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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Galaxy, June 1877, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Galaxy, June 1877
+       Vol. XXIII.--June, 1877.--No. 6.
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: April 21, 2010 [EBook #32075]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GALAXY, JUNE 1877 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GALAXY.
+
+
+VOL. XXIII.--JUNE, 1877.--No. 6.
+
+
+
+SPRING LONGING.
+
+What art thou doing here, O Imagination? Go away, I entreat thee by the
+gods, as thou didst come, for I want thee not. But thou art come
+according to thy old fashion. I am not angry with thee--only go
+away.--_Marcus Antoninus._
+
+    Lilac hazes veil the skies.
+            Languid sighs
+    Breathes the mild, caressing air.
+    Pink as coral's branching sprays,
+            Orchard ways
+    With the blossomed peach are fair.
+
+    Sunshine, cordial as a kiss,
+            Poureth bliss
+    In this craving soul of mine,
+    And my heart her flower-cup
+            Lifteth up,
+    Thirsting for the draught divine.
+
+    Swift the liquid golden flame
+            Through my frame
+    Sets my throbbing veins afire.
+    Bright, alluring dreams arise,
+            Brim mine eyes
+    With the tears of strong desire.
+
+    All familiar scenes anear
+            Disappear--
+    Homestead, orchard, field, and wold.
+    Moorish spires and turrets fair
+            Cleave the air,
+    Arabesqued on skies of gold.
+
+    Lo, my spirit, this May morn,
+            Outward borne,
+    Over seas hath taken wing:
+    Where the mediaeval town,
+            Like a crown,
+    Wears the garland of the Spring.
+
+    Light and sound and odors sweet
+            Fill the street;
+    Gypsy girls are selling flowers.
+    Lean hidalgos turn aside,
+            Amorous-eyed,
+    'Neath the grim cathedral towers.
+
+    Oh, to be in Spain to-day,
+            Where the May
+    Recks no whit of good or evil,
+    Love and only love breathes she!
+            Oh, to be
+    'Midst the olive-rows of Seville!
+
+    Or on such a day to glide
+            With the tide
+    Of the berylline lagoon,
+    Through the streets that mirror heaven,
+            Crystal paven,
+    In the warm Venetian noon.
+
+    At the prow the gondolier
+            May not hear,
+    May not see our furtive kiss;
+    But he lends with cadenced strain
+            The refrain
+    To our ripe and silent bliss.
+
+    Golden shadows, silver light,
+            Burnish bright
+    Air and water, domes and skies;
+    As in some ambrosial dream,
+            On the stream
+    Floats our bark in magic wise.
+
+    Oh, to float day long just so!
+            Naught to know
+    Of the trouble, toil, and fret!
+    This is love, and this is May:
+            Yesterday
+    And to-morrow to forget!
+
+    Whither hast thou, Fancy free,
+            Guided me,
+    Wild Bohemian sister dear?
+    All thy gypsy soul is stirred
+            Since yon bird
+    Warbled that the Spring was here.
+
+    Tempt no more! I may not follow,
+            Like the swallow,
+    Gayly on the track of Spring.
+    Bounden by an iron fate,
+            I must wait,
+    Dream and wonder, yearn and sing.
+
+EMMA LAZARUS.
+
+
+Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by SHELDON &
+CO. in the office of Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
+
+
+
+
+A PROGRESSIVE BABY.
+
+
+LETTER III.
+
+18 STANFIELD GARDENS, }
+SOUTH KENSINGTON,     }
+May 28, 1875.         }
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+And there you have us down to date, my Susie. The sunshine and the
+crisp breezes, the innocent early teas with cresses and prawns, the
+grand long nights full of sleep, have put us all right with the world
+again; but after all Brighton's only a bit of West End moved off down
+by the sea, and if one must live in London at all, why, it's at its
+best for three or four weeks to come. And we're to get off early to
+Switzerland this year, for fear that it mayn't be so easy next summer.
+For Ronayne's father is clearing away to make him stand for that dreary
+territory of hovels and bogs in which the paternal mansion is situate.
+Fancy Ronayne an M.P.! And an Irish M.P.! I fight against it--under
+cover. The dream of my heart is an _appartement avec tenasse_ in Paris,
+and in summer to turn vagrants and tramps as now. It's so unlucky
+Ronayne should have been the eldest son: duty, respectability, and the
+proprieties have such a much stronger gripe upon him, and we're born
+vagabonds, both.
+
+But, what must be, must. Meanwhile I console myself with my
+window-gardening. And you should see the house-front!--the balcony that
+will be a perfect bower presently. My window-boxes, the gayest mosaics of
+color, and the vestibule lined with callas, acacias, and heath--against a
+background of ferns and ivy. We were never so magnificent before, and it
+was Ronayne's surprise for me when we came back from the sea--he having
+given our florist _carte-blanche_; whereas I, bearing a conscience, have
+bargained with him always, and carefully counted my pots.
+
+Mrs. Malise's disciplinary Johanna brought her charge for a little
+visit to my nursery yesterday. And my heart aches so for that baby!
+He's a great child, well made, and with his mother's wonderful
+eyes--but so heavy, listless--"Meek as a work'us' child brought up on
+skilly," Ronayne renders it--and though he's perfectly clean now, and
+comfortably clad, nobody would dream he was a young mother's first
+baby, so ornamentless and sombre-hued are his little garments.
+
+Nurse brings back indignant accounts of the way he's left to amuse
+himself, or cry his fill, when out for an airing in Kensington Gardens.
+"Hours, ma'am, she keep that poor thing a-frettin' or a-sleepin' in his
+perambulator, the east wind a-cuttin' about him as draughty as
+draughty, while she sits on a bench a-makin' her foolish lace or
+talkin' to some of them German bandmen. He never gets taken out, nor
+played with, nor has any playthings. It's just cruelty to
+animals--that's what it is!" finishes my nursery dragon, who is as
+soft-hearted as she is grim of exterior and grammatically independent
+in speech.
+
+Mrs. Malise has been absent at suffrage meetings in Scotland and
+Ireland for a month past, Miss Hedges told me when dining here just
+after our return. Mrs. Stainton, the porcelain widow, was invited also,
+and a curious and wonderfully interesting person we find her: the
+daintiest small creature--complexion like an ivory painting, deep-set,
+seeress eyes, and looking fairly spirit-like for fragility, in her long
+black dress and white lace shawl. Nothing could well be more piquant
+than to hear this filmy little thing, in a voice that would have fitted
+Queen Mab, recount her experiences in the most widely separated circles
+of life and thought, or quietly give utterance to quaint, audacious
+speculations, as to mysteries that perplex so many of us concerning
+this existence and the eternity it preludes. "If there be a hereafter!"
+I heard some one answer to a remark of hers. "Ah, that was never a
+doubt to me save for a very brief space," she replied. "I am like the
+Cure de Ars--'I know some one who would be finely taken in if there
+were no Paradise!'" Her exquisiteness of look, the fascinating talk,
+the soft, helpless manner are so appealing that one is disposed to
+treat her as some wandered denizen of the air and skies, though she
+hangs effortless, her whole weight upon one, and there is scarce a
+limit to her fine-lady and delicate-organization requirements.
+
+The daughter of a Low Church dean, she became, in her husband's time,
+first broad church, then rationalist; after his death, because of
+extraordinary, extra natural occurrences that befell her, a
+spiritualist, and now she seems to be turning toward Catholicism,
+though Miss Hedges, who is a Catholic, shakes her head, and says she
+always feels very hopeless of people essentially given to all manner of
+vague interpretations, fanciful twistings of simple doctrine, and
+aesthetic sentimental mysticism.
+
+"Obedience is in the order of existence," says the little lady. "I long
+for authority; I long for a voice I shall not question, to whose
+decision I can submit all the questions that torture me."
+
+"I tried to stay my soul with ritualism," she said, talking to Miss H.
+and myself when we were alone after dinner, "and at first I thought I
+was going to get some comfort out of it. I made my father furious by
+entering one of Miss ----'s famous sisterhoods. But it wouldn't do.
+Ritualism of course was not more illogical then than now, but the
+actors weren't as well up in their parts, and how queer some of our
+performances at ---- were! I remember a retreat I made there, in which
+I was put into a cell bare of everything save a table and chair, and a
+Testament upon the table, and there I was left alone the whole day,
+seeing no creature save a Sister who, speechless, thrust my dinner and
+tea in at me! You may imagine the imbecile condition in which night
+found me.
+
+"And as a punishment for some fault I was ordered to go to communion
+for four months without going to confession! Miss ----, our Reverend
+Mother, behaved exactly as if she had taken her notions of the external
+character and dignities of her office from some swelling, stern, ridiculous
+Lady Abbess in a no-popery novel! We undertook everything--teaching,
+the care of hospitals, training of servants, district work, Magdalen
+houses, and to these active employments we joined the contemplative,
+strictly cloistered life! We had no special training for either one of
+our labors; we had no completed constitutions or rule, and one was
+liable, at any moment, to be whisked from one's quiet cell and sent
+alone at night, across the kingdom, to some duty for which one was no
+more fitted than a baby or a savage.
+
+"I was set, in the beginning, to clean lamps, and black-lead the
+grates, but failed in this business so completely that I was given a
+district in East London to afflict with visitations and instructions.
+Trying one day to convey some idea of the Real Presence to a voluble
+old woman who was one of the sisterhood's most devoted _protegees_, I
+said, 'Then, Sally, since you know _who_ is in the church, I hope you
+never go in or out without showing proper respect.' 'Oh, yessum,
+yessum!' she assured me. 'Indeed, 'm, I allays bobs to the eagle!' (the
+brass eagle of the lectern!). With all Sally's bobbings to the eagle
+and to us sisters, she was a dreadful old harpy, and made me think
+always of two old women my father overheard talking one day at
+Cirencester. There is a fund there which was long ago bequeathed by
+some pious person for the furnishing small stipends to such aged poor
+people as should daily devoutly hear mass. Of course since the revenues
+have lapsed into Anglican hands this sum is used now for those who
+attend the early service. And this was what my father heard:
+
+"First old crone, _loquitur_: 'These be hard times, Betty. How d'ye
+think of getting a livelihood this winter?'
+
+"Second old crone: 'They _be_ hard, for shore, Anne, and I'm a-thinking
+of taking to yorly priors (early prayers) for a quarter!'
+
+"One of my droll, dreadful district visitor experiences I shall never
+forget. In the process of my visitations I stumbled, one day, into the
+room of a woman very haggard and very yellow, but as the woman was
+dressed and moving actively about, I had no idea of her having any
+special ailment, save dirt. But as soon as she knew who I was, a
+visiting Sister, she began to tell me how ill she was--ill of a disease
+that not another person in the whole kingdom had--the doctor said
+so--spotted leprosy. And how physicians came constantly to see her, and
+brought, each one, other physicians--how, in short of a horrible long,
+she was a sort of gruesome doctor's pet!
+
+"The woman's husband--for she was married, had eleven children, and
+another baby coming soon--was working away at a cobbler's bench in the
+room's only window, and she constantly appealed to him: 'Dr. So-and-So
+said there wasn't another case like mine in this country, didn't he,
+Jim? And he didn't see how it was it hadn't killed me off long ago--you
+remember, Jim? And that young Scotch doctor that was so astonished to
+see what a family I had--you haven't forgotten him, have you, Jim?' And
+the man corroborated all her statements with a pride in having a wife
+so uniquely afflicted impossible to describe! Then she insisted I must
+see and dress the awful sores that made her shoulders and one breast a
+great wound, telling me, as I half fainted over the task, that I didn't
+do it half so well as any of the doctors, and begging me, when I had
+finished, to stop long enough for her to give me a cup of tea in that
+place, insufferable at best with the dirty cobbler and five or six of
+the wretched babies, but become, after my _mauvais quart d'heure_ with
+the terrible woman, a chamber of horrors in which to delay one further
+instant would, I felt, make me daft, or shudderingly sea-sick, for
+life!
+
+"I stopped a year and a half in the sisterhood, trying, as I said, to make it
+do; but either I'm too logical, or have too keen a sense of the ridiculous,
+for the farce of our active-uncloistered-severely-contemplative-enclosed
+life, a religious order without a constitution, frowned on by all the
+bishops, carrying on its dearest devotional practices in hiding from
+all proper ecclesiastical authority, became intolerable to me; and
+when, one fine day, there came from 'Reverend Mother' an order to go
+and nurse a man ill with typhus--an agricultural laborer living alone
+in his cottage--and to my remonstrances that I knew nothing of the
+disease, my plea for a companion less ignorant or at least clear
+instructions for my own guidance, no answer was vouchsafed save an
+oracular assurance that if I did my part of obedience, light would be
+given me, I revolted, sent a contumacious message that though I
+believed the age of miracles by no means past, I had never seen any
+wrought in our order, and could not risk the poor man's life upon so
+vague a prospect, and presently bid farewell to my Anglican convent and
+to ritualism. Several Sisters have returned to the world since, and
+four of these have gone over to Rome. Two of these have married. One,
+whom I loved most dearly, is a Poor Clare in Ireland, and the other has
+used her fortune to open a creche, where she works harder than any of
+her nurses, and carries, I should say, the lightest heart in London.
+
+"I have no doubt there is more system, more decorum--I use the word in
+its literal sense--in the Anglican sisterhoods now. I'm quite amazed
+sometimes at the closeness of the imitation of the real thing when I go
+to Margaret street, or to St. Alban's--the altars, the lights, the
+confessionals, the stations, the black-cassocked figures gliding about,
+removing their berettas and dropping on one knee as they pass the
+altar--all the furniture; but a dreadful feeling of emptiness--as if the
+house's owner had moved away! Do you ever look at the pictures and the
+titles of books in the windows of the High Church bookshops? What would
+have been thought of them five years ago even? And at ----'s in Oxford
+street, a High Church friend tells me, they have a room into which you
+may be ushered by inquiring for the 'Penitential Department,' if the card
+bearing the name of a clerical voucher, which you must present, be
+satisfactory, and where you may purchase disciplines--nail-studded
+armlets, waist-belts--perhaps hair shirts, though I don't remember that
+they figured in my friend's list.
+
+"And, two years ago, I think it was, I witnessed a little scene that
+was as extraordinary as it was absurd. I was coming up from Cromer, and
+our train had halted for the usual time in the station at Norwich. It's
+a large station, trains constantly rolling in and out, and crowds of
+passengers, guards, porters flying about. While we waited, above the
+din suddenly was heard a singular and regular thud! thud! coming down
+the platform. Thud! thud! on it came, and the noise, and the queer,
+sudden hush of most of the other racket made us all look eagerly out to
+see what it could be. _It_ was a progression--a procession--a man in
+soutane, barefooted, I believe, preceded by some sort of a servitor
+carrying a monstrous book--breviary, 'Livre des Heures'--I know not
+what, and a tall wooden crosier, whose foot it was that made the thud!
+thud! At a little distance behind the man in the soutane, whom I
+recognized directly as Mr. Lyne--the famous Father Ignatius, a self
+constituted Benedictine Abbot--followed two Anglican Sisters. The
+servitor and Father Ignatius betook themselves into a first-class
+carriage, the Sisters remaining outside, and presently the crosier head
+was thrust out of the window, and Father Ignatius appeared behind it
+with hand outstretched to bless the Sisters, who knelt devoutly on the
+platform to receive the benediction. Up to this point everybody had
+behaved with wonderful restraint; but the last stroke was too much, and
+it was amid a perfect scream of laughter from passengers, officials,
+cabmen, and _gamins_, that the train steamed out of the station,
+bearing the Benedictine Abbot away, but surely not leaving the lambs of
+the flock comfortless."
+
+And so she goes on for as long as you like. She has been everywhere.
+She has known quantities of out-of-the-way people. She is ready at
+every turn with a fresh story, an apposite bit of experience, and darts
+in an instant from the perfect mimicry of a popular vicar we know, who
+preaches in lavender kids, and leaving his cure of souls for a month's
+holiday, pathetically from the pulpit entreats our Lord to look after
+his charge until its proper shepherd returns, to some speculation
+concerning personal accountability, an annunciation of the
+reasonableness of purgatory, and wondering as to its various forms of
+discipline for individual souls, or to dwell on minute phases of the
+preservation of identity, distinctive and original character after
+death, etc., and manifests altogether such an at-homeness with the
+unseen world that, listening to her, I half expect phantom eyes will
+look into mine if I glance back over either shoulder, bodiless
+somethings start forward from dusky corners, the very sweep of my own
+drawing-room curtains gets eerie, a what-not or a tabouret becomes a
+tripod, my unsubstantial small guest is a priestess--and I'm glad when
+Ronayne's voice breaks in, "All in the dark, the fire at its last coal,
+no tea or coffee. Mrs. Stainton, you're a syren!"
+
+Her own little sitting-room in the associate house is as heterogeneous
+as herself--the room lined with soft comforts, the air heavy with the
+fragrance of a profusion of flowers, the room's mistress nearly lost in
+the capaciousness of a most luxurious lounging chair, her table piled
+with ascetic literature; and in this chamber I encountered the other
+day the very oddest of all the peculiar people to whom my friendship
+for "little Malaise" has introduced me--a Miss Beauclerc, a short,
+stout, dark, coarse-skinned woman of fifty odd, hair cropped close, and
+an obstinate, honest, horse face.
+
+She was exhibiting her own "spirit drawings"--mad scaramouches, things
+like designs for eastern embroidery, accurate representations of
+various portions of the kingdom of heaven, she assured me, and a
+quantity of utterly purposeless collections of strokes and dots, to
+which she gave names that would have been blasphemous in any but a
+lunatic's mouth. How she explained them! How fondly she looked at them!
+and what anguish she told me she endured lest they should be injured,
+or perish in some unworthy way. This woman believes herself to be the
+spirit bride of ----! Can you fancy it? one of the most fervent,
+poetic, spiritual, gifted of all Anglican divines. She says that since
+his death he has been constantly near her. She sees him often, leads
+the life he prescribes, making and shunning acquaintances at his
+direction, going from place to place, crossing the ocean twice even at
+his pleasure. Finally she showed a photograph--the faithfulest possible
+presentment of her own unideal face and person, with, floating above,
+arms extended in protecting angel guise, a mistily outlined, veiled
+figure surmounted by the refined, beautiful face known to everybody in
+the later editions of his poems, and in the windows of church
+bookshops--the poor clergyman who is allowed to rest neither in his
+grave nor in any unknown country beyond. It is hard for him, hard for
+Mrs. ----, were she to hear of this post-mortem masquerading and
+"affinity," hard for the deluded woman who wanders about the world
+alone with her crazy fancies, repudiated by her kindred, and plundered
+by the brigandish among her co-believers.
+
+Here, too, I met again the tall, thin young lady, heroine of the device
+for frightening small bores--the Plymouth Sister's daughter. We talked
+of a good many things, but chiefly of marriage, and the position of
+unmarried women in England. The girl was as simply frank as a child.
+Matrimony, and matrimony alone, offered any career to women in England.
+And upon Mrs. Stainton's saying that despite her own perfect
+marriage--a marriage for love, and the union so entire that there
+lurked no shadowy region in her soul of which she could not make her
+husband as free as herself to enter--yet all that she had seen of life
+made her feel sure that, beyond a few rare exceptions, it mattered not,
+ten years after marriage, whether the match had been for love solely,
+or arranged, or a _mariage de convenance_, the girl assented; somewhat
+bitterly remarked that ideals were very well for a heroic life, but
+terrible drawbacks in the world of to-day, and that any woman would do
+better for herself to accept any reasonably suitable offer than to
+cling to an impossible dream, or insist upon a great amount of
+sentiment. "It ought to be enough," said this girl of the period, "for
+a woman to be able to decently respect a man who has the means of
+placing her in such conditions as she thinks will suit her. And men do
+very well without sentiment. They have their professions, their
+business, their friends, their clubs. It is quite enough for them if
+their wives are fairly good housekeepers and mothers, presentable at
+head of their tables, pleasant hostesses in their drawing-rooms. It
+sounds very mean, but what is a girl to do? We may be most of us clever
+enough and tolerably well educated, but there are not among us many
+brilliant geniuses who can find all comfort and happiness in a life
+devoted, wholly to art or literature. What is one of the mediocre mass
+to do? It's not genteel to do this, it's unfeminine to do that; one
+can't stir in any direction that would have in it some spirit, some
+earnest, something worth while.
+
+"You can always do good, they tell us. I dare say; so can men; but how
+many among them would like to be recommended, as life occupation, to go
+making impertinent raids into poor people's houses to tell them they're
+untidy, when a family has but one room to live in, and there's but one
+water tap in the court, and two or three flights of stairs over which
+to carry every drop; or that they're ill-smelling, and will have fever,
+when an open drain and the dust bin are lodged just under the window,
+and somebody's great high wall cuts off every ray of sunshine; or that
+they don't know how to manage because they fare ill, when a half dozen
+people must keep life in them and some covering on them on fifteen
+shillings a week? Oh, I'm sick of it all! Look at mamma! She _lives_ in
+jails, up alleys, in soup kitchens and dispensaries, and we girls cut
+out and make up flannels, and knew about relief tickets before we could
+speak, and it's all just pouring water into a sieve! Mamma's always
+in agonies about some _protegee_ she's placed somewhere, who has
+absconded with the family plate and wardrobe. Her people are always
+getting drunk, fighting, or cheating her in some monstrous way. Her
+nicest girls run off with a strolling theatre company, or to dance in
+the ballet. There's no end to her miseries, and the people she spends
+her whole time, strength, and all the money she can spare and beg upon
+are not really much better off in the end. But even if they were? Mamma
+is mamma, and I am myself, and we're differing stars. No, I stick to my
+text. To be only a commonly contented married woman, with the shelter
+and freedom of a wife's position, with a house to keep, children and
+servants to look after, and with a certain amount of social influence,
+is better than to subside into a grim or fidgetty old maid in lodgings,
+with a dog and three-volume novels to get through the days and years
+with; to be snubbed and sneered at by men; to have, when one's hair is
+white as time can make it, the privilege of walking meekly out to
+dinner behind one's grand niece, a silly chit of eighteen, married a
+twelvemonth--and nobody to care whether one lives or dies, unless
+perhaps a Bath chair man.
+
+"Matrimony's the only career for women in England, but we ought to be
+trained for it on Gradgrind principles. As it is, we're far too
+aesthetic and sentimental for the mates we must have--if any. Poetry and
+the stories of fine, gracious, self-sacrificing lives ought to be
+suppressed; they're ruinous reading for this nineteenth century." And
+so on and on.
+
+"There's reason for that poor girl's bitterness," said Mrs. Stainton
+when we were again alone. "A dozen years ago, in her first and second
+seasons out, a more charming creature it would have been hard to
+find--ingenuous, sunny tempered, a dashing, sparkling blonde beauty,
+full of Irish quickness and fun, and a favorite wherever she went.
+Unluckily she met Ward Cotterell--now one of the editors of 'The
+Phare'--then a radiant, double first, handsome, chivalric, but as poor
+and debt-laden as he was clever, and the pair fell desperately in love.
+Mrs. Dixon wouldn't let them call themselves engaged. She had crippled
+her own fortune, and Kate had sacrificed a great part of her own
+portion, to clear a spendthrift eldest son and brother of his
+difficulties, and start him afresh in Ceylon, so that aid on their part
+was impossible, and Cotterell, after a year or so's trying vainly in
+this and that direction, for an income, gave up the struggle, married
+an heiress, who paid his debts, brought him L40,000 then, and has
+inherited since L60,000, and within six months after his marriage had
+his place on the 'Phare' offered him, with a salary of L1,200 a year.
+'What would I not have given a year ago for any sort of hard work that
+would have made me sure of L500 a year?' he said to some friend who
+knew the little story.
+
+"Poor Kate kept up pretty well. 'What else _could_ he do?' she always
+says. 'He had no income, and mine would have barely given us shelter.'
+But she refused offer after offer for years. Now, when she finds
+admiration less freely forthcoming, and is utterly weary of everything
+she has tried, or believes is in store for her, I dare say she fancies
+she regrets the lost chances, but she's too genuine to make a _mariage
+de convenance_, let her talk as cynically as she will.
+
+"As for Cotterell, he hasn't a money anxiety in the world, and is
+reckoned one of the most brilliant leader writers in London; but his
+wife is the most commonplace woman alive--no more a companion to him
+than a housemaid would be; and Cotterell's not one of the clever men
+who like women to be pillows, and pillows only. He has given up
+society, save that of men, almost entirely; lives in his study and his
+room in the 'Phare' building, and his talk, when one meets him, is a
+mixture of fatalism and wormwood, depressing to the last degree. No
+hero he, and yet his fate has plenty of compensations that Kate's
+lacks--power, work, and two or three children that have inherited his
+wit as well as his handsome looks.
+
+"Oh, what a world it is!--a world of infinite pettinesses. I'm
+dreadfully poor and cowardly myself, but I've always had the greatest
+reverence for the gift of immortality, and I used to think if I could
+have chosen, I would have been born and then have died directly. But
+now that I believe unbaptized babies and people whose goodness, however
+perfect, is only natural, will have, in another existence, but natural
+beatitude, and as such a state wouldn't at all satisfy me for an
+eternity, I should have to tarry long enough to be baptized, and after
+that one can't wish to run away directly from the foes one has just
+promised to war against. A soul _not_ such a responsibility, and is
+always thrusting in to complicate and confuse matters!
+
+"But, do you know, I think so often what an admirable, harmonious,
+earthly preface to eternal bliss in the natural order would Anglicanism
+be--Anglicanism of the moderate type, a little quickened with the
+evangelical element, but neither high nor low. The life, as I remember
+it in the close at ----, was so pleasant, so decorous, so amiable, so
+full of good, comfortable, luxurious things, so ladylike and
+gentlemanly, so reputable. One kept the commandments mainly; one was
+never anything but high-bred and high-toned; one did one's duty
+too--taught a little in the schools; looked after the rheumatic old
+bodies in cottages delightfully picturesque to sketch, but dark and
+damp as graves to live in; handed buns and tea at the school treats;
+one wasn't always thinking about delicate matters of conscience, about
+renunciation, self-abnegation, and what it must mean to be a soldier
+under a captain who neither lived delicately, nor slept softly, nor was
+used to stately shelter--a crucified head whose arms are the
+instruments of the Passion--and how well off one's body was!"
+
+And I've been--no, I've been bidden to the Dialectical Society. You
+don't know what that is, my barbaric New Zealander? And I didn't know
+either when Mr. Malise sent me tickets for one evening, specially
+urging my attendance, as there would be something well worth hearing--a
+paper on "Celibacy" read by its author, a gifted young girl of only
+twenty-two!
+
+I took my tickets to my liege. "Ronayne, fount of wisdom and light,
+whatever may the Dialectical Society be?"
+
+"The Dialectical Society, madam, is a body of men and women who meet to
+rake up, turn over, and discuss to all their verges subjects which the
+weaker mass of mortals think upon only on compulsion, with fear and
+trembling, and in mental sackcloth and ashes. And pray, what have you
+to do with Dialecticals, Eve? We are _not_ going there, if that's what
+those tickets mean!"
+
+"Oh, Adam! And why not? Because I'm, unluckily, married, am I to stop
+trying to improve myself, and not care to know what grand heights
+happier, unhampered women are scaling? And, Adam, only see, here's to
+be a paper read by a young lady only twenty-two, Mr. Malise says, and
+there couldn't be anything so very dreadful to hear in the little
+composition of an innocent young creature like that!"
+
+"'Subject, Celibacy, by Eliza Stella Greatheart, M.D.,'" read Ronayne.
+"Humph! charming young creature! Well, madam Lil, you'll have to
+imagine what the medical young lady will say on the state she's proved
+to such ripeness of years, for you're not likely to hear, and Mr.
+Malise has wasted his tickets. And as if you cared what anybody could
+say about single blessedness--a woman with an angel in the nursery
+crib, and a husband who breathes but to serve her! Go away this
+minute!" And I left monseigneur to his _moutons_, a little huffed, no
+doubt, at being interrupted in the fine middle of a working
+morning--always "The Growth of Language"; and you should see the pile
+of MSS. I used to copy for him, but lately it has taken so much time to
+sketch my baby! Every new attitude is prettier than the last, and every
+day adds a charm. You need not laugh; I never had a baby before. Just
+wait until you know for yourself! I've painted the darling twice, once
+for Ronayne's father, though a little against the grain, for the old
+gentleman thinks it dreadfully _infra dig._ that I, a lady born, and I
+most especially a lady wed, should ever have been publicly catalogued
+as an artist in exhibition lists and newspaper notices, and have sold
+the labor of my hands, eyes, and brain in the marketplace. What would
+happen if he caught sudden sight of a memento that always goes with me
+in one of my boxes--a little tin sign, my first one; and how proud I
+was of it!
+
+FRAULEIN LILIAN MACFARLANE.
+
+
+I don't like, for the family's sake, to imagine. When Ronayne gave him
+the picture on his birthday, our joint offering, my work set in the
+loveliest frame Ronayne could find, he couldn't help being pleased, and
+he couldn't help knowing it was baby's very self; but if the picture
+had been the work of a paid artist, I know he would have been
+wonderfully soothed. The picture was on exhibition for some days in the
+morning room, and being one day in the conservatory with Ronayne, I
+heard his father expatiating upon the striking likeness that had been
+happily caught, to a lady visitor. Presently I heard her read the
+signature, "Lil. De Vere, del., 1873." "Why, it is your
+daughter-in-law's work! How charming for a mother to be able to paint
+such an admirable portrait of her child. That must double the picture's
+value to you!"
+
+And the _beau pere_ hemmed and hawed, and made the general inarticulate
+noises of an Englishman embarrassed, or wishful to make an impressive
+speech, and finally got out:
+
+"Aw, yes, yes--of course! A nice and amateur talent has Mrs. De Vere."
+
+"Nice amateur talent!" I was fit to fly at him, and only the
+brutal--yes, the brutal--grasp of my husband kept me from rushing into
+the room and proclaiming "Mrs. De Vere's" antecedents--her artistic
+career sketched in a few bold touches.
+
+The world would have ended then and there. But how delightful to have
+seen, first, his looks of blank horror at the idea of a daughter-in-law
+who had been used to rough it, and to make her little money go a
+fabulously long way.
+
+"This is the daughter of Prof. Macfarlane!" he introduces me proudly
+sometimes. I wonder if he thinks a poor scientific man like papa could
+send all his young ravens about first-class, or keep a maid and a
+governess with one in various continental cities where she chose, as an
+eccentric whim, to abide and study art? What would he have said to my
+gloves in those earlier days when I earned nothing, and most of my
+allowance, beyond board and lodging, went for paints, and four pairs of
+dark, carefully chosen gloves had to go through the year? What to my
+lodgings at the tailor's--a poor cobbler-tailor, in Dresden? What to my
+lunches of _Wurst_ beer and black bread? What to the concerts, where,
+in smoke and a three-penny seat, I heard music as good as plenty which
+costs me ten shillings to a guinea in London? What to all the
+cheek-by-jowl encounters with the peasants in our cheap, rapturously
+happy sketching tours? Bah! the poor Irishman! As if he could guess
+anything about it! Why should I think twice of his "amateur talent" and
+other little pin-pricks when the stiff, starved man never had, in his
+whole life, one such happy day of honest work, utter freedom, and
+simplest, blissfullest pleasures as have been mine by scores? Be easy,
+Ronayne. Not for the Bohemian daughter-in-law shall apoplexy smite the
+sovereign of Castle _Starched-stiff-O_!--which sacrilegious parody
+shall be my only revenge.
+
+And if I portray my baby in every week of her life, her father turns
+her to account no less. She is beginning to chatter like a wren, and
+Ronayne has a notebook devoted to her earliest attempts at speech--the
+sounds, as she is progressively able to make them--the easily-conquered
+ones, the impregnable rock-fortresses, the turns, substituted letters.
+Sometimes I get quite furious over this anatomical process. My darling
+says something with the dearest, sweetest, small voice:
+
+"Oh, Ronayne!" I cry. "Did you hear? Three words together--'Pease,
+papa, tugar!'" And I smother her in ecstasy.
+
+"Yes, love," says Ronayne. "And do you notice how she can manage s
+before a, and not before u? This morning I shook her, and nurse asked
+her, 'What does papa do?' 'S-ake a baby,' she answered--but she never
+says sugar. And there's the same----"
+
+"Oh, you vivisecter," I broke in; "I'll have you to know, sir, that
+_my_ baby's pretty lispings are not to be treated like the rudimental
+language of a philologist's offspring! Put up that abominable book this
+instant! Did a cruel father, my lammie, spear his own child with a
+wicked pin, and stick her up in a case?"
+
+I _am_ a happy woman, Susie. Too happy; I'm frightened at it. You, may
+be, don't see where this comes in. If you don't, never mind. My heart
+_does_ run over nowadays for all sorts of reasons, and no-reasons.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+Later on Ronayne told me, apropos of the Dialectical, that his
+objection was like the Frenchman's to the fox-hunt--"he'd been," if you
+please--went with Dr. Thunder and the Truth-Seeker just before our trip
+to Brighton. Then the subject under discussion was marriage, and Lady
+----'s son read the paper--a long argument against monogamic marriage:
+In the light of experience and human reason it was monstrous to make
+the promises required at the altar; monogamic marriage fettered man,
+made his best capabilities impossible, made women hypocrites and
+slaves, made love commercial, was physiologically a cruelty and a
+mistake, and so on, and so on. "You don't love Lady ----'s son. You
+would love him less had you heard the things he found it possible to
+say before the fifty or sixty ladies who found it possible to listen to
+him, and to take some active part in the discussion that succeeded.
+
+"They called loudly upon Dr. Thunder to speak; but he refused to rise,
+preferring, I suppose, to hear how well his disciples could acquit
+themselves; for he is the author of a work upon physiology which is
+nick-named the 'Social Science Bible'--a book I believe to be one of
+the most mischievous that has appeared within recent years--materialistic
+to the last degree, degrading man, disorganizing society.
+
+"Over a glass of wine afterward, Mr. Feldwick--I beg your pardon, the
+Truth-Seeker--told me a pleasant little history of Lady ----'s son. He
+says the man had, as a child and youth, a thoroughly good nature,
+frank, placable, extraordinarily loving and generous, and that then he
+bade fair to achieve great things as a naturalist.
+
+"But Lady ----, who had had a hard experience of matrimony, with a
+husband whose only merit was his early death, lost, when this son was
+sixteen, her only other child, a boy of twelve--not an imbecile, but a
+slow, feeble-minded, gentle, and very beautiful child to whom mother
+and brother were passionately devoted.
+
+"Lady ---- was nearly frantic at this loss: would see no one; retired
+for a year or so to a desolate Scotch place they have, and then
+suddenly went abroad. There she flew restlessly from Algeria to St.
+Petersburg and Norway for awhile, seen everywhere, but nowhere long;
+then followed several quieter years when she spent her time chiefly at
+Berlin, Geneva, and Paris, forming in these places a large circle of
+acquaintances among the most revolutionary spirits of Europe. By and by
+they, mother and son, came back to London, but so changed--she in
+thought and speech, he in all things--that their old friends and
+kindred scarce knew how, comfortably, to maintain any intercourse with
+them, and the son, at least, seemed to desire that all old ties should
+be snapped asunder. The mother was for ever declaiming vague,
+inconsequent tirades against all things that are; the son was cynical,
+rough, disagreeable to an insufferable extent, and in their
+drawing-rooms a quiet, _borne_ old friend was sure to encounter a
+tremendous procession of the emancipated--the reddest of reds, unwashed
+agitators of all tongues and hues, aggressive free-thinkers, poets
+screaming mad indecencies and blasphemies to vindicate the office of
+art; women whose mission it was, by nude dancing, posing, acting, to
+educate humanity and lift it to that plane whereon to the pure all
+things are pure; men of science standing on dreary pedestals of comely
+things they have shattered--a procession, in short, no one of whose
+members the humdrum old acquaintance would care to face a second time.
+
+"More discouraging than all was a story that began to be whispered
+among the people who had known the family most intimately in the
+earlier days--the story of a young girl, a distant connection of Lady
+----'s husband, who had been left an orphan when only a child, almost
+friendless and quite penniless, and had been, thanks to Lady ----, most
+carefully trained abroad to fill the position of musical governess, the
+girl having extraordinary aptitude for music. Her studies over, she
+accompanied Lady ---- during a year or two of her later wanderings on
+the continent, and returned with her to London, where she soon obtained
+several good teaching engagements, and sang with great success at
+concerts during one season. A very pretty, winning creature she was,
+Mr. Feldwick said: a dark, rich-tinted face, where every emotion
+mirrored itself, and a manner as joyous, impulsive, frank as a child's,
+joined to the caressing coquetry of a Frenchwoman. She spoke three or
+four languages as well as English; her dancing was a thing to see in
+this awkward island; and the child was altogether so fresh and sweet
+that no one wondered that Lady ---- insisted that her _protegee_ must
+not think of finding shelter save with her.
+
+"But young ---- was not less sensible than his mother to the girl's
+charm, and it presently became evident that he had the child's whole
+heart in return. And now began difficulties. For years Lady ---- had
+declaimed against the bondage, the hideous wrongs and wretchednesses of
+marriage, and had never tired in depicting a glorious earth-life in the
+future when the free man and woman should love each other because they
+loved--but be held to no duty of loving, no responsibility--free as the
+air to come and go; and young ----, fed on such food, companioned as he
+had always been, was far more vehement than his mother upon the
+subject, and had sworn by all his gods that civilized marriage should
+never count him among its victims.
+
+"He told the girl he loved her, but that she knew he could not marry
+her; that the fetters of marriage would kill love in him; and he would
+rather assume them for any woman in the world than herself. The girl
+would have married him at a word; on her part there was the utter
+surrender of an adoring affection; but what would it be to have Herbert
+without his love?
+
+"And she had not been so intimately a member of that household without
+coming to share its opinions and sentiments, so she declared that
+Herbert should give her his love, make no sacrifice for her, sully the
+ethereal nature of their relation with no worldly care. They were to be
+that grand pair, the coming man and woman, prophesied by Lady ---- and
+her philosophers. But, most astonishingly to the young people, here
+Lady ---- failed them. The coming man and woman were all very
+fine--some ages hence--but to have them appear in conventional,
+censorious London, in the century we live in, and in the bosom of her
+family, was too much for her heroism--'Her hereditary instincts,
+cowardice, and training,' her son said. Herbert might marry Mimi at any
+moment; no one could ask of the Fates a more lovable wife and
+daughter-in-law; but it was nonsense--worse, it was wickedness--to
+dream of living after or up to their convictions in society as now
+constituted. Did Herbert think for a moment what would befall Mimi if
+she acted as her generosity and all their ideas would prompt her? It
+would be destruction--simple destruction to the child, and if her son
+could not sacrifice his principles to his love, then he was bound in
+honor and pity, living in this unhappy time, to sacrifice his heart. At
+any rate Mimi must be protected.
+
+"But the young man could not deny his principles, and would not deny
+his selfishness; so Lady ---- sent Mimi from her, obtaining her a good
+position in one of the best schools at Brighton, begging the lady
+principal, an old friend of her own, to keep upon the young girl a
+watch that might almost be called a guard. She remained there a few
+months, and then, one fine morning, was suddenly missing, and Lady ----
+received a note from her, posted in London, to say that it was useless
+to struggle longer; Herbert was bitterly unhappy and disappointed in
+her, reflected on her want of love and courage, and that she, Mimi, had
+chosen her part, and meant to see if one could not honestly live one's
+frank life in the London of to-day.
+
+"Lady ----'s expostulations with her son were useless. 'I like what you
+have taught me, mother, and my conscience is in the matter.'
+
+"And the same delicate conscience prevented him from supporting Mimi
+pecuniarily. He said, and she confirmed, that there should be no tie
+between them but love--that no other gift was fitting from one to the
+other. The woman of the future would have no need of protection, or to
+barter herself for care and a home; she would love out of a sphere of
+fine, grand independence, self-reliance--so would and should Mimi. Poor
+girl! her sphere of independence has been anything but grand and fine:
+a life in shifting, third-rate lodgings, under an alias, for, keeping
+her maiden style, it was simply impossible with her means to secure
+anywhere a reputable shelter, singing in concerts to support herself,
+and getting now and then a few lessons to give where people don't
+inquire too closely if they can secure good teaching cheaply, but
+bereft of all friends save a few pitying ones who now and then come to
+her relief, with no young brightness in her life, separated from her
+children, for she has three or four who are inexpensively taken care of
+at a farm in Cumberland, at a distance too great for her to see them
+save for a short autumn holiday; seeing Herbert sometimes only at very
+long intervals, for he goes abroad frequently for long absences, and
+leaves her with scanter ceremony than most men bestow upon a faithful
+dog--the mean-spirited good-for-naught!--shabbily clad, and living,
+like a rock hermit, on bread, fruit, and a salad, to make the money
+cover as far as may her own and her children's simplest needs. One
+can't wonder that Lady ----'s beautiful hair has turned from lustrous
+brown to snowy white in these few years, or that she should be
+tormented, as Mr. Feldwick says she is, with remorse lest she be to
+blame for the miserable warping of her son, and the catastrophe of
+Mimi's existence. She would be glad to come to Mimi's aid and that of
+her grandchildren, but that Mimi never permits unless she is in
+_extremis_, having, as she says, taken her lot with full warning from
+Lady ----; and Mimi has a helper who asks nothing more than to succor
+her from his own very moderate store--a fellow singer who met and loved
+her in the days when she was free, and in these, her days of ignominy,
+loves her honorably and hopelessly still, and devotes himself to any
+service in her and her children's behalf that she will permit; a poor,
+little, unknown, unsung Bayard, whose earthly happiness may be added to
+those sadder wrecks of lives ruined by the theorizings of Lady ---- and
+her co-vagrants."
+
+What do you think of all this, Susie? Would you exchange love in the
+bush for love among these "leaders of thought" in London? How, after
+these wicked, cynic, dreary histories and encounters, I nestle into my
+home and am so humbly grateful for its every little self-abnegation,
+every straitness of bond, no less than for the unspeakable riches it
+holds--that of being loved and beloving to one's heart's highest-heaped
+and deepest-down-pressed measure.
+
+Love from Ronayne and self to my dearest woman. All kindest regards to
+the head of the house, and tender wishes that the new home in that
+topsy-turvy region of the world may be as happy and, some day, as noisy
+as that whence this journeys to you from
+
+Lil.
+
+
+18 STANFIELD GARDENS, }
+March 12, 1876.       }
+
+And do I never, in these days, see anything of my cooperative friends?
+Yes, something, but less since Miss Hedges went to Duesseldorf. Mrs.
+Stainton came to us a good deal early in the winter, but a month ago
+she was ordered off to Bournemouth for an obstinate cough, and the long
+letters I get from her are fuller of personal and spiritual matters
+than of references to her late co-associates. For she's done at last
+what we had all been looking for--gone over to Rome--and one hears from
+her now nothing but the Church: the Church's wisdom and peace,
+allusions to the saints, speculations upon states of prayer, enthusiasm
+for the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, and fervent wishes that
+all puzzled wayfarers may find what she has found--absolute conviction
+and rest--though she owns that the new religion is fuller, far, of
+struggles and crosses than the old. "What does our father, the Dean,
+say?" I asked lately. "That this 'is at least a respectable vagary,'"
+she wrote back, "'which one could hardly say for most of my dreams and
+experiments!' Fancy papa's feeling himself authorized to speak of the
+spiritual life of anything above a crayfish!--a dear old country
+gentleman who is too entirely well satisfied with this world and his
+lot in it ever to think of heaven except in an official way, and whose
+strongest vocations are matrimony, and the writing mildly learned
+antiquarian papers for the West of England Archaeological Society.
+
+"But you like stories. Here is papa's latest: One of his High Church
+confreres had been diligently expounding to a navvy the doctrine of the
+Trinity, and was boasting to papa of the intelligence of his neophyte.
+Papa, who holds very old-fashioned, inhumanitarian ideas as to the good
+or possibility of education for the masses, was scornfully incredulous
+as to the navvy's getting even an idea of the mystery upon which his
+friend had been instructing him. 'Will you go with me to see him, and
+convince yourself?' asked the clergyman. 'Delighted,' said papa, and
+off they set to find the navvy. After a little talk papa said to the
+man, 'This gentleman here tells me he has been talking to you about the
+Holy Trinity. Can you give me the names of the Three Persons?' 'Why,
+sir,' answered the navvy, 'there's God the Father and God the Son, but,
+to tell the truth, sir, I disremember the name of the other gentleman
+entirely!' Now I maintain that papa's in the wrong about the navvy, and
+that the ritualist clergyman had no reason to be so utterly
+disconcerted, as papa declares he was, at this naive answer. Am I
+wicked, I wonder, to be repeating these stories? But you know I don't
+mean the least irreverence, and I can't help seeing they're droll!
+Somebody has said nobody is so irreverent as religious people, but I
+always reckoned that a sour-tempered saying, judging after the sense
+and not after the spirit. We have some distant Quaker connections where
+I visit sometimes, and in that household if one mentions our Lord in
+familiar conversation, as if He had a connection with the humble little
+events of the daily life, there is always a shocked hush, as if
+possibly it might not be unsacrilegious to speak of our Creator save on
+meeting days, and with formal removal of all lay business and speech. I
+am sure they never heard of St. Francis of Assisi preaching to the
+birds. What would they have said to it?
+
+"You hope that Mr. Feldwick's experience will not be mine, and intimate
+that if the Church fails me, nothing remains for me but the unbelief of
+our friends in the cooperative house. Yes, I've long felt that between
+Rome and rationalism there's no logical ground on which to rest. But I
+have no fears.
+
+"Mr. Feldwick told me once that having, while a Catholic, read
+somewhere that St. Philip of Neri was so distressed at ecstasies that
+befell him in public that he tried the reading, before saying mass, of
+books on other than spiritual subjects, to divert the usual current of
+his thoughts and love, he, Mr. Feldwick, conceived this to be an
+authorization for him to read romances, speculative books, what not, by
+way of preparing himself to receive Holy Communion--after which history
+I never wondered that he had wandered out of the Father's House after
+the husks of spiritism. But it is very difficult to conceive him
+responsible. If reading qualified for heaven, how high up would he not
+be! But he seems rather born to accumulate all manner of heterogeneous
+information, and to echo the last 'Times' leader, the last clever paper
+in the 'Contemporary' or 'Fortnightly,' than to live a man's life of
+independent impression, expression, and will. I always hope that
+invincible ignorance and invincible prejudice may cover so much!"
+
+Anna Hedges and the porcelain widow being gone from London, I should
+see little of the remaining confederates were it not for "little
+Malaise." His mother, I am sure, has given me up as a possible
+disciple. I have never been able to get beyond one suffrage meeting; I
+couldn't somehow sign my name to a petition that women be eligible
+pupils for the study of law, and I horrified her greatly by
+enthusiastic support of a proposition that garroters, wife-beaters, and
+committers of ruffianly assaults upon women and children be publicly
+punished with the cat. "So inhumane!" she said. "Such an education of
+the brutal instincts in the spectators! Surely I did not think what
+such a sight would be for the young, how much more it would inculcate
+in them revenge than the gentler virtues. And society was responsible
+for these criminals. They were what her neglect and their conditions
+had made them. They should not be punished for what was a misfortune
+rather than a fault. Our business was to train, develop these people
+instead of behaving to them as they did to their unfortunate victims."
+I admitted a trembling hope that something might be done for the
+humanizing of the next generation of our lowest-down people, but
+persisted that fear and shame seemed to me the likeliest means to stop
+the sickening record of cowardly savagery that week after week comes to
+us from all over England--the crimes of adults past all restraints save
+forcible ones. One week I kept a list, gathered from two provincial
+papers and the "Telegraph." Besides a dozen or so of the ordinary cases
+where a man beats and kicks his wife, and policemen and no onlookers
+interfere _because_ she's the man's wife, one costermonger had flung
+his wife under a loaded van; one navvy had gouged out one of his wife's
+eyes, and threatened, in the police court, "to do for her yet"; another
+had pounded his wife to a horrible jelly with a flat-iron; another held
+his by force upon a red-hot stove; and the last on the list, a collier,
+nearly tore his wife in pieces, with the help of a bull-dog, "because
+she aggerewated him by giving him a leg of veal for his dinner when
+he'd made up his mind to a pair o' boiled fowls!"
+
+But Ronayne says maliciously that Mrs. Malise has resigned me to
+obscurity and the fossil period; not because it was hopeless--the
+winning me--but because, after all, it didn't seem worth while. True I
+had broken from the ranks, set up in business for myself, and earned my
+bread for a while--but then how dreadfully ignorant I am. It was bad
+enough when I didn't know who Margaret Fuller was, and had never read
+Mill on "Liberty"; but the day I owned to a pocket dictionary, and my
+unaided helplessness as to double consonants and such vicious words as
+_separate_, _niece_, _ascension_, and so on, finished the business.
+
+And no wonder. What do you suppose my Mabel will say, grown tall and
+wise like her father, to a mother who knows more about King Arthur and
+the Knights of the Round Table than about the real kings and bygone
+personages of her own or any other country--a mother puzzled always as
+to whether it was Alfred the Great or Sir Humphrey Davy who burnt the
+cakes; a mother loving Glastonbury better than almost any spot of
+English ground, and believing devoutly that there Joseph of Arimathea
+planted his staff that became the winter thorn, blossoming at
+Christmas, "mindful of our Lord"; that there in the church-yard of the
+first hurdle-built church he and King Arthur and Queen Guinevere all
+mouldered away to dust; a mother who knew no more than sufficed to
+wield crayon and brush indifferently, and to love what she loves with
+her whole heart?
+
+And I'm writing her life, her little life, with all its tiny
+unfoldings--a story of her being and doings, illustrated profusely with
+sketches and photographs--writing it for the Mabel of by and by. Will
+she forget the tenderness that's in every line and stroke when she
+comes upon such a sinful juxtaposition as this which Ronayne laughed at
+the other day. "Flanel peticoat?" Yes, "flanel peticoat"; it _does_
+look rather queer, but that's only because we're used to the wicked
+lavishness of the common fashion--and double consonants are only so
+much crinoline. When I worry sometimes as to what baby'll think of her
+mother being such a goose, Ronayne says the spelling and all the other
+stupidities are only piquant, and that he asks of heaven nothing better
+than a daughter only half as much to his taste as his wife is, which
+would be very dear of him to think and tell me if he had not rather
+upset it by admitting that if he had a son who persisted in spelling
+warm after his mother's eccentric fashion--wharm--he, my husband, would
+certainly "wharm" that boy--my boy.
+
+And I'd sooner Mabel should laugh even unkindly at her mother's
+ignorance than ever see her turning over the leaves of a set of books
+wherein her mother's hand had carefully cut away every allusion to
+Christian belief, every repetition of God's name--such a set as I saw
+Mrs. Malise scissoring when I called upon her last.
+
+"These are books that are accumulating for Mill," she
+explained--"presents from one and another--and I'm cutting out every
+word that can suggest to him the idea of any life or any world than the
+only one of which he can gain a certainty through his senses; childish
+impressions are so tenacious, and I mean him to be utterly free from
+influence or superstition; open to believe or disbelieve in immortality
+when his faculties are trained, and he can judge evidence fairly. The
+Christian scheme seems to me to rest on a mass of unworthy fables; but
+he is not to be taught in the sense of my conclusion. I shall guard him
+from my atheism as carefully as from accepted forms of faith. Surely no
+more can be exacted from a mother than to rear a child unbiassed, and
+let him make his own experiences, shape his own belief. I believe there
+are text-books in which no reference to any possible personal Creator
+of the universe is to be found, and we hope such are in use at the
+Genevan kindergarten, and Mr. Malise means, in some of his leisure
+time, to write a series of stories for children in which there shall be
+no hint of the supernatural; stories that shall deal only with this
+living, breathing world we know; with no pretty fiction concerning a
+life and personages generations of men have invented details for"--and
+I--
+
+    I seemed to move among a world of ghosts,
+    And feel myself the shadow of a dream.
+
+But Geneva and these dreary story-books are two or three years off, let
+us hope. Meanwhile baby and I are grown very fond of the patient,
+lonely little man, and I have him here as often as Johanna is pleased
+to bring him. Great comfort, I see and hear, he has in Mabel's large,
+sunny day nursery, gay with birds and pictures, well stocked with
+playthings, and possessing an extraordinary wooden construction which
+our little guest beholds with the eye of faith, naming it rapturously
+gee-gee, and worshipping it as the king of beasts. When we are alone at
+dinner I have the mites down for a few minutes at dessert, and it is
+really pathetic to watch little Malaise's shy delight at getting a
+little fruit and an innocent sweet or two.
+
+
+THE LABURNUMS,    }
+HENLEY-ON-THAMES, }
+July 16, 1876.    }
+
+Changed quarters, you see, my Susie. It was so cold all June I thought
+we should be able to hold out until the end of the session at No. 18;
+but July came in flaming; so more for Mabel's sake than our own we've
+taken a pretty villa here at pretty Henley, for six weeks, and then
+we're off for Biarritz, where we mean to settle ourselves comfortably,
+and thence explore, at our leisure, all the lovely yet almost unknown
+near-by country. The grandpapa paternal has written begging that we'll
+leave Mabel, whom he calls "Tramp No. 3, and too small for the work,"
+at Castle Starched-stiff-O; but Tramps 1 and 2 think they couldn't
+possibly fare on comfortably without that small golden head bobbing
+along beside them, up the hills and down the dales. Nurse is even more
+gypsyish than her master and mistress, and Mabel has spent the greater
+part of all her waking hours since she was two months old out of doors;
+so I think we shall always have in her the hardiest of small comrades.
+
+Miss Hedges goes with us, and we mean, she and I, to bring back between
+us the entire Basque country in our portfolios.
+
+"I'm thankful we're going to a region of picturesque men," says
+Ronayne, "for I think my lot in life likely to be a little less
+afflictive than it was last year. I don't much mind leading contrary
+minded horses up and down by the hour, coaxing suspicious or aggressive
+goats; I might even put another bull as savage as that fellow at
+Twickenham through his paces; but as to posing myself, in any possible
+fashion, even as a snoring shepherd, please to consider, ladies, that
+it's not down in our summer programme.
+
+"Talk of the miseries of a man with a literary wife! What are they, I
+should like to be told, beside those of the unlucky mortal who's
+married a 'fair artist,' and can never so much as yawn in peace again,
+without being perpetuated in the act?"
+
+"I had an eye to business when I married you, sir!" I retort. "You see
+you're a fine, tall, well-made animal, and since I own you, why should
+I go pay away my money for some other model who wouldn't be half so
+good-looking, and whom I couldn't frighten so well into minding me? Not
+pose indeed! Perhaps you would even choose to be bow-legged if so you
+could escape doing your duty? And I think you're maliciously trying to
+get stout. In our rides lately, I notice you puff a good deal if we
+have a bit of a race, and you're really getting a quite perceptible
+little bulge!"
+
+And Ronayne, who knows very well that he's a capital figure, and whom I
+accuse of keeping the lowest button of his coat fastened in order to
+display his slender waist, gives an alarmed glance down at himself, and
+I see, to my great amusement, that no Bass is uncorked at luncheon, my
+lord consenting himself with a glass of sherry instead--a needless
+self-denial, I hasten to add, for he's really no more bulging than a
+greyhound! But he deserves the little scare for his attempt at
+rebellion. Fancy my husband having any will of his own about stopping
+in any attitude I choose him to take, and for as long as I choose! I
+knew such a queer artist in London, a rather coarse, wholly uneducated
+woman, but with a streak of real genius. She married the commonest,
+stupidest man, a pink-and-white young idiot of a tailor, grown now to
+be the "heavy father"--red, fat, lazy, letting his wife earn all the
+money. Somebody scolded about him to the poor, over-worked wife. "Yes,
+I know I have to keep the pot boiling," she answered, "but then Dave
+saves a model, he's the kindest father to the children, and he does all
+the sewing!" _He_ doesn't object to pose, not he! And how proud he is
+of his wife! I found him alone in her studio one day. I looked over
+some engravings after Titian while waiting, and the man said, "Them
+engravings o' Titian's, now, ma'am, they're out o' drawing! But here's
+a picture o' my wife's that's more the real thing," putting on the
+easel, with affectionate pride, a painting in which two or three of
+their children were grouped--a trashy, tawdry, grinning thing, and yet
+with unmistakable touches of power. And this is a tale my husband has
+reason to know by heart, I'm sure! Not pose! I wish he had Miss Hedges
+for a wife! Anything like that girl's utter devotion to her work I've
+never seen in a woman. Rain or shine, cold or heat, are all one to her;
+she never has spiritually gray days when the grasshopper's a burden,
+and Capua itself wouldn't have unnerved her arm and purpose. Work!
+work! And everything turned to account.
+
+Last summer when she was with us I fainted at some horrible tale or
+other. She came into the room where I lay stretched flat upon the
+floor, too miserable to speak, but conscious again. I must do her the
+justice to say she had heard there was no serious cause for my
+condition; but her first exclamation was,
+
+"Oh, Lilian, what a color you are! Blue-white, ghastly, your face all
+drawn, pinched--magnificent! Let me see your hands and nails. Ah,
+capital! Capital! Poor little Lilian! But if you must faint, what a
+chance for me! I couldn't think how I was to get the right tint for my
+dying soldier. I never saw any one dead or wounded, and I am much too
+stolid ever to faint myself. Crossing the channel I took my hand-mirror
+and studied my face when I was desperately sick--but it was all green
+and pathos--no good! But your color's the very thing--only you get pink
+so fast! Oh, Lilian, if ever you faint again, have me called the very
+instant you feel yourself going off!"
+
+This may be called devotion to one's work? But grand work she's going
+to do. She's full of genius, and has only to get over the
+niminy-piminy-izing of the South Kensington School, and work abroad a
+few years, to have a far more justly grounded fame than Rosa Bonheur's.
+
+Already a few first great drops of her shower are falling. She's a
+picture in the Academy, her first, and _on the line_--a picture to
+which the hanging committee themselves took off their hats, and gave a
+cheer for the artist; and a regular ovation she had on the private view
+day--nobility and clergy, fellow artists and journalists, army and
+navy--such a day as she says can never come again for her, let the
+future have what success in store for her it may.
+
+She has sold the picture for a thousand guineas, and her sketch in the
+Black and White Exhibition has appeared in one of the illustrated
+papers, the same paper offering her _carte-blanche_ for illustrations.
+How I feel like swinging her in triumph before the faces of Mesdames
+Malise and her friends!--a simple, frank, good girl, who never in her
+life thought of crying out about a career, and a smoothing of her way,
+or declared her right to devote herself to art, and to such an
+unwomanly branch of it as the drawing of horses and soldiers, but set
+herself obscurely at work, and toiled as faithfully as if she hadn't a
+spark of genius in her--to win what she has already done, and yet will
+do!
