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Project Gutenberg's McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908, by Various

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Title: McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908

Author: Various

Release Date: February 2, 2006 [EBook #17663]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, VOL. 31 ***




Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Richard J. Shiffer and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.






  [Transcriber's Note: The Table of Contents and the list of illustrations
   were added by the transcriber.]




  McCLURE'S MAGAZINE

  VOL. XXXI   MAY, 1908   No. 1




  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  ILLUSTRATIONS.
  THE MISADVENTURES OF CASSIDY. By Edward S. Moffat.
  MARY BAKER G. EDDY. By Georgine Milmine.
  IN CHARGE OF TRUSTY. By Lucy Pratt.
  FIRST DAYS OF THE RECONSTRUCTION. By Carl Schurz.
    Restless Foot-loose Negroes.
    The Freedmen's Bureau.
    Pickles and Patriotism.
    The South's Hopeless Poverty.
    Johnson's Haste for Reconstruction.
    Arming the Young Men of the South.
    The President Defends Southern Militia.
    Criticism and Personal Discomfort.
    The End of an Aristocracy.
    An Ungracious Reception.
    Why the President Reversed his Policy.
    Congress and General Grant's Report.
  THE FLOWER FACTORY. By Florence Wilkinson.
  THE SILLY ASS. By James Barnes.
  WAR ON THE TIGER. By W. G. Fitz-gerald.
  THE RADICAL JUDGE. By Anita Fitch.
  POVERTY AND DISCONTENT IN RUSSIA. By George Kennan.
  "THE HEART KNOWETH." By Charlotte Wilson.
  IN THE DARK HOUR. By Perceval Gibbon.
  "OLIVIA" and "FAUST" AT THE LYCEUM. By Ellen Terry.
    "Olivia" a Family Play.
    Ellen Terry and Eleanora Duse.
    "Faust."
    George Alexander and the Barmaids.
    "Faust" a Paradoxical Success.
    Irving on Long Runs.
    Irving's Mephistopheles.
    "Faust's" Four Hundred Ropes.
  THE LIE DIRECT. By Caroline Duer.
  THE WAYFARERS. By Mary Stewart Cutting.
    XV.
    XVI.
    XVII.
    XVIII.


  ILLUSTRATIONS

  "FOR FOUR LONG SUMMER MONTHS OF DUST AND HEAT CASSIDY HAD BEEN A
      FREIGHTER."
  "'I'VE SOLD THEM WHEELERS!'"
  "NEAREST TO THE ROUGH PINE BOX STOOD THE WIDOW, WITH LOWERED EYES"
  "'I HEREBY PRONOUNCE YUH MAN AND WIFE!'"
  GREETING THE PILGRIMS.
  GEORGE WASHINGTON GLOVER.
  THE MOTHER CHURCH IN BOSTON.
  "'I'SE JUS 'BLIGE WHUP 'IM ALL DE WAY TER SCHOOL'"
  "I KIN GET 'EM YERE, EF YER WANTS."
  "TWO SMALL FIGURES PUSHED THEIR WAY INTO THE ROOM"
  "THAT LITTLE BOY, SMILED THE ROSY-CHEEKED GENTLEMAN"
  MAJOR-GENERAL O. O. HOWARD.
  A PHOTOGRAPH OF GENERAL HOWARD.
  MAJOR-GENERAL H. W. SLOCUM FROM A WAR-TIME PHOTOGRAPH.
  MAJOR-GENERAL H. W. SLOCUM BEFORE HIS DEATH IN 1894.
  MAJOR-GENERAL E. R. S. CANBY.
  SENATOR WILLIAM LEWIS SHARKEY.
  "HE COULD HEAR THE CRASH, SEE THE GREAT BOW SINKING"
  "FIRST A MAGNIFICENT YELLOW HEAD EMERGES, THEN THE LONG, LITHE BODY"
  HOWDAH ELEPHANT TRAINING MADE EASY.
  LAST WALL OF DEFENSE.
  SLAYER OF SEVENTY-SIX NATIVES LAID LOW AT LAST.
  TIGRESS ALSO IS SLAIN.
  "'WADICAL!'"
  "AN UNTIDY MIDGET FOLLOWING CLOSELY AT HIS HEELS"
  "HOPE CAROLINA, FROM HER MARVELOUS BED, COULD SEE EVERYTHING."
  "FOREVER TURNING BACK TO KISS HIM...."
  "IT WAS THE QUAINT CUSTOM ... TO FOLLOW MOURNERS ... FROM THE GRAVE"
  PAUL MILYUKOV.
  P. A. STOLYPIN.
  THE AUDREY ARMS, OXBRIDGE, MIDDLESEX.
  ELLEN TERRY AS "OLIVIA."
  ELLEN TERRY AS OLIVIA.
  HENRY IRVING AS THE VICAR.
  H. BEERBOHM TREE.
  ELEANORA DUSE WITH LENBACH'S CHILD.
  ELLEN TERRY AS ELLALINE IN "THE AMBER HEART."
  HENRY IRVING AS MEPHISTOPHELES IN "FAUST."
  ELLEN TERRY.
  ELLEN TERRY'S FAVOURITE PHOTOGRAPH AS OLIVIA.
  ELLEN TERRY AS OLIVIA AND HENRY IRVING AS THE VICAR.
  ELLEN TERRY AS MARGUERITE IN "FAUST."
  "MRS. LEVERICH BOWED INCIDENTALLY"
  "WITH EYES FOR NOBODY ELSE"
  "FLOWERS AND CHILDREN--CHILDREN AND FLOWERS!"
  "'THE LITTLE SPIDER WON'T HURT YOU'"
  "'NEVER LET HIM COME HERE AGAIN--NEVER, NEVER!'"




[Illustration: "FOR FOUR LONG SUMMER MONTHS OF DUST AND HEAT CASSIDY
HAD BEEN A FREIGHTER."]




McCLURE'S MAGAZINE

VOL. XXXI MAY, 1908 No. 1




THE MISADVENTURES OF CASSIDY

BY EDWARD S. MOFFAT

ILLUSTRATIONS BY N.C. WYETH


Cassidy gazed long and blankly across the desert. "Wot a life!" he
muttered grimly. "Say, _wot_ a life this is!" Cassidy made the words
by putting his tongue against his set teeth and forcibly wrenching the
sounds out by the roots. The words had been a long time in the making,
but now, because of the infinite sourness of their birth and because
of the acrid grinding and gritting that had been going on in the dark
recesses of his soul, Cassidy was forced at last to listen. Rudely and
forever they dispelled Cassidy's dull impression that things were well
with Cassidy, and in so doing tore away the veil and revealed Truth
standing before him, naked, yet gloriously unashamed. But the general
outlines of the goddess had not been entirely unfamiliar to him.
Although his previous skull-gropings had brought forth neither a cause
nor a remedy, he had so long felt that things were far from
satisfactory that when at last she fronted him brazenly, eye to eye,
he only sighed heavily, spat twice in sad reflection, and----nodded
for her to pass on; she had been accepted.

"Gosh, wot a thirst I got!" he pondered, and kicked the empty canteen
at his feet. "Wot a simply horrible thirst! Say, pardner, I wonder did
a feller _ever_ have a thirst like this?" Luckily for Cassidy, his
throat was not yet so dry but that he could amuse himself by
fancifully measuring his thirst, first by pints, then by quarts.

"A quart would never do it, though," he meditated whimsically. "It
would be a mean, low trick to make it think so. This yere job rightly
belongs to a water-tank. Oh, gosh! And ten miles yet, across that
darned dry lake, tuh Ochre. Gid-ap, Tawmm!"

In slow response, the four blacks settled into their sweaty collars,
and the big Bain freighter, with its tugging trailer, heaved up the
swale and lurched drunkenly down the other side to the glittering
mesa.

For four long summer months of dust and heat Cassidy had been a
freighter. From sun-up to sun-down he had dragged with snail-like
progress up and down the cañons, through the rocky washes and crooked
draws; and now that the road had dropped into the Southwestern Basin
it was sickening mesa work, with the fine dust running like water
ahead of his wheels or whirling up in fantastic, dancing pillars of
grit that drove spitefully into his slack, parched mouth and sleepy
eyes.

"It's the goll-dinged monotonosity of it I cain't stand!" he whined,
as he drove his boot-heel down on the rasping brake-lever and waited
sullenly for the inevitable bump from the trailer. "Gawd never meant
fer a feller tuh do this work. I don't know Him very good," wailed
Cassidy, "but I bet He wouldn't deal no such a raw hand. It ain't
_human!_"

He frowned heavily at the sky-line of jagged mountains blued with
haze. "They look like a lot of big old alligators--just as if they was
asleep and lyin' with their shoulders half out of water," he murmured
in gentle, subdued reminiscence. "The darned old no-good things!"

Then, as the bitterness of his lonely life rose up and dulled his mind
and soured his tongue, "Why don't yuh get some mineral into yuh?" he
yelled with abrupt ferocity. "Why ain't yuh some good tuh a feller?
_Zing, zing, zing_--I _hate_ your old heat a-singin' in my ears all
the gosh-blamed time! Why don't yuh _do_ something? Huh? Yuh don't
make it so's anything kin live. Yuh don't give no water, yuh don't
give no grass, yuh don't do nothin'! Yuh jest lay there and make
_heat!_"

[Illustration: "'I'VE SOLD THEM WHEELERS!'"]

[Illustration: "NEAREST TO THE ROUGH PINE BOX STOOD THE WIDOW, WITH
LOWERED EYES"]

Across the mesa the shimmering white surface of a dry lake caught his
angry eye. As he looked, it began to rock gently from side to side.
Presently, in a freakish spirit of its own, it curled up at the edges.
Later, it seemed to turn into a dimpling sheet of water, cool, sweet,
and alluring.

Cassidy burst into a howl of derision that startled his blacks into a
jogging trot: "Oh, yuh cain't fool me, yuh darned old fake!" He shook
a huge red fist in defiance of his ancient foe. "I'll beat yuh
yet--darn yuh!"

Late that night, a large man with a red face and a sunburned neck on
which the skin lay in little cobwebs, stumbled in under the lights of
Number One Commissary Tent.

"I want my time and I want my money. I ain't a-goin' tuh work _no
more!_ he announced with a displeased frown.

"Going back home tuh Coloraydo?" asked the youthful clerk.

"Back home?" repeated Cassidy mechanically. "How--how's that, young
feller?"

"I asked yuh if yuh were going tuh hit the grit fer home?" the boy
repeated.

"Aoh!" said Cassidy, and a blank look spread across his countenance.
He spoke as if he did not understand. For a while he stood quite
still, unknowingly twiddling the time-check in his thick,
fat-cushioned fingers into a moist pink ball. His face grew heavy and
dull. It seemed to have been robbed, with a surprising suddenness, of
all the good spirits, all the abounding, virile life, of the moment
before. It grew to look old and lined under the flickering lamplight,
and this was odd, because Cassidy was not by any means an old man.

For a time the only sound he made was a queer little ejaculation of
surprise, the only movement a bewildered stare at the boy. Together
they were the actions of a child who, in the first numbing moments of
a gashed finger, only gazes at the wound in round-eyed wonder. Cassidy
had begun to remember.

He remembered that "back home" a man didn't have to live _all_ the
time on sour bread and canned tomatoes; "back home" you didn't have to
die of thirst, coming in with day-empty water-barrels to find the
spring dried up; "back home" the mountains didn't jiggle up and down
in front of you, through glassy waves of heat that rightfully
belonged in a blast-furnace. Things were different--and better--"back
home."

Cassidy lifted his head and listened. He had heard the sound of water.
Half hidden in the brush, a little brook was running by him down a
dark ravine. Joyously, tumultuously, it churked and gurgled over the
smooth green stones and moss down to the level, and then slipped away,
with low, contented murmurings, among the cottonwoods and willows.
Cassidy found himself following that brook. It took him down through
fields of dark lucerne. It led him through yellow pasturage, deep with
stubble and wild oats. It showed him long-aisled orchards glinting
with fruit in the sunlight. It ushered him into a wide and pleasant
valley. In the distance Cassidy saw a ranch. Near by, with blowsy
forelock and careless mane, a shaggy pony stood knee-deep in the
river-sedge.

"Why, hello, hossy!" whispered Cassidy, with soft surprise. "Why, say!
I know yuh!"

A full, warm wind began to sough through the pines on the hillside. He
could hear it blowing, blowing unendingly, from across the hills. His
ears rang with the whirring sound, as it came singing along with the
vox humana chords of a great 'cello, streaming down from the heights,
gentle-fingered, but wondrously vast-bodied--booming along with half a
world behind it. Fair in the face it smote him with its resinous
breath, and he felt his lips parting to inhale its fiery tonic--felt,
as he used to feel, the magic glow tingling in his veins again and
brightening his eyes with the pure pagan glory of his living.

And then, very sadly indeed for Cassidy, and in much the same way that
whisky and he had let it all slip through their fingers long ago, the
sound of the brook stilled. The valley, the meadows, the ranch, and
the kind, warm wind faded, one by one. In their stead came the creak
and shock of a belated wagon-train pulling into camp. He heard the
panting of laboring horses. He caught the salt reek of sweaty harness.
He heard the drivers curse querulously as they jammed down the
brake-levers, tossed the reins away, and clambered stiffly down.

Cassidy turned a strained, hard face on the boy. "I reckon not," he
said sadly, grimly. "I ain't a-goin' home. Nope; I ain't a-goin' no
place that's good. Yuh kin always be sure of that, kid."

"Oh, now, that's all right. Don't get sore," soothed the boy. "That's
all right, Cassidy."

"No, it ain't!" roared Cassidy, angry with the long, hot days and
stifling nights, angry with the work and the scanty pay, angry most
of all with himself. "No, it _ain't_ all right!"

[Illustration: "'I HEREBY PRONOUNCE YUH MAN AND WIFE!'"]

As a previously concealed resolve crystallized at last somewhere in
his brain, his voice rasped up a whole octave.

"Nothin's all right, pardner!" he yelled. "Yuh hear me? Yuh know what
I'm goin' tuh do?" He waved the time-check defiantly above his head
and let go one last howl of sardonic self-derision:

"I'm goin' down tuh the Bucket of Blood _tuh get drunk_!"

       *       *       *       *       *

The desert town of Ochre, in its more salient points, was not unlike a
desert flower, although its makers were far from desiring it to blush
unseen. Yesterday it had slept unborn in a nook of the sand-hills, the
abiding-place of cat's-claw, mesquit, and flickering lizards.

To-day it burst, with an almost tropic vigor, into riotous growth.
Flamboyant youth, calculating middle age, doddering senility, all
these were there, all treading on one another's heels, to reap and be
reaped. To-day a scene of marvelous activity, a maelstrom of bustling
commissariat and fretting supply-trains, cut by never-ending
counter-currents of hoboes to and from the front, to-morrow it would
simmer down into the desuetude of a siding. Thus is vanity repaid.

Although Cassidy had begun at the "Bucket," he soon discovered that it
possessed no phonograph, and, possessing a craving for music, he had
removed himself and the remains of the pink check to where an aged
instrument in "Red Eye Mike's" guttered forth a doubtful plea for one
"Bill Bailey" to come home.

Here he had remained for five fateful, forgetting days. What Mike and
Mike's friends did to him in that space of time cannot be dwelt upon.
Suffice it to say that on the morning of the sixth day the bleary
semblance of a man who had slept all night in the sand, alongside of a
saloon, awoke to the daylight and a hell of pain.

By dint of soul-racking exertions it managed to roll to its hands and
knees. Then, by slow stages, it pulled itself together, and after
several unsuccessful attempts, tottering, stood on its feet. Tents,
horses, sky, desert, and sun revolved in a bewildering kaleidoscope
before his eyes. In the vastness of his skull a point of pain darted
agonizingly back and forth. In his mouth was a taste like unto nothing
known on this earth or in either bourn.

"I got money yet," he mumbled dazedly to himself, as was his
conversational wont. "Say! I'm tellin' yuh, I got money yet!"
Fumbling, he searched his pockets, but quite to no avail. Sadder yet,
a repetition of the search, even to turning his clothes inside out and
then looking anxiously on the sand, produced nothing. With a puzzled
look on his haggard face, he stumbled into Mike's saloon.

Not at all disconcerted by the bedraggled form that leaned on his bar
and mouthed disconnectedly, the worthy keeper of the hostel proceeded
to produce a sheet of paper from the till.

"I don't savvy what you're talking about at all," he remarked
ingenuously; "but seein' as you've been spendin' a few bucks amongst
your friends here, I'll tell you how you stand."

"How do I stand?" asked Cassidy thickly.

Mike laughed in his face. "You don't stand, pardner. You're all in."

A moment necessarily had to be allowed Cassidy to fathom this
catastrophe. When the agony had come and passed, he was heard to sigh
heavily and remark: "Well, I reckon it'll be the old job again. I got
the outfit yet."

"Have you, indeed?" mocked Mike, well up to his lay. "I'm glad to have
you mention it. See here, pardner." He slapped the sheet of paper flat
on the bar, under Cassidy's astonished eyes. "Do you figure this is
your name at the bottom, or don't you?" he demanded in peremptory
tones.

Cassidy frowned and regarded the paper. Then, as the words swam and
blurred together in one long, discouraging line, he weakly gave it up.

"Wot's it say, Mike?" he asked feebly.

"This here paper says," responded the other, with the cold, forceful
air of one well within his rights, "that last night you sold me your
teams and your outfit--fer a consideration. Of course, now, I ain't
sayin' just what you done with the consideration I give you. Mebbe you
spent it like a gent fer booze, mebbe you was foolish and went to some
strong-arm shack and got rolled. I dunno; I can't say. All I know is
that you got your money and I got the outfit. Savvy?"

Cassidy's face took on a queer, pasty white. His hands clawed
ineffectively at the bar.

"Sold you my _outfit_?" he quavered, with an awful break in his voice.
"_Sold it_, Mike? Why, how do you figure that?"

"Is that your name?" barked Mike in answer. He thrust the paper out at
arm's length and shook it under Cassidy's nose with astonishing
ferocity. "Just you say one little short word, friend. Is that your
name, or isn't it?"

Cassidy wavered. It was unquestionably his name; whether _he_ had
written it there or not was yet to be decided.

If psychological moments come to the Cassidys, this one felt such a
thing near him. _Now_ was the time for him to leap in the air and
pound wrathfully upon the bar. _Now_ was the instant for him to rush
into the open and call vociferously on his friends. _Now_ was the
fraction of a second left for him to reach out his hard knuckles and
pin Mike to the wall and tear the paper from his hands. But instead,
and with a queer feeling of aloofness from it all, much as if he were
the helpless spectator of activities proceeding in some fantastic
dream, he felt the moment thrilling up to him; felt it stand
obediently waiting; felt himself slowly gathering in response to its
mute query; then felt himself drop helplessly back into a stupid coma
of whisky fumes and sodden inertia.

When he came to, Mike had put the paper back in his till and was
assiduously cleaning up his bar. It was all over.

Cassidy shifted irresolutely from one foot to the other. A sickening
feeling of hollowness within him was crying aloud to be appeased by
either food or drink, and his shaking body begged for a place to rest
itself into tranquillity; but still for a while he stood there,
fighting off these yearnings while he gathered his far-strayed wits.
Now and then he weakly attempted to catch the other's eye, but as Mike
studiously refused to be caught, Cassidy could only blink owlishly and
fumble again with the tangled ends of the skein. Finally, abandoning
it all as useless, he turned toward the door, yet arrested his dazed
shambling to ask one last question.

"How's that?" Mike responded vaguely over his shoulder. "Still harping
on that, are you?"

"Did I really sell you them blacks?" ventured Cassidy quaveringly,
controlling his voice only with a tremendous effort. "Reelly,
truly--did I sell 'em?"

Mike rolled a cigar over in his mouth, with a complacent lick of his
tongue. "That's what," he replied laconically.

Cassidy gulped down something in his throat. He leaned for a moment
against the door-jamb; his gaunt, hollow-cheeked face quivered with
misery.

"I mean them black wheelers, Mike. Just them two--them wheelers," he
pleaded. Hesitating a little, as the other deigned no response, he
ventured weakly on:

"I was figurin', now--of course, I don't mean nothin' by it, Mike,
only yuh see how a feller _c'u'd_ figger it--that mebbe--mebbe you
made some mistake in readin' that paper. Yuh see how it could happen.
A feller _c'u'd_ make a mistake in readin', now, c'u'dn't he?" With
this flimsy appeal Cassidy played his last and poorest card.

In answer the other snapped some ashes from his sleeve, turned his
back, slapped the cash-register shut, and strode masterfully down the
room. "Not this time, pardner."

Cassidy stumbled out.

"I've sold them wheelers!" he sobbed under his breath. "Why, it seems
like I was just this minute thinkin' I'd get tuh go and water 'em, and
rub 'em down a bit. _Now_ it ain't no use thinkin' about it--not any
more. It ain't me that's goin' tuh do that. I cain't water 'em. I
ain't got rights to even lay my hands on 'em! O-h-h!" he shuddered,
and agonizedly pulled taut on every tired, aching muscle. "Yuh oughter
be beat up with a club. Yuh oughter get pounded with a rawk. You're a
rotten, whisky-soaked bum, that's all yuh are now, and yuh oughter be
killed and kicked out in the street!"

Half whining, half crying miserably, he drove himself out of the town,
for a mile or more, on the desert, then plodded painfully back again,
mauling and beating himself with the bludgeon of his awful self-pity.

At the foot of a fast-rising "grade" he halted wearily and watched the
work. It was well on toward noon by this time, and the sun was blazing
down through a choking pall of dust that hung in the lifeless air. Men
were driving horses to and fro. They were men with weak, deeply lined
faces and shambling gaits. They broke into querulous curses and beat
their animals savagely on ridiculously small pretexts. They handled
their reins with a uniformly betraying awkwardness.

Cassidy sized them up and sniffed contemptuously to himself. _He_
knew. "That's wot _you_'ll be doing to-morrow," he muttered. "Durn
your hide, that's all you're good for. That's yuh to-morrow, yuh and
the rest of the 'boes."

Not knowing what to do with himself now, he drifted back to the town
and sat in the scanty shade of a joshua, prepared to commune further
with himself. Looking up after a time, his eyes descried in the
distance the figures of two men who were walking toward him.

"I bet that's Con Maguire," he murmured. "Yep--him and that old
'Arkinsaw.' They've got their time-checks, tuh; I kin tell the way
they walk. I bet I know wot they're sayin'. Con, he's got a little
ranch up tuh Provo, and he's fer makin' right up the line and gettin'
that old no-good Arkinsaw to go along and pass up the booze.

"Poor old Arkinsaw!" mused Cassidy shrewdly. "He's worked three months
steady for Donovans', drivin' scraper, the poor old slob, and their
chuck is rotten. I'll bet he's terrible glad to get back tuh Number
One. He's got forty dollars now. I bet he's near crazy. He allers
looks that way when he's got forty dollars," said Cassidy.

"Sure I'll go with you, Con," Arkinsaw was saying. "I always meant to
go, reelly, truly I did. You ask any of the fellers back to Donovans'.
I was allers savin', 'I'm goin' out home when Con Maguire goes'--and,
sure enough, here I am. I'll be to the train the same time as you.
We'll go home on the same train, Con; sure we will." The old man
laughed nervously. His eyes were bright with some strange
excitement--but half of it was fear.

"Say, Con," he whispered hoarsely, "I'll be all right. You jest ketch
holt of my arm when we go by; I'll be all right then. Say, Con," he
guttered, in an agony of fear and desperation, "you hear me? Only git
me by that first saloon."

But the approaching twain had been seen by other eyes than Cassidy's.
By some odd fortuity, a phonograph broke into wheezy song as the
wayfarers swung down the street. Dice began to roll invitingly across
the bars, and from a distant spot came the hollow sound of the
roulette-ball. Quite by chance, a man appeared in a doorway, holding a
glass of beer. He was seen to drain it, just as they passed. Then he
noticed them for the first time.

"Come in and cool off, boys," he suggested cordially. "It's all on
ice. Good, cold lager, boys!"

Under its mask of dust, Arkinsaw's face worked horribly. He stumbled,
loitered along the way to fix his shoe, zigzagged from one side to the
other, fumbled at his pack, and finally stopped.

"Say, Con," he rasped feebly. "Oh, Con! Say, I gotter see a feller
here. Say!" as his friend looked back at him with disconcerting doubt
written on every feature. "Say, Con!--reelly, truly I have!"

"Well, hurry up, then," replied the other, and went on his dogged way.

The instant his back was turned, the old man obliqued crabwise to the
side of the road. Fumbling nervously at his roll of bedding, he threw
it off and darted for the saloon, running and stumbling in his haste.
But at this point a large, gaunt, red-faced man, bearing a club in one
hand, appeared from nowhere in particular and fronted him.

"G'wan down the road!" said the red-faced man harshly.

"Why--why, _Cass_!" Arkinsaw bleated surprisedly. "How you did startle
me! Why, where did you come from? Yessir!" and he deftly manoeuvered
so as to catch a glimpse of the bar over Cassidy's shoulder. "You
surely startled me bad. Excuse _me_," he murmured absently; "I gotter
see a feller----"

"G'wan down the road!"

"No, no, Cass!" the old man begged, hopping frantically on one foot.
"Just a minute. It'll only take me a minute, I tell you. I gotter see
a feller."

"G'wan down the road!"

"Say, Cass! _don't_ treat a feller that way----"

Arkinsaw retreated. Cassidy and the club advanced. Arkinsaw craftily
side-stepped. So did Cassidy. They paused.

Cassidy leaned on his stick and centered the old man's wavering gaze.
"Don't lie," he said softly. "If yuh lie tuh me, yuh feather-brained
old cockroach, I'll just natch'lly beat your face off! I want yuh tuh
go home; just clamp your mind on that, Sam Meeker! If yuh think you're
goin' tuh throw your money away over that bar, yuh want tuh separate
yourself from the idea mighty quick. I won't stand fer foolishness. Go
over there and git your bed!"

By this time the old man had calmed down. He looked the other over
with a benevolently crafty eye.

"Why, what you been doing lately, Cass?" he inquired, with an adroit
turn of the conversation. "You don't look as if you were real happy."

Cassidy winced. Then he hefted the club suggestively. "I've been doin'
things _yuh_ won't do!" he said savagely. "There's your bed over
there. Pick it up! Hit the breeze! _Hike!_"

"This yere's a friend of mine, Con," chortled Arkinsaw delightedly, as
he scrambled up the steps of the swing train a little later. "He
knowed my folks, back home. He's a real kind feller."

Con nodded and surveyed Cassidy's club with vast appreciation. The
train underwent a preliminary convulsion and began to pull out.

"Good-by!" yelled Cassidy. "Keep sober, yuh brindle-whiskered old
billy-goat!"

Arkinsaw's straggly beard waved in the air as he stuck his head out of
a window. His worn, furtive old face was riotous with joy. He was
going home--_home_! Safe and sober, with forty dollars and a clean
conscience, more than had been his in many a day.

"You bet I kin!" he bellowed back. "You're all right, Cass!"

Cassidy sniffed and turned again toward the town. "I don't reckon I
c'u'd stand these yere chuck-ranches off fer a meal," he soliloquized,
"not lookin' the way I am. To-morrow's all right; I'll be workin'
then. To-day--" He paused and ran his hand over his forehead. "Well,
to-day I reckon it'll be Mike's again--if he'll stand fer it."

And Mike fed him. Cassidy was harmless now. The fact that he asked for
food proved it. Mike knew it; Cassidy knew it.

The rear of the saloon was partitioned off into a "Ladies' Room,"
whose door opened on the alkali flat behind. From thence came the
monotonous drone of a murmured conversation. Cassidy tried
ineffectually to follow it, but the droning of the voices and the
steady hum of the flies around the beer lees on the bar made him
sleepy. Outside it was stiflingly hot. Over on the grade the horses
were choking and snorting in the dust, while the shambling-gaited men
cursed steadily and heaved at the heavy scrapers. The little patch of
blue in the doorway was twinkling with heat. Far out on the yellow
plain, a grotesque-armed joshua lurched from side to side.

Cassidy felt a hand on his shoulder. "Do you want a drink?" asked
Mike. "If you do, go in there and earn it. Talk to her. She's in hard
luck."

Cassidy arose obediently, and with not a little timidity ventured to
open the door and peer within.

"Come in," said a woman's voice, and Cassidy, not knowing why or why
not, went in.

"Put your hat on the coffin and have a chair," said the woman. "I've
looked and looked, and I can't see any table in this room."

Cassidy shuffled to a seat in a moment of surprise, and looked
guardedly about him. There was, in fact, no table. Indubitably there
was a coffin.

"That's my husband," said the woman. "Want to see him?"

"N-n-no, ma'am," Cassidy stammered hastily.

The woman nodded appreciatively. "Few does," she said, "and I guess it
wouldn't do yuh much good. What's the matter with yuh? Yuh don't seem
right well."

"No, ma'am," Cassidy confessed; "I ain't very well to-day."

The woman smiled a little. There was a pause. "How long have yuh been
drinkin'?" she asked in a gentle voice.

"'Bout five days now," said Cassidy, reddening to the tips of his ears
and bashfully looking up for the first time.

She was a short, well-made woman, dressed in black from the hem of her
shiny skirt to the long plush bonnet-strings dangling loosely in her
lap. Her face was a firm, pleasant oval, quite unlined except near the
eyes, where there was a multitude of fine wrinkles such as come from
squinting across a desert under a desert sun. There was nothing
particularly worth noting about her face, except that it had an
exceptionally healthy appearance. But her eyes fascinated Cassidy.
They were an uncompromising, snapping black. They seemed brimming over
with vitality. They were eyes that showed a strength of will behind
them only woefully expressible in her woman's voice. They had a
compelling quality in their straightforward honesty that forced
Cassidy at once to forego the rest of her features. If he ventured to
admire the firm white chin and well-kept teeth, the eyes flashed a
stern rebuke. If his gaze slipped down to the sleazy, badly fashioned
dress, the eyes brought him up with a round turn, slapped him, and
reduced him to obedience. If his own flitted curiously to the smooth
brown hair, drawn simply, plainly away from her forehead, hers towed
him mercilessly back.

"We never drank much down tuh the ranch," she remarked, with the easy
deviance of one who understands another's failings and does not wish
to pain him by intruding their own immunity; "and now I s'pose there
won't be hardly any. I'm Sarah Gentry. Yuh know me? We live down tuh
Willow Springs."

Cassidy nodded. _He_ knew Willow Springs and its well-kept ranch. It
was the only fertile neck of land that ran down to Ochre Desert, an
oasis, a veritable paradise of cottonwoods, willows, dark fields of
alfalfa, a capably fenced corral, long lines of beehives, and
apple-and olive-trees.

Cassidy grinned feebly. "I know. I stoled a mushmelon there last
week."

"I saw yuh," said Sarah Gentry quickly, but without a shadow of
malice. "Your head is tuh red. Yuh better stick tuh grapes at night."

Cassidy collapsed.

"My husband died yesterday, from consumption," she went on, with an
even, steady flow of talk. "And I came in here tuh get a preacher tuh
bury him. I heard the railroad was comin' this way, and I figured
Christianity would come clippin' right along behind. But I guess it
won't pull in for quite a spell. It just beats me how the devil
_always_ gets the head start. _He_ kin always get in somehow, ridin'
the rods, or comin' blind baggage; religion sorter tags behind and
waits for the chair-car. I don't think much of this town, either. It
seems like it was full of nothin' but sand, saloons, beer-bottles, and
bums. Are yuh one of 'em?" she inquired, with a sudden thrust that
startled Cassidy beyond bounds.

"A _bum_, ma'am?" gasped Cassidy.

"No; a preacher."

"I reckon not," said Cassidy definitely.

"I didn't know," said the woman vaguely. "I never saw one. Edgard an'
me was married by the county clerk down tuh Hackberry, and he tried
tuh kiss me, and Edgard shot him. Those would be mighty unfortunate
manners for a preacher, I reckon. And now I'm all tired out and don't
know what tuh do. That man outside let me sit down in here, and made
me bring the coffin right inside,--he carried it in himself,--but he
didn't seem tuh know much about preachers, either. If I was a Mormon I
s'pose I could divide up the buryin' some, but I'm all alone now."

In a moment of unreflecting insanity Cassidy opened his mouth. "I'll
help yuh, ma'am!" he said gallantly.

"All right," responded the widowed woman instantly. "Yuh kin lead."

Cassidy paled perceptibly under his tan.

"Now don't back out," she said, "even if yuh do feel sick. Mebbe some
whisky would hearten yuh up." And she went quickly to the door.

Cassidy sat still in his chair, making up his mind--about the whisky.

"There!" said Sarah Gentry, suddenly appearing with a glass which she
set on the coffin. "Looks real good, don't it?"

Cassidy's forehead was damp with perspiration. Inside of him something
was clamoring frightfully for the stuff in the glass. Something seemed
gnawing at his very heart and soul, threatening and pleading, begging
and insisting, fashioning devilish excuses, promising great things.
Cassidy's hand stretched slowly out for the drink--and came back.
There was a silence. The woman fixed her large, strong eyes on his.
Again he reached out his hand, and his face was strained and
unpleasant to look upon. But again he stopped before he took the
glass. A horse had whinnied outside. Cassidy shook his head grimly.
Putting his toe against the glass, he deftly kicked it into the
corner. "I reckon not," he said.

The woman jumped to her feet.

"Git up!" she said impulsively. "Git up and shake hands. You're a
_man_! And now we'll go out and git tuh buryin'."

A little party of six was assembled in a gulch in the sand-hills. The
coffin, marked only with a card, lay in a slight depression scooped
out by the wind.

Nearest to the rough pine box stood the widow, with lowered eyes, but
without the trace of an expression on her face. Heavy-handed,
red-faced, gaunt and grim, Cassidy loomed up beside her. Behind them,
in attitudes of more or less perfunctory interest, stood a
white-capped cook from the commissary-tent, who had come out to get
away from the flies, two vague-visaged unknowns from the vast
under-world of hobodom, and a greasy, loose-lipped fireman with a
dirty red sweater and a contemptuous eye.

"Go on!" whispered the woman. She threw one of her swift, compelling
glances at Cassidy. "Say something!" And Cassidy obeyed; he could not
have refused if he had tried.

It became at once apparent that he must make no rambling talk. The
history of the past five days, while illuminating and diverting, could
not be calculated to inspire the casual onlooker with religious awe.
If aught was to be said, it must, perforce, be meaty and direct.

Cassidy grasped the irritating fireman firmly by the arm. Fixing him
with a baleful eye, he spoke:

"This yere lady has wanted me to say something tuh yuh about her
husband dyin'. As far as I kin understand, that part is all right.
That's what he done. He's dead, all right; there ain't no mistake
about _that_. Wot I'm askin' _yuh_ is: Was he a _man_? Was he good for
anything? Wot did he do when he wasn't workin'? Was he a low, mean
cuss, always goin' round with bums?"

"How do I know?" asked the fireman, in an aggrieved tone. "Ouch! Say,
leggo my arm!"

Cassidy's grip tightened. The fireman groaned dismally and subsided.

"Judgin' from wot I kin see, I should say he was! I mean he _was_ good
fer something. I should say he was surely a terrible weaver if he
couldn't keep straight, hitched up alongside of the--the lamented
widow. I don't think any feller could be much if he wasn't. Yuh see,
pardner, he had _all the chance in the world_. _He_ didn't need to be
jay-hawkin' round, makin' eyes at every red-cheeked biscuit-shooter
that fed him hot cakes. _He_ had a nice ranch and a good wife. A
feller that couldn't be grateful tuh a woman that's treated him as
good as she has to-day, and hauled him clear from Willow Springs tuh
git a Christian burial, and stood around fer him in a hot sun--well,
he couldn't be no account _at all_!"

Cassidy paused and spat. "That's the way _I_ look at it. And,"
thwarting the restive fireman by a startlingly painful grip on the
fleshy part of his arm, "any feller that ain't got as good a wife--any
feller that ain't got _any_, and lays round drinkin', and foolin' his
money away on the 'double O,' and sittin' in tuh stud games with
permiskus strangers, and gettin' ready tuh be a hobo--all I kin say
is, he'd better brace up and try tuh deserve one. A feller that ain't
got a wife is a no-account loafer and bum, and he ought tuh git
kicked! _This_ man had one, but he went and left her. Even then he
done better than _yuh_ done! That's all."

"Kin I go now?" queried the fireman smartly.

"Yuh kin!" responded Cassidy, malevolently, "but I'll see yuh later,
young feller. I ain't overfond of yuh." And he turned away to cover
the coffin with sand, digging it up laboriously and scattering it here
and there with a piece of board.

"That was a mighty nice talk yuh gave the fireman," remarked the
woman, during an interval in their labors. "I feel a lot better now.
Mebbe the fireman will get married now and brace up. Was he really
doing all those things yuh said?"

"Some feller was," answered Cassidy. "I heard about it."

"And now," announced the widow, "we'll just make him a good head-board
and stop there. Edgard _might_ have been a good husband, but he didn't
try overhard. Have yuh got anything written?"

"I ain't got anything but this yere old location notice," ventured
Cassidy doubtfully. "I guess, though, I'll just stake out Edgard, the
same as a claim. Then it'll be regular, and there won't nobody touch
him. Of course we won't put up any side centers or corner posts; jest
a sort of discovery monument. He'll be safe for three months, all
right."

And so Cassidy, with the nub of a pencil, and using his knee as a
writing-desk, duly, and in the manner set forth in the laws of the
United States, discovered and located Edgard Gentry, age thirty-five,
died of consumption, extending fifteen hundred feet in a northerly and
southerly direction and three hundred feet on either side, together
with all his dips, spurs, and angles.

"Yuh write a nice hand," murmured the widow pensively, sitting down in
the sand beside him and unwittingly breathing on his neck as he wrote.
"Did yuh go tuh school, Mister Cassidy?"

"Yessum," was the confused answer. "Leastways, part of the time."

The widow surveyed him with a dreamy look in her fine eyes and pulled
thoughtfully at her full lower lip.

"You're a big man," she remarked. "How much do you weigh?"

"Over two hundred," answered Cassidy consciously.

"And yuh haven't got any home?"--innocently.

"No, ma'am."

"What were yuh doing tuh that poor old man to-day?"

The sudden irrelevance of the question startled Cassidy immeasurably.

"Wot? That little old Arkinsaw man? Oh--nothin'. Did yuh see me
talkin' tuh him?"

"I did," said the woman; "and I also saw yuh poking him up the street
with a big stick. Do yuh think that was a nice thing for a strong
young man like yuh?"

"I was--I was just advisin' him," explained Cassidy thickly. "I----"

"What were yuh hurtin' that old man for?" was the forceful
interruption. "Did he ever hurt _yuh_ any?"

"Hurt _me_? Old Arkinsaw? No, ma'am; not tuh my knowledge. But----"

"_Never mind that_," said the woman stonily though the big, strong
eyes had a favorable light in their depths. "Yuh tell me why yuh were
sticking him in the back."

"Well--he wanted a drink--that's why," Cassidy mumbled.

"Oh!" remarked the woman, with withering comprehension. "And so,
because he was tired and thirsty and wanted a drink, yuh poked him. I
see."

Cassidy grew desperate. "I'm afraid, ma'am, yuh don't rightly
understand," he undertook to explain.

"Yes, I do," replied the woman hotly, and burned him with her eyes.
Then she turned her back on him, which hurt him a great deal more.

Cassidy groaned aloud.

"I believe you're a bully," goaded the little woman, and showed an
attractive, mutinous profile over her shoulder. "Do yuh bully women,
too?"

Cassidy did not answer at once. When he did, it was in a low, rather
lifeless voice: "No'm; I don't bother the women-folks much."

"There, there, now," soothed the woman, quickly turning to him and
putting her hand on his shoulder with a motherly gesture. "Don't go
tuh feelin' bad. Don't yuh s'pose I knew all the time why yuh did it?
I was glad, too. Just yuh lay down there in the sand and get rested,
and tell me all about it."

And so Cassidy, stretched full length, with his face half hidden in
his arm, mumbled fragmentarily--and told. After it was finished, after
all his misdeeds had been related, and counted over, one by one, he
ventured to look up.

The woman's face was grave, but she was smiling. She laid her hand
gently on his cheek and turned his eyes to hers.

"But you've quit now?" she stated.

"I've quit," answered Cassidy honestly.

"Well, then, it'll be all right. I reckon it's time for me to be going
now. Yuh better drive me home."

       *       *       *       *       *

The road to Willow Springs lay straight across the mesa. Here and
there, in the yellow expanse of sand, were patches of green mesquit,
where some underground flow came near enough to the surface to slake
their thirsty roots. Elsewhere the sand shifted noiselessly across the
plain, under the touch of the wind, which fashioned innumerable oddly
shaped hummocks, and then gently purred them away again, to heap on
others.

After they had driven silently for some time, the woman spoke:
"There's a man standing in that clump of cat's-claw ahead. Did yuh see
him?"

Cassidy thoughtfully eased up the perspiring team. "I know him," he
answered, although apparently he had not raised his eyes above the
dash-board for a long time. "Name is Tommy."

"Well, what's Tommy hidin' in those bushes for?" demanded the woman.

"A feller broke into Number One Commissary last night."

"Did Tommy do it?"

"No, ma'am--not this time. His partner done it and skipped out."

"Does Jake think Tommy did it?"

"Yes, ma'am. I see Jake hitchin' up tuh go after him when we started
out."

There was little said after that until they came abreast of the
cat's-claw near the road. Cassidy pulled up.

"Say, Tommy! Oh, yuh Tommy!" he called persuasively at the silent
bushes. "Come, git in here. This lady wants yuh."

"I guess Jake's a-comin'," replied Tommy, poking his head into view
from his thorny retreat.

"I guess he is," said Cassidy, and looked over his shoulder at a
rapidly approaching pillar of dust. "It's a good thing the county pays
for his horse-flesh." There was a pause. "I reckon you'd better hurry
some, Tommy," drawled Cassidy.

"Don't stand there imperiling your life, tryin' tuh guess who I am,"
said the widow abruptly. "Get right in here and cover up with alfalfa
and them horse-blankets, and lie quiet. I want yuh."

"What for?" queried Tommy, as he clambered in, being a young man of
devious thought.

"For a witness!" said Sarah Gentry unfathomably--for Tommy.

Cassidy looked puzzled for a moment. Then a slow wave of red crept
over his face and crimsoned his ears. He started his horses again to
cover his confusion.

The woman let him think for a moment; then her eyes drew his own
startled orbs around and enveloped them in a soft light.

"Yuh know what I mean, Mister Cassidy?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Well--shall we?" shyly.

"Yes, ma'am," answered Cassidy, and blushed incontinently.

Behind them a light buggy was being driven over the desert at a
furious pace. As it came nearer, the two in the ranch-wagon, with its
confused huddle of horse-blankets and hay, beneath which lay the
trustful Tommy, could hear the shock of the springs as it bumped from
one chuck-hole to another; but they did not turn their heads.

"Hello, there, Cass!" shouted the sheriff genially, as he pulled down
alongside of them. "How'do, Mis' Gentry! Pretty hot travelin', ain't
it?"

"I s'pose it is--being July," the little woman replied, with the first
trace of confusion that Cassidy had seen. "I--I hadn't been noticing
lately."

"I'm in a terrible hurry," the sheriff continued rapidly. "Some are
sayin' young Tommy Ivison come this way, and I want him. I hate tuh
give yuh my dust. Whoa, Dick! Whoa, Pet!" He pulled in his fretting
team with a heavy hand. "I've got tuh get him before he crosses the
California line, so I got tuh fan right along. Gid-ap, there!"

"Wait a minute, Jake."

"Can't do it, Mis' Gentry. If he's more than a couple of miles ahead,
I can't ketch him. What is it I can do for you?"

"Yuh kin marry us two!" said the little woman, with a gulp.

"_Marry yuh?_" roared the sheriff. "Can't do it, ma'am--not even for a
friend. Awful sorry, Mis' Gentry, but I've just _got_ tuh go." He
jerked the whip from its socket for a merciless slash.

"_Jake!_" said the little woman commandingly.

"Ma'am?" said the sheriff in an uncertain tone.

"Yuh heard what I said?"

"Yes, ma'am; but it ain't regular at _all_. I ain't no justice of the
peace; I ain't got power enough; I ain't got anything--Bible, nor
statutes, nor nothing. I couldn't take no fee, either; it wouldn't be
right. By Golly!" he exclaimed excitedly, "I bet that's him, up ahead,
right now!" and he struck his horses.

"Whip up!" said the woman to Cassidy, and she stood up in the wagon
and held on by the rocking top.

"Jake Bowerman!" she called across the erratic width that separated
the rapidly moving vehicles, "if you've got power enough tuh 'rest
people and keep 'em in jail for the rest of their lives, marryin'
ain't much worse, and yuh kin do it if yuh try!"

"Yuh ain't got any witness, Mis' Gentry!" bellowed the confused Jake,
as a last resort, and touched his horses again. Cassidy let out
another notch, and kept even. The wagons were swaying jerkily from
side to side.

"Yes, I have!" snapped the woman. "Now, yuh hurry up!"

"Better stand up, Mister Cassidy," she whispered; "we've got tuh be
real quick!"

"It don't seem hardly regular!" yelled the discomfited sheriff,
skilfully avoiding a dangerous hummock and crashing through a
mesquit-bush which whipped away his hat. "I'll--I'll do it for yuh,
Mis' Gentry. I'll marry yuh as tight as I kin; but I can't stop
drivin' for that, and I've forgot a whole lot how it goes. Are yuh all
ready?"

The desert had changed from its soft, yielding sand to a brown, flat
floor of small stones and volcanic dust, fairly hard and unrutted.
Pulling in dangerously close, the sheriff shifted his reins to one
hand and faced them. The two wagons were racing neck and neck in a
cloud of dust, Cassidy handling his lines with skill and growing
satisfaction. From the body of the wagon under him, and quite
distinguishable from the clatter of the horses' feet, came a series of
sharp bumps as the unfortunate Tommy ricochetted from side to side.

"Do yuh believe in the Constitution of the United States?" bellowed
Jake.

