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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13655 ***
+
+[Note: The Table of Contents and the list of illustrations were added
+by the transcriber.]
+
+
+
+
+LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE OF POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE
+
+March, 1876.
+
+Vol. XVII, No. 99.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+
+  ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  THE CENTURY—ITS FRUITS AND ITS FESTIVAL.
+
+    III.--PAST EXPOSITIONS.
+
+  SKETCHES OF INDIA.
+    III.
+
+  LIFE-SAVING STATIONS by REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.
+
+  THE EUTAW FLAG.
+    II.
+    III.
+
+  CONVENT LIFE AND WORK by LADY BLANCHE MURPHY.
+
+  THE ATONEMENT OF LEAM DUNDAS.
+    BY MRS. E. LYNN LINTON, AUTHOR OF "PATRICIA KEMBALL."
+
+    CHAPTER XXV. SMALL CAUSES.
+
+    CHAPTER XXVI. THE GREEN YULE.
+
+    CHAPTER XXVII. IN THE BALANCE.
+
+    CHAPTER XXVIII. ONLY A DREAM.
+
+  LOVE'S SEPULCHRE by KATE HILLARD.
+
+  LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA by LADY BARKER.
+
+  A SYLVAN SEARCH by MARY B. DODGE.
+
+  THE SONGS OF MIRZA-SCHAFFY by AUBER FORESTIER.
+
+  TO CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN by SIDNEY LANIER.
+
+  CHARLES KINGSLEY: A REMINISCENCE by ELLIS YARNALL.
+
+  OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
+
+    A WOMAN'S OPINION OF PARIS AND THE PARISIANS by L.H.H.
+
+    THE COLLEGIO ROMANO by T.A.T.
+
+    TRADES UNIONISM IN ITS INFANCY.
+
+    MORAL TRAINING IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
+
+    THE EARLIEST PRINTED BOOKS by M.H.
+
+    FLOWERS VS. FLIES.
+
+  LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
+
+  Books Received.
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  THE GREAT ANNUAL FAIR AT NIZHNEE-NOVGOROD.
+
+  CRYSTAL PALACE--LONDON EXHIBITION BUILDING, 1851.
+
+  INTERIOR VIEW OF THE TRANSEPT OF CRYSTAL PALACE.
+
+  NEW YORK EXHIBITION BUILDING, 1853.
+
+  CORK EXHIBITION BUILDING, 1853.
+
+  DUBLIN EXHIBITION BUILDING, 1853.
+
+  MUNICH EXHIBITION BUILDING, 1854.
+
+  MANCHESTER EXHIBITION BUILDING, 1857.
+
+  FLORENCE EXHIBITION BUILDING, 1861
+
+  PARIS EXPOSITION BUILDING AND GROUNDS, 1867.
+
+  GRAND VESTIBULE OF THE PARIS EXPOSITION BUILDING, 1867.
+
+  VIENNA EXPOSITION BUILDING AND GROUNDS, 1873.
+
+  ROTUNDA OF THE VIENNA EXPOSITION BUILDING, 1873.
+
+  MUSSULMAN WOMAN OF BHOPAL.
+
+  A NAUTCH-GIRL (OR BAYADÈRE) OF ULWUR.
+
+  A NAUTCHNI (OR BAYADÈRE) OF BARODA.
+
+  THE CATHACKS (OR DANCING MEN) OF BHOPAL.
+
+  BURIAL PLACE OF THE RAJAHS OF JHANSI.
+
+  TOMB OF ALLUM SAYED.
+
+  PEASANTS OF THE DOUAB.
+
+  HINDU BANKERS OF DELHI.
+
+  THE GRAND HALL OF THE DEWANI KHAS IN THE PALACE OF DELHI.
+
+  THE JAMMAH MASJID AT DELHI.
+
+
+
+
+LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
+
+OF
+
+_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE._
+
+
+MARCH, 1876.
+
+Vol. XVII, No. 99.
+
+
+
+
+THE CENTURY--ITS FRUITS AND ITS FESTIVAL.
+
+III.--PAST EXPOSITIONS.
+
+[Illustration: THE GREAT ANNUAL FAIR AT NIZHNEE-NOVGOROD.]
+
+We have presented a feeble sketch of a century that stands out from
+its fellows, not as a mere continuation, or even intensification, of
+them--a hundred annual circuits of the earth in its orbit as little
+distinguished by intellectual or material achievement as those
+repetitions of the old beaten track through space are by astronomical
+incident--but as an epoch _sui generis_, a century _d'elite_, picked
+out from the long ranks of time for special service, charged by
+Fate with an extraordinary duty, and decorated for its successful
+performance. Those of its historic comrades even partially so honored
+are few indeed. They will not make a platoon--scarce a corporal's
+guard. We should seek them, for instance, in the Periclean age,
+when eternal beauty, and something very like eternal truth, gained
+a habitation upon earth through the chisel and the pen; in the first
+years of the Roman empire, when the whole temperate zone west of China
+found itself politically and socially a unit, at rest but for the
+labors of peace; and in the sixteenth century, when the area fit for
+the support of man was suddenly doubled, when the nominal value of his
+possessions was additionally doubled by the mines of Mexico and
+Peru, and when his mental implements were in a far greater proportion
+multiplied by the press.
+
+[Illustration: CRYSTAL PALACE--LONDON EXHIBITION BUILDING, 1851.]
+
+The last of these periods comes nearest to our standard. The first had
+undying brilliance in certain fields, but the scope of its influence
+was geographically narrow, and its excessively active thought was not
+what we are wont to consider practically productive, its conquests in
+the domain of physical science being but slender. The second was in no
+sense originative, mankind being occupied, quietly and industriously,
+in making themselves comfortable in the pleasant hush after the
+secular rattle of spear and shield. The third was certainly full of
+results in art, science and the diffusion of intelligence through the
+upper and middle strata of society. It might well have celebrated the
+first centennial of the discovery of printing or of the discovery of
+America by assembling the fresh triumphs of European art, so wonderful
+to us in their decay, with the still more novel productions of
+Portuguese India and Spanish America. But the length of sea--voyages
+prosecuted in small vessels with imperfect knowledge of winds and
+currents, and the difficulties of land-transportation when roads
+were almost unknown, would have restricted the display to meagre
+proportions, particularly had Vienna been the site selected. Few
+visitors could have attended from distant countries, and the masses of
+the vicinage could only have stared. The idea, indeed, of getting up
+an exhibition to be chiefly supported by the intelligent curiosity of
+the bulk of the people would not have been apt to occur to any one.
+The political and educational condition of these was at the end of the
+century much what it had been at the beginning. Labor and the laborer
+had gained little.
+
+The weapon-show, depicted in _Old Mortality_, and the market-fair, as
+vivid in the _Vicar of Wakefield_, exemplify the expositions of
+those days. To them were added a variety of church festivals, or
+"functions," still a great feature of the life of Catholic countries.
+Trade and frolic divided these among themselves in infinite gradation
+of respective share, now the ell-wand, and now the quarter-staff or
+the fiddler's bow, representing the sceptre of the Lord of Misrule.
+"At Christe's Kirk on the Grene that day" the Donnybrook element would
+appear to have predominated. The mercantile feature was naturally
+preferred by gentle Goldy, and the hapless investor in green
+spectacles may be counted the first dissatisfied exhibitor on record
+at a modern exposition, for he skirts the century.
+
+Looking eastward, we find these rallies of the people, the
+time-honored stalking-grounds of tale-writers and students of
+character generally, swell into more imposing proportions. The sea
+dwindles and the land broadens. Transportation and travel become
+difficult and hazardous. Merchant and customer, running alike a
+labyrinthine gauntlet of taxes, tolls and arbitrary exactions by the
+wolves of schloss and château, found it safest to make fewer trips and
+concentrate their transactions. The great nations, with many secondary
+trade-tournaments, as they may be termed, had each a principal one.
+From the great fair of Leipsic, with the intellectual but very bulky
+commodity of books for its specialty to-day, we pass to the two
+Novgorods--one of them no more than a tradition, having been
+annihilated by Peter the Great when, with the instinct of great rulers
+for deep water, he located the new capital of his vast interior empire
+on the only available harbor it possessed. Its successor, known from
+its numerous namesakes by the designation of "New," draws convoys of
+merchandise from a vast tributary belt bounded by the Arctic and
+North Pacific oceans and the deserts of Khiva. This traffic exceeds
+a hundred millions of dollars annually. The medley of tongues and
+products due to the united contributions of Northern Siberia, China
+and Turkestan is hardly to be paralleled elsewhere on the globe.
+_Was_, insists the all-conquering railway as it moves inexorably
+eastward, and relegates the New Novgorod, with its modern fairs,
+to the stranded condition of the old one, with its traditional
+expositions. As, however, the rail must have a terminus somewhere,
+if only temporary, the caravans of camels, oxen, horses, boats and
+sledges will converge to a movable entrepôt that will assume more
+and more an inter-Asiatic instead of an inter-national character. The
+furs, fossil ivory, sheepskins and brick tea brought by them after
+voyages often reaching a year and eighteen months, come, strictly
+enough, under the head of raw products. Still, it is the best they
+can bring; which cannot be said of what Europe offers in
+exchange--articles mostly of the class and quality succinctly
+described as "Brummagem." It is obvious that prizes, diplomas, medals,
+commissioners and juries would be thrown away here. The palace
+of glass and iron can only loom in the distant future, like the
+cloud-castle in Cole's _Voyage of Life_. It may possibly be essayed in
+a generation or two, when Ekaterinenborg, built up into a great
+city by the copper, iron, gold, and, above all, the lately-opened
+coal-mines of the Ural, shall have become the focus of the Yenisei,
+Amour, Yang-tse and Indus system of railways. But here, again, we are
+overstepping our century.
+
+[Illustration: INTERIOR VIEW OF THE TRANSEPT OF CRYSTAL PALACE.]
+
+To us it seems odd that in the days when an autocratic decree could
+summarily call up "all the world" to be taxed, and when, in prompt
+obedience to it, the people of all the regions gathered to a thousand
+cities, the idea of numbering and comparing, side by side, goods,
+handicrafts, arts, skill, faculties and energies, as well as heads,
+never occurred to rulers or their counselors. If it did, it was never
+put in practice. The difficulties to which we have before adverted
+stood in the way of that combination of individual effort to which the
+great displays of our day are mainly indebted for their success; but
+what the government might have accomplished toward overcoming distance
+and defective means of transport is evidenced by the mighty current
+of objects of art, luxury and curiosity which flowed toward the
+metropolis. Obelisks, colossal statues, and elephants and giraffes by
+the score are articles of traffic not particularly easy to handle even
+now.
+
+[Illustration: NEW YORK EXHIBITION BUILDING, 1853.]
+
+At the annual exposition of the Olympic games we have the feature of a
+distribution of prizes. They were conferred, however, only on horses,
+poets and athletes--a conjunction certainly in advance of the asses
+and savants that constituted the especial care of the French army in
+Egypt, but not up to the modern idea of the comprehensiveness of human
+effort. While our artists confess it almost a vain hope to rival
+the cameo brooch that fastened the scanty garment of the Argive
+charioteer, or the statue spattered with the foam of his horses and
+shrouded in the dust of his furious wheel--while they are content to
+be teachable, moreover, by the exquisite embroidery and lacework
+in gold and cotton thread displayed at another semi-religious and
+similarly ancient reunion at Benares,--they claim the alliance and
+support of many classes of craftsmen unrepresented on the Ganges or
+Ilissus. These were, in the old days, ranked with slaves, many of whom
+were merchants and tradesmen; and they labor yet in some countries
+under the social ban of courts, no British merchant or cotton-lord,
+though the master of millions, being presentable at Buckingham Palace,
+itself the product of the counting-room and the loom. Little, however,
+does this slight appear to affect the sensibilities of the noble army
+of producers, who loyally rejoice to elevate their constitutional
+sovereign on their implements as the Frankish prolétaries did upon
+their shields.
+
+The family of expositions with which we are directly concerned is,
+like others of plebeian origin, at some loss as to the roots of its
+ancestral tree. We may venture to locate them in the middle of the
+eighteenth century. In 1756-57 the London Society of Arts offered
+prizes for specimens of decorative manufactures, such as tapestry,
+carpets and porcelain. This was part of the same movement with that
+which brought into being the Royal Academy, with infinitely less
+success in the promotion of high art than has attended the development
+of taste, ingenuity and economy in the wider if less pretentious
+field.
+
+France's first exhibition of industry took place in 1798. It was
+followed by others under the Consulate and Empire in 1801, 1802, 1806.
+In 1819 the French expositions became regular. Each year attested an
+advance, and drew more and more the attention of adjacent countries.
+The international idea had not yet suggested itself. The tendency
+was rather to the less than the more comprehensive, geographically
+speaking. Cities took the cue from the central power, and got up each
+its own show, of course inviting outside competition. The nearest
+resemblance to the grand displays of the past quarter of a century
+was perhaps that of Birmingham in 1849, which had yet no government
+recognition; but the French exposition of five years earlier had a
+leading influence in bringing on the London Fair of 1851, which
+had its inception as early as 1848--one year before the Birmingham
+display.
+
+The getting up of a World's Fair was an afterthought; the original
+design having been simply an illustration of British industrial
+advancement, in friendly rivalry with that which was becoming,
+across the Channel, too brilliant to be ignored. The government's
+contribution, in the first instance, was meagre enough--merely the use
+of a site. Rough discipline in youth is England's system with all her
+bantlings. She is but a frosty parent if at bottom kindly, and, when
+she has a shadow of justification, proud. In the present instance
+she stands excused by the sore shock caused her conservatism by the
+conceit of a building of glass and iron four times as long as St.
+Paul's, high enough to accommodate comfortably one of her ancestral
+elms, and capacious enough to sustain a general invitation to all
+mankind to exhibit and admire.
+
+Novelty and innovation attended the first step of the great movement.
+The design of the structure made architects rub their eyes, and
+yet its origin was humble and practical enough. The Adam of crystal
+palaces, like him of Eden, was a gardener. When Joseph Paxton raised
+the palm-house at Chatsworth he little suspected that he was building
+for the world--that, to borrow a simile from his own vocation, he was
+setting a bulb which would expand into a shape of as wide note as the
+domes of Florence and St. Sophia. And the cost of his new production
+was so absurdly low--eighty thousand pounds by the contract.
+The cheapness of his plan was its great merit in the eyes of the
+committee, and that which chiefly determined its selection over
+two hundred and forty-four competitors. This new cathedral for the
+apotheosis of industry resembled those of the old worship in the
+attributes of nave, aisles and transepts; and these features have
+been, by reason in great degree of the requirements of construction,
+continued in its successors. Galleries were added to the original
+design to secure space additional to what was naturally deemed at
+first an ample allowance for all comers. Before ground had been well
+broken the demands of British exhibitors alone ran up to four hundred
+and seventeen thousand superficial feet instead of the two hundred and
+ten thousand--half the whole area--allotted them. The United States
+were offered forty thousand feet; France, fifty thousand, afterward
+increased to sixty-five; the Zollverein, thirty thousand, and
+India the same. A comparison of the whole number of exhibitors, as
+distributed between Great Britain and other countries, indicates that
+the equal division of the superficial space was a tolerably accurate
+guess. They numbered 7381 from the mother-country and her colonies,
+and 6556 from the rest of the world. Certainly, a change this from the
+first French exhibition, held in the dark days of the Directory, when
+the list reached but 110 names. We shall dismiss the statistics of
+this exhibition with the remark that it has precedence of its fellows
+in financial success as well as in time, having cleared a hundred
+and seventy-odd thousand pounds, and left the Kensington Museum as
+a memorial of that creditable feat, besides sending its cast-off but
+still serviceable induviæ to Sydenham, where it enshrines another
+museum, chiefly of architectural reproductions in plaster, in a
+sempiternal coruscation of fountains, fireworks and fiddle-bows. The
+palace of industry has become the palace of the industrial--abundantly
+useful still if it lure him from the palace of gin. The chrism of
+Thackeray's inaugural ode will not have been dishonored.
+
+[Illustration: CORK EXHIBITION BUILDING, 1853.]
+
+The first of the great fairs, in so many respects a model to all
+that came after, was beset at the outset by the same difficulty in
+arrangement encountered by them. How to reconcile the two headings of
+subjects and nations, groups of objects and groups of exhibitors, the
+endowments and progress of different races and the advance of mankind
+generally in the various fields of effort, was, and is, a problem only
+approximately to be solved. It was yet more complicated in 1851 from
+the compression of the entire display into one building of simple and
+symmetrical form, instead of dispersing certain classes of objects,
+bulky and requiring special appliances for their proper display, into
+subsidiary structures--the plan so effectively employed in Fairmount
+Park. A sort of compromise was arrived at which rendered possible the
+mapping of both countries and subjects, especially in the reports, and
+to some extent in the exhibition itself, without making the spectacle
+one of confusion. The visitor was enabled to accomplish his double
+voyage through the depths of the sea of glass without a great deal
+of backing and filling, and to find his log, after it was over,
+reasonably coherent.
+
+The articles displayed were ranged under thirty heads. The
+preponderance of matter of fact was shown in the concession of four of
+these to raw material, nineteen to manufactures, and _one_ to the
+fine arts. Twenty-nine atoms of earth to one of heaven! Of course the
+one-thirtieth whereinto the multiform and elastic shape of genius was
+invited, like the afreet into his chest, to condense itself, had to
+be subdivided--an intaglio and a temple, a scarabæus and a French
+battle-picture, being very different things. This was accomplished,
+and the Muses made as comfortable as could be expected. They soon
+asserted the pre-eminence theirs by right divine, and came to be the
+leading attraction of the affair, next to the Koh-i-noor. On this
+barbaric contribution of the gorgeous East the French observers, a
+little jealous perhaps, were severe. One of them says: "They rely on
+the sun to make it sparkle," and, when the fog is too thick, on gas.
+The curiosity about it, in the eyes of this incisive Gaul, was "not
+the divinity, but the worshipers." All day long a crowd filed solemnly
+by it under the supervision of a detachment of police, each pilgrim
+bestowing upon the fetish, "an egg-shaped lump of glass," half a
+second's adoration, and then moving reluctantly on. Thousands of far
+more beautiful things were around it, but none embodying in so small
+a space so many dollars and cents, and none therefore so brilliant in
+the light of the nineteenth century. As this light, nevertheless, is
+that in which we live, move and have our being, we must accept it, and
+turn to substantials, wrought and unwrought.
+
+On our way to this feast of solids we must step for a moment into St.
+Paul's and listen to the great commemorative concert of sixty-five
+hundred voices that swept all cavilers, foreign and domestic, off
+their feet, brought tears to the most sternly critical eye, and caused
+the composer, Cramer, to exclaim, as he looked up into the great dome,
+filled with the volume of harmony, "Cosa stupenda! stupenda! La gloria
+d'Inghilterra!"
+
+A transition, indeed, from this to coal and iron--from a concord of
+sweet sounds to the rumble into hold, car and cart of thirty-five
+millions of tons of coal and two and a half millions of iron, the
+yearly product at that time of England! She has since doubled that of
+iron, and nearly trebled her extract of coal, whatever her progress
+in the harvest of good music and good pictures. Forced by economical
+necessity and assisted by chemistry, she makes her fuel, too, go a
+great deal farther than it did in 1851, when the estimate was that
+eighty-one per cent. of that consumed in iron-smelting was lost, and
+when the "duty" of a bushel of coal burnt in a steam-engine was less
+than half what it now is. The United States have the benefit of these
+improvements, at the same time that their yield of coal has swelled
+from four millions of tons at that time to more than fifty now, and
+of iron in a large though not equal ratio. The Lake Superior region,
+which rested its claims on a sample of its then annual product of one
+hundred tons of copper, now exports seven hundred thousand tons of
+iron ore.
+
+Steel, now replacing iron in some of its heaviest uses, appeared as
+almost an article of luxury in the shape of knives, scissors and the
+like. The success of the Hindus in its production was quite envied and
+admired, though they had probably advanced little since Porus deemed
+thirty pounds a present fit for Alexander; their rude appliances
+beating Sheffield an hour and a half in the four hours demanded by the
+most adroit forgers of the city of whittles for its elimination from
+the warm bath of iron and carbon. Bessemer, with his steel-mines, as
+his furnaces at the ore-bank may be termed, was then in the future.
+The steel rails over which we now do most of our traveling were
+undreamed of. Bar iron did duty on all the eighty-eight hundred miles
+of American and sixty-five hundred of British railway; not many, if
+at all, more than are now laid, in this country at least, with steel.
+This poetic and historic metal has become as truly a raw product as
+potatoes. The poets will have to drop it. The glory of Toledo--of
+her swords bent double in the scabbard, of her rapiers that bore into
+one's interior only the titillating sensation of a spoonful of vanilla
+ice, and of her decapitating sabres that left the culprit whole so
+long as he forbore to sneeze--is trodden under foot of men.
+
+[Illustration: DUBLIN EXHIBITION BUILDING, 1853.]
+
+In crude materials the Union is at home. It was so in 1851, and is
+still; but then it was not so much at home in anything else as now.
+We have advanced in that field too, since we sent no silver, and from
+Colorado no gold, no canned fruits, meats or fish, and no wine but
+some Cincinnati Catawba, thin and acid, according to the verdict
+of the imbibing jury. We adventured timidly into manufacturing
+competition with the McCormick reaper, which all Europe proceeded
+straightway to pirate; ten or twelve samples of cotton and three of
+woolen goods; Ericsson's caloric-engine; a hydrostatic pump; some
+nautical instruments; Cornelius's chandeliers for burning lard
+oil--now the light of other days, thanks to our new riches in
+kerosene; buggies of a tenuity so marvelous in Old-World eyes that
+their half-inch tires were likened to the miller of Ferrette's legs,
+so thin that Talleyrand pronounced his standing an act of the most
+desperate bravery; soap enough to answer Coleridge's cry for a
+detergent for the lower Rhine; and one bridge model, forerunner of the
+superb iron erections that have since leaped over rivers and ravines
+in hundreds.
+
+Meagre enough was the display of our craftsmen by the side of that
+made by their brethren of the other side. It could have been scarce
+visible to Britannia, looking down from a pinnacle of calico ready for
+a year's export over and above her home consumption, long enough, if
+unrolled, to put a girdle thirty times round the globe, though not all
+of it warranted to stand the washing-test that would be imposed by the
+briny part of the circuit.
+
+And yet there were visible in the American department germs
+of original inventions and adaptations, the development and
+fructification of which in the near future were foreseen by acute
+observers. Our metallic life-boats were then unknown to other
+countries, those of England being all of wood. The screw-propeller
+was quite a new thing, though the Princeton had carried it, or been
+carried by it, into the Mediterranean ten years before. Engines
+designed for its propulsion attracted special attention. The
+side-wheel reigned supreme among British war-steamers, although some
+of the altered liners which cut such an imposing figure till the
+Sebastopol forts in '55 checked, and iron-clads in '62 finished,
+their career, were under way. A model of one of them, The Queen, was
+exhibited as the highest exemplification of "the progress of art
+as applied to shipbuilding during the last eighteen centuries"--a
+progress entirely eclipsed by that of the subsequent eighteen years.
+
+We sent no steam fire-engines, no locomotives, and no cars. Our great
+printing-presses, since largely borrowed from and imported by Europe,
+were scarcely noticed. Not so with "a most beautiful little machine"
+for making card wire-cloth, copied from America. Recognition of the
+supreme merits of the pianos of Chickering, Steinway and the rest was
+still wanting, Erard's Parisian instruments bearing the bell. Borden's
+meat-biscuit--to revert to the practical--caused quite a sensation,
+the Admiralty being overloaded with spoiled and condemned _preserved_
+meat. The American daguerreotypes on exhibition were pronounced
+decidedly superior to those of France, and still more to those of
+England. Whipple displayed the first photograph taken of the moon,
+thus securing to this country the credit of having broken ground for
+the application of the new art to astronomy. No photograph of a star
+or of the sun had been obtained. The distance between the United
+States and Europe in the application and improvement of photography
+cannot be said, notwithstanding our advantage in climate, to have been
+since widened. A field of competition still lies open before them in
+the fixing of color by the camera and the sensitive surface. The
+sun still insists on doing his work with India ink and keeping his
+spectral palette strictly to himself. For cheap and popular renderings
+of color man was then, as now, fain to have recourse to the press.
+The English exhibited some chromatic printing, far inferior to the
+chromo-lithographs of today.
+
+And this brings us to art. One out of thirty in the programme, it was,
+as it always will be on these occasions, nearer thirty to one in the
+estimation of assembled sight-seers. The dry goods and machinery, even
+the bald, shadeless and ugly (however comfortable) model cottages of
+the inevitable Prince Albert, failed to draw like the things which
+flattered the lust of the eye; as the pigs and pumpkins of an
+"agricultural horse-trot" attract but a wayside glance from the
+procession to the grand stand. We are all dwellers in a vast
+picture-gallery, with frescoed dome above and polychromed sculpture
+and mosaic pavement on the floor below. Its merits we perceive, enjoy
+and interpret according to our individual gifts and education. But it
+makes amateurs in some sort of every mother's son or daughter, of us;
+and we hasten to plunge, confident each in his particular grammar of
+the beautiful, into the study of what imitative gallery may be offered
+us. Though the financial idea may have been uppermost in the minds of
+the devotees of the Mountain of Light, and their pleasure in the march
+past that of a stroll through the vaults of the Bank of England, they
+also expected to see in it the combined brilliance of all diamonds.
+Not finding that, we dare say few of them paid it a second visit, but,
+led by a like craving for dazzle, sought more legitimate intoxication
+in marble, canvas, porcelain and chased and cast metals.
+
+There they saw the diamond put into harness by the Hindus and used
+for drilling gems as it is now for drilling railway tunnels. In the
+carpets and shawls of the same region was to be traced an exact and
+unfaltering instinct for color, the tints falling into their proper
+places like those of the rainbow--the result not a picture, any more
+than the rainbow is a picture, but a blotted study rubbed up with the
+palette-knife, or what in music would be a fantasia.
+
+[Illustration: MUNICH EXHIBITION BUILDING, 1854.]
+
+From the Asiatic display, more complete by far than any before known,
+the eye passed to the works of the more disciplined hand and fancy and
+the more scholastic color-notions of Europe. There was young Munich
+with Müller's lions and the anti-realistic figures of Schwanthaler;
+Austria with Monti's veiled heads, henceforth to be credited to
+Lombardy; Prussia with Rauch; and Denmark with Thorwaldsen--all pure
+form, copied without color from Nature, from convention and from
+the antique. Then came design and color united in ceramics--in
+the marvelously delicate flowers of Dresden, purified in the
+porcelain-furnace as by fire; in the stately vases of Sèvres, just
+but varied in proportion, unfathomable in the rich depths of their
+ground-shadows, and exact and brilliant in the superimposed details;
+the more raw but promising efforts of Berlin, marked, like the jewelry
+from the same city, by faithful study of Nature; and, blending the
+decorative with the economic, the works of the English Wedgwoods and
+Mintons, infinite in variety of style and utility, and often pleasing
+in design. Italy, though supplying from her ancient stores so many
+of the models and so much of the inspiration of the countries named,
+seems to have forgotten Faenza and Etruria, and to prefer solid stone
+as a material to preparations of clay and flint. Her Venetian glass
+has markedly declined, at the same time that glass elsewhere--notably,
+the stained windows of Munich and the smaller objects of France
+and Bohemia--shows a great advance in perfection of manufacture and
+manageability for art purposes.
+
+In that debatable land where the artistic and the convenient meet at
+the fire-side and the tea-table, English invention, enterprise
+and solicitude for the comfort and presentability of home shone
+conspicuous. Domestic art finds in the island a congenial home,
+and helps to make one for the islanders. English interiors, often
+incongruous and sombre in their decorations, at least produce the
+always pleasant sensation of physical comfort, the attainment of
+which the average Briton will class among the fine arts. Lovely as the
+Graces are, they need a little editing to harmonize them with a coal
+fire.
+
+This halfway house of the nineteenth century, the house of glass in
+which it boldly ensconced itself to throw stones at its benighted
+relations, will ever be a landmark to the traveler over the somewhat
+arid expanse of industrial and commercial history. Its humblest
+statistics will be preserved, and coming generations will read with
+interest that 42,809 persons visited it, on an average, each day, that
+these rose on one day to 109,915, and that there were at one time
+in the building 93,224, or six thousand more than Domitian's most
+tempting and sanguinary bill of theatrical fare could have drawn
+into the Coliseum. Its length, by the way, was exactly equal to the
+circumference of the Flavian amphitheatre--1848 feet.
+
+A new home (of progress)! who'll follow? "I," quoth New York. The
+British empire had taken three years in preparation: New York was
+ready with less than two. Not quite ready, either, we are apt to
+say now, but most creditably so for the time and the means of a few
+enterprising private men bestowed upon it. And up to this time the
+display of '53 under the Karnak-like shadow of the Croton Reservoir
+has not been equaled on our soil.
+
+Architecturally, the building was superior to that of London, and
+showed itself less cramped by the peculiarities of the novel material.
+The form was that of a Greek cross, with a central dome a hundred and
+forty-eight feet high, and eight towers at the salients of seventy
+feet. The space, including galleries, did not reach a third of that
+afforded by its prototype, but proved equal to the demand.
+
+Considering the absence of any formal public character in the movement
+and the brief notice, foreign exhibitors came forward in tolerable
+force. They could not expect to address through this display each
+other's commercial constituencies, as very few visitors would traverse
+the Atlantic: they could reach only the people of the United States.
+This difficulty must interfere--though much less now than twenty years
+ago, when the means of ocean-travel were but a fraction of what they
+are at present--with the strictly international complexion of any
+exposition in this country. If, however--as we are already assured
+beyond peradventure will be the case with the Centennial--our
+neighbors over the way send us a full representation of their
+products, and a delegation of visitors from their most intelligent
+classes, not inferior in numbers, for example, to the Germans who went
+to London, and the English who repaired in '73 to Vienna, we shall
+claim a cosmopolitan character for our exposition, and hold that it
+well fills its place in the line of progress.
+
+What Europe did send to New York sufficed to prove the superiority
+of our own artisans in such labor-saving contrivances as suited the
+conditions of the country. The foreign implements and machines were
+more cumbrous in both complexity and weight of parts than ours. In
+the finer departments of manufacture, the Gobelin tapestry, the French
+glass, porcelain and silks, the broadcloths of England and Prussia,
+and a host of other such articles, could expect no rivalry here. The
+slender contributions of statuary and paintings hardly sufficed to
+illustrate the conceded superiority of the Old World in art. Crawford
+and Powers did very well by the side of the other, disciples of
+the antique, their chief opposition coming from some indifferent
+plaster-casts of Thorwaldsen's _Twelve Apostles_. In point of
+popularity, Kiss's spirited melodramatic group of the _Amazon and
+Tiger_ threw them all into the shade. Its triumph at London was almost
+as marked, and the innumerable reductions of it met with everywhere
+show it to be one of the few hits of modern sculpture.
+
+The general result of the exhibition was to encourage our
+manufacturers, without giving them a great deal of food for higher
+ambition; while our artists and the taste of their patrons, actual
+and possible, were disappointed of the instruction they had reason to
+expect, and which the ateliers of Europe will supply in fuller measure
+this year.
+
+The succeeding years present us with an epidemic of expositions, most
+of them, often on the slenderest grounds, arrogating the title of
+"international." The sprightly little city of Cork was one year ahead
+of New York. Then came Dublin in '53, Munich in '54, Paris in '55,
+Manchester in '57 (of art exclusively, and very brilliant), Florence
+in '61, London again in '62, Amsterdam in '64; and in '65 the mania
+had overspread the globe, that year witnessing exhibitions dubbed
+"international" in Dublin, New Zealand, Oporto, Cologne and Stettin,
+with perhaps some outliers we have missed. Then ensued a lull or a
+mitigation till the moribund empire of France and the remodeled empire
+of Austro-Hungary flared up into the magnificent demonstrations of '67
+and '73. To these last we shall devote the remainder of this article,
+with but a glance at the second British of 1862.
+
+[Illustration: MANCHESTER EXHIBITION BUILDING, 1857.]
+
+This, held upon the same ground with its forerunner of eleven years
+previous, affords a better measure of progress. It developed a
+manifest advance in designs for ornamental manufactures. The
+schools of decorative art were beginning to tell. Carpets, hangings,
+furniture, stuffs for wear, encaustic tiles, etc. showed a sounder
+taste; and this in the foreign as well as the British stalls. French
+porcelain was more fully represented than before, and in finer
+designs. The Paris exhibition of '55, more extensively planned, though
+less of a financial success, than the London one it followed, was not
+without effect on the industry and art-culture of France. The United
+States also showed that they had not been idle. Our fabrics of
+vulcanized rubber and sewing-machines were boons to Europe she has not
+been slow to seize. The latter are now sold in England, with trifling
+modifications and new trademarks, at from one-third to one-half the
+price our people have to pay.
+
+The secret of making money out of these great fairs seemed to have
+been lost. Although England's second took in much more than the first,
+and four times as much as the first French, four hundred and sixty
+thousand pounds having entered its treasury, it failed to leave any
+such profitable memorials of profit.
+
+By this time the spirit of French emulation was stirred to its
+inmost depths. They had gone to London, argued the Gauls, under every
+disadvantage. To prove that they had returned covered with glory,
+they hunted every nook and corner of numerical analysis. Out of 18,000
+exhibitors of all nations, they had had but 1747, and yet Paris had
+received thirty-nine council medals, or honors of the first order,
+per million of inhabitants, against fourteen per million accorded to
+London. She had beaten the metropolis of fog not only in general,
+but in detail. In every branch, from the most solid to the most
+sentimental, she was victorious. For machinery a million of gamins
+beat a million of Cockneys in the proportion of seven to six; in the
+economical and chemical arts, four to one; in the geographical and
+geometrical, eight to three; and in the fine arts, Waterloo was
+reversed to the tune of twenty to four.
+
+Nothing could be more conclusive; but to take a bond of fate it
+was determined to imitate England in trying a second display, and
+supplement '53 with '67 more effectively than Albion had '51 with
+'62. In what gallant style this determination was carried out we
+all remember. France did put forth her strength. She illustrated the
+Second Empire with an outpouring of her own genius and energy the
+variety and comprehensiveness of which no other nation could pretend
+to equal; and she called together the nearest approach to a rally of
+the nations that had yet been seen.
+
+The casket of these assembled treasures was hardly worthy of them,
+so far as the effect of the mass went. It needed a facade as badly
+as does a confectioner's plum-cake. Had the vitreous mass been dumped
+upon the Champs de Mars from the clouds in a viscous state like
+the Alpine _mers de glace_, it would have assumed much such a thick
+disk-like shape as it actually wore. Then decorate it with some
+spun-sugar pinnacles and some flags of silver paper, and the confiseur
+stood confessed. Nevertheless, motive was there. Catch anything French
+without it.
+
+[Illustration: FLORENCE EXHIBITION BUILDING, 1861]
+
+The pavilion consisted of seven concentric ovals, the arcs and their
+radii effecting the duplicate division of objects and countries.
+Outside, under the eaves and in the surrounding area, the peoples
+were encamped around their possessions. The gastric fluid being the
+universal solvent, the festive board was assigned the position nearest
+the building, a continuous shed protecting the restaurants of all
+nations, each with its proper specialty in the way of viands and
+service. Necessarily, there was in the carrying out of the latter idea
+a good deal of the sham and theatrical. But that gave the thing more
+zest, and the saloons were by no means the least effective feature of
+the appliances for introducing the races to each other. Tired of
+the tender intercourse of chopsticks, forks and fingers, they could
+exchange visits in their drawing-rooms; most of the known styles
+of dwelling-place, if we except the snow-huts of the Esquimaux,
+the burrows of the Kamtchadales and the boats of Canton, having
+representatives.
+
+The United States government took particular interest in this
+exposition, and published a long and detailed report made by its
+commissioners. Our contributions were not worthy of the country, and
+showed but little novelty. Implements of farming and of war, pianos,
+sewing-machines and locomotives attracted chief attention. The pianos
+were "unreservedly praised." The wines, California having come to the
+rescue, were pronounced an improvement on previous specimens. The only
+trait of our engines that was admired or borrowed appears to have been
+that which had least to do with the organism of the machine--the cab.
+In cars our ideas have fruited better, and Pullman and Westinghouse
+have gained a firm foothold in England, with whose endorsement their
+way is open across the Channel. In the arts we are credited with
+seventy-five pictures, against a hundred and twenty-three from England
+and six hundred and fifty-two from France.
+
+[Illustration: PARIS EXPOSITION BUILDING AND GROUNDS, 1867.]
+
+Here France was at home, and felt it. The works of Dubray, Triquetti,
+Yvon, Giraud, Gérôme, Dubufe, Toulmouche, Courbet, Troyon, Rosa
+Bonheur and others exhibited the route toward the naturalistic
+taken by her modern school, so different from that pursued by the
+Pre-Raphaelites in England. The Düsseldorf school has been drawn into
+the same path--France's one conquest from Prussia, who made at the
+same time a stout struggle in defence of the classic manner through
+Kaulbach. The drawings and paintings of art-students maintained by the
+French government in Italy attested an enlightened liberality other
+governments, general or local, would do well to imitate. The cost of
+supporting a few score of pupils in Rome could in no way be better
+bestowed for the promotion of commerce, manufactures and education.
+Taste has unquestionably a high economic value. But this is only one
+of France's ways of recognizing the fact. The government École des
+Beaux Arts at Paris contained, in 1875, a hundred and seventy-two
+students of architecture, a hundred and eighty-three of painting,
+forty of sculpture and two hundred and fifty of engraving.
+
+As a corollary to this assiduous culture, French art collectively was
+at the exposition "first, and the rest nowhere." The old works sent
+by Italy stood by themselves; and in mosaic, Salviati's glass, and
+statuary led by Vela's _Last Moments of Napoleon_, the modern studios
+of that country ranked in the front. Prussia had some heliographic
+maps, then a new thing, and chromos, also in the bud; Austria and
+England, fine architectural drawings; and Eastlake, Stanfield,
+Landseer, Frith and Faed crossed pencils with the French. But nothing
+modern of the kind could stand by the porcelain of Sèvres, the glass
+of St. Louis and Baccarat, the bronzes of other French producers, the
+vast collection of drawings of ancient and mediaeval monuments and
+architecture in France, her book-binding and illustration by Bida and
+Doré, her jewelry and her art-manufactures as a whole. In carriages
+she had obviously studied the turnouts of American workshops to
+advantage.
+
+In agricultural machinery all civilized exhibitors had gone to school
+to our artisans.
+
+One of our specialties, a postal-car, appeared under the Prussian
+flag. So did things more legitimately the property of the nascent
+empire. The Krupp gun cast its substance, as well as its shadow,
+before. A locomotive destined for India made Bull rub his eyes.
+Chemicals in every grade of purity spoke the potency of the German
+alembic.
+
+The probability that the production of beetroot-sugar would before
+many years attain a position among the industries of this country gave
+interest in the eyes of American visitors to the display of European
+machinery employed so successfully in that business. Labor-saving
+machinery we have not generally been in the habit of borrowing.
+Neither, on the other hand, has Europe been accustomed to draw from
+us crude material for the finest manufactures; and the balance was set
+even by the admirable quality of the glass made from American sand
+and the porcelain moulded in American kaolin. The latter substance, a
+silicate of alumina, is not found in England, and at but few points on
+the Continent. We have it in abundance and of the finest quality.
+
+[Illustration: GRAND VESTIBULE OF THE PARIS EXPOSITION BUILDING,
+1867.]
+
+The extraordinary steps made within five years in the arts of
+destruction were illustrated by the twelve-inch Armstrong rifles of
+England and the Essen gun, throwing a 1212-pound shot. In 1862 the
+heaviest projectile shown did not exceed one hundred pounds. For
+field-service the limit of practice in weight seems long ago to have
+been reached: for forts and ships it cannot be far off. Armor and
+projectiles must soon bring each other to a standstill; as when, in
+the Italian wars of the fifteenth century, offence and defence reached
+the _reductio ad absurdum_ of the incapacity of men-at-arms to inflict
+serious injury upon each other, or even to pick themselves up when
+the weight of their armor, with some aid from the clumsy blows of
+an antagonist, had overthrown them. Assailant and assailed were _in
+equilibrio_, and personal equilibrium could not be restored. Some such
+inane result may be witnessed when a pair of hostile iron-clads, out
+of sight of their nursing convoys, shall meet alone upon the deep;
+with the disagreeable difference that they will, if they go down, have
+a great deal farther to fall than the cuirassiers of the land.
+
+[Illustration: VIENNA EXPOSITION BUILDING AND GROUNDS, 1873.]
+
+Since 1851 a new commercial cement had come into operation in the
+adoption by neighboring powers of the French metrical system. England
+and America still hold out against the mètre and the gramme; and the
+press of both occasionally levels at it the old jokes of making the
+spheres weigh a pound of butter and the polar axis measure a yard
+of calico. With the innovation, however, our merchants have become
+perforce familiar, a large share of their imported commodities
+being invoiced in accordance with it. Its immense superiority to our
+complicated and arbitrary weights and measures, in the tables whereof
+the same word often has half a dozen meanings, is beyond argument.
+In the United States it has earned a quasi-official adoption, but the
+force of habit among the people has yet to be overcome.
+
+We may here give, in evidence of the increasing hold these expositions
+have upon the popular mind, the gradual multiplication of the numbers
+exhibiting. At London, in '51, the exhibitors were 13,937; at Paris,
+'55, 23,954; at London, '62, 28,653; and at Paris, '67, 50,226.
+
+Austria, with admirable spirit, determined to anticipate her turn to
+enter the lists of peace. Undismayed by Solferino and Sadowa, she had
+found her Antaeus in Andrassy. Her capital city was advancing with
+immense strides in beauty and extent. Geographically and ethnically it
+was, like the empire itself, a meeting-ground of north and south, east
+and west. Isolated from the sea, it offered for the transport of heavy
+articles a system of railways proved by the event to be sufficiently
+effective. It was decided that the march of progress should be more
+than kept up, and that the building, with its appendages, should be an
+improvement on all its predecessors in extent, in architectural effect
+and in solidity of material. The dimensions are so variously stated,
+owing largely to difference of opinion as to what should be embraced
+within the admeasurement, that we are at a loss how to give them. To
+the main building, however, was assigned a capacity of seventy-three
+thousand five hundred and ninety-three square mètres. Sixty-three
+hundred and eighty of these were awarded to France, ten mètres less
+to England; and thirteen hundred and sixty to the United States. The
+marquee-like rotunda rose to a height of two hundred and fifty feet,
+with a diameter at base of three hundred and fifty-four. The principal
+entrance, with piers and arches of cut stone profusely decorated
+with statues and reliefs, was in highly satisfactory contrast to
+the fragile shells of glass and cast iron that sheltered the earlier
+exhibitions.
+
+
+[Illustration: ROTUNDA OF THE VIENNA EXPOSITION BUILDING, 1873.]
+
+Perhaps in all this solid work the demands of time had not been duly
+considered. Certainly, the display was not punctual to the appointed
+period of opening. Exceptionally bad weather was another drawback, and
+the greed of the Viennese hotel-keepers a third. For such, among other
+reasons, the enterprise was financially a failure--a fact which little
+concerns those who went to study and learn, and those who three years
+later have to describe. If the darkening of the imperial exchequer
+prove more than a passing shadow, and an ultimate loss on the
+speculation cease to be matter of question, the few millions it cost
+may be recovered by the disbanding of a regiment or two. For one
+brigade, out of half a million soldiers, to bring the world and its
+wealth to the seat of government, is doing better than the usual work
+of the bayonet.
+
+The country and the city themselves were a study to foreigners in
+many of the modes of life. The extent to which the utilization, as
+stationary and locomotive machines, of pigs, cows, women and dogs
+was carried elicited constant remark from the Western tourists, with
+sundry moral conclusions perhaps too hastily arrived at. This outside
+feature of the exposition may serve as an admonition to put our own
+surroundings in order. They are not apt to expose us to such comments
+as naturally occur to those who have never seen dogs and damsels in
+harness together; but other vulnerable points may peradventure be
+descried. We must demonstrate our civilization to be complete at
+all points, and not simply a coddled exotic under glass. What if our
+Viennese guests, physically a stouter race than we, should pronounce
+our women _too_ obviously not hod-carriers, and painfully unaccustomed
+to wheeling anything heavier than an arm-chair or a piano-stool?
+
+In that land of music concerts could not fail to be a leading feature.
+The Boston improvement of emphasizing the bass with discharges of
+distant artillery, or its equivalent, the slamming of cellar-doors
+nearer by, was not attained. Noise and harmony were kept at arm's
+length apart.
+
+The illustration of homes was made a specialty. As at Paris, the
+peoples brought their dwellings, or, more often, the dwellings came
+without their occupants. The four-footed and feathered live-stock
+were of more indubitable authenticity. The display of all the European
+breeds of cattle and horses--English Durhams, Alderneys and racers,
+Russian trotters, Holstein cows and Flemish mares, the gray oxen of
+Hungary and the buffaloes of the Campagna, the wild red pigs of the
+Don and the razor-backs of Southern France--was calculated to amuse,
+if but moderately to edify, our breeders of Ohio, Kentucky and New
+York. A thousand horses and fifteen hundred horned cattle comprised
+this congress, while two hundred and fifty pigs were deemed enough to
+represent the grunters of all nations.
+
+Of animals in another form, the preserved meats of Australia, sent
+sound across the tropics to the amount of seventeen thousand tons in
+1872, against _four_ tons in 1866, had their use of instruction to
+our packers. So with the improved display of agricultural produce from
+Southern Russia, our chief competitor in the grain-market. Our reapers
+and threshers are supplanting, in Eastern Europe, the ridiculous
+flails, sickles and straight-handled scythes that figured at New York
+in 1853. We have sent the Dacians, Huns and Sarmatians weapons to
+cut our own commercial throats. There are more enriching articles of
+export than wheat, as we must continue to learn.
+
+In turning to other provinces, we find that England was foremost in
+machinery, the United States, "the only rival," says a British critic,
+"from whom we had anything to fear," being feebly represented, as
+we were in other respects, thanks to certain irregularities in the
+management of our commissioners sufficiently discussed at the time.
+The British carpets out-shone the display of any competitor, the
+influence of her new schools of decorative design being unmistakably
+marked.
+
+The Aubusson carpets of France still maintained their position, as did
+the velvet, faïence, tapestry, engravings, books, marine photographs,
+etc. of the same country. Italy made her usual contribution in the
+arts. Among the Austrian objects of this class the opals of Hungary
+were prominent.
+
+India was unexpectedly complete in her collection: not only her modern
+industry, but her antiquities, had abundant specimens.
+
+Much criticism has been expended upon the alleged lavish and
+indiscriminate distribution of medals and diplomas at Vienna. But,
+however numerous the undeserving who obtained them, the deserving must
+at the same time have had their share: the shower that fell on the
+unjust could not have missed the just. Therefore we note that, despite
+our slender show, one hundred and seventy-eight medals for Merit and
+sixty-nine for Progress, two for the Fine Arts (German Bierstadt and
+French Healey) and five for Good Taste, came to America. The
+National Bureau of Education, the Lighthouse Board and the State of
+Massachusetts obtained "Grand Diplomas of Honor" for documents. The
+like honor was awarded to the city of Boston and the Smithsonian
+Institution, and to four private exhibitors for the more
+palpable contributions of tool-making machinery, steam-machinery,
+mowing-machines and dentistry. This list does not teach us much. The
+prizes are, unless awarded with the most intelligent and conscientious
+precision, valuable chiefly as advertisements to the recipients, who
+can earn, and generally have earned, better advertisements in other
+shapes.
+
+Thus have the chief powers of Western and Central Europe displayed
+their mettle in peaceful tourney. The visor of a young and unknown
+knight is now barred for the fray. He has, like the rest in these days
+of modern chivalry, to be his own herald and blow his own preliminary
+blast. It is a tolerably sonorous one. Let the event show that he
+speaks not through brass alone.
+
+
+
+
+SKETCHES OF INDIA.
+
+III.
+
+
+Thus we fared leisurely along. We passed Cabul merchants peddling
+their dried fruit on shaggy-haired camels; to these succeeded, in
+more lonesome portions of the road, small groups of Korkas, wretched
+remnants of one of the autochthonal families of Central India--even
+lower in the scale of civilization than the Gónds, among whom they are
+found; and to these the richly-caparisoned elephants of some wealthy
+Bhopal gentleman making a journey. We lingered long among the
+marvelous old Buddhistic _topes_ or tumuli of Sanchi, and I interested
+my companion greatly in describing the mounds of the United
+States, with which I was familiar, and whose resemblance to these
+richly-sculptured and variously-ornamented ruins, though rude and far
+off, was quite enough to set his active fancy to evolving all manner
+of curious hypotheses going to explain such similarity. The whole way,
+by Sangor, Gharispore, Bhilsa, Sanchi, Sonori, presented us with the
+most interesting relics of the past, and the frequent recurrence of
+the works of the once prevalent Buddhistic faith continually incited
+us to new discussions of the yet unsolved question, Why has Buddha's
+religion, which once had such entire possession of this people's
+hearts, so entirely disappeared from the land?
+
+And, as nothing could be more completely contrasted with the desert
+asceticism which Buddha's tenets inculcated than the luxury into which
+Mohammed's creed has flowered, so nothing could have more strikingly
+broken in upon our discussions of the Buddhistic monuments than
+the view which we at last obtained of the lovely Mohammedan city of
+Bhopal. To the south and east ran a strip of country as barren and
+heartacheish as if the very rocks and earth had turned Buddhist,
+beyond which a range of low rounded hills, not unlike _topes_,
+completed the ascetic suggestion. But, turning from this, we saw
+Mohammedanism at its very loveliest. Minarets, domes, palaces,
+gardens, the towers of the citadel, waters of lovely lakes, all
+mingled themselves together in the voluptuous light of the low
+sun: there was a sense of music, of things that sparkled, of pearly
+lustres, of shimmering jewels, of softness, of delight, of luxury.
+Bhopal looked over the ragged valley like a sultan from the window of
+his zenana regarding afar off an unkempt hermit in his solitude. My
+companion had arranged for permission to enter the town, and it was
+not long ere we were installed in the house of a friend of Bhima
+Gandharva's, whose guests we remained during our stay in Bhopal.
+
+[Illustration: MUSSULMAN WOMAN OF BHOPAL.]
