester
+papers of the year brought it to light, and we reprint it here for the
+first time. It gives concisely what Lincoln thought about the slavery
+question in 1848. The report reads:
+
+"Mr. Lincoln has a very tall and thin figure, with an intellectual
+face, showing a searching mind and a cool judgment. He spoke in a
+clear and cool and very eloquent manner for an hour and a half,
+carrying the audience with him in his able arguments and brilliant
+illustrations--only interrupted by warm and frequent applause. He
+began by expressing a real feeling of modesty in addressing an
+audience this 'side of the mountains,' a part of the country where, in
+the opinion of the people of his section, everybody was supposed to be
+instructed and wise. But he had devoted his attention to the question
+of the coming Presidential election, and was not unwilling to exchange
+with all whom he might the ideas to which he had arrived. He then
+began to show the fallacy of some of the arguments against General
+Taylor, making his chief theme the fashionable statement of all those
+who oppose him (the old Locofocos as well as the new), that he _has no
+principles_, and that the Whig party have abandoned their principles
+by adopting him as their candidate. He maintained that General Taylor
+occupied a high and unexceptionable Whig ground, and took for his
+first instance and proof of this his statement in the Allison
+letter--with regard to the Bank, Tariff, Rivers and Harbors,
+etc.--that the will of the people should produce its own results,
+without executive influence. The principle that the people should do
+what--under the Constitution--they please, is a Whig principle. All
+that, General Taylor not only consents to, but appeals to the people
+to judge and act for themselves. And this was no new doctrine for
+Whigs. It was the 'platform' on which they had fought all their
+battles, the resistance of executive influence, and the principle of
+enabling the people to frame the government according to their will.
+General Taylor consents to be the candidate, and to assist the people
+to do what they think to be their duty, and think to be best in their
+national affairs; but because _he don't want to tell what we ought to
+do_, he is accused of having no principles. The Whigs have maintained
+for years that neither the influence, the duress, nor the prohibition
+of the executive should control the legitimately expressed will of the
+people; and now that on that very ground General Taylor says that he
+should use the power given him by the people to do, to the best of his
+judgment, the will of the people, he is accused of want of principle
+and of inconsistency in position.
+
+"Mr. Lincoln proceeded to examine the absurdity of an attempt to make a
+platform or creed for a national party, to _all_ parts of which
+_all_ must consent and agree, when it was clearly the intention and
+the true philosophy of our government, that in Congress all opinions and
+principles should be represented, and that when the wisdom of all had
+been compared and united, the will of the majority should be carried
+out. On this ground he conceived (and the audience seemed to go with
+him) that General Taylor held correct, sound republican principles.
+
+[Illustration: LEVI LINCOLN, GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS FROM 1825 TO
+1834.
+
+From a photograph kindly loaned by Miss Frances M. Lincoln of Worcester,
+Massachusetts, after a painting by Chester Harding. Levi Lincoln was
+born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1782, and died there in 1868. He
+was a fourth cousin of Thomas Lincoln, father of the President, being
+descended from the oldest son of Samuel Lincoln of Hingham,
+Massachusetts, from whose fourth son, Mordecai, Abraham Lincoln
+descended. Levi Lincoln was a graduate of Harvard, and studied law,
+practising in Worcester. He filled many important public positions in
+the State, serving in the legislature, and as lieutenant-governor, judge
+of the Supreme Court, and from 1825 to 1834 as governor. He represented
+the Whigs in Congress from 1835 to 1841, and after the expiration of his
+term was made collector of the port of Boston. Levi Lincoln was an
+active member of several learned societies, and prominent in all the
+public functions of his State. In 1848, when Abraham Lincoln, then
+member of Congress, spoke in Worcester, ex-Governor Lincoln presided.]
+
+"Mr. Lincoln then passed to the subject of slavery in the States, saying
+that the people of Illinois agreed entirely with the people of
+Massachusetts on this subject, except, perhaps, that they did not keep
+so constantly thinking about it. All agreed that slavery was an evil,
+but that we were not responsible for it, and cannot affect it in States
+of this Union where we do not live. But the question of the
+_extension_ of slavery to new territories of this country is a part
+of our responsibility and care, and is under our control. In opposition
+to this Mr. Lincoln believed that the self-named 'Free Soil' party was
+far behind the Whigs. Both parties opposed the extension. As he
+understood it, the new party had no principle except this opposition. If
+their platform held any other, it was in such a general way that it was
+like the pair of pantaloons the Yankee peddler offered for sale, 'large
+enough for any man, small enough for any boy.' They therefore had taken
+a position calculated to break down their single important declared
+object. They were working for the election of either General Cass or
+General Taylor. The speaker then went on to show, clearly and
+eloquently, the danger of extension of slavery likely to result from the
+election of General Cass. To unite with those who annexed the new
+territory, to prevent the extension of slavery in that territory, seemed
+to him to be in the highest degree absurd and ridiculous. Suppose these
+gentlemen succeed in electing Mr. Van Buren, they had no specific means
+to _prevent_ the extension of slavery to New Mexico and California;
+and General Taylor, he confidently believed, would not encourage it, and
+would not prohibit its restriction. But if General Cass was elected, he
+felt certain that the plans of farther extension of territory would be
+encouraged, and those of the extension of slavery would meet no check.
+The 'Free Soil' men, in claiming that name, indirectly attempt a
+deception, by implying that Whigs were _not_ Free Soil men. In
+declaring that they would 'do their duty and leave the consequences to
+God,' they merely gave an excuse for taking a course they were not able
+to maintain by a fair and full argument. To make this declaration did
+not show what their duty was. If it did, we should have no use for
+judgment; we might as well be made without intellect; and when divine or
+human law does not clearly point out what _is_ our duty, we have no
+means of finding out what it is but using our most intelligent judgment
+of the consequences. If there were divine law or human law for voting
+for Martin Van Buren, or if a fair examination of the consequences and
+first reasoning would show that voting for him would bring about the
+ends they pretended to wish, then he would give up the argument. But
+since there was no fixed law on the subject, and since the whole
+probable result of their action would be an assistance in electing
+General Cass, he must say that they were behind the Whigs in their
+advocacy of the freedom of the soil.
+
+"Mr. Lincoln proceeded to rally the Buffalo convention for forbearing to
+say anything--after all the previous declarations of those members who
+were formerly Whigs--on the subject of the Mexican War because the Van
+Burens had been known to have supported it. He declared that of all the
+parties asking the confidence of the country, this new one had
+_less_ of principle than any other.
+
+"He wondered whether it was still the opinion of these Free Soil
+gentlemen, as declared in the 'whereas' at Buffalo, that the Whig and
+Democratic parties were both entirely dissolved and absorbed into their
+own body. Had the _Vermont election_ given them any light? They had
+calculated on making as great an impression in that State as in any part
+of the Union, and there their attempts had been wholly ineffectual.
+Their failure there was a greater success than they would find in any
+other part of the Union.
+
+"Mr. Lincoln went on to say that he honestly believed that, if all those
+who wished to keep up the character of the Union, who did not believe in
+enlarging our field, but in keeping our fences where they are, and
+cultivating our present possessions, making it a garden, improving the
+morals and education of the people, devoting the administrations to this
+purpose--all real Whigs, friends of good honest government--will unite,
+the race was ours. He had opportunities of hearing from almost every
+part of the Union, from reliable sources, and had not heard of a county
+in which we had not received accessions from other parties. If the true
+Whigs come forward and join these new friends, they need not have a
+doubt. We had a candidate whose personal character and principles he had
+already described, whom he could not eulogize if he would. General
+Taylor had been constantly, perseveringly, quietly standing up, _doing
+his duty_, and asking no praise or reward for it. He was and must be
+just the man to whom the interests, principles, and prosperity of the
+country might be safely intrusted. He had never failed in anything he
+had undertaken, although many of his duties had been considered almost
+impossible.
+
+"Mr. Lincoln then went into a terse though rapid review of the origin of
+the Mexican War, and the connection of the administration and General
+Taylor with it, from which he deduced a strong appeal to the Whigs
+present to do their duty in the support of General Taylor, and closed
+with the warmest aspirations for and confidence in a deserved success.
+
+"At the close of this truly masterly and convincing speech, the audience
+gave three enthusiastic cheers for Illinois, and three more for the
+eloquent Whig member from that State."
+
+After the speech at Worcester, Lincoln spoke at Dorchester, Dedham,
+Roxbury, and Chelsea, and on September 22d, in Tremont Temple,
+Boston,[14] following a splendid oration by Governor Seward. His speech
+on this occasion was not reported, though the Boston papers united in
+calling it "powerful and convincing." His success at Worcester and
+Boston was such that invitations came from all over New England asking
+him to speak, and "The Atlas," to which many of these requests were
+sent, was obliged finally to print the following note:
+
+[Footnote 14: At this meeting the secretary was Ezra Lincoln, also a
+descendant of Samuel Lincoln of Hingham.]
+
+    HON. ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
+
+    In answer to the many applications which we daily receive from
+    different parts of the State for this gentleman to speak, we
+    have to say that he left Boston on Saturday morning on his way
+    home to Illinois.
+
+But Lincoln won something in New England of vastly deeper importance
+than a reputation for making popular campaign speeches. He for the first
+time caught a glimpse of the utter irreconcilableness of the Northern
+conviction that slavery was evil and unendurable, and the Southern claim
+that it was divine and necessary; and he began here to realize that
+something must be done. Listening to Seward's speech in Tremont Temple,
+he seems to have had a sudden insight into the truth, a quick
+illumination; and that night, as the two men sat talking, he said
+gravely to the great anti-slavery advocate:
+
+"Governor Seward, I have been thinking about what you said in your
+speech. I reckon you are right. We have got to deal with this slavery
+question, and got to give much more attention to it hereafter than we
+have been doing."
+
+
+
+
+[BEGUN IN THE APRIL NUMBER.]
+
+[Illustration: "PHROSO"]
+
+A TALE OF BRAVE DEEDS AND PERILOUS VENTURES
+
+BY ANTHONY HOPE,
+
+Author of "The Prisoner of Zenda," "The Dolly Dialogues," etc.
+
+SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS ALREADY PUBLISHED.
+
+    Lord Charles Wheatley, having taken leave in London (in a
+    parting not overcharged with emotion) of Miss Beatrice Hipgrave,
+    to whom he is to be married in a year; of her mother, Mrs.
+    Kennett Hipgrave. and of Mr. Bennett Hamlyn, a rich young man
+    who gives promise of seeing that Miss Hipgrave does not wholly
+    lack a man's attentions in the absence of her lover,--sets put
+    to enter possession of a remote Greek island, Neopalia, which he
+    has purchased of the hereditary lord, Stefanopoulos. But on
+    arriving he finds himself anything but welcome. He and his
+    companions,--namely, his cousin, Denny Swinton; his factotum,
+    Hogvardt; and his servant, Watkins,--are at once locked up; and
+    though released soon, it is with a warning from the populace,
+    headed by Vlacho, the innkeeper, that if found on the island
+    after six o'clock the next morning, their lives will not be
+    worth much. Toward midnight, little disposed to sleep, and
+    curious to look about somewhat before leaving the island, they
+    stroll inland, and come by chance upon the manor-house, still
+    and apparently deserted. Curiosity drives them to enter. They
+    find Lord Stefanopoulos, whom Vlacho had reported to them as
+    recently dead of a fever, not dead, but on the point of
+    dying--from a dagger wound. And the wound, they learn from his
+    own lips, was given him by his nephew, Constantine, in a tumult
+    that arose a few hours before when the people came up to protest
+    against the sale of the island, and to persuade the lord to send
+    the strangers away. Constantine, it further appears, is making
+    them all their trouble, having come to the island just ahead of
+    them to that end, after learning their plans by overhearing
+    Wheatley talking in a London restaurant. In the darkness, on
+    their way up, they have met a man and a woman going toward the
+    village. The man, by his voice, they knew to be Constantine. The
+    woman, they now learn, was the Lady Euphrosyne, cousin of
+    Constantine and heiress to the island. From talk overheard
+    between her and Constantine, she had seemed to be, while
+    desirous of their departure, also anxious to spare them harm. In
+    full possession of the house, they decide to stand siege, though
+    scant of provisions and ammunition, and armed only with their
+    own revolvers and a rifle left behind by Constantine. Soon
+    Stefanopoulos dies, and by an old serving-woman they send
+    warning to Constantine that he shall be brought to justice for
+    his crime. Thus passes the night. Next morning Wheatley's
+    attention is engaged by a woman studying them through a
+    field-glass from before a small bungalow, higher up the
+    mountain. Then Vlacho, the innkeeper, presents himself for a
+    parley, of which nothing comes but the disclosure that
+    Constantine is pledged to marry Euphrosyne, while already
+    secretly married to another woman. The evening falls with the
+    "death-chant" sounding in the air--a chant made by Alexander the
+    Bard when an earlier Lord Stefanopoulos was killed by the people
+    for having tried to sell the island. Lord Wheatley himself tells
+    the story.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+A RAID AND A RAIDER.
+
+
+It was between eight and nine o'clock when the first of the enemy
+appeared on the road, in the persons of two smart fellows in gleaming
+kilts and braided jackets. It was no more than just dusk, and I saw that
+they were strangers to me. One was tall and broad, the other shorter,
+and of very slight build. They came on towards us confidently enough. I
+was looking over Denny's shoulder; he held Constantine's rifle, and I
+knew that he was impatient to try it. But inasmuch as might was
+certainly not on our side, I was determined that right should abide with
+us, and was resolute not to begin hostilities. Constantine had at least
+one powerful motive for wishing our destruction; I would not furnish him
+with any plausible excuse for indulging his desire. So we stood, Denny
+and I at one window, Hogvardt and Watkins at the other, and watched the
+approaching figures. No more appeared; the main body did not show
+itself, and the sound of the fierce chant had suddenly died away. But
+all at once a third man appeared, running rapidly after the first two.
+He caught the shorter by the arm, and seemed to argue or expostulate
+with him. For a while the three stood thus talking; then I saw the last
+comer make a gesture of protest, and they all came on together.
+
+"Push the barrel of that rifle a little farther out," said I to Denny,
+"It may be useful to them to know it's there."
+
+Denny obeyed. The result was a sudden pause in our friends' advance; but
+they were near enough now for me to distinguish the last comer, and I
+discerned in him, although he wore the native costume, and had discarded
+his tweed suit, Constantine Stefanopoulos himself.
+
+"Here's an exercise of self-control," I groaned, laying a detaining hand
+on Denny's shoulder.
+
+As I spoke, Constantine put a whistle to his lips and blew loudly. The
+blast was followed by the appearance of five more fellows. In three of
+them I recognized old acquaintances--Vlacho, Demetri, and Spiro. These
+three all carried guns; and the whole eight came forward again, till
+they were within a hundred yards of us. There they halted, and, with a
+sudden, swift movement, three barrels were levelled at the window where
+Denny and I were looking out. Well, we ducked. There is no use in
+denying it. For we thought that the fusillade had really begun. Yet no
+shot followed, and, after an instant, holding Denny down, I peered out
+cautiously myself. The three stood motionless, their aim full on us. The
+other five were advancing cautiously, well under the shelter of the
+rock, two on one side of the road and three on the other. The slim,
+boyish fellow was with Constantine, on our right hand; a moment later
+the other three dashed across the road and joined them. Suddenly what
+military men call "the objective," the aim of these manoeuvres, flashed
+across me. It was simple almost to ludicrousness; yet it was very
+serious, for it showed a reasoned plan of campaign, with which we were
+very ill prepared to cope. While the three held us in check, the five
+were going to carry off our cows. And without our cows we should soon be
+hard put to it for food. For the cows had formed in our plans a most
+important _piece de resistance_.
+
+"This won't do," said I. "They're after the cows." And I took the rifle
+from Denny's hand, cautioning him not to show his face at the window.
+Then I stood in the shelter of the wall, so that I could not be hit by
+the three, and levelled the rifle, not at any human enemies, but at the
+unoffending cows.
+
+"A dead cow," I remarked, "is a great deal harder to move than a live
+one."
+
+The five had now come quite near the pen of rude hurdles in which the
+cows were. As I spoke, Constantine appeared to give some order; and
+while he and the boy stood looking on, Constantine leaning on his gun,
+the boy's hand resting with jaunty elegance on the handle of the knife
+in his girdle, the others leaped over the hurdles. Crack, went the
+rifle! A cow fell! I reloaded hastily. Crack! And the second cow fell.
+It was very fair shooting in such a bad light, for I hit both mortally;
+and my skill was rewarded by a shout of anger from the robbers (for
+robbers they were; I had bought the live stock).
+
+"Carry them off now!" I cried, carelessly showing myself at the window.
+But I did not stay there long, for three shots rang out, and the bullets
+pattered on the masonry above me. Luckily the covering party had aimed a
+trifle too high.
+
+"No more milk, my lord," observed Watkins, in a regretful tone. He had
+seen the catastrophe from the other window.
+
+The besiegers were checked. They leaped out of the pen with alacrity. I
+suppose they realized that they were exposed to my fire, while at that
+particular angle I was protected from the attack of their friends. They
+withdrew to the middle of the road, selecting a spot at which I could
+not take aim without showing myself at the window. I dared not look out
+to see what they were doing. But presently Hogvardt risked a glance, and
+called out that they were in retreat, and had rejoined the three, and
+that the whole body stood together in consultation, and were no longer
+covering my window. So I looked out, and saw the boy standing in an
+easy, graceful attitude, while Constantine and Vlacho talked a little
+apart. It was growing considerably darker now, and the figures became
+dim and indistinct.
+
+"I think the fun's over for to-night," said I, glad to have it over so
+cheaply.
+
+Indeed, what I said seemed to be true, for the next moment the group
+turned, and began to retreat along the road, moving briskly out of our
+sight. We were left in the thick gloom of a moonless evening and the
+peaceful silence of still air.
+
+"They'll come back and fetch the cows," said Hogvardt. "Could we not
+drag one in, my lord, and put it where the goat is, behind the house?"
+
+I approved of this suggestion, and Watkins having found a rope, I armed
+Denny with the rifle, took from the wall a large, keen hunting-knife,
+opened the door, and stole out, accompanied by Hogvardt and Watkins, who
+carried their revolvers. We reached the pen without interruption, tied
+our rope firmly round the horns of one of the dead beasts, and set to
+work to drag it along. It was no child's play, and our progress was very
+slow; but the carcass moved, and I gave a shout of encouragement as we
+got it down to the smoother ground of the road and hauled it along with
+a will. Alas! that shout was a great indiscretion. I had been too hasty
+in assuming that our enemy was quite gone. We heard suddenly the rush of
+feet; shots whistled over our heads; we had but just time to drop the
+rope and turn round when Denny's rifle rang out, and then--somebody was
+at us! I really do not know exactly how many there were. I had two at
+me, but by great good luck I drove my big knife into one fellow's arm at
+the first hazard, and I think that was enough for him. In my other
+assailant I recognized Vlacho. The fat innkeeper had got rid of his gun,
+and had a knife much like the one I carried myself. I knew him more by
+his voice, as he cried fiercely, "Come on," than by his appearance, for
+the darkness was thick now. Parrying his fierce thrusts--he was very
+active for so stout a man--I called out to our people to fall back as
+quickly as they could, for I did not know but that we might be taken in
+the rear also.
+
+But discipline is hard to maintain in such a force as mine.
+
+"Bosh!" cried Denny's voice.
+
+"Mein Gott, no!" exclaimed Hogvardt.
+
+Watkins said nothing, but for once in his life he also disobeyed me.