"_We do!_" pealed the woman.

"Do yuh--whoa, there, Pet! Goll darn your hide!--do yuh solemnly swear
never tuh fight no _duels_?"

"What's that?" screamed the woman.

"He said a 'duel'!" shouted Cassidy in her ear, above the uproar of
the wheels. "Tell him _no_! We won't fight many duels!"

"No! _No_ duels!" sang the woman.

"And no aidin' or abettin'?"

"No! No bettin' at all!"

"Nor have any connection with any _duels_ whatsoever?"

The widow looked puzzled. She didn't understand. What had _duels_ to
do with solemn marriage?

"It's all in the statutes, all right!" roared the sheriff angrily, as
vast portions of the laws of Nevada fled from his agitated mind.

"Mebbe you're both grand jurors now; I dunno. I think that's the oath.
I reckon it's good and bindin', anyhow." He stood up in his buggy and
shook the reins furiously over his horses' backs to escape from
further legal entanglements. Leaning back over the folded top, he
pointed at them magisterially with his whip.

"And now, by the grace of God and me, Jake Bowerman, I hereby
pronounce yuh man and wife!"

With a roar of wheels, bad language, and a cloud of dust, the sheriff
vanished in pursuit of the California line and the fleet-footed Tommy.

Cassidy pulled his horses into a much-needed walk. The little woman
sat down and felt for her bonnet.

"_My!_" gasped Mrs. Cassidy, "_that_ was going some! Do yuh reckon
we're really married?"

The team, unheeded, had swung off from the desert into a road made in
damper, richer soil. Not far ahead, now, the dark foliage of the
Willow Spring ranch rose in cool relief against the grim, sun-reddened
buttes beyond. Their passenger had some time since dropped quietly off
and was walking ahead of the plodding horses.

As Cassidy looked forward at the quiet fields, and the ranch, and the
spring, in the half-circle of willows where the cattle drank, now
gradually dimming in the soft twilight, and then, with an involuntary
turn, at the God-forgotten waste behind him, something melted in his
breast; something cleared up his mind, and wiped it free of his
thoughtless appetites and sins, and made him a strong, clean-hearted
man again. He turned to the now quiet, pensive little woman at his
side. He found her looking up at him with trustful, softly shining,
all-enveloping eyes.

"I hope we're married!" said Cassidy gravely. "I reckon we are. Jake
was always a mighty brave man, and what he does, he does so it sticks.
But even if we ain't married good enough fer some folks, it's good
enough fer me, for all time. I won't run away, ma'am. No, ma'am--not
ever!"

"I know!" said the little woman happily. "_I_ know!"




MARY BAKER G. EDDY

THE STORY OF HER LIFE AND THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

BY GEORGINE MILMINE


XIII

TRAINING THE VINE--A STUDY IN MRS. EDDY'S PREROGATIVES AND POWERS

    A Lady with a Lamp shall stand
    In the great history of the land
          _Motto upon the cover of the "Christian Science Sentinel"_

At the June communion of the Mother Church, 1895, a telegram from Mrs.
Eddy was read aloud to the congregation, in which she invited all
members who desired to do so to call upon her at Pleasant View on the
following day.[1] Accordingly, one hundred and eighty Christian
Scientists boarded the train at Boston and went up to Concord. Mrs.
Eddy threw her house open to them, received them in person, shook
hands with each delegate, and conversed with many. This was the
beginning of the Concord "pilgrimages" which later became so
conspicuous.

After the communion in 1897, twenty-five hundred enthusiastic pilgrims
crowded into the little New Hampshire capital. Although the Scientists
hired every available conveyance in Concord, there were not nearly
enough carriages to accommodate their numbers, so hundreds of the
pilgrims made their joyful progress on foot out Pleasant Street to
Mrs. Eddy's home.

Mrs. Eddy again received her votaries, greeted them cordially, and
made a rather lengthy address. The _Journal_ says that her manner upon
this occasion was peculiar for its "utter freedom from sensationalism
or the Mesmeric effect that so many speakers seem to exert," and adds
that she was "calm and unimpassioned, but strong and convincing." The
_Journal_ also states that upon this occasion Mrs. Eddy wore "a royal
purple silk dress covered with black lace" and a "dainty bonnet." She
wore her diamond cross and the badge of the Daughters of the
Revolution in diamonds and rubies.

In 1901[2] three thousand of the June communicants went from Boston to
Concord on three special trains. They were not admitted to the house,
but Mrs. Eddy appeared upon her balcony for a moment and spoke to
them, saying that they had already heard from her in her message to
the Mother Church, and that she would pause but a moment to look into
their dear faces and then return to her "studio." The _Journal_
comments upon her "erect form and sprightly step," and says that she
wore "what might have been silk or satin, figured, and cut _en
traine_. Upon her white hair rested a bonnet with fluttering blue and
old gold trimmings."

The last of these pilgrimages occurred in 1904, when Mrs. Eddy did not
invite the pilgrims to come to Pleasant View but asked them to
assemble at the new Christian Science church in Concord. Fifteen
hundred of them gathered in front of the church and stood in reverent
silence as Mrs. Eddy's carriage approached. The horses were stopped in
front of the assemblage, and Mrs. Eddy signaled the President of the
Mother Church to approach her carriage. To him, as representing the
church body, she spoke her greeting.

The yearning which these people felt toward Mrs. Eddy, and their
rapture at beholding her, can only be described by one of the
pilgrims. In the _Journal_, June, 1899, Miss Martha Sutton Thompson
writes to describe a visit which she made in January of that year to
the meeting of the Christian Science Board of Education in Boston. She
says:

     "When I decided to attend I also hoped to see our Mother....
     I saw that if I allowed the thought that I must see her
     personally to transcend the desire to obey and grow into the
     likeness of her teachings, this mistake would obscure my
     understanding of both the Revelator and the Revelation.
     After the members of the Board had retired they reappeared
     upon the rostrum and my heart beat quickly with the thought
     'Perhaps _she_ has come.' But no, it was to read her
     message.... She said God was with us and to give her love to
     all the class. It was so precious to get it directly from
     her.

     "The following day five of us made the journey to Concord,
     drove out to Pleasant View, and met her face to face on her
     daily drive. She seemed watching to greet us, for when she
     caught sight of our faces she instantly half rose with
     expectant face, bowing, smiling, and waving her hand to each
     of us. Then as she went out of our sight, kissed her hand to
     all.

     "I will not attempt to describe the Leader, nor can I say
     what this brief glimpse was and is to me. I can only say I
     wept and the tears start every time I think of it. Why do I
     weep? I think it is because I want to be like her and they
     are tears of repentance. I realize better now what it was
     that made Mary Magdalen weep when she came into the presence
     of the Nazarene."


_Mrs. Eddy's Last Class_

After the pilgrimages were discouraged, there was no possible way in
which these devoted disciples could ever see Mrs. Eddy. They used,
indeed, like Miss Thompson, to go to Concord and linger about the
highways to catch a glimpse of her as she drove by, until she rebuked
them in a new by-law in the Church Manual: "_Thou Shalt not Steal_.
Sect. 15. Neither a Christian Scientist, his student or his patient,
nor a member of the Mother Church shall daily and continuously haunt
Mrs. Eddy's drive by meeting her once or more every day when she goes
out--on penalty of being disciplined and dealt with justly by her
church," etc.

Mrs. Eddy did her last public teaching in the Christian Science Hall
in Concord, November 21 and 22, 1898. There were sixty-one persons in
this class,--several from Canada, one from England, and one from
Scotland,--and Mrs. Eddy refused to accept any remuneration for her
instruction. The first lesson lasted about two hours, the second
nearly four. "Only two lessons," says the _Journal_, "but such
lessons! Only those who have sat under this wondrous teaching can form
a conjecture of what these classes were." "We mention," the _Journal_
continues, "a sweet incident and one which deeply touched the Mother's
heart. Upon her return from class she found beside her plate at dinner
table a lovely white rose with the card of a young lady student
accompanying on which she chastely referred to the last couplet of the
fourth stanza of that sweet poem from the Mother's pen, 'Love.'

    "Thou to whose power our hope we give
      Free us from human strife.
    Fed by Thy love divine we live
      For Love alone is Life," etc.


_Mrs. Eddy and the Press_

Mrs. Eddy now achieved publicity in a good many ways, and to such
publications as afforded her space and appreciation she was able to
grant reciprocal favors. The _Granite Monthly_, a little magazine
published at Concord, New Hampshire, printed Mrs. Eddy's poem "Easter
Morn" and a highly laudatory article upon her. Mrs. Eddy then came out
in the _Christian Science Journal_ with a request that all Christian
Scientists subscribe to the _Granite Monthly_, which they promptly
did. Colonel Oliver C. Sabin, an astute politician in Washington,
D.C., was editor of a purely political publication, the Washington
_News Letter_. A Congressman one day attacked Christian Science in a
speech. Colonel Sabin, whose paper was just then making things
unpleasant for that particular Congressman, wrote an editorial in
defense of Christian Science. Mrs. Eddy inserted a card in the
_Journal_ requesting all Christian Scientists to subscribe to the
_News Letter_. This brought Colonel Sabin such a revenue that he
dropped politics altogether and his political sheet became a
religious periodical. Mr. James T. White, publisher of the _National
Encyclopaedia of American Biography_, gave Mrs. Eddy a generous place
in his encyclopedia and wrote a poem to her. Mrs. Eddy requested,
through the _Journal_, that all Christian Scientists buy Mr. White's
volume of verse for Christmas presents, and the Christian Science
Publication Society marketed Mr. White's verses. Mrs. Eddy made a
point of being on good terms with the Concord papers; she furnished
them with many columns of copy, and the editors realized that her
presence in Concord brought a great deal of money into the town. From
1898 to 1901 the files of the _Journal_ echo increasing material
prosperity, and show that both Mrs. Eddy and her church were much more
taken account of than formerly. Articles by Mrs. Eddy are quoted from
various newspapers whose editors had requested her to express her
views upon the war with Spain, the Puritan Thanksgiving, etc.

In the autumn of 1901 Mrs. Eddy wrote an article on the death of
President McKinley. Commenting upon this article, _Harper's Weekly_
said: "Among others who have spoken [on President McKinley's death]
was Mrs. Eddy, the Mother of Christian Science. She issued two
utterances which were read in her churches.... Both of these
discourses are seemly and kind, but they are materially different from
the writings of any one else. Reciting the praises of the dead
President, Mrs. Eddy says: 'May his history waken a tone of truth that
shall reverberate, renew euphony, emphasize human power and bear its
banner into the vast forever.' No one else said anything like that.
Mother Eddy's style is a personal asset. Her sentences usually have
the considerable literary merit of being unexpected."

Of this editorial the Journal says, with a candor almost incredible:
"We take pleasure in republishing from that old-established and
valuable publication _Harper's Weekly_, the following merited tribute
to Mrs. Eddy's utterances," etc. Then follows the editorial quoted
above.

[Illustration: _Copyrighted, 1903, by R. W. Sears_ GREETING THE
PILGRIMS

MRS. EDDY ON THE BALCONY OF HER CONCORD HOME ADDRESSING THE PILGRIMS IN
1903. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH MADE AT THE TIME BY R. W. SEARS]

In the winter of 1898 Christian Science was given great publicity
through the death, under Christian Science treatment, of the American
journalist and novelist, Harold Frederic, in England. Mr. Frederic's
readers were not, as a rule, people who knew much about Christian
Science, and his taking off brought the new cult to the attention of
thousands of people for the first time.


Mrs. Eddy and the Peerage

In December, 1898, the Earl of Dunmore, a peer of the Scottish Realm,
and his Countess, came to Boston to study Christian Science. They were
received by Mrs. Eddy at Pleasant View, and Lady Dunmore was present
at the June communion, 1899. According to the _Journal_, Lady
Dunmore's son, Lord Fincastle, left his regiment in India and came to
Boston to join his mother in this service, and then returned
immediately to his military duties. Lady Mildred Murray, daughter of
the Countess, also came to America to attend the annual communion. A
pew was reserved upon the first floor of the church for this titled
family, although the _Journal_ explains that "the reservation of a pew
for the Countess of Dunmore and her family was wholly a matter of
international courtesy, and not in any sense a tribute to their rank."

Lord Dunmore, at one of the Wednesday evening meetings, discussed the
possibilities of a "Christianly-Scientific Alliance of the two
Anglo-Saxon peoples." Even after his departure to England, Lord
Dunmore continued to contribute very characteristic Christian Science
poetry to the _Journal_. He paid a visit to Mrs. Eddy only a few
months before his death in the summer of 1907.

In 1904 the Earl was present at the convention of the Christian
Science Teachers' Association in London, and sent Mrs. Eddy the
following cablegram:

                                   "London, Nov. 28, 1904.

     "REV. MARY BAKER EDDY,
     "Pleasant View, Concord, N. H.

     "Members of Teachers' Association, London, send much love,
     and are striving, by doing better, to help you.

                                   "DUNMORE."


To this Mrs. Eddy gallantly replied:

                                   "Concord, N. H., November 29, 1904.

     "EARL OF DUNMORE, AND TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION, London, G. B.

     "Increasing gratitude and love for your lordly help and that
     of your Association.

                                   "MARY BAKER EDDY."

In these prosperous years the Reverend Irving C. Tomlinson, in
commenting in the _Journal_ upon Brander Matthews' statement that
English seemed destined to become the world-language, says: "It may be
that Prof. Matthews has written better than he knew. Science and
Health is fast reaching all parts of the world; and as our text book
may never be translated into a foreign tongue, may it not be expected
to fulfill the prophet's hope, 'Then will I turn to the people a pure
language,'" etc.

In January, 1901, Mrs. Eddy called her directors together in solemn
conclave, and charged them to send expressions of sympathy to the
British government and to King Edward upon the death of the Queen.

Truly the days of the Lynn shoemakers and the little Broad Street
tenement were far gone by, and it must have seemed to Mrs. Eddy that
she was living in one of those _New York Ledger_ romances which had so
delighted her in those humbler times. Even a less spirited woman than
she would have expanded under all this notoriety, and Mrs. Eddy, as
always, caught the spirit of the play. A letter written to her son,
George Glover, April 27, 1898, conveys some idea of how Mrs. Eddy
appeared to herself at this time:

                                   Pleasant View,
                                   Concord, N. H., April 27, 1898.

     DEAR SON: Yours of latest date came duly. That which you
     cannot write I understand, and will say, I am reported as
     dying, wholly decriped and useless, etc. Now one of these
     reports is just as true as the others are. My life is as
     pure as that of the angels. God has lifted me up to my work,
     and if it was not pure it would not bring forth good fruits.
     The Bible says the tree is known by its fruit.

     But I need not say this to a Christian Scientist, who knows
     it. I thank you for any interest you may feel in your
     mother. I am alone in the world, more lone than a solitary
     star. Although it is duly estimated by business characters
     and learned scholars that I lead and am obeyed by 300,000
     people at this date. The most distinguished newspapers ask
     me to write on the most important subjects. Lords and
     ladies, earles, princes and marquises and marchionesses from
     abroad write to me in the most complimentary manner. Hoke
     Smith declares I am the most illustrious woman on the
     continent--those are his exact words. Our senators and
     members of Congress call on me for counsel. But what of all
     this? I am not made the least proud by it or a particle
     happier for it. I am working for a higher purpose.

     Now what of my circumstances? I name first my home, which of
     all places on earth is the one in which to find peace and
     enjoyment. But my home is simply a house and a beautiful
     landscape. There is not one in it that I love only as I love
     everybody. I have no congeniality with my help inside of my
     house; they are no companions and scarcely fit to be my
     help.

     I adopted a son hoping he would take Mr. Frye's place as my
     book-keeper and man of all work that belongs to man. But my
     trial of him has proved another disappointment. His books
     could not be audited they were so incorrect, etc., etc. Mr.
     Frye is the most disagreeable man that can be found, but
     this he is, namely, (if there is one on earth) an honest
     man, as all will tell you who deal with him. At first
     mesmerism swayed him, but he learned through my forbearance
     to govern himself. He is a man that would not steal, commit
     adultery, or fornication, or break one of the Ten
     Commandments. I have now done, but I could write a volume on
     what I have touched upon.

     One thing is the severest wound of all, namely, the want of
     education among those nearest to me in kin. I would gladly
     give every dollar I possess to have one or two and three
     that are nearest to me on earth possess a thorough
     education. If you had been educated as I intend to have you,
     today you could, would, be made President of the United
     States. Mary's letters to me are so misspelled that I blush
     to read them.

     You pronounce your words so wrongly and then she spells them
     accordingly. I am even yet too proud to have you come among
     my society and alas! mispronounce your words as you do; but
     for this thing I should be honored by your good manners and
     I love you. With love to all

                                   MARY BAKER EDDY.

     P.S.--My letter is so short I add a postscript. I have tried
     about one dozen bookkeepers and had to give them all up,
     either for dishonesty or incapacity. I have not had my books
     audited for five years, and Mr. Ladd, who is famous for
     this, audited them last week, and gives me his certificate
     that they are all right except in some places not quite
     plain, and he showed Frye how to correct that. Then he, Frye
     gave me a check for that amount before I knew about it.

     The slight mistake occurred four years ago and he could not
     remember about the things. But Mr. Ladd told me that he knew
     it was only not set down in a coherent way for in other
     parts of the book he could trace where it was put down in
     all probability, but not orderly. When I can get a
     Christian, as I know he is, and a woman that can fill his
     place I shall do it. But I have no time to receive company,
     to call on others, or to go out of my house only to drive.
     Am always driven with work for others, but nobody to help me
     even to get help such as I would choose.

                                   Again,       MOTHER.

[Illustration: GEORGE WASHINGTON GLOVER

MRS. EDDY'S ONLY SON]

While Mrs. Eddy was working out her larger policy she never forgot the
little things. The manufacture of Christian Science jewelry was at one
time a thriving business, conducted by the J. C. Derby Company, of
Concord. Christian Science emblems and Mrs. Eddy's "favorite flower"
were made up into cuff-buttons, rings, brooches, watches, and
pendants, varying in price from $325 to $2.50. The sale of the
Christian Science teaspoons was especially profitable. The "Mother
spoon," an ordinary silver spoon, sold for $5.00. Mrs. Eddy's portrait
was embossed upon it, a picture of Pleasant View, Mrs. Eddy's
signature, and the motto, "Not Matter but Mind Satisfieth." Mrs. Eddy
stimulated the sale of this spoon by inserting the following request
in the _Journal_:[3]

     "On each of these most beautiful spoons is a motto in bas
     relief that every person on earth needs to hold in thought.
     Mother requests that Christian Scientists shall not ask to
     be informed what this motto is, but each Scientist shall
     purchase at least one spoon, and those who can afford it,
     one dozen spoons, that their families may read this motto at
     every meal, and their guests be made partakers of its simple
     truth."

                                   "MARY BAKER G. EDDY.

     "The above-named spoons are sold by the Christian Science
     Souvenir Company, Concord, N. H., and will soon be on sale
     at the Christian Science reading rooms throughout the
     country."

Mrs. Eddy's picture was another fruitful source of revenue. The
copyright for this is still owned by the Derby Company. This portrait
is known as the "authorized" photograph of Mrs. Eddy. It was sold for
years as a genuine photograph of Mrs. Eddy, but it is admitted now at
Christian Science sales-rooms that this picture is a "composite." The
cheapest sells for one dollar. When they were ready for sale, in May,
1899, Mrs. Eddy, in the _Journal_ of that date, announced:

     "It is with pleasure I certify that after months of
     incessant toil and at great expense Mr. Henry P. Moore, and
     Mr. J. C. Derby of Concord, N. H., have brought out a
     likeness of me far superior to the one they offered for sale
     last November. The portrait they have now perfected I
     cordially endorse. Also I declare their sole right to the
     making and exclusive sale of the duplicates of said
     portrait.

     "I simply ask that those who love me purchase this portrait.

                                   "MARY BAKER EDDY."

The material prosperity of the Mother Church continued and the
congregation soon outgrew the original building. At the June communion
in 1902 ten thousand Christian Scientists were present. In the
business meeting which followed they pledged themselves, "with
startling grace," as Mrs. Eddy put it, to raise two million dollars,
or any part of that sum which should be needed, to build an annex.

In the late spring of 1906 the enormous addition to the Mother
Church--the "excelsior extension," as Mrs. Eddy calls it--was
completed, and it was dedicated at the annual communion, June 10, of
that year. The original building was in the form of a cross, so Mrs.
Eddy had the new addition built with a dome to represent a crown--a
combination which is happier in its symbolism than in its
architectural results. The auditorium is capable of holding five
thousand people; the walls are decorated with texts signed "Jesus, the
Christ" and "Mary Baker G. Eddy"--these names standing side by side.

According to the belief of Mrs. Eddy's followers, every signal victory
of Christian Science is apt to beget "chemicalization"; that is, it
stirs up "error" and "mortal mind"--which terms include everything
that is hostile to Christian Science--and makes them ugly and
revengeful. The forces of evil--that curious, non-existent evil
which, in spite of its nihility, makes Mrs. Eddy so much trouble--were
naturally aroused by the dedication of the great church building in
1906, and within a year Mrs. Eddy's son brought a suit in equity which
caused her annoyance and anxiety.


_Suit Brought by Mrs. Eddy's Son_

Among the mistakes of Mrs. Eddy's early life must certainly be
accounted her indifference to her only child, George Washington
Glover. Mrs. Eddy's first husband died six months after their
marriage, and the son was not born until three months after his
father's death--a circumstance which, it would seem, might have
peculiarly endeared him to his mother. When he was a baby, living with
Mrs. Glover in his aunt's house, his mother's indifference to him was
such as to cause comment in her family and indignation on the part of
her father, Mark Baker. The symptoms of serious nervous disorder so
conspicuous in Mrs. Eddy's young womanhood--the exaggerated hysteria,
the anaesthesia, the mania for being rocked and swung--are sometimes
accompanied by a lack of maternal feeling, and the absence of it in
Mrs. Eddy must be considered, like her lack of the sense of smell, a
defect of constitution rather than a vice of character.

Mrs. Eddy has stated that she sent her child away because her second
husband, Dr. Patterson, would not permit her to keep George with her.
But although Mrs. Eddy was not married to Dr. Patterson until 1853, in
1851 she sent the child to live with Mrs. Russell Cheney, a woman who
had attended Mrs. Eddy at the boy's birth. George lived with the
Cheneys at North Groton, New Hampshire, from the time he was seven
years old until he was thirteen. During the greater part of this time
his mother, then Mrs. Patterson, was living in the same town. When
George was thirteen the Cheneys moved to Enterprise, Minnesota, and
took him with them. Mrs. Eddy did not see her son again for
twenty-three years. She wrote some verses about him, but certainly
made no effort to go to him, or to have him come to her. On the whole,
her separation from him seems to have caused her no real distress. The
boy received absolutely no education, and he was kept hard at work in
the fields until he ran away and joined the army, in which he served
with an excellent record.

After he went West with the Cheneys in 1857, George Glover did not see
his mother again until 1879. He was then living in Minnesota, a man of
thirty-five, when he received a telegram from Mrs. Eddy, dated from
Lynn, and asking him to meet her immediately in Cincinnati. This was
the time when Mrs. Eddy believed that mesmerism was overwhelming her
in Lynn; that every stranger she met in the streets, and even
inanimate objects, were hostile to her, and that she must "flee" from
the hypnotists (Kennedy and Spofford) to save her cause and her life.
Unable to find any trace of his mother in Cincinnati, George Glover
telegraphed to the Chief of Police in Lynn. Some days later he
received another telegram from his mother, directing him to meet her
in Boston. He went to Boston, and found that Mrs. Eddy and her
husband, Asa G. Eddy, had left Lynn for a time and were staying in
Boston at the house of Mrs. Clara Choate. Glover remained in Boston
for some time and then returned to his home in the West.

[Illustration: THE MOTHER CHURCH IN BOSTON

THE ORIGINAL BUILDING, AT THE RIGHT, IS IN THE FORM OF A CROSS, AND
THE IMMENSE "ANNEX," WITH ITS DOME, IS SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT A CROWN,
THE TWO BUILDINGS THUS FORMING THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE SEAL--THE CROSS
AND CROWN]

George Glover's longest stay in Boston was in 1888, when he brought
his family and spent the winter in Chelsea. His relations with his
mother were then of a friendly but very formal nature. In the autumn,
when he first proposed going to Boston, his plan was to spend a few
months with his mother. Mrs. Eddy, however, wrote him that she had no
room for him in her house and positively forbade him to come. Mrs.
Eddy's letter reads as follows:

                                   Massachusetts Metaphysical College.
                                   Rev. Mary B. G. Eddy, President.
                                   No. 571 Columbus ave.
                                   Boston, Oct. 31, 1887

     DEAR GEORGE: Yours received. I am surprised that you think
     of coming to visit me when I live in a schoolhouse and have
     no room that I can let even a boarder into.

     I use the whole of my rooms and am at work in them more or
     less all the time.

     Besides this I have all I can meet without receiving
     company. I must have quiet in my house, and it will not be
     pleasant for you in Boston the Choates are doing all they
     can by falsehood, and public shames, such as advertising a
     college of her own within a few doors of mine when she is a
     disgraceful woman and known to be. I am going to give up my
     lease when this class is over, and cannot pay your board nor
     give you a single dollar now. I am alone, and you never
     would come to me when I called for you, and now I cannot
     have you come.

     I want quiet and Christian life alone with God, when I can
     find intervals for a little rest. You are not what I had
     hoped to find you, and I am changed. The world, the flesh
     and evil I am at war with, and if any one comes to me it
     must be to help me and not to hinder me in this warfare. If
     you will stay away from me until I get through with my
     public labor then I will send for you and hope to then have
     a home to take you to.

     As it now is, I have none, and you will injure me by coming
     to Boston at this time more than I have room to state in a
     letter. I asked you to come to me when my husband died and I
     so much needed some one to help me. You refused to come then
     in my great need, and I then gave up ever thinking of you in
     that line. Now I have a clerk[4] who is a pure-minded
     Christian, and two girls to assist me in the college. These
     are all that I can have under this roof.

     If you come after getting this letter I shall feel you have
     no regard for my interest or feelings, which I hope not to
     be obliged to feel.

     Boston is the last place in the world for you or your
     family. When I retire from business and into private life,
     then I can receive you if you are reformed, but not
     otherwise. I say this to you, not to any one else. I would
     not injure you any more than myself. As ever sincerely,

                                   M. B. G. EDDY.

After Mrs. Eddy retired to Pleasant View, neither her son nor his
family were permitted to visit her, and, when they came East, they
experienced a good deal of difficulty in seeing her at all. Mr. Glover
believed that his letters to his mother were sometimes answered by Mr.
Frye, and that some of his letters never reached his mother at all.
Mr. Glover states that he finally sent his mother a letter by express,
with instructions to the Concord agent that it was to be delivered to
her in person, and to no one else. He was notified that Mrs. Eddy
could not receive the letter except through her secretary, Calvin
Frye.

[ILLUSTRATION: MRS. EDDY'S NEW HOME AT CHESTNUT HILL

JANUARY 26, 1908. MRS. EDDY LEFT HER OLD HOME AT CONCORD AND CAME TO
HER NEW HOUSE AT NEWTON ON A SPECIAL TRAIN, WITH THREE ENGINES TO
INSURE HER SAFE CONDUCT]

January 2, 1907, Mr. Glover and his daughter, Mary Baker Glover, were
permitted a brief interview with Mrs. Eddy at Pleasant View. Mr.
Glover states that he was shocked at his mother's physical condition
and alarmed by the rambling, incoherent nature of her conversation. In
talking to him she made the old charges and the old complaints:
"people" had been stealing her "things" (as she used to say they did
in Lynn); people wanted to kill her; two carriage horses had been
presented to her which, had she driven behind them, would have run
away and injured her--they had been sent, she thought, for that
especial purpose.

After this interview Mr. Glover and his daughter went to Washington,
D. C., to ask legal advice from Ex-Senator William E. Chandler. While
there Mr. Glover received the following letter from his mother:

                                   Pleasant View,
                                   Concord, N. H., Jan. 11, 1907.

     MY DEAR SON: The enemy to Christian Science is by the
     wickedest powers of hypnotism trying to do me all the harm
     possible by acting on the minds of people to make them lie
     about me and my family. In view of all this I herein and
     hereby ask this favor of you. I have done for you what I
     could, and never to my recollection have I asked but once
     before this a favor of my only child. Will you send to me by
     express all the letters of mine that I have written to you?
     This will be a great comfort to your mother if you do it.
     Send all--ALL of them. Be sure of that. If you will do this
     for me I will make you and Mary some presents of value, I
     assure you. Let no one but Mary and your lawyer, Mr. Wilson,
     know what I herein write to Mary and you. With love.

                                   Mother, M. B. G. Eddy.

Mr. Glover refused to give up his letters, and on March 1, 1907, he
began, by himself and others as next friends, an action in Mrs. Eddy's
behalf against some ten prominent Christian Scientists, among whom
were Calvin Frye, Alfred Farlow, and the officers of the Mother Church
in Boston. This action was brought in the Superior Court of New
Hampshire. Mr. Glover asked for an adjudication that Mrs. Eddy was
incompetent, through age and failing faculties, to manage her estate;
that a receiver of her property be appointed; and that the various
defendants named be required to account for alleged misuse of her
property. Six days later Mrs. Eddy met this action by declaring a
trusteeship for the control of her estate. The trustees named were
responsible men, gave bond for $500,000, and their trusteeship was to
last during Mrs. Eddy's lifetime. In August Mr. Glover withdrew his
suit.

This action brought by her son, which undoubtedly caused Mrs. Eddy a
great deal of annoyance, was but another result of those indirect
methods to which she has always clung so stubbornly. When her son
appealed to her for financial aid, she chose, instead of meeting him
with a candid refusal, to tell him that she was not allowed to use her
own money as she wished, that Mr. Frye made her account for every
penny, etc., etc. Mr. Glover made the mistake of taking his mother at
her word. He brought his suit upon the supposition that his mother was
the victim of designing persons who controlled her affairs--without
consulting her, against her wish, and to their own advantage--a
hypothesis which his attorneys entirely failed to establish.

This lawsuit disclosed one interesting fact, namely, that while in
1893 securities of Mrs. Eddy amounting to $100,000 were brought to
Concord, and in January, 1899, she had $236,200, and while in 1907 she
had about a million dollars' worth of taxable property, Mrs. Eddy in
1901 returned a signed statement to the assessors at Concord that the
value of her taxable property amounted to about nineteen thousand
dollars. This statement was sworn to year after year by Mr. Frye.


_Mrs. Eddy's Removal to Newton_

About a month after Mr. Glover's suit was withdrawn, Mrs. Eddy
purchased, through Robert Walker, a Christian Scientist real-estate
agent in Chicago, the old Lawrence mansion in Newton, a suburb of
Boston. The house was remodeled and enlarged in great haste and at a
cost which must almost have equaled the original purchase price,
$100,000. All the arrangements were conducted with the greatest
secrecy and very few Christian Scientists knew that it was Mrs. Eddy's
intention to occupy this house until she was actually there in person.

On Sunday, January 26, 1908, at two o'clock in the afternoon, Mrs.
Eddy, attended by nearly a score of her followers, boarded a special
train at Concord. Extraordinary precautions were taken to prevent
accidents. A pilot-engine preceded the locomotive which drew Mrs.
Eddy's special train, and the train was followed by a third engine to
prevent the possibility of a rear-end collision--a precaution never
before adopted, even by the royal trains abroad. Dr. Alpheus B.
Morrill, a second cousin of Mrs. Eddy and a practising physician of
Concord, was of her party. Mrs. Eddy's face was heavily veiled when
she took the train at Concord and when she alighted at Chestnut Hill
station. Her carriage arrived at the Lawrence house late in the
afternoon, and she was lifted out and carried into the house by one of
her male attendants.

Mrs. Eddy's new residence is a fine old stone mansion which has been
enlarged without injury to its original dignity. The grounds cover an
area of about twelve acres and are well wooded. The house itself now
contains about twenty-five rooms. There is an electric elevator
adjoining Mrs. Eddy's private apartments. Two large vaults have been
built into the house--doubtless designed as repositories for Mrs.
Eddy's manuscripts. Since her arrival at Chestnut Hill, Mrs. Eddy,
upon one of her daily drives, saw for the first time the new building
which completes the Mother Church and which, like the original modest
structure, is a memorial to her.

There are many reasons why Mrs. Eddy may have decided to leave
Concord. But the extravagant haste with which her new residence was
got ready for her--a body of several hundred laborers was kept busy
upon it all day, and another shift, equally large, worked all night by
the aid of arc-lights--would seem to suggest that even if practical
considerations brought about Mrs. Eddy's change of residence, her
extreme impatience may have resulted from a more personal motive. It
is, indeed, very probable that Mrs. Eddy left Concord for the same
reason that she left Boston years ago: because she felt that malicious
animal magnetism was becoming too strong for her there. The action
brought by her son in Concord last summer she attributed entirely to
the work of mesmerists who were supposed to be in control of her son's
mind. Mrs. Eddy always believed that this strange miasma of evil had a
curious tendency to become localized: that certain streets,
mail-boxes, telegraph-offices, vehicles, could be totally suborned by
these invisible currents of hatred and ill-will that had their source
in the minds of her enemies and continually encircled her. She
believed that in this way an entire neighborhood could be made
inimical to her, and it is quite possible that, after the recent
litigation in Concord, she felt that the place had become saturated
with mesmerism and that she would never again find peace there.


_Mrs. Eddy at Eighty_

The years since 1890 Mrs. Eddy has spent in training her church in the
way she desires it to go, in making it more and more her own, and in
issuing by-law after by-law to restrict her followers in their church
privileges and to guide them in their daily walk. Mrs. Eddy, one must
remember, was fifty years of age before she knew what she wanted to
do; sixty when she bethought herself of the most effective way to do
it,--by founding a church,--and seventy when she achieved her greatest
triumph--the reorganization and personal control of the Mother Church.
But she did not stop there. Between her seventieth and eightieth year,
and even up to the present time, she has displayed remarkable
ingenuity in disciplining her church and its leaders, and adroit
resourcefulness and unflagging energy in the prosecution of her
plans.

Mrs. Eddy's system of church government was not devised in a month or
a year, but grew, by-law on by-law, to meet new emergencies and
situations. To attain the end she desired it was necessary to keep
fifty or sixty thousand people working as if the church were the first
object in their lives; to encourage hundreds of these to adopt
church-work as their profession and make it their only chance of
worldly success; and yet to hold all this devotion and energy in
absolute subservience to Mrs. Eddy herself and to prevent any one of
these healers, or preachers, or teachers from attaining any marked
personal prominence and from acquiring a personal following. In other
words, the church was to have all the vigor of spontaneous growth, but
was to grow only as Mrs. Eddy permitted and to confine itself to the
trellis she had built for it.


_Preaching Prohibited_

Naturally, the first danger lay in the pastors of her branch churches.
Mrs. Stetson and Laura Lathrop had built up strong churches in New
York; Mrs. Ewing was pastor of a flourishing church in Chicago, Mrs.
Leonard of another in Brooklyn, Mrs. Williams in Buffalo, Mrs. Steward
in Toronto, Mr. Norcross in Denver. These pastors naturally became
leaders among the Christian Scientists in their respective
communities, and came to be regarded as persons authorized to expound
"Science and Health" and the doctrines of Christian Science. Such a
state of things Mrs. Eddy considered dangerous, not only because of
the personal influence the pastor might acquire over his flock, but
because a pastor might, even without intending to do so, give a
personal color to his interpretation of her words. In his sermon he
might expand her texts and infinitely improvise upon her themes until
gradually his hearers accepted his own opinions for Mrs. Eddy's. The
church in Toronto might come to emphasize doctrines which the church
in Denver did not; here was a possible beginning of differing
denominations.

So, as Mrs. Eddy splendidly puts it, "In 1895 I ordained the Bible and
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, as the Pastor, on this
planet, of all the churches of the Christian Science Denomination."
That is what Mrs. Eddy actually did. In the _Journal_ of April, 1895,
she announced, without any previous warning to them, that her
preachers should never preach again; that there were to be no more
preachers; that each church should have instead a First and a Second
Reader, and that the Sunday sermon was to consist of extracts from
the Bible and from "Science and Health," read aloud to the
congregation. In the beginning the First Reader read from the Bible
and the Second Reader from Mrs. Eddy's book. But this she soon
changed. The First Reader now reads from "Science and Health" and the
Second reads those passages of the Bible which Mrs. Eddy says are
correlative. This service, Mrs. Eddy declares, was "authorized by
Christ."[5]

When Mrs. Eddy issued this injunction, every Christian Science
preacher stepped down from his pulpit and closed his lips. There was
not an island of the sea in which he could lift up his voice and
sermonize; Mrs. Eddy's command covered "this" planet. Not one voice
was raised in protest. Whatever the pastors felt, they obeyed. Many of
them kissed the rod. L. P. Norcross, one of the deposed pastors, wrote
humbly in the August _Journal_:

     "Did any one expect such a revelation, such a new departure
     would be given? No, not in the way it came.... A former
     pastor of the Mother Church once remarked that the day would
     dawn when the current methods of preaching and worship would
     disappear, but he could not discern how.... Such disclosures
     are too high for us to perceive. _To One alone did the
     message come._"


_The "Reader" Restricted_

Mrs. Eddy had no grudge against her pastors; she did not intend that
they should starve, and many of them were made Readers and were
permitted to read "Science and Health" aloud in the churches which
they had built and in which they had formerly preached.

The "Reader," it would seem, was a safe experiment, and he was so well
hedged in with by-laws that he could not well go astray. His duties
and limitations are clearly defined:

He is to read parts of "Science and Health" aloud at every service.

He cannot read from a manuscript or from a transcribed copy, but must
read from _the book itself_.

He is, Mrs. Eddy says, to be "well read and well educated," but he
shall at no time make any remarks explanatory of the passages which he
reads.

Before commencing to read from Mrs. Eddy's book "he shall distinctly
announce its full title and give the author's name."

A Reader must not be a leader in the church.

Lest, under all these restrictions, his incorrigible ambition might
still put forth its buds, there is a saving by-law which provides that
Mrs. Eddy can without explanation remove any reader at any time that
she sees fit to do so.[6]

Mrs. Eddy herself seems to have considered this a safe arrangement. In
the same number of the _Journal_ in which she dismissed her pastors
and substituted Readers, she stated, in an open letter, that her
students would find in that issue "the completion, as I now think, of
the Divine directions sent out to the churches." But it was by no
means the completion. By the summer of 1902 Septimus J. Hanna, First
Reader of the Mother Church in Boston, had become, without the liberty
to preach or to "make remarks," by the mere sound of his voice, it
would seem, so influential that Mrs. Eddy felt the necessity to limit
still further the Reader's power. Of course she could have dismissed
Mr. Hanna, but he was far too useful to be dispensed with. So Mrs.
Eddy made a new ruling that the Reader's term of office should be
limited to three years,[7] and, Mr. Hanna's term then being up, he was
put into the lecture field. Now the highest dignity that any Christian
Scientist could hope for was to be chosen to read "Science and Health"
aloud for three years at a comfortable salary.

_Why the Readers Obeyed_

Why, it has often been asked, did the more influential pastors--people
with a large personal following, like Mrs. Stetson--consent to resign
their pulpits in the first place and afterward to be stripped of
privilege after privilege? Some of them, of course, submitted because
they believed that Mrs. Eddy possessed "Divine Wisdom"; others because
they remembered what had happened to dissenters aforetime. Of all
those who had broken away from Mrs. Eddy's authority, not one had
attained to anything like her obvious success or material prosperity,
while many had followed wandering fires and had come to nothing.
Christian Science leaders had staked their fortunes upon the
hypothesis that Mrs. Eddy possessed "divine wisdom"; it was as
expounders of this wisdom that they had obtained their influence and
built up their churches. To rebel against the authority of Mrs. Eddy's
wisdom would be to discredit themselves; to discredit Mrs. Eddy's
wisdom would have been to destroy their whole foundation. To claim an
understanding and an inspiration equal to Mrs. Eddy's, would have been
to cheapen and invalidate everything that gave Christian Science an
advantage over other religions. Had they once denied the Revelation
and the Revelator upon which their church was founded, the whole
structure would have fallen in upon them. If Mrs. Eddy's intelligence
were not divine in one case, who would be able to say that it was in
another? If they could not accept Mrs. Eddy's wisdom when she said
"there shall be no pastors," how could they persuade other people to
accept it when she said "there is no matter"? It was clear, even to
those who writhed under the restrictions imposed upon them, that they
must stand or fall with Mrs. Eddy's Wisdom, and that to disobey it was
to compromise their own career. Even in the matter of getting on in
the world, it was better to be a doorkeeper in the Mother Church than
to dwell in the tents of the "mental healers."


_Mrs. Stetson and Mrs. Eddy_

Probably it was harder for Mrs. Stetson to retire from the pastorship
than for any one else; indeed, it was often whispered that the pastors
were dismissed largely because Mrs. Stetson's growing influence
suggested to Mrs. Eddy the danger of permitting such powers to her
vice-regents. Mrs. Stetson had gone to New York when Christian Science
was practically unknown there, and from poor and small beginnings had
built up a rich and powerful church. But, when the command came, she
stepped out of the pulpit she had built. She is to-day probably the
most influential person, after Mrs. Eddy, in the Christian Science
body. Rumors are ever and again started that Mrs. Stetson is not at
all times loyal to her Leader, and that she controls her faction for
her own ends rather than for Mrs. Eddy's. Whatever Mrs. Stetson's
private conversation may be, her public utterances have always been
humble enough, and she annually declares her loyalty. In 1907 the New
York _World_ published several interviews with persons who asserted
that they believed Mrs. Eddy to be controlled by a clique of Christian
Scientists who were acting for Mrs. Stetson's interests. In June Mrs.
Stetson wrote Mrs. Eddy a letter which was printed in the _Christian
Science Sentinel_ and which read in part:

                                   "Boston, Mass., June 9, 1907.

     "MY PRECIOUS LEADER:--I am glad I know that I am in the
     hands of God, not of men. These reports are only the revival
     of a lie which I have not heard for a long time. It is a
     renewed attack upon me and my loyal students, to turn me
     from following in the footsteps of Christ by making another
     attempt to dishearten me and make me weary of the struggle
     to demonstrate my trust in God to deliver me from the
     'accuser of our brethren.' It is a diabolical attempt to
     separate me from you, as my Leader and Teacher....

     "Oh, Dearest, it is such a lie! No one who knows us can
     believe this. It is vicarious atonement. Has the enemy no
     more argument to use, that it has to go back to this? It is
     exhausting its resources and I hope the end is near. You
     know my love for you, beloved; and my students love you as
     their Leader and Teacher; they follow your teachings and
     lean on the 'sustaining infinite.' They who refuse to accept
     you as God's messenger, or ignore the message which you
     bring, will not get up by some other way, but will come
     short of salvation....

     "Dearly beloved, we are not ascending out of sense as fast
     as we desire, but we are trusting in God to put off the
     false and put on the Christ. This lie cannot disturb you nor
     me. I love you and my students love you, and we never touch
     you with such a thought as is mentioned.

     "Lovingly your child,

                                   "AUGUSTA E. STETSON."


_The Teachers Disciplined_

Her pastors having been satisfactorily dealt with, the next danger
Mrs. Eddy saw lay in her teachers and "academies." Mrs. Eddy soon
found, of course, that a great many Christian Scientists wished to
make their living out of their new religion; that possibility, indeed,
was one of the most effective advantages which Christian Science had
to offer over other religions. In the early days of the church, while
Mrs. Eddy herself was still instructing classes in Christian Science
at her "college," teaching was a much more remunerative business than
healing. Mrs. Eddy charged each student $300 for a primary course of
seven lessons, and the various Christian Science "institutes" and
"academies" about the country charged from $100 to $200 per student.
So long as Mrs. Eddy was herself teaching and never took patients, she
could not well forbid other teachers to do likewise. But after she
retired to Concord, she took the teachers in hand. Mrs. Eddy knew well
enough that Christian Science was propagated and that converts were
made, not through doctrine, but through cures. She had found that out
in the very beginning, when Richard Kennedy's cures brought her her
first success. She knew, too, that teaching Christian Science was a
much easier profession than healing by it, and that the teacher
risked no encounter with the law. Since teaching was both easier and
more remunerative, the first thing to be done in discouraging it was
to cut down the teacher's fee, and to limit the number of pupils which
one teacher might instruct in a year. By 1904 Mrs. Eddy had got the
teacher's fee down to fifty dollars per student, and a teacher was not
permitted to teach more than thirty students a year. Mrs. Eddy's
purpose is as clear as it was wise: she desired that no one should be
able to make a living by teaching alone. It was healing that carried
the movement forward, and whoever made a living by Christian Science
must heal. From 1903 to 1906 all teaching was suspended under the
by-law "Healing better than teaching."

In the fall of 1895 Mrs. Eddy issued her instructions to the churches
in the form of a volume entitled the "Church Manual of the First
Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Mass." The by-laws herein
contained, she says, "were impelled by a power not one's own, were
written at different dates, as occasion required." This book is among
Mrs. Eddy's copyrighted works,--a source of revenue, like the
rest,--and has now been through more than forty editions. Some of the
by-laws in the earlier editions are perplexing.

We find that "Careless comparison or irreverent reference to Christ
Jesus, is abnormal in a Christian Scientist and prohibited."[8] It is
probable that no Christian church had ever before found it necessary
to make such a prohibition.

Again, the by-laws state that "Any member of this church who is found
living with a child improperly, or claiming a child not legally
adopted, or claiming or living with a husband or a wife to whom they
have not been legally married, shall immediately be excommunicated,"
etc.[9] This seems a strange subject for especial legislation.

The Manual, however, is chiefly interesting as an exposition of Mrs.
Eddy's method of church government and as an inventory of her personal
prerogatives. Never was a title more misleadingly modest than Mrs.
Eddy's title of "Pastor Emeritus" of the Mother Church.


