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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11548 ***
+
+MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE.
+
+
+Vol. VI. DECEMBER, 1895. No. I.
+
+
+
+
+ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
+
+
+EDITED BY IDA M. TARBELL.
+
+
+II.
+
+
+LIFE IN INDIANA.--REMOVAL TO ILLINOIS.--LINCOLN STARTS OUT IN LIFE FOR
+HIMSELF AT TWENTY-ONE.--THE BUILDING OF THE FLATBOAT AND THE TRIP TO
+NEW ORLEANS.--LINCOLN HIRES OUT AS A GROCERY CLERK IN NEW SALEM.--HIS
+FIRST VOTE.
+
+
+INDIANA REMINISCENCES OF LINCOLN.
+
+Abraham Lincoln grew to manhood in Southern Indiana. When he reached
+Spencer County in 1816, he was seven years of age; when he left in
+1830, he had passed his twenty-first birthday. This period of a life
+shows usually the natural bent of the character, and we have found in
+these fourteen years of Lincoln's life signs of the qualities of
+greatness which distinguished him. We have seen that, in spite of the
+fact that he had no wise direction, that he was brought up by a father
+with no settled purpose, and that he lived in a pioneer community,
+where a young man's life at best is but a series of makeshifts, he had
+developed a determination to make something out of himself, and a
+desire to know, which led him to neglect no opportunity to learn.
+
+The only unbroken outside influence which directed and stimulated him
+in his ambitions was that coming first from his mother, then from his
+step-mother. It should never be forgotten that these two women, both
+of them of unusual earnestness and sweetness of spirit, were one or
+the other of them at the boy's side throughout this period. The ideal
+they held before him was the simple ideal of the early American, that
+if a boy is upright and industrious he may aspire to any place within
+the gift of the country. The boy's nature told him they were right.
+Everything he read confirmed their teachings, and he cultivated, in
+every way open to him, his passion to know and to be something.
+
+There are many proofs that young Lincoln's characteristics were
+recognized at this period by his associates, that his determination to
+excel, if not appreciated, yet made its imprint. In 1865, thirty-five
+years after he left Gentryville, Mr. Herndon, anxious to save all that
+was known of Lincoln in Indiana, went among his old associates, and
+with a sincerity and thoroughness worthy of great respect, interviewed
+them. At that time there were still living numbers of the people with
+whom he had been brought up. They all remembered something of him. It
+is curious to note that all of these people tell of his doing
+something different from what other boys did, something sufficiently
+superior to have made a keen impression upon them. In almost every
+case the person had his own special reason for admiring young Lincoln.
+His facility for making rhymes and writing essays was the admiration
+of many who considered it the more remarkable because "essays and
+poetry were not taught in school," and "Abe took it up on his own
+account."
+
+[Illustration: REV. ALLEN BROONER.
+
+A neighbor of Thomas Lincoln, still living near Gentryville. Mr.
+Brooner's wife was a friend of Nancy Hanks Lincoln. The two women died
+within a few days of each other, and were buried side by side. When
+the tombstone was placed at Mrs. Lincoln's grave, no one could state
+positively which was Mrs. Brooner's and which Mrs. Lincoln's grave.
+Mr. Allen Brooner gave his opinion, and the stone was placed; but the
+iron fence incloses both graves, which lie in a half-acre tract of
+land owned by the United States government. Mr. Allen Brooner, after
+his wife's death, became a minister of the United Brethren Church, and
+moved to Illinois. He received his mail at New Salem when Abraham
+Lincoln was the postmaster at that place. Mr. Brooner confirms Dr.
+Holland's story that "Abe" once walked three miles after his day's
+work, to make right a six-and-a-quarter-cents mistake he had made in a
+trade with a woman. Like all of the old settlers of Gentryville, he
+remembers the departure of the Lincolns for Illinois. "When the
+Lincolns were getting ready to leave," says Mr. Brooner, "Abraham and
+his stepbrother, John Johnston, came over to our house to swap a horse
+for a yoke of oxen. 'Abe' was always a quiet fellow. John did all the
+talking, and seemed to be the smartest of the two. If any one had been
+asked that day which would make the greatest success in life, I think
+the answer would have been John Johnston."]
+
+Many others were struck by the clever use he made of his gift for
+writing. The wit he showed in taking revenge for a social slight by a
+satire on the Grigsbys, who had failed to invite him to a wedding,
+made a lasting impression in Gentryville. That he was able to write so
+well that he could humiliate his enemies more deeply than if he had
+resorted to the method of taking revenge current in the country--that
+is, thrashing them--seemed to his friends a mark of surprising
+superiority.
+
+Others remembered his quick-wittedness in helping his friends.
+
+"We are indebted to Kate Roby," says Mr. Herndon, "for an incident
+which illustrates alike his proficiency in orthography and his natural
+inclination to help another out of the mire. The word 'defied' had
+been given out by Schoolmaster Crawford, but had been misspelled
+several times when it came Miss Roby's turn. 'Abe stood on the
+opposite side of the room,' related Miss Roby to me in 1865, 'and was
+watching me. I began d-e-f--, and then I stopped, hesitating whether
+to proceed with an i or a y. Looking up, I beheld Abe, a grin covering
+his face, and pointing with his index finger to his eye. I took the
+hint, spelled the word with an i, and it went through all right.'"
+
+This same Miss Roby it was who said of Lincoln, "He was better read
+then than the world knows or is likely to know exactly.... He often
+and often commented or talked to me about what he had read--seemed to
+read it out of the book as he went along--did so to others. He was the
+learned boy among us unlearned folks. He took great pains to explain;
+could do it so simply. He was diffident then, too."
+
+[Illustration: JOHN W. LAMAR.
+
+Mr. Lamar was one of the "small boys" of Spencer County when Lincoln
+left Indiana, but old enough to have seen much of him and to have
+known his characteristics and his reputation in the county. He is
+still living near his old home, and gave our representative in Indiana
+interesting reminiscences which are incorporated into the present
+article.]
+
+[Illustration: LINCOLN IN 1860.
+
+From an ambrotype in the possession of Mr. Marcus L. Ward of Newark,
+New Jersey. This portrait of Mr. Lincoln was made in Springfield,
+Illinois, on May 20, 1860, for the late Hon. Marcus L. Ward, Governor
+of New Jersey. Mr. Ward had gone down to Springfield to see Mr.
+Lincoln, and while there asked him for his picture. The
+President-elect replied that he had no picture which was satisfactory,
+but would gladly sit for one. The two gentlemen went out immediately,
+and in Mr. Ward's presence Mr. Lincoln had the above picture taken.]
+
+One man was impressed by the character of the sentences he had given
+him for a copy. "It was considered at that time," said he, "that Abe
+was the best penman in the neighborhood. One day, while he was on a
+visit at my mother's, I asked him to write some copies for me. He very
+willingly consented. He wrote several of them, but one of them I have
+never forgotten, although a boy at that time. It was this:
+
+  "'Good boys who to their books apply
+  Will all be great men by and by.'"
+
+All of his comrades remembered his stories and his clearness in
+argument. "When he appeared in company," says Nat Grigsby, "the boys
+would gather and cluster around him to hear him talk. Mr. Lincoln was
+figurative in his speech, talks, and conversation. He argued much from
+analogy, and explained things hard for us to understand by stories,
+maxims, tales, and figures. He would almost always point his lesson or
+idea by some story that was plain and near us, that we might instantly
+see the force and bearing of what he said."
+
+There is one other testimony to his character as a boy which should
+not be omitted. It is that of his step-mother:
+
+"Abe was a good boy, and I can say, what scarcely one woman--a
+mother--can say in a thousand, Abe never gave me a cross word or look,
+and never refused, in fact or appearance, to do anything I requested
+him. I never gave him a cross word in all my life.... His mind and
+mine--what little I had--seemed to run together. He was here after he
+was elected President. He was a dutiful son to me always. I think he
+loved me truly. I had a son, John, who was raised with Abe. Both were
+good boys; but I must say, both now being dead, that Abe was the best
+boy I ever saw, or expect to see."
+
+[Illustration: WILLIAM JONES.
+
+The store in Gentryville, in which Lincoln first made his reputation
+as a debater and story-teller, was owned by Mr. Jones. The year before
+the Lincolns moved to Illinois Abraham clerked in the store, and it is
+said that when he left Indiana, Mr. Jones sold him a pack of goods
+which he peddled on his journey. Mr. Jones was the representative from
+Spencer County in the State legislature from 1838 to 1841. He is no
+longer living. His son, Captain William Jones, is still in
+Gentryville.]
+
+[Illustration: PIGEON CREEK CHURCH.
+
+From a photograph loaned by W.W. Admire of Chicago. This little log
+church or "meetin' house" is where the Lincolns attended services in
+Indiana. The pulpit is said to have been made by Thomas Lincoln. The
+building was razed about fifteen years ago, after having been used for
+several years as a tobacco barn.]
+
+These are impressions of Mr. Lincoln gathered in Indiana thirty years
+ago, when his companions were alive. To-day there are people living in
+Spencer County who were small boys when he was a large one, and who
+preserve curiously interesting impressions of him. A representative of
+MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE who has recently gone in detail over the ground of
+Lincoln's early life, says: "The people who live in Spencer County are
+interested in any one who is interested in Abraham Lincoln." They
+showed her the flooring he whip-sawed, the mantles, doors, and
+window-casings he helped make, the rails he split, the cabinets he and
+his father made, and scores of relics cut from planks and rails he
+handled. They told what they remembered of his rhymes and how he would
+walk miles to hear a speech or sermon, and, returning, would repeat
+the whole in "putty good imitation." Many remembered his coming
+evenings to sit around the fireplace with their older brothers and
+sisters, and the stories he told and the pranks he played there until
+ordered home by the elders of the household.
+
+Captain John Lamar who was a very small boy in one of the families
+where Lincoln was well known, has many interesting reminiscences which
+he is fond of repeating. "He told me of riding to mill with his father
+one very hot day. As they drove along the hot road they saw a boy
+sitting on the top rail of an old-fashioned stake-and-rider worm
+fence. When they came close they saw that the boy was reading, and had
+not noticed their approach. His father, turning to him, said: 'John,
+look at that boy yonder, and mark my words, he will make a smart man
+out of himself. I may not see it, but you'll see if my words don't
+come true.' The boy was Abraham Lincoln."
+
+Captain Lamar tells many good stories about the early days: "Uncle
+Jimmy Larkins, as everybody called him, was a great hero in my
+childish eyes. Why, I cannot now say, without it was his manners.
+There had been a big fox chase, and Uncle Jimmy was telling about it.
+Of course he was the hero. I was only a little shaver, and I stood in
+front of Uncle Jimmy, looking up into his eyes, but he never noticed
+me. He looked at Abraham Lincoln, and 'Abe, I've got the best horse in
+the world--he won the race and never drew a long breath;' but Abe paid
+no attention to Uncle Jimmy, and I got mad at the big, overgrown
+fellow, and wanted him to listen to my hero's story. Uncle Jimmy was
+determined that Abe should hear, and repeated the story. 'I say, Abe,
+I have the best horse in the world; after all that running he never
+drew a long breath.' Then Abe, looking down at my little dancing hero,
+said, 'Well, Larkins, why don't you tell us how many short breaths he
+drew?' This raised a laugh on Uncle Jimmy, and he got mad, and
+declared he'd fight Abe if he wasn't so big. He jumped around until
+Abe quietly said: 'Now, Larkins, if you don't shut up I'll throw you
+in that water.' I was very uneasy and angry at the way my hero was
+treated, but I lived to change my views about _heroes_."
+
+[Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
+
+From a photograph in the collection of T.H. Bartlett, of Boston,
+Massachusetts.[A] Mr. Bartlett regards this as his earliest portrait
+of Mr. Lincoln, but does not know when or where it was taken. This
+portrait is also in the Oldroyd Collection at Washington, D.C., and is
+dated 1856.]
+
+[Footnote A: The collection of Lincoln portraits owned by Mr. T.H.
+Bartlett, the sculptor, is the most complete and the most
+intelligently arranged which we have examined. Mr. Bartlett began
+collecting fully twenty years ago, his aim being to secure data for a
+study of Mr. Lincoln from a physiognomical point of view. He has
+probably the earliest portrait which exists, the one here given,
+excepting the one used as a frontispiece in our November number. He
+has a large number of the Illinois pictures made from 1858 to 1860,
+such as the Gilmer picture, which we use as a frontispiece in the
+present number, a large collection of Brady photographs, the masks,
+Volk's bust, and other interesting portraits. These he has studied
+from a sculptor's point of view, comparing them carefully with the
+portraiture of other men, as Webster and Emerson. Mr. Bartlett has
+embodied his study of Mr. Lincoln in an illustrated lecture which is a
+model of what such a lecture should be, suggestive, human, delightful.
+All his fine collection of Lincoln portraits Mr. Bartlett has put
+freely at our disposal, an act of courtesy and generosity for which
+the readers of MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, as well as its editors, cannot fail
+to be deeply grateful.]
+
+
+THE LINCOLNS DECIDE TO LEAVE INDIANA.
+
+Abraham was twenty-one years old when Thomas Lincoln decided to leave
+Indiana in the spring of 1830. The reason Dennis Hanks gives for this
+removal was a disease called the "milk-sick." Abraham Lincoln's
+mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, and several of their relatives who had
+followed them from Kentucky, had died of it. The cattle had been
+carried off by it. Neither brute nor human life seemed to be safe. As
+Dennis Hanks says: "This was reason enough (ain't it?) for leaving."
+
+The place chosen for their new home was the Sangamon country in
+central Illinois. It was a country of great renown in the West, the
+name meaning "The land where there is plenty to eat." One of the
+family--John Hanks, a cousin of Dennis--was already there, and sent
+them inviting reports.
+
+Gentryville saw young Lincoln depart with real regret, and his friends
+gave him a score of rude proofs that he would not be forgotten. Our
+representative in Indiana found that almost every family who
+remembered the Lincolns retained some impression of their leaving.
+
+"Neighbors seemed, in those days," she writes, "like relatives. The
+entire Lincoln family stayed the last night before starting on their
+journey with Mr. Gentry. He was loath to part with Lincoln, so
+'accompanied the movers along the road a spell.' They stopped on a
+hill which overlooks Buckthorn Valley, and looked their 'good-by' to
+their old home and to the home of Sarah Lincoln Grigsby, to the grave
+of the mother and wife, to all their neighbors and friends. Buckthorn
+Valley held many dear recollections to the movers."
+
+After they were gone James Gentry planted the cedar tree which now
+marks the site of the Lincoln home.[A] "The folks who come lookin'
+around have taken twigs until you can't reach any more very handy,"
+those who point out the tree say.
+
+[Footnote A: See November number of MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, page 502.]
+
+[Illustration: GREEN B. TAYLOR.
+
+Son of Mr. James Taylor, for whom Lincoln ran the ferry-boat at the
+mouth of Anderson Creek. Mr. Taylor, now in his eighty-second year,
+lives in South Dakota. He remembers Mr. Lincoln perfectly, and wrote
+our Indiana correspondent that it was true that his father hired
+Abraham Lincoln for one year, at six dollars a month, and that he was
+"well pleased with the boy."]
+
+[Illustration: THE HILL NEAR GENTRYVILLE FROM WHICH THE LINCOLNS TOOK
+THEIR LAST LOOK AT THEIR INDIANA HOME.]
+
+[Illustration: SAMUEL CRAWFORD.
+
+Only living son of Josiah Crawford, who lent Lincoln the Weems's "Life
+of Washington." To our representative in Indiana, who secured this
+picture of Mr. Crawford, he said, when asked if he remembered the
+Lincolns: "Oh, yes; I remember them, although I was not Abraham's age.
+He was twelve years older than I. One day I ran in, calling out,
+'Mother! mother! Aaron Grigsby is sparking Sally Lincoln; I saw him
+kiss her!' Mother scolded me, and told me I must stop watching Sally,
+or I wouldn't get to the wedding. [It will be remembered that Sally
+Lincoln was 'help' in the Crawford family, and that she afterwards
+married Aaron Grigsby.] Neighbors thought lots more of each other then
+than now, and it seems like everybody liked the Lincolns. We were well
+acquainted, for Mr. Thomas Lincoln was a good carpenter, and made the
+cupboard, mantels, doors, and sashes in our old home that was burned
+down."]
+
+Lincoln himself felt keenly the parting from his friends, and he
+certainly never forgot his years in the Hoosier State. One of the most
+touching experiences he relates in all his published letters is his
+emotion at visiting his old Indiana home fourteen years after he had
+left it. So strongly was he moved by the scenes of his first conscious
+sorrows, efforts, joys, ambitions, that he put into verse the feelings
+they awakened.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Letter to ---- Johnston, April 18, 1846. "Abraham
+Lincoln. Complete Works." Edited by John G. Nicolay and John Hay.
+Volume I., pages 86, 87. The Century Co.]
+
+[Illustration: JOHN E. ROLL.
+
+Born in Green Village, New Jersey, June 4, 1814. He went to Illinois
+in 1830, the same year that Mr. Lincoln went, settling in Sangamon
+town, where he had relatives. It was here he met Lincoln, and made the
+"pins" for the flatboat. Later Mr. Roll went to Springfield, where he
+bought large quantities of land and built many houses. A quarter of
+the city is now known as "Roll's addition." Mr. Roll was well
+acquainted with Lincoln, and when the President left Springfield he
+gave Mr. Roll his dog, Fido. Mr. Roll knew Stephen A. Douglas well,
+and carries a watch which once belonged to the "Little Giant."]
+
+While he never attempted to conceal the poverty and hardship of these
+days, and would speak humorously of the "pretty pinching times" he
+saw, he never regarded his life at this time as mean or pitiable.
+
+Frequently he talked to his friends in later years of his boyhood, and
+always with apparent pleasure. "Mr. Lincoln told this story" (of his
+youth), says Leonard Swett, "as the story of a happy childhood. There
+was nothing sad or pinched, and nothing of want, and no allusion to
+want in any part of it. His own description of his youth was that of a
+joyous, happy boyhood. It was told with mirth and glee, and
+illustrated by pointed anecdote, often interrupted by his jocund
+laugh."
+
+And he was right. There was nothing ignoble or mean in this Indiana
+pioneer life. It was rude, but it was only the rudeness which the
+ambitious are willing to endure in order to push on to a better
+condition than they otherwise could know. These people did not accept
+their hardships apathetically. They did not regard them as permanent.
+They were only the temporary deprivations necessary in order to
+accomplish what they had come into the country to do. For this reason
+they could endure hopefully all that was hard. It is worth notice,
+too, that there was nothing belittling in their life, there was no
+pauperism, no shirking. Each family provided for its own simple wants,
+and had the conscious dignity which comes from being equal to a
+situation.
+
+[Illustration: SANGAMON TOWN IN 1831.
+Drawn by J. McCan Davis with the aid of Mr. John E. Roll, a former
+resident.]
+
+
+FROM INDIANA TO ILLINOIS.
+
+The company which emigrated to Illinois included the families of
+Thomas Lincoln, Dennis Hanks--married to one of Lincoln's
+step-sisters--and Levi Hall, thirteen persons in all. They sold land,
+cattle, and grain, and much of their household goods, and were ready
+in March of 1830 for their journey. All the possessions which the
+three families had to take with them were packed into a big wagon--the
+first one Thomas Lincoln had ever owned, it is said--to which four
+oxen were attached, and the caravan started. The weather was still
+cold, the streams were swollen, and the roads were muddy, but the
+party started out bravely. Inured to hardships, alive to all the new
+sights on their route, every day brought them amusement and
+adventures, and especially to young Lincoln the journey must have been
+of keen interest. He drove the oxen on this trip, he tells us, and,
+according to a story current in Gentryville, he succeeded in doing a
+fair peddler's business on the route. Captain William Jones, in whose
+father's store Lincoln had spent so many hours in discussion and in
+story-telling, and for whom he had worked the last winter he was in
+Indiana, says that before leaving the State Abraham invested all his
+money, some thirty-odd dollars, in notions. Though the country through
+which they expected to pass was but sparsely settled, he believed he
+could dispose of them. "A set of knives and forks was the largest item
+entered on the bill," says Mr. Jones; "the other items were needles,
+pins, thread, buttons, and other little domestic necessities. When the
+Lincolns reached their new home, near Decatur, Illinois, Abraham wrote
+back to my father, stating that he had doubled his money on his
+purchases by selling them along the road. Unfortunately we did not
+keep that letter, not thinking how highly we would have prized it
+years afterwards."
+
+The pioneers were a fortnight on their journey. The route they took we
+do not exactly know, though we may suppose that it would be that by
+which they would avoid the most watercourses. We know from Mr. H.C.
+Whitney that the travellers reached Macon County from the south, for
+once when he was in Decatur with Mr. Lincoln the two strolled out for
+a walk, and when they came to the court-house, "Lincoln," says Mr.
+Whitney, "walked out a few feet in front, and after shifting his
+position two or three times, said, as he looked up at the building,
+partly to himself and partly to me: 'Here is the exact spot where I
+stood by our wagon when we moved from Indiana twenty-six years ago;
+this isn't six feet from the exact spot.'... I asked him if he, at
+that time, had expected to be a lawyer and practise law in that
+court-house; to which he replied: 'No; I didn't know I had sense
+enough to be a lawyer then.' He then told me he had frequently
+thereafter tried to locate the route by which they had come; and that
+he had decided that it was near to the line of the main line of the
+Illinois Central Railroad."
+
+[Illustration: LINCOLN, OFFUTT, AND GREEN ON THE FLATBOAT AT NEW
+SALEM.
+
+From a painting in the State Capitol, Springfield, Illinois. This
+picture is crude and, from a historic point of view, inaccurate. The
+celebrated flatboat built by Lincoln and by him piloted to New
+Orleans, was a much larger and better craft than the one here
+portrayed. The little structure over the dam is meant for the Rutledge
+and Cameron mill, but the real mill was a far more pretentious affair.
+There was not only a grist-mill, but also a saw-mill which furnished
+lumber to the settlers for many miles around. The mill was built in
+1829. March 5, 1830, we find John Overstreet appearing before the
+County Commissioners' Court at Springfield and averring upon oath
+"that he is informed and believes that John Cameron and James Rutledge
+have erected a mill-dam on the Sangamon River which obstructs the
+navigation of said river;" and the Commissioners issued a notice to
+Cameron and Rutledge to alter the dam so as to restore the "safe
+navigation" of the river. James M. Rutledge, of Petersburg, a nephew
+of the mill-owner, helped build the mill, and says of it: "The mill
+was a frame structure, and was solidly built. They used to grind corn
+mostly, though some flour was made. At times they would run day and
+night. The saw-mill had an old-fashioned upright saw, and stood on the
+bank." For a time this mill was operated by Denton Offutt, and was
+under the immediate supervision of Lincoln. A few heavy stakes, a part
+of the old dam, still show themselves at low water.--_Note prepared by
+J. McCan Davis_.]
+
+[Illustration: LINCOLN'S AXE.
+
+This broad-axe is said to have been owned originally by Abram Bales,
+of New Salem; and, according to tradition, it was bought from him by
+Lincoln. After Lincoln forsook the woods, he sold the axe to one Mr.
+Irvin. Mr. L.W. Bishop, of Petersburg, now has the axe, having gotten
+it directly from Mr. Irvin. There are a number of affidavits attesting
+its genuineness. The axe has evidently seen hard usage, and is now
+covered with a thick coat of rust.]
+
+
+A NEW HOME.
+
+The party settled some ten miles west of Decatur, in Macon County.
+Here John Hanks had the logs already cut for their new home, and
+Lincoln, Dennis Hanks, and Hall soon had a cabin erected. Mr. Lincoln
+himself (though writing in the third person) says: "Here they built a
+log cabin, into which they removed, and made sufficient of rails to
+fence ten acres of ground, fenced and broke the ground, and raised a
+crop of sown corn upon it the same year. These are, or are supposed to
+be, the rails about which so much is being said just now, though these
+are far from being the first or only rails ever made by Abraham."[A]
+
+[Illustration: MODEL OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S DEVICE FOR LIFTING VESSELS
+OVER SHOALS.
+
+The inscription above this model, which is shown to all visitors to
+the Model Hall of the Patent Office, reads: "6469 Abraham Lincoln,
+Springfield, Ill. Improvement in method of lifting vessels over
+shoals. Patented May 22, 1849." The apparatus consists of a bellows,
+placed in each side of the hull of the craft, just below the
+water-line, and worked by an odd but simple system of ropes and
+pulleys. When the keel of the vessel grates against the sand or
+obstruction, the bellows is filled with air; and, thus buoyed up, the
+vessel is expected to float over the shoal. The model is about
+eighteen or twenty inches long, and looks as if it had been whittled
+with a knife out of a shingle and a cigar box. There is no elaboration
+in the apparatus beyond that necessary to show the operation of
+buoying the vessel over the obstructions.]
+
+If they were far from being his "first and only rails," they certainly
+were the most famous ones he or anybody else ever split. This was the
+last work he did for his father, for in the summer of that year (1830)
+he exercised the right of majority and started out to shift for
+himself. When he left his home to start life for himself, he went
+empty-handed. He was already some months over twenty-one years of
+age, but he had nothing in the world, not even a suit of respectable
+clothes; and one of the first pieces of work he did was "to split four
+hundred rails for every yard of brown jeans dyed with white walnut
+bark that would be necessary to make him a pair of trousers." He had
+no trade, no profession, no spot of land, no patron, no influence. Two
+things recommended him to his neighbors--he was strong, and he was a
+good fellow.
+
+[Footnote A: Short autobiography written in 1860 for use in preparing
+a campaign biography. "Abraham Lincoln. Complete Works." Edited by
+John G. Nicolay and John Hay. The Century Co. Volume I., page 639.]
+
+[Illustration: LINCOLN IN 1857.
+
+From a photograph loaned by H.W. Fay of De Kalb, Illinois. The
+original was taken early in 1857 by Alex. Hesler of Chicago. Mr. Fay
+writes of the picture: "I have a letter from Mr. Hesler stating that
+one of the lawyers came in and made arrangements for the sitting so
+that the members of the bar could get prints. Lincoln said at the time
+that he did not know why the boys wanted such a homely face." Mr.
+Joseph Medill of Chicago went with Mr. Lincoln to have the picture
+taken. He says that the photographer insisted on smoothing down
+Lincoln's hair, but Lincoln did not like the result, and ran his
+fingers through it before sitting. The original negative was burned in
+the Chicago fire.]
+
+His strength made him a valuable laborer. Not that he was fond of hard
+labor. Mrs. Crawford says: "Abe was no hand to pitch into work like
+killing snakes;" but when he did work, it was with an ease and
+effectiveness which compensated his employer for the time he spent in
+practical jokes and extemporaneous speeches. He would lift as much as
+three ordinary men, and "My, how he would chop!" says Dennis Hanks.
+"His axe would flash and bite into a sugar-tree or sycamore, and down
+it would come. If you heard him fellin' trees in a clearin', you would
+say there was three men at work by the way the trees fell." Standing
+six feet four, he could out-lift, out-work, and out-wrestle any man he
+came in contact with. Friends and employers were proud of his
+strength, and boasted of it, never failing to pit him against any hero
+whose strength they heard vaunted. He himself was proud of it, and
+throughout his life was fond of comparing himself with tall and strong
+men. When the committee called on him in Springfield, in 1860, to
+notify him of his nomination as President, Governor Morgan of New York
+was of the number, a man of great height and brawn. "Pray, Governor,
+how tall may you be?" was Mr. Lincoln's first question. There is a
+story told of a poor man seeking a favor from him once at the White
+House. He was overpowered by the idea that he was in the presence of
+the President, and, his errand done, was edging shyly out, when Mr.
+Lincoln stopped him, insisting that he _measure_ with him. The man was
+the taller, as Mr. Lincoln had thought; and he went away evidently
+more abashed at the idea that he dared be taller than the President of
+the United States than that he had dared to venture into his presence.
+
+[Illustration: NEW SALEM.
+
+From a painting in the State Capitol, Springfield, Illinois. New
+Salem, which is described in the body of this article, was founded by
+James Rutledge and John Cameron in 1829. In that year they built a dam
+across the Sangamon River, and erected a mill. Under date of October
+23, 1829, Reuben Harrison, surveyor, certifies that "at the request of
+John Cameron one of the proprietors I did survey the town of New
+Salem." The town within two years contained a dozen or fifteen houses,
+nearly all of them built of logs. New Salem's population probably
+never exceeded a hundred persons. Its inhabitants, and those of the
+surrounding country were mostly Southerners--natives of Kentucky and
+Tennessee--though there was an occasional Yankee among them. Soon
+after Lincoln left the place, in the spring of 1837, it began to
+decline. Petersburg had sprung up two miles down the river, and
+rapidly absorbed its population and business. By 1840 New Salem was
+almost deserted. The Rutledge tavern the first house erected, was the
+last to succumb. It stood for many years, but at last crumbled away.
+Salem hill is now only a green cow pasture.--_Note prepared by J.
+McCan Davis._]
+
+Governor Hoyt tells an excellent story illustrating Lincoln's interest
+in muscle and his involuntary comparison of himself with any man who
+showed great strength. It was in 1859, after Lincoln had delivered a
+speech at the State Agricultural Fair of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. The
+two men were making the rounds of the exhibits, and went into a tent
+to see a "strong man" perform. He went through the ordinary exercises
+with huge iron balls, tossing them in the air and catching them, and
+rolling them on his arms and back; and Mr. Lincoln, who evidently had
+never before seen such a thing, watched him with intense interest,
+ejaculating under his breath every now and then, "By George! By
+George!" When the performance was over, Governor Hoyt, seeing Mr.
+Lincoln's interest, asked him to go up and be introduced to the
+athlete. He did so; and, as he stood looking down musingly on the
+fellow, who was very short, and evidently wondering that a man so much
+shorter than he could be so much stronger, he suddenly broke out with
+one of his quaint speeches. "Why," he said, "why, I could lick salt
+off the top of your hat."
+
+[Illustration: THE NEW SALEM MILL TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO
+
+The Rutledge and Cameron mill, of which Lincoln at one time had
+charge, stood on the same spot as the mill in the picture, and had the
+same foundation. From the map on page 18 it will be seen that the mill
+was below the bluff and east of the town.]
+
+His strength won him popularity, but his good-nature, his wit, his
+skill in debate, his stories, were still more efficient in gaining him
+good-will. People liked to have him around, and voted him a good
+fellow to work with. Yet such were the conditions of his life at this
+time that, in spite of his popularity, nothing was open to him but
+hard manual labor. To take the first "job" which he happened
+upon--rail-splitting, ploughing, lumbering, boating, store-keeping--and
+make the most of it, thankful if thereby he earned his bed and board
+and yearly suit of jeans, was apparently all there was before Abraham
+Lincoln in 1830 when he started out for himself.
+
+
+FIRST INDEPENDENT WORK.
+
+Through the summer and fall of 1830 and the early winter of 1831, Mr.
+Lincoln worked in the vicinity of his father's new home, usually as a
+farm-hand and rail-splitter. Most of his work was done in company with
+John Hanks. Before the end of the winter he secured employment which
+he has given an account of himself (writing again in the third
+person):[A]
+
+"During that winter Abraham, together with his stepmother's son, John
+D. Johnston, and John Hanks, yet residing in Macon County, hired
+themselves to Denton Offutt to take a flat-boat from Beardstown,
+Illinois, to New Orleans, and for that purpose were to join
+him--Offutt--at Springfield, Illinois, so soon as the snow should go
+off. When it did go off, which was about March 1, 1831, the country
+was so flooded as to make travelling by land impracticable; to obviate
+which difficulty they purchased a large canoe and came down the
+Sangamon River in it from where they were all living (near Decatur).
+This is the time and manner of Abraham's first entrance into Sangamon
+County. They found Offutt at Springfield, but learned from him that he
+had failed in getting a boat at Beardstown. This led to their hiring
+themselves to him for twelve dollars per month each, and getting the
+timber out of the trees, and building a boat at old Sangamon town on
+the Sangamon River, seven miles northwest of Springfield, which boat
+they took to New Orleans, substantially on the old contract."
+
+Sangamon town, where Mr. Lincoln built the flatboat, has, since his
+day, completely disappeared from the earth; but then it was one of the
+flourishing settlements on the river of that name. Lincoln and his
+friends on arriving there in March immediately began work. There is
+still living in Springfield, Illinois, a man who helped Lincoln at the
+raft-building--Mr. John Roll, a well-known citizen, and one who has
+been prominent in the material advancement of the city. Mr. Roll
+remembers distinctly Lincoln's first appearance in Sangamon town. To a
+representative of this MAGAZINE who talked with him recently in
+Springfield he described Lincoln's looks when he first came to town.
+"He was a tall, gaunt young man," Mr. Roll said, "dressed in a suit of
+blue homespun jeans, consisting of a roundabout jacket, waistcoat, and
+breeches which came to within about four inches of his feet. The
+latter were encased in raw-hide boots, into the top of which, most of
+the time, his pantaloons were stuffed. He wore a soft felt hat which
+had at one time been black, but now, as its owner dryly remarked, 'it
+had been sunburned until it was a combine of colors.'"
+
+Mr. Roll's relation to the newcomer soon became something more than
+that of a critical observer; he hired out to him, and says with pride,
+"I made every pin which went into that boat."
+
+[Footnote A: Short autobiography written for use in preparing a
+campaign biography. "Abraham Lincoln. Complete Works." Edited by John
+G. Nicolay and John Hay. Volume I., page 639. The Century Co.]
+
+[Illustration: PRESENT SITE OF NEW SALEM.]
+
+
+LINCOLN'S POPULARITY IN SANGAMON.
+
+It took some four weeks to build the raft, and in that period Lincoln
+succeeded in captivating the entire village by his story-telling. It
+was the custom in Sangamon for the "men-folks" to gather at noon and
+in the evening, when resting, in a convenient lane near the mill. They
+had rolled out a long peeled log on which they lounged while they
+whittled and talked. After Mr. Lincoln came to town the men would
+start him to story-telling as soon as he appeared at the assembly
+ground. So irresistibly droll were his "yarns" that, says Mr. Roll,
+"whenever he'd end up in his unexpected way the boys on the log would
+whoop and roll off." The result of the rolling off was to polish the
+log like a mirror. Long after Lincoln had disappeared from Sangamon
+"Abe's log" remained, and until it had rotted away people pointed it
+out, and repeated the droll stories of the stranger.
+
+
+AN EXCITING ADVENTURE.
+
+The flatboat was done in about a month, and Lincoln and his friends
+prepared to leave Sangamon. Before he started, however, he was the
+hero of an adventure so thrilling that he won new laurels in the
+community. Mr. Roll, who was a witness to the whole exciting scene,
+tells the story as follows:
+
+"It was the spring following the winter of the deep snow.[A] Walter
+Carman, John Seamon, myself, and at times others of the Carman boys,
+had helped Abe in building the boat, and when he had finished we went
+to work to make a dug-out, or canoe, to be used as a small boat with
+the flat. We found a suitable log about an eighth of a mile up the
+river, and with our axes went to work under Lincoln's direction. The
+river was very high, fairly 'booming.' After the dug-out was ready to
+launch we took it to the edge of the water, and made ready to 'let her
+go,' when Walter Carman and John Seamon jumped in as the boat struck
+the water, each one anxious to be the first to get a ride. As they
+shot out from the shore they found they were unable to make any
+headway against the strong current. Carman had the paddle, and Seamon
+was in the stern of the boat. Lincoln shouted to them to 'head
+upstream' and 'work back to shore,' but they found themselves
+powerless against the stream. At last they began to pull for the wreck
+of an old flatboat, the first ever built on the Sangamon, which had
+sunk and gone to pieces, leaving one of the stanchions sticking above
+the water. Just as they reached it Seamon made a grab, and caught hold
+of the stanchion, when the canoe capsized, leaving Seamon clinging to
+the old timber, and throwing Carman into the stream. It carried him
+down with the speed of a mill-race, Lincoln raised his voice above the
+roar of the flood, and yelled to Carman to swim for an elm-tree which
+stood almost in the channel, which the action of the high water
+changed. Carman, being a good swimmer, succeeded in catching a branch,
+and pulled himself up out of the water, which was very cold, and had
+almost chilled him to death; and there he sat, shivering and
+chattering in the tree. Lincoln, seeing Carman safe, called out to
+Seamon to let go the stanchion and swim for the tree. With some
+hesitation he obeyed, and struck out, while Lincoln cheered, and
+directed him from the bank. As Seamon neared the tree he made one grab
+for a branch, and, missing it, went under the water. Another desperate
+lunge was successful, and he climbed up beside Carman. Things were
+pretty exciting now, for there were two men in the tree, and the boat
+was gone.