+
+Mrs. Malise. That reminds me of that household. Our latest news from
+it, through Mr. Feldwick, who belongs to a "Sordello" club, for which
+my liege had a hankering, only they made him an Irish member, and so
+he'd no time (you wonder what a Sordello club may be? A society of
+ladies and gentlemen, dear, who read Sordello with a key, and try to
+find out whatever it's all about!), and Mr. Feldwick is good enough to
+keep him _au courant_ of their discoveries and interpretations, and
+gossips with me about the Domestic Club. About this Mr. Feldwick is
+concerned. In losing Mrs. Stainton and Miss Hedges, the house lost much
+in his eyes, and there have been other changes, and all so much for the
+worse, that Mr. F. is seriously debating whether the place can long
+continue sufficiently respectable to be honored by the presence of
+himself and Smut--his pug dog. The people whom Lady ---- brings about
+the place get queerer and queerer, and the ideas and schemes they
+broach are----"I'm a man of the world, and something of a philosopher
+myself," says Mr. F., "and I know human nature has plenty of shady
+corners; but, aw, really, aw, you know there must be _some_ limit!"--which
+I was glad to hear from the Truth-Seeker. Young ----'s gone off to see
+if the Fiji islanders or some other outlandish creatures haven't more
+morality and tenderness and general virtues than the men and women of
+civilization; and when I tell you he sailed just after the death by
+diphtheria of three of poor Mimi's children, leaving her to bear that,
+as all things, unhelped by him, you'll wish with me, that some coppery,
+tough old savage'll eat him for his investigating pains! If anything
+can cure her infatuation, one would think this last stroke of barbarity
+might, and perhaps then there would be some hope for the singer lover,
+who has taken care of her, shared her grief--borne all the burden that
+the miserable new Rousseau refused.
+
+The food-reforming trio are gone from the associate household. "The
+Food-Regenerator" has not the circulation it deserves. Its editor threw
+up a secretaryship that was profitable, but cramping to a soaring,
+unmercenary spirit. So the emoluments of the journal were insufficient
+for the club life, and they've retired to a poor lodging where that
+weary white cat, I suppose, is trying to keep the heroic little man and
+all her hungry progeny--ravens, I of course meant to say, only I'd
+called their mother a cat!--on broad beans and porridge and next to
+nothing a week, and do the work of an office-boy besides!
+
+The third member of the trio, the young girl who told me she was to be
+a "healer," has had a sad fate. She had, it seems, some liabilities to
+lung disease which she determined to starve out; so the great rations
+of bran bread and prunes, which distressed Ronayne at the dinner-party,
+dwindled, months ago, to two or three ounces of bread daily, and a
+little fruit--the quantity becoming so small that her mother piteously
+declared they could not understand how she lived at all.
+
+Reducing her food day by day, she went, in June, to Aberystwith for
+some weeks. While there, she fell asleep while reading one afternoon in
+a cave on the coast, and when she wakened it was night, the rain
+falling heavily, the tide risen so that all egress from the cave was
+cut off, and she a prisoner. At that season of the year there was no
+danger beyond that of fright and exposure to damp and chill so many
+hours; for the water only rises high in the cave during great storms;
+but even if she had been told this, who remembers or reasons clearly in
+such sudden, awful moments? But she came out so soon as morning and the
+ebbing water released her, walked the two or three miles back to her
+lodging, told her story with apparent calmness, and before night was a
+raving maniac, so wild and uncontrollable that her family were obliged
+to place her in a lunatic asylum, and as yet there is nothing favorable
+to report in her case.
+
+Mrs. Stainton still at Bournemouth, but writing often either to Miss
+Hedges or to me. In one of her last notes she says, "Do you remember
+that little story I told you of Ste. Colette, the Saint who was walled
+up? I think of her so often, so anxiously; I think, I almost think, it
+will come to that--walling up, I'm afraid not the sanctity?--with me.
+What a harbor it looks--the cloistered life! And there never seemed to
+be any place for me in the world. Everything has turned to ashes in my
+grasp and on my lips. Perhaps it was that the religious life was always
+calling me. I repeat Pere La Cordaire's saying over and over to myself,
+'When we Frenchmen become religious, we do it meaning to be religious
+up to the neck.'
+
+"I should not enter an active order. I have not the strength. But the
+contemplative ones draw me, draw me. Pray for me!"
+
+Mrs. Stainton, Sybarite of Sybarites, a Carmelite, a poor Clare
+sleeping on a plank, washing herself with cold water and sand, living
+on begged bits, bad herrings, and limp cabbages! Shall we indeed see
+that?
+
+
+20th July.
+
+Susie! Susie! what an ending I must give my letter. Little Malaise is
+dead!
+
+"Have you read the papers to-day, Lil?" Ronayne asked me as he was
+dressing for dinner two days ago.
+
+"No, they're so stupid these days; nothing but Wimbledon and padding.
+Why? Is there anything to-day?"
+
+"No, no; nothing," he answered, and though I thought his manner a
+little odd, I had forgotten all about it later when Archdeacon Ryder,
+who was dining with us, suddenly asked:
+
+"Did you notice the account of that painful accident in Westbourne
+Grove in this morning's 'News'? Those terrible perambulators! I wish
+they could be abolished. Maid servants' arms were stouter in my day.
+This stupid German nurse seems to have got dazed, or was staring
+everywhere but where her business lay. An only child, the paper stated,
+an editor's, but I don't remember the name. It was not one familiar to
+me. Did you know it?"
+
+"I've heard it," Ronayne answered, and would have changed the subject,
+but I broke in:
+
+"Oh, Ronayne, a German nurse! Can anything have happened to Mrs.
+Malise's baby? You needn't be silent. Oh, I'm sure it's he!"
+
+And then it all came out--the fact that the child was killed while his
+nurse was trying to wheel him across the road in Westbourne Grove--but
+Ronayne wouldn't have any details told me.
+
+The poor little man! My own baby's age, and such a sweet-tempered,
+patient little fellow! What a life! To come where he had but grudging
+welcome, to have no real mother, no warm little places of fond
+sunshine, and to go away from all this world's possibilities in that
+sudden cruelty! It wrung my heart, the hardness of it all. But could I
+really grieve, remembering how chill was the brief life, and
+remembering, above all, the scheme that was to make of him, so helpless
+and undefended, a spiritual outcast and foundling?
+
+And since I saw his mother--I went yesterday, having first sacked
+Henley of white flowers, heliotrope, and fragrant leaves--and found her
+unshaken in composure, untouched by any sense of duty missed--since
+then I think I have been only glad that the little soul has taken
+flight.
+
+Very white and peaceful he looked lying in his crib, and I heaped my
+flowers all about him.
+
+"How much you loved him!" Mrs. Malise said, as she stood beside me
+looking at him.
+
+"And how pretty and happy he looks! I wonder if he is happy--if he
+_is_ anywhere?"
+
+"Well, some time we shall know! And perhaps it is better for him as it
+is. Often and often his father and I were perplexed as to what we ought
+to do for him by and by. At any rate he's past our marring! And I hope
+we shall have no more children to deal with--be responsible for."
+
+Ronayne says I ought to add what I have only told him under my breath,
+that it completes my sketch of this "advanced" woman, a mother despite
+herself.
+
+On leaving I said to her something as to where the boy would be buried.
+
+"It is not quite settled," she replied, "but Kensal Green, I suppose.
+We are both strong advocates of cremation, and wish so much that it
+were a present possibility. If it were, and even a difficult one, we
+should certainly bear our practical testimony to the more sanitary way
+of disposing of our dead. But----"
+
+"Heaven help you!" I interrupted; "and farewell!"
+
+We dare not tell this to nurse, who, though she was the little fellow's
+fast friend, cried out at the first news of his death:
+
+"Oh, I am glad he is gone, the poor dear! But he was too good for them,
+and I'm glad he didn't live to have his heart quite broken."
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+And so ends my going forth after new lights. I'm the richer for my
+foray in two friends, and the certainty that, Bohemian as I am, I am
+but a fossil too, and that nature fitted me exactly to my place in
+making me only the contentedly obscure wife of an Irish member and your
+
+Loving Lil.
+
+S. F. HOPKINS.
+
+
+
+
+MISS MISANTHROPE.
+
+BY JUSTIN MCCARTHY.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+CHASTELARD.
+
+
+"So you are really going to be an heiress, my dearest?" Mary Blanchet
+said to Minola, when our heroine was settled at home again. "I knew you
+ought to be, and would be if right were done; but right so often isn't
+done. My brother will be so glad to hear it! but not as other people
+might be glad, you know." For Mary began to be afraid that by a hasty
+word she might be filling the heart of her friend with suspicion of her
+brother.
+
+"I don't know, Mary. Mr. Money, and others, I suppose, say so. I wish
+it were not true; I am all right as things are, and I hate the idea of
+gaining by this poor woman's death. I think I should not feel so if we
+had been friends, and if I could think that it was like a kindly gift
+from her, and that she wished me to have it. But it is all so
+different. And then what do I want of it?"
+
+"One can do so much good with money," said little Mary sighing. She was
+thinking of her brother.
+
+"Yes, that is true," Minola said, thinking of Mary herself and of what
+she might perhaps do for her. "But don't tell any one about this,
+Mary--not even your brother--if you can well help it," Minola added,
+knowing what little chance there would be of Mary's keeping such a
+thing secret from her brother. "It is all uncertain and only talk as
+yet, you know."
+
+"These things are never secret, dearest," Mary said with a wise shake
+of the head. "Men always get to know of them. I think the birds of the
+air carry the news abroad that a woman has money, or that she has not,"
+and Mary sighed again gently.
+
+"Do you see much of an alteration in the ways of men toward me already,
+Mary? Do they hang around me in adoring groups? Do they lean enraptured
+over me as I sweep the chords of the harp? Do they who whispered that I
+sang like the crow before, now loudly declare that my voice puts the
+nightingale out of conceit with his own minstrelsy?"
+
+"Now you are only talking nonsense, dear; for we know so few men--and
+then you don't play the harp, and you never sing in company. But, if
+you ask me, I think I do see some difference."
+
+"Already, Mary?"
+
+"Well, yes, I think so; in one instance at least. Not surely that you
+were not likely to have attentions enough paid to you in any case, if
+you cared about them or encouraged them, and that, even if you hadn't a
+sixpence in the world--but still----"
+
+"But still it does enhance one's charms, you think? Come, Mary, tell me
+the name of this mercenary admirer. Depend upon it, all his arts shall
+fail."
+
+"You are only laughing at me still, dearest, but there is something in
+it I can tell you for all that. It is not my idea alone, I can assure
+you. What do you think of a Duke's brother for an admirer, Minola?"
+
+Little Mary Blanchet was a crafty little personage. She thought she
+could not too soon begin working for her brother's cause by trying to
+throw discredit on the motives of all other possible wooers. She had
+observed when going now and then to the house of the Moneys, during the
+last few days, that the returned cadet of the one great ducal house
+whereof she had any knowledge was there every day, and that he was very
+attentive to Minola. The same remark had been made by Mr. Money, and
+had called forth an indignant objection from Lucy, who protested
+against the thought of her Nola having a broken-down outcast like that
+for a lover. But Mary, who was almost terrified at the idea of sitting
+down in the same room with any member of the great family who owned the
+mausoleum at Keeton, was not certain how far the name of a family like
+that might not go with any girl, even Minola, and believed it not an
+unwise precaution to begin as soon as possible throwing discredit on
+his purposes.
+
+Minola tried not to seem vexed. She had liked to talk to Mr. St. Paul
+when he came, as he did every day of her stay in Victoria street. She
+had liked it because it gave her no trouble in thinking, and it saved
+her from having to talk to others with whom she might have felt more
+embarrassed, and because it turned away attention from what might
+perhaps have otherwise been observed--as she feared at least--by too
+keen eyes. If Mary must suspect anything, it was a relief to find that
+she only suspected this, and Minola tried to make merry with her about
+her absurdity. But in her secret heart she sickened at such talk, and
+such thoughts, and felt as if the very shadow of the fortune which was
+expected for her, falling already on her path, was making it one of new
+pain and of still less accustomed shame.
+
+"Poverty parts good company, used to be said," Minola thought; "a
+little money seems much more likely to part good company in my case."
+
+Yet that there are advantages in a command of money was soon made very
+clear to Minola. When she returned from a walk a day or two after she
+found a specimen copy of Herbert Blanchet's poems awaiting her, with a
+note from Victor Heron. The letter was somewhat awkward and rueful. Mr.
+Heron explained that, by her express instructions, he had allowed
+Blanchet to have it all his own way in the arrangement of the style of
+his appearance in paper and print; and that the cost had become
+something far greater than he had anticipated.
+
+"You should never have been troubled about this," Victor went on to
+say, "but that you made me promise that you alone should pay for this
+thing; I wish I hadn't made any such promise, or consented that
+Blanchet should have his way in the business. To think of a grown man,
+who has seen the world, leaving a matter of money and business in the
+hands of a girl and a poet! Blanchet has been going it."
+
+Minola in all her trouble found room for wonder, delight, and something
+like alarm in looking at the superb edition in which the poems of Mr.
+Blanchet were to go before a world scarcely prepared for so much
+artistic gorgeousness. All that vellum paper, rare typography, costly
+and fantastic binding, and lavish illustration could do for poetry, had
+been done without stint on behalf of Herbert Blanchet. The leaves were
+as thick as parchment and as soft as satin. Only a very few lines of
+verse appeared on each broad luxurious page. Every initial letter of a
+sentence was a fantastic design. The whole school of Blanchet's
+artistic friends had rushed into combination to enrich the pages, the
+margins, and the covers, with fanciful illustration. If they only had
+been great, or even successful and popular artists, the book might have
+been worth its weight in gold. Unfortunately Mr. Blanchet's artistic
+friends were not yet great or famous. The outer world--the world which,
+in the opinion of the school, was wholly composed of dullards and
+Philistines--knew as yet nothing about these artists, and neither
+blamed them nor praised them. The volume was as large in its
+superficial extent as an ordinary atlas, and some of the poems which
+occupied a whole page were not more than four lines in length. The
+whole thing seemed truly, in the words of a poet whom Mr. Blanchet
+especially despised, "all a wonder and a wild desire."
+
+Thinking of herself as the patroness and in some sort the parent of
+such a volume, Minola felt some such mixture of pride and timidity as a
+modest girl might own who has suddenly been made a princess, and is not
+quite certain whether she will be able to support her position with
+becoming nerve and dignity.
+
+There came a little letter too from the poet himself. It ran in this
+fashion:
+
+    "DEAR PATRONESS AND QUEEN: The poet has not dared to send in
+    unfitting casket the offering which your approval has made
+    precious. The poems which are addressed to you must at least
+    offer themselves in form not unworthy to be touched by your
+    hand.
+
+    "In all devotion yours,
+
+    "HERBERT BLANCHET."
+
+Nor did the volume want a poetical dedication. The second leaf
+contained the following:
+
+    UNTO MY LADY PATRONESS AND QUEEN.
+
+      Upon my darkness may there well be fall
+        Light of all darkness, darkness of all light;
+    Starfire of amber, dew of deathlike sheen;
+      Waters that burn, pale fires that sicken all,
+    And shadows all aglow with saffron light;
+      But comes my lady who is Glory's queen,
+        And all the bright is dark, and pallid dark the bright.
+
+Minola read this dedication again and again, puzzled, amused, angry,
+hardly knowing whether to laugh or to cry. "Am I glory's queen?" she
+asked of her own soul. "And if I am, am I letting light or darkness in
+upon my poor poet? Am I depriving him of the amber, the dew, and the
+saffron light, or not? Is it praise or blame, this dedication? I
+suppose it must be praise, but I don't think anybody could tell from
+its words. Oh, my dear little Mary Blanchet, why must you have a
+brother--and why must that brother be a poet?"
+
+There was one consolation--the dedication did not set forth her name,
+and nobody could know who the lady patroness of the poet might be.
+Minola felt inclined to be offended that she should be in any way
+brought into this folly, but she was not certain whether remonstrance
+or complaint might not be more ridiculous than utter silence. After all
+nobody knew anything about her or cared, she said. If she were to
+complain in any way, it would only grieve poor Mary, whom the thought
+that her brother could have offended her friend and leader would drive
+well-nigh distracted. "What does it matter if I am made a little
+ridiculous in my own eyes?" she asked herself. "It is only in my own
+eyes, I suppose. Mary will look on it all as delightful; her brother of
+course means it for the best, and thinks it superb poetry; and there is
+no one else likely to care either way. It is not much to be a little
+more ridiculous in my own eyes than I have already made myself."
+
+Perhaps--perhaps--let it be said with hesitation and much
+caution--there was something not wholly unwelcome to our heroine in the
+idea that she could be glory's queen and all the rest of it, to any
+human creature, not to say any poet, just now. She felt humbled and
+deeply depressed. In her own eyes she was lowered by what she knew of
+her own heart. Her pride had received a terrible wound, almost a death
+wound. The little world she had made so proudly for herself had all
+crumbled into dust. It is not wonderful if at such a time there should
+be, in spite of her sense of the ridiculous and her senses generally, a
+certain soothing influence in the fact that there still was some one in
+whose eyes she appeared a person of account and even of dignity. At all
+events, let it be frankly said, that when the first shock and stir of
+the ridiculous were passed, Minola was not inclined to think more
+harshly than before of the poor poet who called her his patroness and
+his queen. As to the expense of the publication, she was a little
+startled at first, but that sensation very quickly passed away. She was
+not enough of a woman of business yet to care about the cost of
+anything so long as she had the money to pay. It would run her hard in
+her first year of independent life, to pay this much, but then she
+could pay it and live somehow, and it would only be a case for strict
+economy in the future for some time. Besides, it seemed that whether
+she would or not, she was likely to have much more money than she
+wanted or could use for any purposes of her own. Then she was further
+stimulated to carelessness by Mr. Heron's letter.
+
+"If he thinks I care about money, or the cost of serving a friend, he
+is mistaken," she said. "His caution and his protestations are thrown
+away on me."
+
+For she was much inclined to be unjust and harsh in her mind toward
+Heron now. He had committed, all unconsciously, a terrible offence. He
+had, without knowing it, made her fall in love with him. So she made
+the best of the whole affair, cost, dedication, glory's queen, and all;
+and when Mary Blanchet came to look at the precious volume, and to go
+into raptures over it, Minola did her very best to seem contented, and
+not even to suggest a criticism, or to ask what this or that meant. She
+reminded herself that the late Lord Lytton had written contemptuously
+of the "fools on fools" who "still ask what Hamlet means."
+
+"This may be as far off from me as Hamlet from other people," she told
+herself. "Why confess myself a fool by asking what anything means? And
+in any case Mary Blanchet would not know any better than I."
+
+By this resolve she made one woman happy.
+
+But it was not only a woman on whom she had conferred happiness.
+Herbert Blanchet was as happy as even his sister could have wished him
+to be. The head of the poet swam in delight. He had never before been
+so proud and blest. He hung over his volume for hours; he could hardly
+get away from it. When he left it for a moment and tried to escape from
+its fascinations, he found himself drawn back again into its presence.
+He touched fondly its soft, satiny leaves as though they were the cheek
+of beauty; he pressed his own cheek against them; he committed all the
+follies which we understand and admire in the immemorial raptures of
+the young lover or the father of the first born.
+
+"They must see this," he cried aloud. "They can't overlook a volume
+like this." "They" being, of course, that public whose opinion he had
+always despised--those critics whose praise he had always declared to
+be the worst censure to a man of true genius.
+
+To do our poet justice, it must be owned that there was in his breast
+for the first time a deep, strong feeling of gratitude. That emotion
+came there with a strange, overwhelming force, like that of
+intoxication to a man always rigidly sober before. If Minola had had
+him crowned a king, she could hardly have done any greater thing for
+him. Few men on earth can ever have had their dearest ambition so
+sweetly gratified as it was the lot of Herbert, the poet, to find his
+ambition gratified now. To have his poems so set before the world would
+have been a glory and a rapture, no matter though the patron's hand had
+been that of a withered old man or some fat frump of a dowager; but to
+be thus lifted to his longed-for pedestal by the hand of a young and
+beautiful woman was something which he had never dreamed of asleep, and
+seldom allowed even into the dreams of his wild, vain waking hours. The
+emotion called up by experience was as new as the experience itself.
+Mr. Blanchet felt profoundly grateful. In that moment of excitement he
+would probably, if need were, have laid down his life for Minola.
+
+If Minola knew what strange effect had been wrought in the breast of
+her poet, she would assuredly have thought her money well laid out,
+even although she had wanted it far more than she did. "To making a man
+happy, ten pounds," is the peculiar entry on which a famous essay in
+the "Spectator" was founded. To make a man grateful for the first time
+is surely a nobler piece of work than to make him merely happy, and it
+ought fairly to cost a good deal more. Minola had made a man for the
+first time both grateful and happy. The work was a little expensive in
+this case, but what miser will say that the money was thrown away?
+
+It is not likely, however, that Minola would have been quite so much
+delighted if she could have known all the feelings that her generous,
+improvident patronage had awakened in the poet's breast. For Mr.
+Blanchet knew women well, he thought; and he did not believe that mere
+kindness alone could have impelled Minola to such an act of bounty.
+Nor, making every needful allowance for the friendship between Miss
+Grey and his sister, did he find in that a sufficing explanation of
+Minola's liberality. He set himself to think over the whole matter
+coolly and impartially, and he could come to no other conclusion than
+that Miss Grey admired him. He was a handsome fellow, as he knew very
+well, and tall, and romantic in appearance: what could be more natural
+than that a poetic young woman should fall in love with him? He felt
+sure that he had fallen in deepest love with her, but it is doubtful
+whether he was yet in a condition to analyze his own excited feelings
+very clearly. It is certain that he was madly in love with his poems,
+with their gorgeous first edition, with the pride and the prospect of
+the whole affair; and of course likewise in love with the patroness to
+whom he was indebted for so much of a strange delight. But how much was
+love of himself and how much of Minola, he did not take time to
+consider.
+
+There was an artistic and literary association to which Blanchet
+belonged, and amid which he passed most of his nights. It was not
+exactly a club, for it had neither definite rules nor even a distinct
+habitation. It was a little sect rather than a club. It was an
+association of men who believed each in himself, and all, at least for
+the present, in each other. Their essential condition of existence was
+scorn of the world's ways, politics, and theories of art. They held
+that man himself was a poor creature, unworthy of the artist's serious
+consideration. All that related to the well-being of that wretched
+animal in the way of political government they looked down upon with
+mere contempt. The science which professed to concern itself about his
+health, the social philosophy which would take any account of his moral
+improvement, were alike ridiculous in the eyes of this aesthetic school.
+If, however, any uninitiated person should imagine that in setting up
+art as the only serious business of life they were likely to accept any
+common definition of art, he would find himself as open to their scorn
+as if he had tried to improve a bad law or subscribed to the funds of
+some religious organization. Art with them was their own art. The
+enlightened parson, Thwackum, in "Tom Jones," observes that "When I
+mention religion I mean of course the Christian religion, and when I
+speak of the Protestant religion I mean the religion of the Church of
+England." It was in this spirit that the confraternity to which Mr.
+Blanchet belonged defined art. They only meant their own particular
+sect; out of that there was no salvation. Art, it is said, hath no
+enemy but the ignorant. These artists, however, were the enemies of all
+art but their own.
+
+At the present these genial brothers regularly met of nights in the
+lodgings of one of them, who happened to have a large studio in the
+west central region of London, where so much of this unfashionable
+story happens to be cast. Victor Heron had many times been told of the
+genius that burned by night in that favored haunt, and had expressed a
+modest wish to be allowed to pass for an hour within its light. Mr.
+Blanchet was glad of the opportunity of introducing such a friend; for
+it somehow seemed as if the consideration of any member of the
+fraternity was enhanced among his brothers not a little by the fact
+that he could introduce into their midst some distinguished personage
+from the despised outer world. With them Victor Heron might very well
+pass for a distinguished public man, as in fact he already did, with no
+design of his own that way, in the eyes of Herbert Blanchet. To Victor
+the school was all composed of gifted and rising men, whom it was a
+pride to know or even to meet. To the school, on the other hand, Victor
+was a remarkable public man, a tremendous "swell," who had done some
+wondrous things in some far-off countries, and who, for all they knew
+at the time, might be regarded by the world as the prospective Prime
+Minister of England.
+
+There was a peculiar principle of reciprocity tacitly recognized among
+these brothers in art. No one of them would admit that there was
+anything which his brother knew and he did not know. If one of them
+read an author for the first time, and came to meet his fellows proud
+of his freshly-acquired knowledge, he found no man among them who would
+admit that he had not from his birth upward been equally familiar with
+the author in question. It would be easy, surely, some one may say, to
+expose such pretension. Just so; of course it would. But when one
+brother had shown tonight that his friends had never read Schopenhauer,
+and in point of fact could not read him if they tried, who should
+guarantee that same brother against a similar exposure of his own
+harmless little false pretences to-morrow when he professed to know all
+about Euripides? It was not found convenient in this little circle to
+examine too closely into the pretensions of each other. Live and let
+live was the motto of the school so far as their esoteric professors
+were concerned.
+
+There was indeed a legend that some malign person acquainted with the
+peculiarities of the school had once compelled them to invent a patron
+poet. It was done in this fashion: the malign person talked confidently
+and fluently to one of the order concerning a French poet, whom he
+described as a gifted apostle of a kindred school, and whom he was
+pleased to name De Patroque. The youth thus talked to was not to be
+outdone, or even to be instructed. He gave out that he had long had his
+eyes fixed reverently on the genius of the gifted De Patroque. He
+talked largely, not to say bouncingly, of the great De Patroque among
+his friends, who, not to be outdone in their turn, talked to him and to
+others of the new apostle. The fame of De Patroque grew and grew, until
+at last ill-natured persons affirmed that several essays on his genius,
+and fraternal hymns of honor, were composed for him by the admirers of
+his mythical career.
+
+To this select circle Mr. Blanchet had for some time proposed to
+introduce his friend Victor Heron. On the very day when the first
+copies of the gorgeous poems were submitted to privileged eyes, Mr.
+Blanchet called on his friend. He found the friend a little put out by
+the unexpected lavishness of the manner in which the poetic enterprise
+had been carried on.
+
+"This will be an awfully expensive business, I'm afraid," Heron said,
+in an embarrassed tone, for he felt that it was a sort of profanation
+to talk of money matters with a young poet. "I wish you had let me do
+this thing myself, Blanchet. I'd not have minded so far as I'm
+concerned. But I don't know about her, you see--she may not have much
+money. Then young ladies are generally so enthusiastic; she may not
+have thought of what the thing would cost."
+
+"You need not think about that," Herbert said loftily. "Miss Grey will
+be a rich woman one of these days----"
+
+"But I don't see that that much alters the matter, although I am
+decidedly glad to hear it for her own sake, if it will make her any
+happier than she is now--which I take it is not by any means certain.
+But I don't see throwing away her money without her knowing all about
+it any the more."
+
+"Throwing away her money?" Herbert asked, in tones of lofty protest.
+
+"Well, I don't mean that of course," the good-natured Heron hastened to
+explain in all sincerity. "You know very well, my dear Blanchet, what I
+think of your merits and your poems, and of all true poets. I know that
+it is an honor for any one, whether man or woman, to be allowed to help
+a poet to come out before the world and make a success. I only wish I
+had had a chance of doing such a thing for you; but this young lady,
+you know--I don't feel quite certain whether I ought to have spent her
+money so freely."
+
+"I can reassure you, I think," the poet said, with chilling dignity. "I
+should never have allowed any one to do anything for me without having
+satisfied myself that it was done in the unstinting spirit of
+friendship, and by some one whom such kindness would not hurt."
+
+"All right; I am glad to hear you say so, of course, but you won't
+wonder at my scruples, perhaps----"
+
+"Your scruples, my dear fellow, do you infinite honor," Mr. Blanchet
+said, with a slight dash of irony in his tone, which Heron did not at
+the moment perceive, being in truth engrossed by some other thoughts.
+"But you may accept my assurance that there is no further occasion for
+them, and we will, if you please, change the subject."
+
+Victor did not feel by any means well satisfied that there was no
+occasion for scruple, nor did he at all like his poetic friend's way of
+looking at the matter. But he reflected that Blanchet might after all
+have good warrant for what he had said, and that it was not for him to
+cavil at the generosity of a rich girl--if she were rich--toward a poor
+poet.
+
+So they went along, the poet and his distinguished political friend, to
+the scene of the artistic and literary gathering, which the latter was
+so proud to see, and the former so proud to show.
+
+We have all read in story about the effect of some little magic word,
+which once spoken makes that which was lovely before seem but loathly,
+and what was kindly wisdom sound like fatuous malignity. Was there some
+such ill-omened charm working all that night on Victor Heron? Nothing
+seemed to him like what he had expected. He was not impressed as he had
+felt sure he would be by the poets and other sons of genius. They did
+not seem to constitute an assembly of noble minds in whose midst he was
+to feel such reverence as the rude Gauls of history or legend felt in
+the presence of the Roman senators. The thoughts that he heard did not
+strike him as celestial in their origin. There was a good deal of
+disparagement and denunciation of absent authors and artists, which if
+the talkers had not been men of genius, Victor would certainly have
+thought ill-natured and spiteful. There seemed, at least, to his
+untutored mind, to be little more than a technical relish of art in all
+they said. It was not art they cared for, but only a clique and its
+tricks. A group of discontented spinsters girding at their younger
+sisters who were married could hardly have shown themselves more
+narrow-minded and malign. The effect on Victor was profoundly
+depressing. It was like that which might be wrought upon a youth, who
+after gazing in rapture on the performance of some queen of classic
+tragedy, is at his earnest desire taken to see her in her private life,
+and finds her slatternly of dress, mean of speech, wholly uninspired by
+her art, and only taking a genuine pleasure in disparagement or slander
+of her rivals.
+
+If Victor had known the world better, he would have known that much,
+very much, of all this was but the mere affectation and nonsense of
+youth. These young men were as yet among the "odious race of the
+unappreciated." Yet a little, and some of them will make a success, and
+will have the credit of the world for what they do, and they will turn
+out good fellows, kindly, true, and even modest. Nothing makes some
+young men so insufferably conceited and aggressive as the idea that
+they are not successful, and that people know it. There are many of us
+mortals with whom prosperity only agrees. On the other hand, some of
+these youths will fail early, completely, and wholesomely in their
+artistic attempts, and will find out the fact for good, and will retire
+from the field altogether, and settle down to something else, and make
+a success, or at least a decent living, in some other way of life, and
+will forget all the worser teaching of their earlier days; and will
+look back without bitterness on the time when they tried to impress a
+dull world, and have no feeling of hatred for those who have done
+better, but will marry and bring up children, and be Philistines and
+happy. Youth has only one season--luckily for a good many of us, who
+are decent fellows enough as long as we are content to be ourselves,
+and can do without affectation.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+"UNDER BONNYBELL'S WINDOW-PANES."
+
+
+But there was something more in Victor Heron's feeling of depression
+that night than came from the mere fact that he had found a few young
+artists not quite such heroic spirits as he thought they ought to be.
+It was the demeanor of Herbert Blanchet that especially spoiled the
+evening for him. In truth the head of the poet was not a strong one,
+and was very easily turned by any little stimulant of whatever kind.
+His volume of poems this night affected all his being. He felt sure
+that he was at last about to force himself upon the recognition of the
+world, and he made up his mind that Miss Grey was in love with him. He
+conveyed hints of his approaching good fortune to his companions; and
+he received at first with benign courtesy their compliments on the
+success that seemed to await him in life and love. But when some too
+forward person suggested that he could possibly guess at the name of
+the heiress whose heart and hand were to bless the lucky poet, then
+Blanchet became gravely and even severely dignified.
+
+"You will excuse me, Mellifont," he said grandly, the brandy and soda
+having, as was the wont of any such liquor taken by our poor poet, gone
+straight upward to his head--"you will excuse me, I am sure, if I say
+this is not exactly a subject for jocularity; or even, permit me to
+add, for general conversation, although among friends. My distinguished
+friend, Mr. Heron, will, I am sure, exactly appreciate what I say.
+Things may not be so completely settled as to make it proper that they
+should be spoken of as if--as if in short they were settled; you will
+excuse me, Mellifont, my dear fellow--you will excuse me."
+
+Victor Heron thought it time for him to go, and rose accordingly, and
+Mr. Blanchet insisted on accompanying him down the stairs and to the
+door of the house.
+
+"I thought it right, you know," the over-dignified poet said, "to put a
+stop to that sort of thing. Men have no right to make such inferences.
+I should have no right myself to assume that things were settled in
+that sort of way. It is not just to others--to another at least. You
+appreciate my motives I am sure, Heron, my dear friend?"
+
+"I don't know that I even quite understand what your friend was talking
+about," said Heron coldly. "But if it was about any lady, I should
+think such conjecturing highly improper and impertinent; and I should
+be rather inclined to put a stop to it even more quickly."
+
+"Quite my idea--I am glad you entirely concur with me, and approve of
+the course I have taken. But of course you would do so. I knew I could
+count on your approval. By the way, you know Mellifont?"
+
+"The man you talked to just now?"
+
+"Yes, Mellifont--a very good fellow, though a little too fond of
+talking--I have had to reprove him more than once, I can tell you. But
+a very good fellow for all that, and one of the only true artists now
+alive. He is a composer--you must hear him play some bits from his
+opera. He is at work on an opera, you know--or perhaps you have not
+heard?"
+
+"I have not heard--no. I am rather out of the way of such things, I
+fear," said Victor, beginning to feel, in spite of himself, a certain
+awe of a man who could compose an opera, and thinking that, after all,
+a certain allowance must be made for the genius of one who could do
+such things.
+
+"Oh, you must hear some of it soon! We feel satisfied that it will
+sound the death knell of all the existing schools of music. They are
+all wrong, sir, from the first to the last, from Mozart to Wagner--all
+wrong except Mellifont."
+
+Victor was for the moment really staggered by the genius of this great
+man.
+
+"What is his opera to be called?" he asked, not venturing to hazard any
+compromising observation.
+
+"'The Seven Deadly Sins.' It is to be in seven acts, and each act is to
+give an entirely new illustration of a deadly sin--which Mellifont will
+show to be the only true virtues of mankind. It will make a revolution,
+I can tell you."
+
+Victor thought it could hardly fail to do that if it were at all
+successful in the object set out by its author.
+
+"It is to have seven heroines," the poet went on, still at the door,
+and refusing to allow Victor to depart. "Lot's daughters--let me
+see--Messalina, Locusta; Jezebel I think, Theodora, and I believe, Mrs.
+Brownrigg. It will be a splendid thing."
+
+It was not easy for Victor to get away, for the poet had to tell him of
+other great works of art that were in the contemplation of members of
+the school. At length Blanchet released him, thanking him grandly for
+the assistance he had lent to the bringing out of his book, but adding
+even more grandly some words that fell painfully on Victor's ear.
+
+"I hope to be independent of publishers and drudgery before long; I
+fancy--I rather believe it depends upon myself, and I think I owe it to
+my own genius to raise myself above the necessity of drudgery. Then I
+could do something worthy of myself, and the few whose praise I value."
+
+Victor escaped at last and walked away. He was in a very discontented
+mood, an unusual thing for him. He could not help believing that there
+must be, or at least might be, something in the idea which Blanchet so
+evidently wished people to receive. He feared that there must be
+something more than mere kindly patronage in Miss Grey's generosity
+toward Blanchet. The thought was strangely disagreeable to him. He
+could not think with patience of such a girl being in love with such a
+man. He was now disposed to exaggerate the demerits of the poet, and to
+believe anything mean of one who could take a girl's money and give out
+as an excuse for taking it that she was in love with him. "If I had a
+sister," he thought, "and any fellow were to give such hints about her,
+I wonder how I should like it, and I wonder how much of it I should
+stand!"
+
+He felt sorry, very sorry, for Minola, and perhaps a little angry with
+her too for allowing to any man the chance of suggesting such things.
+The more he thought of her and all he had seen of her, the less she
+seemed fitted for such a lover as Mr. Blanchet. She had impressed
+Victor greatly by her manners, her fresh and frank character, and the
+simple, trusting generosity which was her transparent attribute. He
+began to look on the poet now as a mere fortune-hunter, who was
+fastening upon the girl because of the money which he expected her to
+have. He did not know how consuming a passion is the vanity of the
+small artistic mind--the mind which has art's ambition only and not
+art's inspiration. Mr. Blanchet was not a fortune-hunter in the
+ordinary sense. His poems were to him as yet much dearer than any
+fortune. He was drawn to Minola not because she had money, but because
+having money she was willing to spend some of it in bringing out his
+poems in a handsome edition.
+
+Our hero's quixotic temper was thoroughly roused by the thought of some
+wrong which he fancied was about to be done to Minola. He was not one
+of those lucky beings who can let things alone. He never could let
+things alone. Had he had the gift of those who can, he would just then
+have been governor of some rising colony, and would have been in a fair
+way of promotion. He was tormented by the thought that there was
+something he ought to do to save Minola from some vaguely terrible
+fate, and by not being able to see what the something was which lay
+within his power to do. Before he had walked many yards he had worked
+himself into the idea that a plot of some sort was in preparation to
+entrap Minola into a marriage with one who, poet or not, was wholly
+unworthy of her.
+
+His energetic spirit at length suggested something to be done. It was
+not, perhaps, a very practical or useful stroke of policy, but it was
+the only thing which occurred to him and the only thing which he did
+just then. He started off at full speed to walk under the windows of
+the house where Miss Grey was living. It was now fully midnight, and of
+course he had not the slightest idea of seeing Minola, and, indeed,
+would have been greatly embarrassed if he had seen her. But he started
+off, nevertheless, to walk under her windows with as eager a step and
+as steady a purpose as if he were really hastening to rescue her from
+some imminent danger. It was only a short walk from where he then was
+to Minola's lodgings; but Heron was so eager in his purpose that the
+way seemed miles, which he was covering with hasty strides.
+
+When he reached the house where Minola lived, the aspect of the place
+was just such as, if he had been a lover, he might have expected or
+desired to find. The house was all in darkness save for one window.
+There was a looking-glass in that window, making it plain to the least
+observant of human creatures that it must be the window of a bedroom.
+How could a lover doubt that that must be the window of the room which
+was hers, and that she then watched the stars of midnight, and that she
+thought of love, and that her soul was, as Jean Paul puts it, in the
+blue ether? For the moment Victor Heron found himself wishing that he
+were a lover--were the lover of whom the lady, fancy-fixed in that one
+lighted room, might be thinking. But if it were Minola's room, he
+thought, she certainly had not him or any memory of him in her mind. It
+was a clear, soft midnight, and the moon that shone on the near roof of
+the British Museum seemed as poetic and as sad as though it fell on the
+ruins of the Parthenon. No practice in colonial administration can
+wholly squeeze the poetic and the romantic out of the breast of a young
+man of Heron's time of life. As he stood there his grievance seemed as
+far off as the moon herself, but not by any means so poetic and
+beautiful. He paced up and down, feeling very young and odd, and unlike
+his usual self. He was happy in a queer, boyish way that had a certain
+shamefaced sensation about it, as when a youth for the first time
+drinks suddenly of some sparkling wine, and feels his brain and senses
+all aflame with delicious ecstasy, and is afraid of the feeling
+although he delights in it.
+
+It was a natural part of the half fantastic chivalry of his character
+that he should have felt a sort of satisfaction in thus for the moment
+being near Minola, as if by that means he were in some sort protecting
+her against danger. If at that time any softer and warmer feeling than
+mere friendship were mingling itself with Heron's sensations, he did
+not then know it. He thought of the girl as a sweet friend, new to him,
+indeed, but very dear, in whose happiness he felt deeply interested,
+and over whom he had taken it into his head that he had a right to
+watch. She seemed to be strangely alone in the world of London, and,
+indeed, to be at the same time not suited for anything in London but
+just such isolation. He never could think of her as mixing in the
+ordinary society of the metropolis. He could not think of her as one of
+the common crowd, following out mechanically the registered routine of
+the season's amusements, listening to the commonplace talk, and
+compliments, and cheap cynicism of the drawing-room and the five
+o'clock tea. To him she appeared as different from all that, and as
+poetically lifted above it, as if she were Hawthorne's Hilda, high up
+in her Roman tower, among her doves, and near to the blue sky. Except
+in the home of the Moneys, Heron had never seen Minola in anything that
+even looked like society; and there was a good deal of the odd and the
+fresh in that home which took it out of the range of the commonplace,
+and did not interfere with his poetic idealization of Minola. Her
+presence and her way of life appeared alike to him a poetic creation.
+So quiet, self-sufficing a life, alone in the midst of the crowd, such
+simple strength of purpose, such a tranquil choice of the kind of
+existence that suited her best, such generosity and such gracious,
+loving kindness--all this together made up a picture which had a
+natural fascination for a chivalrous young man, who had never before
+had time to allow the softer and more romantic elements of his nature
+any chance of expression. It may be that for the present Minola was to
+him but the first suggestion of an embodiment of all the vague,
+floating thoughts and visions of love and womanhood that must now and
+then cross the spiritual horizon of every young man, no matter how
+closely he may be occupied with colonial affairs and the condition of
+the colored races. The hero of a French story, whereof there is not
+otherwise over-much good to be said, speaks with a feeling as poetic as
+it is true when he says that in the nightingale's song he heard the
+story of the love that he ought to have known, but which had not yet
+come to him. Perhaps in the eyes and in the voice of Minola Victor
+Heron unconsciously found this story told for him.
+
+However that might be, it is certain that Heron found a curious
+satisfaction this night in passing again and again before Minola's
+door, and making believe to himself as if he were guarding her against
+danger. He might have remained on guard in this way, heaven knows how
+long--for, as we know, he was not fond of early going to bed--but that
+he suddenly "was aware," as the old writers put it, of another watcher
+as well as himself. It was unmistakable. Another man came up and passed
+slowly once or twice under the same windows, and on the side of the
+street where Heron had put himself on guard. Then the new comer,
+observing, no doubt, that he was not alone, had crossed to the other
+side of the street, and Heron thought he was only a chance passer and
+was gone altogether. Presently, however, he crossed the road again, and
+stood a short distance away from Heron as if he were watching him. Now,
+though Victor Heron was not a lover, he had just as much objection as
+any lover could have to being seen by observant eyes when watching
+under a girl's window. The mere thought recalled him at once to
+chilling commonplace. He was for going away that moment; all the
+delight was gone out of his watching. But he was a little curious to
+know if the new comer were really only a casual stranger whom his
+movements had stirred into idle curiosity. So he went straightway down
+the street and passed the unwelcome intruder. He felt sure the face of
+the man was known to him, although he could not at first recall to mind
+the person's identity. He felt sure, too, by the way in which the man
+looked at him and then turned suddenly off, that the new comer had
+recognized him as well. This was tormenting for the moment, as he went
+on perplexing himself by trying to think who it was that he had seen in
+this unexpected and unwished-for way. He walked slowly, and looked back
+once or twice. He could not see his disturber any more. The man had
+either gone away or was, perhaps, standing in the shadow of a doorway.
+Suddenly an idea flashed upon Heron.
+
+"Why, of course," he exclaimed, "it's he! I ought to have known! It's
+the man from Keeton--the hated rival."
+
+By "hated rival," however, Heron did not mean a rival in love, but only
+in electioneering; for he now knew that it was Mr. Sheppard he had
+seen, and he remembered how Mr. Sheppard, when he met him in Minola's
+room, had seemed oddly sullen and unwilling to fraternize. This was the
+reason why Heron called him the hated rival. His own idea of a rival in
+an election contest was that of a person whom one ought to ask to
+dinner, and treat with especial courtesy and fair offer of friendship.
+
+Suddenly, however, another idea had occurred to him.
+
+"What on earth can he be doing there," he asked, "under her window? Can
+it be possible that he too is a lover?"
+
+He too? Who then was _the_ lover--the other lover? Heron did not
+believe, and would not admit, that Blanchet was a genuine lover at all.
+The whole theory of Victor's duty to watch under Minola's windows was
+based on the assumption that Blanchet was no true lover, but a cunning
+hunter of fortune. Why then ask, was Mr. Sheppard too a lover? Heron
+did not at the moment stop to ask himself any such question, but after
+awhile the absurdity of his words occurred to him, and he was a little
+amused and a good deal ashamed of his odd and hasty way of putting the
+question.
+
+"Why shouldn't he be there as well as I?" he said. "Why should he be a
+lover any more than I?"
+
+Then he began to assure himself that the hated rival must have been
+there only by chance; and it is doubtful whether if he had thought much
+longer over the question he would not have ended by convincing himself
+that nothing but the merest chance had brought him, too, under Minola's
+window panes.
+
+It was, indeed, Minola's window under which he had been watching; and
+she too was watching, and never dreamed that he was so near. She looked
+from her window not long after he had gone, and saw the street all
+lonely, and felt lonely herself, and shuddered, thinking that life
+would ever be a dreary piece of work for her. It is a melancholy fact
+that all that time, and even long after she had gone in shuddering from
+the window, poor Sheppard was standing in a doorway at the opposite
+side of the street, and that she not only never saw him, but never
+thought of him. Her thoughts were of Victor Heron, and of her own folly
+and her own love--that love which seemed such folly, which was so
+hopeless, which she knew, or at least believed it was a sort of treason
+against friendship to indulge, although in absolute secret.
+
+In Uhland's pretty poem called "Departure" a youth is going on his
+wanderings, and his comrades escort him a little on his way, and as
+they go along they pass beneath the windows of a pretty girl. The lad
+looks up, and would fain if he might have a rose from her hand, and yet
+tells himself that he would not have it--for to what end to have the
+rose when she whom he loved cared nothing for him, and the rose would
+only wither with him, and to no purpose? When he has gone the girl
+strains her eyes after him in grief, and wonders what the world is to
+be to her now that he she loved is going far away, and never knew of
+her love. A few timely words might have spared all the heart-ache, no
+doubt; but it will be a very different world from that which we have
+known when all the words that might have been timely are spoken in
+time, or even when the feelings that might prompt the timely words have
+learned their own meaning at the right moment to give it breath.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+"COUNSEL BETRAYED."
+
+
+The next morning Heron rose with a distinct purpose of doing something
+to put Minola on her guard. His purpose to do something was much more
+clear than his knowledge of what he had better do. Anyhow he thought he
+would go and see Minola, and say something to her. When he began to
+speak he would probably hit upon the thing to say. As he might have put
+it himself, Providence would pull him through somehow. The first thing
+was to get to speech of Minola. This, at least, ought not to be hard to
+compass.
+
+His first idea was simply to go to her house and ask to see her. But
+when he was near the scene of his mounting guard the past night he
+began to think of the difficulties that would be put in his way if any
+one else were present. How, for example, could he possibly say what he
+specially wanted to say if Mary Blanchet were present, or were even
+coming and going in and out of the room, as she was almost sure to be?
+On the other hand, how could he formally ask for a private conversation
+with Minola without stirring all manner of absurd curiosity and
+conjecture? At the very least, Mary Blanchet would be sure to ask, when
+he had gone, what he had come to say; and that would, under the
+circumstances, be rather embarrassing for Minola. He gave up,
+therefore, the idea of seeing Miss Grey at her own house.
+
+Another plan at once occurred to him. He knew how often Minola walked
+in Regent's Park--he would go and walk there about the time which she
+usually chose, and he would go again and again until he met her. So he
+started off for the Park, greatly relieved in mind to be doing
+anything. All the time there was a good deal of work on his account
+which he might and, if he were at all a sensible young man, would have
+been doing. The time that he was spending in trying to ward off from
+Minola a supposed danger might, if properly used, have procured him an
+interview with a Cabinet Minister, or paved the way for easy success at
+the future election for Keeton. There were twenty things which Mr.
+Money had often told him he must do if he would have the faintest hope
+of any success in anything; and all these things he was utterly
+neglecting because he chose to think that he was called on to give some
+advice to a girl who perhaps would repay him with but little thanks for
+his officious attempt at interference.
+
+He walked slowly through the park, along the paths which he knew that
+she loved, and made for the canal. It was a soft, gray day, with no sky
+seen. The air was surcharged with moisture; but it was not raining, and
+the grass was only as if a heavy dew had settled on it. The soft breath
+that floated over the fields was warm and languid. Only three colors
+were to be seen all across the park: the green of the grass, the gray
+of the clouds, or of the one cloud rather, and the dull black of the
+tree-trunks. These colors indeed were softened, and shaded away, and
+blended into each other, with indefinable varieties of tone and
+delicate interchanges of effect. It was just the day to make a certain
+class of observer curse the stupid and foggy monotony of the English
+climate. It was the day, too, to gladden the heart of a certain refined
+class of artist with whom delicate effects of tone and shade are
+precious and familiar. Certainly it might be called a day of poetic
+atmosphere. To Victor, who had long been used to the unwinking
+steadiness of a tropical sun, there was something specially refreshing
+and delightful in the grass, the trees, and the cloud. He found himself
+yearning in heart for a life which would leave him more time and
+thought for the skies, the trees, and the air.
+
+Suddenly the scene vanished from his eyes, and he only saw Minola Grey.
+He was now approaching the canal, and he saw her leaning over the
+bridge and looking into the water. It was early in the day--too early
+for the nursemaids and the children, and the ordinary walkers, and
+there was no one but Minola now in Heron's sight.
+
+The girl, as she leaned on the railing of the bridge and looked into
+the water, might have been adopted by any artist as a model-figure of
+melancholy. If Victor had been less in a hurry with everything--if he
+had remained where he then was and looked at her unperceived for a few
+moments, Heaven knows what inspiration of ideas, what revealings about
+himself and her might have come into his mind. But Victor waited for
+nothing--seldom in life gave himself much time to think, and, in any
+case, would have had an instinctive objection to even a moment's
+unperceived watching of a meditating girl. He was so rejoiced at the
+readiness with which his desire to meet her had been gratified, that he
+thought he could hardly seize his chance too soon. In his eagerness he
+even forgot that the task he had undertaken was rather embarrassing,
+and that he had not yet made up his mind as to what he was going to
+say. He was by Minola's side in a moment.
+
+She was so much surprised and startled that Victor was quite ashamed of
+having come upon her in such a sudden way. He had forgotten that all
+women have nerves, and get startled in ways unknown to men. At least,
+he assumed it must be for some reason of this kind that Minola seemed
+so much disturbed when he came up, but he certainly had not supposed
+that girls so clever and healthy as Miss Grey were usually troubled
+with nerves.
+
+Minola recovered herself very soon, however, and got rid of all
+appearance of mere nervous embarrassment, although there was for a
+while a certain constraint in her manner.
+
+"Have you been long here?" he asked.
+
+"Not very long; at least it did not seem long. I like to be here at
+this time; there are so few people."
+
+"Yes; I knew you were likely to be here about this time if you were
+coming at all to-day," he said; an awkward remark, as it suggested that
+he had come expressly to meet her.
+
+"I come here at all manner of times," she said; "but I think I like
+this time the best."
+
+"You are not going any further, I suppose?"
+
+"No; I thought of turning back now, and going home."
+
+"I'll walk a little way with you if you will allow me?"
+
+Of course she had no objection to make. They had walked in that place
+often before, and it was a matter of certainty that as they did meet
+they would walk together. He need hardly have asked her if she would
+allow him to walk with her now.
+
+So they turned and walked a little off the beaten track, and under the
+trees. When they had walked a certain distance in one direction Victor
+turned round and she turned with him, as if she were merely obeying his
+signal of command. It has already been said more than once that Mr.
+Heron always went on as if he were ever so much older than she, and
+belonging indeed to a different stage of life. He bore himself as a man
+of forty or thereabout might do with a young woman of Minola's age.
+
+"How do you like Blanchet's book?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"It is very beautiful, I suppose. It's a little too ornamental and
+fantastic perhaps for my taste; but I suppose that is in keeping with
+the style of the poems; and _he_ is delighted with the book."
+
+"It has cost a great deal of money--much more than it ought to have
+cost. I don't like the thing at all."
+
+"But think of the joy given to the poet. It is surely not very dearly
+bought at the price. I never knew of a man so happy."
+
+"Yes, yes; that is all very well for him----"
+
+"It is very well for me too, Mr. Heron--to be able to do a kindness for
+any human creature. I dare say it has given me as much pleasure as it
+has given him, and made me quite as proud too--and is not that
+something to gain?"
+
+"Still I can't help feeling uneasy about this thing. It has cost a heap
+of money--much more than I ever supposed it would--and I seem as if I
+had brought you into all the expense."
+
+"How could that be, Mr. Heron? I expressly wished Mr. Blanchet to do as
+he pleased; and he understood me exactly as I wished him to do. You had
+nothing to do with it."
+
+"Oh, yes! I had something to do with it; and then--excuse me--you are
+rather young perhaps----"
+
+"Perhaps I can't be expected to know my own mind; or ought not to be
+trusted with the spending of my own money?"
+
+"No, I didn't mean that; but you might not have known exactly what you
+were being let in for; and it is a good deal of money for a girl to
+pay."
+
+"And in fact you don't think a girl ought to be allowed to spend her
+money without some wise person of the superior sex to guide her hand?
+Thank you very much, Mr. Heron, but I think I may have my own way in
+this at least. I have often told you that I left Keeton because I could
+not stand the control of wiser and better persons than myself. I am not
+at all a good girl, Mr. Heron; I never said I was. The counsels of the
+wise are sadly thrown away on me, I fear."
+
+She spoke in a hard and ungenial tone, which he had not heard her use
+before. He could not help looking at her with an expression of wonder.
+She saw the expression and understood it.
+
+"You are shocked at my want of sweet, feminine docility? I ought not to
+have any ideas of my own, I suppose?"
+
+"No, I am not shocked, and I am not at all such a ridiculous person as
+you would seem to suppose, and I have none of the ideas you set down to
+me; but you don't seem quite like yourself, and you speak as if you
+were offended with me for something."
+
+"Offended? Oh, no. How could I possibly be offended? I am very much
+obliged, on the contrary, for the trouble you take for one who seems to
+you quite unable to take care of herself."
+
+Victor did not like her tone. There was something aggressive in it. He
+was not experienced enough in the ways of society to cry content to
+that which grieved his heart, and his thoughts therefore showed
+themselves pretty clearly in his face.
+
+"I don't like Blanchet's taking all this money," he said, after a
+moment of silence. "I don't think a man ought to take such a helping
+hand as that from--well, from----"
+
+"From a woman, you were going to say? Why not from a woman, Mr. Heron?
+Are we never to do a kind thing, we unfortunate creatures, because we
+are women and are young?"
+
+"No, I don't say that; but there are things it may become a woman to
+do, and which it doesn't quite so well become a man to profit by. I
+don't think Blanchet----"
+
+"Mr. Blanchet seems to have a higher idea of what a woman's friendship
+may be than you have, Mr. Heron. He does not see any degradation in
+allowing a woman to hold him out a helping hand when he wants one. I
+like his ideas better than yours. You say you would have done this
+little service for him if you had been allowed. Why should there be any
+greater degradation to him in having it done by me? At all events you
+can't wonder if I don't see it all at once."
+
+"Of course if you are satisfied and pleased, there is nothing more to
+be said in the matter."
+
+"I am satisfied and pleased. Why should I not be? I asked a friend to
+let me do something to help him, and he answered me just in the spirit
+in which I spoke. Of course I am glad to find that there is even one
+man who could take a friendly offer in a friendly way. There are not
+many such men, I suppose?"
+
+Victor could not help smiling at her emphatic way of expressing her
+scorn of men.
+
+"I do believe you have really turned yourself misanthropical by reading
+'Le Misanthrope,'" he said.
+
+"Well, why should there not be a woman Alceste? although I never knew
+any woman in real life more worthy to be classed with him than the men
+we meet in real life are. Miss Alceste, I think, would sound very
+prettily. I wish I could think myself entitled to bear such a name?"
+
+"Or Miss Misanthrope," he suggested. "How would that do for a young
+lady's name?"
+
+"Admirably, I think. That would get over all the difficulty too, and
+save foolish persons from thinking that one was setting up for another
+Alceste. I should like very much to be called Miss Misanthrope."
+
+"If you go on as you are doing, you will soon be entitled to bear the
+name," said Victor gravely. "At the present moment I don't know that I
+should much object to that."
+
+"No! I am glad that anything I am likely to do has a chance of pleasing
+you. But why should you not object just at present? Why not now as well
+as at any other time?"
+
+"Because I should like you to be a little misanthropical just now, and
+a little distrustful--of men, that is to say, Miss Grey."
+
+She colored slightly, although she had no idea of his meaning yet.
+
+"I always thought you were full of trust in the whole human race, Mr.
+Heron; I thought you liked everybody and believed in everybody. Now you
+tell me to distrust all mankind."
+
+"I didn't say that."
+
+"No? Some particular person, then?"
+
+"Some particular person, perhaps. At least I don't mean exactly that,"
+Heron hastened to explain, his conscience smiting him at the thought
+that perhaps after all he might be suggesting unjust suspicions of an
+absent man who was a sort of friend. "I only mean that you are very
+generous and unselfish, and that there might be persons who might try
+to make use of your good nature, and whom perhaps you might not quite
+understand. I don't know whether I ought to speak about this at all."
+
+"Nor I, Mr. Heron, I am sure; for I really don't know what you are
+speaking of or what mysterious danger is hanging over me. But I hope
+there is something of the kind, for I should so like to resemble a
+heroine of romance."
+
+"There is not anything very romantic in prospect so far as I know," he
+said, now almost wishing he had said nothing, and yet feeling in his
+heart a serious fear that Minola might be led to put too much faith in
+Blanchet. "But if I might speak out freely, and without any fear of
+your misunderstanding me or being offended, there is something, Miss
+Grey, that I should very much like to say." He spoke in an uneasy and
+constrained way, forcing himself on to an ungracious task.
+
+"You have been preaching distrust to me, Mr. Heron, and you have been
+finding fault generally with all women who trust anybody. To show you
+how your lessons are thrown away on me, I shall certainly trust you as
+much as you like, and I shall not misunderstand anything you say nor be
+offended by it." There was something of her old sweet frankness in her
+manner as she spoke these words, and Heron was warmed by it.
+
+"Well," he said at last, "you are a girl, and young, and living almost
+alone, and people tell me you are going to have money. You have
+promised to excuse my blunt way of talking out, haven't you? I almost
+wish for your sake, as you like to live this kind of life, that you had
+just enough of money to live upon and no more; but I hear that that is
+not the case, or at all events is not to be. Well, the only thing is
+that people who I think are not true, and are not honest, and who are
+not worthy of you in any way whatever, may try to make you think that
+they are true, and sincere, and all the rest of it."
+
+"Well, Mr. Heron, what if they do?"
+
+"You may perhaps be persuaded to believe them."