_How the Mother Church is Organized_

Next to Mrs. Eddy in authority is the Board of Directors, who were
chosen by Mrs. Eddy and who are subject to her in all their official
acts. Any one of these directors can at any time be dismissed _upon
Mrs. Eddy's request_, and the vacancy can be filled only by a
candidate whom she has approved. All the church business is
transacted by these directors,--no other members of the church may be
present at the business meetings,--and if at any time one of them
should refuse to carry out Mrs. Eddy's instructions, or should grumble
about carrying them out, her request would remove him. The members of
this board, in addition to their precarious tenure, are pledged to
secrecy; they "shall neither report the discussions of this Board,
_nor those with Mrs. Eddy_."[10]

These directors are Mrs. Eddy's machine; they are her executive self,
created by her breath, dissolved at a breath, and committed to
silence. Their chief duties are two--to elect to office whomsoever
Mrs. Eddy appoints, and to hold their peace.

The President of the church is annually elected by the directors, the
election being subject to Mrs. Eddy's approval.[11]

The First and Second Readers are elected every third year by the
directors, subject to Mrs. Eddy's approval, but she can remove a
Reader either from the Mother Church or from any of the branch
churches whenever she sees fit and without explanation.[12]

The Clerk and Treasurer of the church are elected once a year by the
directors, subject to Mrs. Eddy's approval.[13]

Executive Members: Prior to 1903 these were known as First Members.
They shall not be less than fifty in number, nor more than one
hundred. They must have certain qualifications (such as residing
within five hundred miles of Boston), and they must hold a meeting
once a year and special meetings at Mrs. Eddy's call, but they have no
powers and no duties.[14] The manner of their election is especially
unusual. The by-laws state that a member can be made an Executive
Member only after a letter is received by the directors from Mrs. Eddy
requesting them to make said persons Executive Members; and then, Mrs.
Eddy adds, "they shall be elected by the _unanimous vote of the Board
of Directors_."[15]

What, one might ask, is the purpose in having an "executive" body
which can do nothing--they are not even allowed to be present at the
business meetings of the church--elected by a Board of Directors who
have to elect "unanimously" whomsoever Mrs. Eddy names? Why go through
the form of "electing" them, when they are simply appointed? Why,
indeed, elect the church officers, since, behind this brave showing
of boards and bodies, Mrs. Eddy, in reality, simply appoints?

One reason is that Mrs. Eddy likes the play of making boards and
committees; she loves titles and loves to distribute them. Another
reason is that her followers are proud to be placed upon these boards,
however limited their sphere of action may be.


_How Mrs. Eddy Controls the Branch Churches_

With the branch churches the case is much the same. Mrs. Eddy starts
out bravely by saying that they are to have "local self-government."
But on reading the Manual we find that they are pretty well provided
for.

A branch church can be organized only by a member of the Mother
Church.[16]

The services of the branch churches are definitely prescribed; they
are to consist of music, Mrs. Eddy's prayer, and oral readings from
"Science and Health" and the Bible.

Mrs. Eddy may appoint or remove--without explanation--the Readers of
the branch churches at any time.[17]

The branch churches may never have comments or remarks made by their
Readers, either upon passages from "Science and Health" or from the
Bible.[18]

The branch churches may have lectures only by lecturers whom Mrs. Eddy
has appointed in the usual way--through the "vote" of her Board of
Directors.[19] And the lecture must have passed censorship.[20]

After listening to such a lecture, the members of the branch churches
are not permitted to give a reception or to meet for social
intercourse. Mrs. Eddy tells them that it will be much better for them
to "depart in quiet thought."[21] (It seems more than probable that
this by-law was devised for the spiritual good of the lecturer. Mrs.
Eddy had no idea that these gentlemen should be fêted or made much of
after their discourse and thus become puffed up with pride of place.)

Since the branch churches, then, have nothing to say about their
services, Readers, or lecturers, there seems to be very little left
for them to do with their powers of local self-government.

Services in the branch churches, as in the Mother Church, are limited
to the Sunday morning and evening readings from the Bible and "Science
and Health," the Wednesday evening experience meetings, and to the
communion service. (In the Mother Church this occurs but once a year,
in the branch churches twice.) There is no baptismal service, no
marriage or burial service, and weddings and funerals are never
conducted in any of the Christian Science churches.


_The Publication Committee_

Included in the Mother Church organization are the Publication
Committee, the Christian Science Publishing Society, the Board of
Lectureship, the Board of Missionaries, and the Board of Education,
all absolutely under Mrs. Eddy's control.

The manager of the Publication Committee, at present Mr. Alfred
Farlow, is "elected" annually by the Board of Directors under Mrs.
Eddy's instructions. His salary is to be not less than $5,000. This
Publication Committee is simply a press bureau, consisting of a
manager with headquarters in Boston and of various branch committees
throughout the field. It is the duty of a member of this committee,
wherever he resides, to reply promptly through the press to any
criticism of Christian Science or of Mrs. Eddy which may be made in
his part of the country, and to insert in the newspapers of his
territory as much matter favorable to Christian Science as they will
print. In replying to criticism this bureau will, if necessary, pay
the regular advertising rate for the publication of their statements.
The members of this committee, after having written and published
their articles in defense of Christian Science, are also responsible,
says the Manual, "for having the papers containing these articles
circulated in large quantities." This press agency has been extremely
effective in pushing the interests of Christian Science, in keeping it
before the public, and in building up a desirable legendry around Mrs.
Eddy.


_The Publishing Society_

The Christian Science Publishing Society is conducted for the purpose
of publishing and marketing Mrs. Eddy's works and the three Christian
Science periodicals, the _Christian Science Journal_, the _Christian
Science Sentinel_, and _Der Christian Science Herold_. It is managed
and controlled by a Board of Trustees, appointed by Mrs. Eddy, and the
net profits of the business are turned over semi-annually to the
treasurer of the Mother Church. The manager and editors are appointed
for but one year, and must be elected or reëlected by a vote of the
directors _and_ "the consent of the Pastor Emeritus, given in her own
handwriting." The Manual also states that a person who is not accepted
by Mrs. Eddy as suitable shall _in no manner_ be connected with
publishing her books or editing her periodicals--not a compositor, not
the copy-boy, not the scrubwoman.


_Christian Science Lectures_

Until 1898 any Christian Scientist could give public talks or lectures
upon the doctrines of his faith, but in January of that year Mrs. Eddy
prudently withdrew this privilege. She appointed a Board of
Lectureship, carefully selecting each member and assigning each to a
certain district. In this work she placed several of her most
influential men, among whom was Septimus J. Hanna. Her idea seems to
have been that as itinerant lecturers these men could not build up a
dangerously strong personal following. These lecturers are elected
annually, subject to Mrs. Eddy's approval. Their representative
lecture must be censored by the clerk of the Mother Church. The Manual
stipulates that these lectures must "bear testimony to the facts
pertaining to the life of the Pastor Emeritus."


_Missionaries_

Seven missionaries are elected annually by the Board of
Directors--Mrs. Eddy's usual way of appointing. Indeed, one finds that
the elections of these various boards are simply confirmations of
appointments made by Mrs. Eddy; not, certainly, because her
appointments need confirmation, but rather because it seems to give
these boards pleasure to vote "unanimously" when they are bidden. To
all intents and purposes the Manual might just as well state that
every committee and officer is appointed by the Pastor Emeritus, and
the phrase "elected by the Board of Directors" seems used merely for
variety of expression.


_Board of Education_

The Board of Education consists of three members, the President,
Vice-President, and a teacher. Mrs. Eddy is the permanent
President--unless, says the Manual, she sees fit to "resign over her
own signature." The Vice-President and teacher are elected from time
to time, "subject to the approval of the Pastor Emeritus."


_Obligations of the Individual Christian Scientist_

It is not easy to become a member of the Mother Church. In the first
place, the applicant for admission must read nothing upon metaphysics
or religion except Mrs. Eddy's books and the Bible. In the second
place, his application must be countersigned by one of Mrs. Eddy's
loyal students, who is made responsible for the candidate's sincerity.
There are so many things for which the new member may be expelled
after he is once admitted into the church, that it would seem as if he
can remain there only by very special grace. He is hedged about by a
number of by-laws which seem to relate chiefly to his personal
attitude toward Mrs. Eddy. He may not haunt the roads upon which Mrs.
Eddy drives. He may not discuss, lecture upon, or debate upon
Christian Science in public without especial permission from one of
her representatives. He must not be a "leader" in the church and must
never be called one. He may read only the Bible and Mrs. Eddy for
religious instruction. He shall not "vilify" the Pastor Emeritus. He
is in duty bound to go to Mrs. Eddy's home and serve her in person for
one year if she requires it of him. He may not permit his children to
believe in Santa Claus--Mrs. Eddy abolished Santa Claus by
proclamation in 1904. She brooks no petty rivals. He may not read or
quote from Mrs. Eddy's books or from her "poems" without first naming
the author. She says, in explanation of this by-law: "To pour into the
ears of listeners the sacred revelations of Christian Science
indiscriminately, or without characterizing their origin and thus
distinguishing them from the writings of authors who think at random
on this subject, is to lose some weight in the scale of right
thinking."[22]

A Christian Scientist "shall neither buy, sell nor circulate Christian
Science literature which is not correct in its statement," etc., Mrs.
Eddy, of course, determining whether or not the statement is correct.
He "shall not patronize a publishing house or bookstore that has for
sale obnoxious books."

A Christian Scientist may not belong to any club or society, Free
Masons excepted, outside the Mother Church. His connection with the
Mother Church must be sufficient for all his social and intellectual
needs, and his interest is not to be diverted from its one proper
channel. Mrs. Eddy says that church organizations are ample for
him.[23]

It is indicative of Mrs. Eddy's influence over her followers that when
this by-law was issued, less than twenty inquiries (so her secretary
announced) were received at Pleasant View. Men resigned from their
political, business, and social clubs, women from their literary and
patriotic organizations, without a murmur and without a question.

No hymns may be sung in the Mother Church unless they have been
approved by Mrs. Eddy, and Mrs. Eddy's own hymns must be sung at
stated intervals. "If a solo singer in the Mother Church shall either
neglect or refuse to sing alone a hymn written by our Leader and
Pastor Emeritus, as often as once each month, and oftener if the
Directors so direct, a meeting shall be called and the salary of this
singer shall be stopped."


_Supreme Authority_

But far above all these lesser by-laws Mrs. Eddy holds one in which
her supreme authority rests. A mesmerist or "mental malpractitioner"
is, of course, to be excommunicated, and "if the author of Science and
Health shall bear witness to the offense of mental malpractice, it
shall be considered sufficient evidence thereof."[24] The accused can
make no defense, has no appeal. If any Christian Scientist offends
Mrs. Eddy, if he writes a letter to the _Journal_ and uses a phrase
which does not please her, if he is too popular in his own community,
if it is rumored that he reads upon philosophy or metaphysics, or
medicine, if he in any way wounds her vanity, Mrs. Eddy can expel him
from the church by a word, without explanation, and he can make no
effort to vindicate himself. In the matter of hypnotism Mrs. Eddy's
mere word is enough. She has, she says, an unerring instinct by which
she can detect hypnotism in any creature:

"I possess a spiritual sense of what the malicious mental practitioner
is mentally arguing which cannot be deceived; I can discern in the
human mind thoughts, motives, and purposes; and neither mental
arguments nor psychic power can affect this spiritual insight."[25]


_Actual Size of Mrs. Eddy's Following_

The result of Mrs. Eddy's planning and training and pruning is that
she has built up the largest and most powerful organization ever
founded by any woman in America. Probably no other woman so
handicapped--so limited in intellect, so uncertain in conduct, so
tortured by hatred and hampered by petty animosities--has ever risen
from a state of helplessness and dependence to a position of such
power and authority. All that Christian Science comprises to-day--the
Mother Church, branch churches, healers, teachers, Readers, boards,
committees, societies--are as completely under Mrs. Eddy's control as
if she were their temporal as well as their spiritual ruler. The
growth of her power has been extensive as well as intensive.

In June, 1907, the membership of the Mother Church, according to the
Secretary's report, was 43,876. The membership of the branch churches
amounted to 42,846. As members of the branch churches are almost
invariably members of the Mother Church as well, there cannot be more
than 60,000 Christian Scientists in the world to-day, and the number
is probably nearer 50,000.

In June, 1907, there were in all 710 branch churches. Fifty-eight of
these are in foreign countries: 25 in the Dominion of Canada, 14 in
Great Britain, 2 in Ireland, 4 in Australia, 1 in South Africa, 8 in
Mexico, 2 in Germany, 1 in Holland, and 1 in France. There are also
295 Christian Science societies not yet incorporated into churches, 30
of which are in foreign countries.[26]

In reading these figures one must bear in mind the fact that
twenty-nine years ago the only Christian Science church in the world
was struggling to pay its rent in Boston.

One very effective element in the growth of the church has been the
fact that a considerable proportion of Christian Scientists--probably
about one tenth--make their living by their faith, and their worldly
fortunes as well as their spiritual comfort are in their church; they
must prosper or decline, rise or fall, with Christian Science, and
they prosecute the cause of their church with all their energies and
with entire singleness of purpose. Again, any religion must experience
a great impetus and stimulus from the living presence of its founder
or prophet, and when that presence is as effective as Mrs. Eddy's, it
is a force to be reckoned with. Furthermore, Christian Science is a
novel and sensational presentation of one of the oldest accepted
truths in human thinking, and converts a few time-worn metaphysical
platitudes into mysterious incantations which are quite as effective
by reason of their incoherence and misapplication as because of the
relative truths which they originally conveyed. Optimism is the cry of
the times, and of all the voices which declare it, this is the most
strident and insistent, proclaiming the shortest of all the short
roads to happiness, declaring the secret of a contentment as
impervious of total anaesthesia.

     [Note: The next article will deal with Mrs. Eddy's book,
     "Science and Health," and will complete this history.]


FOOTNOTES:

[1] This communion was originally observed once each quarter and then
twice a year. Since 1899 it has been observed but once a year, on the
second Sunday in June. No "material" emblems, such as bread and wine,
are offered, and the communion is one of silent thought. On Monday the
directors meet and transact the business of the year, and on Tuesday
the officers' reports are read. As most members of the branch churches
are also members of the Mother Church, thousands of Christian
Scientists from all over the United States visit Boston at this time.

[2] At the 1898 communion there was no invitation from Mrs. Eddy, but
a number of communicants went up to Concord to see her house and to
see her start out upon her daily drive. In June, 1899, Mrs. Eddy came
to Boston and briefly addressed the annual business meeting of the
church. In 1902 and 1903 there were no formal pilgrimages, although
hundreds of Christian Scientists went to Concord to catch a glimpse of
Mrs. Eddy upon her drive.

[3] February, 1899.

[4] Calvin Frye.

[5] In a notice to the churches, 1897, Mrs. Eddy says:

"The Bible and the Christian Science text-book are our only preachers.
We shall now read scriptural texts and their co-relative passages from
our text-book--these comprise our sermon. The canonical writings,
together with the word of our text-book, corroborating and explaining
the Bible texts in their denominational, spiritual import and
application to all ages, past, present and future, constitute a sermon
undivorced from truth, uncontaminated or fettered by human hypotheses
and authorized by Christ."

[6] For the text of these by-laws see Christian Science Manual (1904),
Articles IV and XXIII.

[7] Mrs. Eddy stated in regard to this ruling that it was to have
immediate effect only in the Mother Church, adding: "Doubtless the
churches adopting this by-law will discriminate its adaptability to
their conditions. But if now is not the time the branch churches can
wait for the favored moment to act on this subject."

[8] Church Manual (11th ed.), Article XXXII.

[9] Ibid. (3d ed.), Article VIII, Sec. 5.

[10] Church Manual (43d ed.), Article I, Sec. 5.

[11] Ibid. (43d ed.), Article I, Sec. 2.

[12] Ibid. (43d ed.), Article I, Sec. 4. Ibid. (11th ed.), Article
XXIII, Sec. 2.

[13] Ibid. (43d ed.), Article I, Sec. 3.

[14] Formerly the Executive Members were permitted to fix the salaries
of the Readers, but in the last edition of the Manual this privilege
seems to have been withdrawn.

[15] Church Manual (43d ed.), Article VI.

[16] Church Manual (43d ed.), Article XXVIII.

[17] Ibid. (11th ed.), Article XXIII.

[18] Ibid. (43d ed.), Article IV.

[19] Ibid. (43d ed.), Article XXXIV, Sec. 1.

[20] Ibid. (43d ed.), Article XXXIV, Sec. 2.

[21] Ibid. (43d ed.), Article XXXIV, Sec. 4.

[22] Church Manual (11th ed.). Article XV.

[23] Ibid. (43d ed.), Article XXVI.

[24] Church Manual (43d ed.), Article XXII, Sec. 4.

[25] "Christian Science History," by Mary B. G. Eddy (1st ed.), page
16.

[26] In June, 1907, there were 3,515 authorized Christian Science
"healers" in the world; 3,268 of these are practising in the United
States, 1 in Alaska, 63 in the Dominion of Canada, 5 in Mexico, 1 in
Cuba, 1 in South Africa, 18 in Australia, 1 in China, 105 in England,
5 in Ireland, 9 in Scotland, 7 in France, 15 in Germany, 4 in Holland,
1 in India, 1 in Italy, 1 in the Philippine Islands, 1 in Russia, 1 in
South America, 7 in Switzerland.




[Illustration]




IN CHARGE OF TRUSTY

BY LUCY PRATT

ILLUSTRATIONS BY FREDERIC DORR STEELE


There was a dramatic arrival at the Whittier School one Monday
morning.

The children were gathered in their class-rooms, looking particularly
good and hopeful just after their morning exercises, and Miss Doane
was on the platform in the Assembly Room, when she became aware of a
slight confusion in the outside hall. But, since visitors of
distinction always came in from that particular hall, Miss Doane
merely waited for whatever special form of distinction this might be.
There was a thump on the door, and then, after some slight parleying
and continued confusion on the other side, it opened and two visitors
made their entrance. One was a very large and rather ancient-looking
colored man, the other was a very small colored boy. They both looked
somewhat spent and breathless, and when the man had deposited the boy
before him, with a threatening wave of the stick, he took out a large
bandana and wiped the sweat of honest toil from his brow. Miss Doane,
somewhat uneasy, approached her visitor.

"Yer see, Miss," he explained, with a gesture of triumph toward the
small heap on the floor, "he's ser bad, I'se jes 'blige whup 'im all
de way ter school ter git 'im yere fer sho!"

Miss Doane made some response to the effect that it certainly was an
unusual way of making sure that a child came to school, to which he
joined in:

"Ya-as, Miss, ya-as, _Miss_! Cert'nly is so! Jes 'blige drap all my
wuk 'n' run 'im clean yere. Now, ain't yer 'shame, boy, fer de lady
ter see yer ser bad 'n' hard-haided?"

He was not too ashamed to grumble out an unintelligible answer; but he
looked quite disgusted with life in general, and twisted his head
around in all sorts of directions, and sniffed, and rubbed his
coat-sleeve across his face, and appeared generally ill at ease.

"What is his name?" questioned Miss Doane.

"Trusty--Trusty 'is name," explained the parent. "Trusty Miles. W'y
doan't yer speak up, boy, an' tell de lady yer name?"

Trusty grunted.

"He doesn't seem very glad to be here," suggested Miss Doane mildly.

"No, Miss, dat's de trufe," agreed the parent cordially, "dat's de
trufe! Yer see, he ain't r'ally used ter w'ite folks' school, 'counten
allays gwine ter Miss Pauline Smiff's. Yas'm. He ain't r'ally used ter
w'ite folks, an' he jes seem ter natchelly balk at de idea fum de
fus."

"I see," returned Miss Doane modestly, producing a reader by way of
tactful diversion.

Miss Pauline Smith's ex-pupil looked at it a bit askance, and Miss
Doane proceeded in a somewhat harrowing attempt to discover and lay
bare anything in the least suggestive of knowledge--as such.

"I see," she concluded finally, when there was positively nothing
more left to discover; "I see. Will you follow me, please?"

With unexpected docility, Trusty turned and, with his eyes fixed on a
closed door toward which Miss Doane led the way, followed, he knew not
where.

"Miss North," began Miss Doane, when the door had opened and closed
again, "Miss North, I have a new pupil for you."

Miss North tried to look as if this were the most unexpected bit of
good fortune which could possibly come to her, and glanced around for
an appropriate seat. The children looked pleased at the slight
diversion, and Ezekiel, sitting in a corner seat of the front row,
looked both pleased and intelligent.

"Dat's Trusty," he began smilingly in a low voice to Miss North,
"dat's Trusty Miles, Miss No'th"; and, feeling the cheerful
superiority of former acquaintance, he beamed delightedly on Trusty.

"Yes; and I think you may sit right here," explained Miss North, after
brief consideration.

In lack of anything else to do, Trusty accepted the offered seat.

"And now," continued Miss North, when the children had once more
settled themselves and Miss Doane had gone back to her waiting
visitor, "we will go on with the lesson. Yes, we had just decided that
we all had _bodies_."

Ezekiel glanced at the new pupil, who seemed to be somewhat taken by
surprise at this unexpected development, and was looking curiously
around the room with evident hope of disputing the statement.

"Yes, that is true, is it not, that we all have _bodies?_"

They _all_ looked around rather doubtfully, as if they did not feel
quite so sure on this point; but, as no disembodied spirit spoke up in
denial of the assertion, it was gradually accepted.

"Yes; and these bodies have a great many different _parts_, haven't
they?"

"Yas'm," came, rather faintly.

"Why, yes, indeed," went on Miss North, quite gaily, "a great many
different _parts_. Now, what are some of these parts, children? Who
can think?"

There was a moment of tremendous concentration, and then a dozen hands
went up.

"Well, Alphonso Jones--and make a nice sentence, Alphonso."

"Yer haid is part uv yer body," stated Alphonso, as though he were not
in the habit of being contradicted.

"Yes, very true. Your head is part of your body. And now, as different
parts of the head, we have--" putting her fingers suggestively to her
ears----

"Ears!" shouted a tremendous chorus.

[Illustration: "'I'SE JUS 'BLIGE WHUP 'IM ALL DE WAY TER SCHOOL'"]

"Yes; and--" closing her eyes, and just touching the lids lightly, as
the most delicate hint possible----

"Eyes!" shouted a yet more tremendous chorus.

"Yes; and now, since the eyes are such a very important part of the
head, let us think how we can take very good _care_ of the eyes."

This sounded rather complicated, and there was another moment of awful
concentration. Even Trusty appeared to be thinking warmly on the
subject.

"Well, Ezekiel, what do you say?"

"Not pick no holes in 'em wid no pin," suggested Ezekiel pleasantly.

"Why, Ezekiel, certainly not! Of course we shouldn't want to pick
holes in them with a pin; but--well, what do you say, Tommy?"

"Not pick no holes in 'em wid no needle!" explained Tommy, his face
all aglow with enthusiasm.

"Why, no, indeed! Of course not--why, of course _not_. But that isn't
just what I mean, because of course you would never think of doing
that anyway, would you, Tommy?"

Hands were waving madly in all directions now; but when young Charles
Sumner Scott raised his with its usual effect of poise and precision,
Miss North considered the situation saved. Charles usually saved the
situation.

"How must we treat the eyes if we want to keep them nice and strong,
Charles?"

"Not pick no holes in 'em wid no _hat_-pin!" announced Charles.

"Hands down!" ordered Miss North.

Hands down, indeed!

"Hezzy Cones, did you hear what I said?"

"Yath'm! Not pick no holthe in 'em wid no _hair_-pin!" shouted Hezzy,
not to be walked over so easily, and jubilant at this slight
variation.

The new pupil had waked up, too.

"Not pick no holes in 'em wid no _knittin'-needle_!" he sang loudly,
in a perfect burst of inspiration.

This was a stroke of genius, and they all looked around on the
new-comer admiringly, and looked a little doubtful, for a moment, as
to whether anything more could be said on the subject.

Ezekiel fairly radiated at his friend's success.

[Illustration: "I KIN GET 'EM YERE, EF YER WANTS."]

"Now, wait, children!" said Miss North, with emphasis amounting almost
to severity. "Our answers are getting wild--very wild. And I do not
wish to hear anything more about _pins_ or _needles_ or _hat-pins_ or
_knitting-needles_. I should like to see you all _very straight_ in
your seats."

There was a tremendous effort at straightening up, whereupon Miss
North proceeded to make a few valuable suggestions in regard to the
treatment of the eyes.

"Now," said Miss North, as if she were propounding a theory of rare
and striking originality, "_who_ can tell me another part of the
body?"

The pause was long; they were evidently feeling somewhat sore over
their last setback.

"Well?" encouraged Miss North.

"Yer laigs," mumbled a stuffy voice from the back of the room.

"Yes, your legs, Samuel; that is quite right. And perhaps you can tell
me what your legs are for, Samuel. But wait; we will _think_ before
answering."

"Ter se' down with," answered Samuel comfortably.

"No, Samuel; you evidently did _not_ think; they are for nothing of
the kind," returned Miss North shortly.

Trusty's hand was waving with unmistakable interest. Miss North was
painfully aware that he must be encouraged.

"Well, Trusty," she ventured, "what are your legs for?"

"_Ter hole yer feet on!_" shouted Trusty, in a perfect spasm of joyous
interest.

Miss North essayed to collect her thoughts.

"Well, hardly, hardly for--_that alone_, are they, Trusty? Tell me
what else they are for."

But Trusty failed to find any other use to which he could put the
legs, and Miss North again took the floor; whereupon Trusty's interest
immediately subsided.

Later on, she attempted, somewhat cautiously, to draw him out once
more; but the day went on, and not once again did Trusty deign to come
to the front.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next morning Miss Doane was at school early. She had been working
for some moments at her desk in the Assembly Room, when she became
aware that again an unusual sort of demonstration was taking place in
the outside hall. To the hall Miss Doane went; and there, once more,
she was met by the large colored man and the small colored boy.

"Jes 'blige ter 'ply de same kine o' coaxin', Miss! Whup 'im all de
way yere! Ain't I, Trusty?"

Poor Trusty appeared almost too spent even to reply; and Miss Doane
looked at him and suggested that he go to his seat and rest.

"M-m-m--ain' gwine no seat 'n' res'!" he growled.

His father intervened: "Yer see, Miss? Yer see? He's de hard-haidedes'
chile I'se got, an' dat's de trufe. Come 'long, now, boy; jes come
'long, now!" And, without ceremony, Trusty was lifted with a firm hand
and transported through the Assembly Room to his seat, where he was
deposited with a thump.

Miss North looked up in mild surprise.

"Why, Trusty! Good morning!"

Trusty's response was a thing of conjecture.

"And so you are back at school again; and aren't you glad, after all,
to come back to this nice school?"

"M-m-m--school nuthin'!" was the unexpectedly prompt response.

"Yer'll fine 'im mighty wearisome, I 'spec', Miss," put in the parent.
"But whup 'im! Dat's all I kin say. Whup 'im _all_ de time; an' me 'n'
'Mandy'll wuk on 'im nights 'n' mawnin's."

Miss North looked at the diminutive object but half filling his seat,
and caught her breath.

Another day of alternate gloom and occasional spasmodic interest on
Trusty's part, another day of doubts and fears in his behalf on the
part of Miss North.

That night, just as he was about to scuffle disconsolately behind the
others from the room, picturing, no doubt, some of the joys which were
awaiting him at home, she called him back. Ezekiel stood by her desk,
wondering why she had called him, too.

"Trusty," she began, "wouldn't you like to come to school to-morrow
morning with Ezekiel?"

Trusty looked up doubtfully, and Ezekiel looked up, not just
comprehending.

"You live near each other, don't you?"

"No'm," Ezekiel's tone wavered anxiously. "No'm, we don't live nare
each udder, Miss No'th; Trusty he live clare way _down_ de road."

He stopped, meditating; then his face seemed to clear somewhat of its
burden of thought. "But I reckon--I kin _git_ 'im yere, ef yer wants,
Miss No'th; yas'm, I--I kin git 'im yere, ef yer wants, 'cuz I kin go
af' 'im an' git 'im. Yas'm, I kin ca'y 'im ter school, Miss No'th!"

Trusty looked a bit doubtful as to whether he should entirely fall in
with the plan, and Miss North made haste to readjust herself.

"No'm, 'tain' no trouble, Miss No'th; no'm. I kin ca'y 'im ter school
ter-morrer, cyan't I, Trusty?"

Trusty still appeared to be doubting heavily; but Ezekiel's assurances
continued to ring warmly, as they moved on toward the door and
disappeared into the hall.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was still early the next morning when Miss North worked alone in
the school-room. Slowly the door opened. Slowly two small figures
pushed their way awkwardly into the room. Miss North looked up.

"Why, Ezekiel! And Trusty!"

They came in softly, hand in hand, and stood before her desk, Trusty
passive, Ezekiel glowing shyly with pride and pleasure.

"Hyeah's Trusty, Miss No'th," he explained briefly.

"I see. Why, how--how very nice! And so nice and early! Why, Trusty,
aren't you glad you could get here so early?"

Trusty seemed hardly ready to commit himself just yet, but began to
look shyly pleased, too. Ezekiel, still holding him by the hand,
looked down protectingly.

[Illustration: "TWO SMALL FIGURES PUSHED THEIR WAY INTO THE ROOM"]

"Yas'm, he--he likes ter git yere early; doan't yer, Trusty?"

"Yes, I'm sure he does," put in Miss North tactfully. "And now,
perhaps he would like to help by getting some of the dust out of these
erasers; they aren't very clean this morning."

His eyes brightened. "Yas'm!"

The two came back looking as if they had been temporarily detained in
a flour-barrel.

"Why, yes, those are very clean; but you seem to be just a little
dusty yourselves, aren't you?"

"Yas'm," agreed Trusty, while Ezekiel brushed him with doubtful
success. "Kin ole Sam'el Smiff dus' 'em?"

"Samuel Smith? I don't think Samuel ever did dust them----"

"'Cuz me 'n' 'Zekiel kin dus' 'em good's dat 'mos' _any_ time; cyan't
we, 'Zekiel?"

By the time that school was ready to begin that morning, there stood a
stately line of "visitors from the North" across Miss North's room,
ready for enlightenment on the Negro Problem. And as Miss North began:
"We are having a new month to-day, children; who can tell me what the
name of the month is?" the line drew itself up, preparatory to getting
right down to the heart of the matter.

"What month, class?"

"February!"

"Yes; very good. Is February a short month or a long month?"

There was an unfortunate difference of opinion:

"Short!" "Long!" "Short!" "Long!" "_Short!_" "_Long!_"

"Very well," joined in Miss North, ready to agree to anything. "What
do you say about it, Archelus?"

"Li'l' teeny bit uv a short month," explained Archelus. "Ain' no
longer'n----"

As Archelus was about to illustrate the length of February with his
two small hands, Miss North waived any further information on the
subject, and went on:

"Yes, a short month. And who can tell me what holiday we have in this
month?"

There were two or three who promptly arrived at conclusions. The
visitors were smiling wide smiles of appreciation.

"Lemuel?"

"Chris'mas!"

"Oh, no; we have just had Christmas. Samuel?"

"Thanksgivin'!"

"Why, no, indeed, Samuel; you are not thinking. William?"

"Washin'ton's Birthday!"

One of the visitors, a rosy-cheeked gentleman with white hair, gave
such a loud grunt of appreciation at this that Miss North glanced his
way.

"Can he tell us anything _about_ George Washington?" he questioned
smilingly, in response to Miss North's glance.

"Oh, I think so. Who can tell me some one thing about George
Washington, children? Hands, please."

"That little boy," smiled the rosy-cheeked gentleman; "he seems to be
getting so very much interested!"

Heavens! it was Trusty who was getting interested. Miss North glanced
at his face, which radiated with delighted intelligence as he fixed
his eyes on the closed coat-closet, and felt a chilling and definite
foreboding.

"H-m--yes," she went on evasively, "yes. Ezekiel, can you tell
us--something about--" What was the matter? Had _Ezekiel_ forgotten
how to talk? To be sure! His eyes, kindling with interest and pride,
were fixed on his friend.

"No, no! This one," explained the rosy-cheeked gentleman, his eyes
still resting smilingly on Trusty. "Well, what do you know about
George Washington, little fellow?"

"_Miss No'th got 'im shet up in de coat-closet!_"

The rosy-cheeked gentleman stepped back a bit, and there was suddenly
a rather startled expression on the part of the visitors from the
North. Somewhat furtively they glanced at the coat-closet, apparently
expecting to see the immortal George emerge in person at any moment.
Miss North coughed slightly, and looked as if she had known happier
times.

"You may be seated, Trusty."

"She shet 'im in dere fer imperdence!" explained Trusty.

But just then the door creaked softly, and from the unknown depths of
the coat-closet a little figure peered anxiously.

"Mith No'th! Kin I come out now?"

Miss North looked at the small figure, and then at the visitors from
the North, whereupon they all looked at her; and then suddenly the
rosy-cheeked gentleman burst out into such unchecked, joyous laughter
that the others all joined in, and the visitors from the North moved
on.

At the same time, there was a thump on the door which opened from the
back hall, and a large and ancient colored man advanced into the room.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: "THAT LITTLE BOY, SMILED THE ROSY-CHEEKED GENTLEMAN"]

"Mawnin', Miss, mawnin'!" he began in loud, cheerful tones. "'Scusin'
de privilege o' de interruption, I'se 'blige ax yer kin I borry Trusty
fer a li'l' w'ile, 'spesh'ly fer de 'casion?"

Just what the occasion was he did not explain; but Trusty, possibly
receiving suggestive glimmers of inward light on the subject, and
being at this particular moment otherwise interested, began to show
evidence of unexpected combativeness.

"M-m-m--I ain' gwine be 'scuse fer no 'casion," he mumbled
cantankerously.

"Come, now, boy, ya-as, yer is, too!" disagreed the parent, advancing
toward the subject of complication. "Yer see, Miss! Ain't I tole yer
he's de hard-haidedes' chile? Fus I'se 'blige whup 'im school, 'n'
nex' I cyan' git 'im 'way ter bless me! Ain't I jes tole yer!" And
again, with a firm hand, Trusty was lifted and transported across the
room to the open door. Miss North hastily suggested the final
formalities requisite for an excuse, but her voice was quite lost
among the reverberations of a more powerful organ:

"Ain't I jes tole yer so! Ya-as, yer is, too! Ain't I jes tole yer!
Come 'long, now; jes come 'long, now!"

They disappeared through the doorway, and then only the final
reverberations came back to them as Trusty was triumphantly exhorted
on his way.

       *       *       *       *       *

But the worst of vicissitudes, and the best of them, only wait to give
place to new ones, and the old days change to new ones and the weeks
and the months go on; and, as the oft-repeated act becomes a habit, so
it had finally become an unvarying habit for Ezekiel to arrive at
school with Trusty's hand held loosely in his own, while Trusty
himself plodded unresistingly at his side.

But occasionally there comes a time, too, when the habitual thing
fails to happen.

It was one morning toward the end of May. Miss North had glanced at
the clock, which hovered close to nine, and then she had glanced
around the room at several waiting children, and into the yard, which
was filling rapidly, and wondered, half passively, why Ezekiel and
Trusty had not come. In a quickly changing, drifting undercurrent of
thought, she remembered their first arrival together--just how they
had looked as they stood, hand in hand, before her desk. Again, she
remembered Trusty as he had looked that first day, just after his
arrival, first sullenly rebelling, and then vibrating, as it were,
between a state of absolute indifference and one of suddenly aroused
interest. Strange, how it had grown to be a regular thing for Trusty
to be "interested"! She glanced around the room and out to the yard
again, and wondered why they didn't come; and when one of the children
came in from outside with an excited story of "ole Trusty racin' down
de road, an' 'is father after 'im," she listened.

"Ole man Miles say Trusty he cyan' come school dis yere day, an'
Trusty say he is, an' 'Zekiel say he is, too, an' ole man say he
ain't, an' Trusty 'n' 'Zekiel say he is, an' start off down de road
jes a-runnin'! An' ole man af' 'em clean all de way yere!"

A moment after this enthusiastic announcement, the school-room door
burst open, and Ezekiel came lurching into the room, half carrying,
half dragging Trusty, who was spattered with mud and dirt from head to
foot.

"_Miss No'th! He say he cyan' come!_" cried Ezekiel. "_He--he say--he
cyan' come--no mo'!_" He stumbled against her desk, and Trusty dropped
limply down before him, feebly snatching at Miss North's skirts.

"He--he--say--I cyan'--come--no mo'!" he whispered in a faint, panting
echo.

Ezekiel dropped heavily against the desk, his breath catching
convulsively in his throat. "He--he lock 'im up so he cyan' come
ter--ter school!" he choked. "But--T-Trusty he say he--he is, an' he
keep on tellin' 'im he--is--an' he is! An'--an' he jes say--he cyan'
come--no--mo'!" His head bumped down between his arms, and he waited,
his breath still catching in his throat. "An' I--I tells 'im he--he's
'_blige_ ter come! But--'tain'--no--use; he--he--jes lock de do'!
An'--an' we jumps outen de winder, an'--an' he cotch T-Trusty 'n' lock
'im up 'gin--an'--an' he jumps outen 'gin--'cuz he keeps on tellin'
'im he--he's--'b-blige ter come ter--ter school! He--he tells 'im
he's--jes--'_b-blige ter come!_"

With hushed faces, the children gazed first at Ezekiel and then at
Miss North. With an involuntary movement of the arms, she made a
movement toward him. But a small heap of a boy stirred at her feet,
and she looked down. A possibility, suddenly realized, seemed to seize
him, and he looked up, clinging to her in helpless terror.

"Doan't yer let 'im tek me back!" he whispered hoarsely, "so I cyan'
git 'way! Doan't yer, Miss No'th! Please doan't yer! 'Cuz--ain't I
'blige--ain't I 'blige--s-seem like--some'ow"--Miss North bent down to
hear it--"s-seem like--some'ow--t-ter-day--I'se jes--'_blige ter be
yere!_"

She heard the faint, choked whisper, and she saw the trembling little
figure. She saw the other little figure, and then again the faint,
choked whisper came sounding up to her ears. But dimly, dimly--just
for the moment--she seemed to hear something else--to see another
little boy, whipped to school by a coarse, brutish man, yet all the
while helplessly struggling against it. That other little boy--again
the small hands caught at her skirts.

"Doan't yer let 'im! Will yer, Miss No'th?"

She lifted him from the floor.

"No--I won't let him," and she put him gently into his seat.

Still, with hushed faces, the children gazed wonderingly.... She held
out her arms.

"Come, Ezekiel!" Was Miss North going to cry?

"Sit down--right here, Ezekiel; you are very--tired!"

He still hung over the desk, and she went up to him between the seats.

"Eze-kiel! Come! Come--my dear little boy!"

But there was the sound of an opening door, and she turned.

In the doorway stood a large and ancient-looking colored man, and for
a moment he only stood there, breathing laboriously and murmuring in
strange, half-audible tones. Then, with sudden unexpected perception,
he took in the scene before him. Half mortified, half conciliatory, he
turned to Miss North.

"Jes all completely wrop in dey edjercation!" he explained
ingratiatingly, with resigned indulgence. His eyes rested on Trusty.

"Cert'nly did use ter be de boss o' dat boy! Cert'nly did!" He looked
at Ezekiel and chuckled indulgently. "But look like times is change!
Cert'nly is change! Ya-as, suh, I jes natchelly pass de case over ter
you!"

He turned around and went out again--and Ezekiel looked up at Miss
North through his tears.

[Illustration]




FIRST DAYS OF THE RECONSTRUCTION

BY

CARL SCHURZ

ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS


My travels in the interior of the South in the summer and fall of 1865
took me over the track of Sherman's march, which, in South Carolina at
least, looked for many miles like a broad black streak of ruin and
desolation--fences gone, lonesome smoke-stacks, surrounded by dark
heaps of ashes and cinders, marking the spots where human habitations
had stood, the fields along the road wildly overgrown by weeds, with
here and there a sickly-looking patch of cotton or corn cultivated by
negro squatters. In the city of Columbia, the political capital of the
State, I found a thin fringe of houses encircling a confused mass of
charred ruins of dwellings and business buildings which had been
destroyed by a sweeping conflagration.

No part of the South I then visited had, indeed, suffered as much from
the ravages of the war as South Carolina--the State which was looked
upon by the Northern soldier as the principal instigator of the whole
mischief and therefore deserving of special punishment. But even those
regions which had been touched but little or not at all by military
operations were laboring under dire distress. The Confederate money in
the hands of the Southern people, paper money signed by the
Confederate government without any security behind it, had by the
collapse of the Confederacy become entirely worthless. Only a few
individuals of more or less wealth had been fortunate enough to save,
and to keep throughout the war, small hoards of gold and silver, which
in the aggregate amounted to little. Immediately after the close of
the war the people may be said to have been substantially without a
"circulating medium" to serve in the transaction of ordinary business.
United States money came in to fill the vacuum, but it could not be
had for nothing; it could be obtained only by selling something for
it, in the shape of goods or of labor. The Southern people, having
during four years of war devoted their productive activity, aside from
the satisfaction of their current home wants, almost entirely to the
sustenance of their army and of the machinery of their government, and
having suffered great losses by the destruction of property, had, of
course, very little to sell. In fact, they were dreadfully
impoverished and needed all their laboring capacity to provide for the
wants of the next day; and as agriculture was their main resource,
upon which everything else depended, the next day was to them of
supreme importance.


_The First Crop Without Slaves_

But now the men come home from the war found their whole agricultural
labor system turned upside down. Slave labor had been their absolute
reliance. They had been accustomed to it, they had believed in it,
they had religiously regarded it as a necessity in the order of the
universe. During the war a large majority of the negroes had stayed
upon the plantations and attended to the crops in the wonted way in
those regions which were not touched by the Union armies. They had
heard of "Mas'r Lincoln's" Emancipation Proclamation in a more or less
vague way, but did not know exactly what it meant, and preferred to
remain quietly at work and wait for further developments. But when the
war was over, general emancipation became a well-understood reality.
The negro knew that he was a free man, and the Southern white man
found himself face to face with the problem of dealing with the negro
as a free laborer. To most of the Southern whites this problem was
utterly bewildering. Many of them, honest and well-meaning people,
admitted to me, with a sort of helpless stupefaction, that their
imagination was wholly incapable of grasping the fact that their
former slaves were now free. And yet they had to deal with this
perplexing fact, and practically to accommodate themselves to it, at
once and without delay, if they were to have any crops that year.

Many of them would frankly recognize this necessity and begin in good
faith to consider how they might meet it. But then they stumbled
forthwith over a set of old prejudices which in their minds had
acquired the stubborn force of convictions. They were sure the negro
would not work without physical compulsion; they were sure the negro
did not, and never would, understand the nature of a contract; and so
on. Yes, they "accepted the situation." Yes, they recognized that the
negro was henceforth to be a free man. But could not some method of
force be discovered and introduced to compel the negro to work? It
goes without saying that persons of such a way of thinking labored
under a heavy handicap in going at a difficult task with a settled
conviction that it was really "useless to try." But even if they did
try, and found that the negro might, after all, be induced to work
without physical compulsion, they were apt to be seriously troubled by
things which would not at all trouble an employer accustomed to free
labor. I once had an argument with a Georgia planter who vociferously
insisted that one of his negro laborers who had objected to a whipping
had thereby furnished the most conclusive proof of his unfitness for
freedom. And such statements were constantly reinforced by further
assertion that they, the Southern whites, understood the negro and
knew how to treat him, and that we of the North did not and never
would.

This might have been true in one sense, but not true in another. The
Southerner knew better than the Northerner how to treat the negro as a
slave, but it did not follow that he knew best how to treat the negro
as a freeman; and just there was the rub. It was perhaps too much to
expect of the Southern slaveholders, or of Southern society generally,
that a clear judgment of the new order of things should have come to
them at once. The total overturning of the whole labor system of a
country, accomplished suddenly, without preparation or general
transition, is a tremendous revolution, a terrible wrench, well apt to
confuse men's minds. It should not have surprised any fair-minded
person that many Southern people for a time clung to the accustomed
idea that the landowner must also own the black man tilling his land,
and that any assertion of freedom of action on the part of that black
man was insubordination equivalent to criminal revolt, and any dissent
by the black man from the employer's opinion or taste intolerable
insolence. Nor should it be forgotten that the urgent necessity of
negro labor for that summer's crop could hardly fail to sharpen the
nervous tension then disquieting Southern society.


_Restless Foot-loose Negroes_

It is equally natural that the negro population of the South should at
that time have been unusually restless. I have already mentioned the
fact that during the Civil War the bulk of the slave population
remained quietly at work on the plantations, except in districts
touched by the operations of the armies. Had negro slaves not done so,
the Rebellion would not have survived its first year. They presented
the remarkable spectacle of an enslaved race doing slaves' work to
sustain a government and an army fighting for the perpetuation of its
enslavement. Some colored people did, indeed, escape from the
plantations and run into the Union lines where our troops were within
reach, and some of their young men enlisted in the Union army as
soldiers. But there was nowhere any commotion among them that had in
the slightest degree the character of an uprising in force of slaves
against their masters. Nor was there, when, after the downfall of the
Confederacy, general emancipation had become an established fact, a
single instance of an act of vengeance committed by a negro upon a
white man for inhumanity suffered by him or his while in the condition
of bondage. No race or class of men ever passed from slavery to
freedom with a record equally pure of revenge. But many of them,
especially in the neighborhood of towns or of Federal encampments,
very naturally yielded to the temptation of testing and enjoying their
freedom by walking away from the plantations to have a frolic. Many
others left their work because their employers ill-treated them or in
other ways incurred their distrust. Thus it happened that in various
parts of the South the highroads and byways were alive with foot-loose
colored people.