+
+"It was a cold, raw April day, and there was great danger of the men
+becoming benumbed and falling back into the water. Lincoln called out
+to them to keep their spirits up and he would save them. The village
+had been alarmed by this time, and many people had come down to the
+bank. Lincoln procured a rope, and tied it to a log. He called all
+hands to come and help roll the log into the water, and after this had
+been done, he, with the assistance of several others, towed it some
+distance up the stream. A daring young fellow by the name of 'Jim'
+Dorrell then took his seat on the end of the log, and it was pushed
+out into the current, with the expectation that it would be carried
+downstream against the tree where Seamon and Carman were. The log was
+well directed, and went straight to the tree; but Jim, in his
+impatience to help his friends, fell a victim to his good intentions.
+Making a frantic grab at a branch, he raised himself off the log, and
+it was swept from under him by the raging water, and he soon joined
+the other two victims upon their forlorn perch. The excitement on
+shore increased, and almost the whole population of the village
+gathered on the river bank. Lincoln had the log pulled up the stream,
+and securing another piece of rope, called to the men in the tree to
+catch it if they could when he should reach the tree. He then
+straddled the log himself, and gave the word to push out into the
+stream. When he dashed into the tree, he threw the rope over the stump
+of a broken limb, and let it play until he broke the speed of the log,
+and gradually drew it back to the tree, holding it there until the
+three now nearly frozen men had climbed down and seated themselves
+astride. He then gave orders to the people on the shore to hold fast
+to the end of the rope which was tied to the log, and leaving his rope
+in the tree he turned the log adrift, and the force of the current
+acting against the taut rope swung the log around against the bank,
+and all 'on board' were saved. The excited people, who had watched the
+dangerous experiment with alternate hope and fear, now broke into
+cheers for Abe Lincoln and praises for his brave act. This adventure
+made quite a hero of him along the Sangamon, and the people never
+tired of telling of the exploit."
+
+[Footnote A: 1830-1831. "The winter of the deep snow" is the date
+which is the starting point in all calculations of time for the early
+settlers of Illinois, and the circumstance from which the old settlers
+of Sangamon County receive the name by which they are generally known,
+"Snowbirds."]
+
+[Illustration: A MATRON OF NEW SALEM IN 1832.
+
+This costume, worn by Mrs. Lucy M. Bennett of Petersburg, Illinois,
+has been a familiar attraction at old settlers' gatherings in Menard
+County, for years. The dress was made by Mrs. Hill, of New Salem, and
+the reticule or workbag will be readily recognized by those who have
+any recollection of the early days. The bonnet occupied a place in the
+store of Samuel Hill at New Salem. It was taken from the store by Mrs.
+Hill, worn for a time by her, and has been carefully preserved to this
+day. It is an imported bonnet--a genuine Leghorn--and of a kind so
+costly that Mr. Hill made only an occasional sale of one. Its price,
+in fact, was $25.]
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF NEW SALEM.
+
+Map made by J. McCan Davis, aided by surviving inhabitants of New
+Salem. Dr. John Allen was the leading physician of New Salem. He was a
+Yankee, and was at first looked upon with suspicion, but he was soon
+running a Sunday-school and temperance society, though strongly
+opposed by the conservative church people. Dr. Allen attended Ann
+Rutledge in her last illness. He was thrifty, and moving to Petersburg
+in 1840, became wealthy. He died in 1860. Dr. Francis Regnier was a
+rival physician and a respected citizen. Samuel Hill and John McNeill
+(whose real name subsequently proved to be McNamar) operated a general
+store next to Berry & Lincoln's grocery. Mr. Hill also owned the
+carding-machine. He moved his store to Petersburg in 1839, and engaged
+in business there, dying quite wealthy. Jack Kelso followed a variety
+of callings, being occasionally a school-teacher, now and then a
+grocery clerk, and always a fisher and hunter. He was a man of some
+culture, and, when warmed by liquor, quoted Shakespeare and Burns
+profusely, a habit which won for him the close friendship of Lincoln.
+Joshua Miller was a blacksmith, and lived in the same house with
+Kelso--a double house. He is said to be still living, somewhere in
+Nebraska. Miller and Kelso were brothers-in law. Philemon Morris was a
+tinner. Henry Onstott was a cooper by trade. He was an elder in the
+Cumberland Presbyterian Church, and meetings were often held at his
+house. Rev. John Berry, father of Lincoln's partner, frequently
+preached there. Robert Johnson was a wheelwright, and his wife took in
+weaving. Martin Waddell was a hatter. He was the best-natured man in
+town, Lincoln possibly excepted. The Trent brothers, who succeeded
+Berry & Lincoln as proprietors of the store, worked in his shop for a
+time. William Clary, one of the first settlers of New Salem, was one
+of a numerous family, most of whom lived in the vicinity of "Clary's
+Grove." Isaac Burner was the father of Daniel Green Burner, Berry &
+Lincoln's clerk. Alexander Ferguson worked at odd jobs. He had two
+brothers, John and Elijah. Isaac Gollaher lived in a house belonging
+to John Ferguson. "Row" Herndon, at whose house Lincoln boarded for a
+year or more after going to New Salem, moved to the country after
+selling his store to Berry & Lincoln. John Cameron, one of the
+founders of the town, was a Presbyterian preacher and a highly
+esteemed citizen.--_Note prepared by J. McCan Davis_.]
+
+
+A SECOND ADVENTURE.
+
+The flatboat built and loaded, the party started for New Orleans about
+the middle of April. They had gone but a few miles when they met with
+another adventure. At the village of New Salem there was a mill-dam.
+On it the boat stuck, and here for nearly twenty-four hours it hung,
+the bow in the air and the stern in the water, the cargo slowly
+setting backward--shipwreck almost certain. The village of New Salem
+turned out in a body to see what the strangers would do in their
+predicament. They shouted, suggested, and advised for a time, but
+finally discovered that one big fellow in the crew was ignoring them
+and working out a plan of relief. Having unloaded the cargo into a
+neighboring boat, Lincoln had succeeded in tilting his craft. By
+boring a hole in the end extending over the dam the water was let out.
+This done, the boat was easily shoved over and reloaded. The ingenuity
+which he had exercised in saving his boat made a deep impression on
+the crowd on the bank. It was talked over for many a day, and the
+general verdict was that the "bow-hand" was a "strapper." The
+proprietor of boat and cargo was even more enthusiastic than the
+spectators, and vowed he would build a steamboat for the Sangamon and
+make Lincoln the captain. Lincoln himself was interested in what he
+had done, and nearly twenty years later he embodied his reflections on
+this adventure in a curious invention for getting boats over shoals.
+
+[Illustration: WILLIAM G. GREENE.
+
+William G. Greene was one of the earliest friends of Lincoln at New
+Salem. He stood on the bank of the Sangamon River on the 19th of
+April, 1831, and watched Lincoln bore a hole in the bottom of the
+flatboat, which had lodged on the mill-dam, so that the water might
+run out. A few months later he and Lincoln were both employed by the
+enterprising Denton Offutt, as clerks in the store and managers of the
+mill which had been leased by Offutt. It was William G. Greene who,
+returning home from college at Jacksonville on a vacation, brought
+Richard Yates with him, and introduced him to Lincoln, the latter
+being found stretched out on the cellar door of Bowling Green's cabin
+reading a book. Mr. Greene was born in Tennessee in 1812, and went to
+Illinois in 1822. After the disappearance of New Salem he removed to
+Tallula, a few miles away, where in after years he engaged in the
+banking business. He died in 1894, after amassing a fortune.]
+
+
+NEW ORLEANS IN 1831.
+
+The raft over the New Salem dam, the party went on to New Orleans
+without trouble, reaching there in May, 1831, and remaining a month.
+It must have been a month of intense intellectual activity for
+Lincoln. New Orleans was entering then on her "flush times." Commerce
+was increasing at a rate which dazzled merchants and speculators, and
+drew them in shoals from all over the United States. From 1830 to 1840
+no other American city increased in such a ratio; exports and imports,
+which in 1831 amounted to $26,000,000, in 1835 had more than doubled.
+The Creole population had held the sway so far in the city; but now it
+came into competition and often into contest with a pushing,
+ambitious, and frequently unscrupulous native American party. To these
+two predominating elements were added Germans, French, Spanish,
+negroes and Indians. Cosmopolitan in its make-up, the city was even
+more cosmopolitan in its life. Everything was to be seen in New
+Orleans in those days, from the idle luxury of the wealthy Creole to
+the organization of filibustering juntas. The pirates still plied
+their trade in the Gulf, and the Mississippi River brought down
+hundreds of river boatmen--one of the wildest, wickedest sets of men
+that ever existed in any city.
+
+Lincoln and his companions probably tied their boat up beside
+thousands of others. It was the custom then to tie up such craft along
+the river front where St. Mary's Market now stands, and one could walk
+a mile, it is said, over the tops of these boats without going ashore.
+No doubt Lincoln went, too, to live in the boatmen's rendezvous,
+called the "Swamp," a wild, rough quarter, where roulette, whiskey,
+and the flint-lock pistol ruled.
+
+All of the picturesque life, the violent contrasts of the city, he
+would see as he wandered about; and he would carry away the sharp
+impressions which are produced when mind and heart are alert, sincere,
+and healthy.
+
+In this month spent in New Orleans Lincoln must have seen much of
+slavery. At that time the city was full of slaves, and the number was
+constantly increasing; indeed, one-third of the New Orleans increase
+in population between 1830 and 1840 was in negroes. One of the saddest
+features of the institution was to be seen there in its most
+aggravated form--the slave market. The great mass of slave-holders of
+the South, who looked on the institution as patriarchal, and who
+guarded their slaves with conscientious care, knew little, it should
+be said, of this terrible traffic. Their transfer of slaves was
+humane, but in the open markets of the city it was attended by
+shocking cruelty and degradation. Lincoln witnessed in New Orleans for
+the first time the revolting sight of men and women sold like animals
+Mr. Herndon says that he often heard Mr. Lincoln refer to this
+experience: "In New Orleans for the first time," he writes, "Lincoln
+beheld the true horrors of human slavery. He saw 'negroes in
+chains--whipped and scourged.' Against this inhumanity his sense of
+right and justice rebelled, and his mind and conscience were awakened
+to a realization of what he had often heard and read. No doubt, as one
+of his companions has said, 'slavery ran the iron into him then and
+there.' One morning in their rambles over the city the trio passed a
+slave auction. A vigorous and comely mulatto girl was being sold. She
+underwent a thorough examination at the hands of the bidders; they
+pinched her flesh, and made her trot up and down the room like a
+horse, to show how she moved, and in order, as the auctioneer said,
+that 'bidders might satisfy themselves' whether the article they were
+offering to buy was sound or not. The whole thing was so revolting
+that Lincoln moved away from the scene with a deep feeling of
+'unconquerable hate.' Bidding his companions follow him, he said,
+'Boys, let's get away from this. If ever I get a chance to hit that
+thing' (meaning slavery), 'I'll hit it hard.'"
+
+Mr. Herndon gives John Hanks as his authority for this statement. But
+this is plainly an error, for, according to Mr. Lincoln himself,
+Hanks did not go on to New Orleans, but having a family and being
+likely to be detained from home longer than at first expected, turned
+back at St. Louis. Though there is reason for believing that Lincoln
+was deeply impressed on this trip by something he saw in a New Orleans
+slave market, and that he often referred to it, the story told above
+probably grew to its present proportions by much telling.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: "No doubt the young Kentuckian was disgusted [with what
+he saw in the New Orleans slave auction]; but there is no proof that
+this was his first object lesson in human slavery, or that, as so
+often has been asserted, he turned to his companion and said, 'If I
+ever get a chance to hit slavery, I will hit it hard.' Such an
+expression from a flatboat-man would have been absurd."--_Personal
+Reminiscences of 1840-1890, by L.E. Chittenden._]
+
+[Illustration: MENTOR GRAHAM.
+
+Mentor Graham was the New Salem school-master. He it was who assisted
+Lincoln in mastering Kirkham's grammar, and later gave him valuable
+assistance when Lincoln was learning the theory of surveying. He
+taught in a little log school-house on a hill south of the village,
+just across Green's Rocky Branch. Among his pupils was Ann Rutledge,
+and the school was often visited by Lincoln. In 1845, Mentor Graham
+was defendant in a lawsuit in which Lincoln and Herndon were attorneys
+for the plaintiff, Nancy Green. It appears from the declaration,
+written by Lincoln's own hand, that on October 28, 1844, Mentor Graham
+gave his note to Nancy Green for one hundred dollars, with John Owens
+and Andrew Beerup as sureties, payable twelve months after date. The
+note not being paid when due, suit was brought. That Lincoln, even as
+an attorney, should sue Mentor Graham may seem strange; but it is no
+surprise when it is explained that the plaintiff was the widow of
+Bowling Green--the woman who, with her husband, had comforted Lincoln
+in an hour of grief. Justice, too, in this case, was clearly on her
+side. The lawsuit seems never to have disturbed the friendly relations
+between Lincoln and Mentor Graham. The latter's admiration for the
+former was unbounded to the day of his death. Mentor Graham lived on
+his farm near the ruins of New Salem until 1860, when he removed to
+Petersburg. There he lived until 1885, when he removed to Greenview,
+Illinois. Later he went to South Dakota, where he died about 1892, at
+the ripe old age of ninety-odd years.]
+
+
+LINCOLN SETTLES IN NEW SALEM.
+
+The month in New Orleans passed swiftly, and in June, 1831, Lincoln
+and his companions took passage up the river. He did not return,
+however, in the usual way of the river boatman "out of a job."
+According to his own way of putting it, "during this boat-enterprise
+acquaintance with Offutt, who was previously an entire stranger, he
+conceived a liking for Abraham, and believing he could turn him to
+account, he contracted with him to act as a clerk for him on his
+return from New Orleans, in charge of a store and mill at New
+Salem."[A] The store and mill were, however, so far only in Offutt's
+imagination, and Lincoln had to drift about until his employer was
+ready for him. He made a short visit to his father and mother, now in
+Coles County, near Charleston (fever and ague had driven the Lincolns
+from their first home in Macon County), and then, in July, 1831, he
+drifted over to New Salem, where, as he says, he "stopped indefinitely
+and for the first time, as it were, by himself."
+
+[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE HILL ABOVE SANGAMON RIVER, LOOKING TOWARD
+THE SITE OF NEW SALEM.]
+
+"The village of New Salem, the scene of Lincoln's mercantile career,"
+writes one of our correspondents who has studied the history of the
+town and visited the spot where it once stood, "was one of the many
+little towns which, in the pioneer days, sprang up along the Sangamon
+River, a stream then looked upon as navigable and as destined to be
+counted among the highways of commerce. Twenty miles northwest of
+Springfield, strung along the left bank of the Sangamon, parted by
+hollows and ravines, is a row of high hills. On one of these--a long,
+narrow ridge, beginning with a sharp and sloping point near the river,
+running south, and parallel with the stream a little way, and then,
+reaching its highest point, making a sudden turn to the west, and
+gradually widening until lost in the prairie--stood this frontier
+village. The crooked river for a short distance comes from the east,
+and, seeming surprised at meeting the bluff, abruptly changes its
+course, and flows to the north. Across the river the bottom stretches
+out, reaching half a mile back to the highlands. New Salem, founded in
+1829 by James Rutledge and John Cameron, and a dozen years later a
+deserted village, is rescued from oblivion only by the fact that
+Lincoln was once one of its inhabitants. His first sight of the town
+had been in April, 1831, when the flatboat he had built and its little
+crew were detained in getting their boat over the Rutledge and Cameron
+mill-dam, on which it lodged. When Lincoln walked into New Salem,
+three months later, he was not altogether a stranger, for the people
+remembered him as the ingenious flatboat-man who, a little while
+before, had freed his boat from water (and thus enabled it to get over
+the dam) by resorting to the miraculous expedient of boring a hole in
+the bottom."[B]
+
+Offutt's goods had not arrived when Mr. Lincoln reached New Salem; and
+he "loafed" about, so those who remember his arrival say,
+good-naturedly taking a hand in whatever he could find to do, and in
+his droll way making friends of everybody. By chance, a bit of work
+fell to him almost at once, which introduced him generally and gave
+him an opportunity to make a name in the neighborhood. It was election
+day. The village school-master, Mentor Graham by name, was clerk, but
+the assistant was ill. Looking about for some one to help him, Mr.
+Graham saw a tall stranger loitering around the polling place, and
+called to him, "Can you write?" "Yes," said the stranger, "I can make
+a few rabbit tracks." Mr. Graham evidently was satisfied with the
+answer, for he promptly initiated him; and he filled his place not
+only to the satisfaction of his employer, but also to the delectation
+of the loiterers about the polls, for whenever things dragged he
+immediately began "to spin out a stock of Indiana yarns." So droll
+were they that years afterward men who listened to Lincoln that day
+repeated them to their friends. He had made a hit in New Salem, to
+start with, and here, as in Sangamon town, it was by means of his
+story-telling.
+
+[Footnote A: "Abraham Lincoln. Complete Works." Edited by John G.
+Nicolay and John, Hay. Volume I.]
+
+[Footnote B: New Salem plays so prominent a part in the life of
+Lincoln that the MAGAZINE engaged Mr. J. McCan Davis, of Springfield,
+Illinois, who had already made a special study of this period of Mr.
+Lincoln's life, to go in detail over the ground to secure a perfectly
+accurate sequence of events, to collect new and unpublished pictures
+and documents, and to interview all of the old acquaintances of Mr.
+Lincoln who remain in the neighborhood. Mr. Davis has secured some new
+facts about Mr. Lincoln's life in this period; he has unearthed in the
+official files of the county several new documents, and he has secured
+several unpublished portraits of interest. His matter will be
+incorporated into our next two articles.]
+
+[Illustration: LINCOLN'S FIRST VOTE.]
+
+Photographed from the original poll-book, now on file in the county
+clerk's office, Springfield, Illinois. Lincoln's first vote was cast
+at New Salem, "in the Clary's Grove precinct," August 1, 1831. At this
+election he aided Mr. Graham, who was one of the clerks. In the early
+days in Illinois, elections were conducted by the _viva voce_ method.
+The people did try voting by ballot, but the experiment was unpopular.
+It required too much "book larnin," and in 1829 the _viva voce_ method
+of voting was restored. The judges and clerks sat at a table with the
+poll-book before them. The voter walked up, and announced the
+candidate of his choice, and it was recorded in his presence. There
+was no ticket peddling, and ballot-box stuffing was impossible. To
+this simple system we are indebted for the record of Lincoln's first
+vote. As will be seen from the fac-simile, Lincoln voted for James
+Turney for Congressman, Bowling Green and Edmund Greer for
+Magistrates, and John Armstrong and Henry Sinco for Constables. Of
+these five men three were elected. Turney was defeated for Congressman
+by Joseph Duncan. Turney lived in Greene County. He was not then a
+conspicuous figure in the politics of the State, but was a follower of
+Henry Clay, and was well thought of in his own district. He and
+Lincoln, in 1834, served their first terms together in the lower house
+of the legislature, and later he was a State senator. Joseph Duncan,
+the successful candidate, was already in Congress. He was a politician
+of influence. In 1834 he was a strong "Jackson man;" but after his
+election as Governor he created consternation among the followers of
+"Old Hickory" by becoming a Whig. Sidney Breese, who received only two
+votes in the Clary's Grove precinct, afterward became the most
+conspicuous of the five candidates. Eleven years later he defeated
+Stephen A. Douglas for the United States Senate, and for twenty-five
+years he was on the bench of the Supreme Court of Illinois, serving
+under each of the three constitutions. For the office of Magistrate
+Bowling Green was elected, but Greer was beaten. Both of Lincoln's
+candidates for Constable were elected. John Armstrong was the man with
+whom, a short time afterward, Lincoln had the celebrated wrestling
+match. Henry Sinco was the keeper of a store at New Salem. Lincoln's
+first vote for President was not cast until the next year (November 5,
+1832), when he voted for Henry Clay.--_Note furnished by J. McCan
+Davis_.]
+
+_(To be continued.)_
+
+
+
+
+THE LOVE OF THE PRINCE OF GLOTTENBERG.
+
+
+BY ANTHONY HOPE,
+
+Author of "The Prisoner of Zenda," "The Dolly Dialogues," etc.
+
+
+I.
+
+It was in the spring of the year that Ludwig, Prince of Glottenberg,
+came courting the Princess Osra; for his father had sought the most
+beautiful lady of a royal house in Europe, and had found none to equal
+Osra. Therefore the prince came to Strelsau with a great retinue, and
+was lodged in the White Palace, which stood on the outskirts of the
+city, where the public gardens now are (for the palace itself was
+sacked and burnt by the people in the rising of 1848). Here Ludwig
+stayed many days, coming every day to the king's palace to pay his
+respects to the king and queen, and to make his court to the princess.
+King Rudolf had received him with the utmost friendship, and was, for
+reasons of state then of great moment, but now of vanished interest,
+as eager for the match as was the King of Glottenberg himself; and he
+grew very impatient with his sister when she hesitated to accept
+Ludwig's hand, alleging that she felt for him no more than a kindly
+esteem, and, what was as much to the purpose, that he felt no more for
+her. For although the prince possessed most courteous and winning
+manners, and was very accomplished both in learning and in exercises,
+yet he was a grave and pensive young man, rather stately than jovial,
+and seemed, in the princess's eyes (accustomed as they were to catch
+and check ardent glances), to perform his wooing more as a duty of his
+station than on the impulse of any passion. Finding in herself, also,
+no such sweet ashamed emotions as had before now crossed her heart on
+account of lesser men, she grew grave and troubled; and she said to
+the king:
+
+"Brother, is this love? For I had as lief he were away as here; and
+when he is here he kisses my hand as though it were a statue's hand;
+and--and I feel as though it were. They say you know what love is. Is
+this love?"
+
+"There are many forms of love," smiled the king. "This is such love as
+a prince and a princess may most properly feel."
+
+"I do not call it love at all," said Osra, with a pout.
+
+When Prince Ludwig came next day to see her, and told her, with grave
+courtesy, that his pleasure lay in doing her will, she broke out:
+
+"I had rather it lay in watching my face;" and then, ashamed, she
+turned away from him.
+
+He seemed grieved and hurt at her words, and it was with a sigh that
+he said: "My life shall be given to giving you joy."
+
+She turned round on him with flushed cheek and trembling lips:
+
+"Yes, but I had rather it were spent in getting joy from me."
+
+He cast down his eyes a moment, and then, taking her hand, kissed it,
+but she drew it away sharply; and so that afternoon they parted, he
+back to his palace, she to her chamber, where she sat, asking again:
+"Is this love?" and crying: "He does not know love;" and pausing, now
+and again, before her mirror, to ask her pictured face why it would
+not unlock the door of love.
+
+On another day she would be merry, or feign merriment, rallying him on
+his sombre air and formal compliments, professing that for her part
+she soon grew weary of such wooing, and loved to be easy and merry;
+for thus she hoped to sting him, so that he would either disclose more
+warmth, or forsake altogether his pursuit. But he made many apologies,
+blaming nature that had made him grave, but assuring her of his deep
+affection and respect.
+
+"Affection and respect!" murmured Osra, with a little toss of her
+head. "Oh, that I had not been born a princess!" And yet, though she
+did not love him, she thought him a very noble gentleman, and trusted
+to his honor and sincerity in everything. Therefore, when he still
+persisted, and Rudolf and the queen urged her, telling her (the king
+mockingly, the queen with a touch of sadness) that she must not look
+to find in the world such love as romantic girls dreamt of, at last
+she yielded, and she told her brother that she would marry Prince
+Ludwig, yet for a little while she would not have the news proclaimed.
+So Rudolf went, alone and privately, to the White Palace, and said to
+Ludwig:
+
+"Cousin, you have won the fairest lady in the world. Behold, her
+brother says it!"
+
+Prince Ludwig bowed low, and, taking the king's hand, pressed it,
+thanking him for his help and approval, and expressing himself as most
+grateful for the boon of the princess's favor.
+
+"And will you not come with me and find her?" cried the king, with a
+merry look.
+
+"I have urgent business now," answered Ludwig. "Beg the princess to
+forgive me. This afternoon I will crave the honor of waiting on her
+with my humble gratitude."
+
+King Rudolf looked at him, a smile curling on his lips; and he said,
+in one of his gusts of impatience:
+
+"By heaven! is there another man in the world who would talk about
+gratitude, and business, and the afternoon, when Osra of Strelsau sat
+waiting for him?"
+
+"I mean no discourtesy," protested Ludwig, taking the king's arm and
+glancing at him with most friendly eyes. "Indeed, dear friend, I am
+rejoiced and honored. But this business of mine will not wait."
+
+So the king, frowning and grumbling and laughing, went back alone, and
+told the princess that the happy wooer was most grateful, and would
+come, after his business was transacted, that afternoon. But Osra,
+having given her hand, would now admit no fault in the man she had
+chosen, and thanked the king for the message, with great dignity. Then
+the king came to her, and, sitting down by her, stroked her hair,
+saying softly:
+
+"You have had many lovers, sister Osra, and now comes a husband."
+
+"Yes, now a husband," she murmured, catching swiftly at his hand; and
+her voice was half caught in a sudden sob.
+
+"So goes the world--our world," said the king, knitting his brows and
+seeming to fall for a moment into a sad reverie.
+
+"I am frightened," she whispered. "Should I be frightened if I loved
+him?"
+
+"I have been told so," said the king, smiling again. "But the fear has
+a way of being mastered then." And he drew her to him, and gave her a
+hearty brother's kiss, telling her to take heart. "You'll thaw the
+fellow yet," said the king, "though I grant you he is icy enough." For
+the king himself had been by no means what he called an icy man.
+
+But Osra was not satisfied, and sought to assuage the pain of her
+heart by adorning herself most carefully for the prince's coming,
+hoping to fire him to love. For she thought that if he loved she
+might, although since he did not she could not. And surely he did not,
+or all the tales of love were false! Thus she came to receive him very
+magnificently arrayed. There was a flush on her cheek, and an
+uncertain, expectant, fearful look in her eyes; and thus she stood
+before him, as he fell on his knee and kissed her hand. Then he rose,
+and declared his thanks, and promised his devotion; but as he spoke
+the flush faded, and the light died from her eyes; and when at last he
+drew near to her, and offered to kiss her cheek, her eyes were dead,
+and her face pale and cold as she suffered him to touch it. He was
+content to touch it but once, and seemed not to know how cold it was;
+and so, after more talk of his father's pleasure and his pride, he
+took his leave, promising to come again the next day. She ran to the
+window when the door was closed on him, and thence watched him mount
+his horse and ride away slowly, with his head bent and his eyes
+downcast; yet he was a noble gentleman, stately and handsome, kind and
+true. The tears came suddenly into her eyes and blurred her sight as
+she leant watching from behind the hanging curtains of the window.
+Though she dashed them angrily away, they came again, and ran down her
+pale, cold cheeks, mourning the golden vision that seemed gone without
+fulfilment.
+
+That evening there came a gentleman from the Prince of Glottenberg,
+carrying most humble excuses from his master, who (so he said) was
+prevented from waiting on the princess the next day by a certain very
+urgent affair that took him from Strelsau, and would keep him absent
+from the city all day long; and the gentleman delivered to Osra a
+letter from the prince, full of graceful and profound apologies, and
+pleading an engagement that his honor would not let him break; for
+nothing short of that, said he, should have kept him from her side.
+There followed some lover's phrases, scantily worded, and frigid in an
+assumed passion. But Osra smiled graciously, and sent back a message,
+readily accepting all that the prince urged in excuse. And she told
+what had passed to the king, with her head high in the air, and a
+careless haughtiness, so that even the king did not rally her, nor yet
+venture to comfort her, but urged her to spend the next day in riding
+with the queen and him; for they were setting out for Zenda, where the
+king was to hunt in the forest, and she could ride some part of the
+way with them, and return in the evening. And she, wishing that she
+had sent first to the prince, to bid him not come, agreed to go with
+her brother; it was better far to go than to wait at home for a lover
+who would not come.
+
+Thus, the next morning, they rode out, the king and queen with their
+retinue, the princess attended by one of her guard, named Christian
+Hantz, who was greatly attached to her, and most jealous in praise and
+admiration of her. This fellow had taken on himself to be very angry
+with Prince Ludwig's coldness, but dared say nothing of it. Yet,
+impelled by his anger, he had set himself to watch the prince very
+closely; and thus he had, as he conceived, discovered something that
+brought a twinkle into his eye and a triumphant smile to his lips as
+he rode behind the princess. Some fifteen miles she accompanied her
+brother, and then, turning with Christian, took another road back to
+the city. Alone she rode, her mind full of sad thoughts; while
+Christian, behind, still wore his malicious smile. But, presently,
+although she had not commanded him, he quickened his pace, and came up
+to her side, relying on the favor which she always showed him, for
+excuse.
+
+"Well, Christian," said she, "have you something to say to me?"
+
+For answer he pointed to a small house that stood among the trees,
+some way from the road, and he said:
+
+"If I were Ludwig and not Christian, yet I would be here where
+Christian is, and not there where Ludwig is." And he pointed still at
+the house.
+
+She faced round on him in anger at his daring to speak to her of the
+prince, but he was a bold fellow, and would not be silenced now that
+he had begun to speak. He knew also that she would bear much from him;
+so he leant over towards her, saying:
+
+"By your bounty, madam, I have money, and he who has money can get
+knowledge. So I know that the prince is there. For fifty pounds I
+gained a servant of his, and he told me."
+
+"I do not know why you should spy on the prince," said Osra, "and I do
+not care to know where the prince is." And she touched her horse with
+the spur, and cantered fast forward, leaving the little house behind.
+But Christian persisted, partly in a foolish grudge against any man
+who should win what was above his reach, partly in an honest anger
+that she whom his worshipped should be treated lightly by another; and
+he forced her to hear what he had learnt from the gossip of the
+prince's groom, telling it to her in hints and half-spoken sentences,
+yet so plainly that she could not miss the drift of it. She rode the
+faster towards Strelsau, at first answering nothing; but at last she
+turned upon him fiercely, saying that he told a lie, and that she knew
+it was a lie, since she knew where the prince was and what business
+had taken him away; and she commanded Christian to be silent, and to
+speak neither to her nor to any one else of his false suspicions; and
+she bade him, very harshly, to fall back and ride behind her again,
+which he did, sullen, yet satisfied; for he knew that his arrow had
+gone home. On she rode, with her cheeks aflame and her heart beating,
+until she came to Strelsau, and having arrived at the palace, ran to
+her own bedroom and flung herself on the bed.
+
+Here for an hour she lay; then, it being about six o'clock, she sat
+up, pushing her disordered hair back from her hot, aching brow. For an
+agony of humiliation came upon her, and a fury of resentment against
+the prince, whose coldness seemed now to need no more explanation. Yet
+she could hardly believe what she had been told of him; for, though
+she had not loved him, she had accorded to him her full trust. Rising,
+she paced in pain about the room. She could not rest, and she cried
+out in longing that her brother were there to aid her, and find out
+the truth for her. But he was away, and she had none to whom she could
+turn. So she strove to master her anger and endure her suspense till
+the next day; but they were too strong for her, and she cried: "I will
+go myself. I cannot sleep till I know. But I cannot go alone. Who will
+go with me?" And she knew of none, for she would not take Christian
+with her, and she shrank from speaking of the matter to any of the
+gentlemen of the court. And yet she must know. But at last she sprang
+up from the chair into which she had sunk despondently, exclaiming:
+
+"He is a gentleman and my friend. He will go with me." And she sent
+hastily for the Bishop of Modenstein, who was then in Strelsau,
+bidding him come dressed for riding, and with a sword, and the best
+horse in his stable. And the bishop came equipped as she bade him and
+in very great wonder. But when she told him what she wanted, and what
+Christian had made known to her, he grew grave, saying that they must
+wait and consult the king when he returned.
+
+"I will not wait an hour," she cried. "I cannot wait an hour."
+
+"Then I will ride, and bring you word. You must not go," he urged.
+
+"Nay; if I go alone, I will go," said she. "Yes, I will go, and myself
+fling his falseness in his teeth."
+
+Finding her thus resolved, the bishop knew that he could not turn her;
+so, leaving her to prepare herself, he sought Christian Hantz, and
+charged him to bring three horses to the most private gate of the
+palace, that opened in a little by-street. Here Christian waited for
+them with the horses, and they came presently, the bishop wearing a
+great slouched hat, and swaggering like a roystering trooper, while
+Osra was closely veiled. The bishop again imposed secrecy on
+Christian, and then, they both being mounted, said to Osra: "If you
+will, then, madam, come;" and thus they rode secretly out of the
+city, about seven o'clock in the evening, the gate-wardens opening the
+gates at sight of the royal arms on Osra's ring, which she gave to the
+bishop in order that he might show it.
+
+In silence they rode a long way, going at a great speed. Osra's face
+was set and rigid, for she felt now no shame at herself for going, nor
+any fear of what she might find. But the injury to her pride swallowed
+every other feeling, and at last she said, in short, sharp words, to
+the Bishop of Modenstein, having suddenly thrown the veil back from
+her face:
+
+"He shall not live, if it prove true."
+
+The bishop shook his head. His profession was peace; yet his blood,
+also, was hot against the man who had put a slight on Princess Osra.
+
+"The king must know of it," he said.
+
+"The king? The king is not here tonight," said Osra; and she pricked
+her horse, and set him at a gallop. The moon, breaking suddenly in
+brightness from behind a cloud, showed the bishop her face. Then she
+put out her hand, and caught him by the arm, whispering: "Are you my
+friend?"
+
+"Yes, madam," said he. She knew well that he was her friend.
+
+"Kill him for me, then! Kill him for me!"
+
+"I cannot kill him," said the bishop. "I pray God it may prove
+untrue."
+
+"You are not my friend if you will not kill him," said Osra; and she
+turned her face away, and rode yet more quickly.
+
+[Illustration: "KILL HIM FOR ME, THEN! KILL HIM FOR ME!"]
+
+At last they came in sight of the little house that stood back from
+the road, and there was a light in one of the upper windows. The
+bishop heard a short gasp break from Osra's lips, and she pointed with
+her whip to the window. Now his own breath came quick and fast, and he
+prayed to God that he might remember his sacred character and his
+vows, and not be led into great and deadly sin at the bidding of that
+proud, bitter face; and he clenched his left hand, and struck his brow
+with it.
+
+Thus, then, they came to the gate of the avenue of trees that led to
+the house. Here, having dismounted, and tied their horses to the
+gatepost, they stood an instant, and Osra again veiled her face.
+
+"Let me go alone, madam," he implored.
+
+"Give me your sword, and I will go alone," she answered.
+
+"Here, then, is the path," said the bishop; and he led the way by the
+moonlight that broke fitfully here and there through the trees.
+
+"He swore that all his life should be mine," she whispered. "Yet I
+knew that he did not love me."
+
+The bishop made her no answer; she looked for none, and did not know
+that she spoke the bitterness of her heart in words that he could
+hear. He bowed his head, and prayed again for her and for himself; for
+he had found his hand gripping the hilt of his sword. And thus, side
+by side now, they came to the door of the house, and saw a gentleman
+standing in front of the door, still but watchful. And Osra knew that
+he was the prince's chamberlain.
+
+When the chamberlain saw them he started violently, and clapped a hand
+to his sword; but Osra flung her veil on the ground, and the bishop
+gripped his arm as with a vise. The chamberlain looked at Osra and at
+the bishop, and half drew his sword.
+
+"This matter is too great for you, sir," said the bishop. "It is a
+quarrel of princes. Stand aside!" And before the chamberlain could
+make up his mind what to do, Osra had passed by him, and the bishop
+had followed her.