+
+"And even if I am, what matter is that? I had much rather be deceived
+in such things than know the truth, if the truth is to mean that people
+are all deceitful."
+
+"I don't think you want to understand me," he said.
+
+"Indeed I do; I only want to understand you; but I fail as yet. Why not
+speak out, Mr. Heron, like a man and a brother? If there is anything
+you want me to know, do please make me to know it in the clearest way."
+
+She was growing impatient.
+
+"You will have lovers," he said, driven to despair when it seemed as if
+she could not understand a mere hint of any kind; "of course you must
+know that you are attractive and all that--and if you come to have
+money, you will be besieged with fellows--with admirers I mean. Do be a
+little distrustful--of one at least; I don't like him and I wish you
+didn't--and I can't very well tell you why, only that he does not seem
+to me to be manly or even honest."
+
+She colored a little, but she also smiled faintly, for she still did
+not understand him.
+
+"I suppose I must know the man you mean, Mr. Heron; for I think he is
+the only man I ever heard you say anything against, and I have not
+forgotten. But what can have made you think that I needed any lecture
+about him? I don't suppose he ever thought about me in that way in his
+life, or would marry one of my birth and my bringing up even if I asked
+him. And in any case, Mr. Heron, I would not marry him even if he asked
+me. But what a shame it seems to arrange in advance for the refusing of
+a man who never showed the faintest intention of making an offer."
+
+At first Heron did not quite understand her. Then he suddenly caught
+her meaning.
+
+"Oh, that fellow? I didn't mean him. I never could have supposed that
+you were likely to be taken in by him."
+
+"To do him justice, Mr. Heron, he never seems to have any thought of
+taking any one in. Such as he is he always shows himself, I think."
+
+"Oh, I don't care about him----"
+
+"Nor I, Mr. Heron, I assure you. But whom then do you care about--in
+that sense?"
+
+"I distrust a man who takes a woman's money in a reckless and selfish
+way," Heron said impetuously. "That is a man I would not trust. Don't
+trust him, Miss Grey; believe me, he is a cad--I mean a selfish and
+deceitful fellow. I can't bear the thought of a girl like you being
+sacrificed--or sacrificing yourself as you might do perhaps--and I tell
+you that he is just the sort of man----"
+
+"Are you speaking of Mr. Blanchet now, Mr. Heron?" Her tone was cold
+and clear. She was evidently hurt, but determined now to have the whole
+question out.
+
+"Yes, I am speaking of Blanchet, of course--of whom else could I be
+speaking in such a way?"
+
+"Mr. Blanchet is my friend, Mr. Heron; I thought he was a friend of
+yours as well."
+
+"Well, I thought he was a manly, honest sort of fellow--I don't think
+so now," Victor went on impetuously, warming himself as he went into
+increasing strength of conviction. "I know you will hate me for telling
+you this, but I can't help that. I am as much interested in your
+happiness as if--as if you were my sister--and if you were my sister, I
+would just do the same."
+
+It would indeed be idle to attempt to describe the course of the
+feelings that ran through Minola's breast as she listened to the words
+of this kind which he continued to pour out. But out of all that swept
+through her--out of shame, surprise, anger, grief, the one thought came
+uppermost, and survived, and guided her--the thought that she had only
+to leave Heron's appeal unanswered, and her secret was safe for ever.
+
+She made up her mind, and was self-contained and composed to all
+appearance again.
+
+"Let us not say any more about this, Mr. Heron; I am sure you mean it
+as a friend; and I never could allow myself to feel offended by
+anything said in friendship. I am sorry you have such an opinion of Mr.
+Blanchet; I have a much better opinion of him; I like him better than I
+like most men; but you know we have just agreed that I ought to be
+called 'Miss Misanthrope,' and I assure you I mean to do my very best
+to deserve the name. No--please don't say any more--I had rather not
+hear it indeed; and if you know anything of women, Mr. Heron, you must
+know that we never take advice on these matters. No; trust to my
+earning my name of Miss Misanthrope; but don't tell me of the demerits
+of this or that particular man. I had rather hate men in the general
+than in all the particular cases--and how long we must have talked
+about this nonsense, for here is the gate of the park; and Mary
+Blanchet will be thinking that I am lost!"
+
+They almost always parted at this park gate. This time he felt that he
+must not attempt to go any further with her. She smiled and nodded to
+him with a manner of constrained friendliness, and went her way, and
+Heron's heart was deeply moved, for he feared that he had lost his
+friend.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+MR. ST. PAUL'S MYSTERY.
+
+
+Two events occurring almost together affected a good deal some of the
+people of this story. The first was the death of Mrs. Saulsbury.
+
+Miss Grey was at once invited by the lawyers who had the charge of her
+father's affairs to visit Keeton, in order to become fully acquainted
+with the new disposition of things in which she had so much interest.
+Thereupon Mr. Money announced that, as Miss Grey had no very close
+friend to look after her interests, he was resolved to put himself in
+the place of a parent or some near relation, and go with her and see
+that all her interests were properly cared for. Minola was unwilling to
+put him to so much trouble and loss of time, well knowing how absorbed
+in business he was; but he set all her remonstrances aside with blunt,
+good-humored kindness.
+
+"Lucy is coming with us," he said, "if you don't think her in the way;
+it might be pleasant for you to have a companion."
+
+"I should so much like to go with Nola," pleaded Lucy.
+
+"Oh, I shall be delighted if Lucy will go," Minola said, not well
+knowing how to put into words her sense of all their kindness. It was
+really a great relief to her to have Lucy's companionship in such a
+visit. Mary Blanchet did not like to go back even for a few days to
+Keeton. The poetess objected to seeing ever again the place where she
+considered that art and she had been degraded by her servitude in the
+court-house. So the conditions of the visit were all settled.
+
+But there arose suddenly some new conditions which Minola had never
+expected. The long looked-for vacancy at length occurred in the
+representation of Keeton. The sitting member announced his
+determination to resign his seat as soon as the necessary arrangements
+for such a step could be put into effect. It was imperative that Victor
+Heron should lose no time in throwing himself upon the vacant borough.
+Mr. Money and Lucy rattled up to Minola's door one breathless morning
+with the news. Lucy's eyes were positively dancing with excitement and
+delight.
+
+"It seems to me that there's going to be a regular invasion of your
+borough, Miss Grey," Mr. Money said. "We're all going to be there. You
+see that you are under no manner of compliment to me. I must have gone
+down to Keeton in any case; it's one of the lucky things that don't
+often befall a busy man like me to be able to kill the two birds with
+the one stone. I must take care of our friend Heron as well as of you.
+He would be doing some ridiculous thing if there were no elder to look
+after him. He is as innocent of the dodges of an English election as
+you are of the ways of English lawyers. So we'll be all together; that
+will be very pleasant. Of course we'll not interfere with you. You
+shall be just as quiet as you like while we are doing our
+electioneering."
+
+What could Minola say against all this arrangement, which seemed so
+satisfactory and so delightful to her friends? It was not pleasant for
+her to be brought thus into a sort of companionship with Victor Heron.
+But it would be far less pleasant, it would indeed be intolerable and
+not to be thought of, that she should in any way raise an objection or
+make a difficulty which might hint of the feelings that possessed her.
+
+"After all, what does it matter?" she asked herself as Mr. Money was
+speaking. "I shall have to suffer this kind of thing in some way for
+half my life, I suppose. It is no one's fault but my own. Why should I
+disturb the arrangements of these kind people because of any weaknesses
+of mine? If women will be fools, at least they ought to try to hide
+their folly. This is as good practice for me as I could have."
+
+So she told Mr. Money and Lucy that any arrangement that suited them
+would suit her, and that she would be ready to go the moment he gave
+the word. Then Mr. Money hastened away to look after other things, and
+Lucy remained behind "to help Nola with her preparations," as she
+insisted on putting it, but partly, as Minola felt only too sure, to
+talk with her about Victor Heron.
+
+Since Heron had offered her his advice in the park, and she had put it
+aside, Minola and he had only met once or twice. Then he had attempted,
+the first time of their meeting, to renew his apologies, and she had
+put them lightly away, as she already had done the advice, and had
+given him to understand that she wished to hear no more of the matter.
+She had hoped that by assuming a manner of indifference she might lead
+him to forget the whole affair. But he did not understand her, and
+really believed that he had lost her friendship for ever by the manner
+in which he had spoken against Herbert Blanchet. He was troubled for
+her much more than for himself, believing, or at least fearing, that
+she had set her heart on a man unworthy of her. He kept away from her
+therefore, assuming that his society was no longer welcome, and
+resolute not to intrude on her.
+
+Minola had hoped that the worst was over, and that he and she were
+likely to settle gradually and unnoticed by others into a condition of
+ordinary acquaintanceship. This melancholy hope, to her a cruel
+necessity in itself, but yet the best hope she could see now left for
+her, was likely to be disturbed for a while by this ill-omened visit to
+Keeton.
+
+Minola was busy making her preparations for going to Keeton, and with a
+very heavy heart. Everything about the visit was now distressing to
+her. The occasion was mournful; she dreaded long talks and discussions
+with Mr. Saulsbury; she dreaded meeting old acquaintances in Keeton;
+she shrank from the responsibilities of various kinds that seemed to be
+thrust upon her. When she left Keeton she thought she had done with it
+for ever. Where was the free life she had arranged for herself? Nothing
+seemed to turn out as she had expected.
+
+Meanwhile Mary Blanchet and Lucy Money were both delighted, and in
+their different ways, at the prospect of Minola's visit to Keeton. Mary
+saw her leader and patroness come back rich, and ready to be
+distinguished and to confer distinction. Lucy Money had the prospect of
+variety, of a holiday with Minola, whom she loved, and of being very
+often in the society of Victor Heron. Minola was, if anything, made
+additionally sad by the thought that it was not in her power to share
+their feelings, and the fear that she might seem a wet blanket
+sometimes on their happiness.
+
+Lucy had been with her all the morning, helping her with Mary to make
+preparations for the journey. Minola was glad when it was found that
+some things were wanting, and Lucy and Mary offered to go out and buy
+them in Oxford street.
+
+Minola was enjoying the sense of being alone, and was, at the same
+time, secretly accusing herself of want of friendship because she
+enjoyed it, when a card was brought to her, and she was told that the
+gentleman said he wanted to speak to her, if she pleased, "rather
+particular." The card was that of Mr. St. Paul. He had never visited
+Minola before, nor was she even aware that he knew where she lived. She
+was surprised, but she did not know of any reason why she might not see
+him. She hastened down to her sitting-room, and there she found Mr. St.
+Paul, as she had found Mr. Blanchet once before. Mr. St. Paul looked
+even a stranger figure in her room than Mr. Blanchet had done, she
+thought. He seemed far too tall for the place, and had a heedless,
+lounging, half-swaggering way, which appeared as if it were compounded
+of the old manner of the cavalry man and the newer habits of the
+western hunter. Nothing, however, could have been more easy, confident,
+and self-possessed than the way in which he came forward to greet
+Minola. If he had been visiting her every day for a month before, he
+could not have been more friendly and at his ease.
+
+"How d'ye do, Miss Grey? Just in time to see you, I suppose, before you
+go? I've been down to Keeton already. I'm going down again--I mean to
+make my mark there somehow."
+
+Minola thought, with a certain half-amused, half-abashed feeling, of
+the remarks she had heard concerning herself and Mr. St. Paul; but she
+did not show any embarrassment in her manner. Indeed, Mr. St. Paul was
+not a person to allow any one to feel much embarrassed in his presence.
+He was entirely easy, self-satisfied, and unaffected, and he had a way
+of pouring out his confidences as though he had known Minola from her
+birth upward.
+
+"I hope you found a pleasant reception there?"
+
+"Yes, well enough for that matter. I find my brother and his wife are
+not anything like so popular as I was given to understand that they
+were. I saw my brother in London--didn't I tell you?--before I went
+down to Keeton, you know."
+
+"No, I did not know that you had seen him; I hope he was glad to see
+you, Mr. St. Paul?"
+
+"Not he; I dare say he was very sorry I hadn't been wiped out by the
+Indians. Do you know what being wiped out means?"
+
+"Yes, I think I could guess that much. I suppose it means being
+killed?"
+
+"Of course. I mean to teach you all the slang of the West; I think a
+nice girl never looks so nice as when she is talking good expressive
+slang. Our British slang is all unmeaning stuff, you know; only
+consists in calling a thing by some short vulgar word--or some long and
+pompous word, the fun being in the pompousness; but the western slang
+is a sort of picture-writing, don't you know?--a kind of compressed
+metaphor, answering the purposes of an intellectual pemmican or
+charqui. Do you know what these things are, Miss Grey?"
+
+"Oh, yes; compressed meats of some kind, I suppose. But I don't think I
+care about slang very much."
+
+"You may be sure you will when you get over the defects of your Keeton
+bringing up. But what was I going to tell you? Let me see. Oh, yes,
+about my brother and his wife. The honest Keeton folks seem to have
+forgotten them. But I was speaking, too, about my going to see my
+brother in town. Oh, yes, I went to see him; he didn't want me, and he
+made no bones about letting me know it. He thinks I have disgraced the
+family; it was quite like the scene in the play--whose play is it?--I
+am sure I don't remember--where Lord Foppington's brother goes to see
+him, and is taken so coolly. I haven't read the play for more years
+than you have lived in the world, I dare say, but it all came back upon
+me in a moment. I felt like saying, 'Good-by, Foppington,' only that he
+would never have understood the allusion, and would think I meant to
+say he was a 'fop,' which he is not, bless him."
+
+"Then your visit did not bring you any nearer to a reconciliation with
+your brother?"
+
+"Not a bit of it--pushed us further asunder, I think. The odd thing was
+that I told him I wanted nothing from him, and that I had made money
+enough for myself in the West. You would have thought that would have
+fetched him, wouldn't you? Not the least in life, I give you my word."
+And Mr. St. Paul laughed good-humoredly at the idea.
+
+"I am sorry to hear it," said Minola. "I think there are quarrels and
+spites enough in the world, without brothers joining in with all the
+rest."
+
+"Bad form, isn't it--don't you think? But I don't suppose in real life
+brothers and sisters ever do care much for each other--do you think
+they do? I haven't known any such cases--have you?"
+
+Minola could not contribute much from her own family history to
+demonstrate the affection and devotion of brothers, but she had no idea
+of agreeing in the truth of Mr. St. Paul's philosophic reflections for
+all that.
+
+"I believe what you say is true enough as regards the brothers, but I
+can't admit it of the sisters."
+
+"Come now, you don't really believe that nonsense, I know."
+
+"Believe what nonsense? That sisters may be fond of their brothers
+sometimes?"
+
+"No, I don't mean that; but that there is any real difference between
+men and women in these ways--that men are all bad and women all good,
+and that sort of thing. One's as bad as the other, Miss Grey. When you
+have lived as long in the world as I have you'll find it, I tell you.
+But I don't find much fault with either lot. I think they are both
+right enough all things considered, don't you know?"
+
+"I am sure Mary Blanchet is devoted to her brother," Miss Grey said
+warmly.
+
+"That little old maid? Well, now, do you know, I shouldn't wonder.
+That's just the sort of woman to be devoted to a brother, and, of
+course, he doesn't care twopence about her."
+
+"Oh, for shame!" said Minola, not, however, feeling quite satisfied
+about the strength of Herbert Blanchet's affection for his sister, even
+while she felt bound, for Mary's sake, to utter her protest against his
+being set down as wholly undeserving.
+
+"But, I say," Mr. St. Paul observed, "what a fool he is! I don't think
+I ever saw a more conceited cad and idiot."
+
+"He is a very particular friend of mine, Mr. St. Paul," Miss Grey
+began. "At least, his sister is one of my oldest friends."
+
+"Yes, yes; just so. The good old spinster is a friend of yours, and you
+try to like the cad brother on her account. All quite right, of course.
+I should say he was just the sort of fellow to borrow the poor old
+girl's money, if she had any."
+
+"Oh, Mary has no money, and I am sure if she had she would be only too
+glad to give it to him."
+
+"Very likely; anyhow he would be only too glad to take it, you may be
+sure. But I don't want to say anything against your friends, Miss Grey,
+if you don't like it. Only women generally do like it, you know--and
+then you may say anything you please, in your turn, against any of my
+friends or relatives. I shan't be offended one bit, I can assure you."
+
+Minola had nothing to say, and therefore said nothing. Her new
+acquaintance did not allow any silence to spring up.
+
+"Talking of friends," he said, "there is one of your friends who
+politely declines any helping hand of mine in the election business at
+Keeton, although I think I could do him a good turn with some of the
+fellows who are out of humor with my brother. Our quixotic young friend
+will have none of the help of brothers who quarrel with brothers, it
+seems. Easy to see that he never had a brother."
+
+"Mr. Heron is a man of very sensitive nature, I believe," Minola said;
+"he will not do anything that he does not think exactly right, Mr.
+Money says."
+
+"Yes, so I hear. Odd, is it not? Heron always was a confounded young
+fool, you know. He got into all his difficulties by bothering about
+things that oughtn't to have concerned him one red cent. Well, he won't
+have my disinterested assistance. There again he is a fool, for I could
+have done something for him, and Money knows it--it was partly on
+Money's account that I thought of taking up Heron's side of the affair,
+because, so far as I am concerned, anybody else would do me just as
+well so long as he opposed my brother's man."
+
+"I can quite understand that Mr. Heron would not allow himself to be
+made a mere instrument to work out your quarrel with your brother. I
+think he was quite right."
+
+The good-humored St. Paul laughed.
+
+"All very fine, Miss Grey, and it does for a lady uncommonly well, no
+doubt; but if you want to get into Parliament, it won't do to be quite
+so squeamish. I am sure I should be only too happy to get the help of
+Cain against Abel or Abel against Cain if I could in such a case."
+
+"Most men would, I dare say," Minola answered, with as much severity as
+she could assume under the possible penalty of Mr. St. Paul's laughter.
+"But I am glad that there are some men, or that there is one man, at
+least, who thinks there is some object in life higher than that of
+getting into Parliament."
+
+"Oh, as far as that goes, I quite agree with you, Miss Grey; I
+shouldn't care twopence myself about a seat in Parliament--a confounded
+bore, I think. But if you go in for playing a game, why, you ought to
+play it, you know."
+
+"But are there not rules in every game? Are there not such things as
+fair and unfair?"
+
+"Of course, yes; but I fancy the strong players generally make the
+rules to suit their own ideas in the end. Anyhow, I never heard of any
+one playing at electioneering who would have hesitated for a moment
+about accepting the hand I offered to our quixotic young friend."
+
+"I am glad he is quixotic," Minola said eagerly. "I like to think of a
+man who ventures to be a Quixote."
+
+"Very sorry to hear it, Miss Grey, for I am afraid you won't like much
+to think about me. Yet, do you know, I came here to make a sort of
+quixotic offer about this very election."
+
+"I am glad to hear it; the more quixotic it is the more I shall like
+it. To whom is the offer to be made? To Mr. Heron?"
+
+"Oh, no, by Jove!--excuse me, Miss Grey--nothing of the sort. The offer
+is to be made to you."
+
+"To me?" Minola was a little surprised, but she did not color or show
+any surprise. She knew very well that it was not an offer of himself
+Mr. St. Paul was about to make, but it amused her to think of the
+interpretation Mary Blanchet, if she could have been present, would at
+once have put on his words.
+
+"Yes, indeed, Miss Grey, to you. I have it in my power to make you
+returning officer for Keeton. Do you understand what that means?"
+
+"I know in a sort of way what a returning officer is; but I don't at
+all understand how I can do his office."
+
+"I'll show you. You shall have the fate of Keeton as much in your hands
+as if you owned the whole concern--a deuced deal more, in fact, than if
+you owned the whole concern, in days of ballot like these. I believe
+you do own a good many of the houses there now, don't you?"
+
+"I hardly know; but I know that if I do, I wish I didn't."
+
+"Very well; just you try what you can get out of your influence over
+your tenants--that's all."
+
+"Then how am I to become returning officer for Keeton?"
+
+"That's quite another thing. That depends on me."
+
+"On you, Mr. St. Paul?"
+
+"On me. Just listen." St. Paul had been seated in his favorite attitude
+of careless indolence in a very low chair, so low that his long legs
+seemed as if they stretched half way across the room. His position,
+joined with an expression of self-satisfied lawlessness in his face,
+might have whimsically suggested a sort of resemblance to Milton's arch
+fiend "stretched out huge at length," in one of his less malign humors.
+He now jumped up and stood on the hearth-rug, with his back to the
+fireplace, his slightly stooping shoulders only seeming to make him
+look taller than otherwise, because they might set people wondering as
+to the height he would have reached if he had only stood erect and made
+the most of his inches. His blue eyes had quite a sparkle of excited
+interest in them, and his prematurely bald forehead looked oddly
+infantine over these eyes and that keen, fearless mouth.
+
+"Look here, Miss Grey, it's all in your hands. You know both these
+fellows, don't you?"
+
+"Both what fellows?"
+
+"These fellows who want to get in for Keeton. You know them both. Now
+which of them do you want to win?"
+
+"What can it matter which way my wishes go--if they went any way?"
+
+"How like a woman! How very like a woman!" and he laughed.
+
+"What is like a woman? I know when a man says anything is like a woman,
+he means to say that it is ridiculous."
+
+"Well, that's true enough; that is about what we do mean in most cases.
+What I meant in this case was only that you would not answer my
+question. I put a plain direct question, to which you must have some
+answer to give, and you only asked me a question in return which had
+nothing to do with mine."
+
+"Perhaps I have no answer to give. I may have the answer in my own
+mind, and yet not have it to give to any one else."
+
+"Oh, but you may really give it to me! In strictest confidence I assure
+you; no living soul shall ever know from me. Come, Miss Grey, let me
+know the truth. It can't possibly do you any harm--or anybody harm for
+that matter, except the wrong man for I take it for granted that the
+man you don't favor must be the wrong man."
+
+"But I don't know that I ought to have anything to do with such a
+matter----"
+
+"Never mind these scruples; it's nothing; there's to be no treason in
+the business, nor any unfair play. It's only this; I couldn't get in
+for the borough myself, even if I tried my best, but I can send in the
+one of the two whom I prefer--or, in this case, whom you prefer. I can
+do this as certainly as anything in this uncertain world can be
+certain."
+
+"But how could that be?"
+
+"_That_ it would not suit me to tell you just at present. I know a safe
+way, that's all. In the teeth of the ballot I can promise you that.
+Now, Miss Grey, who is to have the seat?"
+
+"Are you really serious in this, Mr. St. Paul?"
+
+"As serious as I ever was in my life about anything--a good deal more
+serious, I dare say, than I often was about graver things and more
+important men. Now then, Miss Grey, which of these two fellows is to
+sit for Keeton?"
+
+"But why do you make this offer to me?" she asked, with some
+hesitation. "What have I to do with it?" There was something alarming
+to her in his odd proposition, about which he was evidently quite
+serious now.
+
+"Why do I make the offer to you? Well, because I should like to please
+you, because you are a sort of woman I like--a regular good girl, I
+think, without any nonsense or affectation about you. Now that's the
+whole reason why I offer this to you. I don't care much myself either
+way, except to annoy my brother, and that can be done in fifty other
+ways without half the trouble to me. I was inclined to draw out of the
+whole affair, until I remembered that you knew both the fellows, and I
+thought you might have a wish for one of them to go in in preference to
+the other--they can't both go in, you see--and so I made up my mind to
+give you the chance of saying which it should be. Now then, Miss Grey,
+name your man."
+
+He put his hands into his pockets, and coolly waited for an answer. He
+had not the appearance of being in the least amused at her perplexity.
+He took the whole affair in a calm, matter-of-fact way, as if it were
+the most natural thing in the world.
+
+Minola was perplexed. She did not see what right he could have to
+control the coming contest in any way, and still less, what right she
+could have to influence him in doing so. The dilemma was one in which
+no previous experience could well guide her. She much wished she had
+Mr. Money at hand to give her a word of counsel.
+
+"Come, Miss Grey, make up your mind--or rather tell me what you have
+already made up your mind to, for I am sure you have not been waiting
+until now to form an opinion. Which of these two men do you want to see
+in Parliament?"
+
+There did not seem any particular reason why Minola or any girl might
+not say in plain words which of two candidates she would rather see
+successful.
+
+Mr. St. Paul appeared to understand her difficulty, for he said in an
+encouraging way--
+
+"After all, you know, if you had women's rights and all that sort of
+thing, you would have to give your vote for one or other of these
+fellows, and I dare say you would be expected to take the stump for
+your favorite candidate. So there really can't be any very serious
+objection to your telling me in confidence which of the two you want to
+win."
+
+Minola could not see how there could be any objection on any moral
+principle she could think of just then--being in truth a little
+confused and puzzled--to her giving a voice to the wish she had formed
+about the election.
+
+"It's not the speaking out of my wish that gives me any doubt," she
+said; "it is the condition under which you want me to speak. I seem to
+be doing something that I have no right to do--that is, Mr. St. Paul,
+if you are serious."
+
+"I remember reading, long ago," he said, "some Arabian Nights' story,
+or something of the kind, about a king, I think it was, who was brought
+at night to some mysterious place and told to cut a rope there, and
+that something or other would happen, he did not know what or when. The
+thing seemed very simple, and yet he didn't quite like to do it without
+knowing why, and how, and all about it. It strikes me that you seem to
+be in the same sort of fix."
+
+"So I am; just the same. Why can't you tell me what you are going to
+do?"
+
+"I like that! That is my secret for the present."
+
+"And your king--the king in your story--did he cut the rope at last?"
+
+"I am afraid I have forgotten that; but I have no doubt he did, for he
+was a reasonable sort of creature, being a man, and I know that
+everything came right with him in the end."
+
+"Very well; I accept the omen of your king, and I too will cut the rope
+without asking why. Of course I wish that Mr. Heron should be elected.
+He is a Liberal in politics. Why do you laugh when I say that, Mr. St.
+Paul?"
+
+"Well, I didn't know that you cared much for that sort of thing, and
+women are generally supposed to be reactionaries all the world over,
+are they not? Well, anyhow, that's one reason, his being a Liberal.
+What next?"
+
+"I don't know that any next is wanting. But of course I think Mr. Heron
+is a much cleverer man, and is likely to be much better able to get on
+in the House of Commons; and then he has his complaint to make against
+the government----"
+
+"Yes; and then?"
+
+"Then he is very much liked by people whom I like--and I like him very
+much myself." Minola spoke out with perfect frankness, believing that
+that was the best thing she could do, and not showing the least sign of
+embarrassment.
+
+Mr. St. Paul laughed.
+
+"You don't like the other fellow so well?" he said.
+
+"I am sure he is a very good man----"
+
+"That's enough; you need not say another word. We all can tell what a
+critic means when he speaks of some actor as a careful and painstaking
+performer. It's just the same when a woman says a man is very good.
+Then you pronounce for Heron?"
+
+"I pronounce for Mr. Heron decidedly, if you call saying what I should
+like to happen pronouncing for any one."
+
+"In this case it is of more effect than many other pronunciamentos. You
+have elected Heron, Miss Grey, if I am not much more out in my calculations
+than I have been this some time. All right, I am satisfied. If you have
+money to throw away, just back what's-his-name?--Sheppard--heavily, and
+you are sure to get rid of it."
+
+"And you won't tell me what all this means?"
+
+"Not I indeed: not likely. Good day, Miss Grey. You have elected your
+friend Heron, I can tell you. Odd, isn't it, that he should come to be
+elected after all by me?"
+
+He bade her good day again, and strode and shambled out of the room and
+down stairs, leaving Minola much perplexed, and not quite pleased, and
+yet full of a secret wonder and pride at the possibility of her having
+helped to do Mr. Heron a service.
+
+"I wonder what he would say if he knew of it?" she asked herself, and
+she could hardly think that he would be greatly delighted with the
+promise of such influence.
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+LOVE AND ELECTIONEERING.
+
+
+The soul of Keeton, as a local orator expressed it, was stirred to its
+depths by the events which succeeded. The three estates of the town,
+whereof we have already spoken, were alike concerned in the election.
+Had it never occurred, there would have been enough in the death of
+Mrs. Saulsbury and the rearrangement of Mr. Grey's property to keep
+conversation up among the middle grade of Keeton folks. But business
+like that would not interest the park, and of course it had no interest
+for the working class of the town. The election, on the contrary, was
+of equal concern to park, semi-detached villa, and cottage, or even
+garret. A contest in Keeton was an absolute novelty, so far as the
+memory of living man could go back.
+
+It may perhaps be said that the opinion of the class who alone
+concerned themselves about her affairs had been, on the whole,
+decidedly unfavorable to Minola. She had gone as a sort of rebel
+against legitimate authority out of Keeton, and had flung herself into
+the giddy vortex of London life. No one well knew what had become of
+her; and that with Keeton folks was another way of saying that she must
+have rushed upon destruction. Some persons held that she must have gone
+upon the stage. This idea became almost a certainty when a Keeton man,
+being in London on business, brought back with him from town a
+play-bill announcing a new opera bouffe in which one of the minor
+performers was named "Miss Mattie Grey." If the good Keeton man had
+only looked in a few other play-bills, he would have no doubt found
+Greys in abundance--Matties, Minnies, Nellies, and such like, Grey
+being rather a favorite name with young ladies in the profession. But
+he made no such investigation, and it was at once assumed that Mattie
+Grey was Minola Grey in disguise--a disguise as subtle as that of the
+famous knight, Sir Tristam, who, when he wanted to conceal his identity
+from all observers and place himself beyond all possibility of
+detection, called himself Sir Tramtrist.
+
+When, however, it was found that Minola was to have her father's
+property after all, a certain change took place in the opinion of most
+persons who concerned themselves about the matter. It was assumed
+generally that Mr. Grey was far too good and Christian a man to have
+left his property to a girl who could be capable of acting in an opera
+bouffe. Then, when Miss Grey in person came to the town in the company
+of so distinguished a man as Mr. Money, even gossip started repentant
+at the sound itself had made, and began to deny that it had ever made
+any sound at all. Mr. Money was a sort of hero among the middle class
+everywhere. He was known to have fought his way up in life, and to be
+now very rich; and when Miss Grey came into the town in the company of
+Mr. Money and his daughter, the report went about forthwith that Minola
+Grey had got into the very best society in London, and that she was
+going to marry the eldest son of Mr. Money, and to be presented at
+court.
+
+Mr. Money had taken a couple of floors of the best hotel to begin with.
+He had brought his carriage with him--a carriage in which he was hardly
+ever known to take a seat when in town. He had brought a sort of
+retinue of servants. He went deliberately about making what Mr. St.
+Paul would have called "a splurge." Mr. Money knew his Pappenheimers.
+He knew that he was well known to have sprung from nothing, but he also
+knew that the middle and lower classes of Keeton would have given him
+little thanks if he had tried to please them by exhibiting there a
+modesty becoming of his modest origin. He knew well enough that the
+more he put on display the more they would think of him and of his
+clients. Therefore he put on display like a garment--a garment to which
+he was little used, and in which he took no manner of delight. There
+was generally a little group of persons round the hotel doors at all
+hours of the day waiting to see Mr. Money and his friends go out or
+come in. At first Minola positively declined to go out at all, except
+at night; and the recent death of her father's widow gave her a fair
+excuse for remaining quietly indoors. Lucy delighted in the whole
+affair, and often declared that she felt as if she had been turned into
+a princess. When Mr. Heron came down he too seemed rather to enjoy it.
+At least he took it all as a matter of course. The experiences of
+colonial days, when the ruler of a colony, however small it may be, is
+a person of majestic proportions in his own sphere, enabled him to take
+Mr. Money's pomp quite seriously.
+
+Meanwhile Mr. Augustus Sheppard had got his committee-rooms and his
+displays of various kinds, and was understood to be working hard. The
+election contest, so long looked for, had taken every one a little by
+surprise when it showed itself so near. It was natural that Mr.
+Sheppard and his friends should feel confident of the result. The
+retiring representative was now an old man. He had faithfully served
+out his time; he had always voted as his patrons wished him to do; he
+had never made a speech in the House of Commons; he had never, indeed,
+risen to his feet there at all, except once or twice to present a
+petition. The delights of a Parliamentary career were, therefore, this
+long time beginning to pall upon him. He had been notoriously anxious
+to get out of Parliament. He had been sent into the House of Commons by
+the late duke to keep the seat warm until the present duke should come
+of age. But the present duke succeeded to the peerage before he came of
+age, and therefore never had a chance of sitting in the House of
+Commons. The man in possession was allowed to remain there through
+years and years, until the present duke could be induced to return from
+abroad and take some interest in the political and other affairs of
+Keeton. His own son was yet too young for Parliament, and as the
+sitting member found himself getting too old and begged for release,
+there was nothing better to do than to get some safe and docile person
+to take on him the representation of the borough for some time to come.
+Those who knew Keeton could recommend no one more fitting in every
+desirable way than Mr. Augustus Sheppard.
+
+The time was when Mr. Sheppard would only have had to present the
+orders of the reigning duke to the constituency of Keeton and to take
+his seat in the House of Commons accordingly as if by virtue of a
+sovereign patent in ancient days. But times had changed even in sleepy
+Keeton. The younger generation had almost forgotten their dukes, it was
+so long since a chief of the house had been among them. Even the women
+had grown comparatively indifferent to the influence of the name seeing
+that it had so long been only a name for them. There had been for many
+years no duchesses and their lady daughters to meet at flower-shows and
+charitable bazaars, by the delight of whose face, and the sound of
+whose feet, and the wind of whose tresses, as the poet has it, they
+could be made to feel happy and exalted. There once were brighter days
+when the coming and going of the ladies at the castle gave the women of
+Keeton a perpetual subject of talk, of thought, of hope, and of
+quarrel. Some of the readers of this story may perhaps have spent a
+little time in small towns on the banks of foreign--say of
+American--rivers which have a habit of freezing up as winter comes, and
+becoming useless for navigation; in fact being converted from rivers
+into great frozen roads, until spring unlocks the flowers and the
+streams again. Such travellers must have noticed what an unfailing
+topic of conversation such a river supplies to those who dwell on its
+banks. How soon will it freeze this season? On what precise day was it
+closed to navigation last year--the year before--the year before that?
+In what year did it freeze soonest? Do you remember that particular
+year when it froze so very soon, or did not freeze for such an
+unprecedented length of time? That was the same year that--no, not that
+year; it was the other year, don't you remember? Then follow
+contradictions and disputes, and the elders always remember the river
+having been regularly in the habit of performing some feat which now it
+never cares to repeat. The time of the frost melting and the river
+becoming really a river again is a matter just as fruitful of
+discussion. The stranger is often tempted to wonder what the people of
+that place would have to talk about at all if suddenly the river were
+to give up its trick of freezing, and were to remain always as fluent
+as our own monotonous Thames. There seems to him some reason to fear
+that the tongues of the people would become frozen as the river ceased
+to freeze.
+
+Like the freezing and the melting of their river to those who lived on
+its bank was the annual visit of the ladies of the ducal family to the
+womankind of Keeton in Keeton's brighter days. Girls were growing up
+there now who had never seen a duchess. The arrival, the length of
+stay, the probable time of departure, the appearances in public whether
+more or less frequent than this time last year, the dresses worn by the
+gracious ladies, the persons spoken to by them, the persons only bowed
+to, the unhappy creatures who got neither speech nor salutation--it is
+a fact that there was a generation of women growing up in Keeton with
+whom these and such questions had never formed any part of the interest
+of their lives. They could not be expected to take much interest all at
+once, and as it were by instinct, in the political cause of the ducal
+family.
+
+There was therefore a good deal of uncertainty about the conditions of
+the problem. The followers of the ducal family were some of them full
+of hope. The reappearance of a duke and duchess and their train might
+do wonders in restoring the old order of things. In Keeton petticoat
+influence counted for a great deal, and in other days those who had the
+promises of the wives hardly thought it worth while to go through the
+form of asking the husbands. But now there was a new condition of the
+political problem even in that respect. The ballot, which had made the
+voter independent of the influence of his landlord or his wealthy
+customer, had converted the power of the petticoat into a sort of
+unknown quantity. There could be little doubt that the moral influence
+and the traditional control would still prevail with some; but he must
+be a rash electioneering agent who would venture to say how many votes
+could thus be counted on. It is a remarkable tribute to the moral
+greatness of an aristocracy that the influence thus obtained in old
+days over the wives and daughters of Keeton was absolutely unearned by
+any overt acts of favor or conciliation. The later dukes and their
+families had always been remarkable for never making any advances
+toward the townspeople. None of the traders of the town, however
+wealthy and respectable, found themselves or their wives invited to any
+manner of festivity up at the ducal hall. All that the noble family
+ever did for the townspeople was to come at certain seasons to Keeton
+and allow themselves to be looked at. This was enough for the time. The
+illustrious ladies could be seen, and, as has been said, they did
+sometimes speak a word to favored and envied persons. They were loved
+for being great personages, not for anything they did to win such
+devotion. "Love is enough," says the poet.
+
+All these considerations, however, rendered it hard to calculate the
+exact chances of opposition in the borough of Keeton. Of course
+revolutionary opinions were growing up, old people found, there as well
+as elsewhere. There was a new class of Conservatives springing up whom
+steady, old-fashioned politicians found it not easy to distinguish from
+the Radicals of their younger days. On the other hand, keen-sighted
+persons could not fail to perceive that, whereas in their youth almost
+all young men had a tendency to be or to fancy themselves Radicals, it
+was now growing rather the fashion for immature politicians to boast
+themselves Tories, and to talk of a spirited foreign policy and the
+dangers of Cosmopolitanism. It would be hard to say how things might
+turn out, knowing people thought, as they shook their heads, and hoped
+the expected contest might not come on for some time.
+
+Now the contest was at hand. At least the sitting member had positively
+declared that he would sit no longer, and it was announced that the
+Duke was coming to Keeton, and that Mr. Augustus Sheppard was to be the
+Duke's candidate. No more striking proof could be given of the recent
+change in the political condition of Keeton than is found in the fact
+that the adoption of Mr. Sheppard as a candidate by the ducal family
+did not even to the most devoted and sanguine followers of the great
+house make Mr. Sheppard's election seem by any means a matter of
+absolute certainty. There was a tolerably strong conviction everywhere,
+long before any opposition was announced, that the Duke's candidate
+would not be allowed to walk over the course and right into the House
+of Commons this time. Nobody in the town would oppose the Duke very
+likely, but the man to oppose would come.
+
+Now the man actually had come. Victor Heron had issued his address and
+was in Keeton. His address was original; he had positively refused from
+the first to make any grand professions of superior statesmanship or
+patriotism. He would tell Englishmen, he said, that he was seeking a
+seat in Parliament as a way of getting redress for a great wrong done
+to him, and through him to some of the principles most dear to the
+country. When he had fought his battle in Parliament and won or lost,
+he promised that he would then place himself in the hands of his
+constituents and resign the seat if they desired. The whole address was
+frank, odd, original, and perhaps seemed a little self-conceited. The
+author's absorption in his subject was mistaken by many people, as will
+happen sometimes, for self-conceit.
+
+Mr. Sheppard's address, on the contrary, talked only of the good old
+Conservative principles which had made England the envy and admiration
+of all surrounding States; of the local interests of Keeton and the
+candidate's acquaintance therewith; and of the many splendid things
+done for the town by the noble family who had done it the honor to have
+a park there.
+
+"I don't think Heron's address reads half badly," Mr. Money said, one
+evening in the absence of Heron, to his two companions; "on the whole,
+I shouldn't wonder if it took some people, the women particularly.
+Anything personal, anything in the nature of a grievance, is likely to
+have a good effect on many people, especially where the injured
+personage is young, and good-looking, and plucky. I wish the women had
+the votes here just for this once, for I think we should stand to win
+if they had."
+
+"Then, papa, do you think we shan't win now?" Lucy asked.
+
+Minola looked up eagerly for his answer.
+
+"Well, Lucelet, I don't like to say; I am not quite charmed with the
+look of things. I find there are a good many very strong Radicals grown
+up in this place since there was a contest here before; and Heron's
+not wild enough for them by half. They are a little of the red-hot
+social-revolution sort of thing--the _proletaire_ business, with a dash
+of the brabbling atheist--the fellows who think one is not fit to live
+if he even admits the possibility of another world. I am afraid these
+fellows will hold aloof from us altogether, or even take some whim of
+voting against us, and they may be strong enough to turn the scale."
+
+Minola hoped that if her friend Mr. St. Paul had really any charm by
+which to extort victory for Heron as he had promised, he would not
+forget to use it in good time. But she began to have less faith, and
+less, in the possibility of any such feat. She was a little in the
+perplexed condition of some one of mediaeval times, who has entered into
+a bargain for supernatural interference, and is not quite certain
+whether to wish that the compact may be really carried out or that it
+may prove to have been only the figment of a dream.
+
+"I'm told we ought to have some poems done," Money went on to say. "Not
+merely squibs, you know, but appeals about right and justice, and the
+cause of oppressed humanity, and all that."
+
+"I'm sure Minola could do some beautifully!" Lucy exclaimed, looking
+beseechingly toward her friend.
+
+"Oh, no; I couldn't indeed! My appeals would be dreadfully weak; they
+could not rouse the spirits of any mortal creature. Now, if we only had
+Mary Blanchet!"
+
+This, it must be owned, was Minola's fun, but it gave an idea to Mr.
+Money.
+
+"Tell you what," he said; "we ought to have her brother--the bard you
+used to call him, Lucelet."
+
+"Oh, no, papa; indeed I never called him anything of the kind. I never
+did, indeed, Nola."
+
+"Well, whatever you called him, Lucelet, we can't do better than to
+have him. We'll put Pegasus into harness, by Jove--a capital good use
+to make of him too. I'll write to what's-his-name?--Blanchet--at once."
+
+"But I don't think he would like it, papa; I think he would take
+offence at the idea of your asking him to do poems for an election. I
+don't think he would come."
+
+"Oh, yes, he would come; we would make it worth his while. These young
+fellows give themselves airs to make you girls admire them, that they
+never think of trying on with men. It would be a rather telling thing
+here too if it got about that we had brought a real poet specially down
+from London. I'll write at once."
+
+This seemed rather alarming to Minola.
+
+"I doubt whether Mr. Heron would much like it," she pleaded. "I don't
+know whether they are such very good friends just now. I am rather
+afraid."
+
+"Oh, yes; of course they must be good friends! Heron is not to have it
+all his own way in everything anyhow. He must like the idea; he shall.
+I'll write without telling him anything about it, and Heron couldn't
+help being friendly to any fellow who came under his roof, as one might
+say."
+
+No one made any further objection.
+
+"I wish Heron had not been so confoundedly particular about St. Paul,"
+Mr. Money went on to say in a discontented tone. "That was absurd. St.
+Paul's no worse than lots of other fellows, and in such a thing as this
+we can't afford to throw away any offer of support. We have to fight
+against the Duke and his lot anyhow, and the help of St. Paul couldn't
+have done us any harm in that quarter, and it might have done us some
+good in others. I shouldn't wonder if St. Paul had some friends and
+admirers here still; and it is as likely as not that his being with us
+might conciliate a few of the mad Radicals. They might like him just
+because he is against his brother, the Duke."
+
+"But Mr. Heron would not have such help as that," Lucy said, in tones
+of pride.
+
+"Oh, by Jove! if you want to carry an election--and now, I suppose, if
+St. Paul has any influence at all, it will be given against us."
+
+Minola thought of her unholy compact, and did not venture to say a word
+on the subject.
+
+
+
+
+THE "UNIFORMED MILITIA" SERVICE.
+
+
+I spent seven years of my boyhood at school among the hills of old
+Connecticut, about fifteen miles back of Bridgeport, in a region even
+now in almost its primitive simplicity and pastoral beauty. It has been
+left quiet and untouched between the iron ways of Housatonic and
+Danbury, equidistant from both, and sufficiently far away from either
+to be free from the impulse and incentive of that practical missionary
+of modern progress, the railroad.
+
+City born, but partly country bred, I understand well the sentiment of
+the New Englander for his old home, and often live over again the days
+in those familiar hills and valleys of Fairfield. I would revel in
+enjoyment if it were possible for me to revisit them. It was there my
+eyes were open to the delights of a "town muster," and my steps taught
+rhythm by fife and drum.
+
+In occasional musings I hear the old music as it used to reach me in
+waves of sound, now faint, then loud, as the variable wind would waft
+it, or as it escaped from obstructing hills. And I see the tall white
+and red plume of the commandant, undulating with his stride, and
+dipping salutes to the wind. Reader, if you have never realized the
+excitement of a "general training day" in the country, you have missed
+the freshest and most genuine pleasure of youth.
+
+In the fall of 1842 occurred the Croton water celebration, a real city
+holiday. The procession was long, interesting, and gorgeous, for all of
+it except the military portion was profusely decorated with autumn
+flowers, odorless but beautiful, rich in color and variety. It might
+properly have been called the feast of dahlias.
+
+The old fire department was out in all its glory, and richly arrayed.
+It always took part in metropolitan rejoicings, heartily and
+generously. But my interest was centred in the soldiers; fired then by
+a longing to shoulder a musket. I waited impatiently for the freedom of
+manhood and a fitting opportunity. When both came I enlisted in a city
+regiment, and continued the connection till after the close of the late
+civil war.
+
+Twenty years of service with musket and sabre failed to dull my
+enthusiasm. I left it, warned by the heaviness of approaching age and
+the demands of business, convinced of the propriety, the usefulness,
+and the value of a well regulated militia force.
+
+Aware of how much has been said and written against such service, and
+of the misapprehension of those who had never studied its organization,
+its possibilities, and necessity, I propose to draw upon the practical
+experience of the past twenty-five years for the purpose of correcting
+wrong views without and suggesting new measures within. The service has
+been charged with costliness, uselessness, and pretentious display;
+with vain ambition, absence of organic purpose, and with being inimical
+to the morality of the individual member. All the charges have some
+foundation for their utterance, though the evils referred to are not
+the legitimate results of the organization, but rather the baleful
+fruit of irresponsible and ignorant commissions. The service is really
+worthy of conscientious labor and the support of the people.
+
+In the present relations of government and society, a disciplined
+militia force is an essential part of the body politic, and an organism
+with vitality if properly administered. The central idea of the
+organization is a military body, directly from the people, for the
+conservation of governmental integrity and a protection to the State.
+Its collateral uses are an initial school for soldierly training, and
+in cities especially a supplementary and occasional aid to the police
+forces. In a general way the central idea is accepted, but in
+particulars is not carried out in equity between governments and the
+people. The theory is that the people are the State, and therefore must
+provide their own protection, but under proper authority. The authority
+exacts the service, at a great cost to the State, but denies reasonable
+compensation and encouragement to the individual member; therefore the
+people are not in sympathy with the organization. The service is
+brought in conflict with the people, in fact with itself, and the
+anomaly is presented of an organism in internal opposition. It is the
+duty of legislation and constituted authority to harmonize such an
+unnatural condition and change indifference into interest, ignorant
+neglect into intelligent support. Only in times of strife, like our
+late civil conflict, or the wars of 1812 and 1776, does the service
+rise to the dignity of an establishment and a recognized power. In
+times of peace it is permitted to exist, mainly in skeleton condition,
+without organic discipline, because the people have a false idea of its
+use and value. State military departments are not administered with
+intelligence, and military codes are subject to yearly legislative
+amendments without understanding; conditions of enlistment are altered,
+generally to the injury of the enlisted soldier, while recruiting for
+the uniformed corps languishes from lack of encouragement.
+
+It is interesting to follow some of the changes of the New York State
+code and their inconsistent applications. For instance, when the law
+allowing relief from jury duty and the partial remission of assessment,
+to continue during life, was amended to cover terms of enlistment only,
+the Adjutant General of the State decided the amendments applied to
+prior enlistments, thereby breaking a contract between the State and
+enlisted men under the old law. But when the term of service was
+reduced from seven to five years, enlistments under the former law were
+held for the longer term. It is in such a spirit that all amendments
+are interpreted in favor of the State and against the individual.
+Fortunately the former provision has been reconsidered, and in a spirit
+of compromise relief from jury duty is reinstated in the code for life,
+but the abatement of assessments covers only terms of service. The
+State considers exemption from jury duty for life a relief, the nominal
+abatement of assessments during the service a benefit, and both
+together ample compensation to the militiamen. They would be in part,
+if immediately available, but the compensation is questionable, as the
+duty is generally performed too early in life for those legislative
+provisions to be of practical application. The abatement of an
+assessment is of little benefit to those who, probably, are without
+property till after their terms of service are completed, and the
+measure fails by limitation. Fortunately the relief from jury duty is a
+life provision, for it generally comes later in life, and after the
+militia service is performed. One does not, however, repay the cost of
+uniforms and other necessary expenses, nor the other compensate for the
+time which the service requires.
+
+The New York State code says: "All able-bodied male citizens, between
+the ages of eighteen and forty-five, are subject to military duty," but
+also says that minors must obtain the written consent of parents or
+guardians to legalize an enlistment in a uniformed corps. Why such an
+incongruous distinction between uniformed corps and ununiformed
+militia? What right has the code to exact military service from a
+person who is condemned by the law as incompetent for citizenship, and
+is legally recognized by the law only as a child? And why exact
+military service from those who are in the decline of life? There are
+many who are physically able to do the duty under the age of twenty-one
+and over the age of forty, but they should be regarded as exceptional.
+Such service should be voluntary by the individual and optional with
+the State.
+
+Spiritual, natural, and physical laws have stamped twenty-one the
+minimum age of manhood, and forty the culmination. Why should military
+law assume the power to control more?
+
+The young absorb the elements of the future, the old dispose of them;
+within these life lines is practical manhood.
+
+Patriotism enthusiastic becomes patriotism triumphant; during its
+passage the sentiment hardens into use.
+
+Fault has been found by tax-payers with State and city governments for
+maintaining militia forces at such an expense. The censure is justified
+by the yearly exhibit of military expenditures, which is due in part to
+the unnecessary maintenance of skeleton regiments and battalions.
+
+The prejudices of the people against soldiers in time of peace will
+never be overcome till they are educated to the necessity of a military
+establishment by intelligent administration of its affairs, proper
+information, greater proficiency, and a more decided application of its
+use. Satisfy the people of the necessity of the service, enlist their
+pride in its support by its efficiency, and its maintenance may be
+secured without opposition. People never grumble when they can see
+their money's worth.
+
+If States have treated their militia forces as an inferior part of
+themselves, if military authorities have acted arbitrarily and
+ungenerously, militiamen themselves are not blameless. They have
+frittered away their opportunities, and belittled their profession, by
+vain-glory and personal ambition, and invited censure by inefficient
+service. Fortunately there are men and officers, companies and
+regiments, who, recognizing their mission, have conscientiously
+performed their duty and redeemed the service from greater obloquy.
+Their work has acted like leaven to the whole body. All honor to them
+for their intelligence, honest pride, and patriotic labor.
+
+The "uniformed militia" system has a foundation of inherent strength
+capable of being built upon and extended to a perfectness not at
+present thought capable of. With its present incompleteness, its degree
+of usefulness is positive, and even under all the adverse circumstances
+referred to the condition of ably administered battalions bears upon
+the side of success and prosperity. Singular as it may seem, part of
+its weakness is from its own elements of apparent strength.
+
+Recruits enlist with a very inadequate idea of its requirements. Many
+go through their term of service, sometimes pleased, oftener bored, but
+always with a sense of personal importance, and take their discharge
+with feelings of relief.
+
+Some members are guilty of license when in uniform that they would not
+indulge in as citizens. Officers without capacity accept commissions
+and occasionally intrigue for command, from ambition and vanity,
+without a sense of their responsibility or a proper knowledge of their
+duties. There are also elements of disorder within the lines of duty
+which are hard to bear and difficult to control, because they arise
+from personal animosities. The judgment of an officer is warped to his
+hurt by his selfishness, wounded pride, and ambition, who will hold a
+commission to the injury of his company or battalion, even with the
+support of part of his command.
+
+Is it to be wondered at that an organization with such elements of
+disorder in it should be regarded with disfavor by those ignorant of
+its trials, its duties, and its aims? And is it not an argument in its
+favor that its discipline is able to control and surmount such
+demoralizing tendencies?
+
+It is not pleasant to deprecate a continuation of long services, but
+under certain circumstances it may result in injury to a corps.
+Officers of merit and distinction, with the personal veneration of
+their men, have been known to outlive their usefulness by retention of
+command after the freshness, activity, and judgment of their earlier
+manhood have departed. The idiosyncrasies of age and confirmed habits
+of authority do not readily accept advanced ideas, improvements in
+methods, and the inevitable changes of time.
+
+Recruiting for uniformed corps has been and is a process without a
+system--a method without a principle; it is simply a necessity. As
+conducted at present it is derogatory to the dignity of the service,
+and in its practice humiliating and unpleasant to its members. The code
+really offers no inducement to militiamen.
+
+Its failure to provide proper encouragement for recruiting is a defect
+which should have the serious consideration of military authorities and
+legislators at the earliest opportunity. It is a matter of vital
+importance to the service, and forces itself upon the attention of all
+commandants to their great concern.
+
+It seems as though battalions are expected to perpetuate themselves,
+and they have to be, by force of circumstances, recruiting
+organizations for the State.
+
+Personal application and argument have to take the place of official
+encouragement, and a service whose necessity, propriety, and benefits
+should be patent to all is left in a measure to factitious
+circumstances for a support. It is not, however, the sole purpose of
+this paper to cavil at authority, to criticise military codes, or
+condemn existing methods, but rather to show how the uniformed militia
+forces can be better rewarded by proper recognition and acknowledgment,
+and made more honorable by a higher standard of service. The
+indifference of the world and the early hostility of the church to
+amusements were fatal blunders which both have ascertained, and are now
+atoning for generously, but too thoughtlessly. Opposition has become
+permission without proper direction, and indiscriminate pleasure
+anticipates regulated and orderly recreation. This is a question of as
+great importance to the State as to society, of as vital interest to
+the church, as of welfare to the individual. Every care should be taken
+to recognize as orderly only those pleasures which have their
+foundation in use.
+
+In every community, between the extremes of the artisan, who is almost
+precluded from the continuous and regular duties of a militiaman, by
+his occupation and necessities, and the student, who is generally
+unfitted for them by his intellectual preoccupation, is a numerous
+class, for whom the service is eminently adapted. Their inclination for
+occasional relief from business and clerical labors is a proper desire,
+and should not be permitted to degenerate into undisciplined sport for
+want of a legitimate pastime.
+
+The militia service, on a peace footing, is really a recreation, with
+an object and an organization of the most singular merit. Its system of
+physical training is superior to the abnormal development of the
+gymnasium, the fitful excitement of the ball-field, the constrained
+pull and single purpose of the oar, and the violent termination of a
+"shell" race. Its normal object, military training, is exacting,
+methodical, and thorough, and moral force of character, self-reliance,
+discipline of the mind, and knowledge of human nature are collateral
+results of company and battalion associations. There is an element of
+possible strength to the militia forces of the several States, which
+may have been thought of, but never utilized. I refer to the youth in
+every community who are old enough to be free from the constant
+necessity of elementary study and relieved from the absorbing
+application of higher educational branches, who are yet at school, but
+with sufficient leisure to do well or ill--that age between the
+watchful eye of maternal care and later parental authority: inchoate
+manhood, rough, awkward, and susceptible; wild with their first taste
+of liberty; full of anticipation and courageous in the future. The
+struggle between them and society for a place is long and doubtful. The
+State should adopt and help them by recognizing a cadet system to be
+attached to the uniformed corps, whose officers could inaugurate no
+wiser, more charitable, or more popular measure than to accept their
+services. The measure of good to the boy and the measure of benefit to
+the service would be reciprocal and incalculable. The cadet would take
+to the "school of the soldier" with enthusiasm. It would give him
+something proper to do, something right to think of; it would perfect
+his growing physique with grace, and engraft on his system the elements
+of manhood.
+
+To all graduating classes in school, a membership in a cadet corps
+would be an incentive, and school commissioners could make such
+membership a reward of merit.
+
+It would relieve the service from the present unpleasant feature of
+recruiting by keeping behind it a subordinate corps of well-drilled
+young soldiers from which its ranks could be kept full. It would
+relieve officers from the drudgery of squad-drills, and give the
+service the full time of their men instead of wasting six, perhaps
+more, months in the present recruit classes. It would also perfect the
+enlisted men and subordinate officers for their prospective duties by
+detailing them for detached service in cadet corps, in grades next
+higher than their own. Such detached service would be an honor and a
+prime incentive for all subordinate officers.
+
+The uniformed militia system has been the growth of years upon the
+single theory of a military power direct from the people. Whatever
+merit has been developed in its practice is intrinsic, and has been
+brought to the surface by force of circumstances rather than by
+encouragement or appreciation. Upon the minimum basis of inherent value
+can be constructed a maximum power of State economy, by honoring the
+service with an establishment of intelligence and efficiency. Make the
+uniformed corps to the State and to the militia forces, in a
+comparative, what the West Point Academy is to the United States and to
+the regular army in a superlative degree.
+
+I have treated militia service thus far as a recreation, because the
+members of uniformed corps have made it so. I will now refer to it as a
+duty, and endeavor to show how the service can be adjusted to the
+greater benefit of the State and be made of greater use to the people.
+
+Declare all male citizens between the ages of twenty-one and forty
+subject to military duty as ununiformed militia, to be enrolled and
+brigaded, but kept immobile except for emergencies, to be officered
+when necessary from the subordinate officers of the uniformed corps.
+
+The object of enrollment is twofold: to ascertain the available force
+of the State, and for the purpose of special taxation, to reimburse the
+State for military expenditures.
+
+Eliminate all extrinsic material from the present force; disband
+skeleton battalions; make supernumerary their officers; reduce the
+force to the efficient corps now existing, or which may have to be
+organized, in place of ineffective ones, for the purpose of creating
+normal schools for military instruction. Never call out an ununiformed
+battalion in time of peace, or put a uniformed corps in the field in
+time of war; consider them component and interchangeable parts of one
+system. In active service let the former be the lungs and the latter
+the heart of a vital organism.
+
+In no instance should a normal battalion be disbanded for the purpose
+of officering ununiformed corps, but should be kept intact with its
+field officers and company commandants--a kind of Gatling educational
+battery for the propulsion of brains. It would be just as sensible to
+put the West Point cadets in the field as a fighting corps as to put
+some of our best regiments. Their heads are worth more to the country
+than their bodies.
+
+I have suggested special taxation of the enrolled militia to reimburse
+the State for its military expenditures. It can probably be collected
+more expeditiously and with less expense through a special department
+of the Commissioner of Jurors than through any other channel. It is now
+necessary for the Commissioner to keep lists of jurors and register all
+exempts, and the plan would certainly aid him in those duties of his
+department by giving him a fuller and more correct canvass of citizens.
