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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature
+and Science, Volume 26, July 1880., by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880.
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: February 23, 2010 [EBook #31365]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE, JULY 1880 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
+
+OF
+
+POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.
+
+VOLUME XXVI.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+PHILADELPHIA:
+J.B. LIPPINCOTT AND CO.
+
+1880.
+
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by
+
+J.B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.,
+
+In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
+
+LIPPINCOTT'S PRESS,
+_Philadelphia._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                                      PAGE
+A Chapter of American
+  Exploration. (_Illustrated._)  _William H. Rideing_                  393
+Adam and Eve                     _Author of "Dorothy Fox"_        42, 147,
+                                                        290, 411, 547, 666
+A Forgotten American Worthy      _Charles Burr Todd_                    68
+A Graveyard Idyl                 _Henry A. Beers_                      484
+A Great Singer                   _Lucy H. Hooper_                      507
+American Aëronauts.
+  (_Illustrated._)               _Will O. Bates_                       137
+Americans Abroad                 _Alain Gore_                          466
+An Episode of Spanish Chivalry   _Prof. T. F. Crane_                   747
+An Historical Rocky-Mountain
+  Outpost. (_Illustrated._)      _George Rex Buckman_                  649
+An Old English Home:
+  Bramshill House                _Rose G. Kingsley_                    163
+An Open Look at the
+  Political Situation                                                  118
+A Pivotal Point                  _William M. Baker_                    559
+Automatism                       _Dr. H. C. Wood_                 627, 755
+A Villeggiatura in Asisi         _Author of_
+                                 _"Signor Monaldini's Niece"_          308
+Bauble Wishart                   _Author of "Flitters, Tatters_
+                                 _and the Counsellor"_                 719
+Canoeing on the High
+  Mississippi. (_Illustrated._)  _A. H. Siegfried_                171, 279
+Dungeness, General Greene's
+  Sea-Island Plantation          _Frederick A. Ober._                  241
+Ekoniah Scrub: Among Florida
+  Lakes. (_Illustrated._)        _Louise Seymour Houghton_             265
+Findelkind of Martinswand:
+  A Child's Story                _Ouida_                               438
+Gas-Burning, and
+  its Consequences               _George J. Varney_                    734
+Glimpses of Portugal and
+  the Portuguese. (_Illustrated._)                                     473
+Heinrich Heine                   _A. Parker_                           604
+Horse-Racing in France.
+  (_Illustrated._)               _L. Lejeune_                     321, 452
+How she Kept her Vow:
+  A Narrative of Facts           _S. G. W. Benjamin_                   594
+"Kitty"                          _Lawrence Buckley_                    503
+Limoges, and its Porcelain       _George L. Catlin_                    576
+Mallston's Youngest              _M. H. Catherwood_                    189
+Mrs. Marcellus. By a Guest
+  at her Saturdays               _Olive Logan_                         613
+Mrs. Pinckney's Governess                                              336
+National Music an Interpreter
+  of National Character          _Amelia E. Barr_                      181
+Newport a Hundred Years Ago      _Frances Pierrepont North_            351
+On Spelling Reform               _M. B. C. True_                       111
+On the Skunk River               _Louise Coffin Jones_                  56
+Our Grandfathers' Temples.
+  (_Illustrated._)               _Charles F. Richardson_               678
+Paradise Plantation.
+  (_Illustrated._)               _Louise Seymour Houghton_              19
+Pipistrello                      _Ouida_                                84
+Seven Weeks a Missionary         _Louise Coffin Jones_                 424
+Short Studies in the Picturesque _William Sloan Kennedy_               375
+Studies in the Slums--           _Helen Campbell_
+    III. Nan; or, A Girl's Life                                        103
+    IV. Jack                                                           213
+     V. Diet and its Doings                                            362
+    VI. Jan of the North                                               498
+The [Greek: Apax Aegomena]
+  in Shakespeare                 _Prof. James D. Butler_               742
+The Arts of India.
+  (_Illustrated._)               _Jennie J. Young_                     532
+The Authors of "Froufrou"        _J. Brander Matthews_                 711
+The Early Days of Mormonism      _Frederic G. Mather_                  198
+The Mistakes of Two People       _Margaret Bertha Wright_              567
+The Palace of the Leatherstonepaughs.
+  (_Illustrated._)               _Margaret Bertha Wright_                9
+The Practical History of a Play  _William H. Rideing_                  586
+The Price of Safety              _E. W. Latimer_                       698
+The Ruin of Me. (Told by
+  a Young Married Man.)          _Mary Dean_                           369
+The Ruins of the Colorado Valley.
+  (_Illustrated._)               _Alfred Terry Bacon_                  521
+Through the Yellowstone Park
+  to Fort Custer                 _S. Weir Mitchell, M. D._              29
+Westbrook                        _Alice Ilgenfritz_                    218
+Where Lightning Strikes          _George J. Varney_                    232
+Will Democracy Tolerate a
+  Permanent Class of National Office-holders?                          690
+
+
+LITERATURE OF THE DAY, comprising Reviews of the following Works:
+
+Arr, E. H.--New England Bygones                                        392
+Auerbach, Berthold--Brigitta                                           775
+Ayres, Anne--The Life and Work of William Augustus Muhlenberg          135
+Black, William--White Wings: A Yachting Romance                        775
+Forrester, Mrs.--Roy and Viola                                         775
+Fothergill, Jessie--The Wellfields                                     775
+Green, John Richard--History of the English People                     774
+Laffan, May--Christy Carew                                             133
+L'Art: revue hebdomadaíre illustrée. Sixième année, Tome II            517
+Mahaffy, M. A., Rev. J. P.--A History of Classical Greek Literature    261
+Mrs. Beauchamp Brown                                                   518
+Nichol, John--Byron. (English Men-of-Letters Series.)                  645
+Piatt, John James--Pencilled Fly-Leaves:
+  A Book of Essays in Town and Country                                 648
+Scoones, W. Baptiste--Four Centuries of English Letters                647
+Smith, Goldwin--William Cowper. (English Men-of-Letters Series.)       263
+Stephen, Leslie--Alexander Pope. (English Men-of-Letters Series.)      389
+Symington, Andrew James--Samuel Lover: A Biographical Sketch.
+  With Selections from his Writings and Correspondence                 391
+Taylor, Bayard--Critical Essays and Literary Notes                     519
+  "        "  --Studies in German Literature                           519
+The American Art Review, Nos. 8 and 9                                  520
+Walford, L. B.--Troublesome Daughters                                  775
+Wikoff, Henry--The Reminiscences of an Idler                           135
+
+
+OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP, comprising the following Articles:
+
+A Child's Autobiography, 770; A Legion of Devils, 257; A Little Ireland
+in America, 767; A Natural Barometer, 517; An Unfinished Page of
+History, 764; A Plot for an Historical Novel, 385; A Sermon to Literary
+Aspirants, 637; Civil-Service Reform and Democratic Ideas, 762;
+Concerning Night-Noises, 253; Condition of the People in the West of
+Ireland, 514; Conservatory Life in Boston, 511; Edelweiss, 126; Fate of
+an Old Companion of Napoleon III., 516; High Jinks on the Upper
+Mississippi, 515; Our New Visitors, 388; People's Houses: A Dialogue,
+640; Prayer-Meeting Eloquence, 129; Seeing is Believing, 642; Spoiled
+Children, 128; Tabarin, the French Merry-Andrew, 255; The Demidoffs,
+259; The Jardin d'Acclimatation of Paris, 130; The Miseries of Camping
+Out, 387; The Paris Salon of 1880, 381; "Time Turns the Tables," 642;
+Unreformed Spelling, 388; Wanted--A Real Gainsborough, 772; "Western
+Memorabilia," 250.
+
+
+POETRY:
+
+A Vengeance                      _Edgar Fawcett_                       211
+Dawn                             _John B. Tabb_                        612
+Delectatio Piscatoria.
+  The Upper Kennebec             _Horatio Nelson Powers_               367
+From Far                         _Philip Bourke Marston_               465
+Lost                             _Mary B. Dodge_                       665
+My Treasure                      _H. L. Leonard_                       109
+Possession                       _Eliza Calvert Hall_                  162
+Shelley                          _J. B. Tabb_                           18
+Teresa di Faenza                 _Emma Lazarus_                         83
+The Home of the Gentians         _Howard Glyndon_                      350
+The King's Gifts                 _Emily A. Braddock_                   718
+The Sea's Secret                 _G. A. Davis_                         240
+Three Roses                      _Julia C. R. Dorr_                    585
+Under the Grasses                _Dora Reed Goodale_                   502
+
+
+
+
+LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
+
+OF
+
+_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE._
+
+JULY, 1880.
+
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by J. B.
+LIPPINCOTT & CO., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
+Washington.
+
+
+
+
+THE PALACE OF THE LEATHERSTONEPAUGHS.
+
+[Illustration: RUINS OF THE PALACES OF THE CÆSARS.]
+
+
+Every sentimental traveller to Rome must sometimes wonder if to come to
+the Eternal City is not, after all, more of a loss than a gain: Rome
+unvisited holds such a solitary place in one's imaginings. It is then a
+place around which sweeps a different atmosphere from that of any other
+city under the sun. One sees it through poetic mists that veil every
+prosaic reality. It is arched by an horizon against which the figures of
+its wonderful history are shadowed with scarcely less of grandeur and
+glory than those the old gods cast upon the Sacred Hill.
+
+One who has never seen Rome is thus led to imagine that those of his
+country-people who have lived here for years have become in a manner
+purged of all natural commonplaceness. One thinks of them as
+refined--sublimated, so to speak--into beings worthy of reverence and to
+be spoken of with awed admiration. For have not their feet wandered
+where the Caesars' feet have trod, till that famous ground has become
+common earth to them? Have they not dwelt in the shadow of mountains
+that have trembled beneath the tramp of Goth, Visigoth and Ostrogoth,
+till those shadows have become every-day shadows to them? Have they not
+often watched beneath the same stars that shone upon knightly vigils,
+till the whiteness of those shining hosts has made pure their souls as
+it purified the heroic ones of old? Have they not listened to the
+singing and sighing of the selfsame winds that sung and sighed about the
+spot where kingly Numa wooed a nymph, till it must be that into the
+commoner natures has entered some of the sweetness and wisdom of that
+half-divine communion?
+
+Thus the dreamer comes to Rome expecting to enter and become enfolded by
+those poetic mists, to live an ideal life amid the tender melancholy
+that broods over stately and storied ruin, and to forget for evermore,
+while within the wondrous precincts, that aught more prosaic exists than
+the heroes of history, the fairest visions of art and dreams of poesy.
+
+[Illustration: "GHOSTS OF FLEAS" (Copied From Sketches Of William
+Blake).]
+
+So came the Leatherstonepaughs. And so have the Leatherstonepaughs
+sometimes wondered if, after all, to come to Rome is not more of a loss
+than a gain in the dimming of one of their fairest ideals. For is there
+another city in the world where certain of the vulgar verities of life
+press themselves more prominently into view than in the Eternal City?
+Can one anywhere have a more forcible conviction that greasy cookery is
+bile-provoking, and that it is because the sylvan bovine ruminates so
+long upon the melancholy Campagna that one's dinners become such a heavy
+and sorrowful matter in Rome? Is there any city in the universe where
+fleas dwarf more colossally and fiendishly Blake's famous "ghosts" of
+their kind? Does one anywhere come oftener in from wet streets, "a dem'd
+moist, unpleasant body," to more tomblike rooms? Is one anywhere so
+ceaselessly haunted by the disagreeable consciousness that one pays ten
+times as much for everything one buys as a native pays, and that the
+trousered descendant of the toga'd Roman regards the Western barbarian
+as quite as much his legitimate prey as the barbarian's barelegged
+ancestors were the prey of his forefathers before the tables of history
+were turned, Rome fallen and breeches supplied to all the world? And are
+any mortal vistas more gorgeously illuminated by the red guidebook of
+the Tourist than are the stately and storied ruins where the
+sentimentalist seeketh the brooding of a tender melancholy, and
+findeth it not in the presence of couriers, cabmen, beggars,
+photograph-peddlers, stovepipe hats, tie-backs and bridal giggles?
+
+The dreamer thought to find old Rome crystallized amid its glorious
+memories. He finds a nineteenth-century city, with gay shops and
+fashionable streets, living over the heroic scenes of the ancients and
+the actual woe and spiritual mysticism of the mediæval age; and he is
+disappointed--nay, even sometimes enraged into a gnashing of the teeth
+at all things Roman.
+
+But after many weeks, after the sights have been "done," the mouldy and
+mossy nooks of the old city explored, and the marvellous picturesqueness
+that hides in strange places revealed--after one has a speaking
+acquaintance with all the broken bits of old statues that gather moth
+and rust where the tourist cometh not and the guidebook is not known,
+and has followed the tiniest thread of legend or tradition into all
+manner of mysterious regions,--then the sentimentalist begins to love
+Rome again--Rome as it is, not Rome as it seemed through the glamours of
+individual imagination.
+
+This is what the Leatherstonepaughs did. But first they fled the
+companionship of the beloved but somewhat loudly-shrieking American
+eagle as that proud bird often appears in the hotels and _pensions_ of
+Europe, and lived in a shabby Roman palace, where only the soft bastard
+Latin was heard upon the stairs, and where, if any mediæval ghost
+stalked in rusted armor or glided in mouldering cerements, it would not
+understand a single word of their foreign, many-consonanted speech.
+
+This palace stands, gay and grim, at the corner of a gay street and a
+dingy _vicolo_, the street and alley contrasting in color like a Claude
+Lorraine with a Nicholas Poussin. Past one side of the palace drifts all
+day a bright tide of foreign sightseers, prosperous Romans, gay models
+and flower-venders, handsome carriages, dark-eyed girls with their
+sallow chaperones, and olive-cheeked, huge-checked _jeunesse dorée_,
+evidently seeking for pretty faces as for pearls of great price, as is
+the manner of the jeunesse dorée of the Eternal City; while down upon
+the scene looks a succession of dwelling-houses, a gray-walled convent
+or two, one of the stateliest palaces of Rome--now let out in apartments
+and hiding in obscure rooms the last two impoverished descendants of a
+proud race that helped to impoverish Rome--one or two more prosperous
+palaces, and a venerable church, looking like a sleepy watchman of Zion
+suffering the enemy to do as it will before his closed eyes.
+
+[Illustration: WHAT A ROMAN BUYS FOR TWO CENTS IN THE ETERNAL CITY.]
+
+[Illustration: WHAT A FOREIGNER BUYS FOR TWO CENTS IN THE ETERNAL CITY.]
+
+On the other side is the vicolo, dark of wall and dank of pavement, with
+petticoats and shirts dangling from numerous windows and fluttering like
+gibbeted wretches in the air; with frowzy women sewing or knitting in
+the sombre doorways and squalid urchins screaming everywhere; with
+humble vegetables and cheap wines exposed for sale in dirty windows;
+with usually a carriage or two undergoing a washing at some stable-door;
+and with almost always an amorous Romeo or two from some brighter region
+wandering hopefully to and fro amid the unpicturesque gloom of this
+Roman lane to catch a wafted kiss or a dropped letter from the rear
+window of his Juliet's home. For nowhere else in Europe, Asia, America,
+the Oceanic Archipelago or the Better Land can the Romeo-and-Juliet
+business be more openly and freely carried on than in the by-streets of
+the Eternal City, where girls are thought to be as jealously secluded
+from the monster Man as are the women of a Turkish seraglio or the nuns
+of a European convent. These Romeos and Juliets usually seem quite
+indifferent to the number of unsympathetic eyes that watch their little
+drama, providing only Papa and Mamma Capulet are kept in the dark in the
+shop below. Even the observation of Signor and Signora Montague would
+disturb them little, for it is only Juliet who is guarded, and Romeo is
+evidently expected to get all the fun out of life he can. In their dingy
+vicolo the Leatherstonepaughs have seen three Romeos watching three
+windows at the same twilight moment. One of them stood under an open
+window in the third story, from whence a line was dropped down to
+receive the letter he held in his hand. Just as the letter-weighted line
+was drawn up a window immediately below Juliet's was thrown violently
+open, and an unromantic head appeared to empty vials of wrath upon the
+spectacled Romeo below for always hanging about the windows of the silly
+_pizzicarole_ girls above and giving the house a ridiculous appearance
+in the eyes of the passers-by. Romeo answered audaciously that the
+signora was mistaken in the man, that he had never been under that
+window before in his life, had never seen the Signorina Juliet, daughter
+of Capulet the pizzicarole who lived above, but that he was merely
+accompanying his friend Romeo, who loved Juliet the daughter of the
+_drochiere_ who lived a story below, and who was now wooing her softly
+two or three windows away. A shriek was his response as the wrathful
+head disappeared, while the lying Romeo laughed wickedly and the
+Leatherstonepaughs immoderately, in spite of themselves, to see Juliet,
+daughter of the drochiere, electrically abstracted from _her_ window as
+if by the sudden application of a four-hundred-enraged-mother-power to
+her lofty chignon from behind, while the three Romeos, evidently all
+strangers to each other, folded their tents like the Arab and silently
+stole away. [Illustration: ROMEO.]
+
+[Illustration: JULIET.]
+
+The Leatherstonepaughs always suspected that no lordly race, from
+father's father to son's son, had ever dwelt in their immense palace.
+They suspected rather that it was, like many another mighty Roman pile,
+reared by plebeian gains to shelter noble Romans fair and proud whom
+Fate confined to economical "flats," and whose wounded pride could best
+be poulticed by the word _palazzo_.
+
+Hans Christian Andersen knew this palace well, and has described it as
+the early home of his _Improvisatore_. In those days two fountains
+tinkled, one within, the other just outside, the dusky iron-barred
+basement. One fountain, however, has ceased to flow, and now if a
+passer-by peeps in at the grated window, whence issue hot strong vapors
+and bursts of merry laughter, he will see a huge stone basin into whose
+foaming contents one fountain drips, and over which a dozen washerwomen
+bend and pound with all their might and main in a bit of chiaroscuro
+that reminds one of Correggio.
+
+Over this Correggio glimpse wide stone stairs lead past dungeon-like
+doors up five flights to the skylighted roof. Each of these doors has a
+tiny opening through which gleams a watchful eye and comes the sound of
+the inevitable "_Chi è?_" whenever the doorbell rings, as if each comer
+were an armed marauder strayed down from the Middle Ages, who must be
+well reconnoitred before the fortress-gates are unbarred.
+
+[Illustration: THE COURT OF THE LEATHERSTONEPAUGHS' PALACE.]
+
+It was in the _ultimo piano_ that the Leatherstonepaughs pitched their
+lodge in a vast wilderness of colorful tiled roofs, moss-grown and
+lichen-laden, amid a forest of quaintly-shaped and smokeless chimneys.
+Their floors, guiltless of rugs or carpets, were of earthen tiles and
+worn into hollows where the feet of the palace-dwellers passed oftenest
+to and fro. A multitude of undraped windows opened like doors upon stone
+balconies, whither the inhabitants flew like a startled covey of birds
+every time the king and queen drove by in the street below, and upon
+which they passed always from room to room. The outer balcony looks down
+upon the Piazza Barberini and its famous Spouting Triton, with an
+horizon-line over the roofs broken by gloomy stone-pines and cypresses
+that seem to have grown from the buried griefs of Rome's dead centuries.
+The inner balcony overlooks the court, where through the wide windows of
+every story, amid the potted plants and climbing vines that never take
+on a shade of pallor in an Italian winter, and that adorn every Roman
+balcony, one could see into the penetralia of a dozen Roman families and
+wrest thence the most vital secrets--even to how much _Romano_ Alfredo
+drank at dinner or whether lemon-juice or sour wine gave piquancy to
+Rosina's salad. Entirely unacquainted with these descendants of ancient
+patrician or pleb, the Leatherstonepaughs ventilated original and
+individual theories concerning them, and gave them names of their own
+choosing.
+
+[Illustration: A CASE OF NON-REMITTANCE.]
+
+"Rameses the Great has quarrelled with the Sphinx and is flirting with
+the Pyramid," whispered young Cain one day as some of the family,
+leaning over the iron railing, looked into the leafy, azure-domed vault
+below, and saw into the dining-room of a family whose mysteriousness of
+habit and un-Italian blankness of face gave them a fanciful resemblance
+to the eternal riddles of the Orient.
+
+The "Pyramid," whose wide feet and tiny head gave her her triangular
+title, was evidently a teacher, for she so often carried exercise-books
+and dog-eared grammars in her hand. She chanced at that moment to glance
+upward. "Lucia," she cried to the Sphinx, speaking with an Italian
+accent that she flattered herself was to the down-gazers an unknown
+tongue, "do look up to the fifth _loggia_. If there isn't the Huge Bear,
+the Middle-sized Bear and the Wee Bear looking as if they wanted to come
+down and eat us up!"
+
+"Y' ain't fat 'nuf," yelled the Wee Bear before the elder Bruins had
+time to squelch him.
+
+The studio-salon of the Leatherstonepaughs amid the clouds and chimneys
+of the Eternal City was a chapter for the curious. It was as spacious as
+a country meeting-house, as lofty as befits a palace. It was frescoed
+like some of the modern pseudo-Gothic and pine cathedrals that adorn the
+village-greens of New England hamlets, and its _pot-pourri_ of artistic
+ideas was rich in helmeted Minervas, vine-wreathed Bacchuses, winged
+Apollos and nameless classic nymphs, all staring downward from the
+spandrels of pointed arches with quite as much at-homeness as Olympian
+heroes would feel amid the mystic shades of the Scandinavian Walhalla.
+This room was magnificent with crimson upholstery, upon which rested a
+multitude of scarlet-embroidered cushions that seemed to the
+color-loving eye like a dream of plum-pudding after a nightmare of
+mince-pie. Through this magnificence had drifted, while yet the
+Leatherstonepaughs saw Rome in all its idealizing mists, generations of
+artists. Sometimes these artists had had a sublime disdain of base
+lucre, and sometimes base lucre had had a sublime disdain of them. Some
+of the latter class--whose name is Legion--had marked their passage by
+busts, statuettes and paintings that served to remind Signora Anina,
+their landlady, that promises of a remittance can be as fair and false
+as the song of the Sirens or the guile of the Loreley. Crusaders in
+armor brandished their lances there in evidence that Michael Angelo
+Bivins never sent from Manhattan the bit of white paper to redeem them.
+Antignone--usually wearing a Leatherstonepaugh bonnet--mourned that
+Praxiteles Periwinkle faded out of the vistas of Rome to the banks of
+the Thames without her. Dancing Floras seemed joyous that they had not
+gone wandering among the Theban Colossi with Zefferino, instead of
+staying to pay for his Roman lodging; while the walls smiled, wept,
+simpered, threatened and gloomed with Madonnas, Dolorosas, Beatrices,
+sprites, angels and fiends, the authors of whose being had long ago
+drifted away on the ocean of poverty which sweeps about the world, and
+beneath which sometimes the richest-freighted ships go down. In the
+twenty years that Signora Anina has let her rooms to artists many such
+tragedies have written significant and dreary lines upon her walls.
+
+That studio-salon was rich not alone in painting and sculpture. The
+whatnot was a museum whither might come the Northern Goth and Southern
+Vandal to learn what a Roman home can teach of the artistic taste that
+Matthew Arnold declares to be the natural heritage only of the nation
+which rocked the cradle of the Renaissance when its old Romanesque and
+Byzantine parents died. That whatnot was covered with tiny china dogs
+and cats, such as we benighted American Goths buy for ten cents a dozen
+to fill up the crevices in Billy's and Bobby's Christmas stockings.
+Fancy inkstands stood cheek by jowl with wire flower-baskets that were
+stuffed with crewel roses of such outrageous hues as would make the
+Angel of Color blaspheme. Cut-glass spoon-holders kept in countenance
+shining plated table-casters eternally and spotlessly divorced from the
+purpose of their being. There were gaudy china vases by the dozen and
+simpering china shepherdesses by the score. There were plaster casts of
+the whole of Signora Anina's family of nine children, from the elder
+fiery Achilles to the younger hysterical Niobe. There were
+perfume-bottles enough to start a coiffeur in business, and woolly lambs
+enough for a dozen pastoral poems or as many bucolic butchers. But the
+piano was piled high with Beethoven's sonatas and Chopin's delicious
+dream-music, while a deluge of French novels had evidently surged over
+that palace of the Leatherstonepaughs.
+
+When the family took possession of their share of the palazzo a corner
+of this studio-salon was dedicated to a peculiar member of their family.
+From that corner she seldom moved save as she swept away in some such
+elegant costume as the others wore only upon gala-occasions, or in some
+picturesque or wildly-fantastic garb that would have lodged her in a
+policeman's care had she ever been suffered to escape thus from the
+palace. All day long, day after day, she tarried in her corner mute and
+motionless, eying all comers and goers with a haughty stare. Sometimes
+she leaned there with rigid finger pressed upon her lip, like a statue
+of Silence; sometimes her hands were pressed pathetically to her breast,
+like a Mater Dolorosa; sometimes both arms hung lax and limp by her
+side, like those of a heart-broken creature; and sometimes she wildly
+clutched empty air, like a Leatherstonepaugh enthusiastically inebriated
+or gone stark, staring, raving mad!
+
+[Illustration: ANTIGNONE.]
+
+Yet never, never, never was Silentia Leatherstonepaugh known to break
+that dreadful silence, even though honored guests spoke to her kindly,
+and although young Cain Leatherstonepaugh repeatedly reviled her as had
+she been Abel's wife. One day came an old Spanish monk of whom Leah and
+Rachel would learn the language of Castile. Silentia gloomed in her
+dusky corner unseen of the monk, who was left with her an instant alone.
+A few moments before, moved perhaps by a dawning comprehension of the
+unspeakable pathos of her fate, young Cain had given her a dagger. When,
+two minutes after the monk's arrival, Leah and Rachel entered the room,
+a black sighing mass cowered in a corner of the sofa, while Silentia
+rose spectre-like in the dimness, the dagger pointed toward her heart.
+
+[Illustration: SILENTIA LEATHERSTONEPAUGH.]
+
+"Madonna mia!" giggled the monk hysterically when his petticoats were
+pulled decorously about him and he was set on his feet again, "I thought
+I should be arrested for murder--_poverino mio_!"
+
+Another day came one of the Beelzebub girls--Lady Diavoletta--who wished
+to coax some of the Leatherstonepaughs to paint her a series of fans
+with the torments of Dante's Inferno. When the doorbell rang, and while
+Cain cried "_Chi è?_" at the peephole, Leah, who was just posing for
+Rachel's barelegged gypsy, hastily pulled a long silk skirt from haughty
+but unresisting Silentia and hurried it over her own head before Lady
+Diavoletta was admitted. The heiress of the Beelzebubs tarried but a
+moment, then took her departure grimly, without hinting a word of her
+purpose. Said Lady Diavoletta afterward to the Cherubim sisters, "Would
+you believe it? I called one day upon those Leatherstonepaughs, and they
+never even apologized for receiving me in a room where there was an
+insane American just escaped from her keeper, _tray beang arrangée pore
+doncy le cong cong_!"
+
+[Illustration: SILENTIA AS SHE APPEARED TO LADY DIAVOLETTA BEELZEBUB.]
+
+Dismal and grim though the exterior of that palazzo was, needing but
+towers and machicolated parapets to seem a fortress, or an encircling
+wall to seem a frowning monastery where cowled figures met each other
+only to whisper sepulchrally, "Brother, we must die," it was yet the
+scene of not a few laughable experiences. And perhaps even in this
+respect it may not have differed so widely as one might think from
+cloistered shades of other days, when out of sad, earth-colored raiment
+and the habit of dismal speech human sentiment painted pictures while
+yet the fagots grew apace for their destruction as well as for the
+funeral-pyre of their scolding and bellowing enemy, Savonarola. For
+where Fra Angelico, working from the life, could create a San Sebastian
+so instinct with earthly vitality and earthly bloom that pious
+Florentine women could not say their prayers in peace in its presence,
+there were three easels, each bearing a canvas, in different parts of
+the room. Before each easel worked a Leatherstonepaugh, each clad with
+classic simplicity in a long blue cotton garment, decorated with many
+colors and smelling strongly of retouching varnish, that covered her
+from the white ruffle at her throat to the upper edge of her black
+alpaca flounce.
+
+The room was silent, and, except for the deft action of brushes,
+motionless. Only that from below was heard the musical splash of the
+Barberini Tritons, and that from the windows could be seen the sombre
+pines of the Ludovisi gardens swaying in solemn rhythmic measure must
+have been sometimes unbending from the dole and drear of mediæval
+asceticism into something very like human fun.
+
+One day the Leatherstonepaughs were all at work in the immense studio.
+Silentia alone was idle, and, somewhat indecorously draped only in a bit
+of old tapestry, with dishevelled hair and lolling head, leaned against
+the wall, apparently in the last stages of inebriety. There against the
+blue sky, all the world would have seemed petrified into the complete
+passiveness of sitting for its picture.
+
+[Illustration: YOUNG CAIN INTERVIEWING SILENTIA.]
+
+Marietta was their model. She was posed in a nun's dress, pensive gray,
+with virginal white bound primly across her brow. Marietta is a capital
+model, and her sad face and tender eyes were upturned with exactly the
+desired expression to the grinning mask in the centre of the ceiling.
+Silentia kindly consented to pose for the cross to which the nun clung;
+that is, she wobbled weakly into the place where the sacred emblem would
+have been were this Nature and not Art, and where the cross would be in
+the picture when completed. Marietta clung devoutly to Silentia's
+ankles, and Silentia looked as cross as possible.
+
+"How unusual to see one of Italia's children with a face like that!"
+said a Leatherstonepaugh as she studied the nun's features. "One would
+say that she had really found peace only after some terrible suffering."
+
+"She does not give me that impression," said another Leatherstonepaugh.
+"Her contours are too round, her color too undimmed, ever to have
+weathered spiritual storms. She seems to me more like one of Giovanni
+Bellini's Madonnas, those fair, fresh girl-mothers whom sorrow has never
+breathed upon to blight a line or tint, and yet who seem to have a
+prophecy written upon their faces--not of the glory of the agony, but of
+the lifelong sadness of a strange destiny. This girl has some mournful
+prescience perhaps. Let me talk with her by and by."
+
+"Marietta," said a Leatherstonepaugh in the next repose, "if you were
+not obliged to be a model, what would you choose to be, of all things in
+the world?"
+
+This was only an entering-wedge, intended by insidious degrees to pry
+open the heart of the girl and learn the mystery of her Madonna-like
+sadness.
+
+Marietta looked up quickly: "What would I be, signorina? Dio mio! but I
+would wear shining clothes and ride in the Polytheama! Giacomo says I
+was born for the circus. Will le signorine see?"
+
+In the twinkling of an eye, before the Leatherstonepaughs could breathe,
+the pensive gray raiment was drawn up to the length of a ballet-skirt
+and the foot of the Madonna-faced nun was in the open mouth of one of
+Lucca della Robbia's singing-boys that hung on the wall about five feet
+from the floor!
+
+"Can any of the signorine do _that_?" she crowed triumphantly. "I can
+knock off a man's hat or black his eye with my foot."
+
+All the Leatherstonepaughs groaned in doleful chorus, "A-a-a-h-h!"
+
+And it was not until young Cain, ostracised from the studio during the
+séance, whistled in through the keyhole sympathetic inquiries concerning
+the only woe his little soul knew, "Watty matter in yare? Ennybuddy dut
+e tummuck-ache?" that they chorused with laughter at their
+"Giovanni-Bellini Madonna."
+
+MARGARET BERTHA WRIGHT.
+
+
+
+
+SHELLEY.
+
+
+    Shelley, the wondrous music of thy soul
+      Breathes in the cloud and in the skylark's song,
+      That float as an embodied dream along
+    The dewy lids of Morning. In the dole
+    That haunts the west wind, in the joyous roll
+      Of Arethusan fountains, or among
+      The wastes where Ozymandias the strong
+    Lies in colossal ruin, thy control
+      Speaks in the wedded rhyme. Thy spirit gave
+    A fragrance to all Nature, and a tone
+      To inexpressive Silence. Each apart--
+    Earth, Air and Ocean--claims thee as its own,
+      The twain that bred thee, and the panting wave
+        That clasped thee like an overflowing heart.
+
+                               J. B. TABB.
+
+
+
+
+PARADISE PLANTATION
+
+[Illustration: "THE SPLENDID SADDLE-HOSS."]
+
+
+"Of course you will live at the hotel?"
+
+"Not at all. The idea of leaving one's work three times a day to dress
+for meals!"
+
+"May I ask, then, where you _do_ propose to reside?"
+
+"In the cottage on the place, to be sure."
+
+The Pessimist thrust his hands into his pockets and gave utterance to a
+long, low whistle.
+
+"You don't believe it? Come over with us and look at it, and let us tell
+you our plans."
+
+"That negro hut, Hope? You never can be in earnest?"
+
+"She is until she has seen it," said the Invalid, smiling. "You had
+better go over with her: a sight of the place will be more effectual
+than all your arguments."
+
+"But she _has_ seen it," said Merry. "Two years ago, when we were here
+and old Uncle Nat was so ill, we went over there."
+
+"And I remember the house perfectly," added Hope--"a charming long, low,
+dark room, with no windows and a great fireplace, and the most
+magnificent live-oak overhanging the roof."
+
+"How enchanting! Let us move in at once." The Invalid rose from his
+chair, and taking Merry's arm, the four descended the piazza-steps.
+
+"Of course," explained Hope as we walked slowly under the grand old
+trees of the hotel park--"of course the carpenter and the painter and
+the glazier are to intervene, and Merry and I must make no end of
+curtains and things. But it will be ever so much cheaper, when all is
+done, than living at the hotel, besides being so much more cozy; and if
+we are to farm, we really should be on the spot."
+
+"Meantime, I shall retain my room at the hotel," said the Pessimist,
+letting down the bars.
+
+"You are expected to do that," retorted Merry, disdaining the bars and
+climbing over the fence. "It will be quite as much as you deserve to be
+permitted to take your meals with us. But there! can you deny that that
+is beautiful?"
+
+The wide field in which we were walking terminated in a high bluff above
+the St. John's. A belt of great forest trees permitted only occasional
+glimpses of the water on that side, but to the northward the ground
+sloped gradually down to one of the picturesque bays which so frequently
+indent the shores of the beautiful river. Huge live-oaks stood here and
+there about the field, with soft gray Spanish moss swaying from their
+dark branches. Under the shadow of one more mighty than the rest stood
+the cottage, or rather the two cottages, which formed the much-discussed
+residence--two unpainted, windowless buildings, with not a perpendicular
+line in their whole superficial extent.
+
+The Pessimist withdrew the stick which held the staple and threw open
+the unshapely door. There were no steps, but a little friendly pushing
+and pulling brought even the Invalid within the room. There was a
+moment's silence; then, from Hope, "Oh, the magnificent chimney! Think
+of a fire of four-foot lightwood on a chilly evening!"
+
+"I should advise the use of the chimney as a sleeping-room: there seems
+to be none other," said the Pessimist.
+
+"But we can curtain off this entire end of the room. How fortunate that
+it should be so large! Here will be our bedroom, and this corner shall
+be for Merry. And when we have put one of those long, low Swiss windows
+in the east side, and another here to the south, you'll see how pleasant
+it will be."
+
+"It appears to me," he remarked perversely, "that windows will be a
+superfluous luxury. One can see out at a dozen places already; and as
+for ventilation, there is plenty of that through the roof."
+
+"The frame really is sound," said the Invalid, examining with a critical
+eye.
+
+"Of course it is," said Hope. "Now let us go into the kitchen. If that
+is only half as good I shall be quite satisfied."
+
+The kitchen-door, which was simply an old packing-box cover, with the
+address outside by way of doorplate, was a veritable "fat man's misery,"
+but as none of the party were particularly fat we all managed to squeeze
+through.
+
+"Two rooms!" exclaimed Hope. "How enchanting! I had no idea that there
+was more than one. What a nice little dining-room this will make! There
+is just room enough."
+
+"'Us four and no more,'" quoted Merry. "But where will the handmaiden
+sleep?"
+
+"The kitchen is large," said the Pessimist, bowing his head to pass into
+the next room: "it will only be making one more curtain, Merry, and she
+can have this corner."
+
+"He is converted! he really is converted!" cried Merry, clapping her
+hands. "And now there is only papa, and then we can go to the sawmill to
+order lumber."
+
+"And to the Cove to find a carpenter," added Hope. "Papa can make up his
+mind in the boat."
+
+We had visited Florida two years before, and, charmed with the climate,
+the river, the oaks, the flowers, the sweet do-nothing life, we had
+followed the example of so many worthy Northerners and had bought an old
+plantation, intending to start an orange-grove. We had gone over all the
+calculations which are so freely circulated in the Florida papers--so
+many trees to the acre, so many oranges to the tree: the results were
+fairly dazzling. Even granting, with a lordly indifference to trifles
+worthy of incipient millionaires, that the trees should bear only
+one-fifth of the computed number of oranges, and that they should bring
+but one-third of the estimated price, still we should realize one
+thousand dollars per acre. And there are three hundred and sixty acres
+in our plantation. Ah! even the Pessimist drew a long breath.
+
+Circumstances had, however, prevented our taking immediate steps toward
+securing this colossal fortune. But now that it had become necessary for
+us to spend the winter in a warm climate, our golden projects were
+revived. We would start a grove at once. It was not until we had been
+three days at sea, southward bound, that Hope, after diligent study of
+an old Florida newspaper, picked up nobody knows where, became the
+originator of the farming plan now in process of development.
+
+"The cultivation of the crop becomes the cultivation of the grove," she
+said with the sublime assurance of utter ignorance, "and thus we shall
+get our orange-grove at no cost whatever."
+
+She was so much in earnest that the Invalid was actually convinced by
+her arguments, which, to do her justice, were not original, but were
+filched from the enthusiastic journal before alluded to. It was decided
+that we were to go to farming. It is true none of us knew anything
+about the business except such waifs of experience as remained to the
+Invalid after thirty years' absence from grandpa's farm, where he used
+to spend the holidays. Holidays were in winter in those times, and his
+agricultural experience had consisted principally in cracking butternuts
+and riding to the wood-lot on the ox-sled. But this was of no
+consequence, as Hope and Merry agreed, since there were plenty of books
+on the subject, and, besides, there were the Florida newspapers!
+
+"I warn you I wash my hands of the whole concern," the Pessimist had
+said. "You'll never make farming pay."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because you won't."
+
+"But why, because?"
+
+"The idea of women farming!"
+
+"Oh, well, if you come to that, I should just like to show you what
+women can do," cried Merry; and this unlucky remark of the Pessimist
+settles the business. There is no longer any question about farming.
+
+No one could deny that the house was pretty, and comfortable too, when
+at last the carpenter and painter had done their work, and the curtains
+and the easy-chairs and the bookshelves had taken their places, and the
+great fire of pine logs was lighted, and the mocking-bird's song
+streamed in with the sunlight through the open door and between the
+fluttering leaves of the ivy-screen at the window. The piano was always
+open in the evenings, with Merry or the Pessimist strumming on the keys
+or trying some of the lovely new songs; and Hope would be busy at her
+table with farm-books and accounts; and the Invalid, in his easy-chair,
+would be listening to the music and falling off to sleep and rousing
+himself with a little clucking snore to pile more lightwood on the fire;
+and the mocking-bird in his covered cage would wake too and join lustily
+in the song, till Merry smothered him up in thicker coverings.
+
+The first duty was evident. "Give it a name, I beg," Merry had said the
+very first evening in the new home; and the house immediately went into
+committee of the whole to decide upon one. Hope proposed Paradise
+Plantation; Merry suggested Fortune Grove; the Pessimist hinted that
+Folly Farm would be appropriate, but this proposition was ignominiously
+rejected; and the Invalid gave the casting-vote for Hope's selection.
+
+[Illustration: "I'SE DE SECTION, SAH."]
+
+The hour for work having now arrived, the man was not slow in presenting
+himself. "I met an old fellow who used to be a sort of overseer on this
+very plantation," the Invalid said. "He says he has an excellent horse,
+and you will need one, Hope. I told him to come and see you."
+
+"Which? the man or the horse?" asked Merry in a low voice.
+
+"Both, apparently," answered the Pessimist in the same tone, "for here
+they come."
+
+"Ole man Spafford," as he announced himself, was a darkey of ancient and
+venerable mien, tall, gaunt and weatherbeaten. His steed was taller,
+gaunter and apparently twice as old--an interesting study for the
+osteologist if there be any such scientific person.
+
+"He splendid saddle-hoss, missis," said the old man: "good wuk-hoss
+too--bery fine hoss."
+
+"It seems to me he's rather thin," said Hope doubtfully.
+
+"Dat kase we didn't make no corn dis year, de ole woman an' me, we was
+bofe so bad wid de misery in the leaders" (rheumatism in the legs). "But
+Sancho won't stay pore ef you buys corn enough, missis. He powerful good
+horse to eat."
+
+Further conversation revealed the fact that old man Spafford was "de
+chief man ob de chu'ch."
+
+"What! a minister?" asked the Invalid.
+
+"No, sah, not azatly de preacher, sah, but I'se de nex' t'ing to dat."
+
+"What may your office be, then, uncle?" asked the Pessimist.
+
+"I'se de section, sah," answered the old man solemnly, making a low bow.
+
+"The sexton! So you ring the bell, do you?"
+
+"Not azatly de bell, sah--we ain't got no bell--but I bangs on de
+buzz-saw, sah."
+
+"What does he mean?" asked Merry.
+
+The Pessimist shrugged his shoulders without answering, but the
+"section" hastened to explain: "You see, missy, when dey pass roun' de
+hat to buy a bell dey didn't lift nigh enough; so dey jis' bought a
+buzz-saw and hung it up in de chu'ch-house; an' I bangs on de buzz-saw,
+missy."
+
+The chief man of the church was found, upon closer acquaintance, to be
+the subject of a profound conviction that he was the individual
+predestinated to superintend our farming interests. He was so well
+persuaded of this high calling that none of us dreamed of questioning
+it, and he was forthwith installed in the coveted office. At his
+suggestion another man, Dryden by name, was engaged to assist old man
+Spafford and take care of Sancho, and a boy, called Solomon, to wait
+upon Dryden and do chores. A few day-laborers were also temporarily
+hired, the season being so far advanced and work pressing. The
+carpenters were recalled, for there was a barn to build, and hen-coops
+and a pig-sty, not to speak of a fence. Hope and Merry flitted hither
+and thither armed with all sorts of impossible implements, which some
+one was sure to want by the time they had worked five minutes with them.
+As for the Pessimist, he confined himself to setting out orange trees,
+the only legitimate business, he contended, on the place. This work,
+however, he performed vicariously, standing by and smoking while a negro
+set out the trees.
+
+"My duties appear to be limited to paying the bills," remarked the
+Invalid, "and I seem to be the only member of the family who cannot let
+out the job."
+
+"I thought the farm was to be self-supporting?" said the Pessimist.
+
+"Well, so it is: wait till the crops are raised," retorted Merry.
+
+"Henderson says," observed Hope, meditatively, "that there are six
+hundred dollars net profits to be obtained from one acre of cabbages."
+
+"Why don't you plant cabbages, then? In this seven-acre lot, for
+instance?"
+
+"Oh, that would be too many. Besides, I have planted all I could get. It
+is too late to sow the seed, but old man Spafford had some beautiful
+plants he let me have. He charged an extra price because they were so
+choice, but I was glad to get the best: it is cheapest in the end. I got
+five thousand of them."
+
+"What sort are they?" asked the Invalid.
+
+"I don't know precisely. Spafford says he done lost the paper, and he
+didn't rightly understand the name nohow, 'long o' not being able to
+read; but they were a drefful choice kind."
+
+"Oh, bother the name!" said the Pessimist: "who cares what it is? A
+cabbage is a cabbage, I presume. But what have you in this seven-acre
+lot?"
+
+"Those are peas. Dryden says that in North Carolina they realize four
+hundred dollars an acre from them--when they don't freeze."
+
+The planting being now fairly over, we began to look about us for other
+amusement.
+
+"Better not ride old Sancho," remarked old man Spafford one day as he
+observed the Pessimist putting a saddle on the ancient quadruped.
+
+"Why not, uncle? You ride him yourself, and you said he was a very fine
+saddle-horse."
+
+"I rides he bareback. Good hoss for lady: better not put man's saddle
+on," persisted the old man.
+
+The Pessimist vaulted into the saddle by way of reply, calling out,
+"Open the gate, Solomon," to the boy, who was going down the lane. But
+the words were not spoken before Sancho, darting forward, overturned the
+deliberate Solomon, leaped the gate and rushed out into the woods at a
+tremendous pace. The resounding beat of his hoofs and energetic cries of
+"Whoa! whoa!" from his rider were wafted back upon the breeze, gradually
+dying away in the distance, and then reviving again as the fiery steed
+reappeared at the same "grand galop." The Pessimist was without a hat,
+and his countenance bore the marks of many a fray with the lower
+branches of the trees.
+
+[Illustration: OVERTURNED SOLOMON.]
+
+"Here, take your old beast!" he said, throwing the bridle impatiently to
+Spafford. "What sort of an animal do you call him?"
+
+The "section" approached with a grin of delight; "He waw-hoss, sah.
+Young missis rid he afo' the waw, an' he used to lady saddle; but ole
+marsa rid he to de waw, an' whenebber he feel man saddle on he back he
+runs dat a way, kase he t'ink de Yankees a'ter him;" and he exchanged a
+glance of intelligence with Sancho, who evidently enjoyed the joke.
+
+The Invalid, who during the progress of our planting had spent much time
+in explorations among our "Cracker" neighbors, had made the discovery of
+a most disreputable two-wheeled vehicle, which he had purchased and
+brought home in triumph. Its wheels were of different sizes and
+projected from the axle at most remarkable angles. One seat was
+considerably higher than the other, the cushions looked like so many
+dishevelled darkey heads, and the whole establishment had a most uncanny
+appearance. It was a perfect match, however, for Sancho, and that
+intelligent animal, waiving for the time his objection to having Yankees
+after him, consented to be harnessed into the vehicle and to draw us
+slowly and majestically about in the pine woods. He never objected to
+stopping anywhere while we gathered flowers, and we always returned
+laden with treasures to deck our little home withal, making many a rare
+and beautiful new acquaintance among the floral riches of pine barren
+and hammock.
+
+Meantime, peas and cabbages and many a "green" besides grew and
+flourished under old man Spafford's fostering care. Crisp green lettuce
+and scarlet radishes already graced our daily board, and were doubly
+relished from being, so to speak, the fruit of our own toil. Paradise
+Plantation became the admiration of all the darkey and Cracker farmers
+for miles around, and it was with the greatest delight that Hope would
+accompany any chance visitor to the remotest corner of the farm,
+unfolding her projects and quoting Henderson to the open-mouthed
+admiration of her interlocutor.
+
+"Have you looked at the peas, lately, Hope?" asked the Pessimist one
+lovely February morning.
+
+"Not since yesterday: why?"
+
+"Come and see," was the reply; and we all repaired to the seven-acre lot
+in company. A woeful sight met our eyes--vines nipped off and trampled
+down and general havoc and confusion in all the ranks.
+
+"Oh, what is it?" cried Merry in dismay.
+
+"It's de rabbits, missy," replied old man Spafford, who was looking on
+with great interest. "Dey'll eat up ebery bit o' greens you got, give
+'em time enough."
+
+"This must be stopped," said Hope firmly, recovering from her stupor of
+surprise. "I shall have a close fence put entirely around the place."
+
+"But you've just got a new fence. It will cost awfully."
+
+"No matter," replied Hope with great decision: "it shall be done. The
+idea of being cheated out of all our profits by the rabbits!"
+
+"What makes them look so yellow?" asked the Invalid as the family was
+looking at the peas over the new close fence some evenings later.
+
+"Don't they always do so when they blossom?" asked Hope.
+
+"How's that, Spafford?" inquired the Pessimist.
+
+"Dey ain't, not to say, jis' right," replied that functionary, shaking
+his head.
+
+"Why, what's the matter?" asked Hope quickly.
+
+"Groun' too pore, I 'spec', missis. Mighty pore piece, dis: lan' all
+wore out. Dat why dey sell so cheap."
+
+[Illustration: "IT'S DE RABBITS, MISSY."]
+
+"Then won't they bear?" asked Merry in despairing accents.
+
+"Oh yes," said Hope with determined courage. "I had a quantity of
+fertilizers put on. Besides, I'll send for more. It isn't too late, I'm
+sure.--We'll use it for top-dressing, eh, Spafford?"
+
+"I declare, Hope, I had no idea you were such a farmer," said the
+Invalid with a pleasant smile.
+
+"And then, besides, we don't depend upon the peas alone," continued
+Hope, reflecting back the smile and speaking with quite her accustomed
+cheerfulness: "there are the corn and the cabbages."
+
+"And the potatoes and cucumbers," added Merry as we returned slowly to
+the house by way of all the points of interest--the young orange trees,
+Merry's newly-transplanted wisteria and the pig-pen.
+
+"I rather suspect that _there_ is our most profitable crop," said the
+Invalid as we seated ourselves upon the piazza which the Pessimist had
+lately built before the house. He was looking toward a tree which grew
+not far distant, sheltered by two enormous oaks. Of fair size and
+perfect proportions, this tree was one mass of glossy, dark-green
+leaves, amid which innumerable golden fruit glimmered brightly in the
+setting sunlight.
+
+[Illustration: PICKING PEAS.]
+
+"Our one bearing tree," answered Hope. "Yes, if we only had a thousand
+like it we might give up farming."
+
+"We shall have them in time," said the Pessimist complacently, looking
+abroad upon the straight rows of tiny trees almost hidden by the growing
+crops. "Thanks to my perseverance--"
+
+"And Dryden's," interpolated Merry.
+
+"There are a thousand four-year-old trees planted," continued the
+Pessimist, not noticing the interruption. "I wonder how many oranges
+that tree has borne?"
+
+"I suppose we have eaten some twenty a day from it for the last three
+months," said Merry.
+
+"Hardly that," said the Invalid, "but say fifteen hundred. And the tree
+looks almost as full as ever."
+
+"What if we should have them gathered and sold?" suggested Hope--"just
+to see what an orange tree is really worth. Spafford says that the fruit
+will not be so good later. It will shrivel at last; and we never can eat
+all those oranges in any case."
+
+Shipping the oranges was the pleasantest work we had yet done. There was
+a certain fascination in handling the firm golden balls, in sorting and
+arranging, in papering and packing; and there was real delight in
+despatching the first shipment from the farm--the more, perhaps, as the
+prospect of other shipments began to dwindle. The peas, in spite of the
+top-dressing, looked yellow and sickly. The cucumbers would not run, and
+more blossoms fell off than seemed desirable. The Pessimist left off
+laughing at the idea of farming, and spent a great deal of time walking
+about the place, looking into things in general.
+
+"Isn't it almost time for those cabbages to begin to head?" he asked one
+day on returning from a tour of inspection.
+
+"Dryden says," observed Merry, "that those are not cabbages at all: they
+are collards."
+
+"What, under the sun, are collards?" asked the Invalid.
+
+"They are a coarse sort of cabbage: the colored people like them, but
+they never head and they won't sell," said Hope, looking up from a
+treatise on agricultural chemistry. "If those should be collards!"
+
+She laid aside her book and went out to investigate. "At any rate, they
+will be good for the pigs," she remarked on returning. "I shall have
+Behavior boil them in that great pot of hers and give them a mess every
+day. It will save corn."
+
+"'Never say die!'" cried the Pessimist. "'Polly, put the kettle on,-'tle
+on,-'tle on! Polly, put--'"
+
+The Invalid interposed with a remark. "Southern peas are selling in New
+York at eight dollars a bushel," he said.
+
+"Oh, those peas! Why won't they grow?" sighed Merry.
+
+The perverse things would not grow. Quotations went down to six dollars
+and to four, and still ours were not ready to ship. The Pessimist
+visited the field more assiduously than ever; Merry looked despondent;
+only Hope kept up her courage.
+
+"Henderson says," she remarked, closing that well-thumbed volume, "that
+one shouldn't look for profits from the first year's farming. The
+profits come the second year. Besides, I have learned one thing by this
+year's experience. Things should not be expected to grow as fast in
+winter--even a Southern winter--as in summer. Next year we will come
+earlier and plant earlier, and be ready for the first quotations."
+
+It was a happy day for us all when at last the peas were ready to
+harvest. The seven-acre lot was dotted over with boys, girls and old
+women, laughing and joking as they picked. Dryden and old man Spafford
+helped Hope and Merry with the packing, and the Pessimist flourished the
+marking-brush with the greatest dexterity. The Invalid circulated
+between pickers and packers, watching the proceedings with profound
+interest.
+
+In the midst of it all there came a shower. How it did rain! And it
+would not leave off, or if it did leave off in the evening it began
+again in the morning with a fidelity which we would fain have seen
+emulated by our help. One day's drenching always proved to be enough for
+those worthies, and we had to scour the country in the pouring rain to
+beat up recruits. Then the Charleston steamer went by in spite of most
+frantic wavings of the signal-flag, and our peas were left upon the
+wharf, exposed to the fury of the elements.
+
+They all got off at last in several detachments, and we had only to wait
+for returns. The rain had ceased as soon as the peas were shipped, and
+in the warm, bright weather which followed we all luxuriated in company
+with the frogs and the lizards. The fields and woods were full of
+flowers, the air was saturated with sweet odors and sunshine and songs
+of birds. A messenger of good cheer came to us also by the post in the
+shape of a cheque from the dealer to whom we had sent our oranges.
+
+"Forty dollars from a single tree!" said Hope exultantly, holding up the
+slip of paper. "And that after we had eaten from it steadily for three
+months!"
+
+"The tree is an eighteen-year-old seedling, Spafford says," said the
+Invalid, looking at the document with interest. "If our thousand do as
+well in fourteen years, Hope, we may give up planting cabbages, eh?"
+
+"The price will be down to nothing by that time," said the Pessimist,
+not without a shade of excitement, which he endeavored to conceal, as he
+looked at the cheque. "Still, it can't go below a certain point, I
+suppose. The newspapers are sounder on the orange question than on some
+others, I fancy."
+
+One would have thought that we had never seen a cheque for forty dollars
+before, so much did we rejoice over this one, and so many hopes of
+future emolument did we build upon it.
+
+[Illustration: PACKING.]
+
+"What's the trouble with the cucumbers, Spafford?" asked the Pessimist
+as we passed by them one evening on our way up from the little wharf
+where we had left our sailboat.
+
+"T'ink it de sandemanders, sah. Dey done burrow under dat whole
+cucumber-patch--eat all the roots. Cucumbers can't grow widout roots,
+sah."
+
+"But the Florida _Agriculturalist_ says that salamanders don't eat
+roots," said Hope: "they only eat grubs and worms."
+
+Spafford shook his head without vouchsafing a reply.
+
+"The grubs and worms probably ate the roots, and then the salamanders
+ate them," observed the Pessimist. "That is poetical justice, certainly.
+If we could only eat the salamanders now, the retribution would be
+complete."
+
+"Sandemanders ain't no 'count to eat," said old man Spafford. "Dey ain't
+many critters good to eat. De meat I likes best is wile-cat."
+
+"Wild-cat, uncle!" exclaimed Merry.
+
+"Do you mean to say you eat such things as that?"
+
+"Why, missy," replied the old man seriously, "a wile-cat's 'most de
+properest varmint going. Nebber eats not'ing but young pigs and birds
+and rabbits, and sich. Yankee folks likes chicken-meat, but 'tain't nigh
+so good."
+
+"Well, if they eat rabbits I think better of them," said Hope; "and here
+comes Solomon with the mail-bag."
+
+Among the letters which the Invalid turned out a yellow envelope was
+conspicuous. Hope seized it eagerly. "From the market-man," she said.
+"Now we'll see."
+
+She tore it open. A ten-cent piece, a small currency note and a one-cent
+stamp dropped into her lap. She read the letter in silence, then handed
+it to her husband.
+
+"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the Pessimist, reading it over his shoulder. "This
+is the worst I _ever_ heard. 'Thirty-six crates arrived in worthless
+condition; twelve crates at two dollars; fifty, at fifty cents;
+freights, drayage, commissions;--balance, thirty-six cents.' Thirty-six
+cents; for a hundred bushels of peas! Oh, ye gods and little fishes!"
+
+Even Hope was mute.
+
+Merry took the document. "It was all because of the rain," she said.
+"See! those last crates, that were picked dry, sold well enough. If all
+had done as well as that we should have had our money back; and that's
+all we expected the first year."
+
+"There's the corn, at any rate," said Hope, rousing herself. "Dryden
+says it's splendid, and no one else has any nearly as early. We shall
+have the first of the market."
+
+The corn was our first thought in the morning, and we walked out that
+way to console ourselves with the sight of its green and waving beauty,
+old Spafford being of the party. On the road we passed a colored woman,
+who greeted us with the usual "Howdy?"
+
+"How's all with you, Sister Lucindy?" asked the "section."
+
+"All standin' up, thank God! I done come t'rough your cornfield, Uncle
+Spafford. De coons is to wuk dar."
+
+We hastened on at this direful news.
+
+"I declar'!" said old Spafford as we reached the fence. "So dey _is_
+bin' to wuk! Done tote off half a dozen bushel dis bery las' night.
+Mought as well give it up, missis. Once _dey_ gits a taste ob it,
+_good-bye!_"
+
+"Well, that's the worst I _ever_ heard!" exclaimed the Pessimist,
+resorting to his favorite formula in his dismay. "Between the coons and
+the commission-merchants your profits will vanish, Hope."
+
+"Do you think I shall give it up so?" asked Hope stoutly. "We kept the
+rabbits out with a fence, and we can keep the coons out with something
+else. It is only a few nights' watching and the corn will be fit for
+sale. Dryden and Solomon must come out with their dogs and guns and lie
+in wait."
+
+"Bravo, Hope! Don't give up the ship," said the Invalid, smiling.
+
+"Well, if she doesn't, neither will I," said the Pessimist. "For the
+matter of that, it will be first-rate sport, and I wonder I haven't
+thought of coon-hunting before. I'll come out and keep the boys company,
+and we'll see if we don't 'sarcumvent the rascals' yet."
+
+And we _did_ save the corn, and sell it too at a good price, the hotels
+in the neighborhood being glad to get possession of the rarity. Hope was
+radiant at the result of her determination: the Pessimist smiled a grim
+approval when she counted up and displayed her bank-notes and silver.
+
+"A few years more of mistakes and losses, Hope, and you'll make quite a
+farmer," he condescended to acknowledge. "But do you think you have
+exhausted the catalogue of animal pests?"
+
+"No," said Hope, laughing. "I never dared to tell you about the Irish
+potatoes. Something has eaten them all up: Uncle Spafford says it is
+gophers."
+
+"What is a gopher?" asked Merry. "Is it any relation to the gryphon?"
+
+"It is a sagacious variety of snapping-turtle," replied the Invalid,
+"which walks about seeking what it may devour."
+
+"And devours my potatoes," said Hope. "But we have got the better of the
+rabbits and the coons, and I don't despair next year even of the gophers
+and salamanders."
+
+"Even victory may be purchased too dearly," said the Pessimist.
+
+"After all, the experiment has not been so expensive a one," said the
+Invalid, laying down the neatly-kept farm-ledger, which he had been
+examining. "The orange trees are a good investment--our one bearing tree
+has proved that--and as for the money our farming experiment has cost
+us, we should have spent as much, I dare say, had we lived at the hotel,
+and not have been one half as comfortable."
+
+"It _is_ a cozy little home," admitted the Pessimist, looking about the
+pretty room, now thrown wide open to the early summer and with a huge
+pot of creamy magnolia-blooms in the great chimney.
+
+"It is the pleasantest winter I ever spent," said Merry
+enthusiastically.
+
+"Except that dreadful evening when the account of the peas came," said
+Hope, drawing a long breath. "But I should like to try it again: I shall
+never be quite satisfied till I have made peas and cucumbers
+profitable."
+
+"Then, all I have to say is, that you are destined to drag out an
+unsatisfied existence," said the Pessimist.
+
+"I am not so sure of that," said the Invalid.
+
+And so we turned our faces northward, not without a lingering sorrow at
+leaving the home where we had spent so many sweet and sunny days.
+
+"Good-bye, Paradise Plantation," said Merry as the little white house
+under the live-oak receded from our view as we stood upon the steamer's
+deck.
+
+"It was not so inappropriately named," said the Invalid. "Our life there
+has surely been more nearly paradisiacal than any other we have known."
+
+And to this even the Pessimist assented.
+
+LOUISE SEYMOUR HOUGHTON.
+
+
+
+
+THROUGH THE YELLOWSTONE PARK TO FORT CUSTER.
+
+CONCLUDING PAPER.
+
+
+It was about 8.30 A. M. before the boat was found, some travellers
+having removed it from the place where Baronette had cachéd it. A half
+hour sufficed to wrap a tent-cover neatly around the bottom and to tack
+it fast on the thwarts. Then two oblongs of flat wood were nailed on ten
+feet of pine-stems and called oars; and, so equipped, we were ready to
+start.
+
+We had driven or ridden hundreds of miles over a country familiar to any
+one who chooses to read half a dozen books or reports; but, once across
+the Yellowstone, we should enter a region of which little has been
+written since Lewis and Clarke wandered across the head-waters of the
+Missouri in 1805, and had their perils and adventures told anonymously
+by one who was to become famous for many noble qualities of mind and
+heart, for great accomplishments and unmerited misfortunes.[A]
+
+Two or three of us sat on the bluff enjoying our after-breakfast pipes
+and watching the transport of our baggage. The gray beach at our feet
+stretched with irregular outline up the lake, and offered one prominent
+cape whence the boat started for its trips across the stream. By 10.30
+all the luggage was over, and then began the business of forcing
+reluctant mules and horses to swim two hundred yards of cold, swift
+stream. The bell-mare promptly declined to lead, and only swam out to
+return again to the shore. Then one or two soldiers stripped and forced
+their horses in, but in turn became scared, and gave it up amidst chaff
+and laughter. At last a line of men, armed with stones, drove the whole
+herd of seventy-five animals into the water with demoniac howls and a
+shower of missiles. Once in, they took it calmly enough, and, the brave
+little foal leading, soon reached the farther bank. One old war-horse of
+recalcitrant views turned back, and had to be towed over.
+
+Finally, we ourselves crossed, and the judge and I, leaving the
+confusion behind us, struck off into some open woods over an indistinct
+trail. Very soon Major Gregg overtook us, and we went into camp about 4
+P. M. on a rising ground two miles from the lake, surrounded by woods
+and bits of grass-land. Here Captain G. and Mr. E. left us, going on
+with Mr. Jump for a two days' hunt.
+
+Next day, at 7 A. M., we rode away over little prairies and across low
+pine-clad hills, and saw to right and left tiny parks with their forest
+boundaries, until, after two miles, we came to Pelican Creek, a broad
+grayish stream, having, notwithstanding its swift current, a look of
+being meant by Nature for stagnation. As we followed this
+unwholesome-looking water eastward we crossed some quaking, ill-smelling
+morasses, and at last rode out on a spacious plain, with Mounts
+Langford, Doane and Stevenson far to the south-east, and Mount Sheridan
+almost south-west of us. The first three are bold peaks, while about
+them lie lesser hills numberless and nameless. The day seemed absolutely
+clear, yet the mountains were mere serrated silhouettes, dim with a
+silvery haze, through which gleamed the whiter silver of snow in patches
+or filling the long ravines. Striking across the plain, we came upon a
+tent and the horses of Captain G. and Mr. E., who were away in the
+hills.
+
+Thence we followed the Pelican Valley, which had broadened to a wide
+meadowy plain, and about ten miles from the camp we began a rough ride
+up the lessening creek from the level. The valley was half a mile wide,
+noisome with sulphur springs and steam-vents, with now and then a
+gayly-tinted hill-slope, colored like the cañon of the Yellowstone. Some
+one seeing deer above us on the hills, Dr. T., Mr. K. and Houston rode
+off in pursuit. Presently came a dozen shots far above us, and the
+major, who had followed the hunters, sent his orderly back for
+pack-mules to carry the two black-tailed deer they had killed. After a
+wild scramble through bogs we began to ascend a narrow valley with the
+creek on our left. Jack Baronette "guessed some timber might have fell
+on that trail." Trail there was none in reality, only steep hillsides of
+soft scoriæ, streaming sulphur-vents and a cat's cradle of tumbled dead
+trees. Every few minutes the axes were ringing, and a way was cleared;
+then another halt, and more axe-work, until we slipped and scrambled and
+stumbled on to a little better ground, to the comfort of man and beast.
+
+Eighteen miles of this savage riding brought us to our next camp, where,
+as the shooting was said to be good and the cattle needed rest, it was
+decided to remain two days. Our tents were pitched on a grassy knoll
+overlooking the main valley, which was bounded by hills of some three or
+four hundred feet high, between which the Pelican ran slowly with bad
+water and wormy trout, though there was no lack of wholesome springs on
+the hill.
+
+Mr. C. and Mr. T. went off with Jack, and Mr. K. with Jump, to camp out
+and hunt early. The night was clear, the thermometer down to 24°
+Fahrenheit, and the ice thick on the pails when we rose. One of our
+parties came in with six deer: the captain and Mr. C. remained out. The
+camp was pleasant enough to an idling observer like myself, but it was
+not so agreeable to find the mountain-side, where Mr. T. and I were
+looking for game, alive with mosquitos. I lit on a place where the bears
+had been engaged in some rough-and-tumble games: the ground was strewed
+with what the lad who was with us asserted to be bears' hair. It looked
+like the wreck of a thousand chignons, and proved, on inspection, to be
+a kind of tawny-colored moss!
+
+All night long, at brief intervals, our mules were scared by a dull,
+distant noise like a musket-shot. A soldier told me it was a mud volcano
+which he had seen the day we arrived. I then found it marked on Hayden's
+map, but learned that it had not been seen by him, and was only so
+located on information received from hunters. On the morning of August
+1st I persuaded the major to walk over and look for the volcano. We
+crossed the valley, and, guided by the frequent explosions, climbed the
+hills to the east, and, descending on the far side, came into a small
+valley full of sluggish, ill-smelling rills, among which we found the
+remarkable crater, which, as it has not been hitherto examined by any
+save hunters, I shall describe at some length.
+
+A gradual rising ground made up of soft sulphureous and calcareous earth
+was crowned by a more abrupt rise some thirty-five feet high, composed
+of tough gray clay. This was pierced by a cone of regular form about
+thirty feet across at top and five feet at the bottom. On the west,
+about one-third of the circumference was wanting from a point six feet
+above the lowest level, thus enabling one to be at a distance or to
+stand close by, and yet see to the bottom of the pit. The ground all
+around and the shrubs and trees were dotted thick with flakes of dry
+mud, which gave, at a distance, a curious stippled look to the
+mud-spattered surfaces. As I stood watching the volcano I could see
+through the clouds of steam it steadily emitted that the bottom was full
+of dark gray clay mud, thicker than a good mush, and that, apparently,
+there were two or more vents. The outbreak of imprisoned steam at
+intervals of a half minute or more threw the mud in small fig-like
+masses from five to forty feet in air with a dull, booming sound,
+sometimes loud enough to be heard for miles through the awful stillness
+of these lonely hills. It is clear, from the fact of our finding these
+mud-patches at least one hundred yards from the crater, that at times
+much more violent explosions take place. The constant plastering of the
+slopes of the crater which these explosions cause tends to seal up its
+vent, but the greater explosions cleanse it at times, and all the while
+the steam softens the masses on the sides, so that they slip back into
+the boiling cauldron below. As one faces the slit in the cone there lies
+to the right a pool of creamy thin mud, white and yellow, feebly
+boiling. It is some thirty feet wide, and must be not more than twenty
+feet from the crater: its level I guessed at sixteen feet above that of
+the bottom of the crater.
+
+After an hour's observation near to the volcano I retired some fifty
+feet, and, sheltering myself under a stunted pine, waited in the hope of
+seeing a greater outbreak. After an hour more the boiling lessened and
+the frequent explosions ceased for perhaps fifteen minutes. Then of a
+sudden came a booming sound, followed by a hoarse noise, as the crater
+filled with steam, out of which shot, some seventy-five feet in air,
+about a cartload of mud. It fell over an area of fifty yards around the
+crater in large or small masses, which flattened as they struck. As
+soon as it ended I walked toward the crater. A moment later a second
+squirt shot out sideways and fell in a line athwart the mud-pool near
+by, crossing the spot where I had been standing so long, and covering
+me, as I advanced, with rare patches of hot mud. Some change took place
+after this in the character and consistency of the mud, and now, at
+intervals, the curious spectacle was afforded of rings of mud like the
+smoke-rings cast by a cannon or engine-chimney. As they turned in air
+they resembled at times the figure 8: once they assumed the form of a
+huge irregular spiral some ten feet high, although usually the figures
+were like long spikes, or, more rarely, thin formless leaves, and even
+like bats or deformed birds.
+
+I walked back over the hills to camp, where we found Captain G. and the
+commissary with the best of two deer they had shot. Later, Mr. C. and
+Mr. K. came in with four elk, so that we were well supplied. Of these
+various meats the deer proved the best, the mountain-sheep the poorest.
+The minimum of the night temperature was 34° Fahrenheit. At eighty-five
+hundred feet above tide the change at sundown was abrupt. Our camp-fires
+had filled the little valley with smoke, and through it the moon rose
+red and sombre above the pine-clad outlines of the eastward hills.
+
+The next day Mr. E. and I, who liked to break the journey by a walk,
+started early, and, following a clear trail, soon passed the mules. We
+left Pelican Creek on our right, and crossed a low divide into a
+cooly,[B] the valley of Broad Creek: a second divide separated this from
+Cañon Creek, both of which enter the Yellowstone below the falls.
+
+After some six miles afoot over grassy rolling plains and bits of wood,
+the command overtook us, and, mounting, we followed the major for an
+hour or two through bogs and streams, where now and then down went a
+horse and over went a trooper, or some one or two held back at a nasty
+crossing until the major smiled a little viciously, when the unlucky
+ones plunged in and got through or not as might chance.
+
+About twelve some of us held up to lunch, the train and escort passing
+us. We followed them soon through dense woods, and at last up a small
+brook in a deep ravine among boulders big and small. At last we lost the
+trail at the foot of a slope one thousand feet high of loose stones and
+earth, from the top of which a cry hailed us, and we saw that somehow
+the command had got up. The ascent was very steep, but before we made it
+a mule rolled down. As he was laden with fresh antelope and deer meat,
+the scattering of the yet red joints as he fell made it look as if the
+poor beast had been torn limb from limb; but, as a packer remarked,
+"Mules has got an all-fired lot of livin' in 'em;" and the mule was
+repacked and started up again. "They jist falls to make yer mad,
+anyway," added the friendly biographer of the mule.
+
+The sheer mountain-side above us was not to be tried mounted; so afoot,
+bridle in hand, we started up, pulling the horses after us. I had not
+thought it could be as hard work as it proved. There was a singular and
+unfeeling lack of intelligence in the fashion the horse had of differing
+with his leader. When the man was well blown and stopped, the horse was
+sure to be on his heels, or if the man desired to move the horse had his
+own opinion and proved restive. At last, horses and men came out on a
+bit of level woodland opening into glades full of snow. We were
+eighty-four hundred feet in air, on a spur of Amethyst or Specimen
+Mountain. We had meant, having made eighteen miles, to camp somewhere on
+this hill, but the demon who drives men to go a bit farther infested the
+major that day; so presently the bugle sounded, and we were in the
+saddle again, and off for a delusive five-mile ride. As Mr. G. Chopper
+once remarked, "De mile-stones to hebben ain't set no furder apart dan
+dem in dis yere land;" and I believed him ere that day was done.
+
+The top of this great hill, which may be some ten thousand feet in
+height, is large and irregular. Our trail lay over its south-eastern
+shoulder. After a little ride through the woods we came out abruptly on
+a vast rolling plain sloping to the north-east, and broadening as it
+fell away from us until, with intervals of belts of wood, it ended in a
+much larger plain on a lower level, quite half a mile distant, and of
+perhaps one thousand acres. About us, in the coolies, the "Indian
+paint-brush" and numberless flowers quite strange to us all so tinted
+the dried grasses of these little vales as to make the general hue seem
+a lovely pink-gray. Below us, for a mile, rolled grassy slopes, now
+tawny from the summer's rainless heat, and set with thousands of
+balsam-firs in groups, scattered as with the hand of unerring taste here
+and there over all the broad expanse. Many of them stood alone, slim,
+tall, gracious cones of green, feathered low, and surrounded by a
+brighter green ring of small shoots extending from two to four feet
+beyond where the lowest boughs, touching the earth, were reflected up
+from it again in graceful curves. On all sides long vistas, bounded by
+these charming trees, stretched up into the higher spurs. Ever the same
+flowers, ever the same amazing look of centuries of cultivation, and the
+feeling that it would be natural to come of a sudden on a gentleman's
+seat or basking cows, rather than upon the scared doe and dappled fawn
+which fled through the coverts near us. We had seen many of these parks,
+but none like this one, nor any sight of plain and tree and flowers so
+utterly satisfying in its complete beauty. It wanted but a contrast,
+and, as we rode through and out of a line of firs, with a cry of wonder
+and simple admiration the rudest trooper pulled up his horse to gaze,
+and the most brutal mule-guard paused, with nothing in his heart but joy
+at the splendor of it.
+
+At our feet the mountain fell away abruptly, pine-clad, and at its base
+the broad plain of the East Branch of the Yellowstone wandered through a
+vast valley, beyond which, in a huge semicircle, rose a thousand
+nameless mountains, summit over summit, snow-flecked or snow-clad, in
+boundless fields--a grim, lonely, desolate horror of rugged, barren
+peaks, of dark gray for the most part, cleft by deep shadows, and right
+in face of us one superb slab of very pale gray buttressed limestone,
+perhaps a good thousand feet high. I thought it the most savage
+mountain-scenery I had ever beheld, while the almost feminine and tender
+beauty of the parks which dotted these wild hills was something to bear
+in remembrance.
+
+But the escort was moving, the mules crowding on behind our halted
+column; so presently we were slipping, sliding, floundering down the
+hillside, now on steep slopes, which made one a bit nervous to ride
+along; now waiting for the axemen to clear away the tangle of trees
+crushed to earth by the burden of some year of excessive snow; now on
+the horses, now off, through marsh and thicket. I ask myself if I could
+ride that ride to-day: it seems to me as if I could not. One so fully
+gets rid of nerves in that clear, dry altitude and wholesome life that
+the worst perils, with a little repetition, become as trifles, and no
+one talks about things which at home would make a newspaper paragraph.
+Yet I believe each of us confessed to some remnant of nervousness, some
+special dread. Riding an hour or two at night in a dense wood with no
+trail is an experiment I advise any man to try who thinks he has no
+nerves. A good steep slope of a thousand feet of loose stones to cross
+is not much more exhilarating: nobody likes it.
+
+The command was far ahead of two or three of us when we had our final
+sensation at a smart little torrent near the foot of the hill, a
+tributary of the main river. The horses dive, in a manner, into a cut
+made dark by overgrowth of trees, then down a slippery bank, scuttle
+through wild waters surging to the cinche, over vast boulders and up the
+farther bank, the stirrups striking the rocks to left or right, till
+horse and man draw long breaths of relief, and we are out on the
+slightly-rolling valley of the East Yellowstone, and turn our heads away
+from Specimen Mountain toward Soda Butte.
+
+Captain G. and I, who had fallen to the rear, rode leisurely northward
+athwart the open prairie on a clear trail, which twice crossed the
+shallow river, and, leaving the main valley, carried us up a narrowing
+vale on slightly rising ground. On either side and in front rose abrupt
+mountains some two thousand feet above the plain, and below the
+remarkable outline of Soda Butte marked the line of the Park boundary.
+Near by was a little corral where at some time herdsmen had settled to
+give their cattle the use of the abundant grasses of these well-watered
+valleys. When there are no Indian scares, the cattle herdsmen make
+immense marches in summer, gradually concentrating their stock as the
+autumn comes on and returning to the shelter of some permanent ranche.
+The very severity and steadiness of the winters are an advantage to
+cattle, which do not suffer so much from low temperature as from lack of
+food. Farther south, the frequent thaws rot the dried grasses, which are
+otherwise admirable fodder, but in Montana the steady cold is rather
+preservative, and the winds leave large parts of the plains so free from
+snow that cattle readily provide themselves with food.
+
+The cone of Soda Butte stands out on the open and level plain of the
+valley, an isolated beehive-shaped mass eighty feet high, and presenting
+a rough appearance of irregular courses of crumbled gray stone. It is a
+perfectly extinct geyser-cone, chiefly notable for its seeming isolation
+from other deposits of like nature, of which, however, the nearer hills
+show some evidence. Close to the butte is a spring, pointed out to us by
+the major's orderly, who had been left behind to secure our tasting its
+delectable waters, which have immense credit as of tonic and digestive
+value. I do not distinctly recall all the nasty tastes which have
+afflicted my palate, but I am quite sure this was one of the vilest. It
+was a combination of acid, sulphur and saline, like a diabolic julep of
+lucifer-matches, bad eggs, vinegar and magnesia. I presume its horrible
+taste has secured it a reputation for being good when it is down. Close
+by it kindly Nature has placed a stream of clear, sweet water.
+
+A mile or so more brought us (August 3d) to camp, which was pitched at
+the end of the valley of Soda Butte. We had had eleven hours in the
+saddle, and had not ridden over twenty-eight or thirty miles. The train
+came straggling in late, and left us time to sharpen our appetites and
+admire the reach of grassy plain, the bold brown summits around us, and
+at our feet a grass-fringed lake of two or three acres. This pond is fed
+by a quick mountain-stream of a temperature of 45° Fahrenheit, and the
+only outlet is nearly blocked up by a tangled network of weeds and
+fallen timber which prevents the fish from escaping. The bottom is thick
+with long grasses, and food must be abundant in this curious little
+preserve. The shores slope, so that it is necessary to use a raft to get
+at the deep holes in the middle.
+
+At breakfast next morning some one growled about the closeness of the
+night air, when we were told, to our surprise, that the minimum
+thermometer marked 36° as the lowest night temperature. Certain it is,
+the out-of-door-life changes one's feelings about what is cold and what
+is not. While we were discussing this a soldier brought in a five-pound
+trout taken in the lake, which so excited the fishermen that presently
+there was a raft builded, and the major and Mr. T., with bare feet, were
+loading their frail craft with huge trout, and, alas! securing for
+themselves a painful attack of sunburn. I found all these large trout to
+have fatty degeneration of the heart and liver, but no worms. They took
+the fly well.
+
+August 5th, under clear skies as usual, we struck at once into a trail
+which for seventeen miles might have been a park bridle-path, a little
+steeper, and in places a little boggy. Our way took us east by north
+into Soda Butte Cañon, a mile wide below, and narrowing with a gradual
+rise, until at Miner's Camp it is quite closely bounded by high
+hillsides, the upper level of the trail being over eight thousand feet
+above the sea. The ride through this irregular valley is very noble. For
+a mile or two on our left rose a grand mass of basalt quite two thousand
+feet in height, buttressed with bold outlying rocks and presenting very
+regular basaltic columns. A few miles farther the views grew yet more
+interesting, because around us rose tall ragged gray or dark mountains,
+and among them gigantic forms of red, brown and yellow limestone rocks,
+as brilliant as the dolomites of the Southern Tyrol. These wild
+contrasts of form and color were finest about ten miles up the cañon,
+where lies to the west a sombre, dark square mountain, crowned by what
+it needed little fancy to believe a castle in ruins, with central keep
+and far-reaching walls. On the brow of a precipice fifteen hundred feet
+above us, at the end of the castle-wall, a gigantic figure in full armor
+seemed to stand on guard for ever. I watched it long as we rode round
+the great base of the hill, and cannot recall any such striking
+simulation elsewhere. My guides called it the "Sentinel," but it haunted
+me somehow as of a familiar grace until suddenly I remembered the old
+town of Innspruck and the Alte Kirche, and on guard around the tomb of
+the great Kaiser the bronze statues of knight and dame, and, most
+charming of all, the king of the Ostrogoths: that was he on the
+mountain-top.
+
+Everywhere on these hills the mining prospector has roamed, and on the
+summit of the pass we found a group of cabins where certain claims have
+been "staked out" and much digging done. As yet, they are as profitable,
+by reason of remoteness, as may be the mines in the lunar mountains.
+With careless glances at piles of ore which may or may not be valuable,
+we rode on to camp, two miles beyond--not very comfortably, finding
+water scarce, some rain falling and a great wealth of midges, such as we
+call in upper Pennsylvania "pungies," and needing a smudge for the
+routing of them. The night was cold and dewy, and our sufferers were
+wretched with sunburn.
+
+The doctor and George Houston here left us, and went on to a salt-lick
+famous for game, but this proved a failure, some one having carelessly
+set fire to the tract. Indeed, in summer it is hard not to start these
+almost endless fires, since a spark or a bit of pipe-cinder will at once
+set the grasses ablaze, to the destruction of hunting and the annoyance
+of all travellers, to whom a fire is something which suggests man, and
+the presence of man needs, sad to say, an explanation. At 6 A. M.,
+August 6th, Captain G. and the lad Lee also went off on a side-trail
+after game, and with lessened numbers we broke camp rather late, and
+rode into dense woods down a steady descent on a fair trail. The changes
+of vegetation were curious and sudden--from pines and firs to elders,
+stunted willows and sparse cottonwood bending over half-dry beds of
+torrents, with vast boulders telling of the fierce fury of water which
+must have undermined, then loosened and at last tumbled them from the
+hillsides. These streams are, in the early spring, impassable until a
+cold day and night check the thaw in the hills, and thus allow the
+impatient traveller to ford.
+
+Gradually, as we rode on, the hills to our left receded, and on our
+right the summits of Index and Pilot stood up and took the
+morning--long, straggling volcanic masses of deep chocolate-brown, black
+as against the crystalline purity of cloudless blue skies, rising in the
+middle to vast rugged, irregular cones fourteen thousand feet above
+tide. From the bewildering desolateness of these savage peaks the eye
+wanders to the foot-hills, tree-clad with millions of pines, and lower
+yet to the wide valley of the West Branch of Clarke's Fork of the
+Yellowstone, through which a great stream rushes; and then, beyond the
+river, park over park with gracious boundaries of fir and pine, and over
+all black peak and snow-clad dome and slope, nameless, untrodden, an
+infinite army of hills beyond hills. The startling combination of black
+volcanic peaks with gray and tinted limestone still makes every mile of
+the way strange and grand. In one place the dark rock-slopes end
+abruptly in a wall of white limestone one hundred to two hundred feet
+high and regular as ancient masonry. A little below was a second of
+these singular dikes, which run for twenty miles or more.
+
+On a rising ground where we halted to lunch a note was found stating
+that Dr. T., failing to find game at the salt-lick, had gone on ahead.
+While lingering over our lunch in leisurely fashion, encircled by this
+great mass of snow and blackness, an orderly suddenly rode up to hasten
+us to camp, as Indian signs had been seen down the valley. In a moment
+we were running our horses over a sage-plain, and were soon in camp,
+which was pitched on the West Branch in the widening valley. Dr. T. and
+George Houston, it appeared, had seen a column of smoke four miles below
+on a butte across the river. As the smoke was steady and did not spread,
+like an accidental fire, it seemed wise to wait for the party. There
+being no news of Indians, and no probability of white travellers, it was
+well to be cautious. It might be a hunters' or prospectors' camp, or a
+rallying-signal for scattered bands of Sioux, or a courier from Fort
+Custer. The doubt was unpleasant, and its effect visible in the men, two
+of whom already _saw_ Indians.
+
+"See 'em?" says Jack. "Yes, they're like the Devil: you just doesn't see
+'em!"
+
+While we pitched camp sentinels were thrown out, and two guides went off
+to investigate the cause of the fire. Houston came back in two hours,
+and relieved us by his statement that no trails led to the fire, and
+that its probable cause was the lightning of the storm which had
+overtaken us in camp the day before.
+
+As the day waned the tints of the great mountains before us changed
+curiously. Of a broken chocolate-brown at noon, as the sun set their
+eastern fronts assumed a soft velvety look, while little purple clouds
+of haze settled in the hollows and rifts, fringing with tender grays the
+long serrated ridges as they descended to the plain. As the sun went
+down the single huge obelisk of Pilot Mountain seemed to be slowly
+growing upward out of the gathering shadows below. Presently, as the sun
+fell lower, the base of the mountain being swarthy with the growing
+nightfall, all of a sudden the upper half of the bleak cone yet in
+sunshine cast upward, athwart the blue sky, upon the moisture
+precipitated by the falling temperature, a great dark, broadening shaft
+of shadow, keen-edged and sombre, and spreading far away into
+measureless space--a sight indescribably strange and solemn.
+
+The next day's ride down Clarke's Fork still gave us morass and mud and
+bad trails, with the same wonderful views in the distance of snow-clad
+hills, and, nearer, brown peaks and gray, with endless limestone dikes.
+We camped at twelve on Crandall's Creek, a mile from the main branch of
+Clarke's Fork of the Yellowstone, and learned from the guides that no
+fish exist in these ample waters. The doubts I at first had were
+lessened after spending some hours in testing the matter. Strange as it
+may seem, and inexplicable, I am disposed to think the guides are right.
+We saw two "cow-punchers," who claimed to be starving, and were
+questioned with some scepticism. In fact, every stranger is looked after
+sharply with the ever-present fear of horse-thieves and of the
+possibility of being set afoot by a night-stampede of the stock. Our
+hunting-parties were still out when I started next morning at 8.30 to
+climb a huge butte opposite our camp. I reached the top at about twelve,
+and found on the verge of a precipice some twenty-five hundred feet
+above the vale a curious semicircle of stones--probably an Indian
+outlook made by the Nez Percés in their retreat. Sitting with my back
+against it, I looked around me. A doe and fawn leapt away, startled from
+their covert close by. Never, even in the Alps, have I so felt the sense
+of loneliness--never been so held awestruck by the silence of the hills,
+by the boundlessness of the space before me. No breath of air stirred,
+no bird or insect hovered near. Away to the north-west Pilot and Index
+rose stern and dark; across the valley, to the north, out of endless
+snow-fields, the long regular red-and-yellow pyramid of Bear Tooth
+Mountain glowed in vivid light with amazing purity of color; while
+between me and it the hills fell away, crossed by intersecting bands of
+dark firs, and between marvellous deceits of fertile farm-lands, hedges
+and orchards. Here and there on the plain tiny lakes lit up the sombre
+grasses, and lower down the valley the waters of Clarke's Fork, now
+green, now white with foam, swept with sudden curve to the north-east,
+and were lost in the walls of its cañon like a scimitar half sheathed.
+On my right, across the vast grass-slopes of this great valley, on a
+gradual hill-slope, rose the most remarkable of the lime dikes I have
+seen. It must enclose with its gigantic wall a space of nearly two miles
+in width, in the centre of which a wild confusion of tinted limestone
+strata, disturbed by some old convulsion of Nature, resembles the huge
+ruins of a great town.
+
+Soon after my return to camp, C. and the doctor came in with great
+triumph, having slain four bears. I was not present on this occasion,
+but I am inclined to fancy, as regards the doctor, that he verily
+believed the chief end and aim of existence for him was to kill bears,
+while C. had an enthusiasm of like nature, somewhat toned down.
+
+After a wild ride on cayooses across Clarke's Fork and on the glowing
+pink side-slopes of Bear Tooth, and a camp in the hills, the ponies,
+which are always astray, were caught, and a game-trail followed among
+the mountains. Suddenly, Houston, in a stage-whisper, exclaimed, "We've
+got him! He's an old buster, he is!" He had seen a large gray
+bear--improperly called a grizzly--feeding a mile away in a long wide
+cooly. A rough, scrambling ride under cover of a spur, amid snow-drifts
+and tumbled trees, enabled the bear-hunters to tie up their ponies and
+push on afoot. If a man desire to lose confidence in his physical
+powers, let him try a good run with a Winchester rifle in hand nine
+thousand feet above tidewater. Rounding the edge of a hill and crossing
+a snow-drift, they came in view of Bruin sixty yards away. He came
+straight toward them against the wind, when there appeared on the left
+Bruin No. 2, to which the doctor directed his attention. Both bears fell
+at the crack of the rifles, and with grunt and snort rolled to the foot
+of the cooly. Houston climbed a snowbank to reconnoitre, aware, as there
+were no trees to climb, that an open cooly was no good place in which
+to face wounded bears. Away went the doctor.
+
+"Let them alone, doctor," said Houston. "Hold up! That valley's full of
+bears." For he had seen a third.
+
+The doctor paused a moment, and then there was a rush down the slope. A
+second shot finished one bear, and then began a running fight of a mile,
+in which wind was of more value than courage. Finally, Bruin No. 2
+stopped. Leaving C. to end his days, the doctor and Houston pursued No.
+3. As the bear grew weak and they approached him, the doctor's
+excitement and Houston's quite reasonable prudence rose together.
+
+"Don't go down that cooly, doctor."
+
+Then a shot or two, a growl, and the doctor gasping, "Do you think I
+left my practice to let that bear die in his bed?"
+
+"Well, the place is full of bears," said George; and so on they went,
+now a shot and now a growl, and then a hasty retreat of Bruin, until,
+utterly blown and in full sight of his prey, the unhappy doctor murmured
+in an exhausted voice, "Give me one cool shot, George."
+
+"Darn it!" replied George, "who's been warming your shots?"
+
+And this one cool shot ended the fray. Returning, they found the judge
+had driven his bear into a thicket, and, having probably taken out a _ne
+exeat_ or an injunction, or some such effective legal remedy against
+him, awaited reinforcements. As George and the doctor arrived the bear
+moved out into the open, and was killed by a final shot.
+
+Mr. Jump informs us that one gets an awful price out of the Chinese for
+bear-galls; and it is the judge's opinion that at this supreme moment
+the doctor would have taken a contract to supply all China with bile of
+Bruin. I suspect our friend George has since told at many a camp-fire
+how the doctor's spurs danced down the coolies, and how the judge
+corralled his bear.
+
+We broke camp August 10th at four, after a night of severe cold--27°
+Fahrenheit--but perfectly dry and dewless. E. and I, as usual, pushed on
+ahead across Lodge Pole Creek, and so down the valley of Clarke's Fork.
+An increasing luxury of growth gave us, in wood or swamp, cottonwood,
+alder, willow, wild currants and myriads of snow-white lilies, and, in
+pretty contrast, the red or pink paint-brush. Losing Pilot and Index as
+the windings of the main valley hid them, and leaving them behind us, we
+began to see rocks of bright colors and more and more regular walls of
+silvery gray stone. At last the widening valley broadened, and from it
+diverged five valleys, like the fingers from a hand, each the bed of a
+stream. As we turned to the left and crossed the wildly-rolling hills,
+and forded Clarke's Fork to camp by Dead Indian Creek, the novelty and
+splendor of this almost unequalled view grew and grew. As I close my
+eyes it comes before me as at the call of an enchanter. From the main
+valley the outlook is down five grass-clad valleys dotted with trees and
+here and there flashing with the bright reflection from some hurrying
+stream. The mountains between rise from two to ten thousand feet, and
+are singular for the contrasts they present. The most distant to the
+right were black serrated battlements, looking as if their darkness were
+vacant spaces in the blue sky beyond. The next hill was a mass of gray
+limestone, and again, on the left, rose a tall peak of ochreous yellows,
+sombre reds and grays. The hill above our camp was composed of red and
+yellow rocks, fading below to gray débris, bounded beneath by a band of
+grasses, and below this another stratum of tinted rock; and so down to
+the plain. The side-view of this group showed it to be wildly distorted,
+the strata lying at every angle, coming out against the distant
+lava-peaks and the green slopes below them in a glory of tenderly-graded
+colors.
+
+It seems as if it should be easy to describe a landscape so peculiar,
+and yet I feel that I fail utterly to convey any sense of the emotions
+excited by the splendid sweep of each valley, by the black fierceness of
+the lava-peaks thrown up in Nature's mood of fury, by the great
+"orchestra of colors" of the limestone hills, and by a burning red
+sunset, filling the spaces between the hills with hazy, ruddy gold,
+and, when all was cold and dark, of a sudden flooding each grim
+lava-battlement with the dim mysterious pink flush of the afterglow,
+such as one may see at rare times in the Alps or the Tyrol. In crossing
+the heads of these valleys, some day to be famous as one of the sights
+of the world, we forded Clarke's Fork, the major, Jack and I being
+ahead. We came out on the far side upon a bit of strand, above and
+around which rose almost perpendicularly the eroded banks of the stream,
+some fifteen feet high. While the guides broke down the bank to allow of
+our horses climbing it, I was struck with a wonderful bit of water. To
+my right this tall bank was perforated by numerous holes, out of which
+flowed an immense volume of water. It bounded forth between the matted
+roots and welled up below from the sand, and, higher up the bank, had,
+with its sweet moisture, bribed the ready mosses to build it numerous
+green basins, out of which also it poured in prodigal flood.
+
+At this point, Dead Indian, we at first decided to await the looked-for
+scout, but on the next morning the major resolved to leave a note on a
+tripod for Mr. T., still out hunting, and to camp and wait on top of
+Cañon Mountain above us. So we left the noisy creek and the broken
+tepees of Joseph and the Nez Percés, and the buffalo and deer-bones and
+the rarer bones of men, and climbed some twenty-four hundred feet of the
+hill above us: then passed over a rolling plain, by ruddy gravel-hills
+and grasses gray- or pink-stemmed, to camp, on what Mr. Baronette called
+Cañon Mountain, among scattered groups of trees having a quaint
+resemblance to an old apple-orchard. Here we held counsel as to whether
+we should wait longer for the scout, push on rapidly to Custer, or
+complete our plans by turning southward to see the Black Cañon of the
+Big Horn River. Our doubt as to the steam-boats, which in the autumn are
+few and far between, and our failing provisions, decided us to push on
+to the fort. Having got in all our parties, with ample supplies of game,
+we started early next day to begin the descent from these delightful
+hills to the plains below. We rode twenty-eight miles, descending about
+thirty-seven hundred feet over boundless rolling, grass-clad foot-hills,
+behind us, to the left, the long mountain-line bounding the rugged cañon
+of Clarke's Fork, and to the right a march of lessening hills, and all
+before us one awful vast gray, sad and silent plain, and in dimmest
+distance again the gray summits about Pryor's Gap. The space before us
+was a vast park, thick with cactus and sage-brush, lit up here and
+there--but especially at the point where the cañon sets free the river
+on to the plain--by brilliant masses of tinted rocks or clays in level
+strata overlapping one another in bars of red, silver, pink, yellow and
+gray. With a certain sense of sadness we took a last look at these snowy
+summits rising out of their green crowns of pine and fir, and, bidding
+adieu to the wholesome hills, rode on to the grim alkali plain with the
+thermometer at 92°.
+
+And now the days of bad water had come, each spring being the nastiest,
+and the stuff not consoling when once down, but making new and
+unquenchable thirst, and leaving a vile and constant taste of magnesia
+and chalk. And thus, over sombre prairies and across a wicked
+ford--where, of course, the captain and T. got their baggage wet--and
+past bones of men on which were piled stones, and the man's breeches
+thrown over these for a shroud or as a remembrance of the shrivelled
+thing below being human, we followed the Nez Percés' trail, to camp at
+four by the broad rattling waters of Clarke. Jack reported Indians near
+by--indeed saw them: guessed them to be Bannocks, as Crows would have
+come in to beg. Sentinels were thrown out on the bluffs near us and the
+stock watched with redoubled care.
+
+I think every man who has camped much remembers, with a distinct
+vividness, the camp-fires. I recall happy hours by them in Maine and
+Canada and on the north shore of Lake Superior, and know, as every lover
+of the woods knows, how each wood has its character, its peculiar
+odors--even a language of its own. The burning pine has one speech, the
+gum tree another. One friend at least who was with me can recall our
+camps in Maine,
+
+    Where fragrant hummed the moist swamp-spruce,
+      And tongues unknown the cedar spoke,
+    While half a century's silent growth
+      Went up in cheery flame and smoke.
+
+The cottonwood burns with a rich, ruddy, abundant blaze and a faint
+pleasant aroma. Not an unpicturesque scene, our camp-fire, with the
+rough figures stretched out on the grass and the captain marching his
+solemn round with utterly unfatigable legs, Jack and George Houston
+good-humoredly chaffing, and now and again a howl responsive to the
+anguish of a burnt boot. He who has lived a life and never known a
+camp-fire is--Well, may he have that joy in the Happy Hunting-grounds!
+
+The next day's ride was only interesting from the fact that we forded
+Clarke's Fork five times in pretty wild places, where, of course,
+Captain G. and the doctor again had their baggage soaked. The annoyance
+of this when, after ten hours in the saddle, you come to fill your
+tobacco-bag and find the precious treasure hopelessly wet, your
+writing-paper in your brushes, the lovely photographs, a desolated
+family presented on your departure, brilliant with yellow mud--I pause:
+there are inconceivable capacities for misery to be had out of a
+complete daily wetting of camp-traps. I don't think the captain ever
+quite got over this last day's calamity, and I doubt not he mourns over
+it to-day in England.
+
+The ride of the next two days brought us again to rising ground, the
+approach to Pryor's Gap. On the 13th I rode on ahead with George
+Houston, and had an unsuccessful buffalo-hunt. We saw about forty head,
+but by no device could we get near enough for effective shooting. I had,
+however, the luck to kill a buck antelope and two does. Rejoining the
+command in great triumph, I found Jump, to my amusement, waving over his
+head a red cotton umbrella which some wandering Crow had dropped on the
+trail. The umbrella being, from the Crow point of view, a highly-prized
+ornament, it was not strange to find it on our trail. In an evil moment
+I asked Jump to hand it to me. As he did so it fell, open, over the nose
+of my cayoose. As to what happened I decline to explain: there have been
+many calumnies concerning what Mr. Jump called "that 'ere horse-show."
+
+On this day we rode through the last range of considerable hills, past a
+vast rock which meant "medicine" of some kind for the Indian, as its
+clefts were dotted with sacrificial beads, arrows and bits of calico. A
+brief scramble and a long descent carried us through Pryor's Gap, and
+out again on to boundless plains, thick with the fresh dung of the
+buffaloes, which must have been here within two days and been hurried
+southward by Crow hunting-parties. This to our utter disgust, as we had
+been promised abundance of buffalo beyond Pryor's Gap.
+
+A thirty-mile march brought us to a poor camp by a marshy stream. Man
+and beast showed the effects of the alkaline waters, which seemed to me
+more nasty every day. There is no doubt, however, that it is possible to
+become accustomed to their use, and no lands are more capable of
+cultivation than these if the water be sufficient for irrigation. The
+camp was enlivened by an adventure of the major's, which revenged for us
+his atrocious habit of rising at 3 A. M. and saying "Now, gentlemen!" as
+he stood relentless at the tent-doors. C. and I had found a cañon near
+by about one hundred feet deep and having a good bathing stream. As we
+returned toward it at evening we saw the gallant major standing
+barelegged on the edge of the cañon, gesticulating wildly, his
+saddle-bags and toilette matters far below beside the creek. Still
+suffering with the sunburn, he had been cooling his feet in the water
+preparatory to a bath, when, lo! a bear standing on his hind legs eating
+berries at a distance of only about fifteen feet! The major promptly
+availed himself of the shelter offered by the bank of the stream; but
+once there, how was he to escape unseen? The water was cold, the bear
+big, the major shoeless. Perhaps a bark simulative of a courageous dog
+might induce the bear to leave. No doubt, under such inspirations, it
+was well done. The bear, amazed at the resources of the army,
+fled--alas! not pursued by the happy major, who escaped up the
+cañon-wall, leaving his baggage to a generous foe, which took no
+advantage of comb or toothbrush. How the whole outfit turned out to hunt
+that bear, and how he was never found, I have not space to tell more
+fully.
+
+All of twelve hours the next day we rode on under a blinding sunlight, a
+cloudless sky, over dreary, rolling, dusty plains, where the only relief
+from dead grasses was the gray sage-brush and cactus, from the shelter
+of which, now and again, a warning rattle arose or a more timid snake
+fled swiftly through the dry grasses. Tinted cones of red and brown
+clays or toadstool forms of eroded sandstone added to the strange
+desolateness of the view; so that no sorrow was felt when, after forty
+miles of it, we came upon a picturesque band of Crows with two chiefs,
+Raw Hide and Tin Belly.
+
+It was an amazing sight to fresh eyes--the clever ponies,
+these bold-featured, bareheaded, copper-tinted fellows with
+bead-decked leggins, gay shirts or none, and their rifles slung in
+brilliantly-decorated gun-covers across the saddle-bows. We rode down
+the bluffs with them to the flat valley of Beauvais Creek, where a few
+lodges were camped with the horses, twelve hundred or more, in a grove
+of lordly cottonwood--a wild and picturesque sight. Tawny squaws
+surrounded us in crowds, begging. A match, a cartridge, anything but a
+quill toothpick, was received with enthusiasm. I rode ahead to the ford
+of the Beauvais Creek, and met the squaws driving in the cayooses.
+Altogether, it was much like a loosely-organized circus. Our own camp
+being set, we took our baths tranquilly, watched by the squaws seated
+like men on their ponies. One of them kindly accepted a button and my
+wornout undershirt.
+
+The cottonwood tree reigns supreme throughout this country wherever
+there is moisture, and marks with its varied shades of green the
+sinuous line of every water-course. Despised even here as soft and
+easily rotted, "warping inside out in a week," it is valuable as almost
+the sole resource for fuel and timber, and as making up in speed of
+growth for a too ready rate of decay. Four or five years' growth renders
+it available for rails, and I should think it must equal the eucalyptus
+for draining moist lands. Many a pretty face is the more admired for its
+owner's wealth, and were the now-despised cottonwood of greater
+market-value it could not, I think, have escaped a reputation for
+beauty. A cottonwood grove of tall trees ten to eighteen feet in
+diameter, set twenty to forty feet apart, with dark-green shining leaves
+spreading high in air over a sod absolutely free of underbrush, struck
+such of us as had no Western prejudices as altogether a noble sight.
+Between Forts Custer and Keogh the cottonwoods are still finer, and what
+a mocking-bird is among birds are these among trees--now like the apple
+tree, now like the olive, now resembling the cork or the red-oak or the
+Lombardy poplar, and sometimes quaintly deformed so as to exhibit
+grotesque shapes,--all as if to show what one tree can do in the way of
+mimicking its fellows.
+
+To our delight, General Sheridan's old war-scout, Mr. Campbell, rode in
+with letters at dusk, and we had the happiness to learn that our long
+absence had made ill news for none of us. By six next day we were up and
+away to see the great Crow camp, which we reached by crossing a long
+ford of the swift Big Horn River. There were one hundred and twenty
+lodges, about one thousand Crows, about two thousand dogs and as many
+ponies. I think it was the commissary who dared to say that every dog
+could not have his day among the Crows, as there would not be enough
+days to go round; but surely never on earth was such a canine chorus. It
+gave one a respect for Crow nerves. Let me add, as a Yankee, my
+veneration for the Crow as a bargainer, and you will have the most
+salient ideas I carried away from this medley of dogs, horses, sullen,
+lounging braves with pipes, naked children warmly clad with dirt,
+hideous squaws, skin lodges, medicine-staffs gay with bead and feathers,
+and stenches for the describing of which civilized language fails.
+
+Crossing a branch of the Big Horn, we rode away again over these
+interminable, lonely grass-plains; past the reaping-machines and the
+vast wagons, with a dozen pairs of oxen to each, sent out to gather
+forage for the winter use of the fort; past dried-up streams,
+whitewashed with snowy alkaline deposits, cheating the eye at a distance
+with mockery of foaming water. Still, mile on mile, across rolling
+lands, with brief pause at the river to water horses, scaring the gay
+little prairie-dogs and laughing at the swift scuttle away of
+jack-rabbits, until by noon the long lines of Custer came into sight.
+
+These three days of sudden descent from high levels to the terrible
+monotony of the thirsty plains, without shade, with the thermometer
+still in the nineties, began to show curiously in the morale of the
+outfit. The major got up earlier and rode farther: our English captain
+walked more and more around the camp-fire. On one day the coffee gave
+out, and on the next the sugar, and everything except the commissary's
+unfailing good-humor, which was, unluckily, not edible. Mr. T. rode in
+silence beside the judge, grimly calculating how soon he could get a
+railroad over these plains. Even the doctor fell away in the "talk"
+line. Says Mr. Jump: "These 'ere plains ain't as social as they might
+be." Some one is responsible for the following brief effort to evolve in
+verse the lugubrious elements of a ride over alkali plains with failing
+provender, weary horses, desiccating heat and quenchless thirst:
+
+    Silent and weary and sun-baked, we rode o'er the alkaline grass-plains,
+    Into and out of the coolies and through the gray green of the sage-brush--
+    All the long line of the horses, with jingle of spur and of bridle,
+    All the brown line of the mule-train, tired and foot-sore and straggling;
+    Nothing to right and to left, nothing before and behind us,
+    Save the dry yellowing grass, and afar on the hazy horizon,
+    Sullen, and grim, and gray, sunburnt, monotonous sand-heaps.
+    So we rode, sombre and listless, day after day, while the distance
+    Grew as we rode, till the eyeballs ached with the terrible sameness.
+
+By this time the command was straggling in a long broken line, all eyes
+set on the fort, where, about 1.30, we dismounted from our six hundred
+miles in the saddle to find in the officers' club-room a hearty welcome
+and the never-to-be-forgotten sensation of a schooner of iced Milwaukee
+beer. From Fort Custer we rode a hundred and thirty miles in ambulances
+to Fort Keogh. This portion of our journey took us over the line to be
+followed by the Northern Pacific Railroad, and gave us a good idea of
+the wealthy grass-lands, capable of easy irrigation, bordering the
+proposed line of rail. The river is navigable to Custer until the middle
+of September, and in wet seasons still later. Already, much of the best
+land is taken up, and we were able to buy chickens if we could shoot
+them, and eggs and potatoes, the latter the best I have seen in any
+country. The river is marked by ample groves of superb cottonwoods and
+by immense thickets of the wild prairie-rose and moss-rose, while the
+shores are endlessly interesting and curious, especially the left bank,
+on account of the singular forms of the mud and sandstone hills, along
+which, in places, lie for miles black level strata of lignite. At Fort
+Keogh we took a steamer to Bismarck, whence we travelled by rail on the
+Northern Pacific road, reaching home September 9th. We had journeyed
+sixty-five hundred miles--on horses, six hundred; by ambulances, four
+hundred; by boat, six hundred and seventy-five.
+
+
+S. WEIR MITCHELL, M. D.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] Nicholas Biddle.
+
+[B] A little valley--probably from the French _coulisse_, a narrow
+channel.
+
+
+
+
+ADAM AND EVE.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+Aunt Hepzibah's house stood well up the hill, far enough away from the
+village to escape the hubbub and confusion which during the removal of
+any considerable store of spirit were most certain to prevail.
+
+Hidden away in the recesses of a tortuous valley, amid hills whose steep
+sides bristled with tier after tier of bare, broken rocks, to reach or
+to leave Polperro by any other mode than on foot was a task of
+considerable difficulty. Wagons were unknown, carts not available, and
+it was only at the risk of his rider's life and limbs that any horse
+ventured along the perilous descents and ascents of the old Talland
+road. Out of these obstacles, therefore, arose the necessity for a
+number of men who could manage the drays, dorsals and crooks which were
+the more common and favored modes of conveyance. With the natural love
+of a little excitement, combined with the desire to do as you would be
+done by, it was only thought neighborly to lend a hand at whatever might
+be going on; and the general result of this sociability was that half
+the place might be found congregated about the house, assisting to the
+best of their ability to impede all progress and successfully turn any
+attempt at work into confusion and disorder.
+
+To add to this tumult, a keg of spirits was kept on tap, to which all
+comers were made free, so that the crowd grew first noisy and
+good-tempered, then riotously merry and quarrelsomely drunk, until
+occasions had been known when a general fight had ensued, the kegs had
+got burst open and upset, the men who were hired to deliver them lay
+maddened or helpless in the street, while the spirit for which liberty
+and life had been risked flowed into the gutters like so much water.
+
+In vain had Adam, to whom these scenes afforded nothing but anger and
+disgust, used all his endeavors to persuade his fellow-workers to give
+up running the vessel ashore with the cargo in her. The Polperro men,
+except under necessity, turned a deaf ear to his entreaties, and in many
+cases preferred risking a seizure to foregoing the fool-hardy
+recklessness of openly defying the arm of the law. The plan which Adam
+would have seen universally adopted here, as it was in most of the other
+places round the coast, was that of dropping the kegs, slung on a rope,
+into the sea, and (securing them by an anchor) leaving them there until
+some convenient season, when, certain of not being disturbed, they were
+landed, and either removed to a more distant hiding-place or conveyed at
+once to their final destination. But all this involved immediate trouble
+and delay, and the men, who without a complaint or murmur would endure
+weeks of absence from their homes, the moment those homes came in sight
+grew irritable under control and impatient of all authority.
+
+With a spirit of independence which verged on rebellion, with an
+uncertain temperament in which good and bad lay jostled together so
+haphazard that to calculate which at any given moment might come
+uppermost was an impossibility, these sons of the sea were hard to lead
+and impossible to drive. Obstinate, credulous, superstitious, they
+looked askant on innovation and hated change, fearing lest it should
+turn away the luck which they vaunted in the face of discretion, making
+it their boast that so many years had gone by since any mischance had
+overtaken the Polperro folk that they could afford to laugh at the
+soldiers before their faces and snap their fingers at the cruisers
+behind their backs.
+
+Under these circumstances it was not to be supposed that Adam's
+arguments proved very effective: no proposition he made was ever
+favorably received, and this one was more than usually unpopular. So, in
+spite of his prejudice against a rule which necessitated the sequence
+of riot and disorder, he had been forced to give in, and to content
+himself by using his authority to control violence and stem as much as
+possible the tide of excess. It was no small comfort to him that Eve was
+absent, and the knowledge served to smooth his temper and keep down his
+irritability. Besides which, his spirits had risen to no common height,
+a frequent result of the reaction which sets in after great emotion,
+although Adam placed his happy mood to the credit of Eve's kind words
+and soft glances.
+
+It was late in the afternoon before the kegs were all got out and safely
+cleared off; but at length the last man took his departure, the visitors
+began to disperse, Uncle Zebedee and Jerrem disappeared with them, and
+the house was left to the undisturbed possession of Joan and Adam.
+
+"I shall bring Eve back when I come," Adam said, reappearing from the
+smartening up he had been giving to himself.
+
+"All right!" replied Joan, but in such a weary voice that Adam's heart
+smote him for leaving her sitting there alone, and with a great effort
+at self-sacrifice he said, "Would you like to go too?"
+
+"Iss, if I could go two p'r'aps I should," retorted Joan, "but as I'm
+only one p'r'aps I might find myself one in the way. There, go along
+with 'ee, do!" she added, seeing him still hesitate. "You knaw if
+there'd bin any chance o' my goin' you wouldn't ha' axed me."
+
+A little huffed by this home-thrust, Adam waited for nothing more, but,
+turning away, he closed the door after him and set off at a brisk pace
+up the Lansallos road, toward Aunt Hepzibah's house.
+
+The light had now all but faded out, and over everything seaward a
+cloudy film of mist hung thick and low; but this would soon lift up and
+be blown away, leaving the night clear and the sky bright with the
+glitter of a myriad stars, beneath whose twinkling light Adam would tell
+his tale of love and hear the sweet reply; and at the thought a thousand
+hopes leaped into life and made his pulses quicken and his nerves
+thrill. Strive as he might, arrived at Aunt Hepzibah's he could neither
+enter upon nor join in any general conversation; and so marked was his
+silence and embarrassed his manner that the assembled party came to the
+charitable conclusion that something had gone wrong in the adjustment of
+his liquor; and knowing it was ticklish work to meddle with a man who
+with a glass beyond had fallen a drop short, they made no opposition to
+Eve's speedy preparations for immediate departure.
+
+"Oh, Eve," Adam exclaimed, giving vent to deep-drawn sighs of relief as,
+having turned from the farm-gate, they were out of sight and hearing of
+the house, "I hope you're not vexed with me for seeming such a fool as
+I've been feeling there. I have been so longing for the time to come
+when I could speak to you that for thinking of it I couldn't talk about
+the things they asked me of."
+
+"Why, whatever can you have to say of so much importance?" stammered
+Eve, trying to speak as if she was unconscious of the subject he was
+about to broach; and this from no coquetry, but because of an
+embarrassment so allied to that which Adam felt that if he could have
+looked into her heart he would have seen his answer in its tumultuous
+beating.
+
+"I think you know," said Adam softly; and as he spoke he stooped to
+catch a glimpse of her averted face. "It's only what I'd on my lips to
+say last night, only the door was opened before I'd time to get the
+words out, and afterward you wouldn't so much as give me a look,
+although," he added reproachfully, "you sat up ever so long after I was
+gone, and only ran away when you thought that I was coming."
+
+"No, indeed I didn't do that," said Eve earnestly: "that was Joan whom
+you heard. I went up stairs almost the minute after you left."
+
+"Is that really true?" exclaimed Adam, seizing both her hands and
+holding them tight within his own. "Eve, you don't know what I suffered,
+thinking you were caught by Jerrem's talk and didn't care whether I felt
+hurt or pleased. I lay awake most of the night, thinking whether it
+could ever be that you could care for me as by some magic you've made
+me care for you. I fancied--"
+
+But here a rustle in the hedge made them both start. Adam turned quickly
+round, but nothing was to be discovered. "'Twas, most-like, nothing but
+a stoat or a rabbit," he said, vexed at the interruption: "still, 'tis
+all but certain there'll be somebody upon the road. Would you mind
+crossing over to the cliff? 'Tis only a little bit down the other side."
+
+Eve raised no objection, and, turning, they picked their way along the
+field, got over the gate and down through the tangle of gorse and brier
+to the path which ran along the Lansallos side of the cliff. Every step
+of the way was familiar to Adam, and he so guided Eve as to bring her
+down to a rough bit of rock which projected out and formed a seat on a
+little flat of ground overhanging a deep gully.
+
+"There!" he said, in a tone of satisfaction, "this isn't so bad, is it?
+You won't feel cold here, shall you?"
+
+"No, not a bit," said Eve.
+
+Then there was a pause, which Eve broke by first giving a nervous,
+half-suppressed sigh, and then saying, "It's very dark to-night, isn't
+it?"
+
+"Yes," said Adam, who had been thinking how he should best begin his
+subject. "I thought the mist was going to clear off better than this,
+but that seems to look like dirty weather blowing up;" and he pointed to
+the watery shroud behind which lay the waning moon.
+
+"I wish a storm would come on," said Eve: "I should so like to see the
+sea tossing up and the waves dashing over everything."
+
+"What! while we two are sitting here?" said Adam, smiling.
+
+"No: of course I don't mean now, this very minute, but some time."
+
+"Some time when I'm away at sea?" put in Adam.
+
+Eve gave a little shudder: "Not for the world! I should be frightened to
+death if a storm came on and you away. But you don't go out in very bad
+weather, do you, Adam?"
+
+"Not if I can help it, I don't," he answered. "Why, would you mind if I
+did?" and he bent down so that he could look into her face. "Eh, Eve,
+would you?"
+
+His tone and manner conveyed so much more than the words that Eve felt
+it impossible to meet his gaze. "I don't know," she faltered. "What do
+you ask me for?"
+
+"What do I ask you for?" he repeated, unable longer to repress the
+passionate torrent which he had been striving to keep under. "Because
+suspense seems to drive me mad. Because, try as I may, I can't keep
+silent any longer. I wanted, before I said more, to ask you about
+somebody you've left behind you at London; but it's of no use. No matter
+what he may be to you, I must tell you that I love you, Eve--that you've
+managed in this little time to make every bit of my heart your own."
+
+"Somebody in London?" Eve silently repeated. "Who could he mean? Not
+Reuben May: how should he know about him?"
+
+The words of love that followed this surprise seemed swallowed up in her
+desire to have her curiosity satisfied and her fears set at rest. "What
+do you mean about somebody I've left in London?" she said; and the
+question, abruptly put, jarred upon Adam's excited mood, strained as his
+feelings were, each to its utmost tension. This man she had left behind,
+then, could even at a moment like this stand uppermost in her mind.
+
+"A man, I mean, to whom, before you left, you gave a promise;" and this
+time, so at variance was the voice with Adam's former tones of
+passionate avowal, that, coupled with the shock of hearing that word
+"promise," Eve's heart quailed, and to keep herself from betraying her
+agitation she was forced to say, with an air of ill-feigned amazement,
+"A man I left? somebody I gave a promise to? I really don't know what
+you mean."
+
+"Oh yes, you do;" and by this time every trace of wooing had passed from
+Adam's face, and all the love so late set flowing from his heart was
+choked and forced back on himself. "Try and remember some fellow who
+thinks he's got the right to ask how you're getting on among the country
+bumpkins, whether you ain't tired of them yet, and when you're coming
+back. Perhaps," he added, goaded on by Eve's continued silence, "'twill
+help you if I say 'twas the one who came to see you off aboard the Mary
+Jane. I suppose you haven't forgot _him_?"
+
+Eve's blood boiled at the sneer conveyed in Adam's tone and look.
+Raising her eyes defiantly to his, she said, "Forgotten him? Certainly
+not. If you had said anything about the Mary Jane before I should have
+known directly who you meant. That person is a very great friend of
+mine."
+
+"Friend?" said Adam.
+
+"Yes, friend--the greatest friend I've got."
+
+"Oh, I'm very glad I know that, because I don't approve of friends. The
+woman I ask to be my wife must be contented with me, and not want
+anything from anybody else."
+
+"A most amiable decision to come to," said Eve. "I hope you may find
+somebody content to be so dictated to."
+
+"I thought I had found somebody already," said Adam, letting a softer
+inflection come into his voice. "I fancied that at least, Eve, _you_
+were made out of different stuff to the women who are always hankering
+to catch every man's eye."
+
+"And pray what should make you alter your opinion? Am I to be thought
+the worse of because an old friend, who had promised he would be a
+brother to me, offers to see me off on my journey, and I let him come?
+You must have a very poor opinion of women, Adam, or at least a very
+poor opinion of me."
+
+And the air of offended dignity with which she gave this argument forced
+Adam to exclaim, "Oh, Eve, forgive me if I have spoken hastily: it is
+only because I think so much more of you--place you so much higher than
+any other girl I ever saw--that makes me expect so much more of you. Of
+course," he continued, finding she remained silent, "you had every right
+to allow your friend to go with you, and it was only natural he should
+wish to do so; only when I'm so torn by love as I am I feel jealous of
+every eye that's turned upon you: each look you give another seems
+something robbed from me."
+
+Eve's heart began to soften: her indignation was beginning to melt away.
+
+"And when I heard he was claiming a promise, I--"
+
+"What promise?" said Eve sharply.
+
+"What promise did you give him?" replied Adam warily, suspicion giving
+to security another thrust.
+
+"That's not to the point," said Eve. "You say I gave him a promise: I
+ask what that promise was?"
+
+"The very question I put to you. I know what he says it was, and I want
+to hear if what he says is true. Surely," he added, seeing she
+hesitated, "if this is only a friend, and a friend who is to be looked
+on like a brother, you can't have given him any promise that if you can
+remember you can't repeat."
+
+Eve's face betrayed her displeasure. "Really, Adam," she said, "I know
+of no right that you have to take me to task in this manner."
+
+"No," he answered: "I was going to ask you to give me that right when
+you interrupted me. However, that's very soon set straight. I've told
+you I love you: now I ask you if you love me, and, if so, whether you
+will marry me? After you've answered me I shall be able to put my
+questions without fear of offence."
+
+"Will you, indeed?" said Eve. "I should think that would rather depend
+upon what the answer may be."
+
+"Whatever it may be, I'm waiting for it," said Adam grimly.
+
+"Let me see: I must consider what it was I was asked," said Eve. "First,
+if--"
+
+"Oh, don't trouble about the first: I shall be satisfied of that if you
+answer the second and tell me you will accept me as a husband."
+
+"Say keeper."
+
+"Keeper, if that pleases you better."
+
+"Thank you very much, but I don't feel quite equal to the honor. I'm not
+so tired yet of doing what pleases myself that I need submit my
+thoughts and looks and actions to another person."
+
+"Then you refuse to be my wife?"
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"And you cannot return the love I offer you?"
+
+Eve was silent.
+
+"Do you hear?" he said.
+
+"Yes, I hear."
+
+"Then answer: have I got your love, or haven't I?"
+
+"Whatever love you might have had," she broke out passionately, "you've
+taken care to kill."
+
+"Kill!" he repeated. "It must have been precious delicate if it couldn't
+stand the answering of one question. Look here, Eve. When I told you I
+had given you my heart and every grain of love in it, I only spoke the
+truth; but unless you can give me yours as whole and as entire as I have
+given mine, 'fore God I'd rather jump off yonder rock than face the
+misery that would come upon us both. I know what 'tis to see another
+take what should be yours--to see another given what you are craving
+for. The torture of that past is dead and gone, but the devil it bred in
+me lives still, and woe betide the man or woman who rouses it!"
+
+Instinctively Eve shrank back: the look of pent-up passion frightened
+her and made her whole body shiver.
+
+"There! there! don't alarm yourself," said Adam, passing his hand over
+his forehead as if to brush away the traces which this outburst had
+occasioned: "I don't want to frighten you. All I want to know is, can
+you give me the love I ask of you?"
+
+"I couldn't bear to be suspected," faltered Eve.
+
+"Then act so that you would be above suspicion."
+
+"With a person always on the watch, looking out for this and that, so
+that one would be afraid to speak or open one's mouth, I don't see how
+one could possibly be happy," said Eve. "All one did, all one said,
+might be taken wrongly, and when one were most innocent one might be
+thought most guilty. No: I don't think I could stand that, Adam."
+
+"Very well," he said coldly. "If you feel your love is too weak to bear
+that, and a great deal more than that, you are very wise to withhold it
+from me: those who have much to give require much in return."
+
+"Oh, don't think I haven't that in me which would make my love equal
+yours any day," said Eve, nettled at the doubt which Adam had flung at
+her. "If I gave any one my heart, I should give it all; but when I do
+that I hope it will be to somebody who won't doubt me and suspect me."
+
+"Then I'd advise you not to give them cause to," said Adam.
+
+"And I'd advise you to keep your cautions for those that need them,"
+replied Eve, rising from where she had been sitting and turning her face
+in the direction of home.
+
+"Oh, you needn't fear being troubled by any more I shall say," said
+Adam: "I'm only sorry that I've been led to say what I have."
+
+"Pray don't let that trouble you: such things, with me, go in at one ear
+and out at the other."
+
+"In that case I won't waste any more words," said Adam; "so if you can
+keep your tongue still you needn't fear being obliged to listen to
+anything I shall say."
+
+Eve gave a little scornful inclination of her head in token of the
+accepted silence between them, and in silence the two commenced their
+walk and took their way toward home.
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+Except the long surging roll of the waves, as in monotonous succession
+they dashed and broke against the rocks, not a sound was to be heard.
+The night had grown more lowering: the sprinkle of stars was hid behind
+the dense masses of cloud, through which, ever and anon, the moon, with
+shadowy face, broke out and feebly cast down a glimmering light. Below,
+the outspread stretch of water lay dark and motionless, its glassy
+surface cold and glittering like steel. Walking a little in the rear of
+Adam, Eve shuddered as her eyes fell on the depths, over whose brink
+the narrow path they trod seemed hanging. Instinctively she shrank
+closer to the cliff-side, to be caught by the long trails of bramble
+which, with bracken and gorse, made the steep descent a bristly wall.
+Insensibly affected by external surroundings, unused to such complete
+darkness, the sombre aspect of the scene filled her with nervous
+apprehension: every bit of jutting rock she stumbled against was a
+yawning precipice, and at each step she took she died some different
+death. The terrors of her mind entirely absorbed all her former
+indifference and ill-humor, and she would have gladly welcomed any
+accident which would have afforded her a decent pretext for breaking
+this horrible silence. But nothing occurred, and they reached the open
+piece of green and were close on the crumbling ruins of St. Peter's
+chapel without a word having passed between them. The moon struggled out
+with greater effort, and, to Eve's relief, showed that the zigzag
+dangers of the path were past, and there was now nothing worse to fear
+than what might happen on any uneven grassy slope. Moreover, the buzz of
+voices was near, and, though they could not see the persons speaking,
+Eve knew by the sound that they could not be very far distant. Having
+before him the peculiar want of reticence generally displayed by the
+Polperro folk, Adam would have given much to have been in a position to
+ask Eve to remount the hill and get down by the other side; but under
+present circumstances he felt it impossible to make any suggestion:
+things must take their course. And without a word of warning he and Eve
+gained the summit of the raised elevation which formed a sheltered
+background to this favorite loitering-place, at once to find themselves
+the centre of observation to a group of men whose noisy discussion they
+had apparently interrupted.
+
+"Why, 'tis my son Adam, ain't it?" exclaimed the voice of Uncle Zebedee;
+and at the sound of a little mingled hoarseness and thickness Adam's
+heart sank within him.--"And who's this he's a got with un, eh?"
+
+"Tis me, Uncle Zebedee," said Eve, stepping down on to the flat and
+advancing toward where the old man stood lounging--"Eve, you know."
+
+"Awh, Eve, is it?" exclaimed Zebedee. "Why, how long's t'wind veered
+round to your quarter, my maid? Be you two sweetheartin' then, eh?"
+
+"I've been all day up to Aunt Hepzibah's," said Eve quickly, endeavoring
+to cover her confusion, "and Adam came to fetch me back: that's how it
+is we're together."
+
+"Wa-al, but he needn't ha' fetched 'ee 'less he'd got a mind for yer
+company, I s'pose," returned Zebedee with a meaning laugh. "Come, come
+now: 't 'ull niver do for 'ee to try to cabobble Uncle Zibedee. So you
+and Adam's courtyin', be 'ee? Wa-al, there's nuffin' to be said agen
+that, I s'pose?" and he looked round as if inviting concurrence or
+contradiction.--"Her's my poor brother Andrer's little maid, ye knaw,
+shipmates"--and here he made a futile attempt to present Eve to the
+assembled company--"what's dead--and drownded--and gone to Davy's
+locker; so, notwithstandin' I'd lashins sooner 'twas our Joan he'd ha'
+fix'd on--Lord ha' massy!" he added parenthetically, "Joan's worth a
+horsgead o' she--still, what's wan man's mate's another man's pison;
+and, howsomedever that lies, I reckon it needn't go for to hinder me
+fra' drinkin' their healths in a drap o' good liquor. So come along, my
+hearties;" and, making a movement which sent him forward with a lurch,
+he began muttering something about his sea-legs, the effect of which was
+drowned in the shout evincing the ready satisfaction with which this
+proposal for friendly conviviality was hailed.
+
+Eve drew in her breath, trying to gather up courage and combat down the
+horrible suspicion that Uncle Zebedee was not quite himself, didn't
+exactly know what he was saying, had taken too much to drink. With
+congratulatory intent she found herself jostled against by two or three
+others near her, whose noisy glee and uncertain gait only increased her
+fears. What should she do? Where could she go? What had become of Adam?
+Surely he would not go and leave her amongst--
+
+But already her question was answered by a movement from some one
+behind, who with a dexterous interposition succeeded in placing himself
+between Uncle Zebedee and herself.
+
+"Father," and Adam's voice sounded more harsh and stern than usual,
+"leave Eve to go home as she likes: she's not used to these sort o'
+ways, and she will not take things as you mean them."
+
+"Eh! what? How not mane 'em?" exclaimed old Zebedee, taken aback by his
+son's sudden appearance. "I arn't a said no harm that I knaws by:
+there's no 'fence in givin' the maid a wet welcome, I s'pose."
+
+A buzz of dissatisfaction at Adam's interference inspired Zebedee with
+renewed confidence, and with two or three sways in order to get the
+right balance he managed to bring himself to a standstill right in front
+of Adam, into whose face he looked with a comical expression of defiance
+and humor as he said, "Why, come 'long with us, lad, do 'ee, and name
+the liquor yerself, and see it passes round free and turn and turn
+about: and let's hab a song or two, and get up Rozzy Treloar wi' his
+fiddle, and Zeke Orgall there 'ull dance us a hornpipe;" and he began a
+double-shuffle with his feet, adding, as his dexterity came to a sudden
+and somewhat unsteady finish, "Tis a ill wind that blows nobody no good,
+and a poor heart what never rejices."
+
+Eve during this time had been vainly endeavoring to make her escape--an
+impossibility, as Adam saw, under existing circumstances; and this
+decided him to use no further argument; but, with his arm put through
+his father's and in company with the rest of the group, he apparently
+conceded to their wishes, and, motioning Eve on, the party proceeded
+along the path, down the steps and toward the quay, until they came in
+front of the Three Pilchards, now the centre of life and jollity, with
+the sound of voices and the preparatory scraping of a fiddle to enhance
+the promise of comfort which glowed in the ruddy reflection sent by the
+bright lights and cheerful fire through the red window-curtain.
+
+"Now, father," exclaimed Adam with a resolute grip of the old man's arm,
+"you and me are homeward bound. We'll welcome our neighbors some other
+time, but for this evening let's say good-night to them."
+
+"Good-night?" repeated Zebedee: "how good-night? Why, what 'ud be the
+manin' o' that? None o' us ain't agoin' to part company here, I hopes.
+We'm all goin' to cast anchor to the same moorin's--eh, mates?"
+
+"No, no, no!" said Adam, impatiently: "you come along home with me now."
+
+"Iss, iss, all right!" laughed the old man, trying to wriggle out of his
+son's grasp; "only not just yet a whiles. I'm agoin' in here to drink
+your good health, Adam lad, and all here's a-comin' with me--ain't us,
+hearties?"
+
+"Pack of stuff! Drink my health?" exclaimed Adam. "There's no more
+reason for drinking my health to-night than any other night. Come along
+now, father: you've had a hard day of it, you know, and when you get
+home you can have whatever you want quietly by your own fireside."
+
+But Zebedee, though perfectly good-humored, was by no means to be
+persuaded: he continued to laugh and writhe about as if the fact of his
+detention was merely a good joke on Adam's part, the lookers-on abetting
+and applauding his determination, until Adam's temper could restrain
+itself no longer, and with no very pleasant explosion of wrath he let go
+his hold and intimated that his father was free to take what course
+pleased him most.
+
+"That's right, lad!" exclaimed old Zebedee heartily, shaking himself
+together. "You'm a good son and a capital sailor-man, but you'm pore
+company, Adam--verra pore company."
+
+And with this truism (to which a general shout gave universal assent)
+ringing in his ears, Adam strode away up the street with all possible
+speed, and was standing in front of the house-door when he was suddenly
+struck by the thought of what had become of Eve. Since they had halted
+in front of the Three Pilchards he had seen nothing of her: she had
+disappeared, and in all probability had made her way home.
+
+The thought of having to confront her caused him to hesitate: should he
+go in? What else could he do? where had he to go? So, with a sort of
+desperation, he pushed open the door and found himself within the
+sitting-room. It was empty; the fire had burnt low, the wick of the
+unsnuffed candle had grown long; evidently Eve had not returned; and
+with an undefined mixture of regret and relief Adam sat down, leaned his
+arms on the table and laid his head upon them.
+
+During the whole day the various excitements he had undergone had so
+kept his mind on the stretch that its powers of keen susceptibility
+seemed now thoroughly exhausted, and in place of the acute pain he had
+previously suffered there had come a dull, heavy weight of despair,
+before which his usual force and determination seemed vanquished and
+powerless. The feeling uppermost was a sense of the injustice inflicted
+on him--that he, who in practice and principle was so far removed above
+his neighbors, should be made to suffer for their follies and misdeeds,
+should have to bear the degradation of their vices. As to any hope of
+reclaiming them, he had long ago given that up, though not without a
+certain disappointment in the omniscience of that Providence which could
+refuse the co-operation of his valuable agency.
+
+Adam suffered from that strong belief in himself which is apt, when
+carried to excess, to throw a shadow on the highest qualities.
+Outstepping the Pharisee, who thanked God that he was not like other
+men, Adam thanked himself, and fed his vanity by the assurance that had
+the Polperro folk followed his lead and his advice they would now be
+walking in his footsteps; instead of which they had despised him as a
+leader and rejected him as a counsellor, so that, exasperated by their
+ignorance and stung by their ingratitude, he had cast them off and
+abandoned them for ever; and out of this disappointment had arisen a dim
+shadow of some far-off future wherein he caught glimpses of a new life
+filled with fresh hopes and successful endeavors.
+
+From the moment his heart had opened toward Eve her image seemed to be
+associated with these hitherto undefined longings: by the light of her
+love, of her presence, her companionship, all that had been vague seemed
+to take shape and grow into an object which was real and a purpose to be
+accomplished; so that now one of the sharpest pricks from the thorn of
+disappointment came of the knowledge that this hope was shattered and
+this dream must be abandoned. And, lost in moody retrospection, Adam sat
+stabbing desire with the sword of despair.
+
+"Let me be! let me be!" he said in answer to some one who was trying to
+rouse him.
+
+"Adam, it's me: do look up;" and in spite of himself the voice which
+spoke made him lift his head and look at the speaker. "Adam, I'm so
+sorry!" and Eve's face said more than her words.
+
+"You've nothing to be sorry for," returned Adam sullenly.
+
+"I want you to forgive me, Adam," continued Eve.
+
+"I've nothing to forgive."
+
+"Yes, you have;" and a faint flush of color came into her cheeks as she
+added with hesitating confusion, "You know I didn't mean you to take
+what I said as you did, Adam; because"--and the color suddenly deepened
+and spread over her face--"because I do care for you--very much indeed."
+
+Adam gave a despondent shake of his head. "No, you don't," he said,
+steadily averting his eyes; "and a very good thing too. I don't know who
+that wasn't forced to it would willingly have anything to do with such a
+God-forsaken place as this is. I only know I'm sick of it, and of myself
+and my life, and everything in it."
+
+"Oh, Adam, don't say that--don't say you're sick of life. At least, not
+now;" and she turned her face so that he might read the reason.
+
+"And why not now?" he asked stolidly. "What have I now that I hadn't
+before?"
+
+"Why, you've got me."
+
+"You? You said you couldn't give me the love I asked you for."
+
+"Oh, but I didn't mean it. What I said was because I felt so hurt that
+you should suspect me as you seemed to."
+
+"I never suspected you--never meant to suspect you. All I wanted you to
+know was that I must be all or nothing."
+
+"Of course; and I meant that too, only you--But there! don't let's drift
+back to that again;" and as she spoke she leaned her two hands upon his
+shoulders and stood looking down. "What I want to say is, that every bit
+of love I have is yours, Adam. I am afraid," she added shyly, "you had
+got it all before ever I knew whether you really wanted it or not."
+
+"And why couldn't you tell me that before?" he said bitterly.
+
+"Why, is it too late now?" asked Eve humbly.
+
+"Too late? You know it can't be too late," exclaimed Adam, his old
+irritability getting the better of him: then, with a sudden revulsion of
+his overwrought susceptibilities, he cried, "Oh, Eve, Eve, bear with me
+to-night: I'm not what I want to be. The words I try to speak die away
+upon my lips, and my heart seems sunk down so low that nothing can
+rejoice it. To-morrow I shall be master of myself again, and all will
+look different."
+
+"I hope so," sighed Eve tremulously. "Things don't seem quite between us
+as they ought to be. I sha'n't wait for Joan," she said, holding out her
+hand: "I shall go up stairs now; so good-night, Adam."
+
+"Good-night," he said: then, keeping hold of her hand, he drew her
+toward him and stood looking down at her with a face haggard and full of
+sadness.
+
+The look acted as the last straw which was to swamp the burden of Eve's
+grief. Control was in vain, and in another instant, with Adam's arms
+around her, she lay sobbing out her sorrow on his breast, and the tears,
+as they came, thrust the evil spirit away. So that when, an hour later,
+the two said good-night again, their vows had been exchanged and the
+troth that bound them plighted; and Adam, looking into Eve's face,
+smiled as he said, "Whether for good luck or bad, the sun of our love
+has risen in a watery sky."
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+Most of the actions and events of our lives are chameleon-hued: their
+colors vary according to the light by which we view them. Thus Eve, who
+the night before had seen nothing but happiness in the final arrangement
+between Adam and herself, awoke on the following morning with a feeling
+of dissatisfaction and a desire to be critical as to the rosy hues which
+seemed then to color the advent of their love.
+
+The spring of tenderness which had burst forth within her at sight of
+Adam's humility and subsequent despair had taken Eve by surprise. She
+knew, and had known for some time, that much within her was capable of
+answering to the demands which Adam's pleading love would most probably
+require; but that he had inspired her with a passion which would make
+her lay her heart at his feet, feeling for the time that, though he
+trampled on it, there it must stay, was a revelation entirely new, and,
+to Eve's temperament, rather humiliating. She had never felt any
+sympathy with those lovesick maidens whose very existence seemed
+swallowed up in another's being, and had been proudly confident that
+even when supplicated she should never seem to stoop lower than to
+accept. Therefore, just as we experience a sense of failure when we find
+our discernment led astray in our perception of a friend, so now,
+although she studiously avoided acknowledging it, she had the
+consciousness that she had utterly misconceived her own character, and
+that the balance by which she had adjusted the strength of her emotions
+had been a false one. A dread ran through her lest she should be seized
+hold upon by some further inconsistency, and she resolved to set a watch
+on the outposts of her senses, so that they might not betray her into
+further weakness.
+
+These thoughts were still agitating her mind when Joan suddenly awoke,
+and after a time roused herself sufficiently to say, "Why, whatever made
+you pop off in such a hurry last night, Eve? I runned in a little after
+ten, and there wasn't no signs of you nowheres; and then I come upon
+Adam, and he told me you was gone up to bed."
+
+"Yes," said Eve: "I was so tired, and my foot began to ache again, so I
+thought there wasn't any use in my sitting up any longer. But you were
+very late, Joan, weren't you?"
+
+"Very early, more like," said Joan: "'twas past wan before I shut my
+eyes. Why, I come home three times to see if uncle was back; and then I
+wouldn't stand it no longer, so I went and fetched un."
+
+"What, not from--where he was?" exclaimed Eve.
+
+Joan nodded her head. "Oh Lors!" she said, "'tain't the fust time by
+many; and," she added in a tone of satisfaction, "I lets 'em know when
+they've brought Joan Hocken down among 'em. I had Jerrem out, and uncle
+atop of un, 'fore they knawed where they was. Awh, I don't stand beggin'
+and prayin', not I: 'tis 'whether or no, Tom Collins,' when I come, I
+can tell 'ee."
+
+"Well, they'd stay a very long time before they'd be fetched by me,"
+said Eve emphatically.
+
+"Awh, don't 'ee say that, now," returned Joan. "Where do 'ee think
+there'd be the most harm in, then--sittin' comfortable at home when you
+might go down and 'tice 'em away, or the goin' down and doin' of it?"
+
+"I've not a bit of patience with anybody who drinks," exclaimed Eve,
+evading a direct answer.
+
+"Then you'll never cure anybody of it, my dear," replied Joan. "You'm
+like Adam there, I reckon--wantin' to set the world straight in one day,
+and all the folks in it bottommost side upward; but, as I tell un, he
+don't go to work the right way. They that can't steer 'ull never sail;
+and I'll bet any money that when it comes to be counted up how many
+glasses o' grog's been turned away from uncle's lips, there'll be more
+set to the score o' my coaxin' than ever 'ull be to Adam's
+bullyraggin'."
+
+"Perhaps so," said Eve; and then, wishing to avoid any argument into
+which Adam could be brought, she adroitly changed the subject, and only
+indifferent topics were discussed until, their dressing completed, the
+two girls were ready to go down stairs.
+
+The first person who answered the summons to breakfast was Uncle
+Zebedee--not heavy-eyed and shamefaced, as Eve had expected to see him,
+but bright and rosy-cheeked as an apple. He had been up and out since
+six o'clock, looking after the repairs which a boat of his was laid up
+to undergo, and now, as he came into the house fresh as a lark, he
+chirruped in a quavery treble,
+
+    "Tom Truelove woo'd the sweetest fair
+      That e'er to tar was kind:
+    Her face was of a booty rare--
+
+That's for all the world what yourn is," he said, breaking off to bestow
+a smacking kiss on Joan. "So look sharp, like a good little maid as you
+be, and gi'e us sommat to sit down for;" and he drew a chair to the
+table and began flourishing the knife which had been set there for him.
+Then, catching sight of Eve, whose face, in her desire to spare him,
+betrayed an irrepressible look of consciousness, he exclaimed, "Why,
+they've bin tellin' up that I was a little over-free in my speech last
+night about you, Eve: is there any truth in it, eh? I doan't fancy I
+could ha' said much amiss--did I?"
+
+"Oh, nothing to signify, uncle."
+
+"'Twas sommat 'bout you and Adam, warn't it?" he continued with a
+puzzled air: "'tis all in my head here, though I can't zackly call it to
+mind. That's the divil o' bein' a little o'ertook that ways," he added
+with the assurance of meeting ready sympathy: "'tis so bafflin' to set
+things all ship-shape the next mornin'. I minds so far as this, that it
+had somehow to do with me holdin' to it that you and Adam was goin' to
+be man and wife; but if you axes for the why and the wherefore, I'm
+blessed if I can tell 'ee."
+
+"Why, whatever put such as that into your head?" said Joan sharply.
+
+"Wa-al, the liquor, I reckon," laughed Zebedee. "And, somehow or
+'nother, Maister Adam didn't seem to have overmuch relish for the
+notion;" and he screwed up his face and hugged himself together as if
+his whole body was tickled at his son's discomfiture. "But there! never
+you mind that, Eve," he added hastily: "there's more baws than one to
+Polperro, and I'll wager for a halfscore o' chaps ready to hab 'ee
+without yer waitin' to be took up by my son Adam."
+
+Poor Eve! it was certainly an embarrassing situation to be placed in,
+for, with no wish to conceal her engagement, to announce it herself
+alone, and unaided by even the presence of Adam, was a task she
+naturally shrank from. In the endeavor to avoid any direct reply she sat
+watching anxiously for Adam's arrival, her sudden change of manner
+construed by Zebedee into the effect of wounded vanity, and by Joan into
+displeasure at her uncle's undue interference. By sundry frowns and nods
+of warning Joan tried to convey her admonitions to old Zebedee, in the
+midst of which Adam entered, and with a smile at Eve and an inclusive
+nod to the rest of the party took a chair and drew up to the table.
+
+"Surely," thought Eve, "he intends telling them."
+
+But Adam sat silent and occupied with the plate before him.
+
+"He can't think I can go living on here with Joan, even for a single
+day, and they not know it;" and in her perplexity she turned on Adam a
+look full of inquiry and meaning.
+
+Still, Adam did not speak: in his own mind he was casting over the
+things he meant to say when, breakfast over and the two girls out of the
+way, he would invite his father to smoke a pipe outside, during the
+companionship of which he intended taking old Zebedee decidedly to task,
+and, putting his intended marriage with Eve well to the front, clinch
+his arguments by the startling announcement that unless some reformation
+was soon made he would leave his native place and seek a home in a
+foreign land. Such words and such threats as these could not be uttered
+to a father by a son save when they two stood quite alone; and Adam,
+after meeting a second look from Eve, shook his head, feeling satisfied
+that she would know that only some grave requirement deterred him from
+immediately announcing the happiness which henceforth was to crown his
+life. But our intuition, at the best, is somewhat narrow, and where the
+heart is most concerned most faulty: therefore Eve, and Adam too, felt
+each disappointed in the other's want of acquiescence, and inclined to
+be critical on the lack of mutual sympathy.
+
+Suddenly the door opened and in walked Jerrem, smiling and apparently
+more radiant than usual under the knowledge that he was more than
+usually an offender. Joan, who had her own reasons for being very
+considerably put out with him, was not disposed to receive him very
+graciously; Adam vouchsafed him no notice whatever; Uncle Zebedee,
+oppressed by the sense of former good fellowship, thought it discreet
+not to evince too much cordiality; so that the onus of the morning's
+welcome was thrown upon Eve, who, utterly ignorant of any offence Jerrem
+had given, thought it advisable to make amends for the pettish
+impatience she feared she had been betrayed into on the previous
+morning.
+
+Old Zebedee, whose resolves seldom lasted over ten minutes, soon fell
+into the swing of Jerrem's flow of talk; a little later on and Joan was
+forced to put in a word; so that the usual harmony was just beginning to
+recover itself when, in answer to a remark which Jerrem had made, Eve
+managed to turn the laugh so cleverly back upon him that Zebedee, well
+pleased to see what good friends they were growing, exclaimed, "Stop her
+mouth! stop her mouth, lad! I'd ha' done it when I was your years twenty
+times over 'fore this. Her's too sarcy--too sarcy by half, her is."
+
+Up started Jerrem, but Adam was before him. "I don't know whether what
+I'm going to say is known to anybody here already," he burst out, "but I
+think it's high time that some present should be told by me that Eve has
+promised to be my wife;" and, turning, he cast a look of angry defiance
+at Jerrem, who, thoroughly amazed, gradually sank down and took
+possession of his chair again, while old Zebedee went through the dumb
+show of giving a long whistle, and Joan, muttering an unmeaning
+something, ran hastily out of the room. Eve, angry and confused, turned
+from white to red and from red to white.
+
+A silence ensued--one of those pauses when some event of our lives seems
+turned into a gulf to separate us from our former surroundings.
+
+Adam was the first to speak, and with a touch of irony he said, "You're
+none of you very nimble at wishing us joy, I fancy."
+
+"And no wonder, you've a-tooked us all aback so," said old Zebedee. "'T
+seems to me I'm foaced to turn it round and round afore I can swaller it
+for rale right-down truth."
+
+"Why, is it so very improbable, then?" asked Adam, already repenting the
+abruptness of the disclosure.
+
+"Wa-al, 'twas no later than last night that you was swearin' agen and
+cussin' everybody from stem to starn for so much as mentionin' it as
+likely. Now," he added, with as much show of displeasure as his cheery,
+weatherbeaten old face would admit of, "I'll tell 'ee the mind I've got
+to'ard these sort o' games: if you see fit to board folks in the smoke,
+why do it and no blame to 'ee, but hang me if I can stomach 'ee sailin'
+under false colors."
+
+"There wasn't anything of false colors about us, father," said Adam in a
+more conciliatory tone; "for, though I had certainly spoken to Eve, it
+was not until after I'd parted with you last night that she gave me her
+answer."
+
+"Awh!" said the old man, only half propitiated. "Wa-al, I s'pose you can
+settle your consarns without my help; but I can tell 'ee this much, that
+if my Joanna had took so long afore she could make her mind up, I'm
+blamed if her ever should ha' had the chance o' bein' your mother,
+Adam--so there!"
+
+Adam bit his lip with vexation. "There's no need for me to enter upon
+any further explanations," he said: "Eve's satisfied, I'm satisfied, so
+I don't see why you shouldn't be satisfied."
+
+"Awh, I'm satisfied enough," said Zebedee; "and, so far as that goes,
+though I ain't much of a hand at speechifyin', I hopes that neither of
+'ee 'ull never have no raison to repent yer bargain. Eve's a fine
+bowerly maid, so you'm well matched there; and so long as she's ready to
+listen to all you say and bide by all you tells her, why 'twill be set
+fair and sail easy."
+
+"I can assure you Eve isn't prepared to do anything of the sort, Uncle
+Zebedee," exclaimed Eve, unable to keep silence any longer. "I've always
+been told if I'd nothing else I've got the Pascals' temper; and that,
+according to your own showing, isn't very fond of sitting quiet and
+being rode over rough-shod."
+
+The whistle which Uncle Zebedee had tried to choke at its birth now came
+out shrill, long and expressive, and Adam, jumping up, said, "Come,
+come, Eve: we've had enough of this. Surely there isn't any need to take
+such idle talk as serious matter. If you and me hadn't seen some good in
+one another we shouldn't have taken each other, I suppose; and, thank
+the Lord, we haven't to please anybody but our two selves."
+
+"Wa-al, 'tis to be hoped you'll find that task aisier than it looks,"
+retorted Uncle Zebedee with a touch of sarcasm; while Jerrem, after
+watching Adam go out, endeavored to throw a tone of regret into the
+flattering nothings he now whispered by way of congratulation, but Eve
+turned impatiently away from him. She had no further inclination to talk
+or to be talked to; and Uncle Zebedee having by this time sought solace
+in a pipe, Jerrem joined him outside, and the two sauntered away
+together toward the quay.
+
+Left to the undisturbed indulgence of her own reflections, Eve's mood
+was no enviable one--the more difficult to bear because she had to
+control the various emotions struggling within her. She felt it was time
+for plain speaking between her and Adam, and rightly judged that a
+proper understanding come to at once would be the safest means of
+securing future comfort. Turn and twist Adam's abrupt announcement as
+she would, she could assign but one cause for it, and that cause was an
+overweening jealousy; and as the prospect came before her of a lifetime
+spent in the midst of doubt and suspicion, the strength of her love
+seemed to die away and her heart grew faint within her. For surely if
+the demon of jealousy could be roused by the sight of commonplace
+attentions from one who was in every way like a brother--for so in Eve's
+eyes Jerrem seemed to be--what might not be expected if at any time
+circumstances threw her into the mixed company of strangers? Eve had
+seen very little of men, but whenever chance had afforded her the
+opportunity of their society she had invariably met with attention, and
+had felt inwardly gratified by the knowledge that she was attracting
+admiration; but now, if she gave way to this prejudice of Adam's, every
+time an eye was turned toward her she would be filled with fear, and
+each time a look was cast in her direction her heart would sink with
+dread.
+
+What should she do? Give him up? Even with the prospect of possible
+misery staring at her, Eve could not say yes, and before the thought had
+more than shaped itself a dozen suggestions were battling down the dread
+alternative. She would change him, influence him, convert him--anything
+but give him up or give in to him. She forgot how much easier it is to
+conceive plans than to carry them out--to arrange speeches than to utter
+them. She forgot that only the evening before, when, an opportunity
+being afforded, she had resolved upon telling Adam the whole
+circumstance of Reuben May and the promise made between them, while the
+words were yet on her lips she had drawn them back because Adam had said
+he knew that the promise was "nothing but the promise of a letter;" and
+Eve's courage had suddenly given way, and by her silence she had led him
+to conclude that nothing else had passed between them. Joan had spoken
+of the envious grudge which Adam had borne toward Jerrem because he had
+shared in his mother's heart, so that this was not the first time Adam
+had dropped in gall to mingle with the cup of his love.
+
+The thought of Joan brought the fact of her unexplained disappearance to
+Eve's mind, and, full of compunction at the bare suspicion of having
+wounded that generous heart, Eve jumped up with the intention of seeking
+her and of bringing about a satisfactory explanation. She had not far to
+go before she came upon Joan, rubbing and scrubbing away as if the
+welfare of all Polperro depended on the amount of energy she could throw
+into her work. Her face was flushed and her voice unsteady, the natural
+consequences of such violent exercise, and which Eve's approach but
+seemed to lend greater force to.
+
+"Joan, I want to speak to you."
+
+"Awh, my dear, I can't listen to no spakin' now," replied Joan hastily,
+"and the tables looking as they do."
+
+"But Tabithy always scrubs the tables, Joan: why should you do it?"
+
+"Tabithy's arms ain't half so young as mine--worse luck for me or for
+she!"
+
+Having by this time gained a little insight into Joan's peculiarities,
+Eve argued no further, but sat herself down on a convenient seat,
+waiting for the time when the rasping sound of the brush would come to
+an end. Her patience was put to no very great tax, for after a few
+minutes Joan flung the brush along the table, exclaiming, "Awh, drabbit
+the ole scrubbin'! I must give over. I b'lieve I've had enuf of it for
+this time, 't all events."
+
+"Joan, you ain't hurt with me, are you?" said Eve, trying to push her
+into the seat from which she had just risen. "I wanted to be the first
+to tell you, only that Adam spoke as he did, and took all I was going to
+say out of my mouth. It leaves you to think me dreadfully sly."
+
+"Awh, there wasn't much need for tellin' me," said Joan with a sudden
+relax of manner. "When I didn't shut my eyes o' purpose I could tell,
+from the first, what was certain to happen."
+
+"It was more than I could, then," said Eve. "I hadn't given it a thought
+that Adam meant to speak to me, and when he asked me I was quite taken
+aback, and said 'No' for ever so long."
+
+"What made 'ee change yer mind so suddent, then?" said Joan bluntly.
+
+Eve hesitated. "I hardly know," she said, with a little confusion. "I
+think it was seeing him so cast down made me feel so dreadfully sorry."
+
+"H'm!" said Joan. "Didn't 'ee never feel no sorrow for t'other poor chap
+that wanted to have 'ee--he to London, Reuben May?"
+
+"Not enough to make me care in that way for him: I certainly never did."
+
+"And do you care for Adam, then?"
+
+"I think I do."
+
+"Think?"
+
+"Well, I am sure I do."
+
+"That's better. Well, Eve, I'll say this far;" and Joan gave a sigh
+before the other words would come out: "I'd rather it should be you than
+anybody else I ever saw."
+
+The struggle with which these words were said, their tone and the look
+in Joan's face, seemed to reveal a state of feeling which Eve had not
+suspected. Throwing her arms round her, she cried out, "Oh, Joan, why
+didn't he choose you? You would have been much better for him than me."
+
+"Lord bless the maid!"--and Joan tried to laugh through her tears--"I
+wouldn't ha' had un if he'd axed me. Why, there'd ha' bin murder 'tween
+us 'fore a month was out: us 'ud ha' bin hung for one 'nother. No: now
+don't 'ee take no such stuff as that into yer head, 'cos there's no
+sense in it. Adam's never looked 'pon me not more than a sister;" and,
+breaking down, Joan sobbed hysterically; "and when you two's married I
+shall feel 'zackly as if he was a brother, and be gladder than e'er a
+one else to see how happy you makes un."
+
+"That's if I _do_ make him happy," said Eve sadly.
+
+"There's no fear but you'll do that," said Joan, resolutely wiping the
+tears from her eyes; "and 'twill be your own fault if you bain't happy
+too yourself, Eve. Adam's got his fads to put up with, and his fancies
+same as other men have, and a masterful temper to keep under, as nobody
+can tell better than me; but for rale right-down goodness I shouldn't
+know where to match his fellow--not if I was to search the place
+through; and, mind 'ee, after all, that's something to be proud of in
+the man you've got to say maister to."
+
+Eve gave a little smile: "But he must let me be mistress, you know,
+Joan."
+
+"All right! only don't you stretch that too far," said Joan warningly,
+"or no good 'ull come of it; and be foreright in all you do, and spake
+the truth to un. I've many a time wished I could, but with this to hide
+o' that one's and that to hush up o' t'other's, I know he holds me for a
+downright liard; and so I am by his measure, I 'spects."
+
+"I'm sure you're nothing of the sort, Joan," said Eve. "Adam's always
+saying how much people think of you. He told me only yesterday that he
+was certain more than half the men of the place had asked you to marry
+them."
+
+"Did he?" said Joan, not wholly displeased that Adam should hold this
+opinion. "Awh, and ax they may, I reckon, afore I shall find a man to
+say 'Yes' to."
+
+"That is what I used to think myself," said Eve.
+
+"Iss, and so you found it till Roger put the question," replied Joan
+decisively. Then, after a minute's pause, she added, "What be 'ee goin'
+to do 'bout the poor sawl to London, then--eh? You must tell he
+somehow."
+
+"Oh, I don't see that," said Eve. "I mean to write to him, because I
+promised I would; and I shall tell him that I've made up my mind not to
+go back, but I sha'n't say anything more. There isn't any need for it,
+that I see--at least, not yet a while."
+
+"Best to tell un all," argued Joan. "Why shouldn't 'ee? 'Tis the same,
+so far as you'm concerned, whether he's killed to wance or dies by
+inches."
+
+But Eve was not to be persuaded. "There isn't any reason why I should,"
+she said.
+
+"No reason?" replied Joan. "Oh, Eve, my dear," she added, "don't 'ee let
+happiness harden your heart: if love is sweet to gain, think how bitter
+'tis to lose; and, by all you've told me, you'll forfeit a better man
+than most in Reuben May."
+
+_The Author of "Dorothy Fox._"
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+ON THE SKUNK RIVER.
+
+
+The Lady of Shalott, looking into the mirror which reflected the highway
+"a bowshot from her bower-eaves," saw the villagers passing to their
+daily labor in the barley-fields; market-girls in red cloaks and damsels
+of high degree; curly shepherd-boys and long-haired pages in gay livery;
+an abbot on an ambling pad and knights in armor and nodding plumes; and
+her constant pastime was to weave these sights into the magic web on
+which she wrought. I undertake, in a modest way, to follow her example,
+and weave a series of pictures from the sights that daily meet my eyes.
+
+The highway which runs a bowshot from _my_ bower-eaves is a
+much-travelled road, leading from the farms of a prairie country into a
+prairie town. It is a stripe of black earth fifteen or twenty feet wide,
+the natural color of the soil, ungraded, ungravelled, and just now half
+a foot deep in mud from the melting February snows. Looking in the
+direction from which it comes, a mile or two of rolling prairie-land is
+visible, divided into farms of one hundred, one hundred and forty or one
+hundred and sixty acres. Just now it is faded yellow in hue, with
+patches of snow in the hollows, and bare of trees, stumps or fences,
+except the almost invisible wire-fences which separate the fields from
+the road and from each other. Here and there, at wide intervals, a few
+farm-houses can be seen, sheltered on the north and west by a
+thickly-set row of cottonwood or Lombardy poplar trees, which serve in a
+great measure to break the sweep of the pitiless Iowa winds. Most of the
+houses are large and comfortable, and are surrounded by barns, haystacks
+and young orchards, denoting a long residence and prosperity; but two or
+three, far off on the horizon, are small wooden structures, set on the
+bare prairie, without a tree or outbuilding near them, and looking bleak
+and lonely. To one who knows something of the straitened lives, the
+struggles with poverty, that go on in them, they seem doubly pitiful and
+desolate.
+
+The town into which the highway leads lies straight before my window,
+flat, unpicturesque, uninteresting, marked by the untidiness of
+crudeness and the untidiness of neglect. The ungraded streets are
+trodden into a sticky pudding by horses' feet, the board sidewalks are
+narrow, uneven and broken, and the crossings are deep in mud. In the
+eastern part of the town the dwellings are large, comfortable, even
+elegant, with well-kept grounds filled with trees and shrubbery, and
+there are a few of the same character scattered here and there
+throughout the town; but the large majority of houses, those that give
+the place its discouraged, unambitious look, are small wooden dwellings,
+a story or a story and a half high, with the end facing the street and a
+shed-kitchen behind. Those that are painted are white or brown, but many
+are unpainted, have no window-shutters and are surrounded by untidy
+yards and fences that need repair.
+
+The centre of the town, both in position and importance, is "The
+Square." This is an open space planted thickly with trees, which have
+now grown to a large size and cast a refreshing shade over the crowd
+that gathers there in summer to hear political speeches or to celebrate
+the Fourth of July. It is surrounded by hitching-racks, and on Saturdays
+and other unusually busy days these racks, on all the four sides of the
+Square, are so full of teams--generally two-horse farm-wagons--that
+there is not room for another horse to be tied. Facing the Square
+and extending a block or two down adjacent streets are the
+business-houses--stores, banks, express-office, livery-stables,
+post-office, gas-office, the hotels, the opera-house, newspaper and
+lawyers' offices. Many of the buildings are of brick, three stories
+high, faced or trimmed with stone, but the general effect is marred by
+the contiguity of little wooden shanties used as barber-shops and
+meat-markets.
+
+Except in the north-east, where the land is rolling and densely wooded,
+the horizon-line is flat and on a level with our feet. The sun rises
+from the prairie as he rises from the ocean, and his going down is the
+same: no far-off line of snowy mountains, no range of green hills nor
+forest-crest, intercepts his earliest and his latest rays. Over this
+wide stretch of level land the wind sweeps with unobstructed violence,
+and more than once in the memory of settlers it has increased to a
+destructive tornado, carrying buildings, wagons, cattle and human beings
+like chaff before it. Just now, a sky of heavenly beauty and color bends
+over it, and through the wide spaces blow delicious airs suggestive of
+early spring.
+
+Nearly every day, and often many times a day, farm-wagons drawn by two
+horses pass along the highway in front of my window. The wagon-bed is
+filled with sacks of wheat or piled high with yellow corn, and on the
+high spring-seat in front sits the farmer driving, and by him his wife,
+her head invariably wrapped in a white woollen nubia or a little shawl,
+worn as a protection against the catarrh-producing prairie winds.
+Cuddled in the hay at their feet, but keeping a bright lookout with
+round eager eyes, are two or three stout, rosy children, and often there
+is a baby in the mother's arms. When "paw" has sold his wheat or corn
+the whole family will walk around the Square several times, looking in
+at the shop-windows and staring at the people on the sidewalk. When they
+have decided in which store they can get the best bargains, they will go
+in and buy groceries, calico and flannel, shoes for the children, and
+perhaps a high chair for the baby. Later in the day they rattle by
+again, the farmer sitting alone on the spring-seat, the wife and
+children, as a better protection against the wind, on some hay in the
+now empty wagon-bed behind. So they jolt homeward over the rough, frozen
+road or toil through sticky mud, as the case may be, well pleased with
+their purchases and their glimpse of town, and content to take up again
+the round of monotonous life on their isolated prairie farm.
+
+Sometimes on spring-like days, when the roads are good, two women or a
+woman and one or two half-grown children drive by in a spring-wagon,
+bringing chickens, eggs, and butter to market. Heavy wagons loaded with
+large clear blocks of ice go by every day, the men walking and driving
+or seated on a board seat at the extreme rear of the wagon. The great
+crystal cubes look, as they flash in the sunshine, like
+building-material for Aladdin's palace quarried from some mine of
+jewels, but they are only brought from the Skunk River, three miles
+distant, to the ice-houses in town, and there packed away in sawdust
+for summer use. On two days of the week--shipping days for
+live-stock--farm-wagons with a high railing round the beds go by, and
+inside the railing, crowded as thickly as they can stand, are fat black
+or black-and-white hogs, which thrust their short noses between the
+boards and squeal to get out. They are unloaded at the cattle-pens near
+the railroad, and thence shipped to pork-packers at Chicago.
+
+And sometimes half a dozen Indians, the roving gypsies of the West,
+dressed in warm and comfortable clothing and wrapped in red or blue
+blankets, ride into town on good horses. They belong to the Sacs and
+Foxes, a friendly, well-disposed remnant of people who live half a day's
+ride to the north-east of this place. They are better off than the
+average of white people, for every man, woman and child owns a quarter
+section of land in the Indian Territory, and receives an annuity of
+money besides. Immediately after pay-day they visit the neighboring
+towns, their pockets full of silver dollars, and buy whatever necessity
+or fancy dictates. The women are generally neat and comely in
+appearance, and the pappooses that peer from the bags hung on either
+side of the ponies are bright-eyed, round-faced youngsters, who never
+cry and seldom cause any trouble. They seem to be born with a certain
+amount of gravity, and a capacity for patient endurance that forbids
+them to lift up their voices at every slight provocation after the
+manner of white babies. The Indian ponies too are models of endurance.
+The squaws tie their purchases in blankets and hang them across the
+backs of their ponies, swing their pappooses to one side and perhaps a
+joint of fresh meat to the other, then mount on top astride, dig the
+pony's neck with their moccasined heels and start off at a trot.
+Sometimes a large party of Indians, men, women and children, camp on
+Skunk River and fish. In the spring they make a general hegira to a
+wooded section two or three days' journey to the northward for the
+purpose of tapping the maple trees and boiling down the syrup into
+sugar. As before mentioned, they are friendly and inoffensive in their
+dealings with the white people, but their patience must be sorely tried
+sometimes. The town-boys hoot at them, throw stones at their ponies, and
+try in many ways to annoy them. I remember once seeing them pass through
+another town on their annual spring excursion to the sugar-camps. Two of
+the pack-ponies had strayed behind the train, and a squaw rode back to
+drive them ahead. A number of town-boys, thinking this an excellent
+opportunity to have some fun, threw sticks at them and drove them off on
+by-streets and up back alleys. The squaw tried patiently again and again
+to get them together and join the train, but it was not until a brave
+turned back and came to her assistance that she succeeded. Neither of
+the Indians uttered a word or betrayed by sign or expression that they
+noticed the insults of the boys.
+
+Often, when the mud is too deep for teams, farmers go by on horseback,
+with their horses' tails tied into a knot to keep them out of the mud.
+They have come to town to learn the price of wheat, corn or hogs, to
+bargain for some article of farm use, or perhaps to pay the interest on
+their mortgages. Many of them have not yet paid entirely for their
+farms, and comparatively few are free from debt in some form. Some,
+being ambitious to have large farms, have taken more land than they can
+profitably manage or pay for in a number of years, and are what is
+called "land poor:" others, though content with modest portions of sixty
+or a hundred acres, have not yet been able, by reason of poor crops,
+their own mismanagement or some other cause, to clear their farms of
+debt. They work along from year to year, supporting their families,
+paying the interest, and paying off the principal little by little. When
+the last payment is made and the mortgage released, then the owner can
+hold the land in spite of all other creditors. His store-bills or other
+debts may run up to hundreds of dollars, but his homestead cannot be
+taken to satisfy them by any process of law. This is the homestead law
+of the State. A single exception is made in favor of one creditor: the
+mechanic who has erected the buildings can hold what is called a
+mechanic's lien upon the property until his claim is satisfied.