+
+Finding themselves in a narrow passage, they made out, by the dim
+light of a lamp, a flight of stairs that rose from the farthest end of
+it. The bishop tried to pass the princess, but she motioned him back,
+and walked swiftly to the stairs. In silent speed they mounted till
+they had reached the top of the first stage; and facing them, eight or
+ten steps farther up, was a door. By the door stood a groom. This was
+the man who had treacherously told Christian of his master's doings;
+but when he saw, suddenly, what had come of his disloyal chattering,
+the fellow went white as a ghost, and came tottering in stealthy
+silence down the stairs, his finger on his lips. Neither of them spoke
+to him, nor he to them. They gave no thought to him; his only thought
+was to escape as soon as he might; so he passed them, and, going on,
+passed also the chamberlain, who stood dazed at the house door, and so
+disappeared, intent on saving the life that he had justly forfeited.
+Thus the rogue vanished, and what became of him no one knew nor cared.
+He showed his face no more at Glottenberg or Strelsau.
+
+"Hark! there are voices," whispered Osra to the bishop, raising her
+hand above her head, as they two stood motionless.
+
+The voices came from the door that faced them, the voice of a man and
+the voice of a woman. Osra's glance at her companion told him that she
+knew as well as he whose the man's voice was.
+
+"It is true, then," she breathed from between her teeth. "My God, it
+is true!"
+
+The woman's voice spoke now, but the words were not audible. Then came
+the prince's: "Forever, in life or death, apart or together, forever."
+But the woman's answer came no more in words, but in deep, low,
+passionate sobs, that struck their ears like the distant cry of some
+brute creature in pain that it cannot understand. Yet Osra's face was
+stern and cold, and her lips curled scornfully when she saw the
+bishop's look of pity.
+
+"Come, let us end it," said she; and with a firm step she began to
+mount the stairs that lay between them and the door.
+
+Yet once again they paused outside the door, for it seemed as though
+the princess could not choose but listen to the passionate words of
+love that pierced her ears like knives. Yet they were all sad,
+speaking of renunciation, not happiness. But at last she heard her own
+name; then, with a sudden start, she caught the bishop's hands, for
+she could not listen longer. And she staggered and reeled as she
+whispered to him: "The door, the door--open the door!"
+
+The bishop, his right hand being across his body and resting on the
+hilt of his sword, laid his left upon the handle of the door and
+turned it. Then he flung the door wide open; and at that instant Osra
+sprang past him, her eyes gleaming like flames from her dead-white
+face. And she stood rigid on the threshold of the room, with the
+bishop by her side.
+
+[Illustration: "IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROOM STOOD THE PRINCE OF
+GLOTTENBERG; AND ... CLINGING TO HIM ... WAS A GIRL OF SLIGHT AND SLENDER
+FIGURE."]
+
+In the middle of the room stood the Prince of Glottenberg; and
+strained in a close embrace, clinging to him, supported by his arms,
+with head buried in his breast, was a girl of slight and slender
+figure, graceful, though not tall; and her body was still shaken by
+continual, struggling sobs. The prince held her there as though
+against the world, but raised his head, and looked at the intruders
+with a grave, sad air. There was no shame on his face, and hardly
+surprise. Presently he took one arm from about the lady, and, raising
+it, motioned to them to be still. Osra took one step forward toward
+where the pair stood; the bishop caught her sleeve, but she shook him
+off. The lady looked up into the prince's face; with a sudden,
+startled cry clutched him closer, and turned a terrified face over her
+shoulder. Then she moaned in great fear, and, reeling, fell against
+the prince, and would have sunk to the ground if he had not upheld
+her; and her eyes closed and her lips dropped as she swooned away. But
+the princess smiled, and, drawing herself to her full height, stood
+watching while Ludwig bore the lady to a couch and laid her there.
+Then, when he came back and faced her, she asked coldly and slowly:
+
+"Who is this woman, sir? Or is she one of those that have no names?"
+
+The prince sprang forward, a sudden anger in his eyes; he raised his
+hand as if he would have pressed it across her scornful mouth, and
+kept back her bitter words. But she did not flinch; and, pointing at
+him with her finger, she cried to the bishop, in a ringing voice:
+
+"Kill him, my lord, kill him!"
+
+And the sword of the Bishop of Modenstein was half-way out of the
+scabbard.
+
+
+II.
+
+"I would to God, my lord," said the prince in low, sad tones, "that
+God would suffer you to kill me, and me to take death at your hands.
+But neither for you nor for me is the blow lawful. Let me speak to the
+princess."
+
+The bishop still grasped his sword; for Osra's face and hand still
+commanded him. But at the instant of his hesitation, while the
+temptation was hot in him, there came from the couch where the lady
+lay a low moan of great pain. She flung her arms out, and turned,
+groaning, again on her back, and her head lay limply over the side of
+the couch. The bishop's eyes met Ludwig's; and with a "God forgive
+me!" he let the sword slip back, and, springing across the room, fell
+on his knees beside the couch. He broke the gold chain round his neck,
+and grasped the crucifix which he carried in one hand, while with the
+other he raised the lady's head, praying her to open her eyes, before
+whose closed lids he held the sacred image; and he, who had come so
+near to great sin, now prayed softly, but fervently, for her life and
+God's pity on her, for the frailty her slight form showed could not
+withstand the shock of this trial.
+
+"Who is she?" asked the princess.
+
+But Ludwig's eyes had wandered back to the couch, and he answered
+only:
+
+"My God, it will kill her!"
+
+"I care not," said Osra. But then came another low moan. "I care not,"
+said the princess again. "Ah, she is in great suffering!" And her eyes
+followed the prince's.
+
+There was silence, save for the lady's low moans and the whispered
+prayers of the Bishop of Modenstein. But the lady opened her eyes, and
+in an instant, answering the summons, the prince was by her side,
+kneeling, and holding her hand very tenderly, and he met a glance from
+the bishop across her prostrate body. The prince bowed his head, and
+one sob burst from him.
+
+"Leave me alone with her for a little, sir," said the bishop; and the
+prince, obeying, rose and withdrew into the bay of the window, while
+Osra stood alone near the door by which she had entered.
+
+A few minutes passed, then Osra saw the prince return to where the
+lady was, and kneel again beside her; and she saw that the bishop was
+preparing to perform his most sacred and sublime office. The lady's
+eyes dwelt on him now in peace and restfulness, and held Prince
+Ludwig's hand in her small hand. But Osra would not kneel; she stood
+upright, still and cold, as though she neither saw nor heard anything
+of what passed; she would not pity nor forgive the woman even if, as
+they seemed to think, she lay dying. But she spoke once, asking in a
+harsh voice:
+
+"Is there no physician in the house or near?"
+
+"None, madam," said the prince.
+
+The bishop began the office, and Osra stood, dimly hearing the words
+of comfort, peace, and hope; dimly seeing the smile on the lady's
+face, for gradually her eyes clouded with tears. Now her ears seemed
+to hear nothing save the sad and piteous sobs that had shaken the girl
+as she hung about Ludwig's neck. But she strove to drive away her
+softer thoughts, fanning her fury when it burnt low, and telling
+herself again of the insult that she had suffered. Thus she rested
+till the bishop had performed the office. But when he had finished it
+he rose from his knees, and came to where Osra was.
+
+"It was your duty," she said. "But it is none of mine."
+
+"She will not live an hour," said he. "For she had an affection of the
+heart, and this shock has killed her. Indeed, I think she was half
+dead from grief before we came."
+
+"Who is she?" broke again from Osra's lips.
+
+"Come and hear," said he; and she followed him obediently, yet
+unwillingly, to the couch, and looked down at the lady. The lady
+looked at her with wondering eyes, and then she smiled faintly,
+pressing the prince's hand and whispering:
+
+"Yet she is so beautiful." And she seemed now wonderfully happy, so
+that the three all watched her, and were envious, although they were
+to live and she to die.
+
+"Now God pardon her sin," said the Princess Osra suddenly, and she
+fell on her knees beside the couch, crying: "Surely God has pardoned
+her."
+
+"Sin she had none, save what clings even to the purest in this world,"
+said the bishop. "For what she has said to me I know to be true."
+
+Osra answered nothing, but gazed in questioning at the prince, and he,
+still holding the lady's hand, began to speak in a gentle voice.
+
+"Do not ask her name, madam. But from the first hour that we knew the
+meaning of love we have loved one another. And had the issue rested in
+my hands I would have thrown to the winds all that kept me from her. I
+remember when first I met her--ah, my sweet! do you remember? And from
+that day to this, in soul she has been mine, and I hers in all my
+life. But more could not be. Madam, you have asked what love is. Here
+is love. Yet fate is stronger. Thus I came here to woo, and she, left
+alone, resolved to give herself to God."
+
+"How comes she here, then?" whispered Osra. And she laid one hand
+timidly on the couch near the lady, yet not so as to touch even her
+garments.
+
+"She came here," he began--but suddenly, to their amazement, the lady,
+who had seemed dead, with an effort raised herself on her elbow, and
+spoke in a quick, eager whisper, as if she feared time and strength
+would fail.
+
+"He is a great prince," she said; "he must be a great king. God means
+him for greatness. God forbid that I should be his ruin! Oh, what a
+sweet dream he painted! But praise be to the blessed saints that kept
+me strong. Yet, at the last I was weak. I could not live without
+another sight of his face, and so--so I came. Next week I am--I was to
+take the veil, and I came here to see him once again--God pardon me
+for it--but I could not help it. Ah, madam, I know you, and I see now
+your beauty. Have you known love?"
+
+"No," said Osra; and she moved her hand near to the lady's hand.
+
+"And when he found me here he prayed me again to do what he asked, and
+I was half killed in denying it. But I prevailed, and we were even
+then parting when you came. Why, why did I come?" And for a moment her
+voice died away in a low, soft moan. But she made one more effort.
+Clasping Osra's hand in her delicate fingers, she whispered: "I am
+going. Be his wife."
+
+"No, no, no!" whispered Osra, her face now close to the lady's. "You
+must live you must live and be happy." And then she kissed the lady's
+lips. The lady put out her arms, and clasped them round Osra's neck;
+and again she whispered softly in Osra's ear. Neither Ludwig nor the
+bishop heard what she said, but they heard only that Osra sobbed.
+Presently the lady's arms relaxed a little in their hold, and Osra,
+having kissed her again, rose, and signed to Ludwig to come nearer;
+while she, turning, gave her hand to the bishop, and he led her from
+the room, and finding another room near, took her in there, where she
+sat silent and pale.
+
+Thus half an hour passed; then the bishop stole softly out, and
+presently returned, saying:
+
+"God has spared her the long, painful path, and has taken her straight
+to his rest."
+
+Osra heard him, half in a trance, and as if she did not hear; she did
+not know whither he went, nor what he did, nor anything that passed,
+until, as it seemed, after a long while, she looked up, and saw Prince
+Ludwig standing before her. He was composed and calm, but it seemed as
+if half the life had gone out of his face. Osra rose slowly to her
+feet, supporting herself on an arm of the chair on which she had sat,
+and when she had seen his face she suddenly threw herself on the floor
+at his feet, crying:
+
+"Forgive me! Forgive me!"
+
+"The guilt is mine," said he; "for I did not trust you, and did by
+stealth what your nobility would have suffered openly. The guilt is
+mine." And he offered to raise her, but she rose unaided, asking with
+choking voice:
+
+"Is she dead?"
+
+"She is dead," said the prince; and Osra, hearing it, covered her face
+with her hands, and blindly groped her way back to the chair, where
+she sat, panting and exhausted.
+
+"To her I have said farewell, and now, madam, to you. Yet do not think
+that I am a man without eyes for your beauty, or a heart to know your
+worth. I seemed to you a fool and a churl. I grieved most bitterly,
+and I wronged you bitterly; my excuse for all is now known. For though
+you are more beautiful than she, yet true love is no wanderer; it
+gives a beauty that it does not find, and weaves a chain no other
+charms can break. Madam, farewell."
+
+[Illustration: "OSRA ... SUDDENLY THREW HERSELF ON THE FLOOR AT HIS
+FEET, CRYING, 'FORGIVE ME! FORGIVE ME!'"]
+
+She looked at him and saw the sad joy in his eyes, an exultation over
+what had been that what was could not destroy; and she knew that the
+vision was still with him, though his love was dead. Suddenly he
+seemed to her a man she also might love, and for whom she also, if
+need be, might gladly die. Yet not because she loved him, for she was
+asking still in wonder: "What is this love?"
+
+"Madam, farewell," said he again; and, kneeling before her, he kissed
+her hand.
+
+"I carry the body of my love," he went on, "back with me to my home,
+there to mourn for her; and I shall come no more to Strelsau."
+
+Osra bent her eyes on his face as he knelt, and presently she said to
+him in a whisper that was low for awe, not shame:
+
+"You heard what she bade me do?"
+
+"Yes, madam, I know her wish."
+
+"And you would do it?" she asked.
+
+"Madam, my struggle was fought before she died. But now you know that
+my love was not yours."
+
+"That also I knew before, sir;" and a slight, bitter smile came on her
+face. But she grew grave again, and sat there, seeming to be
+pondering, and Prince Ludwig waited on his knees. Then she suddenly
+leant forward and said:
+
+"If I loved I would wait for you to love. Now what is the love that I
+cannot feel?"
+
+And then she sat again silent, but at last raised her eyes again to
+his, saying in a voice that even in the stillness of the room he
+hardly heard:
+
+"Now I do dearly love you, for I have seen your love, and know that
+you can love; and I think that love must breed love, so that she who
+loves must in God's time be loved. Yet"--she paused here, and for a
+moment hid her face with her hand--"yet I cannot," she went on. "Is it
+our Lord Christ who bids us take the lower place? I cannot take it He
+does not so reign in my heart. For to my proud heart--ah, my heart so
+proud!--she would be ever between us. I could not bear it. Even though
+she is dead, I could not bear it. Yet I believe now that with you I
+might one day find happiness."
+
+The prince, though in that hour he could not think of love, was yet
+very much moved by her new tenderness, and felt that what had passed
+rather drew them together than made any separation between them. And
+it seemed to him that the dead lady's blessing was on his suit, so he
+said:
+
+"Madam, I would most faithfully serve you, and you would be the
+nearest and dearest to me of all living women."
+
+She waited a while, then she sighed heavily, and looked in his face
+with an air of wistful longing, and she knit her brows as though she
+were puzzled. But at last, shaking her head, she said:
+
+"It is not enough."
+
+And with this she rose and took him by the hand, and they two went
+back together to where the Bishop of Modenstein still prayed beside
+the body of the lady.
+
+Osra stood on one side of the body, and stretched her hand out to the
+prince, who stood on the other side.
+
+"See," said she, "she must be between us." And having kissed the dead
+face once, she left the prince there by the side of his love, and
+herself went out, and turning her head, saw that the prince knelt
+again by the corpse of his love.
+
+"He does not think of me," she said to the bishop.
+
+"His thoughts are still with her, madam," he answered.
+
+It was late night now, and they rode swiftly and silently along the
+road to Strelsau. And on all the way they spoke to one another only a
+few words, being both sunk deep in thought. But once Osra spoke, as
+they were already near to Strelsau. For she turned suddenly to the
+bishop, saying:
+
+"My lord, what is it? Do you know it?"
+
+"Yes, madam, I have known it," answered the bishop.
+
+"Yet you are a churchman!"
+
+"True, madam," said he, and he smiled sadly.
+
+She seemed to consider, fixing her eyes on his; but he turned his
+aside.
+
+"Could you not make me understand?" she asked.
+
+"Your lover, when he comes, will do that, madam," said he, and still
+he kept his eyes averted. And Osra wondered why he kept his eyes
+turned away; yet presently a faint smile curved her lips, and she
+said:
+
+"It may be you might feel it, if you were not a churchman. But I do
+not. Many men have said they loved me, and I have felt something in my
+heart--but not this!"
+
+"It will come," said the bishop.
+
+"Does it come, then, to every one?"
+
+"To most," he answered.
+
+"Heigho, will it ever come to me?" she sighed.
+
+And so they were at home. And Osra was for a long time very sorrowful
+for the fate of the lady whom the Prince of Glottenberg had loved; but
+since she saw Ludwig no more, and the joy of youth conquered her
+sadness, she ceased to mourn; and as she walked along she would wonder
+more and more what it might be, this great love that she did not feel.
+
+"For none will tell me, not even the Bishop of Modenstein," said she.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: P.A.J. DAGNAN-BOUVERET, A LIVING FRENCH PAINTER.]
+
+
+MADONNA AND CHILD IN ART.
+
+
+BY WILL H. LOW.
+
+
+When shepherds watched their flocks by night, and the angel appeared,
+bringing the tidings of good-will, a new vocation, until then unknown,
+was given to men. Tradition has it that one of the earliest of the
+followers of the Child born that night was a painter, and in the
+pictures of the primitive Dutch and Italian schools a not uncommon
+subject is St. Luke painting the Virgin and Child, while in more than
+one church in Europe the original(?) picture may be seen. Perhaps the
+most notable of these is the beautiful though quaint picture by Rogier
+van der Weyden, now in the Old Pinakothek, in Munich. And the
+tradition is a pleasant one, showing how early the services of the
+painters were enlisted in spreading abroad the new gospel of peace on
+earth.
+
+When we consider that, even stripped of divinity, the birth of a
+child, its first dawning intelligence, its flower-like tenderness of
+aspect, are one and all motives which excite the best that is in man,
+there is little wonder that the Christ-child should have been and
+should still be the best subject that a painter could demand. In many
+forms, in fact, do we of a later day and of less fervent faith
+celebrate the beauty of mother and child. How much more ardently,
+therefore, in the days when faith and the painter's craft were so
+intimately linked, have the painters approached their task. Almost
+transfigured to divinity is the woman with the child at her breast
+that shines upon us in so many galleries; quite divine in the devout
+painter's thought it was as he wrought.
+
+  "Fair shines the gilded aureole
+  In which our highest painters place
+  Some living woman's simple face."
+
+sings Rossetti; and the "highest painter," pious monk, as in the case
+of Fra Angelico, and stately courtier, as was Peter Paul Rubens,
+meet, extremes though they are, on the same ground when they approach
+this sacred subject. The pictures reproduced here, it may safely be
+said, are all celebrated, and yet they represent but a small part of
+the pictures of the same subject which are known to be by men of
+importance, and of which every museum in the world has a goodly
+number. If we add to these the pictures in private collections, and
+then take into account the tens of thousands of pictures of the same
+subject which, everywhere throughout the world, especially in Europe,
+are to be found in the churches, it is safe to say that no other
+subject has so often given its inspiration to the painter.
+
+[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD. TITIAN (ITALIAN: BORN 1477; DIED
+1576).]
+
+Nor in any other case has a subject given such variety of inspiration.
+The elements are few and simple, and though occasionally there are
+accessory figures, the concentration of interest, the reason for the
+existence of the picture, is centred on the Mother and Child. A survey
+of these pages will suffice to show that of these two principal
+elements a great variety of pictorial effect, of expression, of
+sentiment, of composition of line, and of light and shade, is
+possible. We can go back to the splendid Byzantine churches, with
+their wealth of mosaic, their subdued splendor of dulled gold covering
+arch and pillar as a background for the glow of color with which the
+artists of Constantine worked,--in a rigid convention as to form which
+gives their figures an impressive air, but which is ill-suited to the
+representation of the divine Mother and Child. Hence, in this, the
+earliest manifestation of Christian art, it is the remembrance of the
+majesty of a prophet, of the benign dignity of the mature Christ, that
+I we carry away with us. Giotto, however, had no sooner freed himself
+from the hampering conditions under which his predecessors worked,
+than we begin to feel the human element enter into art. Down through
+the centuries until to-day, the long procession of artists comes to
+us: those of Italy first of all, birthplace of modern art, land where
+time has touched everything with so reverent a hand that all has been
+rendered beautiful.
+
+[Illustration: MADONNA AND CHILD. MURILLO (SPANISH: BORN 1618?; DIED
+1682).
+
+This legion of valiant painters enlisted in the service of "that most
+noble Lady and her Son, our Lord and Seigneur," have names which sound
+sweet to the ear, as their work is goodly to the sight. Giotto, Era
+Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Gentile da Fabriano, Ghirlandajo, names like
+the beads of a rosary, commence the list, to which Botticelli,
+Perugino, Raffaello Santi, Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea del Sarto,
+Correggio, Tiziano, Veronese, and, last of all, with a name like the
+blast of a trumpet, the mighty Michael the Archangel, add their
+syllabic charm. Then the painters of more northern lands bring the
+tribute of their name and work; names less pleasing to the ear, as
+their work has less beauty to the sight, but rich, both in name and
+work, with honest intent and simple devotion.
+
+[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD, MURILLO (SPANISH: BORN 1618?; DIED
+1682).]
+
+First come the men whose names are those of their works or of their
+birthplace: Master William of Cologne, Master of the Death of Mary,
+Master of the Holy Companionship. Then the Van Eycks, Hubert and Jan,
+Rogier van der Weyden, Hugo van der Goes, Hans Memling, Quentin
+Massys, Lucas van Leyden, the two Hans Holbein, elder and younger,
+Burgkmair, Wolgemut, and then, master of them all, Albrecht Dürer.
+Something of their honesty of purpose must have been mixed with their
+pigments, for the works of these fortunate painters of the early Dutch
+and German schools shine on us to-day from the gallery walls with
+undiminished splendor; and brave with vivid reds, with blues as rich
+and deep as an organ chord, and yellows rich as the gold with which
+they embroidered their Virgin's robes, their pictures show, with
+touching lapses in some of the details, a large technical mastery,
+coupled with an intensity of sentiment which has remained
+unapproachable.
+
+[Illustration: HOLY FAMILY. NICOLAS POUSSIN (FRENCH: BORN 1594; DIED
+1665).]
+
+[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD. LANDELLE. A LIVING FRENCH PAINTER.]
+
+[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD. UNKNOWN EARLY FLEMISH PAINTER.]
+
+[Illustration: THE MADONNA WITH THE DIADEM. RAPHAEL (ITALIAN: BORN
+1483; DIED 1520).]
+
+[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD. RUBENS (FLEMISH: BORN 1577; DIED
+1640).]
+
+[Illustration: VIRGIN, INFANT JESUS, AND ST. JOHN. BOTTICELLI
+(ITALIAN: BORN 1447; DIED 1515).]
+
+[Illustration: THE REPOSE OF THE HOLY FAMILY. CANTARINI (ITALIAN: BORN
+1612; DIED 1648).]
+
+The next of these northern painters who can claim the first rank is he
+who is in some respects the greatest of all from a painter's
+standpoint, Rembrandt van Ryn. There is little of the primitive
+Italian here, little of the painter who worships his Madonna through
+the medium of his craft as some great lady, "empress of heaven and of
+earth." Rembrandt's picture, lacking this mysticism, gains, however,
+in humanity; and however far even from our modern point of view it may
+be as a creation embodying the divine Motherhood, it throbs with
+tenderness. The homely interior, the good mother, the almost pathetic
+_abandon_ of the sleeping child--surely no painter ever wrought
+better, nor, we may be sure, more devoutly!
+
+[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD. P.A.J. DAGNAN-BOUVERET, A LIVING
+FRENCH PAINTER.]
+
+Then the giant Peter Paul Rubens, with his facile brush, his acres of
+canvas, covered with the virile arabesque by which he has transmitted
+to us the record of a temperament so full of life that it needs no
+great effort of imagination, before one of his crowded canvases, to
+imagine the doughty Fleming back in our midst, and taking his place as
+Jupiter upon his painted Olympus, reawakened to life. Yet, when he in
+turn approaches this natal subject, his pagan brush touches the
+canvas lightly, and all its deftness is given to the praise of Our
+Lady and Our Lord. With him, as with the painters of all and differing
+nationalities, both Mother and Child bear the strong impress of the
+painter's surroundings. It is as though the miraculous birth had, by
+some mysterious dispensation, taken place in each of the countries of
+the world, the better to insure the comprehension of the message of
+divine love to all peoples.
+
+[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD. N. BARABINO, A LIVING ITALIAN
+PAINTER.]
+
+[Illustration: HOLY FAMILY. SIR ANTHONY VAN DYCK (FLEMISH: BORN 1599;
+DIED 1641).]
+
+[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD. CARLO DOLCI (ITALIAN: BORN 1616; DIED
+1686).]
+
+[Illustration: HOLY FAMILY. BONIFAZIO (ITALIAN: BORN 1494; DIED
+1563).]
+
+With Van Dyck, a little later, the Child is a young patrician; the
+quality of the painter's imagination, influenced by his frequentation
+of the princes of the earth, making him conceive the young Christ as a
+magnificent man-child, fit to be called later to the high places of
+the world, a serene and noble leader.
+
+Somewhat differently did the Italians of the great epoch of painting,
+Raphael, Titian, Veronese, even Bellini, who was earlier, conceive
+their subject. While both Mother and Child with them were merely what
+painters call a "bit" of painting, directly founded on close study of
+a living woman and child, there was always present a religious
+feeling, different, but almost as intense as that of the primitive
+Italian painters. Throughout the many Madonnas on which the fame of
+Raphael is founded we feel that, through a certain variety of type,
+the research was always the same--a desire to realize the maid-mother,
+and to presage, in the lineaments of the child, his future character.
+This sentiment, everywhere present, is approached reverently, and the
+too short-lived painter in his work at least utters a constant prayer.
+With Bellini, with Titian, and with Veronese the effort is not
+dissimilar, though something of the sumptuosity of Venetian life has
+crept in, and it is to a queen of earth as much as of heaven, and to a
+prince of the church temporal, that their service is rendered.
+
+[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD. N. BARABINO, A LIVING ITALIAN
+PAINTER.]
+
+In the Spanish pictures, particularly those of earlier date than any
+Spanish picture reproduced here, we feel the strong impress of the
+Church. In the picture by Alonso Cano there looks out from the eyes of
+the Mother the sentiment of the cloistered nun; and though, with the
+Murillos, we catch a glimpse of Spain outside of the Church, even with
+him there is a sense of subjection from which the memories of the
+Inquisition are not altogether absent.
+
+[Illustration: LA VIERGE AU COUSSIN VERT--MADONNA OF THE GREEN
+CUSHION. ANDREA DA SOLARIO (ITALIAN: BORN 1458; DIED 1530).]
+
+[Illustration: LA VIERGE AUX CERISES--MADONNA OF THE CHERRIES.
+ANNIBALE CARRACCI (ITALIAN: BORN 1560; DIED 1609).]
+
+[Illustration: JESUS ASLEEP. L. DESCHAMPS, A LIVING FRENCH PAINTER.]
+
+[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD. S.H. LYBAERT, A LIVING GERMAN
+PAINTER.]
+
+Our modern art has become so complex, the demands on the modern
+painter are so different from those which the older masters met, that
+our latter-day painting offers fewer examples of the Mother and Child.
+Dagnan-Bouveret, in France, however, has treated the subject in such a
+way as to show that there yet remains new presentations of the
+world-old theme. To-day the painter has to retain the sentiment of his
+subject through a network of technical difficulties, and the gracious
+virginal figure which Monsieur Dagnan-Bouveret has painted does this
+measurably well; while he has triumphed technically in painting a
+figure in white, lit by reflected light filtered through a network of
+green leaves. Another picture of the Virgin and Child, where the
+outline of the Child is seen through the cloak by which his mother
+shelters him, was exhibited not long ago in New York, and is
+reproduced here.
+
+[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD. E. VAN HOVE, A LIVING FRENCH
+PAINTER.]
+
+[Illustration: THE HOLY NIGHT. F. ROEBER, A LIVING GERMAN PAINTER.]
+
+[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD. ITALIAN SCHOOL OF THE SIXTEENTH
+CENTURY; ARTIST UNKNOWN.]
+
+[Illustration: THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI. SPAGNOLETTO (SPANISH: BORN
+1588; DIED 1656).]
+
+[Illustration: THE MADONNA OF THE TEMPI FAMILY. RAPHAEL (ITALIAN: BORN
+1483; DIED 1520).]
+
+[Illustration: HOLY FAMILY. REMBRANDT (DUTCH: BORN 1607; DIED 1669).]
+
+In Italy, sadly fallen from her former greatness in art, many painters
+render their service to the Church and to their ancient faith, and
+there are numerous pictures of the divine Mother and Child. The best
+of these, however, are characterized by novel arrangement of the
+figures rather than by any sentiment in keeping with theme--a
+criticism applicable also to most the modern French examples. Modern
+Germany gains in sentiment while losing decidedly in pictorial value,
+and it is a question whether it is possible, in these times, to avoid
+a mere repetition of what has already been so well done, and produce
+more than a picture which, with pictorial and technical qualities, is
+laboring in the messages of "peace on earth, good-will to men."
+
+[Illustration: MADONNA, INFANT JESUS, AND ST. JOHN. VOUET (FRENCH:
+BORN 1590; DIED 1649).]
+
+[Illustration: LA VIERGE À LA GRAPPE--MADONNA OF THE GRAPES. PIERRE
+MIGNARD (FRENCH: BORN 1610; DIED 1695).]
+
+[Illustration: LA VIERGE AU LAPIN--MADONNA OF THE RABBIT. TITIAN
+(ITALIAN: BORN 1477; DIED 1576).]
+
+[Illustration: THE FOND MOTHER. GABRIEL GUAY, A LIVING FRENCH
+PAINTER.]
+
+[Illustration: ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.
+
+From a photograph by Mr. Benjamin Kimball, Boston.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTERS FROM A LIFE.
+
+I.
+
+BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS,
+
+Author of "The Gates Ajar," "The Madonna of the Tubs," etc.
+
+
+Has it not been said that once in a lifetime most of us succumb to the
+particular situation against which we have cultivated the strongest
+principles? If there be one such, among the possibilities to which a
+truly civilized career is liable, more than another objectionable to
+the writer of these words, the creation of autobiography has long been
+that one.
+
+Yet, for that offence, once criminal to my taste, I find myself hereby
+about to become indictable; and do set my hand and seal, on this day
+of the recall of my dearest literary oath, in this year of eminent
+autobiographical examples, one thousand eight hundred and ninety-five.
+
+"There is ----, who has written a charming series of personal
+reminiscences, and ---- ----, and ----.
+
+"You might meet your natural shrinking by allowing yourself to treat
+especially of your literary life; including, of course, whatever went
+to form and sustain it."
+
+"I suppose I _might_," I sigh. The answer is faint; but the deed is
+decreed. Shall I be sorry for it?
+
+It is a gray day, on gray Cape Ann, as I write these words. The fog is
+breathing over the downs. The outside steamers shriek from off the
+Point, as they feel their way at live of noon, groping as though it
+were dead of night, and stars and coast-lights all were smitten dark,
+and every pilot were a stranger to his chart.
+
+A stranger to my chart, I, doubtful, put about, and make the untried
+coast.
+
+At such a moment, one thinks wistfully of that fair, misty world which
+is all one's own, yet on the outside of which one stands so humbly,
+and so gently. One thinks of the unseen faces, of the unknown friends
+who have read one's tales of other people's lives, and cared to read,
+and told one so, and made one believe in their kindness, and affection
+and fidelity for thirty years. And the hesitating heart calls out to
+them: Will _you_ let me be sorry? Thirty years! It is a good while
+that you and I have kept step together. Shall we miss it now? If _you_
+will care to hear such chapters as may select themselves from the
+story of the story-teller,--you have the oldest right to choose, and
+I, the happy will to please you if I can.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The lives of the makers of books are very much like other people's in
+most respects, but especially in this: that they are either rebels to,
+or subjects of, their ancestry. The lives of some literary persons
+begin a good while after they are born. Others begin a good while
+before.
+
+Of this latter kind is mine.
+
+It has sometimes occurred to me to find myself the possessor of a sort
+of unholy envy of writers concerning whom our stout American phrase
+says that they have "made themselves." What delight to be aware that
+one has not only created one's work, but the worker! What elation in
+the remembrance of the battle against a commercial, or a scientific,
+or a worldly and superficial heredity; in the recollection of the tug
+with habit and education, and the overthrow of impulses setting in
+other directions than the chosen movement of one's own soul!
+
+What pleasure in the proud knowledge that all one's success is one's
+own doing, and the sum of it cast up to one's credit upon the long
+ledger of life! To this exhilarating self-content I can lay no claim.
+For whatever measure of what is called success has fallen to my lot, I
+can ask no credit. I find myself in the chastened position of one
+whose literary abilities all belong to one's ancestors.
+
+It is humbling--I do not deny that it may be morally invigorating--to
+feel that whatever is "worth mentioning" in my life is no affair of
+mine, but falls under the beautiful and terrible law by which the dead
+men and women whose blood bounds in our being control our destinies.
+
+Yet, with the notable exception of my father, I have less than the
+usual store of personal acquaintance with the "people who most
+influenced me." Of my grandfather, Moses Stuart, I have but two
+recollections; and these, taken together, may not be quite devoid of
+interest, as showing how the law of selection works in the mind of an
+imaginative child.
+
+I remember seeing the Professor of Sacred Literature come into his
+dining-room one morning in his old house on Andover Hill which was
+built for him, and marked the creation of his department in the early
+days of the seminary history. He looked very tall and imposing. He had
+a mug in his hand, and his face smiled like the silver of which it was
+made.
+
+The mug was full of milk, and he handed it ceremoniously to the
+year-old baby, his namesake and grandson, my first brother, whose
+high-chair stood at the table.
+
+Then, I remember--it must have been a little more than a year after
+that--seeing the professor in his coffin in the front hall; that he
+looked taller than he did before, but still imposing; that he had his
+best coat on--the one, I think, in which he preached; and that he was
+the first dead person I had ever seen.
+
+Whenever the gray-headed men who knew him used to sit about, relating
+anecdotes of him--as, how many commentaries he published, or how he
+introduced the first German lexicon into this country (as if a girl in
+short dresses would be absorbingly interested in her grandfather's
+dictionaries!)--I saw the silver mug and the coffin.
+
+Gradually the German lexicon in a hazy condition got melted in between
+them. Sometimes the baby's mug sat upon the dictionary. Sometimes the
+dictionary lay upon the coffin. Sometimes the baby spilled the milk
+out of the mug upon the dictionary. But for my personal uses, the
+Andover grandfather's memoirs began and ended with the mug and the
+coffin.
+
+The other grandfather was not distinguished as a scholar; he was but
+an orthodox minister of ability and originality, and with a vivacious
+personal history. Of him I knew something. From his own lips came
+thrilling stories of his connection with the underground railway of
+slavery days; how he sent the sharpest carving-knife in the house,
+concealed in a basket of food, to a hidden fugitive slave who had
+vowed never to be taken alive, and whose master had come North in
+search of him. It was a fine thing, that throbbing humanity, which
+could in those days burst the reformer out of the evangelical husk,
+and I learned my lesson from it. ("Where _did_ she get it?"
+conservative friends used to wail, whenever I was seen to have tumbled
+into the last new and unfashionable reform.)
+
+From his own lips, too, I heard the accounts of that extraordinary
+case of house-possession of which (like Wesley) this innocent and
+unimaginative country minister, who had no more faith in "spooks" than
+he had in Universalists, was made the astonished victim.
+
+Night upon night I have crept gasping to bed, and shivered for hours
+with my head under the clothes, after an evening spent in listening to
+this authentic and fantastic family tale. How the candlesticks walked
+out into the air from the mantelpiece, and back again; how the chairs
+of skeptical visitors collected from all parts of the country to study
+what one had hardly then begun to call the "phenomena" at the
+parsonage at Stratford, Connecticut, hopped after the guests when they
+crossed the room; how the dishes at the table leaped, and the silver
+forks were bent by unseen hands, and cold turnips dropped from the
+solid ceiling; and ghastly images were found, composed of
+underclothing proved to have been locked at the time in drawers of
+which the only key lay all the while in Dr. Phelps's pocket; and how
+the mysterious agencies, purporting by alphabetical raps upon bed-head
+or on table to be in torments of the nether world, being asked what
+their host could do to relieve them, demanded a piece of squash pie.
+
+From the old man's own calm hands, within a year or two of his death,
+I received the legacy of the written journal of these phenomena, as
+recorded by the victim from day to day, during the seven months that
+this mysterious misfortune dwelt within his house.