+
+The encouragement needed to induce men and officers to spend their
+leisure hours for ten years in these normal battalions is to void the
+present remission of assessment, as an inequitable provision--reimburse
+them for clothing, relieve them from jury duty for life, and exempt
+them from any possible future draft. With their discharges give the men
+sergeants' warrants, non-commissioned officers lieutenants'
+commissions, and advance officers' commissions one grade, waiting
+papers for possible future services. Furnish comfortable and
+substantial drill-rooms and armories, and reimburse battalions for
+proper musical expenditures.
+
+The State should hold itself responsible to the general Government for
+its officers who may be touched by a draft and furnish the necessary
+substitutes as compensation in part for their former and prospective
+services.
+
+Experience furnishes proof that well made, good-fitting clothing,
+stylish, but not extravagant, is much better and cheaper than the
+low-priced, ugly State uniforms, ground out by contract, allotted by
+sizes, and fitting by chance. There is no economy in the joint
+ownership of a uniform; the nominal owner is niggardly in purchase and
+the wearer careless in use. Let the uniform be chosen by corps, made in
+accordance with regimental bills of dress, by individual measure, and
+let the State reimburse the corps by a liberal commutation. To
+reimburse battalions for their music may seem a costly item--it
+certainly is a great expense to the present uniformed corps--but as the
+project is based upon the idea of a self-supporting establishment,
+there is no injury to the State; a nominal tax paid by the enrolled
+ununiformed militia should be sufficient to pay the entire expenditures
+of the State military department.
+
+To honor discharged men and officers with a kind of brevet commission
+would be an incentive for ability and efficiency, and would be of
+sufficient value to invite the best class of young men to the ranks.
+Whatever may be questionable in the action of Congress for reducing the
+force of the regular army, there can be none in the policy of the State
+for reducing its force to the lowest possible point. Every man should
+be released from the ranks that can be, both in justice to himself and
+for general industrial effect. The cost of company drills, regimental
+brigade and division parades in time and money is immense, and out of
+all proportion to the doubtful value of such services, constituted as
+the force is. But a compact, thoroughly disciplined, and perfectly
+drilled force, of the highest obtainable military character, is
+necessary and should be well maintained for contingent purposes.
+
+I have thrown out these views as applicable to the city and State of
+New York; but the ideas can be applied to the military department of
+every State, with such modifications as may be found necessary.
+
+It would be expensive, impolitic, and unnecessary for the general
+Government to keep a regular army, through years of peace, of
+sufficient numerical force to meet successfully internal outbreaks or
+external pressure. The militia force should be trained to be the
+supporting power of the army for such contingencies. The doubts and
+fears and awful suspense of the people during the early days of the
+late rebellion would have been greatly lessened, perhaps quite avoided,
+had the regular and militia forces been in effective readiness for the
+struggle, and met the necessity of the hour. The uniformed corps could
+have been ordered to the front for temporary defence, as some were, and
+time given for mobilizing the ununiformed troops.
+
+As it was all was confusion, distrust, and almost despair; only for the
+instinctive loyalty and inherent courage of the people, all would have
+been lost. The men of the first levy, the rank and file, were
+magnificent in material, confident in ability, honest in purpose, crude
+in development, difficult to discipline--it was hard for them to come
+under military law. Many of their officers were adventurers without
+experience or qualifications for command. They obtained commissions
+through personal influence rather than by merit. Militia officers, with
+all their imperfections, would have been of much greater service.
+
+Is the affair of Bull Run to be wondered at, with such material, and in
+the light of later education? It was the incisive action of the war; it
+punctured the conceit of both armies.
+
+C. H. MEDAY.
+
+
+
+
+THE YOSEMITE HERMIT.
+
+
+The shadows were lying tolerably long on the green hillsides when the
+lumbering yellow stage, somewhat the worse for wear, drawn by four
+lean, dusty horses, also somewhat the worse for wear, drew up with a
+grand flourish in front of the Grand Hotel, Mariposa.
+
+It was a long, low building, with a broad piazza in front and along one
+side; the facade was painted a dingy yellow to match the stage
+apparently, but the rest of the edifice had been neglected, and the
+superabundant rain and superabundant sunshine of Mariposa had left
+marks of their handiwork on the bare boards.
+
+The loungers rushed out of the bar-room as soon as the wheels were
+heard, and stood grouped about the broad piazza exchanging jokes with
+the driver, who was known as Scotty, and asking the news from Hornitos
+and other way places.
+
+Meanwhile the "Doctor," a stout, ruddy-complexioned man, whose
+appearance spoke well for his profession, descended from his seat on
+the box, and, opening the stage door with an air of pride and
+satisfaction, he assisted the one lady passenger to alight with a grace
+which would have done credit to Chesterfield. The loungers on the
+piazza started and drew back. All ceased their gibes with Scotty, and
+two or three removed their hats. She was not only a woman, but a very
+pretty woman--she was even beautiful.
+
+She thanked the Doctor with a pretty grace, and turned her clear, hazel
+eyes upon the admiring group, scanning each face eagerly and wistfully.
+The Doctor said, "Allow me," and was about to escort her into the small
+den at one side known as the "Ladies' parlor," but she swept past him
+and walked straight into the bar-room, the Doctor, the loafers, and
+Scotty crowding in after her and regarding her movements with an
+undisguised admiration, and as much reverential curiosity as though she
+had been a visitant from another sphere.
+
+The proprietor of the "Grand" was a podgy man, with an aggressively
+bald head and scaley eyes like an alligator's--though for that matter I
+may be libelling the alligator. His name was Sharpe, commonly corrupted
+into "Cutey" by some mysterious process.
+
+He was pouring whiskey from a bottle into a glass, preparatory to
+serving himself, when the new comer walked--she walked like an
+angel--straight up to him and said, "Is this the landlord?"
+
+Cutey was so astonished by the apparition that he dropped the glass--he
+called it a glass; it was in reality a stone-china cup about half an
+inch thick--and wasted the whiskey; it was only by the greatest
+presence of mind that he succeeded in saving the bottle.
+
+"Ma-a-a'm?" he stammered, clutching at his bald head to see if there
+was a hat there.
+
+The woman repeated her question; the crowd by the doorway, headed by
+the Doctor, strained their ears to listen. She had a low voice,
+tolerably sweet. Such music had never before been heard within those
+low walls, perhaps. They wished she would say more. Old "Punks"
+muttered that she 'minded him of his Lyddy--"jest sech a voice!" which
+remark brought down upon him much contumely afterward, and a threat
+from the Doctor to "put daylight through him." After a helpless look
+around him, Cutey admitted that he _was_ the landlord, with the air of
+a cornered scoundrel confessing a crime.
+
+"Then perhaps you can tell me what I wish to know," said the woman,
+fixing her clear, sweet eyes upon him. "I want to find a man named
+Wilmer--James Courtney Wilmer."
+
+Cutey shook his head sorrowfully.
+
+"Thar be so many names," said he: "skurce any man goes by his own name.
+Be he livin' in Mariposa, ma'am?"
+
+"I do not know," was the reply, with a suggestion of tears in the
+voice, at which every heart in the crowd by the door was touched and
+unhappy.
+
+Punks nudged Scotty with his elbow.
+
+"What's that fellow's name that wus partners with Circus Jack in the
+Banderita?" he whispered.
+
+Scotty rapped his forehead with his horny hand, and ran his fingers
+into his bushy, tow-colored hair, with a clutch of desperation.
+
+"Punks," he whispered, "I allers counted you a fool, but you ain't; you
+air a shinin' light! His name _wus_ Jim Wilmer."
+
+Then, coloring up to the roots of his hair, he advanced and said:
+
+"If you please, ma'am."
+
+The woman turned at this, meeting a whole battery of eyes without any
+seeming consciousness of it.
+
+"There wus a feller named Jim Wilmer here--wus partners in the
+Banderita, with a feller named Circ--leastways, I don't know his name,
+but we called him Circus Jack, ma'am."
+
+The woman's face--her beautiful face--turned as white as the collar at
+her throat; she leaned against the bar and tried to speak, but the
+words died on her lips.
+
+Finally, with an effort, she half whispered:
+
+"Do you know where he is now?"
+
+Then, as the men looked at each other, she cried in a clearer tone, "Is
+he _dead_?"
+
+"No, no, ma'am. He wus here, 'taint a month," said Scotty. "I think
+he's off huntin' in the hills. I'll find Circus Jack, and bring him up
+here. He'll be likely to know--him and Jim wus real good friends."
+
+"Thank you," said the stranger softly, in a voice which smote Scotty's
+heart exceedingly.
+
+The Doctor, meanwhile, had gone for Mrs. Sharpe, who presently entered,
+and invited the stranger to "hev a little tea."
+
+She was a small fair woman, with a washed-out look, and a mouth not
+innocent of _dipping_, but she looked and spoke kindly, and the
+stranger was glad enough to answer, "Yes," and follow her into the
+dining-room. The crowd fell back as she approached, but only enough to
+give her room to pass. Some stealthily touched her dress as she swept
+by them, and when she had disappeared, and the door had closed, forty
+tongues were loosed at once, and a scene of excitement ensued only
+equalled by the one which followed on the shooting of "the Judge" by
+"Little Jack," over a game of poker, in that very bar-room of the Grand
+Hotel.
+
+"Mought I ax your name, ma'am?" inquired Mrs. Sharpe.
+
+"Marian Kingsley," was the faint reply.
+
+"Miss or Mrs., ma'am?" pursued Mrs. Sharpe, glancing at the shapely,
+white, ringless hands.
+
+The stranger gave a slight impatient twitch. "It doesn't matter," she
+said. "Call me Marian. That will do as well as anything."
+
+Mrs. Sharpe was a washed-out woman. Many of the natural and laudable
+instincts remained, perhaps being fast colors; but a horror of the
+class to which she now supposed Marian to belong was one which had
+faded out of her nature. She gave a slightly supercilious look, which
+fell upon the woman like moonlight on ice, and pursued her inquiries.
+
+"Came from 'Frisco?"
+
+"I came through there. I didn't see anything of the place."
+
+"Whar _did_ yer come from?"
+
+"Philadelphia." The tone was changed. She evidently felt the impalpable
+rudeness of the faded woman, and knew how to resent it in the same way.
+More conversation ensued, in the course of which Mrs. Sharpe discovered
+that Marian had a little money--enough to pay her board for a few
+months--and that she had come there to find "James Courtney Wilmer."
+
+Mrs. Sharpe had information to give as well as to take, for she knew
+something of Jim.
+
+"_We_ called him _Jim_," she said, a little scornfully. "He didn't git
+no 'Courting' from _we_."
+
+Poor Marian gave a faint smile. "There might be other James Wilmers,"
+she said. "I wanted to be sure."
+
+Mrs. Sharpe didn't think this could be the one.
+
+"He's a rough, ragged creeter," she said, "and 's had the snakes fur
+weeks at a time."
+
+Marian shrank and cowered at this, with a pitiful look of pain on her
+beautiful face.
+
+"Hed money left him?" asked Mrs. Sharpe.
+
+Marian nodded.
+
+"'Twon't do him no good. Soon as he hearns of it, he'll drink himself
+into snakes. Allers did when they struck a good lead on the Banderita.
+Circus Jack, he loses all hisn's at poker; so thar they go."
+
+In the course of an hour Circus Jack, scrubbed and "fixed up" to a
+degree which made him almost unrecognizable by his comrades, appeared,
+escorted by Scotty, also prepared by a choice toilet to enter the
+presence of "the ladies."
+
+"'Scuse my not comin' afore," said Scotty. "Hosses must be 'tended to,
+and them of mine wus about dead beat."
+
+Marian smiled graciously, if absently, and turned her clear, hazel eyes
+to Circus Jack, who, with many excuses, circumlocutions, and profane
+epithets, most of which he apologized for instantly, and some of which
+he was evidently unconscious of, gave her all the information in his
+power in regard to the man she had come to find.
+
+No one in Mariposa knew him better. As "Jim" he was almost an integral
+part of the city of "Butterflies." The butterflies, by the by, for
+which the town is named, are not those which soar in the air, but
+"Mariposas," fastened by long, tough filaments to the ground.
+
+Many a night had Jim Wilmer crushed his swollen face into them, and
+slept a drunken sleep with their soft wings folded sorrowfully above
+him.
+
+There was something of a mystery hung about him, which the "boys" had
+never been able to fathom. Some said that he belonged to a wealthy and
+aristocratic family, and had left home and become a wanderer and an
+outcast, because some beautiful woman had jilted him; others said that
+he had had a wife and children, that he had broken his wedded faith and
+his wife's heart at the same time, and that a grim phantom followed him
+wherever he went, and gave him no peace. Others told yet another story:
+that he had been engaged to a beautiful girl, and had loved her and
+trusted her above all telling; that his wedding day was near, when he
+had stumbled upon some miserable secret, which was dead and buried, but
+could not rest in its grave; that there was no room left for doubt,
+which is sometimes blessed, and he had fled without a word;
+disappeared, and left to her own wretched heart the task of telling her
+the reason why.
+
+Circus Jack did not tell Marian these stories, though he had heard them
+all; indeed, they had all been retold and discussed in the bar-room,
+not half an hour since. An average woman would have repeated them to
+her, and thus tempted her to reveal the truth; but a chivalrous heart
+beat under Jack's flannel shirt, and he could no more bear to hurt her
+than he could have crushed a little bird to death with his hand.
+
+If any of the stories were true, and she yet loved poor Jim, he told
+her enough to wring her heart and haunt her dreams for ever.
+
+The winter that he spent in the hollow of a great pine tree, on the rim
+of Yosemite valley, was perhaps his happiest and most peaceful. Every
+Yosemite tourist stops to peep inside this tree, and to wonder if a man
+really lived there. "It was comfortable enough," says the hale old
+pioneer of the valley below. "He had plenty of room. We both slept in
+it one night."
+
+At which the tourist peeps in again, and wonders if the long-limbed
+Texan was not a bit cramped by the footboard.
+
+When Circus Jack told Marian the story it was fresher and less
+wonderful than now.
+
+"Was the snow very deep?" she said. "Was there no danger of his
+freezing to death?"
+
+"I never hearn much about it anyhow," said Circus Jack, "'cept thet he
+lived thar alone cuttin' shingles. I 'spect the snow was 'bout four or
+five foot deep up thar whar he lived. He's a close-mouthed one, I tell
+yer. Never git nothin' outer him, an' when he's drunk he don't tell
+nothin' whatsomd-ever!"
+
+This, with a glance half pitying, half reassuring, as though he would
+promise her that the secret, whatever it might be, was safe.
+
+One comforting doubt beat at the woman's heart all the while that Jack
+was talking. "Perhaps this man was not the one!"
+
+She mentioned this at length, and asked Jack what his quandom "partner"
+was like.
+
+"He was a slight-built feller, rayther light-complected," was the
+reply. "An' han'some! I called him han'some, didn't you, Scotty?"
+
+Scotty, thus appealed to, gave a profane assent. He had scarcely moved
+a muscle since he sat down, with his eyes fixed on Marian's fair,
+ever-changing face. Mrs. Sharpe, after a vain attempt to engage him in
+conversation, had quietly withdrawn, having no relish for being one of
+a quartette where two did all the talking.
+
+"Was he--an--educated man?" inquired Marian hesitatingly, feeling in a
+vague way that the question might offend Jack.
+
+"Yes, he war," replied that worthy in a contemplative tone. "When he
+war drunk I hev hearn him talkin' a lot of stuff like po'try. Thar's a
+pile of books in my cabin now that he used ter read consid'able. _I_
+can't make head nor tail to 'em. P'r'aps you might."
+
+"I would like to see them," said Marian eagerly.
+
+Jack nodded, and a pause ensued. At length Scotty remarked that the
+"old man," meaning Cutey, was "reyther late in lightin' up," at which
+Jack arose and bade the stranger "good night."
+
+Marian put out her hand, saying, "We will be good friends, I hope."
+
+Circus Jack took it by the finger tips cautiously, careful not to hurt
+it with his horny fingers.
+
+"I'll do ary thing in the world fur yer, madam," he replied earnestly
+and ingenuously.
+
+"There was one thing I wished to ask," she said, "though it may be a
+foolish question. Did you ever notice any--ring--that he wore
+or--carried?"
+
+"They _wus_ a ring, but I'm beat ef I kin tell what kind. Once when Jim
+was turrible sick, an' his hand swelled up, I wanted to file it off,
+but he fought so I couldn't. He said when he got well thet it never had
+ben off, nor never shouldn't be while he had life to fight."
+
+"Can't you tell me what it was like?" she asked.
+
+"I ain't no hand," said Circus Jack, rubbing his head. "I'd know it ef
+I seed it, but----"
+
+"Was it like this?" She drew a dainty purse from her pocket, and took
+from its safest corner a plain, flat band of gold, with a small disk on
+it, shaped like the half of a heart placed horizontally.
+
+"Prezactly!" exclaimed Circus Jack with emphasis.
+
+She opened her purse to put it back, but it fell from her hand,
+scattering her little stock of money over the floor, and a moment
+after, when Mrs. Sharpe came in, in response to frantic halloos from
+Scotty, she found Marian in a dead faint upon the floor, with Scotty
+and Circus Jack, with hands clasped behind them, kneeling on either
+side of her like uncouth angels, while scattered coins and escaping
+masses of golden-brown hair formed a halo about her head.
+
+She was ashamed of and provoked at her weakness afterward; said she was
+fatigued with her long and wearisome ride, and that she never fainted
+before; but if she had been an accomplished diplomatist, she could have
+planned nothing better for her popularity.
+
+As for the faded-out woman, her opinion, which had been tottering under
+a severe reproof from Cutey, now underwent a complete revolution.
+
+"_Them_ kind never faints!" she said to herself dogmatically, as she
+assisted Marian to her room and begged her to "take things easy like."
+She patiently answered one hundred and seven inquiries that evening,
+varying from, "How's the sick lady?" to, "Jim Wilmer's gal perking up a
+little arter her faint?" and for the rest of Marian's stay in Mariposa
+she proved that kindliness of heart had been one of the "fast colors."
+
+It was but natural that Cutey should feel a friendly interest, since he
+dealt out at least two hundred extra drinks, at highly remunerative
+prices, on her account that evening; and moreover, the Doctor "tipped"
+him handsomely for extra care and attention. In a week after her
+arrival, Marian had learned all that anybody in Mariposa knew regarding
+"Jim." She wore that curious ring upon her finger now. There were two
+letters upon the disk, but no one ever had the hardihood to ask what
+they were.
+
+Punks, whose eyes were keen, and whose curiosity was keener, declared
+that they were "i l," with a "little quirl-like" between.
+
+Punks also knew--a fact which did credit to his powers and habits of
+observation--that on the disk of the ring which Jim wore on his little
+finger were the letters "Fa."
+
+Punks desired to know what "Fail" spelled but "fail." He further
+inquired "what they wanted to hev sech a doggoned mis'able word as thet
+on a ring fur?"
+
+"'T'orter be 'love' or sunthin'," he added critically.
+
+It was only after much questioning in divers places, and the exercise
+of a deal of patience and some finesse, that Marian learned the present
+whereabouts of the half-crazed hermit "all unblessed." When last seen,
+something less than a week before her arrival, he had been wandering
+through the neighboring mountains, half-clothed in wretched rags,
+living on berries and roots, alternately muttering and shrieking the
+vagaries of his unhinged mind.
+
+They were loth to tell her, even those who knew it. Their rude
+externals seemed to have made their hearts softer. It hurt them to see
+the pink color fade from her cheeks, and the shadow of sharp pain creep
+over her beautiful face; so she had to learn the lesson of smiling when
+her heart ached worst. The two Mexicans, cattle herders, who had seen
+him, were eagerly questioned; but they could tell nothing that she did
+not know, save that they were quite sure that it was Jim, and not some
+other unfortunate, whom they had seen.
+
+They gave a stupid assent when asked by Marian to secure him and bring
+him into town the next time that they saw him; and a "Si, Senor,"
+considerably less stupid in a subsequent private interview with Jack,
+who promised them "heap money" for their labor.
+
+Marian had the books which Jim had left in the cabin: commonplace Greek
+and Latin books, which might have belonged to anybody, save that on one
+fly leaf was written in a scrawling hand, "J. C. Wilmer," and this
+yellow page, and this faded ink, she covered with her kisses and
+baptized with her tears. And another weary week crept by.
+
+The Doctor noticed with disapprobation strongly expressed how pale and
+worn-looking the pretty woman grew. Not professionally; indeed, his
+title was merely honorary, bestowed in recognition of his services in
+prescribing the "Golden Anti-bilious Pills" for Bob Jinks, which, or
+nature in spite of them, had effected a cure, and restored to bereft
+Mariposa society an efficient and valuable member.
+
+The Doctor's interest afforded considerable amusement to the habitues
+of the "Grand" bar-room, and they fairly roared with sympathy when he
+profanely expressed his sorrow to see her wasting her beauty in tears
+over "another feller."
+
+One Saturday night, two weeks and a day since Marian's arrival, the
+whole population of the town were at the Grand, either drinking,
+gambling, or purchasing provisions of Cutey's deputy, who presided over
+the tin can department with activity and grace; and all, whatever their
+occupation, were swearing vigorously and unceasingly.
+
+Marian sat up stairs in her tiny room burning with feverish anxiety.
+Her long years of home-waiting, the comfortless journey, even the first
+week of uncertainty, had been easier to bear than this anxious waiting.
+The Mexicans had not hesitated to say that he must be dead by this
+time; but _that_ she did not believe; he might be starving, crazed,
+nearly dead, but surely she might see him once more and hear him say
+that he forgave her; perhaps even nurse him back to reason and health
+and hope again.
+
+The brawling and laughter down stairs made her shudder. "If I was only
+a man!" she whispered fiercely, clenching her little hands. "Can I do
+_nothing_ but sit here and wait? Oh, God, be merciful!" she cried.
+
+Then suddenly a thought flashed into her mind. She did not stop to
+think of it; she acted upon it.
+
+The Doctor's partner, profoundly studying his cards, was somewhat
+disconcerted to see the table kicked over, and the Doctor's "hand" on
+the floor. Without a question, he put his hand back for his pistol,
+when the sudden stillness in the room caught his attention, and all
+that followed caused him to forget the affront.
+
+In the centre of the room, her disordered hair flying about her face,
+her clear eyes flashing with excitement, her cheeks flaming with color,
+more beautiful than they had ever seen her look before, Marian stood
+waiting for silence. Men crowded up to the doorways and filled the
+windows, certain from the sudden quiet that "something was up."
+
+"Won't you _help_ me?" she cried out. "What can _I_ do to find him? He
+may be starving to death! He would not have left you to starve!
+You"--she gasped and drew her breath hard--"you--whom he was good
+to--you remember--a hundred things, but you forget him! and let
+him--rave his life away--and starve to death--alone." She choked. She
+could not speak another word! but she stood with her lips parted, her
+eyes flashing, looking eagerly, almost angrily, from one face to
+another.
+
+Circus Jack bounded on to a table; it was rickety, and reeled with his
+weight; but Punks and Bob Jinks steadied it; they were friends of
+Jack's; besides, they had just won from him at poker, and felt very
+friendly. "Fellers!" said Jack, "to-morrow's Sunday. I'm going out ter
+hunt fer poor Jim, and ain't comin' back till I find him. Them as wants
+ter 'comp'ny me kin call at my cabin to-night."
+
+"I will go with you, Jack," said the Doctor impressively.
+
+"Me, too, you bet!" cried Scotty.
+
+"Count me in," growled a bass voice from the window.
+
+"Me too," squeaked Punks. "All as'll go say, 'Ay!'"
+
+And an "Ay!" came from those rough voices with such a ringing burst of
+good will as must have startled the very birds asleep in the distant
+trees.
+
+Nay! some faint echo of it may have been heard at the very gates of
+heaven itself. The tears rolled down Marian's cheeks. She tried to say,
+"God bless you!" but the tears had the right of way, and the words
+broke into something unintelligible.
+
+A sudden shame came over them that they had not thought of this before.
+Memories of homes, of mothers, of wives, came knocking at their hearts,
+and would not be denied. The sleeves of rough and not over clean
+flannel shirts were drawn across eyes that had scorned tears, through
+sickness, discomfort, and disappointment.
+
+Cutey came to the rescue.
+
+"Gentlemen!" he said, waving his hand over the bar, "help yourselves.
+My j'ints are stiff, and I can't go; but I'll treat the crowd. Free
+drinks, gentlemen!"
+
+And leaving his bar to the tender mercies of his thirsty friends, Cutey
+offered his arm to Marian, and escorted her to her own door, where he
+took leave of her with a low bow.
+
+Then he went down stairs four steps at a time, lest his choice liquors
+should be annihilated in his absence.
+
+It was Monday noon when they returned. Marian sat at the window in the
+easiest chair the house afforded, sickening with fever. She watched
+them coming into town with a restless, helpless anxiety. She watched
+them scatter to their cabins, and saw Circus Jack coming on toward the
+hotel alone.
+
+She buried her face in her hands. He had said that he would never come
+back until he found him. Had they become discouraged, or----
+
+She could not believe that they had found him. Her heart seemed to cry
+out, "No! no!" Jack came up, with little Mrs. Sharpe at his heels.
+
+"Be keerful!" said the faded woman. "She mighty poorly."
+
+Jack came in as lightly as his heavy boots would allow.
+
+"The boys said fur me ter tell yer they wus all dretful sorry fur yer.
+We buried him jist whar we found him. He'd a ben dead nigh on to a
+couple of weeks, I reckon. Don't yer look so, lady. Poor Jim! he warn't
+never happy, even when he was drunk. He's better off up thar. We flung
+a few stones together to mark the place, and I'll guide you and Mrs.
+Sharpe thar any time."
+
+Then, lowering his voice to a whisper, he added tenderly, "And I tuk
+the ring offen his finger. He couldn't fight fur it now; an I thought
+as mebby you'd like it."
+
+He took it from the corner of his handkerchief; she held up her finger
+for it, and he slipped it on. Then he saw that the letters spelled
+"Faith." "Thet Punks!" he thought to himself contemptuously.
+
+She looked up into his face with a stony smile--no tears now.
+
+"Thank you," she said.
+
+Four weeks afterward the Doctor lifted Marian into the stage. She was
+strong enough for her journey now, she said. Two days before she had
+visited the lonely cairn. It was a tiresome horseback ride too. She
+seemed to be getting well very fast. The Doctor told her so.
+
+"People never die when they wish to," she answered sadly.
+
+Circus Jack came to the stage-door to bid her "Good-by."
+
+"What can I do for you to thank you?" she asked earnestly.
+
+Jack hesitated.
+
+"Ef you wouldn't mind, ma'am," he said, "I'd like--to--kiss your hand.
+I've got a dear old mother home--ef you wouldn't mind!"
+
+Without a blush or a change of countenance she put her arm around his
+neck and kissed his lips.
+
+"Good-by, dear old fellow," she said.
+
+Then Scotty cracked his whip, the crowd on the piazza raised their
+hats--even the poor, chagrined Doctor--a subdued cheer was given, and
+the lumbering stage disappeared in a cloud of dust, the nodding
+mariposas on the hillside looking curiously at it as it went by.
+
+CLARA G. DOLLIVER.
+
+
+
+
+THE PUNISHED.
+
+
+    Not they who know the awful gibbet's anguish,
+      Not they who, while sad years go by them, in
+    The sunless cells of lonely prisons languish,
+      Do suffer fullest penalty for sin.
+
+    'Tis they who walk the highways unsuspected,
+      Yet with grim fear for ever at their side,
+    Who clasp the corpse of some sin undetected,
+      A corpse no grave or coffin lid can hide.
+
+    'Tis they who are in their own chambers haunted
+      By thoughts that like unwelcome guests intrude,
+    And sit down uninvited and unwanted,
+      And make a nightmare of the solitude.
+
+ELLA WHEELER.
+
+
+
+
+ALFRED DE MUSSET.
+
+
+It had been known for some time that M. Paul de Musset was preparing a
+biography of his illustrious brother, and the knowledge had been
+grateful to Alfred de Musset's many lovers; for the author of "Rolla"
+and the "Lettre a Lamartine" has lovers. The book has at last
+appeared--more than twenty years after the death of its hero.[1] It is
+probably not unfair to suppose that a motive for delay has been removed
+by the recent death of Mme. Sand. M. Paul de Musset's volume proves, we
+confess, rather disappointing. It is a careful and graceful, but at the
+same time a very slight performance, such as was to be expected from
+the author of "Lui et Elle" and of the indignant refutation (in the
+biographical notice which accompanies the octavo edition of Alfred de
+Musset's works) of M. Taine's statement that the poet was addicted to
+walking about the streets late at night. As regards this latter point,
+M. Paul de Musset hastened to declare that his brother had no such
+habits--that his customs were those of a _gentilhomme_; by which the
+biographer would seem to mean that when the poet went abroad after dark
+it was in his own carriage, or at least in a hired cab, summoned from
+the nearest stand. M. Paul de Musset is a devoted brother and an
+agreeable writer; but he is not, from the critic's point of view, the
+ideal biographer. This, however, is not seriously to be regretted, for
+it is little to be desired that the ideal biography of Alfred de Musset
+should be written, or that he should be delivered over, bound hand and
+foot, to the critics. Those who really care for him would prefer to
+judge him with all kinds of allowances and indulgences--sentimentally
+and imaginatively. Between him and his readers it is a matter of
+affection, or it is nothing at all; and there is something very happy,
+therefore, in M. Paul de Musset's fond, fraternal reticency and
+extenuation. He has related his brother's life as if it were a pretty
+"story"; and indeed there is enough that was pretty in it to justify
+him. We should decline to profit by any information that might be
+offered us in regard to its prosaic, its possibly shabby side. To make
+the story complete, however, there appears simultaneously with M. Paul
+de Musset's volume a publication of a quite different sort--a memoir of
+the poet by a clever German writer, Herr Paul Lindau.[2] Herr Lindau is
+highly appreciative, but he is also critical, and he says a great many
+things which M. Paul de Musset leaves unsaid. As becomes a German
+biographer, he is very minute and exhaustive, and a stranger who should
+desire a "general idea" of the poet would probably get more instruction
+from his pages than from the French memoir. Their fault is indeed that
+they are apparently addressed to persons whose mind is supposed to be a
+blank with regard to the author of "Rolla." The exactions of bookmaking
+alone can explain the long analyses and prose paraphrases of Alfred de
+Musset's comedies and tales to which Herr Lindau treats his readers--the
+dreariest kind of reading when an author is not in himself essentially
+inaccessible. Either one has not read Alfred de Musset's comedies or
+not felt the charm of them--in which case one will not be likely to
+resort to Herr Lindau's memoirs--or one _has_ read them, in the
+charming original, and can therefore dispense with an elaborate German
+_resume_.
+
+      [1] "_Biographie de Alfred de Musset: sa Vie et ses Oeuvres._"
+      Par PAUL DE MUSSET. Paris: Charpentier.
+
+      [2] "_Alfred de Musset._" Von PAUL LINDAU. Berlin: Hofmann.
+
+In saying just now that M. Paul de Musset's biography of his brother is
+disappointing, we meant more particularly to express our regret that he
+has given us no letters--or given us at least but two or three. It is
+probable, however, that he had no more in his hands. Alfred de Musset
+lived in a very compact circle; he spent his whole life in Paris, and
+his friends lived in Paris near him. He was little separated from his
+brother, who appears to have been his best friend (M. Paul de Musset
+was six years Alfred's senior), and much of his life was passed under
+the same roof with the other members of his family. Seeing his friends
+constantly, he had no occasion to write to them; and as he saw little
+of the world (in the larger sense of the phrase), he would have had
+probably but little to write about. He made but one attempt at
+travelling--his journey to Italy, at the age of twenty-three, with
+George Sand. "He made no important journeys," says Herr Lindau, "and if
+one excepts his love affairs, he really had no experiences." But his
+love affairs, as a general thing, could not properly be talked about.
+M. de Musset shows good taste in not pretending to narrate them. He
+mentions two or three of the more important episodes of this class, and
+with regard to the others he says that when he does not mention them
+they may always be taken for granted. It is perhaps indeed in a limited
+sense that Alfred de Musset's love affairs may be said to have been in
+some cases more important than in others. It was his own philosophy
+that in this matter one thing is about as good as another--
+
+    Aimer est le grand point; qu'importe la maitresse?
+    Qu'importe le flacon pourvu qu'on ait l'ivresse?
+
+Putting aside the "ivresse," which was constant, Musset's life certainly
+offers little material for narration. He wrote a few poems, tales, and
+comedies, and that is all. He _did_ nothing, in the sterner sense of
+the word. He was inactive, indolent, idle; his record has very few
+dates. Two or three times the occasion to do something was offered him,
+but he shook his head and let it pass. It was proposed to him to accept
+a place as attache to the French embassy at Madrid, a comfortable
+salary being affixed to the post. But Musset found no inspiration in
+the prospect. He had written about Spain in his earlier years--he had
+sung in the most charming fashion about Juanas and Pepitas, about
+senoras in mantillas stealing down palace staircases that look "blue"
+in the starlight. But the desire to _see_ the picturesqueness that
+he had fancied proved itself to have none of the force of a motive.
+This is the fact in Musset's life which the writer of these lines finds
+most regrettable--the fact of his contented smallness of horizon--the
+fact that on his own line he should not have cared to go further. There
+is something really exasperating in the sight of a picturesque poet
+wantonly slighting an opportunity to go to Spain--the Spain of forty
+years ago. It does violence even to that minimum of intellectual
+eagerness which is the portion of a contemplative mind. It is annoying
+to think that Alfred de Musset should have been meagrely contemplative.
+This is the weakness that tells against him, more than the weakness of
+what would be called his excesses. From the point of view of his own
+peculiar genius, it was a good fortune for him to be susceptible and
+tender, sensitive and passionate. The trouble was not that he was all
+this, but that he was lax and soft; that he had too little energy and
+curiosity. Shelley was at least equally tremulous and sensitive--equally
+a victim of his impressions, and an echo, as it were, of his temperament.
+But even Musset's fondest readers must feel that Shelley had within him
+a firm, divinely-tempered spring against which his spirit might rebound
+indefinitely. As regards intense sensibility--that fineness of feeling
+which is the pleasure and pain of the poetic nature--M. Paul de Musset
+tells two or three stories of his brother which remind one of the
+anecdotes recorded of the author of the "Ode to the West Wind." "One of
+the things which he loved best in the world was a certain exclamation
+of Racine's 'Phaedra,' which expresses by its _bizarrerie_ the trouble
+of her sickened heart:
+
+    Ariane, ma soeur, de quel amour blessee,
+    Vous mourutes aux bords ou vous futes laissee!
+
+When Rachel used to murmur forth this strange, unexpected plaint,
+Alfred always took his head in his two hands and turned pale with
+emotion."
+
+The author describes the poet's early years, and gives several very
+pretty anecdotes of his childhood. Alfred de Musset was born in 1810,
+in the middle of old Paris, on a spot familiar to those many American
+visitors who wander across the Seine, better and better pleased as they
+go, to the museum of the Hotel de Cluny. The house in which Musset's
+parents lived was close to this beautiful monument--a happy birthplace
+for a poet; but both the house and the street have now disappeared. M.
+Paul de Musset does not relate that his brother began to versify in his
+infancy; but Alfred was indeed hardly more than an infant when he
+achieved his first success. The poems published under the title of
+"Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie" were composed in his eighteenth and
+nineteenth years; he had but just completed his nineteenth when the
+volume into which they had been gathered was put forth. There are
+certainly--if one considers the quality of the poems--few more striking
+examples of literary precocity. The cases of Chatterton and Keats may
+be equally remarkable, but they are not more so. These first boyish
+verses of Musset have a vivacity, a brilliancy, a freedom of feeling
+and of fancy which may well have charmed the little _cenacle_ to which
+he read them aloud--the group of litterateurs and artists which
+clustered about Victor Hugo, who, although at this time very young, was
+already famous. M. Paul de Musset intimates that if his brother was at
+this moment (and as we may suppose, indeed, always) one of the warmest
+admirers of the great author of "Hernani" and those other splendid
+productions which project their violet glow across the threshold of the
+literary era of 1830, and if Victor Hugo gave kindly audience to "Don
+Paez" and "Mardoche," this kindness declined in proportion as the fame
+of the younger poet expanded. Alfred de Musset was certainly not
+fortunate in his relations with his more distinguished contemporaries.
+Victor Hugo "dropped" him; it would have been better for him if George
+Sand had never taken him up; and Lamartine, to whom, in the shape of a
+passionate epistle, he addressed the most beautiful of his own, and one
+of the most beautiful of all poems, acknowledged the compliment only
+many years after it was paid. The _cenacle_ was all for Spain, for
+local color, for serenades, and daggers, and Gothic arches. It was
+nothing if not audacious (it was in the van of the Romantic movement),
+and it was partial to what is called in France the "humoristic" as well
+as to the ferociously sentimental. Musset produced a certain "Ballade a
+la Lune" which began--
+
+    C'etait dans la nuit brune
+    Sur le clocher jauni,
+          La lune
+    Comme un point sur un i!
+
+This assimilation of the moon suspended above a church spire to a dot
+upon an _i_ became among the young Romanticists a sort of symbol of
+what they should do and dare; just as in the opposite camp it became a
+by-word of horror. But this was only playing at poetry, and in his next
+things, produced in the following year or two, Musset struck a graver
+and more resonant chord. The pieces published under the title of "Un
+Spectacle dans un Fauteuil" have all the youthful grace and gayety of
+those that preceded them; but they have beyond this a suggestion of the
+quality which gives so high a value to the author's later and best
+verses--the accent of genuine passion. It is hard to see what, just
+yet, Alfred de Musset had to be passionate about; but passion, with a
+poet, even when it is most genuine, is very much of an affair of the
+imagination and the personal temperament (independent, we mean, of
+strong provoking causes), and the sensibilities of this young man were
+already exquisitely active. His poems found a great many admirers, and
+these admirers were often women. Hence for the young poet, says M. Paul
+de Musset, a great many romantic and "_Boccaciennes_" adventures. "On
+several occasions I was awaked in the middle of the night to give my
+opinion on some question of high prudence. All these little stories
+having been confided to me under the seal of secrecy, I have been
+obliged to forget them; but I may affirm that more than one of them
+would have aroused the envy of Bassompierre and Lauzun. Women at that
+time were not wholly absorbed in their care for luxury and dress. To
+hope to please, young men had no need to be rich; and it served a
+purpose to have at nineteen years of age the prestige of talent and
+glory." This is very pretty, as well as very Gallic; but it is rather
+vague, and we may without offence suspect it to be, to a certain
+extent, but that conventional _coup de chapeau_ which every
+self-respecting Frenchman renders to actual or potential, past,
+present, or future gallantry. Doubtless, however, Musset was, in the
+native phrase, _lance_. He lived with his father and mother, his
+brother and sister; his purse was empty; Seville and Granada were very
+far away; and these "Andalusian passions," as M. Paul de Musset says,
+were mere reveries and boyish visions. But they were the visions of a
+boy who was all ready to compare reality with romance, and who, in
+fact, very soon acceded to a proposal which appeared to offer a
+peculiar combination of the two. It is noticeable, by the way, that
+from our modest Anglo-Saxon point of view these same "Andalusian
+passions," dealing chiefly with ladies tumbling about on disordered
+couches, and pairs of lovers who take refuge from an exhausted
+vocabulary in _biting_ each other, are an odd sort of thing for an
+ingenuous lad, domiciled in the manner M. Paul de Musset describes, and
+hardly old enough to have a latch-key, to lay on the family breakfast
+table. But this was very characteristic all round. Musset was not a
+didactic poet, and it was not for him to lose time by taking his first
+steps as one. His business was to talk about love in unmistakable
+terms, to proclaim its pleasures and pains with all possible eloquence;
+and he would have been quite at a loss to understand why he should have
+blushed or stammered in preluding to so beautiful a theme. Herr Lindau
+thinks that even in the germ Musset's inspiration is already
+vicious--that "his wonderful talent was almost simultaneously ripe and
+corrupted." But Herr Lindau speaks from the modest Saxon point of view;
+a point of view, however, from which, in such a matter, there is a
+great deal to be said.
+
+The great event in Alfred de Musset's life, most people would say, was
+his journey to Italy with George Sand. This event has been
+abundantly--superabundantly--described, and Herr Lindau, in the volume
+before us, devotes a long chapter to it and lingers over it with
+peculiar complacency. Our own sentiment would be that there is
+something extremely displeasing in the publicity which has attached
+itself to the episode; that there is indeed a sort of colossal
+indecency in the way it has passed into the common fund of literary
+gossip. It illustrates the base, the weak, the trivial side of all the
+great things that were concerned in it--fame, genius, and love. Either
+the Italian journey was in its results a very serious affair for the
+remarkable couple who undertook it--in which case it should be left in
+that quiet place in the history of the development of the individual
+into which public intrusion can bring no light, but only darkness--or
+else it was a piece of levity and conscious self-display; in which case
+the attention of the public has been invited to it on false grounds. If
+there ever was an affair it should be becoming to be silent about, it
+was certainly this one; but neither the actors nor the spectators have
+been of this way of thinking; one may almost say that there exists a
+whole literature on the subject. To this literature Herr Lindau's
+contribution is perhaps the most ingenious. He has extracted those
+pages from Paul de Musset's novel of "Lui et Elle" which treat of the
+climax of the relations of the hero and heroine, and he has printed the
+names of George Sand and Alfred de Musset instead of the fictitious
+names. The result is perhaps of a nature to refresh the jaded vision of
+most lovers of scandal.
+
+We must add that some of his judgments on the matter happen to have a
+certain felicity. M. Paul de Musset has narrated the story more
+briefly--having, indeed, by the publication of "Lui et Elle," earned
+the right to be brief. He mentions two or three facts, however, the
+promulgation of which he may have thought it proper, as we said before,
+to postpone to Mme. Sand's death. One of them is sufficiently dramatic.
+Musset had met George Sand in the summer of 1833, about the time of the
+publication of "Rolla"--seeing her for the first time at a dinner given
+to the contributors of the "Revue des Deux Mondes," at the Trois Freres
+Provencaux. George Sand was the only woman present. Sainte-Beuve had
+already endeavored to bring his two friends together, but the attempt
+had failed, owing to George Sand's reluctance, founded on an impression
+that she should not like the young poet. Alfred de Musset was
+twenty-three years of age; George Sand, who had published "Indiana,"
+"Valentine," and "Lelia," was close upon thirty. Alfred de Musset, as
+the author of "Rolla," was a very extraordinary young man--quite the
+young man of whom Heinrich Heine could say "he has a magnificent _past_
+before him." Upon his introduction to George Sand, an intimacy speedily
+followed--an intimacy commemorated by the lady in expansive notes to
+Sainte-Beuve, whom she kept informed of its progress. When the winter
+came the two intimates talked of leaving Paris together, and, as an
+experiment, paid a visit to Fontainebleau. The experiment succeeded,
+but this was not enough, and they formed the project of going to Italy.
+To this project, as regarded her son, Mme. de Musset refused her
+consent. (Alfred's father, we should say, had died before the
+publication of "Rolla," leaving his children without appreciable
+property, though during his lifetime, occupying a post in a government
+office, he had been able to maintain them comfortably.) His mother's
+opposition was so vehement that Alfred gave up the project, and
+countermanded the preparations that had already been made for
+departure.
+
+"That evening toward nine o'clock," says M. Paul de Musset, "our mother
+was alone with her daughter by the fireside, when she was informed that
+a lady was waiting for her at the door in a hired carriage, and begged
+urgently to speak with her. She went down accompanied by a servant. The
+unknown lady named herself; she besought this deeply grieved mother to
+confide her son to her, saying that she would have for him a maternal
+affection and care. As promises did not avail, she went so far as sworn
+vows. She used all her eloquence, and she must have had a great deal,
+since her enterprise succeeded. In a moment of emotion the consent was
+given." The author of "Lelia" and the author of "Rolla" started for
+Italy together. M. Paul de Musset mentions that he accompanied them to
+the mail coach "on a sad, misty evening, in the midst of circumstances
+that boded ill." They spent the winter at Venice, and M. Paul de Musset
+and his mother continued to hear regularly from Alfred. But toward the
+middle of February his letters suddenly stopped, and for six weeks they
+were without news. They were on the point of starting for Italy, to put
+an end to their suspense, when they received a melancholy epistle
+informing them that their son and brother was on his way home. He was
+slowly recovering from an attack of brain fever, but as soon as he
+should be able to drag himself along he would seek the refuge of the
+paternal roof.
+
+On the 10th of April he reappeared alone. A quarter of a century later,
+and a short time after his death, Mme. Sand gave to the world, in the
+guise of a novel, an account of the events which had occupied this
+interval. The account was highly to her own advantage and much to the
+discredit of her companion. Paul de Musset immediately retorted with a
+little book which is decidedly poor as fiction, but tolerably good,
+probably, as history. As a devoted brother, given all the
+circumstances, it was perhaps the best thing he could do. It is
+believed that his reply was more than, in the vulgar phrase, Mme. Sand
+had bargained for; inasmuch as he made use of documents of whose
+existence she had been ignorant. Alfred de Musset, suspecting that her
+version of their relations would be given to the world, had, in the
+last weeks of his life, dictated to his brother a detailed statement of
+those incidents to which misrepresentation would chiefly address
+itself, and this narrative Paul de Musset simply incorporated in his
+novel. The gist of it is that the poet's companion took advantage of
+his being seriously ill, in Venice, to be flagrantly unfaithful, and
+that, discovering her infidelity, he relapsed into a brain fever which
+threatened his life, and from which he rose only to make his way home
+with broken wings and a bleeding heart.
+
+Mme. Sand's version of the story is that his companion's infidelity was
+a delusion of the fever itself, and that the charge was but the climax
+of a series of intolerable affronts and general fantasticalities.
+
+Fancy the great gossiping, vulgar-minded public deliberately invited to
+ponder this delicate question! The public should never have been
+appealed to; but once the appeal made, it administers perforce a rough
+justice of its own. According to this rough justice, the case looks
+badly for Musset's fellow traveller. She was six years older than he
+(at that time of life a grave fact); she had drawn him away from his
+mother, taken him in charge, assumed a responsibility. Their literary
+physiognomies were before the world, and she was, on the face of the
+matter, the riper, stronger, more reasonable nature. She had made great
+pretensions to reason, and it is fair to say of Alfred de Musset that
+he had made none whatever. What the public sees is that the latter,
+unreasonable though he may have been, comes staggering home, alone and
+forlorn, while his companion remains quietly at Venice and writes three
+or four highly successful romances. Herr Lindau, who analyzes the
+affair, comes to the same conclusion as the gross synthetic public; and
+he qualifies certain sides of it in terms of which observant readers of
+George Sand's writings will recognize the justice. It is very happy to
+say "she was something of a Philistine;" that at the bottom of all
+experience with her was the desire to turn it to some economical
+account; and that she probably irritated her companion in a high degree
+by talking too much about loving him as a mother and a sister. (This,
+it will be remembered, is the basis of action with Therese, in "Elle et
+Lui." She becomes the hero's mistress in order to retain him in the
+filial relation, after the fashion of Rousseau's friend, Mme. de
+Warens.) On the other hand, it seems hardly fair to make it one of
+Musset's grievances that his comrade was industrious, thrifty, and
+methodical; that she had, as the French say, _de l'ordre_; and that,
+being charged with the maintenance of a family, she allowed nothing to
+divert her from producing her daily stint of "copy."
+
+It is easy to believe that Musset may have tried the patience of a
+tranquil associate. George Sand's Jacques Laurent, in "Elle et Lui," is
+a sufficiently vivid portrait of a highly endowed, but hopelessly
+petulant, unreasonable, and dissipated egotist. We are far from
+suspecting that the portrait is perfectly exact; no portrait by George
+Sand is perfectly exact. Whatever point of view she takes, she always
+abounds too much in her own sense. But it evidently has a tolerably
+solid foundation in fact. Herr Lindau holds that Alfred de Musset's
+life was literally blighted by the grief that he suffered in Italy, and
+that the rest of his career was a long, erratic, unprofitable effort to
+drown the recollection of it. Our own inclination would be to judge him
+at once with more and with less indulgence. Whether deservedly or no,
+there is no doubt that his suffering was great; his brother quotes a
+passage from a document written five years after the event, in which
+Alfred affirms that, on his return to Paris, he spent four months shut
+up in his room in incessant tears--tears interrupted only by a
+"mechanical" game of chess in the evening. But Musset, like all poets,
+was essentially a creature of impression; as with all poets, his
+sentimental faculty needed constantly to renew itself. He found his
+account in sorrow, or at least in emotion, and we may say, in differing
+from Herr Lindau, that he was not a man to let a grievance grow stale.
+To feel permanently the need of smothering sorrow is in a certain sense
+to be sobered by it. Musset was never sobered (a cynical commentator
+would say he was never sober). Emotions bloomed again lightly and
+brilliantly on the very stem on which others had withered. After the
+catastrophe at times his imagination saved him, distinctly, from
+permanent depression; and on a different line, this same imagination
+helped him into dissipation.
+
+M. Paul de Musset mentions that in 1837 his brother conceived a
+"passion serieuse" for an attractive young lady, and that the _liaison_
+lasted two years--"two years during which there was never a quarrel, a
+storm, a cooling-off; never a pretext for umbrage or jealousy. This is
+why," he adds, "there is nothing to be told of them. Two years of love
+without a cloud cannot be narrated." It is noticeable that this is the
+third "passion serieuse" that M. Paul de Musset alludes to since the
+dolorous weeks which followed the return from Venice. Shortly after
+this period another passion had come to the front; a passion which,
+like that which led him to Italy, was destined to have a tragical
+termination. This particular love affair is commemorated, in accents of
+bitter melancholy, in the "Nuit de Decembre," just as the other, which
+had found its catastrophe at Venice, figures, by clear allusion, in
+"Nuit de Mai," published a few months before. It may provoke a
+philosophic smile to learn, as we do from M. Paul de Musset--candid
+biographer!--that the "motives" of these two poems are not identical,
+as they have hitherto been assumed to be. It had never occurred to the
+reader that one disillusionment could follow so fast upon the heels of
+another. When we add that a short time afterward--as the duration of
+great intimacies of the heart is measured--Alfred de Musset was ready
+to embark upon "two years of love without a cloud" with still another
+object--to say nothing of the brief interval containing a sentimental
+episode of which our biographer gives the prettiest account--we seem to
+be justified in thinking that, for a "blighted" life, that of Alfred de
+Musset exhibited a certain germinal vivacity.
+
+During his stay in Italy he had written nothing; but the five years
+which followed his return are those of his most active and brilliant
+productivity. The finest of his verses, the most charming of his tales,
+the most original of his comedies, belong to this relatively busy
+period. Everything that he wrote at this time has a depth and intensity
+which distinguishes it from the jocosely sentimental productions of his
+debut, and from the somewhat mannered and vapidly elegant compositions
+which he put forth, at wide intervals, during the last fifteen years of
+his life. This was the period of Musset's intellectual virility. He was
+very precocious, but he was at the same time, at first, very youthful.
+On the other hand, his decline began early; in most of his later
+things, especially in his verses (they become very few in number), the
+inspiration visibly runs thin. "Mon verre n'est pas grand, mais je bois
+dans mon verre," he had said, and both clauses of the sentence are
+true. His glass held but a small quantity; the best of his
+verses--those that one knows by heart and never wearies of
+repeating--are very soon counted. We have named them when we have
+mentioned "Rolla," the "Nuit de Mai," the "Nuit d'Aout" and the "Nuit
+d'Octobre"; the "Lettre a Lamartine," and the "Stances a la Malibran."
+These, however, are perfection; and if Musset had written nothing else,
+he would have had a right to say that it was from his own glass that he
+drank. The most beautiful of his comedies, "Il ne faut pas badiner avec
+l'Amour," dates from 1834, and to the same year belongs the
+"Lorenzaccio," the strongest, if not the most exquisite, of his
+dramatic attempts. His two most agreeable _nouvelles_, "Emmeline" and
+"Frederic et Bernerette," appeared about the same time. But we have not
+space to enumerate his productions in detail. During the fifteen last
+years of his life, as we have said, they grew more and more rare; the
+poet had, in a certain sense, out-lived himself. Of these last years
+Herr Lindau gives a rather realistic and unflattered sketch; picturing
+him especially as a figure publicly familiar to Parisian loungers, who
+were used to observe him as "an unfortunate with an interesting face,
+dressed with extreme care," with the look of youth and the lassitude of
+age, seated in a corner of a cafe and gazing blankly over a marble
+table on which "a half empty bottle of absinthe and a quite empty
+glass" stood before him. M. Paul de Musset, in describing his brother's
+later years, is mindful of the rule to glide, not to press; with a very
+proper fraternal piety, he leaves a great many foibles and
+transgressions in the shade. He mentions, however, Alfred's partiality
+for spirits and stimulants--a taste which had defined itself in his
+early years. Musset made an excessive use of liquor; in plain English,
+he got drunk. Sainte-Beuve, somewhere in one of his merciless but
+valuable foot-notes, alludes to the author of "Rolla" coming tipsy to
+the sittings of the French Academy. Herr Lindau repeats a pun which was
+current on such occasions. "Musset s'absente trop," said some one. "Il
+s'absinthe trop," replied some one else. He had been elected to the
+Academy in 1852. His speech on the occasion of his reception was a
+disappointment to his auditors. Herr Lindau attributes the sterility of
+his later years to indolence and perversity; and it is probable that
+there is not a little justice in the charge. He was unable to force
+himself; he belonged to the race of gifted people who must do as it
+pleases them. When a literary task was proposed to him and he was not
+in the humor for it, he was wont to declare that he was not a
+maid-of-all-work, but an artist. He must write when the fancy took him;
+the fancy took him, unfortunately, less and less frequently. With a
+very uncertain income, and harassed constantly by his debts, he scorned
+to cultivate a pecuniary inspiration. He died in the arms of his
+brother in the spring of 1857.
+
+He was beyond question one of the first poets of our day. If the poetic
+force is measured by the _quality_ of the inspiration--by its purity,
+intensity, and closely personal savor--Alfred de Musset's place is
+surely very high. He was, so to speak, a thoroughly _personal_ poet.
+He was not the poet of nature, of the universe, of reflection, of
+morality, of history; he was the poet simply of a certain order of
+personal emotions, and his charm is in the frankness and freedom, the
+grace and harmony, with which he expressed these emotions. The affairs
+of the heart--these were his province; in no other verses has the heart
+spoken more characteristically. Herr Lindau says very justly that if he
+was not the greatest poet among his contemporaries, he was at any rate
+the most poetically constituted nature. A part of the rest of Herr
+Lindau's judgment is worth quoting:
+
+    He has remained the poet of youth. No one has sung so truthfully
+    and touchingly its aspirations and its sensibilities, its doubts
+    and its hopes. No one has comprehended and justified its follies
+    and its amiable idiosyncrasies with a more poetic irony, with a
+    deeper conviction. His joy was young, his sorrow was young, and
+    young was his song. To youth he owes all happiness, and in youth he
+    sang his brightest chants. But the weakness of youth was his fatal
+    enemy, and with youth faded away his joy in existence and in
+    creation.
+
+This is exactly true. Half the beauty of Musset's writing is its simple
+suggestion of youthfulness--of something fresh and fair, slim and
+tremulous, with a tender epidermis. This quality, with some readers,
+may seem to deprive him of a certain proper dignity; and it is very
+true that he was not a Stoic. You may even call him unmanly. He cries
+out when he is hurt; he resorts frequently to tears, and he talks much
+about his tears. (We have seen that after his return from Venice they
+formed, for four months, his principal occupation.) But his defence is
+that if he does not bear things like a man, he at least, according to
+Shakespeare's distinction, feels them like a man. What makes him
+valuable is just this gift for the expression of that sort of emotion
+which the conventions and proprieties of life, the dryness of ordinary
+utterance, the stiffness of most imaginations, leave quite in the
+vague, and yet which forms a part of human nature important enough to
+have its exponent. If the presumption is against the dignity of deeply
+poetic utterance, poor Musset is, in the vulgar phrase, nowhere--he is
+a mere grotesque sound of lamentation. But if in judging him you don't
+stint your sympathy, you will presently perceive him to have an
+extraordinarily precious quality--a quality equally rare in literature
+and in life. He has passion. There is in most poetry a great deal of
+reflection, of wisdom, of grace, of art, of genius; but (especially in
+English poetry) there is little of this peculiar property of Musset's.
+When it occurs we feel it to be extremely valuable; it touches us
+beyond anything else. It was the great gift of Byron, the quality by
+which he will live in spite of those weaknesses and imperfections which
+may be pointed out by the dozen. Alfred de Musset in this respect
+resembled the poet whom he appears most to have admired--living at a
+time when it had not begun to be the fashion to be ashamed to take
+Byron seriously. Mr. Swinburne in one of his prose essays speaks of him
+with violent scorn as Byron's "attendant dwarf," or something of that
+sort. But this is to miss the case altogether. There is nothing
+diminutive in generous admiration, and nothing dwarfish in being a
+younger brother; Mr. Swinburne's charge is too coarse a way of stating
+the position. Musset resembles Byron in the fact that the beauty of his
+verse is somehow identical with the feeling of the writer--with his
+immediate, sensible warmth--and not dependent upon that reflective
+stage into which, to produce its great effects, most English poetic
+expression instantly passes, and which seems to chill even while it
+nobly beautifies. Musset is talked of nowadays in France very much as
+Byron is talked of among ourselves; it is noticed that he often made
+bad verse, and he is accused of having but half known his trade. This
+sort of criticism is eminently just, and there is a weak side of the
+author of "Rolla" which it is easy to attack.
+
+Alfred de Musset, like Mr. Murray's fastidious correspondent, wrote
+poetry as an amateur--wrote it, as they say in France, _en
+gentilhomme_. It is the fashion, I believe, in some circles, to be on
+one's guard against speaking foreign tongues too well (the precaution
+is perhaps superfluous) lest a marked proficiency should expose one to
+be taken for a teacher of languages. It was a feeling of this kind,
+perhaps, that led Alfred de Musset to a certain affectation of
+negligence and laxity; though he wrote for the magazines, he could
+boast a long pedigree, and he had nothing in common with the natives of
+Grub street. Since his death a new school of poets has sprung up--of
+which, indeed, his contemporary, Theophile Gautier, may be regarded as
+the founder. These gentlemen have taught French poetry a multitude of
+paces of which so sober-footed a damsel was scarcely to have been
+supposed capable; they have discovered a great many secrets which
+Musset appears never to have suspected, or (if he did suspect them) to
+have thought not worth finding out. They have sounded the depths of
+versification, and beside their refined, consummate _facture_ Musset's
+simple devices and good-natured prosody seem to belong to a primitive
+stage of art. It is the difference between a clever performer on the
+tight rope and a gentleman strolling along on soft turf with his hands
+in his pockets. If people care supremely for form, Musset will always
+but half satisfy them. It is very pretty, they will say; but it is
+confoundedly unbusinesslike. His verse is not chiselled and pondered,
+and in spite of an ineffable natural grace, it lacks the positive
+qualities of cunning workmanship--those qualities which are found in
+such high perfection in Theophile Gautier. To our own sense Musset's
+exquisite feeling more than makes up for one-half the absence of
+"chiselling," and the ineffable grace we spoke of just now makes up for
+the other half. His sweetness of passion, of which the poets who have
+succeeded him have so little, is a more precious property than their
+superior science. His grace is often something divine; it is in his
+grace that we must look for his style. Herr Lindau says that Heine
+speaks of "truth, harmony, and grace" being his salient qualities. (By
+the first, we take it, he meant what we have called Musset's passion.)