+Advantage is often taken of this law for the purpose of defrauding
+creditors. In one instance a merchant who owned a good residence in a
+city and a valuable store-property, sold or transferred his residence,
+moved his family into the rooms above his store, and soon afterward
+failed. His creditors tried to get possession of his store-property, and
+entered suit, but the testimony proved that it was his dwelling also,
+and therefore exempt under the homestead law. The amount of land that
+can be held in this way is limited to forty acres.
+
+Beginning life in a new country with small capital involves many years
+of hard work and strict economy, perhaps privation and loneliness. This
+comes especially hard on the farmers' wives, many of whom have grown up
+in homes of comfort and plenty in the older States. Ask the men what
+they think of Iowa, and they will say that it is a fine State; it has
+many resources and advantages; there is room for development here; the
+avenues to positions of profit and honor are not so crowded as they are
+in the older States; a good class of emigrants are settling up the
+State: that, on the whole, Iowa has a bright future before it. But the
+women do not deal in such generalities. Their own home and individual
+life is all the world to them, and if that is encompassed with toil and
+hardship, if all their cherished longings and ambitions are denied and
+their hearts sick with hope deferred, this talk about the undeveloped
+resources of Iowa and its future greatness has no interest or meaning
+for them. In their isolated homes on the bleak prairie they have few
+social opportunities, and their straitened means do not allow them to
+buy books or pictures, to take papers or magazines, or to indulge in
+many of the little household ornaments dear to the feminine heart. What
+wonder, then, if their eyes have a weary, questioning look, as if they
+were always searching the flat prairie-horizon for some promise or hope
+of better days, something fresh and stimulating to vary the dull
+monotony of toil?
+
+"There's a better time coming," the farmer says. "When we get the farm
+paid for we will build a new house and send the children to town to
+school;" and so the slow years go by. If every new country is not
+actually fertilized with the heart's blood of women, the settling and
+development of it none the less require the sacrifice of their lives.
+One generation must cast itself into the breach, must toil and endure
+and wear out in the struggle with elementary forces, in order that those
+who come after them may begin life on a higher plane of physical comfort
+and educational and social advantages. They have not, like the settlers
+of Eastern States, had to fell forests, grub up stumps, and so wrest
+their farms from Nature; but they have none the less endured the
+inevitable hardships of life in a new, thinly-settled country, far from
+markets, railroads, schools, churches and all that puts a market value
+on man's labor. I see many women who have thus sacrificed, and are
+sacrificing, their lives. Their faces are wrinkled, their hands are hard
+with rough, coarse work, they have long ago ceased to have any personal
+ambitions; but their hopes are centred in their children. Their
+self-abnegation is pathetic beyond words. Looking at them and musing on
+their lives, I think truly
+
+    The individual withers, and the world is more and more.
+
+Must the old story be repeated over and over again? Must some hearts be
+denied all their lives long in order that a possible good may come to
+others in the future? Must some lives, full of throbbing hopes and
+aspirations, be put down in the dust and mire as stepping-stones, that
+those who come after may go over dryshod? Is the individual not to be
+considered, but only the good of the mass? Can there be justice and
+righteousness in a plan that requires the lifelong martyrdom of a few?
+Have not these few as much right to a full and free development, to
+liberty to work out their own ambitions, as have any of the multitude
+who reap the benefit of their sacrifices? But peace: this little
+existence is not all there is of life, and in the sphere of wider
+opportunities and higher activity that awaits us there will be room for
+these thwarted, stunted lives to grow and flourish and bloom in immortal
+beauty. With our limited vision, our blind and short-sighted judgment,
+how can we presume to say what is harsh or what is kind in the
+discipline of life? The earth as she flies on her track through space
+deviates from a straight line less than the eighth of an inch in the
+distance of twenty miles. We, seeing only twenty miles of her course,
+would declare that it was perfectly straight, that it did not curve in
+the slightest degree; yet flying on that same course the earth makes
+every year her vast elliptical journey around the sun. Could we see a
+hundred million miles of the track, we should discern the curve very
+plainly. Could we see a part of the boundless future of a life whose
+circumstances in this little span of existence were limited and
+depressing, we should discern the meaning of much that viewed separately
+seems hard and bitter and useless.
+
+The settlers of this State have chiefly emigrated from the older
+States--Indiana, Ohio and the Eastern and Middle States. There are many
+foreigners--Swedes, Norwegians, Germans, Dutch and Irish--who generally
+live in colonies. The German element predominates, especially in the
+cities. In the south-western part of the State there is a colony of
+Russian Mennonites, and at Amana, in the eastern part, there are several
+flourishing German colonies where the members hold all property in
+common. They preserve to some extent the quaint customs and costumes of
+the Fatherland, and one set down in the midst of their homes without
+knowing where he was might well believe himself in Germany. The Swedes
+and Norwegians bear a good character for industry and sobriety: the
+young women are in great demand as house-servants and command good
+wages.
+
+The emigrants from older States were many of them farmers of small
+means, who came through in covered wagons with their families and
+household stuff. In pleasant weather this mode of travelling was not
+disagreeable, but in rainy or cold weather it was very uncomfortable. No
+one could walk in the deep mud: the whole family were obliged to huddle
+together in the back part of the wagon, wrapped in bed-quilts or other
+covers, while the driver, generally the head of the family, sat on the
+seat in front, exposed to the cold or driving rain. The horses slowly
+dragged the heavily-laden wagon through the mud, and the progress toward
+their new home was tedious in the extreme. The wagons were usually
+common farm-wagons with hoops of wood, larger and stouter than barrel
+hoops, arched over the bed and covered with white cotton cloth.
+Sometimes, as a protection against rain, a large square of black
+oil-cloth was spread over the white cover. The front of the wagon was
+left open: at the back the cover was drawn together by a string run
+through the hem. Before leaving his old home the farmer generally held a
+public sale and disposed of his household furniture, farming utensils
+and the horses and cattle he did not intend to take with him. Sometimes
+this property went by private sale to the purchaser of his farm. He
+reserved the bedding, a few cooking utensils and other necessaries.
+These were loaded into the wagon, a feed-box for the horses was fastened
+behind, an axe strapped to it, and a tar-bucket hung underneath. Flour
+and bacon were stored away in a box under the driver's seat, or, if
+they expected no chance for replenishing on the way, another wagon was
+filled with stores. Then, when all was ready, the farmer and his family
+looked their last upon their old home, bade good-bye to the friends who
+had gathered to see them off, took their places in the wagon and began
+the long, tedious journey to "Ioway." Hitherto they had had a local
+habitation and a name: now, for several months, they were to be known
+simply as "movers." Among the memories of a childhood spent in a village
+on the old National 'Pike those pertaining to movers are the earliest.
+It was the pastime of my playmates and myself to hang on the fence and
+watch the long train of white-covered wagons go by, always toward the
+setting sun. Sometimes there were twenty in a train, and the slow creak
+of the wagons, the labored stepping of the horses, had an important
+sound to our childish ears. It was
+
+    The tread of pioneers
+    Of nations yet to be.
+
+Looking backward to that time, it seems to me now that they went by
+every day. It was a common sight, but one which never lost its interest
+to us. The cry of "Movers! movers!" would draw us from our play to hang
+idly on the fence until the procession had passed. In some instances
+nightfall overtook them just as they reached our village, and they
+camped by the roadside, lighting fires on the ground with which to cook
+their evening meal. Our timidity was greater than our curiosity, and we
+seldom went near their camps. Movers, in our estimation, were above
+"stragglers," the name by which we knew the vagrants--forerunners of the
+great tribe of tramps--who occasionally passed along the road with a
+bundle on a stick over their shoulders; but still, they were a vague,
+unknown class, whose intentions toward us were questionable, and we
+remained in the vicinity of our mothers' apron-strings so long as they
+were in the neighborhood.
+
+When the weeks or months of slow travel during the day and camping out
+by night were over, and the new home on the prairie was reached, the
+discomforts and privations of the emigrating family were not ended: they
+were only fairly begun. There was no house in which to lay their heads,
+no sawmill where lumber could be obtained, no tree to shelter them,
+unless they had the good fortune to locate near a stream--nothing but a
+smooth, level expanse of prairie-sod, bright green and gay with the
+flowers of early summer or faded and parched with the droughts of
+autumn. Sometimes they camped in the open air until lumber could be
+brought from a distance and a rude shanty erected, but often they built
+a turf house, in which they passed their first winter. These houses were
+constructed by cutting blocks of turf about eighteen inches square--the
+roots of prairie-grass being that long--and piling one upon another
+until the walls were raised to the desired height. Slender poles were
+then laid across from wall to wall, and on these other strips and
+squares of turf were piled until a roof thick enough to keep out the
+rain was formed. A turf fireplace and chimney were constructed at one
+end; the opening left for entrance was braced with poles and provided
+with a door; and sometimes a square opening was cut in the end opposite
+the chimney and a piece of muslin stretched across it to serve as a
+window. The original earth formed the floor, and piles of turf covered
+with bedding served as beds. It was only when the family intended to
+live some time in the turf house that all these pains were taken to make
+it comfortable. Many of these dwellings were dark huts, with floors a
+foot or two below the level of the ground and without window or chimney.
+These were intended for temporary occupation. A few of this kind, still
+inhabited, are to be seen in the sparsely-settled north-western part of
+the State. I do not mean this description to apply in a general sense to
+the early settlers of Iowa. Many parts of the State are heavily wooded,
+and cabins of hewed logs chinked with mud are still to be seen here and
+there--specimens of the early homes. In the regions where turf houses
+were necessary prairie-hay was burned as fuel.
+
+When his family was housed from the weather the farmer turned his
+attention to his land. The virgin sod had to be broken and the rich
+black soil turned up in ridges to the air and sunlight. When the ground
+was prepared the stock of seed-corn was planted or wheat sown, and the
+farmer's old life began again under new and quite different
+circumstances. In the eastern and oldest-settled part of the State these
+beginnings date back a generation: in the western part they are still
+fresh and recent. In the old part well-cultivated fields, large barns,
+orchards, gardens and comfortable farm-houses greet the traveller's eye:
+in the new he may travel for half a day without seeing a single
+dwelling, and may consider himself fortunate if he does not have to pass
+the night under the lee side of a haystack.
+
+After a foothold has been gained in a new country and a home
+established, a generation, perhaps two, must pass away before a fine
+type of humanity is produced. The fathers and mothers have toiled for
+the actual necessaries of life, and gained them. The children are
+supplied with physical comforts. Plenty of food and exercise in the pure
+air give them stalwart frames, good blood and perfect animal health, but
+there is a bovine stolidity of expression in their faces, a
+suggestion of kinship with the clod. They are honest-hearted and
+well-meaning--stupid, not naturally, but because their minds have never
+been quickened and stimulated. They grope in a blind way for better
+things, and wonder if life means no more than to plough and sow and
+reap, to wash and cook and sew. I see young people of this class by the
+score, and my heart goes out toward them in pity, though they are all
+unconscious of needing pity. Perhaps one out of every hundred will break
+from the slowly-stepping ranks and run ahead to taste of the springs of
+knowledge reserved for the next generation, but the vast majority will
+go down to their graves without ever attaining to the ripeness and
+symmetry of a fully-developed life. Their children perhaps--certainly
+their grand-children--will attain a fine physical and mental type; and
+by that time "the prairies" will cease to be a synonym for lack of
+society and remoteness from liberal and refining influences.
+
+The land in this vicinity is largely devoted to wheat, corn and oats:
+much, however, is used for pasturage, and several fine stock-farms lie
+within a radius of five miles. Sheep-rearing is a profitable industry,
+the woollen manufactory at this place affording a convenient and ready
+market for the clip. But the statistics of Iowa show that the rearing of
+hogs is a more prominent industry than any of these. The agricultural
+fairs that are held at the county-seats in August or September every
+year serve to display the growth of these and other industries and the
+development of the resources of the country, as well as the advance in
+material comfort. The fair-ground is generally a smooth plat of ground
+several acres in extent just outside the city limits, and besides the
+race-track and wooden "amphitheatre" there are sheds for cattle, stalls
+for horses, pens for hogs and sheep and poultry, a large open shed for
+the exhibition of agricultural machinery and implements, a long wooden
+building--usually called "Farmers' Hall"--where fruits, grain and
+vegetables are displayed, and another, called "Floral Hall," where there
+is a motley display consisting of flowering plants and cut flowers,
+needlework, embroidery, pieced bed-quilts, silk chair-cushions and
+sofa-pillows, jellies, preserves, jams, butter, cake, bread--the
+handiwork of women. There is generally a crowd of women from the country
+around these exhibits, examining them and bestowing friendly comment or
+criticism.
+
+The fair which is held here every year affords a good opportunity for a
+study of the bucolic character. Farm-wagons, full of men, women and
+children, come in from the country early in the morning, and by eleven
+o'clock the halls are crowded with red-faced and dusty sightseers, who
+elbow their way good-humoredly from one attractive exhibit to another,
+and gaze with open eyes and mouth and loud and frequent comment. At noon
+they retire to their wagons or the shade of the buildings to eat their
+dinner, which they have brought from home in a large basket, and there
+is a great flourish of fried chicken legs and wings and a generous
+display of pies, pickles and ginger-bread. The young men and half-grown
+boys have scorned the slow progress of the farm-wagons, and have come
+into town early on horseback. They have looked forward to this occasion
+for months, and perhaps have bought a suit of "store clothes" in honor
+of it. They have already seen the various exhibits, and now that the
+dinner-hour has arrived they seek refreshment--not from the family
+dinner-basket, but from some of the various eating-stands temporarily
+erected on the grounds--and buy pop-beer, roasted peanuts and candy of
+the vendors, who understand the art of extracting money from the rural
+pockets. Then in the afternoon come the races, and, having paid a
+quarter for a seat in the "amphitheatre," they give themselves up to the
+great excitement of the day. The incidents of fair-time will serve as
+food for thought and conversation for weeks afterward. It is the
+legitimate dissipation of the season.
+
+What character shall I choose as a typical Iowan? Not the occupant of
+the large brick house with tall evergreens in front which meets my sight
+whenever I look toward the country. An old woman lives there alone,
+except for a servant or two, having buried her husband and ten children.
+She is worth a hundred thousand dollars, but can neither read nor write.
+Her strong common sense and deep fund of experience supply her lack of
+education, and one would not think while listening to her that she was
+ignorant of letters. Her life has been one of toil and sorrow, but her
+expression is one of brave cheerfulness. She and her husband came to
+this place forty years ago. They were the first white settlers, and for
+neighbors they had Indians and wolves. They entered most of the land on
+which the town now stands, and when other settlers came in and the town
+was laid out their land became valuable, and thus the foundation of
+their fortune was laid. But as riches increased, cares also increased:
+the husband was so weighed down by responsibility and anxiety that his
+mind gave way, and in a fit of despondency he committed suicide. The
+sons and daughters who died, with the exception of two or three, were
+taken away in childhood. So the large mansion, with its richly-furnished
+rooms, is shut up from the sunlight and rarely echoes to the patter of
+childish feet. The mistress lives in the back part, but exercises a care
+over the whole house, which is kept in a state of perfect order and
+neatness. Not a speck of dirt is to be seen on the painted wood-work or
+the window-glass, not a stain mars the floor--long as the deck of a
+ship--of the porch which extends the length of the ell. The plates in
+the corner cupboard in the sitting-room are freshly arranged every day,
+the tins in the kitchen shine till you can see your face in them, and in
+summer the clean flower-beds, bright with pansies, roses, carnations and
+geraniums, that border the long walk leading to the front gate and adorn
+the side yards, attest the care and neatness of the mistress. Though she
+has lived on the prairie for forty years, yet the expressions that savor
+of her early life in a densely-wooded State still cling to her, and if
+you find her in her working-dress among her flowers she will beg you to
+excuse her appearance, adding, "I look as if I was just out of the
+timber."
+
+But this character, though interesting, is not a typical one. Neither is
+that of the pinched, hungry-looking little man whose five acres and
+small dwelling meet my sight when I look toward the country in another
+direction. His patch of ground is devoted to market-gardening, and from
+its slender profits he is trying to support himself and wife and four
+children and pay off a mortgage of several hundred dollars. He has
+lately invented an ingenious toy for children, and is trying to raise
+enough money to get it patented, hoping when that is done to reap large
+profits from the sale of it. He is like a poor trembling little mouse
+caught and held in the paws of a cruel cat. Sometimes Fate relaxes her
+grip on him, and he breathes freer and dares to hope for a larger
+liberty: then she puts her paw on him again, and tosses him and plays
+with him in very wantonness.
+
+Neither are the three old-maid sisters whose house I often pass types of
+Iowa character, but I cannot forbear describing them. Their names are
+Semira, Amanda and Melvina. There is nothing distinctive in their
+personal appearance, but their character, as expressed in their home and
+surroundings, is quite interesting. Their little low house is on a
+corner lot, and as the other three corners are occupied by large
+two-story houses, it seems lower still by contrast. It is unpainted, and
+has a little wooden porch over the front door. The floors are covered
+with homemade carpet, and braided mats are laid before each door and in
+front of the old-fashioned bureau, which has brass rings for handles on
+the drawers. A snow tree made of frayed white cotton or linen cloth
+adorns the table in the best room; woolly dogs with bead eyes and
+cotton-flannel rabbits with pink ears stand on the mantel; a bead
+hanging-basket filled with artificial flowers decorates the window; an
+elaborate air-castle, made of straw and bright worsted, hangs from the
+middle of the low ceiling; and hung against the wall, between two
+glaring woodcuts representing "Lady Caroline" in red and "Highland Mary"
+in blue, is a deep frame filled with worsted flowers, to which a
+butterfly and a bumble-bee have been pinned. Paper lacework depends from
+their kitchen-shelves, and common eggshells, artificially colored,
+decorate the lilac-bushes in the side yard. They are always making new
+mats or piecing quilts in a new pattern.
+
+As soon as the first bluebird warbles they begin to work in their flower
+and vegetable garden, and from then until it is time to cover the
+verbena-beds in the fall I rarely pass without seeing one or more of
+them, with sunbonnet on head and hoe in hand, busy at work. Besides
+keeping their little front yard a mass of gorgeous bloom and their
+vegetable garden free from weed or stone, they raise canary-birds to
+sell and take care of a dozen hives of bees. Last fall I frequently saw
+all three of them in the yard, with a neighbor or two called in for
+conference, and all twittering and chattering like blackbirds in March.
+Finally, the mystery was solved. Going past one day, I saw a carpenter
+deliberately cutting out the whole end of the house, and soon a large
+bay-window made its appearance. When this was completed three rows of
+shelves were put up inside close to the glass, and immediately filled
+with plants in pots and tin cans. What endless occupation and
+entertainment the watering and watching and tending of these must afford
+the sisters during winter!
+
+Neither does another neighbor of mine supply the type I seek--the old
+Quaker farmer, who is discontented and changeable in his disposition,
+having lived in Indiana a while, then in Iowa, then in Indiana again,
+and who is now in Iowa for the second time. He rents some land which
+lies just across the railroad, and in summer, when he is ploughing the
+growing corn, I hear him talking to his horse. He calls her a "contrary
+old jade," and jerks the lines and saws her mouth, and says, "Get over
+in that other row, I tell thee!" Once I heard him mutter to her, when he
+was leading her home after the day's work was done, "I came as near
+killin' thee to-day as ever I did."
+
+I will take for one type a man whom we met last summer in the country.
+We had driven for miles along the country roads in search of a certain
+little glen where the maiden-hair ferns grew waist-high and as broad
+across as the fronds of palms, and having found it and filled our
+spring-wagon with the treasures, we set out to return home by another
+road. We lost our way, but did not regret it, as this mischance made
+known to us the most stately and graceful tree we had ever seen--one
+that was certainly worth half a day's ride to see. The road left the
+treeless uplands, where the sunshine reflected from the bright yellow
+stubble of the newly-cut wheat-fields beat against our faces with a
+steady glare, and dipped into a cool, green, shady hollow where cows
+cropped the rich grass or stood knee-deep in the water of a little
+stream. Well they might stand in quiet contentment: a king might have
+envied them their surroundings. Overhead rose a dozen or more of the
+tallest and finest elms we had ever seen, stretching their thick
+branches till they met and formed a canopy so dense that only a stray
+sunbeam or two pierced through and fell upon the smooth green sward.
+Peerless among them stood an elm of mighty girth and lofty height, its
+widely-stretching branches as large around, where they left the trunk,
+as a common tree, and clothed to the farthest twig with luxuriant
+foliage. And all up and down the mossy trunk and around the branches
+grew young twigs from a few inches to a foot or two in length, half
+hiding the shaggy bark with their tender green leaves. It was a
+combination of tree-majesty and grace that is rarely seen. In a tropical
+forest I have beheld a lofty tree covered thickly all over its trunk and
+branches with ferns and parasitic plants, but the sight, though
+beautiful, was suggestive of morbid, unnatural growth. This royal elm
+out of its own sap had clothed its trunk as with a thickly-twining vine.
+When, after gazing our fill, we drove reluctantly out of the shady green
+hollow into the sunshine, and began to climb a hill, we saw at the top a
+small house surrounded by fruit trees and shaded in front by a
+grape-arbor. On reaching it we stopped to ask our way of a man who sat
+in his shirt-sleeves near the front door, fanning himself with his straw
+hat. He seemed frank and inclined to talk, and asked us to stop and rest
+a while in the shade. We did so, and his wife brought us some fresh
+buttermilk to drink, the children gathering about to look at us as if
+our advent was the incident of the month. In conversation we learned
+that he was the owner of forty acres, which he devoted largely to the
+cultivation of small fruits. The land was paid for, with the exception
+of a mortgage of three hundred dollars, which he hoped to lift in a
+season or two if the yield was good.
+
+"We're doing well now," he said, "but when we started, eight years ago,
+it was truly discouraging. There was no house on the place when we came
+here. We put up the room we now use as a kitchen, and lived in it for
+two years and a half. It was so small that it only held a bed, a table,
+a cook-stove and two or three chairs, and when the table was drawn out
+for meals my wife had to set the rocking-chair on the bed, because there
+wasn't room for it on the floor. She helped me on the farm the first
+year or two. We moved here late in the spring, and I only had time to
+get the sod broken before corn-planting time. My wife had a lame foot
+that spring, but I made her a sort of crutch-stilt, and with this she
+walked over the ground as I ploughed it, making holes in the earth by
+means of it and dropping in the corn. She also rode the reaper when our
+wheat was ripe the next year, and I followed, binding and stacking. She
+has helped me in many other ways on the farm, for she is as ambitious as
+I am to have a place free from debt which we can call our own. We added
+these two other rooms in the third year, and when we are out of debt and
+have money ahead we shall put up another addition: we shall need it as
+the children grow up. I have a nice lot of small fruit--strawberries,
+raspberries, currants, gooseberries--and besides these I sell every
+spring a great many early vegetables. The small fruits pay me more to
+the acre than anything else I could raise. There is a good market for
+them in the neighboring towns, and I seldom have to hire any help. My
+children do most of the picking."
+
+It is only a bit of personal history, to be sure, but it affords an
+insight into the life of one who, like many others in this State, began
+with only his bare hands and habits of industry and economy for capital.
+
+Another typical illustration is supplied by a man whose home we visited
+in the winter. His comfortable farm-house was overflowing with the good
+things of life: a piano and an organ stood in the parlor, and a
+well-filled bookcase in the sitting-room; a large bay-window was bright
+with flowering plants; and base-burner coal-stoves and double-paned
+windows mocked at the efforts of the wintry winds and kept perpetual
+summer within. In the large barn were farm-wagons, a carriage, a buggy,
+a sleigh--a vehicle for every purpose. The farmer invited us one morning
+to step into a large sled which stood at the door, and took us half a
+mile to his stock-yards. There we saw fat, sleek cattle by the dozen and
+fat hogs by the score, great cribs bursting with corn, a windmill pump
+and other conveniences for watering stock. Besides all these possessions
+this man owns two or three other good farms, and has money loaned on
+mortgages; in short, is worth about fifty thousand dollars, every cent
+of which he has gained by his own exertions in the last twenty years. He
+said: "When my father died and his estate was divided among his
+children, each of us received eighty-three dollars as his share. I
+resolved then that if thrift and energy could avail anything I would
+have more than that to leave to each of my children when I died. It has
+required constant hard work and shrewd planning, but I have gained my
+stake, and am not a very old man yet," passing his hand over his hair,
+which was thinly sprinkled with gray.
+
+This man gave us a description of a tornado which passed over that
+portion of the State a number of years ago. It was shortly after he was
+married and while he was staying at his father-in-law's house. The whole
+family were away from home that day, and when they returned they found
+only the cellar. The house had been lifted from its foundation, and
+carried so far on the mighty wings of the hurricane that nothing
+pertaining to it was ever found except the rolling-pin and a few boards
+of the yellow-painted kitchen-floor. Of a new farm-wagon nothing
+remained but one tire, and that was flattened out straight. The trees
+that stood in the yard had been broken off at the surface of the ground.
+The grass lay stretched in the direction of the hurricane as if a flood
+of water had passed over it. Horses, cattle and human beings had been
+lifted and carried several rods through the air, then cast violently to
+earth again. Those who witnessed the course of the tornado said that it
+seemed to strike the ground, then go up in the air, passing harmlessly
+over a mile or two of country, then strike again, all the time whirling
+over and over, and occasionally casting out fragments of the spoils it
+had gathered up. After passing east to a point beyond the Mississippi it
+disappeared.
+
+This part of Iowa has rich deposits of coal, and mining is a regular and
+important business. The coal-mines lying a few miles south of this place
+are the largest west of the Mississippi River. A thriving little town
+has grown up around them, composed chiefly of miners' cottages, stores
+and superintendents' dwellings. A creek winds through it whose banks are
+shaded by elms and carpeted in spring and early summer with
+prairie-flowers; and a range of wooded hills in whose depths the richest
+coal-deposits lie lends a picturesque aspect to the scene, and partly
+compensates for the dreary look of the town itself, the comfortless
+appearance of many of the miners' houses and the great heaps of slag and
+refuse coal at the mouth of the mines. Mules hitched to little cars
+serve to draw the coal out of several of the mines, but the largest one
+is provided with an engine, which, by means of an endless rope of
+twisted wire, pulls long trains of loaded cars out of the depths of the
+mine and up to a high platform above the railroad, whence the coal is
+pitched into the waiting cars beneath. Sixty-five railroad cars are
+sometimes loaded in one day from this single mine. The coal is soft
+coal, and is sold by retail at from six to seven cents a bushel.
+
+One April day, when the woods were white and pink with the bloom of the
+wild plum and crab trees and the ground was blue with violets, we rode
+over to this place, and, hitching our horses to some trees growing over
+the principal mine, we descended to the entrance. A miner, an
+intelligent middle-aged man who was off work just then, volunteered to
+be our guide, and after providing each of us with a little oil lamp like
+the one he wore in his hat-brim, he led us into the dark opening that
+yawned in the hillside. The passage was six or seven feet wide, and so
+low that we could not stand erect. Under our feet was the narrow track,
+the space between the ties being slippery with mud: over our heads and
+on either hand were walls of rock, with a thick vein of coal running
+through them, braced every few feet with heavy timbers. The track began
+to descend, and soon we lost sight of the daylight and had to depend
+entirely on the feeble glimmer of our lamps. We occasionally came to
+smooth-plastered spaces in the walls, the closed-up mouths of old
+side-tunnels, and placing our hands upon them felt that they were warm.
+Fires were raging in the abandoned galleries, but, being shut away from
+the air and from access to the main tunnel, they were not dangerous. The
+dangers usually dreaded by the miners are the falling of heavy masses of
+earth and rock from the roof of the gallery and the sudden flow of water
+into the mine from some of the secret sources in the hillside. After
+penetrating about a quarter of a mile into the mine and descending one
+hundred and twenty feet, we reached the end of the main tunnel and saw
+the great wheel, fixed in the solid rock, on which the endless steel
+rope turned. A train of loaded cars had passed out just before we
+entered the mine, and on a switch near the end of the track stood
+another train of empty cars. The air thus far on our dark journey had
+been cool and good, for the main tunnel was ventilated by means of
+air-shafts that pierced the hillside to the daylight above; but now our
+guide opened the door of what seemed a subterranean dungeon, closed it
+behind us when we had passed through, lifted a heavy curtain that hung
+before us, and ushered us into a branch-tunnel where the air was hot and
+stifling and heavy with the fumes of powder. At the farther end we saw
+tiny specks of light moving about. As we neared them we found that they
+were lamps fastened in the hat-bands of the miners at work in this
+distant tunnel--literally, "the bowels of the earth." Some were using
+picks and shovels, others were drilling holes in the solid coal and
+putting in blasts of gunpowder. When these blasts were fired a
+subterranean thunder shook the place: it seemed as if the hill were
+falling in upon us. Little cars stood upon the track partly filled with
+coal, and mules were hitched to them. The forms of these animals loomed
+large and dark in the dim light: they seemed like some monsters of a
+previous geologic age. The men themselves, blackened with coal and grimy
+with powder-smoke, might have seemed like gnomes or trolls had we not
+seen their homes in the plain, familiar sunlight above, and known that
+they were working for daily bread for themselves and families. They are
+paid according to the amount of coal they dig. Some have earned as high
+as one hundred and thirty dollars a month, but half that sum would be
+nearer the average.
+
+As we left this shaft and came back into the main tunnel we saw a miner
+sitting by the track with his small tin bucket open. It was noon and he
+was eating his dinner. It might just as well have been midnight, so
+dense was the darkness. We seemed to have been an uncomputable time in
+the depths, yet, glancing at the bunch of wild flowers in my belt, I saw
+that they were only beginning to wilt. Did poor Proserpine have the same
+feeling when she was ravished from the sunshine and the green and
+flowery earth and carried into the dark underground kingdom of Pluto?
+Remembering her fate, I whispered to my companion, "We will not eat
+anything while here--no, not so much as one pomegranate-seed."
+
+There are many smaller coal-mines in this vicinity--hardly a hillside
+but has a dark doorway leading into it--but they are not all worked
+regularly or by more than a few hands.
+
+On the road leading from town to the Skunk River one has glimpses of
+another industry. Limekilns, with uncouth signs announcing lime for sale
+at twenty-five cents a bushel, thrust themselves almost into the road,
+and the cabins or neatly-whitewashed board huts of the lime-burners
+border the way. Some have grass-plots and mounds of flowers around them:
+others are without ornament, if we except the children with blue eyes,
+red cheeks and hair like corn-silk that hang on the fence and watch us
+ride by.
+
+Skunk River is a broad, still stream, with hilly banks heavily wooded
+with willow, oak, maple, sycamore and bass-wood. Here we find the
+earliest wild flowers in spring: blue and purple hepaticas blossom among
+the withered leaves on the ground while the branches above are still
+bare, and a little later crowds of violets and spring-beauties brighten
+the tender grass; clusters of diacentra--or "Dutchman's breeches," as
+the children call them--nod from the shelter of decaying stumps to small
+yellow lilies with spotted leaves and tufts of fresh green ferns.
+
+The place is equally a favorite bird-haunt. The prairie-chicken, the
+best-known game-bird of the State, chooses rather the open prairie, but
+wild-ducks settle and feed here in their migratory journeys, attracting
+the sportsman by their presence; the fish-hawk makes his nest in the
+trees on the bank; the small blue heron wades pensively along the
+margin; and the common wood-birds, such as blackbirds, bluebirds, jays,
+sparrows and woodpeckers, chatter or warble or scold among the branches.
+Sometimes the redbird flashes like a living flame through the green
+tree-tops, or the brilliant orange-and-black plumage of the Baltimore
+oriole contrasts with the lilac-gray bark of an old tree-trunk.
+
+Besides the small wild flowers there are many shrubs and trees that
+bloom in spring. The haw tree and wild plum put forth masses of small
+creamy-white flowers, the redbud tree blooms along the water-courses,
+the dogwood in the woods and the wild crab-apple upon the open hillside.
+The crab trees often form dense thickets an acre or two in extent, and
+when all their branches are thickly set with coral buds or deep-pink
+blossoms they form a picture upon which the eye delights to rest. Spring
+redeems even the flat prairie from the blank monotony which wearies the
+eye in winter. There are few places in this vicinity where the virgin
+sod has not been broken, consequently few spots where the original,
+much-praised prairie-flowers grow; but a tender green clothes all the
+plain, hundreds of meadow-larks sing in the grass, the tints and colors
+of the sky are lovely beyond words, and the balmy winds breathe airs of
+Paradise.
+
+Even the town, whose ugliness has offended artistic taste and one's love
+of neatness all winter, clothes itself in foliage and hides its
+ungraceful outlines in bowery verdure. Lilacs scent the air, roses crowd
+through the broken fences, the milky floss of the cottonwood trees is
+strewed upon the sidewalks or floats like thistledown upon the air. To
+one sensitive to physical surroundings the change is like that from a
+sullen face to a smiling one, from a forbidding aspect to a cheerful
+one. The constant bracing of one's self against the influence of one's
+surroundings is relaxed: a feeling of relief and contentment comes
+instead. Our thirst for picturesque beauty may not be satisfied, but we
+accept with thankful hearts the quiet loveliness of spring. In this, as
+in deeper experiences, we learn that
+
+    At best we gain not happiness,
+    But peace, friends--peace in the strife.
+
+LOUISE COFFIN JONES.
+
+
+
+
+A FORGOTTEN AMERICAN WORTHY
+
+
+The pleasant agricultural village of Reading, in Fairfield county,
+Western Connecticut, presents much that is charming and picturesque in
+scenery, and is withal replete with historic incidents; but its chief
+claim to interest rests on the fact that it was the birthplace of Joel
+Barlow, who has decided claims to the distinction of being the father of
+American letters. Nearly seventy years have passed since the poet's
+tragic death, and the story of his life is still untold, while his
+memory has nearly faded from the minds of the living; nor would it be
+easy, at this late day, to collect sufficient material for an extended
+biography if such were demanded. Some pleasant traditions still linger
+in the sleepy atmosphere of his native village; a few of his letters and
+papers still remain in his family; contemporary newspapers had much to
+say both for and against him; the reviewers of his day noticed his
+poems, sometimes with approbation, sometimes with bitterness. There are
+fragmentary sketches of him in encyclopædias and biographical
+dictionaries, and several pigeonholes in the State Department are filled
+with musty documents written by him when abroad in his country's
+diplomatic service. From these sources alone is the scholar of our times
+to glean his knowledge of one who in his day filled as large a space in
+the public eye as almost any of his contemporaries, and whose talents,
+virtues and public services entitled him to as lasting a fame as theirs.
+
+Not from any of these sources, but from the Barlow family register in
+the ancient records of Fairfield, we learn that the poet was born on
+March 24, 1754, and not in 1755, as is almost universally stated by the
+encyclopædists. His father was Samuel Barlow, a wealthy farmer of the
+village--his mother, Elizabeth Hull, a connection of the general and
+commodore of the same name who figured so prominently in the war of
+1812. There is little in the early career of the poet of interest to the
+modern reader. He is first presented to us in the village traditions as
+a chubby, rosy-faced boy, intent on mastering the Greek and Latin tasks
+dealt out to him by Parson Bartlett, the Congregational minister of the
+village, who, like many of the New England clergy of that day, added the
+duties of schoolmaster to those of the clergyman. In a year or two he
+was placed at Moor's school for boys in Hanover, New Hampshire, and on
+completing his preparatory course he entered Dartmouth College in 1774.
+His father had died the December previous, and, with the view probably
+of being nearer his mother and family in Reading, he left Dartmouth in
+his Freshman year and was entered at Yale.
+
+Barlow's college career was marked by close application to study, and
+won for him the respect and confidence of all with whom he came in
+contact. During his second year the war of the Revolution broke out, but
+the young poet, though an ardent patriot, clung to his books, resolutely
+closing his ears to the clamor of war that invaded his sacred cloisters
+until the long summer vacation arrived. Then he threw aside books and
+gown and joined his four brothers in the Continental ranks, where he did
+yeoman's service for his country. He graduated in 1778, and signalized
+the occasion by reciting an original poem called the "Prospect of
+Peace," which, in the quaint language of one of his contemporaries,
+gained him "a very pretty reputation as a poet."
+
+The next year found him a chaplain in the Continental army, in the same
+brigade with his friend Dwight, later renowned as the poet-president of
+Yale College, and with Colonel Humphreys, whom we shall find associated
+with him in a far different mission. The two young chaplains, not
+content with the performance of their clerical duties, wrote in
+connection with Humphreys stirring patriotic lyrics that were set to
+music and sung by the soldiers around the camp-fires and on the weary
+march, and aided largely in allaying discontent and in inducing them to
+bear their hardships patiently.
+
+For four years, or until the peace of 1783, Barlow continued to serve
+his country in the army: he left the service as poor as when he entered
+it, and a second time the question of a vocation in life presented
+itself. He at length chose the law, but before being admitted to
+practice performed an act which, however foolish it may have seemed to
+the worldly wise, proved to be one of the most fortunate events of his
+life. Although poor and possessing none of the qualities of the
+successful bread-winner, he united his fortunes with those of an amiable
+and charming young lady--Miss Ruth Baldwin of New Haven, daughter of
+Michael Baldwin, Esq., and sister of Hon. Abraham C. Baldwin, whom the
+student will remember as a Senator of note from Georgia. After marriage
+the young husband settled in Hartford, first in the study, and later in
+the practice, of the law. In Hartford we find him assuming the duties of
+lawyer, journalist and bookseller, and in all proving the truth of the
+fact often noted, that the possession of literary talent generally
+unfits one for the rough, every-day work of the world. As a lawyer
+Barlow lacked the smoothness and suavity of the practised advocate,
+while the petty details and trickeries of the profession disgusted him.
+As an editor he made his journal, the _American Mercury_, notable for
+the high literary and moral excellence of its articles, but it was not
+successful financially, simply because it lacked a constituency
+sufficiently cultured to appreciate and sustain it. His bookstore, which
+stood on the quiet, elm-shaded main street of the then provincial
+village, was opened to dispose of his psalm-book and poems, and was
+closed when this was accomplished.
+
+As a poet, however, he was more successful, and it was here that the
+assurance of literary ability, so dear to the heart of the neophyte,
+first came to him. Dr. Watts's "imitation" of the Psalms, incomplete and
+inappropriate in many respects, was then the only version within reach
+of the Puritan churches, and in 1785 the Congregational Association of
+Connecticut applied to the poet for a revised edition of the work.
+Barlow readily complied, and published his revision the same year,
+adding to it several psalms which Dr. Watts had omitted. This work was
+received with marked favor by the Congregational churches, and was used
+by them exclusively until rumors of the author's lapse from orthodoxy
+reached them, when it was superseded by a version prepared by Dr.
+Dwight.
+
+Two years after, in 1787, Barlow published his _Vision of Columbus_, a
+poem conceived while in the army and largely written during the poet's
+summer vacations at Reading. It was received with unbounded favor by his
+patriotic countrymen, and after passing through several editions at
+home was republished both in London and Paris, and made its author the
+best known American in the literary circles of his day. There was in
+Hartford at this time a coterie of literary spirits whose sprightliness
+and bonhomie had gained for them the sobriquet of the "Hartford Wits."
+Dr. Lemuel Hopkins was doubtless the chief factor in the organization of
+this club: Barlow, John Trumbull, Colonel Humphreys, Richard Alsop and
+Theodore Dwight--all of whom had gained literary distinction--were its
+chief members. The principal publications of the club were the
+_Anarchiad_, a satirical poem, and the _Echo_, which consisted of a
+series of papers in verse lampooning the social and political follies of
+the day. To both of these, it is said, Barlow was a prominent
+contributor. He was also a prominent figure in the organization, about
+this time, of the Connecticut Cincinnati, a society formed by
+Revolutionary officers for urging upon Congress their claims for
+services rendered in the Revolution.
+
+In these varied pursuits and amid such pleasant associations three years
+passed away, but during all this time the grim spectre of Want had
+menaced the poet--first at a distance, but with each succeeding month
+approaching nearer and nearer, until now, in 1788, it stared him in the
+face. His patrimony had been nearly exhausted in his education; his
+law-business was unremunerative; his paper, as we have said, was not a
+success financially; and his poetry brought him much more honor than
+cash. And thus it happened that at the age of thirty-four he found
+himself without money or employment. At this trying juncture there came
+from the West--fruitful parent of such schemes!--the prospectus of the
+Scioto Land Company, furnished with glaring head-lines and seductive
+phrases, and parading in its list of stockholders scores of the
+best-known names in the community. This company claimed to have become
+the fortunate possessor of unnumbered acres in the valley of the Scioto,
+and was anxious to share its good fortune--for a consideration--with
+Eastern and European capitalists. It was desirous of securing an agent
+to negotiate its sales in Europe, and, quite naturally, its choice fell
+on Joel Barlow, the only American having a reputation abroad who was at
+liberty to undertake the mission; and, since the company bore a good
+repute and offered fair remuneration, the poet very gladly embraced its
+offer. He does not seem to have met with much success in England, but in
+France his reception was much more encouraging. An estate in the New
+World was a veritable _château en Espagne_ to the mercurial Frenchmen,
+and they purchased with some avidity; but just as the agent's ground was
+prepared for a plenteous harvest news came that the Scioto Company had
+burst, as bubbles will, leaving to its dupes only a number of
+well-executed maps, some worthless parchments called deeds, and that
+valuable experience which comes with a knowledge of the ways of the
+world. Barlow, being the company's principal agent abroad, came in for
+his full share of the abuse excited by its operations; and yet it is
+evident that he was as innocent of its real character as any one, and
+that he had accepted the position of agent with full confidence in the
+company's integrity. Its collapse left him as poor as ever, and a
+stranger in a strange land, notwithstanding he was surrounded here by
+conditions that assured him the generous and honorable career which had
+been denied him in the New World.
+
+Of the foreigners who then thronged cosmopolitan Paris, none were so
+popular as Americans. Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane, by their
+courtesy and dignity, joined to republican simplicity, had provided
+passports for their countrymen to the good graces of all Frenchmen:
+besides, the name "republican" was a word of magic import in France at
+that time. Barlow's reputation as a poet was also of great service to
+him at a time when literature exercised a commanding influence both in
+society and politics. He was presented at court, admitted to the
+companionship of wits and savants, and was enabled, by the favor of some
+financial magnates, to participate in speculations which proved so
+successful that in a short time he was raised above the pressure of
+want. But in less than a year after his arrival the Revolution broke
+out, and involved him in its horrors. His sympathies were entirely with
+the Girondists--the party of the literati, and the most patriotic and
+enlightened of the rival factions. He is said to have entered heartily
+into the advocacy of their cause, writing pamphlets and addresses in
+their interest and contributing frequently to their journals: he is also
+said to have figured prominently at the meetings of the Girondist
+leaders held in the salon of Madame Roland. The atrocities of the
+Jacobins, however, so shocked and disgusted him that he shortly withdrew
+and went into retirement outside of the city. The greater part of the
+years 1791-92 he spent in England, with occasional visits to France.
+During one of these visits the privileges of French citizenship were
+conferred on him--an honor that had been previously conferred on but two
+Americans, Washington and Hamilton.
+
+In 1795 a crisis in his fortunes occurred, and from this date the story
+of his life becomes an interesting and important one. He had been for
+some months on a business-tour through the northern provinces, and,
+returning to Paris early in September, was surprised at receiving a
+visit from his old friend Colonel David Humphreys, who had been American
+minister to Portugal for some years, and was now in Paris on a political
+mission. He was accompanied on this visit by James Monroe, then American
+minister at the French court. They bore a commission from President
+Washington naming Barlow consul at Algiers, and their object was to
+induce him to accept the appointment. The post was one of extreme
+difficulty and danger, and had Barlow consulted his own wishes and
+interests he would undoubtedly have declined it. But by appeals to his
+philanthropy, and by representations that from his knowledge of courts
+and experience of the world he was well fitted for the performance of
+the duties assigned to him, he was at length induced to accept the
+commission. Preparations were at once made for the journey. His
+business-affairs were arranged and his will made: then, bidding his wife
+farewell, he set out with Humphreys on the 12th of September, 1795, for
+Lisbon, _en route_ for the Barbary coast.
+
+At the time of Barlow's mission Algiers was at the height of its power
+and arrogance. Great Britain, France, Spain, Holland, Denmark, Sweden
+and Venice were tributaries of this barbarous state, which waged
+successful war with Russia, Austria, Portugal, Naples, Sardinia, Genoa
+and Malta. Its first depredation on American commerce was committed on
+the 25th of July, 1785, when the schooner Maria, Stevens master, owned
+in Boston, was seized off Cape St. Vincent by a corsair and carried into
+Algiers. Five days later the ship Dauphin of Philadelphia, Captain
+O'Brien, was taken and carried into the same port. Other captures
+quickly followed, so that at the time of Barlow's mission there were one
+hundred and twenty American citizens in the Algerine prisons, exclusive
+of some forty that had been liberated by death or ransomed through the
+private exertions of their friends.
+
+The course pursued by Congress for the liberation of these captives
+cannot be viewed with complacency even at this late day. After some
+hesitation it decided to ransom the prisoners, and proceeded to
+negotiate--first, through Mr. John Lamb, its agent at Algiers, and
+secondly through the general of the Mathurins, a religious order of
+France instituted in early times for the redemption of Christian
+captives from the infidel powers. These negotiations extended through a
+period of six years, and accomplished nothing, from the fact that the
+dey invariably demanded double the sum which Congress thought it could
+afford to pay. In June, 1792, with the hope of negotiating a treaty and
+rescuing the captives, the celebrated John Paul Jones was appointed
+consul to Algiers, but died before reaching the scene of his mission.
+His successor, Mr. Thomas Barclay, died at Lisbon January 19, 1793,
+while on his way to Algiers. The conduct of Barbary affairs was next
+confided to Colonel Humphreys, our minister to Portugal, with power to
+name an agent who should act under him, and Mr. Pierre E. Skjoldebrand,
+a brother of the Swedish consul, was appointed under this arrangement;
+but the latter gentleman seems to have been no more successful than his
+predecessors. Late in 1794, Humphreys returned to America, and while
+here it was arranged that Joseph Donaldson should accompany him on his
+return as agent for Tunis and Tripoli, while Barlow, it was hoped, could
+be induced to accept the mission to Algiers and the general oversight of
+Barbary affairs.
+
+The two diplomats left America early in April, 1795, and proceeded to
+Gibraltar, where they separated, Donaldson continuing his journey to
+Algiers _viâ_ Alicant, and Humphreys hastening on to Paris in search of
+Barlow, as has been narrated. Colonel Humphreys and Mr. Barlow did not
+reach Lisbon until the 17th of November, and when the latter was about
+prosecuting his journey he was surprised by a visit from Captain
+O'Brien, who had been despatched by Mr. Donaldson with a newly-signed
+treaty with Algiers. Mr. Donaldson, it was learned, had reached Algiers
+on the 3d of September, and finding the dey in a genial mood had
+forthwith concluded a treaty with him, considering that he had
+sufficient authority for this under the general instructions of Colonel
+Humphreys. It was found that some of the conditions of the treaty could
+not be fulfilled, particularly one stipulating that the first payment of
+nearly eight hundred thousand dollars should be made by the 5th of
+January, 1796; and Barlow therefore hastened forward to Algiers to
+explain the matter to the dey and make such attempts at pacification as
+were practicable, while Captain O'Brien was sent to London in the brig
+Sophia for the money. Of his life in Algiers, and of the subsequent fate
+of the treaty, some particulars are given in a letter from Barlow to
+Humphreys, dated at Algiers April 5, 1796, and also in a letter to Mrs.
+Barlow written about the same time. The letter to Humphreys is as
+follows:
+
+"SIR: We have now what we hope will be more agreeable news to you. For
+two days past we have been witnesses to a scene of as complete and
+poignant distress as can be imagined, arising from the total state of
+despair in which our captives found themselves involved, and we without
+the power of administering the least comfort or hope. The threat of
+sending us away had been reiterated with every mark of a fixed and final
+decision, and the dey went so far as to declare that after the thirty
+days, if the money did not come, he never would be at peace with the
+Americans. Bacri the Jew, who has as much art in this sort of management
+as any man we ever knew, who has more influence with the dey than all
+the regency put together, and who alone has been able to soothe his
+impatience on this subject for three months past, now seemed unable to
+make the least impression, and the dey finally forbade him, under pain
+of his highest displeasure, to speak to him any more about the
+Americans. His cruisers are now out, and for some days past he has been
+occupied with his new war against the Danes. Three days ago the Danish
+prizes began to come in, and it was thought that this circumstance might
+put him in good-humor, so that the Jew might find a chance of renewing
+our subject in some shape or other; and we instructed the Jew that if he
+could engage him in conversation on his cruisers and prizes he might
+offer him a new American-built ship of twenty guns which should sail
+very fast, to be presented to his daughter, on condition that he would
+wait six months longer for our money. The Jew observed that we had
+better say a ship of twenty-four guns, to which we agreed. After seeing
+him three or four times yesterday under pretence of other business,
+without being able to touch upon this, he went this morning and
+succeeded.
+
+"The novelty of the proposition gained the dey's attention for a moment,
+and he consented to see us on the subject; but he told the Jew to tell
+us that it must be a ship of thirty-six guns or he would not listen to
+the proposition. We were convinced that we ought not to hesitate an
+instant. We accordingly went and assented to his demand, and he has
+agreed to let everything remain as it is for the term of three months
+from this day, but desired us to remember that not a single day beyond
+that will be allowed on any account.
+
+"We consider the business as now settled on this footing, and it is the
+best ground that we could possibly place it upon. You still have it in
+your power to say peace or no peace: you have an alternative. In the
+other case war was inevitable, and there would have been no hope of
+peace during the reign of this dey....
+
+"In order to save the treaty, which has been the subject of infinite
+anxiety and vexation, we found it necessary some time ago to make an
+offer to the Jew of ten thousand sequins (eighteen thousand dollars), to
+be paid eventually if he succeeded, and to be distributed by him among
+such great officers of state as he thought necessary, and as much of it
+to be kept for himself as he could keep consistent with success. The
+whole of this new arrangement will cost the United States about
+fifty-three thousand dollars. We expect to incur blame, because it is
+impossible to give you a complete view of the circumstances, but we are
+perfectly confident of having acted right."
+
+A few weeks later the long-expected ransom arrived: the prison-doors
+were thrown open, and the captives came out into the sunlight. How
+pitifully the poet-diplomatist received them, how tenderly he cared for
+their wants, and how he exerted himself to secure for them a speedy
+passage to their native land, may be inferred from the character of the
+man. Having now accomplished the object of his mission, it was to be
+expected that he would be free to give up his unpleasant post and return
+to France. But in the adjacent states of Tunis and Tripoli there were
+other prisons in which American citizens were confined, and until they
+were liberated he does not seem to have considered his mission as fully
+performed. Six months or more were spent in effecting this object, and
+when it was accomplished he very gladly delivered up his credentials to
+the government and returned to his home and friends in France.
+
+The succeeding eight years were spent in congenial pursuits, chiefly of
+a literary and philanthropic character. He purchased the large hôtel of
+the count Clermont Tonnere, near Paris, which he transformed into an
+elegant villa: here he lived during his residence in France, dispensing
+a broad hospitality and enjoying the friendship of the leading minds of
+the Empire, as well as the companionship of all Americans of note who
+visited the capital. But at length, in 1805, after seventeen years of
+absence, the home-longing which sooner or later comes to every exile
+seized upon him, and, yielding to its influence, he disposed of his
+estates in France and with his faithful wife embarked for America.
+
+Great changes had occurred in his native land during these seventeen
+years. Washington was gone, and with him the power and prestige of
+Federalism; Jefferson and Burr had led the Republican hosts to victory;
+Presbyterianism as a political force was dead; and everywhere in society
+the old order was giving place to the new. This was more markedly the
+case in New England, where the Puritan crust was being broken and
+pulverized by the gradual upheaval of the Republican strata. Withal, it
+was an era of intense political feeling and of partisan bitterness
+without a parallel.
+
+This will explain, perhaps, the varying manner in which Barlow was
+received by the different parties among his countrymen. The Republicans
+greeted him with acclamation as the honored citizen of two republics,
+the man who had perilled life and health in rescuing his countrymen from
+slavery. The Federalists, on the other hand, united in traducing him--an
+assertion which may be gainsaid, but which can be abundantly proved by
+reference to the Federal newspapers and magazines of the day. In
+evidence, and as a curious instance of the political bitterness of the
+times, I will adduce the following article from the _Boston Repertory_,
+printed in the August after the poet's return:
+
+     "JEFFERSON, BARLOW AND PAINE.
+
+     "In our last paper was announced, and that with extreme
+     regret, the return of Joel Barlow, Esq., to this country.
+     This man, the strong friend of Mr. Jefferson and
+     confidential companion of his late warm defender, Tom Paine,
+     is one of the most barefaced infidels that ever appeared in
+     Christendom. Some facts respecting these distinguished
+     personages may serve to show the votaries of Christianity
+     what a band of open enemies (to the faith) is now assembling
+     in this country.
+
+     "Mr. Jefferson, in his famous _Notes on Virginia_, advances
+     opinions incompatible with Mosaic history. This cannot be
+     disputed, nor will Mr. Jefferson dare to deny that he has,
+     since he has been President of the United States, publicly
+     made the Eucharist a subject of impious ridicule. Tom Paine
+     has written two books for the express purpose of combating
+     the Holy Scriptures. His _Age of Reason_ is but too common,
+     and his letter to the late Samuel Adams still evinces his
+     perverse adherence to his infidel system.
+
+     "Joel Barlow is said to have written the following shocking
+     letter to his correspondent, John Fellows, dated Hamburg,
+     May 23, 1805: 'I rejoice at the progress of good sense over
+     the _damnable imposture_ of _Christian mummery_. I had no
+     doubt of the effect of Paine's _Age of Reason_: it may be
+     cavilled at a while, but it must prevail. Though things as
+     good have been often said, they were never said in so good a
+     way,' etc. Mr. Barlow can now answer for himself: if this
+     letter be a forgery, let him inform the public. It has never
+     yet been contradicted, though it has been four years
+     published in America."
+
+From which we gather that in the political code of that day the grossest
+calumnies if uncontradicted were to be accepted as truth. There is not
+the slightest evidence, however, in his writings or public utterances
+that the poet ever renounced the faith of his fathers, although it is
+not probable that he was a very strict Presbyterian at this time.
+
+Barlow seems not to have returned with any hopes of political
+preferment: at least he made no attempt to enter the field of politics,
+but after spending several months in travel took up his residence in
+Washington and devoted himself to philosophical studies and the
+cultivation of the Muses. He had purchased a beautiful site on the banks
+of the Potomac within the city limits, and here he erected a mansion
+whose beauty and elegance made it famous throughout the country. This
+mansion he called Kalorama, and the wealth and correct taste of its
+owner were lavishly employed in its adornment. Broad green lawns, shaded
+by forest trees, surrounded the house, fountains sparkled and gleamed
+amid the shrubberies, and gay parterres of flowers added their beauty to
+the scene. Within, French carpets, mirrors, statuary, pictures and
+bric-à-brac betokened the foreign tastes of the owner. In the library
+was gathered the most extensive private collection of foreign books
+which the country then contained. Kalorama was the Holland House of
+America, where were to be met all the notables of the land, political,
+literary or philanthropic. The President, heads of departments,
+Congressmen, foreign ambassadors, poets, authors, reformers, inventors,
+were all to be seen there. Robert Fulton, the father of
+steam-navigation, was the poet's firm friend, and received substantial
+aid from him in his enterprise. Jefferson, throwing off the cares of
+state, often paid him informal visits, and the two sages had a pet plan
+which was generally the subject of conversation on these occasions. This
+was the scheme of a national university, to be modelled after the
+Institute of France, and to combine a university, a learned society, a
+naval and military school and an academy of fine arts. The movement had
+been originated by Washington, and Jefferson and Barlow, with many other
+leading men of the day, were its warm friends and promoters. In 1806,
+Barlow, at Jefferson's suggestion, drew up a prospectus, which was
+printed and circulated throughout the country. So great a public
+sentiment in favor of the scheme was developed that a bill for its
+endowment was shortly after introduced in Congress; but New England
+exerted her influence against it in favor of Yale and Harvard so
+successfully that it was defeated.
+
+The chief literary work which occupied the poet in this classic retreat
+was _The Columbiad_, which appeared in 1808. He also busied himself with
+collecting materials for a general history of the United States--a work
+which, if he had been permitted to finish it, would have proved no doubt
+a valuable contribution to this department of literature. But in the
+midst of this scholarly retirement he was surprised at receiving a note
+from Mr. Monroe, then Secretary of State, offering him the position of
+minister to France, and urging his acceptance of it in the strongest
+terms.
+
+Our relations with France were then (1811) in a very critical state,
+owing to the latter's repeated attacks on American commerce, and it was
+of vital moment to the government that a man so universally respected by
+the French people, and so familiar with the French court and its circle
+of wily diplomats, as was Barlow, should have charge of American
+interests in that quarter. A man less unselfish, less patriotic, would
+have refused the burden of such a position, especially one so foreign to
+his tastes and desires; but the poet in this case, as in 1795, seems not
+to have hesitated an instant at the call of his country. Kalorama was
+closed--not sold, for its owner hoped that his absence would not be of
+long duration--preparations for the journey were speedily made, and
+early in August, 1811, Barlow, accompanied by his faithful wife, was set
+down at the port of Annapolis, where the famous frigate Constitution,
+Captain Hull, had been lying for some time in readiness to receive him.
+In Annapolis the poet was received with distinguished honor: at his
+embarkation crowds thronged the quay, and a number of distinguished
+citizens were gathered at the gang-plank to bid him God-speed on his
+journey. Captain Hull received his guest with the honor due his
+station: then the Constitution spread her sails, and, gay with bunting
+and responding heartily to the salutes from the forts on shore, swept
+gallantly down the bay and out to sea. The beautiful city, gleaming amid
+the foliage of its stately forest trees, and the low level shores, green
+with orchards and growing corn, were the last objects that the poet
+beheld ere the outlines of his native land sank beneath the waters.
+Happily, he could not foresee the untimely death in waiting for him not
+eighteen months distant, nor the lonely sepulchre in the Polish waste,
+nor the still more bitter fact that ere two generations should pass an
+ungrateful country would entirely forget his services and martyrdom.
+
+Barlow's correspondence with Mr. Monroe and the duke de Bassano while
+abroad on this mission forms an interesting and hitherto unpublished
+chapter in our history. It has rested undisturbed in the pigeonholes of
+the State Department for nearly a century, and if published in
+connection with a brief memoir of the poet would prove a valuable
+addition to our annals. The first of the series is Mr. Monroe's letter
+of instruction to the newly-appointed minister, defining the objects of
+his mission, which were, in brief, indemnity for past spoliations and
+security from further depredations. The second paper is Mr. Barlow's
+first letter from Paris, under date of September 29, 1811, and is as
+follows:
+
+"I seize the first occasion to announce to you my arrival, though I have
+little else to announce. I landed at Cherbourg the 8th of this month,
+and arrived at Paris the 19th. The emperor has been residing for some
+time at Compiègne, and it unluckily happened that he set out thence for
+the coast and for Holland the day of my arrival here. The duke de
+Bassano, Minister of Foreign Relations, came the next day to Paris for
+two days only, when he was to follow the emperor to join him in Holland.
+General Turreau and others, who called on me the morning after I reached
+Paris, assured me that the duke was desirous of seeing me as soon as
+possible and with as little ceremony.
+
+"On the 21st I made my first visit to him, which of course had no other
+object than that of delivering my credentials. I expressed my regret at
+the emperor's absence, and the consequent delay of such business as was
+rendered particularly urgent by the necessity of sending home the
+frigate and by the approaching session of Congress, as well as by the
+distressed situation of those American citizens who were awaiting the
+result of decisions which might be hastened by the expositions I was
+charged to make on the part of the President of the United States. He
+said the emperor had foreseen the urgency of the case, and had charged
+him to remedy the evil, as far as could be done, by dispensing with my
+presentation to His Majesty till his return, and that I might
+immediately proceed to business as if I had been presented. He said the
+most flattering things from the emperor relative to my appointment. He
+observed that His Majesty had expected my arrival with some solicitude,
+and was disposed to do everything that I could reasonably ask to
+maintain a good intelligence between the two countries.... I explained
+to him with as much precision as possible the sentiments of the
+President on the most pressing objects of my mission, and threw in such
+observations as seemed to arise out of what I conceived to be the true
+interests of France. He heard me with patience and apparent solicitude,
+endeavored to explain away some of the evils of which we complain, and
+expressed a strong desire to explain away the rest. He said that many of
+the ideas I suggested were new to him, and were very important--that he
+should lay them before the emperor with fidelity and in a manner
+calculated to produce the most favorable impression; desired me to
+reduce them to writing, to be presented in a more solemn form; and
+endeavored to convince me that he doubted not our being able on the
+return of the emperor to remove all obstacles to a most perfect harmony
+between the two countries."
+
+In a letter dated December 19, 1811, he writes:
+
+"Since the date of my last I have had many interviews with the Minister
+of Foreign Relations. I have explained several points, and urged every
+argument for as speedy an answer to my note of the 10th as its very
+serious importance would allow. He always treats the subject with
+apparent candor and solicitude, seems anxious to gain information, and
+declares that neither he nor the emperor had before understood American
+affairs, and always assures me that he is nearly ready with his answer.
+But he says the emperor's taking so long a time to consider it and make
+up his decision is not without reason, for it opens a wide field for
+meditation on very interesting matters. He says the emperor has read the
+note repeatedly and with great attention--that he told him the reasoning
+in it was everywhere just and the conclusions undeniable, but to
+reconcile its principles with his continental system presented
+difficulties not easy to remove. From what the emperor told me himself
+at the last diplomatic audience, and from a variety of hints and other
+circumstances remarked among the people about his person, I have been
+made to believe that he is really changing his system relative to our
+trade, and that the answer to my note will be more satisfactory than I
+had at first expected."
+
+Several other letters from the poet to Monroe follow, all of the same
+general tenor--complaining of delay, yet hopeful that the treaty would
+shortly be secured. February 8, 1812, he writes to the Secretary of
+State that the duke is "at work upon the treaty, and probably in good
+earnest, but the discussions with Russia and the other affairs of this
+Continent give him and the emperor so much occupation that I cannot
+count upon their getting on very fast with ours."
+
+Amid these delays the summer passed away, and the emperor, intent on
+mapping out his great campaign against Russia, still neglected to sign
+the important instrument. Early in the summer Napoleon left Paris for
+Wilna to take command of the vast armies that had been collected for the
+invasion, and from that place, on the 11th of October, the duke de
+Bassano addressed the following note to Mr. Barlow in Paris:
+
+"SIR: I have had the honor to make known to you how much I regretted, in
+the negotiation commenced between the United States and France, the
+delays which inevitably attended a correspondence carried on at so great
+a distance. Your government has desired to see the epoch of this
+arrangement draw near: His Majesty is animated by the same dispositions,
+and, willing to assure to the negotiation a result the most prompt, he
+has thought that it would be expedient to suppress the intermediaries
+and to transfer the conference to Wilna. His Majesty has in consequence
+authorized me, sir, to treat directly with you; and if you will come to
+this town I dare hope that, with the desire which animates us both to
+conciliate such important interests, we shall immediately be enabled to
+remove all the difficulties which until now have appeared to impede the
+progress of the negotiation. I have apprised the duke of Dalberg that
+his mission was thus terminated, and I have laid before His Majesty the
+actual state of the negotiation, to the end that when you arrive at
+Wilna, the different questions being already illustrated either by your
+judicious observation or by the instructions I shall have received, we
+may, sir, conclude an arrangement so desirable and so conformable to the
+mutually amicable views of our two governments."
+
+Barlow could do no less than comply with this invitation, since, as he
+remarked in a letter to Monroe under date of October 25, "it was
+impossible to refuse it without giving offence." His letter accepting
+the duke's invitation was probably the last ever written by him, and is
+dated Paris, October 25, 1812:
+
+"SIR: In consequence of the letter you did me the honor to write me on
+the 11th of this month, I accept your invitation, and leave Paris
+to-morrow for Wilna, where I hope to arrive in fifteen or eighteen days
+from this date. The negotiation on which you have done me the honor to
+invite me at Wilna is so completely prepared in all its parts between
+the duke of Dalberg and myself, and, as I understand, sent on to you for
+your approbation about the 18th of the present month, that I am
+persuaded that if it could have arrived before the date of your letter
+the necessity of this meeting would not have existed, as I am confident
+His Majesty would have found the project reasonable and acceptable in
+all its parts, and would have ordered that minister to conclude and sign
+both the treaty of commerce and the convention of indemnities."
+
+Barlow left Paris for Wilna on the 26th of October in his private
+carriage, yet travelling night and day and with relays of horses at the
+post-towns to expedite his progress. His sole companion was his nephew
+and secretary of legation, Thomas Barlow, who had been educated and
+given an honorable position in life through the poet's munificence.
+Their route, the same as that pursued by Napoleon a few weeks before,
+led across the Belgian frontiers and through the forests and defiles of
+the German principalities. Once across the Niemen, they met with rumors
+of the emperor's disaster at Moscow, and that portions of his army were
+then in full retreat, but, discrediting them, pushed on to Wilna, which
+they reached about the 1st of December. Wilna is the only considerable
+village in Russia between the Niemen and Moscow: it is a quaint and
+venerable town, capital of the ancient province of Lithuania, and played
+an important part in Napoleon's Russian campaign, being the rendezvous
+of his legions after crossing the Niemen and the site of his
+army-hospitals. When our travellers entered it, it was filled with a
+horde of panic-stricken fugitives, who made the town a temporary
+resting-place before continuing their flight to the frontiers; nor were
+they long in learning the, to them, distressing news that the French
+army was in swift retreat, and that the duke de Bassano, so far from
+being at leisure to attend a diplomatic conference at Wilna, was then on
+the frontiers hurrying forward reinforcements to cover the retreat of
+his emperor across the Beresina.
+
+The perilous journey had been made in vain, and the treaty was doomed to
+still further delay. It now only remained for Barlow to extricate
+himself from his dangerous position and to reach the frontiers before
+the fleeing army and the pursuing Cossacks should close every avenue of
+escape.
+
+Thomas Barlow on his return to America sometimes favored his friends
+with vivid pictures of the sufferings and privations endured by the
+travellers in their flight from Wilna. The passage of so many men had
+rendered the roads well-nigh impassable; food, even of the meanest kind,
+could only be procured with the greatest difficulty; and often the
+travellers were mixed up with the flying masses, as it seemed
+inextricably. Ruined habitations, wagons and provision-vans overturned
+and pillaged, men dying by scores from hunger and starvation, and frozen
+corpses of men and horses, were objects that constantly presented
+themselves. At length they crossed the Niemen and pursued their journey
+through Poland, still suffering terribly from the cold and from the
+insufficient nature of the food obtainable; but on reaching Zarrow,[C]
+an obscure village near Cracow, the poet was seized with a sudden and
+fatal attack of pneumonia, the result, no doubt, of privation and
+exposure. He was borne to a little Jewish cottage, the only inn that the
+village afforded, and there died December 26, 1812. His remains were
+interred in the little churchyard of the village where he died. It is
+rarely that an American visits his grave, and the government has never
+taken interest enough in its minister to erect a memorial slab above his
+dust; but wifely devotion has supplied the omission, and a plain
+monument of marble, on which are inscribed his name, age and station and
+the circumstances of his death, marks the poet's place of sepulture.
+
+The news of his death seems not to have reached the United States until
+the succeeding March. The Federal journals merely announced the fact
+without comment: the Republican papers published formal eulogiums on the
+dead statesman. President Madison, in his inaugural of 1813, thus
+referred to the event: "The sudden death of the distinguished citizen
+who represented the United States in France, without any special
+arrangement by him for such a conclusion, has kept us without the
+expected sequel to his last communications; nor has the French
+government taken any measures for bringing the depending negotiations to
+a conclusion through its representative in the United States."
+
+In France the poet's demise excited a more general feeling of regret,
+perhaps, than in his own country. A formal eulogy on his life and
+character was pronounced by Dupont de Nemours before the Society for the
+Encouragement of National Industry, and the year succeeding his death an
+account of his life and writings was published at Paris in quarto form,
+accompanied by one canto of _The Columbiad_, translated into French
+heroic verse. The American residents of Paris also addressed a letter of
+condolence to Mrs. Barlow, in which is apparent the general sentiment of
+respect and affection entertained for the poet in the French capital.
+
+"In private life," says one of his eulogists, "Mr. Barlow was highly
+esteemed for his amiable temperament and many social excellences. His
+manners were generally grave and dignified, and he possessed but little
+facility of general conversation, but with his intimate friends he was
+easy and familiar, and upon topics which deeply interested him he
+conversed with much animation."
+
+Another thus refers to his domestic relations: "The affection of Mr.
+Barlow for his lovely wife was unusually strong, and on her part it was
+fully reciprocated. She cheerfully in early life cast in her lot with
+his 'for better or for worse'--and sometimes the worst, so far as their
+pecuniary prospects were concerned. In their darkest days Barlow ever
+found light and encouragement at home in the smiles, sympathy and
+counsel of his prudent, faithful wife. No matter how dark and portentous
+the cloud that brooded over them might be, she always contrived to give
+it a silver lining, and his subsequent success in life he always
+attributed more to her influence over him than to anything else."
+
+Barlow lived a dual life--the life of a poet as well as of a
+diplomatist--and this paper can scarcely be considered complete unless
+it touches somewhat on his literary productions. It will be the verdict
+of all who study his life carefully that he was a better statesman than
+poet, and a better philanthropist than either; yet as a poet he
+surpassed his contemporaries, producing works that fairly entitle him to
+the distinction of being the father of American letters. His _Hasty
+Pudding_ would be a valuable addition to any literature, and in his
+_Advice to the Privileged Orders_ and his _Conspiracy of Kings_ much
+poetic power and insight is apparent. It was on his epic of _The
+Columbiad_ that he no doubt founded his hopes of fame, but, though the
+book was extensively read in its day and passed through several editions
+on both continents, no reprint has been demanded in modern times, and it
+long since dropped out of the category of books that are read.
+
+Barlow's private letters from abroad would have possessed undoubted
+interest to the present generation, but, so far as is known, none of
+them have been preserved--with one exception, however. There is in
+existence a long letter of his, written to his wife while he was in
+Algiers in imminent danger from the plague, and which was to be
+forwarded to her only in case of his death. It was found among his
+papers after his death nearly sixteen years later. This letter has
+already appeared in print, but it will be new to most of our readers,
+and it is so remarkable in itself, and throws such light on the
+character of the writer, that, in spite of its length, no apology is
+required for inserting it here:
+
+    "_To Mrs. Barlow in Paris_:
+
+                                      "ALGIERS, 8th July, 1796.
+
+     "MY DEAREST LIFE AND ONLY LOVE: I run no risk of alarming
+     your extreme sensibility by writing this letter, since it is
+     not my intention that it shall come into your hands unless
+     and until, through some other channel, you shall be informed
+     of the event which it anticipates as possible. For our happy
+     union to be dissolved by death is indeed at every moment
+     possible; but at this time there is an uncommon degree of
+     danger that you may lose a life which I know you value more
+     than you do your own. I say I _know_ this, because I have
+     long been taught, from our perfect sympathy of affection, to
+     judge your heart by mine; and I can say solemnly and truly,
+     as far as I know myself, that I have no other value for my
+     own life than as a means of continuing a conjugal union with
+     the best of women--the wife of my soul, my first, my last,
+     my only love. I have told you in my current letters that the
+     plague is raging with considerable violence in this place. I
+     must tell you in this, if it should be your fortune to see
+     it, that a pressing duty of humanity requires me to expose
+     myself more than other considerations would justify in
+     endeavoring to save as many of our unhappy citizens as
+     possible from falling a sacrifice, and to embark them at
+     this cruel moment for their country. Though they are dying
+     very fast, it is possible that my exertions may be the means
+     of saving a number who otherwise would perish. If this
+     should be the case, and _I_ should fall instead of _them_,
+     my tender, generous friend must not upbraid my memory by
+     ever thinking I did too much. But she cannot help it: I know
+     she cannot. Yet, my dearest love, give me leave, since I
+     must anticipate your affliction, to lay before you some
+     reflections which would recur to you at _last_, but which
+     ought to strike your mind at _first_, to mingle with and
+     assuage your first emotions of grief. You cannot judge at
+     your distance of the risk I am taking, nor of the necessity
+     of taking it; and I am convinced that were you in my place
+     you would do more than I shall do, for your kind, intrepid
+     spirit has more courage than mine, and always had.
+
+     "Another consideration: Many of these persons have wives at
+     home as well as I, from whom they have been much longer
+     separated, under more affecting circumstances, having been
+     held in a merciless and desponding slavery: if their wives
+     love them as mine does me (a thing I cannot believe, but
+     have no right to deny), ask these lately disconsolate and
+     now joyous families whether I have done too much.
+
+     "Since I write this as if it were my last poor demonstration
+     of affection to my lovely friend, I have much to say; and it
+     is with difficulty that I can steal an hour from the fatigue
+     of business to devote to the grateful, painful task. But
+     tell me (you cannot tell me) where shall I begin? where
+     shall I end? how shall I put an eternal period to a
+     correspondence which has given me so much comfort? With what
+     expression of regret shall I take leave of my happiness?
+     with what words of tenderness, of gratitude, of counsel, of
+     consolation, shall I pay you for what I am robbing you
+     of--the husband whom you cherish, the friend who is all your
+     own?
+
+     "But I am giving vent to more weakness than I intended:
+     this, my dear, is a letter of _business_, not of love, and I
+     wonder I cannot enter upon it and keep to my subject.
+     Enclosed is my last will, made in conformity to the one I
+     left in the hands of Doctor Hopkins of Hartford, as you may
+     remember. The greater part of our property now lying in
+     Paris, I thought proper to renew this instrument, that you
+     might enter immediately upon the settlement of your affairs,
+     without waiting to send to America for the other paper.
+
+     "You will likewise find enclosed a schedule of our property
+     debts and demands, with explanations, as nearly just as I
+     can make it from memory in the absence of my papers. If the
+     French Republic is consolidated, and her funds rise to par,
+     or near it, as I believe they will do soon after the war,
+     the effects noted in this schedule may amount to a capital
+     of about one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, besides
+     paying my debts; which sum, vested in the American funds or
+     mortgages equally solid, would produce something more than
+     seven thousand dollars a year perpetual income.
+
+     "If the French should fund their debt anew at one-half its
+     nominal value (which is possible), so that the part of your
+     property now vested in those funds should diminish in
+     proportion, still, taking the whole together, it will not
+     make a difference of more than one-third, and the annual
+     income may still be near five thousand dollars. Events
+     unforeseen by me may, however, reduce it considerably lower.
+     But, whatever may be the value of what I leave, it is left
+     simply and wholly to you.
+
+     "Perhaps some of my relations may think it strange that I
+     have not mentioned them in this final disposition of my
+     effects, especially if they should prove to be as
+     considerable as I hope they may. But, my dearest love, I
+     will tell you my reasons, and I hope you will approve them;
+     for if I can excuse myself to _you_ in a point in which your
+     generous delicacy would be more likely to question the
+     propriety of my conduct than in most others, I am sure my
+     arguments will be convincing to those whose objections may
+     arise from their interest.
+
+     "_First._ In a view of justice and equity, whatever we
+     possess at this moment is a joint property between
+     ourselves, and ought to remain to the survivor. When you
+     gave me your blessed self you know I was destitute of every
+     other possession, as of every other enjoyment: I was rich
+     only in the fund of your affectionate economy and the sweet
+     consolation of your society. In our various struggles and
+     disappointments while trying to obtain a moderate competency
+     for the quiet enjoyment of what we used to call the
+     remainder of our lives, I have been rendered happy by
+     misfortunes, for the heaviest we have met with were turned
+     into blessings by the opportunities they gave me to discover
+     new virtues in you, who taught me how to bear them.
+
+     "I have often told you since the year 1791, the period of
+     our deepest difficulties (and even during that period), that
+     I had never been so easy and contented before; and I have
+     certainly been happier in you during the latter years of our
+     union than I was in former years; not that I have loved you
+     more ardently or more exclusively, for that was impossible,
+     but I have loved you _better_: my heart has been more full
+     of your excellence and less agitated with objects of
+     ambition, which used to devour me too much.
+
+     "I recall these things to your mind to convince you of my
+     full belief that the acquisition of the competency which we
+     seem at last to have secured is owing more to your energy
+     than my own: I mean the energy of your virtues, which gave
+     me consolation, and even happiness, under circumstances
+     wherein, if I had been alone or with a partner no better
+     than myself, I should have sunk.
+
+     "These fruits of our joint exertions you expected to enjoy
+     _with me_, else I know you would not have wished for them.
+     But if by my death you are to be deprived of the greater
+     part of the comfort you expected, it would surely be unjust
+     and cruel to deprive you of the remainder, or any portion of
+     it, by giving any part of this property to others. It is
+     yours in the truest sense in which property can be
+     considered; and I should have no right, if I were disposed,
+     to take it from you.
+
+     "_Secondly._ Of _my_ relations, I have some thirty or forty,
+     nephews and nieces and their children, the greater part of
+     whom I have never seen, and from whom I have had no news for
+     seven or eight years. Among them there may be some
+     necessitous ones who would be proper objects of particular
+     legacies, yet it would be impossible for me at this moment
+     to know which they are. It was my intention, and still is if
+     I live, to go to America, to make discrimination among them
+     according to their wants, and to give them such relief as
+     might be in my power, without waiting to do it by legacy.
+     Now, my lovely wife, if this task and the means of
+     performing it should devolve upon you, I need not recommend
+     it: our _joint_ liberality would have been less extensive
+     and less grateful to the receivers than _yours_ will be
+     alone.
+
+     "_Your own_ relations in the same degree of affinity are few
+     in number. I hope I need not tell you that in my affections
+     I know no difference between yours and mine. I include them
+     all in the same recommendation, without any other
+     distinction than what may arise from their wants and your
+     ability to do them good.
+
+     "If Colonel B---- or his wife (either of them being left by
+     the other) should be in a situation otherwise than
+     comfortable, I wish my generous friend to render it so as
+     far as may be in her power. We may have had more powerful
+     friends than they, but never any more sincere. _He_ has the
+     most frank and loyal spirit in the world, and she is
+     possessed of many amiable and almost heroic virtues.
+
+     "Mary----, poor girl!--you know her worth, her virtues, and
+     her talents, and I am sure you will not fail to keep
+     yourself informed of her circumstances. She has friends, or
+     at least _had_ them, more able than you will be to yield her
+     assistance in case of need. But they may forsake her for
+     reasons which to your enlightened and benevolent mind would
+     rather be an additional inducement to contribute to her
+     happiness. Excuse me, my dearest life, for my being so
+     particular on a subject which, considering to whom it is
+     addressed, may appear superfluous; but I do it rather to
+     show that I agree with you in these sentiments than to
+     pretend that they originate on my part. With this view I
+     must pursue them a little further. One of the principal
+     gratifications in which I intended, and still intend to
+     indulge myself if I should live to enjoy with you the means
+     of doing it, is to succor the unfortunate of every
+     description as far as possible--to encourage merit where I
+     find it, and try to create it where it does not exist. This
+     has long been a favorite project with me; but, having always
+     been destitute of the means of carrying it into effect to
+     any considerable degree, I have not conversed with you upon
+     it as much as I wish I had. Though I can say nothing that
+     will be new to you on the pleasure of employing one's
+     attention and resources in this way, yet some useful hints
+     might be given on the means of multiplying good actions from
+     small resources; for I would not confine my pleasure to the
+     simple duties of _charity_ in the beggar's sense of the
+     word.
+
+     "_First._ Much may be done by advising with poor persons,
+     contriving for them, and pointing out the objects on which
+     they can employ their own industry.
+
+     "_Secondly._ Many persons and families in a crisis of
+     difficulty might be extricated and set up in the world by
+     little loans of money, for which they might give good
+     security and refund within a year; and the same fund might
+     then go to relieve a second and a third; and thus a dozen
+     families might be set on the independent footing of their
+     own industry in the course of a dozen years by the help of
+     fifty dollars, and the owner lose nothing but the interest.
+     Some judgment would be necessary in these operations, as
+     well as care and attention in finding out the proper
+     objects. How many of these are to be found in prisons,
+     thrown in and confined for years, for small debts which
+     their industry and their liberty would enable them to
+     discharge in a short time! Imprisonment for debt still
+     exists as a stain upon our country, as most others. France,
+     indeed, has set us the example of abolishing it, but I am
+     apprehensive she will relapse from this, as I see she is
+     inclined to do from many other good things which she began
+     in her magnanimous struggle for the renovation of society.
+
+     "_Thirdly._ With your benevolence, your character and
+     connections, you may put in motion a much greater fund of
+     charity than you will yourself possess. It is by searching
+     out the objects of distress or misfortune, and recommending
+     them to their wealthy neighbors in such a manner as to
+     excite their attention. I have often remarked to you (I
+     forget whether you agree with me in it or not) that there is
+     more goodness at the bottom of the human heart than the
+     world will generally allow. Men are as often hindered from
+     doing a generous thing by an _indolence_ either of thought
+     or action as by a selfish principle. If they knew what the
+     action was, when and where it was to be done and how to do
+     it, their obstacles would be overcome. In this manner one
+     may bring the resources of others into contribution, and
+     with such a grace as to obtain the thanks both of the givers
+     and receivers.
+
+     "_Fourthly._ The _example_ of one beneficent person, like
+     yourself, in a neighborhood or a town would go a great way.
+     It would doubtless be imitated by others, extend far, and
+     benefit thousands whom you might never hear of.
+
+     "I certainly hope to escape from this place and return to
+     your beloved arms. No man has stronger inducements to wish
+     to live than I have. I have no quarrel with the world: it
+     has used me as well as could be expected. I have valuable
+     friends in every country where I have put my foot, not
+     excepting this abominable sink of wickedness, pestilence and
+     folly--the city of Algiers. I have a pretty extensive and
+     dear-bought knowledge of mankind; a most valuable collection
+     of books; a pure and undivided taste for domestic
+     tranquillity, the social intercourse of friends, study, and
+     the exercise of charity. I have a moderate but sufficient
+     income, perfect health, an unimpaired constitution, and, to
+     give the relish to all enjoyments and smooth away the
+     asperities that might arise from unforeseen calamities, I
+     have the wife that my youth chose and my advancing age has
+     cherished--the pattern of excellence, the example of every
+     virtue--from whom all my joys have risen, in whom all my
+     hopes are centred.
+
+     "I will use every precaution for my safety, as well for your
+     sake as mine. But if you should see me no more, my dearest
+     friend, you will not forget I loved you. As you have valued
+     my love, and as you believe this letter is written with an
+     intention to promote your happiness at a time when it will
+     be for ever out of my power to contribute to it in any other
+     way, I beg you will kindly receive the last advice I can
+     give you, with which I am going to close our endearing
+     intercourse.... Submitting with patience to a destiny that
+     is unavoidable, let your tenderness for me soon cease to
+     agitate that lovely bosom: banish it to the house of
+     darkness and dust, with the object that can no longer be
+     benefited by it, and transfer your affections to some worthy
+     person who shall supply my place in the relation I have
+     borne to you. It is for the living, not the dead, to be
+     rendered happy by the sweetness of your temper, the purity
+     of your heart, your exalted sentiments, your cultivated
+     spirit, your undivided love. Happy man of your choice should
+     he know and prize the treasure of such a wife! Oh, treat her
+     tenderly, my dear sir: she is used to nothing but kindness,
+     unbounded love and confidence. She is all that any
+     reasonable man can desire. She is more than I have merited,
+     or perhaps than you can merit. My resigning her to your
+     charge, though but the result of uncontrollable necessity,
+     is done with a degree of cheerfulness--a cheerfulness
+     inspired by the hope that her happiness will be the object
+     of your care and the long-continued fruit of your affection.
+
+     "Farewell, my wife; and though I am not used to subscribe my
+     letters addressed to you, your familiarity with my writing
+     having always rendered it unnecessary, yet it seems proper
+     that the last characters which this hand shall trace for
+     your perusal should compose the name of your most faithful,
+     most affectionate and most grateful husband,
+
+    "JOEL BARLOW."
+
+After her husband's decease Mrs. Barlow returned to America, and
+continued to reside at Kalorama until her death in 1818.
+
+CHARLES BURR TODD.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[C] The name is variously written Zarrow, Zarniwica and Zarrowitch.
+
+
+
+
+TERESA DI FAENZA.
+
+
+    I.
+
+    If he should wed a woman like a flower,
+    Fresh as the dew and royal as a rose,
+    Veined with spring-fire, mesmeric in repose,
+    His world-vext brain to lull with mystic power,
+    Great-souled to track his flight through heavens starred,
+    Upborne by wings of trust and love, yet meek
+    As one who has no self-set goal to seek,
+    His inspiration and his best reward,
+    At once his Art's deep secret and clear crown,
+    His every-day made dream, his dream fulfilled,--
+    If such a wife he wooed to be his own,
+    God knows 'twere well. Even I no less had willed.
+    Yet, O my heart! wouldst thou for his dear sake
+    Frankly rejoice, or with self-pity break?
+
+
+    II.
+
+    What could I bring in dower? A restless heart,
+    As eager, ardent, hungry, as his own,
+    Face burned pale olive by our Southern sun,
+    A mind long used to musings grave apart.
+    Gold, noble name or fame I ne'er regret,
+    Albeit all are lacking; but the glow
+    Of spring-like beauty, but the overflow
+    Of simple, youthful joy. And yet--and yet--
+    A proud voice whispers: Vain may be his quest,
+    What fruit soe'er he pluck, what laurels green,
+    Through all the world, for just this prize unseen
+    I in my deep heart harbor quite unguessed:
+    I alone know what full hands I should bring
+    Were I to lay my wealth before my king.
+
+                         EMMA LAZARUS.
+
+
+
+
+PIPISTRELLO.
+
+
+I am only Pipistrello. Nothing but that--nothing more than any one of
+the round brown pebbles that the wind sets rolling down the dry bed of
+the Tiber in summer.
+
+I am Pipistrello, the mime, the fool, the posturer, the juggler, the
+spangled saltinbanco, the people's plaything, that runs and leaps and
+turns and twists, and laughs at himself and is laughed at by all, and
+lives by his limbs like his brother the dancing bear and his cousin the
+monkey in a red coat and a feathered cap.
+
+I am Pipistrello, five-and-twenty years old, and strong as you see, and
+good to look at, the women have said. I can leap and run against any
+man, and I can break a bar of iron against my knee, and I can keep up
+with the fastest horse that flies, and I can root up a young oak without
+too much effort. I am strong enough, and my life is at the full, and a
+day's sickness I never have known, and my mother is living. Yet I lie
+under sentence of death, and to-morrow I die on the scaffold: if nothing
+come between this and the break of dawn, I am a dead man with
+to-morrow's sun.
+
+And nothing will come: why should it?
+
+I am only Pipistrello. The people have loved me, indeed, but that is no
+reason why the law should spare me. Nor would I wish that it should--not
+I. They come and stand and stare at me through the grating, men and
+women and maidens and babies. A few of them cry a little, and one little
+mite of a child thrusts at me with a little brown hand the half of a red
+pomegranate. But for the most part they laugh. Why, of course they do.
+The street-children always laugh to see a big black steer with his bold
+horned head go down under the mace of the butcher: the street always
+finds that droll. The strength of the bull could scatter the crowd as
+the north wind scatters the dust, if he were free; but he is not, and
+his strength serves him nothing: the hammer fells him and the crowd
+laughs.
+
+The people of this old Orte know me so well. Right and left, up and
+down, through the country I have gone all the years of my life. Wherever
+there was fair or festa, there was I, Pipistrello, in the midst. It is
+not a bad life, believe me. No life is bad that has the sun and the rain
+upon it, and the free will of the feet and the feel of the wind, and
+nothing between it and heaven.
+
+My father had led the same kind of life before me: he died at Genoa, his
+spine broken in two, like a snapped bough, by a fall from the trapeze
+before the eyes of all the citizens. I was a big baby in that time,
+thrown from hand to hand by the men in their spectacles as they would
+have thrown a ball or an orange.
+
+My mother was a young and gentle creature, full of tenderness for her
+own people, with strangers shy and afraid. She was the daughter of a
+poor weaver. My father had found and wooed her in Etruria, and although
+he had never taken the trouble to espouse her before the mayor, yet he
+had loved her and had always treated her with great respect. She was a
+woman very pure and very honest. Alas, the poor soul! To-day her hair is
+white as the snow, and they tell me she is mad. So much the better for
+her if she know nothing; but I fear the mad and the imbecile know all
+and see all, crouching in their hapless gloom.
+
+When my father died thus at Genoa my mother took a hatred for that
+manner of living, and she broke off all ties with the athletes who had
+been his comrades, and, taking the little money that was hers in a
+little leather bag, she fled away with me to the old town of Orte, where
+my grandmother still lived, the widow of the weaver. The troop wished to
+keep me with them, for, although I was but five years old, I was supple
+and light and very fearless, and never afraid of being thrown up in the
+air, a living ball, in their games and sports.
+
+Orte was just the same then as it is now. These very aged towns I think
+never change: if you try to alter them you must break them up and
+destroy them utterly. Orte has known the Etruscans: she can very well do
+without modern folk. At Orte my mother and grandmother dwelt together in
+one room that looked over the river--a large vaulted chamber with grated
+casements, with thick stone walls--a chamber in what had once been a
+palace. My mother was then still very young and beautiful--of a pale,
+serious beauty, full of sadness. She smiled on me sometimes, but never
+once did I hear her laugh. She had never laughed since that awful day
+when, in the full sunlight, in the midst of the people, in the sight of
+the sea, in Genoa, a man had dropped from air to earth like an eagle
+fallen stone dead from the skies, struck by lightning.
+
+My mother had many suitors. She was beautiful of face, as I say, like
+one of the Madonnas of our old painters: she was industrious, and all
+her little world knew very well that she would one day inherit the strip
+of field and the red cow that my grandmother owned outside the gates of
+Orte. All these pretty suitors of course made a great fuss with me,
+caressed me often, and brought me tomatoes, green figs, crickets in wire
+cages, fried fish and playthings. But my mother looked at none of them.
+When a woman's eyes are always looking downward on a grave, how should
+their tear-laden lids be lifted to see a fresh lover? She repulsed them
+all, always. She lived, lonely and sad, as well as she could in our
+great garret: we ate little, our bed was hard, and she and my grandam
+labored hard to get a pittance. But when a rich bailiff sought her in
+honest marriage, she kissed me and wept over me, and said again and
+again, "No, no! To your father I will be faithful, let what will chance
+to us."
+
+The bailiff soon consoled himself: he married a big country wench who
+had a fine rope of pearls and gold bracelets, and I continued to grow
+up by my mother's side where the Tiber is gilded with the gold of the
+dawns and rolls its heavy waves under the weeping boughs of its willows.
+My boyish strength increased in the heat of the summers, and I grew like
+a young brown stalk of the tall maize. I herded the cow, cut the rushes
+and hewed wood, and I was always happy, even when my mother would send
+me to the old priest to learn things out of books. She wished to make a
+monk of me, but the mere idea made me shudder with fear. I loved to
+climb the oaks, to swing in the maples, to scale the roofs and the
+towers and the masts of the vessels. What had I to do with a monkish
+frock and a whitewashed cell? _Ouf!_ I put my fingers in my ears and ran
+away whenever my poor mother talked of the cloister.
+
+My limbs were always dancing, and my blood was always leaping, laughing,
+boiling merrily in my veins. A priest? What an idea! I had never wholly
+forgotten the glad, bright days of childhood when my father had thrown
+me about in the air like a ball: I had never wholly forgotten the shouts
+of the people, the sight of the human sea of faces, the loud, frank
+laugh of the populace, the sparkle of the spangled habit, the
+intoxication of the applause of a crowd. I had only been five years old
+then, yet I remembered, and sometimes in the night I cried bitterly for
+those dead days. I had only been a little brown thing, with curls as
+black as the raven's wing, and they had thrown me from one to the other
+lightly, laughingly, like a ripe apple, like a smooth peach. But I had
+known what it was to get drunk on the "hurrahs" of the multitude, and I
+did not forget them as I grew up here a youth in old Orte.
+
+The son of an athlete can never rest quiet at home and at school like
+the children of cobblers and coppersmiths and vine-dressers. All my life
+was beating in me, tumbling, palpitating, bubbling, panting in
+me--moving incessantly, like the wings of a swallow when the hour draws
+near for its flight and the thirst for the south rises in it. With all
+my force I adored my pale, lovely, Madonna-like mother, but all the
+same, as I trotted toward the priest with a satchel on my back, I used
+to think, Would it be very wicked to throw the books into the river and
+run away to the fields? And, in truth, I used to run away very often,
+scampering over the country around Orte like a mountain-hare, climbing
+the belfries of the churches, pulling off their weathercocks or setting
+their bells a-ringing--doing a thousand and one mischievous antics; but
+I always returned at nightfall to my mother's side. It seemed to me it
+would be cruel and cowardly to leave her, for she had but me in the
+world.
+
+"You promise to be sensible and quiet, Pippo?" the poor soul always
+murmured. And I used to say "Yes," and mean it. But can a bird promise
+not to fly when it feels in its instincts the coming of spring? Can a
+young colt promise not to fling out his limbs when he feels the yielding
+turf beneath his hoofs?
+
+I never wished to be disobedient, but, somehow, ten minutes after I was
+out of her sight I was high above on some tower or belfry, with the
+martens and the pigeons circling about my curly head. I was so happy on
+high there, looking down on all the old town misty with dust, the men
+and women like ants on an antheap, the historic river like a mere
+ribbon, yellow and twisted, the palaces and the tombs all hidden under
+the same gray veil of summer dust! I was so happy there!--and they spoke
+of making me into a monk, or, if I would not hear of that, of turning me
+into a clerk in a notary's office!
+
+A monk? a clerk? when all the trees cried out to me to climb and all the
+birds called to me to fly! I used to cry about it with hot tears that
+stung my face like lashes, lying with my head hidden on my arms in the
+grass by the old Tiber water. For I was not twelve years old, and to be
+shut up in Orte always, growing gray and wrinkled as the notary had done
+over the wicked, crabbed, evil-looking skins that set the neighbors at
+war! The thought broke my heart. Nevertheless, I loved my mother, and I
+mended my quills, and tried to write my best, and said to the boys of
+the town, "I cannot bend iron or leap or race any more. I am going to
+write for my bread in the notary's office a year hence, for my mother
+wishes it, and so it must be."
+
+And I did my best not to look up to the jackdaws circling round the
+towers or the old river running away to Rome. For all the waters cried
+to me to leap, and all the birds to fly. And you cannot tell, unless you
+have been born to do it as I was, how good it is to climb and climb and
+climb, and see the green earth grow pale beneath you, and the people
+dwindle till they are small as dust, and the houses fade till they seem
+like heaps of sand. The air gets so clear around you, and the great
+black wings flap close against your face; and you sit astride where the
+bells are, with some quaint stone face beside you that was carved on the
+pinnacle here a thousand years and more ago, and has hardly been seen of
+man ever since; and the white clouds are so near you that you seem to
+bathe in them; and the winds toss the trees far below, and sweep by you
+as they go down to torment the trees and the sea, the men that work, and
+the roofs that cover them, and the sails of their ships in the ocean.
+Men are so far from you, and heaven seems so near! The fields and the
+plains are lost in the vapors that divide you from them, and all their
+noise of living multitudes comes very faintly to your ear, and sweetly
+like the low murmuring of bees in the white blossoms of an acacia in the
+month of May.
+
+But you do not understand, you poor toilers in cities who pace the
+street and watch the faces of the rich.
+
+I was to be a notary's clerk--I, called Pipistrello (the bat) because I
+was always whirling and wheeling in air. I was to be a clerk, so my
+mother and grandmother decided for me, with the old notary himself who
+lived at the corner, and made his daily bread by carrying fire and sword
+where he could through the affairs of his neighbors. He was an old
+rascal, but my mother did not know that: he promised to be a safe and
+trustworthy guardian of my youth, and she believed he had power to keep
+me safe from all dangers of destiny. She wanted to be sure that I should
+never run the risks of my father's career: she wanted to see me always
+before the plate of herb soup on her table. Poor mother!
+
+One day in Orte chance gave me another fate than this of her desires.
+
+One fine sunrise on the morning of Palm Sunday I heard the sharp sound
+of a screeching fife, the metallic clash of cymbals, the shouts of boys,
+the rattle of a little drum. It was the rataplan beating before a troop
+of wrestlers and jugglers who were traversing the Marche and Reggio
+Emilia. The troop stationed themselves in a little square burnt by the
+sun and surrounded by old crumbling houses: I ran with the rest of the
+lads of Orte to see them. Orte was in holiday guise: aged, wrinkled,
+deserted, forgotten by the world as she is, she made herself gay that
+day with palms and lilies and lilac and the branches of willow; and her
+people, honest, joyous, clad in their best, who filled the streets and
+the churches and wine-houses, after mass flocked with one accord and
+pressure around the play-place of the strollers.
+
+It was in the month of April: outside the walls and on the banks of
+Tiber, still swollen by the floods of winter, one could see the gold of
+millions of daffodils and the bright crimson and yellow of tulips in the
+green corn. The scent of flowers and herbs came into the town and filled
+its dusky and narrow ways; the boatmen had green branches fastened to
+their masts; in the stillness of evening one heard the song of crickets,
+and even a mosquito would come and blow his shrill little trumpet, and
+one was willing to say to him "Welcome!" because on his little horn he
+blew the good news, "Summer is here!" Ah, those bright summers of my
+youth! I am old now--ay, old, though I have lived through only
+twenty-five years.
+
+This afternoon, on Palm Sunday, I ran to see the athletes as a moth
+flies to the candle: in Italy all the world loves the saltinbanco, be he
+dumb or speaking, in wood or in flesh, and all Orte hastened, as I
+hastened, under the sunny skies of Easter. I saw, I trembled, I laughed:
+I sobbed with ecstasy. It was so many years that I had not seen my
+brothers! Were they not my brothers all?
+
+This day of Palm, when our Orte, so brown and so gray, was all full of
+foliage and blossom like an old pitcher full of orange-flowers for a
+bridal, it was a somewhat brilliant troop of gymnasts which came to
+amuse the town. The troop was composed of an old man and his five sons,
+handsome youths, and very strong, of course. They climbed on each
+other's shoulders, building up a living pyramid; they bent and broke
+bars of iron; they severed a sheep with one blow of a sword; in a word,
+they did what my father had done before them. As for me, I watched them
+stupefied, fascinated, dazzled, drunk with delight, and almost crazy
+with a torrent of memories that seemed to rain on me like lava as I
+watched each exploit, as I heard each shout of the applauding
+multitudes.
+
+It is a terrible thing, a horrible thing, those inherited memories that
+are born in you with the blood of others. I looked at them, I say,
+intoxicated with joy, mad with recollection and with longing;--and my
+mother destined me to a notary's desk, and wished me to be shut there
+all my life, pen in hand, sowing the seeds of all the hatreds, of all
+the crimes, of all the sorrows of mankind, lighting up the flames of
+rage and of greed in human souls for an acre of ground, for a roll of
+gold! She wished to make me a notary's clerk! I gazed at these men who
+seemed to me so happy--these slender, agile, vigorous creatures in their
+skins that shone like the skins of green snakes, in their broidered,
+glittering, spangled vests, in their little velvet caps with the white
+plume in each. "Take me! take me!" I shrieked to them; and the old king
+of the troop looked hard at me, and when their games were finished
+crossed the cord that marked their arena and threw his strong arms about
+me, and cried, "Body of Christ! you are little Pippo!" For he had been
+my father's mate. To be brief, when the little band left Orte I went
+with them.
+
+It was wickedly done, for my poor mother slept, knowing nothing, when in
+the dusk before daybreak I slipped through the bars of the casement and
+noiselessly dropped on to a raft in the river below, and thence joined
+my new friends. It was wickedly done; but I could not help it. Fate was
+stronger than I.
+
+The old man did not disturb himself as to whether what he had encouraged
+me to do was ill or well. He foresaw in me an athlete who would do him
+honor and make the ducats ring merrier in his purse. Besides, I had cost
+him nothing.
+
+From this time life indeed began for me. I wept often; I felt the barb
+of a real remorse; when I passed a crucifix on the road I trembled with
+true terror and penitence; but I fled away, always. I drew my girdle
+closer about my spangled coat, and, despite all my remorse, I was happy.
+When I was very, very far away I wrote to my mother, and she understood,
+poor soul! that there were no means of forcing me back to her. Children
+are egotists: childhood has little feeling. When the child suffers he
+thirsts for his mother, but when he is happy, alas! he thinks little and
+rarely about her.
+
+I was very happy, full of force and of success: the men kept their word
+and taught me all their tricks, all their exploits. Soon I surpassed my
+teachers in address and in temerity. I soon became the glory of their
+band. In the summertime we wandered over the vast Lombard plains and the
+low Tuscan mountains; in winter we displayed our prowess in Rome, in
+Naples, in Palermo; we loitered wherever the sun was warm or the people
+liked to laugh.
+
+From time to time I thought of my mother: I sent her money. I shivered a
+little when I saw a Madonna, for all Madonnas have the smile that our
+mother has for our infancy. I thought of her, but I never went home. I
+was Pipistrello the champion-wrestler. I was a young Hercules, with a
+spangled tunic in lieu of a lion-skin. I was a thousand years, ten
+thousand leagues, away from the child of Orte. God is just. It is just
+that I die here, for in my happy years I forgot my mother. I lived in
+the sunlight--before the crowds, the nervous crowds of Italy--singing,
+shouting, leaping, triumphing; and I forgot my mother alone in the old
+chamber above the Tiber--quite alone, for my grandam was dead. That I
+have slain what I have slain--that is nothing. I would do the same thing
+again had I to live my life again. Yes, without pause or mercy would I
+do it. But my mother--she has lived alone, and she is mad. That is my
+crime.
+
+I was a tall, strong youth, full of courage and handsome to the eye of
+women: I led a life noisy and joyous, and for ever in movement. I was
+what my father had been before me. So they all said. Only I liked to
+finger a book, and my father never had looked inside one, and out of
+remembrance of the belief of my mother I uncovered my head as I passed a
+church or saw a shrine, and to do this had not been in my father's
+habits. In these years I made a great deal of money--a great deal, at
+least, for a stroller--but it went as fast as it came. I was never a
+vicious man, nor a great gambler or drinker, yet my plump pieces soon
+took wing from my pocket, for I was very gay and I liked to play a
+lover's part. My life was a good life, that I know: as for the life of
+the rich and of the noble, I cannot tell what it is like, but I think it
+is of a surety more gloomy and mournful than mine. In Italy one wants so
+little. The air and the light, and a little red wine, and the warmth of
+the wind, and a handful of maize or of grapes, and an old guitar, and a
+niche to sleep in near a fountain that murmurs and sings to the mosses
+and marbles,--these are enough, these are happiness in Italy. And it is
+not difficult to have thus much, or was not so in those days. I was
+never very poor, but whenever money jingled in my purse I treated all
+the troop and half the town, and we laughed loud till daybreak.
+
+I was never aught save Pipistrello--Pipistrello the wrestler, who jumped
+and leaped, and lifted an ox from the ground as easily as other men lift
+a child. No doubt to the wise it seems a fool's life, to the holy a life
+impure. But I had been born for it: no other was possible to me; and
+when money rained upon me, if I could ease an aching heart, or make a
+sick lad the stouter for a hearty meal, or make a tiny child the gladder
+for a lapful of copper coins, or give a poor stray dog a friend and a
+bed of straw, or a belabored mule a helpful push to the wheels of his
+cart,--well, that was all the good a mountebank could look to do in this
+world, and one could go to sleep easy upon it.
+
+When the old man died who had been my father's comrade the troop fell to
+pieces, quarrelling over his leavings. The five brothers came to a
+common issue of stabbing. In Italy one takes to the knife as naturally
+as a child to the breast. Tired of their disputes, I left them
+squabbling and struck off by myself, and got a little band together,
+quite of youths, and with them made merry all across the country from
+sea to sea. We were at that time in the south. I was very popular with
+the people. When my games were done I could sing to the mandoline, and
+improvise, and make them laugh and weep: some graver men who heard me
+said I might have been a great actor or a great singer. Perhaps: I never
+was anything but Pipistrello the stroller. I wanted the fresh air and
+the wandering and the sports of my strength too much ever to have been
+shut in a roofed theatre, ever to have been cooped up where lamps were
+burning.
+
+One day, when we were in dusty, brown Calabria, parching just then under
+June suns, with heavy dust on its aloe-hedges and its maize-fields, a
+sudden remorse smote me: I thought of my mother, all alone in Orte. I
+had thought of her scores of times, but I had felt ashamed to go and see
+her--I who had left her so basely. This day my remorse was greater than
+my shame. I was master of my little troop. I said to them, "It is hot
+here: we will go up Rome-way, along the Tiber;" and we did so.
+
+I have never been out of my own land: I fancy it must be so dark there,
+the other side of the mountains. I know the by-roads and the hill-paths
+of Italy as a citizen knows the streets and lanes of his own _contrada_.
+We worked and played our way now up through the Basilicata and Campania
+and Latium, till at last we were right near Orte--dull, old,
+gray-colored Orte, crumbling away on the banks of Tiber. Then my heart
+beat and my knees shook, and I thought, If she is dead?
+
+I left my comrades drinking and resting at a wine-shop just outside the
+town, and went all alone to look for her. I found the house--the gloomy
+barred window hanging over the water, the dark stone walls frowning down
+on the gloomy street. There was a woman, quite old, with white hair, who
+was getting up water at the street-fountain that I had gone to a
+thousand times in my childhood. I looked at her. I did not know her: I
+only saw a woman feeble and old. But she, with the brass _secchia_
+filled, turned round and saw me, and dropped the brazen pitcher on the
+ground, and fell at my feet with a bitter cry. Then I knew her.
+
+When in the light of the hot, strong sun I saw how in those ten years my
+mother had grown old--old, bent, broken, white-haired, in those ten
+years that had been all glow and glitter, and pleasure and pastime, and
+movement and mirth to me--then I knew that I had sinned against her with
+a mighty sin--a sin of cruelty, of neglect, of selfish wickedness. She
+had been young still when I had left her--young and fair to look at, and
+without a silver line in her ebon hair, and with suitors about her for
+her beauty like bees about the blossoms of the ivy in the autumn-time.
+And now--now she was quite old.
+
+She never rebuked me: she only said, "My son! my son! God be praised!"
+and said that a thousand times, weeping and trembling. Some women are
+like this.
+
+When the bright, burning midsummer day had grown into a gray,
+firefly-lighted night, I laid me down on the narrow bed where I had
+slept as a child, and my mother kissed me as though I were a child. It
+seemed to purify me from all the sins of all the absent years, except,
+indeed, of that one unpardonable sin against her. In the morning she
+opened the drawers of an old bureau and showed me everything I had sent
+her all those years: all was untouched, the money as well as the
+presents. "I took nothing while you did not give me yourself," she said.
+I felt my throat choke.
+
+It was early day: she asked me to go to mass with her. I did so to
+please her. All the while I watched her bent, feeble, aged figure and
+the white hair under the yellow kerchief, and felt as if I had killed
+her. This lone old creature was not the mother like Raffaelle's Madonna
+I had left: I could never make her again what she had been.
+
+"It is my son," she said to her neighbors, but she said it with pain
+rather than with pride, for she hated my calling; but Orte was of
+another way of thinking. Orte flocked to see me, having heard of
+Pipistrello, its own Pipistrello, who had plagued it with his childish
+tricks, having grown into fame amongst the cities and villages as the
+strongest man in all Italy. For indeed I was that; and my mother, with
+dim, tear-laden eyes, looked at me and said, "You are the image of your
+father. Oh, my dear, my love! take care."
+
+She, poor soul! saw nothing but the fall she had seen that day at Genoa
+of a strong man who dropped like a stone. But I fear to weary you. Well!
+I had left my spangled dress and all insignia of my calling with my
+comrades at the wine-shop, fearing to harass my mother by sight of all
+those things which would be so full of bitter recollection and dread to
+her. But Orte clamored for me to show it my powers--Orte, which was more
+than half asleep by Tiber's side, like that nymph Canens whom I used to
+read of in my Latin school-books--Orte, which had no earthly thing to do
+this long and lazy day in the drought of a rainless June.
+
+I could not afford to baulk the popular will, and I was proud to show
+them all I could do--I, Pipistrello, whom they had cuffed and kicked so
+often in the old time for climbing their walnut trees and their pear
+trees, their house-roofs and their church-towers. So, when the day
+cooled I drew a circle with a red rope round myself and my men on a
+piece of waste ground outside the town, and all Orte flocked out there
+as the sun went down, shouting and cheering for me as though Pipistrello
+were a king or a hero. The populace is always thus--the giddiest-pated
+fool that ever screamed, as loud and as ignorant as a parrot, as
+changeful as the wind in March, as base as the cuckoo. The same people
+threw stones at me when they brought me to this prison--the same people
+that feasted and applauded me then, that first day of my return to Orte.
+To-day, indeed, some women weep, and the little child brings me half a
+pomegranate. That is more remembrance than some fallen idols get, for
+the populace is cruel: it is a beast that fawns and slavers, then tears.
+
+It was a rainless June, as I say. It was very warm that evening; the low
+west was vermilion and the higher sky was violet; bars of gold parted
+the two colors; the crickets were hooting, the bats were wheeling, great
+night-moths were abroad. I felt very happy that night. With us Italians
+pain rarely stays long. We feel sharply, but it soon passes. I had
+drowned my remorse in the glory and vanity of showing Orte all I could
+do by the sheer force of my muscles and sinews. We are not a very brave
+people, nor a strong one, and so strength and bravery seem very rare and
+fine things on our soil, and we make a great clatter and uproar when we
+ever find them amidst us. I had them both, and the people were in
+ecstasies with all I did. I put out all my powers, and in the circle of
+red rope exerted all my might, as though I had been performing before
+kings. After all, there is no applause that so flatters a man as that
+which he wrings from unwilling throats, and I know Orte had been long
+set against me by reason of my boyish mischief and my flight.
+
+In real truth, I did nothing now in my manhood so really perilous as I
+had done in my childhood, when I had climbed to the top of the cross on
+the church and sat astride of it. But they had called that mischief and
+blasphemy: they called the things I did now gymnastics, and applauded
+them till the noise might have wakened the Etrurian dead under the soil.
+
+At last I came to the feat which, though far from the hardest to me,
+always looked to the crowd the most wonderful: it was my old master's
+trick of holding his five sons on his shoulder. Only I outshone him, and
+sustained on mine seven men in four tiers, and the topmost had on his
+head little Febo.
+
+The mite whom we called Phoebus, because we had found him at sunrise
+and he had such yellow locks--yellow as the dandelion or the
+buttercup--was a stray thing picked up on the seashore in Apulia--a
+soft, merry, chirping little fellow, of whom we were all fond, and to
+whom we had easily taught that absence of fear which enabled us to play
+ball with him in our spectacles. He always delighted the people, he was
+such a pretty little lad, and not, perhaps, more than four years old
+then, and always laughing, always ready. To him it was only fun, as it
+had been to me at his years. I never thought it was cruel to use him so,
+I had been so happy in it myself. All at once, as I stood erect
+sustaining the men on my shoulders, the topmost one holding on his head
+our tiny Phoebus--all at once as I did this, which I had done a
+hundred times, and had always done in safety--all at once, amongst the
+sea of upturned faces in the glowing evening light, I saw one woman's
+eyes. She was leaning a little forward, resting her cheek on her hand.
+She had black lace about her head and yellow japonica-flowers above her
+left ear. She was looking at me and smiling a little.
+
+I met her eyes, full, across the dust reddened by the sunset glow as the
+dust of a battlefield is reddened with blood. I felt as if I were
+stabbed; the red dust seemed to swim round me; I staggered slightly: in
+another instant I had recovered myself, but the momentary oscillation
+had terrified my comrades. The seventh and highest, feeling the human
+pyramid tremble beneath him, involuntarily, unconsciously, opened his
+arms to save himself. He did not lose his balance, but he let the child
+fall. It dropped as an apple broken off the bough falls to the earth.
+
+There was a moment of horrible silence. Then the men leaped down,
+tumbling and huddling one over another, not knowing what they did. The
+audience rose screaming; and broke the rope and swarmed into the arena.
+I stooped and took up the child. He was dead. His neck had been broken
+in the fall. He had struck the earth with the back of his head; he was
+rolled up on the sand like a little dead kid; his tiny tinsel crown had
+fallen off his curls, his tiny tinselled limbs were crushed under him,
+his blossom-like mouth was half open. It was horrible.
+
+People spoke to me: I did not see or hear them. The crowd parted and
+scattered, some voluble, some dumb, with the shock of what they had
+seen. I lifted up what a moment before had been little Phoebus, and
+bore him in my arms to my mother's house.
+
+She was sitting at home alone, as she had been alone these ten years and
+more. When she saw the dead baby in those glistening spangled clothes
+she shuddered, and understood without words. "Another life?" she said,
+and said nothing more: she was thinking of my father. Then she took the
+dead child and laid him on her knees as if he had been a living one, and
+rocked him on her breast and smoothed the sand out of his pretty yellow
+curls. "The people go always in the hope of seeing something die," she
+said at length. "That is what they go for: you killed the baby for their
+sport. It was cruel."
+
+I went out of the house and felt as if I had murdered him--the little
+fair, innocent thing who had run along with us over the dusty roads, and
+along the sad seashores, and under the forest trees, laughing and
+chirping as the birds chirp, and when he was tired lifting up his arms
+to be carried on the top of the big drum, and sitting there throned like
+a king. Poor little dead Phoebus! It was true what my mother had said:
+the people throng to us in hope of seeing our death, and yet when they
+do see it they are frightened and sickened and sorrowful. Orte was so
+this night.
+
+"Could I help it?" I cried to my comrades fiercely; and in my own soul I
+said to myself, "Could I help it? That woman looked at me."
+
+Who was she? All through the pain that filled me for the death of the
+child that wonder was awake in me always. She had looked so strange
+there, so unlike the rest, though she was all in black and had the lace
+about her head which is common enough in our country. All the night long
+I saw her face--a beautiful face, with heavy lids and drooping hair,
+like that marble head they call the Braschi Antinous down in Rome.
+
+Little Phoebus was laid that night in my mother's house, with lilies
+about him, while a little candle that the moths flickered into burnt at
+his feet. As I sat and watched by him to drive away the rats which came
+up in hordes at night from Tiber into the rooms that overhung the river,
+I only saw that face. It had been a bad home-coming.
+
+I would play no more in Orte, nor go with these men any more. I
+disbanded my troop and let them pass their own ways. I had coin enough
+to live on for months: that was enough for the present. I felt as if the
+sight of the red rope and the spangled vest and the watching crowd would
+be horrible to me--those things which I had loved so well. Little
+Phoebus was put away in the dark earth, as the little Etruscan
+children had been so many hundred years before him, and I buried his
+little crown and his little coat with him, as the Etruscans buried the
+playthings. Poor little man! we had taught him to make Death his toy,
+and his toy had been stronger than he.
+
+After his burial I began my search for the woman whose face I had seen
+in the crowd. My mother never asked me whence I came or where I went.
+The death of Phoebus had destroyed the trembling joy with which she
+had seen me return to her: happiness came to her too late. When grief
+has sat long by one hearth, it is impossible to warm the ashes of joy
+again: they are cold and dead for ever. My time passed sadly; a
+terrible calmness had succeeded to the gayety and noise of my life; a
+frightful silence had replaced the frenzied shouts, the boisterous
+laughter, of the people: sometimes it seemed to me that I had died, not
+Phoebus.
+
+The constant hope of finding the woman I had seen but once occupied me
+always. I roamed the country without ceasing, always with that single
+hope before me. Days became weeks: I wandered miserably, like a dog
+without master or home.
+
+One day I saw her. Having on my shoulder my _girella_, which gave me a
+pretext for straying along the river-side, I came to that part of
+Etruria where (so I had used to learn from the school-books in my
+childhood) the Etruscans in ancient times drew up in order of battle to
+receive Fabius. The country is pretty about there, or at least it seemed
+so to me. The oak woods descend to the edge of the Tiber: from them one
+sees the snow of the Apennines; the little towns of Giove and Penna are
+white on the Umbrian hills; in the low fields the vine and the olive and
+the maize and the wheat grow together. Here one finds our Lagherello,
+which I had heard scholars say is no other than the Lake Vadimon of
+which Pliny speaks. Of that I know nothing: it is a poor little pool
+now, filled with rushes, peopled with frogs. By the side of this pool I
+saw her again: she looked at me. Like a madman I plunged into the water,
+but the reeds and the lilies entangled me in their meshes: the long
+grasses and water-weeds were netted into an impenetrable mass. I stood
+there up to my waist in water, incapable of movement, like the poor
+cattle of which Pliny tells, who used to mistake all this verdure for
+dry land, and so drifted out into the middle of the lake. She looked at
+me, laughed a little, and disappeared.
+
+Before sunset I had learned who she was from a peasant who came there to
+cut the reeds.
+
+Near to the Lagherello is a villa named Sant' Aloïsa: about its walls
+there is a sombre, melancholy wood, a remnant of that famous forest
+which in the ancient times the Romans dreaded as the borders of hell.
+The Tiber rolls close by, yellow and muddy with the black buffaloes
+descending to its brink to drink, and the snakes and the toads in its
+brakes counting by millions--sad, always sad, whether swollen by flood
+in autumn and vomiting torrents of mud, or whether with naked sands and
+barren bed in summer, with the fever-vapors rising from its shallow
+shoals. The villa is dull and mournful like the river--built of stone,
+fortified in bygone centuries, without color, without light, without
+garden or greenery, all its casements closed like the eyelids of a
+living man that is blind.
+
+This was and is Sant' Aloïsa. In the old times, no doubt, the villa had
+been strong and great, and peopled with a brilliant feudal pomp, and
+noisy with the clash and stir of soldiery: now it is poverty-stricken
+and empty, naked and silent, looking down on the tawny, sullen swell of
+the Tiber--the terrible Tiber, that has devoured so much gold, so much
+treasure, so much beauty, and hidden so many dead and so many crimes,
+and flows on mute and gloomy between its poisonous marshes. Of Tiber I
+have always felt afraid.
+
+Sant' Aloïsa has always been a fief of the old counts Marchioni. One of
+that race lived still, and owned the old grounds and the old walls,
+though the fortunes of the family had long fallen into decay. Taddeo
+Marchioni was scarcely above his own peasants in his manners and way of
+life. He was ugly, avaricious, rustic, cruel. He was lord of the soil
+indeed, but he lived miserably, and this beautiful woman had been his
+wife seven years. At fifteen her father, a priest who passed as her
+uncle, had wedded her to Taddeo Marchioni. She had dwelt here seven
+mortal years, in this gloomy wood, by these yellow waters, amidst these
+pestilential marshes. Her marriage had made her a countess, that was
+all. For the rest, it had consigned her, living, to a tomb.
+
+The lives of our Italian women are gay enough in the cities, but in the
+country these women grow gray and pallid as the wings of the night-moth.
+They have no love for Nature, for air, for the woods, for the fields:
+flowers say nothing to them. They look neither at the blossoms nor the
+stars. The only things which please them are a black mask and a murmur
+of love, a hidden meeting, the noise of the streets, the bouquets of a
+carnival. What should they do in the loneliness and wildness of the
+broad and open country--our women, who only breathe at their ease in the
+obscurity of their _palco_ or under the shelter of a domino?
+
+The travellers who run over our land and see our women laughing with
+wide-opened rose-red mouths upon their balconies at Berlingaccio or at
+Pentolaccia can never understand the immense, the inconsolable,
+desolation of dulness which weighs on the lives of these women in the
+little towns of the provinces and the country-houses of the hills and
+plains. They have the priest and the chapel; that is all.
+
+In Italy we have no choice between the peasant-woman toiling in the
+ploughed fields, and growing black with the scorch of the sun, and bowed
+and aged with the burdens she bears, and the ladies who live between the
+alcove and the confessional, only going forth from their chambers by
+night as fireflies glisten, and living on secret love and daily gossip.
+What can these do in their gaunt, dull villas--they who detest the sough
+of the wind and the sight of a tree, who flee from a dog and scream at a
+tempest, who will not read, and whose only lore is the sweet science of
+the passions?
+
+This I came to know later. All I saw that day, as I tramped around it
+wet and cold, was the gloomy evil shadow of the great place that had
+once been a fortress, the barred and shattered windows, the iron-studded
+doors, the grass-grown bastions. She had made me kill Phoebus, and yet
+I only lived to see her face again.
+
+Sometimes I think love is the darkest mystery of life: mere desire will
+not explain it, nor will the passions or the affections. You pass years
+amidst crowds and know naught of it: then all at once you meet a
+stranger's eyes, and never again are you free. That is love. Who shall
+say whence it comes? It is a bolt from the gods that descends from
+heaven and strikes us down into hell. We can do nothing.
+
+I went home slowly when evening fell. I had seen her eyes across the
+crowd in Orte once, and once across the pool that was the Vadimon, and I
+was hers for evermore. Explain that, ye wise men, who in your pride have
+long words for all things. Nay, you may be wise, but it is beyond you.
+
+My mother and I spoke but little at this time. That home was a sad one:
+the death of the child and the absence of long years had left a chill in
+it. We ate together, chiefly in silence: it was always a pain to her
+that I was but Pipistrello the gymnast--not a steadfast, deep-rooted,
+well-loved citizen of Orte, with a trade to my hand and a place in
+church and market. Every day she thought I should wander again; every
+day she knew my savings shrank in their bag; every day she heard her
+neighbors say, "And your Pippo? will he not quiet down and take a wife
+and a calling?"
+
+Poor mother! Other women had their sons safe stay-at-homes, wedded
+fathers of children, peaceable subjects of the king, smoking at their
+own doors after the day's work was done. She would have been so blessed
+had I been like them--I, who was a wrestler and a roysterer, a mere
+public toy that had broken down in the sight of all Orte. My father had
+never failed as I had failed. He had never killed a child that trusted
+in his strength: he had fallen himself and died. That difference between
+us was always in her eyes. I saw it when I met them; and she would make
+up little knots of common flowers and carry them to the tiny grave of
+Phoebus, my victim. Once I said to her, "I could not help it: I would
+have given my life to save him." She only replied, "If you had consented
+to bide at home the child would be living."
+
+Nay, I thought, if she had not looked at me--But of that I said nothing.
+I kept the memory of that woman in my heart, and went night and day
+about the lake and the river and the marshes of Sant' Aloïsa. Once or
+twice I saw Taddeo Marchioni, the old count--a gray, shrunken, decrepit
+figure of a man, old, with a lean face and a long hard jaw--but of her,
+for days that lengthened into weeks, I saw nothing. There are fish in
+the Lagherello. I got the square huge net of our country, and set it in
+the water as our habit is, and watched in the sedges from dawn to eve.
+What I watched for was the coming of the vision I had once seen there:
+the fish came and went at their will for me.
+
+One day, sick of watching vainly, and having some good fish in the net,
+I dragged them out into the reeds, and pushed them in a creel, and
+shouldered them, and went straight to the gloomy walls of Sant' Aloïsa.
+There were no gates: the sedges of the low lands went along the front of
+the great pile, almost touching it. Around it were fields gray with
+olives, and there was neither garden nor grass-land: all had been
+ploughed up that was not marsh and swamp.
+
+The great doors were close fastened. I entered boldly by a little
+entrance at the side, and found myself in the great naked hall of
+marble, empty and still and damp. There was a woman there, old and
+miserable, who called her master. Taddeo Marchioni came and saw the
+fish, and chaffered for them with long hesitation and shrewd greed, as
+misers love to do, and then at last refused them: they were too dear, he
+said. I threw them down and said to him, "Count, give me a stoup of wine
+and they are yours." That pleased him: he bade the serving-woman carry
+the fish away, and told me to follow him. He took me into a vaulted
+stone chamber, and poured with a niggard hand a glass of _mezzo-vino_. I
+looked at him: he was lean, gray, unlovely. I could have crushed him to
+death with one hand.
+
+These great old villas in the lone places of Italy are usually full at
+least of pleasant life--of women hurrying to the silk-worms and the
+spinning and the linen-press, of barefooted men loitering about on a
+thousand pleas or errands to their master. But Sant' Aloïsa was silent
+and empty.
+
+Passing an open door, I saw her. She was sitting, doing nothing, in a
+room whose faded tapestries were gray as spiders' webs, and she was
+beautiful as only one woman is here and there in a generation. She
+looked at me, and I thought she smiled.
+
+I went out with my brain on fire and my sight dim. I saw only that
+smile--that sudden, momentary smile whose fellow had brought death to
+little Phoebus. And I felt she had known me again, though she had seen
+me but once, in my spangled coat of velvet and silver, and now I had my
+legs bare to the knee, and was clad in a rough blue shirt and woollen
+jacket, like any other country-fellow upon Tiber's side.
+
+As I was going out the serving-wench plucked my sleeve and whispered to
+me, "Come back a moment: she wishes to see you."
+
+My heart leaped, then stood still. I turned back into the house, and
+with trembling knees went into that chamber where the dusky tapestry
+mouldered on the walls. She looked at me, sitting idly there herself in
+the bare, melancholy room--a woman with the face of our Titian's Venus.
+
+"Did the child die?" she asked.
+
+I stammered something, I knew not what.
+
+"Why did you tremble that day?" she said, with the flicker of a smile
+about her lovely mouth: "you look strong--and bold."
+
+How the words had courage and madness enough to leap to my lips I know
+not, but I do know I said to her, "You looked at me."
+
+She frowned a moment: then she laughed. No doubt she had known it
+before. "Your nerves were not of iron, then, as they should be," she
+said carelessly. "Well! the people wanted to see something die. They
+always do: you must know that. Bring more fish for my husband to-morrow.
+Now go."
+
+I trembled from head to foot. I had said this bold and insolent thing to
+her face, and she still bade me return!
+
+No doubt had I been a man well born I should have fallen at her feet and
+sworn a midsummer madness: I should have been emboldened to any coarse
+avowal, to any passionate effrontery. But I was only a stroller--a poor
+ignorant soul, half Hercules, half fool. I trembled and was mute.
+
+When the air blew about me once more I felt as if I had been
+drunk--drunk on that sweet yeasty wine of a new vintage which makes the
+brain light and foolish. She had bade me return!
+
+That day my mother ate alone at home. When night fell it found me by the
+Lagherello. I set my nets: I slept in a shepherd's hut. I had forgotten
+Phoebus: I only saw her face. What was she like? I cannot tell you.
+She was like Titian's Venus. Go and look at it--she who plays with the
+little dog in the Tribune at Pitti: that one I mean. With all that
+beauty, half disclosed like the bud of a pomegranate-flower, she had
+been given to Taddeo Marchioni, and here for seven years she had dwelt,
+shut in by stone walls.
+
+Living so, a woman becomes a saint or a devil. Taddeo Marchioni forgot
+or never knew that. He left her in his chamber as he left the figures of
+the tapestry, till her bloom should fade like theirs, and time write
+wrinkles on her as it wove webs on them. He forgot! he forgot! He was
+old and slow of blood and feeble of sight: she was scarcely beautiful to
+him. There were a few poor peasants near, and a priest as old as Taddeo
+Marchioni was; and though Orte was within five miles, the sour and
+jealous temper of her husband shut her up in that prison-house as Pia
+Tolomei was shut in the house of death in the Maremma.
+
+That night I watched impatient for the dawn. Impatient I watched the
+daybreak deepen into day. All the loveliness of that change was lost on
+me: I only counted the hours in restless haste. Poor fools! our hours
+are in sum so few, and yet we for ever wish them shorter, and fling
+them, scarcely used, behind us roughly, as a child flings his broken
+toys.
+
+The sultry morning was broad and bright over the land before I dared
+take up such fish as had entered my girella in the night and bend my
+steps to Sant' Aloïsa. Fever-mists hung over the cane-brakes and the
+reedy swamps; the earth was baked and cracked; everything looked
+thirsty, withered, pallid, dull, decaying: in the heats of August it is
+always so desolate wherever Tiber rolls. "Marchioni is out," said the
+old brown crone whom I had seen the day before. "But come in: bring your
+fish to Madama Flavia."
+
+It was a strange, gaunt wilderness of stone, this old villa of the
+Marchioni. It would have held hundreds of serving-men--it had as many
+chambers as one of the palaces down in Rome--but this old woman was all
+the servitor it had, and in the grand old hall, with sculptured shields
+upon the columns of it and Umbrian frescoes in the roof, she spread
+their board and brought them their onion-soup and their dish of _pasta_,
+and while they ate it looked on and muttered her talk and twirled her
+distaff, day after day, year after year, the same. Life is homely and
+frugal here, and has few graces. The ways of life in these grand old
+places are like nettles and thistles set in an old majolica vase that
+has had knights and angels painted on it. You know what I mean, you who
+know Italy. Do you remember those pictures of Vittorio Carpaccio and of
+Gentiléo? They say that this is the life our Italy saw once in her
+cities and her villas: that is the life she wants. Sometimes, when you
+are all alone in these vast deserted places, the ghosts of all that
+pageantry pass by you, and they seem fitter than the living people for
+these courts and halls.
+
+"Madama Flavia will see the fish," said the old crone, and hobbled away.
+
+Madama Flavia! How many times has Tiber heard such a name as that
+breathed on a lover's mouth to the sigh of the mandoline, uttered in
+revel or in combat, or as a poisoner whispered it stealing to mix the
+drug with the wine in the goblet. Madama Flavia! All Italy seemed in
+it--all love, all woe! There is a magic in some names.
+
+Madama Flavia! Just such a woman as this it needs would be to fitly wear
+such a name--a woman with low brows and eyes that burn, and a mouth like
+the folded leaves that lie in the heart of a rose--a woman to kneel at
+morn in the black shadows of the confessional, and to go down into the
+crowd of masks at night and make men drunk with love.
+
+"Madama Flavia!" The name (so much it said to me) halted stupidly on my
+lips: I stood in her presence like a foolish creature. I never before
+had lacked either courage or audacity: I trembled now. I had been awake
+all the night, gazing at the dim, dusky pile of her roof as it rose out
+from the olives black against the stars; and she knew it--she knew it
+very well. That I saw in her face. And she was Madama Flavia, and I was
+Pipistrello the juggler. What could I say to her? I could have fallen at
+her feet and kissed her or killed her, but I could not speak. No doubt I
+looked but a poor boor to her--a giant and a dolt.
+
+She was leaning against a great old marble vase--leaning her hands on
+it, and her chin on her hands. She had some red carnations in her
+breast: their perfume came to me. She was surrounded by decay, dusty
+desolation, the barrenness of a poverty that is drearier than any of the
+poverty of the poor; but so might have looked Madama Lucrezia in those
+old days when the Borgia was God's vicegerent.
+
+At the haul of fish she never glanced: she gazed at me with meditation
+in her eyes. "You are very strong," she said abruptly.
+
+At that I could do no less than laugh. It was as if she had said the ox
+in the yoke was strong or the Tiber strong at flood.
+
+"Why are you a fisherman now?" she said. "Why do you leave your arena?"
+
+I shuddered a little. "Since the child fell"--I muttered, thinking she
+would understand the remorse that made my old beloved calling horrible
+to me.
+
+"It was no fault of yours," she said with a dreamy smile. "They say I
+have the evil eye--"
+
+"You have, madama," I said bluntly, and then felt a choking in my
+throat, fearing my own rashness.
+
+Her beautiful eyes had a bright scorn in them, and a cold mockery of me.
+"Why do you stay, then?" she asked, and smiled at the red carnations
+carelessly.
+
+"Because--rather would I die of beholding you than live shut out from
+sight of you," I said in my madness. "Madama, I am a great useless fool:
+I have done nothing but leap and climb and make a show. I am big and
+strong as the oxen are, but they work, and I have never worked. I have
+shown myself, and the people have thrown me money--a silly life, good to
+no man or beast. Oh yes, that I know full well now; and I have killed
+Phoebus because you looked at me; and my mother, who has loved me all
+her life, is old before her time through my fault. I am a graceless
+fool, a mountebank. When I put off my spangles and stand thus, you see
+the rude peasant that I am. And yet in all the great, wide, crowded
+world I know there does not live another who could love you as I
+love--seeing you twice."
+
+I stopped; the sound of my own voice frightened me; the dull tapestries
+upon the wall heaved and rocked round me. I saw her as through a mist,
+leaning there with both arms on the broken marble vase.
+
+A momentary smile passed over her face. She seemed diverted, not angered
+as I feared. She had listened without protest. No doubt she knew it very
+well before I spoke. "You are very strong," she said at length. "Strong
+men are always feeble--somewhere. If the count Taddeo heard you he
+would--" Then some sudden fancy struck her, and she laughed aloud, her
+bright red lips all tremulous and convulsed with laughter. "What could
+he do? You could crush him with one hand, as you could crush a newt!
+Poor Taddeo! did he not beat your fish down, give you watered wine, the
+rinsings of the barrel, yesterday? That is Taddeo always."
+
+She laughed again, but there was something so cruel in that laughter
+that it held me mute. I dared not speak to her. I stood there stupidly.
+
+"Do you know that he is rich?" she said abruptly, gnawing with her
+lovely teeth the jagged leaf of one of her carnations. "Yes, he is rich,
+Taddeo. That is why my father sold me to him. Taddeo is rich: he has
+gold in the ground, in the trees, in the rafters and the stones of the
+house; he has gold in Roman banks; he has gold in foreign scrip, and in
+ships, and in jewels, and in leases: he is rich. And he lives like a
+gray spider in the cellar-corner. He shuts me up here. We eat black
+bread, we see no living soul: once in the year or so I go to Orte or to
+Penna. And I am twenty-three years old, and I can read my own face in
+the mirror." She paused; her breast heaved, her beautiful low brows drew
+together in bitter fury at her fate: she had no thought of me.
+
+I waited, mute. I did not dare to speak.
+
+It was all true: she was the wife of Taddeo Marchioni, shut here as in a
+prison, with her youth passing and her loveliness unseen, and her angry
+soul consuming itself in its own fires. I loved her: what use was that
+to her--a man who had naught in all the world but the strength of his
+sinews and muscles?
+
+She remembered me suddenly, and gave me a gesture of dismissal: "Take
+your fish to the woman; I cannot pay you for them; I have never as much
+as a bronze coin. But--you may come back another day. Bring more--bring
+more." Then with a more imperious gesture she made me leave her.
+
+I stumbled out of the old dark, close-shuttered house into the burning
+brilliancy of the August day, giddy with passion and with hope. She knew
+I loved her, and yet she bade me return!
+
+I know not how much, how little, that may mean in other lands, but here
+in Italy it has but one language--language enough to make a lover's
+heart leap like the wild goat. Yet hope is perhaps too great a word to
+measure rightly the timid joy that filled my breast. I lay in the
+shepherd's hut wide awake that night, hearing the frogs croak from the
+Lagherello and the crickets sing in the hot darkness. The hut was empty:
+shepherd and sheep and dogs were all gone up to the higher grounds
+amongst the hills. There were some dry fern-plants in a corner of it. I
+lay on these and stared at the planets above me throbbing in the
+intense blue of the skies: they seemed to throb, they seemed alive.
+
+A mile away, between me and the stars, was the grand black pile of Sant'
+Aloïsa.
+
+Christ! it was strange! I had led a rough life, I had been no saint. I
+had always been ready for jest or dance or intrigue with a pretty woman,
+and sometimes women far above me had cast their eyes down on the arena,
+as in Spain ladies do in the bull-ring to pick a lover out thence for
+his strength; but I had never cared. I had loved, laughed and wandered
+away with the stroller's happy liberty, but I had never cared. Now, all
+at once, the whole world seemed dead--dead heaven and earth--and only
+one woman's two eyes left living in the universe, living and looking
+into my soul and burning it to ashes. Do you know what I mean? No? Ah,
+then you know not love.
+
+All the night I lay awake--the short hot night when the western gold of
+sunset scarce fades into dark ere the east seems to glow luminous and
+transparent with the dawn. Ah! the sunrise! I shall see it once more,
+only once more! I shall see it through those bars, a hand's breadth of
+it above Tiber, no more; and when again it spreads its rosy warmth over
+the sky and reddens the river and the plain, I shall be dead--a headless
+thing pushed away under the earth and lime, and over my brain and skull
+the wise men will peer with knife and scalpel, and pour the plaster over
+its bones to take a cast, and say most likely to one another, as I heard
+them say once before a cast in a museum, "A good face, a fair brow, fine
+lines: strange that he should have been a murderer!" Well! so be it.
+Even though I lived for fourscore years and ten, the sun would nevermore
+rise for me as it rose before Phoebus died.
+
+At that time I lived only to see a shadow on the barred windows, a hand
+open a lattice, a veiled head glide by through the moonbeams. I was
+wretched, yet never had I been so happy. The bolt of the gods stuns as
+it falls, but it intoxicates also.
+
+I had been such a fool! such a fool! When she had said so much I had
+said nothing: that last moment haunted me with unending pain. If I had
+been bolder, if I had only known what to answer, if I had only seized
+her in my arms and kissed her! It would have been better to have had
+that one moment, and have died for it, than have been turned out of her
+presence like a poor cowardly clod.
+
+I cannot tell how the long hot days went on: they were days of drought
+to the land, but they were days of paradise to me. The fever-mists were
+heavy and the peasants sickened. Tiber was low, and had fetid odors as
+its yellow shallows dried up in the sun, clouds of gnats hovered over
+the Lagherello and its beds of rushes, and the sullen wind blew always
+from the south-east, bringing the desert sand with it. But to me this
+sickly summer was so fair that I continued to live in the absent
+shepherd's empty hut. I continued to net the fish when I could, and now
+and again I saw her. I lived only in the hope of seeing her face. She
+had the evil eye. Well, let it rest on me and bring me all woe, so that
+only I might live in its light one day! So I said in my madness, not
+knowing.
+
+I must have looked mad at that time to the few scattered peasants about
+the pool. I lived on a handful of maize, a crust of bread. I cast my
+nets in the water, and once or twice went up to Sant' Aloïsa with the
+small fish, and was sent away by the crone Marietta. August passed, and
+the time drew nigh for the gathering of the grapes, ripe here sooner
+than in the Lombard and the Tuscan plains. But the vintage of Sant'
+Aloïsa was slight, for the ground was covered with olives in nearly
+every part. When they were stripping what few poor vines there were I
+offered myself for that work. I thought so I might behold her. There was
+no mirth on the lands of Taddeo Marchioni: the people were poor and
+dull. Fever that came from the river and the swamps had lessened their
+numbers by death and weakened those who were living: my strength was
+welcome to those ague-stricken creatures.
+
+The day of the gathering was very hot: no rain had fallen. The oxen in
+the wains were merely skin and bone: their tongues were parched and
+swollen in their muzzled mouths. The grass had been long all burnt up,
+and the beasts famished: the air was stifling, pregnant with storm.
+
+Amidst the sere and arid fields, and the woods, black and gray, of ilex
+and of olive, the great old square house rose before us, pale, solitary,
+mysterious--a mausoleum that shut in living creatures: it terrified me.
+
+Night fell as the last wagon, loaded with the last casks of grapes,
+rolled slowly with heavy grinding wheels toward the cellars of Sant'
+Aloïsa. With the wagon there were a few men enfeebled with fever, a few
+women shivering with ague. I walked behind the wagon, pushing it to aid
+the weary oxen. There was no moon: here and there a torch flickered in a
+copper sconce filled with oil. The courtyard and the cellar were of
+enormous size: in the old times Sant' Aloïsa had sheltered fifteen
+hundred men. In the darkness, where a torch flared when he passed, I saw
+now and then Taddeo Marchioni coming and going, giving orders in his
+high, thin voice, screaming always, swearing sometimes, always
+suspecting some theft. He did not see me. He was entirely absorbed in
+his vintage and in the rebukes he hurled at his peasants. I drew back
+into the shadow, leaning against the column of the gateway, a huge wall
+blackened with time and damp. The bell of the old clock-tower sounded
+the nineteenth hour of the night. All at once the servant Marietta
+muttered in my ear, "Go in: she wants to speak with you. Go in to the
+tapestry-room on the other side of the house: you remember."
+
+My blood bounded in my veins. I asked nothing better of Fate. I glided
+along the old walls, leaving the central court and the master there
+absorbed in his work, and I found with some difficulty the little
+side-door by which I had entered the house before. I trembled from head
+to foot, as in that hour. I felt myself all at once to be ugly, heavy,
+stupid, a brute to frighten any woman--sweating from the labors of the
+day, covered with dust, poor and frightful in my rough hempen shirt,
+with my naked legs and my bare knees impregnated with the juice of the
+grapes. And I dared to love this woman--I! Loved her, though she had
+slain Phoebus.
+
+My mind was all in confusion: I was no longer master of myself. I
+scarcely drew breath; my head was giddy; I staggered as I went along
+those endless galleries and passages, as I had done that day when
+Phoebus had fallen on the sand of my arena. At last I reached--how I
+knew not--the room of the _arazzi_, scarcely lighted by a lamp of bronze
+that hung from the ceiling by a chain. In the twilight I saw the woman
+with the fatal gaze, with the lips of rose, with the features of
+Lucrezia, of Venus, the woman who in all ages has destroyed man.
+
+Then I forgot that I was a laborer, a peasant, a juggler, a wrestler, a
+vagabond--that I was clad in coarse linen of hemp--that I was dirty and
+filthy and ignorant and coarse. I forgot myself: I only remembered my
+love--my love immense as the sky, omnipotent as Deity. I fell on my
+knees before her. I only cried with stifled voice, "I am yours! I am
+yours!" I did not even ask her to be mine. I was her slave, her tool,
+her servitor, her thing, to be cherished or rejected as she would. I
+shivered, I sobbed. I had never known before, it seemed to me, what love
+could be; and it made a madman of me.
+
+All the while she said nothing: she let me kiss her gown, her feet, the
+stone floor on which she stood. Suddenly and abruptly she said only,
+"You are a droll creature: you love me, really--you?"
+
+Then I spoke, beside myself the while. I remember nothing that I said:
+she heard me in silence, standing erect above me where I kneeled. The
+light was very faint; the lamp swung to and fro on its bronze chain; I
+saw only the eyes of the woman burning their will into mine. She bent
+her head slightly: her voice was very low. She said only, "I have known
+it a long time. Yes, you love me, but how? How?"
+
+How? I knew no words that could tell her. Human tongues never have
+language enough for that: a look can tell it. I looked at her.
+
+She trembled for a moment as though I had hurt her. Soon she regained
+her empire over herself. "But how?" she muttered very low, bending over
+me her beautiful head, nearly touching mine. "But how? Enough to--?"
+
+She paused. Enough? Enough for what? Enough to deny heaven, to defy
+hell, to brave death and torment, to do all that a man could do: who
+could do more?
+
+"And I love you--I." She murmured the words very low: the evening wind
+which touches the roses was never softer than her voice. She brushed my
+hair with her lips. "I love you," she repeated. "For you are strong, you
+are strong."
+
+Kneeling before her there, I took her in my arms. I drew her close to
+me: I drank the wine of Paradise--the wine that makes men mad.
+
+But she stopped me, drew herself away from me, yet gently, without
+wrath. "No," she said, "not yet, not yet." Then she added, lower still,
+"You must deserve me."
+
+Deserve her? I did not comprehend. I knew well that I did not deserve my
+joy, poor fool that I was, mere man of the people, with the trestles of
+the village fair for all my royal throne. But, since she loved me, a
+crowd of ideas confused and giddy thronged on my brain and whirled madly
+together. Up above in the belfries and the towers in my infancy, with
+the clear blue air about me and the peopled world at my feet, I had
+dreamed so many foolish gracious things--things heroical, fantastical,
+woven from the legends of saints and the poems of wandering minstrels.
+When she spoke to me thus these old beautiful fancies came back to my
+memory. If she wished me to become a soldier for her sake, I thought--
+
+She looked at me, burning my soul with her eyes, that grew sombre yet
+brilliant, like the Tiber water lighted by a golden moon. "You must
+deserve me," she repeated: "you must deliver me. You are strong."
+
+"I am ready," I answered. I was still kneeling before her. I had at my
+throat a rude cross that my mother had hung there in my childish years.
+I touched the cross with my right hand in sign of oath and
+steadfastness. "I am ready," I said to her. "What do you wish?"
+
+She answered, "You must free me. You are strong."
+
+Even then I did not understand. "Free?" I repeated. "You would fly with
+me?"
+
+She gave a gesture, superb, impatient, contemptuous. She drew herself
+backward and more erect. Her eyes had a terrible brilliancy in them. She
+was so beautiful, but as fierce in that hour as the wild beast that I
+saw once at a fair break from its cage and descend amidst the people,
+and which I strangled in my arms unaided.
+
+She murmured through her closed teeth, "You must kill him. You are
+strong."
+
+With a bound I rose to my feet. In the burning night an icy cold chilled
+my blood, my limbs, my heart.
+
+Kill him? Whom? The old man? I, young and strong as I was, and his
+wife's lover?
+
+I looked at her. What will be the scaffold to-morrow to me, since I have
+lived through that moment?
+
+She looked at me, always with her sorceress's eyes. "You must kill him,"
+she said briefly. "It will be so easy to you. If you love me it will be
+done. If not--farewell."
+
+A horrible terror seized on me. I said nothing. I was stupefied. The
+gloomy shadows of the chamber surrounded us like a mystic vapor; the
+pale figures of the tapestries seemed like the ghosts arisen from the
+grave to witness against us; the oppressive heat of the night hour lay
+on our heads like an iron hand.
+
+A phantom parted us: the spectre of a cowardly crime had come between
+us.
+
+"You do not love me," she said slowly. She grew impatient, angered,
+feverish: a dumb rage began to work in her. She had no fear.
+
+I drew my breath with effort. It seemed as if some one were strangling
+me. Kill him! Kill him! These ghastly words re-echoed in my ears. Kill
+an old and feeble man? It was worse than a crime: it was a cowardice.
+
+"You do not love me," she repeated with utter scorn. "Go--go!"
+
+A cry to her sprang from my very soul: "Anything else, anything but
+that! Ask my own life, and you shall have it."
+
+"I ask what I wish."
+
+As she answered me thus she drew herself in all her full height upward
+under the faint radiance from the lamp. Her magnificent beauty shone in
+it like a grand white flower of the datura under the suns of autumn. A
+disdain without bounds, without limit, without mercy, gleamed from her
+eyes. She despised me--a man of the people, a public wrestler, a bravo,
+only made to kill at his mistress's order, only of use to draw the
+stiletto in secrecy at the whim and will of a woman.
+
+I was Italian, yet I dared not slay a feeble old man in the soft dark of
+a summer night, to find my reward on the breast of his wife.
+
+Silence fell between us. Her eyes of scorn glanced over me, and all her
+beauty tempted me and cried to me, "Kill, kill, kill! and all this is
+thine!"
+
+Then her eyes filled with tears, her proud loveliness grew humble, and,
+a supplicant, she stretched out her arms to me: she cried, "Ah, you love
+me not: you have no pity. I may live and die here: you will not save me.
+You are strong as the lions are--you are so strong, and yet you are
+afraid."
+
+I shook in all my limbs. Yes, I was afraid--I was afraid of her, afraid
+of myself. I shivered: she looked at me always, her burning eyes now
+humid and soft with tears.
+
+"In open war, in combat, all you wish," I said to her slowly. "But an
+old man--in secret--to be his assassin--"
+
+My voice failed me. I saw the light in the lamp that swung above,
+oscillating between us: it seemed to me like the frail life of Taddeo
+Marchioni that swung on a thread at our will.
+
+She drew herself upward once more. Her tears were burned up in the fires
+of a terrible dumb rage. She cried aloud, "You are a coward. Go!"
+
+I fell once more at her feet; I seized her by her gown; I kissed her
+feet. "Any other thing!" I cried to her in my anguish--"any other thing!
+But the life of a weak old man! It would be horrible. I am not a coward:
+I am brave. It is for cowards to kill the feeble: I cannot. And you
+would not wish it? No, no, you would not wish it? It is a dream, a
+nightmare! It is not possible. I adore you! I adore you! I am a madman.
+I am yours; I give you my life; I give you my body and my soul. But to
+kill a feeble old man that I could crush in my arms as a fly is stifled
+in wine! No, no, no! Any other thing, any other thing! But not that."
+
+She thrust me from her with her foot. "That or nothing," she said
+coldly.
+
+The sweat fell from my brow in the agony of this horrible hour. I was
+ready to give my life for her, but an old man, a murder done in secret!
+All my soul revolted.
+
+"But you love me!" I cried to her; and a great sob rose in my throat.
+
+"You refuse to do this thing?" she answered.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Then she threw me away from her with the strength of a tigress:
+"Imbecile! You thought I loved you? I should have used you: that is
+all."
+
+The lamp went out: the darkness was complete. I stretched my hands out,
+to meet but empty air. If I were alone I could not tell: I touched
+nothing, I heard nothing, I saw nothing. A strange giddiness came upon
+me; my limbs trembled under the weight of my body and gave way; I lost
+consciousness. It is what we call in this country a stroke of the blood.
+
+When my senses revived I opened my eyes. It was still night about me,
+but a pallid light shone into the chamber, for the moon had risen, and
+its rays penetrated through the iron bars of the high windows. I
+remembered all.
+
+I rose with pain and effort: the heavy fall on the stone floor had
+bruised and strained me. A great stupor, the stupor of horror, had
+fallen upon me. I felt all at once old, quite old. The thought of my
+mother passed through my mind for the first time for many days. My poor
+mother!
+
+By the light of the moon I tried to find my way out of this chamber--a
+chamber accursed. I gained the entrance of the gallery. Silence reigned
+everywhere. I could not tell what hour it was. The lustre from the skies
+sufficed to illumine fitfully the vast and sombre passages. I found the
+door by which I had entered the house, and I felt the hot air of the
+night blow upon my forehead, as hot now as it had been at noonday.
+
+I passed into the great open court. Above it hung the moon, late risen,
+round, yellow, luminous. I looked upward at it: this familiar object
+seemed to me a strange and unknown thing. I walked slowly across the
+pavement of the courtyard on a sheer instinct, as you may see a wounded
+dog walk, bearing death in him. My heart seemed like a stone in my
+breast: my blood seemed like ice in my veins. All around me were the
+walls of Sant' Aloïsa, silent, gray, austere.
+
+My foot touched something on the ground. I looked at it. It was a thing
+without form--a block of oak wood or a slab of marble?--yet I looked at
+it, and my eyes were rooted there and could not look elsewhere. The moon
+shed a sinister white light upon this thing. I looked long, standing
+there motionless and without power to move. Then I saw what it was, this
+shapeless thing: it was the body of Taddeo Marchioni--dead, horribly
+dead, fallen face downward, stretched out upon the stones, a knife
+plunged into the back of the throat, and left there. He had been stabbed
+from behind.
+
+I looked, I saw, I understood: it was her act.
+
+I stooped; I touched the corpse; I turned the face to the light; I
+searched for a pulse of life, a breath. There was none: he was dead. A
+single blow had been given, and the blow had been sure. A ghastly
+grimace distended the thin lips of the toothless mouth; the eyes were
+starting from their orbits; the hands were clenched: it had been a death
+swift, silent, violent, terrible.
+
+I drew out the knife, deep buried in the bone of the throat below the
+skull. It was my knife, the same with which I had slashed asunder the
+boughs of the vines in the day just gone in the vintage-fields. She had
+taken it, no doubt, from my girdle when I had fallen at her feet.
+
+"I understand," I said to the dead man: "it is her work."
+
+The dead mouth seemed to laugh.
+
+A casement opened on the court. A voice cried aloud. The voice was hers:
+it cried for help. From the silent dwelling came a sound of hurrying
+feet: the flame of a torch borne in a peasant's hand fell red on the
+livid moonlight.
+
+She came with naked feet, with unloosed hair, as though roused from her
+bed, beautiful in her disarray, and crying aloud, "An assassin! an
+assassin!"
+
+I understood all. She meant to send me to the scaffold in her place. It
+was my knife: that would be testimony enough for a tribunal. Justice is
+blind.
+
+She cried aloud: they seized me, and the dead man lay between us,
+stretched on the stones and bathed in blood. I looked at her: she did
+not tremble.
+
+But she had forgotten that I was strong--strong with the strength of the
+lion, of the bull, of the eagle. She had forgotten. With a gesture I
+flung far away from me, against the walls, the men who had seized me:
+with a bound I sprang upon her. I took her in my arms in her naked
+loveliness, scarcely veiled by the disordered linen, by the loosened
+hair, and shining like marble in the glisten of the moon. I seized her
+in my arms; I kissed her on her lips; I pressed against my heart her
+beautiful white bosom. Then between her two breasts I plunged my knife,
+red with the blood of her dead lord. "I avenge Phoebus," I said to
+her.
+
+Now you know why to-morrow they will kill me, why my mother is mad.
+
+Hush! I am tired. Let me sleep in peace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And on the morrow he slept.
+
+OUIDA.
+
+
+
+
+STUDIES IN THE SLUMS.
+
+
+III.--NAN; OR, A GIRL'S LIFE.
+
+"An' this one? Lord have mercy on her, an' forgive me for saying it the
+way I do every time I look at her! It comes out of itself, an' there's
+times when I could think for a minute that He will; an' then it comes
+over me like a blackness on everything that her chance is gone. Look at
+that one by her. Ain't he a rough? Ain't he just fit for the Rogues'
+Gallery, an' nowhere else? And yet--Well, it's a long story, an' you
+won't want to hear it all."
+
+"Every word," I said. "For once, we are all alone, and the rain pours
+down so nobody is likely to interrupt. Such a face as that could hardly
+help having a story, and a strange one."
+
+"The most of it happens often enough, but I'll tell you. You think it's
+pretty, but that black an' white thing doesn't tell much. If you could
+once have looked at her, you'd have wanted to do something, same as
+'most everybody did when the time for doin' was over. Let me get my bit
+of work, an' then I'll tell you."
+
+It was in the "McAuley Mission-parlor." The street below, cleared by the
+pouring rain, was comparatively silent, though now and then a sailor
+swung by unmindful of wet, or the sound of a banjo came from the
+tenement-houses opposite. Below us, in the chapel, the janitor scrubbed
+vigorously to the tune which seems for some unknown reason to be always
+a powerful motive-power,
+
+    "I'm goin' home, no more to roam,"
+
+the brush coming down with a whack at each measure. In my hands was the
+mission album, a motley collection of faces, as devoid of Nature or any
+clew to the real characteristics of the owners as the average photograph
+usually is, but here and there one with a suggestion of interest and, in
+this special case, of beauty--a delicate, pensive face, with a mass of
+floating hair, deep, dark eyes, and exquisite curves in cheek and lip
+and chin--the face of some gently born and nurtured maiden, looking
+dreamily out upon a world which thus far, at least, could have shown her
+only its tender, never its cruel or unfriendly, side, and not, as its
+place would indicate, that of one who had somehow and at some strange
+time found a home in these slums. Beauty of a vulgar, striking sort is
+common enough there--vivid coloring, even a sparkle and light poverty
+has had no power to kill--but this face had no share in such dower, and
+the dark, soft eyes had a compelling power which made mine search them
+for their secret,--not theirs, after all, it might prove, but only a
+gift from some remote ancestor, who could transmit outline, and even
+expression, but not the soul that had made them.
+
+Mrs. McAuley slipped the picture from its place as she sat down by me
+again. "I ought to have done that long ago," she said. "Jerry is always
+telling me I've no business to keep it where everybody can look at it
+an' ask about her; an' I hadn't, indeed, for it brings up a time I'd
+hardly think or talk about unless I had to for some good. I'll put it
+away with two or three more I keep for myself; an' Jerry'll be glad of
+it, for he hates to think of her, 'most as much as I do.
+
+"Her father and mother? Ah, that's it: if she'd had _them_! But, you
+see, her mother was a young thing that wasn't used to roughing it, an'
+this Nan only a baby then. They were decent English folks, an' he looked
+like a gentleman; but all we know was that she died of ship-fever on the
+passage over, an' was buried at sea; an' he had it too, an' came 'most
+as nigh dyin', an' just had strength to crawl ashore with Nan in his
+arms. He'd a cousin in the Bowery, a woman that kept a little store for
+notions, but didn't make any headway on account of two drinkin' sons;
+an' he went to her, an' just fell on the floor before he'd half finished
+his story. She put him to bed, and, though the sons swore he shouldn't
+stay, an' said they'd chuck him out on the sidewalk, she had her way. It
+didn't take him long to die, an' he'd a good bit of money that
+reconciled them; but when he was gone there was the baby, just walkin'
+an' toddlin' into everything, an' would scream if Pete came near her. He
+was the oldest, an' he hated her worse than poison, an' about once in so
+often he'd swear he'd send her to the orphan asylum or anywhere that
+she'd be out of his sight. Jack didn't care one way or another, but the
+mother was just bound up in the little thing; an' she was, they said,
+just that wonderful-lookin' that people stopped an' stared at her. Her
+eyes weren't black, as they look there, but gray, with those long curly
+lashes that looked innocent an' baby-like to the very last minute; and
+her hair--oh, you never saw such hair! Not bleached out, as they do it
+now, to a dead yellow, but a pure gold-color, an' every thread of it
+alive. I've taken hold of it many a time to see it curl round my finger,
+an' the little rings of it lying round her forehead; an' her face to the
+last as pure-lookin' as a pearl--clear an' soft, you know--an', when I
+saw her first, with a little color in her cheeks no deeper than the pink
+in a pink rose.
+
+"Now, it'll seem to you like a bit out of the _Police Gazette_ or those
+horrid story-papers, but, do you know, when she wasn't three Pete came
+home one night just drunk enough to be cunnin', an' he said, after he'd
+had his supper, he wanted to take the child a little way, only round the
+corner, to show her to some friends of his. Mrs. Simpson said
+No--whoever wanted to see her could come there, but she shouldn't let
+her be taken round. The shop-bell rang that minute, an' she went out. It
+wasn't ten minutes, but when she came back Pete an' the child weren't
+there. She ran to the door an' looked up an' down the street, but it was
+twelve years before she ever saw that child again. Pete was gone a week,
+an' when he come home not a word would he say but that the child was
+safe enough, an' he'd had enough of her round under foot. They had high
+words. She told him he should never have another cent till Nan was
+brought back, an' he went out swearin' an' cursin', to be brought home
+in half an hour past any tellin' in this world. He'd been knocked down
+an' run over by a fire-engine, an', though there was life enough left to
+look at his mother an' try to speak, speak he couldn't.
+
+"Well, there was nothin' that woman didn't do, far as her money would
+go. She'd a nephew was a policeman, an' he hunted, an' plenty more, but
+never a sign or a word. She couldn't get out much on account of the
+shop, but whenever she did there wasn't a beggar with a child that she
+wouldn't stop an' look with all her eyes to see if it might be Nan. You
+wouldn't think anybody would take a child that way to be tormented with,
+when there's hundreds runnin' round loose that nobody claims; but, for
+all that, it's done. Not as often as people think. There's more
+kidnappin' in the story-papers than ever gets done really, but it _does_
+happen now and then. An' New York's a better place to hide in than
+anywheres out of it. I know plenty of places this minute where the
+police couldn't find a man if they hunted a month.
+
+"Pete Simpson took this child to a hole in the Five Points, rag-pickers
+an' beggars an' worse, an' gave her to a woman that took children that
+was wanted out o' the way. He paid her a dollar, an' said she could make
+enough out of her to pay for the trouble, she was so fair-lookin'. She
+was one of the women that sit round with a baby an' one or two children
+close to her, mostly with laudanum enough to make 'em stupid.
+
+"Nan was spirited, an' she screamed an' fought, but blows soon hushed
+her. She remembered, she's told me. She didn't know where she'd come
+from, but she knew it was clean an' decent, an' she wouldn't eat till
+hunger made her. Then there was a long time she came up with three or
+four that made a kind of a livin' pickin' pockets an' a turn now an'
+then as newsboys, or beggin' cold victuals an' pickin' up any light
+thing they could see if they were let in. Nan changed hands a dozen
+times, an' she never would have known where she come from if Charley
+Calkins hadn't kept half an eye to her. He was six years older, an'
+nobody knew who he belonged to; an' he an' Nan picked rags together, an'
+whatever trick he knew he taught her. They cropped her hair, an' dirt
+hid all the prettiness there was, but by ten she'd learned enough to get
+any bit of finery she could, an' to fight 'em off when they wanted to
+cut her hair still. She'd dance an' sing to any hand-organ that come
+along; an' that was where I saw her first--when she was twelve, I should
+think--with a lot o' men an' boys standin' round, an' she dancin' an'
+singin' till the very monkey on the organ danced too. I was in a house
+on Cherry street then, with some girls that played at a variety theatre
+on the Bowery, an' Nan by this time was so tall they'd made her a
+waiter-girl in one of the beer-shops. It was there the theatre-man saw
+her one day goin' down to the ferry. He thought she was older, for she
+never let on, an' she was tall as she ever was, an' her hair floatin'
+back the way she would always have it. She could read. She'd been to
+school one term, because she would, an' she had a way with her that
+you'd think she was twenty. So it didn't take long. The variety-man said
+he'd make her fortune, an' she thought he would; an' next day she come
+an' told me she had agreed for three years.
+
+"She didn't know there was work in it, but she soon found there was just
+as much drudgery as in the rag-pickin' or a beer-shop. But she had an
+ambition. She said she'd started here, an' she would stay an' learn
+everything there was, but she believed she should be an actress in the
+Old Bowery yet. That seemed a great thing to me in those days, an' I
+looked at her an' wondered if she knew enough, an' if she'd speak to us
+when she got there. She was so silent sometimes that it daunted us, an'
+then she'd have spells of bein' wilder than the wildest; but she said
+straight enough, 'I'm not goin' to stay down in this hole: I'm goin' to
+be rich an' a lady; an' you'll see it.'
+
+"The time came when she did get to the Old Bowery, an' the manager glad
+to have her too. The variety-man swore he'd kill her for leavin', for
+she drew at the last bigger houses than he ever had again. How she
+learned it all you couldn't tell, but the night we all turned out to see
+her in _The Rover's Bride_ you'd have said yourself she was
+wonderful--painted of course, and fixed off, but a voice that made you
+cry, an' a way just as natural as if she believed every word she said.
+An' when she came out the third time, after such a stampin' an' callin'
+as you never heard, with her eyes shinin' an' _such_ a smile, I cried
+with all my might.
+
+"It was the very next day. Charley Calkins was bar-tender in a saloon,
+but getting off whenever he could to see Nan act. That was another
+thing. She wouldn't take any fancy name, but was Nan Evans straight
+through--on the bills an' everywhere--an' every one she'd grown up with
+went to see her, an' felt sort of proud to think she belonged to the
+Fourth Ward. An' a strange thing was, that, though so many were after
+her, she never seemed to care for anybody but this Charley, that had
+knocked her round himself, though he wouldn't let anybody else.
+
+"Well, the old woman that had taken her first was dyin'. She was
+Charley's aunt, an' so she sent for him, for want of any other relation,
+an' told him she'd a little money for him, an' was a mind to give a
+little to Nan. Charley said, 'All right!' He knew she most likely had a
+good bit, for they often do, but then he said, 'You've always kept to
+yourself where you got Nan, an' I'm a mind to know.'--'Simpson's, up the
+Bowery,' she said; an' that was the very last word she ever spoke. She
+left thirteen hundred dollars in the Bowery Bank, an' it seemed as if
+there were odd sums in every bunch of rags in the room, so that Charley
+had enough to set him up pretty well. An' it didn't take him long after
+he started his own saloon near the theatre to find out, among all the
+Simpsons, the woman that had had Nan. She had her store still, an' a
+young woman to help her, an' she cried a little when Charley told her.
+But she was a member of the Mott Street Church, an' when she said,
+'Where is she now? and why don't she come herself?' an' Charley said,
+'She couldn't, because rehearsal's going on,' she looked at him.
+
+"'Re-what?' says she.
+
+"'Re-hearsal: she's an actress,' says he; an' she shut her eyes up as if
+the sight of him after such words was poison.
+
+"'I want nothing to do with her,' says she. 'I've had my fill of sorrow
+an' trouble from wickedness. You can go, an' say no more.'
+
+"This didn't suit Charley, for he knew how Nan kept herself sort of
+respectable even when she was with the worst, an' he was bound to find
+out all he could.
+
+"Well, he hung on an' asked questions till he'd found out all there was,
+an' that was little, as you know. But Nan had wondered many a time where
+she came from, an' if she'd ever belonged to anybody, an' he wanted to
+be the first one to tell her. He scared the old lady, for he wasn't long
+from the Island, where he'd been sent up for assault an' battery, an',
+do what you would to him, clothes nor nothin' could ever make him look
+like anything but a rough. But he was bound to know, for he thought
+there might be money belonging to her or folks that would do for her.