+
+It may be prudent to say, just here, that it will be quite useless to
+make any further inquiries of me upon the subject, or to ask of me--a
+request which has been repeated till I am fain to put an end to
+it--for either loan or copy of these records for the benefit of either
+personal or scientific curiosity. Both loaning and copying are now
+impossible, and have been made so by family wishes which will be
+sacredly respected. The phenomena themselves have long been too widely
+known to be ignored, and I have no hesitation in making reference to
+them.
+
+[Illustration: ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS, HER MOTHER, AND HER INFANT
+BROTHER. AFTERWARDS PROFESSOR M. STUART PHELPS.]
+
+Perhaps it is partly on account of the traditions respecting this bit
+of family history that I am so often asked if I am a spiritualist. I
+am sometimes tempted to reply in grammar comprehensible to the writers
+of certain letters which I receive upon the subject:
+
+"No; nor none of our folks!"
+
+How the Connecticut parson on whom this mysterious infliction fell
+ever came out of it _not_ a spiritualist, who can tell? That the
+phenomena were facts, and facts explicable by no known natural law, he
+was forced, like others in similar positions, to believe and admit.
+That he should study the subject of spiritualism carefully from then
+until the end of his life, was inevitable.
+
+But, as nearly as I can make it out, on the whole, he liked his Bible
+better.
+
+Things like these did not happen on Andover Hill; and my talks with
+this very interesting grandfather gave me my first vivid sensation of
+the possibilities of life.
+
+With what thrills of hope and fear I listened for thumps on the head
+of my bed, or watched anxiously to see my candlestick walk out into
+the air!
+
+But not a thump! Not a rap! Never a snap of the weakest proportions
+(not explicable by natural laws) has, from that day to this, visited
+my personal career. Not a candlestick ever walked an inch for me. I
+have never been able to induce a chair to hop after me. No turnip has
+consented to drop from the ceiling for me. Planchette, in her day,
+wrote hundreds of lines for me, but never one that was of the
+slightest possible significance to me, or to the universe at large.
+Never did a medium tell me anything that ever came to pass; though one
+of them once made a whole winter miserable by prophesying a death
+which did not occur.
+
+Being destitute of objections to belief in the usefulness of
+spiritualistic mystery,--in fact, by temperament, perhaps inclining to
+hope that such phenomena may be tamed and yoked, and made to work for
+human happiness,--yet there seems to be something about me which these
+agencies do not find congenial. Though I have gone longing for a sign,
+no sign has been given me. Though I have been always ready to believe
+all other people's mysteries, no inexplicable facts have honored my
+experience.
+
+The only personal prophecy ever strictly fulfilled in my life was--I
+am not certain whether I ought to feel embarrassed in alluding to
+it--made by a gipsy fortune-teller. She was young and pretty, the
+seventh child of a seventh child, and she lived in a Massachusetts
+shoe-town by the name of Lynn. And what was it? Oh, but you must
+excuse me.
+
+The grandfather to whom these marvels happened was not, as I say, a
+literary man; yet even he did write a little book--a religious tale,
+or tract, after the manner of his day and profession; and it took to
+itself a circulation of two hundred thousand copies. I remember how
+Mr. James T. Fields laughed when he heard of it--that merry laugh
+peculiar to himself.
+
+"You can't help it," the publisher said; "you come of a family of
+large circulations."
+
+One day I was at school with my brother,--a little, private school,
+down by what were called the English dormitories in Andover.
+
+I was eight years old. Some one came in and whispered to the teacher.
+Her face turned very grave, and she came up to us quietly, and called
+us out into the entry, and gently put on our things.
+
+"You are to go home," she said; "your mother is dead." I took my
+little brother's hand without a word, and we trudged off. I do not
+think we spoke--I am sure we did not cry--on the way home. I remember
+perfectly that we were very gayly dressed. Our mother liked bright,
+almost barbaric colors on children. The little boy's coat was of red
+broadcloth, and my cape of a canary yellow, dyed at home in white-oak
+dye. The two colors flared before my eyes as we shuffled along and
+crushed the crisp, dead leaves that were tossing in the autumn wind
+all over Andover Hill.
+
+When we got home they told us it was a mistake; she was not dead; and
+we were sent back to school. But, in a few weeks after that, one day
+we were told we need not go to school at all; the red and yellow coats
+came off, and little black ones took their places. The new baby, in
+his haggard father's arms, was baptized at his mother's funeral; and
+we looked on, and wondered what it all meant, and what became of
+children whose mother was obliged to go to heaven when she seemed so
+necessary in Andover.
+
+At eight years of age a child cannot be expected to know her mother
+intimately, and it is hard for me always to distinguish between the
+effect produced upon me by her literary success as I have since
+understood it, and that left by her own truly extraordinary
+personality upon the annals of the nursery.
+
+[Illustration: PROFESSOR PHELPS'S HOUSE AT ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS, THE
+HOUSE IN WHICH ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WAS REARED.]
+
+My mother, whose name I am proud to wear, was the eldest daughter of
+Professor Stuart, and inherited his intellectuality. At the time of
+her death she was at the first blossom of her very positive and
+widely-promising success as a writer of the simple home stories which
+took such a hold upon the popular heart. Her "Sunnyside" had already
+reached a circulation of one hundred thousand copies, and she was
+following it fast--too fast--by other books for which the critics and
+the publishers clamored. Her last book and her last baby came
+together, and killed her. She lived one of those rich and piteous
+lives such as only gifted women know; torn by the civil war of the
+dual nature which can be given to women only. It was as natural for
+her daughter to write as to breathe; but it was impossible for her
+daughter to forget that a woman of intellectual power could be the
+most successful of mothers.
+
+[Illustration: PROFESSOR AUSTIN PHELPS, FATHER OF ELIZABETH STUART
+PHELPS.
+
+From an early photograph.]
+
+"Everybody's mother is a remarkable woman," my father used to say when
+he read overdrawn memoirs indited by devout children; and yet I have
+sometimes felt as if even the generation that knows her not would feel
+a certain degree of interest in the tact and power by which this
+unusual woman achieved the difficult reconciliation between genius and
+domestic life.
+
+In our times and to our women such a problem is practical, indeed. One
+need not possess genius to understand it now. A career is enough.
+
+The author of "Sunnyside," "The Angel on the Right Shoulder," and
+"Peep at Number Five," lived before women had careers and public
+sympathy in them. Her nature was drawn against the grain of her times
+and of her circumstances; and where our feet find easy walking, hers
+were hedged. A child's memories go for something by way of tribute to
+the achievement of one of those rare women of the elder time whose
+gifts forced her out, but whose heart held her in.
+
+I can remember no time when I did not understand that my mother must
+write books because people would have and read them; but I cannot
+remember one hour in which her children needed her and did not find
+her.
+
+My first distinct vision of this kind of a mother gives her by the
+nursery lamp, reading to us her own stories, written for ourselves,
+never meant to go beyond that little public of two, and illustrated in
+colored crayons by her own pencil. For her gift in this direction was
+of an original quality, and had she not been a writer she must have
+achieved something as an artist.
+
+Perhaps it was to keep the standards up, and a little girl's filial
+adoration down, that these readings ended with some classic--Wordsworth,
+I remember most often--"We are Seven," or "Lucy Gray."
+
+[Illustration: ELM ARCH, ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS.]
+
+It is certain that I very early had the conviction that a mother was a
+being of power and importance to the world; but that the world had no
+business with her when we wanted her. In a word, she was a strong and
+lovely symmetry--a woman whose heart had not enfeebled her head, but
+whose head could never freeze her heart.
+
+I hardly know which of those charming ways in which I learned to spell
+the word motherhood impressed me most. All seemed to go on together
+side by side and step by step. Now she sits correcting proof-sheets,
+and now she is painting apostles for the baby's first Bible lesson.
+Now she is writing her new book, and now she is dyeing things
+canary-yellow in the white-oak dye--for the professor's salary is
+small, and a crushing economy was in those days one of the conditions
+of faculty life on Andover Hill. Now--for her practical ingenuity was
+unlimited--she is whittling little wooden feet to stretch the
+children's stockings on, to save them from shrinking; and now she is
+reading to us from the old, red copy of Hazlitt's "British Poets," by
+the register, upon a winter night. Now she is a popular writer,
+incredulous of her first success, with her future flashing before her;
+and now she is a tired, tender mother, crooning to a sick child, while
+the MS. lies unprinted on the table, and the publishers are wishing
+their professor's wife were a free woman, childless and solitary, able
+to send copy as fast as it is wanted. The struggle killed her, but she
+fought till she fell.
+
+In these different days, when,
+
+  "Pealing, the clock of time
+  Has struck the Woman's Hour,"
+
+[Illustration: THE REV. DR. E. PHELPS, GRANDFATHER OF ELIZABETH
+STUART PHELPS.]
+
+I have sometimes been glad, as my time came to face the long question
+which life puts to-day to all women who think and feel, and who care
+for other women and are loyal to them, that I had those early visions
+of my own to look upon.
+
+When I was learning why the sun rose and the moon set, how the flowers
+grew and the rain fell, that God and heaven and art and letters
+existed, that it was intelligent to say one's prayers, and that
+well-bred children never told a lie, I learned that a mother can be
+strong and still be sweet, and sweet although she is strong; and that
+she whom the world and her children both have need of, is of more
+value to each, for this very reason.
+
+I said it was impossible to be her daughter and not to write. Rather,
+I should say, impossible to be _their_ daughter and not to have
+something to say, and a pen to say it.
+
+The comparatively recent close of my father's life has not left him
+yet forgotten, and it can hardly be necessary for me to do more than
+to refer to the name of Austin Phelps to recall to that part of our
+public which knew and loved him the quality of his work.
+
+"The Still Hour" is yet read, and there are enough who remember how
+widely this book has been known and loved, and how marked was the
+literary gift in all the professor's work.
+
+It has fallen to me otherwise to say so much of my peculiar
+indebtedness to my father, that I shall forbid myself, and spare my
+reader, too much repetition of a loving credit which it would not be
+possible altogether to omit from this chapter.
+
+He who becomes father and mother in one to motherless children, bears
+a burden which men shirk or stagger under; and there was not a
+shirking cell in his brain or heart.
+
+As I have elsewhere said: "There was hardly a chapter in my life of
+which he was not in some sense, whether revealed or concealed, the
+hero."
+
+"If I am asked to sum in a few words the vivid points of his
+influence, I find it as hard to give definite form to my indebtedness
+to the Christian scholar whose daughter it is my honor to be, as to
+specify the particulars in which one responds to sunshine or oxygen.
+He was my climate. As soon as I began to think, I began to reverence
+thought and study and the hard work of a man devoted to the high ends
+of a scholar's life. His department was that of rhetoric, and his
+appreciation of the uses and graces of language very early descended
+like a mantle upon me. I learned to read and to love reading, not
+because I was made to, but because I could not help it. It was the
+atmosphere I breathed."
+
+"Day after day the watchful girl observed the life of a student--its
+scholarly tastes, its high ideals, its scorn of worldliness and paltry
+aims or petty indulgences, and forever its magnificent habits of
+_work_."
+
+"At sixteen, I remember, there came to me a distinct arousing or
+awakening to the intellectual life. As I look back, I see it in a
+flash-light. Most of the important phases or crises of our lives can
+be traced to some one influence or event, and this one I connect
+directly with the reading to me by my father of the writings of De
+Quincey and the poems of Wordsworth. Every one who has ever heard him
+preach or lecture remembers the rare quality of Professor Phelps's
+voice. As a pulpit orator he was one of the few, and to hear him read
+in his own study was an absorbing experience. To this day I cannot put
+myself outside of certain pages of the laureate or the essayist. I do
+not read; I listen. The great lines beginning:
+
+  "'Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
+  Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears;'
+
+the great passage which opens: 'Then like a chorus the passion
+deepened,' and which rises to the aching cry: 'Everlasting
+farewells!... Everlasting farewells!' ring in my ears as they left his
+lips."
+
+For my first effort to sail the sea of letters, it occurs to me that I
+ought to say that my father's literary reputation cannot be held
+responsible.
+
+I had reached (to take a step backwards in the story) the mature age
+of thirteen. I was a little girl in low-necked gingham dresses, I
+know, because I remember I had on one (of a purple shade, and
+incredibly unbecoming to a half-grown, brunette girl) one evening when
+my first gentleman caller came to see me.
+
+I felt that the fact that he was my Sunday-school teacher detracted
+from the importance of the occasion, but did not extinguish it.
+
+It was perhaps half-past eight, and, obediently to law and gospel, I
+had gone upstairs.
+
+The actual troubles of life have never dulled my sense of
+mortification at overhearing from my little room at the head of the
+stairs, where I was struggling to get into that gingham gown and
+present a tardy appearance, a voice distinctly excusing me on the
+ground that it was past her usual bedtime, and she had gone to bed.
+
+Whether the anguish of that occasion so far aged me that it had
+anything to do with my first literary undertaking, I cannot say; but I
+am sure about the low-necked gingham dress, and that it was during
+this particular year that I determined to become an individual and
+contribute to the "Youth's Companion."
+
+I did so. My contribution was accepted and paid for by the appearance
+in my father's post-office box of the paper for a year; and my
+impression is that I wore high-necked dresses pretty soon thereafter,
+and was allowed to sit up till nine o'clock. At any rate, these
+memorable events are distinctly intertwined in my mind.
+
+This was in the days when even the "Companion," that oldest and most
+delightful of children's journals, printed things like these:
+
+   "_Why Julia B. loved the Country_.
+
+   "Julia B. loved the country because whenever she walked out she
+   could see God in the face of Nature."
+
+I really think that the semi-column which I sent to that distinguished
+paper was a tone or two above this. But I can remember nothing about
+it, except that there was a sister who neglected her little brothers,
+and hence defeated the first object of existence in a woman-child. It
+was very proper, and very pious, and very much like what
+well-brought-up little girls were taught to do, to be, to suffer, or
+to write in those days. I have often intended to ask Mr. Ford if the
+staff discovered any signs of literary promise in that funny little
+performance.
+
+At all events, my literary ambitions, with this solitary exercise,
+came to a sudden suspension. I have no recollection of having written
+or of having wanted to write anything more for a long time.
+
+I was not in the least a precocious young person, and very much of a
+tomboy into the bargain. I think I was far more likely to have been
+found on the top of an apple-tree or walking the length of the
+seminary fence than writing rhymes or reading "solid reading." I know
+that I was once told by a queer old man in the street that little
+girls should not walk fences, and that I stood still and looked at
+him, transfixed with contempt. I do not think I vouchsafed him any
+answer at all. But this must have been while I was still in the little
+gingham gowns.
+
+Perhaps this is the place, if anywhere, to mention the next experiment
+at helping along the literature of my native land of which I have any
+recollection. There was another little contribution--a pious little
+contribution, like the first. Where it was written, or what it was
+about, or where it was printed, it is impossible to remember; but I
+know that it appeared in some extremely orthodox young people's
+periodical--I think, one with a missionary predilection. The point of
+interest I find to have been that I was paid for it.
+
+With the exception of some private capital amassed by abstaining from
+butter (a method of creating a fortune of whose wisdom, I must say, I
+had the same doubts then that I have now), this was the first money I
+had ever earned. The sum was two dollars and a half. It became my
+immediate purpose not to squander this wealth. I had no spending money
+in particular that I recall. Three cents a week was, I believe, for
+years the limit of my personal income, and I am compelled to own that
+this sum was not expended at book-stalls, or for the benefit of the
+heathen who appealed to the generosity of professors' daughters
+through the treasurer of the chapel Sunday-school; but went solidly
+for cream cakes and apple turnovers alternately, one each week.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE WESTERN WINDOW OF THE STUDY IN PROFESSOR
+AUSTIN PHELPS'S HOUSE, ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS.]
+
+Two dollars and a half represented to me a standard of munificent
+possession which it would be difficult to make most girls in their
+first teens, and socially situated today as I was then, understand. To
+waste this fortune in riotous living was impossible. From the hour
+that I received that check for "two-fifty," cream cakes began to wear
+a juvenile air, and turnovers seemed unworthy of my position in life.
+I remember begging to be allowed to invest the sum "in pictures," and
+that my father, gently diverting my selection from a frowsy and
+popular "Hope" at whose memory I shudder even yet, induced me to find
+that I preferred some excellent photographs of Thorwaldsen's "Night"
+and "Morning," which he framed for me, and which hang in our rooms
+to-day.
+
+It is impossible to forget the sense of dignity which marks the hour
+when one becomes a wage-earner. The humorous side of it is the least
+of it--or was in my case. I felt that I had suddenly acquired
+value--to myself, to my family, and to the world.
+
+Probably all people who write "for a living" would agree with me in
+recalling the first check as the largest and most luxurious of life.
+
+
+
+
+THE UNDERSTUDY.
+
+
+BY ROBERT BARR,
+
+Author of "In the Midst of Alarms," "A Typewritten Letter," etc.
+
+
+The monarch in the Arabian story had an ointment which, put upon his
+right eye, enabled him to see through the walls of houses. If the
+Arabian despot had passed along a narrow street leading into a main
+thoroughfare of London one night, just before the clock struck twelve,
+he would have beheld, in a dingy back room of a large building, a very
+strange sight. He would have seen King Charles the First seated in
+friendly converse with none other than Oliver Cromwell.
+
+The room in which these two noted people sat had no carpet and but few
+chairs. A shelf extended along one side of the apartment, and it was
+covered with mugs containing paint and grease. Brushes were littered
+about, and a wig lay in a corner. Two mirrors stood at each end of the
+shelf, and beside them flared two gas jets protected by wire baskets.
+Hanging from nails driven in the walls were coats, waistcoats, and
+trousers of more modern cut than the costumes worn by the two men.
+
+King Charles, with his pointed beard and his ruffles of lace, leaned
+picturesquely back in his chair, which rested against the wall. He was
+smoking a very black briar-root pipe, and perhaps his Majesty enjoyed
+the weed all the more that there was just above his head, tacked to
+the wall, a large placard containing the words, "No smoking allowed in
+this room, or in any other part of the theatre."
+
+Cromwell, in more sober garments, had an even jauntier attitude than
+the king; for he sat astride the chair, with his chin resting on the
+back of it, smoking a cigarette in a meerschaum holder.
+
+"I'm too old, my boy," said the king, "and too fond of my comfort.
+Besides, I have no longer any ambition. When an actor once realizes
+that he will never be a Charles Kean or a Macready, then comes peace
+and the enjoyment of life. Now, with you it is different; you are, if
+I may say so in deep affection, young and foolish. Your project is a
+most hair-brained scheme. You are throwing away all you have already
+won."
+
+"Good gracious!" cried Cromwell, impatiently, "what have I won?"
+
+"You have certainly won something," resumed the elder, calmly, "when a
+person of your excitable nature can play so well the sombre, taciturn
+character of Cromwell. You have mounted several rounds, and the whole
+ladder lifts itself up before you. You have mastered several
+languages, while I know but one, and that imperfectly. You have
+studied the foreign drama, while I have not even read all the plays of
+Shakespeare. I can do a hundred parts conventionally well. You will,
+some day, do a great part as no other man on earth will do it, and
+then fame will come to you. Now you propose recklessly to throw all
+this away and go into the wilds of Africa."
+
+"The particular ladder you offer to me," said Cromwell, "I have no
+desire to climb; I am sick of the smell of the footlights and the
+whole atmosphere of the theatre. I am tired of the unreality of the
+life we lead. Why not be a hero, instead of mimicking one?"
+
+"But, my dear boy," said the king, filling his pipe again, "look at
+the practical side of things. It costs a fortune to fit out an African
+expedition. Where are you to get the money?"
+
+This question sounded more natural from the lips of the king than did
+the answer from the lips of Cromwell.
+
+"There has been too much force and too much expenditure about African
+travel. I do not intend to cross the continent with arms and the
+munitions of war. As you remarked a while ago, I know several European
+languages, and if you will forgive what sounds like boasting, I may
+say that I have a gift for picking up tongues. I have money enough to
+fit myself out with some necessary scientific instruments, and to pay
+my passage to the coast. Once there, I will win my way across the
+continent through love and not through fear."
+
+[Illustration: IT WAS A YEAR AFTER THE DISAPPEARANCE THAT A WAN LIVING
+SKELETON STAGGERED OUT OF THE WILDERNESS IN AFRICA.]
+
+"You will lose your head," said King Charles; "they don't understand
+that sort of thing out there, and, besides, the idea is not original.
+Didn't Livingstone try that tack?"
+
+"Yes, but people have forgotten Livingstone and his methods. It is now
+the explosive bullet and the elephant gun. I intend to learn the
+language of the different native tribes I meet, and if a chief opposes
+me, and will not allow me to pass through his territory, and if I find
+I cannot win him over to my side by persuasive talk, then I will go
+around."
+
+"And what is to be the outcome of it all?" cried Charles. "What is
+your object?"
+
+"Fame, my boy, fame," cried Cromwell enthusiastically, flinging the
+chair from under him and pacing the narrow room.
+
+"If I can get from coast to coast without taking the life of a single
+native, won't that be something greater to have done than all the
+play-acting from now till doomsday?"
+
+"I suppose it will," said the king gloomily; "but you must remember
+you are the only friend I have, and I have reached an age when a man
+does not pick up friends readily."
+
+Cromwell stopped in his walk, and grasped the king by the arm. "And
+are not you the only friend I have?" he said. "And why can you not
+abandon this ghastly sham and come with me, as I asked you to at
+first? How can you hesitate when you think of the glorious freedom of
+the African forest, and compare it with this cribbed, and cabined, and
+confined business we are now at?"
+
+The king shook his head slowly, and knocked the ashes from his pipe.
+He seemed to have some trouble in keeping it alight, probably because
+of the prohibition on the wall.
+
+"As I said before," replied the king, "I am too old. There are no
+'pubs' in the African forest where a man can get a glass of beer when
+he wants it. No, Ormond, African travel is not for me. If you are
+resolved to go--go, and God bless you; I will stay at home and
+carefully nurse your fame. I will from time to time drop appetizing
+little paragraphs into the papers about your wanderings, and when you
+are ready to come back to England, all England will be ready to listen
+to you. You know how interest is worked up in the theatrical business
+by judicious puffing in the papers, and I imagine African exploration
+requires much the same treatment. If it were not for the press, my
+boy, you could explore Africa till you were blind and nobody would
+hear a word about it; so I will be your advance agent, and make ready
+for your home coming."
+
+At this point in the conversation between these two historical
+characters, the janitor of the theatre put his head into the room and
+reminded the celebrities that it was very late; whereupon both king
+and commoner rose with some reluctance and washed themselves--the king
+becoming, when he put on the ordinary dress of an Englishman, Mr.
+James Spence, while Cromwell, after a similar transformation, became
+Mr. Sidney Ormond; and thus, with nothing of royalty or dictatorship
+about them, the two strolled up the narrow street into the main
+thoroughfare, and entered their favorite midnight restaurant, where,
+over a belated meal, they continued the discussion of the African
+project, which Spence persisted in looking upon as one of the maddest
+expeditions that had ever come to his knowledge. But the talk was
+futile--as most talk is--and within a month from that time Ormond was
+on the ocean, headed for Africa.
+
+Another man took Ormond's place at the theatre, and Spence continued
+to play his part, as the papers said, in his usual acceptable manner.
+He heard from his friend, in due course, when he landed. Then at
+intervals came one or two letters showing how he had surmounted the
+unusual difficulties he had to contend with. After a long interval
+came a letter from the interior of Africa, sent to the coast by
+messenger. Although at the beginning of this letter Ormond said he had
+but faint hope of reaching his destination, he nevertheless gave a
+very complete account of his wanderings and his dealings with the
+natives; and up to that point his journey seemed to be most
+satisfactory. He enclosed several photographs, mostly very bad ones,
+which he had managed to develop and print in the wilderness. One,
+however, of himself was easily recognizable, and Spence had it copied
+and enlarged, hanging the framed enlargement in whatever dressing-room
+fate assigned to him, for Spence never had a long engagement at any
+one theatre. He was a useful man who could take any part, but had no
+specialty, and London was full of such.
+
+For a long time he heard nothing from his friend; and the newspaper
+men to whom Spence indefatigably furnished interesting items about the
+lone explorer began to look upon Ormond as an African Mrs. Harris, and
+the paragraphs, to Spence's deep regret, failed to appear. The
+journalists, who were a flippant lot, used to accost Spence with,
+"Well, Jimmy, how's your African friend?" and the more he tried to
+convince them the less they believed in the peace-loving traveller.
+
+At last there came a final letter from Africa, a letter that filled
+the tender middle-aged heart of Spence with the deepest grief he had
+ever known. It was written in a shaky hand, and the writer began by
+saying that he knew neither the date nor his locality. He had been ill
+and delirious with fever, and was now at last in his right mind, but
+felt the grip of death upon him. The natives had told him that no one
+ever recovered from the malady he had caught in the swamp, and his own
+feelings led him to believe that his case was hopeless. The natives
+had been very kind to him throughout, and his followers had promised
+to bring his boxes to the coast. The boxes contained the collections
+he had made and also his complete journal, which he had written up to
+the day he became ill.
+
+Ormond begged his friend to hand over his belongings to the
+Geographical Society, and to arrange for the publication of his
+journal, if possible. It might secure for him the fame he had died to
+achieve, or it might not; but, he added, he left the whole conduct of
+the affair unreservedly to his friend, on whom he bestowed that love
+and confidence which a man gives to another man but once in his life,
+and then when he is young. The tears were in Jimmy's eyes long before
+he had finished the letter.
+
+He turned to another letter he had received by the same mail as
+Ormond's and which also bore the South African stamp upon it. Hoping
+to find some news of his friend, he broke the seal, but it was merely
+an intimation from the steamship company that half a dozen boxes
+remained at the southern terminus of the line addressed to him; but,
+they said, until they were assured the freight upon them to
+Southampton would be paid, they would not be forwarded.
+
+A day or two after, the London papers announced in large type,
+"Mysterious Disappearance of an Actor." The well-known actor, Mr.
+James Spence, had left the theatre in which he had been playing the
+part of Joseph to a great actor's Richelieu, and had not since been
+heard of. The janitor remembered him leaving that night, for he had
+not returned his salutation, which was most unusual. His friends had
+noticed that for a few days previous to his disappearance he had been
+apparently in deep dejection, and fears were entertained. One
+journalist said jestingly that probably Jimmy had gone to see what had
+become of his African friend; but the joke, such as it was, was not
+favorably received, for when a man is called Jimmy until late in life
+it shows that people have an affection for him, and every one who knew
+Spence was sorry that he had disappeared, and hoped that no evil had
+overtaken him.
+
+It was a year after the disappearance that a wan living skeleton
+staggered out of the wilderness in Africa, and blindly groped his way
+to the coast, as a man might who had lived long in darkness, and found
+the light too strong for his eyes. He managed to reach a port, and
+there took steamer homeward-bound for Southampton. The sea-breezes
+revived him somewhat, but it was evident to all the passengers that he
+had passed through a desperate illness. It was just a toss-up whether
+he could live until he saw England again. It was impossible to guess
+at his age, so heavy a hand had disease laid upon him; and he did not
+seem to care to make acquaintances, but kept much to himself, sitting
+wrapped up in his chair, gazing with a tired-out look at the green
+ocean.
+
+A young girl often sat in the chair beside him, ostensibly reading,
+but more often glancing sympathetically at the wan figure beside her.
+Frequently she seemed about to speak to him, but apparently hesitated
+about doing so, for the man took no notice of his fellow-passengers.
+At length, however, she mustered up courage to address him, and said:
+"There is a good story in this magazine--perhaps you would like to
+read it."
+
+He turned his eyes from the sea, and rested them vacantly upon her
+face for a moment. His dark mustache added to the pallor of his face,
+but did not conceal the faint smile that came to his lips; he had
+heard her but had not understood.
+
+"What did you say?" he asked gently.
+
+"I said there was a good story here entitled 'Author, Author!' and I
+thought you might like to read it;" and the girl blushed very prettily
+as she said this, for the man looked younger than he had before he
+smiled.
+
+"I am not sure," said the man slowly, "that I have not forgotten how
+to read. It is a long time since I have seen a book or a magazine.
+Won't you tell me the story? I would much rather hear it from you than
+make the attempt to read it myself in the magazine."
+
+"Oh," she cried breathlessly, "I'm not sure that I could tell it--at
+any rate, not as well as the author tells it; but I will read it to
+you if you like."
+
+The story was about a man who had written a play, and who thought, as
+every playwright thinks, that it was a great addition to the drama,
+and would bring him fame and fortune. He took this play to a London
+manager, but heard nothing from it for a long time, and at last it was
+returned to him. Then, on going to a first night at the theatre to see
+a new tragedy which this manager called his own, he was amazed to see
+his rejected play, with certain changes, produced upon the stage; and
+when the cry arose for "Author, Author!" he rose in his place; but
+illness and privation had done their work, and he died proclaiming
+himself the author of the play.
+
+"Ah," said the man when the reading was finished, "I cannot tell you
+how much the story has interested me. I once was an actor myself, and
+anything pertaining to the stage interests me, although it is years
+since I saw a theatre. It must be hard luck to work for fame and then
+be cheated out of it, as was the man in the tale; but I suppose it
+sometimes happens--although, for the honesty of human nature, I hope
+not very often."
+
+"Did you act under your own name, or did you follow the fashion so
+many of the profession adopt?" asked the girl, evidently interested
+when he spoke of the theatre.
+
+The young man laughed, for perhaps the first time on the voyage. "Oh,"
+he answered, "I was not at all noted. I acted only in minor parts and
+always under my own name, which, doubtless, you have never heard; it
+is Sidney Ormond."
+
+"What!" cried the girl in amazement, "not Sidney Ormond, the African
+traveller?"
+
+The young man turned his wan face and large, melancholy eyes upon his
+questioner.
+
+"I am certainly Sidney Ormond, an African traveller, but I don't think
+I deserve the '_the_,' you know. I don't imagine any one has heard of
+me through my travelling any more than through my acting."
+
+"The Sidney Ormond I mean," she said, "went through Africa without
+firing a shot; his book, 'A Mission of Peace,' has been such a success
+both in England and America. But of course you cannot be he, for I
+remember that Sidney Ormond is now lecturing in England to tremendous
+audiences all over the country. The Royal Geographical Society has
+given him medals or degrees, or something of that sort--but I believe
+it was Oxford that gave the degree. I am sorry I haven't his book with
+me; it would be sure to interest you. But some one on board is almost
+certain to have it, and I will try to get it for you. I gave mine to a
+friend in Cape Town. What a funny thing it is that the two names
+should be exactly the same!"
+
+"It is very strange," said Ormond gloomily; and his eyes again sought
+the horizon, and he seemed to relapse into his usual melancholy.
+
+The girl left her seat, saying she would try to find the book, and
+left him there meditating. When she came back after the lapse of half
+an hour or so she found him sitting just as she had left him, with his
+sad eyes on the sad sea. The girl had a volume in her hand. "There,"
+she said, "I knew there would be a copy on board, but I am more
+bewildered than ever; the frontispiece is an exact portrait of you,
+only you are dressed differently and do not look"--the girl
+hesitated--"so ill as when you came on board."
+
+Ormond looked up at the girl with a smile, and said:
+
+"You might say with truth, so ill as I look now."
+
+"Oh, the voyage has done you good. You look ever so much better than
+when you came on board."
+
+"Yes, I think that is so," said Ormond, reaching for the volume she
+held in her hand. He opened it at the frontispiece, and gazed long at
+the picture.
+
+The girl sat down beside him, and watched his face, glancing from it
+to the book.
+
+"It seems to me," she said at last, "that the coincidence is becoming
+more and more striking. Have you ever seen that portrait before?"
+
+"Yes," said Ormond, slowly, "I recognize it as a portrait I took of
+myself in the interior of Africa, which I sent to a very dear friend
+of mine--in fact, the only friend I had in England. I think I wrote
+him about getting together a book out of the materials I sent him, but
+I am not sure. I was very ill at the time I wrote him my last letter.
+I thought I was going to die, and told him so. I feel somewhat
+bewildered, and don't quite understand it all."
+
+"I understand it!" cried the girl, her face blazing with indignation.
+"Your friend is a traitor. He is reaping the reward that should have
+been yours, and so poses as the African traveller, the real Ormond.
+You must put a stop to it when you reach England, and expose his
+treachery to the whole country."
+
+Ormond shook his head slowly and said:
+
+"I cannot imagine Jimmy Spence a traitor. If it were only the book,
+that could be, I think, easily explained, for I sent him all my notes
+of travel and materials; but I cannot understand his taking of the
+medals or degrees."
+
+The girl made a quick gesture of impatience.
+
+"Such things," she said, "cannot be explained. You must confront him,
+and expose him."
+
+"No," said Ormond, "I shall not confront him. I must think over the
+matter deeply for a time. I am not quick at thinking, at least just
+now, in the face of this difficulty. Every thing seemed plain and
+simple before; but if Jimmy Spence has stepped into my shoes, he is
+welcome to them. Ever since I came out of Africa, I seem to have lost
+all ambition. Nothing appears to be worth while now."
+
+"Oh!" cried the girl, "that is because you are in ill health. You will
+be yourself again when you reach England. Don't let this worry you
+now; there is plenty of time to think it all out before we arrive. I
+am sorry I spoke about it, but you see I was taken by surprise when
+you mentioned your name."
+
+"I am very glad you spoke to me," said Ormond, in a more cheerful
+voice. "The mere fact that you have spoken to me has encouraged me
+wonderfully. I cannot tell how much this conversation has been to me.
+I am a lone man, with only one friend in the world; I am afraid I must
+add now, without even one friend in the world. I am grateful for your
+interest in me, even though it was only compassion for a wreck, for a
+derelict, floating about on the sea of life."
+
+There were tears in the girl's eyes, and she did not speak for a
+moment. Then she laid her hand softly on Ormond's arm, and said: "You
+are not a wreck--far from it. You sit alone too much, and I am afraid
+that what I have thoughtlessly said has added to your troubles." The
+girl paused in her talk, but after a moment added: "Don't you think
+you could walk the deck for a little?"
+
+"I don't know about walking," said Ormond, with a little laugh; "but
+I'll come with you if you don't mind an incumbrance."
+
+He rose somewhat unsteadily, and she took his arm.
+
+"You must look upon me as your physician," she said, cheerfully, "and
+I shall insist that my orders are obeyed."
+
+"I shall be delighted to be under your charge," said Ormond, "but may
+I not know my physician's name?"
+
+The girl blushed deeply as she realized that she had had such a long
+conversation with one to whom she had never been introduced. She had
+regarded him as an invalid who needed a few words of cheerful
+encouragement; but as he stood up she saw that he was much younger
+than his face and appearance had led her to suppose.
+
+"My name is Mary Radford," she said.
+
+"_Miss_ Mary Radford?" inquired Ormond.
+
+"Miss Mary Radford."
+
+That walk on the deck was the first of many, and it soon became
+evident to Ormond that he was rapidly becoming his old self again. If
+he had lost a friend in England he had certainly found another on
+shipboard, to whom he was getting more and more attached as time went
+on. The only point of disagreement between them was in regard to the
+confronting of Jimmy Spence. Ormond was determined in his resolve not
+to interfere with Jimmy and his ill-gotten fame.
+
+As the voyage was nearing its end Ormond and Miss Radford stood
+together, leaning over the rail, conversing quietly. They had become
+very great friends indeed.
+
+"But if you do not intend to expose this man," said Miss Radford,
+"what then do you propose to do when you land? Are you going back to
+the stage again?"
+
+"I don't think so," replied Ormond. "I will try to get something to
+do, and live quietly for awhile."
+
+"Oh," answered the girl, "I have no patience with you."
+
+"I am sorry for that, Mary," said Ormond, "for if I could have made a
+living I intended to have asked you to be my wife."
+
+"Oh!" cried the girl breathlessly, turning her head away.
+
+"Do you think I would have any chance?" asked Ormond.
+
+"Of making a living?" inquired the girl, after a moment's silence.
+
+"No. I am sure of making a living, for I have always done so.
+Therefore, answer my question: Mary, do you think I would have any
+chance?" And he placed his hand softly over hers, which lay on the
+ship's rail.