+His harmony, from the first, was often admirable; the rhythm of even
+some of his earliest verses makes them haunt the ear after one has
+murmured them aloud.
+
+    Ulric, des mers nul oeil n'a mesure l'abime,
+    Ni les herons plongeurs, ni les vieux matelots;
+    Le soleil vient briser ses rayons sur leur cime,
+    Comme un soldat vaincu brise ses javelots.
+
+Musset's grace, in its suavity, freedom, and unaffectedness, is
+altogether peculiar; though it must be said that it is only in the
+poems of his middle period that it is at its best. His latest things
+are, according to Sainte-Beuve, _califichets_--baubles; they are too
+much in the rococo, the Dresden china style. But as we have said
+before, with his youth Musset's inspiration failed him. It failed him
+in his prose as well as in his verse. "Il faut qu'une Porte soit
+ouverte ou fermee," one of the last of his dramatic proverbs, is very
+charming, very perfect in its way; but compared with the tones of the
+"Caprices de Marianne," the "Chandelier," "Fantasio," the sentiment is
+thin and the style has rather a simper. It is what the French call
+_marivaudage_. There can, however, be no better example of the
+absoluteness of the poetic sentiment, of its justifying itself as it
+goes, of lyrical expression being as it were not only a means, but an
+end, than the irresistible beauty of such effusions as the "Lettre a
+Lamartine" and the "Nuit d'Aout."
+
+    Poete, je t'ecris pour te dire que j'aime!
+
+--that is all, literally, that Musset has to say to the "amant
+d'Elvire"; and it would be easy to make merry at the expense of so
+simply candid a piece of "gush." But the confidence is made with a
+transparent ardor, a sublime good faith, an audible, touching tremor of
+voice, which, added to the enchanting harmony of the verse, make the
+thing one of the most splendid poems of our day.
+
+    Ce ne sont pas des chants, ce ne sont que des larmes,
+    Et je ne te dirai que ce que Dieu m'a dit!
+
+Musset has never risen higher. He has, in strictness, only one
+idea--the idea that the passion of love and the act of loving are the
+divinest things in a miserable world; that love has a thousand
+disappointments, deceptions, and pangs, but that for its sake they are
+all worth enduring, and that, as Tennyson has said, more curtly and
+reservedly,
+
+    'Tis better to have loved and lost
+    Than never to have loved at all.
+
+Sometimes he expresses this idea in the simple epicurean fashion, with
+gayety and with a more or less cynical indifference to the moral side
+of the divine passion. Then he is often pretty, picturesque, fanciful,
+but he remains essentially light. At other times he feels its relation
+to the other things that make up man's destiny, and the sense of
+aspiration meets with the sense of enjoyment or of regret. Then he is
+at his best; then he seems an image of universally sentient youth.
+
+        Je ne puis; malgre moi, l'infini me tourmente.
+    Je n'y saurais songer sans crainte et sans espoir;
+    Et quoiqu'on en ait dit, ma raison s'epouvante
+    De ne pas le comprendre, et pourtant de le voir.
+
+While we may suspect that there is something a little over-colored in
+M. Paul de Musset's account of the degree to which his brother was
+haunted by the religious sentiment--by the impulse to grope for some
+philosophy of life--we may also feel that with the poet's sense of the
+"divineness" of love there went a conviction that ideal love implies a
+divine object. This is the feeling expressed in the finest lines of the
+"Lettre a Lamartine"--in lines at least which, if they are not the
+finest, are fine enough to quote:
+
+    Eh bien, bon ou mauvais, inflexible ou fragile,
+    Humble ou gai, triste ou fier, mais toujours gemissant,
+    Cet homme, tel qu'il est, cet etre fait d'argile,
+    Tu l'a vu, Lamartine, et son sang est ton sang.
+    Son bouheur est le tien; sa douleur est la tienne;
+    Et des maux qu'ici bas il lui faut endurer,
+    Pas un qui ne te touche et qui ne t'appartienne;
+    Puisque tu sais chanter, ami, tu sais pleurer.
+    Dis-moi, qu'en penses-tu dans tes jours de tristesse?
+    Que t'a dit le malheur quand tu l'as consulte?
+    Trompe par tes amis, trahi par ta maitresse,
+    Du ciel et de toi-meme as-tu jamais doute?
+    Non, Alphonse, jamais. La triste experience
+    Nous apporte la cendre et n'eteint pas le feu.
+    Tu respectes le mal fait par la Providence;
+    Tu le laisses passer et tu crois a ton Dieu.
+    Quelqu'il soit c'est le mien; il n'est pas deux croyances.
+    Jene sais pas son nom: j'ai regarde les cieux;
+    Je sais qu'ils sont a lui, je sais qu'ils sont immenses,
+    Et que l'immensite ne peut pas etre a deux.
+    J'ai connu, jeune encor, de severes souffrances;
+    J'ai vu verdir les bois et j'ai tente d'aimer.
+    Je sais ce que la terre engloutit d'esperances,
+    Et pour y recueillir ce qu'il y faut semer.
+    Mais ce que j'ai senti, ce que je veux t'ecrire,
+    C'est ce que m'ont appris les anges de douleur;
+    Je le sais mieux encor et puis mieux te le dire,
+    Car leur glaive, en entrant, l'a grave dans mon coeur.
+
+And the rest of the poem is a lyrical declaration of belief in
+immortality.
+
+We have called the "Lettre a Lamartine" Musset's highest flight, but
+the "Nuit de Mai" is almost as fine a poem--full of imaginative
+splendor and melancholy ecstasy. The series of the "Nuits" is
+altogether superb; with an exception made, perhaps, for the "Nuit de
+Decembre," which has a great deal of sombre beauty, but which is not,
+like the others, in the form of a dialogue between the Muse and the
+poet--the Muse striving to console the world-wounded bard for his
+troubles, and urging him to take refuge in hope and production:
+
+    Poete, prends ton luth et me donne un baiser;
+    La fleur de l'eglantier sent ses bourgeons eclore.
+    Le printemps nait ce soir; les vents vout s'embraser;
+    Et la bergeronette, en attendant l'aurore,
+    Au premier buissons vertes commence a se poser.
+    Poete, prends ton luth et me donne un baiser.
+
+That is impregnated with the breath of a vernal night. The same poem
+(the "Nuit de Mai") contains the famous passage about the pelican--the
+passage beginning
+
+    Les plus' desesperes sont les chants les plus beaux,
+    Et j'en sais d'immortels qui sont de purs sanglots----
+
+in which the legend of the pelican opening his breast to feed his
+starving young is made an image of what the poet does to entertain his
+readers:
+
+    Poete, c'est ainsi que font les grands poetes.
+    Ils laissent s'egayer ceux qui vivent un temps;
+    Mais les festins humains qu'ils servent a leurs fetes
+    Ressemblent la plupart a ceux des pelicans.
+
+This passage is perhaps--unless we except the opening verses of
+"Rolla"--Musset's noblest piece of poetic writing. We must place next
+to it--next to the three "Nuits"--the admirably passionate and genuine
+"Stanzas to Malibran"--a beautiful characterization of the artistic
+disinterestedness of the singer who suffered her genius to consume
+her--who sang herself to death. The closing verses of the poem have a
+wonderful purity; to rise so high, and yet in form, in accent, to
+remain so still and temperate, belongs only to great poetry; as it
+would be well to remind the critic who thinks the author of the
+"Stanzas to Malibran" dwarfish. There is another sort of verse in which
+violence of movement is more sensible than upwardness of direction.
+
+So far in relation to Musset's lyric genius--though we have given but a
+brief and inadequate account of it. He had besides a dramatic genius of
+the highest beauty, to which we have left ourself space to devote only
+a few words. It is true that the drama with Musset has a decidedly
+lyrical element, and that though his persons always talk prose, they
+are constantly saying things which would need very little help to fall
+into the mould of a stanza or a sonnet. In his dramas as in his verses,
+his weakness is that he is amateurish; they lack construction; their
+merit is not in their plots, but in what, for want of a better term,
+one may call their sentimental perfume. The earliest of them failed
+upon the stage, and for many years it was supposed they could not be
+played. Musset supposed so himself, and took no trouble to encourage
+the experiment. He made no concessions to contemporary "realism." But
+at last they were taken up--almost by accident--and it was found that,
+in the hands of actors whose education enabled them to appreciate their
+delicacy, this delicacy might become wonderfully effective. If feeling
+is the great quality in his verses, the case is the same in his
+strange, fantastic, exquisite little _comedies_; comedies in the
+literal English sense of the word we can hardly call them, for they
+have almost always a melancholy or a tragical termination. They are
+thoroughly sentimental; he puts before us people who convince us that
+they really _feel_; the drama is simply the history of their feeling.
+In the emotions of Valentin and Perdican, of Fantasio and Fortunio, of
+Celio and Octave, of Carmosine and Bettine, there is something
+contagious, irresistibly touching. But the great charm is Musset's
+dramatic world itself, the atmosphere in which his figures move, the
+element they breathe.
+
+It seems at first like a reckless thing to say, but we will risk it: in
+the _quality_ of his fancy Musset always reminds us of Shakespeare. His
+little dramas go on in the country of "As you Like It" and the
+"Winter's Tale"; the author is at home there, like Shakespeare himself,
+and he moves with something of the Shakespearian lightness and freedom.
+His fancy loves to play with human life, and in the tiny mirror which
+it holds up we find something of the depth and mystery of the object.
+Musset's dialogue, in its mingled gayety and melancholy, its sweetness
+and irony, its allusions to real things and its kinship with a romantic
+world, has an altogether indefinable magic. To speak it on the stage is
+almost to make it coarse. Once Musset attempted a larger theme than
+usual; in "Lorenzaccio" he wrote an historical drama on the scale of
+Shakespeare's histories; that is, with multitudes of figures, scenes,
+incidents, and illustrations. He laid his hand on an admirable
+subject--the story of a certain Lorenzino de' Medici, who played at
+being a debauchee and a poltroon in order better to put the tyrant of
+Florence (his own cousin) off his guard, and serve his country by
+ridding her of him. The play shows an extraordinary abundance and
+vivacity of imagination, and really, out of those same "histories" of
+Shakespeare, it is hard to see where one should find an equal
+spontaneity in dealing with the whole human furniture of a period.
+Alfred de Musset, in "Lorenzaccio," has the air of being as ready to
+handle a hundred figures as a dozen--of having imagination enough for
+them all. The thing has the real creative _souffle_, and if it is not
+the most perfect of his productions, it is probably the most vigorous.
+
+We have not spoken of his tales; their merit is the same as of the
+_comedies_--that of spontaneous feeling, and of putting people before
+us in whose feelings we believe. Besides this, they have Musset's grace
+and delicacy in a perhaps excessive degree; they are the most mannered
+of his productions. Two or three of them, however--"Emmeline," "Les
+Deux Maitresses," "Frederic et Bernerette"--are masterpieces; this last
+epithet is especially to be bestowed upon the letter written by the
+heroine of the last-mentioned tale (an incorrigibly _volage_ grisette)
+to her former lover on the occasion of his marrying and settling. The
+incoherency, the garrulity, the mingled resignation and regret of an
+amiable flirt of the lower orders, divided between the vivacity of her
+emotion and the levity of her nature, are caught in the act; and yet it
+is not fair to say of anything represented by Musset that it is caught
+in the act. Just the beauty and charm of it is that it is not the exact
+reality, but a something seen by the imagination--a tinge of the ideal,
+a touch of poetry. We must try to see Musset himself in the same way;
+his own figure needs to a certain extent the help of our imagination.
+And yet, even with such help taken, we cannot but feel that he is an
+example of the wasteful way in which nature and history sometimes
+work--of their cruel indifference to our personal standards of
+economy--of the vast amount of material they take to produce a little
+result.
+
+Alfred de Musset's exquisite organization, his exaltations and
+weaknesses, his pangs and tears, his passions and debaucheries, his
+intemperance and idleness, his years of unproductiveness, his
+innumerable mistresses (with whatever pangs and miseries it may seem
+proper to attribute to _them_), his quarrel with a woman of genius, and
+the scandals, exposures, and recriminations that are so ungracefully
+bound up with it--all this was necessary in order that we should have
+the two or three little volumes into which his _best_ could be
+compressed. It takes certainly a great deal of life to make a little
+art! In this case, however, we must remember, that little is exquisite.
+
+HENRY JAMES, JR.
+
+
+
+
+REFLECTED LIGHT.
+
+
+    Your eyes say, "Sweet, I love--I love you, sweet."
+          Where is the blame
+    If, when their mute significance I meet,
+          Mine say the same?
+
+    Nay, thank me not, nor deem your triumph near.
+          The message bright
+    My glance conveys--'tis but--believe, me, dear--
+          Reflected light!
+
+MARY AINGE DE VERE.
+
+
+
+
+LIFE INSURANCE.--II.
+
+
+The companies organized under the general law of the State of New York
+are the mere creatures of that statute. Their organization, management,
+powers for good or evil, opportunities for mismanagement and
+corruption, are all to be traced directly to the law to which they owe
+their being. It will be necessary, therefore, for an intelligent
+understanding of the condition to which the business has come, to
+examine the act particularly. It is chapter 463 of the laws of 1853. It
+provides that any number of persons not less than thirteen may form a
+corporation for the purpose of making insurance on the lives of
+individuals, or against accidents, or on the health of persons, or on
+live stock. Such corporators are allowed to draw their own charter, and
+upon its approval by the Attorney General, that document has all the
+force of positive law. It is of course subject to the provisions of the
+act itself, but those provisions are so few and meagre that it is
+practically left to the promoters of the scheme to draw their own
+charter of incorporation. The capital stock is to be not less than
+$100,000, and no provision is made for the incorporating of any company
+without a capital. The rate of dividends to the stockholders, the
+proportion of profits to be paid the policy-holders, and the time of
+payment, are not provided for in the law, and are left to be settled by
+the associates. The consequence is that no two companies are alike in
+this respect. In some of them the stockholder receives an interest of
+seven per cent. upon his stock, and is entitled to no more under any
+circumstances, the whole surplus or profits being divided among the
+policy-holders. In others, in addition to interest, the stock is
+entitled to participate with the policies in the surplus. The extent of
+this participation varies; in some it is fixed at ten per cent. of the
+whole profits, to the stock-holders, in others twenty, and in others
+thirty per cent. In all of them, however, with one exception,
+participation by the policy-holders in the profits of the business is a
+rule. To a greater or lesser extent, in some to the whole profits, it
+is the recognized rule that the holders of policies are to receive
+dividends or bonuses from the companies out of the profits. In effect,
+therefore, so far as participation in the profits of the business goes,
+all our companies, with the one exception before mentioned, are mutual
+companies.
+
+The act makes no provision for the government of the corporations it
+allows to be created. It leaves it to the promoters to state the mode
+and manner in which the corporate powers shall be exercised, and the
+manner of electing trustees, or directors, and officers. The natural
+consequence of this provision is, that the manner of electing trustees
+and directors varies in different companies. In some of them the
+stock-holders alone have any voice or vote, in others the
+policy-holders are allowed, under certain restrictions, to vote, but it
+is safe to say that in all of them the power is kept in the hands of
+the stock-holders as far as it possibly can be; and the policy-holders
+are allowed as little voice in the management of the company as the
+stock-holders can permit.
+
+The result of this vice in the formation of the company is shown in
+corporations which have amassed a large reserve. There it will be seen
+that the owners of one hundred thousand dollars of stock absolutely
+control the entire management and disposition of twenty, thirty, or
+forty millions of accumulations, as the case may be; and the real
+owners of this fund--the policy-holders--have no voice in its
+management and no vote for the body or board which exercises the powers
+of the corporation.
+
+It is contended by very prominent gentlemen in the life insurance
+business, that this plan is the only safe one; that interference in the
+management of the company by uninstructed policy-holders, not versed in
+the business, would be productive of nothing but evil. They contend
+that the necessary unity of management required for a business,
+covering as this does long periods of time, and requiring carefully
+laid plans extending into the distant future, would be greatly
+endangered by the existence of a right to participate in the management
+by representation on the part of so numerous and so widely scattered a
+constituency. In other words, the managers of companies which have
+retained in the hands of the stock-holders all the powers of the
+corporation think that those powers are more safely exercised by that
+small body than they would be if participated in by all the holders of
+policies. It may be doubted, however, whether a constituency small in
+number and capable of manipulation, and their votes of concentration
+into the hands of a few men, is the safest body to manage a corporation
+whose chief business is the care of the accumulations arising from the
+trust imposed upon the corporation by the contract of life insurance.
+The power of wielding a mass of capital amounting to many millions of
+dollars is an enormous power, and it should be reposed only in a body
+which should be responsible for the careful, honest administration of
+the trust, at stated intervals, to the persons most interested--that
+is, to the policy-holders--the owners of the trust fund. One of the
+chief characteristics of English companies is, that at the annual
+meeting of the interested persons a full statement of the affairs of
+the company is laid before the meeting, and an opportunity offered of
+critical examination and comment. Discontent is thus allowed a safety
+valve to express itself through, and the managers an opportunity of
+explaining their action and accounting for their conduct. Public
+opinion--the public opinion of the persons interested--is allowed a
+chance of expression, and all misunderstandings and misconceptions an
+opportunity for examination and refutation. The right to interrogate
+the managers, and ask and obtain information as to the business at such
+regularly recurring intervals, is an inestimable one. It can hardly be
+conceived possible that great abuses could grow up if such a right
+existed; but at any rate it is apparent that the probability of such
+abuses is lessened to a great extent.
+
+But this English practice is not known among us. In life insurance
+affairs we have nothing remotely approaching it. It seems to have been
+the policy of our companies to restrict participation in their
+management to the smallest possible number, to avoid opportunities for
+questioning or explanation, and to shroud the business in the deepest
+mystery.
+
+The officers of companies responsible for this policy justify
+themselves upon the broad ground that they know better what is good for
+the policy-holders than they do themselves. In the light of the
+evidence given before the Committee of the Assembly by life insurance
+officers, and in the light of the affairs of the Continental, Security,
+and Popular, it may be doubted whether this assertion proves itself. It
+has the merit, however, that every honest avowal has, and it is
+entitled to examination.
+
+Why should a self-electing, self-perpetuating proprietary board,
+resting upon a constituency composed solely of owners of the capital
+stock, be a safer or better management than one elected by the votes of
+the policy-holders at large? The only answer you can get to that query
+is this: The board elected by the stock-holders are sure of their
+position, and it is not in the power of a few malcontents to get up a
+secret movement to oust them at the election. The more stable
+management is to be preferred to one which is dependent on the
+popularity of the officers with the policy-holders. It is in the nature
+of things that the officers should become more or less unpopular. The
+business depends for success upon the enforcement of strict rules in
+dealing with the policy-holders, and the enforcement of these strict
+rules, although absolutely necessary for the success of the business,
+naturally tends to give fancied grievances to the persons against whom
+they are enforced. If, therefore, the tenure of office of the
+management depends upon the policy-holders, there is the constant
+danger of frequent attempts at revolution arising from this cause, and
+the consequent weakness of the officers in enforcing rules the
+enforcement of which may tend to shorten their tenure of office.
+
+I think I have fairly stated the argument. Is there anything in it? Is
+the reason given any reason at all? Is it not rather a positive
+argument against the system. Perhaps the best government for men and
+companies is an absolute monarchy, without accountability or restraint;
+there are large masses of the human race who are so governed; and it is
+an open question yet whether government by the people be or be not the
+best government. But certainly one thing is assured. In this day and in
+this country the monarchical and the oligarchical systems are out of
+date and out of place; and all attempts to introduce them or the
+principles which underlie them into our system of free government by
+the representatives of the governed will be failures. The doctrine of
+paternal government is "played out" in affairs of nations, and it is
+not to be supposed that the principle has in it any greater efficacy
+when applied to the affairs of corporations. The fact is, we have too
+much of this thing in all our relations political and social. The idea
+that there is a class who are in their own estimation better able to
+govern than the rest of mankind has been exploded by the experience of
+the people of this country, and it is intolerable that we should be
+forced to do homage in our private affairs to a principle which we
+have, as regards public business, exploded long ago as a traditional
+fallacy.
+
+Most of the evil practices which have made the whole system of life
+insurance a by-word and the scorn of the people, have arisen under this
+irresponsible management. Investments in extravagant buildings, the
+enormous expenditures for payments of salaries to officers and to
+agents, are all the result of the secret plan of management. Does any
+one suppose that if the affairs of the companies were fully and
+completely exposed to the public, such payments would be permitted or
+tolerated? Men are entitled to be paid for services rendered the full
+equivalent of those services, but they ought not to be allowed to be
+the sole judges of the value of those services, and they ought to be at
+all times ready and willing to come before the persons interested, and
+submit a full, fair, and clear account of their stewardship. Human
+nature is of the same quality in the managers of life insurance
+companies as in other men. Responsibility to some power, accountability
+to some persons or body, is absolutely essential to honest management.
+Men who know that they cannot or will not be called to account will
+fall into loose and unbusinesslike methods and practices. Nothing can
+be more dangerous to the honesty of a man than to place him in charge
+of immense interests without a system of periodical accountability. A
+man may be ever so honest, yet he will, if this accountability be
+absent, be led to do things which he never would do if he were sure
+that at a fixed period his doings would become known and he would be
+required to justify them.
+
+From these considerations and on these grounds, I come to the
+conclusion that the management of a life insurance company by a board
+of directors elected solely by the stock-holders is a management which
+contains within itself the germs of a fatal disease, which will sooner
+or later develop itself. In this respect legislation is needed. Such a
+management ought to be forbidden, and a provision made for the election
+of trustees by the policy-holders as well as the stock-holders, upon a
+basis as to the vote and the amount of interest it should represent
+which would be equitable and just.
+
+Complaints have been made against the use of proxies in elections.
+Notably these complaints have been made respecting elections in the
+Mutual Life Insurance Company, a corporation which has no
+stock-holders, but which consists in a membership of its
+policy-holders. These policy-holders have the supreme control of the
+corporation in their own hands. Its government is by them delegated to
+a board of trustees thirty-six in number, divided into four classes of
+nine in each class. The term of office is four years, so that nine
+trustees go out of office in each year. This classification prevents
+the possibility of any sudden change of management, while it leaves all
+needed control in the hands of the policy-holders. If, for instance,
+dissatisfaction with the management exists, and nine new trustees are
+elected, it is not to be doubted but that the warning would be listened
+to and the necessary change of policy effected to satisfy the
+constituency. On the other hand, should the change of trustees be the
+result of a combination to seize the management of the company for any
+improper purpose, the first election would unmask the design and insure
+its defeat by an appeal to the voters.
+
+The objections to the use of proxies come entirely from those
+policy-holders who have been defeated by their use, or fear they will
+be defeated by their use, in an attempt to change the management. Does
+not this prove that the great body of policy-holders believe in the
+management and are determined to sustain it. In a free company based
+upon the liberal principles upon which the Mutual Life is established,
+any attempt to limit the franchise would be an unparalleled wrong. The
+policy-holder in Chicago or in San Francisco has the same right to
+exercise his right to a voice in the election of trustees as the
+policy-holder who resides in New York, and there can be no reason why
+he should not cast his vote by proxy, since it would result in his
+disfranchisement to require him to do it in person. Be sure that if
+real trouble arose, and there was an abuse to rectify, if there were
+officers unmindful of their duties to rebuke, or trustees regardless of
+their trust to set aside, the votes cast by proxy would be as
+intelligently given as those of the residents immediately near the
+office who could attend in person. Every effort to limit the right to
+vote by proxy is an attempt to perpetuate power in the hands of the
+policy-holders resident here, which would be quite as obnoxious to
+sound principles as the government of companies solely by the
+stockholders.
+
+It would appear, on every principle of fairness and justice, that the
+more full and perfect the right of the policy-holder to participate in
+the election of trustees, the more stable and conservative will be the
+management. On the other hand, it is quite as apparent that the
+limitation of such right is attended with consequences the reverse of
+those just stated, and those consequences attained in proportion to the
+limitation of the right.
+
+With the broad superstructure of a body of voting policy-holders, the
+selling out of the control of a company is impossible, because no one
+will be willing to pay for the possession which the next election may
+deprive him of. Of all the mean and contemptible methods of robbery as
+yet discovered, the selling out of a life insurance company is the
+meanest and most contemptible. Too cowardly to wreck it themselves and
+personally rob the widows and orphans, the trustees, who quietly
+receive a bonus for their stock and retire from the management, sell
+the opportunity of robbery to others. This they do too in the full
+knowledge of the purpose for which they are asked to retire. When the
+crash comes they may say they did not know the purpose of the
+purchasers, but they did know they were to receive for their stock two
+or three times its value, and that no man could afford to pay such a
+price to obtain control of the company except for the purpose of making
+money by irregular and questionable means. It will not do for men
+entrusted with positions of a fiduciary character to make the holding
+of such positions the lever for obtaining a large price for their
+stock, and then claim exemption from responsibility for the misdeeds of
+their successors. They were there in charge of a sacred trust, and they
+have sold and betrayed that trust--for what? Why, for the enhanced
+price which they got for their stock. This is the great evil of the
+close corporation system. It enables one or more men to own complete
+control of a company and to sell it to the highest bidder. Of course
+the highly respectable gentlemen who sell, and those also who buy, will
+be shocked at having imputed to them any crime or breach of trust. But
+how can such sums of money be lawfully made out of life insurance stock
+as to justify the price the records of the Committee on Insurance show
+have been paid for it? Life insurance is or ought to be a benevolent
+institution. Its management is or ought to be a trust, and every
+trustee who makes use of his position to make money for himself is
+false to his trust, and should never be appointed to another. Life
+insurance is not to be made the sport of speculators, and the only
+reliance of the unfortunate made the football of gambling operations.
+Most if not all of the troubles which have arisen in the business are
+to be traced to this attempt to make money out of it, honestly if
+possible, but to make money at all hazards. The way to end this for
+ever is to allow the policy-holders to vote, not for a minority of the
+trustees, but for all of them. Representation should be equal, or it is
+worthless. The representation which would leave the power to elect a
+majority still in the hands of the stock-holders is not equal or just.
+Money paid for premiums is as good as money paid for stock, and should
+have equal voice in the management. But when you have given the
+policy-holders votes, you should also see that the opportunity was
+afforded to them of voting. Most of the elections are held without any
+other notice than an advertisement in the corner of a crowded column of
+one or two newspapers. Every policy should have printed on it the date
+of the annual election, and all the information necessary to enable the
+holder to be present and vote, or to be represented by proxy. Under the
+present practice, few holders of policies know whether they have votes
+or not, and hardly any of them ever heard of the time of holding the
+election. If the present discussion of life insurance affairs does no
+other good than to awaken the policy-holders to a sense of their own
+responsibility for abuses of management, it will not have been in vain.
+It is safe to say that watchfulness on their part would have prevented
+the lavish expenditures, the unwise real estate investments, the
+enormous salaries, which the investigation of the Assembly committee
+has discovered. The same conservative power held over managers would be
+a constant check upon any tendency to depart from the safe and regular
+open pathway of honorable dealings. Under its influence there would be
+few if any cases of commissions in addition to salary of officers, less
+tendency to make loans to the trustees and their friends, and a general
+adhesion to business rules and traditions. But above and beyond all
+other reforms, the control of the company by the policy-holders would
+make it impossible for greedy and scoundrel officers to gather into
+their hands the entire control of the company, and then sell it out to
+a rival company for four or five times what the stock cost, and an
+annuity for life to the traitor who had betrayed his trust. This has
+been, is now, and will be, if not prevented, the fruitful mother of all
+the ills of life insurance. Just as soon as any clique get possession
+of the majority of the stock, there is danger. Nay, there is always
+danger; any clique may, at any time, get possession of the stock by
+paying enough for it. If one price will not bring it, another will, and
+the value to the wrecker depends upon the amount of assets. It is the
+assets which are to pay the profit of the transaction. The money of the
+policy-holders is what is sold, not the mere pittance which belongs to
+the stock-holders, and it is the money of the policy-holders which is
+stolen to pay the purchase money. Honorable gentlemen, prominent in
+social life, elders, deacons, and vestrymen who in the past few years
+have quietly pocketed two hundred for your stock and retired from the
+management of life insurance companies, how are you pleased with your
+own conduct? In the light of recent disclosures, does not the
+ill-gotten money burn in your pockets? Truly you would not wreck a
+company yourselves by transferring it to any man or number of men; but
+you accomplish the same purpose by retiring. A captain who will not
+himself surrender to the enemy, but who retires from the command of his
+fortification knowing that the subaltern who will succeed him intends
+to strike his flag, may deceive himself, but he does not long succeed
+in deceiving any one else.
+
+The evidence taken before the referee in the Continental case fully
+describes and explains the methods of wrecking. A company is sold out
+or reinsured in another; that is, the stock has been bought up at two
+or three hundred per centum, the officers have been promised good
+places, or paid in cash for their silence. Immediately the operations
+of the wreckers begin. The agents of both companies go into the work
+with a single aim, and that aim is to obtain the surrender of the
+policies in the old company in exchange for new policies in the
+purchasing corporation. The old policies represent an actual liability;
+the company which has issued them is obliged to hold a certain sum
+against each of them. The aggregate of these sums makes up the
+"reserve" or reinsurance fund. As fast as the old policies are
+cancelled this reserve is released, and when all the policies are
+cancelled there is no liability at all. The new policies of course have
+no liability. This is in short the whole operation of wrecking. By such
+means a million or two of assets will be distributed, and in the
+process the policy-holders will receive a little--a very little--and
+the agents a good deal, and the officers composing the ring all that is
+left. The arts, the deceptions, the false representations made in the
+course of the proceeding to induce the policy-holder to give up his
+policy have been fully disclosed by the evidence in question. Of course
+it is suggested that the company is in a bad way, and that there is
+probably no other way of securing anything unless an opportunity now
+offered of changing is embraced.
+
+Reinsurance was abandoned as a means of wrecking because it was found
+the policy-holders preferred to keep the old policy and the new
+guarantee together. So in the later transactions they are told that if
+they do not change, they will get nothing.
+
+The lesson of all this to the policy-holder may be written in large
+letters and kept as a maxim:
+
+    DO NOT SURRENDER YOUR POLICY.
+
+You will never make a mistake by keeping to this motto. And
+particularly the more should it be kept to when you are urged by agents
+to a contrary action. You never get one-third its value even in
+companies honestly managed; what you get in companies dishonestly
+managed no one can tell.
+
+
+
+
+FALLEN AMONG THIEVES.
+
+
+BRUSSELS!
+
+Is it not written that good Americans, when they die, go to Paris? So
+Elysium to all righteous sons of Cockayne is Brussels. And yet I was
+weary of it. No charms for me had the perpetual sabots and blouses, the
+_braves Belges_ in jaunty uniform, the bejewelled saunterers in the
+Galerie St. Hubert, the _gauche_ tourists desecrating the sombre
+stillness of the St. Gudule, _la belle Anglaise_ seeing for the first
+time the outrageous little manikin, the homely phaeton of good old King
+Leopold with its pair of very unroyal plugs, the tirailleurs in Lincoln
+green, the Parc with its music, fountains and maitrank, the Jardin des
+Plantes, the boulevard, and the Ecole d'Equitation.
+
+All lost on me. I stood at a window of the Hotel de Flandres gazing on
+the ever-moving panorama of the Grande Place with as little interest as
+though my eye rested on a vacant lot in Pumpkinville.
+
+Was it bile? No. Was it love? Yes.
+
+Another scene was ever before my eyes: An old red-brick house on the
+cliffs of Devonshire, half hid by giant oaks and elms, fragrant with
+honeysuckle and jessamine, stately with avenue, lawn, and rookery; and
+I saw leaning on the rustic gate beneath the chestnut trees Gwendoline
+Grey: her straw hat dangling by her side, her fresh young face set in a
+glory of light brown hair, her---- But it had all passed away now. The
+light was gone out of my life, for but three days ago I had received a
+letter from her mother deploring my altered prospects, returning my
+billets and love tokens, and assuring me that Gwendoline acquiesced in
+this painful decision.
+
+My altered prospects--_hinc illae lacrymae_. Nine months ago I was heir
+to a wealthy man, and now I was but bear-leader to the son of the Earl
+of Tottenbridge. Upon the loss of my father's property, which had come
+like an avalanche on us, I had left college and assumed the tutorship
+of the Hon. Nigel Fairleigh, as good a lad as ever handled a cricket
+bat.
+
+After a brief run through southern Europe, I had just delivered him up
+to his aunt, my lady Milton, who was to take him to Scotland, while I
+was free, according to compact, to enjoy a couple of months' vacation.
+
+How I had longed for this vacation--and now, where to go, what to do, I
+knew not. For three days I had stayed with a dull uncertainty on the
+spot where the blow had fallen on me.
+
+My meditations were broken by the entrance of a garcon announcing,
+
+"A gentleman for monsieur."
+
+"Ah, M. Danneris, I am glad to see you. Be seated."
+
+To say how I became acquainted with the chatty little Frenchman who
+sat before me would be a difficult matter. The offer of a cigar, an
+exchange of newspapers at the reading room, a passing _bon jour_ on the
+stairs, had ripened under his friendly gayety into a familiarity which
+had extended so far as to my passing more than one evening at his snug
+office in the Rue des Allumettes, where Francois Danneris, advocate,
+spun toils for litigious Flemish _bourgeoises_.
+
+"My friend," he said, "you look _ennuye_, _triste_, dull; you need
+change. What do you say to a scamper over the continent?"
+
+"I have done scampering enough lately," I replied, "and moreover my
+funds----"
+
+"_Tiens, mon ami._ Do not talk of money. It is my great happiness to
+offer you an opportunity to combine business with pleasure, and take a
+most delightful trip without the expenditure of a sou."
+
+"You surprise me--and where?"
+
+"To a beautiful manorial residence at the village of Kioske, twenty
+miles beyond Buda, on the banks of the Danube--one of the most romantic
+spots of eastern Europe."
+
+"And the object?"
+
+"To take temporary charge of the only son of the wealthy Baron von
+Dressdorf. Jules von Dressdorf," added the advocate in his bland,
+pleasant way, "is a boy of fifteen, who, after spending a year in an
+academy in England, has been placed in a _pension_ in Brussels; but,
+_helas!_ an hereditary disease, which has developed itself more
+strongly of late, has determined his father to recall him immediately.
+Pericardiac, my dear sir--pericardiac; and it is most important that he
+should without delay seek the quiet of his native valley."
+
+"The terms?"
+
+"Two hundred and fifty francs a week, and all expenses paid. When could
+you start?"
+
+"To-morrow--to-day--when you will."
+
+"_Bien!_ There is a little difficulty I would mention; the journey is
+not without small perils. Hungary, as you are aware, is now under the
+ban of an Austrian tyranny."
+
+I assured him of my sympathy.
+
+"Hold," he cried. "It is exactly that you have no sympathy that I
+select you. The Baron is already _suspect_, and the son, inheriting his
+father's sentiments, has small discretion of speech. Keep Austria in
+the background, I implore you."
+
+"And are you sure that the Baron will approve of your choice of an
+escort?"
+
+"The mere fact, Monsieur Mortimer, that you were in the service--I beg
+your pardon--in the family of the Earl of Tottenbridge would be
+sufficient, but I am proud to say that the recommendation of Francois
+Danneris would be a _carte blanche_ to any one to the confidence of
+Baron Dressdorf. He is a noble man," he added with emotion, "and to him
+I owe all I have in the world."
+
+And then for half an hour the advocate poured into my ear the glories
+of the house of Dressdorf and stories of Austrian oppression that made
+me eager to serve his _protege_. Nay, I was so interested in his case
+that I believe I would have seen the youth home, if I had had to bear
+all the expenses of the journey myself.
+
+"Have you a passport?"
+
+"It is here," I said, handing it to him--"a Foreign Office passport
+that protects me all over the continent."
+
+"Ah, I see. And this permit?"
+
+"Ah, that belongs to my pupil, Nigel Fairleigh. We can cut that off.
+Lady Milton should have had it with her, but they are not very strict
+at Ostend, and I suppose her rank proved an open sesame."
+
+"Black eyes," he read, "black hair, sharp features, high forehead,
+height, five feet three. My dear Monsieur Mortimer," and he turned
+eagerly toward me, "you would do me a real service, you would lay the
+noble Dressdorf under the greatest obligation, if you would permit our
+young charge to use this passport. It describes him to a T. The
+critical nature of events, the necessity for caution, the delicate
+health of the boy--nay, do not look shocked; such things are done every
+day--will excuse the trifling impropriety----"
+
+"Impossible!"
+
+Taking no notice of the interruption, he continued. "And to tell the
+truth, it was just this that bothered me. A Belgian passport is looked
+upon with much suspicion, and is likely to lead to inquiry; but armed
+with this, you may go from here to the Oural mountains without a
+question."
+
+At first I refused point-blank, but at last resigned myself to his
+sophistry, and the bargain was closed.
+
+"When can I see the youth?" I asked.
+
+"Now, monsieur. I will at once escort you to the _pension_ of the Porte
+de Schaerbeck, and introduce him to you."
+
+Fifty boys of Belgian, French, American, and English extraction, seated
+at a long table enjoying their afternoon's "goute"--a post-meridian
+lunch of weak brandy-and-water and grapes; a bald _maitre d'ecole_
+periodically crying, "Si-i-i-lence, messieurs. Restez-vous tranquilles!"
+like a sheriff in a court of law. Such a scene met my view. I
+recognized my youth in a moment; there was no mistaking the clear,
+well-defined features, raven hair, and black eyes of the gentle lad who
+rose to greet my companion with a grace and assurance that checked
+remonstrance on the part of the half-offended usher, who simply solaced
+himself with a shrug of the shoulders and a more than usually prolonged
+"Si-i-i-i-i-lence, messieurs. Restez-vous tranquilles!"
+
+"This is the gentleman, Jules, who has kindly consented to take you
+home, and it is arranged that you start to-morrow," said the advocate.
+
+The boy's big eyes looked into mine with an inquiring gaze, and then,
+taking my hand, he quaintly said:
+
+"I like you."
+
+There was nothing impertinent in the tone or manner; it was the hearty
+expression of his unsophisticated thought.
+
+"He is an Englishman," continued M. Danneris, "and will be very kind to
+you. Remember that you owe him respect and implicit obedience."
+
+"Then he hates the Austrians--he whose country is free knows how to
+give sympathy to a poor Hungarian. This good Englishman shall see for
+himself how our noble people suffer at the hands of tyrants."
+
+"Hush, hush, Jules! You must not talk like this. Is it not
+extraordinary," said M. Danneris, turning to me, "that even the very
+children of this oppressed race fill their minds with a sense of
+wrong?"
+
+"No wonder," I replied, "if but half you have told me is true."
+
+"When I am a man," flashed Jules, "I will kill the Austrians--they are
+not worthy to live."
+
+"Jules," I said soothingly, "I am just going for a stroll over the
+fields toward Louvain. Ask permission from monsieur, your professor, to
+join me."
+
+Danneris smiled. "That was well done," he said. "You cannot too soon
+become acquainted. Call here for the boy to-morrow midday. I will see
+that he is prepared."
+
+When I said adieu to Jules that evening, after a long ramble over the
+endless corn fields that bordered the "road to Waterloo," I saw with
+pleasure that I had awakened in him a generous confidence. He too had,
+by his artless manner, inspired in me no common interest.
+
+We started. Six days' journey to reach Vienna, a hundred-mile trip up
+the Danube to Buda, seven leagues in a _caleche_, and we should be at
+Dressdorf Castle.
+
+Uneventful the days were. Poor Jules, weary with travel, talked but
+little, for which I was appropriately thankful. It was painful to see
+how he shrank from the gaze of any official who might question us a
+little closely as to our destination, and to watch his quivering lips
+as he muttered in response to my assurances of safety, "I trust all to
+the good Englishman."
+
+As we neared the Austrian frontier he harped more on the subject of his
+Austrian wrongs, and I was frequently obliged to check him. A fire
+seemed consuming the boy, a burning vengeance toward the oppressor.
+
+We reached Vienna at dusk on the sixth day, and put up at the Hotel
+d'Hollande, according to the suggestions of Danneris. Jules complained
+of sick headache, and I was somewhat relieved to hear him suggest bed.
+
+It was not till I had seen him safely settled, and had extracted a
+promise from him not to leave his room, that I felt at liberty to call
+a few hours my own.
+
+Having dined, I stood on the doorstep of the hotel smoking a cigar and
+revolving in my mind where I should spend my evening, when I was
+accosted by a police agent making some inquiry about my passport.
+
+"By the way," said I, "I never was in Austria before, but in France I
+have been accustomed to give a gensdarme a couple of francs to take my
+passport to the bureau of the police to be _vise_."
+
+"Herr Englaender can pursue the same plan here," was the polite
+rejoinder. "I shall be happy to oblige him."
+
+Glad to be relieved of the bother, I handed him the document. He
+briefly compared my person with the description, and then queried:
+
+"And the boy?"
+
+"He is sick and has retired; but if you desire it, you shall see him."
+
+"No need--a boy is no great matter"; and the courteous official, with a
+bow that would have graced a D'Orsay, was gone.
+
+To the Grand Opera House, the largest in the world, I bent my steps,
+and in an hour was revelling in Mme. Garcia's thrilling notes, when a
+hand was laid on my shoulder and a grim, moustached, soldier-like
+fellow whispered in my ear:
+
+"Your passport, Herr Englaender."
+
+"It is gone to the police bureau to be _vise_. I sent it from the Hotel
+d'Hollande by an officer."
+
+For the moment he withdrew, and burning with shame, for every eye was
+upon me, I turned defiantly to the stage.
+
+"Will the Herr ride or walk?" came again the voice in my ear.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"The Herr must go immediately to the Hotel d'Hollande. That is all."
+
+I expostulated, but a storm of hisses from those near enough to be
+interrupted in their enjoyment of the music decided me, and I angrily
+rose.
+
+"I am at your service, sir."
+
+We walked on without a word.
+
+Never shall I forget the face of the fat little Dutch landlord as we
+entered--surprise, sympathy, fear alternately lighting his countenance
+as he poured forth a polyglot expression of his excited feelings. In
+French, English, Dutch, and German he assured us he was desolated,
+miserable, abandoned. Ah, but it was a good young Englaender. It was
+true he had never seen the passport; he knew he should have asked for
+it himself when his noble friend first came to the house; but, _bete
+brouillant_ that he was, he had forgotten it.
+
+Then followed a conference between the landlord and the officer,
+resulting in my being called aside by the former and receiving the
+following valuable advice:
+
+"My dear sir, you have made a most never-to-be-sufficiently deplored
+mistake. But see. Satisfy this zealous officer with a bottle of good
+Stein wine, and all will be well in the morning; only do not leave the
+house again to-night."
+
+It was a bitter pill, but I swallowed it gracefully, and Herr
+Polizeidiener and I clicked glasses fraternally with protestations of
+mutual regard.
+
+In the morning I was awakened by Jules, whose night's rest had done him
+a world of good. Bright, vivacious, and noisy, he bounded into my room.
+
+"Oh, Herr Mortimer, such an idea! There is a grand review of the
+soldiery. Come, get up. We must go and see it. I would not miss it for
+the world."
+
+"Do not be so excited, Jules; it is the last place to which I would
+dream of taking you. Your father----"
+
+"Wrote me not to fail to see the Austrian troops if I had an
+opportunity."
+
+Perhaps there was some object in that, and to Jules's delight I
+consented to take seats on the lumbering stage-coach that was to leave
+the hotel with other guests bent on the same holiday excursion. I was
+the more complacent as I reflected that the steamer did not leave
+Vienna till five o'clock, and I thus saw a means of keeping Jules out
+of further mischief.
+
+We reached the review ground. It was indeed a gorgeous scene. Crimson
+and gold, blue and silver flashed back the sun's rays, bugles sounded,
+and cannon roared.
+
+I was not quite at my ease, however, as I noticed the interest I was
+exciting in a resplendent official, whose eyes were continually on me.
+At last, to my dismay, he beckoned to me.
+
+"Sir, your passport?"
+
+"It is gone to the bureau to be _vise_," and then followed a pathetic
+recital of the annoyances I had been subjected to.
+
+"Will the Herr ride or walk?" was the stereotyped response.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"To Vienna. Until this passport is found the Herr must consider himself
+under arrest."
+
+In vain I pleaded the unprotected position of my young companion. All
+the concession I could get was permission to speak a few words with
+him, which I did with much caution, simply assuring him of my speedy
+return, and extracting his promise that, if I were detained by my
+"friend," he would return with the fiacre to the hotel, and quietly
+await my arrival.
+
+"I will do all the good Englishman asks of me"; and a warm pressure of
+the hand made me feel that Jules understood the extremity of the case.
+
+At once to the bureau.
+
+I was so confident of finding the passport and utterly confounding the
+officer who had given me all this trouble, that I am afraid my manner
+was rather supercilious, to say the least of it.
+
+The commissaire heard my story somewhat impatiently.
+
+"The officer's number to whom you say you gave your passport?"
+
+"I did not notice it."
+
+"His name?"
+
+"I never demanded it."
+
+A grin on the face of the commissaire, a very sarcastic curl of the
+lip, a shrug of the shoulders, an ominous silence.
+
+"Sir," said I, somewhat sobered by the course events had taken, "I am a
+British subject!"
+
+"Zo?"
+
+"A graduate of the University of Oxford."
+
+"Zo?"
+
+"Tutor in the family of the Earl of Tottenbridge."
+
+"Zo?"
+
+"Son of a county magistrate."
+
+"Zo? And nevertheless you are arrested for wandering about like a rogue
+and vagabond without a passport. We know not who you are, what you are,
+where you come from. The question with us is, Where is your passport?
+It is enough." And before I could reply his back was turned.
+
+A whitewashed room, sixteen feet square, one barred window, one iron
+bedstead, one wooden bench--such was my apartment and the inventory of
+its furniture; and I felt my heart sink as the key in the door turned
+with an ominous click, and I was left to enjoy my solitary meditations.
+
+What could I do? For an hour I racked my brain. Dared I apply to the
+English embassy? I would, come what might of it. A few blows on the
+panel of my door brought the officer.
+
+"I wish to make immediate application to Lord Cowley."
+
+"I will see."
+
+He returned in a few minutes.
+
+"Lord Cowley is not in Vienna now. He is at the Grand Baths."
+
+"Still, there is somebody at the embassy office. I must go there."
+
+After a brief interview with his superior, the permission was accorded.
+
+The officer and I reached the embassy building, and as I passed the
+jovial English porter at the door, my heart rose, for already I felt
+the shadow of the British lion over me.
+
+A pale, emaciated, gentlemanly youth, with a gold eyeglass, was
+standing with his back to the fire, reading a copy of the "Times,"
+while at his feet lay a magnificent bull-and-mastiff, by far the more
+dignified animal of the two. The exquisite gave no sign of his
+knowledge of our presence.
+
+"Ahem!"
+
+No attention.
+
+The dog yawned, the great clock on the wall ticked with an aggravating
+loudness, and at last I broke out--
+
+"Sir, I am in a terrible dilemma. I have lost my passport. I trusted it
+to a rascally policeman to take to the bureau to get _vise_, and now I
+am apprehended, put in a miserable prison, called a rogue and vagabond
+by a confounded commissaire." The effect of my eloquence on the attache
+was amusing. Down went the paper.
+
+"Oh, I say--you know--you mustn't--indeed, you mustn't. The office
+can't be approached in this manner--very irregular, by Jove, very
+irregular."
+
+"What must I do? The consequences may be fearful----"
+
+"Write to Lord John Russell at the F. O. If he knows anything about
+you, you can petition Lord Cowley, and in the course of a few
+weeks----"
+
+"A few weeks! a cycle of years! I must be liberated at once. The
+safety, nay, the very life of a helpless boy depends upon it."
+
+"Oh, I say, you know, you mustn't get so excited, by Jove, you know;
+you mustn't indeed. Very irregular--'pon honor, I never saw such
+irregularity."
+
+The Adam was aroused in me--I couldn't help it.
+
+"Sir!" I roared, "you are here for the protection of the British
+subject----"
+
+"No, you know," he interrupted. "Consul, that sort of thing. By Jove,
+never saw such a fellow."
+
+"You are placed here for use or ornament. You are, sir, a failure in
+either capacity."
+
+"John!"--oh, the superciliously grand air of that little mite!--"John,
+show this person the door!"
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+Once more in prison.
+
+Another hour's mental rack, another resource--send for the landlord of
+the Hotel d'Hollande.
+
+He came.
+
+I fancy I see before me now the paunchy Dutchman, rubbing his fat hands
+and condoling with me in hybrid accents.
+
+"But now, Herr Englaender, an inspiration!" He approached me, placed his
+pursy lips to my ears, and whispered: "Offer--delicately as you
+can--but offer the commissaire a few of your English gold pieces, and
+see the passport, he return, he come back--_vite_, quick. _Voila
+tout._"
+
+"Bribe the commissaire?"
+
+"Hush! yes, it is your only chance."
+
+Heavens! what a country! Well might poor Jules rave at the Austrians!
+
+The Dutchman left, and after a few minutes' hesitation, I summoned up
+courage to knock at the door, which was promptly opened by the officer,
+who respectfully demanded my requirements.
+
+"I wish to see the commissaire."
+
+"Surely. Will the Herr follow me?"
+
+Where were the frowns gone? The commissaire received me in a most
+gracious manner. Would I be seated?
+
+"Sir," I stammered, for it went sorely against the grain, "my
+carelessness has brought me into considerable trouble, and I feel that
+with your aid alone I can rectify matters. At the same time I am aware
+that I should pay some penalty for my lack of discretion. If therefore
+you would give these five sovereigns to some charitable institution in
+Vienna, and use some effort to find my passport, you will lay me under
+a great obligation."
+
+The great official said he would do so, and the English sovereigns
+chinked in his capacious vest-pocket.
+
+"And now, if the Herr will go to his hotel, all Vienna shall be
+searched. The passport cannot be lost, and in a few hours it shall be
+in his hands."
+
+Free! It was the only time I was ever under lock and key, but I shall
+never forget the exhilarating delight of that moment.
+
+I had hardly gone twenty rods when I remembered that the boat left at
+five o'clock, and I thought that I would return and tell the
+commissaire to hurry up.
+
+As I opened the door of the bureau I saw him deliberately take from a
+pigeon-hole my passport, and handing it to the agent, say, "Here, take
+this stupid Englishman his passport!"
+
+"Sir," I said, stepping forward, "I will relieve you of the trouble."
+
+Not a blush, not an apology. With a profusion of compliments and hopes
+for my _bon voyage_, the commisaaire graciously bowed me out, and with
+all haste I sought the Hotel d'Hollande.
+
+The fiacre was just driving up to the door as I arrived. I saw it all
+in one moment. _The boy was not there._
+
+I questioned the driver and passengers. It appeared that Jules had left
+the carriage shortly after my departure, and as three hours had elapsed
+before their return to Vienna, they concluded that he had joined me.
+
+My excitement threw the landlord into a further convulsion of
+hand-rubbing and general perplexity.
+
+"Get me a strong saddle horse," I impetuously demanded.
+
+"It shall be at the door in five minutes. Will not the Herr dine before
+he leaves?"
+
+"Dine! No; but let me have a flask of brandy."
+
+Out through the paved streets to the plain. I scoured the whole country
+round, peered into every carriage, searched every bush and brier, rode
+up and down the neighboring lanes and highways, inquired of all I met,
+and only trotted back to Vienna when darkness came on and my jaded
+horse could hardly bear me home.
+
+Then I ate and drank, and, taking a caleche, visited every police
+station and hospital in Vienna. All in vain; and at three o'clock in
+the morning I threw myself on my bed to snatch a few hours' sleep ere
+my search should be again renewed.
+
+I will not dwell upon the horrors of that time. Day succeeded day, and
+nearly a week passed in my frantic efforts to discover the whereabouts
+of the poor young Hungarian. How my heart bled for the gentle boy,
+perhaps languishing in an Austrian dungeon and calling on the good
+Englishman to rescue him. I lived a year in that week. At last I
+resolved to telegraph to M. Danneris. "Jules is lost. For God's sake,
+come at once," flashed along the wires. The answer was equally terse.
+The operator at Brussels replied, "Danneris gone. Left no address."
+
+Was ever anything so unfortunate? Ah, yes, he did talk of visiting
+England, and that was the reason he could not himself escort Jules
+home.
+
+Then I knew that I must brace my nerves to the terrible effort of
+telling that poor father that his child was lost; that I, by my cursed
+carelessness, had been the destroyer of his peace.
+
+"Your son has mysteriously disappeared from my charge. Hasten here."
+
+The answer was more perplexing than the one from Brussels: "Baron von
+Dressdorf not known--no such place as Kioske."
+
+Heavens! Was I in a dream?
+
+For three weeks I continued my search, wandering about in a haggard,
+broken manner, dreading every day to be stricken with brain fever. I
+could not sleep for thinking of the poor lad, whose big, pleading eyes
+seemed to look up into mine from every side. He haunted me.
+
+One day I was watching the crowd pass the corner of the Thun Strasse,
+when my hand was clasped, and a cheery voice rang in my ear:
+
+"Mortimer, old fellow, by all that's glorious! Who would ever have
+thought of meeting you here?"
+
+It was Harvey Lawson, my old college chum.
+
+"But you are sick, man. You look clean out of condition. Come up into
+my den--mind those stairs--here you are--take that arm-chair. You see
+I'm 'own correspondent' to the 'Daily Growler.' There's a pipe. Will
+you have beer or wine? And, now, what have you been doing with
+yourself?"
+
+I told him all, and my story certainly awakened much interest in him.
+
+"What was the date of your leaving Brussels?"
+
+"Wednesday, September 17."
+
+"Just a month ago. Hand me that file of papers at your elbow."
+
+He selected one, glanced at it a moment. "Ah, yes, here it is."
+
+"What?" I cried eagerly, the blood flying to my face.
+
+"What was the name of the advocate?" he persisted with all the gravity
+of a judge.
+
+"Auguste Danneris."
+
+"And his office, 170 Rue des Allumettes?"
+
+"Yes, yes!"
+
+"The _pension_ in the Porte de Schaerbeck?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The youth--black eyes, black hair, high forehead, projecting chin,
+height five feet three?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Spoke English well?"
+
+"Remarkably well for a foreigner--and so young."
+
+"Had a slight impediment in pronouncing the letter _p_."
+
+"Yes, I tried to correct the dear boy of the habit."
+
+"Did, eh?"
+
+"I did, and with some success too."
+
+"And went by the name of Jules von Dressdorf?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then, by the lord Harry! Master Mortimer, you've immortalized yourself.
+You've abducted the most accomplished little _dame d'industrie_ Paris
+ever produced--you've snatched from under the very noses of a cordon of
+French and Flemish police the princess of adventuresses, Adele de la
+Voix, spy, thief, forger--ay, and if suspicion points truly,
+murderess--for she is believed to have poisoned an accomplice at Ghent
+after consummating the robbery of the Comtesse de Nemour's jewels. A
+pretty piece of business truly."
+
+I was dazed. He handed me the journal, and I read for myself the whole
+of the infamous plot.
+
+"By George, that boarding-school dodge was an excellent one, worthy of
+her greatness--threw the police off the scent for ten days," said
+Harvey with a grin.
+
+"Then, when the police got on the right track again," he continued, "it
+was too late; she had eloped with you. O Lord, it's too good," and he
+lay back in his chair and roared.
+
+"By heavens, if you are not quiet, I'll pitch you out of the window."
+
+"No, you won't. If you move a finger, I'll write and tell Gwennie Grey
+all about your elopement. Why, man, if you were a child of grace, you'd
+go down on your knees and implore me not to give you two columns in the
+'Growler.' There, I was only joking. Don't look so blue. But I confess
+it's a strong temptation. Such sensations don't crop up every day;
+besides, messieurs the police are dying to know how _la belle_ Adele
+crossed the frontier."
+
+"Do you think," I said wearily, "that the proprietor of the _pension_
+was an accomplice?"
+
+"Most assuredly not. He is an old resident, and gave his testimony with
+tears in his eyes, assuring the court that Jules von Dressdorf was one
+of the most docile, intelligent pupils he ever had under his roof."
+
+"And M. Danneris?"
+
+"Her father, I believe. His role was the man of reference, the
+respectable 'fence' who directs the game while others do the work."
+
+"Had my trouble with the police here anything to do with the matter?"
+
+"Not a bit of it. They are infernal rascals, reaping where they do
+not sow, and looking on careless travellers as legitimate game. Under
+the present _regime_ they make half their living out of passport
+irregularities."
+
+"I suppose," I added, "I had better notify the police at Brussels."
+
+"And be the laughing stock of Europe for your pains. No, Mortimer, lie
+quiet here for a week or two, then take steamer through the
+Mediterranean home. By the by, did Danneris advance you money for the
+journey?"
+
+"He gave me five hundred francs."
+
+"Then you are not so badly off after all. Make your mind easy about
+Mlle. Adele. She is hundreds of miles away by this."
+
+"I wonder why she did not run away from the hotel the night I went to
+the theatre."
+
+"_Quien sabe?_ Let the dead past bury its dead."
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+Seventeen years have passed since the occurrence of the events I have
+recorded, and never till yesterday have I seen or heard one word of
+Adele de la Voix.
+
+"Gwennie," said I to my dear little wife, on reaching my home in
+southern Michigan after a visit on business to Detroit, "you remember
+the heroine of my trip to Dressdorf castle, just before we were
+married?"
+
+"Surely," said the wife.
+
+"Well, I saw Adele de la Voix yesterday."
+
+"You didn't! When? Where?"
+
+"At a store in Gratiot avenue. I was making a purchase, when a woman
+entered--old-looking, homely, shabby; but there was no mistaking those
+black eyes, nor the sniff of the left nostril. When she was gone, I
+made some inquiries about her, and here is her business card:
+
+    "MME. JULIENNE, from Paris, reveals the past, the present, and the
+    future. Can be consulted on all affairs of love, business, or law,
+    and overcomes trouble of any kind. She brings together the
+    separated, causes speedy marriages, and sells infallible love
+    powders. Go and see for yourself. No humbug here.