I did not find, so far as I was informed by personal observation or
report, that their conduct could, on the whole, be called lawless.
There was some stealing of pigs and chickens and other petty
pilfering, but rather less than might have been expected. More serious
depredations rarely, if ever, occurred. The vagrants were throughout
very good-natured. They had their carousals with singing and dancing,
and their camp-meetings with their peculiar religious programs. But,
while these things might in themselves have been harmless enough under
different circumstances, they produced deplorable effects in the
situation then existing. Those negroes stayed away from the
plantations just when their labor was most needed to secure the crops
of the season, and those crops were more than ordinarily needed to
save the population from continued want and misery. Violent efforts
were made by white men to drive the straggling negroes back to the
plantations by force, and reports of bloody outrages inflicted upon
colored people came from all quarters. I had occasion to examine
personally into several of those cases, and I saw in odious hospitals
negroes, women as well as men, whose ears had been cut off, or whose
bodies were slashed with knives, or bruised with whips or bludgeons,
or punctured with shot-wounds. Dead negroes were found in considerable
numbers in the country roads or on the fields, shot to death, or
strung on the limbs of trees. In many districts the colored people
were in a panic of fright, and the whites in a state of almost insane
irritation against them. These conditions in their worst form were
only local, but they were liable to spread, for there was plenty of
inflammable spirit of the same kind all over the South. It looked
sometimes as if wholesale massacres were prevented only by the
presence of the Federal garrisons which were dispersed all over the
country.

[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL O. O. HOWARD

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN DECEMBER, 1862, JUST AFTER HIS PROMOTION TO
MAJOR-GENERAL OF VOLUNTEERS]


_The Freedmen's Bureau_

Indeed, nothing could have been more necessary at that time than the
active interposition of the Federal power between the whites and the
blacks of the South, not only to prevent or repress violent
collisions, but to start the former masters and the former slaves on
the path of peaceful and profitable coöperation as employers and free
laborers. This was a difficult task. Northern men who had come to the
South to purchase or lease plantations enjoyed the great advantage of
having money, so that they could pay the wages of their negro laborers
in cash, which the negroes preferred. The Southern men, having been
stripped almost naked by the war, had, aside from current sustenance,
only prospective payment to offer, consisting mostly of a part of the
crop. While many planters were just and even liberal in the making of
cash contracts, others would take advantage of the ignorance of the
negroes and try to tie them down to stipulations which left to the
laborer almost nothing, or even obliged him to run in debt to his
employer, and thus drop into the condition of a mere peon, a
debt-slave. It is a very curious fact that some of the forms of
contract drawn up by former slaveholders contained provisions looking
to the probability of a future restoration of slavery. There was, not
unnaturally, much distrust of the planters among the negroes, who, in
concluding contracts, feared to compromise their rights as freemen or
to be otherwise overreached. To allay that distrust and, in many
cases, to secure their just dues, they stood much in need of an
adviser in whom they had confidence and to whom they could look for
protection, while, on the other hand, the employers of negro labor
stood in equal need of some helpful authority to give the colored
people sound instruction as to their duties as freemen and to lead
them back to the path of industry and good order when, with their
loose notions of the binding force of agreements, they broke their
contracts, or indulged themselves otherwise in unruly pranks.

To this end the "Freedmen's Bureau" was instituted, an organization of
civil officials who were, with the necessary staffs, dispersed all
over the South to see that the freedmen had their rights and to act as
intermediaries between them and the whites. The conception was a good
one, and the institution, at the head of which General O. O. Howard
was put, did useful service in many instances.

Thus the strain of the situation was somewhat relieved by the
interposition of the Federal authority between clashing elements, but
by no means as much as was required to produce a feeling of security.
The labor puzzle, aggravated by race antagonism, was indeed the main
distressing influence, but not the only one. To the younger
Southerners who had grown up in the heated atmosphere of the political
feud about slavery, to whom the threat of disunion as a means to save
slavery had been like a household word, and who had always regarded
the bond of Union as a shackle to be cast off, the thought of being
"reunited" to "the enemy," the hated Yankee, was distasteful in the
extreme. Such sentiments of the "unconquered" found excited and
exciting expression in the Southern press, and were largely
entertained by many Southern clergymen of different denominations and
still more ardently by Southern women. General Thomas Kilby Smith,
commanding the southern districts of Alabama, reported to me that when
he suggested to Bishop Wilmer, of the Episcopal diocese of Alabama,
the propriety of restoring to the Litany that prayer which includes
the President of the United States, the whole of which he had ordered
his rectors to expurge, the bishop refused, first, upon the ground
that he could not pray for a continuance of martial law, and,
secondly, because he would, by ordering the restoration of the prayer,
stultify himself in the event of Alabama and the Southern Confederacy
regaining independence.


_Pickles and Patriotism_

The influence exercised by the feelings of the women of the South upon
the condition of mind and the conduct of the men was, of course, very
great. Of those feelings I witnessed a significant manifestation in a
hotel at Savannah. At the public dinner-table I sat opposite a lady in
black, probably mourning. She was middle-aged, but still handsome, and
of an agreeable expression of countenance. She seemed to be a lady of
the higher order of society. A young lieutenant in Federal uniform
took a seat by my side, a youth of fine features and gentlemanly
appearance. The lady, as I happened to notice, darted a glance at him
which, as it impressed me, indicated that the presence of the person
in Federal uniform was highly obnoxious to her. She seemed to grow
restless, as if struggling with an excitement hard to restrain. To
judge from the tone of her orders to the waiter, she was evidently
impatient to finish her dinner. When she reached for a dish of pickles
standing on the table at a little distance from her, the lieutenant
got up and, with a polite bow, took it and offered it to her. She
withdrew her hand as if it had touched something loathsome, her eyes
flashed fire, and in a tone of wrathful scorn and indignation she
said: "So you think a Southern woman will take a dish of pickles from
a hand that is dripping with the blood of her countrymen?" Then she
abruptly left the table, while the poor lieutenant, deeply blushing,
apparently stunned by the unexpected rebuff, stammered some words of
apology, assuring the lady that he had meant no offense.

The mixing of a dish of pickles with so hot an outburst of Southern
patriotism could hardly fail to evoke a smile; but the whole scene
struck me as gravely pathetic, and as auguring ill for the speedy
revival of a common national spirit.


[Illustration: A PHOTOGRAPH OF GENERAL HOWARD, TAKEN AT GOVERNOR'S
ISLAND IN 1893 AT THE CLOSE OF THE WAR GENERAL HOWARD WAS APPOINTED
CHIEF OF THE FREEDMEN'S BUREAU]


_The South's Hopeless Poverty_

Southern women had suffered much by the Civil War, on the whole far
more than their Northern sisters. There was but little exaggeration in
the phrase which was current at the time, that the Confederacy, in
order to fill its armies, had to "draw upon the cradle and the grave."
Almost every white male capable of bearing arms enlisted or was
pressed into service. The loss of men, not in proportion to the number
on the rolls, but in proportion to the whole white population, was far
heavier in the South than in the North. There were not many families
unbereft, not many women who had not the loss of a father, or a
husband, or a brother, or a friend to deplore. In the regions in
which military operations had taken place the destruction of property
had been great, and while most of that destruction seemed necessary in
the opinion of military men, in the eyes of the sufferers it appeared
wanton, cruel, malignant, devilish. The interruption of the industries
of the country, the exclusion by the blockade of the posts of all
importations from abroad, and the necessity of providing for the
sustenance of the armies in the field, subjected all classes to
various distressing privations and self-denials. There were bread
riots in Richmond. Salt became so scarce that the earthen floors of
the smoke-houses were scraped to secure the remnants of the
brine-drippings of former periods. Flour was at all times painfully
scarce. Coffee and tea were almost unattainable. Of the various little
comforts and luxuries which by long common use had almost become
necessaries, many were no longer to be had. Mothers had to ransack old
rag-bags to find material with which to clothe their children. Ladies
accustomed to a life of abundance and fashion had not only to work
their old gowns over and to wear their bonnets of long ago, but also
to flit with their children from one plantation to another in order to
find something palatable to eat in the houses of more fortunate
friends who had in time provided for themselves. And when at last the
war was over, the blockade was raised, and the necessaries and
comforts so long and so painfully missed came within sight again, the
South was made only more sensible of her poverty. It was indeed an
appalling situation, looking in many respects almost hopeless. And for
all this the Southern woman, her heart full of the mournful memories
of the sere past and heavy with the anxieties of the present, held the
"cruel Yankee" responsible.

From time to time, traveling from State to State, I reported to
President Johnson my observations and the conclusions I drew from
them. Not only was I most careful to tell him the exact truth as I saw
it; I also elicited from our military officers and from agents of the
Freedmen's Bureau stationed in the South, as well as from prominent
Southern men, statements of their views and experiences, which formed
a mighty body of authoritative testimony, coming as it did from men of
high character and important public position, some of whom were
Republicans, some Democrats, some old anti-slavery men, some old
pro-slavery men. All these papers, too, I submitted to the President.
The historian of that time will hardly find more trustworthy material.
They all substantially agreed upon certain points of fact. They all
found that the South was at peace in so far as there was no open armed
conflict between the government troops and organized bodies of
insurgents. The South was not at peace inasmuch as the different
social forces did not peaceably coöperate, and violent collisions on a
great scale were prevented or repressed only by the presence of the
Federal authority supported by the government troops on the ground for
immediate action. The "results of the war," recognized in the South in
so far as the restoration of the Union and the Federal Government,
were submitted to by virtue of necessity, and the emancipation of the
slaves and the introduction of free labor were accepted in name; but
the Union was still hateful to a large majority of the white
population of the South, the Southern Unionists were still social
outcasts, the officers of the Union were still regarded as foreign
tyrants ruling by force. And as to the abolition of slavery,
emancipation, although "accepted" in name, was still denounced by a
large majority of the former master class as an "unconstitutional"
stretch of power, to be reversed if possible; and that class, the
ruling class among the whites, was still desiring, hoping, and
striving to reduce the free negro laborer as much as possible to the
condition of a slave. And this tendency was seriously aggravated by
the fact that the South, exhausted and impoverished, stood in the most
pressing need of productive agricultural labor, while the landowners
generally did not yet know how to manage the former slave as a free
laborer, and the emancipated negro was still unused to the rights and
duties of a freeman. In short, Southern society was still in that most
confused, perplexing, and perilous of conditions--the condition of a
defeated insurrection leaving irritated feelings behind it, and of a
great social revolution only half accomplished, leaving antagonistic
forces face to face. The necessity of the presence of a restraining
and guiding higher authority could hardly have been more obvious.

[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL H. W. SLOCUM

FROM A WAR-TIME PHOTOGRAPH]


_Johnson's Haste for Reconstruction_

During the first six weeks of my travels in the South I did not
receive a single word from the President or any member of the
administration; but through the newspapers and the talk going on
around me I learned that the President had taken active measures to
put the "States lately in rebellion" into a self-governing
condition--that is to say, he had appointed "provisional governors";
he had directed those provisional governors to call conventions, to be
elected, according to the plan laid down in the North Carolina
proclamation, by the "loyal" white citizens, an overwhelming majority
of whom were persons who had adhered to the Rebellion and had then
taken the prescribed oath of allegiance. On the same basis, the
provisional governors were to set in motion again the whole machinery
of civil government as rapidly as possible. When, early in July, I had
taken leave of the President to set out on my tour of investigation,
he, as I have already mentioned, had assured me that the North
Carolina proclamation was not to be regarded as a plan definitely
resolved upon; that it was merely tentative and experimental; that
before proceeding further he would "wait and see"; and that to aid him
by furnishing him information and advice while he was "waiting and
seeing" was the object of my mission. Had not this been the
understanding, I should not have undertaken the wearisome and
ungrateful journey. But now he did not wait and see; on the contrary,
he rushed forward the political reconstruction of the Southern States
in hot haste--apparently without regard to consequences.

[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL H. W. SLOCUM

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN SHORTLY BEFORE HIS DEATH IN 1894]

Every good citizen most cordially desired the earliest practicable
reëstablishment of the constitutional relations of the late "rebel
States" to the national government; but, before restoring those States
to all the functions of self-government within the Union, the national
government was in conscience bound to keep in mind certain debts of
honor. One was due to the Union men of the South who had stood true to
the republic in the days of trial and danger; and the other was due to
the colored people who had furnished 200,000 soldiers to our army at
the time when enlistments were running slack, and to whom we had given
the solemn promise of freedom at a time when that promise gave a
distinct moral character to our war for the Union, fatally
discouraging the inclination of foreign governments to interfere in
our civil conflict. Not only imperative reasons of statesmanship, but
the very honor of the republic seemed to forbid that the fate of the
emancipated slaves be turned over to State governments ruled by the
former master class without the simplest possible guaranty of the
genuineness of their freedom. But, as every fair-minded observer would
admit, nothing could have been more certain than that the political
restoration of the "late rebel States" as self-governing bodies on the
North Carolina plan would, at that time, have put the whole
legislative and executive power of those States into the hands of men
ignorant of the ways of free labor society, who sincerely believed
that the negro would not work without physical compulsion and was
generally unfit for freedom, and who were then pressed by the dire
necessities of their impoverished condition to force out of the
negroes all the agricultural labor they could with the least possible
regard for their new rights. The consequences of all this were
witnessed in the actual experiences of every day.

[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL E. R. S. CANBY

COMMANDER OF THE DEPARTMENT OF LOUISIANA]


_Arming the Young Men of the South_

At last I came again into contact with the President. Late in August I
arrived in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and visited the headquarters of
Major-General Slocum, who commanded the Department of the Mississippi.
I found the General in a puzzled state of mind about a proclamation
recently issued by Mr. W. L. Sharkey, whom President Johnson had
appointed provisional governor of that State, calling "upon the
people, and especially upon such as are liable to perform military
duty and are familiar with military discipline," and more especially
"the young men of the State who have so distinguished themselves for
gallantry," to organize as speedily as possible volunteer companies in
every county of the State, at least one company of cavalry and one of
infantry, for the protection of life, property, and good order in the
State. This meant no more nor less than the organization under the
authority of one of the "States lately in rebellion" of a large armed
military force consisting of men who had but recently surrendered
their arms as Confederate soldiers.

Two days before my arrival at Vicksburg, General Slocum had issued a
"general order" in which he directed the district commanders under him
not to permit within their districts the organization of such military
forces as were contemplated by Governor Sharkey's proclamation. The
reasons for such action, given by General Slocum in the order itself,
were conclusive. While the military forces of the United States sent
to the State of Mississippi for the purpose of maintaining order and
of executing the laws of Congress and the orders of the War Department
had performed their duties in a spirit of conciliation and forbearance
and with remarkable success, the provisional governor, on the alleged
ground that this had not been done to his satisfaction, and without
consulting the department commander, had called upon the late
Confederate soldiers, fresh from the war against the national
government, to organize a military force intended to be "independent
of the military authority now present, and superior in strength to the
United States powers on duty in the States." The execution of this
scheme would bring on collisions at once, especially when the United
States forces consisted of colored troops. The crimes and disorder the
occurrence of which the provisional governor adduced as his reason for
organizing his State volunteers had been committed or connived at, as
the record showed, by people of the same class as that to which the
governor's volunteers would belong. The commanding general, as well as
every good citizen, earnestly desired to hasten the day when the
troops of the United States could with safety be withdrawn, but that
day would "not be hastened by arming at this time the young men of the
South."

[Illustration: SENATOR WILLIAM LEWIS SHARKEY

APPOINTED PROVISIONAL GOVERNOR OF MISSISSIPPI BY PRESIDENT JOHNSON]

General Slocum--by the way, be it said, not at all an old anti-slavery
man, but a Democrat in politics--was manifestly right. He showed me
reports from his district commanders which substantially anticipated
his order. But the General was anxious to know whether the President
had authorized or approved Governor Sharkey's action. This he asked me
to ascertain, and I telegraphed to President Johnson the following
despatch:

"General Slocum has issued an order prohibiting the organization of
the militia in this State. The organization of the militia would have
been a false step. All I can see and learn in the State convinces me
that the course followed by General Slocum is the only one by which
public order and security can be maintained. To-day I shall forward by
mail General Slocum's order with a full statement of the case."


_The President Defends Southern Militia_

It is hard to imagine my amazement when, at two o'clock on the morning
of September 1, I was called up from my berth on a Mississippi
steamboat carrying me from Vicksburg to New Orleans, off Baton Rouge,
to receive a telegraphic despatch from President Johnson, to which I
cannot do justice without quoting it in full:

                                   Washington, D. C.,
                                   August 30, 1865.
     To Major-General Carl Schurz,
     Vicksburg, Mississippi.

     I presume General Slocum will issue no order interfering
     with Governor Sharkey in restoring functions of the State
     Government without first consulting the Government, giving
     the reasons for such proposed interference. It is believed
     there can be organized in each county a force of citizens or
     militia to suppress crime, preserve order, and enforce the
     civil authority of the State and of the United States which
     would enable the Federal Government to reduce the Army and
     withdraw to a great extent the forces from the state,
     thereby reducing the enormous expense of the Government. If
     there was any danger from an organization of the Citizens
     for the purpose indicated, the military are there to detect
     and suppress on the first appearance any move
     insurrectionary in its character. One great object is to
     induce the people to come forward in the defense of the
     State and Federal Government. General Washington declared
     that the people or the militia was the Army of the
     Constitution or the Army of the United States, and as soon
     as it is practicable the original design of the Government
     must be resumed and the Government administrated upon the
     principles of the great chart of freedom handed down to the
     people by the founders of the Republic. The people must be
     trusted with their Government, and, if trusted, my opinion
     is they will act in good faith and restore their former
     Constitutional relations with all the States composing the
     Union. The main object of Major-General Carl Schurz's
     mission to the South was to aid as far as practicable in
     carrying out the policy adopted by the Government for
     restoring the States to their former relations with the
     Federal Government. It is hoped such aid has been given. The
     proclamation authorizing restoration of State Governments
     requires the military to aid the Provisional Governor in the
     performance of his duties as prescribed in the proclamation,
     and in no manner to interfere or throw impediments in the
     way of consummating the object of his appointment, at least
     without advising the Government of the intended
     interference.

                                   ANDREW JOHNSON, Prest. U. S.

As soon as I reached New Orleans, I telegraphed my reply. The
President having apparently supposed that I had ordered General Slocum
to issue his order, I thought it due to myself to inform the President
that the order had been out before I saw the General, but that I
decidedly approved of it.

According to the President's own words, I had understood the
President's policy to be merely experimental and my mission to be
merely one of observation and report. I had governed myself strictly
by this understanding, seeking to aid the President by reliable
information, believing that it could not be the President's intention
to withdraw his protecting hand from the Union people and freedom
before their rights and safety were secured. I entreated him not to
disapprove General Slocum's conduct and to give me an indication of
his purposes concerning the Mississippi militia case.

The next day, September 2, after having seen Major-General Canby, the
commander of the Department of Louisiana, an uncommonly cool-headed
and cautious man, I telegraphed again as follows:

"TO THE PRESIDENT: General Canby authorizes me to state that the
organization of local militia companies was tried in his department,
but that he found himself obliged to disband them again because they
indulged in the gratification of private vengeance and worked
generally against the policy of the Government. Sheridan has issued an
order in Texas embracing the identical points contained in General
Slocum's order."


_Criticism and Personal Discomfort_

Thereupon I received on September 6 a telegram simply announcing the
receipt of my "despatch of the 30th ultimo," probably meaning my
letter from Vicksburg; and then nothing more--not a word indicating
the President's policy, or his wishes, or his approval or disapproval
of my conduct. But meanwhile I had found a short paragraph in a New
Orleans paper telegraphed from Washington, only a few lines, stating
that the President was dissatisfied with me, and that I was especially
blamed for having written to the newspapers instead of informing him.
I believed I saw in this news paragraph an inspiration from the White
House. Acting upon that supposition, I at once wrote to the President,
reminding him that I had not sought this mission to the South, but had
accepted it thinking that I might do the country some service. I
pointed out to him that the charge that I had reported to the
newspapers instead of to the President was simply absurd; that I had
written to the President a series of elaborate reports; and, though I
had, indeed, written a few letters to a newspaper, that it was well
understood by the Secretary of War that I would do this when he made
the arrangements for my journey. The compensation set out for me, I
reminded the President, was a mere War Department clerk's salary,
utterly insufficient to cover the expenses incidental to my travels,
aside from transportation and subsistence, among which incidentals was
a considerable extra premium on my life-insurance on account of my
travels so far South during the summer, and consequently, as the
Secretary of War understood and appreciated, I had to earn something
in some way to make my journey financially possible. My newspaper
letters contained nothing that should have been treated as official
secrets, but incidents of travel, anecdotes, picturesque views of
Southern conditions with some reflections thereon, mostly things which
would not find proper elaboration in official reports--and all this
quite anonymous, so as not to have the slightest official character;
and, finally, I wrote, I had a right to feel myself entitled to
protection against such imputations as the newspaper paragraph in
question contained.

My first impulse was to resign my mission at once and return home. But
then I considered that the duty to the public which I had assumed
obliged me to finish my work as well as I could, unless I were
expressly recalled by the President. I would, therefore, at any rate,
go on with my inquiries, in expectation of an answer from him to my
letter. I was outraged at the treatment I was receiving. I had
undertaken the journey in obedience to an urgent request of the
President and at serious sacrifice, for I was on the point of
returning to my Western home when the President called me. My journey
in the South during the hottest part of the year was in the highest
degree laborious and fatiguing, but it was hardly worse than the
sweltering nights in the wretched country taverns of those
days--nights spent in desperate fights with ravenous swarms of
mosquitos. The upshot of it was that, when I arrived at New Orleans,
the limits of my endurance were well-nigh reached, and a few days
later I had a severe attack of the "break-bone fever," an illness
which by the sensations it caused me did full justice to its
ill-boding name. I thought I might fight the distemper by leaving New
Orleans and visiting other parts in pursuit of my inquiries. I went to
Mobile for the purpose of looking into the conditions of southern
Alabama, returned to New Orleans, and then ran up Bayou Teche in a
government tug-boat as far as New Iberia, where I was literally driven
back by clouds of mosquitos of unusual ferocity. At New Orleans I
despatched an additional report to the President, and then,
relentlessly harassed by the break-bone fever, which a physician
advised me I should not get rid of as long as I remained in that
climate, I set my face northward, stopping at Natchez and Vicksburg to
gather some important information.


_The End of an Aristocracy_

At Natchez I witnessed a significant spectacle. I was shown some large
dwelling-houses which before the Civil War had at certain seasons been
occupied by families of the planting aristocracy of that region. Most
of those houses now looked deserted and uncared for, shutters
unhinged, window-panes broken, yards and gardens covered with a rank
growth of grass and weeds. In the front yard of one of the houses I
observed some fresh stumps and stacks of cordwood and an old man busy
cutting down with an ax a magnificent shade-tree. There was something
distinguished in his appearance that arrested my attention--fine
features topped with long white locks; slender, delicate hands;
clothes shabby, but of a cut denoting that they had originally been
made for a person above the ordinary wood-chopper. My companion, a
Federal captain, did not know him. I accosted him with the question to
whom that house belonged. "It belongs to me," he said. I begged his
pardon for asking the further question why he was cutting down that
splendid shade-tree. "I must live," he replied, with a sad smile. "My
sons fell in the war; all my servants have left me. I sell fire-wood
to the steamboats passing by." He swung his ax again to end the
conversation. A warm word of sympathy was on my tongue, but I
repressed it, a look at his dignified mien making me apprehend that he
might resent being pitied, especially by one of the victorious enemy.

At Vicksburg I learned from General Slocum that Governor Sharkey
himself had, upon more mature reflection, given up the organization of
his State militia as too dangerous an experiment.

I left the South troubled by great anxiety. Four millions of negroes,
of a race held in servitude for two centuries, had suddenly been made
free men. That an overwhelming majority of them, grown up in the
traditional darkness of slavery, should at first not have been able to
grasp the duties of their new condition, together with its rights, was
but natural. It was equally natural that the Southern whites, who had
known the negro laborer only as a slave, and who had been trained only
in the habits and ways of thinking of the master class, should have
stubbornly clung to their traditional prejudice that the negro would
not work without physical compulsion. They might have concluded that
their prejudice was unreasonable; but, such is human nature, a
prejudice is often the more tenaciously clung to the more unreasonable
it is. There was, therefore, a strong tendency among the whites to
continue the old practices of the slavery system to force the negro
freedmen to labor for them. Thus the two races, whose well-being
depended upon their peaceable and harmonious coöperation, confronted
each other in a state of fearful irritation, aggravated by the
pressing necessity of producing a crop that season, and embittered by
race antagonism. The Southern whites wished and hoped to be speedily
restored to the control of their States by the reëstablishment of
their State governments. To this end they were willing to recognize
"the results of the war," among them the abolition of slavery, in
point of form. The true purpose was to use the power of the State
governments, legislative and executive, to reduce the freedom of the
negroes to a minimum and to revive as much of the old slave code as
they thought necessary to make the blacks work for the whites.

Now President Johnson stepped in and, by directly encouraging the
expectation that the States would without delay be restored to full
self-control even under present circumstances, distinctly stimulated
the most dangerous reactionary tendencies to more reckless and baneful
activity.


_An Ungracious Reception_

This was my view of Southern conditions when I returned from my
mission of inquiry. Arrived at Washington, I reported myself at once
at the White House. The President's private secretary, who seemed
surprised to see me, announced me to the President, who sent out word
that he was busy. When would it please the President to receive me?
The private secretary could not tell, as the President's time was much
occupied by urgent business. I left the anteroom, but called again the
next morning. The President was still busy. I asked the private
secretary to submit to the President that I had returned from a three
months' journey made at the President's personal request; that I
thought it my duty respectfully to report myself back; and that I
should be obliged to the President if he would let me know whether,
and if so when, he would receive me to that end. The private
secretary went in again, and brought out the answer that the President
would see me in an hour or so. At the appointed time I was admitted.
The President received me without a smile of welcome. His mien was
sullen. I said that I had returned from the journey which I had made
in obedience to his demand, and was ready to give him, in addition to
the communications I had already sent him, such further information as
was in my possession. A moment's silence followed. Then he inquired
about my health. I thanked him for the inquiry and hoped the
President's health was good. He said it was. Another pause, which I
brought to an end by saying that I wished to supplement the letters I
had written to him from the South with an elaborate report giving my
experiences and conclusions in a connected shape. The President looked
up and said that I need not go to the trouble of writing out such a
general report on his account. I replied that it would be no trouble
at all, but that I should consider it a duty. The President did not
answer. The silence became awkward, and I bowed myself out.

President Johnson evidently wished to suppress my testimony as to the
condition of things in the South. I resolved not to let him do so. I
had conscientiously endeavored to see Southern conditions as they
were. I had not permitted any political considerations or any
preconceived opinions on my part to obscure my perception and
discernment in the slightest degree. I had told the truth, as I
learned it and understood it, with the severest accuracy, and I
thought it due to the country that the truth should be known.


_Why the President Reversed his Policy_

Among my friends in Washington there were different opinions as to how
the striking change in President Johnson's attitude had been brought
about. Some told me that during the summer the White House had been
fairly besieged by Southern men and women of high social standing, who
had told the President that the only element of trouble in the South
consisted of a lot of fanatical abolitionists who excited the negroes
with all sorts of dangerous notions, and that all would be well if he
would only restore the Southern State government as quickly as
possible according to his own plan as laid down in the North Carolina
proclamation, and that he was a great man to whom they looked up as
their savior. It was now thought that Mr. Johnson, the plebeian who
before the war had been treated with undisguised contempt by the
slaveholding aristocracy, could not withstand the subtle flattery of
the same aristocracy when they flocked around him as humble
suppliants cajoling his vanity.

I went to work at my general report with the utmost care. My
statements of fact were invariably accompanied by the sources of my
information, my testimony being produced in the language of my
informants. I scrupulously avoided exaggeration and cultivated sober
and moderate forms of expression. It gives me some satisfaction now to
say that none of those statements of fact has ever been effectually
controverted. I cannot speak with the same assurance of my conclusions
and recommendations, for they were matters, not of knowledge, but of
judgment.

In the concluding paragraph of my report I respectfully suggested to
the President that he advise Congress to send one or more
investigating committees into the Southern States to inquire for
themselves into the actual condition of things before taking final and
irreversible action, I sent the completed document to the President on
November 22, asking him at the same time to permit me to publish it,
on my sole responsibility and in such a manner as would preclude the
imputation that the President approved the whole or any part of it. To
this request I never received a reply.


_Congress and General Grant's Report_

Congress met early in December. At once the Republican majority in
both houses rose in opposition to President Johnson's plan of
reconstruction. Even before the President's message was read, the
House of Representatives, upon the motion of Thaddeus Stevens of
Pennsylvania, passed a resolution providing for a joint committee of
both houses to inquire into the condition of the "States lately in
rebellion," which committee should thereupon report, "by bill or
otherwise," whether, in its judgment, those States, or any of them,
were entitled to be represented in either House of Congress. To this
resolution the Senate subsequently assented. Thus Congress took the
matter of the reconstruction of the late rebel States as to its final
consummation into its own hands.

On December 12, upon the motion of Mr. Sumner, the Senate resolved
that the President be directed to furnish to the Senate, among other
things, a copy of my report. A week later the President did so, but he
coupled it with a report from General Grant on the same subject. The
two reports were transmitted with a short message from the President
in which he affirmed that the Rebellion had been suppressed; that,
peace reigned throughout the land; that, "so far as could be done,"
the courts of the United States had been restored, post-offices
reëstablished, and revenues collected; that several of those States
had reorganized their State governments, and that good progress had
been made in doing so; that the constitutional amendment abolishing
slavery had been ratified by nearly all of them; that legislation to
protect the rights of the freedmen was in course of preparation in
most of them; and that, on the whole, the condition of things was
promising and far better than might have been expected. He transmitted
my report without a word of comment, but called special attention to
that of General Grant.

The appearance of General Grant's report was a surprise, which,
however, easily explained itself. On November 22 the President had
received my report. On the 27th General Grant, with the approval of
the President, started on a "tour of inspection through some of the
Southern States" to look after the "disposition of the troops," and
also "to learn, as far as possible, the feelings and intentions of the
citizens of those States toward the general government." On December
12 the Senate asked for the transmission of my report. General Grant's
report was dated the 10th, and on the 17th it was sent to the Senate
together with mine. The inference was easily drawn, and it was
generally believed that this arrangement was devised by President
Johnson to the end of neutralizing the possible effect of my account
of Southern conditions. If so, it was cleverly planned. General Grant
was at that time at the height of his popularity. He was since
Lincoln's death by far the most imposing figure in the popular eye.
Having forced the surrender of the formidable Lee, he was by countless
tongues called "the savior of the Union." His word would go very far
toward carrying conviction. But in this case the discredit which
President Johnson had already incurred proved too heavy for even the
military hero to carry. As to the practical things to be done General
Grant's views were not so very far distinct from mine; but President
Johnson's friends insisted upon representing him as favoring the
immediate restoration of all "the States lately in rebellion" to all
their self-governing functions, and this became the general
impression, probably much against Grant's wish. My report after its
publication as an "executive document" became widely known in the
country. A flood of letters of approval and congratulation poured in
upon me from all parts of the United States.




[Illustration]




THE FLOWER FACTORY

BY FLORENCE WILKINSON


    _Lisabetta, Marianina, Fiametta, Teresina,
    They are winding stems of roses, one by one, one by one--
    Little children who have never learned to play:
    Teresina softly crying that her fingers ache to-day,
    Tiny Fiametta nodding when the twilight slips in, gray.
    High above the clattering street, ambulance and fire-gong beat,
    They sit, curling crimson petals, one by one, one by one.

    Lisabetta, Marianina, Fiametta, Teresina,
    They have never seen a rose-bush nor a dew-drop in the sun.
    They will dream of the vendetta, Teresina, Fiametta,
    Of a Black Hand and a Face behind a grating;
    They will dream of cotton petals, endless, crimson, suffocating,
    Never of a wild-rose thicket nor the singing of a cricket,
    But the ambulance will bellow through the wanness of their dreams,
    And their tired lids will flutter with the street's hysteric screams.

    Lisabetta, Marianina, Fiametta, Teresina,
    They are winding stems of roses, one by one, one by one.
    Let them have a long, long play-time, Lord of Toil, when toil is done!
    Fill their baby hands with roses, joyous roses of the sun._




THE SILLY ASS

BY JAMES BARNES

ILLUSTRATION BY ARTHUR COVEY


"Marcia," called the admiral, tapping lightly on the state-room door
with the back of his fingernails, "Marcia, my dear, I hope you're
better. Come out with me; it's--oh, ah--where's Miss Marcia?"

The door had been opened by the courier maid, whose wilted and forlorn
appearance was eloquent of her failure to live up to at least one item
in her letter of recommendation.

"Miss Dorn has gone up to--ze deck, Monsieur."

"Humph! I didn't see her. When did she go?"

"Since early zis morning, Monsieur," rejoined the well-recommended one
rather despondently.

Perhaps she might have gone on to say something more, but the admiral
stamped down the passageway. The maid looked on her features in the
glass much as one might inspect a barometer, drew a weak, despairing
breath, and laid herself down on the sofa again, her relaxed person
responding inertly to the steamer's vibrations.

Now, Admiral Page Paulding was as sweet-tempered an old sea-dog as
ever retired from the employ of an ungrateful country; but foggy
weather always worked a bit on his nerves--and what hands he had held
that morning in the smoke-room! As he thumped up the rubber-carpeted
staircase he knew that he was in a thoroughly bad humor, but made up
his mind to conceal it. And there were reasons. When a man has reached
the age when by all rights he should be a grandfather, and finds
himself only a foolish old-bachelor uncle personally conducting a
young niece of marriageable age and attractive exterior on her first
trip to Europe, it may well be said: "Of each day learneth he
experience." Aside from the avuncular privilege of paying bills, he
had known the jealous promptings of a father, indulged in the
self-communing suspicions of a mother, and supported smilingly the
irritations of a chaperon. The enforced companionship of a courier
maid does not lessen the perplexities of certain situations nor
lighten the burden of responsibility.

If the truth be told, the admiral's retirement, this time, from what
might quite properly be termed active service would be accompanied by
no bitter heartburnings and regrets. Rather--yes, many times
rather--would he con a fleet of battle-ships through the tortuous
turnings of Smith Island Sound than again personally conduct one
attractive and impulsive young female through the hotel-strewn shoals
of Europe. There was that German baron in Switzerland, that dashing
young lieutenant of cavalry in Vienna, and that persistent
Englishman--oh, that _persistent_ Englishman!--who turned up
everywhere, and would not be turned down! There was a good deal back
of the cablegram the old gentleman had sent Mrs. Dorn, his sister,
from Southampton, which had read:

     Sailing _Caronia_, unentangled, on Wednesday.

"That means only three days more now," mused the admiral, recalling
these words to himself as he came out on the promenade-deck. He stood
there a moment, looking about him, hoping for a glimpse of a slim
young figure. But no sign! His conscience smote him a little. Maybe he
had been somewhat neglectful for the past two days; but then--All at
once he noticed the remarkable change in the weather.

From a foggy, dreary morning it had grown into a crisp, sparkling
afternoon. The long, sweeping seas, the aftermath of some heavy blow
to the northward, had subsided. Passengers who had kept to their
cabins, or who had huddled in the corners of saloon or library, were
emerging on the decks. Those who had braved the weather rather than
face the close air below looked up, mummy-wise, from their swathings
with hopes of returning appetites.

It had needed but a short perusal of the passenger-list to show him
that his niece and he had several acquaintances as fellow-travelers on
this homeward and thrice welcome voyage. One of the swaddled objects
suddenly turned and addressed him:

"Looking for Miss Dorn, Admiral?"

"Oh, how d'ye do--Mrs. ----" For the life of him, he couldn't remember
the lady's name. "Lovely day--er, yes; have you seen Marcia anywhere?"

"Yes; she's been walking up and down here for an hour with Victor
Masterson and my----"

"With--what did you say his name was?"

"Victor Masterson."

"Is he an Englishman?"

"Oh, no; very much of an American, I should say--oh, most amusing and
entertaining. My daughter has met him somewhere. I think you will find
the young people up in that direction, playing some game or other."

The admiral thanked the swaddled lady and strode forward impatiently.
All at once he stopped.

"I wonder," said he to himself, "if that's the silly ass I squelched
t'other day in the smoke-room; just like Marcia to have picked him
out!"

       *       *       *       *       *

In the sunniest corner of the promenade-deck a quartermaster had laid
the numbered squares of a shuffleboard. The game was over, but two
young people still lingered, leaning against the rail. One was a tall,
slender girl with red lips, red cheeks, tan-colored hair, and tan
shoes, and the other was a very slight, extremely round-faced young
man whose attire and manners could best be described as "insistent."
He was one of the kind that appears in all weathers without a hat and
that persists in attracting attention to large feet and bony ankles by
wearing turned-up trousers, low shoes, and vivid half-hose. At this
moment he was enjoying himself, and so was the girl.

"Was he large and rather red-faced?" she asked, following up something
her companion was saying.

"Yes, with two bunches of iron-gray spinach growing down like this;
and he beckoned me over to him and said, 'Young man, you're playing
the clown'; and I said, 'You play you're the elephant, and we'll be a
circus.'"

The round-faced one te-heed in a way that was contagious; Miss Dorn
quite loved him for it.

"Do that again," she said.

"Do what?"

"Make that little squeak."

He looked at her with mock seriousness. "Oh, please don't! Please
don't!" He spoke imploringly. "I am very touchy about my laugh--it's
the only one I've got, you know. It's quite childish, isn't it? Never
grew up, you know." He made the funny little sound again. It was like
the bleating of a toy lamb when its head is twisted. "You know, they
ask me how I do it. I don't know; I try to teach other people--they
never seem to get it right. Do you like it?"

Miss Dorn laughed again and looked gratefully at him.

"Oh, I'm so glad I met you!" she said quite frankly--and then,
mischievously: "I'll ask my uncle to forgive you, if you like."

"Your uncle!"

"Yes, the old gentleman with the--er--spinach."

If Mr. Masterson was simulating embarrassment, he did it very
cleverly: he started to say something once or twice, changed his mind
confusedly, and suddenly, putting the shuffleboard stick under his
arm, began to imitate a guitar.

Miss Dorn applauded. "Splendid! You should play in the orchestra."

"Thank you." He smiled gratefully. "Listen; this is a bassoon. I have
to make a funny face when I do it."

Miss Dorn clapped her hands. "Great!" she cried. "Oh, simply great!"

"A flute," introduced Mr. Masterson.

Miss Marcia chortled. "That's a funnier face than the last," she said.

"A cello."

"Good!"

"A violin," he announced.

"Not so good"; she smiled in appreciative criticism.

"I'll have to practise up on it. But listen to this. I'm all right on
the cornet."

It did sound like a cornet, even to the tremolo and the tonguing.
People were looking up from their steamer-chairs now, and one or two
pedestrians had gathered about; Mr. Masterson had an appreciative
audience. Encouraged, he essayed another effort. He wrinkled his
comical face and pursed up his lips, starting three or four times, and
shaking his head at his failures. The others were watching him much as
they would a catherine-wheel that refused to ignite. At last he
brought forth a puny little sound.

"I really don't know," observed the amateur entertainer blandly, "what
that is."

Every one burst into roars, and it was at this moment that the Admiral
hove in sight round the corner of the deck-house. When Miss Dorn
looked up, Mr. Masterson was gone; the crowd, still laughing, was
dwindling; and there stood her uncle. He had on what she termed his
"quarter-deck expression." Before he could speak she had taken him by
the arm.

[Illustration: "HE COULD HEAR THE CRASH, SEE THE GREAT BOW SINKING"]

"Where have you been, Nuncky dear?" she inquired most sweetly.

"Looking for you, my dear Marcia."

"For two whole days?"

"Well--er--yesterday I--er--thought you'd better be left alone,
and--er--where did you meet that young man?"

"Oh, Bertha Sands introduced him--he's a dear! You came just a minute
too late." Miss Dorn laughed and squeezed her uncle's arm. "He's _so_
amusing. You'd _love_ to meet him!"

"That silly ass!" grunted Admiral Paulding. "Not much. He makes my toe
itch! I've got a good name for him--'the smoke-room pest.' He's always
doing card tricks under your unwilling nose, pretending to sit on
somebody's hat, upsetting the dominos! If he can get a laugh out of a
waiter, he's perfectly satisfied. I squelched him the other day, I can
tell you!"

"What did you do?" Miss Marcia asked the question with mock
seriousness.

"Never mind; but I taught him a lesson. Marcia, my dear, you do pick
up the most peculiar acquaintances."

"But, really, my dear Nuncky, he's so clever, so quick at
repartee--m--m--I'd be afraid! Tell me how you did it."

"Never mind how; but let me tell you this! That young man would never
say anything sensible if he could help it, and never do anything
useful, even by accident! And I think that you, my dear Marcia----"

"It's been a perfectly lovely day," remarked Miss Dorn abstractedly.


II

As if in sheer perversity, the weather changed early in the evening,
and the night that followed was punctuated regularly by the blast of
the fog-whistle. The next day broke thick and damp, with a wall of
impenetrable mist shadowing the great vessel to half her length. Over
the tall sides the greasy green of the water could just be seen moving
by. The masts and funnels disappeared irregularly overhead. The fog
clung to everything; it rimed the rugs and capes of the passengers who
feared the close air of the 'tween-decks and lay recumbent in the
steamer-chairs, and it clung in little pearls to Miss Marcia Dorn's
curly front hair, that seemed to curl all the tighter for the wetting.

With Mr. Victor Masterson at her side, she was walking up and down the
hurricane-deck. His appearance was not quite so spruce or so comical
this morning; he looked as if he had been dipped overboard. He still
disdained a hat, and his hair was plastered over his forehead in an
uneven, scraggly bang. The weather seemed also to have dampened his
spirits. Miss Dorn found it difficult to lead him away from serious
subjects; his ideas on mental telepathy did not amuse her, nor the
fact that he was a fatalist.

"Oh, I wish you'd do something to make me laugh," she broke in
suddenly.

"Are you ticklish?" inquired the Silly Ass quite soberly.

Miss Dorn could not help but titter; she was not at all put out.

"There!" said Mr. Masterson. "Now, you see, I have done it! Please
thank me. Now let me go on. You know, there is no doubt that the mind
of one person when thinking of----"

"Oh, don't let's think!" Miss Dorn leaned back against the rail, half
hidden from the gangway. "Isn't it dreary," she said, "this weather?
And look at those people all stretched out. I wish we could do
something to wake them up! The whole ship seems to have the
glooms--even the captain; he wouldn't speak a word to me at
breakfast."

"I could wake 'em up," said Mr. Masterson emphatically. "I could wake
the whole ship up, and the captain too, and the lootenant, and the
quartermaster, and the squingerneer, and the crew of the _Nancy Brig_,
if I wanted to--and your Uncle Admiral Elephant here, asleep in the
steamer-chair."

"Why, sure enough, there he is!" cried Miss Dorn. "He's got the
glooms, too; he says he always gets 'em in foggy weather at sea." She
turned and touched Mr. Masterson lightly on the arm. "Wake him up!"
she said, her eyes twinkling.

"I hardly dare."

"Oh, go on! I don't believe you can. How would you do it?"

"How would I do it? Why, just this way." He crumpled his hands
together and blew between the knuckles of his thumbs a low, resonant,
gruffly humming note.

They were hidden now by the bow of the life-boat and were standing
quite close together. They noticed that the figure in the
steamer-chair nearest them had suddenly raised itself a little and
then had sat bolt upright. The old admiral, the mist in his gray
whiskers, turned one ear forward and listened attentively.

The gray wall had grown a little whiter, less opaque; they could see
now the whole length of the ship, out to the lifting stern.

"Oh, go on," tempted the girl; "do it again--louder!"

Mr. Masterson looked at her.

"Oh, _please_ do," she pleaded; "real loud. I dare you to!"

He slowly raised his hands, the thumb-knuckles to his lips again.
There sounded two deep, long-drawn, half-roaring, thrilling notes, for
all the world like steam in the cup of a great metal whistle.

Footsteps, hurried and quick, rushed overhead on the bridge. A hoarse
voice shouted orders. The quartermaster spun the wheel. Now:

"Full speed ahead, the starboard engine! Full speed astern, port!"

"Ay, ay, sir!"

There was the clank-clank of the semaphores, and suddenly two
bursting, answering blasts that hid the huge funnels in a cloud of
feathery white.

The admiral in the steamer-chair threw off his wrappings and leaped to
the rail.

A loud, anxious hail from above: "Lookout, there forward! Can you make
out anything?"

"Oh, see what I've done!" faltered the Silly Ass in a frightened
whisper.

Miss Dorn grasped his shoulder.

There had followed a sudden cry that rose in a diapason of mad fear:

"Vessel ahead! _Star_board your helm, sir! _Star_board your h-e-l-m!"

The helm was already over; the ship was swinging wide. Another quick
order. The second officer leaped again to the semaphores. The huge
fabric trembled, racking in every plate, as both engines reversed at
full speed, the screws churning and thundering astern. And now a rift
came in the encircling fog, as if it had been cut by a mighty sword.

Clear and distinct, not half a cable's length away, wallowed a great
black shape. The mighty bow swept veering past her quarter, then her
stern, and clear of it by no more than thirty yards!

Only those few on deck outside of the weather-cloth saw the sight, and
then for but an instant. Never would they forget it!

Lying low in the water, all awash from the break of her
topgallant-forecastle to the lift of her high poop-deck, the green
seas running under her bridge and about her superstructure, swayed a
great mass of iron and steel of full five thousand tons! Ship without
a soul! A wisp of a flag, upside down, still floated in her slackened
rigging; swinging falls dangled from her empty davits. Then the fog
closed in, and, as a picture on a lantern-slide fades and disappears,
she vanished and was gone!

A white-faced boy looked up into Miss Dorn's frightened eyes. His
lips moved, but made no sound.

On the bridge, the captain had grasped the second officer by the arm.
"My God! Fitzgerald, did you see that? It was the _Drachenburg_."

"Derelict and abandoned! But, by heaven, sir, _she signaled us!_"

The captain turned quickly. "Stop those engines!" he ordered hoarsely.

