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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Galaxy, April, 1877, 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: The Galaxy, April, 1877
+       Vol. XXIII.--April, 1877.--No. 4.
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: May 31, 2010 [EBook #32616]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GALAXY, APRIL, 1877 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GALAXY.
+
+VOL. XXIII.--APRIL, 1877.--No. 4.
+
+Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by SHELDON &
+CO., in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
+
+
+
+
+THE THEATRE FRANCAIS.
+
+M. Francisque Sarcey, the dramatic critic of the Paris "Temps," and the
+gentleman who, of the whole journalistic fraternity, holds the fortune
+of a play in the hollow of his hand, has been publishing during the
+last year a series of biographical notices of the chief actors and
+actresses of the first theatre in the world. "Comediens et Comediennes:
+la Comedie Francaise"--such is the title of this publication, which
+appears in monthly numbers of the Librairie des Bibliophiles, and is
+ornamented on each occasion with a very prettily etched portrait, by M.
+Gaucherel, of the artist to whom the number is devoted. By lovers of
+the stage in general, and of the Theatre Francais in particular, the
+series will be found most interesting; and I welcome the pretext for
+saying a few words about an institution which--if such language be not
+hyperbolical--I passionately admire. I must add that the portrait is
+incomplete, though for the present occasion it is more than sufficient.
+The list of M. Sarcey's biographies is not yet filled up; three or
+four, those of Mme. Favart and of MM. Febvre and Delaunay, are still
+wanting. Nine numbers, however, have appeared--the first being entitled
+"La Maison de Moliere," and devoted to a general account of the great
+theatre; and the others treating of its principal _societaires_ and
+_pensionnaires_ in the following order:
+
+    Regnier,
+    Got,
+    Sophie Croizette,
+    Sarah Bernhardt,
+    Coquelin,
+    Madeleine Brohan,
+    Bressant,
+    Mme. Plessy.
+
+(This order, by the way, is purely accidental; it is not that of age or
+of merit.) It is always entertaining to encounter M. Francisque Sarcey,
+and the reader who, during a Paris winter, has been in the habit, of a
+Sunday evening, of unfolding his "Temps" immediately after unfolding
+his napkin, and glancing down first of all to see what this sturdy
+_feuilletoniste_ has found to his hand--such a reader will find him in
+great force in the pages before us. It is true that, though I myself
+confess to being such a reader, there are moments when I grow rather
+weary of M. Sarcey, who has in an eminent degree both the virtues and
+the defects which attach to the great French characteristic--the habit
+of taking terribly _au serieux_ anything that you may set about doing.
+Of this habit of abounding in one's own cause, of expatiating,
+elaborating, reiterating, refining, as if for the hour the fate of
+mankind were bound up with one's particular topic, M. Sarcey is a
+capital and at times an almost comical representative. He talks about
+the theatre once a week as if--honestly, between himself and his
+reader--the theatre were the only thing in this frivolous world that
+is worth seriously talking about. He has a religious respect for his
+theme, and he holds that if a thing is to be done at all, it must be
+done in detail as well as in the gross.
+
+It is to this serious way of taking the matter, to his thoroughly
+businesslike and professional attitude, to his unwearying attention to
+detail, that the critic of the "Temps" owes his enviable influence and
+the weight of his words. Add to this that he is sternly incorruptible.
+He has his admirations, but they are honest and discriminating; and
+whom he loveth he very often chasteneth. He is not ashamed to commend
+Mlle. X., who has only had a curtsey to make, if her curtsey has been
+_the_ curtsey of the situation; and he is not afraid to overhaul M. A.,
+who has delivered the _tirade_ of the play, if M. A. has failed to hit
+the mark. Of course his judgment is good; when I have had occasion to
+measure it, I have usually found it excellent. He has the scenic
+sense--the theatrical eye. He knows at a glance what will do, and what
+won't do. He is shrewd and sagacious and almost tiresomely in earnest,
+but this closes the list of his attractions. He is not witty--to speak
+of; and he is not graceful; he is heavy and common, and above all what
+is familiarly called "shoppy." He leans his elbows on his desk, and
+does up his weekly budget into a parcel the reverse of coquettish. You
+can fancy him a grocer retailing tapioca and hominy--full weight for
+the price; his style seems a sort of integument of brown paper. But the
+fact remains that if M. Sarcey praises a play, the play has a run; and
+that if M. Sarcey says it won't do, it does not do at all. If M. Sarcey
+devotes an encouraging line and a half to a young actress, mademoiselle
+is immediately _lancee_; she has a career. If he bestows a quiet
+"bravo" on an obscure comedian, the gentleman may forthwith renew his
+engagement. When you make and unmake fortunes at this rate, what
+matters it whether you have a little elegance the more or the less?
+
+Elegance is for M. Paul de St. Victor, who does the theatres in the
+"Moniteur," and who, though he writes a style only a trifle less
+pictorial than that of Theophile Gautier himself, has never, to the
+best of my belief, brought clouds or sunshine to any playhouse. I may
+add, to finish with M. Sarcey, that he contributes a daily political
+article--generally devoted to watching and showing up the "game" of the
+clerical party--to Edmond About's journal, the "XIXieme Siecle"; that
+he gives a weekly _conference_ on current literature; that he "confers"
+also on those excellent Sunday morning performances now so common in
+the French theatres, during which examples of the classic repertory
+are presented, accompanied by a light lecture upon the history and
+character of the play. As the commentator on these occasions M. Sarcey
+is in great demand, and he officiates sometimes in small provincial
+towns. Lastly, frequent playgoers in Paris observe that the very
+slenderest novelty is sufficient to insure at a theatre the (very
+considerable) physical presence of the conscientious critic of the
+"Temps." If he were remarkable for nothing else, he would be remarkable
+for the fortitude with which he exposes himself to the pestiferous
+climate of the Parisian temples of the drama.
+
+For these agreeable "notices" M. Sarcey appears to have mended his pen
+and to have given a fillip to his fancy. They are gracefully and often
+lightly turned; occasionally, even, the author grazes the epigrammatic.
+They deal, as is proper, with the artistic and not with the private
+physiognomy of the ladies and gentlemen whom they commemorate; and
+though they occasionally allude to what the French call "intimate"
+matters, they contain no satisfaction for the lovers of scandal. The
+Theatre Francais, in the face it presents to the world, is an austere
+and venerable establishment, and a frivolous tone about its affairs
+would be almost as much out of keeping as if applied to the Academie
+herself. M. Sarcey touches upon the organization of the theatre, and
+gives some account of the different phases through which it has passed
+during these latter years. Its chief functionary is a general
+administrator, or director, appointed by the State, which enjoys this
+right in virtue of the considerable subsidy which it pays to the house;
+a subsidy amounting, if I am not mistaken (M. Sarcey does not mention
+the sum), to 250,000 francs. The director, however, is not an absolute,
+but a constitutional ruler; for he shares his powers with the society
+itself, which has always had a large deliberative voice.
+
+Whence, it may be asked, does the society derive its light and its
+inspiration? From the past, from precedent, from tradition--from the
+great unwritten body of laws which no one has in his keeping, but many
+in their memory, and all in their respect. The principles on which the
+Theatre Francais rests are a good deal like the common law of
+England--a vaguely and inconveniently registered mass of regulations
+which time and occasion have welded together, and from which the
+recurring occasion can usually manage to extract the rightful
+precedent. Napoleon I., who had a finger in every pie in his dominion,
+found time during his brief and disastrous occupation of Moscow to send
+down a decree remodelling and regulating the constitution of the
+theatre. This document has long been a dead letter, and the society
+abides by its older traditions. The _traditions_ of the Comedie
+Francaise--that is the sovereign word, and that is the charm of the
+place--the charm that one never ceases to feel, however often one may
+sit beneath the classic, dusky dome. One feels this charm with peculiar
+intensity as a newly arrived foreigner. The Theatre Francais has had
+the good fortune to be able to allow its traditions to accumulate. They
+have been preserved, transmitted, respected, cherished, until at last
+they form the very atmosphere, the vital air, of the establishment. A
+stranger feels their superior influence the first time he sees the
+great curtain go up; he feels that he is in a theatre which is not as
+other theatres are. It is not only better, it is different. It has a
+peculiar perfection--something consecrated, historical, academic. This
+impression is delicious, and he watches the performance in a sort of
+tranquil ecstasy.
+
+Never has he seen anything so smooth, and harmonious, so artistic and
+complete. He heard all his life of attention to detail, and now, for
+the first time, he sees something that deserves the name. He sees
+dramatic effort refined to a point with which the English stage is
+unacquainted. He sees that there are no limits to possible "finish,"
+and that so trivial an act as taking a letter from a servant or
+placing one's hat on a chair may be made a suggestive and interesting
+incident. He sees these things and a great many more besides, but at
+first he does not analyze them; he gives himself up to sympathetic
+contemplation. He is in an ideal and exemplary world--a world that has
+managed to attain all the felicities that the world we live in misses.
+The people do the things that we should like to do; they are gifted
+as we should like to be; they have mastered the accomplishments that
+we have had to give up. The women are not all beautiful--decidedly
+not, indeed--but they are graceful, agreeable, sympathetic, ladylike;
+they have the best manners possible, and they are delightfully well
+dressed. They have charming musical voices, and they speak with
+irreproachable purity and sweetness; they walk with the most elegant
+grace, and when they sit it is a pleasure to see their attitudes. They
+go out and come in, they pass across the stage, they talk, and laugh,
+and cry, they deliver long _tirades_ or remain statuesquely mute; they
+are tender or tragic, they are comic or conventional; and through it
+all you never observe an awkwardness, a roughness, an accident, a
+crude spot, a false note.
+
+As for the men, they are not handsome either; it must be confessed,
+indeed, that at the present hour manly beauty is but scantily
+represented at the Theatre Francais. Bressant, I believe, used to be
+thought handsome; but Bressant has retired, and among the gentlemen of
+the troupe I can think of no one but M. Mounet-Sully who may be
+positively commended for his fine person. But M. Mounet-Sully is, from
+the scenic point of view, an Adonis of the first magnitude. To be
+handsome, however, is for an actor one of the last necessities; and
+these gentlemen are mostly handsome enough. They look perfectly what
+they are intended to look, and in cases where it is proposed that they
+shall _seem_ handsome, they usually succeed. They are as well mannered
+and as well dressed as their fairer comrades, and their voices are no
+less agreeable and effective. They represent gentlemen, and they
+produce the illusion. In this endeavor they deserve even greater credit
+than the actresses, for in modern comedy, of which the repertory of the
+Theatre Francais is largely composed, they have nothing in the way of
+costume to help to carry it off. Half a dozen ugly men, in the periodic
+coat and trousers and stove-pipe hat, with blue chins and false
+moustaches, strutting before the footlights, and pretending to be
+interesting, romantic, pathetic, heroic, certainly play a perilous
+game. At every turn they suggest prosaic things, and their liabilities
+to awkwardness are increased a thousand fold. But the comedians of the
+Theatre Francais are never awkward, and when it is necessary they solve
+triumphantly the problem of being at once realistic to the eye and
+romantic to the imagination.
+
+I am speaking always of one's first impression of them. There are spots
+on the sun, and you discover after a while that there are little
+irregularities at the Theatre Francais. But the acting is so
+incomparably better than any that you have seen, that criticism for a
+long time is content to lie dormant. I shall never forget how at first
+I was under the charm. I liked the very incommodities of the place; I
+am not sure that I did not find a certain mystic salubrity in the bad
+ventilation. The Theatre Francais, it is known, gives you a good deal
+for your money. The performance, which rarely ends before midnight, and
+sometimes transgresses it, frequently begins by seven o'clock. The
+first hour or two is occupied by secondary performers; but not for the
+world at this time would I have missed the first rising of the curtain.
+No dinner could be too hastily swallowed to enable me to see, for
+instance, Mme. Nathalie in Octave Feuillet's charming little comedy of
+"Le Village." Mme. Nathalie was a plain, stout old woman, who did the
+mothers, and aunts, and elderly wives; I use the past tense because she
+retired from the stage a year ago, leaving a most conspicuous vacancy.
+She was an admirable actress, and a perfect mistress of laughter and
+tears. In "Le Village" she played an old provincial _bourgeoise_ whose
+husband takes it into his head, one winter night, to start on the tour
+of Europe with a roving bachelor friend, who has dropped down on him at
+supper-time, after the lapse of years, and has gossiped him into
+momentary discontent with his fireside existence. My pleasure was in
+Mme. Nathalie's figure when she came in dressed to go out to vespers
+across the _place_. The two foolish old cronies are over their wine,
+talking of the beauty of the women on the Ionian coast; you hear the
+church bell in the distance. It was the quiet felicity of the old
+lady's dress that used to charm me; the Comedie Francaise was in every
+fold of it. She wore a large black silk mantilla, of a peculiar cut,
+which looked as if she had just taken it tenderly out of some old
+wardrobe where it lay folded in lavender, and a large dark bonnet,
+adorned with handsome black silk loops and bows. Her big pale face had
+a softly frightened look, and in her hand she carried her neatly kept
+breviary. The extreme suggestiveness, and yet the taste and temperance
+of this costume, seemed to me inimitable; the bonnet alone, with its
+handsome, decent, virtuous bows, was worth coming to see. It expressed
+all the rest, and you saw the excellent, pious woman go pick her steps
+churchward among the puddles, while Jeannette, the cook, in a high
+white cap, marched before her in sabots, with a lantern.
+
+Such matters are trifles, but they are representative trifles, and they
+are not the only ones that I remember. It used to please me, when I had
+squeezed into my stall--the stalls at the Francais are extremely
+uncomfortable--to remember of how great a history the large, dim
+_salle_ around me could boast: how many great things had happened
+there; how the air was thick with associations. Even if I had never
+seen Rachel, it was something of a consolation to think that those very
+footlights had illumined her finest moments, and that the echoes of her
+mighty voice were sleeping in that dingy dome. From this to musing upon
+the "traditions" of the place, of which I spoke just now, was of course
+but a step. How were they kept? by whom, and where? Who trims the
+undying lamp and guards the accumulated treasure? I never found out--by
+sitting in the stalls; and very soon I ceased to care to know. One may
+be very fond of the stage, and yet care little for the green room; just
+as one may be very fond of pictures and books, and yet be no frequenter
+of studios and authors' dens. They might pass on the torch as they
+would behind the scenes; so long as, during my time, they didn't let it
+drop, I made up my mind to be satisfied. And that one could depend upon
+their not letting it drop became a part of the customary comfort of
+Parisian life. It became certain that the "traditions" were not mere
+catchwords, but a most beneficent reality.
+
+Going to the other Parisian theatres helps you to believe in them.
+Unless you are a voracious theatre-goer you give the others up; you
+find they don't pay; the Francais does for you all that they do and so
+much more besides. There are two possible exceptions--the Gymnase and
+the Palais Royal, The Gymnase, since the death of Mlle. Desclee, has
+been under a heavy cloud; but occasionally, when a month's sunshine
+rests upon it, there is a savor of excellence in the performance. But
+you feel that you are still within the realm of accident; the
+delightful security of the Rue de Richelieu is wanting. The young lover
+is liable to be common, and the beautifully dressed heroine to have an
+unpleasant voice. The Palais Royal has always been in its way very
+perfect; but its way admits of great imperfection. The actresses are
+classically bad, though usually pretty, and the actors are much
+addicted to taking liberties. In broad comedy, nevertheless, two or
+three of the latter are not to be surpassed, and (counting out the
+women) there is usually something masterly in a Palais Royal
+performance. In its own line it has what is called style, and it
+therefore walks, at a distance, in the footsteps of the Francais. The
+Odeon has never seemed to me in any degree a rival of the Theatre
+Francais, though it is a smaller copy of that establishment. It
+receives a subsidy from the State, and is obliged by its contract to
+play the classic repertory one night in the week. It is on these
+nights, listening to Moliere or Marivaux, that you may best measure the
+superiority of the greater theatre. I have seen actors at the Odeon, in
+the classic repertory, imperfect in their texts; a monstrously
+insupposable case at the Comedie Francaise. The function of the Odeon
+is to operate as a _pepiniere_ or nursery for its elder--to try young
+talents, shape them, make them flexible, and then hand them over to the
+upper house. The more especial nursery of the Francais, however, is the
+Conservatoire Dramatique, an institution dependent upon the State,
+through the Ministry of the Fine Arts, whose budget is charged with
+the remuneration of its professors. Pupils graduating from the
+Conservatoire with a prize have _ipso facto_ the right to _debuter_ at
+the Theatre Francais, which retains them or lets them go, according to
+its discretion. Most of the first subjects of the Francais have done
+their two years' work at the Conservatoire, and M. Sarcey holds that an
+actor who has not had that fundamental training which is only to be
+acquired there, never obtains a complete mastery of his resources.
+Nevertheless some of the best actors of the day have owed nothing to
+the Conservatoire--Bressant, for instance, and Aimee Desclee, the
+latter of whom, indeed, never arrived at the Francais. (Moliere and
+Balzac were not of the Academy, and so Mlle. Desclee, the first actress
+after Rachel, died without acquiring the privilege which M. Sarcey says
+is the day-dream of all young theatrical women--that of printing on
+their visiting cards, after their name, _de la Comedie Francaise_.)
+
+The Theatre Francais has, moreover, the right to do as Moliere did--to
+claim its property wherever it finds it. It may stretch out its long
+arm and break the engagement of a promising actor at any of the other
+theatres; of course after a certain amount of notice given. So, last
+winter, it notified to the Gymnase its danger of appropriating Worms,
+the admirable _jeune premier_, who, returning from a long sojourn
+in Russia, and taking the town by surprise, had begun to retrieve the
+shrunken fortunes of that establishment.
+
+On the whole, it may be said that the great talents find their way,
+sooner or later, to the Theatre Francais. This is of course not a rule
+that works unvaryingly, for there are a great many influences to
+interfere with it. Interest as well as merit--especially in the case of
+the actresses--weighs in the scale; and the ire that may exist in
+celestial minds has been known to manifest itself in the councils of
+the Comedie. Moreover, a brilliant actress may prefer to reign supreme
+at one of the smaller theatres; at the Francais, inevitably, she shares
+her dominion. The honor is less, but the comfort is greater.
+
+Nevertheless, at the Francais, in a general way, there is in each case
+a tolerably obvious artistic reason for membership; and if you see a
+clever actor remain outside for years, you may be pretty sure that,
+though private reasons count, there are artistic reasons as well. The
+first half dozen times I saw Mlle. Fargueil, who for years ruled the
+roost, as the vulgar saying is, at the Vaudeville, I wondered that so
+consummate and accomplished an actress should not have a place on the
+first French stage. But I presently grew wiser, and perceived that,
+clever as Mlle. Fargueil is, she is not for the Rue de Richelieu, but
+for the Boulevards; her peculiar, intensely Parisian intonation would
+sound out of place in the Maison de Moliere. (Of course if Mlle.
+Fargueil has ever received overtures from the Francais, my sagacity is
+at fault--I am looking through a millstone. But I suspect she has not.)
+Frederic Lemaitre, who died last winter, and who was a very great
+actor, had been tried at the Francais and found wanting--for those
+particular conditions. But it may probably be said that if Frederic was
+wanting, the theatre was too, in this case. Frederic's great force was
+his extravagance, his fantasticality; and the stage of the Rue de
+Richelieu was a trifle too academic. I have even wondered whether
+Desclee, if she had lived, would have trod that stage by right, and
+whether it would have seemed her proper element. The negative is not
+impossible. It is very possible that in that classic atmosphere her
+great charm--her intensely _modern_ quality, her supersubtle
+realism--would have appeared an anomaly. I can imagine even that her
+strange, touching, nervous voice would not have seemed the voice of the
+house. At the Francais you must know how to acquit yourself of a
+_tirade_; that has always been the touchstone of capacity. It would
+probably have proved Desclee's stumbling-block, though she could utter
+speeches of six words as no one else surely has ever done. It is true
+that Mlle. Croizette, and in a certain sense Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt, are
+rather weak at their _tirades_; but then old theatre-goers will tell
+you that these young ladies, in spite of a hundred attractions, have no
+business at the Francais.
+
+In the course of time the susceptible foreigner passes from that
+superstitious state of attention which I just now sketched to that
+greater enlightenment which enables him to understand such a judgment
+as this of the old theatre-goers. It is borne in upon him that, as the
+good Homer sometimes nods, the Theatre Francais sometimes lapses from
+its high standard. He makes various reflections. He thinks that Mlle.
+Favart rants. He thinks M. Mounet-Sully, in spite of his delicious
+voice, insupportable. He thinks that M. Parodi's five-act tragedy,
+"Rome Vaincue," presented in the early part of the present winter, was
+better done certainly than it would have been done upon any English
+stage, but by no means so much better done than might have been
+expected. (Here, if I had space, I would open a long parenthesis, in
+which I should aspire to demonstrate that the incontestable superiority
+of average French acting to English is by no means so strongly marked
+in tragedy as in comedy--is indeed sometimes not strongly marked at
+all. The reason of this is in a great measure, I think, that we have
+had Shakespeare to exercise ourselves upon, and that an inferior
+dramatic instinct exercised upon Shakespeare may become more flexible
+than a superior one exercised upon Corneille and Racine. When it comes
+to ranting--ranting even in a modified and comparatively reasonable
+sense--we do, I suspect, quite as well as the French, if not rather
+better.) Mr. G. H. Lewes, in his entertaining little book upon "Actors
+and the Art of Acting," mentions M. Talbot, of the Francais, as a
+surprisingly incompetent performer. My memory assents to his judgment
+at the same time that it proposes an amendment. This actor's special
+line is the buffeted, bemuddled, besotted old fathers, uncles, and
+guardians of classic comedy, and he plays them with his face much more
+than with his tongue. Nature has endowed him with a visage so admirably
+adapted, once for all, to his role, that he has only to sit in a chair,
+with his hands folded on his stomach, to look like a monument to
+bewildered senility. After that it doesn't matter what he says or how
+he says it.
+
+The Comedie Francaise sometimes does weaker things than in keeping M.
+Talbot. Last autumn, for instance, it was really depressing to see
+Mlle. Dudley brought all the way from Brussels (and with not a little
+flourish either) to "create" the guilty vestal in "Rome Vaincue." As
+far as the interests of art are concerned, Mlle. Dudley had much better
+have remained in the Flemish capital, of whose language she is
+apparently a perfect mistress. It is hard, too, to forgive M. Perrin
+(M. Perrin is the present director of the Theatre Francais) for
+bringing out "L'Ami Fritz" of M. Erckmann-Chatrian. The two gentlemen
+who write under this name have a double claim to kindness. In the first
+place, they have produced some delightful little novels; every one
+knows and admires "Le Conscrit de 1813"; every one admires, indeed, the
+charming tale on which the play in question is founded. In the second
+place, they were, before the production of their piece, the objects of
+a scurrilous attack by the "Figaro" newspaper, which held the authors
+up to reprobation for having "insulted the army," and did its best to
+lay the train for a hostile manifestation on the first night. (It may
+be added that the good sense of the public outbalanced the impudence of
+the newspaper, and the play was simply advertised into success.) But
+neither the novels nor the persecutions of M. Erckmann-Chatrian avail
+to render "L'Ami Fritz," in its would-be dramatic form, worthy of the
+first French stage. It is played as well as possible, and upholstered
+even better; but it is, according to the vulgar phrase, too "thin" for
+the locality. Upholstery has never played such a part at the Theatre
+Francais as during the reign of M. Perrin, who came into power, if I
+mistake not, after the late war. He proved very early that he was a
+radical, and he has introduced a hundred novelties. His administration,
+however, has been brilliant, and in his hands the Theatre Francais has
+made money. This it had rarely done before, and this, in the
+conservative view, is quite beneath its dignity. To the conservative
+view I should humbly incline. An institution so closely protected by a
+rich and powerful State ought to be able to cultivate art for art.
+
+The first of M. Sarcey's biographies, to which I have been too long in
+coming, is devoted to Regnier, a veteran actor, who left the stage four
+or five years since, and who now fills the office of oracle to his
+younger comrades. It is the indispensable thing, says M. Sarcey, for
+a young aspirant to be able to say that he has had lessons of M.
+Regnier, or that M. Regnier has advised him, or that he has talked
+such and such a point over with M. Regnier. (His comrades always speak
+of him as M. Regnier--never as simple Regnier.) I have had the fortune
+to see him but once; it was the first time I ever went to the Theatre
+Francais. He played Don Annibal in Emile Augier's romantic comedy of
+"L'Aventuriere," and I have not forgotten the exquisite humor of the
+performance. The part is that of a sort of seventeenth century Captain
+Costigan, only the Miss Fotheringay in the case is the gentleman's
+sister, and not his daughter. This lady is moreover an ambitious and
+designing person, who leads her threadbare braggart of a brother quite
+by the nose. She has entrapped a worthy gentleman of Padua, of mature
+years, and he is on the eve of making her his wife, when his son, a
+clever young soldier, beguiles Don Annibal into supping with him, and
+makes him drink so deep that the prating adventurer at last lets the
+cat out of the bag, and confides to his companion that the fair
+Clorinda is not the virtuous gentlewoman she appears, but a poor
+strolling actress who has had a lover at every stage of her journey.
+The scene was played by Bressant and Regnier, and it has always
+remained in my mind as one of the most perfect things I have seen on
+the stage. The gradual action of the wine upon Don Annibal, the
+delicacy with which his deepening tipsiness was indicated, its
+intellectual rather than physical manifestation, and, in the midst of
+it, the fantastic conceit which made him think that he was winding his
+fellow drinker round his fingers--all this was exquisitely rendered.
+Drunkenness on the stage is usually both dreary and disgusting; and I
+can remember besides this but two really interesting pictures of
+intoxication (excepting always, indeed, the immortal tipsiness of
+Cassio in "Othello," which a clever actor can always make touching).
+One is the beautiful befuddlement of Rip Van Winkle, as Mr. Joseph
+Jefferson renders it, and the other (a memory of the Theatre Francais)
+the scene in the "Duc Job," in which Got succumbs to mild inebriation,
+and dozes in his chair just boosily enough for the young girl who loves
+him to make it out.
+
+It is to this admirable Emile Got that M. Sarcey's second notice is
+devoted. Got is at the present hour unquestionably the first actor at
+the Theatre Francais, and I have personally no hesitation in accepting
+him as the first of living actors. His younger comrade, Coquelin, has,
+I think, as much talent and as much art; but the older man Got has the
+longer and fuller record, and may therefore be spoken of as the master
+_par excellence_. If I were obliged to rank the half dozen _premiers
+sujets_ of the last few years at the Theatre Francais in their absolute
+order of _talent_ (thank Heaven, I am not so obliged!), I think I
+should make up some such little list as this: Got, Coquelin, Mme.
+Plessy, Sarah Bernhardt, Mlle. Favart, Delaunay. I confess that I have
+no sooner written it than I feel as if I ought to amend it, and wonder
+whether it is not a great folly to put Delaunay after Mlle. Favart. But
+this is idle.
+
+As for Got, he is a singularly interesting actor. I have often wondered
+whether the best definition of him would not be to say that he is
+really a _philosophic_ actor. He is an immense humorist, and his
+comicality is sometimes colossal; but his most striking quality is the
+one on which M. Sarcey dwells--his sobriety and profundity, his
+underlying element of manliness and melancholy, the impression he gives
+you of having a general conception of human life and of seeing the
+relativity, as one may say, of the character he represents. Of all the
+comic actors I have seen he is the least trivial--at the same time that
+for richness of detail his comicality is unsurpassed. His repertory is
+very large and various, but it may be divided into two equal
+halves--the parts that belong to reality and the parts that belong to
+fantasy. There is of course a vast deal of fantasy in his realistic
+parts and a vast deal of reality in his fantastic ones, but the general
+division is just; and at times, indeed, the two faces of his talent
+seem to have little in common. The Duc Job, to which I just now
+alluded, is one of the things he does most perfectly. The part, which
+is that of a young man, is a serious and tender one. It is amazing that
+the actor who plays it should also be able to carry off triumphantly
+the frantic buffoonery of Maitre Pathelin, or should represent the
+Sganarelle of the "Medecin Malgre Lui" with such an unctuous breadth of
+humor. The two characters, perhaps, which have given me the liveliest
+idea of Got's power and fertility are the Maitre Pathelin and the M.
+Poirier, who figures in the title to the comedy which Emile Augier and
+Jules Sandeau wrote together. M. Poirier, the retired shop-keeper who
+marries his daughter to a marquis and makes acquaintance with the
+incommodities incidental to such a piece of luck, is perhaps the
+actor's most elaborate creation; it is difficult to see how the
+portrayal of a type and an individual can have a larger sweep and a
+more minute completeness. The _bonhomme_ Poirier, in Got's hands,
+is really great; and half a dozen of the actor's modern parts that I
+could mention are hardly less brilliant. But when I think of him I
+instinctively think first of some role in which he wears the cap and
+gown of the days in which humorous invention may fairly take the bit in
+its teeth. This is what Got lets it do in Maitre Pathelin, and he leads
+the spectators' exhilarated fancy a dance to which their aching sides
+on the morrow sufficiently testify.
+
+The piece is a _rechauffe_ of a mediaeval farce, which has the credit of
+being the first play not a "mystery" or a miracle piece in the records
+of the French drama. The plot is of the baldest and most primitive. It
+sets forth how a cunning lawyer undertook to purchase a dozen ells of
+cloth for nothing. In the first scene we see him in the market-place,
+bargaining and haggling with the draper, and then marching off with the
+roll of cloth, with the understanding that the shop-man is to call at
+his house in the course of an hour for the money. In the next act we
+have Maitre Pathelin at his fireside with his wife, to whom he relates
+his trick and its projected sequel, and who greets them with Homeric
+laughter. He gets into bed, and the innocent draper arrives. Then
+follows a scene of which the liveliest description must be ineffective.
+Pathelin pretends to be out of his head, to be overtaken by a
+mysterious malady which has made him delirious, not to know the draper
+from Adam, never to have heard of the dozen ells of cloth, and to be
+altogether an impossible person to collect a debt from. To carry out
+this character he indulges in a series of indescribable antics,
+out-Bedlams Bedlam, frolics over the room dressed out in the
+bed-clothes and chanting the wildest gibberish, bewilders the poor
+draper to within an inch of his own sanity, and finally puts him
+utterly to rout. The spectacle could only be portentously flat or
+heroically successful, and in Got's hands this latter was its fortune.
+His Sganarelle, in the "Medecin Malgre Lui," and half a dozen of his
+characters from Moliere besides--such a part, too, as his Tibia, in
+Alfred de Musset's charming bit of romanticism, the "Caprices de
+Marianne"--have a certain generic resemblance with his treatment of the
+figure I have sketched. In all of these the comicality is of the
+exuberant and tremendous order, and yet, in spite of its richness and
+flexibility, it suggests little connection with high animal spirits. It
+seems a matter of invention, of reflection and irony. You cannot
+imagine Got representing a fool pure and simple--or at least a passive
+and unsuspecting fool. There must always be an element of shrewdness
+and even of contempt; he must be the man who knows and judges--or at
+least who pretends. It is a compliment, I take it, to an actor, to say
+that he prompts you to wonder about his private personality; and an
+observant spectator of M. Got is at liberty to guess that he is both
+obstinate and proud.
+
+In Coquelin there is perhaps greater spontaneity, and there is a not
+inferior mastery of his art. He is a wonderfully brilliant, elastic
+actor. He is but thirty-five years old, and yet his record is most
+glorious. He too has his "actual" and his classical repertory, and here
+also it is hard to choose. As the young _valet de comedie_ in Moliere,
+Regnard, and Marivaux, he is incomparable. I shall never forget the
+really infernal brilliancy of his Mascarille in "L'Etourdi." His
+volubility, his rapidity, his impudence and gayety, his ringing,
+penetrating voice, and the shrill trumpet-note of his laughter, make
+him the ideal of the classic serving-man of the classic young
+lover--half rascal and half good fellow. Coquelin has lately had two or
+three immense successes in the comedies of the day. His Duc de
+Sept-Monts, in the famous "Etrangere" of Alexandre Dumas, last winter,
+was the capital creation of the piece; and in the revival, this winter,
+of Augier's "Paul Forestier," his Adolphe de Beaubourg, the young man
+about town, consciously tainted with _commonness_, and trying to shake
+off the incubus, seemed, while one watched it and listened to it, the
+last word of delicately humorous art. Of Coquelin's eminence in the old
+comedies M. Sarcey speaks with a certain picturesque force: "No one is
+better cut out to represent those bold and magnificent rascals of the
+old repertory, with their boisterous gayety, their brilliant fancy, and
+their superb extravagance, who give to their buffoonery _je ne sais
+quoi d'epique_. In these parts one may say of Coquelin that he is
+incomparable. I prefer him to Got in such cases, and even to Regnier,
+his master. I never saw Monrose, and cannot speak of him. But good
+judges have assured me that there was much that was factitious in the
+manner of this eminent comedian, and that his vivacity was a trifle
+mechanical. There is nothing whatever of this in Coquelin's manner.
+The eye, the nose, and the voice--the voice above all--are his most
+powerful means of action. He launches his _tirades_ all in one breath,
+with full lungs, without bothering too much over the shading of
+details, in large masses, and he possesses himself only the more
+strongly of the public, which has a great sense of _ensemble_. The
+words that must be detached, the words that must decisively 'tell,'
+glitter in this delivery with the sonorous ring of a brand-new louis
+d'or. Crispin, Scapin, Figaro, Mascarille have never found a more
+valiant and joyous interpreter."
+
+I should say that this was enough about the men at the Theatre
+Francais, if I did not remember that I have not spoken of Delaunay. But
+Delaunay has plenty of people to speak for him; he has, in especial,
+the more eloquent half of humanity--the ladies. I suppose that of all
+the actors of the Comedie Francais he is the most universally
+appreciated and admired; he is the popular favorite. And he has
+certainly earned this distinction, for there was never a more amiable
+and sympathetic genius. He plays the young lovers of the past and the
+present, and he acquits himself of his difficult and delicate task with
+extraordinary grace and propriety. The danger I spoke of a while
+since--the danger, for the actor of a romantic and sentimental part, of
+being compromised by the coat and trousers, the hat and umbrella of the
+current year--are reduced by Delaunay to their minimum. He reconciles
+in a marvellous fashion the love-sick gallant of the ideal world with
+the "gentlemanly man" of to-day; and his passion is as far removed from
+rant as his propriety is from stiffness. He has been accused of late
+years of falling into a mannerism, and I think there is some truth in
+the charge. But the fault in Delaunay's situation is certainly venial.
+How can a man of fifty, to whom, as regards face and figure, Nature has
+been stingy, play an amorous swain of twenty without taking refuge in a
+mannerism? His mannerism is a legitimate device for diverting the
+spectator's attention from certain incongruities. Delaunay's
+juvenility, his ardor, his passion, his good taste and sense of
+fitness, have always an irresistible charm. As he has grown older he
+has increased his repertory by parts of greater weight and sobriety--he
+has played the husbands as well as the lovers. One of his most recent
+and brilliant "creations" of this kind is his Marquis de Presles in "Le
+Gendre de M. Poirier"--a piece of acting superb for its lightness and
+_desinvolture_. It cannot be better praised than by saying it was
+worthy of Got's inimitable rendering of the part opposed to it. But I
+think I shall remember Delaunay best in the picturesque and romantic
+comedies--as the Duc de Richelieu in "Mlle. De Belle-Isle"; as the
+joyous, gallant, exuberant young hero, his plumes and love knots
+fluttering in the breath of his gushing improvisation, of Corneille's
+"Menteur"; or, most of all, as the melodious swains of those charmingly
+poetic, faintly, naturally Shakespearian little comedies of Alfred de
+Musset.
+
+To speak of Delaunay ought to bring us properly to Mlle. Favart, who
+for so many years invariably represented the object of his tender
+invocations. Mlle. Favart at the present time rather lacks what the
+French call "actuality." She has made this winter an attempt to recover
+something of that large measure of it which she once possessed; but I
+doubt whether it has been completely successful. M. Sarcey has not yet
+put forth his notice of her; and when he does so it will be interesting
+to see how he treats her. She is not one of his high admirations. She
+is a great talent which has passed into eclipse. I call her a great
+talent, although I remember the words in which M. Sarcey somewhere
+speaks of her: "Mlle. Favart, who, to happy natural gifts, _soutenu par
+un travail acharne_, owed a distinguished place," etc. Her talent is
+great, but the impression that she gives of a _travail acharne_ and of
+an insatiable ambition is perhaps even greater. For many years she
+reigned supreme, and I believe she is accused of not having always
+reigned generously. However that may be, there came a day when Mlles.
+Croizette and Sarah Bernhardt passed to the front, and the elder
+actress receded, if not into the background, at least into what
+painters call the middle distance. The private history of these events
+has, I believe, been rich in heart-burnings; but it is only with the
+public history that we are concerned. Mlle. Favart has always seemed to
+be a powerful rather than an interesting actress; there is usually
+something mechanical and overdone in her manner. In some of her parts
+there is a kind of audible creaking of the machinery. If Delaunay is
+open to the reproach of having let a mannerism get the better of him,
+this accusation is much more fatally true of Mlle. Favart. On the other
+hand, she knows her trade as no one does--no one, at least, save Mme.
+Plessy. When she is bad she is extremely bad, and sometimes she is
+interruptedly bad for a whole evening. In the revival of Scribe's
+clever comedy of "Une Chaine," this winter (which, by the way, though
+the cast included both Got and Coquelin, was the nearest approach to
+mediocrity I have ever seen at the Theatre Francais), Mlle. Favart was,
+to my sense, startlingly bad. The part had originally been played by
+Mme. Plessy; and I remember how M. Sarcey in his _feuilleton_ treated
+its actual representative. "Mlle. Favart does Louise. Who does not
+recall the exquisite delicacy and temperance with which Mme. Plessy
+rendered that difficult scene in the second act?" etc. And nothing
+more. When, however, Mlle. Favart is at her best, she is prodigiously
+strong. She rises to great occasions. I doubt whether such parts as the
+desperate heroine of the "Supplice d'une Femme," or as Julie in Octave
+Feuillet's lugubrious drama of that name, could be more effectively
+played than she plays them. She can carry a great weight without
+flinching; she has what the French call her "authority"; and in
+declamation she sometimes unrolls her fine voice, as it were, in long
+harmonious waves and cadences, the sustained power of which her younger
+rivals must often envy her.
+
+I am drawing to the close of these rather desultory observations
+without having spoken of the four ladies commemorated by M. Sarcey in
+the publication which lies before me; and I do not know that I can
+justify my tardiness otherwise than by saying that writing and reading
+about artists of so extreme a personal brilliancy is poor work, and
+that the best the critic can do is to wish his reader may see them,
+from a quiet _fauteuil_, as speedily and as often as possible. Of
+Madeleine Brohan, indeed, there is little to say. She is a delightful
+person to listen to, and she is still delightful to look at in spite of
+that redundancy of contour which time has contributed to her charm. But
+she has never been ambitious, and her talent has had no particularly
+original quality. It is a long time since she created an important
+part; but in the old repertory her rich, dense voice, her charming
+smile, her mellow, tranquil gayety, always give extreme pleasure. To
+hear her sit and _talk_, simply, and laugh and play with her fan, along
+with Mme. Plessy, in Moliere's "Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes," is an
+entertainment to be remembered. For Mme. Plessy I should have to mend
+my pen and begin a new chapter; and for Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt no less a
+ceremony would suffice. I saw Mme. Plessy for the first time in Emile
+Augier's "Aventuriere," when, as I mentioned, I first saw Regnier. This
+is considered by many persons her best part, and she certainly carries
+it off with a high hand; but I like her better in characters which
+afford more scope to her talents for comedy. These characters are very
+numerous, for her activity and versatility have been extraordinary. Her
+comedy of course is "high"; it is of the highest conceivable kind, and
+she has often been accused of being too mincing and too artificial. I
+should never make this charge, for, to me, Mme. Plessy's _minauderies_,
+her grand airs and her arch-refinements, have never been anything but
+the odorous swayings and queenly tossings of some splendid garden
+flower. Never had an actress grander manners. When Mme. Plessy
+represents a duchess, you have to make no allowance. Her limitations
+are on the side of the pathetic. If she is brilliant, she is cold; and
+I cannot imagine her touching the source of tears. But she is in the
+highest degree accomplished; she gives an impression of intelligence
+and intellect which is produced by none of her companions--excepting
+always the extremely exceptional Sarah Bernhardt. Mme. Plessy's
+intellect has sometimes misled her--as, for instance, when it whispered
+to her, a few years since, that she could play Agrippine in Racine's
+"Britannicus," when that tragedy was presented for the _debuts_ of
+Mounet-Sully. I was verdant enough to think her Agrippine very fine;
+but M. Sarcey reminds his readers of what he said of it the Monday
+after the first performance. "I will not say"--he quotes himself--"that
+Mme. Plessy is indifferent. With her intelligence, her natural gifts,
+her great situation, her immense authority over the public, one cannot
+be indifferent in anything. She is therefore not indifferently bad. She
+is bad to a point which cannot be expressed, and which would be
+afflicting for dramatic art if it were not that in this great shipwreck
+there rise to the surface a few floating fragments of the finest
+qualities that nature has ever bestowed upon an artist."
+
+Mme. Plessy retired from the stage six months ago, and it may be said
+that the void produced by this event is irreparable. There is not only
+no prospect, but there is no hope of filling it up. The present
+conditions of artistic production are directly hostile to the formation
+of actresses as consummate and as complete as Mme. Plessy. One may not
+expect to see her like, any more than one may expect to see a new
+manufacture of old lace and old brocade. She carried off with her
+something that the younger generation of actresses will consistently
+lack--a certain largeness of style and robustness of art. (These
+qualities are in a modified degree those of Mlle. Favart.) But if the
+younger actresses have the success of Mlles. Croizette and Sarah
+Bernhardt, will they greatly care whether they are not "robust"? These
+young ladies are children of a later and eminently contemporary type,
+according to which an actress undertakes not to interest, but to
+fascinate. They are charming--"awfully" charming; strange, eccentric,
+and imaginative. It would be needless to speak specifically of Mlle.
+Croizette; for although she has very great attractions, I think she may
+(by the cold impartiality of science) be classified as a secondary, a
+less inspired, and (to use the great word of the day) a more "brutal"
+Sarah Bernhardt. (Mlle. Croizette's "brutality" is her great card.) As
+for Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt, she is simply, at present, in Paris, one of
+the great figures of the day. It is hard to imagine a more brilliant
+embodiment of feminine success. It is hard to imagine a young woman
+leading a more complete and multifold existence. The intellectual
+fermentation of a productive, creative (and most ambitious) artist, the
+splendors of a princess, the glories of a celebrity, and various other
+matters besides--these are a sufficiently interesting combination. But
+as an artist, as I have said, Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt would almost
+deserve a chapter for herself.
+
+HENRY JAMES, JR.
+
+
+
+
+MISS MISANTHROPE.
+
+BY JUSTIN MCCARTHY.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+ON THE BRIDGE.
+
+
+There was one walk of which Minola Grey was especially fond, and which
+she loved to enjoy alone. It led by a particular track through Regent's
+Park, avoiding for the most part the frequented paths, and bringing her
+at one time to the summit of a little mound or knoll, from which she
+could look across broad fields where sheep were grazing, and through
+clumps of trees and over hedges, and from which, by a happy
+peculiarity, all sight of the beaten and dusty avenues of the park was
+shut out. The view from this little eminence was perhaps most beautiful
+on a moist and misty day. There the soft, loving, artistic breath of
+the rain-charged clouds breathed tenderly on the landscape, and effaced
+any of the harsher, or meaner, or in any way more prosaic details.
+There the gazer only saw a noble expanse of delicious green grass and
+darker hedgerows, and trees of dun and gray, and softly-mottled
+moss-grown trunks, and here and there a bed of flowers, and all under a
+silver-gray atmosphere that almost seemed to dissolve while the eye
+rested on it. When Minola had looked long enough on the scene opening
+below the mound, she then usually pursued her course by devious ways
+until she reached one of the bridges of the canal, and there she made
+another halting place. The scene from the canal-bridge, unlike that
+from the mound, looked best on a bright, breezy day, of quick changing
+lights and shadows. There the brown water of the canal sparkled and
+gladdened in the sun, and Minola, leaning over the little bridge, and
+fixing her eyes on the water as it rippled past the nearer bank, might
+enjoy, for the hour, the full sensation of one who floats in a boat
+along a stream, and watches the trees and grasses of the shore. The
+place was quiet enough, and rich enough in trees and shrubs, and little
+reeds quivering out of the water, to seem, at least in Minola's pleased
+eyes, like a spot on the bank of the canal far in the country, while
+yet there was to her the peculiar and keen delight of knowing herself
+in London. Sometimes, too, a canal boat came gliding along, steered by
+a stalwart and sunburnt woman in a great straw bonnet, and the boat and
+the woman brought wild and delicious ideas of far-off country places,
+with woods and gipsies, and fresh, half savage, half poetic life.
+Minola extracted beautiful pictures and much poetry and romance from
+that little bridge over the discolored canal, creeping through the
+heart of London.
+
+The population of London--even its idlers--usually move along in tracks
+and grooves. Where some go, others go; where few go, at last none go.
+It is wonderful what hours of almost absolute solitude Minola was able
+to enjoy in the midst of Regent's Park. Voices, indeed, constantly
+reached her: the cries and laughter of children, the shoutings of
+cricketers, the dulled clamor of the metropolis itself. These reached
+her as did the bleating of sheep and the tinkle of their bells, the
+barking of dogs, and occasionally the fierce, hoarse, thrilling growl
+or roar of some disturbed or impatient animal in the Zooelogical Gardens
+near at hand. But many and many a time Minola lounged for half an hour
+on her little knoll or on her chosen bridge, without seeing more of man
+or woman than of the lions in their cages on the other side of the
+enclosure. There was a particular hour of the day, too, when the park
+in general was especially deserted, and it appears almost needless to
+say that this was the time selected usually by Miss Grey for her
+rambles. It was sometimes a curious, half sensuous pleasure for her
+thus alone, amid the murmur of the trees, to fancy herself, for the
+moment, back again within sight of the mausoleum at Keeton, where she
+had spent so many weary and solitary hours, and then, awaking, to
+rejoice anew in her freedom and in London.
+
+It was a fortunate and kindly destiny which assigned to our heroine a
+poetess for a companion. Much as she loved occasional solitude, Minola
+loved still better the spirit of fidelity to the obligations of true
+_camaraderie_, and if Miss Blanchet had had any manner of work to
+do, from the mending of a stocking to the teaching of a school, in
+which Minola could possibly have assisted her, Minola would never have
+thought of leaving her to do the work alone. Or even if Miss Blanchet
+had work to do in which Minola could not have helped her, but to which
+her presence would be any manner of encouragement, Minola would have
+stayed with her, and never dreamed of play while her companion had to
+be at work. But we may safely appeal to all the poets of all time to
+say whether anybody ever desired companionship while engaged in the
+composition of poetry. Sappho herself could have well dispensed with
+the society of Phaon at such a moment. It is true that Corinne threw
+off some of her grandest effusions in full face of an admiring crowd,
+and recited them not only with Lord Nelvil, but at him. Corinne,
+however, was of the improvisatrice class, to which Mary Blanchet did
+not profess to belong; and we own, moreover, to a constant suspicion
+that Corinne must have sat up late for many previous nights getting her
+improvisations by heart. At all events Miss Blanchet was not Corinne,
+and required seclusion, and much thought, and comparison of rhymes, and
+even looking out in dictionaries, in order to the composition of her
+poems. At the present time Minola was well aware that her friend had a
+new collection of poems on hand, and that the poems would be churned
+off with less difficulty if the author were occasionally left to
+herself for an hour or two. Therefore Minola was free to go into
+Regent's Park, with untroubled conscience and light heart. The woman
+who was not a poet revelled in the rustling branches and the sight of
+the soft grass, and was filled with glad visions and dreams by the
+flowing even of a poor, clouded, slow canal stream, and was rapt into
+the ideal at the sight of a reed growing in the water and shaken by the
+wind. The poetess remained at home in a dull room, and hammered out
+rhymes with the help of a dictionary.
+
+But, to do Minola justice, she was not wholly given up, even in these
+free and lonely hours, to the sweet, innocent sensuousness that fills
+certain beings when amid trees and the sounds of flowing water. She had
+many scruples about the possible selfishness of her life, and wondered
+whether it was not wrong thus to live, and whether it was not through
+some fault of hers that no opportunity presented itself to her of doing
+any good for man or woman. She asked herself sometimes whether she had
+not been impatient and wilful in her dealings with the people at home.
+She still, when in a self-questioning and penitential mood, thought and
+spoke of Keeton as "home," and whether she had not done wrong in
+leaving the material enclosure of any place bearing even by tradition
+the name of home, for a life of freedom which some censors might have
+thought unwomanly. There are metaphysicians who hold that, although man
+of his nature has no intuitive knowledge, yet that the accumulated
+experience of generations supplies gradually for men, as they are born,
+a something which is like intuition to start with, and which they could
+not now start clear of. So the experience or the traditions of
+generations form a sort of factitious and accumulated conscience for
+women independent of any abstract or eternal laws, and amounting in
+strength to something like intuition. Over this shadow they cannot
+leap. Minola, filled as she was with a peculiarly independent spirit,
+and driven by circumstances to consider its indulgence a right and even
+a duty, could not keep from the occasional torment of a doubt whether
+there must not be something wrong in the conduct of any woman who,
+under any circumstances, leaves voluntarily, and while she is yet under
+age, the home of her childhood, and takes up her abode among strangers,
+without guardians, mistress of herself, and in lodgings.
+
+Perhaps some such ideas were in Minola's mind when she left Mary
+Blanchet, a few mornings after the meetings described in the last
+chapter, and set out for a pleasant lonely walk in Regent's Park.
+Perhaps it was the very pleasure of the walk, and the loneliness, now
+missed for some days, that made her dread being selfish, and sent her
+down into a drooping and penitent reaction. "This will never do," she
+kept thinking. "I ought to try to do something for somebody. I am
+growing to think only of myself--and I broke away from Keeton because I
+was getting morbid in thinking about myself."
+
+It was in this remorseful condition of mind that she approached her
+favorite mound, longing for an hour of quiet delight there, and half
+ashamed of her longing. When she had nearly reached its height, she
+discerned that the fates had seemingly resolved to punish her for her
+love of solitariness, by decreeing that her chosen retreat should that
+day be occupied. There was a seat on which she usually sat, and now a
+man was there. That was bad enough, but she could in an ordinary case
+have passed on, and sought some other place. Now, however, she saw that
+that was denied to her; for the intruder was Mr. Victor Heron, and at
+the sound of her footstep he looked round, recognized her, and was
+already coming toward her, with hat uplifted and courteous bow.
+
+The very rapid moment of time between Minola's first seeing Mr. Heron
+and his recognizing her had enabled her quick eyes to perceive that
+when he thought himself alone he was anything but the genial and joyous
+personage he appeared in company. At first Miss Grey's attention was
+withdrawn from her own disappointment by the air of melancholy and even
+of utter despondency about the face and figure of the seated man. He
+sat leaning forward, his chin supported by one hand, his eyes fixed
+moodily on the ground. He seemed to have no manner of concern with air,
+or sky, or scene, and his dark-complexioned face gave the impression of
+one terribly at odds with fortune. Minola felt almost irresistibly
+drawn toward one who seemed unhappy. Her harmless misanthropy went out
+at a breath in the presence of any man who appeared to suffer.
+
+But the change which came over Mr. Heron when he saw her can only be
+likened to that which would be made by the sudden illumination of a
+house that a second before was all dark, and seemingly tenantless. He
+came to meet her with sparkling eyes and delighted expression. Mr.
+Heron, it should perhaps be explained, considered himself so much older
+than Miss Grey, so entirely an experienced, mature, not to say outworn
+man, that he did not think of waiting to see whether Miss Grey was
+inclined to encourage a renewal of the acquaintance. He considered it
+his duty to be polite and friendly to the pretty girl he had met at
+Money's, and whom he assumed to be poor, and wanting in friends.
+
+"How fortunate I am to meet you here to-day!" he said. "You remember
+me, I hope, Miss Grey? I haven't called you Miss Money this time. Come
+now--don't say you have forgotten me."
+
+"I could not say I had forgotten you, for it would not be true, Mr.
+Heron."
+
+"Thank you; that was very prettily said, and kindly."
+
+"Was it? I really didn't mean it to be either pretty or kind--only the
+truth."
+
+"I see, you go in for being downright, and saying only what you mean. I
+am very glad. So do I, and I am very much delighted to meet you here,
+Miss Grey. Come, you won't say as much for me?"
+
+"I cannot say that I was glad to see anybody just here; this place is
+always deserted, except by me."
+
+"You come here often, and you are sorry to have your retreat broken in
+upon? Don't hesitate to say so, Miss Grey, and I will promise not to
+come into this part of the park--or into any part of the park for that
+matter--any more. Why should I disturb you?"
+
+He spoke with such earnestness and such evident sincerity that Minola
+began to feel ashamed of her previous ungraciousness.
+
+"That would be rather hard upon you, and a little arrogant on my part,"
+she said smiling. "The park isn't mine, and, if it were, I am sure I
+could not be selfish enough to wish to shut you out from any part of
+it. But I am in the habit of being a good deal alone; and I fear it
+makes me a little rude and selfish sometimes. I was thinking of that
+just as I came up here, and saw you."
+
+"Then you saw me before I saw you?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"I am afraid you must have seen a very woe-begone personage."
+
+"Yes; you seemed unhappy, I thought."
+
+"There is something sympathetic about you, Miss Grey, for all your
+coldness and loneliness."
+
+"Surely," said Miss Grey, "a woman without some feeling of sympathy
+would be hardly fit to live."
+
+"You think so?" he asked quite earnestly and gravely. "So do I--so do I
+indeed. Men have little time to sympathize with men--they are all too
+busy with their own affairs. What should we do but for the sympathy of
+women? Now tell me, why do you smile at that? I saw that you were
+trying not to laugh."
+
+"I could not help smiling a little, it was so thoroughly masculine a
+sentiment."
+
+"Was it? How is that now?" His direct way of propounding his questions
+rather amused and did not displease her. It was like the way of a
+rational man talking with another rational being--a style of
+conversation which has much attraction for some women.
+
+"Well, because it looked upon women so honestly as creatures only
+formed to make men comfortable, by coming up and sympathizing with them
+when they are in a humor for sympathy, and then retiring out of the way
+into their corner again."
+
+"I can assure you, Miss Grey, that never has been my idea--nothing of
+the kind, indeed. To tell the truth, I have not known much about the
+sympathy of women and all that. I have lived awfully out of the world,
+and I never had any sisters, and I hardly remember my mother. I know
+women chiefly in poems and romances, and I believe I generally adopt
+the goddess theory. In honest truth, most women do seem to me a sort of
+goddesses."
+
+"You will not be long in England without unlearning that theory," Miss
+Grey said. "Our writers seem to have hardly any subject now but the
+faults and follies of women. One might sometimes think that woman was a
+newly-discovered creature that the world could never be done wondering
+at."
+
+"Yes, yes; I read a good deal of that sort of thing out in the
+colonies. But I have retained the goddess theory, so far at least. Mrs.
+Money seems to me a sort of divinity. Miss Money is a born saint; she
+ought to go about with a gilt plate round her head. Miss Lucy Money
+seems like a little angel of light. Are you smiling again? I do assure
+you these are my real feelings."
+
+"I was not smiling at the idea, but only at the difference between it
+and the favorite ideas of most people at present, even of women about
+women."
+
+"May I walk a little with you," Mr. Heron said, "or will you sit and
+rest here, if you are tired, and we will talk? Don't stand on formality
+and send me away, although I will go if you like, and not feel in the
+least offended. But if we might talk for a little, it would give me
+great pleasure. You said just now that you did not wish to be selfish.
+It will be very unselfish and very kind if you will let me talk to you
+a little. I felt very wretched when you came up--quite in a suicidal
+frame of mind."
+
+"Oh, no! Pray don't speak in that way. You do not mean it I am sure."
+
+"In one sense I do mean it--that is, it is quite true that I should not
+have thrown myself into the water or blown my brains out; that sort of
+thing seems to me like abandoning one's post without orders from
+headquarters. But I felt in the condition of mind when one can quite
+understand how such things are done, and would be glad if he were free
+to follow the example. For _me_ that is a great change in itself," the
+young man added with some bitterness.
+
+"What can I do for him?" Miss Grey asked herself mentally. "Nothing but
+to show him the view from the canal bridge. There is nothing else in my
+power."
+
+"There is a very pretty view a short distance from this," she said; "a
+view from a bridge, and I am particularly fond of looking from bridges.
+Should you like to walk there?"
+
+"I should like to walk anywhere with you," Victor Heron said, with a
+look of genuine gratefulness, which had not the faintest breath of
+compliment in it, and could only be accepted as frank truth.
+
+Perhaps, if Miss Grey had been a town-bred girl, she might have
+hesitated about setting out for a companionable walk in the park with a
+young man who was almost a stranger to her. But, as it was, she
+appeared to herself to have all the right of free action belonging to
+one in a place of which the public opinion can in no wise touch her.
+She acted in London as freely as one speaks with a friend in a foreign
+hotel room, where he knows that the company around are unable to
+understand what he is saying. In this particular instance, however,
+Minola hardly thought about the matter at all. There was something in
+Heron's open and emotional way which made people almost at the first
+meeting cease to regard him as a stranger. Perhaps, if Minola had
+thought over the matter, she might have cited in vindication of her
+course the valuable authority of Major Pendennis, who, when asked
+whether Laura might properly take walks in the Temple Gardens with
+Warrington, eagerly said, "Yes, yes, begad, of course, you go out with
+him. It's like the country, you know; everybody goes out with everybody
+in the Gardens; and there are beadles, you know, and that sort of
+thing. Everybody walks in the Temple Gardens." Regent's Park, one would
+think, ought to come under the same laws. There are beadles there, too,
+or guardian functionaries of some sort, although it may be owned that
+in their walk to and from the canal bridge Heron and Minola encountered
+none of them.
+
+It is doubtful whether Heron at least would have noticed such a
+personage even had they come in their way, for he talked nearly all the
+time, except when he paused for an answer to some direct question, and
+he seldom took his eyes from Minola's face. He was not staring at her,
+or broadly admiring her; nor, indeed, was there anything in his manner
+to make it certain that he was admiring her at all, as man
+conventionally is understood to admire woman. But he had evidently put
+Miss Grey into the place of a sympathetic and trusted friend, and he
+talked to her accordingly. She was amused and interested, and she now
+and then kept making little disparaging criticisms to herself, in order
+to sustain her place as the cool depreciator of man. But she was very
+happy for all that.