+
+    "Rooms, etc."
+
+"And what are you going to do?"
+
+"Do? I don't know."
+
+"I do."
+
+"You wise woman, what is it?"
+
+"Write the whole story for your favorite magazine. It is as interesting
+as half the fiction one reads, and contains a good moral."
+
+
+
+
+THE BATTALION.
+
+
+    A thousand strong we marched to battle;
+      The city roared around the host;
+    The tambours crashed their vaunting rattle;
+      The bugles screamed their joyous boast.
+
+    No thought had we to die asunder,
+      Companions sworn, a brother throng;
+    We looked to sweep through battle's thunder
+      In noble lines, a thousand strong.
+
+    But ah, the fever's poisoned arrow!
+      The jungle's breath, the summer's glow!
+    Our broad array grew swiftly narrow,
+      And scanty hundreds met the foe.
+
+    O splendid longings, thoughts and fancies
+      Which tread the city of the soul,
+    How few of all your spirit-lances
+      Arrive where duty's trumpets roll!
+
+J. W. DE FOREST.
+
+
+
+
+THE FASCINATIONS OF ANGLING.
+
+
+I.
+
+It is the cheerful verdict of all anglers that they find no other
+pastime so fascinating. This conclusion is not based upon the mere
+mechanism of the art, but upon the fact that it is eminently healthful,
+rational, and elevating, blending the picturesque and exhilarating in
+such equal proportions as to exactly meet the demands of the quiet
+student, the contemplative philosopher, and the care-worn man of
+business, whose wearied or exhausted nature covets just the solitude
+and repose which no other recreation so abundantly furnishes.
+
+This of course could not be said of angling if it had no other
+attraction than the excitement it affords. But I am sure no one ever
+became an enthusiastic angler who had no other or higher conceptions of
+its possibilities. The mere act of taking fish is but a minor note in
+the full volume of harmony which comes to its appreciative disciples
+amid the vast solitudes where they find their best sport and highest
+pleasure. Ask any true angler what pictures come up most vividly before
+him as "the time of the singing of birds" draweth nigh, when it is
+right to "go a-fishing." His answer will not be, "The rise and strike
+of trout or salmon," although both will pass upon the canvas like rays
+of sunshine upon the quiet repose of a forest landscape. He will rather
+discourse to you of flowing river, of murmuring brook, of cloud-capped
+mountain, of waving forest, of sunshine and shadow, of rapid and
+cascade, of tent and camp fire, of silence and solitude, of cozy nook,
+of undisturbed repose, of refreshing slumber, of invigorated health,
+and the _abandon_ of delight which neither word nor pencil can
+adequately portray. I have heard such "simple wise men" talk of their
+favorite pastime until they glowed with ecstasy, without once naming
+fish or fishing. That is but the body of the art. Its spirit consists
+in what is seen and felt. An angler, "born so," as Walton hath it,
+retains a more vivid recollection of the foam-encircled pool where
+salmon love to congregate than of the "rise" and "strike" which gave
+him his early morning's exhilaration. While he soon forgets the "play"
+and weight of the fish captured, he never forgets the picturesque
+surroundings of the struggle. He may forget the last homily he read, or
+the last sermon to which he listened, but never the thrill of devout
+ecstasy which came to him while wandering along some forest pathway, or
+while gently floating with the current of his favorite river, bathed in
+sunshine and fanned by summer zephyrs. After many days, these blissful
+moments come back to him like divine benedictions. Be sure, O carping
+critic, the gentle art has its spiritual and aesthetic as well as its
+physical and intellectual attributes.
+
+As a mere physical pastime, angling stands foremost among all the known
+sources of pleasurable recreation. It blends active exercise with
+fascinating excitement in such healthful proportions as to ensure the
+fortunate participant equally against wearisome monotony and excessive
+fatigue. The pure mountain air in which he is constantly enveloped is a
+perpetual tonic, while the exercise it compels gives steadiness to the
+nerves and solidity to the muscles.
+
+As a mental renovator it is equally effective. There can be no
+protracted lassitude while the brain is constantly quickened into
+refreshing vitality by the novel and exhilarating surroundings of
+mountain and forest and river, and the rise and strike and struggle of
+trout or salmon.
+
+And to those who have neither physical nor mental ailment, but who are
+conscious of a spiritual need--of some more vivid appreciation of the
+goodness and beneficence of the Heavenly Father than most men attain
+unto while writhing under the harrow of business or bewildered by the
+shallow superficialities or noisy clatter of artificial life--the quiet
+places where the pursuit of the gentle art takes them, the silence and
+shadow of the sombre forest, the twitter and song of the solitary
+woodbird, the clear shining stars, which hang like silver lamps above
+his tent or cabin, and the reposeful hush which comes to his soul like
+whispered benedictions--these all tend to intensify his gratitude, to
+quicken his spiritual pulse, and to give to him a higher and a keener
+appreciation of his spiritual obligations.
+
+There may be those who engage in angling only as they engage in the
+coarser amusements which, for a time, divert the mind and banish
+_ennui_. But all such soon weary of it, and never reach the higher
+plane of the pleasant pastime. To do so requires a placid temper, a
+thoughtful if not a poetic appreciation of the picturesque, a moderate
+love of solitude, a patient habit, and a quiet disposition. To find
+delectation in his walks, the angler need not be an ascetic or a
+stickler for creeds; but I do not think the heart of Gallio, who "cared
+for none of these things," would have been made glad when "the voice of
+the turtle was heard in the land," and it was right to "go a-fishing,"
+because I cannot imagine him a man of a teachable disposition or of a
+lovable nature, who took pleasure in the society or teachings of the
+gentle Master of the Galilean fishermen. Izaak Walton might have had
+equal skill with rod and reel without his saintly faith; but his
+"Complete Angler" never would have attained the high place it has held
+and will ever hold in the affections of the contemplative men of all
+time had he not been imbued with the spirit of reverent humility and
+such a loving sense of the Infinite Beneficence as to find in all the
+beauty and sublimity of Nature evidence of His great goodness and
+loving kindness to the children of men. He may not, like Enoch, have
+"walked with God," but in all his walks he saw God's handiwork; and
+this consciousness multiplied many fold the pleasure he sought and
+always found in the pursuit of his favorite recreation.
+
+
+II.
+
+There are times and seasons for salmon fishing as for all things. But
+all times and all seasons are not alike. Nor are all places. The best
+time to fish for salmon, where salmon are to be fished for, is the
+first hour the water is in condition; that is, as soon as the spring
+freshets have subsided, and the water, by falling back into its natural
+channel, has become freed from the surface rubbish washed into it, and
+sufficiently settled to render your line visible to the eye of the
+fish. This time varies on different rivers, according to their length,
+their volume, and the character of the soil through which they flow. On
+some rivers the drainage is so limited that a fly may be cast
+successfully so soon as the ice disappears. There are, however, but few
+rivers on either side the Gulf, or in either of the Provinces, where
+the best fishing is attainable before the first of June. The "season"
+continues from that time on to the middle of August, although there is
+often good sport into September, when the last "run" begin their
+journey. But no "posted" angler would care to be compelled to take the
+chances of sport after the close of August, as only very few fish come
+up from the sea later, and those remaining in the river are wearied
+from their long journeyings, or are torpid from their protracted
+absence from the sea.
+
+Within the period named--June to the middle of August--salmon are gamy
+and muscular, wherever found, whether one or fifty miles from the
+ocean. But the pools most coveted are those in closest proximity to
+salt water. Salmon are at their best when they begin their upward
+journey. The fresh element in which they find themselves seems to give
+them new life and friskiness, and when hooked they fight with a
+strength and fierceness not exhibited in the same measure afterward. A
+twenty-pound salmon fresh from the sea gives you the play of a
+thirty-pound fish taken weeks after he has made his way far up toward
+the headwaters of a fifty or a hundred-mile river.
+
+This fact, however, is not only not perceptible to the novice, but the
+sport furnished by the capture of a salmon at any point in a river, or
+at any stage of his sojourn in fresh water, is so grandly exhilarating
+and so full of the intensest excitement, that it is a matter of but
+trifling moment where a fish is struck so long as the angler strikes
+him.
+
+But the season _is_ important. The earlier weeks on any river are to be
+preferred, not alone because the fish have more vitality, but because,
+as a rule, they are more abundant. With an unerring instinct which is
+as mysterious as it is wonderful, they seek the rivers where they were
+born upon the return of every spring. If the rivers are in condition
+for their ascent, they begin their journey at once. But the rivers are
+not always in this condition when salmon first come to them; and if
+they are not, they wait their opportunity, and then move forward with
+the regularity and steadiness of an army under marching orders. Hence
+they are ordinarily found in greatest numbers at the first rush; and
+they are most fortunate who are duly placed, at favorite pools, to bid
+them welcome.
+
+What I know of this phase of salmon angling I have learned from
+experience and observation, under circumstances which enable me to
+speak with more confidence than would be otherwise becoming. I have
+fished for three years on what I believe to be one of the very best
+rivers on the continent; best not merely because of the abundance and
+weight of its fish, but because also of its size and length, the
+magnificence of its scenery, and the great number of its splendid
+pools. My first two seasons extended from July 10 to August 10; and
+they are seasons which will be for ever remembered with delight. I did
+not deem it possible that I should ever experience any higher pleasure
+this side that "pure river of water, clear as crystal," which fills so
+large a place in the entrancing picture of the bright hereafter. My
+catch exceeded my highest expectations, the sport from first to last
+was magnificent and kingly, and the river, and the scenery, and the
+surroundings embodied so much of beauty and grandeur, that my cup of
+joy was filled to overflowing. If I had left the river with no other
+knowledge than I then possessed of what had been and of what might be,
+I would have lived on content with the happy impression that I had
+experienced the highest possibilities of the gentle art. Every hour was
+an hour of sunshine--whether casting, or striking, or killing--whether
+slowly ascending or swiftly schuting the rapids--whether shouting in
+very ecstasy of delight or quietly discoursing of the pleasures of
+angling, around the camp fire, grateful to a kind Providence which had
+"cast my lines in such pleasant places," and filled with devout
+thanksgiving that time and opportunity had been given me to understand
+why the good men, and the thoughtful men, and the simple wise men of
+all ages had written so enthusiastically and sung so glowingly of the
+gentle art.
+
+But, while thus pluming myself upon what I had achieved and
+experienced, fancying that I had reached the highest pleasure
+attainable from the art of angling, I learned that while I had done
+well I could do much better earlier in the season. And so I found; for
+by a combination of circumstances as fortunate as they were gratifying,
+my third season gave me the first "run" and such experience and sport
+as will for ever remain a golden memory.
+
+
+III.
+
+With a companion as venerable in years and as full of enthusiasm as
+myself, we set our faces toward the bay of Chaleur on as bright and
+beautiful a June morning as ever gladdened the world. Hitherto the
+journey had been tedious and circuitous--by rail and steamer. But, like
+the world in general, the Provinces are progressive, and on this
+occasion an "all-rail" route enabled us to do in two days what it
+formerly took six to accomplish, and the 10th of June found us encamped
+in a beautiful valley encircled by magnificent mountains, with a
+majestic river at our feet grandly marching to the sea, but in
+unwelcome volume and raging with frightful turbulence. The melted snow
+was pouring down from the hills in such torrents as to overflow banks
+and lowlands, and to preclude all hope of angling until an abatement of
+the flood. It only remained for us to imitate the patriotic Germans on
+the Rhine, and "watch and wait." And for ten days we watched and waited
+with such patience as we could muster, and with such diversion as could
+be found in casting for trout in a neighboring brook which found its
+way to the river in our immediate neighborhood.
+
+
+IV.
+
+It was the tenth day of our waiting, and while the river was rushing
+with such fury as to render holding a canoe in the current with any
+appliances at our command impracticable, that I succeeded in reaching
+an eddy caused by a huge bowlder still buried beneath the waters. I
+could not anchor, and my frail bark was kept in constant motion by the
+swirling eddy, when, after repeated casts, I had a rise. The fish
+leaped to such an unusual height, and with such seeming determination
+that the lure should not escape him, that I was startled and barely
+escaped a backward plunge in my anxiety to make a sure "strike." From
+the "feel," which ran like electricity from my submerged fly to the
+tips of my fingers, I knew that the hook had effectively performed its
+work, and was "fastened in a sure place." With this conviction I felt
+bold to begin the work resolutely, although I knew that if I succeeded
+in making a capture, I must do so under circumstances more difficult
+than any I had ever before encountered in any waters or with any fish.
+I was literally hemmed in. I dared not allow the monster to get outside
+the restricted circle of the eddy, for if he should reach the current,
+which was sweeping downward at the rate of ten miles an hour, I would
+be utterly powerless to check him, because it would be impossible to
+prevent him from rushing over the boiling rapids, which were thundering
+within fifty feet of the lower edge of the eddy. My only hope of fish
+or canoe was to hold both under the shelter of the rock which caused
+the eddy. To do this required a shorter line than it is ever wise to
+retain at the opening of a fight with a thirty-pound salmon. But
+everything--fish, rod, and line--had to be risked. It was hold all or
+lose everything; and with a shout which made the whole camp lookers-on,
+I began the fight; now hopeful, now in despair; now with the fish
+leaping within fifty feet of the canoe, and now lashing the water with
+the fierceness of a tiger; now dashing toward the current as if
+determined to break off or drag the canoe with him, and anon sullenly
+permitting himself to be reeled up to within ten feet of the gaff; now
+sinking and sulking, and now rushing and leaping as if he would twist
+off his own neck in his attempts to shake the cruel barb from his
+lacerated jaw; now at handsome holding distance, peaceful as a lamb,
+and seemingly ready for the _coup de grace_, and anon dashing hither
+and thither, as if looking for some open door to freedom; but all in
+vain. If his mettle was up, so was mine, and at that moment I would
+sooner have lost a fortune than that fish. I had kept him within bounds
+and well in hand; had got him within a foot of the gaff, sure of
+victory, and was shouting to my gaffer, "Now then, let him have it!"
+when, like a flash, he shot under the canoe, and would have smashed
+everything in a moment had not my watchful guide, seeing the situation
+and the danger in the twinkling of an eye, swung round our boat so that
+I could place the tip of my rod beyond the stern of the canoe, and thus
+escaped the greatest misfortune that can befall a salmon angler. It was
+quickly and skilfully done, and in five minutes more the first salmon
+of the season was gaffed, and the first victory achieved. The shout
+from my own canoe was caught up by the excited lookers-on, and we
+paddled to camp thrilled with the excitement of the contest, and happy
+as it is possible for an angler to be--and there are possibilities of
+happiness to anglers inconceivable to any who have never killed a
+salmon.
+
+We accepted this first fish as the forerunner of the good time hoped
+for. And the good time came of which, for the delectation of those who
+have been or would like to be "there" themselves, I subjoin a few
+samples.
+
+
+V.
+
+I had as my immediate companion an enthusiastic angler in all waters,
+but who had not as yet had the good fortune to take a salmon. The flood
+had somewhat receded; but it was still necessary to place our canoes in
+the eddies, and cast crosswise into the edges of the current. I had
+landed a fish of moderate size, and was watching my friend trying his
+'prentice hand, at salmon casting, occasionally directing him by my
+fancied superior knowledge of the art, when a very large fish rose to
+his fly, and he struck him with a suddenness and force which was
+certainly complimentary to his muscle if not so illustrative of his
+skill. For it is always dangerous to strike too hard. It does not
+require a great pressure to force the barb home, while a heavy strike
+or a too sudden twitch is apt either to break something or tear the
+hook from the fish's jaw. In this case the hook held. For a moment fish
+and fisher seemed alike astonished, and neither stirred; but it was
+only for a moment. Directly away flew the fish--the line spinning from
+the reel as if harnessed to a locomotive. Fortunately the eddy, which
+made out from the point of an island, extended some quarter of a mile,
+and before it was passed over, the Judge began to appreciate the
+situation, the magnitude of the work in hand, and the difficulties he
+was likely to encounter before he could call the fish his own. He held
+him with a steady hand. He answered every call for line with a
+promptness and caution which indicated great tact, and he lost no
+opportunity to reel in when practicable. For a time it seemed probable
+that he would kill his fish without being carried into the central
+current. But no such luck awaited him; for after two hours of patient
+waiting and working--of rushing, and leaping, and sulking--the frenzied
+fish made for the centre of the river with such impetuosity that it
+would have been as easy to stop the flow of the river itself as to
+check him in his mad career. Where he led the canoe was obliged to
+follow; and follow it did for more than two miles, with occasional
+respites at available eddies, and occasional dashes up stream, putting
+the canoe men to their best trumps to prevent the reel from becoming
+exhausted by these upward flights.
+
+Thus the battle progressed for more than three hours, when the fish
+approached the canoe of one of the party, which was anchored near a
+bank covered with overhanging brush. He rushed with such speed that the
+Indians in the anchored canoe had barely time to get out of the way,
+when the fish dashed between them and the bank, but so closely that
+when he halted for an instant near the surface, one of the Indians,
+whose movements were as quick as those of the fish himself, gaffed him
+and so saved him "as by fire," for in an instant more he would have
+been caught in the overhanging brush toward which he was moving, and
+where, had he reached it, he would have been inevitably lost. He
+weighed thirty-six pounds--the largest fish taken during our month's
+sojourn on the river. But the most marvelous part of the story is that
+the brute was hooked foul in the side, rendering the fight and the
+capture of so large a fish a double victory.
+
+Many events in the Judge's life will be forgotten, but this first fight
+with his first salmon will remain a pleasant memory for ever.
+
+
+VI.
+
+Here is another experience which all anglers will appreciate. I was
+anchored in an eddy at the head of a favorite pool while the current in
+the channel of the river was so strong that it was deemed impossible to
+make headway against it. The pool in which I was casting was full of
+hidden rocks; but for that very reason it was one of the very best on
+the river. After an unusually long cast, a fish rose to my fly and was
+hooked. On the instant he dashed for the head of the pool, but by the
+time the anchor was shipped he reversed his movement with a rush,
+carrying with him more than two hundred feet of line. The canoe, having
+been forced into the channel, was sweeping downward with great
+rapidity, when I became conscious that my line was hitched. The only
+hope of rescue was to force the canoe back against the heavy
+current--and the order to do so was answered by such a display of skill
+and muscle as I had never before and have never since witnessed. The
+paddles bent like withs, and for a moment not an inch of headway was
+obtained. "We can't move her," was the mournful wail of my faithful
+Indians. "You can and must. Away with her!" was all I could say to
+them; and "away" it was. After a desperate struggle the canoe reached a
+point on a line with the rock on which I was caught, when off the line
+flew with a spring which indicated the great tension to which it had
+been subjected. "Now let her go!" and down we went, swept by the
+current, past rocks, into eddies and over rapids for a mile before I
+succeeded in getting the fish in a position where I could check him or
+place him where I desired. This I did, however, in time, by getting
+below him and holding the canoe broadside to the current. This enabled
+me to handle him at will, and the gaffer soon brought him to book. He
+weighed twenty-nine pounds.
+
+
+VII.
+
+One other incident. To have it appreciated, however, I must premise
+that the manner in which an angler plays a fish depends largely upon
+the condition of the river. Where, after a strike, you can pass into
+still water or into a moderate current, the position of your canoe is
+of no great moment. But if you are forced into very swift water, to
+allow a fish to have his way, and to make no attempt to gaff him until
+he is exhausted or until you can force him up to within gaffing
+distance against the current, is to find yourself at the end of the
+battle so far from your pool as to render a return unpleasantly
+tedious. Under such circumstances the order of battle with experts is
+as follows: The moment the fish starts down stream push below him with
+all possible despatch, reeling up the attained slack as the distance
+decreases. When the desired position is reached the canoe is thrown
+across the current and allowed to float with it. As the fish is above
+you, it is comparatively easy, with the aid of the current, to guide
+him downward with a very moderate pressure. In this position, with the
+exercise of proper caution and skill, the fish can generally be brought
+near enough to be gaffed long before he is the least exhausted.
+
+This mode of killing is not only exciting, but very hazardous. The
+fish, when brought close up to the canoe, sometimes dashes beneath it,
+to the great peril of rod, reel, and leader, if not to the
+perpendicularity of the canoe itself. To illustrate: I had struck a
+large fish, and was playing him in the manner detailed, to my entire
+satisfaction. I had never been better pleased with the behavior of any
+fish, and I had him under such perfect control that I foolishly began
+to deem myself perfect master of the situation. In his strugglings the
+fish had crossed and recrossed the channel a hundred times--had rushed
+up stream and dashed down stream with the speed and eccentricity of a
+boomerang, but had failed to get beyond the restraint of a steady
+tension. I had reached a point in the struggle where I would not have
+given a farthing to be insured against accidents, when, while holding
+him within twenty feet of my tip, he turned his head down stream and
+dashed directly under the centre of the canoe, bearing my rod with him,
+and bending it double before I knew whether I stood on my head or my
+heels. And then came a crack, and a tear, and a snap, splintering the
+second joint of my rod, and breaking my tip like a pipe stem. I
+supposed, of course, that the wrench had released the fish, and I began
+to reel in as disconsolate as a defeated candidate for office. But,
+hollo! the fish is not off! When the crash came the line had rendered
+so freely that there was no unusual strain upon the hook, and he was
+still fast. But what of that? How could I save him with such a wreck?
+The idea that it was possible, with skilful handling, added a
+hundredfold to the excitement, and put me on my mettle. So, finding
+that the line was free, and that by keeping the dangling pieces in
+proper position I could still manipulate the reel, I renewed the
+contest, and after floating a mile or two with the current, brought him
+to gaff. I mourned, of course, the destruction of my favorite rod--the
+best I ever handled, which had served me, without a crack, for two
+years, and which I would not have exchanged for any rod I ever saw.
+There was nothing gorgeous about it; but it had life in every fibre,
+and responded with every cast, from tip to butt, with such spring and
+elasticity as rendered casting with it a real pleasure.
+
+
+VIII.
+
+And apropos of the old adage that wise men learn from experience. After
+this fish had thus made shipwreck of my favorite rod, the Judge, with a
+generosity which is characteristic of the true angler--and no man has
+the spirit of the true angler who is not generous--proffered me the use
+of his untried bamboo. It was, and still is, the handsomest piece of
+salmon rod workmanship I ever saw, and felt in the handling as if it
+were as good to go as it was handsome to look at. He had hesitated,
+with the excusable timidity of the novice, to use it himself, and
+wished it tried, that he might report the result to its maker. I, of
+course, felt complimented by this proof of confidence in my skill, and
+consented, with the promise that I would do my best to preserve it
+intact, but that I must save my fish if I had to risk every inch of my
+harness.
+
+The pool in which the test was to be made was directly in front of our
+camp, and the water was still in excessive volume, and the flow
+unpleasantly impetuous. I soon caught the hang of the rod, and was
+making experimental casts of a hundred feet or more, quite delighted
+with its spring and play, when I had a rise from the most dangerous
+spot in the pool. Afraid to strike with my usual force, I simply raised
+my tip an inch or two, and felt that he was as securely hooked as if I
+had a "double hitch" around him. And it is curious this instinctive
+consciousness of a secure or of a frail hold of your fish the instant
+you strike him. Every observant angler has this consciousness; and
+nothing is more common at such a moment than the remark, "I am afraid
+he is not well hooked"; or, "Ah! that struck home"; and all the after
+play--whether timidly or fearlessly--depends largely upon the "feel" of
+the strike.
+
+At the outset I knew that if my fish escaped, it would not be because
+he was not well hooked; and, with this assurance, the play began. He
+took to the swiftest water at the first dash; he fairly leaped over the
+rapids at the foot of the pool, the canoe following with the speed of a
+race-horse, for half a mile, when he cried a halt, much to my
+satisfaction, for was I not entrusted with the finest rod that had ever
+wet its tip in the Cascapedia? Unlike my old companion, with which I
+had fought an hundred such battles, I was ignorant of the strain this
+elegant bamboo would bear, and so fought this battle as timidly as if I
+had never before broken a lance or captured a salmon. But a necessity
+was upon me. Its power of resistance must be tested, and the monster I
+was fighting must be kept in hand, if every joint in the rod should be
+reduced to splinters. So, ounce by ounce, the pressure was increased.
+Every new rush of the fish was met by augmented resistance on my part,
+until I found the rod capable of as hard work and as heavy a pressure
+as I had ever placed upon any rod I had ever handled. With what
+mathematical precision it curved from tip to reel! How grandly it took
+the butt, and with what grace it resumed its original form when
+relieved of an unusual pressure! To handle it soon became a delight,
+and I found myself procrastinating the contest from the mere pleasure I
+experienced in watching its perfect movement.
+
+When at length I concluded to make a finish of the struggle, had placed
+my canoe below the fish, and was gathering him in, by slow approaches,
+not dreaming of disaster or defeat, the ferocious brute dashed for the
+canoe, passing under it near the stern like a flash, and threatening to
+make as complete shipwreck of the Judge's bamboo as the fish of the day
+previously had made of my own lance-wood. But, like others before me, I
+had learned from the enemy how to fight. The moment I saw what was
+coming I threw my rod down parallel with the side of the canoe,
+allowing the tip to extend beyond it, with the reel outward, so as to
+give the line free play. The experiment was a success. The line
+followed the fish without a hitch, and the beautiful rod remained
+intact! The furious brute was outflanked, and, as if in despair, he
+gave up the battle, and in ten minutes was gaffed.
+
+The rod was a success. It had passed every ordeal grandly, and it was
+handed back to its owner with the comforting assurance, "It will do."
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+These are but specimen illustrations of the pleasure and exhilaration
+which come to those who "go-a-fishing" for salmon. But the pastime
+holds its votaries for other reasons than the mere excitement it
+affords them. A diversion which reaches only to the material of our
+natures can never acquire a permanent place in the affections of men of
+thoughtful habit. It is proof, therefore, of the satisfying and
+elevating character of the gentle art, that its disciples never weary
+of the pleasure it affords them. Indeed, the most enthusiastic anglers,
+and those who best illustrate its refining and invigorating influence,
+are those who have passed into "the sere and yellow leaf" with rod and
+reel as their inseparable companions. Like the virtues, it grows by
+what it feeds upon; and as the sun becomes more and more attractive in
+its mellow beauty, as it silently and gently sinks from view, so do the
+pleasures of angling become increasingly fascinating to its happy
+votaries as they near the gateway of their final rest. Ah! unhappy they
+who, in making haste to be rich, fail to avail themselves of the
+opportunity which angling affords to garner up such pleasant memories
+as would cast perennial rays of refreshing sunshine upon the too often
+sombre pathway of old age!
+
+GEORGE DAWSON.
+
+
+
+
+EXECUTIVE PATRONAGE AND CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.
+
+
+Late writers on the English Constitution draw a contrast rather
+unfavorable to us between their Parliamentary and our Presidential
+Government. Our Executive is a fixture for four years and reeligible.
+He is responsible, and not shielded by any such legal fiction as "The
+king can do no wrong." In Great Britain, the cabinet, selected from the
+legislature, is the real executive body. "In its origin it belongs to
+the legislative part of the State; in its functions it belongs to the
+executive part." By a conventional code, the ministry or "the
+Government" can be changed by a vote of want of confidence, or by a
+defeat of the ministry in the House of Commons on a governmental
+measure. Our Cabinet holds a subordinate position. The Constitution
+contemplates, but does not define, "executive departments." Seven have
+been established by law, some of which have been divided into inferior
+departments called bureaus. The Cabinet is the political family of the
+President. The "heads of departments" are his constitutional advisers,
+and aid in the execution of his high functions. They are not held
+responsible for good government, are not liable to votes of censure for
+their policy, although for convenience sake, a kind of semi-official
+connection subsists betwixt them and the Federal Legislature.
+
+The "principal officer in each of the executive departments" has a
+staff of subordinates. The various officers of the United States
+constitute the machinery of government, and the appointment of a large
+proportion of them is vested in the President. These various civil
+officers, so appointed, are for the execution of public business. The
+conduct of public business and the care of the public interests are,
+under the President's supervision and control, largely committed to
+these functionaries. With the growth of the country in territorial
+area, population, and wealth, the enormous increase of taxation and
+expenditures and the assumption by the Federal Government of State
+duties and prerogatives, the number of officials has increased to
+100,000. The civil list in 1859 numbered 44,527; in 1875, 94,119. The
+rolls show a larger list of paid dependents since the war than there
+was during the war. All these officers hold their places by the tenure
+of the President's will. They are to be found in every neighborhood in
+the Union, and constitute a large army, dangerous to the welfare and
+perpetuity of the republic.
+
+The theory is that all public offices are for administrative efficiency
+and the public weal. Up to the beginning of General Jackson's term of
+office, there had been, during the forty years of his six predecessors,
+112 removals of such officers as required for their appointment "the
+advice and consent of the Senate." These few removals were not made
+from caprice, or to punish enemies, or to reward partisans, but for
+cause and by strict rule. The power of removal was exerted so
+exceptionally, only for just and salutary purposes, and was never used
+as an instrument of party success. Public policy dictated its exercise.
+Offices were not regarded as the private property of the President, or
+as the perquisites of a party, but as trusts for the general good.
+
+General Jackson's accession to the Presidency began a revolution.
+Differences of opinion were punished by removal from office, and
+partisanship was rewarded with places of profit. His successors have
+adhered too closely to a precedent which has almost solidified into a
+party law, or a principle of American politics. No party can claim
+exemption from the sin of using the civil list for party ends. The
+Whig, Democratic, and Republican parties, in the distribution of
+"patronage," in Federal, State, and municipal governments, are alike
+obnoxious to censure. The poison has infiltrated every vein and artery
+of the body politic. Every branch of federal and of State service has
+suffered from the vicious maxim that offices are spoils to be divided
+among the victors in a party contest. Too often the condition precedent
+to appointment is unquestioning submission to party decrees,
+indiscriminate support of party candidates and party measures. The
+right to remove incumbents is now a conceded Presidential prerogative,
+acquiesced in by all parties.
+
+The power of removal, under the influence of a false political
+philosophy, has been perverted into the duty of removal so as to give
+the offices to the winning party. A new President of different politics
+from his predecessor is expected to make sweeping changes, amounting
+even to a "total administrative cataclysm." The appointment of a
+political antagonist excites surprise, and requires an explanation or
+apology. Experience of the working of an office, ability, honesty,
+fitness, are not conclusive. "Off with his head," is the remorseless
+decree when a place is needed for a partisan. Each incoming
+administration is bedeviled by hordes of applicants, as greedy as the
+daughters of the horseleech. The plagues of Egypt scarcely symbolize
+the number and clamorousness of the mendicants. General Harrison,
+honest old man, in one month fell a victim to the tormentors, and
+General Taylor's death was probably hastened by a similar infliction.
+
+Executive patronage is dependent on the revenue and expenditures of the
+Government and on the number of persons employed by the Government, or
+who receive money from the public treasury. To appoint and remove at
+will is a dangerous prerogative, royal in its proportions. Some of the
+ablest statesmen and constitutional lawyers have denied the right of
+the President to remove without cause, especially in such appointments
+as required the concurrence of the Senate.[3] The practice of the
+Government seems to have settled the question differently. Conceding
+_pro hoe vice_ the constitutionality, the evils, as illustrated in our
+history, are none the less great.
+
+      [3] Reports to the Senate in 1825, 1835, and 1844, contain able
+      discussions of "Executive Patronage."
+
+I. There has been a reversal of the theory of our institutions in
+respect to officers. In 1835 Mr. Webster said in the United States
+Senate:
+
+    Government is an agency created for the good of the people, and
+    every person in office is an agent and servant of the people.
+    Offices are created not for the benefit of those who are to fill
+    them, but for the public convenience; and they ought to be no more
+    in number, nor should higher salaries be attached to them, than the
+    public service requires. The difficulty in practice is to prevent a
+    direct reversal of all this; to prevent public offices from being
+    considered as intended for the use and emolument of those who can
+    obtain them. There is a headlong tendency to this.... There is
+    another, and perhaps a greatly more mischievous result, from
+    extensive patronage in the hands of a single magistrate, and that
+    is, that men in office have begun to think themselves mere agents
+    and servants of the appointing power, and not agents of the
+    Government or the country.
+
+Offices are looked upon as the prey of political parties, as spoils to
+be distributed. The well-being of the country, with appointer and
+appointees, becomes a secondary consideration. Office-holders, holding
+by the "tenure of partisan zeal and service" are regarded as receiving
+pap from the party, and therefore under special obligations to make
+sacrifices for its success. Hence federal officers, holding their
+places for the benefit of the party, are assessed for contributions for
+electioneering purposes and the recalcitrants are dismissed or tabooed.
+This system is unfavorable to manly independence. Fearing removal,
+incumbents become parasites, with chameleon facility adapting the
+complexion of their politics to the color of the appointing power.
+Government becomes also an almoner to bestow charities. Pensioning,
+never justifiable except in special exigencies, becomes the rule. Some
+apprehension of the evils of governmental allowances without an
+equivalent possibly induced Dr. Johnson, in the first edition of his
+dictionary, to define "Pensioner, a slave of the State, hired by a
+stipend to obey his master."
+
+II. Government becomes a kind of close corporation for the benefit of
+the party in power. Party adherents, pets, favorites, get the
+dividends; civil service thus affording, as Mr. Bright phrased it for
+England, "a system of out-door relief to the poorer saplings of
+aristocracy." As a necessary consequence, patriotism and attachment to
+principles among those corporators become feebler, and servility to
+party stronger.
+
+III. The Government suffers in its administration. In appointments
+other tests than the Jeffersonian, "Is he honest, is he faithful, is he
+capable?" are applied. The right to employment should grow solely out
+of superior capacity and attainments. Official patronage is a trust for
+promoting the general welfare. The present system, forgetful of general
+interests, instead of securing the best men, often gets instead the
+incapable. A good official system is hardly possible with constant
+changes in the _personnel_. If continuance in office be dependent on
+other considerations than discharge of duties, a stimulus to diligence
+and fidelity is taken away. The best motive for learning a task
+thoroughly should be furnished. Not unfrequently one defeated in his
+aspirations for Congress receives a Federal appointment. A popular
+condemnation becomes a stepping stone to a higher position. What should
+be regarded as a rebuke is made a plea for promotion.
+
+IV. The tendency of the abuse of Executive patronage is to make those
+in the civil service mere placemen and mere tools or willing servitors
+of the President. To quote again from Mr. Webster:
+
+    A competition ensues, not of patriotic labors, not of rough and
+    severe toils for the public good, not of manliness, independence,
+    and public spirit, but of complaisance, of indiscriminate support
+    of executive measures, of pliant subserviency and gross adulation.
+
+By personal effort, by money contributions, through the press, in
+nominating assemblies, at the polls, office-holders work for him in
+whom they have their official being. An incumbent of the Presidency, a
+candidate for reelection, has a large number of men and their families
+interested in his success, and swayed by the temptation of interest to
+secure his renomination and reelection; add to these the hungry
+expectants, whose eyes and hopes are fixed on Washington, and it can be
+seen that the power and the practice of giving offices to partisans
+operate on the fears of all who are in and the hopes of those who wish
+to get in. The Executive himself is armed with undue influence and
+power and subjected to a temptation to dishonesty if he covets a
+reelection. The "spoils" in the hands of a President, granted or
+withdrawn at pleasure, give fearful odds in a popular or party contest.
+Our Presidential elections are pervaded by an element not favorable to
+fairness or purity. A dangerous mass of private and personal interest
+is thrown into the scale, and selfishness usurps the place of
+patriotism and a sense of public duty.
+
+V. Distribution of so many and such valuable offices as party rewards
+degrades parties from organizations upon principle, for patriotic
+political ends, to mere combinations for expediency and for personal
+ends. Because of the power and patronage of the President; and the
+centralizing effects of federal legislation, all State and local
+elections are subordinate to the quadrennial agitation for the highest
+federal officer. So ramifying is this federal influence, the election
+of a constable in Montana is decided by his relation to a "national"
+party. State and county officers are nominated upon "national"
+platforms, and support of Hayes or Tilden determines governors,
+Congressmen, judges, superintendents of education, mayors, sheriffs,
+policemen. Local interests are subordinated to the Presidential
+struggle. The attention and ability of the people of a State are
+diverted from State development to national concerns, or rather to the
+question, who is to be empowered to bestow Executive patronage? In the
+mind of the masses the President is the government. A Presidential
+election has ceased to be a contest of ideas, or to decide a political
+policy. It is a gigantic party struggle. Overwhelming importance
+attaches to it, because the victor has a cornucopia of "patronage
+bribery" to give to whom he likes. In other days, the canvass which
+preceded elections was educatory. Able men, on opposite sides, face to
+face, discussed grave questions of constitutional law or federal
+policy. In the nullification controversy of South Carolina there was a
+war of giants. The speeches of O'Neal, Harper, Johnston, Hamilton,
+Hayne, Preston, McCuffie, and Calhoun were such masterly expositions of
+the relations of the States to the general Government as would have
+done credit to Edmund Burke. In other contests, North and South, were
+discussions by our ablest statesmen of fundamental principles of higher
+abstractions. In the last contest much of the "stump" speaking was the
+veriest twaddle, an appeal to prejudice, and hate, and sectionalism,
+full of scurrility, personality, and vulgar anecdote. The press, so
+essential to free institutions, partakes of the degeneracy, and thus
+politics is degraded from a noble science to a disgusting scramble for
+spoils.
+
+VI. Treating the civil service as legitimate rewards for partisan zeal
+diminishes official responsibility, lowers the standard of official
+integrity, and stimulates corruption by augmenting the means of
+corruption. The rapid growth of patronage, far beyond what is required
+for efficiency of administration, is readily suggestive of evil. A
+spirit of subserviency is not favorable to the growth of the highest
+qualities. Ceasing to regard office as a trust for the public good, the
+holder loses a strong motive for integrity. Favoring servility, or
+sycophancy, to conciliate superiors, very easily loosens the restraints
+of conscience. Vigorous attachment to principles yields to devotion to
+party. Public morals are corrupted by false maxims, by increase of
+temptation, by loss of patriotism. Places are multiplied for partisans.
+Contracts are let to partisans. Frauds, the logical consequence of
+lowering office to be mere pay for party services, are covered up, or
+palliated, to prevent damage to "the party."
+
+If these evils be not greatly exaggerated, reform seems an imperative
+necessity. It is hard to correct governmental abuses. Society is prone
+to run in ruts. To suggest the supernumerariness of an office, or a
+reduction of salaries, raises a howl among the _ins_ as if the
+liberties of the country were imperilled. Those useful legislators,
+like George W. Jones of Tennessee, and Holman of Indiana, who watch for
+abuses and scent afar a "ring," are always unpopular. It is needful to
+get back to first principles and to indoctrinate the public anew with
+correct notions as to the object of an office and the duties of a
+public officer. The Koran says: "A ruler who appoints any man to an
+office when there is in his dominions another man better qualified for
+it sins against God and against the State." To dismiss a faithful and
+capable incumbent to gratify party resentment, or to gratify a friend,
+is utterly in disharmony with the purpose of administrative machinery.
+Our Government is an agency for the public weal. It is not in an
+antagonistic position to "the people of the United States," but their
+servant to accomplish their legal will and to promote their prosperity.
+People were not created for offices, but offices for the people. As
+soon as the public service ceases to be subserved the offices should at
+once cease. While the office is necessary, and the incumbent discharges
+its duties satisfactorily, there should be no needless change. A
+citizen accepting a public trust, and doing his duty faithfully, should
+be allowed to enjoy his manhood and be protected from the exactions of
+a superior power. If, as has been asserted, "no vacancies" greet the
+eyes of applicants for places in Washington, it is a hopeful sign and
+most praiseworthy.
+
+When vacancies do occur, or new offices are created, some competition
+among the candidates for employment would ensure more efficient
+service. Superiority of parts or attainments is a better qualification
+for bureau or clerical duties than activity in a ward meeting. Men of
+the best energy and capacity are not likely to be obtained by an
+arbitrary partition of places among the districts whose representatives
+sustain the Administration. England has reached the competitive test by
+slow steps. Employees in the several departments were, for a long time,
+clerks to the minister, and were paid out of the fees received from
+those who had business with the department. The sale of offices and
+exaction of fees occasioned serious abuses. By several acts of
+Parliament in this century, a civil service has been established, a
+public status assigned to clerks, and their salaries are now paid out
+of the public exchequer. By the test of competitive examinations, and
+by placing on a better basis the relation betwixt public servants and
+the nation, the service has been much improved.
+
+The application of some competitive test for certain grades of office
+might be supplemented by requiring the President, in all cases of
+nominations to the Senate to fill vacancies, to state the reasons for
+removal, if any had been made. Laws might be passed modifying the
+absoluteness of the right of removal. In 1789, in a discussion in the
+House of Representatives, Mr. Madison said:
+
+    To displace a man from office whose merits require that he should
+    be continued in it would be an act of maladministration, and the
+    wanton removal of meritorious officers would subject the President
+    to impeachment and removal from his own high trust.
+
+The Constitution of the Confederate States had this provision:
+
+    The principal officer in each of the executive departments, and all
+    persons connected with the diplomatic service, may be removed from
+    office at the pleasure of the President. All other civil officers
+    of the executive departments may be removed at any time by the
+    President, or other appointing power, when their services are
+    unnecessary, or for dishonesty, incapacity, inefficiency,
+    misconduct, or neglect of duty; and when so removed, the removal
+    shall be reported to the Senate, together with the reasons
+    therefor.
+
+A further provision forbade the President to reappoint to the same
+office, during the recess, any person who had been rejected by the
+Senate.
+
+To make the President ineligible, as was done in the Confederate States
+Constitution, and as President Hayes recommends, would take from the
+Executive the temptation to use the appointing power to receive a
+renomination or reelection. As the term of a Chief Magistrate draws
+near its end, and he becomes more deeply interested in being his own
+successor, he may make his appointments and direct his administration
+to increase popularity and accomplish his own ambitious ends. He might
+look to party management, and ward meetings, and manipulated caucuses,
+rather than to the general welfare. The evil of re-eligibility is
+increased by the failure of our electoral colleges to effect what was
+designed. These colleges have no independence, and most mechanically
+register the decrees of caucuses. What was intended to be a check on
+party has become its pliant instrument.
+
+As essential to reduction of Executive patronage, and disarming the
+President of the dangerous influence and power growing out of it, there
+should be a persevering and a large reduction of federal expenditures.
+General Jackson, in 1836, truly said, "No political maxim is better
+established than that which tells us that an improvident expenditure of
+the public money is the parent of profligacy, and that no people can
+hope to perpetuate their liberties who long acquiesce in a policy which
+taxes them for objects not necessary to the legitimate and real wants
+of their government." Large revenue and expenditure give an excuse if
+they do not make the necessity for increasing the number of persons
+employed by the government. With expenditure comes an army of agents,
+contractors, officers interested in keeping up extravagance and
+multiplying officials. Patronage flows from the fountain of public
+income. To reduce patronage and ensure honest government, it is
+indispensable that the Government should extort no more money from the
+people than is needful for a just and economical administration. Our
+governments, federal, State, and municipal, need to be taught, by
+constitutional limitation and a sound public opinion, that a citizen's
+property is his as against every demand, except for a just, honest, and
+economical administration of the government.
+
+As helping reform and growing out of it, a reorganization of parties is
+needed. The present parties have "played out." Parties are essential in
+republics, but they should represent intelligent patriotism, be
+organized on practical, living issues, and be vitalized by principles.
+Who is wise enough to tell what differentiates the Republican and the
+Democratic parties? What distinctive principles divide them? Who can
+"locate" the parties on such questions as tariff, currency, expenditure,
+civil service reform, character of the government, boundary between
+reserved and delegated powers? Issues like secession and slavery, no
+longer disputed or doubted, should have no influence in forming or
+keeping alive parties. Obsolete shibboleths should not alienate those
+who are otherwise agreed. A party not crystallizing around vital issues,
+not having "the dignity of contention" for principles, becomes a machine
+to put up A or put down B. The _ins_ and the _outs_ make now the two
+centres of the dividing parties, which have become cliques and cabals
+controlled by caucuses.
+
+This is a most opportune season for reorganization of political
+parties, and a readjustment on broad and living issues. It is wrong to
+be carrying about the dead corpse of the past. A new generation has
+grown up since 1860. The spirit of the age is not what it was two
+decades since. The young men know next to nothing of Whiggery and
+Democracy. To make secession, or slavery, or the "bloody shirt" a
+rallying cry, is as absurd as to exhume the embargo or the alien and
+sedition laws. The inertia of society is great, and men cohere from
+traditions of the past. The reform bill of 1832 was long delayed in
+England, in its practical results, because the statesmen of 1832
+continued in public life. So now effete parties are kept alive for
+partisan or patriotic ends by those who seem not to have realized that
+we are living in a new America.
+
+It seems a plain duty to gather up what survives of our constitutional
+federal republic, of the labors of the past, and with a catholic spirit
+to combine for reformation of abuses, for national conciliation, for
+purifying parties, for saving the republic. A party equally of order
+and of progress, in favor of retrenchment, economy, low taxes, sound
+currency, civil service reform, preservation of State and of federal
+honor, strict adherence to the Constitution, keeping federal and State
+governments within their separate and defined spheres of action, while
+encountering the hostility of extremists, would rally to its support
+enough of intelligence and patriotism to repress sectionalism and hate,
+and bring our lately discordant States into a fraternal union, based on
+fixed law, mutual toleration and respect, and exact justice.
+
+J. L. M. CURRY.
+
+
+
+
+THREE PERIODS OF MODERN MUSIC.
+
+
+In "Punch's Almanack" for this year is an illustration, in three
+compartments, of the subject "Music at Home." The first is called
+"Drawing-room Music of the Past." A young lady sits at one of those
+little spindle-legged piano-fortes, hardly larger than a large
+washstand, and somewhat shaped like one, with which our grandmothers
+and great grandmothers, and the men who composed music for them, were
+not only satisfied, but delighted. Her hands are moving, light and
+level, over the little key-board, and the dainty turn of her head shows
+that she is captivated by the sounds that she is eliciting. Around her
+is gathered a family group of some dozen people, old and young, from
+the grandfather to the little grandchild who sits upon a hassock at her
+lovely mother's knee. They are all entranced by the music. Plainly
+there is not a sound in the room but that which is produced by the fair
+performer. The souls of all that company are enchained; their hearts if
+not their eyes are brimming with emotion. A spell of tenderness and
+grace has been cast upon them; and they have given themselves up to him
+who has woven it. The faces of all are lightly tinged with sadness, but
+it is an elevated and elevating sadness; a sadness that is mingled with
+a joy silent, deep, and strong, a joy far above hilarity. The most
+impressive figure of the group is the grandfather, who sits with his
+arm lying listlessly across the instrument and his head slightly bowed,
+as, we may be sure, he is carried back by the sweet strains to a time
+when one who does not appear in the group was by his side in all the
+charms of early womanhood. The composition is so touching, so filled
+with purest, sweetest sentiment, that it is impossible to look at it
+long without being moved almost to tears by the tender and serene
+pathos with which it is pervaded. The legend tells us that the music
+which has wrought this spell is "A Melody by Mozart."
+
+In the second compartment of the triptique, which is labelled
+"Drawing-room Music of the Present," a young lady also sits at a
+piano-forte. It is a grand, a very grand piano-forte; a tremendous
+institution, the invisible end of which stretches far into infinitude.
+Plainly it is one of those awful instruments which have received a gold
+medal at all the expositions. The lid is propped up so that it looks
+like a gigantic trap set to catch some gigantic bird or vermin. The
+performer's shoulders and arms, which emerge in a somewhat alarming
+manner from their scanty covering, are in violent agitation. Her hands
+are flung into the air as they poise for an instant over the upper part
+of the long key-board, ready to pounce down upon the shuddering notes
+below, and from the great gaping instrument a flock of startled and
+affrighted quavers, semiquavers, and demisemiquavers is pouring out
+pell-mell over the assembled hearers. Hearers! No. The great
+drawing-room is filled with a crowd of people who have evidently been
+bidden to listen to the music. But they are undergoing it with stolid
+indifference as they talk or try to talk, either almost shouting or
+whispering into each other's deafened ears and bewildered brains. The
+only person who takes any interest in the performance is the performer
+herself. The motive power here is "A brilliant fantasia for the piano
+by Signor Rumblestominski."
+
+The third compartment is entitled "Drawing-room music of the Future."
+Here five performers are laboring at and around the piano-forte, the
+top of which has been taken off. They are all men; tough-brained-looking
+fellows: one a violinist, one a violoncellist; two are at the key-board,
+and one stands music in hand and mouth wide open. They are toiling as if
+at day's work by the piece; and all are singing. They are engaged upon
+"Twenty-four consecutive interdependent Logarithmic studies for Violin
+and Violoncello, with Double Differential and Integral accompaniment for
+the Piano-forte, supplemented by Unisonal Descriptive and Corroborative
+vocal exposition in five modern languages." They have evidently got well
+into harness, and have dragged their hearers some distance over their
+rugged road, which is a "hard road to travel." The mass of the assembled
+company are rushing madly for the door. On an ottoman in the foreground
+sit five victims, four young ladies and a bald-headed old gentleman, who
+are all fast asleep. At one side a determined fellow sits with his
+elbows on his knees grasping his head with both hands, resolved to
+endure unto the end. Not even in the faces of the performers is there
+the slightest manifestation of the soothing, the elevating, or even the
+pleasurably exciting influence which belongs peculiarly to music. With
+dogged determination they are working out a knotty intellectual problem.
+They do not exhibit even the tickled vanity of musical virtuosity; they
+are there--to use a cant phrase of musical criticism--to "interpret"
+what the composer has with infinite toil and trouble put upon paper; and
+very tough work they find it; somewhat like reading mathematics written
+in the Basque language. And their souls are unmoved. The musical sounds
+go through their ears straight to their brains, leaving their hearts
+untouched. They are engaged in an intellectual process.
+
+Of these designs, the last two, although they are laughable
+caricatures, express with very little exaggeration (allowing for the
+notes made visible in the second) the character, the quality, and the
+effect of certain schools of musical composition. The first is not a
+caricature, as any one will see; but although it is quite the contrary,
+it is not on the other hand idealized. It merely represents with
+skilful touch and felicitous arrangement what might have actually
+occurred and what doubtless did many times occur in drawing-rooms at
+the end of the last century and the first years of this; indeed, what
+might happen and even does happen now. There has been a change in
+costume and in manners; but there is none in the effect upon musical
+souls of a melody by Mozart.
+
+And these designs illustrate three periods in modern music: two through
+which it has passed and one upon which it seems now to be entering. By
+modern music I mean music since the days of Palestrina. What was
+written before that time, nearly or remotely, although it may have
+historical importance and interest, is of little or no value as music.
+Indeed, it hardly is music as we know and feel it. Not that I would
+imply that Palestrina invented modern music, or even that he alone of
+contemporary composers was a gifted and accomplished master of his art.
+Roland de Lattre, called Orlandus Lassus, chief of the Gallo-Belgic
+school, might dispute the palm with him.[4] But this conceded, it
+remains that in Orlandus Lassus we have the best product of the ancient
+school, adhering to the ancient style and bringing it to its highest
+perfection; while in Palestrina we have the beginning of the modern
+school and style, the distinctive trait of which may broadly be said to
+be the use of melody and harmony of independent value under constant
+governance of the principle of tonality. Before the time of
+Palestrina--say A.D. 1550, he having been born about 1524 and having
+died about 1594, which year closed the life of Orlandus Lassus, who was
+born in 1520--before that time music was polyphonic. But it was not
+merely, as that term implies, many-voiced, or in several parts; for
+that it is now; but the parts moved without any aesthetic relation to
+each other, and with the same independence of the aesthetic effect of
+the whole. Their progression was according to certain rules; but these
+conformed to, the object of the composer seemed to be to make his work
+as intricate as possible. Certain figures--for they could hardly be
+called melodies--one or two or three or more--were repeated again and
+again and again by the various voices, each one going or seeming to go
+its own way, entirely regardless of the others--regardless of anything
+except the rules of the counterpoint of the day. The combining result
+was a tangled skein of sound which could be unravelled only as it had
+been put together, by rule. Instead of an emotional expression it was
+an intellectual puzzle in sound. Moreover the whole composition was
+without any bond of unity; it was, so to speak, and in its effect it
+was really, in no particular key.
+
+      [4] For an able setting forth of the claims of Orlandus Lassus,
+      see Frederic Louis Ritter's excellent "History of Music," First
+      Series, published by Oliver Ditson & Co.
+
+Upon music in this condition there came about three hundred years ago a
+great change. Polyphonetic writing gave way, gradually but with some
+rapidity, to the movement of parts in a harmony of independent absolute
+beauty--that is, beauty, in the simple succession of its chords--and to
+the union with this harmony of a leading melody, also valuable for its
+independent, absolute beauty. Thus came into being what I have
+heretofore called "absolute music," which has been known to the world
+only about three hundred years, and in its full and complete
+development only about one hundred and fifty. At the same time, with
+this use of harmony and melody of absolute beauty and value, came in a
+great controlling principle or law, upon the operation and influence of
+which, in fact, the aesthetic effect of the new music chiefly if not
+entirely depended. This law or principle was tonality. I have been told
+that in a publication which I have never seen--although most probably
+it has been sent to me, to go, with the greater part of the printed
+matter and not a few of the letters that I receive, unread into my
+waste-basket--I have been held up as a dreadful example of musical
+incompetence on the ground that I cannot "appreciate Wagner's
+magnificent [or splendid, or something of that sort] tonality." Of
+course it cuts me to the heart to show that my criticaster was
+thoroughly ignorant of the very meaning of the word that he used--a
+word which is the name of a principle of paramount importance and
+significance in the art of music, which, I believe, he in some sort
+professes. But the demands of truth are inexorable.
+
+Tonality is something which cannot be magnificent or splendid; nor can
+it be attributed to a composer as being in the slightest degree a claim
+to admiration. Indeed, one composer can hardly possess it in a greater
+degree than another; and the writer of an ephemeral ballad, or of
+"Thou, thou reignest in this bosom," has it, although not more largely,
+with stronger manifestation than Mozart or Beethoven. And yet it so
+happens that Wagner is in his later works _less_ governed by the law of
+tonality than any other known composer of the day.
+
+Tonality is simply the relation of a musical phrase, or air, or longer
+composition, to a keynote or tonic chord. To this tonic chord the
+harmonies of the composition must bear a close and constantly felt
+relationship. The harmony almost always opens with this chord, and
+continually recurs to it; and either in its simple form or in some of
+its inversions, it, its dominant and subdominant, are the perceptibly
+ruling harmonies of the composition; and upon this tonic chord the
+composition always ends. That is tonality; nothing more nor less; and
+to the influence of this principle of tonality is due the distinctive
+character of modern music. Strange as it will probably seem to most
+amateurs, news as we have already seen it is to one professor, it was
+not until after Palestrina's time that the law of tonality asserted
+itself in music, and that compositions were clearly written with any
+tonic, that is, manifestly and strikingly in any particular key.[5] But
+it so happens that Wagner's method of composition has actually led him
+somewhat away from this principle of tonality. Any musical person will
+see that in recitative there is much less relation of harmony to the
+tonic than in airs or in choruses; and Wagner's prolonged, almost
+endless recitatives are wearisome partly from the very fact that we are
+so long at sea drifting hither and thither without the rudder of
+tonality. But what did this matter to the criticaster? He had heard the
+word tonality, and it was a round, mouth-filling word, somewhat new
+withal, and therefore good for use against an ignoramus. Perhaps he
+thought it meant sonority or something of the kind; or he connected it
+with that lovely phrase "tone-poem." Well, in any case, it has served
+his purpose astonishingly.
+
+      [5] It is not necessary that I should give authority for this to
+      any competent person who is acquainted with the music of the
+      ancient composers; but whoever chooses to do so may find the
+      subject fully discussed in Helmholtz's great work, _passim_.
+
+After the introduction of the principle of tonality music developed
+with remarkable rapidity. In one hundred and fifty years it made more
+progress toward an ideal beauty and as a means of emotional expression
+than it had made in the thousands of years that had passed since the
+first note was sung. For by this principle of tonality, melody and
+harmony as we know them became possible. All that went before was
+either the vague, formless, unsymmetrical production of popular mood
+and fancy, or the dry formula-work of musical pedants. And yet within a
+century we have such a result as Stradella's divine _Aria di chiesa Se
+i miei sospiri_, which, whether for its melody, its harmony, or its
+emotional expression, intense yet kept within the bounds of a lofty and
+almost serene dignity, is unsurpassed by any vocal work which has been
+since produced. It has been said by some that this air was not written
+by Stradella. M. Fetis, however, does not doubt it; and the result of
+the discussion is that it is assigned to the great Italian singer. The
+story of his having saved his life by singing it--two assassins who
+followed him into a cathedral to put him to death for having robbed a
+nobleman of his beautiful mistress having been disarmed and sent off
+repentant by the charm of his voice and of the music--is probably known
+to many of my readers. Did any of them ever hear in a composition by
+Wagner or Liszt, or any of that crew, a melody of which it could be
+believed or for a moment supposed that it would produce such an effect,
+even if it were sung by a seraph?
+
+It was not, however, until the first quarter of the last century that
+what is in a large sense the modern school of music came to full
+growth. Then appeared Bach and Handel. They came suddenly; as suddenly
+as Marlow and Shakespeare into the field of dramatic poetry, as
+suddenly as Raphael and Titian into that of painting. Not indeed
+without roots in the past and a growth from them, but with a
+marvellously quick and strong development, and an unfolding of flower
+and fruit that seemed as if it were--as indeed it was--the blooming of
+a century plant. And as is ever the case in art, the utmost limit of
+attainment seems to have been reached at the first bound. What was
+dramatic poetry before the half century which began with Marlow and
+Shakespeare? What was painting before the like period of its glory? And
+what have either been since? This position may be claimed for Handel,
+with the fullest recognition of the genius of Mozart (Haydn, great,
+enchanting, truly inspired as he was, is yet out of the question), and
+even of the almost awful genius of Beethoven. But when we remember that
+the Hallelujah Chorus, _Lascia chio pianza_, the renowned _Largo_ in G
+so grandly performed by Mr. Thomas's orchestra at his last subscription
+concert, are from the same hand, and that these are only examples
+(which I cite because they are so well known) of a creative power which
+seems to have been equally great and various in its manifestations--when
+we take into consideration the healthiness, the virility of Handel's
+tone of thought, there being, I believe, in all his known works, not a
+single passage marked by morbid feeling or even exaggerated sentiment,
+although of intensest feeling there is overpowering expression, as for
+example in the _Largo_ just referred to, and when we give due weight to
+the copiousness of his production, he being the most voluminous of all
+the great composers, if we measure his works by their quantity and not
+by their numbers, in which an oratorio or an opera would count only one,
+we can hardly hesitate, except in favor of Beethoven, in reckoning him
+as the greatest creative mind in music. And as to Beethoven, deeply as
+he sunk his shaft into the profound of human emotion, mightily as he
+moves us, deftly as he expresses even the lighter moods of feeling
+(rarely, however, without some passing touch which, if pushed a little
+further, might become almost fierceness), is there not sometimes, and
+perhaps more than sometimes, a morbidness, noble, magnificent, but still
+morbidness, in his moods? We are overwhelmed by the grandeur, and are
+swallowed up in the gloom of his graver compositions; but when we emerge
+are we in as healthy a state of mind as that in which we find ourselves
+after listening to Handel or reading Shakespeare--even if we read such
+tragedies as "Hamlet," "Othello," and "King Lear"? Then, too, it must be
+remembered how carefully Beethoven nursed his genius; how regardless he
+was of every consideration except the expression of his own thought; and
+how comparatively limited was his productiveness, or certainly his
+production.