+
+The girl did not answer, but she did not withdraw her hand; she gazed
+down at the bright green water with its tinge of foam.
+
+"I suppose you know," she said at length, "that you have every chance,
+and that you are merely pretending ignorance to make it easier for me,
+because I have simply flung myself at your head ever since we began
+the voyage."
+
+"I am not pretending, Mary," he said. "What I feared was that your
+interest was only that of a nurse in a somewhat backward patient. I
+was afraid that I had your sympathy, but not your love. Perhaps that
+was the case at first."
+
+"Perhaps that was the case--at first--but it is far from being the
+truth now--Sidney."
+
+The young man made a motion to approach nearer to her, but the girl
+drew away, whispering:
+
+"There are other people besides ourselves on deck, remember."
+
+"I don't believe it," said Ormond, gazing fondly at her. "I can see no
+one but you. I believe we are floating alone on the ocean together and
+that there is no one else in the wide world but our two selves. I
+thought I went to Africa for fame, but I see I really went to find
+you. What I sought seems poor compared to what I have found."
+
+"Perhaps," said the girl, looking shyly at him, "fame is waiting as
+anxiously for you to woo her as--as another person waited. Fame is a
+shameless huzzy, you know."
+
+The young man shook his head.
+
+"No. Fame has jilted me once. I won't give her another chance."
+
+So those who were twain sailed gently into Southampton docks resolved
+to be one when the gods were willing.
+
+Miss Mary Radford's people were there to meet her, and Ormond went up
+to London alone, beginning his short railway journey with a return of
+the melancholy that had oppressed him during the first part of his
+long voyage. He felt once more alone in the world, now that the bright
+presence of his sweetheart was missing, and he was saddened by the
+thought that the telegram he had hoped to send to Jimmy Spence,
+exultingly announcing his arrival, would never be sent. In a newspaper
+he bought at the station he saw that the African traveller Sidney
+Ormond was to be received by the mayor and corporation of a midland
+town and presented with the freedom of the city. The traveller was to
+lecture on his exploits in the town so honoring him, that day week.
+Ormond put down the paper with a sigh, and turned his thoughts to the
+girl from whom he had so lately parted. A true sweetheart is a
+pleasanter subject for meditation than a false friend.
+
+Mary also saw the announcement in the paper, and anger tightened her
+lips and brought additional color to her cheeks. Seeing how adverse
+her lover was to taking any action against his former friend, she had
+ceased to urge him, but she had quietly made up her own mind to be
+herself the goddess of the machine.
+
+On the night the bogus African traveller was to lecture in the midland
+town, Mary Radford was a unit in the very large audience that greeted
+him. When he came on the platform she was so amazed at his personal
+appearance that she cried out, but fortunately her exclamation was
+lost in the applause that greeted the lecturer. The man was the exact
+duplicate of her betrothed. She listened to the lecture in a daze; it
+seemed to her that even the tones of the lecturer's voice were those
+of her lover. She paid little heed to the matter of his discourse, but
+allowed her mind to dwell more on the coming interview, wondering what
+excuses the fraudulent traveller would make for his perfidy. When the
+lecture was over, and the usual vote of thanks had been tendered and
+accepted, Mary Radford still sat there while the rest of the audience
+slowly filtered out of the large hall. She rose at last, nerving
+herself for the coming meeting, and went to the side door, where she
+told the man on duty that she wished to see the lecturer. The man said
+that it was impossible for Mr. Ormond to see any one at that moment;
+there was to be a big dinner, and he was to meet the mayor and
+corporation; an address was to be presented, and so the lecturer had
+said that he could see no one.
+
+"Will you take a note to him if I write it?" asked the girl.
+
+"I will send it in to him, but it's no use--he won't see you. He
+refused to see even the reporters," said the doorkeeper, as if that
+were final, and a man who would deny himself to the reporters would
+not admit royalty itself.
+
+Mary wrote on a slip of paper the words, "The affianced wife of the
+real Sidney Ormond would like to see you for a few moments," and this
+brief note was taken in to the lecturer.
+
+The doorkeeper's faith in the consistency of public men was rudely
+shaken a few minutes later, when the messenger returned with orders
+that the lady was to be admitted at once.
+
+When Mary entered the green-room of the lecture-hall she saw the
+double of her lover standing near the fire, her note in his hand and a
+look of incredulity on his face.
+
+The girl barely entered the room, and, closing the door, stood with
+her back against it. He was the first to speak.
+
+"I thought Sidney had told me everything. I never knew he was
+acquainted with a young lady, much less engaged to her."
+
+"You admit, then, that you are not the true Sidney Ormond?"
+
+"I admit it to you, of course, if you were to have been his wife."
+
+"I am to be his wife, I hope."
+
+"But Sidney, poor fellow, is dead--dead in the wilds of Africa."
+
+"You will be shocked to learn that such is not the case, and that your
+imposture must come to an end. Perhaps you counted on his friendship
+for you, and thought that, even if he did return, he would not expose
+you. In that you were quite right, but you did not count on me. Sidney
+Ormond is at this moment in London, Mr. Spence."
+
+Jimmy Spence, paying no attention to the accusations of the girl, gave
+the war-whoop which had formerly been so effective in the second act
+of "Pocahontas"--in which Jimmy had enacted the noble savage--and then
+he danced a jig that had done service in "Colleen Bawn." While the
+amazed girl watched these antics, Jimmy suddenly swooped down upon
+her, caught her round the waist, and whirled her wildly around the
+room. Setting her down in a corner, Jimmy became himself again, and
+dabbing his heated brow with his handkerchief carefully, so as not to
+disturb the make-up--
+
+"Sidney in England again? That's too good news to be true. Say it
+again, my girl; I can hardly believe it. Why didn't he come with you?
+Is he ill?"
+
+"He has been very ill."
+
+"Ah, that's it, poor fellow! I knew nothing else would have kept him.
+And then when he telegraphed to me at the old address on landing, of
+course there was no reply, because, you see, I had disappeared. But
+Sid wouldn't know anything about that, and so he must be wondering
+what has become of me. I'll have a great story to tell him when we
+meet, almost as good as his own African experiences. We'll go right up
+to London to-night as soon as this confounded dinner is over. And what
+is your name, my girl?"
+
+"Mary Radford."
+
+"And you're engaged to old Sid, eh? Well! well! well! well! This is
+great news. You mustn't mind my capers, Mary, my dear; you see, I'm
+the only friend Sid has, and I'm old enough to be your father. I look
+young now, but you wait till the paint comes off. Have you any money?
+I mean to live on when you're married, because I know Sidney never had
+much."
+
+"I haven't very much either," said Mary, with a sigh.
+
+Jimmy jumped up and paced the room in great glee, laughing and
+slapping his thigh.
+
+"That's first rate," he cried. "Why, Mary, I've got over twenty
+thousand pounds in the bank saved up for you two. The book and the
+lectures, you know. I don't believe Sid himself could have done as
+well, for he always was careless with money; he's often lent me the
+last penny he had, and never kept any account of it. And I never
+thought of paying it back either until he was gone, and then it
+worried me."
+
+The messenger put his head into the room, and said the mayor and the
+corporation were waiting.
+
+"Oh, hang the mayor and the corporation," cried Jimmy; then, suddenly
+recollecting himself, he added hastily: "No, don't do that. Just give
+them Jimmy--I mean Sidney Ormond's compliments, and tell his Worship
+that I have just had some very important news from Africa, but will be
+with them directly."
+
+When the messenger was gone Jimmy continued, in high feather: "What a
+time we will have in London! We'll all three go to the old familiar
+theatre. Yes, and, by Jove, we'll pay for our seats; _that_ will be a
+novelty. Then we will have supper where Sid and I used to eat. Sidney
+will talk, and you and I will listen; then I'll talk, and you and Sid
+will listen. You see, my dear, I've been to Africa too. When I got
+Sidney's letter saying he was dying, I just moped about and was of no
+use to anybody. Then I made up my mind what to do. Sid had died for
+fame, and it wasn't just he shouldn't get what he paid so dearly for.
+I gathered together what money I could, and went to Africa steerage. I
+found I couldn't do anything there about searching for Sid, so I
+resolved to be his understudy and bring fame to him, if it was
+possible. I sank my own identity, and made up as Sidney Ormond, took
+his boxes, and sailed for Southampton. I have been his understudy ever
+since; for, after all, I always had a hope he would come back some
+day, and then everything would be ready for him to take the principal
+role, and let the old understudy go back to the boards again, and
+resume competing with the reputation of Macready. If Sid hadn't come
+back in another year, I was going to take a lecturing trip in America;
+and when that was done, I intended to set out in great state for
+Africa, disappear into the forest as Sidney Ormond, wash the paint
+off, and come out as Jimmy Spence. Then Sidney Ormond's fame would
+have been secure, for they would be always sending out relief
+expeditions after him, and not finding him, while I would be growing
+old on the boards, and bragging what a great man my friend Sidney
+Ormond was."
+
+There were tears in the girl's eyes as she rose and took Jimmy's hand.
+
+"No man has ever been so true a friend to his friend as you have
+been," she said.
+
+"Oh, bless you, yes," cried Jimmy jauntily; "Sid would have done the
+same for me. But he is luckier in having you than in having his
+friend, although I don't deny I've been a good friend to him. Yes, my
+dear, he is lucky in having a plucky girl like you. I missed that
+somehow when I was young, having my head full of Macready nonsense,
+and I missed being a Macready too. I've always been a sort of
+understudy; so you see the part comes easy to me. Now I must be off to
+that confounded mayor and corporation. I had almost forgotten them,
+but I must keep up the character for Sidney's sake. But this is the
+last act, my dear. To-morrow I'll turn over the part of explorer to
+the real actor,--to the star."
+
+
+
+
+THE HEROINE OF A FAMOUS SONG.
+
+THE TRUE STORY OF "ANNIE LAURIE."
+
+
+BY FRANK POPE HUMPHREY.
+
+
+Most people suppose "Annie Laurie" to be a creation of the
+songwriter's fancy, or perhaps some Scotch peasant girl, like Highland
+Mary and most of the heroines of Robert Burns. In either case they are
+mistaken.
+
+Annie Laurie was "born in the purple," so to speak, at Maxwelton
+House, in the beautiful glen of the Cairn--Glencairn. Her home was in
+the heart of the most pastorally lovely of Scottish shires--that of
+Dumfries. Her birth is thus set down by her father, in what is called
+the "Barjorg MS.":
+
+"At the pleasure of the Almighty God, my daughter Anna Laurie was
+borne upon the 16th day of December 1682 years, about six o'clock in
+the morning, and was baptized by Mr. George--minister of Glencairn,"
+
+Her father was Sir Robert Laurie, first baronet, and her mother was
+Jean Riddell.
+
+[Illustration: MAXWELTON HOUSE, ANNIE LAURIE'S BIRTHPLACE.]
+
+Maxwelton House was originally the castle of the earls of Glencairn.
+It was bought in 1611 by Stephen Laurie, the founder of the Laurie
+family. Stephen was a Dumfries merchant. The castle was a turreted
+building. In it Annie Laurie was born.
+
+[Illustration: ANNIE LAURIE.
+
+From a painting now preserved at Maxwelton House.]
+
+This castle was partially burned in the last century, but not all of
+it. The great tower is incorporated in the new house, and also a
+considerable portion of the old walls was built in. The foundations
+are those of the castle. The picture shows the double windows of the
+tower. In places its walls are twelve feet thick. The lower room is
+the "gun-room," and the little room above, that in the next story, is
+always spoken of in the family as "Annie Laurie's room," or "boudoir."
+This room of Annie's has been opened into the drawing-room by taking
+down the wall, and it forms a charming alcove. Its stone ceiling shows
+its great age.
+
+In the dining-room, a fine, large apartment, we come again upon the
+old walls, six feet thick, which gives very deep window recesses. In
+this room hang the portraits of Annie Laurie and her husband,
+Alexander Ferguson. They are half-lengths, life-size.
+
+Annie's hair is dark brown, and she has full dark eyes--it is
+difficult to say whether brown or deep hazel. I incline to the latter.
+Whoever doctored the second verse of the original song--I heard it
+credited to "Mrs. Grundy" by a grandnephew of Burns--whoever it was,
+he had apparently no knowledge of this portrait, for you all know he
+has given Annie a "dark _blue_ e'e."
+
+[Illustration: Alexander Ferguson, Annie Laurie's husband. From a
+painting now preserved at Maxwelton House.]
+
+The nose is long and straight; the under lip full, as though "some bee
+had stung it newly," like that of Suckling's bride. A true Scotch
+face, of a type to be met any day in Edinburgh, or any other Scotch
+town. She is in evening dress of white satin, and she wears no jewels
+but the pearls in her hair.
+
+Alexander Ferguson, the husband of Annie Laurie, has a handsome,
+youthful face, with dark eyes and curling hair. His coat is brown, and
+his waistcoat blue, embroidered with gold, and he wears abundant lace
+in the charming old fashion.
+
+It was at Maxwelton House, Annie's birthplace, that I came across the
+missing link in the chain of evidence that fixes the authorship of the
+song upon Douglas of Fingland. Fingland is in the parish of Dalry, in
+the adjacent shire of Kirkcudbright, and Douglas was a somewhat near
+neighbor of Annie.
+
+The present proprietor of Maxwelton House is Sir Emilius Laurie,
+formerly rector of St. John's, Paddington, when he was known as Sir
+Emilius Bayley. He took the name of Laurie when he succeeded to the
+family estates. Sir Emilius is a descendant of Sir Walter, third
+baronet and brother of Annie.
+
+Sir Emilius placed in my hands a letter of which he said I might make
+what use I liked, and this letter contained the missing link. While
+the song has been generally credited to Douglas of Fingland, it has
+always been a matter of tradition rather than of ascertained fact.
+
+But to the important letter.
+
+It was written in 1889, by a friend, to Sir Emilius, and relates an
+incident which took place in 1854. At that time the writer, whom we
+will call Mr. B., was on a visit with his wife to some friends in
+Yorkshire. Mrs. B. was a somewhat famous singer of ballads. A few
+friends were invited to meet them one evening, and, after the ladies
+had retired to the drawing-room, their hostess asked Mrs. B. to sing;
+and she sang "Annie Laurie," in the modern revision, just as we all
+sing it.
+
+Among the guests was a lady in her ninety-seventh year. She gave close
+attention to the singing of the ballad, and when Mrs. B. had finished,
+she spoke up: "Thank you, thank you very much! But _they're na the
+words my grandfather wrote_." Then she repeated the first stanza as
+she knew it.
+
+The next day Mr. and Mrs. B. called upon her, and in the meantime she
+had had the original first stanza written out, dictating it to a
+grandniece. She had signed it with her own shaky hand. Not being
+satisfied with the signature, she had signed it a second time.
+
+She explained that her grandfather, Douglas of Fingland, was
+desperately in love with Annie Laurie when he wrote the song. "But,"
+she added, "he did na get her after a'."
+
+She was not quite sure as to Annie's fate, she said. Some folks had
+said she died unmarried, while some had said she married Ferguson of
+Craigdarrock, and she rather thought _that_ was the truth.
+
+Questioned as to the authenticity of the lines she had given, she
+said:
+
+"Oh, _I_ mind them fine. I have remembered them a' my life. My father
+often repeated them to me." And here is the stanza signed with her
+name:
+
+  "'Maxwelton's banks are bonnie,
+     They're a' clad owre wi' dew,
+  Where I an' Annie Laurie
+     Made up the bargain true.
+  Made up the bargain true,
+     Which ne'er forgot s'all be,
+  An' for bonnie Annie Laurie
+    I'd lay me down an' dee.'
+
+  "I mind na mair.
+
+  [Signed] "Clark Douglas.
+
+  "August 30, 1854."
+
+In the common version this stanza reads:
+
+  "Maxwelton's braes are bonnie
+    Where early fa's the dew,
+  And it's there that Annie Laurie
+    Gie'd me her promise true;
+  Gie'd me her promise true,
+    Which ne'er forgot will be,
+  An' for bonnie Annie Laurie
+    I'd lay me down an' dee."
+
+In the original song there were but two stanzas, and this is the
+second:
+
+  "She's backit like the peacock,
+    She's breistit like the swan,
+  She's jimp around the middle,
+    Her waist ye weel micht span--
+  Her waist ye weel micht span--
+    An' she has a rolling e'e,
+  An' for bonnie Annie Laurie
+    I'd lay me down an' dee."
+
+As I have said, the "rolling e'e" has been changed, and wrongly, into
+one of "dark blue."
+
+Who added the third stanza is not known; but no lover of the song
+would willingly dispense with it:
+
+  "Like dew on the gowan lying
+    Is the fa' o' her fairy feet;
+  Like summer breezes sighing,
+    Her voice is low an' sweet--
+  Her voice is low an' sweet--
+    An' she's a' the world to me,
+  An' for bonnie Annie Laurie
+    I'd lay me down an' dee."
+
+The music of the song is modern, and was composed by Lady John Scott,
+aunt by marriage of the present Duke of Buccleuch. The composer was
+only guessed at for many years, but somewhat recently she has
+acknowledged the authorship.
+
+Maxwelton House sits high upon its "braes." It is "harled" without and
+painted white, and is built around three sides of a sunny court. Ivy
+clambers thriftily about it. Over the entrance door of the tower, and
+above a window in the opposite wing, are inserted two marriage stones;
+the former that of Annie's father and mother, the latter of her
+grandfather and grandmother. These marriage stones are about two feet
+square. The initials of the bride and bridegroom, and the date of the
+marriage, are cut upon them, together with the family coat of arms,
+which bears, among other heraldic devices, two laurel leaves and the
+motto, _Virtus semper viridis_. Below the grandfather's marriage stone
+is cut in the lintel the following:
+
+_Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it_.
+
+Looking up the glen from Maxwelton, the chimneys of Craigdarrock House
+are seen.
+
+It is distant about five miles, and Annie had not far to remove from
+her father's house to that of her husband. She was twenty-eight at the
+time of her marriage.
+
+The Fergusons are a much older family, as families are reckoned, than
+the Lauries. Fergusons of Craigdarrock were attached to the courts of
+William the Lion and Alexander the II. (1214-1249).
+
+Craigdarrock House stands near the foot of one of the three glens
+whose waters unite to form the Cairn. The hills draw together here,
+and give an air of seclusion to the house and grounds. The house,
+large and substantial, lacks the picturesqueness of Maxwelton. It is
+pale pink in tone with window-casings and copings of French gray. The
+delicate cotoneaster vine clings to the stones of it. There are pretty
+reaches of lawns and abundant shrubberies, and in one place
+Craigdarrock Water has been diverted to form a lake, spanned in one
+part by a high bridge. Sheep feed upon the hills topped with green
+pastures, at the south, and shaggy Highland cattle in the meadows
+below. A heavy wood overhangs to the north. There is plenty of fine
+timber on the grounds, beeches, and great silver firs and, especially
+to be named, ancient larches with knees and elbows like old oaks,
+given to the proprietor by George II., when the larch was first
+introduced into Scotland.
+
+The present proprietor of Craigdarrock is Captain Robert Ferguson, of
+the fourth generation in direct descent from Annie Laurie.
+
+Religion has always been a burning question in Scotland, and about
+Annie's time the flames raged with peculiar ferocity. Her father, Sir
+Robert Laurie, was a bitter enemy of the Covenantry, and his name
+finds a somewhat unenviable fame in mortuary verses of this sort cut
+upon gravestones:
+
+  "Douglas of Stenhouse, _Laurie of Maxwelton_,
+  Caused Count Baillie give me martyrdom."
+
+But the Fergusons were staunch Covenanters, and Annie, if we may judge
+from her marriage with one of that party, must have favored
+"compromise." Without doubt she must have worshipped with her husband
+in the old parish kirk, which was burned about fifty years since. The
+two end gables, ivy-shrouded, are still standing.
+
+Against the east gable is the burial-ground of the Lauries, and
+against the west that of the Fergusons. A ponderous monument marks the
+grave of Annie's grandfather, cut with those hideous emblems which
+former generations seemed to delight in. But the burial-place of the
+Fergusons is singularly lacking in early monuments, and no stone marks
+the place of Annie's rest. It is a sweet, secluded spot, and
+Cock-Robin--it was September--was chanting his cheerful noonday song
+over the sleepers when I was there.
+
+At Craigdarrock House is kept Annie's will, a copy of which I give. As
+a will, simply, it is of no special value. As Annie Laurie's, it will
+be read with interest.
+
+   "I, Anna Laurie, spouse to Alexr. Fergusone of Craigdarrock.
+   Forasmuch as I considering it a devotie upon everie persone whyle
+   they are in health and sound judgement so to settle yr. worldly
+   affairs that yrby all animosities betwixt friend and relatives
+   may obviat and also for the singular love and respect I have for
+   the said Alex. Fergusone, in case he survive me I do heirby make
+   my letter will as follows:
+
+   "First, I recommend my soule to God, hopeing by the meritorious
+   righteousness of Jesus Christ to be saved; secondly, I recommend
+   my body to be decently and orderly interred; and in the third
+   plaice nominate and appoynt the sd. Alexr. Fergusone to be my
+   sole and only executor, Legator and universall intromettor with
+   my hail goods, gear, debts, and soams off money that shall
+   pertain and belong to me the tyme of my decease, or shall be dew
+   to me by bill, bond, or oyrway; with power to him to obtain
+   himself confirmed and decreed exr. to me and to do everie thing
+   for fixing and establishing the right off my spouse in his person
+   as law reqaires; in witness whereof their putts (written by John
+   Wilsone off Chapell in Dumfries) are subd. by me at Craigdarrock
+   the twenty eight day of Apryle Jajvij and eleven (1711) years,
+   before the witnesses the sd. John Wilsone and John Nicholsone his
+   servitor.
+
+   "ANN. LAURIE,
+   "JO. WILSON, Witness.
+   "JOHN HOAT, Witness."
+
+If our dates are correct, this will was written the year after her
+marriage. And it is pleasant to see that she had such entire trust in
+Alexander Ferguson. Evidently she cherished no lingering regrets for
+Douglas of Fingland.
+
+In following up the "fairy" footsteps of Annie Laurie I came upon
+others wholly different, but of equal interest--those of Robert Burns.
+
+At Craigdarrock House is kept "the whistle" of his poem of that name.
+Burns tells the story of it in a note. It was brought into Scotland by
+a doughty Dane in the train of Anne, queen of James VI. He had won it
+in a drinking bout. It was a "challenge whistle," to use a modern
+term. The man who gave the last whistle upon it, before tumbling under
+the table dead drunk, won it.
+
+After various vicissitudes, the whistle came into possession of Laurie
+of Maxwelton, and then passed into the hands of a Riddell of the same
+connection. Finally came the last drinking skirmish in which it was to
+appear, and which is chronicled by Burns. This final drinking bout
+took place October 16, 1790. The three champions were Sir Robert
+Laurie of Maxwelton, Alexander Ferguson of Craigdarrock--an eminent
+lawyer, and who must, I think, have been a grandson of Annie
+Laurie--and Captain Riddell of Friar's Carse, antiquary and friend of
+Burns. The contest took place at Friar's Carse, and Alexander Ferguson
+gave the last faint whistle before going under the table, and won the
+prize, which ever since has been kept at Craigdarrock.
+
+The whistle is large, of dark brown wood, and is set in a silver cup
+upon which is engraved the fact that it is "Burns's whistle," together
+with the date of the contest. A silver chain is attached to it; but it
+reposes on velvet, under glass. It is too precious to use.
+
+
+
+
+A POINT OF KNUCKLIN' DOWN.
+
+
+BY ELLA HIGGINSON,
+
+Author of "The Takin' in of Old Mis' Lane" and other stories.
+
+
+It was the day before Christmas--an Oregon Christmas. It had rained
+mistily at dawn; but at ten o'clock the clouds had parted and moved
+away reluctantly. There was a blue and dazzling sky overhead. The
+rain-drops still sparkled on the windows and on the green grass, and
+the last roses and chrysanthemums hung their beautiful heads heavily
+beneath them; but there was to be no more rain. Oregon City's mighty
+barometer--the Falls of the Willamette--was declaring to her people by
+her softened roar that the morrow was to be fair.
+
+Mrs. Orville Palmer was in the large kitchen making preparations for
+the Christmas dinner. She was a picture of dainty loveliness in a
+lavender gingham dress, made with a full skirt and a shirred waist and
+big leg-o'-mutton sleeves. A white apron was tied neatly around her
+waist.
+
+Her husband came in, and paused to put his arm around her and kiss
+her. She was stirring something on the stove, holding her dress aside
+with one hand.
+
+"It's goin' to be a fine Christmas, Emarine," he said, and sighed
+unconsciously. There was a wistful and careworn look on his face.
+
+"Beautiful!" said Emarine vivaciously. "Goin' down-town, Orville?"
+
+"Yes." Want anything?"
+
+"Why, the cranberries ain't come yet. I'm so uneasy about 'em. They'd
+ought to 'a' b'en stooed long ago. I like 'em cooked down an' strained
+to a jell. I don't see what ails them groc'rymen! Sh'u'd think they
+c'u'd get around some time before doomsday! Then I want--here, you'd
+best set it down." She took a pencil and a slip of paper from a shelf
+over the table and gave them to him. "Now, let me see." She commenced
+stirring again, with two little wrinkles between her brows. "A ha'f a
+pound o' citron; a ha'f a pound o' candied peel; two pounds o'
+cur'nts; two pounds o' raisins--git 'em stunned, Orville; a pound o'
+sooet--make 'em give you some that ain't all strings! A box o'
+Norther' Spy apples; a ha'f a dozen lemons; four-bits' worth o'
+walnuts or a'monds, whichever's freshest; a pint o' Puget Sound
+oysters fer the dressin', an' a bunch o' cel'ry. You stop by an' see
+about the turkey, Orville; an' I wish you'd run in 's you go by
+mother's, an' tell her to come up as soon as she can. She'd ought to
+be here now."
+
+Her husband smiled as he finished the list. "You're a wonderful
+housekeeper, Emarine," he said.
+
+Then his face grew grave. "Got a present for your mother yet,
+Emarine?"
+
+"Oh, yes, long ago. I got 'er a black shawl down t' Charman's. She's
+b'en wantin' one."
+
+He shuffled his feet about a little. "Unh-hunh. Yuh--that is--I reckon
+yuh ain't picked out any present fer--fer my mother, have yuh,
+Emarine?"
+
+"No," she replied, with cold distinctness. "I ain't."
+
+There was a silence. Emarine stirred briskly. The lines grew deeper
+between her brows. Two red spots came into her cheeks. "I hope the
+rain ain't spoilt the chrysyanthums," she said then, with an air of
+ridding herself of a disagreeable subject.
+
+Orville made no answer. He moved his feet again uneasily. Presently he
+said: "I expect my mother needs a black shawl, too. Seemed to me her'n
+looked kind o' rusty at church Sunday. Notice it, Emarine?"
+
+"No," said Emarine.
+
+"Seemed to me she was gittin' to look offul old. Emarine"--his voice
+broke; he came a step nearer--"it'll be the first Christmas dinner I
+ever eat without my mother."
+
+She drew back and looked at him. He knew the look that flashed into
+her eyes, and shrank from it.
+
+"You don't have to eat this 'n' without 'er, Orville Parmer! You go
+an' eat your dinner with your mother 'f you want! I can get along
+alone. Are you goin' to order them things? If you ain't, just say so,
+an' I'll go an' do 't myself!"
+
+He put on his hat and went without a word.
+
+Mrs. Palmer took the saucepan from the stove and set it on the hearth.
+Then she sat down and leaned her cheek in the palm of her hand, and
+looked steadily out the window. Her eyelids trembled closer together.
+Her eyes held a far-sighted look. She saw a picture; but it was not
+the picture of the blue reaches of sky, and the green valley cleft by
+its silver-blue river. She saw a kitchen, shabby compared to her own,
+scantily furnished, and in it an old, white-haired woman sitting down
+to eat her Christmas dinner alone.
+
+After a while she arose with an impatient sigh. "Well, I can't help
+it!" she exclaimed. "If I knuckled down to her this time, I'd have to
+do 't ag'in. She might just as well get ust to 't first as last. I
+wish she hadn't got to lookin' so old an' pitiful, though, a-settin'
+there in front o' us in church Sunday after Sunday. The cords stand
+out in her neck like well-rope, an' her chin keeps a-quiv'rin' so! I
+can see Orville a-watchin' her--"
+
+The door opened suddenly and her mother entered. She was bristling
+with curiosity. "Say, Emarine!" She lowered her voice, although there
+was no one to hear. "Where d' you s'pose the undertaker's a-goin' up
+by here? Have you hear of anybody--"
+
+"No," said Emarine. "Did Orville stop by an' tell you to hurry up?"
+
+"Yes. What's the matter of him? Is he sick?"
+
+"Not as I know of. Why?"
+
+"He looks so. Oh, I wonder if it's one o' the Peterson children where
+the undertaker's a-goin'! They've all got the quinsy sore throat."
+
+"How does he look? I don't see 's he looks so turrable."
+
+"Why, Emarine Parmer! Ev'rybody in town says he looks _so_! I only
+hope they don't know what ails him!"
+
+"What _does_ ail him?" cried out Emarine, fiercely. "What are you
+hintin' at?"
+
+"Well, if you don't know what ails him, you'd ort to; so I'll tell
+you. He's dyin' by inches ever sence you turned his mother out o'
+doors."
+
+Emarine turned white. Sheet lightning played in her eyes.
+
+"Oh, you'd ought to talk about my turnin' her put!" she burst out,
+furiously. "After you a-settin' here a-quar'l'n' with her in this very
+kitchen, an' eggin' me on! Wa'n't she goin' to turn you out o' your
+own daughter's home? Wa'n't that what I turned her out fer? I didn't
+turn her out, anyhow! I only told Orville this house wa'n't big enough
+fer his mother an' me, an' that neither o' us 'u'd knuckle down, so
+he'd best take his choice. You'd ought to talk!"
+
+"Well, if I egged you on, I'm sorry fer 't," said Mrs. Endey,
+solemnly. "Ever sence that fit o' sickness I had a month ago, I've
+feel kind o' old an' no account myself, as if I'd like to let all
+holts go, an' jest rest. I don't spunk up like I ust to. No, he didn't
+go to Peterson's--he's gawn right on. My land! I wonder 'f it ain't
+old gran'ma Eliot: she had a bad spell--no, he didn't turn that
+corner. I can't think where he's goin' to!"
+
+She sat down with a sigh of defeat.
+
+A smile glimmered palely across Emarine's face and was gone. "Maybe if
+you'd go up in the antic you could see better," she suggested, dryly.
+
+"Oh, Emarine, here comes old gran'ma Eliot herself! Run an' open the
+door fer 'er. She's limpin' worse 'n usual."
+
+Emarine flew to the door. Grandma Eliot was one of the few people she
+loved. She was large and motherly. She wore a black dress and shawl
+and a funny bonnet, with a frill of white lace around her brow.
+
+Emarine's face softened when she kissed her. "I'm so glad to see you,"
+she said, and her voice was tender.
+
+Even Mrs. Endey's face underwent a change. Usually it wore a look of
+doubt, if not of positive suspicion, but now it fairly beamed. She
+shook hands cordially with the guest and led her to a comfortable
+chair.
+
+"I know your rheumatiz is worse," she said, cheerfully, "because
+you're limpin' so. Oh, did you see the undertaker go up by here? We
+can't think where he's goin' to. D' you happen to know?"
+
+"No, I don't; an' I don't want to neither." Mrs. Eliot laughed
+comfortably. "Mis' Endey, you don't ketch me foolin' with undertakers
+till I have to." She sat down and removed her black cotton gloves.
+"I'm gettin' to that age when I don't care much where undertakers go
+to so long 's they let _me_ alone. Fixin' fer Christmas dinner,
+Emarine dear?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am," said Emarine in her very gentlest tone. Her mother had
+never said "dear" to her, and the sound of it on this old lady's lips
+was sweet. "Won't you come an' take dinner with us?"
+
+The old lady laughed merrily. "Oh, dearie me, dearie me! You don't
+guess my son's folks could spare me now, do you? I spend ev'ry
+Christmas there. They most carry me on two chips. My son's wife,
+Sidonie, she nearly runs her feet off waitin' on me. She can't do
+enough fer me. My, Mrs. Endey, you don't know what a comfort a
+daughter-in-law is when you get old an' feeble!"
+
+Emarine's face turned red. She went to the table and stood with her
+back to the older women; but her mother's sharp eyes observed that her
+ears grew scarlet.
+
+"An' I never will," said Mrs. Endey, grimly.
+
+"You've got a son-in-law, though, who's worth a whole townful of most
+son-in-laws. He was such a good son, too; jest worshipped his mother;
+couldn't bear her out o' his sight. He humored her high an' low.
+That's jest the way Sidonie does with me. I'm gettin' cranky 's I get
+older, an' sometimes I'm reel cross an' sassy to her; but she jest
+laffs at me, an' then comes an' kisses me, an' I'm all right ag'in.
+It's a blessin' right from God to have a daughter-in-law like that."
+
+The knife in Emarine's hand slipped, and she uttered a little cry.
+
+"Hurt you?" demanded her mother, sternly.
+
+Emarine was silent, and did not turn.
+
+"Cut you, Emarine? Why don't you answer me? Aigh?"
+
+"A little," said Emarine. She went into the pantry, and presently
+returned with a narrow strip of muslin which she wound around her
+finger.
+
+"Well, I never see! You never will learn any gumption! Why don't you
+look what you're about? Now, go around Christmas with your finger all
+tied up!"
+
+"Oh, that'll be all right by to-morrow," said Mrs. Eliot, cheerfully.
+"Won't it, Emarine? Never cry over spilt milk, Mrs. Endey; it makes a
+body get wrinkles too fast. O' course Orville's mother's comin' to
+take dinner with you, Emarine."
+
+"Dear me!" exclaimed Emarine, in a sudden flutter. "I don't see why
+them cranberries don't come! I told Orville to hurry 'em up. I'd best
+make the floatin' island while I wait."
+
+"I stopped at Orville's mother's as I come along, Emarine."
+
+"How?" Emarine turned in a startled way from the table.
+
+"I say I stopped at Orville's mother's as I come along."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"She well?" asked Mrs. Endey.
+
+"No, she ain't; shakin' like she had the Saint Vitus dance. She's
+failed harrable lately. She'd b'en cryin'; her eyes was all swelled
+up."
+
+There was quite a silence. Then Mrs. Endey said, "What she b'en cryin'
+about?"
+
+"Why, when I asked her she jest laffed kind o' pitiful, an' said: 'Oh,
+only my tom-foolishness, o' course.' Said she always got to thinkin'
+about other Christmases. But I cheered her up. I told her what a good
+time I always had at my son's, an' how Sidonie jest couldn't do enough
+fer me. An' I told her to think what a nice time she'd have here 't
+Emarine's to-morrow."
+
+Mrs. Endey smiled. "What she say to that?"
+
+"She didn't say much. I could see she was thankful, though, she had a
+son's to go to. She said she pitied all poor wretches that had to set
+out their Christmas alone. Poor old lady! she ain't got much spunk
+left. She's all broke down. But I cheered her up some. Sech a
+_wishful_ look took holt o' her when I pictchered her dinner over here
+at Emarine's. I can't seem to forget it. Goodness! I must go. I'm on
+my way to Sidonie's, an' she'll be comin' after me if I ain't on
+time."
+
+When Mrs. Eliot had gone limping down the path, Mrs. Endey said: "You
+got your front room red up, Emarine?"
+
+"No; I ain't had time to red up anything."
+
+"Well, I'll do it. Where's your duster at?"
+
+"Behind the org'n. You can get out the wax cross again. Mis' Dillon
+was here with all her childern, an' I had to hide up ev'rything. I
+never see childern like her'n. She lets 'em handle things so!"
+
+Mrs. Endey went into the "front room" and began to dust the organ. She
+was something of a diplomat, and she wished to be alone for a few
+minutes. "You have to manage Emarine by contrairies," she reflected.