+
+One characteristic peculiarity of this sudden and singular
+acquaintanceship ought to be mentioned. When people still read "Gil
+Blas" they would have remembered at once how the waiting-woman received
+delightedly the advances of Gil Blas, believing him to be a gentleman
+of fortune, and how Gil Blas paid great court to the waiting-woman,
+believing her to be a lady of rank. The pair of friends in Regent's
+Park were drawn together by exactly opposite impulses: each believed
+the other poor and unfriended. Minola was under the impression that she
+was giving her sympathy to a ruined and unhappy young man, who had
+failed in life almost at the very beginning, and was now friendless in
+stony-hearted London. Victor Heron was convinced that his companion was
+a poor orphan girl, who had been sent down by misfortune from a
+position of comfort, or even wealth, to earn her bread by some sort of
+intellectual labor, while she lived in a small back room in a depressed
+and mournful quarter of London.
+
+He told her the story of his grievance; it may be that he even told her
+some parts of it more than once. It was a strange sensation to her, as
+she walked on the soft green turf, in the silver gray atmosphere, to
+hear this young man, who seemed to have lived so bold and strange a
+life, appealing to her for an opinion as to the course he ought to
+pursue to have his cause set right. The St. Xavier's Settlements do not
+geographically count for much, and politically they count for still
+less. But when Mr. Heron told of his having been administrator and
+commandant there; of his having made treaties with neighboring kings
+(she knew they were only black kings); of his having tried to put down
+slavery, and to maintain what he persisted in believing to be the true
+honor of England; of war made on him, and war made by him in
+return--while she listened to all this, it is no wonder if our romantic
+girl from Duke's Keeton sometimes thought she was conversing with one
+of the heroes and master-spirits of the time. He made the whole story
+very clear to her, and she thoroughly understood it, although her
+imagination and her senses were sometimes disturbed by the tropic glare
+which seemed to come over the places and events he described. At last
+they actually came to be standing on the canal bridge, and neither
+looked at the view they had come to see.
+
+"Now what do you advise?" Heron said, after having several times
+impressed some particular point on her. "I attach great importance to a
+woman's advice. You have instincts, and all that, which we haven't; at
+least so everybody says. Would you let this thing drop altogether, and
+try some other career, or would you fight it out?"
+
+"I would fight it out," Minola said, looking up to him with sparkling
+eyes, "and I would never let it drop. I would make them do me justice."
+
+"Just what I think; just what I came to England resolved to do. I hate
+the idea of giving in; but people here discourage me. Money discourages
+me. He says the Government will never do anything unless I make myself
+troublesome."
+
+"Well, then, why not make yourself troublesome?"
+
+"I have made myself troublesome in one sense," he said, with a vexed
+kind of laugh, "by haunting ante-chambers, and trying to force people
+to see me who don't want to see me. But I can't do any more of that
+kind of work; I am sick of it. I am ashamed of having tried it at all."
+
+"Yes, I couldn't do that," Minola said gravely.
+
+"Then," Heron said, with a little embarrassment, "a man--a very kind
+and well-meaning fellow, an old friend of my father's--offered to
+introduce me to Lady Chertsey--a very clever woman, a queen of society,
+I am told, who gets all the world (of politics, I mean) into her
+drawing-room, and delights in being a sort of power, and all that. She
+could push a fellow, they say, wonderfully if she took any interest in
+him. But I couldn't do that, you know."
+
+"No? Why not?"
+
+"Well, I shouldn't care to be introduced to a lady's drawing-room with
+the secret purpose of trying to get her to do me a service. There seems
+something mean in that. Besides, I have a cause (at least, I think I
+have) which is too good to be served in that kind of way. If I can't
+get a hearing and justice from the Government of England and the people
+of England for the sake of right and for the claims I have, I will
+never try to get it through. Oh, well, perhaps, I ought not to say what
+I was going to say."
+
+"Why not?" Minola asked again.
+
+"I mean, perhaps I ought not to say it to you."
+
+"I don't know really. Tell me what it is, and then I'll tell you
+whether you ought to say it."
+
+He laughed. "Well, I was only going to say that I don't care to have my
+cause served by petticoat influence."
+
+"I think you are quite right. If I were a man, I should think petticoat
+influence in such a matter contemptible. But why should you not like to
+say so?"
+
+"Only because I was afraid you might think I meant to speak
+contemptuously of the influence and the advice of women. I don't mean
+anything of the kind. I have the highest opinion of the advice of women
+and their influence, as I have told you already; but I couldn't endure
+the idea of having a lady, who doesn't know or care anything about me
+and my claims, asked by somebody to say a word to some great man or
+some great man's wife, in order that I might get a hearing. I am sure
+you understand what I mean, Miss Grey."
+
+"Oh, yes, I never should have misunderstood it; and I know that you are
+quite right. It would be a downright degradation."
+
+"So I felt. Anyhow, I could not do it. Then there remains the making
+myself troublesome, as Money advises----"
+
+"Yes, what is that?"
+
+"Getting my case brought on again and again in the House of Commons,
+and having debates about it, and making the whole thing public, and so
+forcing the Government either to do me justice or to satisfy the
+country that justice has already been done," he said bitterly.
+
+"That would seem to me a right thing to do," Miss Grey said; "but I
+know so little that I ought not to offer a word of advice."
+
+"Oh, yes, I should trust to your feelings and instincts in such a case.
+Well, I don't like, somehow, being in the hands of politicians and
+party men, who might use me and my cause only as a means of annoying
+the Government--not really from any sense of right and justice. I don't
+know if I make myself quite understood; it is hard to expect a lady,
+especially a young lady, to understand these things."
+
+"I think I can quite understand all that. We are not so stupid as you
+seem to suppose, Mr. Heron."
+
+"Stupid? Didn't I tell you of my goddess theory?"
+
+"Some of the goddesses were very stupid I always think. Venus was
+stupid."
+
+"Well, well; anyhow you are not Venus."
+
+"No, indeed."
+
+"In that sense I mean. Then I do succeed in making myself understood?"
+
+"Oh, yes!" She could see that he was looking disappointed at her
+interruption and her seeming levity, which was indeed only the result
+of a momentary impulse to keep up to herself her character as a scorner
+of men. "I think I understand quite clearly that you fear to be made
+the mere instrument of politicians; and I think you are quite right. I
+did not think of that at first, but, now that you explain it, I am sure
+that you are right."
+
+He nodded approvingly. "Then comes the question," he said, "what is to
+be done?"
+
+Leaning against the bridge, he thrust his hands into his pockets, and
+stood looking into her face, as if he were really waiting for her to
+solve the problem for him.
+
+"That is entirely beyond me," she said. "I know nothing; I could not
+even guess at what ought to be done."
+
+"No? Now here is my idea. Why not plead my cause myself?"
+
+"Plead your cause yourself? Can that be done?"
+
+"Yes; myself--in Parliament."
+
+Minola's mind at once formed and framed a picture of a stately
+assembly, like a Roman Senate, or like the group of King Agrippa,
+Festus, Bernice, and the rest, and Mr. Heron pleading his cause like
+Cicero or Paul. The thing seemed hardly congruous. It did not seem to
+her to fall in with modern conditions at all. Her face became blank;
+she did not well know what to answer.
+
+"Are people allowed to do such things now, in England?" she asked--"to
+plead causes before Parliament?"
+
+An odd idea came up in her mind, that perhaps by the time this strange
+performance came to be enacted, Mr. Augustus Sheppard might be in
+Parliament, and Mr. Heron's enthusiastic eloquence would have to be
+addressed to him. She did not like the idea.
+
+"You don't understand," Heron said. "You really don't this time. What I
+mean is to get into Parliament--be elected for some place, and then
+stand up and make my own fight for myself."
+
+She kindled at the idea.
+
+"Oh, yes, of course! How stupid I am not to see at once! That is a
+splendid idea; the very thing I should like to do if I were a man and
+in your place."
+
+"You really think so?"
+
+"Indeed I do. But then----" And she hesitated, for she feared that she
+had been only encouraging him to a wild dream. "Does it not cost a
+great deal of money to get into Parliament?"
+
+"No; I think not; not always at least. I should look out for an
+opportunity. I have money enough--for me. I'm not a rich man, Miss
+Grey, but my father left me well enough off, as far as that goes; and
+you know that in a place like St. Xavier's one couldn't spend any
+money. There was no way of getting rid of it. No, my troubles are none
+of them money troubles. I only want to vindicate my past career, and so
+to have a career for the future. I ought to be doing something. I feel
+in an unhealthy state of mind while all this is pressing on me. You
+understand?"
+
+"I can understand it," Miss Grey said, turning to leave the bridge, and
+bestowing one glance at the yellow, slow-moving water, and the reeds
+and the bushes, of which she and her companion had not spoken a word.
+"It is not good to have to think of oneself. But you are bound to
+vindicate yourself; that I am sure is your duty. Then you can think of
+other things--of the public and the country."
+
+"He is rich," she thought, "and he is clever and earnest, in spite of
+his egotism. Of course he will have a career, and be successful. I
+thought that he was poor and broken down, and that I was doing him a
+kindness by showing sympathy with him."
+
+They went away together, and Heron, delighted with her encouragement
+and her intelligence, unfolded splendid plans of what he was to do. But
+Minola somehow entered less cordially into them than she had done
+before, and Mr. Heron at last became ashamed of talking so much about
+himself.
+
+"I hope we shall meet again," he said as she stopped significantly at
+one of the gates leading out of the park, to intimate that now their
+roads were separating. "I wish you would allow me to call and see you.
+I do hope you won't think me odd, or that I am presuming on your
+kindness. I am a semi-barbarian, you know--have been so long out of
+civilization--and I haven't any idea of the ways of the polite world."
+
+"Nor I," said Minola. "I have come from utter barbarism--from a country
+town."
+
+"But I do hope we shall meet again, for you are so sympathetic and
+kind."
+
+She bade him good day, and nodded with a friendly smile, but made no
+answer to the repeated expression of his hope, and she hastened away.
+
+Heron could not endure walking alone just then. He hailed a hansom and
+disappeared.
+
+"How vain men are!" Minola thought as she went her way. "How
+egotistical they all are!" Of course she assumed herself to have
+obtained a complete knowledge of all the characters of men. "How
+egotistic he is! Of course he tells his whole story to every woman he
+meets. Lucy Money no doubt has it by heart."
+
+She did not remember for the moment that her own favorite hero was
+likewise somewhat egotistical and effusive, and that he was very apt to
+pour out the story of his wrongs into the ear of any sympathetic woman.
+But she was disappointed with herself and her friend just now, and was
+not in a mood to make perfectly reasonable comparisons.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+A "HELPER OF UNHAPPY MEN."
+
+
+Mrs. Money had one great object in life. At least, if it was not an
+object defined and set out before her, it was an instinct: it was to
+make people happy. She could not rest without trying to make people
+happy. The motherly instinct, which in other women is satisfied by
+rushing at babies wherever they are to be seen, and ministering to
+them, and fondling them, and talking pigeon-English to them, exuberated
+in her so far as to set her trying to do the mother's part for all men
+and women who came within her range, even when their years far exceeded
+hers. There was one great advantage to herself personally in this: it
+kept her content in what had come to be her own sphere. One cannot go
+meddling in the affairs of duchesses and countesses, and Ministers of
+State, with whatever kindly desire of setting everything to rights and
+making them all happy. People of that class give themselves such
+haughty airs that they would rather remain unhappy in their own way
+than obtain felicity at the hand of some person of inferior station. So
+Mrs. Money believed; and perhaps one secret cause of her dislike to the
+aristocracy (along with the avowed conviction that the aristocratic
+system had somehow misprized and interfered with her husband) was the
+feeling that if she were among them, they would not allow her to do
+anything for them. She therefore maintained a circle of which she
+herself was the queen, and patroness, and Lady Bountiful. She busied
+herself about everybody's affairs, and was kind to everybody, without
+any feeling of delight in the mere work of patronizing, but out of a
+sheer pleasure in trying to make people happy. Naturally she made
+mistakes, and the general system of her social circle worked so as to
+occasion a continual change, a passing away of old friends and coming
+in of new. As young men rose in the world and became independent, as
+girls got married and came to consider themselves supreme in their own
+sphere, they tended to move away from Mrs. Money's influence. Even the
+grateful and the generous could not always avoid this. For beginners in
+any path of life she was the specially appointed helper and friend; and
+next to these she might be called the patron saint of failures. In her
+circle were young poets, painters, lawyers, novelists, preachers,
+ambitious men looking out for seats in Parliament, or beginners in
+Parliament; also there were the gray old poets whom no one read; the
+painters who could not get their pictures exhibited or bought; the men
+who were in Parliament ten or twenty years ago, and got out and never
+could get in again; and the inventors who could not impress any
+government or capitalist with a sense of the value of their
+discoveries. No front-rank, successful person of any kind was usually
+to be found in Mrs. Money's rooms. Her guests were the youths who were
+putting their armor on for the battle, and the worn-out campaigners who
+had put it off defeated.
+
+Naturally, when Minola Grey came in Mrs. Money's way, the sympathy and
+interest of the kindly lady were quickened to their keenest. This
+beautiful, motherless, fatherless, proud, lonely girl--not so old as
+her own Theresa, not older than her own Lucy--living by herself, or
+almost by herself, in gloomy lodgings in the heart of London--how could
+she fail to be an object of Mrs. Money's deep concern? Of course Mrs.
+Money must look into all her affairs, and find out whether she was
+poor; and in what sort of way she was living; and whether the people
+with whom she lodged were kind to her.
+
+Mary Blanchet's pride of heart can hardly be described when an open
+carriage, with a pair of splendid grays, stopped at the door of the
+house in the no-thoroughfare street, and a footman got down and
+knocked; and it finally appeared that Mrs. Money, Miss Money, and Miss
+Lucy Money had called to see Miss Grey. Miss Grey, as it happened, was
+not at home, although the servant at first supposed that she was; and
+thus the three ladies were shown into Minola's sitting-room, and there
+almost instantly captured by Miss Blanchet. We say "almost" because
+there was an interval long enough for Lucy to dart about the room from
+point to point, taking up a book here, a piece of music there, an
+engraving, a photograph, or a flower, and pronouncing everything
+delightful. The room was old-fashioned, spacious, and solid, very
+unlike the tiny apartments of the ordinary West End lodging; and, what
+with the flowers and the books, it really looked rather an attractive
+place to enthusiastic eyes. Miss Money kept her eyes on the ground for
+the most part, and professed to take little notice of the ordinary
+adornments of rooms; for Miss Money was a saint, and was furthermore
+engaged to a man not far from her father's years, who, having made a
+great deal of money at the Parliamentary bar, was now thinking of
+entering the Church, and had already set about the building of a temple
+of mediaeval style, in the progress of which Miss Money naturally was
+deeply interested.
+
+Miss Blanchet was in a flutter of excitement as she entered the
+sitting-room. As she was crossing its threshold she was considering
+whether she ought to present a copy of her poems to each of the three
+ladies or only to Mrs. Money; or whether she ought to tender the gift
+now or send it on by the post. The solemn eyes and imposing presence of
+Mrs. Money were almost alarming, and the trailing dresses and feathers
+of all the ladies sent a thrill of admiration and homage into the heart
+of the poetess--everything was so evidently put on regardless of
+expense. Little Mary had always been so poor and so stinted in the
+matter of wardrobe that she could not help admiring these splendidly
+dressed women. Mary, however, luckily remembered what was due to the
+dignity of poetic genius, and did not allow her homage to show itself
+too much in the form of trepidation. She instantly put on her best
+company manners, and spoke in the sweetly measured and genteel tone
+which she used to employ at Keeton, when she had occasion to
+interchange a word with the judges, or the sheriffs, or some eminent
+counsel.
+
+"Minola will be home in a few moments--a very few," Miss Blanchet said.
+"Indeed, I expect her every minute. I know she would be greatly
+disappointed if she did not see you."
+
+"Oh, I am not going without seeing Nola!" said Lucy.
+
+"I am Minola's friend," Mary explained with placid dignity. "I may
+introduce myself. My brother, I know, has already the honor of your
+acquaintance. I am Miss Blanchet."
+
+"Mr. Herbert Blanchet's sister?" Mrs. Money said in melancholy tone,
+but with delighted eyes. "This is indeed an unexpected and a very great
+pleasure."
+
+"Why, you don't mean to say you are Herbert Blanchet's sister?" Lucy
+exclaimed, seizing both the hands of the poetess. "He's the most
+delightful creature, and a true poet. Oh, yes, a man of genius!"
+
+The eyes of Mary moistened with happiness and pride.
+
+"Herbert Blanchet is my brother. He is much younger than I; I need
+hardly say that. I used to take care of him years ago, almost as if I
+were his mother. We were a long time separated; he has been so much
+abroad."
+
+The faithful Mary would not for all the world have suggested that their
+long separation was due to any indifference on the part of her brother.
+Indeed, at the moment she was not thinking of anything of the kind,
+only of his genius, and his beauty, and his noble heart.
+
+"He never told me he had a sister," Mrs. Money said, "or I should have
+been delighted to call on you long ago, Miss Blanchet. It is your
+brother's fault, not mine. I shall tell him so."
+
+"He did not know that I was coming to London," Mary was quick to
+explain. "He thought I was still living in Keeton. I only came to
+London with Minola."
+
+"Oh! You lived in Keeton then always, along with Miss Grey!"
+
+"How delightful!" Lucy exclaimed, desisting from her occupation of
+opening books and turning over music; "for you can tell us all about
+Nola and her love story."
+
+"Her love story?" Mrs. Money repeated, in tones of melancholy inquiry.
+
+"Her love story!" Miss Blanchet murmured tremulously, and wondering who
+had betrayed Minola's secret.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Lucy decisively. "I know there's some love
+story--something romantic and delightful. Do tell us, Miss Blanchet."
+
+Even the saint-like Theresa now showed a mild and becoming interest.
+
+"It's not exactly a love story," Miss Blanchet said with some
+hesitation, not well knowing what she ought to reveal and what to keep
+back. "At least it's no love affair on Minola's part. She never was in
+love--never. She detests all love-making--at least she thinks so," the
+poetess said with a gentle sigh. "But there was a gentleman who was
+very much in love with her."
+
+"Oh, she must have had heaps of lovers!" interposed Lucy.
+
+Miss Blanchet then told the story of Mr. Augustus Sheppard, and how he
+was rich and handsome--at least rather handsome, she said--and how he
+wanted to marry Minola; and her people very much wished that she would
+have him, and she would not; and how at last she hastened her flight to
+London to get rid of him. All this was full of delightful interest to
+Lucy, and still further quickened the kindly sympathy of Mrs. Money.
+Then Mary Blanchet went into a long story about the death of Minola's
+mother and the second marriage of Minola's father, and then the
+father's death and the stepmother's second marriage, and the discomfort
+of the home which fate had thus provided for Minola. She expatiated
+upon the happiness of the sheltered life Minola had had while her
+mother was living, and the change that came upon her afterward, until
+the only doubt Mrs. Money had ever entertained about Minola--a doubt as
+to the perfect propriety and judgment of her coming to live almost
+alone in London--vanished altogether, and she regarded our heroine as a
+girl who had been driven from her home instead of having fled from it.
+
+Mrs. Money delicately and cautiously approached the subject of Minola's
+means of subsistence. On this point no one could enlighten her better
+than Miss Blanchet, who knew to the sixpence the income and expenditure
+of her friend. Well, Minola was not badly off for a girl, Mrs. Money
+thought. A girl could live nicely and quietly, like a lady, but very
+quietly, on that. Besides, some rich man would be sure to fall in love
+with her.
+
+"But she ought to have a great deal of money," the poetess eagerly
+explained, very proud of her leader's losses. "Her father was a rich
+man, quite a rich man, and he had quarrelled with her brother, and she
+ought to have all the money, only for that second marriage." Indeed,
+Miss Blanchet added the expression of her own profound conviction that
+there must have been some queer work--some concealment or
+something--about Mr. Grey's property, seeing that so little of it came
+to Minola.
+
+"I'll get Mr. Money to look into all that," Mrs. Money said decisively.
+"He understands all about these things, and nothing could be hidden
+from him."
+
+Miss Blanchet modestly intimated that she had confided her suspicions
+to her brother, and begged him to try and find out something.
+
+"Oh, he never could understand anything about it!" Lucy said. "Poets
+never know about these things. It's just in papa's line. He'll find
+out. They can't baffle him. I know they have been cheating Nola--I know
+they have! I know there's a will hidden away somewhere, making her the
+rightful heir or whatever it is."
+
+"About this gentleman--this lover. Is he a nice person?" Mrs. Money
+began.
+
+"Mr. Augustus Sheppard?" Mary asked, mentioning his name for the first
+time in the conversation.
+
+"Augustus Sheppard! Is that his name?" Lucy demanded eagerly.
+
+"Why then, papa knows him! Indeed he does. I do declare papa knows
+everything!"
+
+"Why do you think, dear, that he knows this gentleman?"
+
+"Because I heard him asking Nola about Mr. Augustus Sheppard the other
+day, mamma, in our drawing-room."
+
+"He couldn't have known this, I think," Miss Blanchet said.
+
+"Oh, no, I suppose not; but he knows him, and he'll tell us all about
+him. Why wouldn't Nola have him, Miss Blanchet?"
+
+"He is rather a formal sort of person, and heavy, and not the least in
+the world poetic or romantic; and Minola does not like him at all. She
+doesn't think his feelings are very deep; but there I am sure she is
+wrong," the poetess added emphatically. "She has never had occasion to
+make a study of human feelings as others have."
+
+"You think he has deep feelings?" Mrs. Money asked, turning the full
+light of her melancholy eyes upon Mary, and with her whole soul already
+in the question.
+
+"Oh, yes; I know he has. I know that he will persevere, and will try to
+make Minola marry him still. He is a man I should be afraid of if he
+were disappointed. I should indeed."
+
+"Mamma, don't you think we had better have Nola to stay with us for a
+while?" Lucy asked. "Miss Blanchet could describe him, or get a
+photograph, and we could give orders that no such man was ever to be
+admitted if he should call and ask to see her. Some one should always
+go out with her, or she should only go in the carriage. I dread this
+man; I do indeed. Miss Blanchet is quite right, and she knows more than
+she says, I dare say. Such terrible things have happened, you know. I
+read in a paper the other day of a young man who fell in love with a
+girl--in the country it was, I think, or in Spain perhaps, or
+somewhere--and she would not marry him; and he hid himself with a long
+dagger, and when she was going to church he stabbed her several times."
+
+"I don't think Mr. Augustus Sheppard would be likely to do anything of
+that kind," Miss Blanchet said. "He's a very respectable man, and a
+steady, grave sort of person."
+
+"You never can tell," Lucy declared. "When those quiet men are in love
+and disappointed, they are dreadful! I've read a great many things just
+like that in books."
+
+"Well, dear," Mrs. Money said, "we'll ask your papa. If he knows this
+gentleman--this person--he can tell us what sort of man he is. It
+doesn't seem that he is in London now."
+
+"He may have come to-day," said Lucy.
+
+Miss Theresa looked at her watch.
+
+"Mamma dear, I don't think Miss Grey is coming in just yet, and it's
+growing late, and I have to attend the Ladies' Committee of the Saint
+Angulphus Association, at four."
+
+"You go, mamma, with Theresa," Lucy exclaimed. "I'll wait; I must see
+Nola. I begin to be alarmed. It's very odd her staying out. I think
+something must really have happened. That man may have been in town,
+waiting somewhere. You go. When I have seen Nola, and am satisfied that
+she is safe, I can get home in the omnibus, or the underground, or the
+steamboat, or somehow. I'll find my way, you may be sure."
+
+"My dear," her mother said, "you were never in an omnibus in your
+life."
+
+"Papa goes in omnibuses, and he says he doesn't care whether other
+people do or not."
+
+"But a lady, my dear----"
+
+"Oh, I've seen them in the streets full of women! They don't object to
+ladies at all."
+
+"But my dear young lady," Miss Blanchet pleaded, "there is not the
+slightest occasion for your staying. Mr. Sheppard isn't at all that
+kind of person. Minola is quite safe. She is often out much later than
+this, although I confess that I did expect her home much earlier
+to-day."
+
+"I'll stay till Nola comes," the positive little Lucy declared, "unless
+Miss Blanchet turns me out; and there's an end of that. So, mamma dear,
+you and Tessy do as you please, and never mind me."
+
+"When Minola does come----" Mary Blanchet began to say.
+
+"When she does come?" Lucy interrupted in portentous accents. "Say if
+she does come, Miss Blanchet."
+
+"When she does come, please don't say anything of Mr. Sheppard. Of
+course she would not like to think that we spoke about such a subject."
+
+"Oh, of course, of course!" all the ladies chorused, with looks
+expressive of immense caution and discretion; and in true feminine
+fashion all honestly assuming that there could be nothing wrong in
+talking over anybody's supposed secrets so long as the person concerned
+did not know of the talk.
+
+"I see Miss Grey," said the quiet Theresa suddenly. She had been
+looking out of the window to see if the carriage was near. As a
+professed saint she had naturally less interest in ordinary human
+creatures than her mother and sister had.
+
+"Thank heaven!" Lucy exclaimed.
+
+"Dear Lucy!" Theresa interposed in tones of mild remonstrance, as if
+she would suggest that not everybody had a right to make reference to
+heaven, and that heaven would probably resent any allusion to it by the
+unqualified.
+
+"Well, I am thankful that she is coming all the same; but I wish you
+wouldn't call her Miss Grey, Tessy. It seems cold and unfriendly. Call
+her Nola, please."
+
+Mary Blanchet went to the door and exchanged a brief word or two with
+Minola, in order that she might be prepared for her visitors. Minola
+came in, looking very handsome, with her color heightened by a quick
+walk home and the little excitement of her morning.
+
+"How lovely you are looking, Nola, dear!" Lucy exclaimed, after the
+first greetings were over. "You look as if you had been having an
+adventure."
+
+"I have had a sort of adventure," Minola answered with a faint blush.
+
+The one thought went through the minds of all her listeners at the same
+moment, and it shaped itself into a name--"Mr. Augustus Sheppard." All
+were silent and breathless.
+
+"It was not much," Minola hastened to say. "Only I met Mr. Victor Heron
+in Regent's Park, and I have been walking with him."
+
+Most of her listeners seemed relieved.
+
+"I wish I had met him," Lucy blurted out. "He is very handsome, and I
+should like to have walked with him. Oh, what nonsense I am talking!"
+and she grew red, and jumped up and looked out of the window.
+
+Then they all talked about something else, and the visit closed with a
+promise that Minola and Mary Blanchet would present themselves at one
+of Mrs. Money's little weekly receptions, out of season, which was to
+take place the following evening; and after which Mrs. Money hoped to
+decoy them into staying for the night. Mary Blanchet went to bed that
+night in an ecstasy of happiness, only disturbed now and then by a
+torturing doubt as to whether Mrs. Money would be equally willing to
+receive her if she had known that she had been the keeper of the
+court-house at Keeton; and whether she ought not to forewarn Mrs. Money
+of the fact; and whether she ought not, at least, to call Minola's
+attention to the question, and submit to her judgment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+IN SOCIETY.
+
+
+Mr. Money was not a very regular visitor at his wife's little
+receptions out of the season. In the season, and when they had larger
+and more formal gatherings, he showed himself as much as was fitting
+and regular; for many of the guests then were virtually his guests,
+persons who desired especially to see him, and of whose topics he could
+talk. A good many foreign visitors were there usually--scientific men,
+and railway contractors, and engineers, and shipbuilders, from Germany,
+Italy, and Russia, and of course the United States, who looked upon Mr.
+Money as a person of great importance and distinction, and would not
+have cared anything about most of Mrs. Money's guests.
+
+The foreigners were curiously right and wrong. Mr. Money was a person
+of importance and distinction. Every Londoner who knew anything knew
+his name, and knew that he was clever and distinguished. If a Russian
+stranger of rank were dining with a Cabinet minister, and were to
+express a wish to see and know Mr. Money, the minister would think the
+wish quite natural, and would take his friend down to the lobby of the
+House of Commons, and make him acquainted with Mr. Money. We have all
+been foreigners ourselves somewhere, and we know how our longing to see
+some celebrity, as we suppose, of the land we are visiting, some one
+whose name was familiar to us in England, has been occasionally checked
+and chilled by our finding that in the celebrity's own city no one
+seems to have heard of him. There are only too many celebrities of this
+kind which shine, like the moon, for those who are a long way off. But
+Mr. Money was a man of mark in London, as well as in St. Petersburg and
+New York. Therein the foreigners found themselves right. Yet Mr.
+Money's position was somewhat peculiar for all that, in a manner no
+stranger could well appreciate. The Cabinet minister did not ask Mr.
+Money to meet his friend at dinner; or, at all events, would never have
+been able to say to his friend, "Money? Oh, yes! Of course you ought to
+know him. He is coming to-morrow to dine with us. Won't you come and
+meet him?" The most the Cabinet minister would do would be to get up a
+little dinner party, suitably adjusted for the express purpose of
+bringing his friend and Mr. Money together. It would be too much to say
+that Mr. Money was under a cloud. There rather seemed to be a sort of
+faint idea abroad that he ought to be, or some day would be, under a
+cloud, no one knew why.
+
+No such considerations as these, however, would have affected the
+company who gathered round Mrs. Money in the out-of-season evenings, or
+could have been appreciated by them. They were, for the most part,
+entirely out of Mr. Money's line. He came among them irregularly and at
+intervals; and if he found there any man or woman he knew or was taken
+with, he talked to him or her a good deal, and perhaps, if it were a
+man, he carried him and one or two others off to his own study or
+smoking-room, where they discoursed at their ease. Sometimes Lucelet
+was sent to her papa, if he was not making his appearance in the
+drawing-room, to beg him to accomplish some such act of timely
+intervention. Somebody, perhaps, presented himself among Mrs. Money's
+guests who was rather too solid, or grave, or scientific, or political,
+to care for the general company, and to be of any social benefit to
+them; or some one, as we have said, in whose eyes Mr. Money would be a
+celebrity, and Mrs. Money's guests counted for nothing. Then Lucy went
+for her father, if he was in the house, and drew him forth. He was
+wonderfully genial with his womankind. They might disturb him at any
+moment and in any way they chose. He seemed to have as little idea of
+grumbling if they disturbed him as a Newfoundland dog would have of
+snapping at his master's children if they insisted on rousing him up
+from his doze in the sun.
+
+Mr. Money talked very frankly of his daughters and their prospects
+sometimes.
+
+"My girls are going to marry any one they like," he would often say;
+"the poorer the better, so far as I am concerned, so long as they like
+the girls and the girls like them." As chance would have it, a rich man
+fell in love with Theresa, and she, in her quiet, sanctimonious way,
+loved him, and that was settled.
+
+"Now, Lucelet, look out for yourself," Mr. Money would, say to his
+blushing daughter. "If you fall in love with some fine young fellow, I
+don't care if he hasn't sixpence. Only be sure, Mrs. Lucelet, that you
+are in love with him, and that he is in love with you, and not with
+your expectations."
+
+Lucelet generally smiled and saucily tossed her head, as one who should
+say that she considered herself a person quite qualified to make an
+impression without the help of any expectations.
+
+"I sometimes wish the right man would come along, Lucelet," Mr. Money
+said one day, throwing his arm round his pretty daughter's shoulder,
+and drawing her to him.
+
+"Papa! do you want to get rid of me so soon? I wonder at you. I know I
+don't want to get rid of you."
+
+"No, no, dear; it isn't that. Never mind. Where's your mamma? Just run
+and ask her"--and Mr. Money started something else, and put an end to
+the conversation.
+
+Mr. Money's ideas with regard to the future of his daughters did not
+fail to become known among his acquaintances in general, and would
+doubtless have drawn young men in goodly numbers around his home, even
+if Lucelet were far less pretty than she really was. But in any case
+Mrs. Money loved to be friendly to young people, and her less formal
+parties were largely attended, almost always, by the young. Miss
+Theresa's future husband did not come there often. He had known the
+family chiefly through Mr. Money and Parliament; and, coming once to
+dine with Mr. Money, he fell fairly in love with the dove-like eyes and
+saintly ways of Theresa. Theresa was therefore what her father would
+have called "out of the swim." She looked tolerantly upon her mother's
+little gatherings of poets _en herbe_, artists who were great to
+their friends, patriots hunting for constituencies, orators who had not
+yet caught the speaker's eye, and persons who had tried success in all
+these various paths and failed. She looked on them tolerantly, but her
+soul was not in them; it floated above them in a purer atmosphere. It
+was now, indeed, floating among the spires of the church which her
+lover was to build.
+
+One peculiarity seemed common to the guests whom Mrs. Money gathered
+around her. On any subject in which they felt the slightest interest
+they never felt the slightest doubt. The air they breathed was that
+of conviction; the language they talked was that of dogma. The men
+and women they knew were the greatest, most gifted, and most
+beautiful in the world; the men and women they did not know were
+nothing--were beneath contempt. Every one had what Lowell calls an
+"I-turn-the-crank-of-the-universe air." In that charmed circle every
+one was either a genius destined yet to move the world, or a genius
+too great for the dull, unworthy world to comprehend. It was a happy
+circle, where success or failure came to just the same.
+
+All in a flutter of delight was Mary Blanchet when preparing to enter
+that magical circle. She was going at last to meet great men and
+brilliant women. Perhaps, some day, she might even come to be known
+among them--to shine among them. She could never be done embracing
+Minola for having brought her to the gate of that heaven. She spent all
+the day dressing herself and adjusting her hair; but as the hours went
+on she became almost wretched from nervousness. When it was nearly time
+for them to go she was quivering with agitation. They went in a
+brougham hired specially for the occasion, because, although Mrs. Money
+offered to send her carriage, and Mary would have liked it much, Minola
+would hear of nothing of the kind. Mary was engaged all the way in the
+brougham in the proper adjustment of her gloves. At last they came to
+the place. Minola did the gentleman's part, and handed her agitated
+companion out. Mary Blanchet saw a strip of carpet on the pavement, an
+open door with servants in livery standing about, blazing lights,
+brightly dressed women going in, a glimpse of a room with a crowd of
+people, and then Minola and she found themselves somehow in a ladies'
+dressing-room.
+
+"Minola, darling, don't go in without me. I am quite nervous--I should
+never venture to go in alone."
+
+Minola did not intend to desert her palpitating little companion, who
+now indeed clung to her skirts and would not let her go had she been
+inclined. Miss Blanchet might have been a young beauty just about to
+make her _debut_ at a ball, so anxious was she about her appearance,
+about her dress, about her complexion; and at the same time she was so
+nervous that she could hardly compel her trembling fingers to give the
+finishing touches which she believed herself to need. Minola looked on
+wondering, puzzled, and half angry. The poetess was unmistakably a
+little, withered, yellowing old maid. She had not even the remains of
+good looks. No dressing or decoration possible to woman could make her
+anything but what she was, or deceive any one about her, or induce any
+one to feel interested in her. The handsome, stately girl who stood
+smiling near her was about to enter the drawing-room quite unconcerned
+as to her own appearance, and indeed not thinking about it; and the
+homely little old maid was quite distressed lest the company generally
+should not sufficiently admire her, or should find any fault with her
+dress.
+
+"Come along, you silly poetess," said Minola at last, breaking into a
+laugh, and fairly drawing her companion away from the looking-glass.
+"What do you think anybody will care about you or me? We'll steal in
+unnoticed, and we'll be all right."
+
+"It's the first time I ever was in London society, Minola, dear, and
+I'm quite nervous."
+
+"It's the first time I ever was in London society, and I'm not a bit
+nervous. No one knows us, dear--and no one cares. So come along."
+
+She fairly carried Mary Blanchet out of the dressing-room, along a
+corridor lined with seats, on which people who had been in the
+drawing-room and had come out, were chattering, and flirting, and
+lounging--and at last over the threshold of the drawing-room, and into
+the presence of the hostess. A few friendly words were got through, and
+Minola dragged her companion along through the crowd into the recess
+formed by a window where there were some unoccupied seats.
+
+"Now, Mary, that's done. The plunge is made, dear! We are in society!
+Let us sit down here--and look at it."
+
+"This," said Mary faintly--"this, at last, is society."
+
+"I suppose it is, dear. At least it will do very well for you and me.
+We should never know any difference. Imagine all these people marquises
+and countesses, and what more can we want to make us happy? They may be
+marquises and countesses for all I know."
+
+"I should think there must be some great poets, and authors, and
+artists, Minola. I am sure there must be. Oh, there is my brother!"
+
+In effect Mr. Herbert Blanchet had already fixed his dark eyes on
+Minola, and was making his way up to her retreat, rather to Minola's
+distress. He addressed Minola at once with that undefinable manner of
+easy and kindly superiority which he always adopted toward women, and
+which, it must be owned, impressed some women a great deal. To his
+sister he held out, while hardly looking at her, an encouraging hand of
+recognition.
+
+"Have you seen Delavar's picture?" he asked Minola.
+
+"No. Who is Delavar?"
+
+"Delavar? He _was_ the greatest painter of our time--at least of his
+school; for I don't admit that his school is the true one."
+
+"Oh, is his picture here?"
+
+"In the other room--yes. He painted it for Mr. Money--for Mrs. Money
+rather I should say--and it has just been sent home. Come with me and I
+will show it to you."
+
+"And Mary?"
+
+"We'll come back for Mary presently. The rooms are too full. We
+couldn't all get through. If you'll take my arm, Miss Grey!"
+
+Minola rose and took his arm, and they made their way slowly through
+the room. They moved even more slowly than was necessary, for Herbert
+Blanchet was particularly anxious to show off his companion and himself
+to the fullest advantage. The moment Minola entered the room he saw
+that she was the handsomest girl there, and that her dressing was
+simple, graceful, and picturesque. He knew that before a quarter of an
+hour had passed everybody would be asking who she was, and he resolved
+to secure for himself the effect of being the first to parade her
+through the rooms. He was a singularly handsome man--as has been said
+before--almost oppressively handsome; and a certain wasted look about
+his eyes and cheeks added a new and striking effect to his appearance.
+He was dark, she was fair; he was a tall man, she was a rather tall
+girl; and if his face had a worn look, hers had an expression of
+something like habitual melancholy, which was not perhaps in keeping
+with her natural temperament, and which lent by force of contrast an
+additional charm to her eyes when they suddenly lit up at the opening
+of any manner of animated conversation. No combination could be more
+effective, Mr. Blanchet felt, than that of his appearance and hers; and
+then she was a new figure. So he passed slowly on with her, and he knew
+that most people looked at them as they passed. He took good care, too,
+that they should be engaged in earnest talk.
+
+"I am delighted to have you all to myself for a moment, Miss Grey--to
+tell you that I know all about your goodness to Mary. That is why I
+would not bring her with us now. No--you must let me speak--I am not
+offering you my thanks. I know you would not care about that. But I
+must tell you that I know what you have done. I have no doubt that you
+are her sole support--poor Mary!"
+
+"I am her friend, Mr. Blanchet--only that."
+
+"Her only friend too. Her brother has not done much for her. To tell
+you the truth, Miss Grey, it isn't in his power now. You don't know the
+struggles of us, the unsuccessful men in literature, who yet have faith
+in ourselves. I am very poor. My utmost effort goes in keeping a decent
+dress-coat and buying a pair of gloves; I don't complain--I am not one
+bit deterred, and I only trouble you with this confession, because
+whatever I may have been in the past I had rather you knew me to be
+what I am--a wretched, penniless struggler--than believe that I left my
+sister to be a burden on your friendship."
+
+"Mary is the only friend I have," said Minola. "It is not wonderful if
+I wish to keep her with me. And you will make a great success some
+time."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"If one hadn't to grind at things for bare living, one might do
+something. I am not bad enough, or good enough; and that's the truth of
+it. I dare say if I were mean enough to hunt after some woman with
+money, I might have succeeded as well as others--but I couldn't do
+that."
+
+"No, I am sure you could not."
+
+"I am not mean enough for that. But I am not high-minded enough to
+accept any path, and be content with it and proud of it. Now I shan't
+bore you any more about myself. I wanted you to know this that you
+might not think too harshly of me. I know you felt some objection to me
+at first; you need not try politely to deny it."
+
+"Oh, no; I don't want to deny it. I prefer truth to politeness, a great
+deal. I did think you had neglected your sister; but really I was not
+surprised. I believe other men do the same thing."
+
+"But now you see that I have some excuse?"
+
+"I am glad to hear it, Mr. Blanchet."
+
+"Glad to hear that I am so wretchedly poor, Miss Grey?" he said with a
+smile, and bending his eyes on her. "Glad to hear that your friend's
+brother is such a failure?"
+
+"I would rather a thousand times hear that you were poor than that you
+were heartless. I don't call it a failure to be poor. I should call it
+a failure to be selfish and mean."
+
+She spoke in a low tone, but very earnestly and eagerly, and she
+suddenly thought she was speaking too eagerly, and stopped.
+
+"Well," he said, after a moment's pause, "here is the picture. We shall
+get to it presently, when these people move away."
+
+They had entered, through a curtained door, a small room which was
+nearly filled with people standing before a picture, and admiringly
+criticising it. Minola, with all her real or fancied delight in noting
+the jealousies and weaknesses of men and women, could hear no words of
+detraction or even dispraise.
+
+"Is the painter here?" she asked of her companion in a whisper.
+
+"No; I haven't seen him. Perhaps he'll come in later on."
+
+"Would you think it cheap cynicism if I were to ask why they all praise
+the picture--why they don't find any fault with it?"
+
+"Oh, because they are all of the school, and they must support their
+creed. Our art is a creed to us. I don't admit that I am of Delavar's
+school any more; in fact, I look upon him as a heretic. He is going in
+for mere popularity; success has spoilt him. But to most of these
+people here he is still a divinity. They haven't found him out yet."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+This little exclamation broke from Minola as some people at length
+struggled their way outward, and allowed her to see the whole of the
+picture.
+
+"What is it called?" she asked.
+
+"Love stronger than death."
+
+The scene was a graveyard, under a sickly yellow moon, rising in a
+livid and greenish sky. A little to the left of the spectator was seen
+a freshly-opened grave. In the foreground were two figures--one that of
+a dead girl, whom her lover had just haled from her coffin, wrapped as
+she was in her cerements of the tomb; the other that of the lover. He
+had propped the body against the broken hillock of the grave, and he
+was chanting a love-song to it which he accompanied on his lute. His
+face suggested the last stage of a galloping consumption, further
+enlivened by the fearsome light of insanity in his eyes. Some dreary
+bats flopped and lollopped through the air, and a few sympathetic toads
+came out to listen to the lay of the lover. The cypresses appeared as
+if they swayed and moaned to the music; and the rank weeds and grasses
+were mournfully tremulous around the sandalled feet of the forlorn
+musician.
+
+Minola at first could not keep from shuddering. Then there followed a
+shocking inclination to laugh.
+
+"What do you think of it?" Blanchet asked.
+
+"Oh, I don't like it at all."
+
+"No? It is trivial. Mere prettiness; just a striving after drawing-room
+popularity. No depth of feeling; no care for the realistic power of the
+scene. Pretty, pleasing--nothing more. Surface only; no depth."
+
+"But it is hideous," Minola said.
+
+"Hideous? Oh, no! Decay is loveliness; decay is the soul of really high
+art when you come to understand it. But there is no real decay there.
+That girl's face is pretty waxwork. There's no death there," and he
+turned half away in contempt. "That is what comes of being popular and
+a success. No; Delavar is done. I told him so."
+
+"He is quite new to me," said Minola. "I never heard of him before."
+
+"He's getting old now," Blanchet said. "He must be quite thirty. Let me
+see--oh, yes; fully that. He had better join the pre-Raphaelites now;
+or send to the Royal Academy; or hire a gallery and exhibit his
+pictures at a shilling a head. I fancy they would be quite a success."
+
+Some of this conversation took place as they were making their way
+through the crowd with the intention of entering the drawing-room
+again. Minola was greatly amused, and in a manner interested. The whole
+thing was entirely new to her. As they passed into the corridor there
+were one or two vacant seats.
+
+"Will you rest for a moment?" Blanchet said, motioning toward a seat.
+
+"Hadn't we better go back for Mary?"
+
+"We'll go back presently. She is very happy; she loves above all things
+observing a crowd."
+
+Minola would have liked very much to observe the crowd herself and to
+have people pointed out to her. Blanchet, however, though he saluted
+several persons here and there, did not seem particularly interested in
+any of them. Minola sat down for a while to please him, and to show
+that she had no thought of giving herself airs merely because she was
+enabled to be kind to his sister.
+
+Blanchet threw himself sidelong across his chair and leaned toward
+Minola's seat. He knew that people were looking at him and wondering
+who his companion was, and he felt very happy.
+
+"I wish I might read some of my poems to you, Miss Grey," he said. "I
+should like to have your opinion, because I know it would be sincere."
+
+"I should be delighted to hear them, but I don't think I should venture
+to give an opinion; my opinion would not be worth anything."
+
+"When may I come and read one or two to you and Mary? To-morrow
+afternoon?"
+
+"Oh, yes; we are staying here tonight, but we shall be at home in the
+afternoon. Are these published poems? Pray, excuse me--I quite forgot;
+you don't publish. You don't care for fame--the fame that sets other
+people wild."
+
+He smiled, and slightly shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"We don't care for the plaudits of the stupid crowd," he said; "that is
+quite true. We don't care for popularity, and to have our books lying
+on drawing-room tables, and kept by the booksellers bound in morocco
+ready to hand, to be given away as gift books to young ladies. But we
+should like the admiration of a chosen few. The truth is, that I don't
+publish my poems because I haven't the money. They would be a dead
+loss, of course, to any one who printed them; I am proud to say that. I
+would not have them printed at all if they couldn't be artistically and
+fitly brought out; and I haven't the money, and there's an end. But if
+I might read my poems to you, that would be something."
+
+Minola began to be full of pity for the poor poet, between whom and
+possible fame there stood so hard and prosaic a barrier. She was
+touched by the proud humility of his confession of ambition and
+poverty. Three sudden questions flashed through her mind. "I wonder how
+much it would cost? and have I money enough? and would it be possible
+to get him to take it?"
+
+Her color was positively heightening, and her breath becoming checked
+by the boldness of these thoughts, when suddenly there was a rushing
+and rustling of silken skirts, and Lucy Money, disengaging herself from
+a man's arm, swooped upon her.
+
+"You darlingest, dear Nola, where have you been all the night? I have
+been hunting for you everywhere! Oh--Mr. Blanchet! I haven't seen you
+before either. Have you two been wandering about together all the
+evening?"
+
+Looking up, Minola saw that it was Mr. Victor Heron who had been with
+Lucy Money, and that he was now waiting with a smile of genial
+friendliness to be recognized by Miss Grey. It must be owned that
+Minola felt a little embarrassed, and would rather--though she could
+not possibly tell why--not have been found deep in confidential talk
+with Herbert Blanchet.
+
+She gave Mr. Heron her hand, and told him--which was now the
+truth--that she was glad to see him.
+
+"Hadn't we better go and find Mary?" Blanchet said, rising and glancing
+slightly at Heron. "She will be expecting us."
+
+"No, please don't take Miss Grey away just yet," Victor said,
+addressing himself straightway, and with eyes of unutterable cordiality
+and good-fellowship, to the poet. "I haven't spoken a word to her yet;
+and I have to go away soon."
+
+"I'll go with you to your sister, Mr. Blanchet," said Lucy, taking his
+arm forthwith. "I haven't seen her all the evening, and I want to talk
+to her very much."
+
+So Lucy swept away on Mr. Blanchet's arm, looking very fair, and
+_petite_, and pretty, as she held a bundle of her draperies in one
+hand, and glanced back, smiling and nodding, out of sheer good-nature,
+at Minola.
+
+Victor Heron sat down by Minola, and at once plunged into earnest talk.
+
+
+
+
+TRIED AND TRUE.
+
+
+    Year after year we'll gather here,
+    And pass the night in merry cheer.
+    Through storm and war, o'er sea and land,
+    We'll come each year to Neckar's strand:
+    In war and storm, on land and sea,
+    To this our pledge we'll faithful be,
+    _And each to all be true_.
+
+    So sang three students one March night--
+      Without the storm wind blew,
+    Within were wine and warmth and light
+      And three hearts brave and true.
+
+      "To-morrow morn we all go hence,"
+      Said Wilhelm, speaking low.
+      "For Emil fights for Fatherland,
+      Franz o'er the sea doth go,
+
+      "And I in Berlin, with my books,
+      Will lead a scholar's life--
+    In toil, and war, and foreign land,
+      We thus begin the strife."
+
+    Three glasses then with Rhineland wine
+      Unto the brim were filled,
+    And to the sacred parting pledge
+      Each heart responsive thrilled.
+
+    Three years went by, and so the friends
+      Unto their faith were true,
+    And spent the night in merry song
+      And lived the past year through.
+
+    When came the fourth reunion night
+      Without the March wind blew,
+    Within were wine, and warmth, and light,
+      And one heart brave and true.
+
+    For Emil died for Fatherland,
+      And Franz went down at sea--
+    In war and storm, in life and death,
+      They said they'd faithful be:
+
+    And so Wilhem three glasses filled.
+      Of one he kissed the edge;
+    Two shadow hands the others raised--
+      The friends had kept their pledge!
+
+SYLVESTER BAXTER.
+
+
+
+
+ABOUT CIGARETTES.
+
+
+Ten or fifteen years ago we rarely saw cigarettes in this country,
+their use being confined to the few natives who had acquired the habit
+during a residence abroad, and to foreigners, French, Italian, and
+Cuban settlers, who followed the practices of their youth. So slight
+was the general demand that, excepting in the large cities, cigarettes
+were rarely found for sale. To-day there are probably few small towns
+in the thickly settled portions of the country where cigarettes are not
+readily obtained; while in the large cities the stores vie with each
+other in giving us varied assortments of leading brands. Indeed, recent
+statistics state that nearly thirty per cent. of the entire smoking
+tobacco consumed in the United States is in this form. Cigarettes are
+now imported from all portions of Europe, but principally from France.
+Several factories have of late years been started in our own country,
+but the cigarette _par excellence_ is made in Havana. Nowhere else do
+we find capital so largely invested, labor so diversified, or such
+attention to details. There certainly you can take your
+choice--Honoradez, Havana, Astrea, Cherito, Henriquez, and dozens of
+others of lesser note.
+
+The tobacco used in the making of the Havana cigarettes is bought from
+the cigar factors, but only from those who have the most assured
+reputation. It consists of the leaves left from the making of cigars.
+The necessity of securing the best grades of tobacco cannot be
+overestimated. The judgment of the cigarette smoker is formed solely
+from the sense of taste. He is totally unaffected by sight, which in
+the cigar enables a clever workman to so roll bad tobacco that we are
+predisposed in favor of an inferior article. While absolute inferiority
+is intolerable in either, mediocrity, in Cuba at all events, is much
+more readily tolerated in the cigar than in the cigarette.
+
+The tobacco for the cigarette is not, as is generally supposed with us,
+raised on the plantations of the various leading cigar factors.
+"Bartegas," "Cobania," "Upman," or whatever be the name of our favorite
+brand, does not depend for its success upon any one plantation. The
+practice on the part of the leading houses is to send their purchasing
+agents into the tobacco district as soon as the crop begins to ripen.
+Sales are then and there arranged, immense sums sometimes being offered
+in advance, by way of retainer, for a specially likely plantation. The
+Vuelto Abago district is the favorite one, the planters there holding a
+position not unlike that occupied by the proprietors of the "Sea
+Island" plantations in days when "cotton was king." The ability to
+control the market so as to bring to their own manufactories the
+choicest tobacco is the main secret of the success of the larger
+houses, not, as is frequently supposed, any particular superiority in
+the workmen.
+
+The principal cigarette factory is, as is well known, the factory of M.
+Susini, "La Honoradez," "Honoradez" signifying in Spanish, honesty, the
+motto of the house. It consists of a series of irregular buildings,
+covering an area in space about equal to that occupied by the usual
+Broadway block. On the upper floor of the principal building we find a
+lot of tobacco, which has just arrived, and is being prepared for
+inspection; the first requisite being to remove from it any leaves that
+are either dead or in any way injured. The tobacco lays loosely
+scattered over an immense wooden tray, which is kept continually
+moving, by means of machinery, from one end of a table to the other.
+Around this table are seated some twelve or fourteen Cuban workmen, all
+good judges of tobacco. Each one throws aside such leaves as he deems
+unfit for use, while the slow but yet continual motion given to the
+tray brings each imperfection successively before the eyes of all. The
+next step is to free the tobacco from any particles of sand or earth
+that may adhere to it. This is done by moving the tray by machinery,
+until it is over a large bin, into which the tobacco is allowed to
+fall, being subjected in its passage to a powerful current of air
+induced by means of an immense fan, likewise worked by machinery. One
+step more, and a very simple one--that of drying--and the tobacco is
+ready for a change of form. The tobacco is dried by simply exposing it
+on the roof, for a few hours, to the heat of the sun. For cigarettes it
+can scarcely be too dry, or for cigars too damp. A Cuban would not
+think of smoking other than a damp cigar. In the factories one sees the
+workmen smoking cigars they have just rolled, and no native could
+understand why one should smoke dry cigars in which so much of the
+natural flavor has been lost.
+
+Thus far the process has been entirely one of cleansing or of freeing
+from impurities. The next step is that of cutting the leaves into fine
+particles in order to adapt the tobacco for cigarettes. The scattered
+leaves are first collected and subjected to powerful hydraulic
+pressure, from which they come out looking for all the world like a
+pile of snuff-colored brick. The moulded tobacco next goes to the
+cutting machine, falling from thence into a sieve, the meshes of which
+pass only such pieces as have been reduced to the proper size. The
+remainder is passed into a hopper, and thence goes for a second
+cutting. One step more, and the tobacco will be issued to the
+"rollers." Some half a dozen Chinese enter the room, each carrying with
+him a small vessel containing an aromatic liquid, with which the loose
+tobacco is carefully sprinkled. The preparation of this liquid is not
+known. It is doubtless the desire to keep it secret that leads to the
+preference of Chinese over native labor.
+
+Before following the tobacco furher, let us look at the remaining
+portion of the cigarette, the wrapper. The original envelope for the
+tobacco was doubtless composed of leaves, the followers of Columbus
+carrying back to Spain accounts of the strange custom existing among
+the natives of San Salvador, the smoking of tobacco wrapped in the
+leaves of the palm, which was doubtless the primitive cigarette. In
+France to this day new straws are much used, but generally paper has
+become the popular envelope. This paper must be specially manufactured.
+Most of it comes from Barcelona, where the making of cigarette paper
+constitutes an important industry. All of that used at the "Honoradez"
+factory, after inspection, is carefully stamped with the name "Susini."
+By unrolling any of this brand of cigarettes this mark can be readily
+seen, and serves as the readiest means of detecting counterfeits. A
+portion of the paper is sprinkled with various preparations to give to
+it the flavor of tea, licorice, or such other taste as may suit certain
+consumers. This explains the variation in the color of the wrapper,
+which is sometimes straw-color, sometimes brown, but more usually
+white, the latter color distinguishing the paper which has not been
+artificially flavored. In the cutting machine the paper is rapidly
+converted into the proper size for envelopes, while another machine
+close at hand is turning out little bits of pasteboard for such of the
+cigarettes as are to be made with a mouthpiece.
+
+Both tobacco and paper are now ready to be given out to the "rollers."
+Let us go down and watch them as they come pouring in. Both sexes and
+all ages have representations here. Each one awaits his turn, and then
+receives, after it has been carefully weighed, his or her allowance of
+tobacco, some five thousand papers, and a large wooden hoop. The hoop
+serves as a rude but very accurate gauge, its circumference being of
+such a size as to properly encompass five thousand cigarettes of such
+size as will contain the entire amount of tobacco issued. A slight
+excess of both tobacco and paper, say sufficient to make forty or fifty
+cigarettes, is usually given, intended for the personal consumption of
+the employee. When their work is completed and returned to the factory,
+they receive in exchange therefor a small copper check payable on
+demand. So common are these checks in Havana that a few years
+since--possibly it may be so still--they were constantly given to one
+at the various stores, and were commonly received as current coin.
+
+Physically the cigar and cigarette makers are a sorry lot. The
+continual odor of tobacco, their constant labor, with bodies bent over
+tables, calling into play no muscle, no exertion, indeed, whatever,
+excepting the exercise of their fingers--this cannot fail to have its
+effect. The cigarette makers are injured, too, by the inhalation of an
+almost invisible dust arising from the small particles of tobacco. The
+compensation received appears very small. Four or five cigarettes a
+minute is accounted good work, and even at this rate two days' steady
+labor is required to fill a hoop, for which they receive less than two
+dollars.
+
+The larger number of cigarettes manufactured at Havana are made by
+machinery which is exceedingly ingenious, and has proved thoroughly
+successful. The cigarettes made by machinery are not only more tightly
+wrapped, but also manufactured at a much reduced cost. Each machine is
+capable of making thirty cigarettes per minute, 1,800 per hour, or
+43,200 per day, thus replacing the labor of fourteen men, presuming
+them to be capable of working ten hours per day. For such persons as
+prefer making their own cigarettes, pressed packages of tobacco, with
+little paper books containing the envelopes, are sold. The tobacco is
+so neatly put up that were it not for the accompanying book, one would
+almost fancy it to be a package of the most delicate French chocolate.
+As illustration of the consumption of cigarettes it may be of interest
+to state that three million cigarettes are made in the Honoradez
+factory each year, while it is estimated that in their manufacture over
+six million dollars is annually expended in the city of Havana alone.
+The Cuban, indeed, is much more of a cigarette than a cigar smoker; the
+cigarette is his constant companion. Even after dinner the cigarette
+seems to be preferred. I remember once, at a very charming dinner
+party, being quite astonished--for it was shortly after my arrival in
+Havana--to find myself and the host the only cigar smokers. The rest of
+our number, some six or seven, all Cubans, took to their accustomed
+cigarette with a unanimity which has always led me to believe that my
+good host himself felt called upon by his sense of politeness to do
+violence to his own preference.
+
+In connection with the manufacture of cigarettes, nothing strikes one
+with more astonishment than the many industries which form accessories
+to a factory. The printing and lithographic work, a large quantity of
+which is required for the paper bundles or tasteful pasteboard boxes in
+which the various packages are put up, is all done by the employees,
+and even a photograph gallery is at hand for such persons as may desire
+their own likeness to accompany each package. So cleverly is all this
+work executed, that until very recently the bank notes and lottery
+tickets, both of which are largely circulated, were here printed.
+Rather odd to our American ideas, it must be confessed, is the
+spectacle of bank notes and lottery tickets being printed side by
+side--that too in a cigarette factory.
+
+Boxes of tin, of wood, of all shapes and sizes, as well as kegs for
+exportation to distant points, are made within these same walls, where
+moulders, machinists, blacksmiths, tinmen, printers, lithographers,
+engravers, painters, and carpenters, are all furnished with work. Two
+hundred out of the twenty-five hundred employees are Chinese, and for
+them is provided a separate dormitory, kitchen, and even bathrooms.
+
+
+
+
+THE HARD TIMES.
+
+WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH OUR CHEAP LABOR?