+
+As to his moodiness, it must, on the other hand, be considered that it
+is the peculiar function of music to express moods. Man's soul is
+stirred by emotions which cannot be given utterance in words, and which
+would remain unexpressed but for music, which to the musically
+organized is a means of communication and of sympathy. There is a
+question at least whether an art whose function it is to give
+expression to inward feeling too subtle for words, an expression which
+is above all words, which gives form to the formless and utterance to
+the unspeakable, is not rightfully and of necessity at times morbid and
+moody; whether if it were not so it would not fail in doing that which
+is the very reason of its being. The supremacy lies between Handel and
+Beethoven; and we shall find ourselves inclined to assign it now to one
+and now to the other, according to the mood in which we are, which will
+depend greatly on which of the two we have just heard.
+
+And yet, as to pure music, irrespective of psychological
+significance--that is, the expression of an ideal of beauty in musical
+form--Mozart stands first among all composers. Another mind so fertile
+in thoughts of the finest and highest kind of beauty is unknown in the
+history of any art, Shakespeare being of course always excepted.
+Writing, like Shakespeare, always for money, and not hesitating to put
+his hand to any task that would bring him a return, driven by sharp
+necessity almost to the prostitution of his genius, driven in his
+boyhood, by an exacting father, to write as an infant prodigy for the
+support of the family, dying at the early, and, as far as the mind is
+concerned, the immature, age of thirty-seven, he left behind him, in
+the mass of his compositions, much that was hastily produced merely to
+meet the needs of the moment. And yet in it all what transcendent
+beauty of form! He had rarely even a fitting occasion for the exercise
+of his faculties. Rarely is he not superior to the subject which he
+undertakes to illustrate. Like Shakespeare, he throws away beautiful
+thoughts upon mean and trivial subjects. Contrary to the supposition of
+the Roman Pope, with Mozart it was the jug that was begun to be made
+and the vase that issued from his hand.[6] "Don Giovanni" his greatest
+or at least his richest work, is full of examples of this incongruity
+between the occasion and the production. In a previous paper I pointed
+out an example in the _andante_ of Leporello's catalogue song. Another
+is the trio in masks. Only elsewhere in his own works can be found
+examples of an equally enchanting beauty of musical form. In its
+thought, and in the elevation and finish of that thought, it reaches
+the highest attainable pitch of perfection. This single trio is of more
+worth than all that many composers of repute have written in all their
+lives. For example: If it were a question between the destruction of
+this brief passage and all of Mendelsohn's compositions, the trio
+should be preserved without a moment's hesitation. Just as the Madonna
+Sixtina is worth ten times over all the canvases of Giulio Romano; and
+as a single mutilated figure of the frieze of the Parthenon, or the
+Venus of Milo, outweighs all the perfect marbles of Canova and of
+Thorwaldsen. Such is the transcendent value of the supreme in art.
+
+      [6] Amphora cepit Institui, currente rota cur urceus exit?--_Hor.
+      Ad Pisones._
+
+In all the works of the great composers of the modern school--the only
+real school--of music, from Bach to Beethoven, including Haydn, there
+is a supreme dominant feeling for beauty of form, shown chiefly in
+melody, but hardly less apparent in harmony. Indeed, without this
+feeling they would not have been great. The rule is absolute: no form,
+no art; for art is proportion, symmetry. Melody is a series of musical
+proportions; like a series of arches the lines of which are harmonious.
+These melodic ideas they elaborated with the utmost care. It is
+generally supposed that ideas in art come spontaneously; and of all
+this might seem truest of musical ideas, which are not, like those
+expressed in language, in painting, in sculpture, or in architecture,
+required to conform themselves to a type or a purpose. They do come
+indeed to the musical artist, but not spontaneously in the form in
+which he presents them. They would not come up if they were not in the
+soil; but the soil must be cultivated and the growth must be pruned and
+trained into seeming naturalness and spontaneousness of beauty.
+Milton's lines--
+
+    Where the bright seraphim in burning row
+    Their loud, uplifted angel trumpets blow--
+
+seem like a splendid spontaneous outburst of poetical expression. But
+we know that their splendor and their spontaneous seeming is the result
+of elaboration, of erasure, of interlineation, of recasting. The
+thought we may believe came in a moment, but it was worked with
+consummate care and art into the form in which the poet gave it to the
+world. So it is even with melody, the most spontaneous-seeming part of
+music. We may be sure that even Mozart, most fertile of all composers
+in melody, the greatest master of instrumentation, elaborated his
+themes and his treatment of them, if not on paper, at least in his mind
+before he put his conceptions into score. And the reason, the occasion
+for this elaboration was the desired attainment of the highest possible
+perfection of form. I need hardly say to any musician that I am not
+speaking of technical form, either of harmonic progression or of the
+cast of a composition, as for example the sonata form, the symphonic
+form, the dramatic form, but of the form of intrinsic absolute value
+which appeals to the general craving for and appreciation of beauty.
+This beauty of form cannot be disregarded in any art without failure to
+attain the highest place in the world's estimation, no matter how
+marvellous and admirable the powers displayed in another direction. For
+lack of this excellence Rembrandt can never take the highest place, but
+must be content with the admiration of those who can appreciate his
+mastery of manipulation, a technical excellence. Of all great painters,
+Turner is most imperfect in this respect. But Turner can hardly be said
+to have dealt with form at all. Hence a certain weakness amid all his
+glory. He painted distance, light. Among painters he is the king of
+space, the prince of the powers of the air.
+
+Absolutely essential as beauty of form is in music, the reason of it,
+unlike that of the same quality in other arts, is beyond our
+apprehension. I at least find it so. I have heard it, and seen it upon
+paper, and considered it all my life. I have taken it in at eye and ear
+together. I have read and have pondered; but I never have been able to
+detect musical genius in its working, as I have, or have fancied that I
+have, done in other arts. I can find no reason for the existence of
+this beauty except that it is beautiful. I can see clearly, and I have
+sometimes thought that I could with some satisfactory approach to
+clearness tell in words, what the composer has done; but the how, and
+above all the why, is as much hidden from me as it was from him. For
+that it was unknown to him I am sure, not because I could not discover
+it, but from the very nature of the case.
+
+Beauty of form in music is absolute, independent, self-existent. This
+is true of all natural beauty. There is no obligation upon beauty as
+there is, for instance, upon mathematical truth or moral goodness. But
+in all imitative art there is an obligation of conformity at least to
+an ideal type of what is represented. But music the moment it becomes
+imitative becomes ridiculous; it steps out of the proper limits of the
+art. For example, Haydn's "cheerful roaring lion" and "flexible tiger"
+in the "Creation." But it should be remembered that what is imitative
+and false in that aspect may have an essential beauty given by the
+genius of the composer. For example, the second and the fourth
+movements of the "Pastoral Symphony," and Haydn's own illustration of
+the passage, "softly purling glides through silent glades the limpid
+brook," in Raphael's song, "Rolling in foaming billows."
+
+Music in its higher forms--I will not say its highest, but those which
+bring it within the pale of consideration in aesthetics--is without
+relations of any kind, except those which it bears to the soul of the
+composer and to that of the hearer. Even words are only the occasion of
+it, the suggestion. An embroidery of music with words is like the
+semi-pictorial explanatory addition to the Egyptian temples. The
+hieroglyphics tell us the story indeed, but if we are near enough to
+distinguish them, they only mar the effect of the architecture. So if
+in song the words are for any reason sufficiently salient to attract
+attention to themselves, they mar the music. In sacred music
+innumerable foolish and canting verses have become associated with
+fervor of feeling and sublimity of aspiration because of the music of
+which they have been made the vehicle. We do not really think of the
+words. And so in "Don Giovanni," in "Fidelio," we overlook the
+childishness of the poetry, if it must be called poetry, and regard it
+only as affording suggestions and occasions for the music.
+
+Modern music was presented under these conditions until about half a
+century ago, when beauty of form and emotional expression began to be
+disregarded in favor of finish and brilliancy of execution. This was
+brought about in a great measure by the mechanical improvement of the
+pianoforte and the extension of its scale. This improvement and
+extension were made, it is true, in part to meet the demands of
+performers; but on the other hand, they made performance possible. I
+believe that there has been no more pernicious influence upon music
+than the transformation which the piano-forte has undergone since
+Beethoven's time, and its diffusion over all the world. I do not refer
+to the cruelties which it is daily the means of inflicting upon
+inoffensive families and true lovers of music, but to the effect that
+it has had upon composition and upon performance. The former it has
+helped to be at once flashy, dull, intricate, and shallow; the latter
+it has led to be astonishing. Brilliancy, a crowd of notes, sonority,
+all without beauty of form or emotional suggestiveness--this is the
+music which the modern grand piano-forte has brought upon us. Not only
+piano-forte music, but in a measure all music, has become a brilliant
+fantasia by Signor Rumblestominski. We do not sit in passive silence to
+listen to it; we talk, or are tempted to talk, against it; and the
+praise we give it is not a look of serene joy, with that tinge of
+sadness which Shakespeare had in mind when he made Jessica say, "I'm
+never merry when I hear sweet music," but a clapping of the hands and
+congratulation upon a brilliant triumph. And then we turn aside and go
+on again with our society gabble. Orchestral leaders and performers are
+not content unless they have a very full score to "interpret." They
+must have a big brilliant noise. The pitch has been raised until
+singers shriek, in order that the tone of the instruments may be
+brilliant. Our ears must be shot through and through with piercing
+shafts of sound. The time is quickened until _allegro_ has become
+_presto_, and _presto_ a maddened, indistinguishable rush. Even
+Theodore Thomas loses some of the majesty of the final movement of the
+"Fifth Symphony" by too quick a movement; and in the Trio of the
+Scherzo he drives the basses into a headlong scramble up and down the
+scale. When the clear succession of notes becomes indistinguishable,
+musical form, and with it musical beauty, is lost; and the performance
+becomes a mere victory over musical difficulties. And this quickening
+of the time is exactly what should not have taken place. Our orchestras
+have increased in size and in volume of sound since the days of Mozart
+and Beethoven. As larger bodies, therefore, their movement should be a
+little slower to produce the effect which the great composers had in
+mind. But in our rage for brilliancy we have hastened the movement; as
+if we should make an elephant gallop like a horse. Moreover we have
+fallen into the fatal error of making the finish, if not the difficulty
+of execution, superior to the presentation of beauty in form and in
+expression.
+
+This condition of musical taste has been accompanied or followed--we
+cannot surely say as effect from cause--by a withering of the creative
+musical faculty in all its fairest, highest branches. After Weber's
+death, which deprived the world of the only musician who promised to be
+worthy to follow Beethoven, came Schubert and Mendelssohn, neither of
+them very strong men; the latter decidedly weak, and deficient in
+creative faculty; the former far more fertile and original. Since their
+time there has been a blank in the annals of music of the higher kind.
+The creative faculty seems to be dead. It is not so; for nature is
+exhaustless, and in his due time the new composer will come. But new
+conceptions of beautiful musical forms are unknown to the present
+generation--indeed, were so to the foregoing. There is Schumann; but
+Schumann is only the strongest and best of the non-creative composers.
+He writes very elegantly, with harmonies unexceptionable and pleasing;
+his taste is generally exquisite; his handling of his themes masterly.
+But to what great end? None. He could not create a melody; and his
+harmony is plainly contrived, not conceived. All of Schumann's music
+that I ever heard, from symphony down to piano-forte music, is not
+worth Beethoven's Sonata in C sharp minor, or Mozart's quartet in C.[7]
+They have a certain sort of beauty and charm while you are hearing
+them, but you don't hanker after them; passages from them don't come to
+you when you are alone with troubled thoughts, and comfort you, hearten
+you, and build you up, as the remembered strains of Handel, Mozart, and
+Beethoven do. Simply, they are without real melody: they have only a
+well manufactured imitation of melody. Such enjoyment as they give is
+in a great measure intellectual. We admire the composer's skilful
+musical processes. Hence he is admired by professional musicians. And I
+remark, in passing, that professional criticism in any art, although it
+has a certain value, has not valid, determining power, and is not very
+trustworthy as a guide. It too generally runs on methods, processes,
+technicalities. If you would learn to paint, listen to the criticisms
+of a well instructed, capable painter; but if you would know and feel
+the highest things in art, remain an amateur and study nature and
+Raphael and Titian and Tintoretto.
+
+      [7] No. 6, Breitkopf and Haertel.
+
+As to the other composers who were Schumann's contemporaries, they
+wrote in a condition of hopeless incapacity, except as to their
+acquired mastery of their craft. They are ever uncertain themselves
+what they would be at. Compare them with the real composers. Those men
+knew they had something to do, and they did it. They felt that they had
+something to say, and they said it. These are always about doing
+something; they are ever entangled in some complicated toil of sound,
+out of which they cannot find their way; they are hanging by the very
+eyelids upon some discord that they are afraid to resolve; they are
+always sounding a note of preparation, announcing that they are about
+to do something, which they never do. Their music is written in the
+paulo-post-future tense.
+
+Under such circumstances it is not surprising that music, ceasing to be
+merely beautiful and emotional, has, in its decay, sprouted a fungus
+and monstrous intellectuality. Wagner's musical figures have become as
+intricate, and often as ugly, as those of a Chinese puzzle; and the
+entertainment is to see how they fit each other and the words to which
+they are adapted. In his orchestral work we have the most masterly
+instrumental coloring; a knowledge and an elaboration which is
+unsurpassed, and also uninspired. It is great technical work, and no
+wonder that professional musicians admire it. But what is its real
+value? Take, for example, the finale to the overture to the
+"Meistersinger." It is very impressive materially, and as a work of
+instrumental art. It becomes tremendous from mere muscular activity and
+accumulation of physical force. The violins rush frantically up and
+down the finger-board; the violoncellos are ready to jump over their
+bridges; the trumpets blow blood out of their eyes; and there is
+general frenzy. But what is all this hurly-burly about? What are the
+ideas? Look at them. There are, after all, but three, or it may be
+four, notes in a chord, and a melody is--well, a melody; an
+unmistakable sort of thing, one would think, although so hard to
+define. What is there here of harmony or of melody that would be
+valuable for its own sake? Strip this music of all its instrumental
+elaboration, tone down its noisy self-assertion, and look at the bare
+ideas as they can be played with two hands upon a piano-forte, or with
+four strings in a quartet, and what are they worth? Would a circle of
+cultivated musical people sit entranced by them if they were played
+upon an old harpsichord! No, I take it. And if not, their worth is
+little.
+
+Instrumentation, and all manner of elaboration--orchestral and
+choral--is of value only when it enhances and sets forth ideas,
+melodies, harmonies--in a word, musical forms which in themselves have
+the value which belongs to beauty and expression. Else, like the gift
+of tongues without the spirit of love, it is literally sounding brass
+and tinkling cymbals. There is in some of this work--notably in
+Wagner's--an evidence of sustaining power which deserves and commands a
+certain respect. But such sustaining power, so applied, is like figures
+of caryatides supporting some poor decadent frieze. They bend and
+strain and keep it up. But why, we are tempted to say to them, do you
+strain to keep up that poor, commonplace stuff, which would not be
+looked at if it stood not upon your heads? Let it fall! You are all
+that keep it from tumbling into a dust-heap and seeming the rubbish
+that it is. It seems to be a consciousness of their deficiency in
+melody and in emotional expression which drives such composers of the
+present day as aim to write in the higher style to make their music
+"interdependent, logarithmic, differential, integral, and
+corroborative," and to strive to make up in intellectual elaboration
+what they lack in inspiration.
+
+This condition of things in music is not to be bettered by endeavor.
+Genius alone can do that, when brought into contact with the power of
+appreciating genius. And genius, although conscious of its power, is
+ever ignorant of its tendency, and never works but for its own ends;
+while those who hear and understand its utterances do so with no higher
+purpose than the delight they bring them. When I hear a man talk of
+doing something to elevate his art, however much I may respect his
+taste, his acquirements, or his aims, I then begin to doubt, if I have
+not before doubted, his ability to write a sentence worth reading, to
+make a picture worth looking at, or a song worth hearing.
+
+RICHARD GRANT WHITE.
+
+
+
+
+SPRING.
+
+
+    Spring gives the order, "Forward, march!"
+      'Tis borne along the eager line;
+    Breathes through the boughs of rustling larch,
+      And murmurs in the pine.
+
+    "March!" At the sound, impatient, springs
+      The mountain rill, with rippling glee,
+    And rolling through the valley, brings
+      Its tribute to the sea.
+
+    "March!" and upon each sunny hill
+      Old winter's allies, ice and snow,
+    Start at the music of the rill,
+      And join its onward flow.
+
+    "March!" Down among the fibrous roots
+      Of oaks we hear the summons ring.
+    The long-chilled life-blood upward shoots
+      To hail the coming spring.
+
+    "March!" and along each narrow neck,
+      Across the plain, and up the steep,
+    The spring tide clears the winter's wreck
+      With its resistless sweep.
+
+    Advancing in unbroken lines,
+      New allies rush to join its bands,
+    Till winter, in despair, resigns
+      The sceptre to its hands.
+
+    On southern slopes, in quiet glades,
+      And where the brooklets murmuring run,
+    The grass unsheathes its tiny blades
+      To temper in the sun.
+
+    Flora unfurls her banner bright
+      Above the field of flashing green,
+    And crocus blooms in lines of light
+      Throw back the sunlight's sheen.
+
+    The birds on every budding tree
+      Take up anew the old refrain:
+    The spring has come: rejoice all ye
+      Who breathe its air again.
+
+H. R. H.
+
+
+
+
+DRIFT-WOOD.
+
+
+THE TRAVELLERS.
+
+May brings the travelling season. Thanks to steam and Cook, we can all
+find time for a trip to Florida or Labrador, if not to Lapland and
+Thibet. Travel is a pastime of both sexes, all ages, all sorts and
+conditions of men. Lord Bateman was a noble lord, a noble lord he was
+of high degree; and, adds the ballad, "he determined to go abroad,
+strange countries for to see." Cheek by jowl with Lord Bateman, in the
+railroad car, is Samuel Shears, Esq., his lordship's tailor, on the
+same errand.
+
+"Pa, I think we ought to go to Paris," says matronly Mrs. Brood.
+
+"Why do you think that, my dear?" asks paterfamilias.
+
+"Because I do," rejoins the lady, wheeling in a circle of small radius.
+Impressed by that logic, Brood has his trunks mended, and embarks his
+family on the first available steamer.
+
+Mrs. B's spring of action is that the Breeds have started, or that the
+McBrides went last year. Fashion pries us out of our comfortable
+domesticity, our cozy home-keeping ruts, which we exchange for the
+miseries of inns and the perils of voyaging; precisely as custom,
+gathering at length the force of law, "moves" a hundred thousand
+hapless New Yorkers, more or less, every May, with smash of household
+goods, cost, loss, hurry, flurry, and worry--they exchange houses as in
+the children's game everybody changes "chairs" or "corners" to see who
+will get the worst of it. This is a species of May travelling with all
+its curses and none of its compensations.
+
+Presently our European voyagers will be sending home the tale of their
+misadventures. They fell among the London servants--soft and sweet to
+the face, perfect devils behind your back; stealing all your provisions
+under pretence of perquisites, and drinking enough beer in a week to
+last an American a year; whereas, if you yourself so much as send for a
+glass of ice-water at the hotel, the butler grumbles at the messenger,
+"Those Americans lap water like dogs!" At Paris our pilgrims fall a
+prey to landlords who charge the price of new furniture for every
+microscopic scratch on a chair, besides cheating them out of a thousand
+francs extra rent, as a parting token, on the ground that the laws
+require a certain notice of quitting.
+
+A more agreeable theme will be the people our travellers meet. Whoever
+goes from another American city to New York is struck by the strange
+faces he sees--phizzes and figures that make Hans Breitmann commonplace
+and Nast a portrait painter instead of a caricaturist. Could one have
+suspected such oddities in human shape, such outlandish rigs? The New
+Yorker going to London is still more surprised at the queer-looking
+specimens he sees there, surpassing the fancy of Dickens and
+Cruikshank: plenty of Bagstocks, Peggotys and Skewtons; perfumed old
+beaux, with enormous gloves, too long in the fingers, and with an
+eyeglass held muscularly in one eye socket by screwing up the face; and
+all sorts of people belonging to the last century, and magically coming
+out of bandboxes a hundred years old.
+
+So, at least, writes Augustus from London; and presently, as if whisked
+off by an enchanter, we hear of the youth in Naples, "the noisiest city
+in Europe," he says, where all the people chatter incessantly--"the
+dirtiest city, too, and one of the most delightful." There is something
+enviable to us desk-tethered mortals in these wide-striding rovers who
+one week are in Copenhagen and the next in Constantinople. "Hang it,"
+says Brown, coming down to breakfast in Brussels and finding that Smith
+has gone, "I meant to bid Smith good-by, and forgot it. But I shall run
+across him in Smyrna next month, and can do it then."
+
+Before we have digested the Neapolitan missive of Augustus, and its
+funny account of his fellow voyagers--how the men kissed all their male
+friends at parting, as women do with us, and, after kissing, ran again
+to the car windows to blow and throw last kisses--we see the traveller
+in Toledo, and reeling off his diary to us in some such fashion as
+this: "Here we find Burgos, formerly the capital of Castile and Leon,
+showing signs of former greatness, but now fallen to decay. It has a
+magnificent cathedral, a convent, and a nunnery, in which the people
+seem to have spent all their money, the rest of the city being mostly
+in ruins. Next we come to the Escurial, that vast pile, embracing
+palace, monastery, and cathedral, with burying place for the reigning
+kings. Leaving Madrid for a few moments, we will look at Toledo. Toledo
+is one of the old cities of Spain, and was a place of some importance
+when taken by the Romans, about 200 B.C. It had at one time 200,000
+inhabitants; now but 17,000. What struck me so strangely was, why they
+should build up such a city among these rocky hills, not a tree or
+shrub to be seen outside the city, and very few inside," etc.
+
+I quite like to read these travellers' letters, with their odd jumpings
+from city to city and century to century. True, a man might girdle the
+earth as many times as the Wandering Jew, without reaping a tithe of
+the instruction that Xavier de Maistre got from his "Voyage Autour de
+Ma Chambre"; and again, one untravelled, humorous pen made a small
+Connecticut town more talked of than any other of its size in the
+United States--I mean, of course, Danbury. Still, the exhilaration of
+travel, and its habit of observation, do lend freshness to writing.
+Then the returned traveller has a fund of new ideas for us
+stay-at-homes, and his story is agreeable provided he does not
+pronounce his French and German too abominably. He corrects our fancies
+by his experience. Who does not know Mrs. Norton's "A soldier of the
+Legion lay dying in Algiers," and has not conjured up an image of "fair
+Bingen on the Rhine"? "_Fair_ Bingen!" cries Miss Kate contemptuously,
+when we ask her memory of the place. "Why, Bingen is nothing--not
+handsome, not picturesque, not poetic, not even clean. In fact, it is
+the smelliest place on earth, except Cologne." So the traveller
+modifies our stay-at-home impressions.
+
+Again, we always notice signs of mental growth and widening in our
+returned travellers. Besides, for a time they are less anxious over
+details, less overcome by trivial mishaps; they have an agreeable
+_aplomb_; they bring a certain refreshing atmosphere of leisure to our
+round of careful routine. One palpable danger of the traveller is
+becoming a slave to his guide-book, as some opera-goers are to the
+libretto; he is verifying the assertions of his Murray, when he should
+be seeing the landscape or the cathedral; he spends the time he has for
+picture galleries in checking off the catalogue, as if hired to certify
+that the alleged contents are there. Travellers who see only what the
+books tell them to see bring us home no facts and opinions of value.
+
+The earth has now been so tracked from pole to equator that the
+traveller, to gain the world's attention, must see old things with new
+eyes, or must ferret out new paths and places. Still, for a Stanley
+and a Cameron mankind has immeasurable wonder; so has it for some
+tremendous exploring sportsman like Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Cumming,
+who takes only an ordinary paragraph to describe such an episode as the
+crunching to death of his gun-bearer on a certain Indian "nullah,"
+adding: "This was a sad termination to what had been a brief but
+successful _chasse_--my bag during the trip consisting of seven tigers,
+a panther, and a bear."
+
+As to types of travellers, they have nearly all been drawn--the
+irascible, the erratic, the English, the _nil admirari_, the
+enthusiastic, and so on. Travelling is bad for some people, like Jack
+Peters, who had his cards in Europe printed "Mr. Jacques Petersilli,"
+pretending it to be easier for his European friends to get the hang of
+that title, of which the "silly" part was all acquired across the sea.
+
+The ex-Reverend Christopher Cheeseman, tutor and philosopher, is a
+voyager of a sort perhaps destined to be more generally known among us.
+He visits Europe as often as he can procure his passage and pocket
+money in return for his valuable services as escort and adviser. He
+arranges the preliminaries of purchasing the tickets and outfits, but,
+once afloat, allows little to burden him with anxiety. Aboard ship he
+is recognized as a good teller of stories, some serious but not
+truthful, some comic but not truthful, these last being nicely
+graduated in delicacy from the boudoir to the mess table. Reaching
+England, he has prayers put up in the established church for the safe
+arrival of "Christopher Crozier Cheeseman and party"--the humor being
+that he is only the courier or nominally useful man of the persons who
+pay for him, and whom he lumps as "party." He studies the peerage
+attentively, carefully deciphering the mysteries of the coats of arms
+on the equipages. In England, when visiting the cathedrals, he
+expresses a great desire to be a monk (probably of the _bon vivant_
+sort), and actually pushes his asceticism to the point of attending
+religious services with great regularity; but at Rome the rogue will do
+as Romans do, and may be found any Sunday afternoon listening to the
+band on the Pincio. He likes best to travel as tutor to some ingenuous
+youth, because it comes handy to leave the lad to fight a duel in
+France, or gamble in Germany, or fall in love in Switzerland, while the
+judicious mentor is supplied with funds to take a little diversion on
+his own account, after his arduous duties. But let us stop at the
+threshold of this sketch, because it is plainly one for the skilled
+novelist, rather than the rambling, loitering prattler, to undertake.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+SWINDLERS AND DUPES.
+
+The number of people ready to buy $200 watches for $20, and then to
+find them not worth $10, was made known by a recent exposure of
+pretended Kansas "lotteries." A like eagerness maintains "gift
+concerts" and similar swindles. Conducted honestly, they would earn
+fortunes for their projectors, whose instinct, however, is for a total
+swindle.
+
+The gift swindle is known by its circular, with its voluble assurances
+that "ticket-holders can confide in our honor"; that the drawing is to
+be done from two boxes, a securely blindfolded deacon at one and a real
+blind girl at the other; that all funds received will "remain
+inviolably pledged for prizes and donations"; that the result of the
+drawing of the 9,999 prizes by the 99,990 ticket-holders will be
+telegraphed the same night to all parts of the United States and to
+Mexico and Canada, and the prizes distributed the day following; that
+agents may trust the honesty of the enterprise, "as its founders are
+men of high standing," and so on.
+
+One trick is the "cash assessment on prizes." The investor is notified
+that he has drawn a $150 prize, deliverable on the payment of "the
+usual five per cent. for handling," which sum he will "please forward"
+to the Grand Atlantic and Great Western Monster Gift Carnival and
+Bottle Washer's Library Fund Association. The gudgeon protests that
+there was no such condition on his ticket, but not liking to lose $150
+by grudging $7.50, "forwards" this sum, and receives $150 worth of
+stock in the Seashore Gold-Mining Company, or 3 undivided acres in the
+Atahualpa Swamp--"the directors of the association having recently
+decided to invest the receipts for their wards, the ticket-holders, in
+this splendid property." There really need be no ticket drawing or
+tickets for this swindle, as people who never heard of the enterprise
+can be informed of their luck, and will all the more quickly forward
+their "five per cent."
+
+Some readers may remember B. Sharp & Co.'s fine "gift enterprise,"
+whose drawing was postponed so many times on the plea that "the last
+drawn numbers are as fortunate as the first," as indeed they were. It
+begged ticket-holders to "exhibit to your friends and neighbors the
+many rich presents we have so generously bestowed upon you." The
+"committee" were engaged in the herculean labors of "drawing and
+registering tickets at the rate of 6,000 per week, and in packing and
+expressing prizes"; but alas! "owing to unforeseen expenses we have
+been put to in purchasing presents for our ticket-holders," this is
+what happened:
+
+    _We are compelled to make an assessment of_ 5 PER CENT. _on all
+    prizes over fifty dollars_ ($50) awarded to them; and in order to
+    expedite the business of the distribution in packing and forwarding
+    the gifts, ticket-holders must within _ten days_ after notification
+    of the value of the gift awarded to them, forward to us the amount
+    of per centage, with directions for the packing and expressing of
+    their gift, or else at the expiration of that time it will be
+    forfeited.
+
+Then there was B. Flat's "National Engineers Gift Enterprise," which
+with a spice of humor announced that it was controlled by the class of
+men for whose benefit it was devised--"all engineers." It had as
+"references" a "State senator" of New York and another of Illinois, a
+lithographer, an editor, a hardware merchant, and other like
+distinguished personages, whose callings were proudly set forth,
+presumably to show that they were not mere adventurers. An enlightened
+press, if we may believe the circulars, backed up this "association."
+"Its managers are men of the strictest integrity," said one Milwaukee
+paper; "We believe they will discharge all their obligations to
+purchasers of tickets with punctuality and integrity," said a second;
+"An institution above suspicion, and worthy in every respect of public
+patronage. The managers we believe to be honest, reliable, and
+trustworthy," said a third. "The safest investment of the kind in
+America," said one Chicago paper, unless the circular falsifies;
+"Considered as a sure success," said a second. One New York paper is
+quoted as commending the enterprise, and another as thinking that
+"$30,000 for $2.00 is worth chancing." But when the thing went to
+pieces, and B. Flat escaped on bail, it was announced that "the swindle
+had been exposed by the press," as indeed it was.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+PEGASUS IN HARNESS.
+
+The muse that in our day quits Parnassus to pay gossiping visits among
+the pill-kneaders, and to lounge in the haunts of trade, has of late
+been pressed into service by the guild of beggars. Perceiving,
+doubtless, that fortunes are got in teas, trousers, and tooth washes by
+sheer dint of literary advertising, the mendicants too have quaffed the
+Pierian spring, and now leave their sheets of verses at our doors for
+the accommodating price of "whatever you choose to give." The rogues
+have learned wisdom by experience. When a long-winded legislator
+troubles his fellow Solons with an unwelcome speech, he is sometimes
+gently rebuked by cries of "Oh, print the rest!" That is what the
+professional beggars have learned to do. Habitually cut off in their
+tale of woe at the door sill by an unfeeling "There's nothing for you!"
+they have learned to print the rest, and now before Dora the doormaid
+can utter her formula of rejection, a neat circular is in her hand, on
+which is printed: "Please give this to the lady or gentleman. Will call
+in an hour."
+
+Such, in fact, was the inscription on a printed page left at the Maison
+Quilibet this very morning, purporting to be a "copy of verses by a
+party of mechanics," as indeed one may easily believe that it is, from
+the internal evidence of such stanzas as these:
+
+    For many weeks we work have sought,
+      But work we cannot procure.
+    Sad distress has been our lot,
+      To go from door to door.
+
+    May want upon you never frown,
+      Nor in your dwelling come;
+    May Heaven pour its blessings down
+      On every friendly soul.
+
+    Lord Jesus, thou hast shed thy blood
+      For thousands such as we;
+    Many despise the poor tradesman's lot,
+      But to Thy Cross I flee.
+
+Suddenly shifting then from poesy to prose, the circular continues:
+
+    A BLESSING.--May the blessings of God await you; may the bright sun
+    of glory shine above thy bed; may the gates of plenty, honor, and
+    happiness be ever open to thee; may no sorrow distress thy days,
+    and when the dim curtain of death is closing around thy last sleep,
+    and the lamp of life extinguishing, may it not receive one rude
+    blast to hasten its extinction.
+
+Thus having propitiated the aesthetic feeling as well as the benevolent
+heart of the householder, the circular proceeds to business by
+declaring that "the bearers are a party of unemployed tradesmen, who,"
+etc. There is, of course, no resisting the appeal to buy the poem and
+the benediction; only, when Dora the doormaid is afterward questioned
+how many unemployed tradesmen formed the party, and she answers, "Only
+one, ma'am, and he's no tradesman," we look at each other as we do when
+"The Blind Man's Prayer" is given to us in the street car by some
+bright-eyed little girl, or some boy who meanwhile munches an apple.
+"It's my uncle," says the lad, if asked whether he is perhaps, the
+person alluded to in the lines, "You see before you a poor, blind man,"
+etc.; and I fancy that the literature of mendicancy has now become
+important enough to furnish a large variety of printed forms, so that
+the regular customer can choose for himself whether in any particular
+season he will be a poor blind man, or a lady that has seen better
+days, or a party of poetical mechanics.
+
+PHILIP QUILIBET.
+
+
+
+
+SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.
+
+
+THE SURVEY IN CALIFORNIA.
+
+
+In Lieutenant Wheeler's report of operations on the geographical and
+geological survey of the Territories west of the 100th meridian during
+1876, we find the first explanation of the origin of the name
+California. The mountainous country of Mexico has three climates
+through which the traveller passes in going from the sea to the high
+country, the hot, the temperate, and the cold zones. The Mexicans call
+them _tierra caliente_, _tierra templada_, and _tierra fria_. They
+entered the present region of California from Sonora or New Mexico, and
+on their way passed a lake now called Lake Elizabeth, on the border of
+the California desert. There a violent west wind blows night and day.
+It is a real _sirocco_, dry, and so hot as to remind one of a blast
+from a furnace. The Mexicans accordingly made the country beyond it the
+fourth in their series of ascending temperatures, and named it _tierra
+california_, the country hot as a furnace.
+
+This report is one of the most valuable produced by the survey. During
+the year the great area in California which lies below the level of the
+sea was examined to ascertain whether it could be filled and maintained
+as a lake by a canal from the Colorado river, and the decision is in
+the negative. The depressed area covers about 1,600 square miles in
+California, and the difference between the rainfall and the evaporation
+is so small that if the whole Colorado river were poured into the
+basin, it would cover only 556 square miles of surface, or little more
+than one-third the basin. Filling would cease at that level for the
+reason that the whole supply of the river would disappear in vapor. The
+slope of the Colorado river is extraordinary, 2.13 feet per mile at
+Stone's Ferry, and 1.21 feet at Camp Mohave, which may be compared with
+eight inches, the average fall of the Mississippi per mile. At Stone's
+Ferry the velocity is 3.217 feet per second and the discharge 18,410
+cubic feet. Great difficulties stand in the way of the proposed canal,
+and the engineers do not think the lake, if it could be formed, would
+have an appreciable effect upon the climate of the surrounding region.
+The primary object of this survey is to carry the grand triangulation
+of the continent across the country under its jurisdiction, and to map
+the surface so as to enable the Government to put the ground properly
+in market. In addition to these objects a great amount of valuable work
+is done in geology and natural history.
+
+Prof. Jules Marcou, geologist attached to the survey, points out that
+the valleys of Santa Clara and Santa Barbara in California may become
+the site of _true_ artesian oil wells. The ordinary flowing oil well is
+supposed to obtain the force which lifts its oil above the surface
+level from confined gases in the earth, but in California the lift will
+be obtained in precisely the same manner as in the case of artesian
+wells for water. There are strata of sandstone impregnated with the
+petroleum, and these strata are lifted up on the mountain sides, so
+that a well bored at a low point in the valley would be supplied from a
+reservoir some thousands of feet high. The wells will have to be about
+three thousand feet deep.
+
+The naturalists of the survey noted many singular phenomena of animal
+life. On the islands off the coast there is a race of liliputian foxes
+which is supposed to have been derived from the Gray fox, its small
+size and perfect fearlessness, together with its insect diet, being due
+to its confinement to the islands. This animal is so small that even
+the sheep breeders do not fear it. It lies under the cactus plants for
+its noonday nap, and to this fact must be due the remarkable
+circumstance noticed in skinning a number of them. In every instance
+the interior surface of the hide was perforated by cactus spines, and
+in one individual the hide was fairly coated within by these spines,
+some of which had become soft with age. There were so many that a knife
+could not have pierced the hide without touching the spines!
+
+Another fact developed was that the great dread of the grizzly bear is
+resulting in his rapid extinction. Strychnine is considered
+indispensable to the outfit of a California shepherd, and the grizzlies
+have been killed or forced to the mountains, where they still linger in
+considerable numbers in the chapparal. It is noticeable that the Rocky
+mountain grizzly is a tame creature compared with his brother of the
+Sierra Nevada, who does not hesitate to take the initiative in a combat
+with man.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+A GERMAN SAVANT AMONG THE SIOUX.
+
+Prof. Virchow lately informed the Berlin Anthropological Society that
+an intrepid young German traveller, Herr von Horn von der Horck, is now
+(January, 1877) living among the Sioux Indians busily engaged in taking
+plaster casts for craniological studies. Von der Horck made a journey
+to the Polar sea last summer, returning by way of Lapland, where he
+made enormous collections of bones, skulls, and casts. Prof. Virchow
+says these collections are more complete in Scandinavian ethnology than
+all that European museums outside of Scandinavia contain. One result of
+this journey was the discovery of a continuous water way between the
+Gulf of Bothnia and the Polar sea, though not one that is capable of
+navigation. A lake, called Wawalo Lampi, lies on the divide between
+these two bodies of water, and sends a river to each. The northward
+flowing one is the Ivallo and the southward the Kititui. We are glad to
+welcome so enthusiastic and thorough a student to this country. It is
+precisely work like his that is needed in America, and the time for
+accomplishing it is rapidly passing away. We have too much theory and
+too little real investigation in American ethnology, and while the men
+of hypotheses are talking about the origin of the Indians, and
+endeavoring to trace them to Asiatic stocks through the medium of
+language, the race is fast losing its purity by intermarriage, as it
+has already lost the most distinctive of its peculiarities by
+intercourse with the whites.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+BALLOONING FOR AIR CURRENTS.
+
+It is well known to meteorologists that the wind vanes as ordinarily
+placed near the surface do not give a true indication of the wind. Even
+when the vane is not over a city or town where the air currents near
+the earth are affected by the direction of the streets, the varying
+character of the surface in respect to radiation and absorption of heat
+will modify them. It is therefore for good reasons that vanes are
+perched up on high flagstaffs fixed on the roofs of buildings. Some of
+these are more than a hundred feet above the ground, but recent
+observations in Paris show that this is not enough. Small India-rubber
+balloons a foot in diameter and with an ascensional force of about one
+ounce were sent up, and as they rose slowly, at the rate of twelve feet
+per second, the effect of the air currents upon them could be easily
+marked. This was found to be very variable at heights of less than one
+or two hundred metres (300 to 600 feet). The conclusion was that no
+observations at lower levels were trustworthy.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+THE GREATEST OF RIFLES.
+
+In spite of the familiarity with great cannon which the advances in gun
+construction of late years have produced, the experiments with the
+100-ton gun of the Italian government have not failed to awaken general
+interest and wonder. It fires a 2,000-pound shell, and a charge of 240
+pounds of powder is but a portion of what the gun will bear. These
+light charges have to be used if the penetrative effects of the gun
+under unfavorable conditions are to be studied, for with its full
+charge the weapon simply destroys anything that is put before it.
+Comparative results cannot be obtained when the only effect is complete
+ruin. It is somewhat remarkable that an over confident iron founder
+should have chosen this weapon to test once more the value of _cast_
+iron for defensive armor. His idea was that armor could be made so hard
+by chilling the surface that the shot would be broken to pieces upon
+it, and experiments with a good iron and guns of small calibre had
+encouraged the hope. But a 2,000-pound shell and 400 pounds of powder
+in the 100-ton gun proved anew the unfitness of this material for armor
+plating. The shot had a velocity of 1,494 feet per second, and it
+smashed through an 8-inch plate of wrought iron, a wood layer, and a
+14-inch plate of chilled cast iron. The ruin produced was greater than
+in any other experiment, the cast iron breaking into fragments. The
+power of this gun, the greatest rifle ever made, is such that a solid
+22-inch plate of the best English wrought iron is completely penetrated
+by its shot.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+VIENNA BREAD.
+
+A "Vienna bakery" has been one of the most prominent objects at each of
+the last three international exhibitions, and probably there are many
+housekeepers who would be glad to know how this delicious bread is
+made. Unfortunately success does not always follow imitation, and
+several attempts to introduce the manufacture of this bread have
+failed, even when Vienna bakers were employed in the work; and yet
+there is absolutely no secret in the process. One of the American
+commissioners to the Vienna exhibition, Prof. E. N. Horsford, gave an
+elaborate report on this bread, and since he came to the conclusion
+that it _can_ be made elsewhere, we will recount some of the causes
+upon which in his opinion its excellence depends. These are the mode of
+baking, the mode of making, the use of fresh "compressed yeast" which
+produces no acetic acid in fermentation, the use of selected flour, the
+mode of milling, and the kind of wheat.
+
+    _The Baking._--The loaf should be so small that fifteen or twenty
+    minutes will be sufficient to cook it through in an oven which is
+    heated to a temperature of about 500 deg., or the melting point of
+    bismuth. The rolls should not touch each other.
+
+    _The Mixing._--The proportions are:
+
+    8 pounds of flour,
+    3 quarts of milk and water, in equal proportions,
+    3-1-2 ounces of pressed yeast,
+    1 ounce of salt,
+
+    which should make about 380 rolls of the ordinary "Kaiser semmel"
+    size. The milk and water in equal parts are first mixed and allowed
+    to come to the usual temperature of a kitchen, and a small amount of
+    flour is then mixed in it so as to make a thin emulsion. The yeast is
+    added and well mixed in, first crumbling it in the hand, and the pan
+    is left covered for three-quarters of an hour. Then the rest of the
+    flour is slowly mixed in, with thorough kneading. The dough is left
+    for two hours and a half, "at the end of which time it presents a
+    smooth, tenacious, puffed, homogeneous mass, of slightly yellowish
+    color." It is weighed into pound masses (all bread must be sold by
+    weight in Europe), each of which is cut into twelve rolls. The
+    proportions for twelve rolls should therefore be about as follows:
+    1-4 pound of flour, 1-5 pints milk and water, 1-10 ounce pressed
+    yeast, and 1-32 ounce of salt. The small masses of dough have a
+    thickness of three-quarters of an inch, and the workman, laying the
+    back of his left forefinger in the centre of one, pulls out and folds
+    up the corners of the irregular mass, and pinches them together. The
+    little lump of dough is then reversed upon a smooth board, and after
+    remaining there long enough to finish "rising," they are placed in
+    the hot oven by means of a wooden shovel.
+
+    _The Yeast._--Pressed yeast, which is now made in America, is
+    obtained by skimming the froth from mash while it is in active
+    fermentation. The yeast is repeatedly washed with cold water until
+    it settles pure and white in the water. It forms a tenacious mass
+    which is pressed in a bag. It will keep about eight days in summer,
+    and indefinitely if put on ice.
+
+    _The Flour._--Only a selected part of the flour is used in Vienna
+    for the manufacture of white bread and rolls, amounting to about
+    forty-five per cent. of the wheat. Precisely the same grades are
+    not produced in the American process of milling, but Dr. Horsford
+    thinks that good, fresh middlings flour will compare favorably with
+    the average Hungarian flour.
+
+    _The Milling._--A peculiar mode of milling wheat has grown up in
+    Austria and Hungary, which is almost the antipodes of the old and
+    crude methods of grinding. It is called "high milling," and
+    consists in cracking the wheat by successive operations down to the
+    required size. First the wheat is run through a coarse mill, which
+    takes off the beard at one end and the germ at the other. The
+    resulting powder is then sifted, to separate the grits from the
+    dross and flour, and the central part is again cracked, and the
+    products sifted. Some flour is produced in each of these steps, but
+    the best of the wheat kernel is still in the condition of grits,
+    and the bran and outer coat of the kernel having been separated by
+    the sifting, the pure grits are now cracked once more, and number
+    one flour is produced. All the other flour from these three
+    operations is purified from bran, mixed and ground, making number
+    two flour. In short, the essential characteristic of the Austrian
+    system of milling lies in a gradual process of reducing the wheat,
+    with careful separation of the products, or cleaning, at each step.
+    These products are quite numerous, as the following list shows:
+
+        _Class._    _Percentage._
+
+        A.               { Lady groats.
+        B.        4.25   { Table groats, fine.
+        C.               { Table groats, coarse.
+        0.               { Extra imperial flour.
+        1.        5.53     Extra fine flour.
+        2.        5.76     Ordinary fine flour.
+        3.        5.51     _Extra roll or semmel flour._
+        4.        6.48     _Common roll or semmel flour._
+        5.        7.12     First pollen flour.
+        6.       13.30     Second pollen flour.
+        7.       11.85     First dust flour.
+        8.        9.95     Second dust flour.
+        9.        4.36     Brown pollen flour.
+        10.        6.32     Fort flour.
+        F.        8.94     Fine bran.
+        G.        6.87     Coarse bran.
+        H.        3.76     Chicken feed, loss, and dirt.
+                ----
+                100
+
+    This chicken feed consists of the foreign seeds, the tares, which
+    grow up with the wheat, and which are separated before milling. In
+    the above list only 39 to 40 per cent. of the flour is fit for white
+    bread making.
+
+    _The Wheat._--Last of all, in following back the processes of
+    Vienna bread making, we come to one of the essential requirements,
+    a proper kind of wheat. "The virtues of this bread," says Dr.
+    Horsford, "had their origin principally in the Hungarian wheat.
+    These are not due to any particular variety of wheat, or to any
+    marked peculiarity of soil or mode of fertilizing, or to a mean
+    annual temperature characterizing the climate of Hungary as a
+    whole, but to _a peculiarity of climate_, uniting especial dryness
+    of the air during the hot season, from the time of the development
+    of the milk of the berry, through the period of its segregation of
+    the various constituents of the grain, down to its being housed for
+    thrashing." The Hungarian wheat is red, shrivelled, and hard, and
+    it is this hardness that fits it so well to the successive
+    crackings which constitute the process of "high milling."
+
+Vienna bread is white, fine grained, perfectly sweet, aromatic,
+agreeable without butter, thoroughly baked, and has a tender crust, and
+Dr. Horsford shows dearly that this combination of excellences is not
+the result of an art, but of the joint operation of many arts. Its
+introduction may be made an economical act, for its peculiar succulence
+makes butter or other condiment unnecessary. It is, however,
+essentially a _baker's_ bread, for it should be eaten on the day it is
+made, and is at its best immediately after becoming cold. There is
+little room for expecting it to replace the kind of bread in vogue in
+American homes, for that is just as much the result of peculiar
+circumstances as the product of the Hungarian farm, the Austrian mill,
+and the Vienna oven. Economy in labor is just as much a consideration
+in most American families as it is in our workshops, and the
+semi-weekly or weekly baking is the means by which it is obtained. But
+American housewives can improve their bread by adopting from the
+Austrian system the whitening of the yeast by washing, the small loaf,
+and the rapid baking. The use of selected flour can hardly be obtained
+unless the millers are offered a market for the darker flour that
+remains. In Europe that is at hand in the nutritious "black" bread
+which is everywhere _the_ staff of life, white bread being a luxury
+taken only with coffee. In fact it is American cake that the Vienna
+roll comes in competition with, and the habit of making cake almost
+daily, which obtains in so many American homes, shows that there is
+time and labor which can be turned to the production of the Vienna
+bread if desired.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+MODERN LOSS IN WARFARE.
+
+The German government has just published the official statistics of the
+losses in the war with France. The total killed and wounded was 3,919
+officers and 60,978 men. The killed and dead of wounds were 1,374
+officers and 16,877 men, the proportion being 1 killed to 3.44 wounded
+among the officers, and 1 to 5 among the men. The infantry lost 57,943,
+artillery 4,266, and cavalry 2,236. Fighting in line, and at such a
+distance as modern weapons command, have made the loss by artillery a
+minimum; 5,084 of the casualties being due to artillery and 55,862 to
+rifle practice. One noteworthy item is the proportion--12,717 out of
+the whole number--that were struck about the head and shoulders. This
+is held to show that the French troops fired high, but it may also be
+due to the attention now paid to field defences. It is quite possible
+also that all modern rifles are sighted a trifle too high.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+A NEW TREASURY RULE.
+
+The Secretary of the Treasury has lately issued a circular which
+affects rather uncomfortably the interests of educational, scientific,
+and literary institutions. They are allowed by law to import books,
+instruments, and illustrative collections free of duty, and the
+Secretary now says that the sale or distribution of articles imported
+in this way will not be allowed. They must be retained in the
+institutions that bring them into the country. It is quite probable
+that advantage has sometimes been taken of the law's liberality in this
+respect, but we fear this circular will really defeat the purpose of
+the law. Collections of all kinds in colleges and schools are kept up
+by a system of exchange, which is very necessary to them on account of
+the small sums of money at their disposal. To break up this system in
+the case of European specimens would be especially hard, for each
+institution would then be forced to import single specimens at much
+greater cost and trouble; or what is more likely, it would be found
+cheaper to pay the duty; that is, purchase through a dealer. So long as
+the exchange is confined to the circle of institutions which the law
+was designed to benefit, we cannot see that its provisions are unduly
+taken advantage of.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+A HYGIENIC SCHOOL.
+
+Dr. Agnew, the celebrated oculist of New York, has indicated his idea
+of a school for little children, in which health should be a first
+consideration, as follows: "If we could effect some alterations in the
+style of school architecture in our school houses, especially the
+primary departments, it would be a great desideratum. One of the
+greatest evils at present existing is the method of constructing the
+school room and of conducting the same. I never could understand why
+children of the primary age are kept sitting on benches for a large
+number of hours at a time. School houses ought to be built like the
+hospital building at the corner of Lexington avenue and Forty-second
+street, used for cripples, where there is in the upper story a large
+room, called the solarium, which is in fact a large play room, exposed
+to the sun, where these little ones are kept the greater part of the
+time. The upper story of the school houses should be so constructed;
+and children should be encouraged to bring their toys and playthings
+with them; and then, instead of changing the age of admission from four
+years, it might be kept as it is; and instead of shortening the hours
+of attendance, lengthen them. Of course it should be taken for granted
+that the school house is constructed for the accommodation of the poor
+children, and in this light it would be better that such children
+should spend most of the day in school houses having good sanitary
+conditions, rather than, as they now do, in tenement houses. Thus you
+would have these primary schools with plenty of air and light, which
+you can get in the upper story, and children would be glad to come
+early, and remain until three or four o'clock, or even later in the
+afternoon."
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+MICROSCOPIC COMPARISON OF BLOOD CORPUSCLES.
+
+Dr. J. G. Richardson of Philadelphia, whose views upon the subject of
+proving blood stains by the use of the microscope have been described
+in this Miscellany, has lately prepared slides for the microscope so as
+to show blood corpuscles from two different animals on the same field.
+He did this by flowing two drops of blood down the slide, and nearly in
+contact. Dr. C. L. Mees has modified this proceeding. He spreads the
+blood by Johnston's method, which is to touch a drop of blood to the
+accurately ground edge of a slide, and then draw it gently over the
+face of the other slide, leaving a beautifully spread film. In this way
+one kind of blood is spread upon the slide, and another on the cover.
+When dry, one half of each is carefully scraped off with a smoothly
+sharpened knife, and the cover inverted upon the slide in such position
+as to bring the remaining portions of the film into apposition. When
+thus prepared the magnified image can be photographed.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+THE SUMMER SCIENTIFIC SCHOOLS.
+
+The Peabody Academy of Science at Salem, Massachusetts, will open the
+second session of its summer school of biology July 6, the course to
+continue for six weeks. Four days in each week will be given to
+lectures and laboratory work, and one day to a dredging expedition.
+Entomology, together with spiders, crustacea, and vertebrate anatomy,
+will be the especial subjects of study this year, and as usual the
+advantages enjoyed by this institution for studying marine zoology will
+be fully utilized. Dr. A. S. Packard, assisted by Messrs. Emerton and
+Kingsley, will have charge of zoology, Mr. Robinson of botany, Rev. Mr.
+Bolles of microscopy, and Mr. Cooke of the dredging parties. Fees, $15,
+or for lectures only, $5. Board $5 to $7 weekly. Application should be
+made to Dr. Packard.
+
+A four weeks' school will be opened at the State normal school, West
+Chester, Pennsylvania, beginning July 11. Zoology and botany will be
+taught by Prof. M. W. Harrington, geology and physiological chemistry
+by Mr. V. C. Vaughan, and mineralogy by George G. Groff, all these
+gentlemen being connected with the University of Michigan. Elocution
+and industrial drawing will also be taught. Fees are for board and
+tuition $30, and tuition alone $12. Apply to Mr. George L. Maris,
+principal.
+
+Scientific excursions seem to be the order of the day. Mr. Woodruff of
+Detroit has planned one to make the tour of the world; and Mr. J. B.
+Steere of Michigan university, who spent several years in a journey of
+scientific character, says: "The expedition will probably leave New
+York in October or November next, going directly to the mouth of the
+Amazon, where some time will be spent in making collections in natural
+history. The island of Marajo will be the principal field for this
+work. Rio Janeiro will probably be called in at, on the way to the
+Straits of Magellan, which will be reached in January or February (the
+summer season there), and a stay will be made for the purpose of
+collecting. The expedition will then make its way northwest, cruising
+among several of the rarely visited groups of islands in the central
+Pacific, where there is every opportunity for making large and valuable
+collections of sea shells and corals as well as of the myriads of other
+and rarer things brought up by the dredge. Some stay will probably be
+made in New Guinea; but the next great object of interest will be the
+island of Borneo. It is supposed that the northeast and central part of
+this great island, which are the parts still unknown, can be best
+reached through the assistance of the Dutch traders at Macassar on the
+island of Celebes, where the expedition will touch on its way. It seems
+probable that entering from the east side, with the proper guides and
+interpreters, the interior of the island can be reached and explored,
+and perhaps a party may be able to reach the west coast. Borneo is less
+known than Central Africa, and there is a grand opportunity here for
+Americans to solve the great problem of its interior lakes and
+plateaus. A journey through an unexplored country like this cannot fail
+also to give opportunity for collecting many new species of animals and
+plants. From Borneo the expedition will make its way to the Philippine
+islands, where there is great room still for discovery, not only in
+natural history, but also in fixing the geographical knowledge of the
+islands, which is at present very faulty. Several of the larger islands
+of the group are entirely unknown in respect to their animal and
+vegetable life. From the Philippines the expedition will go to the
+island of Formosa, off the coast of China. This island is rich in
+objects of interest to the naturalist, and the east and central parts
+of the island are unknown. There are Chinese traders who visit the west
+coast for the purpose of trade with the natives, and through their help
+there is no doubt that much new work can be done in that locality. The
+expedition will then visit Canton, and some others of the coast towns
+of China, and begin its return voyage by way of Singapore, which is a
+depot for all that is rare and curious in the East. Ceylon will then be
+touched at, and the expedition will pass through the Red sea and Suez
+canal. It is intended to spend some time in the Mediterranean in
+visiting various places of interest, and to return home by way of
+England. The voyage is expected to occupy two years' time, and to cost
+students $2,500 per year, this sum paying costs of expeditions inland
+and everything except personal expenses, clothing, etc. All the
+collections made will belong to those who make them." This plan seems
+to follow about the same line as Mr. Steere's own journey, and it would
+certainly be a great advantage to the excursionists to be under the
+guidance of an explorer who has so lately been over the ground. We
+believe the company is nearly completed.
+
+A similar trip is proposed in France, where a society supported by the
+liberality of M. Bischofsheim, the well known banker, has been formed
+for the purpose of encouraging periodical voyages. The travellers will
+be scientific men, Dwuyn l'Lhuys being at their head, and as in the
+American expedition, the vessel will be commanded by a naval officer.
+The first voyage will be from Marseilles, and will occupy less than a
+year, the line of travel being to America and India.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+THE WAGES VALUE OF STEAM POWER.
+
+Prof. Leone Levi, in a lecture to workingmen on "Work and Wages,"
+estimated the amount of capital required to carry on some of the
+industries in Great Britain. There are 20,000,000 acres of land
+cultivated, which at L8 is L160,000,000. The cotton trade requires
+L80,000,000, wool trade L30,000,000, iron trade L30,000,000, merchant
+marine L70,000,000; railways have L600,000,000 invested in them, and
+the waterworks, gasworks, docks, and other undertakings all call for
+similar vast sums. Construction may be considered as the fixation of
+work, and here we have about a thousand million pounds worth of fixed
+labor. Labor in use deals with figures and values that are quite as
+large. The annual industrial production of France is L480,000,000, and
+of this L200,000,000 is labor, the remainder being _called_ material,
+though if the items of its cost were ascertained, current labor would
+be found to make up a great portion of that sum also.
+
+But taking French manufactures as they are reported, we can obtain from
+them an estimate of the value of machines. The first steam engine was
+introduced into that country by the city of Paris in 1789, the year of
+revolution. At that time the cost of labor in manufactures was 60 per
+cent. and of material 40 per cent. of the whole cost. On this basis the
+L280,000,000 worth of material used now would require L420,000,000 of
+labor to work it up. The present industrial population of France is
+8,400,000, though all are not fully effective, and on the old basis
+this would have to be increased to 17,640,000 persons. The other
+divisions of population, tradesmen, etc., would also increase, and the
+result is finally apparent that France is not large enough to contain
+and raise food for the people that would be needed to carry on the
+modern business on the old methods. The _man_ power of the steam
+machinery introduced into the industries is estimated at 31,500,000,
+and as it replaces L220,000,000 worth of labor, we may reckon the wages
+of a steam man power at L7, or $35, per year, exclusive of food (fuel)
+and lodging.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+THE NEGRO'S COLOR.