+
+On a rock at the summit of a hill commanding this interesting city
+stands the fort of Fatehgarh, built by a certain Afghan adventurer,
+Dost Mohammed Khan, who, in a time when this part of India must have
+been a perfect paradise for all the free lances of the East, was
+so fortunate as to win the favor of Aurungzebe, and to receive as
+evidence thereof a certain district in Malwa. The Afghan seems to
+have lost no time in improving the foothold thus gained, and he thus
+founded the modern district of Bhopal, which was formerly divided
+between Malwa and Góndwana, one gate of the town standing in the
+former and one in the latter country. Dost Mohammed Khan appears,
+indeed, to have been not the only adventurer who bettered his fortunes
+in Bhopal. It is a curious fact, and one well illustrating the
+liberality which has characterized much of the more modern history of
+the Bhopal government, that no long time ago it was administered by
+a regency consisting of three persons--one a Hindu, one a Mohammedan,
+and the other a Christian. This Christian is mentioned by Sir John
+Malcolm as "Shahzed Musseah, or Belthazzar Bourbona" (by which Sir
+John means _Shahzahad Messiah_--a native appellation signifying "the
+Christian prince"--or _Balthazar of Bourbon_), and is described by
+that officer, to whom he was well known, as a brave soldier and an
+able man. He traced his lineage to a certain Frenchman calling himself
+John of Bourbon, who in the time of Akbar was high in favor and
+position at Delhi. His widow, the princess Elizabeth of Bourbon, still
+resides at Bhopal in great state, being possessed of abundant wealth
+and ranking second only to the Begum. She is the acknowledged head of
+a large number of descendants of John of Bourbon, amounting to five or
+six hundred, who remain at Bhopal and preserve their faith--having a
+church and Catholic priest of their own--as well as the traditions of
+their ancestry, which, according to their claim, allies them to the
+royal blood of France.
+
+No mention of Bhopal can fail to pay at least a hasty tribute in
+commemoration of the forcible character and liberal politics of
+the Begum, who has but of late gone to her account after a long and
+sometimes trying connection with the administration of her country's
+affairs. After the death of her husband--who was accidentally killed
+by a pistol in the hands of a child not long after the treaty with the
+English in 1818--their nephew, then in his minority, was considered as
+the future nawab, and was betrothed to their daughter, the Begum being
+regent during his minority. When the time came, with his majority, for
+the nuptials, the Begum refused to allow the marriage to take place,
+for reasons which need not here be detailed. After much dispute a
+younger brother of the nephew was declared more eligible, but the
+Begum still managed in one way or another to postpone matters, much to
+his dissatisfaction. An arbitration finally resulted in placing him
+on the throne, but his reign was short, and he died after a few years,
+leaving the Begum again in practical charge of affairs--a position
+which she improved by instituting many wise and salutary reforms and
+bringing the state of Bhopal to a condition of great prosperity. The
+Pearl Mosque (_Monti Masjid_), which stands immediately in front
+of the palace, was built at her instance in imitation of the great
+cathedral-mosque of Delhi, and presents a charming evidence of her
+taste, as well as of the architectural powers still existing in this
+remarkable race.
+
+The town proper of Bhopal is enclosed by a much--decayed wall of
+masonry some two miles in circuit, within which is a fort, similar
+both in its condition and material to the wall. Outside these limits
+is a large commercial quarter (_gunge_). The beautiful lake running
+off past the town to the south is said to be artificial in its origin,
+and to have been produced at the instance of Bho Pal, the minister
+of King Bohoje, as long ago as the sixth century, by damming up the
+waters of the Bess (or Besali) River, for the purpose of converting an
+arid section into fertile land. It is still called the Bhopal Tal.
+
+[Illustration: A NAUTCH-GIRL (OR BAYADÈRE) OF ULWUR.]
+
+If this were a ponderous folio of travels, one could detail the
+pleasures and polite attentions of one's Bhopalese host; of the social
+_utter-pán_; of the sprinklings with rose-water; of the dreamy talks
+over fragrant hookahs; of the wanderings among bazaars filled with
+moving crowds of people hailing from all the ports that lie between
+Persia and the Góndwana; of the _fêtes_ where the nautch-girl of
+Baroda contended in graceful emulation with the nautch-girl of Ulwur,
+and the cathacks (or male dancers) with both; of elegantly-perfumed
+Bhopalese young men; of the palaces of nobles guarded by soldiers
+whose accoutrements ranged from the musket to the morion; of the
+Moharum, when the Mohammedan celebrates the New Year. But what would
+you have? A sketch is a sketch. We have got only to the heart of
+India: the head and the whole prodigious eastern side are not yet
+reached. It is time one were off for Jhansi.
+
+At Bioura we encountered modern civilization again in the shape of the
+south-west branch of the Grand Trunk road, which leads off from the
+main stem at Agra. The Grand Trunk is not a railroad, but a firm and
+smooth highway, with which the English have united Calcutta to the
+North-west Provinces and to the west of India. Much of this great
+roadway is metaled with _kunkur_, an oolitic limestone found near the
+surface of the soil in Hindustan; and all Anglo-India laughed at the
+joke of an irreverent punster who, _apropos_ of the fact that this
+application of kunkur to the road-bed was made under the orders of
+Lord William Bentinck, then governor-general, dubbed that gentleman
+William the Kunkurer.
+
+We had abandoned our _chapaya_--which, we may add for the benefit
+of future travelers, we had greatly improved as against jolting by
+causing it to be suspended upon a pair of old springs which we found,
+a relic of some antique break-down, in a village on the route--and
+after a short journey on elephants were traveling _dâk_; that is, by
+post. The _dâk-gharri_ is a comfortable-enough long carriage on four
+wheels, and constitutes the principal mode of conveyance for travelers
+in India besides the railway. It contains a mattress inside, for it
+goes night and day, and one's baggage is strapped on top, much as in
+an American stage-coach after the "boot" is full. Frequent relays of
+horses along the route enable the driver to urge his animals from one
+station to the other with great speed, and the only other stoppages
+are at the _dâk_-bungalows.
+
+"I have discovered," I said to Bhima Gandharva after a short
+experience of the _dâk-gharri_ and the _dâk_-bungalows--"I have
+discovered a general remark about India which is _not_ absurd: all the
+horses are devils and all the _dâk_-bungalow servants are patriarchs."
+
+"If you judge by the heels of the former and the beards of the latter,
+it is true," he said.
+
+This little passage was based on the experience of the last relay,
+which was, however, little more than a repetition of many previous
+ones. My friend and I having arranged ourselves comfortably in the
+_dâk-gharri_ as soon as it was announced ready to start, the long and
+marvelously lean Indian who was our driver signified to his team by
+the usual horse-language that we should be glad to go. The horse did
+not even agitate his left ear--a phenomenon which I associate with
+a horse in that moment when he is quietly making up his mind to be
+fractious. "Go, my brother," said the driver in a mellifluous and
+really fraternal tone of voice. The horse disdained to acknowledge the
+tie: he stood still.
+
+[Illustration: A NAUTCHNI (OR BAYADÈRE) OF BARODA.]
+
+Then the driver changed the relationship, with an access of tenderness
+in voice and in adjuration. "Go, my son," he entreated. But the son
+stood as immovable as if he were going to remain a monument of filial
+impiety to all time.
+
+"Go, my grandson, my love." This seemed entirely too much for the
+animal, and produced apparently a sense of abasement in him which was
+in the highest degree uncomplimentary to his human kinsman and lover.
+He lay down. In so doing he broke several portions of the ragged
+harness, and then proceeded, with the most deliberate absurdity, to
+get himself thoroughly tangled in the remainder.
+
+"I think I should be willing," I said to my companion, "to carry that
+horse to Jhansi on my own shoulders if I could have the pleasure of
+seeing him blown from one of the rajah's cannon in the, fort."
+
+But the driver, without the least appearance of discomposure, had
+dismounted, and with his long deft Hindu fingers soon released the
+animal, patched up his gear, replaced him between the shafts and
+resumed his place.
+
+[Illustration: THE CATHACKS (OR DANCING MEN) OF BHOPAL.]
+
+Another round of consanguinities: the animal still remained immovable,
+till presently he lunged out with a wicked kick which had nearly
+obliterated at one blow the whole line of his ancestry and collateral
+relatives as represented in the driver. At this the latter became
+as furious as he had before been patient: he belabored the horse,
+assistants ran from the stables, the whole party yelled and
+gesticulated at the little beast simultaneously, and he finally broke
+down the road at a pace which the driver did not suffer him to relax
+until we arrived at the bungalow where we intended to stop for supper.
+
+A venerable old Mohammedan in a white beard that gave him the majesty
+of Moses advanced for the purpose of ascertaining our wants.
+
+"Had he any mutton-chops?" asked Bhima Gandharva in Hindustani, the
+_lingua franca_ of the country.
+
+"Cherisher of the humble! no."
+
+"Any beefsteak?"
+
+"Nourisher of the poor! no."
+
+"Well, then, I _hear_ a chicken," said my friend, conclusively.
+
+"O great king," said the Mohammedan, turning to me, "there _is_ a
+chicken."
+
+In a twinkling the cook caught the chicken: its head was turned toward
+Mecca. Bismillah! O God the Compassionate, the Merciful! the poor
+fowl's head flew off, and by the time we had made our ablutions supper
+was ready.
+
+Turning across the ridges to the north-eastward from Sipri, we were
+soon making our way among the tanks and groves which lie about the
+walls of Jhansi. Here, as at Poona, there was ever present to me a
+sense of evil destinies, of blood, of treacheries, which seemed to
+linger about the trees and the tanks like exhalations from the old
+crimes which have stained the soil of the country. For Jhansi is in
+the Bundelcund, and the Bundelcund was born in great iniquity. The
+very name--which properly is _Bundelakhand,_ or "the country of the
+Bundelas"--has a history thickly set about with the terrors of caste,
+of murder and of usurpation. Some five hundred years ago a certain
+Rajput prince, Hurdeo Sing, committed the unpardonable sin of marrying
+a slave (_bundi_), and was in consequence expelled from the Kshatriya
+caste to which he belonged. He fled with his disgrace into this
+region, and after some years found opportunity at least to salve his
+wounds with blood and power. The son of the king into whose land he
+had escaped conceived a passion for the daughter of the slave wife.
+It must needs have been a mighty sentiment, for the conditions which
+Hurdeo Sing exacted were of a nature to try the strongest love. These
+were, that the nuptial banquet should be prepared by the unmentionable
+hands of the slave wife herself, and that the king and his court
+should partake of it--a proceeding which would involve the loss of
+their caste also. But the prince loved, and his love must have lent
+him extraordinary eloquence, for he prevailed on his royal father to
+accept the disgrace. If one could only stop here, and record that he
+won his bride, succeeded his magnanimous old parent on the throne,
+lived a long and happy life with his queen, and finally died regretted
+by his loving people! But this is in the Bundelcund, and the facts
+are, that the treacherous Hurdeo Sing caused opium to be secretly put
+into all the dishes of the wedding-feast, and when the unsuspecting
+revelers were completely stupefied by the drug had the whole party
+assassinated, after which he possessed himself of the throne and
+founded the Bundelcund.
+
+One does not wonder that the hills and forests of such a land became
+the hiding-places of the strangling Thugs, the home of the poisoning
+Dacoits, the refuge of conspirators and insurgents and the terror of
+Central India.
+
+As for Jhansi, the district in whose capital we were now sojourning,
+its people must have tasted many of the sorrows of anarchy and of
+despotism even in recent times. It was appurtenant no long time ago to
+the Bundela rajah of Ourcha: from him it passed by conquest into the
+possession of the Peishwa. These small districts were all too handy
+for being tossed over as presents to favorites: one finds them falling
+about among the greedy subordinates of conquerors like nuts thrown out
+to school-boys. The Peishwa gave Jhansi to a soubahdar: the British
+government then appeared, and effected an arrangement by which the
+soubahdar should retain it as hereditary rajah on the annual payment
+of twenty-four thousand rupees. This so-called rajah, Ramchund Rao,
+died without issue in 1835. Amid great disputes as to the succession
+the British arbitrators finally decided in favor of Rugonath Rao; but
+new quarrels straightway arose, a great cry being made that Rugonath
+Rao was a leper, and that a leper ought not to be a rajah. His death
+in some three years settled that difficulty, only to open fresh
+ones among the conflicting claimants. These perplexing questions the
+British finally concluded quite effectually by assuming charge of the
+government themselves, though this was attended with trouble, for the
+stout old mother of Ramchund Rao made armed resistance from the fort
+or castellated residence of the rajahs, which stands on its great
+rock overlooking the town of Jhansi. A commission finally decreed the
+succession to Baba Gunghadar Rao, but retained the substantial power
+until the revenues had recovered from the depression consequent upon
+these anarchic disturbances.
+
+[Illustration: BURIAL PLACE OF THE RAJAHS OF JHANSI.]
+
+"At any rate," I said as Bhima Gandharva finished this narrative while
+we were walking about the burial-place of the rajahs of Jhansi, and
+occupying ourselves with tracing the curious admixture of Moslem with
+Hindu architecture presented by the tombs, "these rajahs, if they
+loved each other but little in life, appear to have buried each other
+with proper enough observances: the cenotaphs are worthy of tenderer
+remembrances."
+
+"Yes," he said: "this part of India is everywhere a land of beautiful
+tombs which enclose ugly memories. I recall one tomb, however, near
+which I have spent many hours of tranquil meditation, and which is
+at once lovely without and within: it is the tomb of the Muslim saint
+Allum Sayed at Baroda. It was built of stones taken from an old Jain
+temple whose ruins are still visible near by; and with a singular
+fitness, in view of its material, the Muslim architect has mingled
+his own style with the Hindu, so that an elegant union of the keen
+and naked Jain asceticism with the mellower and richer fancy of the
+luxurious Mohammedan has resulted in a perfect work of that art which
+makes death lovely by recalling its spiritual significance. Besides,
+a holy silence broods about the cactus and the euphorbian foliage,
+so that a word will send the paroquets, accustomed to such unbroken
+stillness, into hasty flights. The tomb proper is in the chamber at
+the centre, enclosed by delicately-trellised walls of stone. I can
+easily fancy that the soul of Allum Sayed is sitting by his grave,
+like a faithful dog loath to quit his dead master.
+
+[Illustration: TOMB OF ALLUM SAYED.]
+
+Jhansi was once in the enjoyment of a considerable trade. The caravans
+from the Deccan to Furruckabad and other places in the Douab were
+in the habit of stopping here, and there was much trafficking in the
+cloths of Chanderi and in bows, arrows and spears--the weapons of the
+Bundela tribes--which were here manufactured. Remnants of the wealth
+then acquired remain; and on the evening of the same day when we were
+wandering among the rajahs' tombs we proceeded to the house of a rich
+friend of Bhima Gandharva's, where we were to witness a _nautch_, or
+dance, executed by a wandering troop of Mewati bayadères. We arrived
+about nine o'clock: a servant sprinkled us with rose-water, and we
+were ushered into a large saloon, where the bayadères were seated with
+a couple of musicians, one of whom played the tam-tam and another
+a sort of violin. When the family of our host, together with a few
+friends, were seated at the end of the room opposite the bayadères,
+the signal was given, and the music commenced with a soft and
+indescribably languorous air. One of the bayadères rose with a lithe
+and supple movement of the body not comparable to anything save the
+slow separating of a white scud from the main cloud which one sees
+on a summer's day high up in the cirrus regions. She was attired in a
+short jacket, a scarf, and a profusion of floating stuff that seemed
+at once to hide and expose. Presently I observed that her jewelry was
+glittering as it does not glitter when one is still, yet her feet
+were not moving. I also heard a gentle tinkling from her anklets and
+bracelets. On regarding her more steadily, I saw that her whole body
+was trembling in gentle and yet seemingly intense vibrations, and she
+maintained this singular agitation while she assumed an attitude
+of much grace, extending her arms and spreading out her scarf in
+gracefully-waving curves. In these slow and languid changes of
+posture, which accommodated themselves to the music like undulations
+in running water to undulations in the sand of its bed, and in the
+strange trembling of her body, which seemed to be an inner miniature
+dance of the nerves, consisted her entire performance. She intensified
+the languid nature of her movements by the languishing coquetries of
+her enormous black eyes, from which she sent piercing glances
+between half-closed lids. It was a dance which only southern peoples
+understand. Any one who has ever beheld the _slow juba_ of the negro
+in the Southern United States will recognize its affinity to these
+movements, which, apparently deliberate, are yet surcharged with
+intense energy and fire.
+
+[Illustration: MEWATI DANCING-GIRL.]
+
+Her performance being finished, the bayadère was succeeded by others,
+each of whom appeared to have her specialty--one imitating by her
+postures a serpent-charmer; another quite unequivocally representing
+a man-charmer; another rapidly executing what seemed an interminable
+pirouette. Finally, all joined in a song and a closing round, adding
+the sound of clapping hands to the more energetic measures of the
+music.
+
+"I can now understand," I said when the nautch was finished, "the
+remark of the shah of Persia which set everybody laughing not long ago
+in England. During his visit to that country, being present at a ball
+where ladies and gentlemen were enjoying themselves in a somewhat
+laborious way in dancing, he finally asked, 'Why do you not make
+your servants do this for you?' It is at least entertaining to see
+a nautch, but to wade through the English interpretation of a waltz,
+_hic labor hoc opus est_, and the servants _ought_ to perform it."
+
+"Do you know," said Bhima Gandharva, "that much the same national mode
+of thought which prompts the Hindu to have his dancing done by the
+nautch-girls also prompts him to have his tax-gathering and general
+governing done by the English? We are often asked why the spectacle
+has so often been seen of our native princes quietly yielding up their
+kingdoms to strangers, and even why we do not now rise and expel the
+foreigner from power over us. The truth is, most Hindus are only
+glad to get some one else to do the very hard work of governing. The
+Englishman is always glad to get a French cook, because the French can
+cook better than the English. Why should not we be also glad to get
+English governors, when the English govern so much better than the
+Hindus? In truth, governing and cooking are very like--the successful
+ruler, like the successful cook, has only to consult the tastes of his
+employers; and upon any proper theory of politics government becomes
+just as purely an economic business as cooking. You do not cook your
+own dinner: why? Because you desire to devote your time to something
+better and higher. So we do not collect taxes and lay them out for the
+public convenience, because there are other things we prefer to do. I
+am amazed at the modern ideas of government: it is looked upon as an
+end, as an objective result in itself, whereas it is really only
+the merest of means toward leaving a man at leisure to attend to his
+private affairs. The time will come"--and here the Hindu betrayed more
+energy than I had hitherto ever seen him display--"when the world will
+have its whole governing work done upon contract by those best fitted
+for it, and when such affairs will be looked upon as belonging simply
+to the police function of existence, which negatively secures us from
+harm, without at all positively touching the substantial advancement
+of man's life."
+
+The next day we fared northward toward Agra, by Duttiah, Gwalior and
+Dholepore. Learning at Agra that the northward-bound train--for
+here we had come upon complete civilization again in the East Indian
+Railway--would pass in an hour, we determined to reserve the Taj
+Mahal (the lovely Pearl Mosque of Agra) until we should be returning
+from Delhi to Calcutta. Bhima Gandharva desired me, however, to see
+the Douab country and the old sacred city of Mattra; and so when we
+had reached Hatras Station, a few miles north of Agra, we abandoned
+the railway and struck across to the south-westward, toward Mattra, in
+a hired carriage.
+
+We were now veritably in ancient Hindustan. It was among these level
+plains through which we were rolling that the antique Brahmins came
+and propounded that marvelous system which afterward took the whole
+heart of the land. Nothing could have been more striking than to cast
+one's eye thus over the wide cotton-fields--for one associates cotton
+with the New--and find them cultivated by these bare-legged and
+breech-clouted peasants of the Douab, with ploughs which consisted
+substantially of a crooked stick shod with iron at the end, and with
+other such farming-implements out of the time that one thinks of
+as forty centuries back. Yet in spite of this primitive rudeness
+of culture, and of an aridity of soil necessitating troublesome
+irrigation, these plains have for a prodigious period of time
+supported a teeming population; and I could not help crying out to
+Bhima Gandharva that if we had a few millions of these gentle and
+patient peasants among the cotton-fields of the United States, the
+South would quickly become a Garden of Delight and the planters could
+build Jammah Masjids with rupees for marble.
+
+[Illustration: PEASANTS OF THE DOUAB.]
+
+The conservatism which has preserved for so long a time the ancient
+rude methods of industry begins to grow on one as one passes between
+these villages of people who seem to be living as if they were
+perfectly sure that God never intended them to live any other way.
+
+"It is not long," said my friend, "since a British officer of
+engineers, on some expedition or other, was encamped for the night
+at no great distance from here. His tent had been pitched near one of
+those Persian water-wheels such as you have seen, which, although of
+great antiquity, are perhaps as ingeniously adapted to the purpose of
+lifting water as any machine ever invented. The creaking of the wheel
+annoyed him very much, and after a restless night, owing to that
+cause, he rose and went out of his tent and inquired of the proprietor
+of the wheel (a native) why in the name of Heaven he never greased it.
+'Because,' said the conservative Hindu, 'I have become so accustomed
+to the noise that I can only sleep soundly while it is going on: when
+it stops, then I wake, and knowing from the cessation of the sound
+that my bullock-driver is neglecting his duty, I go out and beat him.'
+Thus, even the conservation of the useless comes in time to create
+habits which are useful."
+
+"It is true," I replied, "and it recalls to me a somewhat unusual
+illustration. A summer or two ago a legal friend of mine, who is the
+possessor of a large family of children, came into the court-room one
+morning with very red eyes, and to my inquiry concerning the cause
+of the same he replied: 'To tell you the truth, I can't go to sleep
+unless a child is crying about the house somewhere; but my wife left
+town yesterday for the summer with all the children, and I haven't had
+a wink the whole night.'"
+
+A drive of some five hours brought us to Mattra after dark, and as we
+crossed the bridge of boats over the sacred Jumna (the _Yamuna_ of the
+Sanscrit poems) he seemed indeed thrice holy, with his bosom full
+of stars. Mattra, which lies immediately on the western bank of the
+river, stands next to Benares among the holy cities of the Hindus:
+here both the soil and the river-water are consecrated, for this was
+the birthplace of Krishna, or, more properly speaking, the scene of
+that avatar of Vishnu which is known as Krishna. When we rose early in
+the morning and repaired to the river-bank, hundreds of the faithful
+were ascending and descending the numerous ghâts leading down the high
+bank to the water, while a still more animated crowd of both sexes
+were standing up to their middle in the stream, throwing the water in
+this direction and that, and mingling their personal ablutions with
+the rites of worship in such a way as might at once clean both
+souls and bodies. Evidences of the holy character of the town met
+us everywhere as we strolled back to our lodgings. Sacred monkeys,
+painted red over their hind quarters in consecration to the monkey-god
+Hanuman, capered and grinned about us, and sacred bulls obstructed
+our way along the narrow and dirty streets, while everywhere we saw
+pictures representing Krishna--sometimes much like an Apollo in the
+guise of a youthful shepherd playing the flute to a group of young
+girls, who danced under a tree; sometimes as a Hercules strangling a
+serpent or performing other feats of physical strength.
+
+Fabulous stories are told of the early wealth and glory of Mattra.
+Ferishta relates that when Mahmoud of Ghazni had arrived with his
+troops in the neighborhood in the year 1017, he heard of this rich
+city consecrated to Krishna Vasu-Deva, and straightway marching upon
+it captured it and gave it up to plunder. Writing of it afterward to
+the governor of Ghazni, he declared that such another city could not
+be built within two centuries; that it contained one thousand edifices
+"as firm as the faith of the faithful," and mostly built of marble;
+that among the temples had been found five golden idols in whose heads
+were ruby eyes worth fifty thousand dinars; that in another was a
+sapphire weighing four hundred _miskals_ (the present _miskal_ of
+Bosrah is seventy-two grains), the image itself producing, after being
+melted, ninety-eight thousand three hundred _miskals_ of pure gold;
+and that besides these there were captured one hundred silver idols,
+each of which was a camel's load.
+
+We spent a pleasant morning in wandering about the old ruined
+fort which was built here by Jey Singh (or Jaya Sinha), the famous
+astronomer, and we were particularly attracted, each in his own
+contemplative and quiet way, by the ruins of an observatory which we
+found on the roof of one of the buildings, where the remains of old
+dials, horizontal circles and mural instruments lay scattered about.
+I think the only remark made by either of us was when Bhima Gandharva
+declared in a voice of much earnestness, from behind a broken gnomon
+where he had ensconced himself, that he saw Time lying yonder on his
+back, with his head on a broken dial, nearly asleep.
+
+[Illustration: HINDU BANKERS OF DELHI.]
+
+Returning to Hatras Station on the same day, we again took the train,
+and this time did not leave it until we had crossed the great tubular
+bridge over the Jumna and come to a standstill in the station at
+Delhi. Here we found one of the apparently innumerable friends of
+Bhima Gandharva, a banker of Delhi, awaiting us with a carriage, and
+we were quickly driven to his residence--a circumstance, by the way,
+which I discovered next day to be a legitimate matter of felicitation
+to myself, for there is, strange to say, no hotel in Delhi for
+Europeans, travelers being dependent upon the accommodations of a
+_dâk_-bungalow, where one is lodged for a rupee a day.
+
+In the morning we made an early start for the palace of the padishahs,
+which stands near the river, and indeed may be said to constitute the
+eastern portion of the city, having a wall of a mile in extent on its
+three sides, while the other abuts along the offset of the Jumna upon
+which Delhi is built. Passing under a splendid Gothic arch in the
+centre of a tower, then along a vaulted aisle in the centre of which
+was an octagonal court of stone, the whole route being adorned with
+flowers carved in stone and inscriptions from the Koran, we finally
+gained the court of the palace, in which is situated the Dewani Khas,
+the famous throne-room which contained the marvelous "peacock throne."
+I found it exteriorly a beautiful pavilion of white marble crowned by
+four domes of the same material, opening on one side to the court,
+on the other to the garden of the palace. On entering, my eye was
+at first conscious only of a confused interweaving of traceries and
+incrustations of stones, nor was it until after a few moments that I
+could bring myself to any definite singling out of particular elements
+from the general dream of flowing and intricate lines; but presently
+I was enabled to trace with more discriminating pleasure the flowers,
+the arabesques, the inscriptions which were carved or designed in
+incrustations of smaller stones, or inlaid or gilt on ceiling, arch
+and pillar.
+
+Yet what a sense of utter reverse of fortune comes upon one after the
+first shock of the beauty of these delicate stone fantasies! Wherever
+we went--in the Dewani Aum or hall of audience; in the Akbari Hammun
+or imperial baths; in the Sammam Burj or private palace of the
+padishahs, that famous and beautiful palace over whose gate the
+well-known inscription stands, "If there is a Paradise on earth, it
+is here;" in the court, in the garden--everywhere was abandonment,
+everywhere the filthy occupations of birds, everywhere dirt, decay,
+desolation.
+
+It was therefore a prodigious change when, emerging from the main gate
+of the palace, we found ourselves in the great thoroughfare of Delhi,
+the Chandni Chowk (literally "Shining street"), which runs straight to
+the Lahore gate of the city. Here an immense number of daily affairs
+were transacting themselves, and the Present eagerly jostled the Past
+out of the road. The shops were of a size which would have seemed very
+absurd to an enterprising American tradesman, and those dealing in
+the same commodities appeared to be mostly situated together--here the
+shoemakers, there the bankers, and so on.
+
+The gold-embroidered cloths--Delhi is famous for them--made me think
+of those embroidered in stone which we had just seen in the Dewani
+Khas. These people seem to dream in curves and flowing lines, as the
+German dreams in chords and meandering tones, the Italian in colors
+and ripe forms.
+
+("And as the American--?" said Bhima Gandharva with a little smile as
+we were walking down the Chandni Chowk.
+
+"The American does not dream--yet," I answered.)
+
+[Illustration: THE GRAND HALL OF THE DEWANI KHAS IN THE PALACE OF
+DELHI.]
+
+We saw much of the embroidered fabrics known as "kincob" (properly,
+_kunkhwab_) and "kalabatu;" and Bhima Gandharva led me into an inner
+apartment where a _nakad_ was manufacturing the gold thread (called
+_kalabatoon_) for these curious loom embroideries. The kalabatoon
+consists of gold wire wound about a silk thread; and nothing could
+better illustrate the deftness of the Hindu fingers than the motions
+of the workman whom we saw. Over a polished steel hook hung from the
+ceiling the end of a reel of slightly twisted silk thread was passed.
+This end was tied to a spindle with a long bamboo shank, which was
+weighted and nearly reached the floor. Giving the shank of the spindle
+a smart roll along his thigh, the workman set it going with great
+velocity: then applying to the revolving thread the end of a quantity
+of gold wire which was wound upon a different reel, the gold wire
+twisted itself in with the silk thread and made a length of kalabatoon
+about as long as the workman. The kalabatoon was then reeled off on a
+separate reel, and the process continually repeated.
+
+We stopped at the office of our banker for a moment on our way along
+the Chandni Chowk in order to effect some changes of money. As we were
+leaving, Bhima Gandharva inquired if I had observed the young man in
+the red cotton turban who had politely broken off in our favor a long
+negotiation with our banker, which he resumed when we had finished our
+little business.
+
+"Of course I did," I replied. "What a beautiful young man he was!
+His aquiline nose, his fair complexion, his brilliant eyes, his
+lithe form, his intelligent and vivacious expression,--all these
+irresistibly attracted me to him."
+
+"Ha!" said Bhima Gandharva, as if he were clearing his throat. He
+grasped my arm: "Come, I thought I saw the young man's father standing
+near the door as we passed out. I wonder if _he_ will irresistibly
+attract you?" He made me retrace my steps to the banker's office:
+"There he is."
+
+He was the image of the son in feature, yet his face was as repulsive
+as his son's was beautiful: the Devil after the fall, compared with
+the angel he was before it, would have presented just such a contrast.
+
+"They are two Vallàbhácháryas," said my companion as we walked away.
+"You know that the trading community of India, comprehended under
+the general term of Baniahs, is divided into numerous castes, which
+transmit their avocations from father to son and preserve themselves
+free from intermixture with others. The two men you saw are probably
+on some important business negotiation connected with Bombay or the
+west of India; for they are Bhattias, who are also followers of
+the most singular religion the world has ever known--that of the
+Vallàbháchárya or Maharaja sect. These are Epicureans who have quite
+exceeded, as well in their formal creeds as in their actual practices,
+the wildest dreams of any of those mortals who have endeavored to
+make a religion of luxury. They are called Vallàbhácháryas, from
+_Vallabha_, the name of their founder, who dates from 1479, and
+_áchárya_, a "leader." Their _Pushti Marga_, or eat-and-drink
+doctrine, is briefly this: In the centre of heaven (_Gouloka_) sits
+Krishna, of the complexion of a dark cloud, clad in yellow, covered
+with unspeakable jewels, holding a flute. He is accompanied by Roaha,
+his wife, and also by three hundred millions of Gopis, or female
+attendants, each of whom has her own palace and three millions of
+private maids and waiting-women. It appears that once upon a time two
+over-loving Gopis quarreled about the god, and, as might be expected
+in a place so given over to love, they fell from heaven as a
+consequence. Animated by love for them, Krishna descended from heaven,
+incarnated himself in the form of Vallabha (founder of the sect), and
+finally redeemed them. Vallabha's descendants are therefore all gods,
+and reverence is paid them as such, the number of them being now sixty
+or seventy. To God belong all things--_Tan_ (the body), _Man_ (the
+mind) and _Dhan_ (earthly possessions). The Vallàbhácháryas therefore
+give up all first to be enjoyed by their god, together with his
+descendants (the Maharajas, as they royally term themselves) and
+his representatives, the gosains or priestly teachers. Apply these
+doctrines logically, and what a carnival of the senses results! A few
+years ago one Karsandas Mulji, a man of talent and education, was sued
+for libel in the court at Bombay by this sect, whose practices he
+had been exposing. On the trial the evidence revealed such a mass
+of iniquity, such a complete subversion of the natural proprietary
+feelings of manhood in the objects of its love, such systematic
+worship of beastly sin, as must for ever give the Vallàbhácháryas
+pre-eminence among those who have manufactured authority for crime out
+of the laws of virtue. For the Vallàbhácháryas derive their scriptural
+sanction from the eighth book of the _Bhagavata Purana_, which they
+have completely falsified from its true meaning in their translation
+called the _Prem Sagar_, or "Ocean of Love." You saw the son? In
+twenty years--for these people cannot last long--trade and cunning
+and the riot of all the senses will have made him what you saw the
+father."
+
+[Illustration: THE JAMMAH MASJID AT DELHI.]
+
+On the next day we visited the Jammah Masjid, the "Great Mosque" of
+Shah Jehan the renowned, and the glory of Delhi. Ascending the flight
+of steps leading to the principal entrance, we passed under the lofty
+arch of the gateway and found ourselves in a great court four hundred
+and fifty feet square, paved with red stone, in the centre of which
+a large basin supplied by several fountains contained the water for
+ceremonial ablutions. On three sides ran light and graceful arcades,
+while the fourth was quite enclosed by the mass of the mosque proper.
+Crossing the court and ascending another magnificent flight of
+stone steps, our eyes were soon commanding the façade of the great
+structure, and reveling in those prodigious contrasts of forms and
+colors which it presents. No building could, for this very reason,
+suffer more from that lack of simultaneity which is involved in any
+description by words; for it is the vivid shock of seeing, in one
+stroke of the eye, these three ripe and luxuriant domes (each of which
+at the same time offers its own subsidiary opposition of white and
+black stripes), relieved by the keen heights of the two flanking
+minarets,--it is this, together with the noble admixtures of reds,
+whites and blacks in the stones, crowned by the shining of the gilded
+minaret-shafts, which fills the eye of the beholder with a large
+content of beautiful form and color.
+
+As one's eye becomes cooler one begins to distinguish in the front,
+which is faced with slabs of pure white marble, the divisions adorned
+by inscriptions from the Koran inlaid in letters of black marble,
+and the singularly airy little pavilions which crown the minarets. We
+ascended one of the minarets by a winding staircase of one hundred
+and thirty steps, and here, while our gaze took flight over Delhi and
+beyond, traversing in a second the achievements of many centuries
+and races, Bhima Gandharva told me of the glories of old Delhi.
+Indranechta--as Delhi appears in the fabulous legends of old India,
+and as it is still called by the Hindus--dates its own birth as far
+back as three thousand years before our era. It was fifty-seven years
+before the time of Christ that the name of Delhi began to appear in
+history. Its successive destructions (which a sketch like this cannot
+even name) left enormous quantities of ruins, and as its successive
+rebuildings were accomplished by the side of (not upon) these remains,
+the result has been that from the garden of Shahlimar, the site of
+which is on the north-west of the town, to beyond the Kantab Minar,
+whose tall column I could plainly distinguish rising up nine miles
+off to the south-west, the plain of Delhi presents an accumulation and
+variety of ruins not to be surpassed in the whole world.
+
+
+
+LIFE-SAVING STATIONS.
+
+With their enthusiasm fairly kindled for the work which the government
+carries on in the signal-service department of the little house on the
+beach,[A] our exploring party descended the narrow ladder and found
+themselves in a ten-by-twelve room, warmed by a stove and surrounded
+by benches. It is used, the old captain who has volunteered as guide
+tells us, by the men on the life-saving service during the nine months
+in which they are on duty. A cheerful fire was burning in the stove,
+and we gathered about it: the wind blew a stronger gale each moment
+outside, barring out the far sea-horizon with a wall of gray mist. The
+tide rolled up on the shelving beach beneath the square window with a
+sullen, treacherous roar.
+
+"It's the bar that gives the sea that sound," said the captain. "This
+is the ugliest bit of coast for vessels from Nova Scotia to Florida.
+It's like this," drawing his finger across the table in the
+vain effort to map out the matter intelligibly to a landsman's
+comprehension. "Here's the Jersey coast. You've got to hug it close
+with your vessel to make New York harbor--there; and all along it,
+from Sandy Hook to Cape May, runs the bar--so. Broken, but so much the
+worse. A nor'-easter drives you on it, sure. I've known from sixteen
+to twenty wracks in a winter on this coast before the companies or
+government took up the matter."
+
+[Footnote A: See the article entitled "The House on the Beach," in
+_Lippincott's Magazine_ for January. Since the publication of that
+paper a letter of distinction has been received by General Albert J.
+Myer from the International Congress of Geographical Sciences, held
+in Paris in 1875, which states that the United States signal service
+appeared to the Congress to deserve an exceptional reward. "This
+service, so remarkably organized, has been the cause of such progress
+in meteorological science that the distinctions provided by the
+regulations of the Congress would not be commensurate for it." The
+letter of distinction was therefore sent as the highest award decreed
+by the Congress.]
+
+"That only argued bad seamanship," said one of his listeners. "When
+every ship's captain knew the bar--"
+
+"That's precisely what they didn't know. It alters with every year;
+and on a dark night, with a driving sea and wind both against you,
+there's small chance of clearing it. However, I don't mean to say
+that all of them vessels were wracked fair and square. It got to be
+customary with owners of wornout coast-schooners to send them out with
+light cargoes and run them on the Jersey bar. The captain and crew
+would time it so's they could get ashore, and the sea would soon break
+up the vessel, and then up they goes to York for insurance on ship and
+cargo. There was a good deal of that sort of work went on when I was
+a boy, until the underwriters got wind of it and established the
+wracking system."
+
+"This building?--"
+
+"No, no! Don't confound the two things. This is government work
+altogether, and maintained solely for the saving of life. The crew
+of the lifeboat here are not allowed to touch a pound of freight or
+baggage on a wracked ship. The wracking-masters were appointed and
+paid by the board of underwriters in New York. Old Captain Brown was
+general agent on this beach. They took the coast in charge, as you
+might say, long before this government service was started. It was
+managed--like this," resorting again to his finger and the imaginary
+lines on the table. "A vessel came ashore on the bar. The first man
+who saw it gave warning to the wracking-master, who took command of
+the men ashore and the cargo in behalf of the insurance companies."
+
+"Were there any signals then to rouse the coast in case of wreck?"
+
+"Lord save you! no: every man warned his neighbor. There weren't but a
+few scattered folks along the coast then, but in time of a wrack you'd
+see them in the dead of night ready and waiting along the beach. No
+need of your signal-flags for them, I reckon. They knew there'd be
+dead men and plenty of wrack coming ashore before morning."
+
+"And every man was ready to go out in his boat?" cried an enthusiastic
+townsman, "or to carry a line to the sinking ship?"
+
+"Well--hardly," said the captain with a dry smile. "Folks that
+know the water don't go exactly that way to work. There was regular
+wracking-boats, built for the surf, and crews for each, you see: best
+man in the starn. The man in the starn, he generally owned the boat
+and chose his crew. Picked men. He kept them year after year. Then the
+wracking-masters hired him, his boat and his crew. Best crew chosen
+first, of course. Two dollars a day each was reckoned good pay. They
+got famous names, some of them surfboat crews," reflectively. "There
+was William Chadwick--Bill Shattuck he goes by--his crew was known
+from Sandy Hook to Hatteras. There's one of them now: he can tell you
+about it better than me.--Hello, Jake!"
+
+We looked out of the window and saw the fisherman whom we had met in
+the afternoon lazily drawing his slow length along the beach, two
+or three blue mackerel dangling from his hand: he had not enough of
+energy, apparently, to hold them up. This was the fellow whom, an hour
+before, we had pitied as a dull soul to whom the wreck was "timber"
+and the life-saving station a "shed." We all had a vague ideal
+before us of a gallant sailor, with eyes of fire and nerves of steel,
+plunging into the cruel surf to rescue the sinking ship. We accepted
+the slouching Jacob instead with disrelish. He was not the stuff of
+which heroes in books are made.
+
+"Jake," said the captain, "where is Shattuck's boat now? I was
+speaking of it to the gentlemen here."
+
+"Take a cigar," interpolated one of the party.
+
+Jacob took a cigar, bit off the end and dropped easily into a
+seat: "Bill's boat? Well, it's drawed up ashore at the head of
+Barnegat--down there. You kin see it out of the window ef you like."
+
+"There is very seldom any call for the surf-boats and crews in
+summer," explained the captain. "The men follow fishing usually. But
+in winter they're always ready if a ship comes on the bar."
+
+"Your crew has done good service in saving life, I hear, Jacob?" said
+one of the strangers.
+
+"Well, I dunno. We're generally the first called on by the
+wracking-master. Sure of the best pay. There's Shattuck and Curtis and
+Van Note and George Johnson, and Fleming in the starn," checking them
+off with his fingers--"all good men to bring off trade in a heavy
+pull."
+
+"You don't mean that these surf boat crews are paid to save the cargo,
+and that human life is left to the care of the government?" cried a
+listener indignantly.
+
+"The government undertakes the life-saving service, and we're paid
+by the wracking-master, certainly," said Jacob calmly. "To save the
+cargo. But the human bein's is took out first. Of course. As you say.
+It's not likely any man's a-goin' to bring trade out of a wrack's
+long's there's a live critter aboard."
+
+"There's not one of these men," said the captain with a little heat in
+his tone, "who has not saved many a life at the risk of his own. Isn't
+that true, Jacob?"
+
+"I dunno. We jist work ahead at what's got to be done. I know Van Note
+saved _my_ life. The way of it was this. It was the time the Clara
+Brookman went down: you mind the Clara Brookman, cap'n? She was
+homeward bound after a long cruise--three year--and she struck the bar
+just below, a mile or two. It was a swashin' sea an' a black night.
+Our surfboat was overturned with thirteen aboard: 'leven of us was
+picked up by the other boat. The men, they stood in the starn an'
+hauled us aboard by main force--lifted us clear out of the water. Van
+Note's a tremendous musc'lar fellar, he is. He caught me by the wrist
+jest as I was goin' down for the last time: I'm not a small fish,
+either," slapping his brawny thigh. "Yes, sir. Van Note and I never
+mixed much together afore or sence. But he did that for me: I don't
+deny it."
+
+"You remember some terrible scenes of suffering no doubt, Jacob?"
+
+"Well, I've seen vessels pretty well smashed up, sir. There was the
+Alabama, coast-schooner: all the crew went down on her in full sight;
+and the Annandale: she was a coal-brig, and she run aground on a
+December night. It was a terrible storm: but one surfboat got out to
+her. They took off what they could--the women and part of the crew. I
+was a boy then, and I mind seein' them come ashore, their beards and
+clothes frozen stiff. After the boat left, some of the crew jumped
+into the sea, but they couldn't live in it two minutes. It was nigh
+dawn when the boat got out to the brig agen, and there wasn't a livin'
+soul aboard of her; only the body of the mate lashed tight to the
+mainmast, a solid mass of ice. He couldn't be got down, and I've heerd
+my father say it was awful to see him, with one hand held out as if
+p'intin' to shore, rockin' to and fro there overhead till the brig
+went under. Months after, some of the bodies of the crew was thrown up
+by the tide; they was as fresh as if they'd jest gone to sleep."
+
+"How could that be? Where had they been?"
+
+"Sucked into the sand. Them heavy nothe-easters always throws up a
+bar, an' they was sucked under it. When the bar give way the tide
+threw them up. But as soon as the air tetched them they began to
+moulder."
+
+There was a short silence. The evening was gathering fast, cold and
+threatening, the little fire threw our shadows high up on the wall,
+and the wail of the wind and thunder of the incoming tide gave a
+ghastly significance to this matter-of-fact catalogue of horrors. As
+we looked through the little window at the vast gray plain of water,
+it seemed as if every wave covered a wreck or dead men's bones.
+
+"Now, George Johnson," continued Jacob, "he was the first man as saw
+the John Minturn come ashore. That was the worst storm I ever seen on
+this coast.--You mind it, cap'n?"
+
+The captain nodded gravely: "February 15, 1846. It was the night old
+Phoebe Hall died, and I was sitting with the body when I heerd the
+guns fired from the Minturn," he remarked.--"But go on, Jacob," waving
+his pipe.
+
+"The current was a-settin' south. Sech a tide hadn't been knowd sence
+the oldest men could remember: the sea broke over all the mashes clear
+up to the farm-houses. Well, sir, I was but a lad, but I couldn't
+sleep: seemed as ef I ought to be a doin' something, I didn't rightly
+know what. About three o'clock in the morning I heerd a gun, and in a
+minute another, 'Mother,' I says, 'there's a vessel on the bar.' So,
+as I gets on my clothes, she makes me a mug of hot coffee. 'You must
+drink this, Jacob, an' eat some'at,' she says, 'before you go out.' So
+to quiet her I takes the mug, but I hadn't half drunk it when I hears
+shouting outside. It was one of the Shattucks: he says, 'There's a
+ship come ashore up by Barnegat' I says, 'No,' I says: 'the guns are
+from off the inlet.' So I runs one way, and Shattuck the other. The
+night was dark as pitch, and the storm drivin' like hell. And we was
+both right, for there was two vessels--a coast-schooner down by
+Squan, where I goes, and this big ship, the John Minturn, just here,"
+pointing with his thumb over his shoulder to the beach outside and bar
+beyond.
+
+"Were there many lives lost?"
+
+"Over three hundred--all but fourteen. They come ashore tied on
+to boards or hencoops or the like--seven of the crew and seven
+passengers. We tried to launch the surfboat, but the boat was never
+built that could live on that sea. She was bound from New Orleans to
+New York, and the most of her passengers were wealthy people, going to
+the North for the winter. At least, so we jedged from her papers and
+the bodies and clothes of them that come ashore--some pretty
+little children, I mind, babies and their black nurses, and their
+mothers--delicate women with valooable rings on their hands. Some of
+them's buried in the graveyard in the village, and their friends took
+some away."
+
+"There was the Minerva, too," said the captain as Jacob paused to
+light his cigar again. "I forgit how many emigrants went down on that
+ship, but I remember picking up on the beach next day a clay pipe,
+with a stem nigh a yard long, not even chipped. It seemed curious that
+a useless thing like that should be washed safe ashore and hundreds of
+human lives be lost. And there was the New Era--went down near Deal:
+three hundred emigrants drowned. The captain had nailed down the
+hatches on them. Oh, that's generally done," he added, seeing the
+look of horror on our faces: "in a storm the steerage can't be managed
+otherwise."
+
+"I remember," said one of the listeners, "an incident which occurred
+when I was in China about ten years ago. Five hundred Chinese soldiers
+were being taken across the Inland Sea to quell an insurrection:
+when off Hoang-Ho the ship sprung a leak. The boats could only give a
+chance of escape to about eighty. The troops were all ordered on deck,
+while a detachment was selected to fill the boats. The rest remained
+immovable, standing under arms without a word, until the ship went
+down."
+
+Somebody reminded him of the story of the Birkenhead, which sank
+within four miles of the English coast with a regiment aboard that
+was coming home after five years' absence in India. They too stood in
+solid rank on deck, their homes almost in sight, while the women and
+children were taken off and the ship slowly sank, the officers, with
+swords drawn, presenting arms to Death.
+
+"Discipline! discipline!" said the captain. "But one wouldn't have
+looked for it in them heathen Chinees."
+
+Duty! duty! we thought, and were quite sure heathenism had never
+interfered with that kind of heroism.
+
+"Now, the usual run of American sailors," said Jacob, who felt by
+this time that his final verdict was needed, wouldn't have done
+that. Passengers is easier managed in time of a storm than sailors,
+especially them of coast-ships. Passengers is like sheep: they're so
+skeert they'll do what you bids 'em; but the sailors broach the liquor
+first thing. I'd rather manage so many pigs than sailors when they get
+holt of the grog. There was the City of New York. When she went down
+the mate stood with a club in his hand to keep the crew off the Scotch
+ale which was part of the freight. Well; sir, they got it, and thar
+they stayed, drinkin', till the vessel parted amidships: couldn't be
+got off no-how. There was three hundred passengers landed from that
+ship. We used the apparatus for her: government had taken hold of the
+matter then."
+
+"Before we say anything about the government service, one question
+about the Jersey wreckers. They bear a bad name. The story goes that
+the Barnegat pirates in old times drew vessels ashore by false lights,
+and plundered the shipwrecked people. How about that, Jacob? Honestly,
+now!"
+
+"Well, sir, them stories is onjust. Them men as is called Barnegat
+pirates are not us fishermen--never were: they're from the
+main--colliers and sech--as come down to a wrack, and they will have
+something to kerry home when they're kept up all night. They do their
+share of stealin', I'll confess; but from Sandy Hook to Cape May
+it's innocent to what is done on Long Island. It's the stevedores and
+rigger-men on Long Island--reg'lar New York roughs. No man or woman
+was ever robbed on this beach till they was dead. Of course I don't
+mean their trunks and sech, but not the body. The Long Islanders cut
+off the fingers of livin' people for rings, but the Barnegat men never
+touch the body till it's dead. _No_, sir."
+
+"And you understand," interposed the captain eagerly, "these Barnegat
+robbers are a very different class from Jacob and the crews of surf
+boats?"
+
+"Certainly. We understand the noble work which these wrecking-crews
+have done.--By the way, how do they choose their captain, Jacob--the
+man in the stern, as you call him? The most brave, heroic fellow, I
+suppose?"
+
+"I dunno about that," with a perplexed air. "We don't calcoolate much
+on heroism and sech: we choose the man that's got the best judgment of
+the sea--a keerful, firm man. These six men hes got to obey him--hes
+got to put their lives altogether in his hand, you see. They
+don't want a headlong fellow: they want a man that knows the
+water--thorough."
+
+"Besides," added the captain, "it is as with any other business--the
+best crew is surest of employment and pay. Each owner of a
+wracking-boat chooses his men for their muscle and skill: and the
+wracking-master chooses the best boat and crew. There's competition,
+competition. On the contrary, the life-saving service, like all
+other government work, for a good many years fell into the hands of
+politicians: the superintendent was chosen because he had given some
+help to his party, and he appointed his own friends as lifeboat-men,
+often tavern loafers like himself. A harness-maker from Bricksburg
+held the place of master of the station below here for years--a man
+who probably never was in a boat, and certainly would not go in one in
+a heavy sea."
+
+"One would hardly expect to find fishermen in this solitary corner
+of the world struggling for political preferment on the seats of a
+lifeboat," laughed one of the party.
+
+But the captain could see no joke in it: "Well, sir, it's a fact that
+it was done. And the consequence was, the people's money was thrown
+away, and hundreds of human beings was left to perish within sight of
+land. If the administration--"
+
+But while the captain and his companions labor over the well-trodden
+road thus opened, we will look into the work done in the house on
+the beach with the help of authorities more accurate than himself and
+Jacob.