+
+
+    "WANTED.--
+
+    _Work for a thousand starving Immigrants!_"
+
+Such is our advertisement. _Cheap labor!_ that is the boon our
+"society" seeks. We wish to "develop our resources"; and as rapidly as
+possible, for in that lies all blessedness--real "sweetness and light."
+
+Has not this delightful gospel been preached to us from pulpit and
+forum now full fifty good years, and does any one doubt its divine
+origin? Yes; I fear there is now and then to be found one of those
+antiquated infidels who scorns our "cheap cotton" and holds fast to
+manhood; who sniffs at our great new factory and says, "Give me a
+_man_!"
+
+It is some two years ago that one of these benighted men told me--I
+pity him--he told me he had been into our beautiful Berkshire county to
+enjoy the delicious air and the delightful mountains. He went to North
+Adams, which lies so calm and basks so peacefully in the embraces of
+its sheltering hills. He said that when the noonday bell clanged out, a
+living torrent of men and women, boys and girls, poured forth from one
+of the gorgeous temples which have been there raised for the worship of
+the new god. In that temple were created cheap shoes. He said these men
+and women, boys and girls, were haggard, old, squalid, dirty; they
+showed traces--so it seemed to his jaundiced eyes--of drink,
+hopelessness, lechery, and vileness. He asked who they were. He was
+told--and they said it with glee--
+
+"_That is our cheap labor!_"
+
+And where does it come from--from the homes of New England? Oh, no!
+From Ireland, from Germany, from Portugal, from China, from
+Canadian-Acadie, that pastoral spot of which poets sing!
+
+"Vileness, filth, baseness!" he said. "My God, has Berkshire come to
+this!"
+
+It was a very foolish thing to say, and his calling upon his antiquated
+God was not only foolish, but useless. His God is not the God now.
+
+He took a ride through the winding roads and wooded hills of that
+delightful land. His driver proposed to take him round by the
+"Limestone brook" to show him the new factory.
+
+"And what do they make there?"
+
+"Why, didn't you know? They are grinding up the white limestone, and
+they send away tons and tons on't every day."
+
+"And what is it used for?"
+
+"Used for? It's used for mixin'. They make three grades: the sody
+grade, and the flour grade, and the sugar grade."
+
+"The deuce they do!"--that was a foolish exclamation. "Do you mean that
+they use this to mix with flour and sugar?"
+
+The man laughed pityingly. "Of course they do. It makes 'em healthier.
+Flour and sugar is healthier and goes further with a little of this
+'ere limestone dust mixed in--you see. It's cheaper too. This stuff is
+sold for fifty cents a hundred, and flour, you know, costs six dollars
+a hundred. Don't you see?"
+
+The benighted infidel did see, and he indulged in some internal
+ejaculations; but he fled from the simple and sincere hills of
+Berkshire, and sought a solace in the coarse vulgarity and vice of
+Boston.
+
+But I am neglecting to say what our _society_ proposes to do; and when
+I have told you _of course_ we shall expect you to subscribe.
+
+"The Cheap Labor Society" proposes to introduce from Africa and China,
+in batches of one thousand each, as rapidly as possible, able-bodied
+men who will work cheap.
+
+"To _develop the resources_" of the country is the end and aim of
+all honorable men. In other words, we want cheap men so that we may
+make cheap shoes, cheap hats, cheap mutton, and--cheap women.
+
+We who are now here--_we_ do not wish to work at all. Work is a
+_curse_. The Bible has said so, and every noble-minded man has said so,
+and the clergy has said so, and we know it is and must be so. But yet
+there are people existing in the depths of Africa and China who it is
+believed will work rather than starve; and these we propose to bring as
+rapidly as our means will permit.
+
+We head our appeal, as you see, "Work wanted for a thousand starving
+men," because we know that we can get more work out of men who are just
+on the edge of starvation than from any other, and in that way we shall
+"develop our resources" most effectively and rapidly.
+
+It is quite true that we already produce more cotton cloth and more
+boots and shoes than we can possibly sell; but we know--for have we not
+political economy to teach us?--that when we get them cheap enough, say
+to one-half their present starvation prices--every man, and every
+woman, and every child will wear two shirts, and two hats, and two
+pairs of shoes; and thus we shall have in a superior way that
+blessedness of which poets write--the making "two blades of grass grow
+where one grew before." Now, I ask any liberal-minded man if "two pairs
+of shoes in place of one" is not higher and nobler than two blades of
+grass? That goes without talking.
+
+If work be indeed the curse of curses, why, let the sons of Ham
+(Africa) and the sons of Shem (Asia) do it; for it is well known they
+are accursed, and have been since the days of "good old Noah"; besides
+which, having colored skins, we know just how to mark the helots; can
+import them as fast as needed; can put all labor upon them, and can
+thus keep our own Japhetic skins and hands clean and white.
+
+Deferring to a not wholly extinct public opinion, which is now and then
+announced by some orator to some small schoolboys, in words like these,
+_Labore est honore_, and in the vernacular, "_Labor is honorable_," I
+am compelled to deny it clearly and distinctly. Almost all know it, but
+it may be best to say to those who do not:
+
+If labor is honorable, why does every man refuse to hoe in his garden,
+to make his fire, to raise his food? Why does every woman refuse to
+cook her food, to make her clothes, to take care of her children? Why
+do every father and every mother take special pains to so bring up and
+educate their children that they can do no sort of hand work? Why is it
+that high schools, and academies, and colleges are held as the most
+majestic of blessings, except that they are intended to wholly unfit
+boys and girls for the _necessary work of life_?
+
+Why is it that those who do no work are always called "upper classes,"
+and those who do much work are called "the masses," unless it is so?
+Being so, let us agree to import "the masses" as rapidly as we can.
+
+Permit me to here lay down another corner-stone: As cheapness is a
+boon, of course cheap labor is a boon; if labor, even at a dollar a
+day, is a blessing, it follows that labor at half a dollar a day is a
+greater blessing; and if we can only get it to a quarter of a dollar a
+day, will not mankind be four times as happy as when it is at a dollar
+a day? And then, oh blessed time! When we get it down to one cent a day
+shall we not be standing just in the portals of Paradise?
+
+Let all men take heart, for we approach that time. I learned last
+summer, in the lovely State of Connecticut, that the Messrs. Sprague
+were hiring able-bodied men to work eleven hours a day, sometimes in
+water and mud, at rebuilding their great Baltic dam, for eighty-three
+cents a day, and that thousands more were ready to rush in. I may
+recall to mind the dark ages, when ignorance prevailed, and men boasted
+of a land (if there was one) where
+
+    All the men were brave and all the women virtuous.
+
+_All_ of that kind! Then there could have been no cheap labor, and the
+boon which we now know to be the greatest vouchsafed to man could not
+be enjoyed. There have been times when strong, honest men and strong,
+honest (and permit me to say clean) women were thought to be the
+fruition of a perfect and Christian civilization--when cheap cotton was
+not thought to be the "one thing needful."
+
+The good King Henri of Navarre is said to have hoped for the day when
+in France the poorest peasant might have a fowl in his pot.
+
+Besotted king! he did not know that in the good time coming, when we
+shall bring in our one to ten thousand cheap Chinese per week, the
+white man will be happy indeed who can get a pound of rice or potatoes
+in his pot. A fowl in his pot! Foolish king!
+
+"Progress"--what a lovely word!--progress has shown all mankind what a
+glorious thing cheap labor is and must be. How great and happy are the
+people who preach and practise it! "Progress"--a beautiful word
+certainly, if we do really understand it. But I remember me of a man--a
+brewer--who rather late in life had fallen in love with the word
+"docile." He thought it a beautiful word. One day his partner returned,
+having failed to collect a doubtful debt. My friend essayed it, but
+returned red in the face.
+
+"Well," said his partner, "have you got it?"
+
+"Got it! The fellow won't do a thing. He's as _docile_ as hell!"
+
+_Progress!_ Its meaning once was,
+
+"Intellectual or moral advancement; improvement in knowledge or in
+virtue."
+
+Now it means _cheap cotton and cheap men and women_. To the enlightened
+and prosperous English nation belongs the credit of this radical
+discovery.
+
+To England too belongs the invention or creation of our new god. She--I
+am happy to say it--she invented and created the god we now worship. We
+call him
+
+    TRADE!
+
+The first, last, and only commandment of our new god is,
+
+"_Buy cheap and sell dear._"
+
+Whatever nation or man worships this god, and obeys this first and
+great commandment, is sure of blessedness; for that man or that nation
+will get more money than other men and other nations, as England has;
+and will be happy, _as she is_!
+
+Swiftly and surely the belief and worship of the new god and the new
+gospel is spreading into all lands. Men _fancy_ they still worship "the
+Trinity," "Confucius," "Zoroaster," "Mohammed," "Mumbo-jumbo." It is
+wholly a fancy. Men still _say_, "I believe in God the Father," etc.
+They still say, "Do to others as you would have them do to you," is the
+first and great commandment. But what they _do_ do, and wish to do, and
+mean to do, is,
+
+"To buy cheap and sell dear."
+
+We need no missionaries to drive this gospel into heathen minds. It has
+the charming vitalizing power of going itself. The Chinese have
+received it, and have immediately taken the whole tea business out of
+the hands of Messrs. Russell & Co. and Jardine, Matheson & Co.; have
+quite put an extinguisher upon _their_ money-making. Indeed, do we not
+know that _almost_ every European, Chinese, and Indian merchant has
+failed, and the heathen Chinee sits in their seats.
+
+How England came to invent this new gospel is known to many, though not
+to all. Let me briefly sketch the amazing creation:
+
+A century ago the strength and power of England was based upon her
+yeomanry. They possessed much land; and upon the lovely rolling fields
+of that lovely country their stone farm-houses and their small farms
+were the homes and habitations of millions. From this strong and hardy
+yeomanry were drawn the bowmen and the pike-men who made the armies of
+the Edwards and the Henrys invincible; from them came the "jolly tars"
+who seized victory for Drake and Nelson.
+
+Then Liverpool was not, and Manchester was not, and _creation_ did
+not pay tribute to England's god.
+
+But a century ago Watt, the keen, canny Scotsman, discovered that
+_steam_ was a giant, and could he but capture him and harness him into
+his machine, what work might he not do? He did capture him, and he did
+harness him to his machine; and now he works on, on, up, down, here,
+there, not ceasing by night and day, by summer and winter; he tires
+not, he rests not; for ever and for ever he toils on. He saws, he
+grinds, he spins, he weaves, he ploughs, he thrashes, he drags, he
+lifts. Such a giant he is!
+
+_One_ man with the steam machine now does the work which once was done
+by _ten_, _twenty_, _fifty_! He files, he cuts, he sews, he polishes,
+he brews, he bakes, he washes, he irons. Is all this nothing?
+
+It is vast--it is a _revolution_! And no man yet sees the end.
+
+Trade now was exaggerated beyond all former measure, and henceforth was
+to be the god of England and of the world. "Let us produce, let us buy
+cheap and sell dear, and so we shall be blessed." England had coal deep
+down in her bowels. Let her send her sons by thousands into the slime
+and darkness to dig it out. Let her make steam, and cheap cotton, and
+infinite iron, and let her make all mankind buy of her. "Let us," she
+cried, "demand free trade! for _we_ can make cheap and sell dear, and
+none can rival us."
+
+She did demand free trade. She demanded it in India by seizing a
+kingdom. She demanded it in China at the cannon's mouth. She got it.
+
+She said to all peoples, "You may make corn, and cotton, and wool for
+us, and we will make everything you want cheaper than you can make it
+for yourselves, and happy you will be. We will make all the ships, will
+bring your corn, and cotton, and wool to us, and we will carry all our
+lovely manufactures to you, to the uttermost ends of the earth--at
+_your_ cost. We will take toll of you both ways; we will make fair
+profit on _your_ cotton, and on _our_ manufactures, and that will be
+just and even, and we shall both be happy."
+
+And so it has gone on for a hundred years, and gold has poured into
+England's stomach, a flowing stream, until her eyes stick out with
+fatness; she has even sought Turkish bonds for investment, and has lent
+much money to the good Khedive of Egypt--_which she can't get back_!
+
+Let us look at England for a moment, as she is to-day. She has built
+magnificent temples dedicated to her great god all over England: at
+Birmingham and Manchester, at Glasgow and Paisley; at Birkenhead and
+Liverpool, at Preston and Salford, at Leeds and Nottingham--and where
+not? England has become a great workshop in which the god of trade is
+ministered to.
+
+Her land? Yes, it is beautiful, but her _yeoman have disappeared_--all
+have been drawn into the maw of the manufacturing monster. Forty
+millions of people now has England, and only some seven per cent. of
+them raise the food they eat. And how do the rest get their food? It is
+quite simple: by selling to other nations the things they make, and
+bringing back the food which other nations make.
+
+It has been the boast of England that she had a larger population to
+the square mile--389 human bodies--than any other land except one, and
+more great cities than any other land but the "far Cathay"--if even she
+be an exception.
+
+That "inspired idiot" Goldsmith once sang in his pretty, sentimental
+way,
+
+    Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey,
+    Where wealth accumulates and men decay:
+    Princes and lords may flourish or may fade;
+    A breath can make them as a breath has made:
+    But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
+    When once destroyed, can never be supplied.
+
+"Bold peasantry," "stalwart yeomen," "hard-handed farmers"--what
+preposterous phrases these seem now when we have the immense advantages
+of "cheap labor"!
+
+And we here in America--we too? But of us, anon, anon.
+
+Great factories, great halls, great shops, abound--abound and magnify
+that English land, so that a glamour has come over mankind, and
+moon-faced idiots in all lands have cried, "Behold the glory of
+England. Let us do likewise." Those great cities have glorified
+themselves and have glorified England, and who has cared to look deeper
+down into the mire? Have we seen these men and women, childhood and
+age, reeking in squalor and vile with filth in the purlieus of every
+temple? Have we looked into the slums of Liverpool and Glasgow, of
+Edinburgh and Newcastle, to see men and women, childhood and age, in
+all their divinity--or their damnation? Is all lovely--is it indeed? Is
+this "progress"? Is it civilization? Is it Christianity? Of course it
+is, all three.
+
+I have mentioned the word _revolution_--social revolution. What is it?
+Is it at hand? It is quite clear that this amazing power of steam and
+machinery is doing _something_. It is quite clear that every machine
+does the work of twenty men, and nineteen of these have got to seek
+other means of support--they and their wives and their little ones.
+
+It is well known that every man out of work means four mouths bare of
+food. Who fills them? The rates (taxes) of course, and in London, the
+last winter I was there, some six years ago, 80,000 paupers and beggars
+were receiving public aid. "The laws of trade" is to make things right.
+I think that is the name of the modern redeemer of men. If work is not
+there and food is not there, man will flow at his own sweet will, like
+water seeking its level, until he finds his food and his work
+somewhere. But if man's "sweet will" decides not to flow, but to lie
+down and make his bed in your _pockets_, and feed on the contents in
+the shape of taxes--what is to come then? Why, he must be depleted, or
+he will deplete _you_. How to deplete him is a most interesting
+question? He does not deplete himself, for it is manifest to men that
+paupers in England and America get children as fast as they can; and
+the clergy applaud and say, "Be fruitful and multiply." There is no
+continence among them--none anywhere except in wicked France.
+
+In the "good time coming" in England, the pauper will lie down with the
+prince, and there will be peace while the pauper devours the prince; or
+there will be pestilence, which is a sure depleter; or the idle army
+may be used to deplete the mob. Who can say?
+
+"But there is no danger! Of course not. Why croak?"
+
+What has been will be, under the benign influence of cheap labor and
+free trade--perhaps! Let me go on with my pleasant tale--do not
+interrupt--I have the word--by and by you.
+
+At this moment, to-day, this year of our Lord 1877, the merchant
+princes of London, the manufacturing barons of Manchester are at their
+wits' ends; for people refuse to buy the products of their mills.
+Germany will not have them, and France will not, and America chooses to
+make her own; and even India, ungrateful that she is, has gone to
+spinning her own cotton. Mills are being closed in England, furnaces
+are blown out, wages are reduced, and workmen are threatening to
+_strike_, or have struck, and are settling down for a comfortable
+winter upon the _rates_. All right! England has "developed her
+resources," and trade is free. Let her sing hosannahs, and cry, "Glory
+be to our god," for no such beautiful "progress" was ever seen on earth
+before.
+
+What is to happen to the 300,000 or half million land-owners of
+England, if outside pig-headed peoples wilfully and maliciously refuse
+to buy the mill products of England and so to feed the 37,200,000
+people of England who have no land upon which to raise their own food?
+What is to happen if some fine day the 37,200,000 take it into their
+foolish heads to say:
+
+"We do not like to starve. We are many, you are few. We will take the
+land and raise our own food, and you can emigrate if you like, or you
+can stand out in the cold as we have done. We don't like it."
+
+It is not quite easy to shoot those people; and if they choose to stay
+in England, it is not quite easy to _make_ them emigrate--not even if
+the "laws of trade" tell them they really ought to go.
+
+And besides, it is so easy for 100,000 paupers to emigrate--to take
+their wives and their children, their flocks and their herds, their
+camels and their asses, their beds and their tents, and go forth to
+seek the promised land--the land flowing with milk and honey. It is so
+simple, so pleasant, that one is lost in amazement that they do not
+go--that they wickedly persist in staying where they are paupers, and
+refuse to obey the law of "supply and demand."
+
+Such conduct is quite unworthy of enlightened Britons who "never will
+be slaves."
+
+It is too bad--it really is--and political economy ought to be preached
+at them severely. Why is it too that outside barbarians refuse to buy
+the divine productions of England? Some think we may do well to take a
+look at this part of the problem before _we_ go on with our plans for
+introducing more cheap labor into our own happy land.
+
+A century ago, as has been said, England discovered the wonderful way
+of applying the _steam giant_ to the creation of manufactured goods,
+and for three-quarters of the century she has had a practical monopoly;
+has turned the golden streams of the whole world to enrich herself; has
+preached free trade; has said, "Buy cheap and sell dear," and has set
+her god on a high throne. But slowly and haltingly other and stupider
+nations have caught the tricks of the new Cultus; have caught little
+steam giants, and have set them to work to turn their mills and grind
+their grists. Germany and the United States are two of these dull
+nations who have done a stroke of work in this way. France has really
+been too stupid to do much at it--has indeed gone back to a tariff
+after having tasted of the new gospel, and now obstinately refuses to
+live by it--_will_ pay her debts, and will _not_ enjoy unlimited
+pauperism.
+
+Germany has, however, done well. She now makes woollens, cottons,
+linens, irons, steels, penknives, and Bibles quite as cheap as England,
+and, as some say (one of her own Centennial Commission), "cheaper and
+nastier." Now _her_ traders are ubiquitous; they go, with the wandering
+Jew, the fascinating Englishman, the penetrating Yankee, into all
+heathen lands, carrying everywhere the new gospel of trade, and
+introducing to youthful minds the civilizing influences of lager beer
+and free lunches. Aided by the persuasive tones of the patient and
+soothing Yankee, they are doing wonders in teaching the value of time,
+by founding establishments for "stand-up drinks" in every lazy and
+luxurious land, by giving prizes to all who _smoke while they work_,
+thus making labor cheerful if not respectable. So patient and
+indefatigable has Germany been, that at Manchester in England, which
+may perhaps be termed the Delos of the new faith, I was told some five
+years ago that she had just taken the contract, had bought from Germany
+the iron beams and rafters for a new city building, and had put them up
+under the very noses of the worshippers who burn their sacred fires at
+Birmingham and Wolverhampton. And so, in the whirligig of time, Trade
+brings his pleasant revenges.
+
+I was told also--the newspapers said it, and it must be true--that Mr.
+Mundella, an enterprising M.P., and a devout worshipper of the new
+god, who is a vast producer at Nottingham of stockings and hosiery of
+every sort--had found it best--well, absolutely necessary--in order to
+compete with the new disciples in Germany, to remove a part of his
+machines and machinery to Germany, and make his stockings there, in
+order that those ridiculous and cheap Germans should not quite put a
+stop to his trade. It was whispered about that French-made tools were
+being bought and brought into England for use there, and it was said
+openly that American saws, vises, and axes were playing the very deuce;
+and now, just after the triumphs of the "Centennial," Englishmen are
+writing home that Yankee silks will also play another very deuce with
+them if they don't get more and cheaper labor. I see too, by late
+letters from England, that they propose to cheapen iron by putting
+cheap Chinese labor into the iron works!
+
+And yet in Germany they cry out that _they_ have a panic, and that
+trade is dull, and people will persist in failing, and that other
+people won't buy all they can make; they too are at their wits' ends.
+There must be something wrong, the "doctrinaires" say, about the gases.
+Trade is not free enough, or labor is not cheap enough, or they have
+too much or too little paper money, or they don't try woman suffrage.
+At any rate the new gospel is right--_must be right_, because if
+you obey the laws of trade and buy cheap and sell dear, you are sure to
+be happy.
+
+And France--it is frightful to think of France. Steeped in stupidity
+and enveloped in Cimmerean fog, she resists the new gospel. She will
+not send her missionaries abroad over the world; she will not build
+great factories and temples; she will not take her whole people from
+their small farms, where they raise great surpluses of food, to put
+them into the new temples; she does not even work her land with steam,
+nor does she hanker for the cheap (and nasty) things which England and
+Germany are so ready, willing, and anxious to pour into every
+household; indeed, will not have them at all. Oh, the economic
+condition of France makes the heart of the enlightened priest of the
+new gospel weep. France has taken no steps to introduce the cheap labor
+of Ireland or China, or even of Africa--right at her doors--into her
+own wretched country, and there is no sign that she will. What feeling
+but contempt can the sincere doctrinaire entertain for France?
+
+It would be indeed strange--and yet it is not wholly impossible--that
+England and Germany and the United States, all of whom have for
+centuries been cursing work, and crying out against work, and doing all
+manner of things to get rid of work, and educating their best and
+wisest not to do it--it would be indeed strange if some day they should
+be crying out, "Give us work, in God's name." Strange, but not wholly
+impossible.
+
+We come back now to our own country--to the
+
+    Land of the free, and the home of the blest.
+
+We are the child of England, and we revere, we love, we emulate her. We
+adopt her methods, we worship her god. We follow in her footsteps, and
+emulating her example, we send out missionaries to extend the gospel of
+trade; we love to buy cheap and sell dear; we love to scheme; we
+delight in speculation, for that is an intellectual operation. We have
+been taught for centuries that the mind is divine, the body devilish.
+We do well, therefore, to despise the devilish body and exalt the
+godlike soul. We do well to depress and belittle the hand, and to
+glorify and enlarge the head. We do well to say it, and to make men
+believe it if we can, that the "pen is mightier than the sword" or the
+plough. We do well to convert our boys and girls into exaggerated
+heads, even if they are useless, because we thus exalt them toward
+gods. We do well to leave out of view all just balance between head and
+hand because that is common and vulgar. We do well to say that the man
+who _says_ a good thing is greater than he who _does_ a good thing, for
+the spiritual _is_ divine, and the earthly _is_ base!
+
+Keeping in view the short time we have possessed this land, we may
+fairly arrogate to ourselves what England has long claimed for herself,
+great "progress." We have created more great cities, more luxurious
+habits, more free whiskey, more useless railroads, more brokers'
+boards, more wild-cat banks, more swindling mining companies, more
+political jobs, more precocious boys and more fast girls, more bankrupt
+men and more nervous women than any country known in history. Following
+the "example of our illustrious predecessor"--England--we have done one
+thing of which we are justly proud, and the full account of which,
+illustrated with pictures, our "Government" (as we facetiously call it)
+has published in some ten fine volumes. And what is the example we
+followed? It is this: England, having possessed herself of the vast
+kingdom of India, found a production there of opium very lucrative to
+her and very desirable to many of the Chinese, who enjoyed the smoking
+of the pleasing drug. England greatly desired to sell this drug to
+China, for it was all in the interest of trade. One fine day some
+Chinese emperor or mandarin took it into his meddling head to check or
+forbid the freedom of this trade: and then the virtue, the religious
+fervor of the devoted Briton was roused. Ninety-three thousand chests
+of good merchantable opium, worth many taels, was not a dogma to be
+trifled with, not even by the Emperor of the Flowery Kingdom. What!
+Should trade be impeded by this yellow Mantchu, this devotee of
+Confucius, this long-eyed heathen, because he had some sentimental
+notions about his people's morals or manners? Good heavens! Could trade
+stand that? By no means. Persuasion must bring him to his senses if he
+had any. Persuasion was tried, and various iron arguments were used.
+They battered down Canton, they assaulted and took the cities of Amoy,
+Chusan, Ningpo, Woosung, Shanghai, Nanking; and thus the English
+missionaries kept on persuading until at last the heathen Chinee
+yielded: was persuaded to pay $12,000,000, to open the ports of Canton,
+Amoy, Foochoo, Ningpo, Shanghai to trade; to welcome all future opium
+with open arms; to make the good Queen Victoria a present of the port
+of Hong Kong; and so on and on. Thus, under the persuasion of a
+fraternal war, "trade, civilization, and Christianity" made themselves
+safe in the high places of China; since which happiness has bourgeoned
+there if not in England!
+
+Could our youthful but pious nation do better than follow this
+illustrious example? Certainly not. Something must be done. If China
+could thus be persuaded to trade by the English, poor little Japan
+might be persuaded to trade by the United States. We could but try. We
+did, and Perry sailed away, with his ships and his cannons, to try. The
+Japs were benighted, foolish, and weak. They declined, and said, "No,
+we don't want any of your trade. We make _all we want_, and don't care
+either for your religion, your opium, your whiskey, or your stovepipe
+hats."
+
+"But," said the gallant Perry, "that is a wicked sentiment. The
+brotherhood of nations is the cornerstone of modern civilization. Trade
+is divine, and stovepipe hats mark the intellectual races. We are your
+brothers. God has made of one blood all the nations of the earth. If
+you will not be our brothers, and trade, we shall be obliged to shoot.
+Don't want to, but must. One--two--three. Bang!"
+
+Well, the Japs also yielded to these arguments, and thenceforth have
+been happy. Trade has prevailed. Rice has gone up, and a good many
+Japs have gone to the ethereal spaces, overcome with hunger. Railways
+have been built, national debts have been created; the Mikado and
+Tycoon have fought, the Daimios have quarrelled, white men have been
+assassinated, beggary has begun, taxes press upon the people; and
+indeed all the signs which mark the high civilization of trade have
+appeared. "Progress," we are assured, is now certain, and Japan is
+"developing her resources." Bliss ensues. All of which is written down
+and printed in many volumes for all men to read. And "Perry's
+Expedition" can be read in beautiful volumes which cost you, we'll say,
+$50 for the books and a million for the glorious expedition.
+
+We make any sacrifices for the new religion, and are willing to waste
+the filthy lucre of gold to extend a divine idea.
+
+We did it!
+
+We opened their ports!
+
+We extended the blessing of trade!
+
+We have made the Japs into Yankees!
+
+They are learning the benefits of cheap and nasty!
+
+Glory be to the new god!
+
+Massachusetts! Massachusetts has held herself and has been held as the
+heart and the brain of New England. She has had (so she has believed)
+the heart to feel a moral principle and the head to accept a great
+thought. She has had brave-hearted men and clear-eyed women. Once--let
+us make a brief retrospect--she had "pilgrim fathers." She had what she
+and the world too thought a religion, which she believed in. She had a
+people of sound English stock, who in this clear New England air grew
+to hate squalor, vice, beggary, debt, and damnation. Once, fifty years
+ago, she had no great cities; her "Hub," Boston, in 1830 had but the
+poor population of 61,392, nearly all born on her soil, few of them
+dirty or beggared. Once, fifty years ago, all through Massachusetts
+were clean, decent, white-housed towns, such as Worcester, and
+Springfield, and Northampton, and Concord, and Salem, and Newburyport,
+centres of small but most cultivated and earnest social life.
+
+Then small farms were cultivated by families of New England birth, out
+of whom came able men and handsome women. Children lived with parents,
+and did not tyrannize them. Silk gowns were rare, and pianos unknown;
+"art" and "culture" had not become household words, but butter was made
+at home, and the mystery of bread was known to ladies. Few then had
+been to Paris, and few therefore knew how vulgar they were. But "where
+ignorance is bliss," etc. They got on, and did not know what poor
+creatures they were.
+
+Every child was expected to learn the three R's at the little red
+school-house, and to _perfect_ his education by taking hold of material
+nature with his hands, and learning what it was by mastering it. That
+was education. The parson knew a little Latin, and he was all. They
+thought this worked well. Lamentable indeed!
+
+The man expected to marry a capable wife, and to bring up children; he
+expected to work on his land or in his shop, to dress decently in
+clothes which his wife had made, securing a reasonable support in this
+world by his own labor, not by _hocus-pocus_; he provided for his
+future salvation by imbibing the five points of Calvin through
+fifty-four sermons a year, with now and then a Thursday lecture to fill
+in the cracks. Thus he was sure of his food here and of salvation
+hereafter--through the merciful providence of God, and not his own
+righteousness. New England thus produced a breed of people unlike and
+they fancied not inferior to any that history tells of.
+
+But it would not do. There was no progress--it was a lamentable
+condition of things. They had _not_ got a population of 211.78 to the
+square mile, raked together from the four corners of creation, making
+the State the sixth in density of all in the world, as she now boasts
+she has, and thus she had totally failed to secure the higher and
+better civilization.
+
+They had not "developed their resources"; they had not built up
+splendid great cities; they had little knowledge of the delights of
+trade. Things could not get on so--that was not "progress." Here was
+water power running to waste all over Massachusetts; there were keen
+and able heads who believed they knew how to set these powers to work
+to grind their grists; it was quite ridiculous that these tumbling
+streams should not be turning millwheels and spinning cheap cotton. And
+then too not a railroad ran through Massachusetts--no transportation
+except in wagons. "Good God!" the pious people naturally exclaimed;
+"what misery, what a slow set!" Money--money was then loaned at only
+six per cent.! Things must be changed. They were changed. Mill after
+mill was built, among them the "_Atlantic_." Railway after railway was
+built, among them the "_Eastern_," and the stock was quickly paid up,
+and all went merry as a marriage bell. But some people own those stocks
+now, and do _not_ find themselves happy!
+
+What is the cure for these shrivelled dividends? Clearly, is it not,
+_to bring in cheap labor_? Let every man who has nothing and wants
+much, take shares in
+
+    "THE CHEAP LABOR SOCIETY."
+
+Seeing what has been done for Massachusetts, it is easy to see what can
+be done. And what has been done? In fifty years she has built up
+Lowell, and Lawrence, and Worcester, and Holyoke, and many more great
+towns. She has increased Boston to a population of 341,919 souls--or
+bodies--in the year of grace 1875. She has "improved" things so, has
+made such progress, that Boston now spends yearly $15,114,389.73
+(auditor's report 1875-6), which means that out of every man, woman,
+and child of Boston was taken in 1875, for public expenses, the sum of
+_forty-four dollars_! The happiness resulting from this may be partly
+understood when I relate that this tax is some four hundred per cent.
+greater than the "effete aristocracies" of Europe have ever got out of
+their down-trodden serfs, or have even dared to try to get. One other
+charming effect of this style of self-government (?), as we please to
+call it, is, that it has driven out of Boston a set of bloated money
+getters, who fancy it is not pleasant to pay large taxes, so they go to
+Nahant, and Barnstable, and Concord for a few months, and rid Boston of
+themselves and--their taxes! Shrewd fellows those Boston Democrats!
+They know how to _govern_ a city. So they do in New York. So they do in
+Cambridge.
+
+But let us look at another of the evidences of true progress. Every man
+votes, you must know, whether he owns any property or not. Now, Mr.
+Daniel L. Harris has discovered, in his researches at Springfield, that
+of the voters there, _four_ pay taxes and _five_ do not; that is,
+four-ninths of the voters pay the taxes and five-ninths who pay none
+outvote the four who pay all. This is so generous on the part of the
+four that we ought to try to see what it is the four really are about.
+Applying the same ratio to Boston, we find that every tax-payer, every
+man of the four-ninth party, really paid to the yearly expenditures of
+the city of Boston, in the blessed year 1875-6, the neat little sum of
+three hundred and ninety-nine dollars, money of this realm.[1]
+
+      [1] Total polls of Boston, 85,243. Four-ninths of these will go
+      into $15,114,389--total expenditure of the year 1875-6--$399
+      times.
+
+And yet the business men of Boston complain that they have made no
+money for three years, and that they can't make any. How absurd that
+is, when they can pay such taxes as these! And then think what they do
+in Boston for the intellect (as it is called). While they stupidly
+complain that they can't make any money, they spend on their common
+schools every year--over two millions of good dollars (2,015,380)--and
+they teach what--what don't they teach? I counted, I think, _thirty-six
+branches_ as being taught in the Boston schools last year. "Art" and
+"culture," you know! And in those brutal old times of fifty years ago,
+they taught only the three R's. Unhappy and despicable! Did they not
+deserve it?
+
+And then the generosity of these Boston merchants who can't, as they
+pretend, make anything. Look for a moment at that!
+
+They paid in 1865 for the teaching of each one of those children those
+thirty-six branches, so necessary to salvation, the sum of $21.16; in
+1875 the sum of $35.23. That is, they voluntarily and gladly paid
+somebody sixty-six per cent. more for their work in 1875 than in 1865,
+and all the while those merchants pretend they are making no money. Do
+they expect us to believe that?
+
+If they want to make money, why not at once bring in more cheap labor?
+The Chinese are ready to come, and the negroes, even if Ireland can
+spare no more of her enlightened people. And then what a boon this
+class of people would be to our aspiring statesman. For the sum of two
+dollars they are entitled to vote, and then any man who feels a desire
+to be a governor or an M.C. can, by paying this paltry pittance,
+secure the votes of a grateful constituency. Is it not, therefore, our
+supreme duty to bring in this class of voters as rapidly as possible?
+We need _population_ and we need _voters_. England has a population of
+389 to the square mile and we in Massachusetts have only 211! Should we
+not hide our faces with shame while such an inferiority lasts?
+
+There are people now who are getting up a scare about the wonderful
+growth of the Holy Catholic Church, claiming that that church demands
+of all its members (as it does) allegiance _first_ to the Church, and
+then _second_ to the government where its subjects happen to be. I
+do not think much of this now that Antonelli is dead; but there may be
+something in it. I question whether Massachusetts can any longer put
+forth pretensions to being a Puritan or a Unitarian or religious State
+of any sort unless it be a Catholic one. Go with me to the U.S. census
+report of 1870:
+
+    The whole population of Massachusetts in 1870 was    1,457,351
+
+    Of these were born in foreign lands         353,319
+
+    Born of foreign parents in Massachusetts    626,211    979,530
+
+Thus, it seems, the population of Massachusetts is already foreign-born
+and of foreign parents, _over two-thirds_. What number of these foreign
+people are Roman Catholics, any other person can guess as well as I
+can. But it is quite certain that this blessing, such as it is, has
+reached us incidentally through our cheap labor; that is, it is a sort
+of superadded bliss, coming as an unexpected reward of unconscious
+virtue. In the words of Shakespeare, "We are twice blessed." We have
+got cheap labor and we have got the Catholic church crowning every hill
+and blooming in every valley.
+
+At any rate it is quite certain that few if any of this class of the
+Massachusetts people are either Puritans, Unitarians, or Episcopalians;
+and some of them I strongly suspect are like the good sailor, neither
+Catholics nor Protestants, but "captains of the fore-top!" In
+Massachusetts, as I have said, there was in 1870 of this kind of
+population sixty-six per cent., and all have votes. In the whole United
+States there was forty-five per cent. of this sort, all of whom have
+votes. It is known also that New York, and Boston, and Lowell, and Fall
+River are intrinsically foreign cities. It is known that the majority
+of voters in those cities have no property which pays taxes; it is
+known that this class of voters are now well organized, and can and do
+vote and do elect such men as will _please them_--men who "will tickle
+me if I'll tickle you"--that is the sort of statesman we now welcome
+with effusion; indeed, we seek no other. We mean to deplete all
+over-grown fortunes; we mean through the taxes to equalize things and
+make Saturday afternoons pleasant. I have not at hand, just this
+moment, the figures to tell what good was done in Boston last year to
+the class called "the poor." But I have them for Cambridge, a small
+city almost a part of Boston. In that small select and intellectual
+city the expenditures in direct aid of "the poor," not counting work
+which was _made_ for them, was in dollars, $80,000, and that does not
+count a large sum besides given in private charity. This help was given
+to some 5,400 persons; stating it simply, in the words of political
+economy, one person in seven or eight of that cultivated and select
+community was a pauper. Another feature of this new and peculiar social
+state is this: that the voters who have no property and pay no taxes do
+not enjoy the possibility of starving, nor do they look with favor upon
+advice which tells them to "Go West." Why should they go West? They do
+not know where to go--indeed, they have no money to go with--nor do
+they know that there would be any work for them there. They _choose_ to
+stay where they are, and they will vote for people who will help them
+to stay; and they have five votes to the tax-payer's four, which
+significant little fact should not be lost sight of!
+
+In our laudable desire for "progress," in our vital wish "to develop
+our resources," we have produced many results, some interesting ones,
+quite unexpected. We have got cheap labor and we have got cheap cotton
+cloth and cheap boots and shoes, and a good deal of all of them. The
+smart little city of Lowell was begun by the most capable and
+enterprising of Boston's "solid men"; it was begun upon a theory that
+men and women in New England ought to be clean, decent, and virtuous.
+In its beginning nearly all the operatives were of New England birth,
+descendants of Puritans who were used to decency, cleanliness, and
+virtue. Then they lived and lodged in houses belonging to the mills,
+which were _regulated_--the men in their own boarding houses, the women
+in theirs. All were expected to be in their houses by or before a
+certain hour, say ten o'clock at night.
+
+Then every young lady had a green silk parasol for Sunday's use, and
+she wrote poetry for the "Lowell Offering," if she felt the divine
+movement. At that early undeveloped time an English gentleman, one
+Anthony Trollope, visited the nascent city. He lamented the
+narrow-mindedness of the projectors, and predicted it would not work;
+that the little Lowell could never compete with such highly developed
+cities as Manchester and Preston, where they knew the magic of "cheap
+labor." In other words, Lowell could not be a great success.
+
+That Arcadian simplicity worked for a while, but inevitably the magic
+of cheap labor made itself felt--it was potent--it came, it saw, it
+conquered. And now the best information I have convinces me that the
+squalor, filth, recklessness, and happiness are nearly or quite equal
+to what they are in the noble cities of Manchester and Glasgow in
+England. Should Mr. Trollope revisit those scenes of his youth, he
+would be as much delighted as any Englishman could permit himself to be
+with anything outside his "Merrie England" at the delectable advances
+made there.
+
+He would find labor cheap and cotton cheap--as cheap as they are in his
+beloved Manchester. He would find, as in his beloved Manchester, that
+they made more than they could sell; which is the secret of cheapness.
+He would find that in that small elysium, in the year 1874, they made
+135,000,000 yards of cotton cloth, which gospel of cotton they were
+then spreading abroad over all the earth, sending some of it to his
+beloved Manchester. He would learn also that there was invested there
+some $20,000,000 of good money of the realm, a large proportion of
+which paid no dividends; which also is an excellent method of securing
+cheapness. He would find all "narrow-minded regulations" quite done
+away with, and the full liberty of the subject enjoyed by all; that
+people staid "out nights" according to their own sweet wills; that men
+slept when they pleased and where they pleased, and with whom they
+pleased--women too for that matter; and that life was as free and
+pleasant as his good English heart could wish. He would find that the
+old-fashioned, narrow-minded New England stock had disappeared--not
+being cheap enough--and their places were fully supplied with a
+delightful conglomeration of gentlemen and ladies who had fled from
+poor Ireland, from the Azores, from Germany, from pastoral Acadie; and
+here and there he would note the pigtail of the frugal Chinese, the
+_avant courier of a better time coming_.
+
+Thus he would find that Lowell, having rid herself of narrow-minded
+notions, having followed reverently in the footsteps of his illustrious
+Manchester, was _a success indeed_.
+
+And _Lynn_ too. She discovered thirty years ago the surprising
+swiftness of "teams," whereby six or eight men working in partnership,
+each one doing only one thing, say one a welt, and another a bottom,
+and another the eyelets, etc., could put a shoe through in one-eighth
+the time of the old "one-man" way. Millions of shoes were made, and
+shoes were cheap. Much money flowed in, and life was lovely at Lynn.
+But Paradise pales if too long continued. The sewing-machines came, and
+McKaye was a god--for the master. One man with his machine could do the
+work of twenty or forty men in the teams. Shoes were now amazingly
+cheap. The Crispins wept, the master laughed, and the making of shoes
+went merrily on. And what became of the Crispins? They struck! and
+then--they disappeared, vanished, went too "where the woodbine
+twineth." They too were not wanted. Let them get themselves out of the
+way! the Chinese are coming!
+
+They got much consolation from a certain set of preachers, who assured
+them it was all right--"Laws of trade, you know," "cheap shoes good for
+the masses," "water will find its level," "the masses in Africa will
+now be able to wear shoes," "the best government is _no_ government,"
+"all one great brotherhood," "every man for himself and the devil take
+the hindmost."
+
+Paradise was just beyond their noses, and it lay just here: "When
+things get very cheap every man will only work three hours a day. All
+men can play the rest of the time, or they can cultivate their
+_minds_!" "Beautiful! Beautiful! Hosannah to the highest!" was what
+every disbanded Crispin ought to have said; but, foolish man as he was,
+he kept saying, "My _body_ is hungry, and I have no work, and I will
+steal some food--or become a broker! You had better look out."
+
+But luckily the Southern war came, and it made places for a good many
+men, and the "Government" (not us men and women)--the Government paid
+_the bills_, and so we were tided over. And now we have got the bills,
+and we have got cheap labor too! And we are as near to "no government"
+as any people ever was except wild Indians; and that we know--for the
+doctrinaires say so--is Paradise. If it is not that, what in Heaven's
+name is it?
+
+There was once a notion that the men who had knowledge, and experience,
+and strength, should think for and act for those who had not; in short,
+that those who were strong should protect and care for the weak. The
+father in some countries--not all--yet does pursue this plan; he is
+head and master of his household, and is expected to know how to act
+and what to do better than his boys and girls.
+
+We have exploded that idea. Under this "best government upon which the
+sun ever shone," we have made discoveries. We find that children know
+what _they_ want better than their fathers; that women are really
+stronger than men, have larger brains, more sense, more heart, and more
+purity; and that when women and children both vote (mistress Biddy too)
+the world will go right--for they--the pure, the honest--_will_ "holler
+out gee!"
+
+This old paternal or family government was a _despotism_, tempered
+with love, to be sure, but a despotism not to be tolerated in an
+enlightened age. Shovel it out, shovel it out!
+
+It is a sad fact that children now, while wiser and purer than their
+fathers, are not physically quite so strong. But it is found that the
+pistol puts the holders upon a _perfect equality_, and that is the
+thing to be aimed at. The redress of the weak is therefore in the
+pistol, which I expect to see in every child's pocket soon. The tyrant
+man will then be degraded to his place. With women voting, and children
+holding pistols, men and fathers will be pulled down from the pedestal
+they have usurped so long.
+
+We know that women have more virtue than men (?), and that children
+have more purity, and therefore, knowing well the "good, the true, and
+the beautiful," they must and shall govern the land. They shall be
+tyrannized no longer.
+
+And so, as New England has cut into old England, and has set her own
+machinery and steam to work making many things cheaper than old England
+can make them, and bids fair to starve out some of her garrisons of
+workers, just in the same way have Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati, and
+Chicago taken it into their heads to set their machinery and steam to
+work; and now torrents of hats, and shoes, and woollens, and cottons,
+and clothing, and furniture, and stoves, and pots are pouring out of
+those nests of industry, so that even they are beginning to cry out,
+"Why don't you buy what we want to sell, and thus make _us_ rich?"
+
+If, then, we in New England refuse to buy--refuse to buy at profitable
+prices the productions of old England--what does England propose to do
+with her millions of non-food-producing workmen? She demands free
+trade; says we are fools for not opening our ports and accepting with
+effusion the blessings of cheap goods she would so willingly send us?
+She does not quite like to open _our_ ports, as she did those of China,
+nor does she incline at present to carry into France the civilizing
+influences of her cheap looms at the point of the bayonet. _She_ must
+answer the question, not I.
+
+And in New England--if that "West," with its fertile fields and its
+surplus food, will go to making cheap shoes and cheap cotton, and will
+not see how much happier she would be if she would only make corn and
+pork and swap them with New England for shoes and cotton--what will New
+England, what will Massachusetts do with her 507,034 workers who do not
+produce their own food? This is rather a vital question to those men
+and women who have no food. It is rather vital too to the capital
+invested in mills and machines in Lowell and elsewhere.
+
+I come back now to my first proposition for the cure of the ills of
+life--_cheap labor_.
+
+If trade be the true god, let us worship him; if to buy cheap and sell
+dear be the true gospel, let us extend that; if to convert men and
+women into tenders to machines be really the perfection of human
+nature, let us import the wild African and the heathen Chinee rapidly,
+largely, for nothing can be cheaper than they. Let us get ready our
+ships; let us open the ports of Dahomey, and Congo, and Canton, and
+Shanghai; let us exchange whiskey and tobacco for able-bodied men and
+women; let us fill this land with the black men and the copper men; let
+us perfect our civilization, for those men and those women can live
+cheap and work cheap; and if _white_ men and _white_ women do go to the
+wall--why should they not?
+
+Gentle reader, you ask what is the _moral_?
+
+I reply, Does not our civilization demand _cheap cotton_ and not great
+_men and women_? Clearly it does.
+
+Does it not demand free _pauper immigration_? Clearly it does.
+
+Does it not demand cheap _Chinese immigration_? Clearly it does.
+
+Does it not demand free _pauper_ and free _Chinese voting_? Clearly it
+does.
+
+Does it not demand that "Trade" shall be god, and the _laws of supply
+and demand_ shall rule? Clearly it does.
+
+Does it not call this "progress"? Clearly it does.
+
+And is not all this leading us directly to--_Heaven_ or to _Hell_?
+Clearly they are.
+
+And you, gentle reader, can decide which.
+
+CHARLES WYLLY ELLIOTT.
+
+
+
+
+THE TWO WORLDS.
+
+
+    Two mighty silences, two worlds unseen
+      Over against each other lie:
+    For ever boundlessly apart have been,
+          For ever nigh.
+
+    In one is God Himself, and angels bright
+      Do congregate, and spirits fair;
+    And, lost in depths of mystic light,
+          Our Dead dwell there.
+
+    All things that cannot fade, nor fall, nor die,
+      Voices beloved, and precious things foregone,
+    Float up and up, and in that silence high,
+          With God grow one.
+
+    No barren silence, nay, but such as over
+      Lips that we love its spell may fling,
+    Where tender words like nested swallows hover,
+          Ere they take wing.
+
+    Sometimes from that far land there comes a breeze,
+      Soft airs surprise us on our way,
+    As dew-drops from above; then on our knees
+          We fall and pray.
+
+    And oft in some low crimson coast of cloud
+      We deem we see its far-off strand:
+    Our hearts, like shipwrecked sailors, cry aloud,
+          "The Land! the Land!"
+
+    And side by side that other world unknown,
+      Drenched in unbroken silence lies,
+    World of ourselves, where each one lives alone,
+          And lonely dies.
+
+    With our unuttered griefs, our joys untold,
+      Our multitudinous thoughts swift throng,
+    We dwell; one silence them and us doth fold
+          All our life long.
+
+    Out from those depths there comes a cry of pain.
+      Ah, pitifully, Lord, it calls,
+    "Behold the sorrows of our hearts!" and then--
+          A silence falls.
+
+    Nought but the narrow strip doth lie between
+      Of sounding surf that men call life;
+    Yet none can pass between those worlds unseen,
+          And end the strife.
+
+    Die down, die down, O thou tormented sea!
+      Suffer my silent world to fill
+    With voices from that land which cry to me,
+          "We love thee still."
+
+    In vain: I hear them not! but o'er my loss
+      Comes an apocalyptic voice,
+    "There shall be no more sea, and thou canst cross."
+          Rejoice! rejoice!
+
+ELICE HOPKINS.
+
+
+
+
+SISTER ST. LUKE.
+
+
+They found her over there. "This is more than I expected," said
+Carrington as they landed--"seven pairs of Spanish eyes at once."
+
+"Three pairs," answered Keith, fastening the statement to fact and the
+boat to a rock in his calm way; "and one if not two of the pairs are
+Minorcan."
+
+The two friends crossed the broad white beach toward the little stone
+house of the light-keeper, who sat in the doorway, having spent the
+morning watching their sail cross over from Pelican reef, tacking
+lazily east and west--an event of more than enough importance in his
+isolated life to have kept him there, gazing and contented, all day.
+Behind the broad shoulders of swarthy Pedro stood a little figure
+clothed in black; and as the man lifted himself lazily at last and came
+down to meet them, and his wife stepped briskly forward, they saw that
+the third person was a nun--a large-eyed, fragile little creature,
+promptly introduced by Melvyna, the keeper's wife, as "Sister St.
+Luke." For the keeper's wife, in spite of her black eyes, was not a
+Minorcan at all; not even a southerner. Melvyna Sawyer was born in
+Vermont, and, by one of the strange chances of this vast, many-raced,
+motley country of ours, she had travelled south as nurse, and a very
+good, energetic nurse too, albeit somewhat sharp-voiced, to a delicate
+young wife, who had died in the sunny land, as so many of them die; the
+sun, with all his good will and with all his shining, not being able to
+undo in three months the work of long years of the snows and the bleak
+east winds of New England.
+
+The lady dead, and her poor thin frame sent northward again to lie in
+the hillside churchyard by the side of bleak Puritan ancestors, Melvyna
+looked about her. She hated the lazy tropical land, and had packed her
+calf-skin trunk to go, when Pedro Gonsalvez surprised her by proposing
+matrimony. At least that is what she wrote to her Aunt Clemanthy, away
+up in Vermont; and although Pedro may not have used the words, he at
+least meant the fact, for they were married two weeks later by a
+justice of the peace, whom Melvyna's sharp eyes had unearthed, she of
+course deeming the padre of the little parish and one or two attendant
+priests as so much dust to be trampled energetically under her shoes,
+Protestant and number six and a half double-soled mediums. The justice
+of the peace, a good natured old gentleman who had forgotten that he
+held the office at all, since there was no demand for justice and the
+peace was never broken in the small lazy village, married them as well
+as he could in a surprised sort of a way, and instead of receiving a
+fee gave one, which Melvyna, however, promptly rescued from the
+bridegroom's willing hand, and returned with the remark that there was
+no "call for alms" (pronounced as if it rhymed with hams), and that two
+shilling, or mebbe three, she guessed, would be about right for the
+job. This sum she deposited on the table, and then took leave, walking
+off with a quick, enterprising step, followed by her acquiescent and
+admiring bridegroom. He had remained acquiescent and admiring ever
+since, and now, as light-house keeper on Pelican island, he admired and
+acquiesced more than ever; while Melvyna kept the house in order,
+cooked his dinners, and tended his light, which, although only third
+class, shone and glittered under her daily care in the old square tower
+which was founded by the Spaniards, heightened by the English, and now
+finished and owned by the United States, whose light-house board said
+to each other every now and then that really they must put a
+first-class Fresnal on Pelican island and a good substantial tower
+instead of that old-fashioned beacon. They did so a year or two later;
+and a hideous barber's pole it remains to the present day. But when
+Carrington and Keith landed there the square tower still stood in its
+gray old age, at the very edge of the ocean, so that high tides swept
+the step of the keeper's house. It was originally a lookout where the
+Spanish soldier stood and fired his culverin when a vessel came in
+sight outside the reef; then the British occupied the land, added a
+story, and placed an iron grating on the top, where their
+coastguardsman lighted a fire of pitch-pine knots that flared up
+against the sky, with the tidings, "A sail! a sail!" Finally the United
+States came into possession, ran up a third story, and put in a
+revolving light, one flash for the land and two for the sea, a
+proportion unnecessarily generous now to the land, since nothing came
+in any more, and everything went by, the little harbor being of no
+importance since the indigo culture had failed. But ships still sailed
+by on their way to the Queen of the Antilles, and to the far Windward
+and Leeward islands, and the old light went on revolving, presumably
+for their benefit. The tower, gray and crumbling, and the keeper's
+house, were surrounded by a high stone wall with angles and
+loopholes--a small but regularly planned defensive fortification built
+by the Spaniards; and odd enough it looked there on that peaceful
+island, where there was nothing to defend. But it bore itself stoutly
+nevertheless, this ancient little fortress, and kept a sharp lookout
+still over the ocean for the damnable Huguenot sail of two centuries
+before.
+
+The sea had encroached greatly on Pelican island, and sooner or later
+it must sweep the keeper's house away; but now it was a not unpleasant
+sensation to hear the water wash against the step--to sit at the narrow
+little windows and watch the sea roll up, roll up, nearer and nearer,
+coming all the way landless in long surges from the distant African
+coast only to never quite get at the foundations of that stubborn
+little dwelling, which held its own against them, and then triumphantly
+watched them roll back, roll back, departing inch by inch down the
+beach, until, behold! there was a magnificent parade-ground, broad
+enough for a thousand feet to tread--a floor more fresh and beautiful
+than the marble pavements of palaces. There were not a thousand feet to
+tread there, however; only six. For Melvyna had more than enough to do
+within the house, and Pedro never walked save across the island to the
+inlet once in two weeks or so, where he managed to row over to the
+village, and return with supplies, by taking two entire days for it,
+even Melvyna having given up the point, tacitly submitting to loitering
+she could not prevent, but recompensing herself by a general cleaning
+on those days of the entire premises, from the top of the lantern in
+the tower to the last step in front of the house.
+
+You could not argue with Pedro. He only smiled back upon you as sweetly
+and as softly as molasses. Melvyna, endeavoring to urge him to energy,
+found herself in the position of an active ant wading through the downy
+recesses of a feather bed, which well represented his mind.
+
+Pedro was six feet, two inches in height, and amiable as a dove. His
+wife sensibly accepted him as he was, and he had his two days in
+town--a very mild dissipation, however, since the Minorcans are too
+indolent to do anything more than smoke, lie in the sun, and eat salads
+heavily dressed in oil. They said, "The serene and august wife of our
+friend is well, we trust?" And, "The island--does it not remain
+lonely?" And then the salad was pressed upon him again. For they all
+considered Pedro a man of strange and varied experiences. Had he not
+married a woman of wonder--of an energy unfathomable? And he lived with
+her alone in a light-house, on an island; alone, mind you, without a
+friend or relation near!
+
+The six feet that walked over the beautiful beach of the southern ocean
+were those of Keith, Carrington, and Sister St. Luke.
+
+"Now go, Miss Luke," Melvyna had said, waving her energetically away
+with the skimmer as she stood irresolute at the kitchen door. "'Twill
+do you a power of good, and they're nice, quiet gentlemen who will see
+to you, and make things pleasant. Bless you, _I_ know what they are.
+They ain't none of the miserable, good-for-nothing race about here!
+Your convent is fifty miles off, ain't it? And besides, you were
+brought over here half dead for me to cure up--now, warn't you?"
+
+The Sister acknowledged that she was, and Melvyna went on.
+
+"You see, things is different up north, and I understand 'em, but you
+don't. Now you jest go right along and hev a pleasant walk, and I'll
+hev a nice bowl of venison broth ready for you when you come back. Go
+right along now." The skimmer waved again, and the Sister went.
+
+"Yes, she's taken the veil, and is a nun for good and all," explained
+Melvyna to her new guests the evening of their arrival, when the shy
+little Sister had retreated to her own room above. "They thought she
+was dying, and she was so long about it, and useless on their hands,
+that they sent her up here to the village for sea air, and to be red of
+her, I guess. 'T any rate, there she was in one of them crowded, dirty
+old houses, and so--I jest brought her over here. To tell the truth,
+gentlemen--the real bottom of it--my baby died last year--and--and Miss
+Luke she was so good I'll never forget it. I ain't a Catholic--fur from
+it; I hate 'em. But she seen us coming up from the boat with our little
+coffin, and she came out and brought flowers to lay on it, and followed
+to the grave, feeble as she was; and she even put in her little black
+shawl, because the sand was wet--this miserable half-afloat land, you
+know--and I couldn't abear to see the coffin set down into it. And I
+said to myself then that I'd never hate a Catholic again, gentlemen. I
+don't love 'em yet, and don't know as I ever shell; but Miss Luke,
+she's different. Consumption? Well, I hardly know. She's a sight better
+than she was when she come. I'd like to make her well again, and,
+someway, I can't help a-trying to, for I was a nurse by trade once. But
+then what's the use? She'll only hev to go back to that old convent!"
+And Melvyna clashed her pans together in her vexation. "Is she a good
+Catholic, do you say? Heavens and earth, yes! She's _that_
+religious--my! I couldn't begin to tell! She believes every word of all
+that rubbish those old nuns have told her. She thinks it's beautiful to
+be the bride of heaven; and, as far as that goes, I don't know but
+she's right: 'tain't much the other kind is wuth," pursued Melvyna,
+with fine contempt for mankind in general. "As to freedom, they've as
+good as shoved her off their hands, haven't they? And I guess I can do
+as I like any way on my own island. There wasn't any man about their
+old convent, as I can learn, and so Miss Luke, she hain't been taught
+to run away from 'em like most nuns. Of course, if they knew, they
+would be sending over here after her: but they don't know, and them
+priests in the village are too fat and lazy to earn their salt, let
+alone caring what has become of her. I guess, if they think of her at
+all, they think that she died, and that they buried her in their
+crowded, sunken old graveyard. They're so slow and sleepy that they
+forget half the time who they're burying! But Miss Luke, she ought to
+go out in the air, and she is so afraid of everything that it don't do
+her no good to go alone. I haven't got the time to go; and so, if you
+will let her walk along the beach with you once in a while, it will do
+her a sight of good, and give her an appetite--although what I want her
+to hev an appetite for I am sure I don't know; for ef she gets well, of
+course she'll go back to the convent. Want to go? _That_ she does.
+She loves the place, and feels lost and strange anywhere else. She was
+taken there when she was a baby, and it is all the home she has.
+_She_ doesn't know they wanted to be red of her, and she wouldn't
+believe it ef I was to tell her forty times. She loves them all dearly,
+and prays every day to go back there. Spanish? Yes, I suppose so; she
+don't know herself what she is exactly. She speaks English well though,
+don't she? Yes, Sister St. Luke is her name; and a heathenish name it
+is for a woman, in my opinion. _I_ call her Miss Luke. Convert
+her? Couldn't any more convert her than you could convert a white gull,
+and make a land bird of him. It's his nature to ride on the water and
+be wet all the time. Towels couldn't dry him--not if you fetched a
+thousand!"
+
+"Our good hostess is a woman of discrimination, and sorely perplexed,
+therefore, over her _protegee_," said Keith, as the two young men
+sought their room, a loft under the peaked roof, which was to be their
+abode for some weeks, when they were not afloat. "As a nurse she feels
+a professional pride in curing, while as a Calvinist she would almost
+rather kill than cure, if her patient is to go back to the popish
+convent. But the little Sister looks very fragile. She will probably
+save trouble all round by fading away."