+
+Well, if they would not do as I said, I must do as they did. The line
+advanced--the whole line, as at Waterloo. We pressed them hard. I heard
+a revolver fired and a cry follow. Fat Vlacho slackened in his attack,
+wavered, halted, turned and ran. A shout of triumph from Denny told me
+that the battle was going well there. Fired with victory, I set myself
+for a chase. But, alas! my pride was checked. Before I had gone two
+yards I fell headlong over the body for which we had been fighting (as
+Greeks and Trojans fought for the body of Hector), and came to an abrupt
+stop, sprawling most ignominiously over the cow's broad back.
+
+"Stop! stop!" I cried. "Wait a bit, Denny. I'm down over this infernal
+cow!" It was an inglorious ending to the exploits of the evening.
+
+Prudence, or my cry, stopped them. The enemy were in full retreat; their
+steps pattered quick along the rocky road, and Denny observed in a tone
+of immense satisfaction:
+
+"I think that's our trick, Charlie,"
+
+"Are you hurt?" I asked, scrambling to my feet.
+
+Watkins owned to a crack from the stock of a gun on his right shoulder;
+Hogvardt to a graze of a knife on the arm. Denny was unhurt. We had
+reason to suppose that we had left our mark on at least two of the
+enemy. For so great a victory it was cheaply bought.
+
+"We'll just drag in the cow," said I--I like to stick to my point--"and
+then we might see if there's anything in the cellar."
+
+We did drag in the cow; we dragged it through the house, and finally
+bestowed it in the compound behind. Hogvardt suggested that we should
+fetch the other also; but I had no mind for another surprise, which
+might not end so happily, and I decided to run the risk of leaving the
+second animal till the morning. So Watkins went off to seek for some
+wine, for which we all felt very ready, and I went to the door with the
+intention of securing it. But before I did so I stood for a moment on
+the step, looking out into the night, and snuffing the sweet, clear,
+pure air. It was in quiet moments like this, not in the tumult that had
+just passed, that I had pictured my beautiful island; and the love of it
+came on me now, and made me swear that these fellows and their arch
+ruffian Constantine should not drive me out of it without some more and
+more serious blows than had been struck that night. If I could get away
+safely, and return with enough force to keep them quiet, I would pursue
+that course. If not--well, I believe I had very blood-thirsty thoughts
+in my mind, as even the most peaceable man will have, when he has been
+served as I had and his friends roughly handled on his account.
+
+Having registered these determinations, I was about to proceed with my
+task of securing the door, when I heard a sound that startled me. There
+was nothing hostile or alarming about it, rather it was pathetic and
+appealing; and, in spite of my previous truculence of mind, it caused me
+to exclaim: "Hullo, is that one of those poor beggars mauled?" For the
+sound was a slight, painful sigh, as of somebody in suffering, and it
+seemed to come from out of the darkness about a dozen yards ahead of me.
+My first impulse was to go straight to the spot; but I had begun by now
+to doubt whether the Neopalians were not unsophisticated in quite as
+peculiar a sense as that in which they were good-hearted; so I called
+Denny and Hogvardt, bidding the latter to bring his lantern with him.
+Thus protected, I stepped out of the door, in the direction from which
+the sigh had come. Apparently we were to crown our victory by the
+capture of a wounded enemy.
+
+An exclamation from Hogvardt told me that he, aided by the lantern, had
+come upon the quarry; but Hogvardt spoke in disgust rather than triumph.
+
+"Oh, it's only the little one!" said he. "What's wrong with him, I
+wonder." He stooped down, and examined the prostrate form. "By heaven, I
+believe he's not touched! Yes, there's a bump on his forehead; but not
+big enough for any of us to have given it."
+
+By this time Denny and I were with him, and we looked down on the boy's
+pale face, which seemed almost death-like in the glare of the lantern.
+The bump was not such a very small one, but it would not have been made
+by any of our weapons, for the flesh was not cut. A moment's further
+inspection showed that it must be the result of a fall on the hard,
+rocky road.
+
+"Perhaps he tripped on the cord, as you did on the cow;" suggested
+Denny, with a grin.
+
+It seemed likely enough, but I gave very little thought to it, for I was
+busy studying the boy's face.
+
+"No doubt," said Hogvardt, "he fell in running away, and was stunned;
+and they did not notice it in the dark, or were afraid to stop. But
+they'll be back, my lord, and soon."
+
+"Carry him inside," said I. "It won't hurt us to have a hostage."
+
+Denny lifted the lad in his long arms--Denny was a tall, powerful
+fellow--and strode off with him. I followed, wondering who it was that
+we had got hold of; for the boy was strikingly handsome. I was last in,
+and barred the door. Denny had set our prisoner down in an armchair,
+where he sat now, conscious again, but still with a dazed look in his
+large, dark eyes, as he looked from me to the rest, and back again to
+me, finally fixing a long glance on my face.
+
+"Well, young man," said I, "you've begun this sort of thing early.
+Lifting cattle and taking murder in the day's work is pretty good for a
+youngster like you. Who are you?"
+
+"Where am I?" he cried, in that blurred, indistinct kind of voice that
+comes with mental bewilderment.
+
+"You're in my house," said I, "and the rest of your infernal gang's
+outside, and going to stay there. So you must make the best of it."
+
+The boy turned his head away and closed his eyes. Suddenly I snatched
+the lantern from Hogvardt. But I paused before I brought it close to the
+boy's face, as I had meant to do, and I said:
+
+"You fellows go and get something to eat and a snooze, if you like. I'll
+look after this youngster. I'll call you if anything happens outside."
+
+After a few unselfish protests, they did as I bade them. I was left
+alone in the hall with the prisoner, and merry voices from the kitchen
+told me that the battle was being fought again over the wine. I set the
+lantern close to the boy's face.
+
+"H'm!" said I, after a prolonged scrutiny. Then I sat down on the table,
+and began to hum softly that wretched chant of One-eyed Alexander's,
+which had a terrible trick of sticking in a man's head.
+
+For a few minutes I hummed. The lad shivered, stirred uneasily, and
+opened his eyes. I had never seen such eyes, and I could not
+conscientiously except even Beatrice Hipgrave's, which were in their way
+quite fine. I hummed away, and the boy said, still in a dreamy voice,
+but with an imploring gesture of his hand:
+
+"Ah, no, not that! Not that, Constantine!"
+
+"He's a tender-hearted youth," said I; and I was smiling now. The whole
+episode was singularly unusual and interesting.
+
+The boy's eyes were on mine again. I met his glance full and square.
+Then I poured out some water, and gave it to him. He took it with
+trembling hand--the hand did not escape my notice--and drank it eagerly,
+setting the glass down with a sigh.
+
+"I am Lord Wheatley," said I, nodding to him. "You came to steal my
+cattle, and murder me, if it happened to be convenient, you know."
+
+The boy flashed out at me in a minute:
+
+"I didn't. I thought you'd surrender, if we got the cattle away."
+
+"You thought," said I, scornfully. "I suppose you did as you were bid."
+
+"No; I told Constantine that they weren't to--" The boy stopped short,
+looked round him, and said in a questioning voice: "Where are all the
+rest of my people?"
+
+"The rest of your people," said I, "have run away. You are in my hands.
+I can do just as I please with you."
+
+His lips set in an obstinate curve, but he made no answer. I went on as
+sternly as I could: "And when I think of what I saw here yesterday--of
+that poor old man stabbed by your blood-thirsty crew--"
+
+"It was an accident," he cried, sharply; the voice had lost its
+dreaminess, and sounded clear now.
+
+"We'll see about that when we get Constantine and Vlacho before a
+judge," I retorted grimly. "Anyhow, he was foully stabbed in his own
+house, for doing what he had a perfect right to do."
+
+"He had no right to sell the island," cried the boy; and he rose for a
+moment to his feet, with a proud air, only to sink back again into the
+chair and stretch out his hand for water again.
+
+Now at this moment Denny, refreshed by meat and drink, and in the
+highest of spirits, bounded into the hall.
+
+"How's the prisoner?" he cried.
+
+"Oh, he's all right. There's nothing the matter with him," I said; and,
+as I spoke, I moved the lantern, so that the boy's face and figure were
+again in shadow.
+
+"That's all right," observed Denny, cheerfully. "Because I thought,
+Charlie, we might get a little information out of him."
+
+"Perhaps he won't speak," I suggested, casting a glance at the captive,
+who sat now motionless in the chair.
+
+"Oh, I think he will," said Denny, confidently; and I observed for the
+first time that he held a very substantial looking whip in his hand; he
+must have found it in the kitchen. "We'll give the young ruffian a taste
+of this, if he's obstinate," said Denny; and I cannot say that his tone
+witnessed any great desire that the boy should prove at once compliant.
+
+I shifted my lantern so that I could see the proud young face while
+Denny could not. The boy's eyes met mine defiantly.
+
+"You hear what he proposes?" I asked. "Will you tell us all we want to
+know?"
+
+The boy made no answer, but I saw trouble in his face, and his eyes did
+not meet mine so boldly now.
+
+"We'll soon find a tongue for him," said Denny, in cheerful barbarity;
+"upon my word, he richly deserves a thrashing. Say the word, Charlie."
+
+"We haven't asked him anything yet," said I.
+
+"Oh, I'll ask him something. Look here, who was the fellow with you and
+Vlacho?"
+
+The boy was silent; defiance and fear struggled in the dark eyes.
+
+"You see, he's an obstinate beggar," said Denny, as though he had
+observed all necessary forms and could now get to business; and he drew
+the lash of the whip through his fingers. I am afraid Denny was rather
+looking forward to executing justice with his own hands.
+
+The boy rose again, and stood facing that heartless young ruffian,
+Denny--it was thus that I thought of Denny at the moment--then once
+again he sank back into his seat, and covered his face with his hands.
+
+"Well, I wouldn't go out killing if I hadn't more pluck than that," said
+Denny, scornfully. "You're not fit for the trade, my lad."
+
+The boy had no retort. His face was buried in those slim hands of his.
+For a moment he was quite still. Then he moved a little; it was a
+movement that spoke of helpless pain, and I heard something very like a
+stifled sob.
+
+"Just leave us alone a little, Denny," said I. "He may tell me what he
+won't tell you."
+
+"Are you going to let him off?" demanded Denny, suspiciously. "You never
+can be stiff in the back, Charlie."
+
+"I must see if he won't speak to me first," I pleaded, meekly.
+
+"But if he won't?" insisted Denny.
+
+"If he won't," said I, "and you still wish it, you may do what you
+like."
+
+Denny sheered off to the kitchen, with an air that did not seek to
+conceal his opinion of my foolish tender-heartedness. Again I was alone
+with the boy.
+
+"My friend is right," said I, gravely. "You are not fit for the trade.
+How came you to be in it?"
+
+My question brought a new look, as the boy's hands dropped from his
+face.
+
+"How came you," said I, "who ought to restrain these rascals, to be at
+their head? How came you, who ought to shun the society of men like
+Constantine Stefanopoulos and his tool Vlacho, to be working with them?"
+
+I got no answer; only a frightened look appealed to me in the white
+glare of Hogvardt's lantern. I came a step nearer, and leaned forward to
+ask my next question:
+
+"Who are you? What's your name?"
+
+"My name--my name?" stammered the prisoner. "I won't tell my name."
+
+"You'll tell me nothing? You heard what I promised my friend?"
+
+"Yes, I heard," said the lad, with a face utterly pale, but with eyes
+that were again set in fierce determination. I laughed a low laugh.
+
+"I believe you are fit for the trade, after all," said I; and I looked
+with mingled distaste and admiration on him. But I had my last weapon
+still, my last question.
+
+I turned the lantern full on his face; I leaned forward again, and said,
+in distinct, low tones--and the question sounded an absurd one to be
+spoken in such an impressive way:
+
+"Do you generally wear clothes like these?"
+
+I had got home with that question. The pallor vanished; the haughty eyes
+sank. I saw long, drooping lashes and a burning flush; and the boy's
+face once again sought his hands.
+
+At the moment I heard chairs pushed back in the kitchen. In came
+Hogvardt, with an amused smile on his broad face; in came Watkins, with
+his impassive acquiescence in anything that his lordship might order; in
+came Master Denny, brandishing his whip in jovial relentlessness.
+
+"Well, has he told you anything?" cried Denny. It was plain that he
+hoped for the answer "No."
+
+"I have asked him half a dozen questions," said I, "and he has not
+answered one."
+
+"All right," said Denny, with wonderful emphasis.
+
+Had I been wrong to extort this much punishment for my most inhospitable
+reception? Sometimes now I think that it was cruel. In that night much
+had occurred to breed viciousness in a man of the most equable temper.
+But the thing had now gone to the extreme limit to which it could; and I
+said to Denny:
+
+"It's a gross case of obstinacy, of course, Denny; but I don't see very
+well how we can horsewhip the lady!"
+
+A sudden, astounded cry, "The lady!" rang from three pairs of lips; the
+lady herself dropped her head on the table, and fenced her face round
+about with her protecting arms.
+
+"You see," said I, "this lad is the Lady Euphrosyne."
+
+For who else could it be that would give orders to Constantine
+Stefanopoulos, and ask where "my people" were? Who else, I also asked
+myself, save the daughter of the noble house, would boast the air, the
+hands, the face, that graced our young prisoner? In all certainty it was
+Lady Euphrosyne.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE COTTAGE ON THE HILL.
+
+
+The effect of my remark was curious. Denny turned scarlet, and flung his
+whip down on the table; the others stood for a moment motionless, then
+turned tail and slunk back to the kitchen. Euphrosyne's face remained
+invisible. However, I felt quite at my ease. I had a triumphant
+conviction of the importance of my capture, and a determination that no
+misplaced chivalry should rob me of it. Politeness is, no doubt, a duty,
+but only a relative duty; and, in plain English, men's lives were at
+stake here. Therefore I did not make my best bow, fling open the door,
+and tell the lady that she was free to go whither she would; but I said
+to her in a dry, severe voice:
+
+"You had better go, madam, to that room you usually occupy here, while
+we consider what to do with you. You know where the room is; I don't."
+
+She raised her head, and said in tones that sounded almost eager:
+
+"My own room? May I go there?"
+
+"Certainly," said I. "I shall accompany you as far as the door; and
+when you've gone in, I shall lock the door."
+
+This programme was duly carried out, Euphrosyne not favoring me with a
+word during its progress. Then I returned to the hall, and said to
+Denny:
+
+"Rather a trump card, isn't she?"
+
+"Yes, but they'll be back pretty soon to look for her, I expect."
+
+Denny accompanied this remark with such a yawn that I suggested he
+should go to bed.
+
+"And aren't you going to bed?" he asked.
+
+"I'll take first watch," said I. "It's nearly twelve now. I'll wake you
+at two, and you can wake Hogvardt at five, and Watkins will be fit and
+well at breakfast time, and can give us roast cow."
+
+Thus I was left alone again; and I sat, reviewing the position. Would
+the islanders fight for their lady? Or would they let us go? They would
+only let us go, I felt sure, if Constantine were outvoted, for he could
+not afford to see me leave Neopalia with a head on my shoulders and a
+tongue in my mouth. Then they probably would fight. Well, I calculated
+that as long as our provisions held out, we could not be stormed; our
+stone fortress was too strong. But we could be beleaguered and starved
+out, and should be very soon, unless the lady's influence could help us.
+I had just arrived at the conclusion that I would talk very seriously to
+her in the morning, when I heard a remarkable sound.
+
+"There never was such a place for queer noises," said I, pricking up my
+ears.
+
+The noise seemed to come from directly above my head; it sounded as
+though a light, stealthy tread were passing over the roof of the hall in
+which I sat. But the only person in the house besides ourselves was the
+prisoner; she had been securely locked in her room; how then could she
+be on the top of the hall? For her room was in the turret over the door.
+Yet the steps crept over my head, going toward the kitchen. I snatched
+up my revolver, and trod with a stealth equal to the stealth of the
+steps overhead, across the hall and into the kitchen beyond. My three
+companions slept the sleep of tired men, but I ruthlessly roused Denny.
+
+"Go on guard in the hall," said I; "I want to have a look round."
+
+Denny was sleepy, but obedient. I saw him start for the hall, and went
+on till I reached the compound behind the house. Here I stood, deep in
+the shadow of the wall. The steps were now over my head again. I glanced
+up cautiously, and above me, on the roof, three yards to the right, I
+saw the flutter of a white kilt.
+
+"There are more ways out of this house than I know," I thought to
+myself.
+
+I heard next a noise as though of something being pushed cautiously
+along the flat roof. Then there protruded from between two of the
+battlements the end of a ladder! I crouched closer under the wall. The
+light flight of steps was let down; it reached the ground; the kilted
+figure stepped on it and began to descend. Here was the Lady Euphrosyne
+again! Her eagerness to go to her own room was fully explained; there
+was a way from it across the house and out on to the roof of the
+kitchen; the ladder showed that the way was kept in use. I stood still.
+She reached the ground, and as her foot touched it she gave the softest
+possible little laugh of gleeful triumph. A pretty little laugh it was.
+Then she stepped briskly across the compound, till she reached the rocks
+on the other side. I crept forward after her, for I was afraid of losing
+sight of her in the darkness, and yet did not desire to arrest her
+progress till I saw where she was going. On she went, skirting the
+perpendicular drop of rock, I was behind her now. At last she came to
+the angle formed by the rock running north and that which, turning to
+the east, enclosed the compound.
+
+"How's she going to get up?" I asked myself.
+
+But up she began to go--her right foot on the north rock, her left foot
+on the east. She ascended with such confidence that it was evident that
+steps were ready for her feet. She gained the top. I began to mount in
+the same fashion, finding steps cut in the face of the cliff. I reached
+the top, and I saw her standing still, ten yards ahead of me. She went
+on. I followed. She stopped, looked, saw me, screamed. I rushed on her.
+Her arms dealt a blow at me--I caught her hand, and in her hand there
+was a little dagger. Seizing her other hand, I held her fast.
+
+"Where are you going?" I asked in a matter-of-fact tone, taking no
+notice of her hasty resort to the dagger. No doubt that was purely a
+national trait.
+
+Seeing that she was caught, she made no attempt to struggle.
+
+"I was trying to escape," she said. "Did you hear me?"
+
+"Yes, I heard you. Where were you going?"
+
+"Why should I tell you? Shall you threaten me with the whip again?"
+
+I loosed her hands. She gave a sudden glance up the hill. She seemed to
+measure the distance.
+
+"Why do you want to go to the top of the hill?" I asked. "Have you
+friends there?"
+
+She denied the suggestion, as I thought she would.
+
+"No, I have not. But anywhere is better than with you."
+
+"Yet there is some one in the cottage up there," I observed. "It belongs
+to Constantine, doesn't it?"
+
+"Yes, it does," she answered, defiantly. "Dare you go and seek him
+there? Or dare you only skulk behind the walls of the house?"
+
+"As long as we are only four against a hundred I dare only skulk," I
+answered. She did not annoy me at all by her taunts. "But do you think
+he's there?"
+
+"There! No, he's in the town--and he'll come from the town to kill you
+to-morrow."
+
+"There is nobody there?" I pursued.
+
+"Nobody," she answered.
+
+"You're wrong," said I. "I saw somebody there to-day."
+
+"Oh, a peasant, perhaps."
+
+"Well, the dress didn't look like it. Do you really want to go there
+now?"
+
+"Haven't you mocked me enough?" she burst out. "Take me back to my
+prison."
+
+Her tragedy air was quite delightful. But I had been leading her up to
+something which I thought she ought to know.
+
+"There's a woman in that cottage," said I. "Not a peasant--a woman in
+some dark-colored dress, who uses opera glasses."
+
+I saw her draw back with a start of surprise.
+
+"It's false," she cried. "There's no one there. Constantine told me no
+one went there except Vlacho, and sometimes Demetri."
+
+"Do you believe all Constantine tells you?" I asked.
+
+"Why should I not? He's my cousin and--"
+
+"And your suitor?"
+
+She flung her head back proudly.
+
+"I have no shame in that," she answered.