+There wasn't a soul, though, that he could find out, an' the next thing
+was to go to Nan an' tell her about it. They'd have been wiser to have
+waited a day, till the old lady'd a chance to quiet down and think it
+all over; but he went straight to Nan an' told her he'd found some of
+her folks; an' she, without a word, put on her hat an' went with him. If
+she'd been alone it might have been better, for Charley seemed worse
+than he was. The old lady was in the room back of the shop, neat as a
+pin, an' Nan looked as if she was looking through everything to see if
+she could remember.
+
+"An' when the old lady saw her there was a minute she cried again an'
+took hold of Nan. 'It's her very look,' she said, 'an' her hair an'
+all;' but then she stiffened. 'I've no call to feel sure,' she said,
+'but if you are Nan, an' want to be decent, an' will give up all your
+wickedness, an' come here an' repent, I'll keep you.'
+
+"'Wickedness?' Nan says, sort of bewildered--'repent?'
+
+"'I don't know as it would do, either,' the old lady said, beginning to
+be doubtful again. 'A lost creature, that's only a disgrace, so that I
+couldn't hold my head up, any more'n I can when I think how Pete went: I
+couldn't well stand it.'
+
+"'You won't have to,' said Nan, with her head high. 'I did think I'd
+found some folks, but it seems not;' an' out she went.
+
+"Charley shook his fist an' swore. 'Nice folks, Christians are!' he
+said. 'I like 'em,----'em! I'd like to burn her shop over her head!'
+
+"'Nonsense!' Nan said, as if she didn't mind a bit. 'I thought it would
+feel good to have somebody I belonged to, but it wouldn't. I never could
+stand anything like her shaking her head over me; but it's strange how
+I've always been hoping, an' now how I don't care.'
+
+"Then Charley told her she'd better go home with him: he'd got a
+comfortable, nice place, an' he'd never bother her. They'd talked it
+over many a time, but she'd held off, always thinking she might find her
+folks.
+
+"Marriage didn't mean anything to either of them. How could it, coming
+up the way they had? though she'd never been like the other girls. You
+can't think how they could be the heathen they were? Remember what
+you've seen an' heard in this very place, an' then remember that ten
+years ago, even, a decent man or woman didn't dare go up these alleys
+even by daylight, an' the two or three missionaries were in danger of
+their lives; an' you'll see how much chance they'd had of learning.
+
+"Nan wasn't sixteen then, an' she didn't think ahead, though if she had
+likely she would have done the same. She had her choice, but she'd
+always known Charley, an' so it ended that way.
+
+"Then came a long time when my own troubles were thick, an' I went off
+to the country an' lost sight of her. It was two years before I came
+back, an' then everything was changed. All that set I'd known seemed to
+have gone to the bad together--some in prison and some dead. Jerry was
+out then, an' we were married an' began together in the little room down
+the street; an' now I thought often of Nan. They told me Charley was
+drinkin' himself to death, an' that she was at the theatre still, an'
+kept things goin' with her money, an' that he knocked her round, when he
+was out of his head, the worst way. It wasn't long before I went to her.
+She looked so beautiful you wouldn't think a fiend could want to hurt
+her, an' her eyes had just the look of that picture. I told her how I
+had turned about, an' how happy we both were, in spite of hard times an'
+little work; but she listened like one in a dream, an' I knew enough to
+see that I should have to tell her many times before she would
+understand or care. But she seemed so frail I couldn't bear to leave her
+so. An' the worst of it was, that she'd begun to wish Charley would
+marry her, an' he thought it was all nonsense, an' swore at her if she
+said a word about it. She'd been gettin' more and more sensible, an'
+he'd just been goin' the other way, but she kept her old fondness for
+him. I said nothing then, but one day I found her cryin', an' her arm so
+she could hardly move it; an' it came out he'd knocked her down, an'
+told her she could clear out when she liked, for he was sick of her pale
+face an' her big eyes an' her airs, an' meant to bring a woman there
+with some life in her."
+
+"'Things don't come out as we plan,' she said. 'I was going to be a
+lady, but I forgot that anybody had anything to do with it but myself.
+An' now I can't go to any decent place, an' Charley doesn't want me any
+longer. See how nice it all looks here, Maria. I've fixed it myself, an'
+I've always been so glad that after the play was over I could come
+_home_--not to somebody else's room, but my own place--an' I never
+thought there was any reason why it wouldn't always be my place. Men
+aren't like women. I was true to Charley, and I'll never think of
+anybody else; but he says I must get out of this.'
+
+"Well, I wanted her to understand that I knew plenty would help her, an'
+I tried to tell her she could begin a different life; but she just
+opened her eyes, astonished at me.
+
+"'You think I'd go to one of those Homes?' she said. 'You're crazy. I
+can make my livin' easy enough at the theatre, even if I'm not so strong
+as I was. What have I done more than anybody, after all? Do you think
+I'd be pointed at an' talked over the way those women are? I'd throw
+myself in the river first! I've learned enough these years. I go to
+church sometimes, an' hear men in the pulpit talk about things I know
+better than they do. I've found out what the good people, the
+respectable people, are like. I've found out, too, what I might have
+been, an' that if I live a thousand years I never can be it in this
+world; an' that's one reason I thought Charley might be willing to marry
+me. But I shall never say anything more now, for, you see, it isn't
+goin' to make so very much matter. I had a bad cold in the spring, an'
+the doctor said then I must be very careful or I should go with
+consumption. See my arm? They said the other day I'd have to do
+something to plump up, but I never shall: I'm goin', an' I'm glad of
+it.'
+
+"'Then, if that's got to be, let it be goin' home,' I said. 'Nan,
+there's everything waitin' for you if you'll only take it. Come down to
+one of the meetin's an' you'll hear. Won't you?'
+
+"'I don't understand it,' she said. 'Everything's in a twist. Years an'
+years and never hear of God, an' not a soul come near you to tell about
+Him, an' all at once they say He loves you, and always has. Bah! If He
+loved, an' people think about it as they pretend, how dare they let
+there be such places for us to come up in? If God is what they say, He
+ought to strike the people dead that keep Him to themselves till it is
+too late for us ever to be helped. There! I won't talk about it. I don't
+care: all I want is quiet, an' I'll have it soon.'
+
+"I saw there was no use then, an' I made up my mind. I'd seen this Mrs.
+Simpson, for Nan had told me when it all happened, an' I'd gone to the
+store on purpose; an' I went straight there. 'I've come from Nan,' I
+said, 'but she doesn't know it. She's a dyin' girl, an' as you helped
+the father I want you to help the daughter. You're a Christian woman,
+an' the only soul belongin' to her, an' the time's come to do
+something.'
+
+"'The father was decent,' she said: 'I've nothing to do with
+street-women.'
+
+"'It's through your own son that she grew up to know no better,' I said,
+for I knew the whole story then, though nobody did when she was down
+there. 'It's for you to give her your hand now, an' not throw it up to
+her, any more'n the Lord when he said, "Go, and sin no more." She's in
+trouble an' sick, and doesn't know what way to turn, an' sore-hearted;
+an' if you would go to her in the right way you might save a soul, for
+then she'd believe people meant what they said.'
+
+"'She's the same to me as dead,' she said. 'I mourned her sharp enough,
+but it ain't in nature to take one again after they've been thought
+dead; an' you know they're straight from corruption itself. There's
+places for her to go if she's tired of wickedness, but I don't want to
+see her bold face, an' her head high, as if she was respectable. An' I
+don't want to be plagued no more. I don't deny I lotted on her before
+she was took away, but I never want to think about her again; so you
+needn't come nor send. I've said my say, an' I hope the Lord will save
+her.'
+
+"'It's good He's more merciful than His creatures,' I said; an' I went
+away more angry than I ever want to get. I couldn't quite make it out--I
+can't to this day--how she could mourn so over the child, an' yet never
+have a thought for all the years she'd had to suffer.
+
+"There came a month that everything crowded. I thought of Nan, but
+couldn't go up, till one day Tom Owens came in--you know him--an' he
+said, 'It's all up with Charley Calkins.'
+
+"'How?' I said.
+
+"'Smallpox,' he said, 'an' Nan's dropped everything to nurse him. She'd
+left there, they said, an' the woman he brought in to take her place
+cut the minute she found he had the smallpox. He won't live, they say.'
+
+"This was before they were so particular about carrying them off to
+hospital. The house was cleared an' the saloon shut up, but Nan was
+allowed to stay because she'd been exposed anyway, an' it was no use to
+send her off. He had it the worst way, an' he'd scream an' swear he
+wouldn't die, an' strike out at her, though he couldn't see, his face
+and eyes bein' all closed up. It didn't last but a week, and then he
+died, but Nan hadn't taken off her clothes or hardly slept one instant.
+He was stupid at the last, an' when she saw he was gone she fell on the
+floor in a faint; an' when she come to the blood poured from her mouth,
+an' all they could do was to take her off to the hospital. She didn't
+take the smallpox, but it was a good while before she could be let to
+see anybody. When they thought it was safe she sent for me, but it was
+hard to think it could be the same Nan I'd known. Every breath come with
+pain, and she was wasted to a shadow, but she smiled at me an' drew me
+down to kiss her. 'You see, I sha'n't be troubled or make trouble much
+longer,' she said, 'but oh, if I only could rest!'
+
+"Poor soul! She couldn't breathe lyin' down, nor sleep but a bit at a
+time, an' it was awful to have her goin' so, an' she not twenty.
+
+"I knelt down by her. She had a little room to herself, for she had some
+money yet, and I prayed till I couldn't speak for crying. 'Nan, Nan!' I
+said, 'you're goin' straight to the next world, an' you've got to be
+judged. What will you do without a Saviour? Try to think about it.'
+
+"She patted my hand as if I were the one to be quieted. 'Don't bother,'
+she said: 'I don't mind, an' you mustn't. If He's as good as you say
+He'll see that it's all right. I'm too tired to care: I only want to get
+through. There's nothing to live for, an' I'm glad it's 'most over. I
+want you to come every day, for it won't be long.'
+
+"'Let me bring Jerry,' I said, but she only laughed. She'd known him at
+his hardest, an' couldn't realize he might be different; but after a
+week or two she let him come, an' she'd lie an' listen with a sort of
+wonder as she watched him. But nothing seemed to take hold of her. She
+looked like a flower lyin' there, an' you'd think her only a child, for
+they'd cut her hair, and it lay in little rings all over her head; an'
+Jerry just cried over her, to think that unless she hearkened she was
+lost. She liked to be read to, but you couldn't make her believe,
+somehow, that any of it was real. 'I'd believe it if I could,' she said,
+'but why should I? I don't see why you do. It sounds good, but it
+doesn't seem to mean anything. Why hasn't anybody ever told me before?'
+
+"'Try to believe, only try!' I'd say. 'Ask God to make you. He can, and
+He will if you only ask;' but all she'd say was, 'I don't seem to care
+enough. How can I? If it is true He will see about it.'
+
+"That was only a day or two before the end. The opium, maybe, hindered
+her thinkin', but she looked quiet an' no sign of trouble between the
+coughing-times. The last night of all I stayed with her. They said she
+would go at daybreak, an' I sat an' watched an' prayed, beggin' for one
+word or sign that the Lord heard us. It never came, though. She opened
+her eyes suddenly from a half sleep, and threw out her hands. I took
+one, but she did not know me. She looked toward the east and smiled.
+'Why! are you coming for me?' she said, and then fell back, but that
+look stayed--a smile as sweet as was ever on a mortal face. An' that's
+why I never can help sayin', 'Lord have mercy on her!' and do you wonder
+even when I know better? But--"
+
+HELEN CAMPBELL.
+
+
+
+
+MY TREASURE.
+
+
+    Under the sea my treasure lies--
+    Only a pair of starry eyes,
+    That looked out from their azure skies
+    With innocent wonder, sweet surprise,
+    That they should have strayed from Paradise.
+
+    Under the sea lies my treasure low--
+    Little white hands like flakes of snow,
+    Once soft and warm; and I loved them so!
+    Ah! the tide will come and the tide will go,
+    But their tender touch I shall never know.
+
+    Under the sea--oh, wealth most rare!--
+    Are silken tresses of golden hair,
+    Each amber thread, each lock so fair,
+    Gleaming out from the darkness there,
+    With the same soft light they used to wear.
+
+    Under the sea--oh, treasure sweet!--
+    Lies a curl-crowned head and tiny feet
+    That in days gone by, when the shadows fleet
+    Were growing long in the darkening street,
+    Came bounding forth their love to meet.
+
+    And I sometimes think, as down by the sea
+    I sit and dream, that there comes to me
+    From my darling a message that none may see,
+    Save those who can read love's mystery
+    By Nature written on leaf and tree.
+
+    Strange things to my spirit-eyes lie bare
+    In the azure depths of the summer air:
+    Through the snowy leaves of the lily fair
+    Gleams her pure white soul, and I compare
+    Its golden heart to her sunny hair.
+
+    The perfume nestling among the leaves,
+    Or blown on the wind from the autumn sheaves,
+    Is her spirit of love, my soul believes;
+    And while my stricken heart still grieves
+    That gentle presence its pang relieves.
+
+    A shell is cast by the waves at my feet,
+    With its wondrous music low and sweet;
+    And in its murmuring tones I greet
+    The voice of my love, while its crimson flush
+    From her fair young cheek has stolen the blush.
+
+    Mid white foam, tossed on the pebbly strand,
+    I catch a glimpse of a waving hand:
+    'Tis a greeting that well _I_ understand;
+    But to those who see not the soul of things
+    'Tis only the spray which the wild wave flings.
+
+    The pearl's rare whiteness, the coral's red,
+    From the brow and the lip of my beautiful dead
+    Their soft tints stole when her spirit fled;
+    And it seems to me that sweet words, unsaid
+    By my darling, gleam through the light they shed.
+
+    Thus down by the sea, in the white sunshine,
+    While the winds and the waves their sighs combine,
+    I sit, and wait from my love a sign;
+    And a message comes to my waiting eyes
+    From under the sea where my treasure lies.
+
+H. L. LEONARD.
+
+
+
+
+ON SPELLING REFORM.
+
+
+The agitation for "reform" in English spelling continues, but, so far,
+without involving anything that can be properly called discussion.
+Discussion implies argument on both sides--a striking by twos. Most of
+the appeals to the public on this subject, whether through the
+newspapers and magazines or on the platform, have been made by the
+advocates of the movement. The other side, if another side there be, has
+been comparatively silent, uttering occasionally only words of dissent.
+I presume this follows a law of Nature: those who favor movement move,
+and those who desire peace keep it and are still. But it ought not to be
+inferred that the noise made by the "spelling reformers" is
+representative of the scholarship of the country, or that the silence of
+the conservatives indicates acquiescence in all the propositions
+suggested and urged by the radicals. There is much that can be said that
+has not been said. Some late announcements on the part of those who
+advocate the evisceration of the English language and literature are of
+a kind to call for some reply. I have no desire, at present, to enter
+into an elaborate discussion of the merits or demerits of the new
+departure in literature. The present agitation is only a skirmish, and
+ought not to be dignified by the title of a battle: whether we shall
+have a battle on this skirmish-line remains to be seen.
+
+In the January number of the _Princeton Review_ there appeared a paper
+from the pen of Professor Francis A. March in commendation of the
+"reform." The professor is one of the most active as well as able of
+those who have spoken on that side, and, while he incidentally and
+modestly crowns Mr. George P. Marsh as chief of the movement, his
+fellow-soldiers, if they are wise, will bestow the crown upon him. In
+the article referred to the professor emphasizes his earnestness by
+securing the printing of his admirable paper in the peculiar orthography
+he advocates. This orthography is practically the same as that advocated
+and contended for by the American Philological Association and the
+Spelling-Reform Association. Any criticism, therefore, of the peculiar
+orthography of the professor's paper is a criticism of the adopted
+orthography of the whole body of "reformers," so far as they are agreed,
+for in some details they still disagree.
+
+The readers of the professor's paper will notice that in a large number
+of words the usual terminal _ed_ is changed to _t_. This is in
+accordance with one of the rules recommended by the Spelling-Reform
+Association and laid down authoritatively by the American Philological
+Association. The phraseology of the rule is to make the substitution
+where-ever the final _ed_ "has the sound of _t_." It is to the
+professor's application of this rule that I now desire to call the
+attention of the reader. The "reformers" write _broacht, ceast,
+distinguisht, establisht, introduçt, past, prejudiçt, pronounçt, rankt,
+pluckt, learnt, reduçt, spelt, trickt, uneartht_, and assert that they
+write the words as they pronounce them. In the rule given by the A.P.A.
+for the substitution of _ed_ for _t_, _lasht_ and _imprest_ are given as
+examples.
+
+All of us are undoubtedly aware of the ease with which the sound
+represented by _ed_ can be reduced to a _t_-sound in vocalization. But
+even if the sound of _t_ is given at the termination of the words named,
+not much is gained by the "reform" in the actual use of the words. On
+the contrary, it adds another tangle in the skein which children at
+school must untangle. It either forms another class of regular verbs, or
+swells the already almost unmanageable list of irregular verbs. In
+either case it is shifting the burden from the shoulders of adults to
+those of children, already, as the reformers tell us, overburdened and
+overworked. When a man really and sincerely asks himself the question,
+"Do I pronounce _lashed_ as though written _lasht_?" and tests his own
+practice in that respect, it will not take him long to determine that he
+does not know. It requires a very delicate ear to make the
+determination. This may also be said of most of the words quoted above.
+The terminal _ed_ means something: it means what it purports to mean
+when used. The _t_ may have a meaning, but that meaning cannot accompany
+it when it acts as a substitute for _ed_. The common-sense view would
+be, in cases of doubt, to use letters with a significance you desire to
+convey by their use.
+
+In the paper to which I have referred Professor March informs us that
+"what _the scholars_ want for historical spelling is a simple and
+uniform fonetic system, which shall record the current pronunciation."
+This assumption is not accidental, I think, nor is the spirit of the
+Pharisee confined to Professor March. Nearly all of the advocates of
+this special "reform" assume the prerogative of determining who are and
+who are not "scholars." In the same paper the professor says: "The
+_scholars proper_ have, in truth, lost all patience with the
+etymological objection. 'Save us from such champions!' says Professor
+Whitney: 'they may be allowed to speak for themselves, since they know
+best their own infirmity of back and need of braces: the rest of the
+guild, however, will thank them for nothing.'" Again: "In conclusion, it
+may be observed that it is mainly among _half-taught dabblers_ in
+filology that etymological spelling has found its supporters. _All true
+filologists_ and filological bodies have uniformly denounçt it as a
+monstrous absurdity, both from a practical and a scientific point of
+view." The professor also quotes approvingly Professor Lounsbury as
+saying that the "spelling reform numbers among its advocates _every
+linguistic scholar_ of any eminence whatever." Of course, these
+statements, whether made by Professor March or by the distinguished
+scholars whom he cites, are strong arguments. That the professor so
+considers them is attested by the logical conclusion drawn from them in
+the very next paragraph after the one in which they are given. There he
+says: "It may be taken, then, as certain, and agreed by all whose
+judgment is entitled to consideration, that there are no sound arguments
+against fonetic spelling to be drawn from scientific and historical
+considerations."
+
+We always forgive something to enthusiasts and reformers. They are
+expected to effervesce once in a while, and when they indulge in gush
+and self-appreciation it is taken as a matter of course. Whether or not
+it strengthens or weakens their arguments is yet to be determined. At
+any rate, the exhibit that is made of them and of their intemperance is
+furnished by themselves.
+
+There is an illogical argument for the new spelling drawn from the
+published facts of illiteracy. We are told that the last national census
+reports 5,658,144 persons, ten years of age and over, who cannot read
+and write, and this number is said to be "one-fifth of the whole
+population." The census of 1870 reports a total population of
+38,558,371, and a total of illiterates, ten years of age and over, of
+5,660,074, which is only 14-1/2 per cent. of the total population. This
+is nearer one-seventh than one-fifth. This "one-fifth" the professor
+compares with the number of illiterates in other countries in order to
+bring discredit upon the English language, showing by the comparison
+that there is a larger percentage of illiterates where the English
+language is spoken and written than in non-English Protestant countries.
+He reports illiterates in England at 33 per cent. of the population. "In
+other Protestant countries of Europe they are comparatively few. In
+Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway there are none to speak of; in
+Germany, as a whole, they count 12 per cent., but some of the states
+have none." Professor March asserts that "one of the causes of the
+excessive illiteracy among the English-speaking people is the difficulty
+of the English spelling;" and his argument proceeds on the assumption
+that this is in fact the main cause.
+
+Even if assent be given to the statement that the difficulty attendant
+upon the acquisition of correctness in English orthography is one of the
+causes of English and American illiteracy, the next step is to determine
+the force and efficiency of the cause in that direction; and this
+determination cannot be had on the basis of bald, unguarded and
+extravagant statements such as I have cited. The illiteracy of the
+American people must not be judged by the bare figures given above. The
+census returns furnish data for a more just discrimination. The
+statistician must not forget the item of 777,864 illiterates of foreign
+birth going to swell the grand total. This leaves 4,882,210 native-born
+illiterates--a percentage of less than 13. Of the native-born
+illiterates reported by the census returns, there are 2,763,991 reported
+as colored. This number is more than one-half the colored population,
+and also over one-half of the whole number of reported native
+illiterates. I think none of the reformers would insist that the
+illiteracy of the colored population ought to be charged to "the
+difficulties of English spelling "--I hardly need to state why: the
+reason will readily suggest itself to all.
+
+Eliminating from the problem the foreign and colored factors, we find a
+native white population in 1870 of 28,121,816, and native white
+illiterates, of ten years of age and over, to the number of
+2,102,670--less than 7-1/2 per cent. Of this number of native white
+illiterates, 1,443,956--two-thirds of the whole--are reported from the
+States lately known as Slave States. In these States, as is well known,
+there are peculiar reasons for the illiteracy of the white as well as of
+the colored native, outside of any consideration of the difficulty of
+mastering English orthography. This survey takes no account of the
+native children with foreign parents, as it would not materially disturb
+the percentage, nor of the populations of New Mexico, Arizona, Southern
+California and Colorado, all largely settled by Mexicans and Spaniards,
+among whom there is doubtless a larger percentage of illiterates than
+among the same number of native whites in the Northern States. If
+account be taken of all these elements, I think the percentage of
+illiterates proper to be charged up to the English language and American
+institutions would be reduced to about 3-1/4 per cent.
+
+The next consideration is as to the cause of this large percentage of
+illiterates among the native white population of the United States.
+Professor March ascribes it in part to "the difficulties of the English
+spelling," and he adds: "We ar now having ernest testimony to this fact
+from scholars and educators in England." He names Max Müller and "Dr.
+Morell, one of Her Majesty's inspectors of schools," and quotes from
+both of them. Dr. Morell states that in some examinations for the civil
+service, out of 1972 failures, "1866 candidates were pluckt for
+spelling; that is, eighteen out of every nineteen who faild, faild in
+spelling." Max Müller, as quoted, bears testimony to the fact that in
+the public schools of England 90 per cent. fail "to read with tolerable
+ease and expression a passage from a newspaper, and spell the same with
+tolerable accuracy." This is the substance of the "ernest testimony"
+from "scholars and educators in England." All this testimony has been
+previously given by the same "reformer" and by others without variation
+or corroboration. The facts stated seem to be isolated ones, as well as
+"grand, gloomy and peculiar." One swallow does not make a summer, nor do
+one eminent philologist and one uneminent educator make "scholars and
+educators." But when the testimony is carefully viewed, what does it
+amount to? Some of the very elements necessary in the consideration of
+the testimony are wanting. What was the extent of the failures by the
+candidates for civil service? Did they miss one word or more? Were they
+more deficient in spelling than in other branches? Of the 90 per cent.
+of the public-school pupils who failed, what is the class composing
+those pupils? Were they as deficient in other branches as in spelling?
+What were the newspaper passages selected for trial? What is meant by
+"tolerable ease and expression" and "tolerable accuracy"? According to
+the testimony itself, the reference of Max Müller is to the "new
+schools" established since the late extension of education in England.
+Confessedly, then, this applies to classes of pupils who had formerly
+been deprived of educational advantages and privileges. It is a wonder
+that 10 per cent. were successful. The testimony furnished is more
+"ernest" than valuable.
+
+The state of education in Protestant countries where other languages
+than the English are spoken is taken as a conclusive argument for the
+efficiency of phonetic orthography. Denmark, Norway, Sweden and
+Switzerland are named as shining exemplars in this regard. It is because
+the languages of those countries are orthographic models that the people
+are so highly educated. The general fact is incontrovertible that among
+those people there is less illiteracy than among those who speak the
+English language. As Switzerland has no national language, the Swiss
+people should not have been named except in company with those others
+whose languages they use. But the bare fact of the smaller percentage of
+illiteracy among the people above named is not conclusive as to the
+retarding and depressing influence which the "difficulties of English
+spelling" have upon the spread of education among the American people.
+In Denmark attendance upon school for seven years by every child of
+school age is compulsory. The number of children of school age for 1876
+was 200,761, while the number in attendance upon the public schools was
+194,198, the attendance being 96 per cent. of the whole number of
+children of school age. In addition to the attendance upon the public
+schools, there were 13,994 in attendance upon private schools: some of
+these evidently were above or below school age. We thus see how
+efficiently the compulsory system is enforced. This system is not new to
+that country, but has been in existence for many years, and the results
+seem to justify the statement in the _Report of the Commissioner of
+Education for 1871_, that "even among the lower classes a remarkable
+knowledge of general history and geography, but more especially of
+Scandinavian literature and history," is found.
+
+In Norway, as in Denmark, from the eighth to the fifteenth year
+attendance upon school is obligatory. In 1866, of a total of 212,137
+country children of school age, 206,623, or more than 97 per cent. of
+the whole, were in attendance at school. In the towns and cities less
+than 1 per cent. failed to attend school. In Sweden compulsory
+attendance upon school is the rule. In 1868, of the whole number of
+children of school age, the average attendance amounted to 97 per cent.
+
+There is no general or national system of common-school instruction in
+Switzerland. Each canton regulates its own schools. There, as in
+Denmark, Norway and Sweden, attendance upon schools is made compulsory.
+In 1870 the attendance of children between six and thirteen years of age
+was between 95 and 96 per cent. of the whole school population.
+
+Now, what kind of a school system have we in the United States? Here, as
+in Switzerland, there is no general or national system of school
+instruction. Each State regulates its own schools in all details. In
+1870 the total school population, excluding the Territories, in the
+United States was 14,093,778; the number actually enrolled in the public
+schools was 8,881,848, or 63 per cent. of the whole; and the average
+daily attendance upon the public schools was 4,886,289, or a little over
+34-1/2 per cent. of the school population. An inclusion of the
+Territories in the computation does not vary the percentage in any
+appreciable degree. In the Northern States only, excluding the
+Territories, and excluding also Minnesota and Wisconsin, whose returns I
+have not at hand, there were 8,364,841 school population, while the
+average daily attendance was only 3,720,133, a trifle over 44 per cent.
+
+In the United States there is practically no compulsory attendance upon
+school. Schools are provided by the State, and the children attend or
+refrain from attendance as suits the convenience or wish of the pupils
+or their parents. That compulsory attendance upon school is productive
+of a wider and more thorough diffusion of knowledge is probably conceded
+by all. At least, educators so urge. What would Professor March have?
+Does he expect to find education as thorough and general among a people
+of whose school population less than one-half are in usual attendance at
+school, and less than two-thirds even enrolled as occasional attendants
+at school, as among a people with whom over 95 per cent. of the school
+population are in constant and habitual attendance? When we consider the
+published school statistics of this nation, it is no wonder that about
+one-seventh of the whole are unable to read and write. Shall we give no
+credit to compulsory systems of education, and still insist that the
+illiteracy of the United States is caused in any appreciable degree by
+the "difficulties of English spelling"?
+
+Early in 1879, Professor Edward North assured us that the Italians and
+Spaniards have discarded _ph_ for _f_ in _philosophy_ and its fellows.
+Professor March gleefully records that "the Italians, like the
+Spaniards, have returned to _f_. They write and print _filosofia_" for
+_philosophia_, and _tisica_ for _phthisica_. Professor Lounsbury, in his
+elaborate articles in _Scribner_ lately, commends the Italians for
+writing _tisico_ and the Spaniards for writing _tisica_. These of course
+are commendations of those peoples for the simplicity of their
+orthography, and they are mentioned as worthy examples for us. Yet we
+are not advised by either of the three professors named that the
+Italians and Spaniards are for that reason gaining upon the English
+people in intelligence, educational progress and culture. No statistics
+are advanced disclosing the narrow percentage of illiteracy found in
+Italy and Spain, and a comparison made between that narrow percentage
+and the wide percentage already advertised as existing in
+English-speaking states. If "the difficulties of English spelling" be a
+serious cause of illiteracy in England and the United States, the
+simplicity of the Italian and Spanish spelling ought to be a cause of
+high proficiency in literary and educational attainments among the
+people of Italy and Spain. A commendation of those two nations for their
+taste in discarding "Greek orthography" to be effective ought to be
+supplemented with some evidence of the usefulness of that operation.
+Unless so supplemented, the commendation can have no weight as an
+argument. The Anglo-Saxon race has not been accustomed to follow the
+Latins in literary and educational matters. The past and present
+condition of those two countries affords no guarantee that their
+adoption of the so-called simpler spelling is commendable. There are
+persons whose corroboration of a statement adds no weight to it with
+their neighbors. It adds no force to the arguments of the "reformers"
+that the Italians and Spaniards endorse them.
+
+The demand for "spelling reform" is based upon the assumption that the
+pronunciation constitutes the word--in other words, that the real word
+is the breath by means of which it is uttered. In the word _wished_
+philologists assure us that the letters _e d_ are remains of _did_, as
+if it were written _did wish_; and it certainly has that sense. It is
+proposed to substitute _t_ for the _ed_, because, we are told by the
+"reformers," the _t_ represents the sound given to those two letters. Of
+course the _t_ stands for nothing: it does not represent any idea. It is
+only a character, and its pronunciation only a breath, without any
+significance. The new word cannot mean _did wish_. The "reformers" must
+contend that _wisht_ is the real word, or their position cannot be
+maintained for an instant. If the word still remains _wished_--"_did
+wish_"--though pronounced _wisht_, their proposition to conform the
+spelling to the pronunciation is laughable. There can be no conformation
+and the old words remain. Whenever a change is made in a single letter
+of a word, the word is broken: it is no longer the same word. The new
+form becomes a new word, and there can be no objection to any one giving
+to it any significance he chooses. In a certain sense, and also to a
+certain extent, letters are representative, and are not the real words.
+Before the arts of writing and printing were invented the sound of
+course constituted the representative of the idea sought to be conveyed.
+The invention of the arts of writing and printing brought into use other
+representatives of ideas. The cuneiform characters and the
+hieroglyphics were representatives of ideas, though there could be no
+pronunciation of them. Letters came into use as representatives merely.
+In an age of printing it is hardly correct to say that they are only
+used to signify sounds. They are now more than that: they have become
+more important than the sounds even. They are now representatives of
+ideas, and not of sound. Modifications of pronunciation are taking
+place, and there are variations in the pronunciation of many words, but
+the word as written and printed is the arbiter.
+
+In the Sanscrit we find the verb _kan_ to see, and the later word _gna_,
+to know, as the result of seeing. The words are practically spelled
+alike, each beginning with a guttural sound. The latter could only have,
+at first, the idea of acquiring or possessing knowledge by sight. It is
+evident that the Greek [Greek: gignôschô] and the Latin _gnosco_ came
+directly from the Sanscrit _gna_, after the vowel between the guttural
+_g_, or _k_ and _n_, had been eliminated; and it is also evident that
+the _g_, or guttural sound, with which _gna_ and its Greek and Latin
+children began, was vocalized. The other branch of the Aryan family
+retained the vowel between the guttural sound and the terminal _n_.
+Hence we have the Gothic _kunnan, kænna_, Anglo-Saxon _cunnan_, German
+_kennen_, to examine, to know. Hence, also, our _can_, to know, to be
+able; _cunning_, knowing, skilful; and _know_, to perceive, to have
+knowledge of. While we pronounce _know_ without the guttural sound, the
+word itself and the significance it embodies necessitate the continued
+use of the _k_. The sound of _know_, as we use it, gives no idea of
+sight or of knowledge or of ability. When we hear it articulated, and we
+understand that _know_ is the word meant, we then recognize the sense
+intended to be conveyed. We are able to do this because of our ability
+to construct and give arbitrary significance to new words, and to
+transfer the sense of an old word to one newly formed. When any word is
+used in speech of which the pronunciation does not correspond with the
+letters with which the word is written, we instinctively image the
+written or printed word in the mind, and others apprehend the sense
+intended. I am aware of a certain answer that may be made to
+this--namely, that illiterate persons are able to understand a word only
+from its sound as it falls on their ears; but I am speaking now of a
+civilized language as used by a civilized people, and illiterates and
+their language do not come under this purview.
+
+The movement inaugurated by Professor March and his associates
+contemplates the displacement of the _k_ or guttural sound from _know_
+and _knowledge_, both in writing and speaking. They say, in effect, if
+not in so many words, that because there is no guttural sound in the
+pronunciation, therefore there is none in the word. Some people say
+_again_, pronouncing the word as it is spelled: others say _agen_, as, I
+believe, Professor March does. These two classes mean the same thing,
+but it is quite evident that they do not say the same thing. _Ai_ cannot
+be the equivalent of _e_. To so hold would be to make "confusion worse
+confounded" in English orthography. By one class of literary people
+_neither_ is pronounced as though the _e_ were absent, and by another
+class as though the _i_ were not present. No one, I think, will contend
+for the identity, or even equivalence, of _i_ and _e_. If not identical
+or equivalent, they must be different. If _ai_ is different from _e_,
+then _again_ and _agen_ cannot be the same word, and if _i_ and _e_ are
+neither identical nor equivalent, _nither_ and _neether_ are two
+different words. The logic of the "reformers" would bring the utmost
+confusion into the language. It would make two separate words identical
+in significance. It would make into one word with four different
+meanings the four words _right, rite, write, wright._ The words _signet_
+and _signature_ are formed from the stem _sign_, and yet the stem when
+standing alone has a different vocalization from what it has when used
+in the derivative words. By the logic of the "reformers" the word _sign_
+when used alone is not the same as the same letters, arranged in the
+same order, when used in _signature, signet, resignation_ and the like.
+The word is changed, but the original significance remains. When a
+person responds, even in writing, "It is me," grammarians say he is
+incorrect--that he ought to say "I." But he means the person and thing
+he would mean if he said "I." He simply spells "I" in a different way.
+Is he not just as correct as he who writes _no_ when he means _know_? or
+he who writes _filosofer_ when he means _philosopher_?
+
+But Professor March dogmatically says that "fonetic spelling does not
+mean that every one is to write as he pronounces or as he thinks he
+pronounces. There ar all sorts of people. We must hav something else
+written than 'confessions of provincials.'" This may be understood as
+modifying the idea expressed earlier in the same paper, that the proper
+function of writing "is truthfully to represent the present speech." But
+the difficulties to be encountered in an effort to make the present
+speech homogeneous will baffle the wisdom of the reformers. I will not
+answer the question now--I will only ask it: What is the present speech?
+Who is to determine that? "The scholars formally recognize that there is
+and ought to be a standard speech and standard writing." I do not quite
+seize the idea embodied in the above-quoted sentences about writing as
+we think we pronounce and about "confessions of provincials." We may
+agree that there ought to be, probably, a standard speech, both spoken
+and written. That we have the standard written speech must be confessed,
+or did have until Professor March and his colaborers began the
+publication of their ideas in "bad spelling." The spoken speech is far
+from homogeneity. Some of the most pretentious scholars assume that we
+have a standard of pronunciation. That the standard is not adhered to,
+and is therefore, to all intents and purposes, no standard at all, is
+evident. The learned or college-bred use one pronunciation, and for that
+class that is the standard. Those who are deficient in education do not
+follow that standard. As the educated seem to drift naturally to centres
+of population, there is assumed to be a city standard and a country
+standard of pronunciation. The professor tells us that the country
+standard must be abolished, the city standard adopted, and then the new
+era will open out in beauty. Or does he mean, as his words are open to
+this meaning, that a spoken word is not _the_ word unless it is spoken
+in accordance with the city or college-bred standard? But sound is
+sound, by whomsoever uttered, and if the word is mere sound a provincial
+can make words as well as any one else. The proposition is, _the_ word
+is the word spoken and not the word written, unless the word is spoken
+by a provincial. To be _the_ word, it must be intoned and articulated in
+accordance with the intonation and articulation of the _literati_. If
+this is the logical outcome of the position taken by the "spelling
+reformers," then we know our soundings.
+
+We speak of _progress_ in connection with intellectual, moral,
+religious, social and political matters and civilization. In the use of
+the word we discard its true meaning, "stepping forward" in a physical
+sense. We cannot have an idea that the mind or the morals or the manners
+take steps. So when we say we will consider a matter we do not
+necessarily mean that two or more of us will _sit together_ about the
+matter. When we meet for _deliberation_ there is no process of weighing
+intended, no proposal to use the scales, in arriving at a conclusion in
+the matter we have in mind. We _say_ "stepping forward," "sitting
+together" and "weighing," but we _mean_ something else. When Professor
+Whitney, in the quotation I have given in the early part of this paper,
+says of the spelling conservatives, "They know best their own infirmity
+of back," he has no idea that the back has anything to do with their
+refusal to follow him in his chimerical ramble after an ideal
+orthography. When Professor March, in the paper from which I have
+quoted, says that "a host of scholars are pursuing the historical study
+of the English language," he means something more than, and different
+from, what his words indicate, and he certainly doesn't mean what his
+words do indicate. The matter of pursuit is altogether one of physics.
+These words of an intellectual significance which I have noted are so
+used because we have no words in our language which have meanings such
+as those we attach to them. We are obliged to take words of a physical
+and material significance and use them as intimations of the sense we
+wish to convey. As men take a material substance--gold, silver, ivory,
+wood or stone--and use it as an image or symbol of the deity they
+worship, so we use words of a material sense to express, in some faint
+degree, the intellectual and moral ideas we desire to disclose.
+
+The bald statement, expressed or implied, that the sounds we produce in
+our attempts to utter a word constitute the true word, requires some
+material modification, but to what extent it is not for me now to
+discuss. When that necessity for modification is admitted by the
+reformers, it is for them to survey its limits. They are the aggressors
+in the contest that is precipitated. They must outline and define their
+own case.
+
+There are many considerations favorable to a modification of the present
+spelling of several classes of words. A reform is needed, and must come,
+but it will not come, and ought not to come, with the character and to
+the extent desired by the "reformers." A reform that shall make the
+spelling better, and not merely make it over, should be aided by all
+admirers of the English language. The just limitations of that reform
+have not been indicated yet by any of the "reformers." That those
+limitations will soon be surveyed and marked I do not doubt.
+
+M. B. C. TRUE.
+
+
+
+
+AN OPEN LOOK AT THE POLITICAL SITUATION.
+
+
+Macaulay, in describing the rise of the two great parties which have
+alternately governed England during the last two centuries, traces the
+division to a fundamental distinction which "had always existed and
+always must exist," causing the human mind "to be drawn in opposite
+directions by the charm of habit and the charm of novelty," and
+separating mankind into two classes--those who are "anxious to preserve"
+and those who are "eager to reform." It seems to us extremely doubtful
+whether this theory, so neat and compact, so simple to state and so easy
+to illustrate, would suffice to explain all the struggles, great and
+small, that have agitated society, varying in character and
+circumstances, and ranging from fervent emulation to violent
+collision--from the ferment of ideas which is the surest sign of
+vitality to the selfish and aimless convulsions that portend
+dissolution. Applied to that condition of things by which it was
+suggested, the theory may be allowed to stand. The history of
+parliamentary government in England, in recent times at least, presents
+a tolerably fair example of a contest between two parties composed
+respectively of men who desired and men who resisted innovation--of
+those who looked forward to an ideal future and those who looked back to
+an ideal past. That the former should triumph in the long run lay in the
+very necessity of things; but, whatever may be thought of the changes
+that have taken place, no one would venture to assert that the contest
+has ever been conducted with purely selfish aims; that no great
+principles were involved in it; that the general mass of the voters have
+been the mere tools of artful leaders; that appeals to the reason, or at
+least to the interests or the prejudices, of the whole nation or of
+different classes have been wanting on either side; that at any crisis
+there has been no discussion of measures, past or prospective, no talk
+of any question concerning the honor or welfare of the country; or that
+victory has ever been achieved or contemplated by the employment of
+mere cunning or fraud. But in a state of things of which one might
+assert all this without fear of contradiction the existence of two
+parties, however evenly balanced, could hardly be accounted for by the
+sway in opposite directions of the charms of habit and of novelty and
+the natural antagonism between men who are anxious to preserve and men
+who are eager to reform. That such a state of things may actually exist
+there can be no doubt, since, if history had no example to offer in the
+past, one which is equally undeniable and conspicuous is presented by
+the United States at the present moment. Here is a people divided into
+two great parties, neither of which is anxious to preserve what the
+other would seek to destroy, or eager to reform anything which the other
+would leave untouched; no principle involving any question or policy of
+the present or the future is inscribed on the banner of either; no
+discussions are held, no appeals are put forth, with the object of
+convincing opponents, stimulating supporters, creating public opinion or
+arousing public sentiment: a great struggle is at hand, and all that any
+one knows about the nature of it is, that it concerns the possession of
+the government, and that the chiefs of the winning faction will reward
+as many as possible of their most active adherents by confirming them in
+office or appointing them to office--this being the one feature of the
+matter in which the "charm of habit" and "the charm of novelty" have a
+visible influence.
+
+We shall probably be told in reply that this state of things is only
+momentary; that there is now a suspension of arms preparatory to the
+decisive conflict; that on each side, while the great host of warriors
+is at rest, the chiefs are in consultation, counting up their resources,
+preparing the plan of battle--above all, selecting the generalissimo;
+and that when these arrangements are completed and the time of action
+draws near the trumpets will give forth no uncertain sound, banners
+emblazoned with the most heart-stirring devices will be advanced, and
+we shall fall into line according as our temperaments and sympathies
+incline us to join with those who are "anxious to preserve" or with
+those who are "eager to reform." It is of course certain that a few
+weeks hence the aspect will have changed in some respects: we shall have
+been told the names of the "candidates" whom we are to support or
+oppose; we shall hear all that can be learned or imagined about their
+characters and acts, and see them painted by turns as angels and demons;
+we shall also be reminded of the traditions which they represent or are
+figured as representing, and shall be assured that certain shibboleths
+and watchwords should be the objects of our veneration and certain
+others of our abhorrence, and that on our choice between them will
+depend the ruin or salvation of the country. But we shall be no wiser
+then than we are now in regard to any one measure or set of measures
+affecting the welfare of the nation, and tending either to preserve or
+to reform, which one party proposes to carry out and the other to
+reject. The proclamations of each will be full of promises and
+disavowals, but these, it is very certain, will not touch a single
+principle of the least importance which will be disputed by the other.
+Each party will parade its "record," its glorious achievements in the
+past, when it carried the country triumphantly through dangers in which
+the other party had involved it; but on neither side will any
+distinctive line of policy be enunciated, for the simple reason that on
+neither side has any distinctive line of policy been conceived or even
+thought of. Finally, it is not at all certain that the battle will be
+decided by the usual and regular methods of political warfare--that "the
+will of the majority" will be allowed to express itself or suffered to
+prevail--that fraudulent devices or actual violence may not ultimately
+determine the result.
+
+The inquiry naturally suggests itself how this state of things has been
+brought about--above all, whether it is, as many intelligent persons
+seem to suspect, an unavoidable outgrowth of democratic institutions.
+This, indeed, is a question important not only to us, but to all the
+civilized nations of the world, for there is nothing more certain in
+regard to the present tendencies of civilization than that they are
+setting rapidly and irresistibly toward the general adoption of
+democratic forms of government. The oldest and greatest of the European
+nations, after trying almost every conceivable system, has returned, not
+so much from a deliberate preference as from the breakdown of every
+other, to that which had twice before failed as an experiment, but which
+now gives fair promise of successful and permanent operation--a republic
+based on universal suffrage. In many other countries what is virtually
+the same system in a somewhat different form seems to be firmly
+established, and in these the ever-potent example of France may be
+expected at some more or less remote conjuncture to bring about the
+final change that shall make the form and the name coincide with the
+reality. England, which at one time led the van in this movement, has
+been outstripped by several of the continental nations, but its
+constant, though somewhat zigzag, advances in the same direction cannot
+be doubted, while community of race and former relations make the
+comparison between its condition and prospects and those of the United
+States more mutually interesting and instructive than any that could be
+instituted between either and another foreign country.
+
+We are aided in making this comparison by a lecture delivered recently
+before the Law Academy of Philadelphia, and since published as a
+pamphlet, in which form we hope it may obtain the wide circulation and
+general attention which it well merits. In a rapid sketch of the
+development and present working of the English constitution the author,
+Judge Hare, shows how the government, which, in theory at least, was
+originally a personal one, has come to be parliamentary and in the
+strictest sense popular, that branch of the legislature which is elected
+by the people having raised itself from a subordinate position "to be
+the hinge on which all else depends, controlling the House of Lords,
+selecting the ministers and wielding through them the power of the
+Crown." Hence a complete harmony, which whenever it is broken is
+instantly restored, between the executive and the legislature, the
+latter in turn being the organ of the public sentiment, which acts
+through unobstructed channels and can neither be defied nor evaded. In
+America, on the other hand, to say nothing of those organic provisions
+of the Constitution which render the executive and the two branches of
+the legislature mutually independent, and sometimes, consequently, out
+of harmony with each other, divergent in their action and liable to an
+absolute deadlock, the method by which it was directly intended to
+secure the result that has been fortuitously obtained in
+England--namely, the selection of an executive by a deliberative
+assembly chosen by the people--has been practically subverted and its
+purpose utterly frustrated. The Electoral Colleges do not elect, but
+merely report the result of an election. This, on the surface, is a
+change in the direction of a more complete democracy. What was devised
+as a check on the popular impulse of the moment has broken down, and the
+people have taken into their own hands the mission they were expected to
+entrust to a small representative body. But, while thus assuming an
+apparently absolute freedom of choice, they virtually, and we may say
+necessarily, surrendered to small, nominally representative, bodies the
+designation of the persons between whom the choice must be made. These
+bodies, unknown to the Constitution, not elected or convoked or
+regulated by any processes or forms of law, have taken upon themselves
+all the functions of the electors, except that it is left to the people
+to throw the casting vote. Now, whatever may be thought of the actual
+workings of this system, it seems to us to be in itself the result of a
+change as natural and legitimate as any that has taken place in the
+practice of the English constitution. The Electoral College was one of
+those devices which are theoretically simple and beautiful, but which
+have never worked beneficially since the world began; and we have
+perhaps some reason to be grateful that it was virtually superseded
+before it had time to become the focus of intrigue and corruption which
+was otherwise its inevitable fate. Since the choice of a President could
+not be remitted to one or both Houses of Congress--which would have been
+the least objectionable plan--and has devolved upon the people, some
+previous process of sifting and nominating is indispensable in order
+that there may be a real and effective election; and we do not see that
+any method of accomplishing this object could have been devised more
+suitable in itself or more conformable to the general character of our
+political system than that which has been adopted. Conventions
+representing the great mass of the electors and various shades of
+opinion might be counted upon to select the most eligible
+candidates--eligible, that is to say, in the sense of having the best
+chance amongst the members of their respective parties of being elected.
+For a long period this system worked sufficiently well. If the ablest
+men were not put forward, this was understood to be because they were
+not also the most popular. If the mass of the voters were not
+represented in the conventions, this was attributed to their own
+indifference or negligence. If a split occurred, leading to the
+nomination of different candidates by the same party, this was the
+result of a division of sentiment on some great question, and might be
+considered a healthy indication--a proof that the interests, real or
+supposed, of the country or some section of the country were the objects
+of prime consideration.
+
+We do not, therefore, agree with those who hold that our institutions
+have deteriorated, or with those who think that democracy has proved a
+failure. On the contrary, we believe that a simpler democratic system,
+with fewer checks and balances, would be an improvement on our present
+Constitution. The framers of that Constitution had two apprehensions
+constantly before their minds--one, that of a military usurper
+overthrowing popular freedom; the other, that of an insurrectionary
+populace overthrowing law and government. Experience has shown that
+neither of these dangers could be realized in a country and with a
+population like ours: the elements of them do not exist, nor are the
+occasions in the least likely to arise. The two great evils to which we
+are exposed are a breakdown of national unity and a decay of political
+life. The former evil--resulting from the magnitude of the country, the
+conflict of interests in its different sections, the State organizations
+and semi-sovereignty, and the consequent lack of that strong
+centralization of administrative powers and functions which, however
+much of a bugbear to many people's imaginations, is indispensable to a
+complete nationality--has threatened us in the past and may be expected
+to threaten us in the future. The latter evil threatens us now.
+
+If we turn to England, we see political life in its fullest vigor. The
+recent election called forth nearly the entire force of the voting
+population, and the contest was carried on with well-directed vigor and
+amid almost unparalleled excitement. Questions affecting both domestic
+and foreign policy, and felt to be vital by the whole community, were
+ardently, persistently and minutely discussed in public meetings and at
+the hustings; and the general nature of the issue indicated with
+sufficient clearness the maintenance of the old division throughout the
+bulk of the nation between a party anxious to preserve and a party eager
+to reform. Men of the highest character and distinction in every walk of
+life were among the most ardent participants in the struggle; but no
+crowds of office-holders and office-seekers opposed each other _en
+masse_ or were prominent in the struggle, the former having as a class
+nothing to fear, and the latter as a class nothing to hope, from the
+result. So far was the leader of the opposition from being suspected of
+a mere selfish desire to grasp the position to which in case of victory
+his pre-eminent ability and activity entitled him that it was altogether
+doubtful whether he would be willing to accept it. He and all the other
+men who marshalled or exhorted the opposing lines stood forth as the
+acknowledged representatives of certain principles and public measures,
+and in that capacity alone were they assailed or defended. The contest
+was decided by strictly legal methods; no suspicion existed as to the
+inviolability of the ballot-boxes or the correctness and validity of the
+returns; and the cases in which corrupt or undue influence was charged
+were reserved for the adjudication of impartial tribunals.
+
+No one supposes that the impending struggle in the United States will be
+of this nature. There is no question before the country involving the
+policy of the government or the interests of the nation. There are no
+leaders who are the representatives of any principle or idea. The ardor
+of the contest will be confined to the men whose individual interests
+are directly or indirectly at stake: the management of the contest will
+be wholly in their hands, and no security will be felt as to the
+legality of the result. Whatever display of popular enthusiasm may be
+made will be chiefly of a factitious nature. Such excitement as may be
+felt will be to a large extent of the kind which is awakened by a "big
+show" or an athletic contest. The general mass of the voters will no
+doubt fall into line in response to signals and cries which, though they
+have lost their original meaning, still retain a certain efficacy, but a
+great falling off from the old fervor and discipline will, we venture to
+think, be almost everywhere apparent. More intelligent persons will
+either stand aloof with conscious powerlessness or strike feebly and
+wildly from a sense of embitterment. The energy put forth will indicate
+disease rather than health; the activity exhibited will be not so much
+that of a great organism as of the parasites that are preying on it.
+
+It cannot be denied that there is in this country a natural tendency
+toward political stagnation. With the exception of slavery and the
+questions arising from it--which fill, it is true, a large space in our
+history, but which must be considered abnormal in their origin--there
+has never been any great and potent cause of dissension, such as rises
+periodically in almost every country in Europe, setting class against
+class, changing the form or character of the government and shaking the
+foundations of society. In England a gradual revolution has been always
+going on, and there have been several struggles even in the present
+century where a popular insurrection loomed in the background and was
+averted only by concession. Our institutions, on the contrary, have
+undergone no change and been exposed to no danger in any fundamental
+point. They were accepted by the whole people, and their stability was a
+subject of national pride. There were two great parties, each of which
+scented in every measure projected by the other a design to unsettle the
+balance between the States and the general government, but both claimed
+to be the guardians of the Constitution, and their mutual rancor was
+founded mainly on jealousy. But for the existence of slavery, and the
+inevitable antagonism provoked by it, there must have been a constant
+decrease of interest in political questions as it became more apparent
+that these could not affect the freedom and security which, coupled with
+the natural advantages of the country, afforded the fullest scope and
+strongest stimulant to industrial activity. The extinction of slavery
+was the cutting away of an excrescence: the wound under a proper
+treatment was sure to heal, and even under unwise treatment Nature has
+been doing her work until only a scar remains. Painful, too, as was the
+operation, its success has given the clearest proof of the health and
+vigor of our system, thus increasing the tendency to political
+inactivity and an over-exertion of energy in other directions. This in
+itself seems not to be a matter for alarm: if the latent strength be
+undiminished we can dispense with displays of mere nervous excitement.
+And, in point of fact, the latent strength is, we believe, undiminished;
+only, there is no general consciousness that it needs to be put forth,
+still less any general agreement as to how it should be put forth.
+
+What has happened is, that not only has the stream of political activity
+been growing languid, but its channel is becoming choked. The noisome
+atmosphere that exhales from it causes delicate people to avert their
+nostrils, timid people to apprehend a universal malaria, and many people
+of the same and other classes to assert that the sluices are not merely
+defective, but constructed on a plan totally and fatally wrong. Some
+bold and sagacious spirits have, however, taken the proper course in
+such cases by examining the obstructions and determining their nature
+and origin. According to their report, the difficulty lies not in any
+general unsoundness of the works, but in the failure to detect and stop
+a side issue from certain foul subterranean regions, the discharge from
+which becomes copious and offensive in proportion as the regular flood
+is feeble and low. In plainer words, we are told that the mode in which
+places in the public service are filled and held has made the active
+pursuit of politics a mere trade, attracting the basest cupidities,
+conducted by the most shameless methods, and putting the control of
+public affairs, directly or indirectly, into impure and incompetent
+hands. This view has been so fully elaborated, and the facts that
+confirm it are so abundant and notorious, that further argument is
+unnecessary. It is equally clear that the state of things thus briefly
+described has no necessary connection with democratic institutions. The
+spread of democracy in Europe has been attended by a gradual
+purification in the political atmosphere. The system of "patronage" had
+its origin in oligarchy, and wherever it is found oligarchy must exist
+in reality if not in name. Instead of being an inherent part of our
+institutions, it is as much an excrescence, an abnormal feature, as
+slavery was; but, unlike that, it might be removed with perfect safety
+and by the simplest kind of operation.
+
+Here, then, is a question worthy to come before the nation as an issue
+of the first magnitude. Here is a thing affecting the interests of the
+whole country which some men are anxious to preserve and which others
+are eager to reform. It remains only to consider how it can best be
+brought before the nation.
+
+We shall perhaps be told that it is already before the nation; that the
+account we have given of the nature of the approaching contest is
+incorrect or incomplete; that on the skirts of the two parties is a body
+of "Independents," carrying the banner of Reform and strong enough to
+decide the contest and give the victory to whichever party will adopt
+that standard as its own.
+
+Now, we have to remark that the tactics thus proposed have been tried
+twice before. Eight years ago the Reformers allied themselves with the
+Democratic party, which accepted their leader--chosen, apparently,
+because he was neither a Reformer nor a Democrat--and the result was not
+only defeat, but disgrace, with disarray along the whole of the combined
+line. Four years ago they adhered to the Republican party, having
+secured, by a compromise, the nomination of Mr. Hayes. Apart from the
+fact that Mr. Hayes was not elected, but obtained the position which he
+holds through, we will say, "the accident of an accident," his
+possession of the Presidency has not advanced the cause of Reform by a
+hair's-breadth. We do not need to discuss his appointments or his views
+or his consistency: it is sufficient to say that he has had neither the
+power nor the opportunity to institute Reform, and that no President,
+while other things are unchanged, _can_ have that power and opportunity.
+The truth is, that there is a great confusion, both as to the object
+they have to aim at and as to the means of accomplishing it, in the
+minds of the Reformers. They talk and act continually as if their sole
+and immediate object were to secure the appointment to office of men of
+decent character and ability, and as if the election of a particular
+candidate for the Presidency, or even the defeat of a particular
+candidate, would afford a sufficient guarantee on this point. They are
+"ready to vote for any Republican nominee but Grant," and, in case of
+his nomination, to vote, we suppose, for any Democratic nominee but
+Tilden--certainly for Mr. Bayard. It may be safely admitted that no
+possible candidate for the Presidency enjoys a higher reputation for
+probity and general fitness for the place than Mr. Bayard--one reason,
+unhappily, why he is not likely to be called upon to fill it. But,
+supposing him to be raised to it, what is one of the first uses he may
+be expected to make of it if not to turn out the solid mass of
+Republican office-holders and fill their places with Democrats? If Mr.
+Hayes, with whom the Reformers have been at least partially satisfied,
+had succeeded to a Democratic administration, can it be doubted that he
+would have made a similar change in favor of the Republicans? Is not
+every President bound by fealty to his party, consequently by a regard
+for his honor and reputation, to perpetuate a system which the true aim
+of Reform is to abolish?
+
+Even if we should concede, what it is impossible to believe, that a
+President personally irreproachable might be trusted to make no unfit
+appointments, this would not reach the source of the evils of which we
+have to complain, which lies in the _method_ by which appointments are
+made and in the _tenure_ by which they are held. So long as the system
+of "patronage" and "rotation in office" prevails, little real
+improvement even in the civil service can be looked for. But improvement
+of the civil service, important as it is in itself, is an insignificant
+object of aspiration compared with the general purification of political
+life, the elevation of the public sentiment, the creation of a school of
+statesmanship in that arena which is now only a mart for hucksters,
+bargaining and wrangling, drowning all discussions and impeding all
+transactions of a legitimate nature. The class who fill that arena and
+block every avenue to it cannot be dispossessed so long as the system
+which furnishes the capital and material for their traffic remains
+unchanged. It is a matter of demonstration that if the civil service
+were put on the same footing as in England and other European countries,
+the machinery by which parties are now governed, not led, public spirit
+stifled, not animated, legislation misdirected or reduced to impotence,
+and "politics" and "politician" made by-words of reproach and objects of
+contempt, must decay and perish. We are not setting up any ideal state
+of things as the result, but only such as shall show a conformity
+between our political life and our social life, exhibiting equal defects
+but also equal merits in both, affording the same scope to honorable
+ambition, healthy activity and right purpose in the one as in the other.
+We are not calling for any change in the character of our institutions
+or one which they afford no means of effecting, but the removal by a
+method which they themselves provide of an incumbrance which impairs
+their nature and impedes their working. No partial measure will
+suffice--none that will depend for its efficacy on the disposition of
+those whose duty it will be to enforce it--none that will be exposed to
+the attacks of those whose interest it will be to reverse it. The end
+can be secured neither by the action of the President nor by that of
+Congress. Reform, in order that it may endure and bear fruit, must be
+engrafted on the organic law, its principles made the subject of an
+amendment to the Constitution, in which they should have been originally
+incorporated.
+
+It may be urged in reply that the present action of those who desire
+Reform is of a preliminary character; that they are simply grasping the
+instruments with which the work is to be done; that the ultimate object
+can be achieved only in the distant future, when the nation has been
+aroused to a sense of its necessity. But the question arises, Is their
+present action consistent with their principles and suited to advance
+their purpose? When they stand between the opposite parties, dickering
+with each in turn, ready to accept any candidate but one that either may
+put forward, inciting people by the prospect of their support to violate
+their pledges, are they introducing purer methods or giving their
+sanction to those which are now in use? Will any nomination they may
+obtain by such means bring the question squarely before the nation?
+Would a President elected by their aid be recognized by the country as
+the champion of Reform? Are they more likely to "capture" the party with
+which they connect themselves or to be captured by it? If they give
+their aid to the Democrats, will they expect the Democrats in return to
+give aid to the cause of Reform? If they support a Republican candidate
+satisfactory to themselves, will not the lukewarmness or disaffection of
+large sections of the party ensure his defeat? If the "best man" on each
+side be nominated, are the Reformers secure against a division and
+melting away of their own unorganized and easily-disheartened ranks?
+Will the victory, in any case, be other than a party victory, leaving
+the fruits to be reaped and further operations to be planned by those
+who have organized and conducted the campaign?
+
+We know well that it is only in a distant future that Reform can hope
+for a complete and assured success. But it is in a distant future that
+the greatest need for it, and with that need its opportunity, will
+arise. Serious as are the present effects of the virus that has stolen
+into our system, its malignant character and fatal tendency are apparent
+only to those who have made it the subject of a careful diagnosis. This
+in part accounts for the apathy of the great mass of the people under a
+state of things which in almost any other country would lead to a
+profound and general agitation. Another cause lies in the consciousness
+of a power to remedy all such evils by peaceful and ordinary methods;
+and a third, in the present lack of any organization for applying those
+methods. This lack will be supplied, and the first step toward a remedy
+taken, when, instead of a body of "Independents" making no direct appeal
+to the people, treating alternately with each of the two existing
+organizations, and liable to be merged in one or the other, we have a
+Reform Party standing on its own ground, assuming a distinctive
+character, refusing any junction or compromise with other parties, and
+trusting to the only means consistent with its aim and capable of
+attaining it. Eight years ago there was a junction with the Democrats,
+four years ago a compromise with the Republicans, and one or other of
+these courses is the only choice presented now. This policy can lead
+only to defeat or to an empty and illusive victory, worse than defeat.
+
+Had a different policy been pursued in the past, the situation at
+present would, we believe, be a very hopeful one. It is impossible not
+to see that the existing parties are undergoing a disintegration which
+was inevitable from several causes, and which on one side at least would
+be far more rapid if a third party stood ready to profit by it. One
+cause of this disintegration is the natural tendency to decay of
+organizations that have lost their _raison d'être_--that have ceased to
+embody any vital principle and consequently to appeal to any strong and
+general sentiment. Another is the disgust inspired by the base uses to
+which they have been turned--a feeling shared by a far larger number of
+voters than those who have already proclaimed their independence. A
+third lies in the feuds among the leaders and managers of each party,
+who, having no longer any principle to represent or any common cause to
+contend for, have thrown away all pretence of disinterestedness and
+generous emulation and engaged in a strife of which the nature is
+undisguised and the effect easy to foresee. Thus it is that outraged
+principles work out their revenge, making their violators mutually
+destructive, and clearing a way for those who are prepared to assert and
+maintain them. In the Democratic party the breach may possibly be
+skinned over, though it can hardly be healed: in the Republican party it
+must widen and deepen. The latter stands now in a position analogous to
+that of the Whig party when it made its last vain attempt to elect its
+candidate, and shortly after went to pieces, the mass of its adherents
+going over to that meagre band which in the same election had stood firm
+around the standard of Liberty. It is for the Reformers to say whether
+they will contend for the inheritance which is legitimately theirs. With
+a cause so clear they have no right to intrigue and no reason to
+despair. They have on their side the best intelligence of the country,
+and consequently at their command the agencies which have ever been the
+most potent in the long run. What they need is faith, concert and
+consistency.
+
+
+
+
+OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
+
+
+EDELWEISS.
+
+Everybody has heard of it, and those who have been in Switzerland have
+seen in the shop-windows, if nowhere else, or in the hat of the man who
+leads their horse over the Wengern Alp, the little irregular,
+star-shaped flower with thick petals that look as if they were cut out
+of white flannel. People may not be certain how its name is
+pronounced--may call it _eedelwise_, or even _idlewise_--but as to its
+habits every one is fully persuaded in his own mind; that is to say, if
+one person believes that it grows on rocks, another is equally sure that
+it blooms under the snow, while in either case there is apt to be an
+impression that it is found only in regions where the foot of the
+ordinary tourist may not venture. The writer has found it, however, in
+various places perfectly accessible to good walkers or where a horse
+could carry those not in that category. Edelweiss certainly likes to
+grow among rocks, on the brink of a precipice or down the face of it,
+and out of reach if possible; but it will also nestle in the grass at
+some distance from the brink, and may be found even where there is no
+precipice at all.
+
+The village of Zweisimmen is a quiet summer resort in the Upper
+Simmenthal, in the canton of Berne. The valley is green and peaceful,
+with chalets dotted over all the mountain-sides: the rocks of the
+Spielgarten tower on the one hand, the snow of the Wildstrubel closes
+the view to the south, where the Rawyl Pass leads to Sion in the valley
+of the Rhone, and, looking northward, the mountains grow more and more
+blue and distant in the direction of Thun. From Zweisimmen, on four
+excursions, the writer and others have had the pleasure of picking
+edelweiss. First, at the Fromattgrat. Horses and saddles are forthcoming
+when required, and the four legs go as far as the scattered chalets of
+Fromatt, the wide mountain-pasture which is reached after a steady
+ascent of two hours and a half. Across from the chalets rises the _grat_
+or ridge where we have to seek our edelweiss. As we mount higher the
+gray masses of the Spielgarten seem very near: a fresh vivifying wind,
+the breath of the Alps, makes one forget how warm it was toiling up the
+gorge. The clouds are drawing around in white veils and sweeping down
+into the valley, quite concealing our destination at times, hiding even
+the members of the party from each other if they separate themselves a
+little. Our fine day takes on a decidedly doubtful aspect: nevertheless,
+after the first cry, "Here's some!" nobody thinks of impending
+discomforts. Here and there in the grass the soft white petals have
+opened, but where the _grat_ sinks straight down for hundreds of feet it
+grows more abundantly, on the edge, and, alas! chiefly over the edge;
+and here a steady head and common prudence come in play. Furnished with
+those requisites, we can collect a bunch of edelweiss, and go on our way
+rejoicing even though the rain-drops begin to fall, the wind grows
+wilder, and presently hail comes in cutting dashes anything but
+agreeable to one's features. We go back along the ridge and descend to
+the broad-roofed chalet that lies invitingly below. It goes by the name
+of the Stierenberger Wirthschaft, and is known to all the cow-herds
+round; but we want no doubtful wine, only fresh milk and thick cream in
+a wooden bowl, and a brown fluid called coffee. Bread we brought with
+us, not caring to exercise our teeth on last month's bake. In any case,
+nothing more solid than bread and cheese is to be found here, tavern
+though it is. A fire blazes in the first room, which has no window, and
+might properly be styled the antechamber of the cow-house, into which
+there is a fine view through an open door. Sixty tails are peacefully
+whisking to and fro, for in the middle of the day the cattle are housed
+to protect them from flies. All the implements of cheese-making--the
+immense copper kettle, the presses, pails, etc.--are kept in the
+antechamber. After trying to dry ourselves at the hearth, and
+discovering that much hail comes down the great square chimney and very
+little smoke goes up, we are shown into the "best room," the furniture
+of which consists of a bed, a pine table and benches. In the adjoining
+apartment are two beds, the gayly-painted chest in which our hostess
+brought home her bridal outfit, and another table; while in both rooms
+the knives and forks are stuck in the chinks of the beams over the
+benches--a convenient arrangement by which one has only to stretch up an
+arm and take down from the ceiling whatever implement is needed. In most
+of these chalets a tall man might be embarrassed what to do with his
+head: it is only necessary to go into their houses to perceive that the
+Swiss mountaineers are short of stature. When the hail and rain have
+ceased we start downward over the hilly pastures, through pine woods and
+beside a rushing stream, into the valley, and so back to Zweisimmen.
+
+Another excursion was to go up to the same inn, and thence to a little
+lake at the foot of the Seeberg, where edelweiss is again to be found.
+At Iffigen Lake it may also be had in abundance; and the fourth and last
+occasion on which we picked it was on the Rawyl Pass. From Zweisimmen
+one drives to Lenk, whence the fine glaciers of the Wildstrubel are in
+full view, then through the village and up a steep ascent, but a good
+carriage-road still, to the beautiful Iffigen Fall. The water descends
+almost perpendicularly over picturesque rocks from a great height,
+falling in long arrows that seem to hesitate and linger in mid-air, and
+then take a fresh swoop down: a rainbow spans it at the foot, where the
+mist rises. Here the carriage is left, and those who intend to ride take
+to the saddle. The way goes up steeply to the broad Iffigen Alp, shut in
+on either hand by Nature's towering gray battlements. Having reached the
+chalets at the farther end of the pasture, we find ourselves facing the
+solid rock and wondering what next. Over the brow of the lofty parapet
+falls a little stream, looking like a white ribbon as it foams on its
+dizzy way. "The path certainly cannot be there," we say; but, as it
+happens, it is just there. It zigzags up, cut with infinite labor in the
+face of the mountain, like the famous Gemmi road from Loèche-les-Bains,
+only that it is not so smooth and more picturesque. The Rawyl, like the
+Gemmi, is sometimes given the reputation of a dangerous pass, but in our
+party a lady rode the whole way without feeling the least uneasiness.
+The path goes up and up until it crosses the waterfall, where one is
+showered with cooling spray: soon after we are over the top of the rock
+and on plainer ground, but still mounting. A hut is passed where the
+guide says travellers can spend the night should it overtake them. There
+is indeed nothing to prevent their spending the night there, but also
+nothing to aid them in so doing: the place is uninhabited and
+unfurnished, the only sign that it is a shelter for human beings and not
+for cattle being a tiny stove in one corner, with a pile of wood. Now a
+small green lake lies beside the way, and then the chalet on the summit
+is in sight, and a cross that marks the boundary between the cantons of
+Berne and Valais. There the highest point of our journey is reached in
+two and three-quarter hours from where the carriage was left, and we
+walk nearly another hour on the level. Snow lies in wide fields in
+several places across the path: the pass is never wholly free from it,
+for what is rain in the valley is apt to be snow at seven thousand nine
+hundred feet, the height of the Rawyl. During this part of the way the
+scene is most wild and impressive: the dark masses of the Mittaghorn,
+the Rohrbachstein and Rawylhorn, and the dazzling glacier of the
+Wildhorn rise majestically into blue space, while from the granite
+summits to the very path under our feet there is nothing but rock, rock,
+rock! It is as if we were passing where the foot of man had never trod
+before, so solemn is the stillness here in the midst of the "everlasting
+hills." To see one solitary bird flitting fitfully from point to point
+only makes the loneliness seem greater, and it is absolutely touching
+to find in a place like this the lovely little _Ranunculus alpestris_
+and _Ranunculus glacialis_ forcing a way between the shingly stones and
+opening their delicate white petals to light and air. The purple
+_Linaria alpina_ keeps them company, but it is only farther on, and as
+we come to green again, that asters, pansies and gentians gem the grass.
+Where the way begins to descend to Sion there is an enchanting view into
+the valley of the Rhone, and for a background to the picture a superb
+line of glaciers and snow-peaks, among them the Matterhorn. The path to
+Sion can be traced for some distance down, but our party intended to go
+back by the way it came; and while we still lingered, wandering among
+the knolls and rocks, we discovered edelweiss, faded and gray, however,
+for in these regions the latter part of August is too late to find it in
+perfection.
+
+As American ladies have the reputation of being poor pedestrians, it may
+be of interest to add that ladies walked on all these excursions.
+
+G.H.P.
+
+
+SPOILED CHILDREN.
+
+It will always remain a mystery to sensible people why, when they are
+held to a rigid consistency, compelled to face palpable and indisputable
+facts, and to acknowledge that under all circumstances two and two make
+four, and never five, there is another class who from childhood to old
+age thrive on their mistakes, are never forced to pay the piper, and are
+granted the privilege of counting the sum of two and two as four when
+convenient, and five when they like, or a hundred if so it should please
+them.
+
+These are the spoiled children of the world, whose fate it is to get the
+best of everything without regard to their deserts. Others may be warm,
+may shiver with cold, may be weary, may be ill, but they must not
+complain. The burden of lamentation comes from those who were never too
+warm or too cold, never weary or ill, but who tremble lest in some cruel
+way they should be forced to suffer, and thus provide against it
+beforehand. To these spoiled children the system of things in general
+has no other design than to give them comfort in particular. And by some
+subtle law of attraction the good things of the world are almost certain
+naturally to gravitate toward them. They sleep well; they dine well;
+they are petted by everybody; they have no despairs; they never suffer
+from other people's mishaps.
+
+A woman who marries one of these spoiled children may be sure of an
+opportunity to practise all the feminine virtues. She is certain to have
+been very much in love with him, for he was handsome, could dance and
+flirt to perfection, and was the very ideal of a charming lover. The
+little dash of selfishness in his ante-nuptial imperiousness and tender
+tyranny pleased her, for it seemed to be the expression of a more ardent
+love than that of every-day men. It depends very much upon her
+generosity and largeness of heart whether she soon wakes up to the fact
+that she has married a being destitute of sympathy, wholly careless and
+ignorant of others' needs and requirements, full of caprices, allowing
+every impulse to carry him away, and thoroughly bent on having his own
+will and bending everybody about him to his own purposes.
+Self-renunciation and absolute devotion and self-sacrifice are natural
+to women of a certain quality of intellect and heart, and possess the
+most powerful charm to their imagination, provided they can have a dash
+of romance or a kindling of sentiment. Hence this form of martyrdom
+offers the female sex the pose in which it has sat for its portrait all
+the centuries since civilization began, and the picture stands out
+impressively against a background we all can recognize. As a school for
+heroism nothing can equal marriage with a spoiled child.
+
+But, although probably quite as many instances may be found in one sex
+as in the other, the characteristics of a spoiled child are distinctly
+feminine, and in no measure belong to robust masculinity. Thus, for a
+study, let us take a girl who from her cradle has found everything
+subordinate to her princess-like whims, inclinations and caprices, and
+has had her way by smiles and cajoleries or sobs and tears, as the case
+may be. She finds out at an early age that it is pleasanter and more
+profitable to be petted and pampered than to be forced to shift for
+herself. She learns that an easy little pitiful curve of her coral lips
+and upward glance of her baby orbs is answered by certain manifestations
+of tenderness and concern: thus she "makes eyes," flirts, as it were,
+before she can talk, and studies the art of successful tyranny. The
+nursery--in fact, the entire house--rejoices when she rejoices and
+trembles when she weeps. She wants everything she sees, and sulks at any
+superiority of circumstances in another; but then she sulks
+bewitchingly. Wherever she goes she carries an imperious sway, and keeps
+her foot well on the necks of her admirers.
+
+The spoiled child blossoms into perfection as a young lady. That is her
+destiny, and to the proper fulfilment of it her family and friends stand
+ready to devote themselves. It may be they are a trifle weary of her
+incalculable temper, that her fascinations have palled a little upon
+them, and that her mysterious inability to put up with the lot of
+every-day mortals and bear disagreeables contentedly has worn out their
+patience. They want her to marry, and, without wasting any empty wishing
+upon a result so certain to come, she wants to marry herself. She is not
+likely to have unattainable ideals: what she demands is a continuation
+of her petted existence--a lifelong adorer to minister to her vanity and
+desires, to find her always beautiful, always precious, and to smooth
+away the rough places of life for her.
+
+Nothing can be more bewitching than she is on her entrance into society.
+Nothing could seem more desirable to an admirer than the possession of
+the beautiful creature, who, with her alternations of sweetness and
+imperiousness, tenderness, and cruelty, stimulates his ardor and appears
+more like a spirit of fire and dew than a real woman. It seems to him
+the most delightful thing in the world when she confesses that she never
+likes what she has, but always craves what she has not--that she hates
+everything useful and prosaic and likes everything which people declare
+she ought to renounce. She is unreasonable, and he loves her
+unreason--it bewitches him: she is obstinate, and he loves to feel the
+strength of her tiny will, as if it were the manifestation of some
+phenomenal force in her nature. Her scorn for common things, her
+fastidiousness, her indifference to the little obligations which compel
+less dainty and spirited creatures,--all act as chains and rivet his
+attachment to her.
+
+A few months later, when she has become his wife, and he is forced to
+look at her tempers and her caprices, at her fastidiousness and
+expensiveness, from an altered standpoint, her whole character seems to
+be illuminated with new light. He no longer finds her charming when she
+has an incurable restlessness and melancholy: her pretty negations of
+the facts life present to her begin to seem to him the product of a mind
+undisciplined by any actual knowledge that she is "a human creature,
+subject to the same laws as other human creatures." He has hitherto
+considered that her scorn for the common and usual indicated an
+appreciation of the rarest and loftiest, but she seems to have no
+appreciation for anything save enjoyment. She has no idea of the true
+purposes of life: she likes everything dwarfed to suit her own stature.
+It is not by compliance that her husband can give her more than
+temporary pleasure. If she wants to see Europe, Europe will not satisfy
+her. "Sense will support itself handsomely in most countries," says
+Carlyle, "on eighteen pence a day, but for fantasy planets and solar
+systems will not suffice."
+
+L.W.
+
+
+PRAYER-MEETING ELOQUENCE.
+
+Weekly prayer-meetings in New England villages offer a variety of
+singular experiences to the unaccustomed listener, and it seems almost
+incredible at times that they can furnish spiritual sustenance even to
+the devout. There are apt to be two or three among the regular
+attendants who being, according to their own estimate, "gifted in
+prayer," raise their voices loud and long with many a mellifluous
+phrase and lofty-sounding polysyllable. Mr. Eli Lewis is one of the most
+eloquent among the church-members in the village of C----, and if left
+to his own way would engross the entire evening with his prayers and
+exhortations. Nothing is too large for his imagination to grasp nor too
+small for his observations to consider. "_O Lord, Thou knowest!_" he
+repeats endlessly, sometimes qualifying this statement by putting into
+the next phrase, "_O Lord, Thou art probably aware!_" He is fond of
+poetry too, and frequently interpolates into his petition and
+thanksgiving his favorite verses. His fellow-worshippers are fully
+conscious of his excellent intentions, but there is some jealousy of the
+surpassing length of his prayers. The other evening he was standing, as
+his custom is, with his long arms upraised with many a strange gesture.
+He had been on his feet half an hour already, and there began to be
+signs of restlessness among the bowed heads around him. Still, there was
+no sign of any let up. He was engaged in drawing a vivid picture of the
+condition of the universe in the abstract, the world in general and his
+country and native village in particular, and required ample time fully
+to elucidate his views regarding their needs, but proposed to illustrate
+it by quotations. "O Lord," said he, "Thou knowest what the poet Cowper
+says--" He paused and cleared his throat as if the better to articulate
+the inspired strains of poetry, and began again more emphatically: "O
+Lord, Thou art probably aware what the poet Cowper says--" but the
+second time broke off. He could not remember what it was the poet Cowper
+said, but with a view to taking the place his memory halted at, went
+back to the starting-place and recommenced: "O Lord, Thou recollectest
+what the poet Cowper says--" It was of no use: he could not think of it,
+and with a wild gesture put his hand to his head. "O Lord," he exclaimed
+in a tone of excessive pain, "_I cannot remember what the poet Cowper
+says_," and prepared to go on with other matter; but Deacon Smith had
+been watching his opportunity for twenty minutes, and was already on
+his feet. "_Let us pray_," he said in a deep voice, which broke on
+Brother Lewis's ears with preternatural power, and he was obliged to sit
+down while the senior deacon held forth. No sooner, however, had Deacon
+Smith's amen sounded than Mr. Eli Lewis started up. "O Lord," he cried
+in a tone of heartfelt satisfaction, "I remember now what the poet
+Cowper says;" and, repeating it at length, he finished his remarks.
+
+It was Deacon Smith who one Sunday asked his pastor to put a petition
+for rain into his afternoon prayer, as moisture was very much needed by
+the deacon's parched fields and meadows. Accordingly, Dr. Peters, who
+was something of a rhetorician, alluded in his prayer to the melancholy
+prospects of the harvest unless rain should soon be sent, and requested
+that the Almighty would consider their sufferings and dispense the
+floods which He held in His right hand. After service, as the reverend
+doctor left the church, he saw Mr. Smith standing rigid in the porch,
+perhaps looking for a rising cloud, and remarked to him, "Well, deacon,
+I hope our petition may be answered." He received only a snort of wrath
+and defiance in reply. Rather puzzled as to what had vexed his
+parishioner, Dr. Peters said blandly, "You heard my prayer for a shower,
+Deacon Smith?" The deacon turned grimly: "I heard you mention the matter
+of rain, Dr. Peters, but, good Heavens, sir! _you should have insisted
+upon it!_"
+
+A.T.
+
+
+THE JARDIN D'ACCLIMATATION OF PARIS.
+
+This beautiful garden, one of the most attractive places in the world,
+was established in the Bois de Boulogne in 1860. It was in the most
+flourishing condition at the time of the breaking out of the war with
+Germany. That war nearly ruined it. During the siege elephants and other
+valuable animals were sacrificed for food. The carrier-pigeons that did
+such noble service during the siege were mostly raised in this
+establishment, and those that survived the war are kept there and most
+tenderly preserved. "Many died gloriously on the field of honor," as we
+read in the records of the society, which preserve a full account of
+their wonderful feats. Some of them again and again dared the Prussian
+lines, carrying those precious microscopic despatches photographed upon
+pellicles of collodion--so light that the whole one hundred and fifteen
+thousand received during the siege do not weigh over one gramme, a
+little over fifteen grains!
+
+The great greenhouse of these gardens for plants that cannot endure a
+temperature lower than two degrees below zero centigrade (28.4° Fahr.)
+would enchant even the most indifferent observer. The building itself is
+one of the finest structures of its kind. It was once the property of
+the Lemichez Brothers, celebrated florists at Villiers, at which place
+it was known as the Palais des Flors. The Acclimatation Society
+purchased it in 1861, and every winter since then there has been a
+magnificent and unfailing display of flowers there. Masses of camellias,
+rhododendrons, azaleas, primroses, _bruyères_, pelargoniums constantly
+succeed each other. These are merely to delight the visitors, the great
+object of the hothouse being to nurse foreign plants and experiment with
+them. Among the rare ones are the paper-plant of the _Aralia_ family;
+the _Chamærops_, or hemp-plant; the _Phormium tenax_, or New Zealand
+flax; and the _Eucalyptus_ of Australia, that wonderful tree introduced
+lately into Algeria, where it grows six mètres a year, and yields more
+revenue than the cereals. This, at least, is what the official handbook
+of the garden says. It may be that the famous "fever-plant" has lost
+some of the faith accorded to it at first.
+
+At the end of this great greenhouse there is a beautiful grotto where a
+little brook loses itself playing hide-and-seek among the fronds of the
+maiden-hair and other lovely ferns. At the right of this grotto is a
+reading-room where visitors may find all the current periodicals--on the
+left, the library of the society, rich in works upon agriculture,
+_zootechnie_, natural history, travels, industrial and domestic economy,
+etc., in several languages. The remarkable thing about this great
+greenhouse is the ever-flourishing, ever-perfect condition of its
+vegetation. Of course this effect must be secured by succursal
+hothouses, not always open to visitors. No tree, no plant, ever appears
+there in a sickly condition, but this may be said also of the animals in
+the gardens. I shall not soon forget a great wire canary cage some
+sixteen or more feet square, enclosing considerable shrubbery and scores
+of birds. There I received my first notion of the natural brilliancy of
+the plumage of these birds: its golden sheen literally dazzled the eyes.
+
+The garden does excellent work for the French people besides furnishing
+a popular school and an inimitable pleasure resort: it assures the
+preservation of approved varieties of fruits, grains, animals. Whoever
+questions the absolute purity of his stock, from a garden herb up to an
+Arabian steed, can place this beyond question by substituting those
+furnished by the Society of Acclimatation. Eggs of birds packed in its
+garden have safely crossed the Atlantic, seventy-five per cent. hatching
+on their arrival. So immensely has the business of the society increased
+that more ground has had to be secured for nursery and seed-raising
+purposes, and the whole vast Zoological Gardens of Marseilles have been
+secured and turned into a "tender," as it were, to the Jardin
+d'Acclimatation at Paris. This was a very important acquisition.
+Marseilles, the great Mediterranean sea-port of France, is necessarily
+the spot where treasures from Africa, Asia and the South Sea Islands
+have to be landed, and they arrive often in a critical condition and
+need rest and careful nursing before continuing their journey.
+
+One of the functions of the garden is to restock parks with game when
+the pheasants, hares, wild-boars, deer, etc. become too rare for good
+sport: another is to tame and break to the harness certain animals
+counted unmanageable. The zebra is one of these. The society has
+succeeded perfectly in breaking the zebra and making him work in the
+field quite like the horse. An ostrich also allows itself to be
+harnessed to a small carriage and to draw two children in it over the
+garden. Still another work of the society is to breed new species. A
+very beautiful animal has been bred by crossing the wild-ass of Mongolia
+with the French variety.
+
+Among the rare animals of the garden may be mentioned the apteryx,
+the only bird existing belonging to the same family as the
+_Dinornis giganteus_ and the still larger _Epyornis maximus_ of
+Madagascar--monstrous wingless birds now extinct. One of the eggs of the
+latter in a fossil condition is preserved in the museum of the Garden of
+Plants in Paris. Its longer axis is sixteen inches, I think. It is, for
+an egg, a most wonderful thing, and on account of its size the bird
+laying it has been supposed to be of very much greater size than even
+the _Dinornis giganteus_, a perfect skeleton of which exists; but this
+seems to be a too hasty conclusion, for the apteryx, a member of the
+same family, has laid an egg or two in captivity, and one of these on
+being weighed proved to be very nearly one-fourth the whole weight of
+the bird, the bird weighing sixty ounces and the egg fourteen and a
+half.
+
+The _Tallegalla Lathami_, or brush-turkey of Australia, is another rare
+bird. It does not sit upon its eggs, but constructs a sort of hot-bed
+for them, which it watches during the whole term as assiduously as a
+wise florist does his seeds planted under glass or as a baker does his
+ovens. As in the ostrich family, it is the male that has the entire care
+of the family from the moment the eggs are laid--a fairer division of
+labor than we see in most _ménages_. The interesting process of
+constructing the hot-bed has been observed several times in Europe. It
+is as follows: When the time arrives for the making of the nest the
+enclosure is supplied with sticks, leaves and detritus of various kinds.
+The male then, with his tail to the centre of the enclosure, commences
+with his powerful feet to throw up a mound of the materials furnished.
+To do this he walks around in a series of concentric circles. When the
+mound is about four feet high the female adds a few artistic touches by
+way of smoothing down, evening the surface and making a depression in
+the centre, where the eggs in due time are laid in a circle, each with
+the point downward and no two in contact. The male tends this hot-bed
+most unweariedly. "A cylindrical opening is always maintained in the
+centre of the circle"--no doubt for ventilation--and the male will often
+cover and uncover the eggs two or three times a day, according to the
+change of temperature. The observer, noting how intelligently this bird
+watches the temperature, almost expects to see him thrust a thermometer
+into his mound! On the second day after it is hatched the young bird
+leaves the nest, but returns to it in the afternoon, and is very cozily
+tucked up by his devoted papa.
+
+One thing in the garden that used to greatly attract visitors was the
+Gaveuse Martin, a machine for cramming fowls in order to fatten them
+rapidly. The society considered Martin's invention of so much importance
+to the world that it granted him a building in the garden and permission
+to charge a special admission. The machine has since been introduced
+into the artificial egg-hatching establishment of Mr. Baker at
+Catskill-on-the-Hudson; at least, he has a machine for "forced feeding"
+which must greatly resemble Martin's. Specimens fattened by the Gaveuse
+Martin, all ready for the _broche_, used to be sold on the premises. The
+interior of the building was occupied by six gigantic _épinettes_, each
+holding two hundred birds. A windlass mounted upon a railroad enabled
+the operator (_gaveur_, from _gaver_, to cram, an inelegant term) very
+easily to raise himself to any story of the épinette. The latter was a
+cylinder turning upon its axis, and thus passing every bird in review.
+"An india-rubber tube introduced into the throat, accompanied by the
+pressure of the foot upon a pedal, makes the bird absorb its copious and
+succulent repast in the wink of an eye." Four hundred an hour have been
+thus fed by one operator. Fowls thus fattened are said to possess a
+delicacy of flavor entirely their own.
+
+M. H.
+
+
+
+
+LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
+
+
+     Christy Carew. By May Laffan, author of "The Honorable Miss
+     Ferrard," etc. (Leisure-Hour Series.) New York: Henry Holt &
+     Co.
+
+The novels to which Miss Laffan gives a sponsor in affixing her
+signature to the latest, _Christy Carew_, present two strong and
+distinct claims to our notice in the vigor and realism with which they
+are written, and the thorough picture they give of Ireland, politically
+and socially, at the present day. They are no mere repetitions of
+hackneyed Irish stories, no sketches drawn from a narrow or partial
+phase of life, but the result of large and penetrating observation among
+all classes, made in a thoroughly systematized manner, so as to form a
+thoughtful and almost exhaustive study of a country which is more
+dogmatized over than understood. Ireland has never been depicted with so
+much interest and sympathy by any novelist since Miss Edgeworth wrote
+her _Moral Tales_, and both the country and the art of novel-writing
+have advanced since then, the latter possibly more than the former. Miss
+Edgeworth, indeed, has been singularly unfortunate. She drew from life,
+and her talent and observation were worthy of a more lasting shrine,
+while the artificiality of her books has caused them to decay even
+faster than those of some of her contemporaries. Her successors in Irish
+fiction, with no lack of talent, have been too often careless in using
+it, or have preferred story-telling to observation. Miss Laffan wields a
+genuine Irish pen, graphic, keen of satire, with plenty of sharp
+Hibernian humor, but she shows in its exercise a care and directness of
+aim which are not the common qualities of Irish writers. In beginning
+her career as a novelist she had the courage to refrain from the pursuit
+of those finer artistic beauties which lure to failure so many writers
+incapable of seizing them: she even put aside the question of plot, and
+strove to give a sound and truthful representation of life and manners.
+
+That end was gained with masterly success. No one reading the anonymous
+novel _Hogan, M.P._, would have been likely to set it down from internal
+evidence as a woman's book: it is one of the stoutest and most vigorous
+pieces of fiction which have appeared for years. We can find no trace of
+its having been reprinted in this country, and are at a loss to account
+for the omission: its distinctively Irish character ought to form an
+attraction. _Hogan, M.P._, is a political novel as realistic as Anthony
+Trollope's, but more incisive in tone and wider in scope. Instead of
+confining her energies to the doings and conversations of one set of
+people, Miss Laffan looks at politics as they are mirrored in society,
+sketching not alone the wire-pulling and petty diplomacies, but phases
+of life resulting therefrom. In _Hogan, M.P._, we have a vivid _coup
+d'oeil_ of Dublin society, with its sharp, irregular boundaries, its
+sects and sets, its manner of comporting and amusing itself. The field
+is a wide one, but Miss Laffan has the happy art of generalization--of
+portraying a whole society in a few well-marked types. There is no
+confusion of character, and though we seem to have shaken hands with all
+Dublin in her pages, from great dignitaries to school-boys, the picture
+is never overcrowded.
+
+"A drop of ditch-water under a microscope" Hogan calls the society of
+his native city--"everybody pushing upward on the social ladder kicking
+down those behind." This zoological spectacle is not confined to Dublin,
+but there appears to be a combination of strictness and indefiniteness
+of precedence belonging peculiarly to that place. At the top of the
+ladder, though not so firmly fixed there as before the Disestablishment,
+is the Protestant set, regarding the Castle as its stronghold and
+looking down on the Roman Catholic set, who reciprocate the contempt.
+These grand divisions are separated by a strict line of demarcation,
+even the performance of the marriage ceremony between Protestants and
+Catholics being forbidden in Dublin. They contain an endless
+ramification of lesser groups, whose relations we may attempt to
+illustrate by quoting from the book before us an account of the mutual
+position of Mrs. O'Neil and Mrs. Carew, the former the wife of a
+tradesman shortly to become lord mayor, the latter a "'vert" from
+Protestantism and the spouse of a Crown solicitor in debt to his future
+mayorship. "The lady mayoress elect, conscious of her prospective
+dignity in addition to the heavy bill due by the Carews, was the least
+possible shade--not patronizing, for that would have been
+impossible--but perhaps independent in manner. She did not turn her head
+toward her companion as she addressed her; she put more questions to her
+and in a broader accent than she usually did in conversation; and she
+barely gave her interlocutor time to finish the rather curt
+contributions she vouchsafed toward the conversation. On her side, Mrs.
+Carew, mindful of her position and of her superior accent, which implied
+even more, wanting to be condescending and patronizing, and half afraid
+to be openly impertinent, was calm and self-possessed. She grew more
+freezingly courteous as the other lady grew less formal."
+
+We have said that Miss Laffan began with realism pure and simple.
+_Hogan, M.P._, remains, so far, to our mind, her strongest book, but
+there are finer and sweeter qualities in her other writings. We should
+be inclined to rank _The Honorable Miss Ferrard_ as an artistic rather
+than a realistic book, though it is based on the same soundness of
+observation as its predecessor. It is an episode, suggestive, rather
+analytic in treatment, with the freshness of a first impression--_le
+charme de l'inachevé_. The heroine is a singularly original, fresh and
+attractive conception. The book deals almost wholly with the outside
+aspects of things, with picturesque rather than moral traits, though a
+breath of feeling true and sweet is wafted across it and heightens its
+fine vague beauty.
+
+A deeper humanity is shown in the short story _Flitters, Tatters and the
+Counsellor_, which made its first appearance in this magazine in
+January, 1879. This sketch gained a quicker popularity than her longer
+novels, and drew forth warm eulogies from critics so far apart in
+standard as Ruskin, Leslie Stephen and Bret Harte.
+
+_Christy Carew_, in its picture of two middle-class Catholic families in
+Dublin, takes us back to the society described in _Hogan, M.P._, but its
+range is narrower and its theme rather social than political. It is a
+softer and more attractive book than _Hogan, M.P._, though, like that
+novel, it is devoted to a realistic picture of life. Miss Laffan's
+characters have the merit of being always real. They are often types,
+but they are never mere abstractions. Whatever their importance or
+qualities, they stand firmly on their feet, are individual and alive.
+Her men are drawn with a vigor which ought to ensure them from the
+reproach of being ladies' men. They may display traits of weakness, but
+these are due to no faltering on the author's part. In _Christy Carew_
+the men are in a minority as far as minuteness of portraiture goes, and
+the most elaborate touches are bestowed on the two young girls who act
+as heroines, for the one is as prominent as the other. Christy and her
+friend Esther O'Neil present two types of girlhood. Esther, _dévote_ and
+gentle, is a very tender, lovable figure, but there is perhaps more
+skill shown in the more contradictory character of Christy, a pretty
+girl addicted to flirting, keenly intelligent and impatient of the
+restraints and inconsistencies of her religious teaching, yet with an
+earnestness which makes her feel the emptiness of her life and vaguely
+seek for something higher. When each of the friends is sought by a
+Protestant lover their different ways of regarding the calamity are in
+keeping with their characters, and though any reader will agree with
+Christy that Esther was the more deserving of happiness, no one will be
+sorry that her own love-story should find a pleasant dénouement. As an
+argument in favor of mixed marriages the book would have been stronger
+if Esther's lover had been separated from her only by prejudice, and not
+by unworthiness as well, but the pathos of the story is in no way marred
+by the neglect to clinch an argument. Like all Miss Laffan's novels, it
+is simple in plot. Construction is not her strong point, and though
+_Christy Carew_ has more story to it than her former books, it is by no
+means technically perfect. There is a certain hurry about it: its good
+things are not driven home, and effects upon which more skilful artists
+would dwell at length are dropped in a concentration upon other objects.
+The book, in the American edition, is also marred by numerous
+typographical defects that betray a singular laxity in proof-reading.
+
+_Hogan, M.P._, was published in 1876: Miss Laffan's career as a novelist
+is therefore only four years old. We will not attempt to cast its
+future: we have simply endeavored, as far as space would admit, to point
+out the soundness of its foundation and the method by which it has been
+laid. In all that she has written there is a reserved strength, a
+sincerity and conscientiousness, which mark her work as unmistakably
+genuine. A large store of observation lies behind all her writing, and
+an intellectual power of a very high order is apparent throughout. What
+she lacks is a mellowness and breadth of art which would enable her to
+blend and concentrate her qualities--to bring the realism of _Hogan,
+M.P._, into unison with the grace of _The Honorable Miss Ferrard_ and
+the pathos and sympathy of _Christy Carew_--to give form and
+completeness to her work. Then Ireland would have a great novelist.
+
+
+     The Reminiscences of an Idler. By Henry Wikoff. New York:
+     Fords, Howard & Hulbert.
+
+The reminiscences of idle men are apt to be more entertaining than those
+of busy men. The idler, passing his time in search of amusement, can
+hardly fail to communicate it when he yields up his store of
+experiences. Being disengaged, his mind is more observant and more
+retentive of the by-play of life, which is the only amusing part of it,
+than that of one of the chief actors can possibly be. Moreover, idlers
+are the natural confidants of the busy: they are consulted, made useful
+as go-betweens, entrusted with those little services which, being
+transient and disconnected, are precisely suited to their disposition
+and secure them a place in the economy of Nature. Mr. Wikoff has been a
+model idler, with large opportunities of this description. From boyhood
+he has, according to his own account, shirked all regular application
+and devoted himself to the pursuit of pleasure, including the
+gratification of an intelligent but superficial curiosity in regard to
+men and manners. He has come in close contact with a great variety of
+people, especially of a class whose private lives and public careers
+react in the production of a piquant interest. These associations kept
+his hands full of what only a very rigid censor would denominate
+mischief. His intimacy with Forrest gained him a suitable companion in a
+journey to the Crimea, and the tragedian a not less suitable negotiator
+in the arrangements for his marriage and his professional engagements in
+London. He aided Lady Bulwer in her fight with her husband's family and
+the recovery of her stolen lap-dog. His friendly offices to Fanny
+Ellsler were more important and fruitful. He had the chief share in
+bringing her to America, smoothing away the difficulties, assuming the
+responsibilities, and escorting her in person, while taking charge at
+the same time of two other interesting and otherwise unprotected
+females. It was, indeed, we need hardly say, in feminine affairs that
+Mr. Wikoff was most at home. But his obliging disposition made him
+equally ready to execute commissions for members of the Bonaparte
+family, his relations with whom grew closer and more interesting at a
+period subsequent to that which is embraced in this volume. Many other
+notabilities, both American and European, have more or less prominence
+in its pages. Some letters from Mrs. Grote are especially deserving of
+notice. As long as it is confined to personal topics the narrative is
+never dull. Without being distinguished for vigor or wit, it has the
+graceful and sprightly garrulity characteristic of the well-preserved
+veteran. Unfortunately, it betrays also the tendency to tediousness
+which belongs to a revered epoch, much of it, being devoted to persons
+and things seen only from a distance and without the powers of vision
+requisite for penetrating their true character. But, in spite of this
+defect, the book is exceedingly readable and enjoyable, and we trust to
+have a continuation of it which may show a restraining influence
+exercised with kindness and tact, such as were so often exerted by the
+author for the benefit of his friends.
+
+
+     The Life and Work of William Augustus Muhlenberg. By Anne
+     Ayres. New York: Harper & Brothers.
+
+There could not well be a stronger contrast than between the subject of
+this book and that of the one just noticed. We have called Mr. Wikoff a
+model idler, and with at least equal truth we may call Dr. Muhlenberg a
+model worker, not because he was unremitting and methodical in labor or
+because his work was his delight, but because it was consecrated by a
+devoted singleness of purpose and crowned by the noblest achievements.
+The life of the founder of St. Luke's Hospital and St. Johnland, as
+exhibited in this faithful record, has the simplicity and grandeur of an
+antique statue, and in the contemplation of it the marvel of its rare
+perfection grows, till we are half inclined to ask whether it, too, be
+not some relic of the remote past rather than a product of our own age.
+Saintly purity, unbounded beneficence, intense earnestness and
+great-hearted liberality of sentiment were never more symmetrically
+blended than in the character of "the great presbyter," whose
+ministrations were neither inspired nor confined by any narrower dogma
+than "that love to man, flowing from love to God," which, as he himself,
+with no lack of humility, said, "had been their impulse." It has been
+justly observed that "he was eminently the common property of a common
+Christianity," and not less truly that "there is, and ever will be, more
+of Christian charity in the world because Dr. Muhlenberg has lived in it
+as he did." He was perhaps not a man of extraordinary intellect, but his
+singularly healthy mind, with its union of resoluteness and candor,
+sound sense and lively fancy, gave the needed counterpoise to his moral
+qualities, keeping his enterprises within the domain of the useful and
+the practical, and thus saving him from the disappointments that too
+often checker the career of the philanthropist. This biography, written
+from long and intimate knowledge and admirable alike in spirit and
+execution, will find, we may trust, a multitude of readers among members
+of all sects and those who belong to none. Its interest is of a far more
+absorbing kind than any that can be excited by gossip or anecdote. It is
+that of a vivid portraiture, in which nothing characteristic is missing,
+in which the details are all harmonious, and which awakens not only our
+admiration, but our warmest sympathies.
+
+
+
+
+_Books Received._
+
+
+History of Political Economy in Europe. By Jérôme-Adolphe Blanqui.
+Translated from the fourth French edition by Emily J. Leonard. New York:
+G. P. Putnam's Sons.
+
+Pure Wine--Fermented Wine and Other Alcoholic Drinks in the Light of the
+New Dispensation. By John Ellis, M. D. New York: Published by the
+Author.
+
+Shakespeare's History of King Henry the Fourth. Parts 1 and 2. Edited,
+with Notes, by William J. Rolfe, A. M. New York: Harper & Brothers.
+
+A History of New York. By Diedrich Knickerbocker. (New "Geoffrey-Crayon"
+Edition of Irving's Works.) New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
+
+Card Essays: Clay's Decisions and Card-table Talk. By "Cavendish."
+(Leisure-Hour Series.) New York: Henry Holt & Co.
+
+William Ellery Channing: His Opinions, Genius and Character. By Henry W.
+Bellows. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
+
+The Virginia Bohemians: A Novel. By John Esten Cooke. (Library of
+American Fiction.) New York: Harper & Brothers.
+
+Nana: Sequel to "L'Assommoir." By Émile Zola. Translated by John
+Stirling. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers.
+
+The Hair, its Growth, Care, Diseases and Treatment. By C. Henri Leonard,
+M. A., M. D. Detroit: C. Henri Leonard.
+
+The Amazon. By Franz Dingelstedt. Translated from the German by J. M.
+Hart. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
+
+Reminiscences of Rev. William Ellery Channing, D. D. By Elizabeth Palmer
+Peabody. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
+
+Around the World with General Grant. By John Russell Young. Parts 19 and
+20. New York: American News Co.
+
+Proverbial Treasury. English and Select Foreign Proverbs. By Carl
+Seelbach. New York: Seelbach Brothers.
+
+The Princess Elizabeth: A Lyric Drama. By Francis H. Williams.
+Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger.
+
+A Foreign Marriage; or, Buying a Title. (Harpers' Library of American
+Fiction.) New York: Harper & Brothers.
+
+William Ellery Channing: A Centennial Memory. By Charles T. Brooks.
+Boston: Roberts Brothers.
+
+Rev. Mr. Dashwell, the New Minister at Hampton. By E. P. B.
+Philadelphia: John E. Potter & Co.
+
+History of the Administration of John De Witt. By James Geddes. New
+York: Harper & Brothers.
+
+Masterpieces of English Literature. By William Swinton. New York: Harper
+& Brothers.
+
+The Theory of Thought: A Treatise on Deductive Logic. New York: Harper &
+Brothers.
+
+The Logic of Christian Evidences. By G. Frederick Wright. Andover:
+Warren F. Draper.
+
+Modern Communism. By Charles W. Hubner. Atlanta, Ga.: Jas. P. Harrison &
+Co.
+
+Free Land and Free Trade. By Samuel S. Cox. New York: G. P. Putnam's
+Sons.
+
+Only a Waif. By R. A. Braendle ("Pips"). New York: D. and J. Sadlier &
+Co.
+
+Life: Its True Genesis. By R. W. Wright. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
+
+Joan of Arc, "The Maid." By Janet Tuckey. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
+
+Mrs. Beauchamp Brown. (No-Name Series.) Boston: Roberts Brothers.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular
+Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880., by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE, JULY 1880 ***
+
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 26, July, 1880.
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature
+and Science, Volume 26, July 1880., by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880.
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: February 23, 2010 [EBook #31365]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE, JULY 1880 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+
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+</pre>
+
+
+
+<h1>LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE</h1>
+
+<h4>OF</h4>
+
+<h2>POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.</h2>
+
+<h3>VOLUME XXVI.</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 106px;">
+<img src="images/image1.jpg" width="106" height="200" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">
+PHILADELPHIA:<br />
+J.B. LIPPINCOTT AND CO.<br />
+<br />
+1880.<br />
+<br />
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by<br />
+<br />
+J.B. LIPPINCOTT &amp; CO.,<br />
+<br />
+In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.<br />
+<br />
+LIPPINCOTT'S PRESS,<br />
+<i>Philadelphia.</i><br /></p>
+
+
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'>PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A Chapter of American Exploration. (<i>Illustrated.</i>)</td><td align='left'><i>William H. Rideing</i></td><td align='right'>393</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Adam and Eve</td><td align='left'><i>Author of "Dorothy Fox"</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_42">42</a>, 147, 290, 411, 547, 666</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A Forgotten American Worthy</td><td align='left'><i>Charles Burr Todd</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_68">68</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A Graveyard Idyl</td><td align='left'><i>Henry A. Beers</i></td><td align='right'>484</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A Great Singer</td><td align='left'><i>Lucy H. Hooper</i></td><td align='right'>507</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>American A&euml;ronauts. (<i>Illustrated.</i>)</td><td align='left'><i>Will O. Bates</i></td><td align='right'>137</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Americans Abroad</td><td align='left'><i>Alain Gore</i></td><td align='right'>466</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>An Episode of Spanish Chivalry</td><td align='left'><i>Prof. T. F. Crane</i></td><td align='right'>747</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>An Historical Rocky-Mountain Outpost. (<i>Illustrated.</i>)</td><td align='left'><i>George Rex Buckman</i></td><td align='right'>649</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>An Old English Home: Bramshill House</td><td align='left'><i>Rose G. Kingsley</i></td><td align='right'>163</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>An Open Look at the Political Situation</td><td align='right'></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A Pivotal Point</td><td align='left'><i>William M. Baker</i></td><td align='right'>559</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Automatism</td><td align='left'><i>Dr. H. C. Wood</i></td><td align='right'>627, 755</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A Villeggiatura in Asisi</td><td align='left'><i>Author of "Signor Monaldini's Niece"</i></td><td align='right'>308</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Bauble Wishart</td><td align='left'><i>Author of "Flitters, Tatters and the Counsellor"</i></td><td align='right'>719</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Canoeing on the High Mississippi. (<i>Illustrated.</i>)</td><td align='left'><i>A. H. Siegfried</i></td><td align='right'>171, 279</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Dungeness, General Greene's Sea-Island Plantation</td><td align='left'><i>Frederick A. Ober.</i></td><td align='right'>241</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Ekoniah Scrub: Among Florida Lakes. (<i>Illustrated.</i>)</td><td align='left'><i>Louise Seymour Houghton</i></td><td align='right'>265</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Findelkind of Martinswand: A Child's Story</td><td align='left'><i>Ouida</i></td><td align='right'>438</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Gas-Burning, and its Consequences</td><td align='left'><i>George J. Varney</i></td><td align='right'>734</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Glimpses of Portugal and the Portuguese. (<i>Illustrated.</i>)</td><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>473</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Heinrich Heine</td><td align='left'><i>A. Parker</i></td><td align='right'>604</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Horse-Racing in France. (<i>Illustrated.</i>)</td><td align='left'><i>L. Lejeune</i></td><td align='right'>321, 452</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>How she Kept her Vow: A Narrative of Facts</td><td align='left'><i>S. G. W. Benjamin</i></td><td align='right'>594</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"Kitty"</td><td align='left'><i>Lawrence Buckley</i></td><td align='right'>503</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Limoges, and its Porcelain</td><td align='left'><i>George L. Catlin</i></td><td align='right'>576</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Mallston's Youngest</td><td align='left'><i>M. H. Catherwood</i></td><td align='right'>189</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Mrs. Marcellus. By a Guest at her Saturdays</td><td align='left'><i>Olive Logan</i></td><td align='right'>613</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Mrs. Pinckney's Governess</td><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>336</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>National Music an Interpreter of National Character</td><td align='left'><i>Amelia E. Barr</i></td><td align='right'>181</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Newport a Hundred Years Ago</td><td align='left'><i>Frances Pierrepont North</i></td><td align='right'>351</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>On Spelling Reform</td><td align='left'><i>M. B. C. True</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_111">111</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>On the Skunk River</td><td align='left'><i>Louise Coffin Jones</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_56">56</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Our Grandfathers' Temples. (<i>Illustrated.</i>)</td><td align='left'><i>Charles F. Richardson</i></td><td align='right'>678</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Paradise Plantation. (<i>Illustrated.</i>)</td><td align='left'><i>Louise Seymour Houghton</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Pipistrello</td><td align='left'><i>Ouida</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_84">84</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Seven Weeks a Missionary</td><td align='left'><i>Louise Coffin Jones</i></td><td align='right'>424</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Short Studies in the Picturesque <i>William Sloan Kennedy</i></td><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>375</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Studies in the Slums&mdash;</td><td align='left'><i>Helen Campbell</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;III. Nan; or, A Girl's Life</td><td align='left'></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_103">103</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;IV. Jack</td><td align='left'></td><td align='right'>213</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;V. Diet and its Doings</td><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>362</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;VI. Jan of the North</td><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>498</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The &#913;&#960;&#945;&#958; &#913;&#949;&#947;&#959;&#956;&#949;&#957;&#945; in Shakespeare</td><td align='left'><i>Prof. James D. Butler</i></td><td align='right'>742</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Arts of India. (<i>Illustrated.</i>)</td><td align='left'><i>Jennie J. Young</i></td><td align='right'>532</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Authors of "Froufrou"</td><td align='left'><i>J. Brander Matthews</i></td><td align='right'>711</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Early Days of Mormonism</td><td align='left'><i>Frederic G. Mather</i></td><td align='right'>198</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Mistakes of Two People</td><td align='left'><i>Margaret Bertha Wright</i></td><td align='right'>567</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Palace of the Leatherstonepaughs. (<i>Illustrated.</i>)</td><td align='left'><i>Margaret Bertha Wright</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_9">9</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Practical History of a Play</td><td align='left'><i>William H. Rideing</i></td><td align='right'>586</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Price of Safety</td><td align='left'><i>E. W. Latimer</i></td><td align='right'>698</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Ruin of Me. (Told by a Young Married Man.)</td><td align='left'><i>Mary Dean</i></td><td align='right'>369</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Ruins of the Colorado Valley. (<i>Illustrated.</i>)</td><td align='left'><i>Alfred Terry Bacon</i></td><td align='right'>521</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Through the Yellowstone Park to Fort Custer</td><td align='left'><i>S. Weir Mitchell, M. D.</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Westbrook</td><td align='left'><i>Alice Ilgenfritz</i></td><td align='right'>218</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Where Lightning Strikes</td><td align='left'><i>George J. Varney</i></td><td align='right'>232</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Will Democracy Tolerate a Permanent Class of National Office-holders?</td><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>690</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Literature of the Day</span>, comprising Reviews of the following Works:</h4>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>Arr, E. H.&mdash;New England Bygones</td><td align='right'>392</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Auerbach, Berthold&mdash;Brigitta</td><td align='right'>775</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Ayres, Anne&mdash;The Life and Work of William Augustus Muhlenberg</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_135">135</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Black, William&mdash;White Wings: A Yachting Romance</td><td align='right'>775</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Forrester, Mrs.&mdash;Roy and Viola</td><td align='right'>775</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Fothergill, Jessie&mdash;The Wellfields</td><td align='right'>775</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Green, John Richard&mdash;History of the English People</td><td align='right'>774</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Laffan, May&mdash;Christy Carew</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_133">133</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>L'Art: revue hebdomada&iacute;re illustr&eacute;e. Sixi&egrave;me ann&eacute;e, Tome II</td><td align='right'>517</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Mahaffy, M. A., Rev. J. P.&mdash;A History of Classical Greek Literature</td><td align='right'>261</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Mrs. Beauchamp Brown</td><td align='right'>518</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Nichol, John&mdash;Byron. (English Men-of-Letters Series.)</td><td align='right'>645</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Piatt, John James&mdash;Pencilled Fly-Leaves: A Book of Essays in Town and Country</td><td align='right'>648</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Scoones, W. Baptiste&mdash;Four Centuries of English Letters</td><td align='right'>647</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Smith, Goldwin&mdash;William Cowper. (English Men-of-Letters Series.)</td><td align='right'>263</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Stephen, Leslie&mdash;Alexander Pope. (English Men-of-Letters Series.)</td><td align='right'>389</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Symington, Andrew James&mdash;Samuel Lover: A Biographical Sketch. With Selections from his Writings and Correspondence</td><td align='right'>391</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Taylor, Bayard&mdash;Critical Essays and Literary Notes</td><td align='right'>519</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&mdash;Studies in German Literature</td><td align='right'>519</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The American Art Review, Nos. 8 and 9</td><td align='right'>520</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Walford, L. B.&mdash;Troublesome Daughters</td><td align='right'>775</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Wikoff, Henry&mdash;The Reminiscences of an Idler</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_135">135</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<h4>
+<span class="smcap">Our Monthly Gossip</span>, comprising the following Articles:</h4>
+
+<p>A Child's Autobiography, 770; A Legion of Devils, 257; A Little Ireland
+in America, 767; A Natural Barometer, 517; An Unfinished Page of
+History, 764; A Plot for an Historical Novel, 385; A Sermon to Literary
+Aspirants, 637; Civil-Service Reform and Democratic Ideas, 762;
+Concerning Night-Noises, 253; Condition of the People in the West of
+Ireland, 514; Conservatory Life in Boston, 511; Edelweiss, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>; Fate of
+an Old Companion of Napoleon III., 516; High Jinks on the Upper
+Mississippi, 515; Our New Visitors, 388; People's Houses: A Dialogue,
+640; Prayer-Meeting Eloquence, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>; Seeing is Believing, 642; Spoiled
+Children, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>; Tabarin, the French Merry-Andrew, 255; The Demidoffs,
+259; The Jardin d'Acclimatation of Paris, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>; The Miseries of Camping
+Out, 387; The Paris Salon of 1880, 381; "Time Turns the Tables," 642;
+Unreformed Spelling, 388; Wanted&mdash;A Real Gainsborough, 772; "Western
+Memorabilia," 250.</p>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Poetry</span>:</h4>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>A Vengeance</td><td align='left'><i>Edgar Fawcett</i></td><td align='right'>211</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Dawn</td><td align='left'><i>John B. Tabb</i></td><td align='right'>612</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Delectatio Piscatoria. The Upper Kennebec</td><td align='left'><i>Horatio Nelson Powers</i></td><td align='right'>367</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>From Far</td><td align='left'><i>Philip Bourke Marston</i></td><td align='right'>465</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Lost</td><td align='left'><i>Mary B. Dodge</i></td><td align='right'>665</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>My Treasure</td><td align='left'><i>H. L. Leonard</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_109">109</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Possession</td><td align='left'><i>Eliza Calvert Hall</i></td><td align='right'>162</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Shelley</td><td align='left'><i>J. B. Tabb</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_18">18</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Teresa di Faenza</td><td align='left'><i>Emma Lazarus</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_83">83</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Home of the Gentians</td><td align='left'><i>Howard Glyndon</i></td><td align='right'>350</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The King's Gifts</td><td align='left'><i>Emily A. Braddock</i></td><td align='right'>718</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Sea's Secret</td><td align='left'><i>G. A. Davis</i></td><td align='right'>240</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Three Roses</td><td align='left'><i>Julia C. R. Dorr</i></td><td align='right'>585</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Under the Grasses</td><td align='left'><i>Dora Reed Goodale</i></td><td align='right'>502</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p>
+<h1><span class="smcap">Lippincott's Magazine</span></h1>
+
+<h4>OF</h4>
+
+<h2><i>POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.</i></h2>
+
+<h3>JULY, 1880.</h3>
+
+<p>Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by <span class="smcap">J.B.
+Lippincott &amp; Co.</span>, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
+Washington.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE PALACE OF THE LEATHERSTONEPAUGHS.</h2>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image5.jpg" width="600" height="391" alt="RUINS OF THE PALACES OF THE C&AElig;SARS." title="" />
+<span class="caption">RUINS OF THE PALACES OF THE C&AElig;SARS.</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Every sentimental traveller to Rome must sometimes wonder if to come to
+the Eternal City is not, after all, more of a loss than a gain: Rome
+unvisited holds such a solitary place in one's imaginings. It is then a
+place around which sweeps a different atmosphere from that of any other
+city under the sun. One sees it through poetic mists that veil every
+prosaic reality. It is arched by an horizon against which the figures of
+its wonderful history are shadowed with scarcely less of grandeur and
+glory than those the old gods cast upon the Sacred Hill.</p>
+
+<p>One who has never seen Rome is thus led to imagine that those of his
+country-people who have lived here for years have become in a manner
+purged of all natural commonplaceness. One thinks of them as
+refined&mdash;sublimated, so to speak&mdash;into beings worthy of reverence and to
+be spoken of with awed admiration.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> For have not their feet wandered
+where the Caesars' feet have trod, till that famous ground has become
+common earth to them? Have they not dwelt in the shadow of mountains
+that have trembled beneath the tramp of Goth, Visigoth and Ostrogoth,
+till those shadows have become every-day shadows to them? Have they not
+often watched beneath the same stars that shone upon knightly vigils,
+till the whiteness of those shining hosts has made pure their souls as
+it purified the heroic ones of old? Have they not listened to the
+singing and sighing of the selfsame winds that sung and sighed about the
+spot where kingly Numa wooed a nymph, till it must be that into the
+commoner natures has entered some of the sweetness and wisdom of that
+half-divine communion?</p>
+
+<p>Thus the dreamer comes to Rome expecting to enter and become enfolded by
+those poetic mists, to live an ideal life amid the tender melancholy
+that broods over stately and storied ruin, and to forget for evermore,
+while within the wondrous precincts, that aught more prosaic exists than
+the heroes of history, the fairest visions of art and dreams of poesy.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image6.jpg" width="500" height="283" alt="&quot;GHOSTS OF FLEAS&quot; (Copied From Sketches Of William
+Blake)." title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;GHOSTS OF FLEAS&quot; (Copied From Sketches Of William
+Blake).</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>So came the Leatherstonepaughs. And so have the Leatherstonepaughs
+sometimes wondered if, after all, to come to Rome is not more of a loss
+than a gain in the dimming of one of their fairest ideals. For is there
+another city in the world where certain of the vulgar verities of life
+press themselves more prominently into view than in the Eternal City?
+Can one anywhere have a more forcible conviction that greasy cookery is
+bile-provoking, and that it is because the sylvan bovine ruminates so
+long upon the melancholy Campagna that one's dinners become such a heavy
+and sorrowful matter in Rome? Is there any city in the universe where
+fleas dwarf more colossally and fiendishly Blake's famous "ghosts" of
+their kind? Does one anywhere come oftener in from wet streets, "a dem'd
+moist, unpleasant body," to more tomblike rooms? Is one anywhere so
+ceaselessly haunted by the disagreeable consciousness that one pays ten
+times as much for everything one buys as a native pays, and that the
+trousered descendant of the toga'd Roman regards the Western barbarian
+as quite as much his legitimate prey as the barbarian's barelegged
+ancestors were the prey of his forefathers before the tables of history
+were turned, Rome fallen and breeches supplied to all the world? And are
+any mortal vistas more gorgeously illuminated by the red guidebook of
+the Tourist than are the stately and storied ruins where the
+sentimentalist seeketh the brooding of a tender melancholy, and
+findeth it not in the presence of couriers, cabmen, beggars,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+photograph-peddlers, stovepipe hats, tie-backs and bridal giggles?</p>
+
+<p>The dreamer thought to find old Rome crystallized amid its glorious
+memories. He finds a nineteenth-century city, with gay shops and
+fashionable streets, living over the heroic scenes of the ancients and
+the actual woe and spiritual mysticism of the medi&aelig;val age; and he is
+disappointed&mdash;nay, even sometimes enraged into a gnashing of the teeth
+at all things Roman.</p>
+
+<p>But after many weeks, after the sights have been "done," the mouldy and
+mossy nooks of the old city explored, and the marvellous picturesqueness
+that hides in strange places revealed&mdash;after one has a speaking
+acquaintance with all the broken bits of old statues that gather moth
+and rust where the tourist cometh not and the guidebook is not known,
+and has followed the tiniest thread of legend or tradition into all
+manner of mysterious regions,&mdash;then the sentimentalist begins to love
+Rome again&mdash;Rome as it is, not Rome as it seemed through the glamours of
+individual imagination.</p>
+
+<p>This is what the Leatherstonepaughs did. But first they fled the
+companionship of the beloved but somewhat loudly-shrieking American
+eagle as that proud bird often appears in the hotels and <i>pensions</i> of
+Europe, and lived in a shabby Roman palace, where only the soft bastard
+Latin was heard upon the stairs, and where, if any medi&aelig;val ghost
+stalked in rusted armor or glided in mouldering cerements, it would not
+understand a single word of their foreign, many-consonanted speech.</p>
+
+<p>This palace stands, gay and grim, at the corner of a gay street and a
+dingy <i>vicolo</i>, the street and alley contrasting in color like a Claude
+Lorraine with a Nicholas Poussin. Past one side of the palace drifts all
+day a bright tide of foreign sightseers, prosperous Romans, gay models
+and flower-venders, handsome carriages, dark-eyed girls with their
+sallow chaperones, and olive-cheeked, huge-checked <i>jeunesse dor&eacute;e</i>,
+evidently seeking for pretty faces as for pearls of great price, as is
+the manner of the jeunesse dor&eacute;e of the Eternal City; while down upon
+the scene looks a succession of dwelling-houses, a gray-walled convent
+or two, one of the stateliest palaces of Rome&mdash;now let out in apartments
+and hiding in obscure rooms the last two impoverished descendants of a
+proud race that helped to impoverish Rome&mdash;one or two more prosperous
+palaces, and a venerable church, looking like a sleepy watchman of Zion
+suffering the enemy to do as it will before his closed eyes.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;">
+<img src="images/image8a.jpg" width="450" height="266" alt="WHAT A ROMAN BUYS FOR TWO CENTS IN THE ETERNAL CITY." title="" />
+<span class="caption">WHAT A ROMAN BUYS FOR TWO CENTS IN THE ETERNAL CITY.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/image8b.jpg" width="400" height="143" alt="WHAT A FOREIGNER BUYS FOR TWO CENTS IN THE ETERNAL CITY." title="" />
+<span class="caption">WHAT A FOREIGNER BUYS FOR TWO CENTS IN THE ETERNAL CITY.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>On the other side is the vicolo, dark of wall and dank of pavement, with
+petticoats and shirts dangling from numerous windows and fluttering like
+gibbeted wretches in the air; with frowzy women sewing or knitting in
+the sombre doorways and squalid urchins screaming everywhere; with
+humble vegetables and cheap wines exposed for sale in dirty windows;
+with usually a carriage or two undergoing a washing at some stable-door;
+and with almost always an amorous Romeo or two from some brighter region
+wandering hopefully to and fro amid the unpicturesque gloom of this
+Roman lane to catch a wafted kiss or a dropped letter from the rear
+window of his Juliet's home. For nowhere else in Europe, Asia, America,
+the Oceanic Archipelago or the Better Land can the Romeo-and-Juliet
+business be more openly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> and freely carried on than in the by-streets of
+the Eternal City, where girls are thought to be as jealously secluded
+from the monster Man as are the women of a Turkish seraglio or the nuns
+of a European convent. These Romeos and Juliets usually seem quite
+indifferent to the number of unsympathetic eyes that watch their little
+drama, providing only Papa and Mamma Capulet are kept in the dark in the
+shop below. Even the observation of Signor and Signora Montague would
+disturb them little, for it is only Juliet who is guarded, and Romeo is
+evidently expected to get all the fun out of life he can. In their dingy
+vicolo the Leatherstonepaughs have seen three Romeos watching three
+windows at the same twilight moment. One of them stood under an open
+window in the third story, from whence a line was dropped down to
+receive the letter he held in his hand. Just as the letter-weighted line
+was drawn up a window immediately below Juliet's was thrown violently
+open, and an unromantic head appeared to empty vials of wrath upon the
+spectacled Romeo below for always hanging about the windows of the silly
+<i>pizzicarole</i> girls above and giving the house a ridiculous appearance
+in the eyes of the passers-by. Romeo answered audaciously that the
+signora was mistaken in the man, that he had never been under that
+window before in his life, had never seen the Signorina Juliet, daughter
+of Capulet the pizzicarole who lived above, but that he was merely
+accompanying his friend Romeo, who loved Juliet the daughter of the
+<i>drochiere</i> who lived a story below, and who was now wooing her softly
+two or three windows away. A shriek was his response as the wrathful
+head disappeared, while the lying Romeo laughed wickedly and the
+Leatherstonepaughs immoderately, in spite of themselves, to see Juliet,
+daughter of the drochiere, electrically abstracted from <i>her</i> window as
+if by the sudden application of a four-hundred-enraged-mother-power to
+her lofty chignon from behind, while the three Romeos, evidently all
+strangers to each other, folded their tents like the Arab and silently
+stole away.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 396px;">
+<img src="images/image9.jpg" width="396" height="500" alt="ROMEO." title="" />
+<span class="caption">ROMEO.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 295px;">
+<img src="images/image10.jpg" width="295" height="450" alt="JULIET." title="" />
+<span class="caption">JULIET.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Leatherstonepaughs always suspected that no lordly race, from
+father's father to son's son, had ever dwelt in their immense palace.
+They suspected rather that it was, like many another mighty Roman pile,
+reared by plebeian gains to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> shelter noble Romans fair and proud whom
+Fate confined to economical "flats," and whose wounded pride could best
+be poulticed by the word <i>palazzo</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Hans Christian Andersen knew this palace well, and has described it as
+the early home of his <i>Improvisatore</i>. In those days two fountains
+tinkled, one within, the other just outside, the dusky iron-barred
+basement. One fountain, however, has ceased to flow, and now if a
+passer-by peeps in at the grated window, whence issue hot strong vapors
+and bursts of merry laughter, he will see a huge stone basin into whose
+foaming contents one fountain drips, and over which a dozen washerwomen
+bend and pound with all their might and main in a bit of chiaroscuro
+that reminds one of Correggio.</p>
+
+<p>Over this Correggio glimpse wide stone stairs lead past dungeon-like
+doors up five flights to the skylighted roof. Each of these doors has a
+tiny opening through which gleams a watchful eye and comes the sound of
+the inevitable "<i>Chi &egrave;?</i>" whenever the doorbell rings, as if each comer
+were an armed marauder strayed down from the Middle Ages, who must be
+well reconnoitred before the fortress-gates are unbarred.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 331px;">
+<img src="images/image11.jpg" width="331" height="500" alt="THE COURT OF THE LEATHERSTONEPAUGHS&#39; PALACE." title="" />
+<span class="caption">THE COURT OF THE LEATHERSTONEPAUGHS&#39; PALACE.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was in the <i>ultimo piano</i> that the Leatherstonepaughs pitched their
+lodge in a vast wilderness of colorful tiled roofs, moss-grown and
+lichen-laden, amid a forest of quaintly-shaped and smokeless chimneys.
+Their floors, guiltless of rugs or carpets, were of earthen tiles and
+worn into hollows where the feet of the palace-dwellers passed oftenest
+to and fro. A multitude of undraped windows opened like doors upon stone
+balconies, whither the inhabitants flew like a startled covey of birds
+every time the king and queen drove by in the street below, and upon
+which they passed always from room to room. The outer balcony looks down
+upon the Piazza Barberini and its famous Spouting Triton, with an
+horizon-line over the roofs broken by gloomy stone-pines and cypresses
+that seem to have grown from the buried griefs of Rome's dead centuries.
+The inner balcony overlooks the court, where through the wide windows of
+every story, amid the potted plants and climbing vines that never take
+on a shade of pallor in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> an Italian winter, and that adorn every Roman
+balcony, one could see into the penetralia of a dozen Roman families and
+wrest thence the most vital secrets&mdash;even to how much <i>Romano</i> Alfredo
+drank at dinner or whether lemon-juice or sour wine gave piquancy to
+Rosina's salad. Entirely unacquainted with these descendants of ancient
+patrician or pleb, the Leatherstonepaughs ventilated original and
+individual theories concerning them, and gave them names of their own
+choosing.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/image12.jpg" width="300" height="231" alt="A CASE OF NON-REMITTANCE." title="" />
+<span class="caption">A CASE OF NON-REMITTANCE.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Rameses the Great has quarrelled with the Sphinx and is flirting with
+the Pyramid," whispered young Cain one day as some of the family,
+leaning over the iron railing, looked into the leafy, azure-domed vault
+below, and saw into the dining-room of a family whose mysteriousness of
+habit and un-Italian blankness of face gave them a fanciful resemblance
+to the eternal riddles of the Orient.</p>
+
+<p>The "Pyramid," whose wide feet and tiny head gave her her triangular
+title, was evidently a teacher, for she so often carried exercise-books
+and dog-eared grammars in her hand. She chanced at that moment to glance
+upward. "Lucia," she cried to the Sphinx, speaking with an Italian
+accent that she flattered herself was to the down-gazers an unknown
+tongue, "do look up to the fifth <i>loggia</i>. If there isn't the Huge Bear,
+the Middle-sized Bear and the Wee Bear looking as if they wanted to come
+down and eat us up!"</p>
+
+<p>"Y' ain't fat 'nuf," yelled the Wee Bear before the elder Bruins had
+time to squelch him.</p>
+
+<p>The studio-salon of the Leatherstonepaughs amid the clouds and chimneys
+of the Eternal City was a chapter for the curious. It was as spacious as
+a country meeting-house, as lofty as befits a palace. It was frescoed
+like some of the modern pseudo-Gothic and pine cathedrals that adorn the
+village-greens of New England hamlets, and its <i>pot-pourri</i> of artistic
+ideas was rich in helmeted Minervas, vine-wreathed Bacchuses, winged
+Apollos and nameless classic nymphs, all staring downward from the
+spandrels of pointed arches with quite as much at-homeness as Olympian
+heroes would feel amid the mystic shades of the Scandinavian Walhalla.
+This room was magnificent with crimson upholstery, upon which rested a
+multitude of scarlet-embroidered cushions that seemed to the
+color-loving eye like a dream of plum-pudding after a nightmare of
+mince-pie. Through this magnificence had drifted, while yet the
+Leatherstonepaughs saw Rome in all its idealizing mists, generations of
+artists. Sometimes these artists had had a sublime disdain of base
+lucre, and sometimes base lucre had had a sublime disdain of them. Some
+of the latter class&mdash;whose name is Legion&mdash;had marked their passage by
+busts, statuettes and paintings that served to remind Signora Anina,
+their landlady, that promises of a remittance can be as fair and false
+as the song of the Sirens or the guile of the Loreley. Crusaders in
+armor brandished their lances there in evidence that Michael Angelo
+Bivins never sent from Manhattan the bit of white paper to redeem them.
+Antignone&mdash;usually wearing a Leatherstonepaugh bonnet&mdash;mourned that
+Praxiteles Periwinkle faded out of the vistas of Rome to the banks of
+the Thames without her. Dancing Floras seemed joyous that they had not
+gone wandering among the Theban Colossi with Zefferino, instead of
+staying to pay for his Roman lodging; while the walls smiled, wept,
+simpered, threatened and gloomed with Madonnas, Dolorosas, Beatrices,
+sprites, angels and fiends, the authors of whose being had long ago
+drifted away on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> the ocean of poverty which sweeps about the world, and
+beneath which sometimes the richest-freighted ships go down. In the
+twenty years that Signora Anina has let her rooms to artists many such
+tragedies have written significant and dreary lines upon her walls.</p>
+
+<p>That studio-salon was rich not alone in painting and sculpture. The
+whatnot was a museum whither might come the Northern Goth and Southern
+Vandal to learn what a Roman home can teach of the artistic taste that
+Matthew Arnold declares to be the natural heritage only of the nation
+which rocked the cradle of the Renaissance when its old Romanesque and
+Byzantine parents died. That whatnot was covered with tiny china dogs
+and cats, such as we benighted American Goths buy for ten cents a dozen
+to fill up the crevices in Billy's and Bobby's Christmas stockings.
+Fancy inkstands stood cheek by jowl with wire flower-baskets that were
+stuffed with crewel roses of such outrageous hues as would make the
+Angel of Color blaspheme. Cut-glass spoon-holders kept in countenance
+shining plated table-casters eternally and spotlessly divorced from the
+purpose of their being. There were gaudy china vases by the dozen and
+simpering china shepherdesses by the score. There were plaster casts of
+the whole of Signora Anina's family of nine children, from the elder
+fiery Achilles to the younger hysterical Niobe. There were
+perfume-bottles enough to start a coiffeur in business, and woolly lambs
+enough for a dozen pastoral poems or as many bucolic butchers. But the
+piano was piled high with Beethoven's sonatas and Chopin's delicious
+dream-music, while a deluge of French novels had evidently surged over
+that palace of the Leatherstonepaughs.</p>
+
+<p>When the family took possession of their share of the palazzo a corner
+of this studio-salon was dedicated to a peculiar member of their family.
+From that corner she seldom moved save as she swept away in some such
+elegant costume as the others wore only upon gala-occasions, or in some
+picturesque or wildly-fantastic garb that would have lodged her in a
+policeman's care had she ever been suffered to escape thus from the
+palace. All day long, day after day, she tarried in her corner mute and
+motionless, eying all comers and goers with a haughty stare. Sometimes
+she leaned there with rigid finger pressed upon her lip, like a statue
+of Silence; sometimes her hands were pressed pathetically to her breast,
+like a Mater Dolorosa; sometimes both arms hung lax and limp by her
+side, like those of a heart-broken creature; and sometimes she wildly
+clutched empty air, like a Leatherstonepaugh enthusiastically inebriated
+or gone stark, staring, raving mad!</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 282px;">
+<img src="images/image15.jpg" width="282" height="450" alt="ANTIGNONE." title="" />
+<span class="caption">ANTIGNONE.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Yet never, never, never was Silentia Leatherstonepaugh known to break
+that dreadful silence, even though honored guests spoke to her kindly,
+and although young Cain Leatherstonepaugh repeatedly reviled her as had
+she been Abel's wife. One day came an old Spanish monk of whom Leah and
+Rachel would learn the language of Castile. Silentia gloomed in her
+dusky corner unseen of the monk, who was left with her an instant alone.
+A few moments before,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> moved perhaps by a dawning comprehension of the
+unspeakable pathos of her fate, young Cain had given her a dagger. When,
+two minutes after the monk's arrival, Leah and Rachel entered the room,
+a black sighing mass cowered in a corner of the sofa, while Silentia
+rose spectre-like in the dimness, the dagger pointed toward her heart.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 281px;">
+<img src="images/image16.jpg" width="281" height="500" alt="SILENTIA LEATHERSTONEPAUGH." title="" />
+<span class="caption">SILENTIA LEATHERSTONEPAUGH.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Madonna mia!" giggled the monk hysterically when his petticoats were
+pulled decorously about him and he was set on his feet again, "I thought
+I should be arrested for murder&mdash;<i>poverino mio</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>Another day came one of the Beelzebub girls&mdash;Lady Diavoletta&mdash;who wished
+to coax some of the Leatherstonepaughs to paint her a series of fans
+with the torments of Dante's Inferno. When the doorbell rang, and while
+Cain cried "<i>Chi &egrave;?</i>" at the peephole, Leah, who was just posing for
+Rachel's barelegged gypsy, hastily pulled a long silk skirt from haughty
+but unresisting Silentia and hurried it over her own head before Lady
+Diavoletta was admitted. The heiress of the Beelzebubs tarried but a
+moment, then took her departure grimly, without hinting a word of her
+purpose. Said Lady Diavoletta afterward to the Cherubim sisters, "Would
+you believe it? I called one day upon those Leatherstonepaughs, and they
+never even apologized for receiving me in a room where there was an
+insane American just escaped from her keeper, <i>tray beang arrang&eacute;e pore
+doncy le cong cong</i>!"</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 285px;">
+<img src="images/image17.jpg" width="285" height="500" alt="SILENTIA AS SHE APPEARED TO LADY DIAVOLETTA BEELZEBUB." title="" />
+<span class="caption">SILENTIA AS SHE APPEARED TO LADY DIAVOLETTA BEELZEBUB.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Dismal and grim though the exterior of that palazzo was, needing but
+towers and machicolated parapets to seem a fortress, or an encircling
+wall to seem a frowning monastery where cowled figures met each other
+only to whisper sepulchrally, "Brother, we must die," it was yet the
+scene of not a few laughable experiences. And perhaps even in this
+respect it may not have differed so widely as one might think from
+cloistered shades of other days, when out of sad, earth-colored<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> raiment
+and the habit of dismal speech human sentiment painted pictures while
+yet the fagots grew apace for their destruction as well as for the
+funeral-pyre of their scolding and bellowing enemy, Savonarola. For
+where Fra Angelico, working from the life, could create a San Sebastian
+so instinct with earthly vitality and earthly bloom that pious
+Florentine women could not say their prayers in peace in its presence,
+there were three easels, each bearing a canvas, in different parts of
+the room. Before each easel worked a Leatherstonepaugh, each clad with
+classic simplicity in a long blue cotton garment, decorated with many
+colors and smelling strongly of retouching varnish, that covered her
+from the white ruffle at her throat to the upper edge of her black
+alpaca flounce.</p>
+
+<p>The room was silent, and, except for the deft action of brushes,
+motionless. Only that from below was heard the musical splash of the
+Barberini Tritons, and that from the windows could be seen the sombre
+pines of the Ludovisi gardens swaying in solemn rhythmic measure must
+have been sometimes unbending from the dole and drear of medi&aelig;val
+asceticism into something very like human fun.</p>
+
+<p>One day the Leatherstonepaughs were all at work in the immense studio.
+Silentia alone was idle, and, somewhat indecorously draped only in a bit
+of old tapestry, with dishevelled hair and lolling head, leaned against
+the wall, apparently in the last stages of inebriety. There against the
+blue sky, all the world would have seemed petrified into the complete
+passiveness of sitting for its picture.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+<img src="images/image18.jpg" width="550" height="412" alt="YOUNG CAIN INTERVIEWING SILENTIA." title="" />
+<span class="caption">YOUNG CAIN INTERVIEWING SILENTIA.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Marietta was their model. She was posed in a nun's dress, pensive gray,
+with virginal white bound primly across her brow. Marietta is a capital
+model, and her sad face and tender eyes were upturned with exactly the
+desired expression to the grinning mask in the centre of the ceiling.
+Silentia kindly consented to pose for the cross to which the nun clung;
+that is, she wobbled weakly into the place where the sacred emblem would
+have been were this Nature and not Art, and where the cross would be in
+the picture<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> when completed. Marietta clung devoutly to Silentia's
+ankles, and Silentia looked as cross as possible.</p>
+
+<p>"How unusual to see one of Italia's children with a face like that!"
+said a Leatherstonepaugh as she studied the nun's features. "One would
+say that she had really found peace only after some terrible suffering."</p>
+
+<p>"She does not give me that impression," said another Leatherstonepaugh.
+"Her contours are too round, her color too undimmed, ever to have
+weathered spiritual storms. She seems to me more like one of Giovanni
+Bellini's Madonnas, those fair, fresh girl-mothers whom sorrow has never
+breathed upon to blight a line or tint, and yet who seem to have a
+prophecy written upon their faces&mdash;not of the glory of the agony, but of
+the lifelong sadness of a strange destiny. This girl has some mournful
+prescience perhaps. Let me talk with her by and by."</p>
+
+<p>"Marietta," said a Leatherstonepaugh in the next repose, "if you were
+not obliged to be a model, what would you choose to be, of all things in
+the world?"</p>
+
+<p>This was only an entering-wedge, intended by insidious degrees to pry
+open the heart of the girl and learn the mystery of her Madonna-like
+sadness.</p>
+
+<p>Marietta looked up quickly: "What would I be, signorina? Dio mio! but I
+would wear shining clothes and ride in the Polytheama! Giacomo says I
+was born for the circus. Will le signorine see?"</p>
+
+<p>In the twinkling of an eye, before the Leatherstonepaughs could breathe,
+the pensive gray raiment was drawn up to the length of a ballet-skirt
+and the foot of the Madonna-faced nun was in the open mouth of one of
+Lucca della Robbia's singing-boys that hung on the wall about five feet
+from the floor!</p>
+
+<p>"Can any of the signorine do <i>that</i>?" she crowed triumphantly. "I can
+knock off a man's hat or black his eye with my foot."</p>
+
+<p>All the Leatherstonepaughs groaned in doleful chorus, "A-a-a-h-h!"</p>
+
+<p>And it was not until young Cain, ostracised from the studio during the
+s&eacute;ance, whistled in through the keyhole sympathetic inquiries concerning
+the only woe his little soul knew, "Watty matter in yare? Ennybuddy dut
+e tummuck-ache?" that they chorused with laughter at their
+"Giovanni-Bellini Madonna."</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Margaret Bertha Wright.</span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>SHELLEY.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Shelley, the wondrous music of thy soul<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Breathes in the cloud and in the skylark's song,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That float as an embodied dream along<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The dewy lids of Morning. In the dole<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That haunts the west wind, in the joyous roll<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of Arethusan fountains, or among<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The wastes where Ozymandias the strong<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lies in colossal ruin, thy control<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Speaks in the wedded rhyme. Thy spirit gave<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A fragrance to all Nature, and a tone<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To inexpressive Silence. Each apart&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Earth, Air and Ocean&mdash;claims thee as its own,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The twain that bred thee, and the panting wave<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">That clasped thee like an overflowing heart.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i27"><span class="smcap">J. B. Tabb.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p>
+<h2>PARADISE PLANTATION</h2>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image22.jpg" width="500" height="309" alt="&quot;THE SPLENDID SADDLE-HOSS.&quot;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;THE SPLENDID SADDLE-HOSS.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>"Of course you will live at the hotel?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all. The idea of leaving one's work three times a day to dress
+for meals!"</p>
+
+<p>"May I ask, then, where you <i>do</i> propose to reside?"</p>
+
+<p>"In the cottage on the place, to be sure."</p>
+
+<p>The Pessimist thrust his hands into his pockets and gave utterance to a
+long, low whistle.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't believe it? Come over with us and look at it, and let us tell
+you our plans."</p>
+
+<p>"That negro hut, Hope? You never can be in earnest?"</p>
+
+<p>"She is until she has seen it," said the Invalid, smiling. "You had
+better go over with her: a sight of the place will be more effectual
+than all your arguments."</p>
+
+<p>"But she <i>has</i> seen it," said Merry. "Two years ago, when we were here
+and old Uncle Nat was so ill, we went over there."</p>
+
+<p>"And I remember the house perfectly," added Hope&mdash;"a charming long, low,
+dark room, with no windows and a great fireplace, and the most
+magnificent live-oak overhanging the roof."</p>
+
+<p>"How enchanting! Let us move in at once." The Invalid rose from his
+chair, and taking Merry's arm, the four descended the piazza-steps.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," explained Hope as we walked slowly under the grand old
+trees of the hotel park&mdash;"of course the carpenter and the painter and
+the glazier are to intervene, and Merry and I must make no end of
+curtains and things. But it will be ever so much cheaper, when all is
+done, than living at the hotel, besides being so much more cozy; and if
+we are to farm, we really should be on the spot."</p>
+
+<p>"Meantime, I shall retain my room at the hotel," said the Pessimist,
+letting down the bars.</p>
+
+<p>"You are expected to do that," retorted Merry, disdaining the bars and
+climbing over the fence. "It will be quite as much as you deserve to be
+permitted to take your meals with us. But there! can you deny that that
+is beautiful?"</p>
+
+<p>The wide field in which we were walking terminated in a high bluff above
+the St. John's. A belt of great forest trees permitted only occasional
+glimpses of the water on that side, but to the northward the ground
+sloped gradually down to one of the picturesque bays which so frequently
+indent the shores of the beautiful river. Huge live-oaks stood here and
+there about the field, with soft gray Spanish moss swaying from their
+dark branches.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> Under the shadow of one more mighty than the rest stood
+the cottage, or rather the two cottages, which formed the much-discussed
+residence&mdash;two unpainted, windowless buildings, with not a perpendicular
+line in their whole superficial extent.</p>
+
+<p>The Pessimist withdrew the stick which held the staple and threw open
+the unshapely door. There were no steps, but a little friendly pushing
+and pulling brought even the Invalid within the room. There was a
+moment's silence; then, from Hope, "Oh, the magnificent chimney! Think
+of a fire of four-foot lightwood on a chilly evening!"</p>
+
+<p>"I should advise the use of the chimney as a sleeping-room: there seems
+to be none other," said the Pessimist.</p>
+
+<p>"But we can curtain off this entire end of the room. How fortunate that
+it should be so large! Here will be our bedroom, and this corner shall
+be for Merry. And when we have put one of those long, low Swiss windows
+in the east side, and another here to the south, you'll see how pleasant
+it will be."</p>
+
+<p>"It appears to me," he remarked perversely, "that windows will be a
+superfluous luxury. One can see out at a dozen places already; and as
+for ventilation, there is plenty of that through the roof."</p>
+
+<p>"The frame really is sound," said the Invalid, examining with a critical
+eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it is," said Hope. "Now let us go into the kitchen. If that
+is only half as good I shall be quite satisfied."</p>
+
+<p>The kitchen-door, which was simply an old packing-box cover, with the
+address outside by way of doorplate, was a veritable "fat man's misery,"
+but as none of the party were particularly fat we all managed to squeeze
+through.</p>
+
+<p>"Two rooms!" exclaimed Hope. "How enchanting! I had no idea that there
+was more than one. What a nice little dining-room this will make! There
+is just room enough."</p>
+
+<p>"'Us four and no more,'" quoted Merry. "But where will the handmaiden
+sleep?"</p>
+
+<p>"The kitchen is large," said the Pessimist, bowing his head to pass into
+the next room: "it will only be making one more curtain, Merry, and she
+can have this corner."</p>
+
+<p>"He is converted! he really is converted!" cried Merry, clapping her
+hands. "And now there is only papa, and then we can go to the sawmill to
+order lumber."</p>
+
+<p>"And to the Cove to find a carpenter," added Hope. "Papa can make up his
+mind in the boat."</p>
+
+<p>We had visited Florida two years before, and, charmed with the climate,
+the river, the oaks, the flowers, the sweet do-nothing life, we had
+followed the example of so many worthy Northerners and had bought an old
+plantation, intending to start an orange-grove. We had gone over all the
+calculations which are so freely circulated in the Florida papers&mdash;so
+many trees to the acre, so many oranges to the tree: the results were
+fairly dazzling. Even granting, with a lordly indifference to trifles
+worthy of incipient millionaires, that the trees should bear only
+one-fifth of the computed number of oranges, and that they should bring
+but one-third of the estimated price, still we should realize one
+thousand dollars per acre. And there are three hundred and sixty acres
+in our plantation. Ah! even the Pessimist drew a long breath.</p>
+
+<p>Circumstances had, however, prevented our taking immediate steps toward
+securing this colossal fortune. But now that it had become necessary for
+us to spend the winter in a warm climate, our golden projects were
+revived. We would start a grove at once. It was not until we had been
+three days at sea, southward bound, that Hope, after diligent study of
+an old Florida newspaper, picked up nobody knows where, became the
+originator of the farming plan now in process of development.</p>
+
+<p>"The cultivation of the crop becomes the cultivation of the grove," she
+said with the sublime assurance of utter ignorance, "and thus we shall
+get our orange-grove at no cost whatever."</p>
+
+<p>She was so much in earnest that the Invalid was actually convinced by
+her arguments, which, to do her justice, were not original, but were
+filched from the enthusiastic journal before alluded to. It was decided
+that we were to go to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> farming. It is true none of us knew anything
+about the business except such waifs of experience as remained to the
+Invalid after thirty years' absence from grandpa's farm, where he used
+to spend the holidays. Holidays were in winter in those times, and his
+agricultural experience had consisted principally in cracking butternuts
+and riding to the wood-lot on the ox-sled. But this was of no
+consequence, as Hope and Merry agreed, since there were plenty of books
+on the subject, and, besides, there were the Florida newspapers!</p>
+
+<p>"I warn you I wash my hands of the whole concern," the Pessimist had
+said. "You'll never make farming pay."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because you won't."</p>
+
+<p>"But why, because?"</p>
+
+<p>"The idea of women farming!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well, if you come to that, I should just like to show you what
+women can do," cried Merry; and this unlucky remark of the Pessimist
+settles the business. There is no longer any question about farming.</p>
+
+<p>No one could deny that the house was pretty, and comfortable too, when
+at last the carpenter and painter had done their work, and the curtains
+and the easy-chairs and the bookshelves had taken their places, and the
+great fire of pine logs was lighted, and the mocking-bird's song
+streamed in with the sunlight through the open door and between the
+fluttering leaves of the ivy-screen at the window. The piano was always
+open in the evenings, with Merry or the Pessimist strumming on the keys
+or trying some of the lovely new songs; and Hope would be busy at her
+table with farm-books and accounts; and the Invalid, in his easy-chair,
+would be listening to the music and falling off to sleep and rousing
+himself with a little clucking snore to pile more lightwood on the fire;
+and the mocking-bird in his covered cage would wake too and join lustily
+in the song, till Merry smothered him up in thicker coverings.</p>
+
+<p>The first duty was evident. "Give it a name, I beg," Merry had said the
+very first evening in the new home; and the house immediately went into
+committee of the whole to decide upon one. Hope proposed Paradise
+Plantation; Merry suggested Fortune Grove; the Pessimist hinted that
+Folly Farm would be appropriate, but this proposition was ignominiously
+rejected; and the Invalid gave the casting-vote for Hope's selection.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 319px;">
+<img src="images/image26.jpg" width="319" height="450" alt="&quot;I&#39;SE DE SECTION, SAH.&quot;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;I&#39;SE DE SECTION, SAH.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The hour for work having now arrived, the man was not slow in presenting
+himself. "I met an old fellow who used to be a sort of overseer on this
+very plantation," the Invalid said. "He says he has an excellent horse,
+and you will need one, Hope. I told him to come and see you."</p>
+
+<p>"Which? the man or the horse?" asked Merry in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Both, apparently," answered the Pessimist in the same tone, "for here
+they come."</p>
+
+<p>"Ole man Spafford," as he announced himself, was a darkey of ancient and
+venerable mien, tall, gaunt and weatherbeaten. His steed was taller,
+gaunter and apparently twice as old&mdash;an interesting study for the
+osteologist if there be any such scientific person.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He splendid saddle-hoss, missis," said the old man: "good wuk-hoss
+too&mdash;bery fine hoss."</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to me he's rather thin," said Hope doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Dat kase we didn't make no corn dis year, de ole woman an' me, we was
+bofe so bad wid de misery in the leaders" (rheumatism in the legs). "But
+Sancho won't stay pore ef you buys corn enough, missis. He powerful good
+horse to eat."</p>
+
+<p>Further conversation revealed the fact that old man Spafford was "de
+chief man ob de chu'ch."</p>
+
+<p>"What! a minister?" asked the Invalid.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sah, not azatly de preacher, sah, but I'se de nex' t'ing to dat."</p>
+
+<p>"What may your office be, then, uncle?" asked the Pessimist.</p>
+
+<p>"I'se de section, sah," answered the old man solemnly, making a low bow.</p>
+
+<p>"The sexton! So you ring the bell, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not azatly de bell, sah&mdash;we ain't got no bell&mdash;but I bangs on de
+buzz-saw, sah."</p>
+
+<p>"What does he mean?" asked Merry.</p>
+
+<p>The Pessimist shrugged his shoulders without answering, but the
+"section" hastened to explain: "You see, missy, when dey pass roun' de
+hat to buy a bell dey didn't lift nigh enough; so dey jis' bought a
+buzz-saw and hung it up in de chu'ch-house; an' I bangs on de buzz-saw,
+missy."</p>
+
+<p>The chief man of the church was found, upon closer acquaintance, to be
+the subject of a profound conviction that he was the individual
+predestinated to superintend our farming interests. He was so well
+persuaded of this high calling that none of us dreamed of questioning
+it, and he was forthwith installed in the coveted office. At his
+suggestion another man, Dryden by name, was engaged to assist old man
+Spafford and take care of Sancho, and a boy, called Solomon, to wait
+upon Dryden and do chores. A few day-laborers were also temporarily
+hired, the season being so far advanced and work pressing. The
+carpenters were recalled, for there was a barn to build, and hen-coops
+and a pig-sty, not to speak of a fence. Hope and Merry flitted hither
+and thither armed with all sorts of impossible implements, which some
+one was sure to want by the time they had worked five minutes with them.
+As for the Pessimist, he confined himself to setting out orange trees,
+the only legitimate business, he contended, on the place. This work,
+however, he performed vicariously, standing by and smoking while a negro
+set out the trees.</p>
+
+<p>"My duties appear to be limited to paying the bills," remarked the
+Invalid, "and I seem to be the only member of the family who cannot let
+out the job."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought the farm was to be self-supporting?" said the Pessimist.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, so it is: wait till the crops are raised," retorted Merry.</p>
+
+<p>"Henderson says," observed Hope, meditatively, "that there are six
+hundred dollars net profits to be obtained from one acre of cabbages."</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you plant cabbages, then? In this seven-acre lot, for
+instance?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that would be too many. Besides, I have planted all I could get. It
+is too late to sow the seed, but old man Spafford had some beautiful
+plants he let me have. He charged an extra price because they were so
+choice, but I was glad to get the best: it is cheapest in the end. I got
+five thousand of them."</p>
+
+<p>"What sort are they?" asked the Invalid.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know precisely. Spafford says he done lost the paper, and he
+didn't rightly understand the name nohow, 'long o' not being able to
+read; but they were a drefful choice kind."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, bother the name!" said the Pessimist: "who cares what it is? A
+cabbage is a cabbage, I presume. But what have you in this seven-acre
+lot?"</p>
+
+<p>"Those are peas. Dryden says that in North Carolina they realize four
+hundred dollars an acre from them&mdash;when they don't freeze."</p>
+
+<p>The planting being now fairly over, we began to look about us for other
+amusement.</p>
+
+<p>"Better not ride old Sancho," remarked old man Spafford one day as he
+observed the Pessimist putting a saddle on the ancient quadruped.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why not, uncle? You ride him yourself, and you said he was a very fine
+saddle-horse."</p>
+
+<p>"I rides he bareback. Good hoss for lady: better not put man's saddle
+on," persisted the old man.</p>
+
+<p>The Pessimist vaulted into the saddle by way of reply, calling out,
+"Open the gate, Solomon," to the boy, who was going down the lane. But
+the words were not spoken before Sancho, darting forward, overturned the
+deliberate Solomon, leaped the gate and rushed out into the woods at a
+tremendous pace. The resounding beat of his hoofs and energetic cries of
+"Whoa! whoa!" from his rider were wafted back upon the breeze, gradually
+dying away in the distance, and then reviving again as the fiery steed
+reappeared at the same "grand galop." The Pessimist was without a hat,
+and his countenance bore the marks of many a fray with the lower
+branches of the trees.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image29.jpg" width="500" height="273" alt="OVERTURNED SOLOMON." title="" />
+<span class="caption">OVERTURNED SOLOMON.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Here, take your old beast!" he said, throwing the bridle impatiently to
+Spafford. "What sort of an animal do you call him?"</p>
+
+<p>The "section" approached with a grin of delight; "He waw-hoss, sah.
+Young missis rid he afo' the waw, an' he used to lady saddle; but ole
+marsa rid he to de waw, an' whenebber he feel man saddle on he back he
+runs dat a way, kase he t'ink de Yankees a'ter him;" and he exchanged a
+glance of intelligence with Sancho, who evidently enjoyed the joke.</p>
+
+<p>The Invalid, who during the progress of our planting had spent much time
+in explorations among our "Cracker" neighbors, had made the discovery of
+a most disreputable two-wheeled vehicle, which he had purchased and
+brought home in triumph. Its wheels were of different sizes and
+projected from the axle at most remarkable angles. One seat was
+considerably higher than the other, the cushions looked like so many
+dishevelled darkey heads, and the whole establishment had a most uncanny
+appearance. It was a perfect match, however, for Sancho, and that
+intelligent animal, waiving for the time his objection to having Yankees
+after him, consented to be harnessed into the vehicle and to draw us
+slowly and majestically about in the pine woods. He never objected to
+stopping anywhere while we gathered flowers, and we always returned
+laden with treasures to deck our little home withal, making many a rare
+and beautiful new acquaintance among the floral riches of pine barren
+and hammock.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, peas and cabbages and many a "green" besides grew and
+flourished under old man Spafford's fostering care. Crisp green lettuce
+and scarlet radishes already graced our daily board, and were doubly
+relished from being, so to speak, the fruit of our own toil. Paradise
+Plantation became the admiration of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> all the darkey and Cracker farmers
+for miles around, and it was with the greatest delight that Hope would
+accompany any chance visitor to the remotest corner of the farm,
+unfolding her projects and quoting Henderson to the open-mouthed
+admiration of her interlocutor.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you looked at the peas, lately, Hope?" asked the Pessimist one
+lovely February morning.</p>
+
+<p>"Not since yesterday: why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Come and see," was the reply; and we all repaired to the seven-acre lot
+in company. A woeful sight met our eyes&mdash;vines nipped off and trampled
+down and general havoc and confusion in all the ranks.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, what is it?" cried Merry in dismay.</p>
+
+<p>"It's de rabbits, missy," replied old man Spafford, who was looking on
+with great interest. "Dey'll eat up ebery bit o' greens you got, give
+'em time enough."</p>
+
+<p>"This must be stopped," said Hope firmly, recovering from her stupor of
+surprise. "I shall have a close fence put entirely around the place."</p>
+
+<p>"But you've just got a new fence. It will cost awfully."</p>
+
+<p>"No matter," replied Hope with great decision: "it shall be done. The
+idea of being cheated out of all our profits by the rabbits!"</p>
+
+<p>"What makes them look so yellow?" asked the Invalid as the family was
+looking at the peas over the new close fence some evenings later.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't they always do so when they blossom?" asked Hope.</p>
+
+<p>"How's that, Spafford?" inquired the Pessimist.</p>
+
+<p>"Dey ain't, not to say, jis' right," replied that functionary, shaking
+his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what's the matter?" asked Hope quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Groun' too pore, I 'spec', missis. Mighty pore piece, dis: lan' all
+wore out. Dat why dey sell so cheap."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image30.jpg" width="500" height="367" alt="&quot;IT&#39;S DE RABBITS, MISSY.&quot;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;IT&#39;S DE RABBITS, MISSY.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Then won't they bear?" asked Merry in despairing accents.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes," said Hope with determined courage. "I had a quantity of
+fertilizers put on. Besides, I'll send for more. It isn't too late, I'm
+sure.&mdash;We'll use it for top-dressing, eh, Spafford?"</p>
+
+<p>"I declare, Hope, I had no idea you were such a farmer," said the
+Invalid with a pleasant smile.</p>
+
+<p>"And then, besides, we don't depend upon the peas alone," continued
+Hope, reflecting back the smile and speaking with quite her accustomed
+cheerfulness: "there are the corn and the cabbages."</p>
+
+<p>"And the potatoes and cucumbers,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> added Merry as we returned slowly to
+the house by way of all the points of interest&mdash;the young orange trees,
+Merry's newly-transplanted wisteria and the pig-pen.</p>
+
+<p>"I rather suspect that <i>there</i> is our most profitable crop," said the
+Invalid as we seated ourselves upon the piazza which the Pessimist had
+lately built before the house. He was looking toward a tree which grew
+not far distant, sheltered by two enormous oaks. Of fair size and
+perfect proportions, this tree was one mass of glossy, dark-green
+leaves, amid which innumerable golden fruit glimmered brightly in the
+setting sunlight.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image31.jpg" width="500" height="444" alt="PICKING PEAS." title="" />
+<span class="caption">PICKING PEAS.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Our one bearing tree," answered Hope. "Yes, if we only had a thousand
+like it we might give up farming."</p>
+
+<p>"We shall have them in time," said the Pessimist complacently, looking
+abroad upon the straight rows of tiny trees almost hidden by the growing
+crops. "Thanks to my perseverance&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And Dryden's," interpolated Merry.</p>
+
+<p>"There are a thousand four-year-old trees planted," continued the
+Pessimist, not noticing the interruption. "I wonder how many oranges
+that tree has borne?"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose we have eaten some twenty a day from it for the last three
+months," said Merry.</p>
+
+<p>"Hardly that," said the Invalid, "but say fifteen hundred. And the tree
+looks almost as full as ever."</p>
+
+<p>"What if we should have them gathered and sold?" suggested Hope&mdash;"just
+to see what an orange tree is really worth. Spafford says that the fruit
+will not be so good later. It will shrivel at last; and we never can eat
+all those oranges in any case."</p>
+
+<p>Shipping the oranges was the pleasantest work we had yet done. There was
+a certain fascination in handling the firm golden balls, in sorting and
+arranging, in papering and packing; and there was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> real delight in
+despatching the first shipment from the farm&mdash;the more, perhaps, as the
+prospect of other shipments began to dwindle. The peas, in spite of the
+top-dressing, looked yellow and sickly. The cucumbers would not run, and
+more blossoms fell off than seemed desirable. The Pessimist left off
+laughing at the idea of farming, and spent a great deal of time walking
+about the place, looking into things in general.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it almost time for those cabbages to begin to head?" he asked one
+day on returning from a tour of inspection.</p>
+
+<p>"Dryden says," observed Merry, "that those are not cabbages at all: they
+are collards."</p>
+
+<p>"What, under the sun, are collards?" asked the Invalid.</p>
+
+<p>"They are a coarse sort of cabbage: the colored people like them, but
+they never head and they won't sell," said Hope, looking up from a
+treatise on agricultural chemistry. "If those should be collards!"</p>
+
+<p>She laid aside her book and went out to investigate. "At any rate, they
+will be good for the pigs," she remarked on returning. "I shall have
+Behavior boil them in that great pot of hers and give them a mess every
+day. It will save corn."</p>
+
+<p>"'Never say die!'" cried the Pessimist. "'Polly, put the kettle on,-'tle
+on,-'tle on! Polly, put&mdash;'"</p>
+
+<p>The Invalid interposed with a remark. "Southern peas are selling in New
+York at eight dollars a bushel," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, those peas! Why won't they grow?" sighed Merry.</p>
+
+<p>The perverse things would not grow. Quotations went down to six dollars
+and to four, and still ours were not ready to ship. The Pessimist
+visited the field more assiduously than ever; Merry looked despondent;
+only Hope kept up her courage.</p>
+
+<p>"Henderson says," she remarked, closing that well-thumbed volume, "that
+one shouldn't look for profits from the first year's farming. The
+profits come the second year. Besides, I have learned one thing by this
+year's experience. Things should not be expected to grow as fast in
+winter&mdash;even a Southern winter&mdash;as in summer. Next year we will come
+earlier and plant earlier, and be ready for the first quotations."</p>
+
+<p>It was a happy day for us all when at last the peas were ready to
+harvest. The seven-acre lot was dotted over with boys, girls and old
+women, laughing and joking as they picked. Dryden and old man Spafford
+helped Hope and Merry with the packing, and the Pessimist flourished the
+marking-brush with the greatest dexterity. The Invalid circulated
+between pickers and packers, watching the proceedings with profound
+interest.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of it all there came a shower. How it did rain! And it
+would not leave off, or if it did leave off in the evening it began
+again in the morning with a fidelity which we would fain have seen
+emulated by our help. One day's drenching always proved to be enough for
+those worthies, and we had to scour the country in the pouring rain to
+beat up recruits. Then the Charleston steamer went by in spite of most
+frantic wavings of the signal-flag, and our peas were left upon the
+wharf, exposed to the fury of the elements.</p>
+
+<p>They all got off at last in several detachments, and we had only to wait
+for returns. The rain had ceased as soon as the peas were shipped, and
+in the warm, bright weather which followed we all luxuriated in company
+with the frogs and the lizards. The fields and woods were full of
+flowers, the air was saturated with sweet odors and sunshine and songs
+of birds. A messenger of good cheer came to us also by the post in the
+shape of a cheque from the dealer to whom we had sent our oranges.</p>
+
+<p>"Forty dollars from a single tree!" said Hope exultantly, holding up the
+slip of paper. "And that after we had eaten from it steadily for three
+months!"</p>
+
+<p>"The tree is an eighteen-year-old seedling, Spafford says," said the
+Invalid, looking at the document with interest. "If our thousand do as
+well in fourteen years, Hope, we may give up planting cabbages, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"The price will be down to nothing by that time," said the Pessimist,
+not without a shade of excitement, which he endeavored to conceal, as he
+looked at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> cheque. "Still, it can't go below a certain point, I
+suppose. The newspapers are sounder on the orange question than on some
+others, I fancy."</p>
+
+<p>One would have thought that we had never seen a cheque for forty dollars
+before, so much did we rejoice over this one, and so many hopes of
+future emolument did we build upon it.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image34.jpg" width="500" height="364" alt="PACKING." title="" />
+<span class="caption">PACKING.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"What's the trouble with the cucumbers, Spafford?" asked the Pessimist
+as we passed by them one evening on our way up from the little wharf
+where we had left our sailboat.</p>
+
+<p>"T'ink it de sandemanders, sah. Dey done burrow under dat whole
+cucumber-patch&mdash;eat all the roots. Cucumbers can't grow widout roots,
+sah."</p>
+
+<p>"But the Florida <i>Agriculturalist</i> says that salamanders don't eat
+roots," said Hope: "they only eat grubs and worms."</p>
+
+<p>Spafford shook his head without vouchsafing a reply.</p>
+
+<p>"The grubs and worms probably ate the roots, and then the salamanders
+ate them," observed the Pessimist. "That is poetical justice, certainly.