+It did not occur to her that this was a family trait. "I'm offul sorry
+I ever egged her on to turnin' Orville's mother out o' doors, but
+who'd 'a' thought it 'u'd break her down so? She ain't told a soul
+either. I reckoned she'd talk somethin' offul about us, but she ain't
+told a soul. She's kep' a stiff upper lip an' told folks she al'ays
+expected to live alone when Orville got married. Emarine's all worked
+up. I believe the Lord hisself must 'a' sent gran'ma Eliot here to
+talk like an angel unawares. I bet she'd go an' ask Mis' Parmer over
+here to dinner if she wa'n't afraid I'd laff at her fer knucklin'
+down. I'll have to aggravate her.'
+
+She finished dusting, and returned to the kitchen. "I wonder what
+gran'ma Eliot 'u'd say if she knew you'd turned Orville's mother out,
+Emarine?"
+
+There was no reply. Emarine was at the table making tarts. Her back
+was to mother.
+
+"I didn't mean what I said about bein' sorry I egged you on, Emarine.
+I'm glad you turned her out. She'd _ort_ to be turned out."
+
+Emarine dropped a quivering ruby of jelly into a golden ring of pastry
+and laid it carefully on a plate.
+
+"Gran'ma Eliot can go talkin' about her daughter-'n-law Sidonie all
+she wants, Emarine. You keep a stiff upper lip."
+
+"I can 'tend to my own affairs," said Emarine, fiercely.
+
+"Well, don't flare up so. Here comes Orviile. Land, but he does look
+peakid!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After supper, when her mother had gone home for the night, Emarine put
+on her hat and shawl.
+
+Her husband was sitting by the fireplace, looking thoughtfully at the
+bed of coals.
+
+"I'm goin' out," she said briefly. "You keep the fire up."
+
+"Why, Emarine, it's dark. Don't choo want I sh'u'd go along?"
+
+"No; you keep the fire up."
+
+He looked at her anxiously, but he knew from the way she set her heels
+down that remonstrance would be useless.
+
+"Don't stay long," he said, in a tone of habitual tenderness. He loved
+her passionately, in spite of the lasting hurt she had given him when
+she parted him from his mother. It was a hurt that had sunk deeper
+than even he realized. It lay heavy on his heart day and night. It
+took the blue out of the sky, and the green out of the grass, and the
+gold out of the sunlight; it took the exaltation and the rapture out
+of his tenderest moments of love.
+
+He never reproached her, he never really blamed her; certainly he
+never pitied himself. But he carried a heavy heart around with him,
+and his few smiles were joyless things.
+
+For the trouble he blamed only himself. He had promised Emarine
+solemnly before he married her, that if there were any "knuckling
+down" to be done, his mother should be the one to do it. He had made
+the promise deliberately, and he could no more have broken it than he
+could have changed the color of his eyes. When bitter feeling arises
+between two relatives by marriage, it is the one who stands between
+them--the one who is bound by the tenderest ties to both--who has the
+real suffering to bear, who is torn and tortured until life holds
+nothing worth the having.
+
+Orville Palmer was the one who stood between. He had built his own
+cross, and he took it up and bore it without a word.
+
+Emarine hurried through the early winter dark until she came to the
+small and poor house where her husband's mother lived. It was off the
+main-travelled street.
+
+There was a dim light in the kitchen; the curtain had not been drawn.
+Emarine paused and looked in. The sash was lifted six inches, for the
+night was warm, and the sound of voices came to her at once. Mrs.
+Palmer had company.
+
+"It's Miss Presly," said Emarine, resentfully, under her breath. "Old
+gossip!"
+
+"--goin' to have a fine dinner, I hear," Miss Presly was saying.
+"Turkey with oyster dressin', an' cranberries, an' mince an' pun'kin
+pie, an' reel plum puddin' with brandy poured over 't an' set afire,
+an' wine dip, an' nuts an' raisins, an' wine itself to wind up on.
+Emarine's a fine cook. She knows how to git up a dinner that makes
+your mouth water to think about. You goin' to have a spread, Mis'
+Parmer?"
+
+"Not much of a one," said Orville's mother. "I expected to, but I
+c'u'dn't git them fall patatas sold off. I'll have to keep 'em till
+spring to git any kind o' price. I don't care much about Christmas,
+though"--her chin was trembling, but she lifted it high. "It's silly
+for anybody but children to build so much on Christmas."
+
+Emarine opened the door and walked in. Mrs. Palmer arose slowly,
+grasping the back of her chair. "Orville's dead?" she said solemnly.
+
+Emarine laughed, but there was the tenderness of near tears in her
+voice. "Oh, my, no!" she said, sitting down. "I run over to ask you to
+come to Christmas dinner. I was too busy all day to come sooner. I'm
+goin' to have a great dinner, an' I've cooked ev'ry single thing of it
+myself! I want to show you what a fine Christmas dinner your
+daughter-'n-law can get up. Dinner's at two, an' I want you to come at
+eleven. Will you?"
+
+Mrs. Palmer had sat down, weakly. Trembling was not the word to
+describe the feeling that had taken possession of her. She was
+shivering. She wanted to fall down on her knees and put her arms
+around her son's wife, and sob out all her loneliness and heartache.
+But life is a stage; and Miss Presly was an audience not to be
+ignored. So Mrs. Palmer said: "Well, I'll be reel glad to come,
+Emarine. It's offul kind o' yuh to think of 't. It 'u'd 'a' be'n
+lonesome eatin' here all by myself, I expect."
+
+Emarine stood up. Her heart was like a thistle-down. Her eyes were
+shining. "All right," she said; "an' I want that you sh'u'd come just
+at eleven. I must run right back now. Good-night."
+
+"Well, I declare!" said Miss Presly. "That girl gits prettier ev'ry
+day o' her life. Why, she just looked full o' _glame_ to-night!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Orville was not at home when his mother arrived in her rusty best
+dress and shawl. Mrs. Endey saw her coming. She gasped out, "Why, good
+grieve! Here's Mis' Parmer, Emarine!"
+
+"Yes, I know," said Emarine, calmly. "I ast her to dinner."
+
+She opened the door, and shook hands with her mother-in-law, giving
+her mother a look of defiance that almost upset that lady's gravity.
+
+"You set right down, Mother Parmer, an' let me take your things.
+Orville don't know you're comin', an' I just want to see his face when
+he comes in. Here's a new black shawl fer your Christmas. I got mother
+one just like it. See what nice long fringe it's got. Oh, my! don't go
+to cryin'! Here comes Orville."
+
+She stepped aside quickly. When her husband entered his eyes fell
+instantly on his mother, weeping childishly over the new shawl. She
+was in the old splint rocking-chair with the high back. "_Mother!_" he
+cried; then he gave a frightened, tortured glance at his wife. Emarine
+smiled at him, but it was through tears.
+
+"Emarine ast me, Orville--she ast me to dinner o' herself! An' she
+give me this shawl. I'm--cryin'--fer--joy--"
+
+"I ast her to dinner," said Emarine, "but she ain't ever goin' back
+again. She's goin' to _stay_. I expect we've both had enough of a
+lesson to do us."
+
+Orville did not speak. He fell on his knees and laid his head, like a
+boy, in his mother's lap, and reached one strong but trembling arm up
+to his wife's waist, drawing her down to him.
+
+Mrs. Endey got up and went to rattling things around on the table
+vigorously. "Well, I never see sech a pack o' loonatics!" she
+exclaimed. "Go an' burn all your Christmas dinner up, if I don't look
+after it! Turncoats! I expect they'll both be fallin' over theirselves
+to knuckle down to each other from now on! I never see!"
+
+But there was something in her eyes, too, that made them beautiful.
+
+
+
+
+THE SUN'S HEAT.
+
+
+BY SIR ROBERT BALL,
+
+Lowndean Professor of Astronomy and Geometry at Cambridge, England;
+formerly Royal Astronomer of Ireland.
+
+
+There is a story told of a well-intentioned missionary who tried to
+induce a Persian fire-worshipper to abandon the creed of his
+ancestors. "Is it not," urged the Christian minister, "a sad and
+deplorable superstition for an intelligent person like you to worship
+an inanimate object like the sun?" "My friend," said the old Persian,
+"you come from England; now tell me, have you ever seen the sun?" The
+retort was a just one; for the fact is, that those of us whose lot
+requires them to live beneath the clouds and in the gloom which so
+frequently brood over our Northern latitudes, have but little
+conception of the surpassing glory of the great orb of day as it
+appears to those who know it in the clear Eastern skies. The Persian
+recognizes in the sun not only the great source of light and of
+warmth, but even of life itself. Indeed, the advances of modern
+science ever tend to bring before us with more and more significance
+the surpassing glory with which Milton tells us the sun is crowned. I
+shall endeavor to give in this article a brief sketch of what has
+recently been learned as to the actual warmth which the sun possesses
+and of the prodigality with which it pours forth its radiant
+treasures.
+
+I number among my acquaintances an intelligent gardener who is fond of
+speculating about things in the heavens as well as about things on the
+earth. One day he told me that he felt certain it was quite a mistake
+to believe, as most of us do believe, that the sun up there is a hot,
+glowing body. "No," he said; "the sun cannot be a source of heat, and
+I will prove it. If the sun were a source of heat," said the rural
+philosopher, "then the closer you approached the sun the warmer you
+would find yourself. But this is not the case, for when you are
+climbing up a mountain you are approaching nearer to the sun all the
+time; but, as everybody knows, instead of feeling hotter and hotter as
+you ascend, you are becoming steadily colder and colder. In fact, when
+you reach a certain height, you will find yourself surrounded by
+perpetual ice and snow, and you may not improbably be frozen to death
+when you have got as near to the sun as you can. Therefore," concluded
+my friend, triumphantly, "it is all nonsense to tell me the sun is a
+scorching hot fire."
+
+[Illustration: THE SUN: FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN BY LEWIS M. RUTHERFURD
+IN NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 22, 1870.
+
+Professor C. A. Young, writing to the editor of MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE,
+pronounces this "still the best photograph of the entire sun" with
+which he is acquainted.]
+
+I thought the best way to explain the little delusion under which the
+worthy gardener labored was to refer him to what takes place in his
+own domain. I asked him wherein lies the advantage of putting his
+tender plants into his greenhouse in November. How does that preserve
+them through the winter? How is it that even without artificial heat
+the mere shelter of the glass will often protect plants from frost? I
+explained to him that the glass acts as a veritable trap for the
+sunbeams; it lets them pass in, but it will not let them escape. The
+temperature within the greenhouse is consequently raised, and thus the
+necessary warmth is maintained. The dwellers on this earth live in
+what is equivalent, in this respect, to a greenhouse. There is a
+copious atmosphere above our heads, and that atmosphere extends to us
+the same protection which the glass does to the plants in the
+greenhouse. The air lets the sunbeams through to the earth's surface,
+and then keeps their heat down here to make us comfortable. When you
+climb to the top of a high mountain you pass through a large part of
+the air. This is the reason why you feel warmer on the surface of the
+earth than you do on the top of a high mountain. If, however, it were
+possible to go very much closer to the sun; if, for example, the earth
+were to approach within half its present distance, it is certain that
+the heat would be so intense that all life would be immediately
+scorched away.
+
+It will be remembered that when Nebuchadnezzar condemned the unhappy
+Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to be cast into the burning fiery
+furnace, he commanded in his fury that the furnace should be heated
+seven times hotter than it was wont to be heated. Let us think of the
+hottest furnace which the minions of Nebuchadnezzar could ever have
+kindled with all the resources of Babylon; let us think indeed of one
+of the most perfect of modern furnaces, in which even a substance so
+refractory as steel, having first attained a dazzling brilliance, can
+be melted so as to run like water; let us imagine the heat-dispensing
+power of that glittering liquid to be multiplied sevenfold; let us go
+beyond Nebuchadnezzar's frenzied command, and imagine the efficiency
+of our furnace to be ten or twelve times as great as that which he
+commanded--we shall then obtain a notion of a heat-giving power
+corresponding to that which would be found in the wonderful celestial
+furnace, the great sun in heaven.
+
+[Illustration: SIR ROBERT BALL. From a photograph by Russel & Sons,
+London.]
+
+Ponder also upon the stupendous size of that orb, which glows at every
+point of its surface with the astonishing fervor I have indicated. The
+earth on which we stand is no doubt a mighty globe, measuring as it
+does eight thousand miles in diameter; yet what are its dimensions in
+comparison with those of the sun? If the earth be represented by a
+grain of mustard seed, then on the same scale the sun should be
+represented by a cocoanut. Perhaps, however, a more impressive
+conception of the dimensions of the great orb of day may be obtained
+in this way. Think of the moon, the queen of the night, which circles
+monthly around our heavens, pursuing, as she does, a majestic track,
+at a distance of two hundred and forty thousand miles from the earth.
+Yet the sun is so vast that if it were a hollow ball, and if the earth
+were placed at the centre of that ball, the moon could revolve in the
+orbit which it now follows, and still be entirely enclosed within the
+sun's interior.
+
+For every acre on the surface of our globe there are more than ten
+thousand acres on the surface of the great luminary. Every portion of
+this illimitable desert of flame is pouring forth torrents of heat. It
+has indeed been estimated that if the heat which is incessantly
+flowing through any single square foot of the sun's exterior could be
+collected and applied beneath the boilers of an Atlantic liner, it
+would suffice to produce steam enough to sustain in continuous
+movement those engines of twenty thousand horse-power which enable a
+superb ship to break the record between Ireland and America.
+
+The solar heat is shot forth into space in every direction, with a
+prodigality which seems well-nigh inexhaustible. No doubt the earth
+does intercept a fair supply of sunbeams for conversion to our many
+needs; but the share of sun-heat that the dwelling-place of mankind is
+able to capture and employ forms only an infinitesimal fraction of
+what the sun actually pours forth. It would seem, indeed, very
+presumptuous for us to assume that the great sun has come into
+existence solely for the benefit of poor humanity. The heat and light
+daily lavished by that orb of incomparable splendor would suffice to
+warm and illuminate, quite as efficiently as the earth is warmed and
+lighted, more than two thousand million globes each as large as the
+earth. If it has indeed been the scheme of nature to call into
+existence the solar arrangements on their present scale for the
+solitary purpose of cherishing this immediate world of ours, then all
+we can say is that nature carries on its business in the most
+outrageously wasteful manner.
+
+What should we think of the prudence of a man who, having been endowed
+with a splendid fortune of not less than twenty million dollars, spent
+one cent of that vast sum usefully and dissipated every other cent and
+every other dollar of his gigantic wealth in mere aimless
+extravagance? This would, however, appear to be the way in which the
+sun manages its affairs, if we are to suppose that all the solar heat
+is wasted save that minute fraction which is received by the earth.
+Out of every twenty million dollars' worth of heat issuing from the
+glorious orb of day, we on this earth barely secure the value of one
+single cent; and all but that insignificant trifle seems to be utterly
+squandered. We may say it certainly is squandered so far as humanity
+is concerned. No doubt there are certain other planets besides the
+earth, and they will receive quantities of heat to the extent of a few
+cents more. It must, however, be said that the stupendous volume of
+solar radiation passes off substantially untaxed into space, and what
+may actually there become of it science is unable to tell.
+
+And now for the great question as to how the supply of heat is
+sustained so as to permit the orb of day to continue in its career of
+such unparalleled prodigality. Every child knows that the fire on the
+domestic hearth will go out unless the necessary supplies of wood or
+coal can be duly provided. The workman knows that the devouring blast
+furnace requires to be incessantly stoked with fresh fuel. How, then,
+comes it that a furnace so much more stupendous than any terrestrial
+furnace can continue to pour forth in perennial abundance its amazing
+stores of heat without being nourished by continual supplies of some
+kind? Professor Langley, who has done so much to extend our knowledge
+of the great orb of heaven, has suggested a method of illustrating the
+quantity of fuel which would be required, if indeed it were by
+successive additions of fuel that the sun's heat had to be sustained.
+Suppose that all the coal seams which underlie America were made to
+yield up their stores. Suppose that all the coal fields of England and
+Scotland, Australia, China, and elsewhere were compelled to contribute
+every combustible particle they contained. Suppose, in fact, that we
+extracted from this earth every ton of coal it possesses, in every
+island and in every continent. Suppose that this vast store of fuel,
+which is adequate to supply the wants of this earth for centuries,
+were to be accumulated in one stupendous pile. Suppose that an army of
+stokers, arrayed in numbers which we need not now pause to calculate,
+were employed to throw this coal into the great solar furnace. How
+long, think you, would so gigantic a mass of fuel maintain the sun's
+expenditure at its present rate? I am but uttering a deliberate
+scientific fact when I say that a conflagration which destroyed every
+particle of coal contained in this earth would not generate so much
+heat as the sun lavishes abroad to ungrateful space in the tenth part
+of every single second. During the few minutes that the reader has
+been occupied over these lines, a quantity of heat which is many
+thousands of times as great as, the heat which could be produced by
+the ignition of all the coal in every coal-pit in the globe has been
+dispersed and totally lost to the sun.
+
+But we have still one further conception to introduce before we shall
+have fully grasped the significance of the sun's extravagance in the
+matter of heat. As the sun shines to-day on this earth, so it shone
+yesterday, so it shone a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago; so
+it shone in the earliest dawn of history; so it shone during those
+still remoter periods when great animals flourished which have now
+vanished forever; so it shone during that remarkable period in earth's
+history when the great coal forests flourished; so it shone in those
+remote ages many millions of years ago when life began to dawn on an
+earth which was still young. There is every reason to believe that
+throughout these illimitable periods which the imagination strives in
+vain to realize, the sun has dispensed its radiant treasures of light
+and warmth with just the same prodigality as that which now
+characterizes it.
+
+We all know the consequences of wanton extravagance. We know it spells
+bankruptcy and ruin. The expenditure of heat by the sun is the most
+magnificent extravagance of which human knowledge gives us any
+conception. How have the consequences of such awful prodigality been
+hitherto averted? How is it that the sun is still able to draw on its
+heat reserves from second to second, from century to century, from eon
+to eon, ever squandering two thousand million times as much heat as
+that which genially warms our temperate regions, as that which draws
+forth the exuberant vegetation of the tropics, or which rages in the
+Desert of Sahara? This is indeed a great problem.
+
+It was Helmholtz who discovered that the continual maintenance of the
+sun's temperature is due to the fact that the sun is neither solid nor
+liquid, but is to a great extent gaseous. His theory of the subject
+has gained universal acceptance. Those who have taken the trouble to
+become acquainted with it are compelled to admit that the doctrine set
+forth by this great philosopher embodies a profound truth.
+
+[Illustration: A TYPICAL SUN-SPOT.
+
+By permission of Longmans, Green & Co., from "Old and New Astronomy,"
+by Richard A. Proctor.]
+
+Even the great sun cannot escape the application of a certain law
+which affects every terrestrial object, and whose province is wide as
+the universe itself. Nature has not one law for the rich and another
+for the poor. The sun is shedding forth heat, and therefore, affirms
+this law, the sun must be shrinking in size. We have learned the rate
+at which this contraction proceeds; for among the many triumphs which
+mathematicians have accomplished must be reckoned that of having put a
+pair of callipers on the sun so as to measure its diameter. We thus
+find that the width of the great luminary is ten inches smaller to-day
+than it was yesterday. Year in and year out the glorious orb of heaven
+is steadily diminishing at the same rate. For hundreds of years, aye,
+for hundreds of thousands of years, this incessant shrinking has gone
+on at about the same rate as it goes on at present. For hundreds of
+years, aye, for hundreds of thousands of years, the shrinking still
+will go on. As a sponge exudes moisture by continuous squeezing, so
+the sun pours forth heat by continuous shrinking. So long as the sun
+remains practically gaseous, so long will the great luminary continue
+to shrink, and thus continue its gracious beneficence. Hence it is
+that for incalculable ages yet to come the sun will pour forth its
+unspeakable benefits; and thence it is that, for a period compared
+with which the time of man upon this earth is but a day, summer and
+winter, heat and cold, seedtime and harvest, in their due succession,
+will never be wanting to this earth.
+
+
+
+
+HALL CAINE.
+
+STORY OF HIS LIFE AND WORK, DERIVED FROM CONVERSATIONS.
+
+
+BY ROBERT HARBOROUGH SHERARD.
+
+
+Extreme dignity is the leading characteristic of Thomas Henry Hall
+Caine as a man, just as extreme conscientiousness is his leading
+characteristic as a writer. He possesses in a high degree the sense of
+the responsibility which an author owes to the public and to himself.
+It is on account of these facts that the story of his uneventful life
+and brilliant literary career is a highly interesting one. It shows
+how, by firmness of principle and a high respect of the public and
+himself, a man of undoubted genius has been enabled to raise himself
+to a position in the English-speaking worlds to which few men of
+letters have ever attained--a position which may be compared to that
+of a _vates_ amongst the Romans, of a prophet in Israel.
+
+Hall Caine, as his double name implies, comes of the mixed Norse and
+Celtic race which constitutes the population of the Isle of Man. Hall,
+his mother's name, is Norse, and is common to this day in Iceland,
+from which the Norsemen came to Manxland. Caine, which means "a
+fighter with clubs," is Celtic. Hall Caine himself, with his ruddy
+beard and hair and distinctive features, has inherited rather the
+physical characteristics of his maternal ancestors, the Norsemen.
+
+[Illustration: BALLAVOLLEY COTTAGE, BALLAUGH, ISLE OF MAN, WHERE HALL
+CAINE LIVED AS A LITTLE BOY.]
+
+He comes of a stock of crofters, or small farmers, who for centuries
+had supported themselves by tilling the soil and fishing the sea. He
+is the first of all his line who ever worked his brain for a living.
+His grandfather, who had a farm of sixty acres in the beautiful parish
+of Ballaugh, which lies between Peel and Ramsey, was a wastrel, fond
+of the amusements and dissipations to be found in Douglas, and
+alienated his small property, so that, at the age of eighteen, his
+son, Hall Caine's father, was for a living obliged to apprentice
+himself to a blacksmith at Ramsey. When he had learned his trade he
+removed, in the hopes of finding more remunerative employment, to
+Liverpool. Here, however, he found it so hard to support himself as a
+blacksmith that he set to work to learn the trade of ship's smith--a
+remunerative one in those days, when Liverpool was the centre of the
+ship-building trade. He became a skilled worker, and at the time of
+his marriage was able to command a wage of thirty-six shillings a
+week, in addition to what he was able to earn by piece work. It was
+whilst engaged on a piece of work on a ship at Runcorn, in Cheshire,
+that on May 14, 1853, the child was born--his second son--to whom he
+gave the names of Thomas Henry Hall. Runcorn can thus claim to be the
+birthplace of the famous writer, although his birth there was a mere
+accident, and not more than ten days of his life were spent there.
+
+[Illustration: From a photograph by Barraud, London.]
+
+[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF HALL CAINE'S MANUSCRIPT, FROM "THE
+MANXMAN." AN ADDITION MADE IN REVISING PROOFS.]
+
+Hall Caine has no remembrance of the first years which he spent in
+Liverpool, and his earliest recollections are of life in his
+grandmother's cottage of Ballavolley, Ballaugh, in the Isle of Man, a
+house set in a wooded plain surrounded by high mountains which glow,
+here yellow with the gorse, there purple with the heather. In the
+foreground is the beautiful old church of Ballaugh, in the cemetery of
+which many generations of Caines lie at rest; and between the old
+church and the village lies the curragh land, full of wild flowers and
+musical with the notes of every bird that uplifts its voice to heaven.
+Far off can be descried, across the sea, the Mull of Galloway. It is
+in its rare beauty a spot than which, for a poet's childhood, no
+fitter could be found.
+
+[Illustration: MRS. HALL CAINE. From a photograph by Alfred Ellis,
+London.]
+
+
+CHILDHOOD IN A MANX COTTAGE.
+
+The Ballavolley cottage was a typical Manx cottage. On one side of the
+porch was the parlor, which also served as a dairy, redolent of milk
+and bright with rare old Derby china. On the other side was the
+living-room, with its undulating floor of stamped earth and grateless
+hearthstone in the ingle, to the right and left of which were seats.
+Here in the ingle-nook the little boy would sit watching his aunts
+cooking the oaten cake on the griddle, over a fire of turf from the
+curragh and gorse from the hills, or the bubbling cooking-pot slung on
+the slowrie. One of his earliest recollections is of his old
+grandmother, seated on her three-legged stool, bending over the fire,
+tongs in hand, renewing the fuel of gorse under the griddle. The walls
+of this room were covered with blue crockery ware, and through the
+open rafters of the unplastered ceiling could be seen the flooring of
+the bedrooms above. These were very low dormer rooms, with the bed in
+the angle where the roof was lowest. One had to crawl into bed and lie
+just under the whitewashed "scraa" or turf roofing, which smelt
+deliciously with an odor that at times still haunts the cottage lad in
+statelier homes.
+
+[Illustration: HALL CAINE'S LIBRARY. From a photograph by Barton.]
+
+Hall Caine's impressions of his life at Ballavolley are vivid--the old
+preacher at the church, the drinking-bouts of "jough"-beer by the
+gallon amongst the villagers, the donkey rides upon the curragh. But
+what it best pleases him to remember are the times when, seated in the
+ingle-nook, he used to listen to his grandmother telling fairy
+stories, as she sat at her black oak spinning-wheel, bending low over
+the whirling yarn. "Hommybeg"--it was a pet name she had given to
+him--"Hommybeg," she would say, "I will tell you of the fairies." And
+the story that he liked best to listen to, though it so frightened him
+that he would run and hide his face in the folds of the blue Spanish
+cloak which Manx women have worn since two ships of the Great Armada
+were wrecked upon the island, was the story of how his grandmother,
+when a lass, had seen the fairies with her own eyes. That was many
+years before. She had been out one night to meet her sweetheart, and
+as she was returning in the moonlight she was overtaken by a
+multitude of little men, tiny little fellows in velvet coats and
+cocked hats and pointed shoes, who ran after her, swarmed over her,
+and clambered up her streaming hair.
+
+[Illustration: GREEBA CASTLE, ISLE OF MAN, WHERE MR. CAINE WROTE MOST
+OF "THE MANXMAN."
+From a photograph by Abel Lewis, Douglas, Isle of Man.]
+
+He was a precocious lad, and knew no greater delight than to read. The
+first book that he remembers reading was a bulky tome on the German
+Reformation, about Luther and Melancthon, which he had found. He spent
+weeks over it, and, staggering under its weight, would carry it out
+into the hayfield, where, truant to the harvest, he would lie behind
+the stacks and read and read. One night, indeed, his interest in this
+book led him to break the rules of his thrifty home--where children
+went to bed when it was dark, so that candles should not be
+burned--and light the candles and read on about Luther. He was found
+thus by one of his aunts as, pails in hand, she returned home from
+milking the cows. Her anger was great. "Candles lit!" she cried.
+"What's to do? Candles! Wasting candles on reading, on mere reading!"
+He was beaten and sent to bed, bursting with indignation at such
+injustice, for he felt that candles were nothing compared to
+knowledge. He was a bookish boy, wanting in boyishness, and never
+played games, but spent his time in reading, not boyish books, indeed,
+but books in which never boy before took interest--histories,
+theological works, and, in preference, parliamentary speeches of the
+great orators, which he would afterwards rewrite from memory. At a
+very early age he showed a great passion for poetry and was a great
+reader of Shakespeare. His talent for reading passages of Shakespeare
+aloud was such that at the school at Liverpool, where he was educated,
+his schoolmaster, George Gill, used to make him read aloud before all
+the boys. This caused him great nervous agony, he says, and he
+suffered horribly. He was a favorite pupil, and, in a school where
+corporal punishment was inflicted with great severity, was never once
+beaten. He left school at the age of fifteen and was apprenticed by
+his father to John Murray, architect and land-surveyor. The lad had no
+special faculties for architecture beyond possessing a fair knowledge
+of drawing. When only thirteen he drew the map of England which
+appeared in the first edition of "Gill's Geography." At this time he
+had shown no bent for authorship beyond making the transcriptions from
+memory of the speeches he had read, and writing, for a school
+competition, a "Life of Joseph," which was not even read by the
+arbitrator, because it was much too long. It is noticeable, however,
+that on this "Life of Joseph" he had worked with the same
+conscientiousness which has distinguished his literary activity
+through all his career. "I read everything on the subject that I could
+lay my hands upon," he says, "and spent day and night in working at
+it." To-day, as then, when Hall Caine has a book to write, he reads
+every book bearing on his theme which he can obtain--"a whole library
+for each chapter"--and will work at his subject day and night,
+all-absorbed, wrapped up, concentrated.
+
+[Illustration: PEEL CASTLE, ISLE OF MAN.]
+
+John Murray was agent for the Lancashire estates of W.E. Gladstone,
+and it was in this way that Hall Caine first became known to the
+statesman, who from the first has been amongst his keenest admirers.
+One of the first occasions on which he attracted Mr. Gladstone's
+attention was one day when he was superintending the surveying of
+Seaforth, Gladstone's estate. Gladstone was surprised to see so small
+a lad in charge of the chainmen, and began to talk with him. He must
+have been impressed by the lad's conversation, for he patted his head
+and told him he would be a fine man yet. Mr. Gladstone has never
+forgotten this incident. Some time later, John Murray having failed in
+the meanwhile, an offer was made to Hall Caine, from the Gladstones,
+of the stewardship of the Seaforth estate at a salary of one hundred
+and twenty pound a year. "Although the thought of so much wealth," he
+relates, "overwhelmed me, I did not see in this offer the prospect of
+any career--indeed this had been pointed out to me--and I determined
+to continue in the architect's office." He accordingly attached
+himself as pupil or apprentice to Richard Owens, the architect.
+
+[Illustration: PEEL, ISLE OF MAN, WHERE MR. CAINE FINISHED "THE
+MANXMAN." THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, IN THE ROW FRONTING ON THE WATER
+AT THE LEFT OF THE PICTURE, IS THE ONE MR. CAINE OCCUPIED.]
+
+
+FIRST WRITINGS FOR THE PUBLIC.
+
+Hall Caine's first writings for the public were done in the Isle of
+Man, at the age of sixteen, when he had come over to recruit his
+health at the house of his uncle, the schoolmaster at Kirk Maughold.
+At that time the island was divided by a discussion as to the
+maintenance or abolition of Manx political institutions, and the boy
+threw himself into this discussion with characteristic ardor. His
+vehement articles in favor of the maintenance of the political
+independence, published each week in "Mona's Herald," were full of
+force. They attracted, however, little notice beyond that of James
+Teare, Caine's uncle, the great temperance reformer, who admired them
+justly. He encouraged the boy to write, and told his skeptical
+relations that if Hall Caine failed as an architect he would certainly
+be able to make a living with his pen.
+
+A visit to Kirk Maughold will afford to the observer the best insight
+into Hall Caine's literary temperament. The spirit of the place
+expounds his spirit; its genius seems to have entered into him. There
+are seasons when this headland height lies serene and calm, wrapped in
+such loveliness of light on sea and land that the heart melts for very
+ecstasy at the beauty of all things around, the glowing hills, the
+flowers that are everywhere, the sea beyond, the tenderness, the
+color, the native poetry of it all. There are seasons, too, of strife
+and hurricane, of titanic forces battling in the air, when vehement
+and irresistible winds burst forth to make howling havoc on the
+bleakest heights--so they seem then--that man's foot ever trod. There
+are times when not one harebell nods its head in the calm air, not one
+seed falls from the feathered grass, in the tender serenity of a quiet
+world; and there are times, too, when Nature aroused puts forth her
+terrible strength, so that man ventures abroad at his great peril, and
+ropes must be stretched along the roads by which the unwary wanderer
+may drag his storm-tossed body home. In Hall Caine's work we also
+find these extremes of tenderness and its calm, of passion and its
+riot.
+
+On his return to Liverpool, encouraged by what James Teare had said,
+Hall Caine continued to write. No longer, however, on political
+questions, but on the subjects with which his profession had
+familiarized him. Between the ages of sixteen and twenty this boy
+wrote learned leading articles on building, land-surveying, and
+architecture for "The Builder." George Godwin, the editor of this
+leading periodical, could not believe his eyes when he first met his
+contributor. Hall Caine was then nineteen. "I felt terribly ashamed of
+being so young," he says, in speaking of this interview.
+
+It was about this time that he returned to the Isle of Man, tired of
+architecture. His uncle died, and there was no schoolmaster at Kirk
+Maughold school. So Hall Caine became schoolmaster, and for about six
+months kept a mixed school on the bleak headland. He is still
+remembered as a schoolmaster, and last year, when "The Manxman" was
+appearing in serial publication, his grown-up scholars used to gather
+at a farm near Kirk Maughold school and listen to the schoolmaster
+reading the story as each instalment came out.
+
+The six months of his schoolmastership were a period of great
+activity. It was the time of the Paris Commune, and, a rabid
+Communist, Hall Caine read Communist and socialistic literature with
+avidity. He contributed violent propagandist articles to "Mona's
+Herald," in which three years previously he had preached the virtues
+of conservatism, and attracted the attention of John Ruskin by his
+eulogies of Ruskin's work with his recently founded Guild of St.
+George. His leisure was spent in his workshop, and during this period
+he not only carved a tombstone for his uncle's grave, but built a
+house--Phoenix cottage--both of which are still standing and may be
+seen. It was a happy time, a time of inspiration; and it may be, from
+the sympathy between the man and the place, that Hall Caine would have
+stayed on at Kirk Maughold had not a most imperative letter from
+Richard Owens, which said that it was deplorable that he should be
+throwing his life away in such occupations, recalled him to Liverpool.
+To Liverpool accordingly he returned, to work as a draughtsman, and
+fired withal with a double ambition--for one thing to win fame as a
+poet, for another to succeed as a dramatist. Already in 1870 he had
+written a long poem, which was published in 1874 anonymously by an
+enterprising Liverpool publisher. About this poem George Gilfillan, to
+whom Hall Caine sent it in 1876, wrote that there was much in it that
+he admired, that it had the ring of genius, but that in parts it was
+spoiled by affectations of language which could, however, be remedied.
+Of the same poem, Rossetti, to whom it was also sent, wrote that it
+contained passages of genius. As a dramatist, Hall Caine wrote, at
+this period in his career, a play called "Alton Locke." founded on
+Kingsley's story. It was shown to Rousby, the actor-manager, who liked
+"the promise that it showed" and asked Hall Caine to write a play to
+his order. At that time he looked upon himself as a dramatist, and
+indeed still hopes to achieve as such--when he shall have tired of the
+novel as a vehicle and shall have learned, the present object of his
+closest study, the technicalities of the stage--a success as great as
+that which has attended his novels. Many of his friends, indeed, hope
+for even better things from him as a dramatist; and Blackmore, for
+instance, hardly ever writes to him without repeating that, great as
+has been his success as a novelist, it will be nothing to his success
+when he gets possession of the stage.
+
+[Illustration: R.E. MORRISON. R.H.SHERARD. HALL CAINE.
+
+From a photograph taken specially for MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, by George B.
+Cowen, Ramsey, Isle of Man. Mr. Morrison is an artist who has lately
+painted a portrait of Mr. Caine.]
+
+
+CAINE'S ASSOCIATION WITH ROSSETTI.
+
+Till the age of twenty-four he remained in Liverpool, earning his
+living in a builder's office, lecturing, starting societies, working
+as secretary of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings,
+and writing for the papers. His lectures on Shakespeare attracted the
+attention of Lord Houghton, who expressed a desire to meet him. A
+meeting was arranged at the house of Henry Bright (the H.A.B, of
+Hawthorne); and the first thing that Lord Houghton, the biographer of
+Keats, said when Hall Caine came into the room was: "You have the head
+of Keats." He predicted that the young author would become a great
+critic. Another of Hall Caine's lectures, delivered during this
+period, "The Supernatural in Poetry," brought a long letter of eulogy
+from Matthew Arnold. His lecture on Rossetti won him the friendship of
+this great man, a correspondence ensued, and when Caine was
+twenty-five years old, Rossetti wrote and asked him to come up to
+London to see him. Caine went and was received most cordially.
+
+[Illustration: BISHOP'S COURT, WHERE DAN MYLREA IN "THE DREMSTER" WAS
+REARED.]
+
+[Illustration: SIR W.L. DRINKWATER, THE PRESENT FIRST DREMSTER OF THE
+ISLE OF MAN.
+From a photograph by J. E. Bruton, Douglas, Isle of Man.]