+
+"She is about as faded now as a woman can be," answered Carrington.
+
+The two friends, or rather companions, plunged into all the phases of
+the southern ocean with a broad, inhaling, expanding delight which only
+a superb natural or an exquisitely cultured physique can feel. George
+Carrington was a vigorous young Saxon, tall and broad to a remarkable
+degree, feeling his life and strength in every vein and muscle. Each
+night he slept his eight hours dreamlessly, like a child, and each day
+he lived four hours in one, counting by the pallid hours of other men.
+Andrew Keith, on the other hand, represented the physique cultured and
+trained up to a high point by years of attention and care. He was a
+slight man, rather undersized, but his wiry strength was more than a
+match for Carrington's bulk, and his finely cut face, if you would but
+study it, stood out like a cameo by the side of a ruddy miniature
+painted in oils. The trouble is that but few people study cameos. He
+was older than his companion, and "One of those quiet fellows, you
+know," said the world. The two had never done or been anything
+remarkable in all their lives. Keith had a little money, and lived as
+he pleased, while Carrington, off now on a vacation, was junior member
+of a firm in which family influence had placed him. Both were city men.
+
+"You absolutely do not know how to walk, senora," said Keith. "I will
+be doctor now, and you must obey me. Never mind the crabs, and never
+mind the jelly fish, but throw back your head and walk off briskly. Let
+the wind blow in your face, and try to stand more erect."
+
+"You are doctor? They told me, could I but see one, well would I be,"
+said the Sister. "At the convent we have only Sister Inez, with her
+small and old medicines."
+
+"Yes, I think I may call myself doctor," answered Keith gravely. "What
+do you say, Carrington?"
+
+"Knows no end, Miss, Miss--Miss Luke--I should say, Miss St. Luke. I am
+sure I do not know why I should stumble over it when St. John is a
+common enough name," answered Carrington, who generally did his
+thinking aloud.
+
+"No end?" repeated the little Sister inquiringly. "But there is an end
+in this evil world to all things."
+
+"Never mind what he says, senora," interrupted Keith, "but step out
+strongly and firmly, and throw back your head. There now, there are no
+crabs in sight, and the beach is hard as a floor. Try it with me: one,
+two; one, two."
+
+So they treated her, partly as a child, partly as a gentle being of an
+inferior race. It was a new amusement, although rather a mild one,
+Carrington said, to instruct this unformed, timid mind, to open the
+blinded eyes, and train the ignorant ears to listen to the melodies of
+nature.
+
+"Do you not hear? It is like the roll of a grand organ," said Keith as
+they sat on the doorstep one evening at sunset. The sky was dark; the
+wind had blown all day from the north to the south, and frightened the
+little Sister as she toiled at her lace work, made on a cushion in the
+Spanish fashion, her lips mechanically repeating prayers meanwhile; for
+never had they such winds at the inland convent, embowered in its
+orange trees. Now, as the deep, low roll of the waves sounded on the
+shore, Keith, who was listening to it with silent enjoyment, happened
+to look up and catch the pale, repressed nervousness of her face.
+
+"Oh, not like an organ," she murmured. "This is a fearful sound; but an
+organ is sweet--soft and sweet. When Sister Teresa plays the evening
+hymn it is like the sighing of angels."
+
+"But your organ is probably small, senora."
+
+"We have not thought it small. It remains in our chapel, by the window
+of arches, and below we walk, at the hour of meditation, from the lime
+tree to the white rose bush, and back again, while the music sounds
+above. We have not thought it small, but large--yes, very large."
+
+"Four feet long probably," said Carrington, who was smoking an evening
+pipe, now listening to the talk awhile, now watching the movements of
+two white heron who were promenading down the beach. "I saw the one
+over in the village church. It was about as long as this step."
+
+"Yes," said the Sister, surveying the step, "it is about as long as
+that. It is a very large organ."
+
+"Walk with me down to the point," said Keith--"just once and back
+again."
+
+The docile little Sister obeyed; she always did immediately whatever
+they told her to do.
+
+"I want you to listen now; stand still and listen--listen to the sea,"
+said Keith, when they had turned the point and stood alone on the
+shore. "Try to think only of the pure, deep, blue water, and count how
+regularly the sound rolls up in long, low chords, dying away and then
+growing louder, dying away and then growing louder, as regular as your
+own breath. Do you not hear it?"
+
+"Yes," said the little Sister timorously.
+
+"Keep time, then, with your hand, and let me see whether you catch the
+measure."
+
+So the small brown hand, nerveless and slender, tried to mark and
+measure the roar of the great ocean surges, and at last succeeded,
+urged on by the alternate praises and rebukes of Keith, who watched
+with some interest a faint color rise in the pale, oval face, and an
+intent listening look come into the soft, unconscious eyes, as, for the
+first time, the mind caught the mighty rhythm of the sea. She listened,
+and listened, standing mute, with head slightly bent and parted lips.
+
+"I want you to listen to it that way every day," said Keith, as he led
+the way back. "It has different voices: sometimes a fresh, joyous song,
+sometimes a faint, loving whisper; but always something. You will learn
+in time to love it, and then it will sing to you all day long."
+
+"Not at the dear convent; there is no ocean there."
+
+"You want to go back to the convent, I suppose?"
+
+"Oh, could I go? Could I go?" said the Sister, not impatiently, but
+with an intense yearning in her low voice. "Here, so lost, so strange
+am I, so wild is everything---- But I must not murmur"; and she crossed
+her hands upon her breast and bowed her head.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+The young men led a riotous life; they rioted with the ocean, with the
+winds, with the level island, with the sunshine and the racing clouds.
+They sailed over to the reef daily and plunged into the surf; they
+walked for miles along the beach, and ran races over its white floor;
+they hunted down the centre of the island, and brought back the little
+brown deer who lived in the low thicket on each side of the island's
+backbone. The island was twenty miles long, and a mile or two broad,
+with a central ridge of shell-formed rock about twenty feet in height,
+that seemed like an Appalachian chain on the level waste; below, in the
+little hollows on each side, spread a low tangled thicket, a few yards
+wide; and all the rest was barren sand, with moveable hills here and
+there--hills a few feet in height, blown up by the wind, and changed in
+a night. The only vegetation besides the thicket was a rope-like vine
+that crept over the sand, with few leaves far apart, and now and then a
+dull purple blossom, a solitary tenacious vine of the desert, satisfied
+with little, its growth slow, its life monotonous; yet try to tear it
+from the surface of the sand, where its barren length seems to lie
+loosely like an old brown rope thrown down at random, and behold, it
+resists you stubbornly. You find a mile or two of it on your hands,
+clinging and pulling as the strong ivy clings to a stone wall; a giant
+could not conquer it, this seemingly dull and half dead thing; and so
+you leave it there to creep on in its own way over the damp,
+shell-strewn waste. One day Carrington came home in great glory; he had
+found a salt marsh. "Something besides this sand, you know--a stretch
+of saw-grass away to the south, the very place for fat ducks. And
+somebody has been there before us, too, for I saw the mast of a
+sailboat some distance down, tipped up against the sky."
+
+"That old boat is ourn, I guess," said Melvyna. "She drifted down there
+one high tide, and Pedro he never would go for her. She was a mighty
+nice little boat, too, ef she _was_ cranky."
+
+Pedro smiled amiably back upon his spouse, and helped himself to
+another hemisphere of pie. He liked the pies, although she was obliged
+to make them, she said, of such outlandish things as figs, dried
+oranges, and pomegranates. "If you could only see a pumpkin, Pedro,"
+she often remarked, shaking her head. Pedro shook his back in sympathy;
+but, in the mean time, found the pies very good as they were.
+
+"Let us go down after the boat," said Carrington. "You have only that
+old tub over at the inlet. Pedro and you really need another boat"
+(Carrington always liked to imagine that he was a constant and profound
+help to the world at large). "Suppose anything should happen to the one
+you have." Pedro had not thought of that; he slowly put down his knife
+and fork to consider the subject.
+
+"We will go this afternoon," said Keith, issuing his orders, "and you
+shall go with us, senora."
+
+"And Pedro, too, to help you," said Melvyna. "I've always wanted that
+boat back, she was such a pretty little thing: one sail, you know, and
+decked over in front; you sat on the bottom. I'd like right well to go
+along myself; but I suppose I'd better stay at home and cook a nice
+supper for you."
+
+Pedro thought so, decidedly.
+
+When the February sun had stopped blazing down directly overhead, and a
+few white afternoon clouds had floated over from the east to shade his
+shining, so that man could bear it, the four started inland toward the
+backbone ridge, on whose summit there ran an old trail southward, made
+by the fierce Creeks three centuries before. Right up into the dazzling
+light soared the great eagles--straight up, up to the sun; their
+unshrinking eyes fearlessly fixed full on his fiery ball.
+
+"It would be grander if we did not know they had just stolen their
+dinners from the poor hungry fish-hawks over there on the inlet," said
+Carrington.
+
+Sister St. Luke had learned to walk quite rapidly now. Her little black
+gown trailed lightly along the sand behind her, and she did her best to
+"step out boldly," as Keith directed; but it was not firmly, for she
+only succeeded in making a series of quick, uncertain little paces over
+the sand-like bird tracks. Once Keith had taken her back and made her
+look at her own uneven footsteps. "Look--no two the same distance
+apart," he said. The little Sister looked and was very much mortified.
+"Indeed, I _will_ try with might to do better," she said. And she did
+try with might; they saw her counting noiselessly to herself as she
+walked, "One, two; one, two." But she had improved so much that Keith
+now devoted his energies to teaching her to throw back her head, and
+look about her. "Do you not see those soft banks of clouds piled up in
+the west?" he said, constantly directing her attention to objects above
+her. But this was a harder task, for the timid eyes had been trained
+from childhood to look down, and the head was habitually bent, like a
+pendant flower on its stem. Melvyna had deliberately laid hands upon
+the heavy veil and white band that formerly encircled the small face.
+"You cannot breathe in them," she said. But the Sister still wore a
+light veil over the short dark hair, which would curl in little rings
+upon her temples in spite of her efforts to prevent it; the cord and
+heavy beads and cross encircled her slight waist, while the wide
+sleeves of her nun's garb fell over her hands to the finger tips.
+
+"How do you suppose she would look dressed like other women?" said
+Carrington one day. The two men were drifting in their small yacht,
+lying at ease on the cushions, and smoking.
+
+"Well," answered Keith slowly, "if she was well dressed--very well I
+mean, say in the French style--and if she had any spirit of her own,
+any vivacity, you might, with that dark face of hers and those
+eyes--you _might_ call her piquant."
+
+"Spirit? She has not the spirit of a fly," said Carrington, knocking
+the ashes out of his pipe and fumbling in an embroidered velvet pouch,
+one of many offerings at his shrine, for a fresh supply of the strong
+aromatic tobacco he affected, Keith meanwhile smoking nothing but the
+most delicate cigarettes. "The other day I heard a wild scream; and
+rushing down stairs I found her half fainting on the steps, all in a
+little heap. And what do you think it was? She had been sitting there,
+lost in a dream--mystic, I suppose, like St. Agnes--
+
+    Deep on the convent roof the snows
+      Are sparkling to the moon:
+    My breath to heaven like vapor goes.
+      May my soul follow soon--
+
+and that sort of thing."
+
+"No," said Keith, "there is nothing mystical about the Luke maiden; she
+has never even dreamed of the ideal ecstasies of deeper minds. She says
+her little prayers simply, almost mechanically, so many every day, and
+dwells as it were content in the lowly valleys of religion."
+
+"Well, whatever she was doing," continued Carrington, "a great sea crab
+had crawled up and taken hold of the toe of her little shoe. Grand
+tableau--crab and Luke maiden! And the crab had decidedly the better of
+it."
+
+"She _is_ absurdly timid," admitted Keith.
+
+And absurdly timid she was now, when, having crossed the stretch of
+sand and wound in and out among the low hillocks, they came to the
+hollow where grew the dark green thicket, through which they must pass
+to reach the Appalachian range, the backbone of the island, where the
+trail gave them an easier way than over the sands. Carrington went
+first and hacked out a path with his knife; Keith followed, and held
+back the branches; the whole distance was not more than twelve feet;
+but its recesses looked dark and shadowy to the little Sister, and she
+hesitated.
+
+"Come," said Carrington; "we shall never reach the salt marsh at this
+rate."
+
+"There is nothing dangerous here, senora," said Keith. "Look, you can
+see for yourself. And there are three of us to help you."
+
+"Yes," said Pedro--"three of us." And he swung his broad bulk into the
+gap.
+
+Still she hesitated.
+
+"Of what are you afraid?" called out Carrington impatiently.
+
+"I know not indeed," she answered, almost in tears over her own
+behavior, yet unable to stir. Keith came back, and saw that she was
+trembling--not violently, but in a subdued, helpless sort of a way
+which was pathetic in its very causelessness.
+
+"Take her up, Pedro," he ordered; and before she could object, the
+good-natured giant had borne her in three strides through the dreaded
+region, and set her down safely upon the ridge. She followed them
+humbly now, along the safe path, trying to step firmly, and walk with
+her head up, as Keith had directed. Carrington had already forgotten
+her again, and even Keith was eagerly looking ahead for the first
+glimpse of green.
+
+"There is something singularly fascinating in the stretch of a salt
+marsh," he said. "Its level has such a far sweep as you stand and gaze
+across it, and you have a dreamy feeling that there is no end to it.
+The stiff drenched grasses hold the salt which the tide brings in twice
+a day, and you inhale that fresh, strong, briny odor, the rank, salt,
+invigorating smell of the sea; the breeze that blows across has a tang
+to it like the snap of a whip lash across your face, bringing the blood
+to the surface, and rousing you to a quicker pace."
+
+"Ha!" said Carrington; "there it is. Don't you see the green? A little
+further on, you will see the mast of the boat."
+
+"That is all that is wanted," said Keith. "A salt marsh is not complete
+without a boat tilted up aground somewhere, with its slender dark mast
+outlined against the sky. A boat sailing along in a commonplace way
+would blight the whole thing; what we want is an abandoned craft, aged
+and deserted, aground down the marsh with only its mast rising above
+the green."
+
+"_Bien!_ there it is," said Carrington; "and now the question is, how
+to get to it."
+
+"You two giants will have to go alone," said Keith, finding a
+comfortable seat. "I see a mile or two of tall wading before us, and up
+to your shoulders is over my head. I went duck-shooting with that man
+last year, senora. 'Come on,' he cried--'splendid sport ahead, old
+fellow; come on.'
+
+"'Is it deep?' I asked from behind. I was already up to my knees, and
+could not see bottom, the water was so dark.
+
+"'Oh no, not at all; just right,' he answered, striding ahead. 'Come
+on.'
+
+"I came; and went in up to my eyes."
+
+But the senora did not smile.
+
+"You know Carrington is taller than I am," explained Keith, amused by
+the novelty of seeing his own stories fall flat in dead failure.
+
+"Is he?" said the Sister vaguely.
+
+It was evident that she had not observed whether he was or not.
+
+Carrington stopped short, and for an instant stared blankly at her.
+What every one noticed and admired all over the country wherever he
+went, this little silent creature had not even seen!
+
+"He will never forgive you," said Keith laughing, as the two tall forms
+strode off into the marsh. Then, seeing that she did not comprehend in
+the least, he made a seat for her by spreading his light coat on the
+Appalachian chain, and leaning back on his elbow, began talking to her
+about the marsh. "Breathe in the strong salt," he said, "and let your
+eyes rest on the green, reedy waste. Supposing you were painting a
+picture, now--does any one paint pictures at your convent?"
+
+"Ah, yes," said the little nun, rousing to animation at once. "Sister
+St. James paints pictures the most beautiful on earth. She painted for
+us Santa Inez with her lamb, and Santa Rufina of Sevilla, with her
+palms and earthen vases."
+
+"And has she not taught you to paint also?"
+
+"Me! Oh, no. I am only a Sister, young and of no gifts. Sister St.
+James is a great saint, and of age she has seventy years."
+
+"Not requisites for painting, either of them, that I am aware," said
+Keith. "However, if you were painting this marsh, do you not see how
+the mast of that boat makes the feature of the landscape the one human
+element; and yet, even that abandoned, merged as it were in the
+desolate wildness of the scene?"
+
+The Sister looked over the green earnestly, as if trying to see all
+that he suggested, Keith talked on. He knew that he talked well, and he
+did not confuse her with more than one subject, but dwelt upon the
+marsh: stories of men who had been lost in them, of women who had
+floated down in boats and never returned; descriptions clear as
+etchings; studies of the monotone of hues before them--one subject
+pictured over and over again, as, wishing to instruct a child, he would
+have drawn with a chalk one letter of the alphabet a hundred times,
+until the wandering eyes had learned at last to recognize and know it.
+"Do you see nothing at all, feel nothing at all?" he said. "Tell me
+exactly."
+
+Thus urged, the Sister replied that she thought she did feel the salt
+breeze a little.
+
+"Then take off that shroud and enjoy it," said Keith, extending his arm
+suddenly, and sweeping off the long veil by the corner that was nearest
+to him.
+
+"Oh!" said the little Sister; "oh!" and distressfully she covered her
+head with her hands, as if trying to shield herself from the terrible
+light of day. But the veil had gone down into the thicket, whither she
+dared not follow. She stood irresolute.
+
+"I will get it for you before the others come back," said Keith. "It is
+gone now, however, and what is more, you could not help it; so sit
+down, like a sensible creature, and enjoy the breeze."
+
+The little nun sat down, and confusedly tried to be a sensible
+creature. Her head, with its short rings of dark hair, rose childlike
+from the black gown she wore, and the breeze swept freshly over her;
+but her eyes were full of tears, and her face so pleading in its pale,
+silent distress, that at length Keith went down and brought back the
+veil.
+
+"See the cranes flying home," he said, as the long line dotted the red
+of the west. "They always seem to be flying right into the sunset,
+sensible birds."
+
+The little Sister had heard that word twice now; evidently the cranes
+were more sensible than she. She sighed as she fastened on the veil;
+there were a great many hard things out in the world, then, she
+thought. At the dear convent it was not expected that one should be as
+a crane.
+
+The other two came back at length, wet and triumphant, with their
+prize. They had stopped to bail it out, plug its cracks, mend the old
+sail after a fashion, and nothing would do but that the three should
+sail home in it; Pedro, for whom there was no room, returning by the
+way they had come. Carrington, having worked hard, was determined to
+carry out his plan; and said so.
+
+"A fine plan to give us all a wetting," remarked Keith.
+
+"You go down there and work an hour or two yourself, and see how _you_
+like it," answered the other, with the irrelevance produced by aching
+muscles and perspiration dripping from every pore.
+
+This conversation had taken place at the edge of the marsh where they
+had brought the boat up through one of the numerous channels.
+
+"Very well," said Keith. "But mind you, not a word about danger before
+the Sister. I shall have hard enough work to persuade her to come with
+us as it is."
+
+He went back to the ridge, and carelessly suggested returning home by
+water. "You will not have to go through the thicket then," he said.
+
+Somewhat to his surprise, Sister St. Luke consented immediately, and
+followed without a word as he led the way. She was mortally afraid of
+the water, but, during his absence, she had been telling her beads, and
+thinking with contrition of two obstinacies in one day: that of the
+thicket and that of the veil; she could not, she would not have three.
+So, commending herself to all the saints, she embarked.
+
+"Look here, Carrington, if ever you inveigle me into such danger again
+for a mere fool's fancy, I will show you what I think of it. You knew
+the condition of that boat, and I did not," said Keith sternly as the
+two men stood at last on the beach in front of the light-house. The
+Sister had gone within, glad to feel land underfoot once more. She had
+sat quietly in her place all the way, afraid of the water, of the wind,
+of everything, but entirely unconscious of the real danger that menaced
+them. For the little craft would not mind her helm; her mast slipped
+about erratically; the planking at the bow seemed about to give way
+altogether; and they were on a lee shore, with the tide coming in, and
+the surf beating roughly on the beach. They were both good sailors, but
+it had taken all they knew to bring the boat safely to the lighthouse.
+
+"To tell the truth, I did not think she was so crippled," said
+Carrington. "She really is a good boat for her size."
+
+"Very," said Keith sarcastically.
+
+But the younger man clung to his opinion; and in order to verify it, he
+set himself to work repairing the little craft. You would have supposed
+his daily bread depended upon her being made seaworthy by the way he
+labored. She was made over from stem to stern: a new mast, a new sail;
+and, finally, scarlet and green paint were brought over from the
+village, and out she came as brilliant as a young paroquet. Then
+Carrington took to sailing in her. Proud of his handy work, he sailed
+up and down, over to the reef, and up the inlet, and even persuaded
+Melvyna to go with him once, accompanied by the meek little Sister.
+
+"Why shouldn't you both learn how to manage her?" he said in his
+enthusiasm. "She's as easy to manage as a child----"
+
+"And as easy to tip over," replied Melvyna, screwing up her lips
+tightly and shaking her head. "You don't catch me out in her again,
+sure as my name's Sawyer."
+
+For Melvyna always remained a Sawyer in her own mind, in spite of her
+spouse's name; she could not, indeed, be anything else--_noblesse
+oblige_. But the Sister, obedient as usual, bent her eyes in turn
+upon the ropes, the mast, the sail, and the helm, while Carrington,
+waxing eloquent over his favorite science, delivered a lecture upon
+their uses and made her experiment a little to see if she comprehended.
+He used the simplest words for her benefit, words of one syllable, and
+unconsciously elevated his voice somewhat, as though that would make
+her understand better; her wits seemed to him always of the slowest.
+The Sister followed his directions and imitated his motions with
+painstaking minuteness. She did very well until a large porpoise rolled
+up his dark, glistening back close alongside, when, dropping the
+sail-rope with a scream, she crouched down at Melvyna's feet and hid
+her face in her veil. Carrington from that day could get no more
+passengers for his paroquet boat. But he sailed up and down alone in
+his little craft, and when that amusement palled he took the remainder
+of the scarlet and green paint and adorned the shells of various
+sea-crabs and other crawling things, so that the little Sister was met
+one afternoon by a whole procession of unearthly creatures, strangely
+variegated, proceeding gravely in single file down the beach from the
+pen where they had been confined. Keith pointed out to her, however,
+the probability of their being much admired in their own circles as
+long as the hues lasted, and she was comforted.
+
+They strolled down the beach now every afternoon, sometimes two,
+sometimes three, sometimes four when Melvyna had no cooking to watch,
+no bread to bake; for she rejected with scorn the omnipresent hot
+biscuit of the South, and kept her household supplied with light loaves
+in spite of the difficulties of yeast. Sister St. Luke had learned to
+endure the crabs, but she still fled from the fiddlers when they
+strayed over from their towns in the marsh; she still went carefully
+around the great jelly fish sprawling on the beach, and regarded from a
+safe distance the beautiful blue Portuguese men-of-war, stranded
+unexpectedly on the dangerous shore, all their fair voyagings over.
+Keith collected for her the brilliant sea-weeds, little flecks of color
+on the white sand, and showed her their beauties; he made her notice
+all the varieties of shells, enormous conches for the tritons to blow,
+and beds of wee pink ovals and cornucopias, plates and cups for the
+little web-footed fairies. Once he came upon a sea bean.
+
+"It has drifted over from one of the West Indian islands," he said,
+polishing it with his handkerchief--"one of the islands--let us say
+Miraprovos--a palmy tropical name, bringing up visions of a volcanic
+mountain, vast cliffs, a tangled gorgeous forest, and the soft lapping
+wash of tropical seas. Is it not so, senora?"
+
+But the senora had never heard of the West Indian islands. Being told,
+she replied, "As you say it, it is so. There is, then, much land in the
+world?"
+
+"If you keep the sea bean for ever, good will come," said Keith,
+gravely presenting it; "but if after having once accepted it, you then
+lose it, evil will fall upon you."
+
+The Sister received the amulet with believing reverence. "I will lay it
+up before the shrine of Our Lady," she said, carefully placing it in
+the little pocket over her heart, hidden among the folds of her gown,
+where she kept her most precious treasures--a bead of a rosary that had
+belonged to some saint who lived somewhere some time, a little faded
+prayer copied in the handwriting of a young nun who had died some years
+before and whom she had dearly loved, and a list of her own most
+vicious faults, to be read over and lamented daily; crying evils such
+as a perverse and insubordinate bearing, a heart froward and evil,
+gluttonous desires of the flesh, and a spirit of murderous rage. These
+were her own ideas of herself, written down at the convent. Had she not
+behaved herself perversely to the Sister Paula, with whom one should be
+always mild on account of the affliction which had sharpened her
+tongue? Had she not wrongfully coveted the cell of the novice Felipa,
+because it looked out upon the orange walk? Had she not gluttonously
+longed for more of the delectable marmalade made by the aged Sanchita?
+And worse than all, had she not, in a spirit of murderous rage, beat
+the yellow cat with a palm branch for carrying off the young doves, her
+especial charge? "Ah, my sins are great indeed," she sighed daily upon
+her knees, and smote her breast with tears.
+
+Keith watched the sea bean go into the little heart-pocket almost with
+compunction. Many of these amulets of the sea, gathered during his
+winter rambles, had he bestowed with formal warning of their magic
+powers, and many a fair hand had taken them, many a soft voice had
+promised to keep them "for ever." But he well knew they would be
+mislaid and forgotten in a day. The fair ones well knew it too, and
+each knew that the other knew, so no harm was done. But this sea bean,
+he thought, would have a different fate--laid up in some little nook
+before the shrine, a witness to the daily prayers of the simple-hearted
+little Sister. "I hope they may do it good," he thought vaguely. Then,
+reflecting that even the most depraved bean would not probably be much
+affected by the prayers, he laughed off the fancy, yet did not quite
+like to think, after all, that the prayers were of no use. Keith's
+religion, however, was in the primary rocks.
+
+Far down the beach they came upon a wreck, an old and long hidden relic
+of the past. The low sand-bluff had caved away suddenly and left a
+clean new side, where, imbedded in the lower part, they saw a ponderous
+mast. "An old Spanish galleon," said Keith, stooping to examine the
+remains. "I know it by the curious bolts. They ran ashore here,
+broadside on, in one of those sudden tornadoes they have along this
+coast once in a while, I presume. Singular! This was my very place for
+lying in the sun and letting the blaze scorch me with its clear
+scintillant splendor. I never imagined I was lying on the bones of this
+old Spaniard."
+
+"God rest the souls of the sailors," said the Sister, making the sign
+of the cross.
+
+"They have been in--wherever they are, let us say, for about three
+centuries now," observed Keith, "and must be used to it, good or bad."
+
+"Nay; but purgatory, senor."
+
+"True. I had forgotten that," said Keith.
+
+One morning there came up a dense, soft, southern-sea fog, "The kind
+you can cut with a knife," Carrington said. It lasted for days,
+sweeping out to sea at night on the land breeze, and lying in a gray
+bank low down on the horizon, and then rolling in again in the morning
+enveloping the water and the island in a thick white cloud which was
+not mist and did not seem damp even, so freshly, softly salt was the
+feeling it gave to the faces that went abroad in it. Carrington and
+Keith, of course, must needs be out in it every moment of the time.
+They walked down the beach for miles in the fog, hearing the muffled
+sound of the near waves, but not seeing them. They sailed in the fog,
+not knowing whither they went, and they drifted out at sunset and
+watched the land breeze lift it, roll it up, and carry it out to sea,
+where distant ships on the horizon line, bound southward, and nearer
+ones, sailing northward with the Gulf stream, found themselves
+enveloped for the night and bothered by their old and baffling foe.
+They went over to the reef every morning, these two, and bathed in the
+fog, coming back by sense of feeling, as it were, and landing not
+infrequently a mile below or above the light-house; then what appetites
+they had for breakfast. And if it was not ready, they roamed about
+roaring like young lions. At least that is what Melvyna said one
+morning when Carrington had put his curly head into her kitchen door
+six times in the course of one half hour.
+
+The Sister shrank from the sea fog; she had never seen one before, and
+she said it was like a great soft white creature that came in on wings,
+and brooded over the earth. "Yes, beautiful, perhaps," she said in
+reply to Keith, "but it is so strange--and--and--I know not how to say
+it--but it seems like a place for spirits to walk, and not of the
+mortal kind."
+
+They were wandering down the beach, where Keith had lured her to listen
+to the sound of the hidden waves. At that moment Carrington loomed into
+view coming toward them. He seemed of giant size as he appeared, passed
+them, and disappeared again into the cloud behind, his voice sounding
+muffled as he greeted them. The Sister shrank nearer to her companion
+as the figure had suddenly made itself visible. "Do you know it is a
+wonder to me how you have ever managed to live, so far?" said Keith
+smiling.
+
+"But it was not far," said the little nun. "Nothing was ever far at the
+dear convent, but everything was near, and not of strangeness to make
+one afraid; the garden wall was the end. There we go not outside, but
+our walk is always from the lime tree to the white rosebush and back
+again. Everything we know there--not roar of waves, not strong wind,
+not the thick, white air comes to give us fear, but all is still and at
+peace. At night I dream of the organ, and of the orange trees, and of
+the doves. I wake, and hear only the sound of the great water below."
+
+"You will go back," said Keith.
+
+He had begun to pity her lately, for her longing was deeper than he had
+supposed. It had its roots in her very being. He had studied her and
+found it so.
+
+"She will die of pure homesickness if she stays here much longer," he
+said to Carrington, "What do you think of our writing down to that old
+convent and offering--of course unknown to her--to pay the little she
+costs them, if they will take her back?"
+
+"All right," said Carrington. "Go ahead."
+
+He was making a larger sail for his paroquet boat. "If none of you will
+go out in her, I might as well have all the sport I can," he said.
+
+"Sport to consist in being swamped?" Keith asked.
+
+"By no means, croaker. Sport to consist in shooting over the water like
+a rocket; I sitting on the tilted edge, watching the waves, the winds,
+and the clouds, and hearing the water sing as we rush along."
+
+Keith took counsel with no one else, not even with Melvyna, but
+presently he wrote his letter and carried it himself over to the
+village to mail. He did good deeds like that once in a while, "to help
+humanity," he said; they were tangible always, like the primary rocks.
+
+At length one evening the fog rolled out to sea for good and all, at
+least as far as the shore was concerned. In the morning there stood the
+light-house, and the island, and the reef, just the same as ever.
+Someway they had almost expected to see them altered or melted a
+little.
+
+"Let us go over to the reef, all of us, and spend the day," said Keith.
+"It will do us good to breathe the clear air, and feel the brilliant,
+dry, hot sunshine again."
+
+"Hear the man!" said Melvyna laughing. "After trying to persuade us all
+those days that he liked that sticky fog too!"
+
+"Mme. Gonsalvez, we like a lily; but is that any reason why we may not
+also like a rose?"
+
+"Neither of 'em grows on this beach as I'm aware of," answered Melvyna
+dryly.
+
+Then Carrington put in his voice, and carried the day. Women never
+resisted Carrington long, but yielded almost unconsciously to the
+influence of his height, and his strength, and his strong, hearty will.
+A subtler influence over them, however, would have waked resistance,
+and Carrington himself would have been conquered far sooner (and was
+conquered later) by one who remained unswayed by those mere outer
+influences, to which the crowd of fair ones, however, paid involuntary
+obeisance.
+
+Pedro had gone to the village for his supplies and his two days of mild
+Minorcan dissipation, and Melvyna, beguiled and cajoled by the chaffing
+of the two young men, at last consented, and not only packed the
+lunch-basket with careful hand, but even donned for the occasion her
+"best bonnet," a structure trimmed in Vermont seven years before by the
+experienced hand of Miss Althy Spears, the village milliner, who had
+adorned it with a durable green ribbon and a vigorous wreath of
+artificial flowers. Thus helmeted, Mme. Gonsalvez presided at the stern
+of the boat with great dignity. For they were in the safe
+well-appointed little yacht belonging to the two gentlemen, the daring
+paroquet having been left at home tied to the last of a low heap of
+rocks that jutted out into the water in front of the light-house, the
+only remains of the old stone dock built by the Spaniards long before.
+Sister St. Luke was with them of course, gentle and frightened as
+usual. Her breath came quickly as they neared the reef, and Carrington
+with a sure hand guided the little craft outside into the surf, and
+rounding a point, landed them safely in a miniature harbor he had noted
+there. Keith had counted the days, and felt sure that the answer from
+the convent would come soon. His offer--for he had made it his alone
+without Carrington's aid--had been munificent; there could be but one
+reply. The little Sister would soon go back to the lime tree, the white
+rosebush, the doves, the old organ that was "so large"--all the quiet
+routine of the life she loved so well; and they would see her small
+oval face and timid dark eyes no more for ever. So he took her for a
+last walk down the reef, while Melvyna made coffee, and Carrington,
+having noticed a dark line floating on the water, immediately went out
+in the boat, of course to see what it was.
+
+The reef had its high backbone, like the island. Some day it would be
+the island with another reef outside, and the light-house beach would
+belong to the mainland. Down the stretch of sand toward the sea the
+pelicans stood in rows, toeing a mark, solemn and heavy, by the
+hundreds--a countless number--for the reef was their gathering place.
+
+"They are holding a conclave," said Keith. "That old fellow has the
+floor. See him wag his head."
+
+In and out among the pelicans, and paying no attention to them and
+their conclave, sped the sickle-bill curlews, actively probing
+everywhere with their long, grotesque, sickle-shaped bills; and woe be
+to the burrowing things that came in their way. The red-beaked oyster
+bird flew by, and close down to the sea skimmed the razor-bill
+shear-water, with his head bent forward and his feet tilted up, just
+grazing the water with his open bill as he flew, and leaving a shining
+mark behind, as though he held a pencil in his mouth and was running a
+line. The lazy gulls, who had no work to do, and would not have done it
+if they had, rode at ease on the little wavelets close in shore. The
+Sister, being asked, confessed that she liked the lazy gulls best.
+Being pressed to say why, she thought it was because they were more
+like the white doves that sat on the old stone well-curb in the convent
+garden.
+
+Keith had always maintained that he liked to talk to women. He said
+that the talk of any woman was more piquant than the conversation of
+the most brilliant men. There was only one obstacle: the absolute
+inability of the sex to be sincere, or to tell the truth, for ten
+consecutive minutes. To-day, however, as he wandered to and fro whither
+he would on the reef, he also wandered to and fro whither he would in
+the mind, and the absolutely truthful mind too, of a woman. Yet he
+found it dull! He sighed to himself, but was obliged to acknowledge
+that it _was_ dull. The lime tree, the organ, the Sisters, the Sisters,
+the lime tree, the organ; it grew monotonous after a while. Yet he held
+his post, for the sake of the old theory, until the high voice of
+Melvyna called them back to the little fire on the beach and the white
+cloth spread with her best dainties. They saw Carrington sailing in
+with an excited air, and presently he brought the boat into the cove
+and dragged ashore his prize, towed behind--nothing less than a large
+shark, wounded, dead, after a struggle with some other marine monster,
+a sword fish probably. "A man-eater," announced the captor. "Look at
+him, will you? Look at him, Miss Luke!"
+
+But Miss Luke went far away, and would not look. In truth he was an
+ugly creature; even Melvyna kept at a safe distance. But the two men
+noted all his points; they measured him carefully; they turned him
+over, and discussed him generally in that closely confined and
+exhaustive way which marks the masculine mind. Set two women to
+discussing a shark, or even the most lovely little brook trout, if you
+please, and see how far off they will be in fifteen minutes!
+
+But the lunch was tempting, and finally its discussion called them away
+even from that of the shark. And then they all sailed homeward over the
+green and blue water, while the white sand hills shone silvery before
+them, and then turned red in the sunset. That night the moon was at its
+full. Keith went out and strolled up and down on the beach. Carrington
+was playing fox-and-goose with Mme. Gonsalvez on a board he had
+good-naturedly constructed for her entertainment when she confessed one
+day to a youthful fondness for that exciting game. Up stairs gleamed
+the little Sister's light. "Saying her prayers with her lips, but
+thinking all the time of that old convent," said the stroller to
+himself, half scornfully. And he said the truth.
+
+The sea was still and radiant; hardly more than a ripple broke at his
+feet; the tide was out, and the broad beach silvery and fresh. "At home
+they are buried in snow," he thought, "and the wind, is whistling
+around their double windows." And then he stretched himself on the
+sand, and lay looking upward into the deep blue of the night, bathed in
+the moonlight, and listening dreamily to the soft sound of the water as
+it returned slowly, slowly back from the African coast. He thought many
+thoughts, and deep ones too, for his mind was of a high order; and at
+last he was so far away on ideal heights that, coming home after
+midnight, it was no wonder if, half unconsciously, he felt himself
+above the others; especially when he passed the little Sister's closed
+door, and thought, smiling not unkindly, how simple she was.
+
+The next morning the two men went off in their boat again for the day,
+this time alone. There were still a few more questions to settle about
+that shark, and, to tell the truth, they both liked a good day of
+unencumbered sailing better than anything else.
+
+About four o'clock in the afternoon Melvyna, happening to look out of
+the door, saw a cloud no bigger than a man's hand low down on the
+horizon line of the sea. Something made her stand and watch it for a
+few moments. Then, "Miss Luke! Miss Luke! Miss Luke! Miss Luke!" she
+called quickly. Down came the little Sister, startled at the cry, her
+lace work still in her hand.
+
+"Look!" said Melvyna.
+
+The Sister looked, and this is what she saw: a line white as milk
+coming toward them on the water, and behind it a blackness.
+
+"What is it?" she asked.
+
+"A tornader," said Melvyna with white lips. "I've only seen one, and
+then I was over in the town; but it's awful! We must run back to the
+thicket," Seizing her companion's arm, the strong Northern woman
+hurried her across the sand, through the belt of sand hills, and into
+the thicket, where they crouched on its far side close down under the
+protecting backbone. "The bushes will break the sand, and the ridge
+will keep us from being buried in it," she said. "I dursn't stay on the
+shore, for the water'll rise."
+
+The words were hardly spoken before the tornado was upon them, and the
+air was filled with the flying sand, so that they could hardly breathe.
+Half choked, they beat with their hands before them to catch a breath.
+Then came a roar, and for an instant, distant as they were, they caught
+a glimpse of the crest of the great wave that followed the whirlwind.
+It seemed to them mountains high, and ready to engulf the entire land.
+With a rushing sound it plunged over the keeper's house, broke against
+the lower story of the tower, hissed across the sand, swallowed the
+sand hills, and swept to their very feet, then sullenly receded with
+slow, angry muttering. A gale of wind came next, singularly enough from
+another direction, as if to restore the equipoise of the atmosphere.
+But the tornado had gone on inland, where there were trees to uproot,
+and houses to destroy, and much finer entertainment generally.
+
+As soon as they could speak, "Where are the two out in the sail boat?"
+asked the Sister.
+
+"God knows!" answered Melvyna. "The last time I noticed their sail they
+were about a mile outside of the reef."
+
+"I will go and see."
+
+"Go and see! Are you crazy? You can never get through that water."
+
+"The saints would help me, I think," said the little Sister.
+
+She had risen, and now stood regarding the watery waste with the usual
+timid look in her gentle eyes. Then she stepped forward with her
+uncertain tread, and before the woman by her side comprehended her
+purpose she was gone, ankle-deep in the tide, knee-deep, and finally
+wading across the sand up to her waist in water toward the light-house.
+The great wave was no deeper, however, even there. She waded to the
+door of the tower, opened it with difficulty, climbed the stairway, and
+gained the light room, where the glass of the windows was all
+shattered, and the little chamber half full of the dead bodies of
+birds, swept along by the whirlwind and dashed against the tower, none
+of them falling to the ground or losing an inch of their level in the
+air as they sped onward, until they struck against some high object,
+which broke their mad and awful journey. Holding on by the shattered
+casement, Sister St. Luke gazed out to sea. The wind was blowing
+fiercely and the waves were lashed to fury. The sky was inky black. The
+reef was under water, save one high knob of its backbone, and to that
+two dark objects were clinging. Further down she saw the wreck of the
+boat driving before the gale. Pedro was over in the village; the tide
+was coming in over the high sea, and night was approaching. She walked
+quickly down the rough stone stairs, stepped into the water again, and
+waded across where the paroquet boat had been driven against the wall
+of the house, baled it out with one of Melvyna's pans, and then,
+climbing in from the window of the sitting-room, she hoisted the sail,
+and in a moment was out on the dark sea.
+
+Melvyna had ascended to the top of the ridge, and when the sail came
+into view beyond the house she fell down on her knees and began to pray
+aloud: "Oh, Lord, save her; save the lamb! She don't know what's she is
+doing, Lord. She's as simple as a baby. Oh, save her, out on that
+roaring sea! Good Lord, good Lord, deliver her!" Fragments of prayers
+she had heard in her prayer-meeting days came confusedly back into her
+mind, and she repeated them all again and again, wringing her hands as
+she saw the little craft tilt far over under its all too large sail, so
+that several times, in the hollows of the waves, she thought it was
+gone. The wind was blowing hard but steadily, and in a direction that
+carried the boat straight toward the reef; no tacks were necessary, no
+change of course; the black-robed little figure simply held the sail
+rope, and the paroquet drove on. The two clinging to the rock, bruised,
+exhausted, with the waves rising and falling around them, did not see
+the boat until it was close upon them.
+
+"By the great heavens!" said Keith.
+
+His face was pallid and rigid, and there was a ghastly cut across his
+forehead, the work of the sharp-edged rock. The next moment he was on
+board, brought the boat round just in time, and helped in Carrington,
+whose right arm was injured.
+
+"You have saved our lives, senora," he said abruptly.
+
+"By Jove, yes," said Carrington. "We could not have stood it long, and
+night was coming." Then they gave all their attention to the hazardous
+start.
+
+Sister St. Luke remained unconscious of the fact that she had done
+anything remarkable. Her black gown was spoiled, which was a pity, and
+she knew of a balm which was easily compounded and which would heal
+their bruises. Did they think Melvyna had come back to the house yet?
+And did they know that all her dishes were broken--yes, even the cups
+with the red flowers on the border? Then she grew timorous again, and
+hid her face from the sight of the waves.
+
+Keith said not a word, but sailed the boat, and it was a wild and
+dangerous voyage they made, tacking up and down in the gayly painted
+little craft, that seemed like a toy on that angry water. Once
+Carrington took the little Sister's hand in his, and pressed his lips
+fervently upon it. She had never had her hand kissed before, and looked
+at him, then at the place, with a vague surprise, which soon faded,
+however, into the old fear of the wind. It was night when at last they
+reached the light-house; but during the last two tacks they had a light
+from the window to guide them; and when nearly in they saw the lantern
+shining out from the shattered windows of the tower in a fitful,
+surprised sort of a way, for Melvyna had returned, and with the true
+spirit of a Yankee, had immediately gone to work at the ruins.
+
+The only sign of emotion she gave was to Keith. "I saw it all," she
+said. "That child went right out after you, in that terrible wind, as
+natural and as quiet as if she was only going across the room. And she
+so timid a fly could frighten her! Mark my words, Mr. Keith, the good
+Lord helped her to do it! And I'll go to that new mission chapel over
+in the town every Sunday after this, as sure's my name is Sawyer!" She
+ceased abruptly, and going into her kitchen, slammed the door behind
+her. Emotion with Melvyna took the form of roughness.
+
+Sister St. Luke went joyfully back to her convent the next day, for
+Pedro, when he returned, brought the letter, written, as Keith had
+directed, in the style of an affectionate invitation. The little nun
+wept for happiness when she read it. "You see how they love me--love me
+as I love them," she repeated with innocent triumph again and again.
+
+"It is all we can do," said Keith. "She could not be happy anywhere
+else, and with the money behind her she will not be neglected. Besides,
+I really believe they do love her. The sending here up here was
+probably the result of some outside dictation."
+
+Carrington, however, was dissatisfied. "A pretty return we make for our
+saved lives," he said. "I hate ingratitude." For Carrington was half
+disposed now to fall in love with his preserver.
+
+But Keith stood firm.
+
+"Adios," said the little Sister, as Pedro's boat received her. Her face
+had lighted so with joy and glad anticipation that they hardly knew
+her. "I wish you could to the convent go with me," she said earnestly
+to the two young men. "I am sure you would like it." Then, as the boat
+turned the point, "I am sure you would like it," she called back,
+crossing her hands on her breast. "It is very heavenly there--very
+heavenly."
+
+That was the last they saw of her.
+
+Carrington sent down the next winter from New York a large silver
+crucifix, superbly embossed and ornamented. It was placed on the high
+altar of the convent, and much admired and reverenced by all the nuns.
+Sister St. Luke admired it too. She spoke of the island occasionally,
+but she did not tell the story of the rescue. She never thought of it.
+Therefore, in the matter of the crucifix, the belief was that a special
+grace had touched the young man's heart. And prayers were ordered for
+him. Sister St. Luke tended her doves, and at the hour of meditation
+paced to and fro between the lime tree and the bush of white roses.
+When she was thirty years old her cup was full, for then she was
+permitted to take lessons and play a little upon the old organ.
+
+Melvyna went every Sunday to the bare, struggling little Presbyterian
+mission over in the town, and she remains to this day a Sawyer.
+
+But Keith remembered. He bares his head silently in reverence to all
+womanhood, and curbs his cynicism as best he can, for the sake of the
+little Sister--the sweet little Sister St. Luke.
+
+CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON.
+
+
+
+
+CLEOPATRA'S SOLILOQUY.
+
+
+    What care I for the tempest? What care I for the rain?
+    If it beat upon my bosom, would it cool its burning pain--
+    This pain that ne'er has left me since on his heart I lay,
+    And sobbed my grief at parting as I'd sob my soul away?
+    O Antony! Antony! Antony! when in thy circling arms
+    Shall I sacrifice to Eros my glorious woman's charms,
+    And burn life's sweetest incense before his sacred shrine
+    With the living fire that flashes from thine eyes into mine?
+    O when shall I feel thy kisses rain down upon my face,
+    As, a queen of love and beauty, I lie in thine embrace,
+    Melting--melting--melting, as a woman only can
+    When she's a willing captive in the conquering arms of man,
+    As he towers a god above her, and to yield is not defeat,
+    For love can own no victor if love with love shall meet?
+    I still have regal splendor, I still have queenly power,
+    And--more than all--unfaded is woman's glorious dower.
+    But what care I for pleasure? what's beauty to me now,
+    Since Love no longer places his crown upon my brow?
+    I have tasted its elixir, its fire has through me flashed,
+    But when the wine glowed brightest from my eager lip 'twas dashed.
+    And I would give all Egypt but once to feel the bliss
+    Which thrills through all my being whene'er I meet his kiss.
+    The tempest wildly rages, my hair is wet with rain,
+    But it does not still my longing, or cool my burning pain.
+    For Nature's storms are nothing to the raging of my soul
+    When it burns with jealous frenzy beyond a queen's control.
+    I fear not pale Octavia--that haughty Roman dame--
+    My lion of the desert--my Antony can tame.
+    I fear no Persian beauty, I fear no Grecian maid:
+    The world holds not the woman of whom I am afraid.
+    But I'm jealous of the rapture I tasted in his kiss,
+    And I would not that another should share with me that bliss.
+    No joy would I deny him, let him cull it where he will,
+    So, mistress of his bosom is Cleopatra still;
+    So that he feels for ever, when he Love's nectar sips,
+    'Twas sweeter--sweeter--sweeter when tasted on my lips;
+    So that all other kisses, since he has drawn in mine,
+    Shall be unto my loved as "water after wine."
+    Awhile let Caesar fancy Octavia's pallid charms
+    Can hold Rome's proudest consul a captive in her arms.
+    Her cold embrace but brightens the memory of mine,
+    And for my warm caresses he in her arms shall pine.
+    'Twas not for love he sought her, but for her princely dower;
+    She brought him Caesar's friendship, she brought him kingly power.
+    I should have bid him take her, had he my counsel sought.
+    I've but to smile upon him, and all her charms are nought;
+    For I would scorn to hold him by but a single hair,
+    Save his own longing for me when I'm no longer there;
+    And I will show you, Roman, that for one kiss from me
+    Wife--fame--and even honor to him shall nothing be!
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+    Throw wide the window, Isis--fling perfumes o'er me now,
+    And bind the Lotus blossoms again upon my brow.
+    The rain has ceased its weeping, the driving storm is past,
+    And calm are Nature's pulses that lately beat so fast.
+    Gone is my jealous frenzy, and Eros reigns serene,
+    The only god e'er worshipped by Egypt's haughty queen.
+    With Antony--my loved--I'll kneel before his shrine
+    Till the loves of Mars and Venus are nought to his and mine;
+    And down through coming ages, in every land and tongue,
+    With them shall Cleopatra and Antony be sung.
+    Burn Sandal-wood and Cassia, let the vapor round me wreathe,
+    And mingle with the incense the Lotus blossoms breathe.
+    Let India's spicy odors and Persia's perfumes rare
+    Be wafted on the pinions of Egypt's fragrant air.
+    With the sighing of the night breeze, the river's rippling flow,
+    Let me hear the notes of music in cadence soft and low.
+    Draw round my couch its curtains: I'd bathe my soul in sleep;
+    I feel its gentle languor upon me slowly creep.
+    O let me cheat my senses with dreams of future bliss,
+    In fancy feel his presence, in fancy taste his kiss,
+    In fancy nestle closely against his throbbing heart,
+    And throw my arms around him, no more--no more to part.
+    Hush! hush! his spirit's pinions are rustling in my ears:
+    He comes upon the tempest to calm my jealous fears;
+    He comes upon the tempest in answer to my call.
+    Wife--fame--and even honor--for me he leaves them all;
+    And royally I'll welcome my lover to my side.
+    I have won him--I have won him from Caesar and his bride.
+
+MARY BAYARD CLARKE.
+
+
+
+
+THE DRAMATIC CANONS.
+
+II.
+
+
+In our late inquiry[2] into the secrets of dramatic success, our
+researches were principally directed toward the ascertainment of such
+general and technical rules as might recommend themselves for the
+treatment of all dramas, whatever the nature of their subject, tragic,
+comic, or melodramatic. The limits of space unavoidable in a magazine
+article prevented anything more than a fragmentary treatment of that
+part of the subject, indicating the general line of argument that
+seemed to be the soundest in the light of the present day, and
+presenting for consideration twelve technical rules, more or less
+general, which we shall here summarize for the sake of convenience, to
+make clear what follows:
+
+      [2] "The Galaxy" for March, 1877.
+
+   I. The subject of a play should be capable of full treatment in fifteen
+scenes at most.
+
+  II. It should be acted without the aid of narrative.
+
+ III. It should have a connected plot, one event depending on the other.
+
+  IV. The interest should hinge on a single action or episode.
+
+   V. Furniture and set-pieces should be kept out of front scenes if
+possible.
+
+  VI. The best dialogue should be put in front scenes.
+
+ VII. They should end in suspense to be relieved by the full scenes.
+
+VIII. Fine points should be avoided in opening a play.
+
+  IX. Act I. should open with a quiet picture, to be disturbed by the bad
+element, the other characters successively coming in, the excitement
+increasing.
+
+   X. Act I. should end in a partial climax of suspense.
+
+  XI. Each act should lead to the other, the interest increasing.
+
+ XII. The interest should be concentrated on few characters.
+
+The reasons for some of these arbitrary rules will appear plain to even
+a cursory observer. The others will recommend themselves, I think,
+after an examination of the models cited in the article itself, to
+which the reader is referred. It must not be supposed, however, even by
+the lay reader, that a subject so extensive can be exhausted in so
+short an essay. Old actors and dramatists, in the light of their own
+experience, may even doubt whether a theme so abstruse and difficult
+can be treated at all, save by one of lifelong experience, and may be
+inclined to sneer at the presumption of any person who attempts to
+write on methods of attaining dramatic success before having attained
+it himself by a grandly popular drama. It seems to the present writer,
+however, that the inquiry is open to all, and if conducted on the
+inductive method, with plays of acknowledged popularity for a basis,
+may result in the settlement of some points around which he, in common
+with other hitherto unsuccessful dramatists, has been groping for
+years.
+
+In closing the first part of our inquiry, we remarked on the fact that
+the interest of a successful play increases gradually from act to act,
+and that it is usually concentrated on a few people. The next question
+that presents itself in our treatment of the play as a whole is as to
+the best method of attaining this increase of interest from act to act,
+and how it is done in successful plays. The suggestion in rule X. seems
+to be the one most generally used by old dramatists for this
+purpose--that is, the employment of the partial climax as a means of
+exciting suspense. It may be said to be one of the most difficult
+points in dramatic construction to decide when to bring the curtain
+down at the end of a play; and the fall of the drop at the end of each
+act offers nearly equal difficulties. Is there any guide to a solution
+of this question in the handling of well-known plays? If there is, let
+us endeavor to find it.
+
+The first thing to be remarked is that we cannot apply to Shakespeare
+for the information. The experience of nearly three centuries in the
+acting of Shakespeare's plays has resulted in making the acting
+editions very different from the original plays in arrangement, in
+the suppression of whole scenes and acts, the substitution of others,
+the amalgamation of plays, the taking of all sorts of liberties with
+the action. Only in one thing do they remain at all times faithful to
+the original author, in the preservation, for the most part, of his
+language. Familiar instances will occur in the "Merchant of Venice,"
+where the play is now always closed with the trial scene; a few
+sentences between Bassanio and Portia, clumsily tacked on, being
+regarded as preferable to the original closing in a final act of light
+comedy. The amalgamation, in the acting edition of "Richard III.," of
+parts of "Henry V." and "Henry VI.," and the suppression of the
+historical ending after Richard's death, were changes made by Colley
+Cibber, which have stood the test of time, and have made the play a
+traditional success whenever well acted. In each case experience
+showed that the following up of a scene of tragic intensity by either
+comedy or narrative made the scene drag. In other words, it was an
+_anti-climax_.
+
+It is noticeable, by the by, that these instances of clumsy construction
+and consequent alteration occur most frequently in Shakespeare's
+historic dramas, where he was fettered by familiar facts, and thought
+less of the play than of the chronicle. Such plays of his as deal with
+popular legend or stories, already polished by tradition into poetic
+justice, and moulded by instinct into a dramatic form, have suffered
+much less in the adaptation; some, such as "Midsummer Night's Dream,"
+"As You Like It," hardly needing alteration. While I do not suppose
+that in these or any other play Shakespeare consciously worked on any
+philosophic principle of construction, previously thought out, it is
+evident that his artistic instinct, left to itself, prevented his
+making any serious mistakes in technique, a matter which has advanced
+considerably since his day. I believe that, had Shakespeare lived
+to-day, he would have written much more perfectly constructed acting
+plays, while at the same time his vast knowledge, or rather lightning
+appreciation of the various phases of human nature, would have been
+just as great. When he wrote, the English drama was in its infancy, but
+three centuries of actors, managers, scene painters, and carpenters
+have made great advances in technical experience since those days; and
+no genius, however great in the essentials of painting the passions,
+can to-day attain success if ignorant of the technical secrets of
+managing scenes. We have noticed the changes made in "Richard" and the
+"Merchant of Venice," to avoid the anti-climax. Let us take a modern
+stock play, the "Lady of Lyons," to illustrate the opposite of dramatic
+construction. The first act ends with Claude scornfully rejected by
+Pauline, burning for revenge, offered a chance, ready to grasp it. Down
+goes the drop. The second act closes with his revenge almost completed,
+his remorse beginning. He is _going_ to be married--_not married yet_.
+Down goes the drop. Third act--he is married, and his remorse has come.
+He has deceived a loving woman, and resolves to atone by giving her up.
+Down goes the drop on his resolve, still unaccomplished. Fourth act--he
+expiates his crime and sees a chance to regain happiness after a long,
+weary probation. Again the drop falls on a _suspense_. The question
+is--Will he stand the test, and will Pauline be faithful? The fifth act
+opens in gloom, and closes with the reward of virtue and punishment of
+vice. The reader will mark in each case how the acts end in suspense,
+and how, as soon as the suspense is clearly indicated, down comes the
+drop. This was Bulwer's first successful play, and we shall come to it
+again in looking at the inner secrets that guide the motives of a
+drama. The good construction of the "Lady of Lyons" and the faulty
+original construction of the "Merchant of Venice" must not blind us to
+the fact that Shylock was the work of a lofty genius, Claude merely the
+polished production of a man of talent and erudition. From the preface
+to "The Caxtons," and other sources, we know that Bulwer was fond of
+ascertaining rules and principles, and that he always did good work
+when once he had found them out. Shakespeare as clearly worked from
+pure instinct, and defied almost all rules, except to hold "the mirror
+up to nature." Could we only join to-day the brains of old William and
+the research and learning of old "Lytton," what a drama might we have
+at last! But lest we further wander away from our theme, it is time to
+propose the canon which the reader must by this time have anticipated
+as self-evident:
+
+XIII. Avoid anti-climax. When you have reached suspense bring down the
+drop or close the scene. When the last climax has come bring down the
+curtain.
+
+Before passing to the more particular secrets of handling scenes in a
+dramatic success, one other general point remains to be treated, which
+is the respective merits of Greek and Gothic dramatic construction, as
+developed, in modern times, into the French and English methods. The
+distinction is broad and simple. The French write all their plays, or
+almost all, in single-scene acts, and never employ front scenes in a
+regular play; the English of the old school use front scenes, and
+multiply the divisions of an act into as many as five in some
+instances. Each method has its strong and weak points. The French
+method is apt to become stiff and formal, the English to fritter away
+the action of the drama into a mass of subordinate pictures. On the
+other hand, the French method gives a degree of realism to each act in
+a drama to which it cannot pretend where the scenes are shifted. Each
+act becomes a living picture, revealed by the rising of the curtain and
+closed by its fall. As long as it lasts it is perfect, and every year
+of advance in the mechanical part of theatricals increases the
+resources of the stage in the direction of realism. In interiors
+particularly the advance has become very great, since the general
+introduction of box scenes, with a regular ceiling and walls,
+simulating the appearance of a room with complete fidelity. Such a
+scene is barely practicable and always clumsy if set in sight of the
+audience, and its removal is hardly possible, save as hidden by the
+curtain. Open-air scenes may be enriched with all sorts of heavy
+set-pieces, when acts are composed of one scene, which must be
+dispensed with if the scenes are numerous, or their removal will entail
+such a noise as seriously to disturb the illusion. The removal of
+scenes, moreover, always disturbs, more or less, the action of a drama,
+and unless that action be very complex, requiring several sets of
+characters, to be introduced in different places simultaneously, is
+unwise.
+
+On the other hand, the breaking up of acts into three or more scenes
+offers one great advantage, that of variety, and prevents many a play
+from dragging. If there are two sets of characters in a play, the
+virtuous and the wicked, it is a very good device to keep them apart,
+acting simultaneously in different scenes, during the action of a play,
+to be brought together only at the climax; and such a method has been
+employed by the best artists, with a gain in interest that could not
+have been obtained with the single-scene act for a basis.