+If we could only eat the salamanders now, the retribution would be
+complete."</p>
+
+<p>"Sandemanders ain't no 'count to eat," said old man Spafford. "Dey ain't
+many critters good to eat. De meat I likes best is wile-cat."</p>
+
+<p>"Wild-cat, uncle!" exclaimed Merry.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to say you eat such things as that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, missy," replied the old man seriously, "a wile-cat's 'most de
+properest varmint going. Nebber eats not'ing but young pigs and birds
+and rabbits, and sich. Yankee folks likes chicken-meat, but 'tain't nigh
+so good."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if they eat rabbits I think better of them," said Hope; "and here
+comes Solomon with the mail-bag."</p>
+
+<p>Among the letters which the Invalid turned out a yellow envelope was
+conspicuous. Hope seized it eagerly. "From the market-man," she said.
+"Now we'll see."</p>
+
+<p>She tore it open. A ten-cent piece, a small currency note and a one-cent
+stamp dropped into her lap. She read the letter in silence, then handed
+it to her husband.</p>
+
+<p>"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the Pessimist, reading it over his shoulder. "This
+is the worst I <i>ever</i> heard. 'Thirty-six crates<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> arrived in worthless
+condition; twelve crates at two dollars; fifty, at fifty cents;
+freights, drayage, commissions;&mdash;balance, thirty-six cents.' Thirty-six
+cents; for a hundred bushels of peas! Oh, ye gods and little fishes!"</p>
+
+<p>Even Hope was mute.</p>
+
+<p>Merry took the document. "It was all because of the rain," she said.
+"See! those last crates, that were picked dry, sold well enough. If all
+had done as well as that we should have had our money back; and that's
+all we expected the first year."</p>
+
+<p>"There's the corn, at any rate," said Hope, rousing herself. "Dryden
+says it's splendid, and no one else has any nearly as early. We shall
+have the first of the market."</p>
+
+<p>The corn was our first thought in the morning, and we walked out that
+way to console ourselves with the sight of its green and waving beauty,
+old Spafford being of the party. On the road we passed a colored woman,
+who greeted us with the usual "Howdy?"</p>
+
+<p>"How's all with you, Sister Lucindy?" asked the "section."</p>
+
+<p>"All standin' up, thank God! I done come t'rough your cornfield, Uncle
+Spafford. De coons is to wuk dar."</p>
+
+<p>We hastened on at this direful news.</p>
+
+<p>"I declar'!" said old Spafford as we reached the fence. "So dey <i>is</i>
+bin' to wuk! Done tote off half a dozen bushel dis bery las' night.
+Mought as well give it up, missis. Once <i>dey</i> gits a taste ob it,
+<i>good-bye!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that's the worst I <i>ever</i> heard!" exclaimed the Pessimist,
+resorting to his favorite formula in his dismay. "Between the coons and
+the commission-merchants your profits will vanish, Hope."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think I shall give it up so?" asked Hope stoutly. "We kept the
+rabbits out with a fence, and we can keep the coons out with something
+else. It is only a few nights' watching and the corn will be fit for
+sale. Dryden and Solomon must come out with their dogs and guns and lie
+in wait."</p>
+
+<p>"Bravo, Hope! Don't give up the ship," said the Invalid, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if she doesn't, neither will I," said the Pessimist. "For the
+matter of that, it will be first-rate sport, and I wonder I haven't
+thought of coon-hunting before. I'll come out and keep the boys company,
+and we'll see if we don't 'sarcumvent the rascals' yet."</p>
+
+<p>And we <i>did</i> save the corn, and sell it too at a good price, the hotels
+in the neighborhood being glad to get possession of the rarity. Hope was
+radiant at the result of her determination: the Pessimist smiled a grim
+approval when she counted up and displayed her bank-notes and silver.</p>
+
+<p>"A few years more of mistakes and losses, Hope, and you'll make quite a
+farmer," he condescended to acknowledge. "But do you think you have
+exhausted the catalogue of animal pests?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Hope, laughing. "I never dared to tell you about the Irish
+potatoes. Something has eaten them all up: Uncle Spafford says it is
+gophers."</p>
+
+<p>"What is a gopher?" asked Merry. "Is it any relation to the gryphon?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is a sagacious variety of snapping-turtle," replied the Invalid,
+"which walks about seeking what it may devour."</p>
+
+<p>"And devours my potatoes," said Hope. "But we have got the better of the
+rabbits and the coons, and I don't despair next year even of the gophers
+and salamanders."</p>
+
+<p>"Even victory may be purchased too dearly," said the Pessimist.</p>
+
+<p>"After all, the experiment has not been so expensive a one," said the
+Invalid, laying down the neatly-kept farm-ledger, which he had been
+examining. "The orange trees are a good investment&mdash;our one bearing tree
+has proved that&mdash;and as for the money our farming experiment has cost
+us, we should have spent as much, I dare say, had we lived at the hotel,
+and not have been one half as comfortable."</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>is</i> a cozy little home," admitted the Pessimist, looking about the
+pretty room, now thrown wide open to the early summer and with a huge
+pot of creamy magnolia-blooms in the great chimney.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the pleasantest winter I ever spent," said Merry
+enthusiastically.</p>
+
+<p>"Except that dreadful evening when the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> account of the peas came," said
+Hope, drawing a long breath. "But I should like to try it again: I shall
+never be quite satisfied till I have made peas and cucumbers
+profitable."</p>
+
+<p>"Then, all I have to say is, that you are destined to drag out an
+unsatisfied existence," said the Pessimist.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not so sure of that," said the Invalid.</p>
+
+<p>And so we turned our faces northward, not without a lingering sorrow at
+leaving the home where we had spent so many sweet and sunny days.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, Paradise Plantation," said Merry as the little white house
+under the live-oak receded from our view as we stood upon the steamer's
+deck.</p>
+
+<p>"It was not so inappropriately named," said the Invalid. "Our life there
+has surely been more nearly paradisiacal than any other we have known."</p>
+
+<p>And to this even the Pessimist assented.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Louise Seymour Houghton.</span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THROUGH THE YELLOWSTONE PARK TO FORT CUSTER.</h2>
+
+<h3>CONCLUDING PAPER.</h3>
+
+
+<p>It was about 8.30 <span class="smcap">a. m.</span> before the boat was found, some travellers
+having removed it from the place where Baronette had cach&eacute;d it. A half
+hour sufficed to wrap a tent-cover neatly around the bottom and to tack
+it fast on the thwarts. Then two oblongs of flat wood were nailed on ten
+feet of pine-stems and called oars; and, so equipped, we were ready to
+start.</p>
+
+<p>We had driven or ridden hundreds of miles over a country familiar to any
+one who chooses to read half a dozen books or reports; but, once across
+the Yellowstone, we should enter a region of which little has been
+written since Lewis and Clarke wandered across the head-waters of the
+Missouri in 1805, and had their perils and adventures told anonymously
+by one who was to become famous for many noble qualities of mind and
+heart, for great accomplishments and unmerited misfortunes.<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p>
+
+<p>Two or three of us sat on the bluff enjoying our after-breakfast pipes
+and watching the transport of our baggage. The gray beach at our feet
+stretched with irregular outline up the lake, and offered one prominent
+cape whence the boat started for its trips across the stream. By 10.30
+all the luggage was over, and then began the business of forcing
+reluctant mules and horses to swim two hundred yards of cold, swift
+stream. The bell-mare promptly declined to lead, and only swam out to
+return again to the shore. Then one or two soldiers stripped and forced
+their horses in, but in turn became scared, and gave it up amidst chaff
+and laughter. At last a line of men, armed with stones, drove the whole
+herd of seventy-five animals into the water with demoniac howls and a
+shower of missiles. Once in, they took it calmly enough, and, the brave
+little foal leading, soon reached the farther bank. One old war-horse of
+recalcitrant views turned back, and had to be towed over.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, we ourselves crossed, and the judge and I, leaving the
+confusion behind us, struck off into some open woods over an indistinct
+trail. Very soon Major Gregg overtook us, and we went into camp about 4
+<span class="smcap">p. m.</span> on a rising ground two miles from the lake, surrounded by woods
+and bits of grass-land. Here Captain G. and Mr. E. left us, going on
+with Mr. Jump for a two days' hunt.</p>
+
+<p>Next day, at 7 <span class="smcap">a. m.</span>, we rode away over little prairies and across low
+pine-clad hills, and saw to right and left tiny<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> parks with their forest
+boundaries, until, after two miles, we came to Pelican Creek, a broad
+grayish stream, having, notwithstanding its swift current, a look of
+being meant by Nature for stagnation. As we followed this
+unwholesome-looking water eastward we crossed some quaking, ill-smelling
+morasses, and at last rode out on a spacious plain, with Mounts
+Langford, Doane and Stevenson far to the south-east, and Mount Sheridan
+almost south-west of us. The first three are bold peaks, while about
+them lie lesser hills numberless and nameless. The day seemed absolutely
+clear, yet the mountains were mere serrated silhouettes, dim with a
+silvery haze, through which gleamed the whiter silver of snow in patches
+or filling the long ravines. Striking across the plain, we came upon a
+tent and the horses of Captain G. and Mr. E., who were away in the
+hills.</p>
+
+<p>Thence we followed the Pelican Valley, which had broadened to a wide
+meadowy plain, and about ten miles from the camp we began a rough ride
+up the lessening creek from the level. The valley was half a mile wide,
+noisome with sulphur springs and steam-vents, with now and then a
+gayly-tinted hill-slope, colored like the ca&ntilde;on of the Yellowstone. Some
+one seeing deer above us on the hills, Dr. T., Mr. K. and Houston rode
+off in pursuit. Presently came a dozen shots far above us, and the
+major, who had followed the hunters, sent his orderly back for
+pack-mules to carry the two black-tailed deer they had killed. After a
+wild scramble through bogs we began to ascend a narrow valley with the
+creek on our left. Jack Baronette "guessed some timber might have fell
+on that trail." Trail there was none in reality, only steep hillsides of
+soft scori&aelig;, streaming sulphur-vents and a cat's cradle of tumbled dead
+trees. Every few minutes the axes were ringing, and a way was cleared;
+then another halt, and more axe-work, until we slipped and scrambled and
+stumbled on to a little better ground, to the comfort of man and beast.</p>
+
+<p>Eighteen miles of this savage riding brought us to our next camp, where,
+as the shooting was said to be good and the cattle needed rest, it was
+decided to remain two days. Our tents were pitched on a grassy knoll
+overlooking the main valley, which was bounded by hills of some three or
+four hundred feet high, between which the Pelican ran slowly with bad
+water and wormy trout, though there was no lack of wholesome springs on
+the hill.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. C. and Mr. T. went off with Jack, and Mr. K. with Jump, to camp out
+and hunt early. The night was clear, the thermometer down to 24&deg;
+Fahrenheit, and the ice thick on the pails when we rose. One of our
+parties came in with six deer: the captain and Mr. C. remained out. The
+camp was pleasant enough to an idling observer like myself, but it was
+not so agreeable to find the mountain-side, where Mr. T. and I were
+looking for game, alive with mosquitos. I lit on a place where the bears
+had been engaged in some rough-and-tumble games: the ground was strewed
+with what the lad who was with us asserted to be bears' hair. It looked
+like the wreck of a thousand chignons, and proved, on inspection, to be
+a kind of tawny-colored moss!</p>
+
+<p>All night long, at brief intervals, our mules were scared by a dull,
+distant noise like a musket-shot. A soldier told me it was a mud volcano
+which he had seen the day we arrived. I then found it marked on Hayden's
+map, but learned that it had not been seen by him, and was only so
+located on information received from hunters. On the morning of August
+1st I persuaded the major to walk over and look for the volcano. We
+crossed the valley, and, guided by the frequent explosions, climbed the
+hills to the east, and, descending on the far side, came into a small
+valley full of sluggish, ill-smelling rills, among which we found the
+remarkable crater, which, as it has not been hitherto examined by any
+save hunters, I shall describe at some length.</p>
+
+<p>A gradual rising ground made up of soft sulphureous and calcareous earth
+was crowned by a more abrupt rise some thirty-five feet high, composed
+of tough gray clay. This was pierced by a cone of regular form about
+thirty feet across<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> at top and five feet at the bottom. On the west,
+about one-third of the circumference was wanting from a point six feet
+above the lowest level, thus enabling one to be at a distance or to
+stand close by, and yet see to the bottom of the pit. The ground all
+around and the shrubs and trees were dotted thick with flakes of dry
+mud, which gave, at a distance, a curious stippled look to the
+mud-spattered surfaces. As I stood watching the volcano I could see
+through the clouds of steam it steadily emitted that the bottom was full
+of dark gray clay mud, thicker than a good mush, and that, apparently,
+there were two or more vents. The outbreak of imprisoned steam at
+intervals of a half minute or more threw the mud in small fig-like
+masses from five to forty feet in air with a dull, booming sound,
+sometimes loud enough to be heard for miles through the awful stillness
+of these lonely hills. It is clear, from the fact of our finding these
+mud-patches at least one hundred yards from the crater, that at times
+much more violent explosions take place. The constant plastering of the
+slopes of the crater which these explosions cause tends to seal up its
+vent, but the greater explosions cleanse it at times, and all the while
+the steam softens the masses on the sides, so that they slip back into
+the boiling cauldron below. As one faces the slit in the cone there lies
+to the right a pool of creamy thin mud, white and yellow, feebly
+boiling. It is some thirty feet wide, and must be not more than twenty
+feet from the crater: its level I guessed at sixteen feet above that of
+the bottom of the crater.</p>
+
+<p>After an hour's observation near to the volcano I retired some fifty
+feet, and, sheltering myself under a stunted pine, waited in the hope of
+seeing a greater outbreak. After an hour more the boiling lessened and
+the frequent explosions ceased for perhaps fifteen minutes. Then of a
+sudden came a booming sound, followed by a hoarse noise, as the crater
+filled with steam, out of which shot, some seventy-five feet in air,
+about a cartload of mud. It fell over an area of fifty yards around the
+crater in large or small masses, which flattened as they struck. As
+soon as it ended I walked toward the crater. A moment later a second
+squirt shot out sideways and fell in a line athwart the mud-pool near
+by, crossing the spot where I had been standing so long, and covering
+me, as I advanced, with rare patches of hot mud. Some change took place
+after this in the character and consistency of the mud, and now, at
+intervals, the curious spectacle was afforded of rings of mud like the
+smoke-rings cast by a cannon or engine-chimney. As they turned in air
+they resembled at times the figure 8: once they assumed the form of a
+huge irregular spiral some ten feet high, although usually the figures
+were like long spikes, or, more rarely, thin formless leaves, and even
+like bats or deformed birds.</p>
+
+<p>I walked back over the hills to camp, where we found Captain G. and the
+commissary with the best of two deer they had shot. Later, Mr. C. and
+Mr. K. came in with four elk, so that we were well supplied. Of these
+various meats the deer proved the best, the mountain-sheep the poorest.
+The minimum of the night temperature was 34&deg; Fahrenheit. At eighty-five
+hundred feet above tide the change at sundown was abrupt. Our camp-fires
+had filled the little valley with smoke, and through it the moon rose
+red and sombre above the pine-clad outlines of the eastward hills.</p>
+
+<p>The next day Mr. E. and I, who liked to break the journey by a walk,
+started early, and, following a clear trail, soon passed the mules. We
+left Pelican Creek on our right, and crossed a low divide into a
+cooly,<a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> the valley of Broad Creek: a second divide separated this from
+Ca&ntilde;on Creek, both of which enter the Yellowstone below the falls.</p>
+
+<p>After some six miles afoot over grassy rolling plains and bits of wood,
+the command overtook us, and, mounting, we followed the major for an
+hour or two through bogs and streams, where now and then down went a
+horse and over went a trooper, or some one or two held back at a nasty
+crossing until the major smiled a little viciously, when the unlucky<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
+ones plunged in and got through or not as might chance.</p>
+
+<p>About twelve some of us held up to lunch, the train and escort passing
+us. We followed them soon through dense woods, and at last up a small
+brook in a deep ravine among boulders big and small. At last we lost the
+trail at the foot of a slope one thousand feet high of loose stones and
+earth, from the top of which a cry hailed us, and we saw that somehow
+the command had got up. The ascent was very steep, but before we made it
+a mule rolled down. As he was laden with fresh antelope and deer meat,
+the scattering of the yet red joints as he fell made it look as if the
+poor beast had been torn limb from limb; but, as a packer remarked,
+"Mules has got an all-fired lot of livin' in 'em;" and the mule was
+repacked and started up again. "They jist falls to make yer mad,
+anyway," added the friendly biographer of the mule.</p>
+
+<p>The sheer mountain-side above us was not to be tried mounted; so afoot,
+bridle in hand, we started up, pulling the horses after us. I had not
+thought it could be as hard work as it proved. There was a singular and
+unfeeling lack of intelligence in the fashion the horse had of differing
+with his leader. When the man was well blown and stopped, the horse was
+sure to be on his heels, or if the man desired to move the horse had his
+own opinion and proved restive. At last, horses and men came out on a
+bit of level woodland opening into glades full of snow. We were
+eighty-four hundred feet in air, on a spur of Amethyst or Specimen
+Mountain. We had meant, having made eighteen miles, to camp somewhere on
+this hill, but the demon who drives men to go a bit farther infested the
+major that day; so presently the bugle sounded, and we were in the
+saddle again, and off for a delusive five-mile ride. As Mr. G. Chopper
+once remarked, "De mile-stones to hebben ain't set no furder apart dan
+dem in dis yere land;" and I believed him ere that day was done.</p>
+
+<p>The top of this great hill, which may be some ten thousand feet in
+height, is large and irregular. Our trail lay over its south-eastern
+shoulder. After a little ride through the woods we came out abruptly on
+a vast rolling plain sloping to the north-east, and broadening as it
+fell away from us until, with intervals of belts of wood, it ended in a
+much larger plain on a lower level, quite half a mile distant, and of
+perhaps one thousand acres. About us, in the coolies, the "Indian
+paint-brush" and numberless flowers quite strange to us all so tinted
+the dried grasses of these little vales as to make the general hue seem
+a lovely pink-gray. Below us, for a mile, rolled grassy slopes, now
+tawny from the summer's rainless heat, and set with thousands of
+balsam-firs in groups, scattered as with the hand of unerring taste here
+and there over all the broad expanse. Many of them stood alone, slim,
+tall, gracious cones of green, feathered low, and surrounded by a
+brighter green ring of small shoots extending from two to four feet
+beyond where the lowest boughs, touching the earth, were reflected up
+from it again in graceful curves. On all sides long vistas, bounded by
+these charming trees, stretched up into the higher spurs. Ever the same
+flowers, ever the same amazing look of centuries of cultivation, and the
+feeling that it would be natural to come of a sudden on a gentleman's
+seat or basking cows, rather than upon the scared doe and dappled fawn
+which fled through the coverts near us. We had seen many of these parks,
+but none like this one, nor any sight of plain and tree and flowers so
+utterly satisfying in its complete beauty. It wanted but a contrast,
+and, as we rode through and out of a line of firs, with a cry of wonder
+and simple admiration the rudest trooper pulled up his horse to gaze,
+and the most brutal mule-guard paused, with nothing in his heart but joy
+at the splendor of it.</p>
+
+<p>At our feet the mountain fell away abruptly, pine-clad, and at its base
+the broad plain of the East Branch of the Yellowstone wandered through a
+vast valley, beyond which, in a huge semicircle, rose a thousand
+nameless mountains, summit over summit, snow-flecked or snow-clad, in
+boundless fields&mdash;a grim, lonely, desolate horror of rugged, barren<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
+peaks, of dark gray for the most part, cleft by deep shadows, and right
+in face of us one superb slab of very pale gray buttressed limestone,
+perhaps a good thousand feet high. I thought it the most savage
+mountain-scenery I had ever beheld, while the almost feminine and tender
+beauty of the parks which dotted these wild hills was something to bear
+in remembrance.</p>
+
+<p>But the escort was moving, the mules crowding on behind our halted
+column; so presently we were slipping, sliding, floundering down the
+hillside, now on steep slopes, which made one a bit nervous to ride
+along; now waiting for the axemen to clear away the tangle of trees
+crushed to earth by the burden of some year of excessive snow; now on
+the horses, now off, through marsh and thicket. I ask myself if I could
+ride that ride to-day: it seems to me as if I could not. One so fully
+gets rid of nerves in that clear, dry altitude and wholesome life that
+the worst perils, with a little repetition, become as trifles, and no
+one talks about things which at home would make a newspaper paragraph.
+Yet I believe each of us confessed to some remnant of nervousness, some
+special dread. Riding an hour or two at night in a dense wood with no
+trail is an experiment I advise any man to try who thinks he has no
+nerves. A good steep slope of a thousand feet of loose stones to cross
+is not much more exhilarating: nobody likes it.</p>
+
+<p>The command was far ahead of two or three of us when we had our final
+sensation at a smart little torrent near the foot of the hill, a
+tributary of the main river. The horses dive, in a manner, into a cut
+made dark by overgrowth of trees, then down a slippery bank, scuttle
+through wild waters surging to the cinche, over vast boulders and up the
+farther bank, the stirrups striking the rocks to left or right, till
+horse and man draw long breaths of relief, and we are out on the
+slightly-rolling valley of the East Yellowstone, and turn our heads away
+from Specimen Mountain toward Soda Butte.</p>
+
+<p>Captain G. and I, who had fallen to the rear, rode leisurely northward
+athwart the open prairie on a clear trail, which twice crossed the
+shallow river, and, leaving the main valley, carried us up a narrowing
+vale on slightly rising ground. On either side and in front rose abrupt
+mountains some two thousand feet above the plain, and below the
+remarkable outline of Soda Butte marked the line of the Park boundary.
+Near by was a little corral where at some time herdsmen had settled to
+give their cattle the use of the abundant grasses of these well-watered
+valleys. When there are no Indian scares, the cattle herdsmen make
+immense marches in summer, gradually concentrating their stock as the
+autumn comes on and returning to the shelter of some permanent ranche.
+The very severity and steadiness of the winters are an advantage to
+cattle, which do not suffer so much from low temperature as from lack of
+food. Farther south, the frequent thaws rot the dried grasses, which are
+otherwise admirable fodder, but in Montana the steady cold is rather
+preservative, and the winds leave large parts of the plains so free from
+snow that cattle readily provide themselves with food.</p>
+
+<p>The cone of Soda Butte stands out on the open and level plain of the
+valley, an isolated beehive-shaped mass eighty feet high, and presenting
+a rough appearance of irregular courses of crumbled gray stone. It is a
+perfectly extinct geyser-cone, chiefly notable for its seeming isolation
+from other deposits of like nature, of which, however, the nearer hills
+show some evidence. Close to the butte is a spring, pointed out to us by
+the major's orderly, who had been left behind to secure our tasting its
+delectable waters, which have immense credit as of tonic and digestive
+value. I do not distinctly recall all the nasty tastes which have
+afflicted my palate, but I am quite sure this was one of the vilest. It
+was a combination of acid, sulphur and saline, like a diabolic julep of
+lucifer-matches, bad eggs, vinegar and magnesia. I presume its horrible
+taste has secured it a reputation for being good when it is down. Close
+by it kindly Nature has placed a stream of clear, sweet water.</p>
+
+<p>A mile or so more brought us (August<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> 3d) to camp, which was pitched at
+the end of the valley of Soda Butte. We had had eleven hours in the
+saddle, and had not ridden over twenty-eight or thirty miles. The train
+came straggling in late, and left us time to sharpen our appetites and
+admire the reach of grassy plain, the bold brown summits around us, and
+at our feet a grass-fringed lake of two or three acres. This pond is fed
+by a quick mountain-stream of a temperature of 45&deg; Fahrenheit, and the
+only outlet is nearly blocked up by a tangled network of weeds and
+fallen timber which prevents the fish from escaping. The bottom is thick
+with long grasses, and food must be abundant in this curious little
+preserve. The shores slope, so that it is necessary to use a raft to get
+at the deep holes in the middle.</p>
+
+<p>At breakfast next morning some one growled about the closeness of the
+night air, when we were told, to our surprise, that the minimum
+thermometer marked 36&deg; as the lowest night temperature. Certain it is,
+the out-of-door-life changes one's feelings about what is cold and what
+is not. While we were discussing this a soldier brought in a five-pound
+trout taken in the lake, which so excited the fishermen that presently
+there was a raft builded, and the major and Mr. T., with bare feet, were
+loading their frail craft with huge trout, and, alas! securing for
+themselves a painful attack of sunburn. I found all these large trout to
+have fatty degeneration of the heart and liver, but no worms. They took
+the fly well.</p>
+
+<p>August 5th, under clear skies as usual, we struck at once into a trail
+which for seventeen miles might have been a park bridle-path, a little
+steeper, and in places a little boggy. Our way took us east by north
+into Soda Butte Ca&ntilde;on, a mile wide below, and narrowing with a gradual
+rise, until at Miner's Camp it is quite closely bounded by high
+hillsides, the upper level of the trail being over eight thousand feet
+above the sea. The ride through this irregular valley is very noble. For
+a mile or two on our left rose a grand mass of basalt quite two thousand
+feet in height, buttressed with bold outlying rocks and presenting very
+regular basaltic columns. A few miles farther the views grew yet more
+interesting, because around us rose tall ragged gray or dark mountains,
+and among them gigantic forms of red, brown and yellow limestone rocks,
+as brilliant as the dolomites of the Southern Tyrol. These wild
+contrasts of form and color were finest about ten miles up the ca&ntilde;on,
+where lies to the west a sombre, dark square mountain, crowned by what
+it needed little fancy to believe a castle in ruins, with central keep
+and far-reaching walls. On the brow of a precipice fifteen hundred feet
+above us, at the end of the castle-wall, a gigantic figure in full armor
+seemed to stand on guard for ever. I watched it long as we rode round
+the great base of the hill, and cannot recall any such striking
+simulation elsewhere. My guides called it the "Sentinel," but it haunted
+me somehow as of a familiar grace until suddenly I remembered the old
+town of Innspruck and the Alte Kirche, and on guard around the tomb of
+the great Kaiser the bronze statues of knight and dame, and, most
+charming of all, the king of the Ostrogoths: that was he on the
+mountain-top.</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere on these hills the mining prospector has roamed, and on the
+summit of the pass we found a group of cabins where certain claims have
+been "staked out" and much digging done. As yet, they are as profitable,
+by reason of remoteness, as may be the mines in the lunar mountains.
+With careless glances at piles of ore which may or may not be valuable,
+we rode on to camp, two miles beyond&mdash;not very comfortably, finding
+water scarce, some rain falling and a great wealth of midges, such as we
+call in upper Pennsylvania "pungies," and needing a smudge for the
+routing of them. The night was cold and dewy, and our sufferers were
+wretched with sunburn.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor and George Houston here left us, and went on to a salt-lick
+famous for game, but this proved a failure, some one having carelessly
+set fire to the tract. Indeed, in summer it is hard not to start these
+almost endless fires, since a spark or a bit of pipe-cinder will at once
+set the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> grasses ablaze, to the destruction of hunting and the annoyance
+of all travellers, to whom a fire is something which suggests man, and
+the presence of man needs, sad to say, an explanation. At 6 <span class="smcap">a. m.</span>,
+August 6th, Captain G. and the lad Lee also went off on a side-trail
+after game, and with lessened numbers we broke camp rather late, and
+rode into dense woods down a steady descent on a fair trail. The changes
+of vegetation were curious and sudden&mdash;from pines and firs to elders,
+stunted willows and sparse cottonwood bending over half-dry beds of
+torrents, with vast boulders telling of the fierce fury of water which
+must have undermined, then loosened and at last tumbled them from the
+hillsides. These streams are, in the early spring, impassable until a
+cold day and night check the thaw in the hills, and thus allow the
+impatient traveller to ford.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually, as we rode on, the hills to our left receded, and on our
+right the summits of Index and Pilot stood up and took the
+morning&mdash;long, straggling volcanic masses of deep chocolate-brown, black
+as against the crystalline purity of cloudless blue skies, rising in the
+middle to vast rugged, irregular cones fourteen thousand feet above
+tide. From the bewildering desolateness of these savage peaks the eye
+wanders to the foot-hills, tree-clad with millions of pines, and lower
+yet to the wide valley of the West Branch of Clarke's Fork of the
+Yellowstone, through which a great stream rushes; and then, beyond the
+river, park over park with gracious boundaries of fir and pine, and over
+all black peak and snow-clad dome and slope, nameless, untrodden, an
+infinite army of hills beyond hills. The startling combination of black
+volcanic peaks with gray and tinted limestone still makes every mile of
+the way strange and grand. In one place the dark rock-slopes end
+abruptly in a wall of white limestone one hundred to two hundred feet
+high and regular as ancient masonry. A little below was a second of
+these singular dikes, which run for twenty miles or more.</p>
+
+<p>On a rising ground where we halted to lunch a note was found stating
+that Dr. T., failing to find game at the salt-lick, had gone on ahead.
+While lingering over our lunch in leisurely fashion, encircled by this
+great mass of snow and blackness, an orderly suddenly rode up to hasten
+us to camp, as Indian signs had been seen down the valley. In a moment
+we were running our horses over a sage-plain, and were soon in camp,
+which was pitched on the West Branch in the widening valley. Dr. T. and
+George Houston, it appeared, had seen a column of smoke four miles below
+on a butte across the river. As the smoke was steady and did not spread,
+like an accidental fire, it seemed wise to wait for the party. There
+being no news of Indians, and no probability of white travellers, it was
+well to be cautious. It might be a hunters' or prospectors' camp, or a
+rallying-signal for scattered bands of Sioux, or a courier from Fort
+Custer. The doubt was unpleasant, and its effect visible in the men, two
+of whom already <i>saw</i> Indians.</p>
+
+<p>"See 'em?" says Jack. "Yes, they're like the Devil: you just doesn't see
+'em!"</p>
+
+<p>While we pitched camp sentinels were thrown out, and two guides went off
+to investigate the cause of the fire. Houston came back in two hours,
+and relieved us by his statement that no trails led to the fire, and
+that its probable cause was the lightning of the storm which had
+overtaken us in camp the day before.</p>
+
+<p>As the day waned the tints of the great mountains before us changed
+curiously. Of a broken chocolate-brown at noon, as the sun set their
+eastern fronts assumed a soft velvety look, while little purple clouds
+of haze settled in the hollows and rifts, fringing with tender grays the
+long serrated ridges as they descended to the plain. As the sun went
+down the single huge obelisk of Pilot Mountain seemed to be slowly
+growing upward out of the gathering shadows below. Presently, as the sun
+fell lower, the base of the mountain being swarthy with the growing
+nightfall, all of a sudden the upper half of the bleak cone yet in
+sunshine cast upward, athwart the blue sky, upon the moisture
+precipitated by the falling temperature, a great dark, broadening shaft<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+of shadow, keen-edged and sombre, and spreading far away into
+measureless space&mdash;a sight indescribably strange and solemn.</p>
+
+<p>The next day's ride down Clarke's Fork still gave us morass and mud and
+bad trails, with the same wonderful views in the distance of snow-clad
+hills, and, nearer, brown peaks and gray, with endless limestone dikes.
+We camped at twelve on Crandall's Creek, a mile from the main branch of
+Clarke's Fork of the Yellowstone, and learned from the guides that no
+fish exist in these ample waters. The doubts I at first had were
+lessened after spending some hours in testing the matter. Strange as it
+may seem, and inexplicable, I am disposed to think the guides are right.
+We saw two "cow-punchers," who claimed to be starving, and were
+questioned with some scepticism. In fact, every stranger is looked after
+sharply with the ever-present fear of horse-thieves and of the
+possibility of being set afoot by a night-stampede of the stock. Our
+hunting-parties were still out when I started next morning at 8.30 to
+climb a huge butte opposite our camp. I reached the top at about twelve,
+and found on the verge of a precipice some twenty-five hundred feet
+above the vale a curious semicircle of stones&mdash;probably an Indian
+outlook made by the Nez Perc&eacute;s in their retreat. Sitting with my back
+against it, I looked around me. A doe and fawn leapt away, startled from
+their covert close by. Never, even in the Alps, have I so felt the sense
+of loneliness&mdash;never been so held awestruck by the silence of the hills,
+by the boundlessness of the space before me. No breath of air stirred,
+no bird or insect hovered near. Away to the north-west Pilot and Index
+rose stern and dark; across the valley, to the north, out of endless
+snow-fields, the long regular red-and-yellow pyramid of Bear Tooth
+Mountain glowed in vivid light with amazing purity of color; while
+between me and it the hills fell away, crossed by intersecting bands of
+dark firs, and between marvellous deceits of fertile farm-lands, hedges
+and orchards. Here and there on the plain tiny lakes lit up the sombre
+grasses, and lower down the valley the waters of Clarke's Fork, now
+green, now white with foam, swept with sudden curve to the north-east,
+and were lost in the walls of its ca&ntilde;on like a scimitar half sheathed.
+On my right, across the vast grass-slopes of this great valley, on a
+gradual hill-slope, rose the most remarkable of the lime dikes I have
+seen. It must enclose with its gigantic wall a space of nearly two miles
+in width, in the centre of which a wild confusion of tinted limestone
+strata, disturbed by some old convulsion of Nature, resembles the huge
+ruins of a great town.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after my return to camp, C. and the doctor came in with great
+triumph, having slain four bears. I was not present on this occasion,
+but I am inclined to fancy, as regards the doctor, that he verily
+believed the chief end and aim of existence for him was to kill bears,
+while C. had an enthusiasm of like nature, somewhat toned down.</p>
+
+<p>After a wild ride on cayooses across Clarke's Fork and on the glowing
+pink side-slopes of Bear Tooth, and a camp in the hills, the ponies,
+which are always astray, were caught, and a game-trail followed among
+the mountains. Suddenly, Houston, in a stage-whisper, exclaimed, "We've
+got him! He's an old buster, he is!" He had seen a large gray
+bear&mdash;improperly called a grizzly&mdash;feeding a mile away in a long wide
+cooly. A rough, scrambling ride under cover of a spur, amid snow-drifts
+and tumbled trees, enabled the bear-hunters to tie up their ponies and
+push on afoot. If a man desire to lose confidence in his physical
+powers, let him try a good run with a Winchester rifle in hand nine
+thousand feet above tidewater. Rounding the edge of a hill and crossing
+a snow-drift, they came in view of Bruin sixty yards away. He came
+straight toward them against the wind, when there appeared on the left
+Bruin No. 2, to which the doctor directed his attention. Both bears fell
+at the crack of the rifles, and with grunt and snort rolled to the foot
+of the cooly. Houston climbed a snowbank to reconnoitre, aware, as there
+were no trees to climb, that an open cooly was no good<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> place in which
+to face wounded bears. Away went the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"Let them alone, doctor," said Houston. "Hold up! That valley's full of
+bears." For he had seen a third.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor paused a moment, and then there was a rush down the slope. A
+second shot finished one bear, and then began a running fight of a mile,
+in which wind was of more value than courage. Finally, Bruin No. 2
+stopped. Leaving C. to end his days, the doctor and Houston pursued No.
+3. As the bear grew weak and they approached him, the doctor's
+excitement and Houston's quite reasonable prudence rose together.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't go down that cooly, doctor."</p>
+
+<p>Then a shot or two, a growl, and the doctor gasping, "Do you think I
+left my practice to let that bear die in his bed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, the place is full of bears," said George; and so on they went,
+now a shot and now a growl, and then a hasty retreat of Bruin, until,
+utterly blown and in full sight of his prey, the unhappy doctor murmured
+in an exhausted voice, "Give me one cool shot, George."</p>
+
+<p>"Darn it!" replied George, "who's been warming your shots?"</p>
+
+<p>And this one cool shot ended the fray. Returning, they found the judge
+had driven his bear into a thicket, and, having probably taken out a <i>ne
+exeat</i> or an injunction, or some such effective legal remedy against
+him, awaited reinforcements. As George and the doctor arrived the bear
+moved out into the open, and was killed by a final shot.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Jump informs us that one gets an awful price out of the Chinese for
+bear-galls; and it is the judge's opinion that at this supreme moment
+the doctor would have taken a contract to supply all China with bile of
+Bruin. I suspect our friend George has since told at many a camp-fire
+how the doctor's spurs danced down the coolies, and how the judge
+corralled his bear.</p>
+
+<p>We broke camp August 10th at four, after a night of severe cold&mdash;27&deg;
+Fahrenheit&mdash;but perfectly dry and dewless. E. and I, as usual, pushed on
+ahead across Lodge Pole Creek, and so down the valley of Clarke's Fork.
+An increasing luxury of growth gave us, in wood or swamp, cottonwood,
+alder, willow, wild currants and myriads of snow-white lilies, and, in
+pretty contrast, the red or pink paint-brush. Losing Pilot and Index as
+the windings of the main valley hid them, and leaving them behind us, we
+began to see rocks of bright colors and more and more regular walls of
+silvery gray stone. At last the widening valley broadened, and from it
+diverged five valleys, like the fingers from a hand, each the bed of a
+stream. As we turned to the left and crossed the wildly-rolling hills,
+and forded Clarke's Fork to camp by Dead Indian Creek, the novelty and
+splendor of this almost unequalled view grew and grew. As I close my
+eyes it comes before me as at the call of an enchanter. From the main
+valley the outlook is down five grass-clad valleys dotted with trees and
+here and there flashing with the bright reflection from some hurrying
+stream. The mountains between rise from two to ten thousand feet, and
+are singular for the contrasts they present. The most distant to the
+right were black serrated battlements, looking as if their darkness were
+vacant spaces in the blue sky beyond. The next hill was a mass of gray
+limestone, and again, on the left, rose a tall peak of ochreous yellows,
+sombre reds and grays. The hill above our camp was composed of red and
+yellow rocks, fading below to gray d&eacute;bris, bounded beneath by a band of
+grasses, and below this another stratum of tinted rock; and so down to
+the plain. The side-view of this group showed it to be wildly distorted,
+the strata lying at every angle, coming out against the distant
+lava-peaks and the green slopes below them in a glory of tenderly-graded
+colors.</p>
+
+<p>It seems as if it should be easy to describe a landscape so peculiar,
+and yet I feel that I fail utterly to convey any sense of the emotions
+excited by the splendid sweep of each valley, by the black fierceness of
+the lava-peaks thrown up in Nature's mood of fury, by the great
+"orchestra of colors" of the limestone hills, and by a burning red
+sunset, filling the spaces between the hills with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> hazy, ruddy gold,
+and, when all was cold and dark, of a sudden flooding each grim
+lava-battlement with the dim mysterious pink flush of the afterglow,
+such as one may see at rare times in the Alps or the Tyrol. In crossing
+the heads of these valleys, some day to be famous as one of the sights
+of the world, we forded Clarke's Fork, the major, Jack and I being
+ahead. We came out on the far side upon a bit of strand, above and
+around which rose almost perpendicularly the eroded banks of the stream,
+some fifteen feet high. While the guides broke down the bank to allow of
+our horses climbing it, I was struck with a wonderful bit of water. To
+my right this tall bank was perforated by numerous holes, out of which
+flowed an immense volume of water. It bounded forth between the matted
+roots and welled up below from the sand, and, higher up the bank, had,
+with its sweet moisture, bribed the ready mosses to build it numerous
+green basins, out of which also it poured in prodigal flood.</p>
+
+<p>At this point, Dead Indian, we at first decided to await the looked-for
+scout, but on the next morning the major resolved to leave a note on a
+tripod for Mr. T., still out hunting, and to camp and wait on top of
+Ca&ntilde;on Mountain above us. So we left the noisy creek and the broken
+tepees of Joseph and the Nez Perc&eacute;s, and the buffalo and deer-bones and
+the rarer bones of men, and climbed some twenty-four hundred feet of the
+hill above us: then passed over a rolling plain, by ruddy gravel-hills
+and grasses gray- or pink-stemmed, to camp, on what Mr. Baronette called
+Ca&ntilde;on Mountain, among scattered groups of trees having a quaint
+resemblance to an old apple-orchard. Here we held counsel as to whether
+we should wait longer for the scout, push on rapidly to Custer, or
+complete our plans by turning southward to see the Black Ca&ntilde;on of the
+Big Horn River. Our doubt as to the steam-boats, which in the autumn are
+few and far between, and our failing provisions, decided us to push on
+to the fort. Having got in all our parties, with ample supplies of game,
+we started early next day to begin the descent from these delightful
+hills to the plains below. We rode twenty-eight miles, descending about
+thirty-seven hundred feet over boundless rolling, grass-clad foot-hills,
+behind us, to the left, the long mountain-line bounding the rugged ca&ntilde;on
+of Clarke's Fork, and to the right a march of lessening hills, and all
+before us one awful vast gray, sad and silent plain, and in dimmest
+distance again the gray summits about Pryor's Gap. The space before us
+was a vast park, thick with cactus and sage-brush, lit up here and
+there&mdash;but especially at the point where the ca&ntilde;on sets free the river
+on to the plain&mdash;by brilliant masses of tinted rocks or clays in level
+strata overlapping one another in bars of red, silver, pink, yellow and
+gray. With a certain sense of sadness we took a last look at these snowy
+summits rising out of their green crowns of pine and fir, and, bidding
+adieu to the wholesome hills, rode on to the grim alkali plain with the
+thermometer at 92&deg;.</p>
+
+<p>And now the days of bad water had come, each spring being the nastiest,
+and the stuff not consoling when once down, but making new and
+unquenchable thirst, and leaving a vile and constant taste of magnesia
+and chalk. And thus, over sombre prairies and across a wicked
+ford&mdash;where, of course, the captain and T. got their baggage wet&mdash;and
+past bones of men on which were piled stones, and the man's breeches
+thrown over these for a shroud or as a remembrance of the shrivelled
+thing below being human, we followed the Nez Perc&eacute;s' trail, to camp at
+four by the broad rattling waters of Clarke. Jack reported Indians near
+by&mdash;indeed saw them: guessed them to be Bannocks, as Crows would have
+come in to beg. Sentinels were thrown out on the bluffs near us and the
+stock watched with redoubled care.</p>
+
+<p>I think every man who has camped much remembers, with a distinct
+vividness, the camp-fires. I recall happy hours by them in Maine and
+Canada and on the north shore of Lake Superior, and know, as every lover
+of the woods knows, how each wood has its character, its peculiar
+odors&mdash;even a language of its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> own. The burning pine has one speech, the
+gum tree another. One friend at least who was with me can recall our
+camps in Maine,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where fragrant hummed the moist swamp-spruce,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And tongues unknown the cedar spoke,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While half a century's silent growth<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Went up in cheery flame and smoke.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The cottonwood burns with a rich, ruddy, abundant blaze and a faint
+pleasant aroma. Not an unpicturesque scene, our camp-fire, with the
+rough figures stretched out on the grass and the captain marching his
+solemn round with utterly unfatigable legs, Jack and George Houston
+good-humoredly chaffing, and now and again a howl responsive to the
+anguish of a burnt boot. He who has lived a life and never known a
+camp-fire is&mdash;Well, may he have that joy in the Happy Hunting-grounds!</p>
+
+<p>The next day's ride was only interesting from the fact that we forded
+Clarke's Fork five times in pretty wild places, where, of course,
+Captain G. and the doctor again had their baggage soaked. The annoyance
+of this when, after ten hours in the saddle, you come to fill your
+tobacco-bag and find the precious treasure hopelessly wet, your
+writing-paper in your brushes, the lovely photographs, a desolated
+family presented on your departure, brilliant with yellow mud&mdash;I pause:
+there are inconceivable capacities for misery to be had out of a
+complete daily wetting of camp-traps. I don't think the captain ever
+quite got over this last day's calamity, and I doubt not he mourns over
+it to-day in England.</p>
+
+<p>The ride of the next two days brought us again to rising ground, the
+approach to Pryor's Gap. On the 13th I rode on ahead with George
+Houston, and had an unsuccessful buffalo-hunt. We saw about forty head,
+but by no device could we get near enough for effective shooting. I had,
+however, the luck to kill a buck antelope and two does. Rejoining the
+command in great triumph, I found Jump, to my amusement, waving over his
+head a red cotton umbrella which some wandering Crow had dropped on the
+trail. The umbrella being, from the Crow point of view, a highly-prized
+ornament, it was not strange to find it on our trail. In an evil moment
+I asked Jump to hand it to me. As he did so it fell, open, over the nose
+of my cayoose. As to what happened I decline to explain: there have been
+many calumnies concerning what Mr. Jump called "that 'ere horse-show."</p>
+
+<p>On this day we rode through the last range of considerable hills, past a
+vast rock which meant "medicine" of some kind for the Indian, as its
+clefts were dotted with sacrificial beads, arrows and bits of calico. A
+brief scramble and a long descent carried us through Pryor's Gap, and
+out again on to boundless plains, thick with the fresh dung of the
+buffaloes, which must have been here within two days and been hurried
+southward by Crow hunting-parties. This to our utter disgust, as we had
+been promised abundance of buffalo beyond Pryor's Gap.</p>
+
+<p>A thirty-mile march brought us to a poor camp by a marshy stream. Man
+and beast showed the effects of the alkaline waters, which seemed to me
+more nasty every day. There is no doubt, however, that it is possible to
+become accustomed to their use, and no lands are more capable of
+cultivation than these if the water be sufficient for irrigation. The
+camp was enlivened by an adventure of the major's, which revenged for us
+his atrocious habit of rising at 3 <span class="smcap">a. m.</span> and saying "Now, gentlemen!" as
+he stood relentless at the tent-doors. C. and I had found a ca&ntilde;on near
+by about one hundred feet deep and having a good bathing stream. As we
+returned toward it at evening we saw the gallant major standing
+barelegged on the edge of the ca&ntilde;on, gesticulating wildly, his
+saddle-bags and toilette matters far below beside the creek. Still
+suffering with the sunburn, he had been cooling his feet in the water
+preparatory to a bath, when, lo! a bear standing on his hind legs eating
+berries at a distance of only about fifteen feet! The major promptly
+availed himself of the shelter offered by the bank of the stream; but
+once there, how was he to escape unseen? The water was cold, the bear
+big, the major shoeless.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> Perhaps a bark simulative of a courageous dog
+might induce the bear to leave. No doubt, under such inspirations, it
+was well done. The bear, amazed at the resources of the army,
+fled&mdash;alas! not pursued by the happy major, who escaped up the
+ca&ntilde;on-wall, leaving his baggage to a generous foe, which took no
+advantage of comb or toothbrush. How the whole outfit turned out to hunt
+that bear, and how he was never found, I have not space to tell more
+fully.</p>
+
+<p>All of twelve hours the next day we rode on under a blinding sunlight, a
+cloudless sky, over dreary, rolling, dusty plains, where the only relief
+from dead grasses was the gray sage-brush and cactus, from the shelter
+of which, now and again, a warning rattle arose or a more timid snake
+fled swiftly through the dry grasses. Tinted cones of red and brown
+clays or toadstool forms of eroded sandstone added to the strange
+desolateness of the view; so that no sorrow was felt when, after forty
+miles of it, we came upon a picturesque band of Crows with two chiefs,
+Raw Hide and Tin Belly.</p>
+
+<p>It was an amazing sight to fresh eyes&mdash;the clever ponies,
+these bold-featured, bareheaded, copper-tinted fellows with
+bead-decked leggins, gay shirts or none, and their rifles slung in
+brilliantly-decorated gun-covers across the saddle-bows. We rode down
+the bluffs with them to the flat valley of Beauvais Creek, where a few
+lodges were camped with the horses, twelve hundred or more, in a grove
+of lordly cottonwood&mdash;a wild and picturesque sight. Tawny squaws
+surrounded us in crowds, begging. A match, a cartridge, anything but a
+quill toothpick, was received with enthusiasm. I rode ahead to the ford
+of the Beauvais Creek, and met the squaws driving in the cayooses.
+Altogether, it was much like a loosely-organized circus. Our own camp
+being set, we took our baths tranquilly, watched by the squaws seated
+like men on their ponies. One of them kindly accepted a button and my
+wornout undershirt.</p>
+
+<p>The cottonwood tree reigns supreme throughout this country wherever
+there is moisture, and marks with its varied shades of green the
+sinuous line of every water-course. Despised even here as soft and
+easily rotted, "warping inside out in a week," it is valuable as almost
+the sole resource for fuel and timber, and as making up in speed of
+growth for a too ready rate of decay. Four or five years' growth renders
+it available for rails, and I should think it must equal the eucalyptus
+for draining moist lands. Many a pretty face is the more admired for its
+owner's wealth, and were the now-despised cottonwood of greater
+market-value it could not, I think, have escaped a reputation for
+beauty. A cottonwood grove of tall trees ten to eighteen feet in
+diameter, set twenty to forty feet apart, with dark-green shining leaves
+spreading high in air over a sod absolutely free of underbrush, struck
+such of us as had no Western prejudices as altogether a noble sight.
+Between Forts Custer and Keogh the cottonwoods are still finer, and what
+a mocking-bird is among birds are these among trees&mdash;now like the apple
+tree, now like the olive, now resembling the cork or the red-oak or the
+Lombardy poplar, and sometimes quaintly deformed so as to exhibit
+grotesque shapes,&mdash;all as if to show what one tree can do in the way of
+mimicking its fellows.</p>
+
+<p>To our delight, General Sheridan's old war-scout, Mr. Campbell, rode in
+with letters at dusk, and we had the happiness to learn that our long
+absence had made ill news for none of us. By six next day we were up and
+away to see the great Crow camp, which we reached by crossing a long
+ford of the swift Big Horn River. There were one hundred and twenty
+lodges, about one thousand Crows, about two thousand dogs and as many
+ponies. I think it was the commissary who dared to say that every dog
+could not have his day among the Crows, as there would not be enough
+days to go round; but surely never on earth was such a canine chorus. It
+gave one a respect for Crow nerves. Let me add, as a Yankee, my
+veneration for the Crow as a bargainer, and you will have the most
+salient ideas I carried away from this medley of dogs, horses, sullen,
+lounging braves with pipes, naked children warmly clad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> with dirt,
+hideous squaws, skin lodges, medicine-staffs gay with bead and feathers,
+and stenches for the describing of which civilized language fails.</p>
+
+<p>Crossing a branch of the Big Horn, we rode away again over these
+interminable, lonely grass-plains; past the reaping-machines and the
+vast wagons, with a dozen pairs of oxen to each, sent out to gather
+forage for the winter use of the fort; past dried-up streams,
+whitewashed with snowy alkaline deposits, cheating the eye at a distance
+with mockery of foaming water. Still, mile on mile, across rolling
+lands, with brief pause at the river to water horses, scaring the gay
+little prairie-dogs and laughing at the swift scuttle away of
+jack-rabbits, until by noon the long lines of Custer came into sight.</p>
+
+<p>These three days of sudden descent from high levels to the terrible
+monotony of the thirsty plains, without shade, with the thermometer
+still in the nineties, began to show curiously in the morale of the
+outfit. The major got up earlier and rode farther: our English captain
+walked more and more around the camp-fire. On one day the coffee gave
+out, and on the next the sugar, and everything except the commissary's
+unfailing good-humor, which was, unluckily, not edible. Mr. T. rode in
+silence beside the judge, grimly calculating how soon he could get a
+railroad over these plains. Even the doctor fell away in the "talk"
+line. Says Mr. Jump: "These 'ere plains ain't as social as they might
+be." Some one is responsible for the following brief effort to evolve in
+verse the lugubrious elements of a ride over alkali plains with failing
+provender, weary horses, desiccating heat and quenchless thirst:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Silent and weary and sun-baked, we rode o'er the alkaline grass-plains,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into and out of the coolies and through the gray green of the sage-brush&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All the long line of the horses, with jingle of spur and of bridle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All the brown line of the mule-train, tired and foot-sore and straggling;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nothing to right and to left, nothing before and behind us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Save the dry yellowing grass, and afar on the hazy horizon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sullen, and grim, and gray, sunburnt, monotonous sand-heaps.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So we rode, sombre and listless, day after day, while the distance<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grew as we rode, till the eyeballs ached with the terrible sameness.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>By this time the command was straggling in a long broken line, all eyes
+set on the fort, where, about 1.30, we dismounted from our six hundred
+miles in the saddle to find in the officers' club-room a hearty welcome
+and the never-to-be-forgotten sensation of a schooner of iced Milwaukee
+beer. From Fort Custer we rode a hundred and thirty miles in ambulances
+to Fort Keogh. This portion of our journey took us over the line to be
+followed by the Northern Pacific Railroad, and gave us a good idea of
+the wealthy grass-lands, capable of easy irrigation, bordering the
+proposed line of rail. The river is navigable to Custer until the middle
+of September, and in wet seasons still later. Already, much of the best
+land is taken up, and we were able to buy chickens if we could shoot
+them, and eggs and potatoes, the latter the best I have seen in any
+country. The river is marked by ample groves of superb cottonwoods and
+by immense thickets of the wild prairie-rose and moss-rose, while the
+shores are endlessly interesting and curious, especially the left bank,
+on account of the singular forms of the mud and sandstone hills, along
+which, in places, lie for miles black level strata of lignite. At Fort
+Keogh we took a steamer to Bismarck, whence we travelled by rail on the
+Northern Pacific road, reaching home September 9th. We had journeyed
+sixty-five hundred miles&mdash;on horses, six hundred; by ambulances, four
+hundred; by boat, six hundred and seventy-five.</p>
+
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">S. Weir Mitchell</span>, M. D.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> Nicholas Biddle.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> A little valley&mdash;probably from the French <i>coulisse</i>, a
+narrow channel.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p>
+<h2>ADAM AND EVE.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XIX.</h3>
+
+<p>Aunt Hepzibah's house stood well up the hill, far enough away from the
+village to escape the hubbub and confusion which during the removal of
+any considerable store of spirit were most certain to prevail.</p>
+
+<p>Hidden away in the recesses of a tortuous valley, amid hills whose steep
+sides bristled with tier after tier of bare, broken rocks, to reach or
+to leave Polperro by any other mode than on foot was a task of
+considerable difficulty. Wagons were unknown, carts not available, and
+it was only at the risk of his rider's life and limbs that any horse
+ventured along the perilous descents and ascents of the old Talland
+road. Out of these obstacles, therefore, arose the necessity for a
+number of men who could manage the drays, dorsals and crooks which were
+the more common and favored modes of conveyance. With the natural love
+of a little excitement, combined with the desire to do as you would be
+done by, it was only thought neighborly to lend a hand at whatever might
+be going on; and the general result of this sociability was that half
+the place might be found congregated about the house, assisting to the
+best of their ability to impede all progress and successfully turn any
+attempt at work into confusion and disorder.</p>
+
+<p>To add to this tumult, a keg of spirits was kept on tap, to which all
+comers were made free, so that the crowd grew first noisy and
+good-tempered, then riotously merry and quarrelsomely drunk, until
+occasions had been known when a general fight had ensued, the kegs had
+got burst open and upset, the men who were hired to deliver them lay
+maddened or helpless in the street, while the spirit for which liberty
+and life had been risked flowed into the gutters like so much water.</p>
+
+<p>In vain had Adam, to whom these scenes afforded nothing but anger and
+disgust, used all his endeavors to persuade his fellow-workers to give
+up running the vessel ashore with the cargo in her. The Polperro men,
+except under necessity, turned a deaf ear to his entreaties, and in many
+cases preferred risking a seizure to foregoing the fool-hardy
+recklessness of openly defying the arm of the law. The plan which Adam
+would have seen universally adopted here, as it was in most of the other
+places round the coast, was that of dropping the kegs, slung on a rope,
+into the sea, and (securing them by an anchor) leaving them there until
+some convenient season, when, certain of not being disturbed, they were
+landed, and either removed to a more distant hiding-place or conveyed at
+once to their final destination. But all this involved immediate trouble
+and delay, and the men, who without a complaint or murmur would endure
+weeks of absence from their homes, the moment those homes came in sight
+grew irritable under control and impatient of all authority.</p>
+
+<p>With a spirit of independence which verged on rebellion, with an
+uncertain temperament in which good and bad lay jostled together so
+haphazard that to calculate which at any given moment might come
+uppermost was an impossibility, these sons of the sea were hard to lead
+and impossible to drive. Obstinate, credulous, superstitious, they
+looked askant on innovation and hated change, fearing lest it should
+turn away the luck which they vaunted in the face of discretion, making
+it their boast that so many years had gone by since any mischance had
+overtaken the Polperro folk that they could afford to laugh at the
+soldiers before their faces and snap their fingers at the cruisers
+behind their backs.</p>
+
+<p>Under these circumstances it was not to be supposed that Adam's
+arguments proved very effective: no proposition he made was ever
+favorably received, and this one was more than usually unpopular. So, in
+spite of his prejudice against<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> a rule which necessitated the sequence
+of riot and disorder, he had been forced to give in, and to content
+himself by using his authority to control violence and stem as much as
+possible the tide of excess. It was no small comfort to him that Eve was
+absent, and the knowledge served to smooth his temper and keep down his
+irritability. Besides which, his spirits had risen to no common height,
+a frequent result of the reaction which sets in after great emotion,
+although Adam placed his happy mood to the credit of Eve's kind words
+and soft glances.</p>
+
+<p>It was late in the afternoon before the kegs were all got out and safely
+cleared off; but at length the last man took his departure, the visitors
+began to disperse, Uncle Zebedee and Jerrem disappeared with them, and
+the house was left to the undisturbed possession of Joan and Adam.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall bring Eve back when I come," Adam said, reappearing from the
+smartening up he had been giving to himself.</p>
+
+<p>"All right!" replied Joan, but in such a weary voice that Adam's heart
+smote him for leaving her sitting there alone, and with a great effort
+at self-sacrifice he said, "Would you like to go too?"</p>
+
+<p>"Iss, if I could go two p'r'aps I should," retorted Joan, "but as I'm
+only one p'r'aps I might find myself one in the way. There, go along
+with 'ee, do!" she added, seeing him still hesitate. "You knaw if
+there'd bin any chance o' my goin' you wouldn't ha' axed me."</p>
+
+<p>A little huffed by this home-thrust, Adam waited for nothing more, but,
+turning away, he closed the door after him and set off at a brisk pace
+up the Lansallos road, toward Aunt Hepzibah's house.</p>
+
+<p>The light had now all but faded out, and over everything seaward a
+cloudy film of mist hung thick and low; but this would soon lift up and
+be blown away, leaving the night clear and the sky bright with the
+glitter of a myriad stars, beneath whose twinkling light Adam would tell
+his tale of love and hear the sweet reply; and at the thought a thousand
+hopes leaped into life and made his pulses quicken and his nerves
+thrill. Strive as he might, arrived at Aunt Hepzibah's he could neither
+enter upon nor join in any general conversation; and so marked was his
+silence and embarrassed his manner that the assembled party came to the
+charitable conclusion that something had gone wrong in the adjustment of
+his liquor; and knowing it was ticklish work to meddle with a man who
+with a glass beyond had fallen a drop short, they made no opposition to
+Eve's speedy preparations for immediate departure.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Eve," Adam exclaimed, giving vent to deep-drawn sighs of relief as,
+having turned from the farm-gate, they were out of sight and hearing of
+the house, "I hope you're not vexed with me for seeming such a fool as
+I've been feeling there. I have been so longing for the time to come
+when I could speak to you that for thinking of it I couldn't talk about
+the things they asked me of."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, whatever can you have to say of so much importance?" stammered
+Eve, trying to speak as if she was unconscious of the subject he was
+about to broach; and this from no coquetry, but because of an
+embarrassment so allied to that which Adam felt that if he could have
+looked into her heart he would have seen his answer in its tumultuous
+beating.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you know," said Adam softly; and as he spoke he stooped to
+catch a glimpse of her averted face. "It's only what I'd on my lips to
+say last night, only the door was opened before I'd time to get the
+words out, and afterward you wouldn't so much as give me a look,
+although," he added reproachfully, "you sat up ever so long after I was
+gone, and only ran away when you thought that I was coming."</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed I didn't do that," said Eve earnestly: "that was Joan whom
+you heard. I went up stairs almost the minute after you left."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that really true?" exclaimed Adam, seizing both her hands and
+holding them tight within his own. "Eve, you don't know what I suffered,
+thinking you were caught by Jerrem's talk and didn't care whether I felt
+hurt or pleased. I lay awake most of the night, thinking whether it
+could ever be that you could care<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> for me as by some magic you've made
+me care for you. I fancied&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But here a rustle in the hedge made them both start. Adam turned quickly
+round, but nothing was to be discovered. "'Twas, most-like, nothing but
+a stoat or a rabbit," he said, vexed at the interruption: "still, 'tis
+all but certain there'll be somebody upon the road. Would you mind
+crossing over to the cliff? 'Tis only a little bit down the other side."</p>
+
+<p>Eve raised no objection, and, turning, they picked their way along the
+field, got over the gate and down through the tangle of gorse and brier
+to the path which ran along the Lansallos side of the cliff. Every step
+of the way was familiar to Adam, and he so guided Eve as to bring her
+down to a rough bit of rock which projected out and formed a seat on a
+little flat of ground overhanging a deep gully.</p>
+
+<p>"There!" he said, in a tone of satisfaction, "this isn't so bad, is it?
+You won't feel cold here, shall you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, not a bit," said Eve.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was a pause, which Eve broke by first giving a nervous,
+half-suppressed sigh, and then saying, "It's very dark to-night, isn't
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Adam, who had been thinking how he should best begin his
+subject. "I thought the mist was going to clear off better than this,
+but that seems to look like dirty weather blowing up;" and he pointed to
+the watery shroud behind which lay the waning moon.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish a storm would come on," said Eve: "I should so like to see the
+sea tossing up and the waves dashing over everything."</p>
+
+<p>"What! while we two are sitting here?" said Adam, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"No: of course I don't mean now, this very minute, but some time."</p>
+
+<p>"Some time when I'm away at sea?" put in Adam.</p>
+
+<p>Eve gave a little shudder: "Not for the world! I should be frightened to
+death if a storm came on and you away. But you don't go out in very bad
+weather, do you, Adam?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not if I can help it, I don't," he answered. "Why, would you mind if I
+did?" and he bent down so that he could look into her face. "Eh, Eve,
+would you?"</p>
+
+<p>His tone and manner conveyed so much more than the words that Eve felt
+it impossible to meet his gaze. "I don't know," she faltered. "What do
+you ask me for?"</p>
+
+<p>"What do I ask you for?" he repeated, unable longer to repress the
+passionate torrent which he had been striving to keep under. "Because
+suspense seems to drive me mad. Because, try as I may, I can't keep
+silent any longer. I wanted, before I said more, to ask you about
+somebody you've left behind you at London; but it's of no use. No matter
+what he may be to you, I must tell you that I love you, Eve&mdash;that you've
+managed in this little time to make every bit of my heart your own."</p>
+
+<p>"Somebody in London?" Eve silently repeated. "Who could he mean? Not
+Reuben May: how should he know about him?"</p>
+
+<p>The words of love that followed this surprise seemed swallowed up in her
+desire to have her curiosity satisfied and her fears set at rest. "What
+do you mean about somebody I've left in London?" she said; and the
+question, abruptly put, jarred upon Adam's excited mood, strained as his
+feelings were, each to its utmost tension. This man she had left behind,
+then, could even at a moment like this stand uppermost in her mind.</p>
+
+<p>"A man, I mean, to whom, before you left, you gave a promise;" and this
+time, so at variance was the voice with Adam's former tones of
+passionate avowal, that, coupled with the shock of hearing that word
+"promise," Eve's heart quailed, and to keep herself from betraying her
+agitation she was forced to say, with an air of ill-feigned amazement,
+"A man I left? somebody I gave a promise to? I really don't know what
+you mean."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, you do;" and by this time every trace of wooing had passed from
+Adam's face, and all the love so late set flowing from his heart was
+choked and forced back on himself. "Try and remember<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> some fellow who
+thinks he's got the right to ask how you're getting on among the country
+bumpkins, whether you ain't tired of them yet, and when you're coming
+back. Perhaps," he added, goaded on by Eve's continued silence, "'twill
+help you if I say 'twas the one who came to see you off aboard the Mary
+Jane. I suppose you haven't forgot <i>him</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>Eve's blood boiled at the sneer conveyed in Adam's tone and look.
+Raising her eyes defiantly to his, she said, "Forgotten him? Certainly
+not. If you had said anything about the Mary Jane before I should have
+known directly who you meant. That person is a very great friend of
+mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Friend?" said Adam.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, friend&mdash;the greatest friend I've got."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm very glad I know that, because I don't approve of friends. The
+woman I ask to be my wife must be contented with me, and not want
+anything from anybody else."</p>
+
+<p>"A most amiable decision to come to," said Eve. "I hope you may find
+somebody content to be so dictated to."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought I had found somebody already," said Adam, letting a softer
+inflection come into his voice. "I fancied that at least, Eve, <i>you</i>
+were made out of different stuff to the women who are always hankering
+to catch every man's eye."</p>
+
+<p>"And pray what should make you alter your opinion? Am I to be thought
+the worse of because an old friend, who had promised he would be a
+brother to me, offers to see me off on my journey, and I let him come?
+You must have a very poor opinion of women, Adam, or at least a very
+poor opinion of me."</p>
+
+<p>And the air of offended dignity with which she gave this argument forced
+Adam to exclaim, "Oh, Eve, forgive me if I have spoken hastily: it is
+only because I think so much more of you&mdash;place you so much higher than
+any other girl I ever saw&mdash;that makes me expect so much more of you. Of
+course," he continued, finding she remained silent, "you had every right
+to allow your friend to go with you, and it was only natural he should
+wish to do so; only when I'm so torn by love as I am I feel jealous of
+every eye that's turned upon you: each look you give another seems
+something robbed from me."</p>
+
+<p>Eve's heart began to soften: her indignation was beginning to melt away.</p>
+
+<p>"And when I heard he was claiming a promise, I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What promise?" said Eve sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"What promise did you give him?" replied Adam warily, suspicion giving
+to security another thrust.</p>
+
+<p>"That's not to the point," said Eve. "You say I gave him a promise: I
+ask what that promise was?"</p>
+
+<p>"The very question I put to you. I know what he says it was, and I want
+to hear if what he says is true. Surely," he added, seeing she
+hesitated, "if this is only a friend, and a friend who is to be looked
+on like a brother, you can't have given him any promise that if you can
+remember you can't repeat."</p>
+
+<p>Eve's face betrayed her displeasure. "Really, Adam," she said, "I know
+of no right that you have to take me to task in this manner."</p>
+
+<p>"No," he answered: "I was going to ask you to give me that right when
+you interrupted me. However, that's very soon set straight. I've told
+you I love you: now I ask you if you love me, and, if so, whether you
+will marry me? After you've answered me I shall be able to put my
+questions without fear of offence."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you, indeed?" said Eve. "I should think that would rather depend
+upon what the answer may be."</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever it may be, I'm waiting for it," said Adam grimly.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me see: I must consider what it was I was asked," said Eve. "First,
+if&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't trouble about the first: I shall be satisfied of that if you
+answer the second and tell me you will accept me as a husband."</p>
+
+<p>"Say keeper."</p>
+
+<p>"Keeper, if that pleases you better."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you very much, but I don't feel quite equal to the honor. I'm not
+so tired yet of doing what pleases myself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> that I need submit my
+thoughts and looks and actions to another person."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you refuse to be my wife?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I do."</p>
+
+<p>"And you cannot return the love I offer you?"</p>
+
+<p>Eve was silent.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you hear?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I hear."</p>
+
+<p>"Then answer: have I got your love, or haven't I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever love you might have had," she broke out passionately, "you've
+taken care to kill."</p>
+
+<p>"Kill!" he repeated. "It must have been precious delicate if it couldn't
+stand the answering of one question. Look here, Eve. When I told you I
+had given you my heart and every grain of love in it, I only spoke the
+truth; but unless you can give me yours as whole and as entire as I have
+given mine, 'fore God I'd rather jump off yonder rock than face the
+misery that would come upon us both. I know what 'tis to see another
+take what should be yours&mdash;to see another given what you are craving
+for. The torture of that past is dead and gone, but the devil it bred in
+me lives still, and woe betide the man or woman who rouses it!"</p>
+
+<p>Instinctively Eve shrank back: the look of pent-up passion frightened
+her and made her whole body shiver.</p>
+
+<p>"There! there! don't alarm yourself," said Adam, passing his hand over
+his forehead as if to brush away the traces which this outburst had
+occasioned: "I don't want to frighten you. All I want to know is, can
+you give me the love I ask of you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't bear to be suspected," faltered Eve.</p>
+
+<p>"Then act so that you would be above suspicion."</p>
+
+<p>"With a person always on the watch, looking out for this and that, so
+that one would be afraid to speak or open one's mouth, I don't see how
+one could possibly be happy," said Eve. "All one did, all one said,
+might be taken wrongly, and when one were most innocent one might be
+thought most guilty. No: I don't think I could stand that, Adam."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," he said coldly. "If you feel your love is too weak to bear
+that, and a great deal more than that, you are very wise to withhold it
+from me: those who have much to give require much in return."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't think I haven't that in me which would make my love equal
+yours any day," said Eve, nettled at the doubt which Adam had flung at
+her. "If I gave any one my heart, I should give it all; but when I do
+that I hope it will be to somebody who won't doubt me and suspect me."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'd advise you not to give them cause to," said Adam.</p>
+
+<p>"And I'd advise you to keep your cautions for those that need them,"
+replied Eve, rising from where she had been sitting and turning her face
+in the direction of home.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you needn't fear being troubled by any more I shall say," said
+Adam: "I'm only sorry that I've been led to say what I have."</p>
+
+<p>"Pray don't let that trouble you: such things, with me, go in at one ear
+and out at the other."</p>
+
+<p>"In that case I won't waste any more words," said Adam; "so if you can
+keep your tongue still you needn't fear being obliged to listen to
+anything I shall say."</p>
+
+<p>Eve gave a little scornful inclination of her head in token of the
+accepted silence between them, and in silence the two commenced their
+walk and took their way toward home.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XX.</h3>
+
+<p>Except the long surging roll of the waves, as in monotonous succession
+they dashed and broke against the rocks, not a sound was to be heard.
+The night had grown more lowering: the sprinkle of stars was hid behind
+the dense masses of cloud, through which, ever and anon, the moon, with
+shadowy face, broke out and feebly cast down a glimmering light. Below,
+the outspread stretch of water lay dark and motionless, its glassy
+surface cold and glittering like steel. Walking a little in the rear of
+Adam, Eve shuddered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> as her eyes fell on the depths, over whose brink
+the narrow path they trod seemed hanging. Instinctively she shrank
+closer to the cliff-side, to be caught by the long trails of bramble
+which, with bracken and gorse, made the steep descent a bristly wall.
+Insensibly affected by external surroundings, unused to such complete
+darkness, the sombre aspect of the scene filled her with nervous
+apprehension: every bit of jutting rock she stumbled against was a
+yawning precipice, and at each step she took she died some different
+death. The terrors of her mind entirely absorbed all her former
+indifference and ill-humor, and she would have gladly welcomed any
+accident which would have afforded her a decent pretext for breaking
+this horrible silence. But nothing occurred, and they reached the open
+piece of green and were close on the crumbling ruins of St. Peter's
+chapel without a word having passed between them. The moon struggled out
+with greater effort, and, to Eve's relief, showed that the zigzag
+dangers of the path were past, and there was now nothing worse to fear
+than what might happen on any uneven grassy slope. Moreover, the buzz of
+voices was near, and, though they could not see the persons speaking,
+Eve knew by the sound that they could not be very far distant. Having
+before him the peculiar want of reticence generally displayed by the
+Polperro folk, Adam would have given much to have been in a position to
+ask Eve to remount the hill and get down by the other side; but under
+present circumstances he felt it impossible to make any suggestion:
+things must take their course. And without a word of warning he and Eve
+gained the summit of the raised elevation which formed a sheltered
+background to this favorite loitering-place, at once to find themselves
+the centre of observation to a group of men whose noisy discussion they
+had apparently interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, 'tis my son Adam, ain't it?" exclaimed the voice of Uncle Zebedee;
+and at the sound of a little mingled hoarseness and thickness Adam's
+heart sank within him.&mdash;"And who's this he's a got with un, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tis me, Uncle Zebedee," said Eve, stepping down on to the flat and
+advancing toward where the old man stood lounging&mdash;"Eve, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Awh, Eve, is it?" exclaimed Zebedee. "Why, how long's t'wind veered
+round to your quarter, my maid? Be you two sweetheartin' then, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've been all day up to Aunt Hepzibah's," said Eve quickly, endeavoring
+to cover her confusion, "and Adam came to fetch me back: that's how it
+is we're together."</p>
+
+<p>"Wa-al, but he needn't ha' fetched 'ee 'less he'd got a mind for yer
+company, I s'pose," returned Zebedee with a meaning laugh. "Come, come
+now: 't 'ull niver do for 'ee to try to cabobble Uncle Zibedee. So you
+and Adam's courtyin', be 'ee? Wa-al, there's nuffin' to be said agen
+that, I s'pose?" and he looked round as if inviting concurrence or
+contradiction.&mdash;"Her's my poor brother Andrer's little maid, ye knaw,
+shipmates"&mdash;and here he made a futile attempt to present Eve to the
+assembled company&mdash;"what's dead&mdash;and drownded&mdash;and gone to Davy's
+locker; so, notwithstandin' I'd lashins sooner 'twas our Joan he'd ha'
+fix'd on&mdash;Lord ha' massy!" he added parenthetically, "Joan's worth a
+horsgead o' she&mdash;still, what's wan man's mate's another man's pison;
+and, howsomedever that lies, I reckon it needn't go for to hinder me
+fra' drinkin' their healths in a drap o' good liquor. So come along, my
+hearties;" and, making a movement which sent him forward with a lurch,
+he began muttering something about his sea-legs, the effect of which was
+drowned in the shout evincing the ready satisfaction with which this
+proposal for friendly conviviality was hailed.</p>
+
+<p>Eve drew in her breath, trying to gather up courage and combat down the
+horrible suspicion that Uncle Zebedee was not quite himself, didn't
+exactly know what he was saying, had taken too much to drink. With
+congratulatory intent she found herself jostled against by two or three
+others near her, whose noisy glee and uncertain gait only increased her
+fears. What should she do? Where could she go? What had become of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> Adam?
+Surely he would not go and leave her amongst&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>But already her question was answered by a movement from some one
+behind, who with a dexterous interposition succeeded in placing himself
+between Uncle Zebedee and herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Father," and Adam's voice sounded more harsh and stern than usual,
+"leave Eve to go home as she likes: she's not used to these sort o'
+ways, and she will not take things as you mean them."</p>
+
+<p>"Eh! what? How not mane 'em?" exclaimed old Zebedee, taken aback by his
+son's sudden appearance. "I arn't a said no harm that I knaws by:
+there's no 'fence in givin' the maid a wet welcome, I s'pose."</p>
+
+<p>A buzz of dissatisfaction at Adam's interference inspired Zebedee with
+renewed confidence, and with two or three sways in order to get the
+right balance he managed to bring himself to a standstill right in front
+of Adam, into whose face he looked with a comical expression of defiance
+and humor as he said, "Why, come 'long with us, lad, do 'ee, and name
+the liquor yerself, and see it passes round free and turn and turn
+about: and let's hab a song or two, and get up Rozzy Treloar wi' his
+fiddle, and Zeke Orgall there 'ull dance us a hornpipe;" and he began a
+double-shuffle with his feet, adding, as his dexterity came to a sudden
+and somewhat unsteady finish, "Tis a ill wind that blows nobody no good,
+and a poor heart what never rejices."</p>
+
+<p>Eve during this time had been vainly endeavoring to make her escape&mdash;an
+impossibility, as Adam saw, under existing circumstances; and this
+decided him to use no further argument; but, with his arm put through
+his father's and in company with the rest of the group, he apparently
+conceded to their wishes, and, motioning Eve on, the party proceeded
+along the path, down the steps and toward the quay, until they came in
+front of the Three Pilchards, now the centre of life and jollity, with
+the sound of voices and the preparatory scraping of a fiddle to enhance
+the promise of comfort which glowed in the ruddy reflection sent by the
+bright lights and cheerful fire through the red window-curtain.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, father," exclaimed Adam with a resolute grip of the old man's arm,
+"you and me are homeward bound. We'll welcome our neighbors some other
+time, but for this evening let's say good-night to them."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night?" repeated Zebedee: "how good-night? Why, what 'ud be the
+manin' o' that? None o' us ain't agoin' to part company here, I hopes.
+We'm all goin' to cast anchor to the same moorin's&mdash;eh, mates?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, no!" said Adam, impatiently: "you come along home with me now."</p>
+
+<p>"Iss, iss, all right!" laughed the old man, trying to wriggle out of his
+son's grasp; "only not just yet a whiles. I'm agoin' in here to drink
+your good health, Adam lad, and all here's a-comin' with me&mdash;ain't us,
+hearties?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pack of stuff! Drink my health?" exclaimed Adam. "There's no more
+reason for drinking my health to-night than any other night. Come along
+now, father: you've had a hard day of it, you know, and when you get
+home you can have whatever you want quietly by your own fireside."</p>
+
+<p>But Zebedee, though perfectly good-humored, was by no means to be
+persuaded: he continued to laugh and writhe about as if the fact of his
+detention was merely a good joke on Adam's part, the lookers-on abetting
+and applauding his determination, until Adam's temper could restrain
+itself no longer, and with no very pleasant explosion of wrath he let go
+his hold and intimated that his father was free to take what course
+pleased him most.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right, lad!" exclaimed old Zebedee heartily, shaking himself
+together. "You'm a good son and a capital sailor-man, but you'm pore
+company, Adam&mdash;verra pore company."</p>
+
+<p>And with this truism (to which a general shout gave universal assent)
+ringing in his ears, Adam strode away up the street with all possible
+speed, and was standing in front of the house-door when he was suddenly
+struck by the thought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> of what had become of Eve. Since they had halted
+in front of the Three Pilchards he had seen nothing of her: she had
+disappeared, and in all probability had made her way home.</p>
+
+<p>The thought of having to confront her caused him to hesitate: should he
+go in? What else could he do? where had he to go? So, with a sort of
+desperation, he pushed open the door and found himself within the
+sitting-room. It was empty; the fire had burnt low, the wick of the
+unsnuffed candle had grown long; evidently Eve had not returned; and
+with an undefined mixture of regret and relief Adam sat down, leaned his
+arms on the table and laid his head upon them.</p>
+
+<p>During the whole day the various excitements he had undergone had so
+kept his mind on the stretch that its powers of keen susceptibility
+seemed now thoroughly exhausted, and in place of the acute pain he had
+previously suffered there had come a dull, heavy weight of despair,
+before which his usual force and determination seemed vanquished and
+powerless. The feeling uppermost was a sense of the injustice inflicted
+on him&mdash;that he, who in practice and principle was so far removed above
+his neighbors, should be made to suffer for their follies and misdeeds,
+should have to bear the degradation of their vices. As to any hope of
+reclaiming them, he had long ago given that up, though not without a
+certain disappointment in the omniscience of that Providence which could
+refuse the co-operation of his valuable agency.</p>
+
+<p>Adam suffered from that strong belief in himself which is apt, when
+carried to excess, to throw a shadow on the highest qualities.
+Outstepping the Pharisee, who thanked God that he was not like other
+men, Adam thanked himself, and fed his vanity by the assurance that had
+the Polperro folk followed his lead and his advice they would now be
+walking in his footsteps; instead of which they had despised him as a
+leader and rejected him as a counsellor, so that, exasperated by their
+ignorance and stung by their ingratitude, he had cast them off and
+abandoned them for ever; and out of this disappointment had arisen a dim
+shadow of some far-off future wherein he caught glimpses of a new life
+filled with fresh hopes and successful endeavors.</p>
+
+<p>From the moment his heart had opened toward Eve her image seemed to be
+associated with these hitherto undefined longings: by the light of her
+love, of her presence, her companionship, all that had been vague seemed
+to take shape and grow into an object which was real and a purpose to be
+accomplished; so that now one of the sharpest pricks from the thorn of
+disappointment came of the knowledge that this hope was shattered and
+this dream must be abandoned. And, lost in moody retrospection, Adam sat
+stabbing desire with the sword of despair.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me be! let me be!" he said in answer to some one who was trying to
+rouse him.</p>
+
+<p>"Adam, it's me: do look up;" and in spite of himself the voice which
+spoke made him lift his head and look at the speaker. "Adam, I'm so
+sorry!" and Eve's face said more than her words.</p>
+
+<p>"You've nothing to be sorry for," returned Adam sullenly.</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to forgive me, Adam," continued Eve.</p>
+
+<p>"I've nothing to forgive."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you have;" and a faint flush of color came into her cheeks as she
+added with hesitating confusion, "You know I didn't mean you to take
+what I said as you did, Adam; because"&mdash;and the color suddenly deepened
+and spread over her face&mdash;"because I do care for you&mdash;very much indeed."</p>
+
+<p>Adam gave a despondent shake of his head. "No, you don't," he said,
+steadily averting his eyes; "and a very good thing too. I don't know who
+that wasn't forced to it would willingly have anything to do with such a
+God-forsaken place as this is. I only know I'm sick of it, and of myself
+and my life, and everything in it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Adam, don't say that&mdash;don't say you're sick of life. At least, not
+now;" and she turned her face so that he might read the reason.</p>
+
+<p>"And why not now?" he asked stolidly. "What have I now that I hadn't
+before?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why, you've got me."</p>
+
+<p>"You? You said you couldn't give me the love I asked you for."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I didn't mean it. What I said was because I felt so hurt that
+you should suspect me as you seemed to."</p>
+
+<p>"I never suspected you&mdash;never meant to suspect you. All I wanted you to
+know was that I must be all or nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course; and I meant that too, only you&mdash;But there! don't let's drift
+back to that again;" and as she spoke she leaned her two hands upon his
+shoulders and stood looking down. "What I want to say is, that every bit
+of love I have is yours, Adam. I am afraid," she added shyly, "you had
+got it all before ever I knew whether you really wanted it or not."</p>
+
+<p>"And why couldn't you tell me that before?" he said bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, is it too late now?" asked Eve humbly.</p>
+
+<p>"Too late? You know it can't be too late," exclaimed Adam, his old
+irritability getting the better of him: then, with a sudden revulsion of
+his overwrought susceptibilities, he cried, "Oh, Eve, Eve, bear with me
+to-night: I'm not what I want to be. The words I try to speak die away
+upon my lips, and my heart seems sunk down so low that nothing can
+rejoice it. To-morrow I shall be master of myself again, and all will
+look different."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so," sighed Eve tremulously. "Things don't seem quite between us
+as they ought to be. I sha'n't wait for Joan," she said, holding out her
+hand: "I shall go up stairs now; so good-night, Adam."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night," he said: then, keeping hold of her hand, he drew her
+toward him and stood looking down at her with a face haggard and full of
+sadness.</p>
+
+<p>The look acted as the last straw which was to swamp the burden of Eve's
+grief. Control was in vain, and in another instant, with Adam's arms
+around her, she lay sobbing out her sorrow on his breast, and the tears,
+as they came, thrust the evil spirit away. So that when, an hour later,
+the two said good-night again, their vows had been exchanged and the
+troth that bound them plighted; and Adam, looking into Eve's face,
+smiled as he said, "Whether for good luck or bad, the sun of our love
+has risen in a watery sky."</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XXI.</h3>
+
+<p>Most of the actions and events of our lives are chameleon-hued: their
+colors vary according to the light by which we view them. Thus Eve, who
+the night before had seen nothing but happiness in the final arrangement
+between Adam and herself, awoke on the following morning with a feeling
+of dissatisfaction and a desire to be critical as to the rosy hues which
+seemed then to color the advent of their love.</p>
+
+<p>The spring of tenderness which had burst forth within her at sight of
+Adam's humility and subsequent despair had taken Eve by surprise. She
+knew, and had known for some time, that much within her was capable of
+answering to the demands which Adam's pleading love would most probably
+require; but that he had inspired her with a passion which would make
+her lay her heart at his feet, feeling for the time that, though he
+trampled on it, there it must stay, was a revelation entirely new, and,
+to Eve's temperament, rather humiliating. She had never felt any
+sympathy with those lovesick maidens whose very existence seemed
+swallowed up in another's being, and had been proudly confident that
+even when supplicated she should never seem to stoop lower than to
+accept. Therefore, just as we experience a sense of failure when we find
+our discernment led astray in our perception of a friend, so now,
+although she studiously avoided acknowledging it, she had the
+consciousness that she had utterly misconceived her own character, and
+that the balance by which she had adjusted the strength of her emotions
+had been a false one. A dread ran through her lest she should be seized
+hold upon by some further inconsistency, and she resolved to set a watch
+on the outposts of her senses, so that they might not betray her into
+further weakness.</p>
+
+<p>These thoughts were still agitating her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> mind when Joan suddenly awoke,
+and after a time roused herself sufficiently to say, "Why, whatever made
+you pop off in such a hurry last night, Eve? I runned in a little after
+ten, and there wasn't no signs of you nowheres; and then I come upon
+Adam, and he told me you was gone up to bed."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Eve: "I was so tired, and my foot began to ache again, so I
+thought there wasn't any use in my sitting up any longer. But you were
+very late, Joan, weren't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very early, more like," said Joan: "'twas past wan before I shut my
+eyes. Why, I come home three times to see if uncle was back; and then I
+wouldn't stand it no longer, so I went and fetched un."</p>
+
+<p>"What, not from&mdash;where he was?" exclaimed Eve.</p>
+
+<p>Joan nodded her head. "Oh Lors!" she said, "'tain't the fust time by
+many; and," she added in a tone of satisfaction, "I lets 'em know when
+they've brought Joan Hocken down among 'em. I had Jerrem out, and uncle
+atop of un, 'fore they knawed where they was. Awh, I don't stand beggin'
+and prayin', not I: 'tis 'whether or no, Tom Collins,' when I come, I
+can tell 'ee."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they'd stay a very long time before they'd be fetched by me,"
+said Eve emphatically.</p>
+
+<p>"Awh, don't 'ee say that, now," returned Joan. "Where do 'ee think
+there'd be the most harm in, then&mdash;sittin' comfortable at home when you
+might go down and 'tice 'em away, or the goin' down and doin' of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've not a bit of patience with anybody who drinks," exclaimed Eve,
+evading a direct answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you'll never cure anybody of it, my dear," replied Joan. "You'm
+like Adam there, I reckon&mdash;wantin' to set the world straight in one day,
+and all the folks in it bottommost side upward; but, as I tell un, he
+don't go to work the right way. They that can't steer 'ull never sail;
+and I'll bet any money that when it comes to be counted up how many
+glasses o' grog's been turned away from uncle's lips, there'll be more
+set to the score o' my coaxin' than ever 'ull be to Adam's
+bullyraggin'."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps so," said Eve; and then, wishing to avoid any argument into
+which Adam could be brought, she adroitly changed the subject, and only
+indifferent topics were discussed until, their dressing completed, the
+two girls were ready to go down stairs.</p>
+
+<p>The first person who answered the summons to breakfast was Uncle
+Zebedee&mdash;not heavy-eyed and shamefaced, as Eve had expected to see him,
+but bright and rosy-cheeked as an apple. He had been up and out since
+six o'clock, looking after the repairs which a boat of his was laid up
+to undergo, and now, as he came into the house fresh as a lark, he
+chirruped in a quavery treble,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Tom Truelove woo'd the sweetest fair<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That e'er to tar was kind:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her face was of a booty rare&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>That's for all the world what yourn is," he said, breaking off to bestow
+a smacking kiss on Joan. "So look sharp, like a good little maid as you
+be, and gi'e us sommat to sit down for;" and he drew a chair to the
+table and began flourishing the knife which had been set there for him.
+Then, catching sight of Eve, whose face, in her desire to spare him,
+betrayed an irrepressible look of consciousness, he exclaimed, "Why,
+they've bin tellin' up that I was a little over-free in my speech last
+night about you, Eve: is there any truth in it, eh? I doan't fancy I
+could ha' said much amiss&mdash;did I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nothing to signify, uncle."</p>
+
+<p>"'Twas sommat 'bout you and Adam, warn't it?" he continued with a
+puzzled air: "'tis all in my head here, though I can't zackly call it to
+mind. That's the divil o' bein' a little o'ertook that ways," he added
+with the assurance of meeting ready sympathy: "'tis so bafflin' to set
+things all ship-shape the next mornin'. I minds so far as this, that it
+had somehow to do with me holdin' to it that you and Adam was goin' to
+be man and wife; but if you axes for the why and the wherefore, I'm
+blessed if I can tell 'ee."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, whatever put such as that into your head?" said Joan sharply.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Wa-al, the liquor, I reckon," laughed Zebedee. "And, somehow or
+'nother, Maister Adam didn't seem to have overmuch relish for the
+notion;" and he screwed up his face and hugged himself together as if
+his whole body was tickled at his son's discomfiture. "But there! never
+you mind that, Eve," he added hastily: "there's more baws than one to
+Polperro, and I'll wager for a halfscore o' chaps ready to hab 'ee
+without yer waitin' to be took up by my son Adam."</p>
+
+<p>Poor Eve! it was certainly an embarrassing situation to be placed in,
+for, with no wish to conceal her engagement, to announce it herself
+alone, and unaided by even the presence of Adam, was a task she
+naturally shrank from. In the endeavor to avoid any direct reply she sat
+watching anxiously for Adam's arrival, her sudden change of manner
+construed by Zebedee into the effect of wounded vanity, and by Joan into
+displeasure at her uncle's undue interference. By sundry frowns and nods
+of warning Joan tried to convey her admonitions to old Zebedee, in the
+midst of which Adam entered, and with a smile at Eve and an inclusive
+nod to the rest of the party took a chair and drew up to the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Surely," thought Eve, "he intends telling them."</p>
+
+<p>But Adam sat silent and occupied with the plate before him.</p>
+
+<p>"He can't think I can go living on here with Joan, even for a single
+day, and they not know it;" and in her perplexity she turned on Adam a
+look full of inquiry and meaning.</p>
+
+<p>Still, Adam did not speak: in his own mind he was casting over the
+things he meant to say when, breakfast over and the two girls out of the
+way, he would invite his father to smoke a pipe outside, during the
+companionship of which he intended taking old Zebedee decidedly to task,
+and, putting his intended marriage with Eve well to the front, clinch
+his arguments by the startling announcement that unless some reformation
+was soon made he would leave his native place and seek a home in a
+foreign land. Such words and such threats as these could not be uttered
+to a father by a son save when they two stood quite alone; and Adam,
+after meeting a second look from Eve, shook his head, feeling satisfied
+that she would know that only some grave requirement deterred him from
+immediately announcing the happiness which henceforth was to crown his
+life. But our intuition, at the best, is somewhat narrow, and where the
+heart is most concerned most faulty: therefore Eve, and Adam too, felt
+each disappointed in the other's want of acquiescence, and inclined to
+be critical on the lack of mutual sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the door opened and in walked Jerrem, smiling and apparently
+more radiant than usual under the knowledge that he was more than
+usually an offender. Joan, who had her own reasons for being very
+considerably put out with him, was not disposed to receive him very
+graciously; Adam vouchsafed him no notice whatever; Uncle Zebedee,
+oppressed by the sense of former good fellowship, thought it discreet
+not to evince too much cordiality; so that the onus of the morning's
+welcome was thrown upon Eve, who, utterly ignorant of any offence Jerrem
+had given, thought it advisable to make amends for the pettish
+impatience she feared she had been betrayed into on the previous
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>Old Zebedee, whose resolves seldom lasted over ten minutes, soon fell
+into the swing of Jerrem's flow of talk; a little later on and Joan was
+forced to put in a word; so that the usual harmony was just beginning to
+recover itself when, in answer to a remark which Jerrem had made, Eve
+managed to turn the laugh so cleverly back upon him that Zebedee, well
+pleased to see what good friends they were growing, exclaimed, "Stop her
+mouth! stop her mouth, lad! I'd ha' done it when I was your years twenty
+times over 'fore this. Her's too sarcy&mdash;too sarcy by half, her is."</p>
+
+<p>Up started Jerrem, but Adam was before him. "I don't know whether what
+I'm going to say is known to anybody here already," he burst out, "but I
+think it's high time that some present should be told by me that Eve has
+promised to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> be my wife;" and, turning, he cast a look of angry defiance
+at Jerrem, who, thoroughly amazed, gradually sank down and took
+possession of his chair again, while old Zebedee went through the dumb
+show of giving a long whistle, and Joan, muttering an unmeaning
+something, ran hastily out of the room. Eve, angry and confused, turned
+from white to red and from red to white.</p>
+
+<p>A silence ensued&mdash;one of those pauses when some event of our lives seems
+turned into a gulf to separate us from our former surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>Adam was the first to speak, and with a touch of irony he said, "You're
+none of you very nimble at wishing us joy, I fancy."</p>
+
+<p>"And no wonder, you've a-tooked us all aback so," said old Zebedee. "'T
+seems to me I'm foaced to turn it round and round afore I can swaller it
+for rale right-down truth."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, is it so very improbable, then?" asked Adam, already repenting the
+abruptness of the disclosure.</p>
+
+<p>"Wa-al, 'twas no later than last night that you was swearin' agen and
+cussin' everybody from stem to starn for so much as mentionin' it as
+likely. Now," he added, with as much show of displeasure as his cheery,
+weatherbeaten old face would admit of, "I'll tell 'ee the mind I've got
+to'ard these sort o' games: if you see fit to board folks in the smoke,
+why do it and no blame to 'ee, but hang me if I can stomach 'ee sailin'
+under false colors."</p>
+
+<p>"There wasn't anything of false colors about us, father," said Adam in a
+more conciliatory tone; "for, though I had certainly spoken to Eve, it
+was not until after I'd parted with you last night that she gave me her
+answer."</p>
+
+<p>"Awh!" said the old man, only half propitiated. "Wa-al, I s'pose you can
+settle your consarns without my help; but I can tell 'ee this much, that
+if my Joanna had took so long afore she could make her mind up, I'm
+blamed if her ever should ha' had the chance o' bein' your mother,
+Adam&mdash;so there!"</p>
+
+<p>Adam bit his lip with vexation. "There's no need for me to enter upon
+any further explanations," he said: "Eve's satisfied, I'm satisfied, so
+I don't see why you shouldn't be satisfied."</p>
+
+<p>"Awh, I'm satisfied enough," said Zebedee; "and, so far as that goes,
+though I ain't much of a hand at speechifyin', I hopes that neither of
+'ee 'ull never have no raison to repent yer bargain. Eve's a fine
+bowerly maid, so you'm well matched there; and so long as she's ready to
+listen to all you say and bide by all you tells her, why 'twill be set
+fair and sail easy."</p>
+
+<p>"I can assure you Eve isn't prepared to do anything of the sort, Uncle
+Zebedee," exclaimed Eve, unable to keep silence any longer. "I've always
+been told if I'd nothing else I've got the Pascals' temper; and that,
+according to your own showing, isn't very fond of sitting quiet and
+being rode over rough-shod."</p>
+
+<p>The whistle which Uncle Zebedee had tried to choke at its birth now came
+out shrill, long and expressive, and Adam, jumping up, said, "Come,
+come, Eve: we've had enough of this. Surely there isn't any need to take
+such idle talk as serious matter. If you and me hadn't seen some good in
+one another we shouldn't have taken each other, I suppose; and, thank
+the Lord, we haven't to please anybody but our two selves."</p>
+
+<p>"Wa-al, 'tis to be hoped you'll find that task aisier than it looks,"
+retorted Uncle Zebedee with a touch of sarcasm; while Jerrem, after
+watching Adam go out, endeavored to throw a tone of regret into the
+flattering nothings he now whispered by way of congratulation, but Eve
+turned impatiently away from him. She had no further inclination to talk
+or to be talked to; and Uncle Zebedee having by this time sought solace
+in a pipe, Jerrem joined him outside, and the two sauntered away
+together toward the quay.</p>
+
+<p>Left to the undisturbed indulgence of her own reflections, Eve's mood
+was no enviable one&mdash;the more difficult to bear because she had to
+control the various emotions struggling within her. She felt it was time
+for plain speaking between her and Adam, and rightly judged that a
+proper understanding come to at once would be the safest means of
+securing future comfort. Turn and twist Adam's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> abrupt announcement as
+she would, she could assign but one cause for it, and that cause was an
+overweening jealousy; and as the prospect came before her of a lifetime
+spent in the midst of doubt and suspicion, the strength of her love
+seemed to die away and her heart grew faint within her. For surely if
+the demon of jealousy could be roused by the sight of commonplace
+attentions from one who was in every way like a brother&mdash;for so in Eve's
+eyes Jerrem seemed to be&mdash;what might not be expected if at any time
+circumstances threw her into the mixed company of strangers? Eve had
+seen very little of men, but whenever chance had afforded her the
+opportunity of their society she had invariably met with attention, and
+had felt inwardly gratified by the knowledge that she was attracting
+admiration; but now, if she gave way to this prejudice of Adam's, every
+time an eye was turned toward her she would be filled with fear, and
+each time a look was cast in her direction her heart would sink with
+dread.</p>
+
+<p>What should she do? Give him up? Even with the prospect of possible
+misery staring at her, Eve could not say yes, and before the thought had
+more than shaped itself a dozen suggestions were battling down the dread
+alternative. She would change him, influence him, convert him&mdash;anything
+but give him up or give in to him. She forgot how much easier it is to
+conceive plans than to carry them out&mdash;to arrange speeches than to utter
+them. She forgot that only the evening before, when, an opportunity
+being afforded, she had resolved upon telling Adam the whole
+circumstance of Reuben May and the promise made between them, while the
+words were yet on her lips she had drawn them back because Adam had said
+he knew that the promise was "nothing but the promise of a letter;" and
+Eve's courage had suddenly given way, and by her silence she had led him
+to conclude that nothing else had passed between them. Joan had spoken
+of the envious grudge which Adam had borne toward Jerrem because he had
+shared in his mother's heart, so that this was not the first time Adam
+had dropped in gall to mingle with the cup of his love.</p>
+
+<p>The thought of Joan brought the fact of her unexplained disappearance to
+Eve's mind, and, full of compunction at the bare suspicion of having
+wounded that generous heart, Eve jumped up with the intention of seeking
+her and of bringing about a satisfactory explanation. She had not far to
+go before she came upon Joan, rubbing and scrubbing away as if the
+welfare of all Polperro depended on the amount of energy she could throw
+into her work. Her face was flushed and her voice unsteady, the natural
+consequences of such violent exercise, and which Eve's approach but
+seemed to lend greater force to.</p>
+
+<p>"Joan, I want to speak to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Awh, my dear, I can't listen to no spakin' now," replied Joan hastily,
+"and the tables looking as they do."</p>
+
+<p>"But Tabithy always scrubs the tables, Joan: why should you do it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tabithy's arms ain't half so young as mine&mdash;worse luck for me or for
+she!"</p>
+
+<p>Having by this time gained a little insight into Joan's peculiarities,
+Eve argued no further, but sat herself down on a convenient seat,
+waiting for the time when the rasping sound of the brush would come to
+an end. Her patience was put to no very great tax, for after a few
+minutes Joan flung the brush along the table, exclaiming, "Awh, drabbit
+the ole scrubbin'! I must give over. I b'lieve I've had enuf of it for
+this time, 't all events."</p>
+
+<p>"Joan, you ain't hurt with me, are you?" said Eve, trying to push her
+into the seat from which she had just risen. "I wanted to be the first
+to tell you, only that Adam spoke as he did, and took all I was going to
+say out of my mouth. It leaves you to think me dreadfully sly."</p>
+
+<p>"Awh, there wasn't much need for tellin' me," said Joan with a sudden
+relax of manner. "When I didn't shut my eyes o' purpose I could tell,
+from the first, what was certain to happen."</p>
+
+<p>"It was more than I could, then," said Eve. "I hadn't given it a thought
+that Adam meant to speak to me, and when he asked me I was quite taken
+aback, and said 'No' for ever so long."</p>
+
+<p>"What made 'ee change yer mind so suddent, then?" said Joan bluntly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Eve hesitated. "I hardly know," she said, with a little confusion. "I
+think it was seeing him so cast down made me feel so dreadfully sorry."</p>
+
+<p>"H'm!" said Joan. "Didn't 'ee never feel no sorrow for t'other poor chap
+that wanted to have 'ee&mdash;he to London, Reuben May?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not enough to make me care in that way for him: I certainly never did."</p>
+
+<p>"And do you care for Adam, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think I do."</p>
+
+<p>"Think?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I am sure I do."</p>
+
+<p>"That's better. Well, Eve, I'll say this far;" and Joan gave a sigh
+before the other words would come out: "I'd rather it should be you than
+anybody else I ever saw."</p>
+
+<p>The struggle with which these words were said, their tone and the look
+in Joan's face, seemed to reveal a state of feeling which Eve had not
+suspected. Throwing her arms round her, she cried out, "Oh, Joan, why
+didn't he choose you? You would have been much better for him than me."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord bless the maid!"&mdash;and Joan tried to laugh through her tears&mdash;"I
+wouldn't ha' had un if he'd axed me. Why, there'd ha' bin murder 'tween
+us 'fore a month was out: us 'ud ha' bin hung for one 'nother. No: now
+don't 'ee take no such stuff as that into yer head, 'cos there's no
+sense in it. Adam's never looked 'pon me not more than a sister;" and,
+breaking down, Joan sobbed hysterically; "and when you two's married I
+shall feel 'zackly as if he was a brother, and be gladder than e'er a
+one else to see how happy you makes un."</p>
+
+<p>"That's if I <i>do</i> make him happy," said Eve sadly.</p>
+
+<p>"There's no fear but you'll do that," said Joan, resolutely wiping the
+tears from her eyes; "and 'twill be your own fault if you bain't happy
+too yourself, Eve. Adam's got his fads to put up with, and his fancies
+same as other men have, and a masterful temper to keep under, as nobody
+can tell better than me; but for rale right-down goodness I shouldn't
+know where to match his fellow&mdash;not if I was to search the place
+through; and, mind 'ee, after all, that's something to be proud of in
+the man you've got to say maister to."</p>
+
+<p>Eve gave a little smile: "But he must let me be mistress, you know,
+Joan."</p>
+
+<p>"All right! only don't you stretch that too far," said Joan warningly,
+"or no good 'ull come of it; and be foreright in all you do, and spake
+the truth to un. I've many a time wished I could, but with this to hide
+o' that one's and that to hush up o' t'other's, I know he holds me for a
+downright liard; and so I am by his measure, I 'spects."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure you're nothing of the sort, Joan," said Eve. "Adam's always
+saying how much people think of you. He told me only yesterday that he
+was certain more than half the men of the place had asked you to marry
+them."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he?" said Joan, not wholly displeased that Adam should hold this
+opinion. "Awh, and ax they may, I reckon, afore I shall find a man to
+say 'Yes' to."</p>
+
+<p>"That is what I used to think myself," said Eve.</p>
+
+<p>"Iss, and so you found it till Roger put the question," replied Joan
+decisively. Then, after a minute's pause, she added, "What be 'ee goin'
+to do 'bout the poor sawl to London, then&mdash;eh? You must tell he
+somehow."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't see that," said Eve. "I mean to write to him, because I
+promised I would; and I shall tell him that I've made up my mind not to
+go back, but I sha'n't say anything more. There isn't any need for it,
+that I see&mdash;at least, not yet a while."</p>
+
+<p>"Best to tell un all," argued Joan. "Why shouldn't 'ee? 'Tis the same,
+so far as you'm concerned, whether he's killed to wance or dies by
+inches."</p>
+
+<p>But Eve was not to be persuaded. "There isn't any reason why I should,"
+she said.</p>
+
+<p>"No reason?" replied Joan. "Oh, Eve, my dear," she added, "don't 'ee let
+happiness harden your heart: if love is sweet to gain, think how bitter
+'tis to lose; and, by all you've told me, you'll forfeit a better man
+than most in Reuben May."</p>
+
+<h4><i>The Author of "Dorothy Fox.</i>"</h4>
+
+<h4>[TO BE CONTINUED.]</h4>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p>
+<h2>ON THE SKUNK RIVER.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The Lady of Shalott, looking into the mirror which reflected the highway
+"a bowshot from her bower-eaves," saw the villagers passing to their
+daily labor in the barley-fields; market-girls in red cloaks and damsels
+of high degree; curly shepherd-boys and long-haired pages in gay livery;
+an abbot on an ambling pad and knights in armor and nodding plumes; and
+her constant pastime was to weave these sights into the magic web on
+which she wrought. I undertake, in a modest way, to follow her example,
+and weave a series of pictures from the sights that daily meet my eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The highway which runs a bowshot from <i>my</i> bower-eaves is a
+much-travelled road, leading from the farms of a prairie country into a
+prairie town. It is a stripe of black earth fifteen or twenty feet wide,
+the natural color of the soil, ungraded, ungravelled, and just now half
+a foot deep in mud from the melting February snows. Looking in the
+direction from which it comes, a mile or two of rolling prairie-land is
+visible, divided into farms of one hundred, one hundred and forty or one
+hundred and sixty acres. Just now it is faded yellow in hue, with
+patches of snow in the hollows, and bare of trees, stumps or fences,
+except the almost invisible wire-fences which separate the fields from
+the road and from each other. Here and there, at wide intervals, a few
+farm-houses can be seen, sheltered on the north and west by a
+thickly-set row of cottonwood or Lombardy poplar trees, which serve in a
+great measure to break the sweep of the pitiless Iowa winds. Most of the
+houses are large and comfortable, and are surrounded by barns, haystacks
+and young orchards, denoting a long residence and prosperity; but two or
+three, far off on the horizon, are small wooden structures, set on the
+bare prairie, without a tree or outbuilding near them, and looking bleak
+and lonely. To one who knows something of the straitened lives, the
+struggles with poverty, that go on in them, they seem doubly pitiful and
+desolate.</p>
+
+<p>The town into which the highway leads lies straight before my window,
+flat, unpicturesque, uninteresting, marked by the untidiness of
+crudeness and the untidiness of neglect. The ungraded streets are
+trodden into a sticky pudding by horses' feet, the board sidewalks are
+narrow, uneven and broken, and the crossings are deep in mud. In the
+eastern part of the town the dwellings are large, comfortable, even
+elegant, with well-kept grounds filled with trees and shrubbery, and
+there are a few of the same character scattered here and there
+throughout the town; but the large majority of houses, those that give
+the place its discouraged, unambitious look, are small wooden dwellings,
+a story or a story and a half high, with the end facing the street and a
+shed-kitchen behind. Those that are painted are white or brown, but many
+are unpainted, have no window-shutters and are surrounded by untidy
+yards and fences that need repair.</p>
+
+<p>The centre of the town, both in position and importance, is "The
+Square." This is an open space planted thickly with trees, which have
+now grown to a large size and cast a refreshing shade over the crowd
+that gathers there in summer to hear political speeches or to celebrate
+the Fourth of July. It is surrounded by hitching-racks, and on Saturdays
+and other unusually busy days these racks, on all the four sides of the
+Square, are so full of teams&mdash;generally two-horse farm-wagons&mdash;that
+there is not room for another horse to be tied. Facing the Square
+and extending a block or two down adjacent streets are the
+business-houses&mdash;stores, banks, express-office, livery-stables,
+post-office, gas-office, the hotels, the opera-house, newspaper and
+lawyers' offices. Many of the buildings are of brick, three stories
+high, faced or trimmed with stone, but the general<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> effect is marred by
+the contiguity of little wooden shanties used as barber-shops and
+meat-markets.</p>
+
+<p>Except in the north-east, where the land is rolling and densely wooded,
+the horizon-line is flat and on a level with our feet. The sun rises
+from the prairie as he rises from the ocean, and his going down is the
+same: no far-off line of snowy mountains, no range of green hills nor
+forest-crest, intercepts his earliest and his latest rays. Over this
+wide stretch of level land the wind sweeps with unobstructed violence,
+and more than once in the memory of settlers it has increased to a
+destructive tornado, carrying buildings, wagons, cattle and human beings
+like chaff before it. Just now, a sky of heavenly beauty and color bends
+over it, and through the wide spaces blow delicious airs suggestive of
+early spring.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly every day, and often many times a day, farm-wagons drawn by two
+horses pass along the highway in front of my window. The wagon-bed is
+filled with sacks of wheat or piled high with yellow corn, and on the
+high spring-seat in front sits the farmer driving, and by him his wife,
+her head invariably wrapped in a white woollen nubia or a little shawl,
+worn as a protection against the catarrh-producing prairie winds.
+Cuddled in the hay at their feet, but keeping a bright lookout with
+round eager eyes, are two or three stout, rosy children, and often there
+is a baby in the mother's arms. When "paw" has sold his wheat or corn
+the whole family will walk around the Square several times, looking in
+at the shop-windows and staring at the people on the sidewalk. When they
+have decided in which store they can get the best bargains, they will go
+in and buy groceries, calico and flannel, shoes for the children, and
+perhaps a high chair for the baby. Later in the day they rattle by
+again, the farmer sitting alone on the spring-seat, the wife and
+children, as a better protection against the wind, on some hay in the
+now empty wagon-bed behind. So they jolt homeward over the rough, frozen
+road or toil through sticky mud, as the case may be, well pleased with
+their purchases and their glimpse of town, and content to take up again
+the round of monotonous life on their isolated prairie farm.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes on spring-like days, when the roads are good, two women or a
+woman and one or two half-grown children drive by in a spring-wagon,
+bringing chickens, eggs, and butter to market. Heavy wagons loaded with
+large clear blocks of ice go by every day, the men walking and driving
+or seated on a board seat at the extreme rear of the wagon. The great
+crystal cubes look, as they flash in the sunshine, like
+building-material for Aladdin's palace quarried from some mine of
+jewels, but they are only brought from the Skunk River, three miles
+distant, to the ice-houses in town, and there packed away in sawdust
+for summer use. On two days of the week&mdash;shipping days for
+live-stock&mdash;farm-wagons with a high railing round the beds go by, and
+inside the railing, crowded as thickly as they can stand, are fat black
+or black-and-white hogs, which thrust their short noses between the
+boards and squeal to get out. They are unloaded at the cattle-pens near
+the railroad, and thence shipped to pork-packers at Chicago.</p>
+
+<p>And sometimes half a dozen Indians, the roving gypsies of the West,
+dressed in warm and comfortable clothing and wrapped in red or blue
+blankets, ride into town on good horses. They belong to the Sacs and
+Foxes, a friendly, well-disposed remnant of people who live half a day's
+ride to the north-east of this place. They are better off than the
+average of white people, for every man, woman and child owns a quarter
+section of land in the Indian Territory, and receives an annuity of
+money besides. Immediately after pay-day they visit the neighboring
+towns, their pockets full of silver dollars, and buy whatever necessity
+or fancy dictates. The women are generally neat and comely in
+appearance, and the pappooses that peer from the bags hung on either
+side of the ponies are bright-eyed, round-faced youngsters, who never
+cry and seldom cause any trouble. They seem to be born with a certain
+amount of gravity, and a capacity for patient endurance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> that forbids
+them to lift up their voices at every slight provocation after the
+manner of white babies. The Indian ponies too are models of endurance.
+The squaws tie their purchases in blankets and hang them across the
+backs of their ponies, swing their pappooses to one side and perhaps a
+joint of fresh meat to the other, then mount on top astride, dig the
+pony's neck with their moccasined heels and start off at a trot.
+Sometimes a large party of Indians, men, women and children, camp on
+Skunk River and fish. In the spring they make a general hegira to a
+wooded section two or three days' journey to the northward for the
+purpose of tapping the maple trees and boiling down the syrup into
+sugar. As before mentioned, they are friendly and inoffensive in their
+dealings with the white people, but their patience must be sorely tried
+sometimes. The town-boys hoot at them, throw stones at their ponies, and
+try in many ways to annoy them. I remember once seeing them pass through
+another town on their annual spring excursion to the sugar-camps. Two of
+the pack-ponies had strayed behind the train, and a squaw rode back to
+drive them ahead. A number of town-boys, thinking this an excellent
+opportunity to have some fun, threw sticks at them and drove them off on
+by-streets and up back alleys. The squaw tried patiently again and again
+to get them together and join the train, but it was not until a brave
+turned back and came to her assistance that she succeeded. Neither of
+the Indians uttered a word or betrayed by sign or expression that they
+noticed the insults of the boys.</p>
+
+<p>Often, when the mud is too deep for teams, farmers go by on horseback,
+with their horses' tails tied into a knot to keep them out of the mud.
+They have come to town to learn the price of wheat, corn or hogs, to
+bargain for some article of farm use, or perhaps to pay the interest on
+their mortgages. Many of them have not yet paid entirely for their
+farms, and comparatively few are free from debt in some form. Some,
+being ambitious to have large farms, have taken more land than they can
+profitably manage or pay for in a number of years, and are what is
+called "land poor:" others, though content with modest portions of sixty
+or a hundred acres, have not yet been able, by reason of poor crops,
+their own mismanagement or some other cause, to clear their farms of
+debt. They work along from year to year, supporting their families,
+paying the interest, and paying off the principal little by little. When
+the last payment is made and the mortgage released, then the owner can
+hold the land in spite of all other creditors. His store-bills or other
+debts may run up to hundreds of dollars, but his homestead cannot be
+taken to satisfy them by any process of law. This is the homestead law
+of the State. A single exception is made in favor of one creditor: the
+mechanic who has erected the buildings can hold what is called a
+mechanic's lien upon the property until his claim is satisfied.
+Advantage is often taken of this law for the purpose of defrauding
+creditors. In one instance a merchant who owned a good residence in a
+city and a valuable store-property, sold or transferred his residence,
+moved his family into the rooms above his store, and soon afterward
+failed. His creditors tried to get possession of his store-property, and
+entered suit, but the testimony proved that it was his dwelling also,
+and therefore exempt under the homestead law. The amount of land that
+can be held in this way is limited to forty acres.</p>
+
+<p>Beginning life in a new country with small capital involves many years
+of hard work and strict economy, perhaps privation and loneliness. This
+comes especially hard on the farmers' wives, many of whom have grown up
+in homes of comfort and plenty in the older States. Ask the men what
+they think of Iowa, and they will say that it is a fine State; it has
+many resources and advantages; there is room for development here; the
+avenues to positions of profit and honor are not so crowded as they are
+in the older States; a good class of emigrants are settling up the
+State: that, on the whole, Iowa has a bright future before it. But the
+women do not deal in such generalities. Their own home and individual
+life is all the world to them, and if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> that is encompassed with toil and
+hardship, if all their cherished longings and ambitions are denied and
+their hearts sick with hope deferred, this talk about the undeveloped
+resources of Iowa and its future greatness has no interest or meaning
+for them. In their isolated homes on the bleak prairie they have few
+social opportunities, and their straitened means do not allow them to
+buy books or pictures, to take papers or magazines, or to indulge in
+many of the little household ornaments dear to the feminine heart. What
+wonder, then, if their eyes have a weary, questioning look, as if they
+were always searching the flat prairie-horizon for some promise or hope
+of better days, something fresh and stimulating to vary the dull
+monotony of toil?</p>
+
+<p>"There's a better time coming," the farmer says. "When we get the farm
+paid for we will build a new house and send the children to town to
+school;" and so the slow years go by. If every new country is not
+actually fertilized with the heart's blood of women, the settling and
+development of it none the less require the sacrifice of their lives.
+One generation must cast itself into the breach, must toil and endure
+and wear out in the struggle with elementary forces, in order that those
+who come after them may begin life on a higher plane of physical comfort
+and educational and social advantages. They have not, like the settlers
+of Eastern States, had to fell forests, grub up stumps, and so wrest
+their farms from Nature; but they have none the less endured the
+inevitable hardships of life in a new, thinly-settled country, far from
+markets, railroads, schools, churches and all that puts a market value
+on man's labor. I see many women who have thus sacrificed, and are
+sacrificing, their lives. Their faces are wrinkled, their hands are hard
+with rough, coarse work, they have long ago ceased to have any personal
+ambitions; but their hopes are centred in their children. Their
+self-abnegation is pathetic beyond words. Looking at them and musing on
+their lives, I think truly</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The individual withers, and the world is more and more.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Must the old story be repeated over and over again? Must some hearts be
+denied all their lives long in order that a possible good may come to
+others in the future? Must some lives, full of throbbing hopes and
+aspirations, be put down in the dust and mire as stepping-stones, that
+those who come after may go over dryshod? Is the individual not to be
+considered, but only the good of the mass? Can there be justice and
+righteousness in a plan that requires the lifelong martyrdom of a few?
+Have not these few as much right to a full and free development, to
+liberty to work out their own ambitions, as have any of the multitude
+who reap the benefit of their sacrifices? But peace: this little
+existence is not all there is of life, and in the sphere of wider
+opportunities and higher activity that awaits us there will be room for
+these thwarted, stunted lives to grow and flourish and bloom in immortal
+beauty. With our limited vision, our blind and short-sighted judgment,
+how can we presume to say what is harsh or what is kind in the
+discipline of life? The earth as she flies on her track through space
+deviates from a straight line less than the eighth of an inch in the
+distance of twenty miles. We, seeing only twenty miles of her course,
+would declare that it was perfectly straight, that it did not curve in
+the slightest degree; yet flying on that same course the earth makes
+every year her vast elliptical journey around the sun. Could we see a
+hundred million miles of the track, we should discern the curve very
+plainly. Could we see a part of the boundless future of a life whose
+circumstances in this little span of existence were limited and
+depressing, we should discern the meaning of much that viewed separately
+seems hard and bitter and useless.</p>
+
+<p>The settlers of this State have chiefly emigrated from the older
+States&mdash;Indiana, Ohio and the Eastern and Middle States. There are many
+foreigners&mdash;Swedes, Norwegians, Germans, Dutch and Irish&mdash;who generally
+live in colonies. The German element predominates, especially in the
+cities. In the south-western part of the State there is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> a colony of
+Russian Mennonites, and at Amana, in the eastern part, there are several
+flourishing German colonies where the members hold all property in
+common. They preserve to some extent the quaint customs and costumes of
+the Fatherland, and one set down in the midst of their homes without
+knowing where he was might well believe himself in Germany. The Swedes
+and Norwegians bear a good character for industry and sobriety: the
+young women are in great demand as house-servants and command good
+wages.</p>
+
+<p>The emigrants from older States were many of them farmers of small
+means, who came through in covered wagons with their families and
+household stuff. In pleasant weather this mode of travelling was not
+disagreeable, but in rainy or cold weather it was very uncomfortable. No
+one could walk in the deep mud: the whole family were obliged to huddle
+together in the back part of the wagon, wrapped in bed-quilts or other
+covers, while the driver, generally the head of the family, sat on the
+seat in front, exposed to the cold or driving rain. The horses slowly
+dragged the heavily-laden wagon through the mud, and the progress toward
+their new home was tedious in the extreme. The wagons were usually
+common farm-wagons with hoops of wood, larger and stouter than barrel
+hoops, arched over the bed and covered with white cotton cloth.
+Sometimes, as a protection against rain, a large square of black
+oil-cloth was spread over the white cover. The front of the wagon was
+left open: at the back the cover was drawn together by a string run
+through the hem. Before leaving his old home the farmer generally held a
+public sale and disposed of his household furniture, farming utensils
+and the horses and cattle he did not intend to take with him. Sometimes
+this property went by private sale to the purchaser of his farm. He
+reserved the bedding, a few cooking utensils and other necessaries.
+These were loaded into the wagon, a feed-box for the horses was fastened
+behind, an axe strapped to it, and a tar-bucket hung underneath. Flour
+and bacon were stored away in a box under the driver's seat, or, if
+they expected no chance for replenishing on the way, another wagon was
+filled with stores. Then, when all was ready, the farmer and his family
+looked their last upon their old home, bade good-bye to the friends who
+had gathered to see them off, took their places in the wagon and began
+the long, tedious journey to "Ioway." Hitherto they had had a local
+habitation and a name: now, for several months, they were to be known
+simply as "movers." Among the memories of a childhood spent in a village
+on the old National 'Pike those pertaining to movers are the earliest.
+It was the pastime of my playmates and myself to hang on the fence and
+watch the long train of white-covered wagons go by, always toward the
+setting sun. Sometimes there were twenty in a train, and the slow creak
+of the wagons, the labored stepping of the horses, had an important
+sound to our childish ears. It was</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The tread of pioneers<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of nations yet to be.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Looking backward to that time, it seems to me now that they went by
+every day. It was a common sight, but one which never lost its interest
+to us. The cry of "Movers! movers!" would draw us from our play to hang
+idly on the fence until the procession had passed. In some instances
+nightfall overtook them just as they reached our village, and they
+camped by the roadside, lighting fires on the ground with which to cook
+their evening meal. Our timidity was greater than our curiosity, and we
+seldom went near their camps. Movers, in our estimation, were above
+"stragglers," the name by which we knew the vagrants&mdash;forerunners of the
+great tribe of tramps&mdash;who occasionally passed along the road with a
+bundle on a stick over their shoulders; but still, they were a vague,
+unknown class, whose intentions toward us were questionable, and we
+remained in the vicinity of our mothers' apron-strings so long as they
+were in the neighborhood.</p>
+
+<p>When the weeks or months of slow travel during the day and camping out
+by night were over, and the new home<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> on the prairie was reached, the
+discomforts and privations of the emigrating family were not ended: they
+were only fairly begun. There was no house in which to lay their heads,
+no sawmill where lumber could be obtained, no tree to shelter them,
+unless they had the good fortune to locate near a stream&mdash;nothing but a
+smooth, level expanse of prairie-sod, bright green and gay with the
+flowers of early summer or faded and parched with the droughts of
+autumn. Sometimes they camped in the open air until lumber could be
+brought from a distance and a rude shanty erected, but often they built
+a turf house, in which they passed their first winter. These houses were
+constructed by cutting blocks of turf about eighteen inches square&mdash;the
+roots of prairie-grass being that long&mdash;and piling one upon another
+until the walls were raised to the desired height. Slender poles were
+then laid across from wall to wall, and on these other strips and
+squares of turf were piled until a roof thick enough to keep out the
+rain was formed. A turf fireplace and chimney were constructed at one
+end; the opening left for entrance was braced with poles and provided
+with a door; and sometimes a square opening was cut in the end opposite
+the chimney and a piece of muslin stretched across it to serve as a
+window. The original earth formed the floor, and piles of turf covered
+with bedding served as beds. It was only when the family intended to
+live some time in the turf house that all these pains were taken to make
+it comfortable. Many of these dwellings were dark huts, with floors a
+foot or two below the level of the ground and without window or chimney.
+These were intended for temporary occupation. A few of this kind, still
+inhabited, are to be seen in the sparsely-settled north-western part of
+the State. I do not mean this description to apply in a general sense to
+the early settlers of Iowa. Many parts of the State are heavily wooded,
+and cabins of hewed logs chinked with mud are still to be seen here and
+there&mdash;specimens of the early homes. In the regions where turf houses
+were necessary prairie-hay was burned as fuel.</p>
+
+<p>When his family was housed from the weather the farmer turned his
+attention to his land. The virgin sod had to be broken and the rich
+black soil turned up in ridges to the air and sunlight. When the ground
+was prepared the stock of seed-corn was planted or wheat sown, and the
+farmer's old life began again under new and quite different
+circumstances. In the eastern and oldest-settled part of the State these
+beginnings date back a generation: in the western part they are still
+fresh and recent. In the old part well-cultivated fields, large barns,
+orchards, gardens and comfortable farm-houses greet the traveller's eye:
+in the new he may travel for half a day without seeing a single
+dwelling, and may consider himself fortunate if he does not have to pass
+the night under the lee side of a haystack.</p>
+
+<p>After a foothold has been gained in a new country and a home
+established, a generation, perhaps two, must pass away before a fine
+type of humanity is produced. The fathers and mothers have toiled for
+the actual necessaries of life, and gained them. The children are
+supplied with physical comforts. Plenty of food and exercise in the pure
+air give them stalwart frames, good blood and perfect animal health, but
+there is a bovine stolidity of expression in their faces, a
+suggestion of kinship with the clod. They are honest-hearted and
+well-meaning&mdash;stupid, not naturally, but because their minds have never
+been quickened and stimulated. They grope in a blind way for better
+things, and wonder if life means no more than to plough and sow and
+reap, to wash and cook and sew. I see young people of this class by the
+score, and my heart goes out toward them in pity, though they are all
+unconscious of needing pity. Perhaps one out of every hundred will break
+from the slowly-stepping ranks and run ahead to taste of the springs of
+knowledge reserved for the next generation, but the vast majority will
+go down to their graves without ever attaining to the ripeness and
+symmetry of a fully-developed life. Their children perhaps&mdash;certainly
+their grand-children&mdash;will attain a fine physical and mental type; and
+by that time "the prairies"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> will cease to be a synonym for lack of
+society and remoteness from liberal and refining influences.</p>
+
+<p>The land in this vicinity is largely devoted to wheat, corn and oats:
+much, however, is used for pasturage, and several fine stock-farms lie
+within a radius of five miles. Sheep-rearing is a profitable industry,
+the woollen manufactory at this place affording a convenient and ready
+market for the clip. But the statistics of Iowa show that the rearing of
+hogs is a more prominent industry than any of these. The agricultural
+fairs that are held at the county-seats in August or September every
+year serve to display the growth of these and other industries and the
+development of the resources of the country, as well as the advance in
+material comfort. The fair-ground is generally a smooth plat of ground
+several acres in extent just outside the city limits, and besides the
+race-track and wooden "amphitheatre" there are sheds for cattle, stalls
+for horses, pens for hogs and sheep and poultry, a large open shed for
+the exhibition of agricultural machinery and implements, a long wooden
+building&mdash;usually called "Farmers' Hall"&mdash;where fruits, grain and
+vegetables are displayed, and another, called "Floral Hall," where there
+is a motley display consisting of flowering plants and cut flowers,
+needlework, embroidery, pieced bed-quilts, silk chair-cushions and
+sofa-pillows, jellies, preserves, jams, butter, cake, bread&mdash;the
+handiwork of women. There is generally a crowd of women from the country
+around these exhibits, examining them and bestowing friendly comment or
+criticism.</p>
+
+<p>The fair which is held here every year affords a good opportunity for a
+study of the bucolic character. Farm-wagons, full of men, women and
+children, come in from the country early in the morning, and by eleven
+o'clock the halls are crowded with red-faced and dusty sightseers, who
+elbow their way good-humoredly from one attractive exhibit to another,
+and gaze with open eyes and mouth and loud and frequent comment. At noon
+they retire to their wagons or the shade of the buildings to eat their
+dinner, which they have brought from home in a large basket, and there
+is a great flourish of fried chicken legs and wings and a generous
+display of pies, pickles and ginger-bread. The young men and half-grown
+boys have scorned the slow progress of the farm-wagons, and have come
+into town early on horseback. They have looked forward to this occasion
+for months, and perhaps have bought a suit of "store clothes" in honor
+of it. They have already seen the various exhibits, and now that the
+dinner-hour has arrived they seek refreshment&mdash;not from the family
+dinner-basket, but from some of the various eating-stands temporarily
+erected on the grounds&mdash;and buy pop-beer, roasted peanuts and candy of
+the vendors, who understand the art of extracting money from the rural
+pockets. Then in the afternoon come the races, and, having paid a
+quarter for a seat in the "amphitheatre," they give themselves up to the
+great excitement of the day. The incidents of fair-time will serve as
+food for thought and conversation for weeks afterward. It is the
+legitimate dissipation of the season.</p>
+
+<p>What character shall I choose as a typical Iowan? Not the occupant of
+the large brick house with tall evergreens in front which meets my sight
+whenever I look toward the country. An old woman lives there alone,
+except for a servant or two, having buried her husband and ten children.
+She is worth a hundred thousand dollars, but can neither read nor write.
+Her strong common sense and deep fund of experience supply her lack of
+education, and one would not think while listening to her that she was
+ignorant of letters. Her life has been one of toil and sorrow, but her
+expression is one of brave cheerfulness. She and her husband came to
+this place forty years ago. They were the first white settlers, and for
+neighbors they had Indians and wolves. They entered most of the land on
+which the town now stands, and when other settlers came in and the town
+was laid out their land became valuable, and thus the foundation of
+their fortune was laid. But as riches increased, cares also increased:
+the husband<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> was so weighed down by responsibility and anxiety that his
+mind gave way, and in a fit of despondency he committed suicide. The
+sons and daughters who died, with the exception of two or three, were
+taken away in childhood. So the large mansion, with its richly-furnished
+rooms, is shut up from the sunlight and rarely echoes to the patter of
+childish feet. The mistress lives in the back part, but exercises a care
+over the whole house, which is kept in a state of perfect order and
+neatness. Not a speck of dirt is to be seen on the painted wood-work or
+the window-glass, not a stain mars the floor&mdash;long as the deck of a
+ship&mdash;of the porch which extends the length of the ell. The plates in
+the corner cupboard in the sitting-room are freshly arranged every day,
+the tins in the kitchen shine till you can see your face in them, and in
+summer the clean flower-beds, bright with pansies, roses, carnations and
+geraniums, that border the long walk leading to the front gate and adorn
+the side yards, attest the care and neatness of the mistress. Though she
+has lived on the prairie for forty years, yet the expressions that savor
+of her early life in a densely-wooded State still cling to her, and if
+you find her in her working-dress among her flowers she will beg you to
+excuse her appearance, adding, "I look as if I was just out of the
+timber."</p>
+
+<p>But this character, though interesting, is not a typical one. Neither is
+that of the pinched, hungry-looking little man whose five acres and
+small dwelling meet my sight when I look toward the country in another
+direction. His patch of ground is devoted to market-gardening, and from
+its slender profits he is trying to support himself and wife and four
+children and pay off a mortgage of several hundred dollars. He has
+lately invented an ingenious toy for children, and is trying to raise
+enough money to get it patented, hoping when that is done to reap large
+profits from the sale of it. He is like a poor trembling little mouse
+caught and held in the paws of a cruel cat. Sometimes Fate relaxes her
+grip on him, and he breathes freer and dares to hope for a larger
+liberty: then she puts her paw on him again, and tosses him and plays
+with him in very wantonness.</p>
+
+<p>Neither are the three old-maid sisters whose house I often pass types of
+Iowa character, but I cannot forbear describing them. Their names are
+Semira, Amanda and Melvina. There is nothing distinctive in their
+personal appearance, but their character, as expressed in their home and
+surroundings, is quite interesting. Their little low house is on a
+corner lot, and as the other three corners are occupied by large
+two-story houses, it seems lower still by contrast. It is unpainted, and
+has a little wooden porch over the front door. The floors are covered
+with homemade carpet, and braided mats are laid before each door and in
+front of the old-fashioned bureau, which has brass rings for handles on
+the drawers. A snow tree made of frayed white cotton or linen cloth
+adorns the table in the best room; woolly dogs with bead eyes and
+cotton-flannel rabbits with pink ears stand on the mantel; a bead
+hanging-basket filled with artificial flowers decorates the window; an
+elaborate air-castle, made of straw and bright worsted, hangs from the
+middle of the low ceiling; and hung against the wall, between two
+glaring woodcuts representing "Lady Caroline" in red and "Highland Mary"
+in blue, is a deep frame filled with worsted flowers, to which a
+butterfly and a bumble-bee have been pinned. Paper lacework depends from
+their kitchen-shelves, and common eggshells, artificially colored,
+decorate the lilac-bushes in the side yard. They are always making new
+mats or piecing quilts in a new pattern.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the first bluebird warbles they begin to work in their flower
+and vegetable garden, and from then until it is time to cover the
+verbena-beds in the fall I rarely pass without seeing one or more of
+them, with sunbonnet on head and hoe in hand, busy at work. Besides
+keeping their little front yard a mass of gorgeous bloom and their
+vegetable garden free from weed or stone, they raise canary-birds to
+sell and take care of a dozen hives of bees. Last fall I frequently<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> saw
+all three of them in the yard, with a neighbor or two called in for
+conference, and all twittering and chattering like blackbirds in March.
+Finally, the mystery was solved. Going past one day, I saw a carpenter
+deliberately cutting out the whole end of the house, and soon a large
+bay-window made its appearance. When this was completed three rows of
+shelves were put up inside close to the glass, and immediately filled
+with plants in pots and tin cans. What endless occupation and
+entertainment the watering and watching and tending of these must afford
+the sisters during winter!</p>
+
+<p>Neither does another neighbor of mine supply the type I seek&mdash;the old
+Quaker farmer, who is discontented and changeable in his disposition,
+having lived in Indiana a while, then in Iowa, then in Indiana again,
+and who is now in Iowa for the second time. He rents some land which
+lies just across the railroad, and in summer, when he is ploughing the
+growing corn, I hear him talking to his horse. He calls her a "contrary
+old jade," and jerks the lines and saws her mouth, and says, "Get over
+in that other row, I tell thee!" Once I heard him mutter to her, when he
+was leading her home after the day's work was done, "I came as near
+killin' thee to-day as ever I did."</p>
+
+<p>I will take for one type a man whom we met last summer in the country.
+We had driven for miles along the country roads in search of a certain
+little glen where the maiden-hair ferns grew waist-high and as broad
+across as the fronds of palms, and having found it and filled our
+spring-wagon with the treasures, we set out to return home by another
+road. We lost our way, but did not regret it, as this mischance made
+known to us the most stately and graceful tree we had ever seen&mdash;one
+that was certainly worth half a day's ride to see. The road left the
+treeless uplands, where the sunshine reflected from the bright yellow
+stubble of the newly-cut wheat-fields beat against our faces with a
+steady glare, and dipped into a cool, green, shady hollow where cows
+cropped the rich grass or stood knee-deep in the water of a little
+stream. Well they might stand in quiet contentment: a king might have
+envied them their surroundings. Overhead rose a dozen or more of the
+tallest and finest elms we had ever seen, stretching their thick
+branches till they met and formed a canopy so dense that only a stray
+sunbeam or two pierced through and fell upon the smooth green sward.
+Peerless among them stood an elm of mighty girth and lofty height, its
+widely-stretching branches as large around, where they left the trunk,
+as a common tree, and clothed to the farthest twig with luxuriant
+foliage. And all up and down the mossy trunk and around the branches
+grew young twigs from a few inches to a foot or two in length, half
+hiding the shaggy bark with their tender green leaves. It was a
+combination of tree-majesty and grace that is rarely seen. In a tropical
+forest I have beheld a lofty tree covered thickly all over its trunk and
+branches with ferns and parasitic plants, but the sight, though
+beautiful, was suggestive of morbid, unnatural growth. This royal elm
+out of its own sap had clothed its trunk as with a thickly-twining vine.
+When, after gazing our fill, we drove reluctantly out of the shady green
+hollow into the sunshine, and began to climb a hill, we saw at the top a
+small house surrounded by fruit trees and shaded in front by a
+grape-arbor. On reaching it we stopped to ask our way of a man who sat
+in his shirt-sleeves near the front door, fanning himself with his straw
+hat. He seemed frank and inclined to talk, and asked us to stop and rest
+a while in the shade. We did so, and his wife brought us some fresh
+buttermilk to drink, the children gathering about to look at us as if
+our advent was the incident of the month. In conversation we learned
+that he was the owner of forty acres, which he devoted largely to the
+cultivation of small fruits. The land was paid for, with the exception
+of a mortgage of three hundred dollars, which he hoped to lift in a
+season or two if the yield was good.</p>
+
+<p>"We're doing well now," he said, "but when we started, eight years ago,
+it was truly discouraging. There was no house on the place when we came
+here. We<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> put up the room we now use as a kitchen, and lived in it for
+two years and a half. It was so small that it only held a bed, a table,
+a cook-stove and two or three chairs, and when the table was drawn out
+for meals my wife had to set the rocking-chair on the bed, because there
+wasn't room for it on the floor. She helped me on the farm the first
+year or two. We moved here late in the spring, and I only had time to
+get the sod broken before corn-planting time. My wife had a lame foot
+that spring, but I made her a sort of crutch-stilt, and with this she
+walked over the ground as I ploughed it, making holes in the earth by
+means of it and dropping in the corn. She also rode the reaper when our
+wheat was ripe the next year, and I followed, binding and stacking. She
+has helped me in many other ways on the farm, for she is as ambitious as
+I am to have a place free from debt which we can call our own. We added
+these two other rooms in the third year, and when we are out of debt and
+have money ahead we shall put up another addition: we shall need it as
+the children grow up. I have a nice lot of small fruit&mdash;strawberries,
+raspberries, currants, gooseberries&mdash;and besides these I sell every
+spring a great many early vegetables. The small fruits pay me more to
+the acre than anything else I could raise. There is a good market for
+them in the neighboring towns, and I seldom have to hire any help. My
+children do most of the picking."</p>
+
+<p>It is only a bit of personal history, to be sure, but it affords an
+insight into the life of one who, like many others in this State, began
+with only his bare hands and habits of industry and economy for capital.</p>
+
+<p>Another typical illustration is supplied by a man whose home we visited
+in the winter. His comfortable farm-house was overflowing with the good
+things of life: a piano and an organ stood in the parlor, and a
+well-filled bookcase in the sitting-room; a large bay-window was bright
+with flowering plants; and base-burner coal-stoves and double-paned
+windows mocked at the efforts of the wintry winds and kept perpetual
+summer within. In the large barn were farm-wagons, a carriage, a buggy,
+a sleigh&mdash;a vehicle for every purpose. The farmer invited us one morning
+to step into a large sled which stood at the door, and took us half a
+mile to his stock-yards. There we saw fat, sleek cattle by the dozen and
+fat hogs by the score, great cribs bursting with corn, a windmill pump
+and other conveniences for watering stock. Besides all these possessions
+this man owns two or three other good farms, and has money loaned on
+mortgages; in short, is worth about fifty thousand dollars, every cent
+of which he has gained by his own exertions in the last twenty years. He
+said: "When my father died and his estate was divided among his
+children, each of us received eighty-three dollars as his share. I
+resolved then that if thrift and energy could avail anything I would
+have more than that to leave to each of my children when I died. It has
+required constant hard work and shrewd planning, but I have gained my
+stake, and am not a very old man yet," passing his hand over his hair,
+which was thinly sprinkled with gray.</p>
+
+<p>This man gave us a description of a tornado which passed over that
+portion of the State a number of years ago. It was shortly after he was
+married and while he was staying at his father-in-law's house. The whole
+family were away from home that day, and when they returned they found
+only the cellar. The house had been lifted from its foundation, and
+carried so far on the mighty wings of the hurricane that nothing
+pertaining to it was ever found except the rolling-pin and a few boards
+of the yellow-painted kitchen-floor. Of a new farm-wagon nothing
+remained but one tire, and that was flattened out straight. The trees
+that stood in the yard had been broken off at the surface of the ground.
+The grass lay stretched in the direction of the hurricane as if a flood
+of water had passed over it. Horses, cattle and human beings had been
+lifted and carried several rods through the air, then cast violently to
+earth again. Those who witnessed the course of the tornado said that it
+seemed to strike the ground, then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> go up in the air, passing harmlessly
+over a mile or two of country, then strike again, all the time whirling
+over and over, and occasionally casting out fragments of the spoils it
+had gathered up. After passing east to a point beyond the Mississippi it
+disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>This part of Iowa has rich deposits of coal, and mining is a regular and
+important business. The coal-mines lying a few miles south of this place
+are the largest west of the Mississippi River. A thriving little town
+has grown up around them, composed chiefly of miners' cottages, stores
+and superintendents' dwellings. A creek winds through it whose banks are
+shaded by elms and carpeted in spring and early summer with
+prairie-flowers; and a range of wooded hills in whose depths the richest
+coal-deposits lie lends a picturesque aspect to the scene, and partly
+compensates for the dreary look of the town itself, the comfortless
+appearance of many of the miners' houses and the great heaps of slag and
+refuse coal at the mouth of the mines. Mules hitched to little cars
+serve to draw the coal out of several of the mines, but the largest one
+is provided with an engine, which, by means of an endless rope of
+twisted wire, pulls long trains of loaded cars out of the depths of the
+mine and up to a high platform above the railroad, whence the coal is
+pitched into the waiting cars beneath. Sixty-five railroad cars are
+sometimes loaded in one day from this single mine. The coal is soft
+coal, and is sold by retail at from six to seven cents a bushel.</p>
+
+<p>One April day, when the woods were white and pink with the bloom of the
+wild plum and crab trees and the ground was blue with violets, we rode
+over to this place, and, hitching our horses to some trees growing over
+the principal mine, we descended to the entrance. A miner, an
+intelligent middle-aged man who was off work just then, volunteered to
+be our guide, and after providing each of us with a little oil lamp like
+the one he wore in his hat-brim, he led us into the dark opening that
+yawned in the hillside. The passage was six or seven feet wide, and so
+low that we could not stand erect. Under our feet was the narrow track,
+the space between the ties being slippery with mud: over our heads and
+on either hand were walls of rock, with a thick vein of coal running
+through them, braced every few feet with heavy timbers. The track began
+to descend, and soon we lost sight of the daylight and had to depend
+entirely on the feeble glimmer of our lamps. We occasionally came to
+smooth-plastered spaces in the walls, the closed-up mouths of old
+side-tunnels, and placing our hands upon them felt that they were warm.
+Fires were raging in the abandoned galleries, but, being shut away from
+the air and from access to the main tunnel, they were not dangerous. The
+dangers usually dreaded by the miners are the falling of heavy masses of
+earth and rock from the roof of the gallery and the sudden flow of water
+into the mine from some of the secret sources in the hillside. After
+penetrating about a quarter of a mile into the mine and descending one
+hundred and twenty feet, we reached the end of the main tunnel and saw
+the great wheel, fixed in the solid rock, on which the endless steel
+rope turned. A train of loaded cars had passed out just before we
+entered the mine, and on a switch near the end of the track stood
+another train of empty cars. The air thus far on our dark journey had
+been cool and good, for the main tunnel was ventilated by means of
+air-shafts that pierced the hillside to the daylight above; but now our
+guide opened the door of what seemed a subterranean dungeon, closed it
+behind us when we had passed through, lifted a heavy curtain that hung
+before us, and ushered us into a branch-tunnel where the air was hot and
+stifling and heavy with the fumes of powder. At the farther end we saw
+tiny specks of light moving about. As we neared them we found that they
+were lamps fastened in the hat-bands of the miners at work in this
+distant tunnel&mdash;literally, "the bowels of the earth." Some were using
+picks and shovels, others were drilling holes in the solid coal and
+putting in blasts of gunpowder. When these blasts were fired a
+subterranean thunder shook the place: it seemed as if the hill were
+falling in upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> us. Little cars stood upon the track partly filled with
+coal, and mules were hitched to them. The forms of these animals loomed
+large and dark in the dim light: they seemed like some monsters of a
+previous geologic age. The men themselves, blackened with coal and grimy
+with powder-smoke, might have seemed like gnomes or trolls had we not
+seen their homes in the plain, familiar sunlight above, and known that
+they were working for daily bread for themselves and families. They are
+paid according to the amount of coal they dig. Some have earned as high
+as one hundred and thirty dollars a month, but half that sum would be
+nearer the average.</p>
+
+<p>As we left this shaft and came back into the main tunnel we saw a miner
+sitting by the track with his small tin bucket open. It was noon and he
+was eating his dinner. It might just as well have been midnight, so
+dense was the darkness. We seemed to have been an uncomputable time in
+the depths, yet, glancing at the bunch of wild flowers in my belt, I saw
+that they were only beginning to wilt. Did poor Proserpine have the same
+feeling when she was ravished from the sunshine and the green and
+flowery earth and carried into the dark underground kingdom of Pluto?
+Remembering her fate, I whispered to my companion, "We will not eat
+anything while here&mdash;no, not so much as one pomegranate-seed."</p>
+
+<p>There are many smaller coal-mines in this vicinity&mdash;hardly a hillside
+but has a dark doorway leading into it&mdash;but they are not all worked
+regularly or by more than a few hands.</p>
+
+<p>On the road leading from town to the Skunk River one has glimpses of
+another industry. Limekilns, with uncouth signs announcing lime for sale
+at twenty-five cents a bushel, thrust themselves almost into the road,
+and the cabins or neatly-whitewashed board huts of the lime-burners
+border the way. Some have grass-plots and mounds of flowers around them:
+others are without ornament, if we except the children with blue eyes,
+red cheeks and hair like corn-silk that hang on the fence and watch us
+ride by.</p>
+
+<p>Skunk River is a broad, still stream, with hilly banks heavily wooded
+with willow, oak, maple, sycamore and bass-wood. Here we find the
+earliest wild flowers in spring: blue and purple hepaticas blossom among
+the withered leaves on the ground while the branches above are still
+bare, and a little later crowds of violets and spring-beauties brighten
+the tender grass; clusters of diacentra&mdash;or "Dutchman's breeches," as
+the children call them&mdash;nod from the shelter of decaying stumps to small
+yellow lilies with spotted leaves and tufts of fresh green ferns.</p>
+
+<p>The place is equally a favorite bird-haunt. The prairie-chicken, the
+best-known game-bird of the State, chooses rather the open prairie, but
+wild-ducks settle and feed here in their migratory journeys, attracting
+the sportsman by their presence; the fish-hawk makes his nest in the
+trees on the bank; the small blue heron wades pensively along the
+margin; and the common wood-birds, such as blackbirds, bluebirds, jays,
+sparrows and woodpeckers, chatter or warble or scold among the branches.
+Sometimes the redbird flashes like a living flame through the green
+tree-tops, or the brilliant orange-and-black plumage of the Baltimore
+oriole contrasts with the lilac-gray bark of an old tree-trunk.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the small wild flowers there are many shrubs and trees that
+bloom in spring. The haw tree and wild plum put forth masses of small
+creamy-white flowers, the redbud tree blooms along the water-courses,
+the dogwood in the woods and the wild crab-apple upon the open hillside.
+The crab trees often form dense thickets an acre or two in extent, and
+when all their branches are thickly set with coral buds or deep-pink
+blossoms they form a picture upon which the eye delights to rest. Spring
+redeems even the flat prairie from the blank monotony which wearies the
+eye in winter. There are few places in this vicinity where the virgin
+sod has not been broken, consequently few spots where the original,
+much-praised prairie-flowers grow; but a tender green clothes all the
+plain, hundreds of meadow-larks sing in the grass, the tints and colors
+of the sky are lovely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> beyond words, and the balmy winds breathe airs of
+Paradise.</p>
+
+<p>Even the town, whose ugliness has offended artistic taste and one's love
+of neatness all winter, clothes itself in foliage and hides its
+ungraceful outlines in bowery verdure. Lilacs scent the air, roses crowd
+through the broken fences, the milky floss of the cottonwood trees is
+strewed upon the sidewalks or floats like thistledown upon the air. To
+one sensitive to physical surroundings the change is like that from a
+sullen face to a smiling one, from a forbidding aspect to a cheerful
+one. The constant bracing of one's self against the influence of one's
+surroundings is relaxed: a feeling of relief and contentment comes
+instead. Our thirst for picturesque beauty may not be satisfied, but we
+accept with thankful hearts the quiet loveliness of spring. In this, as
+in deeper experiences, we learn that</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">At best we gain not happiness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But peace, friends&mdash;peace in the strife.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Louise Coffin Jones.</span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>A FORGOTTEN AMERICAN WORTHY</h2>
+
+
+<p>The pleasant agricultural village of Reading, in Fairfield county,
+Western Connecticut, presents much that is charming and picturesque in
+scenery, and is withal replete with historic incidents; but its chief
+claim to interest rests on the fact that it was the birthplace of Joel
+Barlow, who has decided claims to the distinction of being the father of
+American letters. Nearly seventy years have passed since the poet's
+tragic death, and the story of his life is still untold, while his
+memory has nearly faded from the minds of the living; nor would it be
+easy, at this late day, to collect sufficient material for an extended
+biography if such were demanded. Some pleasant traditions still linger
+in the sleepy atmosphere of his native village; a few of his letters and
+papers still remain in his family; contemporary newspapers had much to
+say both for and against him; the reviewers of his day noticed his
+poems, sometimes with approbation, sometimes with bitterness. There are
+fragmentary sketches of him in encyclop&aelig;dias and biographical
+dictionaries, and several pigeonholes in the State Department are filled
+with musty documents written by him when abroad in his country's
+diplomatic service. From these sources alone is the scholar of our times
+to glean his knowledge of one who in his day filled as large a space in
+the public eye as almost any of his contemporaries, and whose talents,
+virtues and public services entitled him to as lasting a fame as theirs.</p>
+
+<p>Not from any of these sources, but from the Barlow family register in
+the ancient records of Fairfield, we learn that the poet was born on
+March 24, 1754, and not in 1755, as is almost universally stated by the
+encyclop&aelig;dists. His father was Samuel Barlow, a wealthy farmer of the
+village&mdash;his mother, Elizabeth Hull, a connection of the general and
+commodore of the same name who figured so prominently in the war of
+1812. There is little in the early career of the poet of interest to the
+modern reader. He is first presented to us in the village traditions as
+a chubby, rosy-faced boy, intent on mastering the Greek and Latin tasks
+dealt out to him by Parson Bartlett, the Congregational minister of the
+village, who, like many of the New England clergy of that day, added the
+duties of schoolmaster to those of the clergyman. In a year or two he
+was placed at Moor's school for boys in Hanover, New Hampshire, and on
+completing his preparatory course he entered Dartmouth College in 1774.
+His father had died the December previous, and, with the view probably<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>
+of being nearer his mother and family in Reading, he left Dartmouth in
+his Freshman year and was entered at Yale.</p>
+
+<p>Barlow's college career was marked by close application to study, and
+won for him the respect and confidence of all with whom he came in
+contact. During his second year the war of the Revolution broke out, but
+the young poet, though an ardent patriot, clung to his books, resolutely
+closing his ears to the clamor of war that invaded his sacred cloisters
+until the long summer vacation arrived. Then he threw aside books and
+gown and joined his four brothers in the Continental ranks, where he did
+yeoman's service for his country. He graduated in 1778, and signalized
+the occasion by reciting an original poem called the "Prospect of
+Peace," which, in the quaint language of one of his contemporaries,
+gained him "a very pretty reputation as a poet."</p>
+
+<p>The next year found him a chaplain in the Continental army, in the same
+brigade with his friend Dwight, later renowned as the poet-president of
+Yale College, and with Colonel Humphreys, whom we shall find associated
+with him in a far different mission. The two young chaplains, not
+content with the performance of their clerical duties, wrote in
+connection with Humphreys stirring patriotic lyrics that were set to
+music and sung by the soldiers around the camp-fires and on the weary
+march, and aided largely in allaying discontent and in inducing them to
+bear their hardships patiently.</p>
+
+<p>For four years, or until the peace of 1783, Barlow continued to serve
+his country in the army: he left the service as poor as when he entered
+it, and a second time the question of a vocation in life presented
+itself. He at length chose the law, but before being admitted to
+practice performed an act which, however foolish it may have seemed to
+the worldly wise, proved to be one of the most fortunate events of his
+life. Although poor and possessing none of the qualities of the
+successful bread-winner, he united his fortunes with those of an amiable
+and charming young lady&mdash;Miss Ruth Baldwin of New Haven, daughter of
+Michael Baldwin, Esq., and sister of Hon. Abraham C. Baldwin, whom the
+student will remember as a Senator of note from Georgia. After marriage
+the young husband settled in Hartford, first in the study, and later in
+the practice, of the law. In Hartford we find him assuming the duties of
+lawyer, journalist and bookseller, and in all proving the truth of the
+fact often noted, that the possession of literary talent generally
+unfits one for the rough, every-day work of the world. As a lawyer
+Barlow lacked the smoothness and suavity of the practised advocate,
+while the petty details and trickeries of the profession disgusted him.
+As an editor he made his journal, the <i>American Mercury</i>, notable for
+the high literary and moral excellence of its articles, but it was not
+successful financially, simply because it lacked a constituency
+sufficiently cultured to appreciate and sustain it. His bookstore, which
+stood on the quiet, elm-shaded main street of the then provincial
+village, was opened to dispose of his psalm-book and poems, and was
+closed when this was accomplished.</p>
+
+<p>As a poet, however, he was more successful, and it was here that the
+assurance of literary ability, so dear to the heart of the neophyte,
+first came to him. Dr. Watts's "imitation" of the Psalms, incomplete and
+inappropriate in many respects, was then the only version within reach
+of the Puritan churches, and in 1785 the Congregational Association of
+Connecticut applied to the poet for a revised edition of the work.
+Barlow readily complied, and published his revision the same year,
+adding to it several psalms which Dr. Watts had omitted. This work was
+received with marked favor by the Congregational churches, and was used
+by them exclusively until rumors of the author's lapse from orthodoxy
+reached them, when it was superseded by a version prepared by Dr.
+Dwight.</p>
+
+<p>Two years after, in 1787, Barlow published his <i>Vision of Columbus</i>, a
+poem conceived while in the army and largely written during the poet's
+summer vacations at Reading. It was received with unbounded favor by his
+patriotic countrymen,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> and after passing through several editions at
+home was republished both in London and Paris, and made its author the
+best known American in the literary circles of his day. There was in
+Hartford at this time a coterie of literary spirits whose sprightliness
+and bonhomie had gained for them the sobriquet of the "Hartford Wits."
+Dr. Lemuel Hopkins was doubtless the chief factor in the organization of
+this club: Barlow, John Trumbull, Colonel Humphreys, Richard Alsop and
+Theodore Dwight&mdash;all of whom had gained literary distinction&mdash;were its
+chief members. The principal publications of the club were the
+<i>Anarchiad</i>, a satirical poem, and the <i>Echo</i>, which consisted of a
+series of papers in verse lampooning the social and political follies of
+the day. To both of these, it is said, Barlow was a prominent
+contributor. He was also a prominent figure in the organization, about
+this time, of the Connecticut Cincinnati, a society formed by
+Revolutionary officers for urging upon Congress their claims for
+services rendered in the Revolution.</p>
+
+<p>In these varied pursuits and amid such pleasant associations three years
+passed away, but during all this time the grim spectre of Want had
+menaced the poet&mdash;first at a distance, but with each succeeding month
+approaching nearer and nearer, until now, in 1788, it stared him in the
+face. His patrimony had been nearly exhausted in his education; his
+law-business was unremunerative; his paper, as we have said, was not a
+success financially; and his poetry brought him much more honor than
+cash. And thus it happened that at the age of thirty-four he found
+himself without money or employment. At this trying juncture there came
+from the West&mdash;fruitful parent of such schemes!&mdash;the prospectus of the
+Scioto Land Company, furnished with glaring head-lines and seductive
+phrases, and parading in its list of stockholders scores of the
+best-known names in the community. This company claimed to have become
+the fortunate possessor of unnumbered acres in the valley of the Scioto,
+and was anxious to share its good fortune&mdash;for a consideration&mdash;with
+Eastern and European capitalists. It was desirous of securing an agent
+to negotiate its sales in Europe, and, quite naturally, its choice fell
+on Joel Barlow, the only American having a reputation abroad who was at
+liberty to undertake the mission; and, since the company bore a good
+repute and offered fair remuneration, the poet very gladly embraced its
+offer. He does not seem to have met with much success in England, but in
+France his reception was much more encouraging. An estate in the New
+World was a veritable <i>ch&acirc;teau en Espagne</i> to the mercurial Frenchmen,
+and they purchased with some avidity; but just as the agent's ground was
+prepared for a plenteous harvest news came that the Scioto Company had
+burst, as bubbles will, leaving to its dupes only a number of
+well-executed maps, some worthless parchments called deeds, and that
+valuable experience which comes with a knowledge of the ways of the
+world. Barlow, being the company's principal agent abroad, came in for
+his full share of the abuse excited by its operations; and yet it is
+evident that he was as innocent of its real character as any one, and
+that he had accepted the position of agent with full confidence in the
+company's integrity. Its collapse left him as poor as ever, and a
+stranger in a strange land, notwithstanding he was surrounded here by
+conditions that assured him the generous and honorable career which had
+been denied him in the New World.</p>
+
+<p>Of the foreigners who then thronged cosmopolitan Paris, none were so
+popular as Americans. Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane, by their
+courtesy and dignity, joined to republican simplicity, had provided
+passports for their countrymen to the good graces of all Frenchmen:
+besides, the name "republican" was a word of magic import in France at
+that time. Barlow's reputation as a poet was also of great service to
+him at a time when literature exercised a commanding influence both in
+society and politics. He was presented at court, admitted to the
+companionship of wits and savants, and was enabled, by the favor of some
+financial magnates, to participate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> in speculations which proved so
+successful that in a short time he was raised above the pressure of
+want. But in less than a year after his arrival the Revolution broke
+out, and involved him in its horrors. His sympathies were entirely with
+the Girondists&mdash;the party of the literati, and the most patriotic and
+enlightened of the rival factions. He is said to have entered heartily
+into the advocacy of their cause, writing pamphlets and addresses in
+their interest and contributing frequently to their journals: he is also
+said to have figured prominently at the meetings of the Girondist
+leaders held in the salon of Madame Roland. The atrocities of the
+Jacobins, however, so shocked and disgusted him that he shortly withdrew
+and went into retirement outside of the city. The greater part of the
+years 1791-92 he spent in England, with occasional visits to France.
+During one of these visits the privileges of French citizenship were
+conferred on him&mdash;an honor that had been previously conferred on but two
+Americans, Washington and Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>In 1795 a crisis in his fortunes occurred, and from this date the story
+of his life becomes an interesting and important one. He had been for
+some months on a business-tour through the northern provinces, and,
+returning to Paris early in September, was surprised at receiving a
+visit from his old friend Colonel David Humphreys, who had been American
+minister to Portugal for some years, and was now in Paris on a political
+mission. He was accompanied on this visit by James Monroe, then American
+minister at the French court. They bore a commission from President
+Washington naming Barlow consul at Algiers, and their object was to
+induce him to accept the appointment. The post was one of extreme
+difficulty and danger, and had Barlow consulted his own wishes and
+interests he would undoubtedly have declined it. But by appeals to his
+philanthropy, and by representations that from his knowledge of courts
+and experience of the world he was well fitted for the performance of
+the duties assigned to him, he was at length induced to accept the
+commission. Preparations were at once made for the journey. His
+business-affairs were arranged and his will made: then, bidding his wife
+farewell, he set out with Humphreys on the 12th of September, 1795, for
+Lisbon, <i>en route</i> for the Barbary coast.</p>
+
+<p>At the time of Barlow's mission Algiers was at the height of its power
+and arrogance. Great Britain, France, Spain, Holland, Denmark, Sweden
+and Venice were tributaries of this barbarous state, which waged
+successful war with Russia, Austria, Portugal, Naples, Sardinia, Genoa
+and Malta. Its first depredation on American commerce was committed on
+the 25th of July, 1785, when the schooner Maria, Stevens master, owned
+in Boston, was seized off Cape St. Vincent by a corsair and carried into
+Algiers. Five days later the ship Dauphin of Philadelphia, Captain
+O'Brien, was taken and carried into the same port. Other captures
+quickly followed, so that at the time of Barlow's mission there were one
+hundred and twenty American citizens in the Algerine prisons, exclusive
+of some forty that had been liberated by death or ransomed through the
+private exertions of their friends.</p>
+
+<p>The course pursued by Congress for the liberation of these captives
+cannot be viewed with complacency even at this late day. After some
+hesitation it decided to ransom the prisoners, and proceeded to
+negotiate&mdash;first, through Mr. John Lamb, its agent at Algiers, and
+secondly through the general of the Mathurins, a religious order of
+France instituted in early times for the redemption of Christian
+captives from the infidel powers. These negotiations extended through a
+period of six years, and accomplished nothing, from the fact that the
+dey invariably demanded double the sum which Congress thought it could
+afford to pay. In June, 1792, with the hope of negotiating a treaty and
+rescuing the captives, the celebrated John Paul Jones was appointed
+consul to Algiers, but died before reaching the scene of his mission.
+His successor, Mr. Thomas Barclay, died at Lisbon January 19, 1793,
+while on his way to Algiers. The conduct<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> of Barbary affairs was next
+confided to Colonel Humphreys, our minister to Portugal, with power to
+name an agent who should act under him, and Mr. Pierre E. Skjoldebrand,
+a brother of the Swedish consul, was appointed under this arrangement;
+but the latter gentleman seems to have been no more successful than his
+predecessors. Late in 1794, Humphreys returned to America, and while
+here it was arranged that Joseph Donaldson should accompany him on his
+return as agent for Tunis and Tripoli, while Barlow, it was hoped, could
+be induced to accept the mission to Algiers and the general oversight of
+Barbary affairs.</p>
+
+<p>The two diplomats left America early in April, 1795, and proceeded to
+Gibraltar, where they separated, Donaldson continuing his journey to
+Algiers <i>vi&acirc;</i> Alicant, and Humphreys hastening on to Paris in search of
+Barlow, as has been narrated. Colonel Humphreys and Mr. Barlow did not
+reach Lisbon until the 17th of November, and when the latter was about
+prosecuting his journey he was surprised by a visit from Captain
+O'Brien, who had been despatched by Mr. Donaldson with a newly-signed
+treaty with Algiers. Mr. Donaldson, it was learned, had reached Algiers
+on the 3d of September, and finding the dey in a genial mood had
+forthwith concluded a treaty with him, considering that he had
+sufficient authority for this under the general instructions of Colonel
+Humphreys. It was found that some of the conditions of the treaty could
+not be fulfilled, particularly one stipulating that the first payment of
+nearly eight hundred thousand dollars should be made by the 5th of
+January, 1796; and Barlow therefore hastened forward to Algiers to
+explain the matter to the dey and make such attempts at pacification as
+were practicable, while Captain O'Brien was sent to London in the brig
+Sophia for the money. Of his life in Algiers, and of the subsequent fate
+of the treaty, some particulars are given in a letter from Barlow to
+Humphreys, dated at Algiers April 5, 1796, and also in a letter to Mrs.
+Barlow written about the same time. The letter to Humphreys is as
+follows:</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Sir</span>: We have now what we hope will be more agreeable news to you. For
+two days past we have been witnesses to a scene of as complete and
+poignant distress as can be imagined, arising from the total state of
+despair in which our captives found themselves involved, and we without
+the power of administering the least comfort or hope. The threat of
+sending us away had been reiterated with every mark of a fixed and final
+decision, and the dey went so far as to declare that after the thirty
+days, if the money did not come, he never would be at peace with the
+Americans. Bacri the Jew, who has as much art in this sort of management
+as any man we ever knew, who has more influence with the dey than all
+the regency put together, and who alone has been able to soothe his
+impatience on this subject for three months past, now seemed unable to
+make the least impression, and the dey finally forbade him, under pain
+of his highest displeasure, to speak to him any more about the
+Americans. His cruisers are now out, and for some days past he has been
+occupied with his new war against the Danes. Three days ago the Danish
+prizes began to come in, and it was thought that this circumstance might
+put him in good-humor, so that the Jew might find a chance of renewing
+our subject in some shape or other; and we instructed the Jew that if he
+could engage him in conversation on his cruisers and prizes he might
+offer him a new American-built ship of twenty guns which should sail
+very fast, to be presented to his daughter, on condition that he would
+wait six months longer for our money. The Jew observed that we had
+better say a ship of twenty-four guns, to which we agreed. After seeing
+him three or four times yesterday under pretence of other business,
+without being able to touch upon this, he went this morning and
+succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>"The novelty of the proposition gained the dey's attention for a moment,
+and he consented to see us on the subject; but he told the Jew to tell
+us that it must be a ship of thirty-six guns or he would not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> listen to
+the proposition. We were convinced that we ought not to hesitate an
+instant. We accordingly went and assented to his demand, and he has
+agreed to let everything remain as it is for the term of three months
+from this day, but desired us to remember that not a single day beyond
+that will be allowed on any account.</p>
+
+<p>"We consider the business as now settled on this footing, and it is the
+best ground that we could possibly place it upon. You still have it in
+your power to say peace or no peace: you have an alternative. In the
+other case war was inevitable, and there would have been no hope of
+peace during the reign of this dey....</p>
+
+<p>"In order to save the treaty, which has been the subject of infinite
+anxiety and vexation, we found it necessary some time ago to make an
+offer to the Jew of ten thousand sequins (eighteen thousand dollars), to
+be paid eventually if he succeeded, and to be distributed by him among
+such great officers of state as he thought necessary, and as much of it
+to be kept for himself as he could keep consistent with success. The
+whole of this new arrangement will cost the United States about
+fifty-three thousand dollars. We expect to incur blame, because it is
+impossible to give you a complete view of the circumstances, but we are
+perfectly confident of having acted right."</p>
+
+<p>A few weeks later the long-expected ransom arrived: the prison-doors
+were thrown open, and the captives came out into the sunlight. How
+pitifully the poet-diplomatist received them, how tenderly he cared for
+their wants, and how he exerted himself to secure for them a speedy
+passage to their native land, may be inferred from the character of the
+man. Having now accomplished the object of his mission, it was to be
+expected that he would be free to give up his unpleasant post and return
+to France. But in the adjacent states of Tunis and Tripoli there were
+other prisons in which American citizens were confined, and until they
+were liberated he does not seem to have considered his mission as fully
+performed. Six months or more were spent in effecting this object, and
+when it was accomplished he very gladly delivered up his credentials to
+the government and returned to his home and friends in France.</p>
+
+<p>The succeeding eight years were spent in congenial pursuits, chiefly of
+a literary and philanthropic character. He purchased the large h&ocirc;tel of
+the count Clermont Tonnere, near Paris, which he transformed into an
+elegant villa: here he lived during his residence in France, dispensing
+a broad hospitality and enjoying the friendship of the leading minds of
+the Empire, as well as the companionship of all Americans of note who
+visited the capital. But at length, in 1805, after seventeen years of
+absence, the home-longing which sooner or later comes to every exile
+seized upon him, and, yielding to its influence, he disposed of his
+estates in France and with his faithful wife embarked for America.</p>
+
+<p>Great changes had occurred in his native land during these seventeen
+years. Washington was gone, and with him the power and prestige of
+Federalism; Jefferson and Burr had led the Republican hosts to victory;
+Presbyterianism as a political force was dead; and everywhere in society
+the old order was giving place to the new. This was more markedly the
+case in New England, where the Puritan crust was being broken and
+pulverized by the gradual upheaval of the Republican strata. Withal, it
+was an era of intense political feeling and of partisan bitterness
+without a parallel.</p>
+
+<p>This will explain, perhaps, the varying manner in which Barlow was
+received by the different parties among his countrymen. The Republicans
+greeted him with acclamation as the honored citizen of two republics,
+the man who had perilled life and health in rescuing his countrymen from
+slavery. The Federalists, on the other hand, united in traducing him&mdash;an
+assertion which may be gainsaid, but which can be abundantly proved by
+reference to the Federal newspapers and magazines of the day. In
+evidence, and as a curious instance of the political bitterness of the
+times, I will adduce the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> following article from the <i>Boston Repertory</i>,
+printed in the August after the poet's return:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><h4>"JEFFERSON, BARLOW AND PAINE.</h4>
+
+<p>"In our last paper was announced, and that with extreme
+regret, the return of Joel Barlow, Esq., to this country.