+
+Oddly enough, the first effort anywhere to stop the enormous loss
+of human life by shipwreck was made by that most selfish of rulers,
+George IV., and the first lifeboat was built by a London coachmaker,
+Lukin, who, it is said, had never seen the sea. After that other
+models of lifeboats were produced in England, none of which proved
+satisfactory until in 1850 the duke of Northumberland offered one
+hundred guineas as a prize for the best model, which was gained by
+James Beeching. A modification of his boat is now used by the
+National Lifeboat Institution, to which the entire care of the English
+life-saving service is committed. There is probably no object on which
+the British nation has more zealously expended sentiment, enthusiasm
+and money than this service, yet despite its grand record of work
+done there can be no doubt that it has been grossly mismanaged, and
+is ineffective to cope with the actual need. The roll of the National
+Lifeboat Institution numbers names of the most noble, humane and
+wealthy men and women in Great Britain; the queen is its patron; its
+resources are amply sufficient; no pains have been spared to secure
+the most scientific and perfect appliances. The whole work is made,
+in a degree, a matter of sentiment--exalted and humane sentiment,
+but, like all other emotional service, apt to be gusty and at times
+unpractical. The man who saves human life is rewarded with silver or
+gold medals: the individual lifeboats are themes of essays and song,
+and when one wears out a tablet is raised with the record of its
+services. It is the beautiful and touching custom, too, for mourners
+to offer a memorial lifeboat to the memory of their dead, instead of a
+painted window or a showy monument. But with all this genuine feeling
+and actual expenditure of time and money the fact remains that the
+loss of human life from shipwreck is five hundred per cent. larger
+on the coast of Great Britain than on our own, although there are 242
+stations on their comparatively small extent of shore, and but 104
+on our whole Atlantic seaboard. In three cases of shipwreck on the
+English coast in 1875 the loss of life was directly traceable to the
+lack of some necessary appliance or to the absence of guards at the
+stations. In one instance there were no means of telegraphing
+for boats or aid: in the case of the Deutschland, as late as last
+November, where the disaster occurred on a stretch of coast known as
+the most dangerous in England (except that of Norfolk)--a spot where
+shipwrecks have been numbered literally by thousands--there was no
+lifeboat nor any means of taking a line to the ship. The secret of
+these failures lies in the fact that the institution relies for its
+work on spontaneous service and emotion, and is not, like ours, a
+legalized, systematic business. No permanent force or watch is kept at
+the stations: a reward of seven shillings is paid to anybody who gives
+notice of a wreck to the coxswain of the boat. The crews of the boats
+are volunteers, and if they do not happen to report themselves at the
+time of a disaster, their places are filled with any good oarsmen who
+offer. In short, the whole system is based upon the occasional zeal
+and heroism of men, instead of tried and paid skill, fitness for the
+work and a simple sense of duty.
+
+Our own life-saving service is founded on wholly different principles.
+It dates from 1848, when Hon. William Newell of New Jersey (incited
+probably by the recent terrible loss of the John Minturn, of which the
+captain told us) brought before Congress the frightful dangers of the
+coast of that State, and procured an appropriation of ten thousand
+dollars for "providing surf boats, carronades, etc. for the better
+protection of life and property from shipwreck on the coast between
+Sandy Hook and Little Egg Harbor." The next session a similar
+appropriation was obtained. Small houses were built and furnished,
+but no persons were paid or authorized to take charge of them, and the
+business was managed in the well-meaning but slipshod English fashion.
+In 1854 the wreck of the Powhatan on Squan Beach and the loss of three
+hundred lives produced a storm of public indignation which aroused
+Congress, and twenty thousand dollars were appropriated for lifeboats,
+etc. for the coast of New Jersey, and a similar sum for the ocean side
+of Long Island. A superintendent was appointed for each coast and a
+keeper for each of the houses, but for sixteen years no regular crews
+were employed. It was during this period, too, that the petty offices
+of superintendent and keeper became the reward of small village
+politicians, and wreckers who, like Jacob, had worked for years
+without pay in saving human life, showed their righteous indignation
+at these political favorites by refusing to work under them. Several
+terrible disasters in the winter of 1870 and '71 called public
+attention again to the subject, and Captain John Faunce was appointed
+by the department to inspect the coast and the stations. He reported
+the houses as generally in a filthy, dilapidated condition, and often
+so far gone as to be worthless; the apparatus rusty, and many of the
+most necessary articles wanting; in some stations nothing which could
+be carried away was left; the keepers were utterly unfit for
+their position, and the crews which they employed worse. Yet,
+notwithstanding this mismanagement and lack of system, and although no
+regular official record had been kept, there was proof that 4163 lives
+had been saved and $716,000 worth of property.
+
+In 1871, S.I. Kimball, to whom the Revenue Marine Bureau was then
+given in charge, proceeded to completely reorganize the service. New
+houses were built or the old ones repaired and enlarged; competent men
+were appointed as keepers, and strict orders given as to the selection
+of experienced and skillful surfmen as crews; the houses were
+thoroughly furnished with every appliance requisite in time of
+disaster, for which the keeper is held responsible. The average
+distance between the stations is three miles. Immediate proof of
+the efficacy of the improvements in the service was given, as in the
+twenty-two wrecks occurring that season on the Long Island and New
+Jersey coasts not a single life was lost. In a word, Mr. Kimball began
+successfully the seemingly hopeless task of converting the dirty,
+ruinous station-houses and their lazy, disorderly keepers and crews,
+scattered along the coast, to the order, discipline and efficiency
+of forts and drilled soldiers, and the result proved that order and
+discipline, when evolved out of the worst materials, can grapple with
+and conquer even the sea. In 1873 the seventy-one station-houses
+were increased to eighty-one, the line having been extended along the
+coasts of Cape Cod and Rhode Island. Congress having appropriated
+one hundred thousand dollars for the establishment of new stations,
+twenty-three were contracted for, giving the Maine coast five; New
+Hampshire, one; Massachusetts, five; Virginia, two; North Carolina,
+ten. The connection between the life-saving and storm-signal
+service was effected at several stations, thus supplying telegraphic
+communication between the department and the coast outposts. This,
+probably, was the most marked advance made by the service: it was
+the nerve-line which brought the working members under control of an
+intelligent head. In thirty-two wrecks occurring during the year on
+the coasts where stations were established but one life had been lost.
+
+The unprecedented success of the service to this point justified its
+demand for larger means and fuller powers. In the last session of
+the Forty-second Congress a bill was introduced by Hon. John Lynch of
+Maine to provide for the establishment of additional stations on the
+North Atlantic seaboard, and directing the Secretary of the Treasury
+to report the points on the entire sea and lake coasts at which
+stations would best subserve the interests of humanity and commerce,
+with estimates of the cost. This bill passed, and was approved March
+3, 1873. The commission appointed consisted of Mr. Kimball, Captain
+John Faunce and Captain J.H. Merryman. Their report is the result
+of minute examination into the wrecks and disasters on every mile of
+coast for the previous ten years--a research into ghastly horrors for
+a practical end unparalleled perhaps in accuracy and patience.
+They recommended the erection of twenty-three life-saving stations
+complete, twenty-two lifeboat stations and five houses of refuge. The
+first class, containing all appliances for saving life on stranded
+vessels, and manned by regular crews during the winter months, were
+for flat beaches with outlying bars distant from settlements, and were
+required on certain points of the shores of the great lakes and on the
+Atlantic coast as far south as Hatteras. "Upon the coast of Florida
+the shores are so bold," the report states, "that stranded vessels are
+usually thrown high enough upon the beach to permit easy escape from
+them; therefore the usual apparatus belonging to the complete stations
+are not considered necessary. The section of that coast from Indian
+River Inlet to Cape Florida is almost destitute of inhabitants, and
+persons cast upon its inhospitable shores are liable to perish
+from starvation and thirst, from inability to reach the remote
+settlements." Upon these coasts it was recommended that houses
+of refuge should be built large enough to accommodate twenty-five
+persons, supplied with provisions to support them for ten days, and
+provided with surfboat, oars and sails. For the majority of points
+on the Pacific and lake coasts, where disasters were infrequent,
+lifeboats only were considered necessary, these in general to be
+manned by volunteer crews. It was proposed that these crews should
+be paid for services rendered at each wreck, and a system of rewards
+adopted in the shape of medals of honor. The estimated cost of a
+life-saving station complete was $5302; of a house of refuge, $2995;
+of a lifeboat station, $4790. A bill founded on this report was
+prepared by Mr. Kimball, the chief both of the Revenue Marine and
+Life-saving Service, and became a law June, 1874. This bill provides
+for the protection of the entire lake and sea-coasts of the United
+States by a cordon of stations, lifeboats or houses of refuge placed
+at all dangerous points. The stations on the Pacific coast are not yet
+built, but it is hoped that all will be finished and in working
+order by the fall of 1876. The United States will then offer to the
+shipwrecked voyager security and protection through her vast extent of
+coast such as is afforded by no other nation. The measures promoting
+this end were carried through Congress by Senators Newell, Stockton,
+Hamlin, Boutwell, Chandler and Frelinghuysen, and Representatives
+Lynch, Hale of Maine, Cox, Hooper and Conger. But the actual credit of
+this great national work of humanity is due to Sumner I. Kimball, who
+not only conceived the idea of the complete guarding of the coast and
+prepared the bill for Congress, but has reorganized the entire
+system and carried it out successfully in all of its minute practical
+details.
+
+The work accomplished by the service may be clearly understood by a
+glance at the following figures. There is no record of the loss of
+life on stranded vessels previous to its formation in 1848. There
+remain only the terrible legends, such as those which the captain and
+Jacob told us, of numbers of emigrant ships and steamers yearly going
+down with three to four hundred souls on board. The coasts of Long
+Island and New Jersey have justly been called "the despair of mariners
+and shipowners." During the first twenty years of the operation of the
+service, despite its mismanagement, the number of lives lost yearly
+was reduced to an average of twenty-five. Since 1871 the period of its
+reorganization, the loss of life on the coasts of New Jersey and
+Long Island has averaged but one per annum. The report for these four
+years, inclusive of the whole coast guarded by stations, is--
+
+  Total number of disasters,                    185
+  Total number of lives imperiled,             2583
+  Total number of lives saved,                 2564
+  Total number of lives lost,                    19
+  Total number of shipwrecked persons sheltered
+  at the stations,                              368
+  Total number of days' shelter afforded,      1307
+  Total value of property imperiled,     $6,293,658
+  Total value of property saved,          4,514,756
+  Total value of property lost,           1,742,902
+
+Included in this report are the fourteen lives lost on the Italian
+bark Giovanni near Provincetown, Cape Cod, in a storm unprecedented
+for its terrors. A story found its way into the papers at the time
+that the powder used in the mortar was damp, and that from this
+trifling neglect help could not be extended from the station. A strict
+investigation was made, and it was proved by the testimony of the
+people in Provincetown that all the apparatus was in perfect order and
+the keepers and surfmen exerted themselves heroically in aid of the
+doomed vessel, but that she was stranded so far from shore that it
+was simply impossible to reach her. In another case, that of the
+Vicksburg, wrecked on the Long Island coast, where a life was lost
+through the remissness of the keeper, the whole force of the station
+was discharged, and the order to that effect read to every crew in the
+service.
+
+The localities of the stations and houses of refuge now legally
+authorized are--
+
+  Districts.       Location.               Stations.
+
+   1st. Coasts of Maine and New Hampshire,         6
+   2d.  Coast of Massachusetts,                   14
+   3d.  Coasts of Long Island and Rhode Island,   36
+   4th. Coast of New Jersey,                      39
+   5th. Coasts of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, 8
+   6th. Coasts of Virginia and North Carolina,    10
+   7th. Eastern coast of Florida,                  5[A]
+   8th. Coasts of Lakes Ontario and Erie,          9
+   9th. Coasts of Lakes Huron and Superior,        9
+  10th. Coast of Lake Michigan,                   12
+  11th. Pacific coast,                             8
+
+[Footnote A: Houses of refuge.]
+
+While we have been looking into these facts and figures the exploring
+party in the house on the beach have told many a terrible tale of
+shipwreck and half-hinted horrors, among others that of the ill-fated
+Giovanni.
+
+"Suppose that a ship should be driven on this bar in the middle of the
+night, a storm raging," said one of the party, "what would then be the
+keeper's duty?"
+
+The captain threw open the door of the larger room, which in the
+fading light looked full, but for a moment only, of ghostly shadows.
+There we saw boats suspended halfway from the ceiling, other
+mysterious apparatus ranged on either side, anchors, great cables
+coiled accurately in heaps, and all in as exact neatness as though
+upon the deck of a man-of-war.
+
+"When a wrack is sighted," said the captain, "the signal-officer up
+stairs telegraphs to the other near stations, whose keepers at once
+send their lifeboats, cars and surfmen here. The ship is signaled--by
+flags in daytime, by rockets at night." He opened a closet in which
+were arranged the cases of lights, with books of instruction for
+their use. "The keepers ought to understand these as well as all other
+apparatus in the station, and under the new management they usually
+do. The keeper here is an old wracker, and has 'good judgment of
+the sea,' as Jacob would say. _He_ never made harness or friends in
+Congress," the captain threw in with fine satire. "If the ship can
+be reached by a boat, this lifeboat is run into the surf. It moves on
+wheels, you see, and in two minutes ought to be launched and the men
+aboard. This ridge on the outside is an air-tight chamber for giving
+buoyancy. Here are the oars swung in place and the buckets for
+bailing, as you see."
+
+"Is this the English lifeboat?"
+
+"No, sir. Two years ago the service imported a lifeboat and rocket
+apparatus from England to test them here. The lifeboat was found to be
+nearly perfect, but too heavy for launching on our flat beaches with
+light crews: she weighed four thousand pounds. This boat was invented
+by Lieutenant Stodder."
+
+"But if the sea be too heavy for the lifeboat to live in it?"
+
+"Then we give the ship a line: the ball is fired from this mortar, the
+line being fastened to the shot by a spiral wire. Mortar, powder and
+matches are set, you see, ready for instantaneous use. The ball must
+be shot so that the line falls over the ship. Not an easy mark to hit
+in the night and the storm driving. Sometimes it is not done until
+after many trials: sometimes, as in the case of the Giovanni, it
+cannot be reached at all. I saw the Argyle go down eight years ago
+with all on board, after we had tried all night to reach her. One man
+was washed ashore, and we made a rope of hands out beyond the first
+breaker, and so got him in."
+
+"The men farthest out on the line had not much better chance than he?"
+
+"No, but the man had to be got in," carelessly. "I was going to say
+that as soon as the line does fall over the ship it is hauled
+aboard. There is a hauling-line fastened to it, and a hawser to the
+hauling-line. Here they all are in order. When the hawser reaches the
+ship it is made taut and secured to the mizzentop or mainmast, high
+enough to swing clear of the taffrail. It is fastened on shore by
+this sand-anchor. Then we send over the breeches-buoy," pointing to a
+complete suit of india-rubber very similar in appearance to that used
+by Paul Boyton. "One man can be sent safely to shore in that. But we
+use the life-car most frequently."
+
+"A boat?"
+
+"You may call it a covered boat if you will. That life-car, sir, was
+invented by Captain Douglass Ottinger, and this is the first one ever
+used. It was sent out to the ship Ayrshire, and more than two hundred
+souls were saved by it when there was no other way of giving them
+human help. There she is, sir." He laid his hand with a good deal of
+feeling on the queer shell that hung from the ceiling.
+
+The Ottinger life-car, the patent for which the generous inventor gave
+to the; public, is simply an egg-shaped case with bands of cork about
+it. Along the top are iron rings through which it is slung on the
+hawser. The car is drawn by another line from the shore to the vessel.
+It opens by means of a door or lid two feet square on top. Eleven
+passengers can be crowded inside. The lid is then screwed down and the
+car drawn ashore.
+
+"Eleven!" cried one of the party. "It would not hold four
+comfortably."
+
+"Men in that extremity are not apt to stand on the order of their
+going," said another.
+
+"Nor women, neither," added the captain; "though women always do cry
+out to go in the open boat rather than the car, though there isn't
+half the chance for them."
+
+"How is it ventilated?"
+
+"Ventilated? Lord bless you! What would be the good of it if it wasn't
+air-tight? It's under the water all the time, upside down, over and
+over a hundred times. There's air in it enough to last 'em for three
+minutes, and it's calculated that it can be brought ashore in less
+time. I've seen husbands put their wives into it, and mothers their
+little babies--them standing on deck, never hoping to live to see them
+again."
+
+"And when it was opened--"
+
+"Well, sir, there's curious things seen on the beach on nights of
+shipwreck. I'm no hand at describing. Some men stagger out of the car
+sick, some crying or praying, some as cool as if they'd just stepped
+off the train."
+
+The captain locked the rocket-closet, hung the key on the nail and
+rearranged a coil of rope which had been displaced. "Things have to
+be shipshape when the lives of a crew may depend on a missing match
+or wet powder. The houses," he added as we came out of the door and
+he stopped to close it, "are built every three miles along the beach.
+From November 15 until April 15 the keeper and six surfmen live in
+this house, and take watches, patrolling the beach night and day,
+meeting halfway between the stations. Chief Kimball's plan is that
+there shall be an unbroken line of sentries along this dangerous coast
+during the six stormy months."
+
+When the hearty old captain had left us, and we found our way again
+across the marshes, the solitude of the night and stormy sky and the
+moaning sea became oppressive again, and took on all their old meaning
+of death and disaster. But we looked back at the square black shadow
+of the little house upon the headland with its fluttering flag, and
+at the red light burning in the window, and felt a sense of protection
+and trust in the government which we had never known before.
+
+REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.
+
+
+
+
+THE EUTAW FLAG.[A]
+
+In the early spring of the year 1780 two ladies attired in morning
+_négligé_ were sitting together in the parlor of a fine old country
+mansion in lower South Carolina. The remains of two or three huge
+hickory logs were smouldering on the capacious hearth, for the cool
+air of the early morning made fires still comfortable, though as
+the day wore on and the southern sun gathered power the small-paned
+windows which opened on the lawn had been raised to admit the soft
+breeze, which already whispered of opening flowers and breathed the
+sweet fragrance of the jessamine and magnolia. These same embers would
+have furnished heat enough in a house of modern construction to have
+made the room intolerable, but as they reposed upon their bed of ashes
+in the depths of the wide-mouthed chimney-place, lazily sending
+up their little curls of smoke, they served only to create a
+draught-power which cooled the apartment by the free circulation of
+the flower-scented air. The wide lawn was green with the fresh
+spring grass, amid which a lively company of field-larks were busily
+searching for grasshoppers and grubs, their gay yellow breasts and
+jetty breastpins glancing in the sunlight as they raised their heads
+from time to time to utter their soft whistling notes. The blackbirds
+puffed their feathers and sounded their singular call from the
+branches of the old pecan tree, and the flashing of the oriole
+enlivened the sombre foliage of the enormous live-oaks in the avenue.
+Three or four deer-hounds were stretched about under the broad
+benches of the piazza or snapped at the flies under the shade of the
+rose-bushes, already heavy with bloom, paying no attention to the
+tame doe which jingled her little bell over their very heads as she
+stretched up to browse the young shoots of "rose-candy" above them.
+Two mocking-birds, one perched on the chimney-stack of the house, and
+the other on a straggling spray of the wild-orange hedge, vied with
+each other in imitating the medley of bird-language which made the air
+vocal on every side, pouring a rich flood of melody through the open
+windows and into the appreciative ears of the ladies who sat within.
+
+"What a lovely day!" exclaimed the elder of the two as she dropped her
+piece of embroidery and rose to look out upon the scene.
+
+"Oh, how I wish we could take a long ride! Here have I been staying at
+Oaklands three whole weeks, and I have not been in the saddle once! I
+declare, Jane, this horrid war will never be over;" and Rebecca Stead
+drew a long sigh and leaned her pretty head thoughtfully against the
+sash.
+
+"Well, suppose we ride over to The Willows?" answered Jane Elliott
+with a ringing laugh. "If you'll take the old broken-winded mare, I'll
+take one of the plough-mules, and Billy can go with us on the other.
+Wouldn't it be fun?"
+
+In response to the bell, Billy soon made his appearance--an elderly
+negro of most respectable appearance, dressed in a blue cloth coat
+with large brass buttons, a red plush waistcoat with flaps nearly
+reaching his knees, and a pair of yellow breeches with plated
+knee-buckles and coarse blue worsted stockings. A single glance at his
+face and bearing was enough to show his sense of importance and his
+keen appreciation of the responsibility of his position. He listened
+with a look of utter amazement to the orders of his young mistress,
+and then replied in a tone of stern authority, such as none but an old
+family negro servant could assume: "Miss Jane, dat mule nebber had no
+saddle 'pon he back sence he been born."
+
+"Well, Billy, it's high time he should know how it feels."
+
+"He wi' kick you' brains out 'fore you git on um, an' broke you' neck
+'fore you kin git from here to de gate."
+
+"Oh nonsense, Billy! Have the saddle put on him at once, and get the
+old mare for Miss Rebecca."
+
+"Miss 'Becca can't ride de ole mare tid-day, 'cause she 'way down
+in de pasture, an' anybody can't ketch um in tree hour time; an' you
+can't ride de mule, Miss Jane, 'cause you ma done tell me I must tek
+good care o' you an' de house w'ile she gone, an' I ain't gwine let
+you broke you' neck or you' arm--not tid-day." And Billy quietly
+walked out and closed the door, leaving the young ladies half vexed
+and half amused at his summary disposal of their scheme.
+
+"After Tarleton's troop and that horrid Tory Ball took my saddle-pony
+out of the pasture," said Miss Elliott, "mamma sent all the blooded
+horses to General Lincoln, and we hear that they were turned over to
+the Virginia Light Horse."
+
+"Yes," replied Miss Stead with a mischievous smile, "and I hear that
+Colonel Washington has taken the beautiful bay mare for his own mount,
+and named her 'Jane.'"
+
+"That's a piece of his Virginia impudence," rejoined Miss Elliott. "I
+have met him only once, at General Izard's, and I think he has taken a
+great liberty with my name. They say he behaved splendidly at Trenton
+and Princeton."
+
+"Oh, I wish he would call while I am here," said her companion. "They
+say he is an elegant rider. I wonder if he looks like the general?
+I don't believe any Virginian can ride better than our young men. I
+wonder if he can take up a handful of sand at a gallop, like cousin
+John Izard?"
+
+"Or jump his horse on the table," suggested Miss Elliott with a
+roguish glance, "as I've heard that Mr. Izard did one day after a
+club-dinner."
+
+Miss Stead colored slightly as she said that the gentlemen all
+complained of the strength of the last box of claret received from
+Charleston before the club was broken up.
+
+"I hear that Colonel Washington is a fine swordsman," said Miss
+Elliott, "and that his troop are all bold riders. They have fought
+Tarleton's Legion once or twice in skirmishes, and they say the
+red-coats are rather shy of them."
+
+Just at this point the conversation was interrupted by the entrance
+of Billy, bearing a peace-offering in the shape of a huge waiter of
+luncheon. Billy was butler and major-domo to the establishment, and
+the young ladies could not restrain their mirth at the profusion and
+variety with which the faithful fellow was evidently trying to
+make amends for the disappointment which his high sense of duty had
+compelled him to inflict upon them. Had there been a dozen instead of
+two, there would have been ample provision for their wants upon the
+broad silver salver. Cakes and jellies, preserves and sandwiches,
+tarts and ruddy apples, a decanter of sherry and a stand of liqueurs,
+left barely room enough for the dainty little plates and glasses,
+while Billy's special apology appeared in the form of two steaming
+little tumblers of rum-punch, the characteristic beverage of the
+day. All severity of tone and manner had disappeared, and there was
+something almost chivalric in the deferential smile and rude grace
+with which the old fellow handed his waiter to the ladies and assured
+them of the harmless mildness of the punch. Depositing his burden upon
+a little stand within easy reach of the sofa, Billy turned to leave,
+but paused as his eye wandered down the opening vista of the avenue,
+and after gazing for a moment in silence he suddenly exclaimed,
+"Dere's two sojer gemplemans comin' t'rough de big gate."
+
+In an instant both the young ladies were on their feet and at the
+window, for such an announcement was cause enough for excitement in
+that time of war, when the "sojer gemplemans" might prove to be either
+friends or foes. Charleston had already narrowly escaped capture
+during the previous summer by General Prevost, who, although compelled
+to retire on Savannah, had worsted Lincoln's militia army, destroying
+about one-fourth of the little force. In October had occurred the
+disastrous, attack upon Savannah, in which the gallant Pulaski
+lost his life, and Jasper, the hero of Fort Sullivan, received his
+death-wound. Sumter, the "Game-Cock" of Carolina, had retired from
+the State with his handful of followers badly demoralized; Marion, the
+"Swamp-Fox," was concealed with his little band among the cypress-bays
+and canebrakes of the Pedee; and a tone of gloom and despondency
+prevailed among the people. In the neighborhood of Charleston all
+was uncertainty. The plantation residences were occupied chiefly by
+ladies, the gentlemen being generally with the army. Tarleton's Legion
+had become widely known and feared on account of the dashing forays
+which that famous command was constantly making under the lead of its
+brave and impetuous chief. No wonder, then, that the hearts of the
+two young ladies at Oaklands beat quick with anxiety as they strained
+their gaze down the avenue, uncertain whether they should see the
+hated scarlet uniforms of the British troopers or the welcome blue of
+the Continental cavalry.
+
+But the "big gate" to which Billy had alluded was a full quarter of
+a mile distant, and although the first glance satisfied the excited
+watchers that their visitors were friends, little more could be
+certain until they should approach more nearly. Patience, however,
+was hardly to be expected under the circumstances, and its place was
+effectually supplied by a little red morocco-covered spy-glass which
+Miss Elliott took from the table. Scarcely was it brought to bear upon
+the approaching horsemen when she laid it down as suddenly as she had
+seized it, the rich color mantling to her forehead.
+
+"Why, Jane," said her friend, "am I not to have a look at the
+strangers? Oh, I declare--yes, I _do_ believe I know that horse. It
+must be--"
+
+"It is Colonel Washington and some other officer whom I do not know,"
+said Miss Elliott, who had regained her self-possession completely.
+"You have your wish, Rebecca."
+
+The two visitors cantered rapidly up the broad avenue, and found Billy
+waiting to receive them. One was a tall, soldierly-looking man of
+about twenty-eight, his fine face bronzed by exposure, and his easy
+seat in the saddle betokening one who had been a horseman from his
+youth. He wore the blue coat with yellow facings and the buckskin
+breeches of the Continental cavalry, his red sash bound over a broad
+sword-belt which supported a strong sabre, while the handsome and
+well-muscled bay mare which he rode carried a leather portmanteau in
+addition to the heavy bearskin holster. His large cavalry-boots were
+well bespattered, and his whole bearing was that of an officer
+on duty, rather than of a gallant bent on visiting lady fair. His
+companion was a mere youth, seemingly not over seventeen, well mounted
+also, and dressed in the simple uniform of an orderly, but evidently
+the friend and social equal of his superior officer. The young man sat
+his horse with the ease and grace of one born to the saddle, and his
+fiery chestnut seemed to know and understand his rider thoroughly.
+Like the other, he was provided with holsters and portmanteau, a heavy
+blue cavalry cloak being strapped over the unstuffed saddle-tree.
+Entering the drawing-room, Colonel Washington presented his companion
+to Miss Elliott as "Mr. Peyton of Virginia," and both gentlemen were
+in turn presented to Miss Stead, who received their courtly bows with
+one of those graceful, sweeping courtesies which may be ranked among
+the lost arts of a past generation. Billy had followed the guests to
+the parlor-door, where he stood as if waiting orders.
+
+"You seem to have ridden far," said: the fair hostess when the
+ordinary salutations had passed. "Let me order your horses to the
+stable to be fed."
+
+"I thank you very kindly, miss, but there will be scarcely time,
+for we are under marching orders, and must be in Charleston before
+sunset," replied the colonel with a bow; and there was something
+in his tone which faintly suggested a mental desire to see the said
+marching orders in Jericho.
+
+Perhaps young Peyton detected this, for he said immediately, "I think
+we had best accept Miss Elliott's kindness, for we have a long ride
+before us, and we cannot tell what orders may be awaiting us at the
+end of it."
+
+"I believe Peyton is right," said the colonel, "and if you will permit
+me I will ask him to give some directions to the servant."
+
+Billy, however, had heard enough to give him his cue, and had
+disappeared, nor did the summons of the bell bring him back until full
+ten minutes had elapsed. When he did return it was to bring in two
+more tumblers of punch, but this time of "the regulation size" and
+strength, which were handed to the guests and disposed of with bow
+and sentiment; and then the young orderly went out with him to see the
+horses stripped and the holsters deposited on the piazza before the
+animals were led off to be fed.
+
+"We shall have to defer accepting your invitation to attend the dress
+parade until your return to camp," said Miss Elliott.
+
+"I regret to be obliged to say that the fortunes of war have deprived
+us for the present of that honor. My orders extend to the command,
+which broke camp this morning and is now on its march to Charleston."
+
+"Oh, what are we to do? We felt so safe while they were near us."
+
+The remark burst involuntarily from Miss Stead, who blushed and cast
+down her eyes as if conscious of having said too much for maidenly
+propriety, but the smile of acknowledgment on Colonel Washington's
+face gave way to a look of grave anxiety as he replied, "No lady of
+Carolina shall ever need a defender while a man of my command is left
+to draw a sword; but we have news of movements on the enemy's part
+which require our presence nearer to the city, and I have advised that
+all noncombatants who can possibly move into Charleston should do
+so at their earliest convenience. Perhaps we may meet there in a few
+days."
+
+
+A momentary pallor had overspread Miss Elliott's face, but it was
+succeeded immediately by a proud flush as she said, "It is true, then,
+that General Clinton has left Savannah and is moving on Charleston?"
+
+"Such is the report, and I fear we are badly prepared to meet him."
+
+"We have a righteous cause, and God is on our side," replied the brave
+girl with flashing eyes. "Governor Rutledge has issued a call for all
+men not in service to take up arms, and the whole upper country will
+swarm down to meet these hireling British."
+
+"So we all hope and expect; and if they are only in good time, there
+will be no fear of the result."
+
+"Fear! Who fears these upstart baronets and their insolent soldiers?
+Oh, how I wish women could fight! If the men can't drive them back,
+let _us_ take the field, and Clinton shall never set his foot in the
+streets of Charleston;" and the brave little beauty looked as if she
+meant every word she said.
+
+"The men cannot fail to be heroes when the eyes of such women are upon
+them," exclaimed the gallant colonel, looking with amused admiration
+at the lovely face all aglow with patriotic excitement. "But you must
+let us do the fighting, Miss Elliott, while you cheer and support us
+with your smiles and your prayers.--Peyton, what do you think would
+be the result of a charge by a squadron of ladies upon Tarleton's
+Legion?"
+
+"I can't answer for Tarleton," laughingly replied the orderly, who had
+just entered the room, "but I am afraid I should throw down my arms
+and desert in the face of the enemy."
+
+"You are an ungallant fellow, Peyton, to hint even that the ladies
+could ever be your enemies."
+
+"Oh, do look there!" cried Miss Stead with a silvery laugh, and
+pointing through the open window: "shall we take the issue of that
+struggle as an omen?"
+
+The whole party rushed to the window and looked out on the lawn. A
+brilliant redbird, the proximity of whose nest perhaps had fired his
+timid heart with courage, had made a savage assault on a bluejay, the
+colors of whose feathers were strikingly suggestive of the Continental
+uniform. For a moment the two combatants fluttered in angry strife,
+and the result seemed doubtful, when a female mocking-bird flew from
+her nest in the shrubbery and drove them both ingloriously from the
+field.
+
+"That settles the matter," exclaimed Colonel Washington, laughing
+gayly. "If Governor Rutledge calls out the ladies, I shall throw up
+my commission at once, and retire in good order to the security of
+private life."
+
+"Perhaps then Lieutenant Peyton would succeed to the command?"
+rejoined Miss Elliott, glancing archly at the young orderly.
+
+"I am almost sorry that your corps has not been organized, miss, for
+I might then consider myself gazetted for promotion, and claim my
+lieutenant's commission over your signature." The young man spoke in a
+tone of gay badinage, but a shade of annoyance came over his features
+as he added with a slight bow, "I am only plain 'Mr.' Peyton as yet."
+
+"I beg pardon," said Miss Elliott, "but I thought 'lieutenant' was an
+ensign's proper title."
+
+"If Peyton were the ensign of the troop, his office would be a
+sinecure," laughed the colonel, "seeing we have no standard for him to
+carry."
+
+"You surely don't mean, colonel, that your gallant corps fights
+without colors?" said Miss Stead.
+
+"Why, we cannot use those that we captured from the enemy, and I fear
+our lady friends will be unable to present us with a stand until the
+war is over and silk becomes more plentiful."
+
+Miss Elliott's eyes flashed with a sudden impulse, and the color
+deepened on her cheek as she eagerly asked, "Would you carry so poor a
+little flag as a Carolina girl can present to you? Many a good knight
+has gone into battle with no richer standard than a lady's scarf."
+
+"If Miss Elliott will honor my command by entrusting her kerchief to
+its keeping, I swear to fly it in the face of Tarleton's Legion and
+defend it to the last drop of my blood."
+
+"Then let this be your flag," cried the noble girl with a burst of
+enthusiasm which echoed that which rung in Colonel Washington's tones.
+A large _fauteuil_, covered with heavy crimson silk embroidered with
+raised laurel-leaves, was standing near. Miss Elliott seized, as she
+spoke, the scissors from her work-basket, and in a moment had cut out
+the rectangular piece which covered the back and offered it to her
+distinguished guest. Washington bowed low with courtly grace and
+touched his lips to the fair hand which presented it, while young
+Peyton, carried away by the excitement of the moment, sprang to his
+feet with a cheer which started the wild birds from the shrubbery:
+"Colonel Washington, I claim the right, by Miss Elliott's commission,
+to carry that flag into action, and I swear that it shall never be
+stained with dishonor while Walter Peyton has a right hand to grasp
+its staff."
+
+"Take it, my boy," said the colonel in a voice tremulous with emotion,
+"and guard it with your life. With God's help we will make that flag
+a terror to the enemies of our country.--Miss Elliott, accept a
+soldier's gratitude for your precious gift to-day. No prouder banner
+ever waved over battle-field or claimed the devotion of patriotic
+hearts. It shall be fringed and mounted this very night in Charleston,
+and I pledge my sacred honor that Washington's Light Horse shall prove
+worthy of their trust."
+
+There was a pause in the conversation which was broken by young
+Peyton, who rattled on for some time with Miss Stead in that light
+vein which the most serious circumstances cannot long repress when
+youth and beauty meet. Colonel Washington spoke but little, and
+with an evident effort at gayety which ill agreed with the earnest,
+thoughtful look which settled on his features, while Miss Elliott
+could not conceal the embarrassment which her heightened color and
+downcast eyes betrayed as she toyed with her embroidery, avoiding the
+glances of deep and ardent yet restrained admiration with which
+her distinguished guest regarded her. The hour had arrived when the
+soldiers must resume their journey; and while Rebecca Stead stood
+watching from the piazza the final preparations which the young
+orderly was making for the march, Colonel Washington took the hand of
+his fair hostess and after a moment's hesitation bowed low and pressed
+it to his lips, but with somewhat more of warmth than was required by
+the stately courtesy of the day. Their eyes met for an instant, and
+then, without one word of spoken adieu, they parted. When Miss Stead
+turned to join her friend she found herself alone with old Billy,
+who was gazing after the fast-receding forms of the troopers. "Mass'
+Tahlton done ketch de debbil ef he meet dem Virginia man to-night,"
+said the old fellow sententiously as he slowly retired into his
+pantry.
+
+[Footnote A: This fine old relic of the Revolution is preserved by the
+Washington Light Infantry of Charleston, South Carolina. It was borne
+by Colonel William Washington's corps at Cowpens and Eutaw.]
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+On the 12th of May, 1780, General Lincoln, after sustaining a close
+siege of more than a month's duration, surrendered Charleston, with
+five thousand men and four hundred pieces of artillery, into the hands
+of Sir Henry Clinton. The dark cloud which had long been threatening
+Lower Carolina now settled like a pall over the whole State, and but
+for two causes the whole issue of the war might have been changed. One
+of these was the severity of Cornwallis, who succeeded Clinton in the
+command, and who by his unwise policy drove the despondent people to
+desperation: the other was the indomitable courage and self-devoted
+heroism of the women, which encouraged and strengthened the flagging
+patriotism of the men. The militia who had been captured with the city
+regarded themselves as absolved from a parole which did not protect
+them from enlistment in the ranks of the Crown, and the irregular
+bands of Marion, Pickens and Sumter received large accessions.
+Mill-saws were roughly forged into sabres and pewter table-ware melted
+and beaten into slugs for the shot-guns with which the men were armed.
+The British dared not forage except in force, the pickets were shot
+from ambushes, and their Tory allies hung whenever captured. In
+August the disastrous battle of Camden destroyed Gates's army, and
+the Congress sent Greene to supersede him. Making his head-quarters in
+North Carolina, this experienced commander divided his force and sent
+General Morgan, with about one thousand men, into South Carolina to
+harass Cornwallis in the rear. The latter at once sent Tarleton with
+eleven hundred troopers, among them his famous Legion, to cut off
+Morgan or drive him back upon Greene. In the latter part of December
+the Americans were in the region of the upper Broad River, in
+Spartanburg district, South Carolina, Morgan having but one hundred
+and thirty mounted men--they could hardly be called cavalry--among
+whom was Washington's troop.
+
+It was about nine o'clock on the night of the 16th of January, 1781,
+that the little army was encamped between the Pacolet and Broad
+rivers, near a piece of thin woodland known as Hannah's Cowpens. The
+weather was very cold, for the elevation of that part of the country
+produces a temperature equal in severity to that of a much higher
+latitude, but neither tents nor shanties protected the sleeping
+soldiers from the frosty air. Here and there a rough shelter of pine
+boughs heaped together to windward of the smouldering camp-fires told
+of a squad who had not been too weary to work for a little show of
+comfort; but in most cases the men were stretched out on the bare
+ground, their feet toward the embers and their arms wrapped up with
+them in their tattered blankets, which scarcely served to keep out the
+cold. The regular troops, who had seen some service, might have
+been easily distinguished from the less experienced militia by their
+superior sleeping arrangements. Two and sometimes three men would be
+found wrapped in one blanket, "spoon-fashion," with another blanket
+stretched above them on four stakes to serve as a tent-fly, and their
+fires were usually large and well covered with green branches to
+prevent their burning out too rapidly. One and all, however, slept
+as soundly as if reposing on beds of down, while the same quiet stars
+smiled on them and on the anxious wives and mothers who lay waking
+and praying in many a distant home. In and out among the weird and
+shifting shadows of the outer lines the dim figures of the sentinels
+stalked with their old "Queen Anne" muskets at the "right-shoulder
+shift," or tramped back and forth along their beats at the double
+quick to keep their blood in circulation. At a little distance from
+the infantry camp the horses of Washington's dragoons and M'Call's
+mounted Georgians were picketed in groups of ten, the saddles piled
+together, and a sentinel paced between every two groups, while the
+men were stretched around their fires, sleeping on their arms like the
+infantry, for it was known that Tarleton had crossed the Pacolet that
+day, and an attack was expected at any time. A party of officers were
+asleep near one of the fires, with nothing, however, to distinguish
+them from the men but the red or buff facings of their heavy cloaks.
+One of these lay with his face to the stars, sleeping as placidly as
+if his boyish form were safe beneath his mother's roof. One arm lay
+across his chest, clasping to his body the staff of a small cavalry
+flag, while the other stretched along his side, the hand resting
+unconsciously upon a holster-case of pistols. As the glare of the
+neighboring fire played over his features it was easy to recognize
+Walter Peyton, guarding faithfully, even in his sleep, the banner
+which Jane Elliott had cut from her mother's parlor _fauteuil_, and
+which had already become known to the enemy. A rough log cabin stood a
+little way from the bivouac, before which two sentinels in the uniform
+of the Continental regulars were pacing up and down. The gleam of
+the roaring lightwood fire flashed through the open seams between the
+logs, and heavy volumes of smoke rolled out of the clay chimney.
+Just in front of the huge fire-place stood the tall, burly figure of
+Morgan, and near him were grouped, in earnest consultation, the manly
+figure of William Washington, the brave and knightly John Eager Howard
+of Maryland, McDowell, Triplett, Cunningham and other officers of the
+field and staff. Determination not unmingled with gloom was visible
+upon the faces of all. Every arrangement had been made for the
+probable fight of the morrow, and the council was about to disperse,
+when the silence of the night was broken by the call of a distant
+sentinel, taken up and repeated along the line. Morgan instantly
+despatched an orderly, to the bivouac of the guard, and the party were
+soon cheered by the intelligence that a courier had just arrived who
+reported the near approach of Pickens with three hundred Carolina
+riflemen--a timely and valuable addition to the little force of
+patriots.
+
+The first gray pencilings of dawn were scarcely visible when the
+slumbering camp was roused by the rolling notes of the reveille from
+the drum of little Solly Barrett,[A] the drummer-boy of Howard's
+Maryland Regulars. Fully refreshed by a good night's rest, the men
+prepared and ate their breakfasts with but little delay, and by seven
+o'clock the entire force was in line of battle, awaiting the approach
+of the enemy.
+
+[Footnote A: "Solly" resided for many years after the war at Easton,
+Maryland. A good portrait of him is still there.]
+
+Tarleton, flushed with the assurance of easy victory, had made a
+forced march during the night, and his command was much jaded when at
+eight o'clock he came in sight of Morgan's outposts: notwithstanding
+this, however, he determined, as was fully expected by those who knew
+his disposition and mode of warfare, to attack the American lines
+forthwith. It must be left to the historian to tell how the battle
+raged with varying fortunes until Howard's gallant Marylanders taught
+the British regulars that the despised provincials had learned the
+trick of the bayonet, and decided the issue of the day. Up to this
+moment the cavalry, which had been posted in reserve behind a slight
+wooded eminence, had been chafing for a hand in the fray. As has
+been stated, these troops consisted of McCall's mounted militia and
+Washington's Light Dragoons. The latter were all well mounted and
+armed, for their frequent successes in skirmishes with the enemy's
+horse kept them well supplied. They were a crack corps, and well
+had they earned their reputation. Just as Howard's regulars turned
+savagely on their disorderly pursuers and put them to the rout, a
+squadron of British light horse made a dash at McCall, whose men
+were unused to the sabre, and had been demoralized by the first
+bayonet-charge of the enemy, which they had sustained on foot. Now was
+Washington's chance.
+
+"Are you ready, men? Charge!" The words were scarcely off his lips
+ere the noble mare which he rode shot forward, touched by her rider's
+spur. With a wild yell, which drowned the regular cheer of the
+Englishmen, the men dashed after their brave and impetuous leader,
+who was ever the first to cross a sabre with the enemy. Rising in
+his stirrups as the gallant chestnut answered the spur, Walter Peyton
+looked backward at the men as he raised the light staff of his little
+banner and shook its folds to the breeze, and the next moment he was
+close by the side of his chief in the very thickest of the mêlée. For
+a moment all was dust and confusion, for Tarleton's veterans were not
+the men to break at the first onset, and they met the furious charge
+of the Virginians with a determination which promised a bloody and
+doubtful struggle. One stout fellow, mounted on a powerful horse,
+singled out the young ensign as his special quarry, not noticing, in
+his ardor to capture the daring little rebel flag, that the trooper
+who rode next to it was the gallant colonel himself. Reining back his
+horse almost upon its haunches, he had raised his sabre in the very
+act to strike when that of Washington came down with tremendous force,
+severing the upper muscles of his sword-arm, and at the same instant
+Peyton, for the first time observing his danger, dropped his rein and,
+grasping the flagstaff with both hands, swung it full in the face of
+his assailant. The man's horse shied violently as the folds of the
+little banner flapped across his eyes, and as his rider fell heavily
+from the saddle dashed at full speed through the British line. Already
+this had begun to waver, and in another moment the panicstricken
+troopers were flying in wild confusion toward their reserve. To
+rally a body of frightened cavalry is no easy matter under any
+circumstances, but when a determined pursuing force is pressing hotly
+on the rear it becomes a simple impossibility. The entire command gave
+way as the fugitives approached, and in a little while was in full
+retreat. Colonel Washington, as usual far in advance of his men,
+caught sight of the British commander, who, with two of his aides,
+was endeavoring to rally a favorite regiment, and without a thought of
+support pressed toward the group, accompanied only by Peyton with Jane
+Elliott's flag and a little bugler, a mere boy, who carried no sword,
+but who had drawn a pistol from his holster and kept close to the
+colors all through the day.
+
+Tarleton was not deficient in personal courage, and turned to meet his
+old enemy in a hand-to-hand encounter. The officer nearest him struck
+at Washington as he passed, but missed his blow and received a bullet
+in his side from the young bugler's pistol.
+
+"Carter," cried Tarleton to the other aide, who rode near him, "a
+captain's brevet if you take that woman's petticoat," pointing with
+his sword to the saucy little flag, the story of which had reached the
+British camps.
+
+But it was no woman's hand which was there to defend it, and as the
+Englishman wheeled his horse for the attack Peyton's pistol flashed
+almost in his face, and he fell forward on his charger's neck,
+convulsively clasping it as the animal ran wildly forward unguided
+toward the American lines. Meanwhile, the two commanders had crossed
+swords, and as both were good fencers, a duel _à l'outrance_ seemed
+imminent. But Tarleton had no time for chivalrous encounters. His
+opponent beat down his guard, and with a sudden thrust wounded the
+British colonel in the hand. The latter drew a pistol, and as he
+wheeled to follow his flying squadrons discharged it at his adversary,
+the ball taking effect near the knee. The battle was now really at an
+end, and the pursuit was abandoned at this point.
+
+As Walter Peyton lay down beside his camp-fire that night it was with
+a body worn down by excitement and fatigue, but with a heart beating
+high with pride as he looked at the flag he had so gallantly defended,
+and remembered his colonel's words of commendation, which he more than
+hoped meant promotion to a captain's commission.
+
+In the city of Charleston all was gloom and sorrow except in the
+little circle of society which boasted of its loyalty to the Crown.
+Scarcely a family but had some representative in the Continental
+ranks, and as all intelligence reached the city through British
+channels, the darkest side of every encounter between the armies was
+the first which the imprisoned patriots saw. The non-combatant members
+of all the planters' families had moved into the city before
+its capitulation, and while the ladies permitted the visits and
+acquaintance of the English officers, they never lost an opportunity
+to show them how hateful they esteemed the royal cause.
+
+It was nearly a month after the victory at the Cowpens that Miss
+Elliott was sitting with her mother one evening in the parlor of
+their city residence. Conspicuous among the furniture was a large and
+comfortable arm-chair upholstered in heavy crimson silk damask, but
+while everything else in the room was neat and even elegant, this
+chair appeared to be more fit for the lumber-closet, the entire square
+of silk having been cut from the back, leaving the underlining of
+coarse striped cotton exposed to view. The tones of the curfew or
+"first bell," which may still be heard nightly in the seagirt old
+city, had just died away when a loud rap came from the heavy brass
+knocker on the street-door, and in a few moments old Billy appeared to
+announce "Captain Fraser."
+
+A look of slight annoyance passed over the face of the elder lady as
+she arranged the snowy ruffles of her cap, while the deepened color
+and sparkling eyes of the younger, with the almost imperceptible
+sarcasm of her smile, seemed to indicate mingled pleasure, defiance
+and contempt. The visitor who entered was resplendent in the gay
+scarlet and glittering lace of the British uniform, and his redundancy
+of ruffles, powder and sword-knot betokened the military exquisite,
+his bearing presenting a singular mixture of high breeding and haughty
+insolence. With his right hand laid upon the spot where his heart
+was supposed to be, while his left daintily supported the leathern
+scabbard of his sword, he bowed until the stiff little queue of his
+curled wig pointed straight at the heavy cornice. The ladies swept the
+floor with their graceful courtesies, that of the younger presenting
+the least touch of exaggeration as with folded arms and downcast eyes
+she sank backward before her guest. Another knock was heard, and when
+the names of three more of the garrison officers were announced, Miss
+Elliott whispered to Billy a hasty message to some of her fair friends
+in the neighborhood to come in and help her entertain them. These
+impromptu parties were quite common, and in a little while the room
+was sparkling with beauty, gallantry and wit. It may seem strange that
+the patriotic belles of the day, the fair Brewtons and Pinckneys
+and Rutledges, the Ravenels and Mazycks, should have cultivated such
+pleasant associations with the enemies of their country. But among the
+officers they had many old friends and acquaintances of _ante-bellum_
+days, and not a few marriages had established even closer ties. Thus,
+Lord Campbell, the last royal governor, was husband to Sarah Izard,
+the sister of General Ralph Izard, who was brother-in-law to our
+former acquaintance, Rebecca Stead; and even General Washington had
+invited Admiral Fairfax to dine, on the ground that a state of war did
+not preclude the exchange of social civilities between gentlemen who
+served under opposing flags.
+
+Mrs. Elliott received the attentions of her daughter's visitors with
+dignified grace, but with a degree of reserve which it was impossible
+altogether to conceal, and to which the officers had become too much
+accustomed to feel any offence; while the younger ladies drove the
+keen darts of their sarcasm home to the feelings of their hostile
+guests, who were forced to submit to it or forego entirely the
+pleasures of female society.
+
+"May I ask if Company K has been on duty at the picket-lines to-day?"
+asked Miss Elliott of Captain Fraser, who had just sauntered up to her
+chair.
+
+"May I answer the question after the fashion of my ancestors," was the
+reply, "by asking why you should think so?"
+
+"Only because you seem to be suffering from fatigue, which a long
+march might explain."
+
+Fraser's company was notoriously a "fancy corps," whose severest duty
+was generally to furnish the guard at head-quarters and to go through
+a dress parade every evening at the Battery.
+
+"Ah, no, but I have been on inspection duty, and it's a bore, I assure
+you."
+
+"Inspecting the flower-gardens, I presume, to be sure that there are
+no rattlesnakes under the rose-bushes, or the milliner-shops, to see
+that no palmetto cockades are made. May I insist upon a seat for you?
+Not _that_ chair," she added hastily and with heightened color as the
+captain was about to occupy the mutilated _fauteuil_: "excuse me, but
+that is a 'reserved seat.'"
+
+"Ah, I see--beg pardon," said Fraser with a slight sneer, for
+the story of Washington's flag was generally known, and also Miss
+Elliott's aversion to the use of the chair by any British officer.
+"Somebody seems to have carried off the back of that one."