+
+"You would accept his offer?"
+
+"Since you ask, I will answer. Yes; I have promised my uncle I would."
+
+"Good God!" said I, for I was very sorry for her.
+
+The emphasis of my exclamation seemed to startle her afresh. I felt her
+glance rest on me in puzzled questioning.
+
+"Did Constantine let you see the old woman whom I sent to him?" I
+demanded.
+
+"No," she murmured. "He told me what she said."
+
+"That I told him he was his uncle's murderer?"
+
+"Did you tell her to say that?" she asked, with a sudden inclination of
+her body toward me.
+
+"I did. Did he give you the message?"
+
+She made no answer. I pressed my advantage.
+
+"On my honor I saw what I have told you at the cottage," I said. "I know
+what it means no more than you do. But before I came here I saw
+Constantine in London. And there I heard a lady say she would come with
+him. Did any lady come with him?"
+
+"Are you mad?" she asked; but I could hear her breathing quickly, and I
+knew that her scorn was assumed. I drew suddenly away from her, and put
+my hands behind my back.
+
+"Go to the cottage if you like," said I. "But I won't answer for what
+you'll find there."
+
+"You set me free?" she cried with eagerness.
+
+"Free to go to the cottage. You must promise to come back. Or I'll go to
+the cottage, if you'll promise to go back to your room and wait till I
+return."
+
+She hesitated, looking again toward where the cottage was; but I had
+stirred suspicion and disquietude in her. She dared not face what she
+might find in the cottage.
+
+"I'll go back and wait for you," she said. "If I went to the cottage
+and--and all was well, I'm afraid I shouldn't come back."
+
+The tone sounded softer. I would have sworn a smile or a half smile
+accompanied the words, but it was too dark to be sure; and when I leaned
+forward to look, Euphrosyne drew back.
+
+"Then you mustn't go," said I decisively, "I can't afford to lose you,"
+
+"But if you let me go, I could let you go," she cried.
+
+"Could you? Without asking Constantine? Besides, it's my island, you
+see."
+
+"It's not," she cried, with a stamp of her foot. And without more she
+walked straight by me and disappeared over the ledge of rock. Two
+minutes later I saw her figure defined against the sky, a black shadow
+on the deep gray ground. Then she disappeared. I set my face straight
+for the cottage under the summit of the hill. I knew that I had only to
+go straight, and I must come to the little plateau, scooped out of the
+hillside, on which the cottage stood. I found not a path, but a sort of
+rough track that led in the desired direction, and along this I made my
+way very cautiously. At one point it was joined at right angles by
+another track, from the side of the hill where the main road across the
+island lay. This, of course, afforded an approach to the cottage without
+passing by my house. In twenty minutes the cottage loomed, a blurred
+mass, before me. I fell on my knees and peered at it.
+
+There was a light in one of the windows; I crawled nearer. Now I was on
+the plateau; a moment later I was under the wooden veranda and beneath
+the window where the light glowed. My hand was on my revolver. If
+Constantine or Vlacho caught me here, neither side would be able to
+stand on trifles; even my desire for legality would fail under the
+strain. But for the minute everything was quiet, and I began to fear
+that I should have to return empty-handed; for it would be growing light
+in another hour or so, and I must be gone before the day began to
+appear. Ah! There was a sound--a sound that appealed to me after my
+climb--the sound of wine poured into a glass; and then came a voice I
+knew.
+
+"Probably they have caught her," said Vlacho the innkeeper. "What of
+that? They will not hurt her. And she'll be kept safe."
+
+"You mean she can't come spying about here?"
+
+"Exactly. And that, my lord, is an advantage. If she came here--"
+
+"Oh the deuce!" laughed Constantine. "But won't the men want me to free
+her by letting that infernal crew go?"
+
+"Not if they think Wheatley will go to Rhodes and get soldiers and
+return. They love the island more than her. It will all go well, my
+lord. And this other here?"
+
+I strained my ears to listen. No answer came; yet Vlacho went on as
+though he had received an answer.
+
+"These cursed fellows make that difficult, too," he said. "It would be
+an epidemic." Then he laughed, seeming to see wit in his own remark.
+
+"Curse them, yes. We must move cautiously," said Constantine. "What a
+nuisance women are, Vlacho."
+
+"Ay, too many of them," laughed Vlacho.
+
+"I had to swear my life out that no one was here--and then, 'If no one's
+there, why mayn't I come?' You know the sort of thing."
+
+"Indeed, no, my lord. You wrong me," protested Vlacho, humorously; and
+Constantine joined in his laugh.
+
+"You've made up your mind which, I gather?" asked Vlacho.
+
+"Oh, this one, beyond doubt," answered his master.
+
+Now, I thought that I understood most of this conversation, and I was
+very sorry that Euphrosyne was not by my side to listen to it. But I had
+heard about enough for my purpose, and I had turned to crawl away
+stealthily--it is not well to try fortune too far--when I heard the
+sound of a door opening in the house. Constantine's voice followed
+directly on the sound.
+
+"Ah, my darling, my sweet wife," he cried, "not sleeping yet? Where will
+your beauty be. Vlacho and I must plot and plan for your sake, but you
+need not spoil your eyes with sleeplessness."
+
+Constantine did it uncommonly well. His manner was a pattern for
+husbands. I was guilty of a quiet laugh all to myself, in the veranda.
+
+"For me? You're sure it's for me?" came in that Greek tongue with a
+strange accent which had first fallen on my ears in the Optimum
+restaurant.
+
+"She's jealous, she's most charmingly jealous!" cried Constantine, in
+playful rapture. "Does your wife pay you such compliments, Vlacho?"
+
+"She has not cause, my lord. Now my Lady Francesca thinks she has cause
+to be jealous of the Lady Euphrosyne."
+
+Constantine laughed scornfully at the suggestion.
+
+"Where is she now?" came swift and sharp from the woman. "Where is
+Euphrosyne?"
+
+"Why, she's a prisoner to that Englishman," answered Constantine.
+
+I suppose explanations passed on this point, for the voices fell to a
+lower level, as is apt to happen in the telling of a long story, and I
+could not catch what passed till Constantine's tones rose again, as he
+said:
+
+"Oh, yes, we must have a try at getting her out, just to satisfy the
+people. For me, she might stay there as long as she likes, for I care
+for her just as little as, between ourselves, I believe she cares for
+me."
+
+Really, this fellow was a very tidy villain; as a pair, Vlacho and he
+would be hard to beat--in England, at all events. About Neopalia I had
+learned to reserve my opinion. Such were my reflections as I turned to
+resume my interrupted crawl to safety. But in an instant I was still
+again--still, and crouching close under the wall, motionless as an
+insect that feigns death, holding my breath, my hand on the trigger. For
+the door of the cottage was flung open, and Constantine and Vlacho
+appeared on the threshold.
+
+"Ah," said Vlacho, "dawn is nearly on us. See, it grows lighter on the
+horizon."
+
+A more serious matter was that, owing to the opened door and the lamp
+inside, it had grown lighter on the veranda, so light that I saw the
+three figures--for the woman had come also--in the doorway; so light
+that my huddled shape would be seen if any of the three turned an eye
+towards it. I could have picked off both men before they could move; but
+a civilized education has drawbacks; it makes a man scrupulous; I did
+not fire. I lay still, hoping that I should not be noticed. And I should
+not have been noticed but for one thing. Acting up to his part in the
+ghastly farce which these two ruffians were playing with the wife of one
+of them, Constantine turned to bestow kisses on the woman before he
+parted from her. Vlacho, in a mockery that was horrible to me who knew
+his heart, must needs be facetious. With a laugh he drew back; he drew
+back farther still; he was but a couple of feet from the wall of the
+house, and that couple of feet I filled.
+
+In a moment, with one step backward, he would be upon me. Perhaps he
+would not have made that step; perhaps I should have gone, by grace of
+that narrow interval, undetected. But the temptation was too strong for
+me. The thought of the thing threatened to make me laugh. I had a
+penknife in my pocket; I opened it, and I dug it hard into that portion
+of Vlacho's frame which came most conveniently (and prominently) to my
+hand. Then, leaving the penknife where it was, I leaped up, gave the
+howling ruffian a mighty shove, and with a loud laugh of triumph bolted
+for my life down the hill. But when I had gone twenty yards I dropped on
+my knees, for bullet after bullet whistled over my head. Constantine,
+the outraged Vlacho too, perhaps, carried a revolver. And the barrels
+were being emptied after me. I rose and turned one hasty glance behind
+me. Yes, I saw their dim shapes like moving trees. I fired once, twice,
+thrice, in my turn, and then went crashing and rushing down the path
+that I had ascended so cautiously.
+
+I cannoned against the tree trunks; I tripped over trailing branches; I
+stumbled over stones. Once I paused and fired the rest of my barrels; a
+yell told me I had hit--but Vlacho, alas! not Constantine. At the same
+instant my fire was answered, and a bullet went through my hat. I was
+defenceless now, save for my heels, and to them I took again with all
+speed. But as I crashed along, one, at least, of them came crashing
+after me. Yes, it was only one. I had checked Vlacho's career. It was
+Constantine alone. I suppose one of your heroes of romance would have
+stopped and faced him, for with them it is not etiquette to run away
+from one man. Ah, well, I ran away. For all I knew, Constantine might
+still have a shot in the locker. I had none. And if Constantine killed
+me, he would kill the only man who knew all his secrets. So I ran. And
+just as I got within ten yards of the drop into my own territory I heard
+a wild cry, "Charlie, Charlie! Where the devil are you, Charlie?"
+
+"Why, here, of course," said I, coming to the top of the bank and
+dropping over.
+
+I have no doubt that it was the cry uttered by Denny which gave pause to
+Constantine's pursuit. He would not desire to face all four of us. At
+any rate the sound of his pursuing feet died away and ceased. I suppose
+he went back to look after Vlacho and show himself safe and sound to
+that most unhappy woman, his wife. As for me, when I found myself safe
+and sound in the compound, I said, "Thank God!" And I meant it, too.
+Then I looked round. Certainly the sight that met my eyes had a touch of
+comedy in it.
+
+Denny, Hogvardt, and Watkins stood in the compound. Their backs were
+toward me, and they were all staring up at the roof of the kitchen, with
+expressions which the cold light of morning revealed in all their
+puzzled foolishness. On the top of the roof, unassailable and out of
+reach--for no ladder ran from roof to ground now--stood Euphrosyne, in
+her usual attitude of easy grace. And Euphrosyne was not taking the
+smallest notice of the helpless three below, but stood quite still, with
+unmoved face, gazing up toward the cottage. The whole thing reminded me
+of nothing so much as of a pretty, composed cat in a tree, with three
+infuriated, helpless terriers barking round the trunk. I began to laugh.
+
+"What's all the shindy?" called out Denny. "Who's doing revolver
+practice in the wood? And how the dickens did she get there, Charlie?"
+
+But when the still figure on the roof saw me, the impassivity of it
+vanished. Euphrosyne leant forward, clasping her hands, and said to me:
+
+"Have you killed him?"
+
+The question vexed me. It would have been civil to accompany it, at all
+events, with an inquiry as to my own health.
+
+"Killed him?" I answered gruffly. "No, he's sound enough."
+
+"And--" she began; but now she glanced, seemingly for the first time, at
+my friends below. "You must come and tell me," she said; and with that
+she turned and disappeared from our gaze behind the battlements. I
+listened intently. No sound came from the wood that rose gray in the new
+light behind us.
+
+"What have you been doing?" demanded Denny, surlily; he had not enjoyed
+Euphrosyne's scornful attitude.
+
+"I have been running for my life," said I, "from the biggest scoundrels
+unhanged. Denny, make a guess who lives in that cottage."
+
+"Constantine?"
+
+"I don't mean him."
+
+"Not Vlacho--he's at the inn."
+
+"No, I don't mean Vlacho."
+
+"Who, then, man?"
+
+"Some one you've seen."
+
+"Oh, I give it up. It's not the time of day for riddles."
+
+"The lady who dined at the next table to us at the Optimum," said I.
+
+Denny jumped back in amazement, with a long, low whistle.
+
+"What, the one who was with Constantine?" he cried.
+
+"Yes," said I. "The one who was with Constantine."
+
+They were all three round me now; and, thinking that it would be better
+that they should know what I knew, and four lives instead of one stand
+between a ruffian and the impunity he hoped for, I raised my voice and
+went on in an emphatic tone:
+
+"Yes. She's there, and she's his wife."
+
+A moment's astonished silence greeted my announcement. It was broken by
+none of our party. But there came from the battlemented roof above us a
+low, long, mournful moan that made its way straight to my heart, armed
+with its dart of outraged pride and trust betrayed. It was not thus,
+boldly and abruptly, that I should have told my news. But I did not know
+that Euphrosyne was still above us, hidden by the battlements; nor had I
+known that she understood English. We all looked up. The moan was not
+repeated. Presently we heard slow steps retreating with a faltering
+tread across the roof; and we also went into the house in silence and
+sorrow. For a thing like that gets hold of a man; and when he has heard
+it, it's hard for him to sit down and be merry till the fellow that
+caused it has paid his reckoning--as I swore then and there that
+Constantine Stefanopoulos should pay his.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE POEM OF ONE-EYED ALEXANDER.
+
+
+There is a matter on my conscience which I can't excuse, but may as well
+confess. To deceive a maiden is a very sore thing--so sore that it had
+made us all hot against Constantine; but it may be doubted by a cool
+mind whether it is worse, nay, whether it is as bad, as to contrive the
+murder of a lawful wife. Poets have paid more attention to the
+first--maybe they know more about it; the law finds greater employment
+on the whole in respect to the latter. For me, I admit that it was not
+till I found myself stretched on a mattress in the kitchen, with the
+idea of getting a few hours' sleep, that it struck me that Constantine's
+wife deserved a share of my concern and care. Her grievance against him
+was at least as great as Euphrosyne's; her peril was far greater. For
+Euphrosyne was his object, Francesca (for that appeared from Vlacho's
+mode of address to be her name) was an obstacle that prevented his
+attaining that object.
+
+For myself, I should have welcomed a cutthroat if it came as an
+alternative to Constantine's society; but probably his wife would not
+agree with me; and the conversation I had heard left me in little doubt
+that her life was not safe. They could not have an epidemic, Vlacho had
+prudently reminded his master; the island fever could not kill
+Constantine's wife and our party all in a day or two. Men suspect such
+obliging maladies, and the old lord had died of it, pat to the happy
+moment, already. But if the thing could be done, if it could be so
+managed that London, Paris, and the Riviera would find nothing strange
+in the disappearance of one Madame Stefanopoulos and the appearance of
+another, why, to a certainty, done the thing would be, unless I could
+warn or save the woman in the cottage. But I did not see how to do
+either. So (as I set out to confess) I dropped the subject. And when I
+went to sleep I was thinking, not how to save Francesca, but how to
+console Euphrosyne, a matter really of less urgency, as I should have
+seen had not the echo of that sad little cry still filled my ears.
+
+The news that Hogvardt brought me, when I woke in the morning and was
+enjoying a slice of cow steak, by no means cleared my way. An actual
+attack did not seem imminent--I fancy these fierce islanders were not
+too fond of our revolvers--but the house was, if I may use the term,
+carefully picketed; and that both before and behind. Along the road that
+approached it in front, there stood sentries at intervals. They were
+stationed just out of range of our only effective long-distance weapon,
+but it was evident that egress on that side was barred; and the same was
+the case on the other. Hogvardt had seen men moving in the wood, and had
+heard their challenges to one another, repeated at regular intervals. We
+were shut off from the sea; we were shut off from the cottage. A
+blockade would reduce us as well as an attack. I had nothing to offer
+except the release of Euphrosyne. And to release Euphrosyne would in all
+likelihood not save us, while it would leave Constantine free to play
+out his ghastly game to its appointed end.
+
+I finished my breakfast in some perplexity of spirit. Then I went and
+sat in the hall, expecting that Euphrosyne would appear from her room
+before long. I was alone, for the rest were engaged in various
+occupations, Hogvardt being particularly busy over a large handful of
+hunting-knives that he had gleaned from the walls; I did not understand
+what he wanted with them, unless he meant to arm himself in porcupine
+fashion.
+
+Presently Euphrosyne came, but it was a transformed Euphrosyne. The
+kilt, knee breeches, and gaiters were gone; in their place was the white
+linen garment with flowing sleeves and the loose jacket over it, the
+national dress of the Greek woman; but Euphrosyne's was ornamented with
+a rare profusion of delicate embroidery, and of so fine a texture that
+it seemed rather like some delicate, soft, yielding silk. The change of
+attire seemed reflected in her altered manner. Defiance was gone and
+appeal glistened from her eyes as she stood before me. I sprang up, but
+she would not sit. She stood there, and, raising her glance to my face,
+asked simply: "Is it true?"
+
+In a business-like way I told her the whole story, starting from the
+every-day scene at home in the restaurant, ending with the villainous
+conversation and the wild chase of the night before. When I related how
+Constantine had called Francesca his wife, Euphrosyne shivered; while I
+sketched lightly my encounter with him and Vlacho, she eyed me with a
+sort of grave curiosity; and at the end she said: "I'm glad you weren't
+killed." It was not an emotional speech, nor delivered with any
+_empressement_; but I took it for thanks, and made the best of it.
+Then at last she sat down and rested her head on her hand. Her absent
+air allowed me to study her closely, and I was struck by a new beauty
+which the bizarre boy's dress had concealed. Moreover, with the doffing
+of that, she seemed to have put off her extreme hostility; but perhaps
+the revelation I had made to her, which showed her the victim of an
+unscrupulous schemer, had more to do with her softened air. Yet she bore
+the story firmly, and a quivering lip was her extreme sign of grief or
+anger. And her first question was not of herself.
+
+"Do you mean that they will kill this woman?" she asked.
+
+"I'm afraid it's not unlikely that something will happen to her, unless,
+of course--" I paused, but her quick wit supplied the omission.
+
+"Unless," she said, "he lets her live now, because I am out of his
+hands."
+
+"Will you stay out of his hands?" I asked. "I mean, as long as I can
+keep you out of them."
+
+She looked round with a troubled expression.
+
+"How can I stay here?" she said in a low tone.
+
+"You will be as safe here as you were in your mother's arms," I
+answered.
+
+She acknowledged my promise with a movement of her head; but a moment
+later she cried:
+
+"But I am not with you--I am with the people! The island is theirs and
+mine. It is not yours. I will have no part in giving it to you."
+
+"I wasn't proposing to take pay for my hospitality," said I. "It'll be
+hardly handsome enough for that, I'm afraid. But mightn't we leave that
+question for the moment?" And I described briefly to her our present
+position.
+
+"So that," I concluded, "while I maintain my claim to the island, I am
+at present more interested in keeping a whole skin on myself and my
+friends."
+
+"If you will not give it up, I can do nothing," said she. "Though they
+knew Constantine to be all you say, yet they would follow him and not me
+if I yielded the island. Indeed, they would most likely follow him in
+any case. For the Neopalians like a man to follow, and they like that
+man to be a Stefanopoulos; so they would shut their eyes to much, in
+order that Constantine might marry me and become lord."
+
+She stated all this in a matter-of-fact way, disclosing no great horror
+of her countrymen's moral standard. The straightforward barbarousness of
+it perhaps appealed to her a little; she loathed the man who would rule
+on those terms, but had some toleration for the people who set the true
+dynasty above all else. And she spoke of her proposed marriage as though
+it were a natural arrangement.
+
+"I shall have to marry him, I expect, in spite of everything," she said.
+
+I pushed my chair back violently. My English respectability was
+appalled.
+
+"Marry him?" I cried. "Why, he murdered the old lord!"
+
+"That has happened before among the Stefanopouloi," said Euphrosyne,
+with a calmness dangerously near to pride.