+This man, the strong friend of Mr. Jefferson and
+confidential companion of his late warm defender, Tom Paine,
+is one of the most barefaced infidels that ever appeared in
+Christendom. Some facts respecting these distinguished
+personages may serve to show the votaries of Christianity
+what a band of open enemies (to the faith) is now assembling
+in this country.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Jefferson, in his famous <i>Notes on Virginia</i>, advances
+opinions incompatible with Mosaic history. This cannot be
+disputed, nor will Mr. Jefferson dare to deny that he has,
+since he has been President of the United States, publicly
+made the Eucharist a subject of impious ridicule. Tom Paine
+has written two books for the express purpose of combating
+the Holy Scriptures. His <i>Age of Reason</i> is but too common,
+and his letter to the late Samuel Adams still evinces his
+perverse adherence to his infidel system.</p>
+
+<p>"Joel Barlow is said to have written the following shocking
+letter to his correspondent, John Fellows, dated Hamburg,
+May 23, 1805: 'I rejoice at the progress of good sense over
+the <i>damnable imposture</i> of <i>Christian mummery</i>. I had no
+doubt of the effect of Paine's <i>Age of Reason</i>: it may be
+cavilled at a while, but it must prevail. Though things as
+good have been often said, they were never said in so good a
+way,' etc. Mr. Barlow can now answer for himself: if this
+letter be a forgery, let him inform the public. It has never
+yet been contradicted, though it has been four years
+published in America."</p></div>
+
+<p>From which we gather that in the political code of that day the grossest
+calumnies if uncontradicted were to be accepted as truth. There is not
+the slightest evidence, however, in his writings or public utterances
+that the poet ever renounced the faith of his fathers, although it is
+not probable that he was a very strict Presbyterian at this time.</p>
+
+<p>Barlow seems not to have returned with any hopes of political
+preferment: at least he made no attempt to enter the field of politics,
+but after spending several months in travel took up his residence in
+Washington and devoted himself to philosophical studies and the
+cultivation of the Muses. He had purchased a beautiful site on the banks
+of the Potomac within the city limits, and here he erected a mansion
+whose beauty and elegance made it famous throughout the country. This
+mansion he called Kalorama, and the wealth and correct taste of its
+owner were lavishly employed in its adornment. Broad green lawns, shaded
+by forest trees, surrounded the house, fountains sparkled and gleamed
+amid the shrubberies, and gay parterres of flowers added their beauty to
+the scene. Within, French carpets, mirrors, statuary, pictures and
+bric-&agrave;-brac betokened the foreign tastes of the owner. In the library
+was gathered the most extensive private collection of foreign books
+which the country then contained. Kalorama was the Holland House of
+America, where were to be met all the notables of the land, political,
+literary or philanthropic. The President, heads of departments,
+Congressmen, foreign ambassadors, poets, authors, reformers, inventors,
+were all to be seen there. Robert Fulton, the father of
+steam-navigation, was the poet's firm friend, and received substantial
+aid from him in his enterprise. Jefferson, throwing off the cares of
+state, often paid him informal visits, and the two sages had a pet plan
+which was generally the subject of conversation on these occasions. This
+was the scheme of a national university, to be modelled after the
+Institute of France, and to combine a university, a learned society, a
+naval and military school and an academy of fine arts. The movement had
+been originated by Washington, and Jefferson and Barlow, with many other
+leading men of the day, were its warm friends and promoters. In 1806,
+Barlow, at Jefferson's suggestion, drew up a prospectus, which was
+printed and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> circulated throughout the country. So great a public
+sentiment in favor of the scheme was developed that a bill for its
+endowment was shortly after introduced in Congress; but New England
+exerted her influence against it in favor of Yale and Harvard so
+successfully that it was defeated.</p>
+
+<p>The chief literary work which occupied the poet in this classic retreat
+was <i>The Columbiad</i>, which appeared in 1808. He also busied himself with
+collecting materials for a general history of the United States&mdash;a work
+which, if he had been permitted to finish it, would have proved no doubt
+a valuable contribution to this department of literature. But in the
+midst of this scholarly retirement he was surprised at receiving a note
+from Mr. Monroe, then Secretary of State, offering him the position of
+minister to France, and urging his acceptance of it in the strongest
+terms.</p>
+
+<p>Our relations with France were then (1811) in a very critical state,
+owing to the latter's repeated attacks on American commerce, and it was
+of vital moment to the government that a man so universally respected by
+the French people, and so familiar with the French court and its circle
+of wily diplomats, as was Barlow, should have charge of American
+interests in that quarter. A man less unselfish, less patriotic, would
+have refused the burden of such a position, especially one so foreign to
+his tastes and desires; but the poet in this case, as in 1795, seems not
+to have hesitated an instant at the call of his country. Kalorama was
+closed&mdash;not sold, for its owner hoped that his absence would not be of
+long duration&mdash;preparations for the journey were speedily made, and
+early in August, 1811, Barlow, accompanied by his faithful wife, was set
+down at the port of Annapolis, where the famous frigate Constitution,
+Captain Hull, had been lying for some time in readiness to receive him.
+In Annapolis the poet was received with distinguished honor: at his
+embarkation crowds thronged the quay, and a number of distinguished
+citizens were gathered at the gang-plank to bid him God-speed on his
+journey. Captain Hull received his guest with the honor due his
+station: then the Constitution spread her sails, and, gay with bunting
+and responding heartily to the salutes from the forts on shore, swept
+gallantly down the bay and out to sea. The beautiful city, gleaming amid
+the foliage of its stately forest trees, and the low level shores, green
+with orchards and growing corn, were the last objects that the poet
+beheld ere the outlines of his native land sank beneath the waters.
+Happily, he could not foresee the untimely death in waiting for him not
+eighteen months distant, nor the lonely sepulchre in the Polish waste,
+nor the still more bitter fact that ere two generations should pass an
+ungrateful country would entirely forget his services and martyrdom.</p>
+
+<p>Barlow's correspondence with Mr. Monroe and the duke de Bassano while
+abroad on this mission forms an interesting and hitherto unpublished
+chapter in our history. It has rested undisturbed in the pigeonholes of
+the State Department for nearly a century, and if published in
+connection with a brief memoir of the poet would prove a valuable
+addition to our annals. The first of the series is Mr. Monroe's letter
+of instruction to the newly-appointed minister, defining the objects of
+his mission, which were, in brief, indemnity for past spoliations and
+security from further depredations. The second paper is Mr. Barlow's
+first letter from Paris, under date of September 29, 1811, and is as
+follows:</p>
+
+<p>"I seize the first occasion to announce to you my arrival, though I have
+little else to announce. I landed at Cherbourg the 8th of this month,
+and arrived at Paris the 19th. The emperor has been residing for some
+time at Compi&egrave;gne, and it unluckily happened that he set out thence for
+the coast and for Holland the day of my arrival here. The duke de
+Bassano, Minister of Foreign Relations, came the next day to Paris for
+two days only, when he was to follow the emperor to join him in Holland.
+General Turreau and others, who called on me the morning after I reached
+Paris, assured me that the duke was desirous of seeing me as soon as
+possible and with as little ceremony.</p>
+
+<p>"On the 21st I made my first visit to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> him, which of course had no other
+object than that of delivering my credentials. I expressed my regret at
+the emperor's absence, and the consequent delay of such business as was
+rendered particularly urgent by the necessity of sending home the
+frigate and by the approaching session of Congress, as well as by the
+distressed situation of those American citizens who were awaiting the
+result of decisions which might be hastened by the expositions I was
+charged to make on the part of the President of the United States. He
+said the emperor had foreseen the urgency of the case, and had charged
+him to remedy the evil, as far as could be done, by dispensing with my
+presentation to His Majesty till his return, and that I might
+immediately proceed to business as if I had been presented. He said the
+most flattering things from the emperor relative to my appointment. He
+observed that His Majesty had expected my arrival with some solicitude,
+and was disposed to do everything that I could reasonably ask to
+maintain a good intelligence between the two countries.... I explained
+to him with as much precision as possible the sentiments of the
+President on the most pressing objects of my mission, and threw in such
+observations as seemed to arise out of what I conceived to be the true
+interests of France. He heard me with patience and apparent solicitude,
+endeavored to explain away some of the evils of which we complain, and
+expressed a strong desire to explain away the rest. He said that many of
+the ideas I suggested were new to him, and were very important&mdash;that he
+should lay them before the emperor with fidelity and in a manner
+calculated to produce the most favorable impression; desired me to
+reduce them to writing, to be presented in a more solemn form; and
+endeavored to convince me that he doubted not our being able on the
+return of the emperor to remove all obstacles to a most perfect harmony
+between the two countries."</p>
+
+<p>In a letter dated December 19, 1811, he writes:</p>
+
+<p>"Since the date of my last I have had many interviews with the Minister
+of Foreign Relations. I have explained several points, and urged every
+argument for as speedy an answer to my note of the 10th as its very
+serious importance would allow. He always treats the subject with
+apparent candor and solicitude, seems anxious to gain information, and
+declares that neither he nor the emperor had before understood American
+affairs, and always assures me that he is nearly ready with his answer.
+But he says the emperor's taking so long a time to consider it and make
+up his decision is not without reason, for it opens a wide field for
+meditation on very interesting matters. He says the emperor has read the
+note repeatedly and with great attention&mdash;that he told him the reasoning
+in it was everywhere just and the conclusions undeniable, but to
+reconcile its principles with his continental system presented
+difficulties not easy to remove. From what the emperor told me himself
+at the last diplomatic audience, and from a variety of hints and other
+circumstances remarked among the people about his person, I have been
+made to believe that he is really changing his system relative to our
+trade, and that the answer to my note will be more satisfactory than I
+had at first expected."</p>
+
+<p>Several other letters from the poet to Monroe follow, all of the same
+general tenor&mdash;complaining of delay, yet hopeful that the treaty would
+shortly be secured. February 8, 1812, he writes to the Secretary of
+State that the duke is "at work upon the treaty, and probably in good
+earnest, but the discussions with Russia and the other affairs of this
+Continent give him and the emperor so much occupation that I cannot
+count upon their getting on very fast with ours."</p>
+
+<p>Amid these delays the summer passed away, and the emperor, intent on
+mapping out his great campaign against Russia, still neglected to sign
+the important instrument. Early in the summer Napoleon left Paris for
+Wilna to take command of the vast armies that had been collected for the
+invasion, and from that place, on the 11th of October, the duke de
+Bassano addressed the following note to Mr. Barlow in Paris:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Sir</span>: I have had the honor to make known to you how much I regretted, in
+the negotiation commenced between the United States and France, the
+delays which inevitably attended a correspondence carried on at so great
+a distance. Your government has desired to see the epoch of this
+arrangement draw near: His Majesty is animated by the same dispositions,
+and, willing to assure to the negotiation a result the most prompt, he
+has thought that it would be expedient to suppress the intermediaries
+and to transfer the conference to Wilna. His Majesty has in consequence
+authorized me, sir, to treat directly with you; and if you will come to
+this town I dare hope that, with the desire which animates us both to
+conciliate such important interests, we shall immediately be enabled to
+remove all the difficulties which until now have appeared to impede the
+progress of the negotiation. I have apprised the duke of Dalberg that
+his mission was thus terminated, and I have laid before His Majesty the
+actual state of the negotiation, to the end that when you arrive at
+Wilna, the different questions being already illustrated either by your
+judicious observation or by the instructions I shall have received, we
+may, sir, conclude an arrangement so desirable and so conformable to the
+mutually amicable views of our two governments."</p>
+
+<p>Barlow could do no less than comply with this invitation, since, as he
+remarked in a letter to Monroe under date of October 25, "it was
+impossible to refuse it without giving offence." His letter accepting
+the duke's invitation was probably the last ever written by him, and is
+dated Paris, October 25, 1812:</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Sir</span>: In consequence of the letter you did me the honor to write me on
+the 11th of this month, I accept your invitation, and leave Paris
+to-morrow for Wilna, where I hope to arrive in fifteen or eighteen days
+from this date. The negotiation on which you have done me the honor to
+invite me at Wilna is so completely prepared in all its parts between
+the duke of Dalberg and myself, and, as I understand, sent on to you for
+your approbation about the 18th of the present month, that I am
+persuaded that if it could have arrived before the date of your letter
+the necessity of this meeting would not have existed, as I am confident
+His Majesty would have found the project reasonable and acceptable in
+all its parts, and would have ordered that minister to conclude and sign
+both the treaty of commerce and the convention of indemnities."</p>
+
+<p>Barlow left Paris for Wilna on the 26th of October in his private
+carriage, yet travelling night and day and with relays of horses at the
+post-towns to expedite his progress. His sole companion was his nephew
+and secretary of legation, Thomas Barlow, who had been educated and
+given an honorable position in life through the poet's munificence.
+Their route, the same as that pursued by Napoleon a few weeks before,
+led across the Belgian frontiers and through the forests and defiles of
+the German principalities. Once across the Niemen, they met with rumors
+of the emperor's disaster at Moscow, and that portions of his army were
+then in full retreat, but, discrediting them, pushed on to Wilna, which
+they reached about the 1st of December. Wilna is the only considerable
+village in Russia between the Niemen and Moscow: it is a quaint and
+venerable town, capital of the ancient province of Lithuania, and played
+an important part in Napoleon's Russian campaign, being the rendezvous
+of his legions after crossing the Niemen and the site of his
+army-hospitals. When our travellers entered it, it was filled with a
+horde of panic-stricken fugitives, who made the town a temporary
+resting-place before continuing their flight to the frontiers; nor were
+they long in learning the, to them, distressing news that the French
+army was in swift retreat, and that the duke de Bassano, so far from
+being at leisure to attend a diplomatic conference at Wilna, was then on
+the frontiers hurrying forward reinforcements to cover the retreat of
+his emperor across the Beresina.</p>
+
+<p>The perilous journey had been made in vain, and the treaty was doomed to
+still further delay. It now only remained for Barlow to extricate
+himself from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> his dangerous position and to reach the frontiers before
+the fleeing army and the pursuing Cossacks should close every avenue of
+escape.</p>
+
+<p>Thomas Barlow on his return to America sometimes favored his friends
+with vivid pictures of the sufferings and privations endured by the
+travellers in their flight from Wilna. The passage of so many men had
+rendered the roads well-nigh impassable; food, even of the meanest kind,
+could only be procured with the greatest difficulty; and often the
+travellers were mixed up with the flying masses, as it seemed
+inextricably. Ruined habitations, wagons and provision-vans overturned
+and pillaged, men dying by scores from hunger and starvation, and frozen
+corpses of men and horses, were objects that constantly presented
+themselves. At length they crossed the Niemen and pursued their journey
+through Poland, still suffering terribly from the cold and from the
+insufficient nature of the food obtainable; but on reaching Zarrow,<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a>
+an obscure village near Cracow, the poet was seized with a sudden and
+fatal attack of pneumonia, the result, no doubt, of privation and
+exposure. He was borne to a little Jewish cottage, the only inn that the
+village afforded, and there died December 26, 1812. His remains were
+interred in the little churchyard of the village where he died. It is
+rarely that an American visits his grave, and the government has never
+taken interest enough in its minister to erect a memorial slab above his
+dust; but wifely devotion has supplied the omission, and a plain
+monument of marble, on which are inscribed his name, age and station and
+the circumstances of his death, marks the poet's place of sepulture.</p>
+
+<p>The news of his death seems not to have reached the United States until
+the succeeding March. The Federal journals merely announced the fact
+without comment: the Republican papers published formal eulogiums on the
+dead statesman. President Madison, in his inaugural of 1813, thus
+referred to the event: "The sudden death of the distinguished citizen
+who represented the United States in France, without any special
+arrangement by him for such a conclusion, has kept us without the
+expected sequel to his last communications; nor has the French
+government taken any measures for bringing the depending negotiations to
+a conclusion through its representative in the United States."</p>
+
+<p>In France the poet's demise excited a more general feeling of regret,
+perhaps, than in his own country. A formal eulogy on his life and
+character was pronounced by Dupont de Nemours before the Society for the
+Encouragement of National Industry, and the year succeeding his death an
+account of his life and writings was published at Paris in quarto form,
+accompanied by one canto of <i>The Columbiad</i>, translated into French
+heroic verse. The American residents of Paris also addressed a letter of
+condolence to Mrs. Barlow, in which is apparent the general sentiment of
+respect and affection entertained for the poet in the French capital.</p>
+
+<p>"In private life," says one of his eulogists, "Mr. Barlow was highly
+esteemed for his amiable temperament and many social excellences. His
+manners were generally grave and dignified, and he possessed but little
+facility of general conversation, but with his intimate friends he was
+easy and familiar, and upon topics which deeply interested him he
+conversed with much animation."</p>
+
+<p>Another thus refers to his domestic relations: "The affection of Mr.
+Barlow for his lovely wife was unusually strong, and on her part it was
+fully reciprocated. She cheerfully in early life cast in her lot with
+his 'for better or for worse'&mdash;and sometimes the worst, so far as their
+pecuniary prospects were concerned. In their darkest days Barlow ever
+found light and encouragement at home in the smiles, sympathy and
+counsel of his prudent, faithful wife. No matter how dark and portentous
+the cloud that brooded over them might be, she always contrived to give
+it a silver lining, and his subsequent success in life he always
+attributed more to her influence over him than to anything else."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Barlow lived a dual life&mdash;the life of a poet as well as of a
+diplomatist&mdash;and this paper can scarcely be considered complete unless
+it touches somewhat on his literary productions. It will be the verdict
+of all who study his life carefully that he was a better statesman than
+poet, and a better philanthropist than either; yet as a poet he
+surpassed his contemporaries, producing works that fairly entitle him to
+the distinction of being the father of American letters. His <i>Hasty
+Pudding</i> would be a valuable addition to any literature, and in his
+<i>Advice to the Privileged Orders</i> and his <i>Conspiracy of Kings</i> much
+poetic power and insight is apparent. It was on his epic of <i>The
+Columbiad</i> that he no doubt founded his hopes of fame, but, though the
+book was extensively read in its day and passed through several editions
+on both continents, no reprint has been demanded in modern times, and it
+long since dropped out of the category of books that are read.</p>
+
+<p>Barlow's private letters from abroad would have possessed undoubted
+interest to the present generation, but, so far as is known, none of
+them have been preserved&mdash;with one exception, however. There is in
+existence a long letter of his, written to his wife while he was in
+Algiers in imminent danger from the plague, and which was to be
+forwarded to her only in case of his death. It was found among his
+papers after his death nearly sixteen years later. This letter has
+already appeared in print, but it will be new to most of our readers,
+and it is so remarkable in itself, and throws such light on the
+character of the writer, that, in spite of its length, no apology is
+required for inserting it here:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"<i>To Mrs. Barlow in Paris</i>:<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i34">"<span class="smcap">Algiers</span>, 8th July, 1796.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">My dearest Life and only Love</span>: I run no risk of alarming
+your extreme sensibility by writing this letter, since it is
+not my intention that it shall come into your hands unless
+and until, through some other channel, you shall be informed
+of the event which it anticipates as possible. For our happy
+union to be dissolved by death is indeed at every moment
+possible; but at this time there is an uncommon degree of
+danger that you may lose a life which I know you value more
+than you do your own. I say I <i>know</i> this, because I have
+long been taught, from our perfect sympathy of affection, to
+judge your heart by mine; and I can say solemnly and truly,
+as far as I know myself, that I have no other value for my
+own life than as a means of continuing a conjugal union with
+the best of women&mdash;the wife of my soul, my first, my last,
+my only love. I have told you in my current letters that the
+plague is raging with considerable violence in this place. I
+must tell you in this, if it should be your fortune to see
+it, that a pressing duty of humanity requires me to expose
+myself more than other considerations would justify in
+endeavoring to save as many of our unhappy citizens as
+possible from falling a sacrifice, and to embark them at
+this cruel moment for their country. Though they are dying
+very fast, it is possible that my exertions may be the means
+of saving a number who otherwise would perish. If this
+should be the case, and <i>I</i> should fall instead of <i>them</i>,
+my tender, generous friend must not upbraid my memory by
+ever thinking I did too much. But she cannot help it: I know
+she cannot. Yet, my dearest love, give me leave, since I
+must anticipate your affliction, to lay before you some
+reflections which would recur to you at <i>last</i>, but which
+ought to strike your mind at <i>first</i>, to mingle with and
+assuage your first emotions of grief. You cannot judge at
+your distance of the risk I am taking, nor of the necessity
+of taking it; and I am convinced that were you in my place
+you would do more than I shall do, for your kind, intrepid
+spirit has more courage than mine, and always had.</p>
+
+<p>"Another consideration: Many of these persons have wives at
+home as well as I, from whom they have been much longer
+separated, under more affecting circumstances, having been
+held in a merciless and desponding slavery: if their wives
+love them as mine does me (a thing I cannot believe, but
+have no right to deny), ask these lately disconsolate and
+now joyous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> families whether I have done too much.</p>
+
+<p>"Since I write this as if it were my last poor demonstration
+of affection to my lovely friend, I have much to say; and it
+is with difficulty that I can steal an hour from the fatigue
+of business to devote to the grateful, painful task. But
+tell me (you cannot tell me) where shall I begin? where
+shall I end? how shall I put an eternal period to a
+correspondence which has given me so much comfort? With what
+expression of regret shall I take leave of my happiness?
+with what words of tenderness, of gratitude, of counsel, of
+consolation, shall I pay you for what I am robbing you
+of&mdash;the husband whom you cherish, the friend who is all your
+own?</p>
+
+<p>"But I am giving vent to more weakness than I intended:
+this, my dear, is a letter of <i>business</i>, not of love, and I
+wonder I cannot enter upon it and keep to my subject.
+Enclosed is my last will, made in conformity to the one I
+left in the hands of Doctor Hopkins of Hartford, as you may
+remember. The greater part of our property now lying in
+Paris, I thought proper to renew this instrument, that you
+might enter immediately upon the settlement of your affairs,
+without waiting to send to America for the other paper.</p>
+
+<p>"You will likewise find enclosed a schedule of our property
+debts and demands, with explanations, as nearly just as I
+can make it from memory in the absence of my papers. If the
+French Republic is consolidated, and her funds rise to par,
+or near it, as I believe they will do soon after the war,
+the effects noted in this schedule may amount to a capital
+of about one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, besides
+paying my debts; which sum, vested in the American funds or
+mortgages equally solid, would produce something more than
+seven thousand dollars a year perpetual income.</p>
+
+<p>"If the French should fund their debt anew at one-half its
+nominal value (which is possible), so that the part of your
+property now vested in those funds should diminish in
+proportion, still, taking the whole together, it will not
+make a difference of more than one-third, and the annual
+income may still be near five thousand dollars. Events
+unforeseen by me may, however, reduce it considerably lower.
+But, whatever may be the value of what I leave, it is left
+simply and wholly to you.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps some of my relations may think it strange that I
+have not mentioned them in this final disposition of my
+effects, especially if they should prove to be as
+considerable as I hope they may. But, my dearest love, I
+will tell you my reasons, and I hope you will approve them;
+for if I can excuse myself to <i>you</i> in a point in which your
+generous delicacy would be more likely to question the
+propriety of my conduct than in most others, I am sure my
+arguments will be convincing to those whose objections may
+arise from their interest.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>First.</i> In a view of justice and equity, whatever we
+possess at this moment is a joint property between
+ourselves, and ought to remain to the survivor. When you
+gave me your blessed self you know I was destitute of every
+other possession, as of every other enjoyment: I was rich
+only in the fund of your affectionate economy and the sweet
+consolation of your society. In our various struggles and
+disappointments while trying to obtain a moderate competency
+for the quiet enjoyment of what we used to call the
+remainder of our lives, I have been rendered happy by
+misfortunes, for the heaviest we have met with were turned
+into blessings by the opportunities they gave me to discover
+new virtues in you, who taught me how to bear them.</p>
+
+<p>"I have often told you since the year 1791, the period of
+our deepest difficulties (and even during that period), that
+I had never been so easy and contented before; and I have
+certainly been happier in you during the latter years of our
+union than I was in former years; not that I have loved you
+more ardently or more exclusively, for that was impossible,
+but I have loved you <i>better</i>: my heart has been more full
+of your excellence and less agitated with objects of
+ambition, which used to devour me too much.</p>
+
+<p>"I recall these things to your mind to convince you of my
+full belief that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> acquisition of the competency which we
+seem at last to have secured is owing more to your energy
+than my own: I mean the energy of your virtues, which gave
+me consolation, and even happiness, under circumstances
+wherein, if I had been alone or with a partner no better
+than myself, I should have sunk.</p>
+
+<p>"These fruits of our joint exertions you expected to enjoy
+<i>with me</i>, else I know you would not have wished for them.
+But if by my death you are to be deprived of the greater
+part of the comfort you expected, it would surely be unjust
+and cruel to deprive you of the remainder, or any portion of
+it, by giving any part of this property to others. It is
+yours in the truest sense in which property can be
+considered; and I should have no right, if I were disposed,
+to take it from you.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Secondly.</i> Of <i>my</i> relations, I have some thirty or forty,
+nephews and nieces and their children, the greater part of
+whom I have never seen, and from whom I have had no news for
+seven or eight years. Among them there may be some
+necessitous ones who would be proper objects of particular
+legacies, yet it would be impossible for me at this moment
+to know which they are. It was my intention, and still is if
+I live, to go to America, to make discrimination among them
+according to their wants, and to give them such relief as
+might be in my power, without waiting to do it by legacy.
+Now, my lovely wife, if this task and the means of
+performing it should devolve upon you, I need not recommend
+it: our <i>joint</i> liberality would have been less extensive
+and less grateful to the receivers than <i>yours</i> will be
+alone.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Your own</i> relations in the same degree of affinity are few
+in number. I hope I need not tell you that in my affections
+I know no difference between yours and mine. I include them
+all in the same recommendation, without any other
+distinction than what may arise from their wants and your
+ability to do them good.</p>
+
+<p>"If Colonel B&mdash;&mdash; or his wife (either of them being left by
+the other) should be in a situation otherwise than
+comfortable, I wish my generous friend to render it so as
+far as may be in her power. We may have had more powerful
+friends than they, but never any more sincere. <i>He</i> has the
+most frank and loyal spirit in the world, and she is
+possessed of many amiable and almost heroic virtues.</p>
+
+<p>"Mary&mdash;&mdash;, poor girl!&mdash;you know her worth, her virtues, and
+her talents, and I am sure you will not fail to keep
+yourself informed of her circumstances. She has friends, or
+at least <i>had</i> them, more able than you will be to yield her
+assistance in case of need. But they may forsake her for
+reasons which to your enlightened and benevolent mind would
+rather be an additional inducement to contribute to her
+happiness. Excuse me, my dearest life, for my being so
+particular on a subject which, considering to whom it is
+addressed, may appear superfluous; but I do it rather to
+show that I agree with you in these sentiments than to
+pretend that they originate on my part. With this view I
+must pursue them a little further. One of the principal
+gratifications in which I intended, and still intend to
+indulge myself if I should live to enjoy with you the means
+of doing it, is to succor the unfortunate of every
+description as far as possible&mdash;to encourage merit where I
+find it, and try to create it where it does not exist. This
+has long been a favorite project with me; but, having always
+been destitute of the means of carrying it into effect to
+any considerable degree, I have not conversed with you upon
+it as much as I wish I had. Though I can say nothing that
+will be new to you on the pleasure of employing one's
+attention and resources in this way, yet some useful hints
+might be given on the means of multiplying good actions from
+small resources; for I would not confine my pleasure to the
+simple duties of <i>charity</i> in the beggar's sense of the
+word.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>First.</i> Much may be done by advising with poor persons,
+contriving for them, and pointing out the objects on which
+they can employ their own industry.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Secondly.</i> Many persons and families in a crisis of
+difficulty might be extricated and set up in the world by
+little loans of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> money, for which they might give good
+security and refund within a year; and the same fund might
+then go to relieve a second and a third; and thus a dozen
+families might be set on the independent footing of their
+own industry in the course of a dozen years by the help of
+fifty dollars, and the owner lose nothing but the interest.
+Some judgment would be necessary in these operations, as
+well as care and attention in finding out the proper
+objects. How many of these are to be found in prisons,
+thrown in and confined for years, for small debts which
+their industry and their liberty would enable them to
+discharge in a short time! Imprisonment for debt still
+exists as a stain upon our country, as most others. France,
+indeed, has set us the example of abolishing it, but I am
+apprehensive she will relapse from this, as I see she is
+inclined to do from many other good things which she began
+in her magnanimous struggle for the renovation of society.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Thirdly.</i> With your benevolence, your character and
+connections, you may put in motion a much greater fund of
+charity than you will yourself possess. It is by searching
+out the objects of distress or misfortune, and recommending
+them to their wealthy neighbors in such a manner as to
+excite their attention. I have often remarked to you (I
+forget whether you agree with me in it or not) that there is
+more goodness at the bottom of the human heart than the
+world will generally allow. Men are as often hindered from
+doing a generous thing by an <i>indolence</i> either of thought
+or action as by a selfish principle. If they knew what the
+action was, when and where it was to be done and how to do
+it, their obstacles would be overcome. In this manner one
+may bring the resources of others into contribution, and
+with such a grace as to obtain the thanks both of the givers
+and receivers.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Fourthly.</i> The <i>example</i> of one beneficent person, like
+yourself, in a neighborhood or a town would go a great way.
+It would doubtless be imitated by others, extend far, and
+benefit thousands whom you might never hear of.</p>
+
+<p>"I certainly hope to escape from this place and return to
+your beloved arms. No man has stronger inducements to wish
+to live than I have. I have no quarrel with the world: it
+has used me as well as could be expected. I have valuable
+friends in every country where I have put my foot, not
+excepting this abominable sink of wickedness, pestilence and
+folly&mdash;the city of Algiers. I have a pretty extensive and
+dear-bought knowledge of mankind; a most valuable collection
+of books; a pure and undivided taste for domestic
+tranquillity, the social intercourse of friends, study, and
+the exercise of charity. I have a moderate but sufficient
+income, perfect health, an unimpaired constitution, and, to
+give the relish to all enjoyments and smooth away the
+asperities that might arise from unforeseen calamities, I
+have the wife that my youth chose and my advancing age has
+cherished&mdash;the pattern of excellence, the example of every
+virtue&mdash;from whom all my joys have risen, in whom all my
+hopes are centred.</p>
+
+<p>"I will use every precaution for my safety, as well for your
+sake as mine. But if you should see me no more, my dearest
+friend, you will not forget I loved you. As you have valued
+my love, and as you believe this letter is written with an
+intention to promote your happiness at a time when it will
+be for ever out of my power to contribute to it in any other
+way, I beg you will kindly receive the last advice I can
+give you, with which I am going to close our endearing
+intercourse.... Submitting with patience to a destiny that
+is unavoidable, let your tenderness for me soon cease to
+agitate that lovely bosom: banish it to the house of
+darkness and dust, with the object that can no longer be
+benefited by it, and transfer your affections to some worthy
+person who shall supply my place in the relation I have
+borne to you. It is for the living, not the dead, to be
+rendered happy by the sweetness of your temper, the purity
+of your heart, your exalted sentiments, your cultivated
+spirit, your undivided love. Happy man of your choice should
+he know and prize the treasure of such a wife! Oh, treat her
+tenderly, my dear sir: she is used to nothing but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> kindness,
+unbounded love and confidence. She is all that any
+reasonable man can desire. She is more than I have merited,
+or perhaps than you can merit. My resigning her to your
+charge, though but the result of uncontrollable necessity,
+is done with a degree of cheerfulness&mdash;a cheerfulness
+inspired by the hope that her happiness will be the object
+of your care and the long-continued fruit of your affection.</p>
+
+<p>"Farewell, my wife; and though I am not used to subscribe my
+letters addressed to you, your familiarity with my writing
+having always rendered it unnecessary, yet it seems proper
+that the last characters which this hand shall trace for
+your perusal should compose the name of your most faithful,
+most affectionate and most grateful husband,</p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i34">"<span class="smcap">Joel Barlow</span>."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>After her husband's decease Mrs. Barlow returned to America, and
+continued to reside at Kalorama until her death in 1818.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Charles Burr Todd</span>.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_3" id="Footnote_C_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_3"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> The name is variously written Zarrow, Zarniwica and
+Zarrowitch.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>TERESA DI FAENZA.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">I.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If he should wed a woman like a flower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fresh as the dew and royal as a rose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Veined with spring-fire, mesmeric in repose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His world-vext brain to lull with mystic power,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Great-souled to track his flight through heavens starred,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upborne by wings of trust and love, yet meek<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As one who has no self-set goal to seek,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His inspiration and his best reward,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At once his Art's deep secret and clear crown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His every-day made dream, his dream fulfilled,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If such a wife he wooed to be his own,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God knows 'twere well. Even I no less had willed.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet, O my heart! wouldst thou for his dear sake<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Frankly rejoice, or with self-pity break?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="i10">II.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What could I bring in dower? A restless heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As eager, ardent, hungry, as his own,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Face burned pale olive by our Southern sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A mind long used to musings grave apart.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gold, noble name or fame I ne'er regret,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Albeit all are lacking; but the glow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of spring-like beauty, but the overflow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of simple, youthful joy. And yet&mdash;and yet&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A proud voice whispers: Vain may be his quest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What fruit soe'er he pluck, what laurels green,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through all the world, for just this prize unseen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I in my deep heart harbor quite unguessed:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I alone know what full hands I should bring<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were I to lay my wealth before my king.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i27"><span class="smcap">Emma Lazarus.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+<h2>PIPISTRELLO.</h2>
+
+
+<p>I am only Pipistrello. Nothing but that&mdash;nothing more than any one of
+the round brown pebbles that the wind sets rolling down the dry bed of
+the Tiber in summer.</p>
+
+<p>I am Pipistrello, the mime, the fool, the posturer, the juggler, the
+spangled saltinbanco, the people's plaything, that runs and leaps and
+turns and twists, and laughs at himself and is laughed at by all, and
+lives by his limbs like his brother the dancing bear and his cousin the
+monkey in a red coat and a feathered cap.</p>
+
+<p>I am Pipistrello, five-and-twenty years old, and strong as you see, and
+good to look at, the women have said. I can leap and run against any
+man, and I can break a bar of iron against my knee, and I can keep up
+with the fastest horse that flies, and I can root up a young oak without
+too much effort. I am strong enough, and my life is at the full, and a
+day's sickness I never have known, and my mother is living. Yet I lie
+under sentence of death, and to-morrow I die on the scaffold: if nothing
+come between this and the break of dawn, I am a dead man with
+to-morrow's sun.</p>
+
+<p>And nothing will come: why should it?</p>
+
+<p>I am only Pipistrello. The people have loved me, indeed, but that is no
+reason why the law should spare me. Nor would I wish that it should&mdash;not
+I. They come and stand and stare at me through the grating, men and
+women and maidens and babies. A few of them cry a little, and one little
+mite of a child thrusts at me with a little brown hand the half of a red
+pomegranate. But for the most part they laugh. Why, of course they do.
+The street-children always laugh to see a big black steer with his bold
+horned head go down under the mace of the butcher: the street always
+finds that droll. The strength of the bull could scatter the crowd as
+the north wind scatters the dust, if he were free; but he is not, and
+his strength serves him nothing: the hammer fells him and the crowd
+laughs.</p>
+
+<p>The people of this old Orte know me so well. Right and left, up and
+down, through the country I have gone all the years of my life. Wherever
+there was fair or festa, there was I, Pipistrello, in the midst. It is
+not a bad life, believe me. No life is bad that has the sun and the rain
+upon it, and the free will of the feet and the feel of the wind, and
+nothing between it and heaven.</p>
+
+<p>My father had led the same kind of life before me: he died at Genoa, his
+spine broken in two, like a snapped bough, by a fall from the trapeze
+before the eyes of all the citizens. I was a big baby in that time,
+thrown from hand to hand by the men in their spectacles as they would
+have thrown a ball or an orange.</p>
+
+<p>My mother was a young and gentle creature, full of tenderness for her
+own people, with strangers shy and afraid. She was the daughter of a
+poor weaver. My father had found and wooed her in Etruria, and although
+he had never taken the trouble to espouse her before the mayor, yet he
+had loved her and had always treated her with great respect. She was a
+woman very pure and very honest. Alas, the poor soul! To-day her hair is
+white as the snow, and they tell me she is mad. So much the better for
+her if she know nothing; but I fear the mad and the imbecile know all
+and see all, crouching in their hapless gloom.</p>
+
+<p>When my father died thus at Genoa my mother took a hatred for that
+manner of living, and she broke off all ties with the athletes who had
+been his comrades, and, taking the little money that was hers in a
+little leather bag, she fled away with me to the old town of Orte, where
+my grandmother still lived, the widow of the weaver. The troop wished to
+keep me with them, for, although I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> was but five years old, I was supple
+and light and very fearless, and never afraid of being thrown up in the
+air, a living ball, in their games and sports.</p>
+
+<p>Orte was just the same then as it is now. These very aged towns I think
+never change: if you try to alter them you must break them up and
+destroy them utterly. Orte has known the Etruscans: she can very well do
+without modern folk. At Orte my mother and grandmother dwelt together in
+one room that looked over the river&mdash;a large vaulted chamber with grated
+casements, with thick stone walls&mdash;a chamber in what had once been a
+palace. My mother was then still very young and beautiful&mdash;of a pale,
+serious beauty, full of sadness. She smiled on me sometimes, but never
+once did I hear her laugh. She had never laughed since that awful day
+when, in the full sunlight, in the midst of the people, in the sight of
+the sea, in Genoa, a man had dropped from air to earth like an eagle
+fallen stone dead from the skies, struck by lightning.</p>
+
+<p>My mother had many suitors. She was beautiful of face, as I say, like
+one of the Madonnas of our old painters: she was industrious, and all
+her little world knew very well that she would one day inherit the strip
+of field and the red cow that my grandmother owned outside the gates of
+Orte. All these pretty suitors of course made a great fuss with me,
+caressed me often, and brought me tomatoes, green figs, crickets in wire
+cages, fried fish and playthings. But my mother looked at none of them.
+When a woman's eyes are always looking downward on a grave, how should
+their tear-laden lids be lifted to see a fresh lover? She repulsed them
+all, always. She lived, lonely and sad, as well as she could in our
+great garret: we ate little, our bed was hard, and she and my grandam
+labored hard to get a pittance. But when a rich bailiff sought her in
+honest marriage, she kissed me and wept over me, and said again and
+again, "No, no! To your father I will be faithful, let what will chance
+to us."</p>
+
+<p>The bailiff soon consoled himself: he married a big country wench who
+had a fine rope of pearls and gold bracelets, and I continued to grow
+up by my mother's side where the Tiber is gilded with the gold of the
+dawns and rolls its heavy waves under the weeping boughs of its willows.
+My boyish strength increased in the heat of the summers, and I grew like
+a young brown stalk of the tall maize. I herded the cow, cut the rushes
+and hewed wood, and I was always happy, even when my mother would send
+me to the old priest to learn things out of books. She wished to make a
+monk of me, but the mere idea made me shudder with fear. I loved to
+climb the oaks, to swing in the maples, to scale the roofs and the
+towers and the masts of the vessels. What had I to do with a monkish
+frock and a whitewashed cell? <i>Ouf!</i> I put my fingers in my ears and ran
+away whenever my poor mother talked of the cloister.</p>
+
+<p>My limbs were always dancing, and my blood was always leaping, laughing,
+boiling merrily in my veins. A priest? What an idea! I had never wholly
+forgotten the glad, bright days of childhood when my father had thrown
+me about in the air like a ball: I had never wholly forgotten the shouts
+of the people, the sight of the human sea of faces, the loud, frank
+laugh of the populace, the sparkle of the spangled habit, the
+intoxication of the applause of a crowd. I had only been five years old
+then, yet I remembered, and sometimes in the night I cried bitterly for
+those dead days. I had only been a little brown thing, with curls as
+black as the raven's wing, and they had thrown me from one to the other
+lightly, laughingly, like a ripe apple, like a smooth peach. But I had
+known what it was to get drunk on the "hurrahs" of the multitude, and I
+did not forget them as I grew up here a youth in old Orte.</p>
+
+<p>The son of an athlete can never rest quiet at home and at school like
+the children of cobblers and coppersmiths and vine-dressers. All my life
+was beating in me, tumbling, palpitating, bubbling, panting in
+me&mdash;moving incessantly, like the wings of a swallow when the hour draws
+near for its flight and the thirst for the south rises in it. With all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
+my force I adored my pale, lovely, Madonna-like mother, but all the
+same, as I trotted toward the priest with a satchel on my back, I used
+to think, Would it be very wicked to throw the books into the river and
+run away to the fields? And, in truth, I used to run away very often,
+scampering over the country around Orte like a mountain-hare, climbing
+the belfries of the churches, pulling off their weathercocks or setting
+their bells a-ringing&mdash;doing a thousand and one mischievous antics; but
+I always returned at nightfall to my mother's side. It seemed to me it
+would be cruel and cowardly to leave her, for she had but me in the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>"You promise to be sensible and quiet, Pippo?" the poor soul always
+murmured. And I used to say "Yes," and mean it. But can a bird promise
+not to fly when it feels in its instincts the coming of spring? Can a
+young colt promise not to fling out his limbs when he feels the yielding
+turf beneath his hoofs?</p>
+
+<p>I never wished to be disobedient, but, somehow, ten minutes after I was
+out of her sight I was high above on some tower or belfry, with the
+martens and the pigeons circling about my curly head. I was so happy on
+high there, looking down on all the old town misty with dust, the men
+and women like ants on an antheap, the historic river like a mere
+ribbon, yellow and twisted, the palaces and the tombs all hidden under
+the same gray veil of summer dust! I was so happy there!&mdash;and they spoke
+of making me into a monk, or, if I would not hear of that, of turning me
+into a clerk in a notary's office!</p>
+
+<p>A monk? a clerk? when all the trees cried out to me to climb and all the
+birds called to me to fly! I used to cry about it with hot tears that
+stung my face like lashes, lying with my head hidden on my arms in the
+grass by the old Tiber water. For I was not twelve years old, and to be
+shut up in Orte always, growing gray and wrinkled as the notary had done
+over the wicked, crabbed, evil-looking skins that set the neighbors at
+war! The thought broke my heart. Nevertheless, I loved my mother, and I
+mended my quills, and tried to write my best, and said to the boys of
+the town, "I cannot bend iron or leap or race any more. I am going to
+write for my bread in the notary's office a year hence, for my mother
+wishes it, and so it must be."</p>
+
+<p>And I did my best not to look up to the jackdaws circling round the
+towers or the old river running away to Rome. For all the waters cried
+to me to leap, and all the birds to fly. And you cannot tell, unless you
+have been born to do it as I was, how good it is to climb and climb and
+climb, and see the green earth grow pale beneath you, and the people
+dwindle till they are small as dust, and the houses fade till they seem
+like heaps of sand. The air gets so clear around you, and the great
+black wings flap close against your face; and you sit astride where the
+bells are, with some quaint stone face beside you that was carved on the
+pinnacle here a thousand years and more ago, and has hardly been seen of
+man ever since; and the white clouds are so near you that you seem to
+bathe in them; and the winds toss the trees far below, and sweep by you
+as they go down to torment the trees and the sea, the men that work, and
+the roofs that cover them, and the sails of their ships in the ocean.
+Men are so far from you, and heaven seems so near! The fields and the
+plains are lost in the vapors that divide you from them, and all their
+noise of living multitudes comes very faintly to your ear, and sweetly
+like the low murmuring of bees in the white blossoms of an acacia in the
+month of May.</p>
+
+<p>But you do not understand, you poor toilers in cities who pace the
+street and watch the faces of the rich.</p>
+
+<p>I was to be a notary's clerk&mdash;I, called Pipistrello (the bat) because I
+was always whirling and wheeling in air. I was to be a clerk, so my
+mother and grandmother decided for me, with the old notary himself who
+lived at the corner, and made his daily bread by carrying fire and sword
+where he could through the affairs of his neighbors. He was an old
+rascal, but my mother did not know that: he promised to be a safe and
+trustworthy guardian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> of my youth, and she believed he had power to keep
+me safe from all dangers of destiny. She wanted to be sure that I should
+never run the risks of my father's career: she wanted to see me always
+before the plate of herb soup on her table. Poor mother!</p>
+
+<p>One day in Orte chance gave me another fate than this of her desires.</p>
+
+<p>One fine sunrise on the morning of Palm Sunday I heard the sharp sound
+of a screeching fife, the metallic clash of cymbals, the shouts of boys,
+the rattle of a little drum. It was the rataplan beating before a troop
+of wrestlers and jugglers who were traversing the Marche and Reggio
+Emilia. The troop stationed themselves in a little square burnt by the
+sun and surrounded by old crumbling houses: I ran with the rest of the
+lads of Orte to see them. Orte was in holiday guise: aged, wrinkled,
+deserted, forgotten by the world as she is, she made herself gay that
+day with palms and lilies and lilac and the branches of willow; and her
+people, honest, joyous, clad in their best, who filled the streets and
+the churches and wine-houses, after mass flocked with one accord and
+pressure around the play-place of the strollers.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the month of April: outside the walls and on the banks of
+Tiber, still swollen by the floods of winter, one could see the gold of
+millions of daffodils and the bright crimson and yellow of tulips in the
+green corn. The scent of flowers and herbs came into the town and filled
+its dusky and narrow ways; the boatmen had green branches fastened to
+their masts; in the stillness of evening one heard the song of crickets,
+and even a mosquito would come and blow his shrill little trumpet, and
+one was willing to say to him "Welcome!" because on his little horn he
+blew the good news, "Summer is here!" Ah, those bright summers of my
+youth! I am old now&mdash;ay, old, though I have lived through only
+twenty-five years.</p>
+
+<p>This afternoon, on Palm Sunday, I ran to see the athletes as a moth
+flies to the candle: in Italy all the world loves the saltinbanco, be he
+dumb or speaking, in wood or in flesh, and all Orte hastened, as I
+hastened, under the sunny skies of Easter. I saw, I trembled, I laughed:
+I sobbed with ecstasy. It was so many years that I had not seen my
+brothers! Were they not my brothers all?</p>
+
+<p>This day of Palm, when our Orte, so brown and so gray, was all full of
+foliage and blossom like an old pitcher full of orange-flowers for a
+bridal, it was a somewhat brilliant troop of gymnasts which came to
+amuse the town. The troop was composed of an old man and his five sons,
+handsome youths, and very strong, of course. They climbed on each
+other's shoulders, building up a living pyramid; they bent and broke
+bars of iron; they severed a sheep with one blow of a sword; in a word,
+they did what my father had done before them. As for me, I watched them
+stupefied, fascinated, dazzled, drunk with delight, and almost crazy
+with a torrent of memories that seemed to rain on me like lava as I
+watched each exploit, as I heard each shout of the applauding
+multitudes.</p>
+
+<p>It is a terrible thing, a horrible thing, those inherited memories that
+are born in you with the blood of others. I looked at them, I say,
+intoxicated with joy, mad with recollection and with longing;&mdash;and my
+mother destined me to a notary's desk, and wished me to be shut there
+all my life, pen in hand, sowing the seeds of all the hatreds, of all
+the crimes, of all the sorrows of mankind, lighting up the flames of
+rage and of greed in human souls for an acre of ground, for a roll of
+gold! She wished to make me a notary's clerk! I gazed at these men who
+seemed to me so happy&mdash;these slender, agile, vigorous creatures in their
+skins that shone like the skins of green snakes, in their broidered,
+glittering, spangled vests, in their little velvet caps with the white
+plume in each. "Take me! take me!" I shrieked to them; and the old king
+of the troop looked hard at me, and when their games were finished
+crossed the cord that marked their arena and threw his strong arms about
+me, and cried, "Body of Christ! you are little Pippo!" For he had been
+my father's mate. To be brief, when the little band left Orte I went
+with them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was wickedly done, for my poor mother slept, knowing nothing, when in
+the dusk before daybreak I slipped through the bars of the casement and
+noiselessly dropped on to a raft in the river below, and thence joined
+my new friends. It was wickedly done; but I could not help it. Fate was
+stronger than I.</p>
+
+<p>The old man did not disturb himself as to whether what he had encouraged
+me to do was ill or well. He foresaw in me an athlete who would do him
+honor and make the ducats ring merrier in his purse. Besides, I had cost
+him nothing.</p>
+
+<p>From this time life indeed began for me. I wept often; I felt the barb
+of a real remorse; when I passed a crucifix on the road I trembled with
+true terror and penitence; but I fled away, always. I drew my girdle
+closer about my spangled coat, and, despite all my remorse, I was happy.
+When I was very, very far away I wrote to my mother, and she understood,
+poor soul! that there were no means of forcing me back to her. Children
+are egotists: childhood has little feeling. When the child suffers he
+thirsts for his mother, but when he is happy, alas! he thinks little and
+rarely about her.</p>
+
+<p>I was very happy, full of force and of success: the men kept their word
+and taught me all their tricks, all their exploits. Soon I surpassed my
+teachers in address and in temerity. I soon became the glory of their
+band. In the summertime we wandered over the vast Lombard plains and the
+low Tuscan mountains; in winter we displayed our prowess in Rome, in
+Naples, in Palermo; we loitered wherever the sun was warm or the people
+liked to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>From time to time I thought of my mother: I sent her money. I shivered a
+little when I saw a Madonna, for all Madonnas have the smile that our
+mother has for our infancy. I thought of her, but I never went home. I
+was Pipistrello the champion-wrestler. I was a young Hercules, with a
+spangled tunic in lieu of a lion-skin. I was a thousand years, ten
+thousand leagues, away from the child of Orte. God is just. It is just
+that I die here, for in my happy years I forgot my mother. I lived in
+the sunlight&mdash;before the crowds, the nervous crowds of Italy&mdash;singing,
+shouting, leaping, triumphing; and I forgot my mother alone in the old
+chamber above the Tiber&mdash;quite alone, for my grandam was dead. That I
+have slain what I have slain&mdash;that is nothing. I would do the same thing
+again had I to live my life again. Yes, without pause or mercy would I
+do it. But my mother&mdash;she has lived alone, and she is mad. That is my
+crime.</p>
+
+<p>I was a tall, strong youth, full of courage and handsome to the eye of
+women: I led a life noisy and joyous, and for ever in movement. I was
+what my father had been before me. So they all said. Only I liked to
+finger a book, and my father never had looked inside one, and out of
+remembrance of the belief of my mother I uncovered my head as I passed a
+church or saw a shrine, and to do this had not been in my father's
+habits. In these years I made a great deal of money&mdash;a great deal, at
+least, for a stroller&mdash;but it went as fast as it came. I was never a
+vicious man, nor a great gambler or drinker, yet my plump pieces soon
+took wing from my pocket, for I was very gay and I liked to play a
+lover's part. My life was a good life, that I know: as for the life of
+the rich and of the noble, I cannot tell what it is like, but I think it
+is of a surety more gloomy and mournful than mine. In Italy one wants so
+little. The air and the light, and a little red wine, and the warmth of
+the wind, and a handful of maize or of grapes, and an old guitar, and a
+niche to sleep in near a fountain that murmurs and sings to the mosses
+and marbles,&mdash;these are enough, these are happiness in Italy. And it is
+not difficult to have thus much, or was not so in those days. I was
+never very poor, but whenever money jingled in my purse I treated all
+the troop and half the town, and we laughed loud till daybreak.</p>
+
+<p>I was never aught save Pipistrello&mdash;Pipistrello the wrestler, who jumped
+and leaped, and lifted an ox from the ground as easily as other men lift
+a child. No doubt to the wise it seems a fool's life, to the holy a life
+impure. But I had been born for it: no other was possible to me;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> and
+when money rained upon me, if I could ease an aching heart, or make a
+sick lad the stouter for a hearty meal, or make a tiny child the gladder
+for a lapful of copper coins, or give a poor stray dog a friend and a
+bed of straw, or a belabored mule a helpful push to the wheels of his
+cart,&mdash;well, that was all the good a mountebank could look to do in this
+world, and one could go to sleep easy upon it.</p>
+
+<p>When the old man died who had been my father's comrade the troop fell to
+pieces, quarrelling over his leavings. The five brothers came to a
+common issue of stabbing. In Italy one takes to the knife as naturally
+as a child to the breast. Tired of their disputes, I left them
+squabbling and struck off by myself, and got a little band together,
+quite of youths, and with them made merry all across the country from
+sea to sea. We were at that time in the south. I was very popular with
+the people. When my games were done I could sing to the mandoline, and
+improvise, and make them laugh and weep: some graver men who heard me
+said I might have been a great actor or a great singer. Perhaps: I never
+was anything but Pipistrello the stroller. I wanted the fresh air and
+the wandering and the sports of my strength too much ever to have been
+shut in a roofed theatre, ever to have been cooped up where lamps were
+burning.</p>
+
+<p>One day, when we were in dusty, brown Calabria, parching just then under
+June suns, with heavy dust on its aloe-hedges and its maize-fields, a
+sudden remorse smote me: I thought of my mother, all alone in Orte. I
+had thought of her scores of times, but I had felt ashamed to go and see
+her&mdash;I who had left her so basely. This day my remorse was greater than
+my shame. I was master of my little troop. I said to them, "It is hot
+here: we will go up Rome-way, along the Tiber;" and we did so.</p>
+
+<p>I have never been out of my own land: I fancy it must be so dark there,
+the other side of the mountains. I know the by-roads and the hill-paths
+of Italy as a citizen knows the streets and lanes of his own <i>contrada</i>.
+We worked and played our way now up through the Basilicata and Campania
+and Latium, till at last we were right near Orte&mdash;dull, old,
+gray-colored Orte, crumbling away on the banks of Tiber. Then my heart
+beat and my knees shook, and I thought, If she is dead?</p>
+
+<p>I left my comrades drinking and resting at a wine-shop just outside the
+town, and went all alone to look for her. I found the house&mdash;the gloomy
+barred window hanging over the water, the dark stone walls frowning down
+on the gloomy street. There was a woman, quite old, with white hair, who
+was getting up water at the street-fountain that I had gone to a
+thousand times in my childhood. I looked at her. I did not know her: I
+only saw a woman feeble and old. But she, with the brass <i>secchia</i>
+filled, turned round and saw me, and dropped the brazen pitcher on the
+ground, and fell at my feet with a bitter cry. Then I knew her.</p>
+
+<p>When in the light of the hot, strong sun I saw how in those ten years my
+mother had grown old&mdash;old, bent, broken, white-haired, in those ten
+years that had been all glow and glitter, and pleasure and pastime, and
+movement and mirth to me&mdash;then I knew that I had sinned against her with
+a mighty sin&mdash;a sin of cruelty, of neglect, of selfish wickedness. She
+had been young still when I had left her&mdash;young and fair to look at, and
+without a silver line in her ebon hair, and with suitors about her for
+her beauty like bees about the blossoms of the ivy in the autumn-time.
+And now&mdash;now she was quite old.</p>
+
+<p>She never rebuked me: she only said, "My son! my son! God be praised!"
+and said that a thousand times, weeping and trembling. Some women are
+like this.</p>
+
+<p>When the bright, burning midsummer day had grown into a gray,
+firefly-lighted night, I laid me down on the narrow bed where I had
+slept as a child, and my mother kissed me as though I were a child. It
+seemed to purify me from all the sins of all the absent years, except,
+indeed, of that one unpardonable sin against her. In the morning she
+opened<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> the drawers of an old bureau and showed me everything I had sent
+her all those years: all was untouched, the money as well as the
+presents. "I took nothing while you did not give me yourself," she said.
+I felt my throat choke.</p>
+
+<p>It was early day: she asked me to go to mass with her. I did so to
+please her. All the while I watched her bent, feeble, aged figure and
+the white hair under the yellow kerchief, and felt as if I had killed
+her. This lone old creature was not the mother like Raffaelle's Madonna
+I had left: I could never make her again what she had been.</p>
+
+<p>"It is my son," she said to her neighbors, but she said it with pain
+rather than with pride, for she hated my calling; but Orte was of
+another way of thinking. Orte flocked to see me, having heard of
+Pipistrello, its own Pipistrello, who had plagued it with his childish
+tricks, having grown into fame amongst the cities and villages as the
+strongest man in all Italy. For indeed I was that; and my mother, with
+dim, tear-laden eyes, looked at me and said, "You are the image of your
+father. Oh, my dear, my love! take care."</p>
+
+<p>She, poor soul! saw nothing but the fall she had seen that day at Genoa
+of a strong man who dropped like a stone. But I fear to weary you. Well!
+I had left my spangled dress and all insignia of my calling with my
+comrades at the wine-shop, fearing to harass my mother by sight of all
+those things which would be so full of bitter recollection and dread to
+her. But Orte clamored for me to show it my powers&mdash;Orte, which was more
+than half asleep by Tiber's side, like that nymph Canens whom I used to
+read of in my Latin school-books&mdash;Orte, which had no earthly thing to do
+this long and lazy day in the drought of a rainless June.</p>
+
+<p>I could not afford to baulk the popular will, and I was proud to show
+them all I could do&mdash;I, Pipistrello, whom they had cuffed and kicked so
+often in the old time for climbing their walnut trees and their pear
+trees, their house-roofs and their church-towers. So, when the day
+cooled I drew a circle with a red rope round myself and my men on a
+piece of waste ground outside the town, and all Orte flocked out there
+as the sun went down, shouting and cheering for me as though Pipistrello
+were a king or a hero. The populace is always thus&mdash;the giddiest-pated
+fool that ever screamed, as loud and as ignorant as a parrot, as
+changeful as the wind in March, as base as the cuckoo. The same people
+threw stones at me when they brought me to this prison&mdash;the same people
+that feasted and applauded me then, that first day of my return to Orte.
+To-day, indeed, some women weep, and the little child brings me half a
+pomegranate. That is more remembrance than some fallen idols get, for
+the populace is cruel: it is a beast that fawns and slavers, then tears.</p>
+
+<p>It was a rainless June, as I say. It was very warm that evening; the low
+west was vermilion and the higher sky was violet; bars of gold parted
+the two colors; the crickets were hooting, the bats were wheeling, great
+night-moths were abroad. I felt very happy that night. With us Italians
+pain rarely stays long. We feel sharply, but it soon passes. I had
+drowned my remorse in the glory and vanity of showing Orte all I could
+do by the sheer force of my muscles and sinews. We are not a very brave
+people, nor a strong one, and so strength and bravery seem very rare and
+fine things on our soil, and we make a great clatter and uproar when we
+ever find them amidst us. I had them both, and the people were in
+ecstasies with all I did. I put out all my powers, and in the circle of
+red rope exerted all my might, as though I had been performing before
+kings. After all, there is no applause that so flatters a man as that
+which he wrings from unwilling throats, and I know Orte had been long
+set against me by reason of my boyish mischief and my flight.</p>
+
+<p>In real truth, I did nothing now in my manhood so really perilous as I
+had done in my childhood, when I had climbed to the top of the cross on
+the church and sat astride of it. But they had called that mischief and
+blasphemy: they called<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> the things I did now gymnastics, and applauded
+them till the noise might have wakened the Etrurian dead under the soil.</p>
+
+<p>At last I came to the feat which, though far from the hardest to me,
+always looked to the crowd the most wonderful: it was my old master's
+trick of holding his five sons on his shoulder. Only I outshone him, and
+sustained on mine seven men in four tiers, and the topmost had on his
+head little Febo.</p>
+
+<p>The mite whom we called Ph&oelig;bus, because we had found him at sunrise
+and he had such yellow locks&mdash;yellow as the dandelion or the
+buttercup&mdash;was a stray thing picked up on the seashore in Apulia&mdash;a
+soft, merry, chirping little fellow, of whom we were all fond, and to
+whom we had easily taught that absence of fear which enabled us to play
+ball with him in our spectacles. He always delighted the people, he was
+such a pretty little lad, and not, perhaps, more than four years old
+then, and always laughing, always ready. To him it was only fun, as it
+had been to me at his years. I never thought it was cruel to use him so,
+I had been so happy in it myself. All at once, as I stood erect
+sustaining the men on my shoulders, the topmost one holding on his head
+our tiny Ph&oelig;bus&mdash;all at once as I did this, which I had done a
+hundred times, and had always done in safety&mdash;all at once, amongst the
+sea of upturned faces in the glowing evening light, I saw one woman's
+eyes. She was leaning a little forward, resting her cheek on her hand.
+She had black lace about her head and yellow japonica-flowers above her
+left ear. She was looking at me and smiling a little.</p>
+
+<p>I met her eyes, full, across the dust reddened by the sunset glow as the
+dust of a battlefield is reddened with blood. I felt as if I were
+stabbed; the red dust seemed to swim round me; I staggered slightly: in
+another instant I had recovered myself, but the momentary oscillation
+had terrified my comrades. The seventh and highest, feeling the human
+pyramid tremble beneath him, involuntarily, unconsciously, opened his
+arms to save himself. He did not lose his balance, but he let the child
+fall. It dropped as an apple broken off the bough falls to the earth.</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment of horrible silence. Then the men leaped down,
+tumbling and huddling one over another, not knowing what they did. The
+audience rose screaming; and broke the rope and swarmed into the arena.
+I stooped and took up the child. He was dead. His neck had been broken
+in the fall. He had struck the earth with the back of his head; he was
+rolled up on the sand like a little dead kid; his tiny tinsel crown had
+fallen off his curls, his tiny tinselled limbs were crushed under him,
+his blossom-like mouth was half open. It was horrible.</p>
+
+<p>People spoke to me: I did not see or hear them. The crowd parted and
+scattered, some voluble, some dumb, with the shock of what they had
+seen. I lifted up what a moment before had been little Ph&oelig;bus, and
+bore him in my arms to my mother's house.</p>
+
+<p>She was sitting at home alone, as she had been alone these ten years and
+more. When she saw the dead baby in those glistening spangled clothes
+she shuddered, and understood without words. "Another life?" she said,
+and said nothing more: she was thinking of my father. Then she took the
+dead child and laid him on her knees as if he had been a living one, and
+rocked him on her breast and smoothed the sand out of his pretty yellow
+curls. "The people go always in the hope of seeing something die," she
+said at length. "That is what they go for: you killed the baby for their
+sport. It was cruel."</p>
+
+<p>I went out of the house and felt as if I had murdered him&mdash;the little
+fair, innocent thing who had run along with us over the dusty roads, and
+along the sad seashores, and under the forest trees, laughing and
+chirping as the birds chirp, and when he was tired lifting up his arms
+to be carried on the top of the big drum, and sitting there throned like
+a king. Poor little dead Ph&oelig;bus! It was true what my mother had said:
+the people throng to us in hope of seeing our death, and yet when they
+do see it they are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> frightened and sickened and sorrowful. Orte was so
+this night.</p>
+
+<p>"Could I help it?" I cried to my comrades fiercely; and in my own soul I
+said to myself, "Could I help it? That woman looked at me."</p>
+
+<p>Who was she? All through the pain that filled me for the death of the
+child that wonder was awake in me always. She had looked so strange
+there, so unlike the rest, though she was all in black and had the lace
+about her head which is common enough in our country. All the night long
+I saw her face&mdash;a beautiful face, with heavy lids and drooping hair,
+like that marble head they call the Braschi Antinous down in Rome.</p>
+
+<p>Little Ph&oelig;bus was laid that night in my mother's house, with lilies
+about him, while a little candle that the moths flickered into burnt at
+his feet. As I sat and watched by him to drive away the rats which came
+up in hordes at night from Tiber into the rooms that overhung the river,
+I only saw that face. It had been a bad home-coming.</p>
+
+<p>I would play no more in Orte, nor go with these men any more. I
+disbanded my troop and let them pass their own ways. I had coin enough
+to live on for months: that was enough for the present. I felt as if the
+sight of the red rope and the spangled vest and the watching crowd would
+be horrible to me&mdash;those things which I had loved so well. Little
+Ph&oelig;bus was put away in the dark earth, as the little Etruscan
+children had been so many hundred years before him, and I buried his
+little crown and his little coat with him, as the Etruscans buried the
+playthings. Poor little man! we had taught him to make Death his toy,
+and his toy had been stronger than he.</p>
+
+<p>After his burial I began my search for the woman whose face I had seen
+in the crowd. My mother never asked me whence I came or where I went.
+The death of Ph&oelig;bus had destroyed the trembling joy with which she
+had seen me return to her: happiness came to her too late. When grief
+has sat long by one hearth, it is impossible to warm the ashes of joy
+again: they are cold and dead for ever. My time passed sadly; a
+terrible calmness had succeeded to the gayety and noise of my life; a
+frightful silence had replaced the frenzied shouts, the boisterous
+laughter, of the people: sometimes it seemed to me that I had died, not
+Ph&oelig;bus.</p>
+
+<p>The constant hope of finding the woman I had seen but once occupied me
+always. I roamed the country without ceasing, always with that single
+hope before me. Days became weeks: I wandered miserably, like a dog
+without master or home.</p>
+
+<p>One day I saw her. Having on my shoulder my <i>girella</i>, which gave me a
+pretext for straying along the river-side, I came to that part of
+Etruria where (so I had used to learn from the school-books in my
+childhood) the Etruscans in ancient times drew up in order of battle to
+receive Fabius. The country is pretty about there, or at least it seemed
+so to me. The oak woods descend to the edge of the Tiber: from them one
+sees the snow of the Apennines; the little towns of Giove and Penna are
+white on the Umbrian hills; in the low fields the vine and the olive and
+the maize and the wheat grow together. Here one finds our Lagherello,
+which I had heard scholars say is no other than the Lake Vadimon of
+which Pliny speaks. Of that I know nothing: it is a poor little pool
+now, filled with rushes, peopled with frogs. By the side of this pool I
+saw her again: she looked at me. Like a madman I plunged into the water,
+but the reeds and the lilies entangled me in their meshes: the long
+grasses and water-weeds were netted into an impenetrable mass. I stood
+there up to my waist in water, incapable of movement, like the poor
+cattle of which Pliny tells, who used to mistake all this verdure for
+dry land, and so drifted out into the middle of the lake. She looked at
+me, laughed a little, and disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Before sunset I had learned who she was from a peasant who came there to
+cut the reeds.</p>
+
+<p>Near to the Lagherello is a villa named Sant' Alo&iuml;sa: about its walls
+there is a sombre, melancholy wood, a remnant of that famous forest
+which in the ancient times the Romans dreaded as the borders<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> of hell.
+The Tiber rolls close by, yellow and muddy with the black buffaloes
+descending to its brink to drink, and the snakes and the toads in its
+brakes counting by millions&mdash;sad, always sad, whether swollen by flood
+in autumn and vomiting torrents of mud, or whether with naked sands and
+barren bed in summer, with the fever-vapors rising from its shallow
+shoals. The villa is dull and mournful like the river&mdash;built of stone,
+fortified in bygone centuries, without color, without light, without
+garden or greenery, all its casements closed like the eyelids of a
+living man that is blind.</p>
+
+<p>This was and is Sant' Alo&iuml;sa. In the old times, no doubt, the villa had
+been strong and great, and peopled with a brilliant feudal pomp, and
+noisy with the clash and stir of soldiery: now it is poverty-stricken
+and empty, naked and silent, looking down on the tawny, sullen swell of
+the Tiber&mdash;the terrible Tiber, that has devoured so much gold, so much
+treasure, so much beauty, and hidden so many dead and so many crimes,
+and flows on mute and gloomy between its poisonous marshes. Of Tiber I
+have always felt afraid.</p>
+
+<p>Sant' Alo&iuml;sa has always been a fief of the old counts Marchioni. One of
+that race lived still, and owned the old grounds and the old walls,
+though the fortunes of the family had long fallen into decay. Taddeo
+Marchioni was scarcely above his own peasants in his manners and way of
+life. He was ugly, avaricious, rustic, cruel. He was lord of the soil
+indeed, but he lived miserably, and this beautiful woman had been his
+wife seven years. At fifteen her father, a priest who passed as her
+uncle, had wedded her to Taddeo Marchioni. She had dwelt here seven
+mortal years, in this gloomy wood, by these yellow waters, amidst these
+pestilential marshes. Her marriage had made her a countess, that was
+all. For the rest, it had consigned her, living, to a tomb.</p>
+
+<p>The lives of our Italian women are gay enough in the cities, but in the
+country these women grow gray and pallid as the wings of the night-moth.
+They have no love for Nature, for air, for the woods, for the fields:
+flowers say nothing to them. They look neither at the blossoms nor the
+stars. The only things which please them are a black mask and a murmur
+of love, a hidden meeting, the noise of the streets, the bouquets of a
+carnival. What should they do in the loneliness and wildness of the
+broad and open country&mdash;our women, who only breathe at their ease in the
+obscurity of their <i>palco</i> or under the shelter of a domino?</p>
+
+<p>The travellers who run over our land and see our women laughing with
+wide-opened rose-red mouths upon their balconies at Berlingaccio or at
+Pentolaccia can never understand the immense, the inconsolable,
+desolation of dulness which weighs on the lives of these women in the
+little towns of the provinces and the country-houses of the hills and
+plains. They have the priest and the chapel; that is all.</p>
+
+<p>In Italy we have no choice between the peasant-woman toiling in the
+ploughed fields, and growing black with the scorch of the sun, and bowed
+and aged with the burdens she bears, and the ladies who live between the
+alcove and the confessional, only going forth from their chambers by
+night as fireflies glisten, and living on secret love and daily gossip.
+What can these do in their gaunt, dull villas&mdash;they who detest the sough
+of the wind and the sight of a tree, who flee from a dog and scream at a
+tempest, who will not read, and whose only lore is the sweet science of
+the passions?</p>
+
+<p>This I came to know later. All I saw that day, as I tramped around it
+wet and cold, was the gloomy evil shadow of the great place that had
+once been a fortress, the barred and shattered windows, the iron-studded
+doors, the grass-grown bastions. She had made me kill Ph&oelig;bus, and yet
+I only lived to see her face again.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes I think love is the darkest mystery of life: mere desire will
+not explain it, nor will the passions or the affections. You pass years
+amidst crowds and know naught of it: then all at once you meet a
+stranger's eyes, and never again are you free. That is love. Who shall
+say whence it comes? It is a bolt from the gods that descends from
+heaven<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> and strikes us down into hell. We can do nothing.</p>
+
+<p>I went home slowly when evening fell. I had seen her eyes across the
+crowd in Orte once, and once across the pool that was the Vadimon, and I
+was hers for evermore. Explain that, ye wise men, who in your pride have
+long words for all things. Nay, you may be wise, but it is beyond you.</p>
+
+<p>My mother and I spoke but little at this time. That home was a sad one:
+the death of the child and the absence of long years had left a chill in
+it. We ate together, chiefly in silence: it was always a pain to her
+that I was but Pipistrello the gymnast&mdash;not a steadfast, deep-rooted,
+well-loved citizen of Orte, with a trade to my hand and a place in
+church and market. Every day she thought I should wander again; every
+day she knew my savings shrank in their bag; every day she heard her
+neighbors say, "And your Pippo? will he not quiet down and take a wife
+and a calling?"</p>
+
+<p>Poor mother! Other women had their sons safe stay-at-homes, wedded
+fathers of children, peaceable subjects of the king, smoking at their
+own doors after the day's work was done. She would have been so blessed
+had I been like them&mdash;I, who was a wrestler and a roysterer, a mere
+public toy that had broken down in the sight of all Orte. My father had
+never failed as I had failed. He had never killed a child that trusted
+in his strength: he had fallen himself and died. That difference between
+us was always in her eyes. I saw it when I met them; and she would make
+up little knots of common flowers and carry them to the tiny grave of
+Ph&oelig;bus, my victim. Once I said to her, "I could not help it: I would
+have given my life to save him." She only replied, "If you had consented
+to bide at home the child would be living."</p>
+
+<p>Nay, I thought, if she had not looked at me&mdash;But of that I said nothing.
+I kept the memory of that woman in my heart, and went night and day
+about the lake and the river and the marshes of Sant' Alo&iuml;sa. Once or
+twice I saw Taddeo Marchioni, the old count&mdash;a gray, shrunken, decrepit
+figure of a man, old, with a lean face and a long hard jaw&mdash;but of her,
+for days that lengthened into weeks, I saw nothing. There are fish in
+the Lagherello. I got the square huge net of our country, and set it in
+the water as our habit is, and watched in the sedges from dawn to eve.
+What I watched for was the coming of the vision I had once seen there:
+the fish came and went at their will for me.</p>
+
+<p>One day, sick of watching vainly, and having some good fish in the net,
+I dragged them out into the reeds, and pushed them in a creel, and
+shouldered them, and went straight to the gloomy walls of Sant' Alo&iuml;sa.
+There were no gates: the sedges of the low lands went along the front of
+the great pile, almost touching it. Around it were fields gray with
+olives, and there was neither garden nor grass-land: all had been
+ploughed up that was not marsh and swamp.</p>
+
+<p>The great doors were close fastened. I entered boldly by a little
+entrance at the side, and found myself in the great naked hall of
+marble, empty and still and damp. There was a woman there, old and
+miserable, who called her master. Taddeo Marchioni came and saw the
+fish, and chaffered for them with long hesitation and shrewd greed, as
+misers love to do, and then at last refused them: they were too dear, he
+said. I threw them down and said to him, "Count, give me a stoup of wine
+and they are yours." That pleased him: he bade the serving-woman carry
+the fish away, and told me to follow him. He took me into a vaulted
+stone chamber, and poured with a niggard hand a glass of <i>mezzo-vino</i>. I
+looked at him: he was lean, gray, unlovely. I could have crushed him to
+death with one hand.</p>
+
+<p>These great old villas in the lone places of Italy are usually full at
+least of pleasant life&mdash;of women hurrying to the silk-worms and the
+spinning and the linen-press, of barefooted men loitering about on a
+thousand pleas or errands to their master. But Sant' Alo&iuml;sa was silent
+and empty.</p>
+
+<p>Passing an open door, I saw her. She was sitting, doing nothing, in a
+room whose faded tapestries were gray as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> spiders' webs, and she was
+beautiful as only one woman is here and there in a generation. She
+looked at me, and I thought she smiled.</p>
+
+<p>I went out with my brain on fire and my sight dim. I saw only that
+smile&mdash;that sudden, momentary smile whose fellow had brought death to
+little Ph&oelig;bus. And I felt she had known me again, though she had seen
+me but once, in my spangled coat of velvet and silver, and now I had my
+legs bare to the knee, and was clad in a rough blue shirt and woollen
+jacket, like any other country-fellow upon Tiber's side.</p>
+
+<p>As I was going out the serving-wench plucked my sleeve and whispered to
+me, "Come back a moment: she wishes to see you."</p>
+
+<p>My heart leaped, then stood still. I turned back into the house, and
+with trembling knees went into that chamber where the dusky tapestry
+mouldered on the walls. She looked at me, sitting idly there herself in
+the bare, melancholy room&mdash;a woman with the face of our Titian's Venus.</p>
+
+<p>"Did the child die?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>I stammered something, I knew not what.</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you tremble that day?" she said, with the flicker of a smile
+about her lovely mouth: "you look strong&mdash;and bold."</p>
+
+<p>How the words had courage and madness enough to leap to my lips I know
+not, but I do know I said to her, "You looked at me."</p>
+
+<p>She frowned a moment: then she laughed. No doubt she had known it
+before. "Your nerves were not of iron, then, as they should be," she
+said carelessly. "Well! the people wanted to see something die. They
+always do: you must know that. Bring more fish for my husband to-morrow.
+Now go."</p>
+
+<p>I trembled from head to foot. I had said this bold and insolent thing to
+her face, and she still bade me return!</p>
+
+<p>No doubt had I been a man well born I should have fallen at her feet and
+sworn a midsummer madness: I should have been emboldened to any coarse
+avowal, to any passionate effrontery. But I was only a stroller&mdash;a poor
+ignorant soul, half Hercules, half fool. I trembled and was mute.</p>
+
+<p>When the air blew about me once more I felt as if I had been
+drunk&mdash;drunk on that sweet yeasty wine of a new vintage which makes the
+brain light and foolish. She had bade me return!</p>
+
+<p>That day my mother ate alone at home. When night fell it found me by the
+Lagherello. I set my nets: I slept in a shepherd's hut. I had forgotten
+Ph&oelig;bus: I only saw her face. What was she like? I cannot tell you.
+She was like Titian's Venus. Go and look at it&mdash;she who plays with the
+little dog in the Tribune at Pitti: that one I mean. With all that
+beauty, half disclosed like the bud of a pomegranate-flower, she had
+been given to Taddeo Marchioni, and here for seven years she had dwelt,
+shut in by stone walls.</p>
+
+<p>Living so, a woman becomes a saint or a devil. Taddeo Marchioni forgot
+or never knew that. He left her in his chamber as he left the figures of
+the tapestry, till her bloom should fade like theirs, and time write
+wrinkles on her as it wove webs on them. He forgot! he forgot! He was
+old and slow of blood and feeble of sight: she was scarcely beautiful to
+him. There were a few poor peasants near, and a priest as old as Taddeo
+Marchioni was; and though Orte was within five miles, the sour and
+jealous temper of her husband shut her up in that prison-house as Pia
+Tolomei was shut in the house of death in the Maremma.</p>
+
+<p>That night I watched impatient for the dawn. Impatient I watched the
+daybreak deepen into day. All the loveliness of that change was lost on
+me: I only counted the hours in restless haste. Poor fools! our hours
+are in sum so few, and yet we for ever wish them shorter, and fling
+them, scarcely used, behind us roughly, as a child flings his broken
+toys.</p>
+
+<p>The sultry morning was broad and bright over the land before I dared
+take up such fish as had entered my girella in the night and bend my
+steps to Sant' Alo&iuml;sa. Fever-mists hung over the cane-brakes and the
+reedy swamps; the earth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> was baked and cracked; everything looked
+thirsty, withered, pallid, dull, decaying: in the heats of August it is
+always so desolate wherever Tiber rolls. "Marchioni is out," said the
+old brown crone whom I had seen the day before. "But come in: bring your
+fish to Madama Flavia."</p>
+
+<p>It was a strange, gaunt wilderness of stone, this old villa of the
+Marchioni. It would have held hundreds of serving-men&mdash;it had as many
+chambers as one of the palaces down in Rome&mdash;but this old woman was all
+the servitor it had, and in the grand old hall, with sculptured shields
+upon the columns of it and Umbrian frescoes in the roof, she spread
+their board and brought them their onion-soup and their dish of <i>pasta</i>,
+and while they ate it looked on and muttered her talk and twirled her
+distaff, day after day, year after year, the same. Life is homely and
+frugal here, and has few graces. The ways of life in these grand old
+places are like nettles and thistles set in an old majolica vase that
+has had knights and angels painted on it. You know what I mean, you who
+know Italy. Do you remember those pictures of Vittorio Carpaccio and of
+Gentil&eacute;o? They say that this is the life our Italy saw once in her
+cities and her villas: that is the life she wants. Sometimes, when you
+are all alone in these vast deserted places, the ghosts of all that
+pageantry pass by you, and they seem fitter than the living people for
+these courts and halls.</p>
+
+<p>"Madama Flavia will see the fish," said the old crone, and hobbled away.</p>
+
+<p>Madama Flavia! How many times has Tiber heard such a name as that
+breathed on a lover's mouth to the sigh of the mandoline, uttered in
+revel or in combat, or as a poisoner whispered it stealing to mix the
+drug with the wine in the goblet. Madama Flavia! All Italy seemed in
+it&mdash;all love, all woe! There is a magic in some names.</p>
+
+<p>Madama Flavia! Just such a woman as this it needs would be to fitly wear
+such a name&mdash;a woman with low brows and eyes that burn, and a mouth like
+the folded leaves that lie in the heart of a rose&mdash;a woman to kneel at
+morn in the black shadows of the confessional, and to go down into the
+crowd of masks at night and make men drunk with love.</p>
+
+<p>"Madama Flavia!" The name (so much it said to me) halted stupidly on my
+lips: I stood in her presence like a foolish creature. I never before
+had lacked either courage or audacity: I trembled now. I had been awake
+all the night, gazing at the dim, dusky pile of her roof as it rose out
+from the olives black against the stars; and she knew it&mdash;she knew it
+very well. That I saw in her face. And she was Madama Flavia, and I was
+Pipistrello the juggler. What could I say to her? I could have fallen at
+her feet and kissed her or killed her, but I could not speak. No doubt I
+looked but a poor boor to her&mdash;a giant and a dolt.</p>
+
+<p>She was leaning against a great old marble vase&mdash;leaning her hands on
+it, and her chin on her hands. She had some red carnations in her
+breast: their perfume came to me. She was surrounded by decay, dusty
+desolation, the barrenness of a poverty that is drearier than any of the
+poverty of the poor; but so might have looked Madama Lucrezia in those
+old days when the Borgia was God's vicegerent.</p>
+
+<p>At the haul of fish she never glanced: she gazed at me with meditation
+in her eyes. "You are very strong," she said abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>At that I could do no less than laugh. It was as if she had said the ox
+in the yoke was strong or the Tiber strong at flood.</p>
+
+<p>"Why are you a fisherman now?" she said. "Why do you leave your arena?"</p>
+
+<p>I shuddered a little. "Since the child fell"&mdash;I muttered, thinking she
+would understand the remorse that made my old beloved calling horrible
+to me.</p>
+
+<p>"It was no fault of yours," she said with a dreamy smile. "They say I
+have the evil eye&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You have, madama," I said bluntly, and then felt a choking in my
+throat, fearing my own rashness.</p>
+
+<p>Her beautiful eyes had a bright scorn in them, and a cold mockery of me.
+"Why do you stay, then?" she asked,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> and smiled at the red carnations
+carelessly.</p>
+
+<p>"Because&mdash;rather would I die of beholding you than live shut out from
+sight of you," I said in my madness. "Madama, I am a great useless fool:
+I have done nothing but leap and climb and make a show. I am big and
+strong as the oxen are, but they work, and I have never worked. I have
+shown myself, and the people have thrown me money&mdash;a silly life, good to
+no man or beast. Oh yes, that I know full well now; and I have killed
+Ph&oelig;bus because you looked at me; and my mother, who has loved me all
+her life, is old before her time through my fault. I am a graceless
+fool, a mountebank. When I put off my spangles and stand thus, you see
+the rude peasant that I am. And yet in all the great, wide, crowded
+world I know there does not live another who could love you as I
+love&mdash;seeing you twice."</p>
+
+<p>I stopped; the sound of my own voice frightened me; the dull tapestries
+upon the wall heaved and rocked round me. I saw her as through a mist,
+leaning there with both arms on the broken marble vase.</p>
+
+<p>A momentary smile passed over her face. She seemed diverted, not angered
+as I feared. She had listened without protest. No doubt she knew it very
+well before I spoke. "You are very strong," she said at length. "Strong
+men are always feeble&mdash;somewhere. If the count Taddeo heard you he
+would&mdash;" Then some sudden fancy struck her, and she laughed aloud, her
+bright red lips all tremulous and convulsed with laughter. "What could
+he do? You could crush him with one hand, as you could crush a newt!
+Poor Taddeo! did he not beat your fish down, give you watered wine, the
+rinsings of the barrel, yesterday? That is Taddeo always."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed again, but there was something so cruel in that laughter
+that it held me mute. I dared not speak to her. I stood there stupidly.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know that he is rich?" she said abruptly, gnawing with her
+lovely teeth the jagged leaf of one of her carnations. "Yes, he is rich,
+Taddeo. That is why my father sold me to him. Taddeo is rich: he has
+gold in the ground, in the trees, in the rafters and the stones of the
+house; he has gold in Roman banks; he has gold in foreign scrip, and in
+ships, and in jewels, and in leases: he is rich. And he lives like a
+gray spider in the cellar-corner. He shuts me up here. We eat black
+bread, we see no living soul: once in the year or so I go to Orte or to
+Penna. And I am twenty-three years old, and I can read my own face in
+the mirror." She paused; her breast heaved, her beautiful low brows drew
+together in bitter fury at her fate: she had no thought of me.</p>
+
+<p>I waited, mute. I did not dare to speak.</p>
+
+<p>It was all true: she was the wife of Taddeo Marchioni, shut here as in a
+prison, with her youth passing and her loveliness unseen, and her angry
+soul consuming itself in its own fires. I loved her: what use was that
+to her&mdash;a man who had naught in all the world but the strength of his
+sinews and muscles?</p>
+
+<p>She remembered me suddenly, and gave me a gesture of dismissal: "Take
+your fish to the woman; I cannot pay you for them; I have never as much
+as a bronze coin. But&mdash;you may come back another day. Bring more&mdash;bring
+more." Then with a more imperious gesture she made me leave her.</p>
+
+<p>I stumbled out of the old dark, close-shuttered house into the burning
+brilliancy of the August day, giddy with passion and with hope. She knew
+I loved her, and yet she bade me return!</p>
+
+<p>I know not how much, how little, that may mean in other lands, but here
+in Italy it has but one language&mdash;language enough to make a lover's
+heart leap like the wild goat. Yet hope is perhaps too great a word to
+measure rightly the timid joy that filled my breast. I lay in the
+shepherd's hut wide awake that night, hearing the frogs croak from the
+Lagherello and the crickets sing in the hot darkness. The hut was empty:
+shepherd and sheep and dogs were all gone up to the higher grounds
+amongst the hills. There were some dry fern-plants in a corner of it. I
+lay on these and stared at the planets<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> above me throbbing in the
+intense blue of the skies: they seemed to throb, they seemed alive.</p>
+
+<p>A mile away, between me and the stars, was the grand black pile of Sant'
+Alo&iuml;sa.</p>
+
+<p>Christ! it was strange! I had led a rough life, I had been no saint. I
+had always been ready for jest or dance or intrigue with a pretty woman,
+and sometimes women far above me had cast their eyes down on the arena,
+as in Spain ladies do in the bull-ring to pick a lover out thence for
+his strength; but I had never cared. I had loved, laughed and wandered
+away with the stroller's happy liberty, but I had never cared. Now, all
+at once, the whole world seemed dead&mdash;dead heaven and earth&mdash;and only
+one woman's two eyes left living in the universe, living and looking
+into my soul and burning it to ashes. Do you know what I mean? No? Ah,
+then you know not love.</p>
+
+<p>All the night I lay awake&mdash;the short hot night when the western gold of
+sunset scarce fades into dark ere the east seems to glow luminous and
+transparent with the dawn. Ah! the sunrise! I shall see it once more,
+only once more! I shall see it through those bars, a hand's breadth of
+it above Tiber, no more; and when again it spreads its rosy warmth over
+the sky and reddens the river and the plain, I shall be dead&mdash;a headless
+thing pushed away under the earth and lime, and over my brain and skull
+the wise men will peer with knife and scalpel, and pour the plaster over
+its bones to take a cast, and say most likely to one another, as I heard
+them say once before a cast in a museum, "A good face, a fair brow, fine
+lines: strange that he should have been a murderer!" Well! so be it.
+Even though I lived for fourscore years and ten, the sun would nevermore
+rise for me as it rose before Ph&oelig;bus died.</p>
+
+<p>At that time I lived only to see a shadow on the barred windows, a hand
+open a lattice, a veiled head glide by through the moonbeams. I was
+wretched, yet never had I been so happy. The bolt of the gods stuns as
+it falls, but it intoxicates also.</p>
+
+<p>I had been such a fool! such a fool! When she had said so much I had
+said nothing: that last moment haunted me with unending pain. If I had
+been bolder, if I had only known what to answer, if I had only seized
+her in my arms and kissed her! It would have been better to have had
+that one moment, and have died for it, than have been turned out of her
+presence like a poor cowardly clod.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot tell how the long hot days went on: they were days of drought
+to the land, but they were days of paradise to me. The fever-mists were
+heavy and the peasants sickened. Tiber was low, and had fetid odors as
+its yellow shallows dried up in the sun, clouds of gnats hovered over
+the Lagherello and its beds of rushes, and the sullen wind blew always
+from the south-east, bringing the desert sand with it. But to me this
+sickly summer was so fair that I continued to live in the absent
+shepherd's empty hut. I continued to net the fish when I could, and now
+and again I saw her. I lived only in the hope of seeing her face. She
+had the evil eye. Well, let it rest on me and bring me all woe, so that
+only I might live in its light one day! So I said in my madness, not
+knowing.</p>
+
+<p>I must have looked mad at that time to the few scattered peasants about
+the pool. I lived on a handful of maize, a crust of bread. I cast my
+nets in the water, and once or twice went up to Sant' Alo&iuml;sa with the
+small fish, and was sent away by the crone Marietta. August passed, and
+the time drew nigh for the gathering of the grapes, ripe here sooner
+than in the Lombard and the Tuscan plains. But the vintage of Sant'
+Alo&iuml;sa was slight, for the ground was covered with olives in nearly
+every part. When they were stripping what few poor vines there were I
+offered myself for that work. I thought so I might behold her. There was
+no mirth on the lands of Taddeo Marchioni: the people were poor and
+dull. Fever that came from the river and the swamps had lessened their
+numbers by death and weakened those who were living: my strength was
+welcome to those ague-stricken creatures.</p>
+
+<p>The day of the gathering was very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> hot: no rain had fallen. The oxen in
+the wains were merely skin and bone: their tongues were parched and
+swollen in their muzzled mouths. The grass had been long all burnt up,
+and the beasts famished: the air was stifling, pregnant with storm.</p>
+
+<p>Amidst the sere and arid fields, and the woods, black and gray, of ilex
+and of olive, the great old square house rose before us, pale, solitary,
+mysterious&mdash;a mausoleum that shut in living creatures: it terrified me.</p>
+
+<p>Night fell as the last wagon, loaded with the last casks of grapes,
+rolled slowly with heavy grinding wheels toward the cellars of Sant'
+Alo&iuml;sa. With the wagon there were a few men enfeebled with fever, a few
+women shivering with ague. I walked behind the wagon, pushing it to aid
+the weary oxen. There was no moon: here and there a torch flickered in a
+copper sconce filled with oil. The courtyard and the cellar were of
+enormous size: in the old times Sant' Alo&iuml;sa had sheltered fifteen
+hundred men. In the darkness, where a torch flared when he passed, I saw
+now and then Taddeo Marchioni coming and going, giving orders in his
+high, thin voice, screaming always, swearing sometimes, always
+suspecting some theft. He did not see me. He was entirely absorbed in
+his vintage and in the rebukes he hurled at his peasants. I drew back
+into the shadow, leaning against the column of the gateway, a huge wall
+blackened with time and damp. The bell of the old clock-tower sounded
+the nineteenth hour of the night. All at once the servant Marietta
+muttered in my ear, "Go in: she wants to speak with you. Go in to the
+tapestry-room on the other side of the house: you remember."</p>
+
+<p>My blood bounded in my veins. I asked nothing better of Fate. I glided
+along the old walls, leaving the central court and the master there
+absorbed in his work, and I found with some difficulty the little
+side-door by which I had entered the house before. I trembled from head
+to foot, as in that hour. I felt myself all at once to be ugly, heavy,
+stupid, a brute to frighten any woman&mdash;sweating from the labors of the
+day, covered with dust, poor and frightful in my rough hempen shirt,
+with my naked legs and my bare knees impregnated with the juice of the
+grapes. And I dared to love this woman&mdash;I! Loved her, though she had
+slain Ph&oelig;bus.</p>
+
+<p>My mind was all in confusion: I was no longer master of myself. I
+scarcely drew breath; my head was giddy; I staggered as I went along
+those endless galleries and passages, as I had done that day when
+Ph&oelig;bus had fallen on the sand of my arena. At last I reached&mdash;how I
+knew not&mdash;the room of the <i>arazzi</i>, scarcely lighted by a lamp of bronze
+that hung from the ceiling by a chain. In the twilight I saw the woman
+with the fatal gaze, with the lips of rose, with the features of
+Lucrezia, of Venus, the woman who in all ages has destroyed man.</p>
+
+<p>Then I forgot that I was a laborer, a peasant, a juggler, a wrestler, a
+vagabond&mdash;that I was clad in coarse linen of hemp&mdash;that I was dirty and
+filthy and ignorant and coarse. I forgot myself: I only remembered my
+love&mdash;my love immense as the sky, omnipotent as Deity. I fell on my
+knees before her. I only cried with stifled voice, "I am yours! I am
+yours!" I did not even ask her to be mine. I was her slave, her tool,
+her servitor, her thing, to be cherished or rejected as she would. I
+shivered, I sobbed. I had never known before, it seemed to me, what love
+could be; and it made a madman of me.</p>
+
+<p>All the while she said nothing: she let me kiss her gown, her feet, the
+stone floor on which she stood. Suddenly and abruptly she said only,
+"You are a droll creature: you love me, really&mdash;you?"</p>
+
+<p>Then I spoke, beside myself the while. I remember nothing that I said:
+she heard me in silence, standing erect above me where I kneeled. The
+light was very faint; the lamp swung to and fro on its bronze chain; I
+saw only the eyes of the woman burning their will into mine. She bent
+her head slightly: her voice was very low. She said only, "I have known
+it a long time. Yes, you love me, but how? How?"</p>
+
+<p>How? I knew no words that could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> tell her. Human tongues never have
+language enough for that: a look can tell it. I looked at her.</p>
+
+<p>She trembled for a moment as though I had hurt her. Soon she regained
+her empire over herself. "But how?" she muttered very low, bending over
+me her beautiful head, nearly touching mine. "But how? Enough to&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>She paused. Enough? Enough for what? Enough to deny heaven, to defy
+hell, to brave death and torment, to do all that a man could do: who
+could do more?</p>
+
+<p>"And I love you&mdash;I." She murmured the words very low: the evening wind
+which touches the roses was never softer than her voice. She brushed my
+hair with her lips. "I love you," she repeated. "For you are strong, you
+are strong."</p>
+
+<p>Kneeling before her there, I took her in my arms. I drew her close to
+me: I drank the wine of Paradise&mdash;the wine that makes men mad.</p>
+
+<p>But she stopped me, drew herself away from me, yet gently, without
+wrath. "No," she said, "not yet, not yet." Then she added, lower still,
+"You must deserve me."</p>
+
+<p>Deserve her? I did not comprehend. I knew well that I did not deserve my
+joy, poor fool that I was, mere man of the people, with the trestles of
+the village fair for all my royal throne. But, since she loved me, a
+crowd of ideas confused and giddy thronged on my brain and whirled madly
+together. Up above in the belfries and the towers in my infancy, with
+the clear blue air about me and the peopled world at my feet, I had
+dreamed so many foolish gracious things&mdash;things heroical, fantastical,
+woven from the legends of saints and the poems of wandering minstrels.
+When she spoke to me thus these old beautiful fancies came back to my
+memory. If she wished me to become a soldier for her sake, I thought&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>She looked at me, burning my soul with her eyes, that grew sombre yet
+brilliant, like the Tiber water lighted by a golden moon. "You must
+deserve me," she repeated: "you must deliver me. You are strong."</p>
+
+<p>"I am ready," I answered. I was still kneeling before her. I had at my
+throat a rude cross that my mother had hung there in my childish years.
+I touched the cross with my right hand in sign of oath and
+steadfastness. "I am ready," I said to her. "What do you wish?"</p>
+
+<p>She answered, "You must free me. You are strong."</p>
+
+<p>Even then I did not understand. "Free?" I repeated. "You would fly with
+me?"</p>
+
+<p>She gave a gesture, superb, impatient, contemptuous. She drew herself
+backward and more erect. Her eyes had a terrible brilliancy in them. She
+was so beautiful, but as fierce in that hour as the wild beast that I
+saw once at a fair break from its cage and descend amidst the people,
+and which I strangled in my arms unaided.</p>
+
+<p>She murmured through her closed teeth, "You must kill him. You are
+strong."</p>
+
+<p>With a bound I rose to my feet. In the burning night an icy cold chilled
+my blood, my limbs, my heart.</p>
+
+<p>Kill him? Whom? The old man? I, young and strong as I was, and his
+wife's lover?</p>
+
+<p>I looked at her. What will be the scaffold to-morrow to me, since I have
+lived through that moment?</p>
+
+<p>She looked at me, always with her sorceress's eyes. "You must kill him,"
+she said briefly. "It will be so easy to you. If you love me it will be
+done. If not&mdash;farewell."</p>
+
+<p>A horrible terror seized on me. I said nothing. I was stupefied. The
+gloomy shadows of the chamber surrounded us like a mystic vapor; the
+pale figures of the tapestries seemed like the ghosts arisen from the
+grave to witness against us; the oppressive heat of the night hour lay
+on our heads like an iron hand.</p>
+
+<p>A phantom parted us: the spectre of a cowardly crime had come between
+us.</p>
+
+<p>"You do not love me," she said slowly. She grew impatient, angered,
+feverish: a dumb rage began to work in her. She had no fear.</p>
+
+<p>I drew my breath with effort. It seemed as if some one were strangling
+me.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> Kill him! Kill him! These ghastly words re-echoed in my ears. Kill
+an old and feeble man? It was worse than a crime: it was a cowardice.</p>
+
+<p>"You do not love me," she repeated with utter scorn. "Go&mdash;go!"</p>
+
+<p>A cry to her sprang from my very soul: "Anything else, anything but
+that! Ask my own life, and you shall have it."</p>
+
+<p>"I ask what I wish."</p>
+
+<p>As she answered me thus she drew herself in all her full height upward
+under the faint radiance from the lamp. Her magnificent beauty shone in
+it like a grand white flower of the datura under the suns of autumn. A
+disdain without bounds, without limit, without mercy, gleamed from her
+eyes. She despised me&mdash;a man of the people, a public wrestler, a bravo,
+only made to kill at his mistress's order, only of use to draw the
+stiletto in secrecy at the whim and will of a woman.</p>
+
+<p>I was Italian, yet I dared not slay a feeble old man in the soft dark of
+a summer night, to find my reward on the breast of his wife.</p>
+
+<p>Silence fell between us. Her eyes of scorn glanced over me, and all her
+beauty tempted me and cried to me, "Kill, kill, kill! and all this is
+thine!"</p>
+
+<p>Then her eyes filled with tears, her proud loveliness grew humble, and,
+a supplicant, she stretched out her arms to me: she cried, "Ah, you love
+me not: you have no pity. I may live and die here: you will not save me.
+You are strong as the lions are&mdash;you are so strong, and yet you are
+afraid."</p>
+
+<p>I shook in all my limbs. Yes, I was afraid&mdash;I was afraid of her, afraid
+of myself. I shivered: she looked at me always, her burning eyes now
+humid and soft with tears.</p>
+
+<p>"In open war, in combat, all you wish," I said to her slowly. "But an
+old man&mdash;in secret&mdash;to be his assassin&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>My voice failed me. I saw the light in the lamp that swung above,
+oscillating between us: it seemed to me like the frail life of Taddeo
+Marchioni that swung on a thread at our will.</p>
+
+<p>She drew herself upward once more. Her tears were burned up in the fires
+of a terrible dumb rage. She cried aloud, "You are a coward. Go!"</p>
+
+<p>I fell once more at her feet; I seized her by her gown; I kissed her
+feet. "Any other thing!" I cried to her in my anguish&mdash;"any other thing!
+But the life of a weak old man! It would be horrible. I am not a coward:
+I am brave. It is for cowards to kill the feeble: I cannot. And you
+would not wish it? No, no, you would not wish it? It is a dream, a
+nightmare! It is not possible. I adore you! I adore you! I am a madman.
+I am yours; I give you my life; I give you my body and my soul. But to
+kill a feeble old man that I could crush in my arms as a fly is stifled
+in wine! No, no, no! Any other thing, any other thing! But not that."</p>
+
+<p>She thrust me from her with her foot. "That or nothing," she said
+coldly.</p>
+
+<p>The sweat fell from my brow in the agony of this horrible hour. I was
+ready to give my life for her, but an old man, a murder done in secret!
+All my soul revolted.</p>
+
+<p>"But you love me!" I cried to her; and a great sob rose in my throat.</p>
+
+<p>"You refuse to do this thing?" she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Then she threw me away from her with the strength of a tigress:
+"Imbecile! You thought I loved you? I should have used you: that is
+all."</p>
+
+<p>The lamp went out: the darkness was complete. I stretched my hands out,
+to meet but empty air. If I were alone I could not tell: I touched
+nothing, I heard nothing, I saw nothing. A strange giddiness came upon
+me; my limbs trembled under the weight of my body and gave way; I lost
+consciousness. It is what we call in this country a stroke of the blood.</p>
+
+<p>When my senses revived I opened my eyes. It was still night about me,
+but a pallid light shone into the chamber, for the moon had risen, and
+its rays penetrated through the iron bars of the high windows. I
+remembered all.</p>
+
+<p>I rose with pain and effort: the heavy fall on the stone floor had
+bruised and strained me. A great stupor, the stupor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> of horror, had
+fallen upon me. I felt all at once old, quite old. The thought of my
+mother passed through my mind for the first time for many days. My poor
+mother!</p>
+
+<p>By the light of the moon I tried to find my way out of this chamber&mdash;a
+chamber accursed. I gained the entrance of the gallery. Silence reigned
+everywhere. I could not tell what hour it was. The lustre from the skies
+sufficed to illumine fitfully the vast and sombre passages. I found the
+door by which I had entered the house, and I felt the hot air of the
+night blow upon my forehead, as hot now as it had been at noonday.</p>
+
+<p>I passed into the great open court. Above it hung the moon, late risen,
+round, yellow, luminous. I looked upward at it: this familiar object
+seemed to me a strange and unknown thing. I walked slowly across the
+pavement of the courtyard on a sheer instinct, as you may see a wounded
+dog walk, bearing death in him. My heart seemed like a stone in my
+breast: my blood seemed like ice in my veins. All around me were the
+walls of Sant' Alo&iuml;sa, silent, gray, austere.</p>
+
+<p>My foot touched something on the ground. I looked at it. It was a thing
+without form&mdash;a block of oak wood or a slab of marble?&mdash;yet I looked at
+it, and my eyes were rooted there and could not look elsewhere. The moon
+shed a sinister white light upon this thing. I looked long, standing
+there motionless and without power to move. Then I saw what it was, this
+shapeless thing: it was the body of Taddeo Marchioni&mdash;dead, horribly
+dead, fallen face downward, stretched out upon the stones, a knife
+plunged into the back of the throat, and left there. He had been stabbed
+from behind.</p>
+
+<p>I looked, I saw, I understood: it was her act.</p>
+
+<p>I stooped; I touched the corpse; I turned the face to the light; I
+searched for a pulse of life, a breath. There was none: he was dead. A
+single blow had been given, and the blow had been sure. A ghastly
+grimace distended the thin lips of the toothless mouth; the eyes were
+starting from their orbits; the hands were clenched: it had been a death
+swift, silent, violent, terrible.</p>
+
+<p>I drew out the knife, deep buried in the bone of the throat below the
+skull. It was my knife, the same with which I had slashed asunder the
+boughs of the vines in the day just gone in the vintage-fields. She had
+taken it, no doubt, from my girdle when I had fallen at her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"I understand," I said to the dead man: "it is her work."</p>
+
+<p>The dead mouth seemed to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>A casement opened on the court. A voice cried aloud. The voice was hers:
+it cried for help. From the silent dwelling came a sound of hurrying
+feet: the flame of a torch borne in a peasant's hand fell red on the
+livid moonlight.</p>
+
+<p>She came with naked feet, with unloosed hair, as though roused from her
+bed, beautiful in her disarray, and crying aloud, "An assassin! an
+assassin!"</p>
+
+<p>I understood all. She meant to send me to the scaffold in her place. It
+was my knife: that would be testimony enough for a tribunal. Justice is
+blind.</p>
+
+<p>She cried aloud: they seized me, and the dead man lay between us,
+stretched on the stones and bathed in blood. I looked at her: she did
+not tremble.</p>
+
+<p>But she had forgotten that I was strong&mdash;strong with the strength of the
+lion, of the bull, of the eagle. She had forgotten. With a gesture I
+flung far away from me, against the walls, the men who had seized me:
+with a bound I sprang upon her. I took her in my arms in her naked
+loveliness, scarcely veiled by the disordered linen, by the loosened
+hair, and shining like marble in the glisten of the moon. I seized her
+in my arms; I kissed her on her lips; I pressed against my heart her
+beautiful white bosom. Then between her two breasts I plunged my knife,
+red with the blood of her dead lord. "I avenge Ph&oelig;bus," I said to
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Now you know why to-morrow they will kill me, why my mother is mad.</p>
+
+<p>Hush! I am tired. Let me sleep in peace.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 25%;' />
+
+<p>And on the morrow he slept.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Ouida</span>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p>
+<h2>STUDIES IN THE SLUMS.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>III.&mdash;NAN; OR, A GIRL'S LIFE.</h3>
+
+<p>"An' this one? Lord have mercy on her, an' forgive me for saying it the
+way I do every time I look at her! It comes out of itself, an' there's
+times when I could think for a minute that He will; an' then it comes
+over me like a blackness on everything that her chance is gone. Look at
+that one by her. Ain't he a rough? Ain't he just fit for the Rogues'
+Gallery, an' nowhere else? And yet&mdash;Well, it's a long story, an' you
+won't want to hear it all."</p>
+
+<p>"Every word," I said. "For once, we are all alone, and the rain pours
+down so nobody is likely to interrupt. Such a face as that could hardly
+help having a story, and a strange one."</p>
+
+<p>"The most of it happens often enough, but I'll tell you. You think it's
+pretty, but that black an' white thing doesn't tell much. If you could
+once have looked at her, you'd have wanted to do something, same as
+'most everybody did when the time for doin' was over. Let me get my bit
+of work, an' then I'll tell you."</p>
+
+<p>It was in the "McAuley Mission-parlor." The street below, cleared by the
+pouring rain, was comparatively silent, though now and then a sailor
+swung by unmindful of wet, or the sound of a banjo came from the
+tenement-houses opposite. Below us, in the chapel, the janitor scrubbed
+vigorously to the tune which seems for some unknown reason to be always
+a powerful motive-power,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I'm goin' home, no more to roam,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>the brush coming down with a whack at each measure. In my hands was the
+mission album, a motley collection of faces, as devoid of Nature or any
+clew to the real characteristics of the owners as the average photograph
+usually is, but here and there one with a suggestion of interest and, in
+this special case, of beauty&mdash;a delicate, pensive face, with a mass of
+floating hair, deep, dark eyes, and exquisite curves in cheek and lip
+and chin&mdash;the face of some gently born and nurtured maiden, looking
+dreamily out upon a world which thus far, at least, could have shown her
+only its tender, never its cruel or unfriendly, side, and not, as its
+place would indicate, that of one who had somehow and at some strange
+time found a home in these slums. Beauty of a vulgar, striking sort is
+common enough there&mdash;vivid coloring, even a sparkle and light poverty
+has had no power to kill&mdash;but this face had no share in such dower, and
+the dark, soft eyes had a compelling power which made mine search them
+for their secret,&mdash;not theirs, after all, it might prove, but only a
+gift from some remote ancestor, who could transmit outline, and even
+expression, but not the soul that had made them.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. McAuley slipped the picture from its place as she sat down by me
+again. "I ought to have done that long ago," she said. "Jerry is always
+telling me I've no business to keep it where everybody can look at it
+an' ask about her; an' I hadn't, indeed, for it brings up a time I'd
+hardly think or talk about unless I had to for some good. I'll put it
+away with two or three more I keep for myself; an' Jerry'll be glad of
+it, for he hates to think of her, 'most as much as I do.</p>
+
+<p>"Her father and mother? Ah, that's it: if she'd had <i>them</i>! But, you
+see, her mother was a young thing that wasn't used to roughing it, an'
+this Nan only a baby then. They were decent English folks, an' he looked
+like a gentleman; but all we know was that she died of ship-fever on the
+passage over, an' was buried at sea; an' he had it too, an' came 'most
+as nigh dyin', an' just had strength to crawl ashore with Nan in his
+arms. He'd a cousin in the Bowery, a woman that kept a little store for
+notions, but didn't make any headway on account of two drinkin' sons;
+an' he went to her, an' just fell on the floor before he'd half finished
+his story. She put him to bed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> and, though the sons swore he shouldn't
+stay, an' said they'd chuck him out on the sidewalk, she had her way. It
+didn't take him long to die, an' he'd a good bit of money that
+reconciled them; but when he was gone there was the baby, just walkin'
+an' toddlin' into everything, an' would scream if Pete came near her. He
+was the oldest, an' he hated her worse than poison, an' about once in so
+often he'd swear he'd send her to the orphan asylum or anywhere that
+she'd be out of his sight. Jack didn't care one way or another, but the
+mother was just bound up in the little thing; an' she was, they said,
+just that wonderful-lookin' that people stopped an' stared at her. Her
+eyes weren't black, as they look there, but gray, with those long curly
+lashes that looked innocent an' baby-like to the very last minute; and
+her hair&mdash;oh, you never saw such hair! Not bleached out, as they do it
+now, to a dead yellow, but a pure gold-color, an' every thread of it
+alive. I've taken hold of it many a time to see it curl round my finger,
+an' the little rings of it lying round her forehead; an' her face to the
+last as pure-lookin' as a pearl&mdash;clear an' soft, you know&mdash;an', when I
+saw her first, with a little color in her cheeks no deeper than the pink
+in a pink rose.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, it'll seem to you like a bit out of the <i>Police Gazette</i> or those
+horrid story-papers, but, do you know, when she wasn't three Pete came
+home one night just drunk enough to be cunnin', an' he said, after he'd
+had his supper, he wanted to take the child a little way, only round the
+corner, to show her to some friends of his. Mrs. Simpson said
+No&mdash;whoever wanted to see her could come there, but she shouldn't let
+her be taken round. The shop-bell rang that minute, an' she went out. It
+wasn't ten minutes, but when she came back Pete an' the child weren't
+there. She ran to the door an' looked up an' down the street, but it was
+twelve years before she ever saw that child again. Pete was gone a week,
+an' when he come home not a word would he say but that the child was
+safe enough, an' he'd had enough of her round under foot. They had high
+words. She told him he should never have another cent till Nan was
+brought back, an' he went out swearin' an' cursin', to be brought home
+in half an hour past any tellin' in this world. He'd been knocked down
+an' run over by a fire-engine, an', though there was life enough left to
+look at his mother an' try to speak, speak he couldn't.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, there was nothin' that woman didn't do, far as her money would
+go. She'd a nephew was a policeman, an' he hunted, an' plenty more, but
+never a sign or a word. She couldn't get out much on account of the
+shop, but whenever she did there wasn't a beggar with a child that she
+wouldn't stop an' look with all her eyes to see if it might be Nan. You
+wouldn't think anybody would take a child that way to be tormented with,
+when there's hundreds runnin' round loose that nobody claims; but, for
+all that, it's done. Not as often as people think. There's more
+kidnappin' in the story-papers than ever gets done really, but it <i>does</i>
+happen now and then. An' New York's a better place to hide in than
+anywheres out of it. I know plenty of places this minute where the
+police couldn't find a man if they hunted a month.</p>
+
+<p>"Pete Simpson took this child to a hole in the Five Points, rag-pickers
+an' beggars an' worse, an' gave her to a woman that took children that
+was wanted out o' the way. He paid her a dollar, an' said she could make
+enough out of her to pay for the trouble, she was so fair-lookin'. She
+was one of the women that sit round with a baby an' one or two children
+close to her, mostly with laudanum enough to make 'em stupid.</p>
+
+<p>"Nan was spirited, an' she screamed an' fought, but blows soon hushed
+her. She remembered, she's told me. She didn't know where she'd come
+from, but she knew it was clean an' decent, an' she wouldn't eat till
+hunger made her. Then there was a long time she came up with three or
+four that made a kind of a livin' pickin' pockets an' a turn now an'
+then as newsboys, or beggin' cold victuals an' pickin' up any light
+thing they could see if they were let in. Nan changed hands a dozen
+times, an' she never would have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> known where she come from if Charley
+Calkins hadn't kept half an eye to her. He was six years older, an'
+nobody knew who he belonged to; an' he an' Nan picked rags together, an'
+whatever trick he knew he taught her. They cropped her hair, an' dirt
+hid all the prettiness there was, but by ten she'd learned enough to get
+any bit of finery she could, an' to fight 'em off when they wanted to
+cut her hair still. She'd dance an' sing to any hand-organ that come
+along; an' that was where I saw her first&mdash;when she was twelve, I should
+think&mdash;with a lot o' men an' boys standin' round, an' she dancin' an'
+singin' till the very monkey on the organ danced too. I was in a house
+on Cherry street then, with some girls that played at a variety theatre
+on the Bowery, an' Nan by this time was so tall they'd made her a
+waiter-girl in one of the beer-shops. It was there the theatre-man saw
+her one day goin' down to the ferry. He thought she was older, for she
+never let on, an' she was tall as she ever was, an' her hair floatin'
+back the way she would always have it. She could read. She'd been to
+school one term, because she would, an' she had a way with her that
+you'd think she was twenty. So it didn't take long. The variety-man said
+he'd make her fortune, an' she thought he would; an' next day she come
+an' told me she had agreed for three years.</p>
+
+<p>"She didn't know there was work in it, but she soon found there was just
+as much drudgery as in the rag-pickin' or a beer-shop. But she had an
+ambition. She said she'd started here, an' she would stay an' learn
+everything there was, but she believed she should be an actress in the
+Old Bowery yet. That seemed a great thing to me in those days, an' I
+looked at her an' wondered if she knew enough, an' if she'd speak to us
+when she got there. She was so silent sometimes that it daunted us, an'
+then she'd have spells of bein' wilder than the wildest; but she said
+straight enough, 'I'm not goin' to stay down in this hole: I'm goin' to
+be rich an' a lady; an' you'll see it.'</p>
+
+<p>"The time came when she did get to the Old Bowery, an' the manager glad
+to have her too. The variety-man swore he'd kill her for leavin', for
+she drew at the last bigger houses than he ever had again. How she
+learned it all you couldn't tell, but the night we all turned out to see
+her in <i>The Rover's Bride</i> you'd have said yourself she was
+wonderful&mdash;painted of course, and fixed off, but a voice that made you
+cry, an' a way just as natural as if she believed every word she said.
+An' when she came out the third time, after such a stampin' an' callin'
+as you never heard, with her eyes shinin' an' <i>such</i> a smile, I cried
+with all my might.</p>
+
+<p>"It was the very next day. Charley Calkins was bar-tender in a saloon,
+but getting off whenever he could to see Nan act. That was another
+thing. She wouldn't take any fancy name, but was Nan Evans straight
+through&mdash;on the bills an' everywhere&mdash;an' every one she'd grown up with
+went to see her, an' felt sort of proud to think she belonged to the
+Fourth Ward. An' a strange thing was, that, though so many were after
+her, she never seemed to care for anybody but this Charley, that had
+knocked her round himself, though he wouldn't let anybody else.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, the old woman that had taken her first was dyin'. She was
+Charley's aunt, an' so she sent for him, for want of any other relation,
+an' told him she'd a little money for him, an' was a mind to give a
+little to Nan. Charley said, 'All right!' He knew she most likely had a
+good bit, for they often do, but then he said, 'You've always kept to
+yourself where you got Nan, an' I'm a mind to know.'&mdash;'Simpson's, up the
+Bowery,' she said; an' that was the very last word she ever spoke. She
+left thirteen hundred dollars in the Bowery Bank, an' it seemed as if
+there were odd sums in every bunch of rags in the room, so that Charley
+had enough to set him up pretty well. An' it didn't take him long after
+he started his own saloon near the theatre to find out, among all the
+Simpsons, the woman that had had Nan. She had her store still, an' a
+young woman to help her, an' she cried a little when Charley told her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+But she was a member of the Mott Street Church, an' when she said,
+'Where is she now? and why don't she come herself?' an' Charley said,
+'She couldn't, because rehearsal's going on,' she looked at him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Re-what?' says she.</p>
+
+<p>"'Re-hearsal: she's an actress,' says he; an' she shut her eyes up as if
+the sight of him after such words was poison.</p>
+
+<p>"'I want nothing to do with her,' says she. 'I've had my fill of sorrow
+an' trouble from wickedness. You can go, an' say no more.'</p>
+
+<p>"This didn't suit Charley, for he knew how Nan kept herself sort of
+respectable even when she was with the worst, an' he was bound to find
+out all he could.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he hung on an' asked questions till he'd found out all there was,
+an' that was little, as you know. But Nan had wondered many a time where
+she came from, an' if she'd ever belonged to anybody, an' he wanted to
+be the first one to tell her. He scared the old lady, for he wasn't long
+from the Island, where he'd been sent up for assault an' battery, an',
+do what you would to him, clothes nor nothin' could ever make him look
+like anything but a rough. But he was bound to know, for he thought
+there might be money belonging to her or folks that would do for her.
+There wasn't a soul, though, that he could find out, an' the next thing
+was to go to Nan an' tell her about it. They'd have been wiser to have
+waited a day, till the old lady'd a chance to quiet down and think it
+all over; but he went straight to Nan an' told her he'd found some of
+her folks; an' she, without a word, put on her hat an' went with him. If
+she'd been alone it might have been better, for Charley seemed worse
+than he was. The old lady was in the room back of the shop, neat as a
+pin, an' Nan looked as if she was looking through everything to see if
+she could remember.</p>
+
+<p>"An' when the old lady saw her there was a minute she cried again an'
+took hold of Nan. 'It's her very look,' she said, 'an' her hair an'
+all;' but then she stiffened. 'I've no call to feel sure,' she said,
+'but if you are Nan, an' want to be decent, an' will give up all your
+wickedness, an' come here an' repent, I'll keep you.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Wickedness?' Nan says, sort of bewildered&mdash;'repent?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I don't know as it would do, either,' the old lady said, beginning to
+be doubtful again. 'A lost creature, that's only a disgrace, so that I
+couldn't hold my head up, any more'n I can when I think how Pete went: I
+couldn't well stand it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You won't have to,' said Nan, with her head high. 'I did think I'd
+found some folks, but it seems not;' an' out she went.</p>
+
+<p>"Charley shook his fist an' swore. 'Nice folks, Christians are!' he
+said. 'I like 'em,&mdash;&mdash;'em! I'd like to burn her shop over her head!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Nonsense!' Nan said, as if she didn't mind a bit. 'I thought it would
+feel good to have somebody I belonged to, but it wouldn't. I never could
+stand anything like her shaking her head over me; but it's strange how
+I've always been hoping, an' now how I don't care.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then Charley told her she'd better go home with him: he'd got a
+comfortable, nice place, an' he'd never bother her. They'd talked it
+over many a time, but she'd held off, always thinking she might find her
+folks.</p>
+
+<p>"Marriage didn't mean anything to either of them. How could it, coming
+up the way they had? though she'd never been like the other girls. You
+can't think how they could be the heathen they were? Remember what
+you've seen an' heard in this very place, an' then remember that ten
+years ago, even, a decent man or woman didn't dare go up these alleys
+even by daylight, an' the two or three missionaries were in danger of
+their lives; an' you'll see how much chance they'd had of learning.</p>
+
+<p>"Nan wasn't sixteen then, an' she didn't think ahead, though if she had
+likely she would have done the same. She had her choice, but she'd
+always known Charley, an' so it ended that way.</p>
+
+<p>"Then came a long time when my own troubles were thick, an' I went off
+to the country an' lost sight of her. It was two years before I came
+back, an'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> then everything was changed. All that set I'd known seemed to
+have gone to the bad together&mdash;some in prison and some dead. Jerry was
+out then, an' we were married an' began together in the little room down
+the street; an' now I thought often of Nan. They told me Charley was
+drinkin' himself to death, an' that she was at the theatre still, an'
+kept things goin' with her money, an' that he knocked her round, when he
+was out of his head, the worst way. It wasn't long before I went to her.
+She looked so beautiful you wouldn't think a fiend could want to hurt
+her, an' her eyes had just the look of that picture. I told her how I
+had turned about, an' how happy we both were, in spite of hard times an'
+little work; but she listened like one in a dream, an' I knew enough to
+see that I should have to tell her many times before she would
+understand or care. But she seemed so frail I couldn't bear to leave her
+so. An' the worst of it was, that she'd begun to wish Charley would
+marry her, an' he thought it was all nonsense, an' swore at her if she
+said a word about it. She'd been gettin' more and more sensible, an'
+he'd just been goin' the other way, but she kept her old fondness for
+him. I said nothing then, but one day I found her cryin', an' her arm so
+she could hardly move it; an' it came out he'd knocked her down, an'
+told her she could clear out when she liked, for he was sick of her pale
+face an' her big eyes an' her airs, an' meant to bring a woman there
+with some life in her."</p>
+
+<p>"'Things don't come out as we plan,' she said. 'I was going to be a
+lady, but I forgot that anybody had anything to do with it but myself.
+An' now I can't go to any decent place, an' Charley doesn't want me any
+longer. See how nice it all looks here, Maria. I've fixed it myself, an'
+I've always been so glad that after the play was over I could come
+<i>home</i>&mdash;not to somebody else's room, but my own place&mdash;an' I never
+thought there was any reason why it wouldn't always be my place. Men
+aren't like women. I was true to Charley, and I'll never think of
+anybody else; but he says I must get out of this.'</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I wanted her to understand that I knew plenty would help her, an'
+I tried to tell her she could begin a different life; but she just
+opened her eyes, astonished at me.</p>
+
+<p>"'You think I'd go to one of those Homes?' she said. 'You're crazy. I
+can make my livin' easy enough at the theatre, even if I'm not so strong
+as I was. What have I done more than anybody, after all? Do you think
+I'd be pointed at an' talked over the way those women are? I'd throw
+myself in the river first! I've learned enough these years. I go to
+church sometimes, an' hear men in the pulpit talk about things I know
+better than they do. I've found out what the good people, the
+respectable people, are like. I've found out, too, what I might have
+been, an' that if I live a thousand years I never can be it in this
+world; an' that's one reason I thought Charley might be willing to marry
+me. But I shall never say anything more now, for, you see, it isn't
+goin' to make so very much matter. I had a bad cold in the spring, an'
+the doctor said then I must be very careful or I should go with
+consumption. See my arm? They said the other day I'd have to do
+something to plump up, but I never shall: I'm goin', an' I'm glad of
+it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Then, if that's got to be, let it be goin' home,' I said. 'Nan,
+there's everything waitin' for you if you'll only take it. Come down to
+one of the meetin's an' you'll hear. Won't you?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I don't understand it,' she said. 'Everything's in a twist. Years an'
+years and never hear of God, an' not a soul come near you to tell about
+Him, an' all at once they say He loves you, and always has. Bah! If He
+loved, an' people think about it as they pretend, how dare they let
+there be such places for us to come up in? If God is what they say, He
+ought to strike the people dead that keep Him to themselves till it is
+too late for us ever to be helped. There! I won't talk about it. I don't
+care: all I want is quiet, an' I'll have it soon.'</p>
+
+<p>"I saw there was no use then, an' I made up my mind. I'd seen this Mrs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
+Simpson, for Nan had told me when it all happened, an' I'd gone to the
+store on purpose; an' I went straight there. 'I've come from Nan,' I
+said, 'but she doesn't know it. She's a dyin' girl, an' as you helped
+the father I want you to help the daughter. You're a Christian woman,
+an' the only soul belongin' to her, an' the time's come to do
+something.'</p>
+
+<p>"'The father was decent,' she said: 'I've nothing to do with
+street-women.'</p>
+
+<p>"'It's through your own son that she grew up to know no better,' I said,
+for I knew the whole story then, though nobody did when she was down
+there. 'It's for you to give her your hand now, an' not throw it up to
+her, any more'n the Lord when he said, "Go, and sin no more." She's in
+trouble an' sick, and doesn't know what way to turn, an' sore-hearted;
+an' if you would go to her in the right way you might save a soul, for
+then she'd believe people meant what they said.'</p>
+
+<p>"'She's the same to me as dead,' she said. 'I mourned her sharp enough,
+but it ain't in nature to take one again after they've been thought
+dead; an' you know they're straight from corruption itself. There's
+places for her to go if she's tired of wickedness, but I don't want to
+see her bold face, an' her head high, as if she was respectable. An' I
+don't want to be plagued no more. I don't deny I lotted on her before
+she was took away, but I never want to think about her again; so you
+needn't come nor send. I've said my say, an' I hope the Lord will save
+her.'</p>
+
+<p>"'It's good He's more merciful than His creatures,' I said; an' I went
+away more angry than I ever want to get. I couldn't quite make it out&mdash;I
+can't to this day&mdash;how she could mourn so over the child, an' yet never
+have a thought for all the years she'd had to suffer.</p>
+
+<p>"There came a month that everything crowded. I thought of Nan, but
+couldn't go up, till one day Tom Owens came in&mdash;you know him&mdash;an' he
+said, 'It's all up with Charley Calkins.'</p>
+
+<p>"'How?' I said.</p>
+
+<p>"'Smallpox,' he said, 'an' Nan's dropped everything to nurse him. She'd
+left there, they said, an' the woman he brought in to take her place
+cut the minute she found he had the smallpox. He won't live, they say.'</p>
+
+<p>"This was before they were so particular about carrying them off to
+hospital. The house was cleared an' the saloon shut up, but Nan was
+allowed to stay because she'd been exposed anyway, an' it was no use to
+send her off. He had it the worst way, an' he'd scream an' swear he
+wouldn't die, an' strike out at her, though he couldn't see, his face
+and eyes bein' all closed up. It didn't last but a week, and then he
+died, but Nan hadn't taken off her clothes or hardly slept one instant.
+He was stupid at the last, an' when she saw he was gone she fell on the
+floor in a faint; an' when she come to the blood poured from her mouth,
+an' all they could do was to take her off to the hospital. She didn't
+take the smallpox, but it was a good while before she could be let to
+see anybody. When they thought it was safe she sent for me, but it was
+hard to think it could be the same Nan I'd known. Every breath come with
+pain, and she was wasted to a shadow, but she smiled at me an' drew me
+down to kiss her. 'You see, I sha'n't be troubled or make trouble much
+longer,' she said, 'but oh, if I only could rest!'</p>
+
+<p>"Poor soul! She couldn't breathe lyin' down, nor sleep but a bit at a
+time, an' it was awful to have her goin' so, an' she not twenty.</p>
+
+<p>"I knelt down by her. She had a little room to herself, for she had some
+money yet, and I prayed till I couldn't speak for crying. 'Nan, Nan!' I
+said, 'you're goin' straight to the next world, an' you've got to be
+judged. What will you do without a Saviour? Try to think about it.'</p>
+
+<p>"She patted my hand as if I were the one to be quieted. 'Don't bother,'
+she said: 'I don't mind, an' you mustn't. If He's as good as you say
+He'll see that it's all right. I'm too tired to care: I only want to get
+through. There's nothing to live for, an' I'm glad it's 'most over. I
+want you to come every day, for it won't be long.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Let me bring Jerry,' I said, but she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> only laughed. She'd known him at
+his hardest, an' couldn't realize he might be different; but after a
+week or two she let him come, an' she'd lie an' listen with a sort of
+wonder as she watched him. But nothing seemed to take hold of her. She
+looked like a flower lyin' there, an' you'd think her only a child, for
+they'd cut her hair, and it lay in little rings all over her head; an'
+Jerry just cried over her, to think that unless she hearkened she was
+lost. She liked to be read to, but you couldn't make her believe,
+somehow, that any of it was real. 'I'd believe it if I could,' she said,
+'but why should I? I don't see why you do. It sounds good, but it
+doesn't seem to mean anything. Why hasn't anybody ever told me before?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Try to believe, only try!' I'd say. 'Ask God to make you. He can, and
+He will if you only ask;' but all she'd say was, 'I don't seem to care
+enough. How can I? If it is true He will see about it.'</p>
+
+<p>"That was only a day or two before the end. The opium, maybe, hindered
+her thinkin', but she looked quiet an' no sign of trouble between the
+coughing-times. The last night of all I stayed with her. They said she
+would go at daybreak, an' I sat an' watched an' prayed, beggin' for one
+word or sign that the Lord heard us. It never came, though. She opened
+her eyes suddenly from a half sleep, and threw out her hands. I took
+one, but she did not know me. She looked toward the east and smiled.
+'Why! are you coming for me?' she said, and then fell back, but that
+look stayed&mdash;a smile as sweet as was ever on a mortal face. An' that's
+why I never can help sayin', 'Lord have mercy on her!' and do you wonder
+even when I know better? But&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Helen Campbell.</span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>MY TREASURE.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Under the sea my treasure lies&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only a pair of starry eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That looked out from their azure skies<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With innocent wonder, sweet surprise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That they should have strayed from Paradise.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Under the sea lies my treasure low&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Little white hands like flakes of snow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Once soft and warm; and I loved them so!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah! the tide will come and the tide will go,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But their tender touch I shall never know.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Under the sea&mdash;oh, wealth most rare!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are silken tresses of golden hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each amber thread, each lock so fair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gleaming out from the darkness there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the same soft light they used to wear.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Under the sea&mdash;oh, treasure sweet!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lies a curl-crowned head and tiny feet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That in days gone by, when the shadows fleet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were growing long in the darkening street,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Came bounding forth their love to meet.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And I sometimes think, as down by the sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I sit and dream, that there comes to me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From my darling a message that none may see,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Save those who can read love's mystery<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By Nature written on leaf and tree.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Strange things to my spirit-eyes lie bare<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the azure depths of the summer air:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the snowy leaves of the lily fair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gleams her pure white soul, and I compare<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its golden heart to her sunny hair.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The perfume nestling among the leaves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or blown on the wind from the autumn sheaves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is her spirit of love, my soul believes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And while my stricken heart still grieves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That gentle presence its pang relieves.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A shell is cast by the waves at my feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With its wondrous music low and sweet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in its murmuring tones I greet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The voice of my love, while its crimson flush<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From her fair young cheek has stolen the blush.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mid white foam, tossed on the pebbly strand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I catch a glimpse of a waving hand:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis a greeting that well <i>I</i> understand;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But to those who see not the soul of things<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis only the spray which the wild wave flings.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The pearl's rare whiteness, the coral's red,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the brow and the lip of my beautiful dead<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their soft tints stole when her spirit fled;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And it seems to me that sweet words, unsaid<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By my darling, gleam through the light they shed.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thus down by the sea, in the white sunshine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While the winds and the waves their sighs combine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I sit, and wait from my love a sign;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And a message comes to my waiting eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From under the sea where my treasure lies.<br /></span>
+<span class="i27">H. L. <span class="smcap">Leonard</span>.</span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></p>
+<h2>ON SPELLING REFORM.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The agitation for "reform" in English spelling continues, but, so far,
+without involving anything that can be properly called discussion.
+Discussion implies argument on both sides&mdash;a striking by twos. Most of
+the appeals to the public on this subject, whether through the
+newspapers and magazines or on the platform, have been made by the
+advocates of the movement. The other side, if another side there be, has
+been comparatively silent, uttering occasionally only words of dissent.
+I presume this follows a law of Nature: those who favor movement move,
+and those who desire peace keep it and are still. But it ought not to be
+inferred that the noise made by the "spelling reformers" is
+representative of the scholarship of the country, or that the silence of
+the conservatives indicates acquiescence in all the propositions
+suggested and urged by the radicals. There is much that can be said that
+has not been said. Some late announcements on the part of those who
+advocate the evisceration of the English language and literature are of
+a kind to call for some reply. I have no desire, at present, to enter
+into an elaborate discussion of the merits or demerits of the new
+departure in literature. The present agitation is only a skirmish, and
+ought not to be dignified by the title of a battle: whether we shall
+have a battle on this skirmish-line remains to be seen.</p>
+
+<p>In the January number of the <i>Princeton Review</i> there appeared a paper
+from the pen of Professor Francis A. March in commendation of the
+"reform." The professor is one of the most active as well as able of
+those who have spoken on that side, and, while he incidentally and
+modestly crowns Mr. George P. Marsh as chief of the movement, his
+fellow-soldiers, if they are wise, will bestow the crown upon him. In
+the article referred to the professor emphasizes his earnestness by
+securing the printing of his admirable paper in the peculiar orthography
+he advocates. This orthography is practically the same as that advocated
+and contended for by the American Philological Association and the
+Spelling-Reform Association. Any criticism, therefore, of the peculiar
+orthography of the professor's paper is a criticism of the adopted
+orthography of the whole body of "reformers," so far as they are agreed,
+for in some details they still disagree.</p>
+
+<p>The readers of the professor's paper will notice that in a large number
+of words the usual terminal <i>ed</i> is changed to <i>t</i>. This is in
+accordance with one of the rules recommended by the Spelling-Reform
+Association and laid down authoritatively by the American Philological
+Association. The phraseology of the rule is to make the substitution
+where-ever the final <i>ed</i> "has the sound of <i>t</i>." It is to the
+professor's application of this rule that I now desire to call the
+attention of the reader. The "reformers" write <i>broacht, ceast,
+distinguisht, establisht, introdu&ccedil;t, past, prejudi&ccedil;t, pronoun&ccedil;t, rankt,
+pluckt, learnt, redu&ccedil;t, spelt, trickt, uneartht</i>, and assert that they
+write the words as they pronounce them. In the rule given by the A.P.A.
+for the substitution of <i>ed</i> for <i>t</i>, <i>lasht</i> and <i>imprest</i> are given as
+examples.</p>
+
+<p>All of us are undoubtedly aware of the ease with which the sound
+represented by <i>ed</i> can be reduced to a <i>t</i>-sound in vocalization. But
+even if the sound of <i>t</i> is given at the termination of the words named,
+not much is gained by the "reform" in the actual use of the words. On
+the contrary, it adds another tangle in the skein which children at
+school must untangle. It either forms another class of regular verbs, or
+swells the already almost unmanageable list of irregular verbs. In
+either case it is shifting the burden from the shoulders of adults to
+those of children, already, as the reformers tell us, overburdened and
+overworked. When a man really and sincerely asks himself the question,
+"Do I pronounce<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> <i>lashed</i> as though written <i>lasht</i>?" and tests his own
+practice in that respect, it will not take him long to determine that he
+does not know. It requires a very delicate ear to make the
+determination. This may also be said of most of the words quoted above.
+The terminal <i>ed</i> means something: it means what it purports to mean
+when used. The <i>t</i> may have a meaning, but that meaning cannot accompany
+it when it acts as a substitute for <i>ed</i>. The common-sense view would
+be, in cases of doubt, to use letters with a significance you desire to
+convey by their use.</p>
+
+<p>In the paper to which I have referred Professor March informs us that
+"what <i>the scholars</i> want for historical spelling is a simple and
+uniform fonetic system, which shall record the current pronunciation."
+This assumption is not accidental, I think, nor is the spirit of the
+Pharisee confined to Professor March. Nearly all of the advocates of
+this special "reform" assume the prerogative of determining who are and
+who are not "scholars." In the same paper the professor says: "The
+<i>scholars proper</i> have, in truth, lost all patience with the
+etymological objection. 'Save us from such champions!' says Professor
+Whitney: 'they may be allowed to speak for themselves, since they know
+best their own infirmity of back and need of braces: the rest of the
+guild, however, will thank them for nothing.'" Again: "In conclusion, it
+may be observed that it is mainly among <i>half-taught dabblers</i> in
+filology that etymological spelling has found its supporters. <i>All true
+filologists</i> and filological bodies have uniformly denoun&ccedil;t it as a
+monstrous absurdity, both from a practical and a scientific point of
+view." The professor also quotes approvingly Professor Lounsbury as
+saying that the "spelling reform numbers among its advocates <i>every
+linguistic scholar</i> of any eminence whatever." Of course, these
+statements, whether made by Professor March or by the distinguished
+scholars whom he cites, are strong arguments. That the professor so
+considers them is attested by the logical conclusion drawn from them in
+the very next paragraph after the one in which they are given. There he
+says: "It may be taken, then, as certain, and agreed by all whose
+judgment is entitled to consideration, that there are no sound arguments
+against fonetic spelling to be drawn from scientific and historical
+considerations."</p>
+
+<p>We always forgive something to enthusiasts and reformers. They are
+expected to effervesce once in a while, and when they indulge in gush
+and self-appreciation it is taken as a matter of course. Whether or not
+it strengthens or weakens their arguments is yet to be determined. At
+any rate, the exhibit that is made of them and of their intemperance is
+furnished by themselves.</p>
+
+<p>There is an illogical argument for the new spelling drawn from the
+published facts of illiteracy. We are told that the last national census
+reports 5,658,144 persons, ten years of age and over, who cannot read
+and write, and this number is said to be "one-fifth of the whole
+population." The census of 1870 reports a total population of
+38,558,371, and a total of illiterates, ten years of age and over, of
+5,660,074, which is only 14-1/2 per cent. of the total population. This
+is nearer one-seventh than one-fifth. This "one-fifth" the professor
+compares with the number of illiterates in other countries in order to
+bring discredit upon the English language, showing by the comparison
+that there is a larger percentage of illiterates where the English
+language is spoken and written than in non-English Protestant countries.
+He reports illiterates in England at 33 per cent. of the population. "In
+other Protestant countries of Europe they are comparatively few. In
+Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway there are none to speak of; in
+Germany, as a whole, they count 12 per cent., but some of the states
+have none." Professor March asserts that "one of the causes of the
+excessive illiteracy among the English-speaking people is the difficulty
+of the English spelling;" and his argument proceeds on the assumption
+that this is in fact the main cause.</p>
+
+<p>Even if assent be given to the statement<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> that the difficulty attendant
+upon the acquisition of correctness in English orthography is one of the
+causes of English and American illiteracy, the next step is to determine
+the force and efficiency of the cause in that direction; and this
+determination cannot be had on the basis of bald, unguarded and
+extravagant statements such as I have cited. The illiteracy of the
+American people must not be judged by the bare figures given above. The
+census returns furnish data for a more just discrimination. The
+statistician must not forget the item of 777,864 illiterates of foreign
+birth going to swell the grand total. This leaves 4,882,210 native-born
+illiterates&mdash;a percentage of less than 13. Of the native-born
+illiterates reported by the census returns, there are 2,763,991 reported
+as colored. This number is more than one-half the colored population,
+and also over one-half of the whole number of reported native
+illiterates. I think none of the reformers would insist that the
+illiteracy of the colored population ought to be charged to "the
+difficulties of English spelling "&mdash;I hardly need to state why: the
+reason will readily suggest itself to all.</p>
+
+<p>Eliminating from the problem the foreign and colored factors, we find a
+native white population in 1870 of 28,121,816, and native white
+illiterates, of ten years of age and over, to the number of
+2,102,670&mdash;less than 7-1/2 per cent. Of this number of native white
+illiterates, 1,443,956&mdash;two-thirds of the whole&mdash;are reported from the
+States lately known as Slave States. In these States, as is well known,
+there are peculiar reasons for the illiteracy of the white as well as of
+the colored native, outside of any consideration of the difficulty of
+mastering English orthography. This survey takes no account of the
+native children with foreign parents, as it would not materially disturb
+the percentage, nor of the populations of New Mexico, Arizona, Southern
+California and Colorado, all largely settled by Mexicans and Spaniards,
+among whom there is doubtless a larger percentage of illiterates than
+among the same number of native whites in the Northern States. If
+account be taken of all these elements, I think the percentage of
+illiterates proper to be charged up to the English language and American
+institutions would be reduced to about 3-1/4 per cent.</p>
+
+<p>The next consideration is as to the cause of this large percentage of
+illiterates among the native white population of the United States.
+Professor March ascribes it in part to "the difficulties of the English
+spelling," and he adds: "We ar now having ernest testimony to this fact
+from scholars and educators in England." He names Max M&uuml;ller and "Dr.
+Morell, one of Her Majesty's inspectors of schools," and quotes from
+both of them. Dr. Morell states that in some examinations for the civil
+service, out of 1972 failures, "1866 candidates were pluckt for
+spelling; that is, eighteen out of every nineteen who faild, faild in
+spelling." Max M&uuml;ller, as quoted, bears testimony to the fact that in
+the public schools of England 90 per cent. fail "to read with tolerable
+ease and expression a passage from a newspaper, and spell the same with
+tolerable accuracy." This is the substance of the "ernest testimony"
+from "scholars and educators in England." All this testimony has been
+previously given by the same "reformer" and by others without variation
+or corroboration. The facts stated seem to be isolated ones, as well as
+"grand, gloomy and peculiar." One swallow does not make a summer, nor do
+one eminent philologist and one uneminent educator make "scholars and
+educators." But when the testimony is carefully viewed, what does it
+amount to? Some of the very elements necessary in the consideration of
+the testimony are wanting. What was the extent of the failures by the
+candidates for civil service? Did they miss one word or more? Were they
+more deficient in spelling than in other branches? Of the 90 per cent.
+of the public-school pupils who failed, what is the class composing
+those pupils? Were they as deficient in other branches as in spelling?
+What were the newspaper passages selected for trial? What is meant by
+"tolerable ease and expression" and "tolerable accuracy"? According to
+the testimony itself, the reference of Max M&uuml;ller is to the "new<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
+schools" established since the late extension of education in England.
+Confessedly, then, this applies to classes of pupils who had formerly
+been deprived of educational advantages and privileges. It is a wonder
+that 10 per cent. were successful. The testimony furnished is more
+"ernest" than valuable.</p>
+
+<p>The state of education in Protestant countries where other languages
+than the English are spoken is taken as a conclusive argument for the
+efficiency of phonetic orthography. Denmark, Norway, Sweden and
+Switzerland are named as shining exemplars in this regard. It is because
+the languages of those countries are orthographic models that the people
+are so highly educated. The general fact is incontrovertible that among
+those people there is less illiteracy than among those who speak the
+English language. As Switzerland has no national language, the Swiss
+people should not have been named except in company with those others
+whose languages they use. But the bare fact of the smaller percentage of
+illiteracy among the people above named is not conclusive as to the
+retarding and depressing influence which the "difficulties of English
+spelling" have upon the spread of education among the American people.
+In Denmark attendance upon school for seven years by every child of
+school age is compulsory. The number of children of school age for 1876
+was 200,761, while the number in attendance upon the public schools was
+194,198, the attendance being 96 per cent. of the whole number of
+children of school age. In addition to the attendance upon the public
+schools, there were 13,994 in attendance upon private schools: some of
+these evidently were above or below school age. We thus see how
+efficiently the compulsory system is enforced. This system is not new to
+that country, but has been in existence for many years, and the results
+seem to justify the statement in the <i>Report of the Commissioner of
+Education for 1871</i>, that "even among the lower classes a remarkable
+knowledge of general history and geography, but more especially of
+Scandinavian literature and history," is found.</p>
+
+<p>In Norway, as in Denmark, from the eighth to the fifteenth year
+attendance upon school is obligatory. In 1866, of a total of 212,137
+country children of school age, 206,623, or more than 97 per cent. of
+the whole, were in attendance at school. In the towns and cities less
+than 1 per cent. failed to attend school. In Sweden compulsory
+attendance upon school is the rule. In 1868, of the whole number of
+children of school age, the average attendance amounted to 97 per cent.</p>
+
+<p>There is no general or national system of common-school instruction in
+Switzerland. Each canton regulates its own schools. There, as in
+Denmark, Norway and Sweden, attendance upon schools is made compulsory.
+In 1870 the attendance of children between six and thirteen years of age
+was between 95 and 96 per cent. of the whole school population.</p>
+
+<p>Now, what kind of a school system have we in the United States? Here, as
+in Switzerland, there is no general or national system of school
+instruction. Each State regulates its own schools in all details. In
+1870 the total school population, excluding the Territories, in the
+United States was 14,093,778; the number actually enrolled in the public
+schools was 8,881,848, or 63 per cent. of the whole; and the average
+daily attendance upon the public schools was 4,886,289, or a little over
+34-1/2 per cent. of the school population. An inclusion of the
+Territories in the computation does not vary the percentage in any
+appreciable degree. In the Northern States only, excluding the
+Territories, and excluding also Minnesota and Wisconsin, whose returns I
+have not at hand, there were 8,364,841 school population, while the
+average daily attendance was only 3,720,133, a trifle over 44 per cent.</p>
+
+<p>In the United States there is practically no compulsory attendance upon
+school. Schools are provided by the State, and the children attend or
+refrain from attendance as suits the convenience or wish of the pupils
+or their parents. That compulsory attendance upon school is productive
+of a wider and more thorough diffusion of knowledge is probably conceded
+by all. At least, educators so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> urge. What would Professor March have?
+Does he expect to find education as thorough and general among a people
+of whose school population less than one-half are in usual attendance at
+school, and less than two-thirds even enrolled as occasional attendants
+at school, as among a people with whom over 95 per cent. of the school
+population are in constant and habitual attendance? When we consider the
+published school statistics of this nation, it is no wonder that about
+one-seventh of the whole are unable to read and write. Shall we give no
+credit to compulsory systems of education, and still insist that the
+illiteracy of the United States is caused in any appreciable degree by
+the "difficulties of English spelling"?</p>
+
+<p>Early in 1879, Professor Edward North assured us that the Italians and
+Spaniards have discarded <i>ph</i> for <i>f</i> in <i>philosophy</i> and its fellows.
+Professor March gleefully records that "the Italians, like the
+Spaniards, have returned to <i>f</i>. They write and print <i>filosofia</i>" for
+<i>philosophia</i>, and <i>tisica</i> for <i>phthisica</i>. Professor Lounsbury, in his
+elaborate articles in <i>Scribner</i> lately, commends the Italians for
+writing <i>tisico</i> and the Spaniards for writing <i>tisica</i>. These of course
+are commendations of those peoples for the simplicity of their
+orthography, and they are mentioned as worthy examples for us. Yet we
+are not advised by either of the three professors named that the
+Italians and Spaniards are for that reason gaining upon the English
+people in intelligence, educational progress and culture. No statistics
+are advanced disclosing the narrow percentage of illiteracy found in
+Italy and Spain, and a comparison made between that narrow percentage
+and the wide percentage already advertised as existing in
+English-speaking states. If "the difficulties of English spelling" be a
+serious cause of illiteracy in England and the United States, the
+simplicity of the Italian and Spanish spelling ought to be a cause of
+high proficiency in literary and educational attainments among the
+people of Italy and Spain. A commendation of those two nations for their
+taste in discarding "Greek orthography" to be effective ought to be
+supplemented with some evidence of the usefulness of that operation.
+Unless so supplemented, the commendation can have no weight as an
+argument. The Anglo-Saxon race has not been accustomed to follow the
+Latins in literary and educational matters. The past and present
+condition of those two countries affords no guarantee that their
+adoption of the so-called simpler spelling is commendable. There are
+persons whose corroboration of a statement adds no weight to it with
+their neighbors. It adds no force to the arguments of the "reformers"
+that the Italians and Spaniards endorse them.</p>
+
+<p>The demand for "spelling reform" is based upon the assumption that the
+pronunciation constitutes the word&mdash;in other words, that the real word
+is the breath by means of which it is uttered. In the word <i>wished</i>
+philologists assure us that the letters <i>e d</i> are remains of <i>did</i>, as
+if it were written <i>did wish</i>; and it certainly has that sense. It is
+proposed to substitute <i>t</i> for the <i>ed</i>, because, we are told by the
+"reformers," the <i>t</i> represents the sound given to those two letters. Of
+course the <i>t</i> stands for nothing: it does not represent any idea. It is
+only a character, and its pronunciation only a breath, without any
+significance. The new word cannot mean <i>did wish</i>. The "reformers" must
+contend that <i>wisht</i> is the real word, or their position cannot be
+maintained for an instant. If the word still remains <i>wished</i>&mdash;"<i>did
+wish</i>"&mdash;though pronounced <i>wisht</i>, their proposition to conform the
+spelling to the pronunciation is laughable. There can be no conformation
+and the old words remain. Whenever a change is made in a single letter
+of a word, the word is broken: it is no longer the same word. The new
+form becomes a new word, and there can be no objection to any one giving
+to it any significance he chooses. In a certain sense, and also to a
+certain extent, letters are representative, and are not the real words.
+Before the arts of writing and printing were invented the sound of
+course constituted the representative of the idea sought to be conveyed.
+The invention of the arts of writing and printing brought into use other
+representatives<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> of ideas. The cuneiform characters and the
+hieroglyphics were representatives of ideas, though there could be no
+pronunciation of them. Letters came into use as representatives merely.
+In an age of printing it is hardly correct to say that they are only
+used to signify sounds. They are now more than that: they have become
+more important than the sounds even. They are now representatives of
+ideas, and not of sound. Modifications of pronunciation are taking
+place, and there are variations in the pronunciation of many words, but
+the word as written and printed is the arbiter.</p>
+
+<p>In the Sanscrit we find the verb <i>kan</i> to see, and the later word <i>gna</i>,
+to know, as the result of seeing. The words are practically spelled
+alike, each beginning with a guttural sound. The latter could only have,
+at first, the idea of acquiring or possessing knowledge by sight. It is
+evident that the Greek &#947;&#953;&#947;&#957;&#969;&#963;&#967;&#969; and the Latin <i>gnosco</i> came
+directly from the Sanscrit <i>gna</i>, after the vowel between the guttural
+<i>g</i>, or <i>k</i> and <i>n</i>, had been eliminated; and it is also evident that
+the <i>g</i>, or guttural sound, with which <i>gna</i> and its Greek and Latin
+children began, was vocalized. The other branch of the Aryan family
+retained the vowel between the guttural sound and the terminal <i>n</i>.
+Hence we have the Gothic <i>kunnan, k&aelig;nna</i>, Anglo-Saxon <i>cunnan</i>, German
+<i>kennen</i>, to examine, to know. Hence, also, our <i>can</i>, to know, to be
+able; <i>cunning</i>, knowing, skilful; and <i>know</i>, to perceive, to have
+knowledge of. While we pronounce <i>know</i> without the guttural sound, the
+word itself and the significance it embodies necessitate the continued
+use of the <i>k</i>. The sound of <i>know</i>, as we use it, gives no idea of
+sight or of knowledge or of ability. When we hear it articulated, and we
+understand that <i>know</i> is the word meant, we then recognize the sense
+intended to be conveyed. We are able to do this because of our ability
+to construct and give arbitrary significance to new words, and to
+transfer the sense of an old word to one newly formed. When any word is
+used in speech of which the pronunciation does not correspond with the
+letters with which the word is written, we instinctively image the
+written or printed word in the mind, and others apprehend the sense
+intended. I am aware of a certain answer that may be made to
+this&mdash;namely, that illiterate persons are able to understand a word only
+from its sound as it falls on their ears; but I am speaking now of a
+civilized language as used by a civilized people, and illiterates and
+their language do not come under this purview.</p>
+
+<p>The movement inaugurated by Professor March and his associates
+contemplates the displacement of the <i>k</i> or guttural sound from <i>know</i>
+and <i>knowledge</i>, both in writing and speaking. They say, in effect, if
+not in so many words, that because there is no guttural sound in the
+pronunciation, therefore there is none in the word. Some people say
+<i>again</i>, pronouncing the word as it is spelled: others say <i>agen</i>, as, I
+believe, Professor March does. These two classes mean the same thing,
+but it is quite evident that they do not say the same thing. <i>Ai</i> cannot
+be the equivalent of <i>e</i>. To so hold would be to make "confusion worse
+confounded" in English orthography. By one class of literary people
+<i>neither</i> is pronounced as though the <i>e</i> were absent, and by another
+class as though the <i>i</i> were not present. No one, I think, will contend
+for the identity, or even equivalence, of <i>i</i> and <i>e</i>. If not identical
+or equivalent, they must be different. If <i>ai</i> is different from <i>e</i>,
+then <i>again</i> and <i>agen</i> cannot be the same word, and if <i>i</i> and <i>e</i> are
+neither identical nor equivalent, <i>nither</i> and <i>neether</i> are two
+different words. The logic of the "reformers" would bring the utmost
+confusion into the language. It would make two separate words identical
+in significance. It would make into one word with four different
+meanings the four words <i>right, rite, write, wright.</i> The words <i>signet</i>
+and <i>signature</i> are formed from the stem <i>sign</i>, and yet the stem when
+standing alone has a different vocalization from what it has when used
+in the derivative words. By the logic of the "reformers" the word <i>sign</i>
+when used alone is not the same as the same letters, arranged in the
+same order, when used in <i>signature, signet, resignation</i> and the like.
+The word is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> changed, but the original significance remains. When a
+person responds, even in writing, "It is me," grammarians say he is
+incorrect&mdash;that he ought to say "I." But he means the person and thing
+he would mean if he said "I." He simply spells "I" in a different way.
+Is he not just as correct as he who writes <i>no</i> when he means <i>know</i>? or
+he who writes <i>filosofer</i> when he means <i>philosopher</i>?</p>
+
+<p>But Professor March dogmatically says that "fonetic spelling does not
+mean that every one is to write as he pronounces or as he thinks he
+pronounces. There ar all sorts of people. We must hav something else
+written than 'confessions of provincials.'" This may be understood as
+modifying the idea expressed earlier in the same paper, that the proper
+function of writing "is truthfully to represent the present speech." But
+the difficulties to be encountered in an effort to make the present
+speech homogeneous will baffle the wisdom of the reformers. I will not
+answer the question now&mdash;I will only ask it: What is the present speech?
+Who is to determine that? "The scholars formally recognize that there is
+and ought to be a standard speech and standard writing." I do not quite
+seize the idea embodied in the above-quoted sentences about writing as
+we think we pronounce and about "confessions of provincials." We may
+agree that there ought to be, probably, a standard speech, both spoken
+and written. That we have the standard written speech must be confessed,
+or did have until Professor March and his colaborers began the
+publication of their ideas in "bad spelling." The spoken speech is far
+from homogeneity. Some of the most pretentious scholars assume that we
+have a standard of pronunciation. That the standard is not adhered to,
+and is therefore, to all intents and purposes, no standard at all, is
+evident. The learned or college-bred use one pronunciation, and for that
+class that is the standard. Those who are deficient in education do not
+follow that standard. As the educated seem to drift naturally to centres
+of population, there is assumed to be a city standard and a country
+standard of pronunciation. The professor tells us that the country
+standard must be abolished, the city standard adopted, and then the new
+era will open out in beauty. Or does he mean, as his words are open to
+this meaning, that a spoken word is not <i>the</i> word unless it is spoken
+in accordance with the city or college-bred standard? But sound is
+sound, by whomsoever uttered, and if the word is mere sound a provincial
+can make words as well as any one else. The proposition is, <i>the</i> word
+is the word spoken and not the word written, unless the word is spoken
+by a provincial. To be <i>the</i> word, it must be intoned and articulated in
+accordance with the intonation and articulation of the <i>literati</i>. If
+this is the logical outcome of the position taken by the "spelling
+reformers," then we know our soundings.</p>
+
+<p>We speak of <i>progress</i> in connection with intellectual, moral,
+religious, social and political matters and civilization. In the use of
+the word we discard its true meaning, "stepping forward" in a physical
+sense. We cannot have an idea that the mind or the morals or the manners
+take steps. So when we say we will consider a matter we do not
+necessarily mean that two or more of us will <i>sit together</i> about the
+matter. When we meet for <i>deliberation</i> there is no process of weighing
+intended, no proposal to use the scales, in arriving at a conclusion in
+the matter we have in mind. We <i>say</i> "stepping forward," "sitting
+together" and "weighing," but we <i>mean</i> something else. When Professor
+Whitney, in the quotation I have given in the early part of this paper,
+says of the spelling conservatives, "They know best their own infirmity
+of back," he has no idea that the back has anything to do with their
+refusal to follow him in his chimerical ramble after an ideal
+orthography. When Professor March, in the paper from which I have
+quoted, says that "a host of scholars are pursuing the historical study
+of the English language," he means something more than, and different
+from, what his words indicate, and he certainly doesn't mean what his
+words do indicate. The matter of pursuit is altogether one of physics.
+These words of an intellectual significance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> which I have noted are so
+used because we have no words in our language which have meanings such
+as those we attach to them. We are obliged to take words of a physical
+and material significance and use them as intimations of the sense we
+wish to convey. As men take a material substance&mdash;gold, silver, ivory,
+wood or stone&mdash;and use it as an image or symbol of the deity they
+worship, so we use words of a material sense to express, in some faint
+degree, the intellectual and moral ideas we desire to disclose.</p>
+
+<p>The bald statement, expressed or implied, that the sounds we produce in
+our attempts to utter a word constitute the true word, requires some
+material modification, but to what extent it is not for me now to
+discuss. When that necessity for modification is admitted by the
+reformers, it is for them to survey its limits. They are the aggressors
+in the contest that is precipitated. They must outline and define their
+own case.</p>
+
+<p>There are many considerations favorable to a modification of the present
+spelling of several classes of words. A reform is needed, and must come,
+but it will not come, and ought not to come, with the character and to
+the extent desired by the "reformers." A reform that shall make the
+spelling better, and not merely make it over, should be aided by all
+admirers of the English language. The just limitations of that reform
+have not been indicated yet by any of the "reformers." That those
+limitations will soon be surveyed and marked I do not doubt.</p>
+
+<p class="right">M. B. C. <span class="smcap">True</span>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>AN OPEN LOOK AT THE POLITICAL SITUATION.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Macaulay, in describing the rise of the two great parties which have
+alternately governed England during the last two centuries, traces the
+division to a fundamental distinction which "had always existed and
+always must exist," causing the human mind "to be drawn in opposite
+directions by the charm of habit and the charm of novelty," and
+separating mankind into two classes&mdash;those who are "anxious to preserve"
+and those who are "eager to reform." It seems to us extremely doubtful
+whether this theory, so neat and compact, so simple to state and so easy
+to illustrate, would suffice to explain all the struggles, great and
+small, that have agitated society, varying in character and
+circumstances, and ranging from fervent emulation to violent
+collision&mdash;from the ferment of ideas which is the surest sign of
+vitality to the selfish and aimless convulsions that portend
+dissolution. Applied to that condition of things by which it was
+suggested, the theory may be allowed to stand. The history of
+parliamentary government in England, in recent times at least, presents
+a tolerably fair example of a contest between two parties composed
+respectively of men who desired and men who resisted innovation&mdash;of
+those who looked forward to an ideal future and those who looked back to
+an ideal past. That the former should triumph in the long run lay in the
+very necessity of things; but, whatever may be thought of the changes
+that have taken place, no one would venture to assert that the contest
+has ever been conducted with purely selfish aims; that no great
+principles were involved in it; that the general mass of the voters have
+been the mere tools of artful leaders; that appeals to the reason, or at
+least to the interests or the prejudices, of the whole nation or of
+different classes have been wanting on either side; that at any crisis
+there has been no discussion of measures, past or prospective, no talk
+of any question concerning the honor or welfare of the country; or that
+victory has ever been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> achieved or contemplated by the employment of
+mere cunning or fraud. But in a state of things of which one might
+assert all this without fear of contradiction the existence of two
+parties, however evenly balanced, could hardly be accounted for by the
+sway in opposite directions of the charms of habit and of novelty and
+the natural antagonism between men who are anxious to preserve and men
+who are eager to reform. That such a state of things may actually exist
+there can be no doubt, since, if history had no example to offer in the
+past, one which is equally undeniable and conspicuous is presented by
+the United States at the present moment. Here is a people divided into
+two great parties, neither of which is anxious to preserve what the
+other would seek to destroy, or eager to reform anything which the other
+would leave untouched; no principle involving any question or policy of
+the present or the future is inscribed on the banner of either; no
+discussions are held, no appeals are put forth, with the object of
+convincing opponents, stimulating supporters, creating public opinion or
+arousing public sentiment: a great struggle is at hand, and all that any
+one knows about the nature of it is, that it concerns the possession of
+the government, and that the chiefs of the winning faction will reward
+as many as possible of their most active adherents by confirming them in
+office or appointing them to office&mdash;this being the one feature of the
+matter in which the "charm of habit" and "the charm of novelty" have a
+visible influence.</p>
+
+<p>We shall probably be told in reply that this state of things is only
+momentary; that there is now a suspension of arms preparatory to the
+decisive conflict; that on each side, while the great host of warriors
+is at rest, the chiefs are in consultation, counting up their resources,
+preparing the plan of battle&mdash;above all, selecting the generalissimo;
+and that when these arrangements are completed and the time of action
+draws near the trumpets will give forth no uncertain sound, banners
+emblazoned with the most heart-stirring devices will be advanced, and
+we shall fall into line according as our temperaments and sympathies
+incline us to join with those who are "anxious to preserve" or with
+those who are "eager to reform." It is of course certain that a few
+weeks hence the aspect will have changed in some respects: we shall have
+been told the names of the "candidates" whom we are to support or
+oppose; we shall hear all that can be learned or imagined about their
+characters and acts, and see them painted by turns as angels and demons;
+we shall also be reminded of the traditions which they represent or are
+figured as representing, and shall be assured that certain shibboleths
+and watchwords should be the objects of our veneration and certain
+others of our abhorrence, and that on our choice between them will
+depend the ruin or salvation of the country. But we shall be no wiser
+then than we are now in regard to any one measure or set of measures
+affecting the welfare of the nation, and tending either to preserve or
+to reform, which one party proposes to carry out and the other to
+reject. The proclamations of each will be full of promises and
+disavowals, but these, it is very certain, will not touch a single
+principle of the least importance which will be disputed by the other.
+Each party will parade its "record," its glorious achievements in the
+past, when it carried the country triumphantly through dangers in which
+the other party had involved it; but on neither side will any
+distinctive line of policy be enunciated, for the simple reason that on
+neither side has any distinctive line of policy been conceived or even
+thought of. Finally, it is not at all certain that the battle will be
+decided by the usual and regular methods of political warfare&mdash;that "the
+will of the majority" will be allowed to express itself or suffered to
+prevail&mdash;that fraudulent devices or actual violence may not ultimately
+determine the result.</p>
+
+<p>The inquiry naturally suggests itself how this state of things has been
+brought about&mdash;above all, whether it is, as many intelligent persons
+seem to suspect, an unavoidable outgrowth of democratic institutions.