+
+The greatest masters of dramatic construction that have made their
+appearance in the present century are probably Bulwer Lytton and Dion
+Boucicault; and each has left good examples of treatment in both
+schools. Bulwer, in the "Lady of Lyons" and "Richelieu," both romantic
+plays, with the regular villanous element, has used the front scene to
+advantage wherever he found it necessary. In "Money," on the other
+hand, a scientific comedy of the very first order, the five pictures
+succeed each other with no disturbance but that of the curtain. The
+plot of "Money," be it observed, is quite simple, the characters few,
+the intention that of the old Greek comedy--a satire on manners.
+
+Boucicault, in his latest success--the "Shaughraun"--and in his other
+Irish dramas, notably the "Colleen Bawn," uses three and even five
+scenes in an act, with perfect freedom, while in others, almost as
+successful in their day, such as "Jessie Brown," "Octoroon," the French
+form seemed to him to be preferable. Some principle must have guided
+him in this distinction, as it did Bulwer, and the same elements
+probably decided both to tell one story in one way, the other in
+another. It is observable that both treat a romantic and complicated
+story, with numerous characters and considerable of the villanous
+element, in numerous scenes, whereas a realistic picture of actual
+manners, such as "Money," "Octoroon," "Jessie Brown," falls naturally
+into few scenes. The climax of each of these last mentioned plays, be
+it observed, is produced by the operation of general causes, the laws
+of society in "Money" and "Octoroon," the operation of a historical
+fact in "Jessie Brown," while in the romantic plays the climax depends
+on the action of the characters, determined by accidental
+circumstances, irrespective of general laws. The respective rank of
+"Money" and the "Lady of Lyons" in the lapse of years can hardly, I
+think, be doubted. The first will hold its own with the "School for
+Scandal," when the "Lady of Lyons" is forgotten, along with "The
+Duenna." The recent success of Augustin Daly in adapting the "School
+for Scandal" to mono-scenic acts shows how readily that form lends
+itself to the exigencies of legitimate comedy. The single fault of that
+adaptation is that the first act drags, just as Sardou's first acts
+always drag, but the audience forgets that as the story progresses. The
+result of our ramble through the instances mentioned seems to be this
+canon:
+
+XIV. Mono-scenic acts are best for high comedy, realistic and society
+dramas; multi-scenic acts succeed best with romantic and complicated
+plots.
+
+We have now explored, with more or less success, some of the general
+and broad principles that underlie dramatic construction taken as a
+whole, without regard to particular forms and instances. It would seem
+that a brief excursion into the domain of particulars may not be out of
+place, partly as a recreation, partly to test the accuracy of our past
+conclusions. Let us take, for instance, the greatest popular successes
+of late years, and try to find wherein lies their secret, following
+these by an inquiry into the cause why some stock plays hold the boards
+while others are dead. What is the secret of the "Black Crook"? Of
+Boucicault's Irish dramas? Of Bulwer's renowned trio, "Lady of Lyons,"
+"Richelieu," "Money"? Of "School for Scandal" and "Rivals"? Of "Richard
+III.," "Macbeth," "Othello," "Lear," "Hamlet," and the Shakespeare
+comedies? I put out of the question now such plays as the "Dundreary"
+drama, depending as those do on a different element of success, apart
+from the drama itself, to which we shall come before we finish.
+
+First, what is the secret of the "Black Crook"? No other drama ever had
+such a run in the United States, in spite of all sorts of abuse, in
+spite of numerous literary faults, and it has always succeeded wherever
+it has been properly put on the stage. What is its secret? The
+stereotyped answer of the disappointed dramatist and carping newspaper
+critic used to be "legs"; but that answer will not do now. There have
+been plenty of "leg" dramas put on since that day, and as far as the
+display of feminine anatomy is concerned, the "Black Crook" was a
+paragon of prudery compared with many of its followers; yet they only
+ran a few weeks, while the "Black Crook" ran nearly three years, all
+over the Union, with hardly a serious break. It was not the dancing,
+for we have had better since, as far as gymnastics are concerned; it
+was not the dresses and scenery, for both have been excelled since that
+day; it was not the beauty of the tableaux, for they also have been
+excelled; it was something in the drama itself, quite different from
+its predecessors and followers. The "Black Crook" was a strong,
+exaggerated melodrama, with plenty of the weird element in the
+incantation scene, relieved by the broadest of broad farce in the
+person of the magician's comic slave. It was full of _variety_. There
+was a little of everything, and nothing very long at one time. When it
+first came out I remember very young gentlemen making learned
+criticisms on the powerful acting of the man who played the "Black
+Crook" himself. The same class also raved about the "terrible"
+incantation scene, which was worked up till the passion was torn to
+tatters. But I feel convinced that the incantation scene, the dances,
+the novelty of ladies in tights, would have failed to make the "Black
+Crook" a success but for the broad humor and farce of that comic slave
+and the old housekeeper and steward. That humor was so simple, so like
+the well remembered ringmaster and clown of our childhood, that we all
+laughed at it, wise as well as foolish. I remember well during the
+second run of the venerable Herzog and his slave, talking to a very
+acute and learned gentleman--a man of the world too--who actually had
+never seen the "Black Crook" till the previous evening, and he was
+convulsed with laughter every time he recalled the figure of the man
+who shouts, "I want to go home!" That figure remained with him out of
+all the play, in his memory, as something irresistibly comic, just as
+the weird and uncanny elements remained with the minds of smaller
+calibre. For the children who saw it, I will venture to say that the
+parts which pleased them most were the parts which made the success of
+the play, the obtrusion of broad farce in one place, the beauty of the
+grotto scene and really poetical dancing of Bonfanti in another.
+Strange that of all the dancers, many more agile and supple, no one
+should ever have replaced Bonfanti, or even come near her in the "Black
+Crook." She gave the play what it lacked, poetical beauty and grace,
+and thus completed the secret of its success, which was--_variety_. Its
+rivals and followers tried to beat up the narrow channel that leads to
+public favor, in one or two long tacks, and ended by running aground,
+while the "Black Crook" kept hands at the braces all the time, and
+"went about" as often as the water showed a symptom of shoaling.
+
+The same secret of _variety_ accounts for the great success of
+Boucicault's Irish dramas as compared with those of other dramatists,
+and even with his own plays on other subjects. The regular
+old-fashioned Irish drama had interest only to an Irishman. It dealt
+with rebellions of half a century and more gone by, stamped out, and in
+which few took interest outside of Ireland. A certain element, that of
+traditional abuse of the traditional Briton, who was supposed to be
+always wandering over the United States with his pockets full of
+_Berrritish gold_, trying to corrupt patriotic Americans and regain
+King George's colonies, gave a certain interest to the Irish drama in
+America for the half century before the dedication of the Bunker Hill
+monument, but that faded out as time obliterated early jealousies. Then
+came Boucicault and did a wonderful thing, taking hackneyed and
+ridiculous Fenianism and making out of it one of the greatest successes
+of modern times, that bids fair to remain a stock play for years--the
+"Shaughraun." In "Arrah-na-Pogue" he took the old thin story of the
+Irish patriot of '98, and achieved an equal success, while in the
+"Colleen Bawn" he made a tremendous hit with even poorer materials. The
+secret of the success of all three plays is found in _variety_,
+produced by contrasting the broad unctuous humor and sharp wit of the
+Irish peasant, familiar to the English-speaking world, with the quiet
+delicacy and refinement of the Irish upper classes, by using a few
+strong melodramatic situations, but nothing very long, the pathos
+always relieved by humor before it drags. The whole play--any of the
+three--rattles off without a hitch. In the last and most perfect, the
+"Shaughraun," a very happy hit is made with the _comic_ villain, a new
+creation in the drama, though as old in the pantomime as Clown and
+Pantaloon.
+
+If variety be the leading element of success in the "Black Crook" and
+the Irish dramas of Boucicault, wherein lies that of Bulwer's trio of
+stock plays by which he will be remembered? The first of his successes
+was the "Lady of Lyons," and we have already seen how skilful is the
+mechanical construction of this play, leading the suspense from act to
+act; but that will not account for the whole of the interest. A saying
+of Boucicault as to this play gives us also a key to the whole three
+Bulwer plays, for we find the same element pervading them all--the
+central idea of two, and only slightly modified in the third. Boucicault
+has remarked that the interest of the "Lady of Lyons" really depends on
+the fact that the completion of Claude's marriage is delayed from the
+second to the end of the fifth act; and a little reflection will show
+this to be the case. The whole interest of the play before the close of
+the second act turns on whether Claude will obtain his lady-love; the
+interest thereafter on his resistance to the temptations that draw him
+toward Pauline against honor. Look at "Richelieu," and the same element
+intensified pervades it. Adrian de Mauprat marries Julie at the close
+of the first act, only to be separated from her all the rest of the
+play till the climax. Richelieu himself, as far as the main action of
+the play is concerned, is secondary to Adrian, the end of all plays
+being "to make two lovers happy." In "Money" nearly the same motive
+runs through the play. In the first act Evelyn finds that Clara loves
+him, and all real obstacle to their marriage is removed by his sudden
+accession to fortune; yet all the rest of the play sees them kept apart
+by the most flimsy obstacles, just to tantalize the audience, and make
+them wonder if those two fools will ever come together. The means are
+very simple, and yet quite powerful enough, as much so as the first
+part of "Romeo and Juliet," where, by the by, almost all the interest
+dies out after the balcony scene. The main secret of Bulwer then
+reveals itself, like that of flirtation, to reside in the _art of
+tantalization_.
+
+We next come to Sheridan, the man who wrote the best comedy in the
+English language, "School for Scandal." The secret of that play and the
+"Rivals" has been thought by some to consist in the dialogue, but
+dialogue alone never made a play run before a mixed audience. The worst
+dialogue in the "Black Crook"--and God knows it was bad enough--could
+not kill that play any more than the finest dialogue could make
+Tennyson's "Queen Mary" into a real play, or galvanize it into a
+semblance of interest before an audience. Sheridan has more than witty
+dialogue. His situations are always capital, and his characters are
+without exception real living beings, only very slightly caricatured.
+To be sure they are rather too sharp and clever as a class, for we
+seldom or never meet in society such a perfect galaxy of smart,
+keen-witted people, Mrs. Malaprop not excepted; but the secret of
+Sheridan lies below dialogue and character. It lies, I think, in the
+natural sympathy felt by all mixed audiences in favor of youth and high
+spirits, through all their pranks, as exemplified in Captain Absolute,
+Charles Surface, Lydia Languish, and Lady Teazle, against
+respectability, honest or the reverse, embodied in Sir Anthony
+Absolute, Sir Peter Teazle, and Joseph Surface. It is the protest of
+honest animal spirits against conventionality, ending in the
+reconciliation of the rebels to society. Some people talk of the bad
+moral of the "School for Scandal," never thinking that it is identical
+in spirit with that of the parable of the Prodigal Son. A broad feeling
+of charity and toleration for honest error, with a grimly sarcastic
+treatment of all shams, pervade Sheridan's work just as they do those
+of all the great satirists, whether novelists or dramatists. Goldsmith,
+Fielding, Dickens, Thackeray, all run in the same track when they once
+get started, and we must confess that they have pretty high authority
+for their kindness toward the returning prodigal and their sneers at
+his eminently respectable brother, Joseph Surface, Esq.
+
+This secret of Sheridan in the "School for Scandal" is the main element
+of only one modern drama that I now remember--"Rip Van Winkle"--but it
+is quite common in the "old comedies," as they are called. These old
+comedies generally make their appearance at least once in two years at
+such theatres as Wallack's and Daly's of New York and the Arch Street
+at Philadelphia. I forget the name of the Boston "legitimate" place.
+When well acted they always "take," and there are so many stage
+traditions of how to act them that they are seldom badly done. The
+forgiveness of repentant prodigals, it will be remembered, forms the
+basis of most of them, an element which has gradually disappeared from
+the modern drama in deference to the increasing Philistine element,
+represented by the Y.M.C.A. and the T.A.B.
+
+Ascending from the modern English drama to its parents in the
+Elizabethan era, we encounter the only dramatist of those times whose
+works still hold the stage, and ask what is the secret of "Richard
+III.," "Macbeth," "Othello," "Lear," "Hamlet," and the Shakespeare
+comedies. The first general answer that most people will give is--the
+genius of Shakespeare; his power of drawing character, his wonderful
+language, his mastery of human passion. All these, it seems to me, are
+true, but it is to the last element that the success of Shakespeare's
+plays _on the stage_ is mainly due. No other dramatist, French,
+English, or German, with the single exception of Goethe in "Faust," has
+succeeded in making men and women, under the influence of tremendous
+passion, talk and act so _truly_, so _realistically_. We notice this on
+the stage when we see "Richard III." well acted. The man becomes a real
+live man, a great scamp no doubt, but an able scamp, so able that he
+actually excites our sympathy, when a really good actor plays him. The
+main power of Shakespeare's tragedies to-day, and their superiority to
+the tragedies of any other dramatist, lies in their _realism_. Where a
+modern dramatist like Boucicault confines his realistic treatment to
+matters with which most of us are familiar, Shakespeare flies at any
+game, no matter how high, and impresses us with the presence of _real_
+men and women, whether they be kings and queens or only common folk.
+This seems to be Shakespeare's one secret which makes his plays hold
+the stage to-day in spite of faulty construction, in spite of all the
+modern advances in stage management. Modern dramas are realistic, but
+they deal with common emotions, cramped by the restraints of an
+artificial state of society, where all our feelings are more or less
+artificial. Shakespeare takes human nature untrammelled, and paints it
+as it is, unshackled by the commonplace laws of modern society. Compare
+his pathos with modern pathos, and see the difference. The staple
+element of modern pathos is the contrast between poverty and riches,
+hunger and fulness, cold and warmth. The greatest pathos of
+Shakespeare, in "Lear," comes out not in the storm scene, but in the
+meeting of Lear and Cordelia amid luxury and comfort. The old king
+hurls curses and contempt at the mere physical discomforts of the
+tempest; they serve to divert his thoughts from the far greater torture
+of his mind; but when his conscience makes him crave pardon of his own
+child, then indeed the limit of human pathos is reached. There is
+nothing artificial there. Lear might be any old man as well as a king,
+and the situation would be just as terrible in its justice of
+atonement. It is _truth_.
+
+That _realism_ is the whole secret of Shakespeare's success as a
+dramatist, is made more evident by the fact that he avows it himself in
+"Hamlet," as the mainspring of dramatic success, in the celebrated
+"advice to the players." This being the only passage on record in which
+Shakespeare lays down his principles of art, has always been held as of
+great value, and has probably done more to improve the English stage
+than most people imagine. It has been always available as a canon to
+which to refer unnatural ranters, and to prevent the robustious school
+from tearing a passion to tatters. It sobered down Forrest in his old
+age into a model Othello, and constitutes the secret that has placed
+Lester Wallack and Joseph Jefferson at the head of their respective
+lines of light comedy. I think, however, it has hardly been recognized
+fully enough as the principle on which Shakespeare worked, for here at
+least he does seem to have held to a rigidly defined and artificial
+principle of action. This was to take a given passion and treat it with
+the utmost realism from every point of view, making that the _motive_
+of a play, being otherwise careless of construction.
+
+This principle appears very clearly in "Lear," the most artificial in
+construction of all Shakespeare's tragedies. His theme was _filial
+ingratitude_, and hardly a scene in the whole drama turns aside from
+that theme. It appears in the two plots about Lear and Gloucester, both
+having exactly the same lines of actors, the last obviously a reflex of
+the first. It is perhaps the only play of Shakespeare in which the
+_moral_ obtrudes itself forcibly all through the action, as plainly as
+in the stories of an old-fashioned primer, and I cannot help thinking
+that if the whole story of Edgar and Edmund had been left out, the play
+would have gained in unity and nature.
+
+In "Richard III." ambition is the ruling passion, treated in the same
+realistic fashion, conjoined with the extreme sensitiveness of personal
+deformity to strictures on itself. In "Macbeth" ambition pure and
+simple is treated from every point, first in man, then in woman;
+afterward remorse is dissected with equal skill. The ruling passion in
+"Hamlet" is somewhat more difficult to analyze than the rest, but I
+think that the renowned soliloquy of "To be or not to be" discloses it
+more clearly than any other part of the play. It is _fear_. Fear
+appears in Hamlet all through the play, from the first ghost scene to
+the death of Ophelia--an excessive caution, a hesitation, a timidity, a
+want of resolution, mental more than physical, which lasts till he
+returns from his travels and is stung into manliness over poor
+Ophelia's grave. Then at last he does what he ought to have done at
+first, but for his lack of good, honest pluck--gets savage and breaks
+things, and so works poetical justice.
+
+If the tragedies of Shakespeare reveal their principal secret to be the
+realistic treatment of master passions, what shall we say to such
+comedies as "Midsummer Night's Dream," "As You Like It," "Much Ado
+About Nothing," and such? It is very difficult to define in what
+consists their success, apart from the beauty of their love stories,
+their dainty language, their charming feminine characters, and a cloud
+of accessories, none of which can properly be called the main secret.
+The first two, I think, owe their beauty principally to the dissection
+of that passion of love which forms the motive of "Romeo and Juliet."
+The author treats us to nothing but love scenes and scenes in mockery
+of love, and yet we never tire of them. In "Much Ado About Nothing," to
+be sure, there is an artificial plot of villany to hinder the
+love-making, but after all it is Benedick and Beatrice, making fun of
+love and getting caught in its toils, that make the charm of the piece,
+and the same device, minute analysis of love, makes "Twelfth Night"
+what it is. When we come to look below the surface we find, in the
+comedies as in the tragedies of Shakespeare, that the realistic
+treatment of some ruling passion forms the ultimate secret on which he
+works.
+
+To sum up in the aphoristic form the secrets affecting the motives of
+the greatest dramatic successes of the English stage, we can, I think,
+partially agree on one more canon:
+
+  XV. Variety, suspense, satire, and realistic analysis of human passion
+are the secrets, so far discovered, of lasting dramatic successes.
+
+The subject of dramatic success, however, has one more very important
+branch, still to be considered. As an artist cannot work without colors
+and brushes, so a dramatist cannot work without actors. Good actors
+cannot permanently lift a bad play out of the mud, but bad actors can
+murder the best drama ever written, and even the best actor cannot make
+a hit if his part does not fit him and his physical appearance. I
+remember once a ludicrous instance of this, with Boucicault's "Flying
+Scud," which I happened to see in Buffalo. Nat Gosling, the venerable
+jockey, was there played by a man weighing at least a hundred and
+eighty pounds, in the dress of an old farmer; and the absurdity was so
+glaring that the whole play fell as dead as ditchwater, though by no
+means badly played. The same play in New York was first fitted exactly
+with Young for its Nat Gosling--a little, dried-up, weazen-faced man,
+who identified himself so perfectly with the character that the piece
+became quite a _furore_. It is a very common superstition among actors
+that a good actor can act anything, and can "make up" to look like
+anything, and no doubt this is partially, but only partially, true.
+There are actors, with flat, commonplace faces, figures of medium size,
+voices of no particular character, who, by dint of a little paint and
+pomatum, some false hair, some padding, and considerable study, can
+adapt themselves to play almost any character after a fashion; but it
+is a significant fact that such men are not to be found among the
+leaders of their profession, but only in the second rank. _Great_
+actors take a line and stick to it, one that exactly suits their
+individuality, and such find their mark. If they leave it, they
+deteriorate, if they stick to it, they become identified with it, and
+no one can rival them in their specialty. They become _real_ "stars."
+Jefferson found in Rip Van Winkle his _fit_, and has been wise enough
+never to leave it. Sothern did the same in Lord Dundreary. Lester
+Wallack has his own recognized line, the _blase_ man of the world,
+which he never leaves, save to his misfortune. Edwin Booth keeps his
+face, figure, and voice the same in all his characters, and people
+crowd to see him. Why? Because he has a delicately handsome face and
+figure, a melodious voice, and a clear, intellectual conception of
+every part. They go to see Booth, not Bertuccio, or Brutus, or Othello,
+and it is noticeable that his Hamlet is one of his most successful
+pieces, because in it he is less disguised than anywhere else. The
+greatest success Barrett ever made was in Cassius, because the part
+fitted him, and no one has ever come near him in that part, where his
+face and figure appeared as nature made them. Any one who has ever seen
+Charles Fisher act Triplet in "Masks and Faces" must have realized the
+same sense of entire completeness and fitness which attended Barrett's
+Cassius, Jefferson's Rip Van Winkle, Lester Wallack's Elliott Gray,
+Sothern's Dundreary, Harry Placide's Monsieur Tourbillon, Booth's Iago
+and Richard III., Mrs. Scott-Siddons's Viola, Fanny Davenport's
+Georgette in "Fernande," Mary Gannon's "Little Treasure," Maggie
+Mitchell's "Fanchon" and "Little Barefoot."
+
+In all these undoubted successes, old and new, with the sole exception
+of Sothern's Dundreary, the actors and actresses appeared and appear
+undisguised, talk in a natural voice, and fit their characters like
+a glove, face, figure, and all. This essential of fitness between
+character and physique is sometimes ignored by managers, with
+disastrous effects, while its observance has made a success of many
+a play, bolstered up by the influence of a single character. T. P.
+Cooke's Long Tom Coffin in the "Pilot" was such an instance of
+phenomenal success attained by the physique of one actor, carrying a
+rubbishy play through. Charlotte Cushman's Meg Merrilies was another
+such instance, the mere power of face, figure, and voice making a
+triumph, spite of poor play, and even spite of unmitigated and
+unnatural rant on the part of the actress. I have mentioned one
+instance in my own observation of the consequences of putting actors
+into ill fitting parts, in "Flying Scud." If the reader can imagine
+Lester Wallack in Rip Van Winkle, Jefferson in Elliott Gray or Hugh
+Chalcote, Barrett in Dundreary, Sothern in Cassius, Booth as Monsieur
+Tourbillon or Solon Shingle, Owens as Iago, he will have the salient
+points of our argument in strong light. The best example of a well
+fitted play I ever saw was Lester Wallack's "Veteran," as first acted,
+with James W. Wallack for Colonel Delmar, Mrs. Hoey for Amina, Mary
+Gannon for the other young woman, Mrs. Vernon for Mrs. MacShake. Every
+part, down to the very slaves, was perfectly fitted, and nothing has
+since come near it in completeness except Boucicault's plays, written
+at different times for the same theatre, "Jessie Brown" and the
+"Shaughraun." The full consideration of all these facts, and especially
+a retrospect of the relative rank of versatile actors and of
+specialists, has led to the following further aphorism:
+
+XVI. If the actors fit the play, expect success; if they do not,
+disaster.
+
+The consideration of actors as affecting the success of a play brings
+us to the last branch of the whole subject affected by the dramatic
+canons, which is _the qualifications required by the dramatist_ to
+secure success. When we have considered them we shall have finished our
+task--the completion of an essay to arouse thought in others. When we
+consider the literary construction of such plays as "Black Crook,"
+"Buffalo Bill," as well as the hosts of nameless dramas that are
+constantly making their appearance at minor and first-class theatres,
+their flat dialogue and general insipidity when merely read, not acted,
+we begin to realize that genius or even talent in the author are not
+the first requisite. He may lack both and still succeed. He must,
+however, have one thing, or he might as well keep out of the box office
+altogether, for his plays will be there pigeon-holed for good if he
+possesses it not. This something is _stage experience_. He may be an
+actor, no matter how bad, a scene painter, a carpenter, a musician, but
+he must have been about a theatre in some capacity, no matter how
+humble, to see how things work. One week behind the curtain is worth a
+year in front. The mere acquaintance with the ways of managers and
+actors is worth a good deal of time, but the familiarity with the
+working of a piece is the main thing. The most successful American
+comedy that has yet appeared was written by a walking lady who never
+would have made an actress if she had staid on the stage forty years,
+but who utilized her experience to some purpose on quitting the stage.
+The most successful money-making sensational piece of late years was
+written by a scene painter, and the poorest actors frequently write
+very good pieces, while good actors who possess talent for scribbling,
+almost always do well as playwrights. Only one fault do they all
+exhibit, without any exception, so far as my experience has run: they
+are all utterly oblivious of the meaning of the eighth commandment, and
+seem to regard plagiarism not as theft, but as a favor to the author
+whose literary property they steal. This is the worst that can be said
+about actor-authors, and to the rule there are no exceptions that ever
+I heard of. Actor-authors are unmitigated pirates of the most utterly
+unscrupulous sort, who crib whole chapters out of novels, word for
+word, without shame or acknowledgment, and write successful plays by
+filching other men's ideas, making a patchwork. Perhaps the most
+shameless of the whole raft of these actor-authors is Lester Wallack,
+whose two plays, the "Veteran" and "Rose-dale," are marvels of
+patchwork of this sort. In the first all the Arab characters and
+several scenes, language and all, are taken straight out of Captain
+James Grant's nearly forgotten novel of the, "Queen's Own," and in the
+second most of the plot and the most successful comic scene of the play
+come bodily from Colonel Hamley's "Lady Lee's Widowhood," another
+military novel. The provoking part of all this thieving in Wallack is,
+that other parts of his plays show that the man has talent enough to
+write, if he were not too lazy to work; but this preference of theft to
+labor is so common among actor-authors that nothing will ever check it
+but an extension of the copyright law in the interests of justice; for
+moral sense in the direction of the eighth commandment seems to be
+utterly unknown among them. The truth of the old adage about "hawks
+pikeing out hawks 'een" is, however, curiously exemplified in the
+scruples which the same men display as managers toward appropriating a
+play, no matter how much of a piracy in itself, without payment to the
+playwright, unless he be a Frenchman, when the case at once becomes
+altered. Novelists and foreign dramatists having no legal rights,
+actor-authors appear to think they have also no moral rights entitled
+to respect. This is the one stain on the character of actor-authors
+from which not one of them is free, or ever has been free, no matter
+what his time and nation. From Shakespeare to Brougham, from Moliere to
+Boucicault, the lustre of all their talents has been dimmed by this one
+dirty vice of filching the product of other men's brains; and the only
+dramatists free from the reproach have been those who have come to the
+boards from outside, like Bulwer and Sheridan. I do not here mean to
+include avowed translations like "Pizarro" and the "Stranger," nor
+avowed dramatizations of novels like Boucicault's "Heart of Mid
+Lothian." Such things are not thefts, any more than the use of history
+for the basis of a novel; they are open to all. But the unavowed
+stealing of unknown French plays, the surreptitious filching of
+chapters from forgotten novels, no more becomes right after quoting
+Shakespeare and Moliere as exemplars, than cowardice and treason become
+noble because St. Peter sneaked out of Caiaphas's petty sessions once
+on a time.
+
+Spite of this degrading meanness, however, there is no doubt that
+actor-authors have so far written the greatest number of good plays
+that hold the stage, in consequence of just one thing, their
+_experience_, which reveals itself as the first quality necessary
+in the dramatist. After experience of the stage, the next qualification
+that meets us in such dramatists as Shakespeare, Dumas, Lope de Vega,
+and Boucicault, is their marvellous fecundity of invention, implying an
+amount of information on various subjects simply amazing. Nothing comes
+amiss to them, and they seem to have a smattering of every science, to
+have skimmed the private history of the whole world. Variety of
+information comes next after stage experience. A man may be a great
+fool on most subjects, and yet write a fair acting play from stage
+experience alone, if he filches enough, but if he have plenty of
+general information, he will be able to double the value of his play,
+while some plays have been made quite successful by the use of nothing
+but stage experience and some special line of information, by men who
+could not have written an original story to save their necks.
+
+Last of the qualifications for dramatic success come _ideas_, and the
+possession of ideas implies also genius or at least talent, without
+which, after all, the really successful dramatist cannot work and leave
+enduring work behind him. All the ephemeral successes of the stage lack
+this one element, the one thing that cannot be taught, but must be born
+in a man. With genius, with real talent, everything is at last possible
+to a writer ambitious of stage success. Like Bulwer, he may make
+failure after failure, before he gets the _entree_ to theatrical life,
+but once there he will get past the portal and command success at last.
+Experience and information will be acquired with more or less labor,
+but he will get them at last, and then will be content to add his voice
+to the last canon of theatrical conditions to success:
+
+XVII. Stage experience, varied information, and talent, are the _sine
+qua non_ of the dramatist who hopes for success.
+
+FREDERICK WHITTAKER.
+
+
+
+
+SAINT LAMBERT'S COAL.
+
+
+    Wild hordes had sacked the minster: scattered
+      Upon the broken pavement, lay
+    The crash of blazon'd windows, shattered
+      By barbarous knights in wanton fray,
+      Who wrought the wreck and went their way.
+
+    Across pale, pictur'd faces, gashes
+      Showed where their godless blades had thrust
+    Profane defiance; and with ashes
+      Strewn was the altar, and encrust
+      Was chalice, pyx, and urn with rust.
+
+    No lamp shed forth its sacred glimmer,
+      No incense breathed its hallowed fume;
+    And as the rudded eve grew dimmer,
+      Shadows as ghostly as the tomb
+      Wrapped choir and nave and aisle in gloom.
+
+    Anon athwart the murk came stealing
+      Far floatings of a chanted hymn,
+    Up-borne in gusto from floor to ceiling,
+      As faintly a procession dim
+      Out of the darkness seemed to swim.
+
+    Onward it wended--nor did falter,
+      Till from their midmost, one cried--"Who
+    Bethought him of the quenched altar?
+      Alas! how guide the service through?
+      Would God might light the lamp anew!"
+
+    "_Amen!_" came through the silence drifting:
+      And from the train, therewith, out stole
+    A little acolyte, who, lifting
+      His surplice hem, displayed a coal
+      That glowed, yet left the garment whole.
+
+    "_Christus illuminator!_" kneeling,
+      The astonied Bishop cried. "From whom
+    Can light else come? Thyself revealing.
+      Flash forth that faith to chase our gloom,
+    Which burns and yet doth not consume!
+
+    "Such faith is thine, O Lambert! Kindle
+      Thereat the altar-lamp, and let
+    Its lustre, henceforth, never dwindle!"
+      He took the coal, the light reset,
+      And there, they tell, 'tis burning yet.
+
+MARGARET J. PRESTON.
+
+
+
+
+ENGLISH TRAITS.
+
+
+One of the earliest records of modern history in regard to the race
+which peopled the old England and the New refers to its beauty. Most of
+us have heard the story: how three young captives, brought from an
+almost unknown island on the verge of civilization, and indeed at the
+western limit of the then known world, were exposed for sale in Rome,
+and how Gregory the Great, not yet Pope, seeing them, was struck by
+their beauty and asked what they were, and being told, _Angli_
+(English), replied "_Non Angli, sed angeli_" (not Angles, but angels);
+which was a tolerable pun for a future Pope and saint. This was twelve
+hundred years ago; and since that time the English race has enjoyed the
+reputation (subject to some carping criticism, due to the self-love of
+other peoples) of being the handsomest in the world. It is well
+deserved; indeed, if it were not, it would long ago have been jealously
+extinguished. Not improbably, however, the impression made upon Gregory
+was greatly due to the fair complexion, blue eyes, and golden brown
+hair of the English captives, which, indeed, are mentioned in the
+story. For southern Europe is peopled with dark-skinned, dark-haired
+races; and the superior beauty of the blonde type was recognized by the
+painters, who always, from the earliest days, represented angels as of
+that type. The Devil was painted black so much as a matter of course
+that his pictured appearance gave rise to a well-known proverb;
+ordinary mortals were represented as more or less dark; celestial
+people were white and golden-haired; whence the epithet "divinely
+fair." When therefore the good Gregory saw the fair, blue-eyed English
+youths, his comparison was at once suggested, and his pun was almost
+made to his hand. And I am inclined to believe that it is of much later
+origin, although he ought to have made it; just as Sidney Smith ought
+to have said to Landseer, when he asked the Reverend wit to sit for his
+portrait, "Is thy servant a dog that he should do the thing?" and as
+the innkeeper ought to have said to Mr. Seward that he was not Governor
+of New York, but "Thurlow Weed, by thunder?" but did not. In each of
+these cases, however, and in all such, a significant fact is at the
+bottom of the story, which otherwise would have no reason for its
+being.
+
+It is hardly true, however, that other races do not produce individuals
+approaching as nearly to an ideal standard of beauty as any that are
+seen among the English. These are found, as we all know, among the
+various Latin races, the Celts and the Sclaves, and even, as Mr. Julian
+Hawthorne himself would hardly venture to deny, among the Teutons, the
+very Saxons themselves. Who has not seen French women and French men,
+Italians, Spaniards, Russians, Poles, Irish, and even Germans of both
+sexes, distinguished by striking and captivating personal beauty both
+of face and figure? But the average beauty of the English race appears
+to be in a marked degree above that of all others. Among a thousand men
+and women of that race there will not only be found more "beauties"
+than among the same number of other races, but the majority will be
+handsomer, "finer," more symmetrically formed, better featured, with
+clearer skins, and a more dignified bearing and presence than the
+majority of any other European race with which they may be compared.
+
+A notion was for some time in vogue that this English distinction did
+not obtain in America, but that the race had degenerated here. It was a
+mere notion, having its origin in a prejudiced perversion of isolated
+facts; in the desire of book-writing travellers to find something
+strange, and also derogatory, with which to spice their pages; and in a
+craving, which amounts to a mild insanity, among European people, and
+particularly among all classes of the British nation, to lay hold of
+some distinctive "American" quality, whether physiological, literary,
+political, or other, and label it, and file it away, and pigeon-hole it
+for reference by way of differencing "Americans" from themselves.
+
+The notion, I venture to say, was essentially absurd. That a race of
+men should materially change its physical traits in the course of two
+centuries, under whatever conditions of climate or other external
+influence, is inconsistent with all that we know upon that subject. The
+very pyramids protest against it by their pictured records. According
+to the history of mankind, as it is thus far known to us, such a change
+could not take place within such a period, unless to external
+influences of great modifying power there were added such an
+intermingling of races as has not yet taken place here more than in
+England itself, although plainly it is to come in future generations.
+Up to thirty years ago the intermarriage of Yankees--by which name, for
+lack of another, I designate people of English blood born in this
+country--with Irish and Germans was so rare as practically, in regard
+to this question, not to exist; and at that period there was not in
+England itself a more purely English people than that of New England.
+
+This notion of English degeneracy in "America" has, however, been
+rapidly dying out in Europe, and even in England during the last ten or
+fifteen years. The change has been brought about partly by the events
+of our civil war; for the blindest prejudice saw that that war was not
+fought by a physically degenerate people; and partly by the increase of
+knowledge obtained, not from carping travellers writing books to please
+a carping public, but from personal observation. This I know, not by
+inference, but from Englishmen and others who have been here, and who
+have not written books. The belief, formerly prevalent, that "American"
+women had in their youth pretty doll faces, but at no period of life
+womanly beauty of figure, is passing away before a knowledge of the
+truth, and I have heard it scouted here by Englishmen, who, pointing to
+the charming evidence to the contrary before their eyes, have expressed
+surprise that the travelling book-writers, who had given them their
+previous notions on the subject, could have so misrepresented the
+truth. A colonel in the British army, who had been all over the world,
+and with whom I was in New England during the war, at a time when a
+large number of our volunteers were home on furlough, expressed
+constantly his surprise at the "fine men" he saw going about in
+uniform, the equals of whom he said that he had never seen as a whole
+in any army; although he did not hesitate to express his dislike of
+their uniform, or his disgust at the slouchy, slovenly way in which
+they carried themselves. I was ready to believe what he said; for I had
+then just seen the Coldstreams in Montreal; and I had before seen the
+Spanish regular troops in Cuba, who, even the regiment of the Queen,
+were so small that they looked to me like toy soldiers to be kept in a
+box; and a very bad box they soon got into. During my recent visit to
+England, after I had been in London a week or two, having previously
+visited other places, a London friend who had twice visited "the
+States," said to me, "Well, I suppose you've been looking at the people
+here and comparing them with those you've left at home?" "Yes, of
+course." "Do you find much difference in them really?" "No; very
+little; almost none." "You're right--quite right. There may be a little
+more fulness of figure and a little more ruddiness; but it's been
+greatly exaggerated--greatly." One reason for this exaggeration I
+learned from the remarks of two English friends to me in this country.
+Some years ago I took one, a gentleman who had travelled a good deal,
+and who held an important position in the Queen's household--and a very
+outspoken man he was--to a "private view," at which for a wonder there
+was not a miscellaneous throng, but just enough people to fill the
+rooms pleasantly. As we sat together after a tour, looking at the
+company, I asked him to tell me the difference between the people he
+saw there and those he would see on a like occasion at the Royal
+Academy. He sat looking around him in silence for so long a time that I
+thought he was going to pass my question unnoticed, when he said, "I
+can see no difference; none at all; except that there would not be
+quite so many pretty women there, and that there would be more stout
+old people." The other, a lady, who also did not hesitate in her
+criticisms, remarked that the chief difference in appearance between
+people of the same condition here and in England was that here she
+"didn't see any fat old men." _She_ said nothing about fat old women;
+not, however, that she herself was either fat or old.
+
+There is this difference among old people; although even this has been
+exaggerated; and it is this which gives a certain color of truth to the
+notion I have referred to. English men and women do not always grow
+stout and red-faced as they grow old; but after they have passed middle
+age more of them do tend to rubicundity and to protuberant rotundity of
+figure than people of the same age do in "America." The cause, I am
+quite sure, is simply--beer. Both the color and the rotundity come to a
+large proportion of the Americans who live in England and drink English
+beer, in English allowance; which, it need hardly be said, could not be
+the case if there had been any essential change in the type of the
+race. But among men under forty and women under thirty, the difference
+either in complexion or figure is almost inappreciable.
+
+As to the women, there are at least as many in England who are spare
+and angular of figure as here, and of those who have not passed thirty
+I think rather more. The London "Spectator" said some years ago, in
+discussing the Banting diet, I believe, that "scragginess was more
+common in England among women than stoutness"; and it is remarkable
+that the French caricatures of Englishwomen always represent them as
+thin, bony, and sharp-featured. In this of course there is a little
+malice; but it shows the impression left upon the French people by
+their near neighbors. I cannot do better here than to offer my readers,
+in the following passage, a share in one of my letters written home; it
+has at least the advantage of recording on the spot impressions
+received by me after careful examination under the most favorable
+circumstances. I was writing about the beauty of the parks:
+
+"It is amazing to see the great space of this little island that these
+English folk have reserved for air, and health, and beauty; and it is
+for all, the poorest and meanest as well as the richest and noblest;
+there are no privileged classes in this. As to the effect upon their
+health, I suppose it must be something, but it shows for very little.
+G---- [a gentleman who is very strong upon the subject of degeneracy,
+which I have always doubted] will laugh and say that it was a foregone
+conclusion with me, but to set aside my inference he will be obliged to
+take the position that there is nothing so misleading as facts, except
+figures. I have now seen many hundreds of thousands of Englishmen and
+Englishwomen of all classes. I have placed myself in positions to
+examine them closely. At the great Birmingham musical festival my seat
+gave me full view of the house, chorus and all. The vast hall was
+filled with people of the middle and upper middle classes, and at one
+end with members of the highest aristocracy, who occupied seats roped
+off from the rest, and called 'the President's seats'--the President
+being the Marquis of Hertford. At the end of the performance, both
+evening and morning, I hastened to a place where a great part of the
+audience would pass close before me. At Westminster Abbey I stood again
+and again at the principal door and watched the congregation as they
+came out; I have done the same in swarming railway stations; I have
+walked through country villages and cathedral towns; I know the human
+physiognomy of all quarters of London pretty well; I have seen the
+Guards and the heavy dragoons, and I say without any hesitation that
+thus far I find that the men and the women are generally smaller and
+less robust than ours, and above all that the women are on the whole
+sparer and less blooming than ours. The men are ruddier on the whole;
+that is, there are more ruddy men here; but the number of men without
+color in their cheeks seems to be nearly the same as with us. The
+apparent inconsistency of what I have said is due to the fact that the
+ruddy men and women here are generally so very red that they produce a
+great impression of redness, an impression that lasts and remains
+salient in the memory. A delicately graduated and healthy bloom is not
+very common. And so the fat women are so very fat that they seem to
+take up a great part of the island. But the little London 'gent,' with
+whom Leech has made us so familiar, you meet everywhere in the great
+city. Sunday before last, loitering in the cloisters of Westminster, I
+stopped to look at a tablet in the wall. There were three of these men
+before me, and the number soon increased to seven. I looked over _the
+hats_--round felt hats--of the whole seven without raising my chin.
+I remember that like Rosalind I am 'more than common tall,' but I never
+did anything like that at home. At the Horse Guards they put their
+finest men as sentinels, mounted, on each side of the gate. Well, they
+are fine fellows, and would be very uncomfortable chaps to meet, except
+in a friendly way; a detachment of them riding up St. James's street
+the other morning, with their cuirasses like mirrors, and the coats of
+their big black horses almost as bright, was a spectacle which it
+seemed to me could not be surpassed for its union of military splendor
+and the promise of bitter business in a fight; but Maine, or Vermont,
+or Connecticut, or Kentucky can turn out whole regiments of bigger and
+stronger men. Colonel M----, whom I met in Canada, said the same to me
+when he thought he was talking to an Englishman. I wonder that he ever
+forgave me the things he said to me during his brief self-deception;
+for they were true. But he was a good fellow and bore no malice.
+Nevertheless, you sometimes meet here a very fine man, or a big,
+blooming beauty, and in either case the impression is stronger and more
+memorable than in a like case it is apt to be with us; chiefly, I
+think, because of their dress and 'set up,' which in such cases--as in
+that of the Guards and Dragoons--is apt to be very pronounced."
+
+I will add here, in passing, that this English "set up," particularly
+in the case of almost all Englishmen of any pretensions, is
+distinctive, and is in a great measure the cause of the impression of
+superior good looks and strength on their side. It appears in a marked
+degree in all military persons, rank and file as well as officers, and
+in the police force, the men of which are on the whole inferior in
+stature and bulk to ours--leaving the big Broadway squad, most of them
+Yankees, out of the question--and yet it is far superior in appearance
+to ours, owing to the "set up" of the men, and the way in which they
+carry themselves. I observed that although the upper classes contained
+a fair proportion, although no notable excess, of large and well-formed
+men and women, the burly men and the big-bodied, heavy-limbed women
+were generally of the lower and the lower middle class. This made me
+wonder where all the pretty housemaids and shop girls came from; for
+the prettiest faces, the most delicately blooming complexions, and the
+finest figures that I saw in England were among them. In a letter
+written from the Rose Inn at Canterbury, a cosy comfortable old
+hostlery, I find the following passage, which is to the purpose:
+
+"I ate my bacon and eggs this morning in the coffee room, where at
+another table were three queer Englishwomen, yet nice looking--apparently
+a mother and two daughters. The elder daughter was, I will not say a
+lathy girl, but very slim not only in the waist, but above and below
+it. The mother and the younger were plump and rosy, absurdly alike, and
+with that cocked-up nose which is one of the very few distinctive
+peculiarities of figure that you see here, but even this very rarely;
+and their black hair was curled in tight curls all over their heads. I
+was struck by this, because curling hair is comparatively rare here,
+and I had expected to find it common. It was cut just like a man's, and
+plainly so because it would have been impossible to dress it if it were
+allowed to grow long in woman fashion. They were very jolly and
+pleasant, chaffing each other in low, soft voices, and breaking out in
+rich, sweet laughter. They looked just like boys masquerading in
+women's clothes; for the eldest was quite young looking and may have
+been an elder sister. The youngest, who was some seventeen or eighteen
+years old, looked very fair and blooming across the room, but when I
+came close to her, which I had an opportunity of doing, I found that
+her color, both white and red, was coarse, which is very often the case
+here when there is color. In the mother, or eldest sister, this
+coarseness was apparent even at a distance. But see, Lady ---- and her
+daughters, although pretty and elegant, had no tinge of color in their
+cheeks, and they were all as thin as rails, and the girls' hair, as
+well as their mother's, was as straight as fiddle strings. I came here
+expecting to see golden curls in plentiful crops, or at least not
+uncommonly. But it seems to me that I haven't seen a dozen curly-haired
+children since I have been in the country; and I have seen them--the
+children--by tens of thousands, and examined them closely, making
+memorandums of my observation. Nor have the ladies of this family (I am
+now at ----), Lady ---- and Mrs. ----, any more bloom than this paper,
+and they are both as thin as Lady ---- and her daughters; Mrs. ----
+painfully so. The men, belonging of course to another family, are
+stout, well-built fellows enough, but the two other guests are as lean
+as greyhounds. I went to a little dinner party the other evening, and
+the carriage sent to the station for me (for they think nothing here of
+asking you fifteen or twenty miles to dinner even when you are not
+expected to stay over night) took also a Major General Sir ---- ----. I
+was told that he would join me, and I expected to see a portly, ruddy
+man of inches, with sweeping whiskers and moustache. I found a short,
+slender, meek-looking, pale-faced man; but his bearing was very
+military; he was a charming companion and the pink of courtesy. We
+entered the drawing-room together of course; but notwithstanding his
+rank, he waved me in before him, and my plain Mistership was announced
+before his titles. I have seen no men here at all equal in face or
+figure to General Hooker, General Hancock, General Augur, or General
+Terry, to say nothing of General Scott, who was something out of the
+common even with us. And Burnside, and McDowell, and Grant, and
+McClellan are all stouter men than you are apt to find here. The
+biggest men that I have seen were from the north, Yorkshire and
+Northumberland. Those of the south, particularly in Kent, are the
+shortest; although, as a Kent man said to me, they are generally
+'stocky.'"[3]
+
+      [3] Mr. Jennings, late editor of the New York "Times," now London
+      correspondent of the "World," in a recent letter describing the
+      opening of Parliament by the Queen in person, on which occasion
+      the House of Lords was filled with peers and peeresses, writes
+      thus with regard to the beauty of the women and the presence and
+      figures of the men:
+
+          "On this occasion the ladies overflowed the House. Early as
+          it still was, the floor was covered with them--large blocks
+          of the benches were occupied, and the galleries were crowded.
+          All these ladies were in evening toilets, the peeresses
+          wearing coronets of diamonds--most of them being fairly
+          ablaze with diamonds on head and neck. If the daylight was
+          not very favorable to the shoulders or complexions of some of
+          these noble dames, the gorgeousness of their costumes and the
+          glitter of their precious stones served to divert attention
+          from the defects of nature or the ravages of time.... Not
+          many of these ladies in the House were very pretty, although
+          here and there was a face such as makes one stop short and
+          hold one's breath, and wonder at the divine perfection of
+          nature's handiwork when she is at her best.... As for the old
+          bald-headed gentlemen, some of them very short and stumpy,
+          they looked painfully like a collection of 'senators' in some
+          opera bouffe. One of them in particular, with four ermine
+          bars on his cloak, denoting his high rank, was exactly like
+          the funny-looking dummy Englishman which the French delight
+          to exhibit in their farces. He had very little hair left to
+          boast of, and that little was very red, and his face was
+          round and red also, and he was altogether so comic a little
+          man that one could not look at him without a smile. I could
+          not find out who he was till the royal procession entered,
+          when he suddenly reappeared in great pomp and state, standing
+          on the throne by the side of her Majesty's chair and carrying
+          the 'Cap of Maintenance.' Then I knew that he was the Marquis
+          of Winchester--fourteenth of that ilk--John Paulet by name,
+          and the Premier Marquis of England. So much for appearances."
+
+      Mr. Jennings, it should be remembered, is an Englishman; but he
+      lived eight or ten years in New York; and I may be pardoned for
+      saying that he carried away a constant reminder of "American"
+      beauty, and a standard of comparison which would be likely to
+      make him fastidious.
+
+A New England man now living in England, who made his house very
+delightful to me, first by the presence of himself and his family, and
+next by the kindest and most considerate hospitality, is an ever
+present rebuke of the stoutest sort to the British notion of the
+physical degeneracy of the English race in "America." He, a Yankee of
+the old Puritan emigration, is five feet ten and a half inches high, is
+forty-eight inches, four good feet, in girth around the chest, weighs
+two hundred pounds, and yet has not the least appearance of portliness,
+rather the contrary. He is the only man I ever met whose friendly grip
+was rather more than I liked to bear. I spoke to his wife about his
+strength and his figure, and she told me that when he went to get his
+life insured here the surgeons said that they very rarely saw such a
+powerful, finely formed, and perfectly healthy man as he is, and never
+any finer or healthier. That would be impossible. And as he is so was
+his father. Were they exceptions? Only of a sort that constantly occur
+among real Yankees--"Americans" whose families have been in the country
+for generations, and who are the only proper examples of the influence
+of the climate and the social conditions of the country.
+
+I have, perhaps, said too much upon this subject of the comparative
+physical condition of the race in the two countries; but I have been
+led to do so because of the very great inconsistency I found between
+the facts and the common notion as to stout Englishmen and lean
+"Americans," blooming, buxom Englishwomen and pale, slender "American"
+women--a notion which one writer has repeated, parrot-like, after the
+other, until even we ourselves have accepted it without question. Like
+many other notions which no one disputes, it is false. But the world
+has gone on accepting it and assuming it to be true until it has so
+taken possession of the general mind that if in a room full of English
+people only one man were found ruddy and burly, and only one woman
+blooming and well rounded (and this or something very like it I have
+seen more than once), they would be picked out and spoken of as
+English-looking, to the disregard of all the others. The exceptions
+would be taken as examples of the rule; and this even by the English
+themselves, so swayed are we by tradition and authority, even in such
+an everyday matter. Nay, even I myself, skeptical and carping, was thus
+misled. The steamer, going out, was filled chiefly with English people.
+Two of my fellow passengers I selected in my mind as notably and
+typically English, not only in person, but in bearing. They proved to
+be, one a Massachusetts Yankee and the other a Western man; but both
+had from association contracted English habits of dress and of manner.
+Two Englishwomen, however, attracted my particular attention. One was,
+I think, the very largest human female I ever saw outside of a caravan.
+She was a fearful manifestation of the enormous development of solid
+flesh which the British fair sometimes attain. As she stood by her
+husband she was the taller from the ear upward. She weighed about
+twenty stone. I think that a plumb line dropped from the front of her
+corsage would have reached the deck without touching her skirts. Her
+tread was hippopotamic. And yet she showed traces of beauty, and not
+improbably had been a fine fair girl; and even at the present time she
+managed to effect a very palpable waist. I mused wonderingly upon the
+process by which she did this; but still more upon that sad gradual
+enormification by which she passed from a tall blooming beauty into her
+present tremendous proportions. The other was exactly the reverse. She
+could hardly be called ill looking in the face, but her pale, blank,
+unfeatured countenance reminded one instantly of a sheep. She was a
+washed-out, and although young, a faded creature, with no more
+shoulders or hips than my forefinger. And yet she was a perfect English
+type, and so like some of John Leech's women that I could not look at
+her without internal laughter. Her husband--for even such women by some
+mysterious process known to themselves will get husbands--was like unto
+her in face, in feature, and in expression; and yet he was so
+strikingly, so aggressively British in look and in manner that I heard
+some Yankees on board say that they would like to kick him. And I
+somewhat shared their prejudice; of which before we landed I learned to
+be ashamed; for I found him a very intelligent, well-informed, pleasant
+man, reserved in his manners, and although firm in his opinions, which
+were strongly British, very respectful of other men's, and very careful
+of giving offence. His union of firmness and courtesy seemed to me
+worthy of admiration; and if he did wish to kick any of the Yankees on
+board, for which in one or two cases I could have forgiven him, I am
+sure that he never let the desire manifest itself in their presence.
+
+Another prevalent notion, which is reciprocal between the people of the
+two countries, is mistaken according to my observation. It is generally
+believed, or at least very often said in "America," that the men in
+England are very much handsomer than the women; and conversely it is
+commonly believed in England, or said, that the women in "America" are
+handsomer than the men. An absurd and truly preposterous notion, as
+will be seen upon a moment's reflection. For the women in both
+countries are the mothers of both the men and the women; and the men
+are the fathers of both the men and the women; and as some of the women
+are of their fathers' types and some of the men of their mothers', the
+imputed difference of the two in personal beauty could not be brought
+about. It is physiologically impossible that the women of a race should
+be handsomer than the men, and _vice versa_.
+
+It is nevertheless true that the men in England are on the whole more
+attractive to the eye than the women, and that the women in "America"
+are generally much more attractive than the men. The cause of this is a
+fact very distinctive of the social surface of the two countries. I
+have spoken of the "set up" and the bearing of the men in England. It
+is very remarkable, and is far superior to anything of the kind that is
+found even among the most cultivated people in this country, except in
+comparatively rare individual cases. But in England it is common; it is
+the rule. There, from the middle classes up, a slovenly man is a rare
+exception. There men are almost universally neat and tidy, and they
+carry themselves with a conscious self-respect. They do not slouch.
+They do not go about, even in the morning, with coats unbuttoned,
+skirts flying, and their hands in their overcoat pockets. They dress
+soberly, quietly, with manly simplicity, but almost always in good
+taste, and with notable neatness. They are manly looking men, with an
+air of conscious manhood. Moreover, in England the man is still
+recognized as the superior. England has been called the purgatory of
+horses and the paradise of women. But that saying came from the
+continent of Europe, where women, except in the very highest and most
+cultivated classes, are not treated with that tenderness and
+consideration for their weakness and their womanly functions which I am
+inclined to think is somewhat peculiar to the English race. I should
+call England the paradise of men; for there the world is made for them;
+and women are happy in making it so. An Englishman who is the head of a
+family is not only master of his house, but of the whole household. His
+will is recognized as the law of that household. No one thinks of
+disputing it. It is not deemed unreasonable that in the house which he
+provides and keeps up his comfort and his convenience should be first
+considered, or that, as he is responsible for his household both to the
+law and to society, authority should go with responsibility. And
+yet--perhaps for this very reason--wives there have the household
+affairs more absolutely in their hands than they have here. A man whose
+absolute authority is acknowledged, practically as well as
+theoretically, is very ready to make concessions and to rid himself of
+what at any time he may assume. Real monarchs, like the Czars or like
+the Tudors, are careless of the protection of royal etiquette. The
+consciousness of this acknowledged or rather unquestioned superiority
+shows itself in the men's faces, and in their bearing, simple and
+unpretending as their manner is. Besides all this, men in England (I am
+leaving out of consideration the lower classes) show the effect of
+cultivation, of breeding, of discipline. Even in the middle classes
+they are well informed, and, what is of more importance to the present
+question, they have been taught to behave themselves respectfully to
+others. They do so behave; they feel that they ought to do so and that
+they must. There are two gods worshipped in England, and one is
+propriety; and a very good god he is, when he is not made a Juggernaut.
+The result of all this is a very different man in appearance from him
+who generally pervades "America." The latter may be, and generally is,
+as handsome physically as the former; he may be, and generally is, as
+good morally; but the one generally shows for all that he is and
+perhaps for more, and the other does not, and frequently does for less.
+And yet again; among such men in England another sort who, for example,
+say "hadn't oughter," and "have came," and who spit upon the floor, are
+not generally found mingling. They are kept in social pens by
+themselves. And thus in judging of English society they are left out.
+
+A comparative estimate of Englishwomen is too serious and far too
+complicated a subject to be treated except in an article by itself.
+
+RICHARD GRANT WHITE.
+
+
+
+
+A DEAD VASHTI.
+
+Do we indeed desire the dead should still be near us, at our side?
+
+
+"I do not know how it is with others," said the spirit, looking away
+from the Sunday child to the red and spectral moon that was arising
+from the tossing ocean into a mass of heavy, broken clouds; "for since
+my death I have been alone; but when I left my human form I left few of
+the affections, the passions of life, and thus death has made but
+little change in me. I cannot believe, however, that all the dead carry
+as much of their old life into the new as I have, for few can be cursed
+as I have been with a granted prayer. What my life in the world of
+spirits might have been I cannot tell you; but I know that all I have
+suffered comes from my folly, my wickedness in praying for my own will!
+But my life upon earth had been so complete, so happy, it seemed as if
+I might be justified in thinking that it ought to give me the same
+bliss if it was made eternal. My love for Philip was so pure and true
+that it seemed as fit that it should govern me in one life as in the
+other! Other women, I suppose, have loved their husbands as well; but
+few would have had the temerity to stake their eternal happiness on
+human fidelity as I did! But my love was a part of my being, and I
+thought no more of its extent or duration than of the density of the
+air I breathed. It was never put to the test of neglect or
+misunderstanding, and was never subject to question. Looking back now,
+it seems impossible that I ever lived without Philip; for all my days
+before I knew him are but fragments of a half-forgotten time. Of his
+love I had no doubt. It satisfied me. And we were not only lovers, but
+also comrades. I was but an amateur where he was a master, but I
+followed him attentively, eagerly. I like to remember those days, when
+we wandered like children through the woods, when we climbed, sketched,
+laughed, and sang together, and I often wonder if any mortals are as
+happy now. At home we had our hours of work, of merry talk, and happy
+plans. We had the excitements of the exhibition days, the pleasures of
+social life, and then we had also my dear little girl, our Nellie!
+Sometimes I fancy that such happiness cannot die; that if our words and
+actions perpetuate themselves, such vivid experiences cannot fade away,
+and that I may some time find it all passed into an eternal form! But
+these are dreams; for every thing has changed, and I know that nothing
+can be eternal that is not based upon truth, upon faithfulness.
+
+"You can understand, although you are so young, and are just learning
+how love transfigures everything, that my life with my husband was so
+complete that we did not dream of any change; we did not comprehend
+that we could ever be parted. I have heard women say that they have
+trembled when they were very happy, knowing that there must be an end
+to their joy; but I had no such fears. Still it came to me, and in a
+horrible shape.
+
+"I knew that I was very ill, and that Philip was anxious and wretched,
+but I never thought that I might die. My fierce pain gave me no hint of
+death, and so it came almost without warning. I would not believe that
+I must go away, and that this brief illness meant death was incredible,
+preposterous! I shrank from thinking of it; I cried out that I would
+not die; I would not leave Philip! I begged my physicians for life; I
+entreated Heaven to spare me; I almost broke my husband's heart by my
+wild cries for life. It was a bitter struggle! I prayed for
+annihilation--for anything but the knowledge that we were separated. Do
+not think that I forgot Nellie, or that I did not grieve to part with
+her; but other mothers have loved their children for the father's sake,
+and I could have surrendered anything to have kept him. I could trust
+her to a Higher love, but for us there was nothing but daily, hourly
+union.
+
+"The night before I died--for who can thrust away the inevitable!--I
+lay close in Philip's arms as he knelt by my bedside. I was almost
+helpless, but I clung body and soul to him. It was poor comfort to tell
+each other that this was but a temporary separation; that we had yet an
+eternity in which to live together. Eternity was indefinite and far
+away, while our parting, his lonely life, my waiting hours, were so
+near. I cannot forget how he wept as he held me close, closer to him,
+and how his courage failed as he realized how fast my hour of departure
+was hastening to us! I do not now know how it was that we did not die
+together that night! We talked of it, and it seemed so easy and natural
+that we thought we could not help it; but the daylight came, and we
+were still alive, clinging to each other.