+
+"And he proposes to murder his wife," I added.
+
+"Perhaps he will get rid of her without that." She paused; then came the
+anger I had looked for before. "Ah, but how dared he swear that he had
+thought of no one but me and loved me passionately? He shall pay for
+that." Again it was injured pride that rang in her voice, as in her
+first cry. It did not sound like love, and for that I was glad. The
+courtship had probably been an affair of state rather than affection. I
+did not ask how Constantine was to be made to pay, whether before or
+after marriage. I was struggling between horror and amusement at my
+guest's point of view. But I take leave to have a will of my own, even
+sometimes in matters that are not exactly my concern, and I said now,
+with a composure that rivalled Euphrosyne's: "It is out of the question
+that you should marry him. I'm going to get him hanged, and, anyhow, it
+would be atrocious."
+
+She smiled at that, but then she leant forward and asked:
+
+"How long have you provisions for?"
+
+"That's a good retort," I admitted. "A few days; that's all. And we
+can't get out to procure any more; and we can't go shooting, because the
+wood's infested with these ruff--I beg pardon--with your countrymen."
+
+"Then it seems to me," said Euphrosyne, "that you and your friends are
+more likely to be hanged."
+
+Well, on a dispassionate consideration, it did seem more likely; but she
+need not have said so. And she went on with an equally discouraging good
+sense:
+
+"There will be a boat from Rhodes in about a month or six weeks. The
+officer will come then to take the tribute; perhaps the governor will
+come. But till then nobody will visit the island, unless it be a few
+fishermen from Cyprus."
+
+"Fishermen? Where do they land? At the harbor?"
+
+"No. My people do not like them, though the governor threatens to send
+troops if we do not let them land. So they come to a little creek at the
+opposite end of the island, on the other side of the mountain. Ah, what
+are you thinking of?"
+
+As Euphrosyne perceived, her words had put a new idea in my mind. If I
+could reach that creek and find the fishermen and persuade them to help
+me, or to carry me and my party off, that hanging might happen to the
+right man, after all.
+
+"You're thinking you can reach them?" she cried.
+
+"You don't seem sure that you want me to," I observed.
+
+"Oh, how can I tell what I want? If I help you, I am betraying the
+island. If I do not--"
+
+"You'll have a death or two at your door, and you'll marry the biggest
+scoundrel in Europe," said I.
+
+She hung her head, and plucked fretfully at the embroidery on the neck
+of her dress.
+
+"But, anyhow, you couldn't reach them," she said. "You are close
+prisoners here."
+
+That, again, seemed true, so true that it put me in a very bad temper.
+Therefore I rose, and, leaving her without much ceremony, strolled into
+the kitchen. Here I found Watkins dressing the cow's head, Hogvardt
+surrounded by knives, and Denny lying on a rug on the floor with a small
+book, which he seemed to be reading. He looked up with a smile that he.
+considered knowing.
+
+"Well, what does the captive queen say?" he asked with levity.
+
+"She proposes to marry Constantine," I answered, and added quickly to
+Hogvardt: "What's the game with those knives, Hog?"
+
+"Well, my lord," said Hogvardt, surveying his dozen murderous
+instruments, "I thought there was no harm in putting an edge on them, in
+case we should find a use for them;" and he fell to grinding one with
+great energy.
+
+"I say, Charlie, I wonder what this yarn's about? I can't construe half
+of it. It's in Greek, and it's something about Neopalia, and there's a
+lot about a Stefanopoulos."
+
+"Is there? Let's see;" and taking the book I sat down to look at it. It
+was a slim old book, bound in calfskin. The Greek was written in an
+antique style; it was verse. I turned to the title-page. "Hullo, this is
+rather interesting," I exclaimed. "It's about the death of old
+Stefanopoulos--the man they sing that song about, you know."
+
+In fact, I had got hold of the poem which One-eyed Alexander composed.
+Its length was about three hundred lines, exclusive of the refrain which
+the islanders had chanted, and which was inserted six times, occurring
+at the end of each fifty lines. The rest was written in rather barbarous
+iambics; and the sentiments were quite as barbarous as the verse. It
+told the whole story, and I ran rapidly over it, translating here and
+there for the benefit of my companions. The arrival of the Baron
+d'Ezonville recalled our own with curious exactness, except that he came
+with one servant only. He had been taken to the inn, as I had, but he
+had never escaped from there, and had been turned adrift the morning
+after his arrival. I took more interest in Stefan, and followed eagerly
+the story of how the islanders had come to his house, and demanded that
+he should revoke the sale. Stefan, however, was obstinate; it lost the
+lives of four of his assailants before his house was forced. Thus far I
+read, and expected to find next an account of a _melee_ in the
+hall. But here the story took a turn unexpected by me, one that might
+make the reading of the old poem more than a mere pastime.
+
+"But when they had broken in," said One-eyed Alexander, "behold, the
+hall was empty and the house empty! And they stood amazed. But the two
+cousins of the lord, who had been the hottest in seeking his death, put
+all the rest to the door, and were themselves alone in the house; for
+the secret was known to them who were of the blood of the Stefanopouloi.
+Unto me, the bard, it is not known. Yet men say they went beneath the
+earth, and there in the earth found the lord. And certain it is they
+slew him, for in a space they came forth to the door bearing his head,
+and they showed it to the people, who answered with a great shout. But
+the cousins went back, barring the door again; and again, when but a few
+minutes had passed, they came forth, and opened the door, and the elder
+of them, being now by the traitor's death become lord, bade the people
+in and made a great feast for them. But the head of Stefan none saw
+again, nor did any see his body; but the body and head were gone,
+whither none know saving the noble blood of the Stefanopouloi; for
+utterly they disappeared, and the secret was securely kept."
+
+I read this passage aloud, translating as I went. At the end Denny drew
+a breath.
+
+"Well, if there aren't ghosts in this house, there ought to be," he
+remarked. "What the deuce did those rascals do with the old gentleman,
+Charlie?"
+
+"It says 'they went beneath the earth.'"
+
+"The cellar," suggested Hogvardt, who had a prosaic mind.
+
+"But they wouldn't leave the body in the cellar," I objected; "and if,
+as this fellow says, they were only away a few minutes, they couldn't
+have dug a grave for it. And then it says that they 'there in the earth
+found the lord'!"
+
+"It would have been more interesting," said Denny, "if they'd told
+Alexander a bit more about it. However, I suppose he consoles himself
+with his chant again?"
+
+"He does. It follows immediately on what I've read, and so the thing
+ends." And I sat looking at the little yellow volume. "Where did you
+find it, Denny?" I said.
+
+"Oh, on a shelf in the corner of the hall, between the Bible and a Life
+of Byron."
+
+I got up and walked back to the hall. I looked round. Euphrosyne was not
+there. I inspected the hall door; it was still locked on the inside. I
+mounted the stairs, and called at the door of her room; when no answer
+came I pushed it open and took the liberty of glancing round; she was
+not there. I called again, for I thought she might have passed along the
+way over the hall and reached the roof, as she had done before. This
+time I called loudly. Silence followed for a moment. Then came an
+answer, in a hurried, rather apologetic tone, "Here I am." But then the
+answer came, not from the direction that I had expected, but from the
+hall. And looking over the balustrade, I saw Euphrosyne sitting in the
+armchair.
+
+"This," said I, going down-stairs, "taken in conjunction with this," and
+I patted One-eyed Alexander's book, which I held in my hand, "is
+certainly curious and suggestive." "Here I am," said Euphrosyne, with an
+air that added, "I've not moved. What are you shouting for?"
+
+"Yes, but you weren't there a minute ago," I observed, reaching the hall
+and walking across to her.
+
+She looked disturbed and embarrassed.
+
+"Where have you been?" I asked.
+
+"Must I give an account of every movement?" said she, trying to cover
+her confusion with a show of haughty offence.
+
+The coincidence was really a remarkable one; it was as hard to account
+for Euphrosyne's disappearance and reappearance as for the vanished head
+and body of old Stefan. I had a conviction, based on a sudden intuition,
+that one explanation must lie at the root of both these curious things,
+that the secret of which Alexander spoke was a secret still hidden,
+hidden from my eyes but known to the girl before me, the daughter of the
+Stefanopouloi.
+
+"I won't ask you where you've been, if you don't wish to tell me," said
+I, carelessly.
+
+She bowed her head in recognition of my indulgence.
+
+"But there is one question I should like to ask you," I pursued, "if
+you'll be so kind as to answer it."
+
+"Well, what is it?"
+
+"Where was Stefan Stefanopoulos killed, and what became of his body?"
+
+As I put my question I flung One-eyed Alexander's book open on the table
+beside her.
+
+She started visibly, crying, "Where did you get that?"
+
+I told her how Denny had found it, and I added:
+
+"Now, what does 'beneath the earth' mean? You are one of the house, and
+you must know."
+
+"Yes, I know, but I must not tell you. We are all bound by the most
+sacred oath to tell no one."
+
+"Who told you?"
+
+"My uncle. The boys of our house are told when they are fifteen, the
+girls when they are sixteen. No one else knows."
+
+"And why is that?"
+
+She hesitated, fearing perhaps that her answer would itself tend to
+betray the secret.
+
+"I dare tell you nothing," she said. "The oath binds me; and it binds
+every one of my kindred to kill me if I break it."
+
+"But you've no kindred left except Constantine," I objected.
+
+"He is enough. He would kill me."
+
+"Sooner than marry you?" I suggested, rather maliciously.
+
+"Yes, if I broke the oath."
+
+"Hang the oath!" said I, impatiently. "The thing might help us. Did they
+bury Stefan somewhere under the house?"
+
+"No, he was not buried," she answered.
+
+"Then they brought him up, and got rid of his body when the islanders
+had gone?"
+
+"You must think what you will."
+
+"I'll find it out," said I. "If I pull the house down, I'll find it. Is
+it a secret door or--"
+
+She had colored at the question. I put the latter part in a low, eager
+voice, for hope had come to me.
+
+"Is it a way out?" I asked, leaning over to her.
+
+She sat mute, but irresolute, embarrassed and fretful.
+
+"Heavens!" I cried, impatiently, "it may mean life or death to all of
+us, and you boggle over your oath!"
+
+My rude impatience met with a rebuke that it perhaps deserved. With a
+glance of the utmost scorn, Euphrosyne asked, coldly:
+
+"And what are the lives of all of you to me?"
+
+"True, I forgot," said I with a bitter politeness. "I beg your pardon. I
+did you all the service I could last night, and now I and my friends may
+as well die as live! But I'll pull this place to ruin but I'll find your
+secret."
+
+I was walking up and down now in a state of some excitement. My brain
+was fired with the thought of stealing a march on Constantine through
+the discovery of his own family secret.
+
+Suddenly Euphrosyne gave a little soft clap with her hands. It was over
+in a minute, and she sat blushing, confused, trying to look as if she
+had not done it at all.
+
+"What did you do that for?" I asked, stopping in front of her.
+
+"Nothing," said Euphrosyne.
+
+"Oh, I don't believe that," said I.
+
+She looked at me. "I didn't mean to do it," she said again. "But can't
+you guess why?"
+
+"There's too much guessing to be done here," said I, impatiently; and I
+started walking again. But presently I heard a voice say softly, and in
+a tone that seemed to address nobody in particular--me least of all:
+
+"We Neopalians like a man who can be angry, and I began to think you
+never would."
+
+"I am not the least angry," said I, with great indignation. I hate being
+told that I am angry when I am merely showing firmness.
+
+Now, at this protest of mine Euphrosyne saw fit to laugh--the most
+hearty laugh she had given since I had known her. The mirthfulness of it
+undermined my wrath. I stood still opposite her, biting the end of my
+mustache.
+
+"You may laugh," said I, "but I'm not angry; and I shall pull this house
+down--or dig it up--in cold blood, in perfectly cold blood."
+
+"You are angry," said Euphrosyne, "and you say you're not. You are like
+my father. He would stamp his foot furiously like that and say, 'I am
+not angry, I am not angry, Phroso.'"
+
+Phroso! I had forgotten that diminutive of my guest's classical name. It
+rather pleased me, and I repeated it gently after her, "Phroso, Phroso,"
+and I'm afraid I eyed the little foot that had stamped so bravely.
+
+"He always called me Phroso. Oh, I wish he were alive! Then
+Constantine--"
+
+"Since he isn't," said I, sitting by Phroso (I must write it, it's a
+deal shorter)--by Phroso's elbow--"since he isn't, I'll look after
+Constantine. It would be a pity to spoil the house, wouldn't it?"
+
+"I've sworn," said Phroso.
+
+"Circumstances alter oaths," said I, bending till I was very near
+Phroso's ear.
+
+"Ah," said Phroso, reproachfully, "that's what lovers say when they find
+another more beautiful than their old love."
+
+I shot away from Phroso's ear with a sudden backward start. Her remark,
+somehow, came home to me with a very remarkable force. I got off the
+table, and stood opposite to her, in an awkward and stiff attitude.
+
+"I am compelled to ask you for the last time if you will tell me the
+secret," said I, in the coldest of tones.
+
+She looked up with surprise. My altered manner may well have amazed her.
+She did not know the reason of it.
+
+"You asked me kindly and--and pleasantly, and I would not. Now you ask
+me as if you threatened," she said. "Is it likely I should tell you
+now?"
+
+Well, I was angry with myself, and with her because she had made me
+angry with myself; and, the next minute, I became furiously angry with
+Denny, whom I found standing in the doorway that led to the kitchen,
+with a grin of intense amusement on his face.
+
+"What are you grinning at?" I demanded fiercely.
+
+"Oh, nothing," said Denny, and his face strove to assume a prudent
+gravity.
+
+"Bring a pickaxe," said I.
+
+Denny's face wandered toward Phroso. "Is she as annoying as that?" he
+seemed to ask. "A pickaxe?" he repeated in surprised tones.
+
+"Yes, two pickaxes! I'm going to have this floor up, and see if I can
+find out the great Stefanopoulos secret." I spoke with an accent of
+intense scorn.
+
+Again Phroso laughed; her hands beat very softly against one another.
+Heavens, what did she do that for when Denny was there, watching
+everything with those shrewd eyes of his?
+
+"The pickaxes!" I roared.
+
+Denny turned and fled; a moment elapsed; I did not know what to do, how
+to look at Phroso, or how not to look at her. I took refuge in flight. I
+rushed into the kitchen on pretence of aiding or hastening Denny's
+search. I found him taking up an old pick that stood near the door
+leading to the compound. I seized it from his hand.
+
+"Confound you!" I cried, for Denny laughed openly at me; and I rushed
+back to the hall! But on the threshold I paused--and said what I will
+not write.
+
+For, though there came from somewhere just the last ripple of a mirthful
+laugh, the hall was empty! Phroso was gone! I flung the pickaxe down
+with a clatter on the boards, and exclaimed in my haste:
+
+"I wish to heaven I'd never bought the island!"
+
+But I did not mean that really.
+
+(_To be continued._)
+
+
+
+
+CLIMBING MONT BLANC IN A BLIZZARD.
+
+CAUGHT IN A BLINDING SNOW STORM ON A NARROW CLIFF, TWO AND A HALF
+MILES ABOVE SEA LEVEL.
+
+BY GARRETT P. SERVISS,
+
+Author of "Astronomy with an Opera Glass," "Climbing the Matterhorn,"[15]
+etc.
+
+[Footnote 15: See MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE for September, 1895.]
+
+Standing on the spindling tower of the Matterhorn early one August
+morning in 1894 I saw, for the first time, the white crown of Europe,
+Mont Blanc, with its snows sparkling high above the roof of clouds that
+covered the dozing summer in the valleys of Piedmont. Just one year
+later I started from Chamonix to climb to that cool world in the blue.
+
+My guide was Ambroise Couttet, whose family name is famous in the
+mountaineering annals of Savoy. An earlier Ambroise Couttet lies in the
+icy bosom of Mont Blanc, fallen, years ago, down a crevasse so profound
+that his would-be rescuers were drawn, baffled, awe-struck, and with
+shaking nerves, from its horrible depths, whose bottom they could not
+find. Even before that time Pierre Couttet had been whirled to death on
+the great peak, and his body, embedded and preserved in a glacier, was
+found nearly half a century afterward at its foot. And two other
+Couttets of past years escaped, by the merest hair of miraculous
+fortune, from a catastrophe on the same dreadful slopes in which three
+of their comrades were swallowed up. Yet the Ambroise Couttet of to-day
+is never so happy as when he is on the mountain. His eyes sparkle if he
+hears the thunder of an avalanche, and he smiles as he watches its
+tossing white crest ploughing swiftly across some snowy incline which he
+has just traversed.
+
+One porter sufficed, for my only traps consisted of a hand camera, a
+field-glass, and a few extra woollen shirts and stockings. Having had no
+serious exercise since climbing the Matterhorn a year before, I deemed
+it prudent to spare my strength for the more important work above by
+taking a mule to the Pierre Pointue. It was a fine morning, offering a
+promise of favorable weather after several days of mist and rain.
+Monsieur Janssen, the French astronomer, who was waiting at Chamonix for
+his porters to complete their long and wearisome labor of transporting
+piecemeal his telescope and other instruments of observation to the
+summit, before making the ascent himself, said, grasping my arm at
+parting:
+
+"I wish you good luck; good weather you are sure of."
+
+[Illustration: COL DE BLANC, MONT BLANC.
+
+From a photograph loaned by Mr. Frank Hegger, New York.]
+
+It was high authority, for Monsieur Janssen has studied the weather all
+his life, and knows the atmosphere of mountain peaks and of the airy
+levels where balloons float; yet if he could have foreseen what was to
+occur on Mont Blanc within twenty hours, he would have wished me the
+good fortune of being somewhere else.
+
+It was past the middle of the forenoon of the 10th of August when, with
+Couttet and the porter, I left Chamonix. Dismissing my tired mule at the
+Pierre Pointue, which hangs with its flag nearly seven thousand feet
+above sea level, and high over the seracs of the Glacier des Bossons, we
+began the ascent by way of the Pierre a l'Echelle and over the
+missile-scarred foot of the Aiguille du Midi. The upper part of this
+mountain as seen from Chamonix looks quite sharp-pointed enough to
+deserve its name of the "Needle of the South." The side toward the
+Glacier des Bossons is exceedingly steep, and when the snows are melting
+the peak becomes a perfect catapult, volleys of ice and stones being
+discharged from its lofty precipices. The falling rocks, dropping, as
+some of them do, from ledge to ledge half a mile, acquire the velocity
+of cannon shots. Nobody ever lingers on this part of the route, and we
+had no desire to pause, although the Aiguille sends comparatively few
+stones down so late in the summer.
+
+The sun beat furiously while we were scrambling on the rocks, and the
+latter were warm to the touch, although, thousands of feet below, the
+immense cleft in the mountain side was choked with masses of
+never-melted ice.
+
+"Never mind," said Couttet, as I stopped to wipe the perspiration from
+my face, "it will be cool enough when we get onto the glacier."
+
+And it was--so cool in fact that I hastily pulled on my coat. Having
+passed out of range of the Aiguille du Midi, we found comfortable going
+on the ice.
+
+[Illustration: THE MAUVAIS PAS, MONT BLANC.]
+
+DIFFICULTIES AND DANGERS OF THE ROUTE.
+
+
+The northern slope of Mont Blanc is hollowed into a vast cavernous
+channel, half filled with glaciers, and edged on the east by the Mont
+Maudit, the Aiguille de Saussure, and the Aiguille du Midi, and on the
+west by the Dome and Aiguille du Gouter and the Gros Bechat. Down this
+tremendous gutter crowd the eternal snows of Mont Blanc, compressed
+toward the bottom into the Glacier des Bossons and the Glacier de
+Taconnaz. These immense ice streams are separated by the projecting nose
+of the Montagne de la Cote, which rises from the valley of Chamonix and
+lies in a long, dark ridge on the foot of Mont Blanc. Above the Montagne
+de la Cote several gigantic rock masses, shooting into pinnacles, push
+up through the ice from the bottom and near the centre of the channel.