+This, indeed, is a question important not only to us, but to all the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+civilized nations of the world, for there is nothing more certain in
+regard to the present tendencies of civilization than that they are
+setting rapidly and irresistibly toward the general adoption of
+democratic forms of government. The oldest and greatest of the European
+nations, after trying almost every conceivable system, has returned, not
+so much from a deliberate preference as from the breakdown of every
+other, to that which had twice before failed as an experiment, but which
+now gives fair promise of successful and permanent operation&mdash;a republic
+based on universal suffrage. In many other countries what is virtually
+the same system in a somewhat different form seems to be firmly
+established, and in these the ever-potent example of France may be
+expected at some more or less remote conjuncture to bring about the
+final change that shall make the form and the name coincide with the
+reality. England, which at one time led the van in this movement, has
+been outstripped by several of the continental nations, but its
+constant, though somewhat zigzag, advances in the same direction cannot
+be doubted, while community of race and former relations make the
+comparison between its condition and prospects and those of the United
+States more mutually interesting and instructive than any that could be
+instituted between either and another foreign country.</p>
+
+<p>We are aided in making this comparison by a lecture delivered recently
+before the Law Academy of Philadelphia, and since published as a
+pamphlet, in which form we hope it may obtain the wide circulation and
+general attention which it well merits. In a rapid sketch of the
+development and present working of the English constitution the author,
+Judge Hare, shows how the government, which, in theory at least, was
+originally a personal one, has come to be parliamentary and in the
+strictest sense popular, that branch of the legislature which is elected
+by the people having raised itself from a subordinate position "to be
+the hinge on which all else depends, controlling the House of Lords,
+selecting the ministers and wielding through them the power of the
+Crown." Hence a complete harmony, which whenever it is broken is
+instantly restored, between the executive and the legislature, the
+latter in turn being the organ of the public sentiment, which acts
+through unobstructed channels and can neither be defied nor evaded. In
+America, on the other hand, to say nothing of those organic provisions
+of the Constitution which render the executive and the two branches of
+the legislature mutually independent, and sometimes, consequently, out
+of harmony with each other, divergent in their action and liable to an
+absolute deadlock, the method by which it was directly intended to
+secure the result that has been fortuitously obtained in
+England&mdash;namely, the selection of an executive by a deliberative
+assembly chosen by the people&mdash;has been practically subverted and its
+purpose utterly frustrated. The Electoral Colleges do not elect, but
+merely report the result of an election. This, on the surface, is a
+change in the direction of a more complete democracy. What was devised
+as a check on the popular impulse of the moment has broken down, and the
+people have taken into their own hands the mission they were expected to
+entrust to a small representative body. But, while thus assuming an
+apparently absolute freedom of choice, they virtually, and we may say
+necessarily, surrendered to small, nominally representative, bodies the
+designation of the persons between whom the choice must be made. These
+bodies, unknown to the Constitution, not elected or convoked or
+regulated by any processes or forms of law, have taken upon themselves
+all the functions of the electors, except that it is left to the people
+to throw the casting vote. Now, whatever may be thought of the actual
+workings of this system, it seems to us to be in itself the result of a
+change as natural and legitimate as any that has taken place in the
+practice of the English constitution. The Electoral College was one of
+those devices which are theoretically simple and beautiful, but which
+have never worked beneficially since the world began; and we have
+perhaps some reason to be grateful that it was virtually<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> superseded
+before it had time to become the focus of intrigue and corruption which
+was otherwise its inevitable fate. Since the choice of a President could
+not be remitted to one or both Houses of Congress&mdash;which would have been
+the least objectionable plan&mdash;and has devolved upon the people, some
+previous process of sifting and nominating is indispensable in order
+that there may be a real and effective election; and we do not see that
+any method of accomplishing this object could have been devised more
+suitable in itself or more conformable to the general character of our
+political system than that which has been adopted. Conventions
+representing the great mass of the electors and various shades of
+opinion might be counted upon to select the most eligible
+candidates&mdash;eligible, that is to say, in the sense of having the best
+chance amongst the members of their respective parties of being elected.
+For a long period this system worked sufficiently well. If the ablest
+men were not put forward, this was understood to be because they were
+not also the most popular. If the mass of the voters were not
+represented in the conventions, this was attributed to their own
+indifference or negligence. If a split occurred, leading to the
+nomination of different candidates by the same party, this was the
+result of a division of sentiment on some great question, and might be
+considered a healthy indication&mdash;a proof that the interests, real or
+supposed, of the country or some section of the country were the objects
+of prime consideration.</p>
+
+<p>We do not, therefore, agree with those who hold that our institutions
+have deteriorated, or with those who think that democracy has proved a
+failure. On the contrary, we believe that a simpler democratic system,
+with fewer checks and balances, would be an improvement on our present
+Constitution. The framers of that Constitution had two apprehensions
+constantly before their minds&mdash;one, that of a military usurper
+overthrowing popular freedom; the other, that of an insurrectionary
+populace overthrowing law and government. Experience has shown that
+neither of these dangers could be realized in a country and with a
+population like ours: the elements of them do not exist, nor are the
+occasions in the least likely to arise. The two great evils to which we
+are exposed are a breakdown of national unity and a decay of political
+life. The former evil&mdash;resulting from the magnitude of the country, the
+conflict of interests in its different sections, the State organizations
+and semi-sovereignty, and the consequent lack of that strong
+centralization of administrative powers and functions which, however
+much of a bugbear to many people's imaginations, is indispensable to a
+complete nationality&mdash;has threatened us in the past and may be expected
+to threaten us in the future. The latter evil threatens us now.</p>
+
+<p>If we turn to England, we see political life in its fullest vigor. The
+recent election called forth nearly the entire force of the voting
+population, and the contest was carried on with well-directed vigor and
+amid almost unparalleled excitement. Questions affecting both domestic
+and foreign policy, and felt to be vital by the whole community, were
+ardently, persistently and minutely discussed in public meetings and at
+the hustings; and the general nature of the issue indicated with
+sufficient clearness the maintenance of the old division throughout the
+bulk of the nation between a party anxious to preserve and a party eager
+to reform. Men of the highest character and distinction in every walk of
+life were among the most ardent participants in the struggle; but no
+crowds of office-holders and office-seekers opposed each other <i>en
+masse</i> or were prominent in the struggle, the former having as a class
+nothing to fear, and the latter as a class nothing to hope, from the
+result. So far was the leader of the opposition from being suspected of
+a mere selfish desire to grasp the position to which in case of victory
+his pre-eminent ability and activity entitled him that it was altogether
+doubtful whether he would be willing to accept it. He and all the other
+men who marshalled or exhorted the opposing lines stood forth as the
+acknowledged representatives of certain principles and public measures,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
+and in that capacity alone were they assailed or defended. The contest
+was decided by strictly legal methods; no suspicion existed as to the
+inviolability of the ballot-boxes or the correctness and validity of the
+returns; and the cases in which corrupt or undue influence was charged
+were reserved for the adjudication of impartial tribunals.</p>
+
+<p>No one supposes that the impending struggle in the United States will be
+of this nature. There is no question before the country involving the
+policy of the government or the interests of the nation. There are no
+leaders who are the representatives of any principle or idea. The ardor
+of the contest will be confined to the men whose individual interests
+are directly or indirectly at stake: the management of the contest will
+be wholly in their hands, and no security will be felt as to the
+legality of the result. Whatever display of popular enthusiasm may be
+made will be chiefly of a factitious nature. Such excitement as may be
+felt will be to a large extent of the kind which is awakened by a "big
+show" or an athletic contest. The general mass of the voters will no
+doubt fall into line in response to signals and cries which, though they
+have lost their original meaning, still retain a certain efficacy, but a
+great falling off from the old fervor and discipline will, we venture to
+think, be almost everywhere apparent. More intelligent persons will
+either stand aloof with conscious powerlessness or strike feebly and
+wildly from a sense of embitterment. The energy put forth will indicate
+disease rather than health; the activity exhibited will be not so much
+that of a great organism as of the parasites that are preying on it.</p>
+
+<p>It cannot be denied that there is in this country a natural tendency
+toward political stagnation. With the exception of slavery and the
+questions arising from it&mdash;which fill, it is true, a large space in our
+history, but which must be considered abnormal in their origin&mdash;there
+has never been any great and potent cause of dissension, such as rises
+periodically in almost every country in Europe, setting class against
+class, changing the form or character of the government and shaking the
+foundations of society. In England a gradual revolution has been always
+going on, and there have been several struggles even in the present
+century where a popular insurrection loomed in the background and was
+averted only by concession. Our institutions, on the contrary, have
+undergone no change and been exposed to no danger in any fundamental
+point. They were accepted by the whole people, and their stability was a
+subject of national pride. There were two great parties, each of which
+scented in every measure projected by the other a design to unsettle the
+balance between the States and the general government, but both claimed
+to be the guardians of the Constitution, and their mutual rancor was
+founded mainly on jealousy. But for the existence of slavery, and the
+inevitable antagonism provoked by it, there must have been a constant
+decrease of interest in political questions as it became more apparent
+that these could not affect the freedom and security which, coupled with
+the natural advantages of the country, afforded the fullest scope and
+strongest stimulant to industrial activity. The extinction of slavery
+was the cutting away of an excrescence: the wound under a proper
+treatment was sure to heal, and even under unwise treatment Nature has
+been doing her work until only a scar remains. Painful, too, as was the
+operation, its success has given the clearest proof of the health and
+vigor of our system, thus increasing the tendency to political
+inactivity and an over-exertion of energy in other directions. This in
+itself seems not to be a matter for alarm: if the latent strength be
+undiminished we can dispense with displays of mere nervous excitement.
+And, in point of fact, the latent strength is, we believe, undiminished;
+only, there is no general consciousness that it needs to be put forth,
+still less any general agreement as to how it should be put forth.</p>
+
+<p>What has happened is, that not only has the stream of political activity
+been growing languid, but its channel is becoming choked. The noisome
+atmosphere that exhales from it causes delicate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> people to avert their
+nostrils, timid people to apprehend a universal malaria, and many people
+of the same and other classes to assert that the sluices are not merely
+defective, but constructed on a plan totally and fatally wrong. Some
+bold and sagacious spirits have, however, taken the proper course in
+such cases by examining the obstructions and determining their nature
+and origin. According to their report, the difficulty lies not in any
+general unsoundness of the works, but in the failure to detect and stop
+a side issue from certain foul subterranean regions, the discharge from
+which becomes copious and offensive in proportion as the regular flood
+is feeble and low. In plainer words, we are told that the mode in which
+places in the public service are filled and held has made the active
+pursuit of politics a mere trade, attracting the basest cupidities,
+conducted by the most shameless methods, and putting the control of
+public affairs, directly or indirectly, into impure and incompetent
+hands. This view has been so fully elaborated, and the facts that
+confirm it are so abundant and notorious, that further argument is
+unnecessary. It is equally clear that the state of things thus briefly
+described has no necessary connection with democratic institutions. The
+spread of democracy in Europe has been attended by a gradual
+purification in the political atmosphere. The system of "patronage" had
+its origin in oligarchy, and wherever it is found oligarchy must exist
+in reality if not in name. Instead of being an inherent part of our
+institutions, it is as much an excrescence, an abnormal feature, as
+slavery was; but, unlike that, it might be removed with perfect safety
+and by the simplest kind of operation.</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, is a question worthy to come before the nation as an issue
+of the first magnitude. Here is a thing affecting the interests of the
+whole country which some men are anxious to preserve and which others
+are eager to reform. It remains only to consider how it can best be
+brought before the nation.</p>
+
+<p>We shall perhaps be told that it is already before the nation; that the
+account we have given of the nature of the approaching contest is
+incorrect or incomplete; that on the skirts of the two parties is a body
+of "Independents," carrying the banner of Reform and strong enough to
+decide the contest and give the victory to whichever party will adopt
+that standard as its own.</p>
+
+<p>Now, we have to remark that the tactics thus proposed have been tried
+twice before. Eight years ago the Reformers allied themselves with the
+Democratic party, which accepted their leader&mdash;chosen, apparently,
+because he was neither a Reformer nor a Democrat&mdash;and the result was not
+only defeat, but disgrace, with disarray along the whole of the combined
+line. Four years ago they adhered to the Republican party, having
+secured, by a compromise, the nomination of Mr. Hayes. Apart from the
+fact that Mr. Hayes was not elected, but obtained the position which he
+holds through, we will say, "the accident of an accident," his
+possession of the Presidency has not advanced the cause of Reform by a
+hair's-breadth. We do not need to discuss his appointments or his views
+or his consistency: it is sufficient to say that he has had neither the
+power nor the opportunity to institute Reform, and that no President,
+while other things are unchanged, <i>can</i> have that power and opportunity.
+The truth is, that there is a great confusion, both as to the object
+they have to aim at and as to the means of accomplishing it, in the
+minds of the Reformers. They talk and act continually as if their sole
+and immediate object were to secure the appointment to office of men of
+decent character and ability, and as if the election of a particular
+candidate for the Presidency, or even the defeat of a particular
+candidate, would afford a sufficient guarantee on this point. They are
+"ready to vote for any Republican nominee but Grant," and, in case of
+his nomination, to vote, we suppose, for any Democratic nominee but
+Tilden&mdash;certainly for Mr. Bayard. It may be safely admitted that no
+possible candidate for the Presidency enjoys a higher reputation for
+probity and general fitness for the place than Mr. Bayard&mdash;one reason,
+unhappily,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> why he is not likely to be called upon to fill it. But,
+supposing him to be raised to it, what is one of the first uses he may
+be expected to make of it if not to turn out the solid mass of
+Republican office-holders and fill their places with Democrats? If Mr.
+Hayes, with whom the Reformers have been at least partially satisfied,
+had succeeded to a Democratic administration, can it be doubted that he
+would have made a similar change in favor of the Republicans? Is not
+every President bound by fealty to his party, consequently by a regard
+for his honor and reputation, to perpetuate a system which the true aim
+of Reform is to abolish?</p>
+
+<p>Even if we should concede, what it is impossible to believe, that a
+President personally irreproachable might be trusted to make no unfit
+appointments, this would not reach the source of the evils of which we
+have to complain, which lies in the <i>method</i> by which appointments are
+made and in the <i>tenure</i> by which they are held. So long as the system
+of "patronage" and "rotation in office" prevails, little real
+improvement even in the civil service can be looked for. But improvement
+of the civil service, important as it is in itself, is an insignificant
+object of aspiration compared with the general purification of political
+life, the elevation of the public sentiment, the creation of a school of
+statesmanship in that arena which is now only a mart for hucksters,
+bargaining and wrangling, drowning all discussions and impeding all
+transactions of a legitimate nature. The class who fill that arena and
+block every avenue to it cannot be dispossessed so long as the system
+which furnishes the capital and material for their traffic remains
+unchanged. It is a matter of demonstration that if the civil service
+were put on the same footing as in England and other European countries,
+the machinery by which parties are now governed, not led, public spirit
+stifled, not animated, legislation misdirected or reduced to impotence,
+and "politics" and "politician" made by-words of reproach and objects of
+contempt, must decay and perish. We are not setting up any ideal state
+of things as the result, but only such as shall show a conformity
+between our political life and our social life, exhibiting equal defects
+but also equal merits in both, affording the same scope to honorable
+ambition, healthy activity and right purpose in the one as in the other.
+We are not calling for any change in the character of our institutions
+or one which they afford no means of effecting, but the removal by a
+method which they themselves provide of an incumbrance which impairs
+their nature and impedes their working. No partial measure will
+suffice&mdash;none that will depend for its efficacy on the disposition of
+those whose duty it will be to enforce it&mdash;none that will be exposed to
+the attacks of those whose interest it will be to reverse it. The end
+can be secured neither by the action of the President nor by that of
+Congress. Reform, in order that it may endure and bear fruit, must be
+engrafted on the organic law, its principles made the subject of an
+amendment to the Constitution, in which they should have been originally
+incorporated.</p>
+
+<p>It may be urged in reply that the present action of those who desire
+Reform is of a preliminary character; that they are simply grasping the
+instruments with which the work is to be done; that the ultimate object
+can be achieved only in the distant future, when the nation has been
+aroused to a sense of its necessity. But the question arises, Is their
+present action consistent with their principles and suited to advance
+their purpose? When they stand between the opposite parties, dickering
+with each in turn, ready to accept any candidate but one that either may
+put forward, inciting people by the prospect of their support to violate
+their pledges, are they introducing purer methods or giving their
+sanction to those which are now in use? Will any nomination they may
+obtain by such means bring the question squarely before the nation?
+Would a President elected by their aid be recognized by the country as
+the champion of Reform? Are they more likely to "capture" the party with
+which they connect themselves or to be captured by it? If they give
+their aid to the Democrats, will they expect the Democrats in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> return to
+give aid to the cause of Reform? If they support a Republican candidate
+satisfactory to themselves, will not the lukewarmness or disaffection of
+large sections of the party ensure his defeat? If the "best man" on each
+side be nominated, are the Reformers secure against a division and
+melting away of their own unorganized and easily-disheartened ranks?
+Will the victory, in any case, be other than a party victory, leaving
+the fruits to be reaped and further operations to be planned by those
+who have organized and conducted the campaign?</p>
+
+<p>We know well that it is only in a distant future that Reform can hope
+for a complete and assured success. But it is in a distant future that
+the greatest need for it, and with that need its opportunity, will
+arise. Serious as are the present effects of the virus that has stolen
+into our system, its malignant character and fatal tendency are apparent
+only to those who have made it the subject of a careful diagnosis. This
+in part accounts for the apathy of the great mass of the people under a
+state of things which in almost any other country would lead to a
+profound and general agitation. Another cause lies in the consciousness
+of a power to remedy all such evils by peaceful and ordinary methods;
+and a third, in the present lack of any organization for applying those
+methods. This lack will be supplied, and the first step toward a remedy
+taken, when, instead of a body of "Independents" making no direct appeal
+to the people, treating alternately with each of the two existing
+organizations, and liable to be merged in one or the other, we have a
+Reform Party standing on its own ground, assuming a distinctive
+character, refusing any junction or compromise with other parties, and
+trusting to the only means consistent with its aim and capable of
+attaining it. Eight years ago there was a junction with the Democrats,
+four years ago a compromise with the Republicans, and one or other of
+these courses is the only choice presented now. This policy can lead
+only to defeat or to an empty and illusive victory, worse than defeat.</p>
+
+<p>Had a different policy been pursued in the past, the situation at
+present would, we believe, be a very hopeful one. It is impossible not
+to see that the existing parties are undergoing a disintegration which
+was inevitable from several causes, and which on one side at least would
+be far more rapid if a third party stood ready to profit by it. One
+cause of this disintegration is the natural tendency to decay of
+organizations that have lost their <i>raison d'&ecirc;tre</i>&mdash;that have ceased to
+embody any vital principle and consequently to appeal to any strong and
+general sentiment. Another is the disgust inspired by the base uses to
+which they have been turned&mdash;a feeling shared by a far larger number of
+voters than those who have already proclaimed their independence. A
+third lies in the feuds among the leaders and managers of each party,
+who, having no longer any principle to represent or any common cause to
+contend for, have thrown away all pretence of disinterestedness and
+generous emulation and engaged in a strife of which the nature is
+undisguised and the effect easy to foresee. Thus it is that outraged
+principles work out their revenge, making their violators mutually
+destructive, and clearing a way for those who are prepared to assert and
+maintain them. In the Democratic party the breach may possibly be
+skinned over, though it can hardly be healed: in the Republican party it
+must widen and deepen. The latter stands now in a position analogous to
+that of the Whig party when it made its last vain attempt to elect its
+candidate, and shortly after went to pieces, the mass of its adherents
+going over to that meagre band which in the same election had stood firm
+around the standard of Liberty. It is for the Reformers to say whether
+they will contend for the inheritance which is legitimately theirs. With
+a cause so clear they have no right to intrigue and no reason to
+despair. They have on their side the best intelligence of the country,
+and consequently at their command the agencies which have ever been the
+most potent in the long run. What they need is faith, concert and
+consistency.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p>
+<h2>OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>EDELWEISS.</h3>
+
+<p>Everybody has heard of it, and those who have been in Switzerland have
+seen in the shop-windows, if nowhere else, or in the hat of the man who
+leads their horse over the Wengern Alp, the little irregular,
+star-shaped flower with thick petals that look as if they were cut out
+of white flannel. People may not be certain how its name is
+pronounced&mdash;may call it <i>eedelwise</i>, or even <i>idlewise</i>&mdash;but as to its
+habits every one is fully persuaded in his own mind; that is to say, if
+one person believes that it grows on rocks, another is equally sure that
+it blooms under the snow, while in either case there is apt to be an
+impression that it is found only in regions where the foot of the
+ordinary tourist may not venture. The writer has found it, however, in
+various places perfectly accessible to good walkers or where a horse
+could carry those not in that category. Edelweiss certainly likes to
+grow among rocks, on the brink of a precipice or down the face of it,
+and out of reach if possible; but it will also nestle in the grass at
+some distance from the brink, and may be found even where there is no
+precipice at all.</p>
+
+<p>The village of Zweisimmen is a quiet summer resort in the Upper
+Simmenthal, in the canton of Berne. The valley is green and peaceful,
+with chalets dotted over all the mountain-sides: the rocks of the
+Spielgarten tower on the one hand, the snow of the Wildstrubel closes
+the view to the south, where the Rawyl Pass leads to Sion in the valley
+of the Rhone, and, looking northward, the mountains grow more and more
+blue and distant in the direction of Thun. From Zweisimmen, on four
+excursions, the writer and others have had the pleasure of picking
+edelweiss. First, at the Fromattgrat. Horses and saddles are forthcoming
+when required, and the four legs go as far as the scattered chalets of
+Fromatt, the wide mountain-pasture which is reached after a steady
+ascent of two hours and a half. Across from the chalets rises the <i>grat</i>
+or ridge where we have to seek our edelweiss. As we mount higher the
+gray masses of the Spielgarten seem very near: a fresh vivifying wind,
+the breath of the Alps, makes one forget how warm it was toiling up the
+gorge. The clouds are drawing around in white veils and sweeping down
+into the valley, quite concealing our destination at times, hiding even
+the members of the party from each other if they separate themselves a
+little. Our fine day takes on a decidedly doubtful aspect: nevertheless,
+after the first cry, "Here's some!" nobody thinks of impending
+discomforts. Here and there in the grass the soft white petals have
+opened, but where the <i>grat</i> sinks straight down for hundreds of feet it
+grows more abundantly, on the edge, and, alas! chiefly over the edge;
+and here a steady head and common prudence come in play. Furnished with
+those requisites, we can collect a bunch of edelweiss, and go on our way
+rejoicing even though the rain-drops begin to fall, the wind grows
+wilder, and presently hail comes in cutting dashes anything but
+agreeable to one's features. We go back along the ridge and descend to
+the broad-roofed chalet that lies invitingly below. It goes by the name
+of the Stierenberger Wirthschaft, and is known to all the cow-herds
+round; but we want no doubtful wine, only fresh milk and thick cream in
+a wooden bowl, and a brown fluid called coffee. Bread we brought with
+us, not caring to exercise our teeth on last month's bake. In any case,
+nothing more solid than bread and cheese is to be found here, tavern
+though it is. A fire blazes in the first room, which has no window, and
+might properly be styled the antechamber of the cow-house, into which
+there is a fine view through an open door. Sixty tails are peacefully
+whisking to and fro, for in the middle of the day the cattle are housed
+to protect them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> from flies. All the implements of cheese-making&mdash;the
+immense copper kettle, the presses, pails, etc.&mdash;are kept in the
+antechamber. After trying to dry ourselves at the hearth, and
+discovering that much hail comes down the great square chimney and very
+little smoke goes up, we are shown into the "best room," the furniture
+of which consists of a bed, a pine table and benches. In the adjoining
+apartment are two beds, the gayly-painted chest in which our hostess
+brought home her bridal outfit, and another table; while in both rooms
+the knives and forks are stuck in the chinks of the beams over the
+benches&mdash;a convenient arrangement by which one has only to stretch up an
+arm and take down from the ceiling whatever implement is needed. In most
+of these chalets a tall man might be embarrassed what to do with his
+head: it is only necessary to go into their houses to perceive that the
+Swiss mountaineers are short of stature. When the hail and rain have
+ceased we start downward over the hilly pastures, through pine woods and
+beside a rushing stream, into the valley, and so back to Zweisimmen.</p>
+
+<p>Another excursion was to go up to the same inn, and thence to a little
+lake at the foot of the Seeberg, where edelweiss is again to be found.
+At Iffigen Lake it may also be had in abundance; and the fourth and last
+occasion on which we picked it was on the Rawyl Pass. From Zweisimmen
+one drives to Lenk, whence the fine glaciers of the Wildstrubel are in
+full view, then through the village and up a steep ascent, but a good
+carriage-road still, to the beautiful Iffigen Fall. The water descends
+almost perpendicularly over picturesque rocks from a great height,
+falling in long arrows that seem to hesitate and linger in mid-air, and
+then take a fresh swoop down: a rainbow spans it at the foot, where the
+mist rises. Here the carriage is left, and those who intend to ride take
+to the saddle. The way goes up steeply to the broad Iffigen Alp, shut in
+on either hand by Nature's towering gray battlements. Having reached the
+chalets at the farther end of the pasture, we find ourselves facing the
+solid rock and wondering what next. Over the brow of the lofty parapet
+falls a little stream, looking like a white ribbon as it foams on its
+dizzy way. "The path certainly cannot be there," we say; but, as it
+happens, it is just there. It zigzags up, cut with infinite labor in the
+face of the mountain, like the famous Gemmi road from Lo&egrave;che-les-Bains,
+only that it is not so smooth and more picturesque. The Rawyl, like the
+Gemmi, is sometimes given the reputation of a dangerous pass, but in our
+party a lady rode the whole way without feeling the least uneasiness.
+The path goes up and up until it crosses the waterfall, where one is
+showered with cooling spray: soon after we are over the top of the rock
+and on plainer ground, but still mounting. A hut is passed where the
+guide says travellers can spend the night should it overtake them. There
+is indeed nothing to prevent their spending the night there, but also
+nothing to aid them in so doing: the place is uninhabited and
+unfurnished, the only sign that it is a shelter for human beings and not
+for cattle being a tiny stove in one corner, with a pile of wood. Now a
+small green lake lies beside the way, and then the chalet on the summit
+is in sight, and a cross that marks the boundary between the cantons of
+Berne and Valais. There the highest point of our journey is reached in
+two and three-quarter hours from where the carriage was left, and we
+walk nearly another hour on the level. Snow lies in wide fields in
+several places across the path: the pass is never wholly free from it,
+for what is rain in the valley is apt to be snow at seven thousand nine
+hundred feet, the height of the Rawyl. During this part of the way the
+scene is most wild and impressive: the dark masses of the Mittaghorn,
+the Rohrbachstein and Rawylhorn, and the dazzling glacier of the
+Wildhorn rise majestically into blue space, while from the granite
+summits to the very path under our feet there is nothing but rock, rock,
+rock! It is as if we were passing where the foot of man had never trod
+before, so solemn is the stillness here in the midst of the "everlasting
+hills." To see one solitary bird flitting fitfully from point to point
+only makes the loneliness seem<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> greater, and it is absolutely touching
+to find in a place like this the lovely little <i>Ranunculus alpestris</i>
+and <i>Ranunculus glacialis</i> forcing a way between the shingly stones and
+opening their delicate white petals to light and air. The purple
+<i>Linaria alpina</i> keeps them company, but it is only farther on, and as
+we come to green again, that asters, pansies and gentians gem the grass.
+Where the way begins to descend to Sion there is an enchanting view into
+the valley of the Rhone, and for a background to the picture a superb
+line of glaciers and snow-peaks, among them the Matterhorn. The path to
+Sion can be traced for some distance down, but our party intended to go
+back by the way it came; and while we still lingered, wandering among
+the knolls and rocks, we discovered edelweiss, faded and gray, however,
+for in these regions the latter part of August is too late to find it in
+perfection.</p>
+
+<p>As American ladies have the reputation of being poor pedestrians, it may
+be of interest to add that ladies walked on all these excursions.</p>
+
+<p class="right">G. H. P.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SPOILED CHILDREN.</h3>
+
+<p>It will always remain a mystery to sensible people why, when they are
+held to a rigid consistency, compelled to face palpable and indisputable
+facts, and to acknowledge that under all circumstances two and two make
+four, and never five, there is another class who from childhood to old
+age thrive on their mistakes, are never forced to pay the piper, and are
+granted the privilege of counting the sum of two and two as four when
+convenient, and five when they like, or a hundred if so it should please
+them.</p>
+
+<p>These are the spoiled children of the world, whose fate it is to get the
+best of everything without regard to their deserts. Others may be warm,
+may shiver with cold, may be weary, may be ill, but they must not
+complain. The burden of lamentation comes from those who were never too
+warm or too cold, never weary or ill, but who tremble lest in some cruel
+way they should be forced to suffer, and thus provide against it
+beforehand. To these spoiled children the system of things in general
+has no other design than to give them comfort in particular. And by some
+subtle law of attraction the good things of the world are almost certain
+naturally to gravitate toward them. They sleep well; they dine well;
+they are petted by everybody; they have no despairs; they never suffer
+from other people's mishaps.</p>
+
+<p>A woman who marries one of these spoiled children may be sure of an
+opportunity to practise all the feminine virtues. She is certain to have
+been very much in love with him, for he was handsome, could dance and
+flirt to perfection, and was the very ideal of a charming lover. The
+little dash of selfishness in his ante-nuptial imperiousness and tender
+tyranny pleased her, for it seemed to be the expression of a more ardent
+love than that of every-day men. It depends very much upon her
+generosity and largeness of heart whether she soon wakes up to the fact
+that she has married a being destitute of sympathy, wholly careless and
+ignorant of others' needs and requirements, full of caprices, allowing
+every impulse to carry him away, and thoroughly bent on having his own
+will and bending everybody about him to his own purposes.
+Self-renunciation and absolute devotion and self-sacrifice are natural
+to women of a certain quality of intellect and heart, and possess the
+most powerful charm to their imagination, provided they can have a dash
+of romance or a kindling of sentiment. Hence this form of martyrdom
+offers the female sex the pose in which it has sat for its portrait all
+the centuries since civilization began, and the picture stands out
+impressively against a background we all can recognize. As a school for
+heroism nothing can equal marriage with a spoiled child.</p>
+
+<p>But, although probably quite as many instances may be found in one sex
+as in the other, the characteristics of a spoiled child are distinctly
+feminine, and in no measure belong to robust masculinity. Thus, for a
+study, let us take a girl who from her cradle has found everything
+subordinate to her princess-like whims, inclinations and caprices, and
+has had her way by smiles and cajoleries<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> or sobs and tears, as the case
+may be. She finds out at an early age that it is pleasanter and more
+profitable to be petted and pampered than to be forced to shift for
+herself. She learns that an easy little pitiful curve of her coral lips
+and upward glance of her baby orbs is answered by certain manifestations
+of tenderness and concern: thus she "makes eyes," flirts, as it were,
+before she can talk, and studies the art of successful tyranny. The
+nursery&mdash;in fact, the entire house&mdash;rejoices when she rejoices and
+trembles when she weeps. She wants everything she sees, and sulks at any
+superiority of circumstances in another; but then she sulks
+bewitchingly. Wherever she goes she carries an imperious sway, and keeps
+her foot well on the necks of her admirers.</p>
+
+<p>The spoiled child blossoms into perfection as a young lady. That is her
+destiny, and to the proper fulfilment of it her family and friends stand
+ready to devote themselves. It may be they are a trifle weary of her
+incalculable temper, that her fascinations have palled a little upon
+them, and that her mysterious inability to put up with the lot of
+every-day mortals and bear disagreeables contentedly has worn out their
+patience. They want her to marry, and, without wasting any empty wishing
+upon a result so certain to come, she wants to marry herself. She is not
+likely to have unattainable ideals: what she demands is a continuation
+of her petted existence&mdash;a lifelong adorer to minister to her vanity and
+desires, to find her always beautiful, always precious, and to smooth
+away the rough places of life for her.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing can be more bewitching than she is on her entrance into society.
+Nothing could seem more desirable to an admirer than the possession of
+the beautiful creature, who, with her alternations of sweetness and
+imperiousness, tenderness, and cruelty, stimulates his ardor and appears
+more like a spirit of fire and dew than a real woman. It seems to him
+the most delightful thing in the world when she confesses that she never
+likes what she has, but always craves what she has not&mdash;that she hates
+everything useful and prosaic and likes everything which people declare
+she ought to renounce. She is unreasonable, and he loves her
+unreason&mdash;it bewitches him: she is obstinate, and he loves to feel the
+strength of her tiny will, as if it were the manifestation of some
+phenomenal force in her nature. Her scorn for common things, her
+fastidiousness, her indifference to the little obligations which compel
+less dainty and spirited creatures,&mdash;all act as chains and rivet his
+attachment to her.</p>
+
+<p>A few months later, when she has become his wife, and he is forced to
+look at her tempers and her caprices, at her fastidiousness and
+expensiveness, from an altered standpoint, her whole character seems to
+be illuminated with new light. He no longer finds her charming when she
+has an incurable restlessness and melancholy: her pretty negations of
+the facts life present to her begin to seem to him the product of a mind
+undisciplined by any actual knowledge that she is "a human creature,
+subject to the same laws as other human creatures." He has hitherto
+considered that her scorn for the common and usual indicated an
+appreciation of the rarest and loftiest, but she seems to have no
+appreciation for anything save enjoyment. She has no idea of the true
+purposes of life: she likes everything dwarfed to suit her own stature.
+It is not by compliance that her husband can give her more than
+temporary pleasure. If she wants to see Europe, Europe will not satisfy
+her. "Sense will support itself handsomely in most countries," says
+Carlyle, "on eighteen pence a day, but for fantasy planets and solar
+systems will not suffice."</p>
+
+<p class="right">L. W.</p>
+
+
+<h3>PRAYER-MEETING ELOQUENCE.</h3>
+
+<p>Weekly prayer-meetings in New England villages offer a variety of
+singular experiences to the unaccustomed listener, and it seems almost
+incredible at times that they can furnish spiritual sustenance even to
+the devout. There are apt to be two or three among the regular
+attendants who being, according to their own estimate, "gifted in
+prayer," raise their voices loud and long with many a mellifluous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
+phrase and lofty-sounding polysyllable. Mr. Eli Lewis is one of the most
+eloquent among the church-members in the village of C&mdash;&mdash;, and if left
+to his own way would engross the entire evening with his prayers and
+exhortations. Nothing is too large for his imagination to grasp nor too
+small for his observations to consider. "<i>O Lord, Thou knowest!</i>" he
+repeats endlessly, sometimes qualifying this statement by putting into
+the next phrase, "<i>O Lord, Thou art probably aware!</i>" He is fond of
+poetry too, and frequently interpolates into his petition and
+thanksgiving his favorite verses. His fellow-worshippers are fully
+conscious of his excellent intentions, but there is some jealousy of the
+surpassing length of his prayers. The other evening he was standing, as
+his custom is, with his long arms upraised with many a strange gesture.
+He had been on his feet half an hour already, and there began to be
+signs of restlessness among the bowed heads around him. Still, there was
+no sign of any let up. He was engaged in drawing a vivid picture of the
+condition of the universe in the abstract, the world in general and his
+country and native village in particular, and required ample time fully
+to elucidate his views regarding their needs, but proposed to illustrate
+it by quotations. "O Lord," said he, "Thou knowest what the poet Cowper
+says&mdash;" He paused and cleared his throat as if the better to articulate
+the inspired strains of poetry, and began again more emphatically: "O
+Lord, Thou art probably aware what the poet Cowper says&mdash;" but the
+second time broke off. He could not remember what it was the poet Cowper
+said, but with a view to taking the place his memory halted at, went
+back to the starting-place and recommenced: "O Lord, Thou recollectest
+what the poet Cowper says&mdash;" It was of no use: he could not think of it,
+and with a wild gesture put his hand to his head. "O Lord," he exclaimed
+in a tone of excessive pain, "<i>I cannot remember what the poet Cowper
+says</i>," and prepared to go on with other matter; but Deacon Smith had
+been watching his opportunity for twenty minutes, and was already on
+his feet. "<i>Let us pray</i>," he said in a deep voice, which broke on
+Brother Lewis's ears with preternatural power, and he was obliged to sit
+down while the senior deacon held forth. No sooner, however, had Deacon
+Smith's amen sounded than Mr. Eli Lewis started up. "O Lord," he cried
+in a tone of heartfelt satisfaction, "I remember now what the poet
+Cowper says;" and, repeating it at length, he finished his remarks.</p>
+
+<p>It was Deacon Smith who one Sunday asked his pastor to put a petition
+for rain into his afternoon prayer, as moisture was very much needed by
+the deacon's parched fields and meadows. Accordingly, Dr. Peters, who
+was something of a rhetorician, alluded in his prayer to the melancholy
+prospects of the harvest unless rain should soon be sent, and requested
+that the Almighty would consider their sufferings and dispense the
+floods which He held in His right hand. After service, as the reverend
+doctor left the church, he saw Mr. Smith standing rigid in the porch,
+perhaps looking for a rising cloud, and remarked to him, "Well, deacon,
+I hope our petition may be answered." He received only a snort of wrath
+and defiance in reply. Rather puzzled as to what had vexed his
+parishioner, Dr. Peters said blandly, "You heard my prayer for a shower,
+Deacon Smith?" The deacon turned grimly: "I heard you mention the matter
+of rain, Dr. Peters, but, good Heavens, sir! <i>you should have insisted
+upon it!</i>"</p>
+
+<p class="right">A. T.</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE JARDIN D'ACCLIMATATION OF PARIS.</h3>
+
+<p>This beautiful garden, one of the most attractive places in the world,
+was established in the Bois de Boulogne in 1860. It was in the most
+flourishing condition at the time of the breaking out of the war with
+Germany. That war nearly ruined it. During the siege elephants and other
+valuable animals were sacrificed for food. The carrier-pigeons that did
+such noble service during the siege were mostly raised in this
+establishment, and those that survived the war are kept there and most
+tenderly preserved. "Many died<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> gloriously on the field of honor," as we
+read in the records of the society, which preserve a full account of
+their wonderful feats. Some of them again and again dared the Prussian
+lines, carrying those precious microscopic despatches photographed upon
+pellicles of collodion&mdash;so light that the whole one hundred and fifteen
+thousand received during the siege do not weigh over one gramme, a
+little over fifteen grains!</p>
+
+<p>The great greenhouse of these gardens for plants that cannot endure a
+temperature lower than two degrees below zero centigrade (28.4&deg; Fahr.)
+would enchant even the most indifferent observer. The building itself is
+one of the finest structures of its kind. It was once the property of
+the Lemichez Brothers, celebrated florists at Villiers, at which place
+it was known as the Palais des Flors. The Acclimatation Society
+purchased it in 1861, and every winter since then there has been a
+magnificent and unfailing display of flowers there. Masses of camellias,
+rhododendrons, azaleas, primroses, <i>bruy&egrave;res</i>, pelargoniums constantly
+succeed each other. These are merely to delight the visitors, the great
+object of the hothouse being to nurse foreign plants and experiment with
+them. Among the rare ones are the paper-plant of the <i>Aralia</i> family;
+the <i>Cham&aelig;rops</i>, or hemp-plant; the <i>Phormium tenax</i>, or New Zealand
+flax; and the <i>Eucalyptus</i> of Australia, that wonderful tree introduced
+lately into Algeria, where it grows six m&egrave;tres a year, and yields more
+revenue than the cereals. This, at least, is what the official handbook
+of the garden says. It may be that the famous "fever-plant" has lost
+some of the faith accorded to it at first.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of this great greenhouse there is a beautiful grotto where a
+little brook loses itself playing hide-and-seek among the fronds of the
+maiden-hair and other lovely ferns. At the right of this grotto is a
+reading-room where visitors may find all the current periodicals&mdash;on the
+left, the library of the society, rich in works upon agriculture,
+<i>zootechnie</i>, natural history, travels, industrial and domestic economy,
+etc., in several languages. The remarkable thing about this great
+greenhouse is the ever-flourishing, ever-perfect condition of its
+vegetation. Of course this effect must be secured by succursal
+hothouses, not always open to visitors. No tree, no plant, ever appears
+there in a sickly condition, but this may be said also of the animals in
+the gardens. I shall not soon forget a great wire canary cage some
+sixteen or more feet square, enclosing considerable shrubbery and scores
+of birds. There I received my first notion of the natural brilliancy of
+the plumage of these birds: its golden sheen literally dazzled the eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The garden does excellent work for the French people besides furnishing
+a popular school and an inimitable pleasure resort: it assures the
+preservation of approved varieties of fruits, grains, animals. Whoever
+questions the absolute purity of his stock, from a garden herb up to an
+Arabian steed, can place this beyond question by substituting those
+furnished by the Society of Acclimatation. Eggs of birds packed in its
+garden have safely crossed the Atlantic, seventy-five per cent. hatching
+on their arrival. So immensely has the business of the society increased
+that more ground has had to be secured for nursery and seed-raising
+purposes, and the whole vast Zoological Gardens of Marseilles have been
+secured and turned into a "tender," as it were, to the Jardin
+d'Acclimatation at Paris. This was a very important acquisition.
+Marseilles, the great Mediterranean sea-port of France, is necessarily
+the spot where treasures from Africa, Asia and the South Sea Islands
+have to be landed, and they arrive often in a critical condition and
+need rest and careful nursing before continuing their journey.</p>
+
+<p>One of the functions of the garden is to restock parks with game when
+the pheasants, hares, wild-boars, deer, etc. become too rare for good
+sport: another is to tame and break to the harness certain animals
+counted unmanageable. The zebra is one of these. The society has
+succeeded perfectly in breaking the zebra and making him work in the
+field quite like the horse. An ostrich also<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> allows itself to be
+harnessed to a small carriage and to draw two children in it over the
+garden. Still another work of the society is to breed new species. A
+very beautiful animal has been bred by crossing the wild-ass of Mongolia
+with the French variety.</p>
+
+<p>Among the rare animals of the garden may be mentioned the apteryx,
+the only bird existing belonging to the same family as the
+<i>Dinornis giganteus</i> and the still larger <i>Epyornis maximus</i> of
+Madagascar&mdash;monstrous wingless birds now extinct. One of the eggs of the
+latter in a fossil condition is preserved in the museum of the Garden of
+Plants in Paris. Its longer axis is sixteen inches, I think. It is, for
+an egg, a most wonderful thing, and on account of its size the bird
+laying it has been supposed to be of very much greater size than even
+the <i>Dinornis giganteus</i>, a perfect skeleton of which exists; but this
+seems to be a too hasty conclusion, for the apteryx, a member of the
+same family, has laid an egg or two in captivity, and one of these on
+being weighed proved to be very nearly one-fourth the whole weight of
+the bird, the bird weighing sixty ounces and the egg fourteen and a
+half.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Tallegalla Lathami</i>, or brush-turkey of Australia, is another rare
+bird. It does not sit upon its eggs, but constructs a sort of hot-bed
+for them, which it watches during the whole term as assiduously as a
+wise florist does his seeds planted under glass or as a baker does his
+ovens. As in the ostrich family, it is the male that has the entire care
+of the family from the moment the eggs are laid&mdash;a fairer division of
+labor than we see in most <i>m&eacute;nages</i>. The interesting process of
+constructing the hot-bed has been observed several times in Europe. It
+is as follows: When the time arrives for the making of the nest the
+enclosure is supplied with sticks, leaves and detritus of various kinds.
+The male then, with his tail to the centre of the enclosure, commences
+with his powerful feet to throw up a mound of the materials furnished.
+To do this he walks around in a series of concentric circles. When the
+mound is about four feet high the female adds a few artistic touches by
+way of smoothing down, evening the surface and making a depression in
+the centre, where the eggs in due time are laid in a circle, each with
+the point downward and no two in contact. The male tends this hot-bed
+most unweariedly. "A cylindrical opening is always maintained in the
+centre of the circle"&mdash;no doubt for ventilation&mdash;and the male will often
+cover and uncover the eggs two or three times a day, according to the
+change of temperature. The observer, noting how intelligently this bird
+watches the temperature, almost expects to see him thrust a thermometer
+into his mound! On the second day after it is hatched the young bird
+leaves the nest, but returns to it in the afternoon, and is very cozily
+tucked up by his devoted papa.</p>
+
+<p>One thing in the garden that used to greatly attract visitors was the
+Gaveuse Martin, a machine for cramming fowls in order to fatten them
+rapidly. The society considered Martin's invention of so much importance
+to the world that it granted him a building in the garden and permission
+to charge a special admission. The machine has since been introduced
+into the artificial egg-hatching establishment of Mr. Baker at
+Catskill-on-the-Hudson; at least, he has a machine for "forced feeding"
+which must greatly resemble Martin's. Specimens fattened by the Gaveuse
+Martin, all ready for the <i>broche</i>, used to be sold on the premises. The
+interior of the building was occupied by six gigantic <i>&eacute;pinettes</i>, each
+holding two hundred birds. A windlass mounted upon a railroad enabled
+the operator (<i>gaveur</i>, from <i>gaver</i>, to cram, an inelegant term) very
+easily to raise himself to any story of the &eacute;pinette. The latter was a
+cylinder turning upon its axis, and thus passing every bird in review.
+"An india-rubber tube introduced into the throat, accompanied by the
+pressure of the foot upon a pedal, makes the bird absorb its copious and
+succulent repast in the wink of an eye." Four hundred an hour have been
+thus fed by one operator. Fowls thus fattened are said to possess a
+delicacy of flavor entirely their own.</p>
+
+<p class="right">M. H.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p>
+<h2>LITERATURE OF THE DAY.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Christy Carew. By May Laffan, author of "The Honorable Miss
+Ferrard," etc. (Leisure-Hour Series.) New York: Henry Holt &amp;
+Co.</p></div>
+
+<p>The novels to which Miss Laffan gives a sponsor in affixing her
+signature to the latest, <i>Christy Carew</i>, present two strong and
+distinct claims to our notice in the vigor and realism with which they
+are written, and the thorough picture they give of Ireland, politically
+and socially, at the present day. They are no mere repetitions of
+hackneyed Irish stories, no sketches drawn from a narrow or partial
+phase of life, but the result of large and penetrating observation among
+all classes, made in a thoroughly systematized manner, so as to form a
+thoughtful and almost exhaustive study of a country which is more
+dogmatized over than understood. Ireland has never been depicted with so
+much interest and sympathy by any novelist since Miss Edgeworth wrote
+her <i>Moral Tales</i>, and both the country and the art of novel-writing
+have advanced since then, the latter possibly more than the former. Miss
+Edgeworth, indeed, has been singularly unfortunate. She drew from life,
+and her talent and observation were worthy of a more lasting shrine,
+while the artificiality of her books has caused them to decay even
+faster than those of some of her contemporaries. Her successors in Irish
+fiction, with no lack of talent, have been too often careless in using
+it, or have preferred story-telling to observation. Miss Laffan wields a
+genuine Irish pen, graphic, keen of satire, with plenty of sharp
+Hibernian humor, but she shows in its exercise a care and directness of
+aim which are not the common qualities of Irish writers. In beginning
+her career as a novelist she had the courage to refrain from the pursuit
+of those finer artistic beauties which lure to failure so many writers
+incapable of seizing them: she even put aside the question of plot, and
+strove to give a sound and truthful representation of life and manners.</p>
+
+<p>That end was gained with masterly success. No one reading the anonymous
+novel <i>Hogan, M.P.</i>, would have been likely to set it down from internal
+evidence as a woman's book: it is one of the stoutest and most vigorous
+pieces of fiction which have appeared for years. We can find no trace of
+its having been reprinted in this country, and are at a loss to account
+for the omission: its distinctively Irish character ought to form an
+attraction. <i>Hogan, M.P.</i>, is a political novel as realistic as Anthony
+Trollope's, but more incisive in tone and wider in scope. Instead of
+confining her energies to the doings and conversations of one set of
+people, Miss Laffan looks at politics as they are mirrored in society,
+sketching not alone the wire-pulling and petty diplomacies, but phases
+of life resulting therefrom. In <i>Hogan, M.P.</i>, we have a vivid <i>coup
+d'&oelig;il</i> of Dublin society, with its sharp, irregular boundaries, its
+sects and sets, its manner of comporting and amusing itself. The field
+is a wide one, but Miss Laffan has the happy art of generalization&mdash;of
+portraying a whole society in a few well-marked types. There is no
+confusion of character, and though we seem to have shaken hands with all
+Dublin in her pages, from great dignitaries to school-boys, the picture
+is never overcrowded.</p>
+
+<p>"A drop of ditch-water under a microscope" Hogan calls the society of
+his native city&mdash;"everybody pushing upward on the social ladder kicking
+down those behind." This zoological spectacle is not confined to Dublin,
+but there appears to be a combination of strictness and indefiniteness
+of precedence belonging peculiarly to that place. At the top of the
+ladder, though not so firmly fixed there as before the Disestablishment,
+is the Protestant set, regarding the Castle as its stronghold and
+looking down on the Roman Catholic set, who reciprocate the contempt.
+These grand divisions are separated by a strict line of demarcation,
+even the performance of the marriage ceremony between Protestants and
+Catholics being forbidden in Dublin. They contain an endless
+ramification of lesser groups, whose relations we may attempt to
+illustrate by quoting from the book before us an account of the mutual
+position of Mrs. O'Neil and Mrs. Carew, the former the wife of a
+tradesman shortly to become lord mayor, the latter a "'vert" from
+Protestantism and the spouse of a Crown solicitor in debt to his future
+mayorship. "The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> lady mayoress elect, conscious of her prospective
+dignity in addition to the heavy bill due by the Carews, was the least
+possible shade&mdash;not patronizing, for that would have been
+impossible&mdash;but perhaps independent in manner. She did not turn her head
+toward her companion as she addressed her; she put more questions to her
+and in a broader accent than she usually did in conversation; and she
+barely gave her interlocutor time to finish the rather curt
+contributions she vouchsafed toward the conversation. On her side, Mrs.
+Carew, mindful of her position and of her superior accent, which implied
+even more, wanting to be condescending and patronizing, and half afraid
+to be openly impertinent, was calm and self-possessed. She grew more
+freezingly courteous as the other lady grew less formal."</p>
+
+<p>We have said that Miss Laffan began with realism pure and simple.
+<i>Hogan, M.P.</i>, remains, so far, to our mind, her strongest book, but
+there are finer and sweeter qualities in her other writings. We should
+be inclined to rank <i>The Honorable Miss Ferrard</i> as an artistic rather
+than a realistic book, though it is based on the same soundness of
+observation as its predecessor. It is an episode, suggestive, rather
+analytic in treatment, with the freshness of a first impression&mdash;<i>le
+charme de l'inachev&eacute;</i>. The heroine is a singularly original, fresh and
+attractive conception. The book deals almost wholly with the outside
+aspects of things, with picturesque rather than moral traits, though a
+breath of feeling true and sweet is wafted across it and heightens its
+fine vague beauty.</p>
+
+<p>A deeper humanity is shown in the short story <i>Flitters, Tatters and the
+Counsellor</i>, which made its first appearance in this magazine in
+January, 1879. This sketch gained a quicker popularity than her longer
+novels, and drew forth warm eulogies from critics so far apart in
+standard as Ruskin, Leslie Stephen and Bret Harte.</p>
+
+<p><i>Christy Carew</i>, in its picture of two middle-class Catholic families in
+Dublin, takes us back to the society described in <i>Hogan, M.P.</i>, but its
+range is narrower and its theme rather social than political. It is a
+softer and more attractive book than <i>Hogan, M.P.</i>, though, like that
+novel, it is devoted to a realistic picture of life. Miss Laffan's
+characters have the merit of being always real. They are often types,
+but they are never mere abstractions. Whatever their importance or
+qualities, they stand firmly on their feet, are individual and alive.
+Her men are drawn with a vigor which ought to ensure them from the
+reproach of being ladies' men. They may display traits of weakness, but
+these are due to no faltering on the author's part. In <i>Christy Carew</i>
+the men are in a minority as far as minuteness of portraiture goes, and
+the most elaborate touches are bestowed on the two young girls who act
+as heroines, for the one is as prominent as the other. Christy and her
+friend Esther O'Neil present two types of girlhood. Esther, <i>d&eacute;vote</i> and
+gentle, is a very tender, lovable figure, but there is perhaps more
+skill shown in the more contradictory character of Christy, a pretty
+girl addicted to flirting, keenly intelligent and impatient of the
+restraints and inconsistencies of her religious teaching, yet with an
+earnestness which makes her feel the emptiness of her life and vaguely
+seek for something higher. When each of the friends is sought by a
+Protestant lover their different ways of regarding the calamity are in
+keeping with their characters, and though any reader will agree with
+Christy that Esther was the more deserving of happiness, no one will be
+sorry that her own love-story should find a pleasant d&eacute;nouement. As an
+argument in favor of mixed marriages the book would have been stronger
+if Esther's lover had been separated from her only by prejudice, and not
+by unworthiness as well, but the pathos of the story is in no way marred
+by the neglect to clinch an argument. Like all Miss Laffan's novels, it
+is simple in plot. Construction is not her strong point, and though
+<i>Christy Carew</i> has more story to it than her former books, it is by no
+means technically perfect. There is a certain hurry about it: its good
+things are not driven home, and effects upon which more skilful artists
+would dwell at length are dropped in a concentration upon other objects.
+The book, in the American edition, is also marred by numerous
+typographical defects that betray a singular laxity in proof-reading.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hogan, M.P.</i>, was published in 1876: Miss Laffan's career as a novelist
+is therefore only four years old. We will not attempt to cast its
+future: we have simply endeavored, as far as space would admit, to point
+out the soundness of its foundation and the method by which it has been
+laid. In all that she has written there is a reserved strength, a
+sincerity and conscientiousness,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> which mark her work as unmistakably
+genuine. A large store of observation lies behind all her writing, and
+an intellectual power of a very high order is apparent throughout. What
+she lacks is a mellowness and breadth of art which would enable her to
+blend and concentrate her qualities&mdash;to bring the realism of <i>Hogan,
+M.P.</i>, into unison with the grace of <i>The Honorable Miss Ferrard</i> and
+the pathos and sympathy of <i>Christy Carew</i>&mdash;to give form and
+completeness to her work. Then Ireland would have a great novelist.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The Reminiscences of an Idler. By Henry Wikoff. New York:
+Fords, Howard &amp; Hulbert.</p></div>
+
+<p>The reminiscences of idle men are apt to be more entertaining than those
+of busy men. The idler, passing his time in search of amusement, can
+hardly fail to communicate it when he yields up his store of
+experiences. Being disengaged, his mind is more observant and more
+retentive of the by-play of life, which is the only amusing part of it,
+than that of one of the chief actors can possibly be. Moreover, idlers
+are the natural confidants of the busy: they are consulted, made useful
+as go-betweens, entrusted with those little services which, being
+transient and disconnected, are precisely suited to their disposition
+and secure them a place in the economy of Nature. Mr. Wikoff has been a
+model idler, with large opportunities of this description. From boyhood
+he has, according to his own account, shirked all regular application
+and devoted himself to the pursuit of pleasure, including the
+gratification of an intelligent but superficial curiosity in regard to
+men and manners. He has come in close contact with a great variety of
+people, especially of a class whose private lives and public careers
+react in the production of a piquant interest. These associations kept
+his hands full of what only a very rigid censor would denominate
+mischief. His intimacy with Forrest gained him a suitable companion in a
+journey to the Crimea, and the tragedian a not less suitable negotiator
+in the arrangements for his marriage and his professional engagements in
+London. He aided Lady Bulwer in her fight with her husband's family and
+the recovery of her stolen lap-dog. His friendly offices to Fanny
+Ellsler were more important and fruitful. He had the chief share in
+bringing her to America, smoothing away the difficulties, assuming the
+responsibilities, and escorting her in person, while taking charge at
+the same time of two other interesting and otherwise unprotected
+females. It was, indeed, we need hardly say, in feminine affairs that
+Mr. Wikoff was most at home. But his obliging disposition made him
+equally ready to execute commissions for members of the Bonaparte
+family, his relations with whom grew closer and more interesting at a
+period subsequent to that which is embraced in this volume. Many other
+notabilities, both American and European, have more or less prominence
+in its pages. Some letters from Mrs. Grote are especially deserving of
+notice. As long as it is confined to personal topics the narrative is
+never dull. Without being distinguished for vigor or wit, it has the
+graceful and sprightly garrulity characteristic of the well-preserved
+veteran. Unfortunately, it betrays also the tendency to tediousness
+which belongs to a revered epoch, much of it, being devoted to persons
+and things seen only from a distance and without the powers of vision
+requisite for penetrating their true character. But, in spite of this
+defect, the book is exceedingly readable and enjoyable, and we trust to
+have a continuation of it which may show a restraining influence
+exercised with kindness and tact, such as were so often exerted by the
+author for the benefit of his friends.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The Life and Work of William Augustus Muhlenberg. By Anne
+Ayres. New York: Harper &amp; Brothers.</p></div>
+
+<p>There could not well be a stronger contrast than between the subject of
+this book and that of the one just noticed. We have called Mr. Wikoff a
+model idler, and with at least equal truth we may call Dr. Muhlenberg a
+model worker, not because he was unremitting and methodical in labor or
+because his work was his delight, but because it was consecrated by a
+devoted singleness of purpose and crowned by the noblest achievements.
+The life of the founder of St. Luke's Hospital and St. Johnland, as
+exhibited in this faithful record, has the simplicity and grandeur of an
+antique statue, and in the contemplation of it the marvel of its rare
+perfection grows, till we are half inclined to ask whether it, too, be
+not some relic of the remote past rather than a product of our own age.
+Saintly purity, unbounded beneficence,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> intense earnestness and
+great-hearted liberality of sentiment were never more symmetrically
+blended than in the character of "the great presbyter," whose
+ministrations were neither inspired nor confined by any narrower dogma
+than "that love to man, flowing from love to God," which, as he himself,
+with no lack of humility, said, "had been their impulse." It has been
+justly observed that "he was eminently the common property of a common
+Christianity," and not less truly that "there is, and ever will be, more
+of Christian charity in the world because Dr. Muhlenberg has lived in it
+as he did." He was perhaps not a man of extraordinary intellect, but his
+singularly healthy mind, with its union of resoluteness and candor,
+sound sense and lively fancy, gave the needed counterpoise to his moral
+qualities, keeping his enterprises within the domain of the useful and
+the practical, and thus saving him from the disappointments that too
+often checker the career of the philanthropist. This biography, written
+from long and intimate knowledge and admirable alike in spirit and
+execution, will find, we may trust, a multitude of readers among members
+of all sects and those who belong to none. Its interest is of a far more
+absorbing kind than any that can be excited by gossip or anecdote. It is
+that of a vivid portraiture, in which nothing characteristic is missing,
+in which the details are all harmonious, and which awakens not only our
+admiration, but our warmest sympathies.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><i>Books Received.</i></h2>
+
+
+<p>History of Political Economy in Europe. By J&eacute;r&ocirc;me-Adolphe Blanqui.
+Translated from the fourth French edition by Emily J. Leonard. New York:
+G. P. Putnam's Sons.</p>
+
+<p>Pure Wine&mdash;Fermented Wine and Other Alcoholic Drinks in the Light of the
+New Dispensation. By John Ellis, M. D. New York: Published by the
+Author.</p>
+
+<p>Shakespeare's History of King Henry the Fourth. Parts 1 and 2. Edited,
+with Notes, by William J. Rolfe, A. M. New York: Harper &amp; Brothers.</p>
+
+<p>A History of New York. By Diedrich Knickerbocker. (New "Geoffrey-Crayon"
+Edition of Irving's Works.) New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.</p>
+
+<p>Card Essays: Clay's Decisions and Card-table Talk. By "Cavendish."
+(Leisure-Hour Series.) New York: Henry Holt &amp; Co.</p>
+
+<p>William Ellery Channing: His Opinions, Genius and Character. By Henry W.
+Bellows. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.</p>
+
+<p>The Virginia Bohemians: A Novel. By John Esten Cooke. (Library of
+American Fiction.) New York: Harper &amp; Brothers.</p>
+
+<p>Nana: Sequel to "L'Assommoir." By &Eacute;mile Zola. Translated by John
+Stirling. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson &amp; Brothers.</p>
+
+<p>The Hair, its Growth, Care, Diseases and Treatment. By C. Henri Leonard,
+M. A., M. D. Detroit: C. Henri Leonard.</p>
+
+<p>The Amazon. By Franz Dingelstedt. Translated from the German by J. M.
+Hart. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.</p>
+
+<p>Reminiscences of Rev. William Ellery Channing, D. D. By Elizabeth Palmer
+Peabody. Boston: Roberts Brothers.</p>
+
+<p>Around the World with General Grant. By John Russell Young. Parts 19 and
+20. New York: American News Co.</p>
+
+<p>Proverbial Treasury. English and Select Foreign Proverbs. By Carl
+Seelbach. New York: Seelbach Brothers.</p>
+
+<p>The Princess Elizabeth: A Lyric Drama. By Francis H. Williams.
+Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen &amp; Haffelfinger.</p>
+
+<p>A Foreign Marriage; or, Buying a Title. (Harpers' Library of American
+Fiction.) New York: Harper &amp; Brothers.</p>
+
+<p>William Ellery Channing: A Centennial Memory. By Charles T. Brooks.
+Boston: Roberts Brothers.</p>
+
+<p>Rev. Mr. Dashwell, the New Minister at Hampton. By E. P. B.
+Philadelphia: John E. Potter &amp; Co.</p>
+
+<p>History of the Administration of John De Witt. By James Geddes. New
+York: Harper &amp; Brothers.</p>
+
+<p>Masterpieces of English Literature. By William Swinton. New York: Harper
+&amp; Brothers.</p>
+
+<p>The Theory of Thought: A Treatise on Deductive Logic. New York: Harper &amp;
+Brothers.</p>
+
+<p>The Logic of Christian Evidences. By G. Frederick Wright. Andover:
+Warren F. Draper.</p>
+
+<p>Modern Communism. By Charles W. Hubner. Atlanta, Ga.: Jas. P. Harrison &amp;
+Co.</p>
+
+<p>Free Land and Free Trade. By Samuel S. Cox. New York: G. P. Putnam's
+Sons.</p>
+
+<p>Only a Waif. By R. A. Braendle ("Pips"). New York: D. and J. Sadlier &amp;
+Co.</p>
+
+<p>Life: Its True Genesis. By R. W. Wright. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.</p>
+
+<p>Joan of Arc, "The Maid." By Janet Tuckey. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Beauchamp Brown. (No-Name Series.) Boston: Roberts Brothers.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular
+Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880., by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE, JULY 1880 ***
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+</pre>
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+</body>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature
+and Science, Volume 26, July 1880., by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880.
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: February 23, 2010 [EBook #31365]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE, JULY 1880 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
+
+OF
+
+POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.
+
+VOLUME XXVI.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+PHILADELPHIA:
+J.B. LIPPINCOTT AND CO.
+
+1880.
+
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by
+
+J.B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.,
+
+In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
+
+LIPPINCOTT'S PRESS,
+_Philadelphia._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                                      PAGE
+A Chapter of American
+  Exploration. (_Illustrated._)  _William H. Rideing_                  393
+Adam and Eve                     _Author of "Dorothy Fox"_        42, 147,
+                                                        290, 411, 547, 666
+A Forgotten American Worthy      _Charles Burr Todd_                    68
+A Graveyard Idyl                 _Henry A. Beers_                      484
+A Great Singer                   _Lucy H. Hooper_                      507
+American Aeronauts.
+  (_Illustrated._)               _Will O. Bates_                       137
+Americans Abroad                 _Alain Gore_                          466
+An Episode of Spanish Chivalry   _Prof. T. F. Crane_                   747
+An Historical Rocky-Mountain
+  Outpost. (_Illustrated._)      _George Rex Buckman_                  649
+An Old English Home:
+  Bramshill House                _Rose G. Kingsley_                    163
+An Open Look at the
+  Political Situation                                                  118
+A Pivotal Point                  _William M. Baker_                    559
+Automatism                       _Dr. H. C. Wood_                 627, 755
+A Villeggiatura in Asisi         _Author of_
+                                 _"Signor Monaldini's Niece"_          308
+Bauble Wishart                   _Author of "Flitters, Tatters_
+                                 _and the Counsellor"_                 719
+Canoeing on the High
+  Mississippi. (_Illustrated._)  _A. H. Siegfried_                171, 279
+Dungeness, General Greene's
+  Sea-Island Plantation          _Frederick A. Ober._                  241
+Ekoniah Scrub: Among Florida
+  Lakes. (_Illustrated._)        _Louise Seymour Houghton_             265
+Findelkind of Martinswand:
+  A Child's Story                _Ouida_                               438
+Gas-Burning, and
+  its Consequences               _George J. Varney_                    734
+Glimpses of Portugal and
+  the Portuguese. (_Illustrated._)                                     473
+Heinrich Heine                   _A. Parker_                           604
+Horse-Racing in France.
+  (_Illustrated._)               _L. Lejeune_                     321, 452
+How she Kept her Vow:
+  A Narrative of Facts           _S. G. W. Benjamin_                   594
+"Kitty"                          _Lawrence Buckley_                    503
+Limoges, and its Porcelain       _George L. Catlin_                    576
+Mallston's Youngest              _M. H. Catherwood_                    189
+Mrs. Marcellus. By a Guest
+  at her Saturdays               _Olive Logan_                         613
+Mrs. Pinckney's Governess                                              336
+National Music an Interpreter
+  of National Character          _Amelia E. Barr_                      181
+Newport a Hundred Years Ago      _Frances Pierrepont North_            351
+On Spelling Reform               _M. B. C. True_                       111
+On the Skunk River               _Louise Coffin Jones_                  56
+Our Grandfathers' Temples.
+  (_Illustrated._)               _Charles F. Richardson_               678
+Paradise Plantation.
+  (_Illustrated._)               _Louise Seymour Houghton_              19
+Pipistrello                      _Ouida_                                84
+Seven Weeks a Missionary         _Louise Coffin Jones_                 424
+Short Studies in the Picturesque _William Sloan Kennedy_               375
+Studies in the Slums--           _Helen Campbell_
+    III. Nan; or, A Girl's Life                                        103
+    IV. Jack                                                           213
+     V. Diet and its Doings                                            362
+    VI. Jan of the North                                               498
+The [Greek: Apax Aegomena]
+  in Shakespeare                 _Prof. James D. Butler_               742
+The Arts of India.
+  (_Illustrated._)               _Jennie J. Young_                     532
+The Authors of "Froufrou"        _J. Brander Matthews_                 711
+The Early Days of Mormonism      _Frederic G. Mather_                  198
+The Mistakes of Two People       _Margaret Bertha Wright_              567
+The Palace of the Leatherstonepaughs.
+  (_Illustrated._)               _Margaret Bertha Wright_                9
+The Practical History of a Play  _William H. Rideing_                  586
+The Price of Safety              _E. W. Latimer_                       698
+The Ruin of Me. (Told by
+  a Young Married Man.)          _Mary Dean_                           369
+The Ruins of the Colorado Valley.
+  (_Illustrated._)               _Alfred Terry Bacon_                  521
+Through the Yellowstone Park
+  to Fort Custer                 _S. Weir Mitchell, M. D._              29
+Westbrook                        _Alice Ilgenfritz_                    218
+Where Lightning Strikes          _George J. Varney_                    232
+Will Democracy Tolerate a
+  Permanent Class of National Office-holders?                          690
+
+
+LITERATURE OF THE DAY, comprising Reviews of the following Works:
+
+Arr, E. H.--New England Bygones                                        392
+Auerbach, Berthold--Brigitta                                           775
+Ayres, Anne--The Life and Work of William Augustus Muhlenberg          135
+Black, William--White Wings: A Yachting Romance                        775
+Forrester, Mrs.--Roy and Viola                                         775
+Fothergill, Jessie--The Wellfields                                     775
+Green, John Richard--History of the English People                     774
+Laffan, May--Christy Carew                                             133
+L'Art: revue hebdomadaire illustree. Sixieme annee, Tome II            517
+Mahaffy, M. A., Rev. J. P.--A History of Classical Greek Literature    261
+Mrs. Beauchamp Brown                                                   518
+Nichol, John--Byron. (English Men-of-Letters Series.)                  645
+Piatt, John James--Pencilled Fly-Leaves:
+  A Book of Essays in Town and Country                                 648
+Scoones, W. Baptiste--Four Centuries of English Letters                647
+Smith, Goldwin--William Cowper. (English Men-of-Letters Series.)       263
+Stephen, Leslie--Alexander Pope. (English Men-of-Letters Series.)      389
+Symington, Andrew James--Samuel Lover: A Biographical Sketch.
+  With Selections from his Writings and Correspondence                 391
+Taylor, Bayard--Critical Essays and Literary Notes                     519
+  "        "  --Studies in German Literature                           519
+The American Art Review, Nos. 8 and 9                                  520
+Walford, L. B.--Troublesome Daughters                                  775
+Wikoff, Henry--The Reminiscences of an Idler                           135
+
+
+OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP, comprising the following Articles:
+
+A Child's Autobiography, 770; A Legion of Devils, 257; A Little Ireland
+in America, 767; A Natural Barometer, 517; An Unfinished Page of
+History, 764; A Plot for an Historical Novel, 385; A Sermon to Literary
+Aspirants, 637; Civil-Service Reform and Democratic Ideas, 762;
+Concerning Night-Noises, 253; Condition of the People in the West of
+Ireland, 514; Conservatory Life in Boston, 511; Edelweiss, 126; Fate of
+an Old Companion of Napoleon III., 516; High Jinks on the Upper
+Mississippi, 515; Our New Visitors, 388; People's Houses: A Dialogue,
+640; Prayer-Meeting Eloquence, 129; Seeing is Believing, 642; Spoiled
+Children, 128; Tabarin, the French Merry-Andrew, 255; The Demidoffs,
+259; The Jardin d'Acclimatation of Paris, 130; The Miseries of Camping
+Out, 387; The Paris Salon of 1880, 381; "Time Turns the Tables," 642;
+Unreformed Spelling, 388; Wanted--A Real Gainsborough, 772; "Western
+Memorabilia," 250.
+
+
+POETRY:
+
+A Vengeance                      _Edgar Fawcett_                       211
+Dawn                             _John B. Tabb_                        612
+Delectatio Piscatoria.
+  The Upper Kennebec             _Horatio Nelson Powers_               367
+From Far                         _Philip Bourke Marston_               465
+Lost                             _Mary B. Dodge_                       665
+My Treasure                      _H. L. Leonard_                       109
+Possession                       _Eliza Calvert Hall_                  162
+Shelley                          _J. B. Tabb_                           18
+Teresa di Faenza                 _Emma Lazarus_                         83
+The Home of the Gentians         _Howard Glyndon_                      350
+The King's Gifts                 _Emily A. Braddock_                   718
+The Sea's Secret                 _G. A. Davis_                         240
+Three Roses                      _Julia C. R. Dorr_                    585
+Under the Grasses                _Dora Reed Goodale_                   502
+
+
+
+
+LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
+
+OF
+
+_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE._
+
+JULY, 1880.
+
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by J. B.
+LIPPINCOTT & CO., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
+Washington.
+
+
+
+
+THE PALACE OF THE LEATHERSTONEPAUGHS.
+
+[Illustration: RUINS OF THE PALACES OF THE CAESARS.]
+
+
+Every sentimental traveller to Rome must sometimes wonder if to come to
+the Eternal City is not, after all, more of a loss than a gain: Rome
+unvisited holds such a solitary place in one's imaginings. It is then a
+place around which sweeps a different atmosphere from that of any other
+city under the sun. One sees it through poetic mists that veil every
+prosaic reality. It is arched by an horizon against which the figures of
+its wonderful history are shadowed with scarcely less of grandeur and
+glory than those the old gods cast upon the Sacred Hill.
+
+One who has never seen Rome is thus led to imagine that those of his
+country-people who have lived here for years have become in a manner
+purged of all natural commonplaceness. One thinks of them as
+refined--sublimated, so to speak--into beings worthy of reverence and to
+be spoken of with awed admiration. For have not their feet wandered
+where the Caesars' feet have trod, till that famous ground has become
+common earth to them? Have they not dwelt in the shadow of mountains
+that have trembled beneath the tramp of Goth, Visigoth and Ostrogoth,
+till those shadows have become every-day shadows to them? Have they not
+often watched beneath the same stars that shone upon knightly vigils,
+till the whiteness of those shining hosts has made pure their souls as
+it purified the heroic ones of old? Have they not listened to the
+singing and sighing of the selfsame winds that sung and sighed about the
+spot where kingly Numa wooed a nymph, till it must be that into the
+commoner natures has entered some of the sweetness and wisdom of that
+half-divine communion?
+
+Thus the dreamer comes to Rome expecting to enter and become enfolded by
+those poetic mists, to live an ideal life amid the tender melancholy
+that broods over stately and storied ruin, and to forget for evermore,
+while within the wondrous precincts, that aught more prosaic exists than
+the heroes of history, the fairest visions of art and dreams of poesy.
+
+[Illustration: "GHOSTS OF FLEAS" (Copied From Sketches Of William
+Blake).]
+
+So came the Leatherstonepaughs. And so have the Leatherstonepaughs
+sometimes wondered if, after all, to come to Rome is not more of a loss
+than a gain in the dimming of one of their fairest ideals. For is there
+another city in the world where certain of the vulgar verities of life
+press themselves more prominently into view than in the Eternal City?
+Can one anywhere have a more forcible conviction that greasy cookery is
+bile-provoking, and that it is because the sylvan bovine ruminates so
+long upon the melancholy Campagna that one's dinners become such a heavy
+and sorrowful matter in Rome? Is there any city in the universe where
+fleas dwarf more colossally and fiendishly Blake's famous "ghosts" of
+their kind? Does one anywhere come oftener in from wet streets, "a dem'd
+moist, unpleasant body," to more tomblike rooms? Is one anywhere so
+ceaselessly haunted by the disagreeable consciousness that one pays ten
+times as much for everything one buys as a native pays, and that the
+trousered descendant of the toga'd Roman regards the Western barbarian
+as quite as much his legitimate prey as the barbarian's barelegged
+ancestors were the prey of his forefathers before the tables of history
+were turned, Rome fallen and breeches supplied to all the world? And are
+any mortal vistas more gorgeously illuminated by the red guidebook of
+the Tourist than are the stately and storied ruins where the
+sentimentalist seeketh the brooding of a tender melancholy, and
+findeth it not in the presence of couriers, cabmen, beggars,
+photograph-peddlers, stovepipe hats, tie-backs and bridal giggles?
+
+The dreamer thought to find old Rome crystallized amid its glorious
+memories. He finds a nineteenth-century city, with gay shops and
+fashionable streets, living over the heroic scenes of the ancients and
+the actual woe and spiritual mysticism of the mediaeval age; and he is
+disappointed--nay, even sometimes enraged into a gnashing of the teeth
+at all things Roman.
+
+But after many weeks, after the sights have been "done," the mouldy and
+mossy nooks of the old city explored, and the marvellous picturesqueness
+that hides in strange places revealed--after one has a speaking
+acquaintance with all the broken bits of old statues that gather moth
+and rust where the tourist cometh not and the guidebook is not known,
+and has followed the tiniest thread of legend or tradition into all
+manner of mysterious regions,--then the sentimentalist begins to love
+Rome again--Rome as it is, not Rome as it seemed through the glamours of
+individual imagination.
+
+This is what the Leatherstonepaughs did. But first they fled the
+companionship of the beloved but somewhat loudly-shrieking American
+eagle as that proud bird often appears in the hotels and _pensions_ of
+Europe, and lived in a shabby Roman palace, where only the soft bastard
+Latin was heard upon the stairs, and where, if any mediaeval ghost
+stalked in rusted armor or glided in mouldering cerements, it would not
+understand a single word of their foreign, many-consonanted speech.
+
+This palace stands, gay and grim, at the corner of a gay street and a
+dingy _vicolo_, the street and alley contrasting in color like a Claude
+Lorraine with a Nicholas Poussin. Past one side of the palace drifts all
+day a bright tide of foreign sightseers, prosperous Romans, gay models
+and flower-venders, handsome carriages, dark-eyed girls with their
+sallow chaperones, and olive-cheeked, huge-checked _jeunesse doree_,
+evidently seeking for pretty faces as for pearls of great price, as is
+the manner of the jeunesse doree of the Eternal City; while down upon
+the scene looks a succession of dwelling-houses, a gray-walled convent
+or two, one of the stateliest palaces of Rome--now let out in apartments
+and hiding in obscure rooms the last two impoverished descendants of a
+proud race that helped to impoverish Rome--one or two more prosperous
+palaces, and a venerable church, looking like a sleepy watchman of Zion
+suffering the enemy to do as it will before his closed eyes.
+
+[Illustration: WHAT A ROMAN BUYS FOR TWO CENTS IN THE ETERNAL CITY.]
+
+[Illustration: WHAT A FOREIGNER BUYS FOR TWO CENTS IN THE ETERNAL CITY.]
+
+On the other side is the vicolo, dark of wall and dank of pavement, with
+petticoats and shirts dangling from numerous windows and fluttering like
+gibbeted wretches in the air; with frowzy women sewing or knitting in
+the sombre doorways and squalid urchins screaming everywhere; with
+humble vegetables and cheap wines exposed for sale in dirty windows;
+with usually a carriage or two undergoing a washing at some stable-door;
+and with almost always an amorous Romeo or two from some brighter region
+wandering hopefully to and fro amid the unpicturesque gloom of this
+Roman lane to catch a wafted kiss or a dropped letter from the rear
+window of his Juliet's home. For nowhere else in Europe, Asia, America,
+the Oceanic Archipelago or the Better Land can the Romeo-and-Juliet
+business be more openly and freely carried on than in the by-streets of
+the Eternal City, where girls are thought to be as jealously secluded
+from the monster Man as are the women of a Turkish seraglio or the nuns
+of a European convent. These Romeos and Juliets usually seem quite
+indifferent to the number of unsympathetic eyes that watch their little
+drama, providing only Papa and Mamma Capulet are kept in the dark in the
+shop below. Even the observation of Signor and Signora Montague would
+disturb them little, for it is only Juliet who is guarded, and Romeo is
+evidently expected to get all the fun out of life he can. In their dingy
+vicolo the Leatherstonepaughs have seen three Romeos watching three
+windows at the same twilight moment. One of them stood under an open
+window in the third story, from whence a line was dropped down to
+receive the letter he held in his hand. Just as the letter-weighted line
+was drawn up a window immediately below Juliet's was thrown violently
+open, and an unromantic head appeared to empty vials of wrath upon the
+spectacled Romeo below for always hanging about the windows of the silly
+_pizzicarole_ girls above and giving the house a ridiculous appearance
+in the eyes of the passers-by. Romeo answered audaciously that the
+signora was mistaken in the man, that he had never been under that
+window before in his life, had never seen the Signorina Juliet, daughter
+of Capulet the pizzicarole who lived above, but that he was merely
+accompanying his friend Romeo, who loved Juliet the daughter of the
+_drochiere_ who lived a story below, and who was now wooing her softly
+two or three windows away. A shriek was his response as the wrathful
+head disappeared, while the lying Romeo laughed wickedly and the
+Leatherstonepaughs immoderately, in spite of themselves, to see Juliet,
+daughter of the drochiere, electrically abstracted from _her_ window as
+if by the sudden application of a four-hundred-enraged-mother-power to
+her lofty chignon from behind, while the three Romeos, evidently all
+strangers to each other, folded their tents like the Arab and silently
+stole away. [Illustration: ROMEO.]
+
+[Illustration: JULIET.]
+
+The Leatherstonepaughs always suspected that no lordly race, from
+father's father to son's son, had ever dwelt in their immense palace.
+They suspected rather that it was, like many another mighty Roman pile,
+reared by plebeian gains to shelter noble Romans fair and proud whom
+Fate confined to economical "flats," and whose wounded pride could best
+be poulticed by the word _palazzo_.
+
+Hans Christian Andersen knew this palace well, and has described it as
+the early home of his _Improvisatore_. In those days two fountains
+tinkled, one within, the other just outside, the dusky iron-barred
+basement. One fountain, however, has ceased to flow, and now if a
+passer-by peeps in at the grated window, whence issue hot strong vapors
+and bursts of merry laughter, he will see a huge stone basin into whose
+foaming contents one fountain drips, and over which a dozen washerwomen
+bend and pound with all their might and main in a bit of chiaroscuro
+that reminds one of Correggio.
+
+Over this Correggio glimpse wide stone stairs lead past dungeon-like
+doors up five flights to the skylighted roof. Each of these doors has a
+tiny opening through which gleams a watchful eye and comes the sound of
+the inevitable "_Chi e?_" whenever the doorbell rings, as if each comer
+were an armed marauder strayed down from the Middle Ages, who must be
+well reconnoitred before the fortress-gates are unbarred.
+
+[Illustration: THE COURT OF THE LEATHERSTONEPAUGHS' PALACE.]
+
+It was in the _ultimo piano_ that the Leatherstonepaughs pitched their
+lodge in a vast wilderness of colorful tiled roofs, moss-grown and
+lichen-laden, amid a forest of quaintly-shaped and smokeless chimneys.
+Their floors, guiltless of rugs or carpets, were of earthen tiles and
+worn into hollows where the feet of the palace-dwellers passed oftenest
+to and fro. A multitude of undraped windows opened like doors upon stone
+balconies, whither the inhabitants flew like a startled covey of birds
+every time the king and queen drove by in the street below, and upon
+which they passed always from room to room. The outer balcony looks down
+upon the Piazza Barberini and its famous Spouting Triton, with an
+horizon-line over the roofs broken by gloomy stone-pines and cypresses
+that seem to have grown from the buried griefs of Rome's dead centuries.
+The inner balcony overlooks the court, where through the wide windows of
+every story, amid the potted plants and climbing vines that never take
+on a shade of pallor in an Italian winter, and that adorn every Roman
+balcony, one could see into the penetralia of a dozen Roman families and
+wrest thence the most vital secrets--even to how much _Romano_ Alfredo
+drank at dinner or whether lemon-juice or sour wine gave piquancy to
+Rosina's salad. Entirely unacquainted with these descendants of ancient
+patrician or pleb, the Leatherstonepaughs ventilated original and
+individual theories concerning them, and gave them names of their own
+choosing.
+
+[Illustration: A CASE OF NON-REMITTANCE.]
+
+"Rameses the Great has quarrelled with the Sphinx and is flirting with
+the Pyramid," whispered young Cain one day as some of the family,
+leaning over the iron railing, looked into the leafy, azure-domed vault
+below, and saw into the dining-room of a family whose mysteriousness of
+habit and un-Italian blankness of face gave them a fanciful resemblance
+to the eternal riddles of the Orient.
+
+The "Pyramid," whose wide feet and tiny head gave her her triangular
+title, was evidently a teacher, for she so often carried exercise-books
+and dog-eared grammars in her hand. She chanced at that moment to glance
+upward. "Lucia," she cried to the Sphinx, speaking with an Italian
+accent that she flattered herself was to the down-gazers an unknown
+tongue, "do look up to the fifth _loggia_. If there isn't the Huge Bear,
+the Middle-sized Bear and the Wee Bear looking as if they wanted to come
+down and eat us up!"
+
+"Y' ain't fat 'nuf," yelled the Wee Bear before the elder Bruins had
+time to squelch him.
+
+The studio-salon of the Leatherstonepaughs amid the clouds and chimneys
+of the Eternal City was a chapter for the curious. It was as spacious as
+a country meeting-house, as lofty as befits a palace. It was frescoed
+like some of the modern pseudo-Gothic and pine cathedrals that adorn the
+village-greens of New England hamlets, and its _pot-pourri_ of artistic
+ideas was rich in helmeted Minervas, vine-wreathed Bacchuses, winged
+Apollos and nameless classic nymphs, all staring downward from the
+spandrels of pointed arches with quite as much at-homeness as Olympian
+heroes would feel amid the mystic shades of the Scandinavian Walhalla.
+This room was magnificent with crimson upholstery, upon which rested a
+multitude of scarlet-embroidered cushions that seemed to the
+color-loving eye like a dream of plum-pudding after a nightmare of
+mince-pie. Through this magnificence had drifted, while yet the
+Leatherstonepaughs saw Rome in all its idealizing mists, generations of
+artists. Sometimes these artists had had a sublime disdain of base
+lucre, and sometimes base lucre had had a sublime disdain of them. Some
+of the latter class--whose name is Legion--had marked their passage by
+busts, statuettes and paintings that served to remind Signora Anina,
+their landlady, that promises of a remittance can be as fair and false
+as the song of the Sirens or the guile of the Loreley. Crusaders in
+armor brandished their lances there in evidence that Michael Angelo
+Bivins never sent from Manhattan the bit of white paper to redeem them.
+Antignone--usually wearing a Leatherstonepaugh bonnet--mourned that
+Praxiteles Periwinkle faded out of the vistas of Rome to the banks of
+the Thames without her. Dancing Floras seemed joyous that they had not
+gone wandering among the Theban Colossi with Zefferino, instead of
+staying to pay for his Roman lodging; while the walls smiled, wept,
+simpered, threatened and gloomed with Madonnas, Dolorosas, Beatrices,
+sprites, angels and fiends, the authors of whose being had long ago
+drifted away on the ocean of poverty which sweeps about the world, and
+beneath which sometimes the richest-freighted ships go down. In the
+twenty years that Signora Anina has let her rooms to artists many such
+tragedies have written significant and dreary lines upon her walls.
+
+That studio-salon was rich not alone in painting and sculpture. The
+whatnot was a museum whither might come the Northern Goth and Southern
+Vandal to learn what a Roman home can teach of the artistic taste that
+Matthew Arnold declares to be the natural heritage only of the nation
+which rocked the cradle of the Renaissance when its old Romanesque and
+Byzantine parents died. That whatnot was covered with tiny china dogs
+and cats, such as we benighted American Goths buy for ten cents a dozen
+to fill up the crevices in Billy's and Bobby's Christmas stockings.
+Fancy inkstands stood cheek by jowl with wire flower-baskets that were
+stuffed with crewel roses of such outrageous hues as would make the
+Angel of Color blaspheme. Cut-glass spoon-holders kept in countenance
+shining plated table-casters eternally and spotlessly divorced from the
+purpose of their being. There were gaudy china vases by the dozen and
+simpering china shepherdesses by the score. There were plaster casts of
+the whole of Signora Anina's family of nine children, from the elder
+fiery Achilles to the younger hysterical Niobe. There were
+perfume-bottles enough to start a coiffeur in business, and woolly lambs
+enough for a dozen pastoral poems or as many bucolic butchers. But the
+piano was piled high with Beethoven's sonatas and Chopin's delicious
+dream-music, while a deluge of French novels had evidently surged over
+that palace of the Leatherstonepaughs.
+
+When the family took possession of their share of the palazzo a corner
+of this studio-salon was dedicated to a peculiar member of their family.
+From that corner she seldom moved save as she swept away in some such
+elegant costume as the others wore only upon gala-occasions, or in some
+picturesque or wildly-fantastic garb that would have lodged her in a
+policeman's care had she ever been suffered to escape thus from the
+palace. All day long, day after day, she tarried in her corner mute and
+motionless, eying all comers and goers with a haughty stare. Sometimes
+she leaned there with rigid finger pressed upon her lip, like a statue
+of Silence; sometimes her hands were pressed pathetically to her breast,
+like a Mater Dolorosa; sometimes both arms hung lax and limp by her
+side, like those of a heart-broken creature; and sometimes she wildly
+clutched empty air, like a Leatherstonepaugh enthusiastically inebriated
+or gone stark, staring, raving mad!
+
+[Illustration: ANTIGNONE.]
+
+Yet never, never, never was Silentia Leatherstonepaugh known to break
+that dreadful silence, even though honored guests spoke to her kindly,
+and although young Cain Leatherstonepaugh repeatedly reviled her as had
+she been Abel's wife. One day came an old Spanish monk of whom Leah and
+Rachel would learn the language of Castile. Silentia gloomed in her
+dusky corner unseen of the monk, who was left with her an instant alone.
+A few moments before, moved perhaps by a dawning comprehension of the
+unspeakable pathos of her fate, young Cain had given her a dagger. When,
+two minutes after the monk's arrival, Leah and Rachel entered the room,
+a black sighing mass cowered in a corner of the sofa, while Silentia
+rose spectre-like in the dimness, the dagger pointed toward her heart.
+
+[Illustration: SILENTIA LEATHERSTONEPAUGH.]
+
+"Madonna mia!" giggled the monk hysterically when his petticoats were
+pulled decorously about him and he was set on his feet again, "I thought
+I should be arrested for murder--_poverino mio_!"
+
+Another day came one of the Beelzebub girls--Lady Diavoletta--who wished
+to coax some of the Leatherstonepaughs to paint her a series of fans
+with the torments of Dante's Inferno. When the doorbell rang, and while
+Cain cried "_Chi e?_" at the peephole, Leah, who was just posing for
+Rachel's barelegged gypsy, hastily pulled a long silk skirt from haughty
+but unresisting Silentia and hurried it over her own head before Lady
+Diavoletta was admitted. The heiress of the Beelzebubs tarried but a
+moment, then took her departure grimly, without hinting a word of her
+purpose. Said Lady Diavoletta afterward to the Cherubim sisters, "Would
+you believe it? I called one day upon those Leatherstonepaughs, and they
+never even apologized for receiving me in a room where there was an
+insane American just escaped from her keeper, _tray beang arrangee pore
+doncy le cong cong_!"
+
+[Illustration: SILENTIA AS SHE APPEARED TO LADY DIAVOLETTA BEELZEBUB.]
+
+Dismal and grim though the exterior of that palazzo was, needing but
+towers and machicolated parapets to seem a fortress, or an encircling
+wall to seem a frowning monastery where cowled figures met each other
+only to whisper sepulchrally, "Brother, we must die," it was yet the
+scene of not a few laughable experiences. And perhaps even in this
+respect it may not have differed so widely as one might think from
+cloistered shades of other days, when out of sad, earth-colored raiment
+and the habit of dismal speech human sentiment painted pictures while
+yet the fagots grew apace for their destruction as well as for the
+funeral-pyre of their scolding and bellowing enemy, Savonarola. For
+where Fra Angelico, working from the life, could create a San Sebastian
+so instinct with earthly vitality and earthly bloom that pious
+Florentine women could not say their prayers in peace in its presence,
+there were three easels, each bearing a canvas, in different parts of
+the room. Before each easel worked a Leatherstonepaugh, each clad with
+classic simplicity in a long blue cotton garment, decorated with many
+colors and smelling strongly of retouching varnish, that covered her
+from the white ruffle at her throat to the upper edge of her black
+alpaca flounce.
+
+The room was silent, and, except for the deft action of brushes,
+motionless. Only that from below was heard the musical splash of the
+Barberini Tritons, and that from the windows could be seen the sombre
+pines of the Ludovisi gardens swaying in solemn rhythmic measure must
+have been sometimes unbending from the dole and drear of mediaeval
+asceticism into something very like human fun.
+
+One day the Leatherstonepaughs were all at work in the immense studio.
+Silentia alone was idle, and, somewhat indecorously draped only in a bit
+of old tapestry, with dishevelled hair and lolling head, leaned against
+the wall, apparently in the last stages of inebriety. There against the
+blue sky, all the world would have seemed petrified into the complete
+passiveness of sitting for its picture.
+
+[Illustration: YOUNG CAIN INTERVIEWING SILENTIA.]
+
+Marietta was their model. She was posed in a nun's dress, pensive gray,
+with virginal white bound primly across her brow. Marietta is a capital
+model, and her sad face and tender eyes were upturned with exactly the
+desired expression to the grinning mask in the centre of the ceiling.
+Silentia kindly consented to pose for the cross to which the nun clung;
+that is, she wobbled weakly into the place where the sacred emblem would
+have been were this Nature and not Art, and where the cross would be in
+the picture when completed. Marietta clung devoutly to Silentia's
+ankles, and Silentia looked as cross as possible.
+
+"How unusual to see one of Italia's children with a face like that!"
+said a Leatherstonepaugh as she studied the nun's features. "One would
+say that she had really found peace only after some terrible suffering."
+
+"She does not give me that impression," said another Leatherstonepaugh.
+"Her contours are too round, her color too undimmed, ever to have
+weathered spiritual storms. She seems to me more like one of Giovanni
+Bellini's Madonnas, those fair, fresh girl-mothers whom sorrow has never
+breathed upon to blight a line or tint, and yet who seem to have a
+prophecy written upon their faces--not of the glory of the agony, but of
+the lifelong sadness of a strange destiny. This girl has some mournful
+prescience perhaps. Let me talk with her by and by."
+
+"Marietta," said a Leatherstonepaugh in the next repose, "if you were
+not obliged to be a model, what would you choose to be, of all things in
+the world?"
+
+This was only an entering-wedge, intended by insidious degrees to pry
+open the heart of the girl and learn the mystery of her Madonna-like
+sadness.
+
+Marietta looked up quickly: "What would I be, signorina? Dio mio! but I
+would wear shining clothes and ride in the Polytheama! Giacomo says I
+was born for the circus. Will le signorine see?"
+
+In the twinkling of an eye, before the Leatherstonepaughs could breathe,
+the pensive gray raiment was drawn up to the length of a ballet-skirt
+and the foot of the Madonna-faced nun was in the open mouth of one of
+Lucca della Robbia's singing-boys that hung on the wall about five feet
+from the floor!
+
+"Can any of the signorine do _that_?" she crowed triumphantly. "I can
+knock off a man's hat or black his eye with my foot."
+
+All the Leatherstonepaughs groaned in doleful chorus, "A-a-a-h-h!"
+
+And it was not until young Cain, ostracised from the studio during the
+seance, whistled in through the keyhole sympathetic inquiries concerning
+the only woe his little soul knew, "Watty matter in yare? Ennybuddy dut
+e tummuck-ache?" that they chorused with laughter at their
+"Giovanni-Bellini Madonna."
+
+MARGARET BERTHA WRIGHT.
+
+
+
+
+SHELLEY.
+
+
+    Shelley, the wondrous music of thy soul
+      Breathes in the cloud and in the skylark's song,
+      That float as an embodied dream along
+    The dewy lids of Morning. In the dole
+    That haunts the west wind, in the joyous roll
+      Of Arethusan fountains, or among
+      The wastes where Ozymandias the strong
+    Lies in colossal ruin, thy control
+      Speaks in the wedded rhyme. Thy spirit gave
+    A fragrance to all Nature, and a tone
+      To inexpressive Silence. Each apart--
+    Earth, Air and Ocean--claims thee as its own,
+      The twain that bred thee, and the panting wave
+        That clasped thee like an overflowing heart.
+
+                               J. B. TABB.
+
+
+
+
+PARADISE PLANTATION
+
+[Illustration: "THE SPLENDID SADDLE-HOSS."]
+
+
+"Of course you will live at the hotel?"
+
+"Not at all. The idea of leaving one's work three times a day to dress
+for meals!"
+
+"May I ask, then, where you _do_ propose to reside?"
+
+"In the cottage on the place, to be sure."
+
+The Pessimist thrust his hands into his pockets and gave utterance to a
+long, low whistle.
+
+"You don't believe it? Come over with us and look at it, and let us tell
+you our plans."
+
+"That negro hut, Hope? You never can be in earnest?"
+
+"She is until she has seen it," said the Invalid, smiling. "You had
+better go over with her: a sight of the place will be more effectual
+than all your arguments."
+
+"But she _has_ seen it," said Merry. "Two years ago, when we were here
+and old Uncle Nat was so ill, we went over there."
+
+"And I remember the house perfectly," added Hope--"a charming long, low,
+dark room, with no windows and a great fireplace, and the most
+magnificent live-oak overhanging the roof."
+
+"How enchanting! Let us move in at once." The Invalid rose from his
+chair, and taking Merry's arm, the four descended the piazza-steps.
+
+"Of course," explained Hope as we walked slowly under the grand old
+trees of the hotel park--"of course the carpenter and the painter and
+the glazier are to intervene, and Merry and I must make no end of
+curtains and things. But it will be ever so much cheaper, when all is
+done, than living at the hotel, besides being so much more cozy; and if
+we are to farm, we really should be on the spot."
+
+"Meantime, I shall retain my room at the hotel," said the Pessimist,
+letting down the bars.
+
+"You are expected to do that," retorted Merry, disdaining the bars and
+climbing over the fence. "It will be quite as much as you deserve to be
+permitted to take your meals with us. But there! can you deny that that
+is beautiful?"
+
+The wide field in which we were walking terminated in a high bluff above
+the St. John's. A belt of great forest trees permitted only occasional
+glimpses of the water on that side, but to the northward the ground
+sloped gradually down to one of the picturesque bays which so frequently
+indent the shores of the beautiful river. Huge live-oaks stood here and
+there about the field, with soft gray Spanish moss swaying from their
+dark branches. Under the shadow of one more mighty than the rest stood
+the cottage, or rather the two cottages, which formed the much-discussed
+residence--two unpainted, windowless buildings, with not a perpendicular
+line in their whole superficial extent.
+
+The Pessimist withdrew the stick which held the staple and threw open
+the unshapely door. There were no steps, but a little friendly pushing
+and pulling brought even the Invalid within the room. There was a
+moment's silence; then, from Hope, "Oh, the magnificent chimney! Think
+of a fire of four-foot lightwood on a chilly evening!"
+
+"I should advise the use of the chimney as a sleeping-room: there seems
+to be none other," said the Pessimist.
+
+"But we can curtain off this entire end of the room. How fortunate that
+it should be so large! Here will be our bedroom, and this corner shall
+be for Merry. And when we have put one of those long, low Swiss windows
+in the east side, and another here to the south, you'll see how pleasant
+it will be."
+
+"It appears to me," he remarked perversely, "that windows will be a
+superfluous luxury. One can see out at a dozen places already; and as
+for ventilation, there is plenty of that through the roof."
+
+"The frame really is sound," said the Invalid, examining with a critical
+eye.
+
+"Of course it is," said Hope. "Now let us go into the kitchen. If that
+is only half as good I shall be quite satisfied."
+
+The kitchen-door, which was simply an old packing-box cover, with the
+address outside by way of doorplate, was a veritable "fat man's misery,"
+but as none of the party were particularly fat we all managed to squeeze
+through.
+
+"Two rooms!" exclaimed Hope. "How enchanting! I had no idea that there
+was more than one. What a nice little dining-room this will make! There
+is just room enough."
+
+"'Us four and no more,'" quoted Merry. "But where will the handmaiden
+sleep?"
+
+"The kitchen is large," said the Pessimist, bowing his head to pass into
+the next room: "it will only be making one more curtain, Merry, and she
+can have this corner."
+
+"He is converted! he really is converted!" cried Merry, clapping her
+hands. "And now there is only papa, and then we can go to the sawmill to
+order lumber."
+
+"And to the Cove to find a carpenter," added Hope. "Papa can make up his
+mind in the boat."
+
+We had visited Florida two years before, and, charmed with the climate,
+the river, the oaks, the flowers, the sweet do-nothing life, we had
+followed the example of so many worthy Northerners and had bought an old
+plantation, intending to start an orange-grove. We had gone over all the
+calculations which are so freely circulated in the Florida papers--so
+many trees to the acre, so many oranges to the tree: the results were
+fairly dazzling. Even granting, with a lordly indifference to trifles
+worthy of incipient millionaires, that the trees should bear only
+one-fifth of the computed number of oranges, and that they should bring
+but one-third of the estimated price, still we should realize one
+thousand dollars per acre. And there are three hundred and sixty acres
+in our plantation. Ah! even the Pessimist drew a long breath.
+
+Circumstances had, however, prevented our taking immediate steps toward
+securing this colossal fortune. But now that it had become necessary for
+us to spend the winter in a warm climate, our golden projects were
+revived. We would start a grove at once. It was not until we had been
+three days at sea, southward bound, that Hope, after diligent study of
+an old Florida newspaper, picked up nobody knows where, became the
+originator of the farming plan now in process of development.
+
+"The cultivation of the crop becomes the cultivation of the grove," she
+said with the sublime assurance of utter ignorance, "and thus we shall
+get our orange-grove at no cost whatever."
+
+She was so much in earnest that the Invalid was actually convinced by
+her arguments, which, to do her justice, were not original, but were
+filched from the enthusiastic journal before alluded to. It was decided
+that we were to go to farming. It is true none of us knew anything
+about the business except such waifs of experience as remained to the
+Invalid after thirty years' absence from grandpa's farm, where he used
+to spend the holidays. Holidays were in winter in those times, and his
+agricultural experience had consisted principally in cracking butternuts
+and riding to the wood-lot on the ox-sled. But this was of no
+consequence, as Hope and Merry agreed, since there were plenty of books
+on the subject, and, besides, there were the Florida newspapers!
+
+"I warn you I wash my hands of the whole concern," the Pessimist had
+said. "You'll never make farming pay."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because you won't."
+
+"But why, because?"
+
+"The idea of women farming!"
+
+"Oh, well, if you come to that, I should just like to show you what
+women can do," cried Merry; and this unlucky remark of the Pessimist
+settles the business. There is no longer any question about farming.
+
+No one could deny that the house was pretty, and comfortable too, when
+at last the carpenter and painter had done their work, and the curtains
+and the easy-chairs and the bookshelves had taken their places, and the
+great fire of pine logs was lighted, and the mocking-bird's song
+streamed in with the sunlight through the open door and between the
+fluttering leaves of the ivy-screen at the window. The piano was always
+open in the evenings, with Merry or the Pessimist strumming on the keys
+or trying some of the lovely new songs; and Hope would be busy at her
+table with farm-books and accounts; and the Invalid, in his easy-chair,
+would be listening to the music and falling off to sleep and rousing
+himself with a little clucking snore to pile more lightwood on the fire;
+and the mocking-bird in his covered cage would wake too and join lustily
+in the song, till Merry smothered him up in thicker coverings.
+
+The first duty was evident. "Give it a name, I beg," Merry had said the
+very first evening in the new home; and the house immediately went into
+committee of the whole to decide upon one. Hope proposed Paradise
+Plantation; Merry suggested Fortune Grove; the Pessimist hinted that
+Folly Farm would be appropriate, but this proposition was ignominiously
+rejected; and the Invalid gave the casting-vote for Hope's selection.
+
+[Illustration: "I'SE DE SECTION, SAH."]
+
+The hour for work having now arrived, the man was not slow in presenting
+himself. "I met an old fellow who used to be a sort of overseer on this
+very plantation," the Invalid said. "He says he has an excellent horse,
+and you will need one, Hope. I told him to come and see you."
+
+"Which? the man or the horse?" asked Merry in a low voice.
+
+"Both, apparently," answered the Pessimist in the same tone, "for here
+they come."
+
+"Ole man Spafford," as he announced himself, was a darkey of ancient and
+venerable mien, tall, gaunt and weatherbeaten. His steed was taller,
+gaunter and apparently twice as old--an interesting study for the
+osteologist if there be any such scientific person.
+
+"He splendid saddle-hoss, missis," said the old man: "good wuk-hoss
+too--bery fine hoss."
+
+"It seems to me he's rather thin," said Hope doubtfully.
+
+"Dat kase we didn't make no corn dis year, de ole woman an' me, we was
+bofe so bad wid de misery in the leaders" (rheumatism in the legs). "But
+Sancho won't stay pore ef you buys corn enough, missis. He powerful good
+horse to eat."
+
+Further conversation revealed the fact that old man Spafford was "de
+chief man ob de chu'ch."
+
+"What! a minister?" asked the Invalid.
+
+"No, sah, not azatly de preacher, sah, but I'se de nex' t'ing to dat."
+
+"What may your office be, then, uncle?" asked the Pessimist.
+
+"I'se de section, sah," answered the old man solemnly, making a low bow.
+
+"The sexton! So you ring the bell, do you?"
+
+"Not azatly de bell, sah--we ain't got no bell--but I bangs on de
+buzz-saw, sah."
+
+"What does he mean?" asked Merry.
+
+The Pessimist shrugged his shoulders without answering, but the
+"section" hastened to explain: "You see, missy, when dey pass roun' de
+hat to buy a bell dey didn't lift nigh enough; so dey jis' bought a
+buzz-saw and hung it up in de chu'ch-house; an' I bangs on de buzz-saw,
+missy."
+
+The chief man of the church was found, upon closer acquaintance, to be
+the subject of a profound conviction that he was the individual
+predestinated to superintend our farming interests. He was so well
+persuaded of this high calling that none of us dreamed of questioning
+it, and he was forthwith installed in the coveted office. At his
+suggestion another man, Dryden by name, was engaged to assist old man
+Spafford and take care of Sancho, and a boy, called Solomon, to wait
+upon Dryden and do chores. A few day-laborers were also temporarily
+hired, the season being so far advanced and work pressing. The
+carpenters were recalled, for there was a barn to build, and hen-coops
+and a pig-sty, not to speak of a fence. Hope and Merry flitted hither
+and thither armed with all sorts of impossible implements, which some
+one was sure to want by the time they had worked five minutes with them.
+As for the Pessimist, he confined himself to setting out orange trees,
+the only legitimate business, he contended, on the place. This work,
+however, he performed vicariously, standing by and smoking while a negro
+set out the trees.
+
+"My duties appear to be limited to paying the bills," remarked the
+Invalid, "and I seem to be the only member of the family who cannot let
+out the job."
+
+"I thought the farm was to be self-supporting?" said the Pessimist.
+
+"Well, so it is: wait till the crops are raised," retorted Merry.
+
+"Henderson says," observed Hope, meditatively, "that there are six
+hundred dollars net profits to be obtained from one acre of cabbages."
+
+"Why don't you plant cabbages, then? In this seven-acre lot, for
+instance?"
+
+"Oh, that would be too many. Besides, I have planted all I could get. It
+is too late to sow the seed, but old man Spafford had some beautiful
+plants he let me have. He charged an extra price because they were so
+choice, but I was glad to get the best: it is cheapest in the end. I got
+five thousand of them."
+
+"What sort are they?" asked the Invalid.
+
+"I don't know precisely. Spafford says he done lost the paper, and he
+didn't rightly understand the name nohow, 'long o' not being able to
+read; but they were a drefful choice kind."
+
+"Oh, bother the name!" said the Pessimist: "who cares what it is? A
+cabbage is a cabbage, I presume. But what have you in this seven-acre
+lot?"
+
+"Those are peas. Dryden says that in North Carolina they realize four
+hundred dollars an acre from them--when they don't freeze."
+
+The planting being now fairly over, we began to look about us for other
+amusement.
+
+"Better not ride old Sancho," remarked old man Spafford one day as he
+observed the Pessimist putting a saddle on the ancient quadruped.
+
+"Why not, uncle? You ride him yourself, and you said he was a very fine
+saddle-horse."
+
+"I rides he bareback. Good hoss for lady: better not put man's saddle
+on," persisted the old man.
+
+The Pessimist vaulted into the saddle by way of reply, calling out,
+"Open the gate, Solomon," to the boy, who was going down the lane. But
+the words were not spoken before Sancho, darting forward, overturned the
+deliberate Solomon, leaped the gate and rushed out into the woods at a
+tremendous pace. The resounding beat of his hoofs and energetic cries of
+"Whoa! whoa!" from his rider were wafted back upon the breeze, gradually
+dying away in the distance, and then reviving again as the fiery steed
+reappeared at the same "grand galop." The Pessimist was without a hat,
+and his countenance bore the marks of many a fray with the lower
+branches of the trees.
+
+[Illustration: OVERTURNED SOLOMON.]
+
+"Here, take your old beast!" he said, throwing the bridle impatiently to
+Spafford. "What sort of an animal do you call him?"
+
+The "section" approached with a grin of delight; "He waw-hoss, sah.
+Young missis rid he afo' the waw, an' he used to lady saddle; but ole
+marsa rid he to de waw, an' whenebber he feel man saddle on he back he
+runs dat a way, kase he t'ink de Yankees a'ter him;" and he exchanged a
+glance of intelligence with Sancho, who evidently enjoyed the joke.
+
+The Invalid, who during the progress of our planting had spent much time
+in explorations among our "Cracker" neighbors, had made the discovery of
+a most disreputable two-wheeled vehicle, which he had purchased and
+brought home in triumph. Its wheels were of different sizes and
+projected from the axle at most remarkable angles. One seat was
+considerably higher than the other, the cushions looked like so many
+dishevelled darkey heads, and the whole establishment had a most uncanny
+appearance. It was a perfect match, however, for Sancho, and that
+intelligent animal, waiving for the time his objection to having Yankees
+after him, consented to be harnessed into the vehicle and to draw us
+slowly and majestically about in the pine woods. He never objected to
+stopping anywhere while we gathered flowers, and we always returned
+laden with treasures to deck our little home withal, making many a rare
+and beautiful new acquaintance among the floral riches of pine barren
+and hammock.
+
+Meantime, peas and cabbages and many a "green" besides grew and
+flourished under old man Spafford's fostering care. Crisp green lettuce
+and scarlet radishes already graced our daily board, and were doubly
+relished from being, so to speak, the fruit of our own toil. Paradise
+Plantation became the admiration of all the darkey and Cracker farmers
+for miles around, and it was with the greatest delight that Hope would
+accompany any chance visitor to the remotest corner of the farm,
+unfolding her projects and quoting Henderson to the open-mouthed
+admiration of her interlocutor.
+
+"Have you looked at the peas, lately, Hope?" asked the Pessimist one
+lovely February morning.
+
+"Not since yesterday: why?"
+
+"Come and see," was the reply; and we all repaired to the seven-acre lot
+in company. A woeful sight met our eyes--vines nipped off and trampled
+down and general havoc and confusion in all the ranks.
+
+"Oh, what is it?" cried Merry in dismay.
+
+"It's de rabbits, missy," replied old man Spafford, who was looking on
+with great interest. "Dey'll eat up ebery bit o' greens you got, give
+'em time enough."
+
+"This must be stopped," said Hope firmly, recovering from her stupor of
+surprise. "I shall have a close fence put entirely around the place."
+
+"But you've just got a new fence. It will cost awfully."
+
+"No matter," replied Hope with great decision: "it shall be done. The
+idea of being cheated out of all our profits by the rabbits!"
+
+"What makes them look so yellow?" asked the Invalid as the family was
+looking at the peas over the new close fence some evenings later.
+
+"Don't they always do so when they blossom?" asked Hope.
+
+"How's that, Spafford?" inquired the Pessimist.
+
+"Dey ain't, not to say, jis' right," replied that functionary, shaking
+his head.
+
+"Why, what's the matter?" asked Hope quickly.
+
+"Groun' too pore, I 'spec', missis. Mighty pore piece, dis: lan' all
+wore out. Dat why dey sell so cheap."
+
+[Illustration: "IT'S DE RABBITS, MISSY."]
+
+"Then won't they bear?" asked Merry in despairing accents.
+
+"Oh yes," said Hope with determined courage. "I had a quantity of
+fertilizers put on. Besides, I'll send for more. It isn't too late, I'm
+sure.--We'll use it for top-dressing, eh, Spafford?"
+
+"I declare, Hope, I had no idea you were such a farmer," said the
+Invalid with a pleasant smile.
+
+"And then, besides, we don't depend upon the peas alone," continued
+Hope, reflecting back the smile and speaking with quite her accustomed
+cheerfulness: "there are the corn and the cabbages."
+
+"And the potatoes and cucumbers," added Merry as we returned slowly to
+the house by way of all the points of interest--the young orange trees,
+Merry's newly-transplanted wisteria and the pig-pen.
+
+"I rather suspect that _there_ is our most profitable crop," said the
+Invalid as we seated ourselves upon the piazza which the Pessimist had
+lately built before the house. He was looking toward a tree which grew
+not far distant, sheltered by two enormous oaks. Of fair size and
+perfect proportions, this tree was one mass of glossy, dark-green
+leaves, amid which innumerable golden fruit glimmered brightly in the
+setting sunlight.
+
+[Illustration: PICKING PEAS.]
+
+"Our one bearing tree," answered Hope. "Yes, if we only had a thousand
+like it we might give up farming."
+
+"We shall have them in time," said the Pessimist complacently, looking
+abroad upon the straight rows of tiny trees almost hidden by the growing
+crops. "Thanks to my perseverance--"
+
+"And Dryden's," interpolated Merry.
+
+"There are a thousand four-year-old trees planted," continued the
+Pessimist, not noticing the interruption. "I wonder how many oranges
+that tree has borne?"
+
+"I suppose we have eaten some twenty a day from it for the last three
+months," said Merry.
+
+"Hardly that," said the Invalid, "but say fifteen hundred. And the tree
+looks almost as full as ever."
+
+"What if we should have them gathered and sold?" suggested Hope--"just
+to see what an orange tree is really worth. Spafford says that the fruit
+will not be so good later. It will shrivel at last; and we never can eat
+all those oranges in any case."
+
+Shipping the oranges was the pleasantest work we had yet done. There was
+a certain fascination in handling the firm golden balls, in sorting and
+arranging, in papering and packing; and there was real delight in
+despatching the first shipment from the farm--the more, perhaps, as the
+prospect of other shipments began to dwindle. The peas, in spite of the
+top-dressing, looked yellow and sickly. The cucumbers would not run, and
+more blossoms fell off than seemed desirable. The Pessimist left off
+laughing at the idea of farming, and spent a great deal of time walking
+about the place, looking into things in general.
+
+"Isn't it almost time for those cabbages to begin to head?" he asked one
+day on returning from a tour of inspection.
+
+"Dryden says," observed Merry, "that those are not cabbages at all: they
+are collards."
+
+"What, under the sun, are collards?" asked the Invalid.
+
+"They are a coarse sort of cabbage: the colored people like them, but
+they never head and they won't sell," said Hope, looking up from a
+treatise on agricultural chemistry. "If those should be collards!"
+
+She laid aside her book and went out to investigate. "At any rate, they
+will be good for the pigs," she remarked on returning. "I shall have
+Behavior boil them in that great pot of hers and give them a mess every
+day. It will save corn."
+
+"'Never say die!'" cried the Pessimist. "'Polly, put the kettle on,-'tle
+on,-'tle on! Polly, put--'"
+
+The Invalid interposed with a remark. "Southern peas are selling in New
+York at eight dollars a bushel," he said.
+
+"Oh, those peas! Why won't they grow?" sighed Merry.
+
+The perverse things would not grow. Quotations went down to six dollars
+and to four, and still ours were not ready to ship. The Pessimist
+visited the field more assiduously than ever; Merry looked despondent;
+only Hope kept up her courage.
+
+"Henderson says," she remarked, closing that well-thumbed volume, "that
+one shouldn't look for profits from the first year's farming. The
+profits come the second year. Besides, I have learned one thing by this
+year's experience. Things should not be expected to grow as fast in
+winter--even a Southern winter--as in summer. Next year we will come
+earlier and plant earlier, and be ready for the first quotations."
+
+It was a happy day for us all when at last the peas were ready to
+harvest. The seven-acre lot was dotted over with boys, girls and old
+women, laughing and joking as they picked. Dryden and old man Spafford
+helped Hope and Merry with the packing, and the Pessimist flourished the
+marking-brush with the greatest dexterity. The Invalid circulated
+between pickers and packers, watching the proceedings with profound
+interest.
+
+In the midst of it all there came a shower. How it did rain! And it
+would not leave off, or if it did leave off in the evening it began
+again in the morning with a fidelity which we would fain have seen
+emulated by our help. One day's drenching always proved to be enough for
+those worthies, and we had to scour the country in the pouring rain to
+beat up recruits. Then the Charleston steamer went by in spite of most
+frantic wavings of the signal-flag, and our peas were left upon the
+wharf, exposed to the fury of the elements.
+
+They all got off at last in several detachments, and we had only to wait
+for returns. The rain had ceased as soon as the peas were shipped, and
+in the warm, bright weather which followed we all luxuriated in company
+with the frogs and the lizards. The fields and woods were full of
+flowers, the air was saturated with sweet odors and sunshine and songs
+of birds. A messenger of good cheer came to us also by the post in the
+shape of a cheque from the dealer to whom we had sent our oranges.
+
+"Forty dollars from a single tree!" said Hope exultantly, holding up the
+slip of paper. "And that after we had eaten from it steadily for three
+months!"
+
+"The tree is an eighteen-year-old seedling, Spafford says," said the
+Invalid, looking at the document with interest. "If our thousand do as
+well in fourteen years, Hope, we may give up planting cabbages, eh?"
+
+"The price will be down to nothing by that time," said the Pessimist,
+not without a shade of excitement, which he endeavored to conceal, as he
+looked at the cheque. "Still, it can't go below a certain point, I
+suppose. The newspapers are sounder on the orange question than on some
+others, I fancy."
+
+One would have thought that we had never seen a cheque for forty dollars
+before, so much did we rejoice over this one, and so many hopes of
+future emolument did we build upon it.
+
+[Illustration: PACKING.]
+
+"What's the trouble with the cucumbers, Spafford?" asked the Pessimist
+as we passed by them one evening on our way up from the little wharf
+where we had left our sailboat.
+
+"T'ink it de sandemanders, sah. Dey done burrow under dat whole
+cucumber-patch--eat all the roots. Cucumbers can't grow widout roots,
+sah."
+
+"But the Florida _Agriculturalist_ says that salamanders don't eat
+roots," said Hope: "they only eat grubs and worms."
+
+Spafford shook his head without vouchsafing a reply.
+
+"The grubs and worms probably ate the roots, and then the salamanders
+ate them," observed the Pessimist. "That is poetical justice, certainly.
+If we could only eat the salamanders now, the retribution would be
+complete."
+
+"Sandemanders ain't no 'count to eat," said old man Spafford. "Dey ain't
+many critters good to eat. De meat I likes best is wile-cat."
+
+"Wild-cat, uncle!" exclaimed Merry.
+
+"Do you mean to say you eat such things as that?"
+
+"Why, missy," replied the old man seriously, "a wile-cat's 'most de
+properest varmint going. Nebber eats not'ing but young pigs and birds
+and rabbits, and sich. Yankee folks likes chicken-meat, but 'tain't nigh
+so good."
+
+"Well, if they eat rabbits I think better of them," said Hope; "and here
+comes Solomon with the mail-bag."
+
+Among the letters which the Invalid turned out a yellow envelope was
+conspicuous. Hope seized it eagerly. "From the market-man," she said.
+"Now we'll see."
+
+She tore it open. A ten-cent piece, a small currency note and a one-cent
+stamp dropped into her lap. She read the letter in silence, then handed
+it to her husband.
+
+"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the Pessimist, reading it over his shoulder. "This
+is the worst I _ever_ heard. 'Thirty-six crates arrived in worthless
+condition; twelve crates at two dollars; fifty, at fifty cents;
+freights, drayage, commissions;--balance, thirty-six cents.' Thirty-six
+cents; for a hundred bushels of peas! Oh, ye gods and little fishes!"
+
+Even Hope was mute.
+
+Merry took the document. "It was all because of the rain," she said.
+"See! those last crates, that were picked dry, sold well enough. If all
+had done as well as that we should have had our money back; and that's
+all we expected the first year."
+
+"There's the corn, at any rate," said Hope, rousing herself. "Dryden
+says it's splendid, and no one else has any nearly as early. We shall
+have the first of the market."
+
+The corn was our first thought in the morning, and we walked out that
+way to console ourselves with the sight of its green and waving beauty,
+old Spafford being of the party. On the road we passed a colored woman,
+who greeted us with the usual "Howdy?"
+
+"How's all with you, Sister Lucindy?" asked the "section."
+
+"All standin' up, thank God! I done come t'rough your cornfield, Uncle
+Spafford. De coons is to wuk dar."
+
+We hastened on at this direful news.
+
+"I declar'!" said old Spafford as we reached the fence. "So dey _is_
+bin' to wuk! Done tote off half a dozen bushel dis bery las' night.
+Mought as well give it up, missis. Once _dey_ gits a taste ob it,
+_good-bye!_"
+
+"Well, that's the worst I _ever_ heard!" exclaimed the Pessimist,
+resorting to his favorite formula in his dismay. "Between the coons and
+the commission-merchants your profits will vanish, Hope."
+
+"Do you think I shall give it up so?" asked Hope stoutly. "We kept the
+rabbits out with a fence, and we can keep the coons out with something
+else. It is only a few nights' watching and the corn will be fit for
+sale. Dryden and Solomon must come out with their dogs and guns and lie
+in wait."
+
+"Bravo, Hope! Don't give up the ship," said the Invalid, smiling.
+
+"Well, if she doesn't, neither will I," said the Pessimist. "For the
+matter of that, it will be first-rate sport, and I wonder I haven't
+thought of coon-hunting before. I'll come out and keep the boys company,
+and we'll see if we don't 'sarcumvent the rascals' yet."
+
+And we _did_ save the corn, and sell it too at a good price, the hotels
+in the neighborhood being glad to get possession of the rarity. Hope was
+radiant at the result of her determination: the Pessimist smiled a grim
+approval when she counted up and displayed her bank-notes and silver.
+
+"A few years more of mistakes and losses, Hope, and you'll make quite a
+farmer," he condescended to acknowledge. "But do you think you have
+exhausted the catalogue of animal pests?"
+
+"No," said Hope, laughing. "I never dared to tell you about the Irish
+potatoes. Something has eaten them all up: Uncle Spafford says it is
+gophers."
+
+"What is a gopher?" asked Merry. "Is it any relation to the gryphon?"
+
+"It is a sagacious variety of snapping-turtle," replied the Invalid,
+"which walks about seeking what it may devour."
+
+"And devours my potatoes," said Hope. "But we have got the better of the
+rabbits and the coons, and I don't despair next year even of the gophers
+and salamanders."
+
+"Even victory may be purchased too dearly," said the Pessimist.
+
+"After all, the experiment has not been so expensive a one," said the
+Invalid, laying down the neatly-kept farm-ledger, which he had been
+examining. "The orange trees are a good investment--our one bearing tree
+has proved that--and as for the money our farming experiment has cost
+us, we should have spent as much, I dare say, had we lived at the hotel,
+and not have been one half as comfortable."
+
+"It _is_ a cozy little home," admitted the Pessimist, looking about the
+pretty room, now thrown wide open to the early summer and with a huge
+pot of creamy magnolia-blooms in the great chimney.
+
+"It is the pleasantest winter I ever spent," said Merry
+enthusiastically.
+
+"Except that dreadful evening when the account of the peas came," said
+Hope, drawing a long breath. "But I should like to try it again: I shall
+never be quite satisfied till I have made peas and cucumbers
+profitable."
+
+"Then, all I have to say is, that you are destined to drag out an
+unsatisfied existence," said the Pessimist.
+
+"I am not so sure of that," said the Invalid.
+
+And so we turned our faces northward, not without a lingering sorrow at
+leaving the home where we had spent so many sweet and sunny days.
+
+"Good-bye, Paradise Plantation," said Merry as the little white house
+under the live-oak receded from our view as we stood upon the steamer's
+deck.
+
+"It was not so inappropriately named," said the Invalid. "Our life there
+has surely been more nearly paradisiacal than any other we have known."
+
+And to this even the Pessimist assented.
+
+LOUISE SEYMOUR HOUGHTON.
+
+
+
+
+THROUGH THE YELLOWSTONE PARK TO FORT CUSTER.
+
+CONCLUDING PAPER.
+
+
+It was about 8.30 A. M. before the boat was found, some travellers
+having removed it from the place where Baronette had cached it. A half
+hour sufficed to wrap a tent-cover neatly around the bottom and to tack
+it fast on the thwarts. Then two oblongs of flat wood were nailed on ten
+feet of pine-stems and called oars; and, so equipped, we were ready to
+start.
+
+We had driven or ridden hundreds of miles over a country familiar to any
+one who chooses to read half a dozen books or reports; but, once across
+the Yellowstone, we should enter a region of which little has been
+written since Lewis and Clarke wandered across the head-waters of the
+Missouri in 1805, and had their perils and adventures told anonymously
+by one who was to become famous for many noble qualities of mind and
+heart, for great accomplishments and unmerited misfortunes.[A]
+
+Two or three of us sat on the bluff enjoying our after-breakfast pipes
+and watching the transport of our baggage. The gray beach at our feet
+stretched with irregular outline up the lake, and offered one prominent
+cape whence the boat started for its trips across the stream. By 10.30
+all the luggage was over, and then began the business of forcing
+reluctant mules and horses to swim two hundred yards of cold, swift
+stream. The bell-mare promptly declined to lead, and only swam out to
+return again to the shore. Then one or two soldiers stripped and forced
+their horses in, but in turn became scared, and gave it up amidst chaff
+and laughter. At last a line of men, armed with stones, drove the whole
+herd of seventy-five animals into the water with demoniac howls and a
+shower of missiles. Once in, they took it calmly enough, and, the brave
+little foal leading, soon reached the farther bank. One old war-horse of
+recalcitrant views turned back, and had to be towed over.
+
+Finally, we ourselves crossed, and the judge and I, leaving the
+confusion behind us, struck off into some open woods over an indistinct
+trail. Very soon Major Gregg overtook us, and we went into camp about 4
+P. M. on a rising ground two miles from the lake, surrounded by woods
+and bits of grass-land. Here Captain G. and Mr. E. left us, going on
+with Mr. Jump for a two days' hunt.
+
+Next day, at 7 A. M., we rode away over little prairies and across low
+pine-clad hills, and saw to right and left tiny parks with their forest
+boundaries, until, after two miles, we came to Pelican Creek, a broad
+grayish stream, having, notwithstanding its swift current, a look of
+being meant by Nature for stagnation. As we followed this
+unwholesome-looking water eastward we crossed some quaking, ill-smelling
+morasses, and at last rode out on a spacious plain, with Mounts
+Langford, Doane and Stevenson far to the south-east, and Mount Sheridan
+almost south-west of us. The first three are bold peaks, while about
+them lie lesser hills numberless and nameless. The day seemed absolutely
+clear, yet the mountains were mere serrated silhouettes, dim with a
+silvery haze, through which gleamed the whiter silver of snow in patches
+or filling the long ravines. Striking across the plain, we came upon a
+tent and the horses of Captain G. and Mr. E., who were away in the
+hills.
+
+Thence we followed the Pelican Valley, which had broadened to a wide
+meadowy plain, and about ten miles from the camp we began a rough ride
+up the lessening creek from the level. The valley was half a mile wide,
+noisome with sulphur springs and steam-vents, with now and then a
+gayly-tinted hill-slope, colored like the canyon of the Yellowstone. Some
+one seeing deer above us on the hills, Dr. T., Mr. K. and Houston rode
+off in pursuit. Presently came a dozen shots far above us, and the
+major, who had followed the hunters, sent his orderly back for
+pack-mules to carry the two black-tailed deer they had killed. After a
+wild scramble through bogs we began to ascend a narrow valley with the
+creek on our left. Jack Baronette "guessed some timber might have fell
+on that trail." Trail there was none in reality, only steep hillsides of
+soft scoriae, streaming sulphur-vents and a cat's cradle of tumbled dead
+trees. Every few minutes the axes were ringing, and a way was cleared;
+then another halt, and more axe-work, until we slipped and scrambled and
+stumbled on to a little better ground, to the comfort of man and beast.
+
+Eighteen miles of this savage riding brought us to our next camp, where,
+as the shooting was said to be good and the cattle needed rest, it was
+decided to remain two days. Our tents were pitched on a grassy knoll
+overlooking the main valley, which was bounded by hills of some three or
+four hundred feet high, between which the Pelican ran slowly with bad
+water and wormy trout, though there was no lack of wholesome springs on
+the hill.
+
+Mr. C. and Mr. T. went off with Jack, and Mr. K. with Jump, to camp out
+and hunt early. The night was clear, the thermometer down to 24 deg.
+Fahrenheit, and the ice thick on the pails when we rose. One of our
+parties came in with six deer: the captain and Mr. C. remained out. The
+camp was pleasant enough to an idling observer like myself, but it was
+not so agreeable to find the mountain-side, where Mr. T. and I were
+looking for game, alive with mosquitos. I lit on a place where the bears
+had been engaged in some rough-and-tumble games: the ground was strewed
+with what the lad who was with us asserted to be bears' hair. It looked
+like the wreck of a thousand chignons, and proved, on inspection, to be
+a kind of tawny-colored moss!
+
+All night long, at brief intervals, our mules were scared by a dull,
+distant noise like a musket-shot. A soldier told me it was a mud volcano
+which he had seen the day we arrived. I then found it marked on Hayden's
+map, but learned that it had not been seen by him, and was only so
+located on information received from hunters. On the morning of August
+1st I persuaded the major to walk over and look for the volcano. We
+crossed the valley, and, guided by the frequent explosions, climbed the
+hills to the east, and, descending on the far side, came into a small
+valley full of sluggish, ill-smelling rills, among which we found the
+remarkable crater, which, as it has not been hitherto examined by any
+save hunters, I shall describe at some length.
+
+A gradual rising ground made up of soft sulphureous and calcareous earth
+was crowned by a more abrupt rise some thirty-five feet high, composed
+of tough gray clay. This was pierced by a cone of regular form about
+thirty feet across at top and five feet at the bottom. On the west,
+about one-third of the circumference was wanting from a point six feet
+above the lowest level, thus enabling one to be at a distance or to
+stand close by, and yet see to the bottom of the pit. The ground all
+around and the shrubs and trees were dotted thick with flakes of dry
+mud, which gave, at a distance, a curious stippled look to the
+mud-spattered surfaces. As I stood watching the volcano I could see
+through the clouds of steam it steadily emitted that the bottom was full
+of dark gray clay mud, thicker than a good mush, and that, apparently,
+there were two or more vents. The outbreak of imprisoned steam at
+intervals of a half minute or more threw the mud in small fig-like
+masses from five to forty feet in air with a dull, booming sound,
+sometimes loud enough to be heard for miles through the awful stillness
+of these lonely hills. It is clear, from the fact of our finding these
+mud-patches at least one hundred yards from the crater, that at times
+much more violent explosions take place. The constant plastering of the
+slopes of the crater which these explosions cause tends to seal up its
+vent, but the greater explosions cleanse it at times, and all the while
+the steam softens the masses on the sides, so that they slip back into
+the boiling cauldron below. As one faces the slit in the cone there lies
+to the right a pool of creamy thin mud, white and yellow, feebly
+boiling. It is some thirty feet wide, and must be not more than twenty
+feet from the crater: its level I guessed at sixteen feet above that of
+the bottom of the crater.
+
+After an hour's observation near to the volcano I retired some fifty
+feet, and, sheltering myself under a stunted pine, waited in the hope of
+seeing a greater outbreak. After an hour more the boiling lessened and
+the frequent explosions ceased for perhaps fifteen minutes. Then of a
+sudden came a booming sound, followed by a hoarse noise, as the crater
+filled with steam, out of which shot, some seventy-five feet in air,
+about a cartload of mud. It fell over an area of fifty yards around the
+crater in large or small masses, which flattened as they struck. As
+soon as it ended I walked toward the crater. A moment later a second
+squirt shot out sideways and fell in a line athwart the mud-pool near
+by, crossing the spot where I had been standing so long, and covering
+me, as I advanced, with rare patches of hot mud. Some change took place
+after this in the character and consistency of the mud, and now, at
+intervals, the curious spectacle was afforded of rings of mud like the
+smoke-rings cast by a cannon or engine-chimney. As they turned in air
+they resembled at times the figure 8: once they assumed the form of a
+huge irregular spiral some ten feet high, although usually the figures
+were like long spikes, or, more rarely, thin formless leaves, and even
+like bats or deformed birds.
+
+I walked back over the hills to camp, where we found Captain G. and the
+commissary with the best of two deer they had shot. Later, Mr. C. and
+Mr. K. came in with four elk, so that we were well supplied. Of these
+various meats the deer proved the best, the mountain-sheep the poorest.
+The minimum of the night temperature was 34 deg. Fahrenheit. At eighty-five
+hundred feet above tide the change at sundown was abrupt. Our camp-fires
+had filled the little valley with smoke, and through it the moon rose
+red and sombre above the pine-clad outlines of the eastward hills.
+
+The next day Mr. E. and I, who liked to break the journey by a walk,
+started early, and, following a clear trail, soon passed the mules. We
+left Pelican Creek on our right, and crossed a low divide into a
+cooly,[B] the valley of Broad Creek: a second divide separated this from
+Canyon Creek, both of which enter the Yellowstone below the falls.
+
+After some six miles afoot over grassy rolling plains and bits of wood,
+the command overtook us, and, mounting, we followed the major for an
+hour or two through bogs and streams, where now and then down went a
+horse and over went a trooper, or some one or two held back at a nasty
+crossing until the major smiled a little viciously, when the unlucky
+ones plunged in and got through or not as might chance.
+
+About twelve some of us held up to lunch, the train and escort passing
+us. We followed them soon through dense woods, and at last up a small
+brook in a deep ravine among boulders big and small. At last we lost the
+trail at the foot of a slope one thousand feet high of loose stones and
+earth, from the top of which a cry hailed us, and we saw that somehow
+the command had got up. The ascent was very steep, but before we made it
+a mule rolled down. As he was laden with fresh antelope and deer meat,
+the scattering of the yet red joints as he fell made it look as if the
+poor beast had been torn limb from limb; but, as a packer remarked,
+"Mules has got an all-fired lot of livin' in 'em;" and the mule was
+repacked and started up again. "They jist falls to make yer mad,
+anyway," added the friendly biographer of the mule.
+
+The sheer mountain-side above us was not to be tried mounted; so afoot,
+bridle in hand, we started up, pulling the horses after us. I had not
+thought it could be as hard work as it proved. There was a singular and
+unfeeling lack of intelligence in the fashion the horse had of differing
+with his leader. When the man was well blown and stopped, the horse was
+sure to be on his heels, or if the man desired to move the horse had his
+own opinion and proved restive. At last, horses and men came out on a
+bit of level woodland opening into glades full of snow. We were
+eighty-four hundred feet in air, on a spur of Amethyst or Specimen
+Mountain. We had meant, having made eighteen miles, to camp somewhere on
+this hill, but the demon who drives men to go a bit farther infested the
+major that day; so presently the bugle sounded, and we were in the
+saddle again, and off for a delusive five-mile ride. As Mr. G. Chopper
+once remarked, "De mile-stones to hebben ain't set no furder apart dan
+dem in dis yere land;" and I believed him ere that day was done.
+
+The top of this great hill, which may be some ten thousand feet in
+height, is large and irregular. Our trail lay over its south-eastern
+shoulder. After a little ride through the woods we came out abruptly on
+a vast rolling plain sloping to the north-east, and broadening as it
+fell away from us until, with intervals of belts of wood, it ended in a
+much larger plain on a lower level, quite half a mile distant, and of
+perhaps one thousand acres. About us, in the coolies, the "Indian
+paint-brush" and numberless flowers quite strange to us all so tinted
+the dried grasses of these little vales as to make the general hue seem
+a lovely pink-gray. Below us, for a mile, rolled grassy slopes, now
+tawny from the summer's rainless heat, and set with thousands of
+balsam-firs in groups, scattered as with the hand of unerring taste here
+and there over all the broad expanse. Many of them stood alone, slim,
+tall, gracious cones of green, feathered low, and surrounded by a
+brighter green ring of small shoots extending from two to four feet
+beyond where the lowest boughs, touching the earth, were reflected up
+from it again in graceful curves. On all sides long vistas, bounded by
+these charming trees, stretched up into the higher spurs. Ever the same
+flowers, ever the same amazing look of centuries of cultivation, and the
+feeling that it would be natural to come of a sudden on a gentleman's
+seat or basking cows, rather than upon the scared doe and dappled fawn
+which fled through the coverts near us. We had seen many of these parks,
+but none like this one, nor any sight of plain and tree and flowers so
+utterly satisfying in its complete beauty. It wanted but a contrast,
+and, as we rode through and out of a line of firs, with a cry of wonder
+and simple admiration the rudest trooper pulled up his horse to gaze,
+and the most brutal mule-guard paused, with nothing in his heart but joy
+at the splendor of it.
+
+At our feet the mountain fell away abruptly, pine-clad, and at its base
+the broad plain of the East Branch of the Yellowstone wandered through a
+vast valley, beyond which, in a huge semicircle, rose a thousand
+nameless mountains, summit over summit, snow-flecked or snow-clad, in
+boundless fields--a grim, lonely, desolate horror of rugged, barren
+peaks, of dark gray for the most part, cleft by deep shadows, and right
+in face of us one superb slab of very pale gray buttressed limestone,
+perhaps a good thousand feet high. I thought it the most savage
+mountain-scenery I had ever beheld, while the almost feminine and tender
+beauty of the parks which dotted these wild hills was something to bear
+in remembrance.
+
+But the escort was moving, the mules crowding on behind our halted
+column; so presently we were slipping, sliding, floundering down the
+hillside, now on steep slopes, which made one a bit nervous to ride
+along; now waiting for the axemen to clear away the tangle of trees
+crushed to earth by the burden of some year of excessive snow; now on
+the horses, now off, through marsh and thicket. I ask myself if I could
+ride that ride to-day: it seems to me as if I could not. One so fully
+gets rid of nerves in that clear, dry altitude and wholesome life that
+the worst perils, with a little repetition, become as trifles, and no
+one talks about things which at home would make a newspaper paragraph.
+Yet I believe each of us confessed to some remnant of nervousness, some
+special dread. Riding an hour or two at night in a dense wood with no
+trail is an experiment I advise any man to try who thinks he has no
+nerves. A good steep slope of a thousand feet of loose stones to cross
+is not much more exhilarating: nobody likes it.
+
+The command was far ahead of two or three of us when we had our final
+sensation at a smart little torrent near the foot of the hill, a
+tributary of the main river. The horses dive, in a manner, into a cut
+made dark by overgrowth of trees, then down a slippery bank, scuttle
+through wild waters surging to the cinche, over vast boulders and up the
+farther bank, the stirrups striking the rocks to left or right, till
+horse and man draw long breaths of relief, and we are out on the
+slightly-rolling valley of the East Yellowstone, and turn our heads away
+from Specimen Mountain toward Soda Butte.
+
+Captain G. and I, who had fallen to the rear, rode leisurely northward
+athwart the open prairie on a clear trail, which twice crossed the
+shallow river, and, leaving the main valley, carried us up a narrowing
+vale on slightly rising ground. On either side and in front rose abrupt
+mountains some two thousand feet above the plain, and below the
+remarkable outline of Soda Butte marked the line of the Park boundary.
+Near by was a little corral where at some time herdsmen had settled to
+give their cattle the use of the abundant grasses of these well-watered
+valleys. When there are no Indian scares, the cattle herdsmen make
+immense marches in summer, gradually concentrating their stock as the
+autumn comes on and returning to the shelter of some permanent ranche.
+The very severity and steadiness of the winters are an advantage to
+cattle, which do not suffer so much from low temperature as from lack of
+food. Farther south, the frequent thaws rot the dried grasses, which are
+otherwise admirable fodder, but in Montana the steady cold is rather
+preservative, and the winds leave large parts of the plains so free from
+snow that cattle readily provide themselves with food.
+
+The cone of Soda Butte stands out on the open and level plain of the
+valley, an isolated beehive-shaped mass eighty feet high, and presenting
+a rough appearance of irregular courses of crumbled gray stone. It is a
+perfectly extinct geyser-cone, chiefly notable for its seeming isolation
+from other deposits of like nature, of which, however, the nearer hills
+show some evidence. Close to the butte is a spring, pointed out to us by
+the major's orderly, who had been left behind to secure our tasting its
+delectable waters, which have immense credit as of tonic and digestive
+value. I do not distinctly recall all the nasty tastes which have
+afflicted my palate, but I am quite sure this was one of the vilest. It
+was a combination of acid, sulphur and saline, like a diabolic julep of
+lucifer-matches, bad eggs, vinegar and magnesia. I presume its horrible
+taste has secured it a reputation for being good when it is down. Close
+by it kindly Nature has placed a stream of clear, sweet water.
+
+A mile or so more brought us (August 3d) to camp, which was pitched at
+the end of the valley of Soda Butte. We had had eleven hours in the
+saddle, and had not ridden over twenty-eight or thirty miles. The train
+came straggling in late, and left us time to sharpen our appetites and
+admire the reach of grassy plain, the bold brown summits around us, and
+at our feet a grass-fringed lake of two or three acres. This pond is fed
+by a quick mountain-stream of a temperature of 45 deg. Fahrenheit, and the
+only outlet is nearly blocked up by a tangled network of weeds and
+fallen timber which prevents the fish from escaping. The bottom is thick
+with long grasses, and food must be abundant in this curious little
+preserve. The shores slope, so that it is necessary to use a raft to get
+at the deep holes in the middle.
+
+At breakfast next morning some one growled about the closeness of the
+night air, when we were told, to our surprise, that the minimum
+thermometer marked 36 deg. as the lowest night temperature. Certain it is,
+the out-of-door-life changes one's feelings about what is cold and what
+is not. While we were discussing this a soldier brought in a five-pound
+trout taken in the lake, which so excited the fishermen that presently
+there was a raft builded, and the major and Mr. T., with bare feet, were
+loading their frail craft with huge trout, and, alas! securing for
+themselves a painful attack of sunburn. I found all these large trout to
+have fatty degeneration of the heart and liver, but no worms. They took
+the fly well.
+
+August 5th, under clear skies as usual, we struck at once into a trail
+which for seventeen miles might have been a park bridle-path, a little
+steeper, and in places a little boggy. Our way took us east by north
+into Soda Butte Canyon, a mile wide below, and narrowing with a gradual
+rise, until at Miner's Camp it is quite closely bounded by high
+hillsides, the upper level of the trail being over eight thousand feet
+above the sea. The ride through this irregular valley is very noble. For
+a mile or two on our left rose a grand mass of basalt quite two thousand
+feet in height, buttressed with bold outlying rocks and presenting very
+regular basaltic columns. A few miles farther the views grew yet more
+interesting, because around us rose tall ragged gray or dark mountains,
+and among them gigantic forms of red, brown and yellow limestone rocks,
+as brilliant as the dolomites of the Southern Tyrol. These wild
+contrasts of form and color were finest about ten miles up the canyon,
+where lies to the west a sombre, dark square mountain, crowned by what
+it needed little fancy to believe a castle in ruins, with central keep
+and far-reaching walls. On the brow of a precipice fifteen hundred feet
+above us, at the end of the castle-wall, a gigantic figure in full armor
+seemed to stand on guard for ever. I watched it long as we rode round
+the great base of the hill, and cannot recall any such striking
+simulation elsewhere. My guides called it the "Sentinel," but it haunted
+me somehow as of a familiar grace until suddenly I remembered the old
+town of Innspruck and the Alte Kirche, and on guard around the tomb of
+the great Kaiser the bronze statues of knight and dame, and, most
+charming of all, the king of the Ostrogoths: that was he on the
+mountain-top.
+
+Everywhere on these hills the mining prospector has roamed, and on the
+summit of the pass we found a group of cabins where certain claims have
+been "staked out" and much digging done. As yet, they are as profitable,
+by reason of remoteness, as may be the mines in the lunar mountains.
+With careless glances at piles of ore which may or may not be valuable,
+we rode on to camp, two miles beyond--not very comfortably, finding
+water scarce, some rain falling and a great wealth of midges, such as we
+call in upper Pennsylvania "pungies," and needing a smudge for the
+routing of them. The night was cold and dewy, and our sufferers were
+wretched with sunburn.
+
+The doctor and George Houston here left us, and went on to a salt-lick
+famous for game, but this proved a failure, some one having carelessly
+set fire to the tract. Indeed, in summer it is hard not to start these
+almost endless fires, since a spark or a bit of pipe-cinder will at once
+set the grasses ablaze, to the destruction of hunting and the annoyance
+of all travellers, to whom a fire is something which suggests man, and
+the presence of man needs, sad to say, an explanation. At 6 A. M.,
+August 6th, Captain G. and the lad Lee also went off on a side-trail
+after game, and with lessened numbers we broke camp rather late, and
+rode into dense woods down a steady descent on a fair trail. The changes
+of vegetation were curious and sudden--from pines and firs to elders,
+stunted willows and sparse cottonwood bending over half-dry beds of
+torrents, with vast boulders telling of the fierce fury of water which
+must have undermined, then loosened and at last tumbled them from the
+hillsides. These streams are, in the early spring, impassable until a
+cold day and night check the thaw in the hills, and thus allow the
+impatient traveller to ford.
+
+Gradually, as we rode on, the hills to our left receded, and on our
+right the summits of Index and Pilot stood up and took the
+morning--long, straggling volcanic masses of deep chocolate-brown, black
+as against the crystalline purity of cloudless blue skies, rising in the
+middle to vast rugged, irregular cones fourteen thousand feet above
+tide. From the bewildering desolateness of these savage peaks the eye
+wanders to the foot-hills, tree-clad with millions of pines, and lower
+yet to the wide valley of the West Branch of Clarke's Fork of the
+Yellowstone, through which a great stream rushes; and then, beyond the
+river, park over park with gracious boundaries of fir and pine, and over
+all black peak and snow-clad dome and slope, nameless, untrodden, an
+infinite army of hills beyond hills. The startling combination of black
+volcanic peaks with gray and tinted limestone still makes every mile of
+the way strange and grand. In one place the dark rock-slopes end
+abruptly in a wall of white limestone one hundred to two hundred feet
+high and regular as ancient masonry. A little below was a second of
+these singular dikes, which run for twenty miles or more.
+
+On a rising ground where we halted to lunch a note was found stating
+that Dr. T., failing to find game at the salt-lick, had gone on ahead.
+While lingering over our lunch in leisurely fashion, encircled by this
+great mass of snow and blackness, an orderly suddenly rode up to hasten
+us to camp, as Indian signs had been seen down the valley. In a moment
+we were running our horses over a sage-plain, and were soon in camp,
+which was pitched on the West Branch in the widening valley. Dr. T. and
+George Houston, it appeared, had seen a column of smoke four miles below
+on a butte across the river. As the smoke was steady and did not spread,
+like an accidental fire, it seemed wise to wait for the party. There
+being no news of Indians, and no probability of white travellers, it was
+well to be cautious. It might be a hunters' or prospectors' camp, or a
+rallying-signal for scattered bands of Sioux, or a courier from Fort
+Custer. The doubt was unpleasant, and its effect visible in the men, two
+of whom already _saw_ Indians.
+
+"See 'em?" says Jack. "Yes, they're like the Devil: you just doesn't see
+'em!"
+
+While we pitched camp sentinels were thrown out, and two guides went off
+to investigate the cause of the fire. Houston came back in two hours,
+and relieved us by his statement that no trails led to the fire, and
+that its probable cause was the lightning of the storm which had
+overtaken us in camp the day before.
+
+As the day waned the tints of the great mountains before us changed
+curiously. Of a broken chocolate-brown at noon, as the sun set their
+eastern fronts assumed a soft velvety look, while little purple clouds
+of haze settled in the hollows and rifts, fringing with tender grays the
+long serrated ridges as they descended to the plain. As the sun went
+down the single huge obelisk of Pilot Mountain seemed to be slowly
+growing upward out of the gathering shadows below. Presently, as the sun
+fell lower, the base of the mountain being swarthy with the growing
+nightfall, all of a sudden the upper half of the bleak cone yet in
+sunshine cast upward, athwart the blue sky, upon the moisture
+precipitated by the falling temperature, a great dark, broadening shaft
+of shadow, keen-edged and sombre, and spreading far away into
+measureless space--a sight indescribably strange and solemn.
+
+The next day's ride down Clarke's Fork still gave us morass and mud and
+bad trails, with the same wonderful views in the distance of snow-clad
+hills, and, nearer, brown peaks and gray, with endless limestone dikes.
+We camped at twelve on Crandall's Creek, a mile from the main branch of
+Clarke's Fork of the Yellowstone, and learned from the guides that no
+fish exist in these ample waters. The doubts I at first had were
+lessened after spending some hours in testing the matter. Strange as it
+may seem, and inexplicable, I am disposed to think the guides are right.
+We saw two "cow-punchers," who claimed to be starving, and were
+questioned with some scepticism. In fact, every stranger is looked after
+sharply with the ever-present fear of horse-thieves and of the
+possibility of being set afoot by a night-stampede of the stock. Our
+hunting-parties were still out when I started next morning at 8.30 to
+climb a huge butte opposite our camp. I reached the top at about twelve,
+and found on the verge of a precipice some twenty-five hundred feet
+above the vale a curious semicircle of stones--probably an Indian
+outlook made by the Nez Perces in their retreat. Sitting with my back
+against it, I looked around me. A doe and fawn leapt away, startled from
+their covert close by. Never, even in the Alps, have I so felt the sense
+of loneliness--never been so held awestruck by the silence of the hills,
+by the boundlessness of the space before me. No breath of air stirred,
+no bird or insect hovered near. Away to the north-west Pilot and Index
+rose stern and dark; across the valley, to the north, out of endless
+snow-fields, the long regular red-and-yellow pyramid of Bear Tooth
+Mountain glowed in vivid light with amazing purity of color; while
+between me and it the hills fell away, crossed by intersecting bands of
+dark firs, and between marvellous deceits of fertile farm-lands, hedges
+and orchards. Here and there on the plain tiny lakes lit up the sombre
+grasses, and lower down the valley the waters of Clarke's Fork, now
+green, now white with foam, swept with sudden curve to the north-east,
+and were lost in the walls of its canyon like a scimitar half sheathed.
+On my right, across the vast grass-slopes of this great valley, on a
+gradual hill-slope, rose the most remarkable of the lime dikes I have
+seen. It must enclose with its gigantic wall a space of nearly two miles
+in width, in the centre of which a wild confusion of tinted limestone
+strata, disturbed by some old convulsion of Nature, resembles the huge
+ruins of a great town.
+
+Soon after my return to camp, C. and the doctor came in with great
+triumph, having slain four bears. I was not present on this occasion,
+but I am inclined to fancy, as regards the doctor, that he verily
+believed the chief end and aim of existence for him was to kill bears,
+while C. had an enthusiasm of like nature, somewhat toned down.
+
+After a wild ride on cayooses across Clarke's Fork and on the glowing
+pink side-slopes of Bear Tooth, and a camp in the hills, the ponies,
+which are always astray, were caught, and a game-trail followed among
+the mountains. Suddenly, Houston, in a stage-whisper, exclaimed, "We've
+got him! He's an old buster, he is!" He had seen a large gray
+bear--improperly called a grizzly--feeding a mile away in a long wide
+cooly. A rough, scrambling ride under cover of a spur, amid snow-drifts
+and tumbled trees, enabled the bear-hunters to tie up their ponies and
+push on afoot. If a man desire to lose confidence in his physical
+powers, let him try a good run with a Winchester rifle in hand nine
+thousand feet above tidewater. Rounding the edge of a hill and crossing
+a snow-drift, they came in view of Bruin sixty yards away. He came
+straight toward them against the wind, when there appeared on the left
+Bruin No. 2, to which the doctor directed his attention. Both bears fell
+at the crack of the rifles, and with grunt and snort rolled to the foot
+of the cooly. Houston climbed a snowbank to reconnoitre, aware, as there
+were no trees to climb, that an open cooly was no good place in which
+to face wounded bears. Away went the doctor.
+
+"Let them alone, doctor," said Houston. "Hold up! That valley's full of
+bears." For he had seen a third.
+
+The doctor paused a moment, and then there was a rush down the slope. A
+second shot finished one bear, and then began a running fight of a mile,
+in which wind was of more value than courage. Finally, Bruin No. 2
+stopped. Leaving C. to end his days, the doctor and Houston pursued No.
+3. As the bear grew weak and they approached him, the doctor's
+excitement and Houston's quite reasonable prudence rose together.
+
+"Don't go down that cooly, doctor."
+
+Then a shot or two, a growl, and the doctor gasping, "Do you think I
+left my practice to let that bear die in his bed?"
+
+"Well, the place is full of bears," said George; and so on they went,
+now a shot and now a growl, and then a hasty retreat of Bruin, until,
+utterly blown and in full sight of his prey, the unhappy doctor murmured
+in an exhausted voice, "Give me one cool shot, George."
+
+"Darn it!" replied George, "who's been warming your shots?"
+
+And this one cool shot ended the fray. Returning, they found the judge
+had driven his bear into a thicket, and, having probably taken out a _ne
+exeat_ or an injunction, or some such effective legal remedy against
+him, awaited reinforcements. As George and the doctor arrived the bear
+moved out into the open, and was killed by a final shot.
+
+Mr. Jump informs us that one gets an awful price out of the Chinese for
+bear-galls; and it is the judge's opinion that at this supreme moment
+the doctor would have taken a contract to supply all China with bile of
+Bruin. I suspect our friend George has since told at many a camp-fire
+how the doctor's spurs danced down the coolies, and how the judge
+corralled his bear.
+
+We broke camp August 10th at four, after a night of severe cold--27 deg.
+Fahrenheit--but perfectly dry and dewless. E. and I, as usual, pushed on
+ahead across Lodge Pole Creek, and so down the valley of Clarke's Fork.
+An increasing luxury of growth gave us, in wood or swamp, cottonwood,
+alder, willow, wild currants and myriads of snow-white lilies, and, in
+pretty contrast, the red or pink paint-brush. Losing Pilot and Index as
+the windings of the main valley hid them, and leaving them behind us, we
+began to see rocks of bright colors and more and more regular walls of
+silvery gray stone. At last the widening valley broadened, and from it
+diverged five valleys, like the fingers from a hand, each the bed of a
+stream. As we turned to the left and crossed the wildly-rolling hills,
+and forded Clarke's Fork to camp by Dead Indian Creek, the novelty and
+splendor of this almost unequalled view grew and grew. As I close my
+eyes it comes before me as at the call of an enchanter. From the main
+valley the outlook is down five grass-clad valleys dotted with trees and
+here and there flashing with the bright reflection from some hurrying
+stream. The mountains between rise from two to ten thousand feet, and
+are singular for the contrasts they present. The most distant to the
+right were black serrated battlements, looking as if their darkness were
+vacant spaces in the blue sky beyond. The next hill was a mass of gray
+limestone, and again, on the left, rose a tall peak of ochreous yellows,
+sombre reds and grays. The hill above our camp was composed of red and
+yellow rocks, fading below to gray debris, bounded beneath by a band of
+grasses, and below this another stratum of tinted rock; and so down to
+the plain. The side-view of this group showed it to be wildly distorted,
+the strata lying at every angle, coming out against the distant
+lava-peaks and the green slopes below them in a glory of tenderly-graded
+colors.
+
+It seems as if it should be easy to describe a landscape so peculiar,
+and yet I feel that I fail utterly to convey any sense of the emotions
+excited by the splendid sweep of each valley, by the black fierceness of
+the lava-peaks thrown up in Nature's mood of fury, by the great
+"orchestra of colors" of the limestone hills, and by a burning red
+sunset, filling the spaces between the hills with hazy, ruddy gold,
+and, when all was cold and dark, of a sudden flooding each grim
+lava-battlement with the dim mysterious pink flush of the afterglow,
+such as one may see at rare times in the Alps or the Tyrol. In crossing
+the heads of these valleys, some day to be famous as one of the sights
+of the world, we forded Clarke's Fork, the major, Jack and I being
+ahead. We came out on the far side upon a bit of strand, above and
+around which rose almost perpendicularly the eroded banks of the stream,
+some fifteen feet high. While the guides broke down the bank to allow of
+our horses climbing it, I was struck with a wonderful bit of water. To
+my right this tall bank was perforated by numerous holes, out of which
+flowed an immense volume of water. It bounded forth between the matted
+roots and welled up below from the sand, and, higher up the bank, had,
+with its sweet moisture, bribed the ready mosses to build it numerous
+green basins, out of which also it poured in prodigal flood.
+
+At this point, Dead Indian, we at first decided to await the looked-for
+scout, but on the next morning the major resolved to leave a note on a
+tripod for Mr. T., still out hunting, and to camp and wait on top of
+Canyon Mountain above us. So we left the noisy creek and the broken
+tepees of Joseph and the Nez Perces, and the buffalo and deer-bones and
+the rarer bones of men, and climbed some twenty-four hundred feet of the
+hill above us: then passed over a rolling plain, by ruddy gravel-hills
+and grasses gray- or pink-stemmed, to camp, on what Mr. Baronette called
+Canyon Mountain, among scattered groups of trees having a quaint
+resemblance to an old apple-orchard. Here we held counsel as to whether
+we should wait longer for the scout, push on rapidly to Custer, or
+complete our plans by turning southward to see the Black Canyon of the
+Big Horn River. Our doubt as to the steam-boats, which in the autumn are
+few and far between, and our failing provisions, decided us to push on
+to the fort. Having got in all our parties, with ample supplies of game,
+we started early next day to begin the descent from these delightful
+hills to the plains below. We rode twenty-eight miles, descending about
+thirty-seven hundred feet over boundless rolling, grass-clad foot-hills,
+behind us, to the left, the long mountain-line bounding the rugged canyon
+of Clarke's Fork, and to the right a march of lessening hills, and all
+before us one awful vast gray, sad and silent plain, and in dimmest
+distance again the gray summits about Pryor's Gap. The space before us
+was a vast park, thick with cactus and sage-brush, lit up here and
+there--but especially at the point where the canyon sets free the river
+on to the plain--by brilliant masses of tinted rocks or clays in level
+strata overlapping one another in bars of red, silver, pink, yellow and
+gray. With a certain sense of sadness we took a last look at these snowy
+summits rising out of their green crowns of pine and fir, and, bidding
+adieu to the wholesome hills, rode on to the grim alkali plain with the
+thermometer at 92 deg.
+
+And now the days of bad water had come, each spring being the nastiest,
+and the stuff not consoling when once down, but making new and
+unquenchable thirst, and leaving a vile and constant taste of magnesia
+and chalk. And thus, over sombre prairies and across a wicked
+ford--where, of course, the captain and T. got their baggage wet--and
+past bones of men on which were piled stones, and the man's breeches
+thrown over these for a shroud or as a remembrance of the shrivelled
+thing below being human, we followed the Nez Perces' trail, to camp at
+four by the broad rattling waters of Clarke. Jack reported Indians near
+by--indeed saw them: guessed them to be Bannocks, as Crows would have
+come in to beg. Sentinels were thrown out on the bluffs near us and the
+stock watched with redoubled care.
+
+I think every man who has camped much remembers, with a distinct
+vividness, the camp-fires. I recall happy hours by them in Maine and
+Canada and on the north shore of Lake Superior, and know, as every lover
+of the woods knows, how each wood has its character, its peculiar
+odors--even a language of its own. The burning pine has one speech, the
+gum tree another. One friend at least who was with me can recall our
+camps in Maine,
+
+    Where fragrant hummed the moist swamp-spruce,
+      And tongues unknown the cedar spoke,
+    While half a century's silent growth
+      Went up in cheery flame and smoke.
+
+The cottonwood burns with a rich, ruddy, abundant blaze and a faint
+pleasant aroma. Not an unpicturesque scene, our camp-fire, with the
+rough figures stretched out on the grass and the captain marching his
+solemn round with utterly unfatigable legs, Jack and George Houston
+good-humoredly chaffing, and now and again a howl responsive to the
+anguish of a burnt boot. He who has lived a life and never known a
+camp-fire is--Well, may he have that joy in the Happy Hunting-grounds!
+
+The next day's ride was only interesting from the fact that we forded
+Clarke's Fork five times in pretty wild places, where, of course,
+Captain G. and the doctor again had their baggage soaked. The annoyance
+of this when, after ten hours in the saddle, you come to fill your
+tobacco-bag and find the precious treasure hopelessly wet, your
+writing-paper in your brushes, the lovely photographs, a desolated
+family presented on your departure, brilliant with yellow mud--I pause:
+there are inconceivable capacities for misery to be had out of a
+complete daily wetting of camp-traps. I don't think the captain ever
+quite got over this last day's calamity, and I doubt not he mourns over
+it to-day in England.
+
+The ride of the next two days brought us again to rising ground, the
+approach to Pryor's Gap. On the 13th I rode on ahead with George
+Houston, and had an unsuccessful buffalo-hunt. We saw about forty head,
+but by no device could we get near enough for effective shooting. I had,
+however, the luck to kill a buck antelope and two does. Rejoining the
+command in great triumph, I found Jump, to my amusement, waving over his
+head a red cotton umbrella which some wandering Crow had dropped on the
+trail. The umbrella being, from the Crow point of view, a highly-prized
+ornament, it was not strange to find it on our trail. In an evil moment
+I asked Jump to hand it to me. As he did so it fell, open, over the nose
+of my cayoose. As to what happened I decline to explain: there have been
+many calumnies concerning what Mr. Jump called "that 'ere horse-show."
+
+On this day we rode through the last range of considerable hills, past a
+vast rock which meant "medicine" of some kind for the Indian, as its
+clefts were dotted with sacrificial beads, arrows and bits of calico. A
+brief scramble and a long descent carried us through Pryor's Gap, and
+out again on to boundless plains, thick with the fresh dung of the
+buffaloes, which must have been here within two days and been hurried
+southward by Crow hunting-parties. This to our utter disgust, as we had
+been promised abundance of buffalo beyond Pryor's Gap.
+
+A thirty-mile march brought us to a poor camp by a marshy stream. Man
+and beast showed the effects of the alkaline waters, which seemed to me
+more nasty every day. There is no doubt, however, that it is possible to
+become accustomed to their use, and no lands are more capable of
+cultivation than these if the water be sufficient for irrigation. The
+camp was enlivened by an adventure of the major's, which revenged for us
+his atrocious habit of rising at 3 A. M. and saying "Now, gentlemen!" as
+he stood relentless at the tent-doors. C. and I had found a canyon near
+by about one hundred feet deep and having a good bathing stream. As we
+returned toward it at evening we saw the gallant major standing
+barelegged on the edge of the canyon, gesticulating wildly, his
+saddle-bags and toilette matters far below beside the creek. Still
+suffering with the sunburn, he had been cooling his feet in the water
+preparatory to a bath, when, lo! a bear standing on his hind legs eating
+berries at a distance of only about fifteen feet! The major promptly
+availed himself of the shelter offered by the bank of the stream; but
+once there, how was he to escape unseen? The water was cold, the bear
+big, the major shoeless. Perhaps a bark simulative of a courageous dog
+might induce the bear to leave. No doubt, under such inspirations, it
+was well done. The bear, amazed at the resources of the army,
+fled--alas! not pursued by the happy major, who escaped up the
+canyon-wall, leaving his baggage to a generous foe, which took no
+advantage of comb or toothbrush. How the whole outfit turned out to hunt
+that bear, and how he was never found, I have not space to tell more
+fully.
+
+All of twelve hours the next day we rode on under a blinding sunlight, a
+cloudless sky, over dreary, rolling, dusty plains, where the only relief
+from dead grasses was the gray sage-brush and cactus, from the shelter
+of which, now and again, a warning rattle arose or a more timid snake
+fled swiftly through the dry grasses. Tinted cones of red and brown
+clays or toadstool forms of eroded sandstone added to the strange
+desolateness of the view; so that no sorrow was felt when, after forty
+miles of it, we came upon a picturesque band of Crows with two chiefs,
+Raw Hide and Tin Belly.
+
+It was an amazing sight to fresh eyes--the clever ponies,
+these bold-featured, bareheaded, copper-tinted fellows with
+bead-decked leggins, gay shirts or none, and their rifles slung in
+brilliantly-decorated gun-covers across the saddle-bows. We rode down
+the bluffs with them to the flat valley of Beauvais Creek, where a few
+lodges were camped with the horses, twelve hundred or more, in a grove
+of lordly cottonwood--a wild and picturesque sight. Tawny squaws
+surrounded us in crowds, begging. A match, a cartridge, anything but a
+quill toothpick, was received with enthusiasm. I rode ahead to the ford
+of the Beauvais Creek, and met the squaws driving in the cayooses.
+Altogether, it was much like a loosely-organized circus. Our own camp
+being set, we took our baths tranquilly, watched by the squaws seated
+like men on their ponies. One of them kindly accepted a button and my
+wornout undershirt.
+
+The cottonwood tree reigns supreme throughout this country wherever
+there is moisture, and marks with its varied shades of green the
+sinuous line of every water-course. Despised even here as soft and
+easily rotted, "warping inside out in a week," it is valuable as almost
+the sole resource for fuel and timber, and as making up in speed of
+growth for a too ready rate of decay. Four or five years' growth renders
+it available for rails, and I should think it must equal the eucalyptus
+for draining moist lands. Many a pretty face is the more admired for its
+owner's wealth, and were the now-despised cottonwood of greater
+market-value it could not, I think, have escaped a reputation for
+beauty. A cottonwood grove of tall trees ten to eighteen feet in
+diameter, set twenty to forty feet apart, with dark-green shining leaves
+spreading high in air over a sod absolutely free of underbrush, struck
+such of us as had no Western prejudices as altogether a noble sight.
+Between Forts Custer and Keogh the cottonwoods are still finer, and what
+a mocking-bird is among birds are these among trees--now like the apple
+tree, now like the olive, now resembling the cork or the red-oak or the
+Lombardy poplar, and sometimes quaintly deformed so as to exhibit
+grotesque shapes,--all as if to show what one tree can do in the way of
+mimicking its fellows.
+
+To our delight, General Sheridan's old war-scout, Mr. Campbell, rode in
+with letters at dusk, and we had the happiness to learn that our long
+absence had made ill news for none of us. By six next day we were up and
+away to see the great Crow camp, which we reached by crossing a long
+ford of the swift Big Horn River. There were one hundred and twenty
+lodges, about one thousand Crows, about two thousand dogs and as many
+ponies. I think it was the commissary who dared to say that every dog
+could not have his day among the Crows, as there would not be enough
+days to go round; but surely never on earth was such a canine chorus. It
+gave one a respect for Crow nerves. Let me add, as a Yankee, my
+veneration for the Crow as a bargainer, and you will have the most
+salient ideas I carried away from this medley of dogs, horses, sullen,
+lounging braves with pipes, naked children warmly clad with dirt,
+hideous squaws, skin lodges, medicine-staffs gay with bead and feathers,
+and stenches for the describing of which civilized language fails.
+
+Crossing a branch of the Big Horn, we rode away again over these
+interminable, lonely grass-plains; past the reaping-machines and the
+vast wagons, with a dozen pairs of oxen to each, sent out to gather
+forage for the winter use of the fort; past dried-up streams,
+whitewashed with snowy alkaline deposits, cheating the eye at a distance
+with mockery of foaming water. Still, mile on mile, across rolling
+lands, with brief pause at the river to water horses, scaring the gay
+little prairie-dogs and laughing at the swift scuttle away of
+jack-rabbits, until by noon the long lines of Custer came into sight.