+
+"When last heard from," said the beauty with curling lip, "it was at
+Colonel Tarleton's back."
+
+"Tarleton should be court-martialed for that affair at Cowpens," said
+Fraser with some warmth, and forgetting the proffered seat he prepared
+to take his leave.
+
+"Perhaps Captain Fraser would like to have had a hand in the 'affair'
+also," added Miss Elliott with a demure smile. This allusion to
+Tarleton's wound was too much for the gallant captain, and again
+elevating the point of his queue toward the ceiling, but this time
+without his hand to his heart, he left the room with a face somewhat
+redder than his uniform.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+There are defeats which are more glorious than victory, and one
+of these it was which, on the 8th of September, 1781, gave to Jane
+Elliott's flag the title which has come down with it to posterity. In
+the earlier days of its history the saucy little standard was known to
+the gallant men who followed it to action as "Tarleton's Terror," and
+sometimes it is even now spoken of as "the Cowpens Banner." But the
+name by which its brave custodians most love to call it is "the Eutaw
+Flag," It is hard to realize as one stands beside the lovely fountains
+which flow to-day as they did a hundred--or perhaps a thousand--years
+ago, that close by these placid waters was fought one of the most
+desperate and bloody struggles of a long and cruel war. The sunfish
+and bream floated with quivering fins or darted among the rippling
+shadows on that autumn morning as we see them doing now. The
+mocking-bird sang among the overhanging branches the same varied
+song which gladdens our ears, and the wild deer then, as now, lay
+peacefully in the shady coverts of the neighboring woods. Who knows
+what they may have thought when they heard their only enemy, man, ring
+out his bugle-call to slip the war-dogs on his fellows, or when the
+sharp crack of the rifle told them for the first time of safety to
+themselves and of death to their wonted destroyers?
+
+Already had "Light-horse Harry" Lee struck the first blow victoriously
+in the capture of Coffin and the discomfiture of his force. Already
+for several hours the old black oaks had quivered beneath the thunder
+of artillery more fearfully destructive than that of Heaven itself as
+Williams hurled back from his field-battery the iron hail with which
+the enemy strove to overwhelm him. Already had Howard's gallant
+Marylanders, the heroes of the Cowpens, crossed bayonets with the
+veteran "Irish Buffs" and forced them in confusion from the field.
+Majoribanks, with his regulars, grenadiers and infantry, was strongly
+posted behind a copse too dense to be forced by cavalry, and yet to
+dislodge him was Colonel Washington's special duty. Pointing with his
+sword toward a narrow passage near the water, he dashed the spurs into
+the flanks of his gallant mare and called on his men to follow.
+There was a momentary pause, for the duty was of the most desperate
+character, but Captain Peyton snatched the little banner which he had
+carried so long from the hand of the sergeant who had succeeded to its
+charge, and raising it above his head spurred after his leader. As the
+silken folds fluttered out on the air a ringing cheer went up from
+the troop, and the whole line, wheeling into sections so as to pass
+through the narrow gap, dashed forward as one man. It was a daring
+attempt, and terribly did they pay for their audacity. A perfect storm
+of bullets greeted the brave Virginians, and nearly one-half of them
+went down, horse and man, beneath its fearful breath ere the other
+half were in the midst of the enemy's ranks. Those were days when a
+certain simplicity of character made the soldier believe that bayonets
+and sabres were terrible weapons and meant to do terrible work. No
+rewards were then offered for "a dead cavalryman" or for "a bloody
+bayonet." There were cloven skulls at Eutaw as at Crecy, and men were
+transfixed by each other's deadly bayonet-thrusts. As Washington,
+maddened by the loss of his brave troopers, swung his sharp blade like
+the flail of death, a shot from the musket of a tall grenadier pierced
+the lung of his noble bay, and as the falling steed rolled over on her
+gallant rider the man shortened his musket and buried the sharp steel
+in the colonel's body. A second thrust would have followed with deadly
+result had not the British major, Majoribanks, seized the arm of the
+soldier and demanded the surrender of his fallen and bleeding foe. The
+tide of battle had receded like some huge swell of ocean, and as the
+wounded hero struggled to his feet he found himself surrounded by
+enemies, to contend with whom would have been folly. Turning his
+feeble glance for a second toward the retreating remnant of his
+shattered command, he caught a glimpse through the smoke and dust of
+his little battle-flag fluttering in the distance, and fast receding
+toward the point whence Hampton's bugles were already sounding the
+rally. Neither William Washington nor his "Eutaw Flag" was ever again
+in battle for the country, for the captivity of the former terminated
+only with the war, and the latter fades from history from that
+date until, in 1827, Jane Washington, for seventeen years a widow,
+presented it as a precious inheritance to the gallant corps of
+Charleston citizen soldiery, who still guard its folds from dishonor,
+as they do the name of the knightly paladin which they bear. The
+wedding was celebrated soon after the establishment of peace. Major
+Majoribanks escaped the carnage of the day, but he lived not to
+deliver his distinguished prisoner at Charleston. Sickening on the
+retreat with the deadly malaria of the Carolina swamps, he died near
+Black Oak, and his mossy grave may be seen to-day by the roadside,
+marked by a simple stone and protected from desecration by a wooden
+paling. It stands near the gate of Woodboo plantation, which old
+Stephen Mazyck, the Huguenot, first settled, about twenty-five miles
+from Eutaw and forty-three from Charleston. On the banks of the
+Cooper, amid the lovely scenes of "Magnolia," Charleston's city of
+the dead, there stands a marble shaft enwreathed in the folds of the
+rattlesnake, the symbol of Revolutionary patriotism, and beneath it
+rests all that was mortal of William Washington and Jane Elliott his
+wife.
+
+ROBERT WILSON.
+
+
+
+
+CONVENT LIFE AND WORK.
+
+
+To those who have had but little opportunity to examine the inner
+workings of the Catholic Church the subject of the conventual life has
+always been something of a puzzle. Of course it has been difficult for
+them to obtain a personal insight into its details, just as it would
+be difficult to gain admittance into the mosque of St. Sophia or a
+Hindu community of religious. Curiosity, unsatisfied, betakes itself
+to hearsay, and since those who know most are generally most silent
+about their knowledge, it is to the gossip of ignorance or prejudice
+that curiosity looks for an answer. Distorted views or imaginary
+descriptions end by being received into the mill of public opinion,
+and issue thence ground into gospel truth and invested with mysterious
+(because fictitious) interest. It is strange that a phase of life
+which is in constant practice at the present day, often within a
+stone's throw of our own doors, and which has personal ramifications
+in the families of our neighbors and acquaintances, should still be
+so much of a phenomenon to the public mind. In England, France, Italy,
+Germany and America I have been familiarly acquainted with it, have
+studied its principles and its details under many varying forms,
+and never found it less interesting because it was _not_ mysterious.
+Human, fallible beings are the inhabitants of monasteries either
+for males or females, with individual peculiarities and different
+sympathies--by no means machines, but free and intelligent agents,
+each with a character as individual as that of separate flowers in a
+large garden--full of personality and of human imperfection.
+
+In Rome, not far from the Fountain of Trevi--of whose waters it is
+said that they have the power to ensure the return to Rome of any
+one who has drunk of them in a cup not heretofore devoted to common
+purposes--is the spacious convent called San Domenico e Sisto. Here
+the first convent of Dominican friars was established, and the spot
+is historic ground in the annals of the order of Preachers. In the
+turbulent thirteenth century, when papal, feudal and democratic
+parties opposed each other in Rome, and the vigorous sap of half-tamed
+barbarian life still coursed through the pulses of Italy, Saint
+Dominic rose like a reformer, a lawgiver and a peace-maker. On the
+other side of the Tiber, entrenched behind baronial walls and fiercely
+protected by baronial champions, was a convent of women whose practice
+of their vows had become too relaxed for such a bad example to be
+allowed to remain unreproved. The ecclesiastical authorities wished
+peremptorily to disestablish the convent and filter its inmates
+through some neighboring religious houses more zealous and more
+edifying in their conduct. But the nuns, who were mostly of noble
+families, appealed to their charters, their immunities and exemption
+from papal jurisdiction. Their fathers and brothers, the formidable
+barons who held within the papal city many strongholds well
+garrisoned, took up their quarrel and dared the world to dispossess
+the refractory sisterhood. Saint Dominic had just brought his friars
+to the dilapidated house then known as San Sisto, had caused rapid
+repairs to be made, and in his fervor had created round himself a
+nucleus of ardent reformers. The Gordian knot was referred to him, and
+with characteristic abruptness he promised to cut it at once. He came
+alone to the gates of the convent, presented no credentials from pope
+or cardinal, and asked an interview with the abbess. He spoke of the
+holiness of an austere life, the reward of those that "follow the Lamb
+whithersoever He goeth," the merit of obedience, the need of reform,
+the great work that his order was doing for God, and the call for more
+laborers in the field: he proposed to the nuns to be his helpers
+among their own sex, and his coheiresses in the heavenly reward of the
+future. His eloquence and zeal soon melted the haughty resolve of
+the rebellious but still noble-minded women. Roused to a new sense of
+power and responsibility, they embraced his rigid rule, and with the
+enthusiasm of their sex, that never halts midway in reform, became
+models of austerity. The better to signify to the world the spiritual
+change wrought in their temper, they migrated from the abode which
+they had sworn to make the symbol and palladium of their independence,
+and went to San Sisto, Saint Dominic taking his monks to repeople the
+convent across the Tiber left vacant by the submissive sisterhood.
+
+It is with this new house, henceforth called San Domenico e Sisto,
+that one of my earliest recollections of conventual life is connected.
+The order is one which enjoins strict enclosure. The dress is of
+coarse white serge or flannel, consisting of a long, narrow tunic with
+flowing sleeves drawn over tight ones of linen; a _scapular_ or stole
+(i.e., a piece of straight stuff half a yard broad worn hanging from
+the shoulders both behind and before); a leathern girdle round the
+waist, from which hangs a rosary, large, common and set in steel;
+strong, thick sandals; a linen wimple enveloping the face and hiding
+the ears, neck and roots of the hair; a woolen veil, black for the
+professed nuns, white for the novices, and of white _linen_ for the
+lay sisters; and over all an immense black cloak, falling around the
+figure in statuesque folds.
+
+In this order, and almost invariably in every other, a candidate is
+admitted at first as a _postulant_ for a period of six months--a sort
+of preliminary trial of her fitness for the religious life. She wears
+ordinary clothes during this time--plain and black, of course, but not
+of any prescribed shape. Sometimes, however, she is required by custom
+to wear a plain black cap. After six months she is admitted as a
+novice--i.e., she solemnly puts off the secular dress and wears the
+habit of the order, making the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience
+for the space of one year only. The details of the ceremony vary in
+different orders, but the ceremony itself is called in all by the
+generic name of "clothing" or "taking the white veil." In orders where
+a white woolen veil is the badge of profession (these are not many)
+a linen one is equally the mark of the novice and the lay sister.
+Although there exists for convenience' sake a distinction between
+choir-nuns and lay sisters--the former paying a dowry to the common
+fund on the day of their entrance, and the latter bringing their
+manual service to the house instead of any offering--still, the
+difference is not spiritual, and beyond the mere distribution of labor
+is not practically discernible. In orders where the education of youth
+is the primary object, the lay sisters, under the supervision of the
+choir-nun to whose charge the housekeeping is directly entrusted,
+perform all the menial service, which would otherwise make too many
+inroads on the time of the teaching nuns; but in other orders, the
+Carmelites for instance, the lowest work, be it of the kitchen, the
+laundry or the chamber, is undertaken in turn by every member of the
+community. When Madame Louise, the daughter of Louis XV. of France,
+became a Carmelite nun, the first task assigned her was the washing of
+coarse dishes and the sweeping of floors. A parallel case is that of
+the Cistercian monks, who to this day, at their famous farm-monastery
+at Mount St. Bernard, England, are bound by their rule to labor with
+their hands so many hours a day. No exception is made for the abbot
+himself; and when we visited the establishment a few years ago we had
+to wait some time for the abbot, who was digging in a distant field.
+Scholar and savant are not exempt any more than the humblest member of
+the brotherhood; and as it is a very learned order, and attracts
+many recent converts to Catholicism, it is not infrequently that one
+recognizes in the monk-laborer, digging potatoes or hoeing turnips,
+some Anglican clergyman of delicate nurture and scholarly renown.
+To this monastery, entirely self-supported by its extensive farm,
+is attached a boys' reformatory, one of whose products is the most
+excellent butter known in England. Tailoring, shoemaking, carpentry,
+turning, etc. are all taught under the supervision of the monks:
+those among the boys who wish it are helped to emigrate, and others
+apprenticed at the proper time to the trades they have already been
+taught at Mount St. Bernard.
+
+To resume our sketch of the Dominican nuns in Rome. It is the custom
+in Italy for a young lady about to "enter religion" to choose a
+godmother or _madrina_, a lady of proper age and mature experience,
+who acts as her chaperon during the few weeks preceding the
+"clothing." She comes forth from the convent where she has been a
+postulant, and, dressed in the garb of the world, makes formal
+visits to all her relations, friends and patrons, assists at public
+ceremonies in the local churches, even visits some places of interest,
+such as museums and galleries. This is her solemn farewell to the
+world, and she is supposed thus to have another trial given to the
+steadfastness of her resolve, another chance to abandon it before it
+is too late. A young girl of an illustrious Roman family, but of very
+slender fortune, was about to enter the Dominican order at the time to
+which I allude, in 1853. Her only sister had for some years been a nun
+of a strictly enclosed order, and Mademoiselle G----, having chosen as
+her madrina an English Catholic lady who had been enabled to show her
+some kindness while still in the world, went to bid farewell to this
+elder sister. The meeting was very affecting: the sisters could not
+see each other face to face--a thick grating separated them. The elder
+had long been a spiritual guide to the younger: she had led her mind
+in the direction of the cloister, and now rejoiced sincerely that God
+had smoothed away the family difficulties and pecuniary embarrassments
+which for some time had stood in the way of her vocation. Still,
+natural affection was not stifled in the generous, unselfish heart of
+the cloistered nun, and she wept with her sister at the thought that,
+though the walls of the same city would hold them both till death, and
+hardly a few blocks of houses separate their convent homes, yet in
+the flesh they should never meet again. The English godmother sat in a
+remote corner of the cool, shady parlor, sympathizing in silence with
+the touching scene, but keeping as much in the background as etiquette
+and custom allowed, that she might not intrude on this last farewell.
+At length the curtain behind the grating fell, and the young girl had
+severed the tenderest link that bound her to the world. Many other
+visits were paid--some to friends of Mademoiselle G----'s parents (she
+had long been an orphan), some to ecclesiastical personages who had
+interested themselves to procure her admission into the Dominican
+community. With repeated blessings the young girl left their presence,
+every day advancing nearer to her spiritual bridal.
+
+At last the day came. Early in the morning the madrina arrived at the
+convent with her two little girls of six and eight years old dressed
+in white as bridesmaids, or, as the Italian term _angiolini_ has it,
+little angels. They bore delicate baskets filled with white flowers to
+strew before the "bride," and their office during the ceremony was
+to hold the novice's gloves, fan and handkerchief. The young girl
+herself, looking pale and earnest, walked up the aisle of the convent
+chapel in bridal robes of white silk, with a veil and wreath on her
+head, and round her neck a string of pearls, an heirloom in the G----
+family. Her brother, the only male representative of her once powerful
+house, was present in the outer chapel, full of grief at a sacrifice
+which he had never countenanced, and ready to claim that morning the
+only legacy of his sister the promise of which he had been able to
+secure--the thick coils of her black hair when they should have been
+cut off preparatory to her taking the novice's veil. The scene was
+very solemn. The nuns sat in their carved stalls within the grating
+whose black bars divided them from the "bride" and her friends in the
+ante-chapel: the chant of psalms and versicles came down from a hidden
+gallery, and the priest in rich vestments stood at the foot of the
+altar within the railing. The service went on in the midst of a
+palpable hush; the very air seemed hardly to vibrate; the bride,
+attended by her two angiolini, left her gorgeous kneeling-chair and
+advanced to the open door in the grating, where the priest met her.
+Question and answer were interchanged in Italian, and the young girl
+vowed that of her own free will she left the world and joined the
+order of St. Dominic. Prayers in Latin followed, then again a chanted
+psalm, and Mademoiselle G---- was led away through the iron-grated
+door, which was then closed. It was not long ere she reappeared in
+the long close tunic of white serge, her head covered with a temporary
+veil of coarse linen and her feet shod in sandals. A procession of
+nuns, each bearing a lighted taper, escorted her to the foot of the
+altar (everything was visible through the grating), and she knelt
+before the officiating priest. A white woolen veil was handed to
+him, which he blessed with holy water, the sign of the cross and the
+prescribed ejaculations accompanying these rites: he then laid it
+on her head as a "symbol of the virgin modesty" to which she was now
+pledged. Two nuns were at hand to pin it into the right folds while a
+silver ring was being blessed in the same manner as the veil. This
+was placed on the ring-finger of the left hand as a "symbol of the
+intimate union and espousal with Christ" signified by her renunciation
+of the world. The scapular of white serge, similarly blessed, was
+then laid upon her shoulders as a type of the "yoke of obedience and
+sacrifice;" and lastly, the black cloak, signifying charity, covering
+and enveloping the whole person. Then in a loud, firm voice, instinct
+with passion and resolve, she read, standing, the formal declaration
+of her religious vows. When this was over the mother-superior led
+the novice, now Sister Maria Colomba, to a small table on which lay
+a bridal wreath of white roses and a crown of thorns. She asked her
+solemnly which was her choice in life, and the novice took up the
+crown of thorns and placed it on her head. This typical ceremony I
+never saw performed in any other order. Shortly after the crown of
+thorns was exchanged for that of roses, the superior saying, "Inasmuch
+as thou hast chosen the crown which thy Saviour wore, He rewards thee
+with that which is a shadow of the heavenly crown reserved for His
+spouses in heaven." This bridal token the new nun wears during the
+whole day.
+
+To a few ladies and to the angiolini a special permission to enter the
+enclosure was given in honor of the day: a festive meal was served in
+the bare, cool refectory, the rule of silence being relaxed for the
+special occasion, and the nuns wearing a happy, child-like expression
+that hardly varied in the face of the youngest novice and that of
+the septuagenarian "mother." The strangers were shown through the
+dormitories, the kitchen, the laundry, the garden, the community-room,
+where embroidery, painting and study diversify the labors of the broom
+and the dishcloth, and everywhere the same exquisite neatness
+struck the eye. Everything used in the house was of the coarsest
+description--the linen like sack-cloth, but speckless; the delf as
+thick and rough as if made for sailors; the floors mostly of brick or
+stone; the furniture of unpainted deal. Over each bed, which is only a
+board on trestles covered with heavy sacking, is a common crucifix and
+a sprig of box or olive blessed on Palm Sunday. The sisters sleep in
+their tunics. The library is common property, but no one may use or
+read any book save by permission of the superioress. The rules of
+fasting and abstinence are not exactly the same in every convent of
+the order, but the broad rule is that meat should be eaten only on
+great holidays, vegetables and farinaceous preparations, such as most
+Italians are not unskilled in, forming the staple of the nuns' food.
+Fish is almost as rare a luxury as meat. Their bread is coarse and
+brown, and their drink indifferently water or a wine so sour that it
+is practically vinegar. Not that these nuns are not good cooks and
+bakers: witness the delicate sweetmeats, biscuits and pastry they
+offer to strangers on such festival days as the one just described,
+the fruit-preserves in blocks sold for their sustenance by the nuns
+at Funchal, Madeira, and the fairy frostwork of sugar seen on great
+occasions in French convents. No womanly art is a stranger to the deft
+fingers of cloistered nuns. Bookbinding is a pursuit well known among
+them, as is also the mounting in delicate filigree of the "Agnus Dei"
+or waxen representation of the Lamb of God, blessed by the pope
+at Easter and distributed throughout Christendom from the papal
+metropolis. Another convent industry is the preparation of the wafers
+used in the celebration of mass.
+
+These Dominicanesses rise at four in the morning and dine at eleven,
+making after that only one slight meal in the evening--bread and
+vegetables, for instance, or a saucerful of macaroni. At stated times
+they assemble in the chapel for the singing of the "divine office,"
+and always have an early mass, at which the whole community receives
+holy communion. This is administered by the priest through a square
+opening in the iron grating dividing the nuns from the altar. At
+eight, or at latest nine o'clock in the evening, all are in bed,
+whence they rise again at midnight (in some orders at two o'clock in
+the morning, but this custom involves rising somewhat later, generally
+five o'clock) for matins and lauds.
+
+The duties of separate departments are judiciously divided among the
+sisters. There is the infirmarian; the _économe_, or housekeeper,
+to whose share falls the supplying of the larder; the librarian, the
+sacristan, the portress (often in cloistered orders this position,
+which is exceptional in its exemptions, involves the ordering of
+outside business matters), the care-taker of the garments and linen,
+the gardener, the secretary, the mistress and sub-mistress of novices.
+The house is managed like clockwork. Punctually as the bell rings each
+sister goes to the task appointed for that hour, and leaves it, no
+matter how important or absorbing it may be, for the duty appointed
+by the rule for the next division of time. Silence prevails among the
+sisters at almost all hours: for at most three times a day speech is
+permitted, and seldom for more than half an hour at a time. During
+meals one sister reads the _Lives of the Saints_ aloud. Each in her
+turn takes the place of server at table. The superioress alone has
+power to dispense with the rule of silence in case of necessity, as
+she transacts most of the business, social or legal, of her community.
+
+During the year of novitiate the novices are under the direct rule
+of the mistress of novices, whose authority over them is paramount,
+though she herself is of course under a vow of obedience to the
+superior. When a novice receives a visit from one in the world she is
+accompanied by the "mistress," and if the visitor be a near relation
+and a woman the curtain behind the grating is withdrawn; if only a
+friend, the visitor does not even see the nun, as the thick curtain
+is drawn, and the only communication possible is by speech. It is
+generally possible, on any necessity arising, to obtain a special
+permission to break through the rule of enclosure: this is done by
+applying to the superior-general of the order, or in Rome to the Holy
+Father, whose authority naturally supersedes all others. Sometimes
+the power to dispense lies with the local superior, but it is a
+prerogative seldom used, and wisely so. In every order the internal
+government of each house is of an elective form, but when once chosen
+the superiors exercise absolute authority. The community meets
+every three years (in some orders every year) and chooses by vote a
+superioress, an assistant superioress and a mistress of novices. Only
+the professed nuns have a vote, and the majority carry the day.
+These "officers," once appointed, rule the house and choose all minor
+deputies themselves. The heads alone of each house assemble at the
+death of the superior-general (or abbess, as she is styled in some
+of the more ancient orders) and choose another, equally by vote, the
+election being sometimes decided by only one vote. This assembly is
+called a "chapter." The generals of most orders reside in Rome.
+
+The year after the "clothing" of Sister Maria Colomba we witnessed the
+final ceremony of her "profession"--that is, of her assuming the black
+veil and renewing her religious vows _for life_. Hitherto, she had
+been free to return to the world and marry: henceforth such a return
+(unless by a dispensation so rarely given that it is practically
+non-existent) would be sacrilege. The details of the ceremony vary in
+different orders, and with those which are not cloistered the scene
+is far less impressive. What we were going to see included the most
+solemn forms ever used. This time the whole service took place behind
+the grating: there were no "bridesmaids" now, no shadow of worldly
+pomp was borrowed to enhance the last and momentous consecration of
+religion. The novice knelt between the superior and the mistress of
+novices, each bearing a lighted taper. The white veil was taken
+from her head, and a black one, previously blessed with holy water
+sprinkled over it in the form of a cross, substituted: the low chant
+of the unseen choir of nuns sounded impressively as the echo of
+another world. Then came the renewal of the dread vows, binding now
+until death, and the voice of the young girl seemed firm though low:
+her face wore a calm, peaceful look, subdued by the solemn occasion,
+yet irrepressibly suggesting a joy unknown in the world, where joy is
+seldom free from passion. The most interesting ceremony, however, was
+yet to come. The slow chant shaped itself into the words of the psalm
+_De Profundis_, the special prayer which in the Catholic Church is
+reserved for the dead, and four professed nuns advanced toward their
+new sister, who was now prostrate at the foot of the altar. Each held
+the corner of a funeral pall, which they slowly; dropped over the
+figure of Sister Maria Colomba, and, kneeling, held it over her until
+the last verse of the psalm had been sung. This suggestive ceremony
+closed the service. It is a forcible and picturesque type of the
+complete severance of the nun's future life and interests from the
+outside world, the death of her heart to all carnal affections, the
+"dying daily" which Saint Paul calls the "life" of the Christian soul.
+A long procession accompanied the newly-professed nun to the inner
+rooms of the convent, and for this one day again she wore over the
+black veil the bridal wreath, which to-morrow would be put away until
+required for her last adornment in the coffin.
+
+Ten years after our farewell to Sister Maria Colomba behind the
+bars of the convent-parlor we saw her again, and, armed with a papal
+permission, were shown by her over the whole convent. Those rare
+occasions when a stranger is allowed to penetrate the "enclosure" are
+always gala-days for the nuns. I remarked the blithe, youthful look
+that shone on all their faces: Sister Maria Colomba herself, from a
+pale, nervous girl, had expanded into a strong, hale, buxom woman. The
+glow of health was on her cheek, the sparkle of innocent mirth shone
+in her eye. There was one among the sisters who gleefully asked me to
+guess at her age. She was a sweet, fresh-complexioned, matronly woman.
+"Not more than fifty, good mother," was the answer.
+
+She laughed and gently clapped her hands. "Add twenty years to that,"
+she answered with an innocent burst of pride. Then she told how she
+had entered the order while yet in her "teens," had held half the
+offices of trust in the community, and had never missed any of the
+most rigid fasts or absented herself once from the midnight office,
+never having known so much as a day's ill-health. "Ah, a nun's life is
+a healthy one, child, as well as a happy one," she said in conclusion.
+
+We went over the kitchen, laundry, refectory, dormitories, chapel,
+garden, etc. Just the same as before--a little "calvary" at one end
+of the garden and a rough picture of a Madonna in an arbor, the
+long, echoing corridors spotless as the deck of a man-of-war, and the
+smiling faces making a very flower-garden of the community-room. We
+left loaded with specimens of the nuns' work--Agnus Deis in frames of
+silver filigree dotted with white roses and hanging from white satin
+ribbon-bows; flake-like biscuits of peculiar flavor; and baskets,
+pincushions, etc. of delicate workmanship. I do not know whether this
+convent is still in the hands of the Dominicanesses, so many in Rome
+having become barracks since the new royal authority superseded that
+of the pope. But the picture of San Domenico e Sisto as it was in
+1853 and 1863 may yet interest many who perhaps will never have the
+opportunity of seeing such an establishment for themselves.
+
+This is a very fair sample of the convents of the stricter and
+cloistered orders: there are some exceptional houses, such as that of
+the Sepolte Vive, where the rule is far more austere. There is but
+one convent of this description in Rome, and I believe one or two in
+France. It is a noteworthy fact that most of the strictest observances
+of penance originated in France, and are continued there to this day.
+This convent of the Sepolte Vive ("Buried Alive") is not formally
+sanctioned by the papal authority, but only _tolerated_. The nuns
+were forbidden more than ten years ago to admit any more novices, and
+although the individual zeal of those who started the order was not
+exactly censured, still a tacit intimation of its being considered
+excessive and imprudent was given by the highest ecclesiastical court.
+Among their customs (which much resemble those of the Trappist monks)
+these nuns have that of digging their own graves, and as the cemetery
+is small and included in the "enclosure," the oldest graves are opened
+after a period of forty or fifty years, and the crumbling contents
+ejected to make room for the lately deceased. The death of a nun's
+nearest relation, be it father, mother, brother or sister, is made
+known to the superior alone, and she in her turn announces it, _not_
+to the bereaved one, but to the whole sisterhood, in this manner: They
+are all assembled in the community-room, and admonished to "pray for
+the soul of the father or mother" (as the case may be) "of one among
+their number." To the day of her death the nun never knows how near
+and dear by the ties of Nature may have been the soul for which she
+has prayed every day since the announcement was made.
+
+The Sepolte Vive, when found guilty of any breach of the rule, are
+labeled with a ticket attached to their habit, and on which their
+fault is written in large, conspicuous letters--for instance,
+"Disobedience," "Curiosity," "Talkativeness"--and this they wear
+at their ordinary avocations for as many hours as the superioress
+commands. They never undress on going to bed, and wear the same habit
+winter and summer, the stuff being too hot for the one and too cold
+for the other; so that at all times the penance is the same. On the
+wrists many of them wear iron manacles that graze the skin and cause
+constant irritation at every turn of the hand: this is sometimes
+imposed as a penance, but very often is voluntarily inflicted
+on themselves by zealous members of the sisterhood. Before the
+prohibition to receive additional novices the sisterhood consisted of
+a fixed number, and when a vacancy occurred by the death of one the
+place was filled by the first on the list of postulants. _This list
+was always a large one_, and generally contained many names belonging
+to the noblest families of Rome. These details were gathered from
+the same lady who acted as madrina to the Dominican nun Sister Maria
+Colomba; and when she and a friend obtained permission from the pope
+to penetrate the "enclosure," the nuns told her that it was _twenty
+years_ since the same privilege had been granted. For almost the space
+of a generation no stranger had been seen or heard by them, for not
+even the privilege of a grated and curtained parlor interview is
+allowed to the Sepolte Vive. And yet with all this unparalleled
+refinement of austerity they were as blithe and healthy a body of
+women, as cheerful and youthful in manner, as peaceful and calm in
+appearance, as could be found among the Sisters of Charity or the lay
+members of an association of Mercy.
+
+The Carmelites are an order spread wide over the Christian world. The
+reform of Saint Teresa was sadly needed among these nuns three hundred
+years ago, and the recital of the vehement opposition made to her
+efforts shows the merit due to her. At the present day the order is
+one of the strictest in existence. The habit is of coarse brown serge,
+including the tunic and scapular, a cord round the waist, sandals (in
+England and other northern climates shoes are allowed), a black veil
+and an ample white cloak. They rise at two o'clock, winter and summer
+alike, to sing matins, and when they retire to rest at night one of
+their number walks through the corridors--in this order each nun has
+a cell--springing a rattle and repeating in a clear tone a verse of
+Scripture to serve as a subject of meditation before going to sleep.
+In the choir the Carmelites are only permitted the use of three notes,
+the reason alleged for this restriction being that the service of God
+must not run the risk of becoming an occasion of temptation to the
+singers. These nuns are very strictly cloistered, and their rules
+regarding visitors are much the same as those described at length in
+the beginning of this paper.
+
+The cloistered orders are less numerous, but also less known, than the
+communities formed for active duty, such as education and nursing
+the sick; but in describing their constitution and rules we show the
+reader the true basis on which the more modern and active orders are
+constituted. The traditions of the spiritual life came down through
+them, and they represent the principle of vicarious oblation
+which animates all the different phases of convent life; i.e. the
+substitution of a small body of voluntary servants of God for the
+entire world, which ought to be perpetually engaged in His service
+and worship. The Benedictines, Capuchins and Visitation nuns are also
+cloistered, but the last are the only ones of this description who are
+likewise teachers of youth. Many very superior women belong to this
+order, which, except for the enclosure, practices no special physical
+austerities. The principle of the rule is the subduing of the will
+and the curbing of the spirit. The order is a recent one, and was
+instituted by Saint Francis of Sales while Beza ruled in Geneva and
+the Reformation had just disturbed the religious balance of Europe.
+With consummate prudence the new order was directed to employ the
+means best understood by the age. Cold calculation had succeeded to
+ardent zeal: the public mind no longer instinctively revered the old
+heroic type of dragon-tamers, be they called Roland or Saint Benedict.
+The new current required a new rudder, and the Visitation nuns
+supplied the need. At first they were not even meant to be cloistered,
+but to form a kind of missionary society (as their very name implies)
+among the Calvinists of Savoy and France. This original intention was
+soon overruled by the Italian advisers of Saint Francis: the southern
+European mind has ever been slow to conceive the idea of a more
+spiritual protection than bolts and bars. But even in their cloistered
+sphere the Visitation nuns clung to useful, active work, and became
+a teaching order. They and the Ursulines (who in Italy, at least, are
+cloistered) shared this task among them till the more modern order of
+the "Sacred Heart" almost monopolized it. I have myself known women
+of the most tried virtue and rare learning among the "Visitandines."
+Their rule is less strict about visitors, and even strangers are
+admitted to the parlor without a curtain being drawn behind the
+grating. Their features are thus perfectly visible, and you can even
+shake hands between the bars.
+
+Even to this day there is hardly a noble family of Catholic Europe
+that has not one or more representatives among the religious orders.
+In England, both among "converts" and families of old Catholic stock,
+there are many girls whose names have been absorbed into those given
+at the same time as the ring and veil of a novice. In Flanders
+there are fully half a dozen convents--at Bruges, Antwerp and
+Louvain--emphatically called "English," and founded by scions of great
+English families exiled for their adherence to the old faith under
+Elizabeth and James I. They are mostly Augustinians. The new order of
+the "Sacred Heart" has drawn to it women from Russia, Spain, America,
+as well as from its native land of France, and the Sisters of Charity
+have won a worldwide fame in the hospitals of the East and the recent
+battle-fields of the West.
+
+I have dwelt chiefly on the life of the old contemplative, cloistered
+orders, because they are less known to the public and more mistakes
+are made about their constitution and rules, and also because in these
+old cradle-institutions are hidden the roots of the whole religious
+system which to this day crops out so vigorously in works of mercy
+over every land where the Catholic Church has a foothold. Among the
+uncloistered orders of religious women--and here we expect to be
+better understood and more fairly met by those whose knowledge
+of "religion" is not personal--there are many that fulfill heroic
+missions, perform useful tasks, or even silent, uncomplaining
+drudgery. In all large European towns the _cornette_ of the Sister
+of St. Vincent of Paul is seen in hospital, prison and asylum, in the
+garret of the dying workman as well as by the bed where the warrior
+lies in state--in the humble schools of the lowest suburbs and in the
+_crèches_ of the darkest byways.
+
+The crèche--so called in remembrance of the crib of Bethlehem--is
+an institution of the greatest use to poor women obliged to work for
+their living. They either find their children an insuperable bar
+to their labor, or else a source of constant anxiety during their
+absence. To the crèche, however, they can take the little ones in the
+early morning and leave them till late at night, paying only a
+small sum, such as five cents a day, if they are able, while if
+circumstances warrant their being exempted even this is not required.
+The house is supported chiefly by voluntary contributions, and the
+sisters often have lay assistants eager to share in their labor of
+love. The children are taken in at all ages, the tiniest, unweaned
+infant not excepted: there are little cots of all sizes prepared for
+them, an abundance of milk, toys for the older ones, picture-books,
+etc. They are fed three times a day, washed and combed before being
+sent home (although constant applicants are expected to bring their
+children tidy and neat on first arrival), and if the mother fails to
+return at night, they are of course housed with the tenderest care. As
+there would be no room to accommodate permanent baby-boarders without
+impairing the original intention for which the crèche is opened, these
+little waifs, if not claimed after three nights and days, are sent to
+the foundling asylum: this, however, does not often occur. There are
+many of these institutions scattered through France: London has two,
+and New York will soon have one--perhaps by this time it has already
+been opened. A woman earning her bread by hard work would have to
+leave her children in the care of some neighbor, who most likely would
+fail in her task or teach the children bad things, and demand some
+compensation all the same. If the eldest child were left in charge
+of younger infants, as is so often the case with the honest poor, the
+chances are that it will break or injure its spine by carrying
+the little ones. All this anxiety is avoided by this beautiful and
+inviting arrangement, which is generally under the management of the
+Sisters of Charity. The London crèches have a night school for working
+girls and grown women in connection with the principal part of the
+institution; also a Sunday school for children. Among the rules is one
+which forbids the wearing of artificial flowers or any tawdry finery
+during school-time. But in another part of London artificial flowers
+in a Sunday bonnet are a sign of a reclaimed female drunkard, as the
+clergyman has hit on the ingenious method of advising the women to
+leave off drinking, that they may be able to afford some Sunday finery
+wherewith to please their husbands' eyes and to hold up their heads
+with the best in church!
+
+Old age is as helpless as infancy, and less attractive in its
+helplessness, so that the task undertaken by the Little Sisters of the
+Poor is still more meritorious when performed in the devoted spirit
+which characterizes them. They are literally the servants of beggars:
+they are bound to possess nothing and to hoard nothing; they live on
+the refuse of refuse, begging the crumbs from rich men's tables to
+feed the hungry ones under their care, and when these are satisfied
+sitting down to the scanty remains. They have a large establishment
+in London, which I once visited, but which has since been divided
+into two, the aim of both continuing the same. The sisters wear a very
+unpretending black gown and cap: when out of doors they add to this
+a poke-bonnet and thick veil, with a large black shawl. They have a
+little donkey-cart, which they drive themselves, and which makes daily
+pilgrimages all over town, stopping at the houses of the rich of all
+denominations and receiving contributions of that which is too often
+thought below the cook's while to claim as a perquisite. So laden, the
+Little Sisters return to their old people, and a transformation begins
+in the vast kitchen. No one would believe what savory dishes
+they manufacture out of the leavings and parings of great houses:
+everything is sifted, cleaned, washed, as the case requires; each kind
+of food is carefully separated and placed in its appointed place; an
+immense cauldron is continually on the fire, and soups and jellies are
+in a constant state of fusion and preparation. Puddings of all sorts
+come out of the renovating oven: joints of roast meat are the only
+things which are exceptional, and sometimes the more generous charity
+of some outsider adds even this luxury to the usual fare. The Little
+Sisters of the Poor clothe as well as feed their charges: for this,
+too, they trust to charity, and left-off clothes are a great boon to
+them. They are so ingenious that there is hardly a thing of which they
+cannot make a deft use. They have houses in New York and Philadelphia,
+and already do an immense deal of good among the destitute aged poor.
+
+The Order of Sion is a rather peculiar one, its principal object
+being the conversion to Christianity and subsequent education of
+young Jewesses. It has been founded within the last forty years by
+the brothers Ratisbonne, both of them Jews of distinction converted
+to Christianity. The elder brother (they are both priests now)
+superintends the order in Europe: the younger resides at
+the mother-house at Jerusalem. The convent is an educational
+establishment, where the daughters of Orientals of all kinds are
+received--Jews, Arabs, Syrians, Armenians, etc. In Europe the houses,
+of course, do not confine themselves to Jewish pupils, else they would
+find less work than their many hands could do, but receive boarders
+and give a solid education like the other and more fashionable
+convents. As a child I lived nearly a year in one of these houses, a
+large, roomy, silent villa, two hours from Paris. Behind the house
+was a garden and grove crossed in all directions by bewildering
+little paths leading into unexpected hollows where a rustic altar
+and statuette of Our Lady would be placed, or a crucifix erected in
+startling loneliness on a little hillock. A wide avenue of lime trees,
+where the pupils might be seen early in the morning studying their
+tasks, or in the afternoon eating their luncheon of grapes and brown
+bread, traversed this grove in a straight line, and here on certain
+feast-days nuns and pupils would form picturesque processions, with
+the customary banners, tapers, white veils and swelling hymns. Here
+the Ratisbonne brothers came to rest from their work of furthering the
+interests of the order--the elder a fatherly, portly man with white
+hair and a gentle manner, the younger a bronzed, black-bearded man,
+a true Oriental, with enthusiasm expressed in every line of his
+countenance and every flash of his piercing eye. He was only on a
+visit at that time, and then, as now, made Jerusalem his permanent
+home. There are one or two convents of this order in England, but I
+think none as yet in America.
+
+The convent of the Assumption at Auteuil, a suburb of Paris, is one
+renowned for its excellent educational advantages. I spent a week
+there one winter on a visit to a near relative among the pupils, and
+had an opportunity to observe the clock-like life of the place. All
+the girls I have known to be educated there were better scholars than
+any brought up elsewhere. There were many English and American girls,
+besides Poles, Germans and West Indian Creoles. The war of 1860-64
+left traces of strange animosity among the Northern and Southern
+children: it was hardly credible that such a spirit could animate
+young children so long removed from the immediate home influences that
+would otherwise have accounted for the feeling. Among the nuns were
+several English women, clever and deeply read, but softer-hearted than
+most scholars who have had too much to do with the world. There was
+also a sister of Père Hyacinthe among the Assumptionists, and the
+great orator himself often came to the convent-chapel to preach simple
+little sermons to the school-girls. His sister was terribly crushed
+by the news of his defection from the Catholic Church, and, I believe,
+refused even to see him again.
+
+A very beautiful scene which I witnessed on the 8th of December in
+this convent was the renewal of the vows. The mass was celebrated in
+the chapel at five in the morning, of course by gas- and candle-light.
+The body of the chapel was perfectly clear, the community sat in
+carved wooden stalls round the altar, the pupils assisted from the
+galleries above, and hidden under the gallery was the small but very
+perfect choir of nuns and children. The hymns of Père Hermann, a
+famous pianist and composer, a pupil of Liszt, a convert from Judaism,
+and afterward a Carmelite friar, are very popular in France, and of
+these the music chiefly consisted. At the communion the superioress
+stepped forward, wearing the white woolen mantle (which with a purple
+tunic is the complete dress of this order) and knelt to receive the
+holy sacrament. A nun in the same costume, bearing a lighted taper and
+bowing almost to the ground, stood on each side of her as the priest
+communicated her, and so on till the whole sisterhood had each knelt
+separately and the bowing figures, like attendant angels, had
+done homage to each as the tabernacle, for a time, of the blessed
+sacrament. When the mass was over each professed sister solemnly read
+over the formula of her religious vows before a table on which lay
+a crucifix, which each reverently kissed in token of rededication of
+herself to the divine service.
+
+The order of the Good Shepherd is one that is known throughout the
+world. It has branch houses in every country. The one to which I shall
+specially refer is in New York. It stands on the banks of the East
+River, overlooking Astoria and Long Island, and from its top windows
+the eye reaches far up the Sound. Like all convents, it is marvelously
+clean. The order is devoted to the reclaiming of fallen women, and in
+this instance the house is a government reformatory. A certain
+annual subsidy is guaranteed by the city authorities, but voluntary
+contributions and the industry of the inmates give more than half
+toward the real support of the house. Three sorts of women are
+under the care of the nuns: (1) those whom the judges send there as
+criminals for a specified term; (2) those whom their friends send
+in hope of their being quietly reformed without the intervention of
+justice; and (3) those who seek of their own accord to do penance and
+earn forgiveness for their sins. This is of course the most hopeful
+class, and it frequently happens that these penitents become in time
+permanent inmates, and even nuns. In the latter case, as the rule of
+the order does not allow of the reception of any woman with a stain on
+her reputation, they are clothed in the habit of the Carmelite Third
+Order (brown serge tunic and black veil), in which the austerities are
+not very great. They go through the usual novitiate and make their
+vows in the regular manner: they are then called "Magdalens," and
+inhabit a portion of the house reserved for them, say their office
+at stated hours in their own chapel, contiguous to that of the Good
+Shepherd nuns, and live under obedience to the superioress of the
+latter. I saw about a dozen of them taking their evening walk in a
+pretty enclosed garden by the river-side. Other women who do not feel
+inclined to so full a renunciation of their liberty bind themselves
+by a promise, good for one year only, to the service of the house, and
+wear a semi-religious kind of cap and a scarlet badge with the letter
+_P_ or _F_: they are divided into two classes, under the patronage of
+Saint Joseph and Saint Patrick. They renew the promise from year to
+year, and often spend their lives in this lay sisterhood of penance.
+Every inmate, be she prisoner or penitent, is taught to sew, first
+by hand, then on the machine: many on their first entrance are so
+ignorant that they do not know on which finger to place the thimble,
+but after a while most are able to do a good day's work on common
+shirts and linen articles which the order contracts for with the
+wholesale shops. Another source of profit to the house is the laundry,
+but this is conducted exclusively by the nuns themselves. They do all
+the washing of surplices, altar-cloths, etc. for most of the Catholic
+churches of New York, for the convents and colleges, and for many
+private families. The fluting on children's frocks and the polish on
+shirts is something wonderful, and the young nun who superintends
+the concern seemed to be a real enthusiast in the matter. The nuns'
+dormitories, as well as those of the prisoners, are miracles of
+neatness; the refectories likewise. There are various immense airy
+halls where the nuns and girls sit sewing, and where a stranger sees
+a spectacle new to most people, certainly unexpected by the greater
+number--that of an assemblage of ugly faces, each belonging to
+an _unfortunate_ whose temptations are usually understood to lie
+originally in her fatal beauty. Many of them are scarcely fourteen,
+and if once admitted, the melancholy chance is that they will be here
+again time after time: the sentences are seldom long enough to afford
+room for thought and conversion. Among the penitents the cases are
+far more hopeful, but the gentle sisters never forget their kind,
+conciliatory manner toward all; and unless a perverse demon whispers
+to their ear that these nuns are their _jailers_, the poor prisoners
+see little to remind them that they are not in a voluntarily chosen
+home.
+
+Nuns are by no means a shiftless, unbusiness-like set of women: they
+can look after themselves as well as after the poor and forlorn:
+many of them, were they in the world, would be called strong-minded,
+blue-stockinged women. At Montreal there is a large establishment
+of the Sisters of the Congrégation de Notre Dame, generally called
+Congregation Sisters, founded by Margaret Bourgeoys. They are the
+great educational sisters of Lower Canada. They own St. Paul's Island,
+some distance above the city: this is their farm, and one of the nuns,
+called the sister économe, has to visit it frequently and superintend
+matters, being the stewardess and committee of ways and means and
+revenue department combined. Of course a good horse is desirable for
+these drives, and their horses being one source of profit, the économe
+feels that the reputation of the breed ought not to be depreciated
+by her own "turnout." The young men of the town often meet her on the
+road and try to distance her, but this she will never permit, and her
+horse, faultlessly groomed and in splendid condition, always comes
+off the winner in these innocent races. One day, however, the
+bishop, having heard of this rivalry on the road, sent for her and
+remonstrated, alleging that such "fast" conduct might lend itself to
+scandalous rumors, and was altogether unbecoming in a _religious_. The
+nun smiled, and protested that she was ready to obey her superiors'
+orders in every particular, as all good Catholics and good religious
+are bound to do, but slyly insinuated the following cogent argument:
+"Does not Your Lordship think, however, that, since our convent lives
+partly on the reputation of this famous breed of trotters, it is
+hardly for the credit of the house that its representative conveyance
+should drag along as dejectedly as a street-vendor's donkey-cart?"
+What the bishop's reply was "the deponent sayeth not," but we may
+infer that this shrewd woman was at least as capable of controlling a
+wide meshwork of business details as he was of managing his diocese.
+Now, there are many such women in convents, for the religious
+life leads not, as people think, to a renunciation of your own
+self-dependence, but on the contrary to the highest kind of confidence
+in your own power _when backed by the help of Almighty God_. Saint
+Teresa of Spain once said these memorable words: "Teresa and tenpence
+are nothing: Teresa, tenpence _and God_ are omnipotent."
+
+LADY BLANCHE MURPHY.
+
+
+
+
+THE ATONEMENT OF LEAM DUNDAS.
+
+BY MRS. E. LYNN LINTON, AUTHOR OF "PATRICIA KEMBALL."
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+SMALL CAUSES.
+
+
+The frost came early this year; and by the second week in December
+the ponds and shallows in the neighborhood of North Aston were covered
+with ice that made good sliding-grounds for the children. Presently
+it grew and spread till the deeper waters were frozen over, and a
+skating-rink was formed of the Broad that bore the heavier weights
+without danger. It was a merry time for the North Astonians; and even
+the elder men strapped on their skates and took colds and contusions
+in their endeavors to double back on their supple youth and to forget
+the stiffer facts of time. As for the young people, they were in the
+full swing of innocent enjoyment; and the girls wished that the frost
+would last through the whole of the winter, so that they might make
+up skating-parties with the boys every day, and avoid the unmeaning
+deadness of "tender" weather.
+
+This ice had been in perfect condition for three days and the Broad
+had been thronged, but Leam had not appeared. All the other young
+ladies of the country had come, Adelaide Birkett one of the most
+diligent in her attendance, for was not Edgar Harrowby one of the
+most constant in his? But though more than one pair of eyes had looked
+anxiously along the road that led to Ford House, which some people
+still continued to call Andalusia Cottage, no lithe, graceful figure
+had been seen gliding between the frosted hedgerows, and Edgar, like
+Alick, had skated in disappointment, the former with the feeling of an
+actor playing to an empty house when he made his finest turns and she
+was not there to see them; the latter with the self-reproach of one
+taking enjoyment abroad while the beloved is sitting in solitude and
+dreariness at home.
+
+At last, on the fourth day, she came down with her father; and to at
+least two on the ground the advent of a slender-waisted girl with dark
+eyes and small feet changed the whole aspect of things, and made life
+for the moment infinitely more beautiful and desirable than it had
+been. It was a brilliant day, with as fine a sun as England can show
+in winter--no wind, but a clear air, crisp, dry and exhilarating,
+Every one was there--Edgar, the most graceful of the skaters; Alick,
+the most awkward; Dr. Corfield, essaying careful little spurts,
+schoolboy fashion, along the edges; and the portly rector, proud
+to show his past superiority in sharp criticism on the style of the
+present day as a voucher for his own greater grace and skill in the
+days when he too was an Adonis for the one part and an Admirable
+Crichton for the other, and carried no superfluous flesh about his
+ribs. Among them, too, looking on the scene as if it was something in
+which he had no inherited share, as if these were not men and women to
+whom he was sib on Adam's side, but cunningly contrived machines whose
+movements he contemplated with benign indifference, was to be seen the
+mild philosophic occupant of Lionnet--that Mr. Gryce of whom no one
+knew more than that he studied dead languages through the day and
+caught moths and beetles in the twilight, had come without letters of
+introduction and was never seen at church; hence that he was a man of
+whom to beware, and a dangerous element among them. The pendulum of
+acceptance, which had swung so far on one side in the unguaranteed
+reception of Madame de Montfort, had now gone back to the
+corresponding extent on the other; and no one, not even Mr. Birkett as
+the clergyman, nor Mr. Dundas as the landlord, had held out a finger
+to the new-comer, not to speak of a hand; while all regarded
+his presence at North Aston as rather a liberty than otherwise.
+Nevertheless, as time would show, though he had come there without
+purpose and lived among the people without interest, he would not be
+found without his uses, and one at least of the threads making up the
+skein of life at North Aston would be placed in his hands.