+These are called the Grands Mulets, from the resemblance which they
+present, when seen from Chamonix, to a row of huge black mules tramping
+up the white mountain side.
+
+[Illustration: THE GLACIER DES BOSSONS, MONT BLANC.]
+
+I mention these features because the best route to the summit of Mont
+Blanc lies over the glaciers and snow fields and between the walls of
+the great trough I have described, and the first station is at the
+Grands Mulets, where a cabin for the accommodation of climbers has
+existed for many years. From the foot of the Aiguille du Midi, at the
+Pierre a l'Echelle, across the Glacier des Bossons to the rocks of the
+Grands Mulets the distance is about a mile and a quarter, and the
+perpendicular increase of elevation nearly two thousand feet. The
+passage seldom presents any difficulty, except to inexperienced persons,
+although at times many crevasses must be crossed, particularly at what
+is called the Junction, just above the point where the Glacier des
+Bossons and the Glacier de Taconnaz are divided by the Montagne de la
+Cote. Here some underlying irregularity of the rocks, deep beneath the
+surface of the mighty river of ice, causes the formation of a labyrinth
+of fissures and crevasses, overhung with towering seracs, or ice
+turrets; and the ice descends between the Grands Mulets and the rock
+wall in front of the Gros Bechat in a sort of motionless
+cascade--motionless, that is to say, except when cracks break apart into
+yawning chasms, and massive blocks tumble into the depths.
+
+Even a practised climber is occasionally compelled to look to his steps
+in passing the Junction. On my return I witnessed an accident in this
+place which proved at the same time the reality of the danger and the
+usefulness in sudden crises of the mountaineer's rope. A tourist
+descending from the Grands Mulets was passing, under an impending serac,
+around the head of a crevasse, where the only footway was a few inches
+of ice hewn with the axe. Being heedless or nervous, his feet shot from
+under him, and with a yell he plunged into the pit. Luckily, he was tied
+to the rope between two guides, one of whom had passed the dangerous
+corner, while the other, behind, had also a safe footing. As he fell the
+guides braced themselves, the rope zipped, and the unfortunate
+adventurer hung clutching and kicking at the polished blue wall. He had
+really descended but a few feet into the crevasse, though to him
+doubtless it seemed a hundred, and with a surprising display of
+strength, or skill, the guides hauled him out by simply tightening the
+rope. One of them pulled back and the other forward, and between them
+the sprawling victim rose with the strain to the brink of the chasm,
+where a third man dexterously caught and landed him.
+
+[Illustration: REFUGE STATION AT THE GRANDS MULETS, MONT BLANC.]
+
+Madame Marke and Olivier Gay were not so fortunate near this spot in
+1870. A bridge of snow spanning a crevasse gave way beneath them, and,
+the rope breaking, they disappeared and perished in the abyss.
+
+We reached the Grands Mulets in the middle of the afternoon. Here the
+great majority of amateur climbers are content to terminate their ascent
+of Mont Blanc. The experience of getting as far as this point and back
+again is, as the incidents just related show, anything but
+insignificant, and may prove not only exciting but even tragic. Yet, of
+course, the real work, the tug of war between human endurance and the
+obstacles of untamed nature, is above. The Grands Mulets formed the
+stopping place in some of the earliest attempts to climb Mont Blanc,
+more than a hundred years ago. Here Jacques Balmat, the hero of the
+first ascent, passed an awful night alone, amid the cracking of glaciers
+and the shaking of avalanches, before his final victory over the peak in
+1786. In the spirit which led the Romans to surname the conqueror of
+Hannibal "Scipio Africanus," the exultant Chamonniards called their hero
+"Balmat de Mont Blanc." He, too, finally perished by a fall from a
+precipice in 1834, and to-day there are those who whisper that his
+spirit can be seen flitting over the snowy wastes before every new
+catastrophe.
+
+The cabin at the Grands Mulets is furnished with rough bunks and cooking
+apparatus, and during the summer a woman, Adele Balmat, assisted by the
+guides, acts as hostess for this high-perched "inn," ten thousand feet
+above sea level.
+
+It is customary to leave the Grands Mulets for the ascent to the summit
+soon after midnight, in order to get over the immense snow slopes before
+the action of the sun has loosened the avalanches and weakened the
+crevasse bridges. But we did not start until half-past three in the
+morning. The waning moon, hanging over the Dome du Gouter, gave
+sufficient light to render a lantern unnecessary, and dawn was near at
+hand. Threatening bands of clouds attracted anxious glances from
+Couttet, and it was evident that a change of weather impended. But we
+clambered over the rocks to the crevassed slopes below the Gouter, and
+pushed upward.
+
+We were now approaching the higher and narrower portion of the immense
+cleft or channel in the mountain that I have described. On our right
+towered the Dome du Gouter, and on the left the walls of the Mont Maudit
+and its outlying pinnacles. Snowy ridges and peaks shone afar in the
+moonlight on all sides. It was a wilderness of white.
+
+[Illustration: ADELE BALMAT, HOSTESS AT THE GRANDS MULETS STATION.]
+
+At the height of twelve thousand feet we came upon the Petit Plateau, a
+comparatively horizontal lap of snow which is frequently swept clear
+across with avalanches of ice descending from the enormous seracs that
+hang like cornices upon the precipices above. The frosty splinters of a
+recent downfall sparkled and crunched under our feet. It is one of the
+most dangerous places on the mountain. "Men have lost their lives here
+and will again lose them," is the remark of Mr. Conway, the Himalayan
+climber, in describing his passage of the place. "Many times I have
+crossed it," said Monsieur Vallot, the mountain meteorologist, last
+summer, "but never without a sinking of the heart, and the moment we are
+over the Petit Plateau I always hear my guides, trained and fearless
+men, mutter, 'Once more we are out of it.'"
+
+Knowing these things, it is needless to say that I found the Petit
+Plateau keenly interesting. The menacing seracs leaned from the cliffs,
+glittering icily, and threw black shadows upon the _neve_ beneath,
+but suffered us to pass unmolested.
+
+Above the Petit Plateau is a steep ascent called the Grands Montees
+which taxes the breath. Having surmounted this, we were on the Grand
+Plateau, a much wider level than the other, edged with tremendous ice
+cliffs and crevasses, and situated at an elevation of thirteen thousand
+feet. For some time now it had been broad day, but the clouds had
+thickened rapidly, and the summit was wrapped and completely hidden in
+them. Blasts of frigid wind began to whistle about us, driving stinging
+pellets of ice into our faces. We quickened our steps, for it would not
+do to be caught in a storm here. The Grand Plateau has taken more lives
+than its ill-starred neighbor below.
+
+
+A BLINDING STORM OF SNOW AND WIND.
+
+
+We now bore off to the right, in order to clamber up the side of the
+great channel, or depression, that we had thus far followed, because at
+its upper end, where it meets the base of the crowning pyramid of Mont
+Blanc, it abuts against ice-covered precipices that no mortal will ever
+scale. Snow commenced to fall, and the wind rose. As we neared the crest
+of the ridge connecting the Dome du Gouter with the Bosses du Dromadaire
+and the summit, the tempest burst fiercely upon us. In an instant we
+were enveloped by a cloud of whirling snow that blotted out sky and
+mountains alike. It drove into my eyes, and half blinded me. It was so
+thick that objects a few yards away would have been concealed even
+without a violent wind to confuse the vision. At times Couttet, close
+ahead of me, was visible only in a kind of gray outline, like a wraith.
+On an open plain such a storm in such a temperature would have had its
+dangers for a traveller seeking his way. We were seeking our way, not on
+an open plain, but two miles and a half above sea level, in a desert of
+snow and ice, encompassed with precipices, chasms, and pitfalls,
+treading on we knew not what, assailed by a wild storm, all landmarks
+obliterated, and our footsteps filling so fast with drifted snow that in
+two minutes we could not see from what direction we had last come.
+
+In such a situation the imagination becomes dramatic. The night before I
+had been reading the account of the loss, in 1870, of Dr. Bean, Mr.
+Randall, and the Rev. Mr. Corkendale, together with five guides and
+three porters, eleven persons in all, in just such a storm and within
+sight of this spot. And now as we stumbled along I repeated to myself,
+almost word for word, Dr. Bean's message to his wife, found when his
+body was discovered:
+
+"September 7, evening--My dear Hessie: We have been two days on Mont
+Blanc in the midst of a terrible hurricane of snow; we have lost our
+way, and are in a hole scooped in the snow at an altitude of fifteen
+thousand feet. I have no longer any hope of descending. Perhaps this
+notebook will be found and sent to you. We have nothing to eat, my feet
+are already frozen, and I am exhausted. I have strength to write only a
+few words more. I have left means for C.'s education; I know you will
+employ them wisely. I die with faith in God and with loving thoughts of
+you. Farewell to all. We shall meet again in heaven--I think of you
+always."
+
+The bodies of five of these victims were found but a few feet aside from
+the proper route which in clear weather would have led to safety; the
+other six had disappeared.
+
+While such cheerful recollections were running through my mind I noticed
+that we were no longer ascending, and that Couttet, whom I had not
+troubled with questions as long as he showed no hesitation, was bearing
+now this way and now that, and occasionally stopping and peering about
+with spread nostrils, like a dog seeking a trail. Clearly we were on the
+top of the highest elevation in our neighborhood, for the wind now came
+point blank in our faces out of the white abyss of the atmosphere, and
+almost blew me off my feet.
+
+"Have you lost the way?" I asked.
+
+"I'll find it," Couttet replied.
+
+"Where are we?"
+
+"Near the Bosses."
+
+"Isn't there a refuge hut on the Bosses?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Can we reach it?"
+
+Couttet did not immediately reply, but looked up and about, as if trying
+to pierce the driving snow with his gaze. "If I could catch sight of the
+rocks," at length he said.
+
+Suddenly the gale seemed to split the clouds, and for an instant a
+vision opened of blue sky over our heads, and endless slopes of snow,
+falling one below another, under our feet. I saw that we were standing
+on the rounded back of a snowy ridge. Just in front the white surface
+dipped and disappeared in a vast gulf of air, where flying clouds were
+torn against the black jagged points of lower mountains. Above our
+level, to the left, rocks appeared projecting through the covering of
+snow. I knew that these must belong to the Bosses du Dromadaire, and
+that the hut we sought was perched on one of them.
+
+All this the eye caught in a twinkling, for the storm curtain was lifted
+only to be as quickly dropped again, shutting out both the upper and the
+lower world, and leaving us isolated on the slippery roof ridge of
+Europe. At the same time the wind increased its violence, and the cold
+became more penetrating. I pulled my fingers out of the digits of my
+woollen gloves, and gripped my iron-shod baton between thumb and
+knuckles. We now had our bearings, thanks to the momentary glance, and
+it behooved us not to lose them, for the storm was every instant growing
+worse. At times it was not the simplest thing in the world to keep one's
+feet in the face of the blasts. I was too fresh from reading the history
+of Mont Blanc not to remember that a few years ago Count Villanova and
+two guides were blown from another nearby ridge into the very abyss
+whose jaws had just opened before us, where their bodies lie
+undiscovered to this day.
+
+Moving cautiously, we began to descend, in order to cross the neck which
+stretches between the Dome du Gouter and the Bosses. When we wandered a
+little to the right the surface commenced to pitch off, and we knew what
+that meant--beware! Once when we had veered too far to the left,
+staggering down hill under the blows of the storm, and able to see but a
+few feet away, we stopped as if a shot had arrested us. Another step or
+two would have carried us over a precipice of ice, whose blue wall fell
+perpendicularly from the brittle edge at our feet into cloud-choked
+depths. We had gone down our roof to the eaves. Not a word was spoken,
+but with instant unanimity we turned and scrambled up again, Couttet in
+the lead, and the porter breathing hard at my heels. Such a scene in the
+fraction of a second is photographed on the memory for a lifetime.
+
+In a little while we began to ascend another slope, to which we had felt
+our way, and this was surely the swelling hump of the first of the
+Bosses, and the rocks must be near at hand. Another opportune gap in the
+clouds, which left us for an instant surrounded with retreating walls of
+vapor, confirmed that opinion, and vindicated the mountaineering skill
+of Couttet, who had found the way though way there was none. A quick,
+breathless scramble up a confused heap of ice and slippery points of
+rock brought us at last to the refuge.
+
+[Illustration: PASSAGE OF A CREVASSE, MONT BLANC.]
+
+A NIGHT OF SCANT SHELTER AND NO FOOD.
+
+Couttet shook and banged the door, making a noise that did not penetrate
+far through the whistling air, and, with cold fingers, began fumbling at
+the latch, when, to my surprise, the door opened and a muffled voice
+bade us enter. An Englishman who had started with his guides at midnight
+from the Grands Mulets, and three or four of Monsieur Janssen's porters,
+had already sought refuge in the hut. Icicles hung about my face, and my
+clothes were as stiff as chain armor. There was no fire in the little
+hut and no means of making any. My watch, when I was able to get it out
+of my pocket, showed the time to be a quarter to nine A.M.
+
+Pulling off our shoes and putting on dry stockings as quickly as
+possible, we imitated the example of the man who had let us in, and who
+no sooner closed the door than he tumbled back into his bunk and buried
+himself in the rough woollen blankets which the Alpine Club has provided
+for the use of those who may need them.
+
+In about an hour the storm lightened, and the Englishman and the porters
+started back to the Grands Mulets. I consulted Couttet about making a
+dash for the summit; but he thought it would be better to wait awhile,
+and better still to follow the others down the mountain. To this last
+proposition I decidedly objected, although Couttet was right, as it
+turned out; for in another hour the storm, which had not entirely ceased
+at any time, whipped itself into renewed fury, and before noon the wind
+was howling and shrieking with demoniac energy, and flinging gritty snow
+and ice in blinding clouds against the hut, which, situated on a ridge,
+was completely exposed. Fortunately it is strongly built and solidly
+anchored. While I entertained no reasonable doubt of its security, yet
+when a blast of extraordinary fierceness made it tremble, as if it were
+holding itself with desperate grip upon the rocks, I could not help
+picturing it, in imagination, taking flight at last, and sailing high
+over the mountains in the wild embrace of the tempest.
+
+Time moved with a dreadfully slow pace. The only way to keep warm was to
+remain in the bunk under a pile of blankets. Once, in my impatience, I
+got out and painfully hauled on my shoes, which were as cold as ice, and
+as hard almost; but my feet were blistered through lack of previous
+exercise, and after hobbling and shivering for a few minutes on the
+narrow floor, which was partly covered with a constantly accumulating
+deposit of snow, as fine and dry as flour and as frigid as though it had
+come straight from the Arctic Circle, I hurried back under the blankets.
+The invading snow penetrated through cracks that one could hardly see,
+around the door and the little square window.
+
+At last noon came, and we ate our remaining morsels of dry bread, which
+finished our provisions. We had brought along only enough to provide a
+lunch on the way to the summit, intending to be back at the Grands
+Mulets not later than midday. Then the long afternoon dragged its weary
+hours, while the storm got higher, shriller, and colder, and the sense
+of our isolation became keener. Finally daylight began to fade. Slowly
+the light grew dim in the window at my feet, until it was a mere
+glimmer. Since we had to stay, we thanked the storm for hastening the
+fall of night. When the gloom became so dense that even the window had
+disappeared, Couttet lit a tallow dip, but it would not remain upright
+in its improvised holder, and the freezing draughts that stole through
+the hut kept it flickering so that he finally put it out, and we
+remained in the dark, not "seein' things," like Eugene Field's youthful
+hero, but hearing things no less uncanny. The wind whistled, moaned,
+screeched, growled, and occasionally shouted with such startling
+imitation of human voices that I once asked Couttet if some one were not
+calling for help. But investigation showed that we were alone on our
+tempestuous perch, and that the cry of agony had been uttered by the
+hurricane, or the wind-lashed rocks.
+
+[Illustration: PASSAGE OF A CREVASSE. MONT BLANC.]
+
+Supperless, we wrapped our blankets closer, got ears and noses under,
+and tried to sleep. I had a few naps, but the roar outside, and the
+shaking of the hut as the storm smote it again and again, rendered
+continuous sleep impossible. Something had been loosened on the roof
+close overhead, and it rattled and banged as if the destruction of the
+hut had actually begun. It was a queer sound, angry, imperious,
+menacing, and it produced a quaking sensation. Sometimes it would die
+down, and, with a final rap or two, entirely cease. Then it would
+resume, with perhaps five strokes to the second, increasing to ten, then
+to twenty, and quickly rising to an ear-splitting r-r-r-h, terminated
+with a bang! bang!! bang!!! that made the heart leap, while the hut
+seemed to rock on its foundations.
+
+Getting out of the bunk, I found by the sense of touch that the powdery
+snow-drifts were becoming steadily deeper on the floor. This recalled
+another incident which had greatly interested me during my preliminary
+reading at Chamonix. The winter before, Monsieur Janssen's men had
+stored some of the heavier materials for his observatory near these
+rocks. At the opening of summer they could not be found, and no one knew
+what had become of them. Finally, as the snows melted and fell from the
+peak in slides and avalanches, the missing articles were uncovered,
+having been buried in a white grave forty feet deep.
+
+And so the wild night passed, until with tedious deliberation the little
+window made a hole in the darkness, and I knew that morning was at hand.
+The howling without was as loud as ever, and the fine snow was packed
+high upon the window, shutting out a good share of the light. The floor
+was covered with white drifts, and my shoes had swallowed snow; but
+being hard and dry, it was easily shaken out. There was no fire to be
+built and no breakfast to be prepared. But it was impossible to lie
+still, even for the sake of keeping warm, and pulling on our shoes we
+stamped about the floor, and occasionally opened the door to see what
+the storm was about. Along about eight o'clock it began to lighten, and
+my hopes rose. We could catch an occasional glimpse of the crowning peak
+and of the observatory, which we knew contained two or three of
+Janssen's men and some provisions. An hour later, when the storm seemed
+about at an end, and we were preparing to ascend to the top, we saw the
+men from the observatory coming down. They warned us that the snow above
+was in bad condition, and, believing that more foul weather was to come,
+they were embracing this opportunity to get down. Couttet proposed that
+we should accompany them, especially as they reported nothing left to
+eat at the observatory, but I declined. Again the event proved that he
+was right, for while we waited a little before starting out, the storm
+fell upon us once more. Then Couttet insisted upon descending, and I did
+not think it wise to oppose his decision, knowing that it was based upon
+experience and that he had nothing to gain and something to lose in
+returning without having conducted his "monsieur" to the summit.
+
+[Illustration: A BIRTHPLACE OF AVALANCHES, MONT BLANC.]
+
+A SECOND ATTEMPT FOR THE SUMMIT.
+
+We put on the rope and scrambled down, but when we got upon the neck
+below the Bosses the clouds whirled off and the burnished sun stood over
+the white peak, too splendid to be looked upon.
+
+"Couttet, we must go up," I exclaimed.
+
+"As you say," he replied; and we turned upon our track.
+
+We had got back to the hut and started up the steep arete above it, when
+the sun disappeared, the air turned white, and the wind resumed its
+wrestle. So powerful was it that on our narrow ridge it had the
+advantage of us, and we crouched behind a projecting point.
+
+"It is too perilous," said Couttet, "and we must descend. I will not
+take the risk."