+
+These three days of sudden descent from high levels to the terrible
+monotony of the thirsty plains, without shade, with the thermometer
+still in the nineties, began to show curiously in the morale of the
+outfit. The major got up earlier and rode farther: our English captain
+walked more and more around the camp-fire. On one day the coffee gave
+out, and on the next the sugar, and everything except the commissary's
+unfailing good-humor, which was, unluckily, not edible. Mr. T. rode in
+silence beside the judge, grimly calculating how soon he could get a
+railroad over these plains. Even the doctor fell away in the "talk"
+line. Says Mr. Jump: "These 'ere plains ain't as social as they might
+be." Some one is responsible for the following brief effort to evolve in
+verse the lugubrious elements of a ride over alkali plains with failing
+provender, weary horses, desiccating heat and quenchless thirst:
+
+    Silent and weary and sun-baked, we rode o'er the alkaline grass-plains,
+    Into and out of the coolies and through the gray green of the sage-brush--
+    All the long line of the horses, with jingle of spur and of bridle,
+    All the brown line of the mule-train, tired and foot-sore and straggling;
+    Nothing to right and to left, nothing before and behind us,
+    Save the dry yellowing grass, and afar on the hazy horizon,
+    Sullen, and grim, and gray, sunburnt, monotonous sand-heaps.
+    So we rode, sombre and listless, day after day, while the distance
+    Grew as we rode, till the eyeballs ached with the terrible sameness.
+
+By this time the command was straggling in a long broken line, all eyes
+set on the fort, where, about 1.30, we dismounted from our six hundred
+miles in the saddle to find in the officers' club-room a hearty welcome
+and the never-to-be-forgotten sensation of a schooner of iced Milwaukee
+beer. From Fort Custer we rode a hundred and thirty miles in ambulances
+to Fort Keogh. This portion of our journey took us over the line to be
+followed by the Northern Pacific Railroad, and gave us a good idea of
+the wealthy grass-lands, capable of easy irrigation, bordering the
+proposed line of rail. The river is navigable to Custer until the middle
+of September, and in wet seasons still later. Already, much of the best
+land is taken up, and we were able to buy chickens if we could shoot
+them, and eggs and potatoes, the latter the best I have seen in any
+country. The river is marked by ample groves of superb cottonwoods and
+by immense thickets of the wild prairie-rose and moss-rose, while the
+shores are endlessly interesting and curious, especially the left bank,
+on account of the singular forms of the mud and sandstone hills, along
+which, in places, lie for miles black level strata of lignite. At Fort
+Keogh we took a steamer to Bismarck, whence we travelled by rail on the
+Northern Pacific road, reaching home September 9th. We had journeyed
+sixty-five hundred miles--on horses, six hundred; by ambulances, four
+hundred; by boat, six hundred and seventy-five.
+
+
+S. WEIR MITCHELL, M. D.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] Nicholas Biddle.
+
+[B] A little valley--probably from the French _coulisse_, a narrow
+channel.
+
+
+
+
+ADAM AND EVE.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+Aunt Hepzibah's house stood well up the hill, far enough away from the
+village to escape the hubbub and confusion which during the removal of
+any considerable store of spirit were most certain to prevail.
+
+Hidden away in the recesses of a tortuous valley, amid hills whose steep
+sides bristled with tier after tier of bare, broken rocks, to reach or
+to leave Polperro by any other mode than on foot was a task of
+considerable difficulty. Wagons were unknown, carts not available, and
+it was only at the risk of his rider's life and limbs that any horse
+ventured along the perilous descents and ascents of the old Talland
+road. Out of these obstacles, therefore, arose the necessity for a
+number of men who could manage the drays, dorsals and crooks which were
+the more common and favored modes of conveyance. With the natural love
+of a little excitement, combined with the desire to do as you would be
+done by, it was only thought neighborly to lend a hand at whatever might
+be going on; and the general result of this sociability was that half
+the place might be found congregated about the house, assisting to the
+best of their ability to impede all progress and successfully turn any
+attempt at work into confusion and disorder.
+
+To add to this tumult, a keg of spirits was kept on tap, to which all
+comers were made free, so that the crowd grew first noisy and
+good-tempered, then riotously merry and quarrelsomely drunk, until
+occasions had been known when a general fight had ensued, the kegs had
+got burst open and upset, the men who were hired to deliver them lay
+maddened or helpless in the street, while the spirit for which liberty
+and life had been risked flowed into the gutters like so much water.
+
+In vain had Adam, to whom these scenes afforded nothing but anger and
+disgust, used all his endeavors to persuade his fellow-workers to give
+up running the vessel ashore with the cargo in her. The Polperro men,
+except under necessity, turned a deaf ear to his entreaties, and in many
+cases preferred risking a seizure to foregoing the fool-hardy
+recklessness of openly defying the arm of the law. The plan which Adam
+would have seen universally adopted here, as it was in most of the other
+places round the coast, was that of dropping the kegs, slung on a rope,
+into the sea, and (securing them by an anchor) leaving them there until
+some convenient season, when, certain of not being disturbed, they were
+landed, and either removed to a more distant hiding-place or conveyed at
+once to their final destination. But all this involved immediate trouble
+and delay, and the men, who without a complaint or murmur would endure
+weeks of absence from their homes, the moment those homes came in sight
+grew irritable under control and impatient of all authority.
+
+With a spirit of independence which verged on rebellion, with an
+uncertain temperament in which good and bad lay jostled together so
+haphazard that to calculate which at any given moment might come
+uppermost was an impossibility, these sons of the sea were hard to lead
+and impossible to drive. Obstinate, credulous, superstitious, they
+looked askant on innovation and hated change, fearing lest it should
+turn away the luck which they vaunted in the face of discretion, making
+it their boast that so many years had gone by since any mischance had
+overtaken the Polperro folk that they could afford to laugh at the
+soldiers before their faces and snap their fingers at the cruisers
+behind their backs.
+
+Under these circumstances it was not to be supposed that Adam's
+arguments proved very effective: no proposition he made was ever
+favorably received, and this one was more than usually unpopular. So, in
+spite of his prejudice against a rule which necessitated the sequence
+of riot and disorder, he had been forced to give in, and to content
+himself by using his authority to control violence and stem as much as
+possible the tide of excess. It was no small comfort to him that Eve was
+absent, and the knowledge served to smooth his temper and keep down his
+irritability. Besides which, his spirits had risen to no common height,
+a frequent result of the reaction which sets in after great emotion,
+although Adam placed his happy mood to the credit of Eve's kind words
+and soft glances.
+
+It was late in the afternoon before the kegs were all got out and safely
+cleared off; but at length the last man took his departure, the visitors
+began to disperse, Uncle Zebedee and Jerrem disappeared with them, and
+the house was left to the undisturbed possession of Joan and Adam.
+
+"I shall bring Eve back when I come," Adam said, reappearing from the
+smartening up he had been giving to himself.
+
+"All right!" replied Joan, but in such a weary voice that Adam's heart
+smote him for leaving her sitting there alone, and with a great effort
+at self-sacrifice he said, "Would you like to go too?"
+
+"Iss, if I could go two p'r'aps I should," retorted Joan, "but as I'm
+only one p'r'aps I might find myself one in the way. There, go along
+with 'ee, do!" she added, seeing him still hesitate. "You knaw if
+there'd bin any chance o' my goin' you wouldn't ha' axed me."
+
+A little huffed by this home-thrust, Adam waited for nothing more, but,
+turning away, he closed the door after him and set off at a brisk pace
+up the Lansallos road, toward Aunt Hepzibah's house.
+
+The light had now all but faded out, and over everything seaward a
+cloudy film of mist hung thick and low; but this would soon lift up and
+be blown away, leaving the night clear and the sky bright with the
+glitter of a myriad stars, beneath whose twinkling light Adam would tell
+his tale of love and hear the sweet reply; and at the thought a thousand
+hopes leaped into life and made his pulses quicken and his nerves
+thrill. Strive as he might, arrived at Aunt Hepzibah's he could neither
+enter upon nor join in any general conversation; and so marked was his
+silence and embarrassed his manner that the assembled party came to the
+charitable conclusion that something had gone wrong in the adjustment of
+his liquor; and knowing it was ticklish work to meddle with a man who
+with a glass beyond had fallen a drop short, they made no opposition to
+Eve's speedy preparations for immediate departure.
+
+"Oh, Eve," Adam exclaimed, giving vent to deep-drawn sighs of relief as,
+having turned from the farm-gate, they were out of sight and hearing of
+the house, "I hope you're not vexed with me for seeming such a fool as
+I've been feeling there. I have been so longing for the time to come
+when I could speak to you that for thinking of it I couldn't talk about
+the things they asked me of."
+
+"Why, whatever can you have to say of so much importance?" stammered
+Eve, trying to speak as if she was unconscious of the subject he was
+about to broach; and this from no coquetry, but because of an
+embarrassment so allied to that which Adam felt that if he could have
+looked into her heart he would have seen his answer in its tumultuous
+beating.
+
+"I think you know," said Adam softly; and as he spoke he stooped to
+catch a glimpse of her averted face. "It's only what I'd on my lips to
+say last night, only the door was opened before I'd time to get the
+words out, and afterward you wouldn't so much as give me a look,
+although," he added reproachfully, "you sat up ever so long after I was
+gone, and only ran away when you thought that I was coming."
+
+"No, indeed I didn't do that," said Eve earnestly: "that was Joan whom
+you heard. I went up stairs almost the minute after you left."
+
+"Is that really true?" exclaimed Adam, seizing both her hands and
+holding them tight within his own. "Eve, you don't know what I suffered,
+thinking you were caught by Jerrem's talk and didn't care whether I felt
+hurt or pleased. I lay awake most of the night, thinking whether it
+could ever be that you could care for me as by some magic you've made
+me care for you. I fancied--"
+
+But here a rustle in the hedge made them both start. Adam turned quickly
+round, but nothing was to be discovered. "'Twas, most-like, nothing but
+a stoat or a rabbit," he said, vexed at the interruption: "still, 'tis
+all but certain there'll be somebody upon the road. Would you mind
+crossing over to the cliff? 'Tis only a little bit down the other side."
+
+Eve raised no objection, and, turning, they picked their way along the
+field, got over the gate and down through the tangle of gorse and brier
+to the path which ran along the Lansallos side of the cliff. Every step
+of the way was familiar to Adam, and he so guided Eve as to bring her
+down to a rough bit of rock which projected out and formed a seat on a
+little flat of ground overhanging a deep gully.
+
+"There!" he said, in a tone of satisfaction, "this isn't so bad, is it?
+You won't feel cold here, shall you?"
+
+"No, not a bit," said Eve.
+
+Then there was a pause, which Eve broke by first giving a nervous,
+half-suppressed sigh, and then saying, "It's very dark to-night, isn't
+it?"
+
+"Yes," said Adam, who had been thinking how he should best begin his
+subject. "I thought the mist was going to clear off better than this,
+but that seems to look like dirty weather blowing up;" and he pointed to
+the watery shroud behind which lay the waning moon.
+
+"I wish a storm would come on," said Eve: "I should so like to see the
+sea tossing up and the waves dashing over everything."
+
+"What! while we two are sitting here?" said Adam, smiling.
+
+"No: of course I don't mean now, this very minute, but some time."
+
+"Some time when I'm away at sea?" put in Adam.
+
+Eve gave a little shudder: "Not for the world! I should be frightened to
+death if a storm came on and you away. But you don't go out in very bad
+weather, do you, Adam?"
+
+"Not if I can help it, I don't," he answered. "Why, would you mind if I
+did?" and he bent down so that he could look into her face. "Eh, Eve,
+would you?"
+
+His tone and manner conveyed so much more than the words that Eve felt
+it impossible to meet his gaze. "I don't know," she faltered. "What do
+you ask me for?"
+
+"What do I ask you for?" he repeated, unable longer to repress the
+passionate torrent which he had been striving to keep under. "Because
+suspense seems to drive me mad. Because, try as I may, I can't keep
+silent any longer. I wanted, before I said more, to ask you about
+somebody you've left behind you at London; but it's of no use. No matter
+what he may be to you, I must tell you that I love you, Eve--that you've
+managed in this little time to make every bit of my heart your own."
+
+"Somebody in London?" Eve silently repeated. "Who could he mean? Not
+Reuben May: how should he know about him?"
+
+The words of love that followed this surprise seemed swallowed up in her
+desire to have her curiosity satisfied and her fears set at rest. "What
+do you mean about somebody I've left in London?" she said; and the
+question, abruptly put, jarred upon Adam's excited mood, strained as his
+feelings were, each to its utmost tension. This man she had left behind,
+then, could even at a moment like this stand uppermost in her mind.
+
+"A man, I mean, to whom, before you left, you gave a promise;" and this
+time, so at variance was the voice with Adam's former tones of
+passionate avowal, that, coupled with the shock of hearing that word
+"promise," Eve's heart quailed, and to keep herself from betraying her
+agitation she was forced to say, with an air of ill-feigned amazement,
+"A man I left? somebody I gave a promise to? I really don't know what
+you mean."
+
+"Oh yes, you do;" and by this time every trace of wooing had passed from
+Adam's face, and all the love so late set flowing from his heart was
+choked and forced back on himself. "Try and remember some fellow who
+thinks he's got the right to ask how you're getting on among the country
+bumpkins, whether you ain't tired of them yet, and when you're coming
+back. Perhaps," he added, goaded on by Eve's continued silence, "'twill
+help you if I say 'twas the one who came to see you off aboard the Mary
+Jane. I suppose you haven't forgot _him_?"
+
+Eve's blood boiled at the sneer conveyed in Adam's tone and look.
+Raising her eyes defiantly to his, she said, "Forgotten him? Certainly
+not. If you had said anything about the Mary Jane before I should have
+known directly who you meant. That person is a very great friend of
+mine."
+
+"Friend?" said Adam.
+
+"Yes, friend--the greatest friend I've got."
+
+"Oh, I'm very glad I know that, because I don't approve of friends. The
+woman I ask to be my wife must be contented with me, and not want
+anything from anybody else."
+
+"A most amiable decision to come to," said Eve. "I hope you may find
+somebody content to be so dictated to."
+
+"I thought I had found somebody already," said Adam, letting a softer
+inflection come into his voice. "I fancied that at least, Eve, _you_
+were made out of different stuff to the women who are always hankering
+to catch every man's eye."
+
+"And pray what should make you alter your opinion? Am I to be thought
+the worse of because an old friend, who had promised he would be a
+brother to me, offers to see me off on my journey, and I let him come?
+You must have a very poor opinion of women, Adam, or at least a very
+poor opinion of me."
+
+And the air of offended dignity with which she gave this argument forced
+Adam to exclaim, "Oh, Eve, forgive me if I have spoken hastily: it is
+only because I think so much more of you--place you so much higher than
+any other girl I ever saw--that makes me expect so much more of you. Of
+course," he continued, finding she remained silent, "you had every right
+to allow your friend to go with you, and it was only natural he should
+wish to do so; only when I'm so torn by love as I am I feel jealous of
+every eye that's turned upon you: each look you give another seems
+something robbed from me."
+
+Eve's heart began to soften: her indignation was beginning to melt away.
+
+"And when I heard he was claiming a promise, I--"
+
+"What promise?" said Eve sharply.
+
+"What promise did you give him?" replied Adam warily, suspicion giving
+to security another thrust.
+
+"That's not to the point," said Eve. "You say I gave him a promise: I
+ask what that promise was?"
+
+"The very question I put to you. I know what he says it was, and I want
+to hear if what he says is true. Surely," he added, seeing she
+hesitated, "if this is only a friend, and a friend who is to be looked
+on like a brother, you can't have given him any promise that if you can
+remember you can't repeat."
+
+Eve's face betrayed her displeasure. "Really, Adam," she said, "I know
+of no right that you have to take me to task in this manner."
+
+"No," he answered: "I was going to ask you to give me that right when
+you interrupted me. However, that's very soon set straight. I've told
+you I love you: now I ask you if you love me, and, if so, whether you
+will marry me? After you've answered me I shall be able to put my
+questions without fear of offence."
+
+"Will you, indeed?" said Eve. "I should think that would rather depend
+upon what the answer may be."
+
+"Whatever it may be, I'm waiting for it," said Adam grimly.
+
+"Let me see: I must consider what it was I was asked," said Eve. "First,
+if--"
+
+"Oh, don't trouble about the first: I shall be satisfied of that if you
+answer the second and tell me you will accept me as a husband."
+
+"Say keeper."
+
+"Keeper, if that pleases you better."
+
+"Thank you very much, but I don't feel quite equal to the honor. I'm not
+so tired yet of doing what pleases myself that I need submit my
+thoughts and looks and actions to another person."
+
+"Then you refuse to be my wife?"
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"And you cannot return the love I offer you?"
+
+Eve was silent.
+
+"Do you hear?" he said.
+
+"Yes, I hear."
+
+"Then answer: have I got your love, or haven't I?"
+
+"Whatever love you might have had," she broke out passionately, "you've
+taken care to kill."
+
+"Kill!" he repeated. "It must have been precious delicate if it couldn't
+stand the answering of one question. Look here, Eve. When I told you I
+had given you my heart and every grain of love in it, I only spoke the
+truth; but unless you can give me yours as whole and as entire as I have
+given mine, 'fore God I'd rather jump off yonder rock than face the
+misery that would come upon us both. I know what 'tis to see another
+take what should be yours--to see another given what you are craving
+for. The torture of that past is dead and gone, but the devil it bred in
+me lives still, and woe betide the man or woman who rouses it!"
+
+Instinctively Eve shrank back: the look of pent-up passion frightened
+her and made her whole body shiver.
+
+"There! there! don't alarm yourself," said Adam, passing his hand over
+his forehead as if to brush away the traces which this outburst had
+occasioned: "I don't want to frighten you. All I want to know is, can
+you give me the love I ask of you?"
+
+"I couldn't bear to be suspected," faltered Eve.
+
+"Then act so that you would be above suspicion."
+
+"With a person always on the watch, looking out for this and that, so
+that one would be afraid to speak or open one's mouth, I don't see how
+one could possibly be happy," said Eve. "All one did, all one said,
+might be taken wrongly, and when one were most innocent one might be
+thought most guilty. No: I don't think I could stand that, Adam."
+
+"Very well," he said coldly. "If you feel your love is too weak to bear
+that, and a great deal more than that, you are very wise to withhold it
+from me: those who have much to give require much in return."
+
+"Oh, don't think I haven't that in me which would make my love equal
+yours any day," said Eve, nettled at the doubt which Adam had flung at
+her. "If I gave any one my heart, I should give it all; but when I do
+that I hope it will be to somebody who won't doubt me and suspect me."
+
+"Then I'd advise you not to give them cause to," said Adam.
+
+"And I'd advise you to keep your cautions for those that need them,"
+replied Eve, rising from where she had been sitting and turning her face
+in the direction of home.
+
+"Oh, you needn't fear being troubled by any more I shall say," said
+Adam: "I'm only sorry that I've been led to say what I have."
+
+"Pray don't let that trouble you: such things, with me, go in at one ear
+and out at the other."
+
+"In that case I won't waste any more words," said Adam; "so if you can
+keep your tongue still you needn't fear being obliged to listen to
+anything I shall say."
+
+Eve gave a little scornful inclination of her head in token of the
+accepted silence between them, and in silence the two commenced their
+walk and took their way toward home.
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+Except the long surging roll of the waves, as in monotonous succession
+they dashed and broke against the rocks, not a sound was to be heard.
+The night had grown more lowering: the sprinkle of stars was hid behind
+the dense masses of cloud, through which, ever and anon, the moon, with
+shadowy face, broke out and feebly cast down a glimmering light. Below,
+the outspread stretch of water lay dark and motionless, its glassy
+surface cold and glittering like steel. Walking a little in the rear of
+Adam, Eve shuddered as her eyes fell on the depths, over whose brink
+the narrow path they trod seemed hanging. Instinctively she shrank
+closer to the cliff-side, to be caught by the long trails of bramble
+which, with bracken and gorse, made the steep descent a bristly wall.
+Insensibly affected by external surroundings, unused to such complete
+darkness, the sombre aspect of the scene filled her with nervous
+apprehension: every bit of jutting rock she stumbled against was a
+yawning precipice, and at each step she took she died some different
+death. The terrors of her mind entirely absorbed all her former
+indifference and ill-humor, and she would have gladly welcomed any
+accident which would have afforded her a decent pretext for breaking
+this horrible silence. But nothing occurred, and they reached the open
+piece of green and were close on the crumbling ruins of St. Peter's
+chapel without a word having passed between them. The moon struggled out
+with greater effort, and, to Eve's relief, showed that the zigzag
+dangers of the path were past, and there was now nothing worse to fear
+than what might happen on any uneven grassy slope. Moreover, the buzz of
+voices was near, and, though they could not see the persons speaking,
+Eve knew by the sound that they could not be very far distant. Having
+before him the peculiar want of reticence generally displayed by the
+Polperro folk, Adam would have given much to have been in a position to
+ask Eve to remount the hill and get down by the other side; but under
+present circumstances he felt it impossible to make any suggestion:
+things must take their course. And without a word of warning he and Eve
+gained the summit of the raised elevation which formed a sheltered
+background to this favorite loitering-place, at once to find themselves
+the centre of observation to a group of men whose noisy discussion they
+had apparently interrupted.
+
+"Why, 'tis my son Adam, ain't it?" exclaimed the voice of Uncle Zebedee;
+and at the sound of a little mingled hoarseness and thickness Adam's
+heart sank within him.--"And who's this he's a got with un, eh?"
+
+"Tis me, Uncle Zebedee," said Eve, stepping down on to the flat and
+advancing toward where the old man stood lounging--"Eve, you know."
+
+"Awh, Eve, is it?" exclaimed Zebedee. "Why, how long's t'wind veered
+round to your quarter, my maid? Be you two sweetheartin' then, eh?"
+
+"I've been all day up to Aunt Hepzibah's," said Eve quickly, endeavoring
+to cover her confusion, "and Adam came to fetch me back: that's how it
+is we're together."
+
+"Wa-al, but he needn't ha' fetched 'ee 'less he'd got a mind for yer
+company, I s'pose," returned Zebedee with a meaning laugh. "Come, come
+now: 't 'ull niver do for 'ee to try to cabobble Uncle Zibedee. So you
+and Adam's courtyin', be 'ee? Wa-al, there's nuffin' to be said agen
+that, I s'pose?" and he looked round as if inviting concurrence or
+contradiction.--"Her's my poor brother Andrer's little maid, ye knaw,
+shipmates"--and here he made a futile attempt to present Eve to the
+assembled company--"what's dead--and drownded--and gone to Davy's
+locker; so, notwithstandin' I'd lashins sooner 'twas our Joan he'd ha'
+fix'd on--Lord ha' massy!" he added parenthetically, "Joan's worth a
+horsgead o' she--still, what's wan man's mate's another man's pison;
+and, howsomedever that lies, I reckon it needn't go for to hinder me
+fra' drinkin' their healths in a drap o' good liquor. So come along, my
+hearties;" and, making a movement which sent him forward with a lurch,
+he began muttering something about his sea-legs, the effect of which was
+drowned in the shout evincing the ready satisfaction with which this
+proposal for friendly conviviality was hailed.
+
+Eve drew in her breath, trying to gather up courage and combat down the
+horrible suspicion that Uncle Zebedee was not quite himself, didn't
+exactly know what he was saying, had taken too much to drink. With
+congratulatory intent she found herself jostled against by two or three
+others near her, whose noisy glee and uncertain gait only increased her
+fears. What should she do? Where could she go? What had become of Adam?
+Surely he would not go and leave her amongst--
+
+But already her question was answered by a movement from some one
+behind, who with a dexterous interposition succeeded in placing himself
+between Uncle Zebedee and herself.
+
+"Father," and Adam's voice sounded more harsh and stern than usual,
+"leave Eve to go home as she likes: she's not used to these sort o'
+ways, and she will not take things as you mean them."
+
+"Eh! what? How not mane 'em?" exclaimed old Zebedee, taken aback by his
+son's sudden appearance. "I arn't a said no harm that I knaws by:
+there's no 'fence in givin' the maid a wet welcome, I s'pose."
+
+A buzz of dissatisfaction at Adam's interference inspired Zebedee with
+renewed confidence, and with two or three sways in order to get the
+right balance he managed to bring himself to a standstill right in front
+of Adam, into whose face he looked with a comical expression of defiance
+and humor as he said, "Why, come 'long with us, lad, do 'ee, and name
+the liquor yerself, and see it passes round free and turn and turn
+about: and let's hab a song or two, and get up Rozzy Treloar wi' his
+fiddle, and Zeke Orgall there 'ull dance us a hornpipe;" and he began a
+double-shuffle with his feet, adding, as his dexterity came to a sudden
+and somewhat unsteady finish, "Tis a ill wind that blows nobody no good,
+and a poor heart what never rejices."
+
+Eve during this time had been vainly endeavoring to make her escape--an
+impossibility, as Adam saw, under existing circumstances; and this
+decided him to use no further argument; but, with his arm put through
+his father's and in company with the rest of the group, he apparently
+conceded to their wishes, and, motioning Eve on, the party proceeded
+along the path, down the steps and toward the quay, until they came in
+front of the Three Pilchards, now the centre of life and jollity, with
+the sound of voices and the preparatory scraping of a fiddle to enhance
+the promise of comfort which glowed in the ruddy reflection sent by the
+bright lights and cheerful fire through the red window-curtain.
+
+"Now, father," exclaimed Adam with a resolute grip of the old man's arm,
+"you and me are homeward bound. We'll welcome our neighbors some other
+time, but for this evening let's say good-night to them."
+
+"Good-night?" repeated Zebedee: "how good-night? Why, what 'ud be the
+manin' o' that? None o' us ain't agoin' to part company here, I hopes.
+We'm all goin' to cast anchor to the same moorin's--eh, mates?"
+
+"No, no, no!" said Adam, impatiently: "you come along home with me now."
+
+"Iss, iss, all right!" laughed the old man, trying to wriggle out of his
+son's grasp; "only not just yet a whiles. I'm agoin' in here to drink
+your good health, Adam lad, and all here's a-comin' with me--ain't us,
+hearties?"
+
+"Pack of stuff! Drink my health?" exclaimed Adam. "There's no more
+reason for drinking my health to-night than any other night. Come along
+now, father: you've had a hard day of it, you know, and when you get
+home you can have whatever you want quietly by your own fireside."
+
+But Zebedee, though perfectly good-humored, was by no means to be
+persuaded: he continued to laugh and writhe about as if the fact of his
+detention was merely a good joke on Adam's part, the lookers-on abetting
+and applauding his determination, until Adam's temper could restrain
+itself no longer, and with no very pleasant explosion of wrath he let go
+his hold and intimated that his father was free to take what course
+pleased him most.
+
+"That's right, lad!" exclaimed old Zebedee heartily, shaking himself
+together. "You'm a good son and a capital sailor-man, but you'm pore
+company, Adam--verra pore company."
+
+And with this truism (to which a general shout gave universal assent)
+ringing in his ears, Adam strode away up the street with all possible
+speed, and was standing in front of the house-door when he was suddenly
+struck by the thought of what had become of Eve. Since they had halted
+in front of the Three Pilchards he had seen nothing of her: she had
+disappeared, and in all probability had made her way home.
+
+The thought of having to confront her caused him to hesitate: should he
+go in? What else could he do? where had he to go? So, with a sort of
+desperation, he pushed open the door and found himself within the
+sitting-room. It was empty; the fire had burnt low, the wick of the
+unsnuffed candle had grown long; evidently Eve had not returned; and
+with an undefined mixture of regret and relief Adam sat down, leaned his
+arms on the table and laid his head upon them.
+
+During the whole day the various excitements he had undergone had so
+kept his mind on the stretch that its powers of keen susceptibility
+seemed now thoroughly exhausted, and in place of the acute pain he had
+previously suffered there had come a dull, heavy weight of despair,
+before which his usual force and determination seemed vanquished and
+powerless. The feeling uppermost was a sense of the injustice inflicted
+on him--that he, who in practice and principle was so far removed above
+his neighbors, should be made to suffer for their follies and misdeeds,
+should have to bear the degradation of their vices. As to any hope of
+reclaiming them, he had long ago given that up, though not without a
+certain disappointment in the omniscience of that Providence which could
+refuse the co-operation of his valuable agency.
+
+Adam suffered from that strong belief in himself which is apt, when
+carried to excess, to throw a shadow on the highest qualities.
+Outstepping the Pharisee, who thanked God that he was not like other
+men, Adam thanked himself, and fed his vanity by the assurance that had
+the Polperro folk followed his lead and his advice they would now be
+walking in his footsteps; instead of which they had despised him as a
+leader and rejected him as a counsellor, so that, exasperated by their
+ignorance and stung by their ingratitude, he had cast them off and
+abandoned them for ever; and out of this disappointment had arisen a dim
+shadow of some far-off future wherein he caught glimpses of a new life
+filled with fresh hopes and successful endeavors.
+
+From the moment his heart had opened toward Eve her image seemed to be
+associated with these hitherto undefined longings: by the light of her
+love, of her presence, her companionship, all that had been vague seemed
+to take shape and grow into an object which was real and a purpose to be
+accomplished; so that now one of the sharpest pricks from the thorn of
+disappointment came of the knowledge that this hope was shattered and
+this dream must be abandoned. And, lost in moody retrospection, Adam sat
+stabbing desire with the sword of despair.
+
+"Let me be! let me be!" he said in answer to some one who was trying to
+rouse him.
+
+"Adam, it's me: do look up;" and in spite of himself the voice which
+spoke made him lift his head and look at the speaker. "Adam, I'm so
+sorry!" and Eve's face said more than her words.
+
+"You've nothing to be sorry for," returned Adam sullenly.
+
+"I want you to forgive me, Adam," continued Eve.
+
+"I've nothing to forgive."
+
+"Yes, you have;" and a faint flush of color came into her cheeks as she
+added with hesitating confusion, "You know I didn't mean you to take
+what I said as you did, Adam; because"--and the color suddenly deepened
+and spread over her face--"because I do care for you--very much indeed."
+
+Adam gave a despondent shake of his head. "No, you don't," he said,
+steadily averting his eyes; "and a very good thing too. I don't know who
+that wasn't forced to it would willingly have anything to do with such a
+God-forsaken place as this is. I only know I'm sick of it, and of myself
+and my life, and everything in it."
+
+"Oh, Adam, don't say that--don't say you're sick of life. At least, not
+now;" and she turned her face so that he might read the reason.
+
+"And why not now?" he asked stolidly. "What have I now that I hadn't
+before?"
+
+"Why, you've got me."
+
+"You? You said you couldn't give me the love I asked you for."
+
+"Oh, but I didn't mean it. What I said was because I felt so hurt that
+you should suspect me as you seemed to."
+
+"I never suspected you--never meant to suspect you. All I wanted you to
+know was that I must be all or nothing."
+
+"Of course; and I meant that too, only you--But there! don't let's drift
+back to that again;" and as she spoke she leaned her two hands upon his
+shoulders and stood looking down. "What I want to say is, that every bit
+of love I have is yours, Adam. I am afraid," she added shyly, "you had
+got it all before ever I knew whether you really wanted it or not."
+
+"And why couldn't you tell me that before?" he said bitterly.
+
+"Why, is it too late now?" asked Eve humbly.
+
+"Too late? You know it can't be too late," exclaimed Adam, his old
+irritability getting the better of him: then, with a sudden revulsion of
+his overwrought susceptibilities, he cried, "Oh, Eve, Eve, bear with me
+to-night: I'm not what I want to be. The words I try to speak die away
+upon my lips, and my heart seems sunk down so low that nothing can
+rejoice it. To-morrow I shall be master of myself again, and all will
+look different."
+
+"I hope so," sighed Eve tremulously. "Things don't seem quite between us
+as they ought to be. I sha'n't wait for Joan," she said, holding out her
+hand: "I shall go up stairs now; so good-night, Adam."
+
+"Good-night," he said: then, keeping hold of her hand, he drew her
+toward him and stood looking down at her with a face haggard and full of
+sadness.
+
+The look acted as the last straw which was to swamp the burden of Eve's
+grief. Control was in vain, and in another instant, with Adam's arms
+around her, she lay sobbing out her sorrow on his breast, and the tears,
+as they came, thrust the evil spirit away. So that when, an hour later,
+the two said good-night again, their vows had been exchanged and the
+troth that bound them plighted; and Adam, looking into Eve's face,
+smiled as he said, "Whether for good luck or bad, the sun of our love
+has risen in a watery sky."
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+Most of the actions and events of our lives are chameleon-hued: their
+colors vary according to the light by which we view them. Thus Eve, who
+the night before had seen nothing but happiness in the final arrangement
+between Adam and herself, awoke on the following morning with a feeling
+of dissatisfaction and a desire to be critical as to the rosy hues which
+seemed then to color the advent of their love.
+
+The spring of tenderness which had burst forth within her at sight of
+Adam's humility and subsequent despair had taken Eve by surprise. She
+knew, and had known for some time, that much within her was capable of
+answering to the demands which Adam's pleading love would most probably
+require; but that he had inspired her with a passion which would make
+her lay her heart at his feet, feeling for the time that, though he
+trampled on it, there it must stay, was a revelation entirely new, and,
+to Eve's temperament, rather humiliating. She had never felt any
+sympathy with those lovesick maidens whose very existence seemed
+swallowed up in another's being, and had been proudly confident that
+even when supplicated she should never seem to stoop lower than to
+accept. Therefore, just as we experience a sense of failure when we find
+our discernment led astray in our perception of a friend, so now,
+although she studiously avoided acknowledging it, she had the
+consciousness that she had utterly misconceived her own character, and
+that the balance by which she had adjusted the strength of her emotions
+had been a false one. A dread ran through her lest she should be seized
+hold upon by some further inconsistency, and she resolved to set a watch
+on the outposts of her senses, so that they might not betray her into
+further weakness.
+
+These thoughts were still agitating her mind when Joan suddenly awoke,
+and after a time roused herself sufficiently to say, "Why, whatever made
+you pop off in such a hurry last night, Eve? I runned in a little after
+ten, and there wasn't no signs of you nowheres; and then I come upon
+Adam, and he told me you was gone up to bed."
+
+"Yes," said Eve: "I was so tired, and my foot began to ache again, so I
+thought there wasn't any use in my sitting up any longer. But you were
+very late, Joan, weren't you?"
+
+"Very early, more like," said Joan: "'twas past wan before I shut my
+eyes. Why, I come home three times to see if uncle was back; and then I
+wouldn't stand it no longer, so I went and fetched un."
+
+"What, not from--where he was?" exclaimed Eve.
+
+Joan nodded her head. "Oh Lors!" she said, "'tain't the fust time by
+many; and," she added in a tone of satisfaction, "I lets 'em know when
+they've brought Joan Hocken down among 'em. I had Jerrem out, and uncle
+atop of un, 'fore they knawed where they was. Awh, I don't stand beggin'
+and prayin', not I: 'tis 'whether or no, Tom Collins,' when I come, I
+can tell 'ee."
+
+"Well, they'd stay a very long time before they'd be fetched by me,"
+said Eve emphatically.
+
+"Awh, don't 'ee say that, now," returned Joan. "Where do 'ee think
+there'd be the most harm in, then--sittin' comfortable at home when you
+might go down and 'tice 'em away, or the goin' down and doin' of it?"
+
+"I've not a bit of patience with anybody who drinks," exclaimed Eve,
+evading a direct answer.
+
+"Then you'll never cure anybody of it, my dear," replied Joan. "You'm
+like Adam there, I reckon--wantin' to set the world straight in one day,
+and all the folks in it bottommost side upward; but, as I tell un, he
+don't go to work the right way. They that can't steer 'ull never sail;
+and I'll bet any money that when it comes to be counted up how many
+glasses o' grog's been turned away from uncle's lips, there'll be more
+set to the score o' my coaxin' than ever 'ull be to Adam's
+bullyraggin'."
+
+"Perhaps so," said Eve; and then, wishing to avoid any argument into
+which Adam could be brought, she adroitly changed the subject, and only
+indifferent topics were discussed until, their dressing completed, the
+two girls were ready to go down stairs.
+
+The first person who answered the summons to breakfast was Uncle
+Zebedee--not heavy-eyed and shamefaced, as Eve had expected to see him,
+but bright and rosy-cheeked as an apple. He had been up and out since
+six o'clock, looking after the repairs which a boat of his was laid up
+to undergo, and now, as he came into the house fresh as a lark, he
+chirruped in a quavery treble,
+
+    "Tom Truelove woo'd the sweetest fair
+      That e'er to tar was kind:
+    Her face was of a booty rare--
+
+That's for all the world what yourn is," he said, breaking off to bestow
+a smacking kiss on Joan. "So look sharp, like a good little maid as you
+be, and gi'e us sommat to sit down for;" and he drew a chair to the
+table and began flourishing the knife which had been set there for him.
+Then, catching sight of Eve, whose face, in her desire to spare him,
+betrayed an irrepressible look of consciousness, he exclaimed, "Why,
+they've bin tellin' up that I was a little over-free in my speech last
+night about you, Eve: is there any truth in it, eh? I doan't fancy I
+could ha' said much amiss--did I?"
+
+"Oh, nothing to signify, uncle."
+
+"'Twas sommat 'bout you and Adam, warn't it?" he continued with a
+puzzled air: "'tis all in my head here, though I can't zackly call it to
+mind. That's the divil o' bein' a little o'ertook that ways," he added
+with the assurance of meeting ready sympathy: "'tis so bafflin' to set
+things all ship-shape the next mornin'. I minds so far as this, that it
+had somehow to do with me holdin' to it that you and Adam was goin' to
+be man and wife; but if you axes for the why and the wherefore, I'm
+blessed if I can tell 'ee."
+
+"Why, whatever put such as that into your head?" said Joan sharply.
+
+"Wa-al, the liquor, I reckon," laughed Zebedee. "And, somehow or
+'nother, Maister Adam didn't seem to have overmuch relish for the
+notion;" and he screwed up his face and hugged himself together as if
+his whole body was tickled at his son's discomfiture. "But there! never
+you mind that, Eve," he added hastily: "there's more baws than one to
+Polperro, and I'll wager for a halfscore o' chaps ready to hab 'ee
+without yer waitin' to be took up by my son Adam."
+
+Poor Eve! it was certainly an embarrassing situation to be placed in,
+for, with no wish to conceal her engagement, to announce it herself
+alone, and unaided by even the presence of Adam, was a task she
+naturally shrank from. In the endeavor to avoid any direct reply she sat
+watching anxiously for Adam's arrival, her sudden change of manner
+construed by Zebedee into the effect of wounded vanity, and by Joan into
+displeasure at her uncle's undue interference. By sundry frowns and nods
+of warning Joan tried to convey her admonitions to old Zebedee, in the
+midst of which Adam entered, and with a smile at Eve and an inclusive
+nod to the rest of the party took a chair and drew up to the table.
+
+"Surely," thought Eve, "he intends telling them."
+
+But Adam sat silent and occupied with the plate before him.
+
+"He can't think I can go living on here with Joan, even for a single
+day, and they not know it;" and in her perplexity she turned on Adam a
+look full of inquiry and meaning.
+
+Still, Adam did not speak: in his own mind he was casting over the
+things he meant to say when, breakfast over and the two girls out of the
+way, he would invite his father to smoke a pipe outside, during the
+companionship of which he intended taking old Zebedee decidedly to task,
+and, putting his intended marriage with Eve well to the front, clinch
+his arguments by the startling announcement that unless some reformation
+was soon made he would leave his native place and seek a home in a
+foreign land. Such words and such threats as these could not be uttered
+to a father by a son save when they two stood quite alone; and Adam,
+after meeting a second look from Eve, shook his head, feeling satisfied
+that she would know that only some grave requirement deterred him from
+immediately announcing the happiness which henceforth was to crown his
+life. But our intuition, at the best, is somewhat narrow, and where the
+heart is most concerned most faulty: therefore Eve, and Adam too, felt
+each disappointed in the other's want of acquiescence, and inclined to
+be critical on the lack of mutual sympathy.
+
+Suddenly the door opened and in walked Jerrem, smiling and apparently
+more radiant than usual under the knowledge that he was more than
+usually an offender. Joan, who had her own reasons for being very
+considerably put out with him, was not disposed to receive him very
+graciously; Adam vouchsafed him no notice whatever; Uncle Zebedee,
+oppressed by the sense of former good fellowship, thought it discreet
+not to evince too much cordiality; so that the onus of the morning's
+welcome was thrown upon Eve, who, utterly ignorant of any offence Jerrem
+had given, thought it advisable to make amends for the pettish
+impatience she feared she had been betrayed into on the previous
+morning.
+
+Old Zebedee, whose resolves seldom lasted over ten minutes, soon fell
+into the swing of Jerrem's flow of talk; a little later on and Joan was
+forced to put in a word; so that the usual harmony was just beginning to
+recover itself when, in answer to a remark which Jerrem had made, Eve
+managed to turn the laugh so cleverly back upon him that Zebedee, well
+pleased to see what good friends they were growing, exclaimed, "Stop her
+mouth! stop her mouth, lad! I'd ha' done it when I was your years twenty
+times over 'fore this. Her's too sarcy--too sarcy by half, her is."
+
+Up started Jerrem, but Adam was before him. "I don't know whether what
+I'm going to say is known to anybody here already," he burst out, "but I
+think it's high time that some present should be told by me that Eve has
+promised to be my wife;" and, turning, he cast a look of angry defiance
+at Jerrem, who, thoroughly amazed, gradually sank down and took
+possession of his chair again, while old Zebedee went through the dumb
+show of giving a long whistle, and Joan, muttering an unmeaning
+something, ran hastily out of the room. Eve, angry and confused, turned
+from white to red and from red to white.
+
+A silence ensued--one of those pauses when some event of our lives seems
+turned into a gulf to separate us from our former surroundings.
+
+Adam was the first to speak, and with a touch of irony he said, "You're
+none of you very nimble at wishing us joy, I fancy."
+
+"And no wonder, you've a-tooked us all aback so," said old Zebedee. "'T
+seems to me I'm foaced to turn it round and round afore I can swaller it
+for rale right-down truth."
+
+"Why, is it so very improbable, then?" asked Adam, already repenting the
+abruptness of the disclosure.
+
+"Wa-al, 'twas no later than last night that you was swearin' agen and
+cussin' everybody from stem to starn for so much as mentionin' it as
+likely. Now," he added, with as much show of displeasure as his cheery,
+weatherbeaten old face would admit of, "I'll tell 'ee the mind I've got
+to'ard these sort o' games: if you see fit to board folks in the smoke,
+why do it and no blame to 'ee, but hang me if I can stomach 'ee sailin'
+under false colors."
+
+"There wasn't anything of false colors about us, father," said Adam in a
+more conciliatory tone; "for, though I had certainly spoken to Eve, it
+was not until after I'd parted with you last night that she gave me her
+answer."
+
+"Awh!" said the old man, only half propitiated. "Wa-al, I s'pose you can
+settle your consarns without my help; but I can tell 'ee this much, that
+if my Joanna had took so long afore she could make her mind up, I'm
+blamed if her ever should ha' had the chance o' bein' your mother,
+Adam--so there!"
+
+Adam bit his lip with vexation. "There's no need for me to enter upon
+any further explanations," he said: "Eve's satisfied, I'm satisfied, so
+I don't see why you shouldn't be satisfied."
+
+"Awh, I'm satisfied enough," said Zebedee; "and, so far as that goes,
+though I ain't much of a hand at speechifyin', I hopes that neither of
+'ee 'ull never have no raison to repent yer bargain. Eve's a fine
+bowerly maid, so you'm well matched there; and so long as she's ready to
+listen to all you say and bide by all you tells her, why 'twill be set
+fair and sail easy."
+
+"I can assure you Eve isn't prepared to do anything of the sort, Uncle
+Zebedee," exclaimed Eve, unable to keep silence any longer. "I've always
+been told if I'd nothing else I've got the Pascals' temper; and that,
+according to your own showing, isn't very fond of sitting quiet and
+being rode over rough-shod."
+
+The whistle which Uncle Zebedee had tried to choke at its birth now came
+out shrill, long and expressive, and Adam, jumping up, said, "Come,
+come, Eve: we've had enough of this. Surely there isn't any need to take
+such idle talk as serious matter. If you and me hadn't seen some good in
+one another we shouldn't have taken each other, I suppose; and, thank
+the Lord, we haven't to please anybody but our two selves."
+
+"Wa-al, 'tis to be hoped you'll find that task aisier than it looks,"
+retorted Uncle Zebedee with a touch of sarcasm; while Jerrem, after
+watching Adam go out, endeavored to throw a tone of regret into the
+flattering nothings he now whispered by way of congratulation, but Eve
+turned impatiently away from him. She had no further inclination to talk
+or to be talked to; and Uncle Zebedee having by this time sought solace
+in a pipe, Jerrem joined him outside, and the two sauntered away
+together toward the quay.
+
+Left to the undisturbed indulgence of her own reflections, Eve's mood
+was no enviable one--the more difficult to bear because she had to
+control the various emotions struggling within her. She felt it was time
+for plain speaking between her and Adam, and rightly judged that a
+proper understanding come to at once would be the safest means of
+securing future comfort. Turn and twist Adam's abrupt announcement as
+she would, she could assign but one cause for it, and that cause was an
+overweening jealousy; and as the prospect came before her of a lifetime
+spent in the midst of doubt and suspicion, the strength of her love
+seemed to die away and her heart grew faint within her. For surely if
+the demon of jealousy could be roused by the sight of commonplace
+attentions from one who was in every way like a brother--for so in Eve's
+eyes Jerrem seemed to be--what might not be expected if at any time
+circumstances threw her into the mixed company of strangers? Eve had
+seen very little of men, but whenever chance had afforded her the
+opportunity of their society she had invariably met with attention, and
+had felt inwardly gratified by the knowledge that she was attracting
+admiration; but now, if she gave way to this prejudice of Adam's, every
+time an eye was turned toward her she would be filled with fear, and
+each time a look was cast in her direction her heart would sink with
+dread.
+
+What should she do? Give him up? Even with the prospect of possible
+misery staring at her, Eve could not say yes, and before the thought had
+more than shaped itself a dozen suggestions were battling down the dread
+alternative. She would change him, influence him, convert him--anything
+but give him up or give in to him. She forgot how much easier it is to
+conceive plans than to carry them out--to arrange speeches than to utter
+them. She forgot that only the evening before, when, an opportunity
+being afforded, she had resolved upon telling Adam the whole
+circumstance of Reuben May and the promise made between them, while the
+words were yet on her lips she had drawn them back because Adam had said
+he knew that the promise was "nothing but the promise of a letter;" and
+Eve's courage had suddenly given way, and by her silence she had led him
+to conclude that nothing else had passed between them. Joan had spoken
+of the envious grudge which Adam had borne toward Jerrem because he had
+shared in his mother's heart, so that this was not the first time Adam
+had dropped in gall to mingle with the cup of his love.
+
+The thought of Joan brought the fact of her unexplained disappearance to
+Eve's mind, and, full of compunction at the bare suspicion of having
+wounded that generous heart, Eve jumped up with the intention of seeking
+her and of bringing about a satisfactory explanation. She had not far to
+go before she came upon Joan, rubbing and scrubbing away as if the
+welfare of all Polperro depended on the amount of energy she could throw
+into her work. Her face was flushed and her voice unsteady, the natural
+consequences of such violent exercise, and which Eve's approach but
+seemed to lend greater force to.
+
+"Joan, I want to speak to you."
+
+"Awh, my dear, I can't listen to no spakin' now," replied Joan hastily,
+"and the tables looking as they do."
+
+"But Tabithy always scrubs the tables, Joan: why should you do it?"
+
+"Tabithy's arms ain't half so young as mine--worse luck for me or for
+she!"
+
+Having by this time gained a little insight into Joan's peculiarities,
+Eve argued no further, but sat herself down on a convenient seat,
+waiting for the time when the rasping sound of the brush would come to
+an end. Her patience was put to no very great tax, for after a few
+minutes Joan flung the brush along the table, exclaiming, "Awh, drabbit
+the ole scrubbin'! I must give over. I b'lieve I've had enuf of it for
+this time, 't all events."
+
+"Joan, you ain't hurt with me, are you?" said Eve, trying to push her
+into the seat from which she had just risen. "I wanted to be the first
+to tell you, only that Adam spoke as he did, and took all I was going to
+say out of my mouth. It leaves you to think me dreadfully sly."
+
+"Awh, there wasn't much need for tellin' me," said Joan with a sudden
+relax of manner. "When I didn't shut my eyes o' purpose I could tell,
+from the first, what was certain to happen."
+
+"It was more than I could, then," said Eve. "I hadn't given it a thought
+that Adam meant to speak to me, and when he asked me I was quite taken
+aback, and said 'No' for ever so long."
+
+"What made 'ee change yer mind so suddent, then?" said Joan bluntly.
+
+Eve hesitated. "I hardly know," she said, with a little confusion. "I
+think it was seeing him so cast down made me feel so dreadfully sorry."
+
+"H'm!" said Joan. "Didn't 'ee never feel no sorrow for t'other poor chap
+that wanted to have 'ee--he to London, Reuben May?"
+
+"Not enough to make me care in that way for him: I certainly never did."
+
+"And do you care for Adam, then?"
+
+"I think I do."
+
+"Think?"
+
+"Well, I am sure I do."
+
+"That's better. Well, Eve, I'll say this far;" and Joan gave a sigh
+before the other words would come out: "I'd rather it should be you than
+anybody else I ever saw."
+
+The struggle with which these words were said, their tone and the look
+in Joan's face, seemed to reveal a state of feeling which Eve had not
+suspected. Throwing her arms round her, she cried out, "Oh, Joan, why
+didn't he choose you? You would have been much better for him than me."
+
+"Lord bless the maid!"--and Joan tried to laugh through her tears--"I
+wouldn't ha' had un if he'd axed me. Why, there'd ha' bin murder 'tween
+us 'fore a month was out: us 'ud ha' bin hung for one 'nother. No: now
+don't 'ee take no such stuff as that into yer head, 'cos there's no
+sense in it. Adam's never looked 'pon me not more than a sister;" and,
+breaking down, Joan sobbed hysterically; "and when you two's married I
+shall feel 'zackly as if he was a brother, and be gladder than e'er a
+one else to see how happy you makes un."
+
+"That's if I _do_ make him happy," said Eve sadly.
+
+"There's no fear but you'll do that," said Joan, resolutely wiping the
+tears from her eyes; "and 'twill be your own fault if you bain't happy
+too yourself, Eve. Adam's got his fads to put up with, and his fancies
+same as other men have, and a masterful temper to keep under, as nobody
+can tell better than me; but for rale right-down goodness I shouldn't
+know where to match his fellow--not if I was to search the place
+through; and, mind 'ee, after all, that's something to be proud of in
+the man you've got to say maister to."
+
+Eve gave a little smile: "But he must let me be mistress, you know,
+Joan."
+
+"All right! only don't you stretch that too far," said Joan warningly,
+"or no good 'ull come of it; and be foreright in all you do, and spake
+the truth to un. I've many a time wished I could, but with this to hide
+o' that one's and that to hush up o' t'other's, I know he holds me for a
+downright liard; and so I am by his measure, I 'spects."
+
+"I'm sure you're nothing of the sort, Joan," said Eve. "Adam's always
+saying how much people think of you. He told me only yesterday that he
+was certain more than half the men of the place had asked you to marry
+them."
+
+"Did he?" said Joan, not wholly displeased that Adam should hold this
+opinion. "Awh, and ax they may, I reckon, afore I shall find a man to
+say 'Yes' to."
+
+"That is what I used to think myself," said Eve.
+
+"Iss, and so you found it till Roger put the question," replied Joan
+decisively. Then, after a minute's pause, she added, "What be 'ee goin'
+to do 'bout the poor sawl to London, then--eh? You must tell he
+somehow."
+
+"Oh, I don't see that," said Eve. "I mean to write to him, because I
+promised I would; and I shall tell him that I've made up my mind not to
+go back, but I sha'n't say anything more. There isn't any need for it,
+that I see--at least, not yet a while."
+
+"Best to tell un all," argued Joan. "Why shouldn't 'ee? 'Tis the same,
+so far as you'm concerned, whether he's killed to wance or dies by
+inches."
+
+But Eve was not to be persuaded. "There isn't any reason why I should,"
+she said.
+
+"No reason?" replied Joan. "Oh, Eve, my dear," she added, "don't 'ee let
+happiness harden your heart: if love is sweet to gain, think how bitter
+'tis to lose; and, by all you've told me, you'll forfeit a better man
+than most in Reuben May."
+
+_The Author of "Dorothy Fox._"
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+ON THE SKUNK RIVER.
+
+
+The Lady of Shalott, looking into the mirror which reflected the highway
+"a bowshot from her bower-eaves," saw the villagers passing to their
+daily labor in the barley-fields; market-girls in red cloaks and damsels
+of high degree; curly shepherd-boys and long-haired pages in gay livery;
+an abbot on an ambling pad and knights in armor and nodding plumes; and
+her constant pastime was to weave these sights into the magic web on
+which she wrought. I undertake, in a modest way, to follow her example,
+and weave a series of pictures from the sights that daily meet my eyes.
+
+The highway which runs a bowshot from _my_ bower-eaves is a
+much-travelled road, leading from the farms of a prairie country into a
+prairie town. It is a stripe of black earth fifteen or twenty feet wide,
+the natural color of the soil, ungraded, ungravelled, and just now half
+a foot deep in mud from the melting February snows. Looking in the
+direction from which it comes, a mile or two of rolling prairie-land is
+visible, divided into farms of one hundred, one hundred and forty or one
+hundred and sixty acres. Just now it is faded yellow in hue, with
+patches of snow in the hollows, and bare of trees, stumps or fences,
+except the almost invisible wire-fences which separate the fields from
+the road and from each other. Here and there, at wide intervals, a few
+farm-houses can be seen, sheltered on the north and west by a
+thickly-set row of cottonwood or Lombardy poplar trees, which serve in a
+great measure to break the sweep of the pitiless Iowa winds. Most of the
+houses are large and comfortable, and are surrounded by barns, haystacks
+and young orchards, denoting a long residence and prosperity; but two or
+three, far off on the horizon, are small wooden structures, set on the
+bare prairie, without a tree or outbuilding near them, and looking bleak
+and lonely. To one who knows something of the straitened lives, the
+struggles with poverty, that go on in them, they seem doubly pitiful and
+desolate.
+
+The town into which the highway leads lies straight before my window,
+flat, unpicturesque, uninteresting, marked by the untidiness of
+crudeness and the untidiness of neglect. The ungraded streets are
+trodden into a sticky pudding by horses' feet, the board sidewalks are
+narrow, uneven and broken, and the crossings are deep in mud. In the
+eastern part of the town the dwellings are large, comfortable, even
+elegant, with well-kept grounds filled with trees and shrubbery, and
+there are a few of the same character scattered here and there
+throughout the town; but the large majority of houses, those that give
+the place its discouraged, unambitious look, are small wooden dwellings,
+a story or a story and a half high, with the end facing the street and a
+shed-kitchen behind. Those that are painted are white or brown, but many
+are unpainted, have no window-shutters and are surrounded by untidy
+yards and fences that need repair.
+
+The centre of the town, both in position and importance, is "The
+Square." This is an open space planted thickly with trees, which have
+now grown to a large size and cast a refreshing shade over the crowd
+that gathers there in summer to hear political speeches or to celebrate
+the Fourth of July. It is surrounded by hitching-racks, and on Saturdays
+and other unusually busy days these racks, on all the four sides of the
+Square, are so full of teams--generally two-horse farm-wagons--that
+there is not room for another horse to be tied. Facing the Square
+and extending a block or two down adjacent streets are the
+business-houses--stores, banks, express-office, livery-stables,
+post-office, gas-office, the hotels, the opera-house, newspaper and
+lawyers' offices. Many of the buildings are of brick, three stories
+high, faced or trimmed with stone, but the general effect is marred by
+the contiguity of little wooden shanties used as barber-shops and
+meat-markets.
+
+Except in the north-east, where the land is rolling and densely wooded,
+the horizon-line is flat and on a level with our feet. The sun rises
+from the prairie as he rises from the ocean, and his going down is the
+same: no far-off line of snowy mountains, no range of green hills nor
+forest-crest, intercepts his earliest and his latest rays. Over this
+wide stretch of level land the wind sweeps with unobstructed violence,
+and more than once in the memory of settlers it has increased to a
+destructive tornado, carrying buildings, wagons, cattle and human beings
+like chaff before it. Just now, a sky of heavenly beauty and color bends
+over it, and through the wide spaces blow delicious airs suggestive of
+early spring.
+
+Nearly every day, and often many times a day, farm-wagons drawn by two
+horses pass along the highway in front of my window. The wagon-bed is
+filled with sacks of wheat or piled high with yellow corn, and on the
+high spring-seat in front sits the farmer driving, and by him his wife,
+her head invariably wrapped in a white woollen nubia or a little shawl,
+worn as a protection against the catarrh-producing prairie winds.
+Cuddled in the hay at their feet, but keeping a bright lookout with
+round eager eyes, are two or three stout, rosy children, and often there
+is a baby in the mother's arms. When "paw" has sold his wheat or corn
+the whole family will walk around the Square several times, looking in
+at the shop-windows and staring at the people on the sidewalk. When they
+have decided in which store they can get the best bargains, they will go
+in and buy groceries, calico and flannel, shoes for the children, and
+perhaps a high chair for the baby. Later in the day they rattle by
+again, the farmer sitting alone on the spring-seat, the wife and
+children, as a better protection against the wind, on some hay in the
+now empty wagon-bed behind. So they jolt homeward over the rough, frozen
+road or toil through sticky mud, as the case may be, well pleased with
+their purchases and their glimpse of town, and content to take up again
+the round of monotonous life on their isolated prairie farm.
+
+Sometimes on spring-like days, when the roads are good, two women or a
+woman and one or two half-grown children drive by in a spring-wagon,
+bringing chickens, eggs, and butter to market. Heavy wagons loaded with
+large clear blocks of ice go by every day, the men walking and driving
+or seated on a board seat at the extreme rear of the wagon. The great
+crystal cubes look, as they flash in the sunshine, like
+building-material for Aladdin's palace quarried from some mine of
+jewels, but they are only brought from the Skunk River, three miles
+distant, to the ice-houses in town, and there packed away in sawdust
+for summer use. On two days of the week--shipping days for
+live-stock--farm-wagons with a high railing round the beds go by, and
+inside the railing, crowded as thickly as they can stand, are fat black
+or black-and-white hogs, which thrust their short noses between the
+boards and squeal to get out. They are unloaded at the cattle-pens near
+the railroad, and thence shipped to pork-packers at Chicago.
+
+And sometimes half a dozen Indians, the roving gypsies of the West,
+dressed in warm and comfortable clothing and wrapped in red or blue
+blankets, ride into town on good horses. They belong to the Sacs and
+Foxes, a friendly, well-disposed remnant of people who live half a day's
+ride to the north-east of this place. They are better off than the
+average of white people, for every man, woman and child owns a quarter
+section of land in the Indian Territory, and receives an annuity of
+money besides. Immediately after pay-day they visit the neighboring
+towns, their pockets full of silver dollars, and buy whatever necessity
+or fancy dictates. The women are generally neat and comely in
+appearance, and the pappooses that peer from the bags hung on either
+side of the ponies are bright-eyed, round-faced youngsters, who never
+cry and seldom cause any trouble. They seem to be born with a certain
+amount of gravity, and a capacity for patient endurance that forbids
+them to lift up their voices at every slight provocation after the
+manner of white babies. The Indian ponies too are models of endurance.
+The squaws tie their purchases in blankets and hang them across the
+backs of their ponies, swing their pappooses to one side and perhaps a
+joint of fresh meat to the other, then mount on top astride, dig the
+pony's neck with their moccasined heels and start off at a trot.
+Sometimes a large party of Indians, men, women and children, camp on
+Skunk River and fish. In the spring they make a general hegira to a
+wooded section two or three days' journey to the northward for the
+purpose of tapping the maple trees and boiling down the syrup into
+sugar. As before mentioned, they are friendly and inoffensive in their
+dealings with the white people, but their patience must be sorely tried
+sometimes. The town-boys hoot at them, throw stones at their ponies, and
+try in many ways to annoy them. I remember once seeing them pass through
+another town on their annual spring excursion to the sugar-camps. Two of
+the pack-ponies had strayed behind the train, and a squaw rode back to
+drive them ahead. A number of town-boys, thinking this an excellent
+opportunity to have some fun, threw sticks at them and drove them off on
+by-streets and up back alleys. The squaw tried patiently again and again
+to get them together and join the train, but it was not until a brave
+turned back and came to her assistance that she succeeded. Neither of
+the Indians uttered a word or betrayed by sign or expression that they
+noticed the insults of the boys.
+
+Often, when the mud is too deep for teams, farmers go by on horseback,
+with their horses' tails tied into a knot to keep them out of the mud.
+They have come to town to learn the price of wheat, corn or hogs, to
+bargain for some article of farm use, or perhaps to pay the interest on
+their mortgages. Many of them have not yet paid entirely for their
+farms, and comparatively few are free from debt in some form. Some,
+being ambitious to have large farms, have taken more land than they can
+profitably manage or pay for in a number of years, and are what is
+called "land poor:" others, though content with modest portions of sixty
+or a hundred acres, have not yet been able, by reason of poor crops,
+their own mismanagement or some other cause, to clear their farms of
+debt. They work along from year to year, supporting their families,
+paying the interest, and paying off the principal little by little. When
+the last payment is made and the mortgage released, then the owner can
+hold the land in spite of all other creditors. His store-bills or other
+debts may run up to hundreds of dollars, but his homestead cannot be
+taken to satisfy them by any process of law. This is the homestead law
+of the State. A single exception is made in favor of one creditor: the
+mechanic who has erected the buildings can hold what is called a
+mechanic's lien upon the property until his claim is satisfied.
+Advantage is often taken of this law for the purpose of defrauding
+creditors. In one instance a merchant who owned a good residence in a
+city and a valuable store-property, sold or transferred his residence,
+moved his family into the rooms above his store, and soon afterward
+failed. His creditors tried to get possession of his store-property, and
+entered suit, but the testimony proved that it was his dwelling also,
+and therefore exempt under the homestead law. The amount of land that
+can be held in this way is limited to forty acres.
+
+Beginning life in a new country with small capital involves many years
+of hard work and strict economy, perhaps privation and loneliness. This
+comes especially hard on the farmers' wives, many of whom have grown up
+in homes of comfort and plenty in the older States. Ask the men what
+they think of Iowa, and they will say that it is a fine State; it has
+many resources and advantages; there is room for development here; the
+avenues to positions of profit and honor are not so crowded as they are
+in the older States; a good class of emigrants are settling up the
+State: that, on the whole, Iowa has a bright future before it. But the
+women do not deal in such generalities. Their own home and individual
+life is all the world to them, and if that is encompassed with toil and
+hardship, if all their cherished longings and ambitions are denied and
+their hearts sick with hope deferred, this talk about the undeveloped
+resources of Iowa and its future greatness has no interest or meaning
+for them. In their isolated homes on the bleak prairie they have few
+social opportunities, and their straitened means do not allow them to
+buy books or pictures, to take papers or magazines, or to indulge in
+many of the little household ornaments dear to the feminine heart. What
+wonder, then, if their eyes have a weary, questioning look, as if they
+were always searching the flat prairie-horizon for some promise or hope
+of better days, something fresh and stimulating to vary the dull
+monotony of toil?
+
+"There's a better time coming," the farmer says. "When we get the farm
+paid for we will build a new house and send the children to town to
+school;" and so the slow years go by. If every new country is not
+actually fertilized with the heart's blood of women, the settling and
+development of it none the less require the sacrifice of their lives.
+One generation must cast itself into the breach, must toil and endure
+and wear out in the struggle with elementary forces, in order that those
+who come after them may begin life on a higher plane of physical comfort
+and educational and social advantages. They have not, like the settlers
+of Eastern States, had to fell forests, grub up stumps, and so wrest
+their farms from Nature; but they have none the less endured the
+inevitable hardships of life in a new, thinly-settled country, far from
+markets, railroads, schools, churches and all that puts a market value
+on man's labor. I see many women who have thus sacrificed, and are
+sacrificing, their lives. Their faces are wrinkled, their hands are hard
+with rough, coarse work, they have long ago ceased to have any personal
+ambitions; but their hopes are centred in their children. Their
+self-abnegation is pathetic beyond words. Looking at them and musing on
+their lives, I think truly
+
+    The individual withers, and the world is more and more.
+
+Must the old story be repeated over and over again? Must some hearts be
+denied all their lives long in order that a possible good may come to
+others in the future? Must some lives, full of throbbing hopes and
+aspirations, be put down in the dust and mire as stepping-stones, that
+those who come after may go over dryshod? Is the individual not to be
+considered, but only the good of the mass? Can there be justice and
+righteousness in a plan that requires the lifelong martyrdom of a few?
+Have not these few as much right to a full and free development, to
+liberty to work out their own ambitions, as have any of the multitude
+who reap the benefit of their sacrifices? But peace: this little
+existence is not all there is of life, and in the sphere of wider
+opportunities and higher activity that awaits us there will be room for
+these thwarted, stunted lives to grow and flourish and bloom in immortal
+beauty. With our limited vision, our blind and short-sighted judgment,
+how can we presume to say what is harsh or what is kind in the
+discipline of life? The earth as she flies on her track through space
+deviates from a straight line less than the eighth of an inch in the
+distance of twenty miles. We, seeing only twenty miles of her course,
+would declare that it was perfectly straight, that it did not curve in
+the slightest degree; yet flying on that same course the earth makes
+every year her vast elliptical journey around the sun. Could we see a
+hundred million miles of the track, we should discern the curve very
+plainly. Could we see a part of the boundless future of a life whose
+circumstances in this little span of existence were limited and
+depressing, we should discern the meaning of much that viewed separately
+seems hard and bitter and useless.
+
+The settlers of this State have chiefly emigrated from the older
+States--Indiana, Ohio and the Eastern and Middle States. There are many
+foreigners--Swedes, Norwegians, Germans, Dutch and Irish--who generally
+live in colonies. The German element predominates, especially in the
+cities. In the south-western part of the State there is a colony of
+Russian Mennonites, and at Amana, in the eastern part, there are several
+flourishing German colonies where the members hold all property in
+common. They preserve to some extent the quaint customs and costumes of
+the Fatherland, and one set down in the midst of their homes without
+knowing where he was might well believe himself in Germany. The Swedes
+and Norwegians bear a good character for industry and sobriety: the
+young women are in great demand as house-servants and command good
+wages.
+
+The emigrants from older States were many of them farmers of small
+means, who came through in covered wagons with their families and
+household stuff. In pleasant weather this mode of travelling was not
+disagreeable, but in rainy or cold weather it was very uncomfortable. No
+one could walk in the deep mud: the whole family were obliged to huddle
+together in the back part of the wagon, wrapped in bed-quilts or other
+covers, while the driver, generally the head of the family, sat on the
+seat in front, exposed to the cold or driving rain. The horses slowly
+dragged the heavily-laden wagon through the mud, and the progress toward
+their new home was tedious in the extreme. The wagons were usually
+common farm-wagons with hoops of wood, larger and stouter than barrel
+hoops, arched over the bed and covered with white cotton cloth.
+Sometimes, as a protection against rain, a large square of black
+oil-cloth was spread over the white cover. The front of the wagon was
+left open: at the back the cover was drawn together by a string run
+through the hem. Before leaving his old home the farmer generally held a
+public sale and disposed of his household furniture, farming utensils
+and the horses and cattle he did not intend to take with him. Sometimes
+this property went by private sale to the purchaser of his farm. He
+reserved the bedding, a few cooking utensils and other necessaries.
+These were loaded into the wagon, a feed-box for the horses was fastened
+behind, an axe strapped to it, and a tar-bucket hung underneath. Flour
+and bacon were stored away in a box under the driver's seat, or, if
+they expected no chance for replenishing on the way, another wagon was
+filled with stores. Then, when all was ready, the farmer and his family
+looked their last upon their old home, bade good-bye to the friends who
+had gathered to see them off, took their places in the wagon and began
+the long, tedious journey to "Ioway." Hitherto they had had a local
+habitation and a name: now, for several months, they were to be known
+simply as "movers." Among the memories of a childhood spent in a village
+on the old National 'Pike those pertaining to movers are the earliest.
+It was the pastime of my playmates and myself to hang on the fence and
+watch the long train of white-covered wagons go by, always toward the
+setting sun. Sometimes there were twenty in a train, and the slow creak
+of the wagons, the labored stepping of the horses, had an important
+sound to our childish ears. It was
+
+    The tread of pioneers
+    Of nations yet to be.
+
+Looking backward to that time, it seems to me now that they went by
+every day. It was a common sight, but one which never lost its interest
+to us. The cry of "Movers! movers!" would draw us from our play to hang
+idly on the fence until the procession had passed. In some instances
+nightfall overtook them just as they reached our village, and they
+camped by the roadside, lighting fires on the ground with which to cook
+their evening meal. Our timidity was greater than our curiosity, and we
+seldom went near their camps. Movers, in our estimation, were above
+"stragglers," the name by which we knew the vagrants--forerunners of the
+great tribe of tramps--who occasionally passed along the road with a
+bundle on a stick over their shoulders; but still, they were a vague,
+unknown class, whose intentions toward us were questionable, and we
+remained in the vicinity of our mothers' apron-strings so long as they
+were in the neighborhood.
+
+When the weeks or months of slow travel during the day and camping out
+by night were over, and the new home on the prairie was reached, the
+discomforts and privations of the emigrating family were not ended: they
+were only fairly begun. There was no house in which to lay their heads,
+no sawmill where lumber could be obtained, no tree to shelter them,
+unless they had the good fortune to locate near a stream--nothing but a
+smooth, level expanse of prairie-sod, bright green and gay with the
+flowers of early summer or faded and parched with the droughts of
+autumn. Sometimes they camped in the open air until lumber could be
+brought from a distance and a rude shanty erected, but often they built
+a turf house, in which they passed their first winter. These houses were
+constructed by cutting blocks of turf about eighteen inches square--the
+roots of prairie-grass being that long--and piling one upon another
+until the walls were raised to the desired height. Slender poles were
+then laid across from wall to wall, and on these other strips and
+squares of turf were piled until a roof thick enough to keep out the
+rain was formed. A turf fireplace and chimney were constructed at one
+end; the opening left for entrance was braced with poles and provided
+with a door; and sometimes a square opening was cut in the end opposite
+the chimney and a piece of muslin stretched across it to serve as a
+window. The original earth formed the floor, and piles of turf covered
+with bedding served as beds. It was only when the family intended to
+live some time in the turf house that all these pains were taken to make
+it comfortable. Many of these dwellings were dark huts, with floors a
+foot or two below the level of the ground and without window or chimney.
+These were intended for temporary occupation. A few of this kind, still
+inhabited, are to be seen in the sparsely-settled north-western part of
+the State. I do not mean this description to apply in a general sense to
+the early settlers of Iowa. Many parts of the State are heavily wooded,
+and cabins of hewed logs chinked with mud are still to be seen here and
+there--specimens of the early homes. In the regions where turf houses
+were necessary prairie-hay was burned as fuel.
+
+When his family was housed from the weather the farmer turned his
+attention to his land. The virgin sod had to be broken and the rich
+black soil turned up in ridges to the air and sunlight. When the ground
+was prepared the stock of seed-corn was planted or wheat sown, and the
+farmer's old life began again under new and quite different
+circumstances. In the eastern and oldest-settled part of the State these
+beginnings date back a generation: in the western part they are still
+fresh and recent. In the old part well-cultivated fields, large barns,
+orchards, gardens and comfortable farm-houses greet the traveller's eye:
+in the new he may travel for half a day without seeing a single
+dwelling, and may consider himself fortunate if he does not have to pass
+the night under the lee side of a haystack.
+
+After a foothold has been gained in a new country and a home
+established, a generation, perhaps two, must pass away before a fine
+type of humanity is produced. The fathers and mothers have toiled for
+the actual necessaries of life, and gained them. The children are
+supplied with physical comforts. Plenty of food and exercise in the pure
+air give them stalwart frames, good blood and perfect animal health, but
+there is a bovine stolidity of expression in their faces, a
+suggestion of kinship with the clod. They are honest-hearted and
+well-meaning--stupid, not naturally, but because their minds have never
+been quickened and stimulated. They grope in a blind way for better
+things, and wonder if life means no more than to plough and sow and
+reap, to wash and cook and sew. I see young people of this class by the
+score, and my heart goes out toward them in pity, though they are all
+unconscious of needing pity. Perhaps one out of every hundred will break
+from the slowly-stepping ranks and run ahead to taste of the springs of
+knowledge reserved for the next generation, but the vast majority will
+go down to their graves without ever attaining to the ripeness and
+symmetry of a fully-developed life. Their children perhaps--certainly
+their grand-children--will attain a fine physical and mental type; and
+by that time "the prairies" will cease to be a synonym for lack of
+society and remoteness from liberal and refining influences.
+
+The land in this vicinity is largely devoted to wheat, corn and oats:
+much, however, is used for pasturage, and several fine stock-farms lie
+within a radius of five miles. Sheep-rearing is a profitable industry,
+the woollen manufactory at this place affording a convenient and ready
+market for the clip. But the statistics of Iowa show that the rearing of
+hogs is a more prominent industry than any of these. The agricultural
+fairs that are held at the county-seats in August or September every
+year serve to display the growth of these and other industries and the
+development of the resources of the country, as well as the advance in
+material comfort. The fair-ground is generally a smooth plat of ground
+several acres in extent just outside the city limits, and besides the
+race-track and wooden "amphitheatre" there are sheds for cattle, stalls
+for horses, pens for hogs and sheep and poultry, a large open shed for
+the exhibition of agricultural machinery and implements, a long wooden
+building--usually called "Farmers' Hall"--where fruits, grain and
+vegetables are displayed, and another, called "Floral Hall," where there
+is a motley display consisting of flowering plants and cut flowers,
+needlework, embroidery, pieced bed-quilts, silk chair-cushions and
+sofa-pillows, jellies, preserves, jams, butter, cake, bread--the
+handiwork of women. There is generally a crowd of women from the country
+around these exhibits, examining them and bestowing friendly comment or
+criticism.
+
+The fair which is held here every year affords a good opportunity for a
+study of the bucolic character. Farm-wagons, full of men, women and
+children, come in from the country early in the morning, and by eleven
+o'clock the halls are crowded with red-faced and dusty sightseers, who
+elbow their way good-humoredly from one attractive exhibit to another,
+and gaze with open eyes and mouth and loud and frequent comment. At noon
+they retire to their wagons or the shade of the buildings to eat their
+dinner, which they have brought from home in a large basket, and there
+is a great flourish of fried chicken legs and wings and a generous
+display of pies, pickles and ginger-bread. The young men and half-grown
+boys have scorned the slow progress of the farm-wagons, and have come
+into town early on horseback. They have looked forward to this occasion
+for months, and perhaps have bought a suit of "store clothes" in honor
+of it. They have already seen the various exhibits, and now that the
+dinner-hour has arrived they seek refreshment--not from the family
+dinner-basket, but from some of the various eating-stands temporarily
+erected on the grounds--and buy pop-beer, roasted peanuts and candy of
+the vendors, who understand the art of extracting money from the rural
+pockets. Then in the afternoon come the races, and, having paid a
+quarter for a seat in the "amphitheatre," they give themselves up to the
+great excitement of the day. The incidents of fair-time will serve as
+food for thought and conversation for weeks afterward. It is the
+legitimate dissipation of the season.
+
+What character shall I choose as a typical Iowan? Not the occupant of
+the large brick house with tall evergreens in front which meets my sight
+whenever I look toward the country. An old woman lives there alone,
+except for a servant or two, having buried her husband and ten children.
+She is worth a hundred thousand dollars, but can neither read nor write.
+Her strong common sense and deep fund of experience supply her lack of
+education, and one would not think while listening to her that she was
+ignorant of letters. Her life has been one of toil and sorrow, but her
+expression is one of brave cheerfulness. She and her husband came to
+this place forty years ago. They were the first white settlers, and for
+neighbors they had Indians and wolves. They entered most of the land on
+which the town now stands, and when other settlers came in and the town
+was laid out their land became valuable, and thus the foundation of
+their fortune was laid. But as riches increased, cares also increased:
+the husband was so weighed down by responsibility and anxiety that his
+mind gave way, and in a fit of despondency he committed suicide. The
+sons and daughters who died, with the exception of two or three, were
+taken away in childhood. So the large mansion, with its richly-furnished
+rooms, is shut up from the sunlight and rarely echoes to the patter of
+childish feet. The mistress lives in the back part, but exercises a care
+over the whole house, which is kept in a state of perfect order and
+neatness. Not a speck of dirt is to be seen on the painted wood-work or
+the window-glass, not a stain mars the floor--long as the deck of a
+ship--of the porch which extends the length of the ell. The plates in
+the corner cupboard in the sitting-room are freshly arranged every day,
+the tins in the kitchen shine till you can see your face in them, and in
+summer the clean flower-beds, bright with pansies, roses, carnations and
+geraniums, that border the long walk leading to the front gate and adorn
+the side yards, attest the care and neatness of the mistress. Though she
+has lived on the prairie for forty years, yet the expressions that savor
+of her early life in a densely-wooded State still cling to her, and if
+you find her in her working-dress among her flowers she will beg you to
+excuse her appearance, adding, "I look as if I was just out of the
+timber."
+
+But this character, though interesting, is not a typical one. Neither is
+that of the pinched, hungry-looking little man whose five acres and
+small dwelling meet my sight when I look toward the country in another
+direction. His patch of ground is devoted to market-gardening, and from
+its slender profits he is trying to support himself and wife and four
+children and pay off a mortgage of several hundred dollars. He has
+lately invented an ingenious toy for children, and is trying to raise
+enough money to get it patented, hoping when that is done to reap large
+profits from the sale of it. He is like a poor trembling little mouse
+caught and held in the paws of a cruel cat. Sometimes Fate relaxes her
+grip on him, and he breathes freer and dares to hope for a larger
+liberty: then she puts her paw on him again, and tosses him and plays
+with him in very wantonness.
+
+Neither are the three old-maid sisters whose house I often pass types of
+Iowa character, but I cannot forbear describing them. Their names are
+Semira, Amanda and Melvina. There is nothing distinctive in their
+personal appearance, but their character, as expressed in their home and
+surroundings, is quite interesting. Their little low house is on a
+corner lot, and as the other three corners are occupied by large
+two-story houses, it seems lower still by contrast. It is unpainted, and
+has a little wooden porch over the front door. The floors are covered
+with homemade carpet, and braided mats are laid before each door and in
+front of the old-fashioned bureau, which has brass rings for handles on
+the drawers. A snow tree made of frayed white cotton or linen cloth
+adorns the table in the best room; woolly dogs with bead eyes and
+cotton-flannel rabbits with pink ears stand on the mantel; a bead
+hanging-basket filled with artificial flowers decorates the window; an
+elaborate air-castle, made of straw and bright worsted, hangs from the
+middle of the low ceiling; and hung against the wall, between two
+glaring woodcuts representing "Lady Caroline" in red and "Highland Mary"
+in blue, is a deep frame filled with worsted flowers, to which a
+butterfly and a bumble-bee have been pinned. Paper lacework depends from
+their kitchen-shelves, and common eggshells, artificially colored,
+decorate the lilac-bushes in the side yard. They are always making new
+mats or piecing quilts in a new pattern.
+
+As soon as the first bluebird warbles they begin to work in their flower
+and vegetable garden, and from then until it is time to cover the
+verbena-beds in the fall I rarely pass without seeing one or more of
+them, with sunbonnet on head and hoe in hand, busy at work. Besides
+keeping their little front yard a mass of gorgeous bloom and their
+vegetable garden free from weed or stone, they raise canary-birds to
+sell and take care of a dozen hives of bees. Last fall I frequently saw
+all three of them in the yard, with a neighbor or two called in for
+conference, and all twittering and chattering like blackbirds in March.
+Finally, the mystery was solved. Going past one day, I saw a carpenter
+deliberately cutting out the whole end of the house, and soon a large
+bay-window made its appearance. When this was completed three rows of
+shelves were put up inside close to the glass, and immediately filled
+with plants in pots and tin cans. What endless occupation and
+entertainment the watering and watching and tending of these must afford
+the sisters during winter!
+
+Neither does another neighbor of mine supply the type I seek--the old
+Quaker farmer, who is discontented and changeable in his disposition,
+having lived in Indiana a while, then in Iowa, then in Indiana again,
+and who is now in Iowa for the second time. He rents some land which
+lies just across the railroad, and in summer, when he is ploughing the
+growing corn, I hear him talking to his horse. He calls her a "contrary
+old jade," and jerks the lines and saws her mouth, and says, "Get over
+in that other row, I tell thee!" Once I heard him mutter to her, when he
+was leading her home after the day's work was done, "I came as near
+killin' thee to-day as ever I did."
+
+I will take for one type a man whom we met last summer in the country.
+We had driven for miles along the country roads in search of a certain
+little glen where the maiden-hair ferns grew waist-high and as broad
+across as the fronds of palms, and having found it and filled our
+spring-wagon with the treasures, we set out to return home by another
+road. We lost our way, but did not regret it, as this mischance made
+known to us the most stately and graceful tree we had ever seen--one
+that was certainly worth half a day's ride to see. The road left the
+treeless uplands, where the sunshine reflected from the bright yellow
+stubble of the newly-cut wheat-fields beat against our faces with a
+steady glare, and dipped into a cool, green, shady hollow where cows
+cropped the rich grass or stood knee-deep in the water of a little
+stream. Well they might stand in quiet contentment: a king might have
+envied them their surroundings. Overhead rose a dozen or more of the
+tallest and finest elms we had ever seen, stretching their thick
+branches till they met and formed a canopy so dense that only a stray
+sunbeam or two pierced through and fell upon the smooth green sward.
+Peerless among them stood an elm of mighty girth and lofty height, its
+widely-stretching branches as large around, where they left the trunk,
+as a common tree, and clothed to the farthest twig with luxuriant
+foliage. And all up and down the mossy trunk and around the branches
+grew young twigs from a few inches to a foot or two in length, half
+hiding the shaggy bark with their tender green leaves. It was a
+combination of tree-majesty and grace that is rarely seen. In a tropical
+forest I have beheld a lofty tree covered thickly all over its trunk and
+branches with ferns and parasitic plants, but the sight, though
+beautiful, was suggestive of morbid, unnatural growth. This royal elm
+out of its own sap had clothed its trunk as with a thickly-twining vine.
+When, after gazing our fill, we drove reluctantly out of the shady green
+hollow into the sunshine, and began to climb a hill, we saw at the top a
+small house surrounded by fruit trees and shaded in front by a
+grape-arbor. On reaching it we stopped to ask our way of a man who sat
+in his shirt-sleeves near the front door, fanning himself with his straw
+hat. He seemed frank and inclined to talk, and asked us to stop and rest
+a while in the shade. We did so, and his wife brought us some fresh
+buttermilk to drink, the children gathering about to look at us as if
+our advent was the incident of the month. In conversation we learned
+that he was the owner of forty acres, which he devoted largely to the
+cultivation of small fruits. The land was paid for, with the exception
+of a mortgage of three hundred dollars, which he hoped to lift in a
+season or two if the yield was good.
+
+"We're doing well now," he said, "but when we started, eight years ago,
+it was truly discouraging. There was no house on the place when we came
+here. We put up the room we now use as a kitchen, and lived in it for
+two years and a half. It was so small that it only held a bed, a table,
+a cook-stove and two or three chairs, and when the table was drawn out
+for meals my wife had to set the rocking-chair on the bed, because there
+wasn't room for it on the floor. She helped me on the farm the first
+year or two. We moved here late in the spring, and I only had time to
+get the sod broken before corn-planting time. My wife had a lame foot
+that spring, but I made her a sort of crutch-stilt, and with this she
+walked over the ground as I ploughed it, making holes in the earth by
+means of it and dropping in the corn. She also rode the reaper when our
+wheat was ripe the next year, and I followed, binding and stacking. She
+has helped me in many other ways on the farm, for she is as ambitious as
+I am to have a place free from debt which we can call our own. We added
+these two other rooms in the third year, and when we are out of debt and
+have money ahead we shall put up another addition: we shall need it as
+the children grow up. I have a nice lot of small fruit--strawberries,
+raspberries, currants, gooseberries--and besides these I sell every
+spring a great many early vegetables. The small fruits pay me more to
+the acre than anything else I could raise. There is a good market for
+them in the neighboring towns, and I seldom have to hire any help. My
+children do most of the picking."
+
+It is only a bit of personal history, to be sure, but it affords an
+insight into the life of one who, like many others in this State, began
+with only his bare hands and habits of industry and economy for capital.
+
+Another typical illustration is supplied by a man whose home we visited
+in the winter. His comfortable farm-house was overflowing with the good
+things of life: a piano and an organ stood in the parlor, and a
+well-filled bookcase in the sitting-room; a large bay-window was bright
+with flowering plants; and base-burner coal-stoves and double-paned
+windows mocked at the efforts of the wintry winds and kept perpetual
+summer within. In the large barn were farm-wagons, a carriage, a buggy,
+a sleigh--a vehicle for every purpose. The farmer invited us one morning
+to step into a large sled which stood at the door, and took us half a
+mile to his stock-yards. There we saw fat, sleek cattle by the dozen and
+fat hogs by the score, great cribs bursting with corn, a windmill pump
+and other conveniences for watering stock. Besides all these possessions
+this man owns two or three other good farms, and has money loaned on
+mortgages; in short, is worth about fifty thousand dollars, every cent
+of which he has gained by his own exertions in the last twenty years. He
+said: "When my father died and his estate was divided among his
+children, each of us received eighty-three dollars as his share. I
+resolved then that if thrift and energy could avail anything I would
+have more than that to leave to each of my children when I died. It has
+required constant hard work and shrewd planning, but I have gained my
+stake, and am not a very old man yet," passing his hand over his hair,
+which was thinly sprinkled with gray.
+
+This man gave us a description of a tornado which passed over that
+portion of the State a number of years ago. It was shortly after he was
+married and while he was staying at his father-in-law's house. The whole
+family were away from home that day, and when they returned they found
+only the cellar. The house had been lifted from its foundation, and
+carried so far on the mighty wings of the hurricane that nothing
+pertaining to it was ever found except the rolling-pin and a few boards
+of the yellow-painted kitchen-floor. Of a new farm-wagon nothing
+remained but one tire, and that was flattened out straight. The trees
+that stood in the yard had been broken off at the surface of the ground.
+The grass lay stretched in the direction of the hurricane as if a flood
+of water had passed over it. Horses, cattle and human beings had been
+lifted and carried several rods through the air, then cast violently to
+earth again. Those who witnessed the course of the tornado said that it
+seemed to strike the ground, then go up in the air, passing harmlessly
+over a mile or two of country, then strike again, all the time whirling
+over and over, and occasionally casting out fragments of the spoils it
+had gathered up. After passing east to a point beyond the Mississippi it
+disappeared.
+
+This part of Iowa has rich deposits of coal, and mining is a regular and
+important business. The coal-mines lying a few miles south of this place
+are the largest west of the Mississippi River. A thriving little town
+has grown up around them, composed chiefly of miners' cottages, stores
+and superintendents' dwellings. A creek winds through it whose banks are
+shaded by elms and carpeted in spring and early summer with
+prairie-flowers; and a range of wooded hills in whose depths the richest
+coal-deposits lie lends a picturesque aspect to the scene, and partly
+compensates for the dreary look of the town itself, the comfortless
+appearance of many of the miners' houses and the great heaps of slag and
+refuse coal at the mouth of the mines. Mules hitched to little cars
+serve to draw the coal out of several of the mines, but the largest one
+is provided with an engine, which, by means of an endless rope of
+twisted wire, pulls long trains of loaded cars out of the depths of the
+mine and up to a high platform above the railroad, whence the coal is
+pitched into the waiting cars beneath. Sixty-five railroad cars are
+sometimes loaded in one day from this single mine. The coal is soft
+coal, and is sold by retail at from six to seven cents a bushel.
+
+One April day, when the woods were white and pink with the bloom of the
+wild plum and crab trees and the ground was blue with violets, we rode
+over to this place, and, hitching our horses to some trees growing over
+the principal mine, we descended to the entrance. A miner, an
+intelligent middle-aged man who was off work just then, volunteered to
+be our guide, and after providing each of us with a little oil lamp like
+the one he wore in his hat-brim, he led us into the dark opening that
+yawned in the hillside. The passage was six or seven feet wide, and so
+low that we could not stand erect. Under our feet was the narrow track,
+the space between the ties being slippery with mud: over our heads and
+on either hand were walls of rock, with a thick vein of coal running
+through them, braced every few feet with heavy timbers. The track began
+to descend, and soon we lost sight of the daylight and had to depend
+entirely on the feeble glimmer of our lamps. We occasionally came to
+smooth-plastered spaces in the walls, the closed-up mouths of old
+side-tunnels, and placing our hands upon them felt that they were warm.
+Fires were raging in the abandoned galleries, but, being shut away from
+the air and from access to the main tunnel, they were not dangerous. The
+dangers usually dreaded by the miners are the falling of heavy masses of
+earth and rock from the roof of the gallery and the sudden flow of water
+into the mine from some of the secret sources in the hillside. After
+penetrating about a quarter of a mile into the mine and descending one
+hundred and twenty feet, we reached the end of the main tunnel and saw
+the great wheel, fixed in the solid rock, on which the endless steel
+rope turned. A train of loaded cars had passed out just before we
+entered the mine, and on a switch near the end of the track stood
+another train of empty cars. The air thus far on our dark journey had
+been cool and good, for the main tunnel was ventilated by means of
+air-shafts that pierced the hillside to the daylight above; but now our
+guide opened the door of what seemed a subterranean dungeon, closed it
+behind us when we had passed through, lifted a heavy curtain that hung
+before us, and ushered us into a branch-tunnel where the air was hot and
+stifling and heavy with the fumes of powder. At the farther end we saw
+tiny specks of light moving about. As we neared them we found that they
+were lamps fastened in the hat-bands of the miners at work in this
+distant tunnel--literally, "the bowels of the earth." Some were using
+picks and shovels, others were drilling holes in the solid coal and
+putting in blasts of gunpowder. When these blasts were fired a
+subterranean thunder shook the place: it seemed as if the hill were
+falling in upon us. Little cars stood upon the track partly filled with
+coal, and mules were hitched to them. The forms of these animals loomed
+large and dark in the dim light: they seemed like some monsters of a
+previous geologic age. The men themselves, blackened with coal and grimy
+with powder-smoke, might have seemed like gnomes or trolls had we not
+seen their homes in the plain, familiar sunlight above, and known that
+they were working for daily bread for themselves and families. They are
+paid according to the amount of coal they dig. Some have earned as high
+as one hundred and thirty dollars a month, but half that sum would be
+nearer the average.
+
+As we left this shaft and came back into the main tunnel we saw a miner
+sitting by the track with his small tin bucket open. It was noon and he
+was eating his dinner. It might just as well have been midnight, so
+dense was the darkness. We seemed to have been an uncomputable time in
+the depths, yet, glancing at the bunch of wild flowers in my belt, I saw
+that they were only beginning to wilt. Did poor Proserpine have the same
+feeling when she was ravished from the sunshine and the green and
+flowery earth and carried into the dark underground kingdom of Pluto?
+Remembering her fate, I whispered to my companion, "We will not eat
+anything while here--no, not so much as one pomegranate-seed."
+
+There are many smaller coal-mines in this vicinity--hardly a hillside
+but has a dark doorway leading into it--but they are not all worked
+regularly or by more than a few hands.
+
+On the road leading from town to the Skunk River one has glimpses of
+another industry. Limekilns, with uncouth signs announcing lime for sale
+at twenty-five cents a bushel, thrust themselves almost into the road,
+and the cabins or neatly-whitewashed board huts of the lime-burners
+border the way. Some have grass-plots and mounds of flowers around them:
+others are without ornament, if we except the children with blue eyes,
+red cheeks and hair like corn-silk that hang on the fence and watch us
+ride by.
+
+Skunk River is a broad, still stream, with hilly banks heavily wooded
+with willow, oak, maple, sycamore and bass-wood. Here we find the
+earliest wild flowers in spring: blue and purple hepaticas blossom among
+the withered leaves on the ground while the branches above are still
+bare, and a little later crowds of violets and spring-beauties brighten
+the tender grass; clusters of diacentra--or "Dutchman's breeches," as
+the children call them--nod from the shelter of decaying stumps to small
+yellow lilies with spotted leaves and tufts of fresh green ferns.
+
+The place is equally a favorite bird-haunt. The prairie-chicken, the
+best-known game-bird of the State, chooses rather the open prairie, but
+wild-ducks settle and feed here in their migratory journeys, attracting
+the sportsman by their presence; the fish-hawk makes his nest in the
+trees on the bank; the small blue heron wades pensively along the
+margin; and the common wood-birds, such as blackbirds, bluebirds, jays,
+sparrows and woodpeckers, chatter or warble or scold among the branches.
+Sometimes the redbird flashes like a living flame through the green
+tree-tops, or the brilliant orange-and-black plumage of the Baltimore
+oriole contrasts with the lilac-gray bark of an old tree-trunk.
+
+Besides the small wild flowers there are many shrubs and trees that
+bloom in spring. The haw tree and wild plum put forth masses of small
+creamy-white flowers, the redbud tree blooms along the water-courses,
+the dogwood in the woods and the wild crab-apple upon the open hillside.
+The crab trees often form dense thickets an acre or two in extent, and
+when all their branches are thickly set with coral buds or deep-pink
+blossoms they form a picture upon which the eye delights to rest. Spring
+redeems even the flat prairie from the blank monotony which wearies the
+eye in winter. There are few places in this vicinity where the virgin
+sod has not been broken, consequently few spots where the original,
+much-praised prairie-flowers grow; but a tender green clothes all the
+plain, hundreds of meadow-larks sing in the grass, the tints and colors
+of the sky are lovely beyond words, and the balmy winds breathe airs of
+Paradise.
+
+Even the town, whose ugliness has offended artistic taste and one's love
+of neatness all winter, clothes itself in foliage and hides its
+ungraceful outlines in bowery verdure. Lilacs scent the air, roses crowd
+through the broken fences, the milky floss of the cottonwood trees is
+strewed upon the sidewalks or floats like thistledown upon the air. To
+one sensitive to physical surroundings the change is like that from a
+sullen face to a smiling one, from a forbidding aspect to a cheerful
+one. The constant bracing of one's self against the influence of one's
+surroundings is relaxed: a feeling of relief and contentment comes
+instead. Our thirst for picturesque beauty may not be satisfied, but we
+accept with thankful hearts the quiet loveliness of spring. In this, as
+in deeper experiences, we learn that
+
+    At best we gain not happiness,
+    But peace, friends--peace in the strife.
+
+LOUISE COFFIN JONES.
+
+
+
+
+A FORGOTTEN AMERICAN WORTHY
+
+
+The pleasant agricultural village of Reading, in Fairfield county,
+Western Connecticut, presents much that is charming and picturesque in
+scenery, and is withal replete with historic incidents; but its chief
+claim to interest rests on the fact that it was the birthplace of Joel
+Barlow, who has decided claims to the distinction of being the father of
+American letters. Nearly seventy years have passed since the poet's
+tragic death, and the story of his life is still untold, while his
+memory has nearly faded from the minds of the living; nor would it be
+easy, at this late day, to collect sufficient material for an extended
+biography if such were demanded. Some pleasant traditions still linger
+in the sleepy atmosphere of his native village; a few of his letters and
+papers still remain in his family; contemporary newspapers had much to
+say both for and against him; the reviewers of his day noticed his
+poems, sometimes with approbation, sometimes with bitterness. There are
+fragmentary sketches of him in encyclopaedias and biographical
+dictionaries, and several pigeonholes in the State Department are filled
+with musty documents written by him when abroad in his country's
+diplomatic service. From these sources alone is the scholar of our times
+to glean his knowledge of one who in his day filled as large a space in
+the public eye as almost any of his contemporaries, and whose talents,
+virtues and public services entitled him to as lasting a fame as theirs.
+
+Not from any of these sources, but from the Barlow family register in
+the ancient records of Fairfield, we learn that the poet was born on
+March 24, 1754, and not in 1755, as is almost universally stated by the
+encyclopaedists. His father was Samuel Barlow, a wealthy farmer of the
+village--his mother, Elizabeth Hull, a connection of the general and
+commodore of the same name who figured so prominently in the war of
+1812. There is little in the early career of the poet of interest to the
+modern reader. He is first presented to us in the village traditions as
+a chubby, rosy-faced boy, intent on mastering the Greek and Latin tasks
+dealt out to him by Parson Bartlett, the Congregational minister of the
+village, who, like many of the New England clergy of that day, added the
+duties of schoolmaster to those of the clergyman. In a year or two he
+was placed at Moor's school for boys in Hanover, New Hampshire, and on
+completing his preparatory course he entered Dartmouth College in 1774.
+His father had died the December previous, and, with the view probably
+of being nearer his mother and family in Reading, he left Dartmouth in
+his Freshman year and was entered at Yale.
+
+Barlow's college career was marked by close application to study, and
+won for him the respect and confidence of all with whom he came in
+contact. During his second year the war of the Revolution broke out, but
+the young poet, though an ardent patriot, clung to his books, resolutely
+closing his ears to the clamor of war that invaded his sacred cloisters
+until the long summer vacation arrived. Then he threw aside books and
+gown and joined his four brothers in the Continental ranks, where he did
+yeoman's service for his country. He graduated in 1778, and signalized
+the occasion by reciting an original poem called the "Prospect of
+Peace," which, in the quaint language of one of his contemporaries,
+gained him "a very pretty reputation as a poet."
+
+The next year found him a chaplain in the Continental army, in the same
+brigade with his friend Dwight, later renowned as the poet-president of
+Yale College, and with Colonel Humphreys, whom we shall find associated
+with him in a far different mission. The two young chaplains, not
+content with the performance of their clerical duties, wrote in
+connection with Humphreys stirring patriotic lyrics that were set to
+music and sung by the soldiers around the camp-fires and on the weary
+march, and aided largely in allaying discontent and in inducing them to
+bear their hardships patiently.
+
+For four years, or until the peace of 1783, Barlow continued to serve
+his country in the army: he left the service as poor as when he entered
+it, and a second time the question of a vocation in life presented
+itself. He at length chose the law, but before being admitted to
+practice performed an act which, however foolish it may have seemed to
+the worldly wise, proved to be one of the most fortunate events of his
+life. Although poor and possessing none of the qualities of the
+successful bread-winner, he united his fortunes with those of an amiable
+and charming young lady--Miss Ruth Baldwin of New Haven, daughter of
+Michael Baldwin, Esq., and sister of Hon. Abraham C. Baldwin, whom the
+student will remember as a Senator of note from Georgia. After marriage
+the young husband settled in Hartford, first in the study, and later in
+the practice, of the law. In Hartford we find him assuming the duties of
+lawyer, journalist and bookseller, and in all proving the truth of the
+fact often noted, that the possession of literary talent generally
+unfits one for the rough, every-day work of the world. As a lawyer
+Barlow lacked the smoothness and suavity of the practised advocate,
+while the petty details and trickeries of the profession disgusted him.
+As an editor he made his journal, the _American Mercury_, notable for
+the high literary and moral excellence of its articles, but it was not
+successful financially, simply because it lacked a constituency
+sufficiently cultured to appreciate and sustain it. His bookstore, which
+stood on the quiet, elm-shaded main street of the then provincial
+village, was opened to dispose of his psalm-book and poems, and was
+closed when this was accomplished.
+
+As a poet, however, he was more successful, and it was here that the
+assurance of literary ability, so dear to the heart of the neophyte,
+first came to him. Dr. Watts's "imitation" of the Psalms, incomplete and
+inappropriate in many respects, was then the only version within reach
+of the Puritan churches, and in 1785 the Congregational Association of
+Connecticut applied to the poet for a revised edition of the work.
+Barlow readily complied, and published his revision the same year,
+adding to it several psalms which Dr. Watts had omitted. This work was
+received with marked favor by the Congregational churches, and was used
+by them exclusively until rumors of the author's lapse from orthodoxy
+reached them, when it was superseded by a version prepared by Dr.
+Dwight.
+
+Two years after, in 1787, Barlow published his _Vision of Columbus_, a
+poem conceived while in the army and largely written during the poet's
+summer vacations at Reading. It was received with unbounded favor by his
+patriotic countrymen, and after passing through several editions at
+home was republished both in London and Paris, and made its author the
+best known American in the literary circles of his day. There was in
+Hartford at this time a coterie of literary spirits whose sprightliness
+and bonhomie had gained for them the sobriquet of the "Hartford Wits."
+Dr. Lemuel Hopkins was doubtless the chief factor in the organization of
+this club: Barlow, John Trumbull, Colonel Humphreys, Richard Alsop and
+Theodore Dwight--all of whom had gained literary distinction--were its
+chief members. The principal publications of the club were the
+_Anarchiad_, a satirical poem, and the _Echo_, which consisted of a
+series of papers in verse lampooning the social and political follies of
+the day. To both of these, it is said, Barlow was a prominent
+contributor. He was also a prominent figure in the organization, about
+this time, of the Connecticut Cincinnati, a society formed by
+Revolutionary officers for urging upon Congress their claims for
+services rendered in the Revolution.
+
+In these varied pursuits and amid such pleasant associations three years
+passed away, but during all this time the grim spectre of Want had
+menaced the poet--first at a distance, but with each succeeding month
+approaching nearer and nearer, until now, in 1788, it stared him in the
+face. His patrimony had been nearly exhausted in his education; his
+law-business was unremunerative; his paper, as we have said, was not a
+success financially; and his poetry brought him much more honor than
+cash. And thus it happened that at the age of thirty-four he found
+himself without money or employment. At this trying juncture there came
+from the West--fruitful parent of such schemes!--the prospectus of the
+Scioto Land Company, furnished with glaring head-lines and seductive
+phrases, and parading in its list of stockholders scores of the
+best-known names in the community. This company claimed to have become
+the fortunate possessor of unnumbered acres in the valley of the Scioto,
+and was anxious to share its good fortune--for a consideration--with
+Eastern and European capitalists. It was desirous of securing an agent
+to negotiate its sales in Europe, and, quite naturally, its choice fell
+on Joel Barlow, the only American having a reputation abroad who was at
+liberty to undertake the mission; and, since the company bore a good
+repute and offered fair remuneration, the poet very gladly embraced its
+offer. He does not seem to have met with much success in England, but in
+France his reception was much more encouraging. An estate in the New
+World was a veritable _chateau en Espagne_ to the mercurial Frenchmen,
+and they purchased with some avidity; but just as the agent's ground was
+prepared for a plenteous harvest news came that the Scioto Company had
+burst, as bubbles will, leaving to its dupes only a number of
+well-executed maps, some worthless parchments called deeds, and that
+valuable experience which comes with a knowledge of the ways of the
+world. Barlow, being the company's principal agent abroad, came in for
+his full share of the abuse excited by its operations; and yet it is
+evident that he was as innocent of its real character as any one, and
+that he had accepted the position of agent with full confidence in the
+company's integrity. Its collapse left him as poor as ever, and a
+stranger in a strange land, notwithstanding he was surrounded here by
+conditions that assured him the generous and honorable career which had
+been denied him in the New World.
+
+Of the foreigners who then thronged cosmopolitan Paris, none were so
+popular as Americans. Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane, by their
+courtesy and dignity, joined to republican simplicity, had provided
+passports for their countrymen to the good graces of all Frenchmen:
+besides, the name "republican" was a word of magic import in France at
+that time. Barlow's reputation as a poet was also of great service to
+him at a time when literature exercised a commanding influence both in
+society and politics. He was presented at court, admitted to the
+companionship of wits and savants, and was enabled, by the favor of some
+financial magnates, to participate in speculations which proved so
+successful that in a short time he was raised above the pressure of
+want. But in less than a year after his arrival the Revolution broke
+out, and involved him in its horrors. His sympathies were entirely with
+the Girondists--the party of the literati, and the most patriotic and
+enlightened of the rival factions. He is said to have entered heartily
+into the advocacy of their cause, writing pamphlets and addresses in
+their interest and contributing frequently to their journals: he is also
+said to have figured prominently at the meetings of the Girondist
+leaders held in the salon of Madame Roland. The atrocities of the
+Jacobins, however, so shocked and disgusted him that he shortly withdrew
+and went into retirement outside of the city. The greater part of the
+years 1791-92 he spent in England, with occasional visits to France.
+During one of these visits the privileges of French citizenship were
+conferred on him--an honor that had been previously conferred on but two
+Americans, Washington and Hamilton.
+
+In 1795 a crisis in his fortunes occurred, and from this date the story
+of his life becomes an interesting and important one. He had been for
+some months on a business-tour through the northern provinces, and,
+returning to Paris early in September, was surprised at receiving a
+visit from his old friend Colonel David Humphreys, who had been American
+minister to Portugal for some years, and was now in Paris on a political
+mission. He was accompanied on this visit by James Monroe, then American
+minister at the French court. They bore a commission from President
+Washington naming Barlow consul at Algiers, and their object was to
+induce him to accept the appointment. The post was one of extreme
+difficulty and danger, and had Barlow consulted his own wishes and
+interests he would undoubtedly have declined it. But by appeals to his
+philanthropy, and by representations that from his knowledge of courts
+and experience of the world he was well fitted for the performance of
+the duties assigned to him, he was at length induced to accept the
+commission. Preparations were at once made for the journey. His
+business-affairs were arranged and his will made: then, bidding his wife
+farewell, he set out with Humphreys on the 12th of September, 1795, for
+Lisbon, _en route_ for the Barbary coast.
+
+At the time of Barlow's mission Algiers was at the height of its power
+and arrogance. Great Britain, France, Spain, Holland, Denmark, Sweden
+and Venice were tributaries of this barbarous state, which waged
+successful war with Russia, Austria, Portugal, Naples, Sardinia, Genoa
+and Malta. Its first depredation on American commerce was committed on
+the 25th of July, 1785, when the schooner Maria, Stevens master, owned
+in Boston, was seized off Cape St. Vincent by a corsair and carried into
+Algiers. Five days later the ship Dauphin of Philadelphia, Captain
+O'Brien, was taken and carried into the same port. Other captures
+quickly followed, so that at the time of Barlow's mission there were one
+hundred and twenty American citizens in the Algerine prisons, exclusive
+of some forty that had been liberated by death or ransomed through the
+private exertions of their friends.
+
+The course pursued by Congress for the liberation of these captives
+cannot be viewed with complacency even at this late day. After some
+hesitation it decided to ransom the prisoners, and proceeded to
+negotiate--first, through Mr. John Lamb, its agent at Algiers, and
+secondly through the general of the Mathurins, a religious order of
+France instituted in early times for the redemption of Christian
+captives from the infidel powers. These negotiations extended through a
+period of six years, and accomplished nothing, from the fact that the
+dey invariably demanded double the sum which Congress thought it could
+afford to pay. In June, 1792, with the hope of negotiating a treaty and
+rescuing the captives, the celebrated John Paul Jones was appointed
+consul to Algiers, but died before reaching the scene of his mission.
+His successor, Mr. Thomas Barclay, died at Lisbon January 19, 1793,
+while on his way to Algiers. The conduct of Barbary affairs was next
+confided to Colonel Humphreys, our minister to Portugal, with power to
+name an agent who should act under him, and Mr. Pierre E. Skjoldebrand,
+a brother of the Swedish consul, was appointed under this arrangement;
+but the latter gentleman seems to have been no more successful than his
+predecessors. Late in 1794, Humphreys returned to America, and while
+here it was arranged that Joseph Donaldson should accompany him on his
+return as agent for Tunis and Tripoli, while Barlow, it was hoped, could
+be induced to accept the mission to Algiers and the general oversight of
+Barbary affairs.
+
+The two diplomats left America early in April, 1795, and proceeded to
+Gibraltar, where they separated, Donaldson continuing his journey to
+Algiers _via_ Alicant, and Humphreys hastening on to Paris in search of
+Barlow, as has been narrated. Colonel Humphreys and Mr. Barlow did not
+reach Lisbon until the 17th of November, and when the latter was about
+prosecuting his journey he was surprised by a visit from Captain
+O'Brien, who had been despatched by Mr. Donaldson with a newly-signed
+treaty with Algiers. Mr. Donaldson, it was learned, had reached Algiers
+on the 3d of September, and finding the dey in a genial mood had
+forthwith concluded a treaty with him, considering that he had
+sufficient authority for this under the general instructions of Colonel
+Humphreys. It was found that some of the conditions of the treaty could
+not be fulfilled, particularly one stipulating that the first payment of
+nearly eight hundred thousand dollars should be made by the 5th of
+January, 1796; and Barlow therefore hastened forward to Algiers to
+explain the matter to the dey and make such attempts at pacification as
+were practicable, while Captain O'Brien was sent to London in the brig
+Sophia for the money. Of his life in Algiers, and of the subsequent fate
+of the treaty, some particulars are given in a letter from Barlow to
+Humphreys, dated at Algiers April 5, 1796, and also in a letter to Mrs.
+Barlow written about the same time. The letter to Humphreys is as
+follows:
+
+"SIR: We have now what we hope will be more agreeable news to you. For
+two days past we have been witnesses to a scene of as complete and
+poignant distress as can be imagined, arising from the total state of
+despair in which our captives found themselves involved, and we without
+the power of administering the least comfort or hope. The threat of
+sending us away had been reiterated with every mark of a fixed and final
+decision, and the dey went so far as to declare that after the thirty
+days, if the money did not come, he never would be at peace with the
+Americans. Bacri the Jew, who has as much art in this sort of management
+as any man we ever knew, who has more influence with the dey than all
+the regency put together, and who alone has been able to soothe his
+impatience on this subject for three months past, now seemed unable to
+make the least impression, and the dey finally forbade him, under pain
+of his highest displeasure, to speak to him any more about the
+Americans. His cruisers are now out, and for some days past he has been
+occupied with his new war against the Danes. Three days ago the Danish
+prizes began to come in, and it was thought that this circumstance might
+put him in good-humor, so that the Jew might find a chance of renewing
+our subject in some shape or other; and we instructed the Jew that if he
+could engage him in conversation on his cruisers and prizes he might
+offer him a new American-built ship of twenty guns which should sail
+very fast, to be presented to his daughter, on condition that he would
+wait six months longer for our money. The Jew observed that we had
+better say a ship of twenty-four guns, to which we agreed. After seeing
+him three or four times yesterday under pretence of other business,
+without being able to touch upon this, he went this morning and
+succeeded.
+
+"The novelty of the proposition gained the dey's attention for a moment,
+and he consented to see us on the subject; but he told the Jew to tell
+us that it must be a ship of thirty-six guns or he would not listen to
+the proposition. We were convinced that we ought not to hesitate an
+instant. We accordingly went and assented to his demand, and he has
+agreed to let everything remain as it is for the term of three months
+from this day, but desired us to remember that not a single day beyond
+that will be allowed on any account.
+
+"We consider the business as now settled on this footing, and it is the
+best ground that we could possibly place it upon. You still have it in
+your power to say peace or no peace: you have an alternative. In the
+other case war was inevitable, and there would have been no hope of
+peace during the reign of this dey....
+
+"In order to save the treaty, which has been the subject of infinite
+anxiety and vexation, we found it necessary some time ago to make an
+offer to the Jew of ten thousand sequins (eighteen thousand dollars), to
+be paid eventually if he succeeded, and to be distributed by him among
+such great officers of state as he thought necessary, and as much of it
+to be kept for himself as he could keep consistent with success. The
+whole of this new arrangement will cost the United States about
+fifty-three thousand dollars. We expect to incur blame, because it is
+impossible to give you a complete view of the circumstances, but we are
+perfectly confident of having acted right."
+
+A few weeks later the long-expected ransom arrived: the prison-doors
+were thrown open, and the captives came out into the sunlight. How
+pitifully the poet-diplomatist received them, how tenderly he cared for
+their wants, and how he exerted himself to secure for them a speedy
+passage to their native land, may be inferred from the character of the
+man. Having now accomplished the object of his mission, it was to be
+expected that he would be free to give up his unpleasant post and return
+to France. But in the adjacent states of Tunis and Tripoli there were
+other prisons in which American citizens were confined, and until they
+were liberated he does not seem to have considered his mission as fully
+performed. Six months or more were spent in effecting this object, and
+when it was accomplished he very gladly delivered up his credentials to
+the government and returned to his home and friends in France.
+
+The succeeding eight years were spent in congenial pursuits, chiefly of
+a literary and philanthropic character. He purchased the large hotel of
+the count Clermont Tonnere, near Paris, which he transformed into an
+elegant villa: here he lived during his residence in France, dispensing
+a broad hospitality and enjoying the friendship of the leading minds of
+the Empire, as well as the companionship of all Americans of note who
+visited the capital. But at length, in 1805, after seventeen years of
+absence, the home-longing which sooner or later comes to every exile
+seized upon him, and, yielding to its influence, he disposed of his
+estates in France and with his faithful wife embarked for America.
+
+Great changes had occurred in his native land during these seventeen
+years. Washington was gone, and with him the power and prestige of
+Federalism; Jefferson and Burr had led the Republican hosts to victory;
+Presbyterianism as a political force was dead; and everywhere in society
+the old order was giving place to the new. This was more markedly the
+case in New England, where the Puritan crust was being broken and
+pulverized by the gradual upheaval of the Republican strata. Withal, it
+was an era of intense political feeling and of partisan bitterness
+without a parallel.
+
+This will explain, perhaps, the varying manner in which Barlow was
+received by the different parties among his countrymen. The Republicans
+greeted him with acclamation as the honored citizen of two republics,
+the man who had perilled life and health in rescuing his countrymen from
+slavery. The Federalists, on the other hand, united in traducing him--an
+assertion which may be gainsaid, but which can be abundantly proved by
+reference to the Federal newspapers and magazines of the day. In
+evidence, and as a curious instance of the political bitterness of the
+times, I will adduce the following article from the _Boston Repertory_,
+printed in the August after the poet's return:
+
+     "JEFFERSON, BARLOW AND PAINE.
+
+     "In our last paper was announced, and that with extreme
+     regret, the return of Joel Barlow, Esq., to this country.
+     This man, the strong friend of Mr. Jefferson and
+     confidential companion of his late warm defender, Tom Paine,
+     is one of the most barefaced infidels that ever appeared in
+     Christendom. Some facts respecting these distinguished
+     personages may serve to show the votaries of Christianity
+     what a band of open enemies (to the faith) is now assembling
+     in this country.
+
+     "Mr. Jefferson, in his famous _Notes on Virginia_, advances
+     opinions incompatible with Mosaic history. This cannot be
+     disputed, nor will Mr. Jefferson dare to deny that he has,
+     since he has been President of the United States, publicly
+     made the Eucharist a subject of impious ridicule. Tom Paine
+     has written two books for the express purpose of combating
+     the Holy Scriptures. His _Age of Reason_ is but too common,
+     and his letter to the late Samuel Adams still evinces his
+     perverse adherence to his infidel system.
+
+     "Joel Barlow is said to have written the following shocking
+     letter to his correspondent, John Fellows, dated Hamburg,
+     May 23, 1805: 'I rejoice at the progress of good sense over
+     the _damnable imposture_ of _Christian mummery_. I had no
+     doubt of the effect of Paine's _Age of Reason_: it may be
+     cavilled at a while, but it must prevail. Though things as
+     good have been often said, they were never said in so good a
+     way,' etc. Mr. Barlow can now answer for himself: if this
+     letter be a forgery, let him inform the public. It has never
+     yet been contradicted, though it has been four years
+     published in America."
+
+From which we gather that in the political code of that day the grossest
+calumnies if uncontradicted were to be accepted as truth. There is not
+the slightest evidence, however, in his writings or public utterances
+that the poet ever renounced the faith of his fathers, although it is
+not probable that he was a very strict Presbyterian at this time.
+
+Barlow seems not to have returned with any hopes of political
+preferment: at least he made no attempt to enter the field of politics,
+but after spending several months in travel took up his residence in
+Washington and devoted himself to philosophical studies and the
+cultivation of the Muses. He had purchased a beautiful site on the banks
+of the Potomac within the city limits, and here he erected a mansion
+whose beauty and elegance made it famous throughout the country. This
+mansion he called Kalorama, and the wealth and correct taste of its
+owner were lavishly employed in its adornment. Broad green lawns, shaded
+by forest trees, surrounded the house, fountains sparkled and gleamed
+amid the shrubberies, and gay parterres of flowers added their beauty to
+the scene. Within, French carpets, mirrors, statuary, pictures and
+bric-a-brac betokened the foreign tastes of the owner. In the library
+was gathered the most extensive private collection of foreign books
+which the country then contained. Kalorama was the Holland House of
+America, where were to be met all the notables of the land, political,
+literary or philanthropic. The President, heads of departments,
+Congressmen, foreign ambassadors, poets, authors, reformers, inventors,
+were all to be seen there. Robert Fulton, the father of
+steam-navigation, was the poet's firm friend, and received substantial
+aid from him in his enterprise. Jefferson, throwing off the cares of
+state, often paid him informal visits, and the two sages had a pet plan
+which was generally the subject of conversation on these occasions. This
+was the scheme of a national university, to be modelled after the
+Institute of France, and to combine a university, a learned society, a
+naval and military school and an academy of fine arts. The movement had
+been originated by Washington, and Jefferson and Barlow, with many other
+leading men of the day, were its warm friends and promoters. In 1806,
+Barlow, at Jefferson's suggestion, drew up a prospectus, which was
+printed and circulated throughout the country. So great a public
+sentiment in favor of the scheme was developed that a bill for its
+endowment was shortly after introduced in Congress; but New England
+exerted her influence against it in favor of Yale and Harvard so
+successfully that it was defeated.
+
+The chief literary work which occupied the poet in this classic retreat
+was _The Columbiad_, which appeared in 1808. He also busied himself with
+collecting materials for a general history of the United States--a work
+which, if he had been permitted to finish it, would have proved no doubt
+a valuable contribution to this department of literature. But in the
+midst of this scholarly retirement he was surprised at receiving a note
+from Mr. Monroe, then Secretary of State, offering him the position of
+minister to France, and urging his acceptance of it in the strongest
+terms.
+
+Our relations with France were then (1811) in a very critical state,
+owing to the latter's repeated attacks on American commerce, and it was
+of vital moment to the government that a man so universally respected by
+the French people, and so familiar with the French court and its circle
+of wily diplomats, as was Barlow, should have charge of American
+interests in that quarter. A man less unselfish, less patriotic, would
+have refused the burden of such a position, especially one so foreign to
+his tastes and desires; but the poet in this case, as in 1795, seems not
+to have hesitated an instant at the call of his country. Kalorama was
+closed--not sold, for its owner hoped that his absence would not be of
+long duration--preparations for the journey were speedily made, and
+early in August, 1811, Barlow, accompanied by his faithful wife, was set
+down at the port of Annapolis, where the famous frigate Constitution,
+Captain Hull, had been lying for some time in readiness to receive him.
+In Annapolis the poet was received with distinguished honor: at his
+embarkation crowds thronged the quay, and a number of distinguished
+citizens were gathered at the gang-plank to bid him God-speed on his
+journey. Captain Hull received his guest with the honor due his
+station: then the Constitution spread her sails, and, gay with bunting
+and responding heartily to the salutes from the forts on shore, swept
+gallantly down the bay and out to sea. The beautiful city, gleaming amid
+the foliage of its stately forest trees, and the low level shores, green
+with orchards and growing corn, were the last objects that the poet
+beheld ere the outlines of his native land sank beneath the waters.
+Happily, he could not foresee the untimely death in waiting for him not
+eighteen months distant, nor the lonely sepulchre in the Polish waste,
+nor the still more bitter fact that ere two generations should pass an
+ungrateful country would entirely forget his services and martyrdom.
+
+Barlow's correspondence with Mr. Monroe and the duke de Bassano while
+abroad on this mission forms an interesting and hitherto unpublished
+chapter in our history. It has rested undisturbed in the pigeonholes of
+the State Department for nearly a century, and if published in
+connection with a brief memoir of the poet would prove a valuable
+addition to our annals. The first of the series is Mr. Monroe's letter
+of instruction to the newly-appointed minister, defining the objects of
+his mission, which were, in brief, indemnity for past spoliations and
+security from further depredations. The second paper is Mr. Barlow's
+first letter from Paris, under date of September 29, 1811, and is as
+follows:
+
+"I seize the first occasion to announce to you my arrival, though I have
+little else to announce. I landed at Cherbourg the 8th of this month,
+and arrived at Paris the 19th. The emperor has been residing for some
+time at Compiegne, and it unluckily happened that he set out thence for
+the coast and for Holland the day of my arrival here. The duke de
+Bassano, Minister of Foreign Relations, came the next day to Paris for
+two days only, when he was to follow the emperor to join him in Holland.
+General Turreau and others, who called on me the morning after I reached
+Paris, assured me that the duke was desirous of seeing me as soon as
+possible and with as little ceremony.
+
+"On the 21st I made my first visit to him, which of course had no other
+object than that of delivering my credentials. I expressed my regret at
+the emperor's absence, and the consequent delay of such business as was
+rendered particularly urgent by the necessity of sending home the
+frigate and by the approaching session of Congress, as well as by the
+distressed situation of those American citizens who were awaiting the
+result of decisions which might be hastened by the expositions I was
+charged to make on the part of the President of the United States. He
+said the emperor had foreseen the urgency of the case, and had charged
+him to remedy the evil, as far as could be done, by dispensing with my
+presentation to His Majesty till his return, and that I might
+immediately proceed to business as if I had been presented. He said the
+most flattering things from the emperor relative to my appointment. He
+observed that His Majesty had expected my arrival with some solicitude,
+and was disposed to do everything that I could reasonably ask to
+maintain a good intelligence between the two countries.... I explained
+to him with as much precision as possible the sentiments of the
+President on the most pressing objects of my mission, and threw in such
+observations as seemed to arise out of what I conceived to be the true
+interests of France. He heard me with patience and apparent solicitude,
+endeavored to explain away some of the evils of which we complain, and
+expressed a strong desire to explain away the rest. He said that many of
+the ideas I suggested were new to him, and were very important--that he
+should lay them before the emperor with fidelity and in a manner
+calculated to produce the most favorable impression; desired me to
+reduce them to writing, to be presented in a more solemn form; and
+endeavored to convince me that he doubted not our being able on the
+return of the emperor to remove all obstacles to a most perfect harmony
+between the two countries."
+
+In a letter dated December 19, 1811, he writes:
+
+"Since the date of my last I have had many interviews with the Minister
+of Foreign Relations. I have explained several points, and urged every
+argument for as speedy an answer to my note of the 10th as its very
+serious importance would allow. He always treats the subject with
+apparent candor and solicitude, seems anxious to gain information, and
+declares that neither he nor the emperor had before understood American
+affairs, and always assures me that he is nearly ready with his answer.
+But he says the emperor's taking so long a time to consider it and make
+up his decision is not without reason, for it opens a wide field for
+meditation on very interesting matters. He says the emperor has read the
+note repeatedly and with great attention--that he told him the reasoning
+in it was everywhere just and the conclusions undeniable, but to
+reconcile its principles with his continental system presented
+difficulties not easy to remove. From what the emperor told me himself
+at the last diplomatic audience, and from a variety of hints and other
+circumstances remarked among the people about his person, I have been
+made to believe that he is really changing his system relative to our
+trade, and that the answer to my note will be more satisfactory than I
+had at first expected."
+
+Several other letters from the poet to Monroe follow, all of the same
+general tenor--complaining of delay, yet hopeful that the treaty would
+shortly be secured. February 8, 1812, he writes to the Secretary of
+State that the duke is "at work upon the treaty, and probably in good
+earnest, but the discussions with Russia and the other affairs of this
+Continent give him and the emperor so much occupation that I cannot
+count upon their getting on very fast with ours."
+
+Amid these delays the summer passed away, and the emperor, intent on
+mapping out his great campaign against Russia, still neglected to sign
+the important instrument. Early in the summer Napoleon left Paris for
+Wilna to take command of the vast armies that had been collected for the
+invasion, and from that place, on the 11th of October, the duke de
+Bassano addressed the following note to Mr. Barlow in Paris:
+
+"SIR: I have had the honor to make known to you how much I regretted, in
+the negotiation commenced between the United States and France, the
+delays which inevitably attended a correspondence carried on at so great
+a distance. Your government has desired to see the epoch of this
+arrangement draw near: His Majesty is animated by the same dispositions,
+and, willing to assure to the negotiation a result the most prompt, he
+has thought that it would be expedient to suppress the intermediaries
+and to transfer the conference to Wilna. His Majesty has in consequence
+authorized me, sir, to treat directly with you; and if you will come to
+this town I dare hope that, with the desire which animates us both to
+conciliate such important interests, we shall immediately be enabled to
+remove all the difficulties which until now have appeared to impede the
+progress of the negotiation. I have apprised the duke of Dalberg that
+his mission was thus terminated, and I have laid before His Majesty the
+actual state of the negotiation, to the end that when you arrive at
+Wilna, the different questions being already illustrated either by your
+judicious observation or by the instructions I shall have received, we
+may, sir, conclude an arrangement so desirable and so conformable to the
+mutually amicable views of our two governments."
+
+Barlow could do no less than comply with this invitation, since, as he
+remarked in a letter to Monroe under date of October 25, "it was
+impossible to refuse it without giving offence." His letter accepting
+the duke's invitation was probably the last ever written by him, and is
+dated Paris, October 25, 1812:
+
+"SIR: In consequence of the letter you did me the honor to write me on
+the 11th of this month, I accept your invitation, and leave Paris
+to-morrow for Wilna, where I hope to arrive in fifteen or eighteen days
+from this date. The negotiation on which you have done me the honor to
+invite me at Wilna is so completely prepared in all its parts between
+the duke of Dalberg and myself, and, as I understand, sent on to you for
+your approbation about the 18th of the present month, that I am
+persuaded that if it could have arrived before the date of your letter
+the necessity of this meeting would not have existed, as I am confident
+His Majesty would have found the project reasonable and acceptable in
+all its parts, and would have ordered that minister to conclude and sign
+both the treaty of commerce and the convention of indemnities."
+
+Barlow left Paris for Wilna on the 26th of October in his private
+carriage, yet travelling night and day and with relays of horses at the
+post-towns to expedite his progress. His sole companion was his nephew
+and secretary of legation, Thomas Barlow, who had been educated and
+given an honorable position in life through the poet's munificence.
+Their route, the same as that pursued by Napoleon a few weeks before,
+led across the Belgian frontiers and through the forests and defiles of
+the German principalities. Once across the Niemen, they met with rumors
+of the emperor's disaster at Moscow, and that portions of his army were
+then in full retreat, but, discrediting them, pushed on to Wilna, which
+they reached about the 1st of December. Wilna is the only considerable
+village in Russia between the Niemen and Moscow: it is a quaint and
+venerable town, capital of the ancient province of Lithuania, and played
+an important part in Napoleon's Russian campaign, being the rendezvous
+of his legions after crossing the Niemen and the site of his
+army-hospitals. When our travellers entered it, it was filled with a
+horde of panic-stricken fugitives, who made the town a temporary
+resting-place before continuing their flight to the frontiers; nor were
+they long in learning the, to them, distressing news that the French
+army was in swift retreat, and that the duke de Bassano, so far from
+being at leisure to attend a diplomatic conference at Wilna, was then on
+the frontiers hurrying forward reinforcements to cover the retreat of
+his emperor across the Beresina.
+
+The perilous journey had been made in vain, and the treaty was doomed to
+still further delay. It now only remained for Barlow to extricate
+himself from his dangerous position and to reach the frontiers before
+the fleeing army and the pursuing Cossacks should close every avenue of
+escape.
+
+Thomas Barlow on his return to America sometimes favored his friends
+with vivid pictures of the sufferings and privations endured by the
+travellers in their flight from Wilna. The passage of so many men had
+rendered the roads well-nigh impassable; food, even of the meanest kind,
+could only be procured with the greatest difficulty; and often the
+travellers were mixed up with the flying masses, as it seemed
+inextricably. Ruined habitations, wagons and provision-vans overturned
+and pillaged, men dying by scores from hunger and starvation, and frozen
+corpses of men and horses, were objects that constantly presented
+themselves. At length they crossed the Niemen and pursued their journey
+through Poland, still suffering terribly from the cold and from the
+insufficient nature of the food obtainable; but on reaching Zarrow,[C]
+an obscure village near Cracow, the poet was seized with a sudden and
+fatal attack of pneumonia, the result, no doubt, of privation and
+exposure. He was borne to a little Jewish cottage, the only inn that the
+village afforded, and there died December 26, 1812. His remains were
+interred in the little churchyard of the village where he died. It is
+rarely that an American visits his grave, and the government has never
+taken interest enough in its minister to erect a memorial slab above his
+dust; but wifely devotion has supplied the omission, and a plain
+monument of marble, on which are inscribed his name, age and station and
+the circumstances of his death, marks the poet's place of sepulture.
+
+The news of his death seems not to have reached the United States until
+the succeeding March. The Federal journals merely announced the fact
+without comment: the Republican papers published formal eulogiums on the
+dead statesman. President Madison, in his inaugural of 1813, thus
+referred to the event: "The sudden death of the distinguished citizen
+who represented the United States in France, without any special
+arrangement by him for such a conclusion, has kept us without the
+expected sequel to his last communications; nor has the French
+government taken any measures for bringing the depending negotiations to
+a conclusion through its representative in the United States."
+
+In France the poet's demise excited a more general feeling of regret,
+perhaps, than in his own country. A formal eulogy on his life and
+character was pronounced by Dupont de Nemours before the Society for the
+Encouragement of National Industry, and the year succeeding his death an
+account of his life and writings was published at Paris in quarto form,
+accompanied by one canto of _The Columbiad_, translated into French
+heroic verse. The American residents of Paris also addressed a letter of
+condolence to Mrs. Barlow, in which is apparent the general sentiment of
+respect and affection entertained for the poet in the French capital.
+
+"In private life," says one of his eulogists, "Mr. Barlow was highly
+esteemed for his amiable temperament and many social excellences. His
+manners were generally grave and dignified, and he possessed but little
+facility of general conversation, but with his intimate friends he was
+easy and familiar, and upon topics which deeply interested him he
+conversed with much animation."
+
+Another thus refers to his domestic relations: "The affection of Mr.
+Barlow for his lovely wife was unusually strong, and on her part it was
+fully reciprocated. She cheerfully in early life cast in her lot with
+his 'for better or for worse'--and sometimes the worst, so far as their
+pecuniary prospects were concerned. In their darkest days Barlow ever
+found light and encouragement at home in the smiles, sympathy and
+counsel of his prudent, faithful wife. No matter how dark and portentous
+the cloud that brooded over them might be, she always contrived to give
+it a silver lining, and his subsequent success in life he always
+attributed more to her influence over him than to anything else."
+
+Barlow lived a dual life--the life of a poet as well as of a
+diplomatist--and this paper can scarcely be considered complete unless
+it touches somewhat on his literary productions. It will be the verdict
+of all who study his life carefully that he was a better statesman than
+poet, and a better philanthropist than either; yet as a poet he
+surpassed his contemporaries, producing works that fairly entitle him to
+the distinction of being the father of American letters. His _Hasty
+Pudding_ would be a valuable addition to any literature, and in his
+_Advice to the Privileged Orders_ and his _Conspiracy of Kings_ much
+poetic power and insight is apparent. It was on his epic of _The
+Columbiad_ that he no doubt founded his hopes of fame, but, though the
+book was extensively read in its day and passed through several editions
+on both continents, no reprint has been demanded in modern times, and it
+long since dropped out of the category of books that are read.
+
+Barlow's private letters from abroad would have possessed undoubted
+interest to the present generation, but, so far as is known, none of
+them have been preserved--with one exception, however. There is in
+existence a long letter of his, written to his wife while he was in
+Algiers in imminent danger from the plague, and which was to be
+forwarded to her only in case of his death. It was found among his
+papers after his death nearly sixteen years later. This letter has
+already appeared in print, but it will be new to most of our readers,
+and it is so remarkable in itself, and throws such light on the
+character of the writer, that, in spite of its length, no apology is
+required for inserting it here:
+
+    "_To Mrs. Barlow in Paris_:
+
+                                      "ALGIERS, 8th July, 1796.
+
+     "MY DEAREST LIFE AND ONLY LOVE: I run no risk of alarming
+     your extreme sensibility by writing this letter, since it is
+     not my intention that it shall come into your hands unless
+     and until, through some other channel, you shall be informed
+     of the event which it anticipates as possible. For our happy
+     union to be dissolved by death is indeed at every moment
+     possible; but at this time there is an uncommon degree of
+     danger that you may lose a life which I know you value more
+     than you do your own. I say I _know_ this, because I have
+     long been taught, from our perfect sympathy of affection, to
+     judge your heart by mine; and I can say solemnly and truly,
+     as far as I know myself, that I have no other value for my
+     own life than as a means of continuing a conjugal union with
+     the best of women--the wife of my soul, my first, my last,
+     my only love. I have told you in my current letters that the
+     plague is raging with considerable violence in this place. I
+     must tell you in this, if it should be your fortune to see
+     it, that a pressing duty of humanity requires me to expose
+     myself more than other considerations would justify in
+     endeavoring to save as many of our unhappy citizens as
+     possible from falling a sacrifice, and to embark them at
+     this cruel moment for their country. Though they are dying
+     very fast, it is possible that my exertions may be the means
+     of saving a number who otherwise would perish. If this
+     should be the case, and _I_ should fall instead of _them_,
+     my tender, generous friend must not upbraid my memory by
+     ever thinking I did too much. But she cannot help it: I know
+     she cannot. Yet, my dearest love, give me leave, since I
+     must anticipate your affliction, to lay before you some
+     reflections which would recur to you at _last_, but which
+     ought to strike your mind at _first_, to mingle with and
+     assuage your first emotions of grief. You cannot judge at
+     your distance of the risk I am taking, nor of the necessity
+     of taking it; and I am convinced that were you in my place
+     you would do more than I shall do, for your kind, intrepid
+     spirit has more courage than mine, and always had.
+
+     "Another consideration: Many of these persons have wives at
+     home as well as I, from whom they have been much longer
+     separated, under more affecting circumstances, having been
+     held in a merciless and desponding slavery: if their wives
+     love them as mine does me (a thing I cannot believe, but
+     have no right to deny), ask these lately disconsolate and
+     now joyous families whether I have done too much.
+
+     "Since I write this as if it were my last poor demonstration
+     of affection to my lovely friend, I have much to say; and it
+     is with difficulty that I can steal an hour from the fatigue
+     of business to devote to the grateful, painful task. But
+     tell me (you cannot tell me) where shall I begin? where
+     shall I end? how shall I put an eternal period to a
+     correspondence which has given me so much comfort? With what
+     expression of regret shall I take leave of my happiness?
+     with what words of tenderness, of gratitude, of counsel, of
+     consolation, shall I pay you for what I am robbing you
+     of--the husband whom you cherish, the friend who is all your
+     own?
+
+     "But I am giving vent to more weakness than I intended:
+     this, my dear, is a letter of _business_, not of love, and I
+     wonder I cannot enter upon it and keep to my subject.
+     Enclosed is my last will, made in conformity to the one I
+     left in the hands of Doctor Hopkins of Hartford, as you may
+     remember. The greater part of our property now lying in
+     Paris, I thought proper to renew this instrument, that you
+     might enter immediately upon the settlement of your affairs,
+     without waiting to send to America for the other paper.
+
+     "You will likewise find enclosed a schedule of our property
+     debts and demands, with explanations, as nearly just as I
+     can make it from memory in the absence of my papers. If the
+     French Republic is consolidated, and her funds rise to par,
+     or near it, as I believe they will do soon after the war,
+     the effects noted in this schedule may amount to a capital
+     of about one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, besides
+     paying my debts; which sum, vested in the American funds or
+     mortgages equally solid, would produce something more than
+     seven thousand dollars a year perpetual income.
+
+     "If the French should fund their debt anew at one-half its
+     nominal value (which is possible), so that the part of your
+     property now vested in those funds should diminish in
+     proportion, still, taking the whole together, it will not
+     make a difference of more than one-third, and the annual
+     income may still be near five thousand dollars. Events
+     unforeseen by me may, however, reduce it considerably lower.
+     But, whatever may be the value of what I leave, it is left
+     simply and wholly to you.
+
+     "Perhaps some of my relations may think it strange that I
+     have not mentioned them in this final disposition of my
+     effects, especially if they should prove to be as
+     considerable as I hope they may. But, my dearest love, I
+     will tell you my reasons, and I hope you will approve them;
+     for if I can excuse myself to _you_ in a point in which your
+     generous delicacy would be more likely to question the
+     propriety of my conduct than in most others, I am sure my
+     arguments will be convincing to those whose objections may
+     arise from their interest.
+
+     "_First._ In a view of justice and equity, whatever we
+     possess at this moment is a joint property between
+     ourselves, and ought to remain to the survivor. When you
+     gave me your blessed self you know I was destitute of every
+     other possession, as of every other enjoyment: I was rich
+     only in the fund of your affectionate economy and the sweet
+     consolation of your society. In our various struggles and
+     disappointments while trying to obtain a moderate competency
+     for the quiet enjoyment of what we used to call the
+     remainder of our lives, I have been rendered happy by
+     misfortunes, for the heaviest we have met with were turned
+     into blessings by the opportunities they gave me to discover
+     new virtues in you, who taught me how to bear them.
+
+     "I have often told you since the year 1791, the period of
+     our deepest difficulties (and even during that period), that
+     I had never been so easy and contented before; and I have
+     certainly been happier in you during the latter years of our
+     union than I was in former years; not that I have loved you
+     more ardently or more exclusively, for that was impossible,
+     but I have loved you _better_: my heart has been more full
+     of your excellence and less agitated with objects of
+     ambition, which used to devour me too much.
+
+     "I recall these things to your mind to convince you of my
+     full belief that the acquisition of the competency which we
+     seem at last to have secured is owing more to your energy
+     than my own: I mean the energy of your virtues, which gave
+     me consolation, and even happiness, under circumstances
+     wherein, if I had been alone or with a partner no better
+     than myself, I should have sunk.
+
+     "These fruits of our joint exertions you expected to enjoy
+     _with me_, else I know you would not have wished for them.
+     But if by my death you are to be deprived of the greater
+     part of the comfort you expected, it would surely be unjust
+     and cruel to deprive you of the remainder, or any portion of
+     it, by giving any part of this property to others. It is
+     yours in the truest sense in which property can be
+     considered; and I should have no right, if I were disposed,
+     to take it from you.
+
+     "_Secondly._ Of _my_ relations, I have some thirty or forty,
+     nephews and nieces and their children, the greater part of
+     whom I have never seen, and from whom I have had no news for
+     seven or eight years. Among them there may be some
+     necessitous ones who would be proper objects of particular
+     legacies, yet it would be impossible for me at this moment
+     to know which they are. It was my intention, and still is if
+     I live, to go to America, to make discrimination among them
+     according to their wants, and to give them such relief as
+     might be in my power, without waiting to do it by legacy.
+     Now, my lovely wife, if this task and the means of
+     performing it should devolve upon you, I need not recommend
+     it: our _joint_ liberality would have been less extensive
+     and less grateful to the receivers than _yours_ will be
+     alone.
+
+     "_Your own_ relations in the same degree of affinity are few
+     in number. I hope I need not tell you that in my affections
+     I know no difference between yours and mine. I include them
+     all in the same recommendation, without any other
+     distinction than what may arise from their wants and your
+     ability to do them good.
+
+     "If Colonel B---- or his wife (either of them being left by
+     the other) should be in a situation otherwise than
+     comfortable, I wish my generous friend to render it so as
+     far as may be in her power. We may have had more powerful
+     friends than they, but never any more sincere. _He_ has the
+     most frank and loyal spirit in the world, and she is
+     possessed of many amiable and almost heroic virtues.
+
+     "Mary----, poor girl!--you know her worth, her virtues, and
+     her talents, and I am sure you will not fail to keep
+     yourself informed of her circumstances. She has friends, or
+     at least _had_ them, more able than you will be to yield her
+     assistance in case of need. But they may forsake her for
+     reasons which to your enlightened and benevolent mind would
+     rather be an additional inducement to contribute to her
+     happiness. Excuse me, my dearest life, for my being so
+     particular on a subject which, considering to whom it is
+     addressed, may appear superfluous; but I do it rather to
+     show that I agree with you in these sentiments than to
+     pretend that they originate on my part. With this view I
+     must pursue them a little further. One of the principal
+     gratifications in which I intended, and still intend to
+     indulge myself if I should live to enjoy with you the means
+     of doing it, is to succor the unfortunate of every
+     description as far as possible--to encourage merit where I
+     find it, and try to create it where it does not exist. This
+     has long been a favorite project with me; but, having always
+     been destitute of the means of carrying it into effect to
+     any considerable degree, I have not conversed with you upon
+     it as much as I wish I had. Though I can say nothing that
+     will be new to you on the pleasure of employing one's
+     attention and resources in this way, yet some useful hints
+     might be given on the means of multiplying good actions from
+     small resources; for I would not confine my pleasure to the
+     simple duties of _charity_ in the beggar's sense of the
+     word.
+
+     "_First._ Much may be done by advising with poor persons,
+     contriving for them, and pointing out the objects on which
+     they can employ their own industry.
+
+     "_Secondly._ Many persons and families in a crisis of
+     difficulty might be extricated and set up in the world by
+     little loans of money, for which they might give good
+     security and refund within a year; and the same fund might
+     then go to relieve a second and a third; and thus a dozen
+     families might be set on the independent footing of their
+     own industry in the course of a dozen years by the help of
+     fifty dollars, and the owner lose nothing but the interest.
+     Some judgment would be necessary in these operations, as
+     well as care and attention in finding out the proper
+     objects. How many of these are to be found in prisons,
+     thrown in and confined for years, for small debts which
+     their industry and their liberty would enable them to
+     discharge in a short time! Imprisonment for debt still
+     exists as a stain upon our country, as most others. France,
+     indeed, has set us the example of abolishing it, but I am
+     apprehensive she will relapse from this, as I see she is
+     inclined to do from many other good things which she began
+     in her magnanimous struggle for the renovation of society.
+
+     "_Thirdly._ With your benevolence, your character and
+     connections, you may put in motion a much greater fund of
+     charity than you will yourself possess. It is by searching
+     out the objects of distress or misfortune, and recommending
+     them to their wealthy neighbors in such a manner as to
+     excite their attention. I have often remarked to you (I
+     forget whether you agree with me in it or not) that there is
+     more goodness at the bottom of the human heart than the
+     world will generally allow. Men are as often hindered from
+     doing a generous thing by an _indolence_ either of thought
+     or action as by a selfish principle. If they knew what the
+     action was, when and where it was to be done and how to do
+     it, their obstacles would be overcome. In this manner one
+     may bring the resources of others into contribution, and
+     with such a grace as to obtain the thanks both of the givers
+     and receivers.
+
+     "_Fourthly._ The _example_ of one beneficent person, like
+     yourself, in a neighborhood or a town would go a great way.
+     It would doubtless be imitated by others, extend far, and
+     benefit thousands whom you might never hear of.
+
+     "I certainly hope to escape from this place and return to
+     your beloved arms. No man has stronger inducements to wish
+     to live than I have. I have no quarrel with the world: it
+     has used me as well as could be expected. I have valuable
+     friends in every country where I have put my foot, not
+     excepting this abominable sink of wickedness, pestilence and
+     folly--the city of Algiers. I have a pretty extensive and
+     dear-bought knowledge of mankind; a most valuable collection
+     of books; a pure and undivided taste for domestic
+     tranquillity, the social intercourse of friends, study, and
+     the exercise of charity. I have a moderate but sufficient
+     income, perfect health, an unimpaired constitution, and, to
+     give the relish to all enjoyments and smooth away the
+     asperities that might arise from unforeseen calamities, I
+     have the wife that my youth chose and my advancing age has
+     cherished--the pattern of excellence, the example of every
+     virtue--from whom all my joys have risen, in whom all my
+     hopes are centred.
+
+     "I will use every precaution for my safety, as well for your
+     sake as mine. But if you should see me no more, my dearest
+     friend, you will not forget I loved you. As you have valued
+     my love, and as you believe this letter is written with an
+     intention to promote your happiness at a time when it will
+     be for ever out of my power to contribute to it in any other
+     way, I beg you will kindly receive the last advice I can
+     give you, with which I am going to close our endearing
+     intercourse.... Submitting with patience to a destiny that
+     is unavoidable, let your tenderness for me soon cease to
+     agitate that lovely bosom: banish it to the house of
+     darkness and dust, with the object that can no longer be
+     benefited by it, and transfer your affections to some worthy
+     person who shall supply my place in the relation I have
+     borne to you. It is for the living, not the dead, to be
+     rendered happy by the sweetness of your temper, the purity
+     of your heart, your exalted sentiments, your cultivated
+     spirit, your undivided love. Happy man of your choice should
+     he know and prize the treasure of such a wife! Oh, treat her
+     tenderly, my dear sir: she is used to nothing but kindness,
+     unbounded love and confidence. She is all that any
+     reasonable man can desire. She is more than I have merited,
+     or perhaps than you can merit. My resigning her to your
+     charge, though but the result of uncontrollable necessity,
+     is done with a degree of cheerfulness--a cheerfulness
+     inspired by the hope that her happiness will be the object
+     of your care and the long-continued fruit of your affection.
+
+     "Farewell, my wife; and though I am not used to subscribe my
+     letters addressed to you, your familiarity with my writing
+     having always rendered it unnecessary, yet it seems proper
+     that the last characters which this hand shall trace for
+     your perusal should compose the name of your most faithful,
+     most affectionate and most grateful husband,
+
+    "JOEL BARLOW."
+
+After her husband's decease Mrs. Barlow returned to America, and
+continued to reside at Kalorama until her death in 1818.
+
+CHARLES BURR TODD.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[C] The name is variously written Zarrow, Zarniwica and Zarrowitch.
+
+
+
+
+TERESA DI FAENZA.
+
+
+    I.
+
+    If he should wed a woman like a flower,
+    Fresh as the dew and royal as a rose,
+    Veined with spring-fire, mesmeric in repose,
+    His world-vext brain to lull with mystic power,
+    Great-souled to track his flight through heavens starred,
+    Upborne by wings of trust and love, yet meek
+    As one who has no self-set goal to seek,
+    His inspiration and his best reward,
+    At once his Art's deep secret and clear crown,
+    His every-day made dream, his dream fulfilled,--
+    If such a wife he wooed to be his own,
+    God knows 'twere well. Even I no less had willed.
+    Yet, O my heart! wouldst thou for his dear sake
+    Frankly rejoice, or with self-pity break?
+
+
+    II.
+
+    What could I bring in dower? A restless heart,
+    As eager, ardent, hungry, as his own,
+    Face burned pale olive by our Southern sun,
+    A mind long used to musings grave apart.
+    Gold, noble name or fame I ne'er regret,
+    Albeit all are lacking; but the glow
+    Of spring-like beauty, but the overflow
+    Of simple, youthful joy. And yet--and yet--
+    A proud voice whispers: Vain may be his quest,
+    What fruit soe'er he pluck, what laurels green,
+    Through all the world, for just this prize unseen
+    I in my deep heart harbor quite unguessed:
+    I alone know what full hands I should bring
+    Were I to lay my wealth before my king.
+
+                         EMMA LAZARUS.
+
+
+
+
+PIPISTRELLO.
+
+
+I am only Pipistrello. Nothing but that--nothing more than any one of
+the round brown pebbles that the wind sets rolling down the dry bed of
+the Tiber in summer.
+
+I am Pipistrello, the mime, the fool, the posturer, the juggler, the
+spangled saltinbanco, the people's plaything, that runs and leaps and
+turns and twists, and laughs at himself and is laughed at by all, and
+lives by his limbs like his brother the dancing bear and his cousin the
+monkey in a red coat and a feathered cap.
+
+I am Pipistrello, five-and-twenty years old, and strong as you see, and
+good to look at, the women have said. I can leap and run against any
+man, and I can break a bar of iron against my knee, and I can keep up
+with the fastest horse that flies, and I can root up a young oak without
+too much effort. I am strong enough, and my life is at the full, and a
+day's sickness I never have known, and my mother is living. Yet I lie
+under sentence of death, and to-morrow I die on the scaffold: if nothing
+come between this and the break of dawn, I am a dead man with
+to-morrow's sun.
+
+And nothing will come: why should it?
+
+I am only Pipistrello. The people have loved me, indeed, but that is no
+reason why the law should spare me. Nor would I wish that it should--not
+I. They come and stand and stare at me through the grating, men and
+women and maidens and babies. A few of them cry a little, and one little
+mite of a child thrusts at me with a little brown hand the half of a red
+pomegranate. But for the most part they laugh. Why, of course they do.
+The street-children always laugh to see a big black steer with his bold
+horned head go down under the mace of the butcher: the street always
+finds that droll. The strength of the bull could scatter the crowd as
+the north wind scatters the dust, if he were free; but he is not, and
+his strength serves him nothing: the hammer fells him and the crowd
+laughs.
+
+The people of this old Orte know me so well. Right and left, up and
+down, through the country I have gone all the years of my life. Wherever
+there was fair or festa, there was I, Pipistrello, in the midst. It is
+not a bad life, believe me. No life is bad that has the sun and the rain
+upon it, and the free will of the feet and the feel of the wind, and
+nothing between it and heaven.
+
+My father had led the same kind of life before me: he died at Genoa, his
+spine broken in two, like a snapped bough, by a fall from the trapeze
+before the eyes of all the citizens. I was a big baby in that time,
+thrown from hand to hand by the men in their spectacles as they would
+have thrown a ball or an orange.
+
+My mother was a young and gentle creature, full of tenderness for her
+own people, with strangers shy and afraid. She was the daughter of a
+poor weaver. My father had found and wooed her in Etruria, and although
+he had never taken the trouble to espouse her before the mayor, yet he
+had loved her and had always treated her with great respect. She was a
+woman very pure and very honest. Alas, the poor soul! To-day her hair is
+white as the snow, and they tell me she is mad. So much the better for
+her if she know nothing; but I fear the mad and the imbecile know all
+and see all, crouching in their hapless gloom.
+
+When my father died thus at Genoa my mother took a hatred for that
+manner of living, and she broke off all ties with the athletes who had
+been his comrades, and, taking the little money that was hers in a
+little leather bag, she fled away with me to the old town of Orte, where
+my grandmother still lived, the widow of the weaver. The troop wished to
+keep me with them, for, although I was but five years old, I was supple
+and light and very fearless, and never afraid of being thrown up in the
+air, a living ball, in their games and sports.
+
+Orte was just the same then as it is now. These very aged towns I think
+never change: if you try to alter them you must break them up and
+destroy them utterly. Orte has known the Etruscans: she can very well do
+without modern folk. At Orte my mother and grandmother dwelt together in
+one room that looked over the river--a large vaulted chamber with grated
+casements, with thick stone walls--a chamber in what had once been a
+palace. My mother was then still very young and beautiful--of a pale,
+serious beauty, full of sadness. She smiled on me sometimes, but never
+once did I hear her laugh. She had never laughed since that awful day
+when, in the full sunlight, in the midst of the people, in the sight of
+the sea, in Genoa, a man had dropped from air to earth like an eagle
+fallen stone dead from the skies, struck by lightning.
+
+My mother had many suitors. She was beautiful of face, as I say, like
+one of the Madonnas of our old painters: she was industrious, and all
+her little world knew very well that she would one day inherit the strip
+of field and the red cow that my grandmother owned outside the gates of
+Orte. All these pretty suitors of course made a great fuss with me,
+caressed me often, and brought me tomatoes, green figs, crickets in wire
+cages, fried fish and playthings. But my mother looked at none of them.
+When a woman's eyes are always looking downward on a grave, how should
+their tear-laden lids be lifted to see a fresh lover? She repulsed them
+all, always. She lived, lonely and sad, as well as she could in our
+great garret: we ate little, our bed was hard, and she and my grandam
+labored hard to get a pittance. But when a rich bailiff sought her in
+honest marriage, she kissed me and wept over me, and said again and
+again, "No, no! To your father I will be faithful, let what will chance
+to us."
+
+The bailiff soon consoled himself: he married a big country wench who
+had a fine rope of pearls and gold bracelets, and I continued to grow
+up by my mother's side where the Tiber is gilded with the gold of the
+dawns and rolls its heavy waves under the weeping boughs of its willows.
+My boyish strength increased in the heat of the summers, and I grew like
+a young brown stalk of the tall maize. I herded the cow, cut the rushes
+and hewed wood, and I was always happy, even when my mother would send
+me to the old priest to learn things out of books. She wished to make a
+monk of me, but the mere idea made me shudder with fear. I loved to
+climb the oaks, to swing in the maples, to scale the roofs and the
+towers and the masts of the vessels. What had I to do with a monkish
+frock and a whitewashed cell? _Ouf!_ I put my fingers in my ears and ran
+away whenever my poor mother talked of the cloister.
+
+My limbs were always dancing, and my blood was always leaping, laughing,
+boiling merrily in my veins. A priest? What an idea! I had never wholly
+forgotten the glad, bright days of childhood when my father had thrown
+me about in the air like a ball: I had never wholly forgotten the shouts
+of the people, the sight of the human sea of faces, the loud, frank
+laugh of the populace, the sparkle of the spangled habit, the
+intoxication of the applause of a crowd. I had only been five years old
+then, yet I remembered, and sometimes in the night I cried bitterly for
+those dead days. I had only been a little brown thing, with curls as
+black as the raven's wing, and they had thrown me from one to the other
+lightly, laughingly, like a ripe apple, like a smooth peach. But I had
+known what it was to get drunk on the "hurrahs" of the multitude, and I
+did not forget them as I grew up here a youth in old Orte.
+
+The son of an athlete can never rest quiet at home and at school like
+the children of cobblers and coppersmiths and vine-dressers. All my life
+was beating in me, tumbling, palpitating, bubbling, panting in
+me--moving incessantly, like the wings of a swallow when the hour draws
+near for its flight and the thirst for the south rises in it. With all
+my force I adored my pale, lovely, Madonna-like mother, but all the
+same, as I trotted toward the priest with a satchel on my back, I used
+to think, Would it be very wicked to throw the books into the river and
+run away to the fields? And, in truth, I used to run away very often,
+scampering over the country around Orte like a mountain-hare, climbing
+the belfries of the churches, pulling off their weathercocks or setting
+their bells a-ringing--doing a thousand and one mischievous antics; but
+I always returned at nightfall to my mother's side. It seemed to me it
+would be cruel and cowardly to leave her, for she had but me in the
+world.
+
+"You promise to be sensible and quiet, Pippo?" the poor soul always
+murmured. And I used to say "Yes," and mean it. But can a bird promise
+not to fly when it feels in its instincts the coming of spring? Can a
+young colt promise not to fling out his limbs when he feels the yielding
+turf beneath his hoofs?
+
+I never wished to be disobedient, but, somehow, ten minutes after I was
+out of her sight I was high above on some tower or belfry, with the
+martens and the pigeons circling about my curly head. I was so happy on
+high there, looking down on all the old town misty with dust, the men
+and women like ants on an antheap, the historic river like a mere
+ribbon, yellow and twisted, the palaces and the tombs all hidden under
+the same gray veil of summer dust! I was so happy there!--and they spoke
+of making me into a monk, or, if I would not hear of that, of turning me
+into a clerk in a notary's office!
+
+A monk? a clerk? when all the trees cried out to me to climb and all the
+birds called to me to fly! I used to cry about it with hot tears that
+stung my face like lashes, lying with my head hidden on my arms in the
+grass by the old Tiber water. For I was not twelve years old, and to be
+shut up in Orte always, growing gray and wrinkled as the notary had done
+over the wicked, crabbed, evil-looking skins that set the neighbors at
+war! The thought broke my heart. Nevertheless, I loved my mother, and I
+mended my quills, and tried to write my best, and said to the boys of
+the town, "I cannot bend iron or leap or race any more. I am going to
+write for my bread in the notary's office a year hence, for my mother
+wishes it, and so it must be."
+
+And I did my best not to look up to the jackdaws circling round the
+towers or the old river running away to Rome. For all the waters cried
+to me to leap, and all the birds to fly. And you cannot tell, unless you
+have been born to do it as I was, how good it is to climb and climb and
+climb, and see the green earth grow pale beneath you, and the people
+dwindle till they are small as dust, and the houses fade till they seem
+like heaps of sand. The air gets so clear around you, and the great
+black wings flap close against your face; and you sit astride where the
+bells are, with some quaint stone face beside you that was carved on the
+pinnacle here a thousand years and more ago, and has hardly been seen of
+man ever since; and the white clouds are so near you that you seem to
+bathe in them; and the winds toss the trees far below, and sweep by you
+as they go down to torment the trees and the sea, the men that work, and
+the roofs that cover them, and the sails of their ships in the ocean.
+Men are so far from you, and heaven seems so near! The fields and the
+plains are lost in the vapors that divide you from them, and all their
+noise of living multitudes comes very faintly to your ear, and sweetly
+like the low murmuring of bees in the white blossoms of an acacia in the
+month of May.
+
+But you do not understand, you poor toilers in cities who pace the
+street and watch the faces of the rich.
+
+I was to be a notary's clerk--I, called Pipistrello (the bat) because I
+was always whirling and wheeling in air. I was to be a clerk, so my
+mother and grandmother decided for me, with the old notary himself who
+lived at the corner, and made his daily bread by carrying fire and sword
+where he could through the affairs of his neighbors. He was an old
+rascal, but my mother did not know that: he promised to be a safe and
+trustworthy guardian of my youth, and she believed he had power to keep
+me safe from all dangers of destiny. She wanted to be sure that I should
+never run the risks of my father's career: she wanted to see me always
+before the plate of herb soup on her table. Poor mother!
+
+One day in Orte chance gave me another fate than this of her desires.
+
+One fine sunrise on the morning of Palm Sunday I heard the sharp sound
+of a screeching fife, the metallic clash of cymbals, the shouts of boys,
+the rattle of a little drum. It was the rataplan beating before a troop
+of wrestlers and jugglers who were traversing the Marche and Reggio
+Emilia. The troop stationed themselves in a little square burnt by the
+sun and surrounded by old crumbling houses: I ran with the rest of the
+lads of Orte to see them. Orte was in holiday guise: aged, wrinkled,
+deserted, forgotten by the world as she is, she made herself gay that
+day with palms and lilies and lilac and the branches of willow; and her
+people, honest, joyous, clad in their best, who filled the streets and
+the churches and wine-houses, after mass flocked with one accord and
+pressure around the play-place of the strollers.
+
+It was in the month of April: outside the walls and on the banks of
+Tiber, still swollen by the floods of winter, one could see the gold of
+millions of daffodils and the bright crimson and yellow of tulips in the
+green corn. The scent of flowers and herbs came into the town and filled
+its dusky and narrow ways; the boatmen had green branches fastened to
+their masts; in the stillness of evening one heard the song of crickets,
+and even a mosquito would come and blow his shrill little trumpet, and
+one was willing to say to him "Welcome!" because on his little horn he
+blew the good news, "Summer is here!" Ah, those bright summers of my
+youth! I am old now--ay, old, though I have lived through only
+twenty-five years.
+
+This afternoon, on Palm Sunday, I ran to see the athletes as a moth
+flies to the candle: in Italy all the world loves the saltinbanco, be he
+dumb or speaking, in wood or in flesh, and all Orte hastened, as I
+hastened, under the sunny skies of Easter. I saw, I trembled, I laughed:
+I sobbed with ecstasy. It was so many years that I had not seen my
+brothers! Were they not my brothers all?
+
+This day of Palm, when our Orte, so brown and so gray, was all full of
+foliage and blossom like an old pitcher full of orange-flowers for a
+bridal, it was a somewhat brilliant troop of gymnasts which came to
+amuse the town. The troop was composed of an old man and his five sons,
+handsome youths, and very strong, of course. They climbed on each
+other's shoulders, building up a living pyramid; they bent and broke
+bars of iron; they severed a sheep with one blow of a sword; in a word,
+they did what my father had done before them. As for me, I watched them
+stupefied, fascinated, dazzled, drunk with delight, and almost crazy
+with a torrent of memories that seemed to rain on me like lava as I
+watched each exploit, as I heard each shout of the applauding
+multitudes.
+
+It is a terrible thing, a horrible thing, those inherited memories that
+are born in you with the blood of others. I looked at them, I say,
+intoxicated with joy, mad with recollection and with longing;--and my
+mother destined me to a notary's desk, and wished me to be shut there
+all my life, pen in hand, sowing the seeds of all the hatreds, of all
+the crimes, of all the sorrows of mankind, lighting up the flames of
+rage and of greed in human souls for an acre of ground, for a roll of
+gold! She wished to make me a notary's clerk! I gazed at these men who
+seemed to me so happy--these slender, agile, vigorous creatures in their
+skins that shone like the skins of green snakes, in their broidered,
+glittering, spangled vests, in their little velvet caps with the white
+plume in each. "Take me! take me!" I shrieked to them; and the old king
+of the troop looked hard at me, and when their games were finished
+crossed the cord that marked their arena and threw his strong arms about
+me, and cried, "Body of Christ! you are little Pippo!" For he had been
+my father's mate. To be brief, when the little band left Orte I went
+with them.
+
+It was wickedly done, for my poor mother slept, knowing nothing, when in
+the dusk before daybreak I slipped through the bars of the casement and
+noiselessly dropped on to a raft in the river below, and thence joined
+my new friends. It was wickedly done; but I could not help it. Fate was
+stronger than I.
+
+The old man did not disturb himself as to whether what he had encouraged
+me to do was ill or well. He foresaw in me an athlete who would do him
+honor and make the ducats ring merrier in his purse. Besides, I had cost
+him nothing.
+
+From this time life indeed began for me. I wept often; I felt the barb
+of a real remorse; when I passed a crucifix on the road I trembled with
+true terror and penitence; but I fled away, always. I drew my girdle
+closer about my spangled coat, and, despite all my remorse, I was happy.
+When I was very, very far away I wrote to my mother, and she understood,
+poor soul! that there were no means of forcing me back to her. Children
+are egotists: childhood has little feeling. When the child suffers he
+thirsts for his mother, but when he is happy, alas! he thinks little and
+rarely about her.
+
+I was very happy, full of force and of success: the men kept their word
+and taught me all their tricks, all their exploits. Soon I surpassed my
+teachers in address and in temerity. I soon became the glory of their
+band. In the summertime we wandered over the vast Lombard plains and the
+low Tuscan mountains; in winter we displayed our prowess in Rome, in
+Naples, in Palermo; we loitered wherever the sun was warm or the people
+liked to laugh.
+
+From time to time I thought of my mother: I sent her money. I shivered a
+little when I saw a Madonna, for all Madonnas have the smile that our
+mother has for our infancy. I thought of her, but I never went home. I
+was Pipistrello the champion-wrestler. I was a young Hercules, with a
+spangled tunic in lieu of a lion-skin. I was a thousand years, ten
+thousand leagues, away from the child of Orte. God is just. It is just
+that I die here, for in my happy years I forgot my mother. I lived in
+the sunlight--before the crowds, the nervous crowds of Italy--singing,
+shouting, leaping, triumphing; and I forgot my mother alone in the old
+chamber above the Tiber--quite alone, for my grandam was dead. That I
+have slain what I have slain--that is nothing. I would do the same thing
+again had I to live my life again. Yes, without pause or mercy would I
+do it. But my mother--she has lived alone, and she is mad. That is my
+crime.
+
+I was a tall, strong youth, full of courage and handsome to the eye of
+women: I led a life noisy and joyous, and for ever in movement. I was
+what my father had been before me. So they all said. Only I liked to
+finger a book, and my father never had looked inside one, and out of
+remembrance of the belief of my mother I uncovered my head as I passed a
+church or saw a shrine, and to do this had not been in my father's
+habits. In these years I made a great deal of money--a great deal, at
+least, for a stroller--but it went as fast as it came. I was never a
+vicious man, nor a great gambler or drinker, yet my plump pieces soon
+took wing from my pocket, for I was very gay and I liked to play a
+lover's part. My life was a good life, that I know: as for the life of
+the rich and of the noble, I cannot tell what it is like, but I think it
+is of a surety more gloomy and mournful than mine. In Italy one wants so
+little. The air and the light, and a little red wine, and the warmth of
+the wind, and a handful of maize or of grapes, and an old guitar, and a
+niche to sleep in near a fountain that murmurs and sings to the mosses
+and marbles,--these are enough, these are happiness in Italy. And it is
+not difficult to have thus much, or was not so in those days. I was
+never very poor, but whenever money jingled in my purse I treated all
+the troop and half the town, and we laughed loud till daybreak.
+
+I was never aught save Pipistrello--Pipistrello the wrestler, who jumped
+and leaped, and lifted an ox from the ground as easily as other men lift
+a child. No doubt to the wise it seems a fool's life, to the holy a life
+impure. But I had been born for it: no other was possible to me; and
+when money rained upon me, if I could ease an aching heart, or make a
+sick lad the stouter for a hearty meal, or make a tiny child the gladder
+for a lapful of copper coins, or give a poor stray dog a friend and a
+bed of straw, or a belabored mule a helpful push to the wheels of his
+cart,--well, that was all the good a mountebank could look to do in this
+world, and one could go to sleep easy upon it.