+
+"He met me on the threshold of his house," he relates, "with both
+hands outstretched, and drew me into his studio. That night he read me
+'The King's Tragedy.'"
+
+During the evening Rossetti asked him to remove to London and invited
+him to his house; at the same time--it may be to prepare him for their
+common life--he showed him, to Caine's horror, what a slave he had
+become to the chloral habit.
+
+It was not until many months later that Hall Caine determined to
+accept Rossetti's invitation, and went to share his monastic seclusion
+in his gloomy London house. In the meanwhile, and in this Rossetti had
+helped him by correspondence, he had edited for Elliot Stock an
+anthology of English sonnets, which was published under the title of
+"Sonnets of Three Centuries." For his work in connection with this
+volume Hall Caine received no remuneration. Indeed, at this period in
+his career the earnings of the writer who can to-day command the
+highest prices in the market, were very small indeed. His average
+income was two hundred and sixty pounds (thirteen hundred dollars),
+and of this two hundred pounds was earned as a draughtsman. When he
+went to live with Rossetti he had about fifty pounds (two hundred and
+fifty dollars) of money saved, to which he was afterwards able to add
+a sum of one hundred pounds, which Rossetti insisted on his accepting
+as his commission on the sale of Rossetti's picture, "Dante's Dream."
+It may be mentioned, to dispel certain misstatements, that this was
+the only financial transaction which took place between the two
+friends. His life in Rossetti's house was the life of a monk, seeing
+nobody except Burne-Jones (whom, as Ruskin will have it, he resembles
+closely), going nowhere and doing little. "I used to get up at noon,"
+he says, "and usually spent my afternoon in walking about in the
+garden. I did not see Rossetti till dinner-time, but from that hour
+till three or four in the morning we were inseparable." It has been
+stated that Caine owed much of his success in literature to Rossetti.
+This is only partly true. His introduction to literary society in
+London under Rossetti's wing was harmful rather than advantageous to
+him, for it prejudiced people against him; and his connection with
+Rossetti, which was that of a spiritual son with a spiritual father,
+was misrepresented. He was spoken of as Rossetti's secretary, even as
+Rossetti's valet. On the other hand, so young a man could not but
+derive benefit from the society of so refined an artist, who had no
+thought nor ambition outside his art. And, in a practical way,
+Rossetti also benefited him. When he first came to Rossetti's house he
+was under an engagement to deliver twenty-four lectures on "Prose
+Fiction" in Liverpool, and in preparation of these lectures began
+studying the English novelists.
+
+[Illustration: KIRK MAUGHOLD, WHICH FIGURES IN "THE BONDMAN" AND "THE
+MANXMAN."]
+
+"One day Rossetti suggested that, instead of reading these novels
+alone, I should read them aloud to him. From that day on, night after
+night, for months and months, I used to read to him. I read Fielding
+and Smollett, Richardson, Radcliffe, 'Monk' Lewis, Thackeray, and
+Dickens, under a running fire of comment and criticism from Rossetti.
+It was terrible labor, this reading for hours night after night, till
+dawn came and I could drag myself wearily upstairs to bed. But it was
+a very useful study, and this is indeed the debt which I owe to
+Rossetti."
+
+Rossetti died on Easter Day, 1882, at the seashore, near Margate, in
+Hall Caine's arms. It shows the extent of their friendship that, the
+bungalow being crowded that night, Caine readily offered to sleep in
+the death-chamber. "It is Rossetti," he said.
+
+
+HALL CAINE'S FIRST NOVEL.
+
+Hall Caine then returned to London, and whilst continuing to
+contribute to various papers, and notably to the "Liverpool Mercury,"
+to which he was attached for years, he wrote his "Recollections of
+Rossetti," which brought him forty pounds (two hundred dollars) and
+attracted some attention in literary circles, without, however,
+enhancing his reputation with the general public. This was followed by
+"Cobwebs of Criticism," the title he gave to a collection of critical
+essays, originally delivered as lectures. This book did nothing for
+him in any way. All this while he had been hankering after
+novel-writing, and, though Rossetti had always urged him to become a
+dramatist, he had also encouraged him to write novels, advising him to
+become the novelist of Manxland. "There is a career there," he used to
+say, "for nothing is known about this land." The two friends had
+discussed Hall Caine's plot of "The Shadow of a Crime," which Rossetti
+had found "immensely powerful but unsympathetic," and it was with this
+novel that Hall Caine began his career as a writer of fiction. He had
+married in the meanwhile, and with forty pounds (two hundred dollars)
+in the bank and an assured income of a hundred (five hundred dollars)
+a year from the "Liverpool Mercury," he went with his wife to live in
+a small house in the Isle of Wight, to write his book. "I labored over
+it fearfully," he says, "but not so much as I do now over my books. At
+that time I only wanted to write a thrilling tale. Now what I want in
+my novels is a spiritual intent, a problem of life." "The Shadow of a
+Crime" appeared first in serial form in the "Liverpool Mercury," and
+was published in book form by Chatto & Windus in 1885. For the book
+rights Hall Caine received seventy-five pounds (three hundred and
+seventy-five dollars), which, with the one hundred pounds (five
+hundred dollars) from the "Liverpool Mercury," is all that he has ever
+received from a book which is now in its seventeenth edition. "It had
+a distinguished reception," he says. "Indeed, it was received with a
+burst of eulogy from the press; but at the time it produced no popular
+success, and made no difference in my market value."
+
+There is no man living, perhaps, who has more contempt for money than
+Hall Caine, revealing himself in this also a true artist; yet to
+exemplify to a _confrère_ the practical value of what he calls the
+"literary statesmanship" which he has practised throughout his career,
+he will sometimes show the little book in which are entered the
+receipts from his various works. No more striking argument in favor of
+conscientiousness and literary dignity could be found than that
+afforded by a comparison between the first page of this account book
+and the last.
+
+[Illustration: LEZAYRE CHURCH, WHERE PETE AND KATE WERE MARRIED IN
+"THE MANXMAN."]
+
+
+BEATING THE STREETS OF LONDON IN SEARCH OF WORK.
+
+A time of need followed, during which Hall Caine beat the streets of
+London in search of work. He offered himself as a publisher's reader
+in various houses, and was roughly turned away. He suffered slights
+and humiliations; but these only strengthened his resolve. In this
+respect he reminds one of Zola, whom slights and humiliations only
+strengthened also; and in this connection it may be mentioned that
+there hangs in Hall Caine's drawing-room, in Peel, a pen-and-ink
+portrait which one mistakes for that of Emile Zola, till one is told
+that it is the picture of Hall Caine.
+
+The reverses, which it now pleases him to remember, in no wise daunted
+him. There was his wife and "Sunlocks," his little son, to be provided
+for; and with fine determination he set to work. In the year 1886 he
+wrote a "Life of Coleridge" and finished his second novel, "A Son of
+Hagar." On the fly-leaf of his copy of the "Life of Coleridge" are
+written the words: "N.B--This book was begun October 8, 1886. It was
+not touched after that date until October 15th or 16th, and was
+finished down to last two chapters by November 1st. Completed December
+4th to 8th--about three weeks in all. H.C." It is an excellent piece
+of work, but Caine regrets now that he threw away on a book of this
+kind all his knowledge of his subject. "_I_ could have written _the_
+Life of Coleridge," he says.
+
+"A Son of Hagar" produced three hundred pounds (fifteen hundred
+dollars), and has now achieved an immense success, but its reception
+at the time was a feeble one. Hall Caine ground his teeth and clenched
+his fist and said: "I will write one more book; I will put into it all
+the work that is in me, and if the world still remains indifferent and
+contemptuous, I will never write another." In the meanwhile he had
+decided to follow Rossetti's advice, to write a Manx novel; and having
+thought out the plot of "The Deemster," went to the Isle of Man to
+write it. It was written in six months, in one of the lodging-houses
+on the Esplanade at Douglas, in a fever of wounded pride. "I worked
+over it like a galley-slave; I poured all my memories into it," he
+says. In the meanwhile he maintained his family by journalism, being
+now connected with the best papers in London. "The Deemster" was sold
+for one hundred and fifty pounds (six hundred dollars), the serial
+rights having produced four hundred pounds (two thousand dollars). He
+would be glad to-day to purchase the copyright back for one thousand
+pounds. He had great faith in this book.
+
+"Long after we are both dead," he said to his publisher, when they
+were discussing terms, "this book will be alive." "I was indifferent
+to its reception," he relates; "I said, that if the public did not
+take it, that would only prove its damnable folly," Its reception was
+immense, and "then began for me something like fame."
+
+
+THE BEGINNING OF PROSPERITY.
+
+[Illustration: INTERIOR OF "THE COTTAGE BY THE WATER-TROUGH," KIRKNEO,
+NEAR RAMSEY, ISLE OF MAN, WHERE LIVED "BLACK TOM," THE GRANDFATHER OF
+PETE, IN "THE MANXMAN."]
+
+Offers came in from all sides; the little house in Kent, where he was
+then living, became the pilgrimage of the publishers. Irving read the
+book in America, and seeing that there was here material for a
+splendid play, with himself in the part of the Bishop, hesitated about
+cabling to the author. In the meanwhile Wilson Barrett had also read
+the book, and had telegraphed to Kent to ask Hall Caine to come up to
+London to discuss its dramatization. Hall Caine started, but was
+forced to leave the train at Derby because a terrible fog rendered
+travelling impossible. He spent the next ten days in the Isaac Walton
+Inn, at Dovedale, near Derby, waiting for the fog to lift, and whilst
+so waiting wrote the first draft of the play, which he entitled
+"Ben-my-Chree," Barrett was enthusiastic about it, and "Ben-my-Chree"
+was duly produced for the first time at the Princess Theatre, on May
+14, 1888, before a packed house, in which every literary celebrity in
+London was present. "The reception was enthusiastic; the next day I
+was a famous man." Notwithstanding its great success on the first
+night and the splendid eulogies of the press, "Ben-my-Chree" failed to
+draw in London, and after running for one hundred nights, at a great
+loss to the management, was withdrawn. It was then taken to the
+provinces, and was very successful, both there and in America, holding
+the stage for seven years. It was afterwards reproduced, with some
+success, in London. This play brought Hall Caine in a sum of one
+thousand pounds (five thousand dollars), and out of this he bought
+himself a house in Keswick, where he remained in residence for four
+years. Having now given up journalism, he devoted himself entirely to
+fiction and play-writing.
+
+[Illustration: THE ORIGINAL OF KATE IN "THE MANXMAN."]
+
+In 1889, he went with his wife to Iceland and spent two months there,
+for the purpose of studying certain scenes which he wished to
+introduce into "The Bondman," on which he was then working.
+Documentation is as much Hall Caine's care in his novels as it is
+Emile Zola's. "The Bondman," which had been begun in March, 1889, at
+Aberleigh Lodge, Bexley Heath, Kent, a house of sinister memory--for
+Caine narrowly escaped being murdered there one night--was finished in
+October, at Castlerigg Cottage, Keswick, and was published by
+Heinemann in 1890, with a success which is far from being exhausted
+even to-day. In this year Hall Caine experienced a great
+disappointment. He had been commissioned by Sir Henry Irving to write
+a play on "Mahornet," and had written three acts of it, when such an
+outcry was made in the press against Irving's proposal to put
+"Mahomet" on the stage, to the certain offence of British Mohammedans,
+that Sir Henry telegraphed to him to say that the plan could not be
+carried out. He offered to compensate Hall Caine for his labor. "I
+refused, however, to accept one penny," says Caine, "and after
+relieving my feelings by spitting on my antagonists in an angry
+article in 'The Speaker,' I finished the play." It was accepted by
+Willard for production in America, but has not yet been played. "This
+was a great disappointment," says Caine, "and I had little heart for
+much work in 1890. I did nothing in that year beyond a hasty 'Life of
+Christ,' which has never been printed. I had read Renan's 'Life of
+Christ,' and had been deeply impressed by it, and I had said that
+there was a splendid chance for a 'Life of Christ' as vivid and as
+personal from the point of belief as Renan's was from the point of
+unbelief." This book he wrote, but was not satisfied with it, and has
+refused to publish it, although only last year a firm of publishers
+offered him three thousand pounds (fifteen thousand dollars) for the
+manuscript. "No, I was not satisfied, though I had brought to bear on
+it faculties which I had never used in my novels. It was human, it was
+most dramatic, but it fell far short of what I had hoped to do, and I
+put it away in my cupboard. I hope to rewrite it some day."
+
+In 1891 Hall Caine began to work on "The Scapegoat," and in the spring
+of that year went to Morocco to fit the scenes to his idea. He
+suffered there from very bad health, from severe neurosthenia. "I was
+a 'degenerate,' he says, "à la Nordau." No sooner had "The
+Scapegoat" been published, than the chief rabbi wrote to him to ask
+him to go to Russia, to write about the persecutions of the Jews in
+that country, and in 1892 he started on this mission, which he
+fulfilled entirely at his own expense, declining all the offers of
+subsidies made to him by the Jewish Committee. He carried with him for
+protection against the Russian authorities, a letter from Lord
+Salisbury to H. M.'s Minister at St. Petersburg, to be delivered only
+in case of need; and as an introduction to the possibly hostile Jewish
+Communities, a letter in Hebrew to be presented to the rabbis in the
+various towns. Lord's Salisbury's letter was never used, but the chief
+rabbi's introduction secured him everywhere a most hospitable
+reception.
+
+[Illustration: "BLACK TOM" BEFORE "THE COTTAGE BY THE WATER-TROUGH."]
+
+"I went through the pale of settlement," he relates, "and saw as much
+of frontier life amongst the Jews as possible and found them like
+hunted dogs. I, however, got no further than the frontier towns, for
+cholera had broken out, numerous deaths took place every day, my own
+health was getting queer, and, to speak plainly, I was frightened. So
+we turned our faces back and returned home. On my return to London I
+delivered a lecture before the Jewish Workmen's Club in the East End,
+in a hall crammed to suffocation. I shall never forget the enthusiasm
+of the audience, the tears, the laughter, the applause, the wild
+embraces to which I was subjected."
+
+This was the only use that Hall Caine ever made of all his experiences
+of his tour in Russia in 1892, which had lasted many months, for when
+he returned to Cumberland to write the story which was to be called
+"The Jew," he found the task impossible. "I worked very hard at it, I
+turned it over in every direction in my mind, but I felt I could not
+do it. I wanted the experience of a life; I could not enter into
+competition in their own field with the great Russian novelists. I
+found it could not be done."
+
+
+THE WRITING OF "THE MANXMAN."
+
+In the meanwhile, circumstances had obliged him to give up Castlerigg
+Cottage in disgust, and he accordingly removed to the Isle of Man,
+with the determination of fixing his residence there definitely. For
+the first six months he lived at Greeba Castle, a very pretty but very
+lonely house, about half-way between Peel and Douglas, on the Douglas
+road--and it was there that most of "The Manxman" was written.
+
+"I turned my Jewish story into a Manx story, and 'The Jew' became 'The
+Manxman.' In my original scheme, Philip was to be a Christian,
+governor of his province in Russia; Pete, Cregeen, and Kate were to be
+Jews. I thought that the racial difference between the two rivals
+would afford greater dramatic contrast than the class difference, and
+it was only reluctantly that I altered the scheme of my story."
+
+Hall Caine, in speaking of the genesis of "The Manxman," may be
+induced to show his little pocket-diary for 1893. Against each day
+during the whole of January and part of February are written the
+words: "The Jew."
+
+"That means," he will explain, "that all those days I was working at
+my story in my head."
+
+"The Manxman" was finished at the house in Marine Parade in Peel where
+Hall Caine is now temporarily residing--a large brick house, which was
+built for a boarding-house and is certainly not the house for an
+artist. As he has determined to make his home in the island, he is at
+present hesitating whether to purchase Greeba Castle, or to build
+himself a house on the Creg Malin headland at Peel, than which no more
+wondrous site for a poet's home could be found in the Queen's
+dominions, overlooking the bay, with the rugged pile of Peel Castle,
+memory haunted, beyond.
+
+He loves the Manx and they love him. At first "society" in the island
+objected to his disregard of the conventions. Now he is as popular at
+Government House, or at the Deemster's, as he is in Black Tom's
+cottage. But his warmest friends are amongst the peasants and
+fishermen, from one end of the island to the other. "They are such
+good fellows," he says, "and such excellent subjects for study for my
+books. They are current coin for me." So he asks them to supper, and
+visits them in their houses, and has taught himself their language and
+their strange intonations as they speak.
+
+In June and July of 1894, whilst in London, Hall Caine wrote a
+dramatic version of "The Manxman" and offered it to Tree, who,
+however, refused it, as unlikely to appeal to the sympathies of the
+fashionable audiences of the Haymarket Theatre. In this version Philip
+was the central figure. The version which has been played with much
+success both in America and in the provinces, was written by Wilson
+Barrett, with Pete as the central figure. It was originally produced
+in Leeds, on August 20, 1894, and has met with a good reception
+everywhere except in Manchester and New York. The critics in the
+latter city wrote that it was a disgrace to the book.
+
+For some years past, Hall Caine has devoted himself to literary public
+affairs. He is Sir Walter Resant's best supporter in his noble efforts
+to protect authors and to advance their interests. His ability as a
+public speaker and a politician of letters is great, and in
+recognition of this he was asked--a most distinguished honor--in
+November of last year to open the Edinburgh Literary and Philosophical
+Institution for the winter session, his predecessors having been John
+Morley and Mr. Goschen. He is at this writing in America on behalf of
+the Authors' Society, in connection with the Canadian copyright
+difficulty. He possesses in a marked degree that sense of solidarity
+amongst men of letters in which most successful authors are so
+singularly lacking, and the great power with which his world-wide
+popularity has vested him is used by him rather in the general
+interest of the craft than to own advantage.
+
+His life in his home in Peel, in the midst of his family--the old
+parents, the pretty young wife, and the two bonny lads--is noble in
+its simplicity, a life of high thinking, when, his success and
+personal popularity being what they are, he has many temptations to
+worldliness.
+
+He attributes his success in part to the fact that he has always been
+a great reader of the Bible.
+
+"I think," he says, "that I know my Bible as few literary men know it.
+There is no book in the world like it, and the finest novels ever
+written fall far short in interest of the stories it tells. Whatever
+strong situations I have in my books are not of my creation, but are
+taken from the Bible. 'The Deemster' is the story of the prodigal son.
+'The Bondman' is the story of Esau and Jacob, though in my version
+sympathy attaches to Esau. 'The Scapegoat' is the story of Eli and his
+sons, but with Samuel as a little girl. 'The Manxman' is the story of
+David and Uriah. My new book also comes out of the Bible, from a
+perfectly startling source."
+
+Hall Caine does not begin his books with a character or group of
+characters, like Dickens or Scott, nor with a plot, like Wilkie
+Collins, nor with a scene, like Black, but with an idea, a spiritual
+intent. In all his books the central motive is always the same. "It
+is," he says, "the idea of justice, the idea of a Divine Justice, the
+idea that righteousness always works itself out, that out of hatred
+and malice comes Love. My theory is that a novel, a piece of
+imaginative writing, must end with a sense of justice, must leave the
+impression that justice is inevitable. My theory is also--on the
+matters which divide novelists into realists and idealists--that the
+highest form of art is produced by the artist who is so far an
+idealist that he wants to say something and so far a realist that he
+copies nature as closely as he can in saying it."
+
+His methods of work are particular to himself. It is difficult for a
+visitor in Hall Caine's house to find pens or ink. As a matter of
+fact, his writing is done with a stylograph pen, which he always
+carries in his pocket.
+
+"I don't think," he says, "that I have sat down to a desk to write for
+years. I write in my head to begin with, and the actual writing, which
+is from memory, is done on any scrap of paper that may come to hand;
+and I always write on my knee. My work is as follows: I first get my
+idea, my central moral; and this usually takes me a very long time.
+The incidents come very quickly, for the invention of incidents is a
+very easy matter to me. I then labor like mad in getting knowledge. I
+visit the places I propose to describe. I read every book I can get
+bearing on my subject. It is elaborate, laborious, but very
+delightful. I then make voluminous notes. Then begins the agony. Each
+day it besets me, winter or summer, from five in the morning till
+breakfast time. I awake at five and lie in bed, thinking out the
+chapter that is to be written that day, composing it word for word.
+That usually takes me up till seven. From seven till eight I am
+engaged in mental revision of the chapter. I then get up and write it
+down from memory, as fast as ever the pen will flow. The rest of the
+morning I spend in lounging about, thinking, thinking, thinking of my
+book. For when I am working on a new book I think of nothing else;
+everything else comes to a standstill. In the afternoon I walk or
+ride, thinking, thinking. In the evenings, when it is dark, I walk up
+and down my room constructing my story. It is then that I am happiest.
+I do not write every day--sometimes I take a long rest, as I am doing
+at present--and when I do write, I never exceed fifteen hundred words
+a day. I do not greatly revise the manuscript for serial publication,
+but I labor greatly over the proofs of the book, making important
+changes, taking out, putting in, recasting. Thus, after 'The
+Scapegoat' had passed through four editions and everybody was praising
+the book, I felt uneasy because I felt I had not done justice to my
+subject; so I spent two months in rewriting it and had the book reset
+and brought out again. The public feeling was that the book had not
+been improved, but I felt that I had lifted it up fifty per cent."
+
+"I am convinced," he continued, "that my system of writing the book in
+my head first is a good one. It shows me exactly what I want to say.
+The mental strain is, of course, immense, and that forces you to go
+straight to your point; for the mind is not strong enough to indulge
+in flirtations, in excursions at a tangent, as the pen is apt to do."
+
+Hall Caine was accused, when he began writing, of obscurity, of a
+predilection for tortuous phrases. "I think that now I have almost
+gone too far in the other direction," he says; "the critics blame me
+for a neglect of style. But--you remember the story of Gough and his
+diamond ring--I am determined not to let any diamond ring get between
+me and my audience. Writing should not get between the reader and the
+picture. I take a great joy in sheer lucidity, and if any sentence of
+mine does not at the very first sight express my meaning, I rewrite
+it. Obscurity of style indicates that the writer is not entirely
+master of what he has to say."
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+NEIGHBOR KING.
+
+
+BY
+COLLINS SHACKELFORD.
+
+
+When my husband, Micah Pyncheon, died he left me alone with our baby
+girl, the farm, an' the grasshoppers. It happened in Kansas, in '76.
+
+You don't mind my crying now, do you? 't seems as though I'd never get
+the tears all out of me. The time ain't so far away, nor me so old,
+but that those days spread out before me like a panorama, nat'ral as
+life. I can feel that hot summer sun, not a cloud in the sky, an' the
+smell of the bakin' earth movin' all the time in waves of heat until
+you got dizzy with the motion an' the scent. An' the grasshoppers! You
+can't know how they came a-flyin' by day an' by night in great brown
+clouds; how they crept an' crawled an' squirmed through the wheat an'
+the corn an' the grass, bitin' an' chewin' every green thing, leavin'
+nothin' but black an' dry shreds, an' the earth more desolate than if
+a fire had swept over it. They were everywhere out-of-doors; they came
+into the house--down the chimney when they couldn't get in through the
+door--an' I've picked their bony bodies out of my pockets many a time,
+an' knocked 'em off the table so as I might put down a dish. If you
+killed one, a thousand came to the funeral. All day an' all night you
+heard the click, click, click of their bodies as they walked about,
+jumped here an' there, or rubbed against one another. An' poor Micah's
+body under the blanket--they were all about it, an' I havin' to brush
+'em away. Anybody would 'a' cried if they'd been in my place, such a
+dreary day was that--me an' baby all alone, with the village ten miles
+off, an' not a soul nearer than neighbor King, three miles away.
+
+Seems to me I don't know how Micah died, it was all so sudden like.
+All day he'd been out in the sun a-fightin' the hoppers, an' tryin' to
+work when he wasn't fightin'; an' he came in with his head a hangin'
+forward an' not a smile on his lips as he put up his hat an' rolled
+down his sleeves.
+
+"I'm downright discouraged, Miranda," he said at last, lookin' out of
+the window. "There's no use in standin' up agin natur an' the hoppers.
+They eat faster'n I can kill 'em, an' in a week the crops 'ull be
+about all gone. It looks as though when winter comes we won't have
+anythin' to eat. I b'lieve I've killed ten thousand of those creatures
+to-day, an' yet they came faster'n drops in a rain-storm."
+
+Then he picked up little Hannah an' lay down on the bed with her in
+his arms, sayin' no more. I bustled 'round--speakin' nothing, an' as
+quiet as possible, knowin' how tired in mind an' body the poor man
+was--an' fixed up a nice supper. When the table was all set, an' the
+food on it, an' everything as cheerful an' encouragin' as the hoppers
+would let me make it, I called Micah. But he didn't answer; so I
+stepped across the room an' put my hand on his face, so as to wake him
+gently, as I was used to doin'.
+
+Oh, dear! Oh, dear! The loved face was cold and white, an' I give one
+scream an' fell beside him, knowin' nothin'. Yes, Micah was
+dead--gone to sleep never to waken, passed from life with little
+Hannah snuggled in his arms.
+
+No wonder I cry when I remember that lonesome night, holdin' the
+little one in my arms an' watchin' the still face on the bed, knowin'
+that nevermore those eyes would look into mine, nevermore those cold
+lips would speak to me. An' when the mornin' came, gray an' hopeless,
+there was no one but me an' the baby an' poor Micah's body; an' the
+hoppers a-creepin' an' a-crawlin' all through the house as if they
+were a-buyin' of it at auction, a-rustlin' their wings an' a-hustlin'
+their bodies until I thought theie was a cool wind instead of a hot,
+breathless mornin'. I covered up the dear face, an', kneelin' by his
+side, prayed an' cried, an' cried an' prayed. It was all I could do
+for my husband of three years. I don't know what else I did, what else
+I thought. I saw nothin', heard nothin', until somebody's hand fell
+upon my shoulder.
+
+"Why, Mrs. Pyncheon!" was the cry, an' lookin' up through my tears I
+saw neighbor King a-standin' by me. "I was goin' up the road," he
+said, "an' thought I'd stop an' say good-mornin'. Where's Micah? In
+the field, an' you a-cryin' for lonesomeness?"
+
+I answered nothin'; but put up my hand an' pulled back the sheet from
+the dear dead face.
+
+"My God!" was all he said, an' he staggered back to a chair an' sat in
+it for five minutes without a word, his face in his hands.
+
+"Madam, forgive me! I never dreamed of such a thing," he cried at
+last, recoverin' himself; "an' when an' how did it happen?"
+
+I told him the story between sobs, breakin' down every few words.
+Thank Heaven! it wasn't a long story, or I should have gone crazy
+before it was told. He was silent for quite a spell, as if he was
+a-meditatin' over the situation, lookin' mostly at poor Micah as if
+drawin' ideas from the cold lips.
+
+"Now, Mrs. Pyncheon!" he said finally, in his solemn voice an' grave,
+slow way of talkin',--"now, Mrs. Pyncheon, you must trust everythin'
+to me. You're beat out. I've no women folks in my house, as you know;
+but I'll ride to town an' get an old lady, a friend of mine, to come
+out an' help you through. I'll see, too, that poor Micah has a coffin
+an' a minister. Be the brave little woman, Mrs. Pyncheon, that Micah
+would tell you to be, if he could speak. By sun-down I'll have
+somebody you can talk to an' who'll cheer you up better than I can.
+To-morrow--to-morrow we'll bury the poor man!"
+
+When he said this it set me to cryin'. Then it was so still that I
+looked up an' found myself alone. A-down the road was a line of dust,
+an' I heard the muffled footfalls of neighbor King's horse on his way
+to the village.
+
+An' "to-morrow we'll bury him" were words that all that long,
+lonesome, hot day kept soundin' in my ears as if some one was callin'
+'em out with the tickin' of the clock. "Bury him"--an' Micah dead only
+a few hours! I couldn't believe it, an' would stop an' listen for his
+whistle at the barn, his talk to the horses, his rattle at the pump,
+his footfall at the door, until, crazy with waitin,' I'd go over to
+the bed, pull back the sheet, an' in the still face read why I should
+never hear those happy sounds again--never again.
+
+Ah, well! The sun went down at last; the long, dreary day was ended,
+an' in the twilight came back my good neighbor with motherly Mrs.
+Challen--an'--an'--it hurts me even now to tell it--the coffin for.
+Micah. In it those two good people softly placed him, an' all that
+night I watched its shape between me an' the window.
+
+[Illustration: "MRS. CHALLEN HELD ME IN HER ARMS."]
+
+The next day, in the mornin', under the trees in the little grove
+across from the house, my Micah was laid to rest forever--placed so
+that when I looked out of the window or the door I could see the mound
+of earth between the fence of tree limbs woven around it, an' seem'
+it, know that in that spot was buried one who in my young life was
+more to me than earth or heaven. I never understood how I got through
+those two terrible days. I can't remember distinctly. It's all
+dream-like, as if in a thin, grayish fog. I know that Mrs. Challen
+held me in her arms--for I was a fragile, girlish thing--like a
+mother; that the minister said words I never heard; that the strange
+faces of a few farm people from miles away looked at me; that the
+grasshoppers were under foot an' in the air an' even on the coffin;
+but, above all else, I recall, movin' among the other people like
+somebody from another world, the tall, straight form and sad face of
+neighbor King. It was neighbor King who managed everything from the
+minute his hand fell upon my shoulder that mornin' until the last limb
+was knit into the rough fence around the lonely grave. What would have
+happened to me without him?
+
+I'm only a woman--one of the weak ones, I s'pose--for I broke down
+entirely the night after poor Micah was buried, Mrs. Challen said I
+went crazy; that I'd kneel down at the side of the bed an' cry as if
+my heart would break; that again an' again I went to the front door
+an' looked up an' down the lonely, treeless road, an' then to the back
+door, where I would call "Micah!" "Micah!"--just as I'd been used to
+callin' him to his meals, an' I'd listen, with my hand to my ear, to
+hear him answer. Last of all, worst of all, she said, I went
+staggerin' across the street, an', pushin' through the rough fence,
+threw myself upon the grave an' begged of the Great Father to give me
+back the dead that had been so much to me when he was living. I don't
+wonder at my losing my head. Micah an' I were both so young, an' we
+had loved each other so much, as common folks often do, that to lose
+him was robbin' my life of all its brightness an' sweetness.
+
+The mornin' after the funeral neighbor King was round bright an'
+early, findin' me red-eyed an' weakly.
+
+"Well! well! Mrs. Pyncheon," he began, in what was for him a cheery
+voice, "what are we a-goin' to do now besides summin' up a little? Are
+we goin' to our relations?"
+
+"No, Mr. King," I answered, havin' thought over the matter a little,
+"no, I'm goin' to stay here. I have no relation I want to bother.
+Here's the place for me an' Hannah. The farm is paid for, an' all I
+have is here an'--an' over there," turnin' my face to the spot where
+Micah lay. "If the grasshoppers 'ull let me, I stay."
+
+[Illustration: "THE MORNIN' AFTER THE FUNERAL NEIGHBOR KING WAS ROUND
+BRIGHT AN' EARLY."]
+
+"Quite right, madam. Very sensible. But, of course, while you can do a
+good deal, you can't work the farm all alone. That's impossible. I've
+been givin' the matter some thought, an' intend to help you out, if
+you'll let me. Suppose we work it on shares? You name my share, ma'am,
+an' I'll take care that my men look after the hard work for you. The
+hoppers won't leave much for this year; but what there is you shall
+have, an' I'll get my share for this year out of next year's crops.
+I'm glad that suits you. Now, you must not live here alone. One of my
+men has a sister in the village, a stout, healthy, willin' girl, who
+wants a home. She'll be glad to come here. I'll try to superintend
+affairs for you, if you're willin', an' make the best of everything.
+Oh, we'll keep you in good shape, never fear; but you mustn't mind my
+askin' questions, so that I can get a knowledge of affairs. Now, don't
+thank me. I'd rather you wouldn't. Just keep cheerful, an' as long as
+we've got to live, let's make the best of life."
+
+[Illustration: "THERE WAS HARDLY A DAY HE DID NOT RIDE OVER THE LITTLE
+FARM TO SEE HOW THINGS WERE GOIN'."]
+
+This was very good from neighbor King--somethin' you wouldn't expect
+from such a sad or solemn-lookin' man, a man so quiet, so reserved,
+appearin' always as if he had some grief of his own, so that he could
+sympathize with others in misery. He must have been forty years old,
+for his dark brown hair was showin' gray around the temples, an' there
+were deep wrinkles around the corners of his mouth, an' lots of little
+ones around his deep, sunken brown eyes. It always seemed to me as if
+he'd been constructed for a minister or a lawyer, an' stopped half way
+as a farmer. He was no half-acre farmer, but a worker of hundreds of
+acres; an' my little homestead was only a potato patch alongside of
+his. The queerest thing about his place was that there wasn't a woman
+on it. All the work, cookin' an' everything was done by men. Well,
+girls was scarce in those days an' those parts, an' perhaps that was
+the reason. Maybe, again, he was afraid of women, an' didn't want 'em
+bossin' around his work. I didn't know an' didn't care. It was no
+concern of mine. I only knew he was mighty good to me in my
+affliction--the truest, steadiest, most unselfish friend a forlorn
+woman could have; an' every night I prayed for that same neighbor
+King, askin' the Lord to bless him for the goodness an' kindness he
+had shown to me.
+
+True enough, the grasshoppers didn't leave me much that year, just
+enough to keep soul and body together, with economy. The pesky things
+eat everything from pussly to leaves. I b'lieve they'd 'a' eaten the
+green out of the sky if they could 'a' got at it. Why, the earth
+looked as if the devil had gone over it with a brush of brown paint,
+missin' a spot here an' there that come up green after the critters
+had got away. There was only one thing they didn't eat, an' that was
+themselves--more's the pity!
+
+Neighbor King (his other name was Horace, I found out afterwards)
+watched my farm matters pretty closely the second year. He tended to
+my interests before his own, because, as he said, I was a widow an'
+must not suffer. There was hardly a day he did not ride over the
+little farm to see how things were goin', always stopping at the door
+to have a cheerful talk, or to give me, when comin' from the village,
+a crumb or two of news of the big world so far away; an' often he left
+a newspaper, that I might read myself what was a-goin' on. This man
+did everything, in his grave, soothin' way, to smooth down my
+sorrow--not to lead me to forget, for that was impossible--an' make
+the roadway of my life as pleasant as a country lane hedged in with
+sweet-smellin' flowers an' alive with birds nestlin' and twitterin'
+among the buds and blossoms. In this quiet, restful, peaceful way
+neighbor King came, in three years, to build his life into mine,
+until, thinkin' matters over, I realized that he was necessary to make
+that life pleasant. I didn't forget poor Micah--how could I? At the
+same time I felt that I could not go on alone the balance of my life
+with the hunger in my heart for some one to love an' to love me. An'
+he? Well, not a word out of line had been spoken; but I read the
+change in his eyes, his looks, his manners, in the tones of his voice.
+Women read where there's neither print nor writin'. I couldn't tell
+why he should love me, though as women go I was young--fifteen years
+younger than he, an' fair lookin', an' a worker. I was companionable
+an' in sympathy with him. Put yourself in my place an' be the
+lonesome, forlorn creature I was, an' see if you wouldn't love the man
+who put aside the dark clouds an' gave you sunshine to drown despair,
+an' a cheerful voice instead of silence. Neither of us spoke. It
+wasn't necessary. We understood. An' because of that to me the skies
+were brighter, an' the earth more beautiful, the days fuller of
+nature's music, an' there was hope an' quiet joy everywhere.
+
+[Illustration: "HE DIDN'T STOP, AS WAS HIS HABIT, BUT CANTERED BY,
+HEAD DOWN AND REINS LOOSE."]
+
+Ah, me! I didn't know it; but behind this sunny life, back of this bit
+of heaven that came down all around me, was a big, black cloud full of
+storm. I remember well the evenin' it first began to show itself. I
+saw neighbor King comin' down the road from the village, on his pony.
+He didn't stop, as was his habit, but cantered by, head down and reins
+loose. Then, as if he'd forgotten somethin', he wheeled the horse
+sharp around, trotted back, threw the bridle over a fence-post, an'
+came in. I saw somethin' was the matter from the absent-minded way he
+talked an' by his lookin' mostly at the floor.