+
+I saw it was necessary to yield, and down we went. Hunger was beginning
+to tell, and we made haste. Where the slopes were not seamed with open
+crevasses we "glissaded," which is a very expeditious and exhilarating
+method of getting down a mountain, although unsafe unless one is certain
+of his ground. Sometimes we slid on our feet, steadying ourselves with
+our batons or ice-axes, and sometimes I sat on the hard snow and glided
+like a Turk on a toboggan slide, the tassel of my woollen cap fluttering
+behind in the wind. We took the unbridged crevasses with flying leaps,
+and so plunged rapidly downward, with frequent keen regrets on my part,
+because the weather seemed mending again. But it would not do to turn
+back now in our half-famished condition, and we were glad when the
+Grands Mulets hove in sight below, a black squadron in a sea of snow.
+
+[Illustration: M. JANSSEN'S OBSERVATORY ON TOP OF MONT BLANC.]
+
+In Chamonix I took a day or two to thaw out and mend bruises, and then
+ran over to Martigny, crossed the Grand St. Bernard, the St. Gotthard,
+and the Grimsel passes, spent a week in William Tell's country, prowling
+about the ruins of old castles and the sites of legendary battles, and
+finally settled down in Milan to feast my eyes on the pinnacles of its
+wondrous cathedral. But my failure to reach the top of Mont Blanc cast a
+perceptible shadow over everything I saw.
+
+One day, the 27th of August, as I stood on the cathedral spire, the sun
+lay warm upon the Alps, and Mont Blanc shone in the distance. "It is
+time to go," I said to myself; and descending, I hurried to my hotel and
+packed a gripsack. The night express via Mont Cenis placed me in Geneva
+the next morning in time to catch the first train for Cluses. The same
+evening the diligence landed me in Chamonix. I sent for Couttet.
+
+"Mont Blanc in the morning," I said.
+
+"Delighted, monsieur; we'll do it this time."
+
+"Storm or no storm?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+It so happened that I was to hear one more story of disaster before
+getting to the top of Mont Blanc. While I watched the distant mountain
+from the Milan cathedral spire the closing scene of a new tragedy was
+being enacted amid its merciless crevasses. Dr. Robert Schnurdreher, an
+advocate of Prague, accompanied by Michael Savoye, guide, and Laurent
+Brou, porter, ascended Mont Blanc from the Italian side on August 17th,
+and passed the night in the hut on the Bosses du Dromadaire where, six
+days before, I had had a stormy experience. But now the weather was
+superb, and when, on the morning of the 18th, they started to descend to
+Chamonix, no thought of impending evil could have oppressed their minds.
+
+They passed the Grand Plateau and the Petit Plateau in safety, and
+reached the labyrinth of crevasses between the cliffs of the Dome du
+Gouter and the Grands Mulets. Just what happened then no one will ever
+know, but there they disappeared from the world of the living.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE SUMMIT OF MONT BLANC, SHOWING THE
+MATTERHORN IN THE DISTANCE.]
+
+Eight days went by, and then a telegram was received at Chamonix from
+the family of the guide Savoye, in Courmayer, Italy, inquiring if he and
+his party had been seen. All Chamonix comprehended in an instant the
+significance of that telegram, and thirty guides started post haste for
+the mountains.
+
+The fact was now recalled that several days before some of Monsieur
+Janssen's porters had noticed an ice axe lying on the snow a little
+aside from the ordinary route. They thought nothing of it at the time,
+supposing that the implement had either been thrown away, or left behind
+by some one who would return to get it. This abandoned axe now became
+the first object of the search. Having discovered it, the guides knew
+well where to look for its owner. The axe lay on a slope of snow almost
+as hard as ice, and at the foot of the slope was the inevitable
+crevasse; not one of the largest, being only fifteen feet wide by two
+hundred long, and one hundred deep, but all too sufficient. They crept
+to the edge, and peered into the gloomy depths. There lay the missing
+men, still tied together. Schnurdreher and Savoye had apparently been
+killed at once; but there was heart-rending evidence that Brou had
+survived the fall, and made a pitiful effort to scale the perpendicular
+walls of the ice chasm. Enclosed in bags of rough sacking, the bodies
+were dragged with ropes down to the Pierre Pointue, and thence carried
+to Chamonix. This is a time-honored procedure in such cases. Every boy
+in Chamonix understands how a body should be brought down from Mont
+Blanc.
+
+On the night of my arrival Savoye and Brou had just been buried at
+Chamonix, and money was being raised for the relief of their almost
+destitute families. But Schnurdreher, in his mountain dress, with his
+spiked shoes on his feet, still lay at the undertaker's, awaiting the
+coming of his relatives.
+
+
+A RACE FOR THE SUMMIT.
+
+The morning of August 29th was cloudless, and with the same outfit as
+before, but with a scion of the house of Balmat for porter in place of
+the man who had filled that office on the first occasion, I started once
+more for the frosty topknot of Europe. At the Grands Mulets we found two
+Germans with their retinue of guides and porters, six persons in all,
+who were also bound for the summit. They left the Grands Mulets at
+midnight, and we followed them three-quarters of an hour later. There
+was no moon, and Couttet carried a lantern. On reaching the Petit
+Plateau we saw the lights of the other party flashing ahead of us, and
+at the foot of the Grands Montees we overtook them. They had talked
+confidently of making the ascent in extraordinarily quick time, and some
+good-natured chaffing now passed between Couttet and the rival guides. I
+had had no thought of a race; but I defy anybody, under the
+circumstances in which we were placed, not to experience a little
+spurring from the spirit of emulation. Jerking the rope to attract
+Couttet's attention, I told him in a low voice to pass the others at the
+first opportunity.
+
+"We'll do it on the Grand Plateau," he whispered.
+
+Five minutes later, however, the advance party paused to take breath. We
+immediately broke out of their tracks in the snow and started to pass
+around them; but they instantly accepted the challenge, and a scrambling
+race began up the steep slope. Sometimes we sank so deep that time was
+lost in extricating our legs, and again we slipped back, which was even
+more annoying than sticking fast. The powdery snow flew about like dust,
+and was occasionally dumped into my face by the piston-like action of my
+knees. The lanterns jangled and flickered wildly, and in their shifting
+and uncertain light, with our odd habiliments, we must have resembled a
+company of mad demons on a lark.
+
+Such a race in such a place could only last a couple of minutes, and it
+was soon over, the American coming out ahead. Getting upon the Grand
+Plateau, we did not stop to rest, but broke into a dog trot.
+
+"Whatever happens, Couttet, we must be first at the top."
+
+"Very well, monsieur."
+
+From the Grand Plateau there are two ways to the summit: one by the
+Bosses du Dromadaire, which we followed on the first attempt; the other,
+which we now adopted, by the "Corridor." This is a steep furrow, crossed
+by an ice precipice with a great crevasse near its foot, which leads
+upward from the left-hand border of the Grand Plateau to a snowy saddle
+between the Mont Maudit and a precipitous out-cropping of rock called
+the Mur de la Cote. A faint glimmer of approaching dawn now lay on part
+of the rim of mountains surrounding us.
+
+When we reached the foot of the Corridor the lights of the other party
+were not visible. But here step-cutting became necessary, and this
+delayed us so much that presently I caught dancing gleams from the
+pursuing lanterns moving rapidly at the bottom of the bowl of night out
+of which we were climbing. They were fast gaining upon us.
+
+"We must hurry, Couttet!"
+
+"Yes, but no man goes quick here who does not go for the last time."
+
+In fact, our position had an appearance of peril. We were part way up
+the frozen precipice that cuts across the Corridor, and were balancing
+ourselves on an acute wedge of ice which stood off several feet in front
+of the precipice, being separated from it by a deep cleft. The outer
+side of this wedge, whose edge we were traversing lengthwise, pitched
+down into the darkness and ended, I believe, in a crevasse. Presently we
+reached a place where the precipice overhung our precarious footway, and
+an inverted forest of icicles depended above us.
+
+"Make as little noise as possible, and step gently," said Couttet.
+
+This is a familiar precaution in the High Alps, where the vibrations of
+sound sometimes act the part of the trigger of a gun and let loose
+terrific energies ready poised for action. The clinking of particles of
+ice that shot from our feet into the depths distracted attention from
+the beautiful play of the light of the lanterns on some of the hanging
+masses.
+
+At last we attained a point where it was possible, by swinging round a
+somewhat awkward corner, to get upon the roof of the precipice. This we
+found so steep that occasional steps had also to be cut there.
+
+The lights of the pursuers had approached the foot of the wall, and
+though now invisible, we knew the party was ascending close behind,
+taking advantage of the steps we had made. This spurred us on, although
+I was beginning to suffer some inconvenience from the rarity of the air,
+and had to stop to breathe much oftener than I liked. In truth, the
+spurt we had made, beginning at the Grands Montees, involved an
+over-expenditure of energy whose effects I could not escape, and nature
+was already demanding usury for the loan.
+
+As we approached the ridge of the saddle, day rose blushing in the east,
+and Couttet put out the lantern. Turning to the right, we hurried in
+zigzags up the slippery Mur de la Cote, stopping to cut steps only when
+strictly necessary. While we were ascending this wall the sun appeared,
+and hung for a moment, a great, dazzling, fire-colored circle, on a
+distant mountain rim. Below us for a long time the great valleys
+remained filled with gloom, while out of and around there rose hundreds
+of peaks, tipped with pink and gold. But very few of the towering giants
+now reached to our level, and in a little while we should be above them
+all.
+
+Once on top of the Mur we had level going again for a space, and
+hurrying to the base of the crowning dome, which swells upward another
+thousand feet, we began its ascent without stopping. About half way up
+the dome the highest visible rocks of Mont Blanc on this side break
+through the Mur. They are called the Petits Mulets. We had nearly
+reached them when, looking back, I saw the heads of the other party
+appearing on the brink of the Mur. They looked up at us hanging right
+above them on the white slope, while Couttet carried my handkerchief,
+streaming triumphantly in the morning wind, from the end of his baton.
+Waving their hands, they sat down and gave up the race. While they
+lunched we pushed upward more slowly, and at six o'clock entered the
+door of Monsieur Janssen's observatory, fifteen thousand seven hundred
+and seventy-seven feet above the sea.
+
+My first look was directed to the Matterhorn, which, thirty-five miles
+away, pierced the morning sky with its black spike. Glittering near it
+were the snow turrets of Monte Rosa, the Dent Blanche, and all the
+marvellous circle of peaks that stand around Zermatt. There was not a
+cloud to break the view. On one side lay Italy; on the other France. It
+would be impossible to imagine the wild scene immediately below us. The
+tremendous slopes of snow falling away on all sides, now in steep
+inclines and now in broken precipices, ever down and down, were not
+after all so imposing as the jagged pinnacles of bare rock that sprang
+out of them.
+
+There was something peculiarly savage, almost menacing, in the aspect of
+these lower mountains, pressing in serried ranks around their
+white-capped chief. They seemed to shut us far away from the human world
+below, and one felt that he had placed himself entirely in the hands of
+nature. This was her realm, where she acknowledged no laws but her own,
+and was incapable of sympathy, pity, or remorse.
+
+
+
+
+FAIRY GOLD.
+
+BY MARY STEWART CUTTING,
+
+Author of "The Coupons of Fortune," "Henry," and other stories.
+
+
+When Mr. William Belden walked out of his house one wet October evening
+and closed the hall door carefully behind him, he had no idea that he
+was closing the door on all the habits of his maturer life and entering
+the borders of a land as far removed from his hopes or his imagination
+as the country of the Gadarenes.
+
+He had not wanted to go out that evening at all, not knowing what the
+fates had in store for him, and being only too conscious of the comfort
+of the sitting-room lounge, upon which, after the manner of the suburban
+resident who travelleth daily by railways, he had cast himself
+immediately after the evening meal was over. The lounge was in
+proximity--yet not too close proximity--to the lamp on the table; so
+that one might have the pretext of reading to cover closed eyelids and a
+general oblivion of passing events. On a night when a pouring rain
+splashed outside on the pavements and the tin roofs of the piazzas, the
+conditions of rest in the cosey little room were peculiarly attractive
+to a man who had come home draggled and wet, and with the toil and wear
+of a long business day upon him. It was therefore with a sinking of the
+heart that he heard his wife's gentle tones requesting him to wend his
+way to the grocery to purchase a pound of butter.
+
+"I hate to ask you to go, William dear, but there really is not a scrap
+in the house for breakfast, and the butter-man does not come until
+to-morrow afternoon," she said deprecatingly. "It really will only take
+you a few minutes."
+
+Mr. Belden smothered a groan, or perhaps something worse. The butter
+question was a sore one, Mrs. Belden taking only a stated quantity of
+that article a week, and always unexpectedly coming short of it before
+the day of replenishment, although no argument ever served to induce her
+to increase the original amount for consumption.
+
+"Cannot Bridget go?" he asked weakly, gazing at the small, plump figure
+of his wife, as she stood with meek yet inexorable eyes looking down at
+him.
+
+"Bridget is washing the dishes, and the stores will be closed before she
+can get out."
+
+"Can't one of the boys--" He stopped. There was in this household a god
+who ruled everything in it, to whom all pleasures were offered up, all
+individual desires sacrificed, and whose Best Good was the greedy and
+unappreciative Juggernaut before whom Mr. Belden and his wife prostrated
+themselves daily. This idol was called The Children. Mr. Belden felt
+that he had gone too far.
+
+"William!" said his wife severely, "I am surprised at you. John and
+Henry have their lessons to get, and Willy has a cold; I could not think
+of exposing him to the night air; and it is so damp, too!"
+
+Mr. Belden slowly and stiffly rose from his reclining position on the
+sofa. There was a finality in his wife's tone before which he succumbed.
+
+The night air _was_ damp. As he walked along the street the water
+slopped around his feet, and ran in rills down his rubber coat. He did
+not feel as contented as usual. When he was a youngster, he reflected
+with exaggerated bitterness, boys were boys, and not treated like
+precious pieces of porcelain. He did not remember, as a boy, ever having
+any special consideration shown him; yet he had been both happy and
+healthy, healthier perhaps than his over-tended brood at home. In his
+day it had been popularly supposed that nothing could hurt a boy. He
+heaved a sigh over the altered times, and then coughed a little, for he
+had a cold as well as Willy.
+
+The streets were favorable to silent meditation, for there was no one
+out in them. The boughs of the trees swished backward and forward in the
+storm, and the puddles at the crossings reflected the dismal yellow
+glare of the street lamps. Every one was housed to-night in the pretty
+detached cottages he passed, and he thought with growing wrath of the
+trivial errand on which he had been sent. "In happy homes he saw the
+light," but none of the high purpose of the youth of "Excelsior" fame
+stirred his heart--rather a dull sense of failure from all high things.
+What did his life amount to anyway, that he should count one thing more
+trivial than another? He loved his wife and children dearly, but he
+remembered a time when his ambition had not thought of being satisfied
+with the daily grind for a living and a dreamless sleep at night.
+
+"'Our life is but a sleep and a forgetting,'" he thought grimly, "in
+quite a different way from what Wordsworth meant." He had been one of
+the foremost in his class at college, an orator, an athlete, a favorite
+in society and with men. Great things had been predicted for him. Then
+he had fallen in love with Nettie; a professional career seemed to place
+marriage at too great a distance, and he had joyfully, yet with some
+struggles in his protesting intellect, accepted a position that was
+offered to him--one of those positions which never change, in which men
+die still unpromoted, save when a miracle intervenes. It was not so good
+a position for a family of six as it had been for a family of two, but
+he did not complain. He and Nettie went shabby, but the children were
+clothed in the best, as was their due.
+
+He was too wearied at night to read anything but the newspapers, and the
+gentle domestic monotony was not inspiring. He and Nettie never went out
+in the evenings; the children could not be left alone. He met his
+friends on the train in that diurnal journey to and from the great city,
+and she occasionally attended a church tea; but their immediate and
+engrossing world seemed to be made up entirely of persons under thirteen
+years of age. They had dwelt in the place almost ever since their
+marriage, respected and liked, but with no real social life. If Mr.
+Belden thought of the years to come, he may be pardoned an unwonted
+sinking of the heart.
+
+It was while indulging in these reflections that he mechanically
+purchased the pound of butter, which he could not help comparing with
+Shylock's pound of flesh, so much of life had it taken out of him, and
+then found himself stepping up on the platform of the station, led by
+his engrossing thoughts to pass the street corner and tread the path
+most familiar to him. He turned with an exclamation to retrace his way,
+when a man pacing leisurely up and down, umbrella in hand, caught sight
+of him.
+
+"Is that you, Belden?" said the stranger. "What are you doing down here
+to-night?"
+
+"I came out on an errand for my wife," said Belden sedately. He
+recognized the man as a young lawyer, much identified with politics; a
+mere acquaintance, yet it was a night to make any speaking animal seem a
+friend, and Mr. Belden took a couple of steps along beside him.
+
+"Waiting for a train?" he said.
+
+"Oh, thunder, yes!" said Mr. Groper, throwing away the stump of a cigar.
+"I have been waiting for the last half hour for the train; it's late, as
+usual. There's a whole deputation from Barnet on board, due at the
+Reform meeting in town to-night, and I'm part of the committee to meet
+them here."
+
+"Where is the other part of the committee?" asked Mr. Belden.
+
+"Oh, Jim Crane went up to the hall to see about something, and Connors
+hasn't showed up at all; I suppose the rain kept him back. What kind of
+a meeting we're going to have I don't know. Say, Belden, I'm not up to
+this sort of thing. I wish you'd stay and help me out--there's no end of
+swells coming down, more your style than mine."
+
+"Why, man alive, I can't do anything for you," said Mr. Belden. "These
+carriages I see are waiting for the delegation, and here comes the train
+now; you'll get along all right."
+
+He waited as the train slowed into the station, smiling anew at little
+Groper's perturbation. He was quite curious to see the arrivals. Barnet
+had been the home of his youth, and there might be some one whom he
+knew. He had half intended, earlier in the day, to go himself to the
+Reform meeting, but a growing spirit of inaction had made him give up
+the idea. Yes, there was quite a carload of people getting out--ladies,
+too.
+
+"Why, Will Belden!" called out a voice from the party. A tall fellow in
+a long ulster sprang forward to grasp his hand. "You don't say it's
+yourself come down to meet us. Here we all are, Johnson, Clemmerding,
+Albright, Cranston---all the old set. Rainsford, you've heard of my
+cousin, Will Belden. My wife and Miss Wakeman are behind here; but we'll
+do all the talking afterward, if you'll only get us off for the hall
+now."
+
+"Well, I am glad to see you, Henry," said Mr. Belden heartily. He thrust
+the pound of butter hastily into a large pocket of his mackintosh, and
+found himself shaking hands with a score of men. He had only time to
+assist his cousin's wife and the beautiful Miss Wakeman into a carriage,
+and in another moment they were all rolling away toward the town hall,
+with little Mr. Groper running frantically after them, ignored by the
+visitors, and peacefully forgotten by his friend.
+
+The public hall of the little town--which called itself a city--was all
+ablaze with light as the party entered it, and well filled,
+notwithstanding the weather. There were flowers on the platform where
+the seats for the distinguished guests were placed, and a general air of
+radiance and joyful import prevailed. It was a gathering of men from all
+political parties, concerned in the welfare of the State. Great measures
+were at stake, and the election of governor of immediate importance. The
+name of Judge Belden of Barnet was prominently mentioned. He had not
+been able to attend on this particular occasion, but his son had come
+with a delegation from the county town, twenty miles away, to represent
+his interests. On Mr. William Belden devolved the task of introducing
+the visitors; a most congenial one, he suddenly found it to be.
+
+His friends rallied around him as people are apt to do with one of their
+own kind when found in a foreign country. They called him Will, as they
+used to, and slapped him on the shoulder in affectionate abandon. Those
+among the group who had not known him before were anxious to claim
+acquaintance on the strength of his fame, which, it seemed, still
+survived him in his native town. It must not be supposed that he had not
+seen either his cousin or his friends during his sojourn away from them;
+on the contrary, he had met them once or so in two or three years, in
+the street, or on the ferry-boat--though they travelled by different
+roads--but he had then been but a passing interest in the midst of
+pressing business. To-night he was the only one of their kind in a
+strange place---his cousin loved him, they all loved him. The expedition
+had the sentiment of a frolic under the severer political aspect.