+
+"But this night of agony did more than death alone could have done, for
+it shaped my future. Out of our frantic grief there came a prayer that
+has fixed me here, and which has taught me of what love is made!
+Together that night we besought Heaven to give me no other happiness
+than that I had known in life, but to let me linger near my home, and
+be with my husband until he died. I cried out that any other existence
+would be hell to me; and with desperate hands we beat against the doors
+of prayer, and pleaded for power to choose our own future.
+
+"The next night I died. All day I had laid on my bed passive and quiet.
+My grief had worn me out, and I could not have spoken had I wished.
+Philip sat by me holding my hand, but he too was silent. I felt vaguely
+that mine was the easier task; that living could be harder than dying;
+but I had no words with which to comfort or strengthen him. I could
+faintly smile when he would bend his head, and kiss my nerveless hand,
+and I wondered if he knew how much I liked to lie quietly and look at
+him. Yet I did not care for it all! I remember the watchful
+indifference with which I regarded my physician's face, and followed
+the motions of the nurse about the room. I remember my sister's tears,
+and how little Nellie sat by me on the bed with her doll, until she
+fell asleep on my pillow. I remember how the hours measured themselves
+away, how the sunshine deepened and faded, how the night came, and all
+grew dim and silent. An absolute hush rested upon the earth. The fire
+blazed, but it had ceased its crackling; the watchers moved noiselessly
+about the room, the street had become quiet, and everything seemed
+awaiting some coming, some solemn change. As Philip leaned over me, and
+I saw his lips move, but heard no sound, I fancied that perhaps my
+hearing had gone from me, but I cared nothing for it! Then the fire
+grew dim, the room seemed full of shadows, the lights faded away, and
+my eyes became heavy, but I did not care to shut them, or to brush away
+the film that covered them. My breath gained substance, and began to
+push its way through my lungs, my throat seemed closing, and then
+suddenly everything changed!
+
+"It is not to my purpose, even were I allowed, to tell you anything of
+the conditions of my present life, or to explain to you how I can
+reveal myself to you, and why it was that Philip could never see me.
+All that I am to tell you is connected with this earth.
+
+"After the first surprise was over I turned to Philip, who was kneeling
+by the bed. He could not believe that I was dead, but called vehemently
+on me to look at him. I remember the joy with which I sprang to his
+side, and putting my arms around, tried to turn his head away from the
+dead body to my living, happy face! But it was all in vain, in vain! He
+was deaf, he was blind to me! Our prayer, our compact was as nothing:
+he knew only the dead wife! I was as indifferent to the body as to a
+shadow on the wall; but to be clinging to him unrecognized, unfelt,
+terrified me, shocked me! I cannot dwell on this, but after all was
+over, and the body carried away, he was still ignorant of my presence.
+I followed his aimless steps through the house; I stood by his chair as
+he sat idly at his easel; I watched with him through the long nights,
+but he never suspected that I was there! How often when he has called
+me have I answered, and when he has prayed for one glimpse of me have I
+clung to him, but had no sign from him to tell me that he even blindly
+guessed that our prayer might have been granted! I have put my arms
+around him; my head has lain upon his shoulder; I have passionately
+called upon him, but still been as empty air! Yet it comforted me to be
+with him, and I could not doubt that some time he would come to know of
+my presence. It was impossible, I thought, for him to dwell in such an
+atmosphere of love and always be unconscious of it. Why, we thought
+only of each other, we longed only for each other, and so he must at
+last come to know how near I was, and then, I thought with joy, waiting
+would lose its pain!
+
+"I could laugh as I now think of this fond and foolish fancy--of my
+trust in time, in a man's intuition! Why, I did not even know that men
+do not nurse grief as we do; and I was surprised by Philip's resolute
+bravery in turning to work, and trying to forget in study all he had
+lost in love. But do not think it was easy for him! I was much too
+intimately connected with his art not to be always suggested by it; and
+my dumb and unknown presence awakened none of the old inspiration of
+our talks, our mutual sympathy and interest. Sometimes his desire for
+me became so intense that I felt that my time for recognition had
+surely come, and I have knelt, clinging to him, waiting for that
+blessed smile of knowledge, but all in vain!
+
+"Time, however, smoothes all griefs for mortals, and soon life began to
+run tranquilly in the house. Nellie was happy in my sister's care, and
+Philip became absorbed in work. The old sparkle and gayety was gone,
+but youth and vigor were left, so they lived pleasantly enough, and I
+wandered through the rooms lonely, but not forlorn. I could not be
+miserable, for I was ever with them. And I could not but be happy in
+seeing how tenderly I was remembered, how constantly I was thought of
+by them all. Nothing was changed, for even my work-basket kept its
+place in Philip's room, and some of my ribbons were still tumbled in
+with his collars! Thus some years passed away. Nellie grew tall and
+pretty, and Philip became graver, more studious, and was as famous as
+he was popular. I do not believe that he ever thought of making any
+change in his life, of filling my place in his home or heart. I never
+dreamed it was possible! But ignorance is a poor safeguard, and at last
+the time came when the shadow began to lift from off his life, to
+deepen over mine. I do not know how to tell you more; the thought of
+speaking of it almost strikes me dumb; but I must, I must! I am
+compelled to do it! And it all came of a picture--a picture of youth
+and beauty; and she--Esther--came to sit for it! You need not expect me
+to tell you much of her, for some things are impossible; but she had
+been as a schoolgirl a pet of mine. She was the daughter of a friend,
+and she was pretty; she was rich; she was good and loving: what else
+could any mortal ask for? These quiet hours in the studio were pleasant
+to both of them, and one day Philip broke the silence of years and
+spoke of me to her. She was glad to talk of me, for she had been fond
+of me; and she told him of what I had said to her; she brought him a
+little drawing I had made of Nellie for her. They spoke of me lovingly
+and gently, but I stood off and wrung my hands in anguish. The most
+cruel silence would have been better than these confidences which
+brought them so close together.
+
+"But what a wonderful picture he painted! How fair, how lovely she
+looked upon the canvas, and how happy she was when the painting was
+praised! She danced for joy when she first saw it in its frame; but
+I--I who knew so well what a success it was--I did not rejoice! I did
+not look at the picture, but instead I watched the soft and tender
+smile with which Philip regarded her! Need I tell you more?" she said
+in a husky voice, standing up and clenching her hands. "Must I repeat
+the history of these days as though it was a story I was telling you!
+Have I not suffered penance enough in witnessing a grief I could not
+comfort, a resignation that I could not share, and a happiness that has
+made me desperate; but must I also put it all into words? But there was
+one trial spared me. I did not have to witness the growth of this new
+love, for I rarely saw them together during the days of courtship. She
+did not come often to the house after the picture was finished, and so
+I escaped this much. Yet I knew when they saw each other, and he was no
+laggard wooer. I never followed him or her, for I could not leave the
+home where we had lived; but in thought I was never parted from him.
+How often have I paced the floor in lonely agony, waiting for his
+return from her house. I have crouched in the corner, fearing, yet
+eager to see him enter with the new happiness in his eye, the new
+elasticity in his step. I saw him grow brighter and gayer; and as he
+whistled or sang at his work I have fled away in helpless agony. Yet he
+had not forgotten me; and in the midst of the new life that was
+thrilling through him I was still dear to him. I cannot pretend to
+understand a man's love, nor to tell you how faithfulness to an old
+affection, and desire for one that is new, can dwell in the same heart.
+He thought of me tenderly. I was a part of a past too dear to be
+forgotten; but I did not belong to the present. He had lived without
+me, and I was no longer necessary to him, but this younger love was
+very near and real to him.
+
+"At last he brought her home, and with many smiles and happy glances he
+led Nellie to her new mother. It seemed very proper to the people who
+filled the house that her grace and youth should mate with his dignity
+and reputation, and that they should love each other; but none of them
+saw, few thought of the disembodied wife who was still chained to his
+side by links he had helped to forge, and who, standing unsuspected in
+their midst, cursed--not the bride nor her husband--but her own
+immorality.
+
+"Yet as I watched the merriment with a most bitter scorn of my
+suffering, and a fancy how Philip might well paint a love dancing on a
+coffin for his next picture, I yet felt glad to know that I had not
+been the one who was false to that dreadful night of vows and prayers.
+If he had died, _I_ would have been faithful. My need of love would
+have been as great; I might have longed for protection, for even bread;
+but I would have had no other husband. I was glad, for it is well to be
+faithful. A new love may bring new sweetness and content, but constancy
+has its own sweet rewards, and the widowed heart would seek no strange
+hand if it did but know what remains to those who are true.
+
+"This was years ago as you count time; but until to-night I have
+lingered around my home--my old home that was changed and beautified
+for another mistress. I have nothing to tell you of their life, that
+does not seem to men to be pleasant. They have been prosperous. They
+have known many joys and few sorrows. They have travelled. He is famous
+and he is also rich. Is that not enough? And Nellie, too, has been
+content. Esther has not allowed the child to miss me; and although
+other children claim equal love from her father, they have never robbed
+her. Is not this best? your questioning eyes ask me. Perhaps it is. I
+have often taken my jealous heart to task; and remembering how solitary
+Philip's home would have been, how much he has gained in these new
+loves, I have tried to say it _was_ the best. But he was not bound to
+me only for life--for my life. Our love reached out toward the other
+world and swore eternal fidelity, and I--_I_ have not been freed
+from him.
+
+"But this is not all. I might reconcile myself to this and be content.
+I love Philip so truly that I think I could sacrifice my dearest, most
+selfish wishes to him, and be satisfied to see him prosperous and
+happy. But whether it is a keener sight that I possess, whether it is a
+natural change that comes to all who submit to the influence of the
+world, I know not; but Philip is not the same artist--he is not the
+same man; but this, I think, no one knows; that his pictures have
+changed is clear to all. Once he worked for the sake of the best; now
+he works for 'success'; and Esther rates his paintings at the price
+they bring. But had I lived even this might have been. Yet this is not
+all. The sting, the bitterness of my bereavement is in my knowledge
+that we are parted for ever. If Philip had not grown so far away from
+me in the years in which he has not known me, I could expect some happy
+reunion with him; but this man will need me no more in Heaven than he
+now does upon earth. If I could now return to him and take Esther's
+place by his side, I would jar upon him, displease him. He might love
+me, but there would be little affinity between us. And I--have I not
+changed? has not my ignorance turned to bitterness, my confidence to
+disbelief? But it seems to me that a little sunshine would bring back
+all that was sweet or good in me--yet I cannot tell. But this I know:
+in the future the soul of this man will lay no claim to mine. We get
+nothing without its price, and Philip has paid for a second love by the
+loss of all he once thought dearest. Still it may be best, it may be
+right.
+
+"As for myself, some change is coming to me. It must be so, or I would
+not be here to-night. You know what perhaps is to occur; you know how
+long I was to linger; but of this I cannot speak. If I shall never see
+him again, do you think I can talk of it?
+
+"But, child, it fills me with wonder as I think that the spirit world
+in which I have so long dwelt, of which I know nothing, is now,
+perhaps, to be revealed to me. I have no fear of it. I believe that
+when I enter Paradise--and I cannot believe that its doors are for ever
+closed against me--that in some way the lost love of my husband, the
+misled affection of my child, will be made up to me. Heaven defrauds us
+of nothing; and as we are created to love and be loved, is it not true
+that there must be compensation somewhere if it is torn from us, or
+denied to us?
+
+"But be that as it may," she said, looking down upon her companion with
+sad and tender eyes. "You are a woman, and I have a charge to give you.
+I warn you, child, that your love to Heaven cannot be too strong; your
+love for man too true; but while you give to man the sweetness and
+comfort of your life, you must look to Heaven alone for faithfulness."
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+When the girl looked up again, the morning star shone over the sea, a
+fresh wind blew out of the yellowing sky, but she was alone upon the
+sands.
+
+LOUISE STOCKTON.
+
+
+
+
+ON BEING BORN AWAY FROM HOME.
+
+
+Reading, the other day, in Mr. Stigand's interesting "Life of Heine,"
+about the young poet's discontent in Germany, about his long desire
+to quit that country and to live in France, and of his final hegira
+to Paris, it occurred to me that he might be described, not too
+fancifully, as having been born away from home. How many have had the
+same fortune, whether for good or ill. But the happier class is the
+contrasting one, that of persons who have never suffered from the
+stress of the migrating instinct; and surely it is a fortunate thing to
+be born in one's own place, as Lamb was born in London, to grow in the
+fit soil, to lose no time in striking root. Lamb was the happiest of
+men in this respect. A true child of the city, he held that London was
+a better place to be born in than any part of the country. "A garden,"
+he writes to Wordsworth, "was the primitive prison, till man, with
+Promethean boldness and felicity, luckily sinned himself out of it."
+For _garden_ if we read _farm_ in this passage, we have, perhaps,
+a statement of the feeling which prompts our own country people, and
+more and more with successive years, to leave the country and come to
+the city--to crowd the towns and desert the fields. Lamb says
+again--and one almost trembles to see him thus defying the "poet of
+nature" to his face--"Separate from the pleasure of your company, I
+don't much care if I never see a mountain in my life.... I do not envy
+you. I should pity you did I not know that the mind will make friends
+with anything." But Wordsworth, the Laker, was quite as clearly born at
+home as Lamb, the Londoner; and, as we know, he came back to his native
+hills after no long wanderings, not to quit them again. It is because
+Lamb hardly wandered at all that he seems so truly autochthonous, so
+peculiarly a child of the soil. He struck deep root into the
+intellectual alluvium of London, and until he was fifty years old he
+suffered nothing from transplantation except when he changed his
+lodgings or paid his somewhat reluctant visits to friends in the
+country; and when, at fifty, he ventured away from London, it was no
+further than to the margin of the city of Paradise--to Enfield,
+Edmonton--the latter a place which he calls "a little teasing image of
+a town," where "the country folks do not look like country folks," and
+where "the very blackguards are degenerate." It was only in London that
+Lamb's spirit really nourished itself and grew.
+
+And why is it in old countries that the mind seems to strike its most
+vigorous fibres into the soil, to draw up its most potent juices,
+bringing to blossom such flowers as Wordsworth's "Poems of Childhood,"
+such pansies as Elia's thoughts? Lamb suggests country images; even
+though he was of the city, his essays have an outdoor freshness and
+tenderness. They take us into the open fields, and show us the soft
+counterchange of shadows and sunlight, bright spaces and pursuing
+swarths of shade. And where did he learn the longing homesickness of a
+child for the country? "How I would wake weeping," Elia says, "and in
+the anguish of my heart exclaim upon sweet Calne, in Wiltshire!"
+Whether in country or city, surely it is in old lands that one gets the
+fullest home feeling, the complete benefits of soil, and atmosphere,
+and acquaintance with the various geniuses of the place. Would that we
+had been Londoners, we say, to know the ancient streets, or Parisians
+for the sake of the great libraries and of Notre Dame!
+
+That, however, is but a melancholy _utinam_; there has been no lack of
+fortunate migrations among people who have been born far away from
+their fitting homes, and who have found their way thither in course of
+time. So the "rising young men" of our own colonial days returned to
+England to make their career; and sometimes we may trace the features
+of their childhood's "environment" in their developed genius. Our
+painters, for whom the new country was not yet a quite satisfactory
+place, displayed perhaps the strongest homing tendency. Copley, West,
+and Stuart, for instance, all American born, had to seek an older home
+of art. West returned in youth to England, and Copley in early manhood;
+there they made their careers, there they lived and died; while Stuart,
+after passing fifteen years in Europe, came back to settle in America.
+But none of these artists quite severed himself from his native
+country. American themes served each of them for some of his best known
+works: as in Stuart's famous "Washington," West's "Death of General
+Wolfe," and Copley's first historical picture, so called, the "Youth
+Rescued from a Shark."[4]
+
+      [4] Now, I believe, in the Boston Athenaeum.
+
+There, too, was Copley's son, born, like his father, in New England.
+In 1774 he was taken to London, where he too made his career, a
+distinguished one; for the Boston boy lived to become Baron Lyndhurst
+and Lord Chancellor. But as the eminent nobleman to be, at the time of
+his demigration, was but two years old, it is difficult to point out
+any traits of distinctively American statesmanship in his career.
+
+And that other American nobleman, Count Rumford, of whom Mr. Ellis has
+recently written the first good biography--his was a notable case of
+birth away from home. It is a little odd to think of the famous Count
+Rumford, Franklin's compeer in genius, and born but a few miles from
+Franklin's birthplace, as plain Benjamin Thompson of North Woburn,
+Massachusetts. His parents were plain New England people, but he was
+ambitious, and had a handsome person; he had, too, what his neighbors
+might have called "uppish" ways; for he pretended to peculiar
+knowledge, and was always making strange researches and experiments; in
+short, I fear that he was not quite enough of a democrat to suit his
+neighbors. There was a distinction about him that they did not like; he
+was too original in his character and tastes; and consequently he was a
+marked man in that community. His fortunes seemed well enough, I
+presume, when, at twenty, he quitted school-teaching to marry a rich
+widow, thirteen years older than himself, Sarah Rolfe of Concord, New
+Hampshire; appearing on the wedding day, it is noted, in a splendid
+scarlet suit, to the astonishment and scandal of the young man's
+friends. But that was in 1772, and his troubles were not far ahead. At
+the outbreak of the colonial quarrel he was accused of being a Tory,
+and charged with disloyalty to the American cause. He protested his
+innocence in vain. He was arrested, tried--and acquitted; for nothing
+could be proven against him. Indeed, there was nothing to prove; it was
+his character that was the real cause of offence to the good people of
+Concord. They were not tolerant of superiority; and there must have
+been an intolerable superiority in young Thompson's personal beauty, in
+his manners, in his passion for study and scientific experiment. In
+spite of his acquittal, he remained _un homme suspect_; and finally the
+Concord mob visited his house to take their will of him; but he had
+fled, never to return. Had he not been forewarned, I fear there would
+never have been any Count Rumford. The patriots of Concord might not
+have put him to death, but one does not easily make noblemen of persons
+who have been tarred and feathered. It is better to admit a tradesman
+now and then, or even a dentist, to the ranks of the nobility, as it
+has happened to some of our countrymen more recently. Very luckily,
+then, young Thompson escaped the tar and feathers; at twenty-two he
+left family, home, and estate, and fled from the Concord mob, never to
+return. His property was confiscated, and in August, 1775, after having
+suffered imprisonment as a Tory, he decided to quit the country. One
+would think that he had sufficient reasons. He wrote thus to his
+father-in-law: "I am determined," he says, "to seek for that _peace_
+and _protection_ in foreign lands, and among strangers, which is deny'd
+me in my native country. I cannot any longer bear the insults that are
+daily offered me. I cannot bear to be looked upon and treated as the
+_Achan_ of society." Thompson showed a true instinct for the
+opportunity in choosing this course. He entered the British service,
+and thenceforward, says Mr. Ellis, "the rustic youth became the
+companion of gentlemen of wealth and culture, of scientific
+philosophers, of the nobility, and of princes." Perhaps it gives a
+wrong impression to speak of him as a "rustic youth"; for besides a
+winning address, we are told that he had "a noble and imposing figure,"
+and that he was a natural courtier; so that the familiar story of his
+rapid promotion is not surprising. Under-Secretary of State at
+twenty-eight, he was knighted by George III. at thirty; and eight years
+later, by the pleasure of the King of Bavaria, Benjamin Thompson, of
+Woburn, Massachusetts, was transformed into Count Rumford, having
+already taken rank as a European celebrity. But he did not forget his
+early home and friends, and it is pleasant to find him deriving his
+title from the name given to Concord by the early settlers--a name, by
+the way, that these patriots misspelled from _Romford_, the village
+near London whence some of them came.
+
+Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, never saw America or Sarah Rolfe
+again. He never saw his only daughter, born after his flight from
+Concord, until, at the age of twenty, she too left the forests of New
+England to meet him in London. From the Continent she wrote those
+interesting letters which his biographer has made accessible, the
+record of a singular experience--that of a bright but untrained New
+England girl introduced, without the least preparation, to courtly
+European life. She relates her blunders and misadventures very frankly;
+how she filled her father with consternation by making her best
+courtesy to a housekeeper; how she ordered costly goods without
+inquiring the prices; how--but I see that this _naive_ young woman
+is likely to lead us from our subject, for Miss Thompson evidently went
+away from home when she left New England.
+
+As for her father, he lived to marry a second widow, the brilliant and
+distinguished woman who had been the wife of Lavoisier. We cannot say
+that Count Rumford's good fortune kept to him in the matter of this
+second marriage. It was an unhappy one; it reminds us of Dr. Johnson's
+genial remark that second marriages are made to illustrate "the triumph
+of hope over experience." My lord and my lady did not suit each other;
+they quarrelled in the midst of their splendor, and in ways not always
+the most decorous. Poor Benjamin Thompson! I fancy that after Madame
+had "poured hot water" on the choicest flowers in your garden, you
+wished that you were taking your ease in Concord again, the Revolution
+being now safely ended, and no further question of tar and feathers
+being likely to arise!
+
+Alexander Hamilton was another eminent American who migrated in search
+of a home; but seeking, not quitting, our dear country. Born of English
+parentage in another British colony, the West Indies, he spent his
+boyhood cursing the fate which had doomed him, apparently, to what he
+called the "grovelling condition of a clerk" in the North Caribbee
+islands. He longed to escape from trade; boy-like, he longed for a war,
+for the opportunity of distinction in affairs. Nor did he have to wait
+until age, or even until maturity, for verification of the saying of
+his contemporary, Goethe, about the final fulfilment of the desires of
+youth. What Hamilton desired in boyhood came to him promptly, almost as
+by the rubbing of the lamp. We all know the story: how at fifteen he
+found his way to New Jersey, whence extricating himself he went to
+Columbia college; and how, while he was there, the Revolutionary war
+broke out, making the lad drop his books at once to accept his
+appointment as a major of artillery; and how naturally his career
+flowed from that initial point. And in our own times Thackeray was
+another product of a British colony, having been born in Calcutta, and
+spending the first seven years of his childhood there. I will not
+venture to say that I trace much colonial influence in his writings. He
+may have been a true Indian at heart, but his novels are certainly
+those of a club-man and a Londoner; and none of his essays disclose
+very much of the Hindoo. Sainte-Claire Deville, again, one of the
+truest of Frenchmen, was born, like Hamilton, in the Antilles.
+
+But how many have there been who never found a real home, though they
+sought it painfully and with tears! Byron, the predestinate wanderer,
+and Rousseau, who never found rest, who complained that his birth was
+but the beginning of his misfortunes, _le premier de mes
+malheurs_--these are types of the less fortunate class. But we need
+not multiply examples; it is the old story of wandering and
+homelessness. How often is the homing effort made in vain! One would
+fancy the air filled with piloting spirits that endeavor to find ways
+of escape for the languishing body, spirits constantly coming and going
+between the rock of exile and the far distant home. Sometimes the
+effort succeeds, as we have seen; and sometimes it fails; the spirit
+wastes itself in vain endeavor, passes away like the unnoticed melting
+of a cloud. To spirits thus aspiring, thus failing, life is indeed what
+old Desportes calls it, a bitter and thorny blossom, _une fleur
+espineuse et poignante_. For what is the loss of opportunity but the
+loss of the soul? and the conscious loss of opportunity may go on for a
+lifetime, a protracted martyrdom. Take the case of any intelligent
+exile, some wanderer in the Macerian desert, some refined person
+unluckily born in Patagonia, who rejects the Patagonian ideals, who no
+longer craves the most succulent of limpets gathered at the lowest
+tide: in our own comfort and satisfaction cannot we extend a little
+compassion to him? Not that I have the least prejudice against
+Patagonia; but we need some name for the better concentration of our
+sympathy. The intelligent but discontented Patagonian, then, who
+rejects the Patagonian ideals, whose thoughts are not the thoughts of
+Patagonia, whose ways are not Patagonian ways, he to whom even the most
+successful popular career in Patagonia would seem a humiliation,
+because it would associate him with the Patagonian character, and so
+compromise him before the extra-Patagonian world--his, I say, is not a
+happy case. His exile must end like other banishments for life--either
+in escape or in death. For while he lives he must do without spiritual
+light and heat, without the intellectual climate that he needs.
+
+Do you call this a morbid state of mind in the Patagonian? Well, it may
+be that he should imitate the repose, the serenity of the limpet; it
+may be his duty to rest contented with the beach at low tide, with the
+estate to which he was born; and yet I say that his feeling is not
+devoid of a certain distinction; it may be, indeed, very blamable, but
+it is a feeling that is no trait of ignoble natures.
+
+And there is, too, a sanative quality in that feeling. His critical
+attitude may help the exile to keep before him higher standards,
+whether in thought or in conduct, whether in his "Hellenizing" or his
+"Hebraizing" tendencies, as Mr. Arnold calls them, than he might
+entertain were he living comfortably at the very centre. His
+privations may thus be more effective than the maceration of the
+recluse in keeping him in sympathy with culture, with the best things
+of the mind; and surely that is some compensation for living in
+Patagonia! There is still another: there is a fortunate exemption for
+such exiles--fortunate we may safely call it, though it is but a
+negative beatitude--the exemption from envy. That is worth not a
+little. In Paris, in London, in Pekin, how many provocatives to envy
+beset even the philosopher! For in those cities he must see many
+undeniably superior persons about him--persons superior to himself not
+only in fortune, but in ability! There, in attainment of all sorts, he
+meets his rivals; and if he is a real philosopher, he will remember
+Creon's caution--"not to get the idea fixed in your head that what you
+say and nothing else is right."[5] Still, philosopher or not, he will
+be likely to envy some of the desirable things that he sees; and the
+fault is perhaps excusable: at any rate an occasional touch of the
+claw, an _effleurement_ now and then of the passion, need not surprise
+us, even when we do not excuse it, in London or Pekin. But in the
+Patagonian civilization, however important it may be to the progress
+of the world, what does such a man find to envy? Surely the higher
+provocatives to that weakness are not abundant. Hereditary wealth,
+ancient family dignities, culture, scholarship, imposing genius--these
+do not surround him, these do not confront him with his inferiority as
+they do, let us say, in this country. It is we, then, who are the
+unhappy ones in this respect; but we can understand, at least, the
+weakness of brethren who may be a little shaken by the contemplation
+of all the desirable things in which the richer civilizations abound.
+
+      [5] [Greek: Me nyn en ethos mounon en sauto phorei,
+                  Hos phes sy, kouden allo, tout' orthos echein.]
+
+      --_Antigone_.
+
+Yes, the careers which we may observe from day to day may certainly
+prove stumbling blocks to some of us. The thriving politician or
+contractor, for instance, Dives in his barouche, the blooming members
+of literary cliques, the fashionable clergymen and poets, chorusing
+gently to feminine audiences, who listen intent, perhaps even "weeping
+in a rapturous sense of art," as Heine tells us the women of his day
+wept when they heard the sweet voices of the evirates singing of
+passion, of
+
+    Liebes fehnen,
+    Von Lieb' und Liebeserguss--
+
+how admirable are all these characters! These, indeed, are careers to
+move any but the steadfast mind.
+
+And yet, even in Philistia, it is not every one that will yearn after
+successes like these. In Philistia, far from the promised land, the
+exile may yet contemplate without desire all these desirable things,
+envying neither them nor their possessors. He may even indulge in a
+saving scorn of them, a scorn of the main achievements, the popular men
+of the Philistine community; bathing himself in irony as a tonic
+against the spiritual malaria. Such a man I once knew, a man of
+Askelon. He lived in that rich city as a recluse, and according to any
+standard recognized in Askelon, he was not rich. On this text he would
+sometimes quote delightful old Rutebeuf:
+
+    Je ne sai par ou je coumance,
+    Tant ai de matyere abondance
+    Por parleir de ma povretei.
+
+Yet this man was not without his pleasures. One of them, I remember,
+came from his interest in the study of architecture. For Askelon was a
+finely built city; and he used to walk much in the streets of it,
+gazing upon the fronts of the costly houses, all patterned, as I
+understood, after the purest Greek orders. He used to walk around
+admiring, and making me admire. But this man had a wonderful eye, a
+visual gift which must have been, I think, much the same thing as the
+second sight or clairvoyance of which we read; for upon the fronts of
+these fine houses he saw more than what the delicate taste, the cunning
+hand of the builder had placed there. I have heard him say that he was
+"a Sunday's child," referring to some superstition not current in that
+community--and he certainly made out writing upon those walls and doors
+which I, for one, could never see, though I have no doubt that it was
+really there. But they were legends which would have startled the
+residents could they have been audibly published in the streets of
+Askelon. "What inscriptions upon these door plates!" he would sometimes
+remark, walking down the Pentodon, the most fashionable street in the
+place: "Let me read you a few that I discern in this neighborhood"; and
+as we passed slowly before the Greek houses he pronounced, one by one,
+these remarkable words, reading them off, as it seemed, from the
+lintels of the very finest edifices. I cannot give all of them, but
+these, if I remember, were some: Charlatan, Tartufe, Peculator,
+Sharper, Parthis mendacior; and when we came to one of the corner
+houses, or "palaces," as they called them in Askelon, he said: "One of
+our furtive men lives there--one of our men of three letters. We have
+as many of them here in Askelon as ever existed in Plautus's time, and
+they are quite as able now as they then were to live in fine houses to
+which they have not quite the most honest claim in the world." While he
+spoke the man of three letters came out and ran down the marble
+staircase, smiling, and offering, I thought, to salute my friend as he
+stepped into his chariot; but my friend, though he had clear sight for
+the palace, did not see the owner.
+
+But you were surely too severe, poor friend of mine. There were just
+men even in Askelon--upright, religious, and intelligent, full of good
+works. What if this clever conveyancer had appropriated to himself
+enough to buy him a fine house? Was it not in the very air of Askelon
+that he should do such a thing--that he, like others, should at any
+rate establish himself comfortably? and will not some honester man than
+himself live after him in the fine house? Come now, confess, I used to
+say, that you yourself, in his place, might not have done much better:
+confess, at least, that when you were a boy you put your fingers into
+the sugar-bowl when you should have kept them out, when you well knew
+that you ought to keep them out! And then my friend would confess the
+pressure of the "environment," the power of the "Zeit-Geist," as we
+have learned to call it since then. Poor man! That was long ago; and
+things have changed greatly in Askelon of latter years. They tell me
+that everybody there has now grown honest, and that nobody goes around
+any more reading invisible writing on the houses. And all the fine
+buildings are still standing, it appears; though the journals of that
+city remark that some of the Grecian architecture has peeled off from
+the fronts of the houses in the Pentodon, having been insecurely
+fastened on, it seems, at first. And how my poor friend used to
+criticise those very palaces in his dry, technical way! One thing in
+particular that he said I remember by the antithesis, the turn of it;
+he used to say that the architects of Askelon were never certain
+whether to construct ornament or to ornament construction.
+
+Well, he is gone now; he will never blame Askelon again, or run down
+Gath. He died in Philistia. Perhaps he served his purpose there, but I
+am sure he would have done more if he had been a little less Quixotic
+in his notions.
+
+But let us not grow tristful again. How many a happy escape, as we
+said, has been made from Philistia; how many a clear spirit has made
+its way out of the darkness to a true honor. If many who have had the
+higher endowments have perished in the shadow, princes dying behind the
+iron mask, yet not all have failed; some have broken away to a career.
+Of two such in particular let us conclude by speaking--Winckelmann and
+Heine. Both were Prussians, and each one migrated from the north into a
+southern country, a fugitive from "the power of the night, the press of
+the storm." Each waited long before his opportunity came; each learned
+that the "tardiest of the immortals are the boon Hours." But each found
+his opportunity; and by what an instinctive escape! For Winckelmann it
+was his first journey out of Prussia, when, in 1755, he set his face
+toward Rome; still it was a homing flight like that of a carrier
+pigeon; for in Rome he found his appointed place, and there he spent in
+congenial work the remaining years of his life. Yet he could say, in
+the bitterness of his spirit, on reaching Rome, "I have come into the
+world and into Italy too late." Nor may we contradict that bitter cry,
+even in view of Winckelmann's great critical achievement; we have to
+ask, Might it not have been greater still, had he not been thus _serus
+studiorum_, as Horace phrases it--thus unluckily belated in his
+culture?
+
+All the traits of these migrations of men of genius are interesting,
+and we may dwell for a moment, though at the risk of some digression,
+upon Winckelmann's disappointment on his arrival in the city of his
+desire. It was a pathetic disappointment, but one of a kind not
+infrequent with sensitive minds. Long detained by poverty in the north,
+it was not until the age of thirty-eight that he reached Italy; and
+when at last he arrived in Rome, the longed-for city wore a strange
+look for him--had an aspect for which he was not prepared. It was there
+that his emotion broke out as we have seen. We can understand his
+disappointment if we bear in mind the cruel treatment to which our
+fancies are commonly subjected at the hands of the fact. How swiftly,
+how silently, like the irrevocable sequence of images in a dissolving
+view, our premonitions vanish under the light of the reality! The
+actual Rome, the living man, the painting, the landscape which we
+travel far to see--these dispel at once the preconception; a glance,
+and the dream is gone, however long domesticated in the mind, however
+brightly glowing but now in the imagination. Fact is a careless
+bedfellow, and overlays the tender child Fancy; and even when nature
+contrives the change less rudely, we can hardly resign our poor,
+familiar fancies without regret. But sometimes, happily, we can do what
+Winckelmann did not do; we can retain the old fancies and compare them
+with the experience. Let me give a personal instance: I remember
+framing the distinctest image of the lakes of Killarney from my
+childhood readings in Peter Parley's veritable histories. There was the
+cool spring, shaded with bushes, and pouring out abundant waters; and
+there was the blessed Saint Patrick, standing by the rocky edge of the
+spring, clasping down the stout lid of an iron-bound chest upon the
+last of the unhappy serpents of Erin, and saying, "Be aisy, darlints!"
+just before casting the box into the depths of the lake. It was a
+pleasant scene, a clear imaginative microcosm; never was a distincter
+picture in my mind than that of this fancied Killarney. The real
+Killarney I saw many years after reading those histories of Peter
+Parley, yet that first vivid picture did not vanish at the sight; the
+fancied lake held its place against the reality; nay, even at this day,
+I can call up the two pictures at will, the imagined and the real, and
+compare the two--the scene of my early fancies with the humorous Celtic
+saint standing beside the spring and snapping down the lid of his box
+upon the tail of the last snake, on the one hand, and the broader
+landscape of reality, in which there were no saints, but many Patricks.
+
+But Winckelmann, if he did not find the visionary Rome, soon became
+reconciled to the real one. The city put on the homelike look for him,
+and it was not long before it became profoundly endeared to him. It was
+with the authentic pang of homesickness that he left it, finally, to
+make that northward journey from which he was never to return.
+
+How different was Heine's first experience of his newly-found home,
+Paris! For that other migrating spirit there was no such initiatory
+disappointment. For Heine his adopted city was from the first a
+spiritual home, a true city of refuge, an island of the blessed. For
+years, lingering in his cold city of the north, _verdammtes Hamburg_,
+as he called it, he had longed in vain to escape; and to what vivid
+expressions of his suffering he gives utterance! In one place he
+compares himself to the white swans at the public garden, whose wings
+were broken on the approach of winter that they should not fly away to
+the south:
+
+"The waiter at the Pavilion declared that they were comfortable there,
+and that the cold was healthy for them. But that is not true. It is not
+good for one to be imprisoned hopelessly in a cold pool, and there to
+be frozen up; to have one's wings broken so that one can no longer fly
+forth to the fair South, where the beautiful flowers are, and the
+golden sunlight, and the blue mountain lakes. Alas! to me once was Fate
+not much kinder."
+
+While still pent up in Hamburg he had written thus to a friend: "I am
+no German, as you well know.... There are but three civilized
+people--the French, the Chinese, and the Persian.... Ah, how I yearn
+for Ispahan! Alas! I, poor fellow, am far from its lovely minarets and
+odoriferous gardens! Ah, it is a terrible fate for a Persian poet that
+he must wear himself out in your base, rugged German tongue.... O
+Firdusi! O Ischami! O Saadi! how miserable is your brother!"
+
+As Goethe is said to have thought of doing when he was in love with
+"Lili," Heine at this time thought of retiring to the United States, "a
+land which I loved before I knew it," as he wrote from Heligoland in
+1830. How he knew it does not appear, but he decided against us; he
+calls this country a "frightful dungeon of freedom, where the invisible
+chains gall still more painfully than the visible ones at home, and
+where ... the mob exercises its coarse dominion!" Meanwhile, as he
+tells us somewhere, "In Hamburg it was my only consolation to think
+that I was better than other people."
+
+Heine reached Paris in his thirty-first year; and never was the city
+better appreciated and enjoyed than by this young wanderer during the
+earlier time of his residence there. Everything in it pleased him: the
+intellectual life, the interest in ideas, not less than the gayety and
+charm. But he found much pleasure in the courtesy of Parisian manners.
+Parisian manners were then, as even now, distinguishable from Prussian
+by the careful observer. "Sweet pineapple odors of politeness!" he
+says, "how beneficially didst thou console my sick spirit, which had
+swallowed down in Germany so much tobacco vapor!... Like the melodies
+of Rossini did the pretty phrases of apology of a Frenchman sound in my
+ear, who had gently pushed me in the street on the day of my arrival. I
+was almost frightened at such sweet politeness--I who had been
+accustomed to boorish German knocks in the ribs without any apology at
+all." If any one jostled Heine roughly in the street, and made no
+apology, he would say, "I knew that that man was one of my
+countrymen."[6]
+
+      [6] I quote from the translations in Stigand's "Life."
+
+But Paris is somewhat more than a city of pleasure; it is a city of
+opportunity. To many Americans it is a stumbling-block, to many
+Englishmen foolishness; but Heine was one of the true children of
+Paris, though wandering at first far from the centre, and he found
+fitting work there. They were busy as well as joyous years, those that
+he first spent in that bright capital. O Paris, city of opportunity,
+how many other of thy children are still wandering far from the centre!
+Some of them live upon the sierras of Patagonia, some in the stonier
+streets of Askelon, some inhabit caves in the deserts of Maceria.
+Living an anchorite's life in German villages, in Pacific colonies, on
+Cape Cod or Kerguelen's Land, the delicate French spirit wastes itself
+away. And yet some of these exiles have found their way to that centre
+of blithe intellectual activity.
+
+Heine was such a one; he spent in Paris the most productive and happy
+period of his life, the bright interval between his cloudy morning and
+the shadows that were to gather around him before their time; and how
+he glowed in the warmth and light of the capital! And while he carried
+his pleasures to excess, yet he did not go pleasuring like the vulgar.
+In a valid sense his very extravagances had an intelligible principle
+in them; one might say that he dissipated himself upon ethical grounds.
+Yet his were the reasons of a poetic, not of an analytic thinker. The
+popular religion, he said, has dishonored the flesh; let us restore it
+to honor. To restore joyousness to modern life, something of the
+antique innocence to pleasure, to make it reputable as well as
+delightful, to readjust the conscience of a community which looked upon
+pleasure as essentially wrong, and yet pursued it, so thinking, at the
+expense of its conscience, to relieve pleasure somewhat from the ban,
+to augment, in a word, the permitted happiness of life--that was
+Heine's aim; that was what he understood by his favorite doctrine of
+restoring the flesh to honor--_la rehabilitation de la chair_.
+
+Do you call that an easy creed, a comfortable practice? I will not deny
+it, but do not let us lose the distinction, the trait by which Heine's
+doctrine was discriminated from that of some other easy-going apostles.
+Heine was intellectually sincere; he had a genuine purpose; he did not
+go to Paris, for instance, as some of our missionaries have gone of
+late years to Florence and Madrid, with commissions to labor among the
+"nominal Christians," as they call the Catholic residents of those
+comfortable capitals, to convert them to the true Christianity of
+American Protestantism. No; Heine had too much directness, too much
+intellectual verity for a situation of that sort: his mistakes were
+honest mistakes, and he paid an honest penalty for them.
+
+And surely the reinstatement of the flesh, the restoration of the body
+to honor and to perfection, is, as I have said elsewhere, an admirable
+purpose. It is only through the wise reinstatement of the flesh, if I
+am not mistaken, that the condition of men is likely to be much
+bettered; for it grows clearer every year that educating will not
+accomplish this, or medicine, or penalties, or perhaps even preaching.
+But Heine was no theorist in these matters: he was poet before all,
+and he was too absolutely, too completely a poet for the justest
+thought, or for his own good. Heine's nature lacked that tonic bent
+toward accurate knowledge, toward dispassionate observation and
+thought, which was the salvation, for instance, of Goethe, and which
+has been the salvation of all great natures who have sought to excel
+in character as well as in art. The spring of clear, untroubled
+intelligence did not flow for Heine, the stream which should flow upon
+the homestead of every poet, the _fons Baudusiae splendidior vitro_.
+In those invigorating waters he seldom refreshed his spirit as
+the greatest poets have done--in meditation, in discipline, in
+dispassionate inquiry. These are the spiritual antiseptics that are
+needful at least for the more carnal poetic temperaments. Am I using
+fanciful metaphors? I mean that the poet who may undertake to put
+forth a new gospel of conduct, must first think long and strictly. But
+Heine did not think strictly, and his critical theory of life need not
+detain us. Heine thought of pleasure, for instance, as Mr. Ruskin
+thinks of work, that it is a thing to be had for the asking; the fact
+being in any state of society yet established inexorably the
+reverse--namely, that neither work nor pleasure is commonly to be had
+on demand.
+
+But it was a part of the new creed that enjoyment was to be had for the
+asking, and the _propaganda_ already existed. "There was a little
+society of devotees, if I may call them so--Michel Chevalier, Olinde,
+Enfantin, and others--who were zealously preaching the rehabilitation
+of the flesh"; and Heine devoted himself with assiduity to the pleasing
+cultus--with all the more assiduity, we may fairly suppose, as being a
+stranger in Paris. I fear that his labors were in the main of a carnal
+and unscientific sort; certainly they never won him any reputation for
+religious zeal. Nor was Paris the field before all others where
+laborers of this sort were needed. In Paris, indeed, the doctrine and
+practice of pleasure had been attended to, with no lack of zeal, for at
+least three centuries before the time of Heine's arrival there. Would
+that Heine had taken up his creed with somewhat more of reserve; that
+he had been content with a less many-sided experience of pleasure! For
+he surfeited himself somewhat with this experience; he knew its dangers
+perfectly well, but what ardent young man is deterred by knowing the
+danger? We bite at the hook just the same, as M. Renan says:
+_L'hamecon est evident, et neanmoins on y a mordu, on y mordra
+toujours_. And with all his love of delicacy, with all his
+distinction of spirit, he also relished harsh things. Sharp aliments,
+rank flavors, draining ecstasies that mingle the last drop of pleasure
+with pain and faintness, seemed necessary to complete the round of this
+man's life--of Heine the singer, Heine the man of all his time in whom
+the delicate blossoms of poetry were most fragrant. No poet could
+better deal than he with the exquisite joyances of the heart and soul;
+and he well knew that this bloom does not gather upon the fruit of
+coarse experience. He knew that the most delicate vintage is yielded to
+the gentle pressure. But with this he was not content. He crushed the
+grape harshly; he made it yield up its harsher juices; the flavors of
+rind and seed are expressed in the wine of his life, and mingle with
+the cup that he pours out.
+
+And his life was spent as wine is poured upon the ground. Heine ended
+where the ascetics began, in pain, privation, mortification of the
+flesh; and it was a mortification that had not even the consolation of
+being the sufferer's own choice, for it was involuntary. Better for him
+would it have been had he gone out to dwell in the wilderness, as St.
+Jerome left the Paris of his day, and retired into the desert of
+Chalcis. For a strange penalty was to be his--one of which the joyous
+apostle of pleasure could hardly have dreamed before the blow fell. A
+paralytic touch converted the man of pleasure into a man of pain, his
+bed a living tomb. No more for ever, for Heine, was there to be any
+reinstatement of the flesh.
+
+This dark closing period of Heine's life has a fascination about it; it
+holds the attention like the background of a Rembrandt etching, with
+its dimly-seen forms that appear to stir in the gloom, ghostly,
+half-alive; such a contrast there is between his gloomy close and the
+bright projection of his earlier career. Shall we call his life a
+failure as regards himself, his personal success and happiness? Upon
+that point we may not pronounce too confidently. He would have chosen
+it had the choice been offered him with full knowledge of the
+alternatives; he would have preferred it to any commonplace existence.
+There will always be those who hold that such careers as Byron's or
+Heine's, such fitful careers, with their fierce tempests, their
+ecstatic sunshine, their "awful brevity," are preferable to any serener
+life, however long; and least of all may we pity Heine. With what scorn
+would he look down upon our pity!
+
+Heine's life has a peculiar value for the student of modern life, in
+that it has what we may call an exemplary interest. For Heine made that
+costly sacrificial experiment of which the old examples never suffice
+us; the experiment which each new generation requires anew, in which
+nature in her wasteful way insists on consuming the finest geniuses. As
+Byron had attempted just before him, so Heine attempted to think and to
+live without reserves, to compass the round of sentiment and sensation,
+to touch the entire range of experience. Like Byron, he could not pass
+through the fire; he fell, the flame licked him up. And yet, far more
+truly than many a martyr, Byron and Heine gave their lives for us. Not,
+indeed, in the professed spirit of the martyr, not purposing the
+sacrifice, but for that very reason making it the more significant.
+They experimented lavishly, daringly with life, and in their poems they
+give us real life as no other poets since have done. They are real
+passion, real thought, the ruddy drops of the sad heart. Heine's "Book
+of Songs" is his own body and blood. One feels of it what Whitman says
+of his "Leaves of Grass": "This is no book; who touches this touches a
+man."
+
+And Heine and Byron, in giving their lives for us, did what the
+greatest poets and the strongest men have seldom done. Though they have
+always suffered, yet for us these have rather toiled than suffered.
+Dante, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Goethe--what exalted, what demiurgic
+creations have they bequeathed to us, what power to move, what beauty
+to ponder with unapproachable longing! But these creations have an
+awing beauty; they keep an unattainable distance and height. When we
+consider the lives of these greatest spirits, we find them walking
+apart in the fastnesses of the hills, pursuing arduous ways where few
+or none may bear them company. Their paths gain upward upon the
+heights; they gain so far and high that the tinge of that mountain
+remoteness falls upon them--an airy distance, a deterring shadow; and
+if ever their voices seem to say, "Follow us," they have not pointed
+out the way.
+
+But though Byron and Heine were thus rapt up into the mountain in
+visions, their daily walk and life were in the world; its dust and
+soilure cling to them, we see them wavering and going astray. Their
+very wanderings bring them nearer to us, who sojourn; their desire,
+their aspiration, their failures make the wiser use of opportunity
+possible to any of us who may have been born away from home.
+
+TITUS MUNSON COAN.
+
+
+
+
+THE HOME OF MY HEART.
+
+
+    Not here in the populous town,
+      In the playhouse or mart,
+    Not here in the ways gray and brown,
+    But afar on the green-swelling down,
+      Is the home of my heart.
+
+    There the hillside slopes down to a dell
+      Whence a streamlet has start;
+    There are woods and sweet grass on the swell,
+    And the south winds and west know it well:
+      'Tis the home of my heart.
+
+    There's a cottage o'ershadowed by leaves
+      Growing fairer than art,
+    Where under the low sloping eaves
+    No false hand the swallow bereaves:
+      'Tis the home of my heart.
+
+    And there as you gaze down the lea,
+      Where the trees stand apart,
+    Over grassland and woodland may be
+    You will catch the faint gleam of the sea
+      From the home of my heart.
+
+    And there in the rapturous spring,
+      When the morning rays dart
+    O'er the plain, and the morning birds sing,
+    You may see the most beautiful thing
+      In the home of my heart;
+
+    For there at the casement above,
+      Where the rosebushes part,
+    Will blush the fair face of my love:
+    Ah, yes! it is this that will prove
+      'Tis the home of my heart.
+
+F. W BOURDILLON.
+
+
+
+
+THE SOUTH, HER CONDITION AND NEEDS.
+
+
+Sir Robert Peel, shortly before his death, said that what he had seen
+and heard in public life had left upon his mind a prevailing impression
+of gloom and grief. What impressed the mind of the English statesman so
+painfully in reference to his own country must be felt correspondingly
+by Americans who contemplate the South; for its present condition
+awakens the anxious solicitude of every thoughtful patriot. A brief
+mention of some of the evils that afflict her may help toward the
+ascertainment and application of adequate remedies. Let it be premised
+that this discussion proceeds in no degree from disloyalty to the
+Government, nor from unwillingness to accept the legitimate
+consequences of the war.
+
+Betwixt the North and the South there lingers much estrangement. One
+serious cause of irritation at the South, which seems irremediable, is
+the distrust with which those who sustained the Confederate States are
+regarded by a large number of Northern people. Our motives are
+habitually misrepresented, our purposes misunderstood, our actions
+perverted, our character maligned. On our conduct have been placed
+constructions which seem to spring from direst hate or malice. By
+representative men Southern States are spoken of as outside the Union;
+and "a solid South" has been the party appeal most efficacious for
+arousing sectional and vindictive passion. Every Southern citizen who
+followed his convictions, and affiliated with the 1,640,000 Democrats
+of the North, is suspected of disloyalty or treason. No protestations
+of men or parties, no avowals of governors or legislatures, are
+accepted as sincere unless accompanied by a support of the Republican
+party. Party platforms, the support of an Abolitionist like Mr.
+Greeley, organic laws, are regarded as deceptive because the shibboleth
+of disloyalty and patriotism is "Republicanism." These persistent
+efforts to brand us as inferiors, to make us unequals as citizens, to
+coerce the support of an administration and a party, are based upon our
+unfitness, morally or intellectually, to decide for ourselves what is
+best for the country's welfare and perpetuity. We are loyal, and
+patriotic, and honest only when we sing paeans to the Administration and
+its favorites. Practically the war has been prolonged, and this policy
+of disunion alienates, embitters, and prohibits the growth of fraternal
+sentiments. To prevent a complete and durable reconciliation seems the
+settled policy of a large party. This proscription and ostracism have
+helped to create a hopelessness as to the future. A nightmare paralyzes
+our energies.
+
+The South, if conquered, and honestly accepting the results of the war,
+needed encouragement and material help instead of discriminating
+injuries. Her condition was deplorable. All wars are destructive of
+property and production. To the South the war between the States was
+exhausting to the utmost degree. Its destructiveness is not computable
+by figures. The numerical inferiority of the army made it necessary to
+put into the effective military force every available boy and man; and
+these were thus withdrawn from productive labor. Much of the labor that
+remained was applied, not to the production of wealth, but to such
+manufactures as were needful only in war. For four dreadful years, like
+the _triste noche_ described by Prescott, with ports closed, and under
+the imperious necessity of evoking and utilizing every possible warlike
+agency, this cessation of wealth-producing industry, this drain upon
+material resources, this decimation of our best men, this waste of
+capital and exhaustion of the country from the Rio Grande to the
+Chesapeake bay, continued remorselessly. Superadd the emancipation of
+4,000,000 slaves, the sudden extinction of $1,600,000,000 of property,
+the disorganization of the labor system, the upheaval of society, the
+"stupendous innovation" upon habits, modes of thought, allegiance,
+amounting almost to a change of civilization, and it will be easy to
+see that the South started upon her new career with nothing but genial
+climate, fertile soil, and brave hearts. Absence of capital, of
+concentrated wealth, made it necessary to begin _de novo_. Slavery and
+profitableness of crops had prevented diversity of pursuits.
+Agriculture, applied to a few products, was almost our sole occupation.
+Former habits had disinclined to mechanical pursuits or manual labor,
+and our towns, since 1865, have been crowded with young men, who have
+sought in clerkships, agencies, and professions the means of support.
+These employments, if furnishing remunerative wages, are not
+wealth-producing, add nothing to capital, and have aggravated the
+general impoverishment.
+
+These evils have been intensified by vicious legislation and bad
+government. Federal legislation has been much in the interest of
+stock-jobbers, speculators, monopolists, so that "corners" have been
+fostered, and labor has paid heavy and depressing tribute to fatten
+greedy cormorants. The present system of banking violates the
+established principles of currency, and is in utter contradiction to
+what, for a decade, by consent of all parties and financiers, was the
+policy of the Government. Bad as the system is inherently by injurious
+legislation, its benefits are secured to a favored class, and by
+combination with other corporations, notably railroad companies, the
+business of the country is largely in the control of a few monopolists,
+who rule and grow rich in spite of the laws of political economy.
+Promissory notes, printed with pictures on fine paper, have been
+substituted for the money of the Constitution, and our young people are
+growing up with the notion that this rag currency is a legitimate
+measure of value and a legal solvent of debts.
+
+So marked has been this class legislation in the interest of capital,
+that a Senator of the United States, Mr. Wallace of Pennsylvania, says,
+"From the beginning of the present Administration down to the
+adjournment of Congress in August, 1876, every financial statute has
+had but one purpose, and that purpose to increase the value of the
+bonded indebtedness of the Government." Statistics show how insecure is
+business, on what vicious principles it is transacted, and how rapidly
+property is concentrating in the hands of a few. In 1874 there were
+5,830 failures for a total of $155,000,000, and in 1875 the failures
+increased to 7,740, aggregating a loss of $201,000,000. In both North
+and South there has been a frightful increase of indebtedness by towns
+and cities, counties and States--thirty-eight States owe an aggregate
+of $382,000,000--so that taxpayers groan in purse and spirit, and are
+deeply concerned to find a way of honest payment.
+
+Taxation has been and is a potent instrument of wrong and corruption.
+To pay the national debt increased taxation was, of course, necessary
+and proper, but taxation should have been adjusted to the rights of
+honest creditors and the lessened pecuniary ability of taxpayers. The
+Federal and local taxes of the last eleven years, according to high
+authority, amount to not less than $7,500,000,000. Never in modern
+times was revenue collected in such a complicated and ruinous manner.
+Mr. Curtis tells us one-fourth of the revenue is lost in the
+collection. If the collection and expenditure of revenue be the tests
+for determining the wisdom of a government, then ours is not "the best
+the world ever saw."
+
+Extravagant expenditure is closely connected with enormous revenues.
+Economy of administration is a lost art. Federal expenditure in 1860,
+exclusive of payment of public debt, was $1.94 per head. In 1870 it was
+$3.52 per head, and in 1875 $3.38. The $4,500,000,000 of Federal
+taxes[7] of the last eleven years have not been exclusively
+appropriated to reduction of debt and defraying necessary expenditures.
+Officials have been needlessly multiplied, jobs have been created,
+peculation is common, and millions have been squandered on contracts
+made with hungry partisans. Such an exhaustion of national resources is
+governmental robbery. In the purer days it was a political maxim that
+no more money was to be taken from the people than was necessary for
+the constitutional and economical wants of the Government. Large
+revenues and large expenditures are mutually recreative. Mr. Calhoun,
+the most sagacious and philosophical statesman of this century, said,
+in 1839, "I am disposed to regard it as a political maxim in free
+States, that an impoverished treasury, once in a generation at least,
+is almost indispensable to the preservation of their institutions and
+liberty." All experience shows that excessive revenue and large
+expenditures increase the patronage of the government and corrupt
+public and private morals. Some palliation may be found in the fact
+that wars are demoralizing, necessitate much assumption of power, and
+that our conflict was gigantic; but after all due allowances the
+corruptions in America must find a parallel in that period of English
+history when the sovereign was the pensioner of a foreign potentate.
+The centennial anniversary of our republic finds a record so scandalous
+that all honest men blush, and the Fourth of July eulogists have to
+make the humiliating confession of much of vice and shame in our
+national life, of a decline from the former high standard of political
+and moral purity, and of the blister of corruption in high places, upon
+Executive and judiciary, upon laws, and on the acts of prominent
+officials. (See speeches of Dr. Storrs and Hon. C. F. Adams.)
+
+      [7] This is somewhat in excess of the actual amount, which is,
+      however, quite large enough, $3,809,722,765; viz., customs,
+      $1,973,589,621; internal revenue, $1,826,185,813; direct tax,
+      $9,947,331. It is well to remember, too, that the expenditures of
+      the Government have decreased one-half in this period; viz., from
+      $520,809,417, in 1866, to $258,469,797 in 1876. Of this decrease,
+      thirty-three millions is in the interest on the public
+      debt.--ED. GALAXY.
+
+As cause and consequence of oppressive taxes, and wasteful and corrupt
+extravagance, I may instance the centripetal tendencies of the Federal
+Government. The patriot must deprecate the rapid strides toward
+consolidation. Our government was designed as a government of
+clearly-defined limitations upon power. It is now practically absolute.
+In its complex character, a division of powers mutually exclusive
+betwixt Federal and State governments, "divisibility of sovereignty,"
+as some phrase it, was contemplated. Now the States are provinces
+dependent on, submissive to, the central head, just as the Colonies
+were looked upon, prior to our independence, as a species of
+feudatories for the benefit of the mother country. By popular vote, by
+elastic constructions or palpable violations of the Constitution, by
+unprecedented assumptions, our Federal system has been revolutionized.
+It is the height of absurdity to talk of the restrictions of a written
+Constitution, when a dominant majority interprets finally that
+instrument, and there are no remedies to protect against invasion or
+encroachment.[8] It is a mere glittering generality to boast of a
+constitutional republic, if a President can violate the organic law
+with impunity, or if Congress is restrained in its assumptions only by
+its own sense of justice. Much recent executive, legislative, and
+judicial action has tended to absorb State rights and prerogatives. Mr.
+Boutwell's proposition to remand a State to territorial pupilage would
+be but the legal enactment and the logical sequence of what has had the
+enthusiastic approval of a large number of citizens. Encroachments have
+been so numerous and violent, submission has been so tame, that
+governors are coolly set aside on the demand of a petty marshal, and
+legislatures on the bidding of Mr. Jones. Once States were supposed to
+have the right of eminent domain; to have exclusive control of
+education, of litigation among its own citizens; to determine the
+elective franchise; to regulate the relations of parent and child,
+husband and wife, guardian and ward; but that was in the purer days of
+the republic, when States were not mere counties, but political
+communities, with, a large residuum of undelegated powers. The earlier
+amendments to the Constitution imposed checks and limitations upon the
+general Government, because of the watchful jealousy on the part of the
+States of their sovereignty and independence. Following the tendency to
+centralize, to despotize, the late amendments are in the direction of
+consolidation, and take away from the States what was once universally
+regarded as their _exclusive_ prerogative in reference to the elective
+franchise. Now, under amendments and "_appropriate_ legislation for
+carrying them into effect," the _national_ Government can control
+voting, make a registration of voters, and very soon, if there be no
+arrest of tyranny, the ballot box will be under the guardianship of
+Presidential appointees. Federal election laws thus degrade States into
+petty municipalities and subvert liberty.
+
+      [8] Not only that government is tyrannical which is tyrannically
+      administered, but all governments are tyrannical which have not
+      in their constitution a sufficient security against arbitrary
+      power.--_Burgh's Pol. Disquis._, 378.