The tearing pulses down below ceased their beating; it was as if a
great heart had stopped! The ship, breathless at her own escape, lay
calm and quiet in the fog. The only sound was of the greasy waves
lapping her high steel flanks. Yet----

Admiral Dorn, still standing beneath the bridge, with both hands
grasping the rail, shivered and drew breath. What might have happened
if----He looked forward. He imagined he could hear the crash, see the
great bow sinking; he could hear the splintering of the bulk-heads,
the screams of the people tumbling up the companionways, the panic and
pandemonium, the mad rush for the boats, the horrid, slow subsidence.
But it was not to be; the danger had gone by!

Now he remembered having heard that first low whistle before the two
that had signaled so plainly: "_I have my helm to starboard--passing
to starboard of you!_" And yet, well did he know that no fires blazed
in those dead furnaces, no steam was coming from that rusty,
salt-incrusted funnel. It was as if the dead had spoken to warn the
living! He shivered once more, and staggered to the bridge-ladder,
holding on and listening.

Three, four, five times did the _Caronia's_ siren wail out into the
stillness. _No reply._ And then the throbbing pulses took up their
beat again.

Down in the corner of the main saloon, filled with chattering people,
romping children, and game-playing young folk, who knew not what had
passed on deck, sat the Silly Ass, the girl close to him.

"I'll never tell," she whispered. "What is it you're thinking of?"

The round eyes gazed into hers. "It's a long time since I did," he
said.

"Did what?"

"Prayed! God made me a fool just to do this some day, I guess." His
face showed the expression of a grown-up, sobered man.

On the bridge, the captain and the other officers were talking in low,
awe-struck tones.




[Illustration]




WAR ON THE TIGER

BY W. G. FITZ-GERALD

ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS AND FROM DRAWINGS BY FRANKLIN BOOTH


The _patwari_ salaamed and laid a report on my desk--a thing of maps
and figures that brought the sweat to my face. Fifty-seven killed, six
hundred square miles of rich rice and sugar country demoralized,
communications stopped, crops rotting on the ground, nine villages
abandoned, and the shyest of jungle creatures grazing in the
market-place! Tiger and tigress--a bad case.

When I told a man once that tigers and cobras, between them, made away
with 25,000 human beings in India every year, he thought I was joking.
"Why," said he, "surely one fifth of the human race--325,000,000, at
any rate--is packed into that triangle! Where can the tigers live?"
But I underestimated it; there were just 24,938 killed in 1906 by
tigers alone. You can see it yourself in the government records.

Now, as District Officer, I'm the "father" of two million souls, and
responsible for all things, from murder to measles. But this was
beyond me. It was a Commissioner's job, backed by the Maharaja.

The man-eaters, now propitiated as gods, had taken toll of my
villagers for two long years. The people were in abject terror, for
none knew the day, hour, or place of the monsters' next leap. Many
were already resigned to death. "It's written on our foreheads," they
said, with gentle misery. Poor devils! Think of the two hundred
millions of them in India oscillating between mere existence and
positive starvation; not living, but just strong enough to crawl along
on the edge of death!

I called the _tahsildar_: "Bring me the record of these tigers."

A bulky file of horrors, in truth! Here a goatherd was taken; there it
was an old woman gathering sticks in the jungle, or children playing
in the village street, or maybe girls going down to the river for
water, laughing joyously, unaware of the great green eyes that watched
them through the towering stalks of elephant-grass; and last among the
victims came some desperate young men who had faced one of the
creatures with fish-spears.

[Illustration: "FIRST A MAGNIFICENT YELLOW HEAD EMERGES, THEN THE
LONG, LITHE BODY"]

It was a difficult country of limitless forest, broken in places by
low hills and by bare sites of the typical village of India. And
apparently from all quarters came the same report, with little
modification. Here is a specimen:

[Illustration: HOWDAH ELEPHANT TRAINING MADE EASY

HE IS FED WITH "GOOR" OR CRUDE SUGAR BEFORE STARTING ON THE TIGER
HUNT]

"As I rode into camp at Bussavanpur to-day, I was met by trackers who
told me the death wail was 'up' in the village. They brought to me a
woman with three small children. Her husband was the latest victim.
With tearless Hindu apathy she told her story, and I gave her five
rupees. She had to spend half this, according to caste usage, because
it was said to be the devil in her that had led the yellow devil to
him. The formalities over, she was admitted to the villages of her
caste, and then took me to the tragic scene. A solitary tamarind-tree
grew on some rocks near the village; no jungle within three hundred
yards; a few bushes on the rock crevices. And close by ran the broad
cattle-track into the village. The man had been following the cattle
home in the evening, and must have stopped to knock down some
tamarinds with his stick; for this last, with his black blanket and
skin cap, still lay where he was seized. Evidently the tigress had
hidden in the rocks, and was upon him in one bound. Dragging her
victim to the edge of a rocky plateau, she leaped down into a field
and there killed him. The spot was marked by a pool of dried blood. I
walked for two hours with the trackers, hoping to come on some traces
of the brute or her mate, but without success."

And so on. Some of the deaths were horrible by reason of the eery
silence that marked them, others because of the mysterious movements
or amazing cunning of the tigers. The comic episodes it were not
seemly to dwell upon. But fifty-seven! Nothing for it now but a hurry
call to the Commissioner and the Maharaja for elephants and an army of
tiger-hunters, a mobilization of the best _shikaris_ in all India, for
a regular campaign against these beasts.

In fourteen days that army was on the spot, and I enlisted under the
banner of Colonel Howe of the Tenth Hussars. The staff was made up of
_shikaris_, and the beaters were of the rank and file. Maps were
called for and studied, scouts sent far and wide into the theater of
operations; native reports were sifted and their exaggerations
discounted with the skill of long practice.

[Illustration: LAST WALL OF DEFENSE

THE TIGER-HUNTING ELEPHANTS CLOSE THEIR RANKS TO RECEIVE THE CHARGE]

Tiger war is a science with axioms of its own. First of all come the
weather and the water-supply. It's useless to look for tigers in a dry
country, and it's useless to try and find them in the wet season, when
there is plenty of water everywhere. "Stripes" must be hunted in hot
weather, when great heat and the water distribution limit his
wanderings, and when forest leaves have fallen and the dense jungle is
thinned out.

And yet, there are all kinds of problems. For instance, Indian weather
is so erratic that, while there may be water and cover and tigers one
season, all three will be absent the next. Further, there is marked
individuality among tigers. One will lie in water all day, and never
venture forth till the sun has sunk behind the western hills; another
prowls boldly by day. Some prey on forest beasts--chiefly the spotted
cheetah and sambur-stag; others, again, mark out domestic animals. And
last comes the tigress with clamorous cubs, who suddenly learns by
accident or impulse that man, hitherto so feared, is in reality the
easiest prey of all.

We had a front of eighty miles. Naturally we needed a big force; we
probably mustered three hundred, all told. Our base of operations was
a railroad-station twenty miles away, and we doubted at first whether
we could live on the country, for the terrified people had abandoned
all cultivation, and were living on bamboo-seeds and the fleshy
blossoms of the mahwa-tree. This was a serious question--this and our
transport. We had seventy-four elephants, and each ate seven hundred
pounds of green stuff or sugar-cane every day; and of camels,
bullocks, rude carts, and horses we had hundreds, to say nothing of
the dozens of buffaloes we carried as live bait for tigers. We should
need fodder by the ton, as well as sheep, fowl, goats, game, and milk;
grain, too, for the crowds of camp-followers; and canned foods and
medicines--including, not least, the store of carbolic acid for
possible tiger-bites and maulings. The water was to be boiled and
filtered, then treated with permanganate of potash. It was regular
army equipment, you see.

I went out myself with the _shikari_ scouts, inspecting jungle-paths,
dry river-beds, and muddy margins of pools. They pointed out to me the
first rudiments in nature's book of signs: first of all the tiger
"pug," and the difference between the footprints of the tiger and the
tigress--the male's square, the female's a clear-cut oval. Here the
great tiger had drunk four days ago. The prints were not clear; in
places they were obliterated by tracks of bear, deer, and porcupine.

But clearly we were in a favorite haunt of both man-eaters. The male
must have passed after dawn, for his tracks overlay those of little
quail, which do not emerge until after daybreak. Then yet more signs:
muddy pools told mute tales of recent visits; high over the hill that
fell sheer to the valley were specks of vultures, hovering over recent
kills. Back to camp we went to report the enemy's presence.

The next move was the setting out of the live bait--the buffaloes.
Twoscore of the slow, ponderous creatures were led out and staked in a
great ring about the tigers, passive outposts about the enemy,
inviting their attack--an attack sure to come during the night. Then
we went back again to wait.

[Illustration: SLAYER OF SEVENTY-SIX NATIVES LAID LOW AT LAST

HE AND HIS MATE RAVAGED A TRACT OF COUNTRY FOUR HUNDRED AND EIGHTY
SQUARE MILES IN EXTENT]

Meanwhile, during the time while scouts were reconnoitering the enemy,
the rank and file had been offering sacrifices to their gods. The
Moslems were less tiresome than the Hindus in this respect. They
merely went in a body to the snow-white _zariat_ (saint-house) on the
hill, and offered up a goat. But the Brahman deity had to be
propitiated, lest all our plans go down to defeat. This god dwelt in a
jungle, attended by an old _jogi_ smeared with wood-ashes and streaked
with paint. Another goat was slain here. The beast was made to bow
comically three times before the hideous image in the shrine, and then
his throat was cut. Victory was now sure. The pious preliminaries
were finished, and then arrived at last the day of battle--the scenes
of which you never forget.

       *       *       *       *       *

We are up and out at dawn, riding about the wide circle of the
tethered buffaloes. A delicate business, this. As we draw near the
first one, with infinite caution, we inspect the site through strong
binoculars. A flick of the ear, a whisk of the tail because of flies,
show that No. 1 is still alive. We water and feed the beast with fresh
grass, and then leave him. But our next place of call looks
suspicious, even from afar. A crow is cawing in a tree, and looks with
beady eyes below. Dark vulture-specks are wheeling in the blue. And
see! Tiger-marks in the dust, both square and oval! The dread couple
have been here--early in the night, evidently, for over their
"pug"-marks lies the trail of porcupines and other nocturnal beasts.
Sure enough, the big buffalo is gone, leaving only a broken rope-end,
a few splashes of blood, and the labored trail of a heavy body.
Strategy is ended now, and tactics begin.

We gallop back to camp and give the alarm. The huge battle-line is
ready. Long rows of giant tuskers stand with swaying heads, each with
his howdah beside him--towering brutes such as the old kings of Asia
rode into battle, to the terror of their enemies. The herds of
disdainful camels are kneeling in roaring protest against the camp
loads. From all quarters scouts have reported the enemy. Our army,
horse and foot, elephants and camels, will march in an hour--as
strange a sight and as strange a work as may be witnessed in the world
to-day.

Watch each elephant kneel and come prone for his big hunting-tower.
There are five men to each elephant, one at his head, four to haul the
gear and make fast. The deft skill, the swiftness and silence, show
the veteran in the enemy's country. Every man knows his work and knows
the officer above him; and each officer, too, knows just what is
expected of him--from the lowest up to the colonel himself, a fine
figure, tall, erect, white-haired, an adept in tiger-lore, with a
hundred and fifty skins in his bungalow.

[Illustration: TIGRESS ALSO IS SLAIN

THE BODY BORNE BACK TO CAMP ON ONE OF THE PAD-ELEPHANTS]

Twelve mounted sahibs gallop this way and that, collecting _shikaris_
and beaters. Native officers distribute fire-works and tom-toms,
rattles and flint-locks and torches. The _mot d'ordre_ is: "Kick
up----at the right time."

There is a brief, businesslike interview in old Howe's tent. "The
tigers," he says in a matter-of-fact way, as though dismissing school,
"shall be inclosed in a triangle, of which the apex shall be ourselves
and the elephants. You will draw lots for positions among yourselves.
The bases of the triangle shall be the beaters, and the flanks the
stops posted up trees, who shall see that the tigers do not turn and
break out of the beat. You will please be alert, with rifles cocked
and barrels and cartridges examined beforehand. There must be no undue
noise or haste. Remember, the clink of a finger-ring on a barrel or
the gleam of the sun on a bright muzzle may turn them. That's all,
gentlemen."

We troop out to distribute rifles to the sepoys, who are supposed to
protect the unarmed beaters. Some of us ride off for miles into the
jungle to the base of the fateful triangle. Others visit the
"stops"--keen-eyed _shikaris_, perched like crows in the big
sal-trees.

Then hark--a shot! It travels like fire, and is answered by a faint
uproar. The beat has begun. We dismount from our elephants for a
steady shot, leaving them behind us in a huge semicircle. Some of them
scent danger, and twirl delicate trunks high in the air. They have
"been there" before! The mahouts sit motionless as bronze
figures--superb fellows, deeply learned in jungle-lore. The triangle's
apex and flanks are in absolute silence, but the base is fiendish with
uproar. Two hundred men are yelling and cursing, roaring and singing,
beating pots and pans, tom-toms and gongs.

Hearts beat a little faster. We look at one another anxiously and
whisper, "Is the beat empty?" It would seem so, for the cunning brutes
give no sign. Yet they must be driven forward if they are there. Ha! a
slender sal-tree to the left shakes with excitement. A turbaned head
shoots out of its branches, with a sudden sound of hand-clapping and
shouting. One of the stops has seen a stirring in the high yellow
grass. The tigers are in the living net!

I call to my side Hyder Ali, my gun-bearer, a lean Pathan from the
Khyber Pass.

"You have my .303?"

He nods and smiles. At that moment I hear a heavy footfall, as of some
great beast, on the thick dry leaves. The high grass parts. First a
magnificent yellow head emerges, infinitely alert; then the long,
lithe body, a picture of supple grace and immense strength. A superb
spectacle the creature presents, with his lovely coat gleaming in the
hot sun. But the din is drawing near. Down goes the massive head;
wide, cruel lips draw back, and four long primary fangs are bared in a
gruff roar. Then he dashes forward for cover. But too late; I have
drawn a bead on his rippling shoulder and fired.

He is down, fighting and biting at he knows not what; and his roars
rise high above the wild pandemonium of the beaters.

But my shot has not killed. I give the alarm, and we put scouts up
trees to direct the ticklish pursuit along the bloody trail. We drive
herds of buffaloes into the long grass and brush to drive out the
wounded tiger. Our general himself takes charge, with few words and
sure tactics.

"We've got his mate," he says grimly. "I put her on a pad-elephant and
sent her back to camp."

It is growing dark. I hear the sambur-stag belling from the
mountain-side, and the monotonous call of the coël, or Indian cuckoo.
Afar a peacock calls from a ruined tomb, and through all the jungle
concert runs the continuous screech of the cicada.

A loud signal from a treed scout suddenly tells us my tiger is
located. Relentlessly, foot by foot, the man-eater is tracked. We are
guided always by the scouts in the trees; for that terrible
bamboo-like grass swallows even elephants, swaying noisily to their
moving bulk. At length we emerge in a little clearing; and even as we
glance around, the stalks part harshly, and the tiger leaps forth at
an unarmed beater, burying fangs in a soundless throat. An awful
sight!

A dozen rifles roar too late to save the poor wretch. We pick up
victim and tiger and heave them on a pad-elephant. And then back to
camp.

[Illustration]




THE RADICAL JUDGE

BY ANITA FITCH

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTHUR G. DOVE


Often when, arm in arm with black Double-headed Pete, the Radical
Judge went by the paling fence, Hope Carolina said to herself:

"W'en he comes all lonely, jus' by his own self, I'll frow a rock at
him. Yes, sholy!"

Unconscious of the danger that lurked in future ambush, the great
politician would pass on, the rear view of his little stiff, quickly
stepping figure showing a high silk hat and the parted tails of a
broadcloth coat, which in front buttoned importantly at the waist.
Dressed with exactly the same splendor, even to the waist-buttoning of
the coat, the huge negro towered a full head taller than his hated,
feared, and brilliant intimate.

In that secret, mysterious way which was a feature of the troublous
times, both were recognized targets for other missiles than stones
flung by dimpled baby hands.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was an educating period for small maids of six, that long-ago time
of bitter party hatred. Though only a short half-dozen years crowned
her fair cropped head, and she lisped still in an adorable baby way,
Hope Carolina was very wise--"monstrous wise," the black people said.
She did not understand the meaning of "renegade" exactly,--the Radical
Judge was a renegade too,--but she knew all about Reconstruction. It
was what made _them_, the black people, so sassy, and your own darling
family wretched.

[Illustration: "'WADICAL!'"]

She knew, too, that Radical judges always wore chain shirts under
their white ones, because they were afraid; and that they carried
knives, oh, mighty big ones, forever up their sleeves, to show in
bar-rooms sometimes to Uncle John when anybody talked too loudly of
renegades and turn-coats. Then, too, and worst of all, they got rich
in a single night and took beautiful homes from dear Prestons and
lived in them themselves. The beloved Prestons, so nobly proud in
their fallen fortunes,--so right and proper in their politics,--had
once owned all the lovely grounds alongside the bald yard that
inclosed the child's own hired house; grounds where peacocks were as
much at home as in story-books--peacocks with tails more ravishing
than fly-brushes; where magnolia-trees flung down big scented petals
as fascinating as sheets of letter-paper, and tall poplars stood like
angels with half-closed wings against the sky. And with her own
tear-filled eyes Hope Carolina had seen the exiled ones depart from
this paradise crying, ah, so bitterly; turning back, as the breaking
heart turns, for long, last, kissing looks. And now the Radical Judge
lived there--the bad Radical Judge _who went locked-arms with
niggers_; lived there with the wife who took things to forget, and the
little crippled child who had never walked in her life because
somebody had let her fall long ago.

[Illustration: "AN UNTIDY MIDGET FOLLOWING CLOSELY AT HIS HEELS"]

Hope Carolina could never go over again and make brown writing marks
on the sweet magnolia petals. She could never steal suddenly through
the boxwood hedge which hid the paling fence at that side of the hired
yard, and frighten the peacocks so that they would spread their tails
proudly. Everything belonged to the Radical Judge, even the old yellow
satin sofas in the parlor, on which negroes sat now. And besides, no
matter how poor they were, Democrat families never had anything to do
with Radical families. They only threw "rocks" at them--safely from
behind fences.

One day the pile of stones near the broken paling fence seemed
splendidly high. They were muddy too, splendidly muddy, for it had
rained in the night, and Hope Carolina had gouged the last ones out of
the wet dirt with a sharp stick. She had even intentionally kept nice
pats of earth around some; and directly, with the enemy approaching in
the lonely way desired, there she was "scrouged" behind the paling
fence, as Robert Lee Preston scrouged when he threw stones at
Radicals. The brisk heels clicked nearer--passed; and then, with a
fine sweep of a fat arm, a loud "ooh, ooh, ooh," she let fly the
deadly missile.

The effect of it was magical. The enemy leaped as if the long-expected
bullet had indeed pierced his chain armor; for the stone, perhaps the
tiniest in Democracy's fort, had neatly nipped his stiff back. But the
dark frown he turned toward her changed instantly. A slow smile, and
then laughter--the doting laughter of the child-lover, to whom even
the naughtiest phases are dear--replaced it. And, indeed, Hope
Carolina did seem a sweet and comical figure in her low-necked,
short-sleeved calico, with her brass toes hitched in the paling fence
somehow, and her cropped head rising barely above it. Excitement, too,
had lent a warmer pink to her apple cheeks, and her blue eyes were
like deep and hating stars.

"Oh, you bad baby!" he called in a moment, plainly ravished with the
nature of his would-be assassin. He knew why the stone had come--only
too well. "You hateful little Democrat!"

Hope Carolina fired up furiously at that. "Wadical!" she called back,
her voice tremulous with rage. And then, deliberately, "Wenegade!
Seef!" fell from her pouting baby lips.

A change came over the Radical Judge's face. It did not smile any
longer; and yet, somehow--_somehow_--it did not seem exactly angry. He
came a step nearer the paling fence.

"Little girl," he began softly, pleadingly, almost prayerfully. But
the thrower of stones waited to hear no more. As he came nearer,
almost near enough to touch, holding her with dumb eyes so different
from those she had expected, she fired another shot--it seemed just to
fly out of her hand--and ran.

As she scrambled up the high house steps, which went rented-fashion in
Fairville, from the ground to the second story, she remembered the
black splotch it had made on his white shirt; and then she remembered
another thing--the chain one underneath, to keep away rocks and
bullets and everything. Ah, if he hadn't worn that she might have
killed him; and then all the trouble in dear South Carolina would be
over forever and ever, amen.

As she sat in her high-chair at supper, eating hot raised corn-bread
and sugar-sweet sorghum, it seemed a dreadful thing that she hadn't
really done it; and directly, when a blue-eyed, full-breasted goddess,
known in the hired house as Ma and Miss Kate, looked meaningly across
the table, she sighed profoundly.

The fair lady, whose beauty was clouded by a deep sadness, turned soon
to the third sitter at the table, a tall, lank gentleman of perhaps
thirty-five, who, with dark, brooding eyes and a serious limp, had
just entered. He was the redoubtable Uncle John, of loud and fearless
opinion; and, if the bar-room bowie had missed him, a stray Radical
bullet had been more successful. A political fight in the railroad
turn-table, some months ago, had been the scene of this heartbreaking
accident. "And all through the war without a scratch!" Ma had sobbed
out to Mrs. Preston when speaking of that bullet, still in the
long-booted leg now under the table.

Directly Hope Carolina forgot the reproof of mother eyes anent the
table manners of well-brought-up children. She began listening
attentively; for that was how, listening when Ma and Uncle John
talked, she had acquired all her deep knowledge of men and things. For
in this close domestic circle all the lurid happenings of the times
were touched upon: more fights in the turn-table; barbecues, black
enemy barbecues--at which the bad Radical Judge stood on stumps, with
his blacked shoes Close together and his beaver hat off, as if he were
talking, _truly_, to white people; where negroes, poor, pitiful,
hungry, corn-field negroes, were bought with scorched beef and bad
whisky to vote any which way. Even the price of bacon, the woeful
rises in the corn-meal market, were discussed here--all the poignant
things, indeed, which, as has been seen, had inspired Hope Carolina's
own poignant and beautiful name.

Now they were speaking of Double-headed Pete, sweet, sorry Ma and good
Uncle John, who must limp forever because he hadn't worn chain things
underneath. Pete was feeling the oats of his new office, Uncle John
said, and Ma said back, "To think!" and looked at Uncle John as if she
were sorry for him.

Hope Carolina sat very quietly, but she was thinking hard. She knew
Pete: he was a bad, bad nigger; and though he locked arms with white
Radicals, and got a big, big salary, he could only put crosses instead
of names at the bottom of the important papers. It seemed a strange
thing that anybody who couldn't write names should get big salaries,
when Uncle John, who did heavenly writing, couldn't get any at all.
Then, along with everything else, there was Pete's maiden speech on
the court-house steps--oh, a terrible maiden speech!

"_De white man is had his day._"

Whether there was any more of it Hope Carolina did not ask herself.
That was enough, for folks looked tiptoe if you only spoke Pete's
name.

Directly, thinking over it all, Hope Carolina said earnestly to
herself, "Maybe I'd better put 'em back," meaning the two thrown
stones. It looked, yes, truly, as if she would have to kill Pete, too;
so her arsenal for destruction must not lack ammunition. It must
rather flow over than fall short.

But a liberal allowance of hot corn-bread and sorghum are not
conducive to murderous zeal. Slowly, almost painfully, the child got
down from her high-chair. She went faster down the steep house steps;
but as she neared the stone fort by the paling fence she halted, all
but paralyzed by the audacity which was being committed under her very
eyes.

Somebody was stooping down outside the fence, with a hand through the
broken place, putting something--_two round, pinky somethings!_--on
top of the stone fort, putting them exactly where the two spent shots
had been.

[Illustration: "HOPE CAROLINA, FROM HER MARVELOUS BED, COULD SEE
EVERYTHING THAT WAS GOING ON IN THE RADICAL JUDGE'S GARDEN"]

[Illustration: "FOREVER TURNING BACK TO KISS HIM, WITH HER HANDS FULL
OF FLOWERS, AND WITH THE PEACOCKS TRAILING BESIDE"]

"Oh!" ejaculated Hope Carolina; and, reaching the fence with a rush,
she stared down lovingly. For they were peaches, real, live, human
peaches--the kind that you buy for five cents apiece, which was a
great price in the hired house.

The form outside the fence straightened up then, and two oldish gray
eyes looked over it into hers--the Radical Judge's eyes. "No more
stones, please," they seemed to say, with a trace of embarrassment at
being caught.

Hope Carolina nodded back with a lovely courtesy, as if to say in
return: "Sholy not."

For this was no moment for politics. Besides, something in the
watching eyes--a wistful something which spoke louder than words--had
awakened all the lady in her; and there was more of it, I can tell
you, than you may be inclined to believe.

Silently, with eyes still meeting eyes, they stood there for a moment;
the great Radical almost shrinkingly, the fiery little Democrat with a
new, sweet feeling which made her seem, for the instant, the bigger,
stronger one of the two. Then, still silent, he was gone; and
snatching the peaches with another ecstatic "Oh!" Hope Carolina did
the thing she had dumbly promised. She kicked down the stone fort.

After she was in bed, she explained the deed to herself; for there,
with reflection, had come some of the pangs that must pierce the
breast of the traitor in any decent camp. You can't take peaches and
throw stones too, no, not even if Democrats would almost want to hang
you for not doing it!

She had come to the pits by now, and these, after more rapturous
suckings, she put under her pillow for planting; for when you are six
you plant everything. She did not know that another and more wonderful
seed had already put forth a green shoot in her own so piteously
hardened little heart.

Hope Carolina slept in a marvelous bed, almost the only thing of
value, in fact, left in the hired house. Ma would not use it herself,
she told dear friends, because of its memories; but as the child of
the house had no recollections of other times, it seemed to her always
a downy and restful nest. There were carved pineapples at the top of
the high mahogany posts, and four more at the bottom of them; and when
Hope Carolina lay in it in the morning, she could see everything that
was going on in the Radical Judge's garden--that lovely paradise of
peacocks and poplars and magnolias which had once been the dear
Prestons'.

Sometimes, even before the truce of peaches, she had felt a little
regret that the decencies barred out all acquaintance with Radical
families. For always on the hot mornings--long, long before it was
time for her to get up--there were the Radical Judge and the little
crippled Grace going about among the shrubs and flowers as if they
were the nicest people. And always the little pale, laughing child
presented a very pretty picture in the wheeled chair, which her father
pushed so patiently; forever turning back to kiss him, with her hands
full of flowers, and with the peacocks trailing beside as if they had
forgotten the dear Prestons entirely.

Then, the Radical Judge seemed to know bushels and bushels of
fairy-stories; and when they came near the boxwood hedge, Hope
Carolina would sometimes hear him begin a new one. They always began
in the right way, "Once upon a time," and that seemed very remarkable,
for how could a Radical Judge know the right sort of fairy-stories?

When they moved away again, the child in the enemy house would feel
her throat gulp sometimes. She knew it was wrong, but oh, she would
have loved to hear the end!

One morning, weeks and weeks after the peaches, when the peacocks had
been gone for days,--they made too much noise, Hope Carolina
knew,--when all the empty, sunburned garden seemed to say weepingly,
"There will be no more fairy-tales," she woke with the morning star,
and, sitting bolt up in bed, blinked wonderingly, a little painfully,
in the direction of the Radical Judge's front door. It was too dark to
see the knob yet, but she knew the thing must be there, the long,
angelically sweet drop of white ribbon and flowers--the poetic and
wistful mourning which is only hung for little dead children.

A great doctor had come down from Baltimore and gone again; and the
Radical Judge's wife was still taking things to forget.

       *       *       *       *       *

The heart of six is full of mystery. All that first morning, with a
piteous earnestness, a piteous heartlessness, Hope Carolina played
funeral in the front yard, in the place where the stone fort had once
been and where the peach-pits were now planted. Every now and then she
would stop patting the little mounds of earth--mounds of earth covered
with sweet flowers, in a place as beautiful as any garden, were the
chief thing in her idea of funerals--and, standing tiptoe, she would
stare over the paling fence, hoping the Radical Judge would come by.
At last, late in the forenoon, her dogged vigilance was rewarded; and
in a moment, bonnetless, an untidy midget in low-necked pink calico
which even had a hole behind--there she was out of the gate, following
closely at his heels. She couldn't tell exactly why she followed him;
she only knew she wanted to--perhaps to see if he thought, too, as
everybody said, that the little crippled Grace was better off up in
the sky. She fancied maybe he didn't, he was so different,
somehow--not like the old, fierce Radical Judge at all. And when
really nice white gentlemen--_Democrats_, who had never noticed him
before--stood respectfully aside with _their_ beaver hats off, he
walked still down the middle of the dirt sidewalk, and did not seem to
see them at all.

[Illustration: "IT WAS THE QUAINT CUSTOM AT FUNERALS IN FAIRVILLE TO
FOLLOW MOURNERS IN LINE FROM THE GRAVE"]

Once when her brass-toed shoe kicked his heel by the railroad,--along
which, the littlest distance away, was the historic spot where Uncle
John had got the bullet,--she said "Thank you" aloud.

She meant it for the peaches, for she had just remembered that it
wasn't very polite not to thank people for things. But still he seemed
not to see, not to hear; and directly, in this blind, groping way, as
if he were falling to pieces somehow, there he was turning into Miss
Sally and Miss Polly Graham's store, where they only sold lady things.

Hope Carolina waited outside, openly and shamelessly watching to see
what he was going to do. She never peeped secretly; that wouldn't be
respectable.

In a minute she said, "Oh!" her eyes stretched wide with delighted
wonder; for he was _buying_ lady things--fairy lace, shimmering satin,
narrow doll-baby ribbon, as lovely as heaven! When he went out,
quickly, as if he were almost running, Hope Carolina still waited,
wondering what Miss Sally and Miss Polly, the two old-maid sisters,
who were Democrats and very nice people themselves, were going to do
with the splendor which still lay upon the counter.

But they did not tell. They told something else--a thing so full of
wonder, so dreadful, that, with another exclamation, one which drew
four astonished maiden eyes to her suddenly blanched cheeks, the child
took to her heels and fled as if pursued by a thousand terrors.

She thought of it all the time she was eating more hot corn-bread and
sorghum at dinner--the thing Miss Sally and Miss Polly Graham had said
to each other; the thing which seemed so new, so strange, so _loud
and awful_, like the hellfire things Baptist ministers talked about.

Then, after supper, she fell asleep in the pineapple bed, still
thinking of it; and all the next day, still playing funeral by the
paling fence, she thought of it again. And that night, when once more
she lay in the pineapple bed, there it was again, the strange loud
thing Miss Sally and Miss Polly Graham had said to each other--said in
a soft, _crying_ way.

All at once she had a waked-up feeling; she sat bolt upright in bed
and thought, "Comp'ny." There were voices coming across the passageway
from the parlor. A light streamed, too; and when she stood faintly
bathed in its glow, she saw that Mrs. Preston was there--Mrs. Preston,
in the deep mourning she had vowed never to put off as long as her
beloved State lay with her head in the dust. But something in her lap
brightened it now, this shabby, soldier-widow black: a slim cross,
divine with green and white, as daintily delicate, with its tremulous
myrtle stars, as had been the lady things in Miss Sally and Miss Polly
Graham's store.

Mrs. Preston was saying that she was going to send it "anonymously."
Then she asked Ma if she knew that _he_ had had to attend to all the
arrangements himself. "Even the dress," went on Mrs. Preston, crying a
little; and Uncle John coughed in the deep, growly way gentlemen
always cough when they are ashamed to cry themselves.

Then they all began talking about funerals, saying to each other they
would like to go, but how _could_ they? Uncle John saying at last,
with more of the growly, coughy way, that no, no, they "couldn't flout
him."

It would be more cruel, far, far more cruel, said Uncle John, than to
stay away. Besides,--didn't the ladies know?--it was private.
"Though," the speaker went on, his worn, somber face lighting up with
something like a gleam of comfort, "I reckon that was to keep those
other white hounds away as well as the rest of us."

Ma nodded. They weren't gentlemen-born, as he was, she sighed--"born
to Southern best." And then, with a "Poor wretch--poor, proud,
degraded wretch!" she handed out the thing she had been making--a
white rosette as beautiful as any rose--and told Mrs. Preston to put
it "there," touching the myrtle cross with fingers kissing-soft.

But Mrs. Preston only said back, "He's refused even the minister!" and
seemed more unhappy, oh, mighty unhappy.

Hope Carolina gasped with the wonderment of it all. How funny it
seemed, how dreadfully funny, that everybody had forgotten everything
just because a child had gone up into the sky: Uncle John the bullet,
and Mrs. Preston the lost paradise next door, and Ma the barbecue
speeches that made niggers vote any which way--all, all that Radicals
had ever done to them!

After a while one of the voices spoke again--whose, Hope Carolina
could never tell:

"_Think, there won't be a white face there!_" And then, after a pause,
another voice:

"_No, not one!_"

Hope Carolina jumped in bed, trembling.

Presently Mrs. Preston went, and then everybody else went to bed. But
still Hope Carolina trembled. For that was exactly what Miss Polly and
Miss Sally Graham had said--_about the white face_.

After a while she knew. It meant, oh, the mightiest, biggest disgrace
on earth not to have white people at your funerals. They went to black
funerals, even--_good_ black funerals.

"Oh!" moaned Hope Carolina suddenly, loud enough for everybody to
hear. But she cried silently. It was a way she had.

She cried again in the night, too--so loudly everybody did hear; but
the dream mother who came and loved her, putting her head on the dear
place, drove away all the lumps in her throat. After that the dark was
still like the dear place, and like arms around her, too.

She had forgotten the dream mother when breakfast came; but she hadn't
forgotten the other thing--the thing about the white face.

Ma said anxiously once to Uncle John, "Do you think she can be sick,
brother?" and Uncle John shook his head, though he knew, too, of the
tearful night.

Hope Carolina sat very still, not seeming to hear even when Ma
announced that the funeral was at nine o'clock. She ate her breakfast
like a ravenous cherub, smiling silently, mysteriously, whenever her
mother looked at her with adoring eyes. Sometimes these dear, watching
eyes, as blue as jewels, set wide apart under a low brow crowned with
waved, satin-bright brown hair, filled slowly. But the darling child,
who had certainly proved her excellent condition, only grinned back
sweetly. All Hope Carolina was thinking of was that she had a
_hole_--she was still wearing the soiled pink calico--and that her
frilled white apron was mussed, and that shoe-strings wouldn't tie
good. In the tarnished gilt-framed mirror behind Ma's lovely head she
could see her own. _That_ was all right; beautiful! She had doused it
with water, the round baby poll, and plastered the short hair smooth,
so that under this close, shining cap her apple cheeks seemed fresher
than ever.

Ma kissed them in passing, going then swiftly, with her eyes closed
tight lest she herself should see, to shut windows on _that_ side of
the house. Hope Carolina knew. Children mustn't look out of windows
when funerals were going on. They mustn't play in the yard, either,
till after they were over.

The big clock in the corner ticked, ticked, ticked, seeming to say
always, "Hurry up, hurry up." And then--it was the longest, longest
while afterward--Ma called from another room that Hopey (it was the
foolish home name) could go and play in the yard now, for it was nine
o'clock.

"Quite half-past, darling," went on the liquid Southern voice, still
tremulous with emotion, still with the yearning anxiety for its own
that the death of any child of kindred age brings to the mother
breast. But there was no answer, and for a very good reason.

Down the long clay road which led from living and now pitying
Fairville to the little cemetery where slept its quiet dead, Hope
Carolina was running.

       *       *       *       *       *

A mile and a half is a long way for a wee fat maiden to go when the
August sun is beating down upon bare heads and necks, and red clay
roads spread sun-baked ruts and furrows as sharp as knives. As many
times as her years, Hope Carolina fell by the way; oftener, indeed.
But the good folk in the scattered blind-closed houses along the
way--who, too, a half-hour ago had whispered tremulously, "There won't
be a white face"--saw no sign of tears.

"It's only Hope Carolina," called somebody, and other watchers
laughed; for all knew the wandering ways of this wise and fearless
child.

And so, stumbling, falling, struggling to her feet again,--wiping away
blood once, even, with impatient hand,--on, on the little figure in
pink and white had gone, a brave and storm-driven flower in the cruel
road. And at last there were the shining crosses and columns of the
dead. One inclosure, radiant with more magnolias and angel poplars,
more stately and wonderful than all the rest, was the dear Preston
plot.

The child, who had paused anxiously at the open gate, sighed, sighed
with immense relief, to see it still without the sacrilege of Radical
invasion. He hadn't taken _that_, too! Then, a step farther, she
stopped again. The red clayey place he had taken had neither fence nor
flowers. Only a tree grew near his place, a great solitary pine, with
the low wailing of whose softly swaying needles singing was mingled.

A single person was singing--a single _black_ person. She knew by the
soft mellow roll of the voice, the sweet, oh, honey-sweet sound of the
hymn words, which she herself had sung many times at the Baptist
Sunday-school, where she had to go when there was no Episcopal
minister. The great figure towering above the tiny, dusky group, with
bare woolly head and working, apelike face uplifted to the sky, took
on a new grandeur.

But only for a moment did she think of Pete, so marvelously changed.
The hymn was ending--they were a long way past the dear line, _Safe on
his gentle breast_.

Now they were moving, the little "crowd of mo'ners over yonder,"--all
black it looked, house-servants mostly,--and quickly, with a
breathless fear of being too late, she rushed forward and thrust her
head between the singer and a sobbing petticoated figure beside him.

Then she drew back smiling, smiling divinely.

The grief-stricken eyes at the other side of the little grave--a grave
heaped with Radical roses, sweet with one Democrat myrtle cross--had
seen it, _the white face_.

"You go fust, honey, jus' behin' him," Pete whispered, as, trudging
valiantly along with the rest, Hope Carolina passed out of the
cemetery gate.

It was the quaint custom at funerals in Fairville, especially funerals
with negroes, to follow mourners in line from the grave as well as to
it. What had been begun through a lack of sidewalks had been continued
as a ceremony of passionate respect.

Pete bent soft, wet, grateful eyes upon her, pushing her close behind
the one carriage as he spoke--eyes as dear and tender as any old
nigger eyes Hope Carolina had ever looked into. All at once she
understood: Pete, bad Pete, loved the Radical judge.

She nodded comprehendingly, including all the other black faces--which
seemed to look toward her, too, with a doglike gratitude--in her
flashing smile.

"Of course!"

       *       *       *       *       *

So it came to pass that Fairville's terrible prophecy was falsified.
In his darkest hour the Radical Judge was not forsaken of all his
race; still unconscious of fatigue and hurt in the cruel clay road,
the little white Democrat, who had toiled this hard way before, led
and redeemed the funeral procession of his child.




POVERTY AND DISCONTENT IN RUSSIA

BY GEORGE KENNAN


In an address delivered in New York City on the 14th of January, 1908,
Paul Milyukov, historian, statesman, and leader of the Constitutional
Democratic party in the third Russian Duma, after reviewing
dispassionately, from a liberal point of view, the unsuccessful
attempt at revolution in the great empire of the north, summed up, in
the following words, his conclusions with regard to the present
Russian situation:

"The social composition of the future Russia is now at stake; the fate
of future centuries is now being determined"; but, "wherever we turn
or look, we meet only with new trouble to come, nowhere with any hope
for conciliation or social peace. This, I am afraid, is not the
message that you expected from me, and I should be much happier myself
if I could answer your wish for information with words of hope, and
with the glad tidings that quiet and security have returned to Russia;
but I am here to tell you the truth."

Americans who have not followed closely the sequence of events in
Russia since October, 1905, may feel inclined to ask, "Why should Mr.
Milyukov take such a pessimistic view of the future, when his country
has not only a representative assembly, but an imperial guaranty of
political freedom and 'real inviolability of personal rights'?" The
answer is not far to seek. A representative assembly that has no
power, and an imperial guaranty that affords no security, do not
encourage hopeful anticipations. Russia has never had a representative
assembly, in the Anglo-Saxon meaning of the words; and as for the
imperial guaranty of political freedom, it was written in water.

Twenty-seven months ago, when Count Witte reported to Nicholas II.
that Russia had "outgrown its governmental framework," and when the
Czar himself, recognizing the necessity of "establishing civil liberty
on unshakable foundations," directed his ministers to give the country
political freedom and allow the Duma to control legislation, there
seemed to be every reason for believing that the crisis had passed and
that the people's fight for self-government had been won; but,
unfortunately, the unstable Czar, who would run into any mold, but
would not keep shape, did not adhere to his avowed purpose for a
single week. In the words of a Russian peasant song:

    The Czar promised lightly to go,
    And made all his plans for departing;
      Then he called for a chair,
      And sat down right there,
    To rest for a while before starting.

Not even so much as an attempt was made to carry the "freedom
manifesto" into effect, and before the ink with which it was written
had fairly had time to dry, the rejoicing people, who assembled with
flags and mottos in the streets of the principal cities to celebrate
the dawn of civil liberty, were attacked and forcibly dispersed by the
police, and were then cruelly beaten or mercilessly slaughtered by
adherents of a national monarchistic association, hostile to the
manifesto, which called itself the "Union of True Russians."[27]
According to the conservative estimate of Mr. Milyukov, these "true
Russians," with the sympathy and coöperation of the police, killed or
wounded no less than thirteen thousand other Russians, whom they
regarded as not "true," in the very first week after the freedom
manifesto was promulgated. One not familiar with Russian conditions
might have supposed that the Czar would use all the force at his
command to stop these murderous "pogroms" and to punish the police and
the "true Russians" who were responsible for them; but he seems to
have regarded them as convincing proof that all true Russians would
rather have autocracy than freedom, and, instead of insisting upon
obedience to his manifesto and punishing those who resorted to
wholesale murder as a means of protesting against it, he not only
allowed the slaughter to go on, but, a few months later, showed his
sympathy with the "true Russians" by telegraphing to their president
as follows:

"Let the Union of the Russian People serve as a trustworthy support. I
am sure that all true Russians who love their country will unite still
more closely, and, while steadily increasing their number, will help
me to bring about the peaceful regeneration of our great and holy
Russia."[28]

Disappointed at the Czar's failure to stand by his own manifesto, and
exasperated by the murderous attacks of the Black Hundreds upon
defenseless people in the streets, the Social Democrats, the Social
Revolutionists, and the extreme opponents of the government generally
resorted to a series of armed revolts, which finally culminated in the
bloody barricade-fighting in the streets of Moscow in December, 1905.
Taking alarm at these revolutionary outbreaks, and yielding to the
reactionary pressure that was brought to bear upon him by the
ultra-conservative wing of the court party, the Czar abandoned the
reforms which he had declared to be the expression of his "inflexible
will,"[29] and permitted his governors and governors-general to "put
down sedition" in the old arbitrary way, with imprisonment, exile, the
Cossack's whip and the hangman's noose.

Long before the meeting of the first Duma the freedom manifesto had
become a dead letter; and in July, 1906, when Mr. Makarof, the
Associate Minister of the Interior, was called before the Duma to
explain the inconsistency between the "inflexible will" of the Czar,
as expressed in the freedom manifesto, and the policy of the
administration, as shown in a long series of arbitrary and oppressive
acts of violence, he coolly said that while the freedom manifesto
"laid down the fundamental principles of civil liberty in a general
way," it had no real force, because it did not specifically repeal the
laws relating to the subject that were already on the statute-books.
He admitted that governors-general were still arresting without
warrant, exiling without trial, suppressing newspapers without a
hearing, and dispersing public meetings by an arbitrary exercise of
discretionary power; but he maintained that in so doing they were only
obeying imperial ukases which antedated the freedom manifesto and
which that document had not abrogated. In all provinces, he said,
where martial law had been declared, or where it might in future be
declared, governors and governors-general were not bound by the
academic statement of general principles in the October manifesto, but
were free to exercise discretionary power under the provisions of
certain earlier decrees relating to "reinforced and extraordinary
defense." These decrees, until repealed, were the law of the land, and
they authorized and sanctioned every administrative measure to which
the interpellations related, freedom manifestos to the contrary
notwithstanding.[30]

The Czar's abandonment of the principles set forth in the freedom
manifesto of October 30, 1905, put an end to what Mr. Milyukov has
called "the ascending phase" of the Russian liberal movement. Count
Witte, who had persuaded the Czar to sign the manifesto, was forced to
retire from the Cabinet, and the new government, taking courage from
the apparent loyalty of the army and the successful suppression of
sporadic revolutionary outbreaks in various parts of the empire,
returned gradually to the old policy of ruling by means of
"administrative process," under the sanction of "exceptional" or
"temporary" laws.

In July, 1906, when P. A. Stolypin was appointed Prime Minister, and
when the first Duma was dissolved in order to prevent it from issuing
an address to the people, the government abandoned even the pretense
of acting in conformity with the principles laid down in the freedom
manifesto, and boldly entered upon the policy of reaction and
repression that it has ever since pursued. It now finds itself
confronted by social and political problems of extraordinary
difficulty and complexity, which are the natural and logical results
of long-continued misgovernment or neglect. With the sympathetic
coöperation of a loyal and united people, these problems might,
perhaps be solved; but in the face of the almost universal discontent
caused by the Czar's return to the old hateful policy of arbitrary
coercion and restraint, it is almost impossible to solve them, or
even to create the conditions upon which successful solution of them
depends.