+
+As Leam came to the side both Edgar Harrowby and Alick Corfield turned
+to greet her, the usually sad face of the curate, already brightened
+by fresh air and exercise, brighter still at seeing her, the handsome
+head of the squire held a little higher as his figure involuntarily
+straightened and he put out his best powers in her honor. But Alick's
+shambling legs carried him fastest, and he was first at the edge, the
+neighborhood looking on, prepared to build a Tower of Babel heaven
+high on the foundation of a single brick. Leam Dundas had not yet been
+fitted with her hypothetical mate, and people wanted to see to whom
+they were to give her.
+
+"Oh, come on with me!" cried Alick as soon as he came up, speaking
+with the unconscious familiarity of gladness at the advent for which
+he had watched so long. He held out his arm to Leam crooked awkwardly
+at the elbow.
+
+"No," said Leam a little shortly.
+
+She always stiffened when Alick spoke to her before folk with anything
+like intimacy in his manner. He was her good friend, granted, and she
+liked him in a way and respected him in a way, though he was still too
+much after the pattern of her former slave and dog to gain her best
+esteem. She was one of those women who are arbitrary and disdainful to
+masculine weakness, and require to be absolutely dominated by men if
+they are to respect them as men like to be respected by women, and
+as--_pace_ the Shriekers--the true woman likes to respect men. And
+Alick, though he had her in his hands and might destroy her at a
+word--clergyman, too, as he was, and thus possessing the key to higher
+things than she knew--was always so humble, so subservient, he made
+her feel as if she was his superior--not, as it should have been, that
+he was hers. In consequence, girl-like, proud and shy, she treated
+him with more disdain than she ought to have done, and used the power
+which he himself gave her without much consideration as to its effect.
+Besides, she did not wish to let people think he knew too much of
+her. With the nervous fancy of youth, ever believing itself to be
+transparent and understood all through, she imagined it would be seen
+that he had the right to speak to her familiarly--that he had her in
+his hand to destroy her at a word if so minded. Wherefore she said
+"No" shortly, and turned away her eyes as her protest against his glad
+face, crooked elbow and eager offer.
+
+"I will not let you fall, and it is very jolly," cried Alick cheerily,
+more like the boyish Alick of former days than the ascetic young
+curate of modern times.
+
+"I do not like it," said Leam.
+
+Alick's countenance fell; and when his face, always long, became
+longer still, with a congealed-looking skin, sad, red-lidded eyes
+and a hanging under lip, it was not lovely. Indeed, according to
+the miserable fatality which so often makes the spiritually best the
+physically worst--like the gods whom the Athenians enclosed in outer
+cases of satyrs and hideous masks of misshapen men--Alick's face was
+never lovely. But his soul? If that could have been seen, the old
+carved parable of the Greeks would have been justified.
+
+"Nonsense, Leam! Why cannot you do as others do?" cried Mr. Dundas.
+
+He wanted to get rid of her for a while, and he was not unwilling that
+Alick, whose affection he suspected, should rid him of her for ever
+if he cared to saddle himself for life with such an uncomfortable
+companion.
+
+"I do not like it," repeated Leam.
+
+"Nonsense!" said her father again. "Other girls are on. Why should you
+not join them? I see Adelaide Birkett and the Fairbairns. Why not go
+to them with Alick?"
+
+"It looks silly balancing one's self on the edge of a knife. And I
+should fall," said Leam.
+
+"No, you shall not fall," Alick pleaded. "I will undertake that you
+shall not."
+
+His arm was still held out, always awkwardly crooked.
+
+Leam lifted her eyes. "No," she said with her old calm decision, and
+moved away. Four years ago she would have supplemented her refusal by
+the words, "You are stupid. You tease me," Now she contented herself
+with action and accent.
+
+Alick, very sorry, moist-eyed from disappointment, but not caring to
+stand there and get chilled--for our good Alick was a little afraid
+of cold, after the manner of mothers' sons in general--skated off
+again to keep up his circulation, his knees bent, his chin forward,
+his arms swinging as balance-weights to his long body, the ends of
+his white woolen comforter flying behind him, and his legs running
+anywhere, the clumsiest and most ungraceful skater on the Broad. All
+the same, he never fell, and he went faster than even Edgar in his
+perfection of manly elegance.
+
+Edgar had watched the whole of this little scene between Leam and
+Alick while seeming to be occupied only in executing his spread eagles
+and outside curves to perfection, and it was no secret to him what
+it meant. The demon of masculine vanity, never far off where a pretty
+woman was concerned, entered and took possession of him. He would
+succeed where Alick Corfield had failed, and Leam, who refused her old
+friend, should gratify her new. He had been guiding Adelaide over the
+ice, but she was rather too stiff in her movements, not sufficiently
+pliant nor yielding to be a very pleasant skating companion. And he
+had been pushing Josephine along the slide, but Joseph was too stout
+and short-breathed to be an ideal convoy; also he had been racing and
+half romping with the Fairbairn girls, who slipped and tumbled and
+laughed and screamed--more hoydenish than he thought pleasing; but
+now he intended to reward himself with Leam, whose action he was sure
+would be all that was delightful, even though unaccustomed, and who
+would look so well on his arm. Her slight and supple figure against
+his breadth and height and sense of solidity and strength, her dark
+hair and his beard of tawny brown, her large dark eyes and his of true
+Saxon blue, her southern face, oval in shape, cream-colored in tint,
+and his, square, open, ruddy, Scandinavian,--yes, they would make
+a splendid pair by their very contrast; and Edgar, narrowing his
+ambition to his circumstances, was quietly resolved to win the day
+over Alick Corfield by inducing Leam to cross the Broad with him
+after she had so manifestly refused her old friend. It was but a small
+object of ambition, but we must do what we can, thought Edgar; and
+it is the best wisdom to content ourselves with mice when we have no
+lions to destroy. He did not, however, rush up to her with Alick's
+tactless precipitancy. He waited just long enough for her to desire,
+and not so long as to disappoint; then, speaking to Adelaide by the
+way, and giving her and Josephine each a helping hand, he came in
+a series of clean, showy curves to where Leam and her father were
+standing.
+
+Leam was glad to meet again this handsome man who had seen so much and
+who talked so well. He was something different from the rest, and
+so far superior to them all. But, not being one of those instinctive
+girls who yield without pressure and fall in love at first sight,
+there were no flushings nor palpitations as Edgar came up; only a
+grave little smile stole half timidly over her face, and she forgot
+that he had insulted her mother's country by calling her the prettiest
+Andalusian he had ever seen.
+
+"Do you skate, Miss Dundas?" asked Edgar after a while, during which
+he had been talking of different matters, beginning with the weather,
+that camel of English conversation, and ending with the state of the
+ice and the chances of a thaw. His five minutes of commonplaces seemed
+an eternity to Adelaide, watching them jealously from a distance.
+
+"No," said Leam.
+
+"I want her to learn; and this is a good opportunity," put in her
+father.
+
+"You are right. It is a capital exercise and a graceful
+accomplishment," said Edgar. "I think a woman never looks better than
+when she is skating," he added carelessly.
+
+"I think she looks silly," said Leam.
+
+He laughed. "That is because you are not English _pur sang_," he cried
+gayly. "If you had only the brave old Norse blood in you, you would
+take to the frost and ice like second nature."
+
+"No, I am not English _pur sang_," answered Leam gravely. "I am more
+than half Spanish," a little proudly.
+
+"Hang it all, you can't make it more than half!" said her father
+testily.
+
+"And that makes such a splendid combination," said Edgar, slightly
+lowering his voice as, ignoring his remark, he turned away from Mr.
+Dundas and gave himself wholly to Leam. "Spanish for art and poetry
+and all the fervid beauty of the South--English for the courage,
+the hardihood, the energy of the North. You ought to cultivate the
+characteristics of both nationalities, Miss Dundas," in a louder tone;
+"and to do justice to one of them you ought to learn to skate."
+
+"That's right, Edgar; so I say," cried Mr. Dundas, who had heard only
+the last part.
+
+"I cannot learn," said Leam; but her face became strangely flushed,
+and she felt her resolution growing limp as her cheeks grew red.
+
+"Yes, you can. I could teach you in half an hour," cried Edgar,
+pulling down his coat-cuffs with an air.
+
+"Go, Leam: let Major Harrowby give you a lesson," said her father.
+"Perhaps he is a better teacher than that shambling-looking Alick. Go,
+child."
+
+"Shall I?" asked Edgar. "At least let me assist you to cross the ice,
+if without skates at first."
+
+He held out his hand.
+
+"I shall fall," objected reluctant Leam.
+
+"No, you shall not. I will answer for that. Come. Will you not trust
+me?" This last phrase was said half tenderly, half with an offended
+kind of remonstrance, and he was still holding out his hand.
+
+"Go, Leam," urged her father.
+
+"It is silly, and I shall fall," repeated Leam.
+
+Nevertheless, she put her hand in Edgar's, and he took her on his arm
+in triumph.
+
+At first her steps were slow and timid; but as her feet grew more
+accustomed to the unusual ground, as she gained more confidence in
+the strong arm that held her like a bar of iron, as her youth began
+to assert itself in the physical pleasure of the fresh air and the
+gliding movement, she lost her shyness and timidity, and she found
+herself almost laughing--she, who never laughed and only so rarely
+smiled.
+
+"You like it?" he asked, looking down on her with a man's admiration
+for a pretty woman marked in every line and feature.
+
+"Yes, so much!" she answered, her usual reserved, self-centred manner
+for the moment lost.
+
+"Now you will know how to trust me in future," he said not very
+loudly.
+
+She looked up to him, carrying her eyes right into his. "Yes, I will,"
+she answered simply.
+
+At this moment Alick joined them, and Leam suddenly lost her new-found
+joy.
+
+"I am glad you have come on at last," said her faithful dog, effacing
+himself and his disappointment with an effort.
+
+"They made me," Leam replied.
+
+"I hope not against your will and not to your displeasure," said
+Edgar, still looking down into her face with the man's admiration of a
+woman's beauty so strongly marked in his own.
+
+"No," she answered: "I have liked it."
+
+"Let us take her between us, major, and give her a good spin," said
+Alick, grasping the upper part of her arm uncomfortably.
+
+Edgar slightly pressed the hand he held crosswise. "Would you like to
+double your protectors?" he asked. "Shall I share my office?"
+
+"No," said Leam. "I like best to be with one person only."
+
+"And possession being the nine points, let us go on," laughed Edgar,
+whirling her away. "By the by, would you have preferred my giving
+you to Mr. Corfield as 'the one person only'?" he asked with affected
+doubt, making pretence of wishing to know her mind. He was skating
+rapidly now. It was as good as flying to Leam, and she was happy and
+very grateful.
+
+"I would rather be with you," she answered.
+
+"Thanks!" said Edgar, and smiled.
+
+"He is awkward, and you are not," continued Leam, anxious to explain.
+"But I like him very much. He is good and kind; and he cannot help
+being awkward, can he?"
+
+"No," said Edgar coldly. "So you like him very much, do you?"
+
+"Very much," repeated Leam with loyal emphasis, "He has always been my
+friend here."
+
+"I hope for the future that I may be included in that sacred place,"
+said Edgar after a pause.
+
+Leam looked at him slowly, fixedly. "You will never be so good to me
+as he is," she answered.
+
+It was the man's heart that beat now, the man's cheek that flushed.
+Who could keep his pulses still when those eyes were turned to his
+with, as it seemed, such maddening meaning? "I will try," he said; and
+from that moment the die was cast. Edgar put himself in competition
+with Alick: he lowered his pride to such a rivalry as this, and threw
+his whole energies into the determination to surpass and supplant a
+man for whom even the least personable of his own sex need have had no
+fear.
+
+He kept Leam for a long time after this, laying ground-lines for the
+future; forgetting Adelaide and the suitability which had hitherto
+been such an important factor in his calculations; forgetting his
+horror of Pepita, whose daughter Leam was, and his contempt for weak,
+fusionless Mr. Dundas, who was her father; forgetting the conventional
+demands of his class, intolerant of foreign blood; forgetting all but
+the words which said that Alick was her best friend here, and doubted
+his (Edgar's) ever being so good to her as that other had been. It was
+on his heart now to convince her that he could be as good to her as
+Alick, and, if she would allow him, a great deal better. At last he
+slackened, and pulled up at the group of which the Fairbairn girls and
+Adelaide Birkett were the most conspicuous members.
+
+"What a long skate you have had!" said Susy Fairbairn ruefully, for
+all that she was a good-tempered girl and not disposed to measure her
+neighbor's wheat by her own bushel. But this was a special matter; for
+Edgar Harrowby was the pride of the place, and they took count of his
+doings as of their local prince, and envied the lucky queen of the
+hour bitterly or sadly according to the mood and the person.
+
+"It was the first time I had tried," said Leam, all aglow with the
+unwonted exercise and unusual excitement.
+
+"I suppose you began by saying you could not and would not, and then
+did more than any one else?" said Adelaide in an acrid voice, veiling
+a very displeased face with a very unpleasant smile; but the veil was
+too transparent and showed the displeasure with palpable plainness.
+
+Leam looked at her in a half-surprised way. Jealousy was a passion
+of which she was wholly ignorant, and she did not understand the
+key-note. She knew nothing of the unspoken affair between Edgar and
+the rector's daughter, and could not read between the lines. Why was
+Adelaide cross because she had been a long time upon the ice? Did it
+hurt her? They had not been near her--not interfered with her in any
+way: why should she be vexed that they, Major Harrowby and herself,
+had been enjoying themselves? So she thought, gazing at Adelaide with
+the serious, searching look which always irritated that young lady,
+and at this moment almost unbearably.
+
+"I wonder they did not teach you at school that it was rude to stare
+as you do, Leam," she cried with impolitic haste and bitterness. "What
+are you looking at? Am I changing into a monster, or what?"
+
+"I am looking at you because you are so cross about nothing," answered
+Leam gravely. "What does it matter to any one if I have been on the
+ice long or no? Why should you be angry?" "Angry!" said Adelaide with
+supreme disdain. "I am not sufficiently interested in what you do,
+Leam, to be angry or cross, as you call it. I confess I do not like
+affectation: that is all."
+
+"Neither do I like affectation," returned Leam. "People should say
+what they feel."
+
+"Indeed! That might not always be agreeable," said Adelaide with her
+most sarcastic air. "Perhaps it is as well that the laws of politeness
+keep one's mouth shut at times, and that we do not say what we feel."
+
+"It would be better," insisted Leam.
+
+"I wonder if you would say so were I to tell you what I thought of you
+now?" Adelaide replied, measuring her scornfully with her eyes.
+
+"Why should you not? What have I done to be ashamed of?" Leam asked.
+
+"And you call yourself natural and not affected!" Adelaide cried,
+turning away abruptly.--"How wrong," she said in a low voice to Edgar,
+"turning the head of such a silly child as this!"
+
+Edgar laughed. The vein of cruelty traversing his nature made him find
+more amusement than chagrin in Adelaide's patent jealousy: he thought
+she was silly, and he was rather amazed at her want of dignity; still,
+it was amusing, and he enjoyed it as so much fun.
+
+But when he laughed Leam's discomfiture was complete. "I am sorry I
+came on the ice at all," she said with a mixture of her old pride and
+new softness that made her infinitely lovely, the proud little head
+held high, but the beautiful eyes dewy. "I have offended every one,
+and I do not know why." Just then Alick came rambling by. She held out
+her hand to him. Here at least was her friend and faithful follower.
+He would not jeer at her nor laugh, nor yet look cross and angry, as
+if she had done wrong. "Take me to papa," she said superbly, making as
+if to withdraw her other hand from Edgar.
+
+Alick's homely face brightened like the morning. "Certainly," he said.
+
+"Certainly not," flashed Edgar proudly, taking both her hands in his
+crosswise and grasping them even more firmly than before. "You are in
+my charge, Miss Dundas, and I can give you up to no one else--not even
+by your own desire."
+
+Adelaide's slight cast became an unmistakable squint; the Fairbairn
+girls fluttered, half frightened at the chance of a fracas; Alick
+looked irresolute; Edgar looked haughty and displeased; Leam tragic
+and proud, partly bewildered, partly distressed.
+
+Then Edgar cut the whole thing short by taking her away in silence,
+but like a whirlwind, saying, when half over the ground and well out
+of hearing, "What have I done to you, Miss Dundas, that you should try
+to throw me over like that?"
+
+"You laughed at me," said Leam.
+
+"Laughed at you? You are dreaming."
+
+"You did," she persisted.
+
+"Pardon me: I laughed because my little friend Adelaide was so cross
+at your skating. It was fun to see her so angry."
+
+"I saw no fun in it," Leam returned. "I only saw that she was angry
+with me, and impertinent, and that then you laughed at me."
+
+"I swear to you I did not," cried Edgar earnestly. "Will you believe
+me? Tell me, Miss Dundas, that you exonerate me from such a charge.
+Tell me that you are sure I did not laugh at you."
+
+Leam looked at him with her large luminous eyes serious, questioning.
+"If you say so, I must believe you," she answered slowly, "but I
+thought you did."
+
+"If you could read my heart, you would know I did not," he said
+emphatically.
+
+They were close on the bank now, where Mr. Dundas was walking with the
+rector.
+
+"Say you believe me," Edgar almost whispered in his rich musical
+voice, so sweet and tender. "Say it, I beseech you! You do not know
+how I shall suffer else."
+
+She looked at him again. "I do," she said in the manner of a
+surrender, the grave little smile which was her most eloquent
+expression of pleasure stealing over her face.
+
+"Thank you," said Edgar: "now you have made me happy."
+
+"I do not understand why," she answered with serious simplicity.
+
+"Perhaps you will some day," he replied as her father came down to
+receive her, rather more content with her than he usually was, seeing
+that Edgar Harrowby--Major Harrowby, the possessor of the Hill and
+some thousands a year--had singled her out for his special attention,
+and had made a picture on the ice almost as pretty as an illustrated
+weekly.
+
+But Edgar, not wishing to go too far in the way of provocation, nor
+to burn his boats behind him before he had decided on his settlement,
+skated off to Adelaide so soon as he had deposited Leam, and by a few
+judicious praises and well-administered tendernesses of voice and look
+succeeded in bringing her back to her normal condition of quiescent
+resolve and satisfaction. Then, when she was her smiling self
+again--for if she had frowns for many others, she had always
+smiles for the Harrowbys as a race, and specially for Edgar as an
+individual--he said, in the manner of one wishing to know the truth of
+a thing, "What made you so savage to Miss Dundas just now?"
+
+"I cannot bear her," said Adelaide with energy.
+
+"No, I see that you dislike her; but why?"
+
+"I can hardly tell you: she has never done anything very bad, but I
+always feel as if she could, she is so silent, so reserved, so odd
+altogether."
+
+"A woman's reason!" he laughed, "Dr. Fell over again."
+
+"It may be," returned Adelaide coldly, "but I believe in my own
+instinctive dislikes. I felt the same kind of mistrust for that
+wretched woman who called herself Madame de Montfort, about whom papa
+and mamma and the whole place went mad. And after her death quite
+odd-enough stories came out to justify my doubts and condemn her
+faithful friends. Every one said she poisoned herself because she knew
+that she would be unmasked and she was afraid to face the ordeal. And
+her debts, I believe, were frightful; though it served that ridiculous
+Mr. Dundas right for marrying such a creature."
+
+"But granting that this woman was an adventuress, as you say, what has
+that to do with Miss Dundas?"
+
+"Nothing, of course: I only mentioned her to show you that I have some
+accuracy of judgment, and that when I say I dislike Leam Dundas my
+opinion ought to be taken as worth consideration."
+
+Adelaide said this quietly, in the well-bred but absolutely positive
+manner which she would have when they were married and she differed
+from him in opinion. It was the moral arbitrariness of the superior
+being, which, amusing now in the maiden, might become wearisome, not
+to say oppressive, in the wife.
+
+"Well, I do not know her as you do, of course, but I cannot see why
+you should dislike her so much," persisted Edgar.
+
+"Trust me, some day it will be seen why," she answered. "I feel
+confident that before long Leam will show herself in her true colors,
+and those will be black. I pity the man who will ever be her husband."
+
+Edgar laughed somewhat forcedly, then looked at Leam walking up the
+road alone, and thought that her husband would not need much pity
+for his state. Her beauty stood with him for moral qualities and
+intellectual graces. Given such a face as hers, such a figure, and
+all the rest was included. And when he thought of her eyes and the
+maddening way in which they looked into his; of the grave little
+smile, evanescent, delicate, subtle, the very aroma of a smile, so
+different from the coarse hilarity of your commonplace English girls;
+of the reticence and pride which gave such value to her smaller
+graces; of the enchanting look and accent which had accompanied
+her act of self-surrender just now--that acceptance of his word and
+renunciation of her own fancy which had put him in the place and given
+him the honor of a conqueror,--he accused Adelaide in his heart of
+prejudice and jealousy, and despised her for her littleness. In fact,
+he was nearer to loving Leam Dundas because of these strictures
+than he would have been had the rector's daughter praised her; and
+Adelaide, usually so politic, had made a horribly bad move by her
+unguarded confession of distrust and dislike.
+
+The whole episode, however, had been lost in its true meaning to all
+save one--that one the Mr. Gryce of Lionnet, who already knew what
+there was to be known of every family in the place, and who had the
+faculty of dovetailing parts into a whole characteristic of the born
+detective.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+THE GREEN YULE.
+
+
+The frost broke suddenly, and was succeeded by damp, close,
+unseasonable weather, continuing up to Christmas, and giving the
+"green yule" which the proverb says "makes a fat churchyard." That
+proverb was justified sadly enough at North Aston, for typhus set in
+among the low-lying cottages, and, as in olden times, when jail-fever
+struck the lawyer at the bar and the judge on the bench in stern
+protest against the foulness they fostered, so now the sins of the
+wealthy landlords in suffering such cottages as these in the bottom
+to exist reacted on their own class, and the fever entered other
+dwellings beside those of the peasants.
+
+Two of the gentry were struck down by it--Alick Corfield and the new
+occupant of Lionnet, that Mr. Gryce who never went to church, and who
+was assumed in consequence to have neither a soul to be saved by God
+nor a heart to be touched by man. And these were just the two who,
+according to the theory of the good or evil of a man's deeds returned
+to him in kind, had the most reason to expect exemption. For Alick had
+spent his strength in visiting the sick as a faithful pastor should,
+and Mr. Gryce had taken them material help with royal abundance. Both
+together they had to pay the price of principle, always an expensive
+luxury, and never personally so safe a card to play in the game of
+life as selfishness. For virtue has not only to be contented with its
+own reward, as we constantly hear, but has to accept punishment for
+its good deeds, vice for the most part carrying off the blue ribbons
+and the gold medals, while poor virtue, shivering in the corner, gets
+fitted with the fool's cap or is haled into the marketplace to be
+pelted in the pillory. As was seen now in North Aston.
+
+The rector, who never went into an infected cottage nor suffered
+a parishioner to stand between the wind and his security, kept his
+portly strength and handsome flesh intact, but Alick nearly lost his
+life as the practical comment on his faithful ministry; and Mr. Gryce,
+who, if he did not carry spiritual manna wherewith to feed hungry
+souls, did take quinine and port wine, money and comforting substances
+generally, for half-starved aching bodies, was also laid hold of by
+that inexorable law which knows nothing about providential immunities
+from established consequences on account of the good motives of the
+actors. This would have been called heresy by the North Astonian
+families, who professed to trust themselves to superior care, but none
+the less used Condy's Fluid as a means whereby the work of Providence
+might be rendered easier to it, nor disdained precipitate flight from
+the protection in which they all said dolefully they believed. But
+there is a wide difference between saying and doing, and men who are
+shocked by words of frank unbelief find faithless deeds both natural
+and in reason.
+
+In spite, then, of that expressed trust in Providence which is part
+of the garniture of English respectability, a great fear fell on the
+North Aston gentry when these two of their own circle were attacked.
+The fever, while it had confined itself to the ill-drained,
+picturesque little cottages below, was lamentable enough, but not more
+than lamentable on the broad platform of a common humanity; and those
+who had lost nothing told those who had lost all that they must bear
+their cross with patience, seeing that it was the divine will that it
+should be so. Now, when the fiery epidemic had come upon the gentry
+face to face in their homes, it was a monster from which they must
+flee without delay, for no one knew whose house was safe, nor for how
+long his own might remain uninfected.
+
+Mrs. Harrowby and her daughters went off to Cheltenham two days after
+Alick was announced as "down," to find there the security of
+living which had failed them here. They were people of the highest
+respectability--people who are the very pith and marrow of English
+social virtue; but they had not been touched with the divine fire of
+self-sacrifice for humanity, and they had no desire to hush the groans
+of the afflicted if they thereby ran the risk of having to gnash their
+own teeth. They could do no good at home. As Mrs. Harrowby said, as
+one propounding a self-evident paradox, how could they go and see the
+sick or help to nurse ploughmen and their children? They would only
+catch the fever themselves, and so spread it still farther. And every
+one knows what a wicked thing that is to do. Cook had orders to supply
+a certain amount of soup and wine when asked for, which was more to
+the purpose than any mere sentimental kindness, of no use to the one
+and highly dangerous to the other; and as Edgar had a great deal to do
+in the house and stables, it was as well, she said with the air of one
+undergoing something disagreeable for high principles, to get out of
+his way and leave him to his bricks and mortar undisturbed. Gentlemen,
+she said, as the clamp holding all together, do not like to be
+interfered with in their own domain. That fever in the bottom was such
+an admirable lever of womanly good sense! So they went and enjoyed
+themselves at Cheltenham as much as it was in the Harrowby nature to
+do, and even Josephine's kind heart consoled itself in the Pump-room
+while their miserable tenants at home sickened and died as comfortably
+as circumstances would allow.
+
+The Fairbairns, too, found themselves obliged to pay a long-promised
+visit to London now on the instant, and swept out of the place with
+even more than their characteristic promptitude; and the rector would
+have given up his charge to a substitute if he could. But floating
+clerical labor was just then scarce, and he could not find any one
+to take his place in the Valley of the Shadow, though he offered the
+liberal terms which are dictated by fear. He sent away his wife and
+daughter, but he himself was bound to his post, and had to make the
+best of the bad bit of cord that held him. He used to say with his
+grand manner of martyrdom that, whatever he suffered, he must pull
+the laboring-oar to the end, and attend to the sheep committed to his
+charge. And he said it so often that he got at last to believe in his
+own devotion. All the same, that laboring-oar of his pulled nothing
+heavier than a cock-boat, and in waters no stormier than a duck-pond;
+and when his sheep had the rot he was too delicate about the hands
+to meddle with them. He preached to the living and he buried the dead
+surrounded by all the protective appliances that science has devised
+or money can supply. When the epidemic was over he too talked of
+Providence and his trust therein, and how he had been mercifully
+spared as his reward.
+
+Mrs. Birkett's native indolence would have kept her at home, well
+fumigated and isolated, even in such a strait of fear and danger as
+this in which they all were, and Adelaide was racked with torment at
+leaving Leam unwatched and unhindered in the same place as Edgar; yet,
+being more afraid of the fever than even of a potential rival, she
+agreed with her father that in justice to themselves they ought to go
+now at once; and Pace, who was to remain to take care of the rector,
+packed up their best dresses, and sent them off with Adelaide's maid
+shared between them. She prophesied, however, that their things would
+all be spoiled before they returned, and then they would know her
+value. As Mr. Dundas elected to remain at home, not being afraid of
+infection and being tired of travel, Mrs. Birkett insisted on
+taking little Fina with her. This was her contribution to the sum
+of philanthropy and self-sacrifice in the world, and it was not
+despicable; for Fina was restless and only six years of age, and Mrs.
+Birkett was indolent and soon tired.
+
+Thus, the whole society of the place was reduced now to the rector,
+Mr. Dundas and Leam, with Edgar Harrowby left alone at the Hill. The
+Corfields did not count, because of Alick's illness, by which they
+were put in quarantine; and if Mr. Gryce at Lionnet had not been the
+cipher he was, his illness too would have disbarred him.
+
+There was nothing of the saint by nature nor of the instinctive
+philanthropist about Leam. She was too concentrated for general
+benevolence, and men and women whom she did not know were little more
+than symbols to her. When she loved it was with her whole heart, her
+whole being: failing this kind of love, she had but weak affections
+and no curiosity, in which much of our ordinary charity consists. When
+the servants told her of such and such distressing circumstances, she
+was sorry because they were sorry, not because she realized in her own
+emotions the troubles she did not share or see. When prompted she sent
+improper things in the way of diet and useless things in the way
+of dress for the benefit of the poor fever patients--and she sent
+generously--but it never occurred to her as possible that she should
+go to see them in their own homes. When we read of a cyclone in China
+which has killed half a hundred mandarins and a small army of coolies,
+we realize the sorrow of the survivors no more than we realize the
+distress of a disturbed ant-hill; and Leam's attitude of mind toward
+the poor of her native village was precisely the same as ours toward
+the Chinese killed in a cyclone or the ants murdered in their hill.
+
+But she went daily to Steel's Corner, because she knew the Corfields
+and in her own way liked Alick. Mrs. Corfield assured her there was
+no danger, not a particle, with her free use of disinfectants and her
+cunning devices of ventilation. And Leam believed her, and acted on
+her belief, which gave her a false look of heroism and devotion that
+won the heart of poor Pepita's "crooked stick" for ever. She thought
+it so good of the girl, so brave and unselfish; and you could scarcely
+have expected such nice feeling from Leam, now could you? she used
+to ask her husband half a dozen times a day, ringing the changes
+on Leam's good qualities as no one in the place had ever rung them
+before, and disturbing the poor doctor in his calculations on the
+varying strength of henbane and aconite till he wished that Leam
+Dundas had never been born. Mrs. Corfield was just as wrong in
+ascribing heroic qualities to the girl for her daily visits to ask
+after Alick as she had been when she had credited her with moral
+faults because of her intellectual ignorance. She was not afraid
+because she knew nothing about infection, and had therefore the
+boldness of ignorance, and she went daily to ask after Alick because
+she somehow slipped into the groove of doing so; and a groove was
+a great thing to conservative Leam. Nevertheless, she was really
+concerned at the illness of her first North Astonian friend, and
+wished that he would soon get well. She never thought that if he died
+she would be rid of the only person who knew her deadly secret. Leam
+was not one who would care to buy her own safety at the price of
+another's destruction; and, more than this, she was not afraid that
+Alick would betray her.
+
+This, then, was the condition of things at North Aston at this moment:
+the villagers dying of fever in the bottom, the families seeking
+safety in flight, Leam going daily to Steel's Corner to ask after
+Alick and sit for precisely half an hour with Mrs. Corfield, and Edgar
+not so much taken up with bricks and mortar as not to understand times
+and habits, and therefore, through that understanding, seeing her for
+some part of every day. And the more he saw of her the more he yearned
+to see, and the stronger grew her strange fascination over him. To
+him, at least, the fever had not been an unmitigated evil; and though
+he was sometimes inclined to quarrel with the fact that Leam went
+daily to Steel's Corner to inquire after Alick Corfield, yet, as he
+got the grain and Alick only the husk, he submitted to the process by
+which the best was winnowed to his side. As the gain of that winnowing
+process became more evident he grew philosophically convinced that
+nothing is so charming in a woman as faithful friendship for a sick
+man, and that sitting daily for half an hour, always at exactly the
+same time, with an afflicted mother is the most delightful act of
+charity to be imagined.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+IN THE BALANCE.
+
+
+Riding was one of the accomplishments brought by Leam from school,
+though she had never been able to thoroughly conquer either her
+timidity or her reluctance. Her childish days of inaction and
+inclusion had left their mark on her for life, and, moreover, she was
+not of the race or kind whence, by any process of education possible,
+could have been evolved a girl of the florid, fearless, energetic kind
+usually held as the type of the English maiden. Hence she was never
+quite happy on horseback, and always wondered how it was that people
+could be enthusiastic about riding. Nevertheless, she had learnt to
+sit with grace, if not with confidence, and she was too proud to
+show the discomfort she felt. Her father had bought for her use the
+showiest chestnut to be had in the market; and as he wished her to
+ride sometimes with him, if oftener with only the groom at her heels,
+and as, again, she had honestly set herself to please him, she used
+to mount her Red Coat, as she called her beast, punctually every
+other day, and carry her dislike to the exercise as the penance it was
+fitting she should perform. And besides all this, that devouring
+fever in her blood, that oppressive consciousness rather than active
+remembrance, lying always at the back of her life, was best soothed
+by long hours alone in the open air. For when she had only the groom
+behind her, Leam--to whom all men were as yet powers undesignated,
+and a man of low degree a mere animal that made intelligible sounds
+on occasions and was of a little more use than a dog--forgot him
+altogether, and was as much alone as if he had not been there.
+
+Once or twice before the hegira of the gentry she had chanced to
+meet Major Harrowby in her rides, and he had turned with her and
+accompanied her, which was half a pain to' Leam and half a pleasure.
+The pain was connected with her reins and her stirrups, her saddle and
+the girths, the restless way in which the chestnut moved his ears,
+the discomposing toss of his small impatient head, the snorts which
+frightened her as the heralds of an outbreak, and his inclination
+to dance sideways into the hedge rather than walk discreetly in the
+middle of the road, whereby her seat was disturbed and her courage
+tried, she all the while not liking to show that she was ill at
+ease. The pleasure was personal, arising from the strange sense of
+protection that she felt in Edgar's society and the charming way in
+which he talked to her. He had seen a great deal, and he had a facile
+tongue, and between fact and color, memory and make-up, his stories
+were delightful. Also, after the manner of men who seek to influence a
+young girl's mind and heart, he lent her books to read, and he marked
+his favorite passages, which he discussed afterward. They were not
+passages of abstract thought and impersonal sentiment, like the
+penciled notes in Alick Corfield's literary loans, but scenes of
+passion or of pathos, going straight to the heart of youth, which
+feels rather than reflects, or descriptions of places which were
+equal to pictures of human life. Under Alick's guidance she had fallen
+asleep over Wordsworth--under Edgar's she dreamed beneath the stars
+over Byron, and had heartaches without knowing why.
+
+If they had met sometimes, and by chance, before the families went
+away, they met now continually, and not by chance. But as Edgar's
+passion and reason were not in accord, he restrained himself, for him
+marvelously, and neither made love to her in earnest nor flirted with
+her in jest. Indeed, Leam was too intense to be approached at any time
+with levity. As well dress the Tragic Muse in the costume of a Watteau
+shepherdess as ply Leam Dundas with the pretty follies found so useful
+with other women. She did not understand them, and it seemed useless
+to try to make her. If Edgar paid her any of the trivial compliments
+always on his lips for women, Leam used to look at him with her
+serious eyes and ask him how could he possibly know what she was
+like--he, who scarcely knew her at all. If he praised her beauty, she
+used to turn away her head offended and tell him he was rude. He felt
+as if he could never touch her, never hold her: his ways were not as
+hers; and if her fascination for him increased, so did his trouble.
+
+He was in doubt on both sides--for her and for himself. He could not
+read that silent, irresponsive nature nor measure his influence over
+her. By no blushes when they met, no girlish poutings when he kept
+away, by no covert reproaches, no ill-concealed gladness, no tremors
+and no consciousness could he gain the smallest clew to guide him. She
+was always the same--grave, gentle, laconic, self-possessed. But who
+that looked into her eyes could fail to see underneath her Spanish
+pride and more than Oriental reserve that fund of passion lying hidden
+like the waters of an artesian well, waiting only to be brought to the
+surface? He had not yet brought that hidden treasure into the light
+of the sun and of love, and he wondered if ever he should. And if he
+should, would it be for happiness? Leam was the kind of girl to love
+madly under the orange trees and myrtles, to break one's heart for
+when brothers interposed in the moonlight with rapiers and daggers
+and caught her away for conventual discipline or for marriage with the
+don; but as the mistress of an English home, the every-day wife of an
+English squire with a character to keep up and an example to set,
+was she fit for that? She was so quaint, so original, there were
+such depths of passionate thought and feeling side by side with such
+strange shallows of social and intellectual ignorance--though reticent
+she was so direct, though tenacious so simple, her love, if difficult
+to win, had such marvelous vitality when won--that he felt as if
+she spoke a language sweeter and purer in many of its tones than the
+current speech of society, but a language with which neither his own
+people nor that society would ever be familiar.
+
+Amorous and easily impressed as he was, her beauty drew him with its
+subtle charm, but his doubt and her pride interposed barriers which
+even he dared not disregard; and at the end of two months he was no
+nearer than at the beginning that understanding which he would have
+established with any other pretty woman in less than a week. And he
+was no surer of himself and what he did really desire. Yet, accustomed
+as he was to loves as easily won as the gathering of a flower by the
+wayside, and to the knowledge that Adelaide Birkett, his social match
+in all things, was ready to pick up the handkerchief when he should
+think fit to throw it, this very doubt both of himself and Leam made
+half the interest if all the perplexity of the situation. He knew, as
+well as he knew that the Corinthian shaft should bear the Corinthian
+capital, if it was Leam whom he loved it was Adelaide whom he ought to
+marry. She would carry incense to the gods of British respectability
+as a squire's lady should, doing nothing that should not be done and
+leaving as little undone that should be done. She would preside at
+the Hill dinners with grace and join the meet at the coverside with
+punctuality; she would dress as became her position, but neither
+extravagantly nor questionably, and she would be more likely to stint
+than to squander; she would live as a polite Christian should, in
+the odor of genteel righteousness, not a fibre laid cross to the
+conventional grain, not a note out of tune with the orthodox chord.
+Yes, it was the rector's daughter whom he ought to marry, but it was
+Pepita's whom he loved. Yet how would things go with such a perplexing
+iconoclast at the head of affairs? Imagine the feelings of an English
+squire, M.H. of his county, loving dogs and horses as some women love
+children, and regarding poaching and vulpicide as crimes almost as
+bad as murder--imagine his feelings when his beautiful wife, grave and
+simple, should say at a hunt-dinner, "I do not like riding. I think
+hunting stupid and cruel: an army of men in red coats after a poor
+little hare--it is horrid! I think poaching quite right. God gave
+beasts and birds to us all alike, and your preserves are robberies. I
+would like to save all the foxes, and I hate the dogs when they catch
+them;" for be sure she would never learn to call them hounds. What
+would he feel? It would be an incongruous kind of thing altogether,
+Edgar used to think when meditating on life as seen through the
+curling clouds of his cigar.
+
+But he loved her--he loved her: daily with more passion, because
+daily holding a stronger check on himself, and so accumulating by
+concentration. It was the old combat between love and reason, personal
+desires and social feelings, and as yet it was undecided which side
+would win. Now it was Adelaide and her exact suitability for her part,
+when he would avoid Leam Dundas for days; now it was Leam and his
+fervid love for her, his passion of doubt, his fever of longing, when
+he would all but commit himself and tempt the fortune of the future
+irrevocably.
+
+One day, during this, time of sickness in the village and Edgar's
+lonely residence at the Hill, Leam was riding along the Green Lanes,
+a pretty bit of quiet country, when she heard the well-known hoofs
+thundering rapidly behind her, and in due time Major Harrowby drew
+rein at her side. "I saw you from the Sherrington road," he said, his
+eyes kindling with pleasure at the meeting.
+
+Leam smiled, that pretty little fluttering smile which was so
+peculiarly her own, playing like a flicker of tender sunshine over
+her face, but she felt gladder than she showed. It was not her way to
+flourish her feelings like flags in the face of men. Her reticence was
+part of her dislike to noise and glare. "I am glad to see you," she
+returned quietly, her eyes raised for a moment to his.
+
+"I sometimes fear I annoy you by joining you so often," said Edgar.
+
+"No, you do not annoy me," Leam answered.
+
+"It is a pleasure to know at least as much as that," he returned with
+a forced laugh.
+
+"Yes? But why should you think that you annoy me?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, perhaps you see too much of me, and so get tired of me. The thing
+is possible," he said, stroking his horse's ears.
+
+Leam looked at him as she had looked before, but this time without the
+smile. "Are you tired of me that you say so?" she asked.
+
+"No, no, no! How can you say such a thing--how dream it?" cried Edgar.
+"How could I be tired of you? Why, you are the sunshine of my life,
+the one thing I "--he checked himself--"I look forward to meeting," he
+added awkwardly.
+
+"Then why should I be tired of you?" she returned. "You are kind
+to me; you tell me things I do not know; and," with maddening
+unconsciousness of how her words might be taken, "there is no one
+else."
+
+This was the nearest approach to a compliment that Leam had ever made.
+She meant simply that, as there was no one else to tire her, how could
+her pleasant friend Major Harrowby possibly do so? But Edgar naturally
+took her words awry. "And if there were anyone else I suppose I should
+be nowhere? My part has not often been that of a _pis aller_," with a
+deep flush of displeasure.
+
+"Why do you say that?" she asked in a slight tone of surprise. "You
+would be always where you are."
+
+"With you?"
+
+Her face asked his meaning.
+
+"I mean, would you always hold me as much your friend, always care for
+me as much as you do now--if, indeed, you care for me at all--if any
+one else was here?" he explained.
+
+Leam turned her troubled eyes to the ground. "I do not change like the
+wind," she answered, wishing he would not talk of her at all.
+
+"No, I do not think you do or would," returned Edgar, bending his head
+nearer to hers as he drew his horse closer. "I should think that once
+loved would be always loved with you, Miss Dundas?" He said this in a
+low voice that slightly trembled.
+
+She was silent. She had a consciousness of unknown dangers, sweet
+and perilous, closing around her--dangers which she must avoid she
+scarcely knew how, only vaguely conscious as she was that they were
+about. Then she said, with an effort, "I do not like myself talked of.
+It does not matter what I am."
+
+"To me everything!" cried Edgar impulsively.
+
+"You say what you do not mean," returned Leam. "I am not your
+sister; how, then, should it matter?"
+
+Her grave simplicity was more seductive to him than the most
+coquettish wiles would have been. She was so entirely at sea in the
+art of love-making that her very ignorance provoked a more explicit
+declaration. "Are there only sisters in the world?" he asked
+passionately, yet angry with himself for skirting so near to the edge
+of peril.
+
+"No: there are mothers," said Leam.
+
+Edgar caught his breath, but again checked himself just in time to
+prevent the words "and wives," that rose to his lips. "And friends,"
+he substituted, with evident constraint and as awkwardly as before. It
+was not often that a woman had been able to disconcert Edgar Harrowby
+so strangely as did this ignorant and innocent half-breed Spanish
+girl.
+
+"And friends," repeated Leam. "But they are not much."
+
+"Alick Corfield? He is my good friend," she answered quietly.
+
+"Yes, I know how much you like him." An understanding ear would have
+caught the sneering undertone in these words.
+
+"Yes, I like him," responded Leam with unmoved gravity.
+
+"And you are sorry that he is ill--very sorry, awfully sorry?"
+
+"I am sorry."
+
+"Would you be as pained if I were ill? and would you come every day
+to the Hill to ask after me, as you go to Steel's Corner to ask after
+him?"
+
+"I would be pained if you were ill, but I would not go to the Hill
+every day," said Leam.
+
+"No? Why this unfair preference?" he asked.
+
+"Because I am not afraid of Mrs. Corfield," she answered.
+
+"And you are of my mother?"
+
+"Yes. She is severe."
+
+"It is severe in you to say so," said Edgar gently.
+
+"No," said Leam with her proud air. "It is true."
+
+"Then you would not like to be my mother's daughter?" asked Edgar,
+both inflamed and troubled.
+
+Leam looked him straight in the face, utterly unconscious of his
+secret meaning. "No," she answered, her head held high, her dark eyes
+proud and fixed, and her small mouth resolute, almost hard. "I would
+like to be no one's daughter but mamma's."
+
+"I do love your fidelity," cried Edgar with a burst of admiration.
+"You are the most loyal girl I know."
+
+She turned pale: her head drooped. "Let us talk of something else,"
+she said in an altered voice. "Myself is displeasing to me."
+
+"But if it pleases me?"
+
+"That is impossible," said Leam. "How can it please you?"
+
+Was it craft? was it indifference? or was it honest ignorance of the
+true motive of a man's words and looks? Edgar pondered for a moment,
+but could come to no definite conclusion save rejection of that one
+hypothesis of craft. Leam was too savagely direct, too uncompromising,
+to be artful. No man who understood women only half so well as Edgar
+Harrowby understood them could have credited such a character as hers
+with deception.
+
+He wavered, then, between the alternative of indifference or
+ignorance. If the one, he felt bound by self-respect to overcome
+it--that self-respect which a man of his temperament puts into his
+successes with women; if the other, he must enlighten it. "Does it not
+please you to talk of those you like?" he asked after a short pause.
+
+"Yes," said Leam, her face suddenly softening into tenderness as she
+thought of her mother; of whom Edgar did not think. "Talk to me of
+Spain and all that you did there."
+
+"And that would be of what you like?" he asked.
+
+"Of what I love," returned Leam in a low voice, her eyes lifted to
+his, soft and humid.
+
+"How can I read you? What can I think? What do you want me to
+believe?" cried Edgar in strange trouble.
+
+"What have I said?" she asked with grave surprise. "Why do you speak
+like this?"
+
+"Are you playing with me, or do you want me to understand that you
+have made me happy?" he cried, his face, voice, bearing, all changed,
+all full of an unknown something that half allured and half frightened
+her.
+
+She turned aside her head with her cold, proud, shrinking air. "I am
+not playing with you; and you are silly to say I have made you happy,"
+she said, shaking her reins lightly and quickening her chestnut's
+uneasy pace; and Edgar, quickening the pace of his heavy bay,
+thought it wiser to let the moment pass, and so stand free and still
+wavering--in doubt and committed to nothing.
+
+Thus the time wore on, with frequent meetings, always crowded
+with doubts and fears, hopes, joys, displeasures in a tangled heap
+together, till the drying winds of March set in and cleared off the
+last of the fever, which had by now worn itself away, and by degrees
+the things of North Aston went back to their normal condition. The
+families came into residence again, and save for the widow's wail and
+the orphan's cry in the desolated village below, life passed as it had
+always passed, and the strong did not spend their strength in bearing
+the burdens of the weak.
+
+The greatest social event that had taken place in consequence of
+the epidemic was, that Mr. Dundas had made acquaintance with his new
+tenant at Lionnet. Full of painful memories for him as the place was,
+he could not let the poor fellow die, he said, with no Christian soul
+near him. As a landlord he felt that he owed this mark of humanity to
+one of whom, if nothing absolutely good was known, neither was there
+anything absolutely bad, save that negative misdemeanor of not coming
+to church. As this was not an unpardonable offence to a man who had
+traveled much if he had thought little, Mr. Dundas let his humanity
+get the upper hand without much difficulty. By which it came about
+that he and his new tenant became friends, as the phrase goes, and
+that thus another paragraph was added to the restricted page of life
+as North Aston knew it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+ONLY A DREAM.
+
+
+Of all those who lived through the fever, poor Alick Corfield's
+case had been the most desperate while it lasted. Mr. Gryce, his
+fellow-sufferer, had been up and about his usual work, extracting
+Aryan roots and impaling Lepidoptera for a month and more, while Alick
+was still in bed among ice-bags and Condy's Fluid, and as bad as at
+the beginning--indeed, worse, having had a relapse which nothing but
+his wiry constitution, backed by his mother's scientific nursing,
+could have pulled him through. Gradually the danger passed, and this
+time his convalescence was solid, and, though slow, uninterrupted. He
+began to creep about the house by the aid of sticks and arms, and he
+came down stairs for the first time on the day when the Harrowbys
+and Birketts returned home; but he remained in strict quarantine, and
+Steel's Corner was scrupulously avoided by the neighbors as the local
+lazaretto which it would be sinful to invade. By all but Leam, who
+went daily to ask after the invalid, and to keep the mother company
+for exactly half an hour by the clock.
+
+One day when she went on her usual errand Mrs. Corfield met her at the
+hall-door, "Alick will be glad to see you, my dear," she called out,
+radiant with happiness, as the girl crossed the threshold. "We are in
+the drawing-room to-day, as brisk and bonny as a bird: such a treat
+for him, poor dear!"
+
+"I am glad," said Leam, who held a basket of early spring flowers
+in her hand. "Now you are happy." Tears came into the poor mother's
+haggard eyes. "Happy, child! You do not know what I feel," she said
+with tremulous emotion. "Only a mother who has been so near to the
+loss of her dearest, so near to heartbreak and despair, as I have
+been, can know the blessed joy of the reprieve."
+
+"How you love him!" said Leam in a half whisper. "I loved mamma like
+that."
+
+"Yes, poor child! I remember," said Mrs. Corfield with compassion. She
+forgot that at the time she had thought the girl's love and despair,
+both the one and the other, exaggerated and morbid. She met her now on
+the platform of sympathy, and her mind saw what it brought to-day as
+it had seen what it had brought before, but she was not conscious of
+the contradiction.
+
+"I thought I should have died too when she did. I wish I had," said
+Leam, looking up to the sky with dreamy love, as if she still thought
+to meet her mother's face in the blue depths.
+
+"My poor dear! it was terrible for you," sighed the elder woman
+sympathetically. "But you must not always mourn, you know. There is
+a time for everything, even for forgetting, and for being happy after
+sorrow."
+
+"Never a time for me to forget mamma, nor to be happy," said Leam.
+
+"Why not?" answered Mrs. Corfield in her impatient way. "You are
+young, nice-looking, in tolerably good health, but you are black
+round your eyes to-day. You have friends: I am sure all of us, from my
+husband downward, think a great deal of you. And Alick has always been
+your friend. Why should you not be happy?"
+
+Leam put the question by. "Yes, you have always been kind to me," she
+answered. "I remember when mamma died how you wanted to be kind then.
+But I did not understand you as I do now. And how good Alick was! How
+sorry I should have been if anything had happened to him now!" Her
+beautiful face grew tender with the thought. She did really love Alick
+in her girlish, sisterly way.
+
+Mrs. Corfield looked at her. "Have you never loved any one else as you
+loved your poor mother?" she asked.
+
+Leam lifted her eyes. "Never," she answered simply. "I have liked a
+few people since, but love as I loved mamma? No!"
+
+"Leam, I am going to ask you a straightforward question, and you must
+give me a straightforward answer: Which do you like best, my boy or
+Edgar Harrowby?" Mrs. Corfield asked this suddenly, as if she wanted
+to surprise the girl's secret thought rather than have a deliberate
+answer.