+
+In the welcome to the visitors by the home committee Mr. Belden also
+received his part, in their surprised recognition of him, almost
+amounting to a discovery.
+
+"We had no idea that you were a nephew of Judge Belden," one of them
+said to him, speaking for his colleagues, who stood near.
+
+Mr. William Belden bowed, and smiled; as a gentleman, and a rather
+reticent one, it had never occurred to him to parade his family
+connections. His smile might mean anything. It made the good
+committeeman, who was rich and full of power, feel a little
+uncomfortable, as he tried to cover his embarrassment with effusive
+cordiality. In the background stood Mr. Groper, wet, and breathing hard,
+but plainly full of admiration for his tall friend, and the position he
+held as the centre of the group. The visitors referred all arrangements
+to him.
+
+At last they filed on to the platform--the two cousins together.
+
+"You must find a place for the girls," said Henry Belden, with the
+peculiar boyish giggle that his cousin remembered so well. "By George,
+they _would_ come; couldn't keep 'em at home, after they once got
+Jim Shore to say it was all right. Of course, Marie Wakeman started it;
+she said she was bound to go to a political meeting and sit on the
+platform; arguing wasn't a bit of use. When she got Clara on her side I
+knew that I was doomed. Now, you couldn't get them to do a thing of this
+kind at home; but take a woman out of her natural sphere, and she
+ignores conventionalities, just like a girl in a bathing-suit. There
+they are, seated over in that corner. I'm glad that they are hidden from
+the audience by the pillar. Of course, there's that fool of a Jim, too,
+with Marie."
+
+"You don't mean to say she's at it yet?" said his cousin William.
+
+"'At it yet'! She's never stopped for a moment since you kissed her that
+night on the hotel piazza after the hop, under old Mrs. Trelawney's
+window--do you remember that, Will?"
+
+Mr. William Belden did indeed remember it; it was a salute that had
+echoed around their little world, leading, strangely enough, to the
+capitulation of another heart--it had won him his wife. But the little
+intimate conversation was broken off as the cousins took the places
+allotted to them, and the business of the meeting began.
+
+If he were not the chairman, he was appealed to so often as to almost
+serve in that capacity. He became interested in the proceedings, and in
+the speeches that were made; none of them, however, quite covered the
+ground as he understood it. His mind unconsciously formulated
+propositions as the flow of eloquence went on. It therefore seemed only
+right and fitting toward the end of the evening, when it became evident
+that his Honor the Mayor was not going to appear, that our distinguished
+fellow-citizen, Mr. William Belden, nephew of Judge Belden of Barnet,
+should be asked to represent the interests of the county in a speech,
+and that he should accept the invitation.
+
+He stood for a moment silent before the assembly, and then all the old
+fire that had lain dormant for so long blazed forth in the speech that
+electrified the audience, was printed in all the papers afterward, and
+fitted into a political pamphlet.
+
+He began with a comprehensive statement of facts, he drew large and
+logical deductions from them, and then lit up the whole subject with
+those brilliant flashes of wit and sarcasm for which he had been famous
+in bygone days. More than that, a power unknown before had come to him;
+he felt the real knowledge and grasp of affairs which youth had denied
+him, and it was with an exultant thrill that his voice rang through the
+crowded hall, and stirred the hearts of men. For the moment they felt as
+he felt, and thought as he thought, and a storm of applause arose as he
+ended--applause that grew and grew until a few more pithy words were
+necessary from the orator before silence could be restored.
+
+He made his way to the back of the hall for some water, and then, half
+exhausted, yet tingling still from the excitement, dropped into an empty
+chair by the side of Miss Wakeman.
+
+"Well done, Billy," she said, giving him a little approving tap with her
+fan. "You were just fine." She gave him an upward glance from her large
+dark eyes. "Do you know you haven't spoken to me to-night, nor shaken
+hands with me?"
+
+"Let us shake hands now," he said, smiling, flushed with success, as he
+looked into the eyes of this very pretty woman.
+
+"I shall take off my glove first--such old friends as we are! It must be
+a real ceremony."
+
+She laid a soft, white, dimpled hand, covered with glistening rings, in
+his outstretched palm, and gazed at him with coquettish plaintiveness.
+"It's so _lovely_ to see you again! Have you forgotten the night
+you kissed me?"
+
+"I have thought of it daily," he replied, giving her hand a hearty
+squeeze. They both laughed, and he took a surreptitious peep at her from
+under his eyelids. Marie Wakeman! Yes, truly, the same, and with the
+same old tricks. He had been married for nearly fourteen years, his
+children were half grown, he had long since given up youthful
+friskiness, but she was "at it" still. Why, she had been older than he
+when they were boy and girl; she must be for--He gazed at her soft,
+rounded, olive cheek, and quenched the thought.
+
+"And you are very happy?" she pursued, with tender solicitude. "Nettie
+makes you a perfect wife, I suppose."
+
+"Perfect," he assented gravely.
+
+"And you haven't missed me at all?"
+
+"Can you ask?" It was the way in which all men spoke to Marie Wakeman,
+married or single, rich or poor, one with another. He laughed inwardly
+at his lapse into the expected tone. "I feel that I really breathe for
+the first time in years, now that I'm with you again. But how is it that
+you are not married?"
+
+"What, after I had known you?" She gave him a reproachful glance. "And
+you were so cruel to me--as soon as you had made your little Nettie
+jealous you cared for me no longer. Look what I've declined to!" She
+indicated Jim Shore, leaning disconsolately against the cornice, chewing
+his moustache. "Now don't give him your place unless you really want to;
+well, if you're tired of me already--thank you ever so much, and I
+_am_ proud of you to-night, Billy!"
+
+Her lustrous eyes dwelt on him lingeringly as he left her; he smiled
+back into them. The lines around her mouth were a little hard; she
+reminded him indefinably of "She;" but she was a handsome woman, and he
+had enjoyed the encounter. The sight of her brought back so vividly the
+springtime of life; his hopes, the pangs of love, the joy that was his
+when Nettie was won; he felt an overpowering throb of tenderness for the
+wife at home who had been his early dream.
+
+The last speeches were over, but Mr. William Belden's triumph had not
+ended. As the acknowledged orator of the evening he had an ovation
+afterward; introductions and unlimited hand-shakings were in order.
+
+He was asked to speak at a select political dinner the next week; to
+speak for the hospital fund; to speak for the higher education of woman.
+Led by a passing remark of Henry Belden's to infer that his cousin was a
+whist player of parts, a prominent social magnate at once invited him to
+join the party at his house on one of their whist evenings.
+
+"My wife, er--will have great pleasure in calling on Mrs. Belden," said
+the magnate. "We did not know that we had a good whist player among us.
+This evening has indeed been a revelation in many ways--in many ways.
+You would have no objection to taking a prominent part in politics,
+if you were called upon? A reform mayor is sadly needed in our
+city--sadly needed. Your connection with Judge Belden would give great
+weight to any proposition of that kind. But, of course, all this is in
+the future."
+
+Mr. Belden heard his name whispered in another direction, in connection
+with the cashiership of the new bank which was to be built. The
+cashiership and the mayoralty might be nebulous honors, but it
+_was_ sweet, for once, to be recognized for what he was--man of
+might; a man of talent, and of honor.
+
+There was a hurried rush for the train at the last on the part of the
+visitors. Mr. William Belden snatched his mackintosh from the peg
+whereon it had hung throughout the evening, and went with the crowd,
+talking and laughing in buoyant exuberance of spirits. The night had
+cleared, the moon was rising, and poured a flood of light upon the wet
+streets. It was a different world from the one he had traversed earlier
+in the evening. He walked home with Miss Wakeman's exaggeratedly tender
+"Good-by, dear Billy!" ringing in his ears, to provoke irrepressible
+smiles. The pulse of a free life, where men lived instead of vegetating,
+was in his veins. His footstep gave forth a ringing sound from the
+pavement; he felt himself stalwart, alert, his brain rejoicing in its
+sense of power. It was even with no sense of guilt that he heard the
+church clocks striking twelve as he reached the house where his wife had
+been awaiting his return for four hours.
+
+She was sitting up for him, as he knew by the light in the parlor
+window. He could see her through the half-closed blinds as she sat by
+the table, a magazine in her lap, her attitude, unknown to herself,
+betraying a listless depression. After all, is a woman glad to have all
+her aspirations and desires confined within four walls? She may love her
+cramped quarters, to be sure, but can she always forget that they are
+cramped? To what does a wife descend after the bright dreams of her
+girlhood! Does she really like above all things to be absorbed in the
+daily consumption of butter, and the children's clothes, or is she
+absorbed in these things because the man who was to have widened the
+horizon of her life only limits it by his own decadence?
+
+She rose to meet her husband as she heard his key in the lock. She had
+exchanged her evening gown for a loose, trailing white wrapper, and her
+fair hair was arranged for the night in a long braid. Her husband had a
+smile on his face.
+
+"You look like a girl again," he said brightly, as he stooped and kissed
+her. "No, don't turn out the light, come in and sit down a while longer,
+I've ever so much to tell you. You can't guess where I've been this
+evening."
+
+"At the political meeting," she said promptly.
+
+"How on earth did you know?"
+
+"The doctor came here to see Willy, and he told me he saw you on the
+way. I'm glad you did go, William; I was worrying because I had sent you
+out; I did not realize until later what a night it was."
+
+"Well, I am very glad that you did send me," said her husband. He lay
+back in his chair, flushed and smiling at the recollection. "You ought
+to have been there, too; you would have liked it. What will you say if I
+tell you that I made a speech--yes, it is quite true--and was applauded
+to the echo. This town has just waked up to the fact that I live in it.
+And Henry said--but there, I'll have to tell you the whole thing, or you
+can't appreciate it."
+
+His wife leaned on the arm of his chair, watching his animated face
+fondly, as he recounted the adventures of the night. He pictured the
+scene vividly, and with a strong sense of humor.
+
+"And you don't say that Marie Wakeman is the same as ever?" she
+interrupted, with a flash of special interest. "Oh, William!"
+
+"_She_ called me Billy." He laughed anew at the thought. "Upon my
+word, Nettie, she beats anything I ever saw or heard of."
+
+"Did she remind you of the time you kissed her?"
+
+"Yes!" Their eyes met in amused recognition of the past.
+
+"Is she as handsome as ever?"
+
+"Um--yes--I think so. She isn't as pretty as you are."
+
+"Oh, Will!" She blushed and dimpled.
+
+"I declare, it is true!" He gazed at her with genuine admiration. "What
+has come over you to-night, Nettie?--you look like a girl again."
+
+"And you were not sorry when you saw her, that--that--"
+
+"Sorry! I have been thinking all the way home how glad I was to have won
+my sweet wife. But we mustn't stay shut up at home as much as we have;
+it's not good for either of us. We are to be asked to join the whist
+club--what do you think of that? You used to be a little card fiend once
+upon a time, I remember."
+
+She sighed. "It is so long since I have been anywhere! I'm afraid I
+haven't any clothes, Will. I suppose I _might_--"
+
+"What, dear?"
+
+"Take the money I had put aside for Mary's next quarter's music lessons;
+I do really believe a little rest would do her good."
+
+"It would--it would," said Mr. Belden with suspicious eagerness. Mary's
+after-dinner practising hour had tinged much of his existence with gall.
+"I insist that Mary shall have a rest. And you shall join the reading
+society now. Let us consider ourselves a little as well as the children;
+it's really best for them, too. Haven't we immortal souls as well as
+they? Can we expect them to seek the honey dew of paradise while they
+see us contented to feed on the grass of the field?"
+
+"You call yourself an orator!" she scoffed.
+
+He drew her to him by one end of the long braid, and solemnly kissed
+her. Then he went into the hall and took something from the pocket of
+his mackintosh which he placed in his wife's hand--a little wooden dish
+covered with a paper, through which shone a bright yellow substance--the
+pound of butter, a lump of gleaming fairy gold, the quest of which had
+changed a poor, commonplace existence into one scintillating with magic
+possibilities.
+
+Fairy gold, indeed, cannot be coined into marketable eagles. Mr. William
+Belden might never achieve either the mayoralty or the cashiership, but
+he had gained that of which money is only a trivial accessory. The
+recognition of men, the flashing of high thought to high thought, the
+claim of brotherhood in the work of the world, and the generous social
+intercourse that warms the earth--all these were to be his. Not even his
+young ambition had promised a wider field, not the gold of the Indies
+could buy him more of honor and respect.
+
+At home also the spell worked. He had but to speak the word, to name the
+thing, and Nettie embodied his thought. He called her young, and happy
+youth smiled from her clear eyes; beautiful, and a blushing loveliness
+enveloped her; clever, and her ready mind leaped to match with his in
+thought and study; dear, and love touched her with its transforming fire
+and breathed of long-forgotten things.
+
+If men only knew what they could make of the women who love them--but
+they do not, as the plodding, faded matrons who sit and sew by their
+household fires testify to us daily.
+
+Happy indeed is he who can create a paradise by naming it!
+
+[Illustration: FIGURE I.--APPARATUS USED BY PROFESSOR W.F. MAGIE IN
+TAKING A SKIAGRAPH OF A HAND.
+
+The Ruhmkorff coil in the background; the Crookes tube in front of it;
+under the hand is the photographic plate in its plate-holder.]
+
+
+
+
+THE USE OF THE ROeNTGEN X RAYS IN SURGERY.
+
+BY W.W. KEEN, M.D., LL.D.
+
+The nineteenth century resembles the sixteenth in many ways. In or about
+the sixteenth we have the extensive use of the mariner's compass and of
+gunpowder, the discovery of printing, the discovery and exploration of
+America, and the acquisition of territory in the New World by various
+European states. In the nineteenth century we have the exploration of
+Africa and the acquisition of territory in its interior, in which the
+various nations of Europe vie with each other again as three centuries
+before; the discovery of steam, and its ever-growing application to the
+transportation of goods and passengers on sea and land; of the
+spectroscope, and through it of many new elements, including helium in
+the sun, and, later, on the earth; of argon in the earth's atmosphere;
+of anaesthetics and of the antiseptic methods in surgery, and, lastly,
+the enormous recent strides in electrical science.
+
+Not only has electricity been applied to transportation and the
+development of light and power; but the latest discovery by Professor
+Roentgen of the X rays seems destined, possibly, not only to
+revolutionize our ideas of radiation in all its forms on the scientific
+side, but also on the practical side to be of use in the domain of
+medicine. It is, therefore, with great pleasure that I accede to the
+request of the editor of this Magazine to state briefly what has been
+achieved in the department of medicine up to the present time.
+
+The method of investigating the body by means of the X rays is very
+simple, as is shown in Figure 1. The Crookes tube, actuated from a
+storage battery or other source of electricity through a Ruhmkorff coil,
+is placed on one side of the body. If need be, instead of using the
+entire tube, the rays from the most effective portion of it only are
+allowed to impinge upon the part of the body to be investigated, through
+an opening in a disk of lead interposed between the Crookes tube and the
+body. On the other side of the part to be investigated is placed a quick
+photographic plate shut up in its plate-holder, and is exposed to the
+rays emanating from the tube for a greater or less length of time. The
+parts of the plate not protected by the body are acted upon by the rays,
+through the lid of the plate-holder (to which the rays are pervious),
+while the tissues of the body act, feebly or strongly, as the case may
+be, as obstacles to the rays. Hence, the part of the plate thus
+protected is less acted upon than the rest, and a shadow is produced
+upon the plate. The soft tissues of the body form but a very slight
+obstacle to the passage of the rays, and, hence, throw very faint
+shadows on the plate. The more dense portions, presenting a greater
+obstacle to the passage of the rays, throw deeper shadows; hence the
+bones are seen as dark shadows, the soft parts as lighter ones. That the
+flesh or soft parts are not wholly permeable to the rays is well shown
+in the skiagraph--i.e., a "shadow picture"--of a foot. (Figure
+2.) Where two toes overlap, it will be observed that there is a deeper
+shadow, like the section of a biconvex lens.
+
+[Illustration: FIGURE 2.--SKIAGRAPH OF A FOOT, SHOWING AN EXTRA BONE IN
+THE GREAT TOE, WHICH WAS REMOVED BY PROFESSOR MOSETIG.
+
+(From the "British Medical Journal.")]
+
+When we attempt to skiagraph the thicker portions of the body, for
+example, the shoulder, the thigh, or the trunk, even the parts
+consisting only of flesh obstruct the rays to such an extent, by reason
+of their thickness, that the shadows of the still more dense tissues,
+like the thigh bone, the arm bone, or the bones of the trunk, cannot be
+distinguished from the shadows of the thicker soft parts. Tesla
+("Electrical Review," March 11, 1896) has to some extent overcome these
+difficulties by his improved apparatus, and has skiagraphed, though
+rather obscurely, the shoulder and trunk, and Rowland has been able to
+do the same. Doubtless when we are able to devise apparatus of greater
+penetration, and to control the effect of the rays, we shall be able to
+skiagraph clearly even through the entire thickness of the body.
+
+It might be supposed that clothing or surgical dressings would prove an
+obstacle to this new photography, but all our preconceived notions
+derived from the ordinary photograph must be thrown aside. The bones of
+the forearm or the hand can be as readily skiagraphed through a
+voluminous surgical dressing or through the ordinary clothing, as when
+the parts are entirely divested of any covering. Even bed-ridden
+patients can be skiagraphed through the bed-clothes, and, therefore,
+without danger from exposure.
+
+[Illustration: FIGURE 3.--SKETCH OF A BABY'S FOOT AS SEEN THROUGH THE
+SKIASCOPE.
+
+(From the "American Journal of the Medical Sciences," March, 1896.)]
+
+[Illustration: FIGURE 4.--SKETCH OF A BABY'S KNEE AS SEEN THROUGH THE
+SKIASCOPE.
+
+(From the "American Journal of the Medical Sciences," March, 1896.)]
+
+One of the principal difficulties of the method at present is the time
+ordinarily required to obtain a good picture. Usually this time may be
+stated at in the neighborhood of an hour, though many good skiagraphs
+have been taken in a half hour or twenty minutes. It is stated that
+Messrs. McLeennan, Wright, and Keele of Toronto have reduced the
+necessary time to one second, and that Mr. Edison has taken even
+instantaneous pictures; but I am not aware of the publication of any
+pictures showing how perfect these results are. Undoubtedly, as a result
+of the labors of so many scores of physicists and physicians as are now
+working at the problem, before long we shall be able to skiagraph at
+least the thinner parts of the body in a very brief interval. The
+brevity of the exposure will also better the pictures in another way. At
+present, if the attempt is made to skiagraph the shoulder or parts of
+the trunk, we have to deal with organs which cannot be kept motionless,
+since the movements incident to breathing produce a constant to and fro
+movement of the shoulder, the lungs, the heart, the stomach, the liver,
+and other organs which, hereafter, may be made accessible to this
+process. There is no serious discomfort excepting the somewhat irksome
+necessity of remaining absolutely still.
+
+Another method of seeing the denser tissues of the body is by direct
+observation. A means of seeing through the thinner parts of the body,
+such as the fingers or the toes, has been devised simultaneously by
+Salvioni of Italy, and Professor Magie of Princeton. Their instruments
+are practically identical, consisting of a hollow cylinder a few inches
+long, one end of which is applied to the eye, the other end, instead of
+having a lens, being covered by a piece of paper smeared with a
+phosphorescent salt, the double cyanide of platinum and barium. When the
+hand is held before a Crookes tube, and is looked at through the
+cylinder, we can see the bones of the hand or foot almost as clearly as
+is shown in Figure 2. It has not yet, I believe, been applied to thicker
+parts of the body. Figures 3 and 4 show a baby's foot and knee as seen
+through this tube. The partial development of the bones accounts for the
+peculiar appearance. There is no bony knee-pan, or patella, at birth,
+and the bones of the toes consist only of cartilage, which is
+translucent, and therefore not seen. The name given by Professor
+Salvioni to this sort of "spy-glass"--if one may apply this term to an
+instrument which has no glass--is that of "cryptoscope" (seeing that
+which is hidden). The name suggested by Professor Magie is "skiascope"
+(seeing a shadow.)