+
+Passing from these grievances, applicable to the whole Union, I
+approach what is to my apprehension the most unmatchable outrage ever
+inflicted by a civilized people. Some acts, like the partition of
+Poland, stand out on the pages of history as disgraceful national
+crimes; but most of them shade into minor offences compared with the
+crime-breeding, race-endangering, liberty-imperiling savagery of
+conferring the right of suffrage upon the negroes _en masse_. In other
+countries liberty has been not so much a creation as a growth. In
+conservative England, suffrage has been slowly, temperately enlarged,
+always preserving restrictions so as not to commit the destinies of the
+kingdom to an ignorant mob. Giving the elective franchise to the
+suddenly emancipated negroes, placing the government of States in the
+hands of such a class, wholly unprepared by education or experience, if
+not such a repeating crime, would be a farce for the ages. Every person
+of the least intelligence knows that generally the voting of the
+negroes is a mere sham. He votes as a machine. He is the tool of the
+demagogue, the pawn of a political party. That men with no intelligent
+understanding of rights and duties, unable to read, untrained in
+political affairs, wholly ignorant of the commonest matters pertaining
+to government, superstitious, credulous, victims of impostors, paying
+no capitation tax, should decide upon grave questions of organic or
+statute law, upon the financial or foreign policy of the country,
+should control counties, cities, States, is an offence that will stink
+in the nostrils of coming centuries. What has occurred since the
+Presidential election is demonstration that both parties at the North
+regard unlimited negro suffrage as subversive of the principle of
+reliance upon moral worth and clear intelligence. The presence of the
+military in South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, the hurrying to and
+fro of partisans, the secret conclaves and cabalistic telegrams, the
+jealous superintendence of the counting of votes, the criminations and
+recriminations in reference to fraud and intimidation, are the
+legitimate results of the attempt to sustain a party by such extreme
+medicine. Our novel experiment of free government cannot endure many
+more such tests. Prof. Huxley, speaking to Americans during his late
+visit, said: "You and your descendants have to ascertain whether the
+great mass of people will hold together under the forms of a republic
+and the despotic reality of universal suffrage; whether centralization
+will get the better without the actual or disguised monarchy; whether
+shifting corruption is better than a permanent bureaucracy." It need
+not take long to work out the problem if the ballot box is to be
+controlled by ignorance. Sometimes we are lectured to be grateful to
+the North for its magnanimity toward the South. Legislation does not
+sustain the self-eulogy. It is alleged that mercy was shown to "rebels
+and traitors." Passing over the _petitio principii_ in the phraseology,
+a thousand times better it would have been to have hung President, and
+Cabinet, and every Congressman, and every general, than to have
+fastened upon us this incurable cancer, eating up the life-blood of the
+Union.
+
+In the South, the administration of government in some instances has
+been marked by oppressive tyranny and open corruption. Incompetent and
+dishonest men have been appointed to positions, and with full knowledge
+of their wrong doings have been retained to accomplish party ends. This
+injustice and tyranny have demoralized somewhat our own people. Tyranny
+always corrupts. A lower standard of morality is first tolerated, and
+then becomes popular. Lax motives of honor are taking the place of
+chivalrous integrity. Payment of honest debts is evaded. Grinding
+poverty has made some unduly covetous of riches. Enormous taxation,
+selfish and immoral legislation, have partially undermined the
+foundations of private virtue. The ease and frequency with which the
+rewards of honest toil are filched away give insecurity to property and
+take away much of the stimulus to diligent toil. Some have sunk into
+despair, while others, with more of unsubdued energy, are willing for
+almost anything to turn up which gives promise or possibility of
+change.
+
+The South in seeking relief need not delude herself by reliance upon
+any _party_ to reform evils and restore prosperity. Some difficulties
+are independent of party action, or even political policy, and have
+their origin in more general causes. A portion of the commercial and
+financial troubles is probably due to some "wider misadjustment of
+labor and capital" than can be rectified by one country, and requires
+broad and sound statesmanship. The Republican party is held together,
+in part, by the "cohesive power of public plunder," or compacted into
+unity by distrust or hatred of the South. The Democratic party, as
+unsound as its antagonist on the vital questions of tariff, currency,
+finances, and the character of the General Government, has practised
+the fatal maxim that "to the victors belong the spoils," and, in
+special localities, has been implicated in corruption. The history of
+parties in England and the United States shows that any party long in
+power will become corrupt. To rely upon any party, or the wisdom or
+sense of justice of any government, for protection of property or
+guaranty of civil or religious liberty, is to lean upon a broken reed;
+for rights never enforce themselves, and are soon gone unless sustained
+by more potent means than the justice or honor of those in power. A
+President is impotent of himself, soon passes into private life, and is
+at best but a man.
+
+Alike futile is the notion, sometimes finding audible expression, that
+an arbitrary government or a monarchy would bring relief. Our fathers,
+in throwing off a kingly government and setting up a constitutional
+republic, acted in the full light thrown on popular rights by all
+preceding history. They did not live in prehistoric or barbaric times,
+but acted with rare wisdom and patriotism. More sagacious men never
+planned a government, and blindly and suicidally would we act to prefer
+or accept a monarchy. The centuries of the past are eloquent with
+wisdom and plethoric with instructive examples on this subject. God has
+never given any exclusive rights to special families, and all
+historical records confirm, with the Scriptures, the folly of choosing
+a king. How often in such governments is public policy dependent on
+royal whims, on palace intrigues, on the taste or caprice of the
+boudoir! Monarchy has been the rule of violence; inequality and
+centralization are of its essence. The rebellion in England and the
+French revolution were the long-delayed protests of outraged peoples
+against ruinous taxation and hurtful tyranny and cankerous corruption.
+When the disgraceful crimes by men in high places were exposed last
+year European journals made themselves merry over the corruptions which
+they alleged were the legitimate outgrowths of democratic institutions.
+In the first place, our Government is not a democracy, and never was
+intended to be. Secondly, monarchies are not in a condition to cast the
+first stone. Italy, Spain, Austria, Russia, and France have had
+corruption enough to make them blush. As England is held up for our
+copying, and is less censurable than the others, I cite a few instances
+from her history. May, in "Constitutional History of England," Vol. I.,
+p. 299 says: "Our Parliamentary history has been tainted with this
+disgrace of vulgar bribes for political support from the reign of
+Charles II. far into that of George III." For shamefulness of public
+life Charles II. stands without a rival. He was a pensioner of the King
+of France, and applied to his own privy purse large sums of money which
+had been appropriated by Parliament for carrying on the war. The
+equipoise designed to be secured in the National Legislature by the
+House of Commons was defeated because the House was at once dependent
+and corrupt. Borough nominations, places, pensions, contracts, shares
+in loans and lotteries, and even pecuniary bribes, secured the
+ascendency of Crown and Lords in the councils and government of the
+State. Sunderland, Secretary of State under James II., stipulated to
+receive 25,000 crowns from the King of France for services to be
+rendered. Walpole's and Pelham's administrations were notorious for the
+very audacity of their corruptions. In the reign of Anne Parliamentary
+corruption was extensive and unblushing. Sir John Trevor, the Speaker,
+accepted a bribe and did the dirty work of bribing other members. In
+the reign of George I., during his first Parliament, 271 members held
+offices, pensions, and sinecures; in the first of George II., 257. In
+1776 Lord Chatham accused the ministers of "servility, incapacity,
+corruption." Macaulay says Lord North's administration was supported by
+vile and corrupt means, and the King, George III., was not only
+cognizant of Parliamentary bribery, but advised it and contributed
+money to it. Although there has been much improvement in the character
+and purity of the public men, yet as late as 1829 the pension list was
+above L750,000.
+
+The principle of a representative constitutional republic is right.
+Much of the evil which afflicts us is the result of a departure from
+our original system; is an accident rather than essential, and is
+certainly not to be cured by a monarchical government.
+
+In suggesting some remedies or palliatives for present ills it is not
+needful to startle by novelties. Truth is generally commonplace,
+honesty always. A return to justice and right, frugality and economy,
+as applicable to the body politic and to individual life, a recurrence
+to fundamental principles, are of prime importance.
+
+As a people we must, if possible, preserve what remains of the
+Constitution and of the federative system. Sober, honest purpose can
+reform some abuses. Imperious necessity will compel the North to take
+effective steps for restoring the violated purity of the Government. If
+present tendencies are not arrested, liberty will be sacrificed. As the
+tendency of every government is to excess, a constitution is more or
+less perfect according as it is full of limitations of authority. The
+grant and the distribution of public functions should be accompanied
+with safeguards. Our Federal Constitution cautiously delegates to
+various public functionaries certain powers of government, defines and
+limits the powers thus delegated, and reserves to the people of the
+States their sovereignty over all things not delegated. Our organic law
+thus seeks to restrain the Government within narrow and prescribed
+limits, to guard weaker and dissimilar interests against inequality, to
+interpose efficient checks, to prevent the stronger from oppressing the
+weaker. Ours is a government under a written compact, and _in its
+purity the best ever devised_. The war between the States is much
+misunderstood. It was a gigantic conflict of _political_ ideas, a
+controversy, not for or between dynasties, but on the nature and
+character and power of the Federal Government. Three things were
+settled by the war:
+
+1. Emancipation and citizenship of the negroes.
+
+2. The surrender of any claim of resort to secession in case of dispute
+as to powers of the Government, or as a remedy for violated compact.
+
+3. The recognition of such a person as a citizen of the United States,
+independent of citizenship in a State.
+
+Besides these, nothing else of a political character was settled, and
+the second was determined only by the stern arbitrament of war. The
+right of search was, however, similarly adjusted, and the treaty of
+peace effected at Ghent, on December 24, 1814, contains no allusion to
+the _casus belli_. There are few, if any, who do not rejoice at the
+accomplishment of the first. The mode of emancipation was not such as
+we would have chosen; but as the problem baffled the wisdom of all the
+statesmen of the past, we may as well be grateful that African slavery
+no longer exists to perplex and confound patriots and Christians. The
+opinions of the framers of the Constitution were reversed on these
+three subjects by the war. All else remains intact, or can be put _in
+statu quo ante bellum_. The Constitution was not abolished. No vital
+principle of the Federal system, State interposition excepted, was
+destroyed. "The invasions of the Constitution have resulted from
+administrative abuses," says Governor Jenkins, "and not from structural
+changes in the government. This distinction should be kept constantly
+in view. In a complex government like our own let it never be conceded
+that a power once usurped is thenceforth a power transferred, nor that
+a right once suppressed is for that cause a right extinguished, nor
+that a Constitution a thousand times violated becomes a Constitution
+abolished." The war did not decide that the powers of the Federal
+Government were indefinite and unlimited. That is subsequent
+usurpation. The war did not decide that State lines were to be
+obliterated, State flags torn down, State governments reduced to
+municipalities, and the elements of civil authority fused into one
+conglomerate and centralized mass. Whatever may be the fate or the
+construction of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, they cannot
+mean the concentration of all power at Washington and the complete
+control of the States by the general Government. Our Constitution-makers
+could not have contemplated political irresponsibility; that the
+minority should be at the mercy of the majority; and that the residuary
+mass of undelegated powers was to be swallowed up by the delegated.
+The fathers felt that no body of men could be safely entrusted with
+unrestrained authority, and they knew that "all restrictions on
+authority unsustained by an equal antagonist power must for ever prove
+wholly inefficient in practice." That a mere party majority can rule as
+they please, is hateful despotism. A majority, unhindered by any rule
+but their discretion, is anything but free government; for human nature
+cannot endure unlimited power, and bodies of men are not more discreet
+in their tyranny than individual tyrants. The distinction between the
+granting and the executing, the Constitution-making and the law-making
+power, is to be reaffirmed. The general Government and the States have
+separate and distinct objects and peculiar interests--"the States,
+acting separately, representing and protecting the local and peculiar
+interests, and acting jointly, through one general government,
+representing and protecting the interests of the whole; and thus
+perfecting, by an admirable but simple arrangement, the great principle
+of representation and responsibility, without which no government can
+be free or just."--_VI. Calhoun_, 66.
+
+We need civil service reform in the United States, States, and cities,
+reducing the number, increasing the competency and responsibility of
+office-holders, and abolishing the pestiferous maxim that to the
+victors in a party contest belong of right the offices of the country.
+We need rigid economy, public and private, civic purity, honest
+administration. To take a citizen's money, except for the just and
+economical administration of affairs, is governmental robbery. Economy
+is not possible in Federal, or State, or municipal governments, with
+high taxes. Men will steal. The Bible says that the love of money is
+the root of all evil. Handling large sums of the people's money is a
+temptation before which many have yielded. "Economy and accountability
+are virtues without which free and popular governments cannot long
+endure."
+
+Closely allied is the good old homely virtue of honesty. Under the
+temptation of loss of property, men have sought to accumulate by any
+methods and get back to ante-secession pecuniary condition. Public
+corruption has been contagious. Men contract debts loosely and
+improvidently, and wipe out easily by bankrupt laws. Tweedism has
+fastened itself upon elections. False registration, ballot-box
+stuffing, the machinery and appliances for fraud, are not the exclusive
+practice of one section or party. "Cheating never thrives." It is as
+true in politics as in religion that there is no good in sin. It is
+essentially and always evil. Party is a great tyrant at best, and the
+caucus system enslaves men, and few have the courage to disobey its
+edicts and encounter its vengeance; but when party to the terrible
+enginery of a caucus, controlled by the vulgar and the vicious, adds
+fraud and bribery, woe be to our republic and to our civilization!
+
+An indispensable factor to the product of the South's upbuilding is the
+introduction of a more healthful public opinion as a positive element
+in politics. It ought to be an ever-present and a permanent force in
+elections and the choice of candidates. Any thing like union of church
+and State, or the prescribing of a Christian profession as a test for
+office, is not to be thought of, except to resist the first hint at
+such a possibility; but such opposition should not prevent moral and
+Christian men from demanding honesty in officials, fairness and
+openness in party machinery, and common decency and morality in
+candidates. In cities, political preferment and success in nominating
+caucuses are largely the result of party machinery by "pot-house
+politicians," by grog shops and gambling saloons, and by men not
+conspicuous for virtue or intelligence. So foul is the atmosphere of
+party politics, to such dishonoring and degrading practices are
+applicants for office often reduced, so necessary is it to spend
+money corruptly and to pension the _claqueurs_ and intriguers and
+wire-pullers, that the virtuous and patriotic are often disgusted, and
+many Christians are unwilling to peril spiritual health and life by
+contact with such impurities. The complications and "trimming"
+expediences often deter the pure and refined from political
+associations, and those who control American politics are quite content
+to dispense with the presence, except at the ballot-box, of those who
+ought to give tone and direction to public opinion. Moral character,
+sobriety, decency, chastity, are not the elements of availability in
+the selection of candidates. Drunkards, profligates, connivers at
+fraud, plotters, are apparently as acceptable for nomination and
+election as those whose intelligence and virtues should commend them to
+public approval. Macaulay has a sentiment which ought to be printed on
+satin and hung up in every house to be memorized by every voter: "The
+practice of begging for votes is absurd, pernicious, and altogether at
+variance with the true principles of representative government. The
+suffrage of an elector ought not to be asked, or to be given, as a
+personal favor. It is as much for the interests of constituents to
+choose well as it can be for the interest of a candidate to be
+chosen.... A man who surrenders his vote to caresses and supplications
+forgets his duty as much as if he sold it for a bank-note. I hope to
+see the day when an Englishman (an American) will think it as great an
+affront to be courted and fawned upon in his capacity of elector as in
+his capacity of juryman."
+
+              Not lightly fall
+              Beyond recall
+    The written scrolls a breath can float:
+              The crowning fact,
+              The kingliest act
+    Of freedom is the freeman's vote.
+
+The too common practice in all portions of the Union honors vice and
+gives scant encouragement to noblest qualities. If a community bestow
+its rewards and honors on inferior or vicious men, higher qualities
+will decay and perish or seek other fields. If honors and rewards be
+allotted to the noble and the good, the demand will develop
+intelligence and nobility. In America there is lamentably a plentiful
+lack of great men. Whatever may be the demand, the supply is
+inadequate. Woe to the country, said Metternich, whose condition and
+institutions no longer produce great men to manage its affairs. The
+country needs men of earnest convictions and noble aims, "to whom power
+is not a possession to be grasped, but a trust to be fulfilled." A
+nation can have no purer wealth than the stainless honor of its public
+men. The philosophic Macintosh enunciated almost a maxim when he said,
+"There can be no scheme or measure as beneficial to the State as the
+mere existence of men who would not do a base act for any public
+advantage." By some, politics seems to be regarded as a game in which
+the sharpest are to win. Federal, State, or municipal government can
+never be safely committed to any party or men as the result of fraud or
+connivance at fraud.
+
+Since the Federal Government dispensed with a period of probation as
+preparatory to suffrage, and refused to leave the whole question of
+suffrage to the States where it properly belongs, the presence of the
+negroes becomes to the South fearfully ominous of peril. Giving the
+right to vote to the ignorant and incapable is only a part of the evils
+associated with the inhabitancy of such a multitude of citizens of a
+different and inferior race. Such is the climate of the South, the
+fertility of soil, the ease of bare subsistence, that little labor and
+but scant clothing and shelter are needed by the negroes, with their
+thriftlessness, and without taste or desire for any large measure of
+artificial comforts, and with few incentives to patient industry. Their
+presence will prevent any early or large immigration of Europeans. The
+removal of the negroes is an obvious suggestion, but the policy pursued
+toward the Indians, undesirable, as coinhabitants, but as capable as
+negroes of free government, seems impracticable from want of territory
+for colonization and because of the large number of the negroes. This
+displacement at present may be impossible, and would certainly be
+tedious and expensive. Close contact of the two races becomes a
+necessity of this cooeccupancy of territory. The Southern white people
+should cultivate kindliest feelings and make wise and strenuous efforts
+for the improvement of their former slaves. Already the whites bear the
+expense of educating the blacks. In the last six years the expenditure
+in Virginia for "colored schools" has amounted to near $1,668,000, and
+it would be safe to say that one and a half millions of this sum were
+paid by white citizens. So also we take care of their blind, and deaf,
+and dumb, and idiotic, pay for the trial and safe-keeping of their
+criminals, and bear the burdens of government. Impartial justice should
+be administered without reference to race, color, or previous
+condition; freedom and the right to hold and inherit property should be
+guaranteed; protection against all violence or wrong should be
+afforded; but there should be formed no party nor other affiliations
+which may tend to efface the line of social separation, or ignore the
+predestined distinction of color. The attempt in Africa to Europeanize
+the negro and ignore his idiosyncrasies as a race has utterly failed.
+The races here should be kept from abnormal admixture. Rigid laws,
+springing from and enforced by an inflexible public opinion, should
+prevent intermarriage. Miscegenation will degrade the Caucasian. Red
+and white deteriorate, _a fortiori_, white and black. The fusion
+would lower the white race in the scale of civilization, of moral and
+mental power, and would reproduce the ignorance, superstition,
+priestcraft, and chronic revolutions of Mexico with her mongrel
+population.
+
+A felt want of the South is the restoration of old-fashioned love of
+country. A sore need is to feel in our souls, as a passion, that this
+is _our_ country; that _we_ have part and lot in it; and to be
+deeply interested in its welfare and perpetuity. To keep alive
+animosities is unchristian. Brooke found it impossible to frame an
+indictment against a whole people. It ought to be equally hard to
+involve a whole party, or geographical section, in sweeping accusations
+of injustice, and tyranny, and fraud. Strong as is the provocation at
+times to bitterness and hatred, the South should not cherish
+resentment, but rather seek that which makes for peace and
+reconciliation. It is better, as far as possible, to obliterate
+unpleasant memories, to practise toleration and forgiveness, to
+cultivate a genuine patriotism, ardent love for this ancient birth land
+of the free. It is easy by cheap rhetoric to open wounds afresh and
+inflame hostility; but every true son and daughter of the South should
+strive not to transmit a legacy of hate, nor make our land a Poland or
+an Ireland. The noble ambition ought rather to be to lift up the South
+and the United States to the level of its privileges, and in the future
+to harmonize the ideal and the actual. The South needs the development
+of her material resources, the diversification of industry, the
+construction of permanent highways, the power of machinery in its
+manifold applications, sounder notions of labor, rigid economy and
+responsibility in all offices. The whole country should encourage
+universal education in universities, colleges, academies, and public
+schools; elevate the tone of a free press; preserve an able and
+independent judiciary; insist upon juster and more enlarged ideas of
+official duty; maintain the principles of constitutional liberty and
+absolute freedom of religion, and above all, a spirit of subordination
+to the divine law, and a reverent acknowledgment of Him in whose hands
+are the destinies of nations.
+
+J. L. M. CURRY.
+
+
+
+
+DRIFT-WOOD.
+
+
+
+
+TALK ABOUT NOVELS.
+
+
+IF the St. Louis preacher who lately tilted against novels chose
+judiciously his points of attack, he presumably won a victory. His own
+Sunday-school library is very likely filled with wishy-washy fiction
+for bright young minds that might be harvesting works worth
+remembering, whether of romance or history. The prudent Quakers of
+Germantown rejoice in a free library without a novel, and a librarian
+who never read one. Indiscriminate novel reading is as sorry a tipple
+as addiction to newspapers, which also, in fact, are largely works of
+the imagination. Besides, the moral of even a goody-good story may be
+ingeniously twisted by perverse readers. The other day a lad was
+indicted in England for breaking into the Rev. Mr. Sherratt's
+schoolroom, where he stole some books and cake, trudging off with them
+in a wheelbarrow at midnight. He was an old pupil, the son of
+respectable parents; in his pocket was a book entitled "Industry
+Without Honesty," and his ambition was to become a _Chevalier
+d'Industrie_ of the sort he had been reading about. It is said that
+Dumas's story, "Monsieur Fromentin," so spread the rage for lottery
+gambling that the author in great grief bought up and burned every copy
+he could lay hands on. For generations English youth have turned
+footpads or thieves, in emulation of Sir Richard Turpin, Lord John
+Sheppard, and other knights of the road whose careers are set forth in
+the shining pages of biographical romance. French youngsters have a
+like exemplar in Louis Cartouche. Two San Francisco lads are now in
+jail for trying to rob a stagecoach, in Claude Duval style--luckless
+little victims, knocked down by the passengers in a way not recorded in
+the novels that had ruined them. Lads are for ever running away to sea
+in imitation of some Jack Halyard or Ben the Bo's'n; and surely we know
+that urchins of all ages and sizes are picked up on their way west to
+"fight Injuns," thanks to their dogs'-eared dime novels narrating the
+prowess of Buffalo Bills and Texas Jacks. Boyish sympathy goes out
+toward the Paul Cliffords, the Arams of romance. I remember, as if it
+were of yesterday, the sad fate of Red Rover, and how the overwrought
+little reader, when he came to the hero's death, put by the book that
+he could not finish, and walked about in the twilight of a Saturday
+whose hours had slipped unnoticed away, inconsolable with sympathy and
+grief.
+
+But the preacher need not rest his case on "Mike Martin," or "Rinaldo
+Rinaldini," or "The Black Avenger of the Spanish Main," or any of the
+predatory heroes embalmed in story for the improvement of youth, since
+he has also the field of poisonous French romance to complain of, with
+its imitations in our tongue. In short, he can indict in a lump the bad
+books of fiction, and against the good he may charge that they exhaust
+our tears and passion on imaginary distresses.
+
+Still, nothing would then have been said of novels which could not be
+said in a degree of the newspapers, the drama, the law, the pulpit
+itself. We must not judge them by their worst fruits. "Pamela" was
+praised from the pulpits of its day, although, to be sure, it would
+hardly now be given to young women. I well remember, when prowling
+about the homestead bookcase, coming upon Rowland Hill's "Village
+Dialogues." Their characters were fictitious, the distresses imaginary;
+still I presume the St. Louis preacher would not object to "Socinianism
+Unmasked," the "Evils of Seduction," and the "Awful Death of Alderman
+Greedy." Everybody sees how fiction is a weapon of philanthropy. Christ
+himself taught by parables. Clergymen resort to romance to achieve what
+the sermon cannot do, and men of science to achieve what the essay
+cannot do. Religious newspapers publish serial novels. The
+anti-slavery, temperance, prison reform, and poor law agitations owe
+immeasurably to novels. Daniel Webster said of Dickens that he had done
+more to ameliorate the condition of the British poor than all the
+statesmen that ever sat in Parliament. And this present wonderful
+movement of the Jews to recover Palestine--what does it not owe to a
+novel?
+
+A noble influence, too, comes from some novels that do not aim to be
+_doctrinaire_ or proselyting. A story of Thackeray is a tonic to the
+scorn of base action; a story of Charles Kingsley is a trumpet call to
+Christian duty; a story of George Eliot is an inspiration to high
+thought and honorable living. Some of her sisterhood are probably
+capable of uneasily disliking George Eliot because she has a depth of
+intelligence quite beyond their plummet, which the world admires; but I
+should think that most women would be proud of the strength and vast
+influence of one who, in succeeding to the royal line of feminine
+novelists, has carried its triumphs far beyond anything achieved by
+Miss Burney, Jane Austin, Miss Porter, Miss Martineau, Charlotte
+Bronte, and Georges Sand.
+
+We lay aside some authors with a sense of fulness that will not let the
+attention be immediately distracted to other persons and things. The
+greatest books put the mind at once into a fruitful state, as if it had
+received seed of instantly bearing power. Less great books may still
+give us the desire to imitate their heroes or follow their maxims. Only
+dead books neither beget new thoughts nor incite by examples. As the
+characters of children are partly moulded from their surroundings, so
+the imaginary friends of fiction are mental associates for good or ill.
+We take heart and hope from the novelist's scenes, or are so wrought
+upon by his personages that these phantoms move us more than most real
+men and women. If all we know of Adam Bede is what we read of him, pray
+what more do we know of Czar Peter? Instead of lamenting the
+fascination of the story-wright, let us rather plead for its noble use,
+saying of him, as a great and generous brother writer said of Dickens:
+"What a place it is to hold in the affections of men! What an awful
+responsibility hanging over a writer! What man holding such a place,
+and knowing that his words go forth to vast congregations of
+mankind--to grown folks, to their children, and perhaps to their
+children's children--but must think of his calling with a solemn and
+humble heart! May love and truth guide such a man always!"
+
+Most of us have known an era in life when we looked down on novels like
+Miss Muloch's, with their gentle refrain: "He was so handsome, how
+could she help loving him? She was so beautiful, what could he do but
+adore her?" Better worth reading were stories of frontier trails,
+knightly tourneys, chases of smuggler and corvette--those stimulating
+feasts that we swallowed rather too hastily for health, and which, I
+grant the St. Louis preacher, formed so rich a mixture that nightmare
+sometimes followed a _pate_ of adventure and murder on which we had too
+bountifully supped.
+
+Yet who would willingly forget the terror of that moment when Crusoe
+discovers the footprints on the lonely shore? I fancy many a lad has
+borne testimony to the genius of De Foe by popping his curly pate
+beneath the bed clothes at that awful juncture, in as great fright as
+if he himself had just seen the track in the sand. Or perhaps, living
+by the seaside, he has rowed his wherry to some neighboring bunch of
+rocks, to take possession of it, Crusoe fashion, bribing some less
+enthusiastic companion to act the role of Friday, until, unworthy of
+his faithful prototype, the extemporized Friday sulks and throws off
+his allegiance. I lately heard that Crusoe's isle was now tenanted by
+industrious German colonists, who had planted and stocked it, not like
+Robinson, but under all agricultural advantages, and that Juan
+Fernandez was a regular entrepot for whale ships. Think of it! Yankee
+tars revictual where the lonely mariner saw cannibals feasting! But it
+is only Selkirk's domain that is thus invaded; Crusoe's right there is
+none to dispute; safe in the keeping of genius, his monarchy can no
+more be annexed by filibuster or colonist than the magic isle of
+Prospero.
+
+Musing on popular novels, one is struck by the changes of fashion in
+fiction. Who now reads "Clarissa," which Dr. Johnson pronounced the
+first book of the world for knowledge of the human heart; which
+D'Alembert styled unapproachably greater than any romance ever written
+in any language; for which Diderot predicted an immortality as
+illustrious as that of Homer? Who reads "Cecilia," which Burke sat up
+all night to read? The romances over which our great grandmothers
+simpered and sighed are to our age intolerable bores. Reade, not
+Richardson, is the man for our money; Miss Braddon, not Miss Burney, is
+the rage at the circulating libraries. Whither are gone those stories
+that a few years ago could not be printed fast enough--"The
+Lamplighter," "Hot Corn," and the rest of that brood? They are hidden
+under dust in the alcoves, or have been carted off to the pulp mill.
+Could mind of man have fancied, an oblivion so swift for those
+favorites of the public? Could mortal ken have foretold its present
+fate for the "Wide, Wide World"?--a story now quite dropped out of
+sight, but once the town's rage, and whose heroine I remember as a sort
+of inexhaustible human watering cart with the tear tap always turned
+on.
+
+What has become, too, of those learned novels, patterned after
+Bulwer--extracts from Lempriere in dialogue form, sandwiched with
+layers of low life? "Surely, my dear niece, you remember what Athenaeaus
+quotes on this subject from the Leontium of Hermesianax of Colophon,
+the friend of Philetas?" "Perfectly, aunt, and methinks mention is also
+made of the same elegiac poem in Pausanias, and again in Antoninus
+Liberalis, the latter saying," etc. Where, I say, are the novels in
+that vein, with their charming mixture of murder, mythology, and
+metaphysics? They have their run, strut their brief hour, and give way
+to some "Madcap Violet" or "Helen's Babies." Never fear a lack of fresh
+novels. If the lads lose Mayne Reid, they find Jules Verne. The secret
+is an open one: the novel is the best paid branch of literature--always
+excepting Mr. Gladstone's pamphlets. Times have changed since "Evelina"
+was sold for L20.
+
+Perhaps of all novelists Victor Hugo receives the largest earnings for
+a single work. One of his clerical enemies, Mgr. de Segur, has bitterly
+attacked him for his gains--"$100,000 for 'Les Miserables' alone," said
+the critic in angry extravagance. But Hugo's admirers will not grudge
+his gains.
+
+The English have put a premium on prolix novels by giving them a
+regulation length of just three volumes, to be cold for a guinea and a
+half. This droll uniformity has much less basis of reason than the old
+custom of writing tragedies and comedies just five acts long; for there
+is sense in making a play last out an evening. Trouble to writer and
+weariness to reader must come of spinning a novel against space,
+overlaying a plot with trivial incidents, and stuffing a story with
+padding, merely to reach a standard of length both arbitrary and
+absurd. Yet prodigious was the patience of our novel-reading ancestry
+prior to Fielding. The "Grand Cyrus" was issued in ten volumes,
+"Clarissa Harlowe" in eight, and sometimes an heroic romance reached
+twelve. Jules Janin puts Richardson on Shakespeare's level, and modern
+French readers appreciate "Clarissa" more than English--but they get it
+abridged. Mr. Dallas, following Janin, has abridged the famous novel
+with care for English readers, too, and a more recent editor likewise
+aims to evade its monotony by striking out "tediously unnecessary
+passages and unimportant details," though old-fashioned readers may
+still like to take "Clarissa" in all its prolixity. As to the romances
+that preceded it, they seem to our age duller than any ever
+written--"huge folios of inanity," said Sir Walter, "over which our
+ancestors yawned themselves to sleep." I warrant their descendants
+never yawned over "Guy Mannering."
+
+Still, modern novels as a class are more apt to be voluble than prolix.
+Story-writers like Trollope, Mrs. Edwards, and McCarthy amaze us at the
+ductility which the English tongue assumes for them. They seem less to
+compose than to _reel off_ their pages. To Trollope's free-and-easy
+flow is there any stop? None, surely, through mental exhaustion. His
+bright loquacity and productiveness remind one of that bewitched salt
+mill in the story of Nicholas, which ground on for ever, without effort
+or wearying, until it had salted the whole sea.
+
+
+
+
+PRIMOGENITURE AND PUBLIC BEQUESTS.
+
+
+SOMETHING was said, in a former "Driftwood" essay, regarding the
+frequent dedications of private fortunes, in America, to public uses.
+We see a philanthropic millionaire stripping himself, even in hale
+life, of all his wealth save a slender annuity and the portions
+reserved for his heirs and legatees; or we see the bulk of a great
+fortune given to charities in a testamentary bequest.
+
+Certainly Americans, though often overreaching in making a fortune, are
+proverbially lavish in distributing it. New England, the home of
+'cuteness in trade, is extraordinary for the number and extent of its
+charitable bequests. Americans may do things that an Englishman will
+not in getting the best of a bargain, but quite as quickly as the
+average Englishman, they give the whole fruits of the sharp trade to
+some sufferer. Unscrupulous in a contest of wits, they yet have bowels
+of compassion beyond many other nations, are perhaps the least cruel of
+all, and have made American private endowments of educational and
+charitable institutions famous the world over.
+
+But can we put all the credit of these endowments to the score of
+national character? Is not some part traceable simply to the abolition
+of the old privileges and customs of primogeniture? I fancy that were
+it American usage to pass the bulk of great estates to a succession of
+eldest sons or to the nearest heir, we should see fewer great bequests
+to the public. "The heir" would ever be an overshadowing figure in the
+rich man's plans; whereas now, if kith and kin be well provided for, no
+one finds it strange that the bulk of an estate like Mr. Peabody's or
+Mr. Lick's or Mr. Cornell's should go to public education and charity.
+
+Our English-speaking race, as we all know, has ever had a thirst for
+posthumous power; so bent were our ancestors on tying up their estates
+in perpetuity that when the law came in to forbid it many were the
+devices to prolong the grasp. Privileges of primogeniture are still
+jealously guarded in England, for the sake of accumulating family
+honors and wealth. Even in America older brothers sometimes oddly think
+themselves sole managers of the parental estate--a fancy due, perhaps,
+to the influence of our English derivation. We see its traces where
+even an estimable oldest brother, as self-appointed head of the family,
+deals with the inherited estate as if it were all his own: prescribes
+the household expenses, "invests" the portions of others as may seem
+good unto him, loses them in his speculations without qualm of
+conscience, or doles out from his gains to his younger brothers and
+sisters with the air of a munificent prince giving bounties.
+Paterfamilias was eminently just in taking him into the historic firm
+on a third share, but it would be preposterous to do the same by
+brother Tom. Let Tom and Harry, after a few years' longer probation of
+clerkship than Primus needed, be generously taken in; but let them
+divide a third of the partnership between them. Primogeniture, I
+repeat, still leaves its curious traces with us in these unpleasant
+delusions of the oldest male child; but the abolition of its ancient
+privileges, and the habit of distributing fortunes and opportunities
+share and share alike among equal heirs or legatees, have accustomed
+many rich men besides childless millionaires to sparing a generous
+portion for charities and colleges. This view is strengthened by
+observing that the famous dedications of private fortunes to public
+uses are made by men who have earned their wealth, not inherited it.
+Inherited wealth is more likely to be transmitted to its owner's heirs
+than broken up for public benefactions. And so, in fine, we may trace a
+part of our national celebrity for public bequests to the lack of
+primogenital laws and of any social system of retaining the bulk of
+family wealth in a line of eldest sons.
+
+We are sometimes unjust toward men of prodigious wealth who disappoint
+public expectation by bequeathing nothing for public purposes. The
+American who keeps fifty millions intact in his family only does what
+is customary in other lands, and what may be done without reproach. If
+he break no law, a man may do what he will with his own--although, to
+be sure, so may his countrymen talk as they will of what he does; and
+they will hardly lump in a common eulogy the public benefactors and
+those who devise none of their prodigious wealth to the public weal.
+For these latter the one or two of their fellow men who have become
+millionaires by their wills may properly raise memorial churches, and
+stained windows, and chimes of bells; but such wills have earned no
+paeans of public gratitude.
+
+PHILIP QUILIBET.
+
+
+
+
+SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.
+
+
+
+
+PHOTOGRAPHING FROM THE RETINA.
+
+
+ONE of the first fruits of the daguerreotypic art was the suggestion
+that unknown murderers could be detected by photographing the last
+image left on the retina of the murdered person's eye. The idea
+that this could be done seems to have taken strong hold of many
+imaginations, and we believe this suggestion is repeated to the police
+authorities of New York on the occurrence of every noticeable and
+mysterious murder. That such a detective task will ever be accomplished
+by photography is extremely doubtful, on account of the length of time
+that usually passes before the discovery of a murder. But science has
+now advanced so far that the image on the retina _has been fixed and
+photographed_. This has been done by Prof. Kuehne of Heidelberg, but not
+with human subjects, as decapitation is one necessary part of the
+process. Prof. Kuehne placed a rabbit four and a half feet from a closed
+window, in the shutter of which was an opening twelve inches square.
+The animal's head was first covered by a black cloth for five minutes
+and then exposed for three minutes. The head was then instantly cut
+off, and one eye taken out in a room illuminated by yellow light. The
+eyeball was opened and instantly plunged into a five per cent. solution
+of alum. This occupied two minutes, and the other eye, still remaining
+in the head, was then exposed at the window just as the first had been.
+It was then taken out and placed in the alum solution like its fellow.
+The next morning the two retinae were carefully isolated, separated from
+the optic nerve, and turned. On a beautiful rose red ground a sharp
+image, somewhat more than one millimetre (one-twenty-fifth inch) square
+was found. The image on the first retina--that which was exposed during
+life--was somewhat reddish and not so sharply defined as that on the
+other.
+
+This fixature of the last impression on the living retina is by no
+means an accidental discovery, but is the final step in a laborious
+series of delicate researches. Nor is it the triumph of one man alone,
+the preliminary work having been performed by two distinguished
+physiologists. Prof. Boll of Rome discovered that the external layer of
+the retina in all living animals has a purple color, which is destroyed
+by light. During life the color is perpetually restored by darkness,
+but after death, Boll thought, it disappeared entirely. Prof. Kuehne
+followed up this wonderful discovery and confirmed it in general, while
+correcting some of Boll's conclusions. He first ascertained that death
+does not necessarily destroy the color, since a retina that is not
+exposed to white light, but is kept in a room lighted by a yellow
+sodium flame, retains this "vision purple" for twenty-four or
+twenty-eight hours, even though incipient decomposition may have set
+in. It is destroyed at the temperature of boiling water or by immersion
+in alcohol, glacial acetic acid, and strong solution of soda, but in
+strong ammonia, saturated solution of common salt, or glycerine, it
+remains undiminished for twenty-four hours. On testing the effect of
+different colored lights upon this "vision purple," he found that the
+most refrangible rays change it most, while red has hardly more effect
+than yellow light. The color is not so delicate as Boll supposed. A few
+moments' exposure to daylight does not bleach the retina. This requires
+exposure for a considerable time to direct sunlight. The source of the
+color was found to be the inner surface of the choroid upon which the
+retina lies. If a portion of the retina is disengaged from the choroid
+and raised up, it bleaches, though the remainder, still attached
+portion, retains its color. If the raised flap is carefully replaced
+upon the choroid, it regains its purple hue. This restoration is
+believed to be a function of the living choroid, and probably of the
+retinal epithelium, though it is independent of the black pigment which
+this epithelium contains. This vision purple is the latest discovery in
+optical physiology, and it cannot fail to be a most important one. How
+far it will alter the received views upon the subject of changes in the
+strength of vision, which are now attributed to alterations in the
+distance of the crystalline lens, cannot be foretold. But it may be
+found possible to stimulate by drugs the restorative action of the
+choroid, and thus by gaining increased "definition," improve weak
+sight. As to the detection of murderers by photographing the last
+retinal picture from their victims' eyes, while these discoveries do
+not leave this an impossibility, they do not much improve the
+probability of its ever being done. Very often the sight of the
+assassin is not the last which comes within the victim's vision. Too
+long a time also usually elapses before discovery. These and similar
+difficulties must prevent the utilization of these discoveries in this
+direction, even if they should prove to be in themselves all that is
+hoped. The retinal picture has not yet been photographed, but it seems
+probable, from the above recounted experiments, that it can be.
+
+
+
+
+ACTION OF ORGANIC ACIDS ON MINERALS.
+
+
+DR. H. C. BOLTON of the New York School of Mines has made the
+interesting discovery that minerals may be decomposed by boiling with
+organic acids, just as they are by treatment with the strong mineral
+acids. He has tried the action of such acids as citric, tartaric,
+oxalic, acetic, malic, and other acids, on finely powdered carbonates,
+silicates, sulphides, and other classes of mineral. All the carbonates
+examined (fourteen in number) dissolved with effervescence, sulphides
+were decomposed with evolution of sulphuretted hydrogen, and silicates
+with formation of gelatinous silica. This important discovery will
+greatly add to the resources of the mineralogist, who is compelled to
+do much of his work in the field. Hitherto he has been debarred from
+using the mineral acids (the action of which sometimes forms a decisive
+test) by the impossibility of carrying them in the pocket or wallet
+without danger. The organic acids are solid, and can be conveniently
+stowed away. Their action, however, is not so decided as that of the
+mineral acids, but this is not always a defect, but offers additional
+means of determination. For example, all the specimens of bornite and
+pyrrhotite examined yielded sulphuretted hydrogen with tartaric,
+citric, and oxalic acids, but chalcopyrite and pyrite do not. On the
+other hand, the use of the organic acids may give rise in some cases to
+the formation of nitric acid, which in its nascent condition will
+afford a very powerful agent of decomposition. Thus all the sulphides
+examined (seventeen), with the exception of molybdenite and cinnabar,
+were quickly attacked by citric or tartaric acid, to which a little
+potassium nitrate had been added. Potassium chlorate produces a similar
+though slower action. These examples are sufficient to show that Dr.
+Bolton has found a promising field of inquiry, and, singular to say,
+considering the attention which the action of organic acids has
+received, it is a field believed to be entirely new. He is continuing
+his researches.
+
+
+
+
+SCIENTIFIC ORCHESTRATION.
+
+
+Prof. Mayer has turned his valuable researches in acoustical science to
+aesthetic uses, and criticises the present mode of arranging orchestras,
+the defects of which he proves by experiment. He took an old silver
+watch, beating four times a second, and caused it to gain thirty
+seconds per hour, so that every two minutes its tick coincided with the
+tick of an ordinary spring balance American clock, also making four
+beats the second. The latter was placed several feet, and the watch two
+feet, from the ear. In this position the ticks of the watch were lost
+for _nine seconds_, about the time of coincidence. The tick of the
+watch disappeared, "with a sharp _chirp_, like a cricket's, and
+reappears with a sound like that made by a boy's marble falling upon
+others in his pocket." This experiment shows most effectively that one
+sonorous impression may overcome and obliterate another, but to do so
+it must be more intense and of lower pitch. If of higher pitch, it
+cannot neutralize the other sound, however much the first may exceed
+the latter in intensity. This discovery, Prof. Mayer thinks, is, "next
+after the demonstration of the fact that the ear is capable of
+analyzing compound musical sounds into their constituent or partial
+simple tones, the most important addition yet made to our knowledge of
+hearing." High sounds cannot obliterate low ones, but, on the contrary,
+the sensation of each partial tone of which compound musical sounds is
+formed is diminished by all the tones below it in pitch. These
+discoveries he applies to orchestration as follows: "In a large
+orchestra I have repeatedly witnessed the complete obliteration of all
+sounds from violins by the deeper and more intense sounds of the wind
+instruments, the double basses alone holding their own. I have also
+observed the sounds of the clarinets lose their peculiar quality of
+tone, and consequent charm, from the same cause. No doubt the conductor
+of the orchestra heard all his violins ranged as they always are, close
+around him, and did not perceive that his clarinets had lost that
+quality of tone on which _the composer_ had relied for producing a
+special character of expression. The function of the conductor seems to
+be threefold: First, to regulate and fix the time. Second, to regulate
+the intensity of the sounds produced by individual instruments, for the
+purpose of expression. Third, to give the proper quality of tone or
+_feeling_ to the whole sound of his orchestra, considered as a
+single instrument, by regulating the _relative intensities_ of
+sounds produced by the various classes of instruments employed. Now
+this third function, the regulation of relative intensities, has
+hitherto been discharged through the judgment of the ears of a
+conductor, who is placed in the most disadvantageous position for
+judging by his ears. Surely he is not conducting for his own personal
+gratification, but for the gratification of his audience, whose ears
+stand in very different relations from his own in respect to their
+distance from the various instruments in action. Is it not time that he
+should pay more attention to his third function, and place himself in
+the position occupied by an average hearer? This position would be
+elevated, and somewhere in the midst of the audience. That the position
+at present occupied by the conductor of an orchestra has often allowed
+him to deprive his audience of some of the most delicate and touching
+qualities of orchestral and concerted vocal music, I have no doubt, and
+I firmly believe that when he changes his position in the manner now
+proposed, the audience will have some of that enjoyment which he has
+too long kept to himself." These views were verified by Prof. Mayer
+visiting different parts of the house during a public performance, and
+observing the different effects of the music. It is not to be supposed
+that a satisfactory change can be made at once. A quantitative analysis
+of the compound tones of all musical instruments must be made. On this
+work he is now engaged. One noteworthy result of his researches is the
+opinion that orchestral instruments should be made on different
+principles from those used in solos. The reason for this is, that
+certain over tones should predominate in orchestral instruments in
+order to give them their due expression in the midst of graver sounds.
+These exaggerated peculiarities will unfit them to be played alone. If
+the learned Professor's views are carried out, a theatre or opera
+manager will be obliged to own the instruments of his orchestra, and
+perhaps to have different sets for different musical works!
+
+
+
+
+THE NITROGEN OF PLANTS.
+
+
+The direct source of the nitrogen contained in plants is an unsolved
+mystery, though the ultimate source of much of it must be the
+atmosphere. A wheat crop gave on unmanured land from 15.9 to 25.2
+pounds of nitrogen, per acre, yearly, but the amount found in the
+rainwater of the same district was only from 6.23 to 8.58 pounds per
+acre. Singular to say, the use of a fertilizer, called a "complex
+mineral manure" in the reports, added only about two pounds of nitrogen
+per acre. But the case is altered when potassic manure is used, and
+especially when applied to land bearing beans. Such a crop gains 13-1/2
+pounds of nitrogen by the addition of saltpetre, or 28 per cent. A
+similar result was obtained with clover--a leguminous crop. A potassic
+fertilizer increased the yield of nitrogen one-third. One of the
+anomalies observed in the study of plant growth is that a good crop
+instead of exhausting the soil seems to improve it. The better the
+crop, and the more nitrogen removed, the better will the succeeding
+crop be. Thus clover removes a much larger amount of nitrogen than
+wheat, the quantity being on unmanured land, say 30.5 pounds per acre
+for clover and 20.7 pounds for wheat, and yet the wheat crop is
+improved if clover is occasionally interpolated or a fair rotation of
+crops kept up. In 1874 barley succeeding barley gave 39.1 pounds of
+nitrogen, while barley following clover gave 69.4 pounds of nitrogen
+withdrawn from an acre of soil. These amounts take no account of the
+nitrogen carried off by the drainage of the soil, which analysis of
+drainwater proves to be considerable. The source of all this nitrogen
+is undoubtedly the atmosphere, but the mode of conveying it into the
+soil is unknown.
+
+
+
+
+IMPORTANT PREHISTORIC DISCOVERIES.
+
+
+Few persons are aware of the wealth of what are called "prehistoric"
+remains. The finding of an isolated skeleton, in a cave, with
+stalagmite completely covering it, is accepted as an occurrence that is
+not very remarkable. However ancient it may be, the preservation of the
+bones is exceptional. But a late discovery in France, near
+Hastiere-sur-Meuse, is of much more importance. No less than fifteen
+burial caverns were found, and from the five that have been explored no
+less than fifty-five human skeletons have been taken, among which are
+thirty-five well-preserved skulls.
+
+In addition to these "finds" the plateaux yielded sixteen dwelling
+places of the old inhabitants from which have been taken a quantity of
+stone implements. These show the age of the skeletons to be that of the
+polished, or "new" stone period. The prospect of being able to restore
+the men who lived before the earliest recorded dates is now very good.
+Some hundreds of their skeletons, with a valuable series of skulls and
+enormous collections of their handiworks, are now in the museums of the
+world.
+
+Some of the more remarkable of these discoveries have been alluded to
+at different times in this Miscellany. One of the latest and most
+interesting consists of some pointed sticks, found in a Swiss coal bed,
+the pointing having been done by hand. It may be thought difficult to
+establish so remarkable a fact in a mass of coal in which the rods have
+been pressed flat and perfectly carbonized. But a microscopic
+examination of one of these pieces shows that the fibres of the wood
+run in two different directions, the two systems meeting at an angle.
+One of the sticks has had its end shaved down, the cut surface being
+then applied to the other, and some substance, probably bark, being
+wound around the joint. The marks of this wrapping are perfectly
+distinct, and in one case the wrapping itself remains. As the bark used
+for this purpose was different from the natural bark of the rods, the
+microscope is now able to distinguish between the two, though both are
+turned to coal. Descriptions and illustrations of these interesting
+relics are published in the "Primeval World of Switzerland," by the
+celebrated Professor Heer. There is no doubt they formed part of some
+basket work. Their age is still doubtful, but must be very great.
+
+
+
+
+THE PHYLLOXERA CONQUERED.
+
+
+The investigation instituted by the French Academy of Sciences into the
+best means of destroying the phylloxera, or grapevine pest, has ended
+in the conclusion that the sulpho-carbonates are a complete antidote to
+these destructive insects. This result has already been announced in
+this Miscellany, and it only remains to explain the action of these
+salts. Under the influence of carbonic acid, which is always present in
+soils containing organic substances, they decompose. A carbonate is
+formed, and sulphuretted hydrogen and bisulphide of carbon are evolved.
+Both of these are deadly poisons to the phylloxera as well as to man.
+To complete the fitness of these salts to agricultural uses, the
+sulpho-carbonate of potassium has an excellent effect upon the vines,
+potash being one of the most valued constituents of manures. Success in
+using the antidote depends upon bringing it in contact with every part
+of the root-system of the plant. This can be done by dissolving the
+salt, but it is better to mix it with half its weight of lime and
+sprinkle it on the ground at the beginning of the rainy season, which
+in France lasts from October to March. M. Mouillefert, who examined
+this subject under direction of the Academy, reports that as an
+antidote the sulpho-carbonates are a proved success, and nothing now
+remains but to educate the vine growers to their proper use. This
+subject has peculiar interest to Americans, for the phylloxera is our
+evil gift to France. It is matter of common observation, both in animal
+and vegetable physiology, that one race or species may live in comfort
+with an enemy--be it a disease or a parasite--which is destructive to
+other species. The American vineyards are by no means free from the
+phylloxera. On the contrary, they are full of this insect, but the
+vines do not lose their hardiness in consequence. They flourish in
+spite of their enemy.
+
+
+
+
+THE SUN'S HEAT.
+
+
+Prof. Langley of the Allegheny observatory has made a direct comparison
+between the heat of the sun and that of the flame in the mouth of a
+Bessemer steel convertor. Estimates of the sun's temperature probably
+vary among themselves more than any other attempts at scientific
+knowledge, ranging from 10,000,000 down to 1,500 deg. We have already
+published in this Miscellany some late French determinations which
+place it below 2,000 deg. C. Prof. Langley's choice of a standard is
+excellent. The flame of the Bessemer convertor results from the burning
+of carbon, silicon, iron, and manganese within the vessels, the result
+of using this once novel fuel being a heat so great that the most
+refractory iron or steel is melted to thin fluidity and so much excess
+of heat imparted, that the mass will remain fluid, without further
+heat, a considerable time. The temperature of the flame is not known,
+though 4,000 or 5,000 deg. Fahr. has been suggested as an approximation.
+This does not vitiate Prof. Langley's experiment, for he used it merely
+as one of the most powerful artificial sources of light obtainable. His
+method was to compare its light with that of the sun by an arrangement
+that resembled a camera obscura, the light from the sun and the flame
+being repeatedly superposed upon each other. The arrangement worked
+admirably, and the observer was able to note the spots on the sun. He
+found that the intensely hot flame was like a dark spot compared to the
+sun's light and that the latter must be at least 2,168 times hotter
+than the flame. This carries the result in favor of the largest
+estimates. The flame of the convertor is not so hot as the melted
+steel from which it comes, but it offers better opportunities for
+observation. The steel itself as it was poured from the convertor was
+found to be not more than one-sixty-fourth as hot as the sun.
+
+
+
+
+DEAF MUTES IN POLAND.
+
+
+Mr. George Darwin has brought forward statistics to prove that the
+intermarriage of near relations does not have the unfavorable effect
+upon offspring which is commonly supposed. But the director of the
+Warsaw Institute for Deaf Mutes and the Blind combats this theory, and
+says that the registers kept at that and similar institutions support
+the popular opinion. The system of instruction at this asylum is very
+perfect. Mimic language being almost totally prohibited, the pupils are
+taught to understand the motion of the lips and to speak more or less
+distinctly; and after a four years' residence in the Institute, they
+generally attain in both a high degree of perfection. With great
+judgment the managers have made the technical instruction at the school
+of the best kind, so that the pupils readily find situations on
+leaving, and indeed there are never enough to fill all the situations
+offered. This appears to be the true method with students who would
+otherwise find themselves at a disadvantage with more favored
+competitors.
+
+
+
+
+THE COMPASS PLANT.
+
+
+The well-known dispute as to the "compass plant" has recently been
+settled by Mr. Meehan in a manner which recalls the opinions of
+judicial officers who deal with other than scientific questions. One
+party of observers say that this plant always points its leaves north
+and south, the leaf standing edgewise to the earth and the two sides
+facing to the east and west. This plant is found on the prairies and
+plains, and is known scientifically as _silphium lacinatum_, popularly
+as pilot weed, rosin weed, and turpentine weed. It stands from three to
+six feet high, and the trappers and Indians are said to find their way
+in dark nights by feeling its leaves. These assertions of polarity are
+denied by the other party. Mr. Meehan now says that both are right.
+When the leaves are young and small the pointing to the north is
+unmistakable, but when they become larger, are beaten down by rains,
+and weighted with sand and dew, they are not able to recover their lost
+bearings.
+
+
+
+
+BALLOONS IN METEOROLOGY.
+
+
+Balloon ascensions are quietly but frequently used by scientific men
+for the purpose of studying the upper parts of the atmosphere. Russian
+savants have lately paid especial attention to this work, but have been
+prevented from extending their examinations to any great height. Prof.
+Mendeleef of St. Petersburg now undertakes to accomplish this also, and
+devotes the profits of two books published by him to the construction
+of a balloon. This is to have a capacity of two or three thousand cubic
+yards, and will be filled by means arranged by him. France also pursues
+this path of investigation with great vigor. Count Bathyani recently
+took up a radiometer to a height of about a mile. At the earth it made
+in the shade thirty-five revolutions per minute. At the height of 5,000
+feet it made sixty-four revolutions, also in the shade. In the sun,
+2,300 feet above the earth, it made fifty-four revolutions. Count
+Bathyani also took up an ethereal apparatus for the purpose of
+condensing water vapor at various heights, in order to collect the
+microscopic particles floating in the air. This line of investigation
+will be continued by means of an apparatus filled with methylic ether.
+This will give a temperature of -20 deg. C., or -15 deg. Fahr. The
+moisture will condense as ice which will be scraped off the vessels.
+All the solid particles floating in the immediate neighborhood of the
+apparatus will also be obtained.
+
+
+
+
+THE LEAD PRODUCT.
+
+
+The mining of lead is a business in which Americans are successfully
+using the remarkable resources of this country. In 1866 the amount made
+here was only 14,342 tons, while we imported 23,330 tons. In fact the
+importation has exceeded the home product ever since 1850 with the
+exception of one year--1860. This improper "balance of trade" was due
+to the system and intelligence with which foreign smelting works are
+conducted, and the ignorance which prevailed in our own country where
+the mining resources are really superior to those of Europe. But this
+state of things has changed with the foundation of mining schools and
+the spread of mining knowledge in this country. In 1873 the "balance"
+turned the other way. The importations have been since then 22,114,
+17,674, 7,305, and 4,685 tons; while the home product shows a rise
+corresponding closely to this falling off, being for the same years,
+37,983, 46,500, 53,250, 57,210 tons. In fact we export as much as we
+import, for the 4,300 tons of pig lead imported is balanced by the
+quantity sent back to Europe in the form of bullets. This change in the
+business is traceable to the fact that refining has been found to pay
+in America, and our lead is thus in request by the white paint makers.
+For years our product lay under a stigma, and it was said that it was
+not suited to the manufacture of the best lead. This evident error has
+been corrected; the refined virgin lead of Missouri and Illinois makes
+the best white lead, and the mining of the metal is not likely to
+suffer from so many causes of depression again. The Territories are now
+large producers, the five principal sources of supply being in 1876--
+
+                                      Tons.
+
+    Importation                       4,685
+    Sales of Government old lead      1,050
+    Missouri                         17,165
+    Galena district                   6,425
+    Utah, Nevada, California         33,630
+                                     ------
+                                     62,955
+
+The production of some few selected places was: Palmer mine, 466 tons,
+Mine LaMotte, 1,657, St. Joseph mines, 1,938, Granby mines, 4,423 tons,
+these being all Missouri; Omaha smelting works, 11,336 tons, St. Louis
+and Pennsylvania smelting works, 8,000 tons, New York and Newark works,
+7,776 tons, California, Nevada, and Utah works, 6,518. The latter four
+items amount to 33,630 tons, which is all made from silver-lead ores,
+mostly by the zinc process of refining.
+
+
+
+
+ARCTIC EXPLORATION.
+
+In fitting out the lately returned Arctic expedition the English
+government attempted to make it the last one of its kind. That is, it
+appropriated a million dollars and engaged the cooeperation of the best
+scientific authorities, and sent out its best men, who departed in the
+full knowledge that their enterprise had aroused a real national
+enthusiasm, and that the most strenuous effort was expected of them.
+The purpose of these accumulated advantages was to so fortify the
+voyagers that their success or failure should satisfy the world upon
+the subject of polar exploration. They went, struggled so bravely that
+their loss of life was greater than on any expedition since the fatal
+one under Franklin--and came back without succeeding. Their commander
+deliberately declared success to be impossible from the nature of the
+difficulties which always exist near the pole, and that this goal of
+nine centuries' effort would never be reached.
+
+But, in spite of Captain Nares's positiveness, the Arctic question is
+now just where he took it up. Seventy miles has been added to the
+distance covered, but the world is just as unsatisfied as ever, and
+polar exploration is just as ardently desired as ever. The spirit is
+unchanged, but the name is altered. Against the uniform report of the
+explorers who have been so numerous during the last decade that a mere
+journey to the pole is not likely to yield much addition to man's
+knowledge, it is hardly possible for even the most enthusiastic
+navigators to stand up. But when Lieutenant Payer, on returning from
+the Austrian expedition north of Spitzbergen, declared that there was
+but one way to make the icy northern regions yield up their scientific
+secrets, and that was by colonizing parties within the Arctic circle,
+to stay there long enough to make a continued study of its meteorology
+and physics, the scientific world gave him its unqualified support.