+
+"I like them differently," began Leam without affectation. "Alick is
+so unlike Major Harrowby in every way. And then I have known him so
+long--since I was a mere child. I feel that I can say what I like to
+him: I always did. But Major Harrowby is a stranger, and I am--I don't
+know: it is all different. I cannot say what I mean." She hesitated,
+stopped, grew pale, glanced aside and looked disturbed; then putting
+on her old air of cold pride, she drew herself a few paces away and
+said, "Why do you ask me such a question, Mrs. Corfield? You should
+not."
+
+Mrs. Corfield sighed. If Edgar was undecided between his personal
+desires and conventional fitness, she was undecided between her
+longing to see Alick happy and her dislike to his being happy in any
+way but the one she should design for him. He had raved a good deal
+during his illness, and had said many mad things connected with
+Leam--always Leam; and since his convalescence his mother had seen
+clearly enough how his heart was toward her. His pleasure when he
+heard that she had been there, his childish delight in anything that
+she had brought for him, the feverishness with which he waited to hear
+her step, her voice from a distance, always demanding that the doors
+should be left open so that he might hear her,--all betrayed to his
+mother as plainly as confession would have done the real thoughts of
+his heart, and cast a trouble into her own whence she saw no present
+satisfactory issue. Though she was fond of Leam now, and grateful to
+her for her faithful visits during Alick's illness, yet, just as Edgar
+doubted of her fitness as a wife for the master of the Hill, so did
+she doubt of her fitness as a daughter-in-law for Steel's Corner. As a
+friend she was pleasant enough, with her quaint ways and pretty face;
+but as one of the Corfield family, bound to them for ever--what then
+would she be? But again, if Alick really loved her, she would not like
+to see him disappointed. So, what between her dislike to the marriage
+should it ever be, and her fear for Alick's unhappiness should he ask
+and be refused, the poor mother was in a state of confused feelings
+and contradictory wishes which did not agree with a nature like hers,
+given to mathematical certainties and averse to loose ends and frayed
+edges anywhere. As nothing more was to be got out of Leam at this
+moment, and as Mrs. Corfield knew that Alick would be impatient, they
+went into the drawing-room together, Leam carrying her basket of
+spring flowers for her old friend.
+
+It was pitiful to see the poor fellow. Thin, gaunt, plainer than ever,
+if also ennobled by that almost saintly dignity which is given by
+illness, the first impression made on Leam was one of acute physical
+repulsion: the second only gave room to compassion. Fortunately, that
+little shudder of hers was unnoticed, and Alick saw only the beloved
+face, more beautiful to him than anything out of heaven, with its
+grave intensity of look that seemed so full of thought and feeling,
+turned to him--saw only those glorious eyes fixed once more straight
+on his--felt only the small hand which seemed to give him new life
+to touch lying clasped in his own, weak, wasted, whitened, like a dead
+hand for color against the warm olive of her skin. It was almost worth
+while to have been separated so long to have this joy of meeting; and
+he thought his pain and danger not too dearly bought by this exquisite
+pleasure of knowing that she had pitied him and cared for him.
+
+He raised himself from his pillows as he took her small, warm, fibrous
+hand, and his pallid face brightened into a tearful smile. "Ah!" he
+said, drawing a deep breath, "I am so glad to see you again!"
+
+"I am glad to see you too," said Leam with a certain sudden
+embarrassment, she did not know why, but it came from something that
+she saw in his eyes and could not explain even to herself.
+
+"Are you?" He pressed her hand, which he still held. "It does me good
+to hear you say so," he replied.
+
+"I have brought you some flowers," then said Leam, a little coldly,
+drawing away her hand, which she hated to have either held or pressed.
+
+He took them with a pleased smile. "Our pretty wild-flowers!" he said
+gratefully, burying his face in them, so cool and fresh and fragrant
+as they were. "They are like the giver," he added after a pause, "only
+not so sweet."
+
+"Do you remember when I persisted to you there were no wild-flowers
+in England?" asked Leam, wishing that Alick would not pay her
+compliments.
+
+"Do I remember? That was the first time I saw you," cried Alick. "Of
+what else have I thought ever since?"
+
+"You like wild-flowers and celandine, do you not?" asked poor Leam,
+desperately disturbed. "I found them in the wood as I came here."
+
+"And picked them for me?--up in the corner there by Barton's? I know.
+And you went up the lane for them--for me?" he repeated.
+
+"Yes," said Leam.
+
+"For me?" he asked again.
+
+"Why, yes: for whom else could it have been?" answered Leam in the
+tone of grave rebuke he knew so well--the tone which always expressed,
+"You are stupid."
+
+Alick's lip quivered. "You are so good," he said.
+
+"Am I?" asked Leam seriously.
+
+Then something passed over her face, a kind of gray shadow of
+remembrance, and she dropped her eyes. Was she good? and could he
+think so?
+
+A silence fell between them, and each knew of what the other was
+thinking; then Leam said suddenly, to break that terrible silence,
+which she felt was more betraying than even speech would have
+been, "I am sorry you have been so ill. How dreadfully ill you have
+been!"
+
+"Yes," he said, "I have been bad enough, I believe, but by God's grace
+I have been spared."
+
+"It would have been more grace not to have let you get ill in the
+beginning," said Leam gravely.
+
+Alick looked distressed. Should he never Christianize this pagan?
+"Don't say that, dear," he remonstrated. "We must not call in question
+His will."
+
+"Things are things," said Leam with her quiet positiveness. "If they
+are bad, they are bad, whoever sends them."
+
+"No. God cannot send us evil," cried Alick.
+
+"Then He does not send us disease or sorrow," answered Leam. "If He
+does, it is silly to say they are good, or that He is kind to make us
+ill and wretched. I cannot tell stories. And all you people do."
+
+"Leam, you pain me so much when you talk like this. It is bad,
+dear--impious and unchristian. Ah! can I never bring you to the true
+way?" he cried with real pain.
+
+"You cannot make me tell stories or talk nonsense because you say
+it is religious," replied Leam, impervious and unconvinced. "I like
+better to tell the truth and call things by their right names."
+
+"And you cannot feel that we are little children walking in the dark
+and that we must accept by faith?" said Alick.
+
+She shook her head, then answered with a certain tone of triumph in
+her voice, "Well, yes, it is the dark: so let it be the dark, and do
+not pretend you understand when you do not. Do not say God made you
+ill in one breath, and in another that He is kind. It is silly."
+
+"Now, my boy, don't excite yourself," said Mrs. Corfield, bustling
+into the room and noting how the thin cheek had flushed and how bright
+and feverish the hollow eyes of her invalid were looking. "You know
+the doctor says you are not to be excited or tired. It is the worst
+thing in the world for you."
+
+"I am neither, mother: don't alarm yourself," he answered; "but I must
+have a little talk with Leam. I have not seen her for so long. How
+long is it, mother?"
+
+"Well, my dear, you have been ill for over ten weeks," she said as she
+went to the window with a sudden gasp.
+
+"Ten weeks gone out of my life!" he replied.
+
+"We have all been sorry," said Leam a little vaguely.
+
+His eyes grew moist. He was weak and easily moved. "Were you very
+sorry?" he asked.
+
+"Very," she answered, for her quite warmly.
+
+"Then you did not want me to die?" He said this with a yearning look,
+raising himself again on his elbow to meet her eyes more straightly.
+
+"Want you to die?" she repeated in astonishment. "Why should I want
+you to die? I want you to get well and live."
+
+He took her hand again. "God bless you!" he said, and turned his face
+to the pillow to conceal that he was weeping.
+
+Again that gray look of remembrance, passed over her face. She knew
+now what he had meant. "No," she said slowly, "I do not want you to
+die. You are good, and would harm no one."
+
+After this visit Leam saw Alick whenever she called at the house,
+which, however, was not so often as heretofore, and week by week
+became still more seldom. Something was growing up in her heart
+against him that made his presence a discomfort. It was not fear
+nor moral dislike, but it was a personal distaste that threatened to
+become unconquerable. She hated to be with him; hated to see his face
+looking at her with such yearning tenderness as abashed her somehow
+and made her lower her eyes; hated his endeavors to convert her to
+an orthodox acceptance of mysteries she could not understand and of
+explanations she could not believe; hated his sadness, hated his joy:
+she only wished that he would go away and leave her alone. What did
+he mean? What did he want? He was changing from the blushing, awkward,
+subservient dog of his early youth, and from the still subservient if
+also more argumentative pastor of these later days alike, and she did
+not like the new Alick who was gradually creeping into the place of
+the old.
+
+When Mrs. Corfield spoke of taking him to the sea for change of air,
+her heart bounded as if a weight had been suddenly removed, and she
+said, "Yes, he ought to go," so warmly that the mother was surprised,
+wondering if she cared so much for him that the idea of his getting
+good elated her beyond herself and made her forget her usual reserve.
+She instinctively contrived not to see him alone now when she went to
+Steel's Corner during his tedious convalescence, for the poor fellow
+mended but slowly, if surely. Either she had only a short time to
+stay, and so stood for a moment, making serious talk impossible, or
+she took little Fina with her, or maybe she entangled Mrs. Corfield
+in the conversation so that she should not leave them alone, the vague
+fear and distaste possessing her making her strangely _rusée_ and on
+the alert. But one day she was caught. It had to come, and it was only
+a question of time. She knew that, as we know when our doom is upon
+us.
+
+Leam had not intended to go in to-day, but Alick, who was in the
+garden rejoicing in the warmth and freshness of this tender April
+noontide, came to meet her at the second gate, and asked her to come
+and sit with him on the garden-seat, there where the budding lilacs
+began to show their bloom, and there where they sat on that fatal day
+when she had hidden the little phial in her hair and bade him tell her
+of flowers till she tired.
+
+She hesitated, and was on the point of refusing, when he took her by
+the upper part of her arm as if to hold her. "Do," he pleaded. "I want
+to say something to you."
+
+"I have no time to stay," she answered, shrinking from his touch.
+
+"Yes, yes, time enough for all I have to say," he returned. "I beg you
+to come with me to-day, Leam--I beg it; and I do not often ask a favor
+of you."
+
+There was something in his manner that seemed to compel Leam to
+consent in spite of herself. True, he besought, but also he seemed
+almost to command; and if he did not command, then his earnestness was
+so strong that she was forced to yield to it. Trembling, but with
+her proud little head held straight--wondering what was coming, and
+vaguely conscious that whatever it was it would be pain--Leam let
+him take her to the garden-seat where the budding lilacs spoke of
+springtime freshness and summer beauty. Alick was trembling too, but
+from excitement, not from fear. He had made up his mind now, and when
+he had once resolved he was not wavering. He would ask her to share
+his life, accept his love, and he would thus take on himself half the
+burden of her sin. This was how he felt it. If he married her, knowing
+all that he knew, he would make himself the partner of her crime,
+because he would accept her past like her present--like her future;
+and thus he would be equally guilty with her before God. But he would
+trust to prayer and the Supreme Mercy to save her and him. He would
+carry no merits of devotion as his own claim, but he would have freed
+her of half her guilt, and he would be content to bear his own portion
+of punishment for this unfathomable gain. It was the man's love, but
+also the soul's passionate promise of sacrifice and redemption, that
+gave him boldness to plead, power to ask for a grace to which, had
+this deep stain of sin never tainted her, he would not have dared to
+aspire. But, as it was, his love was her greater safety, and what
+he gained in earthly joy he would lose in spiritual peace, while her
+partial forgiveness would be bought by the loss of his security of
+salvation. Not that she understood all this or ever should, but it
+gave him courage.
+
+"When you first saw me, Leam, after my illness you said that you
+wanted me to live," he began in a low voice, husky with emotion. "Do
+you mean this?"
+
+"Yes," she said, looking straight before her.
+
+"Live for you?" he asked.
+
+"For us all," she answered.
+
+"No, not for us all--for you," he returned with insistence.
+
+"That would be silly," said Leam quietly. "I am not the only person in
+the world: you have your mother."
+
+"For my mother, perhaps; but for the world, nothing. You are the world
+to me," said Alick. "Give me your love, and I care for nothing else.
+Tell me you will be my wife, and I can live then--live as nothing else
+can make me. Leam, can you love me, dear? I have loved you from the
+first moment I saw you. Will you be my wife?"
+
+"Your wife!" cried Leam with an involuntary gesture of repulsion. "You
+are dreaming."
+
+"No, no: I am in full earnest. Tell me that you love me, Leam. Oh,
+I believe that you do. Surely I have not deceived myself so far. Why
+should you have come every day--every day, as you have done--if you do
+not love me? Yes, you do--I know you, do. Say so, Leam, my darling, my
+beloved, and put me out of my misery of suspense."
+
+"You are my good friend: I love you like a friend; but a wife--that is
+different," faltered Leam.
+
+"Yes, but it will come if you try," pleaded Alick, shifting his point
+from confidence to entreaty. "Won't you try to love me as I love you,
+Leam? Won't you try to love me as a wife loves her husband?"
+
+She turned away. "I cannot," she answered in a low voice, yet firm
+and distinct. It was a voice in which even the most sanguine must have
+recognized the accent of hopeless certainty, inevitable despair.
+
+"Leam, it will be your salvation," cried Alick, taking her hands.
+He meant her spiritual salvation, not her personal safety: it was a
+prayer, not a threat.
+
+"You would not force me by anything you may know?" asked Leam in the
+same low, firm, distinct voice. "Not even for safety, Alick."
+
+"Which I would buy with my own," he answered--"with my eternal
+salvation."
+
+"I am not worthy of such love," said Leam trembling. "And oh, dear
+Alick, do not blame me, but I cannot return it," she added piteously.
+
+She saw him start and heard him moan when she said this, but for a
+moment he was silent. He seemed half stunned as if by a heavy blow,
+but one that he was doing his best to bear. "Tell me so again, Leam.
+Let me be convinced," he then said with pathetic calmness, looking
+into her face. "You cannot love me?--never? never?"
+
+"Never," she said, her voice breaking.
+
+Alick covered his face in his hands, and she saw the tears trickle
+slowly through his fingers. He made no com-plaint, no protestation,
+only covered up his face and prayed, weeping, recognizing his fate.
+
+She was sorry and heart-struck. She felt cruel, selfish, ungrateful,
+but for all that she could not yield nor say that she would marry him,
+trying to love him. Confused images of something dearer than this as
+the love of her life passed before her mind. They were images without
+recognizable form or tangible substance, but they were the true love,
+and this was not like them. No, she could not yield. Sorry as she
+might be for him, and was, she could not promise to marry him.
+
+"Yes," he then said after a pause, lifting up his wan face,
+tear-stained and disordered, but making a sad attempt to smile--"yes,
+dear Leam, I was, as you say, dreaming. We shall always be friends,
+though--brother and sister, as we have been--to the end of our lives,
+shall we not?"
+
+"Yes," was her answer, tears in her own eyes and a kind of wonder at
+her hardness running through her repugnance.
+
+"Thank you, darling, thank you! If you want a friend, and I can be
+that friend and can serve you, you will come to me, will you not? You
+may want me some day, and you know that I shall not fail you. Don't
+you know that, my royal Leam?"
+
+"I am sure of you," she half whispered, shuddering. To be in his power
+and to have rejected him! It all seemed very terrible and confused to
+Leam, to whom things complex and entangled were abhorrent.
+
+"And now forget all this. I was only dreaming, dear. Why, no, of
+course you could not have married me--never could--never, never!
+I know that well enough now. You see I have been ill," nervously
+plucking at his hands, "and have had strange fancies, and I do not
+know myself or anything about me quite yet. But forget it all. It was
+only a sick fancy, and I thought what did not exist"
+
+"I am sorry to have hurt you even in fancy," said Leam; giving a sigh
+of relief. "I do not like to see you unhappy, Alick. You are so-good
+to me."
+
+"And to the end of my life I shall be what I have been," he said
+earnestly. "You can trust me, Leam."
+
+"I am sorry I have hurt you," she said again, bending forward and
+looking up into his face. "But it was only a dream, was it not?"
+pleadingly.
+
+He smiled pitifully, "Yes, dear, only a dream," he answered, turning
+away his head. After a while he took her hand and looked into her
+face, "And now it has passed," he said, calm that she should not be
+sorry.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+LOVE'S SEPULCHRE.
+
+  Build for my love a costly sepulchre;
+    Not underneath cathedral arches dim,
+  Where the sad soul may wake to comfort her
+    The stately music of a funeral hymn;
+
+  Nor on some wind-swept hill, whose wavering grass
+    Sways to the summer breezes blowing free,
+  While the great cedars, rustling as they pass,
+    Murmur a cadence of the mournful sea;
+
+  Not in the arched depths of the solemn woods,
+    Within the flickering shadows cool and deep,
+  Where the still wing of silence ever broods,
+    And woos the weary soul to dreamless sleep.
+
+  But build it in the temple of my heart,
+    And from the sacred and mysterious shrine
+  A flame of deathless memory shall start,
+    Tended by Sorrow and by Love divine.
+
+  All sweetest recollections of past joy
+    Shall haunt that shrine, to make it heavenly fair:
+  All memories of bliss without alloy
+    Shall cluster in undying beauty there.
+
+  There quiet peace shall hold resistless sway:
+    Softer than snow the holy hush shall be.
+  Till even Sorrow gently glide away,
+    And Love divine alone keep watch with me.
+
+KATE HILLARD.
+
+
+
+
+LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA.
+
+BY LADY BARKER.
+
+
+ALGOA BAY, October 23, 1875.
+
+
+Two days ago we steamed out of Table Bay on just such a gray,
+drizzling afternoon as that on which we entered it. But the weather
+cleared directly we got out to sea, and since then it has carried us
+along as though we had been on a pleasant summer cruise. All yesterday
+we were coasting along the low downs which edge the dangerous
+sea-board for miles upon miles. From the deck of the Edinburgh Castle
+the effect is monotonous enough, although just now everything
+is brightly green; and, with their long ribbon fringe of white
+breaker-foam glinting in the spring sunshine, the stretches of
+undulating hillocks looked their best. This part of the coast is well
+lighted, and it was always a matter of felicitation at night when,
+every eighty miles or so, the guiding rays of a lighthouse shone out
+in the soft gloom of the starlight night. One of these lonely towers
+stands more than eight hundred feet above the sea-level, and warns
+ships off the terrible Agulhas Bank.
+
+We have dropped our anchor this fresh bright morning a mile or so from
+the shore on which Port Elizabeth stands. Algoa Bay is not much of a
+shelter, and it is always a chance whether a sudden south-easter
+may not come tearing down upon the shipping, necessitating a sudden
+tripping of anchors and running out to sea to avoid the fate which
+is staring us warningly in the face in the shape of the gaunt ribs or
+rusty cylinders of sundry cast-away vessels. To-day the weather is on
+its good behavior; the south-easter rests on its
+
+            aëry nest
+  As still as a brooding dove;
+
+and sun and sea are doing their best to show off the queer little
+straggling town creeping up the low sandy hills that lie before us. I
+am assured that Port Elizabeth is a flourishing mercantile place. From
+the deck of our ship I can't at all perceive that it is flourishing,
+or doing anything except basking in the pleasant sunshine. But when I
+go on shore an hour or two later I am shown a store which takes
+away my breath, and before whose miscellaneous contents the
+stoutest-hearted female shopper must needs _baisser son pavilion_.
+Everything in this vast emporium looked as neat and orderly as
+possible, and, though the building was twice as big as the largest
+co-operative store in London, there was no hurry or confusion.
+Thimbles and ploughs, eau-de-cologne and mangles, American stoves,
+cotton dresses of astounding patterns to suit the taste of Dutch
+ladies, harmoniums and flat-irons,--all stood peaceably side by side
+together. But these were all "unconsidered trifles" next the more
+serious business of the establishment, which was wool--wool in every
+shape and stage and bale. In this department, however, although for
+the sake of the dear old New Zealand days my heart warms at the sight
+of the huge packages, I was not supposed to take any interest; so we
+pass quickly out into the street again, get into a large open carriage
+driven by a black coachman, and make the best of our way up to a
+villa on the slope of the sandy hill. Once I am away from the majestic
+influence of that store the original feeling of Port Elizabeth being
+rather a dreary place comes back upon me; but we drive all about--to
+the Park, which may be said to be in its swaddling-clothes _as_ a
+park, and to the Botanic Gardens, where the culture of foreign
+and colonial flowers and shrubs is carried on under the chronic
+difficulties of too much sun and wind and too little water. Everywhere
+there is building going on--very modest building, it is true, with
+rough-and-ready masonry or timber, and roofs of zinc painted in
+strips of light colors, but everywhere there are signs of progress and
+growth. People look bored, but healthy, and it does not surprise me in
+the least to hear that though there are a good many inhabitants, there
+is not much society. A pretty little luncheon and a pleasant hour's
+chat in a cool, shady drawing-room, with plenty of new books and music
+and flowers, gave me an agreeable impression to carry back on board
+the ship; which, by the way, seemed strangely silent and deserted when
+we returned, for most of our fellow-passengers had disembarked here on
+their way to different parts of the interior.
+
+As I saunter up and down the clean, smart-looking deck of what has
+been our pleasant floating home during these past four weeks, I
+suddenly perceive a short, squat pyramid on the shore, standing out
+oddly enough among the low-roofed houses. If it had only been red
+instead of gray, it might have passed for the model of the label on
+Bass's beer--bottles; but, even as it is, I feel convinced that there
+is a story connected with it: and so it proves, for this ugly, most
+unsentimental-looking bit of masonry was built long ago by a former
+governor as a record of the virtues and perfections of his dead wife,
+whom, among other lavish epithets of praise, he declares to have been
+"the most perfect of women." Anyhow, there it stands, on what was once
+a lonely strip of sand and sea, a memorial--if one can only believe
+the stone story, now nearly a hundred years old--of a great love and a
+great sorrow; and one can envy the one and pity the other just as much
+when looking at this queer, unsightly monument as when one stands
+on the pure marble threshold of the exquisite Taj Mahal at Agra, and
+reads that it too, in all its grace and beauty, was reared "in memory
+of an undying love."
+
+Although the day has been warm and balmy, the evening air strikes
+chill and raw, and our last evening on board the dear old ship has to
+be spent under shelter, for it is too cold to sit on deck. With the
+first hours of daylight next morning we have to be up and packing, for
+by ten o'clock we must be on board the Florence, a small, yacht-like
+coasting-steamer which can go much closer into the sand-blocked
+harbors scooped by the action of the rivers all along the coast. It is
+with a very heavy heart that I, for one, say good-bye to the Edinburgh
+Castle, where I have passed so many happy hours and made some pleasant
+acquaintances. A ship is a very forcing-house of friendship, and no
+one who has not taken a voyage can realize how rapidly an acquaintance
+grows and ripens into a friend under the lonely influences of sea
+and sky. We have all been so happy together, everything has been so
+comfortable, everybody so kind, that one would indeed be cold-hearted
+if, when the last moment of our halcyon voyage arrived, it could bring
+with it anything short of a regret.
+
+With the same chivalrous goodness and courtesy which has taken thought
+for the comfort of our every movement since we left Dartmouth, our
+captain insists on seeing us safely on board the Florence (what a
+toy-boat she looks after our stately ship!) and satisfying himself
+that we can be comfortably settled once more in our doll's house of a
+new cabin. Then there comes a reluctant "Good-bye" to him and all
+our kind care-takers of the Edinburgh Castle; and the last glimpse we
+catch of her--for the Florence darts out of the bay like a swallow in
+a hurry--is her dipping her ensign in courteous farewell to us.
+
+In less than twenty-four hours we had reached another little port,
+some hundred and fifty miles or so up the coast, called East London.
+Here the harbor is again only an open roadstead, and hardly any vessel
+drawing more than three or four feet of water can get in at all near
+the shore, for between us and it is a bar of shifting sand, washed
+down, day by day, by the strong current of the river Buffalo. All
+the cargo has to be transferred to lighters, and a little tug steamer
+bustles backward and forward with messages of entreaty to those said
+lighters to come out and take away their loads. We had dropped our
+anchor by daylight, yet at ten o'clock scarcely a boat had made its
+appearance alongside, and every one was fuming and fretting at the
+delay and consequent waste of fine weather and daylight. That is to
+say, it was a fine bright day overhead, with sunshine and sparkle all
+round, but the heavy roll of the sea never ceased for a moment. From
+one side to the other, until her ports touched the water, backward and
+forward, with slow, monotonous heaving, our little vessel swayed with
+the swaying rollers until everybody on board felt sick and sorry.
+"This is comparatively a calm day," I was told: "you can't possible
+imagine from this what rolling really is." But I _can_ imagine quite
+easily, and do not at all desire a closer acquaintance with this
+restless Indian Ocean. Breakfast is a moment of penance: little G----
+is absolutely fainting from agonies of sea-sickness, though he has
+borne all our South-Atlantic tossings with perfect equanimity; and it
+is with real joy that I hear the lifeboat is alongside, and that the
+kind-hearted captain of the Florence (_how_ kind sailors are!) offers
+to take babies, nurse and me on shore, so as to escape a long day of
+this agonizing rolling. In happy unconsciousness of what landing at
+East London, even in a lifeboat, meant when a bar had to be crossed,
+we were all tumbled and bundled, more or less unceremoniously, into
+the great, roomy boat, and were immediately taken in hand by the busy
+little tug. For half a mile or more we made good progress in her wake,
+being in a position to set at naught the threatening water-mountains
+which came tumbling in furious haste from seaward. It was not until we
+seemed close to the shore and all our troubles over that the tug was
+obliged to cast us off, owing to the rapidly shoaling water, and
+we prepared to make the best of our own way in. Bad was that best,
+indeed, though the peril came and went so quickly that it is but a
+confused impression I retain of what seemed to me a really terrible
+moment. One instant I hear felicitations exchanged between our
+captain--who sits protectingly close to me and poor, fainting
+little G----, who lies like death in my arms--and the captain of the
+lifeboat. The next moment, in spite of sudden panic and presence of
+danger, I could laugh to hear the latter sing out in sharpest tones
+of terror and dismay, "Ah, you would, would you?" coupled with rapid
+orders to the stout rowers and shouts to us of "Look out!" and I _do_
+look out, to see on one side sand which the retreating wave has sucked
+dry, and in which the boat-seems trying to bury herself as though
+she were a mole: on the other hand there towers above us a huge
+green wave, white-crested and curled, which is rushing at us like a
+devouring monster. I glance, as I think, for the last time, at the
+pale nurse, on whose lap lies the baby placidly sucking his bottle.
+I see a couple of sailors lay hold of her and the child with one hand
+each, whilst with the other they cling desperately to the thwarts.
+A stout seafaring man flings the whole weight of his ponderous
+pilot-coated body upon G---- and me: I hear a roar of water, and, lo!
+we are washed right up alongside of the rude landing-place, still _in_
+the boat indeed, but wet and frightened to the last degree. Looking
+back on it all, I can distinctly remember that it was not the sight
+of the overhanging wave which cost me my deadliest pang of sickening
+fright, but the glimpse I caught of the shining, cruel-looking sand,
+sucking us in so silently and greedily. We were all trembling so much
+that it seemed as impossible to stand upright on the earth as on the
+tossing waters, and it was with reeling, drunken-looking steps that
+we rolled and staggered through the heavy sand-street until we reached
+the shelter of an exceedingly dirty hotel. Everything in it required
+courage to touch, and it was with many qualms that I deposited limp
+little G---- on a filthy sofa. However, the mistress of the house
+looked clean, and so did the cups and saucers she quickly produced;
+and by the time we had finished a capital breakfast we were all quite
+in good spirits again, and so sharpened up as to be able to "mock
+ourselves" of our past perils and present discomforts. Outside there
+were strange, beautiful shrubs in flower, tame pigeons came cooing and
+bowing in at the door, and above all there was an enchanting freshness
+and balminess in the sunny air.
+
+In about an hour "Capting Florence" (as G---- styles our new
+commander) calls for us and takes us out sight-seeing. First and
+foremost, across the river to the rapidly-growing railway lines, where
+a brand-new locomotive was hissing away with full steam up. Here we
+were met and welcomed by the energetic superintendent of this iron
+road, and, to my intense delight, after explaining to me what a long
+distance into the interior the line had to go and how fast it was
+getting on, considering the difficulties in the way of doing anything
+in South Africa, from washing a pocket-handkerchief up to laying down
+a railway, he proposed that we should get _on_ the engine and go as
+far as the line was open for anything like safe traveling. Never were
+such delightful five minutes as those spent in whizzing along through
+the park-like country and cutting fast through the heavenly air. In
+vain did I smell that my serge skirts were getting dreadfully singed,
+in vain did I see most uncertain bits of rail before me: it was all
+too perfectly enchanting to care for danger or disgrace, and I could
+have found it in my heart to echo G----'s plaintive cry for "More!"
+when we came to the end and had to get off. But it consoled us a
+little to watch the stone-breaking machine crunching up small rocks as
+though they had been lumps of sugar, and after looking at that we set
+off for the unfinished station, and could take in, even in its present
+skeleton state, how commodious and handsome it will all be some day.
+You are all so accustomed to be whisked about the civilized world when
+and where you choose that it is difficult to make you understand the
+enormous boon the first line of railway is to a new country--not only
+for the convenience of travelers, but for the transport of goods, the
+setting free of hundreds of cattle and horses and drivers--all sorely
+needed for other purposes--and the fast-following effects of opening
+up the resources of the back districts. In these regions labor is the
+great difficulty, and one needs to hold both patience and temper fast
+with both one's hands when watching either Kafir or Coolie at work.
+The white man cannot or will not do much with his hands out here, so
+the navvies are slim-looking blacks, who jabber and grunt and sigh a
+good deal more than they work.
+
+It is a fortunate circumstance that the delicious air keeps us all in
+a chronic state of hunger, for it appears in South Africa that one is
+expected to eat every half hour or so. And, shamed am I to confess,
+we _do_ eat--and eat with a good appetite too--a delicious luncheon at
+the superintendent's, albeit it followed closely on the heels of our
+enormous breakfast at the dirty hotel. Such a pretty little bachelor's
+box as it was!--so cool and quiet and neat!--built somewhat after the
+fashion of the Pompeian houses, with a small square garden full of
+orange trees in the centre, and the house running round this opening
+in four corridors. After lunch a couple of nice, light Cape carts came
+to the door, and we set off to see a beautiful garden whose owner had
+all a true Dutchman's passion for flowers. Here was fruit as well as
+flowers. Pine-apples and jasmine, strawberries and honeysuckle,
+grew side by side with bordering orange trees, feathery bamboos and
+sheltering gum trees. In the midst of the garden stood a sort of
+double platform, up whose steep border we all climbed: from this we
+got a good idea of the slightly undulating land all about, waving down
+like solidified billows to where the deep blue waters sparkled and
+rolled restlessly beyond the white line of waves ever breaking on the
+bar. I miss animal life sadly in these parts: the dogs I see about the
+streets are few in number, and miserably currish specimens of their
+kind. "Good dogs don't answer out here," I am told: that is to say,
+they get a peculiar sort of distemper, or ticks bite them, or they got
+weak from loss of blood, or become degenerate in some way. The horses
+and cattle are small and poor-looking, and hard-worked, very dear
+to buy and very difficult to keep and to feed. I don't even see many
+cats, and a pet bird is a rarity. However, as we stood on the breezy
+platform I saw a most beautiful wild bird fly over the rose-hedge just
+below us. It was about as big as a crow, but with a strange iridescent
+plumage. When it flitted into the sunshine its back and wings shone
+like a rainbow, and the next moment it looked perfectly black and
+velvety in the shade. Now a turquoise-blue tint comes out on its
+spreading wings, and a slant in the sunshine turns the blue into a
+chrysoprase green. Nobody could tell me its name: our Dutch host spoke
+exactly like Hans Breitmann, and declared it was a "bid of a crow,"
+and so we had to leave it and the platform and come down to more roses
+and tea. There was so much yet to be seen and to be done that we could
+not stay long, and, laden with magnificent bouquets of _gloire de
+Dijon_ roses and honeysuckle, and divers strange and lovely flowers,
+we drove off again in our Cape carts. I observed that instead of
+saying "Whoa!" or checking the horses in anyway by the reins, the
+driver always whistles to them--long, low whistle--and they stand
+quite still directly. We bumped up and down, over extraordinarily
+rough places, and finally slid down a steep cutting to the brink of
+the river Buffalo, over which we were ferried, all standing, on a big
+punt, or rather pontoon. A hundred yards or so of rapid driving then
+took us to a sort of wharf which projected into the river, where the
+important-looking little tug awaited us; and no sooner were we all
+safely on board--rather a large party by this time, for we had gone
+on picking up stragglers ever since we started, only three in number,
+from the hotel--than she sputtered and fizzed herself off up-stream.
+By this time it was the afternoon, and I almost despair of making
+you see the woodland beauty of that broad mere, fringed down to the
+water's edge on one side with shrubs and tangle of roses and woodbine,
+with ferns and every lovely green creeping thing. That was on the bank
+which was sheltered from the high winds: the other hillside showed the
+contrast, for there, though green indeed, only a few feathery tufts
+of pliant shrubs had survived the force of some of these south-eastern
+gales. We paddled steadily along in mid-stream, and from the bridge
+(where little G---- and I had begged "Capting Florence" to let us
+stand) one could see the double of each leaf and tendril and
+passing cloud mirrored sharp and clear in the crystalline water. The
+lengthening shadows from rock and fallen crag were in some places
+flung quite across our little boat, and so through the soft, lovely
+air, flooded with brightest sunshine, we made our way, up past Picnic
+Creek, where another stream joins the Buffalo, and makes miniature
+green islands and harbors at its mouth, up as far as the river was
+navigable for even so small a steamer as ours. Every one was sorry
+when it became time to turn, but there was no choice: the sun-burned,
+good-looking captain of the tug held up a warning hand, and round we
+went with a wide sweep, under the shadows, out into the sunlight, down
+the middle of the stream, all too soon to please us.
+
+Before we left East London, however, there was one more great work to
+be glanced at, and accordingly we paid a hasty visit to the office of
+the superintendent of the new harbor-works, and saw plans and drawings
+of what will indeed be a magnificent achievement when carried out.
+Yard by yard, with patient under-sea sweeping, all that waste of sand
+brought down by the Buffalo is being cleared away; yard by yard, two
+massive arms of solidest masonry are stretching themselves out beyond
+those cruel breakers: the river is being forced into so narrow a
+channel that the rush of the water must needs carry the sand far
+out to sea in future, and scatter it in soundings where it cannot
+accumulate into such a barrier as that which now exists.
+
+Lighthouses will guard this safe entrance into a tranquil anchorage,
+and so, at some not too far distant day, there is good hope that East
+London may be one of the most valuable harbors on this vast coast; and
+when her railway has reached even the point to which it is at present
+projected, nearly two hundred miles away, it will indeed be a thriving
+place. Even now, there is a greater air of movement and life and
+progress about the little seaport, what with the railway and the
+harbor-works, than at any other place I have yet seen; and each
+great undertaking is in the hands of men of first-rate ability and
+experience, who are as persevering as they are energetic. After
+looking well over these most interesting plans there was nothing left
+for us to do except to make a sudden raid on the hotel, pick up our
+shawls and bags, pay a most moderate bill of seven shillings and
+sixpence for breakfast for three people and luncheon for two, and the
+use of a room all day, piteously entreat the mistress of the inn to
+sell us half a bottle of milk for G----'s breakfast to-morrow--as he
+will not drink the preserved milk--and so back again on board the tug.
+The difficulty about milk and butter is the first trouble which besets
+a family traveling in these parts. Everywhere milk is scarce and poor,
+and the butter such as no charwoman would touch in England. In vain
+does one behold from the sea thousands of acres of what looks like
+undulating green pasturage, and inland the same waving green hillocks
+stretch as far as the eye can reach: there is never a sheep or cow to
+be seen, and one hears that there is no water, or that the grass
+is sour, or that there is a great deal of sickness about among the
+animals in that locality. Whatever the cause, the result is the
+same--namely, that one has to go down on one's knees for a cupful of
+milk, which is but poor, thin stuff at its best, and that Irish salt
+butter out of a tub is a costly delicacy.
+
+Having secured this precious quarter of a bottle of milk, for which
+I was really as grateful as though it had been the Koh-i-noor, we
+hastened back to the wharf and got on board the little tug again.
+"Now for the bridge!" cry G---- and I, for has not Captain Florence
+promised us a splendid but safe tossing across the bar? And faithfully
+he and the bar and the boat keep their word, for we are in no danger,
+it seems, and yet we appear to leap like a race-horse across the strip
+of sand, receiving a staggering buffet first on one paddle-wheel and
+then on the other from the angry guardian breakers, which seem sworn
+foes of boats and passengers. Again and again are we knocked aside by
+huge billows, as though the poor little tug were a walnut-shell; again
+and again do we recover ourselves, and blunder bravely on, sometimes
+with but one paddle in the water, sometimes burying our bowsprit in a
+big green wave too high to climb, and dashing right through it as fast
+as if we shut our eyes and went at everything. The spray flies high
+over our heads, G---- and I are drenched over and over again, but
+we shake the sparkling water off our coats, for all the world like
+Newfoundland dogs, and are all right again in a moment, "Is that the
+very last?" asks G---- reluctantly as we take our last breaker like
+a five-barred gate, flying, and find ourselves safe and sound, but
+quivering a good deal, in what seems comparatively smooth water. Is it
+smooth, though? Look at the Florence and all the other vessels. Still
+at it, see-saw, backward and forward, roll, roll, roll! How thankful
+we all are to have escaped a long day of sickening, monotonous motion!
+But there is the getting on board to be accomplished, for the brave
+little tug dare not come too near to her big sister steamboat or
+she would roll over on her. So we signal for a boat, and quickly the
+largest which the Florence possesses is launched and manned--no
+easy task in such a sea, but accomplished in the smartest and most
+seamanlike fashion. The sides of the tug are low, so it is not very
+difficult to scramble and tumble into the boat, which is laden to the
+water's edge by new passengers from East London and their luggage.
+When, however, we have reached the rolling Florence it is no easy
+matter to get out of the said boat and on board. There is a ladder let
+down, indeed, from the Florence's side, but how are we to use it when
+one moment half a dozen rungs are buried deep in the sea, and the next
+instant ship and ladder and all have rolled right away from us? It has
+to be done, however, and what a tower of strength and encouragement
+does "Capting Florence" prove himself at this juncture! We are all to
+sit perfectly still: no one is to move until his name is called, and
+then he is to come unhesitatingly and do exactly what he is told.
+
+"Pass up the baby!" is the first order which I hear given, and
+that astonishing baby is "passed up" accordingly. I use the word
+"astonishing" advisedly, for never was an infant so bundled about
+uncomplainingly. He is just as often upside down as not; he is
+generally handed from one quartermaster to the other by the gathers of
+his little blue flannel frock; seas break over his cradle on deck,
+but nothing disturbs him. He grins and sleeps and pulls at his bottle
+through everything, and grows fatter and browner and more impudent
+every day. On this occasion, when--after rivaling Léotard's most
+daring feats on the trapeze in my scramble up the side of a vessel
+which was lurching away from me--I at last reached the deck, I found
+the ship's carpenter nursing the baby, who had seized the poor man's
+beard firmly with one hand, and with the finger and thumb of the other
+was attempting to pick out one of his merry blue eyes. "Avast
+there!" cried the long-suffering sailor, and gladly relinquished the
+mischievous bundle to me.
+
+Up with the anchor, and off we go once more into the gathering
+darkness of what turns out to be a wet and windy night. Next day the
+weather had recovered its temper, and I was called upon deck directly
+after breakfast to see the "Gates of St. John," a really fine pass
+on the coast where the river Umzimvubu rushes through great granite
+cliffs into the sea. If the exact truth is to be told, I must confess
+I am a little disappointed with this coast-scenery. I have heard
+so much of its beauty, and as yet, though I have seen it under
+exceptionally favorable conditions of calm weather, which has allowed
+us to stand in very close to shore, I have not seen anything really
+fine until these "Gates" came in view. It has all been monotonous,
+undulating downs, here and there dotted with trees, and in some places
+the ravines were filled with what we used to call in New Zealand
+_bush_--i.e., miscellaneous greenery. Here and there a bold cliff or
+tumbled pile of red rock makes a landmark for the passing ships, but
+otherwise the uniformity is great indeed. The ordinary weather along
+this coast is something frightful, and the great reputation of our
+little Florence is built on the method in which she rides dry and safe
+as a duck among these stormy waters. Now that we are close to "fair
+Natal," the country opens out and improves in beauty. There are still
+the same sloping, rolling downs, but higher downs rise behind them,
+and again beyond are blue and purpling hills. Here and there, too, are
+clusters of fat, dumpy haystacks, which in reality are no haystacks at
+all, but Kafir kraals. Just before we pass the cliff and river which
+marks where No-Man's Land ends and Natal begins these little locations
+are more frequently to be observed, though what their inhabitants
+subsist on is a marvel to me, for we are only a mile or so from shore,
+and all the seeing power of all the field-glasses on board fails to
+discern a solitary animal. We can see lots of babies crawling about
+the hole which serves as door to a Kafir hut, and they are all as fat
+as little pigs; but what do they live on? Buttermilk, I am told--that
+is to say, sour milk, for the true Kafir palate does not appreciate
+fresh, sweet milk--and a sort of porridge made of _mealies_. I used
+to think "mealies" was a coined word for potatoes, but it really
+signifies maize or Indian corn, which is rudely crushed and ground,
+and forms the staple food of man and beast.
+
+In the mean time, we are speeding gayly over the bright waters, never
+very calm along this shore. Presently we come to a spot clearly marked
+by some odd-colored, tumbled-down cliffs and the remains of a great
+iron butt, where, more than a hundred years ago, the Grosvenor, a
+splendid clipper ship, was wrecked. The men nearly all perished or
+were made away with, but a few women were got on shore and carried
+off as prizes to the kraals of the Kafir "inkosis" or chieftains.
+What sort of husbands these stalwart warriors made to their reluctant
+brides tradition does not say, but it is a fact that almost all the
+children were born mad, and their descendants are, many of them,
+lunatics or idiots up to the present time. As the afternoon draws on a
+chill mist creeps over the hills and provokingly blots out the coast,
+which gets more beautiful every league we go. I wanted to remain up
+and see the light on the bluff just outside Port d'Urban, but a heavy
+shower drove me down to my wee cabin before ten o'clock. Soon after
+midnight the rolling of the anchor-chains and the sudden change of
+motion from pitching and jumping to the old monotonous roll told us
+that we were once more outside a bar, with a heavy sea on, and that
+there we must remain until the tug came to fetch us. But, alas! the
+tug had to make short work of it next morning, on account of the
+unaccommodating state of the tide, and all our hopes of breakfasting
+on shore were dashed by a hasty announcement at 5 A.M. that the tug
+was alongside, the mails were rapidly being put on board of her, and
+that she could not wait for passengers or anything else, because ten
+minutes later there would not be water enough to float her over the
+bar.
+
+"When shall _we_ be able to get over the bar?" I asked dolefully.
+
+"Not until the afternoon," was the prompt and uncompromising reply,
+delivered through my keyhole by the authority in charge of us. And he
+proved to be quite right; but I am bound to say the time passed more
+quickly than we had dared to hope or expect, for an hour later a bold
+little fishing-boat made her way through the breakers and across the
+bar in the teeth of wind and rain, bringing F---- on board. He has
+been out here these eight months, and looks a walking advertisement of
+the climate and temperature of our new home, so absolutely healthy
+is his appearance. He is very cheery about liking the place, and
+particularly insists on the blooming faces and sturdy limbs I
+shall see belonging to the young Natalians. Altogether, he appears
+thoroughly happy and contented, liking his work, his position,
+everything and everybody; which is all extremely satisfactory to
+hear. There is so much to tell and so much to behold that, as G----
+declares, "it is afternoon directly," and, the signal-flag being up,
+we trip our anchor once more and rush at the bar, two quartermasters
+and an officer at the wheel, the pilot and captain on the bridge, all
+hands on deck and on the alert, for always, under the most favorable
+circumstances, the next five minutes hold a peril in every second,
+"Stand by for spray!" sings out somebody, and we do stand by, luckily
+for ourselves, for "spray" means the top of two or three waves. The
+dear little Florence is as plucky as she is pretty, and appears to
+shut her eyes and lower her head and go _at_ the bar. Scrape, scrape,
+scrape! "We've stuck! No, we haven't! Helm hard down! Over!" and so
+we are. Among the breakers, it is true, buffeted hither and thither,
+knocked first to one side and then to the other; but we keep right on,
+and a few more turns of the screw take us into calm water under the
+green hills of the bluff. The breakers are behind us, we have twenty
+fathoms of water under our keel, the voyage is ended and over, the
+captain takes off his straw hat to mop his curly head, everybody's
+face loses the expression of anxiety and rigidity it has worn these
+past ten minutes, and boats swarm like locusts round the ship. The
+baby is passed over the ship's side for the last time, having been
+well kissed and petted and praised by every one as he was handed from
+one to the other, and we row swiftly away to the low sandy shore of
+the "Point."
+
+Only a few warehouses, or rather sheds of warehouses, are to be
+seen, and a rude sort of railway-station, which appears to afford
+indiscriminate shelter to boats as well as to engines. There are
+leisurely trains which saunter into the town of D'Urban, a mile and a
+half away, every half hour or so, but one of these "crawlers" had just
+started. The sun was very hot, and we voyagers were all sadly
+weary and headachy. But the best of the colonies is the prompt,
+self-sacrificing kindness of old-comers to new-comers. A gentleman had
+driven down in his own nice, comfortable pony-carriage, and without a
+moment's hesitation he insisted on our all getting into it and making
+the best of our way to our hotel. It is too good an offer to be
+refused, for the sun is hot and the babies are tired to death; so we
+start, slowly enough, to plough our way through heavy sand up to the
+axles. If the tide had been out we could have driven quickly along the
+hard, dry sand; but we comfort ourselves by remembering that there
+had been water enough on the bar, and make the best of our way through
+clouds of impalpable dust to a better road, of which a couple of
+hundred yards land us at our hotel. It looks bare and unfurnished
+enough, in all conscience, but it is a new place, and must be
+furnished by degrees. At all events, it is tolerably clean and quiet,
+and we can wash our sunburned faces and hands, and, as nurse says,
+"turn ourselves round."
+
+Coolies swarm in every direction, picturesque fish- and fruit-sellers
+throng the verandah of the kitchen a little way off, and everything
+looks bright and green and fresh, having been well washed by the
+recent rains. There are still, however, several feet of dust in the
+streets, for they are _made_ of dust; and my own private impression
+is, that all the water in the harbor would not suffice to lay the dust
+of D'Urban for more than half an hour. With the restlessness of people
+who have been cooped up on board ship for a month, we insist, the
+moment it is cool enough, on being taken out for a walk. Fortunately,
+the public gardens are close at hand, and we amuse ourselves very well
+in them for an hour or two, but we are all thoroughly tired and worn
+out, and glad to get to bed, even in gaunt, narrow rooms on hard
+pallets.
+
+The two following days were spent in looking after and collecting
+our cumbrous array of boxes and baskets. Tin baths, wicker chairs and
+baskets, all had to be counted and recounted, until one got weary of
+the word "luggage;" but that is the penalty of drafting babies about
+the world. In the intervals of the serious business of tracing No. 5
+or running No. 10 to earth in the corner of a warehouse, I made many
+pleasant acquaintances and received kindest words and notes of welcome
+from unknown friends. All this warm-hearted, unconventional kindness
+goes far to make the stranger forget his "own people and his father's
+house," and feel at once at home amid strange and unfamiliar scenes.
+After all, "home" is portable, luckily, and a welcoming smile and
+hand-clasp act as a spell to create it in any place. We also managed,
+after business-hours, when it was of no use making expeditions to
+wharf or custom-house after recusant carpet-bags, to drive to
+the Botanic Gardens. They are extensive and well kept, but seem
+principally devoted to shrubs. I was assured that this is the worst
+time of year for flowers, as the plants have not yet recovered
+from the winter drought. A dry winter and wet summer is the correct
+atmospheric fashion here: in winter everything is brown and dusty and
+dried up, in summer green and fragrant and well watered. The gardens
+are in good order, and I rather regretted not being able to examine
+them more thoroughly. Another afternoon we drove to the Berea, a
+sort of suburban Richmond, where the rich semi-tropical vegetation is
+cleared away in patches, and villas with pretty pleasure-grounds
+are springing up in every direction. The road winds up the
+luxuriantly-clothed slopes, with every here and there lovely sea-views
+of the harbor, with the purpling lights of the Indian Ocean stretching
+away beyond. Every villa must have an enchanting prospect from its
+front door, and one can quite understand how alluring to the merchants
+and business--men of D'Urban must be the idea of getting away after
+office-hours, and sleeping on such; high ground in so fresh and
+healthy an: atmosphere. And here I must say that we Maritzburgians (I
+am only one in prospective) wage a constant and deadly warfare with
+the D'Urbanites on the score of the health and convenience of our
+respective cities. _We_ are two thousand feet above the sea and
+fifty-two miles inland, so we talk in a pitying tone of the poor
+D'Urbanites as dwellers in a very hot and unhealthy place. "Relaxing"
+is the word we apply to their climate when we want to be particularly
+nasty, and they retaliate by reminding us that they are ever so much
+older than we are (which is an advantage in a colony), and that they
+are on the coast, and can grow all manner of nice things which we
+cannot compass, to say nothing of their climate being more equable
+than ours, and their thunderstorms, though longer in duration, mere
+flashes in the pan compared to what we in our amphitheatre of hills
+have to undergo at the hands of the electric current. We never can
+find answer to that taunt, and if the D'Urbanites only follow up their
+victory by allusions to their abounding bananas and other fruits,
+their vicinity to the shipping, and consequent facility of getting
+almost anything quite easily, we are completely silenced, and it is a
+wonder if we retain presence of mind enough to murmur "Flies." On the
+score of dust we are about equal, but I must in fairness confess that
+D'Urban is a more lively and a better-looking town than Maritzburg
+when you are in it, though the effect from a distance is not so
+good. It is very odd how unevenly the necessaries of existence are
+distributed in this country. Here at D'Urban anything hard in the
+way of stone is a treasure: everything is soft and friable: sand and
+finest shingle, so fine as to be mere dust, are all the available
+material for road-making. I am told that later on I shall find that
+a cartload of sand in Maritzburg is indeed a rare and costly thing:
+there we are all rock, a sort of flaky, slaty rock underlying every
+place. Our last day, or rather half day, in D'Urban was very full of
+sightseeing and work. F---- was extremely anxious for me to see the
+sun rise from the signal-station on the bluff, and accordingly he,
+G---- and I started with the earliest dawn. We drove through the sand
+again in a hired and springless Cape cart down to the Point, got into
+the port-captain's boat and rowed across a little strip of sand at the
+foot of a winding path cut out of the dense vegetation which makes
+the bluff such a refreshingly green headland to eyes of wave-worn
+voyagers. A stalwart Kafir carried our picnic basket, with tea and
+milk, bread and butter and eggs, up the hill, and it was delightful
+to follow the windings of the path through beautiful bushes bearing
+strange and lovely flowers, and knit together in patches in a green
+tangle by the tendrils of a convolvulus or clematis, or sort of wild,
+passion-flower, whose blossoms were opening to the fresh morning air.