+
+This leads me to say a word in reference to the nomenclature. The very
+unfortunate name "shadowgraph" has been suggested and largely used in
+the newspapers, and even in medical journals. It has only the merit of
+clearness as to its meaning to English-speaking persons. It is, however,
+an abominable linguistic crime, being an unnatural compound of English
+and Greek. "Radiograph" and its derivatives are equally objectionable as
+compounds of Latin and Greek. The Greek word for shadow is "skia," and
+the proper rendering, therefore, of shadowgraph is "skiagraph,"
+corresponding to photograph.
+
+The first question that meets us in the use of the method in medicine is
+what normal constituents of the body are permeable or impermeable to the
+X rays. It may be stated, in a general way, that all of the fleshy parts
+of the body are partially permeable to the rays in a relatively short
+time; and if the exposure is long enough, they become entirely
+permeable, so that no shadow is cast. Even the bones, on
+_prolonged_ exposure, do not present a sufficient obstacle to the
+passage of the rays, and the shadow originally cast becomes obliterated.
+Hence, skiagraphs of the same object exposed to the rays for varying
+times may be of value in showing the different tissues. The most
+permeable of the normal tissues are cartilage or gristle, and fat. A
+kidney (out of the body) is stated by Dr. Reid of Dundee to show the
+difference between the rind, or secreting portion, which is more
+transparent, and the central portion, consisting chiefly of conducting
+tubes, which is less transparent. On the contrary, in the brain the gray
+cortex, or rind, is less transparent than the white nerve tubules in the
+centre.
+
+The denser fibrous tissues, such as the ligaments of joints and the
+tendons or sinews of muscles, cast very perceptible shadows, so that
+when we come to a thick tendon like the tendo Achillis, the shadow
+approaches even the density of the shadow cast by bone. I presume that
+it is for the same reason (the dense fibrous envelope, or sclerotic
+coat) that the eye-ball is not translucent to the rays, as is seen in
+Figure 5, of a bullock's eye.
+
+[Illustration: FIGURE 5.--SKIAGRAPH OF A BULLOCK'S EYE.
+
+(From the "American Journal of the Medical Sciences," March 1896.)]
+
+Mr. Arthur H. Lea has ingeniously suggested that the translucency of the
+soft parts of the living and of those of the dead body might show a
+difference, and that, if such were the case, it might be used as a
+definite test of death. Unfortunately Figure 6, of a dead hand, when
+contrasted with Figure 11, of a living hand, shows virtually no
+difference, and the method cannot be used as a positive proof of death.
+
+That we are not able at present to skiagraph the soft parts of the body,
+does not imply that we shall not be able to do it hereafter; and should
+this be possible, especially with our increasing ability to penetrate
+thick masses of tissue, it is evident, without entering into details,
+that the use of the X rays may be of immense importance in obstetrics.
+
+The bones, however, as is seen in nearly all of the skiagraphs
+illustrating this paper, cast well-defined shadows. This is at once an
+advantage and a hindrance. To illustrate the latter first, even one
+thickness of bone is difficult to penetrate, so that the attempt to
+skiagraph the opening which had been made in a skull of a living person
+by a trephine entirely failed, since the bone upon the opposite side of
+the skull formed so dense an obstacle that not the slightest indication
+of the trephine opening appeared. To take, therefore, a skiagraph of a
+brain through two thicknesses of skull, with our present methods, is an
+impossibility. Even should the difficulty be overcome, it is very
+doubtful whether there would be any possibility of discovering diseases
+of the brain, since diseased tissues, such as cancer, sarcoma, etc., are
+probably as permeable to the X rays as the normal tissues. Thus Reid
+("British Medical Journal," February 15, 1896) states that a cancerous
+liver showed no difference in permeability to the rays through its
+cancerous and its normal portions.
+
+Foreign bodies, such as bullets, etc., in the brain may be discovered
+when our processes have become perfected. Figure 7 shows two buck-shot
+skiagraphed inside of a baby's skull, and therefore through two
+thicknesses of bone. It must be remembered, however, that not only are
+the bones of a baby's skull much less thick than those of an adult's
+skull, but they are much less densely ossified, and so throw far less of
+a shadow.
+
+The dense shadows cast by bone are, at least at present, an insuperable
+obstacle to skiagraphing the soft translucent organs of the body which
+are enclosed within a more or less complete bony case, as the rays will
+be intercepted by the bones. Efforts, therefore, to skiagraph the heart,
+the lungs, the liver, and stomach, and all the pelvic organs, probably
+will be fruitless to a greater or less extent until our methods are
+improved. While a stone in a bladder outside the body would undoubtedly
+be perceptible, in the body the bones of the pelvis prevent any
+successful picture being taken.
+
+[Illustration: FIGURE 6.--SKIAGRAPH OF A DEAD HAND AND WRIST, SHOWING
+TWO BUCK-SHOT AND A NEEDLE EMBEDDED IN THE FLESH.
+
+("American Journal of the Medical Sciences," March, 1896.)]
+
+To turn from the hindrances to the advantages of the application of the
+method to the bones, one of the most important uses will be in diseases
+and injuries of bones. In many cases it is very difficult to determine,
+even under ether, by the most careful manipulations, whether there is a
+fracture or a dislocation, or both combined. When any time has elapsed
+after the accident, the great swelling which often quickly follows such
+injuries still further obscures the diagnosis by manipulation. The X
+rays, however, are oblivious, or nearly so, of all swelling, and the
+bones can be skiagraphed in the thinner parts of the body at present,
+say up to the elbow and the ankle, with very great accuracy. Thus,
+Figure 8 shows the deformity from an old fracture of the ulna (one of
+the bones of the forearm) very clearly.
+
+By this means we shall be able to distinguish between fracture and
+dislocation in obscure cases. Thus Mr. Gray ("British Medical Journal,"
+March 7, 1896), in a case of injury to an elbow, was enabled to
+diagnosticate and successfully to replace a very rare dislocation, which
+could not be made out by manipulation, but was clearly shown by the X
+rays. We may also possibly be able to determine when the bones are
+properly adjusted after a fracture; and all the better, since the
+skiagraph can be taken through the dressings, even if wooden splints
+have been employed. If plaster of Paris is used (and it is often the
+best "splint") this is impermeable to the rays.
+
+That this method will come into general use, however, is very unlikely,
+since the expense, the time, and the trouble will be so great that it
+will be impracticable to use it in every case, especially in hospitals
+or dispensaries, where crowds of patients have to be attended to in a
+relatively brief time. In the surgical dispensary alone of the Jefferson
+Medical College Hospital, about one hundred patients are in attendance
+between twelve and two o'clock every day, and all the time of a large
+number of assistants is occupied with dressing the cases. It would be
+manifestly an utter impossibility to skiagraph the many fractures which
+are seen there daily, considering that it would take from half an hour
+to an hour of the time of not less than two or three assistants skilled
+not only in surgery, but also in electricity, to skiagraph a single
+fracture. Now and then, in obscure cases, however, the method will be
+undoubtedly of great service, as in the case above described.
+
+[Illustration: FIGURE 7.--SKIAGRAPH OF A BABY'S SKULL, SHOWING TWO
+BUCK-SHOT PLACED UNDER THE SKULL.
+
+("American Journal of the Medical Sciences," March, 1896.)]
+
+Too hasty conclusions, especially in medico-legal cases, may easily be
+reached. We do not yet know, by skiagraphs of successful results after
+fracture, just how such bones look during the process of healing, and,
+therefore, we cannot yet be sure that the skiagraph of an unsuccessful
+case is an evidence of unskilfulness on the part of the surgeon.
+
+In diseases of bone, which are obscure, it has already proved of great
+advantage, as in a case related by Mr. Abrahams ("British Medical
+Journal," February 22, 1896). A lad of nineteen, who had injured his
+little finger in catching a cricket ball, had the last joint of the
+finger bent at a slight angle, and he could neither flex nor extend it.
+Any attempt to do so caused great pain. The diagnosis was made of a
+fracture extending into the joint, and that the joint having become
+ossified, nothing short of amputation would give relief. Mr. Sydney
+Rowland skiagraphed the hand, and showed that there was only a bridge of
+bone uniting the last two joints of the finger. An anaesthetic was
+administered, and with very little force the bridge of bone was snapped,
+the finger saved, and the normal use of the hand restored.
+
+Deformities of bone can be admirably shown. Thus Figure 9 ("British
+Medical Journal," February 15, 1896) shows the deformity of the last two
+toes of the foot, due to the wearing of tight shoes. (Owing to the
+accidental breaking of the plate, only a part of the foot is shown.) The
+lady whose foot was thus skiagraphed stated that she had suffered
+tortures from her boots, so that walking became a penance, and she even
+wanted the toes amputated. Relief was obtained by wearing broad-toed
+boots, which gave room for the deformed toes. Another admirable
+illustration of a similar use of the method is seen in Figure 2, from a
+case of Professor Mosetig in Vienna. The last joint of the great toe was
+double the ordinary size, and by touch it was recognized that there were
+two bones instead of one. The difficulty was to determine which was the
+normal bone, and which the extra bone that ought to be removed. The
+moment the skiagraph was taken, it was very clear which bone should be
+removed. Bony tumors elsewhere can also be diagnosticated and properly
+treated. Possibly, also, we may be able to determine the presence of
+dead bone, though I am not aware of any such skiagraphs having been
+taken.
+
+[Illustration: FIGURE 8.--SKIAGRAPH OF THE LEFT FOREARM OF A LIVING
+SUBJECT, SHOWING AT THE POINT MARKED "B" A DEFORMITY FROM AN OLD
+FRACTURE.
+
+(Taken at the State Physical Laboratory, Hamburg, and published in the
+"British Medical Journal.")]
+
+Diseases and injuries of the joints will be amenable to examination by
+this method. Figure 10 shows an elbow joint with tuberculous disease.
+The bones of the arm and forearm are clearly seen, and between them, is
+a light area due to granulation-tissue, or to fluid, probably of
+tuberculous nature, which is translucent to the rays. The picture
+confirms the prior diagnosis of tuberculous disease, and shows that the
+joint will have to be opened and treated for the disease. Deposits of
+uric acid in gouty diseases of the joints will undoubtedly be shown by
+these methods, but this will scarcely be of any help in the treatment.
+Whether light will be thrown on other diseases of the joints is a
+problem not yet solved.
+
+Analogous to the bony tissues are the so-called ossified (really,
+calcified) arteries. In the dead body, arteries filled with substances
+opaque to the X rays, such as plaster of Paris or cinnabar mixtures,
+have already been skiagraphed successfully. It is not at all improbable
+that calcified arteries in the living subject may be equally well shown.
+So, too, when we are able to skiagraph through thick tissues, we may be
+able to show such deposits in the internal organs of the body. Stones in
+various organs, such as the kidney, will be accessible to examination so
+soon as our methods have improved sufficiently for us to skiagraph
+through the thicker parts of the trunk. The presence of such stones in
+the kidney is very often inferential, and it will be a great boon, both
+to the surgeon and the patient, if we shall be able to demonstrate
+positively their presence by skiagraphy. For the reason already given
+(the pelvic bones which surround the bladder), it is doubtful whether we
+can make use of it in stone in the bladder. Gall stones, being made not
+of lime and other similar salts, as are stones in the kidney and
+bladder, but of cholesterine, are, unfortunately, permeable to these
+rays; and it is, therefore, doubtful whether the X rays will be of any
+service to us in determining their presence.
+
+The chief use of the method up to the present time, besides determining
+the diseases, injuries, and abnormities of bone, has been in determining
+with absolute accuracy the presence of foreign bodies, especially of
+needles, bullets, or shot and glass. It is often extremely difficult to
+decide whether a needle is actually present or not. There may be a
+little prick of the skin, and no further positive evidence, as the
+needle is often imperceptible to touch. The patient, when
+cross-questioned, is frequently doubtful whether the needle has not
+dropped on the floor; and it might be, in some cases, a serious question
+whether an exploratory operation to find a possible needle might not do
+more harm than the needle. Moreover, though certainly present, to locate
+it exactly is often very difficult; and even after an incision has been
+made, though it may be embedded in a hand or foot, it is no easy task to
+find it.
+
+[Illustration: FIGURE 9.--SKIAGRAPH OF A HUMAN FOOT, SHOWING THE
+DEFORMITY IN THE LAST TWO TOES CAUSED BY TIGHT BOOTS.
+
+(Skiagraphed by Mr. Sydney Rowland, and published in the "British
+Medical Journal.")]
+
+The new method is a great step in advance in the line of precision of
+diagnosis, and, therefore, of correct treatment. About half a dozen
+cases have already been reported in the medical journals in which a
+needle was suspected to be in the hand or the foot, and, in some
+instances, had been sought for fruitlessly by a surgeon, in which the
+use of the X rays demonstrated absolutely, not only its presence, but
+its exact location, and it has then been an easy matter to extract it.
+So, too, in an equal number of cases, bullets and shot have been
+located, even after a prior fruitless search, and have been successfully
+extracted. Figure 6 is the skiagraph of the hand of a cadaver which
+shows a needle deeply embedded in the thumb, and also two buck-shot,
+which were inserted into the palm of the hand through two incisions. It
+will be noticed that their denser shadow is seen even _through the
+bones_ of the hand themselves, for the hand was skiagraphed palm
+downward.
+
+Professor von Bergmann of Berlin has uttered, however, a timely warning
+upon this very point. In many cases, after bullets or shot have been
+embedded in the tissues for any length of time, they become quite
+harmless. They are surrounded with a firm capsule of gristly substance
+which renders them inert. In 1863, soon after I graduated in medicine, I
+remember very well assisting the late Professor S.D. Gross in extracting
+a ball from the leg of a soldier who had been wounded at the Borodino,
+during Napoleon's campaign in Russia. It lay in the leg entirely
+harmless for almost fifty years, and then became a source of irritation,
+and was easily found and removed. There are many veterans of the Civil
+War now living with bullets embedded in their bodies which are doing no
+harm; and there is not a little danger that in the desire to find and
+remove them greater harm may be done by an operation than by letting
+them alone.
+
+Glass is, fortunately, quite opaque to the Roentgen rays, and it will be
+of great service to the patient, if the surgeon shall be able, by
+skiagraphing the hand, to determine positively whether any fragment of
+glass still remains in a hand from which it is at least presumed all the
+fragments have been extracted. Even after the hand has been dressed, it
+is possible, through the dressing, to skiagraph it, and determine the
+presence or absence of any such fragments of glass.
+
+[Illustration: FIGURE 10.---SKIAGRAPH OF A SECTION OF A HUMAN ARM,
+SHOWING TUBERCULOUS DISEASE OF THE ELBOW-JOINT.
+
+("American Journal of the Medical Sciences," March, 1896.)]
+
+Possibly before long we shall be able to determine also the presence or
+absence of solid foreign bodies in the larynx or windpipe. Every now and
+then, patients, especially children, get into the windpipe jack-stones,
+small tin toys, nails, pins, needles, etc., foreign bodies which may
+menace life very seriously. To locate them exactly is very difficult.
+The X rays may here be a great help. An attempt has been made by Rowland
+and Waggett. to skiagraph such foreign bodies, with encouraging results.
+Improvements in our methods will, I think, undoubtedly lead to a
+favorable use of the method in these instances. Beans, peas, wooden
+toys, and similar foreign bodies, being easily permeable to the rays,
+will not probably be discovered.
+
+If our methods improve so that we can skiagraph through the entire body,
+it will be very possible to determine the presence and location of
+foreign bodies in the stomach and intestines. A large number of cases
+are on record in which plates with artificial teeth, knives, forks,
+coins, and other such bodies have been swallowed; and the surgeon is
+often doubtful, especially if they are small, whether they have remained
+in the stomach, or have passed into the intestines, or entirely escaped
+from the body. In these cases, too, a caution should be uttered as to
+the occasional inadvisability of operating, even should they be located,
+for if small they will probably escape without doing any harm. But it
+may be possible to look at them from day to day and determine whether or
+not they are passing safely through the intestinal canal, or have been
+arrested, at any point, and, therefore, whether the surgeon should
+interfere. The man who had swallowed a fork which remained in his
+stomach (_l'homme a la fourchette_, as he was dubbed in Paris) was
+a noted patient, and would have proved an excellent subject for a
+skiagraph, had the method then existed.
+
+As sunlight is known to be the foe of bacteria, the hope has been
+expressed that the new rays might be a means of destroying the microbes
+of consumption and other diseases in the living body. Delepine, Park,
+and others have investigated this with a good deal of care. A dozen
+different varieties of bacteria have been exposed to the Roentgen rays
+for over an hour, but cultures made from the tubes after this exposure
+have shown not only that they were not destroyed, but possibly they were
+more vigorous than before.
+
+The facts above stated seem to warrant the following conclusions as to
+the present value of the method:
+
+_First_.--That deformities, injuries, and diseases of bone can be
+readily and accurately diagnosticated by the Roentgen rays; but that the
+method at present is limited in its use to the thinner parts of the
+body, especially to the hands, forearms, and feet.
+
+_Second_.--That foreign bodies which are opaque to the rays, such
+as needles, bullets, and glass, can be accurately located and their
+removal facilitated by this means; but that a zeal born of a new
+knowledge almost romantic in its character, should not lead us to do
+harm by attempting the indiscriminate removal of every such foreign
+body. _Non nocere_ (to do no harm) is the first lesson a surgeon
+learns.
+
+_Third_.--That at present the internal organs are not accessible to
+examination by the X rays for two reasons: First, because many of them
+are enclosed in more or less complete bony cases, which cut off the
+access of the rays; and, second, because even where not so enclosed, the
+thickness of the body, even though it consists only of soft parts, is
+such that the rays have not sufficient power of penetration to give us
+any information.
+
+_Fourth_.--Even if the rays can be made to permeate the thicker
+parts of the body, it is doubtful whether tumors, such as cancers,
+sarcoma, fatty tumors, etc., which are as permeable to the rays as the
+normal soft parts, can be diagnosticated. Bony tumors, however, can be
+readily diagnosticated; and possibly fibrous tumors, by reason of their
+density, may cast shadows.
+
+_Fifth_.--That stones in the kidney, bladder, and gall bladder
+cannot be diagnosticated, either (1) because they are embedded in such
+parts of the body as are too thick to be permeable by the rays, or (2)
+are surrounded by the bones of the pelvis, or (3) are, in the case of
+gall stones, themselves permeable to the Roentgen rays.
+
+_Sixth_.--That with the improvements which will soon be made in our
+methods, and with a better knowledge of the nature of the rays, and
+greater ability to make them more effective, we shall be able to
+overcome many of the obstacles just stated, and that the method will
+then probably prove to be much more widely useful than at present.
+
+[Illustration: FIGURE 11.--SKIAGRAPH OF A HUMAN WRIST WHICH HAD BEEN
+DISLOCATED.
+
+From a photograph taken by Mr. Herbert B. Shallenberger, Rochester,
+Pennsylvania, and reproduced by his permission. This is a particularly
+interesting picture, because it not only shows the bones with unusual
+clearness, but also shows that the ulna (the small bone of the forearm)
+has been broken; a small projection at its lower end, which ought to
+appear, being absent from the bone as shown in the picture.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6,
+May, 1896, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, VOL. ***
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