Among the most serious and threatening of these problems is that
presented by the steady and progressive impoverishment of the people.
Russian political economists are almost unanimously of opinion that
the condition of the agricultural peasants has been growing steadily
worse ever since the emancipation.[31] As early as 1871, the
well-known political economist Prince Vassilchikof estimated that
Russia had a proletariat which amounted to five per cent. of the whole
peasant population. In 1881, ten years later, the researches of Orlof
and other statisticians from the zemstvos showed that this proletariat
had increased to fifteen per cent., and it is now asserted by
competent authority that there are more than twenty million people in
European Russia who are living from hand to mouth, that is, who
possess no capital and have not land enough to afford them a proper
allowance of daily bread.[32] Four years ago, the Zemstvo Committee on
Agricultural Needs in the "black-soil" province of Voronezh reported
that in that thickly populated and once fertile part of the empire the
net profits of the peasants' lands barely sufficed to pay their direct
taxes. Of the 28,295 families in the district, only 14,328 had land
enough to supply them with the necessary amount of food, while 13,967
were chronically underfed. Seven thousand nine hundred and
ninety-seven families were unable to pay their taxes out of the net
proceeds of their lands, even when they half starved themselves on a
daily allowance of one pound and a third of rye flour per capita.[33]
One might have expected the government to do something for the relief
of a population suffering from such poverty as this, but, instead of
aiding the sufferers, it punished the persons who called attention to
the distress. One member of the Voronezh District Committee, Dr.
Martinof, was exiled to the subarctic province of Archangel; two,
Messrs. Shcherbin and Bunakof, were arrested and put under police
surveillance; and two more, Messrs. Bashkevich and Pereleshin, were
removed from their positions in the zemstvo and forbidden thenceforth
to hold any office of trust in connection with public affairs.[34]

If the janitor of a tenement-house should notify the owner of the
existence of a smoldering fire in the basement, and if the owner,
instead of taking measures to extinguish the fire, should have the
janitor locked up for giving information that might alarm the tenants
and "unsettle their minds," we should regard such owner as an
extremely irrational person, if not an out-and-out lunatic; and yet,
this is the course that the Russian government has been pursuing for
the past quarter of a century. Again and again it has closed
statistical bureaus of the zemstvos, and in some cases has burned
their statistics, simply because the carefully collected material
showed the existence of a smoldering fire of popular distress and
discontent in the basement of the Russian state. Now that the
long-hidden fire has burst into a blaze of agrarian disorder, the
government is trying to smother it with bureaucratic measures of
relief, or to stamp it out with troops, military courts, and punitive
expeditions; but the action comes too late. The economic distress
which a quarter of a century ago was mainly confined to a few
districts or provinces has now become almost universal. Long before
the beginning of the recent agrarian disorders in the central
provinces, a prominent Russian senator, who made an official tour of
inspection and investigation in that part of the empire, described the
condition of the peasants as follows:

"Among the indisputable evidences of progressive impoverishment among
the peasants are the decreasing stocks of grain in the village
storehouses, the deterioration of buildings, the exhaustion of the
soil, the destruction of forests, the arrears of taxes, and the
struggle of the people to migrate. In almost every village the
penniless class is constantly growing, and, at the same time, there is
a frightfully rapid increase in the number of families that are
passing from comparative prosperity to poverty, and from poverty to a
condition in which they have no assured means of support."

Scores if not hundreds of statements like this were made by the
liberal provincial press, or by the district and provincial committees
on agricultural needs; but, when the government paid any attention to
them at all, it merely suspended or suppressed the newspapers for
"manifesting a prejudicial tendency," or punished the committees for
"presenting the condition of the people in too unfavorable a light."

[Illustration: PAUL MILYUKOV

CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRATIC LEADER IN THE THIRD DUMA]

A fair measure, perhaps, of the economic condition of a country is the
earning capacity of its inhabitants, and, tried by this test, Russia
stands far below the other civilized states of the world. According to
a report made by S. N. Prokopovich to the Free Economic Society of St.
Petersburg on May 2, 1907, the average annual income of the population
per capita, in the United States and in various parts of Europe, is as
follows:[35]

  Country               Average income
                         per capita

  United States          $173.00
  England                 136.50
  France                  116.50
  Germany                  92.00
  Servia and Bulgaria      50.50
  Russia                   31.50

It thus appears that the average American family earns nearly six
times as much as the average Russian family, and that even in such
comparatively backward and undeveloped parts of Europe as Servia and
Bulgaria the average income of the population per capita is nearly
twice that of Russia.

Another test of the economic condition of a country is its rate of
mortality, taken in connection with the provision that it makes for
the medical care and relief of its people. The death-rate of
Russia--37.3 per thousand--is higher than that of any other civilized
state, and, according to a report made by Dr. A. Shingaref to the
Piragof Medical Congress in Moscow in May, 1907, the health of the
population is more neglected than in any other country in Europe. The
figures by which he proved this are as follows:[36]

  Great Britain has one doctor to every 1,100 persons
  France         "   "    "     "   "   1,800    "
  Belgium        "   "    "     "   "   1,850    "
  Norway         "   "    "     "   "   1,900    "
  Prussia        "   "    "     "   "   2,000    "
  Austria        "   "    "     "   "   2,400    "
  Italy          "   "    "     "   "   2,500    "
  Hungary        "   "    "     "   "   3,400    "
  Russia         "   "    "     "   "   7,930    "

In connection with this report it may be noted that while Russia has
only one physician to eight thousand people, there is one policeman to
every nine hundred and one soldier to every one hundred and twelve.

This lack of physicians in Russia is mainly due to the extreme poverty
of the mass of the people and their absolute inability to pay for
medical attendance and care. With an earning capacity of only $31.50
per capita, or $189.00 per annum for a family of six, and with taxes
that cut deeply into even this small revenue, the Russians cannot
afford doctors. Shelter, food, and clothing they must have; but
medical attendance is a luxury that may be dispensed with.

One of the principal causes of the impoverishment of the agricultural
peasants in Russia is the insufficiency of their farm allotments. When
the serfs were emancipated about forty-five years ago, they were not
given land enough to make them completely independent of the landed
proprietors, for the reason that the latter had to have laborers to
cultivate their estates, and it was only in the emancipated class that
such laborers could be found. Since that time the peasant population
has nearly doubled, and an allotment that was originally too small
adequately to support one family now has to support two. This
increasing pressure of the growing population upon the land might have
been met, perhaps, as it has been met in Japan, by intensive
cultivation; but such cultivation presupposes education, intelligence,
and adoption of improved agricultural methods; and the Russian
government never has been willing to give its peasant class even the
elementary instruction that would enable it to read and thus to
acquire modern agricultural knowledge. In 1897, more than thirty years
after the emancipation, the Russian percentage of illiteracy was still
seventy-nine, and on January 1, 1905, only forty-two per cent. of the
children of school age were attending school, as compared with
ninety-five per cent, in Japan.[37] Intensive cultivation, moreover,
involves high fertilization and the use of modern agricultural
implements. The Russian peasants do not own live stock enough to
supply them with the quantity of manure that intensive cultivation
would require,--millions of them have no farm-animals at all,--and,
with their earning capacity of only $31.50 a year per capita, they
cannot afford to buy modern plows and improved agricultural machinery.
If there were diversified industries in Russia, the agricultural
peasants who are unable to maintain themselves on their insufficient
allotments might find work to do in mills or factories; but Russia is
not a manufacturing country, and her industrial establishments furnish
only two per cent. of her population with employment.

[Illustration: P. A. STOLYPIN

PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL AND MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR]

Unable to get a living from their small and comparatively unproductive
farms, and equally unable to find work elsewhere, the peasants clamor
loudly for more land; and when, as the result of a bad harvest,
their situation becomes intolerable, they are seized with a sort of
berserker madness and break out into fierce bread riots, which
frequently end in regular campaigns of pillage and arson. In 1905 they
attacked and plundered the estates of more than two thousand landed
proprietors and inflicted upon the latter a loss of more than
$15,000,000. The disorder extended to one hundred and sixty-one
districts and covered thirty-seven per cent. of the area of European
Russia.

Such alarming evidences of wide-spread distress and discontent
naturally forced the agrarian question upon the attention not only of
the government but of the people's representatives in parliament. The
Constitutional Democrats in the first Duma proposed to obtain more
land for the common people by following the example set by Alexander
II. when he emancipated the serfs, namely, by expropriating in part,
and at a fixed price, the estates of the nobility, and selling the
land thus acquired to the peasants upon terms of deferred payment
extending over a long time. The government of Nicholas II., however,
would not listen to this proposition, and the Stolypin ministry is now
trying to satisfy the urgent need of the peasants by selling to them
land that belongs to the state or the crown; by making it easier for
them to buy land through the Peasants' Bank; and by facilitating
emigration to Siberia, where there is supposed to be land enough for
all. None of these measures, however, seems likely to afford more than
partial and temporary relief. Most of the state and crown land in
European Russia is not suitable for cultivation, or it is situated in
northern provinces where agriculture is unprofitable on account of
extremely unfavorable climatic conditions. According to Professor
Maxim Kovalefski, the crown lands of European Russia comprise about
22,000,000 acres. Of the 4,933,000 acres that are arable and well
located, 4,420,000 acres are already leased to the peasants upon terms
that are quite as favorable as they could hope to obtain by purchase,
and the remaining 513,000 acres would afford them no appreciable
relief. In order to give them the same per capita allowance of land
that they had at the time of the emancipation, it would be necessary
to add about 121,000,000 acres to their present holdings, and no such
amount of arable state or crown land is available.[38]

From the operations of the Peasants' Bank little more is to be
expected. In the twenty years of its history it has bought about
17,000,000 acres from landed proprietors, but has disposed of only
3,600,000 acres to peasant communes. The rest it has sold to
associations or land-speculating companies. The extreme need of the
people, moreover, has so forced up the price of land in the black-soil
belt as to make acquisition of it by the poorer class of peasants
almost impossible. Between November 16, 1905, and August 31, 1906, the
bank bought about 5,000,000 acres from landed proprietors, at an
average price of $23.30 per acre, and resold it on bond and mortgage
to individuals, companies, or peasant communes at an average rate of
$24.44 per acre. Comparatively little of this land, however, went into
the possession of the class that needed it most. The 4,997 peasant
families in the district of Voronezh, who can make both ends meet only
by limiting themselves to a per capita allowance of a pound and a
third of rye flour a day, are not financially able to buy land at
$24.44 per acre, and this is the economic condition of hundreds of
thousands of families in the central provinces.[39]

Emigration to Siberia might have lessened the pressure of the growing
population upon the land if it had been resorted to in time; but the
government repeatedly put restrictions upon it, through fear that, if
unchecked, it might result in depriving the landed proprietors of
cheap labor. Count Dmitri Tolstoi, while Minister of the Interior,
openly opposed it, and at one time the Russian periodical press was
not allowed even to discuss it. When at last it was permitted, the
bureaucracy managed it so badly, and paid so little attention to the
distribution and proper settlement of the emigrants in Siberia, that
nearly nineteen per cent. of them returned, practically ruined, to
their old homes in European Russia. In the ten years from 1894 to
1903, 52,000 out of 304,000 emigrants came back from the crown lands
in the Altai, one of the best parts of Siberia; and in the years 1901
and 1902 the percentages of returning emigrants were 53.9 and 68.1. In
other words, more than half of the peasants who made a journey of
fifteen hundred miles to the Altai came back simply because they could
not satisfactorily establish themselves in the country where they had
hoped to find more land and better conditions of life.[40]

If the government fails to relieve the land famine by selling its own
land reserves, by making loans to the people through the Peasants'
Bank, or by promoting emigration to Siberia, it will find itself
threatened by two very serious dangers. On the one hand, the
diminishing power of the peasants to pay taxes will ultimately affect
the national revenue and impair the revenue of the state; and, on the
other hand, the discontent and exasperation of the great class from
which soldiers are drawn will sooner or later infect the army and
lessen the power of the autocracy to enforce its authority. The
government is now drafting about 460,000 recruits a year, and these
conscripts not only share the feelings of the peasantry as a whole,
but belong largely to the very class that has recently been in revolt.
Tens of thousands of them either participated in or sympathized with
the agrarian riots of 1905-6; and not a few of them, remembering how
the troops were then sent against them, solemnly promised their
fellow-villagers, when they joined the colors, that they would never
fire upon their brothers, even if ordered to do so by the Czar
himself. An army of this temper is a weapon that may become very
dangerous to its wielders; and if the discontent and hostility of the
peasants continue to increase with increasing impoverishment, and if
the hundreds of thousands of fresh recruits carry their discontent and
hostility into their barracks, the government may have to deal with
mutinies and revolts much more serious than those of Cronstadt,
Sveaborg, and the Crimea. Certain it is that an army is not likely to
remain loyal when there is wide-spread disaffection in the population
from which it is drawn; and in the present condition, temper, and
attitude of the peasants we may find reasons enough for the "trouble
to come" that Mr. Milyukov predicts.


FOOTNOTES:

[27] Otherwise known as the "Black Hundreds." This reactionary and
terroristic organization impudently pretended to represent the "true
Russian people"; but in the election for the third Duma, when it had
all the encouragement and help that the bureaucracy could give, it was
able to send to the electoral colleges only 72 electors out of a total
number of 5,160. It was composed mainly of the worst elements of the
population, and derived all the power that it had from the support
given to it by the bureaucracy and the police. Without such support it
would have been stamped out of existence in a week by the liberals,
revolutionists, and Jews, who were the chief objects of its attacks.

[28] This was the reply of the Czar to a telegram from the Union of
True Russians thanking him for dissolving the second Duma and
arresting fifty-five of its members on a charge of treason. Eight of
these representatives of the people were afterward sentenced to five
years of penal servitude, nine to four years of penal servitude, and
ten to exile in Siberia as forced colonists. (_Russian Thought_, St.
Petersburg, December, 1907, p. 216.)

When Mr. Milyukov returned to St. Petersburg after the delivery of his
temperate and dispassionate address in New York, the handful of "true
Russians" in the third Duma attacked him with violent and insulting
abuse, and Mr. Vladimir Purishkevich, one of their most influential
leaders, said to him in open session: "You are a poltroon and traitor,
in whose face I would willingly spit!" Such is the spirit of the "true
Russians" whom the Czar has asked to help him in bringing about "the
peaceful regeneration of our great and holy Russia."

[29] The freedom manifesto of October 30, 1905, begins with the words:
"We lay upon Our Government the duty of executing Our inflexible will
by giving to the people the foundations of civil liberty in the form
of real inviolability of personal rights, freedom of conscience,
freedom of speech, freedom of public assembly, and freedom of
organized association."

[30] Stenographic report of the proceedings of the first Russian Duma,
St. Petersburg, July 17, 1906. A large part of the Russian Empire has
been under martial law ever since the assassination of Alexander II.
In 1906 it was in force in sixty-four of the eighty-seven Russian
provinces.

[31] Upon the shoulders of the peasants the whole framework of the
Russian state rests. When the latest census was taken, in 1897, the
peasants numbered 97,000,000 in a total population of 126,000,000.
Since that time the population has increased to 141,000,000, and the
relative proportion of peasants to other classes has grown larger
rather than smaller. (Report of the Russian Statistical Department.
St. Petersburg, August, 1905.)

[32] It is this part of the population that begins to suffer from lack
of food when, for any reason, there is complete or partial failure of
the crops. Twenty million people, in twenty-two provinces, were
reduced to absolute starvation by the famine of 1906, and were kept
alive only by governmental relief on a colossal scale. Famine is
predicted again this year in the provinces of Kaluga, Tula, Tambof,
Samara, Saratof, Viatka, Poltava, and Chernigof. In the province last
named the peasants were already mixing weeds with their rye flour in
November, 1907. (_Nasha Zhizn_, St. Petersburg, May 23. 1906; _Russian
Thought_, St. Petersburg, December, 1907, p. 217.)

[33] Report of the Zemstvo Committee on Agricultural Needs in the
District of Voronezh, Stuttgart, 1903. This report was published in
pamphlet form abroad, because the censor would not allow it to be
printed in Russia.

[34] Report of the Zemstvo Committee on Agricultural Needs in the
District of Voronezh, pp. 33, 34, Stuttgart, 1903.

[35] _Russian Thought_, St. Petersburg. June, 1907, p. 169.

[36] _Russian Thought_, St. Petersburg, June, 1907, p. 124.

[37] Report of the Russian Statistical Department, 1905; and Report to
the Council of Ministers on the state of schools, _Strana_, St.
Petersburg, August 23, 1906.

[38] _Strana_, edited by Professor Maxim Kovalefski, St. Petersburg,
October 7 and 10, 1906.

[39] _Tovarishch_, St. Petersburg, August 26, 1906.

[40] V. Polozof, in _Strana_, St. Petersburg, October 18, 1906.




[Illustration]


"THE HEART KNOWETH"

BY CHARLOTTE WILSON


    Sometimes my little woe is lulled to rest,
    Its clamor shamed by some old poet's page--
    Tumult of hurrying hoof, and battle-rage,
    And dying knight, and trampled warrior-crest.
    Stern faces, old heroic souls unblest,
    Eye me with scorn, as they my grief would gage,
    A mere child, schooled to weep upon the stage,
    Tricked for a part of woe and somber-drest.
    "Lo, who art thou," they ask, "that thou shouldst fret
    To find, forsooth, one single heart undone?
    The page thou turnest there is purple-wet
    With blood that gushed from Caesar overthrown!
    Lo, who art thou to prate of sorrow?" Yet,
    This little woe, it is my own, my own!




IN THE DARK HOUR

BY PERCEVAL GIBBON


The house overlooked the starlit bay, nearly ringed with a sparse
fence of palms, and on its roof, a little scarlet figure on the white
rugs, Incarnacion sat waiting till Scott should come. Below her, the
reeking city was hushed to a murmur, through which there sounded from
the Praca a far throb of drums and pipe-music; and overhead the sky
was a dome of velvet, spangled with a glory of bold stars. Save to the
east, where the blank white walls of the house overlooked the water,
there was on all sides a shadowy prospect of parapets, for in Superban
the houses are close together and folk live intimately upon their
roofs. As she sat, Incarnacion could hear a voice that quavered and
choked as some stricken man labored with his prayers against the
plague that was laying the city waste. Through all Superban such
petitions went up, while daily and nightly the tale of deaths mounted
and the corpses multiplied faster than the graves.

Incarnacion lit herself a cigarette, tucked her feet under her, and
wondered why Scott did not come. But her chief quality was serenity;
she did not give herself over to worry, content to let all problems
solve themselves, as most problems will. She was a wee girl,
preserving on the threshold of sun-ripened womanhood the soft and
pathetic graces of a docile child. Her scarlet dress left her warm
arms bare and did not trespass on the slender throat; she had all the
charm of intrinsic femininity which comes to fruit so early in the
climate of Mozambique and fades so soon. It was this, no doubt, that
had taken Scott and held him; gaunt, harsh, direct in his purposes as
he was quick in his strength, with Incarnacion he found scope for the
tenderness that lurked beneath his rude forcefulness.

He came at last. She heard his step on the stair, cast her cigarette
from her, and sprang to meet him with a little laugh of delight. He
took her in his arms, lifting her from her little bare feet to kiss
her.

"O-oh, Jock, you break me," she gasped, as he set her down. "You are
strong like a bull. What you bin away so long?"

He smiled at her gravely as he let himself down on her rugs and put a
long arm round her. "Did you want me, 'Carnacion?" he asked.

"Me? No," she answered, laughing; "I don' want you, Jock. You go away
twenty--thirty--days; I don' care. Ah, Jock!"

He pressed her close and kissed the crown of her dark head gently. His
strong, keen-featured face was very tender, for this small woman of
the old tropics was all but all the world to him. "You're a little
rip," he said, as he released her. "Make me a cigarette, 'Carnacion.
I've found the boat."

She looked up quickly, while her deft fingers fluttered about the dry
tobacco and the paper. "You find him, Jock?" she asked.

He nodded. "Yes, I've found it," he answered. "She's in a creek, about
six miles down the bay. A big boat, too, with a pretty little cabin
for you to twiddle your thumbs in, 'Carnacion. She's pretty clean,
too; I reckon the old chap must have been getting ready to clear out
in her when he dropped. It's a wonder nobody found her before."

Incarnacion sealed the cigarette carefully, pinched the loose ends
away, kissed it, and put it in his mouth. "Then," she said
thoughtfully, "you take me away to-morrow, Jock?"

He frowned; he was shielding the lighted match in both hands, and it
showed up his drawn brows as he bent to light the cigarette. "I don't
know," he said. "You see, 'Carnacion, there's a good many things I
can't do, and sail a boat is one of 'em. I haven't got a notion how to
set about it, even. I don't know the top end of a sail from the
bottom."

"You make a Kafir do it?" suggested Incarnacion.

He smiled, a brief smile of friendship. "That would do first-rate," he
explained; "only, you see, there's no Kafirs, kiddy. Every nigger that
had ever seen a boat was snapped up a week ago, when the big flit was
happening. That dead-scared crowd that cleared out then took every
single sailorman to ferry 'em down the coast--white, black, and
piebald. And the plain truth of it is, 'Carnacion, I've been up and
down this old rabbit-warren of a city since sun-down, looking for a
sailor, an' the only one I could hear of I found--in the dead-house."

He spat at the parapet upon the memory of that face, where the plague
had done its worst.

"So," remarked Incarnacion gaily. "Then we stop, Jock; we stop here,
eh?"

"There'll be something broken first," retorted Scott. "It's all
bloomin' rot, Incarnacion; you can't have a town this size without a
man in it that can handle a boat--a seaport, too. It isn't sense. It
don't stand to reason."

"There was the Capitan Smeeth," suggested Incarnacion helpfully.

"Just so," said Scott; "there was. He's dead."

Incarnacion crossed herself in silence, and they sat for a while
without speaking. From the Praca the music was still to be heard; some
procession to the great church was in progress, to pray for a
remission of the scourge. Over the line of roofs there was a dull glow
of the watch-fires in the streets; where they sat, Scott and the girl
could smell the pitch that fed them. And, over all, an unseen sick man
gabbled his prayers in a halting monotone. A quick heat of wrath lit
in Scott as his thoughts traveled around the situation; for
Incarnacion sat with her head bowed, playing with her toes, and the
ever-ready terror lest the plague should reach her moved in his heart.
He had been away from Superban when the plague arrived, and though he
had come in on the first word of the news, he had been too late to
find a place for her on the ships that fled down the coast from the
pest. And now that he had found a boat, there was no one to sail her;
in all that terror-ridden city, he could find no man to hold the
tiller and tend the sheet.

"You're feeling all right, eh, 'Carnacion?" he asked sharply.

She turned to him, smiling at once. "All right," she assured him. "An'
you, Jock--you all right, too?"

"Fit as can be," he answered, fingering her hair where it was smooth
and short behind her ear.

"You see," she said. "It is the plague, but the plague don't come for
us, Jock."

"That's right," he said. "You keep your courage up, little girl, an'
we'll be married in Delagoa Bay."

He rose to his feet. "Kiss me good night, 'Carnacion," he said. "I'm
busy these days, an' I can't stop any longer."

She kissed him obediently, giving her fresh lips frankly and eagerly;
and Scott came out to the narrow lane below with the flavor of them
yet on his mouth and new resolution to pursue his quest for a sailor.

He moved on to the Praca, where the stridency of the music still
persisted. Great fires burned at every entrance to the square, so that
between them a man walked in the midst of leaping shadows, as though
his feet were dogged by ghosts. The tall houses around the place were
blind with shuttered windows; from their balconies none watched the
crowd before the great doors of the church. Here a priest stood in a
cart, with a great cross in his hand. His high voice, toneless and
flat, echoed vainly over the heads of the throng, where some knelt in
a passion of prayer, but most stood talking aloud. Through the doors
the lights on the altar were to be seen in the inner gloom, sparkling
from the brass and golden accouterments of the church. Scott
shouldered a road through the crowd, scanning faces expertly. To a big
brown man with empty blue eyes he put the question:

"Can you sail a boat?"

The man stared at him. "Have you got one?" he asked.

"Can you?" repeated Scott. "Do you know anything about sailing a
boat?"

"No," said the other; "but----"

Scott pushed on and left him. In the church, his heart leaped at sight
of a man in the clothes of a Portuguese man-o'-war's-man, asleep by a
pillar--a little swarthy weed of a man. He woke him with a kick, only
to learn, after further kicks, that the man was a stoker and knew as
little about boats as himself. At the door of a confessional lay
another man in the same uniform. A kick failed to wake him, and Scott
bent to shake him. But the hand he stretched out recoiled; the plague
had been before him.

In that time men knew no difference between day and night, for death
knew none, and the traffic of the close, twisted streets never lulled.
The blatant cafés were ablaze with lamps, and in them the tables were
crowded and the fiddles raved and jeered. In one Scott found a chair
to rest in, and sat awhile with liquor before him. He had carried his
search from the shore to the bush, through all the town, and to no
end. Now, mingled with his resolution there was something of
desperation. He sat heavily in thought, his glass in his hand; and
while he brooded, unheeding, the café roared and clattered about him.
To his right, a group of white-clad officers chatted over a languid
game of cards; at his left, a forlorn man sang dolorously to himself.
Others were behind. From these last, as he sat, a word reached him
which woke him from his preoccupation like a thrust of a knife. He sat
without moving, straining his ears.

"De ole captain, he die," said some one; "but hees boat, she lie on de
mud now."

"An' ye know where she is?" demanded another voice, a deeper one.

"Yais," the first speaker replied. He had a voice that purred in
undertones, the true voice of a conspirator.

There was a sound of a fist on the table. "Good for you," said the
deeper voice. "We'll get away by noon, then."

Scott carried his glass to his lips and drained it; then he rose
deliberately in his place and commenced to thread his way out between
the tables. He had to pause to pay the waiter for his drink when he
was a yard or two away; he gave the man an English sovereign, and
thus, while change was procured, he could stand and look at the owners
of the voices. They paid him no attention; he was unsuspected. One of
the men he knew, a tall Italian with a heavy, brutal face, a
knife-fighter of notoriety and a bully. The other was a square, humpy
man, half of whose face was jaw. Not men to put in the company of
little Incarnacion, either of them; Scott's experience of the Coast
spared him any doubts about that. It would be easy, of course, to
settle the matter at once--simply to step up and let his knife into
the Italian, under the neck, where he sat. At that season and in that
place it was an almost obvious remedy; but it would not be less than a
week before he could get clear of the jail, and in that time any one
might find the boat.

He grasped his change and went out. There was only one thing to do: he
must go to the creek where the boat was, and lie in wait for them
there. "Nobody'll miss 'em," he said to himself; "and there's
crocodiles in that creek, all handy."

He struck across the Praca again, between the fires, and down an alley
that would lead him to the beach. The voice of the priest in the cart
seemed to pursue him till he outdistanced it, and he pressed on
briskly. His way was between tall, dark houses; the path lay at their
feet, narrow and tortuous, like some remote cañon. Here was no light,
save when, at the turn of the way, a star swam into view overhead,
pale and cold, and bright as a lantern. Indistinct figures passed him
sometimes; when one came into sight, he would move close to the wall
with a hand on his knife, and the two would edge by one another
watchfully and in silence.

He was almost clear and could smell the sea, when he came round a
corner and met some four or five white figures in the middle of the
way, sheeted like ghosts and walking in silence. There was not a space
to avoid them, and he stopped dead for them to approach and speak--or,
if that was the way of it, to attack. Some of the others stopped too,
but one came on. Scott marked that he walked with a shuffle of his
feet, and made out, by the starlight, that his sheet clung about him
as though it were wet. And, at the same time, he noticed some faint
odor, too vague to put a name to, but sickly and suggestive of
hospitals.

"Go with God," said the figure, when it was close to him. The words
were Portuguese, but the inflection was foreign.

"Are you English?" demanded Scott sharply.

The other had halted a man's length from him. "Ay," he said, "I'm
English."

"Well," said Scott, making to move on, but pointing to where the other
white figures were waiting in a group near by, "what are those chaps
waiting for?"

"They'll not hurt you," answered the other. He mumbled a little when
he spoke, like a man with a full mouth.

"Anyhow," said Scott, "they'd better pass on; I prefer it that way.
Superban's not London, you know."

There came a laugh from the sheet that covered the man's head, short
and harsh. "If it was," he said, "you'd not be meeting us, me lad."

"Who are you?" demanded Scott. Some quality in the man--his manner of
speech, the tone of his laugh, or that faint, unidentifiable
taint--made him uneasy.

"Me?" said the man. "Well, I'll tell you. I'm Captain John Crowder, I
am--what's left of me, and that's a sick soul inside a dead body. And
them"--he made a motion toward the waiting ghosts--"them's my crew
these days. We're the chaps that fetches the dead, we are."

Scott peered at him eagerly, and stepped forward.

The other avoided him by stepping back. "Not too near," he said. "It
ain't sense."

"Captain, you said?" asked Scott. "Er--not a ship-captain, you mean?"

"Ay, I'm a ship-captain right enough," was the answer; "and in my
day----"

Scott interrupted excitedly. "See here," he said. "I've got a boat,
and I want a man to sail her to Delagoa Bay. I'll pay; I'll pay you a
level hundred to start by nine in the morning, cash down on the deck
the minute you're outside the bar. What d'you say to it?"

The sheeted man seemed to stare at him before he answered. "You're on
the run, then?" he mumbled at last. "You're dodging the plague, eh?"

"Yes," said Scott. "A level hundred, an' you can have the boat as
well."

"Man, you must be badly scared," said the other. "What's frightened
you? Are you feared you'll die?"

"Go to blazes," retorted Scott. "Will you come or won't you?"

The man laughed again, the same short cackle of mirth.

"Listen," urged Scott, wiping his forehead. "I've got a--er--I've got
a girl. You say I'm scared. Well, I am scared; every time I think of
her in this plague-rotten place, I go cold to the bone. Is it more
money you want? You can have it. But there's no time to lose; I'm not
the only one that knows about the boat."

"A girl." The other repeated the word, and then stood silent.

"Curse it!" cried Scott, "can't you say the word? Will you come, man?"

"It wouldn't do," said the sheeted man slowly. "You're fond of her,
eh? Ay, but it wouldn't do. Any other man 'u'd suit ye better, me
lad."

"There's no other man," said Scott angrily. "In all this blasted town
there's no man but you. I've been through it like a terrier under a
rick. And I'll tell you what." He took a step nearer; in his pocket
his hand was on his knife. "You can have a hundred and fifty," he
said, "and the boat, if you'll come. An' if you won't, by the Holy
Iron, I'll cut your bloomin' throat here where you stand."

The other did not flinch from him. "Ay, an' you'll do that?" he said.
"I like to hear you talk. Lad, do you know what fashion o' men it is
that serve the dead-carts? Do ye know?" he demanded, seeming to clear
his voice with an effort of the obstacle that hampered his speech.

"What d'you mean?" cried Scott.

"Look at me," bade the man, and drew back the sheet from his face. The
starlight showed him clear.

Scott looked, while his heart slowed down within him, and bowed his
head.

"And shall I steer your girl to Delagoa Bay?" the other asked.

"Yes," said Scott, after a pause. "There's nobody else, leper or not."

"Ah, well," said the leper, with a sigh, "so be it."

Scott fought with himself for mastery of the horror that rose in him
like a tide of fever, and when the leper had put back the sheet and
stood again a figure of the grave, he told him of the boat and how
others knew of it besides himself. In quick, panting sentences he bade
him get forthwith to the creek where the boat lay, directing him to it
through the paths of the night with the sure precision of a man
trained to the trek. He himself would go and fetch Incarnacion and
beat up some provisions, and thus they might get afloat before the
Italian and his mate came on the scene.

"It's every step of six miles," Scott explained. "Are you sure you can
walk it?"

The leper nodded under his hood. "I'll do it," he said. "And if
there's to be a fight, I'm not so far gone but what--" He broke off
with a short spurt of laughter. "It'll be something to feel
deck-planks under me again," he said.

"Then let's be gone," cried Scott.

"Wait." The captain that had been stayed him. "There's just this,
matey. Have a shawl or the like on your girl's shoulders. They wear
'em, you know. An' then, when you come in sight o' me, you can rig it
over her head an' all. For it's--it's truth, no woman should set eyes
on the like o' me."

"I'll do it," said Scott. "You're a man, Captain, anyhow."

"I was," said the other, and turned away.

Scott had a dozen things to do in no more than a pair of hours. They
were not to be done, but he did them. A couple of donkeys were
procured without difficulty; he knew of a stable with a flimsy door. A
revolver, his own small odds and ends, all his money, and such food as
he could lay hands on--by rousing reluctant storekeepers with outcries
and expediting commerce with violence--were got together. Then
Incarnacion must be fetched. She came at once, smiling drowsily, with
a flush of sleep on her little ardent face and all her belongings in a
bundle no bigger than a hat-box. But, with all his urgency, the
eastern sky was stained with dawn before he was clear of the town,
bludgeoning the donkeys before him, with the gear on one and
Incarnacion laughing and crooning on the other.

The beach stretched in a yellow bow on either hand, fringed with bush
and palms, receding to where the ultimate jaws of the bay stood black
and thin against the sunrise. Once upon it, they could be seen by
whoever should look from the town, and there was peremptory occasion
for haste. Scott had counted on forcing the journey into a little over
an hour, but he was not prepared for the eccentricities of a pack
adjusted on a donkey's back by an amateur. There is no art in the
world more arbitrary than that of tying a package on a beast. It must
be done just so, with just such a hitch and such an adjustment of the
burden, or one's rope might as well be of sand. These refinements were
outside Scott's knowledge, and he had not gone far before he saw his
bags and bundles clear themselves and tumble apart. There was a halt
while he picked them up and lashed them on the ass anew. Again and
again it happened, till his patience was raw; and all the time the
steady sun swarmed up the sky and day grew into full being.

Incarnacion sat serenely in her place while these troubles occupied
him, smoking her cigarette and looking about her. He was involved in
an effort to jam the pack and the donkey securely in one overwhelming
intricacy of knots when she called to him.

"Jock," she said.

"Yes, what's up?" he grunted, hauling remorselessly on a line with a
knee against the ass's circumference.

"A man," she said placidly. "He come along, too, behin' us."

"Eh? Where?" he demanded, putting a last knot to the tedious
structure.

Incarnacion pointed to the bush. "I see him poke out hees head two
times," she explained.

Scott passed his hand behind him to his revolver, and stared with
narrow eyes along the green frontier at the bush. He could see
nothing.

"A big man, 'Carnacion?" he asked. "Mustaches? Black hair?"

She nodded and lit another cigarette. "You know him, Jock?"

"I know him," he answered, and drove the donkeys on, thwacking the
pack-ass cautiously for the sake of the load.

It was an anxious passage then, on the open beach. The men who
followed had the cover of the shrubs; theirs was the advantage to
choose the moment of collision. They could shoot at him from their
concealment and flick his brains out comfortably before he could set
eyes on them; or they could shoot the donkeys down, or put a bullet
into Incarnacion where she rode, quiet and regardless of all. He
flogged the beasts on to a trot with a hail of blows, and ran up into
the bush to take an observation.

His foot was barely off the sand of the beach when a shot sounded, and
the wind of the bullet made his eyes smart. Invention was automatic in
his mind. At the noise, he fell forthwith on his face, crashing across
a bush, so that his head was up and his pistol in reach of his hand.
Thus he lay, not moving, but searching through half-closed eyes the
maze of green before him. He heard the rustle of grass, and prepared
for action, every nerve taut; and there came into sight the big
Italian, smiling broadly, a Winchester in his hand.

In Scott's brain some nucleus of motion gave the signal. With a single
movement, his knee crooked under him and he swung the heavy revolver
forward. A howl answered the shot, and he saw the Italian blunder
against a palm, drop his rifle, and scamper out of sight. Firing
again, Scott dashed forward and picked up the Winchester, while from
in front of him the Italian or his companion sent bullet after bullet
about his ears. It was enough of a victory to carry on with, for
Incarnacion would have heard the shots and might come back to him; so
he turned and ran again, and caught her just as she was dismounting.

It was a race now. He silenced the girl's questions sharply, and
thumped the donkeys to a canter, running doggedly behind them with his
stick busy. In the bush, too, there was the noise of hurry; he heard
the crash of feet running, and twice they shot at him. Then
Incarnacion gasped, and held up her cloak to show him a hole through
it; but she was not touched. He swore, but did not cease to flog and
run. The strain told on him; his legs were water, and the sweat stood
on his face in great gouts; and, to embitter the labor, suddenly there
was a shout from ahead. The men had passed him, and he saw the Italian
show himself with a gesture of derision, and disappear again before he
could aim.

"They'll kill the leper," he thought, "and they'll get the boat. But
they'll not get out. I'll be on my belly in the bush then, with this."
And he patted the stock of the Winchester.

"You bin shoot a man, Jock?" asked Incarnacion, as the desperate pace
flagged.

"Not yet," he answered grimly; "but there's time yet, 'Carnacion."

Already he could see, through the slim palms, the straight mast of the
boat against the sky, with its gear about it, not a mile away. He
cocked his ear for the shot that should announce its capture and the
end of the leper.

"Ai, hear that!" exclaimed Incarnacion.

It was a sound of screams--cries of men in stress, traveling thinly
over the distance. Scott checked at it as a horse checks at a snake in
the road, for the cries had a note of wild terror that daunted him.

"You frightened, Jockie?" crooned Incarnacion. "See," she said,
lifting her hand over him, "I make the cross on you."

"It's the confounded mysteriousness that gets me," said Scott, wiping
his forehead. "Here, get on, you beasts. We'll have to take a look at
'em, anyhow."

He strode on between the animals, the rifle in the crook of his arm,
ready for use, and all his senses alert and vivacious. Day was broad
above them now and bitter with the forenoon heat. At their side the
bay was rippled with a capricious breeze, and in all the far prospect
of earth and sea none moved save themselves, detached in a haunting
significance of solitude.

"Ah!" He stopped short and jerked the rifle forward. In the bush ahead
there was a movement; for an instant he saw something white flash
among the palms, and then the Italian burst forth and came toward
them, running all at large, with head down and jolting elbows. He ran
like a man hunted by crazy fears, and did not see Scott till he was
within twenty yards.

"Halt, there, Dago," ordered Scott, and brought the butt to his
shoulder.

The Italian gasped and blundered to his knees, turning on Scott a
glazed and twitching face.

"For peety, for peety!" he quavered.

"Draw that shawl over your face, 'Carnacion," said Scott, without
turning his head. "Can you see now?"

"No," she answered.

He fired, and the Italian sprawled forward on his face, plowing up the
sand with clutching hands.

"Keep the shawl over your eyes, 'Carnacion," directed Scott, and soon
they came round a palm-bunch and were on the bank of the creek, where
a fifteen-ton cutter lay on the mud. A plank lay between her deck and
the shore, and, as they came to it, the captain hailed them from the
cockpit.

"Come aboard," he said. "All's ready."

Scott picked Incarnacion up in his arms, wound another fold of the
shawl about her face, and carried her aboard. He set her down on the
settee in the cabin, released her head, and kissed her fervently. "Now
make yourself comfy here, little 'un," he said; "for here you stay
till we make Delagoa."

He helped her to dispose herself in the cabin, showed her its
arrangements, and saw her curious delight in the little space-saving
contrivances. Then he went out, closing the door behind him. It did
not occur to him to render her any explanations; what Scott did was
always sufficient for Incarnacion.

Again on deck, he found the swathed leper busy, and started when he
saw, along the banks of the creek, a gang of shrouded figures at work
with a hawser.

"My crew," said the captain. "They're to haul us off the mud."

"Then," said Scott, "it was them----"

The leper laughed. "Ay, they ran from us," he said. "They ran from the
lazaretto-hands. The one we caught, we put him overside for the
crocodiles; an' you got the other."

"They chased him?" asked Scott, trembling with the thought.

"Ay," said the leper; "they uncovered their faces and they chased. Ye
heard the squealing?"

He broke off to oversee his gang. "Make fast on that stump!" he
called. In spite of the disease that blurred his speech, there was the
authority of the quarter-deck in his voice. "Now, all hands tally on
and walk her down." And the silent lepers in their grave-clothes
ranged themselves on the rope like the ghosts of drowned seamen.

When the mainsail filled and the cutter heeled to the breeze, pointing
fair for the bar, the leper looked back. Scott followed his glance. On
the spit by the mouth of the creek stood the white figures in a little
group, lonely and voiceless, and over them the palms floated against
the sky like tethered birds.

"There was some that was almost Christians," said the captain;
"they'll miss me, they will." And after a pause he added: "And I'll be
missing them, too; for they was my mates."

There were six days of sailing ere the captain made his landfall, and
they stood off till evening. Then he put in to where the sea shelved
easily on a beach four or five miles south of the town, and it was
time to part.

"You can wade ashore," said the leper.

Scott opened the doors of the little cabin. On the settee Incarnacion
lay asleep, her dark hair tumbled about her warm face. He was about to
wake her, but stayed his hand and drew back. "You can look," he said
to the leper in a whisper.

The shrouded man bent and looked in; Scott marked that he held his
breath. For a full minute he stared in silence, his shoulders blocking
the little door; then he drew back.

"Ay," he murmured, "it's like that they are, lad; and it's grand to be
a man--it's grand to be a man!"

Scott closed the doors gently. "If ever there was a man," he began,
but choked and stopped. "What will you do now?" he asked.

"Oh, I'll just be gettin' back," said the leper. "You see, there's
them lads--my crew. It was me made a crew of 'em in that lazaretto.
They was just stinking heathen till I come. An' I sort of miss 'em, I
do."

"Will you shake hands?" said Scott, torn by a storm of emotions.

The leper shook his head. "You've the girl to think of," he said. "But
good luck to the pair of ye. Ye'll make a fine team."

Half an hour later Scott and Incarnacion stood together on the beach
and watched the cutter's lights as she stood on a bowline to seaward.

"Kiss your hand to it, darling," said Scott.

"I bin done it," answered Incarnacion.




[Illustration: The Audrey Arms Oxbridge Middlesex

Miss Terry's country cottage from 1887 to 1890]




"OLIVIA" AND "FAUST" AT THE LYCEUM[41]

BY ELLEN TERRY

ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS AND FROM DRAWINGS BY ERIC PAPE AND
HARRY FENN


The first night of "Olivia" at the Lyceum was about the only
_comfortable_ first night that I have ever had! I was familiar with
the part, and two of the cast, Terriss and Norman Forbes, were the
same as at the Court, which made me feel all the more at home. Henry
left a great deal of the stage-management to us, for he knew that he
could not improve on Mr. Hare's production. Only he insisted on
altering the last act, and made a bad matter worse. The division into
two scenes wasted time, and nothing was gained by it. _Never_
obstinate, Henry saw his mistake and restored the original end after a
time. It was weak and unsatisfactory, but not pretentious and bad,
like the last act he presented at the first performance.

We took the play too slowly at the Lyceum. That was often a fault
there. Because Henry was slow, the others took their time from him,
and the result was bad.

The lovely scene of the vicarage parlour, in which we used a
harpsichord, and were accused of pedantry for our pains, did not look
so well at the Lyceum as at the Court. The stage was too big for it.

The critics said that I played Olivia better at the Lyceum, but I did
not feel this myself.

At first Henry did not rehearse the Vicar at all well. One day, when
he was stamping his foot very much as if he were Mathias in "The
Bells," my little Edy, who was a terrible child _and_ a wonderful
critic, said:

"Don't go on like that, Henry. Why don't you talk as you do to me and
Teddy? At home you _are_ the Vicar."

The child's frankness did not offend Henry, because it was
illuminating. A blind man had changed his Shylock; a little child
changed his Vicar. When the first night came, he gave a simple,
lovable performance. Many people now understood and liked him as they
had never done before. One of the things I most admired in it was his
sense of the period.

[Illustration: ELLEN TERRY AS "OLIVIA"

FROM A DRAWING BY ERIC PAPE]

[Illustration: _Copyrighted by Window & Grove_

ELLEN TERRY AS OLIVIA]

In this, as in other plays, he used to make his entrance in the _skin_
of the part. No need for him to rattle a ladder at the side to get up
excitement and illusion, as another actor is said to have done. He
walked on and was the simple-minded old clergyman, just as he had
walked on a prince in "Hamlet" and a king in "Charles I."

A very handsome woman, descended from Mrs. Siddons and looking exactly
like her, played the Gipsy in "Olivia." The likeness was of no use,
because the possessor of it had no talent. What a pity!


_"Olivia" a Family Play_

"Olivia" has always been a family play. Edy and Ted walked on the
stage for the first time in the Court "Olivia." In later years Ted
played Moses, and Edy made her first appearance in a speaking part as
Polly Flamborough, and has since played both Sophia and the Gipsy. My
brother Charlie's little girl, Beatrice, made her first appearance as
Bill, a part which her sister Minnie had already played; my sister
Floss played Olivia on a provincial tour, and my sister Marion played
it at the Lyceum when I was ill.

I saw Floss in the part, and took from her a lovely and sincere bit of
"business." In the third act, where the Vicar has found his erring
daughter and has come to take her away from the inn, I always
hesitated at my entrance, as if I were not quite sure what reception
my father would give me after what had happened. Floss, in the same
situation, came running in and went straight to her father, quite sure
of his love, if not of his forgiveness.

I did _not_ take some business which Marion did on Terriss'
suggestion. Where Thornhill tells Olivia that she is not his wife, I
used to thrust him away with both hands as I said "Devil!"

"It's very good, Nell, very fine," said Terriss to me, "but, believe
me, you miss a great effect there. You play it grandly, of course, but
at that moment you miss it. As you say 'Devil!' you ought to strike me
full in the face."

"Oh, don't be silly, Terriss," I said. "Olivia is not a pugilist."

Of course I saw, apart from what was dramatically fit, what would
happen!

However, Marion, very young, very earnest, very dutiful, anxious to
please Terriss, listened eagerly to the suggestion during an
understudy rehearsal.

[Illustration: _Copyrighted by Window & Grove_

HENRY IRVING AS THE VICAR]

"No one could play this part better than your sister Nell," said
Terriss to the attentive Marion, "but, as I always tell her, she does
miss one great effect. When you say 'Devil! hit me bang in the face."

"Thank you for telling me," said Marion gratefully.

"It will be much more effective," said Terriss.

It _was_. When the night came for Marion to play the part, she struck
out, and Terriss had to play the rest of the scene with a handkerchief
held to his bleeding nose!


_Ellen Terry and Eleanora Duse_

I think it was as Olivia that Eleanora Duse first saw me act. She had
thought of playing the part herself sometime, but she said: "_Never_
now!" No letter about my acting ever gave me the same pleasure as this
from her:

     "MADAME: With Olivia you have given me pleasure and pain.
     _Pleasure_ by your noble and sincere art--_pain_ because I
     feel sad at heart when I see a beautiful and generous woman
     give her soul to art--as you do--when it is life itself,
     your heart itself, that speaks tenderly, sorrowfully, nobly
     beneath your acting. I cannot rid myself of a certain
     melancholy when I see artists as noble and distinguished as
     you and Mr. Irving. Although you are strong enough (with
     continual labor) to make life subservient to art, I, from my
     standpoint, regard you as forces of nature itself, which
     should have the right to exist for themselves instead of for
     the crowd. I would not venture to disturb you, Madame, and
     moreover I have so much to do that it is impossible for me
     to tell you personally all the great pleasure you have given
     me, because I have felt your heart. Will you believe, dear
     Madame, in mine, which asks no more at this moment than to
     admire you and to tell you so in any manner whatsoever.