+It was a cool but misty morning, and though we got to our destination
+in ample time, there was never any sunrise at all to be seen. In fact,
+the sun steadily declined to get up the whole day, so far as I knew,
+for the sea looked gray and solemn and sleepy, and the land kept its
+drowsy mantle of haze over its flat shore; which haze thickened and
+deepened into a Scotch mist as the morning wore on. We returned by
+the leisurely railway--a railway so calm and stately in its method
+of progression that it is not at all unusual to see a passenger step
+calmly out of the train when it is at its fullest speed of crawl,
+and wave his hand to his companions as he disappears down the by-path
+leading to his little home. The passengers are conveyed at a uniform
+rate of sixpence a head, which sixpence is collected promiscuously
+by a small boy at odd moments during the journey. There are no nice
+distinctions of class, either, for we all travel amicably together in
+compartments which are a judicious mixture of a third-class carriage
+and a cattle-truck. Of course, wood is the only fuel used, and that
+but sparingly, for it is exceedingly costly.
+
+There was still much to be done by the afternoon--many visitors to
+receive, notes to write and packages to arrange, for our traveling of
+these fifty-two miles spreads itself over a good many hours, as you
+will see. About three o'clock the government mule-wagon came to the
+door. It may truly and literally be described as "stopping the way,"
+for not only is the wagon itself a huge and cumbrous machine, but
+it is drawn by eight mules in pairs, and driven by a couple of black
+drivers. I say "driven by a couple of drivers," because the driving
+was evidently an affair of copartnership: one held the reins--such
+elaborate reins as they were! a confused tangle of leather--and the
+other had the care of two or three whips of differing lengths. The
+drivers were both jet black--not Kafirs, but Cape blacks--descendants
+of the old slaves taken by the Dutch. They appeared to be great
+friends, these two, and took earnest counsel together at every rut and
+drain and steep pinch of the road, which stretched away, over hill and
+dale, before us, a broad red track, with high green hedges on either
+hand. Although the rain had not yet fallen long or heavily, the
+ditches were all running freely with red, muddy water, and the dust
+had already begun to cake itself into a sticky, pasty red clay. The
+wagon was shut in by curtains at the back and sides, and could hold
+eight passengers easily. Luckily for the poor mules, however, we
+were only five grown-up people, including the drivers. The road was
+extremely pretty, and the town looked very picturesque as we gradually
+rose above it and looked down on it and the harbor together. Of a
+fine, clear afternoon it would have been still nicer, though I was
+much congratulated on the falling rain on account of the absence of
+its alternative--dust. Still, it was possible to have too much of a
+good thing, and by the time we reached Pine Town, only fourteen miles
+away, the heavy roads were beginning to tell on the poor mules, and
+the chill damp of the closing evening made us all only too thankful to
+get under the shelter of a roadside inn (or hotel, as they are called
+here), which was snug and bright and comfortable enough to be a credit
+to any colony. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to be
+told that this inn was not only a favorite place for people to come
+out to from D'Urban to spend their holiday time in fine weather (there
+is a pretty little church in the village hard by), but also that it
+was quite _de rigueur_ for all honeymoons to be spent amid its pretty
+scenery.
+
+A steady downpour of rain all through the night made our early start
+next day an affair of doubt and discouragement and dismal prophecy;
+but we persevered, and accomplished another long stage through a cold
+persistent drizzle before reaching an inn, where we enjoyed simply the
+best breakfast I ever tasted, or at all events the best I have tasted
+in Natal. The mules were also unharnessed, and after taking, each, a
+good roll on the damp grass, turned out in the drizzling rain for a
+rest and a nibble until their more substantial repast was ready. The
+rain cleared up from time to time, but an occasional heavy shower
+warned us that the weather was still sulky. It was in much better
+heart and spirits, however, that we made a second start about eleven
+o'clock, and struggled on through heavy roads up and down weary hills,
+slipping here, sliding there, and threatening to stick everywhere.
+Our next stage was to a place where the only available shelter was a
+filthy inn, at which we lingered as short a time as practicable--only
+long enough, in fact, to feed the mules--and then, with every prospect
+of a finer afternoon, set out once more on the last and longest stage
+of our journey. All the way the road has been very beautiful, in spite
+of the shrouding mist, especially at the Inchanga Pass, where round
+the shoulder of the hill as fair a prospect of curved green hills,
+dotted with clusters of timber exactly like an English park, of
+distant ranges rising in softly-rounded outlines, with deep violet
+shadows in the clefts and pale green lights on the slopes, stretches
+before you as the heart of painter could desire. Nestling out of sight
+amid this rich pasture-land are the kraals of a large Kafir location,
+and no one can say that these, the children of the soil, have not
+secured one of the most favored spots. To me it all looked like a fair
+mirage. I am already sick of beholding all this lovely country
+lying around, and yet of being told that food and fuel are almost at
+famine-prices. People say, "Oh, but you should see it in winter. _Now_
+it is green, and there is plenty of feed on it, but three months ago
+no grass-eating creature could have picked up a living on all the
+country-side. It is all as brown and bare as parchment for half the
+year. _This_ is the spring." Can you not imagine how provoking it is
+to hear such statements made by old settlers, who know the place only
+too well, and to find out that all the radiant beauty which greets
+the traveler's eye is illusive, for in many places there are miles and
+miles without a drop of water for the flock and herds; consequently,
+there are no means of transport for all this fuel until the days of
+railways? Besides which, through Natal lies the great highway to
+the Diamond Fields, the Transvaal and the Free States, and all the
+opening-up country beyond; so it is more profitable to drive a wagon
+than to till a farm. Every beast with four legs is wanted to drag
+building materials or provisions. The supply of beef becomes daily
+more precarious and costly, for the oxen are all "treking," and
+one hears of nothing but diseases among animals--"horse sickness,"
+pleuro-pneumonia, fowl sickness (I feel it an impertinence for the
+poultry to presume to be ill), and even dogs set up a peculiar and
+fatal sort of distemper among themselves.
+
+But to return to the last hours of our journey. The mules struggle
+bravely along, though their ears are beginning to flap about any way,
+instead of being held straight and sharply pricked forward, and the
+encouraging cries of "Pull up, Capting! now then, Blue-bok, hi!"
+become more and more frequent: the driver in charge of the whips is
+less nice in his choice of a scourge with which to urge on the patient
+animals, and whacks them soundly with whichever comes first. The
+children have long ago wearied of the confinement and darkness of
+the back seats of the hooded vehicle; we are all black and blue from
+jolting in and out of deep holes hidden by mud which occur at every
+yard; but still our flagging spirits keep pretty good, for _our_
+little Table Mountain has been left behind, whilst before us, leaning
+up in one corner of an amphitheatre of hills, are the trees which mark
+where Maritzburg nestles. The mules see it too, and, sniffing their
+stables afar off, jog along faster. Only one more rise to pull up: we
+turn a little off the high-road, and there, amid a young plantation
+of trees, with roses, honeysuckle and passion-flowers climbing up the
+posts of the wide verandah, a fair and enchanting prospect lying
+at our feet, stands our new home, with its broad red tiled roof
+stretching out a friendly welcome to the tired, belated travelers.
+
+
+
+
+A SYLVAN SEARCH.
+
+
+  I.
+
+  From tales of rural gods I rose,
+    And sought them through the woody deeps,
+  Where, held in shadowy, sweet repose,
+    The sunshine, like Endymion, sleeps--
+  Where murmurous waters softly sing
+    To listening branches, bended low,
+  And tuneful birds on waving wing,
+    As Zephyrus, gently come and go.
+
+
+  II.
+
+  Vainly I sought the gods, yet heard
+    Their whispering spirits say to mine,
+  "Who seeks us finds the forests stirred
+    By myriad voices all divine,
+  And learns that still the mystic spell
+    Of fauns and dryads fills the place
+  With beauty myths have failed to tell--
+    One god in every hidden face."
+
+MARY B. DODGE.
+
+
+
+
+THE SONGS OF MIRZA-SCHAFFY.
+
+
+It was in Vienna during the stormy days of October, 1848. The sky was
+lurid with the glow of surrounding conflagrations: roof and turret
+were illumined by the glaring reflection of the sea of fire, while
+the broad Danube madly stretched forth its blood-red tongue to the
+blood-red walls of the city. The clashing of weapons and rolling of
+drums resounded through the streets. Every house became in its turn a
+fortress, every window a porthole. During these days of horror there
+assembled in the evening at the dwelling of Friedrich Bodenstedt a
+circle of friends, who sought in conversation on literary topics some
+relief after the agitating experiences of the day.
+
+"Bodenstedt," exclaimed Auerbach on one of these occasions, "tell
+us of your adventures in the East. Awake with blithesome touch the
+memories of your past: transport us into a new world where will be
+dispelled the gloom of the present."
+
+"Yes, do," chimed in the rest, drawing their chairs closer together.
+
+"Tell us, above all, of your famous teacher, Mirza-Schaffy," added
+Kaufmann.
+
+One usually narrates one's experiences best in a circle of sympathetic
+listeners, and even under ordinary circumstances Bodenstedt was
+esteemed a good talker. Soon a spirit of cheerfulness prevailed, and
+as the friends sat far into the night, the tumult without, the burning
+suburbs, the beat of drums and the firing of cannons were forgotten.
+
+Night after night the friends met--poets, philosophers, men of
+learning, artists--and sat, to use Bodenstedt's own words, "on the
+carpet of expectation, smoked the pipe of satisfaction, saw the
+sunshine of wine sparkle up from the flask, and fished for words of
+pearls with the delicate nets of the ears." The story of Eastern life
+grew and rounded in its proportions, and Auerbach, who seemed most of
+all entranced, insisted that the source of so fascinating a narrative
+should be guided through the "canal of the pen into the sea of
+publicity." Bodenstedt demurred, maintaining that the "art-hewn path
+from the head to the hand" was far more difficult to traverse than the
+natural one from the mouth to the ear.
+
+"Yes, but it leads farther," rejoined Auerbach, "and what pleases us,
+who listen, you may rest assured, with critical ears, cannot fail to
+please in more extended circles."
+
+Upon this foundation arose that delightful book, _A Thousand and One
+Days in the Orient_, which was the occasion of one of the most
+amusing mystifications and controversies that ever occupied the German
+literary world.
+
+Friedrich Bodenstedt was born at Peine in Hanover, April 21, 1819.
+Notwithstanding his precocious intellectuality and remarkable poetic
+talents, he was condemned by his parents to a mercantile career. After
+a mournful apprenticeship he managed, however, to escape from this
+uncongenial employment, and pursued a course of study at Göttingen,
+Munich and Berlin, devoting himself chiefly to philology and history.
+The year 1840 found him in Moscow as private tutor in the family of
+Prince Galitzin, and shortly after he published his first volume of
+poetry. Later, he was appointed teacher of languages at the Tiflis
+Gymnasium, and the result of his learned investigations here were
+given to the world in his _People of Caucasus_, in which, however,
+were wholly thrust into the background poetical reminiscences evoked,
+as we have seen, by gifted and genial friends.
+
+During his sojourn in Tiflis, the mountain-encompassed capital of
+Georgia, Bodenstedt undertook the study of the Tartar language,
+finding it to be a universally-employed means of communication with
+the many-tongued races of Caucasus. Among the numerous teachers
+recommended to him, he selected one called Mirza-Schaffy, "the wise
+man of Gjändsha," being attracted to him partly because of his calm,
+dignified demeanor, partly because he possessed a sufficient knowledge
+of Russian, with which Bodenstedt was perfectly familiar, to render
+intercourse easy and agreeable.
+
+Here it may not be amiss to observe that "Mirza" is a title which
+placed before a proper name signifies "scribe"--after a name it
+designates a prince. Thus, Mirza-Schaff[^y] means "Scribe Schaffy,"
+but Schaffy-Mirzâ would mean "Prince Schaffy." Each word, when
+pronounced separately, has the accent on the last syllable, but
+together they are pronounced as one word, with the accent on the final
+syllable.
+
+The Tartars possess no such brilliant stores of literature as the
+Persians, but they are endowed with a manly vigor which the latter
+have lost. Mirza-Schaffy was a Tartar by birth, nurtured with Persian
+culture, and was, when Bodenstedt made his acquaintance, in December,
+1843, a man of some forty years of age, of very stately appearance
+and excessive neatness. He wore a soft silken suit, about which he
+carelessly draped a blue Turkish cloak, while a tall black sheep-skin
+hat of sugar-loaf form adorned his shapely head. A dark, well-tended
+beard framed his handsomely chiseled face, whose calm, earnest
+expression was heightened by the deep, rich hue of his complexion, and
+his large, serious eyes were void of the usual cunning of his class.
+His high-heeled slippers, whose purity he miraculously preserved
+unimpaired when mud was at its height in the streets of Tiflis, he
+left always at the threshold of his pupil's room, pressing carpet and
+divan only with his immaculate variegated stockings.
+
+But Mirza-Schaffy's main charm lay in his thorough genuineness,
+his earnestness of purpose and the tranquillity of his whole being.
+Misfortune and sorrow had visited him in many forms, leaving their
+impress on his brow, yet he had not been crushed; and thoroughly as he
+appreciated the refined enjoyments of life, he could most gracefully
+renounce luxuries attainable only by Fortune's favorites. So long as
+he could have his _tschibuq_ filled with good tobacco and his goblet
+with good wine, both of which were plentiful in Tiflis, he seemed
+content with the entire dispensation of the world. Highly as he
+prized, however, the beneficent effects of wine, he was an enemy to
+excess, having made moderation in all things the law of his life.
+
+The whole atmosphere surrounding the man produced a deep and lasting
+impression on Bodenstedt, who, longing to immortalize the name of one
+who had unfolded to him the treasures of Eastern lore, and from whom
+he had derived so much pleasure and profit, conceived the idea of
+representing his teacher in his public characterization with poetic
+freedom, as a type of the Eastern poet and man of learning. Poet,
+Mirza-Schaffy was not in reality, for although he was skilled in the
+art of rhyming, and could translate with ease any simple song from
+the Persian into the Tartar language, Bodenstedt found only one of his
+original efforts which was worthy of preservation. The song referred
+to was one hurled, as it were, at the head of an offending mullah who
+had derided Mirza-Schaffy for his tenderness to wine, and reads as
+follows:
+
+  Mullah! pure is our wine:
+    It to revile were sin.
+  Shouldst thou censure my word,
+    May'st find truth therein!
+
+  No devotion hath me
+    To thy mosque led to pray:
+  Through wine render'd free,
+    I have chanced there to stray.
+
+All other poems introduced into the _Thousand and One Days in the
+Orient_ are entirely of Bodenstedt's own composition, were designed
+to add flavor to the picture of an Eastern divan of wisdom, and were
+usually written while the impression was fresh of intercourse with the
+wise man of Gjändsha. Shortly after the appearance of the book, which
+was well received by the public, the publisher proposed to Bodenstedt
+to issue separately the poems contained in it; and this was finally
+done in an attractive volume entitled _The Songs of Mirza-Schaffy_,
+many additions being made to the original collection. Of these, one of
+the most fresh and sparkling is a spring song, which has never before
+appeared in English, and which we present as a fitting introduction:
+
+  When young Spring up mountain-peaks doth hie,
+    And the sunbeams scatter stores of snow--
+  When the trees put forth their leaflets shy,
+    And amid grass the first wild flower doth blow--
+      When in yonder vale
+      Fleeth in a gale
+    All the dolesome rain and wintry wail,
+      Rings from upland air
+        Forth to many a clime,
+      "Oh, how wond'rous fair
+        Is the glad spring-time!"
+
+  When the glaciers quail 'neath hot sunbeams,
+    And all Nature into life doth spring--
+  When from mountain-sides gush forth cool streams,
+    And with sounds of glee the forests ring--
+      Fragrant zephyrs too
+      Stray the green meads through
+    And the heavens smile, serene and blue.
+      While from upland air
+        Rings to many a clime,
+      "Oh, how wond'rous fair
+        Is the glad spring-time!"
+
+  And was it not in the days of spring
+    That thy heart and mine, O maiden fair!
+  Were united, while our lips did cling
+    In their first long kiss, so sweet and rare?
+      What the glad grove sang
+      Through the wide vale rang,
+    And the fresh stream from the mountain sprang.
+      While the upland air
+        Wafted forth its rhyme,
+      "Oh, how wond'rous fair
+        Is the glad spring-time!"
+
+Seldom has a volume of poems been received with more general applause.
+Their renown spread rapidly through their native land; constantly
+increasing demand for copies rendered needful frequent new editions,
+to which at divers times were added by the author freshly-created
+poems; and the interest is still alive, now nearly quarter of a
+century after their first appearance, when they have passed their
+fiftieth edition. They have been at one time or other translated into
+most of the modern tongues of Europe; and that they have never gained
+popularity with us is due probably to the fact that in those which
+have been translated into our tongue neither the essence nor the form
+of the original has been preserved. By the title no mystification was
+ever designed: it came, as it were, of itself, and the purport of
+the narrative through which the main songs were interwoven being well
+known, it was never, supposed that a doubt concerning the authorship
+could arise. Nevertheless, the critics accepted them as translations
+from the Persian, and sharp lines of distinction were drawn between
+the poet, Mirza-Schaffy, and his translator, Friedrich Bodenstedt,
+not precisely to the advantage of the latter. Many a hearty laugh
+did Bodenstedt indulge in on reading in one or another learned
+dissertation that he was the possessor of a very neat poetic talent,
+and frequently reminded one in his original compositions of the works
+of his genial teacher, Mirza-Schaffy, of which he had given admirable
+translations, though without attaining to the excellence of the
+original. Now, a poet, in the wildest flights of his imagination,
+could not hope for a more brilliant success for the poetic fiction
+of his own creation than to have it accepted by the world as a living
+reality. In this he would naturally delight, even though his own
+personality were for a time thrust into the background, precisely like
+a loving father whose children meet with better fortune in life than
+himself. Sundry renditions into foreign tongues were even announced as
+direct translations from the Persian.
+
+After the death of the real Mirza-Schaffy in 1852, which was duly
+announced by the press, sundry efforts were made by Eastern travelers
+to visit his grave in Tiflis and gain those particulars concerning
+him and his writings which Bodenstedt was supposed to have selfishly
+withheld from the public. Of these, one of the most prominent was
+Professor H. Brugsch, secretary of the Prussian embassy to Persia in
+1860, who in his book of travels thus descants on his futile efforts:
+"No one could inform us where the last earthly remains of a certain
+Mirza-Schaffy were laid to rest. We consoled ourselves with the
+reflection that neither mounds nor monuments are requisite to preserve
+a poet's fame, but that through his songs is his name transmitted to
+posterity. Yet even here we were doomed to disappointment. No one
+whom we encountered knew aught of the songs of the jovial, genial
+Mirza-Schaffy which in our German Fatherland have penetrated to the
+very life of the people."
+
+Some years later the Russian imperial state counselor Bergé, while
+chief of educational institutions in Caucasus, also made the matter
+a subject of investigation, and in the year 1870 gave the history
+thereof to the world in the _Journal of the German Oriental Society_.
+He tells of his vain efforts to learn something of the genius of
+Mirza-Schaffy in his own land, and the amusement he created by his
+queries concerning possible posthumous works, and finally settles the
+question beyond dispute concerning the authorship of the poems.
+
+After this, Bodenstedt yielded to the solicitations of friends to give
+in the pages of the popular German magazine _Daheim_ a correct version
+of the whole affair.
+
+Let the reader present to his mind's eye a picture of the Eastern
+scribe, clad in the apparel before described, seated on the
+comfortable divan, with legs crossed after the fashion of the country,
+the long _tschibuq_ caressingly held in one hand, the other uplifted,
+and with finger pointed to his brow, haranguing the German man of
+letters at his side on the advantages to be enjoyed under his tuition,
+and on the idle pretensions of those who call themselves learned
+without so much as comprehending the sacred languages. He cherished,
+however, the pious hope that in the course of time, thanks to his
+efforts, the enlightenment of the East might take effect in the West,
+which hope was strengthened by the encouraging fact that Bodenstedt
+was the fifth scholar who had felt the need of migrating to Tiflis to
+profit by his instructions. In his excess of national modesty the wise
+man of Gjändsha only styled himself the first wise man of the East,
+but since the children of the West dwelt under a dark cloud of
+unbelief, it resulted as a matter of course that he must be the wisest
+of all men.
+
+"I, Mirza-Schaffy," said he to his pupil, "am the first wise man
+of the East, consequently thou, as my disciple, art the second. But
+misunderstand me not. I have a friend, Omar Effendi, an extremely wise
+man, who verily is not third among the learned scribes of the land.
+Did not I live, and were Omar Effendi thy teacher, he would be first,
+and thou the second wise man."
+
+On being asked what he should do if told that the wise men of the West
+would consider him as deficient in enlightenment as he did them, he
+rejoined, "What could I do but be amazed at their folly? What new
+thing can I learn from their opinions when they merely repeat my own?"
+Hence the song:
+
+  Shall I laugh or fall to wailing
+    That the most of men so dumb are,
+  Ever borrowed thoughts retailing,
+    And in mother-wit so mum are?
+
+  No: thanksgiving heavenward rise
+    That fools so crowd this generation,
+  Else the wisdom of the wise
+    Would be lost to observation.
+
+Numerous rivals envied Mirza-Schaffy his lessons, for each of which
+he was paid a whole silver ruble--an unusually high tuition-fee. Most
+formidable among these was Mirza-Jussuf (Joseph), the wise man of
+Bagdad, who called one day on Bodenstedt and boldly informed him that
+the revered Mirza-Schaffy was an Ischekj ("an ass") among the bearers
+of wisdom--that he could not write properly, and could not sing
+at all. "And what is wisdom without song?" he exclaimed. "What is
+Mirza-Schaffy compared with me?" With bewildering eloquence he set
+forth his own superior accomplishments, dwelling largely on his name,
+which had been exalted by the Hebrew poet Moses as well as by
+the Persian poet Hafiz, and exerting himself to prove that the
+significance of a great name must be transmitted to all future bearers
+thereof. He was still speaking when a measured tread was heard in
+the ante-chamber, and Mirza-Schaffy himself drew near. He appeared to
+comprehend intuitively the cause of the guest's presence, for he cast
+on Jussuf, who had become suddenly stricken with modesty, a glance
+of withering contempt, and was about giving vent to his emotions when
+Bodenstedt interposed with the words, "Mirza-Schaffy, wise man of
+Gjändsha, what have my ears heard? You undertake to instruct me, and
+you can neither write nor sing! You are an Ischekj among the bearers
+of wisdom: thus sayeth Mirza-Jussuf, the wise man of Bagdad."
+
+Without deigning a word of reply, Mirza-Schaffy clapped his hands, a
+sign at which the servant usually brought him a fresh pipe, but
+this time he demanded his thick-soled slippers. With one of these he
+proceeded to so unmercifully belabor the wise man of Bagdad that the
+latter besought mercy with the most appealing words and gestures. But
+the chastiser was inexorable. "What?" said he. "I cannot sing, dost
+thou say? Wait, I will make music for thee! And I cannot write,
+either? Let it be, then, on thy head!" Whimpering and writhing beneath
+the blows accompanying these words, the wise man of Bagdad staggered
+toward the door and vanished from sight.
+
+More calmly than might have been anticipated did Mirza-Schaffy return
+from the contest of wisdom, and promptly taking his usual seat on the
+divan, he began to exhort his German disciple to lend no ear to such
+false teachers as Jussuf and his fellows, whose name, he said, was
+legion, whose avarice was greater than their wisdom, and whose aim was
+to plunder, not teach, their pupils.
+
+Later, Jussuf strove to win Bodenstedt by repeated messages,
+accompanied by songs in the most exquisite handwriting.
+Mirza-Schaffy's opinion concerning these compositions is embodied in
+quite a number of songs, of which space must be found for one:
+
+  Forsooth! is Mirza-Jussuf a very well-read man!
+  Now searcheth he Hafiz, now searcheth the Koran,
+  Now Dshamy and Chakany, and now the _Gülistan_.
+  Here stealeth he a symbol, and there doth steal a flower,
+  Here robbeth precious thoughts, and there a true word's power.
+  He giveth as his own what has been said before,
+  Transplanted! the whole world into his tedious lore;
+  And proudly decketh he his prey with borrowed plumes,
+  Then flauntingly that this is poetry assumes.
+
+  How differently lives and sings Mirza-Schaffy!
+  A glowing star his heart to lighten paths of gloom,
+  His mind a blooming garden, filled with sweet perfume,
+  And in his rich creations no plagiarist is he:
+  His songs are full of beauty, and perfect as can be.
+
+Mirza-Schaffy himself was a miracle of skill in chirography: none
+could equal him in wielding the _kalem_. His aim was not to impart a
+precise regularity to the characters, but to indicate by the writing
+the matter and style. Proverbs or utterances of wisdom were indited
+by him in a firm, bold hand with unadorned simplicity; love-songs with
+delicate, clear-cut lines, attractive capricious curves, enigmatical,
+almost illegible minuteness, designed to set forth the type of female
+character. The chirography of the songs to wine and earthly pleasure
+is full of fire and flourish--that of the songs of lamentation neat,
+legible and unadorned. To impart this skill to his pupil was one of
+his most earnest endeavors.
+
+One day, when inspired by choice wine and soothed by the fragrant
+fumes of his _tschibuq_, Mirza-Schaffy was moved to tell of the love
+his heart had cherished--love such as man had never before known. The
+object of his adoration was Zuléikha, daughter of Ibrahim, the chan of
+Gjändsha. Her eyes, darker than the night, shone with a brighter
+glow than the stars of heaven: passing description were the graceful
+loveliness of her form, the dainty perfection of hands and feet, her
+soft hair long as eternity, and the sweet mouth whose breath was more
+fragrant than the roses of Schiraz. He who was destined to be her
+slave had watched her daily for six months--as she sat on the housetop
+at midday with her companions, or on moonlight evenings when she
+amused herself with the dancing of her slaves--before he received so
+much as a sign that she deemed him worthy of her regard. He rejoiced
+in the splendor of her countenance, but dared no more approach her
+than the sun in whose warm rays he might bask. By day he was compelled
+to exercise the utmost caution, as his life would have been in
+jeopardy had Ibrahim Chan descried him casting loving looks at
+Zuléikha, but in the evening he was safe to draw attention to himself,
+as after eight o'clock the old man never crossed his threshold. Then
+the flames of the lover's heart burst into song, and he gave
+utterance to a _ghazel_ now of Hafiz, now of Firdusa, while still more
+frequently he sang his own songs.
+
+Finally, Ibrahim Chan set forth on an expedition against the enemies
+of Moscow, and thus was afforded a rare opportunity for the enamored
+Mirza to present himself and his songs to the fair one's notice. One
+dark evening, when the ladies had failed to appear on the housetop,
+as Mirza-Schaffy was turning disappointed away he was accosted by a
+closely-veiled female, who, bidding him follow her, led the way to
+a secluded spot where interruption would be improbable, and thus
+addressed him: "I am Fatima, the confidential attendant of Zuléikha.
+My mistress hath gazed on thee with the eye of satisfaction. The
+resonance of thy voice hath delighted her ear, the purport of thy
+songs touched her heart. I am come of my own accord, without my lady's
+bidding, to let thee drink hope from the fountain of my words, because
+I wish thee well."
+
+"Has, then, Zuléikha not closed her ear to the poorest of her slaves?"
+exclaimed the overjoyed Mirza. "And will my heart not be lacerated
+by the thorn of her displeasure? Allah min! Allah bir! The God of
+thousands is one only God! Great is His goodness and wonderful are His
+ways! What have I done that He hath guided the stream of my songs to
+the sea of beauty?"
+
+Fatima told him he did well to prize the merciful goodness of Allah
+and the loveliness of her mistress, who was a "jewel in the ring of
+beauty, a pearl in the shell of fortune." Her noble lady, she said,
+would have given token of her favor before had not her virtuous
+modesty exceeded her beauty, and had she not feared the displeasure
+of her father, who tenderly loved her and would never consent to her
+stooping to a poor mirza. Then she proceeded to tell how Achmed
+Chan of Avaria, who was at the war with Ibrahim Chan, was suing for
+Zuléikha's hand, which was promised by the father should he return
+triumphant from the campaign. This would render prompt action
+desirable, and Fatima suggested that Mirza-Schaffy should appear on
+the following evening, when the call to prayer resounded from the
+minaret, before the garden with his choicest offering of song, to
+which, the messenger was ready to wager, would be accorded a rosebud.
+Intoxicated with joy, Mirza-Schaffy bestowed on the friendly Fatima
+his purse, his watch and all the valuables about him, also promising a
+talisman to cure a black spot on her left cheek; and they parted
+with the understanding that they should meet, again for further
+communication.
+
+And here, in exemplification of the learned scribe's rejoinders to
+his pupil's queries concerning the significance of the thorn of
+displeasure and the rosebud, is introduced the song:
+
+  The thorn is token of rejection,
+    Of disapproval and of scorn:
+  If she to union hath objection,
+    She giveth me as sign a thorn.
+
+  Yet if, instead, the maiden throws me
+    A tender rosebud as a token,
+  That fate propitious is it shows me,
+    And bids me wait with faith unbroken.
+
+  But if a full-blown rose she tenders,
+    Its open chalice is a token
+  Which boldest hope in me engenders;
+    Through it her love is clearly spoken.
+
+On the ensuing evening Mirza-Schaffy presented himself promptly at
+the appointed place, prepared with a love-song which he knew none of
+womankind could resist. The evening was calm and clear, and on the
+housetop, alone with Fatima, was plainly discernible Zuléikha, her
+veil slightly drawn aside in token of favor. Taking courage, the
+enamored Mirza pushed back his cap in order to display his freshly
+shaven head, of whose whiteness he was excessively proud, and which he
+felt to be irresistible to maidens' eyes, and began to sing his song,
+having first cast a written copy folded about a double almond-kernel,
+as a keepsake at the feet of beauty. The song given at this point is
+excessively flowery, and declares the maiden's eyes to be brighter
+than those of the wild gazelle, her form more ethereal than the
+slender pine, and pronounces the wooer, his heart and his tuneful lay
+to be but slaves of her loveliness. This by way of preparation, the
+highest point of the offering being the concluding stanzas:
+
+  With faithful heart and hopefully
+    Approach I now Love's sacred bower,
+  And cast this wistful song at thee,
+    This fragrant song, as question-flower.
+
+  Accept with joy or scornfully,
+    Give my heart death or consolation,
+  Cast rosebud, rose, or thorn at me,
+    I humbly wait thy revelation.
+
+Smilingly the maiden cast a rosebud at her waiting suitor, and for the
+first time fully displayed to him her beauteous face. From this moment
+new life dawned on our Mirza, and for six weeks he basked in the
+sunshine of felicity ere threatening clouds loomed up in his horizon.
+Then Ibrahim Chan returned from the war, and with him came his
+daughter's suitor. A troop of horsemen had been despatched to Avaria
+for the bridal gift, and on their return they were to conduct Achmed
+Chan and his chosen lady home. Prize combats and festivities were
+planned to celebrate the return of the heroes, and at Zuléikha's
+request a singing festival was likewise to take place. All the singers
+of the land were invited and bidden to prepare their choicest lays
+extolling the sovereign lady of the fête: to the victorious competitor
+would be accorded the right to break the instruments of his opponents.
+
+Now was the time for Mirza-Schaffy to gather all his courage, for he
+knew the crisis of his destiny to be at hand. He arranged with Fatima
+that the day of the singing festival should be likewise that of his
+flight with Zuléikha, for he was troubled with no doubt concerning
+the success of his lyrical efforts. An Armenian who was about setting
+forth with a caravan was confided in, and engaged to reserve camels
+for and accord protection to the fugitives.
+
+The minutes seemed like days, the hours like years, until the
+announcement was heralded that Ibrahim Chan had sallied forth with his
+guests to the prize combat, and that the ladies awaited the minstrels.
+They were assembled on the housetop, lovely matrons and maidens, and
+there was spread a large carpet on which set two players on the _sass_
+and _tshengir_, between whom each singer in turn took his place to
+sing his offering to the sound of strings. The handsomest boy
+in Gjändsha was appointed to hand to each singer a silver plate,
+wherewith to conceal from the eye of beauty the emotions depicted in
+his countenance while singing. Twenty singers stood in a circle and
+stepped forth one after the other, Mirza-Schaffy, as the youngest
+of the number, coming last. All other emanations he felt to be
+faint sparks in comparison with the fire of his own. How could it be
+otherwise, considering the source of his inspiration? As he sang his
+heart swelled with ecstasy, and when he concluded there lay at his
+feet a full-blown rose. He was victor of the festival, yet so filled
+was he with thoughts of his beloved that he remembered not to break
+the instruments of the vanquished.
+
+The flight was effected; the bride, although awaiting the coming of
+the bridegroom in bridal array, offering all due resistance as he led
+her from her home; indeed, so zealous was she to be faithful to the
+customs of her country that her cries would have roused the household
+had not the prudent Fatima interposed. On reaching the caravan a
+double security seemed to arise from the Armenian proving to be
+the accepted lover of Fatima; and Zuléikha, although deeming it a
+degradation for a daughter of Ali to unite her destinies with an
+unbeliever, was herself too strongly in the bondage of love to
+withhold her consent. Then how happy were they all! and what
+precautions were taken for their safety! Nevertheless, they were
+overtaken by the angry father and the outraged suitor of his choice.
+Zuléikha and Fatima were rudely snatched from the protection of their
+lovers, and the learned scribe--we blush to write it--received on the
+very soles which had borne him to the summit of bliss the ignominious
+blows of the bastinado.
+
+From that day Mirza-Schaffy had felt indisposed to bestow his
+affections on mortal woman, and since the sun of his hopes had set
+dwelt serenely in the moonlight of remembrance. As Zuléikha, the
+embodiment of all virtue and beauty, had loved him, he believed
+himself to be an object of adoration to all feminine hearts, and
+grimly resolved that all womankind must suffer in expiation of his own
+sufferings.
+
+During the winter there arrived another student from Germany, who,
+becoming acquainted with Bodenstedt, arranged to share with him the
+lessons in Tartar and Persian, which Mirza-Schaffy was pleased to call
+"hours of wisdom." In course of time other friends joined the circle,
+so that finally arose a formal divan, where the wise man of Gjändsha
+discoursed less on personalities, dwelling chiefly on general
+effusions of wisdom, interspersed with many a song. One of the latter
+reads as though designed by Bodenstedt to indicate the relation borne
+by Mirza-Schaffy to his own productions:
+
+  Thou art of my song the begetter;
+    Its drapery putteth my wand on;
+  Thou yieldest the purest of marble,
+    And I lay the sculpturing hand on.
+
+  Thou givest the spirit, the essence:
+    Me for utt'rance alone mak'st demand on--
+  Oft my power's deficient, and madly
+    Thy crude thoughts I haste to expand on.
+
+Sundry songs extolling the beneficence of wine and earthly pleasure
+arose at this period. Of these we find none more attractive than that
+which owed its origin to a conversation held in the divan of wisdom
+concerning certain Russians and Georgians who drank wine more freely
+than the camels drank water, yet had gained no inspiration therefrom:
+
+  From wine's fiery fascination
+    From the goblet's mystic pleasure,
+  Poison foams, and sweet refreshment,
+  Beauty flows, and degradation,
+    As the drinker's worth may measure,
+  According to his brain's assessment.
+
+  In debasement deeply sunken
+    Lies the fool, through wine's might captur'd:
+  When _he_ drinks becomes he drunken;
+    When _we_ drink we are enraptured.
+    Sparkling gleams of wit, worth dreaming,
+    Flash from tongues like angel's seeming,
+    And with ardor we are teeming,
+  And alone with beauty drunken.
+
+  Well resembles wine the shower
+    Which to mire fresh mire amasses,
+  But to fair fields brings a dower
+    Rich in blessing as it passes.
+
+One evening Bodenstedt discovered his worthy teacher singing before
+a house on whose roof sat a graceful maiden, and from the man's whole
+manner then and thereafter concluded that in the long-faithful heart
+had been at last replaced the image of Zuléikha. And so it proved. On
+the very evening when he was returning home with softened heart after
+the recital of the joys and sorrows of his first love, Mirza-Schaffy's
+attention had been arrested by a lovely maiden who, as he pushed
+back his cap--solely, of course, to cool his heated brow--gave
+incontestable evidences of being smitten with him. When he went to
+his couch that night sleep refused to visit his eyelids, and as he
+restlessly tossed to and fro, the image of Zuléikha haunting him with
+reproachful mien, his thoughts turned ever to the peerless maiden who
+menaced further fidelity to the old love. Ere morning dawned he had
+resolved to break the spell, and for several days avoided the locality
+of the fair enticer. But the attraction became finally too strong to
+resist. He went, he saw the maiden, and she bestowed on him a glance
+which rendered him her slave for life;
+
+  A wond'rous glance hath met my eyes:
+    The magic of this moment rare
+  Worketh for aye a fresh surprise,
+    A miracle beyond compare.
+
+  A question, therefore, ask I thee--
+    Pay heed, sweet life whom I adore--
+  Was that fond glance bestowed on me?
+    A token give, then, I implore.
+
+  And round thee could my strong arm cling,
+    Might I to thee life consecrate,
+  Loud jubilees my heart would sing,
+    And these to thee I'd dedicate.
+
+The first interview presents decidedly a comical side. By a
+confidential attendant Mirza-Schaffy was introduced on the roof
+disguised in female costume, his face and flowing beard modestly
+covered with a long veil. Luckily, he was not doomed long to such
+undignified concealment, for he soon managed, through his beauty
+and genius, to win favor in the eyes of the lady's mother, and she
+promised to intercede in his behalf with the stern old father. The
+latter, however, having eyes neither for beauty nor poetry, thought
+only to demand what means of support the bold intruder had to offer
+his daughter, and when he learned how small these were, withheld
+his consent until the suitor could secure a professorship in some
+institution of learning. Although loath to renounce his freedom,
+Mirza-Schaffy determined for Hafisa's sake to make application, as he
+had often been advised to do, at the Tiflis Gymnasium for the position
+of teacher of Tartaric. But, alas! there was prepared for our poor
+Mirza a humiliation second only to the bastinado. His reply was a
+portentous document in the Russian language, of which he could not
+read a word. Hafisa's father demanded sight of it, had it interpreted
+by a learned mullah, and it proved to be a summons for the applicant
+to appear at an appointed hour for examination. This was too much.
+Mirza-Schaffy, the first wise man of the East, the pride of his race,
+the pearl in the shell of poetry, to be examined in his own language!
+Hafisa's father declared his belief that the mirza's wisdom was as
+doubtful as his fortune, and the wise man himself began to wonder
+whether his wisdom had not gone "pleasuring in the dusk of the
+evening." Moreover, during the conference with the mullah certain
+revelations came to light concerning the lack of orthodoxy in the
+mirza's belief and the frequent slurs it was his wont to cast on the
+powerful mullahs; and this set the old father hopelessly against him,
+causing him to revoke all promise of possible consent. Such being
+the case, Mirza-Schaffy had no heart to brave the humiliation of an
+examination. Shortly after, however, he was honored with a call to the
+new school at Gjändsha, and Hafisa's father dying about the same time,
+all obstacles were removed to a union with the maiden of his choice.
+And so with his bride he returned to his native place, and felt that
+the summit of earthly bliss was attained.
+
+Friedrich Bodenstedt has been a very prolific author, having published
+several volumes of poetry, besides numerous romances, tales and
+miscellaneous works. He is one of a committee of poets and men
+of learning appointed not long since to retranslate the works of
+Shakespeare. At present he is adding to his well-earned laurels
+through his volume _Aus dem Nachlasse Mirza-Schaffys_. The book is
+divided into seven parts, the first of which is dedicated to love.
+Then there are songs of earthly pleasure, songs of consolation,
+sayings of wisdom, stories in rhyme of Eastern romance, a series of
+problems and a "bouquet of cypresses and roses."
+
+AUBER FORESTIER.
+
+
+
+
+TO CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN.
+
+
+  Look where a three-point star shall weave his beam
+  Into the slumb'rous tissue of some stream,
+  Till his bright self o'er his bright copy seem
+  Fulfillment dropping on a come-true dream;
+  So in this night of art thy soul doth show
+  Her excellent double in the steadfast flow
+  Of wishing love that through men's hearts doth go:
+  At once thou shin'st above and shin'st below.
+  E'en when thou strivest there within Art's sky
+  (Each star must round an arduous orbit fly),
+  Full calm thine image in our love doth lie,
+  A Motion glassed in a Tranquillity.
+  So triple-rayed, thou mov'st, yet stay'st, serene--
+  Art's artist, Love's dear woman, Fame's good queen!
+
+SIDNEY LANIER.
+
+
+
+
+CHARLES KINGSLEY: A REMINISCENCE.
+
+
+The heat of London in the midsummer of 1857, even to my American
+apprehension, was intense. The noise of the streets oppressed me,
+and perhaps the sight now and again of freshly-watered flowers which
+beautify so many of the window-ledges, and which seem to flourish and
+bloom whatever the weather, filled me the more with a desire for the
+quiet of green fields and the refreshing shade of trees. I had just
+returned from Switzerland, and the friends with whom I had been
+journeying in that land of all perfections had gone back to their home
+among the wealds and woods of Essex. I began to feel that sense of
+solitude which weighs heavily on a stranger in the throng of a great
+city; so that it was with keen pleasure I looked forward to a visit to
+Mr. Kingsley. A most kind invitation had come from him, offering me "a
+bed and all hospitality in their plain country fashion."
+
+At four in the afternoon of a hot July day I started for Winchfield,
+which is the station on the London and Southampton Railway nearest to
+Eversley--a journey of an hour and a half. I took a fly at Winchfield
+for Eversley, a distance of six miles. My way lay over wide silent
+moors: now and then a quiet farmstead came in view--_moated granges_
+they might have been--but these were few and far between, this part of
+Hampshire being owned in large tracts. It was a little after six when
+I drew near to the church and antique brick dwelling-house adjoining
+it which were the church and rectory of Eversley. There were no other
+houses near, so that it was evidently a wide and scattered parish.
+Old trees shaded the venerable irregularly-shaped parsonage, ivy
+and creeping plants covered the walls, and roses peeped out here and
+there. Mr. Kingsley himself met me at the open hall-door, and there
+was something in his clear and cheerful tone that gave a peculiar
+sense of welcome to his greeting. "Very glad to see you," said he.
+Then taking my bag from the fly, "Let me show you your room at once,
+that you may make yourself comfortable." So, leading the way, he
+conducted me up stairs and along a somewhat intricate passage to a
+room in the oldest part of the house. It was a quaint apartment, with
+leaden casements, a low ceiling, an uneven floor--a room four hundred
+years old, as Mr. Kingsley told me, but having withal a very habitable
+look. "I hope you'll be comfortable here," said my host as he turned
+to go--"as comfortable as one can be in a cottage. Have you everything
+you want? There will be a tea-dinner or a dinner-tea in about half
+an hour." Then, as he lingered, he asked, "When did you see Forster
+last?"
+
+"Six weeks ago," I said--"in London. He had just received news of
+the vacancy at Leeds, and at once determined to offer himself as the
+Liberal candidate. He went to Leeds for this purpose, but subsequently
+withdrew his name. I gather from his speech at the banquet his
+supporters gave him afterward that this was a mistake, and that if he
+had stood he would have been elected."
+
+"Ah," said Kingsley, "I should like to see Forster in Parliament. He
+is not the man, however, to make head against the _tracasseries_ of an
+election contest."
+
+Some other talk we had, and then he left me, coming back before long
+to conduct me to the drawing-room. Two gentlemen were there--one a
+visitor who soon took leave; the other, the tutor to Mr. Kingsley's
+son. Mrs. Kingsley came in now and shook hands with me cordially, and
+I had very soon the sense of being at one with them all. Our having
+mutual friends did much toward this good understanding, but it was
+partly that we seemed at once to have so much to talk of on the events
+of the day, and on English matters in which I took keen interest.
+
+India was naturally our first subject, and the great and absorbing
+question of the mutiny. I told what the London news was in regard to
+it, and how serious was the look of things. Kingsley said there must
+be great blame somewhere--that as to the British rule in India, no man
+could doubt that it had been a great blessing to the country, but
+the individual Englishman had come very far short of his duty in
+his dealings with the subject race: a reckoning was sure to come.
+_Oakfield_ was mentioned--a story by William Arnold of which the scene
+was laid in India, and which contained evidence of this ill-treatment
+of the Hindoos by their white masters. Kingsley spoke highly of this
+book. I said I thought it had hardly been appreciated in England.
+Kingsley thought the reason was it was too didactic--there was too
+much moralizing. Only the few could appreciate this: the many did not
+care for it in a novel.
+
+Our tea-dinner was announced: it was served in the hall. Mrs.
+Kingsley spoke laughingly of their being obliged to make this their
+dining-room. The talk at the table fell on American affairs. Sumner's
+name was mentioned. I said he was in London, and that I had had a
+long conversation with him a few days before. Would I give them his
+address? they asked: they must have a visit from him. I said he would
+be glad to visit them, I was sure, for when I told him I was coming
+here he said he envied me. He was at present engaged in a round
+of dinners--expected to go to France in August to stay with De
+Tocqueville, but would be again in England in the autumn. Kingsley
+spoke of Brooks's death--of the suddenness of it seeming almost a
+judgment. I said Brooks, as I happened to know, was thought a good
+fellow before the assault--that he really had good qualities, and
+was liked even by Northern men. "So we have heard from others," said
+Kingsley, "and one can well believe it. The man who suffers for a bad
+system is often the best man--one with attractive qualities." Charles
+I. and Louis XVI. were instances he gave to illustrate this. A recent
+article in the _Edinburgh Review_ on slavery was spoken of. I said
+it had attracted a good deal of attention with us, because we saw
+immediately it could only have been written by an American. Of
+slavery Mr. Kingsley spoke in calm and moderate words. I told him his
+introductory chapter to _Two Years Ago_ showed that he appreciated the
+difficulties with which the question was encumbered. He said it would
+be strange if he did not see these difficulties, considering that he
+was of West Indian descent (his grandfather had married a West Indian
+heiress). He admitted that the result of emancipation in the West
+Indies was not encouraging as it regarded the material condition
+of the islands, especially of Jamaica, and he was quite able to
+understand how powerfully this fact would weigh on our Southern
+planters, and how it tended to close their ears to all anti-slavery
+argument. They could hardly be expected to look beyond this test of
+sugar-production to the moral progress of the black race which freedom
+alone could ensure.
+
+Our pleasant meal being over, we strolled out on the lawn and sat down
+under one of the fine old trees, where we continued our talk about
+slavery. Mr. Kingsley said he could quite believe any story he might
+hear of cruelty practiced upon slaves. He knew too well his own
+nature, and felt that under the influence of sudden anger he would be
+capable of deeds as violent as any of which we read. This, of course,
+was putting out of view the restraints which religion would impose;
+but it was safe for no man to have the absolute control of others.
+
+He left us to go into the house, and Mrs. Kingsley then spoke of his
+parochial labors. She wished I could spend a Sunday with them--"I
+should so like you to see the congregation he has. The common
+farm-laborers come morning and afternoon: the reason is, he preaches
+so that they can understand him. I wish you could have been with us
+last Sunday, we had such an interesting person here--Max Müller, the
+great linguist and Orientalist. But we can't have pleasant _meets_
+here: we have only one spare room."
+
+"How old is Max Müller?" I asked.
+
+"Twenty-eight, and he scarcely looks to be twenty-two."
+
+"How long has Mr. Kingsley been here?" I asked.
+
+"Fifteen years--two years as curate, and then the living becoming
+vacant, it was given to him."
+
+She told me a funeral was to take place directly--that of a poor woman
+who had been a great sufferer. "Ah, here it comes," she said.
+
+There was the bier borne on men's shoulders and a little company
+of mourners, the peasantry of the neighborhood, the men wearing
+smock-frocks. They were awaiting the clergyman at the lichgate. Mr.
+Kingsley appeared at the moment in his surplice, and the procession
+entered the churchyard, he saying as he walked in front the solemn
+sentences with which the service begins. It was the scene which I had
+witnessed in another part of Hampshire some years before, when the
+author of _The Christian Year_ was the officiating clergyman. Mrs.
+Kingsley and I joined the procession and entered the church. It was a
+small, oddly-arranged interior--brick pavements, high-backed pews,
+the clerk's desk adjoining the reading-desk, but a little lower. Mr.
+Kingsley read the service in a measured tone, which enabled him to
+overcome the defect in his utterance noticeable in conversation. At
+the grave the rest of the office was said, and here the grief of the
+poor mourners overcame them. The family group consisted of the husband
+of the deceased, a grown-up daughter and a son, a boy of fifteen. All
+were much moved, but the boy the most. He cried bitterly--a long wail,
+as if he could not be comforted. Mr. Kingsley tried to console him,
+putting his arm over his shoulders. He said words of sympathy to the
+others also. They went their way over the heath to their desolate
+home. Mr. and Mrs. Kingsley spoke of the life of toil which had thus
+ended, and of the patience with which long-continued bodily pain had
+been borne. It was clear that the popular author was first of all a
+parish priest.
+
+We now went into his study, where he lighted a long pipe, and we then
+returned to a part of the lawn which he called his quarter-deck, and
+where we walked up and down for near an hour. What an English summer
+evening it was!--dewy and still. Now and then a slight breeze stirred
+in the leaves and brought with it wafts of delicate odors from the
+flowers somewhere hidden in the deep shadows, though as yet it was not
+night and the sweet twilight lay about us like a charm. He asked if
+I knew Maurice. I did slightly--had breakfasted with him six weeks
+before, and had seen enough of him to understand the strong personal
+influence he exerted. "I owe all that I am to Maurice," said Kingsley,
+"I aim only to teach to others what I get from him. Whatever facility
+of expression I have is God's gift, but the views I endeavor to
+enforce are those which I learn from Maurice. I live to interpret him
+to the people of England."