+Several nations have been reported to be on the point of organizing
+such a colony, but America seems likely to be the first to act
+energetically on the suggestion. Captain Howgate of the Signal Service
+Corps has petitioned Congress for $50,000 with which to send out a
+company of forty men, provided with supplies for three years. They are
+to be taken by a government vessel to some point between 81 deg. and 83
+deg., the route taken to be by Smith's sound. There they will be left,
+the vessel returning. An annual visit is to be paid the colony, but
+otherwise they will be left to themselves. To prevent the scandalous
+quarrels which ruined the Polaris expedition, the whole party will be
+enlisted in the United States service, and strict discipline will be
+maintained. The fact that the suggestion for the expedition comes from
+a Signal Service officer will give the country confidence in the plan,
+and also ensure proper attention to that science which may hope to reap
+the greatest benefit from Arctic observations, the science of
+meteorology and cosmic physics. The scientific members of the party are
+to include an astronomer, one or more meteorologists, and two or more
+naturalists. The project is by no means on a sure footing as yet, but
+it has got so far as to be favorably reported on by the Naval Committee
+of the House of Representatives. It certainly embodies the plan which
+scientific men all over the world unite in endorsing, and which seems
+to offer the most promising rewards to effort. But disguise the fact as
+we will, it still remains true that it is in exploration and discovery
+that such schemes find their surest ground for support. The gains to
+science have uniformly been greater than the satisfaction to curiosity,
+and this plan is professedly made with especial care to secure the
+greatest return to science. But the march to the pole is the thing that
+is inviting, and it entices now just as strongly, after all the
+failures, as it ever did. Captain Howgate's plan provides for this.
+During their three years' stay his men will be on the watch for
+opportunities to advance northward, and if they find none, they intend
+to make such a study of currents, ice, and seasons as will give the cue
+to others in after years.
+
+The principal difficulties in pushing far northward may be summed up in
+a few words. The attempt must be made in summer (the Arctic day), when
+the ice is liable to break up. A boat must therefore be carried, and
+this makes the sledge train heavy. The ice to be crossed is extremely
+rough, and explorers have not been able to find smoother spots of any
+considerable size. By rough we mean that it is covered with deep rifts,
+blocks and snow drifts from five to twenty feet or more in height, and
+these impediments cover the surface so closely as to leave no
+alternative but a slow tugging of the sledges over the most available
+parts of them. The English expedition found these drifts to lie
+directly across their course, having been formed by a west wind. The
+labor of crossing them is performed with the thermometer far below the
+freezing point. There is no fire, provisions have to be carefully
+husbanded, sleep is dangerous unless frequently broken, and if one of
+the party breaks down, the strength of the whole is seriously
+diminished, while its task is greatly increased. Such has been the
+history of exploration up to within 400 miles of the pole, and it is at
+least probable that many of these difficulties will be intensified as
+that point is reached. The north pole may now be considered to occupy
+the centre of an area 800 miles in diameter, the condition of things
+within which it is not possible even to conjecture. We may plausibly
+suppose (1) that it is not land, for the ice of the Arctic sea is never
+more than 150 feet thick, and there are no glaciers; (2) that it is a
+shallow sea; and (3) that the precipitation of moisture in the centre
+must be considerable, as the ice is moving in all directions from the
+centre during the summer. The theory of an open sea at the pole is now
+discarded by most scientific men, and, we believe, by all experienced
+explorers except Hayes. In the present state of knowledge it rests upon
+the presumption that the polar sea is very shallow, so that the deep
+and warm currents which are known to enter the Arctic ocean may be
+forced to the surface there; and that the ice drift removes the ice as
+fast as it forms.
+
+
+
+
+EXPLORATION NOTES.
+
+
+THE Portuguese government has decided to spend $100,000 on a
+scientific expedition to Central Africa.
+
+
+EVERY exploring expedition across the continent of Australia has to
+taste the extreme difficulties of travel in the barren parts of that
+extraordinary country. Mr. Giles, the last explorer, says: "From the
+end of the watershed in longitude 120 deg. 20 min., the latitude being
+near the 24th parallel, to the Rawlinson range of my last horse
+expedition, in longitude 127 deg., the country was all open spinifex
+sandhill desert. At starting into the desert most of the camels were
+continually poisoned, the plant which poisoned them not being allied in
+any way to the poison plants of the settled districts of Western
+Australia. I now know it well, and have brought specimens. The longest
+stretch without water was a ten days' march. One old cow camel died
+after reaching the water. We had some rain on May 8 before reaching the
+Ashburton, and some of it must have extended into the desert. It was
+the only chance water we obtained."
+
+
+PROF. NORDENSKIOLD, who sailed from Norway to the mouth of the river
+Jenesei, in Siberia, is now preparing for a voyage from that river
+along the shore of the Arctic sea to Behrings straits. It may be that
+the navigation of the Arctic sea, which is impossible away from land,
+can be accomplished in its neighborhood. The return journey will be
+made by way of China, India, and the Suez canal, the whole forming the
+most remarkable voyage ever undertaken by one ship.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+BRADFORD, Pennsylvania, is lighted with gas from a well situated about
+two miles from town.
+
+
+IN the United States heavy rains are less frequent between 4:35 P.M.
+and 11 P.M than at any other part of the day. The greatest number are
+between 7:35 A.M. and 4:35 P.M.
+
+
+IN the Alps the snow line is 8,900 feet high on the northern side and
+9,200 feet on the southern. In the Himalayas it is 16,600 feet on the
+northern side and 16,200 feet on the southern.
+
+
+THE eminent physicist, Prof. J. C. Poggendorff, for many years
+professor in the Berlin university, and editor of "Poggendorff's
+Annalen," has died in Berlin, in his eighty-first year.
+
+
+THE magnitude of the prizes which may be drawn by exploring
+antiquarians in Europe is shown by the recent finding near Verona,
+Italy, of two large amphorae containing 50,000 coins of the Emperor
+Gallienus and his immediate successors. The majority of them are of
+bronze, but there are some of silver. Nearly all of them are in the
+finest state of preservation, and are so fresh from the mint as to make
+it evident that they were never put into circulation.
+
+
+PROF. LOOMIS says that in this country great rainfalls do not generally
+continue over eight hours, and very rarely do they continue for
+twenty-four hours, either at one place or a number of places considered
+successively.
+
+
+ACCORDING to the Washington "Gazette," the paint makers are grinding up
+Egyptian mummies for the fine brown color which they make when
+powdered. This color is due to the asphaltum with which the cloths
+wrapped around the mummies was impregnated.
+
+
+THE Washington monument is probably doomed. In its present condition it
+is a grievous eyesore in the Washington landscape, and a board of army
+engineers now say that its foundations are not strong enough to permit
+raising the shaft higher, and it is proposed to take it down.
+
+
+MR. H. BYASSON has produced a kind of petroleum by the mutual action of
+steam, carbonic acid, and sulphuretted hydrogen in presence of iron at
+a white heat. All these substances are known to be contained in the
+rocks of the earth's crust, which also has at various times afforded
+the necessary heat.
+
+
+GOLD, though the principal standard of value, is not moved about the
+world much. The entire import of London, the greatest banking city in
+the world, was only $116,222,350 in 1876, and the export was
+$81,097,850. Nearly the whole of the difference went into the vaults of
+the Bank of England, the stock of which increased $34,992,020.
+
+
+PROF. HAWES has proved the existence of metallic iron in the basalt
+dykes of New Hampshire. It exists as small specks in the centre of
+grains of magnetite. This contradicts the theory that the metallic iron
+of the dykes is the result of carbon acting upon the magnetite in them,
+and proves that the iron is the primary and the magnetite the secondary
+product.
+
+
+THOUGH agricultural professorships are not considered to have produced
+all the good that was once expected from them, there is one lately
+established by the French Government which might well be copied in
+other countries. It is a professorship of comparative agriculture at
+Vincennes, and its occupant will make a systematic comparison of home
+and foreign agriculture.
+
+
+THE character of the Yale lectures to mechanics is seen from the
+following titles to some of the lectures: "Forester and Forest
+Products," Prof. William H. Brewer; "Mosses," Prof. C. D. Eaton; "Our
+Red Sandstone," G. W. Hawes; "The Usury Laws," Prof. F. A. Walker; and
+"Sanitary Engineering," Prof. W. P. Trowbridge. The course contains
+thirteen lectures, and costs $1.
+
+
+A FRENCH paper says that "an American company proposes to introduce fur
+seals from Alaska into Lake Superior! The temperature of the lake is
+considered to be sufficiently cold for the purpose, and the company
+hopes to obtain from Congress and the Canadian Parliament an act
+protecting the creatures from slaughter for twenty years, after which
+time it is supposed that they will be sufficiently acclimatized and
+numerous to form subjects of sport." As the fur seal is a marine animal
+and Lake Superior is a body of fresh water, the success of the
+experiment, and even the authenticity of the story, is at least
+doubtful!
+
+
+M. GIFFARD, inventor of the steam injector which bears his name, has
+entered upon a line of invention of which Americans have been very
+fond. He is building a small steamer to ply, during the French
+Exposition, over the three miles of the Seine between Pont Royal and
+the Exhibition. The steamer will be thirty metres, or one hundred feet
+long and three and a half metres, or eleven feet eight inches broad,
+and is to make forty-five miles an hour! The length is to the beam,
+therefore, as 8-1/2 to 1. It is singular that marine engineering has
+gained but little from these attempts to attain excessive speeds. The
+real advances have been obtained by small successive improvements.
+
+
+
+
+CURRENT LITERATURE.
+
+
+MR. HENRI VAN LAUN is known in the world of letters by his admirable
+translation of Taine's "History of English Literature," and also by his
+not yet completed translation of Moliere's works; the latter being not
+merely a translation, but a very thoroughly worked English edition of
+the great French dramatist. He now presents us with the first volume of
+an original critical work of great importance and interest[9]--nothing
+less than a history of French literature. Mr. Van Laun's work is not a
+mere critical appreciation of French writers, which of itself would be
+an undertaking of very considerable moment, and which would fill a
+place hitherto unoccupied in our critical literature. The present work
+is in fact a history of French thought, and even more; it is a history
+of the French people as exhibited in the writings of Frenchmen from the
+very earliest period. The author accepts the theory which has lately
+come into vogue among the more elaborate, if not the profounder
+critics, that the literature of an age is a manifestation of its
+spirit; that a nation, or rather a people, has a soul like an
+individual man, and that that soul is manifested and is to be read in
+the pages of its authors; that as it, the people, is developed,
+intellectually, morally, socially, and politically, from age to age,
+the changes through which it passes are reflected in its literature,
+and that there no less, perhaps even more, than in the record of its
+doings at home, abroad, in the family, in society, in commerce, in
+manufactures, in art, and on the field of battle, is to be found its
+true portraiture. Indeed, he begins his book with the assertion that
+"the history of a literature is the history of a people; if not this,
+it is worthless."
+
+      [9] "_History of French Literature._" By HENRI VAN LAUN. I. From
+      its Origin to the Renaissance. 8vo, pp. 342. New York: G. P.
+      Putnam's Sons.
+
+To this theory and its general acceptance we owe chiefly the very wide
+scope and the philosophical profundity of most modern critical writing
+of the higher kind. Critics are not content nowadays with taking up a
+poem, novel, essay, or history, and looking at it by itself as an
+individual and isolated work of art. They must look into the personal
+life of the writer; they must discover and estimate all the influences
+by which he was surrounded; and among these they give a very important
+place to the condition of the society in which he lived, the political
+and religious forces which were at work while he was studying,
+thinking, writing. Briefly, they regard him not as an isolated
+individual force, but as a manifestation, a result of many forces, as
+doing his work less by personal volition than as the unconscious agent
+or representative of the times in which he lived. Consequently a
+critical edition or appreciation of a great writer has come to be not a
+purely literary task, but an attempt to unfold the mental and moral
+condition of a people and a period. Compare, for example, Addison's
+criticism of the "Paradise Lost," to which in a great measure the
+general appreciation of that poem is due, with David Masson's "Life of
+Milton." The former can all be included in a thin duodecimo volume, and
+has been so printed; the latter, still unfinished, fills several
+ponderous octavo volumes. Addison concerns himself with the poem
+itself; Masson writes an elaborate history of Puritanism and of the
+English people during the development and completion of that religious,
+social, and political revolution which produced the Commonwealth in Old
+England and the Puritan emigration to America, with the formation of
+the religious commonwealths of New England. True, Addison did not
+undertake to do what Masson undertook, and allowance must be made for
+the avowed difference between the methods of the two writers. But still
+that very difference is the significant exponent of the critical spirit
+of the times in which they lived. The very fact that the Victorian
+critic has undertaken his tremendous task, which Addison or any man of
+his time would not have thought of, is significant of the change in
+critical manner to which we have referred.
+
+That the new theory of the proper scope of criticism is well founded,
+cannot be entirely denied. Literature to a certain degree is a
+characteristic product of the age and of the people for which, if not
+by which, it is produced. And if Mr. Van Laun had confined himself to
+the affirmative part of his proposition, his position would have been
+less disputable than it became when he added his negative assertion. It
+is not quite true that the history of a literature is the history of a
+people; still further from the truth is it that literary history which
+is not the history of a people is worthless. It might be easily shown
+that some of the very greatest literary productions known to the world
+have very slight relations, or none at all, to the condition of the
+society in which they were written. What, for example, is there in
+Shakespeare's plays, or in Sir Walter Scott's poems and novels, which
+is a manifestation of the spirit of their time? Scott, Wordsworth,
+Byron, and Moore were strictly contemporaries. What could be more
+unlike than their poems in spirit or in substance? What one trait have
+they in common? The theory in question is an example of the tendency of
+men to over generalization of particular facts, and of a like tendency
+to over subtlety in critical philosophy.
+
+The spirit of a people is, however, undeniably manifest in the writings
+of its best and most favored authors; and to trace the rise of that
+spirit and the gradual formation of a national or popular character is
+a legitimate and a very instructive part of the task of a critic who
+undertakes to present a full appreciation of a national literature.
+
+Mr. Van Laun certainly begins at the beginning. He shows us what the
+French people are; how the French nation arose and gradually grew into
+an individual existence; and he thus imitates and emulates the
+distinguished French critic whose work he has translated. M. Taine is
+strong on the manifestation of Anglo-Saxonism in English literature,
+and even finds the results of English beef and beer, and of the very
+rain and fog of England, in the books of English writers.
+
+Mr. Van Laun's theory of the origin of the French people is not a very
+clear one; not even in his own mind, it would seem. He starts with the
+assertion, in very positive terms, that the Iberians were the vanguard
+of the invading races who overwhelmed and swept before them the oldest
+known inhabitants of Western Europe--the Celts; and his language
+implies that the former were and the latter were not an Indo-European
+race; that the vanguard of the Indo-European invaders _found_ the Celts
+in Europe and overcame them. But there is no doubt, we believe, that
+the Celts themselves were, or are, an Indo-European race, and that they
+are the oldest representatives of that race in Europe. Their position
+in the extreme west, even in the Highlands of Scotland and in Ireland,
+shows this. As to the Iberians, the name itself is rather vague as that
+of a people or a race; but as far as we know anything of the race which
+Mr. Van Laun seems to have in view, _they_ were found in the west of
+Europe by the invading Celts. The Basques are regarded by philologists
+and ethnologists as the modern representatives of the "Iberians," if
+that name must be used--at any rate of the prehistoric inhabitants of
+Western Europe. Of this Mr. Van Laun himself seems to have an inkling,
+for he says "they were possibly themselves an indigenous European race
+driven back upon the Celts by the invading tribes which so persistently
+trod upon their heels." He finds a confirmation of this supposition in
+a curious etymological coincidence. In the Basque tongue _atzean_
+signifies "behind," and _atzea_ "a foreigner." He accounts for this by
+supposing that the Iberian, pushed hard by the invaders, made common
+cause with the Celt, and that therefore the ever-encroaching Goth and
+Frank were "the people behind him." But if his "Iberians" were an
+indigenous European race, how could they be "driven back" upon the
+Celts unless the latter had gone through and through them, and so
+actually got before them, leaving the indigenous people between
+them--the Celts--and the succeeding Indo-European invaders? The fact is
+that Mr. Van Laun has begun so very far back that he is in deep water,
+rather out of his depth--out of any one's depth indeed. For as to the
+Basques, they are still an ethnological and philological puzzle. The
+balance of probabilities, however, seems to be in favor of their being
+the, or an, indigenous European race, not connected with the Aryan or
+Indo-European races, against whom they, a small remnant, have managed
+to hold their own, and preserve their individuality in language, law,
+and customs for more than two thousand years. The first element, the
+ground, so to speak, of the French nation, is, however, doubtless
+Celtic; and as to how much of an intermingling there may have been
+between them and the "Iberians," or the indigenous race represented by
+the Basques, we do not know. Judging by the very remarkable
+individuality of that strange people, their boldness, and their
+disposition to keep themselves to themselves, the probabilities of any
+very great intermingling between them and their conquerors are very
+small indeed.
+
+Upon the Celts came the Greeks and the Romans. The former took no such
+hold of the country as the latter did; but yet there seems to be some
+reason for Mr. Van Laun's summary of the influence upon Gaul, (not yet
+France) of the two great nations of antiquity when he says: "Greece,
+the commercial nation, had charmed and penetrated her hosts by her
+poetry, her rhetoric, her arts; Rome, the military nation, remodelled
+her victims by her laws, her administration, her moral vigor." This is
+somewhat loosely expressed for a work of such literary pretensions as
+those of the book before us; but it suggests the truth. There was,
+however, in the end, to use a popular phrase, "no comparison" between
+the influence of the Greeks and that of the Romans upon Gaul. It was in
+letters as in society and in politics; the intellectual existence of
+Gaul, as well as her physical existence, was to be inextricably
+interwoven with that of her Roman conquerors. Gaul became Romanized;
+the language of the country, whatever it had been, was driven out, and
+Latin took its place. The people of the country became one of what are
+now known as the Latin races, chiefly because of their languages.
+French is little more than Latin first debased and then by culture
+reformed into a language having a character and laws of its own. The
+words which form the bulk of the French language may be traced, have
+been traced, down step by step from the original Latin forms; and it is
+found that changes from ancient Latin to modern French took place
+according to certain phonetic laws so absolute that, given a Latin
+word, philologists can tell surely under what form it must appear in
+French.
+
+After the Romans came the Teutonic invaders; and of these the Franks so
+imposed themselves upon the country that they gave it their name, and
+Gaul became France. Charlemagne was neither Celtic nor Latin, but
+simply Karl the Great, a Teutonic monarch under whose sceptre all the
+Franks were united. The predominance of the Franks in Gaul for many
+generations had a modifying influence upon the people. The Celtic Gaul
+was a lively, spirited, vain, bold, but not a very steadily courageous
+man. The Teutonic was a quieter, steadier, more reserved, and more
+thoughtful man. He was a bigger man, too, and like big men, he took
+things more quietly; he had the steady courage which the dashing and
+gaily caparisoned Celt somewhat lacked. And yet it is remarkable that
+in the end the Celtic nature reasserted itself in France, although with
+some modification; and to-day the Frenchman is a Celt, as fond of talk,
+of fanciful poetry, of fine dress, and show, and dash, as his
+forefather was fifteen hundred years ago.
+
+It was not until about the year 850 that the language of the people of
+France assumed a form distinctively French, according to the modern
+standard; and even then it was so rude and unformed that to a modern
+uneducated Frenchman it would be quite as strange and incomprehensible
+as Latin itself. From the very first the great distinction between the
+language of the north and that of the south seems to have existed. The
+_langue d'oc_ and the _langue d'oil_ contended for the mastery, which
+was finally won by the latter. This is remarkable, as the former was
+the softer and more cultivated tongue. The finest and the most of the
+very early poetry of France was written in the _langue d'oc_. To this
+literature and to the condition of the society in which it was produced
+Mr. Van Laun gives much attention, as might have been expected. This
+part of his book is interesting to students of literary history; but we
+must confess that the songs of the troubadours have to us very rarely
+any of the charms of poetry, and that we think that much of the
+admiration of them which has been expressed by literary antiquarians is
+fictitious. There is occasionally in these poems a touch of natural
+feeling; but generally they are cold and full of conceits. Form seems
+to have been more important in the poet's eyes than spirit; and instead
+of genuine fervor we have deliberate extravagance. The great epic poem
+of the French language--its greatest if not its only great poem--the
+"Chanson de Roland"--is written in the _langue d'oil_. Mr. Van Laun
+notices this poem of course, and gives a brief summary of its plot, or
+we might better say of its incidents; but we are surprised that he does
+not give it more attention. It is far more worthy of critical
+examination than the fantastic love poems of the troubadours.
+
+In his account of feudal society and of the effect which its conditions
+had upon such literature as there was in that day, Mr. Van Laun could
+hardly pass over those tribunals so characteristic and so foreign to
+our modes of thought and feeling nowadays--the courts of love, of which
+the troubadours were, in a sort, the advocates. These courts were
+governed by a Code of Love, which had thirty-one statutes or ruling
+maxims. Of these maxims the most significant, and some of the most
+remarkable, are the following:
+
+    The plea of wedlock is not a sufficient excuse from love.
+
+    None can be bound by a double love.
+
+    It is undoubted that love is always diminishing or increasing.
+
+    A two years' widowhood is enjoined for a deceased lover.
+
+    It is shameful to love those with whom marriage would be shameful.
+
+    A true lover does not desire the embrace of any one save his
+    companion in love.
+
+    Love rarely endures when made public.
+
+    Easy acceptance renders love contemptible; a slow acceptance causes
+    it to be held dear.
+
+    A man full of love is ever full of fear.
+
+    Love can deny nothing to a lover.
+
+    There is nothing to prevent one woman from being loved by two men,
+    nor one man by two women.
+
+In the last quoted of these remarkable laws (which were the work of
+women and of a few men who wished to please women), it will be observed
+that no authority or countenance is given to the loving of two women by
+one man. Our author regards the effect of these courts and their code
+as on the whole beneficial. His judgment may be sound, monstrous as the
+code seems to us, recognizing and even sanctioning as it did relations
+of the sexes not formed according to civil laws; for, as he says, "it
+refined the inevitable evil, substituted an easy for an almost
+impracticable moral code, and being compelled to draw a new line
+between venial offences and coarse licentiousness, exacted a rigid
+obedience to those laws." There is also some force in his plea that the
+courts of love "rescued woman from what would have become a condition
+of intolerable degradation, elevated affection rather than passion into
+the place of honor, and encouraged devotion in the stronger sex, grace
+and propriety in the weaker." It is undoubtedly true that when society
+became more rigid in sexual morality, and the mediaeval code of love
+disappeared, there remained the tenderness and courtesy for the fairer
+and weaker sex which that code had done so much to develop.
+
+Mr. Van Laun's first volume brings us down only to the Renaissance. But
+at that period the characteristic trait of French literature developed
+itself strongly. That trait is satire; not the bloody scourge of
+Juvenal, but a light, caustic, reserved, and almost pleasant although
+malicious satire--malicious in the French sense of _malice_, which is
+not so strong a word as its English counterpart. The difference between
+the French spirit and the English is shown by the fact that with free
+thought in the English race came stubborn dissent; in the French,
+light-hearted satire. "Satire," as Mr. Van Laun justly says, "is at the
+root of the French character, an instinct among the descendants of the
+ancient Gauls, who loved to fight and to talk well." This satire broke
+out in the sixteenth century with a brightness and causticity which has
+ever since distinguished French literature. The leader was Marguerite,
+sister to Francis I., the well-known Queen of Navarre. Her "Heptameron"
+is a strange book for a woman, and not a bad woman, a lady, and a
+queen, to have written. In it "she vents her contemptuous scorn upon
+husbands, although [perhaps because] she was married; against monks,
+though she was an ardent devotee of religion; against lawyers and
+doctors, though she was a queen." But it is most happily added that
+"her shrewdest satire of all is unconsciously pointed against herself;
+for she stands revealed to us a very woman, the rivals for whose favor
+are God and the devil, and who affords to neither of these more than a
+short coquettish glance."
+
+It was at this period that the present school of French literature had
+its beginning; the spirit then so strongly manifested, the tendency to
+clearness, brightness, and high finish of style which then appeared
+among French writers, have since that time been the signs and tokens of
+the French mind and hand in literature. All that goes before is rude or
+fantastic or pedantic; then French literature rises in its splendor; we
+can hardly say its grandeur. Mr. Van Laun's first volume is full of
+interest which, however, is rather historical than literary; in the
+succeeding part of his work we may look for criticism more acceptable
+to the general reader.
+
+--We pass easily from this history of the earliest days of French
+literature to its very latest, and we may add, one of its most
+characteristic productions. Alphonse Daudet's novel, "Fromont Jeune et
+Risler Aine," has suddenly attained one of those rare and brilliant
+successes which seem possible only in France. Within an incredibly
+short time sixty thousand copies of it were sold, and it was "crowned"
+by the French Academy; whatever that may mean, whether an actual
+crowning of either book or author, it certainly does imply the awarding
+of the highest honors by the most eminent literary tribunal in France.
+It has now been reproduced here in a translation which leaves nothing
+to be desired, whether as a transfusion of the French spirit of the
+book, or as an example of a fine English narrative style.[10] Indeed,
+it unites these two most important requisites of a good translation in
+a rare and remarkable manner. As to the book itself, although it is a
+very good novel, and carries upon its face the evidence that it is a
+careful study of a certain phase of French life, we are at a loss to
+account for its phenomenal success. It is all about Sidonie, who may be
+called its heroine, as Becky Sharp is the heroine of "Vanity Fair." Now
+Sidonie is a pretty, vulgar, vile-souled shop girl who uses her beauty
+to make her way to a certain sort of _bourgeois_ fashionable life, but
+who is really a far more infamous creature than many a common harlot.
+For she is not wanton; she is not merely venal; she is pitilessly
+selfish and fiendishly malicious. She has no honesty of any kind--of
+mind, heart, soul, or body. A baser, viler creature in female, and
+therefore in human form, it would be impossible to conceive. For to all
+grovelling, debasing vice she adds a monstrous, cold-hearted cruelty.
+With all this she is not remarkable for anything except a pretty,
+blooming face and a low cunning. What need to familiarize us with the
+life of such a creature? She ruins the happiness of two men, one of a
+noble soul and the other a weak-minded creature; she breaks up a
+family; she brings her principal victim to suicide; and all this not
+even for a grand passion, but that she may have fine dresses, diamonds,
+and a social success. This is very barren business. We do not care to
+have such a life as this laid before us with all the particularity of
+treatment which belongs to the realistic school. But granted that we
+did desire it, we must confess that we could not wish for it better
+done. The life-portraiture, inner as well as outer, is perfect and
+minute to admiration. The end is brought about in fine melodramatic
+style. Around Sidonie are grouped several personages lovable and
+unlovable, admirable and unadmirable, but all painted with perfect,
+clear conception and firm, minute touch. The distinctive Frenchness of
+the author is manifest in every page. It is shown particularly in the
+absence of any touch of humor in the portraiture of Sidonie. Unlike
+Becky Sharp, she hems no little shirt in public until a little Rawdon
+has long outgrown it. The hard portrait of her hard soul has no such
+softening touch as that. The book is of a bad sort; but of its sort
+most admirable.
+
+      [10] "_Sidonie._" From the French of ALPHONSE DAUDET. 16mo, pp.
+      262. Boston: Estes & Lauriat.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+The Lenten season is peculiarly the time for religious books, and the
+publishers have not failed to take advantage of it this year. Among the
+most interesting and valuable of the new works is Dr. Gregory's
+examination into the reason for having Four Gospels.[11] Why there
+should be two, three, or any number more than one, or less than eleven,
+is a question that has been considered significant for many centuries.
+Why out of eleven faithful disciples, precisely four should be inspired
+to write the history of the founder of the Church is certainly a
+problem that must be worth examining. The first idea, and it is one
+that has not died out yet, was that the four Gospels were so many
+incomplete but supplementary narratives, and in the second century
+efforts were made to improve upon the Biblical record by the
+Harmonists, who tried to compile what they considered a consistent and
+progressive account of the acts of Christ's ministry. They were
+followed by the Allegorists, who took the vision of Ezekiel, with its
+likeness of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle, and applied it to the
+writers of the Gospels as an exemplification of the meaning each of the
+narratives was intended to have. Though they, and their modern
+followers also, have not been able to agree upon this symbolical
+purport, the four Evangelists have retained in art those symbolical
+figures. The lion and St. Mark, the eagle and St. John are indissolubly
+connected in ecclesiastical art and story. The other schools of
+interpretation are, according to Dr. Gregory, the rationalists and "the
+common-sense critics." His own answer to the question, Why Four
+Gospels? is, that Christ had a mission to the Jews, and Matthew
+presented that argument for his divinity which was best calculated to
+impress that people; and to the Romans, to whom Mark was an
+interpreter; and to the Greeks, to whom Luke spoke; and to the Church
+at large, for whom John wrote his gospel of gentleness and love. The
+Jew, the Roman, and the Greek then composed the world of
+civilization--the existing society of that day--and in the Bible we
+find one writer for each of these nations, and one for the whole
+Church. This is certainly a rational and unembarrassed explanation. Dr.
+Gregory enforces it with great force and learning.
+
+      [11] "_Why Four Gospels?_ or, The Gospel for all the World." By
+      D. S. GREGORY, D.D. New York: Sheldon & Co.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+MR. BUCHANAN'S "Shadow of the Sword"[12] has so many faults that it is
+a wonder he could have written it to the end without arousing his own
+disgust. It revives the long-neglected horrors of the time of the first
+Napoleon, and deals with them in a way that is brutal, not artistic.
+Its hero is a deserter, and he is so sharply followed by the gendarmes
+that for a year or more he lives the life of a burrowing animal, until
+reason itself is unseated. The only relief to a picture which the
+author strives vigorously to make revolting is the love of the hero's
+betrothed; but that too is so mingled with terror that it only throws a
+more lurid light upon the sufferings her lover undergoes. The style is
+as close an imitation of the French as the author can produce,
+occasionally varied, however, most ludicrously by an unguarded
+exhibition of English slang. The heroine has those eyes so rarely seen
+outside of novels, of "that mystic color which can be soft as heaven
+with joy and love, but dark as death with jealousy and wrath." For
+those who get near enough to gaze long into them, they reveal "strange
+depths of passion, and self-control, and pride." The individual who did
+this gazing is a tall, lusty fellow, and healthy as the average of
+fisherman's boys, but for all that he has the soul of romance within
+him. When his comrades are lounging on the beach, _he_ is "walking in
+some vast cathedral not made with hands," or performing daring feats of
+strength. Unluckily forsaking his cathedral, to lounge on the beach
+with his true love, like common mortals, they are caught by the tide,
+and have to wade through the water to escape. She bares her legs for
+the bath without hesitation or blush, for "she knew that they were
+pretty, of course, and she felt no shame." But there is one thing this
+young lady would not for worlds reveal, and that is _her hair_, which
+is invariably concealed beneath a coif. But as the waters deepen, Rohan
+throws the pretty-limbed creature over his shoulder and wades thigh
+deep. As he lands her he looks up, "and lo! he saw a sight which
+brought the bright blood to his own cheeks and made him tremble like a
+tree beneath his load." _Her hair had fallen down_, and the cheeks
+and neck that bore unmoved the exposure of her knees, were now "crimson
+with a delicious shame." This incident "bared each to each in all the
+nudity of passion," and it certainly bares the nudity of the author's
+invention. He is nowhere prurient, and nowhere delicate. He describes
+the revolting details of the story with as much unction as if they were
+the important things, and he leaves his hero at the end a complete
+failure in life and love, wasted in strength, and ruined in mind.
+
+      [12] "_The Shadow of the Sword._" A Romance. By ROBERT BUCHANAN.
+      New York: Lovell, Adam, Wesson & Co.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+WE are glad to see Dr. McClellan persist in his study of the cholera
+question.[13] We know of no publications which are better fitted than
+his to awaken the people to a proper sense of the duty, and also of the
+efficiency, of personal providence against disease. He is an advocate
+of the Indian origin theory of the disease and its spread by personal
+infection only, and in this pamphlet maintains two propositions: 1st,
+that Asiatic cholera has never yet _originated on the American
+continent_, but in every instance has spread from a first case which
+reached its shores from some countries beyond the ocean; and 2d, that
+it is diffused by the migrations of individuals who are infected by the
+disease, a specific poison existing in their dejecta, which reproduces
+the disease in any person to whom it gains access. This is a theory of
+epidemic cholera which is rational, consistent with the constantly
+developing facts of scientific research, and which happily includes a
+remedy that is every way practicable and thorough. But it is a theory
+that is not yet acknowledged by all authorities. Telluric conditions,
+malaria, and other local influences are frequently pointed to as the
+cause of the disease, and the doctrine of specific cholera poison still
+demands strong partisan advocacy.
+
+      [13] "_Lessons to be Learned from the Cholera Facts of the Past
+      Year._" By ELY MCCLELLAN, M.D., Surgeon U.S.A. Reprinted from the
+      "Richmond and Louisville Medical Journal."
+
+--An anonymous pamphlet on vivisection, which takes ground against that
+mode of obtaining knowledge, is not worth serious notice except for the
+odd argument that crime is likely to increase if the vivisectionists
+are allowed to experiment on cats and dogs, as the new English law
+proposes! Criminals, says the authoress, rarely have had pets, and
+_therefore_ if we kill all the pets, and thus deprive ourselves of the
+refining influences of kitty and the ennobling example of doggy, we
+shall the more readily turn to criminal ways. Another powerful
+argument is that "the countries where vivisection has prevailed seem
+to have secured no lasting blessing, but to have been the subjects of
+peculiarly calamitous afflictions, direful disasters, unnatural
+_internal tribulations_, and other multiplied evils." This is
+theocracy with a vengeance.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+FOR some years past the "North American Review" has been enriched by
+papers from the late Mr. Chauncey Wright on various subjects in the
+wide field of modern philosophy, but especially in the much disputed
+theories of biology. They exhibited such proofs of independent judgment
+and critical acumen as to give their author immediate standing among
+European as well as home savants. These critiques have been collected
+and published under the name "Philosophical Discussions."[14] Much as
+we admired these articles when they first appeared, we do not see that
+a republication of them is needed unless as a graceful monument to an
+enthusiastic student. In their permanent form they lose the immediate
+fitness to questions under universal discussion, which is the true
+_raison d'etre_ of such papers. The extreme wordiness which was Mr.
+Wright's principal literary fault is disagreeably manifest when his
+book is laid by those of other masters in positive philosophy. This is
+especially noticeable in the only strictly original discussion in the
+book, the one on the arrangement of leaves in plants. In this paper the
+editor has left out the "strictly inductive investigation" which
+contains the kernel of the essay! He has omitted the soul and given the
+"limbs and outward flourishes" of the author's discussion, and much to
+the latter's discredit. Aside from this tendency to sentences and words
+of philosophical length, Mr. Wright's style is extremely agreeable,
+clear, and strong. It frequently shines with unexpected felicities of
+expression, just as the author's argument frequently awakens the
+perception with its unusual keenness and depth of thought.
+
+      [14] "_Philosophical Discussions._" By CHAUNCEY WRIGHT. With a
+      Biographical Sketch of the Author by Charles Eliot Norton. New
+      York: Henry Holt & Co.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+"THE CONVICTS,"[15] by Auerbach, will not increase that author's
+reputation in America. It belongs to the distinctively romantic school
+of German fiction. The story is that two convicts, reformed through the
+agency of a charitable society, marry and bring up a large family of
+children. These suffer pangs of sorrow when they learn of the stain
+on their parents' name, but otherwise they do not appear to be
+inconvenienced by their unfortunate origin. They marry into stations
+very much above them, though in addition to the embarrassing criminal
+history of their parents, they suffer what in Germany is the hardly
+less disaster, of being the children of a railway signal man! We
+suppose the object of this plot, and of much special social sentiment
+which is introduced in the story, is to represent the increased
+importance which the industrial classes have in Germany, as elsewhere
+in the world. Here in America the improvement in the condition of the
+working-man does not excite attention except from professed students of
+political economy. But in Germany it is contrasted with a previous
+state of almost complete vassalage, and the poets there seem to think
+it indicates an approaching brotherhood of man. Wealth and worth are to
+embrace each other, and the sins of the father are not to descend even
+to the first generation of children. We cannot but sympathize with the
+Councillor of State (whose granddaughter wants to, and does, marry one
+of the convict flagman's sons, an artisan) when he says:
+
+    See! see! This then is the latest ideal? Formerly the ideals were
+    painters, musicians, hussar riding masters, and players. Now love
+    also is practical. So then an artisan? All the enthusiasm runs to
+    tunnels and viaducts.
+
+      [15] "_The Convicts and their Children._" By BERTHOLD AUERBACH.
+      Translated by Charles T. Brooks. Leisure Hour Series. New York:
+      H. Holt & Co.
+
+The book is marred by unnecessary exactitude in translation. Thouing
+and theeing make no impression of intimacy and confidence on the
+American understanding as they do on the German, and should be omitted.
+Nor has the author the strength of his youth, and the beauty of his
+fancy no longer atones for the weakness of the story. Nothing in the
+whole of the book proper is so good as the following from the preface:
+
+    A generation has passed away since I began to present in a
+    framework of fiction the interior life of my countrymen and
+    neighbors. If after another generation a poet shall again undertake
+    to express the village life of my home, what will he perhaps find?
+    Flowers bloom in all times out of the German soil, and Beauty will
+    in all times bloom out of the German soul.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+OF late years there has been a tendency to abandon the exhaustive
+"manuals" which once formed the only style of school and hand-books
+known, and to use in their place books which contain only so much of a
+science as is taught in some one well-proportioned school. The change
+is based on the rational supposition that whatever suffices for the
+thorough instruction of students should also satisfy the wants of an
+ordinary practical worker. Mr. Ricketts's "Notes on Assaying"[16]
+belong to this modern kind of text-book. They contain what the students
+in the School of Mines in New York learn, and as a thorough knowledge
+of assaying is obviously necessary to a mining engineer, the author
+considers that the same course if honestly worked through should
+suffice for practice outside the school. The book covers both dry and
+wet assaying, and gold parting, and there are chapters in which the
+apparatus and chemical reagents are described. A few condensed notes on
+blowpiping finish an extremely concise and useful book, always
+available for reference, and in which the self-taught workman may find
+his way without confusion.
+
+      [16] "_Notes on Assaying and Assay Schemes._" By PIERRE DE
+      PEYSTER RICKETTS, E.M. New York: The Art Printing Establishment.
+
+--Under the pressure of incessant examinations for admission to and
+promotion in many fields of human activity, from the Government service
+to apprentices' workshops, English literature is receiving important
+accessions to its facilities for teaching science. All kinds of
+positive knowledge are condensed into class books, sometimes by the
+very master minds of scientific research, sometimes by experienced
+teachers. Of the latter kind is Mr. Lee's "Acoustics, Light and
+Heat,"[17] which he has written to meet the wants of students for the
+Advanced Stage Examination of the British Department of Science and
+Art. Excellence in such a work requires that the main principles of the
+science should be sufficiently covered, explanations be clear,
+illustrations sufficient, and language as simple as possible. Mr. Lee's
+book appears to us somewhat over-condensed, but otherwise conforms to
+these requirements.
+
+      [17] "_Acoustics, Light and Heat._" By WILLIAM LEES, M.A. With
+      200 illustrations. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+LORD DUFFERIN'S "Letters from High Latitudes," describing the yacht
+voyage he made in 1856 to Iceland, Jan Mayen, and Spitzbergen, are so
+well known that it is only necessary to say they are republished by
+Lovell, Adam, Wesson & Co., a Canadian firm that has lately established
+itself in New York. In reading these familiar and gossipy letters, one
+is painfully impressed with a sense of the dreariness of the Northern
+regions. Whatever there is of interest is carried there by the
+traveller. The country itself, even including Iceland, adds little to
+the narrative, and sea life, whether stormy or calm, is not provocative
+of incident. But in spite of these inherent discouragements, the author
+maintains his cheerfulness throughout with such uniformity that we
+cannot resist a suspicion of its genuineness. He comes up to the
+inditing of each epistle with the determined smile of a much battered
+pugilist, when a new round is called--and we are very much in his debt
+for his pluck.
+
+
+
+
+BOOKS RECEIVED.
+
+
+"_Sir Roger de Coverley._" J. HADBERTON. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.00.
+
+"_Childhood of the English Nation._" ELLA S. ARMITAGE. The same. $1.25.
+
+"_Modern Materialism._" JAMES MARTINEAU. The same. $1.25.
+
+"_Acoustics, Light and Heat._" W. LEES, M.A. The same. $1.50.
+
+"_Letters from High Latitudes._" LORD DUFFERIN. Lovell, Adam, Wesson &
+Co.
+
+"_Shadow of the Sword._" ROBERT BUCHANAN. The same.
+
+"_The Splendid Advantage of being a Woman._" CHAS. J. DUNPHIE. The
+same.
+
+"_King Saul._" A Tragedy. BYRON A. BROOKS. Nelson & Phillips.
+
+"_U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories._" F. V. HAYDEN. Vols. IX.
+and X., and Annual Report for 1875.
+
+"_The Jukes._ A Study in Crime and Pauperism." E HARRIS, M.D. G. P.
+Putnam's Sons.
+
+"_Waverley Novels_," Riverside Edition. HURD & HOUGHTON.
+    "_The Abbot._" $1.50.
+    "_Kenilworth._" $1.50.
+    "_Fortunes of Nigel._" $1.50.
+    "_The Pirate._" $1.50.
+
+"_Heritage of Langdaler._" Mrs. ALEXANDER. Henry Holt & Co. $1.25.
+
+"_The New Church._" B. F. BARRETT. Claxton, Remsen & Halffelfinger.
+
+"_List of Merchant Vessels of the United States._" Government Printing
+Office.
+
+"_Smithsonian Report 1875._" Government Printing Office.
+
+"_Six Weeks in Norway._" E. L. ANDERSON. Robert Clarke & Co.
+
+"_Alexander Hamilton._" Hon. GEORGE SHEA. Hurd & Houghton. $1.00.
+
+"_Harriet Martineau's Autobiography._" Two volumes. M. W. CHAPMAN. J.
+R. Osgood & Co. $6.00
+
+
+
+
+NEBULAE.
+
+
+--WE have not yet entered into rivalry with Mexico; and although to
+those who looked upon our politics during the last two months from the
+outside only, we have doubtless seemed to be tending toward anarchy,
+revolution, and pronunciamentos, we were really in no such danger.
+Teutonic blood and the English language (Anglo-Saxons and Germans are
+both Teutonic) seem to carry with them a certain steadiness and
+capacity of common-sense perception which are preventives of great
+political folly; and although it is not the habit of our politicians to
+speak very respectfully of each other from the opposite sides of a
+political canvass, and the conduct of our Representatives at Washington
+is not always quite so admirable and exemplary as it might be, we do
+not, in French phrase, "descend into the streets," or raise barricades,
+or fly at each other's throats unless we mean real revolutionary
+business. Even then we are apt to go decorously, if not solemnly, about
+our work, and talk about "the course of human events" and "a decent
+respect for the opinions of mankind"; we at least did so once, and
+notwithstanding the great changes that have taken place in our
+political and social condition, it may be safely assumed that we should
+do so again. Frothy talk at Washington gives occasion for leading
+articles which are not always less frothy, and for sensation headings
+that gladden the eyes of newsboys. The desperate political game played
+at Washington for the Presidency has had a very bad effect upon our
+reputation, and has increased the very political demoralization of
+which it was an outward sign; but it is safe to say that when the most
+furious politicians there talked revolution they did not "mean
+business." Both parties stood before the world in a not very admirable
+light. On the one hand, the Democrats digged a pit and fell into it
+themselves. The Electoral Commission was their own contrivance; and
+when they were moved to wrath and denunciation by the decisions against
+their case, they only showed that they formed the Commission in the
+supposed certainty that it would decide in their favor. They did not
+want a tribunal of arbitration, but a decision under the forms of
+arbitration. On the other hand, the Republicans appeared with changed
+front on the subject of State sovereignty. No assertion of the purely
+federative constitution of the Union could equal in force the decision
+that, fraud or no fraud, Congress should not go behind the electoral
+certificates of the Governors of the various States. Partisanship was
+equally binding on both sides. If then all the Republicans on the
+Commission always voted one way, with like "solidarity" all the
+Democrats always voted the other. To adopt a phrase attributed to the
+ex-Confederate General Jubal Early, the seven-spot couldn't take the
+eight. One result of the struggle, and of the revelations which it
+brought about, was the remarkable one of the destruction of the
+prestige of the candidate who came within one electoral vote of the
+Presidency. It is safe to say that if a new election had been brought
+about, the Democrats would not have ventured to go into it with Mr.
+Tilden in nomination.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+--THE struggle is over, and the uncertainty is past; and now, according
+to very general anticipations, business ought to revive and prosperity
+to return. We would gladly believe that such will be the result, but we
+doubt it. Business will revive, prosperity will return; for the country
+is rich, never more so, and is daily becoming richer. It is impossible
+to stop the onward course of a people who have our advantages; but the
+causes of our present depression lie too deep to be touched by the
+settlement of a mere party contest. We are suffering from the effects
+of a political, social, and moral revolution which has been in progress
+for nearly twenty years, and which the rest of the world has felt
+hardly less than ourselves. We have suffered the most because on the
+one hand our financial position is at any time less stable than that of
+other people, and on the other because we of all have undergone the
+greatest moral deterioration. We have been brought to that sad
+condition in which we are afraid to trust each other. So many of us
+have been playing the part of adventurers, so many have been playing a
+"confidence game," that confidence is gone in another sense than that
+in which it is so often said to be wanting. Prosperity will return to
+our business circles slowly and surely as our moral tone rises, and as
+business is conducted upon stable principles and upon an honorable
+basis. We must cease to "swap jackknives" in the shape of railway bonds
+and unimproved land; we must do more productive work and keep better
+faith. Hard work and honesty will do more for us than the settlement of
+the Presidential question, although that will probably do something.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+--THIRTY-FIVE years ago Charles Dickens, having visited the legislative
+capital of a great nation, wrote thus about the men that he found
+there: "I saw in them the wheels that move the meanest perversion of
+virtuous political machinery that the worst tools ever wrought.
+Despicable trickery at elections, underhanded tamperings with public
+officers, cowardly attacks upon opponents with scurrilous newspapers
+for shields, and hired pens for daggers, shameful trucklings to
+mercenary knaves, whose claim to be considered is that every day and
+week they sow new crops of ruin with their venal types, which are like
+dragons' teeth of yore in everything but sharpness; aiding and abetting
+of every bad inclination in the popular mind, and artful suppressions
+of all its good influences--such things as these, and in a word,
+Dishonest Faction, in its most depraved and unblushing form, stared at
+me from every corner of the crowded hall." Of what country could he
+have thus written? Manifestly some "effete monarchy" in the most
+degraded stage of its decadence.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+--THE effort to establish carnivals in America is not a very
+encouraging sign of a healthy moral tone in the public mind. Surely
+there was never an attempt more superfluous, untimely, or out of place.
+Not only New York, but the whole country is swarming with thousands of
+people who are in need of money to buy shelter, food, and clothing;
+banks of discount, savings banks, trust companies, the very charitable
+institutions, are brought to ruin and disgrace by fraudulent
+bankruptcy; and this is the time that is chosen to entice people to
+playing the fool publicly in the open streets. If ever a Lent should
+have been kept in the sackcloth of humiliation and the ashes of
+despair, it is that which has just passed. People who would take part
+in a carnival now would dance upon the borders of their own open
+graves. And what do we want of a carnival, even if we were prosperous?
+Carnivals are not suited to our national traits. They suit the Latin
+races of the south of Europe; and even among them they are fading away
+before the light of diffused intelligence and the thoughtfulness that
+comes of knowledge. To us they are entirely foreign. They do not suit
+our sober, practical habits of life and thought; and if we attempted
+them, we should only make ourselves ridiculous by our awkwardness.
+Festivals of that kind require a volatile people, who at least can
+practise folly gracefully. We should unite folly with dulness and
+stupidity. Moreover, such festivals cannot be got up to order anywhere.
+They are results; they are the growth of centuries. Italians and
+Frenchmen do not say, Go to! we will have a carnival. The thing belongs
+to them by inheritance; the memories of it mingle with their earliest
+recollections. As for us, we might go through a carnival dolefully, as
+a penance fitting to Lent; but as to enjoying one, except as
+spectators, to us that is quite impossible. All such festivities are
+foreign to our nature. We cannot even keep up an interest in
+"Decoration Day." We revere the memories of our dead; but a ceremonial
+exhibition of our reverence sits ill upon us. We do not take kindly to
+public spectacles, and ourselves never appear well in them. As to the
+sober procession for which the municipal laws in New York compelled the
+projected masquerade to be changed, it will be, if it is at all, only a
+means of advertising. That sort of display we take to hugely. It was
+with difficulty that President Lincoln's obsequies were preserved
+against the projects of advertisers. We turn the mountains into posters
+and the hills into sign-posts. If we must do that, let us do it openly
+and plainly; but a carnival! Fudge!
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+--WE cannot successfully imitate Europeans in their graceful follies;
+but in their soberer and more practical habits we might well follow
+their example. A step has been just taken in Germany which is more
+needed here, and which yet there is hardly any hope that we shall
+profit by. The union of German apothecaries has addressed a petition to
+the Federal Council demanding that the secret medicines concocted and
+advertised by quacks shall be officially tested before they are
+permitted to be sold. A more creditable and needful step was never
+taken, or one which was more indicative of enlightenment and high
+civilization. Quack medicines are on the whole a curse to mankind. They
+are generally imposed upon the ignorant and credulous by men who care
+not what harm they do so long as they profit by their business. Many of
+these medicines--so called--are very injurious, and a still greater
+proportion of them are entirely useless. The very fact that their
+composition is kept secret is against them. It is a law absolute among
+all honorable physicians that no remedial agent shall be kept secret.
+Such physicians, if in their practice they discover a remedy for any
+disease, at once make it known to the whole profession. To keep such a
+discovery secret would be to lose caste, if not to be entirely excluded
+from honorable professional association and recognition. If such an
+examination as that proposed in Germany is needed there, here it is
+required by a tenfold greater necessity. America is the great field of
+operation for the patent medicine vender. Here he thrives. Here he
+accumulates huge fortunes if he will only advertise persistently and
+with sufficient disregard of truth. And his chief victims are women and
+children. He is one of the pests of our society. We cannot exclude him,
+or extinguish him entirely; that would interfere with the individual
+liberty of the citizen; not only of the seller, but of the buyer. If
+people choose to poison themselves gradually, they insist upon their
+right to do so unhindered by government action. But at least we might
+do what the German apothecaries ask to have done, and require as a
+condition of the granting of a patent for a medicine that it should be
+tested and its contents officially declared. The effect of such a
+measure upon the general health would be in the highest degree
+beneficial; and at least the public would be protected against the
+fraudulent representations of the majority of patent medicine makers
+and venders.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+--IN another matter, church chimes, we have imitated Europe, and not
+discreetly, and we have had our first check. A certain chime of church
+bells in Philadelphia became annoying to the people in the
+neighborhood, who complained to the courts, and obtained an injunction
+restricting the use of the chimes to certain times of day. Even were
+this often bell-jangling not the annoyance that it is, the whole
+American public would owe something to these good Philadelphians simply
+for the good example of their action in this matter. They were annoyed
+by some one, the agent of a corporation, who, although he did not
+commit murder, burglary, or arson, interfered with their comfort and
+marred their enjoyment of life; and they, like sensible men, instead of
+putting up with the annoyance after the American fashion, and saying,
+"Oh, no matter! What can we do to stop it? Let it go!" set themselves
+to work to see if they couldn't stop it. They tested the question
+whether a certain number of men might please their taste or their
+religious fancy at the risk of disturbing and annoying others; and they
+succeeded. It is to be hoped that the lesson will not be lost in regard
+not only to the specific annoyance which was the cause of complaint,
+but all other selfish indulgences by which some men interfere with the
+rights of others. The law of common sense and justice in such matters
+is that every man may enjoy himself as he pleases so long as he does
+not interfere with the enjoyment of their natural rights by others. A
+man may give his days and nights to ringing chimes so long as they are
+not heard outside of his own house; but if they are so heard, and they
+deprive a single person of rest, or even of a quiet enjoyment of life,
+he has passed the limit of right. A dozen men may like a strong
+perfume; but they have no right to load the common air with it to the
+annoyance even of a thirteenth. This matter of ringing church chimes
+has become somewhat of a religious and sentimental affectation. Chimes
+have a very pretty effect in literature; and at a distance in the
+country they are charming. But when they clang daily in the tower of a
+city church within a few hundred yards of you, they become a great
+nuisance. Nor is the annoyance they give diminished when the chimer,
+instead of ringing such changes as are suited to bells, will insist
+upon playing _affettuoso_. In fact, all church bells are an annoyance
+in cities, and a needless one. They were first used to call people to
+church when there were no clocks, and before watches were heard of.
+Now, when the humblest apartment has a clock that strikes the hour,
+"the church-going bell" is entirely superfluous for the object for
+which it is rung, and is really a great annoyance not only to the sick,
+but to those who are in health. It is a noisy anachronism which clamors
+with iron tongue and brazen throat for its own suppression.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+--AND so at last the marriage of Adelina Patti to the Marquis of Caux
+has come to its natural end. What could the Marquis or the lady
+expect? He married her for the money that she earned, and that he
+might own so charming a celebrity; she accepted him as a husband for
+his title. Years have passed, and nothing has occurred to bind them
+more closely. The lady has no children, or any prospect of one; and so
+there is nothing in the way of a judicial separation on account of
+incompatibility. It is not necessary to suppose that the distinguished
+prima donna has actually run away from her husband with a lover; but
+it would only be natural if there were a man in the distance more to
+her taste. It is remarkable, by the way, that so great an interest
+should be taken by Americans in the fortunes of this lady, who, since
+she has developed her extraordinary talent, has turned her back
+entirely on this country. She is spoken of here often as an American
+prima donna. This can only be the result of a very great and an absurd
+misapprehension. Adelina Patti is an Italian. Her father and mother
+were both Italians, who could speak hardly a word of English. Her
+education and habits of life have been entirely Italian. Even if she
+had been born here by the chance of a professional residence here by
+her mother, that would not have made her anything else than Italian,
+more than a like chance residence in Russia or in Turkey would have
+made her a Russian or a Turk, or than the Irishman's being born in a
+stable would have made him a horse. When a family emigrates and
+resides permanently in another country, assuming the life and the
+habits of that country, and intermarrying there, it changes its
+nationality, but not otherwise. The eagerness which many Americans
+show to claim as American everything meritorious in art over whose
+supposed origin the Stars and Stripes may have been thrown, is a
+witness to our real native poverty in that respect, which we reveal by
+the very means by which we would conceal it. And besides all this,
+Adelina Patti was not even born in this country. She came here from
+Europe a little girl, with her mother, Katarina Barili-Patti, a prima
+donna, who, although she had not her daughter's facility of execution
+and range of voice, sang in the grand style, and who, as a dramatic
+vocalist, was far beyond _la diva_, as Adelina is absurdly called. As
+to her parting company with M. Caux, nothing is more probable than
+that the restraint--at least external--which belongs to the life of a
+marquise became too intolerable to her inborn Bohemianism, and that
+she seeks deliverance not only from an unloved and unloving husband,
+but from the galling restraints of dull respectability.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+--THERE is a club in London, the Albemarle, which admits both men and
+women as members, and which the wags have therefore nicknamed the
+Middlesex club. An English gentleman being urged to join this club on
+the ground that he could take his wife there, plumply refused on that
+very ground, saying that the chief good in a club consisted in its
+being a refuge for married men. Whereupon the average woman exclaims,
+"The brute! What did he marry for if he wanted to be rid of his wife?"
+A view of the case not unnatural perhaps in a woman, but most unwise.
+Passing by the not very remote possibility that there are women (as
+there are men) who in the matrimonial lottery could not be regarded as
+prizes, there are strong reasons for the exclusion of women, even the
+most charming, from clubs. For women a man may see at home daily or in
+society. It is in those places that he expects to find them; there they
+naturally belong; there they are attractive. But when he sets up a club
+it is for the very purpose of enjoying man companionship and indulging
+his mannish tastes. He wishes there to be entirely at his ease, and not
+to be called on for "little attentions." He wears his hat in the
+club-house if he likes, and he does not wish to be called upon to take
+it off unless he likes. In short, he wishes there to be free, for a
+time, from the restraints which the presence of ladies puts upon the
+conduct and conversation of men, even of those who neither in act nor
+in speech pass the bounds of reasonable decorum. Women in clubs are
+pretty annoyances, fine things very much out of place. Moreover, it is
+true, although by most women, particularly married women, it will not
+be believed, that clubs, by their exclusion of women, make the society
+of the sex more pleasant to the average man, and tend to keep warm the
+marital love of the average husband. Woman, whether to her credit or
+not we shall not undertake to decide, can bear the continued
+companionship of a favored man much better than man can bear that of a
+woman, no matter how beautiful, how charming, or how much beloved. But
+even women are happier for the inevitable separation from them of their
+husbands every day and during a greater part of the day. As to men,
+unfortunately many of them would begin to weary of a woman, and at last
+to dislike her, if they were compelled to pass every evening in her
+company. Here the club steps in (we are not speaking of the mere "club
+man"), and interposes its conservative influence. Many a man's love is
+kept fresh by his having his club for a refuge; and many a love which
+has cooled almost to indifference has been prevented from turning into
+aversion by the soothing influences of that refuge. For the leisurely
+classes of men clubs are a benign invention; and women should in their
+own interests avoid giving them anything of a "middlesex" character.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+--WHILE we write a new grand scandal is impending of the Beecher-Tilton
+kind, which will attract less attention than that did because the
+parties to it are less widely known. But as the principal person is a
+late minister of Trinity Church in New York, and now the head, of the
+far-famed charitable association known as "St. John's Guild," and as
+the principal witness and complainant is this gentleman's wife, who is
+the daughter of a late rector of Trinity, and as she has already,
+before the investigation is begun, shown an inclination to have no
+connubial reserves with the public, the affair promises to be what the
+journalists call a rich case. It certainly is a very deplorable one,
+however it may result to the persons principally interested. It is much
+to be regretted that the investigation has been announced with such a
+flourish of trumpets, calling in the wife, who declares herself so much
+injured, inviting the press, and announcing that the investigation will
+be held with open doors; and this after a publication almost in minute
+detail of all the charges brought against the Reverend defendant--at
+whose own request, by the way, the investigation is set on foot.
+Investigations like these must needs sometimes take place; but
+everything should be done to confine a knowledge of them to those who
+are called upon to take part in them, either as parties, as referees,
+or as advocates. On the contrary, everything is done to make them as
+public and as injurious and offensive as possible. In this the press is
+chiefly culpable. Nothing is gained for justice by such public
+exhibitions, and much is lost to decency.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Galaxy, April, 1877, by Various
+
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