                                   "Always yours,
                                   "E. Duse."[42]

It was worth having lived to get that letter!

[Illustration: _From a drawing by the Marchioness of Granby_

H. BEERBOHM TREE WHO PLAYED WITH ELLEN TERRY IN "THE AMBER HEART"]


"_Faust_"

A claptrappy play "Faust" was, no doubt, but Margaret was the part I
liked better than any other--outside Shakespeare. I played it
beautifully sometimes. The language was often very commonplace, not
nearly as poetic or dramatic as that of "Charles I.," but the
character was all right--simple, touching, sublime. The Garden Scene I
know was a _bourgeois_ affair. It was a bad, weak love-scene, but
George Alexander as Faust played it admirably. Indeed, he always acted
like an angel with me; he was so malleable, ready to do anything. He
was launched into the part at very short notice, after H. B. Conway's
failure on the first night. Poor Conway! It was Coghlan as Shylock all
over again.

[Illustration: ELEANORA DUSE WITH LENBACH'S CHILD

FROM THE PAINTING BY FRANZ VON LENBACH]

Conway was a descendant of Lord Byron, and he had a look of the
_handsomest_ portraits of the poet. With his bright hair curling
tightly all over his well-shaped head, his beautiful figure, and
charming presence, he created a sensation in the eighties almost equal
to that made by the more famous beauty, Lily Langtry. As an actor he
belonged to the Terriss type, but he was not nearly as good as
Terriss.

Henry called a rehearsal the next day--on Sunday, I think. The company
stood about in groups on the stage, while Henry walked up and down,
speechless, but humming a tune occasionally, always a portentous sign
with him. The scene set was the Brocken scene, and Conway stood at
the top of the slope, as far away from Henry as he could get! He
looked abject. His handsome face was very red, his eyes full of tears.
He was terrified at the thought of what was going to happen. As for
Henry, he was white as death, but he never let pain to himself (or
others) stand in the path of duty to his public, and his public had
shown that they wanted another Faust. The actor was summoned to the
office, and presently Loveday came out and said that Mr. George
Alexander would play Faust the following night.

[Illustration: _Copyrighted by Window & Grove_

ELLEN TERRY AS ELLALINE IN "THE AMBER HEART"

FROM THE COLLECTION OF MISS FRANCES JOHNSTON]


_George Alexander and the Barmaids_

Alec had been wonderful as Valentine the night before, and as Faust he
more than justified Henry's belief in him. After that he never looked
back. He had come to the Lyceum for the first time in 1882, an unknown
quantity from a stock company in Glasgow, to play Caleb Decie in "The
Two Roses." He then left us for a time, returned for "Faust," and
remained in the Lyceum Company for some years, playing all Terriss'
parts.

Alexander had the romantic quality which was lacking in Terriss, but
there was a kind of shy modesty about him which handicapped him when
he played Squire Thornhill in "Olivia." "Be more dashing, Alec!" I
used to say to him. "Well, I do my best," he said. "At the hotels I
chuck all the barmaids under the chin, and pretend I'm a dog of a
fellow, for the sake of this part!" Conscientious, dear, delightful
Alec! No one ever deserved success more than he did, and used it
better when it came, as the history of St. James' Theatre under his
management proves. He had the good luck to marry a wife who was clever
as well as charming, and could help him.

The original cast of "Faust" was never improved upon. What Martha was
ever so good as Mrs. Stirling? The dear old lady's sight had failed
since "Romeo and Juliet," but she was very clever at concealing it.
When she let Mephistopheles in at the door, she used to drop her work
on the floor, so that she could find her way back to her chair. I
never knew why she dropped it--she used to do it so naturally, with a
start, when Mephistopheles knocked at the door--until one night when
it was in my way and I picked it up, to the confusion of poor Mrs.
Stirling, who nearly walked into the orchestra.


_"Faust" a Paradoxical Success_

"Faust" was abused a good deal--as a pantomime, a distorted caricature
of Goethe, and a thoroughly inartistic production. But it proved the
greatest of all Henry's financial successes. The Germans who came to
see it, oddly enough, did not scorn it nearly as much as the English
who were sensitive on behalf of the Germans, and the Goethe Society
wrote a tribute to Henry Irving after his death, acknowledging his
services to Goethe!

It is a curious paradox in the theatre that the play for which every
one has a good word is often the play which no one is going to see,
while the play which is apparently disliked and run down has crowded
houses every night.

Our preparations for the production of "Faust" included a delightful
"grand tour" of Germany. Henry, with his accustomed royal way of doing
things, took a party which included my daughter Edy, Mr. and Mrs.
Comyns Carr, and Mr. Hawes Craven, who was to paint the scenery. We
bought nearly all the properties used in "Faust" in Nuremberg, and
many other things which we did not use, that took Henry's fancy. One
beautifully carved escutcheon, the finest armorial device I ever saw,
he bought at this time, and presented it in after years to the famous
American connoisseur, Mrs. Jack Gardner. It hangs now in one of the
rooms of her palace at Boston.

It was when we were going in the train along one of the most beautiful
stretches of the Rhine that Sally Holland, who accompanied us as my
maid, said: "Uncommon pretty scenery, dear, I must say!"

When we laughed uncontrollably, she added: "Well, dear, _I_ think so!"

[Illustration: _Copyrighted by the London Stereoscopic Co._

HENRY IRVING AS MEPHISTOPHELES IN "FAUST"

FROM THE DRAWING BY BERNARD PARTRIDGE]


_Irving on Long Runs_

During the run of "Faust" Henry visited Oxford, and gave his address
on "Four Actors" (Burbage, Betterton, Garrick, Kean). He met there one
of the many people who had recently been attacking him on the ground
of too long runs and too much spectacle. He wrote me an amusing
account of the duel between them:

"I had supper last night at New College after the affair. A. was
there, and I had it out with him--to the delight of all.

"'_Too much decoration_' etc., etc.

"I asked him what there was in Faust in the matter of appointments,
etc., that he would like left out.

"Answer--nothing.

"'Too long runs.'

"'You, sir, are a poet,' I said. 'Perhaps it may be my privilege some
day to produce a play of yours. Would you like it to have a long run
or a short one?' (Roars of laughter.)

"Answer: 'Well, er, well, of course, Mr. Irving, you--well--well, a
short run, of course, for _art_, but----'

"'Now, sir, you're on oath,' said I. 'Suppose that the fees were
rolling in £10 and more a night--would you rather the play were a
failure or a success?'

"'Well, well, as _you_ put it, I must say--er--I would rather my play
had a _long_ run!'

"A. floored!

"He has all his life been writing articles running down good work and
crying up the impossible, and I was glad to show him up a bit!

"The Vice-Chancellor made a most lovely speech after the address--an
eloquent and splendid tribute to the stage.

"Bourchier presented the address of the 'Undergrads.' I never saw a
young man in a greater funk--because, I suppose, he had imitated me so
often!

"From the address: 'We have watched with keen and enthusiastic
interest the fine intellectual quality of all these representations,
from Hamlet to Mephistopheles, with which you have enriched the
contemporary stage. To your influence we owe deeper knowledge and more
reverent study of the master mind of Shakespeare.' All very nice
indeed!"


_Irving's Mephistopheles_

I never cared much for Henry's Mephistopheles--a twopence coloured
part, anyway. Of course he had his moments,--he had them in every
part,--but they were few. One of them was in the Prologue, when he
wrote in the student's book, "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and
evil." He never looked at the book, and the nature of the _spirit_
appeared suddenly in a most uncanny fashion.

Another was in the Spinning-wheel Scene, when Faust defies
Mephistopheles, and he silences him with "_I am a spirit_." Henry
looked to grow a gigantic height--to hover over the ground instead of
walking on it. It was terrifying.

[Illustration: _From the collection of Robert Coster_

ELLEN TERRY

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN ABOUT 1885, THE YEAR IN WHICH "OLIVIA" AND
"FAUST" WERE PRODUCED AT THE LYCEUM]

I made valiant efforts to learn to spin before I played Margaret. My
instructor was Mr. Albert Fleming, who, at the suggestion of Ruskin,
had recently revived hand-spinning and hand-weaving in the north of
England. I had always hated that obviously "property" spinning-wheel
in the opera and Margaret's unmarketable thread. My thread always
broke, and at last I had to "fake" my spinning to a certain extent,
but at least I worked my wheel right and gave an impression that I
could spin my pound of thread a day with the best!

[Illustration: _Copyrighted by Window & Grove_

ELLEN TERRY'S FAVOURITE PHOTOGRAPH AS OLIVIA

FROM THE COLLECTION OF MISS EVELYN SMALLEY]

Two operatic stars did me the honour to copy my Margaret dress--Madame
Albani and Madame Melba. It was rather odd, by the way, that many
mothers who would take their daughters to see the opera of "Faust"
would not bring them to see the Lyceum play. One of these mothers was
Princess Mary of Teck, a constant patron of most of our plays.

Other people "missed the music." The popularity of an opera will often
kill a play, although the play may have existed before the music was
ever thought of. The Lyceum "Faust" held its own against Gounod. I
liked our incidental music to the action much better. It was taken
from Berlioz and Lassen, except for the Brocken music, which was the
original composition of Hamilton Clarke.


_"Faust's" Four Hundred Ropes_

In many ways "Faust" was our heaviest production. About four hundred
ropes were used, each rope with a name. The list of properties and
instructions to the carpenters became a joke among the theatre staff.
When Henry first took "Faust" into the provinces, the head carpenter
at Liverpool, Myers by name, being something of a humorist, copied out
the list on a long, thin sheet of paper which rolled up like a royal
proclamation. Instead of "God save the Queen," he wrote at the foot,
with many flourishes:

"God help Bill Myers!"

[Illustration: ELLEN TERRY AS OLIVIA AND HENRY IRVING AS THE VICAR IN
WILLS' PLAY "OLIVIA"

FROM A DRAWING BY ERIC PAPE]

The crowded houses at "Faust" were largely composed of "repeaters," as
Americans call those charming playgoers who come to see a play again
and again. We found favour with the artists and musicians, too, even
in "Faust"! Here is a nice letter I got during the run (it _was_ a
long one) from that gifted singer and good woman, Madame Antoinette
Sterling:

     "My dear Miss Terry,

     "I was quite as disappointed as yourself that you were not
     at St. James' Hall last Monday for my concert.... Jean
     Ingelow said she enjoyed the afternoon very much....

     "I wonder if you would like to come to luncheon some day and
     have a little chat with her, but perhaps you already know
     her. I love her dearly. She has one fault--she never goes to
     the theatre. Oh, my! What she misses, poor thing, poor
     thing! We have already seen Faust twice, and are going again
     soon, and shall take the George Macdonalds this time. The
     Holman Hunts were delighted. He is one of the most
     interesting and clever men I have ever met, and she is very
     charming and clever, too. How beautifully plain you write!
     Give me the recipe. With many kind greetings,

     "Believe me, sincerely yours,

                                   "ANTOINETTE STERLING MACKINLAY."

In "Faust" Violet Vanbrugh "walked on" for the first time.

My girl Edy was an "angel" in the last act. This reminds me that Henry
one Valentine's Day sent me some beautiful flowers with this little
rhyme:

    White and red roses,
    Sweet and fresh posies:
    One bunch, for Edy, _Angel_ of mine--
    Big bunch for Nell, my dear Valentine.

[Illustration: ELLEN TERRY AS MARGUERITE IN "FAUST"

FROM A DRAWING BY ERIC PAPE]

Henry Irving has often been attacked for not preferring Robert Louis
Stevenson's "Macaire" to the version which he actually produced in
1883. It would have been hardly more unreasonable to complain of his
producing "Hamlet" in preference to Mr. Gilbert's "Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern." Stevenson's "Macaire" may have all the literary quality
that is claimed for it, although I personally think Stevenson was only
making a delightful idiot of himself in it! Anyhow, it is frankly a
burlesque, a skit, a satire on the real "Macaire." The Lyceum was
_not_ a burlesque house! Why should Henry have done it?

It was funny to see Toole and Henry rehearsing together for "Macaire."
Henry was always _plotting_ to be funny. When Toole, as Jacques Strop,
hid the dinner in his pocket, Henry, after much labour, thought of his
hiding the plate inside his waistcoat. There was much laughter later
on when Macaire, playfully tapping Strop with his stick, cracked the
plate, and the pieces fell out! Toole hadn't to bother about such
subtleties, and Henry's deep-laid plans for getting a laugh must have
seemed funny to dear Toole, who had only to come on and say "Whoop!"
and the audience roared.

Henry's death as Macaire was one of a long list of splendid deaths.
Macaire knows the game is up and makes a rush for the French windows
at the back of the stage. The soldiers on the stage shoot him before
he gets away. Henry did not drop, but turned round, swaggered
impudently down to the table, leaned on it, then suddenly rolled over,
dead.

Henry's production of "Werner" for one matinée was to do some one a
good turn, and when Henry did a good turn he did it magnificently. We
rehearsed the play as carefully as if we were in for a long run.
Beautiful dresses were made for me by my friend Alice Carr, but when
we had given that one matinée they were put away for ever. The play
may be described as gloom, gloom, gloom. It was worse than "The Iron
Chest."

While Henry was occupying himself with "Werner" I was pleasing myself
with "The Amber Heart," a play by Alfred Calmour, a young man who was
at this time Wills' secretary. I wanted to do it, not only to help
Calmour, but because I believed in the play and liked the part of
Ellaline. I had thought of giving a matinée of it at some other
theatre, but Henry, who at first didn't like my doing it at all, said:
"You must do it at the Lyceum. I can't let you, or it, go out of the
theatre."

So we had the matinée at the Lyceum. Mr. Willard and Mr. Beerbohm Tree
were in the cast, and it was a great success. For the first time Henry
saw me act--a whole part and from the "front," at least, for he had
seen and liked scraps of my Juliet from the "side." Although he had
known me such a long time, my Ellaline seemed to come quite as a
surprise. "I wish I could tell you of the dream of beauty that you
realised," he wrote after the performance. He bought the play for me,
and I continued to do it "on and off," in England and in America,
until 1902.

Many people said that I was good, but that the play was bad. This was
hard on Alfred Calmour. He had created the opportunity for me, and few
plays with the beauty of "The Amber Heart" have come my way since. "He
thinks it's all his doing!" said Henry. "If he only knew!" "Well,
that's the way of authors!" I answered. "They imagine so much more
about their work than we put into it that although we may seem to the
outsider to be creating, to the author we are, at our best, only doing
our duty by him!"

Our next production was "Macbeth"; but meanwhile we had visited
America three times. In the next chapter I shall give an account of my
tours in America, of my friends there; and of some of the impressions
that the vast, wonderful country made on me.

[Illustration]


FOOTNOTES:

[41] _Copyright, 1908, by Ellen Terry_ (_Mrs. Carew_)

[42] Madame: Avec Olivia vous m'avez donné bonheur et peine. _Bonheur_
par votre art qui est noble et sincère--_peine_ car je sens tristesse
au coeur de voir une belle et généreuse nature de femme, donner son
âme à l'art--comme vous le faites--quand c'est la vie même, votre
coeur même, qui parle tendrement, douleureusement, noblement sous
votre jeu. Je ne puis pas me débarrasser d'une certaine tristesse
quand je vois des artistes si nobles et hauts tels que vous et
Monsieur Irving. Si vous deux vous êtes si fortes de soumettre (avec
un travail continuel) la vie à l'art, moí de mon coin, je vous regarde
comme des forces de la nature même qui auraient droit de vivre pour
eux-mêmes et pas pour la foule. Je n'ose pas vous déranger, Madame, et
d'ailleurs j'ai tant à faire aussi, qu'il m'est impossible de vous
dire de vive voix tout le grand plaisir que vous m'avez donnée, mais
parce que j'ai senti votre coeur. Veuillez, chère madame, croire au
mien qui ne demande pas mieux dans cet instant que vous admirer et
vous le dire tant bien que mal d'une manière quelconque.

Bien à vous,

E. Duse.




THE LIE DIRECT

BY

CAROLINE DUER


Two men went up into the sanctum sanctorum of the Quill Drivers' Club
to lunch. The younger was a writer of fiction and the elder a
clergyman, his friend and guest, by chance encountered on a rare visit
to town.

They were evidently absorbed in discussion when they sat down, for the
host hardly interrupted himself long enough to give the briefest of
orders to the attendant waiter before he leaned forward across the
table and resumed eagerly: "Let the critics rage furiously together if
they will"--referring to a controversy excited by one of his late
stories. "The thing is going to stand! I believe, and I'll go bail
there's no reasonable person who doesn't believe, that falsehood is
justifiable, and more than justifiable, on many occasions."

"Only everybody will differ as to the occasions," put in the
clergyman, the humor in the corners of his eyes counterbalanced by the
graveness of the lines about his mouth.

"I'll go further than that," continued the writer, striking his hand
on the table impressively. "In the circumstances as I described them I
won't call it falsehood! I agree with whoever it was who said that one
lied only when one intentionally deceived a person who had a right to
know the truth."

"And suppose," said the clergyman, with sudden earnestness, "the
knowledge of the truth would be cruel, painful, harmful even, to the
person who had the right to it. What then? Would you still owe it to
him, or not?"

"Why, then, of course, I wouldn't tell it," answered the other. "You
might call it what you liked. I suppose it would be a passive lie, if
you're particular about its front name; but there have been lots of
fine ones, actively and passively told, since the world began."

"Fine?" echoed the clergyman thoughtfully. "I wonder!"

"Fitting, proper, expedient," amended the writer impatiently.

"Fitting, proper, expedient," repeated the clergyman--"even when the
result appeared to justify it. I--wonder!"

He sank into a reverie so profound that the younger man had to call
his attention to the fact that food was being offered to him; and then
he helped himself mechanically, as if his mind had drifted too far to
be immediately recalled to material things.

"I wonder!" he said again vaguely, his eyes, sad and thoughtful, fixed
upon distance.

"I was once, you see," he went on, making a sudden effort and looking
his companion in the face with a directness that was almost
disconcerting. "I was once involved in a case where such a lie had
been told, and I--well, I am inclined, if you have no objections, to
tell you the whole story and let you judge.

"Some years ago I broke down from over-work and worry, and was ordered
away for my health. I chose to travel about my own country, and at a
hotel in a certain place where many people go to recover from
imaginary ailments I met a man who was being slowly crippled forever
by a real and incurable one. His place at the table was next to mine,
and every day he was brought in, in his wheeled chair, from the
sunniest corner of the piazza, fed neatly and expeditiously by his
manservant (his own hands were almost useless), and fetched away
again. During the meal when I first sat beside him we entered into
conversation, and I found him so cultivated, charming, and humorous a
companion that for the rest of my stay I neglected no opportunity of
indulging myself in his society."

"Of course it was no indulgence at all to him," said the writer, whose
affectionate regard for his friend was one of long standing.

"I hope so," answered the other, "and, indeed, I had every reason to
suppose that the liking which sprang up between us was no less on his
side than on my own. We were mutually attracted in spite of, or
perhaps _because_ of, our fundamental differences in disposition,
opinions, beliefs; though no Christian could have borne affliction
with a braver patience than he--the braver in that he did not look to
a hereafter for comfort."

"A continuous powder and no jam to come," threw in the writer, with
the glare of battle in his eye, for he also had opinions and beliefs
at variance with those of his companion. "There are a good many of us
who have to face that."

"Not many in worse case than he," returned the clergyman gently,
declining to be drawn into discussion. "But although the use of his
limbs was denied him, he took a keener delight than any man I have
ever known in the compensations that his mind, through books, and his
senses, through contact with the outer world, brought him. Beauty of
color and form, beauty in nature, beauty in people, was an exquisite
pleasure to him, and music an intense--I had almost said a sacred
passion. He drank in lovely sights and sweet sounds with an almost
painful appreciation, and I remember well his telling me in his
whimsical way--it was during one of the last conversations I had with
him before my departure--that, travel about as I would with my mere
automatic arms and legs, I could never overtake such happiness as he
did on the wings of harmony.

"We corresponded, from time to time, for a year or two, I in the usual
manner and he by means of dictation to his servant, who was an earnest
if somewhat poor performer on the type-writer. But gradually the
thread of our intercourse was broken in some way and our letters
ceased."

"I've always said that nothing but community of interests preserved
friendship," declared the writer sententiously, "with the exception,
of course, of our own."

"I was surprised, therefore," went on the clergyman, "to receive about
eighteen months ago a brief note telling me that a great sorrow and a
great joy had come into his life almost simultaneously, and begging me
to go to him, if he might so far trespass upon our acquaintance, as he
had 'matters about which it behooved a man'--I am repeating his
words--'to consult another wiser than himself.' I started at once. It
took me all day to accomplish the journey, and it was early evening
when I arrived at the little station he had mentioned as the place
where he would send somebody to meet me. I found the carriage without
difficulty, and was driven for some five miles through the beautiful
autumn woods.

"It was a low, square, comfortable-looking paper-weight of a house,"
he went on after a moment, "beaming welcome from an open front door,
where my friend's confidential servant stood waiting for me. He
conducted me at once to my room, saying that dinner would be served as
soon as I could make myself ready and join his master in the library.
This I made haste to do. I found my friend in his wheeled chair, near
a cheerfully crackling fire in a delightful room lined with books from
its scarlet-carpeted floor to its oak-beamed ceiling. He welcomed me
warmly and yet with a certain constraint, and I felt--it might have
been some subtle thought-transference--that the thing he had it in his
mind to discuss with me was one which only an extremity of trouble
would have induced him to discuss with any man.

"Dinner was announced almost before our first greetings were over, and
an excellent dinner it was--cooked by an old woman who, he declared,
had virtually ruled him and the house ever since he could remember,
and waited upon by the man, who also attended to his master's peculiar
needs with the utmost swiftness and dexterity. The household, I
subsequently learned, consisted of only these two, an elderly
housemaid, and the white-haired coachman who had driven me from the
station.

"'Why they stay with me in this out-of-the-way place, without a
grumble, all the year round, I can't see,' said my host, after our
meal was over and we were once more alone in the library. 'And, by the
way,' he added, turning his face toward me suddenly,--I don't know
whether I have mentioned that he had a particularly handsome
face,--'apropos of seeing, what I have not seen before I shall have no
further chance of informing myself about now, for I have become, in
these last six months, completely blind.'

"The unexpected horror of the announcement, the shock of it, left me
for the moment speechless. But I looked at him and saw, what I suppose
I might in a more direct light have noticed before, that his eyes had
the dull, dumb stare of blindness. Before the inarticulate sound of
pity I made could have reached him, he continued:

"'I used to tell myself, quite sincerely, I think, that as long as I
had an eye or an ear left I'd not waste my time envying any other man.
Nature seems to have been afraid I'd see too much, so she has cut off
my powers of vision. That is the great sorrow that has come to me. The
great joy, if I may accept it (and it is about that that I have been
driven by my conscience to consult you), is that I have found--or
perhaps, as that suggests a certain amount of activity on my part,
I'd better say _Fate_ has found for me--here, living at my very gates,
a woman who loves me!'

"He appeared to dread interruption, for he went on hurriedly:
'Extraordinary, isn't it? But let me tell you how it happened. I've a
garden out there to the south, and last summer, soon after this thing
first came upon me, I used to have myself wheeled there and left in
the shade for hours to think things out where I could feel light and
color and fresh air about me. On the other side of my wall is her
cottage, and one day she began to play, play like an angel. You know
how that would move me. I sent a note to her telling her that a blind
beggar had been lifted into heaven for a little while by her music,
and would be glad if, of her clemency, he might sometimes be so lifted
again. After that she played to me every day, and so, she being
alone--for her mother, it seems, had died early in the spring, soon
after they came--and I being lonely, we gradually drifted into--Oh, I
know it's monstrous!' he exclaimed, breaking off in his recital, and
evidently afraid of the mental recoil he suspected in me, 'monstrous
to consider that a beautiful young woman should bear the name, even,
of wife to me; but she is very poor, and now entirely desolate. I am,
comparatively speaking, well off, and I cannot live long! I shall at
least leave her better able to fight the world. You'll think I could
do that, I suppose, in any event, for a man such as I am--a sightless
head in command of a body that cannot move hand or foot--might _will_
what he pleased to any woman without exciting adverse comment; but I
ask you, haven't I the right to allow myself the happiness of her near
companionship for whatever time it may be before I die? It seems to me
that I have, since, instead of shrinking from me, she loves me, and is
willing, indeed,--bless her wonderful heart for it,--_wilful_ to marry
me. What time is it?' he cried abruptly, turning his blank eyes toward
the clock on the mantelpiece.

"'Five minutes before nine,' I answered.

"'She will be here directly,' he said. 'I had a piano of my mother's
put in order and moved in here as soon as the garden grew too cold for
me. She comes every evening to play to me. You will see her with me,
and alone if you like, and to-morrow you must tell me, man to man,
what you think I ought or ought not to do. She knows that I was to
write and put the case before you, but she will be surprised to find
you here.'

"'I will do my best,' said I, infinitely moved, 'to make friends with
her.'

"'I wish I could tell what you are thinking now!' he cried out with
sudden passion, and then, before I could reply, he said, 'Hush! I hear
her in the hall.'

"All the excitement died out of his face, leaving it white and drawn,
but peaceful. I had heard nothing.

"'She's coming,' he whispered, 'and she'll be so embarrassed, poor,
pretty soul. She thinks it's of no account, her being pretty, but I
tell her that, blind as I am, I think I _feel_ the atmosphere of her
beauty, and if she were plain she would not please me so.'

"As he spoke the curtains in front of the doorway parted. My eyes,
lifted to the height of fair tallness they expected to encounter,
looked for an instant upon vacancy. Then they dropped to meet those of
a grotesque and piteous little hunchback, whose agonized gaze cried to
me, as did the hitching of her poor shoulders and the sudden trembling
flutter of her hands to her mouth: 'For God's sake, don't betray me!'

"He leaned his head a little on one side, listening to the silence.
Then he said to me, laughing: 'Is she as charming as all that? Or do
you refrain from speech for fear of alarming her?'

"She stood quite still, her sharp-featured, tragic face, with its halo
of reddish hair, raised toward mine, and her expression imploring,
pleading, mutely compelling me.

"I had to answer his question.

"'Both,' I said.

"As I finished he called to her: 'I always knew you were lovely, Rica,
but this is a real tribute--the dumbness of admiration!'

       *       *       *       *       *

"She told me later that he had fantastically described her to herself
after hearing her play, at the same time dwelling upon the happiness
it was to him to think of her so. She had longed to make her
affliction known to him, but for his own sake had not dared.

"'No one here will undeceive him unless you bid them,' she said, 'and
you will not be so cruel! What has he left in life but this illusion?
What have I but my love for him?'

"And she did love him! I had seen tenderness and pity leap from her
eyes whenever they turned in his direction, and he--What should a man
have done?" ended the clergyman.

The writer shook his head. "What did you do?" he asked rather
hoarsely.

"I married them," answered the other simply.




THE WAYFARERS

BY

MARY STEWART CUTTING

AUTHOR OF "LITTLE STORIES OF COURTSHIP," "LITTLE STORIES OF MARRIED
LIFE," ETC.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALICE BARBER STEPHENS


XV

"Lois, would you mind very much if we didn't move into the new house,
after all?"

"Not move into the new house! What do you mean? I thought it would be
finished next week."

"It means that I shall not be able to increase my living expenses this
year," said Justin.

Husband and wife were sitting on the piazza, in the shade of the
purple wistaria-vines, on a warm Sunday afternoon, a month after
Dosia's return. From within, the voices of the children sounded
peacefully over their early supper.

The afternoon, so far, had savored only of domestic monotony, with no
foreshadowing of events to come. Dosia was out walking with George
Sutton, and the people who might "drop in," as they often did on
Sundays, had other engagements to-day. Lois, gowned in lavender
muslin, had been sitting on the piazza for an hour, trying to read
while waiting for Justin to join her. She had counted each minute, but
now that he was there, she put down her book with a show of reluctance
as she said:

"Why didn't you tell me before? I gave the order for the window-shades
yesterday when I was in town--that was what I wanted to talk to you
about this afternoon. You have to leave your order at least two weeks
beforehand at this season of the year."

"You can countermand it, can't you?"

"I suppose I'll have to--if we're not to move into the house," said
Lois in a high-keyed voice, with those tiresome tears coming, as
usual, to her eyes. She felt inexpressibly hurt, disappointed, fooled.
"I thought you said you were having so many orders lately. Does the
money _all_ have to 'go back into the business,'" she quoted
sardonically, "as usual? I think there might be some left for your own
family sometimes. I'm tired of always going without for the business."
It was a complaint she had made many times before, but in each fresh
pang of her resentment she felt as if she were saying it for the first
time.

"We have orders, I'm glad to say, but we've had one big setback
lately," he answered.

He knew, with a twinge, that she had some reason on her side. The very
effort for success was meat and drink to him; he cared not what else
he went without, so the business grew. But she _might_ have had a
little more out of it as they went along, instead of waiting for the
grand climax of undoubted prosperity. A little means so much to a wife
sometimes, because it means the recognition of her right.

"I've been in a lot of trouble lately, Lois, though I haven't talked
about it," he continued, with an unusual appeal in his voice. The
blasting fact of those returned machines had been all he could cope
with; he had been tongue-tied when it came to speaking about it--the
whirl and counter-whirl in his brain demanded concentration, not
diffusion and easy words to interpret. But now that he had begun to
see his way clear again, he had a sudden deep craving for the
unreasoning sympathy of love.

"I waited until the last possible moment to tell you, in hopes that I
shouldn't have to, Lois. Anyway, Saunders is going to put up a couple
of houses for next year that you'll like much better, he says."

"Oh, it will be just the same next year; there'll always be
something," said Lois indifferently, getting up and going into the
house.

He was bitterly hurt, and far too proud to show it. He could have
counted on quickest sympathy from her once; he knew in his heart that
he could call it out even now if he chose, but he did not choose. If
his own wife could be like that, she might be.

"Papa dear, I love you so much!"

He looked down to see his little fair-haired girl, white-ruffled and
blue-ribboned, standing beside him a-tiptoe in her little white shoes,
her arms reached up to tighten instantly around his neck as he bent
over.

"Zaidee, my little Zaidee," he said, and, lifting her on his knee,
strained her tightly to him with a rush of such passionate affection
that it almost unmanned him for the moment. She lay against his heart
perfectly still. After a few moments she put her small hand to his
lips, and he kissed it, and she smiled up at him, warm and secure--his
little darling girl, his little princess. Yet, even in that joy of his
child, he felt a new heart-hunger which no child love, beautiful as it
was, could ever satisfy, any more than it could satisfy the
heart-hunger of his wife.

She had begun, since the ball, to go around again as usual, and the
house looked as if it had a mistress in it once more, though the
atmosphere of a home was lacking. She was languid, irritable, and
unsmiling, accepting his occasional caresses as if they made little
difference to her, though sometimes she showed a sort of fierce,
passionate remorse and longing. Either mood was unpleasing to him: it
contained tacit reproach for his separateness. Then, there were still
occasionally evenings when he came home to find her windows darkened
and everything in the household upset and forlorn; when every footfall
must be adjusted to her ear--that ear that had strained and ached for
his coming. Her whole day culminated in that poor, meager half-hour in
which he sat by her, and in which her personality hardly reached him
until he kissed her, on leaving, with a quick, remorseful affection at
being so glad to go.

The typometer disaster had proved as bad as, and worse than, he had
feared, but he was working retrieval with splendid effort, calling all
his personal magnetism into play where it was possible. He had
borrowed a large sum from Lanston's,--a young private banking firm,
glad at the moment to lend at a fairly large interest for a term of
months,--holding on to the dissatisfied customers and creating new
demand for the machine, so that the sales forged ahead of Cater's,
with whom there was still a good-natured we-rise-together sort of
rivalry, though it seemed at times as if it might take a sharper edge.
Leverich's dictum regarding Cater embodied an extension of the policy
to be pursued with minor, outlying competitors: "You'll have to force
that fellow out of business or get him to come into the combine."

Leverich again smiled on Justin. Immediate success was the price
demanded for the continuance of a backing. There was just a little of
the high-handed quality in his manner which says, "No more nonsense,
if you please." That morning after the ball had shown Justin the fangs
that were ready, if he showed symptoms of "falling down," to shake him
ratlike by the neck and cast him out.

"Papa dear, papa dear! There's a man coming up the walk, my papa
dear."

"Why, so there is," said Justin, rising and setting the child down
gently as he went forward with outstretched hand, while Lois
simultaneously appeared once more on the piazza. "Why, how are you,
Larue? I'm mighty glad to see you back again. When did you get home?"

"The steamer got in day before yesterday," said the newcomer, shaking
hands heartily with host and hostess. He was a man with a dark,
pointed beard and mustache, deep-set eyes, and an unusually pleasant
deep voice that seemed to imply a grave kindliness. His glance
lingered over Lois. "How are you, Mrs. Alexander? Better, I hope?
Which chair shall I push out of the sun for you--this one?"

"Yes, thank you," responded Lois, sinking into it, with her billows of
lilac muslin and her rich brown hair against the background of green
vines. "Aren't you going to sit down yourself?"

"Thank you, I've only a minute," said the visitor, leaning against one
of the piazza-posts, his wide hat in his hand. "I'm out at my place at
Collingwood for the summer, and the trains don't connect very well on
Sunday. I had to run down here to see some people, but I thought I
wouldn't pass you by."

"Did you have a pleasant trip?" asked Lois.

"Very pleasant," rejoined Mr. Larue, without enthusiasm. "Oh, by the
way, Alexander, I heard that you were inquiring for me at the office
last week. Anything I can do for you?"

"Have you any money lying around just now that you don't know what to
do with?" asked Justin significantly.

Mr. Larue's dark, deep-set eyes took on the guarded change which the
mention of money brings into social relations.

"Perhaps," he admitted.

"May I come around to-morrow at three o'clock and talk to you?"

"Yes, do," said the other, preparing to move on. "Please don't get up,
Mrs. Alexander; you don't look as well as I'd like to see you."

"Oh, I'm all right," said Lois.

"You must try and get strong this summer," said Mr. Larue, his eyes
dwelling on her with an intimate, penetrating thoughtfulness before he
turned away and went, Justin accompanying him down the walk, Zaidee
dancing on behind. Lois looked after them. At the gate, Mr. Larue
turned once more and lifted his hat to her.

A faint, lovely color had come into Lois' cheek, brought there by the
powerful tonic which she always felt in Eugene Larue's presence. She
felt cheered, invigorated, comforted, by a man with whom she had
hardly talked alone for an hour altogether in their whole five years'
acquaintance. He had a way of taking thought for her on the slightest
occasion, as he had to-day: he knew when she entered a room or left
it, and she knew that he knew.

It was one of those peculiar, unspoken sympathetic intimacies which
exist between certain men and women, without the conscious volition of
either. His glance or the tone of his voice was a response to her
mood; he saw instinctively when she was too warm or too cold, or
needed a rest. Her husband, who loved her, had no such intuitions; he
had to be told clumsily, and even then might not understand. Yet she
had not loved him the less because she must beat down such little
barriers herself; perhaps she had loved him the more for it--he was
the man to whom she belonged heart and soul: but the barriers were a
fact. She had an absolute conviction that she could do nothing that
Eugene Larue would misunderstand, any more than she misunderstood her
involuntary attraction for him. Above all things, he reverenced her as
his ideal of what a wife and mother should be. He would have given all
he possessed to have the kind of love which Justin took as a matter of
course.

Eugene Larue had been married himself for ten years, for more than
half of which time his wife, whom Lois had never seen, had lived
abroad for the further study of music, an art to which she was
passionately devoted. If there had been any effort to bring a hint of
scandal into the semi-separation, it had been instantly frowned away;
there was nothing for it to feed on. Mrs. Larue lived in Dresden,
under the undoubted chaperonage of an elderly aunt and in the constant
publicity of large musical entertainments and gatherings. She
sometimes played the accompaniments of great singers. Her husband went
over every spring, presumably to be with her, living alone for the
greater part of the year at his large place at Collingwood. Neither
was ever known to speak of the other without the greatest respect,
and questions as to when either had been "heard from" were usual and
in order; it was always tacitly taken for granted that Mrs. Larue's
expatriation was but temporary.

But Lois knew, without needing to be told, that he was a man who had
suffered, and still suffered at times profoundly, from having all the
tenderness of his nature thrown back upon itself, without reference to
that sting of the known comment of other men: "It must be pretty tough
to have your wife go back on you like that." In some mysterious way,
his wife had not needed the richness of the affection that he lavished
on her. If her heart had been warmed by it a little when she married
him, it had soon cooled off; she was glad to get away, and he had
proudly let her go.

Lois smiled up at Justin with sudden coquetry as he mounted the porch
steps, but he only looked at her absently as he said:

"There seems to be a shower coming up. Dosia's hurrying down the road.
I think I'd better take the chairs in now."


XVI

Dosia had come back from the Leverichs' to a household in which her
presence no longer made any difference for either pleasure or
annoyance. She came and went unquestioned, practised interminably, and
spent her evenings usually in her own room, developing a hungry
capacity for sleep, of which she could not seem to have enough--sleep,
where all one's sensibilities were dulled and shame and tragedy
forgotten. She had, however, rather more of the society of the
children than before, owing to their mother's preoccupation. Nothing
could have been more of a drop from her position as princess and
lady-of-love in the Leverich domicile, where she had been the center
of attraction and interest. Everything seemed terribly unnatural here,
and she the most unnatural of all--as if she were clinging temporarily
to a ledge in mid-air, waiting for the next thing to happen.

Lois had really tried to show some sympathy for the girl, but was held
back by her repugnance to Lawson, which inevitably made itself felt.
She couldn't understand how Dosia could possibly have allowed herself
to get into an equivocal position with such a man--"really not a
gentleman," as she complained to Justin, and he had answered with the
vague remark that you could never tell about a girl; even in its
vagueness the reply was condemning.

The people whom Dosia met in the street looked at her with curiously
questioning eyes as they talked about casual matters. Mrs. Leverich
bowed incidentally as she passed in her carriage, where another
visitor was ensconced, a blonde lady from Montreal, in whom her
hostess was absorbed.

Dosia had been twice to see Miss Bertha, with a blind, desultory
counting on the sympathy that had helped her before; but she had been
unfortunate in the times for her visits. On the first occasion Mrs.
Snow, with majestic demeanor and pursed lips, had kept guard; and on
the second the whole feminine part of the family were engaged, in
weird pinned-up garments, in the sacred rite of setting out the
innumerable house-plants, with the help of a man hired semiannually,
for the day, to set out the plants or to take them in. Callers are a
very serious thing when you have a man hired by the day, who must be
looked after every minute, so that he may be worth his wage. As Mrs.
Snow remarked, "People ought to know when to come and when not to."
Dosia got no farther than the porch, and though Miss Bertha asked her
to come again, and gave her a sprig of sweet geranium, with a kind
little pressure of the hand, she was not asked to sit down.

Your trouble wasn't anybody else's trouble, no matter how kind people
were; it was only your own. Billy Snow, who had always been her
devoted cavalier, patently avoided her, turning red in the face and
giving her a curt, shamefaced bow as he went by, having his own
reasons therefor. It would have hurt her, if anything of that kind
could have hurt her very much. But Dosia was in the half-numb
condition which may result from some great blow or the fall from a
great height, save for those moments when she was anguished suddenly
by poignant memories of sharpest dagger-thrusts, at which her heart
still bled unbearably afresh, as when one remembers the sufferings of
the long-peaceful dead which one must, for all time, be terribly
powerless to alleviate.

Mr. Sutton alone kept his attitude toward her unchanged. He sent her
great bunches of roses, that seemed somehow alive and comfortingly
akin when she buried her face in them. He had come to see her every
week, though twice she had gone to bed before his arrival. If his
attitude was changed at all, it was to a heightened respect and
interest and solicitude. It might be that in the subsidence of other
claims Mr. Sutton, who had a good business head, saw an occasion of
profit for himself which he might well be pardoned for seizing. He
required little entertaining when he called, developing an unsuspected
faculty for narrative conversation.

Foolish and inane in amatory "attentions" to young ladies, George was
no fool. He had a fund of knowledge gained from the observation of
current facts, and could talk about the newsboys' clubs, or the
condition of the docks, or the latest motor-cars and ballooning, or
the practical reasons why motives for reform didn't reform; and the
talk was usually semi-interesting, and sometimes more--he had the
personal intimacy with his topics which gives them life. Dosia began
to find him, if not exciting, at least not tiring; restful, indeed.
She began genuinely to like him. He took her thoughts away from
herself, while obviously always thinking of her.

This Sunday afternoon Dosia--modish and natty in her short
walking-skirt and little jacket of shepherd's check, and a clumpy,
black-velveted, pink-rosed straw hat--walked companionably beside the
square-set figure of George up the long slope of the semi-suburban
road. Dosia had preferred to walk instead of driving. There was a
strong breeze, although the sun was warm; and the summerish wayside
trees and grasses had inspired him with the recollection of a country
boy's calendar--a pleasing, homely monologue. He was, however, never
too occupied with his theme to stoop over and throw a stone out of her
path, or to hold her little checked umbrella so that the sun should
not shine in her eyes, or to offer her his hand with old-fashioned
gallantry if there was any hint of an obstacle to surmount. The way
was long, yet not too long. They stopped, however, when they reached
the summit, to rest for a while.

As they stood there, looking into the distance for some minutes, Dosia
with thoughts far, far from the scene, George Sutton's voice suddenly
broke the silence:

"I had a letter from Lawson Barr yesterday."

Dosia's heart gave a leap that choked her. It was the first time that
anybody had spoken his name since he left. She had prayed for him
every night--how she had prayed! as for one gone forever from any
other reach than that of the spirit. At this heart-leap ... fear was
in it--fear of any news she might hear of him; fear of the slighting
tone of the person who told it, which she would be powerless to
resent; fear of awakening in herself the echo of that struggle of the
past.

"He's at the mines, isn't he?" she questioned, in that tone which she
had always striven to make coolly natural when she spoke of him.

"Yes; but I don't believe he's working there yet. He seems to be
mostly engaged in playing at the dance-hall for the miners. Sounds
like him, doesn't it?"

"Yes," assented Dosia, looking straight off into the distance.

"I call it hard luck for Barr to be sent out there," pursued Mr.
Sutton. "It's the worst kind of a life for him. He's an awfully clever
fellow; he could do anything, if he wanted to. I don't know any man I
admire more, in certain ways, than I do Barr."

Sutton spoke with evident sincerity. Lawson's clever brilliancy, his
social ease and versatility and musical talent, were all what he
himself had longed unspeakably to possess. Besides, there was a deeper
bond. "I've known him ever since he was a curly-headed boy, long
before he came to this place," he continued.

"Oh, did you?" cried Dosia, suddenly heart-warm. With a flash, some
words of Mrs. Leverich's returned to her--"Mr. Sutton brought Lawson
home last night." So that was why! Her voice was tremulous as she went
on: "It is very unusual to hear any one speak as you do of Mr. Barr.
Everybody here seems to look down on--to despise him."

"Oh, that sort of talk makes me sick," said George, with an unexpected
crude energy. His good-natured face took on a sneering, contemptuous
expression. "Men talking about him who----" He looked down sidewise at
Dosia and closed his lips tightly. No man was more respectable than
he,--respectability might be said to be his cult,--yet he lived in
daily, matter-of-fact touch with a world of men wherein "ladies" were
a thing apart. No man was ever kept from any sort of confidence by the
fact of George Sutton's presence. His feeling for Barr and toleration
of his shortcomings were partly due to the fact that George himself
had also been brought up in one of those small, dull country towns in
which all too many of the cleanly, white, God-fearing houses have no
home in them for a boy and his friends.

"If Lawson had had money, everybody would have thought he was all
right," he asserted shortly. "Perhaps we'd better be going home; it
looks as if there was a shower coming up. Money makes a lot of
difference in this world, Miss Dosia."

"I suppose it does; I've never had it," said Dosia simply.

"Maybe you'll have it some day," returned Mr. Sutton significantly.
His pale eyes glowed down at her as they walked back along the road
together, but the fact was not unpleasant to her; Lawson's name had
created a new bond between them. Poor, storm-beaten Dosia felt a warm
throb of friendship for George. He sympathized with Lawson; _he_
prized her highly, if nobody else did, and he was not ashamed to show
it. He went on now with genuine emotion: "I know one thing; if--if I
had a wife, she'd never have to wish twice for anything I could give
her, Miss Dosia."

"She ought to care a good deal for you, then," suggested Dosia,
picking her way daintily along the steeply sloping path, her little
black ties finding a foothold between the stones, with Mr. Sutton's
hand ever on the watch to interpose supportingly at her elbow.

"No, I wouldn't ask that; I'd only ask her to let me care for _her_. I
think most men expect too much from their wives," said George. "I
don't think they've got the right to ask it. And I don't think a man
has any right to marry until he can give the lady all she ought to
have--that's my idea! If any beautiful young lady, as sweet as she was
beautiful, did me the honor of accepting my hand,"--Mr. Sutton's voice
faltered with honest emotion,--"I'd spend my life trying to make her
happy; I would indeed, Miss Dosia. I'd take her wherever she wanted to
go, as far as my means would afford; she should have anything I could
get for her."