+
+The chemical character of the coloring matter in the negro's skin has
+been investigated by Dr. F. P. Floyd, in the laboratory of the
+University of Virginia. Strips of skin were well washed with water and
+alcohol, in order to remove fatty matter, and then cautiously scraped
+with a blunt scalpel, to loosen up the pigment granules. This must be
+carefully done, for an examination of the scraped skin shows that the
+whole substance of the cuticular tissue may easily be broken up and
+mingled with the pigment, which cannot then be obtained pure. But by
+selecting the most strongly colored parts and treating them carefully,
+the following points were established: The coloring matter is insoluble
+in water, alcohol, and ether. It is also unaffected by dilute acids or
+dilute solutions of alkali. The strong acids, even concentrated nitric
+acid, attack it but slowly. Chlorine destroys it especially in presence
+of alkali. Heated for some time with a strong solution of sodium
+hydrate, it is gradually dissolved, and from the diluted solution it
+may be partially precipitated on neutralization with an acid. The ash
+of the negro skin gave twice as much ash as the white skin, or 2.4 per
+cent. against 1.15 per cent. Analyses of the ash for iron showed 2.28
+per cent. of metallic iron in the black and 1.21 per cent. in the white
+skin. These facts confirm the general impression that the color of the
+negro's skin is nearly allied to the "melanin," or black pigment of the
+choroid coat in the eye. Both seem to be products of alteration of the
+blood.
+
+This pigment appears to be similar to or identical with the black
+coloring matter of feathers. When perfectly white hair or feathers are
+heated gently with dilute sulphuric acid, they dissolve completely,
+though slowly. Black or brown feathers leave an insoluble residue. This
+subject was lately presented to the London Chemical Society by Messrs.
+W. R. Hodgkinson and H. C. Sorby. They took feathers of the English
+rook, which contain one per cent. of pigment, and having cut the vanes
+from the central rib, cleaned them from fat by treatment with alcoholic
+ammonia. Warm dilute sulphuric acid was then applied, until it was no
+longer colored, and the residue was treated with dilute hydrochloric
+acid and boiling alcohol and ether. Black pigment is usually found in
+black, brown, and dark red hair, but in the latter it is associated
+with a brown pigment that is soluble in dilute sulphuric acid.
+
+Experiments were made by Dr. Floyd to determine the position of the
+pigment in the negro's skin. Many Southern physicians are under the
+impression that a blister upon the black skin is white, or nearly so.
+But this was disproved by experiment, and the microscope showed that
+the granules were dispersed through the whole of the cuticle, though
+less dense at the surface than in the deeper tissues. In fact Dr. Floyd
+thinks that the pigment originates in the outer layer of true skin,
+"its production being probably connected with the loss of vitality of
+the cells, and that it accompanies those cells all the way to the
+surface, where it is mechanically removed by desquamation." The
+alteration of the red blood corpuscles to black pigment may be due to
+feeble circulation in the superficial capillaries. The diseases of
+negroes, and their extreme sensitiveness to low temperatures, sustain
+this view.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+The jurisdiction of London extends over 756 square miles; its area
+embraces 78,000 acres. It contains 4,000,000 of inhabitants, increasing
+at the rate of 75,000 a year, of various nationalities.
+
+
+The rapidity of sewing machine work, even when not working beyond an
+ordinary manufacturing speed, is seen in the manufacture of 110
+three-bushel sacks per hour, containing 35,640 stitches, or close on
+600 per minute.
+
+
+The pine woods of Michigan are said to contain in standing trees--
+
+    In Eastern Michigan       13,500,000,000 feet.
+    In Western Michigan       11,500,000,000  "
+    In Upper Peninsular       19,500,000,000  "
+                              --------------
+        Total                 44,500,000,000
+
+
+A manufacturer lately sued the city of Paris for about $15,000 on the
+ground that the water supplied by the new works was so good that he
+could not make gelatine, and his business was therefore ruined! The
+suit was dismissed with costs.
+
+
+A paste made of fifty-one parts of finely shaved stearine, melted in
+seventy-two parts of previously warmed oil of turpentine, will restore
+the polish to furniture. When cool rub on with a woollen rag, and when
+dry rub thoroughly with a clean dry cloth.
+
+
+This winter is said to have been the coldest known in Russia for 153
+years! In St. Petersburg the thermometer has been -32 deg. Reaumur, or
+40 deg. below zero, Fahrenheit. Drivers have frozen in their seats, and
+the police kept large fires burning in the streets at night.
+
+
+The difference between exploding powder under water and above ground is
+shown in the relative effect of 50,000 pounds of giant powder fired in
+the great Hell Gate blast, and the small quantity of 370 pounds of
+black powder which is the service charge of the 80-ton cannon at
+Shoebury, England. The former made but little shock or sound. The
+latter has shaken houses to pieces by the force of the concussion wave
+produced in the air. The first blood shed by the gun was that of a half
+dozen sea gulls. A canister shot, containing 2,170 balls, burst just in
+front of a large flock of them.
+
+
+The United States issued 15,911 patents in 1876, and received 22,408
+applications.
+
+
+Important works in construction and other branches of engineering are
+now sometimes continued at night by means of the electric light. The
+buildings for the French international exhibition are pushed in this
+way, and the method is used at the Taybridge Works and others in
+England.
+
+
+Among the interesting facts which have been developed by the careful
+study of ants is the existence of piracy among them. Mr. McCook has
+noticed that ants descending from trees with abdomens full of honey dew
+were waited for by workers from the hill, seeking food, and compelled
+to disgorge their accumulations. If this was not done willingly, force
+was used.
+
+
+The walrus has a singular mode of adapting his attack upon enemies to
+the circumstances in which he is placed. They can shiver ice from four
+to six inches thick by rising from below and striking it with their
+huge heads. An exploring party near Novaya Zemla, while walking over a
+field of new ice, noticed a herd of walruses following them under the
+ice. They presently began operations, and broke the field in pieces on
+all sides of the party, which barely escaped by running for the main
+pack ice near by.
+
+
+Oxford university, England, has a revenue of about $2,000,000 yearly,
+43 professors, 160 lecturers and tutors, 2,400 undergraduates (1875),
+of whom 24 per cent. hold scholarships worth from $150 to $500 yearly.
+Seventy-five per cent. of these read for honors as follows: 33 per
+cent. for the school of Literae Humaniores (philosophy, classical
+history, and philology), 20 per cent. for the school of modern history,
+17 per cent. theology, 15 per cent. law, 7 per cent. mathematics, and
+6.5 per cent. physical science. There are 360 fellows, of whom 140 are
+resident and engaged in teaching. The average endowment of a fellowship
+is $1,250. The average number of pupils to one professor or teacher is
+in Literae Humaniores 5 1-2; in mathematics 6, in physical science 7, in
+modern history 5, in law 15 1-2.
+
+
+Prof. von Zech lately mingled politics and science in a paper read
+before the Wurtemburg Anthropological Society. He compared the returns
+of a recent election with the known ethnological characteristics of the
+kingdom of Wurtemburg, and found that in districts where light hair and
+eyes predominated the government won the election. The black-haired and
+black-eyed portions of the population seemed to favor democracy and
+social reform, and the Ultramontanes form a medium class so far as
+complexion is concerned.
+
+
+The misfortunes of the deaf and dumb are greatly lessened by the
+substitution of lip-reading for other modes of conversation. The words
+are read from the movement of the lips so that the deaf can join in an
+ordinary conversation. In beginning the instruction the lips must be
+moved slowly, but in time the pupil gains such facility that the words
+of a public speaker can be taken as well by a deaf person in the
+audience as by any other. Deaf mutes are frequently very intelligent,
+and it may be that the "kindergarten" system, which is a necessity in
+their case, has something to do with their proficiency. In the Clark
+Institute children are received at the age of five years, and the first
+year's instruction consists in laying sticks and rings in designs
+imitated from the teacher. Weaving, card pricking, and drawing are also
+taught. From this beginning the pupil's development goes on through
+physical studies, such as zoology, botany, physiology, and geography.
+After these come higher mathematics, geology, chemistry, history,
+psychology, etc.
+
+
+
+
+CURRENT LITERATURE.
+
+
+It would seem, or rather it would have seemed, almost impossible to
+present Shakespeare in any new light, so much has been written by the
+wise and the foolish, the learned and the ignorant, the bright and the
+dull, the competent and the incompetent, upon that marvellous man. But
+Mr. George Wilkes has managed to write a goodly octavo which, while it
+contains nothing absolutely new upon this subject, presents it as a
+whole in a fresh aspect.[8] Mr. Wilkes says, in his brief preface, a
+few words which seem to be candid and truly modest. Rigorous criticism,
+he tells us, will not be unwelcome, not because he has any vain
+confidence in his own views, but "because they are put forward in good
+faith in order to elicit truth concerning a genius who is the richest
+inheritance of the intellectual world." He adds that he presents his
+book rather as a series of inquiries than as dogmatic doctrine, and
+that even if his views are controverted, he must be a gainer, "for it
+can never be a true source of mortification to relinquish opinions in
+favor of those which are shown to be better." This is indeed the
+fairest, best spirit of literary candor, and it is expressed with manly
+ingenuousness. If the author really feels what he utters so well, and
+we are both bound and willing to believe that he does so, he has set an
+example of a virtue which should be very much commoner than it is.
+
+      [8] "_Shakespeare, from an American Point of View_: Including an
+      Inquiry as to his Religious Faith and his Knowledge of Law. With
+      the Baconian Theory Considered." By GEORGE WILKES. 8vo, pp. 471.
+      New York: D. Appleton & Co.
+
+In giving to Mr. Wilkes's book the consideration which is due to its
+careful and intelligent preparation, we are, however, somewhat puzzled
+at the outset. What is an American point of view in regard to a
+literary subject, and above all a subject the historical position of
+which is previous, not only to the Declaration of Independence, but to
+the settlement of New England? We can apprehend what an "American"
+point of view might be as to a question of politics, or of society, or
+even of morals, in the present day; but what such a _distinctive_
+view could be even on those subjects, considered as they present
+themselves at a time when our forefathers, just like the forefathers of
+the present British people, were in England or in Scotland, we can
+hardly divine. And as to literature, the difficulty seems still
+greater. For, in the first place, literature and art are of no country
+and no time, except historically, and moreover the literature of a
+language and a race belong to that race and the speakers of that
+language wherever they may be. A man of English blood and speech loses
+no right in Shakespeare, he loses no right in any English author,
+because he happens to be born in New England instead of Old England, or
+in Australia instead of the Isle of Wight or of Man. Political
+divisions have nothing to do with literature. We hear nothing of
+Prussian literature or of Austrian literature; it is all
+German--"Deutsch." And the eminent German philologist Mentzner, in his
+great English grammar, that awful book in three octavo volumes, draws
+for his countless illustrations quite as freely upon Bryant, Irving,
+Longfellow, Hawthorne, Prescott, and their countrymen, as upon
+Tennyson, Browning, Macaulay, and theirs. English literature is the
+literature of the English race wherever it may be. It has nothing to do
+with the distinctions British and American. They are political only.
+This is true of all literature, even that of the day; but especially
+and absolutely is it true of all English literature that was produced
+before there was any New England. Shakespeare belongs to the people now
+in England because when he wrote he and their forefathers lived
+together in England and spoke the same tongue; and exactly for that
+reason he belongs to all of us here who are of his race and tongue.
+There is not the slightest difference between the relations of the two
+people to the one man. This consideration applies, without
+qualification, to all English literature before 1620; with slight
+external, unessential modification, to that between 1620 and 1776; and
+with somewhat greater external, but still unessential modification, to
+all that has been produced since.
+
+Mr. Wilkes, however, may reasonably reply that while he may or may not
+agree with this view of English literature, there is in either case an
+American point of view as to every subject--a view taken from the
+position in which Americans stand politically and socially; a position
+which affects their vision and their judgment of all subjects,
+including literature, even in the form of dramatic poetry, the most
+absolute form in which it can exist. He is to a certain extent right;
+and waiving the question as to whether such a view is likely to have
+any peculiar value, particularly in regard to dramatic poems produced
+in the other hemisphere nearly three hundred years ago, let us see what
+in this guise Mr. Wilkes has to present to us.
+
+He opens his book with a reference to the "Baconian theory," as it is
+called; that is, the notion that the plays published in 1623 as "Mr.
+William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies," were
+actually written by the great Bacon, incorrectly called Lord Bacon.
+This notion, which may in a certain sense be called "American," because
+of its setting forth by Miss Delia Bacon, a New England woman, some
+twenty years ago, is not and never was worth five minutes' serious
+consideration by any sane human being. It is too foolish to be talked
+about. No man who really knows anything about the subject has ever
+given this fancy a moment's entertainment; and we regret to see that
+Mr. Wilkes is at the pains of examining it carefully all through his
+book. It is not worthy of refutation. We therefore set small store by
+the probabilities which he accumulates against it. There is no more
+ground for reasonable doubt that William Shakespeare did and Francis
+Bacon did not write the plays attributed to the former than there is
+for doubt that Horace Greeley did and William Henry Seward did not edit
+the "Tribune" between the years 1845 and 1865. That Bacon was their
+author is indeed an American point of view, it having been taken not
+only by Miss Bacon, but by Judge Holmes of Missouri, and by an unknown
+American writer in "Frazer's Magazine" for August, 1874. But we are
+inclined to think that Miss Bacon's book is unknown to Mr. Wilkes
+except at second hand, else he would not speak of that tremendous
+octavo tome as a "pamphlet," which he does twice. It was as heavy
+metaphorically as it was in avoirdupois. It fell dead from the press.
+Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote the introduction to it, says in his "Old
+Home" that he believes that it never had but one reader, a young man of
+his acquaintance. He probably had not seen Mr. Grant White's statement,
+made in some of his Shakespearian books or writings, that "for his
+sins" he had read every word of it. And we must say from our knowledge
+of it, that the reading ought to go largely to his credit in his
+account with purgatory. Judge Holmes's book is very able and ingenious;
+so much so that it is to be regretted that he did not give his learning
+and his reasoning powers to better business. In Mr. Wilkes's book we
+probably have heard the last of this American view of Shakespeare.
+
+Our author also gives much attention to the questions of Shakespeare's
+religious faith and his knowledge of the law. He is of the opinion that
+Shakespeare was a Roman Catholic, and that he had not studied law. In
+both cases we think Mr. Wilkes wrong. Such evidence as Shakespeare's
+works afford goes, we think, decidedly in favor of their writer's
+having been a Protestant of unusually "broad church" views for his
+time, and of his having made some study at least of the attorney's part
+of law. After considering all that Mr. Wilkes urges, we find nothing in
+his ingeniously extracted evidence to shake our faith in these
+probabilities. But in any case all this is of small importance. Suppose
+Shakespeare to have been a Romanist, and never to have entered an
+attorney's office: of what moment are these conclusions to the reader
+of his plays? The facts were important to Shakespeare himself, but are
+of only the slightest interest to any one else.
+
+Mr. Wilkes's American point of view is finally and chiefly that which
+he takes of Shakespeare's social feeling, according to his--Mr.
+Wilkes's--conception of it. He says of him that it seems strange that
+"unlike all the great geniuses of the world who had come before or
+[have] come after him, he should be the only one so deficient in that
+beneficent tenderness toward his race, so vacant of those sympathies
+which usually accompany intellectual power, as never to have been
+betrayed into one generous aspiration in favor of popular liberty. Nay,
+worse than this, worse than his servility to royalty and rank, we never
+find him speaking of the poor with respect, or alluding to the working
+classes without detestation or contempt." This view of the great
+poet-dramatist is repeated over and over again, all through Mr.
+Wilkes's book. The point is not a new one. It has been considered by
+one or two of Mr. Wilkes's predecessors, and has been set aside as of
+no significance by those who have brought it up for consideration. We
+cannot congratulate Mr. Wilkes upon his success in establishing his
+position. The subject is of some interest, and for example we take Mr.
+Wilkes's remarks in his twenty-third chapter, which is entirely devoted
+to the support he finds for it in the first part of "Henry VI." He
+quotes passages in which La Pucelle (Joan of Arc) calls herself "a
+shepherd's daughter," speaks of her "contemptible estate," and her
+"base vocation"; in which Talbot expresses his insulted feeling at a
+proposal that he, when a prisoner, should have been proposed in
+exchange for a "baser man of arms," and in which he and other noblemen
+speak with contempt of peasants. And then he exclaims, "Lords, lords,
+lords; nothing but princes and lords, and The People never alluded to
+except as _worthless peasants_, or to be scorned as _scabs_, and
+_hedge-born_ swains." The reply to all this is much like the famous one
+as to the stealing of the kettle; which was first, that the defendant
+did not take the kettle; next that he returned it; and finally that the
+plaintiff never had any kettle. First these sentiments are not put
+forth as those of the writer of the play, but as those of the
+personages who figured in the historical incidents therein dramatized;
+next it is undeniable that such were the feelings which noblemen and
+gentlemen of Henry VI.'s time, and of the time when this play was
+written, had and expressed toward peasants; and finally, whether or no
+it makes no difference as to Shakespeare's sentiments in regard to his
+humbler fellow men; for _Shakespeare did not write this play_. No
+editor or competent critic of Shakespeare believes that Shakespeare
+wrote one single scene of the first part of "King Henry VI." True the
+same feeling is expressed by noblemen and gentlemen in plays which
+Shakespeare did write; and we notice this particular passage chiefly
+because of its evidence that Mr. Wilkes, although an intelligent and
+careful reader of Shakespeare, is not sufficiently acquainted with the
+history and the literature of his time, or with dramatic literature
+generally, to undertake to pass judgment upon Shakespeare from the
+higher points of view, however he may be so to judge him from "an
+American point of view." For the assertion that Shakespeare was in this
+respect "unlike all the great geniuses of the world" is absolutely
+untrue. If Mr. Wilkes will carefully examine the works of the
+playwrights contemporary with Shakespeare, he will find their _dramatis
+personae_ equally made up of "lords, lords, lords," and he will find the
+lords speaking in just such a way of the common people. If they did not
+do so, the portraiture would be unfaithful; it would not "hold the
+mirror up to nature." And if he will look through the plays of Moliere,
+who stands next to Shakespeare as a dramatist, and who was like him a
+player and a man of the people, he will find all the lords and
+gentlemen who ruffle through his delightful pages speaking with
+contempt and ridicule of the lower classes. Moreover, it is absolutely
+untrue that Shakespeare was even thus indirectly a sycophant to kings
+and nobles, and a maintainer of their essential superiority. On fitting
+occasions he puts into their own mouths satires against themselves,
+their rank, and their pretensions; and he shows, when opportunity
+offers, a warm sympathy with and tenderness for the lowly and the
+oppressed. Whoever chooses to do so may find this shown in a few pages
+of Mr. Grant White's essay on Shakespeare's genius. ("Life and Genius
+of Shakespeare," pp. 298-302.) If we are to have a peculiarly American
+view of Shakespeare, pray let us have one founded upon thorough
+knowledge and taken in a fair spirit. Not that we mean that Mr. Wilkes
+is intentionally unfair, but that his judgment has been perverted by
+his strong democratic feeling, and that he seems not to have been able
+to investigate his subject with the research which it properly demands.
+
+We are sorry to observe also a reckless tone of disparagement running
+through Mr. Wilkes's book. True, Shakespeare's reputation may be able
+to bear it; but for the very reason of Shakespeare's preeminence the
+world--the thoughtful part of it at least--would welcome a close,
+careful, and competent examination of his claims, even in an adverse
+spirit. Such an examination Mr. Wilkes, notwithstanding the
+voluminousness and the method of his book, has not been able to give
+them. It is not--for example, in his chapter on the "Merchant of
+Venice"--by calling Antonio a "blackguard" and a "ruffian," and
+Bassanio "an unprincipled, penniless adventurer, a mere tavern
+spendthrift and carouser, who borrows money that he may cheat a wealthy
+maiden of her dower," by calling Gratiano and Lorenzo "poodles and
+parasites," the first of whom "is willing to put up with Portia's
+waiting maid Nerissa," that Mr. Wilkes can hope to win respect for an
+American view of Shakespeare. If Mr. Wilkes had informed himself more
+thoroughly in regard to the manners of Antonio's time, he would have
+found that in those days men, otherwise kind-hearted and generous,
+treated Jews as he treated Shylock; that Nerissa was probably, if not
+surely, as well born and as well bred as her mistress was; and that
+Bassanio's desire to marry an heiress, beautiful, loving, and by him
+beloved, was not peculiar to the hero of the "Merchant of Venice."
+Indeed, very estimable men have not been found averse to such a
+proceeding in these days, and even in America. And what is strange the
+beautiful heiresses have forgiven them, and if they behaved kindly and
+lovingly as husbands, have been very happy, strange as it may seem. Why
+should Mr. Wilkes speak of Bassanio's going to Belmont "to swindle
+Portia"? He does no such thing. Such criticism of Shakespeare, if it
+were truly and representatively American, would justly hold America up
+to the world's ridicule.
+
+Scattered through Mr. Wilkes's book, making us regret the more such
+passages as we have noticed, are others which show fine insight and
+robust common sense. In this very chapter on the "Merchant of Venice"
+there are two or three pages of sound criticism of the dull and pompous
+platitudes of the sham-profound German critics, for which we thank the
+author. They are well and heartily written, and they do not overstep
+the bounds of literary decorum. In many parts, Mr. Wilkes's book,
+although it is a very unsafe guide, contains stimulating suggestions to
+reflection.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+Lord Amberly, the recently deceased son and heir of Earl Russel, left
+an elaborate work behind him upon the religions of the world, which has
+just been republished here.[9] Apart from its teachings, or rather its
+tendencies, which would be stamped as "infidel" by all orthodox
+Christians, the book is valuable. For it is the result of very
+profound, painstaking research. It contains nothing particularly new,
+but it presents, in a tolerably compact form, a critical view of the
+whole subject of religious beliefs and ceremonies, in all time and in
+all countries. Its author evidently means to be fair; and from his
+point of view he is so. The book is full of information upon a subject
+which is now attracting unusual attention from a class of minds which,
+twenty-five or thirty years ago, would have shrunk in horror from any
+such examination; and its value in this respect is enhanced by an
+index, which makes it a useful book of reference.
+
+      [9] "_An Analysis of Religious Belief._" By Viscount AMBERLY.
+      8vo, pp. 745. New York: D. M. Bennett.
+
+--Mr. Frothingham, who has rapidly taken the place of leader in a new
+school of morals and religion, but whose followers are yet few, has
+added another book to those which have been recently noticed in our
+pages.[10] It is composed of some of those discourses--for they cannot
+be called sermons, in the ordinary sense of the word--which he delivers
+to his disciples on Sunday; delivering them on that day because it is
+convenient for the purpose. It must be admitted that they teach a very
+high and pure morality. But we confess that the title of the book, "The
+Spirit of the New Faith," seems to us a misnomer; for we seek in it in
+vain for the evidences of any faith. Indeed, its principal object seems
+to be the inculcation of morality without faith; the teaching that, to
+an upright life--truly Christian, that is, in spirit--(for Mr.
+Frothingham would probably spurn the name) no faith of any sort is
+necessary. In the sermon--not the first in order--which gives the
+volume its name, we remark a strange perversion or misconception of the
+chiefest Christian virtue. Mr. Frothingham writes in a kindly, generous
+spirit which excludes scorn; but he approaches scorn in his remarks
+upon charity, at which he almost scoffs. He says of it: "Charity is not
+equivalent to brotherhood; it is not synonymous with brotherhood, or
+even with appreciation. Charity can be unjust: it is unjust in its
+pity. Pity, indeed, is its essence." Were this a true definition of
+charity, Mr. Frothingham might be justified in the tone he takes toward
+it. But the very spirit of charity is at war not only with injustice,
+but with arrogance, and with phariseeism of all kinds. Its very essence
+is the assumption of good motives, even on the part of those who differ
+radically from us in conduct and belief. It is the great moral
+equalizer of the world. We are surprised that a thinker of Mr.
+Frothingham's clearness and subtlety of mind should have so failed in
+appreciating a quality which does not inculcate, but which _is_ love
+and respect for others.
+
+      [10] "_The Spirit of the New Faith._ A Series of Sermons." By
+      OCTAVIUS BROOKS FROTHINGHAM. 16mo, pp. 272. New York: G. P.
+      Putnam's Sons.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+Few persons are aware of the vast and varied range of duties which are
+connected with what is called, "for short," a geological and
+geographical survey of the Territories.[11] The second edition of the
+catalogue of publications made in connection with the survey, of which
+Dr. F. V. Hayden is director, enumerates forty-one publications issued
+within ten years, among which are annual reports of the work done since
+1867, bulletins, the issue of which began in 1874, and important
+monographs on ancient and modern fauna and flora of the region
+examined. Dr. Hayden's own geological work is necessarily limited by
+his heavy duties as director of the whole survey, but his long study of
+the West gives him unusual qualifications for assembling and discussing
+the work of others. He has a minute description with map of the Upper
+Arkansas valley and its glaciation, and of the old lake system of the
+West. During the early portion of the Tertiary the whole country, "from
+the Arctic circle to the Isthmus of Darien," was occupied with lakes,
+some of which were immense in size. In after times thousands of small
+lakes took their place, and these have finally disappeared. Many of
+these were expansions of the rivers, like most modern lakes. The old
+valleys are now occupied by a diluvial deposit, the counterpart of the
+Loess of the Rhine, and almost the same in composition. The
+agricultural future of all that valley region is very promising, for
+from some mysterious cause, the rainfall seems to be increasing over
+the whole area. Buried trees of great size prove that Nebraska has not
+always been the grassy waste it now is, and the revolutions of nature
+may restore its forests. Mr. Aughey figures some arrow-heads which he
+found in this deposit fifteen and twenty feet from the top, and in such
+a position as to assure him of their true age. Leaving the admirable
+geological study of Dr. Peale, we come to Mr. Eudlich's examination of
+the San Juan mines. This is a kind of work which government explorers
+should do more of, though until the mines are worked deeper, the
+information obtained is not very full. The veins are reported to be
+probably of Cretaceous age, or they may date from the beginning of the
+Tertiary. Dr. Hayden reports that when the coming season's work is
+finished "the most rugged and mountainous portion of our continent"
+will have been surveyed. It is his intention to map it in an atlas of
+six sheets, each covering about 11,500 square miles. The cartographical
+work of the survey is excellent. This volume contains eighty-eight maps
+and views, executed in a most creditable manner.
+
+      [11] "_United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the
+      Territories._" F. V. HAYDEN, United States Geologist in charge.
+      Annual Report, 1877. Colorado and adjacent Territories.
+      Government Printing Office.
+
+--We have also received two of the "Miscellaneous Publications"[12] of
+the survey, one being the last and crowning work of America's great
+invertebrate palaeontologist, Dr. F. B. Meek.[13] The names "Meek and
+Hayden" have an association in American scientific work that is
+historic, and in the "Report on Invertebrate, Cretaceous, and Tertiary
+Fossils of the Upper Missouri Country" are assembled the results of
+painstaking labors extending through many years. The volume is worthy
+to stand as a monument to such an author. The introduction contains a
+description, in the author's characteristically concise style, of the
+formations in which the fossils were found. The fossils described
+include all the invertebrates from the prescribed region, and it is
+indicative of the author's position in regard to palaeontological work
+in America, that nearly all the species were originally described by
+him. This profound knowledge of the subject and the painstaking
+attention to the discussion of types, and of their synonomy, make the
+work, as Dr. Hayden truly says, "one of the most important
+contributions ever made to the science of palaeontology in any portion
+of the world." Forty-five lithographic plates, by Meek and Swinton, and
+numerous woodcuts, illustrate the book.
+
+      [12] _The Same._ Catalogue of Publications. Second edition,
+      Revised to December 31, 1876.
+
+      [13] _The Same._ Report on Invertebrate Palaeontology. F. B. MEEK.
+
+--Dr. Packard's "Monograph of the Geometrid Moths"[14] is the next
+important publication of this survey. It is the first complete treatise
+on the American species of these moths. The author describes between
+three and four hundred species, and thinks it not unlikely that nearly
+a thousand will be ultimately found on the continent. The collections
+have been made by many travellers, and at points extending from Polaris
+bay to Texas. Great attention is paid to generic and specific
+description, and to synonomy, besides which a complete bibliography of
+the subject is added. Dr. Packard's work is therefore well suited to
+serve for immediate instruction, as well as a standard for reference.
+The admirably executed plates increase its value for both uses.
+
+      [14] _The Same._ Monograph of the Geometrid Moths or Phalaenidae.
+      By A. S. PACKARD, Jr., M.D.
+
+--Captain Ludlow's report of his visit to the Yellowstone Park in 1875
+is one of the most interesting books the Government has published.[15]
+He found that the army of American vandals has turned its footsteps
+toward this national museum of wonders, and every year they go to it in
+hundreds and thousands to admire and destroy the delicate lace work
+which nature has spent centuries in weaving. The Park contains the most
+remarkable glaciers on this continent, and the constantly flowing and
+splashing water has built up a basin of opal around each fountain.
+These basins are curiously convoluted and fretted, and are composed
+almost entirely of quartz deposited from the water, their light gray
+color contrasting beautifully with the deeply tinted water. Wherever
+they are solid the idiotic visitor writes his name, and thousands of
+these unimprisoned lunatics have been there. Wherever the basins are
+most delicate and wonderful, the savage white man strikes them with an
+axe and carries home "a specimen." Captain Ludlow found two women
+climbing around one geyser called the Castle, from the numerous little
+pinnacles and towers it has built up, "with tucked up skirts and rubber
+shoes, armed one with an axe, the other with a spade." When he first
+saw the Beehive, the most remarkable of the geysers in point of height,
+throwing its stream two hundred feet high from a small aperture, he had
+a pang in anticipation of the destruction that he felt sure would come
+upon it. And with good reason. The next day he returned to camp just in
+time to run in and save the Beehive, the pride of the Park, from the
+uplifted axe of _a woman_! He urges the Government to spend $10,000 or
+thereabouts in protecting this beautiful place from the assaults of
+these iconoclasts, who break down ten times as much as they carry off.
+We regret to see that his recommendation is unheeded. A governor is
+appointed for the Park, but he has no salary, and probably does not
+remain on the ground. Captain Ludlow very truly says that the presence
+of a small party there to open roads, preserve the Park, and keep a
+careful record of the geysers would well repay its cost in the increase
+of knowledge and pleasurable travel it would bring to our people.
+
+      [15] "_Report of a Reconnaissance to the Yellowstone National
+      Park in the Summer of 1875._" By WILLIAM LUDLOW, Captain of
+      Engineers. War Department, Washington.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+Mr. David A. Wells has made a good choice in presenting Bastiat's
+writings on political economy,[16] for his essays are as sound in
+principle as they are homely in method. He tried to make people see the
+true meaning of the phrases and theories which are the common staple of
+conversation among the industrial classes. For instance, he meets the
+assertion that a country gains wealth when the government employs a
+great number of people by pointing out that the personal expenditures
+of the people are reduced by just the amount of the taxes. When the
+government takes a dollar from a citizen to pay a laborer, the citizen
+has just one dollar less to hire the laborer for his own use. The
+country gains no wealth by such a transaction, but merely makes an
+exchange of employers. This proposition, which M. Bastiat insists upon
+through many arguments, is of more vital interest to France than to us.
+It refers to a form of folly that is chronic there, but sporadic here,
+and its most threatening outbreak (during the "ring rule" in New York)
+was violently cured by the panic of 1873. But the importance of
+inculcating sound views on this subject is just as necessary here as
+there. Probably the larger part of Tweed's stealings ultimately found
+their way to laboring men, but who shall say that New York has gained
+wealth by his career? M. Bastiat's views on interest, capital, taxes,
+encouragement of fine arts by the State, public works, the spendthrift,
+government, etc., are excellent, and expressed in an ingenious and
+taking way. It is hard to give to dissertations on such subjects that
+"blood-curdling interest" which Mark Twain promised in his agricultural
+memoranda; but M. Bastiat certainly unites an unusual interest of style
+to sensible and simple views. Mr. Wells may count the reproduction of
+these essays as one of the many valuable public services he has done
+his countrymen.
+
+      [16] "_Essays on Political Economy._" By FREDERICK BASTIAT.
+      Translation revised by David A. Wells. New York: G. P. Putnam's
+      Sons.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+A hundred and four years have passed since John Howard paid that visit
+to Bedford jail which first directed his attention to the improvement
+of the prisoners' condition. The work began with the study of prisons;
+a hundred years has turned it into the study of the prisoner. Mr.
+Dugdale[17] discovered in 1874 the criminal family which has become
+notorious as containing Margaret, "the mother of criminals." She was
+one of six sisters, of whom one is not traceable; four gave rise to
+mixed criminal and pauper lines, and Margaret to a distinctively
+criminal line. To these sisters Mr. Dugdale gives the name _Jukes_, and
+he has followed up seven generations, containing 540 known persons of
+Juke blood, and 169 known persons of other blood who became allied to
+the Jukes in one way or another. All told, this criminal family
+contains 709 known persons, and probably 500 undiscovered members,
+forming the most numerous criminal lineage ever studied. Mr. Dugdale's
+pamphlet is a profoundly interesting analysis of the history of this
+family, and the tendencies that have governed it. The remarkable fact
+is developed that the strongest criminal tendencies are on the female
+side, and pauper tendencies on the male side. Crime and pauperism are
+psychologically one and the same, one or the other being manifested as
+the individual's character is strong or weak. A life may exhibit an
+innocent childhood, a criminal maturity, and a pauper old age. The same
+phases may be developed more slowly, and appear in successive
+generations, or even in alternate generations. Intemperance is no doubt
+frequently the immediate cause of crime, as seen in so many murders.
+But Mr. Dugdale shows that the common belief that criminal tendencies
+are the result of intemperance is not true, while the reverse is true,
+that these tendencies produce physical degeneration, which craves the
+stimulus of drink. These investigations show that the pauper is almost
+irreclaimable. His mental weakness neutralizes every effort made for
+his welfare, but the active criminal has strength enough to do better
+if he will. As to women, it is shown that their immorality is the
+precise counterpart of crime in the man, and it is to this fact that we
+owe the steady development of our criminal population. Illegitimacy is
+not in itself a cause of crime, but the environment of neglect in which
+the illegitimate live is a fruitful cause. We cannot detail all the
+conclusions of this close and exhaustive study of criminal character.
+They are as numerous as they are disagreeable to read and contemplate.
+
+      [17] "_The Jukes._ A Study In Crime, Pauperism, Disease, and
+      Heredity." By R. L. DUGDALE. With an Introduction by Elisha
+      Harris, M.D. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
+
+--Dr. Bowen's pamphlet on "Dyspepsia," published by Loring, is so good,
+so comforting, and so plain to persons who do not know any more of
+medicine than is necessary to have the various diseases, that we are
+glad to point it out to our readers. He says there is no case of
+dyspepsia that cannot be cured, except such as are complicated with
+other troubles that are necessarily fatal. He opposes the starvation
+treatment, but does not give general directions for cure, saying that
+each case must be studied and treated for itself.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+Dr. Stillman's "Seeking the Golden Fleece"[18] is worth reading for its
+faithful picture of a long sea voyage in the olden time. Nearly a
+hundred passengers left New York in the Pacific, the captain and owner
+being obliged to slink on board, to avoid attachments sued out against
+them by other passengers who were dissatisfied and left behind. The
+voyage consumed 194 days, and the narrative of its incidents is much
+the most interesting part of the book. As to the author's experience in
+California, we can sum it up in the common phrase, "The old story." He
+was one of the first argonauts. He saw Sacramento when it had
+half-a-dozen shanties, San Francisco when millions of dollars worth of
+goods lay on the hillsides, for lack of sufficient warehouses, when the
+mines were yielding well, and cooks were cheap at $300 a month. Dr.
+Stillman's narrative is one of the best that has appeared of California
+in the days of the pioneers.
+
+      [18] "_Seeking the Golden Fleece._ A Record of Pioneer Life in
+      California." By J. D. B. STILLMAN. A. Roman & Co.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+Mr. Habberton shows how fit he is to be the editor of selections from
+standard authors by publishing the Roger de Coverly papers[19] without a
+note or emendation. We have these celebrated numbers of the "Spectator"
+in all the grace and humor of the originals, and with the quaint flavor
+which age has necessarily added to them unimpaired. The editor informs
+us that after a careful hunt through the book market, he finds the
+previous editions of Sir Roger out of print, and for that reason he
+publishes this one, though his first plan for the "Select British
+Essayists" did not include it. He thinks the publication peculiarly
+timely now, when "the standard of letters threatens to become vastly
+different from that under which English literature has gained whatever
+it possesses of real value." We do not agree with him in anticipating
+the complete shelving of Sir Roger in case this threatened change
+really takes place. In all times the really great authors will be read
+by the few, and talked about by the many. But however that may be, Mr.
+Habberton's handsome and convenient collection of these papers will be
+welcomed by the many who are glad to learn how famous authors wrote,
+and yet have not taste enough for classical reading to attack the whole
+"Spectator" itself.
+
+      [19] "_Sir Roger de Coverly:_ Consisting of the Papers Relating
+      to Sir Roger, which were Originally Published in the 'Spectator.'"
+      With an Introductory Essay by JOHN HABBERTON. New York: G. P.
+      Putnam's Sons. $1.25.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+The disciples of Swedenborg will read with interest a little book of a
+mildly controversial character by B. F. Barrett, which endeavors to
+show what the New Church really is.[20] The controversy is not with the
+unbelievers in Swedenborg, but with some prominent persons among his
+disciples. Its object is to show that the New Jerusalem, or New Church,
+is not an organized and visible body of people united by a creed and a
+form of worship more or less uniform. This view, although, as the
+writer says, it has prevailed among the students of Swedenborg for
+nearly a hundred years and is probably held by a large majority of them
+at the present day, he regards as an utterly mistaken conception. He,
+on the contrary, regards the theory of separation as false and vicious.
+The function of Swedenborgianism, if so it must be called, he believes
+to be to uproot and destroy the mischievous spirit of sect, to exalt
+charity above faith, life above doctrine, both inside and outside of
+all the churches. This he regards as that second coming of the Lord
+which Swedenborg taught; and this he sees in the signs of the times.
+Few of us know really what Swedenborgianism is; and some of us have
+tried in vain to discover what there is in it which captivates some
+clear-headed as well as true-hearted men. But if this be
+Swedenborgianism, who of us is there that will not bid it God speed?
+
+      [20] "_The New Church:_ Its Nature and Whereabout. Being a
+      Critical Examination of the Popular Theory, with some
+      Illustrations of its Tendency and Legitimate Fruits." By B. F.
+      BARRETT. 16mo, pp. 213. Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen &
+      Haffelfinger.
+
+--"The Library of Swedenborg,"[21] edited by Mr. Barrett, is to consist
+of twelve handy volumes, giving a complete summary of Swedenborg's
+system in a series of extracts from his writings, grouped together
+under appropriate headings, indicating the special doctrine they
+illustrate. These volumes are of the most convenient size and neatly
+printed and bound. They are, in short, in every respect in contrast
+with the bulky tomes in which Swedenborg's system is usually and so
+repulsively presented. Three volumes of the series have thus far been
+published.
+
+      [21] "_Volume Third The Swedenborg Library._" Edited by B. F.
+      BARRETT. Freedom, Rationality, and Catholicity. From the Writings
+      of Emanuel Swendenborg. Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen &
+      Haffelfinger.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+A book the author of which publishes his own portrait as a frontispiece
+is opened with prejudice by most sensible men, we believe, and
+phrenology is not regarded with great favor by the majority of such
+readers. But here is a book which is able to stand up against both
+these prejudices.[22] Whatever we may think of phrenology, we cannot
+withhold our hearty approval of the methods of teaching which are
+recommended by Mr. Sizer. He would have the teacher study his pupil,
+watch the action of his mind, detect his propensities, and then direct
+his efforts accordingly. The author does not content himself with
+generalities; he goes into particulars; he indicates temperaments,
+describes mental traits and modes of action, and gives good counsel as
+to their direction. His views of training include the moral as well as
+the mental side of the pupil, and also his physical nature. Children
+trained according to the system here recommended and set forth would
+have the most made of them that their organizations permit. We commend
+the book to all teachers and parents. It will interest them, and if
+they study it and follow its counsels, it will profit their children.
+As to the phrenology of it, they may let that go. Like the allegory of
+"The Faerie Queene," it won't bite them.
+
+      [22] "_How to Teach according to Temperament and Mental
+      Development_; or, Phrenology in the School Room and the Family."
+      By NELSON SIZER. 16mo, pp. 331. New York: Wells & Co.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+In poetry we have before us this month only a sacred tragedy, the
+writer of which we fear has been misled into verse-writing by an
+ambition to justify his parents' choice of a name.[23] The incidents of
+his tragedy are of course derived from the Old Testament, and in every
+case in which they are in any way modified it is for the worse. His
+poetry reminds us of that dreary stuff that was written before the
+appearance of Marlowe and the other Elizabethan dramatists. We wonder
+that the writer undertook a subject which had been so ably handled by
+others before him, and particularly by Charles Heavysege, to whose
+vigorous and highly picturesque dramatic poem[24] we direct the
+attention of our poetry-loving readers.
+
+      [23] "_King Saul:_ A Tragedy." By BYRON A. BROOKS. 16mo, pp. 144.
+      New York: Nelson & Phillips.
+
+      [24] Published by Osgood & Company.
+
+
+
+
+NEBULAE.
+
+
+--The result of months of agitation and negotiation is that to Russia
+is left the task of driving the Turks out of Europe single-handed.
+Well, Russia is content, and not only content, but pleased. She does
+not object to being left to seek her own ends by her own means, and
+would like nothing better than to have all the other powers take the
+position of disinterested bystanders while she whops poor little Johnny
+Turk, and takes as much as she likes of his territory by way of
+indemnity. She meant this all along, and it has been amusing to see how
+she has with a combination of tact and persistency attained her end. Of
+course as to her motives there can be no doubt; they are purely
+philanthropic and religious. It is for the Christians in the Turkish
+provinces, about whom England began the disturbance, the result of
+which promises to be Russia's success and her own discomfiture. The
+attitude of Turkey wins respect and sympathy. It has been manly in
+tone, and in diplomacy not unskilful. The Turks have always shown a
+combination of stubbornness and craft which have made them, except in
+the field, more than a match for their Christian enemies. Without
+approving Turkish faith or life, we may yet admire the firmness and
+dignity with which they have refused to submit to a dictation which
+would exclude them from the rank of independent nations. They made the
+mistake of not putting the Czar palpably in the wrong, which they would
+have done by sending the embassy to St. Petersburg to treat of
+disarmament. But he would have probably wriggled but of this position
+in some way; and of this they may have felt sure. Plainly the Turks
+feel that they are in a crisis of their national existence, and they
+are desperate. They know of course that between Great Britain and
+Russia there is a determination to drive them out of Europe, and that
+their only safety thus far has been in the rivalry and jealousy of
+those two powers. Since the effort is to be made, they feel that they
+are in as good a condition to resist it now as they ever will be; and
+with the desperation of their character they have gone into the unequal
+fight. What will be the end, no one can foresee; but of one thing we
+may be sure, that the British Government will not fight for the Turks,
+and as certainly they will not fight with Russia against them. Neither
+Germany nor Austria is likely to spend blood and treasure for the
+aggrandizement of Russia. Therefore, although some publicists look for
+a great change in the map of Europe, it seems rather that the result of
+the war, even if it be unfavorable to Turkey, will be little more than
+the liberation and autonomy of one or two of the provinces.
+
+
+--The personal nature of our politics was never more apparent than it
+is at present. On all sides, and in regard to all questions, we meet
+with evidence of it. Whether it be in regard to great questions of
+national importance, the formation of parties, or some little State or
+county matter, the point generally first raised is how Mr. ---- or Mr.
+---- will be likely to feel about it. The subject is not discussed upon
+broad grounds of right, of law, or of policy, but with regard to the
+effect that it will have upon such or such an "interest," which is
+represented by Mr. ----, the said interest being sometimes that of a
+railway, or a "ring," but generally that of a knot of professional
+politicians. This seems strange in a country where the government is
+"of the people, by the people, and for the people." Our democracy has
+subjected us to the condition of the old Roman clients. We do not have
+leaders in politics, but users; men who use us for their own advantage.
+
+
+--China and Japan are turning the tables upon us bravely. We have been
+sending missionaries to them for two hundred years and more, and now a
+young disciple of Buddha comes among us to criticise our religion and
+to tell us that the moral principles and the conduct of Christians are
+of a lower standard than those taught by Confucius; and a Japanese
+publicist criticises our politics in our leading review, and tells us
+that we are the slowest people on the face of the earth, and are tied
+hand and foot by our paper constitutions. There will probably not be
+many converts to Buddhism; and as probably the Constitution of the
+United States will not be set aside as a worthless piece of paper in
+this generation. None the less, however, are these return-missionary
+efforts of our extremely Oriental friends very significant signs of the
+times. They show two things: first, the little real effect which, after
+all, the West has produced upon the East; and last, the freedom of
+thought and discussion which is now pervading the world. It is safe to
+say that our Chinese and Japanese critics will be listened to with
+respect; and that not in a mere spirit of tolerance and politeness. The
+world has changed its position greatly in such respects within the last
+thirty or fifty years. The petition in the English prayer-book in favor
+of "Jews, Turks, heretics, and infidels," which found its counterpart
+in the extemporaneous prayers of other orthodox religious sects, is
+beginning to sound rather antiquated. The idea of holding up Dr.
+Gottheil, for instance, as a proper subject for especial prayer, is to
+most sensible people rather ridiculous, however good Christians they
+may be. Investigation has found the principles of a high morality in
+other religious creeds than those of Western Europe and America; and
+charity, that chiefest of Christian virtues, has taught us to judge
+others, if we judge them at all, by standards of general application
+with allowance for peculiar conditions. We have discovered that
+political sagacity was not confined to the founders of the political
+systems of modern Europe. It is found that the human mind is much the
+same under like conditions in all countries and in all times; and we
+are approaching gradually to Tennyson's "parliament of man" and
+"federation of the world."
+
+
+--A sadder story has not been told for a long while than that of the
+mother and daughter who were excluded from the Shaker settlement at
+Whitewater, where they had been for fourteen years, and after leaving
+which, and seeking in vain the means of livelihood, they, in despair,
+took poison, and died in each other's arms. The sadness is not so much
+in their death; for to that they were at any time liable; and loving
+each other fondly, as they manifestly did, in their voluntary death
+they were not divided. But the mother was at first driven to the Shaker
+community fourteen years ago, with her little girl, because she had
+been deserted by the father of her child, to whom she had not been
+married. She had weakly yielded to the impulse of nature without
+fortifying herself by a legal claim upon the father of her child, and
+the world, instead of treating her tenderly and helping her, turned its
+back upon her and told her that she and the child that she had borne
+were fit only to starve or to live in a county poor house. After
+fourteen years of the cold, colorless, and unnatural life of the
+Shakers, the daughter showed that she was not an abstraction or a
+forked radish, and behaved like a woman, perhaps not a prudent one, to
+the young men of the community. She was told that such behavior was
+only fit for the world's people, and that she and her daughter must go.
+But the world's people had driven out the mother herself upon something
+such grounds years before; and now when she came back she was met by
+the same stony front. Let us not be misunderstood; we are not
+justifying or even palliating the mother's conduct. We pass that point
+by without consideration. But the point remains that for an error,
+which, however great, was in the course of nature, the mother became an
+outcast, and that for indiscretion, also in the course of nature, on
+the daughter's part, both afterward were turned away from the Shaker
+community; and then they found the world so hard, and life in it so
+bitter, that, although one was still in the prime of life and the other
+in its early morning, they chose rather death together. They might have
+been base and unnatural, hard-hearted, malicious, slanderous,
+revengeful, covetous, grasping, utterly regardless of the happiness
+and, within the law, of the rights of others, the mother might not have
+loved her child, the child might not have loved her mother, and yet the
+world would not have driven them to the Shakers and the Shakers would
+not have driven them out again into the world to die. It is an old
+story, we do not hesitate to say an old wrong, of which every man and
+woman with an unperverted heart admits the cruelty in the abstract, but
+of which the collective world is always ready to be guilty. A woman who
+"gets a husband," no matter by what base arts or design, is "received";
+a woman who gives the world a child otherwise than according to law is
+cast out, often by those who are not worthy to touch the hem of her
+garment. It is not necessary to justify women who err in this way
+before condemning the pharisaic righteousness which stones them into
+despair. "Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more."
+
+
+--Compare the wrong done in such a case with the conduct of a
+"respectable" young woman whose sudden disappearance from her home near
+Waterford, New York, caused much excitement. She reappeared after a
+week's absence, and accused three young men of the place of abducting
+her. They were rather wild fellows, and they were arrested. But upon
+investigation the story was found to be a pure fabrication. The girl
+had gone suddenly off to visit some of her relatives; and to gratify
+some feeling, whatever it might have been, she trumped up this
+accusation. It is impossible to conceive a fouler, baser act. And yet
+she will not be an outcast; she is "respectable"; no one will venture
+to call her a "bad girl." But suppose that He who said "neither do I
+condemn thee" were to decide between the relative fitness of the two
+for a place in His kingdom--is there any doubt in whose favor He would
+speak? The law cannot decide as He would decide; and the world is right
+in insisting upon the chastity of woman; but is the world right in
+regarding chastity as the only female virtue, or at least in regarding
+a lapse from continence as the only wrong which should exclude woman
+from the pale of decent society, and deprive her of a right to earn her
+living among other women? Is it right in asking only one question in
+regard to a woman's conduct and in "receiving" a married woman, merely
+because she is married, although she may make her home a little hell
+for her husband and her children? We are not advocating looseness upon
+the former point, but only comparing the world's treatment of natural
+error with its treatment of essential and malicious wrong-doing. If the
+one should be condemned--and it should be--what should be done in case
+of the other? Motive gives every act its true character; and if we
+teach women that a life filled with acts the motives of which are mean
+and malicious may be "respectable," are we not subjecting them to a
+daily discipline of moral degradation?
+
+
+--And with it all there is such a foolish, deplorable, ruinous neglect
+of the proper instruction of young women. They are taught heaps of
+things that are of no possible use to them, and they are not taught
+those which concern them most nearly. Here is this miserable
+"Throop-Price" affair, as it is called, in which a young lady belonging
+to a family of some culture and social position is actually taken
+before a clergyman and half married before she knows it; but suspecting
+that something is wrong, and being assured by the clergyman that the
+ceremony he is performing solemnizes a real, binding marriage, she
+flies off, but is immediately induced to go before the Mayor, and is
+there married out of hand when she meant to do no such thing. It seems
+incredible; but it is actually true. We make, as we should do, an awful
+fuss about marriage, and a good marriage is, as it should be, the
+desire of a young woman's heart, and yet in regard to all the
+essentials of marriage as well as the duties and personal relations of
+married life, we leave them in ignorance. There would seem to be but
+two ways about this matter: one, the French way of keeping young girls
+in seclusion and absolute ignorance, and then marrying them off as a
+sort of business transaction--an arrangement that does not suit our
+social life, and which, it must be confessed, does not tend to produce
+the best state of morals in France; the other to give young girls
+reasonable liberty, under the general supervision of their parents and
+family, but in this case to arm them with knowledge, to let them know
+what marriage is legally, ceremonially, socially, and physiologically.
+This is a safe way, and the only safe one. Let this be done, and then
+if a girl "goes wrong" in any way, it is merely one of those
+unavoidable misfortunes which some of us have to encounter.
+
+
+--Was there ever anything so amazing as this blue-glass craze that has
+taken possession of about two-thirds of those who are included in the
+term "everybody"? It would seem as if there were no limit to man's
+credulity, particularly upon those subjects which concern him most
+nearly, religion and the preservation of bodily health. In both he is
+ready to listen to any plausible person who will tell him to "do some
+great thing." Tell him that he must live a life morally pure and
+physically clean and sober, that he must not sin against his own
+consciousness of right, and that he must wash himself and eat simple,
+wholesome food, conform himself to the indications of his physical
+structure, and he will assent in a careless way, and immediately
+violate every rule of sound morals and physiology. But tell him that he
+must make a pilgrimage to Rome, or that he must lift six or seven
+hundred pounds daily, swallow pills and bitters, or live in a blue
+conservatory, and he will prick up his long ears, and do it if he can.
+What wonder that quacks all make money, and that the "patent medicine
+interest" should have a representative in Congress! But quacks and
+patent medicines usually must have the benefit of a few years of
+copious advertising before they effect their purpose; whereas blue
+glass was written into popular favor with the dash of a pen. It trebled
+in price in less than so many weeks. The notion that light should be
+filtered of every ray but the blue one to produce the best effect upon
+the human body and brain is certainly one of the most fantastic that
+has been broached since the days of the medical mountebanks. The best
+use to which this glass can be put is to the making of hot-beds. Let
+our early lettuce and pease by all means be brought forward under
+sashes glazed in blue. What cauliflowers we shall have, and what
+cabbages! At present the crop of cabbage heads, to be sure, promises to
+be very large through the intervention of blue glass; but much the
+greater number of them appear to be growing upon human shoulders.
+
+
+--Science, or self-styled science, however, insists on playing its
+tricks with colors as with other matter--if color be matter. There is
+now a budding theory that the eye is and always has been in a state of
+development, and that we are yet to discover new colors of which we
+have at present no idea. In support of this it is urged that in early
+literature we find only the strong primary colors mentioned--red, blue,
+black; black, however, being the absence of true color. It is supposed
+that the other colors were not seen; and in support of this it is urged
+that Aristotle assigns only four colors to the rainbow. But surely this
+is scientific trifling. It is natural that early writers upon any
+subject should notice only the strongest and most salient points
+connected with it. Its finer gradations become the subject of
+subsequent discussion. Particularly might this be expected to be the
+case in the ruder states of society. It is not that the senses cannot
+perceive; for the savage senses are very keen, as is well known, but
+that language, perhaps even the mind, does not discriminate. It is
+content with broad and marked distinctions. So with regard to the eye
+and color. We may be very sure that a perfect eye sees, and has always
+seen, all possible color. But unless led thereto by science or art, or
+love of beauty in dress or ornamentation, the observer is content with
+noticing the strong tints, red, blue, yellow, black, white--and green
+also, which is so widely spread over nature. But as to a new color,
+that is quite impossible, unless some new gradation or combination of
+color may have a new name given to it. For in the spectrum we have a
+perfect gradation of colors, all that are in the ray; and after we pass
+the primaries, the others are but combinations and gradations. To get a
+new color we must wait for a new eye and a new sun.
+
+
+--Where will the desire for championship not lead some one of us, and
+where will it end? We have champion walkers and skaters, champion
+boot-blacks and bill-posters; and out at the West the other day a lad
+employed in a newspaper office to wrap papers for the mails announced
+himself as the champion paper-wrapper, and challenged anybody to wrap
+with him--the most in so many hours. The last champion performance is
+that of a "professor of dancing" (Anglece, a dancing master), who
+waltzed for five consecutive hours. It was an occasion. We are told
+how, after waltzing some half-a-dozen persons, male and female, out of
+breath, the "intrepid professor" kept on; how he changed partners
+without stopping his regular steps; how he drank a glass of wine now
+and then, while stepping in time to the music; and how, when after
+waltzing steadily for four hours and a half, he showed some signs of
+faltering, slices of lemon were put into his mouth, ten minutes after
+swallowing which "the professor revived." Then he became dizzy, and
+peppermint lozenges were given him. On he went, and in the last five
+minutes of his stint showed his pluck by "putting in fancy steps"; and
+his wife, who was now his partner--a sort of nursing partner, it would
+seem--occasionally whispered "nods of encouragement," a performance
+which beats the professor's all hollow. "Nods and becks and wreathed
+smiles" are very natural and very charming on appropriate occasions;
+but whispered nods are something quite inconceivable. The professor
+held out, and at half-past twelve "a grand huzza rang out." Is not this
+rather a pitiful spectacle? If a man dances, let him dance well. If to
+teach dancing is his vocation, let him get, and let him prize, a
+reputation for teaching it well. That is reasonable and respectable.
+But that a man should spend five whole consecutive hours, nearly a
+quarter of a day, in dancing for the mere sake of showing that he could
+keep it up and dance ever so many people down, is rather a sad
+exhibition of smallness. All these exhibitions spring, not from the
+desire to do well, which is always and in all things honorable, but
+from that of doing something that other people cannot do, which is not
+very admirable. Some other "professor," not to be bluffed, will now
+challenge this professor; and we shall have a dance for the
+championship. Then some other professor in Europe will be fired with
+ambition, and we shall have a grand International Dancing Contest for
+the Championship of the World. Well, it will be a little better, but
+not much, than the eating and drinking matches which sometimes take
+place in England, in which two half-beastly creatures gorge and guzzle
+in a contest wherein the victor would probably be beaten by almost any
+four-legged swine. Emulation is a spur to exertion the moral excellence
+of which is at least questionable; and when it leads to dancing five
+hours on a stretch or eating five pounds of bacon at a sitting, we see
+a little what its essence is.
+
+
+--The curiosities of advertising come out strongly at the far West.
+Here is the "Denver Rocky Mountain News" all ablaze with displayed
+announcements, some of which are of an extraordinary and whimsical
+character. One man cries out in enormous type, "Deadwood on getting
+rich if you only save your money; no need of going to the Black Hills
+if you can buy Groceries at these figures"; another exclaims in very
+big black letters, "Store your Stoves! and avoid trouble, dirt, rust,
+hard work, and _profanity_"--the latter a piece of advice very
+pertinent, it would seem, to the region; another insinuates in a sort
+of colossal pica that although "Bragg and Stick'em may have a larger
+stock of men's furnishing goods than all the other houses in the United
+States put together," the right place to get things cheap and elegant
+is his establishment (who are the loudly advertising rivals that he
+pillories as Bragg and Stick'em does not appear); another firm of
+traders announce themselves as the "Chicago Square-Dealing House";
+another, a jeweller, informs the Western world that in consequence of
+the "great failure of the Milton Gold jewelry company in London, their
+entire stock has been consigned to us to raise money as soon as
+possible"--the idea of a consignment from London to Denver does not
+seem to strike the Western mind as it does us who are somewhat nearer
+London; two undertakers announce their business by enormous prints of
+black-plumed hearses; and the paper itself publishes a "black list" of
+debts for sale, ingeniously adding that a dollar a week will be
+credited to the debtors during the publication; one advertisement is
+headed, "Drunkard, Stop!" an appeal which seems quite in place; for the
+most important and interesting announcement of all, headed, "Don't you
+forget it!" is that a certain man has "the best stock of Straight
+Kentucky Sour-mash Bourbon and Rye _Whiskey_ in the Far West." He may
+be sure that the Denver people will not forget that.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Galaxy, June 1877, by Various
+
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