+
+When the old man died who had been my father's comrade the troop fell to
+pieces, quarrelling over his leavings. The five brothers came to a
+common issue of stabbing. In Italy one takes to the knife as naturally
+as a child to the breast. Tired of their disputes, I left them
+squabbling and struck off by myself, and got a little band together,
+quite of youths, and with them made merry all across the country from
+sea to sea. We were at that time in the south. I was very popular with
+the people. When my games were done I could sing to the mandoline, and
+improvise, and make them laugh and weep: some graver men who heard me
+said I might have been a great actor or a great singer. Perhaps: I never
+was anything but Pipistrello the stroller. I wanted the fresh air and
+the wandering and the sports of my strength too much ever to have been
+shut in a roofed theatre, ever to have been cooped up where lamps were
+burning.
+
+One day, when we were in dusty, brown Calabria, parching just then under
+June suns, with heavy dust on its aloe-hedges and its maize-fields, a
+sudden remorse smote me: I thought of my mother, all alone in Orte. I
+had thought of her scores of times, but I had felt ashamed to go and see
+her--I who had left her so basely. This day my remorse was greater than
+my shame. I was master of my little troop. I said to them, "It is hot
+here: we will go up Rome-way, along the Tiber;" and we did so.
+
+I have never been out of my own land: I fancy it must be so dark there,
+the other side of the mountains. I know the by-roads and the hill-paths
+of Italy as a citizen knows the streets and lanes of his own _contrada_.
+We worked and played our way now up through the Basilicata and Campania
+and Latium, till at last we were right near Orte--dull, old,
+gray-colored Orte, crumbling away on the banks of Tiber. Then my heart
+beat and my knees shook, and I thought, If she is dead?
+
+I left my comrades drinking and resting at a wine-shop just outside the
+town, and went all alone to look for her. I found the house--the gloomy
+barred window hanging over the water, the dark stone walls frowning down
+on the gloomy street. There was a woman, quite old, with white hair, who
+was getting up water at the street-fountain that I had gone to a
+thousand times in my childhood. I looked at her. I did not know her: I
+only saw a woman feeble and old. But she, with the brass _secchia_
+filled, turned round and saw me, and dropped the brazen pitcher on the
+ground, and fell at my feet with a bitter cry. Then I knew her.
+
+When in the light of the hot, strong sun I saw how in those ten years my
+mother had grown old--old, bent, broken, white-haired, in those ten
+years that had been all glow and glitter, and pleasure and pastime, and
+movement and mirth to me--then I knew that I had sinned against her with
+a mighty sin--a sin of cruelty, of neglect, of selfish wickedness. She
+had been young still when I had left her--young and fair to look at, and
+without a silver line in her ebon hair, and with suitors about her for
+her beauty like bees about the blossoms of the ivy in the autumn-time.
+And now--now she was quite old.
+
+She never rebuked me: she only said, "My son! my son! God be praised!"
+and said that a thousand times, weeping and trembling. Some women are
+like this.
+
+When the bright, burning midsummer day had grown into a gray,
+firefly-lighted night, I laid me down on the narrow bed where I had
+slept as a child, and my mother kissed me as though I were a child. It
+seemed to purify me from all the sins of all the absent years, except,
+indeed, of that one unpardonable sin against her. In the morning she
+opened the drawers of an old bureau and showed me everything I had sent
+her all those years: all was untouched, the money as well as the
+presents. "I took nothing while you did not give me yourself," she said.
+I felt my throat choke.
+
+It was early day: she asked me to go to mass with her. I did so to
+please her. All the while I watched her bent, feeble, aged figure and
+the white hair under the yellow kerchief, and felt as if I had killed
+her. This lone old creature was not the mother like Raffaelle's Madonna
+I had left: I could never make her again what she had been.
+
+"It is my son," she said to her neighbors, but she said it with pain
+rather than with pride, for she hated my calling; but Orte was of
+another way of thinking. Orte flocked to see me, having heard of
+Pipistrello, its own Pipistrello, who had plagued it with his childish
+tricks, having grown into fame amongst the cities and villages as the
+strongest man in all Italy. For indeed I was that; and my mother, with
+dim, tear-laden eyes, looked at me and said, "You are the image of your
+father. Oh, my dear, my love! take care."
+
+She, poor soul! saw nothing but the fall she had seen that day at Genoa
+of a strong man who dropped like a stone. But I fear to weary you. Well!
+I had left my spangled dress and all insignia of my calling with my
+comrades at the wine-shop, fearing to harass my mother by sight of all
+those things which would be so full of bitter recollection and dread to
+her. But Orte clamored for me to show it my powers--Orte, which was more
+than half asleep by Tiber's side, like that nymph Canens whom I used to
+read of in my Latin school-books--Orte, which had no earthly thing to do
+this long and lazy day in the drought of a rainless June.
+
+I could not afford to baulk the popular will, and I was proud to show
+them all I could do--I, Pipistrello, whom they had cuffed and kicked so
+often in the old time for climbing their walnut trees and their pear
+trees, their house-roofs and their church-towers. So, when the day
+cooled I drew a circle with a red rope round myself and my men on a
+piece of waste ground outside the town, and all Orte flocked out there
+as the sun went down, shouting and cheering for me as though Pipistrello
+were a king or a hero. The populace is always thus--the giddiest-pated
+fool that ever screamed, as loud and as ignorant as a parrot, as
+changeful as the wind in March, as base as the cuckoo. The same people
+threw stones at me when they brought me to this prison--the same people
+that feasted and applauded me then, that first day of my return to Orte.
+To-day, indeed, some women weep, and the little child brings me half a
+pomegranate. That is more remembrance than some fallen idols get, for
+the populace is cruel: it is a beast that fawns and slavers, then tears.
+
+It was a rainless June, as I say. It was very warm that evening; the low
+west was vermilion and the higher sky was violet; bars of gold parted
+the two colors; the crickets were hooting, the bats were wheeling, great
+night-moths were abroad. I felt very happy that night. With us Italians
+pain rarely stays long. We feel sharply, but it soon passes. I had
+drowned my remorse in the glory and vanity of showing Orte all I could
+do by the sheer force of my muscles and sinews. We are not a very brave
+people, nor a strong one, and so strength and bravery seem very rare and
+fine things on our soil, and we make a great clatter and uproar when we
+ever find them amidst us. I had them both, and the people were in
+ecstasies with all I did. I put out all my powers, and in the circle of
+red rope exerted all my might, as though I had been performing before
+kings. After all, there is no applause that so flatters a man as that
+which he wrings from unwilling throats, and I know Orte had been long
+set against me by reason of my boyish mischief and my flight.
+
+In real truth, I did nothing now in my manhood so really perilous as I
+had done in my childhood, when I had climbed to the top of the cross on
+the church and sat astride of it. But they had called that mischief and
+blasphemy: they called the things I did now gymnastics, and applauded
+them till the noise might have wakened the Etrurian dead under the soil.
+
+At last I came to the feat which, though far from the hardest to me,
+always looked to the crowd the most wonderful: it was my old master's
+trick of holding his five sons on his shoulder. Only I outshone him, and
+sustained on mine seven men in four tiers, and the topmost had on his
+head little Febo.
+
+The mite whom we called Phoebus, because we had found him at sunrise
+and he had such yellow locks--yellow as the dandelion or the
+buttercup--was a stray thing picked up on the seashore in Apulia--a
+soft, merry, chirping little fellow, of whom we were all fond, and to
+whom we had easily taught that absence of fear which enabled us to play
+ball with him in our spectacles. He always delighted the people, he was
+such a pretty little lad, and not, perhaps, more than four years old
+then, and always laughing, always ready. To him it was only fun, as it
+had been to me at his years. I never thought it was cruel to use him so,
+I had been so happy in it myself. All at once, as I stood erect
+sustaining the men on my shoulders, the topmost one holding on his head
+our tiny Phoebus--all at once as I did this, which I had done a
+hundred times, and had always done in safety--all at once, amongst the
+sea of upturned faces in the glowing evening light, I saw one woman's
+eyes. She was leaning a little forward, resting her cheek on her hand.
+She had black lace about her head and yellow japonica-flowers above her
+left ear. She was looking at me and smiling a little.
+
+I met her eyes, full, across the dust reddened by the sunset glow as the
+dust of a battlefield is reddened with blood. I felt as if I were
+stabbed; the red dust seemed to swim round me; I staggered slightly: in
+another instant I had recovered myself, but the momentary oscillation
+had terrified my comrades. The seventh and highest, feeling the human
+pyramid tremble beneath him, involuntarily, unconsciously, opened his
+arms to save himself. He did not lose his balance, but he let the child
+fall. It dropped as an apple broken off the bough falls to the earth.
+
+There was a moment of horrible silence. Then the men leaped down,
+tumbling and huddling one over another, not knowing what they did. The
+audience rose screaming; and broke the rope and swarmed into the arena.
+I stooped and took up the child. He was dead. His neck had been broken
+in the fall. He had struck the earth with the back of his head; he was
+rolled up on the sand like a little dead kid; his tiny tinsel crown had
+fallen off his curls, his tiny tinselled limbs were crushed under him,
+his blossom-like mouth was half open. It was horrible.
+
+People spoke to me: I did not see or hear them. The crowd parted and
+scattered, some voluble, some dumb, with the shock of what they had
+seen. I lifted up what a moment before had been little Phoebus, and
+bore him in my arms to my mother's house.
+
+She was sitting at home alone, as she had been alone these ten years and
+more. When she saw the dead baby in those glistening spangled clothes
+she shuddered, and understood without words. "Another life?" she said,
+and said nothing more: she was thinking of my father. Then she took the
+dead child and laid him on her knees as if he had been a living one, and
+rocked him on her breast and smoothed the sand out of his pretty yellow
+curls. "The people go always in the hope of seeing something die," she
+said at length. "That is what they go for: you killed the baby for their
+sport. It was cruel."
+
+I went out of the house and felt as if I had murdered him--the little
+fair, innocent thing who had run along with us over the dusty roads, and
+along the sad seashores, and under the forest trees, laughing and
+chirping as the birds chirp, and when he was tired lifting up his arms
+to be carried on the top of the big drum, and sitting there throned like
+a king. Poor little dead Phoebus! It was true what my mother had said:
+the people throng to us in hope of seeing our death, and yet when they
+do see it they are frightened and sickened and sorrowful. Orte was so
+this night.
+
+"Could I help it?" I cried to my comrades fiercely; and in my own soul I
+said to myself, "Could I help it? That woman looked at me."
+
+Who was she? All through the pain that filled me for the death of the
+child that wonder was awake in me always. She had looked so strange
+there, so unlike the rest, though she was all in black and had the lace
+about her head which is common enough in our country. All the night long
+I saw her face--a beautiful face, with heavy lids and drooping hair,
+like that marble head they call the Braschi Antinous down in Rome.
+
+Little Phoebus was laid that night in my mother's house, with lilies
+about him, while a little candle that the moths flickered into burnt at
+his feet. As I sat and watched by him to drive away the rats which came
+up in hordes at night from Tiber into the rooms that overhung the river,
+I only saw that face. It had been a bad home-coming.
+
+I would play no more in Orte, nor go with these men any more. I
+disbanded my troop and let them pass their own ways. I had coin enough
+to live on for months: that was enough for the present. I felt as if the
+sight of the red rope and the spangled vest and the watching crowd would
+be horrible to me--those things which I had loved so well. Little
+Phoebus was put away in the dark earth, as the little Etruscan
+children had been so many hundred years before him, and I buried his
+little crown and his little coat with him, as the Etruscans buried the
+playthings. Poor little man! we had taught him to make Death his toy,
+and his toy had been stronger than he.
+
+After his burial I began my search for the woman whose face I had seen
+in the crowd. My mother never asked me whence I came or where I went.
+The death of Phoebus had destroyed the trembling joy with which she
+had seen me return to her: happiness came to her too late. When grief
+has sat long by one hearth, it is impossible to warm the ashes of joy
+again: they are cold and dead for ever. My time passed sadly; a
+terrible calmness had succeeded to the gayety and noise of my life; a
+frightful silence had replaced the frenzied shouts, the boisterous
+laughter, of the people: sometimes it seemed to me that I had died, not
+Phoebus.
+
+The constant hope of finding the woman I had seen but once occupied me
+always. I roamed the country without ceasing, always with that single
+hope before me. Days became weeks: I wandered miserably, like a dog
+without master or home.
+
+One day I saw her. Having on my shoulder my _girella_, which gave me a
+pretext for straying along the river-side, I came to that part of
+Etruria where (so I had used to learn from the school-books in my
+childhood) the Etruscans in ancient times drew up in order of battle to
+receive Fabius. The country is pretty about there, or at least it seemed
+so to me. The oak woods descend to the edge of the Tiber: from them one
+sees the snow of the Apennines; the little towns of Giove and Penna are
+white on the Umbrian hills; in the low fields the vine and the olive and
+the maize and the wheat grow together. Here one finds our Lagherello,
+which I had heard scholars say is no other than the Lake Vadimon of
+which Pliny speaks. Of that I know nothing: it is a poor little pool
+now, filled with rushes, peopled with frogs. By the side of this pool I
+saw her again: she looked at me. Like a madman I plunged into the water,
+but the reeds and the lilies entangled me in their meshes: the long
+grasses and water-weeds were netted into an impenetrable mass. I stood
+there up to my waist in water, incapable of movement, like the poor
+cattle of which Pliny tells, who used to mistake all this verdure for
+dry land, and so drifted out into the middle of the lake. She looked at
+me, laughed a little, and disappeared.
+
+Before sunset I had learned who she was from a peasant who came there to
+cut the reeds.
+
+Near to the Lagherello is a villa named Sant' Aloisa: about its walls
+there is a sombre, melancholy wood, a remnant of that famous forest
+which in the ancient times the Romans dreaded as the borders of hell.
+The Tiber rolls close by, yellow and muddy with the black buffaloes
+descending to its brink to drink, and the snakes and the toads in its
+brakes counting by millions--sad, always sad, whether swollen by flood
+in autumn and vomiting torrents of mud, or whether with naked sands and
+barren bed in summer, with the fever-vapors rising from its shallow
+shoals. The villa is dull and mournful like the river--built of stone,
+fortified in bygone centuries, without color, without light, without
+garden or greenery, all its casements closed like the eyelids of a
+living man that is blind.
+
+This was and is Sant' Aloisa. In the old times, no doubt, the villa had
+been strong and great, and peopled with a brilliant feudal pomp, and
+noisy with the clash and stir of soldiery: now it is poverty-stricken
+and empty, naked and silent, looking down on the tawny, sullen swell of
+the Tiber--the terrible Tiber, that has devoured so much gold, so much
+treasure, so much beauty, and hidden so many dead and so many crimes,
+and flows on mute and gloomy between its poisonous marshes. Of Tiber I
+have always felt afraid.
+
+Sant' Aloisa has always been a fief of the old counts Marchioni. One of
+that race lived still, and owned the old grounds and the old walls,
+though the fortunes of the family had long fallen into decay. Taddeo
+Marchioni was scarcely above his own peasants in his manners and way of
+life. He was ugly, avaricious, rustic, cruel. He was lord of the soil
+indeed, but he lived miserably, and this beautiful woman had been his
+wife seven years. At fifteen her father, a priest who passed as her
+uncle, had wedded her to Taddeo Marchioni. She had dwelt here seven
+mortal years, in this gloomy wood, by these yellow waters, amidst these
+pestilential marshes. Her marriage had made her a countess, that was
+all. For the rest, it had consigned her, living, to a tomb.
+
+The lives of our Italian women are gay enough in the cities, but in the
+country these women grow gray and pallid as the wings of the night-moth.
+They have no love for Nature, for air, for the woods, for the fields:
+flowers say nothing to them. They look neither at the blossoms nor the
+stars. The only things which please them are a black mask and a murmur
+of love, a hidden meeting, the noise of the streets, the bouquets of a
+carnival. What should they do in the loneliness and wildness of the
+broad and open country--our women, who only breathe at their ease in the
+obscurity of their _palco_ or under the shelter of a domino?
+
+The travellers who run over our land and see our women laughing with
+wide-opened rose-red mouths upon their balconies at Berlingaccio or at
+Pentolaccia can never understand the immense, the inconsolable,
+desolation of dulness which weighs on the lives of these women in the
+little towns of the provinces and the country-houses of the hills and
+plains. They have the priest and the chapel; that is all.
+
+In Italy we have no choice between the peasant-woman toiling in the
+ploughed fields, and growing black with the scorch of the sun, and bowed
+and aged with the burdens she bears, and the ladies who live between the
+alcove and the confessional, only going forth from their chambers by
+night as fireflies glisten, and living on secret love and daily gossip.
+What can these do in their gaunt, dull villas--they who detest the sough
+of the wind and the sight of a tree, who flee from a dog and scream at a
+tempest, who will not read, and whose only lore is the sweet science of
+the passions?
+
+This I came to know later. All I saw that day, as I tramped around it
+wet and cold, was the gloomy evil shadow of the great place that had
+once been a fortress, the barred and shattered windows, the iron-studded
+doors, the grass-grown bastions. She had made me kill Phoebus, and yet
+I only lived to see her face again.
+
+Sometimes I think love is the darkest mystery of life: mere desire will
+not explain it, nor will the passions or the affections. You pass years
+amidst crowds and know naught of it: then all at once you meet a
+stranger's eyes, and never again are you free. That is love. Who shall
+say whence it comes? It is a bolt from the gods that descends from
+heaven and strikes us down into hell. We can do nothing.
+
+I went home slowly when evening fell. I had seen her eyes across the
+crowd in Orte once, and once across the pool that was the Vadimon, and I
+was hers for evermore. Explain that, ye wise men, who in your pride have
+long words for all things. Nay, you may be wise, but it is beyond you.
+
+My mother and I spoke but little at this time. That home was a sad one:
+the death of the child and the absence of long years had left a chill in
+it. We ate together, chiefly in silence: it was always a pain to her
+that I was but Pipistrello the gymnast--not a steadfast, deep-rooted,
+well-loved citizen of Orte, with a trade to my hand and a place in
+church and market. Every day she thought I should wander again; every
+day she knew my savings shrank in their bag; every day she heard her
+neighbors say, "And your Pippo? will he not quiet down and take a wife
+and a calling?"
+
+Poor mother! Other women had their sons safe stay-at-homes, wedded
+fathers of children, peaceable subjects of the king, smoking at their
+own doors after the day's work was done. She would have been so blessed
+had I been like them--I, who was a wrestler and a roysterer, a mere
+public toy that had broken down in the sight of all Orte. My father had
+never failed as I had failed. He had never killed a child that trusted
+in his strength: he had fallen himself and died. That difference between
+us was always in her eyes. I saw it when I met them; and she would make
+up little knots of common flowers and carry them to the tiny grave of
+Phoebus, my victim. Once I said to her, "I could not help it: I would
+have given my life to save him." She only replied, "If you had consented
+to bide at home the child would be living."
+
+Nay, I thought, if she had not looked at me--But of that I said nothing.
+I kept the memory of that woman in my heart, and went night and day
+about the lake and the river and the marshes of Sant' Aloisa. Once or
+twice I saw Taddeo Marchioni, the old count--a gray, shrunken, decrepit
+figure of a man, old, with a lean face and a long hard jaw--but of her,
+for days that lengthened into weeks, I saw nothing. There are fish in
+the Lagherello. I got the square huge net of our country, and set it in
+the water as our habit is, and watched in the sedges from dawn to eve.
+What I watched for was the coming of the vision I had once seen there:
+the fish came and went at their will for me.
+
+One day, sick of watching vainly, and having some good fish in the net,
+I dragged them out into the reeds, and pushed them in a creel, and
+shouldered them, and went straight to the gloomy walls of Sant' Aloisa.
+There were no gates: the sedges of the low lands went along the front of
+the great pile, almost touching it. Around it were fields gray with
+olives, and there was neither garden nor grass-land: all had been
+ploughed up that was not marsh and swamp.
+
+The great doors were close fastened. I entered boldly by a little
+entrance at the side, and found myself in the great naked hall of
+marble, empty and still and damp. There was a woman there, old and
+miserable, who called her master. Taddeo Marchioni came and saw the
+fish, and chaffered for them with long hesitation and shrewd greed, as
+misers love to do, and then at last refused them: they were too dear, he
+said. I threw them down and said to him, "Count, give me a stoup of wine
+and they are yours." That pleased him: he bade the serving-woman carry
+the fish away, and told me to follow him. He took me into a vaulted
+stone chamber, and poured with a niggard hand a glass of _mezzo-vino_. I
+looked at him: he was lean, gray, unlovely. I could have crushed him to
+death with one hand.
+
+These great old villas in the lone places of Italy are usually full at
+least of pleasant life--of women hurrying to the silk-worms and the
+spinning and the linen-press, of barefooted men loitering about on a
+thousand pleas or errands to their master. But Sant' Aloisa was silent
+and empty.
+
+Passing an open door, I saw her. She was sitting, doing nothing, in a
+room whose faded tapestries were gray as spiders' webs, and she was
+beautiful as only one woman is here and there in a generation. She
+looked at me, and I thought she smiled.
+
+I went out with my brain on fire and my sight dim. I saw only that
+smile--that sudden, momentary smile whose fellow had brought death to
+little Phoebus. And I felt she had known me again, though she had seen
+me but once, in my spangled coat of velvet and silver, and now I had my
+legs bare to the knee, and was clad in a rough blue shirt and woollen
+jacket, like any other country-fellow upon Tiber's side.
+
+As I was going out the serving-wench plucked my sleeve and whispered to
+me, "Come back a moment: she wishes to see you."
+
+My heart leaped, then stood still. I turned back into the house, and
+with trembling knees went into that chamber where the dusky tapestry
+mouldered on the walls. She looked at me, sitting idly there herself in
+the bare, melancholy room--a woman with the face of our Titian's Venus.
+
+"Did the child die?" she asked.
+
+I stammered something, I knew not what.
+
+"Why did you tremble that day?" she said, with the flicker of a smile
+about her lovely mouth: "you look strong--and bold."
+
+How the words had courage and madness enough to leap to my lips I know
+not, but I do know I said to her, "You looked at me."
+
+She frowned a moment: then she laughed. No doubt she had known it
+before. "Your nerves were not of iron, then, as they should be," she
+said carelessly. "Well! the people wanted to see something die. They
+always do: you must know that. Bring more fish for my husband to-morrow.
+Now go."
+
+I trembled from head to foot. I had said this bold and insolent thing to
+her face, and she still bade me return!
+
+No doubt had I been a man well born I should have fallen at her feet and
+sworn a midsummer madness: I should have been emboldened to any coarse
+avowal, to any passionate effrontery. But I was only a stroller--a poor
+ignorant soul, half Hercules, half fool. I trembled and was mute.
+
+When the air blew about me once more I felt as if I had been
+drunk--drunk on that sweet yeasty wine of a new vintage which makes the
+brain light and foolish. She had bade me return!
+
+That day my mother ate alone at home. When night fell it found me by the
+Lagherello. I set my nets: I slept in a shepherd's hut. I had forgotten
+Phoebus: I only saw her face. What was she like? I cannot tell you.
+She was like Titian's Venus. Go and look at it--she who plays with the
+little dog in the Tribune at Pitti: that one I mean. With all that
+beauty, half disclosed like the bud of a pomegranate-flower, she had
+been given to Taddeo Marchioni, and here for seven years she had dwelt,
+shut in by stone walls.
+
+Living so, a woman becomes a saint or a devil. Taddeo Marchioni forgot
+or never knew that. He left her in his chamber as he left the figures of
+the tapestry, till her bloom should fade like theirs, and time write
+wrinkles on her as it wove webs on them. He forgot! he forgot! He was
+old and slow of blood and feeble of sight: she was scarcely beautiful to
+him. There were a few poor peasants near, and a priest as old as Taddeo
+Marchioni was; and though Orte was within five miles, the sour and
+jealous temper of her husband shut her up in that prison-house as Pia
+Tolomei was shut in the house of death in the Maremma.
+
+That night I watched impatient for the dawn. Impatient I watched the
+daybreak deepen into day. All the loveliness of that change was lost on
+me: I only counted the hours in restless haste. Poor fools! our hours
+are in sum so few, and yet we for ever wish them shorter, and fling
+them, scarcely used, behind us roughly, as a child flings his broken
+toys.
+
+The sultry morning was broad and bright over the land before I dared
+take up such fish as had entered my girella in the night and bend my
+steps to Sant' Aloisa. Fever-mists hung over the cane-brakes and the
+reedy swamps; the earth was baked and cracked; everything looked
+thirsty, withered, pallid, dull, decaying: in the heats of August it is
+always so desolate wherever Tiber rolls. "Marchioni is out," said the
+old brown crone whom I had seen the day before. "But come in: bring your
+fish to Madama Flavia."
+
+It was a strange, gaunt wilderness of stone, this old villa of the
+Marchioni. It would have held hundreds of serving-men--it had as many
+chambers as one of the palaces down in Rome--but this old woman was all
+the servitor it had, and in the grand old hall, with sculptured shields
+upon the columns of it and Umbrian frescoes in the roof, she spread
+their board and brought them their onion-soup and their dish of _pasta_,
+and while they ate it looked on and muttered her talk and twirled her
+distaff, day after day, year after year, the same. Life is homely and
+frugal here, and has few graces. The ways of life in these grand old
+places are like nettles and thistles set in an old majolica vase that
+has had knights and angels painted on it. You know what I mean, you who
+know Italy. Do you remember those pictures of Vittorio Carpaccio and of
+Gentileo? They say that this is the life our Italy saw once in her
+cities and her villas: that is the life she wants. Sometimes, when you
+are all alone in these vast deserted places, the ghosts of all that
+pageantry pass by you, and they seem fitter than the living people for
+these courts and halls.
+
+"Madama Flavia will see the fish," said the old crone, and hobbled away.
+
+Madama Flavia! How many times has Tiber heard such a name as that
+breathed on a lover's mouth to the sigh of the mandoline, uttered in
+revel or in combat, or as a poisoner whispered it stealing to mix the
+drug with the wine in the goblet. Madama Flavia! All Italy seemed in
+it--all love, all woe! There is a magic in some names.
+
+Madama Flavia! Just such a woman as this it needs would be to fitly wear
+such a name--a woman with low brows and eyes that burn, and a mouth like
+the folded leaves that lie in the heart of a rose--a woman to kneel at
+morn in the black shadows of the confessional, and to go down into the
+crowd of masks at night and make men drunk with love.
+
+"Madama Flavia!" The name (so much it said to me) halted stupidly on my
+lips: I stood in her presence like a foolish creature. I never before
+had lacked either courage or audacity: I trembled now. I had been awake
+all the night, gazing at the dim, dusky pile of her roof as it rose out
+from the olives black against the stars; and she knew it--she knew it
+very well. That I saw in her face. And she was Madama Flavia, and I was
+Pipistrello the juggler. What could I say to her? I could have fallen at
+her feet and kissed her or killed her, but I could not speak. No doubt I
+looked but a poor boor to her--a giant and a dolt.
+
+She was leaning against a great old marble vase--leaning her hands on
+it, and her chin on her hands. She had some red carnations in her
+breast: their perfume came to me. She was surrounded by decay, dusty
+desolation, the barrenness of a poverty that is drearier than any of the
+poverty of the poor; but so might have looked Madama Lucrezia in those
+old days when the Borgia was God's vicegerent.
+
+At the haul of fish she never glanced: she gazed at me with meditation
+in her eyes. "You are very strong," she said abruptly.
+
+At that I could do no less than laugh. It was as if she had said the ox
+in the yoke was strong or the Tiber strong at flood.
+
+"Why are you a fisherman now?" she said. "Why do you leave your arena?"
+
+I shuddered a little. "Since the child fell"--I muttered, thinking she
+would understand the remorse that made my old beloved calling horrible
+to me.
+
+"It was no fault of yours," she said with a dreamy smile. "They say I
+have the evil eye--"
+
+"You have, madama," I said bluntly, and then felt a choking in my
+throat, fearing my own rashness.
+
+Her beautiful eyes had a bright scorn in them, and a cold mockery of me.
+"Why do you stay, then?" she asked, and smiled at the red carnations
+carelessly.
+
+"Because--rather would I die of beholding you than live shut out from
+sight of you," I said in my madness. "Madama, I am a great useless fool:
+I have done nothing but leap and climb and make a show. I am big and
+strong as the oxen are, but they work, and I have never worked. I have
+shown myself, and the people have thrown me money--a silly life, good to
+no man or beast. Oh yes, that I know full well now; and I have killed
+Phoebus because you looked at me; and my mother, who has loved me all
+her life, is old before her time through my fault. I am a graceless
+fool, a mountebank. When I put off my spangles and stand thus, you see
+the rude peasant that I am. And yet in all the great, wide, crowded
+world I know there does not live another who could love you as I
+love--seeing you twice."
+
+I stopped; the sound of my own voice frightened me; the dull tapestries
+upon the wall heaved and rocked round me. I saw her as through a mist,
+leaning there with both arms on the broken marble vase.
+
+A momentary smile passed over her face. She seemed diverted, not angered
+as I feared. She had listened without protest. No doubt she knew it very
+well before I spoke. "You are very strong," she said at length. "Strong
+men are always feeble--somewhere. If the count Taddeo heard you he
+would--" Then some sudden fancy struck her, and she laughed aloud, her
+bright red lips all tremulous and convulsed with laughter. "What could
+he do? You could crush him with one hand, as you could crush a newt!
+Poor Taddeo! did he not beat your fish down, give you watered wine, the
+rinsings of the barrel, yesterday? That is Taddeo always."
+
+She laughed again, but there was something so cruel in that laughter
+that it held me mute. I dared not speak to her. I stood there stupidly.
+
+"Do you know that he is rich?" she said abruptly, gnawing with her
+lovely teeth the jagged leaf of one of her carnations. "Yes, he is rich,
+Taddeo. That is why my father sold me to him. Taddeo is rich: he has
+gold in the ground, in the trees, in the rafters and the stones of the
+house; he has gold in Roman banks; he has gold in foreign scrip, and in
+ships, and in jewels, and in leases: he is rich. And he lives like a
+gray spider in the cellar-corner. He shuts me up here. We eat black
+bread, we see no living soul: once in the year or so I go to Orte or to
+Penna. And I am twenty-three years old, and I can read my own face in
+the mirror." She paused; her breast heaved, her beautiful low brows drew
+together in bitter fury at her fate: she had no thought of me.
+
+I waited, mute. I did not dare to speak.
+
+It was all true: she was the wife of Taddeo Marchioni, shut here as in a
+prison, with her youth passing and her loveliness unseen, and her angry
+soul consuming itself in its own fires. I loved her: what use was that
+to her--a man who had naught in all the world but the strength of his
+sinews and muscles?
+
+She remembered me suddenly, and gave me a gesture of dismissal: "Take
+your fish to the woman; I cannot pay you for them; I have never as much
+as a bronze coin. But--you may come back another day. Bring more--bring
+more." Then with a more imperious gesture she made me leave her.
+
+I stumbled out of the old dark, close-shuttered house into the burning
+brilliancy of the August day, giddy with passion and with hope. She knew
+I loved her, and yet she bade me return!
+
+I know not how much, how little, that may mean in other lands, but here
+in Italy it has but one language--language enough to make a lover's
+heart leap like the wild goat. Yet hope is perhaps too great a word to
+measure rightly the timid joy that filled my breast. I lay in the
+shepherd's hut wide awake that night, hearing the frogs croak from the
+Lagherello and the crickets sing in the hot darkness. The hut was empty:
+shepherd and sheep and dogs were all gone up to the higher grounds
+amongst the hills. There were some dry fern-plants in a corner of it. I
+lay on these and stared at the planets above me throbbing in the
+intense blue of the skies: they seemed to throb, they seemed alive.
+
+A mile away, between me and the stars, was the grand black pile of Sant'
+Aloisa.
+
+Christ! it was strange! I had led a rough life, I had been no saint. I
+had always been ready for jest or dance or intrigue with a pretty woman,
+and sometimes women far above me had cast their eyes down on the arena,
+as in Spain ladies do in the bull-ring to pick a lover out thence for
+his strength; but I had never cared. I had loved, laughed and wandered
+away with the stroller's happy liberty, but I had never cared. Now, all
+at once, the whole world seemed dead--dead heaven and earth--and only
+one woman's two eyes left living in the universe, living and looking
+into my soul and burning it to ashes. Do you know what I mean? No? Ah,
+then you know not love.
+
+All the night I lay awake--the short hot night when the western gold of
+sunset scarce fades into dark ere the east seems to glow luminous and
+transparent with the dawn. Ah! the sunrise! I shall see it once more,
+only once more! I shall see it through those bars, a hand's breadth of
+it above Tiber, no more; and when again it spreads its rosy warmth over
+the sky and reddens the river and the plain, I shall be dead--a headless
+thing pushed away under the earth and lime, and over my brain and skull
+the wise men will peer with knife and scalpel, and pour the plaster over
+its bones to take a cast, and say most likely to one another, as I heard
+them say once before a cast in a museum, "A good face, a fair brow, fine
+lines: strange that he should have been a murderer!" Well! so be it.
+Even though I lived for fourscore years and ten, the sun would nevermore
+rise for me as it rose before Phoebus died.
+
+At that time I lived only to see a shadow on the barred windows, a hand
+open a lattice, a veiled head glide by through the moonbeams. I was
+wretched, yet never had I been so happy. The bolt of the gods stuns as
+it falls, but it intoxicates also.
+
+I had been such a fool! such a fool! When she had said so much I had
+said nothing: that last moment haunted me with unending pain. If I had
+been bolder, if I had only known what to answer, if I had only seized
+her in my arms and kissed her! It would have been better to have had
+that one moment, and have died for it, than have been turned out of her
+presence like a poor cowardly clod.
+
+I cannot tell how the long hot days went on: they were days of drought
+to the land, but they were days of paradise to me. The fever-mists were
+heavy and the peasants sickened. Tiber was low, and had fetid odors as
+its yellow shallows dried up in the sun, clouds of gnats hovered over
+the Lagherello and its beds of rushes, and the sullen wind blew always
+from the south-east, bringing the desert sand with it. But to me this
+sickly summer was so fair that I continued to live in the absent
+shepherd's empty hut. I continued to net the fish when I could, and now
+and again I saw her. I lived only in the hope of seeing her face. She
+had the evil eye. Well, let it rest on me and bring me all woe, so that
+only I might live in its light one day! So I said in my madness, not
+knowing.
+
+I must have looked mad at that time to the few scattered peasants about
+the pool. I lived on a handful of maize, a crust of bread. I cast my
+nets in the water, and once or twice went up to Sant' Aloisa with the
+small fish, and was sent away by the crone Marietta. August passed, and
+the time drew nigh for the gathering of the grapes, ripe here sooner
+than in the Lombard and the Tuscan plains. But the vintage of Sant'
+Aloisa was slight, for the ground was covered with olives in nearly
+every part. When they were stripping what few poor vines there were I
+offered myself for that work. I thought so I might behold her. There was
+no mirth on the lands of Taddeo Marchioni: the people were poor and
+dull. Fever that came from the river and the swamps had lessened their
+numbers by death and weakened those who were living: my strength was
+welcome to those ague-stricken creatures.
+
+The day of the gathering was very hot: no rain had fallen. The oxen in
+the wains were merely skin and bone: their tongues were parched and
+swollen in their muzzled mouths. The grass had been long all burnt up,
+and the beasts famished: the air was stifling, pregnant with storm.
+
+Amidst the sere and arid fields, and the woods, black and gray, of ilex
+and of olive, the great old square house rose before us, pale, solitary,
+mysterious--a mausoleum that shut in living creatures: it terrified me.
+
+Night fell as the last wagon, loaded with the last casks of grapes,
+rolled slowly with heavy grinding wheels toward the cellars of Sant'
+Aloisa. With the wagon there were a few men enfeebled with fever, a few
+women shivering with ague. I walked behind the wagon, pushing it to aid
+the weary oxen. There was no moon: here and there a torch flickered in a
+copper sconce filled with oil. The courtyard and the cellar were of
+enormous size: in the old times Sant' Aloisa had sheltered fifteen
+hundred men. In the darkness, where a torch flared when he passed, I saw
+now and then Taddeo Marchioni coming and going, giving orders in his
+high, thin voice, screaming always, swearing sometimes, always
+suspecting some theft. He did not see me. He was entirely absorbed in
+his vintage and in the rebukes he hurled at his peasants. I drew back
+into the shadow, leaning against the column of the gateway, a huge wall
+blackened with time and damp. The bell of the old clock-tower sounded
+the nineteenth hour of the night. All at once the servant Marietta
+muttered in my ear, "Go in: she wants to speak with you. Go in to the
+tapestry-room on the other side of the house: you remember."
+
+My blood bounded in my veins. I asked nothing better of Fate. I glided
+along the old walls, leaving the central court and the master there
+absorbed in his work, and I found with some difficulty the little
+side-door by which I had entered the house before. I trembled from head
+to foot, as in that hour. I felt myself all at once to be ugly, heavy,
+stupid, a brute to frighten any woman--sweating from the labors of the
+day, covered with dust, poor and frightful in my rough hempen shirt,
+with my naked legs and my bare knees impregnated with the juice of the
+grapes. And I dared to love this woman--I! Loved her, though she had
+slain Phoebus.
+
+My mind was all in confusion: I was no longer master of myself. I
+scarcely drew breath; my head was giddy; I staggered as I went along
+those endless galleries and passages, as I had done that day when
+Phoebus had fallen on the sand of my arena. At last I reached--how I
+knew not--the room of the _arazzi_, scarcely lighted by a lamp of bronze
+that hung from the ceiling by a chain. In the twilight I saw the woman
+with the fatal gaze, with the lips of rose, with the features of
+Lucrezia, of Venus, the woman who in all ages has destroyed man.
+
+Then I forgot that I was a laborer, a peasant, a juggler, a wrestler, a
+vagabond--that I was clad in coarse linen of hemp--that I was dirty and
+filthy and ignorant and coarse. I forgot myself: I only remembered my
+love--my love immense as the sky, omnipotent as Deity. I fell on my
+knees before her. I only cried with stifled voice, "I am yours! I am
+yours!" I did not even ask her to be mine. I was her slave, her tool,
+her servitor, her thing, to be cherished or rejected as she would. I
+shivered, I sobbed. I had never known before, it seemed to me, what love
+could be; and it made a madman of me.
+
+All the while she said nothing: she let me kiss her gown, her feet, the
+stone floor on which she stood. Suddenly and abruptly she said only,
+"You are a droll creature: you love me, really--you?"
+
+Then I spoke, beside myself the while. I remember nothing that I said:
+she heard me in silence, standing erect above me where I kneeled. The
+light was very faint; the lamp swung to and fro on its bronze chain; I
+saw only the eyes of the woman burning their will into mine. She bent
+her head slightly: her voice was very low. She said only, "I have known
+it a long time. Yes, you love me, but how? How?"
+
+How? I knew no words that could tell her. Human tongues never have
+language enough for that: a look can tell it. I looked at her.
+
+She trembled for a moment as though I had hurt her. Soon she regained
+her empire over herself. "But how?" she muttered very low, bending over
+me her beautiful head, nearly touching mine. "But how? Enough to--?"
+
+She paused. Enough? Enough for what? Enough to deny heaven, to defy
+hell, to brave death and torment, to do all that a man could do: who
+could do more?
+
+"And I love you--I." She murmured the words very low: the evening wind
+which touches the roses was never softer than her voice. She brushed my
+hair with her lips. "I love you," she repeated. "For you are strong, you
+are strong."
+
+Kneeling before her there, I took her in my arms. I drew her close to
+me: I drank the wine of Paradise--the wine that makes men mad.
+
+But she stopped me, drew herself away from me, yet gently, without
+wrath. "No," she said, "not yet, not yet." Then she added, lower still,
+"You must deserve me."
+
+Deserve her? I did not comprehend. I knew well that I did not deserve my
+joy, poor fool that I was, mere man of the people, with the trestles of
+the village fair for all my royal throne. But, since she loved me, a
+crowd of ideas confused and giddy thronged on my brain and whirled madly
+together. Up above in the belfries and the towers in my infancy, with
+the clear blue air about me and the peopled world at my feet, I had
+dreamed so many foolish gracious things--things heroical, fantastical,
+woven from the legends of saints and the poems of wandering minstrels.
+When she spoke to me thus these old beautiful fancies came back to my
+memory. If she wished me to become a soldier for her sake, I thought--
+
+She looked at me, burning my soul with her eyes, that grew sombre yet
+brilliant, like the Tiber water lighted by a golden moon. "You must
+deserve me," she repeated: "you must deliver me. You are strong."
+
+"I am ready," I answered. I was still kneeling before her. I had at my
+throat a rude cross that my mother had hung there in my childish years.
+I touched the cross with my right hand in sign of oath and
+steadfastness. "I am ready," I said to her. "What do you wish?"
+
+She answered, "You must free me. You are strong."
+
+Even then I did not understand. "Free?" I repeated. "You would fly with
+me?"
+
+She gave a gesture, superb, impatient, contemptuous. She drew herself
+backward and more erect. Her eyes had a terrible brilliancy in them. She
+was so beautiful, but as fierce in that hour as the wild beast that I
+saw once at a fair break from its cage and descend amidst the people,
+and which I strangled in my arms unaided.
+
+She murmured through her closed teeth, "You must kill him. You are
+strong."
+
+With a bound I rose to my feet. In the burning night an icy cold chilled
+my blood, my limbs, my heart.
+
+Kill him? Whom? The old man? I, young and strong as I was, and his
+wife's lover?
+
+I looked at her. What will be the scaffold to-morrow to me, since I have
+lived through that moment?
+
+She looked at me, always with her sorceress's eyes. "You must kill him,"
+she said briefly. "It will be so easy to you. If you love me it will be
+done. If not--farewell."
+
+A horrible terror seized on me. I said nothing. I was stupefied. The
+gloomy shadows of the chamber surrounded us like a mystic vapor; the
+pale figures of the tapestries seemed like the ghosts arisen from the
+grave to witness against us; the oppressive heat of the night hour lay
+on our heads like an iron hand.
+
+A phantom parted us: the spectre of a cowardly crime had come between
+us.
+
+"You do not love me," she said slowly. She grew impatient, angered,
+feverish: a dumb rage began to work in her. She had no fear.
+
+I drew my breath with effort. It seemed as if some one were strangling
+me. Kill him! Kill him! These ghastly words re-echoed in my ears. Kill
+an old and feeble man? It was worse than a crime: it was a cowardice.
+
+"You do not love me," she repeated with utter scorn. "Go--go!"
+
+A cry to her sprang from my very soul: "Anything else, anything but
+that! Ask my own life, and you shall have it."
+
+"I ask what I wish."
+
+As she answered me thus she drew herself in all her full height upward
+under the faint radiance from the lamp. Her magnificent beauty shone in
+it like a grand white flower of the datura under the suns of autumn. A
+disdain without bounds, without limit, without mercy, gleamed from her
+eyes. She despised me--a man of the people, a public wrestler, a bravo,
+only made to kill at his mistress's order, only of use to draw the
+stiletto in secrecy at the whim and will of a woman.
+
+I was Italian, yet I dared not slay a feeble old man in the soft dark of
+a summer night, to find my reward on the breast of his wife.
+
+Silence fell between us. Her eyes of scorn glanced over me, and all her
+beauty tempted me and cried to me, "Kill, kill, kill! and all this is
+thine!"
+
+Then her eyes filled with tears, her proud loveliness grew humble, and,
+a supplicant, she stretched out her arms to me: she cried, "Ah, you love
+me not: you have no pity. I may live and die here: you will not save me.
+You are strong as the lions are--you are so strong, and yet you are
+afraid."
+
+I shook in all my limbs. Yes, I was afraid--I was afraid of her, afraid
+of myself. I shivered: she looked at me always, her burning eyes now
+humid and soft with tears.
+
+"In open war, in combat, all you wish," I said to her slowly. "But an
+old man--in secret--to be his assassin--"
+
+My voice failed me. I saw the light in the lamp that swung above,
+oscillating between us: it seemed to me like the frail life of Taddeo
+Marchioni that swung on a thread at our will.
+
+She drew herself upward once more. Her tears were burned up in the fires
+of a terrible dumb rage. She cried aloud, "You are a coward. Go!"
+
+I fell once more at her feet; I seized her by her gown; I kissed her
+feet. "Any other thing!" I cried to her in my anguish--"any other thing!
+But the life of a weak old man! It would be horrible. I am not a coward:
+I am brave. It is for cowards to kill the feeble: I cannot. And you
+would not wish it? No, no, you would not wish it? It is a dream, a
+nightmare! It is not possible. I adore you! I adore you! I am a madman.
+I am yours; I give you my life; I give you my body and my soul. But to
+kill a feeble old man that I could crush in my arms as a fly is stifled
+in wine! No, no, no! Any other thing, any other thing! But not that."
+
+She thrust me from her with her foot. "That or nothing," she said
+coldly.
+
+The sweat fell from my brow in the agony of this horrible hour. I was
+ready to give my life for her, but an old man, a murder done in secret!
+All my soul revolted.
+
+"But you love me!" I cried to her; and a great sob rose in my throat.
+
+"You refuse to do this thing?" she answered.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Then she threw me away from her with the strength of a tigress:
+"Imbecile! You thought I loved you? I should have used you: that is
+all."
+
+The lamp went out: the darkness was complete. I stretched my hands out,
+to meet but empty air. If I were alone I could not tell: I touched
+nothing, I heard nothing, I saw nothing. A strange giddiness came upon
+me; my limbs trembled under the weight of my body and gave way; I lost
+consciousness. It is what we call in this country a stroke of the blood.
+
+When my senses revived I opened my eyes. It was still night about me,
+but a pallid light shone into the chamber, for the moon had risen, and
+its rays penetrated through the iron bars of the high windows. I
+remembered all.
+
+I rose with pain and effort: the heavy fall on the stone floor had
+bruised and strained me. A great stupor, the stupor of horror, had
+fallen upon me. I felt all at once old, quite old. The thought of my
+mother passed through my mind for the first time for many days. My poor
+mother!
+
+By the light of the moon I tried to find my way out of this chamber--a
+chamber accursed. I gained the entrance of the gallery. Silence reigned
+everywhere. I could not tell what hour it was. The lustre from the skies
+sufficed to illumine fitfully the vast and sombre passages. I found the
+door by which I had entered the house, and I felt the hot air of the
+night blow upon my forehead, as hot now as it had been at noonday.
+
+I passed into the great open court. Above it hung the moon, late risen,
+round, yellow, luminous. I looked upward at it: this familiar object
+seemed to me a strange and unknown thing. I walked slowly across the
+pavement of the courtyard on a sheer instinct, as you may see a wounded
+dog walk, bearing death in him. My heart seemed like a stone in my
+breast: my blood seemed like ice in my veins. All around me were the
+walls of Sant' Aloisa, silent, gray, austere.
+
+My foot touched something on the ground. I looked at it. It was a thing
+without form--a block of oak wood or a slab of marble?--yet I looked at
+it, and my eyes were rooted there and could not look elsewhere. The moon
+shed a sinister white light upon this thing. I looked long, standing
+there motionless and without power to move. Then I saw what it was, this
+shapeless thing: it was the body of Taddeo Marchioni--dead, horribly
+dead, fallen face downward, stretched out upon the stones, a knife
+plunged into the back of the throat, and left there. He had been stabbed
+from behind.
+
+I looked, I saw, I understood: it was her act.
+
+I stooped; I touched the corpse; I turned the face to the light; I
+searched for a pulse of life, a breath. There was none: he was dead. A
+single blow had been given, and the blow had been sure. A ghastly
+grimace distended the thin lips of the toothless mouth; the eyes were
+starting from their orbits; the hands were clenched: it had been a death
+swift, silent, violent, terrible.
+
+I drew out the knife, deep buried in the bone of the throat below the
+skull. It was my knife, the same with which I had slashed asunder the
+boughs of the vines in the day just gone in the vintage-fields. She had
+taken it, no doubt, from my girdle when I had fallen at her feet.
+
+"I understand," I said to the dead man: "it is her work."
+
+The dead mouth seemed to laugh.
+
+A casement opened on the court. A voice cried aloud. The voice was hers:
+it cried for help. From the silent dwelling came a sound of hurrying
+feet: the flame of a torch borne in a peasant's hand fell red on the
+livid moonlight.
+
+She came with naked feet, with unloosed hair, as though roused from her
+bed, beautiful in her disarray, and crying aloud, "An assassin! an
+assassin!"
+
+I understood all. She meant to send me to the scaffold in her place. It
+was my knife: that would be testimony enough for a tribunal. Justice is
+blind.
+
+She cried aloud: they seized me, and the dead man lay between us,
+stretched on the stones and bathed in blood. I looked at her: she did
+not tremble.
+
+But she had forgotten that I was strong--strong with the strength of the
+lion, of the bull, of the eagle. She had forgotten. With a gesture I
+flung far away from me, against the walls, the men who had seized me:
+with a bound I sprang upon her. I took her in my arms in her naked
+loveliness, scarcely veiled by the disordered linen, by the loosened
+hair, and shining like marble in the glisten of the moon. I seized her
+in my arms; I kissed her on her lips; I pressed against my heart her
+beautiful white bosom. Then between her two breasts I plunged my knife,
+red with the blood of her dead lord. "I avenge Phoebus," I said to
+her.
+
+Now you know why to-morrow they will kill me, why my mother is mad.
+
+Hush! I am tired. Let me sleep in peace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And on the morrow he slept.
+
+OUIDA.
+
+
+
+
+STUDIES IN THE SLUMS.
+
+
+III.--NAN; OR, A GIRL'S LIFE.
+
+"An' this one? Lord have mercy on her, an' forgive me for saying it the
+way I do every time I look at her! It comes out of itself, an' there's
+times when I could think for a minute that He will; an' then it comes
+over me like a blackness on everything that her chance is gone. Look at
+that one by her. Ain't he a rough? Ain't he just fit for the Rogues'
+Gallery, an' nowhere else? And yet--Well, it's a long story, an' you
+won't want to hear it all."
+
+"Every word," I said. "For once, we are all alone, and the rain pours
+down so nobody is likely to interrupt. Such a face as that could hardly
+help having a story, and a strange one."
+
+"The most of it happens often enough, but I'll tell you. You think it's
+pretty, but that black an' white thing doesn't tell much. If you could
+once have looked at her, you'd have wanted to do something, same as
+'most everybody did when the time for doin' was over. Let me get my bit
+of work, an' then I'll tell you."
+
+It was in the "McAuley Mission-parlor." The street below, cleared by the
+pouring rain, was comparatively silent, though now and then a sailor
+swung by unmindful of wet, or the sound of a banjo came from the
+tenement-houses opposite. Below us, in the chapel, the janitor scrubbed
+vigorously to the tune which seems for some unknown reason to be always
+a powerful motive-power,
+
+    "I'm goin' home, no more to roam,"
+
+the brush coming down with a whack at each measure. In my hands was the
+mission album, a motley collection of faces, as devoid of Nature or any
+clew to the real characteristics of the owners as the average photograph
+usually is, but here and there one with a suggestion of interest and, in
+this special case, of beauty--a delicate, pensive face, with a mass of
+floating hair, deep, dark eyes, and exquisite curves in cheek and lip
+and chin--the face of some gently born and nurtured maiden, looking
+dreamily out upon a world which thus far, at least, could have shown her
+only its tender, never its cruel or unfriendly, side, and not, as its
+place would indicate, that of one who had somehow and at some strange
+time found a home in these slums. Beauty of a vulgar, striking sort is
+common enough there--vivid coloring, even a sparkle and light poverty
+has had no power to kill--but this face had no share in such dower, and
+the dark, soft eyes had a compelling power which made mine search them
+for their secret,--not theirs, after all, it might prove, but only a
+gift from some remote ancestor, who could transmit outline, and even
+expression, but not the soul that had made them.
+
+Mrs. McAuley slipped the picture from its place as she sat down by me
+again. "I ought to have done that long ago," she said. "Jerry is always
+telling me I've no business to keep it where everybody can look at it
+an' ask about her; an' I hadn't, indeed, for it brings up a time I'd
+hardly think or talk about unless I had to for some good. I'll put it
+away with two or three more I keep for myself; an' Jerry'll be glad of
+it, for he hates to think of her, 'most as much as I do.
+
+"Her father and mother? Ah, that's it: if she'd had _them_! But, you
+see, her mother was a young thing that wasn't used to roughing it, an'
+this Nan only a baby then. They were decent English folks, an' he looked
+like a gentleman; but all we know was that she died of ship-fever on the
+passage over, an' was buried at sea; an' he had it too, an' came 'most
+as nigh dyin', an' just had strength to crawl ashore with Nan in his
+arms. He'd a cousin in the Bowery, a woman that kept a little store for
+notions, but didn't make any headway on account of two drinkin' sons;
+an' he went to her, an' just fell on the floor before he'd half finished
+his story. She put him to bed, and, though the sons swore he shouldn't
+stay, an' said they'd chuck him out on the sidewalk, she had her way. It
+didn't take him long to die, an' he'd a good bit of money that
+reconciled them; but when he was gone there was the baby, just walkin'
+an' toddlin' into everything, an' would scream if Pete came near her. He
+was the oldest, an' he hated her worse than poison, an' about once in so
+often he'd swear he'd send her to the orphan asylum or anywhere that
+she'd be out of his sight. Jack didn't care one way or another, but the
+mother was just bound up in the little thing; an' she was, they said,
+just that wonderful-lookin' that people stopped an' stared at her. Her
+eyes weren't black, as they look there, but gray, with those long curly
+lashes that looked innocent an' baby-like to the very last minute; and
+her hair--oh, you never saw such hair! Not bleached out, as they do it
+now, to a dead yellow, but a pure gold-color, an' every thread of it
+alive. I've taken hold of it many a time to see it curl round my finger,
+an' the little rings of it lying round her forehead; an' her face to the
+last as pure-lookin' as a pearl--clear an' soft, you know--an', when I
+saw her first, with a little color in her cheeks no deeper than the pink
+in a pink rose.
+
+"Now, it'll seem to you like a bit out of the _Police Gazette_ or those
+horrid story-papers, but, do you know, when she wasn't three Pete came
+home one night just drunk enough to be cunnin', an' he said, after he'd
+had his supper, he wanted to take the child a little way, only round the
+corner, to show her to some friends of his. Mrs. Simpson said
+No--whoever wanted to see her could come there, but she shouldn't let
+her be taken round. The shop-bell rang that minute, an' she went out. It
+wasn't ten minutes, but when she came back Pete an' the child weren't
+there. She ran to the door an' looked up an' down the street, but it was
+twelve years before she ever saw that child again. Pete was gone a week,
+an' when he come home not a word would he say but that the child was
+safe enough, an' he'd had enough of her round under foot. They had high
+words. She told him he should never have another cent till Nan was
+brought back, an' he went out swearin' an' cursin', to be brought home
+in half an hour past any tellin' in this world. He'd been knocked down
+an' run over by a fire-engine, an', though there was life enough left to
+look at his mother an' try to speak, speak he couldn't.
+
+"Well, there was nothin' that woman didn't do, far as her money would
+go. She'd a nephew was a policeman, an' he hunted, an' plenty more, but
+never a sign or a word. She couldn't get out much on account of the
+shop, but whenever she did there wasn't a beggar with a child that she
+wouldn't stop an' look with all her eyes to see if it might be Nan. You
+wouldn't think anybody would take a child that way to be tormented with,
+when there's hundreds runnin' round loose that nobody claims; but, for
+all that, it's done. Not as often as people think. There's more
+kidnappin' in the story-papers than ever gets done really, but it _does_
+happen now and then. An' New York's a better place to hide in than
+anywheres out of it. I know plenty of places this minute where the
+police couldn't find a man if they hunted a month.
+
+"Pete Simpson took this child to a hole in the Five Points, rag-pickers
+an' beggars an' worse, an' gave her to a woman that took children that
+was wanted out o' the way. He paid her a dollar, an' said she could make
+enough out of her to pay for the trouble, she was so fair-lookin'. She
+was one of the women that sit round with a baby an' one or two children
+close to her, mostly with laudanum enough to make 'em stupid.
+
+"Nan was spirited, an' she screamed an' fought, but blows soon hushed
+her. She remembered, she's told me. She didn't know where she'd come
+from, but she knew it was clean an' decent, an' she wouldn't eat till
+hunger made her. Then there was a long time she came up with three or
+four that made a kind of a livin' pickin' pockets an' a turn now an'
+then as newsboys, or beggin' cold victuals an' pickin' up any light
+thing they could see if they were let in. Nan changed hands a dozen
+times, an' she never would have known where she come from if Charley
+Calkins hadn't kept half an eye to her. He was six years older, an'
+nobody knew who he belonged to; an' he an' Nan picked rags together, an'
+whatever trick he knew he taught her. They cropped her hair, an' dirt
+hid all the prettiness there was, but by ten she'd learned enough to get
+any bit of finery she could, an' to fight 'em off when they wanted to
+cut her hair still. She'd dance an' sing to any hand-organ that come
+along; an' that was where I saw her first--when she was twelve, I should
+think--with a lot o' men an' boys standin' round, an' she dancin' an'
+singin' till the very monkey on the organ danced too. I was in a house
+on Cherry street then, with some girls that played at a variety theatre
+on the Bowery, an' Nan by this time was so tall they'd made her a
+waiter-girl in one of the beer-shops. It was there the theatre-man saw
+her one day goin' down to the ferry. He thought she was older, for she
+never let on, an' she was tall as she ever was, an' her hair floatin'
+back the way she would always have it. She could read. She'd been to
+school one term, because she would, an' she had a way with her that
+you'd think she was twenty. So it didn't take long. The variety-man said
+he'd make her fortune, an' she thought he would; an' next day she come
+an' told me she had agreed for three years.
+
+"She didn't know there was work in it, but she soon found there was just
+as much drudgery as in the rag-pickin' or a beer-shop. But she had an
+ambition. She said she'd started here, an' she would stay an' learn
+everything there was, but she believed she should be an actress in the
+Old Bowery yet. That seemed a great thing to me in those days, an' I
+looked at her an' wondered if she knew enough, an' if she'd speak to us
+when she got there. She was so silent sometimes that it daunted us, an'
+then she'd have spells of bein' wilder than the wildest; but she said
+straight enough, 'I'm not goin' to stay down in this hole: I'm goin' to
+be rich an' a lady; an' you'll see it.'
+
+"The time came when she did get to the Old Bowery, an' the manager glad
+to have her too. The variety-man swore he'd kill her for leavin', for
+she drew at the last bigger houses than he ever had again. How she
+learned it all you couldn't tell, but the night we all turned out to see
+her in _The Rover's Bride_ you'd have said yourself she was
+wonderful--painted of course, and fixed off, but a voice that made you
+cry, an' a way just as natural as if she believed every word she said.
+An' when she came out the third time, after such a stampin' an' callin'
+as you never heard, with her eyes shinin' an' _such_ a smile, I cried
+with all my might.
+
+"It was the very next day. Charley Calkins was bar-tender in a saloon,
+but getting off whenever he could to see Nan act. That was another
+thing. She wouldn't take any fancy name, but was Nan Evans straight
+through--on the bills an' everywhere--an' every one she'd grown up with
+went to see her, an' felt sort of proud to think she belonged to the
+Fourth Ward. An' a strange thing was, that, though so many were after
+her, she never seemed to care for anybody but this Charley, that had
+knocked her round himself, though he wouldn't let anybody else.
+
+"Well, the old woman that had taken her first was dyin'. She was
+Charley's aunt, an' so she sent for him, for want of any other relation,
+an' told him she'd a little money for him, an' was a mind to give a
+little to Nan. Charley said, 'All right!' He knew she most likely had a
+good bit, for they often do, but then he said, 'You've always kept to
+yourself where you got Nan, an' I'm a mind to know.'--'Simpson's, up the
+Bowery,' she said; an' that was the very last word she ever spoke. She
+left thirteen hundred dollars in the Bowery Bank, an' it seemed as if
+there were odd sums in every bunch of rags in the room, so that Charley
+had enough to set him up pretty well. An' it didn't take him long after
+he started his own saloon near the theatre to find out, among all the
+Simpsons, the woman that had had Nan. She had her store still, an' a
+young woman to help her, an' she cried a little when Charley told her.
+But she was a member of the Mott Street Church, an' when she said,
+'Where is she now? and why don't she come herself?' an' Charley said,
+'She couldn't, because rehearsal's going on,' she looked at him.
+
+"'Re-what?' says she.
+
+"'Re-hearsal: she's an actress,' says he; an' she shut her eyes up as if
+the sight of him after such words was poison.
+
+"'I want nothing to do with her,' says she. 'I've had my fill of sorrow
+an' trouble from wickedness. You can go, an' say no more.'
+
+"This didn't suit Charley, for he knew how Nan kept herself sort of
+respectable even when she was with the worst, an' he was bound to find
+out all he could.
+
+"Well, he hung on an' asked questions till he'd found out all there was,
+an' that was little, as you know. But Nan had wondered many a time where
+she came from, an' if she'd ever belonged to anybody, an' he wanted to
+be the first one to tell her. He scared the old lady, for he wasn't long
+from the Island, where he'd been sent up for assault an' battery, an',
+do what you would to him, clothes nor nothin' could ever make him look
+like anything but a rough. But he was bound to know, for he thought
+there might be money belonging to her or folks that would do for her.
+There wasn't a soul, though, that he could find out, an' the next thing
+was to go to Nan an' tell her about it. They'd have been wiser to have
+waited a day, till the old lady'd a chance to quiet down and think it
+all over; but he went straight to Nan an' told her he'd found some of
+her folks; an' she, without a word, put on her hat an' went with him. If
+she'd been alone it might have been better, for Charley seemed worse
+than he was. The old lady was in the room back of the shop, neat as a
+pin, an' Nan looked as if she was looking through everything to see if
+she could remember.
+
+"An' when the old lady saw her there was a minute she cried again an'
+took hold of Nan. 'It's her very look,' she said, 'an' her hair an'
+all;' but then she stiffened. 'I've no call to feel sure,' she said,
+'but if you are Nan, an' want to be decent, an' will give up all your
+wickedness, an' come here an' repent, I'll keep you.'
+
+"'Wickedness?' Nan says, sort of bewildered--'repent?'
+
+"'I don't know as it would do, either,' the old lady said, beginning to
+be doubtful again. 'A lost creature, that's only a disgrace, so that I
+couldn't hold my head up, any more'n I can when I think how Pete went: I
+couldn't well stand it.'
+
+"'You won't have to,' said Nan, with her head high. 'I did think I'd
+found some folks, but it seems not;' an' out she went.
+
+"Charley shook his fist an' swore. 'Nice folks, Christians are!' he
+said. 'I like 'em,----'em! I'd like to burn her shop over her head!'
+
+"'Nonsense!' Nan said, as if she didn't mind a bit. 'I thought it would
+feel good to have somebody I belonged to, but it wouldn't. I never could
+stand anything like her shaking her head over me; but it's strange how
+I've always been hoping, an' now how I don't care.'
+
+"Then Charley told her she'd better go home with him: he'd got a
+comfortable, nice place, an' he'd never bother her. They'd talked it
+over many a time, but she'd held off, always thinking she might find her
+folks.
+
+"Marriage didn't mean anything to either of them. How could it, coming
+up the way they had? though she'd never been like the other girls. You
+can't think how they could be the heathen they were? Remember what
+you've seen an' heard in this very place, an' then remember that ten
+years ago, even, a decent man or woman didn't dare go up these alleys
+even by daylight, an' the two or three missionaries were in danger of
+their lives; an' you'll see how much chance they'd had of learning.
+
+"Nan wasn't sixteen then, an' she didn't think ahead, though if she had
+likely she would have done the same. She had her choice, but she'd
+always known Charley, an' so it ended that way.
+
+"Then came a long time when my own troubles were thick, an' I went off
+to the country an' lost sight of her. It was two years before I came
+back, an' then everything was changed. All that set I'd known seemed to
+have gone to the bad together--some in prison and some dead. Jerry was
+out then, an' we were married an' began together in the little room down
+the street; an' now I thought often of Nan. They told me Charley was
+drinkin' himself to death, an' that she was at the theatre still, an'
+kept things goin' with her money, an' that he knocked her round, when he
+was out of his head, the worst way. It wasn't long before I went to her.
+She looked so beautiful you wouldn't think a fiend could want to hurt
+her, an' her eyes had just the look of that picture. I told her how I
+had turned about, an' how happy we both were, in spite of hard times an'
+little work; but she listened like one in a dream, an' I knew enough to
+see that I should have to tell her many times before she would
+understand or care. But she seemed so frail I couldn't bear to leave her
+so. An' the worst of it was, that she'd begun to wish Charley would
+marry her, an' he thought it was all nonsense, an' swore at her if she
+said a word about it. She'd been gettin' more and more sensible, an'
+he'd just been goin' the other way, but she kept her old fondness for
+him. I said nothing then, but one day I found her cryin', an' her arm so
+she could hardly move it; an' it came out he'd knocked her down, an'
+told her she could clear out when she liked, for he was sick of her pale
+face an' her big eyes an' her airs, an' meant to bring a woman there
+with some life in her."
+
+"'Things don't come out as we plan,' she said. 'I was going to be a
+lady, but I forgot that anybody had anything to do with it but myself.
+An' now I can't go to any decent place, an' Charley doesn't want me any
+longer. See how nice it all looks here, Maria. I've fixed it myself, an'
+I've always been so glad that after the play was over I could come
+_home_--not to somebody else's room, but my own place--an' I never
+thought there was any reason why it wouldn't always be my place. Men
+aren't like women. I was true to Charley, and I'll never think of
+anybody else; but he says I must get out of this.'
+
+"Well, I wanted her to understand that I knew plenty would help her, an'
+I tried to tell her she could begin a different life; but she just
+opened her eyes, astonished at me.
+
+"'You think I'd go to one of those Homes?' she said. 'You're crazy. I
+can make my livin' easy enough at the theatre, even if I'm not so strong
+as I was. What have I done more than anybody, after all? Do you think
+I'd be pointed at an' talked over the way those women are? I'd throw
+myself in the river first! I've learned enough these years. I go to
+church sometimes, an' hear men in the pulpit talk about things I know
+better than they do. I've found out what the good people, the
+respectable people, are like. I've found out, too, what I might have
+been, an' that if I live a thousand years I never can be it in this
+world; an' that's one reason I thought Charley might be willing to marry
+me. But I shall never say anything more now, for, you see, it isn't
+goin' to make so very much matter. I had a bad cold in the spring, an'
+the doctor said then I must be very careful or I should go with
+consumption. See my arm? They said the other day I'd have to do
+something to plump up, but I never shall: I'm goin', an' I'm glad of
+it.'
+
+"'Then, if that's got to be, let it be goin' home,' I said. 'Nan,
+there's everything waitin' for you if you'll only take it. Come down to
+one of the meetin's an' you'll hear. Won't you?'
+
+"'I don't understand it,' she said. 'Everything's in a twist. Years an'
+years and never hear of God, an' not a soul come near you to tell about
+Him, an' all at once they say He loves you, and always has. Bah! If He
+loved, an' people think about it as they pretend, how dare they let
+there be such places for us to come up in? If God is what they say, He
+ought to strike the people dead that keep Him to themselves till it is
+too late for us ever to be helped. There! I won't talk about it. I don't
+care: all I want is quiet, an' I'll have it soon.'
+
+"I saw there was no use then, an' I made up my mind. I'd seen this Mrs.
+Simpson, for Nan had told me when it all happened, an' I'd gone to the
+store on purpose; an' I went straight there. 'I've come from Nan,' I
+said, 'but she doesn't know it. She's a dyin' girl, an' as you helped
+the father I want you to help the daughter. You're a Christian woman,
+an' the only soul belongin' to her, an' the time's come to do
+something.'
+
+"'The father was decent,' she said: 'I've nothing to do with
+street-women.'
+
+"'It's through your own son that she grew up to know no better,' I said,
+for I knew the whole story then, though nobody did when she was down
+there. 'It's for you to give her your hand now, an' not throw it up to
+her, any more'n the Lord when he said, "Go, and sin no more." She's in
+trouble an' sick, and doesn't know what way to turn, an' sore-hearted;
+an' if you would go to her in the right way you might save a soul, for
+then she'd believe people meant what they said.'
+
+"'She's the same to me as dead,' she said. 'I mourned her sharp enough,
+but it ain't in nature to take one again after they've been thought
+dead; an' you know they're straight from corruption itself. There's
+places for her to go if she's tired of wickedness, but I don't want to
+see her bold face, an' her head high, as if she was respectable. An' I
+don't want to be plagued no more. I don't deny I lotted on her before
+she was took away, but I never want to think about her again; so you
+needn't come nor send. I've said my say, an' I hope the Lord will save
+her.'
+
+"'It's good He's more merciful than His creatures,' I said; an' I went
+away more angry than I ever want to get. I couldn't quite make it out--I
+can't to this day--how she could mourn so over the child, an' yet never
+have a thought for all the years she'd had to suffer.
+
+"There came a month that everything crowded. I thought of Nan, but
+couldn't go up, till one day Tom Owens came in--you know him--an' he
+said, 'It's all up with Charley Calkins.'
+
+"'How?' I said.
+
+"'Smallpox,' he said, 'an' Nan's dropped everything to nurse him. She'd
+left there, they said, an' the woman he brought in to take her place
+cut the minute she found he had the smallpox. He won't live, they say.'
+
+"This was before they were so particular about carrying them off to
+hospital. The house was cleared an' the saloon shut up, but Nan was
+allowed to stay because she'd been exposed anyway, an' it was no use to
+send her off. He had it the worst way, an' he'd scream an' swear he
+wouldn't die, an' strike out at her, though he couldn't see, his face
+and eyes bein' all closed up. It didn't last but a week, and then he
+died, but Nan hadn't taken off her clothes or hardly slept one instant.
+He was stupid at the last, an' when she saw he was gone she fell on the
+floor in a faint; an' when she come to the blood poured from her mouth,
+an' all they could do was to take her off to the hospital. She didn't
+take the smallpox, but it was a good while before she could be let to
+see anybody. When they thought it was safe she sent for me, but it was
+hard to think it could be the same Nan I'd known. Every breath come with
+pain, and she was wasted to a shadow, but she smiled at me an' drew me
+down to kiss her. 'You see, I sha'n't be troubled or make trouble much
+longer,' she said, 'but oh, if I only could rest!'
+
+"Poor soul! She couldn't breathe lyin' down, nor sleep but a bit at a
+time, an' it was awful to have her goin' so, an' she not twenty.
+
+"I knelt down by her. She had a little room to herself, for she had some
+money yet, and I prayed till I couldn't speak for crying. 'Nan, Nan!' I
+said, 'you're goin' straight to the next world, an' you've got to be
+judged. What will you do without a Saviour? Try to think about it.'
+
+"She patted my hand as if I were the one to be quieted. 'Don't bother,'
+she said: 'I don't mind, an' you mustn't. If He's as good as you say
+He'll see that it's all right. I'm too tired to care: I only want to get
+through. There's nothing to live for, an' I'm glad it's 'most over. I
+want you to come every day, for it won't be long.'
+
+"'Let me bring Jerry,' I said, but she only laughed. She'd known him at
+his hardest, an' couldn't realize he might be different; but after a
+week or two she let him come, an' she'd lie an' listen with a sort of
+wonder as she watched him. But nothing seemed to take hold of her. She
+looked like a flower lyin' there, an' you'd think her only a child, for
+they'd cut her hair, and it lay in little rings all over her head; an'
+Jerry just cried over her, to think that unless she hearkened she was
+lost. She liked to be read to, but you couldn't make her believe,
+somehow, that any of it was real. 'I'd believe it if I could,' she said,
+'but why should I? I don't see why you do. It sounds good, but it
+doesn't seem to mean anything. Why hasn't anybody ever told me before?'
+
+"'Try to believe, only try!' I'd say. 'Ask God to make you. He can, and
+He will if you only ask;' but all she'd say was, 'I don't seem to care
+enough. How can I? If it is true He will see about it.'
+
+"That was only a day or two before the end. The opium, maybe, hindered
+her thinkin', but she looked quiet an' no sign of trouble between the
+coughing-times. The last night of all I stayed with her. They said she
+would go at daybreak, an' I sat an' watched an' prayed, beggin' for one
+word or sign that the Lord heard us. It never came, though. She opened
+her eyes suddenly from a half sleep, and threw out her hands. I took
+one, but she did not know me. She looked toward the east and smiled.
+'Why! are you coming for me?' she said, and then fell back, but that
+look stayed--a smile as sweet as was ever on a mortal face. An' that's
+why I never can help sayin', 'Lord have mercy on her!' and do you wonder
+even when I know better? But--"
+
+HELEN CAMPBELL.
+
+
+
+
+MY TREASURE.
+
+
+    Under the sea my treasure lies--
+    Only a pair of starry eyes,
+    That looked out from their azure skies
+    With innocent wonder, sweet surprise,
+    That they should have strayed from Paradise.
+
+    Under the sea lies my treasure low--
+    Little white hands like flakes of snow,
+    Once soft and warm; and I loved them so!
+    Ah! the tide will come and the tide will go,
+    But their tender touch I shall never know.
+
+    Under the sea--oh, wealth most rare!--
+    Are silken tresses of golden hair,
+    Each amber thread, each lock so fair,
+    Gleaming out from the darkness there,
+    With the same soft light they used to wear.
+
+    Under the sea--oh, treasure sweet!--
+    Lies a curl-crowned head and tiny feet
+    That in days gone by, when the shadows fleet
+    Were growing long in the darkening street,
+    Came bounding forth their love to meet.
+
+    And I sometimes think, as down by the sea
+    I sit and dream, that there comes to me
+    From my darling a message that none may see,
+    Save those who can read love's mystery
+    By Nature written on leaf and tree.
+
+    Strange things to my spirit-eyes lie bare
+    In the azure depths of the summer air:
+    Through the snowy leaves of the lily fair
+    Gleams her pure white soul, and I compare
+    Its golden heart to her sunny hair.
+
+    The perfume nestling among the leaves,
+    Or blown on the wind from the autumn sheaves,
+    Is her spirit of love, my soul believes;
+    And while my stricken heart still grieves
+    That gentle presence its pang relieves.
+
+    A shell is cast by the waves at my feet,
+    With its wondrous music low and sweet;
+    And in its murmuring tones I greet
+    The voice of my love, while its crimson flush
+    From her fair young cheek has stolen the blush.
+
+    Mid white foam, tossed on the pebbly strand,
+    I catch a glimpse of a waving hand:
+    'Tis a greeting that well _I_ understand;
+    But to those who see not the soul of things
+    'Tis only the spray which the wild wave flings.
+
+    The pearl's rare whiteness, the coral's red,
+    From the brow and the lip of my beautiful dead
+    Their soft tints stole when her spirit fled;
+    And it seems to me that sweet words, unsaid
+    By my darling, gleam through the light they shed.
+
+    Thus down by the sea, in the white sunshine,
+    While the winds and the waves their sighs combine,
+    I sit, and wait from my love a sign;
+    And a message comes to my waiting eyes
+    From under the sea where my treasure lies.
+
+H. L. LEONARD.
+
+
+
+
+ON SPELLING REFORM.
+
+
+The agitation for "reform" in English spelling continues, but, so far,
+without involving anything that can be properly called discussion.
+Discussion implies argument on both sides--a striking by twos. Most of
+the appeals to the public on this subject, whether through the
+newspapers and magazines or on the platform, have been made by the
+advocates of the movement. The other side, if another side there be, has
+been comparatively silent, uttering occasionally only words of dissent.
+I presume this follows a law of Nature: those who favor movement move,
+and those who desire peace keep it and are still. But it ought not to be
+inferred that the noise made by the "spelling reformers" is
+representative of the scholarship of the country, or that the silence of
+the conservatives indicates acquiescence in all the propositions
+suggested and urged by the radicals. There is much that can be said that
+has not been said. Some late announcements on the part of those who
+advocate the evisceration of the English language and literature are of
+a kind to call for some reply. I have no desire, at present, to enter
+into an elaborate discussion of the merits or demerits of the new
+departure in literature. The present agitation is only a skirmish, and
+ought not to be dignified by the title of a battle: whether we shall
+have a battle on this skirmish-line remains to be seen.
+
+In the January number of the _Princeton Review_ there appeared a paper
+from the pen of Professor Francis A. March in commendation of the
+"reform." The professor is one of the most active as well as able of
+those who have spoken on that side, and, while he incidentally and
+modestly crowns Mr. George P. Marsh as chief of the movement, his
+fellow-soldiers, if they are wise, will bestow the crown upon him. In
+the article referred to the professor emphasizes his earnestness by
+securing the printing of his admirable paper in the peculiar orthography
+he advocates. This orthography is practically the same as that advocated
+and contended for by the American Philological Association and the
+Spelling-Reform Association. Any criticism, therefore, of the peculiar
+orthography of the professor's paper is a criticism of the adopted
+orthography of the whole body of "reformers," so far as they are agreed,
+for in some details they still disagree.
+
+The readers of the professor's paper will notice that in a large number
+of words the usual terminal _ed_ is changed to _t_. This is in
+accordance with one of the rules recommended by the Spelling-Reform
+Association and laid down authoritatively by the American Philological
+Association. The phraseology of the rule is to make the substitution
+where-ever the final _ed_ "has the sound of _t_." It is to the
+professor's application of this rule that I now desire to call the
+attention of the reader. The "reformers" write _broacht, ceast,
+distinguisht, establisht, introduct, past, prejudict, pronounct, rankt,
+pluckt, learnt, reduct, spelt, trickt, uneartht_, and assert that they
+write the words as they pronounce them. In the rule given by the A.P.A.
+for the substitution of _ed_ for _t_, _lasht_ and _imprest_ are given as
+examples.
+
+All of us are undoubtedly aware of the ease with which the sound
+represented by _ed_ can be reduced to a _t_-sound in vocalization. But
+even if the sound of _t_ is given at the termination of the words named,
+not much is gained by the "reform" in the actual use of the words. On
+the contrary, it adds another tangle in the skein which children at
+school must untangle. It either forms another class of regular verbs, or
+swells the already almost unmanageable list of irregular verbs. In
+either case it is shifting the burden from the shoulders of adults to
+those of children, already, as the reformers tell us, overburdened and
+overworked. When a man really and sincerely asks himself the question,
+"Do I pronounce _lashed_ as though written _lasht_?" and tests his own
+practice in that respect, it will not take him long to determine that he
+does not know. It requires a very delicate ear to make the
+determination. This may also be said of most of the words quoted above.
+The terminal _ed_ means something: it means what it purports to mean
+when used. The _t_ may have a meaning, but that meaning cannot accompany
+it when it acts as a substitute for _ed_. The common-sense view would
+be, in cases of doubt, to use letters with a significance you desire to
+convey by their use.
+
+In the paper to which I have referred Professor March informs us that
+"what _the scholars_ want for historical spelling is a simple and
+uniform fonetic system, which shall record the current pronunciation."
+This assumption is not accidental, I think, nor is the spirit of the
+Pharisee confined to Professor March. Nearly all of the advocates of
+this special "reform" assume the prerogative of determining who are and
+who are not "scholars." In the same paper the professor says: "The
+_scholars proper_ have, in truth, lost all patience with the
+etymological objection. 'Save us from such champions!' says Professor
+Whitney: 'they may be allowed to speak for themselves, since they know
+best their own infirmity of back and need of braces: the rest of the
+guild, however, will thank them for nothing.'" Again: "In conclusion, it
+may be observed that it is mainly among _half-taught dabblers_ in
+filology that etymological spelling has found its supporters. _All true
+filologists_ and filological bodies have uniformly denounct it as a
+monstrous absurdity, both from a practical and a scientific point of
+view." The professor also quotes approvingly Professor Lounsbury as
+saying that the "spelling reform numbers among its advocates _every
+linguistic scholar_ of any eminence whatever." Of course, these
+statements, whether made by Professor March or by the distinguished
+scholars whom he cites, are strong arguments. That the professor so
+considers them is attested by the logical conclusion drawn from them in
+the very next paragraph after the one in which they are given. There he
+says: "It may be taken, then, as certain, and agreed by all whose
+judgment is entitled to consideration, that there are no sound arguments
+against fonetic spelling to be drawn from scientific and historical
+considerations."
+
+We always forgive something to enthusiasts and reformers. They are
+expected to effervesce once in a while, and when they indulge in gush
+and self-appreciation it is taken as a matter of course. Whether or not
+it strengthens or weakens their arguments is yet to be determined. At
+any rate, the exhibit that is made of them and of their intemperance is
+furnished by themselves.
+
+There is an illogical argument for the new spelling drawn from the
+published facts of illiteracy. We are told that the last national census
+reports 5,658,144 persons, ten years of age and over, who cannot read
+and write, and this number is said to be "one-fifth of the whole
+population." The census of 1870 reports a total population of
+38,558,371, and a total of illiterates, ten years of age and over, of
+5,660,074, which is only 14-1/2 per cent. of the total population. This
+is nearer one-seventh than one-fifth. This "one-fifth" the professor
+compares with the number of illiterates in other countries in order to
+bring discredit upon the English language, showing by the comparison
+that there is a larger percentage of illiterates where the English
+language is spoken and written than in non-English Protestant countries.
+He reports illiterates in England at 33 per cent. of the population. "In
+other Protestant countries of Europe they are comparatively few. In
+Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway there are none to speak of; in
+Germany, as a whole, they count 12 per cent., but some of the states
+have none." Professor March asserts that "one of the causes of the
+excessive illiteracy among the English-speaking people is the difficulty
+of the English spelling;" and his argument proceeds on the assumption
+that this is in fact the main cause.
+
+Even if assent be given to the statement that the difficulty attendant
+upon the acquisition of correctness in English orthography is one of the
+causes of English and American illiteracy, the next step is to determine
+the force and efficiency of the cause in that direction; and this
+determination cannot be had on the basis of bald, unguarded and
+extravagant statements such as I have cited. The illiteracy of the
+American people must not be judged by the bare figures given above. The
+census returns furnish data for a more just discrimination. The
+statistician must not forget the item of 777,864 illiterates of foreign
+birth going to swell the grand total. This leaves 4,882,210 native-born
+illiterates--a percentage of less than 13. Of the native-born
+illiterates reported by the census returns, there are 2,763,991 reported
+as colored. This number is more than one-half the colored population,
+and also over one-half of the whole number of reported native
+illiterates. I think none of the reformers would insist that the
+illiteracy of the colored population ought to be charged to "the
+difficulties of English spelling "--I hardly need to state why: the
+reason will readily suggest itself to all.
+
+Eliminating from the problem the foreign and colored factors, we find a
+native white population in 1870 of 28,121,816, and native white
+illiterates, of ten years of age and over, to the number of
+2,102,670--less than 7-1/2 per cent. Of this number of native white
+illiterates, 1,443,956--two-thirds of the whole--are reported from the
+States lately known as Slave States. In these States, as is well known,
+there are peculiar reasons for the illiteracy of the white as well as of
+the colored native, outside of any consideration of the difficulty of
+mastering English orthography. This survey takes no account of the
+native children with foreign parents, as it would not materially disturb
+the percentage, nor of the populations of New Mexico, Arizona, Southern
+California and Colorado, all largely settled by Mexicans and Spaniards,
+among whom there is doubtless a larger percentage of illiterates than
+among the same number of native whites in the Northern States. If
+account be taken of all these elements, I think the percentage of
+illiterates proper to be charged up to the English language and American
+institutions would be reduced to about 3-1/4 per cent.
+
+The next consideration is as to the cause of this large percentage of
+illiterates among the native white population of the United States.
+Professor March ascribes it in part to "the difficulties of the English
+spelling," and he adds: "We ar now having ernest testimony to this fact
+from scholars and educators in England." He names Max Mueller and "Dr.
+Morell, one of Her Majesty's inspectors of schools," and quotes from
+both of them. Dr. Morell states that in some examinations for the civil
+service, out of 1972 failures, "1866 candidates were pluckt for
+spelling; that is, eighteen out of every nineteen who faild, faild in
+spelling." Max Mueller, as quoted, bears testimony to the fact that in
+the public schools of England 90 per cent. fail "to read with tolerable
+ease and expression a passage from a newspaper, and spell the same with
+tolerable accuracy." This is the substance of the "ernest testimony"
+from "scholars and educators in England." All this testimony has been
+previously given by the same "reformer" and by others without variation
+or corroboration. The facts stated seem to be isolated ones, as well as
+"grand, gloomy and peculiar." One swallow does not make a summer, nor do
+one eminent philologist and one uneminent educator make "scholars and
+educators." But when the testimony is carefully viewed, what does it
+amount to? Some of the very elements necessary in the consideration of
+the testimony are wanting. What was the extent of the failures by the
+candidates for civil service? Did they miss one word or more? Were they
+more deficient in spelling than in other branches? Of the 90 per cent.
+of the public-school pupils who failed, what is the class composing
+those pupils? Were they as deficient in other branches as in spelling?
+What were the newspaper passages selected for trial? What is meant by
+"tolerable ease and expression" and "tolerable accuracy"? According to
+the testimony itself, the reference of Max Mueller is to the "new
+schools" established since the late extension of education in England.
+Confessedly, then, this applies to classes of pupils who had formerly
+been deprived of educational advantages and privileges. It is a wonder
+that 10 per cent. were successful. The testimony furnished is more
+"ernest" than valuable.
+
+The state of education in Protestant countries where other languages
+than the English are spoken is taken as a conclusive argument for the
+efficiency of phonetic orthography. Denmark, Norway, Sweden and
+Switzerland are named as shining exemplars in this regard. It is because
+the languages of those countries are orthographic models that the people
+are so highly educated. The general fact is incontrovertible that among
+those people there is less illiteracy than among those who speak the
+English language. As Switzerland has no national language, the Swiss
+people should not have been named except in company with those others
+whose languages they use. But the bare fact of the smaller percentage of
+illiteracy among the people above named is not conclusive as to the
+retarding and depressing influence which the "difficulties of English
+spelling" have upon the spread of education among the American people.
+In Denmark attendance upon school for seven years by every child of
+school age is compulsory. The number of children of school age for 1876
+was 200,761, while the number in attendance upon the public schools was
+194,198, the attendance being 96 per cent. of the whole number of
+children of school age. In addition to the attendance upon the public
+schools, there were 13,994 in attendance upon private schools: some of
+these evidently were above or below school age. We thus see how
+efficiently the compulsory system is enforced. This system is not new to
+that country, but has been in existence for many years, and the results
+seem to justify the statement in the _Report of the Commissioner of
+Education for 1871_, that "even among the lower classes a remarkable
+knowledge of general history and geography, but more especially of
+Scandinavian literature and history," is found.
+
+In Norway, as in Denmark, from the eighth to the fifteenth year
+attendance upon school is obligatory. In 1866, of a total of 212,137
+country children of school age, 206,623, or more than 97 per cent. of
+the whole, were in attendance at school. In the towns and cities less
+than 1 per cent. failed to attend school. In Sweden compulsory
+attendance upon school is the rule. In 1868, of the whole number of
+children of school age, the average attendance amounted to 97 per cent.
+
+There is no general or national system of common-school instruction in
+Switzerland. Each canton regulates its own schools. There, as in
+Denmark, Norway and Sweden, attendance upon schools is made compulsory.
+In 1870 the attendance of children between six and thirteen years of age
+was between 95 and 96 per cent. of the whole school population.
+
+Now, what kind of a school system have we in the United States? Here, as
+in Switzerland, there is no general or national system of school
+instruction. Each State regulates its own schools in all details. In
+1870 the total school population, excluding the Territories, in the
+United States was 14,093,778; the number actually enrolled in the public
+schools was 8,881,848, or 63 per cent. of the whole; and the average
+daily attendance upon the public schools was 4,886,289, or a little over
+34-1/2 per cent. of the school population. An inclusion of the
+Territories in the computation does not vary the percentage in any
+appreciable degree. In the Northern States only, excluding the
+Territories, and excluding also Minnesota and Wisconsin, whose returns I
+have not at hand, there were 8,364,841 school population, while the
+average daily attendance was only 3,720,133, a trifle over 44 per cent.
+
+In the United States there is practically no compulsory attendance upon
+school. Schools are provided by the State, and the children attend or
+refrain from attendance as suits the convenience or wish of the pupils
+or their parents. That compulsory attendance upon school is productive
+of a wider and more thorough diffusion of knowledge is probably conceded
+by all. At least, educators so urge. What would Professor March have?
+Does he expect to find education as thorough and general among a people
+of whose school population less than one-half are in usual attendance at
+school, and less than two-thirds even enrolled as occasional attendants
+at school, as among a people with whom over 95 per cent. of the school
+population are in constant and habitual attendance? When we consider the
+published school statistics of this nation, it is no wonder that about
+one-seventh of the whole are unable to read and write. Shall we give no
+credit to compulsory systems of education, and still insist that the
+illiteracy of the United States is caused in any appreciable degree by
+the "difficulties of English spelling"?
+
+Early in 1879, Professor Edward North assured us that the Italians and
+Spaniards have discarded _ph_ for _f_ in _philosophy_ and its fellows.
+Professor March gleefully records that "the Italians, like the
+Spaniards, have returned to _f_. They write and print _filosofia_" for
+_philosophia_, and _tisica_ for _phthisica_. Professor Lounsbury, in his
+elaborate articles in _Scribner_ lately, commends the Italians for
+writing _tisico_ and the Spaniards for writing _tisica_. These of course
+are commendations of those peoples for the simplicity of their
+orthography, and they are mentioned as worthy examples for us. Yet we
+are not advised by either of the three professors named that the
+Italians and Spaniards are for that reason gaining upon the English
+people in intelligence, educational progress and culture. No statistics
+are advanced disclosing the narrow percentage of illiteracy found in
+Italy and Spain, and a comparison made between that narrow percentage
+and the wide percentage already advertised as existing in
+English-speaking states. If "the difficulties of English spelling" be a
+serious cause of illiteracy in England and the United States, the
+simplicity of the Italian and Spanish spelling ought to be a cause of
+high proficiency in literary and educational attainments among the
+people of Italy and Spain. A commendation of those two nations for their
+taste in discarding "Greek orthography" to be effective ought to be
+supplemented with some evidence of the usefulness of that operation.
+Unless so supplemented, the commendation can have no weight as an
+argument. The Anglo-Saxon race has not been accustomed to follow the
+Latins in literary and educational matters. The past and present
+condition of those two countries affords no guarantee that their
+adoption of the so-called simpler spelling is commendable. There are
+persons whose corroboration of a statement adds no weight to it with
+their neighbors. It adds no force to the arguments of the "reformers"
+that the Italians and Spaniards endorse them.
+
+The demand for "spelling reform" is based upon the assumption that the
+pronunciation constitutes the word--in other words, that the real word
+is the breath by means of which it is uttered. In the word _wished_
+philologists assure us that the letters _e d_ are remains of _did_, as
+if it were written _did wish_; and it certainly has that sense. It is
+proposed to substitute _t_ for the _ed_, because, we are told by the
+"reformers," the _t_ represents the sound given to those two letters. Of
+course the _t_ stands for nothing: it does not represent any idea. It is
+only a character, and its pronunciation only a breath, without any
+significance. The new word cannot mean _did wish_. The "reformers" must
+contend that _wisht_ is the real word, or their position cannot be
+maintained for an instant. If the word still remains _wished_--"_did
+wish_"--though pronounced _wisht_, their proposition to conform the
+spelling to the pronunciation is laughable. There can be no conformation
+and the old words remain. Whenever a change is made in a single letter
+of a word, the word is broken: it is no longer the same word. The new
+form becomes a new word, and there can be no objection to any one giving
+to it any significance he chooses. In a certain sense, and also to a
+certain extent, letters are representative, and are not the real words.
+Before the arts of writing and printing were invented the sound of
+course constituted the representative of the idea sought to be conveyed.
+The invention of the arts of writing and printing brought into use other
+representatives of ideas. The cuneiform characters and the
+hieroglyphics were representatives of ideas, though there could be no
+pronunciation of them. Letters came into use as representatives merely.
+In an age of printing it is hardly correct to say that they are only
+used to signify sounds. They are now more than that: they have become
+more important than the sounds even. They are now representatives of
+ideas, and not of sound. Modifications of pronunciation are taking
+place, and there are variations in the pronunciation of many words, but
+the word as written and printed is the arbiter.
+
+In the Sanscrit we find the verb _kan_ to see, and the later word _gna_,
+to know, as the result of seeing. The words are practically spelled
+alike, each beginning with a guttural sound. The latter could only have,
+at first, the idea of acquiring or possessing knowledge by sight. It is
+evident that the Greek [Greek: gignoscho] and the Latin _gnosco_ came
+directly from the Sanscrit _gna_, after the vowel between the guttural
+_g_, or _k_ and _n_, had been eliminated; and it is also evident that
+the _g_, or guttural sound, with which _gna_ and its Greek and Latin
+children began, was vocalized. The other branch of the Aryan family
+retained the vowel between the guttural sound and the terminal _n_.
+Hence we have the Gothic _kunnan, kaenna_, Anglo-Saxon _cunnan_, German
+_kennen_, to examine, to know. Hence, also, our _can_, to know, to be
+able; _cunning_, knowing, skilful; and _know_, to perceive, to have
+knowledge of. While we pronounce _know_ without the guttural sound, the
+word itself and the significance it embodies necessitate the continued
+use of the _k_. The sound of _know_, as we use it, gives no idea of
+sight or of knowledge or of ability. When we hear it articulated, and we
+understand that _know_ is the word meant, we then recognize the sense
+intended to be conveyed. We are able to do this because of our ability
+to construct and give arbitrary significance to new words, and to
+transfer the sense of an old word to one newly formed. When any word is
+used in speech of which the pronunciation does not correspond with the
+letters with which the word is written, we instinctively image the
+written or printed word in the mind, and others apprehend the sense
+intended. I am aware of a certain answer that may be made to
+this--namely, that illiterate persons are able to understand a word only
+from its sound as it falls on their ears; but I am speaking now of a
+civilized language as used by a civilized people, and illiterates and
+their language do not come under this purview.
+
+The movement inaugurated by Professor March and his associates
+contemplates the displacement of the _k_ or guttural sound from _know_
+and _knowledge_, both in writing and speaking. They say, in effect, if
+not in so many words, that because there is no guttural sound in the
+pronunciation, therefore there is none in the word. Some people say
+_again_, pronouncing the word as it is spelled: others say _agen_, as, I
+believe, Professor March does. These two classes mean the same thing,
+but it is quite evident that they do not say the same thing. _Ai_ cannot
+be the equivalent of _e_. To so hold would be to make "confusion worse
+confounded" in English orthography. By one class of literary people
+_neither_ is pronounced as though the _e_ were absent, and by another
+class as though the _i_ were not present. No one, I think, will contend
+for the identity, or even equivalence, of _i_ and _e_. If not identical
+or equivalent, they must be different. If _ai_ is different from _e_,
+then _again_ and _agen_ cannot be the same word, and if _i_ and _e_ are
+neither identical nor equivalent, _nither_ and _neether_ are two
+different words. The logic of the "reformers" would bring the utmost
+confusion into the language. It would make two separate words identical
+in significance. It would make into one word with four different
+meanings the four words _right, rite, write, wright._ The words _signet_
+and _signature_ are formed from the stem _sign_, and yet the stem when
+standing alone has a different vocalization from what it has when used
+in the derivative words. By the logic of the "reformers" the word _sign_
+when used alone is not the same as the same letters, arranged in the
+same order, when used in _signature, signet, resignation_ and the like.
+The word is changed, but the original significance remains. When a
+person responds, even in writing, "It is me," grammarians say he is
+incorrect--that he ought to say "I." But he means the person and thing
+he would mean if he said "I." He simply spells "I" in a different way.
+Is he not just as correct as he who writes _no_ when he means _know_? or
+he who writes _filosofer_ when he means _philosopher_?
+
+But Professor March dogmatically says that "fonetic spelling does not
+mean that every one is to write as he pronounces or as he thinks he
+pronounces. There ar all sorts of people. We must hav something else
+written than 'confessions of provincials.'" This may be understood as
+modifying the idea expressed earlier in the same paper, that the proper
+function of writing "is truthfully to represent the present speech." But
+the difficulties to be encountered in an effort to make the present
+speech homogeneous will baffle the wisdom of the reformers. I will not
+answer the question now--I will only ask it: What is the present speech?
+Who is to determine that? "The scholars formally recognize that there is
+and ought to be a standard speech and standard writing." I do not quite
+seize the idea embodied in the above-quoted sentences about writing as
+we think we pronounce and about "confessions of provincials." We may
+agree that there ought to be, probably, a standard speech, both spoken
+and written. That we have the standard written speech must be confessed,
+or did have until Professor March and his colaborers began the
+publication of their ideas in "bad spelling." The spoken speech is far
+from homogeneity. Some of the most pretentious scholars assume that we
+have a standard of pronunciation. That the standard is not adhered to,
+and is therefore, to all intents and purposes, no standard at all, is
+evident. The learned or college-bred use one pronunciation, and for that
+class that is the standard. Those who are deficient in education do not
+follow that standard. As the educated seem to drift naturally to centres
+of population, there is assumed to be a city standard and a country
+standard of pronunciation. The professor tells us that the country
+standard must be abolished, the city standard adopted, and then the new
+era will open out in beauty. Or does he mean, as his words are open to
+this meaning, that a spoken word is not _the_ word unless it is spoken
+in accordance with the city or college-bred standard? But sound is
+sound, by whomsoever uttered, and if the word is mere sound a provincial
+can make words as well as any one else. The proposition is, _the_ word
+is the word spoken and not the word written, unless the word is spoken
+by a provincial. To be _the_ word, it must be intoned and articulated in
+accordance with the intonation and articulation of the _literati_. If
+this is the logical outcome of the position taken by the "spelling
+reformers," then we know our soundings.
+
+We speak of _progress_ in connection with intellectual, moral,
+religious, social and political matters and civilization. In the use of
+the word we discard its true meaning, "stepping forward" in a physical
+sense. We cannot have an idea that the mind or the morals or the manners
+take steps. So when we say we will consider a matter we do not
+necessarily mean that two or more of us will _sit together_ about the
+matter. When we meet for _deliberation_ there is no process of weighing
+intended, no proposal to use the scales, in arriving at a conclusion in
+the matter we have in mind. We _say_ "stepping forward," "sitting
+together" and "weighing," but we _mean_ something else. When Professor
+Whitney, in the quotation I have given in the early part of this paper,
+says of the spelling conservatives, "They know best their own infirmity
+of back," he has no idea that the back has anything to do with their
+refusal to follow him in his chimerical ramble after an ideal
+orthography. When Professor March, in the paper from which I have
+quoted, says that "a host of scholars are pursuing the historical study
+of the English language," he means something more than, and different
+from, what his words indicate, and he certainly doesn't mean what his
+words do indicate. The matter of pursuit is altogether one of physics.
+These words of an intellectual significance which I have noted are so
+used because we have no words in our language which have meanings such
+as those we attach to them. We are obliged to take words of a physical
+and material significance and use them as intimations of the sense we
+wish to convey. As men take a material substance--gold, silver, ivory,
+wood or stone--and use it as an image or symbol of the deity they
+worship, so we use words of a material sense to express, in some faint
+degree, the intellectual and moral ideas we desire to disclose.
+
+The bald statement, expressed or implied, that the sounds we produce in
+our attempts to utter a word constitute the true word, requires some
+material modification, but to what extent it is not for me now to
+discuss. When that necessity for modification is admitted by the
+reformers, it is for them to survey its limits. They are the aggressors
+in the contest that is precipitated. They must outline and define their
+own case.
+
+There are many considerations favorable to a modification of the present
+spelling of several classes of words. A reform is needed, and must come,
+but it will not come, and ought not to come, with the character and to
+the extent desired by the "reformers." A reform that shall make the
+spelling better, and not merely make it over, should be aided by all
+admirers of the English language. The just limitations of that reform
+have not been indicated yet by any of the "reformers." That those
+limitations will soon be surveyed and marked I do not doubt.
+
+M. B. C. TRUE.
+
+
+
+
+AN OPEN LOOK AT THE POLITICAL SITUATION.
+
+
+Macaulay, in describing the rise of the two great parties which have
+alternately governed England during the last two centuries, traces the
+division to a fundamental distinction which "had always existed and
+always must exist," causing the human mind "to be drawn in opposite
+directions by the charm of habit and the charm of novelty," and
+separating mankind into two classes--those who are "anxious to preserve"
+and those who are "eager to reform." It seems to us extremely doubtful
+whether this theory, so neat and compact, so simple to state and so easy
+to illustrate, would suffice to explain all the struggles, great and
+small, that have agitated society, varying in character and
+circumstances, and ranging from fervent emulation to violent
+collision--from the ferment of ideas which is the surest sign of
+vitality to the selfish and aimless convulsions that portend
+dissolution. Applied to that condition of things by which it was
+suggested, the theory may be allowed to stand. The history of
+parliamentary government in England, in recent times at least, presents
+a tolerably fair example of a contest between two parties composed
+respectively of men who desired and men who resisted innovation--of
+those who looked forward to an ideal future and those who looked back to
+an ideal past. That the former should triumph in the long run lay in the
+very necessity of things; but, whatever may be thought of the changes
+that have taken place, no one would venture to assert that the contest
+has ever been conducted with purely selfish aims; that no great
+principles were involved in it; that the general mass of the voters have
+been the mere tools of artful leaders; that appeals to the reason, or at
+least to the interests or the prejudices, of the whole nation or of
+different classes have been wanting on either side; that at any crisis
+there has been no discussion of measures, past or prospective, no talk
+of any question concerning the honor or welfare of the country; or that
+victory has ever been achieved or contemplated by the employment of
+mere cunning or fraud. But in a state of things of which one might
+assert all this without fear of contradiction the existence of two
+parties, however evenly balanced, could hardly be accounted for by the
+sway in opposite directions of the charms of habit and of novelty and
+the natural antagonism between men who are anxious to preserve and men
+who are eager to reform. That such a state of things may actually exist
+there can be no doubt, since, if history had no example to offer in the
+past, one which is equally undeniable and conspicuous is presented by
+the United States at the present moment. Here is a people divided into
+two great parties, neither of which is anxious to preserve what the
+other would seek to destroy, or eager to reform anything which the other
+would leave untouched; no principle involving any question or policy of
+the present or the future is inscribed on the banner of either; no
+discussions are held, no appeals are put forth, with the object of
+convincing opponents, stimulating supporters, creating public opinion or
+arousing public sentiment: a great struggle is at hand, and all that any
+one knows about the nature of it is, that it concerns the possession of
+the government, and that the chiefs of the winning faction will reward
+as many as possible of their most active adherents by confirming them in
+office or appointing them to office--this being the one feature of the
+matter in which the "charm of habit" and "the charm of novelty" have a
+visible influence.
+
+We shall probably be told in reply that this state of things is only
+momentary; that there is now a suspension of arms preparatory to the
+decisive conflict; that on each side, while the great host of warriors
+is at rest, the chiefs are in consultation, counting up their resources,
+preparing the plan of battle--above all, selecting the generalissimo;
+and that when these arrangements are completed and the time of action
+draws near the trumpets will give forth no uncertain sound, banners
+emblazoned with the most heart-stirring devices will be advanced, and
+we shall fall into line according as our temperaments and sympathies
+incline us to join with those who are "anxious to preserve" or with
+those who are "eager to reform." It is of course certain that a few
+weeks hence the aspect will have changed in some respects: we shall have
+been told the names of the "candidates" whom we are to support or
+oppose; we shall hear all that can be learned or imagined about their
+characters and acts, and see them painted by turns as angels and demons;
+we shall also be reminded of the traditions which they represent or are
+figured as representing, and shall be assured that certain shibboleths
+and watchwords should be the objects of our veneration and certain
+others of our abhorrence, and that on our choice between them will
+depend the ruin or salvation of the country. But we shall be no wiser
+then than we are now in regard to any one measure or set of measures
+affecting the welfare of the nation, and tending either to preserve or
+to reform, which one party proposes to carry out and the other to
+reject. The proclamations of each will be full of promises and
+disavowals, but these, it is very certain, will not touch a single
+principle of the least importance which will be disputed by the other.
+Each party will parade its "record," its glorious achievements in the
+past, when it carried the country triumphantly through dangers in which
+the other party had involved it; but on neither side will any
+distinctive line of policy be enunciated, for the simple reason that on
+neither side has any distinctive line of policy been conceived or even
+thought of. Finally, it is not at all certain that the battle will be
+decided by the usual and regular methods of political warfare--that "the
+will of the majority" will be allowed to express itself or suffered to
+prevail--that fraudulent devices or actual violence may not ultimately
+determine the result.
+
+The inquiry naturally suggests itself how this state of things has been
+brought about--above all, whether it is, as many intelligent persons
+seem to suspect, an unavoidable outgrowth of democratic institutions.
+This, indeed, is a question important not only to us, but to all the
+civilized nations of the world, for there is nothing more certain in
+regard to the present tendencies of civilization than that they are
+setting rapidly and irresistibly toward the general adoption of
+democratic forms of government. The oldest and greatest of the European
+nations, after trying almost every conceivable system, has returned, not
+so much from a deliberate preference as from the breakdown of every
+other, to that which had twice before failed as an experiment, but which
+now gives fair promise of successful and permanent operation--a republic
+based on universal suffrage. In many other countries what is virtually
+the same system in a somewhat different form seems to be firmly
+established, and in these the ever-potent example of France may be
+expected at some more or less remote conjuncture to bring about the
+final change that shall make the form and the name coincide with the
+reality. England, which at one time led the van in this movement, has
+been outstripped by several of the continental nations, but its
+constant, though somewhat zigzag, advances in the same direction cannot
+be doubted, while community of race and former relations make the
+comparison between its condition and prospects and those of the United
+States more mutually interesting and instructive than any that could be
+instituted between either and another foreign country.
+
+We are aided in making this comparison by a lecture delivered recently
+before the Law Academy of Philadelphia, and since published as a
+pamphlet, in which form we hope it may obtain the wide circulation and
+general attention which it well merits. In a rapid sketch of the
+development and present working of the English constitution the author,
+Judge Hare, shows how the government, which, in theory at least, was
+originally a personal one, has come to be parliamentary and in the
+strictest sense popular, that branch of the legislature which is elected
+by the people having raised itself from a subordinate position "to be
+the hinge on which all else depends, controlling the House of Lords,
+selecting the ministers and wielding through them the power of the
+Crown." Hence a complete harmony, which whenever it is broken is
+instantly restored, between the executive and the legislature, the
+latter in turn being the organ of the public sentiment, which acts
+through unobstructed channels and can neither be defied nor evaded. In
+America, on the other hand, to say nothing of those organic provisions
+of the Constitution which render the executive and the two branches of
+the legislature mutually independent, and sometimes, consequently, out
+of harmony with each other, divergent in their action and liable to an
+absolute deadlock, the method by which it was directly intended to
+secure the result that has been fortuitously obtained in
+England--namely, the selection of an executive by a deliberative
+assembly chosen by the people--has been practically subverted and its
+purpose utterly frustrated. The Electoral Colleges do not elect, but
+merely report the result of an election. This, on the surface, is a
+change in the direction of a more complete democracy. What was devised
+as a check on the popular impulse of the moment has broken down, and the
+people have taken into their own hands the mission they were expected to
+entrust to a small representative body. But, while thus assuming an
+apparently absolute freedom of choice, they virtually, and we may say
+necessarily, surrendered to small, nominally representative, bodies the
+designation of the persons between whom the choice must be made. These
+bodies, unknown to the Constitution, not elected or convoked or
+regulated by any processes or forms of law, have taken upon themselves
+all the functions of the electors, except that it is left to the people
+to throw the casting vote. Now, whatever may be thought of the actual
+workings of this system, it seems to us to be in itself the result of a
+change as natural and legitimate as any that has taken place in the
+practice of the English constitution. The Electoral College was one of
+those devices which are theoretically simple and beautiful, but which
+have never worked beneficially since the world began; and we have
+perhaps some reason to be grateful that it was virtually superseded
+before it had time to become the focus of intrigue and corruption which
+was otherwise its inevitable fate. Since the choice of a President could
+not be remitted to one or both Houses of Congress--which would have been
+the least objectionable plan--and has devolved upon the people, some
+previous process of sifting and nominating is indispensable in order
+that there may be a real and effective election; and we do not see that
+any method of accomplishing this object could have been devised more
+suitable in itself or more conformable to the general character of our
+political system than that which has been adopted. Conventions
+representing the great mass of the electors and various shades of
+opinion might be counted upon to select the most eligible
+candidates--eligible, that is to say, in the sense of having the best
+chance amongst the members of their respective parties of being elected.
+For a long period this system worked sufficiently well. If the ablest
+men were not put forward, this was understood to be because they were
+not also the most popular. If the mass of the voters were not
+represented in the conventions, this was attributed to their own
+indifference or negligence. If a split occurred, leading to the
+nomination of different candidates by the same party, this was the
+result of a division of sentiment on some great question, and might be
+considered a healthy indication--a proof that the interests, real or
+supposed, of the country or some section of the country were the objects
+of prime consideration.
+
+We do not, therefore, agree with those who hold that our institutions
+have deteriorated, or with those who think that democracy has proved a
+failure. On the contrary, we believe that a simpler democratic system,
+with fewer checks and balances, would be an improvement on our present
+Constitution. The framers of that Constitution had two apprehensions
+constantly before their minds--one, that of a military usurper
+overthrowing popular freedom; the other, that of an insurrectionary
+populace overthrowing law and government. Experience has shown that
+neither of these dangers could be realized in a country and with a
+population like ours: the elements of them do not exist, nor are the
+occasions in the least likely to arise. The two great evils to which we
+are exposed are a breakdown of national unity and a decay of political
+life. The former evil--resulting from the magnitude of the country, the
+conflict of interests in its different sections, the State organizations
+and semi-sovereignty, and the consequent lack of that strong
+centralization of administrative powers and functions which, however
+much of a bugbear to many people's imaginations, is indispensable to a
+complete nationality--has threatened us in the past and may be expected
+to threaten us in the future. The latter evil threatens us now.
+
+If we turn to England, we see political life in its fullest vigor. The
+recent election called forth nearly the entire force of the voting
+population, and the contest was carried on with well-directed vigor and
+amid almost unparalleled excitement. Questions affecting both domestic
+and foreign policy, and felt to be vital by the whole community, were
+ardently, persistently and minutely discussed in public meetings and at
+the hustings; and the general nature of the issue indicated with
+sufficient clearness the maintenance of the old division throughout the
+bulk of the nation between a party anxious to preserve and a party eager
+to reform. Men of the highest character and distinction in every walk of
+life were among the most ardent participants in the struggle; but no
+crowds of office-holders and office-seekers opposed each other _en
+masse_ or were prominent in the struggle, the former having as a class
+nothing to fear, and the latter as a class nothing to hope, from the
+result. So far was the leader of the opposition from being suspected of
+a mere selfish desire to grasp the position to which in case of victory
+his pre-eminent ability and activity entitled him that it was altogether
+doubtful whether he would be willing to accept it. He and all the other
+men who marshalled or exhorted the opposing lines stood forth as the
+acknowledged representatives of certain principles and public measures,
+and in that capacity alone were they assailed or defended. The contest
+was decided by strictly legal methods; no suspicion existed as to the
+inviolability of the ballot-boxes or the correctness and validity of the
+returns; and the cases in which corrupt or undue influence was charged
+were reserved for the adjudication of impartial tribunals.
+
+No one supposes that the impending struggle in the United States will be
+of this nature. There is no question before the country involving the
+policy of the government or the interests of the nation. There are no
+leaders who are the representatives of any principle or idea. The ardor
+of the contest will be confined to the men whose individual interests
+are directly or indirectly at stake: the management of the contest will
+be wholly in their hands, and no security will be felt as to the
+legality of the result. Whatever display of popular enthusiasm may be
+made will be chiefly of a factitious nature. Such excitement as may be
+felt will be to a large extent of the kind which is awakened by a "big
+show" or an athletic contest. The general mass of the voters will no
+doubt fall into line in response to signals and cries which, though they
+have lost their original meaning, still retain a certain efficacy, but a
+great falling off from the old fervor and discipline will, we venture to
+think, be almost everywhere apparent. More intelligent persons will
+either stand aloof with conscious powerlessness or strike feebly and
+wildly from a sense of embitterment. The energy put forth will indicate
+disease rather than health; the activity exhibited will be not so much
+that of a great organism as of the parasites that are preying on it.
+
+It cannot be denied that there is in this country a natural tendency
+toward political stagnation. With the exception of slavery and the
+questions arising from it--which fill, it is true, a large space in our
+history, but which must be considered abnormal in their origin--there
+has never been any great and potent cause of dissension, such as rises
+periodically in almost every country in Europe, setting class against
+class, changing the form or character of the government and shaking the
+foundations of society. In England a gradual revolution has been always
+going on, and there have been several struggles even in the present
+century where a popular insurrection loomed in the background and was
+averted only by concession. Our institutions, on the contrary, have
+undergone no change and been exposed to no danger in any fundamental
+point. They were accepted by the whole people, and their stability was a
+subject of national pride. There were two great parties, each of which
+scented in every measure projected by the other a design to unsettle the
+balance between the States and the general government, but both claimed
+to be the guardians of the Constitution, and their mutual rancor was
+founded mainly on jealousy. But for the existence of slavery, and the
+inevitable antagonism provoked by it, there must have been a constant
+decrease of interest in political questions as it became more apparent
+that these could not affect the freedom and security which, coupled with
+the natural advantages of the country, afforded the fullest scope and
+strongest stimulant to industrial activity. The extinction of slavery
+was the cutting away of an excrescence: the wound under a proper
+treatment was sure to heal, and even under unwise treatment Nature has
+been doing her work until only a scar remains. Painful, too, as was the
+operation, its success has given the clearest proof of the health and
+vigor of our system, thus increasing the tendency to political
+inactivity and an over-exertion of energy in other directions. This in
+itself seems not to be a matter for alarm: if the latent strength be
+undiminished we can dispense with displays of mere nervous excitement.
+And, in point of fact, the latent strength is, we believe, undiminished;
+only, there is no general consciousness that it needs to be put forth,
+still less any general agreement as to how it should be put forth.
+
+What has happened is, that not only has the stream of political activity
+been growing languid, but its channel is becoming choked. The noisome
+atmosphere that exhales from it causes delicate people to avert their
+nostrils, timid people to apprehend a universal malaria, and many people
+of the same and other classes to assert that the sluices are not merely
+defective, but constructed on a plan totally and fatally wrong. Some
+bold and sagacious spirits have, however, taken the proper course in
+such cases by examining the obstructions and determining their nature
+and origin. According to their report, the difficulty lies not in any
+general unsoundness of the works, but in the failure to detect and stop
+a side issue from certain foul subterranean regions, the discharge from
+which becomes copious and offensive in proportion as the regular flood
+is feeble and low. In plainer words, we are told that the mode in which
+places in the public service are filled and held has made the active
+pursuit of politics a mere trade, attracting the basest cupidities,
+conducted by the most shameless methods, and putting the control of
+public affairs, directly or indirectly, into impure and incompetent
+hands. This view has been so fully elaborated, and the facts that
+confirm it are so abundant and notorious, that further argument is
+unnecessary. It is equally clear that the state of things thus briefly
+described has no necessary connection with democratic institutions. The
+spread of democracy in Europe has been attended by a gradual
+purification in the political atmosphere. The system of "patronage" had
+its origin in oligarchy, and wherever it is found oligarchy must exist
+in reality if not in name. Instead of being an inherent part of our
+institutions, it is as much an excrescence, an abnormal feature, as
+slavery was; but, unlike that, it might be removed with perfect safety
+and by the simplest kind of operation.
+
+Here, then, is a question worthy to come before the nation as an issue
+of the first magnitude. Here is a thing affecting the interests of the
+whole country which some men are anxious to preserve and which others
+are eager to reform. It remains only to consider how it can best be
+brought before the nation.
+
+We shall perhaps be told that it is already before the nation; that the
+account we have given of the nature of the approaching contest is
+incorrect or incomplete; that on the skirts of the two parties is a body
+of "Independents," carrying the banner of Reform and strong enough to
+decide the contest and give the victory to whichever party will adopt
+that standard as its own.
+
+Now, we have to remark that the tactics thus proposed have been tried
+twice before. Eight years ago the Reformers allied themselves with the
+Democratic party, which accepted their leader--chosen, apparently,
+because he was neither a Reformer nor a Democrat--and the result was not
+only defeat, but disgrace, with disarray along the whole of the combined
+line. Four years ago they adhered to the Republican party, having
+secured, by a compromise, the nomination of Mr. Hayes. Apart from the
+fact that Mr. Hayes was not elected, but obtained the position which he
+holds through, we will say, "the accident of an accident," his
+possession of the Presidency has not advanced the cause of Reform by a
+hair's-breadth. We do not need to discuss his appointments or his views
+or his consistency: it is sufficient to say that he has had neither the
+power nor the opportunity to institute Reform, and that no President,
+while other things are unchanged, _can_ have that power and opportunity.
+The truth is, that there is a great confusion, both as to the object
+they have to aim at and as to the means of accomplishing it, in the
+minds of the Reformers. They talk and act continually as if their sole
+and immediate object were to secure the appointment to office of men of
+decent character and ability, and as if the election of a particular
+candidate for the Presidency, or even the defeat of a particular
+candidate, would afford a sufficient guarantee on this point. They are
+"ready to vote for any Republican nominee but Grant," and, in case of
+his nomination, to vote, we suppose, for any Democratic nominee but
+Tilden--certainly for Mr. Bayard. It may be safely admitted that no
+possible candidate for the Presidency enjoys a higher reputation for
+probity and general fitness for the place than Mr. Bayard--one reason,
+unhappily, why he is not likely to be called upon to fill it. But,
+supposing him to be raised to it, what is one of the first uses he may
+be expected to make of it if not to turn out the solid mass of
+Republican office-holders and fill their places with Democrats? If Mr.
+Hayes, with whom the Reformers have been at least partially satisfied,
+had succeeded to a Democratic administration, can it be doubted that he
+would have made a similar change in favor of the Republicans? Is not
+every President bound by fealty to his party, consequently by a regard
+for his honor and reputation, to perpetuate a system which the true aim
+of Reform is to abolish?
+
+Even if we should concede, what it is impossible to believe, that a
+President personally irreproachable might be trusted to make no unfit
+appointments, this would not reach the source of the evils of which we
+have to complain, which lies in the _method_ by which appointments are
+made and in the _tenure_ by which they are held. So long as the system
+of "patronage" and "rotation in office" prevails, little real
+improvement even in the civil service can be looked for. But improvement
+of the civil service, important as it is in itself, is an insignificant
+object of aspiration compared with the general purification of political
+life, the elevation of the public sentiment, the creation of a school of
+statesmanship in that arena which is now only a mart for hucksters,
+bargaining and wrangling, drowning all discussions and impeding all
+transactions of a legitimate nature. The class who fill that arena and
+block every avenue to it cannot be dispossessed so long as the system
+which furnishes the capital and material for their traffic remains
+unchanged. It is a matter of demonstration that if the civil service
+were put on the same footing as in England and other European countries,
+the machinery by which parties are now governed, not led, public spirit
+stifled, not animated, legislation misdirected or reduced to impotence,
+and "politics" and "politician" made by-words of reproach and objects of
+contempt, must decay and perish. We are not setting up any ideal state
+of things as the result, but only such as shall show a conformity
+between our political life and our social life, exhibiting equal defects
+but also equal merits in both, affording the same scope to honorable
+ambition, healthy activity and right purpose in the one as in the other.
+We are not calling for any change in the character of our institutions
+or one which they afford no means of effecting, but the removal by a
+method which they themselves provide of an incumbrance which impairs
+their nature and impedes their working. No partial measure will
+suffice--none that will depend for its efficacy on the disposition of
+those whose duty it will be to enforce it--none that will be exposed to
+the attacks of those whose interest it will be to reverse it. The end
+can be secured neither by the action of the President nor by that of
+Congress. Reform, in order that it may endure and bear fruit, must be
+engrafted on the organic law, its principles made the subject of an
+amendment to the Constitution, in which they should have been originally
+incorporated.
+
+It may be urged in reply that the present action of those who desire
+Reform is of a preliminary character; that they are simply grasping the
+instruments with which the work is to be done; that the ultimate object
+can be achieved only in the distant future, when the nation has been
+aroused to a sense of its necessity. But the question arises, Is their
+present action consistent with their principles and suited to advance
+their purpose? When they stand between the opposite parties, dickering
+with each in turn, ready to accept any candidate but one that either may
+put forward, inciting people by the prospect of their support to violate
+their pledges, are they introducing purer methods or giving their
+sanction to those which are now in use? Will any nomination they may
+obtain by such means bring the question squarely before the nation?
+Would a President elected by their aid be recognized by the country as
+the champion of Reform? Are they more likely to "capture" the party with
+which they connect themselves or to be captured by it? If they give
+their aid to the Democrats, will they expect the Democrats in return to
+give aid to the cause of Reform? If they support a Republican candidate
+satisfactory to themselves, will not the lukewarmness or disaffection of
+large sections of the party ensure his defeat? If the "best man" on each
+side be nominated, are the Reformers secure against a division and
+melting away of their own unorganized and easily-disheartened ranks?
+Will the victory, in any case, be other than a party victory, leaving
+the fruits to be reaped and further operations to be planned by those
+who have organized and conducted the campaign?
+
+We know well that it is only in a distant future that Reform can hope
+for a complete and assured success. But it is in a distant future that
+the greatest need for it, and with that need its opportunity, will
+arise. Serious as are the present effects of the virus that has stolen
+into our system, its malignant character and fatal tendency are apparent
+only to those who have made it the subject of a careful diagnosis. This
+in part accounts for the apathy of the great mass of the people under a
+state of things which in almost any other country would lead to a
+profound and general agitation. Another cause lies in the consciousness
+of a power to remedy all such evils by peaceful and ordinary methods;
+and a third, in the present lack of any organization for applying those
+methods. This lack will be supplied, and the first step toward a remedy
+taken, when, instead of a body of "Independents" making no direct appeal
+to the people, treating alternately with each of the two existing
+organizations, and liable to be merged in one or the other, we have a
+Reform Party standing on its own ground, assuming a distinctive
+character, refusing any junction or compromise with other parties, and
+trusting to the only means consistent with its aim and capable of
+attaining it. Eight years ago there was a junction with the Democrats,
+four years ago a compromise with the Republicans, and one or other of
+these courses is the only choice presented now. This policy can lead
+only to defeat or to an empty and illusive victory, worse than defeat.
+
+Had a different policy been pursued in the past, the situation at
+present would, we believe, be a very hopeful one. It is impossible not
+to see that the existing parties are undergoing a disintegration which
+was inevitable from several causes, and which on one side at least would
+be far more rapid if a third party stood ready to profit by it. One
+cause of this disintegration is the natural tendency to decay of
+organizations that have lost their _raison d'etre_--that have ceased to
+embody any vital principle and consequently to appeal to any strong and
+general sentiment. Another is the disgust inspired by the base uses to
+which they have been turned--a feeling shared by a far larger number of
+voters than those who have already proclaimed their independence. A
+third lies in the feuds among the leaders and managers of each party,
+who, having no longer any principle to represent or any common cause to
+contend for, have thrown away all pretence of disinterestedness and
+generous emulation and engaged in a strife of which the nature is
+undisguised and the effect easy to foresee. Thus it is that outraged
+principles work out their revenge, making their violators mutually
+destructive, and clearing a way for those who are prepared to assert and
+maintain them. In the Democratic party the breach may possibly be
+skinned over, though it can hardly be healed: in the Republican party it
+must widen and deepen. The latter stands now in a position analogous to
+that of the Whig party when it made its last vain attempt to elect its
+candidate, and shortly after went to pieces, the mass of its adherents
+going over to that meagre band which in the same election had stood firm
+around the standard of Liberty. It is for the Reformers to say whether
+they will contend for the inheritance which is legitimately theirs. With
+a cause so clear they have no right to intrigue and no reason to
+despair. They have on their side the best intelligence of the country,
+and consequently at their command the agencies which have ever been the
+most potent in the long run. What they need is faith, concert and
+consistency.
+
+
+
+
+OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
+
+
+EDELWEISS.
+
+Everybody has heard of it, and those who have been in Switzerland have
+seen in the shop-windows, if nowhere else, or in the hat of the man who
+leads their horse over the Wengern Alp, the little irregular,
+star-shaped flower with thick petals that look as if they were cut out
+of white flannel. People may not be certain how its name is
+pronounced--may call it _eedelwise_, or even _idlewise_--but as to its
+habits every one is fully persuaded in his own mind; that is to say, if
+one person believes that it grows on rocks, another is equally sure that
+it blooms under the snow, while in either case there is apt to be an
+impression that it is found only in regions where the foot of the
+ordinary tourist may not venture. The writer has found it, however, in
+various places perfectly accessible to good walkers or where a horse
+could carry those not in that category. Edelweiss certainly likes to
+grow among rocks, on the brink of a precipice or down the face of it,
+and out of reach if possible; but it will also nestle in the grass at
+some distance from the brink, and may be found even where there is no
+precipice at all.
+
+The village of Zweisimmen is a quiet summer resort in the Upper
+Simmenthal, in the canton of Berne. The valley is green and peaceful,
+with chalets dotted over all the mountain-sides: the rocks of the
+Spielgarten tower on the one hand, the snow of the Wildstrubel closes
+the view to the south, where the Rawyl Pass leads to Sion in the valley
+of the Rhone, and, looking northward, the mountains grow more and more
+blue and distant in the direction of Thun. From Zweisimmen, on four
+excursions, the writer and others have had the pleasure of picking
+edelweiss. First, at the Fromattgrat. Horses and saddles are forthcoming
+when required, and the four legs go as far as the scattered chalets of
+Fromatt, the wide mountain-pasture which is reached after a steady
+ascent of two hours and a half. Across from the chalets rises the _grat_
+or ridge where we have to seek our edelweiss. As we mount higher the
+gray masses of the Spielgarten seem very near: a fresh vivifying wind,
+the breath of the Alps, makes one forget how warm it was toiling up the
+gorge. The clouds are drawing around in white veils and sweeping down
+into the valley, quite concealing our destination at times, hiding even
+the members of the party from each other if they separate themselves a
+little. Our fine day takes on a decidedly doubtful aspect: nevertheless,
+after the first cry, "Here's some!" nobody thinks of impending
+discomforts. Here and there in the grass the soft white petals have
+opened, but where the _grat_ sinks straight down for hundreds of feet it
+grows more abundantly, on the edge, and, alas! chiefly over the edge;
+and here a steady head and common prudence come in play. Furnished with
+those requisites, we can collect a bunch of edelweiss, and go on our way
+rejoicing even though the rain-drops begin to fall, the wind grows
+wilder, and presently hail comes in cutting dashes anything but
+agreeable to one's features. We go back along the ridge and descend to
+the broad-roofed chalet that lies invitingly below. It goes by the name
+of the Stierenberger Wirthschaft, and is known to all the cow-herds
+round; but we want no doubtful wine, only fresh milk and thick cream in
+a wooden bowl, and a brown fluid called coffee. Bread we brought with
+us, not caring to exercise our teeth on last month's bake. In any case,
+nothing more solid than bread and cheese is to be found here, tavern
+though it is. A fire blazes in the first room, which has no window, and
+might properly be styled the antechamber of the cow-house, into which
+there is a fine view through an open door. Sixty tails are peacefully
+whisking to and fro, for in the middle of the day the cattle are housed
+to protect them from flies. All the implements of cheese-making--the
+immense copper kettle, the presses, pails, etc.--are kept in the
+antechamber. After trying to dry ourselves at the hearth, and
+discovering that much hail comes down the great square chimney and very
+little smoke goes up, we are shown into the "best room," the furniture
+of which consists of a bed, a pine table and benches. In the adjoining
+apartment are two beds, the gayly-painted chest in which our hostess
+brought home her bridal outfit, and another table; while in both rooms
+the knives and forks are stuck in the chinks of the beams over the
+benches--a convenient arrangement by which one has only to stretch up an
+arm and take down from the ceiling whatever implement is needed. In most
+of these chalets a tall man might be embarrassed what to do with his
+head: it is only necessary to go into their houses to perceive that the
+Swiss mountaineers are short of stature. When the hail and rain have
+ceased we start downward over the hilly pastures, through pine woods and
+beside a rushing stream, into the valley, and so back to Zweisimmen.
+
+Another excursion was to go up to the same inn, and thence to a little
+lake at the foot of the Seeberg, where edelweiss is again to be found.
+At Iffigen Lake it may also be had in abundance; and the fourth and last
+occasion on which we picked it was on the Rawyl Pass. From Zweisimmen
+one drives to Lenk, whence the fine glaciers of the Wildstrubel are in
+full view, then through the village and up a steep ascent, but a good
+carriage-road still, to the beautiful Iffigen Fall. The water descends
+almost perpendicularly over picturesque rocks from a great height,
+falling in long arrows that seem to hesitate and linger in mid-air, and
+then take a fresh swoop down: a rainbow spans it at the foot, where the
+mist rises. Here the carriage is left, and those who intend to ride take
+to the saddle. The way goes up steeply to the broad Iffigen Alp, shut in
+on either hand by Nature's towering gray battlements. Having reached the
+chalets at the farther end of the pasture, we find ourselves facing the
+solid rock and wondering what next. Over the brow of the lofty parapet
+falls a little stream, looking like a white ribbon as it foams on its
+dizzy way. "The path certainly cannot be there," we say; but, as it
+happens, it is just there. It zigzags up, cut with infinite labor in the
+face of the mountain, like the famous Gemmi road from Loeche-les-Bains,
+only that it is not so smooth and more picturesque. The Rawyl, like the
+Gemmi, is sometimes given the reputation of a dangerous pass, but in our
+party a lady rode the whole way without feeling the least uneasiness.
+The path goes up and up until it crosses the waterfall, where one is
+showered with cooling spray: soon after we are over the top of the rock
+and on plainer ground, but still mounting. A hut is passed where the
+guide says travellers can spend the night should it overtake them. There
+is indeed nothing to prevent their spending the night there, but also
+nothing to aid them in so doing: the place is uninhabited and
+unfurnished, the only sign that it is a shelter for human beings and not
+for cattle being a tiny stove in one corner, with a pile of wood. Now a
+small green lake lies beside the way, and then the chalet on the summit
+is in sight, and a cross that marks the boundary between the cantons of
+Berne and Valais. There the highest point of our journey is reached in
+two and three-quarter hours from where the carriage was left, and we
+walk nearly another hour on the level. Snow lies in wide fields in
+several places across the path: the pass is never wholly free from it,
+for what is rain in the valley is apt to be snow at seven thousand nine
+hundred feet, the height of the Rawyl. During this part of the way the
+scene is most wild and impressive: the dark masses of the Mittaghorn,
+the Rohrbachstein and Rawylhorn, and the dazzling glacier of the
+Wildhorn rise majestically into blue space, while from the granite
+summits to the very path under our feet there is nothing but rock, rock,
+rock! It is as if we were passing where the foot of man had never trod
+before, so solemn is the stillness here in the midst of the "everlasting
+hills." To see one solitary bird flitting fitfully from point to point
+only makes the loneliness seem greater, and it is absolutely touching
+to find in a place like this the lovely little _Ranunculus alpestris_
+and _Ranunculus glacialis_ forcing a way between the shingly stones and
+opening their delicate white petals to light and air. The purple
+_Linaria alpina_ keeps them company, but it is only farther on, and as
+we come to green again, that asters, pansies and gentians gem the grass.
+Where the way begins to descend to Sion there is an enchanting view into
+the valley of the Rhone, and for a background to the picture a superb
+line of glaciers and snow-peaks, among them the Matterhorn. The path to
+Sion can be traced for some distance down, but our party intended to go
+back by the way it came; and while we still lingered, wandering among
+the knolls and rocks, we discovered edelweiss, faded and gray, however,
+for in these regions the latter part of August is too late to find it in
+perfection.
+
+As American ladies have the reputation of being poor pedestrians, it may
+be of interest to add that ladies walked on all these excursions.
+
+G.H.P.
+
+
+SPOILED CHILDREN.
+
+It will always remain a mystery to sensible people why, when they are
+held to a rigid consistency, compelled to face palpable and indisputable
+facts, and to acknowledge that under all circumstances two and two make
+four, and never five, there is another class who from childhood to old
+age thrive on their mistakes, are never forced to pay the piper, and are
+granted the privilege of counting the sum of two and two as four when
+convenient, and five when they like, or a hundred if so it should please
+them.
+
+These are the spoiled children of the world, whose fate it is to get the
+best of everything without regard to their deserts. Others may be warm,
+may shiver with cold, may be weary, may be ill, but they must not
+complain. The burden of lamentation comes from those who were never too
+warm or too cold, never weary or ill, but who tremble lest in some cruel
+way they should be forced to suffer, and thus provide against it
+beforehand. To these spoiled children the system of things in general
+has no other design than to give them comfort in particular. And by some
+subtle law of attraction the good things of the world are almost certain
+naturally to gravitate toward them. They sleep well; they dine well;
+they are petted by everybody; they have no despairs; they never suffer
+from other people's mishaps.
+
+A woman who marries one of these spoiled children may be sure of an
+opportunity to practise all the feminine virtues. She is certain to have
+been very much in love with him, for he was handsome, could dance and
+flirt to perfection, and was the very ideal of a charming lover. The
+little dash of selfishness in his ante-nuptial imperiousness and tender
+tyranny pleased her, for it seemed to be the expression of a more ardent
+love than that of every-day men. It depends very much upon her
+generosity and largeness of heart whether she soon wakes up to the fact
+that she has married a being destitute of sympathy, wholly careless and
+ignorant of others' needs and requirements, full of caprices, allowing
+every impulse to carry him away, and thoroughly bent on having his own
+will and bending everybody about him to his own purposes.
+Self-renunciation and absolute devotion and self-sacrifice are natural
+to women of a certain quality of intellect and heart, and possess the
+most powerful charm to their imagination, provided they can have a dash
+of romance or a kindling of sentiment. Hence this form of martyrdom
+offers the female sex the pose in which it has sat for its portrait all
+the centuries since civilization began, and the picture stands out
+impressively against a background we all can recognize. As a school for
+heroism nothing can equal marriage with a spoiled child.
+
+But, although probably quite as many instances may be found in one sex
+as in the other, the characteristics of a spoiled child are distinctly
+feminine, and in no measure belong to robust masculinity. Thus, for a
+study, let us take a girl who from her cradle has found everything
+subordinate to her princess-like whims, inclinations and caprices, and
+has had her way by smiles and cajoleries or sobs and tears, as the case
+may be. She finds out at an early age that it is pleasanter and more
+profitable to be petted and pampered than to be forced to shift for
+herself. She learns that an easy little pitiful curve of her coral lips
+and upward glance of her baby orbs is answered by certain manifestations
+of tenderness and concern: thus she "makes eyes," flirts, as it were,
+before she can talk, and studies the art of successful tyranny. The
+nursery--in fact, the entire house--rejoices when she rejoices and
+trembles when she weeps. She wants everything she sees, and sulks at any
+superiority of circumstances in another; but then she sulks
+bewitchingly. Wherever she goes she carries an imperious sway, and keeps
+her foot well on the necks of her admirers.
+
+The spoiled child blossoms into perfection as a young lady. That is her
+destiny, and to the proper fulfilment of it her family and friends stand
+ready to devote themselves. It may be they are a trifle weary of her
+incalculable temper, that her fascinations have palled a little upon
+them, and that her mysterious inability to put up with the lot of
+every-day mortals and bear disagreeables contentedly has worn out their
+patience. They want her to marry, and, without wasting any empty wishing
+upon a result so certain to come, she wants to marry herself. She is not
+likely to have unattainable ideals: what she demands is a continuation
+of her petted existence--a lifelong adorer to minister to her vanity and
+desires, to find her always beautiful, always precious, and to smooth
+away the rough places of life for her.
+
+Nothing can be more bewitching than she is on her entrance into society.
+Nothing could seem more desirable to an admirer than the possession of
+the beautiful creature, who, with her alternations of sweetness and
+imperiousness, tenderness, and cruelty, stimulates his ardor and appears
+more like a spirit of fire and dew than a real woman. It seems to him
+the most delightful thing in the world when she confesses that she never
+likes what she has, but always craves what she has not--that she hates
+everything useful and prosaic and likes everything which people declare
+she ought to renounce. She is unreasonable, and he loves her
+unreason--it bewitches him: she is obstinate, and he loves to feel the
+strength of her tiny will, as if it were the manifestation of some
+phenomenal force in her nature. Her scorn for common things, her
+fastidiousness, her indifference to the little obligations which compel
+less dainty and spirited creatures,--all act as chains and rivet his
+attachment to her.
+
+A few months later, when she has become his wife, and he is forced to
+look at her tempers and her caprices, at her fastidiousness and
+expensiveness, from an altered standpoint, her whole character seems to
+be illuminated with new light. He no longer finds her charming when she
+has an incurable restlessness and melancholy: her pretty negations of
+the facts life present to her begin to seem to him the product of a mind
+undisciplined by any actual knowledge that she is "a human creature,
+subject to the same laws as other human creatures." He has hitherto
+considered that her scorn for the common and usual indicated an
+appreciation of the rarest and loftiest, but she seems to have no
+appreciation for anything save enjoyment. She has no idea of the true
+purposes of life: she likes everything dwarfed to suit her own stature.
+It is not by compliance that her husband can give her more than
+temporary pleasure. If she wants to see Europe, Europe will not satisfy
+her. "Sense will support itself handsomely in most countries," says
+Carlyle, "on eighteen pence a day, but for fantasy planets and solar
+systems will not suffice."
+
+L.W.
+
+
+PRAYER-MEETING ELOQUENCE.
+
+Weekly prayer-meetings in New England villages offer a variety of
+singular experiences to the unaccustomed listener, and it seems almost
+incredible at times that they can furnish spiritual sustenance even to
+the devout. There are apt to be two or three among the regular
+attendants who being, according to their own estimate, "gifted in
+prayer," raise their voices loud and long with many a mellifluous
+phrase and lofty-sounding polysyllable. Mr. Eli Lewis is one of the most
+eloquent among the church-members in the village of C----, and if left
+to his own way would engross the entire evening with his prayers and
+exhortations. Nothing is too large for his imagination to grasp nor too
+small for his observations to consider. "_O Lord, Thou knowest!_" he
+repeats endlessly, sometimes qualifying this statement by putting into
+the next phrase, "_O Lord, Thou art probably aware!_" He is fond of
+poetry too, and frequently interpolates into his petition and
+thanksgiving his favorite verses. His fellow-worshippers are fully
+conscious of his excellent intentions, but there is some jealousy of the
+surpassing length of his prayers. The other evening he was standing, as
+his custom is, with his long arms upraised with many a strange gesture.
+He had been on his feet half an hour already, and there began to be
+signs of restlessness among the bowed heads around him. Still, there was
+no sign of any let up. He was engaged in drawing a vivid picture of the
+condition of the universe in the abstract, the world in general and his
+country and native village in particular, and required ample time fully
+to elucidate his views regarding their needs, but proposed to illustrate
+it by quotations. "O Lord," said he, "Thou knowest what the poet Cowper
+says--" He paused and cleared his throat as if the better to articulate
+the inspired strains of poetry, and began again more emphatically: "O
+Lord, Thou art probably aware what the poet Cowper says--" but the
+second time broke off. He could not remember what it was the poet Cowper
+said, but with a view to taking the place his memory halted at, went
+back to the starting-place and recommenced: "O Lord, Thou recollectest
+what the poet Cowper says--" It was of no use: he could not think of it,
+and with a wild gesture put his hand to his head. "O Lord," he exclaimed
+in a tone of excessive pain, "_I cannot remember what the poet Cowper
+says_," and prepared to go on with other matter; but Deacon Smith had
+been watching his opportunity for twenty minutes, and was already on
+his feet. "_Let us pray_," he said in a deep voice, which broke on
+Brother Lewis's ears with preternatural power, and he was obliged to sit
+down while the senior deacon held forth. No sooner, however, had Deacon
+Smith's amen sounded than Mr. Eli Lewis started up. "O Lord," he cried
+in a tone of heartfelt satisfaction, "I remember now what the poet
+Cowper says;" and, repeating it at length, he finished his remarks.
+
+It was Deacon Smith who one Sunday asked his pastor to put a petition
+for rain into his afternoon prayer, as moisture was very much needed by
+the deacon's parched fields and meadows. Accordingly, Dr. Peters, who
+was something of a rhetorician, alluded in his prayer to the melancholy
+prospects of the harvest unless rain should soon be sent, and requested
+that the Almighty would consider their sufferings and dispense the
+floods which He held in His right hand. After service, as the reverend
+doctor left the church, he saw Mr. Smith standing rigid in the porch,
+perhaps looking for a rising cloud, and remarked to him, "Well, deacon,
+I hope our petition may be answered." He received only a snort of wrath
+and defiance in reply. Rather puzzled as to what had vexed his
+parishioner, Dr. Peters said blandly, "You heard my prayer for a shower,
+Deacon Smith?" The deacon turned grimly: "I heard you mention the matter
+of rain, Dr. Peters, but, good Heavens, sir! _you should have insisted
+upon it!_"
+
+A.T.
+
+
+THE JARDIN D'ACCLIMATATION OF PARIS.
+
+This beautiful garden, one of the most attractive places in the world,
+was established in the Bois de Boulogne in 1860. It was in the most
+flourishing condition at the time of the breaking out of the war with
+Germany. That war nearly ruined it. During the siege elephants and other
+valuable animals were sacrificed for food. The carrier-pigeons that did
+such noble service during the siege were mostly raised in this
+establishment, and those that survived the war are kept there and most
+tenderly preserved. "Many died gloriously on the field of honor," as we
+read in the records of the society, which preserve a full account of
+their wonderful feats. Some of them again and again dared the Prussian
+lines, carrying those precious microscopic despatches photographed upon
+pellicles of collodion--so light that the whole one hundred and fifteen
+thousand received during the siege do not weigh over one gramme, a
+little over fifteen grains!
+
+The great greenhouse of these gardens for plants that cannot endure a
+temperature lower than two degrees below zero centigrade (28.4 deg. Fahr.)
+would enchant even the most indifferent observer. The building itself is
+one of the finest structures of its kind. It was once the property of
+the Lemichez Brothers, celebrated florists at Villiers, at which place
+it was known as the Palais des Flors. The Acclimatation Society
+purchased it in 1861, and every winter since then there has been a
+magnificent and unfailing display of flowers there. Masses of camellias,
+rhododendrons, azaleas, primroses, _bruyeres_, pelargoniums constantly
+succeed each other. These are merely to delight the visitors, the great
+object of the hothouse being to nurse foreign plants and experiment with
+them. Among the rare ones are the paper-plant of the _Aralia_ family;
+the _Chamaerops_, or hemp-plant; the _Phormium tenax_, or New Zealand
+flax; and the _Eucalyptus_ of Australia, that wonderful tree introduced
+lately into Algeria, where it grows six metres a year, and yields more
+revenue than the cereals. This, at least, is what the official handbook
+of the garden says. It may be that the famous "fever-plant" has lost
+some of the faith accorded to it at first.
+
+At the end of this great greenhouse there is a beautiful grotto where a
+little brook loses itself playing hide-and-seek among the fronds of the
+maiden-hair and other lovely ferns. At the right of this grotto is a
+reading-room where visitors may find all the current periodicals--on the
+left, the library of the society, rich in works upon agriculture,
+_zootechnie_, natural history, travels, industrial and domestic economy,
+etc., in several languages. The remarkable thing about this great
+greenhouse is the ever-flourishing, ever-perfect condition of its
+vegetation. Of course this effect must be secured by succursal
+hothouses, not always open to visitors. No tree, no plant, ever appears
+there in a sickly condition, but this may be said also of the animals in
+the gardens. I shall not soon forget a great wire canary cage some
+sixteen or more feet square, enclosing considerable shrubbery and scores
+of birds. There I received my first notion of the natural brilliancy of
+the plumage of these birds: its golden sheen literally dazzled the eyes.
+
+The garden does excellent work for the French people besides furnishing
+a popular school and an inimitable pleasure resort: it assures the
+preservation of approved varieties of fruits, grains, animals. Whoever
+questions the absolute purity of his stock, from a garden herb up to an
+Arabian steed, can place this beyond question by substituting those
+furnished by the Society of Acclimatation. Eggs of birds packed in its
+garden have safely crossed the Atlantic, seventy-five per cent. hatching
+on their arrival. So immensely has the business of the society increased
+that more ground has had to be secured for nursery and seed-raising
+purposes, and the whole vast Zoological Gardens of Marseilles have been
+secured and turned into a "tender," as it were, to the Jardin
+d'Acclimatation at Paris. This was a very important acquisition.
+Marseilles, the great Mediterranean sea-port of France, is necessarily
+the spot where treasures from Africa, Asia and the South Sea Islands
+have to be landed, and they arrive often in a critical condition and
+need rest and careful nursing before continuing their journey.
+
+One of the functions of the garden is to restock parks with game when
+the pheasants, hares, wild-boars, deer, etc. become too rare for good
+sport: another is to tame and break to the harness certain animals
+counted unmanageable. The zebra is one of these. The society has
+succeeded perfectly in breaking the zebra and making him work in the
+field quite like the horse. An ostrich also allows itself to be
+harnessed to a small carriage and to draw two children in it over the
+garden. Still another work of the society is to breed new species. A
+very beautiful animal has been bred by crossing the wild-ass of Mongolia
+with the French variety.
+
+Among the rare animals of the garden may be mentioned the apteryx,
+the only bird existing belonging to the same family as the
+_Dinornis giganteus_ and the still larger _Epyornis maximus_ of
+Madagascar--monstrous wingless birds now extinct. One of the eggs of the
+latter in a fossil condition is preserved in the museum of the Garden of
+Plants in Paris. Its longer axis is sixteen inches, I think. It is, for
+an egg, a most wonderful thing, and on account of its size the bird
+laying it has been supposed to be of very much greater size than even
+the _Dinornis giganteus_, a perfect skeleton of which exists; but this
+seems to be a too hasty conclusion, for the apteryx, a member of the
+same family, has laid an egg or two in captivity, and one of these on
+being weighed proved to be very nearly one-fourth the whole weight of
+the bird, the bird weighing sixty ounces and the egg fourteen and a
+half.
+
+The _Tallegalla Lathami_, or brush-turkey of Australia, is another rare
+bird. It does not sit upon its eggs, but constructs a sort of hot-bed
+for them, which it watches during the whole term as assiduously as a
+wise florist does his seeds planted under glass or as a baker does his
+ovens. As in the ostrich family, it is the male that has the entire care
+of the family from the moment the eggs are laid--a fairer division of
+labor than we see in most _menages_. The interesting process of
+constructing the hot-bed has been observed several times in Europe. It
+is as follows: When the time arrives for the making of the nest the
+enclosure is supplied with sticks, leaves and detritus of various kinds.
+The male then, with his tail to the centre of the enclosure, commences
+with his powerful feet to throw up a mound of the materials furnished.
+To do this he walks around in a series of concentric circles. When the
+mound is about four feet high the female adds a few artistic touches by
+way of smoothing down, evening the surface and making a depression in
+the centre, where the eggs in due time are laid in a circle, each with
+the point downward and no two in contact. The male tends this hot-bed
+most unweariedly. "A cylindrical opening is always maintained in the
+centre of the circle"--no doubt for ventilation--and the male will often
+cover and uncover the eggs two or three times a day, according to the
+change of temperature. The observer, noting how intelligently this bird
+watches the temperature, almost expects to see him thrust a thermometer
+into his mound! On the second day after it is hatched the young bird
+leaves the nest, but returns to it in the afternoon, and is very cozily
+tucked up by his devoted papa.
+
+One thing in the garden that used to greatly attract visitors was the
+Gaveuse Martin, a machine for cramming fowls in order to fatten them
+rapidly. The society considered Martin's invention of so much importance
+to the world that it granted him a building in the garden and permission
+to charge a special admission. The machine has since been introduced
+into the artificial egg-hatching establishment of Mr. Baker at
+Catskill-on-the-Hudson; at least, he has a machine for "forced feeding"
+which must greatly resemble Martin's. Specimens fattened by the Gaveuse
+Martin, all ready for the _broche_, used to be sold on the premises. The
+interior of the building was occupied by six gigantic _epinettes_, each
+holding two hundred birds. A windlass mounted upon a railroad enabled
+the operator (_gaveur_, from _gaver_, to cram, an inelegant term) very
+easily to raise himself to any story of the epinette. The latter was a
+cylinder turning upon its axis, and thus passing every bird in review.
+"An india-rubber tube introduced into the throat, accompanied by the
+pressure of the foot upon a pedal, makes the bird absorb its copious and
+succulent repast in the wink of an eye." Four hundred an hour have been
+thus fed by one operator. Fowls thus fattened are said to possess a
+delicacy of flavor entirely their own.
+
+M. H.
+
+
+
+
+LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
+
+
+     Christy Carew. By May Laffan, author of "The Honorable Miss
+     Ferrard," etc. (Leisure-Hour Series.) New York: Henry Holt &
+     Co.
+
+The novels to which Miss Laffan gives a sponsor in affixing her
+signature to the latest, _Christy Carew_, present two strong and
+distinct claims to our notice in the vigor and realism with which they
+are written, and the thorough picture they give of Ireland, politically
+and socially, at the present day. They are no mere repetitions of
+hackneyed Irish stories, no sketches drawn from a narrow or partial
+phase of life, but the result of large and penetrating observation among
+all classes, made in a thoroughly systematized manner, so as to form a
+thoughtful and almost exhaustive study of a country which is more
+dogmatized over than understood. Ireland has never been depicted with so
+much interest and sympathy by any novelist since Miss Edgeworth wrote
+her _Moral Tales_, and both the country and the art of novel-writing
+have advanced since then, the latter possibly more than the former. Miss
+Edgeworth, indeed, has been singularly unfortunate. She drew from life,
+and her talent and observation were worthy of a more lasting shrine,
+while the artificiality of her books has caused them to decay even
+faster than those of some of her contemporaries. Her successors in Irish
+fiction, with no lack of talent, have been too often careless in using
+it, or have preferred story-telling to observation. Miss Laffan wields a
+genuine Irish pen, graphic, keen of satire, with plenty of sharp
+Hibernian humor, but she shows in its exercise a care and directness of
+aim which are not the common qualities of Irish writers. In beginning
+her career as a novelist she had the courage to refrain from the pursuit
+of those finer artistic beauties which lure to failure so many writers
+incapable of seizing them: she even put aside the question of plot, and
+strove to give a sound and truthful representation of life and manners.
+
+That end was gained with masterly success. No one reading the anonymous
+novel _Hogan, M.P._, would have been likely to set it down from internal
+evidence as a woman's book: it is one of the stoutest and most vigorous
+pieces of fiction which have appeared for years. We can find no trace of
+its having been reprinted in this country, and are at a loss to account
+for the omission: its distinctively Irish character ought to form an
+attraction. _Hogan, M.P._, is a political novel as realistic as Anthony
+Trollope's, but more incisive in tone and wider in scope. Instead of
+confining her energies to the doings and conversations of one set of
+people, Miss Laffan looks at politics as they are mirrored in society,
+sketching not alone the wire-pulling and petty diplomacies, but phases
+of life resulting therefrom. In _Hogan, M.P._, we have a vivid _coup
+d'oeil_ of Dublin society, with its sharp, irregular boundaries, its
+sects and sets, its manner of comporting and amusing itself. The field
+is a wide one, but Miss Laffan has the happy art of generalization--of
+portraying a whole society in a few well-marked types. There is no
+confusion of character, and though we seem to have shaken hands with all
+Dublin in her pages, from great dignitaries to school-boys, the picture
+is never overcrowded.
+
+"A drop of ditch-water under a microscope" Hogan calls the society of
+his native city--"everybody pushing upward on the social ladder kicking
+down those behind." This zoological spectacle is not confined to Dublin,
+but there appears to be a combination of strictness and indefiniteness
+of precedence belonging peculiarly to that place. At the top of the
+ladder, though not so firmly fixed there as before the Disestablishment,
+is the Protestant set, regarding the Castle as its stronghold and
+looking down on the Roman Catholic set, who reciprocate the contempt.
+These grand divisions are separated by a strict line of demarcation,
+even the performance of the marriage ceremony between Protestants and
+Catholics being forbidden in Dublin. They contain an endless
+ramification of lesser groups, whose relations we may attempt to
+illustrate by quoting from the book before us an account of the mutual
+position of Mrs. O'Neil and Mrs. Carew, the former the wife of a
+tradesman shortly to become lord mayor, the latter a "'vert" from
+Protestantism and the spouse of a Crown solicitor in debt to his future
+mayorship. "The lady mayoress elect, conscious of her prospective
+dignity in addition to the heavy bill due by the Carews, was the least
+possible shade--not patronizing, for that would have been
+impossible--but perhaps independent in manner. She did not turn her head
+toward her companion as she addressed her; she put more questions to her
+and in a broader accent than she usually did in conversation; and she
+barely gave her interlocutor time to finish the rather curt
+contributions she vouchsafed toward the conversation. On her side, Mrs.
+Carew, mindful of her position and of her superior accent, which implied
+even more, wanting to be condescending and patronizing, and half afraid
+to be openly impertinent, was calm and self-possessed. She grew more
+freezingly courteous as the other lady grew less formal."
+
+We have said that Miss Laffan began with realism pure and simple.
+_Hogan, M.P._, remains, so far, to our mind, her strongest book, but
+there are finer and sweeter qualities in her other writings. We should
+be inclined to rank _The Honorable Miss Ferrard_ as an artistic rather
+than a realistic book, though it is based on the same soundness of
+observation as its predecessor. It is an episode, suggestive, rather
+analytic in treatment, with the freshness of a first impression--_le
+charme de l'inacheve_. The heroine is a singularly original, fresh and
+attractive conception. The book deals almost wholly with the outside
+aspects of things, with picturesque rather than moral traits, though a
+breath of feeling true and sweet is wafted across it and heightens its
+fine vague beauty.
+
+A deeper humanity is shown in the short story _Flitters, Tatters and the
+Counsellor_, which made its first appearance in this magazine in
+January, 1879. This sketch gained a quicker popularity than her longer
+novels, and drew forth warm eulogies from critics so far apart in
+standard as Ruskin, Leslie Stephen and Bret Harte.
+
+_Christy Carew_, in its picture of two middle-class Catholic families in
+Dublin, takes us back to the society described in _Hogan, M.P._, but its
+range is narrower and its theme rather social than political. It is a
+softer and more attractive book than _Hogan, M.P._, though, like that
+novel, it is devoted to a realistic picture of life. Miss Laffan's
+characters have the merit of being always real. They are often types,
+but they are never mere abstractions. Whatever their importance or
+qualities, they stand firmly on their feet, are individual and alive.
+Her men are drawn with a vigor which ought to ensure them from the
+reproach of being ladies' men. They may display traits of weakness, but
+these are due to no faltering on the author's part. In _Christy Carew_
+the men are in a minority as far as minuteness of portraiture goes, and
+the most elaborate touches are bestowed on the two young girls who act
+as heroines, for the one is as prominent as the other. Christy and her
+friend Esther O'Neil present two types of girlhood. Esther, _devote_ and
+gentle, is a very tender, lovable figure, but there is perhaps more
+skill shown in the more contradictory character of Christy, a pretty
+girl addicted to flirting, keenly intelligent and impatient of the
+restraints and inconsistencies of her religious teaching, yet with an
+earnestness which makes her feel the emptiness of her life and vaguely
+seek for something higher. When each of the friends is sought by a
+Protestant lover their different ways of regarding the calamity are in
+keeping with their characters, and though any reader will agree with
+Christy that Esther was the more deserving of happiness, no one will be
+sorry that her own love-story should find a pleasant denouement. As an
+argument in favor of mixed marriages the book would have been stronger
+if Esther's lover had been separated from her only by prejudice, and not
+by unworthiness as well, but the pathos of the story is in no way marred
+by the neglect to clinch an argument. Like all Miss Laffan's novels, it
+is simple in plot. Construction is not her strong point, and though
+_Christy Carew_ has more story to it than her former books, it is by no
+means technically perfect. There is a certain hurry about it: its good
+things are not driven home, and effects upon which more skilful artists
+would dwell at length are dropped in a concentration upon other objects.
+The book, in the American edition, is also marred by numerous
+typographical defects that betray a singular laxity in proof-reading.
+
+_Hogan, M.P._, was published in 1876: Miss Laffan's career as a novelist
+is therefore only four years old. We will not attempt to cast its
+future: we have simply endeavored, as far as space would admit, to point
+out the soundness of its foundation and the method by which it has been
+laid. In all that she has written there is a reserved strength, a
+sincerity and conscientiousness, which mark her work as unmistakably
+genuine. A large store of observation lies behind all her writing, and
+an intellectual power of a very high order is apparent throughout. What
+she lacks is a mellowness and breadth of art which would enable her to
+blend and concentrate her qualities--to bring the realism of _Hogan,
+M.P._, into unison with the grace of _The Honorable Miss Ferrard_ and
+the pathos and sympathy of _Christy Carew_--to give form and
+completeness to her work. Then Ireland would have a great novelist.
+
+
+     The Reminiscences of an Idler. By Henry Wikoff. New York:
+     Fords, Howard & Hulbert.
+
+The reminiscences of idle men are apt to be more entertaining than those
+of busy men. The idler, passing his time in search of amusement, can
+hardly fail to communicate it when he yields up his store of
+experiences. Being disengaged, his mind is more observant and more
+retentive of the by-play of life, which is the only amusing part of it,
+than that of one of the chief actors can possibly be. Moreover, idlers
+are the natural confidants of the busy: they are consulted, made useful
+as go-betweens, entrusted with those little services which, being
+transient and disconnected, are precisely suited to their disposition
+and secure them a place in the economy of Nature. Mr. Wikoff has been a
+model idler, with large opportunities of this description. From boyhood
+he has, according to his own account, shirked all regular application
+and devoted himself to the pursuit of pleasure, including the
+gratification of an intelligent but superficial curiosity in regard to
+men and manners. He has come in close contact with a great variety of
+people, especially of a class whose private lives and public careers
+react in the production of a piquant interest. These associations kept
+his hands full of what only a very rigid censor would denominate
+mischief. His intimacy with Forrest gained him a suitable companion in a
+journey to the Crimea, and the tragedian a not less suitable negotiator
+in the arrangements for his marriage and his professional engagements in
+London. He aided Lady Bulwer in her fight with her husband's family and
+the recovery of her stolen lap-dog. His friendly offices to Fanny
+Ellsler were more important and fruitful. He had the chief share in
+bringing her to America, smoothing away the difficulties, assuming the
+responsibilities, and escorting her in person, while taking charge at
+the same time of two other interesting and otherwise unprotected
+females. It was, indeed, we need hardly say, in feminine affairs that
+Mr. Wikoff was most at home. But his obliging disposition made him
+equally ready to execute commissions for members of the Bonaparte
+family, his relations with whom grew closer and more interesting at a
+period subsequent to that which is embraced in this volume. Many other
+notabilities, both American and European, have more or less prominence
+in its pages. Some letters from Mrs. Grote are especially deserving of
+notice. As long as it is confined to personal topics the narrative is
+never dull. Without being distinguished for vigor or wit, it has the
+graceful and sprightly garrulity characteristic of the well-preserved
+veteran. Unfortunately, it betrays also the tendency to tediousness
+which belongs to a revered epoch, much of it, being devoted to persons
+and things seen only from a distance and without the powers of vision
+requisite for penetrating their true character. But, in spite of this
+defect, the book is exceedingly readable and enjoyable, and we trust to
+have a continuation of it which may show a restraining influence
+exercised with kindness and tact, such as were so often exerted by the
+author for the benefit of his friends.
+
+
+     The Life and Work of William Augustus Muhlenberg. By Anne
+     Ayres. New York: Harper & Brothers.
+
+There could not well be a stronger contrast than between the subject of
+this book and that of the one just noticed. We have called Mr. Wikoff a
+model idler, and with at least equal truth we may call Dr. Muhlenberg a
+model worker, not because he was unremitting and methodical in labor or
+because his work was his delight, but because it was consecrated by a
+devoted singleness of purpose and crowned by the noblest achievements.
+The life of the founder of St. Luke's Hospital and St. Johnland, as
+exhibited in this faithful record, has the simplicity and grandeur of an
+antique statue, and in the contemplation of it the marvel of its rare
+perfection grows, till we are half inclined to ask whether it, too, be
+not some relic of the remote past rather than a product of our own age.
+Saintly purity, unbounded beneficence, intense earnestness and
+great-hearted liberality of sentiment were never more symmetrically
+blended than in the character of "the great presbyter," whose
+ministrations were neither inspired nor confined by any narrower dogma
+than "that love to man, flowing from love to God," which, as he himself,
+with no lack of humility, said, "had been their impulse." It has been
+justly observed that "he was eminently the common property of a common
+Christianity," and not less truly that "there is, and ever will be, more
+of Christian charity in the world because Dr. Muhlenberg has lived in it
+as he did." He was perhaps not a man of extraordinary intellect, but his
+singularly healthy mind, with its union of resoluteness and candor,
+sound sense and lively fancy, gave the needed counterpoise to his moral
+qualities, keeping his enterprises within the domain of the useful and
+the practical, and thus saving him from the disappointments that too
+often checker the career of the philanthropist. This biography, written
+from long and intimate knowledge and admirable alike in spirit and
+execution, will find, we may trust, a multitude of readers among members
+of all sects and those who belong to none. Its interest is of a far more
+absorbing kind than any that can be excited by gossip or anecdote. It is
+that of a vivid portraiture, in which nothing characteristic is missing,
+in which the details are all harmonious, and which awakens not only our
+admiration, but our warmest sympathies.
+
+
+
+
+_Books Received._
+
+
+History of Political Economy in Europe. By Jerome-Adolphe Blanqui.
+Translated from the fourth French edition by Emily J. Leonard. New York:
+G. P. Putnam's Sons.
+
+Pure Wine--Fermented Wine and Other Alcoholic Drinks in the Light of the
+New Dispensation. By John Ellis, M. D. New York: Published by the
+Author.
+
+Shakespeare's History of King Henry the Fourth. Parts 1 and 2. Edited,
+with Notes, by William J. Rolfe, A. M. New York: Harper & Brothers.
+
+A History of New York. By Diedrich Knickerbocker. (New "Geoffrey-Crayon"
+Edition of Irving's Works.) New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
+
+Card Essays: Clay's Decisions and Card-table Talk. By "Cavendish."
+(Leisure-Hour Series.) New York: Henry Holt & Co.
+
+William Ellery Channing: His Opinions, Genius and Character. By Henry W.
+Bellows. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
+
+The Virginia Bohemians: A Novel. By John Esten Cooke. (Library of
+American Fiction.) New York: Harper & Brothers.
+
+Nana: Sequel to "L'Assommoir." By Emile Zola. Translated by John
+Stirling. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers.
+
+The Hair, its Growth, Care, Diseases and Treatment. By C. Henri Leonard,
+M. A., M. D. Detroit: C. Henri Leonard.
+
+The Amazon. By Franz Dingelstedt. Translated from the German by J. M.
+Hart. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
+
+Reminiscences of Rev. William Ellery Channing, D. D. By Elizabeth Palmer
+Peabody. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
+
+Around the World with General Grant. By John Russell Young. Parts 19 and
+20. New York: American News Co.
+
+Proverbial Treasury. English and Select Foreign Proverbs. By Carl
+Seelbach. New York: Seelbach Brothers.
+
+The Princess Elizabeth: A Lyric Drama. By Francis H. Williams.
+Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger.
+
+A Foreign Marriage; or, Buying a Title. (Harpers' Library of American
+Fiction.) New York: Harper & Brothers.
+
+William Ellery Channing: A Centennial Memory. By Charles T. Brooks.
+Boston: Roberts Brothers.
+
+Rev. Mr. Dashwell, the New Minister at Hampton. By E. P. B.
+Philadelphia: John E. Potter & Co.
+
+History of the Administration of John De Witt. By James Geddes. New
+York: Harper & Brothers.
+
+Masterpieces of English Literature. By William Swinton. New York: Harper
+& Brothers.
+
+The Theory of Thought: A Treatise on Deductive Logic. New York: Harper &
+Brothers.
+
+The Logic of Christian Evidences. By G. Frederick Wright. Andover:
+Warren F. Draper.
+
+Modern Communism. By Charles W. Hubner. Atlanta, Ga.: Jas. P. Harrison &
+Co.
+
+Free Land and Free Trade. By Samuel S. Cox. New York: G. P. Putnam's
+Sons.
+
+Only a Waif. By R. A. Braendle ("Pips"). New York: D. and J. Sadlier &
+Co.
+
+Life: Its True Genesis. By R. W. Wright. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
+
+Joan of Arc, "The Maid." By Janet Tuckey. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
+
+Mrs. Beauchamp Brown. (No-Name Series.) Boston: Roberts Brothers.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular
+Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880., by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE, JULY 1880 ***
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