+
+A talk about the influence of the Oxford writers came next: on
+this subject I knew we should not agree, though of course it was
+interesting to me to hear Mr. Kingsley's opinion. He spoke with some
+asperity of one or two of the leaders, though his chief objection was
+to certain young men who had put themselves forward as champions of
+the movement. Of Mr. Keble he spoke very kindly. He said he had at
+one time been much under the influence of these writings. I mentioned
+Alexander Knox as being perhaps the forerunner of the Oxford men.
+"Ah," he said, "I owe my knowledge of that good man to Mrs. Kingsley:
+you must talk with her about him." We joined the party in the
+drawing-room, and there was some further conversation on this subject.
+
+At about ten o'clock the bell was rung, the servants came in,
+prayers were said, and the ladies (Mrs. Kingsley and their daughter's
+governess) bid us good-night. Then to Mr. Kingsley's study, where
+the rest of the evening was spent--from half-past ten to half-past
+twelve--the pipe went on, and the talk--a continuous flow. Quakerism
+was a subject. George Fox, Kingsley said, was his admiration: he read
+his _Journal_ constantly--thought him one of the most remarkable men
+that age produced. He liked his hostility to Calvinism. "How little
+that fellow Macaulay," he said, "could understand Quakerism! A man
+needs to have been in Inferno himself to know what the Quakers meant
+in what they said and did." He referred me to an article of his on
+Jacob Boehme and the mystic writers, in which he had given his views
+in regard to Fox.
+
+We talked about his parish work: he found it, he said, a great help to
+him, adding emphatically that his other labor was secondary to this.
+He had trained himself not to be annoyed by his people calling on him
+when he was writing. If he was to be their priest, he must see them
+when it suited them to come; and he had become able if called off from
+his writing to go on again the moment he was alone. I asked him when
+he wrote. He said in the morning almost always: sometimes, when much
+pushed, he had written for an hour in the evening, but he always had
+to correct largely the next morning work thus done. Daily exercise,
+riding, hunting, together with parish work, were necessary to keep him
+in a condition for writing: he aimed to keep himself in rude health.
+I asked whether _Alton Locke_ had been written in that room. "Yes," he
+said--"from four to eight in the mornings; and a young man was staying
+with me at the time with whom every day I used to ride, or perhaps
+hunt, when my task of writing was done."
+
+A fine copy of St. Augustine attracted my attention on his
+shelves--five volumes folio bound in vellum. "Ah," he said, "that _is_
+a treasure I must show you;" and taking down a volume he turned to the
+fly-leaf, where were the words "Charles Kingsley from Thomas Carlyle,"
+and above them "Thomas Carlyle from John Sterling." One could
+understand that Carlyle had thus handed on the book, notwithstanding
+its sacred associations, knowing that to Kingsley it would have a
+threefold value. My eye caught also a relic of curious interest--a
+fragment from one of the vessels of the Spanish Armada. It lay on the
+mantelpiece: I could well understand Kingsley's pleasure in possessing
+it.
+
+At the breakfast-table the next morning we had much talk in regard to
+American writers. Kingsley admitted Emerson's high merit, but thought
+him too fragmentary a writer and thinker to have enduring fame. He had
+meant that this should be implied as his opinion in the title he gave
+to _Phaethon_--"Loose Thoughts for Loose Thinkers"--a book he had
+written in direct opposition to what he understood to be the general
+teaching of Emerson. I remarked upon the great beauty of some of
+Emerson's later writings and the marvelous clearness of insight which
+was shown in his _English Traits_. Kingsley acquiesced in this, but
+referred to some American poetry, so called, which Emerson had lately
+edited, and in his preface had out-Heroded Herod. Kingsley said the
+poems were the production of a coarse, sensual mind. His reference, of
+course, was to Walt Whitman, and I had no defence to make. Of Lowell,
+Mr. Kingsley spoke very highly: his _Fable for Critics_ was worthy of
+Rabelais. Mr. Froude, who is Kingsley's brother-in-law, had first made
+him acquainted with Lowell's poetry. Hawthorne's style he thought was
+exquisite: there was scarcely any modern writing equal to it. Of all
+his books he preferred the _Blithedale Romance_.
+
+We talked of Mr. Froude, whom Kingsley spoke of as his dearest friend:
+he thought Froude sincerely regretted ever having written the _Nemesis
+of Faith_. Mr. Helps, author of _Friends in Council_, he spoke of as
+his near neighbor there in Hampshire, and his intimate friend. Mr.
+Charles Reade he knew, and I think he said he was also a neighbor:
+his _Christie Johnston_ he thought showed high original power. Mrs.
+Gaskell we talked of, whose _Life of Charlotte Bronté_ had just then
+been published: Mr. Kingsley thought it extremely interesting and
+"slightly slanderous." He told me of the author of _Tom Brown's
+School-days_, a copy of which, fresh from the publishers, was lying on
+his table. Mr. Hughes is now so well known to us I need only mention
+that Mr. Kingsley spoke of him as an old pupil of Arnold's and a
+spiritual child of Maurice. He spoke most warmly of him, and offered
+me a letter of introduction to him. I could not avail myself of this,
+having so little time to remain in London.
+
+I must mention, as showing further Mr. Kingsley's state of mind toward
+Maurice, that he had named his son after him. He spoke of the boy as
+being intended for the army: the family, he said, had been soldiers
+for generations. "That is the profession England will need for the
+next five-and-twenty years." Of Forster he said, "What a pity he had
+not been put in the army at the age of eighteen!--he would have been a
+general now. England has need of such men." I note this as showing
+the curious apprehension of war which he, an Englishman, felt eighteen
+years ago, and which he expressed to me, an American. How little
+either of us thought of the struggle which men of English blood were
+to engage in in three years from that time! How little I could dream
+that one of the decisive battles of the world was so soon to be fought
+in my own State, Pennsylvania!
+
+Our morning was spent in all this varied talk, walking partly on the
+lawn, partly in the study. His pipe was still his companion. He
+seemed to need to walk incessantly, such was his nervous activity of
+temperament. He asked me if it annoyed me for him to walk so much up
+and down his study. The slight impediment in his speech one forgot as
+one listened to the flow of his discourse. He talked a volume while
+I was with him, and what he said often rose to eloquence. There was
+humor too in it, of which I can give no example, for it was fine and
+delicate. But what most impressed me was his perfect simplicity of
+character. He talked of his wife with the strongest affection--wished
+I could remain longer with them, if only to know her better. Nothing
+could be more tender than his manner toward her. He went for her when
+we were in the study, and the last half hour of my stay she sat with
+us. She is one of five sisters who are all married to eminent men.
+
+It occurs to me to note, as among my last recollections of our talk,
+that I spoke of Spurgeon, whom I had heard in London a short time
+before, and was very favorably impressed with. I could not but commend
+his simple, strong Saxon speech, the charm of his rich full voice,
+and above all the earnest aim which I thought was manifest in all he
+uttered. Mr. Kingsley said he was glad to hear this, for he had been
+told of occasional irreverences of Spurgeon's, and of his giving way
+now and then to a disposition to make a joke of things. Not that he
+objected altogether to humor in sermons: he had his own temptations
+in this way. "One must either weep at the follies of men or laugh
+at them," he added. I told him Mr. Maurice had spoken to me of Mr.
+Spurgeon as no doubt an important influence for good in the land, and
+he said this was on the whole his own opinion. He told me, however,
+of teaching of quite another character, addressed to people of
+cultivation mainly, and to him peculiarly acceptable. His reference
+was to Robertson's _Sermons_: he showed me the volume--the first
+series--just then published. The mention of this book perhaps led to
+a reference by Mr. Kingsley to the Unitarians of New England, of whom
+he spoke very kindly, adding, in effect, that their error was but
+a natural rebound from Calvinism, that dreary perversion of God's
+boundless love.
+
+But I had now to say good-bye to these new friends, who had come to
+seem old friends, so full and cordial had been their hospitality, and
+so much had we found to talk of in the quickly-passing hours of my
+visit. Mr. Kingsley drove me three miles on my way to Winchfield. His
+talk with me was interspersed with cheery and friendly words to his
+horse, with whom he seemed to be on very intimate terms. "Come and
+see us again," he said as we parted: "the second visit, you know, is
+always the best."
+
+ELLIS YARNALL.
+
+
+
+
+OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
+
+A WOMAN'S OPINION OF PARIS AND THE PARISIANS.
+
+
+I have now lived in Paris two consecutive years, and during this time
+the question has often been put to me, "How do you like Paris and the
+Parisians?" That question I will now try to answer.
+
+Like Paris? Of course I do--heartily and truly. Cold indeed must the
+heart be that does not find space in its depths for a true affection
+for the fair queen-city which welcomes all strangers so kindly and
+hospitably, which has a smile for all, and which at the wide banquet
+of her bounty sets forth food for every phase of mental hunger. Do you
+wish to study? Her libraries lie open to your research--her monuments,
+her galleries, her public institutions are given to your inspection,
+freely and without price. Do you seek amusement? Paris, in that
+respect, is like the rollicking heroine of _Barbe-Bleu:_ there is none
+like Boulotte, "quand il s'agit de batifoler." Do you wish to hide
+yourself in depths of unbroken quiet? There are in her very heart
+lonely streets where scarce a cart ever penetrates, and in her suburbs
+green shaded nooks where the spirit of Solitude reigns supreme.
+
+Life runs on such smooth and well-oiled wheels for all humanity in
+Paris that half the cares that torture us are cast aside as soon as
+we enter her precincts. Take, for instance, the grand question of
+housekeeping. Fancy living in a land where all the servants
+are skilled and civil, if not all trustworthy and honest; where
+washing-days and ironing-days and baking-days are unknown; where there
+are no staircases to sweep down and no front-door steps to scour;
+where rents and eating and all other household expenses may be gauged
+in accordance with one's purse. If you wish to entertain, you may give
+a soirée that will cost ten dollars if you cannot afford to give a
+ball that costs five thousand. Nothing is _de rigueur_ in Paris. It
+is neither incumbent upon you to be housed splendidly nor to feast
+sumptuously--to drive your own carriage nor to entertain an army of
+servants. "Do the best you can" is the motto of Parisian life. And
+so it often happens that in a small room, up half a dozen flights
+of stairs, with a cup of tea for sole refreshment and music or
+conversation for sole amusement, one will find some of the pleasantest
+society in Paris. You do not get champagne and boned turkey and the
+German, but you hear sometimes a little music, such as one pays untold
+gold to hear at the opera, or a fragment of declamation by some noted
+elocutionist, or a new poem fresh from the pen of some celebrated
+writer. And you have always conversation; that is to say, the wit and
+sparkle of the wittiest and brightest nation on the face of the earth.
+In a world that is becoming more and more a Paradise of Fools the
+charm of sheer brain and brightness is irresistible. To live in such
+an intellectual centre is in itself delightful. Paris is a veritable
+_Foire aux Idées_. Its criticism, keen as the sword of Saladin,
+overwhelming as the battle-axe of Coeur de Lion, is in itself a
+study. It is not so much the intellectual productions of Paris as the
+comments they call forth that are at once instructive and fascinating.
+
+When we turn from the world of intellect to that of ordinary life
+the same charm haunts our footsteps. Everything is so well done,
+so gracefully and so winningly presented! The exquisite perfume of
+refinement hangs about every trivial detail. Your washerwoman is a
+lady, and your coalman a Chesterfield. If a Frenchman is ever rude, he
+is rude with malice prepense and aforethought. He knows better, we may
+be sure. Patrick may err on the score of politeness from ignorance,
+but Alphonse is a beast only because he chooses to be bestial. All the
+traditions of his race run counter to his conduct when he forgets the
+supreme suavity that should characterize a Gaul.
+
+And yet it is possible for an American--or rather an Anglo-Saxon--to
+live for years in the midst of this brilliant, polished, fascinating
+people, and never to feel specially interested in them, either
+individually or nationally. What is the reason? Why is it that, loving
+Paris like a second home, we do not take the Parisians to our hearts
+as brothers and sisters, or at least as dear first cousins? The causes
+are many and various. In the first place, the Parisians do not like
+us. The popularity which Americans were said to possess in Paris has
+vanished with the Empire--that is, if it really existed. It probably
+was nothing more at any time than the courtesy shown by an astute
+sovereign of a nation of shopkeepers to a nation of purchasers. To-day
+Americans are not popular in Parisian society. It is almost impossible
+that they should be. Our ideas, our social customs, our notions of
+right and wrong, are diametrically opposed to all the social theories
+of France. Our girls, with their free frank ways and their liberty of
+speech and action, are so many disreputable horrors in Parisian eyes.
+Madame la Comtesse de St. Germain would as soon think of taking her
+daughters to see Schneider as of permitting them to associate with
+young ladies who are allowed to receive morning calls from gentlemen
+without the presence of their parents--who call the male friends of
+their childhood by their first names--and who are suffered to witness
+_Faust_ at the opera and _La Haine_ at La Gaîté. Americans, especially
+wealthy ones, usually draw around them a vast circle of French
+acquaintances, it is true, but these are mostly sponges and
+adventurers, well born and well bred, it may be, but decidedly, to use
+a vulgar but expressive American idiom, "on the make." Of the pure
+and inner sanctuary of French society scarce a glimpse is afforded to
+these alien eyes. It would not amuse them very much if it were,
+for, by all accounts, this hallowed inner circle is as dull as it is
+exclusive. The charm of French society is to be found in those salons
+which are frequented by the kings of Parisian Bohemia--journalists,
+poets, dramatists, artists--wherein the Republic is queen and Victor
+Hugo a god.
+
+Two great and ineradicable defects underlie the brightness and
+fascination of the external part of French character--namely,
+selfishness and insincerity. Perfect in manner, in dress, in grace,
+in suavity, in sweetness it may be, the French are utterly and wholly
+unreliable. They resemble the phantom woman in the story told by Leigh
+Hunt, that was only a suit of clothes, with no face beneath the hood
+and no body inside of the robes; or rather those malignant spirits
+that look like fair women when seen in front, but when seen from
+behind show only as hollow shells.
+
+And the tradespeople, the bourgeoisie--your dressmaker, your milliner,
+your tailor, your butcher and baker and candlestick-maker--skilled and
+suave and generally charming--O heaven and earth! how they do lie!
+Not occasionally, not when hard-pressed, not when truth will not do as
+well, but persistently, calmly, eternally. "I swear to you, monsieur,"
+will your Parisian say, "that your work shall be done in two hours,"
+Esteem yourself fortunate if it is finished in two days: very probably
+two weeks will see it still uncompleted. Send for a workman to execute
+some little job about your house. "He will come at once--yes, at
+once." Days roll round, and he never comes at all. Your dressmaker
+agrees to make you a dress for a certain price: your bill comes
+home for half as much again. An American in Paris ordered an extra
+door-key, giving the original key as a pattern. The key was to cost
+four francs. Here is a copy of the bill as presented:
+
+                                                   Francs.
+For taking off lock (a process wholly unnecessary,
+   by the by),                                       1-1/2
+For putting it on again,                             1-1/2
+Workman's time,                                      1
+Journey from shop (about half a square),             1
+Key,                                                 4
+                                                     ____
+     Total                                           9
+
+Another American sent for a bell-hanger to inspect an electric bell
+which was thought to be out of order, but which proved on inspection
+to be all right. He got a bill of five francs, whereof one item ran
+thus: "_For looking at the bell_, 2 francs." He had not touched the
+thing, be it borne in mind.
+
+I cannot refrain from here making answer to a remark too often
+heard from American lips, that America is as immoral as France--that
+American society is every whit as depraved as the French. It is _not_.
+The immorality of America is as a festering wound on an otherwise
+healthy body: the immorality of France is like a scrofulous taint that
+poisons the whole life-current. One gets weary and heartsick with the
+old eternal song, the everlasting theme, which is sung and told and
+dramatized and written about and painted--that flies in your face at
+every corner and stares up at you from every inch of printed paper,
+every square of colored canvas, in the whole nationality. And to sum
+up at last this, "a woman's opinion," I will freely state that the
+longer I live in France the more I admire the Parisians and the less I
+like them.
+
+L.H.H.
+
+
+
+
+THE COLLEGIO ROMANO.
+
+
+The Collegio Romano was always worth a visit, because it contained the
+celebrated Kircherian Museum and the admirable observatory presided
+over by Father Secchi, the world-celebrated astronomer. But these are
+matters sufficiently treated of by the guide-books, and may be left
+to them. Of the story of the enormous building they have less to tell,
+though there is much of curious interest to be told. But neither is
+that my object on the present occasion. My purpose is to speak of the
+strangely-changed fortunes and destinies of the old historic pile, and
+of what it now is and is to be. But little in Rome, as we all
+know, has remained unchanged in these strange latter days. But few
+things--at least few material things--have experienced such a change
+as the Collegio Romano. The "Collegio Romano" was in fact nothing
+more than the principal convent of the Jesuits. The establishment was
+founded immediately after the institution of the order, and mainly by
+the care and energy of Saint Francisco Borgia, the third general
+of the order. The present building, however, was raised in the
+pontificate of Gregory XIII. by the Florentine architect Ammanati,
+the first stone having been laid in 1582. It is an enormous mass of
+building--enormous even among the huge structures for which Rome above
+all other cities is remarkable--situated near the church of the Gesù
+and not far from the Piazza di Venezia. There is nothing remarkable in
+its outward appearance save the vast size, the object of the builders
+having evidently been only to adapt it in a business-like way to
+the purposes to which it was destined. These included not only the
+provision of a residence for the fathers of the order resident
+in Rome, and for the all-but all-powerful general of the terrible
+order--the "Black Pope," as the Romans were wont to call him--but also
+all the _locale_ necessary for a very large educational establishment,
+whence the building took its name.
+
+The Jesuits, like all other members of the almost innumerable monastic
+establishments in Rome, have, as we all know, been turned out of their
+homes, their property has been--or rather is being--sold, and the
+convents have become national property. Many of these are vast
+buildings, but no one of them is to be compared with the great Jesuit
+convent, which was the central home and head-quarters of the "Company
+of Jesus." And a memorable day it was in Rome, and a very singular
+sight, when, the dreaded fathers of the terrible "Company" having
+taken their departure, the few remaining goods and chattels in the
+convent were sold by public auction. Few and not of much value were
+the articles to be sold; for the fathers are not men to take no heed
+of those shadows which coming events cast before them, and they had
+long foreseen that their day in Rome was at an end, and had contrived
+to leave as little as might be to the spoiler. None the less was it a
+strange sight, as I say, to see the _profanum vulgus_ of the buyers
+of old furniture, and the still more numerous herd of the curious,
+looking on with very diversified feelings--some with bitterness enough
+in their hearts--pushing and tramping through those noble corridors
+and vast halls and secret cells, on which no profane gaze had rested
+for more than three hundred years.
+
+There has been abundance of doubt, but no difficulty, in disposing of
+the great number of buildings which have thus come into the possession
+of the nation. Many of the smaller convents have been sold in the same
+manner as the other property of the ousted communities. But this has
+not been done--and indeed could hardly have been done--in the case of
+the larger buildings; and there has been a competition very much in
+the nature of a scramble for the appropriation of them by the heads of
+the several governmental departments. That of Public Instruction, now
+worthily represented by Signor Bonghi, has succeeded in laying hands
+on perhaps the grandest prize of all, the great Jesuit establishment
+of the Collegio Romano; and, looking to the uses to which it is being
+put by Signor Bonghi, it may, I think, be said that it could not have
+been better bestowed. Under his auspices it is intended to assume, and
+is indeed rapidly assuming, the functions of the still vaster pile of
+building in Great Russell street, London, known to all the world as
+the British Museum, as will be seen from the following statement of
+the purposes it is intended to serve and of the various matters to be
+housed in it.
+
+On the ground-floor there is already established a "Museo
+Scolastico-Pedagogico"--a museum of all the means and appurtenances
+that are used, or have been used, in different countries for the ends
+and purposes of instruction. This is the idea and the creation of
+Signor Bonghi; and it will, I think, be admitted that it is a very
+happy one and likely to be fruitful in good results. A visit to it is
+more interesting than might perhaps at first sight be imagined. I may
+mention that on asking the very competent and enlightened director of
+the establishment what people he considered to have done most and as
+foremost in the work of educating the masses, he said that the
+Germans had done most theoretically and in the way of thinking on
+the philosophy of the matter, but that the Americans had done most
+practically in the way of improving the material means for popular
+education.
+
+On the first and second floors the great national library, the
+"Biblioteca Vittorio Emmanuele," is--or, it would perhaps be more
+accurate to say, will be--placed and made accessible to the public.
+At Florence there exists the celebrated Magliabecchian Library, which
+when Florence became the capital of Italy was called the National
+Library--somewhat ungratefully, it will probably be thought, to the
+learned and indefatigable collector who gave his life and his means to
+the formation of it, and then bequeathed it to his native city. And I
+am inclined to believe that this library is still, for all the general
+working purposes of a nineteenth-century student, the best in Italy.
+In Rome, when the Eternal City in its turn became the capital of a
+New Italy, there existed nothing that deserved to be called a national
+library, and the present minister of Public Instruction set about
+doing what was possible to supply the want. The Company of Jesus
+possessed a fine and valuable library, containing about one hundred
+and seventy thousand volumes. This, when the Jesuits were turned out,
+was declared national property, and it forms the nucleus of the new
+Victor Emmanuel Library. While the Jesuits inhabited their old home it
+was arranged in one very fine hall built in the form of a cross,
+which will continue to be one of the principal receptacles, in the
+new establishment. It was in the middle of 1874 that the Italian
+government took possession of this collection. To this have been added
+forty-eight other libraries, the former property of the suppressed
+convents of the city and provinces of Rome. They were placed for the
+nonce in the cells which had been inhabited by the Jesuit fathers. The
+mass of books thus collected amounts to about four hundred thousand
+volumes. It will be seen at once that the labor of reducing to
+order, classifying and arranging such a confused mass must be truly
+herculean. But the first librarian of the Victor Emmanuel Library,
+Signor Carlo Castellani, well known in the literary world as a
+palaeographer of great eminence, is laboring at the colossal task with
+an energy and a zeal that have already accomplished much, and is daily
+making sensible advances in the work. It is, however, also evident
+that four hundred thousand volumes thus collected must include an
+immense number of duplicates; and, worse still, that (as may be
+readily supposed from the sources whence the books have come) one
+special branch of general literature will be represented in very undue
+proportion. Of course, the greater portion of the conventual
+libraries was theological. It may be presumed that classical and (old)
+historical literature will be found to exist, the former in tolerable
+completeness (so far as regards old and in many cases now obsolete
+editions), and the latter in considerable abundance. But of modern
+literature little or nothing can be expected, even of Italian, and
+still less of any other language. Among the number of volumes which
+has been mentioned there are some seven or eight thousand manuscripts,
+and perhaps an equal number of the editions of the fifteenth century,
+which go far to make the library an interesting one to the learned and
+to the student and lover of bibliography, but are of very little avail
+toward rendering the collection worth much as a national _working_
+library. The question then arises, What means has Italy of procuring
+such a library for her capital? Something may be probably expected
+from the liberality of her Parliament in furtherance of this great
+national object. But for the present, in the depressed (though
+improving) state of the Italian finances, this cannot be much. There
+exists in Italy a law similar to that on the same subject in England,
+by which every publisher is obliged to deposit one copy of every book
+published in the national library. But this copy at present is sent to
+the Magliabecchian Library at Florence. Signor Castellani hopes that
+the privilege may be transferred, as seems but reasonable, to Rome.
+But I do not see why it should be necessary thus to impoverish
+Florence to enrich the capital. In England the law requires eleven
+copies which are distributed to the great libraries of the three
+kingdoms. It is true that this exaction has sometimes been complained
+of, and it is said that in the case of very costly illustrated
+works the tax is a very heavy one, and that in some instances it
+has operated to make the production of certain books impossible. And
+perhaps it may be reasonable to make some regulation by which such
+works should be exempted from the obligation. But in ordinary cases
+the tax is an almost inappreciable one, and, such as it is, must of
+course fall ultimately on the writers and readers of books--mainly on
+the latter--for the benefit of which classes libraries exist. It seems
+to me, therefore, that a somewhat larger number of copies than one or
+two might reasonably and advantageously be exacted from publishers.
+And if three or four copies were delivered to the great Roman library,
+there would be the means of effecting very advantageous exchanges with
+other countries. I asked Signor Castellani what increase in the number
+of volumes the _locale_ now at the disposal of the library would be
+capable of accommodating. He said that there would be room for about
+seven hundred thousand volumes, evidently a quite inadequate provision
+for the future. Many years will not elapse before the measure which
+is now demanded at the British Museum--viz., the removal of all
+the various collections housed there to other localities, and
+the dedication of the entire building to the library--will become
+necessary at the old Collegio Romano. Vast as the building is, the
+entirety of it is not at all too large for the Roman library of the
+future. Or--since we _are_ allowing our thoughts to consider
+events which cast their shadows before as if they were accomplished
+facts--may it not perhaps be found better some of these days to move
+the whole of the present collection to the Vatican, to be united with
+the colossal and almost unknown hoards there buried in one collection?
+As it is, a new reading-room, after the model of that existing at the
+National Library in Paris, is about to be built in the courtyard of
+the Collegio Romano. The classification, arrangement and methods
+of working the library will be copied in great measure from those
+introduced by Mr. Panizzi at the British Museum. Unlike the liberal
+practice of the great German libraries, no volume will be on any
+account permitted to leave the library. I was sorry to find that in
+one all-important respect the Roman practice as regards the national
+library will differ from that of London. The collection is being
+catalogued in slips, to be kept, after the fashion of booksellers,
+in boxes made for the purpose, and there is no present intention of
+making any catalogue in volumes accessible to the public. Of course it
+is impossible to allow the public to have access to the slips; and
+all who have ever really used a great library know but too well that a
+library the catalogue of which is not accessible to the student is at
+least _half_ useless. Even putting aside the numerous cases in which
+an inquirer knows of the existence of such or such a work, but is not
+aware of the author's name, and cannot therefore ask for or obtain
+the book in question, it happens more often than not that a person
+inquiring on any given subject finds his best guide to the available
+sources of information in the catalogue.
+
+I have not left myself room, I fear, to say anything on the present
+occasion of the other highly interesting collections which are
+at present lodged, or in the course of being placed, under the
+all-sheltering roof of the Collegio Romano. I must content myself with
+simply enumerating them, with the hope of giving some account of them
+at some future time. I may briefly state, then, that the celebrated
+Kircherian Museum, formed toward the close of the sixteenth century
+by the learned Jesuit father Kircher, still occupies the rooms on the
+ground-floor, with a somewhat improved arrangement, which it occupied
+when the fathers of the Company inhabited the building. The collection
+of ancient Roman marbles discovered in the excavations of the buried
+city of Ostia have been brought thence, and arranged in rooms also
+on the third floor--a fact which strikes one as not a little to the
+credit of the handiwork of Ammanati, the Florentine architect. Also
+on the third floor there is an exceedingly interesting collection,
+of which I hope to speak somewhat more at length another time. It
+is called a palaeo-ethnographical museum, and consists of a large
+collection of the implements of all sorts of the people belonging to
+the pre-historic period, together with a similar gathering of articles
+used by the uncivilized races of the present day. The interest of
+such a comparative study as is here suggested is, as may be
+readily understood, very great. On the fourth floor there is a very
+considerable collection of objects illustrating Italian art of the
+ante-Roman period, and also a Museum of Industrial Art, conceived on
+the plan of the English School of Art at South Kensington.
+
+T.A.T.
+
+
+
+
+TRADES UNIONISM IN ITS INFANCY.
+
+In these days of trades unionism and strikes an account of the germ of
+such associations in this country is not without interest. So far
+back as 1806 a remarkable trial arising out of such a combination took
+place before the recorder of Philadelphia and a jury. It lasted three
+days and excited extraordinary interest. Jared Ingersoll and Joseph
+Hopkinson were counsel for the prosecution, and Caesar A. Rodney and
+Walter Franklin for the defence.
+
+The defendants, eight in number, were indicted for not being content
+to work at the usual prices, but contriving to increase and augment
+them, and for endeavoring to prevent by threats, menaces and other
+unlawful means other artificers from working at the usual rate, and
+uniting into a club or combination to make and ordain unlawful and
+arbitrary rules to govern those engaged in their trade, and unjustly
+exact great sums of money by means thereof.
+
+The evidence went to show in the clearest manner that a system of
+frightful thralldom had been put in force. A witness named Harrison
+stated that when he reached the United States in 1794 he found this
+system of terrorism prevalent. He went to work for a Mr. Bedford,
+and presently got a hint that if he did not join the association of
+journeymen shoemakers he was liable to be "scabbed," which meant that
+men would not work in the same shop, nor board or lodge in the same
+house, nor would they work at all for the same employer. The case of
+this man seemed exceptionally hard. He made shoes exclusively, and
+when "a turn-out came to raise the wages on boots" he remonstrated,
+pleading that shoes did not enter into the question, and urging that
+he had a sick wife and a large family. But it was all to no
+purpose. He then resolved that he would turn a "scab" unknown to the
+association, and continue his work; but having a neighbor whom it was
+impossible for him to deceive, he went to him and said that he knew
+his circumstances, and that his family must perish or go to "the
+bettering-house" unless he continued to work. This neighbor, Swain,
+replied that he knew his condition was desperate, but that a man
+had better make any sacrifice than turn a "scab" at that time. He
+presently informed against him, and Mr. Bedford (his employer) was
+warned that he must discharge his "scabs." He refused, saying
+that, "Let the consequence be what it might, we should sink or swim
+together." However, one Saturday night, when all but Harrison and a
+man named Logan had left him, Bedford's resolution gave way, and he
+exclaimed, "I don't know what the devil I am to do: they will ruin
+me in the end. I wish you would go to the body and pay a fine, if not
+very large, in order to set the shop free once more." The fine offered
+was refused, and Mr. Bedford's shop remained "under scab" for a year.
+Still, Mr. Bedford, who must have been a very plucky fellow, would not
+give Harrison up, but removed in 1802 to Trenton. Harrison stated that
+although he could not, had Mr. Bedford given him up, have got work
+anywhere else, and that he might have ground him down to any terms,
+yet he (Bedford) very nobly always gave him full price. At length,
+by paying a fine, Harrison became reconciled to his persecutors, and
+Bedford's shop was once more free.
+
+William Forgrave said that "the name of a 'scab' is very dangerous:
+men of this description have been hurt when out at night." He had been
+threatened, and joined the association from fear of personal injury.
+A vast deal more of evidence was given and eloquent speeches delivered
+by counsel, but the foregoing gives the sum and substance of the case.
+
+In the course of the summing up Recorder Levy said: "To make an
+artificial regulation is not to regard the excellence of the work or
+quality of the material, but to fix a positive and arbitrary price,
+governed by no standard, but dependent on the will of the few who are
+interested.... What, then, is the operation of this kind of conduct
+upon the commerce of the city? It exposes it to inconveniences, if
+not to ruin: therefore it is against the public welfare. How does it
+operate upon the defendants? We see that those who are in indigent
+circumstances, and who have families to maintain, have declared
+here on oath that it was impossible for them to hold out. They were
+interdicted from all employment in future if they did not continue to
+persevere in the measures taken by the journeymen shoemakers. Does not
+such a regulation tend to involve necessitous men in the commission
+of crimes? If they are prevented working for six weeks, it might lead
+them to procure support for their wives and children by burglary,
+larceny or highway robbery."
+
+The jury found the defendants "guilty of a combination to raise their
+wages," and the court sentenced them to pay a fine of eight dollars
+each, with costs of suit, and to stand committed till paid.
+
+
+
+
+MORAL TRAINING IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
+
+
+One of our popular clergymen, in a late Sunday discourse upon the
+Bible in the public schools, labored to show that the question was a
+very unimportant one. because none were much interested in it except
+infidels and politicians--a sufficiently absurd position for a
+professed teacher of the people to assume. Doubtless it is a folly to
+fan into flame the slumbering embers of a quarrel, but it is a greater
+folly to pretend, in the face of the common sense of the people, that
+all signs of fire are extinguished or never existed where there is
+so much inflammable material about and the "wind of doctrine" running
+high.
+
+This question of secular education for our public schools is in fact
+one of the most difficult of solution. Chicago has met it in a summary
+manner by excluding the Bible from all her free schools, but this does
+not settle the question, because both believers and unbelievers in the
+various creeds of the churches admit that there should be provision
+made for the training of the moral faculties of the children in
+our public schools. Many of them, especially in cities and large
+manufacturing centres, come out of the dark alleys where intemperance,
+poverty and ignorance tend to arrest the development of their higher
+sentiments. For the unfortunate children of such homes the sessions of
+the public school afford the only glimpse of a better life, the
+only chance for moral and æsthetic culture. Protestants, as a rule,
+honestly believe that the reading of the Bible at the opening of
+school tends to waken and develop the moral aspirations of the child.
+Just as honestly and conscientiously do Catholics disbelieve in the
+efficacy of Bible reading, while they boldly condemn secular education
+as a principle. Father Muller, priest of the congregation of the Most
+Holy Redeemer, in his work upon public school education, published
+three years ago in Boston, says: "The language of the Vicar of Christ
+in regard to godless education is very plain and unmistakable"....
+"Our Holy Father, Pope Pius IX., has declared that Catholics cannot
+approve of a system of educating youth unconnected with the Catholic
+faith and the power of the Church".... "The voice of common sense, the
+voice of sad experience, the voice of Catholic bishops, and especially
+the voice of the Holy Father, is raised against and condemns the
+public school system as a huge humbug, injuring and not promoting
+personal virtue and good citizenship, and as being most pernicious to
+the Catholic faith and life and all good morals. A pastor, therefore,
+cannot maintain the contrary opinion without incurring guilt before
+God and the Church. He cannot allow parents to send their children to
+such schools of infidelity. He cannot give them absolution and say,
+_Innocens sum_."
+
+According to the _American Annual Cyclopædia_ for 1875, the Roman
+Catholic Church has in the United States 1 cardinal, 8 archbishops, 54
+bishops, 4872 priests, 4731 churches, 1902 chapels, 68 colleges, 511
+academies, and a lay membership numbering over 6,000,000. This shows
+a great and increasing prosperity of that Church in this country; yet
+our institutions have nothing to fear from that prosperity unless
+the principles of Catholicity support the "one-man power" against the
+doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, the foundation-principle
+of republicanism. Patriotic Catholic citizens claim that there is no
+conflict. They love their Church and their country, and will labor to
+preserve peace and harmony. Yet how can harmony be maintained while
+a large and increasing number of our tax-paying citizens, accepting
+their Church and its head as infallible, are forced by their spiritual
+allegiance to send their children to Catholic schools, though at
+the same time paying taxes to support those "godless" public schools
+condemned by the infallible Church? To take the ground that these
+two powers, the Catholic Church and our government, do not conflict,
+because one is a spiritual and the other a civil power, is simply
+absurd. We see that they _do_ conflict. The pope interferes with the
+civil rights of our citizens when--as, for example, in his encyclical
+letter of December 8, 1874--he commands all Catholics to treat the
+liberty of speech, of the press, of conscience and of worship, the
+separation of Church and State and the secular education of youth, as
+"_reprobatas, proscriptas, atque damnatas_."
+
+
+
+
+THE EARLIEST PRINTED BOOKS.
+
+
+A recent lecture of the Rev. Dr. Storrs in New York, before the
+Society for the Advancement of Science and Art, must have been very
+interesting to an ordinary audience, but for one composed of professed
+promoters of learning it could hardly have been sufficiently exact to
+give general satisfaction if the newspaper reports of it were at all
+correct. They represent the lecturer as saying that an immense number
+of books date back to 1450. Now, the first printed book bearing a date
+is the _Psalter_ of Füst and Schoeffer, 1457. A _portion_ of the
+Bible was printed by Gutenberg and Füst in 1450, but the work was
+so expensive and so imperfect that it was abandoned. In 1452, after
+Schoeffer joined the firm, another Bible is supposed to have been
+printed, but no copy of it is known to exist. Of course it is well
+known that many of the earliest printed books are without date, but
+none could have been printed before 1450; and there is no proof, we
+believe, that the Bible said to be of 1455 bore that or any date.
+In that year the firm of Gutenberg, Füst and Schoeffer dissolved. L.
+Grégoire in his _Dictionnaire Encyclopédique_, published in Paris in
+1817, says that there are only three or four copies of the Füst
+Bible known to exist. Dr. Storrs, however, says, without giving his
+authority, that there are fifteen.
+
+The sole idea of the early printers was to imitate exactly the
+manuscript characters of the scribes. The initial letters of the
+Bibles and the numbers of the chapters were therefore added with a pen
+in blue and red ink alternately; and there is not the slightest doubt
+that these first books were palmed off upon an unsuspecting public as
+manuscripts. All the servants or employés of Füst and Schoeffer were
+put under solemn oath to divulge nothing of the secret concerning
+printing. It is to the policy which the first printers exerted to
+conceal their art that we owe the tradition of the Devil and Dr.
+Faustus. Füst having printed off quite a number of Bibles, and had the
+large initial letters added by hand, he took them to Paris and sold
+them for about fifty dollars apiece. The scribes demanded about ten
+times that sum, and they earned the money, for it must have been an
+herculean task to copy, as they did, every letter of the Bible with
+such exquisite care, and then draw and illuminate the heads of the
+chapters and the initial letters. It was a marvel how this new man
+could produce these ponderous books at so low a rate. And then the
+uniformity of the letters and the pages increased the wonder, until
+the cry of "sorcerer" was raised: complaints before the magistrates
+were made against him, his lodgings were searched and a great number
+of copies were found and confiscated. The populace in their ignorance
+and superstition declared that he was in league with the devil, and
+that the red ink with which the books were embellished was his blood.
+It is a satisfaction to know that the Parliament of Paris passed an
+act to discharge the sorcerer from all prosecution in consideration of
+_the usefulness of his art_.
+
+M.H.
+
+
+
+
+FLOWERS VS. FLIES.
+
+
+An Irish clergyman is said to have discovered last autumn a charming
+antidote to flies, which it is only a pity he could not have lighted
+on rather earlier in the season. Having occasion to change his abode,
+he sent on his window-plants, calceolarias and geraniums, to that
+which he intended to occupy several days before he went himself, and
+immediately found that he was pestered with flies, whereas previously
+he had enjoyed perfect immunity from the nuisance. A more agreeable
+remedy cannot be conceived. Next autumn let our windows be a blaze
+of brilliancy, so that all visitors to the Centennial may say, at all
+events, "There are no flies in Philadelphia."
+
+
+
+
+LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
+
+
+Shakespeare Hermeneutics; or, The Still Lion. Being an Essay towards
+the Restoration of Shakespeare's Text. By C.M. Ingleby, M.A., LL.D.
+London: Trübner & Co.
+
+Setting aside those who care merely to see a play on the stage, it may
+be said that of Shakespeare there are readers and readers; and both
+classes have rights and privileges which should be treated with
+deference. The reader who studies every line should not fleer at
+him who studies not at all. Have we not a right to read a play of
+Shakespeare's through in two short hours, surrendering ourselves,
+unvexed by logic or grammar, to the enchantment which scenes and
+phrases and words conjure up as they glide through our minds? When all
+the atmosphere is tremulous with airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
+must we, forsooth! stop and philosophically investigate what Hamlet
+means by a "_dram of eale"_? Must we lose a scruple of the sport by
+turning aside to find out what Malvolio means by the "_lady of the
+Strachey_"? If Timon chooses to invite _Ullorxa_ to his feast, are we
+to bar the door because no one ever heard the name before? No: let us
+have our Shakespeare (is he not as much ours as yours?) free from
+all notes, on a page purified from the musty cobwebs of black-letter
+pedants. We want no jargon of bickering critics to drown the music
+that sings at Heaven's gate. Give us those immortal plays just
+as Shakespeare wrote them, that we may read them without let or
+hinderance.
+
+But, fair and softly, is not this the very point at which we are
+striving? With all our twistings and turnings, our patchings and
+piecings, have we aught else in view than to decipher just what
+Shakespeare wrote? Where are Shakespeare's exact words to be found?
+Not in the so-called Quartos; for they are said by Shakespeare's
+intimate and dear friends to have been "maimed and deformed by the
+frauds and stealthes of injurious impostors," and taken down perhaps
+from the lips of some of the actors, bribed by stoops of liquor at
+_Yaughan's_ (and from the gibberish here and there set down it is to
+be feared that the potations were at times pottle deep). Nor can
+we take the Folio in which all his dramas were first collected:
+Shakespeare never saw a line of it; for seven years he had been hid in
+death's dateless night when that volume was printed. What, then, is
+to be done? The Quartos and Folios are all the authority we have,
+and none of them present what can be held to have been undeniably
+Shakespeare's exact words. In dealing with the text we must never
+for a moment forget that there stands, and will for ever stand, as
+interpreters between us and Shakespeare, a crew of dishonest actors
+or of more or less ignorant compositors. Is such a text, thus
+transmitted, to be held in reverence so deep that not a syllable is to
+be changed for fear of the cry that we are tampering with the words of
+Shakespeare? Is the curse in his epitaph on the mover of his bones to
+hang over his text? Small reverence for Shakespeare does it betoken,
+in our opinion, to believe this. Rather, let us regard these pages of
+the Folio as what they virtually are in so many cases--namely, as but
+little better than our modern proof-sheets. And they should be
+dealt with accordingly by a modern critic; but only on one condition
+precedent: he must be Shakespeare's peer. In default of this we can
+only humbly erase here, and reverently suggest there, summoning to our
+aid all possible knowledge, lest in plucking up the tares we pluck up
+the wheat also.
+
+And this is really all that textual criticism for the last hundred
+and forty years has aimed at--merely to get at what Shakespeare really
+wrote. We know that he could not write sheer nonsense, and yet at
+times sheer nonsense mows at us from his printed page. Those who
+clamor for Shakespeare's text, pure and simple, divested of all notes
+and annotations, have no idea how much thought and time have been
+expended on every line,--nay, on every word, on every comma,--in the
+text of any good modern edition of his dramas, and with the single
+aim, be it remembered, of revealing exactly what the poet wrote.
+
+It must not, however, be thought that since the original texts of
+Shakespeare's plays are so corrupt, any criticaster has good leave to
+expunge or expand at will, under a roving commission to hack and
+hew wheresoever and howsoever it may please him, under the plea of
+restoring the text. On the contrary, since we cannot fulfill the
+condition precedent of being Shakespeare's peers, we must exercise the
+greatest caution in changing a reading of the Quartos or Folios, lest
+in condemning the text as corrupt we pass judgment on our own wit.
+
+  He who the sword of Heaven would bear
+  Must be as holy as severe.
+
+And we must be very sure that the passage is corrupt before we set
+about amending it. First and last, we must remember that primal elder
+law, that of two readings the more difficult is to be preferred.
+_Durior lectio preferenda 'st_ should be a frontlet between our brows.
+The weaker reading or the plainer meaning is more likely to be a
+printer's interpretation of what he failed to comprehend.
+
+But to understand Shakespeare's meaning in a degree that will
+authorize us to amend the text, we must understand Shakespeare's
+speech; that is, we must be thoroughly familiar with the words and
+usages of Elizabethan English; and not only with Elizabethan words and
+phrases, but also, as far as possible, with the very pronunciation.
+
+This fundamental principle is well enforced and illustrated in Dr.
+Ingleby's book, which was originally published in one of the Annuals
+of the German Shakespeare Society under the title of _The Still Lion_,
+a title suggested by a passage in De Quincey, where the danger of
+meddling with Milton's text is compared to that of meddling with
+a still lion, which may be neither dead nor sleeping, but merely
+shamming. Dr. Ingleby substitutes Shakespeare for Milton, and
+maintains that the mass of Shakespearian emendations that have
+been proposed during the last twenty years are needless; and that
+corruptions have been assumed where none exist, owing to the limited
+knowledge possessed by the critics. Thus, for instance, in the _Comedy
+of Errors_ (I. i. 152) the Duke bids Aegeon to "seek thy _help_
+by beneficial _help_." At once there is a chorus from all of
+us, sciolists, of "Corruption!" "Sophistication!" "Cacophonous
+repetition!" etc. etc. "But gently, friends," says Dr. Ingleby: "may
+not 'help' have borne a different or a special meaning in Elizabethan
+English?" and turning to medical writers and books on medicine of
+the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (among them Dr. John Hall,
+Shakespeare's own son-in-law), he proves that _heal_ and _help_ having
+a common origin, _help_ was used by Shakespeare's contemporaries as a
+synonym for _cure, deliverance_. The text, then, is perfectly correct,
+Ægeon being bid to seek his _deliverance_ from the doom of death by
+the _help_ of what friends he can find. The lion's slumbers were here
+of the lightest, and happy men be our dole to have escaped with whole
+skins. Thus Dr. Ingleby takes up passage after passage of Shakespeare
+that has been pronounced corrupt, and shows that the fault imputed to
+it lies not in the text, but in the lack of requisite knowledge, be it
+of language, of usage, of manners and customs, or even of Elizabethan
+spelling and grammar, on the part of the critic. The mischief that
+ignorance has done in the past is irrevocable, but such impressive
+warnings as Dr. Ingleby gives us may help, in both senses of the
+word, in the future. We may be spared, hereafter, the infliction
+of numberless "felicitous" conjectures, on which the following is
+scarcely a parody. It was proposed many years ago in sport by the late
+deeply-lamented Chauncey Wright, and, as far as we know, has never yet
+appeared in print, though it may live to be gravely noted down in
+some future Variorum, being a genuine echo of many a note by Zachary
+Jackson or Andrew Beckett. In _As You Like It_ occur the familiar
+lines, "And thus our life ... finds ... books in the running brooks,
+sermons in stones," etc. "This is stark nonsense, and must be
+remedied. Who ever found a _book_ in a _rivulet_ or a _sermon_ in
+a _rock?_ It is clearly an error of a most ignorant or careless
+compositor, who has transposed the nouns. Read, '_stones in the
+running brooks and sermons in books_.' Sense is vindicated. Stones
+are frequently found in brooks. David chose smooth _pebbles from
+the brook_, and sermons are quite frequently printed and sold in a
+book-form. By this restoration Shakespeare's wonderful observation
+is," etc., etc., etc.
+
+Great as is the service done in particular cases, the most valuable
+part of _The Still Lion_ is the moral which it points, that
+"successful emendation is the fruit of severe study and research on
+the one hand, and of rare sensibility and sense on the other." And in
+our opinion Dr. Ingleby might have gone even farther, and demanded for
+it a spark of that creative power which is genius. But it must not be
+inferred that all the difficult passages in Shakespeare can be thus
+explained away. Despite all learning, or acuteness, or genius, there
+remains a considerable number that have never yet been solved, and
+never will be, in general acceptation, till the crack of doom. These,
+however, bear so small a proportion to the vast mass of perplexing
+riddles that have been satisfactorily settled that, like an infinitely
+small quantity in mathematics, they may be neglected. Therefore, let
+not him who wishes to read his Shakespeare unalloyed by notes and
+textual comment, despise the painful critic or accuse him of playing
+at loggats with the words of Shakespeare. It is through the labors of
+critics that the text is in such a shape that the work-a-day reader
+can read it at all. In the Folios and Quartos we see Shakespeare
+as through a glass darkly, but, thanks to those drudges, the
+commentators, in numberless places we can now see him face to face.
+
+
+The Orphan of Pimlico, and other Sketches, Fragments and Drawings.
+By William Makepeace Thackeray. With some notes by Anne Isabella
+Thackeray. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co.
+
+The artistic sense--the vivid conception of things and persons in
+their external aspects and with a constant regard to their groupings
+and the effect upon the spectator--made itself peculiarly prominent
+in all that Thackeray wrote. It is not that he gives us elaborate
+descriptions: this, indeed, is the resource of writers who are lacking
+in the faculty mentioned, and are consequently obliged to reach the
+result, if at all, by inferior means. His power lay in the selection
+of traits which were strictly characteristic, in making every act or
+phrase indicative of individuality. An astute critic, therefore--one
+gifted with that keenness of vision to which the exercise of the
+office unhappily implies a claim--should have been able to infer
+Thackeray's dexterity with the pencil from the methods of his literary
+work. There was, however, no room for conjecture on this point, as the
+fact was early a matter of notoriety, and many of the illustrations
+in his books were known to be from his own sketches. Recently, too, a
+publication containing some of his earliest and slightest work in this
+way attracted considerable attention, with the fortunate result of
+calling out the volume before us, which embodies the best specimens
+of his skill reproduced by a method that renders every line an exact
+transcript, and accompanied by facsimiles of whatever written text or
+comment appeared on the same page. Many of them partake more or less
+of the nature of caricature, and if the execution alone be considered,
+they show that Thackeray might, in default of talents of a different
+order, have pursued this line with as much success as some of its
+cleverest cultivators. But what distinguishes the drolleries in
+this book is the inventiveness shown in the conception and the
+characteristic ingenuity of the details. The designs for "Playing
+Cards," in which the tray of spades is represented by the figures of
+Johnson, Boswell and Gibbon, and a scene at "Dr. Birch's School" does
+duty for the seven of hearts, are especially felicitous in this way;
+while a different but not less familiar trait is exhibited in
+some carefully-drawn "Initial Letters," embodying charming bits of
+child-life and quaint allusions to well-known scenes in history and
+romance. "Othello" in the form of "Dandy Jim of Souf Caroline," and
+"The Little Assessor of Tübingen"--a mysterious personage of whom
+the author refused to reveal the secret--are equally amusing and
+suggestive. There are some half hundred subjects of the same or
+other kinds in the volume, which, as a mere picture-book, is full of
+entertainment for readers of all ages, while for those with whom the
+name of Thackeray is a dear household word it will have a still higher
+charm, calling up as it does so many associations connected with the
+author and the man, and seeming like a fragment of the biography which
+has been vainly looked for.
+
+
+
+
+_BOOKS RECEIVED_.
+
+The Illustrated Annual Register of Rural Affairs for 1876. By J.J.
+Thomas. Albany: Luther Tucker & Son.
+
+The Chevalier Casse-Cou: The Red Camellia. By Fortuné Du Boisgobey.
+Translated from the French by Thos. Picton. New York: Robert M. De
+Witt.
+
+Household Elegancies. By Mrs. C.S. Jones and Henry T. Williams. New
+York: Henry T. Williams.
+
+The Children's Treasury of English Song. By Francis Turner Palgrave.
+New York: Macmillan & Co.
+
+Stories from the Lips of the Teacher. By O.B. Frothingham. New York:
+G.P. Putnam's Sons.
+
+Songs of Three Centuries. Edited by J.G. Whittier. Boston: James R.
+Osgood & Co.
+
+Roddy's Reality. By Helen Kendrick Johnson. New York: G.P. Putnam's
+Sons.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13655 ***