"I think you are the very kindest man I have ever known," said Dosia,
with sincerity, touched by his earnestness, though with a far-off,
outside sort of feeling that the whole thing was happening in a book.
Her vivid imagination was alluringly at work. In many novels which she
had read the real hero was the other man, whom no one noticed at
first, and who seemed to be prosaic, even uncouth and stupid, when
confronted with his fascinating rival, yet who turned out to be
permanently true and unselfish and omnisciently kind--the possessor,
in spite of his uninspiring exterior, of all the sterling qualities of
love; in short, "John," the honest, patient, constant "John" of
fiction. His affection for the maiden might be of so high a nature
that he would not even claim her as a wife after marriage until she
had learned truly to love him, which of course she always did. If Mr.
Sutton were really "John"--Dosia half-freakishly cast a swift
inventorial side-glance at the gentleman.

The next moment they turned into the highroad, and a rippling smile
overspread her face.

"Here's the very lady for you now," she remarked flippantly, as Ada
Snow, prayer-book in hand, came into view at the crossing against a
dust-cloud in the background, on her way to a friend's house from
service at the little mission chapel on the hill. Ada's cheeks took on
a not unbecoming flush, her eyes drooped modestly beneath Mr. Sutton's
glance,--a maidenly tribute to masculine superiority,--before she went
down the side-road.

Mr. Sutton's face reddened also. "Now, Miss Dosia! Miss Ada may be
very charming, but I wouldn't marry Miss Ada if she were the only girl
left in the world. I give you my word I wouldn't. _You_ ought to
know----"

"We'll have to hurry, or we'll be caught in the rain," interrupted
Dosia, rushing ahead with a rapidity that made further conversation an
affair of ineffective jerks, though she dreaded to get back to the
house and be left alone to the numb dreariness of her thoughts. Justin
and Lois were gathering up the rugs and sofa-pillows, as they reached
the piazza, to take them in from the blackly advancing storm. Lois
greeted Mr. Sutton with unusual cordiality; perhaps she also dreaded
the accustomed dead level.

"Do come in; you'll be caught in the rain if you go on. Can't you stay
to a Sunday night's tea with us?"

"Oh, do," urged Dosia, disregarding the delighted fervor of his gaze.
Lois' hospitality, never her strong point, had been much in abeyance
lately; to have a fourth at the table would be a blessed relief. She
felt a new tie with Mr. Sutton: they both sympathized with Lawson,
believed in him!

She ran up-stairs to change her walking-suit for a soft little
round-necked summer gown of pinkish tint, made at Mrs. Leverich's,
which somehow made her pale little face and fair, curling hair look
like a cameo. When she came down again, she ensconced herself in one
corner of the small spindle sofa, to which Zaidee instantly
gravitated, her red lips parted over her little white teeth in a smile
of comfort as she cuddled within Dosia's half-bare round white arm,
while Mr. Sutton, drawing his chair up very close, leaned over Dosia
with eyes for nobody else, his round face getting brick-red at times
with suppressed emotion, though he tried to keep up his part in an
amiable if desultory conversation. Lois reclined languidly in an
easy-chair, and Justin alternately played with and scolded the
irrepressible Redge, in the intervals of discourse.

Through the long open windows they watched the sky, which seemed to
darken or grow light as fitfully, in the progress of the oncoming
storm, the wind lifted the vines on the piazza and flapped them down
again; the trees bent in straightly slanting lines, with foam-tossing
of green and white from the maples; still it did not rain. Presently
from where Dosia sat she caught sight of a passer-by on the other side
of the street--a tall, straight, well-set-up figure with the easy,
erect carriage of a soldier. He stopped suddenly when he was opposite
the house, looked over at it, and seemed to hesitate; then he moved
on hastily, only to stop the next instant and hesitate once more. This
time he crossed over with a quick, decided step.

"Why, here's Girard!" cried Justin, rising with alacrity. His voice
came back from the hall. "Awfully glad you took us on your way.
Leverich told you where I lived? You'll have to stay now until the
storm is over. Lois, this is Mr. Girard. You know Sutton, of course.
Dosia----"

"I have already met Mr. Girard," said Dosia, turning very white, but
speaking in a clear voice. This time it was she who did not see the
half-extended hand, which immediately dropped to his side, though he
bowed with politely murmured assent. Stepping back to a chair half
across the room, he seated himself by Justin.

A wave of resentment, greater than anything that she had ever felt
before, had surged over Dosia at the sight of him, as his eyes, with a
sort of quick, veiled questioning in them, had for an instant met
hers--resentment as for some deep, irremediable wrong. Her cheeks and
lips grew scarlet with the proudly surging blood, she held her head
high, while Mr. Sutton looked at her as if bewitched--though he turned
from her a moment to say:

"Weren't you up on the Sunset Drive this afternoon, Girard?"

"Yes; I thought you didn't see me," said the other lightly, himself
turning to respond to a question of Justin's, which left the other
group out of the conversation, an exclusion of which George availed
himself with ardor.

There is an atmosphere in the presence of those who have lived through
large experiences which is hard to describe. As Girard sat there
talking to Justin in courteous ease, his elbow on the arm of his
chair, his chin leaning on the fingers of his hand, he had a
distinction possessed by no one else in the room. Even Justin, with
all his engaging personality, seemed somehow a little narrow, a little
provincial, by the side of Girard.

Lois, who had been going backward and forward from the
dining-room,--with black-eyed Redge, sturdy and turbulent, following
after her astride a stick, until the nurse was called to take him
away,--came and sat down quite naturally beside this new visitor as if
he had been an old friend, and was evidently interested and pleased.
As a matter of fact, though all women as a rule liked Girard at sight,
he much preferred the society of those who were married, when he went
in women's society at all. Girls gave him a strange inner feeling of
shyness, of deficiency--perhaps partly caused by the conscious
disadvantages of a youth other than that to which he had been born;
but it was a feeling that he would have been the last to be credited
with, and which he certainly need have been the last to possess. Like
many very attractive people, he had no satisfying sense of
attractiveness himself.

It was raining now, but very softly, after all the wild preparation,
with a hint of sunshine through the rain that sent a pale-green light
over the little drawing-room, with its spindle-legged furniture and
the water-colors on its walls, though the gloom of the dining-room
beyond was relieved only by the silver and the white napkins on the
round mahogany table with a glass bowl of green-stemmed, white-belled
lilies-of-the-valley in the center.

The people in the two separate groups in the drawing-room took on an
odd, pearly distinctness, with the flesh-tints subdued. In this
commonplace little gathering on a Sunday afternoon the material seemed
to be only a veil for the things of the spirit--subtle
cross-communications of thought-touch or repulsion, impressions
tinglingly felt. Something seemed to be curiously happening, though
one knew not what. To Dosia's swift observation, Girard had lost some
of the brightness that had shone upon her vision the night of the
ball; he looked as if he had been under some harassing strain. Her
first impression that he had come into the house reluctantly was
reinforced now by an equal impression that he stayed with reluctance.
Why, then, had he come at all? Was it only to escape the rain? Her
rescuer, the hero of her dreams, still held his statued place in the
shrine of her memory, as proudly, defiantly opposed to this stranger.
Had he known? He must have known, just as she had. It was not Lawson
who had hurt her the most! She could not hear what he said, though the
room was small; he and Justin and Lois were absorbed together. It was
evident that he frankly admired Lois, who was smiling at him. Yet, as
he talked, Dosia became curiously aware that from his position
directly across the room he was covertly watching her as she sat
consentingly listening to George Sutton, whose round face was bending
over very near, his thick coat sleeve pinning down the filmy ruffles
of hers as it rested on the carved arm of the little sofa.

She still held Zaidee cuddled close to her, the light head with its
big blue bow lying against her breast, as the child played with the
simple rings on the soft fingers of the hand she held.

Mr. Sutton got up, at Dosia's bidding, to alter the shade, and she
moved a little, drawing Zaidee up to her to kiss her; Girard the next
instant moved slightly also, so that her face was still within his
range of vision, the intent gray eyes shaded by his hand. It was not
her imagining--she felt the strong play of unknown forces: the gaze of
those two men never left her, one covertly observant, the other most
obviously so. George came back from his errand only to sit a little
closer to Dosia, his eyes in their most suffused state. He was,
indeed, in that stage of infatuation which can no longer brook any
concealment, and for which other men feel a shamefaced contempt,
though a woman even while she derides, holds it in a certain respect
as a foolish manifestation of something inherently great, and a
tribute to her power. To Dosia's indifference, in this strange dual
sense of another and resented excitement,--an excitement like that
produced on the brain by some intolerably high altitude,--Mr. Sutton's
attentions seemed to breathe only of a grateful warmth; she felt that
he was being very, very kind. She could ask him to do anything for
her, and he would do it, no matter what it was, just because she asked
him. He was planning now a day on somebody's yacht, with Lois, of
course; and "What do you say, Miss Dosia--can't we make it a family
party, and take the children too?" he asked, with eager divination of
what would please this lovely thing.

"Yes, oh, why can't you take _us_?" cried Zaidee, trembling with
delight.

The rain had ceased, but the sunlight had vanished, too; the whole
place was growing dark. There was a sudden silence, in which Dosia's
voice was heard saying:

"I'll get my photograph now, if you want it." She rose and left the
room,--she could not have stayed in it a moment longer,--and Zaidee
ran over to her father, her white frock crumpled and the cheek that
had lain against Dosia rosy warm.

"You had better light the lamp, Justin," said Lois, and then, "Oh,
you're not going?" as Girard stood up.

He turned his bright, gentle regard upon her. "I'm afraid I'll have
to."

"I expected you to stay to tea; I've had a place set for you."

"I'd like to very much--it's kind of you to ask me--but I'm afraid not
to-night. I'll see you to-morrow, Sutton, I suppose. Good evening,
Mrs. Alexander." His hand-touch seemed to give an intimacy to the
words.

"Your stick is out here in the hall somewhere," said Justin,
investigating the corners for it, while Zaidee, who had followed the
two, stood in the doorway.

"I wonder if this little girl will kiss me good-by?" asked Girard
tentatively.

"Will you, Zaidee?" asked her father, in his turn.

For all answer, Zaidee raised her little face trustfully. Girard
dropped on one knee, a very gallant figure of a gentleman, as he put
both arms around the small, light form of the child and held her
tightly to him for one brief instant while his lips pressed that warm
cheek. When he strode lightly away, waving his hand behind him in
farewell, it was with an odd, somber effect of having said good-by to
a great deal.

For the second time that day, it seemed that Zaidee had been the
recipient of an emotion called forth by some one else.


XVII

"Lois?"

"Yes?"

Dosia had come into the nursery, where Lois sat sewing, a canary
overhead swinging with shrill velocity in a stream of sunshine. Her
look gave no invitation to Dosia. She did not want to talk; she was
busy, as ever, with--no matter what she was doing--the self-fulness of
her thoughts, which chained her like a slave. She had been longing to
move into the other house, where, amid new surroundings, she could
escape from the familiar walls and outlook that each brought its
suggestion of pain, with the wearying iterancy of habit, no matter how
she wanted to be happy.

Dosia dropped half-unwillingly into a chair as she said:

"I've something to tell you, Lois."

"Well?"

"I'm engaged to George Sutton."

"Dosia!"

Lois' work fell from her hand as she stared at the girl.

"I'm sure I don't see that you need be surprised," said Dosia. She
looked pale and expressionless, as one who did not expect either
sympathy or interest.

"No, I suppose not," said Lois. "Of course, I know he has been paying
you a great deal of attention, but then, he has paid other girls
almost as much." She stopped, with her eyes fixed on Dosia. In a
sense, she had rather hoped for this; the marriage would certainly
solve many difficulties, and be a very fine thing for Dosia--if Dosia
could----! Yet now the idea revolted Lois. To marry a man without
loving him would have been to her, at any time or under any stress, a
physical impossibility. Marriage for friendship or suitability or
support were outside her scheme of comprehension. She spoke now with
cold disapproval:

"Dosia, you don't know what you are doing. You don't love George
Sutton."

Dosia's face took on the well-known obstinate expression.

"He loves me, anyhow, and he is satisfied with me as I am. If he is
satisfied, I don't see why any one else need object! He likes me just
as I am, whether I care for him or not."

She clasped both hands over her knee as she went on with that
unexplainable freakishness to which girlhood is sometimes maddeningly
subject, when all feeling as well as reason seems in abeyance, though
her voice was tremulous. "And I _do_ care for him. I like him better
than any one I know. We are sympathetic on a great many points. No
one--_no one_ has been so kind to me as he! He doesn't want anything
but to make me happy."

Lois made a gesture of despair. "Oh, _kind_! As if a man like George
Sutton, who has done nothing but have his own way for forty years, is
going to give up wanting it now! Marriage is very different from what
girls imagine, Dosia."

"I suppose so," said Dosia indifferently. She rose and came over to
Lois. "Would you like to see my ring?" She turned the circle around on
her finger, displaying a diamond like a search-light. "He gave it to
me last night."

"It is very handsome," said Lois. "I suppose you will have to be
thinking of clothes soon," she added, with a glimmer of the natural
feminine interest in all that pertains to a wedding, since further
protest seemed futile. "I will write to Aunt Theodosia."

"Thank you," said Dosia dutifully.

A hamper of fruit came for her at luncheon, almost unimaginably
beautiful in its arrangement of white hothouse grapes and peaches and
strawberries as large as the peaches; and the contents of a box of
flowers filled every available vase and jug and bowl in the house, as
Dosia arranged them, with the help of Zaidee and Redge--the former
winningly helpful, and the latter elfishly agile, his bare knees
nut-brown from the sun of the springtime, jumping on her back whenever
she stooped over, to be seized in her arms and hugged when she
recovered herself. Flowers and children, children and flowers! Nothing
could be sweeter than these.

In the afternoon, in a renewed capacity for social duties, she put on
her hat with the roses and went to make a call, long deferred and
hitherto impossible of accomplishment, on a certain Mrs. Wayne, a
bride of a few months, who, as Alice Lee, had been one of the girls of
her outer circle. Dosia did not mean to announce her engagement, but
she felt that Alice Wayne's state of mind would be more sympathetic,
even if unconsciously so, than Lois'.

As she walked along now, she thought of George with a deeply grateful
affection. How good he was to her! He had been unexpectedly nice when
he had asked her to marry him; the very force of his feeling had given
him an unusual dignity. His voice had broken almost with a groan on
the words:

"I have never known any one with such a beautiful nature as yours,
Miss Dosia! I just worship you! I only want to live to make you
happy."

He did not himself care for motoring--being, truth to tell, afraid of
it; but she was to choose a car next week. She had told him about her
father and her mother and the children. She was to have the latter
come up to stay with her after she was married--do anything for them
that she would. In imagination now she was taking them through all the
shops in town, buying them toy horses and soldiers and balls, and
dressing them in darling little light-blue sailor-suits. She could
hardly wait for the time to come! She thought with a little awe that
she hadn't known that Mr. Sutton was as well off as he seemed to be.
And the way he had spoken of Lawson--Ah, Lawson! That name tugged at
her heart. This suddenly became one of those anguished moments when
she yearned over him as over a beloved lost child, to be wept over,
succored only through her efforts. She must never forget! "Lawson, I
believe in you." She stopped in the shaded, quiet street with its
garden-surrounded houses, and said the words aloud with a solemn sense
of immortal infinite power, before coming back to the eager surface
planning of her own life, with an intermediate throb of a new and
deeper loneliness. The Dosia who had so upliftingly faced truth had
only strength enough left now to evade it. Perhaps some of that
exquisite inner perception of her nature had been jarred confusingly
out of touch.

Mrs. Wayne was in, although, the maid announced, she had but just
returned from town. A moment later Dosia heard herself called from
above:

"Dosia Linden! Won't you come up-stairs? You don't mind, do you?"

"No, indeed," answered Dosia, obeying the summons with alacrity, and
pleased that she should be considered so intimate. This was more than
she had expected--an informal reception and talk. With Dosia's own
responsive warmth, she felt that she really must always have wanted to
see more of Alice, who, in her lacy pink-and-white negligée, might be
pardoned for wishing to show off this ornament of her trousseau.

"I hope you won't mind the appearance of this room," she announced,
after a hospitable violet-perfumed embrace. "I went to town so early
this morning that I didn't have time to really set things to rights,
and I don't like the new maid to touch them."

"You have so many pretty things," said Dosia admiringly.

"Yes, haven't I? Take that seat by the window; it's cooler. _Please_
don't look at that dressing-table; Harry leaves his neckties
everywhere, though he has his own chiffonnier in the other room--he's
such a _bad_ boy! He seems to think I have nothing to do but put away
his things for him."

Mrs. Wayne paused with a bridal air of important matronly
responsibility. She was a tall, thin, black-haired, dashing girl, not
at all pretty, who was always spoken of compensatingly as having a
great deal of "style"; but she seemed to have gained some new and
gentle charm of attraction because she was so happy.

"Have this fan, won't you?" she went on talking. "Harry and I saw you
and George Sutton out walking yesterday. We were in the motor, and had
stopped up on the Drive to speak to Mr. Girard. He _is_ just the
loveliest thing! What a pity he won't go where there are girls! Harry
is quite jealous, though I tell him he needn't be." Mrs. Wayne paused
with a lovely flush before going on. "You didn't see us, though we
stopped quite near you. My dear, it's _very_ evident that--" She
paused once more, this time with arch significance. "Oh, you needn't
be afraid. I never know anything until I'm told. But George is such a
good fellow! I'm sure I ought to know--he was perfectly devoted to me.
Not the kind girls are apt to take a fancy to, perhaps,--girls are so
foolish and romantic,--but he'd be awfully nice to his wife. Harry
says he's a lot richer than anybody knows. And people are so much
happier married--the right people, of course."

"Did you have a pleasant time while you were away?" asked Dosia, as
she lay back in her low, wide, prettily chintz-covered arm-chair. If
she had had some half-defined impulse to confide in Alice Wayne, it
was gone, melted away in this too fervid sunshine of approval. She
had, instead, one of her accessions of dainty shyness; the ring on her
finger, underneath her glove, seemed to burn into her flesh. Her eyes
roved warily around the room as Mrs. Wayne talked about her
wedding-trip and her husband, folding up her Harry's neckties as she
chattered, her fingers lingering over them with little secret pats.
She brought out some of her pretty dresses afterward for Dosia's
inspection. From the open door of a closet beyond, a pair of shoes
was distinctly visible--Harry's shoes, which the wife laughingly put
back into place as she went and closed the door. It was impossible not
to see that even those clumsy, monstrously thick-soled things were
touched with sentiment for her because the feet of her dearest had
worn them.

In Dosia's world so far it was a matter of course that some people
were married--their household life went unnoticed; the fact had no
relation to her own intangible dreams or hopes; it was a condition
inherent to these elders, and not of any particular interest to her.
But Alice Wayne had been a girl like herself until now. This
matter-of-fact community of living forced itself upon her notice, as
if for the first time, as an absolutely new thing. The blood surged up
suddenly through the ice of her indifference; the room choked her.
George Sutton's neckties, not to speak of his shoes----!

"I'll have to be going," she interrupted precipitately, rising as she
spoke.

"Why,"--Alice Wayne stopped in the middle of a sentence, looking at
her in surprise,--"what's the matter? Aren't you well?"

"Yes, yes, but I have an appointment," affirmed Dosia desperately.
"I've been enjoying it all so much, but I'd forgotten I must go--at
once! Good-by."

She almost ran on the way home. There was no appointment, but it was
imperative that she should be alone, away from all suggestion of the
newly married. She hoped that there would be no visitors. But as she
neared the house she saw that there was some one on the piazza--George
Sutton, frock-coated and high-hatted, with a rose above his white
waistcoat and a beaming face that rivaled the rose in color as he came
to meet her.

"Why, I thought you were not coming until this evening," said Dosia
demandingly,--"not until you could see Justin."

"Did you think I could stay away as long as that?" asked George. His
manner the night before had been almost reverential in the depth of
his honest emotion; the kiss he had imprinted on her forehead had
seemed of an impersonal nature, and she a princess who regally allowed
it. She was conscious now of a change.

"Where is Lois?" she asked, as they went up the steps together.

"The maid said she had stepped out for a moment."

"Then we'll sit out here on the piazza and wait for her," said Dosia,
without looking at her lover. Taking the hat-pins out of her hat, she
deposited it on a chair with a quick decision of movement, and then
seated herself by a wicker table, while Mr. Sutton, looking
disappointed, was left perforce to the rocker on the other side.

The piazza was rather a long one, and, except for a rambling vine,
open toward the street; but around the corner of the house Japanese
screens walled it off from passers-by into a cozy arbored nook, sweet
with big bowls of roses.

"Come around to the other end of the porch," said George appealingly.

"No," said Dosia, with her obstinate expression; "I like it here."

She stripped the long gloves from her arms, and spread out her hands,
palms upward, in her lap. The diamond, which had been turned inward,
caught the sunshine gloriously. His gaze fell upon it, and he smiled.
Dosia saw the smile and reddened.

"I wish you wouldn't sit there looking at me," she said in a tone
which she tried to make neutral.

"Come down to the other end of the piazza--just for a moment."

"No!" said Dosia again. She gave a sudden movement and changed her
tone sharply: "Oh, there's a spider on the table there, crawling
toward me! Please take it away." Her voice rose uncontrollably. "I
hate spiders--oh, I _hate_ spiders! I'm afraid of them. Make it go
away! Please! There--now you've got it; throw it off the piazza,
quick! Don't bring it near me!"

"The little spider won't hurt you," said George enjoyingly.

Dosia, flushing and paling alternately, carried entirely out of her
deterring placidity, her blue eyes dilatingly raised to his, her red
lips quivering, was distractingly lovely. Fear gave to her quick,
uncalculated movements the grace of a wild thing. George, in spite of
his solid good qualities, possessed the mistaken playfulness of the
innately vulgar. He advanced, the spider now held between his thumb
and forefinger, a little nearer to her--a little nearer yet. There is
a type of bucolic mind to which the causeless, palpitating fear of a
woman is an exquisitely funny joke.

"Don't," said Dosia again, in a strangled voice, ready to fly from the
chair. The spider touched her sleeve, with George's fatuously smiling
face behind it. The next instant she had fled wildly down to the
screened corner of the veranda, with George after her, only to be
stopped by the screens at the end. His following arms closed tightly
around her as he kissed her in happy triumph.

After one wild, instinctive effort at struggle, Dosia stood perfectly
still, with that peculiarly defensive self-possession that came into
play at such times. She seemed to yield entirely now to the rightful
caresses of an accepted lover as she said in a perfectly even and
casual tone of voice:

"Let me go for a moment, George! I must get my handkerchief up-stairs.
I'll be right back again."

"Don't be gone long," said George fondly, releasing her
half-unconsciously at the accent of custom.

"No," said Dosia, very pale, and smiling back at him coquettishly as
she went off with unhurried step--to dart up two pairs of stairs like
a flying, hunted thing, and into her room, to lock the door fast and
bolt it as if from the thoughts that pursued her.

Lois, coming up the stairs half an hour later, rattled the door-knob
ineffectually before she knocked.

"Dosia, what's the matter? To whom are you talking? Let me in! Katy
said, when she came up, you would not answer. She said Mr. Sutton had
been walking up and down the piazza for a long time. Dosia, let me in;
let me in this minute!"

The key clicked in the lock, the bolt slipped back, and the door flew
open. Dosia, in her blue muslin frock, her hair in wild disorder, was
standing in the center of the room, fiercely rubbing her already
scarlet cheeks with a rough towel. Every trace of assumed listlessness
had vanished; she was frantically alive, with blazing, defiant eyes,
and talking half-disconnectedly.

"Never let him come here again--never, never!" she appealed to Lois.

"Whom do you mean?"

"George Sutton!"

A contraction passed over her face; she began rubbing again with
renewed fury.

"Don't do that, Dosia! You'll take the skin off. Stop it!"

Lois, alarmed, put her arm around the girl, trying to push the towel
away from her. "Dosia, sit down by me here on the bed--how you're
trembling! What on earth is the matter? Dosia, you must not; you'll
take the skin off your face."

"I want to take it off," whispered Dosia intensely. "I hate him, I
hate him! I never want to see him again. I can't see him again. I
threw the ring out in the hall somewhere; you'll have to find it. I
couldn't have it in the room with me! Lois, you must tell him I can't
see him again; promise me that I'll never see him again--promise,
_promise_!" She clung to Lois as if her life depended on that
protection.

"Yes, yes, dear, I promise," said Lois, with a sudden warmth of
sympathy such as she had never before felt for the girl. This
situation, this feeling, she could comprehend--it might have been her
own in similar case. She had known girls before who had been engaged
for but a day or a week, and then revolted--it was not so new a
circumstance as the world fancies.

She drew the towel now from Dosia's relaxed fingers, and held her
closer as she said:

"There, be quiet, Dosia, and don't make yourself ill. I don't see what
that poor man is going to do--of course he'll feel dreadfully; but you
can't help that now--it's a great deal better than finding out the
mistake later. I'll tell him not to come again; I promise you. Of
course, I'll have to speak to Justin--I don't know what he will say!"
Lois broke into a rueful smile. "Dosia, Dosia! What scrape will you
get into next?"

"Isn't it dreadful!" gasped poor Dosia. She sat up straight and looked
at Lois with tragic eyes.

"Now two men have kissed me. I can never get over that in this world.
I can never be nice again--no one can ever think I'm nice again! No
one can ever--_love_ me in this world!" She buried her hot face in
Lois' bosom, sobbing tearlessly against that new shelter, in spite of
the other's incoherent words of comfort, so unalterably, so inherently
a woman made to be loved that the loss of the dream of it was like the
loss of existence. After a moment Dosia went on brokenly:

"It seems so strange. Things begin, and you think they are going to
turn out to be something you want very much, and then all of a sudden
they end--and there is nothing more. Everything is all beginning--and
then it ends--there is nothing more. And now I can never be really
nice again!"

"Nonsense! You'll feel very differently about it all after a while,"
said Lois sensibly.

"I don't want to go down-stairs again." Dosia began to shake
violently. "If he were to come back----"

"Well, stay up here. Zaidee shall bring you your dinner," said Lois
humoringly. "I must go down now; I hear Justin. Only, you'll have to
promise me to be quiet, Dosia, and not begin going wild again the
moment I'm out of the room."

"No, I'll be good," murmured Dosia submissively. "Oh, Lois, you're so
kind to me! I love you so much!"

Her head ached so hard that it was easy to be quiet now. She could not
eat the meal which Zaidee, assisted to the door by the maid, brought
in to her. It seemed, oddly enough, like a reversion back to that
first night of her arrival--oh, so long ago!--after tempest and
disaster. Yet then the white, enhancing light of the future had shone
down through everything, and now there was no future, only a murky
past, and she a poor girl who had dropped so far out of the way of
happiness that she could never get back to it, never be nice again.
That hand that had once held hers so firmly, so steadily, that she
could sleep secure with just the comfort of its remembered touch, the
thought of it had become only pain, like everything else. Oh, back of
all this shaming hurt with Lawson and George Sutton was another shame,
that went deeper and deeper still. Since that visit of Bailey
Girard's, she had known that he had thought of her as she had thought
of him, with a knowledge that could not be controverted. It is
astonishing that we, who feel ourselves to be so dependent on speech
as a means of communication, have our intensest, our most revealing
moments without it. He had thought of her as she had of him, and, with
the thought of her in his heart, had been content easily that it
should be no more.

Oh, if this stranger had been indeed the hero of her dreams,--lover,
protector, dearest friend,--to have sought her mightily with the
privilege and the prerogative of a man, so that she might have had no
experience to live through but that white experience with him!

"Dosia! Open the door quickly."

It was the voice of Lois once more, with a strange note in it. She
stood, hurried and breathless, under the gas she turned on as she held
out a telegram--for the second time the transmitter of bad news from
the South. The message read: "Your father is ill. Come at once."


XVIII

There are times and seasons which seem to be full of happenings,
followed by long stretches that have only the character of transition
from the former stage to something that is to come. Weeks and months
fly by us; we do not realize that they are here before they are gone,
there is so little to mark any day from its fellow. Yet we lay too
much stress on the power of separate and peculiar events to shape the
current of our lives, and do not take into account that drama which
never ceases to be acted, which knows no pause nor interim, and which
takes place within ourselves.

It was April once more before Dosia Linden came North again, after
extending months, in no day of which had her stay seemed anything but
temporary--a condition to be ended next week or the week after at
farthest. Her father's illness turned out to be a lingering one,
taking every last ounce of strength from his wife and his daughter;
and after his death the little stepmother had collapsed for a while,
with only Dosia to take the helm. Dosia had worked early and late,
nursing, looking after the children, cooking, sewing, and later on,
when sickness and death had taken nearly all the means of livelihood,
trying to earn money for the immediate needs by teaching the scales to
some of the temporary tribe at the hotel--an existence in which self
was submerged in loving care for those who clung to her; and to cling
to Dosia was always to receive from her. Sleep was the goal of the
day, and too much of a luxury to have any of its precious moments
wasted in wakeful dreaming; besides, there was nothing to dream about
any more. As she crept into her low bed, she turned away from the
moonlight, because there are times, when one is young, when moonlight
is very hard to bear.

The little family, bewildered and exhausted, had come to the end of
its resources, when Mrs. Linden's brother in San Francisco offered her
and her children a home with him--an offer which, naturally, did not
include Dosia. She was very glad for them, but, after all, though she
had worked so hard for them, they were not to belong to her for her
very own. The aunt whose generosity had given her the money for her
musical education had also died, leaving a small sum in trust for the
girl. It was that which furnished her with means when she went once
more to stay at the Alexanders'. Justin himself had written to see if
she could come.

There was another baby now, a couple of months old, and Lois needed
her. No fairy-story maiden this, going out to seek her fortune, who
took an uneventful train journey this time--only a very tired girl,
worn with work and worn with the sorrow of parting, yet thankful to
lean her head against the back of the car-seat and feel the burden of
anxiety and care slip from her for a little while.

Hard work alone is not ennobling, but drudgery for those whom we love
may have its uplifting trend. Dosia was pale and thin; the blue veins
on her temples showed more plainly. Her face was no longer the typical
white page, unwritten upon; that first freshness of youth and
inexperience had gone. Dosia had lived. Young as she was, she had
tasted of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; she had known
suffering; she had faced shame and disappointment and--truth; yes,
through everything she had faced that--taken herself to account,
probed, condemned, renounced. What she had lost in youthfulness she
had gained in character. She had an innocent nobility of expression
that came from a light within, as of one ready to answer unwaveringly
wherever she might be called. Yet something in her soft eyes at times
trembled into being, indescribably gentle, intolerably sweet--the soul
of that Dosia who was made to be loved.

[Illustration: "MRS. LEVERICH BOWED INCIDENTALLY"]

If she had changed since that first journeying a year and a half ago,
so had the conditions changed in the household to which she went.
Justin had had the not unusual experience of the business man who has
achieved what he has set out to achieve without the expected result;
in the silting-pan which holds success some of the gold mysteriously
drops through. The Typometer Company was doing a very large business,
quadrupled since the day of its inception. The building was hardly big
enough now to hold the offices and manufacturing plant; the force had
been greatly increased, and an additional floor for storage had been
hired next door. The typometer had absorbed the output of two small
rival companies, one out West and one in a neighboring town--both
glad, in view of a losing game, to make terms with the successful
arbiter. Where one person used a typometer three years ago, it was in
request by fifty people now, for many things--for many more, indeed,
than had been thought of at first; every week plans in special
adjustments were made to fit the machine for different purposes. It
was undoubtedly not only a success in itself, but was destined to fit
into more and more of the needs of the working world as a standard
product.

Orders came in from all parts of the globe. Justin, as he hurried over
to his office or held important consultations with the men who wanted
to see him, was awarded the respect given to the head of a large and
successful concern. He was marked as a rising man. Yet, in spite of
all this real accomplishment of the Typometer Company, the net profits
had always fallen short of the mark set for them; the company was in
constant and growing need of money.

Prices of everything to do with manufacturing had increased--prices of
copper and steel, of machinery, of wages, in addition to the larger
number of hands employed, and the rent of the additional floor. It was
always necessary for one's peace of mind to go back to the value of
the material stock and the assets to be counted on in the future. The
steady branching out of the business in every direction was proof of
the fact that if it did not it must retrench; and to retrench meant
fewer orders, fewer opportunities--financial suicide.

It was the powerful shibboleth of the world of trade that one must be
seen to be doing business; only so could the doors of credit be
opened. If Cater came in with him now, as seemed at last to be
expected, the doors must open farther. No matter how one tries to see
all around the consequences of any change, any undertaking, there
always arise minor consequences which from their very nature must be
unforeseen, and yet which may turn out to be the really powerful
factors in the main issue; unimportant genii that, let out of their
bottle, swell immeasurably. The consequences of the fire, small as it
was, seemed never-ending. The defective bars had proved a disastrous
supply for the machine, in more ways than one.

Left by the Leverich-Martin combination to work his own retrieval, he
had borrowed the ten thousand from Lewiston, and had used part of the
money to pay the interest to the others; and later, in the flush of
reinstatement, he had borrowed another ten thousand from Leverich, a
loan to be called by him at any time. Lewiston's loan had seemed easy
of repayment at six months. Justin knew when the money was coming in,
but he had been obliged, after all, to anticipate, and get his bills
discounted before they came due for other purposes, often paying huge
tribute for the service. Lewiston had renewed the note for sixty days,
and then for sixty more, but with the proviso that this was the last
extension.

In short, the whole process of competently keeping afloat had been
gone through, with a definite aim of accomplishment. Cater's
cooperation, about which he had been so slow, would infuse new blood
into the business. It was maddening at times to have so many good uses
for money, and to be unable to command it at the crucial moment. He
had approached Eugene Larue on that past Sunday afternoon, only to
find him cautiously negative where once he had seemed friendlily
suggesting.

Such a process, to be successful, depends on the power of the man
behind it, which must not only comprehend and direct the larger
issues, but must be able to carry along smoothly all the easily
entangling threads of detail; he must not only have a capable brain,
but he must have the untiring nervous energy that can "hold out"
through any crisis. Such men may go to pieces after incredible effort,
but they are on the way to success first. Danger only quickens the
sure leap to safety.

[Illustration: "WITH EYES FOR NOBODY ELSE"]

Justin, preëminently clear-headed, had been conscious lately of two
phases--one an almost preternatural illumination of intellect, and the
other a sort of brain-inertia, more soul-and body-fatiguing than any
pain. There were seasons when he was obliged to think when he could
instead of when he would. He looked grave, alert, competent, but
underneath this demeanor there went an unceasing effort of computation
and reckoning to which the computation and reckoning on the first
night of his agreement with Leverich was as a child's play with toy
bricks is to the building of an edifice of stone.

[Illustration: "FLOWERS AND CHILDREN--CHILDREN AND FLOWERS!"]

The large business responsibilities now incurred clashed grotesquely
with the daily need of money at home for petty uses, a condition of
affairs which often happens at the birth of a child, when the
household is at loose ends, and the expenses are necessarily greater
in every direction, at the time when it seems most imperative to limit
them. He seemed never to have enough "change" in his pockets, no
matter how much he brought home.

[Illustration: "'THE LITTLE SPIDER WON'T HURT YOU'"]

In some men the business faculties become more and more self-sufficing
when there is no other passion to divide them--the nature grows all
one way; and there are others who seem independent, yet who are always
as dependent as children on the unnoticed, sustaining help of
affectionate love that makes the home a refuge from the provoking of
all men; that unreasonably, and at all times, hotly champions the
cause of the beloved against the world. No help-giving virtue had gone
out from this household in the last year; it had all been a dead lift.

Justin had never spoken of his affairs to Lois since that Sunday when
she had said that she hated them. When she had asked for money, she
had always added the proviso, "if he could afford it," and accepted
the fact either way without comment. He was, as time went on, more and
more affectionately solicitous for her welfare, even if he was, as she
keenly felt, less personally loving.

If she went to bed early in the evening, he took that opportunity to
go out; and if she stayed up, he remained at home and went to sleep on
the lounge, and the little touch that binds divergence with the inner
thread of sympathy was lacking.

Yet, strange as it might seem, while she consciously suffered far the
most, his loss was mysteriously the greater; the fire of love of which
she was by right high priestess still burned secretly for her tending
as she covered over the embers on the hearthstone, though he was cold
and chill for lack of that vital warmth.

There were moments when she felt that she could die gladly for him,
but always for that glory of self-triumphing in the end. Then that
which seemed as if it could never change began to change.

Before the child was born, and now since that, there was a difference.
Men and women who suffer most from imaginary wrongs may become sane
and heroic in times of real danger. Lois, noble, sweet, and brave,
thoughtful for Zaidee and Redge and Justin even while she trembled,
excited reverence and a deep and anxious tenderness in her husband.

Then, afterward, he was proud of his second son. When Justin came in
at the end of each day and sat down by her bedside, holding her
blue-veined hand while she smiled peacefully at him, there was a
sweet, sufficing pleasure about those few minutes, singularly
soothing, though the interim had no relation to actual living, except
in the fact that one anxiety had been lifted. While the expectant
birth of the child had been to her, as it is to almost every woman, a
separate and distinct calamitous illness to which she looked forward
as one might look forward to being taken with typhoid or diphtheria,
he considered it as a manifestation of nature, not in itself
dangerous, and her fear that of a child, to be soothed by reason.

Still, he had had his moments of a reluctant, twinging fear. One cause
for disquieting thought was removed. Now the helplessness of this
little family, for whom he was the provider, tugged at a swelling
heart.

As he walked toward his office to-day somewhat later than was his
wont, he diverged from his usual custom: instead of entering his own
doorway, he went across the street to Cater's after a moment's
hesitation. Now that Cater's coöperation was at the consummating
point, it was wiser not to run the risk of its sagging back. Leverich
and Martin were keenly for its success. Justin's credit would rise
immeasurably with it. The Typometer Company had absorbed the minor
machines with so little trouble that the unabsorbability of the
timoscript had seemed an unnecessary stumbling-block. Time and time
again Justin had sought Cater with tabulated figures and unanswerable
arguments. The combination, he firmly believed, would be highly
beneficial for both. The field was, in its way, too narrow to be
divided with the highest profit; together they could command the
trade.

[Illustration: "'NEVER LET HIM COME HERE AGAIN--NEVER, NEVER!'"]

Cater was opposed to all combinations as trusts,--a word against which
he was principled,--with obstinate refusal to differentiate as to
kind, quality, or intent. Like many men who are given to a far-seeing
philosophy in words, he was narrow-mindedly cautious when it came to
action, apt to be suspicious in the wrong place, and requiring to be
continually reassured about conditions which seemed the very a-b-c of
commerce. The rivalry between the two firms had been apparently
good-natured, yet a little of the sharp edge of competition had shown
signs of cutting through the bond.

The typometer had put its prices down, and the timoscript had cut
under; then the typometer had gone as low as was wise, and the
timoscript had begun to weaken in its defenses.

Cater was already at work at a big desk as Justin entered, but rose to
shake hands. There was a look of melancholy in his eyes, in spite of
his smile of greeting.

"Anything wrong with you?" asked Justin, instinctively noticing the
look rather than the smile.

"No," said Cater. He hooked his legs under his chair, and leaned back,
the light from the high unshaded window striking full on his lean
yellow countenance. "No, there's nothing wrong. Got some things off my
mind, things that have been bothering me for a long time, and I reckon
I don't feel quite easy without 'em."

"I think you're very lucky," said Justin. The light from the high
window fell on his face, too--on his brown hair, turning a little gray
at the temples, on the set lines of his face, in which his eyes, keen
and blue, looked intently at his friend. He was well dressed; the foot
that was crossed over his knee was excellently shod.

Cater shifted a little in his seat. "Well, I don't know. My experience
is some different from the usual run, I reckon. I never had any big
streak of luck that it didn't get back at me afterwards. There was my
marriage--I know it ain't the thing to talk about your marriage, but
you do sometimes. My wife's a fine woman,--yes, sir, I was mighty
lucky to get her,--but I didn't know how to live up to her family.
It's been that-a-way all my life. Sure's I get to ringin' the bells,
the floorin' caves in under me."

"We'll see that the flooring holds, now that you're coming in with
us," said Justin good-naturedly. "I've got some propositions to put up
to you to-day."

Cater shook his head. "There's no use of your putting up any
propositions. I've been drawin' on my well of thought so hard lately
that I reckon you could hear the pumps workin' plumb across the
street. I've been cipherin' down to the fact that I can't go it alone,
any more'n you,--there we agree; hold on, now!--but I can't combine."

"You can't!" cried Justin, with unusual violence. "Why not?"

"Well, you know my feelin's about trusts, and--I like you, Mr.
Alexander, you know that, mighty well, but I balk at your backin'. I
don't believe in it. It'll fail when you count on it most. It'll cramp
on you merciless if you come short of its expectations. Leverich isn't
so bad, but Martin cramps a hold of him, and I can't stand Martin
havin' a finger in any concern _I_ have a hold of."

"He's clever enough to make what he touches pay," said Justin.

Cater's eyebrows contracted. "You say he's clever; because he's
tricky--because he's sharp. He isn't clever enough to make money
honestly; he isn't big enough. You and me, we're honest, or try to be;
but we haven't the brain to give every man his just due, and get
ahead, too. It's the greatest game there is, but you got to be a
genius to play it. You and me, we can't do it; we ain't got the brain
and we ain't got the nerve. _I_ haven't. You've just everlastingly got
to do the best for yourself if you've got a family; the best _as_ you
see it."

"What's all this leading up to? What change have you been making,
Cater?" asked Justin, with stern abruptness.

"I've given the agency of the machine to Hardanger."

"Hardanger!" Justin's face flushed momentarily, then became set and
expressionless. To stand out on abstract questions of honor, and then
tacitly break all faith by going in with Hardanger!

"I shut down on part of my plant when I began figuring on this
change," continued Cater. "I've been getting the steel fittin's on
contract from Beuschoten again, as I did at first; it'll come cheaper
in the end. Gives us a pretty big stock to start off with. I was
sorry--I was sorry to have to turn off a dozen men, but what you going
to do? I've got to cut down on the manufacturing as close as I can
now."

"I suppose so."

"I wanted to tell you the first one," said Cater.

"Well, I congratulate you," said Justin formally, rising.

"This isn't going to make any difference in the friendship between me
and you, Mr. Alexander? I've thought a powerful lot of your
friendship. If I'd 'a' seen any way to have come in with you, I'd 'a'
done it. But business ain't going to interfere between two such good
friends as we are!"

"Why, no," said Justin, with the conventional answer to an appeal
which still pitifully claims for truth that which it has made false.
The handshake that followed was one in which all their friendship
seemed to dissolve and change its character, hardening into ice.

_Hardanger!_

Hardanger & Company represented one of the greatest factors in the
trade of two hemispheres. To say that a thing was taken up by
Hardanger meant its success. They took nothing that was not likely to
succeed; they _made_ it succeed--for them. Their agents in all parts
of the known world had easy access to firms and to opportunities hard
to be reached by those of lesser credit. Their reputation was
unassailed; they kept scrupulously to the terms agreed upon. The only
bar to putting an article into their hands was the fact that their
terms--except in the case of certain standard articles which they were
obliged to have--embraced nearly all the profits, only the very
narrowest margins coming to the original owners. Everything had to be
figured down, and still further and further down, by those owners, to
make that margin possible. It was cutthroat all the way through--a
policy that made for the rottenness of trade.

Justin and Leverich had once made tentative investigations as to
Hardanger, with the conclusion that there was far more money outside,
even if one must go a little more slowly. It was better to go a little
more slowly, for the sake of getting so much more out of it in the
end. Hardanger was to be kept as a last resort, if everything else
failed. Cater had expressed himself as feeling the same way; that was
the understanding between them. But now? Backed by this powerful
agency, the timoscript assumed disquieting proportions. In the
distance, a time not so very far distant either, Justin could see
himself squeezed to the wall, the output of his factory bought up by
Hardanger for the price of old iron--forced into it, whether he would
or no. Why had he been so short-sighted? Why hadn't he made terms
himself sooner? But Cater had been a fool to give in to those terms
when, by combining, they could have swung trade between them to their
own measure. Then Hardanger might have been obliged to seek _them_, to
take their price!--Hardanger, who could afford to laugh at his
pretensions now!

He thought of Cater without malice--with, instead, a shrewd, kind
philosophy, a sad, clear-visioned impulse of pity mixed with his
wonder. So that was the way a man was caught stumbling between the
meshes, blinded, dulled, unconsciously maimed of honor, while still
feeling himself erect and honest-eyed! There had been no written
agreement between them that either should consult the other before
seeking Hardanger; but some promises should be all the stronger for
not being written.

This thing _couldn't_ happen; in some way, he must get his foot inside
the door, so that it couldn't shut on him. There was that note of
Lewiston's, due in thirty days--no, twenty-five now. What about that?

Later in the day, after he had been seeing drayful after drayful of
boxes leave the factory opposite, Bullen, the foreman, came into the
office with some estimates, pointing out the figures with a small
strip of steel tubing held absently in his fingers.

While the clerks were all deferential, and those of foreign birth
obsequious, Bullen had an air that was more than sturdily
independent--the air and the eye of the skilled mechanic. On his own
ground he was master, and Justin, with a smile, deferred to him. But
Justin broke into Bullen's calculations abruptly, after a while, to
ask:

"What's that you've got there? It looks like one of those bars that
nearly smashed us."

"You've got a good eye, sir," said Bullen approvingly. "A year and a
half ago you'd not have seen any difference between one bit of steel
and another. But there's one thing I didn't see about it myself until
Venly--he's a new man we've taken on--pointed it out to me. He came
across a case of these to-day we'd thrown out in the waste-heap. We
thought our machine had jarred them out of shape, because they were a
fraction off size; well, so they were. But Venly he spotted them in a
minute, when he was out there, and he asked me if they weren't from
the Beuschoten factory--he was turned off from there last week;
they're cutting down the force; they always do, come spring. He said
they looked like part of a bum lot that had flaws in them. He got the
magnifying-glass and showed me, and, sure enough, 'twas right he was!
He says they've got piles of them they've been workin' off on the
trade at a cut price. Venly he said he didn't have any stomach for a
skin game like that."

"That's a pretty ruinous way to do business, isn't it?" asked Justin.

"Oh, they're going to sell out in July, so they don't care. I pity any
one that's counting on any sort of machine that's got these in 'em.
Would you take the glass and look for yourself, sir? Every one of 'em
is flawed!"

                          TO BE CONTINUED






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