+
+Strange, too, he began about crops an' prices; then he had somethin'
+to say about the village, and from that to livin' in big cities, an'
+how such places changes people's natures, makin' women different
+creatures--more bold, more forgetful of friends, less kindly to their
+sex, than those of the country; an' he said it all as slowly an'
+softly an' solemnly as those ministers pray who don't think the Lord's
+deaf. He seemed to be tryin' to get at somethin' by goin' round it;
+an' I thought that somethin' was me.
+
+"Neighbor King," I said finally, "you always speak so kindly of women
+folks that it seems odd to me that you never have a woman on your
+farm; an' odder still that you've never married."
+
+"Mrs. Pyncheon," his face lightin' up like the sky just before
+sunrise, "you an' I are old an' tried friends, an' I know you'll
+respect an' keep secret what I'm going to tell you, an' what, to be
+plain, I came to tell you. I knew, an' I didn't wonder, that you
+thought it strange I'd never married. The Lord only knows how I hunger
+for a woman's love, a woman's talk, a woman's presence where I can see
+her. I would give all I am worth if I could take a good woman by the
+hand as my wife, an' go forth even to begin life over again. Hunger
+an' thirst are terrible; but they are easily borne in comparison with
+the hunger an' thirst for a woman's love that I have endured for
+years. No one can realize my lonesomeness, Mrs. Pyncheon;" an'
+reachin' out he caught my hands in his. "I've been your friend for
+years. You know it. I believe you've been mine. Will you continue such
+when I keep from you a truth I dare not tell, an' give you in its
+place a fact that you must know? I know you to be brave an' strong.
+You'll be so now, an' secret, too--for no one here knows what I'm
+goin' to tell you. Mrs. Pyncheon, I am a married man."
+
+I couldn't help it; but the news was so sudden an' so startlin' that
+my hands came away from his with a wrench, an' I drew away, feelin'
+hurt an' shamed, if not guilty; an' I felt a flush of anger burnin' my
+cheeks.
+
+"There! there! don't misjudge me, Mrs. Pyncheon. Pity me, instead.
+I've made no attempt to deceive you. I've been silent, because I could
+not talk about a matter that was sad an' sacred. Yes, I'm married;
+but"--an' great tears came into his eyes--"my wife has been hopelessly
+insane for ten years. You buried Micah an' mourned for him, knowin' he
+was dead; I buried my wife alive, God knows whether I've grieved for
+her. She is in an insane asylum. For years I could not break away an'
+leave her; it seemed so heartless to desert one who had been the joy
+an' pride of my youth. But the doctor told me that it was death for me
+if I stayed; that I could not last more than a year goin' on as I'd
+been livin'. Now you can understand why I am here, solitary an'
+hopeless, without a friend--unless I can call you one?"
+
+"You never had a truer one, neighbor King," my heart speakin' out its
+gratitude. "When I think of what you've done for me, an' how you've
+thought of me, all when the world was the darkest,--why, it seems as
+if my life was too short in which to say all my prayers for you."
+
+Perhaps I spoke particularly quick an' spirited, an' perhaps my eyes
+showed more'n I spoke; for he looked very queerly at me for a minute,
+his face lightin' up in a way it was unused to, an' then he said,
+"Thank you, Mrs. Pyncheon; I think I understand. I shall not forget
+this meetin'. Good-by." An', before I knew what he meant to do, he
+stooped an' kissed my forehead, an' was out of the house before I
+could speak.
+
+I wasn't angry; I wasn't hurt. If the truth was given, I was
+delighted; for I, too, was hungry an' thirsty for a little love. I was
+woman enough to know what that kiss meant. At the same time I grieved
+for the poor man, chained, so to speak, to a crazy person, bearin' his
+unseen burden so uncomplainingly, an' doin' God-like work all the
+year round. But the more I thought over that kiss, the more I realized
+that between neighbor King an' myself had been suddenly put up a high
+wall, he on one side, I on the other; an' that in the future I should
+see him very seldom.
+
+It happened as I thought. Days passed, an' neighbor King came not. The
+thumpety-thump of his pony no longer sounded along the road. Mornin's
+and evenin's came an' went, an' not a "howdy-do" in his pleasant
+voice. I wasn't surprised; I expected as much for a time. Finally, one
+of the hired men said he'd gone away. Then I put my lips together in a
+dogged way an' settled down to a lonesome life, cheered a little by
+the prattle of little Hannah, an' kept from rustin' by the farm work.
+I was lonesome, very lonesome, when the evenin' shadows crept over the
+ground, an' the crickets began to sing, the katydids to scold, an' the
+hoot owl to give his mournful cry over in the grove where Micah lay.
+
+[Illustration: "ONE OF HIS MEN BROUGHT ME A LETTER--THE FIRST I'D HAD
+FOR YEARS"]
+
+There was daybreak at last, though nearly a month after neighbor King
+had gone. One of his men brought me a letter--the first I'd had for
+years--an' I looked at it a long time before I opened it, wondering
+what strange news it had for me to know, why I should have it, an'
+what I should do with it now it had come. I knew the writin'. It was
+neighbor King's. Was it good news, or news to shrivel my heart up as
+with fire? I tore off an end an' pulled out the sheet. It didn't take
+long to read it.
+
+   CHICAGO, _August 17, 187-._
+
+   MRS. PYNCHEON: I find that my wife has been dead a year.
+
+   HORACE KING.
+
+The letter dropped from my hand. It was the heart-breaking end of a
+love story--the closin' up of one of those little tragedies which the
+world seldom hears about. Such love stories are happening all the
+while among poor people, an' so are too common for the way-up world;
+yet they are full of heartaches, an' hot, droppin' tears, an' great
+sobs that are like moans. An' so my neighbor King had come to the end
+of his tragedy; had found the idol of his young life an' love put away
+in her grave, an' the waitin' an' hopin' was at an end. What that good
+man must have suffered durin' those ten long years, nobody but himself
+could know. Now that he was free, possibly he would sell his farm an'
+go back to the city to live, an' I, to whom he had been so good an'
+grand, would soon be forgotten. Ah! that was a bitin' thought. It
+almost crazed me, now that I knew how much I loved him, to think of
+being left alone to grow old an' wrinkled an' withered, an' no words
+of comfort to cheer me up along the path walked by nobody but myself.
+I knew he was too great a man to plough his talents into the soil or
+to hide the light of his intellect in the jungles of his fields of
+wheat or corn. That letter made me feel, somehow, that everything was
+suddenly changed; that my little world was not the same as it had been
+ten minutes before. The tears came into my eyes, an' I'm not sure but
+I was sobbin' under a forlorn, lonesome feelin', when I heard a step
+behind me, an' before I could put away the letter or wipe my eyes, a
+hand was softly laid upon my shoulder. I sprang to my feet, too
+frightened to speak. Instantly there was an arm around my neck an' a
+kiss upon my cheek, an' I heard neighbor King say, with a happy laugh,
+"It's only me, Miranda. I find I'm here as soon as my letter."
+
+"I thought, you might not be comin' back," I whispered, with quiverin'
+lips.
+
+"Why, my darling, I've come back for you," he said, bendin' over an'
+kissin' me again. "Didn't you understand me when I was here last?"
+
+"I thought I did, but wasn't sure. The kiss was a sort of mystery. But
+it's all plain now, an' I'm so happy;" an' like a little fool was off
+to cryin' again, this time for gladness, an' he a-holdin' me close in
+his arms.
+
+This may not read like much of a love story, yet it was a bitter story
+for me, all in all, during the years from Micah's death to the golden
+mornin' that brought such sweet relief an' rest. The thought troubles
+me now an' then, but I don't believe that Micah, if he sees from the
+other world what I've done, blames me for the change. He knows I can't
+forget him, an' would not if I could.
+
+Through months an' years of loneliness, of heartaches, of hopin' an'
+expectin', of draggin' along for no particular purpose, save to keep
+body an' soul together; with few joys, an' but little else than
+sighin'; an' the great world made no more for me than a little farm, a
+little house, an' a voiceless sky above me--what blame, then, have I,
+if I brightened an' happified my life an' his by makin' neighbor King
+my husband?
+
+
+
+
+THROUGH THE DARDANELLES.
+
+
+BY CY WARMAN,
+
+Author of "A Thousand-mile Ride on the Engine of a 'Flyer.'"
+
+
+  Soul of Sappho, if, to-night,
+    When my boat is drifting near
+  Your fair island, spirit bright--
+    If I sing, and if you hear,
+  From your island in the sea,
+  Soul of Sappho, speak to me.
+
+  Soul of Sappho, they have said
+    That your hair, a heap of gold,
+  Made a halo for your head;
+    And your eyes, I have been told,
+  Were like stars. Oh, from the sea,
+  Soul of Sappho, speak to me!
+
+
+Constantinople may be considered as the end of the railway system of
+the earth. Here, if you wish to see more of the Orient, you must take
+to the sea. There is, to be sure, a projected railway out of the
+Sultan's city into the interior, but only completed to Angora, three
+hundred and sixty-five miles. The intention of the projectors was to
+continue the road down to Bagdad, on the river Tigris, through which
+they could reach the Persian Gulf.
+
+[Illustration: SACRED DOGS, CONSTANTINOPLE.]
+
+I had arranged to go to Angora, but found a ten-days' quarantine five
+miles out of Constantinople, and backed into town, and then made an
+effort to secure from the office of the titled German who stands for
+the railway company, some idea of the road, its prospects, probable
+cost, and estimated earnings, but had my letters returned without a
+line.
+
+To show them that I was acting in good faith, and willing to pay for
+what I got, I went with Vincent, the guide (the only guide I ever
+had), and asked them for some printed matter or photographs, or
+anything that would throw a little light along the line of their
+plague-stricken railway; but they still refused to talk. No wonder it
+has taken these dreamers ten years to build three hundred and sixty
+miles of very cheap railroad.
+
+It was my misfortune to fall into a little old Austrian-Lloyd steamer
+called the "Daphne." Before we lifted anchor in the Golden Horn I
+learned that her boilers had not been overhauled for ten years; and
+before we reached the Dardanelles I concluded that the sand had not
+been changed in the pillows for a quarter of a century. I have slept
+in the American Desert for a period of thirty nights, between the
+earth and the heavens, and found a better bed than was made by the
+ossified mattress and petrified pillows of the "Daphne." It was bad
+enough to breathe the foul air that came up from the camping pilgrims
+on the main deck; but the first day out we learned that these ugly
+Armenians, greasy Greeks, and buggy Bedouins would be allowed to come
+up on the promenade deck and mingle with those who had paid for
+first-class passage. Poorly clad, half-starved, poverty-stricken
+people, headed for the Holy Land, came and rubbed elbows with American
+and European women and children. Of course one sympathizes with these
+poor, miserable people, but one does not want their secrets.
+
+[Illustration: THE RAILROAD STATION AT CONSTANTINOPLE.]
+
+We left the Bosporus at twilight, crossed the Sea of Marmora during
+the night, and the next morning were at Gallipoli, where the
+bird-seeds come from. The day broke beautifully, and the little sea
+was as calm as a summer lake. By ten o'clock we were drifting down the
+Dardanelles, which resembles a great river, for the land is always
+near on either side.
+
+The ship's doctor, who was my guide, at every landing-place kindly
+pointed out the many points of interest.
+
+"Those pyramids over there," he would say, "were erected by the Turks,
+to commemorate a victory. Here is where Byron swam the sea from Europe
+to Asia; and over there is where King Midas lived, whose touch turned
+piastres to napoleons, and flounders to goldfish. Here, to the left,
+on that hill, stood ancient Troy."
+
+All things seemed to work together to make the day a most enjoyable
+one, and just at nightfall the doctor came to me and said:
+
+"See that island over there? That was the home of Sappho."
+
+An hour later we anchored in a little natural harbor, and five of us
+went ashore. Besides the ship's doctor (whose uniform was a sufficient
+passport for all), there were in our party a Pole and a
+Frenchman--both inspectors of revenue for the Turkish government, and
+splendid fellows--a Belgian, and the writer. We entered a _café_
+concert, where one man and five or six girls sat in a sort of balcony
+at one end of the building and played at "fiddle." The main hall was
+filled with small tables, at which were Greeks, Arabs, Armenians,
+Turks, and negroes as black as a hole in the night. Between acts the
+girls were expected to come down, distribute themselves about, and
+consume beer and other fluid at the expense of the frequenters.
+
+The girls were nearly all Germans, plain, honest, tired-looking
+creatures, who seemed half embarrassed at seeing what they call
+Europeans. One very pretty girl, with peachy checks, who, as we
+learned, had for several evenings been in the habit of drinking beer
+with a Greek, sat this evening with a dark Egyptian, almost jet-black.
+The Greek--a hollow-chested, long-haired fellow--came in, and, the
+moment he saw the girl with the chalk-eyed Egyptian, turned red, then
+white, and then whipping out a pistol levelled it at the girl. Nearly
+all the lights went out, and the girl dropped from the chair. When the
+smoke and excitement cleared away, it was found that the bullet had
+only parted the girl's hair, and she was able to take her fiddle and
+beer when time was called.
+
+At midnight we were rowed back to the boat, with all the poetry
+knocked out of the isle of Sappho, hoisted anchor, and steamed away.
+On the whole, however, the day had been most delightful. To me there
+are no fairer stretches of water for a glorious day's sail than the
+Dardanelles.
+
+When we dropped anchor again, ten hours later, it was at Smyrna, the
+garden of Asia Minor. Here I went ashore with my faithful guide the
+doctor, and found a real railway.
+
+
+THE FIRST RAILROAD IN ASIA MINOR.
+
+The Ottoman Railway, whose headquarters are at Smyrna, was the first
+in Asia Minor, and was begun by the English company which continues to
+do business, thirty-six years ago. William Shotton, the locomotive
+superintendent, showed us through the shops and buildings. One does
+not need to be told that this property is managed by an English
+company. I saw here the neatest, cleanest shops that I have ever seen
+in any country. There were in the car shops some carriages just
+completed, designed and built by native workmen who had learned the
+business with the company, and I have not seen such artistic cars in
+England or France.
+
+Mr. Shotton explained to me that they found it necessary to ask an
+applicant his religion before employing him, so as to keep the Greeks
+and Catholics about equally divided; otherwise, the faction in the
+majority would lord it over the weaker band to the detriment of the
+service. An occasional Mohammedan made no difference, but the Greeks
+and Catholics have it "in" for each other.
+
+The Ottoman Railway Company has three hundred and fifty miles of good
+railroad, and hope some day to be able to continue across to Bagdad,
+though it is hinted by people not interested that the Sultan's
+government favors the sleepy German company, to the embarrassment of
+the Smyrna people, who have done so much for the development of this
+marvellously blessed section.
+
+We spent a pleasant day at Smyrna, with its watermelons, Turkish
+coffee, and camels, and twenty-four hours later we were at the Isle of
+Rhodes, where the great Colossus was. It was a dark, dreary, windy
+night, and the Turks fought hard for the ship's ladder; for we had on
+board a wise old priest from Paris, with a string of six or eight
+young priests, who were to unload at Rhodes. Despite the cold, raw
+wind and rain, men came aboard with canes, beads, and slippers made of
+native wood--for there is a prison, here--and offered them for sale at
+very low prices.
+
+For the next forty-eight hours our little old ship was walloped about
+in a boisterous sea, and when we stopped again it was at Mersina,
+where a little railway runs up to Tarsus. As we arrived at this place
+after sunset, which ends the Turkish day, we were obliged to lie here
+twenty-four hours to get landing. An hour before sunset it is
+twenty-three o'clock, an hour after it is one. That's the way the
+Turks tell time.
+
+[Illustration: JAFFA FROM THE HARBOR.]
+
+On the morning of the second day after our arrival at this struggling
+little port, our anchor touched bottom in the beautiful bay of
+Alexandretta. Here they show you the quiet nook where the whale
+"shook" Jonah. That was a sad and lasting lesson for the whale, for
+not one of his kind has been seen in the Mediterranean since. All day
+we watched them hoist crying sheep and mild-eyed cattle, with a
+derrick, from row-boats, up over the deck, by the feet, and drop them
+down into the ship just as carelessly as a boy would drop a string of
+squirrels from his hand to the ground. The next morning we rode into
+the only harbor on the Syrian coast, and anchored in front of the
+beautiful city of Beyrout.
+
+It would take too long to describe this place, even if I had the
+power. To tell of the road to Damascus, the drives to the hills of
+Lebanon, through the silk farms; the genial and obliging American
+consul, and the American college. Here, after nine days and nights, we
+said "good-by" to the obliging crew of the poor old "Daphne."
+
+[Illustration: A CREW OF JAFFA BOATMEN.]
+
+For nearly a week the steamers had been passing Jaffa without landing,
+and the result was that Beyrout and Port Saïd were filled with
+passengers and pilgrims for the Holy Land. All day the Russian
+steamer, which we were to take, had been loading with deck or steerage
+passengers, poorer and sicker and hungrier, if possible, than those on
+the "Daphne." It was dark when they had finished, and when we steamed
+out of the harbor we had seven hundred patches of poverty piled up on
+the deck.
+
+It began to rain shortly, that cold, damp rain that seems to go with a
+rough sea just as naturally as red liquor goes with crime. For a week
+or more these miserable, misguided beggars had been carried by Jaffa,
+from Beyrout to Port Saïd, then from Port Saïd to Beyrout, unable to
+land. The good captain caused a canvas to be stretched over the
+shivering, suffering mob that covered the deck, but the pitiless rain
+beat in, and the wind moaned the rigging, and the ship rolled and
+pitched and ploughed through the black sea, and the poor pilgrims
+regretted the trip, in each other's laps. All night, and till nearly
+noon the next day, they lay there, more dead than alive, and the
+hardest part of their pilgrimage was yet before them.
+
+If you have ever seen a flock of hungry gulls around a floating
+biscuit, you can form a very faint idea of a mob of native boatmen
+storming a ship at Jaffa. Of course, the ladders are filled first,
+then those who have missed the ladders drive bang against the ship,
+grab a rope or cable, or anything they can grasp, and run up the iron,
+slippery side of the ship as a squirrel runs up a tree.
+
+[Illustration: A STREET SCENE IN JERUSALEM.]
+
+From the top of the ship they began to fire the bags, bundles, and
+boxes of the deck passengers down into the broad boats that lay so
+thick at the ship's side as to hide the sea entirely. When they had
+thrown everything overboard that was loose at one end, they began on
+the poor pilgrims.
+
+Women, old and young, who were scarcely able to stand up, were dragged
+to the ladders and down to the last step. Here they were supposed to
+wait for the boat into which the Arabs were preparing to pitch them,
+for the sea was still very rough. Now the bottom step of the ladder
+was in the water, now six feet above, but what did these poor ignorant
+Russians know about gymnastics? When the rolling sea brought the
+row-boats up, the pilgrim usually hesitated, while the bare-armed and
+bare-legged boatmen yelled and wrenched her hands from the chains. By
+the time the Mohammedans had shaken her loose, and the victim had
+crossed herself, the ladder was six or eight feet from the small boat;
+but it was too late to stay her now, even if the Arabs had wished to,
+but they did not. When she made the sign of the cross, that decided
+them, and they let her drop. Some waiting Turks made a feeble attempt
+to catch the sprawling woman, but not much. Sometimes, before one
+could rise, another woman--for they were nearly all women--would drop
+upon her bent back. Sometimes, when the first boat was filled, an Arab
+would catch the pilgrim on his neck, and she could then be seen riding
+him away, as a woman rides a bicycle. From one boat to another he
+would leap with his helpless victim, and finally pitch her forward,
+over his own head, into an empty boat, where she would lie limp and
+helpless, and regret it some more.
+
+I saw one poor girl, with great heavy boots on her feet, with
+horse-shoe nails in the heels, fall into the bottom of a boat, and,
+before she could get up, three large women were dropped in her lap.
+Just then the boat, being full, pulled off, and I saw her faint; her
+head fell back, and her deathlike face showed how she suffered. It was
+rare sport for the Mohammedans.
+
+"Jump," they would say to the Christians; "don't be afraid; Christ
+will save you!"
+
+It was four P.M. when the last of these miserable people, who ought to
+have been at home hoeing potatoes, left the ship. An hour later a long
+dark line of smoke was stretching out across the plain of Sharon,
+behind a locomotive drawing a train of stock cars. These cars held the
+seven hundred pilgrims bound for Jerusalem. It will be midnight when
+they arrive at the Holy City, and they will have no money and no place
+to sleep. Ah, I forgot. They will go to the Russian hospice, where
+they will find free board and lodging. It is kind and thoughtful in
+the Russian church people to care for those poor pilgrims, now that
+they are here, but it is not right nor kind to encourage them to come.
+It will be strangely interesting to them at first, but when they have
+seen it all, there will be nothing for them but idleness. Nothing to
+do but walk, walk, up the valley of Jehoshaphat and down the road to
+Bethlehem.
+
+
+JERUSALEM.
+
+Nearly all the "places of interest" in and about Jerusalem have been
+collected together, and are now exhibited under one roof, in the
+Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Most travellers go there first, but they
+should not. One should go first to the Mount of Olives, survey, and
+try to understand the country. It is easy to believe that this is the
+original mount. There, at your feet, is the Garden of Gethsemane, and
+beyond the gulch of Jehoshaphat (for it is not a valley) is the dome
+of the marvellous Mosque of Omar. It is easy to believe, also, that
+the dome of this mosque covers the rock where Abraham was about to
+offer up his son, for it is surely the highest point on Mount Moriah.
+
+Looking along the wall you can see the Golden Gate, with the decay of
+which, the Mohammedans say, will come the fall of Islam, just as the
+Sultan's power shall pass away when the last sacred dog dies. Looking
+down the cañon you see the old King's Garden, the pool of Siloam, the
+Virgin's Well, and, farther down, some poor houses where the lepers
+live. Still farther, fourteen miles away, and four thousand feet below
+you, lies the deep Dead Sea, beyond which are the hills of Moab. If
+you have been lucky enough to come up here without a guide or dragoman
+with a bosom full of ivory-handled revolvers and long knives, you will
+sit for hours spellbound. The guide tries too hard to give you your
+money's worth. He will not allow you to muse over these things, which
+are reasonably real and true, but will tell you the most marvellous
+stories, which you cannot believe. He will show you the grave of
+Moses, and I am told that the Scriptures say, "No man knoweth where
+his grave is;" yet, if you doubt, the guide feels hurt. He will ask
+you to harken to the "going in the mulberries," and if you say you
+don't hear he is surprised.
+
+[Illustration: LEPERS IN JERUSALEM.]
+
+I made no notes of Jerusalem, for I did not and do not intend to write
+of it. It was well done long ago by a man equally innocent and more
+abroad, and has not changed much since. The Turks are still on guard
+at the cradle and the grave of Christ, to try and keep the devout
+Christians from spattering up the walls with each other's blood. The
+lamps have been carefully and nearly equally divided between the
+Greeks, Catholics, and Armenians, as well as the space around and the
+time for worship.
+
+What strikes the traveller most forcibly on seeing Jerusalem for the
+first time is the littleness of everything. The Mount of Olives is a
+little mound; Mount Moriah is a scarcely perceptible rise of ground;
+Mount Zion is a gentle hill; the valley of Jehoshaphat is a deep, ugly
+gulch, with scarcely enough water in it to wet a postage stamp: and
+the Tyropoeon Valley is an alley. Then you look at the unspeakable
+poverty, the dreariness, the miles of piles of hueless rocks, and are
+interested. The desert is interesting because it is desolate, but it
+is an awful interest. The people--the beggars that hound you--are as
+poor, as dwarfed and deformed as the gnarled trees that try to live on
+the naked rocks.
+
+One day in a narrow street we met two women who nearly blocked the
+way.
+
+"They are lepers!" cried the guide, pushing me by them. I started to
+run, for never had the voice of man thrilled and filled me with such
+fear; but, remembering my photographic machine, I had the guide throw
+them some coin, and made a picture, but not a good one. I was
+surprised that the poor beggar near whose feet the money fell made no
+effort to pick it up, but continued to pray to us, and waited for her
+companion. Then I saw that there were no fingers on her hands.
+
+
+
+
+THE EARLIEST PORTRAIT OF LINCOLN
+
+LETTERS IN REGARD TO THE FRONTISPIECE OF THE NOVEMBER MCCLURE'S.
+
+
+FROM THE HON. THOMAS M. COOLEY, for many years Chief Justice of the
+Supreme Court of Michigan, and the first Chairman of the Inter-State
+Commerce Commission.
+
+ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN, _October 24, 1895._
+
+MR. S.S. MCCLURE, _New York City_.
+
+_Dear Sir_: I have received the daguerreotype likeness you sent me on
+the 19th inst., and which you understand to be the first ever taken of
+Mr. Lincoln. I am delighted to have the opportunity to see and inspect
+it. I think it a charming likeness; more attractive than any other I
+have seen, principally perhaps because of the age at which it was
+taken. The same characteristics are seen in it which are found in all
+subsequent likenesses--the same pleasant and kindly eyes, through
+which you feel, as you look into them, that you are looking into a
+great heart. The same just purposes are also there; and, as I think,
+the same unflinching determination to pursue to final success the
+course once deliberately entered upon. And what particularly pleases
+me is that there is nothing about the picture to indicate the low
+vulgarity that some persons who knew Mr. Lincoln in his early career
+would have us believe belonged to him at that time. The face is very
+far from being a coarse or brutal or sensual face. It is as refined in
+appearance as it is kindly. It seems almost impossible to conceive of
+this as the face of a man to be at the head of affairs when one of the
+greatest wars known to history was in progress, and who could push
+unflinchingly the measures necessary to bring that war to a successful
+end. Had it been merely a war of conquest, I think we can see in this
+face qualities that would have been entirely inconsistent with such a
+course, and that would have rendered it to this man wholly impossible.
+It is not the face of a bloodthirsty man, or of a man ambitious to be
+successful as a mere ruler of men; but if a war should come involving
+issues of the very highest importance to our common humanity, and that
+appealed from the oppression and degradation of the human race to the
+higher instincts of our nature, we almost feel, as we look at this
+youthful picture of the great leader, that we can see in it as plainly
+as we saw in his administration of the government when it came to his
+hands that here was likely to be neither flinching nor shadow of
+turning until success should come.
+
+Very respectfully yours,
+
+THOMAS M. COOLEY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FROM HERBERT B. ADAMS, Professor of History in Johns Hopkins
+University.
+
+JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, _October 24, 1895._
+
+S.S. MCCLURE, ESQ., 30 _Lafayette Place, New York City_.
+
+_My Dear Mr. McClure_: I thank you for a copy of the new portrait of
+Abraham Lincoln, which I shall promptly have framed and exhibited to
+my historical students. Indeed, I called it to their attention this
+morning, and they are all greatly interested in this remarkable
+likeness of the Saviour of his Country. The portrait indicates the
+natural character, strength, insight, and humor of the man before the
+burdens of office and the sins of his people began to weigh upon him.
+The prospect of a new life of Lincoln, revealing the Man as well as
+the Statesman, is most pleasing. From the previous work of Miss
+Tarbell on Napoleon, and from her preliminary sketches of Lincoln's
+boyhood, I am confident that this new series which you have undertaken
+to publish will have unique interest for the American people, and
+prove an unqualified success. The illustrations of the first number
+are worthy of the subject-matter. You have secured a wonderful
+combination of literary skill and artistic excellence in the
+presentation of Lincoln's life.
+
+Very sincerely yours,
+
+H.B. ADAMS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FROM HENRY C. WHITNEY, an associate of Lincoln's on the circuit in
+Illinois, whose unpublished notes have saved from oblivion the great
+"lost speech" made by Lincoln at Bloomington in 1856, at the first
+meeting for organizing the Republican party in Illinois. Mr. Whitney's
+account of this speech will appear later in this Magazine.
+
+BEACHMONT, MASSACHUSETTS, _October 24, 1895._
+
+_My Dear Sir_: I am greatly obliged for your early picture of Abraham
+Lincoln, which I regard as an important contribution to history. It is
+without doubt authentic and accurate; and dispels the illusion so
+common (but never shared by me) that Mr. Lincoln was an ugly-looking
+man. In point of fact, Mr. Lincoln was always a noble-looking--always
+a highly intellectual looking man--not handsome, but no one of any
+force ever thought of that. All pictures, as well as the living man,
+show _manliness_ in its highest tension--this as emphatically as the
+rest. This picture was a surprise and pleasure to me. I doubt not it
+is its first appearance. It will be hailed with pleasure by friends of
+Mr. Lincoln. You ought to put his _latest_ picture (the one I told
+Miss Tarbell about) with it. This picture was probably taken between
+December, 1847, and March, 1849, while he was in Congress. I never saw
+him with his hair combed before.
+
+Yours,
+
+HENRY C. WHITNEY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FROM THE HON. HENRY B. BROWN, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court
+of the United States.
+
+WASHINGTON, _October 23, 1895._
+
+S.S. MCCLURE, _New York_.
+
+_Dear Sir_: Accept my thanks for the engraving of the earliest picture
+of Mr. Lincoln. I recognized it at once, though I never saw Mr.
+Lincoln, and know him only from photographs of him while he was
+President. I think you were fortunate in securing the daguerreotype
+from which this was engraved, and it will form a very interesting
+contribution to the literature connected with this remarkable man.
+From its resemblance to his later pictures I should judge the likeness
+must be an excellent one.
+
+Very truly yours,
+
+H.B. BROWN.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FROM MAJOR J.W. POWELL, of the United States Geological Survey.
+
+WASHINGTON, _October 24, 1895._
+
+_My Dear McClure_: I am delighted with the proof of the portrait of
+Lincoln from a daguerreotype. His pictures have never quite pleased
+me, and I now know why. I remember Lincoln as I saw him when I was a
+boy; after he became a public man I saw him but few times. This
+portrait is Lincoln as I knew him best: his sad, dreamy eye, his
+pensive smile, his sad and delicate face, his pyramidal shoulders, are
+the characteristics which I best remember; and I can never think of
+him as wrinkled with care, so plainly shown in his later portraits.
+This is the Lincoln of Springfield, Decatur, Jacksonville, and
+Bloomington.
+
+Yours cordially,
+
+J.W. POWELL.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FROM MR. JOHN C. ROPES, author of "The First Napoleon" and
+"The Story of the Civil War."
+
+99 MOUNT VERNON STREET, BOSTON, _October 24, 1895._
+
+S. S. MCCLURE, ESQ.
+
+_My Dear Sir_: I thank you for the engraving of the daguerreotype
+portrait of Mr. Lincoln. It is assuredly a most interesting portrait.
+The expression, though serious and earnest, is devoid of the sadness
+which characterizes the later likenesses. There is an appearance of
+strength and self-confidence in this face, and an evident sense of
+humor. This picture is a great addition to our portraits of Mr.
+Lincoln.
+
+With renewed thanks, I am,
+
+Very truly yours,
+
+J. C. ROPES.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FROM WOODROW WILSON, Professor of Finance and Political Economy at
+Princeton.
+
+PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY, _October 23, 1895._
+
+MR. S. S. MCCLURE.
+
+_My Dear Mr. McClure_: I thank you very much for the portrait of
+Lincoln you were kind enough to send me, reproduced from an early
+daguerreotype. It seems to me both striking and singular. The fine
+brows and forehead, and the pensive sweetness of the clear eyes, give
+to the noble face a peculiar charm. There is in the expression the
+dreaminess of the familiar face without its later sadness. I shall
+treasure it as a notable picture.
+
+Very sincerely yours,
+
+WOODROW WILSON.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FROM C. R. MILLER, editor of the New York "Times."
+
+NEW YORK, _October 24, 1895._
+
+S. S. MCCLURE, ESQ., _City_.
+
+_Dear Mr. McClure_: I thank you for the privilege you have given me of
+looking over some of the text and illustrations of your new Life of
+Lincoln. The portraits are of extraordinary interest, especially the
+"earliest" portrait, which I have never seen before. It is surprising
+that a portrait of such personal and historic interest could so long
+remain unpublished.
+
+Yours very truly,
+
+C. R. MILLER.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FROM THE HON. DAVID J. BREWER, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court
+of the United States.
+
+WASHINGTON, _October 24, 1895._
+
+S. S. MCCLURE, ESQ., _New York_.
+
+_My Dear Sir_: I have yours of 19th inst., accompanied by an engraving
+of an early picture of Abraham Lincoln. Please accept my thanks for
+your kindness. The picture, if a likeness, must have been taken many
+years before I saw him and he became the central figure in our
+country's life. Indeed, I find it difficult to see in that face the
+features with which we are all so familiar. It certainly is a valuable
+contribution to any biography of Mr. Lincoln, and I wish that in some
+way the date at which it was taken could be accurately determined.
+
+Yours truly,
+
+DAVID J. BREWER.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FROM MURAT HALSTEAD, for many years editor of the Cincinnati
+"Commercial Gazette," and now editor of the Brooklyn "Standard-Union."
+
+BROOKLYN STANDARD-UNION, _October 23, 1895._
+
+_S. S. MCCLURE_.
+
+_My Dear Sir_: I am under obligations to you for the artist's proof of
+the engraving of Abraham Lincoln as a young man. It is a surprising
+good fortune that you have this most interesting and admirable
+portrait. It is the one thing needed to tell the world the truth about
+Lincoln. The old daguerreotype was, after all, the best likeness, in
+the right light, ever made. This is incredibly fine. It shows Lincoln
+to have been in his youth very handsome, and the stamp of a manhood of
+noble promise is in this. There is manifest, too, intellectuality. The
+head is grand, the mouth is tender, the expression composed and
+pathetic. One sees the possibility of poetry and romance in it. The
+dress is not careless, but neat and elegant. The elaborate tie of the
+cravat is most becoming. The chin is magnificent. The length of neck
+is shaded away by the collars and the voluminous necktie. This young
+man might do anything important. I cannot understand how this
+wonderful picture should have been private property so long. It is at
+once the first and last chapter of the life of Lincoln. The young face
+of Lincoln, thus far unknown to the world, will be the most famous of
+all his portraits. It will be multiplied by the million, and be found
+in every house inhabited by civilized men.
+
+MURAT HALSTEAD.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FROM GENERAL FRANCIS A. WALKER, President of the Massachusetts
+Institute of Technology.
+
+BOSTON, _October 24, 1895._
+
+S. S. MCCLURE, ESQ., _30 Lafayette Place, New York City_.
+
+_Dear Mr. McClure_: I am in receipt of your picture of Lincoln. Having
+seen Mr. Lincoln in the war time, I have not been so dependent upon
+photographs and engravings as have most of the men of my generation
+for an impression of Mr. Lincoln's personality. I can, however, say
+that the present picture has distinctly helped me to understand the
+relation between Mr. Lincoln's face and his mind and character, as
+shown in his life's work. It is, far away, the most interesting
+presentation of the man I have ever seen. To my eye it _explains_ Mr.
+Lincoln far more than the most elaborate line-engraving which has been
+produced.
+
+Very truly yours,
+
+FRANCIS A. WALKER.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FROM CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.
+
+HARTFORD, _October 24, 1895._
+
+_My Dear Mr. McClure_: The engraving you sent me of an authentic
+picture of Abraham Lincoln is of very great interest and value. I wish
+the date could be ascertained. The change from the Lincoln of this
+portrait to the Lincoln of history is very marked, and shows a
+remarkable development of character and expression. It must be very
+early. The deep-set eyes and mouth belong to the historical Lincoln,
+and are recognizable as his features when we know that this is a
+portrait of him. But I confess that I should not have recognized the
+likeness. I was familiar with his face as long ago as 1857, '58, '59.
+I used often to see him in the United States Court room in Chicago,
+and hear him, sitting with other lawyers, talk and tell stories. He
+looked then essentially as he looked when I heard him open in Chicago
+the great debate with Douglas, and when he was nominated. But the
+change from the Lincoln of this picture to the Lincoln of national
+fame is almost radical in character, and decidedly radical in
+expression.
+
+For the study of the man's development, I think this new old portrait
+has a peculiar value.
+
+Yours sincerely,
+
+CHAS. DUDLEY WARNER.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of McClure's Magazine December, 1895
+Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11548 ***